I don't find it hard to excuse those who snuck over, I know of a lawyer who graduated suma cum laude and who still needed a specialist lawyer to help with the paperwork. If there is that much paperwork and that complicated who really can blame poor undereducated workers from just sneaking across? getting in leggaly will cost upwards of 15'000$, or roughly a years wages after taxes for these people.
That has more to do with the nature of a very large federal bureaucracy than anything else. For an example, you can contact the IRS and ask a relatively simple tax question 50 times and are likely to get more than 40 different answers. This isn't unique at all to immigration.
The real way to fix this is to reduce the demand. That can be arranged by cracking down on businesses who operate on US soil and hire illegal immigrants, by getting rid of bi-lingual everything and declaring the national language to be English, and by requiring proof of citizenship before one may receive any sort of welfare, public education, or other public assistance. Then it's more like "sure, you can probably cross that border without getting caught, it's a big border and hard to police all of it even if we had the will to do so, but once you get here there's nothing for you."
Anyone who thinks that any of the above would be harsh needs to take a good look at Mexico's immigration laws and is not qualified to speak about the subject until they do.
That would stem the tide and make it a much more attractive option to come here legally. That in turn would tend to encourage those who respect our laws to be the ones who immigrate.
If someone isn't willing to endure a process that provides no guarantees and is instead willing to risk it all to come here, then they should reconsider how much they want to be here. Yeah that makes sense.
Because clearly I am entitled to immigrate to any country I please. Therefore, because of my entitlement, any immigration laws that wouldn't let me move to that country are flawed and should be flippantly ignored rather than respected as reflecting the intent of a soverign nation. It's all about me, baby, and anything that interferes with what I want to do is wrong even if that means breaking the laws and trespassing on the foreign soil of a nation that doesn't owe me anything. Because I take up space and breathe oxygen I get to be anywhere, even where I'm clearly not wanted and even against the wishes of those who rightfully live there.
Perhaps the "right way" is unavailable to some people.
Then they can stay the fuck out! How hard is this to understand?
I may disagree with a foreign country's immigration policy. I might really, very strongly, in the most heartfelt way disagree with a foreign country's immigration policy. I might think they're a bunch of jackasses for having such a policy. None of that gives me the right to break their laws.
I would imagine the process of getting a green card was a lot easier for Linus Torvalds than it would be for some random Jose Gonzales with not so much as a high school degree.
Coincidentally, highly educated and highly skilled people from Finland aren't causing the USA's illegal immigration problem.
You might as well complain that people who have not so much as a high school degree have a really difficult time becoming brain surgeons. Horrible discrimination, that is.
It's not anywhere near as straight-forward as that. Furthermore, peer pressure is difficult even with the best parenting.
That's only true when you pressure your children to behave (for example, getting upset and intimidating them into "being good" instead of correcting and instructing them with calm but unyielding authority). That teaches them to respond to pressure and that this is normal. Then when someone else comes along who also knows how to pressure them, you have this tug-of-war that you very well may end up losing since you can't be there all the time to counter every bad influence.
It is as straightforward as that, unless you are merely an older, wiser, bigger source of pressure applying the same mechanic as the peers. Nearly everyone is, to the point that few can imagine any other way to do things.
I really liked your post, it was cool and logical. Then, I assume so you could fit in here (the Internet), you go and post the douchey paragraph at the end.
There is a silver lining to that cloud. The more criminals are tempted to go after those who actively make themselves an easy target, the more likely it is that those with a bit of sense will be left alone. This means you now have more control than ever over whether this will happen to you. Choice is good.
Just as long as that easy target isn't your teenager telling all of his/her friends that you're out of town on facebook! You can't keep track of every stupid thing your child does.
Instead you can teach them better than that. Of course, that isn't compatible with the assumption that they're going to do stupid things no matter what and there's nothing you can do about it.
The schools understand something quite well. The best way to make an impressionable young person into an idiot is to treat them like one.
It is different. A postal mailbox doesn't have a button hidden behind the hinge of the front door which, unless you press it, will publish the fronts of your envelopes (but only the fronts, anything more would be invasive y'see) and summary statistics on mail received, in the Orangeville Residents' Bulletin and Book of Faces.
OK it's not a perfect analogy, and maybe it's not fundamentally different, but online life has more gotchas than what meets the eye. Privacy and forgetting have to be engineered in; there aren't physical limitations.
The only thing there is to assume is that the Internet is a public resource and anything you publish there is fully public unless you have a very good, verifiable, evidence-based reason to believe otherwise. It's that simple.
Here's the thing, when you have kids, you end up friending a ton of people you know marginally. You also find out a lot of things that you can have talks with your kids about (not mentioning any names in those talks, just bring up the topic in general... "hey, what would you do if you found out some of your friends did such and such?").
My kids don't have Facebook accounts, but most of their IRL friends at school and church do.
But I think this shows that you shouldn't put anything online that you don't want to put right in front of your house. Don't put up a flier "gone out of town 3 weeks" on your front door and don't put it on Facebook either. Share the photos when you get back.
Sounds like a good topic for me and my family to talk about at dinner tonight.
If you have been a good model and example to your family of common sense and instilled the same virtue in them, gently and patiently but unambiguously correcting any failures to apply it, then any specific talk about this particular subject would be redundant.
If you've failed to uphold that standard then the very best you could do is a list of "dos and dont's". That list might or might not include potential perils of using Facebook but anything you leave out of that list would remain a vulnerability from a security standpoint.
Better to be acquainted with the true principle than worry about the infinite variations of possible instances of it.
So you're trashing something you don't use or understand.
Actually I don't use it because I understand it. Maybe you don't know this, but you can look before you leap, you can read up on something and learn something about it before deciding whether you will engage in it.
By your false logic, every non-smoker on the planet was once a smoker since they would never know why tobacco use is detrimental to health until after trying it and experiencing worse health. There's this thing called foresight that makes that unnecessary.
Incidentally "trashing" is a very strange term to describe calmly and honestly discussing its disadvantages. I think you have a sore point. Apparently the idea that others might have good reasons for not doing something that you have your reasons for doing is inflammatory and offensive to you. Most of the problems in the world are caused by an inability to live and let live, which in turn is rooted in mentalities like yours. You deserve every last bit of misery it causes you.
Dispute me on that if you think you can, though at this point the prudent thing for you would be to silently disappear and pretend you didn't notice my reply.
But now, thanks to Places and the idiots that use it, burgling is easier than ever!
There is a silver lining to that cloud. The more criminals are tempted to go after those who actively make themselves an easy target, the more likely it is that those with a bit of sense will be left alone. This means you now have more control than ever over whether this will happen to you. Choice is good.
You know, of all the things the military could be spending money on, I really can't bring myself to complain about this... Funding science is pretty much the only nearly universally accepted upside to having a military.
Or more specifically, to having a standing army during a time when no war has been declared by Congress, the only entity authorized to do so by the Constitution.
Try taking software back to a store. Say you didn't like the license and want a refund. They'll tell you "No refunds on opened software, exchanges only." Of course you can fight that but it takes time and money.
So ask for an exchange. When the exchange is made, say "now that I have an unopened box of this software, I want a refund."
When Microsoft touts the "Ease of Use" of their product, clearly they're speaking to the portion of the population with an IQ higher than room temperature. Apparently you're not part of their target demographic. May I offer an alternative?
You're certainly a single-minded one. The subtle disapproval of how I express myself was recognized and rejected so you decided you'd just try harder with a more blatant form of making this personal. Trying to insult me is a sorry substitute for arguing against my position. You can't make me deviate from my position no matter how hard you try to make this personal.
Most users of Windows are not technically skilled and there's no way that Microsoft doesn't know this. When they tout "ease of use" they are not making an effort to restrict their audience to the technically skilled. When the unskilled purchase Windows, their money is just as green as the skilled users' money. That's why Microsoft likes this arrangement and has no interest in limiting it.
I want Microsoft to either clearly state that their products are not intended for the technically unskilled or take on the liability for suffering caused by ignorant users who buy into their hype about security and ease-of-use. All of the childishness and belligerence you can possibly summon won't alter this logic. Now, if you have what it takes, then either demonstrate with solid reasoning why my logic is faulty or admit that you cannot.
I can't believe you took the time to write that much.
Point I was making: what you're calling negligence, isn't. If your house gets broken into, you don't get to sue the lock manufacturer because tumblers are so easy to pick. If your car breaks down because you never change the oil, you don't get to sue Ford. If you can't program your VCR clock because you're an idiot, you don't get to sue RCA. And if you fail to grasp these simple concepts, don't expect to be taken seriously.
And no, I would never want OS manufacturers to be held to the same standards as the car industry, since this would effectively kill off the Open Source movement.
Hang on, I need to approve or disapprove of the amount of writing you did before I can respond to your point. Did too much? Damn you're wordy. Not enough? Clearly you're too lazy. -- I think that makes the point. Reserve the personal shit for someone who desires your opinion, it will be much more effective. Moving on from your self-flattery...
If the lock manufacturer kept advertising "more secure than ever!" you might have a case. If Ford advertised "more maintainence-free than ever!" you might have case. If RCA advertised "easier to program than ever before!" you might have a case. They don't. Usually those companies make no claims at all about any of these things. The merit of their products is relative to their performance compared to the competition. But wait: all of those companies have real competition.
Microsoft is a blatant contrast to all of the above. Also, manufacturer liability makes no sense unless a profit is being made. Most Open Source is not distributed for a profit and is generally made available for no charge at all. It is when you as a customer are paying money that you can reasonably expect to receive something of value in return for that money that works as advertised. That's basic quid pro quo. When you are receiving something for free and no marketing promises are made to you then you don't have grounds to justify any such expectations. Thus it's perfectly reasonable to hold Microsoft to one legal standard and Open Source distributors to another; in fact it'd be unreasonable to do otherwise.
The actual reason is that the users still haven't learned from the last 9 years of experience.
Some users weren't around 9 years ago. Making it sound like users are all stupid may be popular here but it's childish. There are lots of reasons why a user may not know better or may slip up. You need education, not blame.
I agree. The last 9 years of the most basic and easily-understood aspects of security history would be included in even the shoddiest education about this subject.
What's stupid is using what you do not understand and are not actively learning about, while also thinking that nothing bad will ever happen.
"I think a better route would be make that the default method/policy and make it hard for the average user to it."
Microsoft marketing droids think otherwise.
And free market has shown them right by making Bill Gates one of the richest men in planet.
It's a market alright but I wouldn't call it a free market. A free market assumes that everyone involved is rational and acting in their own interests. A staggering level of ignorance on the part of the buyers that is nowhere to be found on the part of the sellers will drastically alter this equation in favor of the sellers. That means it is no longer a mutual agreement between equals. That doesn't make the sellers correct. It makes them more powerful.
This situation has no claim to legitimacy. It's old-fashioned might-makes-right. The reason why is simple. The degree to which one side is far more powerful than the other is the same degree to which the less-powerful side is no longer making a truly free choice.
It is, in part, a long standing design error. The actions for viewing a document and for running an executable are exactly the same. The error was compounded by hiding all evidence in the UI that a given file is actually an executable.
The result is and was entirely predictable.
It is an essential part of Ameircan culture to have a seething, burning hatred for the practice of addressing and mitigating readily predictable losses before they happen. No one in government does that, few in their personal lives do that, and few in business ever do that. The case could be made that it's part of the anti-intellectualism that is so prevalent, as forethought can be understood as an intellectual activity.
That's why I'd like to see Microsoft forced to assume product liability so long as they market their software to the general public on the basis of "ease of use". Either market it to "technically knowledgable users only" or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in any way due to security issues.
I agree. Likewise, Volkswagen should be sued into bankruptcy for marketing their vehicles as "people cars". They should either be forced to change the name to Technischversiertenwagen, or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in an way due to car accidents.
While I appreciate your sarcasm I believe it is thoroughly misplaced.
Microsoft has little or nothing in common with car manufacturers. The car manufacturers actually have to meet certain safety/quality standards and face both regulatory and civil liability if they fail. Microsoft doesn't. Drivers have to demonstrate at least enough competence to obtain a license to use car manufacturers' products; computer users don't. Drivers are legally required to observe best practices and are held financially responsible (usually by the requirement that they carry liability insurance) and maybe even criminally responsible for any damages caused by their failure to do so. Car manufacturers who make defective parts can be forced to conduct a recall for which they must bear all expenses. No such requirement applies to Microsoft.
Microsoft and Volkswagen are not remotely comparable. If you think they should be, then I say let's hold both to the standard that applies to Volkswagen. This wouldn't be unusual anyplace except the software industry. Manufacturers of physical goods of all sorts, not just automobiles that require a license to operate, are expected to pay for their negligence. If software companies want intellectual property to be treated like physical property then let them bear the same amount of liability bourne by any manufacturer of physical property. If they don't want that amount of liability then let them abandon the artificial scarcity model that is the essence of intellectual property. Right now they are having their cake and eating it too and I have no idea why anyone would defend this sorry state of affairs.
This breaks down in Windows because Windows does not have a centralized package manager that handles both the installation and the uninstallation of all new software. The proprietary nature of most Windows software would preclude such a thing.
No, it does not. The only real barrier to something like that on Windows is the usual cries of "monopoly", which tend to be louder on Slashdot than anywhere else.
If Microsoft released Windows with a default configuration that could only install applications they approved of, Slashdot would be in a state of apoplectic outrage, even if it was trivially simple (say, a checkbox in a control panel) to turn that feature off (that is to say, defeat the purpose of having it at all).
I think you fail to appreicate the proprietary nature of most Windows software. Even the freeware is closed-sourced and copyrighted in such a way that you are not authorized to redistribute it. That means you cannot legally operate a repository containing a library of Windows software from a single source, because you'd have to get written permission from the authors of each individual piece of software allowing you to redistribute their software from your single source. It'd be an absolute nightmare and one mistake would make you end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
That is, of course, not beginning to address the issues surrounding the redistribution of commercial for-pay software. Redistributing that without the express blessing of the creator is usually called "piracy" and may be severely punished by the civil courts.
The only way around this would be for Microsoft to create a walled-garden type of environment sort of like Apple's App Store. Then they could dictate what licenses and/or terms of copyright are and are not acceptable. But you better believe that this would raise monopoly issues when that single vendor controls over 90% of the marketshare. Want your software to reach 90% of all desktop users? Then you play by their rules, or else. At that point the software license is no longer between the vendor and the user who is their customer; Microsoft is now the referee whether or not this is against the will of the vendor or user.
You may characterize concerns about monopoly power as categorically illegitimate and overblown in all possible cases. I do not. It is not desirable for anyone to give Microsoft that kind of power over that many users. Centralized package managers just aren't compatible with monopolies and proprietary licenses for a wide variety of good reasons that aren't just going to go away.
A centralized package manager for Windows is such a great idea that it would have been implemented by now except that there are some damned good reasons why such a thing is destined to fail miserably.
But as you point out seat belts only work if people use them, and if you remember, there was a lot of resistance to the idea despite the evidence that seat belts save lives. My grandmother refuses to wear one to this day because it's "uncomfortable."
If these people wouldn't change change their behavior if their lives literally depended on it. What makes you think they'll stick in their trusty repo garden?
Forgive my blatant insensitivity but that's the sort of person for whom the Darwin Awards site was created. In other words, it's not a huge surprise when someone who values a slight amount of comfort over life and limb suffers injury to life and limb. It's unfortunate but that's the priorities the person has chosen to have. I deal in reality however ugly it may sometimes be. In this case, it's ugly. I hope the lady never has to find out the hard way why her decision was a bad one.
And as DragonWriter pointed out, if users are taught to trust repos, it's only a matter of time until these users are directed to a "sexy celeb screensaver" repo of filth.
That's the difference between official repos endorsed and maintained by your distribution and unofficial third-party repos. There's a significant difference there. Not the least of which is that a user has to go out of their way (often editing config files) to enable a third-party repo. That makes it less likely that a user with no knowledge of how the system works is going to do that. It certainly doesn't make it impossible, nor is this the intent of the design, but it does ensure that a user who selects third-party repos is doing so at their own risk and has to take the intiative to make them available. That's still a damn sight better than the way things work on Windows.
Devils advocate here: is there any reason why a normal non-technical windows user should be able to run an executable in a directory they are able to write to? Maybe the ipod/ipad approach is better for most people.
Back on topic, what you mention is a very good idea. It's also not new to Apple products at all. That's the approach Unix has used for a long, long time now. Installed programs on a Unix system are generally root-owned and sit in directories that are also root-owned. For a normal user, both the executable and the directory in which it is located is read-only.
It's certainly possible for a Linux user to download an executable to his/her home directory and run it. That was GP's point.
Sure. For that matter, it's possible for you to deliberately chew on broken glass. So what? The point is, Linux users have little or no need to get their software that way. So they overwhelmingly tend not to do so. I don't know how to make this any simpler. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see and you very well may be one of those.
New users keep coming as even more PCs are sold. Blinded by marketspeak about how easy a PC (i.e. Windows) is, they refuse to learn. That is very unfortunate because said people have vast computing powers that easily outperform supercomputers just a few decades old. Coupled with the attitude that their time is too valuable to learn something about computers they use (insert your favorite car analogy here) this refusal to educate themselves creates an ever growing problem for the network as a whole: when a PC is infected to a crawl these people tend to buy a new one, with even more computing power.
That's why I'd like to see Microsoft forced to assume product liability so long as they market their software to the general public on the basis of "ease of use". Either market it to "technically knowledgable users only" or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in any way due to security issues. Until then, Microsoft gets to profit handsomely from Windows and Windows software without bearing any of the cost of its downsides. That gives them the rightful status of a parasite. This is what needs to change.
The people who fall prey to a virus like that won't be technical enough to do that (even with an easy point and click tool)
If something like Sandboxie were bundled with the operating system, mail clients would by default run mail attachments in a sandbox. But you're right that it wouldn't stop "This application wants to break out of jail: Cancel or Allow?" from getting a click on Allow. The only thing that can stop that is mandatory verification of the hardware maker's digital signature on everything from the bootloader on up, as seen in iPhone and other consoles.
An iPhone may or may not be an appliance, but general-purpose computers and the operating systems designed for them are certainly not appliances.
Slashdot Mirror
That has more to do with the nature of a very large federal bureaucracy than anything else. For an example, you can contact the IRS and ask a relatively simple tax question 50 times and are likely to get more than 40 different answers. This isn't unique at all to immigration.
The real way to fix this is to reduce the demand. That can be arranged by cracking down on businesses who operate on US soil and hire illegal immigrants, by getting rid of bi-lingual everything and declaring the national language to be English, and by requiring proof of citizenship before one may receive any sort of welfare, public education, or other public assistance. Then it's more like "sure, you can probably cross that border without getting caught, it's a big border and hard to police all of it even if we had the will to do so, but once you get here there's nothing for you."
Anyone who thinks that any of the above would be harsh needs to take a good look at Mexico's immigration laws and is not qualified to speak about the subject until they do.
That would stem the tide and make it a much more attractive option to come here legally. That in turn would tend to encourage those who respect our laws to be the ones who immigrate.
If someone isn't willing to endure a process that provides no guarantees and is instead willing to risk it all to come here, then they should reconsider how much they want to be here. Yeah that makes sense.
Because clearly I am entitled to immigrate to any country I please. Therefore, because of my entitlement, any immigration laws that wouldn't let me move to that country are flawed and should be flippantly ignored rather than respected as reflecting the intent of a soverign nation. It's all about me, baby, and anything that interferes with what I want to do is wrong even if that means breaking the laws and trespassing on the foreign soil of a nation that doesn't owe me anything. Because I take up space and breathe oxygen I get to be anywhere, even where I'm clearly not wanted and even against the wishes of those who rightfully live there.
Signed,
Jose
Then they can stay the fuck out! How hard is this to understand?
I may disagree with a foreign country's immigration policy. I might really, very strongly, in the most heartfelt way disagree with a foreign country's immigration policy. I might think they're a bunch of jackasses for having such a policy. None of that gives me the right to break their laws.
Coincidentally, highly educated and highly skilled people from Finland aren't causing the USA's illegal immigration problem.
You might as well complain that people who have not so much as a high school degree have a really difficult time becoming brain surgeons. Horrible discrimination, that is.
It's not anywhere near as straight-forward as that. Furthermore, peer pressure is difficult even with the best parenting.
That's only true when you pressure your children to behave (for example, getting upset and intimidating them into "being good" instead of correcting and instructing them with calm but unyielding authority). That teaches them to respond to pressure and that this is normal. Then when someone else comes along who also knows how to pressure them, you have this tug-of-war that you very well may end up losing since you can't be there all the time to counter every bad influence.
It is as straightforward as that, unless you are merely an older, wiser, bigger source of pressure applying the same mechanic as the peers. Nearly everyone is, to the point that few can imagine any other way to do things.
I really liked your post, it was cool and logical. Then, I assume so you could fit in here (the Internet), you go and post the douchey paragraph at the end.
So you won't be disputing my points then?
There is a silver lining to that cloud. The more criminals are tempted to go after those who actively make themselves an easy target, the more likely it is that those with a bit of sense will be left alone. This means you now have more control than ever over whether this will happen to you. Choice is good.
Just as long as that easy target isn't your teenager telling all of his/her friends that you're out of town on facebook! You can't keep track of every stupid thing your child does.
Instead you can teach them better than that. Of course, that isn't compatible with the assumption that they're going to do stupid things no matter what and there's nothing you can do about it.
The schools understand something quite well. The best way to make an impressionable young person into an idiot is to treat them like one.
It is different. A postal mailbox doesn't have a button hidden behind the hinge of the front door which, unless you press it, will publish the fronts of your envelopes (but only the fronts, anything more would be invasive y'see) and summary statistics on mail received, in the Orangeville Residents' Bulletin and Book of Faces.
OK it's not a perfect analogy, and maybe it's not fundamentally different, but online life has more gotchas than what meets the eye. Privacy and forgetting have to be engineered in; there aren't physical limitations.
The only thing there is to assume is that the Internet is a public resource and anything you publish there is fully public unless you have a very good, verifiable, evidence-based reason to believe otherwise. It's that simple.
Yeah, because that is so easy to predict.
Here's the thing, when you have kids, you end up friending a ton of people you know marginally. You also find out a lot of things that you can have talks with your kids about (not mentioning any names in those talks, just bring up the topic in general... "hey, what would you do if you found out some of your friends did such and such?").
My kids don't have Facebook accounts, but most of their IRL friends at school and church do.
But I think this shows that you shouldn't put anything online that you don't want to put right in front of your house. Don't put up a flier "gone out of town 3 weeks" on your front door and don't put it on Facebook either. Share the photos when you get back.
Sounds like a good topic for me and my family to talk about at dinner tonight.
If you have been a good model and example to your family of common sense and instilled the same virtue in them, gently and patiently but unambiguously correcting any failures to apply it, then any specific talk about this particular subject would be redundant.
If you've failed to uphold that standard then the very best you could do is a list of "dos and dont's". That list might or might not include potential perils of using Facebook but anything you leave out of that list would remain a vulnerability from a security standpoint.
Better to be acquainted with the true principle than worry about the infinite variations of possible instances of it.
Actually I don't use it because I understand it. Maybe you don't know this, but you can look before you leap, you can read up on something and learn something about it before deciding whether you will engage in it.
By your false logic, every non-smoker on the planet was once a smoker since they would never know why tobacco use is detrimental to health until after trying it and experiencing worse health. There's this thing called foresight that makes that unnecessary.
Incidentally "trashing" is a very strange term to describe calmly and honestly discussing its disadvantages. I think you have a sore point. Apparently the idea that others might have good reasons for not doing something that you have your reasons for doing is inflammatory and offensive to you. Most of the problems in the world are caused by an inability to live and let live, which in turn is rooted in mentalities like yours. You deserve every last bit of misery it causes you.
Dispute me on that if you think you can, though at this point the prudent thing for you would be to silently disappear and pretend you didn't notice my reply.
How much do you want to bet that the victims were using Facebook's default privacy settings...
My default privacy settings are the best available because I don't use Facebook.
But now, thanks to Places and the idiots that use it, burgling is easier than ever!
There is a silver lining to that cloud. The more criminals are tempted to go after those who actively make themselves an easy target, the more likely it is that those with a bit of sense will be left alone. This means you now have more control than ever over whether this will happen to you. Choice is good.
I think this is another "but somehow it's different because a computer was involved!" type of issue.
You know, of all the things the military could be spending money on, I really can't bring myself to complain about this... Funding science is pretty much the only nearly universally accepted upside to having a military.
Or more specifically, to having a standing army during a time when no war has been declared by Congress, the only entity authorized to do so by the Constitution.
Try taking software back to a store. Say you didn't like the license and want a refund. They'll tell you "No refunds on opened software, exchanges only." Of course you can fight that but it takes time and money.
So ask for an exchange. When the exchange is made, say "now that I have an unopened box of this software, I want a refund."
When Microsoft touts the "Ease of Use" of their product, clearly they're speaking to the portion of the population with an IQ higher than room temperature. Apparently you're not part of their target demographic. May I offer an alternative?
You're certainly a single-minded one. The subtle disapproval of how I express myself was recognized and rejected so you decided you'd just try harder with a more blatant form of making this personal. Trying to insult me is a sorry substitute for arguing against my position. You can't make me deviate from my position no matter how hard you try to make this personal.
Most users of Windows are not technically skilled and there's no way that Microsoft doesn't know this. When they tout "ease of use" they are not making an effort to restrict their audience to the technically skilled. When the unskilled purchase Windows, their money is just as green as the skilled users' money. That's why Microsoft likes this arrangement and has no interest in limiting it.
I want Microsoft to either clearly state that their products are not intended for the technically unskilled or take on the liability for suffering caused by ignorant users who buy into their hype about security and ease-of-use. All of the childishness and belligerence you can possibly summon won't alter this logic. Now, if you have what it takes, then either demonstrate with solid reasoning why my logic is faulty or admit that you cannot.
I can't believe you took the time to write that much.
Point I was making: what you're calling negligence, isn't. If your house gets broken into, you don't get to sue the lock manufacturer because tumblers are so easy to pick. If your car breaks down because you never change the oil, you don't get to sue Ford. If you can't program your VCR clock because you're an idiot, you don't get to sue RCA. And if you fail to grasp these simple concepts, don't expect to be taken seriously.
And no, I would never want OS manufacturers to be held to the same standards as the car industry, since this would effectively kill off the Open Source movement.
Hang on, I need to approve or disapprove of the amount of writing you did before I can respond to your point. Did too much? Damn you're wordy. Not enough? Clearly you're too lazy. -- I think that makes the point. Reserve the personal shit for someone who desires your opinion, it will be much more effective. Moving on from your self-flattery...
If the lock manufacturer kept advertising "more secure than ever!" you might have a case. If Ford advertised "more maintainence-free than ever!" you might have case. If RCA advertised "easier to program than ever before!" you might have a case. They don't. Usually those companies make no claims at all about any of these things. The merit of their products is relative to their performance compared to the competition. But wait: all of those companies have real competition.
Microsoft is a blatant contrast to all of the above. Also, manufacturer liability makes no sense unless a profit is being made. Most Open Source is not distributed for a profit and is generally made available for no charge at all. It is when you as a customer are paying money that you can reasonably expect to receive something of value in return for that money that works as advertised. That's basic quid pro quo. When you are receiving something for free and no marketing promises are made to you then you don't have grounds to justify any such expectations. Thus it's perfectly reasonable to hold Microsoft to one legal standard and Open Source distributors to another; in fact it'd be unreasonable to do otherwise.
The actual reason is that the users still haven't learned from the last 9 years of experience.
Some users weren't around 9 years ago. Making it sound like users are all stupid may be popular here but it's childish. There are lots of reasons why a user may not know better or may slip up. You need education, not blame.
I agree. The last 9 years of the most basic and easily-understood aspects of security history would be included in even the shoddiest education about this subject.
What's stupid is using what you do not understand and are not actively learning about, while also thinking that nothing bad will ever happen.
"I think a better route would be make that the default method/policy and make it hard for the average user to it."
Microsoft marketing droids think otherwise.
And free market has shown them right by making Bill Gates one of the richest men in planet.
It's a market alright but I wouldn't call it a free market. A free market assumes that everyone involved is rational and acting in their own interests. A staggering level of ignorance on the part of the buyers that is nowhere to be found on the part of the sellers will drastically alter this equation in favor of the sellers. That means it is no longer a mutual agreement between equals. That doesn't make the sellers correct. It makes them more powerful.
This situation has no claim to legitimacy. It's old-fashioned might-makes-right. The reason why is simple. The degree to which one side is far more powerful than the other is the same degree to which the less-powerful side is no longer making a truly free choice.
It is, in part, a long standing design error. The actions for viewing a document and for running an executable are exactly the same. The error was compounded by hiding all evidence in the UI that a given file is actually an executable.
The result is and was entirely predictable.
It is an essential part of Ameircan culture to have a seething, burning hatred for the practice of addressing and mitigating readily predictable losses before they happen. No one in government does that, few in their personal lives do that, and few in business ever do that. The case could be made that it's part of the anti-intellectualism that is so prevalent, as forethought can be understood as an intellectual activity.
That's why I'd like to see Microsoft forced to assume product liability so long as they market their software to the general public on the basis of "ease of use". Either market it to "technically knowledgable users only" or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in any way due to security issues.
I agree. Likewise, Volkswagen should be sued into bankruptcy for marketing their vehicles as "people cars". They should either be forced to change the name to Technischversiertenwagen, or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in an way due to car accidents.
While I appreciate your sarcasm I believe it is thoroughly misplaced.
Microsoft has little or nothing in common with car manufacturers. The car manufacturers actually have to meet certain safety/quality standards and face both regulatory and civil liability if they fail. Microsoft doesn't. Drivers have to demonstrate at least enough competence to obtain a license to use car manufacturers' products; computer users don't. Drivers are legally required to observe best practices and are held financially responsible (usually by the requirement that they carry liability insurance) and maybe even criminally responsible for any damages caused by their failure to do so. Car manufacturers who make defective parts can be forced to conduct a recall for which they must bear all expenses. No such requirement applies to Microsoft.
Microsoft and Volkswagen are not remotely comparable. If you think they should be, then I say let's hold both to the standard that applies to Volkswagen. This wouldn't be unusual anyplace except the software industry. Manufacturers of physical goods of all sorts, not just automobiles that require a license to operate, are expected to pay for their negligence. If software companies want intellectual property to be treated like physical property then let them bear the same amount of liability bourne by any manufacturer of physical property. If they don't want that amount of liability then let them abandon the artificial scarcity model that is the essence of intellectual property. Right now they are having their cake and eating it too and I have no idea why anyone would defend this sorry state of affairs.
This breaks down in Windows because Windows does not have a centralized package manager that handles both the installation and the uninstallation of all new software. The proprietary nature of most Windows software would preclude such a thing.
No, it does not. The only real barrier to something like that on Windows is the usual cries of "monopoly", which tend to be louder on Slashdot than anywhere else.
If Microsoft released Windows with a default configuration that could only install applications they approved of, Slashdot would be in a state of apoplectic outrage, even if it was trivially simple (say, a checkbox in a control panel) to turn that feature off (that is to say, defeat the purpose of having it at all).
I think you fail to appreicate the proprietary nature of most Windows software. Even the freeware is closed-sourced and copyrighted in such a way that you are not authorized to redistribute it. That means you cannot legally operate a repository containing a library of Windows software from a single source, because you'd have to get written permission from the authors of each individual piece of software allowing you to redistribute their software from your single source. It'd be an absolute nightmare and one mistake would make you end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
That is, of course, not beginning to address the issues surrounding the redistribution of commercial for-pay software. Redistributing that without the express blessing of the creator is usually called "piracy" and may be severely punished by the civil courts.
The only way around this would be for Microsoft to create a walled-garden type of environment sort of like Apple's App Store. Then they could dictate what licenses and/or terms of copyright are and are not acceptable. But you better believe that this would raise monopoly issues when that single vendor controls over 90% of the marketshare. Want your software to reach 90% of all desktop users? Then you play by their rules, or else. At that point the software license is no longer between the vendor and the user who is their customer; Microsoft is now the referee whether or not this is against the will of the vendor or user.
You may characterize concerns about monopoly power as categorically illegitimate and overblown in all possible cases. I do not. It is not desirable for anyone to give Microsoft that kind of power over that many users. Centralized package managers just aren't compatible with monopolies and proprietary licenses for a wide variety of good reasons that aren't just going to go away.
A centralized package manager for Windows is such a great idea that it would have been implemented by now except that there are some damned good reasons why such a thing is destined to fail miserably.
Forgive my blatant insensitivity but that's the sort of person for whom the Darwin Awards site was created. In other words, it's not a huge surprise when someone who values a slight amount of comfort over life and limb suffers injury to life and limb. It's unfortunate but that's the priorities the person has chosen to have. I deal in reality however ugly it may sometimes be. In this case, it's ugly. I hope the lady never has to find out the hard way why her decision was a bad one.
That's the difference between official repos endorsed and maintained by your distribution and unofficial third-party repos. There's a significant difference there. Not the least of which is that a user has to go out of their way (often editing config files) to enable a third-party repo. That makes it less likely that a user with no knowledge of how the system works is going to do that. It certainly doesn't make it impossible, nor is this the intent of the design, but it does ensure that a user who selects third-party repos is doing so at their own risk and has to take the intiative to make them available. That's still a damn sight better than the way things work on Windows.
Devils advocate here: is there any reason why a normal non-technical windows user should be able to run an executable in a directory they are able to write to? Maybe the ipod/ipad approach is better for most people.
Back on topic, what you mention is a very good idea. It's also not new to Apple products at all. That's the approach Unix has used for a long, long time now. Installed programs on a Unix system are generally root-owned and sit in directories that are also root-owned. For a normal user, both the executable and the directory in which it is located is read-only.
It's certainly possible for a Linux user to download an executable to his/her home directory and run it. That was GP's point.
Sure. For that matter, it's possible for you to deliberately chew on broken glass. So what? The point is, Linux users have little or no need to get their software that way. So they overwhelmingly tend not to do so. I don't know how to make this any simpler. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see and you very well may be one of those.
New users keep coming as even more PCs are sold. Blinded by marketspeak about how easy a PC (i.e. Windows) is, they refuse to learn. That is very unfortunate because said people have vast computing powers that easily outperform supercomputers just a few decades old. Coupled with the attitude that their time is too valuable to learn something about computers they use (insert your favorite car analogy here) this refusal to educate themselves creates an ever growing problem for the network as a whole: when a PC is infected to a crawl these people tend to buy a new one, with even more computing power.
That's why I'd like to see Microsoft forced to assume product liability so long as they market their software to the general public on the basis of "ease of use". Either market it to "technically knowledgable users only" or pay monetary damages to anyone and everyone who suffers in any way due to security issues. Until then, Microsoft gets to profit handsomely from Windows and Windows software without bearing any of the cost of its downsides. That gives them the rightful status of a parasite. This is what needs to change.
The people who fall prey to a virus like that won't be technical enough to do that (even with an easy point and click tool)
If something like Sandboxie were bundled with the operating system, mail clients would by default run mail attachments in a sandbox. But you're right that it wouldn't stop "This application wants to break out of jail: Cancel or Allow?" from getting a click on Allow. The only thing that can stop that is mandatory verification of the hardware maker's digital signature on everything from the bootloader on up, as seen in iPhone and other consoles.
An iPhone may or may not be an appliance, but general-purpose computers and the operating systems designed for them are certainly not appliances.