You just made the point I think was in my head all along, but I wasn't sure how to express it.
I have no problem with the Gates Foundation wanting to do the charity work they're doing, and making a decision that it's going to be about such things as curing malaria in Africa, vs. helping countries get a better internet experience. But I *do* have a problem with Bill or anyone else implying that others with money to spend on projects are somehow "lesser" or in the wrong because they don't follow his chosen path.
I'm a big believer in the idea that individuals should pursue things that personally interest them. If Google's expertise is with the Internet and application development, then it stands to reason it can be most efficient working on projects in that vein! How many folks at Google are experts in water purification, or in treating diseases? How many would even find that type of work enjoyable?
Gates is in a different situation than the folks running Google. He already LEFT his tech. company by choice, after it made massive amounts of money for him. That tells me that basically, he grew tired of running Microsoft each day and wanted out. So when you see him pursuing other things, it stands to reason he would.
Who here is stating a belief that the U.S. will stop all spying?
The goal here is to demand some accountability.... To say, "Look.... We know you have spy agencies, like all nation do. And while we might not care for spying on the whole, it's an unfortunate necessity to have our own organization to counter what the rest of the world still wants to do to us. BUT, there's NO excuse for putting resources and taxpayer dollars into warrantless spying on our own citizens, on our own soil!"
It appears to me that a good bit of what's happening now is Federal govt. paying private contractors to build some of these spying tools and to actually DO the spying for them. That way, government is able to claim it is following the Constitution and doing nothing wrong. (They're simply getting information handed over to them by a private party.) Then, govt. simply invests in the computer power to process and save all of this information that was "given" to them.
Sure, not everything in a science fiction story plays out as reality. If it did, the stories would be under the headings of "prophecies" instead of sci-fi!
But the part I constantly find interesting with science fiction is how often it suggests ideas which seem unbelievable at the time, but which more or less come true eventually.
Taking the 1984 example (since you brought it up)... Many would insist that the entire "war on terror" the USA is waging is exactly like the Eurasia scenario. (Govt. finds it useful to control the masses by keeping them in a constant state of fear and declared war.) The "Big Brother is Watching" theme throughout it certainly resonates with people today, too. The differences between the book and reality today are the "small elements". (EG. In the book, everyone was viewing broadcasts created by the government while cameras watched them back, and were apparently monitored at random at some central facility. In reality today, everyone views broadcasts which are ostensibly not affiliated with government, but which regularly feed us the versions of the news the government wants us to hear, and the distractions govt. wants us to stay entertained and occupied with. The cameras watching us back aren't centralized or placed in our TV sets, but rather, are strategically distributed all over the landscape, with each serving a specific purpose of controlling one aspect of people's behavior. One set to enforce stopping at red signal lights, one set to enforce speed limits, one set to record one's actions in front of any FDIC insured banking institution.....)
If you read other dystopian science fiction like Brave New World, you'd find that today's society is probably more like a "mash up" of what it envisioned and the 1984 world.
As for The Jetsons? It was just a cartoon. I find it a little bit insulting to famous book authors to put it in the same category of science fiction, though it was a perfectly good cartoon series in its own right.
Well, first of all? Who are these commercial activities you speak of who supposedly claimed quality and value were ONLY achievable via commercial enterprise?
I can't think of a single business making that claim today? Clearly, technological progress means that ideas starting out as massive, costly endeavors become mundane with time. I remember when recordable CDR technology was brand new, for example. The only people possessing CD writer drives were generally government contractors and educational institutions because the drives themselves were thousands of dollars, with blank media as expensive as $25-30 per disc. They only recorded at 1x speeds, and were all external drives, because any vibration during the recording process ruined the disc. So you had to carefully place the recorder in a spot where it wouldn't get bumped or shake. That's just a small example of a technology everyone takes for granted today. (Can you even buy a CD-ROM reader that doesn't include writing functionality today, if you wanted to??)
It's this same principle that caused space travel (once thought so complicated and expensive, only Federal government could do anything with it) to become privatized today. It's the reason individuals are now doing DNA splicing in their own homes as hobbies and why 3D printing is becoming something you can do on your own with equipment you build yourself.
There will always be a use for the resources and capabilities of big business (and arguably even government, at a tier above that -- as a way to get a VERY large project completed by the will of the taxpayer in a certain time-frame). But whatever these entities come up with with eventually trickle down to a more manageable size and scope, suitable for interested individuals to undertake.
IMO, there's plenty of blame to go around everywhere, in this story.
First and foremost? Let's talk about "middle management" a bit. WHY would someone feel a need to sift through a former employer's search queries in the first place? Honestly, I've worked in corporate I.T. for 20+ years now and none of us ether wasted time with that stuff. If the company let go of the person already, it's "water under the bridge" at that point. What good does it to anyone to discover that, "Hey! It turns out Joe was looking up performance parts for his truck during the day!" or even, "Wow! Who knew Dan was into gay porn??"
The fact is, the current employees who'd have any legitimate reason to touch the former employee's computer should be using their time efficiently (meaning wiping the drive and re-imaging the machine so it's ready for the next user) instead of snooping around to see what the last guy left behind. If there's a concern the person left important documents on the C: drive instead of putting them out on the server for safe keeping, that's one thing. But that doesn't involve opening up a browser history.
Anyone who's a manager who thought it was a good use of time to order I.T. to retrieve the guy's old search results (or wasted time doing it himself before he'd turn the computer back over to be re-imaged) needs to re-think his/her priorities. If there was truly some concern about the person looking at non work related things on the net, that should have been addressed while he still worked there.
But as for these NSA professionals? I don't think these guys are "clueless" at all. I'm pretty sure the organization is full of some of the more intelligent people receiving a govt. paycheck. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous to individual rights or freedom from government oppression. Right now, the country is pretty clearly divided into two camps; those who believe the whole terrorist threat thing is a real and present danger to the country, and without government's constant vigilance, we all might die at any time... and those who think it's over-hyped/over-blown, and simply used as an excuse for government to give itself new powers it wasn't supposed to have. (Guess which camp I'm in?)
First of all.... the conservative movement of the Reagan era is LONG gone. I think that's worth noting, because America was in a much different place in the 80's than it is today, but also because practically everyone running as a "Republican" today has values very far from what Reagan did.
If you simply want to do a quick "once over" of how the Obama and Reagan presidency differed, you only have to look at the economic picture. The U.S. was prospering under Reagan's administration. College tuition might have risen under Reagan, but so did people's ability to pay it, by and large. Obama has done practically nothing to "reduce government" that I'm aware of, either? Please cite these claims! If anything, he's consistently maintained practically all of the additional government baggage the Bush administration brought about (and which MANY people think needs to go!). TSA, Homeland Security... these things didn't even exist in the Reagan days.
As far as this specific article? I'm not particularly surprised to see Obama praising an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. I simply agree that it's an "interesting" choice for a speech about middle class jobs. I have no problem with Amazon, and would probably agree with Obama that the company as a whole is an example of a U.S. tech success story. But certainly, the temporary, low paid labor positions the warehouses create aren't doing much to improve the nation's economic situation.
Overall, I'm very much in agreement that Obama has done an awful lot of maintaining policies and govt. programs put in place his Republican predecessor. But his predecessor wasn't following in Reagan's footsteps. (In fact, going back as far as Bush, Sr.'s presidency -- I remember reading an anecdote about Reagan feeling the man wasn't even fit to shake his hand at the inauguration, and didn't want to attend the White House dinner for him either. He only did all of that because it was expected of him as a tradition.)
The truth is, the middle class is getting squeezed out, but the smartest way to achieve that goal without inciting revolt is to simply redefine what the term means.
We've always had and always will have the "poor". That's an unavoidable fact of human nature. There will always be a certain percentage of people who simply don't care to expend any effort to earn above the bare minimum, and others who simply can't do so, due to physical or mental limitations. Occasionally, you'll even get the odd situation where someone is plunged into poverty due to circumstances beyond their control, and the hole is simply too big to dig back out of.
At the other end, you have the rich/wealthy. Some are there through a life of honest, hard work, while others cheated and lied their way to the top. Still others had it handed to them from a previous generation. At some point, some of the rich become rich enough so the sheer amount of money they possess can essentially work for itself. These people have a hard time spending it as fast as the income it generates via interest and investment gains. Others have major setbacks, just like the former "middle class" people who were plunged into poverty -- except thanks to a combination of their connections and the amount of wealth they amassed first, they often only fall back into middle class status vs. poverty. Of course, they view this as a bad thing and strive to get back to the lifestyle they were accustomed to.
Traditionally, I think all of this worked ok, because the poor viewed the middle class as a goal to achieve, and at the same time, as a group of people likely to lend a hand to them. (The rich may be the ones funding the big foundations and charities.... but it's your average middle class Joe who decides to give to the food pantry at church, or to donate some time around the holidays to bring toys/gifts and food to a poor family in need.) Meanwhile, the rich viewed the middle class as critical to their success. If you own a business, you need middle management and engineers and salespeople, accountants, etc. These folks aren't coming from your own social class.
But now, the country competes on a global scale, with many countries where living standards for the masses are FAR lower than ours. Automation is quickly replacing the need for the unskilled labor (working poor, essentially). And the rich elite at the top have concluded that the biggest obstacle to their future success is the middle class. (People who are both unhappy with the status quo AND intelligent enough to leverage the legal system to make changes are dangerous.) They want to make adjustments so former middle class people slip into a state of being the working poor, while still doing all those jobs the old middle class did for them. The people at the very bottom? They don't matter any more than they ever did, really. They're just another line item expense to deal with via tax deductible charitable donations and so on.
I grew up in the midwest, where manufacturing and "blue collar jobs" were a huge part of the landscape. I saw that slipping away ever since the 1990's or so. It's not dead yet, certainly, but just in the city I lived in alone, at least 3 auto plants closed down and other big manufacturers were bought out by international companies. One could drive through the area and see steel manufacturers busily cutting and loading steel onto trucks and say, "Things look fine to me!" But only upon much closer inspection, actually talking to the rank and file employees there, did you get a better idea of what was happening. A lot of those people were working 2 or 3 jobs instead of just 1, sometimes working one of them only for the healthcare benefits. Some were driving motorcycles in to work each day, which you might think was fine -- until you found out the real reason for that was they couldn't afford the gas anymore to use a car. Some of these people had really useful skills that they weren't utilizing at all, because they simply couldn't find a better payi
You make a valid point, in our situation, most likely. To be clear, we're just talking about one of Cisco's lower end VPN routers though, which Cisco itself claims is suitable for the purpose and scope of what we're doing with it. But my point is, even this device sells for north of $1,200 PLUS fees for maintenance contracts on it and more for the upgraded license allowing more than 10 simultaneous connections to be routed. The offices relying on these things have no more than 10-15 people in them, tops, and they simply need the ability for 4 or 5 people (or less) to connect in via VPN from home.
This is well within the scope of what FAR, FAR cheaper hardware can do effectively... but I'm sure when the company originally opted for Cisco, it was due to a promise that it was a higher grade of hardware that would be rock solid reliable for years and years, etc. That's where my complaint really comes in. It's pretty evident that these VPN routers are really no more reliable or better than the competition.
But ultimately, Cisco probably makes much more sense at the high end of the spectrum, where you have many thousands of nodes and your options are more limited.
#1. Should NOT be upset that a costly piece of critical networking infrastructure gear just went DoA by simply powering it down and back up again, despite only being a couple years old?
#2. Should have done some sort of backup which would easily let me restore all the settings into the replacement device AND allowed the licensing from the original unit to come over to the new one without Cisco's assistance?
#3. Yes, upset that the license was tied to a dead device and nobody on Cisco's phone support hotline seemed to understand the idea that it caused an entire office to be DOWN/NON-functional! We kept having to argue with people who claimed "You're not really down, because you have replacement equipment from us.", and acted like we should just submit some web-based request for the license xfer and wait days for them to process it.
I'm not saying any of this counterfeiting of gear is legally or morally "ok" -- but Cisco has LONG been inflating the prices of their equipment FAR beyond what it's reasonably worth, given the components inside.
I remember at least 10 years ago opening up one of the Cisco PIIX firewalls our company had recently upgraded to, and discovering it was essentially a Pentium class PC motherboard and CPU inside. They were charging all that money for standard (outdated at that point) PC hardware, crammed into a Cisco labeled rack mount case.
More recently, one of our branch offices had their Cisco router/VPN die on me. The office moved to a new location and all I did was unplug the power to it, move it to the new office down the road, and plug it back in. It refused to power on at all.... totally dead. At first we assumed it might just be a bad AC power adapter, but nope. The whole unit was defective. (Finally found a CIsco tech document online mentioning the issue. Supposedly early revisions of this unit had a problem where they could get caught in an endless loop after a power cycle and never come back up. Nice!)
The worst part? All of the office's complex configuration settings were in the old, dead router. Luckily, they were saved on a CF memory card in the unit, so I took it apart and pulled the card out. When my boss went through the big song and dance to get Cisco to send us a replacement router and open an RMA for the dead one, I swapped the flash cards. It worked, but only sort of.... Turns out every connection made beyond the first 10 were getting nowhere, because all the licensing we had didn't transfer over. Cisco ties that part of each unit's serial number. So the office was down for hours while we fought again to get tech. support to do a license transfer to the replacement router.
I fail to see what point there was at all to forking out the money for real Cisco gear, when it failed us like that AND was made so artificially difficult to get back up and running again? If we had used some cheaper, off the shelf product (like D-Link or what not?), we could have easily gotten another new unit going with far less downtime and had the ability to keep a spare around for the price of the 1 Cisco.
The counterfeiters wouldn't be targeting Cisco so heavily if they weren't aware of the huge price markup on the stuff in the first place.
I think the hoarding is an unavoidable consequence of a new/young currency that allows individuals to help "mint" it?
If you invest a lot of money and effort into mining bitcoins or other e-currencies, you're starting out in a situation where your up-front costs to do it are large, and initial payback is small. You *could* take a long-term view of things thinking "If I keep my systems mining the coins for several years, I'll eventually pay them off and start coming out ahead." but IMO, few of the miners do this. Why? Because computer gear breaks down over time, for one thing. The costly video cards burn up occasionally, power supplies fail, etc. The difficultly level for mining the new coins keeps increasing too. So the equipment that used to mine you several coins a day reaches a point where it mines only 1, or a partial coin each day.
So what you wind up with are most of these folks sitting on the majority of the coins they create, hoping for the value to rise enough so they make a real profit, relatively quickly, by selling at the right time.
It's also a matter of not enough acceptance of the e-currencies yet. I've got some litecoin myself, and I've only found maybe 3 or 4 websites that sell products allowing me to pay directly with my litecoin. (And none of them even have any products I'm interested in right now.) People will keep treating these coins like stock investments rather than true currencies if it's not easy and common to have the ability to SPEND them like a regular currency!
You say "movies haven't really changed that much over time" -- but I don't know that I can agree with that.
One of the big changes I've noticed is all of the CGI, which I think often hurts a movie more than it helps.
It reminds me of the classic problem in video production of amateurs over-using the zoom/telephoto feature. Great feature to have, but easy to over-use it and ruin the quality of the production.
In modern movies, it feels like the pros just call for CGI whenever they have a complicated idea that would be difficult to film in a traditional way -- and the results are a mixed bag. Just a few examples that come to mind would be the "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" series of movies -- where I thought some of the scenes with the tiger and other animals just looked distracting. There was something "not quite right" about all of it, that just looked like one object was super-imposed over the rest of the footage. Some of the scenes in the most recent 3 Star Wars movies had the same problem. (I still remember a scene that particularly bothered me where the robots were dodging things and running along a factory conveyor belt, and it just reeked of "fake"!)
The other thing I dislike are all of the remakes.... often making a full-length movie out of what was just a rather campy, relatively low-budget TV series to start with. This stuff can be mildly amusing, but it never ranks above "I'll watch it some time after I can rent it inexpensively." Talk about predictable. You practically *know* they're going to try to surprise you with a cameo appearance of at least one of the actors/actresses from the original. And how far astray can they go from what you expected the characters to do in all the old shows you remember? I know this isn't a brand new thing for Hollywood -- but they've basically failed at it for decades now and show no sign of changing course. (Remember how awful the movie versions were of cartoons they decided to remake like Popeye, or The Flintstones?) But lately we've had to suffer through remakes of everything from Starsky and Hutch to The A-Team. This doesn't seem like it was much of an issue back in the 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's or even 60's.
Honestly, I don't really think the "golden age of movies" centers around what I watched when I was 8-18. There were a FEW classics I saw when I was that age, certainly. But some of the best movies I've ever seen are ones I watched more recently, often recommended to me online by someone who shared my general interest in movies, or on some sort of list of "favorite movies" someone posted.
It's my belief that almost every time you put out a film that people really enjoy, you're going to be able to milk at least 1 sequel out of it that gets good theater attendance. (That's why Dispicable Me 2 did so well. An awful lot of people left the first one happy and hoping to see more of the "minions" and other characters.)
All too often, that sequel is rather weak, but it seems to me that most people will STILL give those situations one final chance, if a "part 3" comes out, hoping for some sort of redemption. (Take Iron Man for example.... People loved the first one. Second one was relatively weak. But almost everyone gave the 3rd. one a chance, confident there was enough substance to the whole thing to pull off a winner -- and by and large, it seems they did.)
Once Hollywood stretches it beyond 3 movies, I think they're just aiming for a die-hard audience they know will keep going back. Concerns over making truly "good" movies are out the window at that point, because it ceases to matter. They just think they have a niche audience that's going to keep watching as long as they keep up the formula, and they're betting that niche is big enough to make the whole thing profitable. (EG. All the "Chucky" horror movies, or the Fast and the Furious series.)
There is NOT scientific consensus on the fact that humans (we) are responsible for all of the global warming that's happening. More likely, we're a contributing factor, on top of a natural cycle of warming that would happen anyway.
As for nations being selfish and hoping others pay the bill of reducing greenhouse gasses? I guess you could look at it that way. But I'd also say historically, we've simply seen where nations do a lot of polluting and relatively inefficient power generation during the phase where they undergo an industrial revolution. Once that change is established in a country, they tend to focus more on optimizing things.... reducing pollution and so on.
Right now, we've got some big nations (such as China) going through that industrialization phase -- and they're just now starting to say, "Hey... all this pollution we're creating is starting to become a real issue for our people. Maybe we should see what we can do about it?"
Clearly, the problem is that government has the power to arrest and imprison you. or make financial demands of you that you have no legal recourse to wash away, or even in some cases to legally end your life. A private social media web site like Facebook can do none of this, by comparison.
But that said? I still use FB (often using it as a sounding board to complain about political issues and repost relevant news items for my friends to read). Certainly, there are many personal things I choose not to share there. But many other things, I will. Government offers me none of the benefits of sharing such information though, if I were to volunteer the same information to them. FB, at least, gives me a window into the daily lives of many people I know, helps me buy and sell items, etc. -- all without paying any money for the service. Govt. generally just takes your information, compiles it into databases at facilities they own, and then turns around and denies they have it.
I'm thinking along the same lines here.... I can't say that I've really seen Javascript embedded PDFs as much of an attack vector where I work. By and large, your Mac OS X users wouldn't encounter this anyway, since they generally use the "Preview" app that's part of the OS to view and print PDFs. Adobe Reader is usually rather pointless to install in OS X, since Preview renders pages far faster anyway AND gives the ability to do things like add signatures to a document, re-order the pages and annotate, without paying for the abilities.
I'm sure this could eventually be an issue for some of our users, but you'd hope the desktop anti-virus software might stop it from doing damage too, depending on what it was attempting. But even if not? You can't protect against everything, and you reach a point where the solutions are as bad as the problems since they start impacting productivity and slowing down EVERYONE, all the time, just to try to block the one hypothetical attack.
At least in Windows, I wish sometimes the OS had the capability of opening all attached executable type files from email in sort of a "sandbox". Only after a file was determined to be something the user actually wanted to use/print/keep would they get the option to transfer it over to the regular file system. (When you think about it, almost all the malware that gets in by tricking a user into opening the attachment would at least get caught at THIS level. They almost always realize after running the file that, "Hey, that didn't seem to do anything!" or "That did something weird to my system... Oh no!", or even "That's not the document the email said it was going to be!") It's that curiosity or initial confusion that makes them open the bad stuff in the first place -- and a sandboxed "safe zone" to do that in would let them do it while mitigating the risk.
I love how the Windows users get *so* irritated when Mac users point out to them how their machines generally "just work" without all the virus and malware hassles, need for (often costly) anti-virus software and subscriptions, etc.
The only people I see really trying to "pound some sense" into OS X users to use anti-virus software are the companies hawking the stuff.
I use both Windows machines and Macs practically every day. I work in a corporate environment where we're pretty much a 50/50 mix of both platforms, and provide I.T. support for both.
Everyone in our dept. will readily tell you that the Macs are FAR less of a support issue, overall, than the Windows PCs. Nothing in this world is absolute, and it's silly for anyone to make claims involving words like "never". So yes, clearly a handful of viruses HAVE been developed over the years just for Macs and running OS X doesn't make you immune to ever getting a piece of malware. But given a typical use-case of employees using their machines on our corporate network for 8 hours every weekday, doing lots of email, editing of documents, printing of documents, online purchasing, research, etc. etc. -- the Macs have so far NEVER been infected with a virus since we've owned them. The Windows machines have caused multiple serious virus outbreaks, requiring days of effort restoring files on the servers.
We actually bought eSET anti-virus for some of our Macs to try it out, but it just didn't make much financial sense in the end. (The OS X version of their product is far behind the Windows edition in ability to do central administration and updates, and it seemed to just be one more thing to use up system resources.)
Seriously, technology and the ubiquitous nature of social media and electronic communications means pretty much anything newsworthy has a technological component to it.
I agree that this case is something you'd put in a broad category of "general news", but there's probably some interesting science behind the analysis of the events that unfolded, at the very least? But perhaps more relevant to the Slashdot crowd, we've all been exposed to a pretty wide variety of opinions on the case thanks to being online.
In a time not that long ago, you'd watch the nightly news to learn about a shooting incident like this, and your concept of "how people felt about it" was probably based on what your immediate family said, what your good friends said, and some random comments from co-workers or fellow students. Now, you get on Facebook or what-not and you're easily able to skim hundreds or thousands of opinions about it, coming from all ages, both genders, and multiple ethnic and economic groups.
To me, that's kind of an amazing thing. It may not change the outcome, but hopefully it enlightens more people. If nothing else, this case made me think a little bit deeper about the whole "stand your ground" concept and where it could become a murky, grey area if one hoped to use it as a defense in a life-threatening situation. In a more general sense, it reminded me of how many people draw conclusions based on details that really are just extraneous noise when trying to determine guilt of a specific crime. (By that, I'm talking about both sides.... everything from Martin's alleged marijuana usage, "thug" lifestyle and theories of why he was carrying the bag of Skittles to assumptions of Zimmerman's character based on his ethnicity, choice to act in a role of a security type person for the neighborhood, and so on.)
A criminal trial should be based purely on the evidence and facts... not painting subjective pictures of the types of people involved. But obviously, the news media realizes all of that gets "eyeballs" of more viewers and drums up more interest and emotions so the outcome of the case will be followed more closely.
As all of us contribute to the rapid-fire dissemination of information through technology and computers, I hope we keep all of this in mind.
The law likes to find an easy solution by claiming "you're always at fault for rear-ending a vehicle in front of you". That doesn't make it "right" or "just".
For example, the person who suddenly brakes when there's no good reason to do so, simply in the hopes of making a car behind them bump them? That happened all the time where I used to live, when someone wanted to commit some insurance fraud. (Already have some rear-end damage that you couldn't get covered? Just cause another accident that you can force the other guy to pay out on, and get it all fixed free.)
Not all vehicles have identically stopping distances either.... A lot depends on the tires, weight of the vehicle in question, etc. So even an alert driver can't always guarantee he or she can avoid rear-ending a car that unexpectedly does a panic stop.
I already see the White House big-shots trying to spin Snowden as a fraud, since he's running away for refuge in nations that don't believe in any of what he claims to be fighting for.
But hey, he's just being practical at this point. As he said himself in an interview, when a major world power decides they're out to get you, they'll eventually succeed if they try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's smart to remain a sitting duck and make yourself easy to snuff out -- which is exactly what staying in the U.S. would do.
It doesn't really matter where in the world he chooses to travel. The media spin, the lies, and the propaganda won't change or come at a reduced rate. The irony of him being temporarily safer in nations like China than here just further illustrates how deep the problem goes -- and buys Snowden some more time to argue for his side of the case in the press.
I mean, how can our country's leaders even keep a straight face when declaring Snowden should come back here voluntarily to get his day in court? Everything they've done regarding the spying is handled by a SECRET court -- so there's no way he'd have a fair trial. Essentially, they'd screw him over just as badly as nations like China do all the time to the people opposing their own governments.
At the same time, there are degrees of evil. IMO, a central government of ANY type is inherently evil. Yet I still won't advocate the philosophy of the anarchists out there, simply because I think their idea of a "better way" to do things vastly underestimates the number of people on this planet who don't think logically or act in what is actually their own best interest in the long-run (opting instead for short-term gains at the expense of others around them). Human nature is what, ultimately, makes central government a necessary evil.
The reason I rather like the original idea of a Democratic Republic the United States' founders envisioned was the attempt to place checks and balances on power while giving the general public a meaningful voice. The Constitution and Bill of Rights spelled out a recognition of *innate* human rights that no government could grant or take away. All in all, that makes it a far less evil system than most of the competing forms of government in use.
Unfortunately, I think we're seeing exactly what some of the Founders cautioned..... that it might not be able to last more than 200 years or so, as people became complacent with the prosperity enjoyed under the system and as corrupt individuals finally opened up enough loopholes to circumvent the checks and balances, and begin breaking down the system for personal gain.
Honestly, the entire concept of a country like the USA operating secret spy agencies is one I've never really been comfortable with. I think such a thing goes against everything we claim to stand for. (If our nation is so prosperous and successful on its own merits, why the need to go on the offense, trying to steal secrets from other nations while professing to care about such concepts as privacy or individual freedoms?) I can see running a defensive, anti-spying group -- but nothing else, except perhaps in time of war. (And unfortunately, even war itself has become a "loophole" for our government. Seems we like to stay in a perpetual state of declared war on somebody, so politicians are free to do questionable things under the claim of the "National Security" need.)
Sure, but people voted for "this guy" not only once, but RE-elected him for a second term -- so it proves a combination of gullibility of the general voting public and the power of the mass media and propaganda to get a desired outcome.
Personally, I couldn't agree more that we're sucked into a perpetual 2 party system that's just a charade. Both parties appear to have end goals of tearing the USA apart and reconstructing it into some sort of neo-Fascist system.
Having *just* come back from 3 days of the "Points of Light" conference on service and volunteering in D.C. though, it made me realize that they can get away with this simply by preaching fuzzy, happy concepts like "unity" as solutions. The message I heard pounded home over and over, ad nauseum, was the idea that people on "both sides of the political fence" need to work on problem solving together. (As was brought up in relation to Hurricane Sandy for example, the weather "doesn't just destroy Republican or Democratic homes".)
That all sounds great if you're trying to get people to do charitable work without getting too hung up on which political party advocating it is benefiting. But it ALSO serves to perpetuate the 2 party dictatorship..... (Never mind the fact that people who think for themselves usually don't even see politics as some sort of virtual land ownership that has to exist on either side of a fence!) If you can get people comfortable with the idea that "the things that really matter" are getting accomplished simply by ignoring the politics -- you can get them to pay less attention to the "man behind the curtain" who is pulling all the strings and taking their individual rights and freedoms away one after the other.
Honestly, the only thing I'm less than certain of these days is if the whole "show" is really being run by our leaders' "corporate masters", or if it goes a step beyond that? So many of the things I thought were pure wacko conspiracy theory nonsense have shaped up to make a lot of sense in recent years. It makes me wonder if this is really about a relative handful of uber-rich elite who amassed so much wealth and power, the world is like a board game to them. Corporations are part of where their wealth and control lies, but they also act like a level "once removed" for them, so the occasional company can fall if it's implicated in doing too much evil. But they're just pawns anyway. With enough power, one can experiment with re-shaping the balance of government -- pushing for the proverbial "New World Order" with one central government, for example. Or simply playing out "What if?" scenarios, like pitting nations against each other who used to be allies. When you already "have it all" -- I can see this sort of thing being the amusement of the very top wealth-holders in the world.
I may not be fortunate enough to own a big tech company myself, but if I did? NYC would probably be one of the LAST places on my list where I'd consider an expansion or a move.
Real estate is insane, obviously... but you're also dealing with the transportation headaches. Where I work now, we already have some big problems with that, and we don't have NYC's density. (Everyone's pushed and prodded to use public transportation since cars are impractical with high daily parking costs, traffic jams, etc.) But with public transportation, you're really limited in what you can carry. Any kind of office outing requires renting an expensive bus to shuttle everyone to or from the event, too. And if the subway has a problem, you may as well shut the place down until they get things fixed. Additionally, your employees who might otherwise be happy to work late or odd hours to finish some project are constrained by the hours the bus or metro runs. So you lose some potential productivity there too.
You also have to figure that in many ways, the tech market there is saturated. It's not like all the Wall Street traders don't have any contacts to work with to provide their network bandwidth or computer maintenance. If you move out to NYC, it sounds to me like a tough, uphill battle if you want to establish yourself as a contender?
If the physical presence makes no difference (software development, for example) -- then you want the CHEAPEST place you can build an office and still be able to hire good talent. I think what many companies would find if they actually thought "outside the box" a bit, is that there's a LOT of great computer talent in the small, rural communities. Kids growing up there don't have as much to do, so many gravitate towards the home computer and the internet, and spend a lot of time with it. The technical minded who don't envision themselves working the family farm like their parents did constitute a good hiring pool that's neglected.
The Fry's CEO accepted all sorts of kickbacks to try to pay down his gambling debts. As I recall, he was only caught when an employee happened to find some incriminating paperwork he threw in a trashcan....
One *might* argue that using the existing "default" fiat currency means we're 100% sure of getting screwed -- as buying power drops with govt. printing more paper to cover increasing debt.
Bitcoin may have the theoretical threat of the 51% attack, but it seems to me this risk drops as more people start using the e-currency? Furthermore, the talk of someone buying up enough processor power to take over the network seems to make an assumption that it would be possible to purchase the latest generation of bitcoin mining gear using dedicated ASICs. From what I've seen, those are more "vapor-ware" than reality today, with backorders waiting months to be filled? That will change, I'm sure.... but right now, I don't know if enough product exists out there to really buy enough for a takeover?
Bitcoin clones may or may not have any credibility. I'd agree some really don't and will probably just die. But others will have to prove themselves.... probably at least partially by giving early adopters the chance to get in on them at a low cost with high probability of the value going up over time. People ALWAYS accept some financial risk hoping for a reward. (Heck, people play the lottery every week despite huge odds against a payout.)
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You just made the point I think was in my head all along, but I wasn't sure how to express it.
I have no problem with the Gates Foundation wanting to do the charity work they're doing, and making a decision that it's going to be about such things as curing malaria in Africa, vs. helping countries get a better internet experience. But I *do* have a problem with Bill or anyone else implying that others with money to spend on projects are somehow "lesser" or in the wrong because they don't follow his chosen path.
I'm a big believer in the idea that individuals should pursue things that personally interest them. If Google's expertise is with the Internet and application development, then it stands to reason it can be most efficient working on projects in that vein! How many folks at Google are experts in water purification, or in treating diseases? How many would even find that type of work enjoyable?
Gates is in a different situation than the folks running Google. He already LEFT his tech. company by choice, after it made massive amounts of money for him. That tells me that basically, he grew tired of running Microsoft each day and wanted out. So when you see him pursuing other things, it stands to reason he would.
Who here is stating a belief that the U.S. will stop all spying?
The goal here is to demand some accountability.... To say, "Look.... We know you have spy agencies, like all nation do. And while we might not care for spying on the whole, it's an unfortunate necessity to have our own organization to counter what the rest of the world still wants to do to us. BUT, there's NO excuse for putting resources and taxpayer dollars into warrantless spying on our own citizens, on our own soil!"
It appears to me that a good bit of what's happening now is Federal govt. paying private contractors to build some of these spying tools and to actually DO the spying for them. That way, government is able to claim it is following the Constitution and doing nothing wrong. (They're simply getting information handed over to them by a private party.) Then, govt. simply invests in the computer power to process and save all of this information that was "given" to them.
Sure, not everything in a science fiction story plays out as reality. If it did, the stories would be under the headings of "prophecies" instead of sci-fi!
But the part I constantly find interesting with science fiction is how often it suggests ideas which seem unbelievable at the time, but which more or less come true eventually.
Taking the 1984 example (since you brought it up) ... Many would insist that the entire "war on terror" the USA is waging is exactly like the Eurasia scenario. (Govt. finds it useful to control the masses by keeping them in a constant state of fear and declared war.) The "Big Brother is Watching" theme throughout it certainly resonates with people today, too. The differences between the book and reality today are the "small elements". (EG. In the book, everyone was viewing broadcasts created by the government while cameras watched them back, and were apparently monitored at random at some central facility. In reality today, everyone views broadcasts which are ostensibly not affiliated with government, but which regularly feed us the versions of the news the government wants us to hear, and the distractions govt. wants us to stay entertained and occupied with. The cameras watching us back aren't centralized or placed in our TV sets, but rather, are strategically distributed all over the landscape, with each serving a specific purpose of controlling one aspect of people's behavior. One set to enforce stopping at red signal lights, one set to enforce speed limits, one set to record one's actions in front of any FDIC insured banking institution.....)
If you read other dystopian science fiction like Brave New World, you'd find that today's society is probably more like a "mash up" of what it envisioned and the 1984 world.
As for The Jetsons? It was just a cartoon. I find it a little bit insulting to famous book authors to put it in the same category of science fiction, though it was a perfectly good cartoon series in its own right.
Well, first of all? Who are these commercial activities you speak of who supposedly claimed quality and value were ONLY achievable via commercial enterprise?
I can't think of a single business making that claim today? Clearly, technological progress means that ideas starting out as massive, costly endeavors become mundane with time. I remember when recordable CDR technology was brand new, for example. The only people possessing CD writer drives were generally government contractors and educational institutions because the drives themselves were thousands of dollars, with blank media as expensive as $25-30 per disc. They only recorded at 1x speeds, and were all external drives, because any vibration during the recording process ruined the disc. So you had to carefully place the recorder in a spot where it wouldn't get bumped or shake. That's just a small example of a technology everyone takes for granted today. (Can you even buy a CD-ROM reader that doesn't include writing functionality today, if you wanted to??)
It's this same principle that caused space travel (once thought so complicated and expensive, only Federal government could do anything with it) to become privatized today. It's the reason individuals are now doing DNA splicing in their own homes as hobbies and why 3D printing is becoming something you can do on your own with equipment you build yourself.
There will always be a use for the resources and capabilities of big business (and arguably even government, at a tier above that -- as a way to get a VERY large project completed by the will of the taxpayer in a certain time-frame). But whatever these entities come up with with eventually trickle down to a more manageable size and scope, suitable for interested individuals to undertake.
IMO, there's plenty of blame to go around everywhere, in this story.
First and foremost? Let's talk about "middle management" a bit. WHY would someone feel a need to sift through a former employer's search queries in the first place? Honestly, I've worked in corporate I.T. for 20+ years now and none of us ether wasted time with that stuff. If the company let go of the person already, it's "water under the bridge" at that point. What good does it to anyone to discover that, "Hey! It turns out Joe was looking up performance parts for his truck during the day!" or even, "Wow! Who knew Dan was into gay porn??"
The fact is, the current employees who'd have any legitimate reason to touch the former employee's computer should be using their time efficiently (meaning wiping the drive and re-imaging the machine so it's ready for the next user) instead of snooping around to see what the last guy left behind. If there's a concern the person left important documents on the C: drive instead of putting them out on the server for safe keeping, that's one thing. But that doesn't involve opening up a browser history.
Anyone who's a manager who thought it was a good use of time to order I.T. to retrieve the guy's old search results (or wasted time doing it himself before he'd turn the computer back over to be re-imaged) needs to re-think his/her priorities. If there was truly some concern about the person looking at non work related things on the net, that should have been addressed while he still worked there.
But as for these NSA professionals? I don't think these guys are "clueless" at all. I'm pretty sure the organization is full of some of the more intelligent people receiving a govt. paycheck. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous to individual rights or freedom from government oppression. Right now, the country is pretty clearly divided into two camps; those who believe the whole terrorist threat thing is a real and present danger to the country, and without government's constant vigilance, we all might die at any time... and those who think it's over-hyped/over-blown, and simply used as an excuse for government to give itself new powers it wasn't supposed to have. (Guess which camp I'm in?)
First of all.... the conservative movement of the Reagan era is LONG gone. I think that's worth noting, because America was in a much different place in the 80's than it is today, but also because practically everyone running as a "Republican" today has values very far from what Reagan did.
If you simply want to do a quick "once over" of how the Obama and Reagan presidency differed, you only have to look at the economic picture. The U.S. was prospering under Reagan's administration. College tuition might have risen under Reagan, but so did people's ability to pay it, by and large. Obama has done practically nothing to "reduce government" that I'm aware of, either? Please cite these claims! If anything, he's consistently maintained practically all of the additional government baggage the Bush administration brought about (and which MANY people think needs to go!). TSA, Homeland Security ... these things didn't even exist in the Reagan days.
As far as this specific article? I'm not particularly surprised to see Obama praising an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. I simply agree that it's an "interesting" choice for a speech about middle class jobs. I have no problem with Amazon, and would probably agree with Obama that the company as a whole is an example of a U.S. tech success story. But certainly, the temporary, low paid labor positions the warehouses create aren't doing much to improve the nation's economic situation.
Overall, I'm very much in agreement that Obama has done an awful lot of maintaining policies and govt. programs put in place his Republican predecessor. But his predecessor wasn't following in Reagan's footsteps. (In fact, going back as far as Bush, Sr.'s presidency -- I remember reading an anecdote about Reagan feeling the man wasn't even fit to shake his hand at the inauguration, and didn't want to attend the White House dinner for him either. He only did all of that because it was expected of him as a tradition.)
Unfortunately, yes. THIS!
The truth is, the middle class is getting squeezed out, but the smartest way to achieve that goal without inciting revolt is to simply redefine what the term means.
We've always had and always will have the "poor". That's an unavoidable fact of human nature. There will always be a certain percentage of people who simply don't care to expend any effort to earn above the bare minimum, and others who simply can't do so, due to physical or mental limitations. Occasionally, you'll even get the odd situation where someone is plunged into poverty due to circumstances beyond their control, and the hole is simply too big to dig back out of.
At the other end, you have the rich/wealthy. Some are there through a life of honest, hard work, while others cheated and lied their way to the top. Still others had it handed to them from a previous generation. At some point, some of the rich become rich enough so the sheer amount of money they possess can essentially work for itself. These people have a hard time spending it as fast as the income it generates via interest and investment gains. Others have major setbacks, just like the former "middle class" people who were plunged into poverty -- except thanks to a combination of their connections and the amount of wealth they amassed first, they often only fall back into middle class status vs. poverty. Of course, they view this as a bad thing and strive to get back to the lifestyle they were accustomed to.
Traditionally, I think all of this worked ok, because the poor viewed the middle class as a goal to achieve, and at the same time, as a group of people likely to lend a hand to them. (The rich may be the ones funding the big foundations and charities.... but it's your average middle class Joe who decides to give to the food pantry at church, or to donate some time around the holidays to bring toys/gifts and food to a poor family in need.) Meanwhile, the rich viewed the middle class as critical to their success. If you own a business, you need middle management and engineers and salespeople, accountants, etc. These folks aren't coming from your own social class.
But now, the country competes on a global scale, with many countries where living standards for the masses are FAR lower than ours. Automation is quickly replacing the need for the unskilled labor (working poor, essentially). And the rich elite at the top have concluded that the biggest obstacle to their future success is the middle class. (People who are both unhappy with the status quo AND intelligent enough to leverage the legal system to make changes are dangerous.) They want to make adjustments so former middle class people slip into a state of being the working poor, while still doing all those jobs the old middle class did for them. The people at the very bottom? They don't matter any more than they ever did, really. They're just another line item expense to deal with via tax deductible charitable donations and so on.
I grew up in the midwest, where manufacturing and "blue collar jobs" were a huge part of the landscape. I saw that slipping away ever since the 1990's or so. It's not dead yet, certainly, but just in the city I lived in alone, at least 3 auto plants closed down and other big manufacturers were bought out by international companies. One could drive through the area and see steel manufacturers busily cutting and loading steel onto trucks and say, "Things look fine to me!" But only upon much closer inspection, actually talking to the rank and file employees there, did you get a better idea of what was happening. A lot of those people were working 2 or 3 jobs instead of just 1, sometimes working one of them only for the healthcare benefits. Some were driving motorcycles in to work each day, which you might think was fine -- until you found out the real reason for that was they couldn't afford the gas anymore to use a car. Some of these people had really useful skills that they weren't utilizing at all, because they simply couldn't find a better payi
You make a valid point, in our situation, most likely. To be clear, we're just talking about one of Cisco's lower end VPN routers though, which Cisco itself claims is suitable for the purpose and scope of what we're doing with it. But my point is, even this device sells for north of $1,200 PLUS fees for maintenance contracts on it and more for the upgraded license allowing more than 10 simultaneous connections to be routed. The offices relying on these things have no more than 10-15 people in them, tops, and they simply need the ability for 4 or 5 people (or less) to connect in via VPN from home.
This is well within the scope of what FAR, FAR cheaper hardware can do effectively ... but I'm sure when the company originally opted for Cisco, it was due to a promise that it was a higher grade of hardware that would be rock solid reliable for years and years, etc. That's where my complaint really comes in. It's pretty evident that these VPN routers are really no more reliable or better than the competition.
But ultimately, Cisco probably makes much more sense at the high end of the spectrum, where you have many thousands of nodes and your options are more limited.
So you're saying I:
#1. Should NOT be upset that a costly piece of critical networking infrastructure gear just went DoA by simply powering it down and back up again, despite only being a couple years old?
#2. Should have done some sort of backup which would easily let me restore all the settings into the replacement device AND allowed the licensing from the original unit to come over to the new one without Cisco's assistance?
#3. Yes, upset that the license was tied to a dead device and nobody on Cisco's phone support hotline seemed to understand the idea that it caused an entire office to be DOWN/NON-functional! We kept having to argue with people who claimed "You're not really down, because you have replacement equipment from us.", and acted like we should just submit some web-based request for the license xfer and wait days for them to process it.
I'm not saying any of this counterfeiting of gear is legally or morally "ok" -- but Cisco has LONG been inflating the prices of their equipment FAR beyond what it's reasonably worth, given the components inside.
I remember at least 10 years ago opening up one of the Cisco PIIX firewalls our company had recently upgraded to, and discovering it was essentially a Pentium class PC motherboard and CPU inside. They were charging all that money for standard (outdated at that point) PC hardware, crammed into a Cisco labeled rack mount case.
More recently, one of our branch offices had their Cisco router/VPN die on me. The office moved to a new location and all I did was unplug the power to it, move it to the new office down the road, and plug it back in. It refused to power on at all .... totally dead. At first we assumed it might just be a bad AC power adapter, but nope. The whole unit was defective. (Finally found a CIsco tech document online mentioning the issue. Supposedly early revisions of this unit had a problem where they could get caught in an endless loop after a power cycle and never come back up. Nice!)
The worst part? All of the office's complex configuration settings were in the old, dead router. Luckily, they were saved on a CF memory card in the unit, so I took it apart and pulled the card out. When my boss went through the big song and dance to get Cisco to send us a replacement router and open an RMA for the dead one, I swapped the flash cards. It worked, but only sort of.... Turns out every connection made beyond the first 10 were getting nowhere, because all the licensing we had didn't transfer over. Cisco ties that part of each unit's serial number. So the office was down for hours while we fought again to get tech. support to do a license transfer to the replacement router.
I fail to see what point there was at all to forking out the money for real Cisco gear, when it failed us like that AND was made so artificially difficult to get back up and running again? If we had used some cheaper, off the shelf product (like D-Link or what not?), we could have easily gotten another new unit going with far less downtime and had the ability to keep a spare around for the price of the 1 Cisco.
The counterfeiters wouldn't be targeting Cisco so heavily if they weren't aware of the huge price markup on the stuff in the first place.
I think the hoarding is an unavoidable consequence of a new/young currency that allows individuals to help "mint" it?
If you invest a lot of money and effort into mining bitcoins or other e-currencies, you're starting out in a situation where your up-front costs to do it are large, and initial payback is small. You *could* take a long-term view of things thinking "If I keep my systems mining the coins for several years, I'll eventually pay them off and start coming out ahead." but IMO, few of the miners do this. Why? Because computer gear breaks down over time, for one thing. The costly video cards burn up occasionally, power supplies fail, etc. The difficultly level for mining the new coins keeps increasing too. So the equipment that used to mine you several coins a day reaches a point where it mines only 1, or a partial coin each day.
So what you wind up with are most of these folks sitting on the majority of the coins they create, hoping for the value to rise enough so they make a real profit, relatively quickly, by selling at the right time.
It's also a matter of not enough acceptance of the e-currencies yet. I've got some litecoin myself, and I've only found maybe 3 or 4 websites that sell products allowing me to pay directly with my litecoin. (And none of them even have any products I'm interested in right now.) People will keep treating these coins like stock investments rather than true currencies if it's not easy and common to have the ability to SPEND them like a regular currency!
You say "movies haven't really changed that much over time" -- but I don't know that I can agree with that.
One of the big changes I've noticed is all of the CGI, which I think often hurts a movie more than it helps.
It reminds me of the classic problem in video production of amateurs over-using the zoom/telephoto feature. Great feature to have, but easy to over-use it and ruin the quality of the production.
In modern movies, it feels like the pros just call for CGI whenever they have a complicated idea that would be difficult to film in a traditional way -- and the results are a mixed bag. Just a few examples that come to mind would be the "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" series of movies -- where I thought some of the scenes with the tiger and other animals just looked distracting. There was something "not quite right" about all of it, that just looked like one object was super-imposed over the rest of the footage. Some of the scenes in the most recent 3 Star Wars movies had the same problem. (I still remember a scene that particularly bothered me where the robots were dodging things and running along a factory conveyor belt, and it just reeked of "fake"!)
The other thing I dislike are all of the remakes.... often making a full-length movie out of what was just a rather campy, relatively low-budget TV series to start with. This stuff can be mildly amusing, but it never ranks above "I'll watch it some time after I can rent it inexpensively." Talk about predictable. You practically *know* they're going to try to surprise you with a cameo appearance of at least one of the actors/actresses from the original. And how far astray can they go from what you expected the characters to do in all the old shows you remember? I know this isn't a brand new thing for Hollywood -- but they've basically failed at it for decades now and show no sign of changing course. (Remember how awful the movie versions were of cartoons they decided to remake like Popeye, or The Flintstones?) But lately we've had to suffer through remakes of everything from Starsky and Hutch to The A-Team. This doesn't seem like it was much of an issue back in the 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's or even 60's.
Honestly, I don't really think the "golden age of movies" centers around what I watched when I was 8-18. There were a FEW classics I saw when I was that age, certainly. But some of the best movies I've ever seen are ones I watched more recently, often recommended to me online by someone who shared my general interest in movies, or on some sort of list of "favorite movies" someone posted.
It's my belief that almost every time you put out a film that people really enjoy, you're going to be able to milk at least 1 sequel out of it that gets good theater attendance. (That's why Dispicable Me 2 did so well. An awful lot of people left the first one happy and hoping to see more of the "minions" and other characters.)
All too often, that sequel is rather weak, but it seems to me that most people will STILL give those situations one final chance, if a "part 3" comes out, hoping for some sort of redemption. (Take Iron Man for example.... People loved the first one. Second one was relatively weak. But almost everyone gave the 3rd. one a chance, confident there was enough substance to the whole thing to pull off a winner -- and by and large, it seems they did.)
Once Hollywood stretches it beyond 3 movies, I think they're just aiming for a die-hard audience they know will keep going back. Concerns over making truly "good" movies are out the window at that point, because it ceases to matter. They just think they have a niche audience that's going to keep watching as long as they keep up the formula, and they're betting that niche is big enough to make the whole thing profitable. (EG. All the "Chucky" horror movies, or the Fast and the Furious series.)
No... that's not quite accurate either.
There is NOT scientific consensus on the fact that humans (we) are responsible for all of the global warming that's happening. More likely, we're a contributing factor, on top of a natural cycle of warming that would happen anyway.
As for nations being selfish and hoping others pay the bill of reducing greenhouse gasses? I guess you could look at it that way. But I'd also say historically, we've simply seen where nations do a lot of polluting and relatively inefficient power generation during the phase where they undergo an industrial revolution. Once that change is established in a country, they tend to focus more on optimizing things .... reducing pollution and so on.
Right now, we've got some big nations (such as China) going through that industrialization phase -- and they're just now starting to say, "Hey... all this pollution we're creating is starting to become a real issue for our people. Maybe we should see what we can do about it?"
Clearly, the problem is that government has the power to arrest and imprison you. or make financial demands of you that you have no legal recourse to wash away, or even in some cases to legally end your life. A private social media web site like Facebook can do none of this, by comparison.
But that said? I still use FB (often using it as a sounding board to complain about political issues and repost relevant news items for my friends to read). Certainly, there are many personal things I choose not to share there. But many other things, I will. Government offers me none of the benefits of sharing such information though, if I were to volunteer the same information to them. FB, at least, gives me a window into the daily lives of many people I know, helps me buy and sell items, etc. -- all without paying any money for the service. Govt. generally just takes your information, compiles it into databases at facilities they own, and then turns around and denies they have it.
I'm thinking along the same lines here.... I can't say that I've really seen Javascript embedded PDFs as much of an attack vector where I work. By and large, your Mac OS X users wouldn't encounter this anyway, since they generally use the "Preview" app that's part of the OS to view and print PDFs. Adobe Reader is usually rather pointless to install in OS X, since Preview renders pages far faster anyway AND gives the ability to do things like add signatures to a document, re-order the pages and annotate, without paying for the abilities.
I'm sure this could eventually be an issue for some of our users, but you'd hope the desktop anti-virus software might stop it from doing damage too, depending on what it was attempting. But even if not? You can't protect against everything, and you reach a point where the solutions are as bad as the problems since they start impacting productivity and slowing down EVERYONE, all the time, just to try to block the one hypothetical attack.
At least in Windows, I wish sometimes the OS had the capability of opening all attached executable type files from email in sort of a "sandbox". Only after a file was determined to be something the user actually wanted to use/print/keep would they get the option to transfer it over to the regular file system. (When you think about it, almost all the malware that gets in by tricking a user into opening the attachment would at least get caught at THIS level. They almost always realize after running the file that, "Hey, that didn't seem to do anything!" or "That did something weird to my system... Oh no!", or even "That's not the document the email said it was going to be!") It's that curiosity or initial confusion that makes them open the bad stuff in the first place -- and a sandboxed "safe zone" to do that in would let them do it while mitigating the risk.
I love how the Windows users get *so* irritated when Mac users point out to them how their machines generally "just work" without all the virus and malware hassles, need for (often costly) anti-virus software and subscriptions, etc.
The only people I see really trying to "pound some sense" into OS X users to use anti-virus software are the companies hawking the stuff.
I use both Windows machines and Macs practically every day. I work in a corporate environment where we're pretty much a 50/50 mix of both platforms, and provide I.T. support for both.
Everyone in our dept. will readily tell you that the Macs are FAR less of a support issue, overall, than the Windows PCs. Nothing in this world is absolute, and it's silly for anyone to make claims involving words like "never". So yes, clearly a handful of viruses HAVE been developed over the years just for Macs and running OS X doesn't make you immune to ever getting a piece of malware. But given a typical use-case of employees using their machines on our corporate network for 8 hours every weekday, doing lots of email, editing of documents, printing of documents, online purchasing, research, etc. etc. -- the Macs have so far NEVER been infected with a virus since we've owned them. The Windows machines have caused multiple serious virus outbreaks, requiring days of effort restoring files on the servers.
We actually bought eSET anti-virus for some of our Macs to try it out, but it just didn't make much financial sense in the end. (The OS X version of their product is far behind the Windows edition in ability to do central administration and updates, and it seemed to just be one more thing to use up system resources.)
Seriously, technology and the ubiquitous nature of social media and electronic communications means pretty much anything newsworthy has a technological component to it.
I agree that this case is something you'd put in a broad category of "general news", but there's probably some interesting science behind the analysis of the events that unfolded, at the very least? But perhaps more relevant to the Slashdot crowd, we've all been exposed to a pretty wide variety of opinions on the case thanks to being online.
In a time not that long ago, you'd watch the nightly news to learn about a shooting incident like this, and your concept of "how people felt about it" was probably based on what your immediate family said, what your good friends said, and some random comments from co-workers or fellow students. Now, you get on Facebook or what-not and you're easily able to skim hundreds or thousands of opinions about it, coming from all ages, both genders, and multiple ethnic and economic groups.
To me, that's kind of an amazing thing. It may not change the outcome, but hopefully it enlightens more people. If nothing else, this case made me think a little bit deeper about the whole "stand your ground" concept and where it could become a murky, grey area if one hoped to use it as a defense in a life-threatening situation. In a more general sense, it reminded me of how many people draw conclusions based on details that really are just extraneous noise when trying to determine guilt of a specific crime. (By that, I'm talking about both sides .... everything from Martin's alleged marijuana usage, "thug" lifestyle and theories of why he was carrying the bag of Skittles to assumptions of Zimmerman's character based on his ethnicity, choice to act in a role of a security type person for the neighborhood, and so on.)
A criminal trial should be based purely on the evidence and facts ... not painting subjective pictures of the types of people involved. But obviously, the news media realizes all of that gets "eyeballs" of more viewers and drums up more interest and emotions so the outcome of the case will be followed more closely.
As all of us contribute to the rapid-fire dissemination of information through technology and computers, I hope we keep all of this in mind.
The law likes to find an easy solution by claiming "you're always at fault for rear-ending a vehicle in front of you". That doesn't make it "right" or "just".
For example, the person who suddenly brakes when there's no good reason to do so, simply in the hopes of making a car behind them bump them? That happened all the time where I used to live, when someone wanted to commit some insurance fraud. (Already have some rear-end damage that you couldn't get covered? Just cause another accident that you can force the other guy to pay out on, and get it all fixed free.)
Not all vehicles have identically stopping distances either.... A lot depends on the tires, weight of the vehicle in question, etc. So even an alert driver can't always guarantee he or she can avoid rear-ending a car that unexpectedly does a panic stop.
I already see the White House big-shots trying to spin Snowden as a fraud, since he's running away for refuge in nations that don't believe in any of what he claims to be fighting for.
But hey, he's just being practical at this point. As he said himself in an interview, when a major world power decides they're out to get you, they'll eventually succeed if they try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's smart to remain a sitting duck and make yourself easy to snuff out -- which is exactly what staying in the U.S. would do.
It doesn't really matter where in the world he chooses to travel. The media spin, the lies, and the propaganda won't change or come at a reduced rate. The irony of him being temporarily safer in nations like China than here just further illustrates how deep the problem goes -- and buys Snowden some more time to argue for his side of the case in the press.
I mean, how can our country's leaders even keep a straight face when declaring Snowden should come back here voluntarily to get his day in court? Everything they've done regarding the spying is handled by a SECRET court -- so there's no way he'd have a fair trial. Essentially, they'd screw him over just as badly as nations like China do all the time to the people opposing their own governments.
At the same time, there are degrees of evil. IMO, a central government of ANY type is inherently evil. Yet I still won't advocate the philosophy of the anarchists out there, simply because I think their idea of a "better way" to do things vastly underestimates the number of people on this planet who don't think logically or act in what is actually their own best interest in the long-run (opting instead for short-term gains at the expense of others around them). Human nature is what, ultimately, makes central government a necessary evil.
The reason I rather like the original idea of a Democratic Republic the United States' founders envisioned was the attempt to place checks and balances on power while giving the general public a meaningful voice. The Constitution and Bill of Rights spelled out a recognition of *innate* human rights that no government could grant or take away. All in all, that makes it a far less evil system than most of the competing forms of government in use.
Unfortunately, I think we're seeing exactly what some of the Founders cautioned ..... that it might not be able to last more than 200 years or so, as people became complacent with the prosperity enjoyed under the system and as corrupt individuals finally opened up enough loopholes to circumvent the checks and balances, and begin breaking down the system for personal gain.
Honestly, the entire concept of a country like the USA operating secret spy agencies is one I've never really been comfortable with. I think such a thing goes against everything we claim to stand for. (If our nation is so prosperous and successful on its own merits, why the need to go on the offense, trying to steal secrets from other nations while professing to care about such concepts as privacy or individual freedoms?) I can see running a defensive, anti-spying group -- but nothing else, except perhaps in time of war. (And unfortunately, even war itself has become a "loophole" for our government. Seems we like to stay in a perpetual state of declared war on somebody, so politicians are free to do questionable things under the claim of the "National Security" need.)
Sure, but people voted for "this guy" not only once, but RE-elected him for a second term -- so it proves a combination of gullibility of the general voting public and the power of the mass media and propaganda to get a desired outcome.
Personally, I couldn't agree more that we're sucked into a perpetual 2 party system that's just a charade. Both parties appear to have end goals of tearing the USA apart and reconstructing it into some sort of neo-Fascist system.
Having *just* come back from 3 days of the "Points of Light" conference on service and volunteering in D.C. though, it made me realize that they can get away with this simply by preaching fuzzy, happy concepts like "unity" as solutions. The message I heard pounded home over and over, ad nauseum, was the idea that people on "both sides of the political fence" need to work on problem solving together. (As was brought up in relation to Hurricane Sandy for example, the weather "doesn't just destroy Republican or Democratic homes".)
That all sounds great if you're trying to get people to do charitable work without getting too hung up on which political party advocating it is benefiting. But it ALSO serves to perpetuate the 2 party dictatorship..... (Never mind the fact that people who think for themselves usually don't even see politics as some sort of virtual land ownership that has to exist on either side of a fence!) If you can get people comfortable with the idea that "the things that really matter" are getting accomplished simply by ignoring the politics -- you can get them to pay less attention to the "man behind the curtain" who is pulling all the strings and taking their individual rights and freedoms away one after the other.
Honestly, the only thing I'm less than certain of these days is if the whole "show" is really being run by our leaders' "corporate masters", or if it goes a step beyond that? So many of the things I thought were pure wacko conspiracy theory nonsense have shaped up to make a lot of sense in recent years. It makes me wonder if this is really about a relative handful of uber-rich elite who amassed so much wealth and power, the world is like a board game to them. Corporations are part of where their wealth and control lies, but they also act like a level "once removed" for them, so the occasional company can fall if it's implicated in doing too much evil. But they're just pawns anyway. With enough power, one can experiment with re-shaping the balance of government -- pushing for the proverbial "New World Order" with one central government, for example. Or simply playing out "What if?" scenarios, like pitting nations against each other who used to be allies. When you already "have it all" -- I can see this sort of thing being the amusement of the very top wealth-holders in the world.
I may not be fortunate enough to own a big tech company myself, but if I did? NYC would probably be one of the LAST places on my list where I'd consider an expansion or a move.
Real estate is insane, obviously ... but you're also dealing with the transportation headaches. Where I work now, we already have some big problems with that, and we don't have NYC's density. (Everyone's pushed and prodded to use public transportation since cars are impractical with high daily parking costs, traffic jams, etc.) But with public transportation, you're really limited in what you can carry. Any kind of office outing requires renting an expensive bus to shuttle everyone to or from the event, too. And if the subway has a problem, you may as well shut the place down until they get things fixed. Additionally, your employees who might otherwise be happy to work late or odd hours to finish some project are constrained by the hours the bus or metro runs. So you lose some potential productivity there too.
You also have to figure that in many ways, the tech market there is saturated. It's not like all the Wall Street traders don't have any contacts to work with to provide their network bandwidth or computer maintenance. If you move out to NYC, it sounds to me like a tough, uphill battle if you want to establish yourself as a contender?
If the physical presence makes no difference (software development, for example) -- then you want the CHEAPEST place you can build an office and still be able to hire good talent. I think what many companies would find if they actually thought "outside the box" a bit, is that there's a LOT of great computer talent in the small, rural communities. Kids growing up there don't have as much to do, so many gravitate towards the home computer and the internet, and spend a lot of time with it. The technical minded who don't envision themselves working the family farm like their parents did constitute a good hiring pool that's neglected.
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11290227
The Fry's CEO accepted all sorts of kickbacks to try to pay down his gambling debts. As I recall, he was only caught when an employee happened to find some incriminating paperwork he threw in a trashcan....
One *might* argue that using the existing "default" fiat currency means we're 100% sure of getting screwed -- as buying power drops with govt. printing more paper to cover increasing debt.
Bitcoin may have the theoretical threat of the 51% attack, but it seems to me this risk drops as more people start using the e-currency? Furthermore, the talk of someone buying up enough processor power to take over the network seems to make an assumption that it would be possible to purchase the latest generation of bitcoin mining gear using dedicated ASICs. From what I've seen, those are more "vapor-ware" than reality today, with backorders waiting months to be filled? That will change, I'm sure .... but right now, I don't know if enough product exists out there to really buy enough for a takeover?
Bitcoin clones may or may not have any credibility. I'd agree some really don't and will probably just die. But others will have to prove themselves.... probably at least partially by giving early adopters the chance to get in on them at a low cost with high probability of the value going up over time. People ALWAYS accept some financial risk hoping for a reward. (Heck, people play the lottery every week despite huge odds against a payout.)