I didn't RTFA, but i highly doubt that they searched all Google searches for "poison" and then traced the searches back to her. There's a simpler, much more likely option that would necessarily link it to the woman's actual computer, and not just an IP address her ISP assigned to her. It's obvious: they had a search warrant and looked on her computer.
There's your search history and cache. Depending on your browser, it might auto-complete text fields of web pages you've visited before. Also, if you have a Google account and you're logged in, it might store your search history. Unless you know what you're doing, your you'll leave all sorts of information about your browsing habits on your own computer.
All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot.
I don't know what the current situation is, but there was a point in time a few years ago where people were screaming their heads off about "genetically modified food" that had only ever been "genetically modified" through selective breeding and purposeful cross-polination and such. So it wasn't like there were people in a lab splicing DNA from random species into corn or something, but what was being done was effectively the same as the breeding that people have been doing since civilization began. Most of the "natural" food we eat today was somehow domesticated by man for the purpose of food. We continued to breed and replant the mutations or variants that made crops more reliable, made the meat more fleshy, and made animals easier to corral.
Yes, people sometimes eat wild animals that they've hunted or wild vegetation they've found, but mostly that isn't the case. Cows, pigs, and chickens were all "genetically modified" a long time ago, as have carrots, grapes, apples, etc.
I'm not suggesting that there's no danger here, but there definitely have been instances of "genetic modification" being blown way out of proportion.
No kidding. Obviously, you should bring the camera... and I could understand an iPod or a satellite phone. But a Macbook?
Yeah, I can see what you're saying, but....
So you bring your digital camera. Now where do you offload your pictures when the memory card starts filling up? You bring your iPod, now what if you want to add songs or change your playlists or something?
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea to bring your laptop, but I can understand the temptation. I think it'd be stupid to sit around web-browsing (since you can do that anywhere), but I also use my computer to keep a journal, and I like having a journal when I'm traveling. I might take my laptop with me, depending on where I was traveling to.
Well, there's actually less of an inherent logic problem with #2 (excepting that the creature with a beard was ever "nothing"), so given those two choices, a good physicist would have to choose it. The alternative is to toss out the idea of causality, and therefore, you end with no physics. Really, the two options with "beginning" is either that there has always been something from the beginning of time, or at some point there was nothing and then, suddenly, something appeared.
It's easy to claim that there has always been something, whether you bind it to religion or not. If you ask, what was before X, you can say, "Y was before X" and for every X there is a Y. It's like turtles, all the way down, except it's events, all the way back. No original cause, but only that there must have always been something. In this sense, the "big bang" might be interpreted to not be the "beginning of all things", but rather a point in time before which we can offer no chance of measurement. In other words, "I can't tell you what was before the big bang, but there must have been something, or else what caused it?" If religious, you can instead claim that, whenever the universe "began", it was created by god(s) who always existed. In this sense, the universe either always existed or was brought into existence by something else which has always existed.
The reason I say this is that the idea of anything coming spontaneously out of complete nothingness is an idea that cannot exist within our understanding. And when I say, "cannot exist within our understanding," I don't mean in the sense that "I don't understand general relativity" but rather that "we should all shut up because it's so beyond our understanding that we can't even pretend to talk about it."
If the universe came spontaneously out of nothing, then let me ask you, what caused it to appear? In order to wrap your head around that question fully, let me ask a couple different questions: What caused it to appear as it appeared, and not otherwise? Why did it appear exactly when it did? Why not sooner? Why not later?
The whole of physics relies on our assumption that physical causality is traceable. If you say the universe popped into existence from nothing, you're violating this causality, and therefore saying that physics is bullshit. Otherwise, what would stop matter and energy from appearing out of nowhere later, or even now? If things can come into existence out of nothing, then there can be no rules confining spontaneous generation. How could we make measurements or attach predictability to events when things can happen without cause? It's clear that science would have a more reliable foundation if it were assumed that God brought the universe into existence than if you believed the universe spontaneously generated itself out of nothing.
(And if it needs to be said, I'm not a theist and don't believe that the universe was created by God)
Of course, that's exactly the difference in perception of "computer" between a geek and a general consumer. Geeks might see a computer without an OS as a complete product because operating systems are part of the content you put on it. Most people view the OS as "just part of the system" and the content is all the web sites, documents, movies, and music.
So while you see a Dell without Windows as a DVD player without a DVD, most consumers would view it as a DVD player that doesn't play DVDs out of the box. In fact, I don't even mean this metaphorically, I mean many consumers see computers as a hybrid DVD-player/MP3-player/Internet-applicance/word-pro cessor, and so by coming without an operating system, it is literally a DVD player that, doesn't play DVDs, an MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s, and Internet appliance that can't view web sites, and a word processor that can't... er.... process words. It does nothing it's "supposed to do" out of the box.
Not really interested in OEM installation of any specific distro. They'll do it wrong or pollute it as they do Windows. What good is that?
Discounted price. Seriously, why do you think Dell installs all that crapware on the systems they ship? They're paid to. When they feel like being competitive (which Dell often does), they pass those savings on to you.
I say, go ahead, Dell. Install a copy of OpenSuSE on the computer you're shipping me. Fill it with so much spyware that it doesn't run properly anymore, and pass those bribes onto me. It's easy enough for me to wipe it out and put whatever I want on it, but I don't mind saving money.
You can already buy a Dell without Windows, though. Go to http://linux.dell.com/ and look for their n-Series desktops and notebooks. It comes with FreeDOS, with the expectation that you'll probably install something else of your own choosing. I bought one and had no trouble throwing Debian on it (as long as I used the 2.6 kernel).
Now, at the time I bought it, for the price I paid, I only saved about $30 from what it would cost to get the same hardware with Windows XP Home, but I don't think Dell spends much for the Windows licenses anyway.
And so on. Support "Linux", not "Red Hat". Ship the hardware and let the buyer get support from the distribution s/he prefers.
But it's not *exactly* that simple, right? Let's say Dell releases a new laptop with some hardware beyond the standard keyboard/trackpad, let's say a built-in webcam. Now, how, exactly, do they ensure that this webcam works with all Linux distributions? They can't. Even if it's old tech, there's no guarantee that every distro will compile support into the kernel.
Yes, they could try to make sure that all their hardware has some kind of Linux driver available somewhere, which of course is what will have to happen in order even to support Red Hat alone. Hopefully they'll look for hardware vendors that offer open-source drivers, yes, but that's not really what they're talking about when they talk about "support". The only way to support "Linux" is to first choose a means of having a standardized package. This means they either need to pick a distro or roll their own. (Yes, they could pick a couple distros, but they can't pick "all of them")
There's so much variety under the umbrella of "Linux". If I tell you I want to run "Linux", that might mean a stripped-down kernel on an embedded system or it could be a full desktop system. If they don't pick a standard, then what do they say when a user calls and says, "How do I open a letter my friend sent to me?" Where do you even start if you don't know what applications the user has installed, which window manager the user has installed, or really even whether they have a X-Windows installed.
Really, *that* is what Dell is talking about when they say "support": not just having drivers available, but having phone technicians standing by with step-by-step trouble-shooting manuals that cover pretty much every possibility until their question-tree hits a solution. If the phone technicians hit something where they say, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't help you with that," that means Dell doesn't "support" it.
Well, that's a good point-- Dell doesn't really give "Windows support". If something is wrong with Windows, Dell doesn't fix it. However, all their support directions are written as though you're running Windows ("Go to the start menu and click on 'control panel'.")
If they chose a specific Linux distribution, would it be so strange that they could do the same thing with a specific Linux install? Instead of telling people to go to the "Control Panel", you'd just tell them to go someplace else. Doesn't seem like it's necessarily a big deal, beyond rewriting all their support manuals. Yeah, that's kind of big all by itself, but not unthinkable. I assume they revise it for different versions of Windows anyway.
Your definitions are good, but when I went to school, a CS degree meant basically that you learned how to program. Apparently. You'd get kids coming out of school knowing nothing about computers except programming and a little theory.
Now it is true that re-inventing the wheel is a bad move at times. However whilst studying for their qualification, they should learn how to build the wheel in the first place.
You're right. In fact, I would say that "you shouldn't re-invent the wheel," just doesn't apply in education. Education is all about re-inventing wheels. Teachers don't tell young students, "The multiplication table has already been figured out, so no use learning that!" or "Other people have learned to write; no use teaching you how to spell!"
Just because something is known doesn't mean it shouldn't be learned.
I've yet to see, say, a well written and stable ERP system.
I have yet to see even a well-written and stable PHP-based weblog system.
Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If there's any sort of implication that, "We don't need programmers anymore because our current programs are good enough," that's just silly. I can't think of any kind of program that doesn't need some serious improvement. What shocks me these days is how slowly things are improving. Office suites, e-mail, operating systems, etc. It all works sort of OK these days, but most of the frustrations I had 6 years ago haven't really improved. Every company I've worked for has some small-time or home-grown programs (like ERP programs) that simply stink.
Maybe there's a problem, that CS people *think* their work is done, or else that funding to fix these things has dried up, and that's why they aren't doing much. But these things could all use some real improvements.
the only time the average user would need to surf anonymous is when he/she knows he is doing something wrong...Obviously we have 'pr0n viewing' at work, and stalking ex's and whathave you...
It's all shades of grey, though. Ok, so you bring up "'pr0n viewing' at work", but what about "'pr0n viewing' at home"? I think this distinction is where the question begins: let's say you sometimes downloaded porn that wasn't illegal or even particularly awful (relative to... you know, porn in general), but you just didn't want some guy having a full record of every dirty movie and every dirty picture you'd downloaded.
Honestly, I don't see a great need for ways to bypass at-work web filtering, and I don't do anything online from home that I'm particularly ashamed of, but it's also just sort of creepy to think there are records of everything I do online. With every site I visit and every e-mail I send, there are growing logs that document all of it, and it's not clear to me who has access to those or what use someone might invent for that information. If nothing else, it's just unsettling. There are random people out there with random access to random pieces of my personal information, and I can't even know when that information has been accessed.
Ok, so that's not a huge problem, but it's a valid concern. And it doesn't even begin to get into people who are in a position to be compromised for voicing a political viewpoint. In every country, no matter how free, there are dangers inherent in voicing highly-upopular viewpoints. Sometimes those viewpoints still need to be voiced, but will only be under anonymous circumstances.
But that's what I'm saying-- that instead of arguing whether a particular thing is happening, let's all agree that we'd like to improve efficiency and lower pollution levels. At least, let's agree that we'd like to do that. Everyone should agree that there's some level at which some sacrifice is worth some benefit.
Does that sound like a dumb thing to focus on? That we all agree on that sentiment? I don't think so. I think that sometimes, when you're arguing, it's a good idea to think about what you can agree on. It helps remind people that the gap may not be so great, and that you might be able to bridge it.
This conflict is so often painted as a disagreement between people who care about saving the environment and people who don't. Or else as between crazy hippies who want to destroy civilization and people who want to preserve what has been built. I think it's worthwhile (very worthwhile) to note that most of us don't fit into any of these groupings. Most of us would be want a healthy environment, but aren't quite ready to dismantle modern life completely. Most of us would make some small sacrifices easily, and would be willing to make some more substantial sacrifices with a little more persuasion, but just aren't quite ready to give up modern technology and healthy economies altogether.
Let's face it, the gross majority of people want the deal to go through (so to speak), but we're haggling over terms. Giving up cars completely, for example, will be a deal-breaker for lots of people, so let's talk about how to bring about cheap energy-efficient cars.
I'd like to generalize what you're saying a bit, and say that honest disagreement is fine, and a few nut-balls can be tolerated, but when nut-balls start running the show, it's a real problem.
It seems to me that the problem with these global warming debates is that people (politicians, media, everyday people) tend to paint it in extremes and use it for their own ideological arguments. There are people who want to use global warming to say that we should all give up on technology and industry and go live in grass huts, and there are people who think we should push ahead with industry without an keeping an eye out for consequences. I think it should be obvious to us all that both of these viewpoints are extreme (in the bad sense of "extreme").
Beyond this, there are people who want to use this issue as political leverage. Some people are fear mongering on the side of, "If you let those hippies say global warming is real, then they'll have us all living in grass huts!" while others alarm, "If you let anyone doubt global warming isn't exactly what we say, then evil neocons will pump cyanide gas into the air until the entire planet is lifeless!"
Regardless of the specifics, shouldn't we all be willing to agree that it's good to be more efficient with our expenses of energy? Shouldn't we be able to agree that pollution is bad and trees are good? Can we start with what we can all agree on, and work on compromises where we might be able to reach an agreement? Or must we really just dig our heels in on stupid ideologies and accomplish nothing?
Part of the problem is that the media is simply irresponsible about science in general. They're just looking for sensationalistic and scary stories that sound like science fiction plots. You could have a single minor study that suggested that there might be a couple distinct branches of "homo sapiens", and the nightly news would suddenly be reporting that "scientists have proven that you might not be human". They take these things out of context, report them out of proportion, and sometimes just get the facts flat-out wrong.
Why all the hostility? His usage is a common modern usage. It seems to me you don't like what the poster is saying and so you attack the poster himself rather than arguing against him. Being an expert on logical fallacies, I'm sure you know what the name for that is.
That, after being harassed as children, the adult geek will behave as children, grouping all people into "us" and "them", and then treating "them" badly?
Proper spelling and grammar are one of our shibboleths, along with Natalie Portman, hot grits, and Beowulf clusters. It isn't primarily about communication, although that is a factor. It is about identity. We are geeks. Geeks are smart. Smart people spell words correctly and use proper grammar. That is who we are.
Also, geeks have poor social skills and never consider that it might be rude and annoying to needlessly correct someone. Geeks are geeks because they'd (we'd?) rather show our intellectual superiority than make friends.
Normally, I'd consider myself a geek, but I don't like being a dick to other people, so perhaps I don't qualify?
That's one way to go, of course, but by buying Ubuntu, they'd be surrenduring control of the OS and support to another company. That's fine so long as you trust that other company to do what you want. I think that if I were a hardware company, I'd want my own builds.
I was saying, "If I were Dell, I'd make my own distro". Now, sure, of course, Dell will probably go with someone else's distro (i.e. Redhat or Novell), but personally, given Dell's resources, I would build my very own, either from scratched or based on a very good/versitile distro like Debian. I would start with an open source operating system and build it up specifically to support my hardware, changing it to fit my vision of what I wanted my computers to be.
In essence, rather than tacking on someone else's distribution, I would go the Apple route and take full control of hardware and software, but be more open in order to win the geek vote. It would be a dangerous move, but if I were the CEO of a company like Dell or HP, I'd have people working on a home-grown Linux distro (perhaps in secret).
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't RTFA, but i highly doubt that they searched all Google searches for "poison" and then traced the searches back to her. There's a simpler, much more likely option that would necessarily link it to the woman's actual computer, and not just an IP address her ISP assigned to her. It's obvious: they had a search warrant and looked on her computer.
There's your search history and cache. Depending on your browser, it might auto-complete text fields of web pages you've visited before. Also, if you have a Google account and you're logged in, it might store your search history. Unless you know what you're doing, your you'll leave all sorts of information about your browsing habits on your own computer.
Or better yet, try Googling for "how NOT to shoot someone". That will throw the cops off your tracks.
All the variaties of corn in use today are the result of a centuries-long selective-breeding program.
Genetic engenerring just speeds up the process a lot.
I don't know what the current situation is, but there was a point in time a few years ago where people were screaming their heads off about "genetically modified food" that had only ever been "genetically modified" through selective breeding and purposeful cross-polination and such. So it wasn't like there were people in a lab splicing DNA from random species into corn or something, but what was being done was effectively the same as the breeding that people have been doing since civilization began. Most of the "natural" food we eat today was somehow domesticated by man for the purpose of food. We continued to breed and replant the mutations or variants that made crops more reliable, made the meat more fleshy, and made animals easier to corral.
Yes, people sometimes eat wild animals that they've hunted or wild vegetation they've found, but mostly that isn't the case. Cows, pigs, and chickens were all "genetically modified" a long time ago, as have carrots, grapes, apples, etc.
I'm not suggesting that there's no danger here, but there definitely have been instances of "genetic modification" being blown way out of proportion.
again, it depends on where you go.
No kidding. Obviously, you should bring the camera... and I could understand an iPod or a satellite phone. But a Macbook?
Yeah, I can see what you're saying, but....
So you bring your digital camera. Now where do you offload your pictures when the memory card starts filling up? You bring your iPod, now what if you want to add songs or change your playlists or something?
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good idea to bring your laptop, but I can understand the temptation. I think it'd be stupid to sit around web-browsing (since you can do that anywhere), but I also use my computer to keep a journal, and I like having a journal when I'm traveling. I might take my laptop with me, depending on where I was traveling to.
Well, there's actually less of an inherent logic problem with #2 (excepting that the creature with a beard was ever "nothing"), so given those two choices, a good physicist would have to choose it. The alternative is to toss out the idea of causality, and therefore, you end with no physics. Really, the two options with "beginning" is either that there has always been something from the beginning of time, or at some point there was nothing and then, suddenly, something appeared.
It's easy to claim that there has always been something, whether you bind it to religion or not. If you ask, what was before X, you can say, "Y was before X" and for every X there is a Y. It's like turtles, all the way down, except it's events, all the way back. No original cause, but only that there must have always been something. In this sense, the "big bang" might be interpreted to not be the "beginning of all things", but rather a point in time before which we can offer no chance of measurement. In other words, "I can't tell you what was before the big bang, but there must have been something, or else what caused it?" If religious, you can instead claim that, whenever the universe "began", it was created by god(s) who always existed. In this sense, the universe either always existed or was brought into existence by something else which has always existed.
The reason I say this is that the idea of anything coming spontaneously out of complete nothingness is an idea that cannot exist within our understanding. And when I say, "cannot exist within our understanding," I don't mean in the sense that "I don't understand general relativity" but rather that "we should all shut up because it's so beyond our understanding that we can't even pretend to talk about it."
If the universe came spontaneously out of nothing, then let me ask you, what caused it to appear? In order to wrap your head around that question fully, let me ask a couple different questions: What caused it to appear as it appeared, and not otherwise? Why did it appear exactly when it did? Why not sooner? Why not later?
The whole of physics relies on our assumption that physical causality is traceable. If you say the universe popped into existence from nothing, you're violating this causality, and therefore saying that physics is bullshit. Otherwise, what would stop matter and energy from appearing out of nowhere later, or even now? If things can come into existence out of nothing, then there can be no rules confining spontaneous generation. How could we make measurements or attach predictability to events when things can happen without cause? It's clear that science would have a more reliable foundation if it were assumed that God brought the universe into existence than if you believed the universe spontaneously generated itself out of nothing.
(And if it needs to be said, I'm not a theist and don't believe that the universe was created by God)
Of course, that's exactly the difference in perception of "computer" between a geek and a general consumer. Geeks might see a computer without an OS as a complete product because operating systems are part of the content you put on it. Most people view the OS as "just part of the system" and the content is all the web sites, documents, movies, and music.
So while you see a Dell without Windows as a DVD player without a DVD, most consumers would view it as a DVD player that doesn't play DVDs out of the box. In fact, I don't even mean this metaphorically, I mean many consumers see computers as a hybrid DVD-player/MP3-player/Internet-applicance/word-pro cessor, and so by coming without an operating system, it is literally a DVD player that, doesn't play DVDs, an MP3 player that doesn't play MP3s, and Internet appliance that can't view web sites, and a word processor that can't... er.... process words. It does nothing it's "supposed to do" out of the box.
Not really interested in OEM installation of any specific distro. They'll do it wrong or pollute it as they do Windows. What good is that?
Discounted price. Seriously, why do you think Dell installs all that crapware on the systems they ship? They're paid to. When they feel like being competitive (which Dell often does), they pass those savings on to you.
I say, go ahead, Dell. Install a copy of OpenSuSE on the computer you're shipping me. Fill it with so much spyware that it doesn't run properly anymore, and pass those bribes onto me. It's easy enough for me to wipe it out and put whatever I want on it, but I don't mind saving money.
You can already buy a Dell without Windows, though. Go to http://linux.dell.com/ and look for their n-Series desktops and notebooks. It comes with FreeDOS, with the expectation that you'll probably install something else of your own choosing. I bought one and had no trouble throwing Debian on it (as long as I used the 2.6 kernel).
Now, at the time I bought it, for the price I paid, I only saved about $30 from what it would cost to get the same hardware with Windows XP Home, but I don't think Dell spends much for the Windows licenses anyway.
And so on. Support "Linux", not "Red Hat". Ship the hardware and let the buyer get support from the distribution s/he prefers.
But it's not *exactly* that simple, right? Let's say Dell releases a new laptop with some hardware beyond the standard keyboard/trackpad, let's say a built-in webcam. Now, how, exactly, do they ensure that this webcam works with all Linux distributions? They can't. Even if it's old tech, there's no guarantee that every distro will compile support into the kernel.
Yes, they could try to make sure that all their hardware has some kind of Linux driver available somewhere, which of course is what will have to happen in order even to support Red Hat alone. Hopefully they'll look for hardware vendors that offer open-source drivers, yes, but that's not really what they're talking about when they talk about "support". The only way to support "Linux" is to first choose a means of having a standardized package. This means they either need to pick a distro or roll their own. (Yes, they could pick a couple distros, but they can't pick "all of them")
There's so much variety under the umbrella of "Linux". If I tell you I want to run "Linux", that might mean a stripped-down kernel on an embedded system or it could be a full desktop system. If they don't pick a standard, then what do they say when a user calls and says, "How do I open a letter my friend sent to me?" Where do you even start if you don't know what applications the user has installed, which window manager the user has installed, or really even whether they have a X-Windows installed.
Really, *that* is what Dell is talking about when they say "support": not just having drivers available, but having phone technicians standing by with step-by-step trouble-shooting manuals that cover pretty much every possibility until their question-tree hits a solution. If the phone technicians hit something where they say, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't help you with that," that means Dell doesn't "support" it.
Well, that's a good point-- Dell doesn't really give "Windows support". If something is wrong with Windows, Dell doesn't fix it. However, all their support directions are written as though you're running Windows ("Go to the start menu and click on 'control panel'.")
If they chose a specific Linux distribution, would it be so strange that they could do the same thing with a specific Linux install? Instead of telling people to go to the "Control Panel", you'd just tell them to go someplace else. Doesn't seem like it's necessarily a big deal, beyond rewriting all their support manuals. Yeah, that's kind of big all by itself, but not unthinkable. I assume they revise it for different versions of Windows anyway.
Now that you mention it, I'm not sure "obquote" is even a word. What did he think it means?
Your definitions are good, but when I went to school, a CS degree meant basically that you learned how to program. Apparently. You'd get kids coming out of school knowing nothing about computers except programming and a little theory.
Now it is true that re-inventing the wheel is a bad move at times. However whilst studying for their qualification, they should learn how to build the wheel in the first place.
You're right. In fact, I would say that "you shouldn't re-invent the wheel," just doesn't apply in education. Education is all about re-inventing wheels. Teachers don't tell young students, "The multiplication table has already been figured out, so no use learning that!" or "Other people have learned to write; no use teaching you how to spell!"
Just because something is known doesn't mean it shouldn't be learned.
I've yet to see, say, a well written and stable ERP system.
I have yet to see even a well-written and stable PHP-based weblog system.
Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. If there's any sort of implication that, "We don't need programmers anymore because our current programs are good enough," that's just silly. I can't think of any kind of program that doesn't need some serious improvement. What shocks me these days is how slowly things are improving. Office suites, e-mail, operating systems, etc. It all works sort of OK these days, but most of the frustrations I had 6 years ago haven't really improved. Every company I've worked for has some small-time or home-grown programs (like ERP programs) that simply stink.
Maybe there's a problem, that CS people *think* their work is done, or else that funding to fix these things has dried up, and that's why they aren't doing much. But these things could all use some real improvements.
It's all shades of grey, though. Ok, so you bring up "'pr0n viewing' at work", but what about "'pr0n viewing' at home"? I think this distinction is where the question begins: let's say you sometimes downloaded porn that wasn't illegal or even particularly awful (relative to... you know, porn in general), but you just didn't want some guy having a full record of every dirty movie and every dirty picture you'd downloaded.
Honestly, I don't see a great need for ways to bypass at-work web filtering, and I don't do anything online from home that I'm particularly ashamed of, but it's also just sort of creepy to think there are records of everything I do online. With every site I visit and every e-mail I send, there are growing logs that document all of it, and it's not clear to me who has access to those or what use someone might invent for that information. If nothing else, it's just unsettling. There are random people out there with random access to random pieces of my personal information, and I can't even know when that information has been accessed.
Ok, so that's not a huge problem, but it's a valid concern. And it doesn't even begin to get into people who are in a position to be compromised for voicing a political viewpoint. In every country, no matter how free, there are dangers inherent in voicing highly-upopular viewpoints. Sometimes those viewpoints still need to be voiced, but will only be under anonymous circumstances.
I think we agree.
But that's what I'm saying-- that instead of arguing whether a particular thing is happening, let's all agree that we'd like to improve efficiency and lower pollution levels. At least, let's agree that we'd like to do that. Everyone should agree that there's some level at which some sacrifice is worth some benefit.
Does that sound like a dumb thing to focus on? That we all agree on that sentiment? I don't think so. I think that sometimes, when you're arguing, it's a good idea to think about what you can agree on. It helps remind people that the gap may not be so great, and that you might be able to bridge it.
This conflict is so often painted as a disagreement between people who care about saving the environment and people who don't. Or else as between crazy hippies who want to destroy civilization and people who want to preserve what has been built. I think it's worthwhile (very worthwhile) to note that most of us don't fit into any of these groupings. Most of us would be want a healthy environment, but aren't quite ready to dismantle modern life completely. Most of us would make some small sacrifices easily, and would be willing to make some more substantial sacrifices with a little more persuasion, but just aren't quite ready to give up modern technology and healthy economies altogether.
Let's face it, the gross majority of people want the deal to go through (so to speak), but we're haggling over terms. Giving up cars completely, for example, will be a deal-breaker for lots of people, so let's talk about how to bring about cheap energy-efficient cars.
I'd like to generalize what you're saying a bit, and say that honest disagreement is fine, and a few nut-balls can be tolerated, but when nut-balls start running the show, it's a real problem.
It seems to me that the problem with these global warming debates is that people (politicians, media, everyday people) tend to paint it in extremes and use it for their own ideological arguments. There are people who want to use global warming to say that we should all give up on technology and industry and go live in grass huts, and there are people who think we should push ahead with industry without an keeping an eye out for consequences. I think it should be obvious to us all that both of these viewpoints are extreme (in the bad sense of "extreme").
Beyond this, there are people who want to use this issue as political leverage. Some people are fear mongering on the side of, "If you let those hippies say global warming is real, then they'll have us all living in grass huts!" while others alarm, "If you let anyone doubt global warming isn't exactly what we say, then evil neocons will pump cyanide gas into the air until the entire planet is lifeless!"
Regardless of the specifics, shouldn't we all be willing to agree that it's good to be more efficient with our expenses of energy? Shouldn't we be able to agree that pollution is bad and trees are good? Can we start with what we can all agree on, and work on compromises where we might be able to reach an agreement? Or must we really just dig our heels in on stupid ideologies and accomplish nothing?
Part of the problem is that the media is simply irresponsible about science in general. They're just looking for sensationalistic and scary stories that sound like science fiction plots. You could have a single minor study that suggested that there might be a couple distinct branches of "homo sapiens", and the nightly news would suddenly be reporting that "scientists have proven that you might not be human". They take these things out of context, report them out of proportion, and sometimes just get the facts flat-out wrong.
Why all the hostility? His usage is a common modern usage. It seems to me you don't like what the poster is saying and so you attack the poster himself rather than arguing against him. Being an expert on logical fallacies, I'm sure you know what the name for that is.
As a neuroscientist, I'd like to post that I'm a neuroscientist for no reason other than to say that I'm a neuroscientist.
Ok, so I'm not a neuroscientist. I'm a cowboy-astronaut!
Do you see where this is going?
That, after being harassed as children, the adult geek will behave as children, grouping all people into "us" and "them", and then treating "them" badly?
Proper spelling and grammar are one of our shibboleths, along with Natalie Portman, hot grits, and Beowulf clusters. It isn't primarily about communication, although that is a factor. It is about identity. We are geeks. Geeks are smart. Smart people spell words correctly and use proper grammar. That is who we are.
Also, geeks have poor social skills and never consider that it might be rude and annoying to needlessly correct someone. Geeks are geeks because they'd (we'd?) rather show our intellectual superiority than make friends.
Normally, I'd consider myself a geek, but I don't like being a dick to other people, so perhaps I don't qualify?
That's one way to go, of course, but by buying Ubuntu, they'd be surrenduring control of the OS and support to another company. That's fine so long as you trust that other company to do what you want. I think that if I were a hardware company, I'd want my own builds.
I was saying, "If I were Dell, I'd make my own distro". Now, sure, of course, Dell will probably go with someone else's distro (i.e. Redhat or Novell), but personally, given Dell's resources, I would build my very own, either from scratched or based on a very good/versitile distro like Debian. I would start with an open source operating system and build it up specifically to support my hardware, changing it to fit my vision of what I wanted my computers to be.
In essence, rather than tacking on someone else's distribution, I would go the Apple route and take full control of hardware and software, but be more open in order to win the geek vote. It would be a dangerous move, but if I were the CEO of a company like Dell or HP, I'd have people working on a home-grown Linux distro (perhaps in secret).