It's morally apropriate if it's impartial, and benefits society in as many immeasurably blatant ways as a usable world-wide-web has.
It's immoral if it's done for a cheap sensationalist buzz by what's rapidly becoming the online equivalent of a tabloid newspaper.
Google doesn't make money from "publishing personal information" - it makes money from advertising, and selling search technologies to other people - they (and Altavista and others before them) provide tools which are now essential to the high-tech global economy.
CNet/ZDNet used those tools to go after a particular individual, and did so clearly solely for profit - there was no attempt to be fair or impartial, no comment from Google, and the pathetically childish ZDNet follow-up clearly indicates they're looking for a lovely juicy PR fight, not acting in the public interest.
If they were genuinely interested in stimulating debate they would have written one story about Google's shadowy data-retention policies, with Google as the bad guy. Then they would have written another story about the increasing transparency of our information society, and what it means to us and out culture, where they would have used Google as an example.
Instead, they wrote a confused and ill-reasoned hatchet job on Google's CEO, and are now trying to spin the resulting reaction into lovely free advertising for them.
Actually, I think you'll find it's an almost-inevitable consequence of technological advancement.
The progress of technology can be thought of as an ever-increasing ease with which information flows.
First language, to communicate ideas between individuals at all, and in small groups.
Next, writing, to preserve information for longer, and disseminate it more widely.
Hand-illumination of manuscripts, printing engraved slabs and moveable type all contributed to the process, as did radio, then television (although the flow was one-sided).
Next computers take up the slack - e-mail happened, then networks started merging and usenet took off. Finally the internet arrives, giving rise to the web and search engines. Now anyone can publish literally anything they like (if they want to enough and don't mind any potential consequences).
The fact is that the ease with which information can flow is an inseparable consequence of progress, unless we artificially restrict it with copy-protection, DRM or legal regulations. Even then, how often do DRM schemes go uncracked, and how often do people get away with publicising secret information if it's genuinely in the public's interest?
My point is this: Google is no more responsible for this trend than Gutenberg, manuscript-illuminating medieval monks or the first clever chimp who grunted to warn his mate about an approaching predator.
Given this, it's currently up to society to decide where and when we want to restrict or punish the publicising of information.
You'll also notice that no-one's claiming Google tried to have the article withdrawn - it's leaving it out there, but refusing to co-operate with the people who made it public because it disapproves of how it was done. It's not even (to my knowledge) sueing.
As covered in other posts, there were plenty of other ways to make the point almost as forcefully - hey, how about using the CEO's information (or hey, the President's), but just not stating who it was? Post him a copy privately to make the point - he'll certainly understand, and you haven't acted childishly or compromised your journalistic efforts.
Incidentally, I agree that Google needs to grow up and address privacy concerns, but these concern their internal data-retention policies. Irresponsible hatchet-job "journalism" like this does more to mask the debate (by focusing on public information) than help it, and the use of public information is a problem for society as a whole, not just one of many companies merely currently riding the wave of technological progress.
Short version: Google didn't start this - it's an inescapable fact of life. There are better ways to make the point. Google is acting true to its beliefs, and appears to still be doing so - they haven't de-listed CNet, have they? CNet (and ZDNet) appears to be staffed by immature five-year-olds. I was almost expecting them to refer to Google as "poopy-heads" by the end of it. Google does have issues it needs to address, but this does more to distract people from them than to help resolve the situation.
Maybe so, but making yourself the subject of the investigation, asking Google to remove certain records and their subsequent refusal would have proved the point just as well. Besides, once information's public it's public - everyone knows this already. That doesn't, however, justify collecting and packaging it for easy privacy-infringement.
The usefulness of information grows exponentially with the number of connected pieces.
For example, I might know you've just won the lottery and live in California, and I might read about someone on an amphibian-fetishist messagboard who's just won the California state lottery.
Neither piece of information is dangerous by itself, but put them together and I know you're a frog-fucking pervert and can set about ruining your life...
(Just an example, obviously - I have no evidence one way or the other if the AC's really a toad-poker:-)
What would they have to have posted - his cock length, inside-leg measurement and a photoshoot showing him in a compromising position with a tub of butter and an aardvark?
Just because the information can be discovered by anyone skilled and motivated enough, doesn't make it alright to collate and publicly broadcast it. How would you feel if someone did the same to you? (I'm asking, not threatening - it's totally against my principles)
To take an extreme case, "public" light is bouncing off your body all the time, but that doesn't give someone the right to use it to take photos of you and use it however they like, does it?
We already have the concept of "image rights" in visual media - with the increasing transparency of the information age do we need something similar for other "personal" information?
Personally I'm happy with it being left up to personal/professional responsibility, but then there are always unethical fuckwits like the "journalist" who wrote this story who don't appear to have any. The more wired we are the more they can find out, and the more harm they can potentially cause someone.
Our mission is to collect and index all the public information in the world, and make it available to everyone, irrespective of race, gender, religion or level of affluence. We see access to information as the great leveller, eroding the boundries between the haves and the have-nots and promoting a more egalitarian and just society. Because of this we do not charge for this service, nor even offer a "premium" version with additional benefits.
We believe in an open, transparent and democratic society, and believe that the best way to achieve this is to maximise the free flow of information.
Obviously nothing is black-and-white, and obviously there are limits - we believe in the freedom of speech, but that does not include the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre. Or at least, not the freedom to shout fire in a crowded theatre and then demand praise or accolades, or even co-operation, from the people you have hurt or needlessly inconvenienced.
Although we promote freedom of information, as this example shows it does come with a price. That price is personal responsibility.
We support the possession of knives for eating, but it is well understood that this presupposes a level of responsibility that means everyone isn't going to rush out and stab the first person who irritates them. Sure, there are always a few people who'll abuse the privilege, but as long as society punishes them for their transgressions and doesn't mistake the potential for incitement, on balance knives make society "better" - we can eat meat, develop table-manners and hey, we don't have to live exclusively on gruel.
Broadly, we provide the service in an attempt to make life better, and because we believe it aids and improves society. It's very useful, and has substantial legitimate uses, but it's up to you to use it responsibly, and up to you to censure people who use it irresponsibly or try to take advantage of it.
You know as well as we do that the web woudln't function without us and others like us, so if you disapprove of what we're doing that's fine, but be prepared to give up the entire future of computing, information technology and knowledge management, and be prepared to slow the development of our culture as a whole.
Congratulations - with your unrepentant attitude and sophomoric sarcasm you've clearly identified yourselves as the bad guys here.
The original article buried what should have been two interesting cautionery stories (about the information trails we leave behind us and Google's questionable data retention policies) under a mountain of unnecessary privacy-invasion and cheap personal shots. It was utterly unnecessary (and you had no right) to explictiely identify the person you'd researched, and selecting Google's CEO was a blatant attack both on his person and the company, making it very obvious the author had some kind of axe to grind.
A professional journalist, acting with integrity, would either have anonymised the person but reported a frightening selection of facts about them or "objectively" researched their own (or a colleague's) life. They would certainly have asked permission before publicly holding anyone up to such unwanted scrutiny.
Simply because the information is out there, that doesn't justify publicising it. Light is constantly bouncing off your body when you're at home, but that wouldn't justify poking a camera through the blinds and taking naked photos of the "journalist" who caused this furore, would it?
Granted, Google appears to have over-reacted in blacklisting CNet for a year, but it was both the journalist *and* CNet the company who allowed this hatchet-job to be posted to the site, and since you've left yourself open to lawsuits for such blatant and deliberate infringement of privacy I'd say you got off lightly.
With this childish attempt at getting one more dig in you demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is more about a personal vendetta against Google, and not (as you will no doubt claim) reporting in the public interest.
This is doubly uncalled-for, because Google themselves are the ones making this information available. Unless you are seriously arguing for the abolishment of all search engines (which would pretty much render the web useless), it should be obvious to all that the onus is on the user to use their service responsibly. Congratulations - you are the first entity to publicly prove that you can't.
In addition, your sensationalist methods have quite obscured the *important* parts of this debate - how to deal with the increasing transparency of an information society, and Google's data retention policies. If you were trying to make any point at all in the public interest, you have therefore failed miserably.
You should know that this pathetic display has quite turned around my opinion of the integrity and professionalism of ZDNet and CNet both, and I will no longer be using your websites or purchasing your publications in any form.
Not to come off as a Google conspiracist (I like and trust them... for the moment), but there are several misconceptions in your post:
"First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?"
As others have noted this can generally be adequately accomplished using session ids stored in the URL. Now, there might be things that session IDs can't do, but the only one I can think of offhand is "track users between visits", which is exactly what people are objecting to.
"Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?"
Basically, yes, but not in the way you think. It's far simpler (and more technically correct) to capture all your user-behaviour at the server, and record it in a database. Your cookie merely stores a unique user id, and Google's servers capture that userid and use it to lookup your records stored in their database.
All you need from the cookie is to store a unique number for each user, and you can store a hell of a large number in 1K (8 * 2^1024, off the top of my head).
My maths is a bit rusty, but for reference, the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be about 10^79. So, with 1K of memory per userid, we could index every atom in the universe, more than 900 times over.
1K is plenty big enough.
"Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!"
The sad thing is, it's trivial, unoriginal and obvious, and it's probably already been granted.
Ever think maybe it's the wigging out and the anger that motivates people to crack the DRM, so people like you can just "go on with their lives", happily oblivious?
And just because almost all the schemes have been cracked doesn't mean the next one won't be uncrackable.
Software-only solutions are pretty much always doomed to failure - that's why the latest round of DRM schemes are tending to be hardware-based - requiring "trusted" (hackcoughspit) hardware, and in the case of Windows Vista, dynamically downsampling the video stream if even your monitor doesn't support it. Hardware it a lot harder to crack (and disseminate the cracks for) than software.
Basically, yeah, every time they try they fail. So they try harder. Eventually, if we're unlucky, they'll try hard enough, and we're all fucked.
"Is that why children think there's Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, etc?"
Small point, but they believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny because their parents, whom they trust implicitly, lied to them about it from the moment they were old enough to understand the concept.
They see images of Santa and the Easter Bunny, but it's the parents who (explicitely, by telling them or implicitly, by playing along and not correcting them) tell the child they're real, and should be believed-in.
Ditto violence and anti-social behaviour.
"Is that why children imitate everything around them? Watch a bunch of kids playing for about 15 minutes, and I guarantee you'll see something "pop culture" woven into their play."
So what? No-one's suggesting that kids play games invented out of whole cloth by themselves, including characters, settings and plots. Of course they're going to be based in the child's experience. To create a play-world that bears no relationship whatsoever to anything the child's ever experienced is a creative feat beyond the majority of most adults - just try it.
The trick here is to make sure that the kid knows the difference between right and wrong, and understands the difference between the play-world and the real world. That's the job of the parents.
Just because kids might see it isn't a reason to censor anything that isn't kid-friendly - it's the job of the parents to shield them from it and/or put it in context.
Obviously there's a trade-off - you don't want to have to fit your kids with blinkers so they can't see the crack-house that's sprung up next to their school - but the current trend seems to be to frantically blame anything but the parents, irrespective of how ignorant, negligent or stupid they've been.
I, as an adult, refuse to give up my responsible, adult use of "adult" entertainment (porn, violence or offensive language) because negligent parents would rather not have the hassle of keeping their kids away from it. They're parents - it's their fucking job.
Yep, there we go. Ignoring my points, disingenuity and refusing to respond to things that you can't explain (like how on earth PNAC isn't supposed to be a neocon-influenced think-tank).
What, like signed affadavits, written in their own (genetically tested) blood? No. My memory might be failing me and they might not even have stated it explicitely, but it's such an utterly ubiquitous, uncontested assertion that I think you'll find it's true.
"This document (PNAC?) has become a sort of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for a modern breed of conspiracy theorist. It has pushed to the side the "New World Order" and the Bildeburgers. Probably it is the same world-controlling cabal meeting in the same castle on a cliff."
I'm not sure what you mean by "document", but the PNAC is a political think-tank. I know you're trolling now, but you can at least use Wikipedia: PNAC.
"Do we know if Monty Burns, Elvis and Steve Gutenberg are still members?"
Last I heard, yeah. They were holed up on Venus with Lord Lucan. Seriously, you're stretching pretty far if you think you can troll by denying the adminsitration's blatant links to the neocon movement, or the neocons stated aims to aggressively depose foreign nations in order to set up replacement regimes more friendly to the US.
"His opinion is that at some point storage will become so plentiful in personal devices that the concept of "having it all" will be a reality. His first example is loading all recorded media onto a personal device. His second is storing photo-realistic images in car navigation systems. This is his revolution?"
Be fair to the guy - he's talking to an interviewer from a completely non-technical magazine. He's giving extremely good examples, because they relate directly to the lives of the kind of people who'll be reading it.
He could waffle on all day about "functionally infinite, ubiquitous semantically-organised storage accessible through a hypermedia interface functioning as a shared information-space and opt-in global group-consciousness", and you'd be nodding your head in agreement. However, he would have lost 99.999% of the intended audience by "ubiquitous".
"Having infinite storage is interesting, but if you consider the Internet to be the same type of thing, there are already limitations."
Since when has having access to the internet been the same as effectively infinite personal storage? Just because you can access lots of information on the net doesn't mean you own unlimited storage space. Sure, I can find and download much information that others find interesting, but I'm a long way away from cheaply and easily being able to assemble my own unlimited-size database, and share it with other people.
"First, you need to realize that 90% of everything is garbage. The other 10% may be useful, but to whom?"
Apples and oranges. 90% of the internet may be crap, but 90% of my personal MP3 collection isn't rubbish in the same way that 90% of my house isn't unliveable-in.
You're right, in that we will need enhanced searching and information-handling mechanisms, but that's a corrolary to what he's saying - he's not tackling that point (which is likely too esoteric for his audience), so your point is irrelevant.
"They are slowly getting better, but the tide of information only comes in, so though the engines are getting better, the quality of results is increasingly getting worse."
This seems to be a popular meme on slashdot - "Google was better in the old days - it's shit now".
In contrast, I've found Google to get better the older it is. And it's certainly better than Altavista before it. In this ever-increasing deluge of information, even staying as relevent as in the past is a great achievement, and the mild improvement I've seen represent a great advance. Am I alone here? Are all search engines really shit these days, or is it merely rosy-tinted nostalgia?
"What would I do with all recorded music? I couldn't possibly listen to it all in my lifetime. I'd need some sort of intelligent agent to find things that I'd like and play those so that I don't waste time listening to things I'm not interested in."
So what? Did he ever say you wouldn't need an intelligent suggestion agent to select items out of that for you? No, so what are you arguing about?
If you're arguing against the idea of everyone eventually having access to all music, just compare the size of the average CD collection to the average MP3 collection, and we'll talk again.
"This isn't some future revolution. It's reality now, and for the most part it works okay."
Yeah. For the few (hundred?) thousand nerds like us on the bleeding edge of the technology. And we're experiencing the very, very, very beginning of the revolution. This is an article in a mainstream site - these are the people who still can't program their videos, let alone reliably navigate a worldwide shared information-space, or assemble quasi-infinite storage space. Sure we're already starting to do it, but we're five minutes ahead on a month-long journey, so stop being so patronising.
"What will we do with infinite storage? Probably just hoard more data, I think. There's only a small amount of
"The No-Fly Zones were not UN-accepted... Then, before war began, we began bombing essentially at will to try and goad Iraq into attacking the US. The reason we were able to start the war with a ground assault was that our air assault began long before the war started."
I've read several reports that "our" air assault never actually ended. We were bombing suspected airfields and "possible" munition dumps on a daily/weekly basis from the end of the first gulf war right up to the beginning of the second. I can't find the references ATM, but it was reported in the UK's The Big Issue, amongst other less-mainstream publications.
True, the bombings did intensify to try to provoke a reaction, but we never actually stopped bombing them in the first place.
"First, you are dead wrong... Cuba-based missiles allowed a strike with only 20 minutes flight time, and from an area not as well covered by US warning systems."
That's a fair point, and one which I was not aware of. To be fair it does increase the threat of cuban missiles, but the example was only intended to illustrate the innate human instinct of escalation - any other example would have done as well.
"Second, the issue at hand is developing the anti-satellite technology, not launching them into space."
That's a fair point, but do you think it's possible to actually develop space-based weapons that work without launching them and testing them? No-one's going to rely on an untested weapon, so tests are inevitable.
Once you're launching weapon systems into space, you've crossed the line and militarised earth-orbit. Now, you may tell people all you like that you're just conducting tests, but the mere fact you've got something launchworthy is a big psychological threat to other nations. You've reached a big milestone in the development, and you're obviously leaving other, non-space-weapons-developing countries behind. This kick in the arse (and the associated paranoia it causes) almost ensures they'll start their own programs, in a way that merely developing them on the ground, "in theory" doesn't.
In addition, once you've launched a series of tests, how do other countries know they're "just tests"?
For example, for ammunition-based systems it would be trivial to launch a "test" satellite, but only to use half its ammo in the test - bingo, it's now a deployed weapon. Will the government undertake to prove every test uses every single unit of ammunition and propellant on-board, and to immediately de-orbit every single test satellite the very second it's finished its test run?
I'd be very surprised, so there's no real way to tell the difference - left-over "test" satellites make the deployment of fully-functional orbital weapons trivial and unnoticeable, so they're going to push people's buttons. And, more overtly, what happens when a "test" satellite eventually works acceptably? Is the US government really going to voluntarily de-orbit and destroy millions of dollars of equipment (that'll additionally cost even more millions to re-launch), just to give the rest of the world warm fuzzy feelings? Judging from their past recent behaviour they'll instead act all surprised that it could be thought of as a threat, and elect to keep it up there on economic grounds. Bingo - the space arms race starts up if it hasn't already.
Just to make clear my position, I have no problems with the US developing or simulating anti-satellite weapons, but the second an armed (even "test") satellite goes into orbit, they've crossed a line, and I'm vehemently opposed to it.
"You may have a case about maintaining the moral high ground. How much are we willing to sacrifice principles for pragmatism?"
This is a good point, and something I think America (particularly the neocons and Bush administration) needs to address, immediately.
America has traditionally been looked to as the guardian of democracy and freedom, always ready to stand behind its principles and fight for them.
These days, however, with Guantanamo, abu Ghraib, the entire Iraq war, espousing human rights while allying with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the ongoing clampdown on both freedom and democracy, America now stands more for paying lip-service to principles while discarding them the very second it looks even mildly useful.
From the point of a non-american, the moral high-ground is something the US could really, really do with capturing a piece of again.
Finally, a topic not so far addressed is "what damn good are anti-satellite weapons?". These days the biggest perceived "danger" to american citizens is terrorism (actually, it's more likely to be heart attacks or lightening strikes, but you can't use a lovely juicy War on Weather to
That the US's recent neocon-lead invasions in the Middle East (specifically Iraq, on what amount to trumped-up charges) make the rest of the world nervous? As a member of the rest of the world, with access to a sample of the rest of the world's media, I assure you they do. I live in the UK, the US's staunchest ally, and recent surveys have shown the general feeling in the UK is that the US is more dangerous to world peace than al Quaeda and Saddam put together. They were small-scale threats to a (comparatively few) individuals at a time, but the US has the ability to start another world war, potentially killing millions.
That the US is schizophrenic? Look at the foreign policy - it's either hypocritical in the extreme or schizophrenic. Supporting human-rights abusers in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia while condomning them in other countries? Espousing democracy while running an election campaign (2000) that would have embarrassed a banana republic? Paying lip-service to freedom while pushing an unprecedented clampdown in civil liberties and removing judicial oversight? And how about the left/right poliarisation of american culture? Even respected US political scientists have been talking about a "culture war".
That the US is trying to arrange the equivalent of an assult weapon and 3000 rounds of ammo? If space-based weaponery isn't that advantageous, why pursue it?
That the new deployment position amounts to a sniper's nest overlooking your back garden? It's earth orbit, FFS - they can hit practically anywhere on the globe from there.
Please explain exactly which assertions are "crackpot", or accept that you're dismissing arguments based on whether or not they feel good, rather than whether they're a valid reading of the situation.
"Could they conceivably be used against the USA in any kind of realistic timeframe?" Less than six months.
If they even still exist, or ever did. You still haven't proven they are working (and space is a very hostile environment to machinery), so why the rush to start the new arms race? Espcially since the US didn't follow-up when (if) the USSR initially put arms in orbit. Surely this is an argument that the paranoia is unnecessary, not in favour of it.
"Does anyone still have the know-how to put up a space-based weapon system in the next 5-10 years?" Yes Russia does. Add to that China, India, possibly Pakasitan,and Israel. Of course more of the EU and Japan could also pull it off.
I think you under-estimate the difficulty of putting reliable, working space-based weapons in orbit.
In addition, the main problem I have against space-based weaponery of any kind is that it's the thin end of the wedge that militarises space and leads to space-to-ground weaponery, and that's the main worry. Reliable accurate StG weaponery is also many magnitudes of difficulty higher than StS weaponery, so factor in additional time before this even possibly becomes a problem.
"Are they still up there working?" Who knows? "Is anyone else in the world even working on space-based weapons?" Probably China and any other nation with a space launch capability.
So, basically, USSR might have put weapons in space before, but the US didn't at the time and never, ever suffered for it.
You don't know if the possible weapons are even still working, which (given the hostile environment of earth-orbit) is quite unlikely without regular maintenance... that they haven't been getting.
You don't know of a single other country that's actually even researching space-based weaponery - the best you can do is suggest who might be doing it, if anyone else was.
Forgive me if I don't find "maybe"s and "perhaps"es a compelling reason to militarise the last demilitarised area (volume?) we have access to, and to start an arms race that could well lead to a new era of international tension or conflict...
I have to tell you, to non-adherents the arguments put forward in favour of militarising space always sound like classic military-grade paranoia. "If we don't destroy the earth, someone else might!". "If we don't start the arms race, someone else might!".
Does the pro-camp also believe that one about destroying the village in order to save it?
Actually, I'd argue exactly that. Sights on their own aren't part of the weapon any more than the case you carry it in is. They might be accessories to the weapon, but they aren't the weapon itself.
Sights are merely specialised telescopes, and tripods and stocks are just devices for keeping things steady - this is why you can wave a sight (or a stock, or a tripod) at police officers in any city in the world, but try doing the same with an actual gun...
You're arguing that because spy satellites can be used to find targets they're part of a "weapon system", and since part of it is allowed, why not the rest?
I'm saying spy satellites take pictures, and that's a very different thing to offensively attacking someone else. I don't subscribe to the idea of a tightly-integrated "weapon system", for the reasons I gave in my post, and so I don't think there's any precedent for purpose-designed offensive weapons in orbit.
I can deal with GPS-enabled cruise missiles (for example), because GPS has lots of other, non-offensive uses - it's primarily peaceful. In the same way I don't have a problem with space stations or large satellites, even though they could be deliberately de-orbited and crashed into an enemy's city - if their main purpose is non-offensive, it's fine.
It's the assets placed in orbit that are only there for offensive purposes that I have a problem with, and I think you'll find most people against the militarisation of space would agree.
"You seem to be drawing a parallel between placing nukes close to another's shore, and placing an anti-satellite in space"
Well yeah, but only because the US and USSR could hit each other with ICBMs just fine, even from their own territories. Given that, there isn't that much advantage in siting them closer, apart from ensuring you get a few more hits in in a war that was highly likely to destroy both countries anyway (ie, no real advantage).
My point was that America was happy to get all wound up about "aggressive moves" that would only really translate into getting in an extra kick in a fight that would kill both combatants.
In contrast, you don't think that gaining a clear, immediate advantage over any nation on earth is cause for others to worry?
Now, granted anti-satellite weapons aren't quite such adirect threat on their own, but once you break the hard and fast "no weapons in space" rule, I'd think it highly unlikely that it won't be followed (even by someone else, seeking advantage rather than stalemate) by space-to-ground munitions, or even simply kinetic harpoons (the "poor mans's nuke").
My point is that if you start an arms race, nobody can choose where it stops. Even if the US only puts anti-satellite weapons in orbit, that paves the way for someone else to site anti-terrestrial weapons. You can tell them you won't until you're blue in the face, but you've already crossed the line, so you have no moral right to insist they don't do it themselves.
I'm not going to fruitlessly argue with an AC, but you really should read my post again.
Specifically, I was querying the architecture of Windows, so whether or not the kernel is actually modified ("recompiled" - the quotes are there for a reason) or not is irrelevant - I was asking, not telling.
That said, thank you for answering my question - apprently Windows has a microkernel (right?) so the drivers live in userland.
If this is the case (and the drivers definitely aren't part of the kernel), this one piece of Linux criticism is valid, and that's all I was trying to clear up.
As an aside, I'm not sure where I got the idea that Windows had a monolithic kernel - maybe an old version did, and this was changed later (eg, 3.x->Me did, NT didn't)?
Leaving aside the GP's (apparently) incorrect assessment of the M-I Complex's fortunes...
"People like you (Liberal Democrats) have made defense contracting a hard place to break even, much less make a profit! I suggest you go learn a little something about a field you obviously do not know a single thing about, other than the name."
And how is that a bad thing?
You seem to be implying that it's something they've done wrong, but I can't see a much more progressive step for the world than making it economically unviable to get rich by enabling the deaths or maiming of millions...
Let's be honest - the US is never (at least, not before the Big Post-Bush Economic Collapse) going to be unable to afford weapons to defend itself.
Given your country's always going to be safe and well-supplied, what's wrong with making it damn hard for people to acquire wealth and influence by profiting from human misery and suffering?
Frankly, it'd be a better world if weapons were totally unnecessary, but I'll settle for now for them being merely prohibitively expensive.
"so will the conduct of the US really shape the behavior of the rest of the world? (I would guess that many outside the US would hope not.)"
Damn straight I hope not. However, it's a fact that the US policy shapes the rest of the world's.
This is entirely understandable, even more so given the US's recent little adventures in the Middle East. You might be happy for life protecting your family with just a catapult, until you hear the paranoid schizophrenic down the road's just bought an assault rifle and 3000 rounds of ammo, and built an armoured sniping-nest overlooking your kids paddling pool.
Oh come on, like the sudden aggressive taking out of even a single spy satellite wouldn't be trumpeted by the side that lost it as a casus belli to do whatever they wanted?
FFS, even siting nukes a bit too close to each other was almost a cause for a hot war. While it might be less serious than a direct invasive attempt, you can rest assured that whichever side lost a satellite would have made maximum PR use of it to paint the other side as aggressors, or that the side doing the shooting would have trumpeted it as a victory over their perfidious infidel opponents.
Did the weapons work? Are they still up there working? Could they conceivably be used against the USA in any kind of realistic timeframe? Does anyone still have the know-how to put up a space-based weapon system in the next 5-10 years? Is anyone else in the world even working on space-based weapons?
Well then, why the hell does America need to blink first and start a whole new arms race?
The current adminstration (and to a certain extent US culture as a whole) needs to grow some backbone, drop the terrible '80s paranoia (it's so passé these days) and stop picking unnecessary fights for fear that someone else might be even a fraction as belligerent, manipulative or invasive as they are.
Mod me troll if you like, but I calls it like I sees it. And I sees an oversized bully finding new ways to pick on smaller kids, to distract him from the hole in his pocket that all his pocket-money's draining away through.
Slashdot Mirror
It's morally apropriate if it's impartial, and benefits society in as many immeasurably blatant ways as a usable world-wide-web has.
It's immoral if it's done for a cheap sensationalist buzz by what's rapidly becoming the online equivalent of a tabloid newspaper.
Google doesn't make money from "publishing personal information" - it makes money from advertising, and selling search technologies to other people - they (and Altavista and others before them) provide tools which are now essential to the high-tech global economy.
CNet/ZDNet used those tools to go after a particular individual, and did so clearly solely for profit - there was no attempt to be fair or impartial, no comment from Google, and the pathetically childish ZDNet follow-up clearly indicates they're looking for a lovely juicy PR fight, not acting in the public interest.
If they were genuinely interested in stimulating debate they would have written one story about Google's shadowy data-retention policies, with Google as the bad guy. Then they would have written another story about the increasing transparency of our information society, and what it means to us and out culture, where they would have used Google as an example.
Instead, they wrote a confused and ill-reasoned hatchet job on Google's CEO, and are now trying to spin the resulting reaction into lovely free advertising for them.
Sensationalist trash journalism at its worst.
Actually, I think you'll find it's an almost-inevitable consequence of technological advancement.
The progress of technology can be thought of as an ever-increasing ease with which information flows.
First language, to communicate ideas between individuals at all, and in small groups.
Next, writing, to preserve information for longer, and disseminate it more widely.
Hand-illumination of manuscripts, printing engraved slabs and moveable type all contributed to the process, as did radio, then television (although the flow was one-sided).
Next computers take up the slack - e-mail happened, then networks started merging and usenet took off. Finally the internet arrives, giving rise to the web and search engines. Now anyone can publish literally anything they like (if they want to enough and don't mind any potential consequences).
The fact is that the ease with which information can flow is an inseparable consequence of progress, unless we artificially restrict it with copy-protection, DRM or legal regulations. Even then, how often do DRM schemes go uncracked, and how often do people get away with publicising secret information if it's genuinely in the public's interest?
My point is this: Google is no more responsible for this trend than Gutenberg, manuscript-illuminating medieval monks or the first clever chimp who grunted to warn his mate about an approaching predator.
Given this, it's currently up to society to decide where and when we want to restrict or punish the publicising of information.
You'll also notice that no-one's claiming Google tried to have the article withdrawn - it's leaving it out there, but refusing to co-operate with the people who made it public because it disapproves of how it was done. It's not even (to my knowledge) sueing.
As covered in other posts, there were plenty of other ways to make the point almost as forcefully - hey, how about using the CEO's information (or hey, the President's), but just not stating who it was? Post him a copy privately to make the point - he'll certainly understand, and you haven't acted childishly or compromised your journalistic efforts.
Incidentally, I agree that Google needs to grow up and address privacy concerns, but these concern their internal data-retention policies. Irresponsible hatchet-job "journalism" like this does more to mask the debate (by focusing on public information) than help it, and the use of public information is a problem for society as a whole, not just one of many companies merely currently riding the wave of technological progress.
Short version:
Google didn't start this - it's an inescapable fact of life.
There are better ways to make the point.
Google is acting true to its beliefs, and appears to still be doing so - they haven't de-listed CNet, have they?
CNet (and ZDNet) appears to be staffed by immature five-year-olds. I was almost expecting them to refer to Google as "poopy-heads" by the end of it.
Google does have issues it needs to address, but this does more to distract people from them than to help resolve the situation.
Maybe so, but making yourself the subject of the investigation, asking Google to remove certain records and their subsequent refusal would have proved the point just as well. Besides, once information's public it's public - everyone knows this already. That doesn't, however, justify collecting and packaging it for easy privacy-infringement.
:-)
The usefulness of information grows exponentially with the number of connected pieces.
For example, I might know you've just won the lottery and live in California, and I might read about someone on an amphibian-fetishist messagboard who's just won the California state lottery.
Neither piece of information is dangerous by itself, but put them together and I know you're a frog-fucking pervert and can set about ruining your life...
(Just an example, obviously - I have no evidence one way or the other if the AC's really a toad-poker
What, photos of him? Wife's name? Address?
What would they have to have posted - his cock length, inside-leg measurement and a photoshoot showing him in a compromising position with a tub of butter and an aardvark?
Just because the information can be discovered by anyone skilled and motivated enough, doesn't make it alright to collate and publicly broadcast it. How would you feel if someone did the same to you? (I'm asking, not threatening - it's totally against my principles)
To take an extreme case, "public" light is bouncing off your body all the time, but that doesn't give someone the right to use it to take photos of you and use it however they like, does it?
We already have the concept of "image rights" in visual media - with the increasing transparency of the information age do we need something similar for other "personal" information?
Personally I'm happy with it being left up to personal/professional responsibility, but then there are always unethical fuckwits like the "journalist" who wrote this story who don't appear to have any. The more wired we are the more they can find out, and the more harm they can potentially cause someone.
We provide a service, and have a mission.
We believe in freedom of information.
Our mission is to collect and index all the public information in the world, and make it available to everyone, irrespective of race, gender, religion or level of affluence. We see access to information as the great leveller, eroding the boundries between the haves and the have-nots and promoting a more egalitarian and just society. Because of this we do not charge for this service, nor even offer a "premium" version with additional benefits.
We believe in an open, transparent and democratic society, and believe that the best way to achieve this is to maximise the free flow of information.
Obviously nothing is black-and-white, and obviously there are limits - we believe in the freedom of speech, but that does not include the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre. Or at least, not the freedom to shout fire in a crowded theatre and then demand praise or accolades, or even co-operation, from the people you have hurt or needlessly inconvenienced.
Although we promote freedom of information, as this example shows it does come with a price. That price is personal responsibility.
We support the possession of knives for eating, but it is well understood that this presupposes a level of responsibility that means everyone isn't going to rush out and stab the first person who irritates them. Sure, there are always a few people who'll abuse the privilege, but as long as society punishes them for their transgressions and doesn't mistake the potential for incitement, on balance knives make society "better" - we can eat meat, develop table-manners and hey, we don't have to live exclusively on gruel.
Broadly, we provide the service in an attempt to make life better, and because we believe it aids and improves society. It's very useful, and has substantial legitimate uses, but it's up to you to use it responsibly, and up to you to censure people who use it irresponsibly or try to take advantage of it.
You know as well as we do that the web woudln't function without us and others like us, so if you disapprove of what we're doing that's fine, but be prepared to give up the entire future of computing, information technology and knowledge management, and be prepared to slow the development of our culture as a whole.
Your call.
Also posted on the story's comments page
Congratulations - with your unrepentant attitude and sophomoric sarcasm you've clearly identified yourselves as the bad guys here.
The original article buried what should have been two interesting cautionery stories (about the information trails we leave behind us and Google's questionable data retention policies) under a mountain of unnecessary privacy-invasion and cheap personal shots. It was utterly unnecessary (and you had no right) to explictiely identify the person you'd researched, and selecting Google's CEO was a blatant attack both on his person and the company, making it very obvious the author had some kind of axe to grind.
A professional journalist, acting with integrity, would either have anonymised the person but reported a frightening selection of facts about them or "objectively" researched their own (or a colleague's) life. They would certainly have asked permission before publicly holding anyone up to such unwanted scrutiny.
Simply because the information is out there, that doesn't justify publicising it. Light is constantly bouncing off your body when you're at home, but that wouldn't justify poking a camera through the blinds and taking naked photos of the "journalist" who caused this furore, would it?
Granted, Google appears to have over-reacted in blacklisting CNet for a year, but it was both the journalist *and* CNet the company who allowed this hatchet-job to be posted to the site, and since you've left yourself open to lawsuits for such blatant and deliberate infringement of privacy I'd say you got off lightly.
With this childish attempt at getting one more dig in you demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is more about a personal vendetta against Google, and not (as you will no doubt claim) reporting in the public interest.
This is doubly uncalled-for, because Google themselves are the ones making this information available. Unless you are seriously arguing for the abolishment of all search engines (which would pretty much render the web useless), it should be obvious to all that the onus is on the user to use their service responsibly. Congratulations - you are the first entity to publicly prove that you can't.
In addition, your sensationalist methods have quite obscured the *important* parts of this debate - how to deal with the increasing transparency of an information society, and Google's data retention policies. If you were trying to make any point at all in the public interest, you have therefore failed miserably.
You should know that this pathetic display has quite turned around my opinion of the integrity and professionalism of ZDNet and CNet both, and I will no longer be using your websites or purchasing your publications in any form.
In Korea, only old people die playing computer games.
No, wait...
Not to come off as a Google conspiracist (I like and trust them... for the moment), but there are several misconceptions in your post:
"First, do you have some magic method you want to share for automatically logging into, and staying logged onto, an account-based service w/o cookies?"
As others have noted this can generally be adequately accomplished using session ids stored in the URL. Now, there might be things that session IDs can't do, but the only one I can think of offhand is "track users between visits", which is exactly what people are objecting to.
"Wow! The 1K max size cookie on my computer stores the IP and info of every single search that is done on google?"
Basically, yes, but not in the way you think. It's far simpler (and more technically correct) to capture all your user-behaviour at the server, and record it in a database. Your cookie merely stores a unique user id, and Google's servers capture that userid and use it to lookup your records stored in their database.
All you need from the cookie is to store a unique number for each user, and you can store a hell of a large number in 1K (8 * 2^1024, off the top of my head).
My maths is a bit rusty, but for reference, the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be about 10^79. So, with 1K of memory per userid, we could index every atom in the universe, more than 900 times over.
1K is plenty big enough.
"Forget search revenues, they need to patent and sell that compression algorithm!"
The sad thing is, it's trivial, unoriginal and obvious, and it's probably already been granted.
Ever think maybe it's the wigging out and the anger that motivates people to crack the DRM, so people like you can just "go on with their lives", happily oblivious?
And just because almost all the schemes have been cracked doesn't mean the next one won't be uncrackable.
Software-only solutions are pretty much always doomed to failure - that's why the latest round of DRM schemes are tending to be hardware-based - requiring "trusted" (hackcoughspit) hardware, and in the case of Windows Vista, dynamically downsampling the video stream if even your monitor doesn't support it. Hardware it a lot harder to crack (and disseminate the cracks for) than software.
Basically, yeah, every time they try they fail. So they try harder. Eventually, if we're unlucky, they'll try hard enough, and we're all fucked.
"Is that why children think there's Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, etc?"
Small point, but they believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny because their parents, whom they trust implicitly, lied to them about it from the moment they were old enough to understand the concept.
They see images of Santa and the Easter Bunny, but it's the parents who (explicitely, by telling them or implicitly, by playing along and not correcting them) tell the child they're real, and should be believed-in.
Ditto violence and anti-social behaviour.
"Is that why children imitate everything around them? Watch a bunch of kids playing for about 15 minutes, and I guarantee you'll see something "pop culture" woven into their play."
So what? No-one's suggesting that kids play games invented out of whole cloth by themselves, including characters, settings and plots. Of course they're going to be based in the child's experience. To create a play-world that bears no relationship whatsoever to anything the child's ever experienced is a creative feat beyond the majority of most adults - just try it.
The trick here is to make sure that the kid knows the difference between right and wrong, and understands the difference between the play-world and the real world. That's the job of the parents.
Just because kids might see it isn't a reason to censor anything that isn't kid-friendly - it's the job of the parents to shield them from it and/or put it in context.
Obviously there's a trade-off - you don't want to have to fit your kids with blinkers so they can't see the crack-house that's sprung up next to their school - but the current trend seems to be to frantically blame anything but the parents, irrespective of how ignorant, negligent or stupid they've been.
I, as an adult, refuse to give up my responsible, adult use of "adult" entertainment (porn, violence or offensive language) because negligent parents would rather not have the hassle of keeping their kids away from it. They're parents - it's their fucking job.
Yep, there we go. Ignoring my points, disingenuity and refusing to respond to things that you can't explain (like how on earth PNAC isn't supposed to be a neocon-influenced think-tank).
IHBT, HAND.
"Do you have any documentation of this?"
What, like signed affadavits, written in their own (genetically tested) blood? No. My memory might be failing me and they might not even have stated it explicitely, but it's such an utterly ubiquitous, uncontested assertion that I think you'll find it's true.
"This document (PNAC?) has become a sort of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" for a modern breed of conspiracy theorist. It has pushed to the side the "New World Order" and the Bildeburgers. Probably it is the same world-controlling cabal meeting in the same castle on a cliff."
I'm not sure what you mean by "document", but the PNAC is a political think-tank. I know you're trolling now, but you can at least use Wikipedia: PNAC.
"Do we know if Monty Burns, Elvis and Steve Gutenberg are still members?"
Last I heard, yeah. They were holed up on Venus with Lord Lucan. Seriously, you're stretching pretty far if you think you can troll by denying the adminsitration's blatant links to the neocon movement, or the neocons stated aims to aggressively depose foreign nations in order to set up replacement regimes more friendly to the US.
Very funny - had it not been for the lack of .sig (implying a different AC) I wouldn't have realised that was even a joke ;-)
That said, I was under the impression than many members of the Bush administration were self-identified as neocons (and Rumsfeld and Cheney were the founders of the neocon-influenced PNAC). And I believe that the current administration foreign policy tallies closely with neocon ideology (aggressive moralist stance on foreign policy, a lesser social conservatism, and weaker dedication to a policy of minimal government).
It's also important to understand I meant "lead" in the ideological sense, rather than who was literally giving the orders to the troops.
"His opinion is that at some point storage will become so plentiful in personal devices that the concept of "having it all" will be a reality. His first example is loading all recorded media onto a personal device. His second is storing photo-realistic images in car navigation systems. This is his revolution?"
Be fair to the guy - he's talking to an interviewer from a completely non-technical magazine. He's giving extremely good examples, because they relate directly to the lives of the kind of people who'll be reading it.
He could waffle on all day about "functionally infinite, ubiquitous semantically-organised storage accessible through a hypermedia interface functioning as a shared information-space and opt-in global group-consciousness", and you'd be nodding your head in agreement. However, he would have lost 99.999% of the intended audience by "ubiquitous".
"Having infinite storage is interesting, but if you consider the Internet to be the same type of thing, there are already limitations."
Since when has having access to the internet been the same as effectively infinite personal storage? Just because you can access lots of information on the net doesn't mean you own unlimited storage space. Sure, I can find and download much information that others find interesting, but I'm a long way away from cheaply and easily being able to assemble my own unlimited-size database, and share it with other people.
"First, you need to realize that 90% of everything is garbage. The other 10% may be useful, but to whom?"
Apples and oranges. 90% of the internet may be crap, but 90% of my personal MP3 collection isn't rubbish in the same way that 90% of my house isn't unliveable-in.
You're right, in that we will need enhanced searching and information-handling mechanisms, but that's a corrolary to what he's saying - he's not tackling that point (which is likely too esoteric for his audience), so your point is irrelevant.
"They are slowly getting better, but the tide of information only comes in, so though the engines are getting better, the quality of results is increasingly getting worse."
This seems to be a popular meme on slashdot - "Google was better in the old days - it's shit now".
In contrast, I've found Google to get better the older it is. And it's certainly better than Altavista before it. In this ever-increasing deluge of information, even staying as relevent as in the past is a great achievement, and the mild improvement I've seen represent a great advance. Am I alone here? Are all search engines really shit these days, or is it merely rosy-tinted nostalgia?
"What would I do with all recorded music? I couldn't possibly listen to it all in my lifetime. I'd need some sort of intelligent agent to find things that I'd like and play those so that I don't waste time listening to things I'm not interested in."
So what? Did he ever say you wouldn't need an intelligent suggestion agent to select items out of that for you? No, so what are you arguing about?
If you're arguing against the idea of everyone eventually having access to all music, just compare the size of the average CD collection to the average MP3 collection, and we'll talk again.
"This isn't some future revolution. It's reality now, and for the most part it works okay."
Yeah. For the few (hundred?) thousand nerds like us on the bleeding edge of the technology. And we're experiencing the very, very, very beginning of the revolution. This is an article in a mainstream site - these are the people who still can't program their videos, let alone reliably navigate a worldwide shared information-space, or assemble quasi-infinite storage space. Sure we're already starting to do it, but we're five minutes ahead on a month-long journey, so stop being so patronising.
"What will we do with infinite storage? Probably just hoard more data, I think. There's only a small amount of
"The No-Fly Zones were not UN-accepted... Then, before war began, we began bombing essentially at will to try and goad Iraq into attacking the US. The reason we were able to start the war with a ground assault was that our air assault began long before the war started."
I've read several reports that "our" air assault never actually ended. We were bombing suspected airfields and "possible" munition dumps on a daily/weekly basis from the end of the first gulf war right up to the beginning of the second. I can't find the references ATM, but it was reported in the UK's The Big Issue, amongst other less-mainstream publications.
True, the bombings did intensify to try to provoke a reaction, but we never actually stopped bombing them in the first place.
"First, you are dead wrong... Cuba-based missiles allowed a strike with only 20 minutes flight time, and from an area not as well covered by US warning systems."
That's a fair point, and one which I was not aware of. To be fair it does increase the threat of cuban missiles, but the example was only intended to illustrate the innate human instinct of escalation - any other example would have done as well.
"Second, the issue at hand is developing the anti-satellite technology, not launching them into space."
That's a fair point, but do you think it's possible to actually develop space-based weapons that work without launching them and testing them? No-one's going to rely on an untested weapon, so tests are inevitable.
Once you're launching weapon systems into space, you've crossed the line and militarised earth-orbit. Now, you may tell people all you like that you're just conducting tests, but the mere fact you've got something launchworthy is a big psychological threat to other nations. You've reached a big milestone in the development, and you're obviously leaving other, non-space-weapons-developing countries behind. This kick in the arse (and the associated paranoia it causes) almost ensures they'll start their own programs, in a way that merely developing them on the ground, "in theory" doesn't.
In addition, once you've launched a series of tests, how do other countries know they're "just tests"?
For example, for ammunition-based systems it would be trivial to launch a "test" satellite, but only to use half its ammo in the test - bingo, it's now a deployed weapon. Will the government undertake to prove every test uses every single unit of ammunition and propellant on-board, and to immediately de-orbit every single test satellite the very second it's finished its test run?
I'd be very surprised, so there's no real way to tell the difference - left-over "test" satellites make the deployment of fully-functional orbital weapons trivial and unnoticeable, so they're going to push people's buttons. And, more overtly, what happens when a "test" satellite eventually works acceptably? Is the US government really going to voluntarily de-orbit and destroy millions of dollars of equipment (that'll additionally cost even more millions to re-launch), just to give the rest of the world warm fuzzy feelings? Judging from their past recent behaviour they'll instead act all surprised that it could be thought of as a threat, and elect to keep it up there on economic grounds. Bingo - the space arms race starts up if it hasn't already.
Just to make clear my position, I have no problems with the US developing or simulating anti-satellite weapons, but the second an armed (even "test") satellite goes into orbit, they've crossed a line, and I'm vehemently opposed to it.
"You may have a case about maintaining the moral high ground. How much are we willing to sacrifice principles for pragmatism?"
This is a good point, and something I think America (particularly the neocons and Bush administration) needs to address, immediately.
America has traditionally been looked to as the guardian of democracy and freedom, always ready to stand behind its principles and fight for them.
These days, however, with Guantanamo, abu Ghraib, the entire Iraq war, espousing human rights while allying with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the ongoing clampdown on both freedom and democracy, America now stands more for paying lip-service to principles while discarding them the very second it looks even mildly useful.
From the point of a non-american, the moral high-ground is something the US could really, really do with capturing a piece of again.
Finally, a topic not so far addressed is "what damn good are anti-satellite weapons?". These days the biggest perceived "danger" to american citizens is terrorism (actually, it's more likely to be heart attacks or lightening strikes, but you can't use a lovely juicy War on Weather to
What "crackpot assertions" precisely?
That the US's recent neocon-lead invasions in the Middle East (specifically Iraq, on what amount to trumped-up charges) make the rest of the world nervous? As a member of the rest of the world, with access to a sample of the rest of the world's media, I assure you they do. I live in the UK, the US's staunchest ally, and recent surveys have shown the general feeling in the UK is that the US is more dangerous to world peace than al Quaeda and Saddam put together. They were small-scale threats to a (comparatively few) individuals at a time, but the US has the ability to start another world war, potentially killing millions.
That the US is schizophrenic? Look at the foreign policy - it's either hypocritical in the extreme or schizophrenic. Supporting human-rights abusers in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia while condomning them in other countries? Espousing democracy while running an election campaign (2000) that would have embarrassed a banana republic? Paying lip-service to freedom while pushing an unprecedented clampdown in civil liberties and removing judicial oversight? And how about the left/right poliarisation of american culture? Even respected US political scientists have been talking about a "culture war".
That the US is trying to arrange the equivalent of an assult weapon and 3000 rounds of ammo? If space-based weaponery isn't that advantageous, why pursue it?
That the new deployment position amounts to a sniper's nest overlooking your back garden? It's earth orbit, FFS - they can hit practically anywhere on the globe from there.
Please explain exactly which assertions are "crackpot", or accept that you're dismissing arguments based on whether or not they feel good, rather than whether they're a valid reading of the situation.
"Could they conceivably be used against the USA in any kind of realistic timeframe?"
Less than six months.
If they even still exist, or ever did. You still haven't proven they are working (and space is a very hostile environment to machinery), so why the rush to start the new arms race? Espcially since the US didn't follow-up when (if) the USSR initially put arms in orbit. Surely this is an argument that the paranoia is unnecessary, not in favour of it.
"Does anyone still have the know-how to put up a space-based weapon system in the next 5-10 years?"
Yes Russia does. Add to that China, India, possibly Pakasitan,and Israel. Of course more of the EU and Japan could also pull it off.
I think you under-estimate the difficulty of putting reliable, working space-based weapons in orbit.
In addition, the main problem I have against space-based weaponery of any kind is that it's the thin end of the wedge that militarises space and leads to space-to-ground weaponery, and that's the main worry. Reliable accurate StG weaponery is also many magnitudes of difficulty higher than StS weaponery, so factor in additional time before this even possibly becomes a problem.
"Are they still up there working?"
Who knows?
"Is anyone else in the world even working on space-based weapons?"
Probably China and any other nation with a space launch capability.
So, basically, USSR might have put weapons in space before, but the US didn't at the time and never, ever suffered for it.
You don't know if the possible weapons are even still working, which (given the hostile environment of earth-orbit) is quite unlikely without regular maintenance... that they haven't been getting.
You don't know of a single other country that's actually even researching space-based weaponery - the best you can do is suggest who might be doing it, if anyone else was.
Forgive me if I don't find "maybe"s and "perhaps"es a compelling reason to militarise the last demilitarised area (volume?) we have access to, and to start an arms race that could well lead to a new era of international tension or conflict...
I have to tell you, to non-adherents the arguments put forward in favour of militarising space always sound like classic military-grade paranoia. "If we don't destroy the earth, someone else might!". "If we don't start the arms race, someone else might!".
Does the pro-camp also believe that one about destroying the village in order to save it?
Actually, I'd argue exactly that. Sights on their own aren't part of the weapon any more than the case you carry it in is. They might be accessories to the weapon, but they aren't the weapon itself.
Sights are merely specialised telescopes, and tripods and stocks are just devices for keeping things steady - this is why you can wave a sight (or a stock, or a tripod) at police officers in any city in the world, but try doing the same with an actual gun...
You're arguing that because spy satellites can be used to find targets they're part of a "weapon system", and since part of it is allowed, why not the rest?
I'm saying spy satellites take pictures, and that's a very different thing to offensively attacking someone else. I don't subscribe to the idea of a tightly-integrated "weapon system", for the reasons I gave in my post, and so I don't think there's any precedent for purpose-designed offensive weapons in orbit.
I can deal with GPS-enabled cruise missiles (for example), because GPS has lots of other, non-offensive uses - it's primarily peaceful. In the same way I don't have a problem with space stations or large satellites, even though they could be deliberately de-orbited and crashed into an enemy's city - if their main purpose is non-offensive, it's fine.
It's the assets placed in orbit that are only there for offensive purposes that I have a problem with, and I think you'll find most people against the militarisation of space would agree.
"You seem to be drawing a parallel between placing nukes close to another's shore, and placing an anti-satellite in space"
Well yeah, but only because the US and USSR could hit each other with ICBMs just fine, even from their own territories. Given that, there isn't that much advantage in siting them closer, apart from ensuring you get a few more hits in in a war that was highly likely to destroy both countries anyway (ie, no real advantage).
My point was that America was happy to get all wound up about "aggressive moves" that would only really translate into getting in an extra kick in a fight that would kill both combatants.
In contrast, you don't think that gaining a clear, immediate advantage over any nation on earth is cause for others to worry?
Now, granted anti-satellite weapons aren't quite such adirect threat on their own, but once you break the hard and fast "no weapons in space" rule, I'd think it highly unlikely that it won't be followed (even by someone else, seeking advantage rather than stalemate) by space-to-ground munitions, or even simply kinetic harpoons (the "poor mans's nuke").
My point is that if you start an arms race, nobody can choose where it stops. Even if the US only puts anti-satellite weapons in orbit, that paves the way for someone else to site anti-terrestrial weapons. You can tell them you won't until you're blue in the face, but you've already crossed the line, so you have no moral right to insist they don't do it themselves.
I'm not going to fruitlessly argue with an AC, but you really should read my post again.
Specifically, I was querying the architecture of Windows, so whether or not the kernel is actually modified ("recompiled" - the quotes are there for a reason) or not is irrelevant - I was asking, not telling.
That said, thank you for answering my question - apprently Windows has a microkernel (right?) so the drivers live in userland.
If this is the case (and the drivers definitely aren't part of the kernel), this one piece of Linux criticism is valid, and that's all I was trying to clear up.
As an aside, I'm not sure where I got the idea that Windows had a monolithic kernel - maybe an old version did, and this was changed later (eg, 3.x->Me did, NT didn't)?
Leaving aside the GP's (apparently) incorrect assessment of the M-I Complex's fortunes...
"People like you (Liberal Democrats) have made defense contracting a hard place to break even, much less make a profit! I suggest you go learn a little something about a field you obviously do not know a single thing about, other than the name."
And how is that a bad thing?
You seem to be implying that it's something they've done wrong, but I can't see a much more progressive step for the world than making it economically unviable to get rich by enabling the deaths or maiming of millions...
Let's be honest - the US is never (at least, not before the Big Post-Bush Economic Collapse) going to be unable to afford weapons to defend itself.
Given your country's always going to be safe and well-supplied, what's wrong with making it damn hard for people to acquire wealth and influence by profiting from human misery and suffering?
Frankly, it'd be a better world if weapons were totally unnecessary, but I'll settle for now for them being merely prohibitively expensive.
"so will the conduct of the US really shape the behavior of the rest of the world? (I would guess that many outside the US would hope not.)"
Damn straight I hope not. However, it's a fact that the US policy shapes the rest of the world's.
This is entirely understandable, even more so given the US's recent little adventures in the Middle East. You might be happy for life protecting your family with just a catapult, until you hear the paranoid schizophrenic down the road's just bought an assault rifle and 3000 rounds of ammo, and built an armoured sniping-nest overlooking your kids paddling pool.
Oh come on, like the sudden aggressive taking out of even a single spy satellite wouldn't be trumpeted by the side that lost it as a casus belli to do whatever they wanted?
FFS, even siting nukes a bit too close to each other was almost a cause for a hot war. While it might be less serious than a direct invasive attempt, you can rest assured that whichever side lost a satellite would have made maximum PR use of it to paint the other side as aggressors, or that the side doing the shooting would have trumpeted it as a victory over their perfidious infidel opponents.
Oh yeah, and:
Did the weapons work?
Are they still up there working?
Could they conceivably be used against the USA in any kind of realistic timeframe?
Does anyone still have the know-how to put up a space-based weapon system in the next 5-10 years?
Is anyone else in the world even working on space-based weapons?
Well then, why the hell does America need to blink first and start a whole new arms race?
The current adminstration (and to a certain extent US culture as a whole) needs to grow some backbone, drop the terrible '80s paranoia (it's so passé these days) and stop picking unnecessary fights for fear that someone else might be even a fraction as belligerent, manipulative or invasive as they are.
Mod me troll if you like, but I calls it like I sees it. And I sees an oversized bully finding new ways to pick on smaller kids, to distract him from the hole in his pocket that all his pocket-money's draining away through.