true, but we are not arrested for wearing cloths[sic] those people don't agree with.
Hahahahaha! Sometimes the truth is so accepted people don't even see it. Put on just a cock ring and go walking down the street. I bet you get arrested. Why is that? Does your near-nakedness harm anyone? Nope, it just violates religious taboos... the same one as the muslims have in fact, just enforced at a different level. The pot just called the kettle black, indeed.
Nor are we stoned to death or beheaded for not beliving the religion they push.
People are stoned to death, castrated, beaten, shot, blown up, stabbed, etc. for not obeying christian beliefs in the US. Try being a homosexual in Kentucky, or a hindi in rural Mississippi.
Now I'm not saying religious persecution is as bad in the US as it is in some predominantly Muslim countries, but it certainly has been in the past and in many primarily muslim countries it was much less in the past. This sort of thing fluctuates with cultural changes and world events. If the southeastern US had just been bombed to hell and back, then conquered by a predominantly Muslim army, you'd see a drastic increase in nationalism and christian hate crimes here.
They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.
Take a look at this page that shows some of the devices christian officials used to burn and rip the penises off of people they suspected might not be christians. Aside from the inquisition, the members of the christian religion have been motivated by their religious beliefs to commit innumerable atrocities, from the crusades to the guy who shot up a gay bar last week.
I seriously doubt christians in small town america would behave any better if positions were reversed, and by positions I don't mean they were shown blasphemous pictures. I mean if their neighboring countries who happen to be mostly the same religion had just been invaded by foreigners who scorn their religion and seem intent on controlling the area. If they were under real threat of conquest, facing forces greater both in number and technology, and they had just taken into their homes refugees fleeing the bombings and death. If they had just lost family and friends and if the blasphemous pictures mirrored the excuses for invading the neighboring country, i.e Jesus eating a dead baby, after some press had read their government should be overthrown because it is made up of Christains who encourage baby eating.
Given those circumstances, how do you think americans would react down at the Iranian embassy? Would there be christian ministers putting themselves between the rock throwing hicks and the foreign embassy, as muslim clerics did? I like to think so. Would american officials try to pacify the people or would they capitalize on it and try to ride the outrage to more power? Probably some of both, just like in the muslim nations.
The problem with comparisons like yours are that they generally only account for one action, not the fear and anger and state of mind of the people as the result of what has been happening in the middle east; largely what the US has been doing in the middle east.
What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism.
I read no such implication in the parent post. Rather, only that there is a difference in the way it is received.
Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem.
No, it isn't. In rhetoric it might be, but this is not the arguments of two individuals, rather it is judging the credibility of information sources. In the former only the argument matters, but in the latter, given that we are not omniscient and do not have infinite time to hunt down the truth or falsehood of everything we read, it is a very valid criteria.
It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.
This is the logical fallacy, "argument by association." The aforementioned argument says one thing, from which you assume the person making the argument holds a whole series of additional beliefs since all people to which you apply the label "leftist idealist" all hold identical beliefs... and since they all hold those beliefs, some of which you disagree with, you'll assume all their arguments are incorrect. You have heard the phrase "ad hominem," great. Now please go read a book on critical thinking and/or logical discourse that explains it and the basic precepts of logic, before you try to attack others on that basis. It can go a long way towards understanding what is and is not valid in conflicting assertions and in finding the facts and making logical decisions.
I don't know of any cases where the CIA broke up a cell of marijuana cultivators.
Not the CIA, the FBI. Take a look at the history of the PATRIOT act being invoked to see how many times it has been used to "fight terrorism" versus how many times it has been used to avoid due process and constitutional rights for suspected drug dealers/users. Take a look at how many times it has been used to shut down and harass legitimate publishers whose publications conflict with the morals of the religion held by certain Justice department officials.
To say that the news of wiretapping suspected terrorists is somehow tied to politically motivated wiretaps has no supporting evidence and you can hardly make a connection between them at all.
But that's the point. This isn't wiretapping "suspected terrorists." This is wiretapping everyone, and then looking through the info gathered, supposedly to see if people are terrorists and with all oversight removed. Will this data which has been gathered be misused because their is no oversight? It has been every time we're aware of this same situation happening in the past.
I suspect that the politically motivated wiretaps (taking your assertion for granted) could have been done by a schmuck private investigator with a hi-tech bugging device.
Nope. You see then the officials actually have to pay money and they are subject to oversight, due to campaign financing laws. Also, they have to do it for everyone in the hopes of finding data on some, which is expensive, involves many people, and likely to become publicly known. This, however, gathers info on all of them already and is concealed from the the public and from oversight. There is no expense and very little risk.
Now if you're assuming that the president of the united states is wiretapping his political opponents, then you've been watching too much 24
Do you really think that is so farfetched? This administration has more shamelessly used public funds and resources to promote their own reelection campaign than any in history. Three times now in US history (that I know of) presidents have been caught spying on their political rivals during campaigns. All three cases were presidents that had a history of invasive, unconstitutional domestic surveillance, which was stopped after they were caught. What makes you think history is not repeating itself, your faith in the basic decency of politicians? That is why we have judicial oversight of the executive branch, because we should not have to trust that they won't break the law secretly.
If you finished reading that paragraph you'd read, "PDF is also an open standard in the sense that anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems."
It is an ISO certified standard with both a reference implementation and multiple open and closed source implementations. If you can show any way in which it is not open or a standard, do tell.
It's[sic] pretty open (especially in Microsoft terms)
So instead of implementing an open standard already adopted by users everywhere, already used for archival purposes, and already implemented by dozens of vendors, MS decided to make up their own format that is "pretty open" whatever that means. Gee I'm thrilled. And this is, of course, bundled with their monopoly OS, further breaking anti-trust laws while insuring that Adobe will lose market share, regardless of which format is superior. Great.
After dozens of "pretty open" things to come out of Microsoft, you'll have to forgive me for being just a teensy bit skeptical that this will have all of the advantages of a truly open standard. Are there any patents involved? Is it ISO approved? Can it be implemented by GPL programs without reverse engineering? Is each version free in perpetuity or can MS cancel their license, when they come out with a newer version breaking archival uses for other implementations?
We've seen all of these hidden caveats with their new Word document format and I have little doubt they are up to the same old tricks. Fool me once... shame on you. Fool me consistently for decades... well, you can't fool me that often. Leave it to MS to rip-off a feature from OS X and at the same time manage to do it in such a way that both breaks the law and introduces a new anti-feature way to lock people in.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an old saying and is the way a lot of the world seems to think. Sadly it is also 100% wrong.
Here's another saying, "There is no black or white, only shades of gray."
You build a false dichotomy of "right-wing" and "left-wing" assigning motivations and beliefs with broad, inaccurate strokes. You try to make it sound as if freedom of religion and freedom to make individual life choices are mutually exclusive. It is possible, you know, to support everyone's right to choose any religion they want and at the same time support the right for people to choose to screw people of the same sex if the feel like it. Both are wholly consistent with the view that individuals should make choices about their own life, for themselves.
...some muslims might just be right wingers...
There is no such thing as a "right-winger." I imagine most devout muslims hold beliefs I disagree with. I take issue with several fundamental themes advocated by the religion, while I appreciate and agree with yet others. So what? If someone has beliefs I disagree with, should I fight with them over it? Why should I care what they believe so long as they don't try to force that belief upon me, and if they do is it the fault of the religion? No, it is the fault of the individual.
Hatred because of someone's religion is very bad, but so is loving someone because of his religion.
Who here ever proposed that muslims are all blameless and perfect because they are muslims? I've never seen it.
Judge a person on his political believes[sic].
Judge a person based upon their actions.
You need to stop buying into all these imaginary classifications and start looking at what individuals think and do. I know it is a lot harder to judge people as individuals, but anything else is called, "prejudice."
The countries that have large muslim populations do not like the west.
This is true.
Sugar coating news articles and censoring stories on news sites is not going to make the fact go away.
This is also true.
I think part of the issue with these countries is that they are poor, and poverty ridden.
This is both true and misleading. You're operating under the assumption that these countries' dislike of the the West is unjustified, when in fact it is very justified. If you want to know why many people in Muslim dominated cultures dislike the US, ask them how many people they know are dead or maimed because of bombs and bullets, supplied by the US or fired directly by US citizens.
If Iraq took it upon themselves to invade the US and free us from the illegal ruler-ship of George Bush, while at the same time making radical changes to our laws, placing on of their spies in charge of our interim government, selling all our natural resources and manufacturing facilitates to foreigners, looting our national treasury and taking out huge debts on our behalf, ridiculing our mainstream religions, and killing huge numbers of our people by bombing and occupying our cities, etc.; well I might develop a bit of a dislike for them.
This generates a sort of hopelessness and despair and this soon turns to anger and irrational decisions.
The US has brought more poverty to the region and at the same time has done much worse things that provoke a very rational dislike for us. And this does not apply only to muslim dominated countries. The US is more feared and disliked by the world in general now than at any time in our history. Many very wealthy countries surveyed strongly disapprove of and dislike the US for what it is doing.
Some of the things I would suggest would be education.
Or maybe we could stop killing them? Maybe that would help the situation a little?
The cultural divide is huge here, and I think if we get rid of the poverty things would fix themselves over time.
Differing cultures co-exist all the time. The trick is that neither must try to impose itself on the other. Look at things from the perspective of someone there. Decades ago a bunch of foreigners with a different religion came and took over large parts of the land, they kicked a lot of people out of one area, called it a country and moved in a different set of foreigners with another religion. Since that time, these two sets of foreigners have been allied, keeping the descendants of those either in exile or without full rights as citizens. Over years of fighting, obviously a lot of hatred and religious-based prejudice would be created.
To make matters worse, the same two groups of foreigners with this other religion are the same ones that centuries ago invaded all these lands and tried to kill or forcibly convert everyone to their religion.
To make matter worse yet, this same group of foreigners with a different religion seems to be funding and supplying weapons to numerous political radicals who wish to create and maintain dictatorships in the area, and who subsequently commit horrible atrocities.
To top it all off, they invade the most powerful country in the area to overthrow one of the dictators they set up, but who no longer is toeing the line, killing thousands, including women and children. Next they pillage for all the valuables, build dozens of huge, permanent, military bases, and start threatening other countries in the area who are insisting the US live up to the treaties it signed (you know like the one we signed that said Iran can build and operate a nuclear plant).
Problem is, Iran, Saudi Arabi for example are corrupt, and are not interested in democracy, empowering people in general because the chaos in those countries allows them to make tons of cash.
The problem is the US is corrupt and is not interested in democracy, only power and making tons of cash. Or did you think Hal
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly.
This is a very important issue, and I agree with you. Recently a bunch of protesters from a nutjob religious organization started protesting near my home. They carried pictures that were both disgusting and very, very misleading. In response, I made up some signs and some friends and I went out and made them look like idiots with a counter protest. So many people enjoyed our humorous criticism of them, that counter-protesters began to appear regularly. Unfortunately, some of them did not understand the principals of free speech and went so far as to try to obscure the signs held by the religious wackos, using sheets and blankets. I've spoken to a few of them, but most don't seem to understand or care about the free speech issue at all.
I don't agree with any of the articles linked, but they should definately be allowed to say it.
Google removing these links is not a free speech issue. They are still free to publish anything they want. Google is not the government nor is it a monopoly enforced by the government. Google removing these links is no more a free speech issue than my painting over words printed on my house.
...no one's taking away their rights in this case. But keep this in mind for the discussion.
If the founding fathers had the eventual failure of the country in their mind when they were designing it it wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it has.
Read a history book already. Jefferson estimated the government would become so corrupt it would need to be overthrown several times in each person's lifetime. They built the entire system of checks and balances to make sure members of the government were motivated to stop power grabs by one another, which slowed the process down and allowed the US government to last as long as it has.
You're only seeing one side of this multi-sided scale.
Mixed metaphors are as confusing as something something something...
You also have to balance in national security. At what point do you throw your ideals out the window to save your own ass.
You don't. Liberty or death and all that jazz. The war on "foo" is just marketing crap. The "terrorist" threat is laughable. More people die every year drowning in buckets than killed by "terrorists" and very few of the actions taken on behalf of the US to stop terrorism have any effect upon it. What they do manage, however, is to keep people afraid, consolidate power into fewer hands, make a few people very rich, and make it less likely than ever that the democratic process can work.
Every time the federal government has overstepped its bound and started surveillance of citizens, it has been horribly abused. Take a look at the history of the US. All those laws they loudly told us would stop terrorists aren't being used to do that at all. They are being used to persecute law-abiding Americans and try to put even more of our population in prisons for non-violent offenses.
The conversations started out with breaking the law and being fearful that you'll be caught by intrusive wire taps. That's the law we're talking about buddy.
Damn straight. Now you tell me with a straight face why this time these intrusive wiretaps won't be used to gather information on political opponents, like they have been every other time the government was caught using illegal wiretaps? Do tell. They are almost certainly being used for that right now. Congressman X is talking to anonymous person Y a lot. Gee that is at a VD clinic. This will kill him in the polls, good job fellas.
Anyone cowardly enough to let the government take their rights from them, under the assumption that they, personally will be ignored is both a fool and a coward.
It is not cheaper but it is legal. allofmp3.com is NOT legal, despite what many people say.
Also, Pi is exactly equal to three, if you redefine the word three to mean something else.
allofmp3.com violates the spirit of the law, if not the exact wording.
And this is different than pretty much all of the copyright laws passed since the 40's in the US how?
It is like saying that identity theft was legal because when it first started happening, there was no specific law against it.
Identity theft was legal before they passed laws against it. Smoking pot was illegal before they passed laws against it. Drinking alcohol was legal before they passed laws against it, and is legal again after they repealed those laws. What is your point?
no[sic] be sure to tell me how legal it is and how paying money to the russian mob is better then downloading via P2P.
So far I have your unsubstantiated opinion that the Russian mob has anything to do with it. I've seen this same opinion spouted by others. Do you have any evidence of this or do you just like slandering people with assertions that they are a criminal?
If you are going to steal music, just fucking steal it and get off your high horse.
What if we don't want to steal anything, but just download well encoded copies of music for a reasonable fee?
I personally hove[sic] no problem gettign[sic] ALL of my music from P2P...
Well some of us don't like wasting our time hunting through poorly encoded, unreliable copies of crap on P2P and we like the fact that we are legally in the clear and we like the fact that the money goes at least somewhat to the artists, rather than a certain cartel. Just because you're a cheapskate doesn't mean everyone is, at least no to the same degree.
Am I to understand that unless you're breaking the law life is boring and uninteresting to you?
Who said anything about breaking the law? Not that it matters, because you are breaking the law. I'm not sure which one, but certainly a number of them you don't know about. Ever said a curse word on the phone? No, the problem is not about breaking the law, but government intrusion into our privacy as a way to expand their power. "And why don't we want them to expand their power?" you might ask. I'll tell you. Because the US government, and all governments, are a threat to the freedom of the people and as such needs to be constantly watched and restricted. The only reason the US government has lasted as long as it has is because it was restricted and bound from the beginning, so it has taken a long time to become oppressive and run by the power hungry and corrupt. As such the people have not had to overthrow it and set up a new one, yet.
Eventually, we will. It is inevitable as all the founding fathers knew.
Just out of curiosity, what applications are we talking about here?
Here is a list someone compiled. Personally, I gave up running as a non-admin both for myself and for the other users in my working group because we were waiting for IT to respond at least once a week, because something was broken or we needed to install or update something. Further, Windows XP seems to become unstable more often in regular user mode. The particular applications that stopped us ranged from Adobe productivity apps to some functions of MS word (using macros). Worse, for some reason regular users can't even install applications in their own, restricted space, and running a VM, just seemed absurd.
yet it seems that the indigenous MS stuff (Office, IE, Outlook) works just fine, along with the third party CAD/CAM/CAE packages.
I think AutoCAD is one of the culprits, running only in admin accounts. As for MS built apps, I know office has issues with some functions, using network printers and shared printers usually won't work, and media player won't run at all. I admittedly haven't tried since service pack 2, but a lot of people have and the problem is not fixed.
Like?...but since you don't list them, we won't know.
I did describe them. They require network access to function, which is not possible for mobiles right now. Since they are specialized they are less likely to benefit from innovation brought on by home user software development.
huh? a network is a prerequisite for any corporarate network, thin or fat client - this makes no sense (strawman anyone?)
I take it your company does not have anyone work offline with a mobile... ever? You're completely failing to understand my main point. When corporate workstations and home computers are the same OS/platform, both benefit from improvements to the other. When they are different, they don't. Thin clients are not practical for most home users. Thus, moving to a thin-client architecture for your corporation means losing a lot of those improvements over time.
I'm not even going to address the rest of your post. Go back, re-read and actually comprehend my points. Then, if you want to discuss it, actually address them, rather than implementation details of a thin client system for a specific use.
NO!!! Absolutely not!!! Many illegal orders, on their face, may appear reasonable. No member of the armed forces (excepting the various JAG's and General Staff Officers) are expected to be constitutional scholars.
Every person can and should reasonably be expected to understand any oath they take. They swore to uphold the constitution. How many members of the armed forced don't know that the constitution grants a provision preventing congress from passing laws restricting, "the right to keep and bear arms?" A quarter of them have it on their trucks as a bumper sticker. It does not take a "constitutional scholar" to understand that it has been violated and implications that it does are just lame excuses.
Sorry, neither "just following orders" nor "I'm too stupid" excuse the action or lack thereof of a person who has sworn an oath when joining the military. The truth is, most don't take the oath that seriously or are not willing to die for their beliefs. And that is just fine. I'm not saying I'd do any differently in the same circumstances, but it still makes them oath breakers.
We aren't really going back to a central processing model. We are trying to regain some of the management and security benefits the old central processing model had by default and that general purpose networked personal computers can only acquire with a lot of hard work.
This is true, but only to a point. It is not just that the individual configuration model is inherently insecure, it is that the market has not been able to demand more security in the default configuration and with easier, more understandable security features. Mostly, this is because the industry is monopolized and free market forces are unable to bring about the wanted change.
Frankly, for what most people use their PCs for at work, and given the ubiquitous network, it would be far cheaper for many enterprises to run thin client diskless workstations and actually return to a central processing model, if we hadn't already bought so heavily into the current model.
This could work, but it is an inefficient model. Work PCs and Home PCs both benefit from sharing the development costs between them. Many features now available to home users would not be if businesses had not demanded them and vice-versus. Maybe a thin client working environment can take over for corporate users, and it does have some benefits, but don't underestimate the inherent drawbacks. And without an ever-present network, the thin client model does not work for everyone. Mobile devices need to function in the absence of the network and are critical to many everyday uses. Until we have fast networking available everywhere, the thin client model will be limited to a small subset of the market.
That sort of contradicts itself. Wheither MS runs as admin or not has absolutly nothing to do with third party developers requireing their software to do so?
Actually, it does. MS makes userland software as well. Major applications they develop do not run, or run properly (or at all) as a regular user. Now developers may consider making their software work for normal users, but if MS does not, why should they bother? Obviously no one is going to run as a non-admin anyway, since the built-in software doesn't work. MS sets the standard for their own OS. They also write the most common dev tools for their OS, which determines how easy it is to make applications work for non-admin users. If it takes extra work due to the APIs and dev tools, enough extra work that MS does not bother, then it will be enough extra work for third-party developers as well.
And as you say the legacy is going to be a big hold up anyway, so I doubt anyone will listen to MS telling people to not use old apps - especially if some of them are proprietary apps with no upgrade solutions.
MS bought Connectix. With half a clue, Vista would run a VM environment for all apps, both old and new and this would not be an issue at all. The rest of the industry is already moving that way.
In other words, live a good clean life, ignore outside influences, pay your taxes on time and you will have little to worry about; Like me:)
In other words, be completely boring, never upset the status quo, never fail to kow-tow to any government officials you meet (just in case) and be insignificant enough to escape notice and you're fine. Yeah, great plan. You'd do just fine as a serf in medieval europe too.
Who cares if the lord can fuck you in the ass whenever they want, so long as you are ugly and unimportant they won't bother.
PS Copyright is about copies. Technically, that means you can talk all you want (and copyright only ecists from a form that is fixed).
This is not so at all. You can copyright a speech, song lyrics, poems, etc. and it is illegal for someone to speak that copyrighted work without your permission, unless it falls under certain "fair use" criteria. It applies equally to speech and written words. It is illegal, for example, to play cover songs in public without reimbursing the copyright holder. It is technically illegal to just sing the song, "happy birthday" although if you are not doing so for commercial gain, in public you will most likely never be taken to court for it.
You can release info about minors. School exam results do this all the time. Privacy laws are based on contractual agreements not to abuse the private relationship - if you don't keep my info secret, you aint gettin no more.
There exist both criminal and civil laws to prevent the release of certain data. For example, it is a criminal offense to republish medical records, regardless of whether or not the individual whose records they are has any sort of business relationship with you (See HIPA).
Trade marks - don't lie by confusing someone into thinking you're someone you're not.
Is that a statement or a question? Trademark law is intended to prevent deception, but in practice also prevents honest conflict or names. For example, a man named John Smith might start a company called Smith Engineering, become established and then be prevented from using that name on paperwork he sends to the US, because it conflicts with a registered copyright there. He is not being dishonest or deceptive, but his free speech has been restricted.
Campaign ads - ?
Marketing works. Really, that is why people spend so much money on it. As a result, the US has adopted campaign funding and advertising laws. They also require equal consideration for ads from both major parties (but not third parties). This insures no one party can monopolize the media to win an election. As a result, it is quite likely that while the day before an election the republican party may want to buy every other ad slot and express a perfectly true message (like "vote bush") it is likely they are not legally allowed to do so.
There exist plenty of examples of true speech that is restricted, in addition to those I listed.
What is your point? You neither contradict any of the points I made, nor address the topic directly. Yes, there is malware for Linux and for OS X. That does not make the statement that all OS's should be running anti-virus software a truism. For the last four years, if you've been using OS X, you have been safer not having anti-virus software installed.
Even if you cite a source, it can still be plagarism. You must both cite the source from which the idea comes from AND quote any words the original source used. Anything less constitutes plagarism.
I disagree. For example, were I too explain to someone that things fall, because of gravity, where all matter is attracted to all other matter, am I plagiarizing? No, I'm expressing my opinion. Even though Newton may have come up with this idea long ago, it is not plagiarism to explain the same idea without quoting him. Plagiarism is strictly when I steal his words and claim them as my own.
This is wrong because, EVEN THOUGH I'm citing the article, I'm still stealing their words. If they're using a specific wording and I use it, even if I cite the article, I MUST use quotes.
Don't be too hung up on quotes. It is intent that matters, not implementation. If I intentionally mislead someone into thinking the words are mine, I've committed plagiarism, otherwise; I've just poorly punctuated or styled my text. You can use a format, color, italics, etc to indicate text from another source. For example, look at news.google.com. They don't format the text any differently than any other text you might read, but they clearly are not trying to pass the news from disparate sites off as their own, given the prominent attributions.
No OS should go without antivirus software. A lot of people are going to get caught with their pants down when some virus writer decides they want to write a nasty one for Linux. Security through obscurity isn't really security.
Well, to date the record says otherwise. More people on OS X have suffered because of tragically faulty anti-virus software from major vendors than from malware. Furthermore, most OS's that don't rhyme with "Kin-blows" have low enough density to make propagation slow unless very well targeted or multi-platform. They have fewer openings for attacks. They have a stronger security community to detect attacks quickly, and they have faster fixes for both vulnerabilities and exploits. Attackers, are motivated to hit big targets and most have a very narrow skill set based entirely upon Windows.
Most alternate OS users are better off with some general tools (application level firewalls or even MAC) that mitigate the problem and make the user aware in general, rather than traditional signature based anti-virus. Enough people have been burned by constantly running a anti-virus application with no signatures installed on it, that slows down their machine and damages files all by itself. Until there are some signatures, it is mostly pointless.
Now I'm not saying security measures are a bad idea, but most of the pro-anti-virus stuff and scary press stories you hear originate from companies trying to make a buck, not solve a real problem.
I have, but usually AT&T is not going ot have the "best path" to customers of UUNet, for example, except to an AT&T transit customer. Which qualifies as traffic that AT&T could be asked to intercept.
Actually, I don't think AT&T is required to have the ability to intercept transit traffic, only endpoint traffic, although I could be wrong. UUNet is, of course, an AT&T transit customer, as AT&T is of UUNet. All the big ISPs are peering for transit traffic.
I just want to be sure that people put the blame where it belongs.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Even if AT&T is obligated to comply with legal wiretap requests I don't think they are required to give NSA personnel direct access and they certainly should be telling their customers about the fact that any communication is subject to being intercepted by the government. I understand their choices, as they seem like the right move from a "making money" perspective. That does not make them blameless.
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true, but we are not arrested for wearing cloths[sic] those people don't agree with.
Hahahahaha! Sometimes the truth is so accepted people don't even see it. Put on just a cock ring and go walking down the street. I bet you get arrested. Why is that? Does your near-nakedness harm anyone? Nope, it just violates religious taboos... the same one as the muslims have in fact, just enforced at a different level. The pot just called the kettle black, indeed.
Nor are we stoned to death or beheaded for not beliving the religion they push.
People are stoned to death, castrated, beaten, shot, blown up, stabbed, etc. for not obeying christian beliefs in the US. Try being a homosexual in Kentucky, or a hindi in rural Mississippi.
Now I'm not saying religious persecution is as bad in the US as it is in some predominantly Muslim countries, but it certainly has been in the past and in many primarily muslim countries it was much less in the past. This sort of thing fluctuates with cultural changes and world events. If the southeastern US had just been bombed to hell and back, then conquered by a predominantly Muslim army, you'd see a drastic increase in nationalism and christian hate crimes here.
They do a lot worse all the time. I'd like you to list one reaction even remotely similar to the staged protests over the Mohammed photos in the Jyllandsposten. Just one.
Take a look at this page that shows some of the devices christian officials used to burn and rip the penises off of people they suspected might not be christians. Aside from the inquisition, the members of the christian religion have been motivated by their religious beliefs to commit innumerable atrocities, from the crusades to the guy who shot up a gay bar last week.
I seriously doubt christians in small town america would behave any better if positions were reversed, and by positions I don't mean they were shown blasphemous pictures. I mean if their neighboring countries who happen to be mostly the same religion had just been invaded by foreigners who scorn their religion and seem intent on controlling the area. If they were under real threat of conquest, facing forces greater both in number and technology, and they had just taken into their homes refugees fleeing the bombings and death. If they had just lost family and friends and if the blasphemous pictures mirrored the excuses for invading the neighboring country, i.e Jesus eating a dead baby, after some press had read their government should be overthrown because it is made up of Christains who encourage baby eating.
Given those circumstances, how do you think americans would react down at the Iranian embassy? Would there be christian ministers putting themselves between the rock throwing hicks and the foreign embassy, as muslim clerics did? I like to think so. Would american officials try to pacify the people or would they capitalize on it and try to ride the outrage to more power? Probably some of both, just like in the muslim nations.
The problem with comparisons like yours are that they generally only account for one action, not the fear and anger and state of mind of the people as the result of what has been happening in the middle east; largely what the US has been doing in the middle east.
What you imply is that if a culture suppresses criticism from itself, it should be immune from all criticism.
I read no such implication in the parent post. Rather, only that there is a difference in the way it is received.
Further, you imply that the validity of a critique depends not on what it says but on who says it. That's ad-hominem.
No, it isn't. In rhetoric it might be, but this is not the arguments of two individuals, rather it is judging the credibility of information sources. In the former only the argument matters, but in the latter, given that we are not omniscient and do not have infinite time to hunt down the truth or falsehood of everything we read, it is a very valid criteria.
It's standard leftist ideology, and it's amazing that any person can espouse it and claim to be educated; the cognitive dissonance required to hold it should break any functioning mind.
This is the logical fallacy, "argument by association." The aforementioned argument says one thing, from which you assume the person making the argument holds a whole series of additional beliefs since all people to which you apply the label "leftist idealist" all hold identical beliefs... and since they all hold those beliefs, some of which you disagree with, you'll assume all their arguments are incorrect. You have heard the phrase "ad hominem," great. Now please go read a book on critical thinking and/or logical discourse that explains it and the basic precepts of logic, before you try to attack others on that basis. It can go a long way towards understanding what is and is not valid in conflicting assertions and in finding the facts and making logical decisions.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers ...
I don't know of any cases where the CIA broke up a cell of marijuana cultivators.
Not the CIA, the FBI. Take a look at the history of the PATRIOT act being invoked to see how many times it has been used to "fight terrorism" versus how many times it has been used to avoid due process and constitutional rights for suspected drug dealers/users. Take a look at how many times it has been used to shut down and harass legitimate publishers whose publications conflict with the morals of the religion held by certain Justice department officials.
To say that the news of wiretapping suspected terrorists is somehow tied to politically motivated wiretaps has no supporting evidence and you can hardly make a connection between them at all.
But that's the point. This isn't wiretapping "suspected terrorists." This is wiretapping everyone, and then looking through the info gathered, supposedly to see if people are terrorists and with all oversight removed. Will this data which has been gathered be misused because their is no oversight? It has been every time we're aware of this same situation happening in the past.
I suspect that the politically motivated wiretaps (taking your assertion for granted) could have been done by a schmuck private investigator with a hi-tech bugging device.
Nope. You see then the officials actually have to pay money and they are subject to oversight, due to campaign financing laws. Also, they have to do it for everyone in the hopes of finding data on some, which is expensive, involves many people, and likely to become publicly known. This, however, gathers info on all of them already and is concealed from the the public and from oversight. There is no expense and very little risk.
Now if you're assuming that the president of the united states is wiretapping his political opponents, then you've been watching too much 24
Do you really think that is so farfetched? This administration has more shamelessly used public funds and resources to promote their own reelection campaign than any in history. Three times now in US history (that I know of) presidents have been caught spying on their political rivals during campaigns. All three cases were presidents that had a history of invasive, unconstitutional domestic surveillance, which was stopped after they were caught. What makes you think history is not repeating itself, your faith in the basic decency of politicians? That is why we have judicial oversight of the executive branch, because we should not have to trust that they won't break the law secretly.
Hmm, I have no idea why my brain flagged that one. I must need more coffee.
If you finished reading that paragraph you'd read, "PDF is also an open standard in the sense that anyone may create applications that read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems."
It is an ISO certified standard with both a reference implementation and multiple open and closed source implementations. If you can show any way in which it is not open or a standard, do tell.
It's[sic] pretty open (especially in Microsoft terms)
So instead of implementing an open standard already adopted by users everywhere, already used for archival purposes, and already implemented by dozens of vendors, MS decided to make up their own format that is "pretty open" whatever that means. Gee I'm thrilled. And this is, of course, bundled with their monopoly OS, further breaking anti-trust laws while insuring that Adobe will lose market share, regardless of which format is superior. Great.
After dozens of "pretty open" things to come out of Microsoft, you'll have to forgive me for being just a teensy bit skeptical that this will have all of the advantages of a truly open standard. Are there any patents involved? Is it ISO approved? Can it be implemented by GPL programs without reverse engineering? Is each version free in perpetuity or can MS cancel their license, when they come out with a newer version breaking archival uses for other implementations?
We've seen all of these hidden caveats with their new Word document format and I have little doubt they are up to the same old tricks. Fool me once... shame on you. Fool me consistently for decades... well, you can't fool me that often. Leave it to MS to rip-off a feature from OS X and at the same time manage to do it in such a way that both breaks the law and introduces a new anti-feature way to lock people in.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is an old saying and is the way a lot of the world seems to think. Sadly it is also 100% wrong.
Here's another saying, "There is no black or white, only shades of gray."
You build a false dichotomy of "right-wing" and "left-wing" assigning motivations and beliefs with broad, inaccurate strokes. You try to make it sound as if freedom of religion and freedom to make individual life choices are mutually exclusive. It is possible, you know, to support everyone's right to choose any religion they want and at the same time support the right for people to choose to screw people of the same sex if the feel like it. Both are wholly consistent with the view that individuals should make choices about their own life, for themselves.
There is no such thing as a "right-winger." I imagine most devout muslims hold beliefs I disagree with. I take issue with several fundamental themes advocated by the religion, while I appreciate and agree with yet others. So what? If someone has beliefs I disagree with, should I fight with them over it? Why should I care what they believe so long as they don't try to force that belief upon me, and if they do is it the fault of the religion? No, it is the fault of the individual.
Hatred because of someone's religion is very bad, but so is loving someone because of his religion.
Who here ever proposed that muslims are all blameless and perfect because they are muslims? I've never seen it.
Judge a person on his political believes[sic].
Judge a person based upon their actions.
You need to stop buying into all these imaginary classifications and start looking at what individuals think and do. I know it is a lot harder to judge people as individuals, but anything else is called, "prejudice."
The countries that have large muslim populations do not like the west.
This is true.
Sugar coating news articles and censoring stories on news sites is not going to make the fact go away.
This is also true.
I think part of the issue with these countries is that they are poor, and poverty ridden.
This is both true and misleading. You're operating under the assumption that these countries' dislike of the the West is unjustified, when in fact it is very justified. If you want to know why many people in Muslim dominated cultures dislike the US, ask them how many people they know are dead or maimed because of bombs and bullets, supplied by the US or fired directly by US citizens.
If Iraq took it upon themselves to invade the US and free us from the illegal ruler-ship of George Bush, while at the same time making radical changes to our laws, placing on of their spies in charge of our interim government, selling all our natural resources and manufacturing facilitates to foreigners, looting our national treasury and taking out huge debts on our behalf, ridiculing our mainstream religions, and killing huge numbers of our people by bombing and occupying our cities, etc.; well I might develop a bit of a dislike for them.
This generates a sort of hopelessness and despair and this soon turns to anger and irrational decisions.
The US has brought more poverty to the region and at the same time has done much worse things that provoke a very rational dislike for us. And this does not apply only to muslim dominated countries. The US is more feared and disliked by the world in general now than at any time in our history. Many very wealthy countries surveyed strongly disapprove of and dislike the US for what it is doing.
Some of the things I would suggest would be education.
Or maybe we could stop killing them? Maybe that would help the situation a little?
The cultural divide is huge here, and I think if we get rid of the poverty things would fix themselves over time.
Differing cultures co-exist all the time. The trick is that neither must try to impose itself on the other. Look at things from the perspective of someone there. Decades ago a bunch of foreigners with a different religion came and took over large parts of the land, they kicked a lot of people out of one area, called it a country and moved in a different set of foreigners with another religion. Since that time, these two sets of foreigners have been allied, keeping the descendants of those either in exile or without full rights as citizens. Over years of fighting, obviously a lot of hatred and religious-based prejudice would be created.
To make matters worse, the same two groups of foreigners with this other religion are the same ones that centuries ago invaded all these lands and tried to kill or forcibly convert everyone to their religion.
To make matter worse yet, this same group of foreigners with a different religion seems to be funding and supplying weapons to numerous political radicals who wish to create and maintain dictatorships in the area, and who subsequently commit horrible atrocities.
To top it all off, they invade the most powerful country in the area to overthrow one of the dictators they set up, but who no longer is toeing the line, killing thousands, including women and children. Next they pillage for all the valuables, build dozens of huge, permanent, military bases, and start threatening other countries in the area who are insisting the US live up to the treaties it signed (you know like the one we signed that said Iran can build and operate a nuclear plant).
Problem is, Iran, Saudi Arabi for example are corrupt, and are not interested in democracy, empowering people in general because the chaos in those countries allows them to make tons of cash.
The problem is the US is corrupt and is not interested in democracy, only power and making tons of cash. Or did you think Hal
Let us all remember that Freedom of Speech is a two way street. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to say it publicly.
This is a very important issue, and I agree with you. Recently a bunch of protesters from a nutjob religious organization started protesting near my home. They carried pictures that were both disgusting and very, very misleading. In response, I made up some signs and some friends and I went out and made them look like idiots with a counter protest. So many people enjoyed our humorous criticism of them, that counter-protesters began to appear regularly. Unfortunately, some of them did not understand the principals of free speech and went so far as to try to obscure the signs held by the religious wackos, using sheets and blankets. I've spoken to a few of them, but most don't seem to understand or care about the free speech issue at all.
I don't agree with any of the articles linked, but they should definately be allowed to say it.
Google removing these links is not a free speech issue. They are still free to publish anything they want. Google is not the government nor is it a monopoly enforced by the government. Google removing these links is no more a free speech issue than my painting over words printed on my house.
Agreed.
If the founding fathers had the eventual failure of the country in their mind when they were designing it it wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as it has.
Read a history book already. Jefferson estimated the government would become so corrupt it would need to be overthrown several times in each person's lifetime. They built the entire system of checks and balances to make sure members of the government were motivated to stop power grabs by one another, which slowed the process down and allowed the US government to last as long as it has.
You're only seeing one side of this multi-sided scale.
Mixed metaphors are as confusing as something something something...
You also have to balance in national security. At what point do you throw your ideals out the window to save your own ass.
You don't. Liberty or death and all that jazz. The war on "foo" is just marketing crap. The "terrorist" threat is laughable. More people die every year drowning in buckets than killed by "terrorists" and very few of the actions taken on behalf of the US to stop terrorism have any effect upon it. What they do manage, however, is to keep people afraid, consolidate power into fewer hands, make a few people very rich, and make it less likely than ever that the democratic process can work.
Every time the federal government has overstepped its bound and started surveillance of citizens, it has been horribly abused. Take a look at the history of the US. All those laws they loudly told us would stop terrorists aren't being used to do that at all. They are being used to persecute law-abiding Americans and try to put even more of our population in prisons for non-violent offenses.
The conversations started out with breaking the law and being fearful that you'll be caught by intrusive wire taps. That's the law we're talking about buddy.
Damn straight. Now you tell me with a straight face why this time these intrusive wiretaps won't be used to gather information on political opponents, like they have been every other time the government was caught using illegal wiretaps? Do tell. They are almost certainly being used for that right now. Congressman X is talking to anonymous person Y a lot. Gee that is at a VD clinic. This will kill him in the polls, good job fellas.
Anyone cowardly enough to let the government take their rights from them, under the assumption that they, personally will be ignored is both a fool and a coward.
It is not cheaper but it is legal. allofmp3.com is NOT legal, despite what many people say.
Also, Pi is exactly equal to three, if you redefine the word three to mean something else.
allofmp3.com violates the spirit of the law, if not the exact wording.
And this is different than pretty much all of the copyright laws passed since the 40's in the US how?
It is like saying that identity theft was legal because when it first started happening, there was no specific law against it.
Identity theft was legal before they passed laws against it. Smoking pot was illegal before they passed laws against it. Drinking alcohol was legal before they passed laws against it, and is legal again after they repealed those laws. What is your point?
no[sic] be sure to tell me how legal it is and how paying money to the russian mob is better then downloading via P2P.
So far I have your unsubstantiated opinion that the Russian mob has anything to do with it. I've seen this same opinion spouted by others. Do you have any evidence of this or do you just like slandering people with assertions that they are a criminal?
If you are going to steal music, just fucking steal it and get off your high horse.
What if we don't want to steal anything, but just download well encoded copies of music for a reasonable fee?
I personally hove[sic] no problem gettign[sic] ALL of my music from P2P...
Well some of us don't like wasting our time hunting through poorly encoded, unreliable copies of crap on P2P and we like the fact that we are legally in the clear and we like the fact that the money goes at least somewhat to the artists, rather than a certain cartel. Just because you're a cheapskate doesn't mean everyone is, at least no to the same degree.
Am I to understand that unless you're breaking the law life is boring and uninteresting to you?
Who said anything about breaking the law? Not that it matters, because you are breaking the law. I'm not sure which one, but certainly a number of them you don't know about. Ever said a curse word on the phone? No, the problem is not about breaking the law, but government intrusion into our privacy as a way to expand their power. "And why don't we want them to expand their power?" you might ask. I'll tell you. Because the US government, and all governments, are a threat to the freedom of the people and as such needs to be constantly watched and restricted. The only reason the US government has lasted as long as it has is because it was restricted and bound from the beginning, so it has taken a long time to become oppressive and run by the power hungry and corrupt. As such the people have not had to overthrow it and set up a new one, yet.
Eventually, we will. It is inevitable as all the founding fathers knew.
Just out of curiosity, what applications are we talking about here?
Here is a list someone compiled. Personally, I gave up running as a non-admin both for myself and for the other users in my working group because we were waiting for IT to respond at least once a week, because something was broken or we needed to install or update something. Further, Windows XP seems to become unstable more often in regular user mode. The particular applications that stopped us ranged from Adobe productivity apps to some functions of MS word (using macros). Worse, for some reason regular users can't even install applications in their own, restricted space, and running a VM, just seemed absurd.
yet it seems that the indigenous MS stuff (Office, IE, Outlook) works just fine, along with the third party CAD/CAM/CAE packages.
I think AutoCAD is one of the culprits, running only in admin accounts. As for MS built apps, I know office has issues with some functions, using network printers and shared printers usually won't work, and media player won't run at all. I admittedly haven't tried since service pack 2, but a lot of people have and the problem is not fixed.
Like? ...but since you don't list them, we won't know.
I did describe them. They require network access to function, which is not possible for mobiles right now. Since they are specialized they are less likely to benefit from innovation brought on by home user software development.
huh? a network is a prerequisite for any corporarate network, thin or fat client - this makes no sense (strawman anyone?)
I take it your company does not have anyone work offline with a mobile... ever? You're completely failing to understand my main point. When corporate workstations and home computers are the same OS/platform, both benefit from improvements to the other. When they are different, they don't. Thin clients are not practical for most home users. Thus, moving to a thin-client architecture for your corporation means losing a lot of those improvements over time.
I'm not even going to address the rest of your post. Go back, re-read and actually comprehend my points. Then, if you want to discuss it, actually address them, rather than implementation details of a thin client system for a specific use.
NO!!! Absolutely not!!! Many illegal orders, on their face, may appear reasonable. No member of the armed forces (excepting the various JAG's and General Staff Officers) are expected to be constitutional scholars.
Every person can and should reasonably be expected to understand any oath they take. They swore to uphold the constitution. How many members of the armed forced don't know that the constitution grants a provision preventing congress from passing laws restricting, "the right to keep and bear arms?" A quarter of them have it on their trucks as a bumper sticker. It does not take a "constitutional scholar" to understand that it has been violated and implications that it does are just lame excuses.
Sorry, neither "just following orders" nor "I'm too stupid" excuse the action or lack thereof of a person who has sworn an oath when joining the military. The truth is, most don't take the oath that seriously or are not willing to die for their beliefs. And that is just fine. I'm not saying I'd do any differently in the same circumstances, but it still makes them oath breakers.
We aren't really going back to a central processing model. We are trying to regain some of the management and security benefits the old central processing model had by default and that general purpose networked personal computers can only acquire with a lot of hard work.
This is true, but only to a point. It is not just that the individual configuration model is inherently insecure, it is that the market has not been able to demand more security in the default configuration and with easier, more understandable security features. Mostly, this is because the industry is monopolized and free market forces are unable to bring about the wanted change.
Frankly, for what most people use their PCs for at work, and given the ubiquitous network, it would be far cheaper for many enterprises to run thin client diskless workstations and actually return to a central processing model, if we hadn't already bought so heavily into the current model.
This could work, but it is an inefficient model. Work PCs and Home PCs both benefit from sharing the development costs between them. Many features now available to home users would not be if businesses had not demanded them and vice-versus. Maybe a thin client working environment can take over for corporate users, and it does have some benefits, but don't underestimate the inherent drawbacks. And without an ever-present network, the thin client model does not work for everyone. Mobile devices need to function in the absence of the network and are critical to many everyday uses. Until we have fast networking available everywhere, the thin client model will be limited to a small subset of the market.
That sort of contradicts itself. Wheither MS runs as admin or not has absolutly nothing to do with third party developers requireing their software to do so?
Actually, it does. MS makes userland software as well. Major applications they develop do not run, or run properly (or at all) as a regular user. Now developers may consider making their software work for normal users, but if MS does not, why should they bother? Obviously no one is going to run as a non-admin anyway, since the built-in software doesn't work. MS sets the standard for their own OS. They also write the most common dev tools for their OS, which determines how easy it is to make applications work for non-admin users. If it takes extra work due to the APIs and dev tools, enough extra work that MS does not bother, then it will be enough extra work for third-party developers as well.
And as you say the legacy is going to be a big hold up anyway, so I doubt anyone will listen to MS telling people to not use old apps - especially if some of them are proprietary apps with no upgrade solutions.
MS bought Connectix. With half a clue, Vista would run a VM environment for all apps, both old and new and this would not be an issue at all. The rest of the industry is already moving that way.
Thanks... and yes I am.
In other words, live a good clean life, ignore outside influences, pay your taxes on time and you will have little to worry about; Like me :)
In other words, be completely boring, never upset the status quo, never fail to kow-tow to any government officials you meet (just in case) and be insignificant enough to escape notice and you're fine. Yeah, great plan. You'd do just fine as a serf in medieval europe too.
Who cares if the lord can fuck you in the ass whenever they want, so long as you are ugly and unimportant they won't bother.
PS Copyright is about copies. Technically, that means you can talk all you want (and copyright only ecists from a form that is fixed).
This is not so at all. You can copyright a speech, song lyrics, poems, etc. and it is illegal for someone to speak that copyrighted work without your permission, unless it falls under certain "fair use" criteria. It applies equally to speech and written words. It is illegal, for example, to play cover songs in public without reimbursing the copyright holder. It is technically illegal to just sing the song, "happy birthday" although if you are not doing so for commercial gain, in public you will most likely never be taken to court for it.
You can release info about minors. School exam results do this all the time. Privacy laws are based on contractual agreements not to abuse the private relationship - if you don't keep my info secret, you aint gettin no more.
There exist both criminal and civil laws to prevent the release of certain data. For example, it is a criminal offense to republish medical records, regardless of whether or not the individual whose records they are has any sort of business relationship with you (See HIPA).
Trade marks - don't lie by confusing someone into thinking you're someone you're not.
Is that a statement or a question? Trademark law is intended to prevent deception, but in practice also prevents honest conflict or names. For example, a man named John Smith might start a company called Smith Engineering, become established and then be prevented from using that name on paperwork he sends to the US, because it conflicts with a registered copyright there. He is not being dishonest or deceptive, but his free speech has been restricted.
Campaign ads - ?
Marketing works. Really, that is why people spend so much money on it. As a result, the US has adopted campaign funding and advertising laws. They also require equal consideration for ads from both major parties (but not third parties). This insures no one party can monopolize the media to win an election. As a result, it is quite likely that while the day before an election the republican party may want to buy every other ad slot and express a perfectly true message (like "vote bush") it is likely they are not legally allowed to do so.
There exist plenty of examples of true speech that is restricted, in addition to those I listed.
What is your point? You neither contradict any of the points I made, nor address the topic directly. Yes, there is malware for Linux and for OS X. That does not make the statement that all OS's should be running anti-virus software a truism. For the last four years, if you've been using OS X, you have been safer not having anti-virus software installed.
Even if you cite a source, it can still be plagarism. You must both cite the source from which the idea comes from AND quote any words the original source used. Anything less constitutes plagarism.
I disagree. For example, were I too explain to someone that things fall, because of gravity, where all matter is attracted to all other matter, am I plagiarizing? No, I'm expressing my opinion. Even though Newton may have come up with this idea long ago, it is not plagiarism to explain the same idea without quoting him. Plagiarism is strictly when I steal his words and claim them as my own.
This is wrong because, EVEN THOUGH I'm citing the article, I'm still stealing their words. If they're using a specific wording and I use it, even if I cite the article, I MUST use quotes.
Don't be too hung up on quotes. It is intent that matters, not implementation. If I intentionally mislead someone into thinking the words are mine, I've committed plagiarism, otherwise; I've just poorly punctuated or styled my text. You can use a format, color, italics, etc to indicate text from another source. For example, look at news.google.com. They don't format the text any differently than any other text you might read, but they clearly are not trying to pass the news from disparate sites off as their own, given the prominent attributions.
No OS should go without antivirus software. A lot of people are going to get caught with their pants down when some virus writer decides they want to write a nasty one for Linux. Security through obscurity isn't really security.
Well, to date the record says otherwise. More people on OS X have suffered because of tragically faulty anti-virus software from major vendors than from malware. Furthermore, most OS's that don't rhyme with "Kin-blows" have low enough density to make propagation slow unless very well targeted or multi-platform. They have fewer openings for attacks. They have a stronger security community to detect attacks quickly, and they have faster fixes for both vulnerabilities and exploits. Attackers, are motivated to hit big targets and most have a very narrow skill set based entirely upon Windows.
Most alternate OS users are better off with some general tools (application level firewalls or even MAC) that mitigate the problem and make the user aware in general, rather than traditional signature based anti-virus. Enough people have been burned by constantly running a anti-virus application with no signatures installed on it, that slows down their machine and damages files all by itself. Until there are some signatures, it is mostly pointless.
Now I'm not saying security measures are a bad idea, but most of the pro-anti-virus stuff and scary press stories you hear originate from companies trying to make a buck, not solve a real problem.
I have, but usually AT&T is not going ot have the "best path" to customers of UUNet, for example, except to an AT&T transit customer. Which qualifies as traffic that AT&T could be asked to intercept.
Actually, I don't think AT&T is required to have the ability to intercept transit traffic, only endpoint traffic, although I could be wrong. UUNet is, of course, an AT&T transit customer, as AT&T is of UUNet. All the big ISPs are peering for transit traffic.
I just want to be sure that people put the blame where it belongs.
There is plenty of blame to go around. Even if AT&T is obligated to comply with legal wiretap requests I don't think they are required to give NSA personnel direct access and they certainly should be telling their customers about the fact that any communication is subject to being intercepted by the government. I understand their choices, as they seem like the right move from a "making money" perspective. That does not make them blameless.