I would say an overtly Christian message is more like:
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
-- Luke 6:27
Now that is a message which I have never seen on a courthouse wall in the US, though I think the country would be a better place if it were common...
So to express a minority opinion (practicing Christian here), I think the Right Thing from a Christian point of view is to let the Satanists put up their monument and invite them over for a picnic.
Terrorism the single most over-hyped thing I can remember hearing about in my lifetime.
That's the point of terrorism -- to be over-hyped, and to scare people.
Our media and politicians have created an environment where even bombs that neverexplode are effective at scaring people. So while we're trying to wake people up, let's give a shout out to Washington and remind our leaders not to freak out the next time some idiot tries to hurt people and fails.
Being able to program these things should be easy to everyone and the fact that it STILL isn't shows the ineptitude of the computer science world
Programming a computer to do simple things IS easy. You want a program to add up a list of numbers, or compute the value of pi, and I can show you how to do that in a handful of lines of code.
The trouble is, people want programs that do complicated things like manage a large company's payroll system or model a 3D fantasy world. Even things that sound pretty simple, like managing your calendar appointments, become surprisingly complicated when you try to specify the requirements in detail.
What I believe is that while there are appropriate tools to for every job, there is no tool or language that makes inherent complexity go away or that makes thorny design problems easy. Neither is there such a thing -- in software or in the physical world -- as a tool that is ultimately powerful and flexible, and requires no skill or knowledge to use.
I do agree that computers are unnecessarily hard to use, but I disagree with you as to to cause. It's not the language and the process of writing and (usually) compiling code; it's the set of large concepts and abstractions one must master in order to do that effectively, and the mixed success with which OS, language, and application developers communicate those concepts and abstractions to their respective end users.
There is a documentary about this, which I saw on Netflix (I don't remember if it was streaming or DVD) called "Top Secret Rosies." I knew about that history from my physics and math background, but my wife was amazed to hear it. Anyway, the film is worth watching.
I've never seen a successful business that tolerated middle management just sitting on a process rather than improving it.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I don't think every process change needs to be justified by a 100-page report filed in triplicate. I do maintain that the changes to a system need to be approved by someone who understands the system thoroughly, and can explain how the proposed change won't do net harm. Very often, suggested "improvements" come from someone with a very narrow perspective and will be beneficial only from that perspective.
So, to answer your question about who has the burden of demonstrating a change has acceptable risks and costs: that burden should fall on someone with a broad and deep knowledge of the system. Someone competent. Inexperienced people can have good ideas, but those should still be subject to approval until that inexperienced person develops a record of competency (and thereby ceases to be inexperienced).
One must always seek opportunities to clean up, sort, and optimize their assigned task. Not just come to work and do the same crap every day.
Again, I agree. There is a very large difference between improving one's own way of doing things, and trying to improve someone else's way of doing things. The latter requires persuasion, diplomacy, and reasoning -- the things that "creative" people take pride in lacking.
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
A close friend of mine works for a tech startup. She is an intensely creative and intelligent person who falls on the risk-taker side of the spectrum. Though her company initially hired her for her problem-solving skills, she is regularly unable to fix actual problems because nobody will listen to her ideas. "I even say, 'I'll do the work. Just give me the go ahead and I'll do it myself,' " she says. "But they won't, and so the system stays less efficient."
If _nobody_ is listening to her ideas, let's run down the possibilities of why not:
1. Her ideas are crap and she's too sophomoric to know (Dunning-Kroger effect)
2. She comes across as an abrasive know-it-all, or her communication skills are severely deficient in some other way
3. A combination of 1 and 2
4. She is actually an unsung genius, all her colleagues are mendacious dullards, and life isn't faiiiiiir
If option 4 is correct, then she should start her own company. I suspect 3 is more likely.
Generally, I consider it more valuable to have someone who is a good listener, a quick learner, and works well with others. If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.
Maybe it's because the measure of welfare is itself subjective. The benefits of an idea are not often spread equally across society: with most change, there are winners and losers.
I think the FSF's concern is much more about what level of review is possible, than about what level of review is actual. The idea is that if the software has a lot of users and/or has a very important function, then it will attract a lot of scrutiny from its corporate users, from college professors, from hobbyists, governments, etc. If the vendor controls access to the source code, the scope of review is limited to whomever the vendors grants access. It does not take computer expertise to realize that the vendor's choice of reviewers are more likely to be biased in its favor, knowingly or unknowingly.
which causes people... to question whether the FSF is actually concerned with security or whether they are simply using this as an excuse to push their ideological agenda.
Of course the FSF is just pushing their ideological agenda! They're an advocacy group. That's their mission. If they ever issue a press release that doesn't promote their ideological agenda, then they're doing it wrong.
Having an ideological agenda is not the same as being wrong.
As an aside, the FSF's agenda is a lot broader than just "open source." The idea of software freedom is that the end user should remain in control of what he can and cannot do with his computer (where "computer" means any device that has a microprocessor, from PCs to smart phones to automobiles). Open source is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve that.
I think Samsung showed us that copying features from Apple products is bad for business. Fine-grained app privileges seem obvious (and hence unpatentable), but when the courts are upholding and enforcing patents on something as stupid as rounded corners, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Thank you for the insight into what until now seemed a baffling and unreasonable position.
I think the FSF (and my) argument would carry more weight, then, if we were to replace the phrase "random strangers on the Internet" with "independent experts." Everyone can appreciate the value of having independent experts review a system; and, the refusal of a company to expose its software to independent review should be grounds for suspicion.
I don't see what's unrelated about the FSF's argument. The debate pretty simple and it goes more or less like this:
MS: Trust us! We're good guys! We'll start using encryption, we promise.
EFF: People should trust what they can verify. Until you have the full details of MS's implementation in front of you, there is no way to be sure they've done it right. And until you have the right to modify the code for yourself, there is no way to be sure that security holes will get patched promptly and correctly.
As far as I can tell, the counter-arguments against FSF's position boil down to "well I trust {Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle} anyway, so there!" and "who cares if you can trust your computing infrastructure anyway, get over it!" If you have something more to add to those illuminating arguments, please do so.
These two have nothing to do with the US government.
Having to prove your citizenship to get a job is a reaction by the market to the number of non US citizens applying for jobs in the US.
Two, Canada is a fucking sovereign country and have every fucking right to ask for your passport if you aren't a citizen. Do you think it's acceptable for Mexicans or Dominicans to enter the US without a passport?
I was misinformed about why we suddenly need a passport to go to Canada. I was previously misinformed -- heard about the new requirement as assumed the policy originated in my police state, not theirs. What offends me is that the trust their government previously extended me has been revoked -- I fully expect to show a passport when going to Europe or Asia. Now that I know it's Canada's fault, to hell with 'em, I'll just cancel that trip to Niagra Falls. To answer your question, yes, I do think it's acceptable for citizens of Mexico to visit the US for short periods without showing a passport. But I don't set policy at the border (if I did, things would be quite different).
As to your first point, you must never have taken a job in the US, or you would know from the proof-of-citizenship form that it has a big-ass U.S. Department of Homeland Security logo on it and has to be submitted to the Customs and Immigration Service. Employers make you fill out that form because they're required to by Federal law, as it also says on the form. So you're obviously talking out your ass on that one.
As an American, I apologize to you that the assholes who claim to represent me passed laws that require you to pay an extra fee and get fingerprinted like a convict in order to visit my country.:-(
The police do not announce their "search day" ahead of time, so you find out about it when you reach the station. The choice is between submitting to the search or not being being able to use the public transit system that day. Few indeed are the people who are privileged enough that such a penalty doesn't screw them (losing a day's pay, missing a chemotherapy appointment, etc.) and with enough backbone to stand up. So few people do, that the city officials don't give a damn. Especially since the bombing, they all want to be tough on terrorism.
Agreed. This is why an "originalist" interpretation of the Bill of Rights is paving the road to tyranny. I'm looking at you, Justice Scalia!
In a lot of ways, the principles of the Constitution are greater than the men who framed it. One could say the same about the Magna Carta, with greater emphasis and confidence. What matters is what the principles in those documents mean to *us*, and what we do about it.
In Boston, at every subway station, the police set up a checkpoint one day a year and search everyone who goes through it. They do this a) to remind the citizens who is really in charge b) to keep up the security theatre that brings them Federal dollars and c) to establish a history of conducting dragnet searches so a future plaintiff cannot claim a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
If there is an American city that has a subway system and does NOT perform this annual charade, please let me know. I would be surprised but please to hear about it.
Carry a pocket knife into a government building. Ride the subway without being searched. Keep my fucking shoes on at the airport. Apply for a job without having to prove my citizenship. Not buy health insurance. Go to Canada without having to carry my passport like we could do for 99% of American history. Write DRM-cracking software. Smoke a joint if I feel like it (I don't actually want to do that, but many do, and who am I to deny them?)
Pretty simple. First, they get the data because the woman lives in Australia, or visited Australia, or knows somebody in Australia, or said "Australia" once. Whatever. They get the data somehow. They're an intelligence agency. Getting data is what they do. Then they share it with a nod and a wink as they ignore whatever feeble privacy laws may exist. Because, as we learned from Snowden, that's also what they do.
You have a good point. Frankly, it is hard to imagine what a world of total transparency would be like. I have doubts whether total, universal transparency would lead to a utopia or a dystopia, but I am pretty darned confident this is all academic because it will never happen. Governments will never allow themselves to be *that* accountable.
You're totally right that privacy laws will always be violated. However, I believe that creating a climate where privacy is the expected situation will make the world a better place. In my country (the US), companies do spend considerable and honest effort to obey privacy laws, such as HIPAA (privacy of medical information). The main problem, in my view, is that so little information is protected by them.
All the way back in 1995, when I first started using the World Wide Web, some users were advocating for strong privacy protections. We were ignored, then laughed at, then insulted with the "tinfoil hat" labrel.
Are you ready to reconsider our point, that society is better off if governments are corporations do NOT have free reign to collect, store, and mine as much data about us as they want?
Slashdot Mirror
Who follows that directive today is more important than who came up with it thousands of years ago.
I would say an overtly Christian message is more like:
Now that is a message which I have never seen on a courthouse wall in the US, though I think the country would be a better place if it were common...
So to express a minority opinion (practicing Christian here), I think the Right Thing from a Christian point of view is to let the Satanists put up their monument and invite them over for a picnic.
That's the point of terrorism -- to be over-hyped, and to scare people.
Our media and politicians have created an environment where even bombs that never explode are effective at scaring people. So while we're trying to wake people up, let's give a shout out to Washington and remind our leaders not to freak out the next time some idiot tries to hurt people and fails.
Programming a computer to do simple things IS easy. You want a program to add up a list of numbers, or compute the value of pi, and I can show you how to do that in a handful of lines of code.
The trouble is, people want programs that do complicated things like manage a large company's payroll system or model a 3D fantasy world. Even things that sound pretty simple, like managing your calendar appointments, become surprisingly complicated when you try to specify the requirements in detail.
What I believe is that while there are appropriate tools to for every job, there is no tool or language that makes inherent complexity go away or that makes thorny design problems easy. Neither is there such a thing -- in software or in the physical world -- as a tool that is ultimately powerful and flexible, and requires no skill or knowledge to use.
I do agree that computers are unnecessarily hard to use, but I disagree with you as to to cause. It's not the language and the process of writing and (usually) compiling code; it's the set of large concepts and abstractions one must master in order to do that effectively, and the mixed success with which OS, language, and application developers communicate those concepts and abstractions to their respective end users.
There is a documentary about this, which I saw on Netflix (I don't remember if it was streaming or DVD) called "Top Secret Rosies." I knew about that history from my physics and math background, but my wife was amazed to hear it. Anyway, the film is worth watching.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I don't think every process change needs to be justified by a 100-page report filed in triplicate. I do maintain that the changes to a system need to be approved by someone who understands the system thoroughly, and can explain how the proposed change won't do net harm. Very often, suggested "improvements" come from someone with a very narrow perspective and will be beneficial only from that perspective.
So, to answer your question about who has the burden of demonstrating a change has acceptable risks and costs: that burden should fall on someone with a broad and deep knowledge of the system. Someone competent. Inexperienced people can have good ideas, but those should still be subject to approval until that inexperienced person develops a record of competency (and thereby ceases to be inexperienced).
Again, I agree. There is a very large difference between improving one's own way of doing things, and trying to improve someone else's way of doing things. The latter requires persuasion, diplomacy, and reasoning -- the things that "creative" people take pride in lacking.
Only if you can tell her ideas are unlikely to have unforeseen bad effects, and can be implemented at reasonable cost.
Creative spelling, for example, is not generally accepted by my peers.
TFA is basically a "creative" type whining about her kind not being appreciated for their brilliance. For example:
If _nobody_ is listening to her ideas, let's run down the possibilities of why not:
If option 4 is correct, then she should start her own company. I suspect 3 is more likely.
Generally, I consider it more valuable to have someone who is a good listener, a quick learner, and works well with others. If you have an idea about changing the way the company does things, the burden is on you to demonstrate the value of that change. If you can't, then the "creative" idea isn't worth much.
Maybe it's because the measure of welfare is itself subjective. The benefits of an idea are not often spread equally across society: with most change, there are winners and losers.
I think the FSF's concern is much more about what level of review is possible, than about what level of review is actual. The idea is that if the software has a lot of users and/or has a very important function, then it will attract a lot of scrutiny from its corporate users, from college professors, from hobbyists, governments, etc. If the vendor controls access to the source code, the scope of review is limited to whomever the vendors grants access. It does not take computer expertise to realize that the vendor's choice of reviewers are more likely to be biased in its favor, knowingly or unknowingly.
Of course the FSF is just pushing their ideological agenda! They're an advocacy group. That's their mission. If they ever issue a press release that doesn't promote their ideological agenda, then they're doing it wrong.
Having an ideological agenda is not the same as being wrong.
As an aside, the FSF's agenda is a lot broader than just "open source." The idea of software freedom is that the end user should remain in control of what he can and cannot do with his computer (where "computer" means any device that has a microprocessor, from PCs to smart phones to automobiles). Open source is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve that.
Expect yet another 5-4 ruling in favor of big business.
I think Samsung showed us that copying features from Apple products is bad for business. Fine-grained app privileges seem obvious (and hence unpatentable), but when the courts are upholding and enforcing patents on something as stupid as rounded corners, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Thank you for the insight into what until now seemed a baffling and unreasonable position.
I think the FSF (and my) argument would carry more weight, then, if we were to replace the phrase "random strangers on the Internet" with "independent experts." Everyone can appreciate the value of having independent experts review a system; and, the refusal of a company to expose its software to independent review should be grounds for suspicion.
I don't see what's unrelated about the FSF's argument. The debate pretty simple and it goes more or less like this:
MS: Trust us! We're good guys! We'll start using encryption, we promise.
EFF: People should trust what they can verify. Until you have the full details of MS's implementation in front of you, there is no way to be sure they've done it right. And until you have the right to modify the code for yourself, there is no way to be sure that security holes will get patched promptly and correctly.
As far as I can tell, the counter-arguments against FSF's position boil down to "well I trust {Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle} anyway, so there!" and "who cares if you can trust your computing infrastructure anyway, get over it!" If you have something more to add to those illuminating arguments, please do so.
I was misinformed about why we suddenly need a passport to go to Canada. I was previously misinformed -- heard about the new requirement as assumed the policy originated in my police state, not theirs. What offends me is that the trust their government previously extended me has been revoked -- I fully expect to show a passport when going to Europe or Asia. Now that I know it's Canada's fault, to hell with 'em, I'll just cancel that trip to Niagra Falls. To answer your question, yes, I do think it's acceptable for citizens of Mexico to visit the US for short periods without showing a passport. But I don't set policy at the border (if I did, things would be quite different).
As to your first point, you must never have taken a job in the US, or you would know from the proof-of-citizenship form that it has a big-ass U.S. Department of Homeland Security logo on it and has to be submitted to the Customs and Immigration Service. Employers make you fill out that form because they're required to by Federal law, as it also says on the form. So you're obviously talking out your ass on that one.
As an American, I apologize to you that the assholes who claim to represent me passed laws that require you to pay an extra fee and get fingerprinted like a convict in order to visit my country. :-(
The police do not announce their "search day" ahead of time, so you find out about it when you reach the station. The choice is between submitting to the search or not being being able to use the public transit system that day. Few indeed are the people who are privileged enough that such a penalty doesn't screw them (losing a day's pay, missing a chemotherapy appointment, etc.) and with enough backbone to stand up. So few people do, that the city officials don't give a damn. Especially since the bombing, they all want to be tough on terrorism.
Agreed. This is why an "originalist" interpretation of the Bill of Rights is paving the road to tyranny. I'm looking at you, Justice Scalia!
In a lot of ways, the principles of the Constitution are greater than the men who framed it. One could say the same about the Magna Carta, with greater emphasis and confidence. What matters is what the principles in those documents mean to *us*, and what we do about it.
In Boston, at every subway station, the police set up a checkpoint one day a year and search everyone who goes through it. They do this a) to remind the citizens who is really in charge b) to keep up the security theatre that brings them Federal dollars and c) to establish a history of conducting dragnet searches so a future plaintiff cannot claim a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
If there is an American city that has a subway system and does NOT perform this annual charade, please let me know. I would be surprised but please to hear about it.
Carry a pocket knife into a government building. Ride the subway without being searched. Keep my fucking shoes on at the airport. Apply for a job without having to prove my citizenship. Not buy health insurance. Go to Canada without having to carry my passport like we could do for 99% of American history. Write DRM-cracking software. Smoke a joint if I feel like it (I don't actually want to do that, but many do, and who am I to deny them?)
Shall I go on?
I suspect Nazi prohibition in Europe will work about as well as drug prohibition in the USA.
Pretty simple. First, they get the data because the woman lives in Australia, or visited Australia, or knows somebody in Australia, or said "Australia" once. Whatever. They get the data somehow. They're an intelligence agency. Getting data is what they do. Then they share it with a nod and a wink as they ignore whatever feeble privacy laws may exist. Because, as we learned from Snowden, that's also what they do.
You have a good point. Frankly, it is hard to imagine what a world of total transparency would be like. I have doubts whether total, universal transparency would lead to a utopia or a dystopia, but I am pretty darned confident this is all academic because it will never happen. Governments will never allow themselves to be *that* accountable.
You're totally right that privacy laws will always be violated. However, I believe that creating a climate where privacy is the expected situation will make the world a better place. In my country (the US), companies do spend considerable and honest effort to obey privacy laws, such as HIPAA (privacy of medical information). The main problem, in my view, is that so little information is protected by them.
All the way back in 1995, when I first started using the World Wide Web, some users were advocating for strong privacy protections. We were ignored, then laughed at, then insulted with the "tinfoil hat" labrel.
Are you ready to reconsider our point, that society is better off if governments are corporations do NOT have free reign to collect, store, and mine as much data about us as they want?