Your ends-justifies-the-means concept holds no water.
My wifi access points are a matter of public knowledge. After all-- they're freaking radios. What's not public knowledge is anything after the location of it, and its authentication- if any.
The data that flows there is mine, and no one elses. The other MAC addresses associated with the AP are also my business, and no one else's. Differing jurisdictions have different views of the severity of the theft that their mindlessly-stupid shark-like gobbling did. I hope they suffer the higher of the common denominators of justice.
At the time of this writing, the parent post is marked "Troll".
How is this trolling? Consequentialism is a valid thing to argue against. Granted, you may disagree with parent's opinion of what is and is not a private component of a Wi-Fi transmission. If you disagree with him that a violation has occurred then you would necessarily also disagree that Google should suffer legal action from any sort of justice system. If that's the case, then the respectable non-cowardly way to handle it is to argue against it and take him to task.
I'll spell this out since a lot of mods clumsily fail to grasp a few basic concepts. "Troll" is something of an accusation or judgment. That doesn't change because you express it by selecting it from a menu rather than directly confronting the poster. As such, it requires at least some kind of positive indication. Specifically, it would require a good reason to believe that the parent poster could not conceivably express the above as a sincere opinion and is saying it merely to get a reaction out of others. There is no such indication here.
This reminds me of too many Apple discussions, in which the fanboyism towards $popular_company is stronger than the love of free speech or the ability to handle opinions with which you disagree. I don't particularly care so much about the waste of a perfectly good mod point. Rather, the hypocrisy is what needs to be pointed out.
The thing most people forget to ask, but was asked in this article, is something you conveniently forgot to mention. Here it is:
What possible use could google have for this data? What would be their motive here?
As the article says, there's almost no personal data in the emails. Even if there is, there's so little of it that what useful purpose could it serve? You'd have a hard time correlating it to any one person, or even finding out what it is. There's going to be so little data here, and it'll be so fragmented, that turning it into anything useful would be impossible.
On the other hand, why would google risk collecting this data when they knew what was going to happen if it got out? The risk vs. reward here just doesn't make sense. They're going to risk their reputation on... what? Collecting a few fragments of unencrypted wifi traffic that probably contains so little information and could very well be generated by a bot running on your machine.
I'm not going to believe google did this on purpose until someone can give me a motive that doesn't sound like something from a UFO convention.
What if this were a calculated marketing maneuver designed to test the waters and find out how much people really care about privacy and the possible hard-to-justify violation thereof? This is, after all, a company that would make far less money if everyone had excellent online privacy. How much people are willing to protect that privacy and how much outrage they express at real or perceived violations of it could be very important data to a company like Google.
This is data that would be difficult for Google to obtain from their usual channels. Just like in politics, it has to become an "issue" and then the reaction can be assessed. A privacy matter that collects little or no directly sensitive information (thus protecting Google from potential liability) that still raises the issue and gets people talking about it would be perfect for this purpose. That's exactly what happened here.
The more successful a company, the more resources it possesses, the more talent it has hired, the more difficult it becomes to believe that they'd make trivial mistakes that most Slashdotters, acting alone with an infinitessimal fraction of the same resources, would have easily avoided. Good long-term strategy looks a lot like things just happening to work out a certain way as a product of chance. It's possible someone at Google could have made the incredibly trivial mistake that caused this chain of events. What's unlikely is that among all of the managers, designers, and programmers involved in this project, not one person noticed such a mistake.
The GPL community not only wants their community to grow but it wants others to shrink. Otherwise, this wouldn't be an issue at all. What difference does it make to GPL advocates what happens to non-GPL projects? The answer is simple and revealing.
The community isn't a solid block of harmony wherein all members share the exact same opinion of non-GPL projects. Still, assuming you are 100% correct in all cases, I have no problem with that either. Why? Because they are doing it the right way, through persuasion and voluntary cooperation and not through coercion or force. Each owner of each project can decide how their code will be licensed. The GPL community is not going to send goons to intimidate them into eschewing proprietary licenses. They might make arguments to that effect and attempt to convince those owners, but as that does not involve force or fraud there is nothing wrong with it. This is the correct way to effect a change that you believe in.
The difference it makes is rather easy to discern. If you can convince a proprietary project to release code under the GPL, the community can benefit from freely reusing that code. This enriches their codebase and prevents programmers from wasting effort by reinventing wheels. It also reflects the non-scarcity of existing code; once written, infinite perfect copies can be made and shared at zero or near-zero cost. It constitutes a rejection of the more typical use of copyright law which is to enforce artificial scarcity.
What's simple and revealing is that anyone would complain about the GPL community's desires and intentions when they are free to choose not to participate in that community. It's like the people who call up a radio talk-show host to tell him how much they hate his guts, yet they are familiar with all of his past shows. That they don't have to listen to something they dislike doesn't seem to occur to them.
The victims are not your friends, your family, and hopefully, not you.
The crux of the matter is the assumption that all use is damaging abuse.
For the sake of argument, assume that you mentioned drinking some beers last weekend. Unless you give a solid reason to believe otherwise, the assumption is that you used alcohol responsibly, you didn't drive drunk, you didn't beat your wife, you didn't get fired for being drunk on the job, etc. You had some beer, stayed home, watched a movie or something, and went to bed.
Because of that, if I said that it would be wrong to put you in prison merely for possessing and using alcohol, you wouldn't immediately portray your friends and family members as victims. You wouldn't immediately assume that anyone who drinks alcohol or believes that adults should be allowed to drink alcohol is a hardcore alcoholic. You'd see why it's unreasonable to assume that all people who use alcohol are alcoholics, that is, alcohol addicts who victimize themselves and those who care about them. You might see why that assumption is a baseless emotional appeal that should never determine public policy.
You might wonder how anyone could, with a straight face, make a serious crime out of watching a movie and drinking a beer. You might wonder that while understanding it's perfectly reasonable to make a serious crime out of driving drunk, since such irresponsible use does endanger others. It's reasonable because the moment others are harmed in some way, such as being endangered, then and only then does it become a crime. Then and only then does the state have a legitimate reason to use police power. Anything else is tyranny.
So why do we recreate the exact circumstances of Prohibition for substances other than alcohol, after having observed that Prohibition stopped no one from drinking, served only to fund organized crime, and was a complete failure? Why do we do that knowing that no one fought with automatic firearms in the streets over alcohol until it was made illegal? Why do we continue to make an assumption that adults cannot be expected to use something responsibily when we already expect them to do that for one of the more harmful drugs known to society?
You see, it doesn't make sense. The anti-drug commercials you're parroting there can sound very convincing until you really question the whole thing as a system. Only politicians benefit from this because of the expansion of police power that it excuses.
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for
drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
what's going on is that it's popular to make a big deal of every vague intention by the Australian government, without reference to the fact that none of it is law yet. (And in the case of the infamous filter, never will be).
What is also usually missing from at least the summaries of these articles is that most of these things are based on already implemented existing laws in either Europe, the UK, Canada or the USA
All laws started out as intentions, so this is significant. If the people of Australia don't want these measures, it's a problem that their representatives in government would like to implement them. It's also a problem because of the precedent it either sets or follows; either way legitimizes the idea.
Personally, here is what I want: if the cops have a good reason to believe someone has committed a crime, let them get a warrant. With that warrant they can search only that particular suspect or particular group of suspects and/or conduct surveillance only on those people to gather the evidence needed to make their case. If this process yields insufficient evidence, then better luck next time. None of this requires a backlog of what everyone has said and done on the Internet for the last two years. There's no genuinely good purpose behind this that outweighs the invasiveness and potential for abuse. I don't care if every country in the whole world has similar laws -- that would merely increase the number that are doing something wrong.
Another thing: does the government intend to provide money to the ISPs for the data centers and hard drives they will have to purchase and maintain to archive such a large volume of information, or is this yet another unfunded mandate?
why would you ever think that a paid advertisement is a good source of honest unbiased information about the product/service in question, and if you recognize that it is not then why would you want to base purchasing decisions on dishonest, biased information?
I make no buying decisions about anything I see advertised in any media. I may see a product that catches my interest but if I'm sheling out some hard earned money you better belive I'm doing some research before I buy anything.
I agree with most everything you said but I come from a long line of skeptics and I suppose that has infuenced my buying decisions more than any advertisement. And yes I know, you're going to say "you saw a product that caught your interest so you are influenced by advertising" and you'd be wrong because the research influences my decision to buy.
No, I wouldn't say you're influenced by advertising without some indication that this is so. Indeed, I stopped short of making such a claim and I preferred to discuss advertising as an institution independently of how it may or may not affect you personally.
Besides, it sounds like you'd know whether you are easily influenced much better than I could. It's a bit of a nuisance on Slashdot that lots of people presume to believe they know my thoughts, intentions, and personal traits better than I do and assume I am bullshitting when I correct them on such matters. I won't follow their example.
It does seem to me though that everything you wrote above undermines the premise of deriving useful information from advertising. As in, if I first find out about a product/service because of an unsolicited ad (by that I mean, not the Yellow Pages), that's a good sign that I don't need it at all, otherwise I'd have looked for and found such a thing on my own.
I see the mindlessness of the masses of people, who only think they have their own thoughts and make their own decisions. The truth is that they have very few thoughts and impulses that someone didn't put there. Much of it was not put there by advertising, but rather by inflicting trauma, emotional frustration, or some other abuse. It so happens that you can bully with kindness as well as with cruelty; in fact the phony kindness is less likely to be resisted. Therefore, advertising puts a nice smiling face on the same process of manipulation in order to exploit the same human weaknesses.
Manipulation is intimately tied to the rest of our society. It's generally how business and politics get done. It's greatly preferred over rational choice because it is hard to rule and dominate when all of your actions have a demonstrable reasonable basis. It's so important to us that we are very careful never to teach any real argumentation, critical thinking, or about propaganda techniques in our public schools. If we did that correctly it would result in a tough-minded population not so easily led around, and that's absolutely not desirable to our rulers.
For this system to work, our rulers need a steady supply of mindless, helpless people who are not very independent and won't try too hard to learn anything on their own. Bonus points if they are emotionally immature, petty, impressed by fame and celebrity, and cannot control their passions. For this the public schools have been quite successful.
So my point in all of this is how very frivolous it is to say "wow, I wouldn't have known about that product" in the face of this gigantic and tremendously evil system. I'd go so far as to say that even when it's right (as in factually accurate) it's still wrong.
Whew. Im glad to know that privacy is still dead. Seriously though, I'd rather have advertisments targeted to my interests than some random bs that I have interest in.
I have one question for you and everyone who says what you just said. It's a two-part question: why would you ever think that a paid advertisement is a good source of honest unbiased information about the product/service in question, and if you recognize that it is not then why would you want to base purchasing decisions on dishonest, biased information?
Advertising is nothing more than the psychological manipulation of behavior by means of suggestion. Manipulation is a bitter pill; that bitter pill is sugar-coated by convincing you that it's somehow helpful to you. Then you can be a good consumer and do as you are told, bonus points if you think it's your own idea when you follow a suggestion.
Ever see a skilled hypnotist in action? They can tell someone ahead of time, "I will implant the suggestion that you put your shoes on backwards, with the left shoe on your right foot and vice-verse." Then the person does that. They ask the person why they did that, and does the person say "you implanted a suggestion that made me do it?" No. The person says "It seemed more comfortable that way" or otherwise makes an excuse for it as though it were their own idea all along. This is how marketing works, how mass numbers of people follow trends and jump on bandwagons at the same time while believing it was an individual choice. It goes far beyond selling products. It's to the point that large numbers of people will, overnight, adopt the mannerisms and speech patterns of various celebrities as though they have always acted and spoken that way. It's actually an affront to the very concept of individuality and self-determination, because real individuals have that pesky habit of not always doing what you want them to do.
I submit that you cannot see this system of manipulation for what it truly is and still make apologies for it.
wish people would pick the denomination that pleases them, worship at its altar if they like, and then realize how pointless it is to endlessly debate non-resolvable religious issues
Well, libertarians have Rand, and hardcore socialists have Marx. Convincing them that their beliefs are fundamentally religious is tricky, however.
The problem or the religious element is the exclusive either-or thinking. For example, I myself tend towards libertarian philosophy. Specifically, I believe that the only legitimate purposes of government are defense, law enforcement, and public works. The only legitimate purpose of law enforcement is to prevent one person from using force or fraud to deprive another person of his/her inalienable rights. There are a tremendous number of laws that would be repealed if we stuck to these principles.
The nuisance is that if you advocate such views, people assume you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that I never make such statements doesn't stop them from assuming I want an anarcho-capitalist society, that I want to eliminate every last regulation of all markets, etc. I'm not always sure if it's a deliberate attempt to belittle what they dislike because they are childish, or if they truly think this is legitimate disputation.
I think it's that they are so shallow they cannot help but pigeonhole any view that is not their own. They don't like it, it isn't what they believe, therefore it must be portrayed as some kind of pure evil, like religious heresy. Mere disagreement based on different worldviews doesn't give them the visceral satisfaction of condemnation that they feed from. The most extreme libertarians would agree with me on the points I made in the first paragraph above. Therefore, they assume I am exactly like them on all other possible points and proceed accordingly.
Maybe no pigeonholing is involved. Perhaps again because they are shallow, they recognize only the most extreme form of any belief. The notion of studying many philosophies, adopting the principles that make sense, and rejecting the ones that do not is alien to them. It's all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us. That's why these things are needlessly religious in nature. The folks who do this are like sheeple or like robotic clones who are think everything must be partisan politics because that's what they see in the media.
Whichever is actually the case, it poisons the well and devalues what could otherwise be edifying discussion.
The article says Google has been "less than clear", but that just for people who don't understand the technology. Exactly what data Google collects, and how they use it, is obvious for anybody who understands the technology. A good explanation of that technology is here:
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html
This is just another example of people being scared of "witchcraft". In this case, so many people (even Slashdot readers) don't understand WiFi technology, so the witchhunt is more persistent.
The real issue here is not that the data is easy to collect, or that collecting it is part of how the technology works. This is really a matter of data retention.
Clearly they retain this data long enough to later perform analysis on it. To say "it's public information that you are broadcasting" misses the point and wastes time affirming a fact that is not in question (which is in fact is a clear sign that the point has been missed).
It's the difference between me someone down a public street and happening to see that you entered a particular store that you frequent, versus someone holding a pen and a notepad so you can see that he recorded your location with timestamps. The first event is not noteworthy in any way. The second event might make you question whether his intentions are in your interests. To be fair, it is rather hard to come up with scenarios where you would benefit from someone who does not personally know you but feels a need to record your comings and goings. Again it's the recording and retention that is the problem; no claim is being made that there is anything wrong with being observed in a public place by someone who is also in a public place.
By recording physical data over time concerning a person's whereabouts, especially with a device they tend to carry around and use frequently (like a Wi-Fi-enabled phone, netbook, or laptop), you can learn quite a bit about someone. If there is a Gmail account used or a browser cookie transferred over that Wi-Fi signal, Google can cross-reference their physical whereabouts with all the other information they've gathered. This could include things like their real name and identity especially if they have used Google Checkout or Google Product Search, their browsing history as provided by tracking tools, their e-mail data if they use Gmail, their search history, the news items that interest them, etc.
Combining all the other data Google gathers with recent or current data on physical location amounts to a powerful collection. The abuse potential is great. That abuse may not even have to come from Google itself as an intentional act. A database like that for many thousands of people is a tempting target for spammers and criminals, for the same reasons they sometimes manage to steal credit card numbers and Social Security numbers. Can you name a government that wouldn't like easy access to that kind of surveillance information, perhaps in the name of fighting terrorism, or did you think their ambitions stopped with projects like Carnivore, warrantless wiretaps, and mandatory access to telecommunications infrastructure?
The disclosures about "we gather data on Wi-Fi signals" or "we record search terms and IP addresses" don't even begin to address the power of cross-referencing multiple databases. Therefore it's not really full disclosure at all. The average person doesn't remotely understand what can be learned about them from multiple sets of data and this reductionist approach to disclosure isn't helping. Each data set seems like a minor thing and a fair price to pay for using a free service. It's the whole picture from the combination of all of those data sets, something easily achievable with modern databases, that poses the real privacy issue. None of the privacy policies and press releases have anything to say about
You should read up on the free market. What we have is not a free market. All the regulations you support are there to attempt to fix problems caused by yet other regulations.
This argument is just silly. A regulation-free market is just another name for anarchy. You wish you had more money than that other trader? No problem, shoot him and take his money, or kidnap his kids and slit their throats unless he agrees to buy them back from you. Don't want something similar to happen to you? No problem, hire a private army of mercenaries to protect yourself. One of your mercenaries is getting a bit ambitious, and sneaking into your room to murder you in the night? Tough, you should have hired a more reliable mercenary.
Regulations are there so that people can conduct their business with at least some confidence that they won't be completely screwed over by every other actor in the market at the first opportunity. Without that confidence, people simply wouldn't trade -- they'd keep all of their money in a locked box in their basement, and spend it mainly on armed guards, and there would be no market, "free" or otherwise.
Yes, some regulations are no doubt unnecessary. But to say that all regulations are only "there to attempt to fix the problems caused by yet other regulations" is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
This is just another rehashed discussion of many rehashed discussions from some dusty old playbook.
It's like what happens anytime Windows security (or lack thereof) is mentioned. Inevitably someone somewhere will say "but Windows gets attacked because it has such a large marketshare," knowing that truly arguing against that would amount to proving a negative.
Windows and its marketshare, regulations vs. laissez-faire capitalism, we've had all of these discussions a thousand times before. They never reach a final conclusion to be resolved once and for all because they are like religious issues. I wish people would pick the denomination that pleases them, worship at its altar if they like, and then realize how pointless it is to endlessly debate non-resolvable religious issues. They tend to derail what would otherwise be a good discussion.
Maybe we can save the repetitive memes for the people who think the next iteration of "in Soviet Russia" is actually funny?
Now there's irony. Yat you totally missed the point, which was that most people DO base their opinions on authority/social status, which is exactly why this statement holds so much more weight.
I got the point, alright. I get it, I just don't agree with it. Therefore I made a contrary point, also called a counterpoint.
Try thinking things through before speaking.
Falsely equating disagreement with lack of understanding doesn't put you in a good position to offer such advice.
I'd tend to disagree with that comment - look what bot nets are used for?? very rarely are they used for mass processing power or for anything more than a spamming and dos'ing..
Things that require little processing power but do require lots of (aggregated) bandwidth. This is where it's easier for botnet owners to compromise a thousand Windows PCs connected via cable modems than one or two high-end multi-homed Unix servers that could handle the same load.
Botnet owners also have a disadvantage: they don't want their malware to be easily detected. Thus the less it burdens the host PC, the less likely that it will be detected and removed. Massive processing power certainly does have applications. It's that botnets are working with what is available and readily feasible and this naturally places limits on their uses, the same way a lack of money would prevent you from purchasing a private jet.
Take it how you will but i think you are confusing what you personally would want to have with what is sufficient and functional for bot nets.
Actually I sought to explain why the low-hanging fruit is even more desirable than the "juciest" targets available. That doesn't mean the juicy targets are less juicy or that the low-hanging fruit isn't low-hanging. It means botnet owners want maximum return for the least possible effort and big-iron Unix systems run by competent admins don't accomplish that goal like expendable Windows machines that are a dime a dozen though individually far less capable. What I personally like or don't like has nothing to do with this.
Compared to home desktop PCs, servers are more likely to be administered by someone with a clue about locking down and updating the system.
Most of whom choose a non-Windows OS. When people with a clue avoid something and people who don't know better flock to something, it says a lot about that something.
To put it another way, I have never met a person who was highly competent with using Windows and also highly competent with using a Unix-like OS (Linux, *BSD, etc) who still preferred Windows. I'm sure someone will pipe up now that I've posted this but the point remains, such people are quite rare. Your preference for one thing is meaningless if you are not at least as familiar with an alternative.
So barring a security hole in something like a home router appliance, desktop PCs running Windows are likely the juiciest targets for establishing a botnet.
Actually a beefy *nix server with extremely high bandwidth, multiple CPUs, and multiple gigs of ram is the juiciest target to be a member of a botnet. It's also a lot more difficult to compromise. Windows PCs are not the juiciest targets. They are the low-hanging fruit that can be harvested in large numbers with automated tools, making it not worthwhile for the botnet owners to spend too much effort taking over any one target no matter how tempting it is.
No, there's a big difference. If he was a current government official, then the statement would represent a government policy.
"This company dominated the market with low-quality products" is not a policy. It is an observation. It's true or it's false no matter who says it or how "official" they are. Try thinking for yourself and being less impressed with authority.
I've never used any system that enhances security, anywhere, that doesn't also increase inconvenience.
You do understand the difference between the saying "objectively isn't an inconvenience at all" versus what I did say, which was "subjectively doesn't seem like such an inconvenience?" That line above does not sound like you do.
Personally I find that Linux's security systems (bear in mind I also use a Gentoo Hardened system) make sense. If they don't make sense, I can spend a few minutes with Google and then they do make sense. I don't need the performance penalty of a malware scanner second-guessing every I/O operation. You also have a software environment built around the idea that applications don't expect to have root privileges without good reason. Microsoft could have started encouraging that years ago but had other priorities. It's yet another lesson they could have learned from Unix, in fact.
Specifically, I expect a package manager to need root before it installs system software; it makes sense and it is not a surprise. Likewise I don't expect my Web browser or e-mail client or word processor to need root and sure enough, they never ask for it.
I think Windows is still trying to achieve that kind of simplicity with UAC. Imagine how easy it would be for their users if no UAC dialog was ever a surprise. They don't have that, and that's what they get for the years of encouraging sloppy security practices such as running Admin all the time. They are clearly reaping what they sow, well really their users are doing the reaping.
The whitelist sounds like a decent idea I suppose, yet I need no such whitelist on Linux. Linux handles this problem differently. Rather than tons of prompts and then a whitelist to reduce their number, there are few prompts to begin with. Very few things I do actually require superuser privileges. The most common is upgrading/installing system software (that is, software available to all users) and like I said, it makes sense that you don't want non-root users doing this. How many of UAC's prompts are so predictable and self-evident? Why was a whitelist necessary?
The part you conveniently but understandably had to ignore, and are going to have a real hell of a time trying to respond to, is where I said that UAC, virus scanners, and Windows security mechanisms in general have something in common: they want to validate all possible actions and they make no effort to instead encourage best practices. That's one of the bigger cultural differences between Windows and other systems.
It's rather obvious that this comes from the marketing nature of Windows and Microsoft; encouraging best practices might mean learning something new, and that in turn might alienate some users who then take their business elsewhere. So the user is treated like a child who will never know better so Microsoft wants to child-proof the whole world, rather than world-proofing the child. If that's the way you as a user want to be treated, I celebrate your right to choose and to pay good money for the privilege, but I reject this notion.
Security is inversely proportional to convenience.
That's technically true but a security system that's simple enough but no simpler, for which the steps involved make sense and their efficacy is relatively self-evident, it subjectively doesn't seem like such an inconvenience. This is what UAC failed to understand, at least initially. It also resembles virus scanners in the sense that it wants to validate all actions rather than encourage best practices.
So you'd say that all those non-Windows OSs are also insecure, because you could have a file "picture", that actually was an executable virus when you doubleclicked?
I was with you until that point.
On any Unix and Unix-like OS (such as Linux and I'd imagine OSX), a file is NOT executable by default when it is created. This includes when it is downloaded. If you download a file you'd have to manually flag it as executable before you could run it. Also you would see the real filename with no lame tricks designed to hide parts of it from you, and you can use the "file" command to see what kind of file it is no matter its name or extension. Finally, you'd almost certainly do all of this as a non-root user. Coincidentally, Unix and Unix-like OSs don't have these Filename.Jpg.Exe problems.
That's the biggest problem, MS is able to release inferior products and then drive user's expectations down to match. When you tell people that they wouldn't have these problems using something else they don't believe you because it sounds "too good to be true".
While I suppose they're both quite plausible, I always figured it was because it would mean learning something new, not because it sounds too good to be true.
I'd imagine it's the same people who blame crime on things like guns and drugs and video games, as though they were something other than inanimate objects and ideas.
You could "blame" the OS in the sense of recognizing that its design or implementation are definitely involved in the cause-and-effect sequence of this infection. Still, I think the blame you're talking about belongs to the moral/ethical realm of accountability. As long as you have large masses of people who will pay money for such systems, many companies would love a large marketshare. You can blame Microsoft only for being the one to become dominant.
Right now they're so dominant that the lack of any real mention about Windows and its vulnerabilities to these infections was omitted. I don't think that's because Microsoft applied bribery or some other pressure. I think that's because most people who use a PC have real experience only with Windows and have come to believe that rampant malware infections are a normal downside to owning a computer.
I saw for myself that most users felt this way about BSODs prior to Windows XP, when Windows 98 and then Windows ME were dominant. It wasn't something they questioned and it didn't inspire any curiosity about whether other systems are like that or even exist. They just dutifully pressed the reset or power button and rebooted. At the time I had been running Linux for a couple of years and it was (and is) quite stable, so I did see it as a strange contrast and as something I'd rather not put up with.
Microsoft has greatly improved the core OS stability of Windows over the years. A modern Windows system that crashes or needs to be rebooted as often as Windows 98 or Windows ME once did would now be regarded as unusual and in need of attention. Still the rampant malware is accepted as normal. That's the next thing that needs to change, whether or not Microsoft and their software is involved in the solution.
I can understand this dude getting in trouble for leaking information and such, but kudos to him for getting the collateral murder video out there in the wild.
If there were any doubts as to the authenticity of these documents and videos, their veracity has now been affirmed.
the problem then, is that it is substantially easier to employ PR and marketing than it is to instill critical thinking in the masses. Not to mention the difficulty of overcoming oppositional PR and marketing, which will cloud your truths. Surely you don't expect that those without fact on their side to simply roll over and let you win simply because you're right and they're wrong?
The only reason you wouldn't "win" is because people so enjoy being lied to. It appeals to their ego, that someone would want so badly to please them by telling them what they want to hear that even the truth is less important. A worthless sense of worth, to borrow a phrase. It still doesn't stand up to solid roots in a real sense of worth wherever a comparison has been made. That's the point.
But if everyone's stuff could stand on its own merits, then you still have a signal noise ratio problem. You need PR and marketing to cut through noise.
I must disagree here. You don't need PR and marketing. What you need is critical thinking. I suppose you could call that an ability to research coupled with an ability to interpret your own information. Then you don't need PR and marketing, which are all about interpretations and how to encourage particular ones that suit their purposes. I like that much better than depending on highly compensated parties to be honest about something they are paid to slant and spin.
Signal-to-noise isn't a problem when your signal comes from within you and not from external suggestion. By comparison, "opt-in vs. opt-out" is a much weaker concept though similar in spirit.
There's no reason why you can't have lobbying, it's a good system that definitely gets abused, but in a two party system you definitely need lobbying so that special interest groups like PETA, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choicers, Gun Control, NRA, Socialized Medicine-ites, "Hands off my Medicare!"-ers and every other group out there can have their say in Washington.
But there is already a way that those groups and all others, including those not affiliated with an organization, can have their say in Washington. That's by voting in order to elect representatives. The only reason why voting is so broken is because we have a very high (around 90%) incumbency rate at the federal level and once in office, to whom will the politician listen? The voter who is 90+% likely to re-elect him, or the lobbyist who gives him cold hard cash? The answer to that seems rather obvious. If you want voting to once again be something better than "the lesser of two evils" you need to eliminate lobbying as a necessary first step. The necessary second step would be to allocate an amount of public money for candidates' campaigns, a very generous amount that is adjusted yearly for inflation, and then outlaw as bribery all other financial contributions to a candidate or his/her campaign.
Then and only then does the vote start to mean something again. Since the people vastly outnumber the corporations and their owners, and the corporations do not get to inject their superior concentrated wealth into the political system, you end up with a vote that means more and a system that tends to represent the people better than it represents the corporations. It's not a matter of taking the money out of politics, for (as others have pointed out) that's not feasible; it's about making the money meaningless by having a large amount of it available for all candidates. Even a very large amount would cost us far less than what we now finance because of special interests and others with clout.
I would be in favor of this being done in such a way that the "minor parties" would have an equal ability to put their candidates onto ballots and to finance campaigns. Only when a real diversity of political philosophies all have an equally viable chance at winning elections can you have real choice for the people. Among many other things, that would imply a replacement of the two-party dupoloy with the recognition that the domination of politics by two parties is equivalent to the negative effects for customers caused by an economic duopoly, with or without collusion. Only when the people have real choice can the powers-that-be claim true legitimacy.
Right now it isn't the throne, but the power behind the throne that is important. Matthew Paris said:
Television lies. All television lies. It lies persistently, instinctively and by habit. Everyone involved lies. A culture of mendacity surrounds the
medium, and those who work there live it, breath it and prosper by it. I know of no area of public life -- no, not even politics -- more saturated by
a professional cynicism. If you want a word that takes you to the core of it, I would offer rigged.
...is it dishonest for the presenter to imply that the pundit in the chair is free to offer any opinion, when the truth is that fifty pundits were
telephoned, but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited?
-- Matthew Parris
Right now that is how politics works. "Fifty pundits were telephoned, but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited." Fifty, or maybe fifty thousand or more people would like to hold public office. Only the fellows of the requisite opinion, as evidenced by party affiliation and loyalty/orthodoxy, were invited to receive campaign contributions. Those with the cash to contribute have that cash because they benefit from the status quo, and could benefit more from a stronger version of it (caused by proceeding further along the course it has been on). Now you inherit a self-reinforcing feedback cycle that wants to become more so. Nowhere in this do you have free choice for the governed, only for those to whom the governed has surrendered his power.
Hmm, sounds more like Milo Minderbinder. From TFA:
"Documents seen by the Guardian show that Cathcart has acted as a paid agent for Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi in a multimillion-pound campaign to "undermine the current regime's standing"...Cathcart, a miniature steam train enthusiast and chairman of his local parish council who operates from modest offices in the outer London suburbs, cuts an unlikely figure in the plot, which involves highly paid US PR consultants, Washington lobbyists and former US-special forces strategists hired at a cost of at least $3.7m (£2.6m)."
Is this a serious attempt to 'undermine the current regime's standing', or just a successful scheme for undermining the Sheikh's bank balance? I guess Cathcart's alleged cut of the proceeds will really help him expand his model train layout, though.
Yet more evidence that PR people are evil and have no good purpose. Tell me, if what you are doing is really good and true, why are the facts of the matter not enough? Why do you need public relations people to spin something favorably if the facts are already on your side? They're little more than mercenaries who don't give a damn about whether the conflict is justified so long as they get paid.
Same deal with lobbyists. If the thing in question really is sound public policy, why can it not stand on its own merits? Why do you need highly paid professionals to use skilled salesmanship and slick presentations to impress people in order to promote something with inherent merit? You see, it doesn't make sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Your ends-justifies-the-means concept holds no water.
My wifi access points are a matter of public knowledge. After all-- they're freaking radios. What's not public knowledge is anything after the location of it, and its authentication- if any.
The data that flows there is mine, and no one elses. The other MAC addresses associated with the AP are also my business, and no one else's. Differing jurisdictions have different views of the severity of the theft that their mindlessly-stupid shark-like gobbling did. I hope they suffer the higher of the common denominators of justice.
At the time of this writing, the parent post is marked "Troll".
How is this trolling? Consequentialism is a valid thing to argue against. Granted, you may disagree with parent's opinion of what is and is not a private component of a Wi-Fi transmission. If you disagree with him that a violation has occurred then you would necessarily also disagree that Google should suffer legal action from any sort of justice system. If that's the case, then the respectable non-cowardly way to handle it is to argue against it and take him to task.
I'll spell this out since a lot of mods clumsily fail to grasp a few basic concepts. "Troll" is something of an accusation or judgment. That doesn't change because you express it by selecting it from a menu rather than directly confronting the poster. As such, it requires at least some kind of positive indication. Specifically, it would require a good reason to believe that the parent poster could not conceivably express the above as a sincere opinion and is saying it merely to get a reaction out of others. There is no such indication here.
This reminds me of too many Apple discussions, in which the fanboyism towards $popular_company is stronger than the love of free speech or the ability to handle opinions with which you disagree. I don't particularly care so much about the waste of a perfectly good mod point. Rather, the hypocrisy is what needs to be pointed out.
The thing most people forget to ask, but was asked in this article, is something you conveniently forgot to mention. Here it is:
What possible use could google have for this data? What would be their motive here?
As the article says, there's almost no personal data in the emails. Even if there is, there's so little of it that what useful purpose could it serve? You'd have a hard time correlating it to any one person, or even finding out what it is. There's going to be so little data here, and it'll be so fragmented, that turning it into anything useful would be impossible.
On the other hand, why would google risk collecting this data when they knew what was going to happen if it got out? The risk vs. reward here just doesn't make sense. They're going to risk their reputation on... what? Collecting a few fragments of unencrypted wifi traffic that probably contains so little information and could very well be generated by a bot running on your machine.
I'm not going to believe google did this on purpose until someone can give me a motive that doesn't sound like something from a UFO convention.
What if this were a calculated marketing maneuver designed to test the waters and find out how much people really care about privacy and the possible hard-to-justify violation thereof? This is, after all, a company that would make far less money if everyone had excellent online privacy. How much people are willing to protect that privacy and how much outrage they express at real or perceived violations of it could be very important data to a company like Google.
This is data that would be difficult for Google to obtain from their usual channels. Just like in politics, it has to become an "issue" and then the reaction can be assessed. A privacy matter that collects little or no directly sensitive information (thus protecting Google from potential liability) that still raises the issue and gets people talking about it would be perfect for this purpose. That's exactly what happened here.
The more successful a company, the more resources it possesses, the more talent it has hired, the more difficult it becomes to believe that they'd make trivial mistakes that most Slashdotters, acting alone with an infinitessimal fraction of the same resources, would have easily avoided. Good long-term strategy looks a lot like things just happening to work out a certain way as a product of chance. It's possible someone at Google could have made the incredibly trivial mistake that caused this chain of events. What's unlikely is that among all of the managers, designers, and programmers involved in this project, not one person noticed such a mistake.
The GPL community not only wants their community to grow but it wants others to shrink. Otherwise, this wouldn't be an issue at all. What difference does it make to GPL advocates what happens to non-GPL projects? The answer is simple and revealing.
The community isn't a solid block of harmony wherein all members share the exact same opinion of non-GPL projects. Still, assuming you are 100% correct in all cases, I have no problem with that either. Why? Because they are doing it the right way, through persuasion and voluntary cooperation and not through coercion or force. Each owner of each project can decide how their code will be licensed. The GPL community is not going to send goons to intimidate them into eschewing proprietary licenses. They might make arguments to that effect and attempt to convince those owners, but as that does not involve force or fraud there is nothing wrong with it. This is the correct way to effect a change that you believe in.
The difference it makes is rather easy to discern. If you can convince a proprietary project to release code under the GPL, the community can benefit from freely reusing that code. This enriches their codebase and prevents programmers from wasting effort by reinventing wheels. It also reflects the non-scarcity of existing code; once written, infinite perfect copies can be made and shared at zero or near-zero cost. It constitutes a rejection of the more typical use of copyright law which is to enforce artificial scarcity.
What's simple and revealing is that anyone would complain about the GPL community's desires and intentions when they are free to choose not to participate in that community. It's like the people who call up a radio talk-show host to tell him how much they hate his guts, yet they are familiar with all of his past shows. That they don't have to listen to something they dislike doesn't seem to occur to them.
The victims are not your friends, your family, and hopefully, not you.
The crux of the matter is the assumption that all use is damaging abuse.
For the sake of argument, assume that you mentioned drinking some beers last weekend. Unless you give a solid reason to believe otherwise, the assumption is that you used alcohol responsibly, you didn't drive drunk, you didn't beat your wife, you didn't get fired for being drunk on the job, etc. You had some beer, stayed home, watched a movie or something, and went to bed.
Because of that, if I said that it would be wrong to put you in prison merely for possessing and using alcohol, you wouldn't immediately portray your friends and family members as victims. You wouldn't immediately assume that anyone who drinks alcohol or believes that adults should be allowed to drink alcohol is a hardcore alcoholic. You'd see why it's unreasonable to assume that all people who use alcohol are alcoholics, that is, alcohol addicts who victimize themselves and those who care about them. You might see why that assumption is a baseless emotional appeal that should never determine public policy.
You might wonder how anyone could, with a straight face, make a serious crime out of watching a movie and drinking a beer. You might wonder that while understanding it's perfectly reasonable to make a serious crime out of driving drunk, since such irresponsible use does endanger others. It's reasonable because the moment others are harmed in some way, such as being endangered, then and only then does it become a crime. Then and only then does the state have a legitimate reason to use police power. Anything else is tyranny.
So why do we recreate the exact circumstances of Prohibition for substances other than alcohol, after having observed that Prohibition stopped no one from drinking, served only to fund organized crime, and was a complete failure? Why do we do that knowing that no one fought with automatic firearms in the streets over alcohol until it was made illegal? Why do we continue to make an assumption that adults cannot be expected to use something responsibily when we already expect them to do that for one of the more harmful drugs known to society?
You see, it doesn't make sense. The anti-drug commercials you're parroting there can sound very convincing until you really question the whole thing as a system. Only politicians benefit from this because of the expansion of police power that it excuses.
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
what's going on is that it's popular to make a big deal of every vague intention by the Australian government, without reference to the fact that none of it is law yet. (And in the case of the infamous filter, never will be).
What is also usually missing from at least the summaries of these articles is that most of these things are based on already implemented existing laws in either Europe, the UK, Canada or the USA
All laws started out as intentions, so this is significant. If the people of Australia don't want these measures, it's a problem that their representatives in government would like to implement them. It's also a problem because of the precedent it either sets or follows; either way legitimizes the idea.
Personally, here is what I want: if the cops have a good reason to believe someone has committed a crime, let them get a warrant. With that warrant they can search only that particular suspect or particular group of suspects and/or conduct surveillance only on those people to gather the evidence needed to make their case. If this process yields insufficient evidence, then better luck next time. None of this requires a backlog of what everyone has said and done on the Internet for the last two years. There's no genuinely good purpose behind this that outweighs the invasiveness and potential for abuse. I don't care if every country in the whole world has similar laws -- that would merely increase the number that are doing something wrong.
Another thing: does the government intend to provide money to the ISPs for the data centers and hard drives they will have to purchase and maintain to archive such a large volume of information, or is this yet another unfunded mandate?
why would you ever think that a paid advertisement is a good source of honest unbiased information about the product/service in question, and if you recognize that it is not then why would you want to base purchasing decisions on dishonest, biased information?
I make no buying decisions about anything I see advertised in any media. I may see a product that catches my interest but if I'm sheling out some hard earned money you better belive I'm doing some research before I buy anything. I agree with most everything you said but I come from a long line of skeptics and I suppose that has infuenced my buying decisions more than any advertisement. And yes I know, you're going to say "you saw a product that caught your interest so you are influenced by advertising" and you'd be wrong because the research influences my decision to buy.
No, I wouldn't say you're influenced by advertising without some indication that this is so. Indeed, I stopped short of making such a claim and I preferred to discuss advertising as an institution independently of how it may or may not affect you personally.
Besides, it sounds like you'd know whether you are easily influenced much better than I could. It's a bit of a nuisance on Slashdot that lots of people presume to believe they know my thoughts, intentions, and personal traits better than I do and assume I am bullshitting when I correct them on such matters. I won't follow their example.
It does seem to me though that everything you wrote above undermines the premise of deriving useful information from advertising. As in, if I first find out about a product/service because of an unsolicited ad (by that I mean, not the Yellow Pages), that's a good sign that I don't need it at all, otherwise I'd have looked for and found such a thing on my own.
I see the mindlessness of the masses of people, who only think they have their own thoughts and make their own decisions. The truth is that they have very few thoughts and impulses that someone didn't put there. Much of it was not put there by advertising, but rather by inflicting trauma, emotional frustration, or some other abuse. It so happens that you can bully with kindness as well as with cruelty; in fact the phony kindness is less likely to be resisted. Therefore, advertising puts a nice smiling face on the same process of manipulation in order to exploit the same human weaknesses.
Manipulation is intimately tied to the rest of our society. It's generally how business and politics get done. It's greatly preferred over rational choice because it is hard to rule and dominate when all of your actions have a demonstrable reasonable basis. It's so important to us that we are very careful never to teach any real argumentation, critical thinking, or about propaganda techniques in our public schools. If we did that correctly it would result in a tough-minded population not so easily led around, and that's absolutely not desirable to our rulers.
For this system to work, our rulers need a steady supply of mindless, helpless people who are not very independent and won't try too hard to learn anything on their own. Bonus points if they are emotionally immature, petty, impressed by fame and celebrity, and cannot control their passions. For this the public schools have been quite successful.
So my point in all of this is how very frivolous it is to say "wow, I wouldn't have known about that product" in the face of this gigantic and tremendously evil system. I'd go so far as to say that even when it's right (as in factually accurate) it's still wrong.
Whew. Im glad to know that privacy is still dead. Seriously though, I'd rather have advertisments targeted to my interests than some random bs that I have interest in.
I have one question for you and everyone who says what you just said. It's a two-part question: why would you ever think that a paid advertisement is a good source of honest unbiased information about the product/service in question, and if you recognize that it is not then why would you want to base purchasing decisions on dishonest, biased information?
Advertising is nothing more than the psychological manipulation of behavior by means of suggestion. Manipulation is a bitter pill; that bitter pill is sugar-coated by convincing you that it's somehow helpful to you. Then you can be a good consumer and do as you are told, bonus points if you think it's your own idea when you follow a suggestion.
Ever see a skilled hypnotist in action? They can tell someone ahead of time, "I will implant the suggestion that you put your shoes on backwards, with the left shoe on your right foot and vice-verse." Then the person does that. They ask the person why they did that, and does the person say "you implanted a suggestion that made me do it?" No. The person says "It seemed more comfortable that way" or otherwise makes an excuse for it as though it were their own idea all along. This is how marketing works, how mass numbers of people follow trends and jump on bandwagons at the same time while believing it was an individual choice. It goes far beyond selling products. It's to the point that large numbers of people will, overnight, adopt the mannerisms and speech patterns of various celebrities as though they have always acted and spoken that way. It's actually an affront to the very concept of individuality and self-determination, because real individuals have that pesky habit of not always doing what you want them to do.
I submit that you cannot see this system of manipulation for what it truly is and still make apologies for it.
wish people would pick the denomination that pleases them, worship at its altar if they like, and then realize how pointless it is to endlessly debate non-resolvable religious issues
Well, libertarians have Rand, and hardcore socialists have Marx. Convincing them that their beliefs are fundamentally religious is tricky, however.
The problem or the religious element is the exclusive either-or thinking. For example, I myself tend towards libertarian philosophy. Specifically, I believe that the only legitimate purposes of government are defense, law enforcement, and public works. The only legitimate purpose of law enforcement is to prevent one person from using force or fraud to deprive another person of his/her inalienable rights. There are a tremendous number of laws that would be repealed if we stuck to these principles.
The nuisance is that if you advocate such views, people assume you want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that I never make such statements doesn't stop them from assuming I want an anarcho-capitalist society, that I want to eliminate every last regulation of all markets, etc. I'm not always sure if it's a deliberate attempt to belittle what they dislike because they are childish, or if they truly think this is legitimate disputation.
I think it's that they are so shallow they cannot help but pigeonhole any view that is not their own. They don't like it, it isn't what they believe, therefore it must be portrayed as some kind of pure evil, like religious heresy. Mere disagreement based on different worldviews doesn't give them the visceral satisfaction of condemnation that they feed from. The most extreme libertarians would agree with me on the points I made in the first paragraph above. Therefore, they assume I am exactly like them on all other possible points and proceed accordingly.
Maybe no pigeonholing is involved. Perhaps again because they are shallow, they recognize only the most extreme form of any belief. The notion of studying many philosophies, adopting the principles that make sense, and rejecting the ones that do not is alien to them. It's all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us. That's why these things are needlessly religious in nature. The folks who do this are like sheeple or like robotic clones who are think everything must be partisan politics because that's what they see in the media.
Whichever is actually the case, it poisons the well and devalues what could otherwise be edifying discussion.
The article says Google has been "less than clear", but that just for people who don't understand the technology. Exactly what data Google collects, and how they use it, is obvious for anybody who understands the technology. A good explanation of that technology is here: http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/05/technical-details-of-street-view-wifi.html
This is just another example of people being scared of "witchcraft". In this case, so many people (even Slashdot readers) don't understand WiFi technology, so the witchhunt is more persistent.
The real issue here is not that the data is easy to collect, or that collecting it is part of how the technology works. This is really a matter of data retention.
Clearly they retain this data long enough to later perform analysis on it. To say "it's public information that you are broadcasting" misses the point and wastes time affirming a fact that is not in question (which is in fact is a clear sign that the point has been missed).
It's the difference between me someone down a public street and happening to see that you entered a particular store that you frequent, versus someone holding a pen and a notepad so you can see that he recorded your location with timestamps. The first event is not noteworthy in any way. The second event might make you question whether his intentions are in your interests. To be fair, it is rather hard to come up with scenarios where you would benefit from someone who does not personally know you but feels a need to record your comings and goings. Again it's the recording and retention that is the problem; no claim is being made that there is anything wrong with being observed in a public place by someone who is also in a public place.
By recording physical data over time concerning a person's whereabouts, especially with a device they tend to carry around and use frequently (like a Wi-Fi-enabled phone, netbook, or laptop), you can learn quite a bit about someone. If there is a Gmail account used or a browser cookie transferred over that Wi-Fi signal, Google can cross-reference their physical whereabouts with all the other information they've gathered. This could include things like their real name and identity especially if they have used Google Checkout or Google Product Search, their browsing history as provided by tracking tools, their e-mail data if they use Gmail, their search history, the news items that interest them, etc.
Combining all the other data Google gathers with recent or current data on physical location amounts to a powerful collection. The abuse potential is great. That abuse may not even have to come from Google itself as an intentional act. A database like that for many thousands of people is a tempting target for spammers and criminals, for the same reasons they sometimes manage to steal credit card numbers and Social Security numbers. Can you name a government that wouldn't like easy access to that kind of surveillance information, perhaps in the name of fighting terrorism, or did you think their ambitions stopped with projects like Carnivore, warrantless wiretaps, and mandatory access to telecommunications infrastructure?
The disclosures about "we gather data on Wi-Fi signals" or "we record search terms and IP addresses" don't even begin to address the power of cross-referencing multiple databases. Therefore it's not really full disclosure at all. The average person doesn't remotely understand what can be learned about them from multiple sets of data and this reductionist approach to disclosure isn't helping. Each data set seems like a minor thing and a fair price to pay for using a free service. It's the whole picture from the combination of all of those data sets, something easily achievable with modern databases, that poses the real privacy issue. None of the privacy policies and press releases have anything to say about
You should read up on the free market. What we have is not a free market. All the regulations you support are there to attempt to fix problems caused by yet other regulations.
This argument is just silly. A regulation-free market is just another name for anarchy. You wish you had more money than that other trader? No problem, shoot him and take his money, or kidnap his kids and slit their throats unless he agrees to buy them back from you. Don't want something similar to happen to you? No problem, hire a private army of mercenaries to protect yourself. One of your mercenaries is getting a bit ambitious, and sneaking into your room to murder you in the night? Tough, you should have hired a more reliable mercenary.
Regulations are there so that people can conduct their business with at least some confidence that they won't be completely screwed over by every other actor in the market at the first opportunity. Without that confidence, people simply wouldn't trade -- they'd keep all of their money in a locked box in their basement, and spend it mainly on armed guards, and there would be no market, "free" or otherwise.
Yes, some regulations are no doubt unnecessary. But to say that all regulations are only "there to attempt to fix the problems caused by yet other regulations" is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
This is just another rehashed discussion of many rehashed discussions from some dusty old playbook.
It's like what happens anytime Windows security (or lack thereof) is mentioned. Inevitably someone somewhere will say "but Windows gets attacked because it has such a large marketshare," knowing that truly arguing against that would amount to proving a negative.
Windows and its marketshare, regulations vs. laissez-faire capitalism, we've had all of these discussions a thousand times before. They never reach a final conclusion to be resolved once and for all because they are like religious issues. I wish people would pick the denomination that pleases them, worship at its altar if they like, and then realize how pointless it is to endlessly debate non-resolvable religious issues. They tend to derail what would otherwise be a good discussion.
Maybe we can save the repetitive memes for the people who think the next iteration of "in Soviet Russia" is actually funny?
I got the point, alright. I get it, I just don't agree with it. Therefore I made a contrary point, also called a counterpoint.
Falsely equating disagreement with lack of understanding doesn't put you in a good position to offer such advice.
Things that require little processing power but do require lots of (aggregated) bandwidth. This is where it's easier for botnet owners to compromise a thousand Windows PCs connected via cable modems than one or two high-end multi-homed Unix servers that could handle the same load.
Botnet owners also have a disadvantage: they don't want their malware to be easily detected. Thus the less it burdens the host PC, the less likely that it will be detected and removed. Massive processing power certainly does have applications. It's that botnets are working with what is available and readily feasible and this naturally places limits on their uses, the same way a lack of money would prevent you from purchasing a private jet.
Actually I sought to explain why the low-hanging fruit is even more desirable than the "juciest" targets available. That doesn't mean the juicy targets are less juicy or that the low-hanging fruit isn't low-hanging. It means botnet owners want maximum return for the least possible effort and big-iron Unix systems run by competent admins don't accomplish that goal like expendable Windows machines that are a dime a dozen though individually far less capable. What I personally like or don't like has nothing to do with this.
Most of whom choose a non-Windows OS. When people with a clue avoid something and people who don't know better flock to something, it says a lot about that something.
To put it another way, I have never met a person who was highly competent with using Windows and also highly competent with using a Unix-like OS (Linux, *BSD, etc) who still preferred Windows. I'm sure someone will pipe up now that I've posted this but the point remains, such people are quite rare. Your preference for one thing is meaningless if you are not at least as familiar with an alternative.
Actually a beefy *nix server with extremely high bandwidth, multiple CPUs, and multiple gigs of ram is the juiciest target to be a member of a botnet. It's also a lot more difficult to compromise. Windows PCs are not the juiciest targets. They are the low-hanging fruit that can be harvested in large numbers with automated tools, making it not worthwhile for the botnet owners to spend too much effort taking over any one target no matter how tempting it is.
No, there's a big difference. If he was a current government official, then the statement would represent a government policy.
"This company dominated the market with low-quality products" is not a policy. It is an observation. It's true or it's false no matter who says it or how "official" they are. Try thinking for yourself and being less impressed with authority.
You do understand the difference between the saying "objectively isn't an inconvenience at all" versus what I did say, which was "subjectively doesn't seem like such an inconvenience?" That line above does not sound like you do.
Personally I find that Linux's security systems (bear in mind I also use a Gentoo Hardened system) make sense. If they don't make sense, I can spend a few minutes with Google and then they do make sense. I don't need the performance penalty of a malware scanner second-guessing every I/O operation. You also have a software environment built around the idea that applications don't expect to have root privileges without good reason. Microsoft could have started encouraging that years ago but had other priorities. It's yet another lesson they could have learned from Unix, in fact.
Specifically, I expect a package manager to need root before it installs system software; it makes sense and it is not a surprise. Likewise I don't expect my Web browser or e-mail client or word processor to need root and sure enough, they never ask for it.
I think Windows is still trying to achieve that kind of simplicity with UAC. Imagine how easy it would be for their users if no UAC dialog was ever a surprise. They don't have that, and that's what they get for the years of encouraging sloppy security practices such as running Admin all the time. They are clearly reaping what they sow, well really their users are doing the reaping.
The whitelist sounds like a decent idea I suppose, yet I need no such whitelist on Linux. Linux handles this problem differently. Rather than tons of prompts and then a whitelist to reduce their number, there are few prompts to begin with. Very few things I do actually require superuser privileges. The most common is upgrading/installing system software (that is, software available to all users) and like I said, it makes sense that you don't want non-root users doing this. How many of UAC's prompts are so predictable and self-evident? Why was a whitelist necessary?
The part you conveniently but understandably had to ignore, and are going to have a real hell of a time trying to respond to, is where I said that UAC, virus scanners, and Windows security mechanisms in general have something in common: they want to validate all possible actions and they make no effort to instead encourage best practices. That's one of the bigger cultural differences between Windows and other systems.
It's rather obvious that this comes from the marketing nature of Windows and Microsoft; encouraging best practices might mean learning something new, and that in turn might alienate some users who then take their business elsewhere. So the user is treated like a child who will never know better so Microsoft wants to child-proof the whole world, rather than world-proofing the child. If that's the way you as a user want to be treated, I celebrate your right to choose and to pay good money for the privilege, but I reject this notion.
That's technically true but a security system that's simple enough but no simpler, for which the steps involved make sense and their efficacy is relatively self-evident, it subjectively doesn't seem like such an inconvenience. This is what UAC failed to understand, at least initially. It also resembles virus scanners in the sense that it wants to validate all actions rather than encourage best practices.
I was with you until that point.
On any Unix and Unix-like OS (such as Linux and I'd imagine OSX), a file is NOT executable by default when it is created. This includes when it is downloaded. If you download a file you'd have to manually flag it as executable before you could run it. Also you would see the real filename with no lame tricks designed to hide parts of it from you, and you can use the "file" command to see what kind of file it is no matter its name or extension. Finally, you'd almost certainly do all of this as a non-root user. Coincidentally, Unix and Unix-like OSs don't have these Filename.Jpg.Exe problems.
That's the biggest problem, MS is able to release inferior products and then drive user's expectations down to match. When you tell people that they wouldn't have these problems using something else they don't believe you because it sounds "too good to be true".
While I suppose they're both quite plausible, I always figured it was because it would mean learning something new, not because it sounds too good to be true.
I'd imagine it's the same people who blame crime on things like guns and drugs and video games, as though they were something other than inanimate objects and ideas.
You could "blame" the OS in the sense of recognizing that its design or implementation are definitely involved in the cause-and-effect sequence of this infection. Still, I think the blame you're talking about belongs to the moral/ethical realm of accountability. As long as you have large masses of people who will pay money for such systems, many companies would love a large marketshare. You can blame Microsoft only for being the one to become dominant.
Right now they're so dominant that the lack of any real mention about Windows and its vulnerabilities to these infections was omitted. I don't think that's because Microsoft applied bribery or some other pressure. I think that's because most people who use a PC have real experience only with Windows and have come to believe that rampant malware infections are a normal downside to owning a computer.
I saw for myself that most users felt this way about BSODs prior to Windows XP, when Windows 98 and then Windows ME were dominant. It wasn't something they questioned and it didn't inspire any curiosity about whether other systems are like that or even exist. They just dutifully pressed the reset or power button and rebooted. At the time I had been running Linux for a couple of years and it was (and is) quite stable, so I did see it as a strange contrast and as something I'd rather not put up with.
Microsoft has greatly improved the core OS stability of Windows over the years. A modern Windows system that crashes or needs to be rebooted as often as Windows 98 or Windows ME once did would now be regarded as unusual and in need of attention. Still the rampant malware is accepted as normal. That's the next thing that needs to change, whether or not Microsoft and their software is involved in the solution.
No, it's the user. Autorun was meant to be usability easiness and laziness.
The decision to accommodate laziness by default and to then advertise it as "easy to use!" for non-technical people was not the users' decision.
I can understand this dude getting in trouble for leaking information and such, but kudos to him for getting the collateral murder video out there in the wild.
If there were any doubts as to the authenticity of these documents and videos, their veracity has now been affirmed.
the problem then, is that it is substantially easier to employ PR and marketing than it is to instill critical thinking in the masses. Not to mention the difficulty of overcoming oppositional PR and marketing, which will cloud your truths. Surely you don't expect that those without fact on their side to simply roll over and let you win simply because you're right and they're wrong?
The only reason you wouldn't "win" is because people so enjoy being lied to. It appeals to their ego, that someone would want so badly to please them by telling them what they want to hear that even the truth is less important. A worthless sense of worth, to borrow a phrase. It still doesn't stand up to solid roots in a real sense of worth wherever a comparison has been made. That's the point.
But if everyone's stuff could stand on its own merits, then you still have a signal noise ratio problem. You need PR and marketing to cut through noise.
I must disagree here. You don't need PR and marketing. What you need is critical thinking. I suppose you could call that an ability to research coupled with an ability to interpret your own information. Then you don't need PR and marketing, which are all about interpretations and how to encourage particular ones that suit their purposes. I like that much better than depending on highly compensated parties to be honest about something they are paid to slant and spin.
Signal-to-noise isn't a problem when your signal comes from within you and not from external suggestion. By comparison, "opt-in vs. opt-out" is a much weaker concept though similar in spirit.
But there is already a way that those groups and all others, including those not affiliated with an organization, can have their say in Washington. That's by voting in order to elect representatives. The only reason why voting is so broken is because we have a very high (around 90%) incumbency rate at the federal level and once in office, to whom will the politician listen? The voter who is 90+% likely to re-elect him, or the lobbyist who gives him cold hard cash? The answer to that seems rather obvious. If you want voting to once again be something better than "the lesser of two evils" you need to eliminate lobbying as a necessary first step. The necessary second step would be to allocate an amount of public money for candidates' campaigns, a very generous amount that is adjusted yearly for inflation, and then outlaw as bribery all other financial contributions to a candidate or his/her campaign.
...is it dishonest for the presenter to imply that the pundit in the chair is free to offer any opinion, when the truth is that fifty pundits were
telephoned, but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited?
-- Matthew Parris
Then and only then does the vote start to mean something again. Since the people vastly outnumber the corporations and their owners, and the corporations do not get to inject their superior concentrated wealth into the political system, you end up with a vote that means more and a system that tends to represent the people better than it represents the corporations. It's not a matter of taking the money out of politics, for (as others have pointed out) that's not feasible; it's about making the money meaningless by having a large amount of it available for all candidates. Even a very large amount would cost us far less than what we now finance because of special interests and others with clout.
I would be in favor of this being done in such a way that the "minor parties" would have an equal ability to put their candidates onto ballots and to finance campaigns. Only when a real diversity of political philosophies all have an equally viable chance at winning elections can you have real choice for the people. Among many other things, that would imply a replacement of the two-party dupoloy with the recognition that the domination of politics by two parties is equivalent to the negative effects for customers caused by an economic duopoly, with or without collusion. Only when the people have real choice can the powers-that-be claim true legitimacy.
Right now it isn't the throne, but the power behind the throne that is important. Matthew Paris said:
Television lies. All television lies. It lies persistently, instinctively and by habit. Everyone involved lies. A culture of mendacity surrounds the medium, and those who work there live it, breath it and prosper by it. I know of no area of public life -- no, not even politics -- more saturated by a professional cynicism. If you want a word that takes you to the core of it, I would offer rigged.
Right now that is how politics works. "Fifty pundits were telephoned, but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited." Fifty, or maybe fifty thousand or more people would like to hold public office. Only the fellows of the requisite opinion, as evidenced by party affiliation and loyalty/orthodoxy, were invited to receive campaign contributions. Those with the cash to contribute have that cash because they benefit from the status quo, and could benefit more from a stronger version of it (caused by proceeding further along the course it has been on). Now you inherit a self-reinforcing feedback cycle that wants to become more so. Nowhere in this do you have free choice for the governed, only for those to whom the governed has surrendered his power.
Hmm, sounds more like Milo Minderbinder. From TFA:
"Documents seen by the Guardian show that Cathcart has acted as a paid agent for Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qasimi in a multimillion-pound campaign to "undermine the current regime's standing"...Cathcart, a miniature steam train enthusiast and chairman of his local parish council who operates from modest offices in the outer London suburbs, cuts an unlikely figure in the plot, which involves highly paid US PR consultants, Washington lobbyists and former US-special forces strategists hired at a cost of at least $3.7m (£2.6m)."
Is this a serious attempt to 'undermine the current regime's standing', or just a successful scheme for undermining the Sheikh's bank balance? I guess Cathcart's alleged cut of the proceeds will really help him expand his model train layout, though.
Yet more evidence that PR people are evil and have no good purpose. Tell me, if what you are doing is really good and true, why are the facts of the matter not enough? Why do you need public relations people to spin something favorably if the facts are already on your side? They're little more than mercenaries who don't give a damn about whether the conflict is justified so long as they get paid.
Same deal with lobbyists. If the thing in question really is sound public policy, why can it not stand on its own merits? Why do you need highly paid professionals to use skilled salesmanship and slick presentations to impress people in order to promote something with inherent merit? You see, it doesn't make sense.