In what way was I dramatic? I dislike the side-effects of a business model, so I choose not to contribute to what I dislike. I wasn't claiming that any of this is the end of the world or some significant threat to society (which would constitute being dramatic), I was explaining how and why I choose not to participate.
When you visit a website, the site owner is well within their rights to record that visit. To assert otherwise is an extremist view that needs popular and legislative buy-in before it can in any way be validated. The negotiation is between Google and website owners.
If you want to think of your HTTP requests as your data, then you'd probably best get off the Internet entirely. No one is every going to pay you for it.
We are not talking about the HTTP access logs of a site that I visit. We are talking about data shared with third parties for marketing purposes. This data does not materialize out of thin air; it requires my participation. So long as this is the case, I am well within my rights to decline to participate. To he who claims I used a red herring, please do explain what's wrong with that?
Since the labor, hardware, and bandwidth costs all seem to be low, Google wouldn't be under pressure to make the investment pay. Google hosts lots of things that don't benefit them directly and from which they gain no real advantage except image.. Despite being a data-mining machine, Google does a lot of truly altruistic stuff.
Low cost != no cost. While you definitely have a point about their corporate image, I can't help but say that recognizing a company as a data-mining machine as you have accurately done, and then assuming (and that's what this is, an assumption) an altruistic motive when they take an action that has a strong data-mining component, is, well, a bit naive. I'm not saying that altruism could not be the case and that profit must be the sole explanation (that would also be an assumption); what I am saying is that given the lack of hard evidence, one of those is a lot more likely.
Do you actually have to block it in your hosts file in order to effectively deny them information? I have it blacklisted in NoScript -- is that sufficient? I'd always thought it was called via Javascript.
The file is indeed Javascript and it's called "urchin.js" (nice name eh?). Personally, I use the hosts file because I don't care to even have my IP address showing up in their access logs. This isn't necessarily because I think that would be a bad thing, but it's because I don't see what benefit there would be for me and, as others have mentioned, the additional DNS query and traffic that would take place could only slow down the rendering of a given Web page.
I also use NoScript, AdBlock, RefControl and others. RefControl is nice because the HTTP Referrer is another way that sites can track your browsing; before Google Analytics it was common for many pages to include a one-pixel graphic from a common third-party host for this reason. Just bear in mind that some sites (especially some shopping-cart systems) legitimately use the referrer so you may need to add those sites to RefControl's exception list in order to shop there, as the default is to populate the referrer with the site's own homepage no matter what the actual referrer would have been.
The "problem" already exists. It's "how can we collect more data about user's browsing habits?" You have to consider that Google is a for-profit business and hosting these files represents a bandwidth cost and a maintainence cost for them. They are unlikely to do this unless they believe that they can turn that into a profit, and the mechanism available to them is advertising revenue.
This is very similar to the purpose of the already-existing google-analytics.com. I block this site in my hosts file (among others) and I take other measures because I feel that if a corporation wants to take my data and profit from it, they first need to negotiate with me. Since Google is not going to do that, I refuse to contribute my data. To the folks who say "well how else are they supposed to make money" I say that I am not responsible for the success of someone else's business model, they are free to deny me access to their search engine if they so choose, and I would also point out that Google is not exactly struggling to turn a profit.
The "something of a privacy violation" mentioned in the summary seems to be the specific purpose.
AFAIK, Electric Universe doesn't even have a *hypothesis* to explain the cosmic microwave anisotropy. Which was, by the way, a huge vindication for Big Bang theory, since it was predicted in advance.
Unfortunately I've yet to see a single person dismiss the Electric Universe who was also familiar with it. From one of their main sites:
As author and EU theorist Wal Thornhill points out:
"If Arp and others are right and the Big Bang is dead, what does the Cosmic Microwave Background signify? The simplest answer, from the highly successful field of plasma cosmology, is that it represents the natural microwave radiation from electric current filaments in interstellar plasma local to the Sun. Radio astronomers have mapped the interstellar hydrogen filaments by using longer wavelength receivers. The dense thicket formed by those filaments produces a perfect fog of microwave radiation - as if we were located inside a microwave oven. Instead of the Cosmic Microwave Background, it is the Interstellar Microwave Background. That makes sense of the fact that the CMB is too smooth to account for the lumpiness of galaxies and galactic clusters in the universe."
Another mention of the subject is here and several more here with some reading. These took me about 30 seconds to find with a Google search for "+electric-universe +cosmic-microwave". So how hard have you worked to understand something before dismissing it or forming an opinion of it? Skepticism doesn't mean you don't even look into something because you dislike how it sounds or you can't see how the mainstream could be wrong.
I know because I have been playing the dreadfully easy, multiple account game.
It's about time you 'fessed up to that.
The bottom line is that you are worse than ineffective, you are counter productive. You are on the losing side the free software battle and making things worse for yourself. Insult and disruption are empty.
I have used Linux for nearly eleven years. Not once have I felt that there is a "battle" between Microsoft and Free Software. I agree that Microsoft makes shitty products; that's why I don't use them. It's such a simple thing: I don't like their products and I don't like their business practices so I contribute to neither. If someone does like their products and does use them, I will tell them that I think there are better alternatives if they are interested. If they are not, I wish them well and I celebrate their right (and obligation) to make their own choices and live with the consequences. If this results in their having a worse computing experience than me, it is unfortunate but it is also not my problem.
A big reason why I have so thoroughly enjoyed Linux is because I am not afraid of learning something new. I am always glad to expand my knowledge, especially when something interests me, because I greatly prefer this over ignorance. To me, there are many wonderous things in the world and there is an element of adventure in overcoming something I did not previously understand. So, when I encountered Linux in mid-1997, I read books, man pages, Internet forums, HOWTOs, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. It absolutely fascinated me, both the elegant design of the system and the philosophy of freedom that was behind it. At the time I kept a Windows 98 partition to play a couple of Windows games; when I noticed that a year went by without me once booting up Windows, I formatted it with an ext2 filesystem and never looked back. I love the design, reliability, and feeling of control that Linux gives me. It does not get in my way. It does not assume that I'm an idiot. If something breaks, it broke for a good reason, it will stay broken until I fix it and when I fix it, it will stay fixed. Linux is easily one of the best things that ever could have happened to my computing experience and my general interest in technology.
However, I do not believe that the average person is going to appreciate these attributes. There is unfortunately a strong anti-intellectual, anti-learning culture, at least in the USA. There exists the idea that the path of least resistance is the secret to a good and happy life, and by extension there is the idea that learning something new is painful and too much work and should be avoided whenever possible. The fact that I believe this to be a lie is not relevant, no matter how much I wish it were. The average person is not going to enjoy the design of Linux or the love of freedom that is behind it. What I am talking about has very little to do with computing, despite the specific application about which I am speaking, but is a general attitude towards life. However much I may disagree with what I consider to be a dehumanizing form of laziness, I must respect that people need to live their own lives the way they see fit. A corporation like Microsoft that promises "it will just work with little to no effort -- now easier to use than EVER!" is always going to appeal to this culture. People who do not wish to expand their knowledge and enjoy the tools they use every day are going to buy into it. To them, it is "the way things are"; to me, they are making their choice and living with the consequences.
If you really think that what you are doing is battling a corporation because you dislike their products and their business practices, it is because you fail to consider and understand the foundation upon which it is built. Microsoft is not the cause of much of anything. In a manner of speaking, the things
You replied to my post. Nowhere in my post did I say it was about eating, so this looks like you were trying to correct a mistake I did not make.
In fact, I did not identify a single cause except to say that poor decision-making is the ultimate cause. We live in a real world where there is much complexity, yet there is one and only one common factor: people who don't know themselves and don't see themselves as being in control of their lives and their bodies. The particulars and the details are really irrelevant once this principle is understood, as they will be taken care of by an individual who is willing to do these things.
In your case, it sounds like this related to lack of exercise and possibly also a willingness to allow other people to cause you stress (you can feel "fried" for more reasons than one). That is, do you ever allow what they say and what they do to anger or frustrate you? Whatever they say or do, you really should do something about it or don't do something about it without getting so upset. This is a skill that might take a long time to develop; it took me a while to realize you do in fact have a choice in the matter of how you react to other people's stupidity, that the behaviors you see growing up and on television and from other people are just one possible method among many. That the method commonly presented was not arrived at by a careful consideration of the merits of all methods. That just because someone is rude doesn't mean you must submit to the angry response that they hope (secretly or openly) to obtain from you. This is called, simply, making your own decisions and being your own person, not easily controlled by or at the mercy of others. It's not something you ever truly finish doing, but it's amazing how much it can teach you.
If you want some motivation, do some serious research on the kind of damage that high levels of stress can do. Bear in mind that what most Americans would consider a "relatively low" amount of stress is still higher than it should be. It's almost as though, in the USA, being ultra-busy and telling other people "I just don't have the time for that" is some kind of status symbol, reserved only for important people -- what a joke. At any rate, truly having your own understanding of what stress can do might mean, horror of horrors, doing some serious reading and otherwise resembling someone who wants to solve the problem no matter what it takes.
Ultimately, it is true that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight - this is physics. Olympic triathletes can have ridiculous amounts of caloric intake (I believe over eight or nine thousand calories a day) without becoming obese, because they are also burning ridiculous amounts of calories. In another person's case, it might be the food. For you, perhaps it was something else. Rather than argue against points I did not make, why not go for a real challenge and increase your understanding?
You cant bitch about tolerance when the problem is your own fault and you can fix it.
Unfortunately, yes, you can. Especially when a bunch of well-meaning idiots will support your denial since it's a hell of a lot easier than examining their own lives and taking care of their own foreseeable problems that they are doing nothing about. Not to mention when another group of well-meaning idiots value political correctness above all notions of truth or health or sustainability and label anyone a bigot if they express their dislike of seeing obesity and other completely preventable problems everywhere they look. To people who have bought into this mentality, the cardinal sin is expecting better from a person than the person expects of themselves, which is amazingly easy to do.
Ultimately, it is about personal responsibility. And apparently you're the world's biggest asshole if you try to tell people that this is the case. You see, their denial has purchased for them a type of selective hearing; they hear only "it's your fault" and they completely miss "you have the power to change for the better". Want to be the world's biggest saint? That's easy too. Just tell people that it's hopeless and that they're exactly as impotent and powerless as they have been led to believe. Then they'll feel that someone "finally understands" them. Sick, isn't it? Honestly, I'm sick of it. Widespread obesity is just one manifestation of this mentality.
If you adequately explain why you dislike someone, it would be a specific and explicit threat, rather than hate speech.
It takes a pretty god damned insecure individual to feel threatened merely because someone does not like him/her. "We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling" is NOT a threat. I'm really tired of how fragile and candy-assed and otherwise cowardly people are becoming. It is a trend that does not bode well.
This may or may not be illegal, although, for instance, threatening to kill or assassinate somebody does carry penalties under most jurisdictions.
Now that hypothetical example would constitute an actual threat. That example goes far, far beyond merely disliking or hating someone.
As much as I'm for freedom of speech, there seem to be a few clear-cut cases where it's not a terrible idea. The Nazis come to mind pretty quickly as an instance where hate speech spiraled out of control, and many were killed for crimes that their race was perceived to have committed.
The Nazis are an instance where the size and power of the state spiraled out of control. The persecution of the Jews and the Reichstag fire and the climate of fear and distrust were means to that end -- if they were unsuccessful, different means would have been used. Having a "tribunal" of people who can decide whether you have committed a thoughtcrime or not (face it, this is what "anti-hate" laws are) is another means to increase state power. The Nazis would have approved.
How about we instead expose the unstated assumptions that are behind all of this? All of it assumes that just because you hear an opinion, you have zero choice but to believe it and to act on it. All of it assumes that just because you dislike or even hate someone or something, that you have no choice but to act on those feelings without regard to the harm that it might cause. In other words, you're all mindless idiots with no hope of deciding anything for yourselves.
Or, from the politician's point of view: "some of you seem to think you should be able to think for yourselves; well that might interfere with the expansion of state authority and the uniform, homogenous society it demands, so we have set up a tribunal to tell you what thoughts you may express and which thoughts are thoughtcrimes and have given it the power to persecute anyone who says something too controversial. That way, we can get you to think in terms of emotional outrage and whether or not you are 'offended' which suits us far better than if you were to think in terms of facts and reasoning. Rest assured that this is all for your own good and that our motives are entirely pure and that this power will never ever be abused." Will we ever wake up and get tired of this?
You know, I generally agree with most of your post, but have you been outside anytime in the last 30 years or so? Most people are mindless zombies that imitate everything they see on a screen. Advertisers (among others) count on it.
After a long enough time, it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It begins the moment you use media as an excuse for what people do and discount the element of choice, for this is the justification that lowers the standard. It legitimizes the negative behavior by saying that the perpetrator was just a victim who had to be a mere product of his environment because he could not possibly have lived his own life, been his own person. It's the victim mentality that's the root of the problem; the ten thousand things that people use as excuses and justifications are just the branches and twigs. So no, I'm not ignorant of the status quo; I just refuse to accept it or contribute to it because I am aware of how much better things have been and could be.
You don't reverse this by doing more of the same. You are sadly correct; most people have chosen to be mindless zombies because they decided that being your own person is too hard. I'm sure these same people wonder why life is so empty and unfulfilling, but that's okay, we have pills and procedures for that too.
There is an ancient saying, "no matter how far down the wrong path you have gone, turn back." You really do get to choose how you live your life. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a coward or fancies himself your master.
I don't fault Jack Thompson for having an opinion, even though I disagree with it and I believe it is utter horseshit.
What I have a big problem with is the mentality shared by him and anyone else who thinks they know what's good for us: the unstated assumption that I am unable to decide for myself whether playing a video game is in my interests, and the unstated assumption that parents are incapable of deciding on their own whether their children are mature enough to handle the content of a video game. Basically, he's assuming that we are all mindless zombies with no choice but to imitate anything we see on a screen, and he's also trying to tell parents how they should raise their children, implying that they are unable to handle the job without his input. I assure you, no one who wants to do these things has a pure motive.
The whole thing is an insult. It illustrates yet again the attitude that "it's not good enough that I choose to abstain from something; everybody else must do the same as me." It also assumes that no one is capable of distinguishing a fictional video game from reality, which is ironically more likely if we stop expecting people to know the difference.
I am very thankful that my parents (within reason, of course) did not try to shelter me from every little objectionable thing in the world. Instead, they explained to me why something was right or wrong and equipped me to deal with an imperfect world that contains many things I might not like. If the Jack Thompsons of the world had their way, no one would be able to actually grow up into an adult human being who can deal with the world the way it is and perhaps try to make it a better place because every potential source of controversy would be censored. What he is advocating is really a form of cowardice, which is generally the motive behind those who would tell you how to live your life.
I strongly disagree with the notion that "understanding the basic concepts of how the internet works" will protect users from scams, including phishing scams, in any way whatsoever. Understanding the tricks phishers use (for example) generally involves understanding URL redirection and DNS spoofing which are advanced networking topics that even many experts do not understand. And as I said earlier, even if we magically eliminated phishing tomorrow, or educated every user in every imaginable aspect of phishing, the scammers would simply switch to a different scam that was less well understood.
You're greatly complicating something that is actually very simple. I'll give one example, but this is a general principle.
If I receive an e-mail claiming to be from my bank which states that my account information has changed or that otherwise there is some input/information needed from me, I am not going to take it seriously nor am I going to click on any links in that e-mail or allow any Javascript/etc contained in it to execute. Instead, I'll separately launch my browser, go to the bank's Web site, and log into the account myself, with a URL that I type myself or a bookmark that I created myself. Then I'll check it out and see if there is anything that needs my attention. I would do this even if I have validated the links in the e-mail and am absolutely confident that it is not a phishing attempt.
Isn't that so much easier than maintaining, as the AC said, an encyclopedic knowledge of all Internet technologies and scamming techniques? While I do understand URL redirection and DNS spoofing, I don't need to understand those things to be an extremely difficult target. Your perspective on this issue seems to be a very narrow one; it might make sense if you insist on doing everything the hard way, but it does not take much creativity to realize that there are other options.
Grandparent is not equating being a victim with being stupid, but with being ignorant. Unfortunately in most cases, ignorant by choice. Notice he said "literate individuals with no leaning disabilities" should take responsibility for understanding what they are doing online. I imagine he, like me, would have more tolerance for the truly stupid who are literally incapable of doing any better.
If you understand the basic concepts of how the internet works and apply critical judgment in your transactions, you don't need to have encyclopedic knowledge of every scam in human history -- that's the whole point.
Thank you.
I believe you clarified that more eloquently than I would have. All I would add is that I am not making the claim that one cannot blame the scammers. You certainly can. It's just one of the most unproductive reactions you could have since you cannot control the scammer and are not responsible for what they do. The blame earned by a scammer is the scammer's problem; it will not make you a more difficult target.
Getting upset with the scammers while ignoring the economic incentives behind them (i.e. there are so many scams that they are obviously profitable) has not made them scarce. If fraud is profitable it's because we have not made it costly enough; if it is not costly enough it is because there is too much low-hanging fruit. If scammers exist it's because they are symptoms of something that has a root cause. It is not luck or chance or the way things happen to be. The root cause is not even ignorance alone, because that could be actively opposed. The cause of this is apathy, the kind of apathy and complacency that requires a wake-up call. For a lot of people, nothing else will do.
When someone maintains willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence, readily available information, repeated warnings, and media attention... when the best that they can come up with is "gee I hope that doesn't happen to me" and they are content to leave it at that... then perhaps this is a situation seeking its own equilibrium.
People who fall for phishing scams are not stupid. They are often very smart people. Mere general intelligence is no defense against scams. Even being a scam artist or security expert yourself isn't a guarantee because NOBODY has encyclopedic knowledge of every scam in human history. If they run across a scam they're not familiar with they're just as vulnerable as "stupid" people.
There are many forms of stupidity. For some reason, intelligence keeps getting confused with wisdom. I'm honestly not sure if that confusion is deliberately encouraged in order to obscure the issue or if most people really have no working knowledge of what the difference is. They might both be true.
At any rate, you can have a very high IQ, perform wonderfully at all sorts of logic and mathematics problems, and still be a gullable easily-scammed individual if you refuse to accept that plenty of people do not operate in good faith. You can be very intelligent and still make very stupid decisions. You can be very smart without being humble enough to recognize your limitations and therefore to understand when you are operating outside of your areas of expertise. You can be very smart without understanding that your area of expertise consists of having memorized the ins and outs of a particular inventory of knowledge and that you lack the practical, working knowledge component of true understanding.
Knowing how to use the tools offers no protection against scams. Knowing how to use a telephone does not protect you from callers that contact you and attempt to scam you. Knowing how to open a door does not protect you from people who come to your door and try and scam you.
You are exactly right. Knowing how to use the telephone shows that you have memorized a small bit of intellectual knowledge. Understanding that there are dishonest people in the world and that therefore, not everyone who calls you is truly who they claim to be demonstrates a working knowledge of the world and of the limitations of the telephone network; that is, a bit of wisdom. So why the need to apologize for people who can't tell the difference? Why send the message that people who have to learn the hard way are victims and therefore are helpless and cannot do better next time at all? Do you believe that you are doing them any favors?
You have a "blame the victim" mentality. It's clearly the fault of the stabbing victim that he got stabbed. He should have jumped out of the way. It's willful helplessness, plain and simple.
Your analogy is flawed because once someone is stabbed, the laws of physics dictate that there is going to be a wound and it will probably be a serious one. It's not like a stabbing victim can decide "hmm, the point of a knife just struck my body with considerable force... should I let that injure me or not?" This is not the case with a scammer. Just because you receive a phishing attempt, there is no law of physics that forces you to give your personal information to a complete stranger without first performing some due diligence to verify that the stranger is who he/she claims to be. So while you might think you just made some profound point, you have compared an apple to an orange and have effectively made the claim that people must accept everything at face value and believe every lie someone tells them. Is that really your view of the world? Is it really your highest expectation of human capability? I celebrate your right to believe whatever you want, but I cannot support this type of victim mentality; indeed, it seems to be so ingrained into our culture that most people don't even recognize it for what it is.
What planet are you from? Do you really think phishing, spam, and viruses will be stopped with an education campaign?
With an education campaign? No. A campaign is precisely the sort of one-to-many communication that presumes that your education (and therefore your well-being) is someone else's job. Did you not read my post? That needless dependence on someone else to look out for your own interests is exactly what I am against. It is the one thing that makes all the other problems possible, which is why the issue of whether PayPal should ban certain browsers based on features is a phony debate.
Overall people are trusting and think that the bad things they read about will never happen to them. You can educate them up the wazoo, but you won't change their mindset.
You're absolutely right. That's why I said "a fool and his money are soon parted." That's why I don't feel a shred of pity for people who refuse to take responsibility for their own experience and therefore end up getting screwed. Again, did you not read my post? If you did, I do not believe you understood it since you're exhibiting exactly the sort of knee-jerk reaction I hinted at. It's not like internet fraud is some obscure unheard-of subject. Some people (I would argue the smarter, wiser ones) can read about those bad things and learn from the mistakes of others. Other people (unfortunately this seems to be the majority) go on being too trusting and have to get screwed over before they decide that perhaps being such an easy target was a bad idea. Both scenarios are perfectly fine, since the individual involved has complete control over which one happens to them. Completely fine, that is, until folks with good intentions and no understanding of the Law of Unintended Consequences come along and tell the clueless that they are 100% pure victims and that what happened is not related in any way to their poor decision-making.
Consumers view it as the company's job anyways to solve all of the above problems. If a consumer gets their information stolen they first blame the company instead of the phisher.
Here, you are really just restating my point that people seem to think that their well-being (financial in this case) is someone else's responsibility. For as long as they believe this, they will continue to make poor choices and will continue to be naive, easy targets for these types of scams.
And finally the funny thing is by doing this, paypal will probably run the most effective campaign for security by forcing users to confront the issue. Of course they will just switch browsers and still will be easily scammed, but at least they were warned first.
With this statement you seem to agree with me that protecting people against their own stupidity is not within PayPal's power. In fact, no company has that power -- the best they can do is damage control and that's a far cry from prevention. Guess who does have that ability? That's right, the people themselves.
Indeed, this has a decent chance of creating a false sense of security. This is especially true when you consider that phishing is only one method used by scammers. Like I said, there are (many) people who have good intentions and a poor understand of the Law of Unintended Consequences...
Because whenever scammers come along to make stupidity more painful, we focus only on the fact that the scammers do this for their own short-term personal gain. Therefore, we lose sight of what happens to any community when all standards are lowered, no one is expected to think for themselves or make informed decisions, and causes (large number of clueless users) are confused with effects (criminals who take advantage of that cluelessness). It's easy for people who cannot separate their emotions from their intellect to get caught up in the outrage at parasitic people who profit from this situation and completely ignore why such scams are so successful in the first place.
Unprincipled people apparently need a fire under their ass before they will willingly broaden their knowledge, expand their experience or otherwise understand anything beyond the superficial level. To me that's quite a shame that they really seem to consider learning, an appreciation for self-reliance, and thinking for yourself to be terribly hard work to be avoided at all costs, rather than a journey of discovery that makes life much less routine and much more interesting. At any rate, if the goal is to remove all incentive to ever actually understand the tools (computers, networks, etc) that we use each day, we are on the right track.
As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Anyone who uses what he does not remotely understand and expects consistently good results qualifies as a fool. For some reason, when a computer is involved this commonsense concept is completely ignored.
Now cue the apologists and their thousand excuses for why literate individuals with no learning disabilities should not be expected to understand the basic concepts behind tools that they decided, of their own free will, to use on a daily basis. It's willful helplessness, plain and simple.
With the increasing social acceptability of this kind of victim mentality, the idea that you are responsible for your own well-being is apparently rather threatening to many people. This is obvious because they tend to give angry emotional responses instead of well-reasoned arguments explaining why they believe I am wrong.
Regardless of what France does, When I see that the EU generally doesn't just cave in anytime a corporation wants to use their government to further its own interests, my first thought is: Did someone steal the balls of every American politician and ship them overseas or something? It would explain quite a bit...
The solution to that is a concept known as "rule of law". It's the idea that no one is above the law, whether you are talking about elected officials, large corporations, or the average citizen.
You are effectively making the claim that this concept has been invalidated in this case, for without this unstated assumption your point has no merit.
I can think of two instances that would make your point valid, although both would require evidence to back them up: a) The laws in question were created for the specific purpose of convicting Microsoft -- this would be absurd if the laws predate the existence of Microsoft Corp; this would also be absurd if they are not so specifically worded that they could not possibly apply to another corporation with a near-monopoly and similar business practices, or b) The laws in question are being selectively enforced against Microsoft while similar violations from other companies are being willfully ignored.
In light of this, your post looks like an emotional reaction to news you happen to dislike. If that's the case, there is nothing wrong with that, but in that case it's just your personal feelings. Honestly it is a mystery to me why so many people are so quick to defend Microsoft and portray them as a helpless victim; they can defend themselves quite well and are anything but helpless. But I digress. If you can show that your post is more than your personal opinion, I would be very interested.
If Microsoft wasn't the best choice, why elminate them from the process?
Who is going to benifit the most from this, and what is the connection to this group?
Is there an eu msft that they are trying to shepard to the big time, or is it simple corruption?
Who wins with MS out of the picture?
I'd say we all win when a strong message is sent to large corporations that says "we will not tolerate illegal behavior from you, and we will stand by this principle even if this means we must make some sacrifices". It's called having a spine. Ideally the goal is not necessarily to get MS out of the picture (unless they refuse to reform their business practices, that is) but to get this kind of behavior out of the picture.
"Nothing that you sell is so good or so vital that we will put up with your abuses in order to purchase it" is an attitude that I wish were more widespread. How this plays out and whether that message is actually sent will be interesting indeed.
What's wrong with the good old fashioned "lying" or "scamming"? Fucking con-artists trying to sound legit. It's "social engineering" if you fell for it.
Why do university students always forget that the professors are their employees? "The university" doesn't have to do jack, the students need to all drop all of that professors classes. It works, at my alma mater I saw a professor let go when his classes dropped to zero enrollment because he had sufficiently pissed off his students. I'm all for professors making a nice buck on the side, publishing or consulting or researching, right up until it starts to effect the quality of work that makes them professors; teaching the students.
This makes me think about how, historically, the idea that teaching is a profession is a recent development. It used to be something that was everyone's "job", if "job" is what you want to call something that is done willfully with no immediate material compensation. It was something that wasn't left in the hands of specialists, since they were "only" technicians. In Athens, systematic compulsory education was for slaves.
Whether this professor's arrangement constitutes a blatant conflict of interest or not, this is what I'm getting at: There is a very good reason why Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money for teaching.
This is what I said: "I don't really blame the companies for trying this. I blame the medical establishment and the general public for going along with it without some serious challenges to whether more medications are the best way to deal with our problems." Did you miss that "medical establishment" part? Reading comprehension is a useful thing!
And yes, I do place some blame on the "hustled"... just from a "fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me" standpoint. Their unrealistic, strong desire for magical instant solutions to deep and significant personal problems (which are often self-inflicted) is a big part of this; whether you or I enjoy hearing that is irrelevant.
What kind of drugs do they give out for it? The kind that make the pharmaceutical companies very wealthy. A government has no power except over those who break its laws, so one way to increase power is to make crimes of things that are not crimes (War on [some] Drugs, etc). Likewise, a pharmaceutical company can't make money from healthy people, so we need designer diseases! ADD, ADHD, Restless Legs Syndrome, Internet Addictions... why, there's a pill for every ill! (Incidentally, showing me a study supporting these diseases is quite useless without also showing me the full paper trail of who funded the study and whether they were an industry front group. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand how propaganda works.)
I don't really blame the companies for trying this. I blame the medical establishment and the general public for going along with it without some serious challenges to whether more medications are the best way to deal with our problems. In many cases, perhaps they are, but I believe that number is significantly smaller than the number of people who are currently using prescription drugs to deal with their lives.
I will preface this by saying that I am not expecting a constructive response to this at all. My purpose here is not to get you to agree with me, for I sincerely don't give a damn whether you do or not. My intention is to give you an alternative viewpoint, something to consider.
People hate nitpickers like you for a very good reason. You divert the discussion away from the significant (the meat and substance of the argument) to the trivial (the incidentals of language use, spelling, trivial and often debatable grammatical points, etc.). People like you waste time and effort MUCH better spent on debating the actual content of a post. You're an annoying distraction, with little if anything to contribute to the actual discussion.
You are confusing cause with effect. If not for glaring and uncorrected spelling/grammatical errors from "editors" you would have no complaints about... the glaring and uncorrected spelling/grammatical errors. To put this another way, it's far simpler to get one paragraph right than it is to convince many thousands of people to accept mediocrity without complaint in order to spare you a little annoyance that you voluntarily experienced.
If you presume to talk to me about what is significant, you should first get a good handle on that yourself. Nothing that is or was or could have been in this discussion should be as significant to you as your personal time and whether you enjoy what you are doing with it. Getting annoyed at something you never had to read, certainly never had to take seriously, and never had to respond to illustrates your failure to understand this. Complaining to me about this because you have such a deep victim mentality that you think my post is responsible for the irritation brought about by such a character flaw is adding failure to failure.
Try taking some control of your own experience; you'll find it much more satisfying than having your emotions at the mercy of whether random strangers express themselves the way you think they should. Don't be so voluntarily helpless and then expect anyone to be concerned that the result was not to your liking. It's pathetic. There is nothing to prevent you from disregarding any comment you don't like; you could have skipped over it and moved on to those more in line with your tastes. No one forced anyone to read it. No one forced the moderators to mod my post up. Both of these were people doing what they wanted to do.
I hope you are not really this petty. If you are, you should know that people like you are very dangerous when they acquire political power since they tend to think that government is a means of forcing their personal tastes on others. The "people like you waste time and effort..." portion of your comment shows this type of arrogance. I mean really, how kind of you to look out for whether my efforts are well-spent -- I'm sure your intentions are pure! I can decide what is or isn't a waste of my time and effort without your assistance. There is a place where you can make those decisions, and that place is in your own life. Try concerning yourself with that sometime, it will make you feel much better than trying to tell me what I should be doing.
Slashdot Mirror
In what way was I dramatic? I dislike the side-effects of a business model, so I choose not to contribute to what I dislike. I wasn't claiming that any of this is the end of the world or some significant threat to society (which would constitute being dramatic), I was explaining how and why I choose not to participate.
We are not talking about the HTTP access logs of a site that I visit. We are talking about data shared with third parties for marketing purposes. This data does not materialize out of thin air; it requires my participation. So long as this is the case, I am well within my rights to decline to participate. To he who claims I used a red herring, please do explain what's wrong with that?
Low cost != no cost. While you definitely have a point about their corporate image, I can't help but say that recognizing a company as a data-mining machine as you have accurately done, and then assuming (and that's what this is, an assumption) an altruistic motive when they take an action that has a strong data-mining component, is, well, a bit naive. I'm not saying that altruism could not be the case and that profit must be the sole explanation (that would also be an assumption); what I am saying is that given the lack of hard evidence, one of those is a lot more likely.
The file is indeed Javascript and it's called "urchin.js" (nice name eh?). Personally, I use the hosts file because I don't care to even have my IP address showing up in their access logs. This isn't necessarily because I think that would be a bad thing, but it's because I don't see what benefit there would be for me and, as others have mentioned, the additional DNS query and traffic that would take place could only slow down the rendering of a given Web page.
I also use NoScript, AdBlock, RefControl and others. RefControl is nice because the HTTP Referrer is another way that sites can track your browsing; before Google Analytics it was common for many pages to include a one-pixel graphic from a common third-party host for this reason. Just bear in mind that some sites (especially some shopping-cart systems) legitimately use the referrer so you may need to add those sites to RefControl's exception list in order to shop there, as the default is to populate the referrer with the site's own homepage no matter what the actual referrer would have been.
The "problem" already exists. It's "how can we collect more data about user's browsing habits?" You have to consider that Google is a for-profit business and hosting these files represents a bandwidth cost and a maintainence cost for them. They are unlikely to do this unless they believe that they can turn that into a profit, and the mechanism available to them is advertising revenue.
This is very similar to the purpose of the already-existing google-analytics.com. I block this site in my hosts file (among others) and I take other measures because I feel that if a corporation wants to take my data and profit from it, they first need to negotiate with me. Since Google is not going to do that, I refuse to contribute my data. To the folks who say "well how else are they supposed to make money" I say that I am not responsible for the success of someone else's business model, they are free to deny me access to their search engine if they so choose, and I would also point out that Google is not exactly struggling to turn a profit.
The "something of a privacy violation" mentioned in the summary seems to be the specific purpose.
Unfortunately I've yet to see a single person dismiss the Electric Universe who was also familiar with it. From one of their main sites:
As author and EU theorist Wal Thornhill points out:
"If Arp and others are right and the Big Bang is dead, what does the Cosmic Microwave Background signify? The simplest answer, from the highly successful field of plasma cosmology, is that it represents the natural microwave radiation from electric current filaments in interstellar plasma local to the Sun. Radio astronomers have mapped the interstellar hydrogen filaments by using longer wavelength receivers. The dense thicket formed by those filaments produces a perfect fog of microwave radiation - as if we were located inside a microwave oven. Instead of the Cosmic Microwave Background, it is the Interstellar Microwave Background. That makes sense of the fact that the CMB is too smooth to account for the lumpiness of galaxies and galactic clusters in the universe."
Another mention of the subject is here and several more here with some reading. These took me about 30 seconds to find with a Google search for "+electric-universe +cosmic-microwave". So how hard have you worked to understand something before dismissing it or forming an opinion of it? Skepticism doesn't mean you don't even look into something because you dislike how it sounds or you can't see how the mainstream could be wrong.
It's about time you 'fessed up to that.
I have used Linux for nearly eleven years. Not once have I felt that there is a "battle" between Microsoft and Free Software. I agree that Microsoft makes shitty products; that's why I don't use them. It's such a simple thing: I don't like their products and I don't like their business practices so I contribute to neither. If someone does like their products and does use them, I will tell them that I think there are better alternatives if they are interested. If they are not, I wish them well and I celebrate their right (and obligation) to make their own choices and live with the consequences. If this results in their having a worse computing experience than me, it is unfortunate but it is also not my problem.
A big reason why I have so thoroughly enjoyed Linux is because I am not afraid of learning something new. I am always glad to expand my knowledge, especially when something interests me, because I greatly prefer this over ignorance. To me, there are many wonderous things in the world and there is an element of adventure in overcoming something I did not previously understand. So, when I encountered Linux in mid-1997, I read books, man pages, Internet forums, HOWTOs, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on. It absolutely fascinated me, both the elegant design of the system and the philosophy of freedom that was behind it. At the time I kept a Windows 98 partition to play a couple of Windows games; when I noticed that a year went by without me once booting up Windows, I formatted it with an ext2 filesystem and never looked back. I love the design, reliability, and feeling of control that Linux gives me. It does not get in my way. It does not assume that I'm an idiot. If something breaks, it broke for a good reason, it will stay broken until I fix it and when I fix it, it will stay fixed. Linux is easily one of the best things that ever could have happened to my computing experience and my general interest in technology.
However, I do not believe that the average person is going to appreciate these attributes. There is unfortunately a strong anti-intellectual, anti-learning culture, at least in the USA. There exists the idea that the path of least resistance is the secret to a good and happy life, and by extension there is the idea that learning something new is painful and too much work and should be avoided whenever possible. The fact that I believe this to be a lie is not relevant, no matter how much I wish it were. The average person is not going to enjoy the design of Linux or the love of freedom that is behind it. What I am talking about has very little to do with computing, despite the specific application about which I am speaking, but is a general attitude towards life. However much I may disagree with what I consider to be a dehumanizing form of laziness, I must respect that people need to live their own lives the way they see fit. A corporation like Microsoft that promises "it will just work with little to no effort -- now easier to use than EVER!" is always going to appeal to this culture. People who do not wish to expand their knowledge and enjoy the tools they use every day are going to buy into it. To them, it is "the way things are"; to me, they are making their choice and living with the consequences.
If you really think that what you are doing is battling a corporation because you dislike their products and their business practices, it is because you fail to consider and understand the foundation upon which it is built. Microsoft is not the cause of much of anything. In a manner of speaking, the things
You replied to my post. Nowhere in my post did I say it was about eating, so this looks like you were trying to correct a mistake I did not make.
In fact, I did not identify a single cause except to say that poor decision-making is the ultimate cause. We live in a real world where there is much complexity, yet there is one and only one common factor: people who don't know themselves and don't see themselves as being in control of their lives and their bodies. The particulars and the details are really irrelevant once this principle is understood, as they will be taken care of by an individual who is willing to do these things.
In your case, it sounds like this related to lack of exercise and possibly also a willingness to allow other people to cause you stress (you can feel "fried" for more reasons than one). That is, do you ever allow what they say and what they do to anger or frustrate you? Whatever they say or do, you really should do something about it or don't do something about it without getting so upset. This is a skill that might take a long time to develop; it took me a while to realize you do in fact have a choice in the matter of how you react to other people's stupidity, that the behaviors you see growing up and on television and from other people are just one possible method among many. That the method commonly presented was not arrived at by a careful consideration of the merits of all methods. That just because someone is rude doesn't mean you must submit to the angry response that they hope (secretly or openly) to obtain from you. This is called, simply, making your own decisions and being your own person, not easily controlled by or at the mercy of others. It's not something you ever truly finish doing, but it's amazing how much it can teach you.
If you want some motivation, do some serious research on the kind of damage that high levels of stress can do. Bear in mind that what most Americans would consider a "relatively low" amount of stress is still higher than it should be. It's almost as though, in the USA, being ultra-busy and telling other people "I just don't have the time for that" is some kind of status symbol, reserved only for important people -- what a joke. At any rate, truly having your own understanding of what stress can do might mean, horror of horrors, doing some serious reading and otherwise resembling someone who wants to solve the problem no matter what it takes.
Ultimately, it is true that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight - this is physics. Olympic triathletes can have ridiculous amounts of caloric intake (I believe over eight or nine thousand calories a day) without becoming obese, because they are also burning ridiculous amounts of calories. In another person's case, it might be the food. For you, perhaps it was something else. Rather than argue against points I did not make, why not go for a real challenge and increase your understanding?
Be careful what you wish for
Unfortunately, yes, you can. Especially when a bunch of well-meaning idiots will support your denial since it's a hell of a lot easier than examining their own lives and taking care of their own foreseeable problems that they are doing nothing about. Not to mention when another group of well-meaning idiots value political correctness above all notions of truth or health or sustainability and label anyone a bigot if they express their dislike of seeing obesity and other completely preventable problems everywhere they look. To people who have bought into this mentality, the cardinal sin is expecting better from a person than the person expects of themselves, which is amazingly easy to do.
Ultimately, it is about personal responsibility. And apparently you're the world's biggest asshole if you try to tell people that this is the case. You see, their denial has purchased for them a type of selective hearing; they hear only "it's your fault" and they completely miss "you have the power to change for the better". Want to be the world's biggest saint? That's easy too. Just tell people that it's hopeless and that they're exactly as impotent and powerless as they have been led to believe. Then they'll feel that someone "finally understands" them. Sick, isn't it? Honestly, I'm sick of it. Widespread obesity is just one manifestation of this mentality.
It takes a pretty god damned insecure individual to feel threatened merely because someone does not like him/her. "We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling" is NOT a threat. I'm really tired of how fragile and candy-assed and otherwise cowardly people are becoming. It is a trend that does not bode well.
Now that hypothetical example would constitute an actual threat. That example goes far, far beyond merely disliking or hating someone.
The Nazis are an instance where the size and power of the state spiraled out of control. The persecution of the Jews and the Reichstag fire and the climate of fear and distrust were means to that end -- if they were unsuccessful, different means would have been used. Having a "tribunal" of people who can decide whether you have committed a thoughtcrime or not (face it, this is what "anti-hate" laws are) is another means to increase state power. The Nazis would have approved.
How about we instead expose the unstated assumptions that are behind all of this? All of it assumes that just because you hear an opinion, you have zero choice but to believe it and to act on it. All of it assumes that just because you dislike or even hate someone or something, that you have no choice but to act on those feelings without regard to the harm that it might cause. In other words, you're all mindless idiots with no hope of deciding anything for yourselves.
Or, from the politician's point of view: "some of you seem to think you should be able to think for yourselves; well that might interfere with the expansion of state authority and the uniform, homogenous society it demands, so we have set up a tribunal to tell you what thoughts you may express and which thoughts are thoughtcrimes and have given it the power to persecute anyone who says something too controversial. That way, we can get you to think in terms of emotional outrage and whether or not you are 'offended' which suits us far better than if you were to think in terms of facts and reasoning. Rest assured that this is all for your own good and that our motives are entirely pure and that this power will never ever be abused." Will we ever wake up and get tired of this?
After a long enough time, it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It begins the moment you use media as an excuse for what people do and discount the element of choice, for this is the justification that lowers the standard. It legitimizes the negative behavior by saying that the perpetrator was just a victim who had to be a mere product of his environment because he could not possibly have lived his own life, been his own person. It's the victim mentality that's the root of the problem; the ten thousand things that people use as excuses and justifications are just the branches and twigs. So no, I'm not ignorant of the status quo; I just refuse to accept it or contribute to it because I am aware of how much better things have been and could be.
You don't reverse this by doing more of the same. You are sadly correct; most people have chosen to be mindless zombies because they decided that being your own person is too hard. I'm sure these same people wonder why life is so empty and unfulfilling, but that's okay, we have pills and procedures for that too.
There is an ancient saying, "no matter how far down the wrong path you have gone, turn back." You really do get to choose how you live your life. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a coward or fancies himself your master.
I don't fault Jack Thompson for having an opinion, even though I disagree with it and I believe it is utter horseshit.
What I have a big problem with is the mentality shared by him and anyone else who thinks they know what's good for us: the unstated assumption that I am unable to decide for myself whether playing a video game is in my interests, and the unstated assumption that parents are incapable of deciding on their own whether their children are mature enough to handle the content of a video game. Basically, he's assuming that we are all mindless zombies with no choice but to imitate anything we see on a screen, and he's also trying to tell parents how they should raise their children, implying that they are unable to handle the job without his input. I assure you, no one who wants to do these things has a pure motive.
The whole thing is an insult. It illustrates yet again the attitude that "it's not good enough that I choose to abstain from something; everybody else must do the same as me." It also assumes that no one is capable of distinguishing a fictional video game from reality, which is ironically more likely if we stop expecting people to know the difference.
I am very thankful that my parents (within reason, of course) did not try to shelter me from every little objectionable thing in the world. Instead, they explained to me why something was right or wrong and equipped me to deal with an imperfect world that contains many things I might not like. If the Jack Thompsons of the world had their way, no one would be able to actually grow up into an adult human being who can deal with the world the way it is and perhaps try to make it a better place because every potential source of controversy would be censored. What he is advocating is really a form of cowardice, which is generally the motive behind those who would tell you how to live your life.
You're greatly complicating something that is actually very simple. I'll give one example, but this is a general principle.
If I receive an e-mail claiming to be from my bank which states that my account information has changed or that otherwise there is some input/information needed from me, I am not going to take it seriously nor am I going to click on any links in that e-mail or allow any Javascript/etc contained in it to execute. Instead, I'll separately launch my browser, go to the bank's Web site, and log into the account myself, with a URL that I type myself or a bookmark that I created myself. Then I'll check it out and see if there is anything that needs my attention. I would do this even if I have validated the links in the e-mail and am absolutely confident that it is not a phishing attempt.
Isn't that so much easier than maintaining, as the AC said, an encyclopedic knowledge of all Internet technologies and scamming techniques? While I do understand URL redirection and DNS spoofing, I don't need to understand those things to be an extremely difficult target. Your perspective on this issue seems to be a very narrow one; it might make sense if you insist on doing everything the hard way, but it does not take much creativity to realize that there are other options.
Thank you.
I believe you clarified that more eloquently than I would have. All I would add is that I am not making the claim that one cannot blame the scammers. You certainly can. It's just one of the most unproductive reactions you could have since you cannot control the scammer and are not responsible for what they do. The blame earned by a scammer is the scammer's problem; it will not make you a more difficult target.
Getting upset with the scammers while ignoring the economic incentives behind them (i.e. there are so many scams that they are obviously profitable) has not made them scarce. If fraud is profitable it's because we have not made it costly enough; if it is not costly enough it is because there is too much low-hanging fruit. If scammers exist it's because they are symptoms of something that has a root cause. It is not luck or chance or the way things happen to be. The root cause is not even ignorance alone, because that could be actively opposed. The cause of this is apathy, the kind of apathy and complacency that requires a wake-up call. For a lot of people, nothing else will do.
When someone maintains willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence, readily available information, repeated warnings, and media attention
There are many forms of stupidity. For some reason, intelligence keeps getting confused with wisdom. I'm honestly not sure if that confusion is deliberately encouraged in order to obscure the issue or if most people really have no working knowledge of what the difference is. They might both be true.
At any rate, you can have a very high IQ, perform wonderfully at all sorts of logic and mathematics problems, and still be a gullable easily-scammed individual if you refuse to accept that plenty of people do not operate in good faith. You can be very intelligent and still make very stupid decisions. You can be very smart without being humble enough to recognize your limitations and therefore to understand when you are operating outside of your areas of expertise. You can be very smart without understanding that your area of expertise consists of having memorized the ins and outs of a particular inventory of knowledge and that you lack the practical, working knowledge component of true understanding.
You are exactly right. Knowing how to use the telephone shows that you have memorized a small bit of intellectual knowledge. Understanding that there are dishonest people in the world and that therefore, not everyone who calls you is truly who they claim to be demonstrates a working knowledge of the world and of the limitations of the telephone network; that is, a bit of wisdom. So why the need to apologize for people who can't tell the difference? Why send the message that people who have to learn the hard way are victims and therefore are helpless and cannot do better next time at all? Do you believe that you are doing them any favors?
Your analogy is flawed because once someone is stabbed, the laws of physics dictate that there is going to be a wound and it will probably be a serious one. It's not like a stabbing victim can decide "hmm, the point of a knife just struck my body with considerable force... should I let that injure me or not?" This is not the case with a scammer. Just because you receive a phishing attempt, there is no law of physics that forces you to give your personal information to a complete stranger without first performing some due diligence to verify that the stranger is who he/she claims to be. So while you might think you just made some profound point, you have compared an apple to an orange and have effectively made the claim that people must accept everything at face value and believe every lie someone tells them. Is that really your view of the world? Is it really your highest expectation of human capability? I celebrate your right to believe whatever you want, but I cannot support this type of victim mentality; indeed, it seems to be so ingrained into our culture that most people don't even recognize it for what it is.
With an education campaign? No. A campaign is precisely the sort of one-to-many communication that presumes that your education (and therefore your well-being) is someone else's job. Did you not read my post? That needless dependence on someone else to look out for your own interests is exactly what I am against. It is the one thing that makes all the other problems possible, which is why the issue of whether PayPal should ban certain browsers based on features is a phony debate.
You're absolutely right. That's why I said "a fool and his money are soon parted." That's why I don't feel a shred of pity for people who refuse to take responsibility for their own experience and therefore end up getting screwed. Again, did you not read my post? If you did, I do not believe you understood it since you're exhibiting exactly the sort of knee-jerk reaction I hinted at. It's not like internet fraud is some obscure unheard-of subject. Some people (I would argue the smarter, wiser ones) can read about those bad things and learn from the mistakes of others. Other people (unfortunately this seems to be the majority) go on being too trusting and have to get screwed over before they decide that perhaps being such an easy target was a bad idea. Both scenarios are perfectly fine, since the individual involved has complete control over which one happens to them. Completely fine, that is, until folks with good intentions and no understanding of the Law of Unintended Consequences come along and tell the clueless that they are 100% pure victims and that what happened is not related in any way to their poor decision-making.
Here, you are really just restating my point that people seem to think that their well-being (financial in this case) is someone else's responsibility. For as long as they believe this, they will continue to make poor choices and will continue to be naive, easy targets for these types of scams.
With this statement you seem to agree with me that protecting people against their own stupidity is not within PayPal's power. In fact, no company has that power -- the best they can do is damage control and that's a far cry from prevention. Guess who does have that ability? That's right, the people themselves.
Indeed, this has a decent chance of creating a false sense of security. This is especially true when you consider that phishing is only one method used by scammers. Like I said, there are (many) people who have good intentions and a poor understand of the Law of Unintended Consequences
Because whenever scammers come along to make stupidity more painful, we focus only on the fact that the scammers do this for their own short-term personal gain. Therefore, we lose sight of what happens to any community when all standards are lowered, no one is expected to think for themselves or make informed decisions, and causes (large number of clueless users) are confused with effects (criminals who take advantage of that cluelessness). It's easy for people who cannot separate their emotions from their intellect to get caught up in the outrage at parasitic people who profit from this situation and completely ignore why such scams are so successful in the first place.
Unprincipled people apparently need a fire under their ass before they will willingly broaden their knowledge, expand their experience or otherwise understand anything beyond the superficial level. To me that's quite a shame that they really seem to consider learning, an appreciation for self-reliance, and thinking for yourself to be terribly hard work to be avoided at all costs, rather than a journey of discovery that makes life much less routine and much more interesting. At any rate, if the goal is to remove all incentive to ever actually understand the tools (computers, networks, etc) that we use each day, we are on the right track.
As the saying goes, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Anyone who uses what he does not remotely understand and expects consistently good results qualifies as a fool. For some reason, when a computer is involved this commonsense concept is completely ignored.
Now cue the apologists and their thousand excuses for why literate individuals with no learning disabilities should not be expected to understand the basic concepts behind tools that they decided, of their own free will, to use on a daily basis. It's willful helplessness, plain and simple.
With the increasing social acceptability of this kind of victim mentality, the idea that you are responsible for your own well-being is apparently rather threatening to many people. This is obvious because they tend to give angry emotional responses instead of well-reasoned arguments explaining why they believe I am wrong.
Regardless of what France does, When I see that the EU generally doesn't just cave in anytime a corporation wants to use their government to further its own interests, my first thought is: Did someone steal the balls of every American politician and ship them overseas or something? It would explain quite a bit...
The solution to that is a concept known as "rule of law". It's the idea that no one is above the law, whether you are talking about elected officials, large corporations, or the average citizen.
You are effectively making the claim that this concept has been invalidated in this case, for without this unstated assumption your point has no merit.
I can think of two instances that would make your point valid, although both would require evidence to back them up: a) The laws in question were created for the specific purpose of convicting Microsoft -- this would be absurd if the laws predate the existence of Microsoft Corp; this would also be absurd if they are not so specifically worded that they could not possibly apply to another corporation with a near-monopoly and similar business practices, or b) The laws in question are being selectively enforced against Microsoft while similar violations from other companies are being willfully ignored.
In light of this, your post looks like an emotional reaction to news you happen to dislike. If that's the case, there is nothing wrong with that, but in that case it's just your personal feelings. Honestly it is a mystery to me why so many people are so quick to defend Microsoft and portray them as a helpless victim; they can defend themselves quite well and are anything but helpless. But I digress. If you can show that your post is more than your personal opinion, I would be very interested.
I'd say we all win when a strong message is sent to large corporations that says "we will not tolerate illegal behavior from you, and we will stand by this principle even if this means we must make some sacrifices". It's called having a spine. Ideally the goal is not necessarily to get MS out of the picture (unless they refuse to reform their business practices, that is) but to get this kind of behavior out of the picture.
"Nothing that you sell is so good or so vital that we will put up with your abuses in order to purchase it" is an attitude that I wish were more widespread. How this plays out and whether that message is actually sent will be interesting indeed.
This makes me think about how, historically, the idea that teaching is a profession is a recent development. It used to be something that was everyone's "job", if "job" is what you want to call something that is done willfully with no immediate material compensation. It was something that wasn't left in the hands of specialists, since they were "only" technicians. In Athens, systematic compulsory education was for slaves.
Whether this professor's arrangement constitutes a blatant conflict of interest or not, this is what I'm getting at: There is a very good reason why Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money for teaching.
This is what I said: "I don't really blame the companies for trying this. I blame the medical establishment and the general public for going along with it without some serious challenges to whether more medications are the best way to deal with our problems." Did you miss that "medical establishment" part? Reading comprehension is a useful thing!
And yes, I do place some blame on the "hustled"... just from a "fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me" standpoint. Their unrealistic, strong desire for magical instant solutions to deep and significant personal problems (which are often self-inflicted) is a big part of this; whether you or I enjoy hearing that is irrelevant.
What kind of drugs do they give out for it? The kind that make the pharmaceutical companies very wealthy. A government has no power except over those who break its laws, so one way to increase power is to make crimes of things that are not crimes (War on [some] Drugs, etc). Likewise, a pharmaceutical company can't make money from healthy people, so we need designer diseases! ADD, ADHD, Restless Legs Syndrome, Internet Addictions ... why, there's a pill for every ill! (Incidentally, showing me a study supporting these diseases is quite useless without also showing me the full paper trail of who funded the study and whether they were an industry front group. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand how propaganda works.)
I don't really blame the companies for trying this. I blame the medical establishment and the general public for going along with it without some serious challenges to whether more medications are the best way to deal with our problems. In many cases, perhaps they are, but I believe that number is significantly smaller than the number of people who are currently using prescription drugs to deal with their lives.
You are confusing cause with effect. If not for glaring and uncorrected spelling/grammatical errors from "editors" you would have no complaints about
If you presume to talk to me about what is significant, you should first get a good handle on that yourself. Nothing that is or was or could have been in this discussion should be as significant to you as your personal time and whether you enjoy what you are doing with it. Getting annoyed at something you never had to read, certainly never had to take seriously, and never had to respond to illustrates your failure to understand this. Complaining to me about this because you have such a deep victim mentality that you think my post is responsible for the irritation brought about by such a character flaw is adding failure to failure.
Try taking some control of your own experience; you'll find it much more satisfying than having your emotions at the mercy of whether random strangers express themselves the way you think they should. Don't be so voluntarily helpless and then expect anyone to be concerned that the result was not to your liking. It's pathetic. There is nothing to prevent you from disregarding any comment you don't like; you could have skipped over it and moved on to those more in line with your tastes. No one forced anyone to read it. No one forced the moderators to mod my post up. Both of these were people doing what they wanted to do.
I hope you are not really this petty. If you are, you should know that people like you are very dangerous when they acquire political power since they tend to think that government is a means of forcing their personal tastes on others. The "people like you waste time and effort..." portion of your comment shows this type of arrogance. I mean really, how kind of you to look out for whether my efforts are well-spent -- I'm sure your intentions are pure! I can decide what is or isn't a waste of my time and effort without your assistance. There is a place where you can make those decisions, and that place is in your own life. Try concerning yourself with that sometime, it will make you feel much better than trying to tell me what I should be doing.