A lot of the Anti-Apple hatred is more of resentment for the years where any sort of Apple criticism, regardless of how valid it was, an automatic "-1 Troll" or "Flamebait".
I think there's a lot of truth in this. It's interesting that as Apple has become more and more visible in the mainstream this has diminished. Maybe it's about "the underdog" and not Apple specifically.
The Anit-MS hatred is mostly the F/oSS fanbois who think MS is the man that's keeping them down.
I'd wager their extreme dominance of the desktop, vendor lock-in practices, and status as convicted in court for abusing a monopoly in multiple countries may have a little something to do with that. The rest that doesn't get talked about so much is the culture that tends to surround Windows, which can be summed up as "the computer is far too complex for you to try to understand, so let us worry about that for you (for a fee, of course)."
So if someone draws "motherf*cker" on your car and you are getting it removed, it is censorship? Don't you think your definition is a bit broad?
That depends on whether his car was represented as a forum where one can post messages, complete with text boxes where one can type in a comment and click "Submit" or similar. I'm guessing his car doesn't fit that description, so no, that'd be the removal of vandalism, not the censorship of speech. It'd be easier to continue this discussion if you don't deliberately act obtuse.
Apple had something to hide and because it was their own site they were successfully able to remove it in an attempt to hide it. That's really all there is to this. If their Web site and/or customer service staff had attributes like grace, dignity, or self-respect then they would write a helpful and professionally-worded response to any customer complaints and criticisms instead of censoring them.
It's like that saying "if you want to see what sort of character a man has, look at how he treats his subordinates or other people he's not required to be nice to." Likewise, if you want to see how honest a company really is, look at how it handles dissent on a forum it controls. What a shame that Apple failed this one so badly. They could have used such discussion threads as an opportunity to show that they listen to their customers and use their feedback to improve their products. That would have been respectable. Instead we get this authoritarian "because we can" garbage in an attempt to cover something up.
It's disgraceful. I am not a customer of Apple but if I were considering doing business with them, this would have made me reconsider.
Seriously? Calm down. They aren't monitoring the communication of private citizens, they are monitoring incoming connections on critical infrastructure systems.
Besides, monitoring the communication of private citizens happened a while ago under a happy little thing called the Patriot Act.::flamesuit::
The mention of the Patriot Act was apropos. That's because when I first saw the name of this, "Perfect Citizen", I wondered whether that sounded Orwellian to anyone else.
This comment is cheap and overrated IMO. It's not for carrying fat people from the couch to the fridge. It's to help commuters get to their destinations faster. The same reason they take that train or bus instead of also walking those distances for the sake of physical fitness.
Or they could do something really crazy, outlandish, absurd, and unthinkable, such as leaving earlier to allow more time to get to their destination. That way they could still reap the benefits of walking and increase their physical fitness. You know, the kind of thing fat people generally refuse to do even when their workplace is within a reasonable walking distance from their home.
Having enough time that they're not in a rush might also reduce their stress level and who knows, that might in turn reduce their desire to overeat. Here I define "overeat" as eating more calories than you burn. For example, Olympic athletes can eat in excess of 6,000 calories a day while training, but they don't become fatties because they are actually burning them.
I think in all the excuses and justifications they forget one very simple fact: it's not physically possible to gain weight if you burn more calories than you consume. More walking would be an opportunity to burn more calories, which would help whether or not they care about their well-being enough to also choose to consume fewer calories.
That's possible whether or not we implement moving sidewalks. If moving sidewalks get more people on their feet, it certainly couldn't hurt. Those interested in retaining a fitness benefit can walk while on a moving sidewalk, adding their walking speed to the speed of the device. This option wouldn't exist at all inside a taxi cab or a bus.
I have heard Hannity complain about politicians not wanting to come on his show and accusing them of basically hating him - yet continue to refer to them with denigrating language.
The politicians understand a basic fact about all talk shows: you cannot possibly win a "debate" against someone who can turn off your microphone or shout you down at any time, nor can you possibly win a "debate" against someone who entirely controls the flow of conversation. You can "win" a "debate" even when you are dead wrong if you can prevent your opponent from ever speaking except to answer yes/no to your carefully crafted and framed questions. You can also "win" a "debate" if you can prevent him from bringing up any new topics while retaining that ability yourself.
Most of what passes for "debate" on these shows is really just an abuse of the Socratic method, which was originally intended as a teaching tool. It can be entertaining but it's problematic to put it mildly when the average person thinks that this is legitimate dissent.
Hannity might complain about politicians not wanting to be his punching bags on his show so he can increase his ratings. How about if Hannity agrees to enter a fair debate, with a moderator who is not an opponent in the debate? I bet more politicians would accept his invitations then. He won't do that, of course, because it would cost him the status of always looking right. Politicians are also good orators and also know how to play to a crowd and there's no way Hannity doesn' t understand that.
Thanks.
I only had a little tiny shred of hope for my country left. Now that too is gone to oblivion.
That woman is what happens when everything you have ever known comes from two sources: public schooling and mainstream media. I will qualify "mainstream media" in this way: Fox News is an equal and opposite type of insanity so I do not refer to them here; instead I refer to news outlets that do not rely so heavily on editorials.
And I know this is off-topic... anyone else wonder if Michael Weiner (the real name of Michael Savage) ever opens his eyelids? He either loves to squint or he's on something...
Just not presidents. I always vote for who I want and not "against someone else." We live in an unfortunately stupid world in an unfortunately stupid country... and our respective leaderships wouldn't have it any other way.
There is a reason, after all, that school teachers are among the "re-educate/kill" lists when governments change power so often. It is the educated people they fear most.
Close, but not quite accurate.
With education often comes a great deal of indoctrination. When governments non-peacefully change power, what they fear is a population that has received the previous indoctrination of the old government. They wish to convert or eliminate the schoolteachers so that they can re-indoctrinate the population in a way that makes them subservient to their own rule.
You may have a knee-jerk reaction to the term "indoctrination". For that I have a simple response. Power-hungry rulers everywhere fear an intelligent population that understands critical thinking and is able to independently think for themselves. This would be undesirable both for the old government and the new one. Yet you don't see them eliminating all schools and all teachers entirely. That would create a population that can only contribute unskilled labor to serve the economic and war machines. So they don't eliminate schools and teachers entirely. They replace them with schools and teachers that they control, who teach a curriculum and wield authority in a way favorable to their interests.
I'll give a general example from the USA. When you have an entire generation that grew up in public schools where the insanity of "zero tolerance" for everything is common, where this government agency frequently limits or eliminates Constitutional rights such as that of free speech or the right not to be searched without a warrant, they grow up and see their government becoming more and more authoritarian and believe that this is normal, for it is all they have ever known from an impressionable age. A reading of the curriculum will list things like "Mathematics" and "Physics" but you won't find that as a line-item on the list. Whether you think that's all a big accident or whether you recognize that legions of educators, psychologists, and other experts might notice the effect this has on society is your call.
Basically I disagree with little except your attitude towards victims.
It's the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to observe the world around you, see that there is such exploitation and theft, see that the people to whom it happens suffer because of it, and then take steps to become a difficult target. The hard way is to do nothing and assume that such things can only happen to other people, get victimized, hate the scammers who victimized you, and never understand that you could have seen through them.
It's not just that there are people who exploit others and willfully do harm to them in order to selfishly enrich themselves. Just or not, this is what happens. You can equip people to better handle a world in which there is such evil, or you can shelter them from it and tell them that they're just victims and this is just the way things are, tough shit for them. I'd rather show people how to eliminate the naivete and other personal weaknesses that such criminals exploit. Not only does this safeguard the people who will learn, it also makes it harder to be a successful criminal. Everyone benefits from this.
I am also not arguing for giving a man a fish, I am arguing for educating people rather than letting parasites painfully push them in the right direction.
They are not mutually exclusive. Educate everyone who will be educated. However, some people will not learn though they are capable. They are stubborn and don't want to face their weaknesses. Consequence is their teacher because they would listen to no other. They chose the hard way.
I have had to learn some lessons the hard way. I admit this happened only because I was stubborn and thought I had all the answers when in fact I didn't. So I got screwed, and the suffering I experienced forced me to recognize that I was wrong. I don't blame anyone else for that because I am not a victim and refuse to become one. Instead, I saw that the suffering I experienced was entirely preventable, which was quite humbling. Instead, I take responsibility for what happens in my life. This will test your courage to be sure, but is absolutely worthwhile. It is precisely because I have had to learn things the hard way that I so dearly value being more proactive and learning them the easy way.
Some people have not yet come to understand this. It is definitely not my place to deprive them of such a valuable lesson if they do not wish to pursue the easy way. They make their choices and live with the results, just as I do. To convince them that they are helpless victims who shouldn't bother actively taking responsibility for their own lives is to forever deprive them of personal growth. That's a hell of a lot more important to me than the fact that some rather judgmental folks will think I'm some kind of bad guy for being honest about it. For all we know, the hard path is an essential and invaluable part of their path to personal growth.
Again it's not about blame. It's about being honest with yourself.
The "you warrentee has expired" robocalling scam of 2009 was one of the largest and most successful in recent times. This is certainly not a computer-specific problem.
I'm not an auto mechanic (far from it) and I have never worked in the automobile industry. Yet I immediately recognized that as a scam.
That only affirms my point that no one has to be a victim. Read my posts in this discussion and look at how much resistence that point has received. Yet here I am, in an area completely outside my expertise, receiveing an attempt to scam me, and immediately I realize that it is a scam. I never gave those bastards the time of day.
Would anyone like to continue making excuses for ignorance and stupidity?
So then where was that savvy and knowledge when people were installing malware ridden screensavers on their Ubuntu boxes?
The user TangoMargarine beat me to a complete rebuttal of what you said there. Instead I'll address this one point specifically:
Ubuntu is touted as the "easy to use" Linux distro, as in you don't need to know what you are doing to use it. And that's the one where this screensaver malware appeared. If anything that only affirms my original point.
One other thing:
You can crow all you want about only Windows users falling for this
Actually, yes I can, thank you very much. The scammers are saying that Microsoft found a virus on your computer. That does a rather good job of limiting this to Windows users, wouldn't you say?
I would pit the knowledge, technical skill, and ability to recognize an online scam of the average Linux user against those traits of the average Windows user. Any day.
Your logic is perfect. These scammers really do serve a purpose, as do rapists. If only their "victims" were acting less sexy and vulnerable! This will provide them an incentive.
Rape is a violent crime using physical force or threat of physical force. As such it does not require the victim's active participation. That is why I made it very clear I was talking about non-violent crimes that require the active cooperation of the victim in order to take place.
You had an emotional knee-jerk reaction and this caused you to disregard the specific written conditions I was clearly discussing. It happens. Your choice now is to make an excuse for it or to get upset at me for pointing that out, or, to recognize this as the unproductive mistake that it was that contributed nothing to the discussion. That's up to you.
Note, however, that I absolutely predicted that someone would do this, which is why I bothered at all to mention non-violent crimes requiring active participation of the victim. The predictability of your statement and the fact that I already addressed it should tell you something about its usefulness and its ability to edify.
Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.
It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.
That's not an accurate description of how smart and savvy people deal with this: People evaluate the message and the context it was delivered in. If you get an email from a co-worker while at work and that's a normal, expected way of communication with the sender you don't call "their published phone number" to confirm you have the right person. The context for evaluating trust includes the medium of delivery. In this case it's the phone and the internet. And people are new to the internet. They haven't figured out the patterns for evaluating the trustworthiness of electronic events (if you will.) That's why this scam works in the first place. It's not just praying on those who fall for any old lie, but those who are feel confused about computers.
If I am new to something and realize I am ignorant about it, then I proceed very carefully. I don't just blindly leap ahead and pray that nothing bad will happen. That'd be foolish. Instead, I look before I leap. That's because I know my limitations. I know when I am operating outside my areas of expertise. If I were new to the Internet and didn't understand how it works, that's all the more reason to be suspicious of unsolicited communications (like cold-calls) that arise from it.
Thus, ignorance about the Internet still wouldn't make me a target for these scammers. My gradual overcoming of that ignorance over time would be evidenced by taking fewer and fewer extra steps to address my suspicions as I became more skilled and knowledgable. I wouldn't have to keep looking up so many things or asking so many questions prior to proceeding with whatever it is I am trying to do. But let me emphasize: at no point between ignorance and mastery would I just blindly leap into something I know nothing about.
No, what many people are doing is different. They honestly believe that they can use what they do not remotely understand and that nothing bad will ever happen as a result. That's absurd. There is nothing in life that confirms this belief. It does not come from observation of nature or of human behavior. They refuse to acknowledge that this is risky behavior, and that they assume a risk when they do it. That's why I used the word "stupid" to distinguish this from mere ignorance. When people engage in risky behavior and it doesn't work out well for them, and they are surprised by this, I do not regard them as victims of anything except their own unwillingness to face their limitations and weaknesses.
Criminy, you read one book of economics and one book of evolution and soon you start thinking criminals serve a natural -- even desirable -- function or niche. I will not be surprised if this meme trickles down to the criminal underclass and is used to justify this sort of scammery. There isn't a fixed level of criminality, nor ignorance, and it is desirable to decrease both.
I did not justify it. Indeed, I agreed that these criminals are scumbags and made that very clear. I said people should learn to stop enabling it. It is precisely because they are scumbags that do harm that we should address the things that make their crimes so easy to commit. It just so happens that putting all of our energies into declaring what scumbags they are doesn't teach victims how to stop being victims.
Incidentally, none of this comes from a book I've read. It comes from my ability to observe the world around me. When you address me you are dealing with an individual, not someone who needs others to articulate his concepts for him. If it were otherwise, those concepts would not truly be my own. Let's be honest about what you did there. It's an attempt to belittle. It's a form of hubris that serves no purpose as it is not necessary for disputing my position.
We all warn our children of certain dangers much like we warn our computer illiterate friends and family of how not to get suckered online. We don't leave them to the parasites so they can learn a few-hundred dollar "lesson" when they can learn it for free.
I draw a big distinction between children and the adults who have the bank accounts and credit cards that are used to pay these scammers.
The rest is the difference between giving a man a fish so he eats for a day, and teaching him to fish so he can always feed himself. If I warn people about this specific scam, it will not do much to equip them to recognize other, different scams in the future. If I address the root of their ignorance, that does equip them to say "you know, there's just something funny about this and I'm not giving out money or personal info until I know who I'm dealing with" even when dealing with a new scam that hasn't become well-known yet.
Like I said, someone cold-calls you and claims that Microsoft found a virus on your computer, the solution to that is to hang up and call Microsoft and ask them about it. No technical skill is required for that, just a shedding of naivete. If I really care about my friends and family, then I don't sit there and do nothing while they remain naive and vulnerable, ready to be victimized by the next asshat to come along. I'd much rather get to the root of why they are vulnerable than hack at the branches and limbs of every possible different scam to warn them against.
I don't know where these people are going to school. I went to a public school in the USA, went to a decent university, grad school, and now job that actually utilizes critical thinking skills. I, and my high school friends, didn't turn out to be the fools that you would assume that we would be by going through public schools at each step. It's more likely that being ignorant is the easy way out and that's what people would rather choose instead.
I'm grateful that you and some others are raising such good points in this discussion. I usually enjoy participating in Slashdot but not usually this much. For that I am glad, for this is truly stimulating.
What I would point out here is a particular disconnect. My high school also taught some critical thinking skills, though in narrow and very specific applications. By that I mean, they were utilized only at the request of some kind of authority figure. There always had to be a "gun to the head" in the form of a failing grade or an angry boss at work. This is still a passive approach to life.
My same fellow students who took the same courses I did were still extremely suggestible and susceptible to the propaganda techniques of advertising. Despite good grades in any classes that discussed critical thinking, they still valued conformity much more than individualism. That tells me they were able to mechanically go through the motions but did not embrace critical thinking in any real way. They did not take it to heart and see its tremendous value. They merely paid lip service to it in order to appease a teacher or a boss.
It's the difference between passively waiting for a teacher or other person to decide to show you a skill, versus seeking it yourself for its own sake. It's the folly of believing that critical thought and being tough-minded is all about passing a class or doing a job. It's a failure to comprehend the true meaning of those things, seeing only their surface in the form of utilitarian application, a memorized series of steps, a procedure, something you are required to do rather than something you gladly embrace.
Most of all, the majority of my fellow students viewed education as something they received from school. They did not see schooling as a supplement to their own personal quest to better themselves even when no one is looking. In short, they were still dependent on others to show them how to think rather than discovering it for themselves by hungering and thirsting for it. That dependence is exactly what public schools want to instill, even while they teach the skills that could otherwise overcome it. In that way they make a sort of mockery of those skills.
Ignorance is not really the easy way out; it just has a certain allure because it involves less up-front effort. I tell you the truth, the avoidable suffering that the ignorant experience is far worse than the effort of bettering oneself. So are the network effects on society when you have so many ignorant people.
"Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their 'victims'... They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the 'victim' can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted."
You're a fucking sociopath. Have a little empathy or fuck off.
I have enough empathy to be honest about their weakness. Would you prefer I help them to remain in denial so that they forever remain victims? It's amazing how angry people sometimes become when you tell a victim that he/she doesn't have to be a victim anymore. You'd think that would be welcome news, a message of hope.
I get it alright. I understand your point of view while you fail to grasp mine. You think that when I say "you were vulnerable to this scam because of a weakness or shortcoming, but that can be corrected and you can eliminate your vulnerability" that I am assigning blame. You think I am pointing a finger and am happy to see this happen. Not really. I merely accept the futility of trying to catch and shut down all present and future scammers and take instead an approach you might call "harden the targets".
I also reject the notion that an individual has to be a helpless victim, at the mercy of anyone who would wish to do him/her harm. To tell people that they are helpless victims who can do nothing to better their own situation, who will always be exploited by criminals, who are completely screwed since the regulators won't protect them and they cannot protect themselves, well, I say that is sociopathy. It's telling them that they are forever doomed to just bend over and take it. Does it ever occur to you that this victim mentality is precisely why we have so many petty criminals?
My longing to live in a kinder, wiser, more sane world is beyond my power of expressing it. Really, there are not words for how badly I wish to see that. The way to get from here to there is to be honest about our weaknesses and our problems, to seek realistic solutions to them. This absolutely includes the notion that an individual can better himself or herself, that honesty about one's shortcomings and understanding one's weaknesses is the first step towards overcoming them. It's not "blaming the victim". It's "empowering the victim". And you can't stand it, can you?
You can call me names some more if it makes you feel better. When you do that, all I see is an equal who is extremely determined to be an inferior. If you should get over that you won't receive an "I told you so" from me. You'd put a smile on my face.
In fact I'd say that the public schools bear more responsibility than anyone else for the widespread ignorance and gullibility that these scammers feed on. A truly tough-minded population familiar with critical thinking, logic, and argumentation would not so easily fall for these scams. They also wouldn't support anything our politicians of today are pushing for. So you see that'd be really inconvenient for our increasingly centralized society *spits*.
How exactly does open source prevent social engineering scams?
Open Source is often accused of not being "user-friendly" because it caters to savvy users who know what they're doing. At the very least, it assumes that the user wishes to understand even if they do not have that understanding now. It is not sold to anyone based on how "easy to use" it is or how little expertise is required to use it. It is not sold as a substitute for knowing what you're doing as many Windows apps are.
So perhaps Open Source in the strictest isolation doesn't prevent social engineering. I think it's the culture surrounding it. Open Source is all about being able to examine and modify the program yourself, if you are so inclined. That naturally assumes that you would have or could obtain some programming skill and some understanding about what the program is intended to do. This again is not "so easy any moron could use it" and isn't trying to be.
It follows that more savvy and knowledgable users are less likely to fall for social engineering attempts. Ignorance is the social engineers' very best friend.
They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation./quote?
Yet the only reason why we care to disincentivize ignorance and stupidity is because those scammers exist. Your logic is viciously circular. They need to exist to protect people from themselves?
I'm glad you raised this point. It's a good one, to be sure.
Being wise and savvy and seeking understanding is the natural state of human beings. The widespread ignorance and stupidity is what I might call "unnaturally natural". The proof is that by not viewing ignorance and gullibility as problems in need of correction, people leave themselves vulnerable to this type of scam. The scammers do not create this vulnerability. They merely capitalize on it. They see that something is out of order and that this creates room for them to operate. Otherwise their dubious "enterprise" would never get off the ground.
The ignorance and stupidity is a disease state. The scammers are the disease that can thrive in the environment of that disease state. They are symptoms, not the actual problem. It's absurdity itself to say that the only reason to eschew ignorance and stupidity is because these scammers exist. Have you no concept of how much better our world would be if ignorance and stupidity were not such powerful forces in shaping it?
The personal shortcomings that scammers exploit go far, far beyond computing. They also play important roles in politics, the economy, interpersonal relationships, you name it. It just so happens that computing provides a convenient entry point for that ignorance and stupidity to come under attack since it is generally encouraged in other realms like politics.
Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims". Thus, they are like ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, flies, and worms: they are unpleasant and downright nasty but they serve a purpose. They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the "victim" can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted.
Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.
It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.
They closed my account and cancelled my debit card when I was a day or two late paying off an overdraft fee. Believe me, I told them how I feel back then.
But now I feel a little better about it.
I have no debit cards and you will never catch me with one. If a bank sent me one unsolicited I would immediately throw it into the shredder. They are a terrible idea. They make sense only for people with such horrible credit that they absolutely cannot obtain a credit card. They might make sense for people with zero discipline who also refuse to make any effort to identify their lack of discipline as a character flaw and take action to correct it (the word for that is "coward"), but in my opinion a credit card with a very low credit limit would be a better choice even for them.
With a debit card you have all of the responsibilities of a credit card and none of the legal protections. With a credit card, if a merchant tries to rip you off you can chargeback. Chargebacks favor the customer and are a hassle for the merchant. Good luck doing that with a debit card. With a credit card, if someone ever steals my card or its number and runs up thousands of dollars in charges, federal law limits my personal liability to $50 and my bank doesn't bother worrying about that. With a debit card, if someone ever steals your card or its number they can drain your entire checking account and that money is gone.
With credit cards, the risks belong to the bank as a cost of doing business. With debit cards, the risks belong to you. How nice! In short, debit cards are a horrible idea for anyone but the banks. If you have some sense you'd draw that conclusion just from how hard banks were pushing them when they came out. That's because along with sense comes the realization that banks are far from charitable institutions and try hard to get everyone on board with something because it's in their interests, not yours.
If you know who Clark Howard is, he's a good reference for this.
That's good, but not everyone has non-religious private schools in their area - and I don't see how sending your child to a private Catholic school is anything more than a different kind of "institutionalized madness".
Then you can home-school. Or you can move to another location that has appropriate schools. These are not insurmountable problems. If you care enough, you'll find a way. If you don't, it'll be "too hard" because of this-and-that.
Further, his children would probably have a far better life if he dropped two of those jobs, sent them to public school, and then spent afternoons and evenings with them. Children need their parents far more than they need private school, and heck he could even do some after-class homeschooling.
I'd say you're not in a position to determine this about someone you have never met. Feel free to assume he's so stupid that he never thought about that, and never arranged his schedule accordingly if that gives you some kind of pleasure ("if only he were as smart as you", right?). I won't bother trying to convince you otherwise since a complete lack of evidence didn't prevent you from forming a conclusion, so you have already abandoned reason. It follows that reasoning with you would be futile.
I can see that you played a little CYA there, so you can make your unfounded judgment while retaining an excuse for it, so I'll address that next. Incidentally that excuse would be both a failed attempt to prevent me from saying what I just said, and a successful attempt to justify/rationalize your judgment in your own eyes. At any rate, we are talking about an individual, not a statistical sample or an extrapolation therefrom, so your use of "probably" is a weasel word in this context. It does not change what I just said. It also doesn't change what you said.
I do not know the answer to this. It is pure speculation only (see how unambiguous that was?). But all of this makes me wonder whether you have children of your own that have been put through the meat-grinder that is our public schools and felt a bit guilty at my description of them. If so, then perhaps you saw them become more irritable, more superficial, and more dependent on others emotionally and practically as the years went by. Maybe you wonder whether those extra material luxuries were really worth avoiding the expense of relocation or alternate schooling. That would certainly explain the need to make things up about an honorable man whom you've never met.
Here's what I think you would really find edifying. They're both by another honorable man named John Taylor Gatto. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher. The second is a full-length book available online for free called The Underground History of American Education. Enjoy.
I believe that where we screwed up big-time was when we ever allowed the government to have any input whatsoever into how we educate our children.
Actually, I have to disagree on that part. Probably because my girlfriend is a teacher, just starting, and I've seen the incredible amount of effort that goes into showing teachers how to teach right. There's a whole science behind that, and not with the best instincts can you be as good as a good teacher.
That said, public schools in the US are probably the mess I keep hearing about. That does not mean the entire concept of a public school is bullshit, just because one specific implementation of it is. Have you ever seen public schools outside the US? Say, in countries that are famous for good schools, such as the scandinavian countries?
The funny thing about girlfriends is that unless you are very careful and unusually aware, then as you are "getting into them" so to speak, they are also getting into you. I am forced to consider you a biased source for that reason. Besides, this is a US story and I am speaking about US schools. Therefore it is I who must ask you if you are familiar with US public schools, and it would seem the answer is "no".
Psychological abuse and humiliation is a staple of US schools, both institutionalized and from other students. It's an integral part of the design. You need a population whose spirits have been broken at an impressionable age before you can embrace authoritarianism.
The main purpose of public schooling in the USA is to create a large underclass of people who are just smart enough to perform useful productive work, and just dumb enough not to think critically or question anything or become very curious. The Carnegies and Morgans and others who backed its founders in the 1800s were amazingly honest about this.
Under this system, the fact that most Americans are short-sighted, egotistical, hedonistic, and emotionally childish is considered a bonus feature. It makes them docile and easy to rule. It makes them feel overwhelmed just living their own lives. It prevents them from being sophisticated enough to understand the Hegelian Dialectic ("Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis" aka "Problem, Reaction, Solution"), bread-and-circus, propaganda techniques, and other tools used to expand and maintain state power.
If you really, truly want to understand public schooling in the USA, there is absolutely no better reference than John Taylor Gatto. He has an essay available here and a complete book, available for free online in its entirety, available here. I think you will find these to be quite an eye-opener.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's a lot of truth in this. It's interesting that as Apple has become more and more visible in the mainstream this has diminished. Maybe it's about "the underdog" and not Apple specifically.
I'd wager their extreme dominance of the desktop, vendor lock-in practices, and status as convicted in court for abusing a monopoly in multiple countries may have a little something to do with that. The rest that doesn't get talked about so much is the culture that tends to surround Windows, which can be summed up as "the computer is far too complex for you to try to understand, so let us worry about that for you (for a fee, of course)."
So if someone draws "motherf*cker" on your car and you are getting it removed, it is censorship? Don't you think your definition is a bit broad?
That depends on whether his car was represented as a forum where one can post messages, complete with text boxes where one can type in a comment and click "Submit" or similar. I'm guessing his car doesn't fit that description, so no, that'd be the removal of vandalism, not the censorship of speech. It'd be easier to continue this discussion if you don't deliberately act obtuse.
Apple had something to hide and because it was their own site they were successfully able to remove it in an attempt to hide it. That's really all there is to this. If their Web site and/or customer service staff had attributes like grace, dignity, or self-respect then they would write a helpful and professionally-worded response to any customer complaints and criticisms instead of censoring them.
It's like that saying "if you want to see what sort of character a man has, look at how he treats his subordinates or other people he's not required to be nice to." Likewise, if you want to see how honest a company really is, look at how it handles dissent on a forum it controls. What a shame that Apple failed this one so badly. They could have used such discussion threads as an opportunity to show that they listen to their customers and use their feedback to improve their products. That would have been respectable. Instead we get this authoritarian "because we can" garbage in an attempt to cover something up.
It's disgraceful. I am not a customer of Apple but if I were considering doing business with them, this would have made me reconsider.
Seriously? Calm down. They aren't monitoring the communication of private citizens, they are monitoring incoming connections on critical infrastructure systems.
Besides, monitoring the communication of private citizens happened a while ago under a happy little thing called the Patriot Act. ::flamesuit::
The mention of the Patriot Act was apropos. That's because when I first saw the name of this, "Perfect Citizen", I wondered whether that sounded Orwellian to anyone else.
Or they could do something really crazy, outlandish, absurd, and unthinkable, such as leaving earlier to allow more time to get to their destination. That way they could still reap the benefits of walking and increase their physical fitness. You know, the kind of thing fat people generally refuse to do even when their workplace is within a reasonable walking distance from their home.
Having enough time that they're not in a rush might also reduce their stress level and who knows, that might in turn reduce their desire to overeat. Here I define "overeat" as eating more calories than you burn. For example, Olympic athletes can eat in excess of 6,000 calories a day while training, but they don't become fatties because they are actually burning them.
I think in all the excuses and justifications they forget one very simple fact: it's not physically possible to gain weight if you burn more calories than you consume. More walking would be an opportunity to burn more calories, which would help whether or not they care about their well-being enough to also choose to consume fewer calories.
That's possible whether or not we implement moving sidewalks. If moving sidewalks get more people on their feet, it certainly couldn't hurt. Those interested in retaining a fitness benefit can walk while on a moving sidewalk, adding their walking speed to the speed of the device. This option wouldn't exist at all inside a taxi cab or a bus.
Wouldn't it be a better idea for people to walk those short distances, given how fat people are these days?
Can they commercialize a moving floor for people who stand around and block doorways? Preferably one that accelerates suddenly and without warning.
The politicians understand a basic fact about all talk shows: you cannot possibly win a "debate" against someone who can turn off your microphone or shout you down at any time, nor can you possibly win a "debate" against someone who entirely controls the flow of conversation. You can "win" a "debate" even when you are dead wrong if you can prevent your opponent from ever speaking except to answer yes/no to your carefully crafted and framed questions. You can also "win" a "debate" if you can prevent him from bringing up any new topics while retaining that ability yourself.
Most of what passes for "debate" on these shows is really just an abuse of the Socratic method, which was originally intended as a teaching tool. It can be entertaining but it's problematic to put it mildly when the average person thinks that this is legitimate dissent.
Hannity might complain about politicians not wanting to be his punching bags on his show so he can increase his ratings. How about if Hannity agrees to enter a fair debate, with a moderator who is not an opponent in the debate? I bet more politicians would accept his invitations then. He won't do that, of course, because it would cost him the status of always looking right. Politicians are also good orators and also know how to play to a crowd and there's no way Hannity doesn' t understand that.
Thanks. I only had a little tiny shred of hope for my country left. Now that too is gone to oblivion.
That woman is what happens when everything you have ever known comes from two sources: public schooling and mainstream media. I will qualify "mainstream media" in this way: Fox News is an equal and opposite type of insanity so I do not refer to them here; instead I refer to news outlets that do not rely so heavily on editorials.
And I know this is off-topic... anyone else wonder if Michael Weiner (the real name of Michael Savage) ever opens his eyelids? He either loves to squint or he's on something...
>>>I vote for the giant douche -- I'm not into scat.
I don't think that's where "douche" is supposed to go. It usually goes in the front hole so you might end-up with some blood, but definitely not scat.
He's saying he votes for the giant douche because voting for a turd sandwich would require being into scat, which as he stated, he is not.
Reading comprehension is hard.
Just not presidents. I always vote for who I want and not "against someone else." We live in an unfortunately stupid world in an unfortunately stupid country... and our respective leaderships wouldn't have it any other way.
There is a reason, after all, that school teachers are among the "re-educate/kill" lists when governments change power so often. It is the educated people they fear most.
Close, but not quite accurate.
With education often comes a great deal of indoctrination. When governments non-peacefully change power, what they fear is a population that has received the previous indoctrination of the old government. They wish to convert or eliminate the schoolteachers so that they can re-indoctrinate the population in a way that makes them subservient to their own rule.
You may have a knee-jerk reaction to the term "indoctrination". For that I have a simple response. Power-hungry rulers everywhere fear an intelligent population that understands critical thinking and is able to independently think for themselves. This would be undesirable both for the old government and the new one. Yet you don't see them eliminating all schools and all teachers entirely. That would create a population that can only contribute unskilled labor to serve the economic and war machines. So they don't eliminate schools and teachers entirely. They replace them with schools and teachers that they control, who teach a curriculum and wield authority in a way favorable to their interests.
I'll give a general example from the USA. When you have an entire generation that grew up in public schools where the insanity of "zero tolerance" for everything is common, where this government agency frequently limits or eliminates Constitutional rights such as that of free speech or the right not to be searched without a warrant, they grow up and see their government becoming more and more authoritarian and believe that this is normal, for it is all they have ever known from an impressionable age. A reading of the curriculum will list things like "Mathematics" and "Physics" but you won't find that as a line-item on the list. Whether you think that's all a big accident or whether you recognize that legions of educators, psychologists, and other experts might notice the effect this has on society is your call.
It's the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to observe the world around you, see that there is such exploitation and theft, see that the people to whom it happens suffer because of it, and then take steps to become a difficult target. The hard way is to do nothing and assume that such things can only happen to other people, get victimized, hate the scammers who victimized you, and never understand that you could have seen through them.
It's not just that there are people who exploit others and willfully do harm to them in order to selfishly enrich themselves. Just or not, this is what happens. You can equip people to better handle a world in which there is such evil, or you can shelter them from it and tell them that they're just victims and this is just the way things are, tough shit for them. I'd rather show people how to eliminate the naivete and other personal weaknesses that such criminals exploit. Not only does this safeguard the people who will learn, it also makes it harder to be a successful criminal. Everyone benefits from this.
They are not mutually exclusive. Educate everyone who will be educated. However, some people will not learn though they are capable. They are stubborn and don't want to face their weaknesses. Consequence is their teacher because they would listen to no other. They chose the hard way.
I have had to learn some lessons the hard way. I admit this happened only because I was stubborn and thought I had all the answers when in fact I didn't. So I got screwed, and the suffering I experienced forced me to recognize that I was wrong. I don't blame anyone else for that because I am not a victim and refuse to become one. Instead, I saw that the suffering I experienced was entirely preventable, which was quite humbling. Instead, I take responsibility for what happens in my life. This will test your courage to be sure, but is absolutely worthwhile. It is precisely because I have had to learn things the hard way that I so dearly value being more proactive and learning them the easy way.
Some people have not yet come to understand this. It is definitely not my place to deprive them of such a valuable lesson if they do not wish to pursue the easy way. They make their choices and live with the results, just as I do. To convince them that they are helpless victims who shouldn't bother actively taking responsibility for their own lives is to forever deprive them of personal growth. That's a hell of a lot more important to me than the fact that some rather judgmental folks will think I'm some kind of bad guy for being honest about it. For all we know, the hard path is an essential and invaluable part of their path to personal growth.
Again it's not about blame. It's about being honest with yourself.
The "you warrentee has expired" robocalling scam of 2009 was one of the largest and most successful in recent times. This is certainly not a computer-specific problem.
I'm not an auto mechanic (far from it) and I have never worked in the automobile industry. Yet I immediately recognized that as a scam.
That only affirms my point that no one has to be a victim. Read my posts in this discussion and look at how much resistence that point has received. Yet here I am, in an area completely outside my expertise, receiveing an attempt to scam me, and immediately I realize that it is a scam. I never gave those bastards the time of day.
Would anyone like to continue making excuses for ignorance and stupidity?
The user TangoMargarine beat me to a complete rebuttal of what you said there. Instead I'll address this one point specifically:
Ubuntu is touted as the "easy to use" Linux distro, as in you don't need to know what you are doing to use it. And that's the one where this screensaver malware appeared. If anything that only affirms my original point.
One other thing:
Actually, yes I can, thank you very much. The scammers are saying that Microsoft found a virus on your computer. That does a rather good job of limiting this to Windows users, wouldn't you say?
I would pit the knowledge, technical skill, and ability to recognize an online scam of the average Linux user against those traits of the average Windows user. Any day.
Your logic is perfect. These scammers really do serve a purpose, as do rapists. If only their "victims" were acting less sexy and vulnerable! This will provide them an incentive.
Rape is a violent crime using physical force or threat of physical force. As such it does not require the victim's active participation. That is why I made it very clear I was talking about non-violent crimes that require the active cooperation of the victim in order to take place.
You had an emotional knee-jerk reaction and this caused you to disregard the specific written conditions I was clearly discussing. It happens. Your choice now is to make an excuse for it or to get upset at me for pointing that out, or, to recognize this as the unproductive mistake that it was that contributed nothing to the discussion. That's up to you.
Note, however, that I absolutely predicted that someone would do this, which is why I bothered at all to mention non-violent crimes requiring active participation of the victim. The predictability of your statement and the fact that I already addressed it should tell you something about its usefulness and its ability to edify.
Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.
It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.
That's not an accurate description of how smart and savvy people deal with this: People evaluate the message and the context it was delivered in. If you get an email from a co-worker while at work and that's a normal, expected way of communication with the sender you don't call "their published phone number" to confirm you have the right person. The context for evaluating trust includes the medium of delivery. In this case it's the phone and the internet. And people are new to the internet. They haven't figured out the patterns for evaluating the trustworthiness of electronic events (if you will.) That's why this scam works in the first place. It's not just praying on those who fall for any old lie, but those who are feel confused about computers.
If I am new to something and realize I am ignorant about it, then I proceed very carefully. I don't just blindly leap ahead and pray that nothing bad will happen. That'd be foolish. Instead, I look before I leap. That's because I know my limitations. I know when I am operating outside my areas of expertise. If I were new to the Internet and didn't understand how it works, that's all the more reason to be suspicious of unsolicited communications (like cold-calls) that arise from it.
Thus, ignorance about the Internet still wouldn't make me a target for these scammers. My gradual overcoming of that ignorance over time would be evidenced by taking fewer and fewer extra steps to address my suspicions as I became more skilled and knowledgable. I wouldn't have to keep looking up so many things or asking so many questions prior to proceeding with whatever it is I am trying to do. But let me emphasize: at no point between ignorance and mastery would I just blindly leap into something I know nothing about.
No, what many people are doing is different. They honestly believe that they can use what they do not remotely understand and that nothing bad will ever happen as a result. That's absurd. There is nothing in life that confirms this belief. It does not come from observation of nature or of human behavior. They refuse to acknowledge that this is risky behavior, and that they assume a risk when they do it. That's why I used the word "stupid" to distinguish this from mere ignorance. When people engage in risky behavior and it doesn't work out well for them, and they are surprised by this, I do not regard them as victims of anything except their own unwillingness to face their limitations and weaknesses.
I did not justify it. Indeed, I agreed that these criminals are scumbags and made that very clear. I said people should learn to stop enabling it. It is precisely because they are scumbags that do harm that we should address the things that make their crimes so easy to commit. It just so happens that putting all of our energies into declaring what scumbags they are doesn't teach victims how to stop being victims.
Incidentally, none of this comes from a book I've read. It comes from my ability to observe the world around me. When you address me you are dealing with an individual, not someone who needs others to articulate his concepts for him. If it were otherwise, those concepts would not truly be my own. Let's be honest about what you did there. It's an attempt to belittle. It's a form of hubris that serves no purpose as it is not necessary for disputing my position.
I draw a big distinction between children and the adults who have the bank accounts and credit cards that are used to pay these scammers.
The rest is the difference between giving a man a fish so he eats for a day, and teaching him to fish so he can always feed himself. If I warn people about this specific scam, it will not do much to equip them to recognize other, different scams in the future. If I address the root of their ignorance, that does equip them to say "you know, there's just something funny about this and I'm not giving out money or personal info until I know who I'm dealing with" even when dealing with a new scam that hasn't become well-known yet.
Like I said, someone cold-calls you and claims that Microsoft found a virus on your computer, the solution to that is to hang up and call Microsoft and ask them about it. No technical skill is required for that, just a shedding of naivete. If I really care about my friends and family, then I don't sit there and do nothing while they remain naive and vulnerable, ready to be victimized by the next asshat to come along. I'd much rather get to the root of why they are vulnerable than hack at the branches and limbs of every possible different scam to warn them against.
I don't know where these people are going to school. I went to a public school in the USA, went to a decent university, grad school, and now job that actually utilizes critical thinking skills. I, and my high school friends, didn't turn out to be the fools that you would assume that we would be by going through public schools at each step. It's more likely that being ignorant is the easy way out and that's what people would rather choose instead.
I'm grateful that you and some others are raising such good points in this discussion. I usually enjoy participating in Slashdot but not usually this much. For that I am glad, for this is truly stimulating.
What I would point out here is a particular disconnect. My high school also taught some critical thinking skills, though in narrow and very specific applications. By that I mean, they were utilized only at the request of some kind of authority figure. There always had to be a "gun to the head" in the form of a failing grade or an angry boss at work. This is still a passive approach to life.
My same fellow students who took the same courses I did were still extremely suggestible and susceptible to the propaganda techniques of advertising. Despite good grades in any classes that discussed critical thinking, they still valued conformity much more than individualism. That tells me they were able to mechanically go through the motions but did not embrace critical thinking in any real way. They did not take it to heart and see its tremendous value. They merely paid lip service to it in order to appease a teacher or a boss.
It's the difference between passively waiting for a teacher or other person to decide to show you a skill, versus seeking it yourself for its own sake. It's the folly of believing that critical thought and being tough-minded is all about passing a class or doing a job. It's a failure to comprehend the true meaning of those things, seeing only their surface in the form of utilitarian application, a memorized series of steps, a procedure, something you are required to do rather than something you gladly embrace.
Most of all, the majority of my fellow students viewed education as something they received from school. They did not see schooling as a supplement to their own personal quest to better themselves even when no one is looking. In short, they were still dependent on others to show them how to think rather than discovering it for themselves by hungering and thirsting for it. That dependence is exactly what public schools want to instill, even while they teach the skills that could otherwise overcome it. In that way they make a sort of mockery of those skills.
Ignorance is not really the easy way out; it just has a certain allure because it involves less up-front effort. I tell you the truth, the avoidable suffering that the ignorant experience is far worse than the effort of bettering oneself. So are the network effects on society when you have so many ignorant people.
"Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their 'victims'... They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the 'victim' can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted."
You're a fucking sociopath. Have a little empathy or fuck off.
I have enough empathy to be honest about their weakness. Would you prefer I help them to remain in denial so that they forever remain victims? It's amazing how angry people sometimes become when you tell a victim that he/she doesn't have to be a victim anymore. You'd think that would be welcome news, a message of hope.
I get it alright. I understand your point of view while you fail to grasp mine. You think that when I say "you were vulnerable to this scam because of a weakness or shortcoming, but that can be corrected and you can eliminate your vulnerability" that I am assigning blame. You think I am pointing a finger and am happy to see this happen. Not really. I merely accept the futility of trying to catch and shut down all present and future scammers and take instead an approach you might call "harden the targets".
I also reject the notion that an individual has to be a helpless victim, at the mercy of anyone who would wish to do him/her harm. To tell people that they are helpless victims who can do nothing to better their own situation, who will always be exploited by criminals, who are completely screwed since the regulators won't protect them and they cannot protect themselves, well, I say that is sociopathy. It's telling them that they are forever doomed to just bend over and take it. Does it ever occur to you that this victim mentality is precisely why we have so many petty criminals?
My longing to live in a kinder, wiser, more sane world is beyond my power of expressing it. Really, there are not words for how badly I wish to see that. The way to get from here to there is to be honest about our weaknesses and our problems, to seek realistic solutions to them. This absolutely includes the notion that an individual can better himself or herself, that honesty about one's shortcomings and understanding one's weaknesses is the first step towards overcoming them. It's not "blaming the victim". It's "empowering the victim". And you can't stand it, can you?
You can call me names some more if it makes you feel better. When you do that, all I see is an equal who is extremely determined to be an inferior. If you should get over that you won't receive an "I told you so" from me. You'd put a smile on my face.
They are far worse than that and it is definitely by careful design.
In fact I'd say that the public schools bear more responsibility than anyone else for the widespread ignorance and gullibility that these scammers feed on. A truly tough-minded population familiar with critical thinking, logic, and argumentation would not so easily fall for these scams. They also wouldn't support anything our politicians of today are pushing for. So you see that'd be really inconvenient for our increasingly centralized society *spits*.
How exactly does open source prevent social engineering scams?
Open Source is often accused of not being "user-friendly" because it caters to savvy users who know what they're doing. At the very least, it assumes that the user wishes to understand even if they do not have that understanding now. It is not sold to anyone based on how "easy to use" it is or how little expertise is required to use it. It is not sold as a substitute for knowing what you're doing as many Windows apps are.
So perhaps Open Source in the strictest isolation doesn't prevent social engineering. I think it's the culture surrounding it. Open Source is all about being able to examine and modify the program yourself, if you are so inclined. That naturally assumes that you would have or could obtain some programming skill and some understanding about what the program is intended to do. This again is not "so easy any moron could use it" and isn't trying to be.
It follows that more savvy and knowledgable users are less likely to fall for social engineering attempts. Ignorance is the social engineers' very best friend.
They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation./quote?
Yet the only reason why we care to disincentivize ignorance and stupidity is because those scammers exist. Your logic is viciously circular. They need to exist to protect people from themselves?
I'm glad you raised this point. It's a good one, to be sure.
Being wise and savvy and seeking understanding is the natural state of human beings. The widespread ignorance and stupidity is what I might call "unnaturally natural". The proof is that by not viewing ignorance and gullibility as problems in need of correction, people leave themselves vulnerable to this type of scam. The scammers do not create this vulnerability. They merely capitalize on it. They see that something is out of order and that this creates room for them to operate. Otherwise their dubious "enterprise" would never get off the ground.
The ignorance and stupidity is a disease state. The scammers are the disease that can thrive in the environment of that disease state. They are symptoms, not the actual problem. It's absurdity itself to say that the only reason to eschew ignorance and stupidity is because these scammers exist. Have you no concept of how much better our world would be if ignorance and stupidity were not such powerful forces in shaping it?
The personal shortcomings that scammers exploit go far, far beyond computing. They also play important roles in politics, the economy, interpersonal relationships, you name it. It just so happens that computing provides a convenient entry point for that ignorance and stupidity to come under attack since it is generally encouraged in other realms like politics.
God, there are some real scumbags in the world.
Yes, but they are non-violent and require the cooperation of their "victims". Thus, they are like ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, flies, and worms: they are unpleasant and downright nasty but they serve a purpose. They provide a limiting function. They disincentivize ignorance and stupidity by making it more painful, just like those natural pests disincentivize improper sanitation. By becoming knowledgable and savvy, the "victim" can have total control over whether he/she is successfully targeted.
Really now, all it would take is a small amount of healthy skepticism. Let's assume the scammer is so good that there are no other "tells". A user would only need to say to the scammer "Microsoft found a virus on my PC did they? Let me get back to you" and then call Microsoft. As unpleasant as calling Microsoft would be, it beats giving money to a scammer. It's the same well-known principle used for dealing with suspicious communications from banks. If you don't know if that e-mail is really from your bank because you don't have the technical skill to determine that, then you ignore it and call your bank at their published phone number. Then it doesn't matter if it's the most clever phishing e-mail in the world.
It doesn't exactly require a genius to understand these things. It just requires that one not leap blindly into what they do not understand while expecting a good result. That's general advice for life, not just computing. I personally believe that almost everyone is capable of understanding these simple concepts, they just can't be bothered to think. Perhaps they need a little incentive. Perhaps by providing one the scammers are serving a purpose, even though I fully agree with you that they are scumbags. That's why I'd liken them to a carrion-eater or a parasite.
Well, yeah. You can't fix stupid. You can't fix gullible.
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
This does provide yet another argument against the camp which thinks that understanding the tools they use is not important.
They closed my account and cancelled my debit card when I was a day or two late paying off an overdraft fee. Believe me, I told them how I feel back then.
But now I feel a little better about it.
I have no debit cards and you will never catch me with one. If a bank sent me one unsolicited I would immediately throw it into the shredder. They are a terrible idea. They make sense only for people with such horrible credit that they absolutely cannot obtain a credit card. They might make sense for people with zero discipline who also refuse to make any effort to identify their lack of discipline as a character flaw and take action to correct it (the word for that is "coward"), but in my opinion a credit card with a very low credit limit would be a better choice even for them.
With a debit card you have all of the responsibilities of a credit card and none of the legal protections. With a credit card, if a merchant tries to rip you off you can chargeback. Chargebacks favor the customer and are a hassle for the merchant. Good luck doing that with a debit card. With a credit card, if someone ever steals my card or its number and runs up thousands of dollars in charges, federal law limits my personal liability to $50 and my bank doesn't bother worrying about that. With a debit card, if someone ever steals your card or its number they can drain your entire checking account and that money is gone.
With credit cards, the risks belong to the bank as a cost of doing business. With debit cards, the risks belong to you. How nice! In short, debit cards are a horrible idea for anyone but the banks. If you have some sense you'd draw that conclusion just from how hard banks were pushing them when they came out. That's because along with sense comes the realization that banks are far from charitable institutions and try hard to get everyone on board with something because it's in their interests, not yours.
If you know who Clark Howard is, he's a good reference for this.
Then you can home-school. Or you can move to another location that has appropriate schools. These are not insurmountable problems. If you care enough, you'll find a way. If you don't, it'll be "too hard" because of this-and-that.
I'd say you're not in a position to determine this about someone you have never met. Feel free to assume he's so stupid that he never thought about that, and never arranged his schedule accordingly if that gives you some kind of pleasure ("if only he were as smart as you", right?). I won't bother trying to convince you otherwise since a complete lack of evidence didn't prevent you from forming a conclusion, so you have already abandoned reason. It follows that reasoning with you would be futile.
I can see that you played a little CYA there, so you can make your unfounded judgment while retaining an excuse for it, so I'll address that next. Incidentally that excuse would be both a failed attempt to prevent me from saying what I just said, and a successful attempt to justify/rationalize your judgment in your own eyes. At any rate, we are talking about an individual, not a statistical sample or an extrapolation therefrom, so your use of "probably" is a weasel word in this context. It does not change what I just said. It also doesn't change what you said.
I do not know the answer to this. It is pure speculation only (see how unambiguous that was?). But all of this makes me wonder whether you have children of your own that have been put through the meat-grinder that is our public schools and felt a bit guilty at my description of them. If so, then perhaps you saw them become more irritable, more superficial, and more dependent on others emotionally and practically as the years went by. Maybe you wonder whether those extra material luxuries were really worth avoiding the expense of relocation or alternate schooling. That would certainly explain the need to make things up about an honorable man whom you've never met.
Here's what I think you would really find edifying. They're both by another honorable man named John Taylor Gatto. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher. The second is a full-length book available online for free called The Underground History of American Education. Enjoy.
I believe that where we screwed up big-time was when we ever allowed the government to have any input whatsoever into how we educate our children.
Actually, I have to disagree on that part. Probably because my girlfriend is a teacher, just starting, and I've seen the incredible amount of effort that goes into showing teachers how to teach right. There's a whole science behind that, and not with the best instincts can you be as good as a good teacher.
That said, public schools in the US are probably the mess I keep hearing about. That does not mean the entire concept of a public school is bullshit, just because one specific implementation of it is. Have you ever seen public schools outside the US? Say, in countries that are famous for good schools, such as the scandinavian countries?
The funny thing about girlfriends is that unless you are very careful and unusually aware, then as you are "getting into them" so to speak, they are also getting into you. I am forced to consider you a biased source for that reason. Besides, this is a US story and I am speaking about US schools. Therefore it is I who must ask you if you are familiar with US public schools, and it would seem the answer is "no".
Psychological abuse and humiliation is a staple of US schools, both institutionalized and from other students. It's an integral part of the design. You need a population whose spirits have been broken at an impressionable age before you can embrace authoritarianism.
The main purpose of public schooling in the USA is to create a large underclass of people who are just smart enough to perform useful productive work, and just dumb enough not to think critically or question anything or become very curious. The Carnegies and Morgans and others who backed its founders in the 1800s were amazingly honest about this.
Under this system, the fact that most Americans are short-sighted, egotistical, hedonistic, and emotionally childish is considered a bonus feature. It makes them docile and easy to rule. It makes them feel overwhelmed just living their own lives. It prevents them from being sophisticated enough to understand the Hegelian Dialectic ("Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis" aka "Problem, Reaction, Solution"), bread-and-circus, propaganda techniques, and other tools used to expand and maintain state power.
If you really, truly want to understand public schooling in the USA, there is absolutely no better reference than John Taylor Gatto. He has an essay available here and a complete book, available for free online in its entirety, available here. I think you will find these to be quite an eye-opener.