Can you perfectly control what everyone else posts about you? Can you absolutely lock down what else can be inferred about you by anyone who can take a long view of everything you post plus everything everyone else posts, such as Facebook staff and their partners?
They thought they were following Christian teachings; just not the ones that you follow.
Funny thing about that: if you actually read the words of Christ, you won't find anywhere a justification to lie, murder, etc. In fact you'll find just the opposite. Jesus wouldn't even let Peter defend Him against the guards who came to arrest Him (going to far as to heal the wound Peter made with his sword and then rebuke Peter).
I mean... you can worship Satan and call yourself "a Christian", that doesn't make it true. It's not "just the ones you follow" as though there were multiple versions, some of which urge believers to kill abortion doctors and what-not. There are no such versions. The people who do that are simply wrong, no matter what veil they choose to hide behind.
They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.
Thank you. Well said.
That a single individual, such as yourself, found that edifying made it more than worth my time to elucidate.
Doesn't consumer just mean an entity that consumes?
No. It comes from the broadcast industry.
Say you run a TV station. You broadcast TV shows plus commercials over the air at no charge. Anyone with the right receiver can watch your content without paying you a cent.
The advertisers who buy commercial time are your customers. They are the ones paying you. If you piss them off, say by airing programs they find distasteful, they will take their business elsewhere and you will lose that revenue.
The viewers who provide eyeballs for the advertisers but pay nothing... those are the consumers. Compared to your customers, they have little or no power to change your content or make requests. One of them threatening to watch another channel means nothing to you. They only matter in very large groups.
They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.
Then you, like me, recognize the problem. Are you, like me, working towards a solution by educating anyone you encounter who wants to understand?
Anyone you can teach can also teach others; anyone they teach can teach others, and so on. It cascades. It grows exponentially.
You can have a much greater impact than you think. You, acting alone, can do that. Imagine what happens when lots of others have the same unwavering determination...
The simple solution is to not buy digital products from people you don't trust. Building a solid reputation does take time (and money) and is not so easily discarded. The problem is that people blindly spend a few bucks on companies with no reputation and then are shocked when those companies don't follow the highest standards of customer service.
This doesn't absolve those unethical companies of guilt, but it doesn't make me feel too sorry for those who choose not to patronize (reward) companies with good reputations. This is true in the digital world or the real world.
Finally, after reading the very last post in this thread, do I feel like someone understood what I was saying and wasn't trying to twist it around into a "but somehow this is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT" kind of hollow rationalization.
I guess I reconcile them thus: There will always be a market for information. I hope our people do more buying than selling. Selling information you are entrusted to protect is despicable. Buying information you need is understandable.
To say that it is the buyer's fault is like saying "If everyone were perfect, X would happen"
I believe systems must be designed for the real world, not utopia. I hope our systems work better. Even if they are based on that evil money I never seem to have enough of...
I understand what you're saying. My argument is that it takes two to tango. Both buyer and seller are equally culpable because both are voluntarily engaged in an unethical transaction.
If you consider consenting adult people doing drugs to be a problem (I don't, but humor me here), you must understand that every last drug dealer would be put out of business if no one wanted to buy drugs. The dealer is merely responding to demand. In fact, the existence of such demand for drugs means that there will always be drug dealers until such time as there is no longer a profit to be made due to lack of demand.
It's a market reality. I don't see where utopia or dystopia enters into it. Honest people don't want at any price information obtained through dishonest means. If you think having a basic level of integrity requires utopia, then in a roundabout way you are actually excusing as "just human nature" those who are dishonest. After all, none of us grew up in Perfect Utopia so hey, who can blame us for being selfish and having no integrity, right? Yet I do have integrity and I didn't derive it from growing up in a perfect world. It's called personal responsibility and it's also called having to live with yourself.
I see you still completely failed to cite anything evil.
No, I said I refused to spoon-feed you. Like I previously noted, you appear to be literate so I know you saw me say that.
In fact another poster did some of your homework for you. That was against my wishes, because laziness such as yours does not deserve to be coddled, but he did it and it is there for your perusal.
Congratulations on proving my point - you have no argument whatsoever.
So then, you do not dispute me when I say your "logic" is the most childish available? Good. You wouldn't stand a chance anyway. It would be like disputing me when I tell you that two plus two equals four.
Come back and have some facts next time.
If you want facts, I am not The Exclusive Source of All Things Factual. I don't own the truth and you're equipped with a computer and Internet access during the Information Age. Facts are not mine to give but they are yours to find. Just how conveniently lazy are you? You cannot be interested in facts, or else you'd research Microsoft's history yourself and nothing I say or do would stop you. You're just another little ego that must feel "right" at all times. That's why you won't look for the facts because they would contradict your "rightness".
I'll wait 'til I've seen verification before I believe it or not... but it's real or not, I still found this line funny:
Regarding the latest breach, Stratfor is fully in control of the situation
If it's real, I also wonder about:
To be clear: We certainly do not condone any criminal activities by groups like Anonymous or other hackers
I mean, this is a group that makes their money by paying off people to get them information, in ways that are hinted are against the law (likely they're getting other people to break the law of other countries, even if the company themselves aren't)... but they're against hackers that break the law? It seems a a bit hypocritical to me.
Sure, just like the way the government can't easily conduct certain forms of surveillance because that would run afoul of the 4th Amendment... but they can contract that out, purchasing the same information from companies conducting the same surveillance, and that's perfectly cromulent.
Yet, if you commit a crime by proxy, you're just as guilty as your hireling. For example, if you hired a contract killer you would be convicted for murder along with your mercenary. And unlike the US Constitution, the law under which you'd be convicted is not the highest law of the land.
Figure that one out in a logically consistent, non-hypocritical way.
I hope it's effective. I don't have a problem with people buying info.
I do have a huge problem with people in positions of responsibility selling it for their own profit at our expense though...
How do you reconcile those two sentences?
Or... guess what makes people in positions of responsibility sell information for their own profit? That's right... other people buy it.
The position of responsibility is why they had the info to sell. They are insiders who are in the loop. Information everyone already knows doesn't command a very high price.
Just because Google is evil doesn't make Microsoft less evil. It just makes them both evil. A trivial perusal of the Web would bring up information about why Microsoft is considered evil. Here is a light selection of keywords for you to start your research with: anti-trust; illegal use of monopoly; linux is cancer; ISO document standard bribery; Open Document Format vs OpenXML; licensing of MFC to crunch Borland and promote MFC over (the vastly superior) OWL; payment of computer manufacturers to bundle Windows instead of open competition; removal of Linux from Asus Eee; deliberatly hobbling OpenGL on Windows; deliberately hobbing POSIX-compliance on Windows (Windows needs POSIX for US Government contracts); deliberately hobbling Java on Windows (which Microsoft lost a court case against Sun over - but the tactic worked long enough for Microsoft to derive the essentially Windows-only C# and the.NET platform from Java and the JVM); Microsoft's attempts in the mid-90's to stiffle the open Internet by promoting NetBUI etc instead of open protocols (something they had to do a volte face about); trying to tie the open internet to Windows through ActiveX and Internet Explorer 6 proprietary extensions (which Bill Gates also famously lied about saying IE could not be removed from the O/S); I could go on but it ought to be enough if you have been paying attention for the last two decades. No one would mind if Microsoft competed hard but fairly. The truth is they don't - they use all sorts of morally shady tactics - which makes them evil. For that matter, neither do Apple. Apple is at least as bad as Microsoft, but at least Apple stuff (mostly) works a lot better. But just because Google and Apple are also evil does not make Microsoft any less evil.
I believe I already shut him up and he has already chosen to slink away and find someone more emotional and less reasonable to try his little routine on. People like him are all show and cannot respond to a legitimate challenge; they can only irritate and obfuscate. Someone who sees through that is the last thing they want to deal with so they suddenly shut up and disappear, though I am almost certain he read my response (and yours as well). His article of faith demands it.
All the same, your post is a good reference and must have taken a bit of effort to put together (less effort to write those, more effort to pick them from a much larger list). Even if little nothing-human-beings like him are incapable of appreciating it, I certainly did. I appreciate anyone who cares about the facts and isn't a total mindless slave to his personal feelings about them.
And yet, even after all this time, I still haven't seen anyone state a compelling reason as to why it's true. What did Microsoft do that was so "evil"? Please enlighten me.
You're just as capable of brushing up on Microsoft's history since the late 1980s as I am. The gist of it would take only a few minutes of your time. Your participation here leads me to assume you are literate, so I refuse to spoon-feed you. If you can't be bothered to inform yourself about a topic that's not remotely obscure, then recuse yourself from this discussion like a respectable person.
Meanwhile, Google is sniffing your wireless network as their cars drive by, making your address book public to promote Buzz, and changing their privacy policies to benefit their data-mining AFTER you have already signed up for various separate services. yet it's only Microsoft that is OMG SO EVIL THEY MUST DIE.
Oh I see, you're using the most childish "logic" available: Entity X did something REALLY BAD, so anything bad that Entity Y does is A-OK!
I didn't mention Google at all, neither positive nor negative, because Google was not being discussed. If you have a fixation on Google, it is yours. Look, if this is a religious conviction or article of faith for you, just say so. That's fine and you're entitled to it. Dressing it up like it's a rational argument is what makes you sound like a spoiled child.
If I were a cynical guy I'd take this as Intel giving Microsoft's cash cow the FU salute after Microsoft said Windows 8 would run on Arm based tablets. Good thing I'm not a cynical person - oh, wait...
Assuming that many people are petty and vindictive is not cynicism, it's realism, so long as you remain open to any exceptions you should encounter.
Having said that, if your suspicion is correct and Microsoft is on the receiving end of some corporate vindictiveness, well, it couldn't have happened to a better company. They may be tame these days as they slide towards irrelevancy, but they also have 25 years of bad karma to catch up with.
I agree that physical violence is appropriate in the case. If an update locks up an application that I have legally paid for and then demands yet more money to unlock it, I'd have to say that the developers need to be publically flogged and run out of town.
Hypothetically speaking... the funny thing about that, is when you won't tolerate this kind of behavior no matter what, when those who feel tempted to try it know that there is a certain and severe consequence, it does not result in more violence. It results in such people finding in the external world the restraint they failed to find within themselves. They are selfish, and rather than the nearly impossible task of (anyone other than them) changing that, you provide for them a selfish reason not to behave this way. It's a shitty alternative to them developing a human conscience, but it does work.
It's the same principle behind law. People who can govern themselves from a genuine, compassionate concern for their fellow man don't need external consequence to dictate their actions. Force or threat of force is for all the rest.
which the best possible means of making displeasure known is the age-old Voting With Your Feet (or dollars) by walking away from anyone practicing such things. I'm a slow adopter on quite a few things, largely because of my elevating level of disappointment with the way people are deciding is appropriate for doing business - by wrecking something you have already paid for and are using.
You're right about "age-old". In fact I'm wondering what the news is here. That digital distribution is not abuse-proof or fraud-proof just like brick-and-mortar sales? That there are dishonest people with exploitative business practices? This has been going on in one form or another ever since the origin of barter and the later invention of currency.
How is this not another "... with a computer!" story?
The solution to this is to make such people notorious, so that potential customers think twice before doing business with them, same as any business that causes legitimate grievances and dissatisfied customers. Make them more famous for their terrible business practices than for any software they have created. Let them be the ones who fail while honest people with good business practices thrive. That's how you create an environment hostile to this sort of thing and select against it. It's just an iteration of that old saying, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
If that's the only societal force that can spare us, then we're screwed. Big customers can be whitelisted or "undesirables" can be blacklisted.
I think what we need is to promote an awareness of just how important the Internet is, that screwing around with it for any reason other than good engineering is a bad idea. For example, the DNSSEC mandate is actually a sound idea and stands a good chance of working better than what we have now.
The moment an anti-malware system starts intentionally hindering many (or all) torrents is the moment it ceases to be a technical solution and changes into a political tool. You don't need to understand the technical details of how BitTorrent works to understand this. We need a general public that understands this, for the same reason we need to understand that "think of the children!" includes concern for what kind of authoritarian, regimented society we're leaving them to inherit.
I have to assume that any mandate to "protect against botnets" that could ever be construed to mean bans on entire protocols is going to be inevitably abused. Authoritarian types look for such "opportunities" just as businesses look for new markets. Power is just a different kind of currency.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egyptians happened to be really good at preserving things, you know, like people and honey, well all the more power to them. However, this is not Egypt during the time of the Parohs.
The statements of the obvious ("this isn't ancient Egypt" etc.) reveal a slight impatient hostility on your part. It's not my fault you chose a weak example.
The principle here is that honey has such a high concentration of varous sugars and such a low concentration of water relative to those, that it provides an environment quite hostile for microbes. Osmosis across their cell membranes would tend to dehydrate them. It's similar to what happens when food (or whatever) is packed in salt. For this reason honey was once used to dress wounds in order to help prevent infection.
Knowing something about its nature is an alternative to dealing with any circular citations you might encounter. At least if your sole concern is whether you are likely to be harmed by eating "expired" honey. I for one am not worried about this at all, but as I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or other such practitioner I'm not telling anyone else what they should do. I simply consider it more than coincidence that such a widespread practice of selling expired honey (assuming I accept that at face value) hasn't resulted in reported cases of food poisoning like we saw with tainted spinach, cantaloupe, et al in recent years.
The FDA is a gimp government department. The only thing it can review in depth is approval for new drugs, and that's only because the corporations submitting the drugs have to pay for that. Funding for everything else, from food and cosmetics inspection to even chasing down advertisers that use the phrase 'FDA approved' illegally, is so hamstrung as to be useless. The only time the FDA gets involved is when there's press coverage on people getting sick and/or dying. Only a very, very small fraction of meat is ever inspected... and there are holes in the system so big you could fly a 737 through it and still have ample room to fit at least a dozen Rush Limbaughs lengthwise through them. Take honey, for example: Honey is mixed and remixed with many other suppliers, such that the expiration date is never known. Should a particular batch of honey be close to expiring or would otherwise fail inspection, it is shipped across the border, mixed in with good honey, and then imported back. This is legal. There's so many examples of this it's not even funny.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm no fan of the FDA either but this isn't your strongest example.
Did you suppose that a teenager who hasn't even graduated high school yet is in a good position to take on the full responsibility of parenting? Have you seen the statistics for children (especially boys) who are raised by such people?
Do you think that's the ideal environment for the child?
Or do you think she just wanted to get her rocks off and didn't consider pregnancy? Oh, and a responsible father would think of these things even if the mother didn't. This isn't a responsible father. This is a horny teenager who wanted to get his rocks off too. It's so bleedin' obvious, it's as though none of you were ever in high school...
Other than this phony sense of "I'm offended by your certainty!" there is no good reason I should have to explain this. If you really, really love your children, then you prepare as best as you can to provide them a quality upbringing. This person could do better, if only it were important enough to her.
I was trying to be funny (guess I failed, lol), but in all honesty, yes, I've seen people behave otherwise myself. My dad, for one. Hopefully, my daughter will say that about me too, one of these days. Most of my friends also value commitment and that which is honorable and true, since those are the kind of people I prefer to associate with.
Heh in retrospect I believe you were joking... but that mentality is so common, so prevalent, that most would have been quite serious.
It's not my place to determine your fate but I can see where your heart is. I strongly, extremely doubt that your daughter will have regrets about your character given the the things you seek and the traits you celebrate. So few people get to grow up with a noble father image, or have no father who is present at all. I believe you because you are believable, and it sounds like you've done well.
That's the only way we're going to reverse this horrifying Dark Age that we currently live under. It will be a while before the mainstream recognizes it as such; it will be quite a while actually. We have so many neat toys and technologies and "stuff". These things distract us from seeing how dark this age really is. I doubt there were many periods in history when personal responsibility, at least a lip service towards virtue, and a concern for one's fellow beings and how one's actions impact them were all simultaneously so hard to find.
You're doing your part and I am doing mine. At the end of the day I have no regrets about it. The one great thing about modern technology is that you never really know how many you can reach with a message of truth and love, for only a tiny minority speak up and respond.
human reproduction is generally far from high-minded reason
Indeed. That's a major component of why we have the kind of world we have today. I never disagreed that this is the case. I only argue that it is the low road.
It is a choice, you know. That means it can be chosen differently, with a loving enlightenment.
I agree with you. In all cases the situation hasn't gone well.
That you say that is truly beautiful and delightful to me. You could have taken the low road and made some personal attack against me, but someone else already tried that and you see how (un)successful that was. It takes some real guts to admit a thing like that and face the tragedy it represents without embracing a lie or making an excuse to cover it up. For people who are egotistical, the fact it involves one's family makes it even more urgent to portray this tragedy as some kind of good thing and anyone who points out its failure as some kind of naysaying demon, just as "Mashiki" tried and failed to do because I see right through it.
The tragedy, specifically, is that the people involved have no real inner purpose guiding and motivating what they do. They do not know what it is to do a good and beautiful thing and have the reward be the chance to participate in it. They need exterior motive in the form of the approval and phony (conditional) "love" and admiration of others, to be seen as "good" in the eyes of others. As I have heard a great teacher say, they are "out-dividuals" and not individuals. They seek fulfillment but are merely fools who are going to get filled. My own term for it is the real STD: the socially transmitted disease.
It's so common that your ability to recognize and question it becomes a formidable test of who you are and what kind of character you have. The awareness this requires is not something you can get from the environment composed of other people and what they tell you. It's more like in the environment around you, to the degree that you are truly committed to what is noble and honorable is the degree to which you understand who your real friends are. The rest are using you to get their own phony sense of worth that comes from approval.
The truly damnable thing is that this is an unconscious or subconscious process. Anyone who had enough awareness to bring these processes into the realm of conscious awareness could never bear the shame and guilt of participating in such a system. In that sense, they are living according to the only way they know and cannot help themselves because no one ever really loved them enough to tell them the truth no matter what.
What a wonderful, mature, high-minded reason to bring a child into the world...
Agreed, but...did you honestly expect people to behave otherwise?
I know for a fact that they can, because I have seen it with my own eyes. It requires a real commitment and ability to cherish what is honorable and true. That's all.
If you want to be the real "one percent" (of one percent), value those things above all else. The only things it will cost you weren't good for you to have anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I can hand pick what information Facebook gets.
Can you perfectly control what everyone else posts about you? Can you absolutely lock down what else can be inferred about you by anyone who can take a long view of everything you post plus everything everyone else posts, such as Facebook staff and their partners?
... that's a neat trick.
If you can, well
Honestly, his statements sound like they belong in an Onion article.
"Daryl Gates Hopes L.A. Riots Were a One-Time Thing, Eager to Resume Beating Black People"
The L.A. Riots didn't happen because a bunch of cops beat the shit out of Rodney King.
The Riots happened because a court refused to do anything about it. Every now and then people get sick and tired of cops being above the law.
A few convictions would have prevented the whole thing.
They thought they were following Christian teachings; just not the ones that you follow.
Funny thing about that: if you actually read the words of Christ, you won't find anywhere a justification to lie, murder, etc. In fact you'll find just the opposite. Jesus wouldn't even let Peter defend Him against the guards who came to arrest Him (going to far as to heal the wound Peter made with his sword and then rebuke Peter).
... you can worship Satan and call yourself "a Christian", that doesn't make it true. It's not "just the ones you follow" as though there were multiple versions, some of which urge believers to kill abortion doctors and what-not. There are no such versions. The people who do that are simply wrong, no matter what veil they choose to hide behind.
I mean
They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.
Thank you. Well said.
That a single individual, such as yourself, found that edifying made it more than worth my time to elucidate.
You're quite welcome, madam.
Doesn't consumer just mean an entity that consumes?
No. It comes from the broadcast industry.
... those are the consumers. Compared to your customers, they have little or no power to change your content or make requests. One of them threatening to watch another channel means nothing to you. They only matter in very large groups.
Say you run a TV station. You broadcast TV shows plus commercials over the air at no charge. Anyone with the right receiver can watch your content without paying you a cent.
The advertisers who buy commercial time are your customers. They are the ones paying you. If you piss them off, say by airing programs they find distasteful, they will take their business elsewhere and you will lose that revenue.
The viewers who provide eyeballs for the advertisers but pay nothing
They are not remotely the same thing. A customer can be influential as an individual. Referring to a customer as a "consumer" is an Orwellian Newspeak method of trying to disempower them, to tilt the balance of market power in your own favor without having earned it. It is belittling and degrading and shows a certain contempt that can only come from taking them for granted.
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Then you, like me, recognize the problem. Are you, like me, working towards a solution by educating anyone you encounter who wants to understand?
Anyone you can teach can also teach others; anyone they teach can teach others, and so on. It cascades. It grows exponentially.
You can have a much greater impact than you think. You, acting alone, can do that. Imagine what happens when lots of others have the same unwavering determination...
The simple solution is to not buy digital products from people you don't trust. Building a solid reputation does take time (and money) and is not so easily discarded. The problem is that people blindly spend a few bucks on companies with no reputation and then are shocked when those companies don't follow the highest standards of customer service.
This doesn't absolve those unethical companies of guilt, but it doesn't make me feel too sorry for those who choose not to patronize (reward) companies with good reputations. This is true in the digital world or the real world.
Finally, after reading the very last post in this thread, do I feel like someone understood what I was saying and wasn't trying to twist it around into a "but somehow this is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT" kind of hollow rationalization.
Thank you for taking the time to post.
I guess I reconcile them thus: There will always be a market for information. I hope our people do more buying than selling. Selling information you are entrusted to protect is despicable. Buying information you need is understandable. To say that it is the buyer's fault is like saying "If everyone were perfect, X would happen" I believe systems must be designed for the real world, not utopia. I hope our systems work better. Even if they are based on that evil money I never seem to have enough of...
I understand what you're saying. My argument is that it takes two to tango. Both buyer and seller are equally culpable because both are voluntarily engaged in an unethical transaction.
If you consider consenting adult people doing drugs to be a problem (I don't, but humor me here), you must understand that every last drug dealer would be put out of business if no one wanted to buy drugs. The dealer is merely responding to demand. In fact, the existence of such demand for drugs means that there will always be drug dealers until such time as there is no longer a profit to be made due to lack of demand.
It's a market reality. I don't see where utopia or dystopia enters into it. Honest people don't want at any price information obtained through dishonest means. If you think having a basic level of integrity requires utopia, then in a roundabout way you are actually excusing as "just human nature" those who are dishonest. After all, none of us grew up in Perfect Utopia so hey, who can blame us for being selfish and having no integrity, right? Yet I do have integrity and I didn't derive it from growing up in a perfect world. It's called personal responsibility and it's also called having to live with yourself.
I see you still completely failed to cite anything evil.
No, I said I refused to spoon-feed you. Like I previously noted, you appear to be literate so I know you saw me say that.
In fact another poster did some of your homework for you. That was against my wishes, because laziness such as yours does not deserve to be coddled, but he did it and it is there for your perusal.
Congratulations on proving my point - you have no argument whatsoever.
So then, you do not dispute me when I say your "logic" is the most childish available? Good. You wouldn't stand a chance anyway. It would be like disputing me when I tell you that two plus two equals four.
Come back and have some facts next time.
If you want facts, I am not The Exclusive Source of All Things Factual. I don't own the truth and you're equipped with a computer and Internet access during the Information Age. Facts are not mine to give but they are yours to find. Just how conveniently lazy are you? You cannot be interested in facts, or else you'd research Microsoft's history yourself and nothing I say or do would stop you. You're just another little ego that must feel "right" at all times. That's why you won't look for the facts because they would contradict your "rightness".
I'll wait 'til I've seen verification before I believe it or not ... but it's real or not, I still found this line funny:
If it's real, I also wonder about:
I mean, this is a group that makes their money by paying off people to get them information, in ways that are hinted are against the law (likely they're getting other people to break the law of other countries, even if the company themselves aren't) ... but they're against hackers that break the law? It seems a a bit hypocritical to me.
Sure, just like the way the government can't easily conduct certain forms of surveillance because that would run afoul of the 4th Amendment... but they can contract that out, purchasing the same information from companies conducting the same surveillance, and that's perfectly cromulent.
Yet, if you commit a crime by proxy, you're just as guilty as your hireling. For example, if you hired a contract killer you would be convicted for murder along with your mercenary. And unlike the US Constitution, the law under which you'd be convicted is not the highest law of the land.
Figure that one out in a logically consistent, non-hypocritical way.
Zerohedge is all over this like white on rice.
I eat brown rice because it's more nutritious ... uh, you insensitive clod!
I hope it's effective. I don't have a problem with people buying info.
I do have a huge problem with people in positions of responsibility selling it for their own profit at our expense though...
How do you reconcile those two sentences?
... guess what makes people in positions of responsibility sell information for their own profit? That's right ... other people buy it.
Or
The position of responsibility is why they had the info to sell. They are insiders who are in the loop. Information everyone already knows doesn't command a very high price.
Just because Google is evil doesn't make Microsoft less evil. It just makes them both evil. A trivial perusal of the Web would bring up information about why Microsoft is considered evil. Here is a light selection of keywords for you to start your research with: anti-trust; illegal use of monopoly; linux is cancer; ISO document standard bribery; Open Document Format vs OpenXML; licensing of MFC to crunch Borland and promote MFC over (the vastly superior) OWL; payment of computer manufacturers to bundle Windows instead of open competition; removal of Linux from Asus Eee; deliberatly hobbling OpenGL on Windows; deliberately hobbing POSIX-compliance on Windows (Windows needs POSIX for US Government contracts); deliberately hobbling Java on Windows (which Microsoft lost a court case against Sun over - but the tactic worked long enough for Microsoft to derive the essentially Windows-only C# and the .NET platform from Java and the JVM); Microsoft's attempts in the mid-90's to stiffle the open Internet by promoting NetBUI etc instead of open protocols (something they had to do a volte face about); trying to tie the open internet to Windows through ActiveX and Internet Explorer 6 proprietary extensions (which Bill Gates also famously lied about saying IE could not be removed from the O/S); I could go on but it ought to be enough if you have been paying attention for the last two decades. No one would mind if Microsoft competed hard but fairly. The truth is they don't - they use all sorts of morally shady tactics - which makes them evil. For that matter, neither do Apple. Apple is at least as bad as Microsoft, but at least Apple stuff (mostly) works a lot better. But just because Google and Apple are also evil does not make Microsoft any less evil.
I believe I already shut him up and he has already chosen to slink away and find someone more emotional and less reasonable to try his little routine on. People like him are all show and cannot respond to a legitimate challenge; they can only irritate and obfuscate. Someone who sees through that is the last thing they want to deal with so they suddenly shut up and disappear, though I am almost certain he read my response (and yours as well). His article of faith demands it.
All the same, your post is a good reference and must have taken a bit of effort to put together (less effort to write those, more effort to pick them from a much larger list). Even if little nothing-human-beings like him are incapable of appreciating it, I certainly did. I appreciate anyone who cares about the facts and isn't a total mindless slave to his personal feelings about them.
And yet, even after all this time, I still haven't seen anyone state a compelling reason as to why it's true. What did Microsoft do that was so "evil"? Please enlighten me.
You're just as capable of brushing up on Microsoft's history since the late 1980s as I am. The gist of it would take only a few minutes of your time. Your participation here leads me to assume you are literate, so I refuse to spoon-feed you. If you can't be bothered to inform yourself about a topic that's not remotely obscure, then recuse yourself from this discussion like a respectable person.
Meanwhile, Google is sniffing your wireless network as their cars drive by, making your address book public to promote Buzz, and changing their privacy policies to benefit their data-mining AFTER you have already signed up for various separate services. yet it's only Microsoft that is OMG SO EVIL THEY MUST DIE.
Oh I see, you're using the most childish "logic" available: Entity X did something REALLY BAD, so anything bad that Entity Y does is A-OK!
I didn't mention Google at all, neither positive nor negative, because Google was not being discussed. If you have a fixation on Google, it is yours. Look, if this is a religious conviction or article of faith for you, just say so. That's fine and you're entitled to it. Dressing it up like it's a rational argument is what makes you sound like a spoiled child.
If I were a cynical guy I'd take this as Intel giving Microsoft's cash cow the FU salute after Microsoft said Windows 8 would run on Arm based tablets. Good thing I'm not a cynical person - oh, wait...
Assuming that many people are petty and vindictive is not cynicism, it's realism, so long as you remain open to any exceptions you should encounter.
Having said that, if your suspicion is correct and Microsoft is on the receiving end of some corporate vindictiveness, well, it couldn't have happened to a better company. They may be tame these days as they slide towards irrelevancy, but they also have 25 years of bad karma to catch up with.
I agree that physical violence is appropriate in the case. If an update locks up an application that I have legally paid for and then demands yet more money to unlock it, I'd have to say that the developers need to be publically flogged and run out of town.
Hypothetically speaking ... the funny thing about that, is when you won't tolerate this kind of behavior no matter what, when those who feel tempted to try it know that there is a certain and severe consequence, it does not result in more violence. It results in such people finding in the external world the restraint they failed to find within themselves. They are selfish, and rather than the nearly impossible task of (anyone other than them) changing that, you provide for them a selfish reason not to behave this way. It's a shitty alternative to them developing a human conscience, but it does work.
It's the same principle behind law. People who can govern themselves from a genuine, compassionate concern for their fellow man don't need external consequence to dictate their actions. Force or threat of force is for all the rest.
which the best possible means of making displeasure known is the age-old Voting With Your Feet (or dollars) by walking away from anyone practicing such things. I'm a slow adopter on quite a few things, largely because of my elevating level of disappointment with the way people are deciding is appropriate for doing business - by wrecking something you have already paid for and are using.
You're right about "age-old". In fact I'm wondering what the news is here. That digital distribution is not abuse-proof or fraud-proof just like brick-and-mortar sales? That there are dishonest people with exploitative business practices? This has been going on in one form or another ever since the origin of barter and the later invention of currency.
How is this not another "... with a computer!" story?
The solution to this is to make such people notorious, so that potential customers think twice before doing business with them, same as any business that causes legitimate grievances and dissatisfied customers. Make them more famous for their terrible business practices than for any software they have created. Let them be the ones who fail while honest people with good business practices thrive. That's how you create an environment hostile to this sort of thing and select against it. It's just an iteration of that old saying, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
I doubt they want to piss off some big customers.
If that's the only societal force that can spare us, then we're screwed. Big customers can be whitelisted or "undesirables" can be blacklisted.
I think what we need is to promote an awareness of just how important the Internet is, that screwing around with it for any reason other than good engineering is a bad idea. For example, the DNSSEC mandate is actually a sound idea and stands a good chance of working better than what we have now.
The moment an anti-malware system starts intentionally hindering many (or all) torrents is the moment it ceases to be a technical solution and changes into a political tool. You don't need to understand the technical details of how BitTorrent works to understand this. We need a general public that understands this, for the same reason we need to understand that "think of the children!" includes concern for what kind of authoritarian, regimented society we're leaving them to inherit.
I have to assume that any mandate to "protect against botnets" that could ever be construed to mean bans on entire protocols is going to be inevitably abused. Authoritarian types look for such "opportunities" just as businesses look for new markets. Power is just a different kind of currency.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm aware that this fact is repeated often on the internet but nobody's ever been able to provide a citation that doesn't cite another, that cites another, that leads on in a circle forever. Regardless, such practices are unregulated and there is no tracking or auditing, so if something that wasn't honey made it into production, or if it contained botulism (yes, honey can indeed become infected with pathogens, le gasp)... there would be no way to trace it back to its source. That was my point. If the Egyptians happened to be really good at preserving things, you know, like people and honey, well all the more power to them. However, this is not Egypt during the time of the Parohs.
The statements of the obvious ("this isn't ancient Egypt" etc.) reveal a slight impatient hostility on your part. It's not my fault you chose a weak example.
The principle here is that honey has such a high concentration of varous sugars and such a low concentration of water relative to those, that it provides an environment quite hostile for microbes. Osmosis across their cell membranes would tend to dehydrate them. It's similar to what happens when food (or whatever) is packed in salt. For this reason honey was once used to dress wounds in order to help prevent infection.
Knowing something about its nature is an alternative to dealing with any circular citations you might encounter. At least if your sole concern is whether you are likely to be harmed by eating "expired" honey. I for one am not worried about this at all, but as I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or other such practitioner I'm not telling anyone else what they should do. I simply consider it more than coincidence that such a widespread practice of selling expired honey (assuming I accept that at face value) hasn't resulted in reported cases of food poisoning like we saw with tainted spinach, cantaloupe, et al in recent years.
The FDA is a gimp government department. The only thing it can review in depth is approval for new drugs, and that's only because the corporations submitting the drugs have to pay for that. Funding for everything else, from food and cosmetics inspection to even chasing down advertisers that use the phrase 'FDA approved' illegally, is so hamstrung as to be useless. The only time the FDA gets involved is when there's press coverage on people getting sick and/or dying. Only a very, very small fraction of meat is ever inspected... and there are holes in the system so big you could fly a 737 through it and still have ample room to fit at least a dozen Rush Limbaughs lengthwise through them. Take honey, for example: Honey is mixed and remixed with many other suppliers, such that the expiration date is never known. Should a particular batch of honey be close to expiring or would otherwise fail inspection, it is shipped across the border, mixed in with good honey, and then imported back. This is legal. There's so many examples of this it's not even funny.
Bottom line here: Don't trust the FDA when it comes to food safety. It may be their responsibility to ensure food is safe, but they're so horribly underfunded and compromised by corporate interests that they cannot realistically be expected to succeed.
Are you aware that ancient Egyptian tombs have been unsealed and were found to contain honey thousands of years old that was still edible? It's an excellent preservative.
I'm no fan of the FDA either but this isn't your strongest example.
Did you suppose that a teenager who hasn't even graduated high school yet is in a good position to take on the full responsibility of parenting? Have you seen the statistics for children (especially boys) who are raised by such people?
Do you think that's the ideal environment for the child?
Or do you think she just wanted to get her rocks off and didn't consider pregnancy? Oh, and a responsible father would think of these things even if the mother didn't. This isn't a responsible father. This is a horny teenager who wanted to get his rocks off too. It's so bleedin' obvious, it's as though none of you were ever in high school...
Other than this phony sense of "I'm offended by your certainty!" there is no good reason I should have to explain this. If you really, really love your children, then you prepare as best as you can to provide them a quality upbringing. This person could do better, if only it were important enough to her.
I was trying to be funny (guess I failed, lol), but in all honesty, yes, I've seen people behave otherwise myself. My dad, for one. Hopefully, my daughter will say that about me too, one of these days. Most of my friends also value commitment and that which is honorable and true, since those are the kind of people I prefer to associate with.
Heh in retrospect I believe you were joking... but that mentality is so common, so prevalent, that most would have been quite serious.
It's not my place to determine your fate but I can see where your heart is. I strongly, extremely doubt that your daughter will have regrets about your character given the the things you seek and the traits you celebrate. So few people get to grow up with a noble father image, or have no father who is present at all. I believe you because you are believable, and it sounds like you've done well.
That's the only way we're going to reverse this horrifying Dark Age that we currently live under. It will be a while before the mainstream recognizes it as such; it will be quite a while actually. We have so many neat toys and technologies and "stuff". These things distract us from seeing how dark this age really is. I doubt there were many periods in history when personal responsibility, at least a lip service towards virtue, and a concern for one's fellow beings and how one's actions impact them were all simultaneously so hard to find.
You're doing your part and I am doing mine. At the end of the day I have no regrets about it. The one great thing about modern technology is that you never really know how many you can reach with a message of truth and love, for only a tiny minority speak up and respond.
human reproduction is generally far from high-minded reason
Indeed. That's a major component of why we have the kind of world we have today. I never disagreed that this is the case. I only argue that it is the low road.
It is a choice, you know. That means it can be chosen differently, with a loving enlightenment.
I agree with you. In all cases the situation hasn't gone well.
That you say that is truly beautiful and delightful to me. You could have taken the low road and made some personal attack against me, but someone else already tried that and you see how (un)successful that was. It takes some real guts to admit a thing like that and face the tragedy it represents without embracing a lie or making an excuse to cover it up. For people who are egotistical, the fact it involves one's family makes it even more urgent to portray this tragedy as some kind of good thing and anyone who points out its failure as some kind of naysaying demon, just as "Mashiki" tried and failed to do because I see right through it.
The tragedy, specifically, is that the people involved have no real inner purpose guiding and motivating what they do. They do not know what it is to do a good and beautiful thing and have the reward be the chance to participate in it. They need exterior motive in the form of the approval and phony (conditional) "love" and admiration of others, to be seen as "good" in the eyes of others. As I have heard a great teacher say, they are "out-dividuals" and not individuals. They seek fulfillment but are merely fools who are going to get filled. My own term for it is the real STD: the socially transmitted disease.
It's so common that your ability to recognize and question it becomes a formidable test of who you are and what kind of character you have. The awareness this requires is not something you can get from the environment composed of other people and what they tell you. It's more like in the environment around you, to the degree that you are truly committed to what is noble and honorable is the degree to which you understand who your real friends are. The rest are using you to get their own phony sense of worth that comes from approval.
The truly damnable thing is that this is an unconscious or subconscious process. Anyone who had enough awareness to bring these processes into the realm of conscious awareness could never bear the shame and guilt of participating in such a system. In that sense, they are living according to the only way they know and cannot help themselves because no one ever really loved them enough to tell them the truth no matter what.
What a wonderful, mature, high-minded reason to bring a child into the world...
Agreed, but...did you honestly expect people to behave otherwise?
I know for a fact that they can, because I have seen it with my own eyes. It requires a real commitment and ability to cherish what is honorable and true. That's all.
If you want to be the real "one percent" (of one percent), value those things above all else. The only things it will cost you weren't good for you to have anyway.