Like it or not, the USA does show all the signs of becoming a police state. That you know this also is apparent when you have a defense mechanism that requires you to stop reading a person's opinion about tech support jobs once you learn that they believe this is true. Now if your argument was that whether the USA is becoming a police state is not relevant in a conversation about the IT industry, then I can see your point. But to call someone a psycho and discredit what they say because they are willing to call a spade a spade is not rational and suggests that you are in denial about this one.
As long as the IE has a dominant role in the browser world, trojan writers will concentrate on it. There are already the first trojans aiming for FF, and I'm not sure if I want them to become more.
We really need to make a document about these lines of "reasoning" in the style of the FUSSP (Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem) and arguments like "well it's only attacked because it's popular" should be one of the check boxes. Then when someone regurgitates this yet again, you can point them towards that section of the document with that particular box checked off. Sure, it might not change anything with regard to the need for new ideas, but it sure would make me feel better.
Rather than mark this as flamebait, I'd like to see someone discredit it on a factual basis. The premise of the parent post seems to rest on IE having less than superb support for W3C standards. Unless this can be demonstrated to be blatantly false then this is not flamebait, it is merely an opinion and the moderator seems to think that the moderation system is how you show disagreement.
The two sides held talks last year in the hopes of avoiding a prolonged format battle similar to the one between Betamax and VHS videotapes in the 1980s, knowing that it could discourage consumers from shifting to the advanced discs and stifle the industry's growth.
I sure wish we could get rid of the overuse of the word "consumer." Here's an example:
In the broadcast TV/advertising business, the advertisers who pay $$ to place commercials on television are the customers, because they are the ones who are providing a source of income for the networks and they are the ones to whom the programming is catered; that is, a show makes it to television because it was successfully sold to enough advertisers who were convinced that it was a viable money-maker. The viewers at home who watch the shows and (as the marketers hope) the advertisements that go with them are the consumers. They provide eyeballs so that the networks can sell advertisements, but they themselves do not make payments towards the broadcast and thus are not customers but merely tools to be used as a selling point by the networks. As such, as long as they tune in, no one in control of the network gives a damn what they do or what they think of the product. This is why controversy sells and often, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
However, if I want to have a Blu-ray drive or a HD-DVD drive (or whatever new format may emerge), I am making a purchasing decision and am giving $$ to the company in exchange for a product. If I do not like the product, the company, their business practices, their marketing tactics, their use of DRM, or the pricing, I may choose not to make this purchase and as a result, the company does not receive my money. I am voting with my feet, I have some control over the transaction, and I do not simply accept whatever is handed to me which is what a consumer does. Customers must be satisfied; consumers must simply be enticed.
I cannot help but think that when, overnight, everyone started calling those who vote with their feet "consumers" that this is nothing more than marketing Newspeak designed to de-emphasize the fact that our wants and desires matter.
Laws should be our *last* resort when trying to deal with any sort of issue, and that includes technical ones.
Oddly enough, the legislators don't see it that way. Fancy that!
It reminds me of how I see people discussing the whole abortion issue. Whether you are for or against it, I will not get into that one. But just the way the question is framed: "The question is, does the Constitution give the people the right to have an abortion?" This is bullshit. The appropriate question is, "Does the Constitution give the government the right to forbid them?" It's a bit like a firewall - the best way is to deny everything by default and only allow what is explicitly defined. The prevailing view of government's proper role these days seems to be to allow everything that is not explicitly forbidden, which is an unwise policy.
Once you make the basics like murder and theft and fraud illegal, what else is there for a full-time legislature to do but fight over the budget and assume that all of the world needs their "help"? If people refuse to either secure their networks or hire someone who can (much as people either maintain their cars and keep them in good repair, or hire a mechanic who can) then they need to experience the full consequences of their failure to understand what they are working with.
I am unfortunately not certain where you would research such a thing, but according to one of my friends the idea that there are more forests in the USA now than there were in the past is something of a half-truth. The reason why is because the old deciduous forests were cut down for wood, and when loggers etc. replant trees they plant the fast-growing pines instead. So, yes there are more sheer numbers of trees now than in the past, but it's questionable whether you can compare a fast-growing 20-year old pine tree with the hundred-plus year old oaks etc. that used to be there.
Oh, and they always have a choice. They can restrict our rights as much as they want in law. Then its up to us to take them to court to prove they have overstepped their bounds and have the law tossed. On our dime.
In the USA at least, the Constitution is the highest law of the land.
Because of this, I never understood why it is that a politician can pass (or help to pass) an unconstitutional law and it can negatively affect the welfare and livelihood and personal freedoms of many people, and yet when this law is finally overturned by a court and found to be unconstitutional, nothing happens to the politician.
If an elected official knowingly (and politicians overwhelmingly tend to be lawyers, so I doubt they can claim ignorance) contradicts the highest law of the land, especially for the purpose of political gain, they should simply be charged with treason and tried in a criminal court, and if found guilty by a court of law, they should be executed or receive life in prison. Let this happen once or twice to establish a precedent and most of the problem will be solved. No one forces a person to run for office; they wanted the power over the lives of millions of Americans, so let them also have the responsibility and personal accountability that goes along with it.
If this became reality, then perhaps if they don't like the Constitution they would go through the process of changing/amending it, rather than simply breaking its laws. You know, like what they tell us to do about laws that we don't like? We must eliminate this idea that government officials are somehow superior to or more soverign than any other citizen - the entire notion of rule of law is threatened by it. They are supposed to be public servants and what's good for the goose truly is good for the gander.
Particularly if you happen to be a male who failed to plan ahead and insist on a prenuptual agreement. If you are such a person, you have little to gain and much to lose by entering into such a contract as marriage. Especially when you consider that women rarely marry a man who earns less money than they do, (that need for "security") and when you consider that the courts tend to be heavily biased against men in the case of divorce (child custody and most especially, alimony). This bias, by the way, originates from a time when women were second-class citizens who would have had a very difficult time earning their own living alone. Apparently I am unique in believing that equality does not mean you get to retain special privileges. Either way, consider the divorce rate and ask yourself how lucky you feel.
Please forgive me for the off-topic post. The subject came up via the A.C. and I honestly feel that few men consider the implications of choices like this. Thankfully I have not had to learn any of the above the hard way; I was fortunate enough to be able to learn this by simple observation. Remember guys, if she really loves you and it really is "always and forever," she will have no problem signing that prenup.
(Why would someone tell the truth if they didn't believe it was in their best interest, i.e. for profit?)
I know this might come as a surprise to some of you, but there's a few strange individuals who have integrity, who do really strange things like telling the truth even when it may not be in their best interests. I suppose that might not fit into your worldview...
I think that for a first offense you just break all of his fingers. Then for a second offense you break all of his fingers with a ball peen hammer, then for a third offense he gets the prison sodomy. I'm amazed at the bleeding heart assholes who get so upset by the thought of punks like this getting punished. These are predatory, irresponsible little fucks. If sending a few of them off to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary makes the rest of them think twice before installing botnets (you probably didn't read the article about the botnet that a couple of these punks installed at Northwest hospital) then I'm willing to make that sacrifice.
This would be nearly workable if not for the fact that prisons are so full of nonviolent drug offenders that it is already difficult in too many cases to avoid releasing violent offenders early to have room enough for them.
There is also the consideration that when the punishment fits the crime, the person being punished has a chance to think about what they did and otherwise place themselves on the path to rehabilitation. Overly harsh punishments embitter those who receive them and make them hate the entire system because they (quite rightly) judge this as evil. So if you want to maximize the already too-small chance that someone is going to change their ways as a result of being put through the justice system, not to mention reduce the recidivism rate, this would be counterproductive. Not to mention the fact that nonviolent offenders often learn much about how to commit more serious crimes from other inmates, and turning a relatively "soft" script kiddie into a more hardened criminal is also counterproductive if your goal is to reduce overall crime. But hey, if you just want some feel-good vengence, why have a justice system at all?
This is humorous and, being a play on the article title, is on topic. Now, I said humorous, I did not say it was hilarious, but c'mon you fucks, offtopic?! I never get mod points very often, otherwise I'd correct this, but if a joke isn't very funny you don't correct this by pretending it's offtopic.
The sad fact is that there is a vast left-wing conspiracy in the media to bury stories that are unfavorable to their political viewpoint. Liberals don't want to hear truth. Stories from soldiers in Iraq are positive, but lefties watching CNN all day only want to hear bad news so they can feel good about hating Bush some more.
It's not about left-wing or right-wing or centrist or any of that. It's about money and power just as it has always been. Play the follow-the-money game (and hone some research skills too, woohoo!) more often and you will come to see this.
Left, right today. God, Satan yesterday. You notice it's always two, and only two, diametrically opposed ideas that can be compromised but cannot be reconciled (with other ideas existing only in an extremely marginalized form that is unlikely to be implemented, such as libertarianism). Your basic divide-and-conquer strategy. The left-wing vs. right-wing is an idealistic clash that does a great job of distracting people from basic critical thinking skills and a willingness to stick to the facts as determined by evidence when making decisions. It's a distraction, and it's a deliberate and effective one.
I'll give an example. Generally a left-winger is for greater personal freedom and more economic restrictions (particularly income redistribution, but there are others). Generally a right-winger is for greater economic freedom (tax cuts and the like) but more restrictions on personal freedom. Well, guess what? Both require a rather large government to properly realize their stated goals. So you have everyone squabbling over which set of restrictions they prefer, meanwhile, the elected officials continue to enjoy an ever-increasing national budget and more and more laws to appease their campaign contributors (recent changes to copyright law, anyone?). No matter how you carry out the left vs. right debate, a minimal government will never be the result. As stated above, a very effective distraction. For the people who stand to gain from less real freedom, and this subset of the population includes the major media outlets, it has served its purpose well. You don't need a conspiracy of any sort either; all that is required is that those who desire power act in their own interests while no one does anything to check them because they're too concerned about who will win the next American Idol.
It has always amazed me how so many people would agree that throughout history, religion has been used to control people by keeping them ignorant and willing to obey, but the same folks who will agree with that find it absurd that media and propaganda and creature comforts and an overemphasis on work/business can be used the same way.
It sure would be great if every time a company did something that most people, upon a little thought, would find really objectionable, it could be directly correlated with a huge decrease in sales (your basic old fashioned boycott). It would be great if people knew when they were clutching sand and understood that the harder you try to squeeze, the more you are going to lose.
But as much as I love your idea, it will not happen due to the Sheeple, who are either too clueless, too apathetic, or both, to make this workable. The backbone is becoming extinct and is being replaced by implicit trust, deference to authority, and pressure to conform.
Since we as a species fail to discourage these elements (and instead work very hard to prop them up, since they would not survive on their own) because the powerful find them desirable to inculcate in a population*, I do not see any easy way to reverse this either.
* If you're in charge, wouldn't you rather be in charge of a docile apathetic population as opposed to a more difficult to subjugate sort? If you quickly disagree and say you'd never want that, imagine for a moment that you love power (and are therefore not qualified to wield it, but then power and who has it was never a meritocracy). Does it make sense now? We keep focusing on this bad law and this rogue company and that legislator who doesn't get it, but all of these are merely opportunists and with such a narrow focus we are merely playing a whack-a-mole game. None of these would ever be possible without the masses being so willing to bend over and take it, and the blame lies with them and not with the inevitability that someone WILL take advantage of this.
To a point, I agree with you. I like hardware; it just works. Flash back to several years ago when WinModems were first introduced... Remember what a disaster they were, especially for anyone who didn't fit the anticipated M$-using profile? They were cheaper yes, but also lower quality, more proprietary, and OS-dependent when compared to hardware modems. It was not very long until anyone buying a modem had to shop around very carefully to avoid being stuck with this type of shit. Because I do not use any Microsoft software (but they make decent mice), this was my experience before broadband became available in my area.
I don't want to see this happen to routers. With the reliability/availability that is usually demanded of a router, and the fact that routers are typically only implemented by either a knowledgable user or a hired technician, I do not anticipate this will actually be a problem.
However, I have encountered your "oh well they usually learn" arrogance before. Hell, from time to time I might display this myself. You know, the idea that anyone who disagrees with you or who wants to use a different solution for their needs than what you would use could only be suffering from a lack of education and must not have any valid point. It's just a dismissal. Dismissal is a favorite tactic of otherwise logical, composed people who do not care to truly examine a particular issue and are not honest about this unwillingness upfront.
The main question your post raises for me is that there is an unstated assumption there that Cisco is absolutely dominating this market (which I do not dispute) and is therefore THE sensible choice (this is the part I find questionable). Support contracts, features, performance, blah blah blah... To me these are not the central issue because you can get your desired balance of these by shopping around. So, just explain this one thing to me - how is a majority Cisco marketshare good for anyone other than Cisco?
FYI, I agree that software routers cannot match the raw performance of dedicated specialty hardware, but I also agree that fire is hot and liquid water is wet. I get the impression that neither Xorp nor any other software router is going to be marketed to Fortune 100 companies in an attempt to directly compete with Cisco, but rather is intended for small to medium sized networks. How many mom-n-pop setups and local businesses ever turn into multimillion dollar enterprises? For this reason I do not consider the "they all migrate one day" statement to be the showstopper that you seem to believe it is.
You're just running into the eagerness most people have to avoid any kind of rational discourse and go diving straight for the ad hominem attacks. Relax. And yes, you fed the troll:-).
I know it's a joke, but really, this is the result of focusing on the actual device and its purposes and how well it works and how to implement it. If the focus were marketing (to which product design is typically secondary) then we'd have some really badass names for our projects too.
Could you imagine the ramifications if a company got caught with a backdoor? They could kiss their ass good bye.
Never underestimate the power of Spin, especially when the general public has no interest in being informed about such complex subjects as network security (and lacks wisdom enough to decide that the only two reasonable courses of action are A. Learn about the subject or B. Shut the fuck up).
If the backdoors are for law enforcement purposes, why, then Cisco is simply being a Patriotic Corporate Citizen and Doing Their Part to help Stop Internet Crime etc etc. If this became a big controversy, all it would take is for one politician or one media outlet to talk even more about how wiretapping/remote logging ability is For Your Own Good and for the sole purpose of Stopping Al-Queda or whomever the convenient bogeyman of the day may be (because Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia). Rest assured that there will be such a device/tactic handy to drown out any kind of reasonable debate about the subject, should it ever become a serious issue.
The belief that a company which implements poor practices--such as undisclosed, intentional security hazards like backdoors--can "kiss their ass good bye" presupposes a market that consists entirely of informed, educated buyers who understand all security ramifications of their buying decisions (and such "features" that come with the package) and who always look after their own interests. Furthermore it assumes that they have enough sense to disregard any and all statements (on principle alone, as such claims have zero credibility) from any third parties who claim to know what is best for them, if only their particular set of restrictions were implemented. You will find that this last item is becoming lost upon us, especially in the USA.
I find this presupposition to be entirely unrealistic, and for that reason open-source alternatives can only possibly be a good thing, even if only because they give the established solutions such as those offered by Cisco a reason to avoid growing complacent.
Why does someone get such a benefit of doubt just because they are elected to a position? "Oh sure, he's just trying to improve america's image so people don't think we're being xenophobic." Yeah right. Because our elected officials are always the Good Guys(tm) who are just trying to make this a better place to live, why, they'd never do anything for personal power/monetary gain reasons, and we should never closely scrutinize their reasons for acting nor demand proof that there are, in fact, no conflicts of interest.". I wish I could live in your world, it's better than the real one.
btw, cut th fair tax crap. it is just another way to shift more of the burden onto the poor and away from the wealthy.
My impression is that while an income tax "punishes" (taxes) the act of producing income, a national sales tax such as the Fair Tax punishes the act of spending money, i.e. when a purchase is made. It is the rich people who spend the most money (hard to spend what you don't have) so it follows that it is they who will be paying the most under the Fair Tax. To me, this achieves an effect similar to what a progressive income tax achieves only without the governmental control (no IRS) and the result is naturall progressive, not the Congress's idea of who should pay more.
Additionally, the cost of living is factored into the Fair Tax and everyone (poor and rich alike) is reimbursed for the cost of basics (think food, etc).
So please explain to me how this harms the poor. Especially explain how the poor are somehow worse off when you can no longer use an income tax to buy their votes.
I think the point was that instead of screwing us, a large company took an action that could threaten other large companies and was smacked down.
As opposed to taking an action that could threaten our rights (i.e. those of the general public, the DMCA being a great example) etc., because when companies do this they are rarely if ever smacked down.
Free markets make many of the same assumptions that modern "democracies" (i.e. constitutional republics) do; that is, they assume an educated populace. "Democracies" assume educated voters who understand the candidates and understand how their form of government works, while free markets assume educated buyers who won't accept crap like this.
The AC makes a great point about complacency and how power grabs are sold to the public. Apparently his or her use of sarcasm was the sole reason for being modded down, in which case the "punishment" does not fit the "crime".
The public is a fairly skittish beast, and as soon as they hear some "expert from NASA" telling them one thing, even if it is a theory, they'll run with it for miles. Next thing you know "The next ice age could be coming in the next several thousand years" has turned into "RUN FOR THE HILLS, THE GLACIERS ARE COMING!!!"
You see, they thought about this kind of problem thousands of years ago, and from this pondering a fable arose about a certain boy and his cry of "Wolf!" Apparently in the USA we find it more profitable to silence every boy who might cry "Wolf!" than to allow people to figure out that it's silly to believe everything you read or everything you are told, at least without first investigating the matter (although back then people tended to have a lot more "common sense" which is why that didn't work out so well for the boy - these days he'd have his own show). Now I expect this in children, in whom obedience is usually considered a more desirable virtue than questioning everything they are told. But how we came to have an entire adult population with no critical thinking skills (on whom propaganda techniques are so effective) took a lot of work, most of which was done by the government-controlled educational system.
It's too bad that doing your own research and evaluating your own facts cannot by definition be spoonfed to the masses, since they usually cannot be bothered to do this themselves - if a major media outlet does not mention it, they remain ignorant of it (which means the major outlets are in the extremely powerful position of framing most issues that matter). Yet, most people do not see their ignorance of the subject in question as a compelling reason to stay the fuck out of issues they have not bothered to learn about. This places NASA in an unenviable position where it really might be in their own best interests to discourage this kind of practice but this is no fault of theirs. This is what happens when the realization that a statement is just the viewpoint of its particular author, and not a declaration of absolute truth, is lost upon the society (just imagine the "WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE?!" response to better illustrate this point).
My view on this is that taking any action that equates to caving in to this kind of ignorance (such as trying to silence the guy) only guarantees more of it, for reasons similar to why appeasing a dictator does not work. The idea that if NASA does not actively censor him (such as by threatening to fire him) then he must be representing the entire organization with his personal opinions needs to be exposed for the absurdity that it is. Unfortunately it looks like I can keep dreaming.
In a Libertarian world, these people would either die, or become slaves to the wealthy. That's not very free.
Unfortunately I don't see anything that would change this other than a return to sustanence farming or otherwise "living off the land" so that dealing with corporations becomes a luxury and not the necessity that it is today. Before you call this absurd, supposing that I properly understand what little I know of the man, I believe this was about the vision that the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, had for America. I doubt they foresaw the degree of dependence that exists now, in which most people would not survive if the economic system were to ever seriously fail (and since it is based largely on lending money at interest, this is not a question of "if", merely of "when").
The reason why I mentioned sustenence farming, despite how unpopular this would be among most people living today, is because real freedom and real self-sufficiency go hand in hand. To have one without also having the other requires a lot of ugly hacks, which is what laws are when they go beyond things like forbidding the use of force or fraud to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property. A real alternative to becoming your own farmer would be having 90% or more of government come from the locality and the state, which also was an intention of the Founding Fathers. About the only issues that truly require a unified, national response are wars and interstate trade.
I know that this idea would also never become popular, but another great boon to the quality of life in the USA would be if no one were ever allowed to vote without first having to pass an extremely difficult civics test. It should then be illegal (with some very stiff penalties) to discriminate in any way with regard to who can access the documentation/study materials and with regard to who may take this test (in fact there should be no age restriction either - if a 16 year old can prove they understand how the government works, they should be allowed to vote), but no one should be allowed to cast a vote and thereby participate in government without first knowing how our government works, for the same reason that your grandma should not be performing security audits for OpenBSD.
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Like it or not, the USA does show all the signs of becoming a police state. That you know this also is apparent when you have a defense mechanism that requires you to stop reading a person's opinion about tech support jobs once you learn that they believe this is true. Now if your argument was that whether the USA is becoming a police state is not relevant in a conversation about the IT industry, then I can see your point. But to call someone a psycho and discredit what they say because they are willing to call a spade a spade is not rational and suggests that you are in denial about this one.
We really need to make a document about these lines of "reasoning" in the style of the FUSSP (Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem) and arguments like "well it's only attacked because it's popular" should be one of the check boxes. Then when someone regurgitates this yet again, you can point them towards that section of the document with that particular box checked off. Sure, it might not change anything with regard to the need for new ideas, but it sure would make me feel better.
Rather than mark this as flamebait, I'd like to see someone discredit it on a factual basis. The premise of the parent post seems to rest on IE having less than superb support for W3C standards. Unless this can be demonstrated to be blatantly false then this is not flamebait, it is merely an opinion and the moderator seems to think that the moderation system is how you show disagreement.
In the broadcast TV/advertising business, the advertisers who pay $$ to place commercials on television are the customers, because they are the ones who are providing a source of income for the networks and they are the ones to whom the programming is catered; that is, a show makes it to television because it was successfully sold to enough advertisers who were convinced that it was a viable money-maker. The viewers at home who watch the shows and (as the marketers hope) the advertisements that go with them are the consumers. They provide eyeballs so that the networks can sell advertisements, but they themselves do not make payments towards the broadcast and thus are not customers but merely tools to be used as a selling point by the networks. As such, as long as they tune in, no one in control of the network gives a damn what they do or what they think of the product. This is why controversy sells and often, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
However, if I want to have a Blu-ray drive or a HD-DVD drive (or whatever new format may emerge), I am making a purchasing decision and am giving $$ to the company in exchange for a product. If I do not like the product, the company, their business practices, their marketing tactics, their use of DRM, or the pricing, I may choose not to make this purchase and as a result, the company does not receive my money. I am voting with my feet, I have some control over the transaction, and I do not simply accept whatever is handed to me which is what a consumer does. Customers must be satisfied; consumers must simply be enticed.
I cannot help but think that when, overnight, everyone started calling those who vote with their feet "consumers" that this is nothing more than marketing Newspeak designed to de-emphasize the fact that our wants and desires matter.
Oddly enough, the legislators don't see it that way. Fancy that!
It reminds me of how I see people discussing the whole abortion issue. Whether you are for or against it, I will not get into that one. But just the way the question is framed: "The question is, does the Constitution give the people the right to have an abortion?" This is bullshit. The appropriate question is, "Does the Constitution give the government the right to forbid them?" It's a bit like a firewall - the best way is to deny everything by default and only allow what is explicitly defined. The prevailing view of government's proper role these days seems to be to allow everything that is not explicitly forbidden, which is an unwise policy.
Once you make the basics like murder and theft and fraud illegal, what else is there for a full-time legislature to do but fight over the budget and assume that all of the world needs their "help"? If people refuse to either secure their networks or hire someone who can (much as people either maintain their cars and keep them in good repair, or hire a mechanic who can) then they need to experience the full consequences of their failure to understand what they are working with.
I am unfortunately not certain where you would research such a thing, but according to one of my friends the idea that there are more forests in the USA now than there were in the past is something of a half-truth. The reason why is because the old deciduous forests were cut down for wood, and when loggers etc. replant trees they plant the fast-growing pines instead. So, yes there are more sheer numbers of trees now than in the past, but it's questionable whether you can compare a fast-growing 20-year old pine tree with the hundred-plus year old oaks etc. that used to be there.
In the USA at least, the Constitution is the highest law of the land.
Because of this, I never understood why it is that a politician can pass (or help to pass) an unconstitutional law and it can negatively affect the welfare and livelihood and personal freedoms of many people, and yet when this law is finally overturned by a court and found to be unconstitutional, nothing happens to the politician.
If an elected official knowingly (and politicians overwhelmingly tend to be lawyers, so I doubt they can claim ignorance) contradicts the highest law of the land, especially for the purpose of political gain, they should simply be charged with treason and tried in a criminal court, and if found guilty by a court of law, they should be executed or receive life in prison. Let this happen once or twice to establish a precedent and most of the problem will be solved. No one forces a person to run for office; they wanted the power over the lives of millions of Americans, so let them also have the responsibility and personal accountability that goes along with it.
If this became reality, then perhaps if they don't like the Constitution they would go through the process of changing/amending it, rather than simply breaking its laws. You know, like what they tell us to do about laws that we don't like? We must eliminate this idea that government officials are somehow superior to or more soverign than any other citizen - the entire notion of rule of law is threatened by it. They are supposed to be public servants and what's good for the goose truly is good for the gander.
Particularly if you happen to be a male who failed to plan ahead and insist on a prenuptual agreement. If you are such a person, you have little to gain and much to lose by entering into such a contract as marriage. Especially when you consider that women rarely marry a man who earns less money than they do, (that need for "security") and when you consider that the courts tend to be heavily biased against men in the case of divorce (child custody and most especially, alimony). This bias, by the way, originates from a time when women were second-class citizens who would have had a very difficult time earning their own living alone. Apparently I am unique in believing that equality does not mean you get to retain special privileges. Either way, consider the divorce rate and ask yourself how lucky you feel.
Please forgive me for the off-topic post. The subject came up via the A.C. and I honestly feel that few men consider the implications of choices like this. Thankfully I have not had to learn any of the above the hard way; I was fortunate enough to be able to learn this by simple observation. Remember guys, if she really loves you and it really is "always and forever," she will have no problem signing that prenup.
I know this might come as a surprise to some of you, but there's a few strange individuals who have integrity, who do really strange things like telling the truth even when it may not be in their best interests. I suppose that might not fit into your worldview
This would be nearly workable if not for the fact that prisons are so full of nonviolent drug offenders that it is already difficult in too many cases to avoid releasing violent offenders early to have room enough for them.
There is also the consideration that when the punishment fits the crime, the person being punished has a chance to think about what they did and otherwise place themselves on the path to rehabilitation. Overly harsh punishments embitter those who receive them and make them hate the entire system because they (quite rightly) judge this as evil. So if you want to maximize the already too-small chance that someone is going to change their ways as a result of being put through the justice system, not to mention reduce the recidivism rate, this would be counterproductive. Not to mention the fact that nonviolent offenders often learn much about how to commit more serious crimes from other inmates, and turning a relatively "soft" script kiddie into a more hardened criminal is also counterproductive if your goal is to reduce overall crime. But hey, if you just want some feel-good vengence, why have a justice system at all?
This is humorous and, being a play on the article title, is on topic. Now, I said humorous, I did not say it was hilarious, but c'mon you fucks, offtopic?! I never get mod points very often, otherwise I'd correct this, but if a joke isn't very funny you don't correct this by pretending it's offtopic.
It's not about left-wing or right-wing or centrist or any of that. It's about money and power just as it has always been. Play the follow-the-money game (and hone some research skills too, woohoo!) more often and you will come to see this.
Left, right today. God, Satan yesterday. You notice it's always two, and only two, diametrically opposed ideas that can be compromised but cannot be reconciled (with other ideas existing only in an extremely marginalized form that is unlikely to be implemented, such as libertarianism). Your basic divide-and-conquer strategy. The left-wing vs. right-wing is an idealistic clash that does a great job of distracting people from basic critical thinking skills and a willingness to stick to the facts as determined by evidence when making decisions. It's a distraction, and it's a deliberate and effective one.
I'll give an example. Generally a left-winger is for greater personal freedom and more economic restrictions (particularly income redistribution, but there are others). Generally a right-winger is for greater economic freedom (tax cuts and the like) but more restrictions on personal freedom. Well, guess what? Both require a rather large government to properly realize their stated goals. So you have everyone squabbling over which set of restrictions they prefer, meanwhile, the elected officials continue to enjoy an ever-increasing national budget and more and more laws to appease their campaign contributors (recent changes to copyright law, anyone?). No matter how you carry out the left vs. right debate, a minimal government will never be the result. As stated above, a very effective distraction. For the people who stand to gain from less real freedom, and this subset of the population includes the major media outlets, it has served its purpose well. You don't need a conspiracy of any sort either; all that is required is that those who desire power act in their own interests while no one does anything to check them because they're too concerned about who will win the next American Idol.
It has always amazed me how so many people would agree that throughout history, religion has been used to control people by keeping them ignorant and willing to obey, but the same folks who will agree with that find it absurd that media and propaganda and creature comforts and an overemphasis on work/business can be used the same way.
It sure would be great if every time a company did something that most people, upon a little thought, would find really objectionable, it could be directly correlated with a huge decrease in sales (your basic old fashioned boycott). It would be great if people knew when they were clutching sand and understood that the harder you try to squeeze, the more you are going to lose.
But as much as I love your idea, it will not happen due to the Sheeple, who are either too clueless, too apathetic, or both, to make this workable. The backbone is becoming extinct and is being replaced by implicit trust, deference to authority, and pressure to conform.
Since we as a species fail to discourage these elements (and instead work very hard to prop them up, since they would not survive on their own) because the powerful find them desirable to inculcate in a population*, I do not see any easy way to reverse this either.
* If you're in charge, wouldn't you rather be in charge of a docile apathetic population as opposed to a more difficult to subjugate sort? If you quickly disagree and say you'd never want that, imagine for a moment that you love power (and are therefore not qualified to wield it, but then power and who has it was never a meritocracy). Does it make sense now? We keep focusing on this bad law and this rogue company and that legislator who doesn't get it, but all of these are merely opportunists and with such a narrow focus we are merely playing a whack-a-mole game. None of these would ever be possible without the masses being so willing to bend over and take it, and the blame lies with them and not with the inevitability that someone WILL take advantage of this.
To a point, I agree with you. I like hardware; it just works. Flash back to several years ago when WinModems were first introduced... Remember what a disaster they were, especially for anyone who didn't fit the anticipated M$-using profile? They were cheaper yes, but also lower quality, more proprietary, and OS-dependent when compared to hardware modems. It was not very long until anyone buying a modem had to shop around very carefully to avoid being stuck with this type of shit. Because I do not use any Microsoft software (but they make decent mice), this was my experience before broadband became available in my area.
I don't want to see this happen to routers. With the reliability/availability that is usually demanded of a router, and the fact that routers are typically only implemented by either a knowledgable user or a hired technician, I do not anticipate this will actually be a problem.
However, I have encountered your "oh well they usually learn" arrogance before. Hell, from time to time I might display this myself. You know, the idea that anyone who disagrees with you or who wants to use a different solution for their needs than what you would use could only be suffering from a lack of education and must not have any valid point. It's just a dismissal. Dismissal is a favorite tactic of otherwise logical, composed people who do not care to truly examine a particular issue and are not honest about this unwillingness upfront.
The main question your post raises for me is that there is an unstated assumption there that Cisco is absolutely dominating this market (which I do not dispute) and is therefore THE sensible choice (this is the part I find questionable). Support contracts, features, performance, blah blah blah... To me these are not the central issue because you can get your desired balance of these by shopping around. So, just explain this one thing to me - how is a majority Cisco marketshare good for anyone other than Cisco?
FYI, I agree that software routers cannot match the raw performance of dedicated specialty hardware, but I also agree that fire is hot and liquid water is wet. I get the impression that neither Xorp nor any other software router is going to be marketed to Fortune 100 companies in an attempt to directly compete with Cisco, but rather is intended for small to medium sized networks. How many mom-n-pop setups and local businesses ever turn into multimillion dollar enterprises? For this reason I do not consider the "they all migrate one day" statement to be the showstopper that you seem to believe it is.
You're just running into the eagerness most people have to avoid any kind of rational discourse and go diving straight for the ad hominem attacks. Relax. And yes, you fed the troll :-).
I know it's a joke, but really, this is the result of focusing on the actual device and its purposes and how well it works and how to implement it. If the focus were marketing (to which product design is typically secondary) then we'd have some really badass names for our projects too.
Never underestimate the power of Spin, especially when the general public has no interest in being informed about such complex subjects as network security (and lacks wisdom enough to decide that the only two reasonable courses of action are A. Learn about the subject or B. Shut the fuck up).
If the backdoors are for law enforcement purposes, why, then Cisco is simply being a Patriotic Corporate Citizen and Doing Their Part to help Stop Internet Crime etc etc. If this became a big controversy, all it would take is for one politician or one media outlet to talk even more about how wiretapping/remote logging ability is For Your Own Good and for the sole purpose of Stopping Al-Queda or whomever the convenient bogeyman of the day may be (because Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia). Rest assured that there will be such a device/tactic handy to drown out any kind of reasonable debate about the subject, should it ever become a serious issue.
The belief that a company which implements poor practices--such as undisclosed, intentional security hazards like backdoors--can "kiss their ass good bye" presupposes a market that consists entirely of informed, educated buyers who understand all security ramifications of their buying decisions (and such "features" that come with the package) and who always look after their own interests. Furthermore it assumes that they have enough sense to disregard any and all statements (on principle alone, as such claims have zero credibility) from any third parties who claim to know what is best for them, if only their particular set of restrictions were implemented. You will find that this last item is becoming lost upon us, especially in the USA.
I find this presupposition to be entirely unrealistic, and for that reason open-source alternatives can only possibly be a good thing, even if only because they give the established solutions such as those offered by Cisco a reason to avoid growing complacent.
Why does someone get such a benefit of doubt just because they are elected to a position? "Oh sure, he's just trying to improve america's image so people don't think we're being xenophobic." Yeah right. Because our elected officials are always the Good Guys(tm) who are just trying to make this a better place to live, why, they'd never do anything for personal power/monetary gain reasons, and we should never closely scrutinize their reasons for acting nor demand proof that there are, in fact, no conflicts of interest.". I wish I could live in your world, it's better than the real one.
My impression is that while an income tax "punishes" (taxes) the act of producing income, a national sales tax such as the Fair Tax punishes the act of spending money, i.e. when a purchase is made. It is the rich people who spend the most money (hard to spend what you don't have) so it follows that it is they who will be paying the most under the Fair Tax. To me, this achieves an effect similar to what a progressive income tax achieves only without the governmental control (no IRS) and the result is naturall progressive, not the Congress's idea of who should pay more.
Additionally, the cost of living is factored into the Fair Tax and everyone (poor and rich alike) is reimbursed for the cost of basics (think food, etc).
So please explain to me how this harms the poor. Especially explain how the poor are somehow worse off when you can no longer use an income tax to buy their votes.
That's one of the best god damned ideas I have heard in a long time.
I think the point was that instead of screwing us, a large company took an action that could threaten other large companies and was smacked down.
As opposed to taking an action that could threaten our rights (i.e. those of the general public, the DMCA being a great example) etc., because when companies do this they are rarely if ever smacked down.
I definitely agree here.
Free markets make many of the same assumptions that modern "democracies" (i.e. constitutional republics) do; that is, they assume an educated populace. "Democracies" assume educated voters who understand the candidates and understand how their form of government works, while free markets assume educated buyers who won't accept crap like this.
Feeling optimistic?
The AC makes a great point about complacency and how power grabs are sold to the public. Apparently his or her use of sarcasm was the sole reason for being modded down, in which case the "punishment" does not fit the "crime".
You see, they thought about this kind of problem thousands of years ago, and from this pondering a fable arose about a certain boy and his cry of "Wolf!" Apparently in the USA we find it more profitable to silence every boy who might cry "Wolf!" than to allow people to figure out that it's silly to believe everything you read or everything you are told, at least without first investigating the matter (although back then people tended to have a lot more "common sense" which is why that didn't work out so well for the boy - these days he'd have his own show). Now I expect this in children, in whom obedience is usually considered a more desirable virtue than questioning everything they are told. But how we came to have an entire adult population with no critical thinking skills (on whom propaganda techniques are so effective) took a lot of work, most of which was done by the government-controlled educational system.
It's too bad that doing your own research and evaluating your own facts cannot by definition be spoonfed to the masses, since they usually cannot be bothered to do this themselves - if a major media outlet does not mention it, they remain ignorant of it (which means the major outlets are in the extremely powerful position of framing most issues that matter). Yet, most people do not see their ignorance of the subject in question as a compelling reason to stay the fuck out of issues they have not bothered to learn about. This places NASA in an unenviable position where it really might be in their own best interests to discourage this kind of practice but this is no fault of theirs. This is what happens when the realization that a statement is just the viewpoint of its particular author, and not a declaration of absolute truth, is lost upon the society (just imagine the "WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE?!" response to better illustrate this point).
My view on this is that taking any action that equates to caving in to this kind of ignorance (such as trying to silence the guy) only guarantees more of it, for reasons similar to why appeasing a dictator does not work. The idea that if NASA does not actively censor him (such as by threatening to fire him) then he must be representing the entire organization with his personal opinions needs to be exposed for the absurdity that it is. Unfortunately it looks like I can keep dreaming.
Unfortunately I don't see anything that would change this other than a return to sustanence farming or otherwise "living off the land" so that dealing with corporations becomes a luxury and not the necessity that it is today. Before you call this absurd, supposing that I properly understand what little I know of the man, I believe this was about the vision that the Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, had for America. I doubt they foresaw the degree of dependence that exists now, in which most people would not survive if the economic system were to ever seriously fail (and since it is based largely on lending money at interest, this is not a question of "if", merely of "when").
The reason why I mentioned sustenence farming, despite how unpopular this would be among most people living today, is because real freedom and real self-sufficiency go hand in hand. To have one without also having the other requires a lot of ugly hacks, which is what laws are when they go beyond things like forbidding the use of force or fraud to deprive someone of life, liberty, or property. A real alternative to becoming your own farmer would be having 90% or more of government come from the locality and the state, which also was an intention of the Founding Fathers. About the only issues that truly require a unified, national response are wars and interstate trade.
I know that this idea would also never become popular, but another great boon to the quality of life in the USA would be if no one were ever allowed to vote without first having to pass an extremely difficult civics test. It should then be illegal (with some very stiff penalties) to discriminate in any way with regard to who can access the documentation/study materials and with regard to who may take this test (in fact there should be no age restriction either - if a 16 year old can prove they understand how the government works, they should be allowed to vote), but no one should be allowed to cast a vote and thereby participate in government without first knowing how our government works, for the same reason that your grandma should not be performing security audits for OpenBSD.