Actually, as another poster stated, that or the creation of a really serious, organized-crime type copying ring will ensue.
Organised crime in involved in prostitution, drugs, gambling and physical DVD/video piracy. Notice the common thread? Money.
Organised crime isn't going to be remotely interested in pirating media and giving it away for free, or else we'd be knee-deep in free poker chips, hookers and coke.
On what basis (other than wishful thinking) do you assert they'll maintain the status-quo, with free downloadable media commonly available?
And then, the War on Terror and the War on Drugs will meet their younger sibling, the War on Reading.
Nice idea. But ever notice a few things:
Drugs cost money, downloads don't.
Drugs generate money for the organised criminals who provide them. Free downloads don't.
Downloads are freely available in a variety of formats, qualities and from a variety of sources. Drugs are much, much harder to get, the supply is uncertain and the quality is wildly variable.
Sigh. Would you like to explain why all the points I raised are wrong, then? I'm seriously interested in why you think that, given:
1. I can't find every piece of media I want now, certainly not within any sensible timeframe.
2. Are you telling me you've never had a torrent die on you half-way through a download? Or that less-popular/rarer torrents aren't more prone to this? And you've never downloaded a torrent to find it's a crappy cam that's been mislabelled?
3. Ripping a DVD already takes less time than a torrent. What makes you so sure bandwidth will increase faster than processing power?
4. Thousands of people are being sued at this very moment. Please explain how this will stop when TCP comes in and it only gets easier to track people.
I love your chirpy optimism, but the fact is these four points are already a problem today, and no matter how hard you wave your hands and claim they aren't, you're not actually giving any evidence at all.
Don't get me wrong, the problems aren't crippling ATM, but this is the case today with software-only DRM, no hardware support and widespread and common (software) skills required to crack it. Because it's software not only the media but also the tools required to crack DRM are distributable anonymously, with an infinite supply and for free.
We're actually currently discussing the change that will negate every single point above[1], and your best counterargument is the (incorrect) assertion that everything's fine right now, so it'll continue to be fine in the future, even after everything changes?
I'm genuinely interested in your opinion, but it isn't making an ounce of sense at the moment...
[1] Hardware hacks necessary, DRM immune to software attacks, obscure hardware skills necessary to crack DRM, and the tools necessary are limited-supply physical goods which would be hard to distribute anonymously.
(And sure, the plans for such tools would be simple to distribute, but we've just got through saying that most people won't have the tehcnical skills to put them together.)
I dunno. We're on parallel courses but the USA is still a fair way out in front IMO.
The frustrating thing is that Blair is faithfully following the course the USA is taking, when he should be looking at the consequences and using the USA as a blatant example of what not to do.
Religion, alcohol, aggressive sports, annoying work colleagues, being cut-up in your car and funny looks all "feed the beast" too - let's ban the lot.
I know, even better lets just ban everything that could conceivably lead an already severely damaged person to act up, all wear bubble-wrap and go and live with the Tellytubbies (after burning to death the handbag-carrying purple gay one, obviously, lest he "feed the beast" of some latent homosexual child).
The problem is that there will always be damaged people who commit crimes, even without anything they can directly blame them on.
I think the solution is clear: we should all be shackled to the floor in individual stone cells, and the only ones who are allowed out to feed us are those who've volunteered to be lobotomised and castrated. Who's with me?
but the population at large does nothing to reign in their own vices or show SOME measure of standards as to what society will put up with.
Bullshit. Closed-minded parochial bullshit.
I'm not into violent porn/BDSM/trust games myself, but I know several people who are. They are without exception nice, loving, well-balanced people who merely enjoy a little "extra" activity in bed.
The "population at large" does reign in their "vices". Your problem is that they're doing it so well that you don't even realise they're doing it. The only people who you actually hear about are the very, very tiny minority who don't manage their predilictions.
You have already achieved what you're asking for. Given that, do you still think the banning of these people's hobby is necessary?
Oh, you mean now? Because once it had been made illegal (disproportionately inconveniencing the black and hispanic populations more than the whites), the white majority found a lovely subject, handily associated with "those" people to demonise and organise a moral crusade against.
Since alcohol and tobacco are still legal it's got fuck-all to do with protecting the children, apart from amongst people who grew up believing the complete bullshit propaganda spouted by the US government for most of this century.
When discussing a change in the law, do the phrases "the mother of a victim" and "its coming [from] victims of crime" ring any warning bells?
Like, these people are definitely qualified to make rational, balanced decisions on the matter because they have a completely unbiased view of the issue?
Next, the close juxtaposition of "30 month campaign", "50,000 signature petition" and "MPs backing the mother" sounds likely, too. A nice juicy moral crusade against a minority for MPs to demonstrate their "tough on X, tough on the causes of X" credentials.
Do I like X? No. Do I think sick people who are already damaged in the head can be made worse by X? Yes. Is that a reason to ban X?
The answer's clearly "yes" when X == "violent porn", right?
How about when X == "religion"? Or violent sports? Or alcohol?
No, because if we ban everything that could conceivably set off a nutter we'd have to ban everything up to and including "funny looks", dress in bubble-wrap and never leave the house.
Sit down, grow up and get some fucking perspective.
You're more at risk of being killed by lightning than a violent-porn-obsessed nutter, so unless you're also campaigning to force everyone to wear earthed metal hats and rubber gumboots at all times, please shut the hell up and get your priorities in order.
This has been a public service announcement from the Strap Down That Jerking Knee And Get Some Fucking Perspective party. Thank you.
Then you must have something to hide? If you do not have violent pornography, you would not need encryption or stegnagrophy.
Everyone has something to hide. Think carefully now - is there not one aspect of your life you wouldn't be happy to see displayed on a large video screen in Times Square, or splashed all over the papers?
Even if you aren't into animals, spanking or little kids (and, believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people who favour cryptography aren't), how about boring, mundane things like credit card numbers, SSNs, PIN numbers/passwords, etc.
I know it's terribly tempting to assume anyone who wants privacy must be some kind of deviant, but if you sat and thought carefully about it you'd realise that you wouldn't want to live in a glass-walled house either. Does that make you a pervert or deviant?
Here in America, we are allowed to do what we want.
::boggles::
Have you been reading the news at all for the last few years?
Dude, in your country you aren't even guaranteed free speech, the right to vote, the right to live on your own land if a corporation wants it, the right to make domestic phone calls without being traffic-analysed or to make international calls without being listened-into. You can't even respectfully question police or DHS officers without risking being dragged off, arrested, searched and suspected of terrorism.
"Whatever you want"? You can't do anything any more. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Except when whatever it is harms another person.
You're wrong, you can't do anything you like, but it's a nice idea.
Violent pornography hurts poeple so it should be illegal.
Sorry - just run that past me again. Apart from the people taking part in it (who are giving their consent, and therefore can't meaningfully be considered "harmed"), who gets hurt?
Please provide evidence of anyone who's ever been harmed by "violent pornography". When giving examples remember to differentiate between causation and correlation. "X looked at violent porn and then raped someone" is completely useless, unless you can demonstrate that X wasn't already the kind of person who would rape someone, and who was (surprise!) also interested in watching similar activites.
Encryption can hide pornography, but has no use if you're not doning anything illegal.
Haaaahahahaha. IHBT. IHL. HAND.
Good one - you got me.
Not that I'm into "violent porn", of course - nice gentle girl-on-girl action's fine for me...;-p
all current DRM systems are far from ebing unhackable even by conventional means
Because they're all software based, so they're amenable to software hacking. Software hacks are easy, cheap and simple to create and distribute. Hardware hacks are none of these things.
And if "all DRM systems are far from being unhackable", please point be towards a WM9 stripper. No, not WM10 or WM11 (they were announced recently), WM9.
and I do not see situation change in next 5 years.
Have you ever heard of the Trusted Computing Platform? It's based around a dinky little chip that will sit inside your machine well within five years' time.
Said dinky little chip provides a unique key that identifies you and allows you to unlock DRMed media. The entire TC platform is designed with one aim in mind - to absolutely prevent you from extracting this key. The entire OS, and hardware from the motherboard up has been designed to prevent you getting the unique personalised key out of the chip for unauthorised purposes. Safeguards are built into the very hardware of the machine such that unless you can get into the physical chip package and somehow read off the (encrypted) key, you aren't getting it.
Windows Vista (and other TCP-supporting OSes) have protected audio and video streams which prevent third-party apps from "listening in" to the decoding processes. These systems run as core OS-level code, and even other parts of the OS don't have permissions to monitor them. Your monitor, sound card and even speakers also need to have a TCP chip in them to decode the stream, so you can't even use old hardware or exploit the analogue hole any more.
You can't get the TCP key out, because it's locked away in hardware. You can't listen into the decoding process in the OS, because it's at a lower level than your apps are allowed to reach. You can't directly exploit the analogue hole, because the media is ecrypted right until it gets to your speakers and monitor.
You're reduced to either hacking speakers and monitors, or literally pointing a video camera and microphone at the screen.
Yay for the day when all rips are dodgy cams, at a fraction of the "acceptable" resolution of the day! Hoorah!
And in 5 years world can be totally different place.
Indeed. It could well be a place where the current flow of pirated content is reduced to a comparative trickle of low-quality cams, said trickle of pirated content is much easier for law enforcement to monitor and use to catch infringers, media companies can dictate to you what devices you browse their content on after sale, "fair use rights" are a quaint memory and trying to exercise your fair use rights makes you a criminal. We're already half-way there now.
Jesus Christ, did nobody bother to read the post to which they responded?
Please explain how anybody's supposed to pirate a movie if devices are coated in inch-thick epoxy resin, or burn out chips when the case is opened. If you're thinking "current DRM systems don't do that", do remember chess matches last longer than one move ahead.
Or since it's just a digital file anyway, how about embedding a watermark in the movie that uniquely identifies you, your computer and your credit-card to anyone who downloads the file. How long do you think mass-distribution piracy is going to last when the police get a handy list of the names of key players in every major pirating ring delivered to their door?
Please also highlight how the fact that I can make myself a criminal and expose myself to prosecution makes up for the fact that my fair use rights are being violated.
Also, even if a few people manage to produce workaround devices and aren't caught and charged under the DMCA, please explain how massively upping the skill-set barrier to entry for piracy and restricting the activity to a tiny fraction of its current number of practitioners is going to help maintain the vast flow of pirated media we enjoy now?
Great. So you're promising there'll always be someone out there who'll be ripping every piece of media I want, no matter how obscure, right?
And he'll always freshly seed a torrent exactly when I'm looking for it so it's always available even though it's not hugely popular, and the movie or album rip'll always be good-quality, right?
And it'll take exactly as long (and no longer) than ripping my own DVDs, right?
And I'll never, ever get caught for copyright infringement (backing up is legal, up/downloading isn't), and never get taken to court and sued, right?
Oh well, that's fine then.
In that case I don't care that I have to become a criminal in order to exercise my legal fair-use rights. And I don't care that the hardware hacking requirements are going to hugely limit the proportion of people with the required skills to rip media in the first place. After all, when you're showering a drip-drip-drip's just as good as a proper full-on power-shower, isn't it?
If it can be played (by me), it can be copied (by me)? No.
I don't care if professional pirating gangs on bittorrent can still pirate movies (although you'd have to be pretty out of it to think this extra layer of complication isn't going to slow the flow at all) - if I can't exercise my fair-use rights with media I paid for, that's fucking wrong.
Come with me on a journey... I own $obscure_dvd. I want to back up $obscure_dvd. At the moment I can rip it to another DVD, or (even better) transcode it into Xvid and stick it on my machine for playing whenever I want. So far so legal.
With DRM+TCP I can't do this. Even if $obscure_dvd does somehow gets ripped by TV-flavour-of-the-month obsessed pirates, and even if it has enough mass-market appeal that the torrents don't just die through unpopularity, by downloading it I'm comitting a criminal act - why the fuck should I have to become a criminal in order to exercise my legal rights?
You're right - DRM+TCP is entirely "survivable" for people who only like mainstream media and just want fr33 sH1t 0ff t3h 1nTern3t5, but for those of us who give a fuck about our rights or prefer something a little more obscure than the latest Paris Hilton album, we're boned.
Except that when you're sat at home wanting to back up your entire DVD collection, who goes on bittorrent and waits to download them all? And who just suddenly guaranteed that every movie I own is available on bittorrent?
There are only so many hacking groups, and you can only rip and transcode so many movies per day, y'know. And with DRM+TCP both of those numbers are effectively set to decrease dramatically.
You're missing the point - even if piracy is always possible, and even if making the ability to hack hardware a requirement doesn't stem the flow too much, and even if the more specialised requirements and necessity of having a physical (no doubt quickly-made-illegal) device doesn't make catching and prosecuting pirates easier, it's the normal users who are effectively stuffed.
If I want to pirate the latest Stargate SG-1 or Desperate Housewives, I'm fine on bittorrent. If all I want to do is back up my $obscure_movie DVD that I already bought and paid-for, I'm boned unless I can rip it myself.
Maybe you weren't aware of this, but many people like watching movies that there isn't a huge mainstream audience for, or that unaccountably aren't popular with the early-adopter geek set.
And maybe you've missed this, but not everyone is interested in the pirate's viewpoint. If you just want to serially rip off movies, great. Ethically indefensible, but great. I've even done it myself before now. But there are those of us who value quaint concepts like personal freedom and fair-use copyright exemptions, and we're the ones who're getting fucked in the arse by DRM/TCP.
But the thing is, problems with the economy can be (and obviously were) rectified.
What government in history has got into office, looked about and said "You know, I think we've got entirely too much power here. We know entirely too much about our citizens lives. Lets hand some power back to the Legislative and Judicial branches, shred a few homeland security files and drop a few database joining tables, eh?".
A screwed economy is one thing, but Bush (and Blair in the UK) seem intent on dismantling the very mechanism of the US/UK democracies.
PERHAPS because they've taken a TECHNOLOGY policy DECISION, and are looking to make a POINT to Microsoft and other large corporations, RATHER than just trying to GET Linux into SCHOOLS.
In addition, why should they be as underhanded as you suggest? It was their call to make and they've taken it, including manning-up and taking any comeback on the chin (and I don't see them getting especially screamed at for being anti-business). Your suggestion reeks of underhandedness, and would more or less imply they think there is something wrong with what they're doing.
You could do the same thing a lot easier by setting up a video camera pointing at the TV screen, but it wouldn't be a 1:1 digital quality copy. And you couldn't back up the movie in less time than it took to play all the way through.
And if you're good enough at hardware to rip open consumer electronics and start re-wiring them then there's nothing practical that anyone could do to stop you.. oh, except embedding the whole motherboard in inches-thick epoxy, or something equally devious. Or just putting a tag on the case that permanently damages the apparatus if it's opened - remember: no user-servicable parts inside.
However, none of this matters, because you simply aren't considering the hassle it involves. If I break a DVD and have a choice of spanding £20 on a new copy or wasting a weeks' worth of evenings ripping open my home electronics, isolating the vulnerable point in the circuit, building some kind of signal-tap, streaming off the signal, taking it into the computer and encoding it to Xvid... well, I'll suck it up and buy another copy of the DVD - my time is worth more than that.
This is the problem - even if piracy is always theoretically possible (and if the gizmo is set to, for example, melt a large hole in the motherboard whenever an unauthorised person breaks the security seal on the case then it isn't), if it's too much hassle then people simply won't bother. Sure, they can technically still exercise their fair-use rights (except where the DMCA already makes it illegal), but if it's too much hassle or too technically difficult then they might as well not have them.
If you're a hard- and software-wizard, and are only interested in pirating mainstream movies on an huge scale then yes, DRM (and arguably even TCA) may ultimately be pointless. However, all this does is (once again!) prevent legit users from exercising their rights while only making piracy even more profitable.
Never underestimate the power of corrupt representatives, well-funded lobbyists, wealthy defence contractors and congressional pork.
The example given (the SA80 Assault Rifle) is even one from the UK, and we don't have anything like the problems the USA does with corruption, patronage and lobbying (at least, not yet).
when you graduate - you won't be prepared for the workforce, where most companies do use microsoft.
This is a stupid comment for three reasons:
1. The government is trying to break the vendor lockin associated with Microsoft products.
They can do this by trying to convince everyone who's already trained on Microsoft software to switch to Linux (with all the re-learning, headaches and user-rejection that causes), or they can take the sensible, long-game approach and instead simply train the next generation of techies to use alternative systems.
Unless you missed the whole aim of the exercise, your point is therefore irrelevant.
2. The whole point is to transition the region to primarily (or at least mixed-) Linux platforms. Given this, by the time the kids are grown up and of working age, there should be a large percentage (majority?) of Linux-based companies for them to work for.
In particular, if the average wage of an MCSE suddenly shoots through the roof, even more places will be tempted to transition to Linux for the cheaper recruitment costs and wages associated with it.
3. Learning Linux systems doesn't prohibit you from learning Microsoft systems any more than learning Microsoft systems prohibits you from learning Linux. In fact, often in my experience learning the OSS way of doing things actually helps in the long term.
Point 3 might need some clarification:
Speaking in broad generalities here, the (geek-created) abstractions OSS software present to the user is more "techie", in the sense of being harder to learn, but crucially is also more attuned to what the machine/OS is actually doing "under the hood". Although you're still picking up an abstraction, it's often more or less a simplified version of The Truth. If you ever need to (or just want to) get under the hood and really learn what's going on, you're instantly half-way there.
In addition, even while using the abstraction, understanding some principles of the underlying mechanism means you can use the abstraction better or more efficiently (eg, understanding the basic steps required to make a database query makes it obvious why these are often the most-important-to-optimise features of a web app).
In contrast, whenever Microsoft present abstractions to the user the way the abstractions are designed is very... quirky. They may be easier to learn, but often MS seems to select an abstraction based on how easy it is to pick up, not on whether it's the best abstraction for the job or whether it bears any relation to the underlying architecture at all.
This is lovely if all you want is an easy abstraction, but only works if the abstraction is perfect. If you ever need (or just want) to get under the hood and really get to grips with what's going on, the first stage is to unlearn everything you've already learned, and then learn from scratch what's actually happening.
Since all abstractions leak implementation details through to some degree, this is a false economy - in my experience even non-technical users using MS products frequently encounter situations which could be avoided or fixed with just a little understanding of the basic principles they're using.
(Referring you to Palmer's Law of Software Abstraction: If all users see is a shiny bonnet, they won't understand why the shift pedal is important to driving.)
This tendancy is pronounced right throughout Microsoft's product line - BASIC/VB started off with a terrible abstraction for programming, and has only gained credibility by slowly evolving to a point it's essentially identical to C++/C#/Java.
ASP.NET attempts to bring drag-and-drop programming to the web, by imposing a stateful "desktop app" metaphor onto a stateless "distributed app" medium. Sure, it's easy to pick up if you're a desktop app programmer who wants to produce simple web apps, but if you don't already appreciate the differenc
Yes, but not every company already has one. And not every company will deliberately, flagrantly and repeatedly break the law to acquire or maintain it.
And if there's a mistrial and a retrial is necessary? Or if the media whips up enough hysteria that political pressure interferes with the legal process? It happens all the time - elected representatives using public outcry to get a leg up on the popularity scale.
If potential jurors hear anything about the case it could prejudice their neutrality, and the article in question is more or less a laundry-list of evidence the police say they found and a complete description of the operation from start to end. It's all the police's side, with no attempt to present the defendants' side of it.
Not that I'm saying they're not guilty (they're pretty obviously guilty of something), but nevertheless, for a fair trial jurors must be unbiased going into the trial.
The UK government has hyped this operation beyond all possible reason - supposedly sober ministers were constantly making comments about "mass murder on an unimaginable scale", "further attacks imminent" and the like, all on national media. There wasn't a person in the UK who hadn't got the message within a few hours of the arrests, and thanks to the government's scaremongering[1] it's now a huge story that you can't very well stay away from.
I'm generally dead-set against censorship or suppression of journalism, but when it's necessary to a fair trial it's understandable. The UK government it blatantly going to get convictions out of the trial - they wouldn't have made it as public a story as it is if they weren't sure. The only question is whether the alleged bombers were actually remotely as serious a threat as they've been trumpeted to be, and if the media can restrain itself to avoid causing a mistrial.
Of course, I don't necessarily expect someone from the USA to agree, but equally I don't think you can hold up the USA justice system as any kind of shining example with a straight face either.
[1] Scaremongering... kind of like "inciting terror"... which is, y'know.. kind of like terrorism. If the terrorists are trying to incite terror, the government should be fighting them by trying to keep people calm. I don't care that they aren't the ones allegedly planning to blow things up - if the government's making the situation worse, they're doing the terrorists' job for them...
More than that, GW are widely reknowned by their own employees and fans as serial IP-copiers.
Many races have been blatantly ripped off from film or TV, with the original Genestealers (confirmed repeatedly by insiders as "borrowed" from Alien) being only the most egregious. Throughout the 80s and early 90s they ripped off ideas from all and sundry, then slowly modified and retconned them over time to hide their origins somewhat.
However, the worst case has simply has to be Space Marine "power armour" - the original idea for power armour was taken more or less verbatim from the Robert A. Heinlein novel "Starship Troopers" - design, function, the lot.
In ST (the book) the mobile infantry wear strength-enhancing "powered armour" suits, giving them a fighting chance against enemy combatants. In the film, the mobile infantry are essentially cannon fodder, diving headlong into combat wearing little more than a glorified bodywarmer.
The reason for this (I have had on good authority, from several ex-staff members) is because during the preliminary work on the film Starship Troopers, GW got wind of the development. They decided that the idea of "powered armour" was a little too close to their "power armour", and threatened to sue the film-makers unless they removed all reference to powered armour from the film.
Yep - that's right. They copied the idea almost verbatim from the book, then asserted ownership and threatened legal action when someone tried to use the source material in the (licenced) film.
This last point is directly from an ex-staff member, who was on socialising terms with the GW high-ups at the time and afterwards.
GW are many things, but original they ain't.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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· Score: 1
The central problem I see with this adaptable OS concept is the fact that those who are programming the adaptability will not have any idea what the average person considers intuitive, or what the average user truly wants from their OS.
This is because the average user doesn't know what they expect, or what they expect from their OS.
The problem is that most people just don't think that clearly - it's not just "using a computer" that people fall down on, but also things like "basic filing", "simple logical inference" and "diagnosing and solving simple problems".
Most people can't be boethered or simply don't know how to reason things out completely and thoroughly. Programming, if it's anything, could be considered "reasoning things out completely and thoroughly", and that's why they'll always be crappy programmers until they learn. "User friendly" programming languages attempt to lower the barrier to entry so anyone can "program", but do nothing to address the fact that most people simply don't have the mental tools to do it properly.
VBA/VBScript/MS Access/Excel Macros gave rise to a generation of hideous half-arsed hacked-up abortions... not because the language forced people to program badly, but because people started doing it without knowing what they were doing. You can write good code in VB, just like you can write bad code in C/C++ - the only difference is that to get anywhere in C/C++ you have to already have some idea what you're doing.
Lower the barrier to entry, and let in more crap, basically.
As an aside, has anyone, ever encountered a computer system that moved options around for them and not eventually become irritated or simply given up in disgust at the fact you never know where a command or menu option is going to be?
It just seems like one of those ideas that's brilliant on paper, but absolutely fucking terrible in the real world.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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· Score: 2, Insightful
i get sick of programmers that think everyone should know how to program... hell, by that rationale, we should be building our own cars.
Most programmers don't think everyone should know how to program, and I don't think this was the point the OP was making.
Many programmers believe that if someone wants to program then they should learn how to program. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The hard part of learning programming is not learning syntax - the hard part is learning to decompose tasks, spot edge-cases, handle bugs and generally think through problems in a logical, structured, consistent way.
"Making programming easier" so far in computing history has chiefly consisted of abstracting the syntax and trying to prevent inexperienced users from doing anything too stupid. Unfortunately unless you already know task decomposition, how to handle bugs and how to tackle various types of problem all the syntax-simplification in the world won't matter a damn.
It's like trying to make "writing stirring and emotive prose" easier by fiddling with the rules of spelling - sure, your essay might be spelled correctly, but that won't make it interesting, well-thought-out or persuasive.
Or think about it like making/maintaining cars - you can make it easier and easier for people to make their own parts, but you still won't end up with the utopian ideal of everyone driving customised electric supercars that get a thousand miles on one charge.
What you'll get is a bunch of people wobbling along at 50 in piece-of-shit rustbuckets that run on leaded petrol, with bits dropping off left and right.
After a while, when trained mechanics and car-designers have seen enough cars spontaneously disintegrating at 50 miles per hour, injuring or maiming the occupants in the process, they might just start to wonder if that whole "empowering users to make their own cars" thing was a bit of a stupid idea. If maybe, just maybe, while users are inordinately proud of their hideous homebrew best-practice-bereft lash-ups... just maybe they'd actually be happier and safer driving nice, boring cars designed by people who actually know what they're doing. Or at least, if there was some sort of accreditation process necessary before people started letting their entire businesses rely on said junk-piles.
The hard part of car design is not making the components - it's knowing how to design a car.
The hard part of programming is not writing the syntax - it's knowing how to design the program.
Simplifying the process of designing a program has almost nothing to do with simplifying the syntax.
It's not elitism, it's just someone who knows what they're talking about and isn't communicating the reasoning behind it to you.
yeah. ok. if you don't like the fact that people expect programmers to be the people programming, maybe you should be in a different field.
Actually, I suspect many programmers would love it if people left the programming to them. It'd wipe out a whole generation of half-arsed Excel Macro/MS Access/VB/VBA/VBScript abortions that we then have to take on, fix/re-write from scratch and maintain for you. I know I would.
All in all, it's not that programmers think everyone should be forced to learn to program (although I do personally believe they should teach it a bit more in schools, especially these days). However, many computing and IT professionals (hell, I'd be willing to bet many professionals in almost every professional field) do believe that if you want to do the job, you should learn how to do it first.
This isn't elitist, any more than "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right".
And frankly any opposition to that, far from being anti-elitist, sounds more like being pro-incompetence.
Slashdot Mirror
Organised crime in involved in prostitution, drugs, gambling and physical DVD/video piracy. Notice the common thread? Money.
Organised crime isn't going to be remotely interested in pirating media and giving it away for free, or else we'd be knee-deep in free poker chips, hookers and coke.
On what basis (other than wishful thinking) do you assert they'll maintain the status-quo, with free downloadable media commonly available?
Nice idea. But ever notice a few things:
Drugs cost money, downloads don't.
Drugs generate money for the organised criminals who provide them. Free downloads don't.
Downloads are freely available in a variety of formats, qualities and from a variety of sources. Drugs are much, much harder to get, the supply is uncertain and the quality is wildly variable.
Sigh. Would you like to explain why all the points I raised are wrong, then? I'm seriously interested in why you think that, given:
1. I can't find every piece of media I want now, certainly not within any sensible timeframe.
2. Are you telling me you've never had a torrent die on you half-way through a download? Or that less-popular/rarer torrents aren't more prone to this? And you've never downloaded a torrent to find it's a crappy cam that's been mislabelled?
3. Ripping a DVD already takes less time than a torrent. What makes you so sure bandwidth will increase faster than processing power?
4. Thousands of people are being sued at this very moment. Please explain how this will stop when TCP comes in and it only gets easier to track people.
I love your chirpy optimism, but the fact is these four points are already a problem today, and no matter how hard you wave your hands and claim they aren't, you're not actually giving any evidence at all.
Don't get me wrong, the problems aren't crippling ATM, but this is the case today with software-only DRM, no hardware support and widespread and common (software) skills required to crack it. Because it's software not only the media but also the tools required to crack DRM are distributable anonymously, with an infinite supply and for free.
We're actually currently discussing the change that will negate every single point above[1], and your best counterargument is the (incorrect) assertion that everything's fine right now, so it'll continue to be fine in the future, even after everything changes?
I'm genuinely interested in your opinion, but it isn't making an ounce of sense at the moment...
[1] Hardware hacks necessary, DRM immune to software attacks, obscure hardware skills necessary to crack DRM, and the tools necessary are limited-supply physical goods which would be hard to distribute anonymously.
(And sure, the plans for such tools would be simple to distribute, but we've just got through saying that most people won't have the tehcnical skills to put them together.)
I dunno. We're on parallel courses but the USA is still a fair way out in front IMO.
The frustrating thing is that Blair is faithfully following the course the USA is taking, when he should be looking at the consequences and using the USA as a blatant example of what not to do.
I know, even better lets just ban everything that could conceivably lead an already severely damaged person to act up, all wear bubble-wrap and go and live with the Tellytubbies (after burning to death the handbag-carrying purple gay one, obviously, lest he "feed the beast" of some latent homosexual child).
The problem is that there will always be damaged people who commit crimes, even without anything they can directly blame them on.
I think the solution is clear: we should all be shackled to the floor in individual stone cells, and the only ones who are allowed out to feed us are those who've volunteered to be lobotomised and castrated. Who's with me?
Bullshit. Closed-minded parochial bullshit.
I'm not into violent porn/BDSM/trust games myself, but I know several people who are. They are without exception nice, loving, well-balanced people who merely enjoy a little "extra" activity in bed.
The "population at large" does reign in their "vices". Your problem is that they're doing it so well that you don't even realise they're doing it. The only people who you actually hear about are the very, very tiny minority who don't manage their predilictions.
You have already achieved what you're asking for. Given that, do you still think the banning of these people's hobby is necessary?
Because it competed with the logging/paper industries.
Oh, you mean now? Because once it had been made illegal (disproportionately inconveniencing the black and hispanic populations more than the whites), the white majority found a lovely subject, handily associated with "those" people to demonise and organise a moral crusade against.
Since alcohol and tobacco are still legal it's got fuck-all to do with protecting the children, apart from amongst people who grew up believing the complete bullshit propaganda spouted by the US government for most of this century.
Christ, where do we begin?
When discussing a change in the law, do the phrases "the mother of a victim" and "its coming [from] victims of crime" ring any warning bells?
Like, these people are definitely qualified to make rational, balanced decisions on the matter because they have a completely unbiased view of the issue?
Next, the close juxtaposition of "30 month campaign", "50,000 signature petition" and "MPs backing the mother" sounds likely, too. A nice juicy moral crusade against a minority for MPs to demonstrate their "tough on X, tough on the causes of X" credentials.
Do I like X? No. Do I think sick people who are already damaged in the head can be made worse by X? Yes. Is that a reason to ban X?
The answer's clearly "yes" when X == "violent porn", right?
How about when X == "religion"? Or violent sports? Or alcohol?
No, because if we ban everything that could conceivably set off a nutter we'd have to ban everything up to and including "funny looks", dress in bubble-wrap and never leave the house.
Sit down, grow up and get some fucking perspective.
You're more at risk of being killed by lightning than a violent-porn-obsessed nutter, so unless you're also campaigning to force everyone to wear earthed metal hats and rubber gumboots at all times, please shut the hell up and get your priorities in order.
This has been a public service announcement from the Strap Down That Jerking Knee And Get Some Fucking Perspective party. Thank you.
Everyone has something to hide. Think carefully now - is there not one aspect of your life you wouldn't be happy to see displayed on a large video screen in Times Square, or splashed all over the papers?
Even if you aren't into animals, spanking or little kids (and, believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people who favour cryptography aren't), how about boring, mundane things like credit card numbers, SSNs, PIN numbers/passwords, etc.
I know it's terribly tempting to assume anyone who wants privacy must be some kind of deviant, but if you sat and thought carefully about it you'd realise that you wouldn't want to live in a glass-walled house either. Does that make you a pervert or deviant?
Have you been reading the news at all for the last few years?
Dude, in your country you aren't even guaranteed free speech, the right to vote, the right to live on your own land if a corporation wants it, the right to make domestic phone calls without being traffic-analysed or to make international calls without being listened-into. You can't even respectfully question police or DHS officers without risking being dragged off, arrested, searched and suspected of terrorism.
"Whatever you want"? You can't do anything any more. Wake up and smell the coffee.
You're wrong, you can't do anything you like, but it's a nice idea.
Sorry - just run that past me again. Apart from the people taking part in it (who are giving their consent, and therefore can't meaningfully be considered "harmed"), who gets hurt?
Please provide evidence of anyone who's ever been harmed by "violent pornography". When giving examples remember to differentiate between causation and correlation. "X looked at violent porn and then raped someone" is completely useless, unless you can demonstrate that X wasn't already the kind of person who would rape someone, and who was (surprise!) also interested in watching similar activites.
Haaaahahahaha. IHBT. IHL. HAND.
Good one - you got me.
Not that I'm into "violent porn", of course - nice gentle girl-on-girl action's fine for me...
NetBSD is dying, craft confirms it.
No, wait...
Because they're all software based, so they're amenable to software hacking. Software hacks are easy, cheap and simple to create and distribute. Hardware hacks are none of these things.
And if "all DRM systems are far from being unhackable", please point be towards a WM9 stripper. No, not WM10 or WM11 (they were announced recently), WM9.
Have you ever heard of the Trusted Computing Platform? It's based around a dinky little chip that will sit inside your machine well within five years' time.
Said dinky little chip provides a unique key that identifies you and allows you to unlock DRMed media. The entire TC platform is designed with one aim in mind - to absolutely prevent you from extracting this key. The entire OS, and hardware from the motherboard up has been designed to prevent you getting the unique personalised key out of the chip for unauthorised purposes. Safeguards are built into the very hardware of the machine such that unless you can get into the physical chip package and somehow read off the (encrypted) key, you aren't getting it.
Windows Vista (and other TCP-supporting OSes) have protected audio and video streams which prevent third-party apps from "listening in" to the decoding processes. These systems run as core OS-level code, and even other parts of the OS don't have permissions to monitor them. Your monitor, sound card and even speakers also need to have a TCP chip in them to decode the stream, so you can't even use old hardware or exploit the analogue hole any more.
You can't get the TCP key out, because it's locked away in hardware. You can't listen into the decoding process in the OS, because it's at a lower level than your apps are allowed to reach. You can't directly exploit the analogue hole, because the media is ecrypted right until it gets to your speakers and monitor.
You're reduced to either hacking speakers and monitors, or literally pointing a video camera and microphone at the screen.
Yay for the day when all rips are dodgy cams, at a fraction of the "acceptable" resolution of the day! Hoorah!
Indeed. It could well be a place where the current flow of pirated content is reduced to a comparative trickle of low-quality cams, said trickle of pirated content is much easier for law enforcement to monitor and use to catch infringers, media companies can dictate to you what devices you browse their content on after sale, "fair use rights" are a quaint memory and trying to exercise your fair use rights makes you a criminal. We're already half-way there now.
Jesus Christ, did nobody bother to read the post to which they responded?
Please explain how anybody's supposed to pirate a movie if devices are coated in inch-thick epoxy resin, or burn out chips when the case is opened. If you're thinking "current DRM systems don't do that", do remember chess matches last longer than one move ahead.
Or since it's just a digital file anyway, how about embedding a watermark in the movie that uniquely identifies you, your computer and your credit-card to anyone who downloads the file. How long do you think mass-distribution piracy is going to last when the police get a handy list of the names of key players in every major pirating ring delivered to their door?
Please also highlight how the fact that I can make myself a criminal and expose myself to prosecution makes up for the fact that my fair use rights are being violated.
Also, even if a few people manage to produce workaround devices and aren't caught and charged under the DMCA, please explain how massively upping the skill-set barrier to entry for piracy and restricting the activity to a tiny fraction of its current number of practitioners is going to help maintain the vast flow of pirated media we enjoy now?
Great. So you're promising there'll always be someone out there who'll be ripping every piece of media I want, no matter how obscure, right?
And he'll always freshly seed a torrent exactly when I'm looking for it so it's always available even though it's not hugely popular, and the movie or album rip'll always be good-quality, right?
And it'll take exactly as long (and no longer) than ripping my own DVDs, right?
And I'll never, ever get caught for copyright infringement (backing up is legal, up/downloading isn't), and never get taken to court and sued, right?
Oh well, that's fine then.
In that case I don't care that I have to become a criminal in order to exercise my legal fair-use rights. And I don't care that the hardware hacking requirements are going to hugely limit the proportion of people with the required skills to rip media in the first place. After all, when you're showering a drip-drip-drip's just as good as a proper full-on power-shower, isn't it?
See where I'm coming from now?
If it can be played (by me), it can be copied (by me)? No.
I don't care if professional pirating gangs on bittorrent can still pirate movies (although you'd have to be pretty out of it to think this extra layer of complication isn't going to slow the flow at all) - if I can't exercise my fair-use rights with media I paid for, that's fucking wrong.
Come with me on a journey... I own $obscure_dvd. I want to back up $obscure_dvd. At the moment I can rip it to another DVD, or (even better) transcode it into Xvid and stick it on my machine for playing whenever I want. So far so legal.
With DRM+TCP I can't do this. Even if $obscure_dvd does somehow gets ripped by TV-flavour-of-the-month obsessed pirates, and even if it has enough mass-market appeal that the torrents don't just die through unpopularity, by downloading it I'm comitting a criminal act - why the fuck should I have to become a criminal in order to exercise my legal rights?
You're right - DRM+TCP is entirely "survivable" for people who only like mainstream media and just want fr33 sH1t 0ff t3h 1nTern3t5, but for those of us who give a fuck about our rights or prefer something a little more obscure than the latest Paris Hilton album, we're boned.
Except that when you're sat at home wanting to back up your entire DVD collection, who goes on bittorrent and waits to download them all? And who just suddenly guaranteed that every movie I own is available on bittorrent?
There are only so many hacking groups, and you can only rip and transcode so many movies per day, y'know. And with DRM+TCP both of those numbers are effectively set to decrease dramatically.
You're missing the point - even if piracy is always possible, and even if making the ability to hack hardware a requirement doesn't stem the flow too much, and even if the more specialised requirements and necessity of having a physical (no doubt quickly-made-illegal) device doesn't make catching and prosecuting pirates easier, it's the normal users who are effectively stuffed.
If I want to pirate the latest Stargate SG-1 or Desperate Housewives, I'm fine on bittorrent. If all I want to do is back up my $obscure_movie DVD that I already bought and paid-for, I'm boned unless I can rip it myself.
Maybe you weren't aware of this, but many people like watching movies that there isn't a huge mainstream audience for, or that unaccountably aren't popular with the early-adopter geek set.
And maybe you've missed this, but not everyone is interested in the pirate's viewpoint. If you just want to serially rip off movies, great. Ethically indefensible, but great. I've even done it myself before now. But there are those of us who value quaint concepts like personal freedom and fair-use copyright exemptions, and we're the ones who're getting fucked in the arse by DRM/TCP.
But the thing is, problems with the economy can be (and obviously were) rectified.
What government in history has got into office, looked about and said "You know, I think we've got entirely too much power here. We know entirely too much about our citizens lives. Lets hand some power back to the Legislative and Judicial branches, shred a few homeland security files and drop a few database joining tables, eh?".
A screwed economy is one thing, but Bush (and Blair in the UK) seem intent on dismantling the very mechanism of the US/UK democracies.
PERHAPS because they've taken a TECHNOLOGY policy DECISION, and are looking to make a POINT to Microsoft and other large corporations, RATHER than just trying to GET Linux into SCHOOLS.
In addition, why should they be as underhanded as you suggest? It was their call to make and they've taken it, including manning-up and taking any comeback on the chin (and I don't see them getting especially screamed at for being anti-business). Your suggestion reeks of underhandedness, and would more or less imply they think there is something wrong with what they're doing.
Why be underhanded when you can be honest?
And why use CAPS when you can use <em>..</em>?
You could do the same thing a lot easier by setting up a video camera pointing at the TV screen, but it wouldn't be a 1:1 digital quality copy. And you couldn't back up the movie in less time than it took to play all the way through.
And if you're good enough at hardware to rip open consumer electronics and start re-wiring them then there's nothing practical that anyone could do to stop you.. oh, except embedding the whole motherboard in inches-thick epoxy, or something equally devious. Or just putting a tag on the case that permanently damages the apparatus if it's opened - remember: no user-servicable parts inside.
However, none of this matters, because you simply aren't considering the hassle it involves. If I break a DVD and have a choice of spanding £20 on a new copy or wasting a weeks' worth of evenings ripping open my home electronics, isolating the vulnerable point in the circuit, building some kind of signal-tap, streaming off the signal, taking it into the computer and encoding it to Xvid... well, I'll suck it up and buy another copy of the DVD - my time is worth more than that.
This is the problem - even if piracy is always theoretically possible (and if the gizmo is set to, for example, melt a large hole in the motherboard whenever an unauthorised person breaks the security seal on the case then it isn't), if it's too much hassle then people simply won't bother. Sure, they can technically still exercise their fair-use rights (except where the DMCA already makes it illegal), but if it's too much hassle or too technically difficult then they might as well not have them.
If you're a hard- and software-wizard, and are only interested in pirating mainstream movies on an huge scale then yes, DRM (and arguably even TCA) may ultimately be pointless. However, all this does is (once again!) prevent legit users from exercising their rights while only making piracy even more profitable.
Or engineers who notice buggered O-rings on shuttles?
Or rifles, but it still happens.
Never underestimate the power of corrupt representatives, well-funded lobbyists, wealthy defence contractors and congressional pork.
The example given (the SA80 Assault Rifle) is even one from the UK, and we don't have anything like the problems the USA does with corruption, patronage and lobbying (at least, not yet).
This is a stupid comment for three reasons:
1. The government is trying to break the vendor lockin associated with Microsoft products.
They can do this by trying to convince everyone who's already trained on Microsoft software to switch to Linux (with all the re-learning, headaches and user-rejection that causes), or they can take the sensible, long-game approach and instead simply train the next generation of techies to use alternative systems.
Unless you missed the whole aim of the exercise, your point is therefore irrelevant.
2. The whole point is to transition the region to primarily (or at least mixed-) Linux platforms. Given this, by the time the kids are grown up and of working age, there should be a large percentage (majority?) of Linux-based companies for them to work for.
In particular, if the average wage of an MCSE suddenly shoots through the roof, even more places will be tempted to transition to Linux for the cheaper recruitment costs and wages associated with it.
3. Learning Linux systems doesn't prohibit you from learning Microsoft systems any more than learning Microsoft systems prohibits you from learning Linux. In fact, often in my experience learning the OSS way of doing things actually helps in the long term.
Point 3 might need some clarification:
Speaking in broad generalities here, the (geek-created) abstractions OSS software present to the user is more "techie", in the sense of being harder to learn, but crucially is also more attuned to what the machine/OS is actually doing "under the hood". Although you're still picking up an abstraction, it's often more or less a simplified version of The Truth. If you ever need to (or just want to) get under the hood and really learn what's going on, you're instantly half-way there.
In addition, even while using the abstraction, understanding some principles of the underlying mechanism means you can use the abstraction better or more efficiently (eg, understanding the basic steps required to make a database query makes it obvious why these are often the most-important-to-optimise features of a web app).
In contrast, whenever Microsoft present abstractions to the user the way the abstractions are designed is very... quirky. They may be easier to learn, but often MS seems to select an abstraction based on how easy it is to pick up, not on whether it's the best abstraction for the job or whether it bears any relation to the underlying architecture at all.
This is lovely if all you want is an easy abstraction, but only works if the abstraction is perfect. If you ever need (or just want) to get under the hood and really get to grips with what's going on, the first stage is to unlearn everything you've already learned, and then learn from scratch what's actually happening.
Since all abstractions leak implementation details through to some degree, this is a false economy - in my experience even non-technical users using MS products frequently encounter situations which could be avoided or fixed with just a little understanding of the basic principles they're using.
(Referring you to Palmer's Law of Software Abstraction: If all users see is a shiny bonnet, they won't understand why the shift pedal is important to driving.)
This tendancy is pronounced right throughout Microsoft's product line - BASIC/VB started off with a terrible abstraction for programming, and has only gained credibility by slowly evolving to a point it's essentially identical to C++/C#/Java.
ASP.NET attempts to bring drag-and-drop programming to the web, by imposing a stateful "desktop app" metaphor onto a stateless "distributed app" medium. Sure, it's easy to pick up if you're a desktop app programmer who wants to produce simple web apps, but if you don't already appreciate the differenc
Yes, but not every company already has one. And not every company will deliberately, flagrantly and repeatedly break the law to acquire or maintain it.
But don't forget, UK != USA...
And if there's a mistrial and a retrial is necessary? Or if the media whips up enough hysteria that political pressure interferes with the legal process? It happens all the time - elected representatives using public outcry to get a leg up on the popularity scale.
If potential jurors hear anything about the case it could prejudice their neutrality, and the article in question is more or less a laundry-list of evidence the police say they found and a complete description of the operation from start to end. It's all the police's side, with no attempt to present the defendants' side of it.
Not that I'm saying they're not guilty (they're pretty obviously guilty of something), but nevertheless, for a fair trial jurors must be unbiased going into the trial.
The UK government has hyped this operation beyond all possible reason - supposedly sober ministers were constantly making comments about "mass murder on an unimaginable scale", "further attacks imminent" and the like, all on national media. There wasn't a person in the UK who hadn't got the message within a few hours of the arrests, and thanks to the government's scaremongering[1] it's now a huge story that you can't very well stay away from.
I'm generally dead-set against censorship or suppression of journalism, but when it's necessary to a fair trial it's understandable. The UK government it blatantly going to get convictions out of the trial - they wouldn't have made it as public a story as it is if they weren't sure. The only question is whether the alleged bombers were actually remotely as serious a threat as they've been trumpeted to be, and if the media can restrain itself to avoid causing a mistrial.
Of course, I don't necessarily expect someone from the USA to agree, but equally I don't think you can hold up the USA justice system as any kind of shining example with a straight face either.
[1] Scaremongering... kind of like "inciting terror"... which is, y'know.. kind of like terrorism. If the terrorists are trying to incite terror, the government should be fighting them by trying to keep people calm. I don't care that they aren't the ones allegedly planning to blow things up - if the government's making the situation worse, they're doing the terrorists' job for them...
More than that, GW are widely reknowned by their own employees and fans as serial IP-copiers.
Many races have been blatantly ripped off from film or TV, with the original Genestealers (confirmed repeatedly by insiders as "borrowed" from Alien) being only the most egregious. Throughout the 80s and early 90s they ripped off ideas from all and sundry, then slowly modified and retconned them over time to hide their origins somewhat.
However, the worst case has simply has to be Space Marine "power armour" - the original idea for power armour was taken more or less verbatim from the Robert A. Heinlein novel "Starship Troopers" - design, function, the lot.
In ST (the book) the mobile infantry wear strength-enhancing "powered armour" suits, giving them a fighting chance against enemy combatants. In the film, the mobile infantry are essentially cannon fodder, diving headlong into combat wearing little more than a glorified bodywarmer.
The reason for this (I have had on good authority, from several ex-staff members) is because during the preliminary work on the film Starship Troopers, GW got wind of the development. They decided that the idea of "powered armour" was a little too close to their "power armour", and threatened to sue the film-makers unless they removed all reference to powered armour from the film.
Yep - that's right. They copied the idea almost verbatim from the book, then asserted ownership and threatened legal action when someone tried to use the source material in the (licenced) film.
This last point is directly from an ex-staff member, who was on socialising terms with the GW high-ups at the time and afterwards.
GW are many things, but original they ain't.
This is because the average user doesn't know what they expect, or what they expect from their OS.
The problem is that most people just don't think that clearly - it's not just "using a computer" that people fall down on, but also things like "basic filing", "simple logical inference" and "diagnosing and solving simple problems".
Most people can't be boethered or simply don't know how to reason things out completely and thoroughly. Programming, if it's anything, could be considered "reasoning things out completely and thoroughly", and that's why they'll always be crappy programmers until they learn. "User friendly" programming languages attempt to lower the barrier to entry so anyone can "program", but do nothing to address the fact that most people simply don't have the mental tools to do it properly.
VBA/VBScript/MS Access/Excel Macros gave rise to a generation of hideous half-arsed hacked-up abortions... not because the language forced people to program badly, but because people started doing it without knowing what they were doing. You can write good code in VB, just like you can write bad code in C/C++ - the only difference is that to get anywhere in C/C++ you have to already have some idea what you're doing.
Lower the barrier to entry, and let in more crap, basically.
As an aside, has anyone, ever encountered a computer system that moved options around for them and not eventually become irritated or simply given up in disgust at the fact you never know where a command or menu option is going to be?
It just seems like one of those ideas that's brilliant on paper, but absolutely fucking terrible in the real world.
Most programmers don't think everyone should know how to program, and I don't think this was the point the OP was making.
Many programmers believe that if someone wants to program then they should learn how to program. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The hard part of learning programming is not learning syntax - the hard part is learning to decompose tasks, spot edge-cases, handle bugs and generally think through problems in a logical, structured, consistent way.
"Making programming easier" so far in computing history has chiefly consisted of abstracting the syntax and trying to prevent inexperienced users from doing anything too stupid. Unfortunately unless you already know task decomposition, how to handle bugs and how to tackle various types of problem all the syntax-simplification in the world won't matter a damn.
It's like trying to make "writing stirring and emotive prose" easier by fiddling with the rules of spelling - sure, your essay might be spelled correctly, but that won't make it interesting, well-thought-out or persuasive.
Or think about it like making/maintaining cars - you can make it easier and easier for people to make their own parts, but you still won't end up with the utopian ideal of everyone driving customised electric supercars that get a thousand miles on one charge.
What you'll get is a bunch of people wobbling along at 50 in piece-of-shit rustbuckets that run on leaded petrol, with bits dropping off left and right.
After a while, when trained mechanics and car-designers have seen enough cars spontaneously disintegrating at 50 miles per hour, injuring or maiming the occupants in the process, they might just start to wonder if that whole "empowering users to make their own cars" thing was a bit of a stupid idea. If maybe, just maybe, while users are inordinately proud of their hideous homebrew best-practice-bereft lash-ups... just maybe they'd actually be happier and safer driving nice, boring cars designed by people who actually know what they're doing. Or at least, if there was some sort of accreditation process necessary before people started letting their entire businesses rely on said junk-piles.
The hard part of car design is not making the components - it's knowing how to design a car.
The hard part of programming is not writing the syntax - it's knowing how to design the program.
Simplifying the process of designing a program has almost nothing to do with simplifying the syntax.
It's not elitism, it's just someone who knows what they're talking about and isn't communicating the reasoning behind it to you.
Actually, I suspect many programmers would love it if people left the programming to them. It'd wipe out a whole generation of half-arsed Excel Macro/MS Access/VB/VBA/VBScript abortions that we then have to take on, fix/re-write from scratch and maintain for you. I know I would.
All in all, it's not that programmers think everyone should be forced to learn to program (although I do personally believe they should teach it a bit more in schools, especially these days). However, many computing and IT professionals (hell, I'd be willing to bet many professionals in almost every professional field) do believe that if you want to do the job, you should learn how to do it first.
This isn't elitist, any more than "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right".
And frankly any opposition to that, far from being anti-elitist, sounds more like being pro-incompetence.
Alos, and incidentally (as is traditional on