But would you agree that, if there are weaknesses in the theory, discussion of the weaknesses should be swept under the rug because it's your favorite theory?
All theories have weaknesses to some extent or another. The question is, should very minor quibbling about refinements of a theory be used to cast doubt on the validity of very well known theories, especially when those points don't effect the practical value of the theory as it is in use today? For example, we don't understand how to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity, but we known gravity exists and how it functions on a day to day basis and entire disciplines of science and technology have been built upon them. Should we put disclaimers in textbooks when we are teaching it? Should we "teach the controversy" that some people believe something else entirely, but have no scientifically formed hypothesis and have never successfully performed an experiment that could falsify their hypothesis? Is that useful for their study of science?
I guess what I most object to is your implication that "weaknesses" are not pointed out when a theory is someone's favorite, instead of the truth of the matter that it is one of the single most well supported theories in all of science backed by hundreds of years of experimentation and forms the basis for immense amounts of working science every day.
I think science classes should teach the scientific method, including hands on examples of how it works to help them determine the most likely truth. We should teach them how people fail at science and try to undermine belief in scientific theories with fake science. This should, however, be taught with non-controversial examples so that teachers who are not scientists but who are emotionally vested in a religious faith do not have motivation to undermine student's education. Topics where their are multi-million dollar misinformation campaigns don't need the misinformation side given any time in schools. Teach them how science works and let them figure out on their own what does and does not follow the rules of science.
You're honestly telling us that people have gone on a school massacre using a duffle bag or a sweatshirt as their killing weapon? Or are you honestly so stupid that you think there's no significant, causal relationship between the gun and the deaths involved?
Are you dense? I'm saying you have to actually show a causal relationship, you can't just assume if guns are less common there will be fewer deaths instead of just fewer deaths with guns (which no one but anti-gun people are interested in).
I mean, who do you think you're impressing with this line of reasoning? "Gosh! I'll bet all these school shooters have hair! Maybe we should ban hair?
Whoosh, my point has gone over your head several times now. What I'm saying is if you ban hair you will have fewer deaths caused by people with hair... not fewer deaths overall. Hence and study which shows fewer deaths by a method is useless , whether that is fewer deaths with guns or fewer deaths by people wearing sweatshirts. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
I'm not arguing the first, but the second is important. Guns are often called "equalizers" for a reason.
Yeah, because they may skill a bigger determining factor than happenstance in who wins a fight. In some places a large male criminal who lifts weights and boxes is not afraid to go break into houses and attack people because very few people will ever be able to fight them effectively. In other places they are afraid to attack a little old man, because he might have a gun. THAT is why they are called equalizers.
The number of people you can kill with your bare hands before being stopped is less than the number of people you can kill with a knife is less than with a semi-automatic is less than a truck bomb is less than a nuke.
Great, now all you have to do is show that firearms allow you to kill more people than the hundreds of other effective weapons like poison, gasoline, and improvised explosives that cannot be easily restricted without bringing our economy to its knees.
Do you think that there's no reason to keep nukes out of kids' hands because there's no evidence that keeping them out of kids' hand reduces violence?
I think all weapons should be kept out of the hand of unsupervised children, but in extreme cases I think children should have access to nukes. I guess if you want to talk about bizarre edge cases we can come up with anything.
Naturally, nukes are a bit of an extreme example, but the difference in the scale of death than can be achieved by one kid trying to go out in a blaze of glory with a knife and one with a gun is obvious.
But it is only an assumption that they will try to go out in a blaze of glory with a knife. Why do you assume they won't use a bomb or start a literal fire? And what about students who defend themselves against violence lawfully using a firearm? Would you claim they don't have that right and should die in your quest to reduce a very specific type of violence, without having any evidence it will reduce overall deaths?
Studies about this subject matter are hard to find. For bloody obvious reasons -- a lack of way to do a controlled study and too few school massacres to create significant crime statistics like we can about street crime.
So you're proposing what? Laws to prevent the ownership of guns in order to stop an event which is so rare that you can't put together statistics on it?
While there have been a few mass murders that didn't involve firearms -- mostly acts of terrorism or the famous nightclub arsonist case -- I cannot find any evidence of a mass murder that occurred at a school that didn't involve a firearm.
Do we have to go over this again? Can you find and evidence of a mass murder by a person not wearing pants? If you ban pants do you think that would
How does the OS determine whether you wanted to connect to a random server or not? Oh, an application specific firewall. One that cannot be altered by a program that has been given the same rights as was given the installer.
Actually an ACL framework is more flexible and allows you to more completely sandbox apps and prevent them from doing things like altering specific files. As for giving the new program the same rights as the ACL sandbox, that's pretty crazy. I favor it being possible if you're installing a kernel extension, for example, but it should be a very rare case and accompanied by very strict warning that it may compromise your entire computer forever. It should never be the general case and installing software with such permissions should never be the same procedure as installing normal user space applications.
Then there are software vendors that require exactly the same installed service in order to phone home and confirm licensing.
Which is why package managers should support an official protocol for software registration (preferably using the OS vendor's own servers) and since it is an official protocol the IP and server info can be coded into the application signature making it a lot harder to hide malware.
Bullshit. A proper trojan differs from regular programs only in that it convinces the user it's meant for something else.
Well, technically it INSTALLS by convincing the user it is meant to do something else, but you're close enough. Why do you think that invalidates my statement? You don't think OS's can be modified to better inform users about where software is coming from and what it should be doing and that the package is unchanged by third parties? You don't think OS's can restrict the operation of unknown software such that even when run it is not granted permission to do anything it wants? You don't think that instead of asking for the admin password (as much software does) the norm could be for software to simply run with permission appropriate to the package (if known) or to the default trust level assigned by the user until the software tries to do something unusual, like access your files without a specific interaction with the user or connect to an unknown and untrusted IP address and transfer data or start an e-mail server running on a port?
If that is where you are, you're about a decade behind the current security state of the art and even behind MS's Windows security.
Interesting. How can this be done, other than by creating a "white list" of trusted apps and setting the OS to refuse to run any apps that doesn't have its checksum in the white list?
Well, creating one or more whitelists and blacklists is a start, but it is better to create a service by which users can subscribe to such lists. Better yet is subscribing to such lists that include ACLs that describe what the program should be doing and restrict it to those activities. After that, you don't prevent any software not on the whitelist from running, you simply sandbox it and give it restricted access to the system based upon how much trust the user has in it. Many times a user wants to run software they don't trust and giving them the option "run this but don't let it talk to the internet or mess with any of my files" is a huge boon and stops trojans right there.
The main trick to stopping the majority of trojans is to give the user information, such as letting them know that 90% of their software came from known places and that the software has been reviewed and locked down and is reasonably safe. Then, for the other 10%, give them a good risk assessment in the UI that tells them what it is doing and how risky such things are and give them the granular permissions to still run software, but restrict what it can do while running. Information and granular control are the two main items lacking in current OS's
Actually, most malware infections by number are automated worms that require no user interaction. There are a lot more malware packages that are trojans or viruses than there are worms, but they compromise fewer machines. (The ratio is not even close to 99.99% though).
No one can -ever- claim that -any- computer is safe from, essentially, social engineering.
Again right. But what's the solution? That is the real question.
You can't make social engineering impossible unless the user is not the admin of that function. You can, however, make social engineering a lot harder by giving the user a whole lot more information about what is going on and getting rid of all the useless measures. For example, when a user installs a package you can standardize that installation by always using the OS's package manager (but said manager needs to be capable and attractive for developers so this is doable). You can check the digital signature of the package against your database of not only malware but known good software. You need to get developers to buy into this to, by making it attractive to them and useful. You can sandbox software and restrict it's permissions by default and if necessary give it access to fake data and network in order to make it run. You can create a UI that lets the user know exactly what the program is trying to do and what level of risk experts think that entails and give them the option to run the software without giving it access to those resources. The thing is, you have to do it well so they get realistic risk assessments and learn to trust those assessments. If 25% of developers refuse to participate and users learn most of the software the system lists as potential malware is not malware, this fails.
What is Apple going to do in response to inevitable arrival of social-engineering malware as it gains marketshare?
The last release of OS X brought with it an ACL framework to sandbox applications and restrict their access more granularly. It included a signing framework to check the authenticity of packages. I'd argue they still need the package manager, whitelist/blacklist service, and UI components. They are definitely moving towards at least some of what I mention.
What is Linux going to if/when it acheives enough marketshare among joe-sixpacks for social engineering to be profitable?
They're working on the same tech, and it is in use in high risk environments, usually the SE Linux version.
As much as/. likes to take shots at Microsoft, what would you do better? *nix security is just as vulnerable to social engineering as windows is, given the same users.
There are two main reasons MS takes a lot of heat from experts here. First, both Apple and Linux are subject to market pressures. If their users have a security problem, they have to respond because Apple loses money or Linux users migrate to other distros. Both are subject to what works for users, so as trojans become a realistic threat they respond. The fact that they have not done a whole lot so far, mostly reflects that it is not a real problem for most of their users.
Microsoft, however, is a monopoly and is not subject to market forces. In general, if they do not respond to security threats with the appropriate level of defenses, they don't lose money. As a result, MS has been very, very slow to do anything about this problem and has not responded.
The second reason MS takes lot of heat is because their overwhelming dominance of the market gives them a lot of power. If one company could steamroll all developers into changing their practices and writing their software such that it installs via a safe and secure mechanism, runs smoothly in a secure sandbox, comes with an appropriate A
iPhone... consumer appliance. I'd say it's closer to a computer than you might think, and I don't see anything realistic preventing malware entering that platform too.
Software for the iPhone is centrally distributed by Apple and uses a signing framework to check packages (regular OS X has it to but it is largely unused). So how is someone going to post fake software with a trojan in it? If they manage to slip one past Apple's review, as soon as it is found Apple can revoke the signature for all copies deactivating them. Software on the iPhone runs in a sandbox and generally has limited permissions making it hard to root. All of these can be overcome, but it is really really hard by comparison to OS X on a Mac, where most of these security measures are not utilized. About the only real issue is if someone hacks the iPhone so it can run other software then installs a trojan, but that applies only to a small subset of iPhones.
And if a user is stupid enough to install a pirated ware AND give said ware the root password, what on earth makes you think they will possibly be able to understand what to do if informed that process xyz is opening a connection?
Some will and some won't, but if you don't give them the option than you can hardly blame them. Users need better choices and need to enter their password less often for normal application installs first, then we can worry about user education to deal with the remaining applications.
As I said, it's a PEBKAC error. If you give an installer your admnin password it can do whatever it pleases.
And if you read my post, I'm telling you that is a design flaw in the OS. On a well designed OS, the software has more granularity of permission than "can do everything include connect to random servers" and "can't install". Apple seems to agree with me since they added an ACL framework to restrict applications with a finer level of permissions in the last version, although it is only used for a small subset of applications so far.
Only an idiot installs pirated wares and only a supremely stupid idiot gives said warez the root password.
I think installing pirated software is unethical and risky, but not necessarily stupid. As for giving it the root password, users have to give up their password all the time to install software, which is part of the problem.
No security paradigm will ever be invented that cannot be undermined by human stupidity.
Maybe, maybe not, but you can sure do a heck of a lot more than current, mainstream OS's do now to help users avoid such security threats.
No system EVER will be secure from a trojan, since for a trojan to work the USER has to willingly give his admini password to install it.
I disagree. Systems can be and have been designed to make getting a trojan running and useful a very, very difficult feat of social engineering or even impossible without hacking the machine in advance. Right now these systems are fairly restricted in their deployment and none are mainstream on consumer PCs, but that doesn't mean mainstream OS's can't catch up and both OS X and Linux are working on technologies that can help mitigate trojans.
I take exception to your assertion. Just because a user runs a program does not mean that program should automatically be able to connect to a remote server without their permission or notification. That's the case for almost all current, mainstream OS's but that does not mean it is a good design.
Second, this is news because it is a trojan reportedly in the wild for a platform where there are very few trojans circulating, especially trojans that are not targeting a specific person or company. People want to know about it and it if it signals the beginning of a trend then Apple may finally have the motivation to push their new security frameworks more aggressively and develop other security elements to help protect users from trojans. It's not like there isn't anything that can be done to make trojans less dangerous.
...and absolutely nobody can protect a computer system against user stupidity.
True, but having some fairly reasonable expectations of your computer and not understanding that it is different from other consumer appliances like the iPhone or a TV is not stupidity. It is ignorance, but forgivable (in my opinion) for non-technical users. A well designed OS in this day of prevalent malware should lock down individual applications and check them against a database of signatures (both known good applications and known malware) and let the user know when a new application connects to outside servers and what those servers are and give them the option of allowing the connection or preventing it.
Murders are about 3 times more common per capita in the US than the UK.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You take two countries that are very different in many ways and compare the rates of murder. Then you state that it doesn't prove gun control is the differentiating factor. Scientifically, how does one go about determining what the most likely causality is? You increase your sample size and look at many countries and look for traits that correlate across many of them.
But there's no need for us to do it. Several studies have already looked at this on a large scale. One quickly discovers that there are incredibly low rates of murder and violent crime in several countries with gun ownership and gun laws no different than the US, while there are very high rates of crime in many countries with low gun ownership and strict laws.
...but it does disprove the argument that the Brits kill people just as much as the Americans, only with different weapons.
Who said they did. I only asserted that there was no evidence that gun laws or ownership rates had anything to do with it. If you're trying to find out what is most likely to account for it, I'll save you some reading. The most strongly correlative factor is wealth disparity (not just poverty mind you). In fact, if you were to predict the UK's violence rate from that of other countries using that factor alone, you'd come pretty darn close.
Actually, you were making an assertion as much as the post you replied to did. You can't counter someone by saying you read a bunch of stuff that says something else but then not bother to back it up by linking them.
No, I said I've read a lot of papers and none have shown a strong correlation. You can't prove a negative. If someone says there is a correlation, the onus is on them to show it, not on me to go through every single study and show there isn't one shown in any of them.
Could bombs and poison be more effective? Sure. Have we had a big attack on college campuses using those? No. Most likely if they didn't have guns they would use the easily available tools like swords and knives which would mean many fewer losses.
And what are you basing this last assumption on? It's yet another assertion without any support. In general no one has shown that gun bans have reduced violence or murder rates. You can assume that does not hold true in schools, but that doesn't make it so either. You need real evidence or you need to admit you're just guessing and don't have any reason behind your belief.
. So many things can go wrong with bombs and poison which would would probably take out the attacker before he attacked. Or they would be duds.
Sure, and things can go wrong with guns too and they have a very limited number of people they can kill, especially in a short period of time. You may want gun bans to reduce the body count and you can come up with all sorts of speculation as to specific causation to explain it if that is the case, but in order for such an assertion to be reason, you need some evidence that it is true.
In any case, I can tell you are one of those people who get emotional and irrational when it comes to guns so this will be a bit pointless. But eh, I need a break.
If you need a break, you seem to be the emotional one. All I've done is call you on your unsupported assertions. I'm asking for reason and evidence instead of emotional assumptions and wishful thinking. You haven't presented anything.
Congratulations, you just repeated what I said.
Your reading comprehension could use some work.
Your problem is you are assuming I am completely anti-gun. I am not. I am saying using statistics and studies is a bullshit way of making your point when you can use some common sense instead.
Yeah, relying on evidence in order to form my opinions sure is irrational. What you call common sense is just another way of saying you base your opinions upon what you think without having looked into things or studied the facts. When your common sense conflicts with the best information provided using the scientific method, what then?
So studies are bull shit. Yes, I can use common sense to say if people didn't have access to guns then there would have been a lot less people killed in Columbine and Virginia.
Well, since there is no way to completely get rid of guns, it's hard to say if ay measure would completely have prevented them from having them, but assuming you could, what cost would be acceptable to you? If you could save a few hundred lives killed with guns in schools, but at the cost of thousands dying outside schools because they are physically weak and unable to defend themselves, would that be the right thing?
And even assuming those kids did not have access to guns, are you certain they would not have used bombs or poison and killed more people overall. And if you ignore the facts presented by statistical studies, how can you know? Did god tell you? Intuition?
Would you deny the fact that a person with a gun is potentially more deadly than a person without a gun?
Potentially more dangerous or realistically more dangerous? Only the latter is relevant. Is a scared mugger with a baseball bat behind you
Spot the last time 17 people were killing a "school clogging" by a teenager...
I don't know of any, but I can point out the last time there was a school massacre using a duffle bag or while wearing a sweatshirt. Should we ban those based upon studies that show if they are banned there are fewer killings by people with them? Or do you concede such a methodology is flawed?
It's not about some arbitrary choice of weapons to hate but about the effectiveness of them.
Fine, so demonstrate banning them reduces violence or that other weapons such as improvised explosives or poisons are less effective. You can't just make blanket statements that it is more effective or that bans help without any evidence to support such a position. Further, you have to take into account firearms used defensively to stop such crimes, including stopping crimes by people who will manage to obtain firearms regardless of attempts to ban them. You see, there have been general studies of violent crime, and I haven't seen even one of them that actually supports gun bans as a way to effectively reduce said violence. I haven't seen any studies with regard to violence in schools. Perhaps such studies exist and you have read and can provide references?
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective?
Since when do we not restrict people having large explosives or biological weapons?
Since when does poison=biological weapon? We do very little to restrict the purchase of poison because so much of what we use every day is poisonous in the wrong context. As for explosives, any kid who can get ahold of their parent's guns can get instructions for making bombs out of everyday materials. I know I made some as a kid, just for fun.
Just because the GP didn't mention these weapons, you assume that he wants to restrict guns but not restrict explosives.
No, I assumed you didn't want to stupidly try to restrict access to everything starting with guns then moving into knives and swords and sticks and anything heavy and anything toxic, etc., etc. because it a lost cause and dreadfully ineffective for anything other than getting votes if you happen to be a politician that like scaring people.
Talk about a fucking straw man, sheesh.
You don't know what a straw man argument is, do you?
Do people need to make a hypothesis for every claim they make?
No, but that isn't the point. Rational people need support for their beliefs. hypothesis was proposed, however informally. I was simply asking if there was any reason to believe that hypothesis, the on they professed to believe, had any support at all and hence there was any reason for rational people to believe it. If you're irrational that's fine, but it isn't very persuasive.
If you got attacked by a mugger, would you rather be mugged by an armed person or not?
That depends on the mugger. In many cases I would rather they had a gun because they would feel more confident and are less likely to kill me with a violent attack and instead just tell me to give them my wallet and leave. But what I would rather is not really important. What matters is if more people are wrongfully killed or injured if guns are available. We do have data on that subject.
Don't be stupid.
I think I'll "be stupid" and actually believe the data from formal studies rather than just assume your uninformed opinions are right despite you having nothing to back them.
You win the "completely invalid comparison" award with that doozy. Shoes - Guns? Come on.
Actually it was an example of how logically flawed the idea of anything that reduces "gun violence" is a good thing regardless of the effects upon overall crime and violence rates. Drawing a correlation between the prevalance of one object and the prevalance of that object when crime occurs is pointless and misleading. The absurd idea being that in places where people have more hats or guns, a ban on hats or guns can reduce the rate of hat wearing or gun using criminals and that means anything useful.
In short, you aren't presenting any factual information either.
I've read quite a few papers, but it doesn't matter because I'm not the one making an assertion.
If we are talking about these attacks on school campuses, I think it is fairly obvious that if the killers didn't have guns, they would be a lot less effective.
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective? I'd argue that largely untrained children with guns are a lot less effective than other techniques they could turn to or at the very least you need to provide some data if you want me to accept this hypothesis.
And you can pick and choose what countries you want to talk about to make the statistics look like guns make things more safe or less safe.
Pick and choose? If you can pick different countries with completely different rates of violence and gun ownership that proves my point. There is no strong correlation between the two factors. Restricting the sample set to just the US and UK without normalizing for all other correlative factors and claiming you can draw conclusions based upon that is the error.
But I think what the OP says is true. Restrict people from having guns, school attacks will be less deadly.
Okay, you think that. Why do you think that? Do you have any information or is it just based upon emotion? Do you have any actual studies to back up your hypothesis or is it completely untested?
I'm not saying ban guns, I am just stating something.
No, you and the previous poster are asserting something, but have presented no evidence to back up your assertion except one implied causation that does not hold up when you look at a sample set of any size.
But the guns rights advocates can't have rational discussions. It is their religion.
This is a strawman. Please wait until others make an irrational argument and then feel free to point it out. In the mean time, why not reply to my rational criticism of your assertions and lack of evidence?
No, but it certainly means the crime is a lot less deadly.
Not really. Availability of guns in a society does not seem to correlate with the number of violent deaths and murders. Maybe this is because people don't fight back if the mugger has a gun or maybe more muggers actually attack a victim from behind injuring or killing them rather than just threatening with a gun. Or maybe more people are able to defend themselves and escape without injury because they have a gun themselves. In some places where guns are rare, drive by attacks use pipe bombs and molotov cocktails resulting in the injury and death of more bystanders than in places where guns are used for the same crimes.
In short, what you assume is obvious has not been supported by any factual information I've ever seen.
In the UK guns are not as easy to get hold of as in the USA. We don't have school shootings. Spot the correlation.
In the US wooden clogs are harder to get ahold of as in Europe in general. We don't have clog beatings. Spot the correlation.
Or you could, you know, define the problem sensibly in terms of violent crime or murders at schools. There are countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the UK, but lower rates of violent crime and school murders. What does that imply about the causality of your correlation?
The truth is if you look objectively you can find things that correlate very strongly with violent crime levels and murder rates around the world, and gun ownership and gun control laws are not one of those correlative items. Wealth disparity is the number one correlation and the UK is doing better than the US on that one. Decriminalization of illicit drugs, socialized drug treatment programs, and socialized healthcare in general are also moderately well correlated. But then if you want to understand why you'd have to read a sociology paper and the masses aren't going to do that. It's easier to exploit people's fears about guns to score political points. It's easier to exploit people's fears about not having a gun to score political points. But that's politics not reality. Realistically, gun ownership rates and gun control are not an issue of crime control any more than video games are.
Fundamental to my argument is that people have a right to that which they produce.
There's a problem with that theory. Most wealth in this country is not generated by people producing but by people leveraging money they inherited. For every dollar I earn by being innovative and earning shares in startup companies, investors who have done nothing but be born with lots of cash earn two dollars. It is the very well known and well documented "wealth condensation" principal, but in the end it boils down to "it takes money to make money". In an unregulated capitalist economy wealth consolidates into fewer and fewer hands until a small number of people control huge amounts of wealth and the masses have little or no real wealth. Usually the economy then collapses and the wealth is forcibly redistributed either by a revolution or a legal redistribution (ala the new deal).
Most countries strive for a more stable economic model where socialism takes enough money from those on top to compensate or nearly compensate for wealth condensation so the money stays distributed. Just like with the great depression, we've allowed that to slip in the US with the wealthy changing the tax laws such that they pay less than equal shares instead of the much larger than equal shares needed to stabilize the economy. Those on the bottom ran out of wealth (the bottom 50% of our country has a net worth of basically zero) and then to try to prop things up the government borrowed from foreign countries on behalf of the people (most of whom have no wealth remember) and the banks loaned the people money despite there being no realistic chance of it being paid back. Eventually, it started to fall down and we're seeing a cascading collapse unless we can stop it.
There is no mystery as to what went wrong here. People were conned into believing that the rich have a entitlement and a right to their inheritance and at the same time have no greater responsibility to society than those with no money and power. The rich used their power to make themselves richer and everyone else poorer and it is now coming to a head. What is needed is increased socialism that takes a lot of money from the very wealthy and uses it to hire out of work Americans to improve our country, our infrastructure, and our investments in research and education. We need people to feel secure in their health and their ability to live without having to sleep on the streets. Historically this is the number one thing that we can do to reduce violent crime and improve quality of living as well as revitalize the economy. Our future depends upon the wealthy and powerful realizing that eventually someone will shoot them in the head and take their wallet and that's just economics.
To default turn it off you might have to. You can just hold shift and disable it temporary when you plug something in until the detection is finished.
Except it can still autorun in response to other events than plugging it in, like single clicking the drive or some applications that look for devices periodically.
You wouldn't know logic if it swam up your arsehole and laid eggs. Go read Aristole, Boole, and Frege and come back with a clue.
This fundamentally boils down to you hating Microsoft and being a closet socialist.
Actually, I advocate a balanced economy, which for the US includes more, or better directed, socialist programs. There's nothing "closet" about that. As for big business, that is one area where I advocate more capitalism and reduced government protections. Corporations are artificial entities created to give shareholders the benefits of investment without the liability and responsibility. I'm in favor of them, but with reduced protections. As for monopolies, they undermine capitalism and without regulation lead to it collapsing into feudalism as anyone ho has bothered to study economics even on a basic level can tell you... which is why the US the EU and pretty much every other economy in the world has antitrust laws very similar to the ones being discussed today.
I'm sure you know better than the economists of the world there, but please don't enlighten me with your wisdom. Be a capitalist and sell your novel theorems to the highest bidder.
You didn't address how silly it is to define a monopoly based on demand instead of supply because you know I'm right.
Monopolies are defined by markets, that is what suppliers are available to provide a good to a set of purchasers. It is both supply and demand, not one or the other. You're clueless... big surprise.
And you can't grasp the concept of having your own well-backed opinions and instead keep pretending to be Master of Economics by referring to econ books.
I keep referring to econ books because I hope you'll pick one up some day. You can get a 50 year old book for a buck on Amazon and the section on antitrust will still be fine because the laws haven't really changed in a hundred years. Seriously, please educate yourself. I'm no master of economics, I just had to take it to get a bachelor's degree and even I can understand the simple concepts. You'll note there doesn't seem to be any dissent on this topic among the economics community not being paid by MS. You're like those pitiful fundamentalists arguing intelligent design while not even understanding what science or the theory of evolution is, but somehow assuming all those "egghead experts" have it all wrong and you know better.
Personally, I wish MS would just do everything you whiners want. Then, when they still dominate the OS market it'll be interesting to see which direction your whining takes.
You can't even get such a fundamental concept right. None of these measures has anything to do with getting rid of MS's monopoly on desktop OS's. It is about stopping them from abusing that monopoly and continuing to destroy innovation with regard to Web browsers. If you don't even understand the purpose of the law you're arguing against, how can you expect anyone to take your ideas seriously?
Those pages exist because MS broke the law and bundled IE
Can you please point me to the law that states that a software company cannot bundle a web browser in its O.S. ?
As others have pointed out, there is no such law. There is a law preventing tying a monopolized product to a non-monopolized product... just as there is a law against murder but no law against firing a gun in general. It is legal to both fire a gun and to bundle a browser and OS in the general case. It is illegal to fire a gun when it is aimed at a person you intend to kill without cause just as it is illegal to bundled a Web browser with a monopolized desktop OS.
Wake up, this is not 20 years ago. What's next? No more bundling of Calc, Live Messenger, Notepad? IE centric web-pages have nothing to do with this, it's a pretext and you know it.
Yeah, the fact that it creates a huge barrier to entry for new Opera customers and costs them millions in development costs to work around those pages is just incidental so we should ignore it and the law because you say so? Bullshit.
The fact is that the E.U. wants Microsoft to remove IE from Windows because of political reasons...
What political reasons? Do you have any evidence of this accusation? Do you even know wo made the decision to go forward with this and what their politics are?
...and then my point is valid: by the same standards they should ask Apple to remove Safari from MacOS.
Yeah, and all people who fire guns should be convicted of murder. It makes lots of sense if you are so clueless that you think murder laws ban the specific action of firing a gun instead of any action designed to kill another without just cause. Please go fricking read an economics book and find out what antitrust laws are before bothering me again with your ignorant nonsense.
An OEM is just a reseller. The concept of an "OEM" is a specific one, you don't go around defining monopolies because of the manner in which a product is sold.
Monopolies are defined by markets which are defined by customers. You can't define a monopoly without knowing who the customers are. Econ 101.
They sell it in tiny numbers because the demand is small (see below) - nobody wants Linux.
So? Why a company has a monopoly has nothing to do with if they have a monopoly. They do, as pretty much every economist worth their salt and numerous courts have decided. You can try to redefine monopoly however you want for your own use, but it has nothing to do with reality. Sorry, but what 'RightSaidFred99' thinks is a monopoly does not change what the law defines as a monopoly.
For that matter, if you're such a modern day trust-buster, go after the OEMs for conspiring to make Microsoft the de-facto OS.
The OEMs have no power. They have pretty much only one viable choice and have broken no laws. They're just forced by MS to do many things in other markets because MS has them by the balls. Way to blame the victims.
Commercially viable is just another way of saying "people want it" or "people don't want it". You're defining a demand-side monopoly which is nonsensical (see below).
You just don't get it. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Why a person has a monopoly is immaterial to if they do. Why is this so hard for you to grasp? There is no such thing as a "demand-side monopoly". A monopoly is simply any product that has a very large influence on the market in which it is sold, such that it can undermine fair competition in other markets.
Indeed. The market is "computer operating systems".
Legally, it as been defines as "desktop computer operating systems" and excludes server OS's.
If you want to play games defining markets, again you can make anything a monopoly.
No, I can't and your equivocation is meaningless. If you're planning on claiming logic as your method, learn the rules already.
"Whaa, the market is 'digital audio players which are manufactured by Apple and which support music purchased off itunes! Whaa, Apple has a monopoly!".
How childish. Are you twelve or something? Apple is being investigated right now for possibly having a monopoly on portable digital music players. Defining that market is significantly more difficult and hinges on if purchasers consider media capable cell phones when making purchases.
Actually, I prefer rational thought to blindly regurgitating politically motivated laws and their interpretation by stupid people.
No, you seem to prefer making unsupported assertions and randomly redefining terms instead of educating yourself on what the standard and legally defined terms you're misusing are. You have an opinion and you try to redefine things in such a way that you could be right. It's sad and pointless.
See if you can follow. I've said all this below and it's essentially unassailable logic if you argue using reason instead of modern interpretations of antitrust law. First, the concept of a monopoly applied to intellectual property is silly. Monopoly law is intended to protect us, society, from the single-supplier issue of a limited physical resource.
Since the copyright laws that establish copyright in the US use the term "monopoly" describing what they are granting... you fail before you've begun. The rest of your comments show you clearly don't understand antitrust law and its purpose in maintaining the benefits of competition. Please go read an economics textbook so you have a clue before trying to debate a topic.
This is Slashdot. Go watch Futurama again so you know what 'irony' is.
But I don't see how either of these "bundling" practices is a problem.
Okay, you don't understand antitrust law or the economics behind it. Why not go read up on it?
No one charges any money for a browser these days anyway, so who cares?
Everyone who makes a browser or develops for the Web or uses the Web and would like one company to no longer have the power to prevent new technologies from being implemented.
If you don't like the one your OS comes with, download another one!
Once you learn what the law is about and why this is an abuse of it, you'll realize that has little to do with this case at all.
Slashdot Mirror
But would you agree that, if there are weaknesses in the theory, discussion of the weaknesses should be swept under the rug because it's your favorite theory?
All theories have weaknesses to some extent or another. The question is, should very minor quibbling about refinements of a theory be used to cast doubt on the validity of very well known theories, especially when those points don't effect the practical value of the theory as it is in use today? For example, we don't understand how to reconcile quantum mechanics with gravity, but we known gravity exists and how it functions on a day to day basis and entire disciplines of science and technology have been built upon them. Should we put disclaimers in textbooks when we are teaching it? Should we "teach the controversy" that some people believe something else entirely, but have no scientifically formed hypothesis and have never successfully performed an experiment that could falsify their hypothesis? Is that useful for their study of science?
I guess what I most object to is your implication that "weaknesses" are not pointed out when a theory is someone's favorite, instead of the truth of the matter that it is one of the single most well supported theories in all of science backed by hundreds of years of experimentation and forms the basis for immense amounts of working science every day.
I think science classes should teach the scientific method, including hands on examples of how it works to help them determine the most likely truth. We should teach them how people fail at science and try to undermine belief in scientific theories with fake science. This should, however, be taught with non-controversial examples so that teachers who are not scientists but who are emotionally vested in a religious faith do not have motivation to undermine student's education. Topics where their are multi-million dollar misinformation campaigns don't need the misinformation side given any time in schools. Teach them how science works and let them figure out on their own what does and does not follow the rules of science.
You're honestly telling us that people have gone on a school massacre using a duffle bag or a sweatshirt as their killing weapon? Or are you honestly so stupid that you think there's no significant, causal relationship between the gun and the deaths involved?
Are you dense? I'm saying you have to actually show a causal relationship, you can't just assume if guns are less common there will be fewer deaths instead of just fewer deaths with guns (which no one but anti-gun people are interested in).
I mean, who do you think you're impressing with this line of reasoning? "Gosh! I'll bet all these school shooters have hair! Maybe we should ban hair?
Whoosh, my point has gone over your head several times now. What I'm saying is if you ban hair you will have fewer deaths caused by people with hair... not fewer deaths overall. Hence and study which shows fewer deaths by a method is useless , whether that is fewer deaths with guns or fewer deaths by people wearing sweatshirts. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
I'm not arguing the first, but the second is important. Guns are often called "equalizers" for a reason.
Yeah, because they may skill a bigger determining factor than happenstance in who wins a fight. In some places a large male criminal who lifts weights and boxes is not afraid to go break into houses and attack people because very few people will ever be able to fight them effectively. In other places they are afraid to attack a little old man, because he might have a gun. THAT is why they are called equalizers.
The number of people you can kill with your bare hands before being stopped is less than the number of people you can kill with a knife is less than with a semi-automatic is less than a truck bomb is less than a nuke.
Great, now all you have to do is show that firearms allow you to kill more people than the hundreds of other effective weapons like poison, gasoline, and improvised explosives that cannot be easily restricted without bringing our economy to its knees.
Do you think that there's no reason to keep nukes out of kids' hands because there's no evidence that keeping them out of kids' hand reduces violence?
I think all weapons should be kept out of the hand of unsupervised children, but in extreme cases I think children should have access to nukes. I guess if you want to talk about bizarre edge cases we can come up with anything.
Naturally, nukes are a bit of an extreme example, but the difference in the scale of death than can be achieved by one kid trying to go out in a blaze of glory with a knife and one with a gun is obvious.
But it is only an assumption that they will try to go out in a blaze of glory with a knife. Why do you assume they won't use a bomb or start a literal fire? And what about students who defend themselves against violence lawfully using a firearm? Would you claim they don't have that right and should die in your quest to reduce a very specific type of violence, without having any evidence it will reduce overall deaths?
Studies about this subject matter are hard to find. For bloody obvious reasons -- a lack of way to do a controlled study and too few school massacres to create significant crime statistics like we can about street crime.
So you're proposing what? Laws to prevent the ownership of guns in order to stop an event which is so rare that you can't put together statistics on it?
While there have been a few mass murders that didn't involve firearms -- mostly acts of terrorism or the famous nightclub arsonist case -- I cannot find any evidence of a mass murder that occurred at a school that didn't involve a firearm.
Do we have to go over this again? Can you find and evidence of a mass murder by a person not wearing pants? If you ban pants do you think that would
How does the OS determine whether you wanted to connect to a random server or not? Oh, an application specific firewall. One that cannot be altered by a program that has been given the same rights as was given the installer.
Actually an ACL framework is more flexible and allows you to more completely sandbox apps and prevent them from doing things like altering specific files. As for giving the new program the same rights as the ACL sandbox, that's pretty crazy. I favor it being possible if you're installing a kernel extension, for example, but it should be a very rare case and accompanied by very strict warning that it may compromise your entire computer forever. It should never be the general case and installing software with such permissions should never be the same procedure as installing normal user space applications.
Then there are software vendors that require exactly the same installed service in order to phone home and confirm licensing.
Which is why package managers should support an official protocol for software registration (preferably using the OS vendor's own servers) and since it is an official protocol the IP and server info can be coded into the application signature making it a lot harder to hide malware.
Bullshit. A proper trojan differs from regular programs only in that it convinces the user it's meant for something else.
Well, technically it INSTALLS by convincing the user it is meant to do something else, but you're close enough. Why do you think that invalidates my statement? You don't think OS's can be modified to better inform users about where software is coming from and what it should be doing and that the package is unchanged by third parties? You don't think OS's can restrict the operation of unknown software such that even when run it is not granted permission to do anything it wants? You don't think that instead of asking for the admin password (as much software does) the norm could be for software to simply run with permission appropriate to the package (if known) or to the default trust level assigned by the user until the software tries to do something unusual, like access your files without a specific interaction with the user or connect to an unknown and untrusted IP address and transfer data or start an e-mail server running on a port?
If that is where you are, you're about a decade behind the current security state of the art and even behind MS's Windows security.
Interesting. How can this be done, other than by creating a "white list" of trusted apps and setting the OS to refuse to run any apps that doesn't have its checksum in the white list?
Well, creating one or more whitelists and blacklists is a start, but it is better to create a service by which users can subscribe to such lists. Better yet is subscribing to such lists that include ACLs that describe what the program should be doing and restrict it to those activities. After that, you don't prevent any software not on the whitelist from running, you simply sandbox it and give it restricted access to the system based upon how much trust the user has in it. Many times a user wants to run software they don't trust and giving them the option "run this but don't let it talk to the internet or mess with any of my files" is a huge boon and stops trojans right there.
The main trick to stopping the majority of trojans is to give the user information, such as letting them know that 90% of their software came from known places and that the software has been reviewed and locked down and is reasonably safe. Then, for the other 10%, give them a good risk assessment in the UI that tells them what it is doing and how risky such things are and give them the granular permissions to still run software, but restrict what it can do while running. Information and granular control are the two main items lacking in current OS's
This requires user action and piracy.
So does 99.99% of windows malware.
Actually, most malware infections by number are automated worms that require no user interaction. There are a lot more malware packages that are trojans or viruses than there are worms, but they compromise fewer machines. (The ratio is not even close to 99.99% though).
No one can -ever- claim that -any- computer is safe from, essentially, social engineering.
Again right. But what's the solution? That is the real question.
You can't make social engineering impossible unless the user is not the admin of that function. You can, however, make social engineering a lot harder by giving the user a whole lot more information about what is going on and getting rid of all the useless measures. For example, when a user installs a package you can standardize that installation by always using the OS's package manager (but said manager needs to be capable and attractive for developers so this is doable). You can check the digital signature of the package against your database of not only malware but known good software. You need to get developers to buy into this to, by making it attractive to them and useful. You can sandbox software and restrict it's permissions by default and if necessary give it access to fake data and network in order to make it run. You can create a UI that lets the user know exactly what the program is trying to do and what level of risk experts think that entails and give them the option to run the software without giving it access to those resources. The thing is, you have to do it well so they get realistic risk assessments and learn to trust those assessments. If 25% of developers refuse to participate and users learn most of the software the system lists as potential malware is not malware, this fails.
What is Apple going to do in response to inevitable arrival of social-engineering malware as it gains marketshare?
The last release of OS X brought with it an ACL framework to sandbox applications and restrict their access more granularly. It included a signing framework to check the authenticity of packages. I'd argue they still need the package manager, whitelist/blacklist service, and UI components. They are definitely moving towards at least some of what I mention.
What is Linux going to if/when it acheives enough marketshare among joe-sixpacks for social engineering to be profitable?
They're working on the same tech, and it is in use in high risk environments, usually the SE Linux version.
As much as /. likes to take shots at Microsoft, what would you do better? *nix security is just as vulnerable to social engineering as windows is, given the same users.
There are two main reasons MS takes a lot of heat from experts here. First, both Apple and Linux are subject to market pressures. If their users have a security problem, they have to respond because Apple loses money or Linux users migrate to other distros. Both are subject to what works for users, so as trojans become a realistic threat they respond. The fact that they have not done a whole lot so far, mostly reflects that it is not a real problem for most of their users.
Microsoft, however, is a monopoly and is not subject to market forces. In general, if they do not respond to security threats with the appropriate level of defenses, they don't lose money. As a result, MS has been very, very slow to do anything about this problem and has not responded.
The second reason MS takes lot of heat is because their overwhelming dominance of the market gives them a lot of power. If one company could steamroll all developers into changing their practices and writing their software such that it installs via a safe and secure mechanism, runs smoothly in a secure sandbox, comes with an appropriate A
iPhone... consumer appliance. I'd say it's closer to a computer than you might think, and I don't see anything realistic preventing malware entering that platform too.
Software for the iPhone is centrally distributed by Apple and uses a signing framework to check packages (regular OS X has it to but it is largely unused). So how is someone going to post fake software with a trojan in it? If they manage to slip one past Apple's review, as soon as it is found Apple can revoke the signature for all copies deactivating them. Software on the iPhone runs in a sandbox and generally has limited permissions making it hard to root. All of these can be overcome, but it is really really hard by comparison to OS X on a Mac, where most of these security measures are not utilized. About the only real issue is if someone hacks the iPhone so it can run other software then installs a trojan, but that applies only to a small subset of iPhones.
And if a user is stupid enough to install a pirated ware AND give said ware the root password, what on earth makes you think they will possibly be able to understand what to do if informed that process xyz is opening a connection?
Some will and some won't, but if you don't give them the option than you can hardly blame them. Users need better choices and need to enter their password less often for normal application installs first, then we can worry about user education to deal with the remaining applications.
As I said, it's a PEBKAC error. If you give an installer your admnin password it can do whatever it pleases.
And if you read my post, I'm telling you that is a design flaw in the OS. On a well designed OS, the software has more granularity of permission than "can do everything include connect to random servers" and "can't install". Apple seems to agree with me since they added an ACL framework to restrict applications with a finer level of permissions in the last version, although it is only used for a small subset of applications so far.
Only an idiot installs pirated wares and only a supremely stupid idiot gives said warez the root password.
I think installing pirated software is unethical and risky, but not necessarily stupid. As for giving it the root password, users have to give up their password all the time to install software, which is part of the problem.
No security paradigm will ever be invented that cannot be undermined by human stupidity.
Maybe, maybe not, but you can sure do a heck of a lot more than current, mainstream OS's do now to help users avoid such security threats.
No system EVER will be secure from a trojan, since for a trojan to work the USER has to willingly give his admini password to install it.
I disagree. Systems can be and have been designed to make getting a trojan running and useful a very, very difficult feat of social engineering or even impossible without hacking the machine in advance. Right now these systems are fairly restricted in their deployment and none are mainstream on consumer PCs, but that doesn't mean mainstream OS's can't catch up and both OS X and Linux are working on technologies that can help mitigate trojans.
Since when does a PEBKAC error count as news?
I take exception to your assertion. Just because a user runs a program does not mean that program should automatically be able to connect to a remote server without their permission or notification. That's the case for almost all current, mainstream OS's but that does not mean it is a good design.
Second, this is news because it is a trojan reportedly in the wild for a platform where there are very few trojans circulating, especially trojans that are not targeting a specific person or company. People want to know about it and it if it signals the beginning of a trend then Apple may finally have the motivation to push their new security frameworks more aggressively and develop other security elements to help protect users from trojans. It's not like there isn't anything that can be done to make trojans less dangerous.
...and absolutely nobody can protect a computer system against user stupidity.
True, but having some fairly reasonable expectations of your computer and not understanding that it is different from other consumer appliances like the iPhone or a TV is not stupidity. It is ignorance, but forgivable (in my opinion) for non-technical users. A well designed OS in this day of prevalent malware should lock down individual applications and check them against a database of signatures (both known good applications and known malware) and let the user know when a new application connects to outside servers and what those servers are and give them the option of allowing the connection or preventing it.
Murders are about 3 times more common per capita in the US than the UK.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You take two countries that are very different in many ways and compare the rates of murder. Then you state that it doesn't prove gun control is the differentiating factor. Scientifically, how does one go about determining what the most likely causality is? You increase your sample size and look at many countries and look for traits that correlate across many of them.
But there's no need for us to do it. Several studies have already looked at this on a large scale. One quickly discovers that there are incredibly low rates of murder and violent crime in several countries with gun ownership and gun laws no different than the US, while there are very high rates of crime in many countries with low gun ownership and strict laws.
...but it does disprove the argument that the Brits kill people just as much as the Americans, only with different weapons.
Who said they did. I only asserted that there was no evidence that gun laws or ownership rates had anything to do with it. If you're trying to find out what is most likely to account for it, I'll save you some reading. The most strongly correlative factor is wealth disparity (not just poverty mind you). In fact, if you were to predict the UK's violence rate from that of other countries using that factor alone, you'd come pretty darn close.
Actually, you were making an assertion as much as the post you replied to did. You can't counter someone by saying you read a bunch of stuff that says something else but then not bother to back it up by linking them.
No, I said I've read a lot of papers and none have shown a strong correlation. You can't prove a negative. If someone says there is a correlation, the onus is on them to show it, not on me to go through every single study and show there isn't one shown in any of them.
Could bombs and poison be more effective? Sure. Have we had a big attack on college campuses using those? No. Most likely if they didn't have guns they would use the easily available tools like swords and knives which would mean many fewer losses.
And what are you basing this last assumption on? It's yet another assertion without any support. In general no one has shown that gun bans have reduced violence or murder rates. You can assume that does not hold true in schools, but that doesn't make it so either. You need real evidence or you need to admit you're just guessing and don't have any reason behind your belief.
. So many things can go wrong with bombs and poison which would would probably take out the attacker before he attacked. Or they would be duds.
Sure, and things can go wrong with guns too and they have a very limited number of people they can kill, especially in a short period of time. You may want gun bans to reduce the body count and you can come up with all sorts of speculation as to specific causation to explain it if that is the case, but in order for such an assertion to be reason, you need some evidence that it is true.
In any case, I can tell you are one of those people who get emotional and irrational when it comes to guns so this will be a bit pointless. But eh, I need a break.
If you need a break, you seem to be the emotional one. All I've done is call you on your unsupported assertions. I'm asking for reason and evidence instead of emotional assumptions and wishful thinking. You haven't presented anything.
Congratulations, you just repeated what I said.
Your reading comprehension could use some work.
Your problem is you are assuming I am completely anti-gun. I am not. I am saying using statistics and studies is a bullshit way of making your point when you can use some common sense instead.
Yeah, relying on evidence in order to form my opinions sure is irrational. What you call common sense is just another way of saying you base your opinions upon what you think without having looked into things or studied the facts. When your common sense conflicts with the best information provided using the scientific method, what then?
So studies are bull shit. Yes, I can use common sense to say if people didn't have access to guns then there would have been a lot less people killed in Columbine and Virginia.
Well, since there is no way to completely get rid of guns, it's hard to say if ay measure would completely have prevented them from having them, but assuming you could, what cost would be acceptable to you? If you could save a few hundred lives killed with guns in schools, but at the cost of thousands dying outside schools because they are physically weak and unable to defend themselves, would that be the right thing?
And even assuming those kids did not have access to guns, are you certain they would not have used bombs or poison and killed more people overall. And if you ignore the facts presented by statistical studies, how can you know? Did god tell you? Intuition?
Would you deny the fact that a person with a gun is potentially more deadly than a person without a gun?
Potentially more dangerous or realistically more dangerous? Only the latter is relevant. Is a scared mugger with a baseball bat behind you
Spot the last time 17 people were killing a "school clogging" by a teenager...
I don't know of any, but I can point out the last time there was a school massacre using a duffle bag or while wearing a sweatshirt. Should we ban those based upon studies that show if they are banned there are fewer killings by people with them? Or do you concede such a methodology is flawed?
It's not about some arbitrary choice of weapons to hate but about the effectiveness of them.
Fine, so demonstrate banning them reduces violence or that other weapons such as improvised explosives or poisons are less effective. You can't just make blanket statements that it is more effective or that bans help without any evidence to support such a position. Further, you have to take into account firearms used defensively to stop such crimes, including stopping crimes by people who will manage to obtain firearms regardless of attempts to ban them. You see, there have been general studies of violent crime, and I haven't seen even one of them that actually supports gun bans as a way to effectively reduce said violence. I haven't seen any studies with regard to violence in schools. Perhaps such studies exist and you have read and can provide references?
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective?
Since when do we not restrict people having large explosives or biological weapons?
Since when does poison=biological weapon? We do very little to restrict the purchase of poison because so much of what we use every day is poisonous in the wrong context. As for explosives, any kid who can get ahold of their parent's guns can get instructions for making bombs out of everyday materials. I know I made some as a kid, just for fun.
Just because the GP didn't mention these weapons, you assume that he wants to restrict guns but not restrict explosives.
No, I assumed you didn't want to stupidly try to restrict access to everything starting with guns then moving into knives and swords and sticks and anything heavy and anything toxic, etc., etc. because it a lost cause and dreadfully ineffective for anything other than getting votes if you happen to be a politician that like scaring people.
Talk about a fucking straw man, sheesh.
You don't know what a straw man argument is, do you?
Do people need to make a hypothesis for every claim they make?
No, but that isn't the point. Rational people need support for their beliefs. hypothesis was proposed, however informally. I was simply asking if there was any reason to believe that hypothesis, the on they professed to believe, had any support at all and hence there was any reason for rational people to believe it. If you're irrational that's fine, but it isn't very persuasive.
If you got attacked by a mugger, would you rather be mugged by an armed person or not?
That depends on the mugger. In many cases I would rather they had a gun because they would feel more confident and are less likely to kill me with a violent attack and instead just tell me to give them my wallet and leave. But what I would rather is not really important. What matters is if more people are wrongfully killed or injured if guns are available. We do have data on that subject.
Don't be stupid.
I think I'll "be stupid" and actually believe the data from formal studies rather than just assume your uninformed opinions are right despite you having nothing to back them.
You win the "completely invalid comparison" award with that doozy. Shoes - Guns? Come on.
Actually it was an example of how logically flawed the idea of anything that reduces "gun violence" is a good thing regardless of the effects upon overall crime and violence rates. Drawing a correlation between the prevalance of one object and the prevalance of that object when crime occurs is pointless and misleading. The absurd idea being that in places where people have more hats or guns, a ban on hats or guns can reduce the rate of hat wearing or gun using criminals and that means anything useful.
You Southern gunslingers are all alike, I swear.
I live in the subarctic, genius.
In short, you aren't presenting any factual information either.
I've read quite a few papers, but it doesn't matter because I'm not the one making an assertion.
If we are talking about these attacks on school campuses, I think it is fairly obvious that if the killers didn't have guns, they would be a lot less effective.
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective? I'd argue that largely untrained children with guns are a lot less effective than other techniques they could turn to or at the very least you need to provide some data if you want me to accept this hypothesis.
And you can pick and choose what countries you want to talk about to make the statistics look like guns make things more safe or less safe.
Pick and choose? If you can pick different countries with completely different rates of violence and gun ownership that proves my point. There is no strong correlation between the two factors. Restricting the sample set to just the US and UK without normalizing for all other correlative factors and claiming you can draw conclusions based upon that is the error.
But I think what the OP says is true. Restrict people from having guns, school attacks will be less deadly.
Okay, you think that. Why do you think that? Do you have any information or is it just based upon emotion? Do you have any actual studies to back up your hypothesis or is it completely untested?
I'm not saying ban guns, I am just stating something.
No, you and the previous poster are asserting something, but have presented no evidence to back up your assertion except one implied causation that does not hold up when you look at a sample set of any size.
But the guns rights advocates can't have rational discussions. It is their religion.
This is a strawman. Please wait until others make an irrational argument and then feel free to point it out. In the mean time, why not reply to my rational criticism of your assertions and lack of evidence?
No, but it certainly means the crime is a lot less deadly.
Not really. Availability of guns in a society does not seem to correlate with the number of violent deaths and murders. Maybe this is because people don't fight back if the mugger has a gun or maybe more muggers actually attack a victim from behind injuring or killing them rather than just threatening with a gun. Or maybe more people are able to defend themselves and escape without injury because they have a gun themselves. In some places where guns are rare, drive by attacks use pipe bombs and molotov cocktails resulting in the injury and death of more bystanders than in places where guns are used for the same crimes.
In short, what you assume is obvious has not been supported by any factual information I've ever seen.
In the UK guns are not as easy to get hold of as in the USA. We don't have school shootings. Spot the correlation.
In the US wooden clogs are harder to get ahold of as in Europe in general. We don't have clog beatings. Spot the correlation.
Or you could, you know, define the problem sensibly in terms of violent crime or murders at schools. There are countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the UK, but lower rates of violent crime and school murders. What does that imply about the causality of your correlation?
The truth is if you look objectively you can find things that correlate very strongly with violent crime levels and murder rates around the world, and gun ownership and gun control laws are not one of those correlative items. Wealth disparity is the number one correlation and the UK is doing better than the US on that one. Decriminalization of illicit drugs, socialized drug treatment programs, and socialized healthcare in general are also moderately well correlated. But then if you want to understand why you'd have to read a sociology paper and the masses aren't going to do that. It's easier to exploit people's fears about guns to score political points. It's easier to exploit people's fears about not having a gun to score political points. But that's politics not reality. Realistically, gun ownership rates and gun control are not an issue of crime control any more than video games are.
Fundamental to my argument is that people have a right to that which they produce.
There's a problem with that theory. Most wealth in this country is not generated by people producing but by people leveraging money they inherited. For every dollar I earn by being innovative and earning shares in startup companies, investors who have done nothing but be born with lots of cash earn two dollars. It is the very well known and well documented "wealth condensation" principal, but in the end it boils down to "it takes money to make money". In an unregulated capitalist economy wealth consolidates into fewer and fewer hands until a small number of people control huge amounts of wealth and the masses have little or no real wealth. Usually the economy then collapses and the wealth is forcibly redistributed either by a revolution or a legal redistribution (ala the new deal).
Most countries strive for a more stable economic model where socialism takes enough money from those on top to compensate or nearly compensate for wealth condensation so the money stays distributed. Just like with the great depression, we've allowed that to slip in the US with the wealthy changing the tax laws such that they pay less than equal shares instead of the much larger than equal shares needed to stabilize the economy. Those on the bottom ran out of wealth (the bottom 50% of our country has a net worth of basically zero) and then to try to prop things up the government borrowed from foreign countries on behalf of the people (most of whom have no wealth remember) and the banks loaned the people money despite there being no realistic chance of it being paid back. Eventually, it started to fall down and we're seeing a cascading collapse unless we can stop it.
There is no mystery as to what went wrong here. People were conned into believing that the rich have a entitlement and a right to their inheritance and at the same time have no greater responsibility to society than those with no money and power. The rich used their power to make themselves richer and everyone else poorer and it is now coming to a head. What is needed is increased socialism that takes a lot of money from the very wealthy and uses it to hire out of work Americans to improve our country, our infrastructure, and our investments in research and education. We need people to feel secure in their health and their ability to live without having to sleep on the streets. Historically this is the number one thing that we can do to reduce violent crime and improve quality of living as well as revitalize the economy. Our future depends upon the wealthy and powerful realizing that eventually someone will shoot them in the head and take their wallet and that's just economics.
To default turn it off you might have to. You can just hold shift and disable it temporary when you plug something in until the detection is finished.
Except it can still autorun in response to other events than plugging it in, like single clicking the drive or some applications that look for devices periodically.
Or..."I can't deny your logic".
You wouldn't know logic if it swam up your arsehole and laid eggs. Go read Aristole, Boole, and Frege and come back with a clue.
This fundamentally boils down to you hating Microsoft and being a closet socialist.
Actually, I advocate a balanced economy, which for the US includes more, or better directed, socialist programs. There's nothing "closet" about that. As for big business, that is one area where I advocate more capitalism and reduced government protections. Corporations are artificial entities created to give shareholders the benefits of investment without the liability and responsibility. I'm in favor of them, but with reduced protections. As for monopolies, they undermine capitalism and without regulation lead to it collapsing into feudalism as anyone ho has bothered to study economics even on a basic level can tell you... which is why the US the EU and pretty much every other economy in the world has antitrust laws very similar to the ones being discussed today.
I'm sure you know better than the economists of the world there, but please don't enlighten me with your wisdom. Be a capitalist and sell your novel theorems to the highest bidder.
You didn't address how silly it is to define a monopoly based on demand instead of supply because you know I'm right.
Monopolies are defined by markets, that is what suppliers are available to provide a good to a set of purchasers. It is both supply and demand, not one or the other. You're clueless... big surprise.
And you can't grasp the concept of having your own well-backed opinions and instead keep pretending to be Master of Economics by referring to econ books.
I keep referring to econ books because I hope you'll pick one up some day. You can get a 50 year old book for a buck on Amazon and the section on antitrust will still be fine because the laws haven't really changed in a hundred years. Seriously, please educate yourself. I'm no master of economics, I just had to take it to get a bachelor's degree and even I can understand the simple concepts. You'll note there doesn't seem to be any dissent on this topic among the economics community not being paid by MS. You're like those pitiful fundamentalists arguing intelligent design while not even understanding what science or the theory of evolution is, but somehow assuming all those "egghead experts" have it all wrong and you know better.
Personally, I wish MS would just do everything you whiners want. Then, when they still dominate the OS market it'll be interesting to see which direction your whining takes.
You can't even get such a fundamental concept right. None of these measures has anything to do with getting rid of MS's monopoly on desktop OS's. It is about stopping them from abusing that monopoly and continuing to destroy innovation with regard to Web browsers. If you don't even understand the purpose of the law you're arguing against, how can you expect anyone to take your ideas seriously?
Those pages exist because MS broke the law and bundled IE
Can you please point me to the law that states that a software company cannot bundle a web browser in its O.S. ?
As others have pointed out, there is no such law. There is a law preventing tying a monopolized product to a non-monopolized product... just as there is a law against murder but no law against firing a gun in general. It is legal to both fire a gun and to bundle a browser and OS in the general case. It is illegal to fire a gun when it is aimed at a person you intend to kill without cause just as it is illegal to bundled a Web browser with a monopolized desktop OS.
Wake up, this is not 20 years ago. What's next? No more bundling of Calc, Live Messenger, Notepad? IE centric web-pages have nothing to do with this, it's a pretext and you know it.
Yeah, the fact that it creates a huge barrier to entry for new Opera customers and costs them millions in development costs to work around those pages is just incidental so we should ignore it and the law because you say so? Bullshit.
The fact is that the E.U. wants Microsoft to remove IE from Windows because of political reasons...
What political reasons? Do you have any evidence of this accusation? Do you even know wo made the decision to go forward with this and what their politics are?
...and then my point is valid: by the same standards they should ask Apple to remove Safari from MacOS.
Yeah, and all people who fire guns should be convicted of murder. It makes lots of sense if you are so clueless that you think murder laws ban the specific action of firing a gun instead of any action designed to kill another without just cause. Please go fricking read an economics book and find out what antitrust laws are before bothering me again with your ignorant nonsense.
An OEM is just a reseller. The concept of an "OEM" is a specific one, you don't go around defining monopolies because of the manner in which a product is sold.
Monopolies are defined by markets which are defined by customers. You can't define a monopoly without knowing who the customers are. Econ 101.
They sell it in tiny numbers because the demand is small (see below) - nobody wants Linux.
So? Why a company has a monopoly has nothing to do with if they have a monopoly. They do, as pretty much every economist worth their salt and numerous courts have decided. You can try to redefine monopoly however you want for your own use, but it has nothing to do with reality. Sorry, but what 'RightSaidFred99' thinks is a monopoly does not change what the law defines as a monopoly.
For that matter, if you're such a modern day trust-buster, go after the OEMs for conspiring to make Microsoft the de-facto OS.
The OEMs have no power. They have pretty much only one viable choice and have broken no laws. They're just forced by MS to do many things in other markets because MS has them by the balls. Way to blame the victims.
Commercially viable is just another way of saying "people want it" or "people don't want it". You're defining a demand-side monopoly which is nonsensical (see below).
You just don't get it. Having a monopoly is not illegal. Why a person has a monopoly is immaterial to if they do. Why is this so hard for you to grasp? There is no such thing as a "demand-side monopoly". A monopoly is simply any product that has a very large influence on the market in which it is sold, such that it can undermine fair competition in other markets.
Indeed. The market is "computer operating systems".
Legally, it as been defines as "desktop computer operating systems" and excludes server OS's.
If you want to play games defining markets, again you can make anything a monopoly.
No, I can't and your equivocation is meaningless. If you're planning on claiming logic as your method, learn the rules already.
"Whaa, the market is 'digital audio players which are manufactured by Apple and which support music purchased off itunes! Whaa, Apple has a monopoly!".
How childish. Are you twelve or something? Apple is being investigated right now for possibly having a monopoly on portable digital music players. Defining that market is significantly more difficult and hinges on if purchasers consider media capable cell phones when making purchases.
Actually, I prefer rational thought to blindly regurgitating politically motivated laws and their interpretation by stupid people.
No, you seem to prefer making unsupported assertions and randomly redefining terms instead of educating yourself on what the standard and legally defined terms you're misusing are. You have an opinion and you try to redefine things in such a way that you could be right. It's sad and pointless.
See if you can follow. I've said all this below and it's essentially unassailable logic if you argue using reason instead of modern interpretations of antitrust law. First, the concept of a monopoly applied to intellectual property is silly. Monopoly law is intended to protect us, society, from the single-supplier issue of a limited physical resource.
Since the copyright laws that establish copyright in the US use the term "monopoly" describing what they are granting... you fail before you've begun. The rest of your comments show you clearly don't understand antitrust law and its purpose in maintaining the benefits of competition. Please go read an economics textbook so you have a clue before trying to debate a topic.
Isn't Opera bundled with OSX?
No.
That's kind of ironic, I think.
This is Slashdot. Go watch Futurama again so you know what 'irony' is.
But I don't see how either of these "bundling" practices is a problem.
Okay, you don't understand antitrust law or the economics behind it. Why not go read up on it?
No one charges any money for a browser these days anyway, so who cares?
Everyone who makes a browser or develops for the Web or uses the Web and would like one company to no longer have the power to prevent new technologies from being implemented.
If you don't like the one your OS comes with, download another one!
Once you learn what the law is about and why this is an abuse of it, you'll realize that has little to do with this case at all.