It isn't unreasonable to point out that if one is to compare the selling of guns to the selling of computer software then one should keep in mind that the potential risks are different.
You're trying to claim, by way of analogy, that because we don't allow situation A, and situation A is similar to situation B, we therefore shouldn't allow situation B to occur. Therefore situations A and B should be comparable in magnitude of effect as well as in form.
Actually I never said either one should be allowed. I never said either one should be banned. I merely observe that this company in this industry gets away with things that we would call irresponsible for other companies in other industries.
Apparently analogies are a real tough thing on this site. The point was, these practices are similar in principle. They are different in effect; a malfunctioning malware-infested computer isn't going to shoot someone.
I realize we're not a society that celebrates abstract reasoning or principle. Still, is it really that difficult to distinguish principle from effect? If you steal $5 from my wallet, you're a thief. If you steal $900,000 from a bank, you're a thief. There's a tremendous difference there in terms of what the effect will be (some probation at worst, versus hard time in prison). The principle that you shouldn't take things that don't belong to you remains the same.
I'm waiting now for someone to say "but but causality, a malfunctioning computer probably won't rob a bank!" That person will probably think he really made a useful point.
I don't mean this to intentionally offend but when I have to explain things like this, I feel like I'm giving remedial instruction, like I am picking up the slack where your schoolteachers and/or professors have failed.
"Terrorists are just a convenient excuse for doing things they'd like to do anyway."
That is my conclusion as well. But there are a lot of people who prefer not to see that.
I'm generally plain-spoken and this will unfortunately be no exception: that's because they're cowards. At least, for the most part. Many of the rest are unable to see it for what it is despite having courage because they are what you could call "educated stupid". It's part of the function of the public schools.
Except, in your bit of rhetoric, you forget that selling an OS to an idiot rarely results in death. Or any other condition that can't be solved with a format and re-install - using the same OS.
How typical of Slashdot. When confronted with an analogy, you have a couple of choices. You either undertand the point that is being made, or you nitpick the analogy. Excellent choice, sir.
If selling an OS to an idiot typically resulted in death there would be a lot of dead idiots.
The point, you know that thing you miss when you nitpick, is not about whether misuse of guns causes death and misuse of OSes doesn't cause death. The point is we have a corporation that is enriching itself by selling items to people who are likely to misuse them and lose time and money (and maybe experience identity theft) from having done so. It's not that this happens and they turn a blind eye to it. It's that they are specifically and intentionally targeting this class of user in order to increase sales.
In what other industry can a corporation do that and never face any sort of liability or government scrutiny?
I mean for god sake my mother, yes my mother, installed Windows herself the last time, and she has zero expertise. So there may be some truth to the whole "easier to use THAN EVAR! No expertise required!" statement.
Good for her. Wait six months, run a thorough scan for malware, and get back to me. Then note that nowhere on the packaged Windows DVD did it say anything about some knowledge being required to avoid such threats.
Why people are so eager to make excuses for this is quite a mystery to me. If you were the one making billions from the whole deal I could understand it. But you're not. Microsoft is. I can understand why *they* whitewash this issue. Why you would do it, no I don't get that.
It's a good read. Very educational. And it shows why these government measures to stop terrorism will not accomplish what the government says it intends.
Despite outward appearances, the people who wield the real power within government are actually not stupid. I believe they know this. Terrorists are just a convenient excuse for doing things they'd like to do anyway.
I'm with you on that. I did not intend to characterize it as a left-vs-right thing, but GP decided to pick on one side, I decided to set him straight.
Anybody who uses bombs (or shootings, or threats of same) as a tool for terrorism in America is a whacko. I don't care if they're "left" or "right" or something else.
Government can't protect people from crazies, because they're not rational. That's what "crazy" means.
You're fine. From reading your posts before, I really didn't think you viewed this in such a narrow perspective of (literally two points and a line) one-dimensional thought as "left vs. right".
I wrote my post as a reply to you not so much because I thought I was telling you anything you didn't know. I was fairly certain I wasn't doing that. This time, I responded to you because I thought you were far more likely to appreciate what I was saying than the other poster. He or she placed far too much importance on party lines.
Rather than bicker with the other poster about why choosing narrowmindedness is a bad thing, I'd prefer to provide a demonstration of what such a conversation looks like when it's not so artificially constrained. You can't really change a mentality like that by telling it that it's invalid. Occasionally, rarely, you can change it by providing a contrast and demonstrating why something else is better. You seemed handy.
Actually it's the opinion of the concensus of contributors who bother to contribute to deletion discussions. Which is just such a small group, in numbers and experience. The key to solving this is appreciating that Wikipedia is not a machine where you put in good information and get out the encyclopedia you want to see, it's about actually dealing with human beings on a large-scale collaborative project which has differences of opinion. Wikipedia needs more internal bickering, not snide remarks on the outside. You, you reading this, are the potential source of that bickering.
I occasionally make small corrections to Wikipedia articles when I see something is amiss. Usually I'm not altering any statements themselves, just fixing grammatical errors or cleaning up style to make something more eloquent and less ambiguous. There's one thing that stops me from more seriously contributing and putting real time and effort into it.
Too many of them have an idea of "bickering" that consists of: "oh, I'm sorry, do you work for a living and have responsibilities? Hahaha, you'll never make edits faster than I can reverse them!" I would say every place has a few bad apples but there's one reason I hesitate to do that here. The people like that don't seem to get their privileges revoked. If anything they tend to become admins, perhaps because their active involvement is mistaken for selfless dedication. That tells me the problem is institutional and systemic.
Wikipedia is a great resource. As a user, I enjoy it immensely. For any non-controversial subject it's my first reference. Yet I recognize that this is in spite of some of its more vitriolic members, not because of them. Behind the scenes it has that reputation and I doubt I'm the only one who is discouraged by this.
Please stop blaming the O/S. In my experience, malware problems are 1% system + 99% uneducated user.
I've run every version of Windows since 3.11 (and a few versions of DOS before that). Never had so much as a single malware issue. I'm sure many here would say the same.
Maybe every O/S installer should end with an exam. If you pass the exam, you get admin. If not, you get a 1-800 number.
Actually he was blaming the vendor.
An analogy could be made that selling an OS to what you nicely call an "uneducated user" is like selling firearms to children. The difference, of course, is that a firearm manufacturer which deliberately did that would face liability. The software company? Not only do they face no liability, they get to advertise "easier to use THAN EVAR! No expertise required!" in order to increase sales.
If anonymous did unreasonably illegal things with total lack or respect for anybody and anything involved, people wouldn't believe it either. The fact that they're mostly out doing relatively harmless things keeps it within the realm of believe.
That's easy to understand: many people believe only what they want to believe. That's because they have little contact with reality except where convenient, where it doesn't too badly challenge what they like to think. It's definitely not because no one ever does truly harmful things.
I thought the time tested method for creating vigilantes was blaming problems on a small group of people that the majority doesn't like anyways and so can get behind stringing up to work out their anger issues.
You could certainly make that case, yes.
I don't personally believe it, though it certainly does sound "standard practice" enough. By that I mean... the (minority of) people who would encourage things to unfold that way, and so get the majority on board with the scapegoating... they understand that this has a serious flaw. Understand that no objection of theirs is because the maneuver is too low, too heatless, too underhanded, but they are quite practical. It is Machiavellian politics. The only problen such people would have is that it wouldn't actually work.
Simply, doing things that way means that the people who have the most incentive to take the personal risks that becoming a vigilante would imply are also the people who receive the most scrutiny and have the most to lose from doing so. Their fear would be quite the inverse. They would fear taking blame for any such event even if actually innocent. That's what scapegoats are all about. However, it's not a great way to encourage that same scapegoat group to take any radical action.
If the intention is to create a bogeyman so that powers can be expanded then turning a blind eye for a while is exactly the procedure. Then a mild irritant can have time to get off the ground, gain inertia, turn radical, and become a big threat. At that point it turns out that... oops, just a bit more political power could help to fight such things. What a coincidence.
Hegel called it "Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis". It is also called "Problem, Reaction, Solution". It's an ancient tactic that predates the Roman empire. It has survived the test of time for the simple reason that it works. The tiny minority who can see through it is easy enough to ignore or marginalize.
Saying "things here are hopeless" and moving to a foreign nation in the hopes of finding something resembling a free country... that means finally giving up on your own country. It means abandoning what is ultimately your homeland, leaving it to the forces of tyranny which have finally succeeded in taking it over. It means surrendering all hope and cutting your losses. It's not an easy thing to do for anyone with a conscience.
And again, it still doesn't mean that the vigilantes are in the right. It just means that they're addressing (for better or for worse) a problem that the government should be addressing, but has failed to.
Allowing criminals and other abusers to go unpunished and uninvestigated is the time-tested method of creating vigilantes where there otherwise were none.
It's simple really. This is mainstream (i.e. lowest common denominator, bottom of the barrel, that which is easiest to sell, what has style but no substance, etc.) thought on the matter: if you are concerned about the government or members of the government acting completely outside of the law, with impunity, well then you're just another paranoid tin-foil hat-wearing insane nutter conspiracy type. You will be dismissed and ridiculed without ever testing the veracity of your claims. That's because we just don't like the way you sound, and that tie you're wearing pisses us off too.
But, if you're concerned about a group of online vandals who cause a lot of inconvenience to a few people, but nothing on the scale of abusive government with no effective checks and balances... well then, we approve of that. Those damned vigilantes. It's definitely okay to believe that a bunch of people with little no no association, organization, or preperation can conspire to bring down a Web site.
It's those insane morons who believe that a bunch of people who are from the same social class, who play golf with each other, who are in bed with the same special interests, who work similar jobs, who all benefit from a more powerful government, why it's madness to believe that they are anything other than saints who are acting in our interests. MADNESS I TELL YOU. What kind of idiot would believe a story like that? Clearly we must ridicule them immediately. We absolutely must, at all costs, ignore every historical precedent for such abuses of power, every self-interested motive of any authority figure involved, every precedent for past abuses of power our own government has perpetrated, and every lack of oversight and basic competency any public official has ever shown. After all, we have some nutters to ridicule.
Just out of curiosity. If you don't have an ID, how does anyone know that you're a citizen of this country? If you are never required to produce it, how would anyone distinguish you from an illegal alien? ESP?
Simple. If you claim someone is an illegal alien, you are accusing them of breaking a law.
The burden of proof is on the accuser.
You either prove that they have in fact broken immigration law... or else they are presumed innocent and assume to be a legal citizen.
But it demonstrates one thing clearly: don't trust government guarantees, when they try something like that. It might last for a few years, then "bye, bye."
There is such a mountain of evidence for this that it's really very simple: anyone who doesn't understand that simply doesn't want to. It definitely isn't because the facts leave any room for interpretation.
The income tax was "a temporary (WWII) war-time measure".
"Read it and weep, you fucking terrorists. This isn't trolling, this is patriotism, calling out the madmen who attack my country. You want to mod me troll? Bring it, I've got karma to burn."
And you conveniently forget (or perhaps didn't even know?) about all the left-wing shootings and terror bombings that took place in the U.S. in the 1960s - 1980s?
FAR more than anybody in the "right wing" has ever pulled. If you don't believe that, I can pull up references. But you can yourself, too. Just look up these names, and learn about the things they took "credit" for doing: "Black Panthers", "Weather Underground".
There were more left-wing terrorist bombings just in Washington D.C. during that period, than all "right-wing" bombings combined.
While you're absolutely right, I think the whole "right vs left" deal glosses over a lot of important things.
All I want is maximum freedom for consenting adults who do not use force or fraud to achieve their goals. All I want is the minimum possible government that can still provide effective public works, law enforcement (but only to prevent one person from using force/fraud to deprive another of civil rights), and national defense (against unprovoked foreign enemies -- to paraphrase Franklin, provoking foreign powers who otherwise would have left us alone is inconsistent with our form of government).
Both the leftist terrorist bombers and the right-wing terorrist bombers have one thing in common: they are willing to use lethal force in the form of unprovoked attack to attempt to achieve their goals. I really don't care in what name they perform these acts. It is the acts themselves and the willingness to perform them because they have no persuasive argument that is the problem.
As far as I am concerned, those who would expand government into tyranny in the name of safety and protection from threats are cut from the same cloth as those terrorists who think that blowing shit up is the very best way to make a statement. People are not supposed to fear their own government. That means they are both terrorists. The only difference is that one is institutional and organizational while the other is underground and ragtag.
Well said, but I think you're putting too much faith in the local government. I would be curious what a nation would look like with most of it's power deliberated at the State level (or province, as I'm in Canada).
And what's to stop someone from leaving the country, rather than just the state?
It's far easier for a U.S. citizen to move from one U.S. state to another U.S. state than it would be to emigrate to another country.
Just off the top of my head... another country would almost certainly mean changing your money to a different currency. For an American, it would likely mean getting used to the metric system. It would mean learning a whole different set of laws. It may mean learning a new language. It is possible but far less likely that you could remain with the same employer (than if you were moving from one U.S. state to another).
Then there is the culture shock. For example, in many countries bribing police officers is considered a standard practice. It's just the way things are done. For an American that would be quite a surprise, since in the USA that's a really great way to end up in jail (the way to do that in the USA is to bribe, err I mean make contributions of course, to the politicians who direct the police).
Not to mention that you'd have to obey the immigration laws of the country. They might or might not let you move there, something that's not a concern for moving from one U.S. state to another. They might let you move there, but only if you have a certain amount of money. You may have to perform military service. You may have restrictions about what kind of property you may own and similar things (for example, in Mexico, foreign nationals may be denied ownership of the highly sought-after oceanfront properties).
It's definitely harder to move to a foreign country and become a naturalized citizen there.
State, national, what's the difference? Only in scale. Sometimes you need the feds to protect you from the state. Authority is authority. All you're choosing is whose foot you want up your ass. The natural birthright is to be able to move about without being tagged like cattle.
In terms of abuses of power... the states are saintly figures of altruism who walk on water, heal the sick, feed the poor, and keep your cereal from getting soggy in milk when compared to the federal government. It's different when the people running things are not so damned far removed from being neighbors in or near your own community. State governments also don't receive nearly the sort of "attention" and dollars from lobbyists and special interests that the feds do. It does happen, but not nearly as much.
You as a taxpaying citizen are far better represented in your state government than you could ever dream of knowing at the federal level. And if all else fails, you can vote with your feet and take yourself and your tax dollars to another state that's more sane.
I heard a fable once about a particular culture's ancient rulers. When a man was to become a local king, the way his territory was determined was simple. He would stand on the very tallest hilltop he could find. Everything he could see was his to rule and not one acre more. The belief was that it's very dangerous to allow a man to rule more than he can see. Smaller and more local is how you lessen the pitfalls that come with political power. Compared to the lumbering gigantic monster that is the U.S. Federal Government, the state governments are quite close to this ideal.
could I then sue the government for wasting tax dollars on a frivolous pursuit
Of course not. That's their job.
Occasionally things like law enforcement against those who use force/fraud to deprive others of civil rights, public works like roads and bridges, and legitimate national defense against an unprovoked foreign aggressor take place... but they're working on that.
It's difficult to beat the economy of expression and precision the command line offers to those who know how to use it. It's really difficult to beat the ease of automation.
It's difficult to beat the interactiveness and feedback presented in a graphical interface, to say nothing of the density and depth of information available, or its ability to behave dynamically based on context.
My comment acknowledges that there is often a trade-off to be made. It also accepts the reality that it is far easier for a person to adapt to the needs of a machine than it is for a machine to adapt to the needs of a person.
Yet the whole point of having the machine in the first place is to free up the person from mundane and unproductive tasks so they can do something useful with their time. We should absolutely be trying to adapt interfaces to people, not vice versa.
Those diverse trades you mention have one thing in common: people who are unskilled at them don't generally try to do them.
Most people who are not technicians do use computers.
Most people who are not mechanics drive (some even for fun or competition). Most people who are not farmers eat. Most people who are not doctors need medical attention. That's exactly what makes using a computer just like all those other things - you do not need to know how a steak gets from a cow to your supermarket to eat it.
If someone who has never driven a car before and does not understand how to drive safely gets behind the wheel and causes an accident, no one finds that surprising. No one blames that on the car being too difficult to use. They understand that as a machine it is only doing what the driver told it to do. If someone who is equally unskilled and lacks basic competency operates a computer and has problems, we blame the computer.
No, the computer is blamed when people who do have basic competency have problems. Similarly with things like cars, planes, and other devices that are designed to remove certain aspects of required expertise.
I'm not aware of anyone who would blame "the computer" if someone who had literally never touched one sat down and didn't know how to use it. I do know lots of people blame "the computer" when they have learnt the basics but they run into problems because the interface is poorly designed, inconsistent, or simply non-existant.
I appreciate that you have some solid reasons for seeing this the way that you do. I still view this differently but it is most interesting to gain some understanding, however imperfect, of another valid perspective.
It's possible that our differing views on this can be reconciled. I'll offer up a possible way to do that.
I think the argument could be made that computing for the masses is not yet a mature technology. We haven't had desktop computers for a hundred years like we have had cars for a hundred years. The early cars produced by Henry Ford were not nearly so "ready for prime time", not nearly so reliable, not nearly so easy to use as it is to drive a modern car today. You just about had to be your own mechanic back then. Even starting the engine, which was done with a hand-turned crank, was potentially dangerous to the operator and certainly more difficult than turning a key to activate an electric starter motor.
To really use a computer effectively, not so much in terms of getting work done but rather in terms of avoiding foreseeable problems, in terms of not succumbing to malware infections and other threats, you just about have to be your own technician now. Those who are not often have frustrations and infections. That is becoming less and less true as time passes, but it is not yet a distant memory either. The main advantage corporations and other organizations have is that they employ dedicated IT staff who are expect
Indeed, which is why in the context of a whole bunch of other comments clearly suggesting that CLIs are awesome and GUIs suck, the implication that GUIs are only used for trivial tasks (and its corollary - only the inexperienced and ignorant who have trivial tasks to do, use GUIs) was pretty clear.
If you had said "the terminal is for tasks best done in a CLI", then I wouldn't have even noticed.
I can see that settling this matter less directly didn't work. One step deeper it is, then. You said "the implication that GUIs are only used for "trivial" tasks is ridiculous on its face."
That means you had a choice. When a statement is "ridiculous on its face" there are two potential reasons. You could assume that I'm careless/stupid/ridiculous/insert-negative-adjective-here. Or you could assume that if you feel that way, you must not have correctly understood what I was saying.
You "wouldn't have noticed" if I had more explicitly spelled it out instead of relying on your ability to interpret something within the given context. That's because if I had done that, it would have left you no room to make an assumption. So I left you a bit of wiggle room there. What did you do with that? Did you at least ask me if that's really what I meant? No, you instantly attribute to me a statement I did not make even though it flies in the face of basic reasoning (a claim that such a user would have terminals for non-trivial tasks is not a claim that a GUI cannot perform a non-trivial task).
You lack the grace and the willingness to extend benefit of doubt, or failing all of that, the awareness that such a glaring omission would be inconsistent with the way I articulated everything else I said, to assume that such a trivial objection indicates you have misunderstood me. That's because in your mind you disagree with my position, therefore I must be wrong. It follows that everything I say must be interpreted in the way that most efficiently reflects on my wrongness, since you've already decided that, even if you must ignore both context and basic reasoning in order to do it.
People have egos, in other words. Egos are quite ingenious at worming their way into a discussion while appearing superficially reasonable. They just don't stand up to critical examination, for that acknowledges the importance of things like context and sound reasoning. A lot of people have a very deep-seated need to feel right, only it's not enough that they feel right, someone else must also be wrong. That's really all this was. Because it's a mostly unconscious process that you didn't deliberately plan on, you may be tempted to think that just because you didn't intend it then you could not have done it.
What you're doing there is something I call playing the hostile audience. It's not about really understanding what I believe and where I am coming from so that you can better explain why you have a different view. Instead, it's about "anything you say can and will be used against you." There's only one thing it really accomplishes: much hair-splitting and much discussion that doesn't elucidate anyone's view or further anyone's understanding of the actual subject. But hey, at least for a brief time between the moment you wrote your "objection" and now, you got to feel like you made an easy slam-dunk and caught me committing something rather stupid in writing. That's what matters, right?
The implication that GUIs are only used for "trivial" tasks is ridiculous on its face.
I forgot to respond to that point and I wanted to be comprehensive.
I made no such claim. I was describing what Linux users who are skilled with the command line yet enjoy featureful GUIs often do. When I said "the terminal is for non-trivial tasks" that is not the same thing as claiming "a GUI cannot perform a non-trivial task". The GUI can do that. The terminal is simply a better tool for the job in many cases. Saying that "A can perform C" is not the same thing as saying "Only A can perform C, therefore B cannot perform C". This is basic reasoning.
So, within the context of describing what experienced Linux users like to do, that is why they often retain a terminal or three even though they may be running a full-blown, feature-packed GUI that provides graphical methods to accomplish most of the same tasks.
That context thing is important. Quoting things out of context to portray them in the most unfavorable fashion possible may seem like an easy way to score points in a discussion or a shortcut to declaring the other guy wrong but the objections raised this way are trivial to invalidate.
It's difficult to beat the economy of expression and precision the command line offers to those who know how to use it. It's really difficult to beat the ease of automation.
No, it doesn't. Your comment assumes that an interface should *have* to be learnt, to be easy to use.
My comment acknowledges that there is often a trade-off to be made. It also accepts the reality that it is far easier for a person to adapt to the needs of a machine than it is for a machine to adapt to the needs of a person.
There is nothing unique to Windows, or even computers, about this. Do you know the intricacies of how your car works ? How about your blender or oven ? Could you fabricate a new bed or sofa from raw materials, and without modern tools ? Do you grow your own produce ? Could you butcher a cow or chicken ? Could you set a complex fracture or create your own painkillers ? Can you brew your own beer ?
In each of those cases I hire experts who are skilled in those trades. Most non-farmers don't operate farm equipment or raise livestock for food. Most people who are not mechanics wouldn't attempt to rebuild their car engines. Most people who lack medical training don't set broken bones or create pharmaceuticals. Those diverse trades you mention have one thing in common: people who are unskilled at them don't generally try to do them.
Most people who are not technicians do use computers. That's what makes it unlike those things. That's why your analogy there is irrepairably flawed. Computing is one of the only areas where people routinely operate a highly complex piece of equipment they don't remotely understand and still expect everything to go smoothly. Predictably and unsurprisingly, they often experience problems. It's something of a miracle they don't have a lot more problems than they do.
What I call basic competence is not like having enough skill as a mechanic to rebuild your car's engine (that would be expertise, not merely competence). It's more like knowing how to drive, understanding what defensive driving is, and understanding that the vehicle needs periodic maintainence in order to remain road-worthy.
If someone who has never driven a car before and does not understand how to drive safely gets behind the wheel and causes an accident, no one finds that surprising. No one blames that on the car being too difficult to use. They understand that as a machine it is only doing what the driver told it to do. If someone who is equally unskilled and lacks basic competency operates a computer and has problems, we blame the computer. I think the only reason this faulty thinking is so widespread is simply that misusing a computer doesn't typically lead to serious injury or death, otherwise more people would feel the necessity of recognizing this mentality as the set of unrealistic expectations that it is.
All I'm asking for is a little consistency.
No, it's nothing like that at all. One is an example of financial irresponsibility and the other is simply realising that you do not need a deep and intricate understanding of a given thing to use or take advantage of the services or benefits it provides.
It is an imperfect analogy to be sure, though not a fatally flawed one. The reason? It's a comparison of a one type of willingness to invest in good results with another.
I never claimed a deep and intricate understanding was necessary either. That'd be more like the mechanic who can rebuild an engine with confidence. You know what would be a drastic improvement? If average users took a little time to learn some best practices, even if all they did was to memorize them with no real understanding of why they are best practices. That'd be more like knowing how to drive safely.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't unreasonable to point out that if one is to compare the selling of guns to the selling of computer software then one should keep in mind that the potential risks are different.
You're trying to claim, by way of analogy, that because we don't allow situation A, and situation A is similar to situation B, we therefore shouldn't allow situation B to occur. Therefore situations A and B should be comparable in magnitude of effect as well as in form.
Actually I never said either one should be allowed. I never said either one should be banned. I merely observe that this company in this industry gets away with things that we would call irresponsible for other companies in other industries.
Apparently analogies are a real tough thing on this site. The point was, these practices are similar in principle. They are different in effect; a malfunctioning malware-infested computer isn't going to shoot someone.
I realize we're not a society that celebrates abstract reasoning or principle. Still, is it really that difficult to distinguish principle from effect? If you steal $5 from my wallet, you're a thief. If you steal $900,000 from a bank, you're a thief. There's a tremendous difference there in terms of what the effect will be (some probation at worst, versus hard time in prison). The principle that you shouldn't take things that don't belong to you remains the same.
I'm waiting now for someone to say "but but causality, a malfunctioning computer probably won't rob a bank!" That person will probably think he really made a useful point.
I don't mean this to intentionally offend but when I have to explain things like this, I feel like I'm giving remedial instruction, like I am picking up the slack where your schoolteachers and/or professors have failed.
"Terrorists are just a convenient excuse for doing things they'd like to do anyway."
That is my conclusion as well. But there are a lot of people who prefer not to see that.
I'm generally plain-spoken and this will unfortunately be no exception: that's because they're cowards. At least, for the most part. Many of the rest are unable to see it for what it is despite having courage because they are what you could call "educated stupid". It's part of the function of the public schools.
How typical of Slashdot. When confronted with an analogy, you have a couple of choices. You either undertand the point that is being made, or you nitpick the analogy. Excellent choice, sir.
If selling an OS to an idiot typically resulted in death there would be a lot of dead idiots.
The point, you know that thing you miss when you nitpick, is not about whether misuse of guns causes death and misuse of OSes doesn't cause death. The point is we have a corporation that is enriching itself by selling items to people who are likely to misuse them and lose time and money (and maybe experience identity theft) from having done so. It's not that this happens and they turn a blind eye to it. It's that they are specifically and intentionally targeting this class of user in order to increase sales.
In what other industry can a corporation do that and never face any sort of liability or government scrutiny?
Good for her. Wait six months, run a thorough scan for malware, and get back to me. Then note that nowhere on the packaged Windows DVD did it say anything about some knowledge being required to avoid such threats.
Why people are so eager to make excuses for this is quite a mystery to me. If you were the one making billions from the whole deal I could understand it. But you're not. Microsoft is. I can understand why *they* whitewash this issue. Why you would do it, no I don't get that.
Despite outward appearances, the people who wield the real power within government are actually not stupid. I believe they know this. Terrorists are just a convenient excuse for doing things they'd like to do anyway.
Old-fashioned thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
I'm with you on that. I did not intend to characterize it as a left-vs-right thing, but GP decided to pick on one side, I decided to set him straight.
Anybody who uses bombs (or shootings, or threats of same) as a tool for terrorism in America is a whacko. I don't care if they're "left" or "right" or something else.
Government can't protect people from crazies, because they're not rational. That's what "crazy" means.
You're fine. From reading your posts before, I really didn't think you viewed this in such a narrow perspective of (literally two points and a line) one-dimensional thought as "left vs. right".
I wrote my post as a reply to you not so much because I thought I was telling you anything you didn't know. I was fairly certain I wasn't doing that. This time, I responded to you because I thought you were far more likely to appreciate what I was saying than the other poster. He or she placed far too much importance on party lines.
Rather than bicker with the other poster about why choosing narrowmindedness is a bad thing, I'd prefer to provide a demonstration of what such a conversation looks like when it's not so artificially constrained. You can't really change a mentality like that by telling it that it's invalid. Occasionally, rarely, you can change it by providing a contrast and demonstrating why something else is better. You seemed handy.
why should I?
How much like them do you really want to be?
Actually it's the opinion of the concensus of contributors who bother to contribute to deletion discussions. Which is just such a small group, in numbers and experience. The key to solving this is appreciating that Wikipedia is not a machine where you put in good information and get out the encyclopedia you want to see, it's about actually dealing with human beings on a large-scale collaborative project which has differences of opinion. Wikipedia needs more internal bickering, not snide remarks on the outside. You, you reading this, are the potential source of that bickering.
I occasionally make small corrections to Wikipedia articles when I see something is amiss. Usually I'm not altering any statements themselves, just fixing grammatical errors or cleaning up style to make something more eloquent and less ambiguous. There's one thing that stops me from more seriously contributing and putting real time and effort into it.
Too many of them have an idea of "bickering" that consists of: "oh, I'm sorry, do you work for a living and have responsibilities? Hahaha, you'll never make edits faster than I can reverse them!" I would say every place has a few bad apples but there's one reason I hesitate to do that here. The people like that don't seem to get their privileges revoked. If anything they tend to become admins, perhaps because their active involvement is mistaken for selfless dedication. That tells me the problem is institutional and systemic.
Wikipedia is a great resource. As a user, I enjoy it immensely. For any non-controversial subject it's my first reference. Yet I recognize that this is in spite of some of its more vitriolic members, not because of them. Behind the scenes it has that reputation and I doubt I'm the only one who is discouraged by this.
There are many times when what they would call "marketing", I would call "fraud". Apparently it's legal, too.
Please stop blaming the O/S. In my experience, malware problems are 1% system + 99% uneducated user.
I've run every version of Windows since 3.11 (and a few versions of DOS before that). Never had so much as a single malware issue. I'm sure many here would say the same.
Maybe every O/S installer should end with an exam. If you pass the exam, you get admin. If not, you get a 1-800 number.
Actually he was blaming the vendor.
An analogy could be made that selling an OS to what you nicely call an "uneducated user" is like selling firearms to children. The difference, of course, is that a firearm manufacturer which deliberately did that would face liability. The software company? Not only do they face no liability, they get to advertise "easier to use THAN EVAR! No expertise required!" in order to increase sales.
If anonymous did unreasonably illegal things with total lack or respect for anybody and anything involved, people wouldn't believe it either.
The fact that they're mostly out doing relatively harmless things keeps it within the realm of believe.
That's easy to understand: many people believe only what they want to believe. That's because they have little contact with reality except where convenient, where it doesn't too badly challenge what they like to think. It's definitely not because no one ever does truly harmful things.
I thought the time tested method for creating vigilantes was blaming problems on a small group of people that the majority doesn't like anyways and so can get behind stringing up to work out their anger issues.
You could certainly make that case, yes.
I don't personally believe it, though it certainly does sound "standard practice" enough. By that I mean ... the (minority of) people who would encourage things to unfold that way, and so get the majority on board with the scapegoating ... they understand that this has a serious flaw. Understand that no objection of theirs is because the maneuver is too low, too heatless, too underhanded, but they are quite practical. It is Machiavellian politics. The only problen such people would have is that it wouldn't actually work.
Simply, doing things that way means that the people who have the most incentive to take the personal risks that becoming a vigilante would imply are also the people who receive the most scrutiny and have the most to lose from doing so. Their fear would be quite the inverse. They would fear taking blame for any such event even if actually innocent. That's what scapegoats are all about. However, it's not a great way to encourage that same scapegoat group to take any radical action.
If the intention is to create a bogeyman so that powers can be expanded then turning a blind eye for a while is exactly the procedure. Then a mild irritant can have time to get off the ground, gain inertia, turn radical, and become a big threat. At that point it turns out that ... oops, just a bit more political power could help to fight such things. What a coincidence.
Hegel called it "Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis". It is also called "Problem, Reaction, Solution". It's an ancient tactic that predates the Roman empire. It has survived the test of time for the simple reason that it works. The tiny minority who can see through it is easy enough to ignore or marginalize.
I think I did leave out one very important point.
Saying "things here are hopeless" and moving to a foreign nation in the hopes of finding something resembling a free country ... that means finally giving up on your own country. It means abandoning what is ultimately your homeland, leaving it to the forces of tyranny which have finally succeeded in taking it over. It means surrendering all hope and cutting your losses. It's not an easy thing to do for anyone with a conscience.
Allowing criminals and other abusers to go unpunished and uninvestigated is the time-tested method of creating vigilantes where there otherwise were none.
"No doubt the alleged HBGary plot is troubling..."
Troubling? That's an understatement... "The Obama Administration’s Justice Department advised the largest bank in America where to find a corporate hacker [Three military contracting 'cyber-security' companies] to fabricate information that could be used to blackmail American journalists"
Corporate America, the Military Industrial Complex and the Government all in bed together to operate outside the law inside the US and without any checks, balances or semblance of respect for the law... and this Ted Samson character is more worried about the civil disobedience group Anonymous... Hellooo... threat assessment!?
It's simple really. This is mainstream (i.e. lowest common denominator, bottom of the barrel, that which is easiest to sell, what has style but no substance, etc.) thought on the matter: if you are concerned about the government or members of the government acting completely outside of the law, with impunity, well then you're just another paranoid tin-foil hat-wearing insane nutter conspiracy type. You will be dismissed and ridiculed without ever testing the veracity of your claims. That's because we just don't like the way you sound, and that tie you're wearing pisses us off too.
But, if you're concerned about a group of online vandals who cause a lot of inconvenience to a few people, but nothing on the scale of abusive government with no effective checks and balances... well then, we approve of that. Those damned vigilantes. It's definitely okay to believe that a bunch of people with little no no association, organization, or preperation can conspire to bring down a Web site.
It's those insane morons who believe that a bunch of people who are from the same social class, who play golf with each other, who are in bed with the same special interests, who work similar jobs, who all benefit from a more powerful government, why it's madness to believe that they are anything other than saints who are acting in our interests. MADNESS I TELL YOU. What kind of idiot would believe a story like that? Clearly we must ridicule them immediately. We absolutely must, at all costs, ignore every historical precedent for such abuses of power, every self-interested motive of any authority figure involved, every precedent for past abuses of power our own government has perpetrated, and every lack of oversight and basic competency any public official has ever shown. After all, we have some nutters to ridicule.
Just out of curiosity. If you don't have an ID, how does anyone know that you're a citizen of this country? If you are never required to produce it, how would anyone distinguish you from an illegal alien? ESP?
Simple. If you claim someone is an illegal alien, you are accusing them of breaking a law.
The burden of proof is on the accuser.
You either prove that they have in fact broken immigration law ... or else they are presumed innocent and assume to be a legal citizen.
Really, it's easy as pie.
There is such a mountain of evidence for this that it's really very simple: anyone who doesn't understand that simply doesn't want to. It definitely isn't because the facts leave any room for interpretation.
The income tax was "a temporary (WWII) war-time measure".
"Read it and weep, you fucking terrorists. This isn't trolling, this is patriotism, calling out the madmen who attack my country. You want to mod me troll? Bring it, I've got karma to burn."
And you conveniently forget (or perhaps didn't even know?) about all the left-wing shootings and terror bombings that took place in the U.S. in the 1960s - 1980s?
FAR more than anybody in the "right wing" has ever pulled. If you don't believe that, I can pull up references. But you can yourself, too. Just look up these names, and learn about the things they took "credit" for doing: "Black Panthers", "Weather Underground".
There were more left-wing terrorist bombings just in Washington D.C. during that period, than all "right-wing" bombings combined.
While you're absolutely right, I think the whole "right vs left" deal glosses over a lot of important things.
All I want is maximum freedom for consenting adults who do not use force or fraud to achieve their goals. All I want is the minimum possible government that can still provide effective public works, law enforcement (but only to prevent one person from using force/fraud to deprive another of civil rights), and national defense (against unprovoked foreign enemies -- to paraphrase Franklin, provoking foreign powers who otherwise would have left us alone is inconsistent with our form of government).
Both the leftist terrorist bombers and the right-wing terorrist bombers have one thing in common: they are willing to use lethal force in the form of unprovoked attack to attempt to achieve their goals. I really don't care in what name they perform these acts. It is the acts themselves and the willingness to perform them because they have no persuasive argument that is the problem.
As far as I am concerned, those who would expand government into tyranny in the name of safety and protection from threats are cut from the same cloth as those terrorists who think that blowing shit up is the very best way to make a statement. People are not supposed to fear their own government. That means they are both terrorists. The only difference is that one is institutional and organizational while the other is underground and ragtag.
Well said, but I think you're putting too much faith in the local government. I would be curious what a nation would look like with most of it's power deliberated at the State level (or province, as I'm in Canada).
And what's to stop someone from leaving the country, rather than just the state?
It's far easier for a U.S. citizen to move from one U.S. state to another U.S. state than it would be to emigrate to another country.
Just off the top of my head ... another country would almost certainly mean changing your money to a different currency. For an American, it would likely mean getting used to the metric system. It would mean learning a whole different set of laws. It may mean learning a new language. It is possible but far less likely that you could remain with the same employer (than if you were moving from one U.S. state to another).
Then there is the culture shock. For example, in many countries bribing police officers is considered a standard practice. It's just the way things are done. For an American that would be quite a surprise, since in the USA that's a really great way to end up in jail (the way to do that in the USA is to bribe, err I mean make contributions of course, to the politicians who direct the police).
Not to mention that you'd have to obey the immigration laws of the country. They might or might not let you move there, something that's not a concern for moving from one U.S. state to another. They might let you move there, but only if you have a certain amount of money. You may have to perform military service. You may have restrictions about what kind of property you may own and similar things (for example, in Mexico, foreign nationals may be denied ownership of the highly sought-after oceanfront properties).
It's definitely harder to move to a foreign country and become a naturalized citizen there.
State, national, what's the difference? Only in scale. Sometimes you need the feds to protect you from the state. Authority is authority. All you're choosing is whose foot you want up your ass. The natural birthright is to be able to move about without being tagged like cattle.
In terms of abuses of power ... the states are saintly figures of altruism who walk on water, heal the sick, feed the poor, and keep your cereal from getting soggy in milk when compared to the federal government. It's different when the people running things are not so damned far removed from being neighbors in or near your own community. State governments also don't receive nearly the sort of "attention" and dollars from lobbyists and special interests that the feds do. It does happen, but not nearly as much.
You as a taxpaying citizen are far better represented in your state government than you could ever dream of knowing at the federal level. And if all else fails, you can vote with your feet and take yourself and your tax dollars to another state that's more sane.
I heard a fable once about a particular culture's ancient rulers. When a man was to become a local king, the way his territory was determined was simple. He would stand on the very tallest hilltop he could find. Everything he could see was his to rule and not one acre more. The belief was that it's very dangerous to allow a man to rule more than he can see. Smaller and more local is how you lessen the pitfalls that come with political power. Compared to the lumbering gigantic monster that is the U.S. Federal Government, the state governments are quite close to this ideal.
Of course not. That's their job.
Occasionally things like law enforcement against those who use force/fraud to deprive others of civil rights, public works like roads and bridges, and legitimate national defense against an unprovoked foreign aggressor take place ... but they're working on that.
It's difficult to beat the interactiveness and feedback presented in a graphical interface, to say nothing of the density and depth of information available, or its ability to behave dynamically based on context.
Yet the whole point of having the machine in the first place is to free up the person from mundane and unproductive tasks so they can do something useful with their time. We should absolutely be trying to adapt interfaces to people, not vice versa.
Most people who are not mechanics drive (some even for fun or competition). Most people who are not farmers eat. Most people who are not doctors need medical attention. That's exactly what makes using a computer just like all those other things - you do not need to know how a steak gets from a cow to your supermarket to eat it.
No, the computer is blamed when people who do have basic competency have problems. Similarly with things like cars, planes, and other devices that are designed to remove certain aspects of required expertise.
I'm not aware of anyone who would blame "the computer" if someone who had literally never touched one sat down and didn't know how to use it. I do know lots of people blame "the computer" when they have learnt the basics but they run into problems because the interface is poorly designed, inconsistent, or simply non-existant.
I appreciate that you have some solid reasons for seeing this the way that you do. I still view this differently but it is most interesting to gain some understanding, however imperfect, of another valid perspective.
It's possible that our differing views on this can be reconciled. I'll offer up a possible way to do that.
I think the argument could be made that computing for the masses is not yet a mature technology. We haven't had desktop computers for a hundred years like we have had cars for a hundred years. The early cars produced by Henry Ford were not nearly so "ready for prime time", not nearly so reliable, not nearly so easy to use as it is to drive a modern car today. You just about had to be your own mechanic back then. Even starting the engine, which was done with a hand-turned crank, was potentially dangerous to the operator and certainly more difficult than turning a key to activate an electric starter motor.
To really use a computer effectively, not so much in terms of getting work done but rather in terms of avoiding foreseeable problems, in terms of not succumbing to malware infections and other threats, you just about have to be your own technician now. Those who are not often have frustrations and infections. That is becoming less and less true as time passes, but it is not yet a distant memory either. The main advantage corporations and other organizations have is that they employ dedicated IT staff who are expect
Indeed, which is why in the context of a whole bunch of other comments clearly suggesting that CLIs are awesome and GUIs suck, the implication that GUIs are only used for trivial tasks (and its corollary - only the inexperienced and ignorant who have trivial tasks to do, use GUIs) was pretty clear.
If you had said "the terminal is for tasks best done in a CLI", then I wouldn't have even noticed.
I can see that settling this matter less directly didn't work. One step deeper it is, then. You said "the implication that GUIs are only used for "trivial" tasks is ridiculous on its face."
That means you had a choice. When a statement is "ridiculous on its face" there are two potential reasons. You could assume that I'm careless/stupid/ridiculous/insert-negative-adjective-here. Or you could assume that if you feel that way, you must not have correctly understood what I was saying.
You "wouldn't have noticed" if I had more explicitly spelled it out instead of relying on your ability to interpret something within the given context. That's because if I had done that, it would have left you no room to make an assumption. So I left you a bit of wiggle room there. What did you do with that? Did you at least ask me if that's really what I meant? No, you instantly attribute to me a statement I did not make even though it flies in the face of basic reasoning (a claim that such a user would have terminals for non-trivial tasks is not a claim that a GUI cannot perform a non-trivial task).
You lack the grace and the willingness to extend benefit of doubt, or failing all of that, the awareness that such a glaring omission would be inconsistent with the way I articulated everything else I said, to assume that such a trivial objection indicates you have misunderstood me. That's because in your mind you disagree with my position, therefore I must be wrong. It follows that everything I say must be interpreted in the way that most efficiently reflects on my wrongness, since you've already decided that, even if you must ignore both context and basic reasoning in order to do it.
People have egos, in other words. Egos are quite ingenious at worming their way into a discussion while appearing superficially reasonable. They just don't stand up to critical examination, for that acknowledges the importance of things like context and sound reasoning. A lot of people have a very deep-seated need to feel right, only it's not enough that they feel right, someone else must also be wrong. That's really all this was. Because it's a mostly unconscious process that you didn't deliberately plan on, you may be tempted to think that just because you didn't intend it then you could not have done it.
What you're doing there is something I call playing the hostile audience. It's not about really understanding what I believe and where I am coming from so that you can better explain why you have a different view. Instead, it's about "anything you say can and will be used against you." There's only one thing it really accomplishes: much hair-splitting and much discussion that doesn't elucidate anyone's view or further anyone's understanding of the actual subject. But hey, at least for a brief time between the moment you wrote your "objection" and now, you got to feel like you made an easy slam-dunk and caught me committing something rather stupid in writing. That's what matters, right?
I forgot to respond to that point and I wanted to be comprehensive.
I made no such claim. I was describing what Linux users who are skilled with the command line yet enjoy featureful GUIs often do. When I said "the terminal is for non-trivial tasks" that is not the same thing as claiming "a GUI cannot perform a non-trivial task". The GUI can do that. The terminal is simply a better tool for the job in many cases. Saying that "A can perform C" is not the same thing as saying "Only A can perform C, therefore B cannot perform C". This is basic reasoning.
So, within the context of describing what experienced Linux users like to do, that is why they often retain a terminal or three even though they may be running a full-blown, feature-packed GUI that provides graphical methods to accomplish most of the same tasks.
That context thing is important. Quoting things out of context to portray them in the most unfavorable fashion possible may seem like an easy way to score points in a discussion or a shortcut to declaring the other guy wrong but the objections raised this way are trivial to invalidate.
It's difficult to beat the economy of expression and precision the command line offers to those who know how to use it. It's really difficult to beat the ease of automation.
My comment acknowledges that there is often a trade-off to be made. It also accepts the reality that it is far easier for a person to adapt to the needs of a machine than it is for a machine to adapt to the needs of a person.
In each of those cases I hire experts who are skilled in those trades. Most non-farmers don't operate farm equipment or raise livestock for food. Most people who are not mechanics wouldn't attempt to rebuild their car engines. Most people who lack medical training don't set broken bones or create pharmaceuticals. Those diverse trades you mention have one thing in common: people who are unskilled at them don't generally try to do them.
Most people who are not technicians do use computers. That's what makes it unlike those things. That's why your analogy there is irrepairably flawed. Computing is one of the only areas where people routinely operate a highly complex piece of equipment they don't remotely understand and still expect everything to go smoothly. Predictably and unsurprisingly, they often experience problems. It's something of a miracle they don't have a lot more problems than they do.
What I call basic competence is not like having enough skill as a mechanic to rebuild your car's engine (that would be expertise, not merely competence). It's more like knowing how to drive, understanding what defensive driving is, and understanding that the vehicle needs periodic maintainence in order to remain road-worthy.
If someone who has never driven a car before and does not understand how to drive safely gets behind the wheel and causes an accident, no one finds that surprising. No one blames that on the car being too difficult to use. They understand that as a machine it is only doing what the driver told it to do. If someone who is equally unskilled and lacks basic competency operates a computer and has problems, we blame the computer. I think the only reason this faulty thinking is so widespread is simply that misusing a computer doesn't typically lead to serious injury or death, otherwise more people would feel the necessity of recognizing this mentality as the set of unrealistic expectations that it is.
All I'm asking for is a little consistency.
It is an imperfect analogy to be sure, though not a fatally flawed one. The reason? It's a comparison of a one type of willingness to invest in good results with another.
I never claimed a deep and intricate understanding was necessary either. That'd be more like the mechanic who can rebuild an engine with confidence. You know what would be a drastic improvement? If average users took a little time to learn some best practices, even if all they did was to memorize them with no real understanding of why they are best practices. That'd be more like knowing how to drive safely.