Heh. Well, I guess that puts things in perspective.
I also want to make clear that my original comment wasn't saying that programmers don't deserve their own holiday, just that we're not the first profession that comes to mind when I think of occupations which are severely lacking in official public recognition. Of course, I probably should have looked up other Russian holidays first.
Since programming isn't really a glamorous profession, and a lot of high school students are probably turned off by its nerdy image, it's actually quite nice that President Medvedev has created this holiday, helping to promote a profession that isn't that often in the public eye.
Well, if you want to look at it like that, then almost anyone can be considered a teacher. Heck, I used to tutor other students after school at the library when I was in high school. Now, as part of my current web development job, it's my responsibility to teach our new high school intern the ins and outs of web development and graphic design. However, I don't think that puts me on the same level as a career teacher.
Don't get me wrong, as a programmer myself and one who's learned immensely from other programmers, I have tremendous respect for the programming profession. In fact, I think the FOSS movement is a tremendous credit to the programming community. The concept of open source, which began in software development and spread out to other fields, is proof that programmers are ahead of the herd when it comes to public collaboration and sharing knowledge.
That said, however, I think the academic community still has an edge on us in that regard. In fact, the FOSS movement has its roots partly in the academic ideals of free exchange of knowledge and information. And even though many professional programmers do "teach" in some small capacity, it's not quite the same as the computer programming professor who's dedicated his life to teaching. I mean, just because you give your child cold medicine when he's sick, or put a band-aid on his knee when he scrapes it, that doesn't make you a doctor or put you on the same level as medical professionals whose job it is to treat the sick and save lives.
List of professions that I think are probably more deserving of their own holiday:
teachers
doctors & other medical professionals
social workers
scientists & mathematicians
mathematicians
firemen/coast guard/rescue workers
artists, musicians, and writers
Of course, some of these are sorta already commemorated by labor day, and I would have also put farmers on the list if most weren't just corporate farms these days. I also thought about including inventors (it'd be nice for encouraging kids to be creative and laud ingenuity) but I'm not sure it's so much an occupation as it is a hobby/lifestyle.
I think the Dreamcast was a lot more successful in Japan, where it actually had a respectable following for some years and had new titles published for it up till as recent as 2007. But if you're in the states or elsewhere, you're probably unaware of the library of games the platform offered.
Discussing what he believes to be the Dreamcast's strengths and weaknesses in order to analyze the reasons for the platform's commercial failure isn't rationalizing. It's a fact of life that good products & services don't always succeed commercially. Considering all the technical praise the Dreamcast has received despite its commercial failure, I think it's safe to say that it falls into the above category. And there's nothing wrong with pointing out some of the good points about a product that was a commercial failure. I think it's actually pretty important to assess the reasons why a well-engineered product was not the commercial success it should have been; especially as it happens quite often that a well-engineered product will perform poorly commercially, and even lose out to competitors that are technologically inferior. It's not as if the Dreamcast was a total bomb like the Gizmondo.
Sony can probably learn a few lessons from the failure of the Dreamcast and Sega's downfall in the console gaming market. Sega began losing ground as soon as they replaced Hayao Nakayama with an investment banker as the head of the company. Nakayama was a businessman, but he was a businessman with a keen sense of the gaming industry. It's not always about cutting costs and squeezing every penny out of consumers. And even a strong product that is technologically sound can be self-sabotaged through mismanagement. The PSP is probably one of the best examples of a technologically impressive product whose potential is largely wasted due to corporate mismanagement. No, it's not a commercial failure, but Sony corporate has certainly done a fine job of drawing the contempt of its user and destroying any consumer confidence & good faith built up by the PSX and PS2.
On the up side, at least it appears that they're learning (albeit slowly and by the hard way) from their mistakes and improving on their business strategy regarding the PSP with each successive generation. It took them over a year, but they finally let gave PSP owners direct access to the PSN—without which PSP users couldn't play PSX games as Sony had heavily advertised—without having to buy a $500 (I believe that's how much the PS3 cost at the time) add-on. And they are finally taking advantage of the PSP's internet capabilities and giving up on the UMD. But the PSP could have been much more successful if they'd taken a clue from CFW users (who have long enjoyed longer battery life and practically zero loading time by booting ISOs off of the PSP's memory stick) sooner and gave consumers what they wanted. Let's see how long it'll take Sony to figure out that PSP users want to be able to rip their old PS1 discs and play them on their PSPs without having to re-purchase their entire game library on the PSN.
Granted, I don't use facebook much these days (stopped using it after they introduced facebook apps), but I've never experienced any technical problems with the site. In contrast, Myspace is a steaming pile of crap that never works 100%. If it's not being unresponsive, it's throwing error messages or losing private messages. The fact that every single profile uses CSS hacks for customization just makes it worse. There were also a number of worms that infected (exploiting the hacked-together CSS skinning system) users' profiles and infected half the network, in addition to their privacy features not working for a long period of time.
But I guess you can't expect quality software from a company that basically started out as spyware/malware developers and made money by selling e-mail lists/contact databases to spammers. Which is why it's hilarious that they're now cracking down on people caught "friend-blasting" (Myspace's form of spamming).
Not to mention their copyright infringement policy is a joke. There are about a thousand profiles out there using songs by our artists on their profiles, and even with profiles posing as our artists. So we have to use profile names like myspace.com/realacidbath or myspace.com/officialblah-blah-blah. But when we try to post our own music up on our own profiles, we get a copyright infringement notice and the music gets taken down. Good one Myspace. You're doing a fine job combating copyright infringement.
My dad and I built one of those when I was a kid. Except it was about 1/10th that size. And it wasn't controlled using Logo. God I hate that language.
I'm sure it was great back in the 60's or 70's (and probably would have been cooler with the physical turtle), but there are much better languages for teaching students how to program today. Unless you're dealing with elementary school students, C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, or even VB or JavaScript would be a better way of introducing students to computer programming. Programming languages are tools. The more things you can do (or create) with that tool, the more fun it will be to explore its uses and, therefore, the more motivated students will be to learn how to use it.
Well, WQXGA is a rather extreme resolution (what monitor, btw?). That's probably around the point where you start exceeding the usefulness of maximizing most applications' UIs. And yea, I meant 1920x1200 in my post.
Personally, I use Aptana Studio (I mostly do PHP/JS web programming these days) and one of the nice things about Aptana is that it's truly a fully-integrated IDE for the sphere of development it's geared towards. So rarely is there a need to even access your web browser, a putty window, or anything else—at least until they removed SFTP support from the community edition (anyone know of a way to tunnel an FTP session&mdashboth control channel and data channels—over SSH?). For instance, there's an integrated (IE/Mozilla) browser preview in the IDE. There's also an integrated online JS/DOM/AJAX doc viewer. You can even run most console tools from within the IDE itself.
Of course, sometimes there's just no substitute for a Putty session. And if I'm reading a reference manual or something, then I will usually manually maximize Acrobat Reader and whatever other application I'm using by hand. Tile Windows Horizontally also works, but I wish Windows let you resize tiled windows using a vertical splitter or dock windows against each other (and to screen edges).
AFAIK, most word processors support word wrap and allow you to set your page dimensions. And that generally has nothing to do with the window size. You can zoom in or zoom out to page any size page take up the full width of your screen.
Like I said, in most cases, it makes perfect sense to maximize the window you're using. It takes less time than resizing the window manually, and it makes the most effective use of your screen real estate. Aside from when you need to see more than 1 application window at a time, there's no advantage to not maximizing the window.
Maybe it's because they want to make better use of their screen real estate? Why do people prefer larger computer monitors and TVs? Because you see can see more and see better. I mean, do you also complain that your TV is maximized instead of displaying bits and pieces of other channels next to the program you're currently watching?
Most operating systems today are capable of multitasking, but most users are not. So if you're only using a single application, and you bought a 24" monitor, then why not use that space? If you're watching a movie, you can see a bigger picture. If you're surfing the web, typing a paper, writing code, or working on a spread sheet, you can see more content at once and scroll less.
Most people don't go out and buy a 24" monitor so that they can see more of their desktop background. The better question might be, why not maximize the application you're currently using? Most OSes have a windows manager or task switcher that allows quick and easy switching between programs. Windows even has a desktop shortcut in the quick launch bar for easy access to the desktop. There's really no advantage to not having your windows maximized and fully utilizing your screen real estate. It's also easier to focus on your work when there's nothing else cluttering the screen.
Many programs, such as IDEs or graphics applications like Photoshop or Illustrator, have a Workspace manager. That's because the developers realize that your screen setup and window layout are vital to user productivity and efficiency. With complex applications as these, you often have tons of widgets, toolbars, info panels, etc. that can take up significant display area. So it makes sense to use your screen real estate as efficiently as possible. It doesn't make sense to clutter your monitor with windows that have nothing to do with your current workflow.
On a 1280x1024 display, I usually don't have space to display all the tool panels and windows I need to work efficiently. On my current 1920x1600 display, I have just enough when the Application is maximized. Sure, I can get by on less screen area. But that usually means constantly opening & collapsing tool panels and a lot of scrolling back and forth. A bigger workspace also means I see my drawings in more detail; I can see more code at a time; and I can more easily & accurately navigate long web pages. Additionally, working with an application maximized allows you to better memorize the location of various panels and toolbars since they're always in the same position. Just as switching between different model keyboards leads to slower typing and more typos, a non-maximized window that's a different size and in a different position every time is similarly less efficient.
By "questionably-obtained monopoly," do you mean by offering a service that no one else wants to offer? Yea, how dare they...
I also don't know why you're mentioning DRM as the article makes no mention of any DRM technology. In fact, if any DRM were to be involved, it would be at the request of the Authors Guild and others opposing Google Book Search. I mean, is Google supposed to be bad because they're against restrictive copyright policies or because they're for restrictive copyright policies?
Unfortunately, Google has no control over congress or copyright laws (otherwise, they probably would have pushed for copyright reforms to keep the project in its original form—instead of making it Google Obscure/Out-of-Print Book Search). What they do have is the ability to come to a private settlement with the parties that are opposed to Google Book Search. So they did that.
I don't know how you construed this as giving Google a monopoly on anything. Anyone else trying to provide a similar service has the same rights as Google and can negotiate a deal of their own with the Author's Guild (WGA is for TV/film writers). It's like if I were to make a movie and wanted to use music by a particular artist in the film. I would then have to negotiate a deal with that artist, and this deal would only be between myself and the artist. I have no authority to negotiate a deal between the artist and the rest of the world.
The idea of holding licensing fees in a trust is also a horrible idea. The music industry does just that. You have "not-for-profit" organizations like the SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI basically going around collecting protection money from public venue owners so that they can have the radio or any kind of music playing in their establishment. It doesn't matter what kind of music it is, who owns the rights to the music, or what the copyright status even is. They even collect fees on the "Happy Birthday" song, on international music whose authors they don't represent, and on classical music that's long since passed into public domain. Worst yet, you have to join and pay a membership fee in order to receive your royalties, but even if you don't, they will continue to charge venues a licensing fee for playing your music. This completely screws over musicians who just want to get their music out there and don't want to charge venues for playing their music. It also eliminates the incentive for venue owners to play music by independent musicians who appreciate the free promotion.
But you're probably right. Only things that can make people money are of any value. It's not like having a single free, digitally searchable online catalog for all the published texts in the world would be of any use to society; never mind the huge boon this would be to people who don't have access to a local library or can't read physical books.
But, like others have said, determinism doesn't necessarily preclude free will. Likewise, randomness does not equate to free will.
For instance, imagine if you had a true random number generator. Now, imagine that every time you were faced with any sort of a decision, you simply fed the options into this magical machine and whatever number the machine spits out, you made the corresponding choice. Imagine if you had to live out your entire life like this—blindly obeying this random number generator's stream of arbitrary output. Does that constitute free will? Does the machine have free will because it's spitting out those random numbers?
I agree that there doesn't appear to be any true randomness in the universe. Everything that happens is likely the predetermined consequence of a continuous chain of events starting with the big bang. Even human consciousness is just the result of a series of physical/chemical chain reactions. But if you interpret "free will" simply as having ownership of one's actions & decisions, then determinism is irrelevant.
I think we can still claim to possess free will if, and only if, we understand why we do what we do and make the choices that we make. Someone who is being manipulated by others clearly doesn't have free will, despite believing they do. But someone who understands his/her choices and is cognizant of their true motivations for doing things can still claim to have free will. Perhaps nothing ever truly happens spontaneously, but that's alright.
For instance, of the 20% of wine shoppers who are not influenced by the music playing in the background, some might be drawn to a particular brand of wine because they are influenced by the company's aggressive marketing efforts. Perhaps the shopper associates the brand with class or prestige. Or maybe there's just a romantic allure about this particular brand. The shopper might be conscious of these positive associations, but, as they're unable to explain why they associate those concepts with the brand, they're still just a slave to irrational impulses.
In an opposite scenario, a shopper might hear the French music playing in the background and be reminded of a summer he spent in France years ago. He might recall fond memories of drinking French wine with a beautiful girl he met there and consciously make the choice to buy a French wine to reminisce about the past. In this case, even if the shopper did not consciously register the French music playing in the store, the motivation behind his purchase is still known to him. Even though his decision was the combined result of many outside factors (a summer in France, a beautiful girl, and the shop music stirring up old memories), there is a clear and logical rationale behind the decision.
Just as understanding why you believe something is paramount to free thought, so too is understanding why you do something critical to free will. Someone who believes something simply because he's told to believe it, has been conditioned to believe it, or because it's all he knows (and thus has never considered the alternatives) cannot claim to possess free thought. Free thought also exists where belief may be predetermined. If I look up and see that the sky is blue, I can't just decide that I don't want to believe that the sky is blue. I have to believe it because it makes sense to me. But so long as I understand why I hold this belief, then I am still demonstrating free thought. In contrast, someone who chooses to believe the sky to be pink against their own faculties of logic is simply demonstrating a tendency towards self-deception.
Exactly. It's hard to even contemplate intelligence or consciousness without the concept of free will. I don't think you can have analytical thought, self-awareness, self-reflection, creativity, etc. without free will. Even the lower forms of intelligence associated with other animal species, like dogs, cats, cows, pigs, etc., require free will or free thought to some extent. Otherwise, you'd simply have an animal that just sits there idly until someone gives it a set of instructions to follow—much like modern, decidedly unintelligent, computers/robots.
On the other hand, it's debatable whether there really is such a thing as "free will" as most people think of it as. That is, most people assume they have the power of self-determination. They make their own decisions based on their own "free will." But time and time again this assertion has proven to be false.
A good example of this was a study conducted on how music influenced wine shoppers. The results of this study were interesting, not because it found that playing German music in the store boosted sales of German wines while French music boosted sales of French wines, but rather because of how the shoppers explained their wine choices. Nearly every shopper perceived their wine selection as a personal choice free from external influences, and barely 2.5% of the shoppers even mentioned the PA music in their decision-making process. However, the fact that 80% of the wine purchases on each day corresponded with the type of music being played seemed to contradict the customers' assertions.
What's most interesting to me about this experiment is the fact that, not only did the overwhelming majority of the shoppers have no clue as to why they made their wine choices, but they even went as far as to invent a fake rationale for their decision after the fact. This indicates that most people are capable of deceiving themselves as to why they do things and are quite willing to do this in order to maintain the illusion of free will and self-determination.
So this begs the question of whether free will truly exists or not, or if it's just an illusion, a quirk of human/animal psychology. All of our actions and decisions could very well be predetermined/dictated by external factors. But as long as our brain invents a motivation for each action, each decision, after the fact, then it will seem like we made all of those choices of our own volition.
But that's the ultimate result of all unmitigated capitalist systems. Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates.
Market forces (via economies of scale/scope) almost always push towards a single fully vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly. That's why Wal-Mart beats out little mom & pop stores. So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations. But those things ultimately get in the way of corporate profits, so anyone supporting them is labeled a socialist (which is true in the sense that they care about society and social welfare over money and the economy). And if you're pro-capitalism then you must necessarily be pro-business and support deregulation.
The other problem is that, even though capitalism is supposed to be an economic theory, its effects tend to spill out into politics and other societal spheres. A capitalist society, by definition, is driven by capital. Wealth equates to power in a capitalist society. With wealth, you have access to better education, better health care, and better opportunities. Additionally, having better lawyers means you are treated better in the eyes of the law, and having powerful lobbies means you have exponentially more political influence than your less affluent brethren—and why shouldn't you? you have better nearly everything else, right? If Ayn Rand was right, and the captains of industry do carry the world on their shoulders, then why shouldn't they get to decide public policy? And if everyone's goal in life should be to get filthy rich and look out for only themselves, then can you really blame the politicians who sell out to powerful business interests?
So we shouldn't really be surprised by actions such as these. Everything from health, to education, to political influence is a commodity to be traded and sold. The economy has become an end in and of itself, and one that's more important than public good.
Well, the FP is claiming that they're the same thing, and your post seemed to be agreeing with him. But yea, that troll rating probably should have gone to the post you replied to.
I don't know anything about prelink, but Superfetch sounds completely different from dyld. Superfetch keeps frequently launched applications in memory to make them launch faster (much like Winamp Agent does for Winamp). dyld, OTOH, shortens application launch times by not reloading a shared library each time an application is launched. Keeping the shared library loaded in a shared cache also reduces the number of copies of that library you need loaded in memory. It doesn't sound like Superfetch does that.
Both a turbocharger and a cold air intake can improve car performance, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
That's a very good point about accidental self-injury (we did, after all, evolve to feel pain for a reason). However, I must say that you have been terribly misinformed about a grown cow being less capable of experiencing pain (physical and mental) than a human embryo/fetus. The overestimation here is on the amount of mental capacity an embryo (at 18 days, it's still not a fetus) has. I would not put too much stock in the information given to you by anyone claiming that a thinking and learning child is formed within 3-weeks of conception.
At 18 days, gastrulation has just barely commenced. There's no defined brain or spinal cord yet, much less a fully functional central nervous system to facilitate thinking and learning. At that early stage, a human embryo looks just about like the embryo of most other vertebrate species in comparable stages of development. The fact of the matter is, it takes 7 weeks just to begin development of a minimal brain stem in human gestation, and it isn't until much later (in the 3rd trimester) that the neocortex develops. Before that, it is biologically impossible for a fetus to experience pain. In fact, a human fetus demonstrates no discernible brain activity (via EEG) before the 25th week of pregnancy.
It's one thing to oppose abortion on purely religious grounds. It's quite another to make up facts (that fly in the face of common sense) about well-understood biological processes in order to express your righteous indignation towards those who don't share your religious views. No biologist in their right mind would say that a fully-grown cow or pig, which demonstrates every sign of sentience, is less capable of suffering than a clump of cells less than 1/12" in diameter but which happens to have human DNA. Human beings are certainly a lot smarter than other animals, but we're still the result of the same basic biological & chemical processes shared by all branches on the tree of life. Human embryos do not possess any supernatural qualities that the embryos of other species don't have. It can't think without a brain, and it can't sense pain without a neocortex and fully formed nerve endings.
This is still a retarded solution to a non-existant problem (or one we have no desire to solve).
First of all, there are already humane ways to kill animals (and humans) without them feeling any discomfort—and they're a heck of a lot simpler/cheaper than genetically engineering animals to feel no pain. Aside from creating another genetically-modified life-form that megacorporations like Monsanto can patent can make billions from it, there's nothing to be gained from this.
You want to kill an animal without making it suffer? Here's a solution that costs about $50 to implement:
1. Build a plexiglass box measuring about 2'x2'x2'.
2. Hook up a tank of ntirous to it.
3. Cut a slot on one side of the box large enough for an animal to put its head through (optionally, install a rubber curtain to form a more perfect seal).
4. Place a bowl of cattle feed in the box.
Tests conducted on pigs have shown that the animal feels no discomfort and will willingly keep their head in the contraption until they pass out and eventually die from asphyxiation. This is just one of the many already existing solutions out there (like shooting the animal in the head with a gun).
The real problem isn't that there's no way to kill animals currently without them feeling pain. The problem is that the meat industry, and most consumers, really don't care how livestock are treated.
Even if the animal cannot feel physical pain, it's still going to be spending its entire life in cramped, inhumane living conditions.
Wow. OK, all I wrote was that it would be better to remember a person's life than to focus on their death. If that's arguing semantics, then I guess I'm guilty as charged.
I was not ripping on the OP, as I don't believe in getting into flame wars or getting as worked up as you seem to be about this over a mere forum post. I interpreted the OP's comment a certain way, and expressed my disagreement with what it seemed to imply to me. He responded to my comment and clarified what he meant, and expressed that we were indeed in agreement. I have no quarrels with him personally, and I'd assume he bears no grudge against me. Why this has you so riled up is beyond me.
Also, you do realize that human (natural) language is not constructed the same way as formal semantics. It's pretty silly to treat it as such. Language is inherently imprecise and full of implied meanings and connotations. Let me just leave you with this statement as an example to think over:
I'm not trying to start a flame war with you. And I didn't mean to imply that you were a troll. I will admit that I was a little angry when I wrote the previous post (so I guess that makes me a hypocrite:-P), as you did get under my skin a bit.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with inverses relations, contrapositives, converse, etc., etc. And it really depends on the propositions and how the statement is constructed.
For example, the statement: "All triangles are 3-sided." can be broken down as: If (P)a shape has 3 sides then (Q)it is a triangle. The inverse of that is: If (!P)a shape does not have 3 sides then (!Q) it is not a triangle.
Obviously, the second statement is true.
Likewise, if you say that most people, when faced with terminal illness, cling to life because they fear death. Add on top of that, you say that this man is brave precisely because he committed suicide. Then, yes, it is implying that (because bravery is a lack of fear) those who don't commit suicide (ie. cling to life out of fear of death) are not brave. Not to mention: "instead of scrabbling away and clinging to anything he could" kinda implies that that is the only other option to suicide (to say nothing about his word choice).
So every terminal cancer patient who doesn't commit suicide isn't brave? By trying to survive they're "scrabbling away and clinging to anything they could?" Sounds like you're saying all the terminally ill who don't commit suicide are pathetic cowards. What about the ones who endure all the pain (physical and psychological) and some how beat the odds (it's happened many a times)?
People who commit suicide all have their own reasons. I think the important thing is to not judge them, regardless of what their circumstances happen to be, as we'll never know what they were going through and the reasoning behind their decision. It's their life. They should have the right to end it if they want. It's really no one else's business.
But let's not try so hard to glorify someone' death that we start denigrating those with the will to live on. This guy obviously lead a very full life filled with many great & admirable accomplishments. Let's just leave it at that. His suicide was just the final period at the end of a fascinating life story. Our attention should be on everything that came before it.
Re:Most people simply don't think about security
on
The Myths of Security
·
· Score: 1
You make some valid points, but I don't think the myth of the "educatable user" is a myth at all. There's a reason why most security experts, and AV-software vendors, emphasize the need for educating users. It's not to deflect responsibility from the software. It's not to undermine their own business model. It's because you need, both, reasonably secure software and reasonably educated users. Sure, you can't expect users to be perfect; even the security experts themselves are fallible. But without basic user precautions and some level of basic security sense, even the most security-hardened system will still be as vulnerable as if no software security had been implemented at all. Otherwise, you're basically only left with the option of making "idiot-proof" software that one would use by choice.
Let's face it, perfect security is often impractical or just infeasible. Many people have to work with Windows and outdated versions of the IE browser in environments where the principle of least privilege just can't be practically implemented. In those cases it makes sense to minimize risk by educating users and setting the appropriate company policies. Heck, it makes sense to do so even outside of such extreme cases. It's about having a balanced security implementation (not putting all your eggs in one basket).
Just recently there was a story on/. about how some penetration tests were conducted, demonstrating the vulnerability of financial institutions to (relatively unsophisticated) social engineering attacks. If you're in the financial/banking industry and you have "uneducatable users" in your company, then they need to be replaced immediately, as they're the biggest threat to your system. It's cheaper, easier, and more realistic to train (or replace) an employee than to try to design a security system that is idiot-proof or is immune to social-engineering attacks.
So the problem isn't the myth of uneducatable users, but rather the complacency we've developed towards walking attack vectors on the company payroll. Perhaps if companies didn't resign themselves to the fact that users have to be stupid, this wouldn't be such a self-fulfilling prophecy. Spend a little more money to attract/hire higher quality job candidates if you have to. All the stories in the news of massive data leaks and other security breaches should be enough to convince most intelligent company execs that this is not something that an organization to whom security is crucial should skimp on.
And who knows? If people start losing their jobs because they're downloading and running executables from unknown sources, or they're giving their password to anyone who bothers to ask, or are otherwise computer security illiterate, then perhaps they'll start making an effort to learn. This isn't the 1990's. Personal computers have become an everyday appliance like the TV or telephone. There's an entire generation of workers out there today who've been brought up on computers and the internet. It's not very hard to find an accountant, or secretary, or VP of sales, etc. who are tech-savvy enough to not open up your network to outside attackers every time they're at a computer.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Well, I guess that puts things in perspective.
I also want to make clear that my original comment wasn't saying that programmers don't deserve their own holiday, just that we're not the first profession that comes to mind when I think of occupations which are severely lacking in official public recognition. Of course, I probably should have looked up other Russian holidays first.
Since programming isn't really a glamorous profession, and a lot of high school students are probably turned off by its nerdy image, it's actually quite nice that President Medvedev has created this holiday, helping to promote a profession that isn't that often in the public eye.
Well, if you want to look at it like that, then almost anyone can be considered a teacher. Heck, I used to tutor other students after school at the library when I was in high school. Now, as part of my current web development job, it's my responsibility to teach our new high school intern the ins and outs of web development and graphic design. However, I don't think that puts me on the same level as a career teacher.
Don't get me wrong, as a programmer myself and one who's learned immensely from other programmers, I have tremendous respect for the programming profession. In fact, I think the FOSS movement is a tremendous credit to the programming community. The concept of open source, which began in software development and spread out to other fields, is proof that programmers are ahead of the herd when it comes to public collaboration and sharing knowledge.
That said, however, I think the academic community still has an edge on us in that regard. In fact, the FOSS movement has its roots partly in the academic ideals of free exchange of knowledge and information. And even though many professional programmers do "teach" in some small capacity, it's not quite the same as the computer programming professor who's dedicated his life to teaching. I mean, just because you give your child cold medicine when he's sick, or put a band-aid on his knee when he scrapes it, that doesn't make you a doctor or put you on the same level as medical professionals whose job it is to treat the sick and save lives.
Ack, that should be scientists & researchers.
Maybe I should have added editors/proof-readers to the list.
List of professions that I think are probably more deserving of their own holiday:
Of course, some of these are sorta already commemorated by labor day, and I would have also put farmers on the list if most weren't just corporate farms these days. I also thought about including inventors (it'd be nice for encouraging kids to be creative and laud ingenuity) but I'm not sure it's so much an occupation as it is a hobby/lifestyle.
I think the Dreamcast was a lot more successful in Japan, where it actually had a respectable following for some years and had new titles published for it up till as recent as 2007. But if you're in the states or elsewhere, you're probably unaware of the library of games the platform offered.
Discussing what he believes to be the Dreamcast's strengths and weaknesses in order to analyze the reasons for the platform's commercial failure isn't rationalizing. It's a fact of life that good products & services don't always succeed commercially. Considering all the technical praise the Dreamcast has received despite its commercial failure, I think it's safe to say that it falls into the above category. And there's nothing wrong with pointing out some of the good points about a product that was a commercial failure. I think it's actually pretty important to assess the reasons why a well-engineered product was not the commercial success it should have been; especially as it happens quite often that a well-engineered product will perform poorly commercially, and even lose out to competitors that are technologically inferior. It's not as if the Dreamcast was a total bomb like the Gizmondo.
Sony can probably learn a few lessons from the failure of the Dreamcast and Sega's downfall in the console gaming market. Sega began losing ground as soon as they replaced Hayao Nakayama with an investment banker as the head of the company. Nakayama was a businessman, but he was a businessman with a keen sense of the gaming industry. It's not always about cutting costs and squeezing every penny out of consumers. And even a strong product that is technologically sound can be self-sabotaged through mismanagement. The PSP is probably one of the best examples of a technologically impressive product whose potential is largely wasted due to corporate mismanagement. No, it's not a commercial failure, but Sony corporate has certainly done a fine job of drawing the contempt of its user and destroying any consumer confidence & good faith built up by the PSX and PS2.
On the up side, at least it appears that they're learning (albeit slowly and by the hard way) from their mistakes and improving on their business strategy regarding the PSP with each successive generation. It took them over a year, but they finally let gave PSP owners direct access to the PSN—without which PSP users couldn't play PSX games as Sony had heavily advertised—without having to buy a $500 (I believe that's how much the PS3 cost at the time) add-on. And they are finally taking advantage of the PSP's internet capabilities and giving up on the UMD. But the PSP could have been much more successful if they'd taken a clue from CFW users (who have long enjoyed longer battery life and practically zero loading time by booting ISOs off of the PSP's memory stick) sooner and gave consumers what they wanted. Let's see how long it'll take Sony to figure out that PSP users want to be able to rip their old PS1 discs and play them on their PSPs without having to re-purchase their entire game library on the PSN.
Granted, I don't use facebook much these days (stopped using it after they introduced facebook apps), but I've never experienced any technical problems with the site. In contrast, Myspace is a steaming pile of crap that never works 100%. If it's not being unresponsive, it's throwing error messages or losing private messages. The fact that every single profile uses CSS hacks for customization just makes it worse. There were also a number of worms that infected (exploiting the hacked-together CSS skinning system) users' profiles and infected half the network, in addition to their privacy features not working for a long period of time.
But I guess you can't expect quality software from a company that basically started out as spyware/malware developers and made money by selling e-mail lists/contact databases to spammers. Which is why it's hilarious that they're now cracking down on people caught "friend-blasting" (Myspace's form of spamming).
Not to mention their copyright infringement policy is a joke. There are about a thousand profiles out there using songs by our artists on their profiles, and even with profiles posing as our artists. So we have to use profile names like myspace.com/realacidbath or myspace.com/officialblah-blah-blah. But when we try to post our own music up on our own profiles, we get a copyright infringement notice and the music gets taken down. Good one Myspace. You're doing a fine job combating copyright infringement.
My dad and I built one of those when I was a kid. Except it was about 1/10th that size. And it wasn't controlled using Logo. God I hate that language.
I'm sure it was great back in the 60's or 70's (and probably would have been cooler with the physical turtle), but there are much better languages for teaching students how to program today. Unless you're dealing with elementary school students, C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, or even VB or JavaScript would be a better way of introducing students to computer programming. Programming languages are tools. The more things you can do (or create) with that tool, the more fun it will be to explore its uses and, therefore, the more motivated students will be to learn how to use it.
Well, WQXGA is a rather extreme resolution (what monitor, btw?). That's probably around the point where you start exceeding the usefulness of maximizing most applications' UIs. And yea, I meant 1920x1200 in my post.
Personally, I use Aptana Studio (I mostly do PHP/JS web programming these days) and one of the nice things about Aptana is that it's truly a fully-integrated IDE for the sphere of development it's geared towards. So rarely is there a need to even access your web browser, a putty window, or anything else—at least until they removed SFTP support from the community edition (anyone know of a way to tunnel an FTP session&mdashboth control channel and data channels—over SSH?). For instance, there's an integrated (IE/Mozilla) browser preview in the IDE. There's also an integrated online JS/DOM/AJAX doc viewer. You can even run most console tools from within the IDE itself.
Of course, sometimes there's just no substitute for a Putty session. And if I'm reading a reference manual or something, then I will usually manually maximize Acrobat Reader and whatever other application I'm using by hand. Tile Windows Horizontally also works, but I wish Windows let you resize tiled windows using a vertical splitter or dock windows against each other (and to screen edges).
AFAIK, most word processors support word wrap and allow you to set your page dimensions. And that generally has nothing to do with the window size. You can zoom in or zoom out to page any size page take up the full width of your screen.
Like I said, in most cases, it makes perfect sense to maximize the window you're using. It takes less time than resizing the window manually, and it makes the most effective use of your screen real estate. Aside from when you need to see more than 1 application window at a time, there's no advantage to not maximizing the window.
Maybe it's because they want to make better use of their screen real estate? Why do people prefer larger computer monitors and TVs? Because you see can see more and see better. I mean, do you also complain that your TV is maximized instead of displaying bits and pieces of other channels next to the program you're currently watching?
Most operating systems today are capable of multitasking, but most users are not. So if you're only using a single application, and you bought a 24" monitor, then why not use that space? If you're watching a movie, you can see a bigger picture. If you're surfing the web, typing a paper, writing code, or working on a spread sheet, you can see more content at once and scroll less.
Most people don't go out and buy a 24" monitor so that they can see more of their desktop background. The better question might be, why not maximize the application you're currently using? Most OSes have a windows manager or task switcher that allows quick and easy switching between programs. Windows even has a desktop shortcut in the quick launch bar for easy access to the desktop. There's really no advantage to not having your windows maximized and fully utilizing your screen real estate. It's also easier to focus on your work when there's nothing else cluttering the screen.
Many programs, such as IDEs or graphics applications like Photoshop or Illustrator, have a Workspace manager. That's because the developers realize that your screen setup and window layout are vital to user productivity and efficiency. With complex applications as these, you often have tons of widgets, toolbars, info panels, etc. that can take up significant display area. So it makes sense to use your screen real estate as efficiently as possible. It doesn't make sense to clutter your monitor with windows that have nothing to do with your current workflow.
On a 1280x1024 display, I usually don't have space to display all the tool panels and windows I need to work efficiently. On my current 1920x1600 display, I have just enough when the Application is maximized. Sure, I can get by on less screen area. But that usually means constantly opening & collapsing tool panels and a lot of scrolling back and forth. A bigger workspace also means I see my drawings in more detail; I can see more code at a time; and I can more easily & accurately navigate long web pages. Additionally, working with an application maximized allows you to better memorize the location of various panels and toolbars since they're always in the same position. Just as switching between different model keyboards leads to slower typing and more typos, a non-maximized window that's a different size and in a different position every time is similarly less efficient.
By "questionably-obtained monopoly," do you mean by offering a service that no one else wants to offer? Yea, how dare they...
I also don't know why you're mentioning DRM as the article makes no mention of any DRM technology. In fact, if any DRM were to be involved, it would be at the request of the Authors Guild and others opposing Google Book Search. I mean, is Google supposed to be bad because they're against restrictive copyright policies or because they're for restrictive copyright policies?
Unfortunately, Google has no control over congress or copyright laws (otherwise, they probably would have pushed for copyright reforms to keep the project in its original form—instead of making it Google Obscure/Out-of-Print Book Search). What they do have is the ability to come to a private settlement with the parties that are opposed to Google Book Search. So they did that.
I don't know how you construed this as giving Google a monopoly on anything. Anyone else trying to provide a similar service has the same rights as Google and can negotiate a deal of their own with the Author's Guild (WGA is for TV/film writers). It's like if I were to make a movie and wanted to use music by a particular artist in the film. I would then have to negotiate a deal with that artist, and this deal would only be between myself and the artist. I have no authority to negotiate a deal between the artist and the rest of the world.
The idea of holding licensing fees in a trust is also a horrible idea. The music industry does just that. You have "not-for-profit" organizations like the SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI basically going around collecting protection money from public venue owners so that they can have the radio or any kind of music playing in their establishment. It doesn't matter what kind of music it is, who owns the rights to the music, or what the copyright status even is. They even collect fees on the "Happy Birthday" song, on international music whose authors they don't represent, and on classical music that's long since passed into public domain. Worst yet, you have to join and pay a membership fee in order to receive your royalties, but even if you don't, they will continue to charge venues a licensing fee for playing your music. This completely screws over musicians who just want to get their music out there and don't want to charge venues for playing their music. It also eliminates the incentive for venue owners to play music by independent musicians who appreciate the free promotion.
But you're probably right. Only things that can make people money are of any value. It's not like having a single free, digitally searchable online catalog for all the published texts in the world would be of any use to society; never mind the huge boon this would be to people who don't have access to a local library or can't read physical books.
But, like others have said, determinism doesn't necessarily preclude free will. Likewise, randomness does not equate to free will.
For instance, imagine if you had a true random number generator. Now, imagine that every time you were faced with any sort of a decision, you simply fed the options into this magical machine and whatever number the machine spits out, you made the corresponding choice. Imagine if you had to live out your entire life like this—blindly obeying this random number generator's stream of arbitrary output. Does that constitute free will? Does the machine have free will because it's spitting out those random numbers?
I agree that there doesn't appear to be any true randomness in the universe. Everything that happens is likely the predetermined consequence of a continuous chain of events starting with the big bang. Even human consciousness is just the result of a series of physical/chemical chain reactions. But if you interpret "free will" simply as having ownership of one's actions & decisions, then determinism is irrelevant.
I think we can still claim to possess free will if, and only if, we understand why we do what we do and make the choices that we make. Someone who is being manipulated by others clearly doesn't have free will, despite believing they do. But someone who understands his/her choices and is cognizant of their true motivations for doing things can still claim to have free will. Perhaps nothing ever truly happens spontaneously, but that's alright.
For instance, of the 20% of wine shoppers who are not influenced by the music playing in the background, some might be drawn to a particular brand of wine because they are influenced by the company's aggressive marketing efforts. Perhaps the shopper associates the brand with class or prestige. Or maybe there's just a romantic allure about this particular brand. The shopper might be conscious of these positive associations, but, as they're unable to explain why they associate those concepts with the brand, they're still just a slave to irrational impulses.
In an opposite scenario, a shopper might hear the French music playing in the background and be reminded of a summer he spent in France years ago. He might recall fond memories of drinking French wine with a beautiful girl he met there and consciously make the choice to buy a French wine to reminisce about the past. In this case, even if the shopper did not consciously register the French music playing in the store, the motivation behind his purchase is still known to him. Even though his decision was the combined result of many outside factors (a summer in France, a beautiful girl, and the shop music stirring up old memories), there is a clear and logical rationale behind the decision.
Just as understanding why you believe something is paramount to free thought, so too is understanding why you do something critical to free will. Someone who believes something simply because he's told to believe it, has been conditioned to believe it, or because it's all he knows (and thus has never considered the alternatives) cannot claim to possess free thought. Free thought also exists where belief may be predetermined. If I look up and see that the sky is blue, I can't just decide that I don't want to believe that the sky is blue. I have to believe it because it makes sense to me. But so long as I understand why I hold this belief, then I am still demonstrating free thought. In contrast, someone who chooses to believe the sky to be pink against their own faculties of logic is simply demonstrating a tendency towards self-deception.
Exactly. It's hard to even contemplate intelligence or consciousness without the concept of free will. I don't think you can have analytical thought, self-awareness, self-reflection, creativity, etc. without free will. Even the lower forms of intelligence associated with other animal species, like dogs, cats, cows, pigs, etc., require free will or free thought to some extent. Otherwise, you'd simply have an animal that just sits there idly until someone gives it a set of instructions to follow—much like modern, decidedly unintelligent, computers/robots.
On the other hand, it's debatable whether there really is such a thing as "free will" as most people think of it as. That is, most people assume they have the power of self-determination. They make their own decisions based on their own "free will." But time and time again this assertion has proven to be false.
A good example of this was a study conducted on how music influenced wine shoppers. The results of this study were interesting, not because it found that playing German music in the store boosted sales of German wines while French music boosted sales of French wines, but rather because of how the shoppers explained their wine choices. Nearly every shopper perceived their wine selection as a personal choice free from external influences, and barely 2.5% of the shoppers even mentioned the PA music in their decision-making process. However, the fact that 80% of the wine purchases on each day corresponded with the type of music being played seemed to contradict the customers' assertions.
What's most interesting to me about this experiment is the fact that, not only did the overwhelming majority of the shoppers have no clue as to why they made their wine choices, but they even went as far as to invent a fake rationale for their decision after the fact. This indicates that most people are capable of deceiving themselves as to why they do things and are quite willing to do this in order to maintain the illusion of free will and self-determination.
So this begs the question of whether free will truly exists or not, or if it's just an illusion, a quirk of human/animal psychology. All of our actions and decisions could very well be predetermined/dictated by external factors. But as long as our brain invents a motivation for each action, each decision, after the fact, then it will seem like we made all of those choices of our own volition.
But that's the ultimate result of all unmitigated capitalist systems. Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates.
Market forces (via economies of scale/scope) almost always push towards a single fully vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly. That's why Wal-Mart beats out little mom & pop stores. So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations. But those things ultimately get in the way of corporate profits, so anyone supporting them is labeled a socialist (which is true in the sense that they care about society and social welfare over money and the economy). And if you're pro-capitalism then you must necessarily be pro-business and support deregulation.
The other problem is that, even though capitalism is supposed to be an economic theory, its effects tend to spill out into politics and other societal spheres. A capitalist society, by definition, is driven by capital. Wealth equates to power in a capitalist society. With wealth, you have access to better education, better health care, and better opportunities. Additionally, having better lawyers means you are treated better in the eyes of the law, and having powerful lobbies means you have exponentially more political influence than your less affluent brethren—and why shouldn't you? you have better nearly everything else, right? If Ayn Rand was right, and the captains of industry do carry the world on their shoulders, then why shouldn't they get to decide public policy? And if everyone's goal in life should be to get filthy rich and look out for only themselves, then can you really blame the politicians who sell out to powerful business interests?
So we shouldn't really be surprised by actions such as these. Everything from health, to education, to political influence is a commodity to be traded and sold. The economy has become an end in and of itself, and one that's more important than public good.
Well, the FP is claiming that they're the same thing, and your post seemed to be agreeing with him. But yea, that troll rating probably should have gone to the post you replied to.
I don't know anything about prelink, but Superfetch sounds completely different from dyld. Superfetch keeps frequently launched applications in memory to make them launch faster (much like Winamp Agent does for Winamp). dyld, OTOH, shortens application launch times by not reloading a shared library each time an application is launched. Keeping the shared library loaded in a shared cache also reduces the number of copies of that library you need loaded in memory. It doesn't sound like Superfetch does that.
Both a turbocharger and a cold air intake can improve car performance, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
That's a very good point about accidental self-injury (we did, after all, evolve to feel pain for a reason). However, I must say that you have been terribly misinformed about a grown cow being less capable of experiencing pain (physical and mental) than a human embryo/fetus. The overestimation here is on the amount of mental capacity an embryo (at 18 days, it's still not a fetus) has. I would not put too much stock in the information given to you by anyone claiming that a thinking and learning child is formed within 3-weeks of conception.
At 18 days, gastrulation has just barely commenced. There's no defined brain or spinal cord yet, much less a fully functional central nervous system to facilitate thinking and learning. At that early stage, a human embryo looks just about like the embryo of most other vertebrate species in comparable stages of development. The fact of the matter is, it takes 7 weeks just to begin development of a minimal brain stem in human gestation, and it isn't until much later (in the 3rd trimester) that the neocortex develops. Before that, it is biologically impossible for a fetus to experience pain. In fact, a human fetus demonstrates no discernible brain activity (via EEG) before the 25th week of pregnancy.
It's one thing to oppose abortion on purely religious grounds. It's quite another to make up facts (that fly in the face of common sense) about well-understood biological processes in order to express your righteous indignation towards those who don't share your religious views. No biologist in their right mind would say that a fully-grown cow or pig, which demonstrates every sign of sentience, is less capable of suffering than a clump of cells less than 1/12" in diameter but which happens to have human DNA. Human beings are certainly a lot smarter than other animals, but we're still the result of the same basic biological & chemical processes shared by all branches on the tree of life. Human embryos do not possess any supernatural qualities that the embryos of other species don't have. It can't think without a brain, and it can't sense pain without a neocortex and fully formed nerve endings.
This is still a retarded solution to a non-existant problem (or one we have no desire to solve).
First of all, there are already humane ways to kill animals (and humans) without them feeling any discomfort—and they're a heck of a lot simpler/cheaper than genetically engineering animals to feel no pain. Aside from creating another genetically-modified life-form that megacorporations like Monsanto can patent can make billions from it, there's nothing to be gained from this.
You want to kill an animal without making it suffer? Here's a solution that costs about $50 to implement:
Tests conducted on pigs have shown that the animal feels no discomfort and will willingly keep their head in the contraption until they pass out and eventually die from asphyxiation. This is just one of the many already existing solutions out there (like shooting the animal in the head with a gun).
The real problem isn't that there's no way to kill animals currently without them feeling pain. The problem is that the meat industry, and most consumers, really don't care how livestock are treated.
Even if the animal cannot feel physical pain, it's still going to be spending its entire life in cramped, inhumane living conditions.
Wow. OK, all I wrote was that it would be better to remember a person's life than to focus on their death. If that's arguing semantics, then I guess I'm guilty as charged.
I was not ripping on the OP, as I don't believe in getting into flame wars or getting as worked up as you seem to be about this over a mere forum post. I interpreted the OP's comment a certain way, and expressed my disagreement with what it seemed to imply to me. He responded to my comment and clarified what he meant, and expressed that we were indeed in agreement. I have no quarrels with him personally, and I'd assume he bears no grudge against me. Why this has you so riled up is beyond me.
Also, you do realize that human (natural) language is not constructed the same way as formal semantics. It's pretty silly to treat it as such. Language is inherently imprecise and full of implied meanings and connotations. Let me just leave you with this statement as an example to think over:
otherwise written as:
If P then Q .
I'm not trying to start a flame war with you. And I didn't mean to imply that you were a troll. I will admit that I was a little angry when I wrote the previous post (so I guess that makes me a hypocrite :-P), as you did get under my skin a bit.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with inverses relations, contrapositives, converse, etc., etc. And it really depends on the propositions and how the statement is constructed.
For example, the statement: "All triangles are 3-sided." can be broken down as:
If (P)a shape has 3 sides then (Q)it is a triangle.
The inverse of that is:
If (!P)a shape does not have 3 sides then (!Q) it is not a triangle.
Obviously, the second statement is true.
Likewise, if you say that most people, when faced with terminal illness, cling to life because they fear death. Add on top of that, you say that this man is brave precisely because he committed suicide. Then, yes, it is implying that (because bravery is a lack of fear) those who don't commit suicide (ie. cling to life out of fear of death) are not brave. Not to mention: "instead of scrabbling away and clinging to anything he could" kinda implies that that is the only other option to suicide (to say nothing about his word choice).
So every terminal cancer patient who doesn't commit suicide isn't brave? By trying to survive they're "scrabbling away and clinging to anything they could?" Sounds like you're saying all the terminally ill who don't commit suicide are pathetic cowards. What about the ones who endure all the pain (physical and psychological) and some how beat the odds (it's happened many a times)?
People who commit suicide all have their own reasons. I think the important thing is to not judge them, regardless of what their circumstances happen to be, as we'll never know what they were going through and the reasoning behind their decision. It's their life. They should have the right to end it if they want. It's really no one else's business.
But let's not try so hard to glorify someone' death that we start denigrating those with the will to live on. This guy obviously lead a very full life filled with many great & admirable accomplishments. Let's just leave it at that. His suicide was just the final period at the end of a fascinating life story. Our attention should be on everything that came before it.
You make some valid points, but I don't think the myth of the "educatable user" is a myth at all. There's a reason why most security experts, and AV-software vendors, emphasize the need for educating users. It's not to deflect responsibility from the software. It's not to undermine their own business model. It's because you need, both, reasonably secure software and reasonably educated users. Sure, you can't expect users to be perfect; even the security experts themselves are fallible. But without basic user precautions and some level of basic security sense, even the most security-hardened system will still be as vulnerable as if no software security had been implemented at all. Otherwise, you're basically only left with the option of making "idiot-proof" software that one would use by choice.
Let's face it, perfect security is often impractical or just infeasible. Many people have to work with Windows and outdated versions of the IE browser in environments where the principle of least privilege just can't be practically implemented. In those cases it makes sense to minimize risk by educating users and setting the appropriate company policies. Heck, it makes sense to do so even outside of such extreme cases. It's about having a balanced security implementation (not putting all your eggs in one basket).
Just recently there was a story on /. about how some penetration tests were conducted, demonstrating the vulnerability of financial institutions to (relatively unsophisticated) social engineering attacks. If you're in the financial/banking industry and you have "uneducatable users" in your company, then they need to be replaced immediately, as they're the biggest threat to your system. It's cheaper, easier, and more realistic to train (or replace) an employee than to try to design a security system that is idiot-proof or is immune to social-engineering attacks.
So the problem isn't the myth of uneducatable users, but rather the complacency we've developed towards walking attack vectors on the company payroll. Perhaps if companies didn't resign themselves to the fact that users have to be stupid, this wouldn't be such a self-fulfilling prophecy. Spend a little more money to attract/hire higher quality job candidates if you have to. All the stories in the news of massive data leaks and other security breaches should be enough to convince most intelligent company execs that this is not something that an organization to whom security is crucial should skimp on.
And who knows? If people start losing their jobs because they're downloading and running executables from unknown sources, or they're giving their password to anyone who bothers to ask, or are otherwise computer security illiterate, then perhaps they'll start making an effort to learn. This isn't the 1990's. Personal computers have become an everyday appliance like the TV or telephone. There's an entire generation of workers out there today who've been brought up on computers and the internet. It's not very hard to find an accountant, or secretary, or VP of sales, etc. who are tech-savvy enough to not open up your network to outside attackers every time they're at a computer.
To be fair, I'd actually never heard about that court case before. So he did save me the time of looking it up myself. =P