How far are people willing to take the monoculture analogy? Nature doesn't have the ability to make iterative improvements to existing individuals, and the magic wand of software updates is a lot more magic than the magic wand of modern medicine.
It's just an analogy; once its point is made, it's no longer useful. Take it as far as you like.
Even if you posit that something like 100 different operating systems would make any sense, by the time you have 1 billion computers connected together, a flaw in any one of those operating systems gives you access to some big chunk of 10 million machines. That's still an awful lot of resources to be chasing after.
The economics of targeting Mac platforms have apparently become good enough:
Okay, let's assume 100 different OSs in common use as you are saying here. The idea is not that none of them have exploits, or that 99 of them being secure means nothing if one is exploitable. The idea is that they each have different exploits, and what allows you to root one of them won't gain you any access on another. The reason why botnets have grown so large is not because a vast army of human beings has launched personal, targeted, hand-crafted attacks against individual machines. Botnets have grown so large because a single automated piece of malware can self-propagate with a success rate that is far higher than it should be. I did not claim that more OS variety would be some perfect, ultimate solution. What I am saying is that (in some ways) we are collectively behaving as though we wanted to make the blackhat's job as easy as possible, enabling write-once-run-almost-anywhere malware that allows them to do great damage with little effort.
User education is getting easier; people that have any sort of investment in their data and setup usually don't want to lose it a *second* time.
If networked computers didn't come with all the new problems that they come with, they would likely be awful boring to use; I'd bet that many of the security problems of today turn out, in hindsight, to be little more than growing pains.
I know you mean well with that comment, but referring to this as "growing pains" is tantamount to saying that it's normal and acceptable and couldn't have been any other way and gee-whiz I hope it gets better soon. To do so is to make an excuse for it. The reality is that almost all of it is caused by poor decision-making by people who could not be bothered to inform themselves because making better choices was not worth the effort (to them). All I am saying is that this is a "garbage in, garbage out" scenario, and laziness is one way to do "garbage in". And yes, it is often laziness; you don't need to be a computer security expert to understand that executing binaries from unknown sources is a bad idea. Anyone who has ever truly pursued a goal that required extreme effort and dedication and discipline can understand that the entry-level book or two that the average person would have to read to be aware of most threats out there (which would vastly improve their security practices) is trivial. They don't WANT to learn; otherwise, they would be self-starters who do it on their own and practically nothing could stop them, certainly not an "its too HAAAARD" attitude.
t's not the Window monoculture so much as the fact that the Windows HTML control is designed to allow you to pass it a chunk of code and say "run this" and if you smell right... it will! How anyone in the world could look at this design and not go "you mean, if I can get some trust hormones and smear them on my program, everyone who looks at it using Internet Explorer will run it?". I mean, this is such a completely insane design that I'm honestly boggled Microsoft hasn't been creamed by a trillion dollar class action suit over it yet.
The reason why this was done is because it's so much more convenient and "easier to use than EVER!!" compared to either not having such functionality, or having it severely locked down (say, whitelist-only, with restrictions).
The Windows monoculture is simply why most users take the presence of such "features" for granted and can't imagine doing things any other way. It's why such a design can instantly appear on millions of hosts. It's also why the idea that rebooting is going to magically fix anything, or that crashes and lockups are a normal part of computing are so widely accepted and are not generally questioned. It's why "everybody knows" that you "need" to be using an after-the-fact antivirus or antispyware tool, hoping that it can remove that malware now that you're already infected and can no longer trust that machine. This sort of thing would be less common if visiting their next door neighbor meant that a user was likely to see a very different system with a saner design. Lousy indeed.
I love the way we keep coming up with all these band-aid solutions that attack symptoms without addressing the root cause, just because the root cause is non-trivial.
There are really only two reasons why botnets and their associated malware have become so prevalent. All other apparent causes stem from these two reasons:
The Windows monoculture. When this accounts for over 90% of all desktop installations, it's much easier to write a single worm/trojan/virus/etc that can single-handedly infect many thousands of hosts. This greatly reduces the number of vulnerabilities that need to be targeted and the knowledge necessary to exploit them on a large scale, which is a situation that favors the blackhats tremendously. If nature handled genetics this way, then the first lethal contagious disease to come along would destroy civilization. There are good reasons other than their business practices why the Microsoft monopoly is a bad idea. No matter how hard they work to improve security, there will be vulnerabilities, and due to this monopoly any single vulnerability will instantly affect millions of hosts. If you want the Internet overall to be a more secure place, this is not a good start. I believe this would be the case with any single vendor controlling this much of the market. Consider also that security is not the only selling point of Windows; convenience and "easier to use than EVER!" are also major factors and (especially convenience) are not compatible with security. The boilerplate nature of most commercial software is also a factor here.
The lack of education of the average user. I don't really know whether this is more or less difficult to address than the first item. The fact is that most users don't give a damn about security, at least not until their identity gets stolen or their data gets deleted or $AUTHORITY_FIGURE knocks on their door asking why their machine is attacking other machines. This appears to be because they don't see their security as their responsibility; they feel that this is entirely $VENDOR's problem. That they would feel this way is a foreseeable consequence of widespread "more convenient and easier to use than ever!" marketing, since this sets up the expectation that it will Just Work with no effort. While it would be easy to blame this on Microsoft since they have profited handsomely from it, I personally believe that this is an aspect of our general instant-gratification culture that effectively says nothing is worth putting any time and effort into; Microsoft merely had the business sense to realize that catering to it is the path to profit. It's difficult to seriously blame a company for doing something when nearly everyone is rewarding them for it. Because of this, if you try to educate people regarding things like system security, what you will find is that not only are most users ignorant, they don't WANT to learn. They see "all that technobabble" as an inconvenience, yet they insist on using equipment that requires some technical skill to properly maintain. This is something of a Catch-22 because Microsoft would build a much more secure Windows if no one would buy Windows otherwise, but average users with little technical skill are not going to create this kind of market.
Just like after-the-infection virus and spyware removal tools, this botnet detector is NOT a real solution, it's a form of damage control and should only be represented as such.
What I really want to see a long-term plan for dealing with those two points. Until these factors change, we are going to keep having the same kind of problems again and again as the arms race between blackhats and whitehats continues. You are never going to have perfect security, but the current situation where one piece of malware can do tremendous damage on a massive scale is a situation that many people have worked very hard to bring about. Too bad that in a superficial society like ours, we have a huge phobia of actually addressing the roots of our problems because we keep hoping to find some form of an "easy way out" of situations that took a long time to become what they are.
I don't understand this argument at all. There are circumstances under which I would be incredibly angry if someone was trying to reach me about something vital (like a life-or-death situation, one of my loved ones in danger, or something like that) and could not because of some asshole like you.
What I don't understand is your idea of cause and effect. Why do you place the blame on the people who might use a cellphone jammer when they are only a reaction to a nuisance that keeps getting worse? The "asshole" is not the guy who gets fed up with widespread blatant rudeness and finally finds a solution; the assholes are the ones with the cell phones who won't be considerate of others in the first place; if not for this, almost no one would have used a jammer. That there are so many such assholes is why being assertive is not practical -- what size mob of immature, self-important other-people-don't-exist assholes who won't take a correction do you want to confront? A jammer is a neat solution that, unlike a confrontation, guarantees that the actual cause of the problem is the one who will be disappointed. Blaming it on the jammers is effectively excusing the root cause of this problem because you dislike one of its symptoms.
My father had cancer, and while he had cancer I was always on call, always available to hear any news about it whatsoever. During the final days it was all I could do not to just sit silently staring at my phone, waiting for news. I was polite, though. If I was in a theatre and an important call came through (on silent, mind you) I would leave the theatre and immediately call back. I know I am not the average case here but I'm also not extraordinary. Lots and lots and lots of people out there are smart and polite people who know how to responsibly use a cell phone.
That's an understandable use, but don't allow your emotions to impact your judgment. A little thought would lead to the conclusion that if your cellphone is on silent/vibrate mode and it vibrates and you leave the theater and call back where you won't be disturbing anyone, there's no incentive to jam your phone call. I doubt anyone near you would even know that you had a cellphone if you handled it this way. Unless you believe that people buy jammers because strangers have a personal vendetta against you and just want to make you miserable (they call this paranoia), then by your own reasoning the jammers won't be after you or anyone who handles this the way that you do. The more rare your politeness is (and this is increasingly the case), the more likely it is to be very much appreciated.
Don't block us out just because of the ignorant masses that just don't get it.
This really seems to be coming from an assumption that a jammer would be operating continuously. I don't own a jammer (and don't plan to since using one is illegal) but if I had one, I know I would not want a microwave frequency radiation source emitting continuously from my person. It's the kind of thing that can't be good for you long-term. Then there's the question of how heavy the batteries would be and how many you want to carry. Considering that continuous use is not at all necessary since you would only need a few seconds to disconnect a call, I think you're inventing a highly unlikely extreme-case scenario backed by an emotional time of your life to justify your universal condemnation.
And you know what? You're living in 2007 now, so if you hear someone's cell phone go off then TOUGH F*CKING COOKIES.
I could just as easily say "You're living in 2007 now, so if you're rude and inconsiderate and your cell phone call gets dropped by someone with a jammer, then TOUGH FUCKING COOKIES." I find this easier to justify than "someone's being rude, you better lay down and take it."
You can approach them politely and ask that they put thei
I, for one, would welcome our new moon-mining robotic overlords.:-)
I wish there were electrified, remotely-activated keyboards just for the purpose of delivering a shock to everyone who posts this meme and all of its variants. The potential for abuse would be worth it. "I for one welcome our new keyboard-electrifying *BZZZZZT* *clunk*"...
Since I am a programmer for a living I think if I have problems installing it then J6P shouldn't be expected to suffer with it. And for the record I have been homebrew HDTV since 2002 with a MyHD card so I am hardly a novice at these things.
Amusing that your post is entitled "Wow, what an arrogant stance" and then proceeds to use your own capability as the yardstick by which the degree of difficulty should be measured. "I do X for a living" is not a line of reasoning. At best it's an appeal to authority (i.e. your own) and even then, that's only if your career path bears a direct relation to the subject. When you use a rather specialized skill like programming as one of your qualifications, and then proceed to talk about how bad it is that Joe Sixpack might not know he needs a cable, it doesn't work because you are effectively comparing a specialty to a matter of reading the manual. Put another way, Albert Einstein was an incredibly smart man with a high IQ who revolutionized physics, yet he often had problems dressing himself; it does not follow that therefore the average person has a difficult time putting on his shoes.
If J6P doesn't get an HDMI cable with his TV and HD player he likely will not know he needs one. But I see you would rather he just think HDTV is a scam.
I never made that claim and in fact gave an entirely different reason for why I feel the way I do about this issue (that things are dumbed-down enough as it is). Due to this, I must conclude that either reading comprehension is not your strongest talent, or you feel a need to resort to making shit up to justify what you want to believe. Furthermore, I said that to spend a non-trivial amount of money on something and then not bother to inform yourself about the most basic aspects of how to use it is willful helplessness and I was clearly against this practice. I'll break down for you what that means -- if what I said there is listened to and understood, then Joe Sixpack won't think that HDTV is a scam due to a missing cable, because he would not have been ignorant enough to reach this false conclusion due to something so basic.
This really is a very basic thing; to treat it as though it's some unreasonably hard task, like I am expecting Joe Sixpack to be able to write the HD player's firmware in assembly, is ridiculous. If you were trying to make the point that manufacturers could do a better job of designing their products (which is an issue separate from whether the inability to do basic problem-solving is a personal flaw), this isn't the way to go about it.
It's because J6P is slow to adopt that the HDTV roll out has been slow. If you want HDTV you want it to be simple for J6P also.
Alternate explanation: HDTV is an incremental improvement over TV, not a revolutionary, must-have killer app that calls for overnight, universal adoption. Compounding this is the fact that there remains a very large volume of content in standard-definition and this will be the case for a little while yet. Considering these two observations, it should not come as a shock that HDTV rollout has been slow.
You could make a much more solid argument if you were more concerned with why you believe what you do and less concerned with how arrogant you think a complete stranger is because you dislike what he says. But if we are going to talk of arrogance, I have to say that it's really rather arrogant to argue that a product redesign is needed to assure the success of HDTV equipment because Joe Sixpack is so ignorant that the current situation exceeds his capabilities. Contrast that with what I am getting at, which is that I expect a bit better than that and I say that Joe Sixpack can make informed decisions that lead to better experiences if he really wants to. No one is preventing Joe Sixpack from doing this other than Joe Sixpack. On a deeper level, I personally believe that w
Someone needs to build these players into a good HDTV so the lay public doesn't have to get the Wires and the Settings correct.
What's that joke, that the definition of "expert" is "someone who can read the manual?" Seriously, I don't feel the slightest bit of sorrow for people who are defeated by the requirement that they do a (very) small amount of one-time research to fully utilize their high-dollar equipment. The more expensive said equipment is, the more senseless it is to allow your own laziness to keep you from enjoying its full capabilities, and someone who experiences lower quality because of this simple principle is merely paying the Willful Helplessness Tax. "Garbage in, garbage out" doesn't just apply to computers. Please, stop portraying these people as victims of "defective" products; this world has become dumbed-down enough already.
The first time some kid mixes something that he wasn't supposed to makes an explosive, corrosive mixture that "puts an eye out", the company that made that kit gets sued.
Sure, lawyers profit from this and politicians talk a big game about how much they care about your safety. And do you know what is at the root of this, the one factor that allows all of the rest to happen? Parents -- specifically, parents who either don't want to do their job or don't know how. A kid who uses something like a chemistry set under the supervision of his parents, who take the time to instruct him in what is safe and what is not and why this is so, and show by example (the only correct way to do so) how to be responsible and how to correctly manage something that could be a danger if mismanaged, and show the kid what it means to have a healthy respect for things, is not going to blow the house up and is not going to lose an eye. If this means keeping the chemistry set under lock and key to make sure that this happens, then so be it, but that probably won't be necessary because a child who is treated this way is likely to respect his parents for reasons other than "they might punish me" and will appreciate this kind of instruction and trust.
Chemistry sets aren't the only casualties in this stupid attempt to shift the burden of raising children from the parents to the society at large by trying to neuter every last thing and remove all potential for any harm and honestly, I'm sick of it. Whenever I hear about a child getting hurt with, say, fireworks, my first thought is not "damn those evil fireworks"; it's "where were the parents when this happened?" No matter what you do, shit happens to some degree, but it's amazing how preventable almost all of these incidents really are and how reluctant most people are to admit this. I realize that having and caring for children is a very tough job, but that's not a reason to force everyone else to suffer, it's a reason to not have them until you're prepared to be fully responsible for them.
There are more trolls moderating... than there are posting. Just keep that in mind. No-nonsense honest bare-naked opinions are not rewarded here, but compliance to the homogenized baseline is.
The thing about that, is that there is no homogenized baseline unless people choose to comply with it, so the antidote to that is clear.
I also think a big part of that problem is that people no longer seem to understand that when you read a book, an article, or a Slashdot post, you are reading the perspective of its author; there is a similar failure to understand that any time you speak about more than one specific individual you must, of necessity, speak in general terms. Very few authors ever claim that what they are saying is absolutely true in all cases with no exceptions and represents every possible instance of $SUBJECT, but when you speak with confidence as one who has an informed opinion, it is usually taken that way. This is because there are many insecure people who feel threatened by that and therefore feel justified in attacking you for it (as opposed to disagreeing). The result is that people think they are being clever when they point out an exception to what was never represented as an absolute truth, or they think they are being righteous when they go the "who are YOU to judge?" route.
If you're not pissing people off, you're not making any progress.
Haha, I certainly do agree with that. Although, that tends to be true only because people are less interested in truth and more interested in identifying with causes that they must then defend. This need to conform and feel like part of the consensus is again a matter of insecurity; unfortunately, it often leads to all sorts of manipulation and attempts to silence.
The AC said "As the 8th most common element (by mass) in the Universe. Do we really need to worry about recycling?"
And for this he/she was modded Troll. That the AC missed the point that recycling the CPU wafers is about not wasting the effort and energy that went into creating them and is not about the abundance of unrefined silicon is most likely a simple careless mistake and there is no evidence to the contrary. Assuming that it's a deliberate troll attempt and wasting mod points that could have been used to promote the responses that corrected it, in my mind, says more about the moderator who did this than about the AC who was factually wrong (for whatever reason).
Why am I bothering to write this, knowing I will probably be modded down? Because I have noticed a decline in the quality of judgment calls made by some moderators (certainly not all and not most of them) and it tends to express itself in this way. Meta-moderating is great and I gladly do it every time it comes up, but if I meta-mod something as "Unfair" it does nothing to explain why I thought so. Moderating isn't supposed to be about kicking ass, it's more of a small way that we can contribute to a site that we enjoy reading, posting, and yes even trolling in order to make it a better place, but that's true only so long as we have that intention behind it.
For all I know, you have correctly described the AC (since I can't claim to read his/her mind), but there IS more to that perception. It's that Microsoft has an effective, well-financed marketing department with lots of advertisements and
I like Linux because its traditionally lacked the hype of MS, so the existence of zealotry in Linux detracts from it. More programmers, less hype. Is that such a bad thing? Just because MS does it, does it mean we do?
Generally my preference for Linux has to do with its suitability for my purposes and what I need an OS to do (and I like it for what it does not do as much as for what it does do), so I really consider hype etc. to be "not my problem". To me, marketing and glossy ads, being rooted in a desire to manipulate/influence behavior, are not a valid basis for any decisions, not to mention that if I want information about a product, I prefer sources less biased than that product's maker (i.e. "of course Windows is the best... if you ask Microsoft"). Having said that, you quoted me a bit out of context -- that Microsoft is an effective marketer is, for me, a good reason why they don't need help in this area and thus the pro-Windows posters who defend it quite naturally will attract cynical comments regarding their motives. That's especially true when you consider that, assuming no shills, they are acting either out of resentment towards the more irrational Windows detractors (sounds noble until you realize you're feeding trolls and playing their game) or they are acting like football fans rooting for their team ("we won"? I didn't see you on that field) and celebrating success that is not their own. This wasn't really intended to be a comparison of Linux advocates versus Windows advocates since nothing about that observation requires a counter-example, but I will say I agree that Microsoft's marketing is not your leader unless you choose to be their follower.
In fact, I believe that people who install and learn how to use Linux tend to do so for reasons different from why people use Windows. That most users probably did not have Linux pre-installed (although Linux pre-installs are slowly becoming more common) and had to do it themselves shows initiative, implying that they made a conscious choice that the people who use Windows because "it's what it came with" are less likely to have made. The people who continue using it are also showing that they can handle the learning curve of an OS that in many ways is completely alien from the mainstream, both in its operation and in its philosophy. In my (completely anecdotal) experience, those who do this on their own tend to be able to do their own research ("RTFM") and solve their own problems without needing someone to hold their hand, therefore it's a learning experience and an exercise in independence and not a "product" for I-just-want-it-to-work instant gratification. This is a fundamental cultural difference and the only way to accommodate people who will not appreciate this kind of learning and independence is to pander to them, that is, to make Linux more like a clone of Windows. If this happened it would negatively impact everything I like the most about Linux and its users, at least for any distributions that did this. If this became the norm, the hype would be sure to follow.
That's because Linux isn't just an operating system, IT'S A CAUSE... yet another independent thing that was nifty and kinda cool before a bunch of halfwitted politicos aped it and turned it into something else.
For all I know, you have correctly described the AC (since I can't claim to read his/her mind), but there IS more to that perception. It's that Microsoft has an effective, well-financed marketing department with lots of advertisements and PR that can advocate their OS (and other products) better than a slashdotter could, and if they disagreed with my assessment then they would make those slashdotters a job offer. So far as I know, this has not happened; therefore, the question is why would you want to do some of their work for them without compensation? There are surely multiple reasons why someone would do that - lots of people really do like Windows, after all - it so happens that the "paid shill" idea is one possibility that explains this behavior. As a for-profit corporation, Microsoft is very good at what they do, which is making money for their shareholders, so such charity seems misplaced and invites cynical explanations -- no politicos or causes required.
Note that I am not commenting on the likelihood of the "paid shill" explanation or whether I think that's true in this case -- everyone can make up their own mind about that one. I am merely explaining how the nature of the situation lends itself to this kind of commentary.
I have a gun, it is loaded with 3 bullets. I aim it at your head and pull the trigger 3 times.
What's the problem here, the fact that I had a loaded gun perfectly capable of killing you, or that I pulled the trigger?
If you take the trigger off the gun, you aren't going to be dead, no matter how many bullets are in there, because I can't fire it. You needn't worry about the gun, or my intent to kill you, because it's *not going to happen without that trigger*.
That gun is an inanimate object with no ability to act on its own, so the ultimate cause here (in this hypothetical situation) would be your reason for wanting to use one. Put another way, when someone is shot and killed, there is a good reason why we put the shooter on trial and not the gun. People managed to do lots of killing before guns were ever invented. It so happens that guns require far less training and dedication to effectively wield than, say, an edged weapon, but like edged weapons they are a tool, a means to an end. The reasons why someone would ever want to present lethal force came before the gun, not after it -- the gun merely proved effective in fulfilling this desire. Fix that desire and you'll find far fewer loaded guns out there, so this is cart-before-the-horse, reverse causation thinking.
Fix the drivers, fix the problem. Activation is annoying but it is part of life.
See, right there you reveal that you are accepting and putting up with something you do not like. This would be a totally different conversation if you really thought activation was a great idea and were thankful for the "opportunity" to have it on your computer. That means you already have the perspective needed to be more objective about this. Most "necessary evils" are not really so necessary at all, which is why there are so many excuses for them.
As far as I know, the drivers otherwise were not "broken". The video driver still talked to your video card, the audio driver still talked to your sound hardware; it's only this need for Microsoft to exert control and the way it was implemented that broke anything. That Microsoft wants to exert more control is nice for Microsoft I guess, but why would I pay them money and reward them for this? Activation is annoying and that's why I don't choose for it to be a part of my life. What, do you think that because Microsoft does something, that now it's an inescapable part of living on planet Earth, like death and taxes? Maybe you're too much of a sheep to understand this (no offense intended - this could be an important realization for you), but this isn't "just the way things are", it's a function of what people will put up with until either an alternative is chosen (that's what I did, ten years ago) or until there is a backlash. You can play the victim like this as much as you want, but don't expect me to call that something other than what it really is. The reality is that you are choosing to deal with a company that is not operating out of good faith (why else do they want you to prove that you didn't "steal" their products?); saying that making choices like that subjects you to these sorts of problems and annoyances is a lot like saying that it hurts when you slam your head against the wall. What I am trying to tell you here is far more important than Vista activation or Windows vs. Linux.
As is accepting EULAs, and typing in product keys.. I certainly do know of a lot of GPL software which, despite being free, forces me to accept an "EULA" (be that the GPL) when I install it. I have to ACCEPT the license before it lets me copy files from a packed executable into my system. It's the bloody GPL!!! Am I forced to go through this crap every time I want to install some software?
Really? When I use "emerge openoffice" or "emerge mozilla-firefox" it simply installs those apps with no questions asked and no interaction required
So, is this a "Activation Sucks!!" issue or a "Windows Hardware Quality Labs are a bunch of fucking fakers!?" issue?
I call the latter. Requiring product activation is something you have to do these days with software. Oh well, live with it.
I certainly appreciate that software licensed under the GPL doesn't "have" to do this to me. Microsoft may think you "have" to do that, but they certainly made a lot of money on products that did not have this nuisance, so what else is it but either a desperation move or an increase in aggression?
If it's not Windows itself, it's Adobe CS3 or CorelDraw or whatever else.
Complacency is an ugly thing. Once you decide to get comfortable with a practice and downplay its problems, you can surely expect to receive more of it.
Microsoft are not the only culprit here on activation problems, and the problems are not down to the activation concept, but some weird driver identifier reporting system.
The "weird driver identifier reporting system" was not the cause of this problem; the presence and severity of a non-essential and completely useless (to the customer) activation system was the cause. The driver update was merely the trigger. The more complex a system is, the more likely it is to break in some way; such needless complications increase the likelihood of some kind of failure and generally indicate lower quality. Especially when you consider that this is an active system that could decide that your installation is illegitimate at any time, based on arbritrary criteria that you cannot examine, tell me why I should ever buy a Microsoft OS?
Which books are digitized anyway? With copyright being as ridiculous as it is (what is it, 50-100 years after the death of the author?), are we likely to see anything modern in such a collection? I would hope that libraries would have some sort of exemption from this, except that in this case it sounds like the data might be used for commercial searches. I also wonder if these will be regular PDFs or if there will be some sort of DRM on them. Can anyone more knowledgable weigh in on this?
75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw took her claw hammer back to the customer service center and bludgeoned the office equipment into tiny plastic pieces."
She's rather old, so I guess the office equipment was easier for her to catch than the employees.
When first I read "both sides" I thought there'd be an interesting link on Congressional wiretaps. This is, after all, on its face a conflict between the federal executive and Congress, so that is naturally the dichotomy that came to my mind when I read "both sides."
I'm saddened by the realization that I am probably part of a slim minority that did not reflexively break this down into a partisan issue.
That "both sides" is also a term used to create the impression that there is no one else other than the Democrats or the Republicans who would like to win elections and hold office. Contrast with "two of the parties" or "the two major parties" etc. In reality, there are third parties (my favorite being the Libertarian party -- they're the only ones I know of who would be willing to take radical steps to decrease the size and power of government and the dependency it creates) who would gladly do this and are routinely ignored or otherwise marginalized, since threatening to change the status quo is a great way to make sure you don't get the kind of support you need to win elections. The Sean Hannities and Rush Limbaughs of the world seem to pride themselves on their willingness to criticize both major parties, yet they also pretend that there's no alternatives available so we're just stuck with these two. This is hard to attribute to ignorance and is probably a deliberate technique; whether accidental or otherwise this is simply a false dichotomy that greatly limits choice.
My response had more to do with the barrage of friend/foe messages I get whenever I post something remotely controversial, and that's fairly often since the majority consensus is not typically very enlightening or otherwise useful to me for anything but the most black-and-white of subjects. I feel that if you like what I said, or don't like what I said, it's more constructive to express that by adding your own post than to give this vague thumbs up/thumbs down signal that never explains why.
that, and i like to get drunk and change my friends/foe list to make little bitches cry.
Someone who would "cry" over that really is a little bitch, which was part of my point. I'm not saying such lists are "evil" or anything like that, just that they are not worth taking seriously.
you have a surplus of self esteem though, so i wohiccupn't bother...
It's not really self-esteem -- that's usually just another euphamism for pride. It's simply a refusal to let the opinions of others influence my mindstate, because that may seem natural to do (since you're surrounded by people who constantly let this happen) but it's actually a form of slavery, a willingness to hand over control of your emotions to anyone who can push your buttons. I don't personally use the friend/foe list since I care about the content of a post a lot more than I care about who posted it (and good or bad, few users consistently have the same quality to their postings, although I generally consider variety to be good) but if it's a benefit to you, then I say hell yeah.
The whole friend/foe list thing is pretty stupid and just makes people feel better about themselves by either "supporting" or expressing displeasure (both without actually doing or changing anything) with someone that they decide they like or don't like. It's just mental masturbation, a way someone can feel important or like they are "making a statement" without having to put one shred of effort into anything. I'm glad I disabled this silliness in my message settings, so you can add or remove me from whatever list you like and I will never know about it.
Advertising a fake low price is a form of bait and switch. My take is that if someone goes through the trouble of ordering something, there's a good chance they won't stop just because the price is a bit higher than they expected. The extra cost of buying from the dishonest merchant is deliberately less than going through the price searching process again.
The only realistic solution to this is to allow princinple to be a major influence in our buying decisions. Then, the question of whether you sustain an extra cost of buying from a dishonest merchant is replaced by a willingness to sustain 5x that extra cost if it means that you know you are not subsidizing people who do not do business in good faith. It really boils down to whether knowing that you are not part of the problem (by rewarding this behavior) is more important to you than a little money. If this were more widespread, there would be little incentive to use bait-and-switch tactics like this, but alas most people only enjoy their "principles" when they don't come with a price tag.
to this is to maintain a "shitlist" of companies that have been known to use deceptive marketing practices, or other abuses such as Sony's rootkit, and make this list easily accessible (a well-known Web site) to anyone who is making a purchasing decision. At the very least, it could make the difference between a pre-order of an unreleased product versus waiting a couple of months to let someone else be the guinea pig -- that shiny new object isn't so shiny anymore if you know it might be a lemon. The idea isn't necessarily that you would never want to do business with a company on the list (although that's certainly possible), just that you would know that you were taking a risk and would take measures to minimize it, i.e. by not pre-ordering a product that has yet to be released or otherwise trusting the word of that company to be correct.
This list should have a reasonable minimum amount of time before any company can be removed (no matter how quickly they improve) and would of course require that the deception/abuse be thoroughly documented, preferably from multiple sources (the standard for this should be high to avoid having the list abused).
Just as government is supposed to fear its people and not the other way around, I believe that companies should fear losing customers instead of customers being in fear of getting a bad deal.
They build a mechanism that fitted the world as they knew it, not the modern world.
Some things are timeless, such as the observation that, given enough time, all governments decay into police states or dictatorships unless proactive steps are taken, primarily by those who can see the obvious, to prevent this. This is simply entropy on a large scale. The USA has already exceeded the life expectancy of a constitutional republic by nearly fifty years.
Modern things you might need from the government you will find research (that today cost so much that only the government can allow itself basic research), and some way to support the economy (like subsidies for education. This method works well in northern europe).
The government really has no legitimate reason to be in the education business, and if you actually research how "public" (government) schools got started you will find that the intentions of those who founded them in the USA and elsewhere were not nearly so noble as the common belief that it was done to benefit the public. The founders of it were surprisingly open about the fact that it was for the purpose of social control, not education. For example, Andrew Bell was fascinated by the schools in India, which had the sole purpose of instilling a docile, unquestioning servitude in the vast majority of the population (all except those from the Brahma, warrior, and industrial/trade caste) in order to maintain the caste system that could otherwise be overthrown by a revolution, since the menial and the "untouchable" castes were 95% of the population! A Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, was instrumental in bringing a system like this first to London and then to the USA; and while he had better intentions, he mistakenly believed that such a system could be used to achieve a different effect. ** Prior to the First World War, Woodrow Wilson gave a speech during which he said:
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
Around 1917, a group known as the "Education Trust" took control of the administration of the schools in the USA. This group consisted of people like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association. ** According to Benjamin Kidd, the chief goal of this group was to "impose on the young the ideal of subordination." When you consider who these people are, you can see why they would want that, but it would be absurd to claim that this is for the public good, or that it's acceptable for government to use state police power to mandate compulsory education in order to meet this goal.
** Both of those quotes are almost directly from the book The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto, and the full text can be read here. This is a complete book so you won't be reading the whole thing in ten minutes, but I would strongly encourage everyone to read it, since it's one of the best I have read on the subject.
This is nonsense, you are replacing the reason and the outcome. Any totalitaric regime is too involved in the everyday lives of its citizens, but it usually what it does after seizing power.
That's just it. The USA government is already too large and is already too powerful and is already too involved in the lives of its citizens. The people behind this are very smart and realize that seizing power all at once would probably create a backlash, so they are currently still busy establishing a national enemy -- Germany blamed its problems on the Jews, and we blame our problems on drugs, guns, and now terrorists (nevermind that you are more likely to be injured by a lightning strike than by a ter
You assume that the Founding Fathers intended for 90% of the government to come from local/state level, it might even be correct. However, the question is not what were their intentions but what is written in the constitution. By the way, they also intended for black people to be slaves and for women to have no vote, do you think anyone who think differently should not be entitled to vote? You might not say there is only one correct way to do things, but you definitly say there is a very small number of ways, and they can't be very different from yours.
I know of no writings left by the Founding Fathers where they stated that they believed slavery was right; I personally tend to believe that they realized they could not win that battle (look how long it took for the abolition movement to succeed) and focused pragmatically on what was within their power to achieve but I have not seen much evidence on this either way. Also, when it is studied objectively, it has been found that allowing women to vote may not be the best idea, because they tend to value security more than freedom and the type of security that government has to offer is a very dangerous thing. Please see the studies; there are very strong correlations between granting women suffrage and the expansion of the size and power of government. Some links: A brief summary that mentions this same belief, shared by a woman, a paper by John Lott on the subject (I believe this one is originally from here) and a general, light read on why big government is a bad idea here. You will find, however, that this is a subject where the facts tend not to reflect what people want to hear, and (because people often act like spoiled children when this is the case) it's hard to have a discussion about it in which people actually stick to facts and logic.
Regarding the "very small number of ways", I didn't just make this up in a vacuum, you know. Study a little history and you will find it plainly evident that every nation which has ever become a police state or a fascist dictatorship did so by allowing its government to become too large and too powerful and too involved in the everyday lives of its citizens and by considered myriad things other than defense, public works, and law enforcement to be its business. The idea is so simple. When an organ in the body carries out its function and serves the rest of the body (when the heart's only concern is pumping blood, when the lungs' only concern is respiration, etc.), that body is healthy; when an organ draws a disproportionate share of resources and multiplies its cells beyond what is necessary for its function, it grows out of control, concerns itself only with its own perpetuation, and becomes a cancer that threatens to kill the rest of the body. Likewise, government does the same and becomes a parasite feeding on its own people when it becomes the all-important solution to every problem and starts making decisions for its people when there is no legitimate public interest in doing so (although plenty of busybodies will invent such reasons to satisfy their need to control others), such as when it attempts to tell consenting adults what they may and may not do in their own homes.
As for income tax, it allows you a higher level of taxation over those who can handle it (that is, relatively rich people). This allows Capitalism to work, without an income tax, the ever-growing income differences will make one of the two systems collapse - the Democracy or the Capitalism. You could get the same effect from sales tax, but only if you make it progressive by different levels of taxation on different products, so basic products will be (at least, almost) tax free, and luxuries will be taxed heavily.
The idea of a civics test is not a particular outcome as you seem to suggest (nice straw man btw), but the more basic concepts of how the system is implemented. It would require that the voter knows i.e. what the executive branch does that the legislative does not, the intentions behind the Bill of Rights and what they were designed to protect (and what they were designed to protect from), and that government only really does three things well, which are: defense, law enforcement, and public works. Someone who could pass such a test would probably also know that the Founding Fathers intended for the vast majority (90+%) of government to come from the local and state level during peacetime. Someone who understand very well how the system is implemented would also tend to recognize when it is being abused, either by vote-buying programs or by noticing how asset forfeiture laws directly contradict the 4th Amendment or by observing that the Fairness Doctrine contradicts the First Amendment. Widespread ignorance is the main reason why these things have gone on without much of a challenge, and a requirement that you need to such pass a test before you may vote would help ensure that those who choose to remain ignorant (which is fine, it is their choice) will not collectively have power over everyone else (which is not fine).
It's not so much the idea of a "correct" form of government as much as it would be a requirement that we actually learn from history and understand why some ideas have proven to be better than others. Also why some practices, such as allowing the government to take care of items beyond its purview like the various entitlement programs (sorry but if you're 20 years old and can't figure out that one day you will grow old and will want to retire, and that the time to start saving for that is right now, then perhaps you should serve as an example to others ala the ant and the grasshopper and not consider this the federal government's problem as though you were some baby who needs to be taken care of) tend to lead to the tyranny of a police state. That is the main way that rulers weaken their people and make them dependent; they do so by taking care of things for you that you really should be taking care of yourself yet they never do as good of a job as you could have done; compare the average Social Security payout with someone who has saved money in a Roth IRA for example.
While I won't say that there is One Correct Way to do things (that would be silly in this case), there is certainly a correct approach to the problem of how to govern. That correct form would stay the fuck out of my life whenever possible, would recogize that consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they damned well please as long as they do not harm someone against their will (doing drugs in your own home and bothering no one, OK - doing drugs and driving a car and endangering others, NOT OK - see the difference?), and would not use deficit spending and unsustainable income transfer programs and class warfare (progressive income taxes) to buy votes and encourage a "what can I get out of this" mentality. Income taxes are designed to manipulate behavior; that is the only "feature" they offer that a national sales tax does not (and indeed a national sales tax would generate MORE revenue since it would be more difficult to cheat and now foreigners visiting here would also pay taxes) so I don't consider them to be a "correct" form either. Care to tell me what's wrong with these ideas or will you continue to pontificate from a veiled "who is he to say that" stance? Because what you will eventually notice is that there is such a thing as truth (if you say there isn't I will merely ask you "is that true?") and that learning from past mistakes is a good way to get closer to it. Business does this all the time, refining production and marketing ideas etc.; the problem with government is that it doesn't have any competition so the incentive to improve must come from us.
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It's just an analogy; once its point is made, it's no longer useful. Take it as far as you like.
Okay, let's assume 100 different OSs in common use as you are saying here. The idea is not that none of them have exploits, or that 99 of them being secure means nothing if one is exploitable. The idea is that they each have different exploits, and what allows you to root one of them won't gain you any access on another. The reason why botnets have grown so large is not because a vast army of human beings has launched personal, targeted, hand-crafted attacks against individual machines. Botnets have grown so large because a single automated piece of malware can self-propagate with a success rate that is far higher than it should be. I did not claim that more OS variety would be some perfect, ultimate solution. What I am saying is that (in some ways) we are collectively behaving as though we wanted to make the blackhat's job as easy as possible, enabling write-once-run-almost-anywhere malware that allows them to do great damage with little effort.
I know you mean well with that comment, but referring to this as "growing pains" is tantamount to saying that it's normal and acceptable and couldn't have been any other way and gee-whiz I hope it gets better soon. To do so is to make an excuse for it. The reality is that almost all of it is caused by poor decision-making by people who could not be bothered to inform themselves because making better choices was not worth the effort (to them). All I am saying is that this is a "garbage in, garbage out" scenario, and laziness is one way to do "garbage in". And yes, it is often laziness; you don't need to be a computer security expert to understand that executing binaries from unknown sources is a bad idea. Anyone who has ever truly pursued a goal that required extreme effort and dedication and discipline can understand that the entry-level book or two that the average person would have to read to be aware of most threats out there (which would vastly improve their security practices) is trivial. They don't WANT to learn; otherwise, they would be self-starters who do it on their own and practically nothing could stop them, certainly not an "its too HAAAARD" attitude.
The reason why this was done is because it's so much more convenient and "easier to use than EVER!!" compared to either not having such functionality, or having it severely locked down (say, whitelist-only, with restrictions).
The Windows monoculture is simply why most users take the presence of such "features" for granted and can't imagine doing things any other way. It's why such a design can instantly appear on millions of hosts. It's also why the idea that rebooting is going to magically fix anything, or that crashes and lockups are a normal part of computing are so widely accepted and are not generally questioned. It's why "everybody knows" that you "need" to be using an after-the-fact antivirus or antispyware tool, hoping that it can remove that malware now that you're already infected and can no longer trust that machine. This sort of thing would be less common if visiting their next door neighbor meant that a user was likely to see a very different system with a saner design. Lousy indeed.
There are really only two reasons why botnets and their associated malware have become so prevalent. All other apparent causes stem from these two reasons:
- The Windows monoculture. When this accounts for over 90% of all desktop installations, it's much easier to write a single worm/trojan/virus/etc that can single-handedly infect many thousands of hosts. This greatly reduces the number of vulnerabilities that need to be targeted and the knowledge necessary to exploit them on a large scale, which is a situation that favors the blackhats tremendously. If nature handled genetics this way, then the first lethal contagious disease to come along would destroy civilization. There are good reasons other than their business practices why the Microsoft monopoly is a bad idea. No matter how hard they work to improve security, there will be vulnerabilities, and due to this monopoly any single vulnerability will instantly affect millions of hosts. If you want the Internet overall to be a more secure place, this is not a good start. I believe this would be the case with any single vendor controlling this much of the market. Consider also that security is not the only selling point of Windows; convenience and "easier to use than EVER!" are also major factors and (especially convenience) are not compatible with security. The boilerplate nature of most commercial software is also a factor here.
- The lack of education of the average user. I don't really know whether this is more or less difficult to address than the first item. The fact is that most users don't give a damn about security, at least not until their identity gets stolen or their data gets deleted or $AUTHORITY_FIGURE knocks on their door asking why their machine is attacking other machines. This appears to be because they don't see their security as their responsibility; they feel that this is entirely $VENDOR's problem. That they would feel this way is a foreseeable consequence of widespread "more convenient and easier to use than ever!" marketing, since this sets up the expectation that it will Just Work with no effort. While it would be easy to blame this on Microsoft since they have profited handsomely from it, I personally believe that this is an aspect of our general instant-gratification culture that effectively says nothing is worth putting any time and effort into; Microsoft merely had the business sense to realize that catering to it is the path to profit. It's difficult to seriously blame a company for doing something when nearly everyone is rewarding them for it. Because of this, if you try to educate people regarding things like system security, what you will find is that not only are most users ignorant, they don't WANT to learn. They see "all that technobabble" as an inconvenience, yet they insist on using equipment that requires some technical skill to properly maintain. This is something of a Catch-22 because Microsoft would build a much more secure Windows if no one would buy Windows otherwise, but average users with little technical skill are not going to create this kind of market.
Just like after-the-infection virus and spyware removal tools, this botnet detector is NOT a real solution, it's a form of damage control and should only be represented as such.What I really want to see a long-term plan for dealing with those two points. Until these factors change, we are going to keep having the same kind of problems again and again as the arms race between blackhats and whitehats continues. You are never going to have perfect security, but the current situation where one piece of malware can do tremendous damage on a massive scale is a situation that many people have worked very hard to bring about. Too bad that in a superficial society like ours, we have a huge phobia of actually addressing the roots of our problems because we keep hoping to find some form of an "easy way out" of situations that took a long time to become what they are.
What I don't understand is your idea of cause and effect. Why do you place the blame on the people who might use a cellphone jammer when they are only a reaction to a nuisance that keeps getting worse? The "asshole" is not the guy who gets fed up with widespread blatant rudeness and finally finds a solution; the assholes are the ones with the cell phones who won't be considerate of others in the first place; if not for this, almost no one would have used a jammer. That there are so many such assholes is why being assertive is not practical -- what size mob of immature, self-important other-people-don't-exist assholes who won't take a correction do you want to confront? A jammer is a neat solution that, unlike a confrontation, guarantees that the actual cause of the problem is the one who will be disappointed. Blaming it on the jammers is effectively excusing the root cause of this problem because you dislike one of its symptoms.
That's an understandable use, but don't allow your emotions to impact your judgment. A little thought would lead to the conclusion that if your cellphone is on silent/vibrate mode and it vibrates and you leave the theater and call back where you won't be disturbing anyone, there's no incentive to jam your phone call. I doubt anyone near you would even know that you had a cellphone if you handled it this way. Unless you believe that people buy jammers because strangers have a personal vendetta against you and just want to make you miserable (they call this paranoia), then by your own reasoning the jammers won't be after you or anyone who handles this the way that you do. The more rare your politeness is (and this is increasingly the case), the more likely it is to be very much appreciated.
This really seems to be coming from an assumption that a jammer would be operating continuously. I don't own a jammer (and don't plan to since using one is illegal) but if I had one, I know I would not want a microwave frequency radiation source emitting continuously from my person. It's the kind of thing that can't be good for you long-term. Then there's the question of how heavy the batteries would be and how many you want to carry. Considering that continuous use is not at all necessary since you would only need a few seconds to disconnect a call, I think you're inventing a highly unlikely extreme-case scenario backed by an emotional time of your life to justify your universal condemnation.
I could just as easily say "You're living in 2007 now, so if you're rude and inconsiderate and your cell phone call gets dropped by someone with a jammer, then TOUGH FUCKING COOKIES." I find this easier to justify than "someone's being rude, you better lay down and take it."
I wish there were electrified, remotely-activated keyboards just for the purpose of delivering a shock to everyone who posts this meme and all of its variants. The potential for abuse would be worth it. "I for one welcome our new keyboard-electrifying *BZZZZZT* *clunk*"
Amusing that your post is entitled "Wow, what an arrogant stance" and then proceeds to use your own capability as the yardstick by which the degree of difficulty should be measured. "I do X for a living" is not a line of reasoning. At best it's an appeal to authority (i.e. your own) and even then, that's only if your career path bears a direct relation to the subject. When you use a rather specialized skill like programming as one of your qualifications, and then proceed to talk about how bad it is that Joe Sixpack might not know he needs a cable, it doesn't work because you are effectively comparing a specialty to a matter of reading the manual. Put another way, Albert Einstein was an incredibly smart man with a high IQ who revolutionized physics, yet he often had problems dressing himself; it does not follow that therefore the average person has a difficult time putting on his shoes.
I never made that claim and in fact gave an entirely different reason for why I feel the way I do about this issue (that things are dumbed-down enough as it is). Due to this, I must conclude that either reading comprehension is not your strongest talent, or you feel a need to resort to making shit up to justify what you want to believe. Furthermore, I said that to spend a non-trivial amount of money on something and then not bother to inform yourself about the most basic aspects of how to use it is willful helplessness and I was clearly against this practice. I'll break down for you what that means -- if what I said there is listened to and understood, then Joe Sixpack won't think that HDTV is a scam due to a missing cable, because he would not have been ignorant enough to reach this false conclusion due to something so basic.
This really is a very basic thing; to treat it as though it's some unreasonably hard task, like I am expecting Joe Sixpack to be able to write the HD player's firmware in assembly, is ridiculous. If you were trying to make the point that manufacturers could do a better job of designing their products (which is an issue separate from whether the inability to do basic problem-solving is a personal flaw), this isn't the way to go about it.
Alternate explanation: HDTV is an incremental improvement over TV, not a revolutionary, must-have killer app that calls for overnight, universal adoption. Compounding this is the fact that there remains a very large volume of content in standard-definition and this will be the case for a little while yet. Considering these two observations, it should not come as a shock that HDTV rollout has been slow.
You could make a much more solid argument if you were more concerned with why you believe what you do and less concerned with how arrogant you think a complete stranger is because you dislike what he says. But if we are going to talk of arrogance, I have to say that it's really rather arrogant to argue that a product redesign is needed to assure the success of HDTV equipment because Joe Sixpack is so ignorant that the current situation exceeds his capabilities. Contrast that with what I am getting at, which is that I expect a bit better than that and I say that Joe Sixpack can make informed decisions that lead to better experiences if he really wants to. No one is preventing Joe Sixpack from doing this other than Joe Sixpack. On a deeper level, I personally believe that w
What's that joke, that the definition of "expert" is "someone who can read the manual?" Seriously, I don't feel the slightest bit of sorrow for people who are defeated by the requirement that they do a (very) small amount of one-time research to fully utilize their high-dollar equipment. The more expensive said equipment is, the more senseless it is to allow your own laziness to keep you from enjoying its full capabilities, and someone who experiences lower quality because of this simple principle is merely paying the Willful Helplessness Tax. "Garbage in, garbage out" doesn't just apply to computers. Please, stop portraying these people as victims of "defective" products; this world has become dumbed-down enough already.
Sure, lawyers profit from this and politicians talk a big game about how much they care about your safety. And do you know what is at the root of this, the one factor that allows all of the rest to happen? Parents -- specifically, parents who either don't want to do their job or don't know how. A kid who uses something like a chemistry set under the supervision of his parents, who take the time to instruct him in what is safe and what is not and why this is so, and show by example (the only correct way to do so) how to be responsible and how to correctly manage something that could be a danger if mismanaged, and show the kid what it means to have a healthy respect for things, is not going to blow the house up and is not going to lose an eye. If this means keeping the chemistry set under lock and key to make sure that this happens, then so be it, but that probably won't be necessary because a child who is treated this way is likely to respect his parents for reasons other than "they might punish me" and will appreciate this kind of instruction and trust.
Chemistry sets aren't the only casualties in this stupid attempt to shift the burden of raising children from the parents to the society at large by trying to neuter every last thing and remove all potential for any harm and honestly, I'm sick of it. Whenever I hear about a child getting hurt with, say, fireworks, my first thought is not "damn those evil fireworks"; it's "where were the parents when this happened?" No matter what you do, shit happens to some degree, but it's amazing how preventable almost all of these incidents really are and how reluctant most people are to admit this. I realize that having and caring for children is a very tough job, but that's not a reason to force everyone else to suffer, it's a reason to not have them until you're prepared to be fully responsible for them.
The thing about that, is that there is no homogenized baseline unless people choose to comply with it, so the antidote to that is clear.
I also think a big part of that problem is that people no longer seem to understand that when you read a book, an article, or a Slashdot post, you are reading the perspective of its author; there is a similar failure to understand that any time you speak about more than one specific individual you must, of necessity, speak in general terms. Very few authors ever claim that what they are saying is absolutely true in all cases with no exceptions and represents every possible instance of $SUBJECT, but when you speak with confidence as one who has an informed opinion, it is usually taken that way. This is because there are many insecure people who feel threatened by that and therefore feel justified in attacking you for it (as opposed to disagreeing). The result is that people think they are being clever when they point out an exception to what was never represented as an absolute truth, or they think they are being righteous when they go the "who are YOU to judge?" route.
Haha, I certainly do agree with that. Although, that tends to be true only because people are less interested in truth and more interested in identifying with causes that they must then defend. This need to conform and feel like part of the consensus is again a matter of insecurity; unfortunately, it often leads to all sorts of manipulation and attempts to silence.
The AC said "As the 8th most common element (by mass) in the Universe. Do we really need to worry about recycling?"
And for this he/she was modded Troll. That the AC missed the point that recycling the CPU wafers is about not wasting the effort and energy that went into creating them and is not about the abundance of unrefined silicon is most likely a simple careless mistake and there is no evidence to the contrary. Assuming that it's a deliberate troll attempt and wasting mod points that could have been used to promote the responses that corrected it, in my mind, says more about the moderator who did this than about the AC who was factually wrong (for whatever reason).
Why am I bothering to write this, knowing I will probably be modded down? Because I have noticed a decline in the quality of judgment calls made by some moderators (certainly not all and not most of them) and it tends to express itself in this way. Meta-moderating is great and I gladly do it every time it comes up, but if I meta-mod something as "Unfair" it does nothing to explain why I thought so. Moderating isn't supposed to be about kicking ass, it's more of a small way that we can contribute to a site that we enjoy reading, posting, and yes even trolling in order to make it a better place, but that's true only so long as we have that intention behind it.
Generally my preference for Linux has to do with its suitability for my purposes and what I need an OS to do (and I like it for what it does not do as much as for what it does do), so I really consider hype etc. to be "not my problem". To me, marketing and glossy ads, being rooted in a desire to manipulate/influence behavior, are not a valid basis for any decisions, not to mention that if I want information about a product, I prefer sources less biased than that product's maker (i.e. "of course Windows is the best
In fact, I believe that people who install and learn how to use Linux tend to do so for reasons different from why people use Windows. That most users probably did not have Linux pre-installed (although Linux pre-installs are slowly becoming more common) and had to do it themselves shows initiative, implying that they made a conscious choice that the people who use Windows because "it's what it came with" are less likely to have made. The people who continue using it are also showing that they can handle the learning curve of an OS that in many ways is completely alien from the mainstream, both in its operation and in its philosophy. In my (completely anecdotal) experience, those who do this on their own tend to be able to do their own research ("RTFM") and solve their own problems without needing someone to hold their hand, therefore it's a learning experience and an exercise in independence and not a "product" for I-just-want-it-to-work instant gratification. This is a fundamental cultural difference and the only way to accommodate people who will not appreciate this kind of learning and independence is to pander to them, that is, to make Linux more like a clone of Windows. If this happened it would negatively impact everything I like the most about Linux and its users, at least for any distributions that did this. If this became the norm, the hype would be sure to follow.
For all I know, you have correctly described the AC (since I can't claim to read his/her mind), but there IS more to that perception. It's that Microsoft has an effective, well-financed marketing department with lots of advertisements and PR that can advocate their OS (and other products) better than a slashdotter could, and if they disagreed with my assessment then they would make those slashdotters a job offer. So far as I know, this has not happened; therefore, the question is why would you want to do some of their work for them without compensation? There are surely multiple reasons why someone would do that - lots of people really do like Windows, after all - it so happens that the "paid shill" idea is one possibility that explains this behavior. As a for-profit corporation, Microsoft is very good at what they do, which is making money for their shareholders, so such charity seems misplaced and invites cynical explanations -- no politicos or causes required.
Note that I am not commenting on the likelihood of the "paid shill" explanation or whether I think that's true in this case -- everyone can make up their own mind about that one. I am merely explaining how the nature of the situation lends itself to this kind of commentary.
That gun is an inanimate object with no ability to act on its own, so the ultimate cause here (in this hypothetical situation) would be your reason for wanting to use one. Put another way, when someone is shot and killed, there is a good reason why we put the shooter on trial and not the gun. People managed to do lots of killing before guns were ever invented. It so happens that guns require far less training and dedication to effectively wield than, say, an edged weapon, but like edged weapons they are a tool, a means to an end. The reasons why someone would ever want to present lethal force came before the gun, not after it -- the gun merely proved effective in fulfilling this desire. Fix that desire and you'll find far fewer loaded guns out there, so this is cart-before-the-horse, reverse causation thinking.
See, right there you reveal that you are accepting and putting up with something you do not like. This would be a totally different conversation if you really thought activation was a great idea and were thankful for the "opportunity" to have it on your computer. That means you already have the perspective needed to be more objective about this. Most "necessary evils" are not really so necessary at all, which is why there are so many excuses for them.
As far as I know, the drivers otherwise were not "broken". The video driver still talked to your video card, the audio driver still talked to your sound hardware; it's only this need for Microsoft to exert control and the way it was implemented that broke anything. That Microsoft wants to exert more control is nice for Microsoft I guess, but why would I pay them money and reward them for this? Activation is annoying and that's why I don't choose for it to be a part of my life. What, do you think that because Microsoft does something, that now it's an inescapable part of living on planet Earth, like death and taxes? Maybe you're too much of a sheep to understand this (no offense intended - this could be an important realization for you), but this isn't "just the way things are", it's a function of what people will put up with until either an alternative is chosen (that's what I did, ten years ago) or until there is a backlash. You can play the victim like this as much as you want, but don't expect me to call that something other than what it really is. The reality is that you are choosing to deal with a company that is not operating out of good faith (why else do they want you to prove that you didn't "steal" their products?); saying that making choices like that subjects you to these sorts of problems and annoyances is a lot like saying that it hurts when you slam your head against the wall. What I am trying to tell you here is far more important than Vista activation or Windows vs. Linux.
Really? When I use "emerge openoffice" or "emerge mozilla-firefox" it simply installs those apps with no questions asked and no interaction required
I certainly appreciate that software licensed under the GPL doesn't "have" to do this to me. Microsoft may think you "have" to do that, but they certainly made a lot of money on products that did not have this nuisance, so what else is it but either a desperation move or an increase in aggression?
Complacency is an ugly thing. Once you decide to get comfortable with a practice and downplay its problems, you can surely expect to receive more of it.
The "weird driver identifier reporting system" was not the cause of this problem; the presence and severity of a non-essential and completely useless (to the customer) activation system was the cause. The driver update was merely the trigger. The more complex a system is, the more likely it is to break in some way; such needless complications increase the likelihood of some kind of failure and generally indicate lower quality. Especially when you consider that this is an active system that could decide that your installation is illegitimate at any time, based on arbritrary criteria that you cannot examine, tell me why I should ever buy a Microsoft OS?
Which books are digitized anyway? With copyright being as ridiculous as it is (what is it, 50-100 years after the death of the author?), are we likely to see anything modern in such a collection? I would hope that libraries would have some sort of exemption from this, except that in this case it sounds like the data might be used for commercial searches. I also wonder if these will be regular PDFs or if there will be some sort of DRM on them. Can anyone more knowledgable weigh in on this?
She's rather old, so I guess the office equipment was easier for her to catch than the employees.
That "both sides" is also a term used to create the impression that there is no one else other than the Democrats or the Republicans who would like to win elections and hold office. Contrast with "two of the parties" or "the two major parties" etc. In reality, there are third parties (my favorite being the Libertarian party -- they're the only ones I know of who would be willing to take radical steps to decrease the size and power of government and the dependency it creates) who would gladly do this and are routinely ignored or otherwise marginalized, since threatening to change the status quo is a great way to make sure you don't get the kind of support you need to win elections. The Sean Hannities and Rush Limbaughs of the world seem to pride themselves on their willingness to criticize both major parties, yet they also pretend that there's no alternatives available so we're just stuck with these two. This is hard to attribute to ignorance and is probably a deliberate technique; whether accidental or otherwise this is simply a false dichotomy that greatly limits choice.
Someone who would "cry" over that really is a little bitch, which was part of my point. I'm not saying such lists are "evil" or anything like that, just that they are not worth taking seriously.
It's not really self-esteem -- that's usually just another euphamism for pride. It's simply a refusal to let the opinions of others influence my mindstate, because that may seem natural to do (since you're surrounded by people who constantly let this happen) but it's actually a form of slavery, a willingness to hand over control of your emotions to anyone who can push your buttons. I don't personally use the friend/foe list since I care about the content of a post a lot more than I care about who posted it (and good or bad, few users consistently have the same quality to their postings, although I generally consider variety to be good) but if it's a benefit to you, then I say hell yeah.
The whole friend/foe list thing is pretty stupid and just makes people feel better about themselves by either "supporting" or expressing displeasure (both without actually doing or changing anything) with someone that they decide they like or don't like. It's just mental masturbation, a way someone can feel important or like they are "making a statement" without having to put one shred of effort into anything. I'm glad I disabled this silliness in my message settings, so you can add or remove me from whatever list you like and I will never know about it.
Were you expecting them to get that right? What do you think they are, EDITORS or something?
The only realistic solution to this is to allow princinple to be a major influence in our buying decisions. Then, the question of whether you sustain an extra cost of buying from a dishonest merchant is replaced by a willingness to sustain 5x that extra cost if it means that you know you are not subsidizing people who do not do business in good faith. It really boils down to whether knowing that you are not part of the problem (by rewarding this behavior) is more important to you than a little money. If this were more widespread, there would be little incentive to use bait-and-switch tactics like this, but alas most people only enjoy their "principles" when they don't come with a price tag.
to this is to maintain a "shitlist" of companies that have been known to use deceptive marketing practices, or other abuses such as Sony's rootkit, and make this list easily accessible (a well-known Web site) to anyone who is making a purchasing decision. At the very least, it could make the difference between a pre-order of an unreleased product versus waiting a couple of months to let someone else be the guinea pig -- that shiny new object isn't so shiny anymore if you know it might be a lemon. The idea isn't necessarily that you would never want to do business with a company on the list (although that's certainly possible), just that you would know that you were taking a risk and would take measures to minimize it, i.e. by not pre-ordering a product that has yet to be released or otherwise trusting the word of that company to be correct.
This list should have a reasonable minimum amount of time before any company can be removed (no matter how quickly they improve) and would of course require that the deception/abuse be thoroughly documented, preferably from multiple sources (the standard for this should be high to avoid having the list abused).
Just as government is supposed to fear its people and not the other way around, I believe that companies should fear losing customers instead of customers being in fear of getting a bad deal.
Some things are timeless, such as the observation that, given enough time, all governments decay into police states or dictatorships unless proactive steps are taken, primarily by those who can see the obvious, to prevent this. This is simply entropy on a large scale. The USA has already exceeded the life expectancy of a constitutional republic by nearly fifty years.
The government really has no legitimate reason to be in the education business, and if you actually research how "public" (government) schools got started you will find that the intentions of those who founded them in the USA and elsewhere were not nearly so noble as the common belief that it was done to benefit the public. The founders of it were surprisingly open about the fact that it was for the purpose of social control, not education. For example, Andrew Bell was fascinated by the schools in India, which had the sole purpose of instilling a docile, unquestioning servitude in the vast majority of the population (all except those from the Brahma, warrior, and industrial/trade caste) in order to maintain the caste system that could otherwise be overthrown by a revolution, since the menial and the "untouchable" castes were 95% of the population! A Quaker, Joseph Lancaster, was instrumental in bringing a system like this first to London and then to the USA; and while he had better intentions, he mistakenly believed that such a system could be used to achieve a different effect. ** Prior to the First World War, Woodrow Wilson gave a speech during which he said:
Around 1917, a group known as the "Education Trust" took control of the administration of the schools in the USA. This group consisted of people like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association. ** According to Benjamin Kidd, the chief goal of this group was to "impose on the young the ideal of subordination." When you consider who these people are, you can see why they would want that, but it would be absurd to claim that this is for the public good, or that it's acceptable for government to use state police power to mandate compulsory education in order to meet this goal.
** Both of those quotes are almost directly from the book The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto, and the full text can be read here. This is a complete book so you won't be reading the whole thing in ten minutes, but I would strongly encourage everyone to read it, since it's one of the best I have read on the subject.
That's just it. The USA government is already too large and is already too powerful and is already too involved in the lives of its citizens. The people behind this are very smart and realize that seizing power all at once would probably create a backlash, so they are currently still busy establishing a national enemy -- Germany blamed its problems on the Jews, and we blame our problems on drugs, guns, and now terrorists (nevermind that you are more likely to be injured by a lightning strike than by a ter
I know of no writings left by the Founding Fathers where they stated that they believed slavery was right; I personally tend to believe that they realized they could not win that battle (look how long it took for the abolition movement to succeed) and focused pragmatically on what was within their power to achieve but I have not seen much evidence on this either way. Also, when it is studied objectively, it has been found that allowing women to vote may not be the best idea, because they tend to value security more than freedom and the type of security that government has to offer is a very dangerous thing. Please see the studies; there are very strong correlations between granting women suffrage and the expansion of the size and power of government. Some links: A brief summary that mentions this same belief, shared by a woman, a paper by John Lott on the subject (I believe this one is originally from here) and a general, light read on why big government is a bad idea here. You will find, however, that this is a subject where the facts tend not to reflect what people want to hear, and (because people often act like spoiled children when this is the case) it's hard to have a discussion about it in which people actually stick to facts and logic.
Regarding the "very small number of ways", I didn't just make this up in a vacuum, you know. Study a little history and you will find it plainly evident that every nation which has ever become a police state or a fascist dictatorship did so by allowing its government to become too large and too powerful and too involved in the everyday lives of its citizens and by considered myriad things other than defense, public works, and law enforcement to be its business. The idea is so simple. When an organ in the body carries out its function and serves the rest of the body (when the heart's only concern is pumping blood, when the lungs' only concern is respiration, etc.), that body is healthy; when an organ draws a disproportionate share of resources and multiplies its cells beyond what is necessary for its function, it grows out of control, concerns itself only with its own perpetuation, and becomes a cancer that threatens to kill the rest of the body. Likewise, government does the same and becomes a parasite feeding on its own people when it becomes the all-important solution to every problem and starts making decisions for its people when there is no legitimate public interest in doing so (although plenty of busybodies will invent such reasons to satisfy their need to control others), such as when it attempts to tell consenting adults what they may and may not do in their own homes.
The idea of a civics test is not a particular outcome as you seem to suggest (nice straw man btw), but the more basic concepts of how the system is implemented. It would require that the voter knows i.e. what the executive branch does that the legislative does not, the intentions behind the Bill of Rights and what they were designed to protect (and what they were designed to protect from), and that government only really does three things well, which are: defense, law enforcement, and public works. Someone who could pass such a test would probably also know that the Founding Fathers intended for the vast majority (90+%) of government to come from the local and state level during peacetime. Someone who understand very well how the system is implemented would also tend to recognize when it is being abused, either by vote-buying programs or by noticing how asset forfeiture laws directly contradict the 4th Amendment or by observing that the Fairness Doctrine contradicts the First Amendment. Widespread ignorance is the main reason why these things have gone on without much of a challenge, and a requirement that you need to such pass a test before you may vote would help ensure that those who choose to remain ignorant (which is fine, it is their choice) will not collectively have power over everyone else (which is not fine).
It's not so much the idea of a "correct" form of government as much as it would be a requirement that we actually learn from history and understand why some ideas have proven to be better than others. Also why some practices, such as allowing the government to take care of items beyond its purview like the various entitlement programs (sorry but if you're 20 years old and can't figure out that one day you will grow old and will want to retire, and that the time to start saving for that is right now, then perhaps you should serve as an example to others ala the ant and the grasshopper and not consider this the federal government's problem as though you were some baby who needs to be taken care of) tend to lead to the tyranny of a police state. That is the main way that rulers weaken their people and make them dependent; they do so by taking care of things for you that you really should be taking care of yourself yet they never do as good of a job as you could have done; compare the average Social Security payout with someone who has saved money in a Roth IRA for example.
While I won't say that there is One Correct Way to do things (that would be silly in this case), there is certainly a correct approach to the problem of how to govern. That correct form would stay the fuck out of my life whenever possible, would recogize that consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they damned well please as long as they do not harm someone against their will (doing drugs in your own home and bothering no one, OK - doing drugs and driving a car and endangering others, NOT OK - see the difference?), and would not use deficit spending and unsustainable income transfer programs and class warfare (progressive income taxes) to buy votes and encourage a "what can I get out of this" mentality. Income taxes are designed to manipulate behavior; that is the only "feature" they offer that a national sales tax does not (and indeed a national sales tax would generate MORE revenue since it would be more difficult to cheat and now foreigners visiting here would also pay taxes) so I don't consider them to be a "correct" form either. Care to tell me what's wrong with these ideas or will you continue to pontificate from a veiled "who is he to say that" stance? Because what you will eventually notice is that there is such a thing as truth (if you say there isn't I will merely ask you "is that true?") and that learning from past mistakes is a good way to get closer to it. Business does this all the time, refining production and marketing ideas etc.; the problem with government is that it doesn't have any competition so the incentive to improve must come from us.