where is the line between "news reporting" and "any random schmoe with a blog/website"?
I do not think their is or should be any such distinction. Anyone is a news reporter whenever they report news. Reporters are not, however, above the law. They have certain protections in whistleblower cases, but this is a straight-up contract dispute with no health concern, criminal activity, or overriding public interest to excuse breaking a legal contract. ThinkSecret can write whatever they want, and Apple has not tried to stop them. But at the same time Apple is fully within their rights to subpoena information regarding who violated their NDA.
I don't buy into far reaching "trade secret" protections. You can arbitrarily decide anything someone says that you don't like is a trade secret, and do an end-run around free speech.
There are already "whistleblower" statues that deal with any case where a person is revealing information in the interests of public health, to reveal a crime, or when their is a significant benefit to the public. The tobacco companies are the reason these whistleblower statutes exist.
If a thousand people outside of Apple know what they will release, Apple does not care. When the mainstream press, especially the Wall Street Journal start running articles about it however, especially when they are subjected to criticism which potentially lowers their stock price, then Apple cares. We are talking about a much larger and more financially significant readership than normal computing news sites. Since the Wall St. Journal quoted AppleInsider, it only makes sense to try to get the name of the leak from them.
In whistle blower cases, I fully hope that no journalist will reveal their sources and subject them to retribution from their employers, and possibly other parts of the industry. A person is speaking out about a danger to the public, or corruption in the government and benefits society. This case, however, is not for the benefit of society. This information was released to make money. It was a trade secret. The leak violated their contract. If the individual loses their job and has a hard time getting hired because they are considered untrustworthy then that is well deserved.
AppleInsider published the information and made money doing so by serving ads. In doing so they violated the law in California. Aside from that, they have no legal or ethical reason to not reveal the source to Apple through the legal instructions of the courts. Apple has done nothing to try to stop AppleInsider from publishing more articles, or even removing the one they already published. Their is no threat to free speech, only to their right not to reveal the evidence they know about a crime, when subpoenaed by the courts.
is it illegal to encourage someone to break their NDA, even if YOU arent doing the breaking ?
No it is not. It is, however, illegal to publish or release any information that you have obtained from someone under an NDA that you have reason to believe is a trade secret (in the state of California). Thus the employee probably broke their NDA, and both the employee and AppleInsider broke the law in California.
The legality is very, very arguable, given contradicting provisions of the DMCA, the fact that burning to another format is not illegal, and the fact that the encryption is not circumvented (it is actually used with proper keys to convert the files). Basically I seriously doubt a suit against the Hymn project would win in court case with equal legal resources. Until it happens, however, their is certainly room for doubt.
Then there was kludgey hassle of having to burn to a CD and re-rip just to be able to listen on my MP3 player.
Someone on Slashdot cannot figure out how to un-DRM music from the ITMS without burning a CD??? It's not even illegal. Jeez! Their are freeware programs that do it automatically.
it was in his contract, so I don't see how Marvel can appeal.
Marvel's argument has been that they made no money on the film. All the money made on the film was spent on production or marketing. All the profits were from merchandising, to which Stan Lee is not entitled a percentage. It is "creative" accounting on their part and hopefully the courts will continue to agree with Mr. Lee in this case.
.. and pay to have those creations made, and cover the costs involved in marketing, selling and sistributing those creations.
They pay the marketing, distribution, and production. I guess that is the part of intellectual property that needs to be protected to encourage author's to create new works and benefit society, right? And once the author dies, they keep those rights for many more years (going on forever right now) because that also encourages the dead authors to crawl out of the grave as artistic zombies. It all makes sense now.
The way to avoid this is, of course, to fund the recording, producing, marketing and sales of your work yourself
...by doing and end-run around the monopoly that controls the market and distribution channels and has been convicted of illegally abusing that monopoly to the detriment of the consumer. You just have to call up all the distribution chains and get them to carry your product, even though you are not part of the highly established and controlled industry and even though you are not getting compensated for any airplay, restaurant play, or other imposed fees collected by the RIAA on behalf of all copyright holders, but not distributed to any independents.
I am serious about the last part. It can be done and has been done. It is just very, very, very hard to fight an unfair battle against a giant who has laws that specifically advantage them against you.
Many non-profit charities have been convicted of embezzlement and fraud. Do you think this would get better or worse as more money was moved through them? Many charities are conditional and have an agenda. For example, join our church and listen to our sermons and we will give you room and board. Finally, when times get tough, charities fail. It has happened in almost every country that leaves support of the poor to charities. When it happens crime goes up. Also there is a huge tendency for the poor to revolt and start a civil war. Wars are something to be avoided at almost all costs. That is why we have social security, because everyone was afraid there would be a revolution during the great depression.
No, it doesn't. The government currently gives people more money than they paid back (Earned Income Credit) if they are at minimum wage, so this is not really a huge change fiscally, just a change in timing.
Other taxes and spending aside, social security is paid by a 6.5ish percent income tax. You are proposing paying back 50% or so to people at minimum wage. You would have to drastically scale social security tax by income bracket, which means you would have to lower other taxes on people in those income brackets to keep taxes the same.
Alternatively, you could raise taxes more to give more back, but funneling more money through the government for them to give back to us has not historically been a win for the bottom line. Huge junks disappear all along the way.
I'm not going to answer for the parent poster, but for myself -- screw 'em, screw 'em, screw 'em, and screw 'em, in that order.
Well that is very darwinian of you. Of course I doubt you are any of the above. You seem to have no problem with random chance ruining someone's life probably because it has not happened to you, and you have little empathy for others. Remember that if it happens to you, and try to stand by your convictions.
If theft is wrong, I have no more right to steal from Bill Gates than I do from Joe Sixpack.
This is not about theft. This is about what is best for the most number of people. Why should some start with more than others? Why should a lucky few never have to work, and get to consume resources and land in huge amounts while others have to struggle just to live? Why are people entitled to own land or money or oil or anything, because their parents did? Does it not make just as much sense for it to be mine, since I can hold it by force?
Social Security Administration sticking me and my employer up for 6.2%, it's immoral. Wrong. And it needs to stop.
OK. That is a nice assertion. Why is it wrong? It prevents great suffering. It prevents war. Are all taxes theft in your opinion?
That sounds eminently fair; I'd love to have that option, but at present, I don't. So why aren't you on our side, supporting an individual right to opt out - irrevocably - of Social Security?
While I am fine with an end to organized government, half measures will not do. If we must have a government, lets at least have a moderately successful one. A socialist system that accounts for the necessities and a capitalist one that accounts for luxuries has proven to be the most stable, and the most likely to provide quality of life for it's citizens. Take a look at all of the top ranked countries for freedom, lack of human rights violations, quality of living, life expectancy, etc. See what they have in common?
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform.
Yeah because private companies would never screw over Americans for money. They have ethics, and their shareholders will not put up with unethical behaviors. I'm sure huge portions of the money would not go to CEOs. I'm sure huge portions would not go to lobbying congress. No need to worry with private companies. They are so much more answerable to the people than the government is. It's a great plan to help people, not a money making scheme, etc., etc.
Friends and family are not resources everyone has.
I firmly believe that welfare should not be in the hands of the government, because it will use politics to decide who gets it.
The alternative is in the hands of companies whose only real goal is to make money. They will be worse. They will do everything they can to keep as much of the money for themselves as possible while paying the minimum amount out. If people start to starve, they will blame the economy, like all companies. And yet somehow the CEOs will still get paid millions a year.
Have the government pay the first $3/hr of salary paid.
And they would pay for this with their main source of funding, income tax right? Sorry your plan falls down on logistics.
The fact that it can be inherited, and hence tends to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands. This results in unfair advantage for some over others. Those born of the poor tend to be poor all their lives. Those born rich tend to stay rich. That is the injustice of private property.
Sounds like a good way for them to get shot or stabbed in retaliation
The whole point of social security is to share the wealth with the unfortunate so that they are not desperate enough to commit crimes for money, or start a revolution to return the money accumulated by the very wealthy to the people. When millions of people were destitute after the stock market crashed (great depression) we were very close to a revolution, and crime was rampant. Social security was to stop it from happening again. If I'm 80 and suddenly find myself destitute, unemployable, but with another 10 years of life expectancy, I'm not sure what I will do. Suicide is one answer. Robbery might be another. Nothing to lose means dying in a robbery attempt might be better than doing nothing.
I've lived by one simple philosophy, and will continue to do so until I die: You don't work, you don't eat. Period.
You philosophy is very harsh. What about invalids? What about the handicapped? What about the elderly who are left without family. What about average joes who are forced into retirement at a certain age so that their employer does not have to pay for their increasing insurance bills?
On the other side of the scale, what about the 5% of the nation that have inherited more money than you and all of your friends and family will ever see. What about those born into wealth that don't have to work, and don't?
Part of the reason the government has socialist programs is because otherwise the very poor have no real choice but to take resources from the very rich by force. This is usually in the form of a revolution, with death, torture, and all the inefficiencies and horror that comes along with it. The game is share the wealth enough, or die.
You might want to look into some of the best places to live in the world. You know those countries that have really low crime rates, high standards of living, good health care and life expectancies, good records on civil rights abuses, etc. There is one thing that is pretty common among all of them. They all have socialized heath care, education, and financial relief. They all also have capitalist economies with strong controls on monopolies.
Personal responibility. Learn it.
I'm happy to take personal responsibility for myself and my well being. I'm happy to expect exactly nothing from the government. In return I only ask that they stop taxing me and telling me what I can and cannot do. Does that sound fair to you?
There are tons of specific permissions that an applet can ask for. Do you know the implications of each? Does your Grandmother?
Browser authors should provide this functionality, and choose reasonable defaults. For example, browsers could treat all sites as untrustworthy to start and grant them no access outside the sandbox. If a applet wanted more permissions the browser could ask the user for permission to do something. "This web site would like to read files on your computer. It probably just wants to see how your computer is configured, but may read your e-mail or private files. Do you trust it with this access? (Yes) (No) (Always deny this level of access)."
If your grandmother can't figure out if she wants something to read her e-mail then she has a problem. Hopefully enough people will have a problem that normal sites stop asking for that level of access.
To paraphrase someone much smarter than I, make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Your insistence that everyone should get a gun is just as absurd as another person's insistence that nobody should have them.
Please point out where in my statement "I think it is cowardly and ignorant to rely solely upon others for your own personal safety and one of the worst instances of irresponsibility." I said anything about everyone having a gun? In fact the beginning of my post stated that I think every responsible person should buy a gun, but that I respect the opinions of people who think otherwise. Please actually read my post and then make comments if you feel the need.
What kind of anarchist crap is that? One of the primary, and only legitimate, roles of government is to provide security, i.e. police and military.
Just to touch upon one thing you get completely wrong though, the police has no duty to protect you. They do not have the manpower to protect you. They do not want to be responsible for keeping everyone from hurting everyone else. Their sole duty is to arrest people who have broken the law, not stop people from doing so. A landmark court case involved three women who were repeatedly raped and beaten. They called the police numerous times during a period of 48 hours but the police never showed up. The courts ruled that the police and the government in general has no responsibility to provide protection or any government services to any individual. This decision has been upheld in numerous cases since. Your assertion that it is the job of the government to protect you is misguided and irresponsible. Protect yourself, don't rely upon others to do it for you. Whether this protection is in the form of strong doors, a stun gun, mace, a gun, or a small personal army is up to you. Leaving it to others, is just not doing anything and just makes you a drain upon the rest of society.
Food eh? You're comparing an item that you normally only buy one of to something where you buy a lot of it and want variety. So are you saying that I should buy both a Creative and an iPod so that I get variety like I do with food? Your argument doesn't make sense to me.
I think it is really amusing when people try to take analogies literally. Analogies are all about how two things compare easily in one respect. Someone always has to strain the analogy beyond all reason. Ferraris are better than pintos. It's like the difference between a well prepared steak and a piece of jerky you found on the floor of a gas station. One is yummy, the other does the same job, but may kill you.
At this point, some dork chimes in, "You're comparing an item that you normally only buy one of to something where you buy a lot of it and want variety. So are you saying that I should buy both a Ferrari and an Pinto so that I get variety like I do with food? Your argument doesn't make sense to me."
Then I write a blurb like this one telling them how much of an idiot they are.
once you've done the work to put it into the firmware, it's practically free.
Practically free in this case is spending time to add and maintain support for OGG in software for Quicktime on Macs and PCs. It basically is assigning an engineer an extra task that gets apple what? Basically nothing. If it is added it will be because someone at Apple, working on quicktime or itunes decided they want it personally and spend some time adding it. At that point I anticipate that you would/will complain that you don't like their implementation and that it is inferior to some other implementation that you prefer.
The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app.
Because it is sooo hard for the OS to ask a normal user for an administrative password to install software that will be available to all users. Oh wait it isn't. And even if it was, there is no reason users can't install software in their user space. These are solved problems, so long as you are not running Windows.
one, the home invader has the advantage of surprise, with the weapon in their hand.
By the time an invader has broken down my door and run up a full flight of stairs (assuming they somehow know where they are going and come straight to my bedroom) I can easily have my shotgun trained on the door. You are also assuming that most intruders will have a gun. In my area they are much more likely to have a pry bar or a knife.
Two, if it's lying around, especially where it's easily accessible, and you keep it loaded, then it is dangerous to your family
Yes well, so are the knives in my kitchen. So are my power tools. I live only with my girlfriend and she is as safe with respect to firearms as anyone I have met. Having a firearm handy does not mean that we are stepping around it or picking it up all the time. The chances that it will accidentally load a round into the chamber, knock the safety off, and fire are pretty bloody remote.
Three, if someone knows you have a gun, it makes you a target for burglary
Assuming we advertise the fact that we have firearms, which we don't. In our location quite a few people do have firearms. The fact that burglars do not know which houses have firearms, works as a general deterrent.
Look, I'm not trying to say nobody has a use for a gun for home defence, but some people seem to think that if you don't have a loaded gun under your pillow that you're crazy, and I just don't follow that argument.
Now who is presenting a straw man?
I think all reasonably responsible people should own a gun and be prepared to use it in their own defense. I think everyone should be trained in responsible handling of firearms, regardless of whether or not they ever plan to own one. I accept that not everyone agrees with my opinions and do not have any problem with people who choose differently. On the other hand, I am very much disgusted with people who not only choose not to own guns, but try to deny that right to others. I think it is cowardly and ignorant to rely solely upon others for your own personal safety and one of the worst instances of irresponsibility.
The second problem is that artists, modellers and musicians rarely work for no immediate payment.
Heh, they are just as likely to work for free as coders are. There are a lot of talented people out there who play around designing graphics, textures, and models. They make stills, and short movies for fun. I know because it is one of my many hobbies. As far as musicians are concerned, there are so many amateur musicians with dreams of making it big that if you put out a classified ad you would likely be completely swamped.
No, the problem with getting artists on board is that you have to recruit them. This means talking to people who are not coders, and telling them what is needed. This is the hard part for a culture dominated by introverts. In fact the most talented graphic artist I know decided he wanted to work on an open source game once. He gave up after getting flamed off the boards when he offered up some sample textures in what was apparently the wrong graphics format. (There was little or no documentation so he had no idea what format they wanted.)
If open source game developers are serious about getting some good graphics or music they should post comments to that effect on some digital art and music forums. You may be very pleasantly surprised. Be sure to be up front about the project and very clear about exactly what is needed. Artists do not dig through code to find out what the specs are.
If your java application can live in the sandbox, it probably isn't doing anything worth downloading an applet for.
Your points about flaws in the JVM are well taken, but they are flaws not intentional design choices. There are many useful reasons to have small applications from the web, that do not require accessing any of your data other than user input. Games are a good example. Content delivery mechanisms are another. It is my opinion that while JVMs are not configurable enough in most implementations, they could easily be made that way. Every Java applet should be able to be easily assigned a set of permissions. I have seen some decent implementations, but nothing I am 100% happy with. At least with Java, anyone can roll their own. With Active X, everyone is stuck with Whatever MS decided, and they have a pretty lousy track record for making default security decisions.
I received some spam in Turkish back in the day. I was working for a company with many international clients so I went to the trouble of getting it translated by a friend from there. His response was "penis enlargement.":)
Slashdot Mirror
where is the line between "news reporting" and "any random schmoe with a blog/website"?
I do not think their is or should be any such distinction. Anyone is a news reporter whenever they report news. Reporters are not, however, above the law. They have certain protections in whistleblower cases, but this is a straight-up contract dispute with no health concern, criminal activity, or overriding public interest to excuse breaking a legal contract. ThinkSecret can write whatever they want, and Apple has not tried to stop them. But at the same time Apple is fully within their rights to subpoena information regarding who violated their NDA.
I don't buy into far reaching "trade secret" protections. You can arbitrarily decide anything someone says that you don't like is a trade secret, and do an end-run around free speech.
There are already "whistleblower" statues that deal with any case where a person is revealing information in the interests of public health, to reveal a crime, or when their is a significant benefit to the public. The tobacco companies are the reason these whistleblower statutes exist.
In this case none of the above apply.
If a thousand people outside of Apple know what they will release, Apple does not care. When the mainstream press, especially the Wall Street Journal start running articles about it however, especially when they are subjected to criticism which potentially lowers their stock price, then Apple cares. We are talking about a much larger and more financially significant readership than normal computing news sites. Since the Wall St. Journal quoted AppleInsider, it only makes sense to try to get the name of the leak from them.
In whistle blower cases, I fully hope that no journalist will reveal their sources and subject them to retribution from their employers, and possibly other parts of the industry. A person is speaking out about a danger to the public, or corruption in the government and benefits society. This case, however, is not for the benefit of society. This information was released to make money. It was a trade secret. The leak violated their contract. If the individual loses their job and has a hard time getting hired because they are considered untrustworthy then that is well deserved.
AppleInsider published the information and made money doing so by serving ads. In doing so they violated the law in California. Aside from that, they have no legal or ethical reason to not reveal the source to Apple through the legal instructions of the courts. Apple has done nothing to try to stop AppleInsider from publishing more articles, or even removing the one they already published. Their is no threat to free speech, only to their right not to reveal the evidence they know about a crime, when subpoenaed by the courts.
is it illegal to encourage someone to break their NDA, even if YOU arent doing the breaking ?
No it is not. It is, however, illegal to publish or release any information that you have obtained from someone under an NDA that you have reason to believe is a trade secret (in the state of California). Thus the employee probably broke their NDA, and both the employee and AppleInsider broke the law in California.
DMCA certainly makes it illegal.
The legality is very, very arguable, given contradicting provisions of the DMCA, the fact that burning to another format is not illegal, and the fact that the encryption is not circumvented (it is actually used with proper keys to convert the files). Basically I seriously doubt a suit against the Hymn project would win in court case with equal legal resources. Until it happens, however, their is certainly room for doubt.
Then there was kludgey hassle of having to burn to a CD and re-rip just to be able to listen on my MP3 player.
Someone on Slashdot cannot figure out how to un-DRM music from the ITMS without burning a CD??? It's not even illegal. Jeez! Their are freeware programs that do it automatically.
it was in his contract, so I don't see how Marvel can appeal.
Marvel's argument has been that they made no money on the film. All the money made on the film was spent on production or marketing. All the profits were from merchandising, to which Stan Lee is not entitled a percentage. It is "creative" accounting on their part and hopefully the courts will continue to agree with Mr. Lee in this case.
They pay the marketing, distribution, and production. I guess that is the part of intellectual property that needs to be protected to encourage author's to create new works and benefit society, right? And once the author dies, they keep those rights for many more years (going on forever right now) because that also encourages the dead authors to crawl out of the grave as artistic zombies. It all makes sense now.
The way to avoid this is, of course, to fund the recording, producing, marketing and sales of your work yourself
...by doing and end-run around the monopoly that controls the market and distribution channels and has been convicted of illegally abusing that monopoly to the detriment of the consumer. You just have to call up all the distribution chains and get them to carry your product, even though you are not part of the highly established and controlled industry and even though you are not getting compensated for any airplay, restaurant play, or other imposed fees collected by the RIAA on behalf of all copyright holders, but not distributed to any independents.
I am serious about the last part. It can be done and has been done. It is just very, very, very hard to fight an unfair battle against a giant who has laws that specifically advantage them against you.
I believe the alternative is non-profit charities
Many non-profit charities have been convicted of embezzlement and fraud. Do you think this would get better or worse as more money was moved through them? Many charities are conditional and have an agenda. For example, join our church and listen to our sermons and we will give you room and board. Finally, when times get tough, charities fail. It has happened in almost every country that leaves support of the poor to charities. When it happens crime goes up. Also there is a huge tendency for the poor to revolt and start a civil war. Wars are something to be avoided at almost all costs. That is why we have social security, because everyone was afraid there would be a revolution during the great depression.
No, it doesn't. The government currently gives people more money than they paid back (Earned Income Credit) if they are at minimum wage, so this is not really a huge change fiscally, just a change in timing.
Other taxes and spending aside, social security is paid by a 6.5ish percent income tax. You are proposing paying back 50% or so to people at minimum wage. You would have to drastically scale social security tax by income bracket, which means you would have to lower other taxes on people in those income brackets to keep taxes the same.
Alternatively, you could raise taxes more to give more back, but funneling more money through the government for them to give back to us has not historically been a win for the bottom line. Huge junks disappear all along the way.
I'm not going to answer for the parent poster, but for myself -- screw 'em, screw 'em, screw 'em, and screw 'em, in that order.
Well that is very darwinian of you. Of course I doubt you are any of the above. You seem to have no problem with random chance ruining someone's life probably because it has not happened to you, and you have little empathy for others. Remember that if it happens to you, and try to stand by your convictions.
If theft is wrong, I have no more right to steal from Bill Gates than I do from Joe Sixpack.
This is not about theft. This is about what is best for the most number of people. Why should some start with more than others? Why should a lucky few never have to work, and get to consume resources and land in huge amounts while others have to struggle just to live? Why are people entitled to own land or money or oil or anything, because their parents did? Does it not make just as much sense for it to be mine, since I can hold it by force?
Social Security Administration sticking me and my employer up for 6.2%, it's immoral. Wrong. And it needs to stop.
OK. That is a nice assertion. Why is it wrong? It prevents great suffering. It prevents war. Are all taxes theft in your opinion?
That sounds eminently fair; I'd love to have that option, but at present, I don't. So why aren't you on our side, supporting an individual right to opt out - irrevocably - of Social Security?
While I am fine with an end to organized government, half measures will not do. If we must have a government, lets at least have a moderately successful one. A socialist system that accounts for the necessities and a capitalist one that accounts for luxuries has proven to be the most stable, and the most likely to provide quality of life for it's citizens. Take a look at all of the top ranked countries for freedom, lack of human rights violations, quality of living, life expectancy, etc. See what they have in common?
I don't agree with Bush on much, but I like his ideas for SS reform.
Yeah because private companies would never screw over Americans for money. They have ethics, and their shareholders will not put up with unethical behaviors. I'm sure huge portions of the money would not go to CEOs. I'm sure huge portions would not go to lobbying congress. No need to worry with private companies. They are so much more answerable to the people than the government is. It's a great plan to help people, not a money making scheme, etc., etc.
I survived because of my friends and family...
Friends and family are not resources everyone has.
I firmly believe that welfare should not be in the hands of the government, because it will use politics to decide who gets it.
The alternative is in the hands of companies whose only real goal is to make money. They will be worse. They will do everything they can to keep as much of the money for themselves as possible while paying the minimum amount out. If people start to starve, they will blame the economy, like all companies. And yet somehow the CEOs will still get paid millions a year.
Have the government pay the first $3/hr of salary paid.
And they would pay for this with their main source of funding, income tax right? Sorry your plan falls down on logistics.
What do you have against private property?
The fact that it can be inherited, and hence tends to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands. This results in unfair advantage for some over others. Those born of the poor tend to be poor all their lives. Those born rich tend to stay rich. That is the injustice of private property.
Sounds like a good way for them to get shot or stabbed in retaliation
The whole point of social security is to share the wealth with the unfortunate so that they are not desperate enough to commit crimes for money, or start a revolution to return the money accumulated by the very wealthy to the people. When millions of people were destitute after the stock market crashed (great depression) we were very close to a revolution, and crime was rampant. Social security was to stop it from happening again. If I'm 80 and suddenly find myself destitute, unemployable, but with another 10 years of life expectancy, I'm not sure what I will do. Suicide is one answer. Robbery might be another. Nothing to lose means dying in a robbery attempt might be better than doing nothing.
They learn. If not, they go to private charity to get assistance when needed.
Or if there is not enough private charity they will climb through your bedroom window at night, cut your throat, and take your wallet. That works too.
I've lived by one simple philosophy, and will continue to do so until I die: You don't work, you don't eat. Period.
You philosophy is very harsh. What about invalids? What about the handicapped? What about the elderly who are left without family. What about average joes who are forced into retirement at a certain age so that their employer does not have to pay for their increasing insurance bills?
On the other side of the scale, what about the 5% of the nation that have inherited more money than you and all of your friends and family will ever see. What about those born into wealth that don't have to work, and don't?
Part of the reason the government has socialist programs is because otherwise the very poor have no real choice but to take resources from the very rich by force. This is usually in the form of a revolution, with death, torture, and all the inefficiencies and horror that comes along with it. The game is share the wealth enough, or die.
You might want to look into some of the best places to live in the world. You know those countries that have really low crime rates, high standards of living, good health care and life expectancies, good records on civil rights abuses, etc. There is one thing that is pretty common among all of them. They all have socialized heath care, education, and financial relief. They all also have capitalist economies with strong controls on monopolies.
Personal responibility. Learn it.
I'm happy to take personal responsibility for myself and my well being. I'm happy to expect exactly nothing from the government. In return I only ask that they stop taxing me and telling me what I can and cannot do. Does that sound fair to you?
There are tons of specific permissions that an applet can ask for. Do you know the implications of each? Does your Grandmother?
Browser authors should provide this functionality, and choose reasonable defaults. For example, browsers could treat all sites as untrustworthy to start and grant them no access outside the sandbox. If a applet wanted more permissions the browser could ask the user for permission to do something. "This web site would like to read files on your computer. It probably just wants to see how your computer is configured, but may read your e-mail or private files. Do you trust it with this access? (Yes) (No) (Always deny this level of access)."
If your grandmother can't figure out if she wants something to read her e-mail then she has a problem. Hopefully enough people will have a problem that normal sites stop asking for that level of access.
To paraphrase someone much smarter than I, make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Your insistence that everyone should get a gun is just as absurd as another person's insistence that nobody should have them.
Please point out where in my statement "I think it is cowardly and ignorant to rely solely upon others for your own personal safety and one of the worst instances of irresponsibility." I said anything about everyone having a gun? In fact the beginning of my post stated that I think every responsible person should buy a gun, but that I respect the opinions of people who think otherwise. Please actually read my post and then make comments if you feel the need.
What kind of anarchist crap is that? One of the primary, and only legitimate, roles of government is to provide security, i.e. police and military.
Just to touch upon one thing you get completely wrong though, the police has no duty to protect you. They do not have the manpower to protect you. They do not want to be responsible for keeping everyone from hurting everyone else. Their sole duty is to arrest people who have broken the law, not stop people from doing so. A landmark court case involved three women who were repeatedly raped and beaten. They called the police numerous times during a period of 48 hours but the police never showed up. The courts ruled that the police and the government in general has no responsibility to provide protection or any government services to any individual. This decision has been upheld in numerous cases since. Your assertion that it is the job of the government to protect you is misguided and irresponsible. Protect yourself, don't rely upon others to do it for you. Whether this protection is in the form of strong doors, a stun gun, mace, a gun, or a small personal army is up to you. Leaving it to others, is just not doing anything and just makes you a drain upon the rest of society.
Food eh? You're comparing an item that you normally only buy one of to something where you buy a lot of it and want variety. So are you saying that I should buy both a Creative and an iPod so that I get variety like I do with food? Your argument doesn't make sense to me.
I think it is really amusing when people try to take analogies literally. Analogies are all about how two things compare easily in one respect. Someone always has to strain the analogy beyond all reason. Ferraris are better than pintos. It's like the difference between a well prepared steak and a piece of jerky you found on the floor of a gas station. One is yummy, the other does the same job, but may kill you.
At this point, some dork chimes in, "You're comparing an item that you normally only buy one of to something where you buy a lot of it and want variety. So are you saying that I should buy both a Ferrari and an Pinto so that I get variety like I do with food? Your argument doesn't make sense to me."
Then I write a blurb like this one telling them how much of an idiot they are.
once you've done the work to put it into the firmware, it's practically free.
Practically free in this case is spending time to add and maintain support for OGG in software for Quicktime on Macs and PCs. It basically is assigning an engineer an extra task that gets apple what? Basically nothing. If it is added it will be because someone at Apple, working on quicktime or itunes decided they want it personally and spend some time adding it. At that point I anticipate that you would/will complain that you don't like their implementation and that it is inferior to some other implementation that you prefer.
The average user simply isn't willing to have an "administrator" account that they have to use every time they want to install an app.
Because it is sooo hard for the OS to ask a normal user for an administrative password to install software that will be available to all users. Oh wait it isn't. And even if it was, there is no reason users can't install software in their user space. These are solved problems, so long as you are not running Windows.
one, the home invader has the advantage of surprise, with the weapon in their hand.
By the time an invader has broken down my door and run up a full flight of stairs (assuming they somehow know where they are going and come straight to my bedroom) I can easily have my shotgun trained on the door. You are also assuming that most intruders will have a gun. In my area they are much more likely to have a pry bar or a knife.
Two, if it's lying around, especially where it's easily accessible, and you keep it loaded, then it is dangerous to your family
Yes well, so are the knives in my kitchen. So are my power tools. I live only with my girlfriend and she is as safe with respect to firearms as anyone I have met. Having a firearm handy does not mean that we are stepping around it or picking it up all the time. The chances that it will accidentally load a round into the chamber, knock the safety off, and fire are pretty bloody remote.
Three, if someone knows you have a gun, it makes you a target for burglary
Assuming we advertise the fact that we have firearms, which we don't. In our location quite a few people do have firearms. The fact that burglars do not know which houses have firearms, works as a general deterrent.
Look, I'm not trying to say nobody has a use for a gun for home defence, but some people seem to think that if you don't have a loaded gun under your pillow that you're crazy, and I just don't follow that argument.
Now who is presenting a straw man?
I think all reasonably responsible people should own a gun and be prepared to use it in their own defense. I think everyone should be trained in responsible handling of firearms, regardless of whether or not they ever plan to own one. I accept that not everyone agrees with my opinions and do not have any problem with people who choose differently. On the other hand, I am very much disgusted with people who not only choose not to own guns, but try to deny that right to others. I think it is cowardly and ignorant to rely solely upon others for your own personal safety and one of the worst instances of irresponsibility.
The second problem is that artists, modellers and musicians rarely work for no immediate payment.
Heh, they are just as likely to work for free as coders are. There are a lot of talented people out there who play around designing graphics, textures, and models. They make stills, and short movies for fun. I know because it is one of my many hobbies. As far as musicians are concerned, there are so many amateur musicians with dreams of making it big that if you put out a classified ad you would likely be completely swamped.
No, the problem with getting artists on board is that you have to recruit them. This means talking to people who are not coders, and telling them what is needed. This is the hard part for a culture dominated by introverts. In fact the most talented graphic artist I know decided he wanted to work on an open source game once. He gave up after getting flamed off the boards when he offered up some sample textures in what was apparently the wrong graphics format. (There was little or no documentation so he had no idea what format they wanted.)
If open source game developers are serious about getting some good graphics or music they should post comments to that effect on some digital art and music forums. You may be very pleasantly surprised. Be sure to be up front about the project and very clear about exactly what is needed. Artists do not dig through code to find out what the specs are.
If your java application can live in the sandbox, it probably isn't doing anything worth downloading an applet for.
Your points about flaws in the JVM are well taken, but they are flaws not intentional design choices. There are many useful reasons to have small applications from the web, that do not require accessing any of your data other than user input. Games are a good example. Content delivery mechanisms are another. It is my opinion that while JVMs are not configurable enough in most implementations, they could easily be made that way. Every Java applet should be able to be easily assigned a set of permissions. I have seen some decent implementations, but nothing I am 100% happy with. At least with Java, anyone can roll their own. With Active X, everyone is stuck with Whatever MS decided, and they have a pretty lousy track record for making default security decisions.
why is all my spam in American english
I received some spam in Turkish back in the day. I was working for a company with many international clients so I went to the trouble of getting it translated by a friend from there. His response was "penis enlargement." :)