Only if you define gameplay as "having seen everything the game has to offer".
I usually play games like Civ IV through quickly on the easiest setting once to get a feel for them before I really play them on higher difficulty levels. And you know, somehow they are still fun even though I've seen everything.
I find tutorials very useful, at times. The Guild Wars tutorials were nicely done and made you learn the game while you were already playing it. The GTA way (with in-game driving schools that show you how to do some of the more advanced tricks) is also cool.
There's just one thing that is really wrong with tutorials sometimes, and that's if you can't skip them. There are a couple games that work like that, where you have to go through the fucking tutorial every time you start a new game. Urgh.
I take exception to the idea that the "free market" only exists in theory. This is the unfortunate result of lots and lots of free and public education conveying the meme that the free market is a nice "idea" and all, but face it, you need the government to help you navigate "reality."
Nonsense. I have a specific criticism that you do not reply to. Information as a requirement to the workings of the free market can not at the same time be a commodity to be traded at a free market. You are mixing various levels here. We could call the information about markets "meta-information", then I would agree that other information can be traded on a market. However, you can not make meta-information a subject to trade, because by definition everyone in the free market requires full access to it, and something that everyone has everything of anyways doesn't make a good trade good (it's value would be zero).
This isn't to say that consumers won't ever get burned -- it's to say that the information that a consumer collects while being burned is valuable to them if they choose to leverage it.
Yes, probably. But you are leaving theory for pragmatics here. The free market theory requires that trades on the market are made by two partners who posess all necessary information about the trade. The theory does not contain elements of surprise or fraud. And that's exactly where according to my argument the government comes in to ensure that we have at least something that closely resembles a free market, by making sure that there are limits to the amount of fraud and mis-information.
Such a scheme would never work, you say?
On the contrary, I know a number of such services and consider them excellent. They are another (non-government) method to approximate the theoretical free market. However, they still do not offer complete information as required by the theory. They limit the impact of marketing, fraud and mis-information, but they do not eliminate them.
The only way we can know that a product or service has value is if it gets tested in a free market -- where people voluntarily exchange for it.
In theory, yes. In the real world, there are countless counter-examples. Now you might claim that there are insubstantial values and some people who pay, say $1000 for gadget X which is also on the market in identical form as gadget Y for $800 are expressing the value the put on the brand of X as compared to Y. However, in reality most of these people do not know (i.e. lack information) that X and Y are actually identical (and there are many examples of products being 100% identical, down to having been manufactured in the same plant, and being sold under different brands for different prices).
We can look at much simpler examples: In most markets, the customers do not even know about all offers that are on the market. No shop carries them all, neither brick-and-mortar nor online. No comparison test gets them all.
We can never know the true value of what the government spends our taxes on without testing the exchange under voluntary conditions.
Not everything has value that can be found in a free market exchange. You have posted some examples yourself: National security, police, etc. - how much is it worth to you not to be robbed every day?;)
To think that free markets can't solve problems like fraud, misrepresentation, etc. is to misunderstand the limited role a government must play.
"must" according to whom?
But I'll be very interested in a free-market solution to fraud. Remember that fraudsters have become extremely mobile - see spammers and phishing. Sure you can set up an info site. But not everyone will read it. So there'll always be some victims. No matter what you do, there will always be phishers because you have a reaction time. With a global Internet, even a short reaction time results in a few victims. Since the cost of spamming a billion peop
And your average German is so enlightened? Give me a break.
I can't remember a German trying to dry his cat in the microwave, no.;)
Please.. your own generalizations show the world that you are indeed retarded.\
Your reply shows that you are unable to spot slight sarcasm.
But... since we were talking about Norway, you might find it interesting that Norway happens to be the #1 nation in the UN Human Development Index, while the US ranks in at #10...
On the surface, your argument sounds convincing. However, it falls down once you dig deeper.
You ignore that "free market" as you laud it exists only in the theoretic world of the textbooks. This theoretical free market does indeed work as advertised. But it requires a few things that simply do not exist in the real world - total information being one of the critical components.
With limited information available to one side of the market (usually the customers), the game shifts from "whoever can make the best offer" to "whoever can seemingly make the best offer" - an important shift that gives rise not only to marketing, but also to shady business practices and outright fraud.
This is where some simple government regulations comes in and supports the market. Through warrenty requirements, for example, these regulations ensure a certain amount of information being available and allow customers to make informed choices. For example, if I know that by law the claims on the outside of the package have to be true or I can return the item, then I have more information than I would have without that law - because without it I would have to research the truth value of each and every claim instead of being able to rely on them. In so far as regulations create a reasonable lower margin, they support the free market by bringing reality more in line with theory.
I do agree that a lot of regulations are not reasonable, and quite a few should be abolished and were almost certainly the work of lobbyists.
However, this fear of any and all regulations some people exhibit is just insane. The solution to tyranny is not anarchy.
Paintball doesn't compare to modern warfare. You are lacking the planes, tanks, cluster bombs, landmines and other pretty much random hazzards. There is no skill that would allow you to dodge a 500lb firebomb. Skill might prevent you from stepping on a landmine (maybe), but if your ship is sunk in the middle of the ocean, no amount of swimming skill will save you or the other 500 people whose only personal mistake was to be on that particular ship at that particular time.
On the macro level, skill matters even less. The most skillful armies do not tend to win. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" is an excellent book in this regard, with lots of numbers an tables to give substance to the claim that war is first and foremost a matter of attrition. Whoever runs out of tanks, planes or ammo first is the loser. A kill-ratio of 2:1 or even 5:1 doesn't matter if the other side is out-producing you 10:1. That's why Russia was always secretly afraid of China - numbers.
Most importantly, however, on the macro scale, it's not about survival in the evolution sense at all anymore, because genetics is the last and least important factor that determines anything.
I don't understand how Norway can say that if one of the parties is Norwegian (or in Norway) that only the laws of Norway can control.
Because laws are not a "choose any you like" concept. You have to follow the US speed limit on US highways, even if you are a foreigner driving a japanese car, you know?
Same thing here. Norwegian law applies if you sell to norwegian customers, even if you're an american company.
If a company wants to do business in a country, it must follow the laws of said country or not do business there, that is the simple issue. Saying "but it's legal where we come from" is not a defence. To put it this way, would you want to allow (say) Chinese cars to be sold in the US without the safety features US law requires, simply because they aren't required in their country of origin?
I think you need a better example to get through to the average american. How about this:
Would you want to allow some company from the Netherlands to sell drugs to your schoolkids, simply because in the Netherlands they are legal?(*)
(*) don't mention that there are some restrictions and that this applies only to some drugs which are widely considered to be not much worse than tobacco or alcohol. That'd only make things more difficult, and americans don't dig difficult.:)
No, I simply believe the socialist mindset of Europe is bad business practice.
You are funny. Europe is very much not socialistic. Just because americans like to label everything left of "kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out" as "socialist" doesn't make it so.
Europe still believes in a balance between human rights and corporate rights. The balance swings a little here and there depending on government, mood and whatever lobbyist group is offering the best entertainment program this year, but it is far from socialism. On the contrary, for a couple years now it's been more right-wing than left (some of the "leftist" parties today run on programs that aren't too far from the right-wing programs of a decade past).
Europe will end up keeping Apple's iTunes out entirely,
May I invite you to a reality check? USA: Population ca. 298 mio. EU: Population ca. 458 mio.
We're a considerably larger market than you are. Neither Apple nor Microsoft nor any of the other big corporations will withdraw from the european market, no matter what and no matter how often you dudes repeat that ridiculous idea.
Apple is an "opt in" monopoly, they force not one person to start using iTunes and their DRM.
Irrelevant. Monopoly is monopoly no matter how nicely you call it.
All you "free market" drones overlook that the antitrust laws are in place to protect the free market, because one thing that the market can not sort out is if it is itself broken - you need a working market to "sort things out" the free market way, so when the market itself is broken, you are lacking the very self-regulation force that could fix it.
Monopolies are the AIDS of capitalism - they attack the immune system, the very "free market forces" that you glorify.
This is most excellent news. Finally, some politicians wake up to the fact that it is them who should regulate copyright, DRM, licensing, warranty and a ton of other issues. That's what we have them for.
It would be a failure of democracy if some politicians in the US, which I could not vote for or against, could set policies for my country. Or some corporations could decide where to apply which laws.
If you want to do business in X, follow whatever rules/laws apply in X. If you don't like it, don't do business there. It really is simple, isn't it?
Oh yeah, that also applies to countries and laws you don't like, no matter if it's Norway and it's copyright laws, or China and its censorship laws...
You would be right if survival in war had anything to do with good genetic traits. That may even have been true in the middle ages, to some extent, though I doubt even that. In modern warfare, good traits certainly have nothing to do with it. It's more a question of whether or not you're standing near the impact of one of the artillery rounds, or happen to be in the wrong building when it gets hit by a 500lb firebomb.
We eliminated that a few thousand years ago, when compassion was raised to a virtue by itself, even without purpose.
From a pure survival POV (i.e. non-moralistic), there is much advantage in temporary support for temporarily disabled (ill, wounded, etc.) group members. However, there is very little advantage in permanently supporting the terminally ill, old, or weak. There is some advantage, if they have positive genetic traits or knowledge to confer and since you don't necessarily know that, an argument can be made that it is positive to do it on blind faith. However, the argument is weak and will almost certainly not pass a cost-vs.-gain analysis.
Point is, we are a species that keeps its old, ill and weak alive while sending its young men to be slaughtered in war. The only thing making less sense than that - again from a pure survival POV - would be sending the young women to war. But I think we aren't too far away from that.
As much as I dislike these legal discussions, I see the point. Debian is a kind of afraid of all the DRM, IP lawsuit, patent law and other bullshit and tries to stear well clear of it. Debian people realize that these things don't hit you in isolated spots - they're like dum-dum bullets, they expand inside the body.
Look at SCO or any patent claim. There's maybe 1% or less of your code that is possibly in violation of someone else's thing. And yet it threatens your entire product.
The following scenario is unlikely - but if it ever does come to pass, we will all thank whatever gods we believe in for Debian to be there and for having been as strict as they are:
Imagine MS or possibly a small group of likewise evil, selfish companies whose only way of "winning" in the marketplace is to destroy their opponents. Imagine them banding together and using a combination of software patents, DRM and DMCA lawsuits and a couple copyright disputes to drag Linux into an endless legal battle. Imagine that different from the SCO they can somehow construct a case that at least appears solid enough to a judge that Redhat and SuSE and whoever you have get slapped with a preliminary injunction. Maybe it's just 2 packages that are a problem, but the judge orders a stop to the distribution until the entire thing can be resolved. You don't think MS would have much haste in getting it resolved, would you?
This or any other scenario like it wouldn't mean the end of Linux - you'd still be able to get your copy from some FTP in Sweden or China, but it would bring Linux progress into the enterprise market to a halt. Unless there is a Debian that can point to documentation and lawyer papers and to the fact that they always acted with so much dilligence that it is very certain none of their stuff ever got tainted.
'This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street,' said Chris Asplen
Chris, as long as everyone agrees on what exactly a "bad guy" is, this isn't much of a problem. However, with the current US king^H^H^Hpresident already redefining prisoners of war as something else ("enemy combatants") just so he do with them as he pleases, the definition of "bad guy" might not long stay something we all agree upon...
The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's expenses,
"supposed to" is the keyword there. Last I checked, they were several years behind in payment. There was a time (I think during the late 90s) where the UN was in serious financial trouble due to the US outright refusal to pay their share.
You mean, someone might be losing his job for listening to the **AA? That'd be about time! And it might dimish their powers considerably in the future.
Indeed it is. Given the context of the discussion, I am interpreting it to mean "deficiencies in the technical capabilities of Windows with regards to restricting user access". I don't see how any other interpretation could be reached, nor worth having a discussion about.
How about "insufficient protection against unauthorized access"? You see, the nifty thing about your definition is that it excludes both bugs and user errors by talking only about capabilities.
Oh yes - and you don't want to restrict user access. You want to restrict unauthorized access.
Reasoning which applies to every platform.
I'm not so sure about that. OpenBSD has had one remote root (default install) or about a dozen (real-world setup) depending on how you count. The reasoning might apply to every platform, but to varying degrees.
There have been *at least* as many "quality" vulnerabilities in non-Windows platforms over the years
see above. Unless, of course, you do what some liars^H^H^H^Hconsultants do and add up "Linux exploits" by adding up all of Debian, Redhat, Suse, etc. even though it's the same exploit.:)
And even then most server exploits are the result of users - sysadmins, in this case - being irresponsible, ignorant, or just plain negligent.
Well, yes. Sooner or later you always arrive at a human making an error. Until computers design, build, configure and administrate themselves that won't change.
The fact remains that some environments make it easier to make mistakes. Why do Windos machines get owned by the bucketload and Mac machines don't even though I wouldn't exactly say the average OSX user is more tech savy than the average XP user?
So, yes, while something like a huge multinational bank is a nice, juicy target, it also has a highly trained team of people watching its systems 24/7, *proactively* trying to identify and close down any potential vulnerabilities and reactively fixing any exploits extremely quickly.
Errmm...... you haven't seen many banks from the inside, have you? While I'm not an expert on multinational bank IT infrastructure, I do have some knowledge (and know people who have more). Trust me, banks aren't as safe as they're made to be. You see, those hypothetical highly trained 24/7 teams cost money. Something most banks much rather make than spend. Very, very, very few sites I've seen have adequate security teams. Most of them get by through luck and quite a few don't even know they've been owned until long after the fact. If I had to dare a guess, I'd say at least half of the security breaches occuring are never noticed by anyone on the target site and half of the other ones get swept under the rug quicker than you can say "oops".
a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes
If anything, than this provides solid proof that MS is unable to learn from mistakes. Read Confirmation Dialogs harmful for a glance of what's been going through the heads of a lot of security professionals the past few years (disclaimer: including me): That the whole "are you sure?" bullshit is a huge fiasco. The only thing it did was train users to click "Ok" or "Continue" without bothering to read the actual text. If there wouldn't be such a slobbering mass of 'em, the dialogs might be taken seriously, but there is and they aren't.
I said it a couple months ago, and I still stand by it: Vista is a trainwreck happening in slow-motion. It's horrible to behold.
Slashdot Mirror
No "unlockables" and it's 30 minutes of gameplay.
Only if you define gameplay as "having seen everything the game has to offer".
I usually play games like Civ IV through quickly on the easiest setting once to get a feel for them before I really play them on higher difficulty levels. And you know, somehow they are still fun even though I've seen everything.
Agree mostly, but only mostly.
I find tutorials very useful, at times. The Guild Wars tutorials were nicely done and made you learn the game while you were already playing it. The GTA way (with in-game driving schools that show you how to do some of the more advanced tricks) is also cool.
There's just one thing that is really wrong with tutorials sometimes, and that's if you can't skip them. There are a couple games that work like that, where you have to go through the fucking tutorial every time you start a new game. Urgh.
I take exception to the idea that the "free market" only exists in theory. This is the unfortunate result of lots and lots of free and public education conveying the meme that the free market is a nice "idea" and all, but face it, you need the government to help you navigate "reality."
;)
Nonsense. I have a specific criticism that you do not reply to. Information as a requirement to the workings of the free market can not at the same time be a commodity to be traded at a free market. You are mixing various levels here. We could call the information about markets "meta-information", then I would agree that other information can be traded on a market.
However, you can not make meta-information a subject to trade, because by definition everyone in the free market requires full access to it, and something that everyone has everything of anyways doesn't make a good trade good (it's value would be zero).
This isn't to say that consumers won't ever get burned -- it's to say that the information that a consumer collects while being burned is valuable to them if they choose to leverage it.
Yes, probably. But you are leaving theory for pragmatics here. The free market theory requires that trades on the market are made by two partners who posess all necessary information about the trade. The theory does not contain elements of surprise or fraud. And that's exactly where according to my argument the government comes in to ensure that we have at least something that closely resembles a free market, by making sure that there are limits to the amount of fraud and mis-information.
Such a scheme would never work, you say?
On the contrary, I know a number of such services and consider them excellent. They are another (non-government) method to approximate the theoretical free market. However, they still do not offer complete information as required by the theory. They limit the impact of marketing, fraud and mis-information, but they do not eliminate them.
The only way we can know that a product or service has value is if it gets tested in a free market -- where people voluntarily exchange for it.
In theory, yes. In the real world, there are countless counter-examples. Now you might claim that there are insubstantial values and some people who pay, say $1000 for gadget X which is also on the market in identical form as gadget Y for $800 are expressing the value the put on the brand of X as compared to Y. However, in reality most of these people do not know (i.e. lack information) that X and Y are actually identical (and there are many examples of products being 100% identical, down to having been manufactured in the same plant, and being sold under different brands for different prices).
We can look at much simpler examples: In most markets, the customers do not even know about all offers that are on the market. No shop carries them all, neither brick-and-mortar nor online. No comparison test gets them all.
We can never know the true value of what the government spends our taxes on without testing the exchange under voluntary conditions.
Not everything has value that can be found in a free market exchange. You have posted some examples yourself: National security, police, etc. - how much is it worth to you not to be robbed every day?
To think that free markets can't solve problems like fraud, misrepresentation, etc. is to misunderstand the limited role a government must play.
"must" according to whom?
But I'll be very interested in a free-market solution to fraud. Remember that fraudsters have become extremely mobile - see spammers and phishing. Sure you can set up an info site. But not everyone will read it. So there'll always be some victims. No matter what you do, there will always be phishers because you have a reaction time. With a global Internet, even a short reaction time results in a few victims. Since the cost of spamming a billion peop
And your average German is so enlightened? Give me a break.
;)
I can't remember a German trying to dry his cat in the microwave, no.
Please.. your own generalizations show the world that you are indeed retarded.\
Your reply shows that you are unable to spot slight sarcasm.
But... since we were talking about Norway, you might find it interesting that Norway happens to be the #1 nation in the UN Human Development Index, while the US ranks in at #10...
On the surface, your argument sounds convincing. However, it falls down once you dig deeper.
You ignore that "free market" as you laud it exists only in the theoretic world of the textbooks. This theoretical free market does indeed work as advertised. But it requires a few things that simply do not exist in the real world - total information being one of the critical components.
With limited information available to one side of the market (usually the customers), the game shifts from "whoever can make the best offer" to "whoever can seemingly make the best offer" - an important shift that gives rise not only to marketing, but also to shady business practices and outright fraud.
This is where some simple government regulations comes in and supports the market. Through warrenty requirements, for example, these regulations ensure a certain amount of information being available and allow customers to make informed choices. For example, if I know that by law the claims on the outside of the package have to be true or I can return the item, then I have more information than I would have without that law - because without it I would have to research the truth value of each and every claim instead of being able to rely on them.
In so far as regulations create a reasonable lower margin, they support the free market by bringing reality more in line with theory.
I do agree that a lot of regulations are not reasonable, and quite a few should be abolished and were almost certainly the work of lobbyists.
However, this fear of any and all regulations some people exhibit is just insane. The solution to tyranny is not anarchy.
I know my history very well, thank you. It just happens to not be US history, you know? There's a world outside your borders, dude. ;)
Paintball doesn't compare to modern warfare. You are lacking the planes, tanks, cluster bombs, landmines and other pretty much random hazzards. There is no skill that would allow you to dodge a 500lb firebomb. Skill might prevent you from stepping on a landmine (maybe), but if your ship is sunk in the middle of the ocean, no amount of swimming skill will save you or the other 500 people whose only personal mistake was to be on that particular ship at that particular time.
On the macro level, skill matters even less. The most skillful armies do not tend to win. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" is an excellent book in this regard, with lots of numbers an tables to give substance to the claim that war is first and foremost a matter of attrition. Whoever runs out of tanks, planes or ammo first is the loser. A kill-ratio of 2:1 or even 5:1 doesn't matter if the other side is out-producing you 10:1. That's why Russia was always secretly afraid of China - numbers.
Most importantly, however, on the macro scale, it's not about survival in the evolution sense at all anymore, because genetics is the last and least important factor that determines anything.
I don't understand how Norway can say that if one of the parties is Norwegian (or in Norway) that only the laws of Norway can control.
Because laws are not a "choose any you like" concept. You have to follow the US speed limit on US highways, even if you are a foreigner driving a japanese car, you know?
Same thing here. Norwegian law applies if you sell to norwegian customers, even if you're an american company.
If a company wants to do business in a country, it must follow the laws of said country or not do business there, that is the simple issue. Saying "but it's legal where we come from" is not a defence. To put it this way, would you want to allow (say) Chinese cars to be sold in the US without the safety features US law requires, simply because they aren't required in their country of origin?
:)
I think you need a better example to get through to the average american. How about this:
Would you want to allow some company from the Netherlands to sell drugs to your schoolkids, simply because in the Netherlands they are legal?(*)
(*) don't mention that there are some restrictions and that this applies only to some drugs which are widely considered to be not much worse than tobacco or alcohol. That'd only make things more difficult, and americans don't dig difficult.
No, I simply believe the socialist mindset of Europe is bad business practice.
You are funny. Europe is very much not socialistic. Just because americans like to label everything left of "kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out" as "socialist" doesn't make it so.
Europe still believes in a balance between human rights and corporate rights. The balance swings a little here and there depending on government, mood and whatever lobbyist group is offering the best entertainment program this year, but it is far from socialism. On the contrary, for a couple years now it's been more right-wing than left (some of the "leftist" parties today run on programs that aren't too far from the right-wing programs of a decade past).
Europe will end up keeping Apple's iTunes out entirely,
May I invite you to a reality check?
USA: Population ca. 298 mio.
EU: Population ca. 458 mio.
We're a considerably larger market than you are. Neither Apple nor Microsoft nor any of the other big corporations will withdraw from the european market, no matter what and no matter how often you dudes repeat that ridiculous idea.
Apple is an "opt in" monopoly, they force not one person to start using iTunes and their DRM.
Irrelevant. Monopoly is monopoly no matter how nicely you call it.
All you "free market" drones overlook that the antitrust laws are in place to protect the free market, because one thing that the market can not sort out is if it is itself broken - you need a working market to "sort things out" the free market way, so when the market itself is broken, you are lacking the very self-regulation force that could fix it.
Monopolies are the AIDS of capitalism - they attack the immune system, the very "free market forces" that you glorify.
This is most excellent news. Finally, some politicians wake up to the fact that it is them who should regulate copyright, DRM, licensing, warranty and a ton of other issues. That's what we have them for.
It would be a failure of democracy if some politicians in the US, which I could not vote for or against, could set policies for my country. Or some corporations could decide where to apply which laws.
If you want to do business in X, follow whatever rules/laws apply in X. If you don't like it, don't do business there. It really is simple, isn't it?
Oh yeah, that also applies to countries and laws you don't like, no matter if it's Norway and it's copyright laws, or China and its censorship laws...
You would be right if survival in war had anything to do with good genetic traits. That may even have been true in the middle ages, to some extent, though I doubt even that. In modern warfare, good traits certainly have nothing to do with it. It's more a question of whether or not you're standing near the impact of one of the artillery rounds, or happen to be in the wrong building when it gets hit by a 500lb firebomb.
Aren't there any areas we should stay away from _even_ if they would help us cure diseases?
Good question.
I have a better one, one whose answer will include the one to yours:
Who gets to decide?
That is an unethical abomination
Why, exactly?
Yeah, sorry, but people stating ethics as facts without supporting argument always trigger my "please explain" reflex.
Why exactly is this unethical? It obviously is to you. But why should it be to me, or anyone else?
Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?
We eliminated that a few thousand years ago, when compassion was raised to a virtue by itself, even without purpose.
From a pure survival POV (i.e. non-moralistic), there is much advantage in temporary support for temporarily disabled (ill, wounded, etc.) group members. However, there is very little advantage in permanently supporting the terminally ill, old, or weak. There is some advantage, if they have positive genetic traits or knowledge to confer and since you don't necessarily know that, an argument can be made that it is positive to do it on blind faith. However, the argument is weak and will almost certainly not pass a cost-vs.-gain analysis.
Point is, we are a species that keeps its old, ill and weak alive while sending its young men to be slaughtered in war. The only thing making less sense than that - again from a pure survival POV - would be sending the young women to war. But I think we aren't too far away from that.
As much as I dislike these legal discussions, I see the point. Debian is a kind of afraid of all the DRM, IP lawsuit, patent law and other bullshit and tries to stear well clear of it. Debian people realize that these things don't hit you in isolated spots - they're like dum-dum bullets, they expand inside the body.
Look at SCO or any patent claim. There's maybe 1% or less of your code that is possibly in violation of someone else's thing. And yet it threatens your entire product.
The following scenario is unlikely - but if it ever does come to pass, we will all thank whatever gods we believe in for Debian to be there and for having been as strict as they are:
Imagine MS or possibly a small group of likewise evil, selfish companies whose only way of "winning" in the marketplace is to destroy their opponents. Imagine them banding together and using a combination of software patents, DRM and DMCA lawsuits and a couple copyright disputes to drag Linux into an endless legal battle. Imagine that different from the SCO they can somehow construct a case that at least appears solid enough to a judge that Redhat and SuSE and whoever you have get slapped with a preliminary injunction. Maybe it's just 2 packages that are a problem, but the judge orders a stop to the distribution until the entire thing can be resolved. You don't think MS would have much haste in getting it resolved, would you?
This or any other scenario like it wouldn't mean the end of Linux - you'd still be able to get your copy from some FTP in Sweden or China, but it would bring Linux progress into the enterprise market to a halt.
Unless there is a Debian that can point to documentation and lawyer papers and to the fact that they always acted with so much dilligence that it is very certain none of their stuff ever got tainted.
'This is the single best way to catch bad guys and keep them off the street,' said Chris Asplen
Chris, as long as everyone agrees on what exactly a "bad guy" is, this isn't much of a problem. However, with the current US king^H^H^Hpresident already redefining prisoners of war as something else ("enemy combatants") just so he do with them as he pleases, the definition of "bad guy" might not long stay something we all agree upon...
There will be demonstrations in Sweden's largest cities this afternoon
Please post torrent of pictures!
The US is supposed to pay 1/4 of the UN's expenses,
"supposed to" is the keyword there. Last I checked, they were several years behind in payment. There was a time (I think during the late 90s) where the UN was in serious financial trouble due to the US outright refusal to pay their share.
You mean, someone might be losing his job for listening to the **AA? That'd be about time! And it might dimish their powers considerably in the future.
Indeed it is. Given the context of the discussion, I am interpreting it to mean "deficiencies in the technical capabilities of Windows with regards to restricting user access". I don't see how any other interpretation could be reached, nor worth having a discussion about.
:)
... you haven't seen many banks from the inside, have you? While I'm not an expert on multinational bank IT infrastructure, I do have some knowledge (and know people who have more). Trust me, banks aren't as safe as they're made to be. You see, those hypothetical highly trained 24/7 teams cost money. Something most banks much rather make than spend.
How about "insufficient protection against unauthorized access"?
You see, the nifty thing about your definition is that it excludes both bugs and user errors by talking only about capabilities.
Oh yes - and you don't want to restrict user access. You want to restrict unauthorized access.
Reasoning which applies to every platform.
I'm not so sure about that. OpenBSD has had one remote root (default install) or about a dozen (real-world setup) depending on how you count. The reasoning might apply to every platform, but to varying degrees.
There have been *at least* as many "quality" vulnerabilities in non-Windows platforms over the years
see above. Unless, of course, you do what some liars^H^H^H^Hconsultants do and add up "Linux exploits" by adding up all of Debian, Redhat, Suse, etc. even though it's the same exploit.
And even then most server exploits are the result of users - sysadmins, in this case - being irresponsible, ignorant, or just plain negligent.
Well, yes. Sooner or later you always arrive at a human making an error. Until computers design, build, configure and administrate themselves that won't change.
The fact remains that some environments make it easier to make mistakes. Why do Windos machines get owned by the bucketload and Mac machines don't even though I wouldn't exactly say the average OSX user is more tech savy than the average XP user?
So, yes, while something like a huge multinational bank is a nice, juicy target, it also has a highly trained team of people watching its systems 24/7, *proactively* trying to identify and close down any potential vulnerabilities and reactively fixing any exploits extremely quickly.
Errmm...
Very, very, very few sites I've seen have adequate security teams. Most of them get by through luck and quite a few don't even know they've been owned until long after the fact.
If I had to dare a guess, I'd say at least half of the security breaches occuring are never noticed by anyone on the target site and half of the other ones get swept under the rug quicker than you can say "oops".
$55 billion... in two years...
Yeah, the damage on the economy is horrifying, isn't it?
(read up on "monopoly rent" if you don't get it)
Microsoft claims they understnad it's a problem and will keep trying to reduce the annoyance.
In other words, it's going to get worse before it's released?
a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes
If anything, than this provides solid proof that MS is unable to learn from mistakes. Read Confirmation Dialogs harmful for a glance of what's been going through the heads of a lot of security professionals the past few years (disclaimer: including me): That the whole "are you sure?" bullshit is a huge fiasco. The only thing it did was train users to click "Ok" or "Continue" without bothering to read the actual text. If there wouldn't be such a slobbering mass of 'em, the dialogs might be taken seriously, but there is and they aren't.
I said it a couple months ago, and I still stand by it: Vista is a trainwreck happening in slow-motion. It's horrible to behold.