So my follow-on question is, Why does everyone think it's OK for private companies answerable to no one (or the highest bidder) to be collecting this information in the first place? Well, yes, I suppose most people in this thread don't think so, but all of the normal people out there seem to be perfectly happy with the idea.
Because they don't view the Bill of Rights as sound and enlightened principles to be honored wherever possible that happened to be enshrined in the Constitution. They view them as rules like any other. Then they note that either the rules don't apply to those private companies or they would be difficult to enforce, and for them, that's that. It's a mentality that is all about what is allowed or what can be gotten away with, rather than what is right or wrong.
I do have a more immediate question. If an average citizen hires a person to do something illegal, both the person and the one he hired can be charged with a crime. If it's illegal for the CIA to gather data on American citizens, why is it suddenly legal when they do the same thing by proxy? Why wouldn't both they and the company they hired be prosecuted for this?
It sounds like something that wouldn't happen if you used commodity PC hardware to set up your own voice mail system. Sure, you could make a similar mistake, but it's less likely considering that no one is as interested in safeguarding your data and privacy as you are. It's difficult to put a dollar amount on it, but maintaining control over your own data and systems is quite valuable all the same. I think it's great that Google wants to make services like these available to people who want them, but I for one won't be jumping on that bandwagon.
It reminded me of Bill Hicks, the master of the use of comedy for the opening of minds.
"[The Earth being] 12,000 years old. I asked the guy, c'mon man, dinosaur fossils, what's the deal? He goes, 'God put those here to test our faith'. I think God put you here to test MY faith, dude. I think I figured this out. That's what this guy said -- does that bother anyone here, the idea that GGOODD might be fuckin' with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's runnin' around, burying fossils, 'huh huh huh, we'll see who believes in me now! Huh huh, I'm a prankster God, I am killing me ha ha ha". You die and go before St. Peter, he says 'Did you believe in dinosaurs?' Well yeah, there were fossils everywhere! 'What are you, an idiot, God was fuckin' with you! Giant flyin' lizards, you moron, that's one of God's EASIEST jokes!' It seemed so plausible, aaaahhhhhh!"
I have +1 anecdote. My employer has started providing flu shots to staff some years ago. There has been a dramatic reduction in time off due to illness in winter on the order of about half the number of sick days used accross the board. Interesting when there's a good third of staff that don't get the jab. Since I've had flu jabs myself I haven't had a serious flu in years other than mild symptoms that clear in a day or two.
Sure. You can use statistics and other tools to get a great idea of which strains of viruses you will encounter in the near future. You can then vaccinate against those. When this results in less time off of work due to sickness, you can then say that your program was a resounding success.
That's what we call short-term gain. Then there is the long-term picture.
There is one and only one way to beat the flu long-term. That would be to vaccinate against each of its strains and to make this vaccine widely available. The flu would then die out due to a lack of vulnerable hosts. We would then need to write history books for our children to even know what the flu was.
However, it's not really possible to do that, so far. The best we have been able to do, so far, is to select the most likely strains and immunize people against those. It's a bit like gambling in that you play the numbers and hope that you don't get screwed. Extrapolated over the long term, this means that the virus plus natural selection have a chance to become less and less susceptible to this particular vaccination approach.
It's just like what happens when antibiotics are over-prescribed: some tiny percentage of the bacteria survive the antibiotic, and when they reproduce, and are no longer such a tiny percentage, you end up with a population of bacteria that will not respond to that antibiotic. That's true because there is no antibiotic that has 100% effectiveness against all possible bacteria, so great care must be taken when they are used.
So what happens when, by design, there is no vaccine that has 100% effectiveness against all forms of that particular virus? Easy. You get a population that is infected with some variant that you did not vaccinate against, and where that variant would normally represent a tiny percentage of all infections, it is now one of a few that can still survive. Now consider that the influenza virus is mutable, in that it can mutate, and at best you can secure yourself against the currently-known strians for a little while. In that case it's an arms race, not unlike the one that computer antivirus vendors conduct against the latest malware. Nowhere in this ongoing struggle do you find an ultimate solution. It's not real security.
With the current efforts, you can only change which strain of flu you might get. At best you can keep paying the pharmaceutical companies for protection against the latest and greatest. Of course that is a moving target which will change over time. I am sure that their motives are pure.
IF you had a mechanism to track this (and that's where we fail here), then in six months and one year, you query those people, see if they're still alive. After all, we don't care if you died from influenza or the marthambles - if the vaccine keeps you out of the grave, then it's a win.
That's just it. I am a healthy, strong, young adult. The H1N1 virus does not represent "the grave" for me. Nor does the regular influenza. This is not about survival. This is about whether I get the sniffles for a few days. By that metric, there is no reason for me to even bother. Yet that is not how this is being sold. Hence, my problem with it.
You can call this the death of common sense due to overspecialization, or whatever you like, but it isn't difficult to apply a little logic to foresee the result. Given that information, it should be obvious that the vaccine will not stop the flu and will not protect you from getting the flu. It will only determine which strain you get.
The latter applies if and only if you are actually exposed to one of the strains that the vaccine does not cover, which has fairly low probability, as the strains that the vaccine covers are the ones that are determined to be the most common that year. Then as "those strains decline and other strains become dominant", the vaccine shifts to cover the new most common ones the next year.
The point is that they can perfectly perform the job you describe; that is, determine which strains of flu I am likely to encounter and vaccinate me against them. The realities of air travel and general mobility means it is still only a matter of time before another strain makes it into my area. That's true even if they do their job perfectly, mind you. When you have N strains that all have a non-zero probability of exposure, and can (or will) only immunize against X strains, it only makes sense that eventually, Y strains (let Y = N - X) will attempt to infect me and I will have no vaccine-granted immunity against those.
In other words, a low probability is not a zero probability, and given enough time, it will become a certainty. That certainty needs to be counted on; to do otherwise is a strategic error. Considering that the infection of flu viruses are measured in hours or days, and that people can travel all over the world in just a single day, and that a non-zero number of people do this every day, there is serious reason to question the effectiveness of vaccinating against a few select strains. One or two infected individuals are potentially enough to introduce an unusual strain into the general population. Considering that there are 350-400 million people in my country, I must assume that this is an eventuality.
It's a stopgap measure, at best. It is not the eradication of flu to where children will have to read history books to learn about it, like we did with a real threat known as polio. It is not even attempting to be.
This is not unlike the over-prescription of antibiotics and the subsequent emergence of bacteria which are resistant against particular biotics. That's because the antibiotics are, unintentionally, selecting for those bacteria which can resist them. Those are the organisms that survive a suddenly-hostile environment and live long enough to reproduce. What manner of philosopher or other individual capable of some sense would be shocked that this same mentality is doing the same thing with the flu? What justification is there to take this risk with a disease that is at most a nuisance to anyone who is not already compromised in some way?
So, to reiterate, I for one will take these risks the moment there is a contagious disease that represents a real threat to life and limb. Until then, I'll take my chances of getting the sniffles and some body aches for a few days. I have yet to see a proposal that made sense that would incline me to do otherwise. What I have seen is a lot of fear-mongering that doesn't stand up very well to questioning.
I have an anecdote for you, the four years I received a flu shot I didn't get the flu until the next March or April. And it happened all four times! So I consider them useless for me, just postpones influenza until the weather is much nicer. I'd rather have my flu when the snow is piled high and its below freezing thanks
I used to work at a place that offered the flu shots for free. The workplace saw it as an invetment, in that they'd rather pay for the vaccine than pay for the flu in the form of lost productivity and sick days. N.B. - this is the regular flu, not H1N1.
I had opportunity to question some of the nurses and doctors who gave the presentations on that program. They specifically told me that there are many different strains of the flu virus, and the vaccine only protects against a few select strains. You can call this the death of common sense due to overspecialization, or whatever you like, but it isn't difficult to apply a little logic to foresee the result. Given that information, it should be obvious that the vaccine will not stop the flu and will not protect you from getting the flu. It will only determine which strain you get.
There is, after all, a type of natural selection in effect here. If you change the virus's environment (by vaccinating the hosts) to select against a few strains, then those strains will decline and other strains will become dominant. When I politely pointed this out and asked if they could clear this up for me, the smooth-talking doctors and nurses who were advocating vaccination were suddenly unable to continue answering my questions. It was as though I was the first person who ever asked them what was, to me, a very obvious question about the effectiveness of the vaccine. I was amazed that from the proposal, to the creation, to the testing, to the manufacturing, to the marketing and finally to the dispensing of this vaccine, not one person in that entire chain of events thought that this question should have a ready answer.
That they don't seem to have considered such concerns tells me that this is a marketing effort.
"Microsoft fixes vulnerability in their own Firefox Addon"? The summary would then point out that this was covered and Microsoft fixed the problem. But I guess calling Microsoft "sneaky," ignoring the fact that this was already posted on slashdot, and then minimizing the fact that MS actually fixed the problem was too appealing to pass up.
In a way it is sneaky. If I used Firefox in Windows and wanted this plugin, I would install it myself. Anyone using Firefox in Windows is already demonstrating that they are aware that they have choices as to what browser software to use, and I strongly doubt that the average Firefox user has never heard of addons.mozilla.com or otherwise doesn't know how to locate and install desired add-ons/plugins on their own.
The case can be made for automagically installing things for the "blue E is the Internet!" crowd as they are rather averse to any involvement in this sort of decision-making, viewing it as an unwanted burden. Yet even then, it's non-ideal. The honest, non-sneaky way to handle this would be to separate it from the core.NET package. Then either remove it from Windows Update completely and offer it as a voluntary download, or, make it a separate line-item update that can be declined.
Just assuming that you must want this non-essential thing and making that assumption without considering security implications, all in the name of increasing marketshare, is what's sneaky or exploitative. People who use automatic Windows Updates do so because they rely on it to keep their systems patched and secure. When they are not technically inclined, they are something of a captive audience in this scenario.
You know, when the big virulent worms like Sasser and Code Red came out, they attacked vulnerabilities for which patches had already been issued. I used to wonder why so many people didn't keep their machines more up-to-date when an automatic mechanism is provided that will do it for them. Every time I see something like this, I begin to understand why. It's in everyone's interest to lessen the number of vulnerable machines on the network. Another reason to distrust a mechanism that could have prevented many of these infections does not further that interest. If Microsoft were really serious about security, they would minimize this effect by separating Windows Update into two categories: "Bugfixes & Security Patches", and an optional "New Features".
IMHO, I don't see the need to shove.NET down web users throats, making them vulnerable to more 'root'-owned style attacks by placing the internet one step closer to your local Just In Time (to pwn you) compilers.
Two reasons come to mind. 1) AJAX and other alternatives tend to be open standards, so vendorlock (a favorite MS tactic) doesn't apply or doesn't easily apply. There is one thing Microsoft really does not like to do, and that's competing on merit in a level playing field that has low barriers to entry for competitors. If it were otherwise, then they would use completely open, unencumbered standards wherever possible (i.e., for every protocol and every file format they create) but this, obviously, is not the case. 2) It's not like Microsoft is ever going to have any legal liability for placing their.NET marketshare ahead of user security. If a customer's machine gets compromised that would not have been compromised without MS's unilateral decision to install the.NET component, that customer has no recourse whatsoever. They can make you as vulnerable as they like in order to advance their marketing goals and they can do it with impunity.
So, Microsoft has something to gain, namely further adoption of.NET and the control that comes with that, and they have nothing to lose. From a business perspective they have no reason not to do this. The only thing that would stop them would be for the average user to both understand these things and demand something different.
It wouldn't be the first time I have seen that definition of "extremist" or "nut" that means "a person who takes a reasonable, legally and morally justifiable action that you happen not to like."
I'm not saying that I don't like the anti-Tivo stuff. I'm saying that it is not reasonable, to the point that it can be taken as a bit hypocritical. I'd be perfectly OK with it if it wasn't presented with the "Free Software" rhetoric and as being in the same spirit as GPLv2.
It's an absurdly broad extension of freedom 1, saying not only that you can change the code, but that everything you receive surrounding the code has to support this as shipped. This is first of all (at least as implemented, but I think this is inherent) morally the same as a "field of endeavor" restriction, saying "you can't do things I don't like with this code", and also comes as the expense of the other listed freedoms as you are now limited in your ability to give out copies (with or without modifications). This is why I call it extremism, taking one tenet and elevating it to extremes at the expense of the others. I think it actually might qualify as a heresy.
It's also a case of trying to use control of one thing (copyright on some software) to exert control over something else (misfeatures on a particular class of hardware). This is the same kind of thing that monopolies get in trouble for, and merely being legal when you're not a monopoly still doesn't make it permissible.
I think it's also a technically incorrect solution for what it's trying to accomplish, the correct solution being something along the lines of cablecard.
To me the reasonableness or unreasonableness of it is a simple thing. Does the author of the code get to decide under what license it will be released, if it is to be released at all? Yes, he or she does. Do I have some claim on that author that should give me the right to tell them how they should license their code? No, I don't. Am I essentially a freeloader who is using the code/work of others only because they have been generous enough to allow me to do so? Yes, I am.
So to me it's reasonable to decide that a license doesn't suit me, therefore I will need to find a solution other than the software in question in order to meet my needs. It would also be reasonable for me to decide that the benefits of using code under its license outweigh the disagreements I may have with that license. I don't consider it reasonable though for me to complain to people who are blessing me with their generosity and sense of community and tell them that their efforts aren't good enough because I dislike what they do with their creations.
Now if I were employing a programmer to produce code, then yes, he or she will do the job to my specifications, including licensing, or I will fire that person and hire someone who will. No such relationship exists between myself and the programmers who release Open Source software. So no, I don't feel that telling them how to release their code is a reasonable action on my part. If they asked for advice that might be one thing, though really in that case they should not seek my unqualified opinion, they should talk to a lawyer who understands the legalese and the full legal implications of any licenses in question to make sure they get the result that they want.
So your definition of "extremist nut," then, is someone who thinks they should actually be allowed to exercise the rights that the license is expressly designed to give them. I fail to see how there's anything extremist about requiring that you not distribute software under the license if the hardware directly prevents the users from using the software in a manner that the license explicitly says they can...
It wouldn't be the first time I have seen that definition of "extremist" or "nut" that means "a person who takes a reasonable, legally and morally justifiable action that you happen not to like." It seems to come from a line of thinking which states, "reasonable people cannot possibly disagree on something or take different positions on it; therefore, if you disagree with me, it can only be because something is wrong with you and it is now my job to label what that something is."
Now if someone said that punching random strangers in the face for no reason should be legal and acceptable behavior, I'd say that yes, there probably IS something wrong with them. But to draw such conclusions based on the choice of software license? For code that the author didn't have to write and had no obligation to share with us in the first place? Yeah, that's a bit much.
Besides, if you want to see an "extreme" license, read the average commercial EULA sometime. Wade through all of the legalese and look at the long list of prohibitions and restrictions. Consider whether this really benefits you as a customer and whether it was intended to. Then note that you generally don't get to review it until after you have purchased the commercial software. The freedoms that the GPL guarantees are a breath of fresh air by comparison. Maybe this is just my personal tastes, but I have always found "enjoy this, just don't restrict someone else's ability to enjoy it as you have" to be far more reasonable than "what you bought isn't really yours, and you will use it only in ways that we have decided to allow, which by the way are subject to change."
Bah. Please ignore that ", though if they should happen to ask me, then I will explain there are hi" partial sentence I left in there at the very last line. Sometimes I will type a sentence and decide I don't like the way I worded it and will re-phrase it and delete the original sentence. I thought I removed that one, so this is just sloppy editing on my part:-).
One reason to critique stupid media is that it contributes to a culture of stupidity. When people who congratulate themselves on their intelligence are often devoted to work that fails on so many levels, it's symptomatic of other problems.
I think that your "leave it alone, it's just entertainment" is also myopic, in that I bet you don't feel any compunctions about feeling superior to those who like professional wrestling and monster truck rallies.
I think there's a lot of either-or thinking present in your response. I may or may not be able to make that evident.
There's a big, BIG difference between someone who can watch professional wrestling knowing that it's low-brow and silly and contrived and enjoy it for what it is, versus someone who has to personally adopt the whole culture surrounding it and consider it the best thing since sliced bread. One is entertainment. The other is fanboyism.
You raised the issue of how I feel about such folks on a personal level. I am not superior to someone who enjoys professional wrestling and monster truck rallies. Neither am I superior even to someone who can't enjoy such things without embracing it as a total lifestyle and buying into the entire culture surrounding it. However, the person who makes that latter choice is making themselves inferior, and I recognize their right to do that. I don't have to like it, nor do I have to hate it. It's not my job to stop them or to tell them what they should do with their lives. For all I know, losing their selfhood to some trend or some movement might be a very important part of their personal path of development, the very thing necessary for them to understand in their own terms why being their own person is important. For that reason, I do not feel guilty of the arrogance you so freely accuse me of.
Now, on a non-personal level, in terms of general principle, you're damned right that there are what you might call higher and lower choices. I cannot help that so many people choose to attach a moral judgment about the worth of the person to this fact. Your automatic assumption that I have done so tells me you have never really seen someone who can acknowledge the truth without the judgments. It takes many, many people to make a world, and each one of those has their own challenges, their own strengths and weaknesses. There are things that very much challenge me that are easier for lots of other people.
Further, I don't adhere to the rigid either-or outlook on this. An intelligent, sophisticated person can still laugh at fart-and-burp humor. It neither removes their intelligence nor does it make them some kind of immature person. Now if they idolize the show or its actors and view them as the be-all and end-all of human existence, to be emulated in every way, that would certainly indicate a weak character or an immature mind. However, condemnation is among the least efficient ways to change that.
By far the best way to change that is to have enough compassionate understanding to eliminate the need to condemn, and then to model for them a better example based on solid principles. I mean genuinely and sincerely set a better example, and I definitely do not mean to play a role, act a part, or otherwise falsely put on a show as though you could trick someone into bettering themselves. If they are interested in change and self-improvement, they will be so glad that someone showed them a better way and did so without condescension. If they are not interested in change and self-improvement, nothing you can do will change that and you must accept it.
So yes, it's just entertainment -- ideally. It's not just entertainment when our entertainment becomes far too important to us, but that's a much deeper problem. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with whether Star Trek is worth watching. Now that I have removed the misperceptions, do you still feel that my viewpoint is myopic? If you can show me that it is, and that this is more than your opinion, you'd be doing me a great service.
, though if they should happen to ask me, then I will explain there are hi
I've been watching a lot of "Outer Limits" on Hulu of late (some of the best episodes aren't available there or on Netflix - only on DVD. What gives?!?). The best stories are about how people interact with aliens, their technology or both or with humans technology and progress. One episode has a plot based on transportation and duplicating folks and how people might deal with it. Or another plot that finds an alien and assumes their hostile only to find out they're friendly and we humans over reacted.
Reminds me too of that Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man." "The rest of the book...it's a COOKBOOK!!"
Star Wars isn't any better, btw.
Agreed. Star Wars very well could have had a medieval setting and it would have made no real difference to the plot. Instead of warriors who build their own light-sabers, the Jedi very well could have been warriors who understood blacksmithing and forged their own blades. Instead of visiting other planets, they could have been traveling to far-away lands. Instead of a Death Star, the evil Empire could have had some kind of super siege engine. The Force isn't terribly unlike the use of magical powers that is standard fare for many games or movies with a medieval setting. Instead of dogfighting spaceships, there could have been large-scale naval battles or even the use of cavalry. The story is your basic "good vs. evil" in which good ultimately prevails even though it looks pretty hopeless for a while, with some elements of philosophy thrown in. It could easily be adapted for a non-technological setting without giving up any of its themes or crucial elements.
the fucking show for what it is make belief sci-fi/fantasy and if you don't like it why do you keep watching it?
Most people don't follow that kind of simple, self-evident wisdom. For most people, here is how it works: "it's not good enough that I enjoy the religion/show/method/belief/taste/style of my choice. Everyone else must enjoy it too." There may be reasons for this other than plain insecurity, but if there are other reasons that don't ultimately reduce to insecurity when deconstructed, they are unknown to me.
It's similar in spirit to another quote about a different duality, the attribution of which I have forgotten, that says "the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
You're thinking of 'deus ex machina' [wikipedia.org], which is a plot device along the lines of "and suddenly a god-like being appeared and fixed everything".
The behaviour their driver has in the benchmark is also used in several games... ie Crysis Warhead. RTFA.
A behavior that is explicitly forbidden for the benchmark. A behavior that is not forbidden in any way for Crysis. I'm not seeing what is so difficult to understand about that. You may want to excuse what happened, and say that the violation of the rules was understandable or whatever, but it was a violation of the rules and all the irrelevant details of how some other application is handled won't change it. You do get that, right?
Its funny that Intel simply creates an INF file and uses those to detect apps and optimize for performance. I mean, if you are detecting a file name and enabling performance optimizations, why not detect the app behaviour itself and make the optimizations generic ? Clearly you know the app behaviour and you know the performance optimizations work. This seem to me a case where people were asked to ship it out fast and instead of taking the time to plug the optimization into the tool, they just made it a hack. A really bad one too!!!
Sure, but how hard would it actually be for a graphics driver to scan an arbitrary executable and determine a) that it's a game and b) how it will behave when executed? I suppose they could model it after the heuristic and behavioristic features of some antivirus/antispyware applications, but nothing about this problem sounds trivial. There's also the question about how bloated of a graphics driver you are willing to accept.
My guess is that the above concerns explain why this was a poorly-executed hack.
It's not special drivers for specific games. It's regular drivers with exceptions coded in to make them appear faster on "standardised" tests, which are meant to be an all-purpose benchmark to help consumers identify the sort of card they need (and to compare competing cards). This is cheating to increase sales among the early adopter/benchmarker crowd, impress marketing types and get more units on shelves, and is generally at the cost of the consumer.
No need for a car analogy on this one. So it's like what happens when the public schools teach a generation or two in such a way that they are optimized for performance on standardized tests, and when those students eventually enter the working world, they don't know how to make change without a cash register or other calculator of some sort? The way they don't know how to deconstruct an argument? Let alone understand the importance of things like living within your means?
Effectively dividing tasks among CPUs is not the issue here. They want to benchmark the GPU and they wanna make sure you don't enable optimizations that are targeted specifically for the benchmark which Intel was doing shamelessly.
From your post I can tell you don't get the reason for UAC's creation.
Sounds like I get them just fine. I just happen to believe that the politics between Microsoft and third-party software vendors that you describe are not the foundation of sound system design. In that fashion, you have made my point for me.
i agree. aside from needing a lot more memory than what was considered "standard" at the time of its release, vista wasn't bad at all. i think everyone was just riding on the stay-away-from-vista band wagon.
The real issue with Vista was that it didn't offer a good reason to upgrade for the many people who were satisfied enough with XP. It wasn't the staggering improvement over XP that XP was over Win98 and WinME. That's why the average person wasn't eager to install it and perhaps more importantly, neither were many corporations. Many who are more technically inclined felt that its improvements were not innovative but were instead evidence that Microsoft took some ten years to finally address some of the core flaws in XP. I personally think that stance is justifiable.
For example, UAC was the result of rampant malware infecting XP, yet a good designer could have told you before XP's release that most users running as "root" all of the time was asking for trouble. That's because other systems learned the importance of privilege separation and viewed it as a general design principle a very long time ago, before there was such a thing as Windows at all (think Multics, VAX, Unix). So now we have UAC so that the use of superuser capabilities can be limited, and if you listened to their marketing at the time, we were supposed to believe that this was innovation.
Having personally witnessed the various versions of Windows (since 3.1) slowly acquire user accounts, something like a distinction between superuser and normal user, network stacks, mount points, something like 'su' (RunAs), something like Sudo (UAC), I am reminded of that saying that "those who fail to understand Unix are doomed to reimplement it." Sometimes the word "poorly" is added to that sentence. The design principles we have seen and tested after decades of computing are sound, or they're not, yet much of the improvements I have seen in Windows were not due to robust basic design. Instead, they were reactions to the failures of earlier versions, which is not terribly innovative or interesting. I do see a lot of real innovation when it comes to OS-level support for DRM, but this doesn't make me want to run Vista either.
it's just sad that the general public believe the opinions of 12-yr-old geek wannabes or 40-yr-old bloggers who don't even know the difference between java and javascript.
It's sad that there are legitimate reasons to dislike something and that those good reasons often get drowned out by a bunch of demagoguery. You'd think the demagoguery would only be necessary in the absence of legitimate reasons, but some really seem to enjoy it. Others seem to have an axe to grind.
Call it a little devil's advocate, but I'd speculate as well that the abusive or at least "questionable" business practices of Microsoft (such as the ones for which they were convicted in multiple countries) and their willingness to use underhanded tactics like vendorlock haven't earned them many friends. While the average person just wants to browse the Web or run their office apps and really doesn't care, that only seems to make the minority who do care all the more vocal. Still, you can't worry too much about them if you trust in your own ability to know a reasonable argument when you see one.
Fact checking is secondary to staying on message, even if the facts get kicked around in the process. No corrections for stories that turn out to be false, no apologies when lives (or countries) are ruined. It's not a news organization, it's a front for propaganda.
I disagree on just a single minor point. The fact checking is important. Modern propaganda techniques are much, much more sophisticated than blatantly lying. Usually the media pushes a political agenda by selectively omitting facts it finds inconvenient while giving high visibility to those it finds desirable. This process is at least as misleading as straight-up lying yet it never requires a single untrue statement. The critical thinking skills needed to detect this kind of framing are much more subtle, and thus more rare, than what it would take to Google a true/false type of fact. For that reason, it is often more misleading than a lie would have been because the lie could be directly falsified.
A perfect example of this would be the use of guns for self-defense and home defense. You'd think, from watching the news, that a law-abiding citizen who legally carries a gun has never stopped a crime. You'd think, from watching the news, that every time a gun is used for self-defense the result is a shootout. Dig a little and you find that in cases where a legal gun was used by a civilian to stop a crime, the news article will say something like "but the attacker was subdued and later arrested" and won't tell you how this happened. Dig some more and you'll see that they give explicit edge-of-your-seat details when an unarmed person wrestles a criminal to the ground, or calls the police and begs for help, or is victimized by a criminal. By comparison, they're strangely quiet when someone refuses to be victimized. Then consider that every dictatorship which has ever occurred in a modern, industrialized nation considered the confiscation of guns to be a very high priority.
The actual agenda isn't difficult to discern. It's your basic statism, though it's often made out to be more complex than it really is. By that I mean people talk about "liberal" and "conservative" and throw around all of these labels. However, both "sides" want to expand the power and size of government. Their only differences are the justifications; one does so for mainly social reasons, the other for economic and military reasons. Yet the result is the same, so any choice provided by the constant (and constantly encouraged) bickering between the two "sides" is illusory. We the people have so far been too dumb to understand the full implications of that, because we'd rather be fat and stupid and occupy our time with sports and entertainment and the latest shiny thing (and those things aren't so bad, just when they're all we care about) because that is the mark of a good consumer. Thus our opinions are as pre-packaged and intended for public consumption as our news stories, and we really do seem to be getting the government we deserve, unfortunately.
Critical thinking and genuine problem solving, along with finding and assimilating information are the skills that matter today.
Absolutely correct.
Unfortunately those skills are too difficult to test on multiple choice standardized tests, so our system stays stuck in it's obsolete state.
A general population with true critical thinking and problem-solving skills is also quite difficult to rule. The first societal effect of such widespread knowledge would be a drastic reduction in the power and influence that government and corporations have over the people, as it would lead to the realizations that many of the excuses and justifications that were given for past power grabs just don't hold water.
The teachers will continue to prepare students for the government exams by teaching to the test.
Which they do because the government that runs the schools has decided that it's very important to them to do things this way, and have mandated that the teachers adhere to it. Even the teachers who understand why this method is flawed must either adhere to it or be fired. It doesn't take much critical thought to see that this is a "fox guarding the henhouse" type of situation.
Our schools have become a sorting mechanism (a poor one at that) and have lost nearly all traces of meaningful education.
The people who designed public schooling as we know it today and made it compulsory were surprisingly open about their intentions. They wanted "the rabble" (i.e. anyone not of an old-money family) to be smart enough to do useful work for the emerging industrial economy but not so smart that that they would be difficult to govern. Particularly, they were worried that people would continue the old American tradition of individual, self-sufficient enterprise because the industrial operations required enormous investments. They were also worried that people who knew how to question would question the political order and otherwise may not "know their station" as subordinates to the de facto aristocracy. The mandatory training in subordination that allowed a small percentage of the population to rule the other three castes in India and the statism of the Prussian system were viewed as enviable triumphs by the political interests that originally established public schooling.
The best authority on this subject is John Taylor Gatto. You might like his essay and he also wrote a book on the subject and made it available online.
Slashdot Mirror
So my follow-on question is, Why does everyone think it's OK for private companies answerable to no one (or the highest bidder) to be collecting this information in the first place? Well, yes, I suppose most people in this thread don't think so, but all of the normal people out there seem to be perfectly happy with the idea.
Because they don't view the Bill of Rights as sound and enlightened principles to be honored wherever possible that happened to be enshrined in the Constitution. They view them as rules like any other. Then they note that either the rules don't apply to those private companies or they would be difficult to enforce, and for them, that's that. It's a mentality that is all about what is allowed or what can be gotten away with, rather than what is right or wrong.
I do have a more immediate question. If an average citizen hires a person to do something illegal, both the person and the one he hired can be charged with a crime. If it's illegal for the CIA to gather data on American citizens, why is it suddenly legal when they do the same thing by proxy? Why wouldn't both they and the company they hired be prosecuted for this?
It sounds like something that wouldn't happen if you used commodity PC hardware to set up your own voice mail system. Sure, you could make a similar mistake, but it's less likely considering that no one is as interested in safeguarding your data and privacy as you are. It's difficult to put a dollar amount on it, but maintaining control over your own data and systems is quite valuable all the same. I think it's great that Google wants to make services like these available to people who want them, but I for one won't be jumping on that bandwagon.
god did it
Haha I thought it was funny.
It reminded me of Bill Hicks, the master of the use of comedy for the opening of minds.
"[The Earth being] 12,000 years old. I asked the guy, c'mon man, dinosaur fossils, what's the deal? He goes, 'God put those here to test our faith'. I think God put you here to test MY faith, dude. I think I figured this out. That's what this guy said -- does that bother anyone here, the idea that GGOODD might be fuckin' with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's runnin' around, burying fossils, 'huh huh huh, we'll see who believes in me now! Huh huh, I'm a prankster God, I am killing me ha ha ha". You die and go before St. Peter, he says 'Did you believe in dinosaurs?' Well yeah, there were fossils everywhere! 'What are you, an idiot, God was fuckin' with you! Giant flyin' lizards, you moron, that's one of God's EASIEST jokes!' It seemed so plausible, aaaahhhhhh!"
I have +1 anecdote. My employer has started providing flu shots to staff some years ago. There has been a dramatic reduction in time off due to illness in winter on the order of about half the number of sick days used accross the board. Interesting when there's a good third of staff that don't get the jab. Since I've had flu jabs myself I haven't had a serious flu in years other than mild symptoms that clear in a day or two.
Sure. You can use statistics and other tools to get a great idea of which strains of viruses you will encounter in the near future. You can then vaccinate against those. When this results in less time off of work due to sickness, you can then say that your program was a resounding success.
That's what we call short-term gain. Then there is the long-term picture.
There is one and only one way to beat the flu long-term. That would be to vaccinate against each of its strains and to make this vaccine widely available. The flu would then die out due to a lack of vulnerable hosts. We would then need to write history books for our children to even know what the flu was.
However, it's not really possible to do that, so far. The best we have been able to do, so far, is to select the most likely strains and immunize people against those. It's a bit like gambling in that you play the numbers and hope that you don't get screwed. Extrapolated over the long term, this means that the virus plus natural selection have a chance to become less and less susceptible to this particular vaccination approach.
It's just like what happens when antibiotics are over-prescribed: some tiny percentage of the bacteria survive the antibiotic, and when they reproduce, and are no longer such a tiny percentage, you end up with a population of bacteria that will not respond to that antibiotic. That's true because there is no antibiotic that has 100% effectiveness against all possible bacteria, so great care must be taken when they are used.
So what happens when, by design, there is no vaccine that has 100% effectiveness against all forms of that particular virus? Easy. You get a population that is infected with some variant that you did not vaccinate against, and where that variant would normally represent a tiny percentage of all infections, it is now one of a few that can still survive. Now consider that the influenza virus is mutable, in that it can mutate, and at best you can secure yourself against the currently-known strians for a little while. In that case it's an arms race, not unlike the one that computer antivirus vendors conduct against the latest malware. Nowhere in this ongoing struggle do you find an ultimate solution. It's not real security.
With the current efforts, you can only change which strain of flu you might get. At best you can keep paying the pharmaceutical companies for protection against the latest and greatest. Of course that is a moving target which will change over time. I am sure that their motives are pure.
That's just it. I am a healthy, strong, young adult. The H1N1 virus does not represent "the grave" for me. Nor does the regular influenza. This is not about survival. This is about whether I get the sniffles for a few days. By that metric, there is no reason for me to even bother. Yet that is not how this is being sold. Hence, my problem with it.
You can call this the death of common sense due to overspecialization, or whatever you like, but it isn't difficult to apply a little logic to foresee the result. Given that information, it should be obvious that the vaccine will not stop the flu and will not protect you from getting the flu. It will only determine which strain you get.
The latter applies if and only if you are actually exposed to one of the strains that the vaccine does not cover, which has fairly low probability, as the strains that the vaccine covers are the ones that are determined to be the most common that year. Then as "those strains decline and other strains become dominant", the vaccine shifts to cover the new most common ones the next year.
The point is that they can perfectly perform the job you describe; that is, determine which strains of flu I am likely to encounter and vaccinate me against them. The realities of air travel and general mobility means it is still only a matter of time before another strain makes it into my area. That's true even if they do their job perfectly, mind you. When you have N strains that all have a non-zero probability of exposure, and can (or will) only immunize against X strains, it only makes sense that eventually, Y strains (let Y = N - X) will attempt to infect me and I will have no vaccine-granted immunity against those.
In other words, a low probability is not a zero probability, and given enough time, it will become a certainty. That certainty needs to be counted on; to do otherwise is a strategic error. Considering that the infection of flu viruses are measured in hours or days, and that people can travel all over the world in just a single day, and that a non-zero number of people do this every day, there is serious reason to question the effectiveness of vaccinating against a few select strains. One or two infected individuals are potentially enough to introduce an unusual strain into the general population. Considering that there are 350-400 million people in my country, I must assume that this is an eventuality.
It's a stopgap measure, at best. It is not the eradication of flu to where children will have to read history books to learn about it, like we did with a real threat known as polio. It is not even attempting to be.
This is not unlike the over-prescription of antibiotics and the subsequent emergence of bacteria which are resistant against particular biotics. That's because the antibiotics are, unintentionally, selecting for those bacteria which can resist them. Those are the organisms that survive a suddenly-hostile environment and live long enough to reproduce. What manner of philosopher or other individual capable of some sense would be shocked that this same mentality is doing the same thing with the flu? What justification is there to take this risk with a disease that is at most a nuisance to anyone who is not already compromised in some way?
So, to reiterate, I for one will take these risks the moment there is a contagious disease that represents a real threat to life and limb. Until then, I'll take my chances of getting the sniffles and some body aches for a few days. I have yet to see a proposal that made sense that would incline me to do otherwise. What I have seen is a lot of fear-mongering that doesn't stand up very well to questioning.
I have an anecdote for you, the four years I received a flu shot I didn't get the flu until the next March or April. And it happened all four times! So I consider them useless for me, just postpones influenza until the weather is much nicer. I'd rather have my flu when the snow is piled high and its below freezing thanks
I used to work at a place that offered the flu shots for free. The workplace saw it as an invetment, in that they'd rather pay for the vaccine than pay for the flu in the form of lost productivity and sick days. N.B. - this is the regular flu, not H1N1.
I had opportunity to question some of the nurses and doctors who gave the presentations on that program. They specifically told me that there are many different strains of the flu virus, and the vaccine only protects against a few select strains. You can call this the death of common sense due to overspecialization, or whatever you like, but it isn't difficult to apply a little logic to foresee the result. Given that information, it should be obvious that the vaccine will not stop the flu and will not protect you from getting the flu. It will only determine which strain you get.
There is, after all, a type of natural selection in effect here. If you change the virus's environment (by vaccinating the hosts) to select against a few strains, then those strains will decline and other strains will become dominant. When I politely pointed this out and asked if they could clear this up for me, the smooth-talking doctors and nurses who were advocating vaccination were suddenly unable to continue answering my questions. It was as though I was the first person who ever asked them what was, to me, a very obvious question about the effectiveness of the vaccine. I was amazed that from the proposal, to the creation, to the testing, to the manufacturing, to the marketing and finally to the dispensing of this vaccine, not one person in that entire chain of events thought that this question should have a ready answer.
That they don't seem to have considered such concerns tells me that this is a marketing effort.
"Microsoft fixes vulnerability in their own Firefox Addon"? The summary would then point out that this was covered and Microsoft fixed the problem. But I guess calling Microsoft "sneaky," ignoring the fact that this was already posted on slashdot, and then minimizing the fact that MS actually fixed the problem was too appealing to pass up.
In a way it is sneaky. If I used Firefox in Windows and wanted this plugin, I would install it myself. Anyone using Firefox in Windows is already demonstrating that they are aware that they have choices as to what browser software to use, and I strongly doubt that the average Firefox user has never heard of addons.mozilla.com or otherwise doesn't know how to locate and install desired add-ons/plugins on their own.
.NET package. Then either remove it from Windows Update completely and offer it as a voluntary download, or, make it a separate line-item update that can be declined.
The case can be made for automagically installing things for the "blue E is the Internet!" crowd as they are rather averse to any involvement in this sort of decision-making, viewing it as an unwanted burden. Yet even then, it's non-ideal. The honest, non-sneaky way to handle this would be to separate it from the core
Just assuming that you must want this non-essential thing and making that assumption without considering security implications, all in the name of increasing marketshare, is what's sneaky or exploitative. People who use automatic Windows Updates do so because they rely on it to keep their systems patched and secure. When they are not technically inclined, they are something of a captive audience in this scenario.
You know, when the big virulent worms like Sasser and Code Red came out, they attacked vulnerabilities for which patches had already been issued. I used to wonder why so many people didn't keep their machines more up-to-date when an automatic mechanism is provided that will do it for them. Every time I see something like this, I begin to understand why. It's in everyone's interest to lessen the number of vulnerable machines on the network. Another reason to distrust a mechanism that could have prevented many of these infections does not further that interest. If Microsoft were really serious about security, they would minimize this effect by separating Windows Update into two categories: "Bugfixes & Security Patches", and an optional "New Features".
Two reasons come to mind. 1) AJAX and other alternatives tend to be open standards, so vendorlock (a favorite MS tactic) doesn't apply or doesn't easily apply. There is one thing Microsoft really does not like to do, and that's competing on merit in a level playing field that has low barriers to entry for competitors. If it were otherwise, then they would use completely open, unencumbered standards wherever possible (i.e., for every protocol and every file format they create) but this, obviously, is not the case. 2) It's not like Microsoft is ever going to have any legal liability for placing their .NET marketshare ahead of user security. If a customer's machine gets compromised that would not have been compromised without MS's unilateral decision to install the .NET component, that customer has no recourse whatsoever. They can make you as vulnerable as they like in order to advance their marketing goals and they can do it with impunity.
.NET and the control that comes with that, and they have nothing to lose. From a business perspective they have no reason not to do this. The only thing that would stop them would be for the average user to both understand these things and demand something different.
So, Microsoft has something to gain, namely further adoption of
It wouldn't be the first time I have seen that definition of "extremist" or "nut" that means "a person who takes a reasonable, legally and morally justifiable action that you happen not to like."
I'm not saying that I don't like the anti-Tivo stuff. I'm saying that it is not reasonable, to the point that it can be taken as a bit hypocritical. I'd be perfectly OK with it if it wasn't presented with the "Free Software" rhetoric and as being in the same spirit as GPLv2.
It's an absurdly broad extension of freedom 1, saying not only that you can change the code, but that everything you receive surrounding the code has to support this as shipped. This is first of all (at least as implemented, but I think this is inherent) morally the same as a "field of endeavor" restriction, saying "you can't do things I don't like with this code", and also comes as the expense of the other listed freedoms as you are now limited in your ability to give out copies (with or without modifications). This is why I call it extremism, taking one tenet and elevating it to extremes at the expense of the others. I think it actually might qualify as a heresy.
It's also a case of trying to use control of one thing (copyright on some software) to exert control over something else (misfeatures on a particular class of hardware). This is the same kind of thing that monopolies get in trouble for, and merely being legal when you're not a monopoly still doesn't make it permissible.
I think it's also a technically incorrect solution for what it's trying to accomplish, the correct solution being something along the lines of cablecard.
To me the reasonableness or unreasonableness of it is a simple thing. Does the author of the code get to decide under what license it will be released, if it is to be released at all? Yes, he or she does. Do I have some claim on that author that should give me the right to tell them how they should license their code? No, I don't. Am I essentially a freeloader who is using the code/work of others only because they have been generous enough to allow me to do so? Yes, I am.
So to me it's reasonable to decide that a license doesn't suit me, therefore I will need to find a solution other than the software in question in order to meet my needs. It would also be reasonable for me to decide that the benefits of using code under its license outweigh the disagreements I may have with that license. I don't consider it reasonable though for me to complain to people who are blessing me with their generosity and sense of community and tell them that their efforts aren't good enough because I dislike what they do with their creations.
Now if I were employing a programmer to produce code, then yes, he or she will do the job to my specifications, including licensing, or I will fire that person and hire someone who will. No such relationship exists between myself and the programmers who release Open Source software. So no, I don't feel that telling them how to release their code is a reasonable action on my part. If they asked for advice that might be one thing, though really in that case they should not seek my unqualified opinion, they should talk to a lawyer who understands the legalese and the full legal implications of any licenses in question to make sure they get the result that they want.
So your definition of "extremist nut," then, is someone who thinks they should actually be allowed to exercise the rights that the license is expressly designed to give them. I fail to see how there's anything extremist about requiring that you not distribute software under the license if the hardware directly prevents the users from using the software in a manner that the license explicitly says they can...
It wouldn't be the first time I have seen that definition of "extremist" or "nut" that means "a person who takes a reasonable, legally and morally justifiable action that you happen not to like." It seems to come from a line of thinking which states, "reasonable people cannot possibly disagree on something or take different positions on it; therefore, if you disagree with me, it can only be because something is wrong with you and it is now my job to label what that something is."
Now if someone said that punching random strangers in the face for no reason should be legal and acceptable behavior, I'd say that yes, there probably IS something wrong with them. But to draw such conclusions based on the choice of software license? For code that the author didn't have to write and had no obligation to share with us in the first place? Yeah, that's a bit much.
Besides, if you want to see an "extreme" license, read the average commercial EULA sometime. Wade through all of the legalese and look at the long list of prohibitions and restrictions. Consider whether this really benefits you as a customer and whether it was intended to. Then note that you generally don't get to review it until after you have purchased the commercial software. The freedoms that the GPL guarantees are a breath of fresh air by comparison. Maybe this is just my personal tastes, but I have always found "enjoy this, just don't restrict someone else's ability to enjoy it as you have" to be far more reasonable than "what you bought isn't really yours, and you will use it only in ways that we have decided to allow, which by the way are subject to change."
Bah. Please ignore that ", though if they should happen to ask me, then I will explain there are hi" partial sentence I left in there at the very last line. Sometimes I will type a sentence and decide I don't like the way I worded it and will re-phrase it and delete the original sentence. I thought I removed that one, so this is just sloppy editing on my part :-).
One reason to critique stupid media is that it contributes to a culture of stupidity. When people who congratulate themselves on their intelligence are often devoted to work that fails on so many levels, it's symptomatic of other problems.
I think that your "leave it alone, it's just entertainment" is also myopic, in that I bet you don't feel any compunctions about feeling superior to those who like professional wrestling and monster truck rallies.
I think there's a lot of either-or thinking present in your response. I may or may not be able to make that evident.
There's a big, BIG difference between someone who can watch professional wrestling knowing that it's low-brow and silly and contrived and enjoy it for what it is, versus someone who has to personally adopt the whole culture surrounding it and consider it the best thing since sliced bread. One is entertainment. The other is fanboyism.
You raised the issue of how I feel about such folks on a personal level. I am not superior to someone who enjoys professional wrestling and monster truck rallies. Neither am I superior even to someone who can't enjoy such things without embracing it as a total lifestyle and buying into the entire culture surrounding it. However, the person who makes that latter choice is making themselves inferior, and I recognize their right to do that. I don't have to like it, nor do I have to hate it. It's not my job to stop them or to tell them what they should do with their lives. For all I know, losing their selfhood to some trend or some movement might be a very important part of their personal path of development, the very thing necessary for them to understand in their own terms why being their own person is important. For that reason, I do not feel guilty of the arrogance you so freely accuse me of.
Now, on a non-personal level, in terms of general principle, you're damned right that there are what you might call higher and lower choices. I cannot help that so many people choose to attach a moral judgment about the worth of the person to this fact. Your automatic assumption that I have done so tells me you have never really seen someone who can acknowledge the truth without the judgments. It takes many, many people to make a world, and each one of those has their own challenges, their own strengths and weaknesses. There are things that very much challenge me that are easier for lots of other people.
Further, I don't adhere to the rigid either-or outlook on this. An intelligent, sophisticated person can still laugh at fart-and-burp humor. It neither removes their intelligence nor does it make them some kind of immature person. Now if they idolize the show or its actors and view them as the be-all and end-all of human existence, to be emulated in every way, that would certainly indicate a weak character or an immature mind. However, condemnation is among the least efficient ways to change that.
By far the best way to change that is to have enough compassionate understanding to eliminate the need to condemn, and then to model for them a better example based on solid principles. I mean genuinely and sincerely set a better example, and I definitely do not mean to play a role, act a part, or otherwise falsely put on a show as though you could trick someone into bettering themselves. If they are interested in change and self-improvement, they will be so glad that someone showed them a better way and did so without condescension. If they are not interested in change and self-improvement, nothing you can do will change that and you must accept it.
So yes, it's just entertainment -- ideally. It's not just entertainment when our entertainment becomes far too important to us, but that's a much deeper problem. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with whether Star Trek is worth watching. Now that I have removed the misperceptions, do you still feel that my viewpoint is myopic? If you can show me that it is, and that this is more than your opinion, you'd be doing me a great service. , though if they should happen to ask me, then I will explain there are hi
Reminds me too of that Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man." "The rest of the book...it's a COOKBOOK!!"
Agreed. Star Wars very well could have had a medieval setting and it would have made no real difference to the plot. Instead of warriors who build their own light-sabers, the Jedi very well could have been warriors who understood blacksmithing and forged their own blades. Instead of visiting other planets, they could have been traveling to far-away lands. Instead of a Death Star, the evil Empire could have had some kind of super siege engine. The Force isn't terribly unlike the use of magical powers that is standard fare for many games or movies with a medieval setting. Instead of dogfighting spaceships, there could have been large-scale naval battles or even the use of cavalry. The story is your basic "good vs. evil" in which good ultimately prevails even though it looks pretty hopeless for a while, with some elements of philosophy thrown in. It could easily be adapted for a non-technological setting without giving up any of its themes or crucial elements.
the fucking show for what it is make belief sci-fi/fantasy and if you don't like it why do you keep watching it?
Most people don't follow that kind of simple, self-evident wisdom. For most people, here is how it works: "it's not good enough that I enjoy the religion/show/method/belief/taste/style of my choice. Everyone else must enjoy it too." There may be reasons for this other than plain insecurity, but if there are other reasons that don't ultimately reduce to insecurity when deconstructed, they are unknown to me.
It's similar in spirit to another quote about a different duality, the attribution of which I have forgotten, that says "the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire."
Yeah, but what's that Q guy got to do with it?
The behaviour their driver has in the benchmark is also used in several games... ie Crysis Warhead. RTFA.
A behavior that is explicitly forbidden for the benchmark. A behavior that is not forbidden in any way for Crysis. I'm not seeing what is so difficult to understand about that. You may want to excuse what happened, and say that the violation of the rules was understandable or whatever, but it was a violation of the rules and all the irrelevant details of how some other application is handled won't change it. You do get that, right?
Its funny that Intel simply creates an INF file and uses those to detect apps and optimize for performance. I mean, if you are detecting a file name and enabling performance optimizations, why not detect the app behaviour itself and make the optimizations generic ? Clearly you know the app behaviour and you know the performance optimizations work. This seem to me a case where people were asked to ship it out fast and instead of taking the time to plug the optimization into the tool, they just made it a hack. A really bad one too!!!
Sure, but how hard would it actually be for a graphics driver to scan an arbitrary executable and determine a) that it's a game and b) how it will behave when executed? I suppose they could model it after the heuristic and behavioristic features of some antivirus/antispyware applications, but nothing about this problem sounds trivial. There's also the question about how bloated of a graphics driver you are willing to accept.
My guess is that the above concerns explain why this was a poorly-executed hack.
It's not special drivers for specific games. It's regular drivers with exceptions coded in to make them appear faster on "standardised" tests, which are meant to be an all-purpose benchmark to help consumers identify the sort of card they need (and to compare competing cards). This is cheating to increase sales among the early adopter/benchmarker crowd, impress marketing types and get more units on shelves, and is generally at the cost of the consumer.
No need for a car analogy on this one. So it's like what happens when the public schools teach a generation or two in such a way that they are optimized for performance on standardized tests, and when those students eventually enter the working world, they don't know how to make change without a cash register or other calculator of some sort? The way they don't know how to deconstruct an argument? Let alone understand the importance of things like living within your means?
Effectively dividing tasks among CPUs is not the issue here. They want to benchmark the GPU and they wanna make sure you don't enable optimizations that are targeted specifically for the benchmark which Intel was doing shamelessly.
Please mod this up; it really is that simple.
So people who use that software only live less than a year and a half afterwards? Now THAT is some malware...
Sounds like I get them just fine. I just happen to believe that the politics between Microsoft and third-party software vendors that you describe are not the foundation of sound system design. In that fashion, you have made my point for me.
i agree. aside from needing a lot more memory than what was considered "standard" at the time of its release, vista wasn't bad at all. i think everyone was just riding on the stay-away-from-vista band wagon.
The real issue with Vista was that it didn't offer a good reason to upgrade for the many people who were satisfied enough with XP. It wasn't the staggering improvement over XP that XP was over Win98 and WinME. That's why the average person wasn't eager to install it and perhaps more importantly, neither were many corporations. Many who are more technically inclined felt that its improvements were not innovative but were instead evidence that Microsoft took some ten years to finally address some of the core flaws in XP. I personally think that stance is justifiable.
For example, UAC was the result of rampant malware infecting XP, yet a good designer could have told you before XP's release that most users running as "root" all of the time was asking for trouble. That's because other systems learned the importance of privilege separation and viewed it as a general design principle a very long time ago, before there was such a thing as Windows at all (think Multics, VAX, Unix). So now we have UAC so that the use of superuser capabilities can be limited, and if you listened to their marketing at the time, we were supposed to believe that this was innovation.
Having personally witnessed the various versions of Windows (since 3.1) slowly acquire user accounts, something like a distinction between superuser and normal user, network stacks, mount points, something like 'su' (RunAs), something like Sudo (UAC), I am reminded of that saying that "those who fail to understand Unix are doomed to reimplement it." Sometimes the word "poorly" is added to that sentence. The design principles we have seen and tested after decades of computing are sound, or they're not, yet much of the improvements I have seen in Windows were not due to robust basic design. Instead, they were reactions to the failures of earlier versions, which is not terribly innovative or interesting. I do see a lot of real innovation when it comes to OS-level support for DRM, but this doesn't make me want to run Vista either.
It's sad that there are legitimate reasons to dislike something and that those good reasons often get drowned out by a bunch of demagoguery. You'd think the demagoguery would only be necessary in the absence of legitimate reasons, but some really seem to enjoy it. Others seem to have an axe to grind.
Call it a little devil's advocate, but I'd speculate as well that the abusive or at least "questionable" business practices of Microsoft (such as the ones for which they were convicted in multiple countries) and their willingness to use underhanded tactics like vendorlock haven't earned them many friends. While the average person just wants to browse the Web or run their office apps and really doesn't care, that only seems to make the minority who do care all the more vocal. Still, you can't worry too much about them if you trust in your own ability to know a reasonable argument when you see one.
I disagree on just a single minor point. The fact checking is important. Modern propaganda techniques are much, much more sophisticated than blatantly lying. Usually the media pushes a political agenda by selectively omitting facts it finds inconvenient while giving high visibility to those it finds desirable. This process is at least as misleading as straight-up lying yet it never requires a single untrue statement. The critical thinking skills needed to detect this kind of framing are much more subtle, and thus more rare, than what it would take to Google a true/false type of fact. For that reason, it is often more misleading than a lie would have been because the lie could be directly falsified.
A perfect example of this would be the use of guns for self-defense and home defense. You'd think, from watching the news, that a law-abiding citizen who legally carries a gun has never stopped a crime. You'd think, from watching the news, that every time a gun is used for self-defense the result is a shootout. Dig a little and you find that in cases where a legal gun was used by a civilian to stop a crime, the news article will say something like "but the attacker was subdued and later arrested" and won't tell you how this happened. Dig some more and you'll see that they give explicit edge-of-your-seat details when an unarmed person wrestles a criminal to the ground, or calls the police and begs for help, or is victimized by a criminal. By comparison, they're strangely quiet when someone refuses to be victimized. Then consider that every dictatorship which has ever occurred in a modern, industrialized nation considered the confiscation of guns to be a very high priority.
The actual agenda isn't difficult to discern. It's your basic statism, though it's often made out to be more complex than it really is. By that I mean people talk about "liberal" and "conservative" and throw around all of these labels. However, both "sides" want to expand the power and size of government. Their only differences are the justifications; one does so for mainly social reasons, the other for economic and military reasons. Yet the result is the same, so any choice provided by the constant (and constantly encouraged) bickering between the two "sides" is illusory. We the people have so far been too dumb to understand the full implications of that, because we'd rather be fat and stupid and occupy our time with sports and entertainment and the latest shiny thing (and those things aren't so bad, just when they're all we care about) because that is the mark of a good consumer. Thus our opinions are as pre-packaged and intended for public consumption as our news stories, and we really do seem to be getting the government we deserve, unfortunately.
Absolutely correct.
A general population with true critical thinking and problem-solving skills is also quite difficult to rule. The first societal effect of such widespread knowledge would be a drastic reduction in the power and influence that government and corporations have over the people, as it would lead to the realizations that many of the excuses and justifications that were given for past power grabs just don't hold water.
Which they do because the government that runs the schools has decided that it's very important to them to do things this way, and have mandated that the teachers adhere to it. Even the teachers who understand why this method is flawed must either adhere to it or be fired. It doesn't take much critical thought to see that this is a "fox guarding the henhouse" type of situation.
The people who designed public schooling as we know it today and made it compulsory were surprisingly open about their intentions. They wanted "the rabble" (i.e. anyone not of an old-money family) to be smart enough to do useful work for the emerging industrial economy but not so smart that that they would be difficult to govern. Particularly, they were worried that people would continue the old American tradition of individual, self-sufficient enterprise because the industrial operations required enormous investments. They were also worried that people who knew how to question would question the political order and otherwise may not "know their station" as subordinates to the de facto aristocracy. The mandatory training in subordination that allowed a small percentage of the population to rule the other three castes in India and the statism of the Prussian system were viewed as enviable triumphs by the political interests that originally established public schooling.
The best authority on this subject is John Taylor Gatto. You might like his essay and he also wrote a book on the subject and made it available online.