Its hard to say whether or not the bans were unfair when the rational for doing them are done on secret mailing lists. Thats the problem here. Theres no way to prove that the bans were fair because the reasons behind them were secret. The poster I responded to wrote in such a way to say "Well, Jimbo says the reasons were fair, so they were," which is a pretty nasty appeal to authority. Especially because Jimbo doesn't exactly have a good record for this sort of thing (initially defending the guy who faked his credentials, IIRC).
If there were easily accessible proof that this person did something wrong, they could produce that instead. Or is this another one of those secret mailing list bans? Granted, El Reg didn't produce much other than hyperbole, but to respond with appeals to authority and hand-waving makes me wonder if there isn't something to what they're saying, especially considering the way the admins have started to operate.
Moreover, Jimbo's "no tolerance" language certainly doesn't endear me to his point of view.
We in the business have a name for that kind of headline. "Joke" As far as the article, calling it a "deliberate and polemic assault designed to take Wiki down, and rob it of all credibility" is some superb hyperbole. The article itself dabbles in hyperbole, but you've pretty much one-upped it. They overdo it in many place (seriously, "totalitarian"?) but most of what is written seems reasonable when you strip away the, *ahem*, creative writing.
The thing that makes these little flukes on Wikipedia a scandal is that instead of admitting theres a problem, the wiki in-group will loudly deny any problems and pose it as an all-or-nothing, you're-with-us-or-against-us situation.
Appeals to Authority don't make very good arguments. Basically all you've told us is that Jimbo Wales said the bans were OK, so they must be. As far as "link-spamming," what you've written there is pretty much worthless as proof. Such revert wars go on all the time at Wikipedia. You've given no compelling evidence whatsoever that the people were banned fairly, had the ban reasons communicated, or that the people banned and community had chances to provide input.
Thats certainly a possibility, but it assumes that giving complete and detailed information is more beneficial than giving a brief summary and then avoid spending the time releasing all the proper information. I don't know whether this would be the case or not.
Another thing to consider: the Wii uses far less energy than the other systems out right now. I wonder if that was calculated the chart?
Heh its funny, because those "second rate" schools can actually be very good. University of Illinois, for example was where I went to school. At that time, we were ranked 4th in the nation for our engineering program.
My Japanese friends would always ask me if it was ok for them to smoke before doing so. Definitely a lot more polite. Around here, most people will just whip out a cigarette and expect people to put up with their habit.
He forgot to put "Air Force One" on his movies list since thats where he ripped the "... on that day of deliverance, you will know what I want" part of his speech from. Kid probably doesn't have a single original thought.
Is the reason that blacks are more likely to go to prison because they commit more crimes, or because of selective enforcement?
Or it could be that blacks, due to slavery and discrimination, are more highly concentrated on the lower, poor strata of our society. Poverty and disadvantages in opportunity are contributing factors to crime. Thus the observed correlation can be explained by a third, invisible factor not accounted for in the correlation.
Its not likely that there is only one explanation. I don't doubt for a minute that selective enforcement plays into the statistic, but likewise I don't doubt for a second that centuries of broken social policy also doesn't play into it. No offense, but you seem to be completely rejecting any explanation so that blame can be maximized upon law enforcement.
Its a real bitch when using kanji-related tools that utilize handwriting recognition, such as dictionary and learning software for the Nintendo DS. Most of them assume a certain stroke order, so if you do it wrong then you come out with a completely different Kanji. Sometimes I have to experiment with two or three different orders to get it to come out correctly.
(long URL ab't a recent ad server compromise that utilizes IFRAME-launched vulns) Apparently, the attackers used an embedded IFRAME to shift browsers to a sniffing website, where it could look for a nice bucket of 0-day exploits (e.g. the recent RealPlayer one).
So basically it redirects your browser to a page that hopes your system isn't patched?
Not exactly - in OSX, you only see that when you actually install a binary that requires full-on root or sudo privileges. UAC in Vista apparently did it all the time (hence jokes such as "your mouse cursor is trying to move. Cancel or Allow?")
I've used Vista. UAC works pretty much the same way as the Mac system does. UAC runs if you're installing something, or you're running a program that requires admin privileges. Problem is that a ton of software out there requires admin privileges.
In my personal case, after I had my software installed, I saw maybe one or two prompts a week. Nowhere near the amount that some people like to joke about. People saw the UAC thing in beta while they were still tweaking thing, grossly exaggerated, and then started posting on the internet. Its an internet meme, not necessarily grounded in reality.
Honestly, if you're seeing a lot of UAC prompts, its probably because your permissions somewhere are screwy, or because someone installed software that wants to be admin all the time. Neither of those are Vista's fault.
My practical experience is that UAC in Vista was no more and no less annoying than sudo in Ubuntu. As it should be, because its pretty much the same friggen thing.
Did you have SP2 installed? One of the dirty secrets of XP is that if you don't have SP2 installed, then you're likely to get nailed before you can even download the first service patch, automatically with >no user intervention. Sadly, theres not much you can do about this but pre-download SP2, install it without network connectivity, and then install. Luckily, most Windows users buy pre-built systems, so they come with SP2 already installed. They still get infected way too easily though.
Well, in all seriousness, I'm thinking of just writing in Colbert or some other form of protest vote from now on. "None of the above" might work as well too. My only concern is that by voting for the lesser of two evils, at least I'd be preventing some evil, even if I couldn't prevent it all.
You know, I agree with Washington in principle on that point. In an ideal world we shouldn't have political parties. But human nature is such that we form groups with people who are similar to us in some way. One of the determining factors is politics. We have millions of years of evolution that forces us into these social groups, and so I think to ignore this fact is foolish.
Ideally, yes, we shouldn't have political parties. But the reality is that human nature guarantees it in one form or another, so its better to make a system that acknowledges this. If you make a system that refuses to acknowledge this, then you run the risk of having a system that is too easy to game by political parties (see: American politics).
You're right, its a trojan not a virus. I associated "malware = virus" in my head and messed up. In my defense though, a lot of computer users do the same.
More recent XP is also a lot better with this, although the admin by default aspect is an achilles heel. Its actually quite possible to run user-level in XP. I've made images for labs that ran about 95% of software out of the box under a user account (except for Macromedia stuff, DIE Dreamweaver!).
But yeah, older versions of Windows fast-tracks the installation of the nasties.
To address the great grandparent's point, Apples advertising specifically mentions viruses. So the fact that they don't advertise "malware" immunity is well taken. I fell into the common trap that your average user does, that is that malware = virus.
How many of those 1.3 million are individual United States citizens that are eligible to vote?
Regardless, here, the media and the powers to be decides who runs. If you don't play the political games that have been laid down, then you don't get a shot. Sad but true, because those games, in my eyes, seem to be a fast track to corruption.
I don't care about Republican or Democrat, just whether the politician is honest and will support the positions I care about. I will vote for said person, regardless of what party he or she is.
And by support, I don't mean saying that they will support it. I mean by actions. Talk is cheap.
How broad was his support? I haven't seen any evidence that he had support from anyone but Colbert Report viewers. Now that may seem like a lot of people, but I don't think that amount compromises a significant percentage of the voting public.
On an off note, my college also had a student government won by a cartoon character. The artist ran his comic character as a protest against what was seen as a worthless student government body. The common opinion was that it existed only to give a small group a chance to "play politics" and pad their resumes. Well, the character won, but was disqualified later, because they went back and counted all the comic strips the character appeared in as "advertising," then claimed that the character went over his budget.
Eh, Microsoft Vista tried to make it not so easy to get nailed by trojans downloaded off the internet. Its pretty much the same the same thing: if the user disregards the warnings and installs something, its their own fault. The OS's only responsibility is to warn the user and not to make it so easy to do something stupid.
To be fair, once any OS has been compromised, its pretty hard to fully trust it again. I find that reinfection is mostly caused by users doing the same stuff over and over again. I always try to educate people when I fix their machines, and set up auto-patching, etc. Of course, most people want their computer to be an appliance, not a general purpose machine.
I probably shouldn't have used quotes, because I didn't mean to insinuate that they stated that exactly. Apple hosts the ads that they show on their site, and one is named "Viruses". I can't watch it at work, since I don't have Quicktime, but its probably the ad I remember that panned PCs for being more susceptible to viruses.
If your Windows machine is unpatched, yep you can probably get hit with something via IFRAME. Up-to-date machines aren't quite that easy to hit with malware though. Most modern day Windows malware happens via trojans, just like this Mac trojan.
The steps are pretty much the same as the ones you gave above, except maybe #3. To be fair though, Vista tried to add #3 and its pretty much universally panned as being "stupid" despite being pretty much the same damn thing. Oh, and when its Windows, its never the user's fault; only Window's.
And yes, it was my personal experience that, as far back as 2003, most infected users explicitly installed the software that infected them. Cursor packs and custom themes, Kazaa, random P2P applications, wierd codecs, etc.
So basically, if people are whining, I'd imagine its because of the perceived double standard, wherein "Windows user does something stupid -> OMG WINDOWS SUCKS," but "OSX user does something stupid -> OSX is perfect, the user is just stupid."
Slashdot Mirror
Its hard to say whether or not the bans were unfair when the rational for doing them are done on secret mailing lists. Thats the problem here. Theres no way to prove that the bans were fair because the reasons behind them were secret. The poster I responded to wrote in such a way to say "Well, Jimbo says the reasons were fair, so they were," which is a pretty nasty appeal to authority. Especially because Jimbo doesn't exactly have a good record for this sort of thing (initially defending the guy who faked his credentials, IIRC).
If there were easily accessible proof that this person did something wrong, they could produce that instead. Or is this another one of those secret mailing list bans? Granted, El Reg didn't produce much other than hyperbole, but to respond with appeals to authority and hand-waving makes me wonder if there isn't something to what they're saying, especially considering the way the admins have started to operate.
Moreover, Jimbo's "no tolerance" language certainly doesn't endear me to his point of view.
We in the business have a name for that kind of headline. "Joke" As far as the article, calling it a "deliberate and polemic assault designed to take Wiki down, and rob it of all credibility" is some superb hyperbole. The article itself dabbles in hyperbole, but you've pretty much one-upped it. They overdo it in many place (seriously, "totalitarian"?) but most of what is written seems reasonable when you strip away the, *ahem*, creative writing.
The thing that makes these little flukes on Wikipedia a scandal is that instead of admitting theres a problem, the wiki in-group will loudly deny any problems and pose it as an all-or-nothing, you're-with-us-or-against-us situation.
Appeals to Authority don't make very good arguments. Basically all you've told us is that Jimbo Wales said the bans were OK, so they must be. As far as "link-spamming," what you've written there is pretty much worthless as proof. Such revert wars go on all the time at Wikipedia. You've given no compelling evidence whatsoever that the people were banned fairly, had the ban reasons communicated, or that the people banned and community had chances to provide input.
Your comment doesn't deserve a troll rating.
Thats certainly a possibility, but it assumes that giving complete and detailed information is more beneficial than giving a brief summary and then avoid spending the time releasing all the proper information. I don't know whether this would be the case or not.
Another thing to consider: the Wii uses far less energy than the other systems out right now. I wonder if that was calculated the chart?
Heh its funny, because those "second rate" schools can actually be very good. University of Illinois, for example was where I went to school. At that time, we were ranked 4th in the nation for our engineering program.
My Japanese friends would always ask me if it was ok for them to smoke before doing so. Definitely a lot more polite. Around here, most people will just whip out a cigarette and expect people to put up with their habit.
In Japan. They're fairly common.
He forgot to put "Air Force One" on his movies list since thats where he ripped the "... on that day of deliverance, you will know what I want" part of his speech from. Kid probably doesn't have a single original thought.
Everything is non-renewable given a long enough time frame. Entropy is a bitch.
Or it could be that blacks, due to slavery and discrimination, are more highly concentrated on the lower, poor strata of our society. Poverty and disadvantages in opportunity are contributing factors to crime. Thus the observed correlation can be explained by a third, invisible factor not accounted for in the correlation.
Its not likely that there is only one explanation. I don't doubt for a minute that selective enforcement plays into the statistic, but likewise I don't doubt for a second that centuries of broken social policy also doesn't play into it. No offense, but you seem to be completely rejecting any explanation so that blame can be maximized upon law enforcement.
Its a real bitch when using kanji-related tools that utilize handwriting recognition, such as dictionary and learning software for the Nintendo DS. Most of them assume a certain stroke order, so if you do it wrong then you come out with a completely different Kanji. Sometimes I have to experiment with two or three different orders to get it to come out correctly.
So basically it redirects your browser to a page that hopes your system isn't patched?
Not exactly - in OSX, you only see that when you actually install a binary that requires full-on root or sudo privileges. UAC in Vista apparently did it all the time (hence jokes such as "your mouse cursor is trying to move. Cancel or Allow?")I've used Vista. UAC works pretty much the same way as the Mac system does. UAC runs if you're installing something, or you're running a program that requires admin privileges. Problem is that a ton of software out there requires admin privileges.
In my personal case, after I had my software installed, I saw maybe one or two prompts a week. Nowhere near the amount that some people like to joke about. People saw the UAC thing in beta while they were still tweaking thing, grossly exaggerated, and then started posting on the internet. Its an internet meme, not necessarily grounded in reality.
Honestly, if you're seeing a lot of UAC prompts, its probably because your permissions somewhere are screwy, or because someone installed software that wants to be admin all the time. Neither of those are Vista's fault.
My practical experience is that UAC in Vista was no more and no less annoying than sudo in Ubuntu. As it should be, because its pretty much the same friggen thing.
I have to agree with Stewart here. Voting for Colbert is more like giving the middle finger to the current establishment.
Did you have SP2 installed? One of the dirty secrets of XP is that if you don't have SP2 installed, then you're likely to get nailed before you can even download the first service patch, automatically with >no user intervention. Sadly, theres not much you can do about this but pre-download SP2, install it without network connectivity, and then install. Luckily, most Windows users buy pre-built systems, so they come with SP2 already installed. They still get infected way too easily though.
Well, in all seriousness, I'm thinking of just writing in Colbert or some other form of protest vote from now on. "None of the above" might work as well too. My only concern is that by voting for the lesser of two evils, at least I'd be preventing some evil, even if I couldn't prevent it all.
You know, I agree with Washington in principle on that point. In an ideal world we shouldn't have political parties. But human nature is such that we form groups with people who are similar to us in some way. One of the determining factors is politics. We have millions of years of evolution that forces us into these social groups, and so I think to ignore this fact is foolish.
Ideally, yes, we shouldn't have political parties. But the reality is that human nature guarantees it in one form or another, so its better to make a system that acknowledges this. If you make a system that refuses to acknowledge this, then you run the risk of having a system that is too easy to game by political parties (see: American politics).
You're right, its a trojan not a virus. I associated "malware = virus" in my head and messed up. In my defense though, a lot of computer users do the same.
More recent XP is also a lot better with this, although the admin by default aspect is an achilles heel. Its actually quite possible to run user-level in XP. I've made images for labs that ran about 95% of software out of the box under a user account (except for Macromedia stuff, DIE Dreamweaver!).
But yeah, older versions of Windows fast-tracks the installation of the nasties.
To address the great grandparent's point, Apples advertising specifically mentions viruses. So the fact that they don't advertise "malware" immunity is well taken. I fell into the common trap that your average user does, that is that malware = virus.
How many of those 1.3 million are individual United States citizens that are eligible to vote?
Regardless, here, the media and the powers to be decides who runs. If you don't play the political games that have been laid down, then you don't get a shot. Sad but true, because those games, in my eyes, seem to be a fast track to corruption.
I don't care about Republican or Democrat, just whether the politician is honest and will support the positions I care about. I will vote for said person, regardless of what party he or she is.
And by support, I don't mean saying that they will support it. I mean by actions. Talk is cheap.
How broad was his support? I haven't seen any evidence that he had support from anyone but Colbert Report viewers. Now that may seem like a lot of people, but I don't think that amount compromises a significant percentage of the voting public.
On an off note, my college also had a student government won by a cartoon character. The artist ran his comic character as a protest against what was seen as a worthless student government body. The common opinion was that it existed only to give a small group a chance to "play politics" and pad their resumes. Well, the character won, but was disqualified later, because they went back and counted all the comic strips the character appeared in as "advertising," then claimed that the character went over his budget.
Eh, Microsoft Vista tried to make it not so easy to get nailed by trojans downloaded off the internet. Its pretty much the same the same thing: if the user disregards the warnings and installs something, its their own fault. The OS's only responsibility is to warn the user and not to make it so easy to do something stupid.
To be fair, once any OS has been compromised, its pretty hard to fully trust it again. I find that reinfection is mostly caused by users doing the same stuff over and over again. I always try to educate people when I fix their machines, and set up auto-patching, etc. Of course, most people want their computer to be an appliance, not a general purpose machine.
I probably shouldn't have used quotes, because I didn't mean to insinuate that they stated that exactly. Apple hosts the ads that they show on their site, and one is named "Viruses". I can't watch it at work, since I don't have Quicktime, but its probably the ad I remember that panned PCs for being more susceptible to viruses.
If your Windows machine is unpatched, yep you can probably get hit with something via IFRAME. Up-to-date machines aren't quite that easy to hit with malware though. Most modern day Windows malware happens via trojans, just like this Mac trojan.
The steps are pretty much the same as the ones you gave above, except maybe #3. To be fair though, Vista tried to add #3 and its pretty much universally panned as being "stupid" despite being pretty much the same damn thing. Oh, and when its Windows, its never the user's fault; only Window's.
And yes, it was my personal experience that, as far back as 2003, most infected users explicitly installed the software that infected them. Cursor packs and custom themes, Kazaa, random P2P applications, wierd codecs, etc.
So basically, if people are whining, I'd imagine its because of the perceived double standard, wherein "Windows user does something stupid -> OMG WINDOWS SUCKS," but "OSX user does something stupid -> OSX is perfect, the user is just stupid."