Enjoy your SUV, 2.1 kids, and your house in the suburbs while you can.
I'm so glad you're concerned about my enjoyment of life. I appreciate that.
Are you concerned about the "while you can" part of that? Because if you take a hard look at the USA you will conclude that this is what a nation on the decline looks like. Want to review the most common failure mode of a collapsing nation? It's not irreversible yet. There is still a lot of room for apathy before that happens.
Right because, sitting on the ground arms behind your back while the cop takes out his can of pepper spray, holding it up and walking with it, showing it to the entire crowd before spraying you in the face untill the can is empty, is totally provoking him.
Those bastards and their damn sitting.
I wish you'd take one minute to Google a term with which you are obviously unfamiliar (agent provocateur) prior to responding to a post based around it. It would be better for everyone. It would also make it easier for you to avoid responding with pure emotion during a factual discussion.
Look for more incidents involving agents provocateurs in future protests. It's easier to "justify" whatever actions are taken if they can show footage of a "protester" acting in an "unreasonable" fashion.
The public footage is having a huge impact right now because people are seeing people like themselves at the protests and NOT causing problems... and hearing the official reports contradicting the footage.
This is what bothers me about the average person. If it isn't undeniably smacking them in the face, they have no clue how much and how often their media lies to them on a daily basis.
People need to seriously wake the fuck up and they need to stop waiting for some leader to show them how. It is and has always been an individual realization based on a real love of truth.
"There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'""
haha come on, parity?
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
Its a sad day our society thinks this is some kind of achievement or "balance" of power
The balance of power has always been a slow, grinding play of justice against violent acts.
You rob a convenience store, or ten, it profits you in the moment, but spending years behind bars is the price. If a cop beats a protester to death for no apparent reason and it is covered by several independent video cameras, he's a lot more likely to answer for his actions than if it was merely witnessed by 50 protesters who were also being beaten.
Unfortunately the worst penalty the cop is likely to face is either a paid vacation known as "administrative leave" or maybe the loss of his job. This is a serious problem. A free society won't stay that way if the police have some kind of special status above the citizens they are supposed to be serving. Incidentally, a cop who beats someone basically has to also charge them with resisting arrest (or similar) or he's admitting he beat them for no reason, so there is both the assault and the criminal charge that may haunt the person for life.
Even the idea that "assaulting a police officer" carries a higher penalty than assaulting a citizen might sound good but it's completely misguided. The cop is better able to respond to an assault, to have back-up, and carries an assortment of weaponry everywhere he goes. The average citizen is more likely to be unarmed and more likely to hesitate to use any available weapons for fear that a court will not consider it self-defense (we like victimhood and we like to encourage bullies so in many states you are expected to try fleeing first, nevermind this only emboldens the criminals). Even if there were not such an inequality, the cop is our servant, one particularly able to abuse his authority, and granting him equality alone is generous.
You simply can't have "special" or "protected" groups and expect to remain an egalitarian society that cherishes freedoms. It has never happened before and it won't happen again.
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
No, they shouldn't, but this is the way it has always been.
You can read the autobiography of Mohandas Ghandi (a really wonderful book) and see the same patterns. You can read some Henry David Thoreau and understand why he would have preferred to remain in jail instead of having a well-meaning but less-principled individual pay his poll tax for him.
As long as the masses, the majority of people, are largely passive and indifferent to the injustice around them there will always be a need for exceptional individuals to take this kind of abuse to effect any real change. What people like Thoreau and Ghandi realized was the error of violence, the way it makes it so easy for those who control perception and use propaganda to make the violent (however justified) into evil bogeymen who will always be demonized in the popular mind.
I heard this one time and I never forgot it. It is a saying of Ghandi's: "the good that violence appears to do is temporary; the harm that it does is permanent." I suppose there are a lot of low-brow, smarmy types with nothing to contribute so for them maybe I should add "within the context of protest and trying to change society" so the fact that war sometimes is quite necessary is irrelevant. There was a time before it became necessary and that's when peaceful change was possible. I'm tired of that small-minded crowd, so I don't consider it a total waste to deny them the slam-dunk "victory" they so desperately crave.
At any rate, doing it peacefully means you absolutely must maintain the high ground. If you want to expose the establishment for the bunch of power-hungry thugs they tend to be, you cannot use their tactics. It provides no contrast. The unwise, reactionary, direction-less types who tend to attach themselves to any major movement are the biggest problem the Occupiers currently have. Do you not notice how the media reports with glee the rapes, murders, etc. that occur on the Occupied territory? That's exactly what they want -- for you to be no better. If you want to be effective, don't give it to them.
What's to not understand? They don't want to be compatible because then they have no leverage over the tech. On the other hand they can, as in this case, patent the tech and lock you in.
I'm not the one who questioned it. Pretending that I am is another fail.
My point in the initial response to you was that you either failed to comprehend or chose to trivialize the question the other poster was asking. Both are useless.
Anyway, as that other poster implies, not using a proprietary technology and being more compatible may increase the usefulness of the device. That, in turn, might be another way to increase sales. I suppose he was wondering what reason they have to believe that proprietary lock-in is more profitable than this.
Isn't that more useful than restating the obvious by saying "it's not one of their goals"? Clearly it is not, or else they would act accordingly. The constructive thing to do then is to move past the obvious that we can all observe and look into why it is that way and whether it could be done differently and how viable that would be.
No, smallpox does NOT make a good weaponized agent.
One of the key attributes of a bioweapon is controllability. You want it to hit who and where you want it to hit, and you DON'T want it to hit outside that area. In particular, you DON'T want it to be significantly contagious - and smallpox is one of the most horribly contagious diseases known to Man.
Pneumonic anthrax, on the other hand, while highly lethal, is essentially not contagious from person to person. This makes it an ideal bioweapon candidate, as was demonstrated some years back - and they STILL haven't found the $^%#&%$!!! who did it.
That didn't stop the early American government from using it as a biological weapon against the Native Americans. Those individuals were evil and they were cowards so they exposed blankets and other items to the virus and then "donated" them to the indigenous tribes.
Now imagine a scenario like that but with modern technology (i.e. delivery methods). Controllability could be as simple as "we have a military budget and easy access to vaccines, drugs, and haz-mat suits while our targets don't."
There just aren't a lot of reasons why you'd worry this much and spend so much money on a virus that generally doesn't exist anymore.
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this.
B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
Most of the arguments against an American universal healthcare system are based on the idea that *this* government wouldn't do a good job even if various European nations handle it well. If you consider other federal projects and programs to be a track record, it's difficult to argue against this. If you think this one thing is somehow unique and special, that people who display extreme corruption/cronyism and gross incompetence will somehow perform wonderfully when you put them in charge of a health system, please understand that you are proposing something contrary to reasonable expectation and there is a burden of proof that goes with that.
I notice in the EU corporations with business practices hostile to the customers actually do get slapped down once in a while by the regulators. If that were the norm here, I would have a lot more confidence that the government is representing the correct set of interests when it takes action. The situation in the USA is not a matter of whether such a system could work in theory or has worked for others. It's a matter of trust; there is none, and trust is a particularly difficult thing to earn back once it is destroyed.
To be active to act on X, there has to be conscious that X even exists. As I said, plenty of people aren't. They aren't passive, just oblivious.
I think you have two choices here. Either embrace a permanent state of victimhood and accept that as the highest knowable reality available... or understand that being oblivious comes from using a thing without ever learning more and more about it over time, without ever investigating how it works and what the pitfalls are, without seeking to understand its ramifications.
I know many people do that and I consider it something of a miracle that they don't suffer quite a bit more than they do. Still, I view that as a choice. I know about these things not because I waited around for some stranger to come along and educate me, but because I have looked into them. I made that choice. Not making a choice is also a choice.
These exploitative business practices won't end until most people begin to see it that way. You could call it a burden but I say that no form of freedom is (libre) free and this kind of freedom is no exception.
I am grateful to you for not immediately resenting the suggestion that people educate themselves. That makes these things much easier to discuss without them childishly devolving into a blame-game. Most of the time I sugget a victim can stop being a victim I am accused of blaming the victim, as though it's a soap opera in which blame is the only consideration, as though there's anything wrong with learning from a situation and not falling prey to it again because the effort required to do so is "unfair" in some way. Seriously, it's nice to have this kind of discourse.
Oh look kids, another delusional soul who still think Facebook only spies on registered users!
Do you see those Facebook buttons everywhere? I don't know how's the situation right now, but just a few months ago they were creating these little cookies with IDs even if you didn't have an account (like I don't). Which means they could log each and every site you went to and create a single profile from it.
So please shut the fuck up the next time, yes?
What's with the belligerent tone?
The Facebook buttons and their cookies are easily blocked. Anyone who cares about this can take the ten minutes necessary to understand how this tracking is done and configure their system(s) to refuse such content. The default choice, the result of doing nothing, is that you get spied on. That makes them a bunch of dicks to be sure, but it's not a big surprise. When in this life have you ever chosen to learn nothing and to do nothing and then received a result you found to be ideal?
If you want to be in the backseat and take a passive role in your experience because you think that's someone else's responsibility... then someone else will decide for you how that turns out. The minority who remain expect to get out of it what they are willing to invest into it and are not disappointed. In the face of an active adversary (a loaded word but appropriate since I did not invite them to attempt to track me), the mentality which desires to remain totally passive and then complain about the result is little more than a spoiled brat.
In summary, they may or may not log each and every site *you* go to. That's your choice and you do have options. It is better to exercise those than to complain that the default choice sucks (which it does, so do something about it). As for me: no, they won't, and my refusal requires neither their goodwill nor their cooperation. Call it what you will; I call it having a spine.
What did people THINK was going to happen when they signed up for Facebook and effectively dropped trou to the universe?
And expecting the grubby little data miners to play fair with people who they're making money off of?
Pfft! Yeah. What world are YOU from?
There's one solution to the problem of Facebook belching your data to whoever pays them their pound of flesh.
DON'T FUCKING SIGN UP FOR FACEBOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE!
With most people, that kind of obvious realization breaks down the moment having some control over their own life involves denying oneself a convenience that is dangled in front of them like bait. The form of the convenience could be the service itself that Facebook offers. It could be (for most anyway) failure to bear the always rewarding but sometimes heavy burden of being a real individual, such as having to explain to friends that you have good reason not to use the site even if they would prefer to contact you with it. Of course a real friend would understand and respect that and not demand (by acting hurt, annoyed, etc) that you conform to their example for something so optional, but judging from the way most people talk about bandwagon appeals and peer pressure it seems most people think this kind of manipulation is normal and legitimate.
It's the same reason most boycotts don't get off the ground. The moment people would have to make do without a luxury or prepare something themselves instead of having it pre-packaged or some other test of their commitment to principle, they cave. It doesn't matter what the company has done to make itself unworthy of continued patronage. It's most unfortunate but the masses of people are pushovers who won't take a stand for much of anything unless they feel (correctly or not) that their back is against a wall.
I suppose most of you reading this think it's a good thing that government intervenes to regulate Facebook. If this were food safety or building construction or some other thing that is a matter of life-and-death, where great damage could be done before any reason for a user/customer to suspect a problem has manifested, then I would agree with you. As it stands now with Facebook, I say that the moment you interfere with this process and shelter this kind of spinelessness is the moment you prevent the character growth of those who are badly in need of a lesson. I know it looks like a nice thing to do but that's short-term thinking; in the long run it makes the problem worse.
Those who have a clue, care about privacy, and make their own decisions avoided Facebook from the beginning. The rest are making their beds and should not be prevented from laying in them.
Enforcement by whom? This is just a standard by W3C, and it is a weak one at that. If you fail to produce compliant HTML, your web page might not render correctly; if you fail to follow this standard, nobody will notice.
Privacy is not something that a standard can guarantee you.
I hope this doesn't work out the same way anti-telemarketer devices did prior to the Do-Not-Call List.
Anyone remember those? They used various tones and other tricks to try to convince the telemarketers' auto-dialers that the number was invalid or not in service. How did the telemarketers respond? Did they take the hint that they were not wanted and focus their efforts on people who might be more willing to entertain their sales pitches? No. They interpreted that as "those people must be using those devices because they are unassertive pushovers who have difficulty saying 'no', so if we can reach them we'll REALLY make some sales!"
So they tried to find ways to circumvent those devices and after some time, the calls would get through anyway and I'd have to tell them to piss off myself. One favorite was to sound interested and then ask for their own personal telephone number. When they inevitably refused, I'd say something like "what's wrong, you don't like having strangers bother you at home?" While it's fun to hassle a professional pest (who during that job market could have chosen many other career paths), it was a nuisance that these idiots tried so hard to circumvent your express wishes.
That was with the telephone network which is old technology that most people understand how to use. Is there any reason to think this won't be the case with Internet technology that most users don't have a clue about? It definitely tends to tilt the playing field in favor of the professional assholes. I for one will ignore this standard and probably won't even use it when it becomes supported on all major browsers. Instead, I'll stick to a combination of Adblock Plus, NoScript, cookie management, Redirect Remover, RefControl, a comprehensive hosts file, and several other measures I use.
I mean think about it. Why leave the decision-making to the party that stands to gain from failing to respect my privacy? What goodwill have they shown in the past that suddenly makes them so trustworthy? Since when did the advertising industry suddenly start respecting privacy? I just don't buy it. It's an inherent conflict of interest.
Thank you. The media has spun this story to appear as though Anonymous backed down out of fear. I wonder why that is.
Because groups like Anon who are good at obtaining information and causing grief for major corporations tend to piss off powerful people. Powerful people tend to be well-represented in the media.
What, did you think the news was somehow objective? The media are populated by fascists, other statists, and those heavily invested in the status quo. They're just careful not to tell an outright lie that is easily falsified. Mostly they spin and they deliberately omit details that don't serve their agenda. Their priorities are roughly as follows:
1. Promote government control and the increasing centralization of both power and wealth, either by fearmongering (gotta stop those terrorists and protect the children!) or by appealing to the nanny-state (because someone might hurt themselves and it's for your own good after all).
2. De-emphasize individuality and personal responsibility. Anyone featured in the news must be identified according to the group identity -- if someone is black or a woman or any other minority group, a big deal must be made of this (a total rejection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s notion of going by the content of character). Everyone who ever suffers in any way is always a victim -- there are no adults who suffer because they make poor decisions. Anyone who successfully stands up for himself must be ignored or downplayed, which is why a citizen with a conceal-carry permit who uses his gun to stop a crime will be described as "the perpetrator was subdued until police arrived" but any psychopath who goes on a shooting spree with a semi-automatic glorified deer rifle will be described as "a GUNman with an ASSAULT RIFLE" (nevermind that an assault rifle has features such as a select-fire switch not present on the firearm in question and they know this term is wrong and does not apply).
3. Dumb everything down and promote childishness and emotional immaturity among adult people. Use words like "lawmaker" because "legislator" might confuse someone, et al. Write and speak at about a 6th-grade reading level. Cater to small-minded gossips by watching every move every actor, singler, dancer, or athlete makes in their personal lives and covering it at length as though it were important. Make a big deal out of every marital problem a celebrity has, every trivial lifestyle decision they make, every unqualified opinion they have as though a thinking person would ever care about such idiotic and insignificant trivia. Then promote this as normal without ever questioning its validity.
4. Never, ever, ever offend a corporate sponsor or release any story that might possibly make them look bad, no matter how important or relevant such a story might be (cf Fox News and BGH milk).
5. Pretend like the linear, one-dimensional thinking that is "Left vs. Right" represents every possibility of human thought that ever has occurred, is occurring, or ever could occur in the future. Pretend also that the two major parties have any significant differences that could radically alter the course of the nation if implemented. Anytime a political figure takes an official position, just parrot what they say instead of applying critical thought to whether it holds water and really makes any sense.
6. If the above criteria are met, cherry-pick events that happen and report on them as long as no significant change could ever occur from these events becoming widely known. Or report them so long as the event is too big or too embarassing to be ignored and then perform the role of damage control by spinning and downplaying anything not favorable to the status quo. Or throw one person under the bus and crucify them for what is actually a systemic or institutional problem of which they happened to be an easy example.
7. Flash something different on the screen every 10-15 seconds or so to a
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling.
As someone familiar with Microsoft's long history of abusive, illegal, and Machiavellian behavior as well as their preference for long-term strategy over hasty decisions... I really do agree that it's naive to expect any form of goodwill from them, or that they would ever do anything that they don't believe gives them a way to put their competitors at a disadvantage. They're not a charity and they're not a community. That's okay because they generally don't pretend to be.
I don't subscribe to this culture where every single opinion that isn't worded with sweetness and presented with a cherry on top absolutely must be trolling. That poster gave reasons for why he believes as he does. The position is valid even if he wasn't terribly nice about it.
I can't speak for decisions I didn't make, but I can guess. Linux is an very fragmented platform. Getting a major piece of software to work across different distros often requires hacks and changes specific to each one. It's very rarely just a matter of recompiling and it's good. If you follow some of the microsoft blogs (windows 8 for example), one of the most common questions they get asked is why didn't you include feature X. The response is usually along the lines of not enough people would use it to be worth the effort. No company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted.
Really? Normally the method is to release it in a generic form and let the individual distribution maintainers worry about details like that. Normally the generic form is a source-code tarball, but if you need a proprietary example take a look at the nVidia graphics drivers. They don't provide packages. The distro maintainers have made.deb and.rpm packages for it, and Gentoo includes an.ebuild for it. Nvidia Corp. didn't have to worry about any of those particulars, nor should they. There is simply no reason why Microsoft would have to. I have to assume you have heard of nVidia.
Sorry but you don't sound knowledgable about this subject you're choosing to speak about. Not when well-known things easily contradict your "guess" and you state obvious things like "no company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted" when no one was claiming that a company did. This kind of vacuous reasoning is more trollish than the post you were complaining about, if you still feel concerned about trolls.
No, you haven't made your case. You might have strong emotional feelings or some kind of faith-based belief concerning Mono but there remain facts of the matter that indicate something other than Microsoft having no ulterior motives and a genuine desire to play nice with the Linux community. You can dismiss the fact that this would contradict their last 20 years of history too, if you like, but I say there is absolutely nothing wrong with being reluctant to trust a known abuser.
Microsoft actually does contribute code to mono. The missing components are mainly either deprecated or windows specific; for 99% of applications it's good enough. Troll harder.
I don't know a lot about.NET vs. Mono, but can you address this part before you call "troll"?
Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made.Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released? Answer: they could if they wanted to.
If you could invalidate that question you'd really have a case for GP being a troll. As it stands you seem to have selectively glossed over it. I know people around here love to cherry-pick what they respond to, but it really weakens your case.
Microsoft really does have a lot of wealth and a lot of highly talented programmers. It's not a question of whether they could or couldn't. I mean, they could have done what Sun did with Java and simultaneously release the runtimes for multiple platforms while maintaining a degree of control over the standard. Why do you believe they didn't? What explanation do you have for this that fits the observed facts better than GP's position? I really want to know and am willing to entertain a solid explanation.
I can get not installing it based on the fact that it targets libraries that drive for-profit philosophy, but at least call it that. Of course, then why is there still wine? samba? tsclient? All of these support and encourage Windows use.
It's minor, but I disagree with this notion.
Interoperability and compatibility are good things. There are situations where your end-users must run software available only for Windows. Wine is constantly improving. Still, not all things fitting this description run well in Wine, and many production environments don't want to struggle with getting them to work based on forum posts etc. when it is known that simply running Windows avoids all of this. Remember that to a Fortune 500 corporation, the cost of a Windows license is less than marginal but the cost of downtime can be significant.
I don't like this and I don't like Windows and I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this is a reality. Things like Samba open up new options that may not have been available before. So you're stuck with Windows for your end-user workstations? At least now your servers can be Linux. That's one more Linux system than you would have been able to use if you had no Samba (et al) equivalent.
Interoperability means you can pick the best system for the particular job knowing it will work with the rest of your systems. There's a freedom in this that you just don't get without it. Without interoperability you're much more at the mercy of vendorlock. The only thing that's a shame is that interoperability is always a one-way street when you deal with a monopolist. Interoperability today means it is always Linux's job to accommodate Windows protocols and filesystems. Microsoft is terrified of merit-based competition on an open playing field with no vendorlock, proprietary protocols, or other cheap tricks designed to prevent evaluation of merit.
When that changes, everyone will benefit. There is no concern about "encouraging Windows use" for those cases where it really is the best tool for the job; nor are there such concerns when it isn't and you can easily replace it with something more suitable.
"The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record in 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated.
No other pollutant is being discussed.
Oh god dammit. CO2 = released by burning shit (imagine a coal-fired electrical power plant). Some other pollutants with more immediate health effects = also released by burning shit. GP was asking why focus on just one. That no other pollutant was being discussed was precisely what he was questioning and it's foolish to point it out as if he didn't realize it.
Now I could answer that question in a variety of ways, such as pointing out that studying just this one thing in isolation (levels of CO2 vs. predicted levels) is probably complex enough without incorporating other concerns into the study, etc, but that's not my point.
My point is... This kind of legalistic "tee hee I'm just going to be dense and give you a hard time by never, ever inferring anything on my own" bullshit is why we can't have nice things. It's a douchebag thing to do. I know you don't mean it, but still. Most of the time the thing this mentality complains about is also the most certain indication that it misunderstood the post (something GP tried to tell you incidentally).
Can we all just quit patting ourselves on the back for a second and realize that this single mistake keeps getting repeated over and over, that it's really a veil for the belief that you're so smart and the other guy is so stupid, and I don't know, maybe we can see how optional it really is? Is that too much to ask?
Why must he be upset in order to point out a business maneuver?
Thanks for that.. You're completely right.. I wasn't upset, mad, or anything. I even said 'nicely done soulskill', because I thought it was clever (in a way). If anyone read any sarcasm in my post, they were mistaken.
I've been reading/. since like '98 (just started coming back after like 5 years away.. so haven't signed up for a new account yet).. I don't come here expecting posts that are worthy of a Pulitzer.
To me your intent was easy to discern. I have one big advantage there that shouldn't be rare but definitely seems to be. I am not easily offended and I neatly separate my personal feelings about a thing from the objective truth or falsehood of it. I might very strongly dislike something you say, but if it is a fact I will acknowledge it. If I truly have a problem with a fact, maybe I'll work towards a constructive way to change it while accepting that some things are beyond my power to change. That's the only real option I have because anything else would make me as psychotic and full of self-conflict as most other people.
Generally I witness a different pattern. It's hard sometimes to call it out because the people I'd be addressing have no real objectivity and thus no frame of reference in which to correctly interpret what I would tell them. The pattern works like this: the person gets offended, upset, or otherwise decides they don't like what somebody said or how they said it; therefore, that person and what they said must be wrong. If it is difficult to demonstrate why they are wrong (i.e. because they're not), they will resort to rhetorical tricks, mischaracerization (i.e. "upset"), ad-hominem, and other forms of demagoguery.
They want to make the facts match their emotionally-driven conclusion and not the other way around. The difficult part is they don't see themselves doing this or understand that this is how they operate. They actually think it's valid, or that they couldn't possibly do such a thing merely because they didn't intend to do it. In that sense it is their unexamined autopilot. Hell, most of them think I'm just hassling them when I say something is wrong with it.
I consider it a type of narcisissm to expect that your personal likes and dislikes are going to determine truth and falsehood. It's something I am fortunate not to suffer. Yet this is by no means an unusual thing to see; in fact I encounter it more often than I don't. Most people maintain this sometimes-convincing appearance that they are reasonable but it's phony. Unwittingly, they are type-cast personalities playing a role. It breaks down the moment they get stressed, offended, or otherwise emotional. Then they need to be "right" no matter how wrong they are. Their commitment to truth is weaker than their egos.
It is quite literally the root of what is wrong with the entire world. As above, so below.
If it was so completely wrong, why DIDN'T you jump in and correct it when it was in the firehose? Why wait until after publication to complain when you could have addressed the problem earlier?
Seems to me, you're not as upset as all that about generating page views and ad revenue on articles you disagree with, or you'd be using what Slashdot already provides to ensure that the articles were all of high calibre.
Why must he be upset in order to point out a business maneuver? Or that people react in a fairly predictable way to a particular summary and that this was likely to have been intentional? If you really believe this cannot be mentioned calmly, that only an angry person could possibly do it, perhaps you can explain why.
He may even admire the technique and regard it as skillfully done. This interpretation is consistent with the tone of the post in question.
The truth is, we don't know how he (or she) feels about it. The personal emotional state the author experienced at the moment the post was written remains unspecified (and seems like irrelevant trivia to me). The fact it was not specified tells me something: it was not the point of the post.
I believe the purpose of the post was to bring conscious awareness to this aspect of how and why some stories make the front page and why they are worded the way that we see them. It is not necessary to condemn or pass judgment in order to do this -- in fact, that could interfere with the expository nature of the task. It is necessary only to put into proper context the fact that Slashdot is not a charity and must make money to remain in business.
You sometimes see similar posts when Slashdot does a book review, pointing out possible financial ties between the publisher and Slashot. I consider it a service as the more naive types tend not to consider these influences on their own. Is there anything wrong with Slashdot making some money for providing a site many people find interesting, entertaining, and useful? I don't think so. I just think transparency is a virtue, that's all. Perhaps this AC feels the same way?
And I don't know... maybe a single individual can change the course of a posted story by interacting with the Firehose, but I doubt it. I also consider it rather, shall we say "selective" to blame someone for not correcting this but then hold faultless the submitter and the editors who made it that way in the first place. I would say the submitter and especially the editors are much more responsible for and have much more control over a front-page story than a random AC.
Try Sandboxie.
I've had good success with running apps and games in a sandbox with it. The only thing it lacks (although it's better security wise) is being able to pipe files between the boxes so you'll have to install programs multiple times if it's needed in more than one box (think PDF reader, zip stuff, etc.).
Thanks for the link. You can probably tell I don't use Windows myself and haven't for some time now (back in the day I used to dual-boot with Win98 until months went by without ever using the Windows system, so I reformatted it ext2 because ext3 didn't exist at the time). So, I'm not terribly informed about specific software available for that platform.
Still, am I the only one who thinks it's terrible, borderline irresponsible that Windows doesn't come with something like this out of the box? Configured to work with major browsers and other widely-used programs? I mean compared to writing the OS, how much more effort would that have taken on the part of Microsoft? In this age of widespread malware? It's a shame that Microsoft Security Essentials doesn't provide something like this that can recognize common programs and correctly sandbox them. At least for software that is also written by Microsoft like Office.
[My wife's voice] Is the only sound that is more harsh than fingernails on a chalkboard.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sexism...
So you won't even respond and prefer to pretend none of this exchange happened? Can't even admit that maybe you were too eager to demonize someone for no good reason? Most of all, you can't even see your hypersensitivity as a problem, specifically as your problem?
How courageous.
As a man, I'd be rightly viewed as gutless if I handled a mistake the same way. If you want to really strike a blow against sexism, maybe next time you could show that a woman can uphold the same standard, like an equal. As for me, not only do I believe the capability is there (else there's be no point in writing this), I believe it's just a choice. Nothing more than that.
If OSs hadn't failed so bad on isolation, we wouldn't need so much virtualization. "Virtual machine monitors" are just operating systems with a rather simple application API. Microkernels, if you will.
Sounds like the solution might be enforcing some sort of (hmm what would you call it?? Dirt box? Dust box?? ahh thats it!!) Sandbox on applications in order to achieve the isolation you desire.
I bet if I'm quick, then I might able to patent the iAmSparticus sandbox technique.
Does Windows provide no functional equivalent to a *nix chroot? That would be a good place to start, especially if you can harden it against known methods of circumvention like you can with Linux and Grsecurity. Or would a chroot be as important when you're using an OS in which not everything is a file?
If Windows has no such function out-of-the-box, are there generic third-party sandboxes that can be used with any application? For example, I understand that the Chrome browser runs in a sandbox but I don't believe you could use this same sandbox to apply appropriate (different) restrictions to something like MS Office.
But to use for security? That's as lame as installing anti-virus software because you know your OS can't handle security.
I've said for some time that anti-virus is not security. It is damage control, at best. The way it is currently marketed and commonly used, it really is a terrible substitute for the inability of an OS to maintain security. As damage control it isn't even very useful because the only correct response to a successful intrusion is to reformat and reinstall from (read-only) media that is reasonably known to be good. It is only in the Windows world of ignorant users and routine infections that anyone desires to doubt this, and even then only as an excuse to avoid many more reinstalls than already occur (which includes licensing/activation hassles and then the joy of separately reinstalling each application with no central package manager). Yet the truth is, it is a general principle and Windows is not a special exception.
The real question is, when will the general public wake up to this fact? Given enough time I consider it inevitable. So, it's just a matter of when. I wonder how McAfee and Norton and others will respond then?
Even that is unnecessary, though. GRSecurity went belly-up because there were not enough developers interested in it and no funding for it at all.
Do you refer there to a company that was also called GRSecurity? Because I'm running a Gentoo Hardened system right now with both PaX and GrSecurity integrated into the kernel (coupled with a hardened toolchain and various userspace features). That is one reason it was worthwhile to me to build from source -- well that and USE flags but this would be another discussion.
If the company going under was what caused the work of the same name to become GPL software, this may have actually increased its availability and usage.
Slashdot Mirror
Enjoy your SUV, 2.1 kids, and your house in the suburbs while you can.
I'm so glad you're concerned about my enjoyment of life. I appreciate that.
Are you concerned about the "while you can" part of that? Because if you take a hard look at the USA you will conclude that this is what a nation on the decline looks like. Want to review the most common failure mode of a collapsing nation? It's not irreversible yet. There is still a lot of room for apathy before that happens.
Right because, sitting on the ground arms behind your back while the cop takes out his can of pepper spray, holding it up and walking with it, showing it to the entire crowd before spraying you in the face untill the can is empty, is totally provoking him.
Those bastards and their damn sitting.
I wish you'd take one minute to Google a term with which you are obviously unfamiliar (agent provocateur) prior to responding to a post based around it. It would be better for everyone. It would also make it easier for you to avoid responding with pure emotion during a factual discussion.
Look for more incidents involving agents provocateurs in future protests. It's easier to "justify" whatever actions are taken if they can show footage of a "protester" acting in an "unreasonable" fashion.
The public footage is having a huge impact right now because people are seeing people like themselves at the protests and NOT causing problems ... and hearing the official reports contradicting the footage.
This is what bothers me about the average person. If it isn't undeniably smacking them in the face, they have no clue how much and how often their media lies to them on a daily basis.
People need to seriously wake the fuck up and they need to stop waiting for some leader to show them how. It is and has always been an individual realization based on a real love of truth.
First Post
"There's almost parity,' writes Andrew Sprung. 'You have a truncheon or gun, I have a camera. You inflict pain, I inflict infamy.'""
haha come on, parity?
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
Its a sad day our society thinks this is some kind of achievement or "balance" of power
The balance of power has always been a slow, grinding play of justice against violent acts.
You rob a convenience store, or ten, it profits you in the moment, but spending years behind bars is the price. If a cop beats a protester to death for no apparent reason and it is covered by several independent video cameras, he's a lot more likely to answer for his actions than if it was merely witnessed by 50 protesters who were also being beaten.
Unfortunately the worst penalty the cop is likely to face is either a paid vacation known as "administrative leave" or maybe the loss of his job. This is a serious problem. A free society won't stay that way if the police have some kind of special status above the citizens they are supposed to be serving. Incidentally, a cop who beats someone basically has to also charge them with resisting arrest (or similar) or he's admitting he beat them for no reason, so there is both the assault and the criminal charge that may haunt the person for life.
Even the idea that "assaulting a police officer" carries a higher penalty than assaulting a citizen might sound good but it's completely misguided. The cop is better able to respond to an assault, to have back-up, and carries an assortment of weaponry everywhere he goes. The average citizen is more likely to be unarmed and more likely to hesitate to use any available weapons for fear that a court will not consider it self-defense (we like victimhood and we like to encourage bullies so in many states you are expected to try fleeing first, nevermind this only emboldens the criminals). Even if there were not such an inequality, the cop is our servant, one particularly able to abuse his authority, and granting him equality alone is generous.
You simply can't have "special" or "protected" groups and expect to remain an egalitarian society that cherishes freedoms. It has never happened before and it won't happen again.
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
No, they shouldn't, but this is the way it has always been.
You can read the autobiography of Mohandas Ghandi (a really wonderful book) and see the same patterns. You can read some Henry David Thoreau and understand why he would have preferred to remain in jail instead of having a well-meaning but less-principled individual pay his poll tax for him.
As long as the masses, the majority of people, are largely passive and indifferent to the injustice around them there will always be a need for exceptional individuals to take this kind of abuse to effect any real change. What people like Thoreau and Ghandi realized was the error of violence, the way it makes it so easy for those who control perception and use propaganda to make the violent (however justified) into evil bogeymen who will always be demonized in the popular mind.
I heard this one time and I never forgot it. It is a saying of Ghandi's: "the good that violence appears to do is temporary; the harm that it does is permanent." I suppose there are a lot of low-brow, smarmy types with nothing to contribute so for them maybe I should add "within the context of protest and trying to change society" so the fact that war sometimes is quite necessary is irrelevant. There was a time before it became necessary and that's when peaceful change was possible. I'm tired of that small-minded crowd, so I don't consider it a total waste to deny them the slam-dunk "victory" they so desperately crave.
At any rate, doing it peacefully means you absolutely must maintain the high ground. If you want to expose the establishment for the bunch of power-hungry thugs they tend to be, you cannot use their tactics. It provides no contrast. The unwise, reactionary, direction-less types who tend to attach themselves to any major movement are the biggest problem the Occupiers currently have. Do you not notice how the media reports with glee the rapes, murders, etc. that occur on the Occupied territory? That's exactly what they want -- for you to be no better. If you want to be effective, don't give it to them.
What's to not understand? They don't want to be compatible because then they have no leverage over the tech. On the other hand they can, as in this case, patent the tech and lock you in.
I'm not the one who questioned it. Pretending that I am is another fail.
My point in the initial response to you was that you either failed to comprehend or chose to trivialize the question the other poster was asking. Both are useless.
Anyway, as that other poster implies, not using a proprietary technology and being more compatible may increase the usefulness of the device. That, in turn, might be another way to increase sales. I suppose he was wondering what reason they have to believe that proprietary lock-in is more profitable than this.
Isn't that more useful than restating the obvious by saying "it's not one of their goals"? Clearly it is not, or else they would act accordingly. The constructive thing to do then is to move past the obvious that we can all observe and look into why it is that way and whether it could be done differently and how viable that would be.
Because compatibility isn't their goal?
Yes, that's what he said he doesn't understand.
Really, it's okay to infer something on your own.
No, smallpox does NOT make a good weaponized agent.
One of the key attributes of a bioweapon is controllability. You want it to hit who and where you want it to hit, and you DON'T want it to hit outside that area. In particular, you DON'T want it to be significantly contagious - and smallpox is one of the most horribly contagious diseases known to Man.
Pneumonic anthrax, on the other hand, while highly lethal, is essentially not contagious from person to person. This makes it an ideal bioweapon candidate, as was demonstrated some years back - and they STILL haven't found the $^%#&%$!!! who did it.
That didn't stop the early American government from using it as a biological weapon against the Native Americans. Those individuals were evil and they were cowards so they exposed blankets and other items to the virus and then "donated" them to the indigenous tribes.
Now imagine a scenario like that but with modern technology (i.e. delivery methods). Controllability could be as simple as "we have a military budget and easy access to vaccines, drugs, and haz-mat suits while our targets don't."
There just aren't a lot of reasons why you'd worry this much and spend so much money on a virus that generally doesn't exist anymore.
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this. B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world. C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
Most of the arguments against an American universal healthcare system are based on the idea that *this* government wouldn't do a good job even if various European nations handle it well. If you consider other federal projects and programs to be a track record, it's difficult to argue against this. If you think this one thing is somehow unique and special, that people who display extreme corruption/cronyism and gross incompetence will somehow perform wonderfully when you put them in charge of a health system, please understand that you are proposing something contrary to reasonable expectation and there is a burden of proof that goes with that.
I notice in the EU corporations with business practices hostile to the customers actually do get slapped down once in a while by the regulators. If that were the norm here, I would have a lot more confidence that the government is representing the correct set of interests when it takes action. The situation in the USA is not a matter of whether such a system could work in theory or has worked for others. It's a matter of trust; there is none, and trust is a particularly difficult thing to earn back once it is destroyed.
To be active to act on X, there has to be conscious that X even exists. As I said, plenty of people aren't. They aren't passive, just oblivious.
I think you have two choices here. Either embrace a permanent state of victimhood and accept that as the highest knowable reality available... or understand that being oblivious comes from using a thing without ever learning more and more about it over time, without ever investigating how it works and what the pitfalls are, without seeking to understand its ramifications.
I know many people do that and I consider it something of a miracle that they don't suffer quite a bit more than they do. Still, I view that as a choice. I know about these things not because I waited around for some stranger to come along and educate me, but because I have looked into them. I made that choice. Not making a choice is also a choice.
These exploitative business practices won't end until most people begin to see it that way. You could call it a burden but I say that no form of freedom is (libre) free and this kind of freedom is no exception.
I am grateful to you for not immediately resenting the suggestion that people educate themselves. That makes these things much easier to discuss without them childishly devolving into a blame-game. Most of the time I sugget a victim can stop being a victim I am accused of blaming the victim, as though it's a soap opera in which blame is the only consideration, as though there's anything wrong with learning from a situation and not falling prey to it again because the effort required to do so is "unfair" in some way. Seriously, it's nice to have this kind of discourse.
Oh look kids, another delusional soul who still think Facebook only spies on registered users!
Do you see those Facebook buttons everywhere? I don't know how's the situation right now, but just a few months ago they were creating these little cookies with IDs even if you didn't have an account (like I don't). Which means they could log each and every site you went to and create a single profile from it.
So please shut the fuck up the next time, yes?
What's with the belligerent tone?
... then someone else will decide for you how that turns out. The minority who remain expect to get out of it what they are willing to invest into it and are not disappointed. In the face of an active adversary (a loaded word but appropriate since I did not invite them to attempt to track me), the mentality which desires to remain totally passive and then complain about the result is little more than a spoiled brat.
The Facebook buttons and their cookies are easily blocked. Anyone who cares about this can take the ten minutes necessary to understand how this tracking is done and configure their system(s) to refuse such content. The default choice, the result of doing nothing, is that you get spied on. That makes them a bunch of dicks to be sure, but it's not a big surprise. When in this life have you ever chosen to learn nothing and to do nothing and then received a result you found to be ideal?
If you want to be in the backseat and take a passive role in your experience because you think that's someone else's responsibility
In summary, they may or may not log each and every site *you* go to. That's your choice and you do have options. It is better to exercise those than to complain that the default choice sucks (which it does, so do something about it). As for me: no, they won't, and my refusal requires neither their goodwill nor their cooperation. Call it what you will; I call it having a spine.
What did people THINK was going to happen when they signed up for Facebook and effectively dropped trou to the universe?
And expecting the grubby little data miners to play fair with people who they're making money off of?
Pfft! Yeah. What world are YOU from?
There's one solution to the problem of Facebook belching your data to whoever pays them their pound of flesh.
DON'T FUCKING SIGN UP FOR FACEBOOK IN THE FIRST PLACE!
With most people, that kind of obvious realization breaks down the moment having some control over their own life involves denying oneself a convenience that is dangled in front of them like bait. The form of the convenience could be the service itself that Facebook offers. It could be (for most anyway) failure to bear the always rewarding but sometimes heavy burden of being a real individual, such as having to explain to friends that you have good reason not to use the site even if they would prefer to contact you with it. Of course a real friend would understand and respect that and not demand (by acting hurt, annoyed, etc) that you conform to their example for something so optional, but judging from the way most people talk about bandwagon appeals and peer pressure it seems most people think this kind of manipulation is normal and legitimate.
It's the same reason most boycotts don't get off the ground. The moment people would have to make do without a luxury or prepare something themselves instead of having it pre-packaged or some other test of their commitment to principle, they cave. It doesn't matter what the company has done to make itself unworthy of continued patronage. It's most unfortunate but the masses of people are pushovers who won't take a stand for much of anything unless they feel (correctly or not) that their back is against a wall.
I suppose most of you reading this think it's a good thing that government intervenes to regulate Facebook. If this were food safety or building construction or some other thing that is a matter of life-and-death, where great damage could be done before any reason for a user/customer to suspect a problem has manifested, then I would agree with you. As it stands now with Facebook, I say that the moment you interfere with this process and shelter this kind of spinelessness is the moment you prevent the character growth of those who are badly in need of a lesson. I know it looks like a nice thing to do but that's short-term thinking; in the long run it makes the problem worse.
Those who have a clue, care about privacy, and make their own decisions avoided Facebook from the beginning. The rest are making their beds and should not be prevented from laying in them.
And then the enforcement is lax.
Enforcement by whom? This is just a standard by W3C, and it is a weak one at that. If you fail to produce compliant HTML, your web page might not render correctly; if you fail to follow this standard, nobody will notice. Privacy is not something that a standard can guarantee you.
I hope this doesn't work out the same way anti-telemarketer devices did prior to the Do-Not-Call List.
Anyone remember those? They used various tones and other tricks to try to convince the telemarketers' auto-dialers that the number was invalid or not in service. How did the telemarketers respond? Did they take the hint that they were not wanted and focus their efforts on people who might be more willing to entertain their sales pitches? No. They interpreted that as "those people must be using those devices because they are unassertive pushovers who have difficulty saying 'no', so if we can reach them we'll REALLY make some sales!"
So they tried to find ways to circumvent those devices and after some time, the calls would get through anyway and I'd have to tell them to piss off myself. One favorite was to sound interested and then ask for their own personal telephone number. When they inevitably refused, I'd say something like "what's wrong, you don't like having strangers bother you at home?" While it's fun to hassle a professional pest (who during that job market could have chosen many other career paths), it was a nuisance that these idiots tried so hard to circumvent your express wishes.
That was with the telephone network which is old technology that most people understand how to use. Is there any reason to think this won't be the case with Internet technology that most users don't have a clue about? It definitely tends to tilt the playing field in favor of the professional assholes. I for one will ignore this standard and probably won't even use it when it becomes supported on all major browsers. Instead, I'll stick to a combination of Adblock Plus, NoScript, cookie management, Redirect Remover, RefControl, a comprehensive hosts file, and several other measures I use.
I mean think about it. Why leave the decision-making to the party that stands to gain from failing to respect my privacy? What goodwill have they shown in the past that suddenly makes them so trustworthy? Since when did the advertising industry suddenly start respecting privacy? I just don't buy it. It's an inherent conflict of interest.
Thank you. The media has spun this story to appear as though Anonymous backed down out of fear. I wonder why that is.
Because groups like Anon who are good at obtaining information and causing grief for major corporations tend to piss off powerful people. Powerful people tend to be well-represented in the media.
What, did you think the news was somehow objective? The media are populated by fascists, other statists, and those heavily invested in the status quo. They're just careful not to tell an outright lie that is easily falsified. Mostly they spin and they deliberately omit details that don't serve their agenda. Their priorities are roughly as follows:
1. Promote government control and the increasing centralization of both power and wealth, either by fearmongering (gotta stop those terrorists and protect the children!) or by appealing to the nanny-state (because someone might hurt themselves and it's for your own good after all).
2. De-emphasize individuality and personal responsibility. Anyone featured in the news must be identified according to the group identity -- if someone is black or a woman or any other minority group, a big deal must be made of this (a total rejection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s notion of going by the content of character). Everyone who ever suffers in any way is always a victim -- there are no adults who suffer because they make poor decisions. Anyone who successfully stands up for himself must be ignored or downplayed, which is why a citizen with a conceal-carry permit who uses his gun to stop a crime will be described as "the perpetrator was subdued until police arrived" but any psychopath who goes on a shooting spree with a semi-automatic glorified deer rifle will be described as "a GUNman with an ASSAULT RIFLE" (nevermind that an assault rifle has features such as a select-fire switch not present on the firearm in question and they know this term is wrong and does not apply).
3. Dumb everything down and promote childishness and emotional immaturity among adult people. Use words like "lawmaker" because "legislator" might confuse someone, et al. Write and speak at about a 6th-grade reading level. Cater to small-minded gossips by watching every move every actor, singler, dancer, or athlete makes in their personal lives and covering it at length as though it were important. Make a big deal out of every marital problem a celebrity has, every trivial lifestyle decision they make, every unqualified opinion they have as though a thinking person would ever care about such idiotic and insignificant trivia. Then promote this as normal without ever questioning its validity.
4. Never, ever, ever offend a corporate sponsor or release any story that might possibly make them look bad, no matter how important or relevant such a story might be (cf Fox News and BGH milk).
5. Pretend like the linear, one-dimensional thinking that is "Left vs. Right" represents every possibility of human thought that ever has occurred, is occurring, or ever could occur in the future. Pretend also that the two major parties have any significant differences that could radically alter the course of the nation if implemented. Anytime a political figure takes an official position, just parrot what they say instead of applying critical thought to whether it holds water and really makes any sense.
6. If the above criteria are met, cherry-pick events that happen and report on them as long as no significant change could ever occur from these events becoming widely known. Or report them so long as the event is too big or too embarassing to be ignored and then perform the role of damage control by spinning and downplaying anything not favorable to the status quo. Or throw one person under the bus and crucify them for what is actually a systemic or institutional problem of which they happened to be an easy example.
7. Flash something different on the screen every 10-15 seconds or so to a
Saying things like this:
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling.
As someone familiar with Microsoft's long history of abusive, illegal, and Machiavellian behavior as well as their preference for long-term strategy over hasty decisions ... I really do agree that it's naive to expect any form of goodwill from them, or that they would ever do anything that they don't believe gives them a way to put their competitors at a disadvantage. They're not a charity and they're not a community. That's okay because they generally don't pretend to be.
I don't subscribe to this culture where every single opinion that isn't worded with sweetness and presented with a cherry on top absolutely must be trolling. That poster gave reasons for why he believes as he does. The position is valid even if he wasn't terribly nice about it.
I can't speak for decisions I didn't make, but I can guess. Linux is an very fragmented platform. Getting a major piece of software to work across different distros often requires hacks and changes specific to each one. It's very rarely just a matter of recompiling and it's good. If you follow some of the microsoft blogs (windows 8 for example), one of the most common questions they get asked is why didn't you include feature X. The response is usually along the lines of not enough people would use it to be worth the effort. No company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted.
Really? Normally the method is to release it in a generic form and let the individual distribution maintainers worry about details like that. Normally the generic form is a source-code tarball, but if you need a proprietary example take a look at the nVidia graphics drivers. They don't provide packages. The distro maintainers have made .deb and .rpm packages for it, and Gentoo includes an .ebuild for it. Nvidia Corp. didn't have to worry about any of those particulars, nor should they. There is simply no reason why Microsoft would have to. I have to assume you have heard of nVidia.
Sorry but you don't sound knowledgable about this subject you're choosing to speak about. Not when well-known things easily contradict your "guess" and you state obvious things like "no company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted" when no one was claiming that a company did. This kind of vacuous reasoning is more trollish than the post you were complaining about, if you still feel concerned about trolls.
No, you haven't made your case. You might have strong emotional feelings or some kind of faith-based belief concerning Mono but there remain facts of the matter that indicate something other than Microsoft having no ulterior motives and a genuine desire to play nice with the Linux community. You can dismiss the fact that this would contradict their last 20 years of history too, if you like, but I say there is absolutely nothing wrong with being reluctant to trust a known abuser.
Microsoft actually does contribute code to mono. The missing components are mainly either deprecated or windows specific; for 99% of applications it's good enough. Troll harder.
I don't know a lot about .NET vs. Mono, but can you address this part before you call "troll"?
Just ask yourself, with all the resources and talent available to Microsoft, why they couldn't have simply made .Net cross-platform from the start and released their own Linux version at the same time each Windows version was released? Answer: they could if they wanted to.
If you could invalidate that question you'd really have a case for GP being a troll. As it stands you seem to have selectively glossed over it. I know people around here love to cherry-pick what they respond to, but it really weakens your case.
Microsoft really does have a lot of wealth and a lot of highly talented programmers. It's not a question of whether they could or couldn't. I mean, they could have done what Sun did with Java and simultaneously release the runtimes for multiple platforms while maintaining a degree of control over the standard. Why do you believe they didn't? What explanation do you have for this that fits the observed facts better than GP's position? I really want to know and am willing to entertain a solid explanation.
I can get not installing it based on the fact that it targets libraries that drive for-profit philosophy, but at least call it that. Of course, then why is there still wine? samba? tsclient? All of these support and encourage Windows use.
It's minor, but I disagree with this notion.
Interoperability and compatibility are good things. There are situations where your end-users must run software available only for Windows. Wine is constantly improving. Still, not all things fitting this description run well in Wine, and many production environments don't want to struggle with getting them to work based on forum posts etc. when it is known that simply running Windows avoids all of this. Remember that to a Fortune 500 corporation, the cost of a Windows license is less than marginal but the cost of downtime can be significant.
I don't like this and I don't like Windows and I'm not fond of Microsoft, but this is a reality. Things like Samba open up new options that may not have been available before. So you're stuck with Windows for your end-user workstations? At least now your servers can be Linux. That's one more Linux system than you would have been able to use if you had no Samba (et al) equivalent.
Interoperability means you can pick the best system for the particular job knowing it will work with the rest of your systems. There's a freedom in this that you just don't get without it. Without interoperability you're much more at the mercy of vendorlock. The only thing that's a shame is that interoperability is always a one-way street when you deal with a monopolist. Interoperability today means it is always Linux's job to accommodate Windows protocols and filesystems. Microsoft is terrified of merit-based competition on an open playing field with no vendorlock, proprietary protocols, or other cheap tricks designed to prevent evaluation of merit.
When that changes, everyone will benefit. There is no concern about "encouraging Windows use" for those cases where it really is the best tool for the job; nor are there such concerns when it isn't and you can easily replace it with something more suitable.
"The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record in 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated.
No other pollutant is being discussed.
Oh god dammit. CO2 = released by burning shit (imagine a coal-fired electrical power plant). Some other pollutants with more immediate health effects = also released by burning shit. GP was asking why focus on just one. That no other pollutant was being discussed was precisely what he was questioning and it's foolish to point it out as if he didn't realize it.
... This kind of legalistic "tee hee I'm just going to be dense and give you a hard time by never, ever inferring anything on my own" bullshit is why we can't have nice things. It's a douchebag thing to do. I know you don't mean it, but still. Most of the time the thing this mentality complains about is also the most certain indication that it misunderstood the post (something GP tried to tell you incidentally).
Now I could answer that question in a variety of ways, such as pointing out that studying just this one thing in isolation (levels of CO2 vs. predicted levels) is probably complex enough without incorporating other concerns into the study, etc, but that's not my point.
My point is
Can we all just quit patting ourselves on the back for a second and realize that this single mistake keeps getting repeated over and over, that it's really a veil for the belief that you're so smart and the other guy is so stupid, and I don't know, maybe we can see how optional it really is? Is that too much to ask?
Why must he be upset in order to point out a business maneuver?
Thanks for that.. You're completely right.. I wasn't upset, mad, or anything. I even said 'nicely done soulskill', because I thought it was clever (in a way). If anyone read any sarcasm in my post, they were mistaken.
I've been reading /. since like '98 (just started coming back after like 5 years away.. so haven't signed up for a new account yet).. I don't come here expecting posts that are worthy of a Pulitzer.
To me your intent was easy to discern. I have one big advantage there that shouldn't be rare but definitely seems to be. I am not easily offended and I neatly separate my personal feelings about a thing from the objective truth or falsehood of it. I might very strongly dislike something you say, but if it is a fact I will acknowledge it. If I truly have a problem with a fact, maybe I'll work towards a constructive way to change it while accepting that some things are beyond my power to change. That's the only real option I have because anything else would make me as psychotic and full of self-conflict as most other people.
Generally I witness a different pattern. It's hard sometimes to call it out because the people I'd be addressing have no real objectivity and thus no frame of reference in which to correctly interpret what I would tell them. The pattern works like this: the person gets offended, upset, or otherwise decides they don't like what somebody said or how they said it; therefore, that person and what they said must be wrong. If it is difficult to demonstrate why they are wrong (i.e. because they're not), they will resort to rhetorical tricks, mischaracerization (i.e. "upset"), ad-hominem, and other forms of demagoguery.
They want to make the facts match their emotionally-driven conclusion and not the other way around. The difficult part is they don't see themselves doing this or understand that this is how they operate. They actually think it's valid, or that they couldn't possibly do such a thing merely because they didn't intend to do it. In that sense it is their unexamined autopilot. Hell, most of them think I'm just hassling them when I say something is wrong with it.
I consider it a type of narcisissm to expect that your personal likes and dislikes are going to determine truth and falsehood. It's something I am fortunate not to suffer. Yet this is by no means an unusual thing to see; in fact I encounter it more often than I don't. Most people maintain this sometimes-convincing appearance that they are reasonable but it's phony. Unwittingly, they are type-cast personalities playing a role. It breaks down the moment they get stressed, offended, or otherwise emotional. Then they need to be "right" no matter how wrong they are. Their commitment to truth is weaker than their egos.
It is quite literally the root of what is wrong with the entire world. As above, so below.
If it was so completely wrong, why DIDN'T you jump in and correct it when it was in the firehose? Why wait until after publication to complain when you could have addressed the problem earlier?
Seems to me, you're not as upset as all that about generating page views and ad revenue on articles you disagree with, or you'd be using what Slashdot already provides to ensure that the articles were all of high calibre.
Why must he be upset in order to point out a business maneuver? Or that people react in a fairly predictable way to a particular summary and that this was likely to have been intentional? If you really believe this cannot be mentioned calmly, that only an angry person could possibly do it, perhaps you can explain why.
... maybe a single individual can change the course of a posted story by interacting with the Firehose, but I doubt it. I also consider it rather, shall we say "selective" to blame someone for not correcting this but then hold faultless the submitter and the editors who made it that way in the first place. I would say the submitter and especially the editors are much more responsible for and have much more control over a front-page story than a random AC.
He may even admire the technique and regard it as skillfully done. This interpretation is consistent with the tone of the post in question.
The truth is, we don't know how he (or she) feels about it. The personal emotional state the author experienced at the moment the post was written remains unspecified (and seems like irrelevant trivia to me). The fact it was not specified tells me something: it was not the point of the post.
I believe the purpose of the post was to bring conscious awareness to this aspect of how and why some stories make the front page and why they are worded the way that we see them. It is not necessary to condemn or pass judgment in order to do this -- in fact, that could interfere with the expository nature of the task. It is necessary only to put into proper context the fact that Slashdot is not a charity and must make money to remain in business.
You sometimes see similar posts when Slashdot does a book review, pointing out possible financial ties between the publisher and Slashot. I consider it a service as the more naive types tend not to consider these influences on their own. Is there anything wrong with Slashdot making some money for providing a site many people find interesting, entertaining, and useful? I don't think so. I just think transparency is a virtue, that's all. Perhaps this AC feels the same way?
And I don't know
Try Sandboxie. I've had good success with running apps and games in a sandbox with it. The only thing it lacks (although it's better security wise) is being able to pipe files between the boxes so you'll have to install programs multiple times if it's needed in more than one box (think PDF reader, zip stuff, etc.).
Thanks for the link. You can probably tell I don't use Windows myself and haven't for some time now (back in the day I used to dual-boot with Win98 until months went by without ever using the Windows system, so I reformatted it ext2 because ext3 didn't exist at the time). So, I'm not terribly informed about specific software available for that platform.
Still, am I the only one who thinks it's terrible, borderline irresponsible that Windows doesn't come with something like this out of the box? Configured to work with major browsers and other widely-used programs? I mean compared to writing the OS, how much more effort would that have taken on the part of Microsoft? In this age of widespread malware? It's a shame that Microsoft Security Essentials doesn't provide something like this that can recognize common programs and correctly sandbox them. At least for software that is also written by Microsoft like Office.
[My wife's voice] Is the only sound that is more harsh than fingernails on a chalkboard.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sexism...
So you won't even respond and prefer to pretend none of this exchange happened? Can't even admit that maybe you were too eager to demonize someone for no good reason? Most of all, you can't even see your hypersensitivity as a problem, specifically as your problem?
How courageous.
As a man, I'd be rightly viewed as gutless if I handled a mistake the same way. If you want to really strike a blow against sexism, maybe next time you could show that a woman can uphold the same standard, like an equal. As for me, not only do I believe the capability is there (else there's be no point in writing this), I believe it's just a choice. Nothing more than that.
If OSs hadn't failed so bad on isolation, we wouldn't need so much virtualization. "Virtual machine monitors" are just operating systems with a rather simple application API. Microkernels, if you will.
Sounds like the solution might be enforcing some sort of (hmm what would you call it?? Dirt box? Dust box?? ahh thats it!!) Sandbox on applications in order to achieve the isolation you desire. I bet if I'm quick, then I might able to patent the iAmSparticus sandbox technique.
Does Windows provide no functional equivalent to a *nix chroot? That would be a good place to start, especially if you can harden it against known methods of circumvention like you can with Linux and Grsecurity. Or would a chroot be as important when you're using an OS in which not everything is a file?
If Windows has no such function out-of-the-box, are there generic third-party sandboxes that can be used with any application? For example, I understand that the Chrome browser runs in a sandbox but I don't believe you could use this same sandbox to apply appropriate (different) restrictions to something like MS Office.
But to use for security? That's as lame as installing anti-virus software because you know your OS can't handle security.
I've said for some time that anti-virus is not security. It is damage control, at best. The way it is currently marketed and commonly used, it really is a terrible substitute for the inability of an OS to maintain security. As damage control it isn't even very useful because the only correct response to a successful intrusion is to reformat and reinstall from (read-only) media that is reasonably known to be good. It is only in the Windows world of ignorant users and routine infections that anyone desires to doubt this, and even then only as an excuse to avoid many more reinstalls than already occur (which includes licensing/activation hassles and then the joy of separately reinstalling each application with no central package manager). Yet the truth is, it is a general principle and Windows is not a special exception.
The real question is, when will the general public wake up to this fact? Given enough time I consider it inevitable. So, it's just a matter of when. I wonder how McAfee and Norton and others will respond then?
Even that is unnecessary, though. GRSecurity went belly-up because there were not enough developers interested in it and no funding for it at all.
Do you refer there to a company that was also called GRSecurity? Because I'm running a Gentoo Hardened system right now with both PaX and GrSecurity integrated into the kernel (coupled with a hardened toolchain and various userspace features). That is one reason it was worthwhile to me to build from source -- well that and USE flags but this would be another discussion.
If the company going under was what caused the work of the same name to become GPL software, this may have actually increased its availability and usage.