Yes, but no matter how conservative your views are, if you go to the Daily Kos and talk up tax breaks for the rich and cuts in services for the poor and how abortion is evil, you're trolling.
I disagree. Sometimes you're just trying to have a good discussion with people ho don't agree with you. Your motivation determines if it is trolling, by the definition of trolling. Trolling is rooted in the fishing term. If you trail bait behind you to catch fish, that's different than if you are actually a small fish in the same place. Just because moderators mark you as a troll, does not mean they are correct.
The only reason to do this is to piss people off...
Again, I disagree. You will most likely piss people off, but that doesn't mean that's the only reason. Maybe your reason is to convince people to see the error of their ways and help them and society. Usually I doubt this, but that does not mean it never happens.
This isn't grade school and everyone isn't equally right. You have to form opinions rationally and defend them logically and show your work, or you are simply wrong.
You've just proven the point you were trying to deny. They aren't "different", they are "simply wrong". And you're the one holding the red pen grading other people's opinions, so you get to decide if what you don't believe could be "logical" or "rational". No possible bias there.
There isn't bias in deciding what is logical and rational because it is a formalized method. I have no problem with people who have different opinions than I do and people with access to different facts or who have a fundamental difference of value can reasonably and rationally disagree. The rhetorical method of discussion is how people discuss and issue to do one of three things:
determine what the fundamental disagreement about a fact is so that it can be researched
discover what the fundamental difference of value is so that others can understand the fundamental difference and everyone can better form their own opinion
expose a logical flaw in the decision making process of one or more of the rhetoricians so that they can correct it
You see, some people simply are wrong in their opinions, wrong as in incorrect not wrong as in immoral (as that is subjective). I am happy to acknowledge the opinions of others as just as valid as mine, but I expect the same rigor in discussion that I present. If people aren't forming their opinions according to a logical process then they have no basis for presenting an argument to others and should not bother to try.
I saw a poll the other day. Don't remember where. Maybe here. 70% of people now believe that the mainstream media have a bias.
Everyone has bias. It's inherent in our nature. That's why we develop formal processes to limit the effect it has on our formal communication with others. The news is supposed to be using journalistic methods and reporting facts, not their opinion of facts. I postulated that this is becoming less and less the case because the public prefers bias. They prefer to be given not just facts, but a comfortable opinion as to how they should interpret those facts.
For now, however, I'm writing you off as a nutjob...
Yes, he must be "simply wrong", and if you can't prove it logically and rationally, you'll write him off as a nutjob.
In the opening lines of his rant he committed several logical fallacies. That is incorrect, but moreover, he was not addressing the points I made in his writing, and that's not even an argument, it's some guy going off on a rant without addressing the statements that led him to go off on a rant.
So yes, he is simply wrong in that he argued that because most people believe something it must be true. He is simply wrong in that he attacked what he claims I was going to accuse him of in the future. He was wrong in that his writing did not address what I wrote and was thus not relevant. He was not wrong in that he did not bother to educate himself well enough to form a rational opinion and present it, but he was deficient and I don't see a lot of point in presenting reason to people who don't understand it or reading a lengthy rant obviously written by someone who is irrational. But I did not refuse to have a discussion with him, I just presented reasonable boundaries if he wants to have a civilized discussion and asked him to adhere to them.
What evidence do you have besides that you don't like Fox that people only watch that confirms their presuppositions? Do you watch Fox? Have you ever agreed with Fox on anything?
My hypothesis was that people watch news shows and read news blogs because those shows confirm their presuppositions and challenge them less with facts that contradict their world view. I further hypothesized that Fox was the forefront of this movement. My support for this was the well documented trend of Fox News viewers to not watch any other news channel, when compared to those who view other stations which were shown to be more willing to consume news from multiple sources (not necessarily on the same issue).
I don't watch Fox News (although I did in the past) but then I don't really watch news on TV at all. I mostly prefer to read my news, primarily via internet outlets and aggregation sites like news.google.com. As to whether I agree with Fox on anything, if it comes to that, it isn't news. News is supposed to be presenting facts, not opinions and I'm sure some of the facts Fox presents are, well, factual. I am not willing to trust that however, given their track record. In my mind they lost any benefit of the doubt I would give to a normal news program or agency when they pissed on journalistic integrity in their court case.
The Internet is exposing people to other views because news sites, like/., are not pushing political views -- just their readers.
I don't think I follow you. How is that exposing people to other views? And what makes you think the average person goes to sites like Slashdot instead of special interest sites. My brother might be a good example of an average guy. The websites he visits and gets news from are devoted to AR-15 ownership, Kawasaki motorcycle ownership, and kayaking. The majority of the news he reads comes as articles posted in one of these three forums, with the vast majority being from the first one. He has pretty well self selected himself into getting a very narrow selection of news because of that, and I should think that is actually the norm.
Which, seems to be a trend considering that quasi-non partisan sites are more popular than the traditional ones.
I don't know what you mean in your terminology. What's a quasi-non partisan site? Do you have an example or two?
Furthermore, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to places that you agree with because you believe their[sic] right, not because you're sheltering yourself from opposing views.
We're not arguing the morality of what people are doing here. I was just discussing what I see the trends to be and how I think that has negative results. People tend towards internet sites that provide filtered news with a predetermined slant already injected. I see that as limiting and divisive and simply partitioning our society into smaller groups with less exposure to diverse views and facts that people in their small societal subset tend not to be exposed to.
I'm not trying to argue partisan politics here either. I think the Democratic and Republican parties are both very wrong about half the time. There isn't even a third party that lines up well with my values and understanding of the world. When I'm on Google news and I see five different papers have an article on something, I click on the BBC first, because they don't provide much opinion in their news and tend to do a professional job with the facts (and because their take on US news tends to be a bit less slanted). Fox isn't on my shitlist because of what their political affiliations are any more than say NBC. They are there because they have such strong political affiliations which does not make for credible news. They are leading the charge towards slanted partisan news and they have rejected of any sort of journalistic integrity. If tomorrow NBC were in court arguing they had a legal right to lie to their v
Some people go to christian chat rooms simply to tell them they're all idiots for not being atheists
Well, they're called "trolls", just as a Christian going to an athoest chat room telling them they're all going to hell is a troll.
Sure some are trolls, just wanting to provoke a response, but a lot are people who actually want to express themselves and believe what they're saying. Traditionally trolls espouse views they don't believe in order to get a response.
I can believe that the average person doesn't want news gathered by people with more resources than them then analyzed by experts with more knowledge than they have.
If you believe that the journalist writing the stories is an expert in any field in which they write, there is no reason to continue reading your comment.
Journalists are supposed to be experts on fact gathering and interviewing. Many of them also have knowledge within the field they report on which greatly exceeds that of the average reader.
You are patently wrong. They demonstrate this on a daily basis by the errors in their reporting. Talk to anyone who IS an expert in a subject that the journalists cover and see if they don't tell you they see far too many errors.
I don't have to, since I can look to fields where I am an expert myself. Yes, reporters get things wrong. They almost certainly get things wrong more often than experts in the field do, although they may do a better job of communicating accurate facts to normal people than those experts. I've too often seen experts talk directly to normal people and normal people leave with completely wrong ideas because the expert did not know how to properly communicate.
But that's all beside the point. You see, a journalist may not be an expert in the subject they're writing about, but unless the reader is an expert in every field, they're still several steps up on the average reader. They also have access average readers don't and their facts are checked by another person. All of this provides value.
The self righteous sanctimony and distain you have of what is CLEARLY more people than ABC/NBC/CBS and probably CNN combined is interesting.
This is called "argumentum ad populum" and has been recognized as a logically fallacious argument for thousands of years.
I'd love to compare the literacy of say those that watch what is on those channels to that of what is on Fox News.
You want to compare the literacy rate of "those who watch what is on those channels" with "what is on Fox News". Maybe you should work on your own literacy a bit, because that doesn't even make sense. Assuming you meant that you want to compare the literacy rates of viewers of Fox New with the literacy rate of viewers of other news programs, I don't think you'll find the results flattering to Fox. I assume you can agree there is probably a strong positive correlation between those that vote republican and those that watch Fox? Because there is a moderately significant correlation between people who no not pass high school and who vote Republican. That is not conclusive of course, but it does suggest just the opposite correlation you seem to imply.
The problem with people such as yourself, you can't imagine anyone having an opinion that is different than you...
Gee what a compelling argument... that is compellingly pointless and from someone who doesn't know me. I don't have any problem with people who have other opinions, I just also recognize not all other opinions are logical or even reasonable. This isn't grade school and everyone isn't equally right. You have to form opinions rationally and defend them logically and show your work, or you are simply wrong.
...you end up saying that they are ignorant(and racist, and sexist....)
And this is the ever popular strawman argument. You'll note that you say that I will say people are sexist and racist, when I said no such thing.
I'm not going to read through all of your long and rambling nonsense. Given your writing so far, I don't think you have much of a grasp on the concepts or logic or reason or rhetoric or at least no formal education since you seem to be ignoring all the rules needed for a rational and civil discussion. If you have a problem with what I have written or want to discuss, then by all means, reply to my previous post again. But this time, actually address the specific points I made with specific and reasoned rebuttal. I'll be happy to address a reply in that format. For now, however, I'm writing you off as a nutjob and not bothering to finish reading your nonsense.
Then explain slashdot -- MS vs Apple, the RIAA apologists you see here in any story about copyright, vi vs Emacs, US vs UK, people for the drug laws vs people with a clue, etc.
Well partly some people do like a good argument and a disagreement and to be challenged, they're just a minority. Those people will go out of their way to find places to get a discussion or to try to espouse their beliefs and attack the beliefs of others. Some people go to christian chat rooms simply to tell them they're all idiots for not being atheists... but those people are fairly uncommon. Partly, people still argue with one another, just over comfortable issues once they can assume a like minded. Some people are happy to argue about whether the mantle that covered the heavens before Noah's flood was made of ice or liquid water, once they know they're in a comfortable setting where they won't be ridiculed for their lack of reason or scientific understanding for believing there was a giant flood that covered the whole earth in the first place.
Slashdot is also interesting because it is a subject matter site. People will argue the objective merits of vi and emacs all day, but they know that if someone comes at them with an argument that reading or writing anything but the bible is the work of satan and that they are going to hell because the bible says so, that person will be modded down by the community of modders, sort of protection in numbers for the ego.
In this community, at least, you have VERY diverse opinions, arguments, areas of expertise, ages...
Certainly, but we also filter out a large range of arguments, mostly ones that are not nerdy enough, like faith based assertions, and threats of personal violence. To call the membership of Slashdot diverse is fair in a way, but it is a self selecting group of people who pride themselves on being nerds, that is intelligence. This alienates a huge portion of the population and makes Slashdot readership very atypical. Heck, go down to your local bar and try to have the same kind of conversations as a typical one on this forum. It seems to be that people who value intelligence (a commonality here) are one of the subsets of our population that do like to argue for the sake of the discussion and the value it can bring.
Do you know why people are moving away from traditional media? Because it acts like it's better than we are.
That's a reasonable hypothesis. I can believe that the average person doesn't want news gathered by people with more resources than them then analyzed by experts with more knowledge than they have. Of course the average person wants to marry someone stupider than they are too. So do you have any sort of support for your hypothesis?
Blogging has become popular because it's there in plain english, the way we look at things -- and it's accessible and free.
Hmm, I think blogging has become popular partly because it is more similar to the reader than mainstream news is. But I don't think that's really a problem with the writing so much as the opinion and analysis injected. Mainstream news tries to present facts and the whole journalistic model of writing all the writers had to master in school is about presenting those facts without subjective interpretation. People like subjective interpretation. It's a lot easier to form opinions as to how something affects you if someone tells you your opinion instead of you having to think. And since there are so many blogs out there, people can find ones that fit in with their already formed biases. They can read the news, but with everything already interpreted in a slant they like. Are you a neo-nazi survivalist? No problem. Instead of reading the facts about some new law, you can just hear about the parts that seem to confirm you beliefs that the jews are screwing you over and it doesn't matter because a violent anarchistic revolution is coming and your investment of all your money into ammunition and canned food was a good idea. The A to B to C of how a credit card reform bill adds to this situation is already constructed for you and you can parrot it verbatim to your buddies.
With the digital age, all of my friends are only a few feet away from me most of the time.
And there's another thing. You can talk to like-minded people on blogs. Your friends can all be on the forums you read and you don't have to talk to all those liberals and blacks at the bar. You can stay home and write to other neo-nazis and you don't have to worry about people telling you you're wrong or an idiot or pointing out your facts are incorrect. Of course obama is half jewish because judaism and islam are really part of the same religion or umm something.
Traditional media has forgotten that the most important asset they have is trust -- and accessibility.
And an almost fanatic devotion to the pope? Actually, once you make yourself the "channel" for a subset of people, trust isn't a big issue. You can outright lie to your readers and viewers and people are so emotionally invested in your "team" being the winning one they won't call you on it. It happens regularly.
I have friends on facebook that post links of personal interest to their feeds so the rest of us can see and comment on it, and this is the foundation of the new media -- peer relationships.
The issue here being, that is media advertising, or circulation, not the research and creation of original news content and expert analysis.
Journalism needs to mesh with this, and the journalists themselves need to get out there and put their reputation on the line in a public and accessible way. I want to 'friend' journalists I like and trust on facebook and then see their stories...
If they're actually presenting subjective news, then the journalist shouldn't be super important, especially compared to the reputation of the publication which vets the articles and makes sure some nutjob isn't making things up. Picking just particular journalists is you self selecting away news you don't want to hear. People already do this to great extent in choosing which newspapers and Websites and TV programs they watch. You're advocatin
3. Most print newspapers have journalist with a very liberal slant, and people don't want that anymore, witness the success of Fox News and online bloggers.
Actually, I'd argue just the opposite. The success of Fox News from a large number of viewers who watch nothing else speaks more to the fact that people will go out of their way and become loyal consumers of "news" that has a distinct slant that confirms the viewers' already conceived ideals. People like news that doesn't give them facts so much as comfortable facts. People like Websites where they can talk to people who don't challenge their ideas and don't make them put in any effort to determine the truth.
Fox News is the epitome of this and is far more focuses on entertainment than journalistic integrity. Heck, they went to court and argued they have no legal obligation to not fire people for refusing to lie on TV and for refusing to kill a story about a health danger to the public. They're legally right too, they have no obligation not to lie to their viewers, but any organization that makes that argument in court is not "news" any more than a Frootloops commercial is. That's not to say some programs on the network don't have some integrity, of course, but the corporation does not.
At one time I thought the internet might open up the world. People would be able to hear views from around the world and directly communicate with those people inexpensively. People could thus gain a wider perspective and understanding. In truth, human nature is such that it has allowed us to self segregate more. People don't even have to talk to so diverse a range of people as live in their neighborhood because they can find an online forum that fits exactly with their beliefs and preconceived ideas and spend all their time talking to people without the discomfort of disagreement. It's much easier to complain about one's favorite villainized segment of our society when one does not actually have to hear them and can just attack strawman arguments one poses on their behalf. There are forums for people who thing the earth is flat or is literally 6000 years old and the people there can safely discuss their nonsense knowing the moderators will ban and remove posts from anyone who challenges it with facts or controversy. People don't want unbiased opinion and Fox is another example of the consumer getting what they want and not what they might need.
That's an interesting fact about Wave, for sure, but it seems unrelated to the assertion of yours that I was responding to.
I can see where you'd think that and I half agree. Still, the fact that Wave is an open protocol with a reference implementation does change the game. Skype has interesting but limited ability to provide different types of communication between individuals. Wave has virtually unlimited ability because any project can display the data and shape the interaction. For example, Waves can be embedded in existing Web pages and used with just a Web browser. Skype is necessarily limited by the authors of the Skype application. But maybe that is slitting hairs.
As for how Wave changes the paradigm of communication, it moves from an interaction centric communication to a topic centric one. You have a topic of communication first, and the participants contribute to that. You're quite correct that you can embed a picture in a Skype chat and then switch to doing a video chat. Can you display the image in your video chat? Can you display the text of the chat conversation in your video chat? Can you drop your chat in a Web page and come back to it later. Can you quite you shut down you computer and go to a coffee shop and reopen it then rewind back through all the changes made while you were out and seamlessly rejoin the conversation.
That's really where I see the big shift. You aren't using a client to start various conversations with various people or groups of people. You're using a client to participate in a conversation which is itself a document or file that persists and can be viewed and interacted with in different ways, sometimes automatically. Writing on it can go from the workflow of an e-mail to that of an IM without any choices on the part of the user. This also frees the conversation for automated participants. I can use a plug-in in some chat clients to automatically translate content from one language to another, but with Wave a bot can sit there and translate for everyone, or perform other useful tasks.
Maybe my view of it is off, but it really does seem to be a paradigm shift. The real question now is if it will be a useful one and if adoption will be significant enough.
From back in the day "talk" and "ytalk" from the CLI. Various IRC clients. AOL IM version 6.8 and later has it as an option. AT&T-IMR (I think this might be piggy backing on AIM). I'm sure there are more, but not that I've used.
I'm actually glad for this website, as it just reaffirms my belief that this stimulus bill is a load of shit. Most of the recipients of grant money in my local area are accountants and attorneys, who are the ones driving around in Porches and Bimmers while not creating tons of jobs for local citizens.
Our of curiosity, where do you live?
In my immediate vicinity the stimulus has gone to:
modernization and operation grant for the public bus system, which was going to be reduced greatly leading to people being unable to get to nearby, affluent areas for work.
a breast cancer prevention program for high risk women without healthcare, run by a local university.
a modernization grant for the city to upgrade firefighting gear (we just had to call in two other regional firefighting groups to put out a fire downtown that destroyed a historic building).
a grant to help keep some publicly subsidized housing for the poor open.
I guess what I'm saying is, they seem to be doing pretty well by my locality for the types of grants they're providing. I don't see any handouts to accountants or attorneys.
And so the user just becomes trained to click yes to every box...
If you present the user with a series of "yes" boxes your security design is fundamentally flawed. First, users should only be asked a question in the event that they have unrecognized malware or are running very unusual software from a third party that for some reason cannot sign their product. Second, if you completely fail to follow good UI practices and present repetitive boxes all with the same thing on them, then yes your design will fail, just the same as if you provide a firewall that can't be configured and is wide open by default. When you include crappy design features currently used as in Windows and used by the UI design community as an example of what should never be done as an implicit statement, then sure it won't work.
Every button should be a verb, that describes a specific action and, ideally is unique to the situation presented. "Yes" is not an action and a user can read that button, click it, and have no idea what they've done, especially if you overload them with tons of useless buttons to press for no reason. If, however, they are presented with specific questions rarely, like: "Program "nudieparty.exe" is from an unknown provider and has not been reviewed for security. It wants to access your e-mail address book and start a server running on your computer. (Stop it from running and delete it)(Stop it from reading my addresses and starting a server but run it anyway)(Allow it to read my addresses and start a server)(See Advanced Options)". Well, that's a reasonable default UI with good choices. Not all users will make the right choice, but at least they have a fighting chance and good choices to make with decent info.
It's not that it's an unfree market, it's more of a natural monopoly.
There are multiple definitions for the phrase "free market" in common use today. Some definitions require competition laws to be enforced while others preclude it. As we're trying to have a discussion instead of write a glossary for an economics text, lets ignore the semantic arguments.
Free market is not the solution to all problems.
NOTHING is a solution to all problems. Leveraging self-interest using economic competition, however, is a fundamental tool for technological advancement, one that is not currently applied to the desktop OS market or effectively to the malware problem.
Antitrust law is fundamentally anti-free-market so you obviously understand that market freedom has to be limited because of the human nature to take advantage of freedom.
I don't really think a discussion of individual versus agent versus societal freedom is on topic, but I get your point.
Leveraging antitrust law on MS is not a bad idea but it is of course a lot more complicated than that.
True. I was sort of hoping, foolishly, that a change in US government party control would result in actual enforcement of our antitrust laws against MS and several other parties in related markets but that hope was in vain. I don't expect meaningful change on software patents either. Without a fundamental shift to reduce industry influence on politics, things will continue as they are.
And that's a problem for a lot of users. Is Yahoo reputable? Adobe? Apple?
To some extent, yes. They are at least identifiable and you can sue them because they signed the software you're installing, as opposed to software with no signature from an unknown source. On top of that, there is no reason users cannot layer more intelligence from one or multiple sources that audit software for malicious behavior.
They all install hard-to-remove adware and crashware as a side effect of installing something you want.
Citation needed.
We've been three years in our combined household (teenager, gamers, and a developer) without any kind of infection. No virus scanners at all...
If you don't run a scanner, how do you know? In any case, how is this relevant to the general case and normal users?
This is why I responded. I left UAC on my development machine at home and on my netbook just to give it a chance. And you know what? Once the initial wave of software installs are over with, it's really not that bad.
The default settings and the UI are both atrocious. Even you had to add a disclaimer in your above statement. The initial wave of installs conditions users to just allow everything since it bugs them repeatedly about software when the OS should have the ability to know it is not malware. You can't ignore the user interface component of security software and not bother with actually testing it's effectiveness in the real world. UAC could have been useful, but as implemented it's just a way to shift the blame for security breaches when normal users behave predictably. Security isn't about finding someone to blame for security breaches. It is about decreasing their frequency.
UAC is still useful for advanced, security minded users as a way to have more control, but it does little or nothing to benefit normal users.
The free market? Yeah that worked great for health care in the USA!
Healthcare, military, police, fire departments, and several other markets are a poor fit for free market capitalism because of inherent bargaining issues and high risks for non-agreement. The desktop OS market does not fit into that same subset.
What you will have is these two companies (or 10 or 20), microsoft-a and microsoft-b colluding together to shaft customers.
I explicitly said they would be forbidden from nonpublic communications or exclusive agreements with one another. How would they then collude?
Look at cel phone companies and their "system access fee" for a good example of that. It doesnt matter how many for profit companies you have, they will never result in the best possible solution for the consumer.
The cell phone industry is not a free market either. It is heavily regulated and came out of the regular phone market, leveraging existing government enforced monopoly power. Besides, the cell phone companies are marketing to consumers. The OS market sells to OEMs with just as much clout and who can roll their own and OSS is an unkillable competitor.
That is simply not the goal of a for profit company.
Of course not! The whole point of why capitalism works better for many markets than socialism is that it harnesses the self interest and greed of companies. They profit the most by making the best offering in competition with others. Their incentive for profit and enforcement of our antitrust laws is all that is needed.
What should be done is the government should build on linux or BSD and make an OS for the people, by the people. This OS would be completely free to everyone.
It already is free for everyone. The problem being, it is not required to be used by everyone. Nor do I think that's would be a useful or justifiable intrusion into personal freedom.
The free market very rarely does anything altruistically.
If companies were altruistic, socialism would be ideal. Capitalism harnesses greed to provide benefit to consumers. The free market works, when it is managed to prevent runaway trusts.
I believe there are a few countries which are already standardizing their desktops on free solutions.
Some are for government use and I think it is a smart decision. I don't know any that mandate it for all citizens though, nor do I think that would be a good idea.
Take it one step further and they would release their OS and customizations to the tax payers who are paying for it anyway.
Are there any governments developing for Linux they have in use that aren't releasing their changes? All the customizations I know of are released already.
And none of that will do anything to prevent users from being dumb and downloading anything from the internet and running it without a care in the world.
Of course not, nor should it. The point is to have an OS secure enough that it doesn't matter. Let the dumb user run any old thing, but by default tell them when it's malware. If you don't know where its from, don't give it default access to do anything. Throw it in a sandbox or a VM and run it there. Unless they explicitly enable it to have access to anything useful, don't give it to unsigned software and throttle the internet access for it and be sure the user knows what it is doing when it does it. The point is to let the user do what they want, but safely without jumping through crazy hoops. Sure tons of users want to play the stupid game from the internet or look at the nudie pics. Make sure programs run just the same in a VM and out and by default let it run in a stupid VM with access to virtual resources and the user is still happy, but secure.
Let us assume that OS becomes rock hard and no malware can infect the machine then what will most likely happen is malware writers will just write stuff to destroy users data.
Why would you give unsigned software access to user data? How would unsigned software know if it has access to user data or if the OS is handing it junk data? Sure a user could explicitly enable some unsigned software to open a particular file by dragging it into the program or whatever, but the OS should also handle versioning so you can just roll that back too. Besides, most malware is for profit these days. How does that profit malware writers?
I would prefer an internet system more akin to the cellphone companies, where the networks are privately held but you still have a choice of multiple providers. Competition is preferable to a government monopoly.
Yeah, because cell phone coverage in the US is so great compared to other places? Also, your analogy does not exactly work, as to do that you'd need each company be able to run lines to your house. It's a engineering nightmare much worse than providing multiple towers in a locality.
Agreed but corporations don't have any control over that. It's the local cities and towns that refuse to allow competition, so petition your local or state government to lift that restriction, and you will have competition. Simple as that.
You don't think there is any reason for those local restrictions? We tried the same thing in the dawn of telephones and electrical power. You get a dozen companies running separate lines and when one pole falls over it knocks out service to a dozen providers. Additionally, whenever one company has to dig or service there is significant risk of damage to other lines, and the more companies there are the worse this problem gets.
It makes a lot more sense to have one set of lines that are shared by all and the government is the best group to do that, or at least one company regulated by the government the way power distribution works. And several municipalities have tried this, often only to be blocked by legislation written by teleco pet legislators at the state and federal level.
We pay more for less than other countries
A common misconception.
You're truncating when quoting me, changing the meaning of what I wrote. I said we have paid more per person in subsidies than other countries with similar population densities who pay less. Comparing us to all of Europe with widely varying population densities and incomes and levels of government subsidy is worse than meaningless it is misleading. Take a look at countries like Sweden. They have faster internet at lower prices, with a similar population density. They paid less in taxes to subsidize their system despite massive fraud during the implementation.
You have to look at all the factors for comparison, not just bandwidth, if you want an accurate picture. Equating us with another country because we have similar bandwidth rates when said country has a significantly lower population density, more universal coverage, lower monthly costs for that bandwidth and spent pennies to our dollar in taxpayer money to set up the system is disingenuous.
This is a gigantic losing battle where we have long since pasted the point where we need more AV and UAC "protection" and start closing loopholes and flaws in the Windows OS and architecture.
The core flaws are the that Windows does not clearly provide the user with appropriate information on who is providing a given application and if that is a reputable source or an anonymous provider. Windows does not allow users to run software within a sandbox with permissions appropriate to the software, by default. Windows does not clearly provide granular controls and feedback on what a given application wants to do and what risk this entails. Further, when it comes to determining trust, MS has failed to make this valuable information a competitive market to motivate creation of the best data. Windows still has a lot of duplicate services running on average because MS insists on using proprietary services for interaction between Windows machines and third parties have to implement standards compliant services for interoperability with everything else. Finally, Windows machines still have a significant number of vulnerabilities due to methodological lack of an ongoing security policy for development (although this is improving significantly).
I would note, UAC isn't a bad concept, just a terrible, terrible implementation with a user interface and default settings that make it unusable.
This is all the free market working against the unfree market. In a free market competitors work to make the best product to make the most money. Right now, that's malware writers, each trying to outdo one another and make the best trojans to get the most bots and personal info.
In a free market consumers would buy computers best suited to deal with this threat, with defenses that appropriately reduce this threat to a small subset of their customers. But, since we have one player with a huge amount of influence on the desktop OS market, with huge influence on computer makers and other markets and who has built substantial barriers to prevent consumers from trying other options, desktop OS's are not adapting appropriately. Why should they if it is not losing them significant money?
Trojans aren't some unsolvable problem, but for the most part they are a problem that needs to be dealt with at the OS level. Add on software from computer makers is only going to be partially effective. SELinux, for example, does a reasonable job of mitigating trojans in the secure workstation market, but has not been adapted to the consumer desktop market as yet because it requires integration on the part of application developers and there is no real motivation to do that. Linux and OS X desktops don't face significant levels of attack. Windows doesn't lose real money when it fails to defend against them. Why would anyone who understands the benefits of free market capitalism expect anything but to have malware writers win. They have direct, financial motivation.
Seriously, MS could easily create a sandboxed backwards compatibility layer (they already have). They could easily require all software that did not have a proper signature and an ACL to run in a restricted sandbox. They could dump money into crafting a good UI for it and motivating developers by restricting access to new, useful APIs. The real question is, why should they, as a business, spend that money?
I have a modest proposal that will solve this problem and a lot of other problems all stemming from the same cause. Break up Microsoft. Seriously. They're repeat offender antitrust violators. Break them up and give at least two new companies complete rights to use all the source code and patents and an equal portion of the human resources and capital. Forbid these companies from any nonpublic communication or any agreements they don't offer to other companies with the same terms.
When you have executives at MS-A and at MS-B both realizing they have to do something to win sales contracts from Dell and HP and Sony and Asus guess what, they'll have to compete. Then their financial well being will depend upon which can deliver a better product at a lower price. Neither will be able to strongarm customers or people in other markets. They'll have motivation to fix the flaws in Windows and the accompanying software that people have been learning to work around for decades. And neither company will have to worry about antitrust concerns and will be able to bundle whatever crap they want including their version of IE. I'd be willing to bet if our justice department had the balls, the malware problem would be a minor annoyance in 5 years time.
Which we will be taxed for at 5 times the current rate charged by the private companies.
We're ALREADY being taxed for it. We paid for the creation of their existing networks with huge government subsidies and they keep getting more of them. We're still paying interest on the loans we took out as a country to provide all that subsidy. Rather than wasting the money, we should hold them accountable to provide a public good and open up all the last mile network to other competitors.
At least with Comcast I can say, "Thanks for the call but I don't want your tv shit," and not pay them a dime.
No you can't. You're already paying them with your tax dollars.
Also my DSL as actually reasonable - $15 a month. I have no complaints.
I'm very happy for you. Too bad most americans don't have any such options. We pay more for less than other countries, just like healthcare. We have already paid more per person in subsidies to the telecos than other countries with similar population densities who now pay half what we do for faster service. Your price is an anecdote, but there are several real studies showing how much we pay and what we get by comparison.
So stop doing it, I did. I download a lot of stuff and my connection is more reliable at actually obtaining the content on a regular basis at a consistent speed using 5 Mbps AT&T DSL than Comcast's "Comcastic" 10 Mbps cable modem.
There are multiple problems with that. First, so far AT&T has been more expensive every time I checked because they bundle their service with a home phone line, which I also don't want. Second, AT&T's connection is slower by all comparisons I've seen. Third, doing business with AT&T (my cell phone provider) is a bureaucratic hell. Even finding out if they will provide DSL to my location is an exercise in frustration. If I go to their Web page right now (just did) I fill out four different forms as they try to figure out where my address is (weird how Yahoo and Google maps have no problem huh?). In the end I get the message "Due to technical problems, we are unable to process your order online at this time. Please contact us at 1-877-722-2256 Monday through Friday, 7 am to 9 pm and on Saturday, 7 am to 5 pm." I'm not falling for that crap again. I called them once and got to talk to a whole variety of clueless people who couldn't give me a straight answer about anything. They are the epitome of a giant broken bureaucracy I don't want to have to deal with.
Stop complaining and start voting with your feet and your wallet, trust me, you'll feel bettter about yourself. I don't LOVE AT&T, but they're certainly the lesser of my two evil choices.
I disagree. So far Comcast is the lesser of two evils for me, but the point is after giving both companies billions in government aid to build their networks I shouldn't have to be picking the lesser of two evils both of whom force me to buy a crappy service I don't want to get what is basically a utility I need. It's idiotic and the result of our broken system that lets corporations lobby the government. We need the government to work for the people again and stop giving these idiots hand outs and start building a public internet infrastructure that Comcact and AT&T can provide TV or phone or both over... and so can any other company without worrying about government enforced monopolies on public right-of ways or trying to overcome start up costs the government paid for their competitors.
Yeah, I pay for basic cable service even though it is not plugged into my TV. That's because I want fast internet access and Comcast has bundled them such that signing up for a cable TV service I don't use, saves me money. That is pretty much a conclusive indicator of a broken market that needs to be addressed by antitrust regulators.
I think a massive component to the success of Wave will be how good the integration tools will be. Will we be able to import contacts from Exchange straight into Wave?
Of course not. How can you interact the same way you did with a Wave user when someone is using Exchange which does not support the vast majority of those features? Wave isn't e-mail it is a replacement for e-mail. It might be able to interact with existing e-mail systems in a limited way but it's not going to magically upgrade Exchange.
Will we be able to use waves in email services other than wave?
Can you use Yahoo chats in email services other than Yahoo chat?
That said, I think Wave could seriously revolutionize the standard of email communication, and I really hope for all our sake they are able to pull it off.
I think Wave has real potential to replace e-mail and chat and standard blogs. I have a lot of hope for it, but a lot depends upon what sort of deals they can manage. Will it work on the iPhone out of the box? In iChat? Will multi-protocol chat clients that are standard on various platforms incorporate support for it? Will Google get stand-alone clients up on all platforms? Will Google get major Web service providers embedding Wave in their pages as a means of supporting richer discussion boards? Wave can be the coolest thing ever, but without promoting it strongly to users it won't go anywhere. There are more than just technical challenges for Google here.
A trend I've noticed for both smartphones and laptops is the constant drive to reduce size and make devices thinner. Smaller and thinner is trendier. Frankly, I wish they're just make an iPhone or laptop twice as thick, thus quadrupling the battery life. I'm not a weakling. I can carry a bit more weight especially if the device is functional enough to take over the function of some other devices I would otherwise carry.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but no matter how conservative your views are, if you go to the Daily Kos and talk up tax breaks for the rich and cuts in services for the poor and how abortion is evil, you're trolling.
I disagree. Sometimes you're just trying to have a good discussion with people ho don't agree with you. Your motivation determines if it is trolling, by the definition of trolling. Trolling is rooted in the fishing term. If you trail bait behind you to catch fish, that's different than if you are actually a small fish in the same place. Just because moderators mark you as a troll, does not mean they are correct.
The only reason to do this is to piss people off...
Again, I disagree. You will most likely piss people off, but that doesn't mean that's the only reason. Maybe your reason is to convince people to see the error of their ways and help them and society. Usually I doubt this, but that does not mean it never happens.
This isn't grade school and everyone isn't equally right. You have to form opinions rationally and defend them logically and show your work, or you are simply wrong.
You've just proven the point you were trying to deny. They aren't "different", they are "simply wrong". And you're the one holding the red pen grading other people's opinions, so you get to decide if what you don't believe could be "logical" or "rational". No possible bias there.
There isn't bias in deciding what is logical and rational because it is a formalized method. I have no problem with people who have different opinions than I do and people with access to different facts or who have a fundamental difference of value can reasonably and rationally disagree. The rhetorical method of discussion is how people discuss and issue to do one of three things:
You see, some people simply are wrong in their opinions, wrong as in incorrect not wrong as in immoral (as that is subjective). I am happy to acknowledge the opinions of others as just as valid as mine, but I expect the same rigor in discussion that I present. If people aren't forming their opinions according to a logical process then they have no basis for presenting an argument to others and should not bother to try.
I saw a poll the other day. Don't remember where. Maybe here. 70% of people now believe that the mainstream media have a bias.
Everyone has bias. It's inherent in our nature. That's why we develop formal processes to limit the effect it has on our formal communication with others. The news is supposed to be using journalistic methods and reporting facts, not their opinion of facts. I postulated that this is becoming less and less the case because the public prefers bias. They prefer to be given not just facts, but a comfortable opinion as to how they should interpret those facts.
For now, however, I'm writing you off as a nutjob ...
Yes, he must be "simply wrong", and if you can't prove it logically and rationally, you'll write him off as a nutjob.
In the opening lines of his rant he committed several logical fallacies. That is incorrect, but moreover, he was not addressing the points I made in his writing, and that's not even an argument, it's some guy going off on a rant without addressing the statements that led him to go off on a rant.
So yes, he is simply wrong in that he argued that because most people believe something it must be true. He is simply wrong in that he attacked what he claims I was going to accuse him of in the future. He was wrong in that his writing did not address what I wrote and was thus not relevant. He was not wrong in that he did not bother to educate himself well enough to form a rational opinion and present it, but he was deficient and I don't see a lot of point in presenting reason to people who don't understand it or reading a lengthy rant obviously written by someone who is irrational. But I did not refuse to have a discussion with him, I just presented reasonable boundaries if he wants to have a civilized discussion and asked him to adhere to them.
What evidence do you have besides that you don't like Fox that people only watch that confirms their presuppositions? Do you watch Fox? Have you ever agreed with Fox on anything?
My hypothesis was that people watch news shows and read news blogs because those shows confirm their presuppositions and challenge them less with facts that contradict their world view. I further hypothesized that Fox was the forefront of this movement. My support for this was the well documented trend of Fox News viewers to not watch any other news channel, when compared to those who view other stations which were shown to be more willing to consume news from multiple sources (not necessarily on the same issue).
I don't watch Fox News (although I did in the past) but then I don't really watch news on TV at all. I mostly prefer to read my news, primarily via internet outlets and aggregation sites like news.google.com. As to whether I agree with Fox on anything, if it comes to that, it isn't news. News is supposed to be presenting facts, not opinions and I'm sure some of the facts Fox presents are, well, factual. I am not willing to trust that however, given their track record. In my mind they lost any benefit of the doubt I would give to a normal news program or agency when they pissed on journalistic integrity in their court case.
The Internet is exposing people to other views because news sites, like /., are not pushing political views -- just their readers.
I don't think I follow you. How is that exposing people to other views? And what makes you think the average person goes to sites like Slashdot instead of special interest sites. My brother might be a good example of an average guy. The websites he visits and gets news from are devoted to AR-15 ownership, Kawasaki motorcycle ownership, and kayaking. The majority of the news he reads comes as articles posted in one of these three forums, with the vast majority being from the first one. He has pretty well self selected himself into getting a very narrow selection of news because of that, and I should think that is actually the norm.
Which, seems to be a trend considering that quasi-non partisan sites are more popular than the traditional ones.
I don't know what you mean in your terminology. What's a quasi-non partisan site? Do you have an example or two?
Furthermore, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to places that you agree with because you believe their[sic] right, not because you're sheltering yourself from opposing views.
We're not arguing the morality of what people are doing here. I was just discussing what I see the trends to be and how I think that has negative results. People tend towards internet sites that provide filtered news with a predetermined slant already injected. I see that as limiting and divisive and simply partitioning our society into smaller groups with less exposure to diverse views and facts that people in their small societal subset tend not to be exposed to.
I'm not trying to argue partisan politics here either. I think the Democratic and Republican parties are both very wrong about half the time. There isn't even a third party that lines up well with my values and understanding of the world. When I'm on Google news and I see five different papers have an article on something, I click on the BBC first, because they don't provide much opinion in their news and tend to do a professional job with the facts (and because their take on US news tends to be a bit less slanted). Fox isn't on my shitlist because of what their political affiliations are any more than say NBC. They are there because they have such strong political affiliations which does not make for credible news. They are leading the charge towards slanted partisan news and they have rejected of any sort of journalistic integrity. If tomorrow NBC were in court arguing they had a legal right to lie to their v
Some people go to christian chat rooms simply to tell them they're all idiots for not being atheists
Well, they're called "trolls", just as a Christian going to an athoest chat room telling them they're all going to hell is a troll.
Sure some are trolls, just wanting to provoke a response, but a lot are people who actually want to express themselves and believe what they're saying. Traditionally trolls espouse views they don't believe in order to get a response.
I can believe that the average person doesn't want news gathered by people with more resources than them then analyzed by experts with more knowledge than they have.
If you believe that the journalist writing the stories is an expert in any field in which they write, there is no reason to continue reading your comment.
Journalists are supposed to be experts on fact gathering and interviewing. Many of them also have knowledge within the field they report on which greatly exceeds that of the average reader.
You are patently wrong. They demonstrate this on a daily basis by the errors in their reporting. Talk to anyone who IS an expert in a subject that the journalists cover and see if they don't tell you they see far too many errors.
I don't have to, since I can look to fields where I am an expert myself. Yes, reporters get things wrong. They almost certainly get things wrong more often than experts in the field do, although they may do a better job of communicating accurate facts to normal people than those experts. I've too often seen experts talk directly to normal people and normal people leave with completely wrong ideas because the expert did not know how to properly communicate.
But that's all beside the point. You see, a journalist may not be an expert in the subject they're writing about, but unless the reader is an expert in every field, they're still several steps up on the average reader. They also have access average readers don't and their facts are checked by another person. All of this provides value.
The self righteous sanctimony and distain you have of what is CLEARLY more people than ABC/NBC/CBS and probably CNN combined is interesting.
This is called "argumentum ad populum" and has been recognized as a logically fallacious argument for thousands of years.
I'd love to compare the literacy of say those that watch what is on those channels to that of what is on Fox News.
You want to compare the literacy rate of "those who watch what is on those channels" with "what is on Fox News". Maybe you should work on your own literacy a bit, because that doesn't even make sense. Assuming you meant that you want to compare the literacy rates of viewers of Fox New with the literacy rate of viewers of other news programs, I don't think you'll find the results flattering to Fox. I assume you can agree there is probably a strong positive correlation between those that vote republican and those that watch Fox? Because there is a moderately significant correlation between people who no not pass high school and who vote Republican. That is not conclusive of course, but it does suggest just the opposite correlation you seem to imply.
The problem with people such as yourself, you can't imagine anyone having an opinion that is different than you...
Gee what a compelling argument... that is compellingly pointless and from someone who doesn't know me. I don't have any problem with people who have other opinions, I just also recognize not all other opinions are logical or even reasonable. This isn't grade school and everyone isn't equally right. You have to form opinions rationally and defend them logically and show your work, or you are simply wrong.
...you end up saying that they are ignorant(and racist, and sexist ....)
And this is the ever popular strawman argument. You'll note that you say that I will say people are sexist and racist, when I said no such thing.
I'm not going to read through all of your long and rambling nonsense. Given your writing so far, I don't think you have much of a grasp on the concepts or logic or reason or rhetoric or at least no formal education since you seem to be ignoring all the rules needed for a rational and civil discussion. If you have a problem with what I have written or want to discuss, then by all means, reply to my previous post again. But this time, actually address the specific points I made with specific and reasoned rebuttal. I'll be happy to address a reply in that format. For now, however, I'm writing you off as a nutjob and not bothering to finish reading your nonsense.
Then explain slashdot -- MS vs Apple, the RIAA apologists you see here in any story about copyright, vi vs Emacs, US vs UK, people for the drug laws vs people with a clue, etc.
Well partly some people do like a good argument and a disagreement and to be challenged, they're just a minority. Those people will go out of their way to find places to get a discussion or to try to espouse their beliefs and attack the beliefs of others. Some people go to christian chat rooms simply to tell them they're all idiots for not being atheists... but those people are fairly uncommon. Partly, people still argue with one another, just over comfortable issues once they can assume a like minded. Some people are happy to argue about whether the mantle that covered the heavens before Noah's flood was made of ice or liquid water, once they know they're in a comfortable setting where they won't be ridiculed for their lack of reason or scientific understanding for believing there was a giant flood that covered the whole earth in the first place.
Slashdot is also interesting because it is a subject matter site. People will argue the objective merits of vi and emacs all day, but they know that if someone comes at them with an argument that reading or writing anything but the bible is the work of satan and that they are going to hell because the bible says so, that person will be modded down by the community of modders, sort of protection in numbers for the ego.
In this community, at least, you have VERY diverse opinions, arguments, areas of expertise, ages...
Certainly, but we also filter out a large range of arguments, mostly ones that are not nerdy enough, like faith based assertions, and threats of personal violence. To call the membership of Slashdot diverse is fair in a way, but it is a self selecting group of people who pride themselves on being nerds, that is intelligence. This alienates a huge portion of the population and makes Slashdot readership very atypical. Heck, go down to your local bar and try to have the same kind of conversations as a typical one on this forum. It seems to be that people who value intelligence (a commonality here) are one of the subsets of our population that do like to argue for the sake of the discussion and the value it can bring.
Do you know why people are moving away from traditional media? Because it acts like it's better than we are.
That's a reasonable hypothesis. I can believe that the average person doesn't want news gathered by people with more resources than them then analyzed by experts with more knowledge than they have. Of course the average person wants to marry someone stupider than they are too. So do you have any sort of support for your hypothesis?
Blogging has become popular because it's there in plain english, the way we look at things -- and it's accessible and free.
Hmm, I think blogging has become popular partly because it is more similar to the reader than mainstream news is. But I don't think that's really a problem with the writing so much as the opinion and analysis injected. Mainstream news tries to present facts and the whole journalistic model of writing all the writers had to master in school is about presenting those facts without subjective interpretation. People like subjective interpretation. It's a lot easier to form opinions as to how something affects you if someone tells you your opinion instead of you having to think. And since there are so many blogs out there, people can find ones that fit in with their already formed biases. They can read the news, but with everything already interpreted in a slant they like. Are you a neo-nazi survivalist? No problem. Instead of reading the facts about some new law, you can just hear about the parts that seem to confirm you beliefs that the jews are screwing you over and it doesn't matter because a violent anarchistic revolution is coming and your investment of all your money into ammunition and canned food was a good idea. The A to B to C of how a credit card reform bill adds to this situation is already constructed for you and you can parrot it verbatim to your buddies.
With the digital age, all of my friends are only a few feet away from me most of the time.
And there's another thing. You can talk to like-minded people on blogs. Your friends can all be on the forums you read and you don't have to talk to all those liberals and blacks at the bar. You can stay home and write to other neo-nazis and you don't have to worry about people telling you you're wrong or an idiot or pointing out your facts are incorrect. Of course obama is half jewish because judaism and islam are really part of the same religion or umm something.
Traditional media has forgotten that the most important asset they have is trust -- and accessibility.
And an almost fanatic devotion to the pope? Actually, once you make yourself the "channel" for a subset of people, trust isn't a big issue. You can outright lie to your readers and viewers and people are so emotionally invested in your "team" being the winning one they won't call you on it. It happens regularly.
I have friends on facebook that post links of personal interest to their feeds so the rest of us can see and comment on it, and this is the foundation of the new media -- peer relationships.
The issue here being, that is media advertising, or circulation, not the research and creation of original news content and expert analysis.
Journalism needs to mesh with this, and the journalists themselves need to get out there and put their reputation on the line in a public and accessible way. I want to 'friend' journalists I like and trust on facebook and then see their stories...
If they're actually presenting subjective news, then the journalist shouldn't be super important, especially compared to the reputation of the publication which vets the articles and makes sure some nutjob isn't making things up. Picking just particular journalists is you self selecting away news you don't want to hear. People already do this to great extent in choosing which newspapers and Websites and TV programs they watch. You're advocatin
3. Most print newspapers have journalist with a very liberal slant, and people don't want that anymore, witness the success of Fox News and online bloggers.
Actually, I'd argue just the opposite. The success of Fox News from a large number of viewers who watch nothing else speaks more to the fact that people will go out of their way and become loyal consumers of "news" that has a distinct slant that confirms the viewers' already conceived ideals. People like news that doesn't give them facts so much as comfortable facts. People like Websites where they can talk to people who don't challenge their ideas and don't make them put in any effort to determine the truth.
Fox News is the epitome of this and is far more focuses on entertainment than journalistic integrity. Heck, they went to court and argued they have no legal obligation to not fire people for refusing to lie on TV and for refusing to kill a story about a health danger to the public. They're legally right too, they have no obligation not to lie to their viewers, but any organization that makes that argument in court is not "news" any more than a Frootloops commercial is. That's not to say some programs on the network don't have some integrity, of course, but the corporation does not.
At one time I thought the internet might open up the world. People would be able to hear views from around the world and directly communicate with those people inexpensively. People could thus gain a wider perspective and understanding. In truth, human nature is such that it has allowed us to self segregate more. People don't even have to talk to so diverse a range of people as live in their neighborhood because they can find an online forum that fits exactly with their beliefs and preconceived ideas and spend all their time talking to people without the discomfort of disagreement. It's much easier to complain about one's favorite villainized segment of our society when one does not actually have to hear them and can just attack strawman arguments one poses on their behalf. There are forums for people who thing the earth is flat or is literally 6000 years old and the people there can safely discuss their nonsense knowing the moderators will ban and remove posts from anyone who challenges it with facts or controversy. People don't want unbiased opinion and Fox is another example of the consumer getting what they want and not what they might need.
That's an interesting fact about Wave, for sure, but it seems unrelated to the assertion of yours that I was responding to.
I can see where you'd think that and I half agree. Still, the fact that Wave is an open protocol with a reference implementation does change the game. Skype has interesting but limited ability to provide different types of communication between individuals. Wave has virtually unlimited ability because any project can display the data and shape the interaction. For example, Waves can be embedded in existing Web pages and used with just a Web browser. Skype is necessarily limited by the authors of the Skype application. But maybe that is slitting hairs.
As for how Wave changes the paradigm of communication, it moves from an interaction centric communication to a topic centric one. You have a topic of communication first, and the participants contribute to that. You're quite correct that you can embed a picture in a Skype chat and then switch to doing a video chat. Can you display the image in your video chat? Can you display the text of the chat conversation in your video chat? Can you drop your chat in a Web page and come back to it later. Can you quite you shut down you computer and go to a coffee shop and reopen it then rewind back through all the changes made while you were out and seamlessly rejoin the conversation.
That's really where I see the big shift. You aren't using a client to start various conversations with various people or groups of people. You're using a client to participate in a conversation which is itself a document or file that persists and can be viewed and interacted with in different ways, sometimes automatically. Writing on it can go from the workflow of an e-mail to that of an IM without any choices on the part of the user. This also frees the conversation for automated participants. I can use a plug-in in some chat clients to automatically translate content from one language to another, but with Wave a bot can sit there and translate for everyone, or perform other useful tasks.
Maybe my view of it is off, but it really does seem to be a paradigm shift. The real question now is if it will be a useful one and if adoption will be significant enough.
Any examples?
From back in the day "talk" and "ytalk" from the CLI. Various IRC clients. AOL IM version 6.8 and later has it as an option. AT&T-IMR (I think this might be piggy backing on AIM). I'm sure there are more, but not that I've used.
I'm actually glad for this website, as it just reaffirms my belief that this stimulus bill is a load of shit. Most of the recipients of grant money in my local area are accountants and attorneys, who are the ones driving around in Porches and Bimmers while not creating tons of jobs for local citizens.
Our of curiosity, where do you live?
In my immediate vicinity the stimulus has gone to:
I guess what I'm saying is, they seem to be doing pretty well by my locality for the types of grants they're providing. I don't see any handouts to accountants or attorneys.
And so the user just becomes trained to click yes to every box...
If you present the user with a series of "yes" boxes your security design is fundamentally flawed. First, users should only be asked a question in the event that they have unrecognized malware or are running very unusual software from a third party that for some reason cannot sign their product. Second, if you completely fail to follow good UI practices and present repetitive boxes all with the same thing on them, then yes your design will fail, just the same as if you provide a firewall that can't be configured and is wide open by default. When you include crappy design features currently used as in Windows and used by the UI design community as an example of what should never be done as an implicit statement, then sure it won't work.
Every button should be a verb, that describes a specific action and, ideally is unique to the situation presented. "Yes" is not an action and a user can read that button, click it, and have no idea what they've done, especially if you overload them with tons of useless buttons to press for no reason. If, however, they are presented with specific questions rarely, like: "Program "nudieparty.exe" is from an unknown provider and has not been reviewed for security. It wants to access your e-mail address book and start a server running on your computer. (Stop it from running and delete it)(Stop it from reading my addresses and starting a server but run it anyway)(Allow it to read my addresses and start a server)(See Advanced Options)". Well, that's a reasonable default UI with good choices. Not all users will make the right choice, but at least they have a fighting chance and good choices to make with decent info.
It's not that it's an unfree market, it's more of a natural monopoly.
There are multiple definitions for the phrase "free market" in common use today. Some definitions require competition laws to be enforced while others preclude it. As we're trying to have a discussion instead of write a glossary for an economics text, lets ignore the semantic arguments.
Free market is not the solution to all problems.
NOTHING is a solution to all problems. Leveraging self-interest using economic competition, however, is a fundamental tool for technological advancement, one that is not currently applied to the desktop OS market or effectively to the malware problem.
Antitrust law is fundamentally anti-free-market so you obviously understand that market freedom has to be limited because of the human nature to take advantage of freedom.
I don't really think a discussion of individual versus agent versus societal freedom is on topic, but I get your point.
Leveraging antitrust law on MS is not a bad idea but it is of course a lot more complicated than that.
True. I was sort of hoping, foolishly, that a change in US government party control would result in actual enforcement of our antitrust laws against MS and several other parties in related markets but that hope was in vain. I don't expect meaningful change on software patents either. Without a fundamental shift to reduce industry influence on politics, things will continue as they are.
And that's a problem for a lot of users. Is Yahoo reputable? Adobe? Apple?
To some extent, yes. They are at least identifiable and you can sue them because they signed the software you're installing, as opposed to software with no signature from an unknown source. On top of that, there is no reason users cannot layer more intelligence from one or multiple sources that audit software for malicious behavior.
They all install hard-to-remove adware and crashware as a side effect of installing something you want.
Citation needed.
We've been three years in our combined household (teenager, gamers, and a developer) without any kind of infection. No virus scanners at all...
If you don't run a scanner, how do you know? In any case, how is this relevant to the general case and normal users?
This is why I responded. I left UAC on my development machine at home and on my netbook just to give it a chance. And you know what? Once the initial wave of software installs are over with, it's really not that bad.
The default settings and the UI are both atrocious. Even you had to add a disclaimer in your above statement. The initial wave of installs conditions users to just allow everything since it bugs them repeatedly about software when the OS should have the ability to know it is not malware. You can't ignore the user interface component of security software and not bother with actually testing it's effectiveness in the real world. UAC could have been useful, but as implemented it's just a way to shift the blame for security breaches when normal users behave predictably. Security isn't about finding someone to blame for security breaches. It is about decreasing their frequency.
UAC is still useful for advanced, security minded users as a way to have more control, but it does little or nothing to benefit normal users.
The free market? Yeah that worked great for health care in the USA!
Healthcare, military, police, fire departments, and several other markets are a poor fit for free market capitalism because of inherent bargaining issues and high risks for non-agreement. The desktop OS market does not fit into that same subset.
What you will have is these two companies (or 10 or 20), microsoft-a and microsoft-b colluding together to shaft customers.
I explicitly said they would be forbidden from nonpublic communications or exclusive agreements with one another. How would they then collude?
Look at cel phone companies and their "system access fee" for a good example of that. It doesnt matter how many for profit companies you have, they will never result in the best possible solution for the consumer.
The cell phone industry is not a free market either. It is heavily regulated and came out of the regular phone market, leveraging existing government enforced monopoly power. Besides, the cell phone companies are marketing to consumers. The OS market sells to OEMs with just as much clout and who can roll their own and OSS is an unkillable competitor.
That is simply not the goal of a for profit company.
Of course not! The whole point of why capitalism works better for many markets than socialism is that it harnesses the self interest and greed of companies. They profit the most by making the best offering in competition with others. Their incentive for profit and enforcement of our antitrust laws is all that is needed.
What should be done is the government should build on linux or BSD and make an OS for the people, by the people. This OS would be completely free to everyone.
It already is free for everyone. The problem being, it is not required to be used by everyone. Nor do I think that's would be a useful or justifiable intrusion into personal freedom.
The free market very rarely does anything altruistically.
If companies were altruistic, socialism would be ideal. Capitalism harnesses greed to provide benefit to consumers. The free market works, when it is managed to prevent runaway trusts.
I believe there are a few countries which are already standardizing their desktops on free solutions.
Some are for government use and I think it is a smart decision. I don't know any that mandate it for all citizens though, nor do I think that would be a good idea.
Take it one step further and they would release their OS and customizations to the tax payers who are paying for it anyway.
Are there any governments developing for Linux they have in use that aren't releasing their changes? All the customizations I know of are released already.
And none of that will do anything to prevent users from being dumb and downloading anything from the internet and running it without a care in the world.
Of course not, nor should it. The point is to have an OS secure enough that it doesn't matter. Let the dumb user run any old thing, but by default tell them when it's malware. If you don't know where its from, don't give it default access to do anything. Throw it in a sandbox or a VM and run it there. Unless they explicitly enable it to have access to anything useful, don't give it to unsigned software and throttle the internet access for it and be sure the user knows what it is doing when it does it. The point is to let the user do what they want, but safely without jumping through crazy hoops. Sure tons of users want to play the stupid game from the internet or look at the nudie pics. Make sure programs run just the same in a VM and out and by default let it run in a stupid VM with access to virtual resources and the user is still happy, but secure.
Let us assume that OS becomes rock hard and no malware can infect the machine then what will most likely happen is malware writers will just write stuff to destroy users data.
Why would you give unsigned software access to user data? How would unsigned software know if it has access to user data or if the OS is handing it junk data? Sure a user could explicitly enable some unsigned software to open a particular file by dragging it into the program or whatever, but the OS should also handle versioning so you can just roll that back too. Besides, most malware is for profit these days. How does that profit malware writers?
I would prefer an internet system more akin to the cellphone companies, where the networks are privately held but you still have a choice of multiple providers. Competition is preferable to a government monopoly.
Yeah, because cell phone coverage in the US is so great compared to other places? Also, your analogy does not exactly work, as to do that you'd need each company be able to run lines to your house. It's a engineering nightmare much worse than providing multiple towers in a locality.
Agreed but corporations don't have any control over that. It's the local cities and towns that refuse to allow competition, so petition your local or state government to lift that restriction, and you will have competition. Simple as that.
You don't think there is any reason for those local restrictions? We tried the same thing in the dawn of telephones and electrical power. You get a dozen companies running separate lines and when one pole falls over it knocks out service to a dozen providers. Additionally, whenever one company has to dig or service there is significant risk of damage to other lines, and the more companies there are the worse this problem gets.
It makes a lot more sense to have one set of lines that are shared by all and the government is the best group to do that, or at least one company regulated by the government the way power distribution works. And several municipalities have tried this, often only to be blocked by legislation written by teleco pet legislators at the state and federal level.
We pay more for less than other countries
A common misconception.
You're truncating when quoting me, changing the meaning of what I wrote. I said we have paid more per person in subsidies than other countries with similar population densities who pay less. Comparing us to all of Europe with widely varying population densities and incomes and levels of government subsidy is worse than meaningless it is misleading. Take a look at countries like Sweden. They have faster internet at lower prices, with a similar population density. They paid less in taxes to subsidize their system despite massive fraud during the implementation.
You have to look at all the factors for comparison, not just bandwidth, if you want an accurate picture. Equating us with another country because we have similar bandwidth rates when said country has a significantly lower population density, more universal coverage, lower monthly costs for that bandwidth and spent pennies to our dollar in taxpayer money to set up the system is disingenuous.
This is a gigantic losing battle where we have long since pasted the point where we need more AV and UAC "protection" and start closing loopholes and flaws in the Windows OS and architecture.
The core flaws are the that Windows does not clearly provide the user with appropriate information on who is providing a given application and if that is a reputable source or an anonymous provider. Windows does not allow users to run software within a sandbox with permissions appropriate to the software, by default. Windows does not clearly provide granular controls and feedback on what a given application wants to do and what risk this entails. Further, when it comes to determining trust, MS has failed to make this valuable information a competitive market to motivate creation of the best data. Windows still has a lot of duplicate services running on average because MS insists on using proprietary services for interaction between Windows machines and third parties have to implement standards compliant services for interoperability with everything else. Finally, Windows machines still have a significant number of vulnerabilities due to methodological lack of an ongoing security policy for development (although this is improving significantly).
I would note, UAC isn't a bad concept, just a terrible, terrible implementation with a user interface and default settings that make it unusable.
This is all the free market working against the unfree market. In a free market competitors work to make the best product to make the most money. Right now, that's malware writers, each trying to outdo one another and make the best trojans to get the most bots and personal info.
In a free market consumers would buy computers best suited to deal with this threat, with defenses that appropriately reduce this threat to a small subset of their customers. But, since we have one player with a huge amount of influence on the desktop OS market, with huge influence on computer makers and other markets and who has built substantial barriers to prevent consumers from trying other options, desktop OS's are not adapting appropriately. Why should they if it is not losing them significant money?
Trojans aren't some unsolvable problem, but for the most part they are a problem that needs to be dealt with at the OS level. Add on software from computer makers is only going to be partially effective. SELinux, for example, does a reasonable job of mitigating trojans in the secure workstation market, but has not been adapted to the consumer desktop market as yet because it requires integration on the part of application developers and there is no real motivation to do that. Linux and OS X desktops don't face significant levels of attack. Windows doesn't lose real money when it fails to defend against them. Why would anyone who understands the benefits of free market capitalism expect anything but to have malware writers win. They have direct, financial motivation.
Seriously, MS could easily create a sandboxed backwards compatibility layer (they already have). They could easily require all software that did not have a proper signature and an ACL to run in a restricted sandbox. They could dump money into crafting a good UI for it and motivating developers by restricting access to new, useful APIs. The real question is, why should they, as a business, spend that money?
I have a modest proposal that will solve this problem and a lot of other problems all stemming from the same cause. Break up Microsoft. Seriously. They're repeat offender antitrust violators. Break them up and give at least two new companies complete rights to use all the source code and patents and an equal portion of the human resources and capital. Forbid these companies from any nonpublic communication or any agreements they don't offer to other companies with the same terms.
When you have executives at MS-A and at MS-B both realizing they have to do something to win sales contracts from Dell and HP and Sony and Asus guess what, they'll have to compete. Then their financial well being will depend upon which can deliver a better product at a lower price. Neither will be able to strongarm customers or people in other markets. They'll have motivation to fix the flaws in Windows and the accompanying software that people have been learning to work around for decades. And neither company will have to worry about antitrust concerns and will be able to bundle whatever crap they want including their version of IE. I'd be willing to bet if our justice department had the balls, the malware problem would be a minor annoyance in 5 years time.
start building a public internet infrastructure
Which we will be taxed for at 5 times the current rate charged by the private companies.
We're ALREADY being taxed for it. We paid for the creation of their existing networks with huge government subsidies and they keep getting more of them. We're still paying interest on the loans we took out as a country to provide all that subsidy. Rather than wasting the money, we should hold them accountable to provide a public good and open up all the last mile network to other competitors.
At least with Comcast I can say, "Thanks for the call but I don't want your tv shit," and not pay them a dime.
No you can't. You're already paying them with your tax dollars.
Also my DSL as actually reasonable - $15 a month. I have no complaints.
I'm very happy for you. Too bad most americans don't have any such options. We pay more for less than other countries, just like healthcare. We have already paid more per person in subsidies to the telecos than other countries with similar population densities who now pay half what we do for faster service. Your price is an anecdote, but there are several real studies showing how much we pay and what we get by comparison.
So stop doing it, I did. I download a lot of stuff and my connection is more reliable at actually obtaining the content on a regular basis at a consistent speed using 5 Mbps AT&T DSL than Comcast's "Comcastic" 10 Mbps cable modem.
There are multiple problems with that. First, so far AT&T has been more expensive every time I checked because they bundle their service with a home phone line, which I also don't want. Second, AT&T's connection is slower by all comparisons I've seen. Third, doing business with AT&T (my cell phone provider) is a bureaucratic hell. Even finding out if they will provide DSL to my location is an exercise in frustration. If I go to their Web page right now (just did) I fill out four different forms as they try to figure out where my address is (weird how Yahoo and Google maps have no problem huh?). In the end I get the message "Due to technical problems, we are unable to process your order online at this time. Please contact us at 1-877-722-2256 Monday through Friday, 7 am to 9 pm and on Saturday, 7 am to 5 pm." I'm not falling for that crap again. I called them once and got to talk to a whole variety of clueless people who couldn't give me a straight answer about anything. They are the epitome of a giant broken bureaucracy I don't want to have to deal with.
Stop complaining and start voting with your feet and your wallet, trust me, you'll feel bettter about yourself. I don't LOVE AT&T, but they're certainly the lesser of my two evil choices.
I disagree. So far Comcast is the lesser of two evils for me, but the point is after giving both companies billions in government aid to build their networks I shouldn't have to be picking the lesser of two evils both of whom force me to buy a crappy service I don't want to get what is basically a utility I need. It's idiotic and the result of our broken system that lets corporations lobby the government. We need the government to work for the people again and stop giving these idiots hand outs and start building a public internet infrastructure that Comcact and AT&T can provide TV or phone or both over... and so can any other company without worrying about government enforced monopolies on public right-of ways or trying to overcome start up costs the government paid for their competitors.
Yeah, I pay for basic cable service even though it is not plugged into my TV. That's because I want fast internet access and Comcast has bundled them such that signing up for a cable TV service I don't use, saves me money. That is pretty much a conclusive indicator of a broken market that needs to be addressed by antitrust regulators.
I think a massive component to the success of Wave will be how good the integration tools will be. Will we be able to import contacts from Exchange straight into Wave?
Of course not. How can you interact the same way you did with a Wave user when someone is using Exchange which does not support the vast majority of those features? Wave isn't e-mail it is a replacement for e-mail. It might be able to interact with existing e-mail systems in a limited way but it's not going to magically upgrade Exchange.
Will we be able to use waves in email services other than wave?
Can you use Yahoo chats in email services other than Yahoo chat?
That said, I think Wave could seriously revolutionize the standard of email communication, and I really hope for all our sake they are able to pull it off.
I think Wave has real potential to replace e-mail and chat and standard blogs. I have a lot of hope for it, but a lot depends upon what sort of deals they can manage. Will it work on the iPhone out of the box? In iChat? Will multi-protocol chat clients that are standard on various platforms incorporate support for it? Will Google get stand-alone clients up on all platforms? Will Google get major Web service providers embedding Wave in their pages as a means of supporting richer discussion boards? Wave can be the coolest thing ever, but without promoting it strongly to users it won't go anywhere. There are more than just technical challenges for Google here.
A trend I've noticed for both smartphones and laptops is the constant drive to reduce size and make devices thinner. Smaller and thinner is trendier. Frankly, I wish they're just make an iPhone or laptop twice as thick, thus quadrupling the battery life. I'm not a weakling. I can carry a bit more weight especially if the device is functional enough to take over the function of some other devices I would otherwise carry.