Yes, but it's 5000 words long. Who has time to read 5000 words?
Re:Who needs privacy when people are so predictabl
on
Blown to Bits
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· Score: 3, Insightful
... Privacy isn't about being different, and it isn't necessarily about being unpredictable (although that can help). The idea is to protect yourself from things like stalking, identify theft, targeted telemarketers, and even just the idea that someone you don't even know can have so much information about you. I don't consider myself overly interested in privacy, but I can see how someone might be.
Besides, even if they are carbon copies of one another (which technically you shouldn't be able to know, since the thing these people have in common is they hide their lives well), I don't see how that would diminish their point.
This isn't necessarily a problem with Microsoft/Windows (although they certainly could have had a better security system), it's a problem with monoculture. Each vulnerability discovered opens up mind-bogglingly large amounts of computers to hacking, so all of the black hats are focusing their efforts on one small goal (making at least one of them succeed very quickly). This also means that exploits relying on uncommon settings (ones that rely on the target having say, two separate unrelated applications installed) are researched, where they might not have been worth the effort otherwise.
Although you have a point about big companies stepping away from Microsoft. Linux is open source, no-architecture-lock-in, and comes with so many different distros with so many different default settings, that the monoculture problem would be replaced with many-more-but-easier-to-manageable problems (think "Asteroids"). The other advantage that a polyculture OS world would offer is halting the SPREAD of the virii - if an exploit relies on someone to have XYZ system/configuration, it wouldn't necessarily be able to spread through the "fire-breaks" of ABC or DEF systems/configurations (and since most home computers nowadays are Microsoft's XYZ systems/configurations, there's no "fire breaks").
I have to disagree w/ your signature though. Taking guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens only lets criminals have a free reign.
*sigh*. Find a country that has more stringent gun control - but a higher gun-related crime-rate than USA, then maybe you'll have some credibility. Hell, I'd settle for a comparison between "crimes-thwarted-by-armed-joe-sixpacks" versus "crimes-committed-with-legally-purchased-guns" which favours the former situation (and no, don't tell me that the knowledge of armed victims scares would-be criminals into lawfulness, if it did you'd have less crime). Besides, any "law abiding citizen" can purchase a gun, and then become a "criminal" once they have it - it's not like would-be criminals are born with the word "DANGER" tattooed into their foreheads.
I never have understood why they have that mental block, it's so limiting.
The thing about CLIs is that they do anything you want them to instantly, if you know what you're doing. The disadvantage to CLIs is that, unlike GUIs, they offer absolutely no prompts - in a GUI there's always words or pictures at least labelling the buttons, even if it's just "load". Another "advantage" to GUIs is that they're "safe" - anything you want to do in a GUI requires at least 2 steps, so it's nearly impossible to do something dangerous accidentally (I'm counting loading the application as a step - in a CLI you can almost always open-and-execute-command in one step). This idea has become so deeply ingrained in people regarding computers (see: Any "hacker" in a movie, general societal impressions of 1980s supergeeks, etc). Most people are actually terrified of command prompts for this very reason - although they might describe it more as "it's confusing"/"I don't know what I'm doing here"/"What if I get it wrong and break something?". Hell, I remember being terrified of "breaking windows" the first time I opened command prompt to do something innocuous (maybe it was proper DOS back in those days though..).
This is basically why most geeks use CLIs when they can - because it's much faster and more efficient to do something you know how to do, while most newbs prefer GUIs - it's safe, easy, faster for doing multiple unrelated things at once, and they're used to it. Personally, I'm glad that there is this mindset - I'm getting a little tired of having to fix my friends' and parents' computers, I hate to think what damage they could accidentally do if they managed to get a dangerous command out in a command line (I can't imagine them accidentally deleting everything with a GUI - there's no one-step rm -rf or del/y C:\* for a GUI).
Don't laugh, my mother was roughed up by cardboard box goons only last week! The scariest part was when they used the double corrugated bats - she's lucky to still be alive..
I'm glad at the enormous figures involved here (one year x 15 million computers). Hopefully, it'll teach people to backup systematically, cleanly and frequently - after all, the arms race on malware/virii has led to better computer security policies and techniques, even if there were many casualties.
I'm surprised it hasn't come up here yet, but in the USA, I believe that ISPs can't snoop on their users' traffic if they wish to maintain their "common carrier" status. Basically, it means that if they do start prosecuting for piracy, then they'll have to make damn sure that they get every single one, otherwise they're legally liable for letting that one slip. But IANAA(merican), so I'm not certain whether this is 100% accurate.
(On topic) I'm surprised ISPs would shoot themselves in the foot like this - at least that's the one advantage of Australia's omniscent pay-for-your-usage plans, the biggest pirates are also making the ISPs the most money so they're unlikely to act against them.
Does it absorb other liquids as well? If this absorbent power works as well as advertised for other fluids, I may have to petition MIT to release this fabric in sock-form.
Oh.. umm, so I can uhh.. dry my feet. Yeah, that's it. Feet.
In the beginning, our leaders and lawmakers generally will just quietly make rational decisions based on ethical public policy and good technical input.
What? Lies! Politicians NEVER do anything quietly, rationally, or based on ethical public policy! Unless Canada's hogging them all - in which case, you may want to consider taking some of your so-called "honest" policians on a round-the-world tour - you'll make millions selling tickets to see these creatures!
Several celebrities came out in favour of the ammendment, stating that they were "excited, because their online content would now deliver all this new internet money". Other celebrities were not as elated about this bill, arguing that "You're not my buddy, guy".
1) Line up a patsy
2) Get some matches/lighter/firestarters
3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
4) Set up a webserver company
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun, and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market that isn't so overcrowded. Professional encryption/sensitive data management perhaps?
It's possible that America isn't the only place with a Ted Stevens in high places, claiming that the information regarding relief effort and coordination "got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.". From there, it's a short logical (logic? hah!) bound to say that cutting off all unrelated content will speed the recovery effort up (although there might be a grain of truth to this thought, if you could prove that Chinese pirates are taxing the infrastructure to the limit, which I highly doubt).
Does this guy do house calls? If so, my neighbour's laptop might need some "testing".. I know his sound system works thanks to his rigorous 24 hour full-volume test, but I'd like to be just as confident in his laptop's abilities as well.
Oh, and don't tell him you're testing it either. It's a ummmm..surprise birthday present from me. Yeah, that's it. Birthday present.
Am I the only one who thinks that it's a little odd that they used a moving parts hard disk drive for such a paltry amount of data? (If it was solid state then it'd be a power of 2, not a round number). Surely even 2003stonauts could have managed to put together more than 400MBs in solid state, thus saving power, size and reliability?
My kingdom for some mod points! I'm so glad that someone knowledgeable finally spoke out and dispelled this myth about how Muslims are all sand-bathing, car-bombing people who eat babies as they twirl their mustaches and cackle at their insidious plans! Corruption, greed, religious zealotry as propaganda, massive hypocrisy, warmongering leaders, secret clubs of the ruling elite? Why, they're more westernised that we are! Bravo!
That's only part of a party game called "kings". You take a deck of cards, go around in a circle drawing the cards.
A: Allocate one shot to somebody. 2: Allocate two shots to one or two people. 3: Allocate three shots to one, two or three people. 4: Bathroom card (return it to the bottom of the pile if you want to take a break - the game continues without you). 5: Guys take a shot. 6: Girls take a shot. 7: Everyone takes a shot. 8: "Buzz". 9: "Fountain" - you can't stop drinking until the person to your left stops. The first person who can stop is the person who pulled the card, the last is the one to their right. 10:"Pick-A-Topic" - pick a topic (States, prime numbers, etc), go around the circle giving examples - whoever can't think of one takes a shot. J: "Nose Game" - without revealing your card, subtly put your finger on your nose. Last person in the group to put their fingers on their nose takes a shot. Q: Queen's English - shot for each swear word for the next 3 turns (if your group don't normally swear, make this "no saying people's names"). K: Put a shot in the middle of the pile. Whoever puts the final king in has to take all 4 shots, and this ends the game.
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Yes, but it's 5000 words long. Who has time to read 5000 words?
... Privacy isn't about being different, and it isn't necessarily about being unpredictable (although that can help). The idea is to protect yourself from things like stalking, identify theft, targeted telemarketers, and even just the idea that someone you don't even know can have so much information about you. I don't consider myself overly interested in privacy, but I can see how someone might be.
Besides, even if they are carbon copies of one another (which technically you shouldn't be able to know, since the thing these people have in common is they hide their lives well), I don't see how that would diminish their point.
This isn't necessarily a problem with Microsoft/Windows (although they certainly could have had a better security system), it's a problem with monoculture. Each vulnerability discovered opens up mind-bogglingly large amounts of computers to hacking, so all of the black hats are focusing their efforts on one small goal (making at least one of them succeed very quickly). This also means that exploits relying on uncommon settings (ones that rely on the target having say, two separate unrelated applications installed) are researched, where they might not have been worth the effort otherwise.
Although you have a point about big companies stepping away from Microsoft. Linux is open source, no-architecture-lock-in, and comes with so many different distros with so many different default settings, that the monoculture problem would be replaced with many-more-but-easier-to-manageable problems (think "Asteroids"). The other advantage that a polyculture OS world would offer is halting the SPREAD of the virii - if an exploit relies on someone to have XYZ system/configuration, it wouldn't necessarily be able to spread through the "fire-breaks" of ABC or DEF systems/configurations (and since most home computers nowadays are Microsoft's XYZ systems/configurations, there's no "fire breaks").
*sigh*. Find a country that has more stringent gun control - but a higher gun-related crime-rate than USA, then maybe you'll have some credibility. Hell, I'd settle for a comparison between "crimes-thwarted-by-armed-joe-sixpacks" versus "crimes-committed-with-legally-purchased-guns" which favours the former situation (and no, don't tell me that the knowledge of armed victims scares would-be criminals into lawfulness, if it did you'd have less crime). Besides, any "law abiding citizen" can purchase a gun, and then become a "criminal" once they have it - it's not like would-be criminals are born with the word "DANGER" tattooed into their foreheads.
Yes, because poor people are useless.
Wow, it seems we're coming full circle with air travel..
"I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogiro?"
The thing about CLIs is that they do anything you want them to instantly, if you know what you're doing. The disadvantage to CLIs is that, unlike GUIs, they offer absolutely no prompts - in a GUI there's always words or pictures at least labelling the buttons, even if it's just "load". Another "advantage" to GUIs is that they're "safe" - anything you want to do in a GUI requires at least 2 steps, so it's nearly impossible to do something dangerous accidentally (I'm counting loading the application as a step - in a CLI you can almost always open-and-execute-command in one step). This idea has become so deeply ingrained in people regarding computers (see: Any "hacker" in a movie, general societal impressions of 1980s supergeeks, etc). Most people are actually terrified of command prompts for this very reason - although they might describe it more as "it's confusing"/"I don't know what I'm doing here"/"What if I get it wrong and break something?". Hell, I remember being terrified of "breaking windows" the first time I opened command prompt to do something innocuous (maybe it was proper DOS back in those days though..).
/y C:\* for a GUI).
This is basically why most geeks use CLIs when they can - because it's much faster and more efficient to do something you know how to do, while most newbs prefer GUIs - it's safe, easy, faster for doing multiple unrelated things at once, and they're used to it. Personally, I'm glad that there is this mindset - I'm getting a little tired of having to fix my friends' and parents' computers, I hate to think what damage they could accidentally do if they managed to get a dangerous command out in a command line (I can't imagine them accidentally deleting everything with a GUI - there's no one-step rm -rf or del
Don't laugh, my mother was roughed up by cardboard box goons only last week! The scariest part was when they used the double corrugated bats - she's lucky to still be alive..
Why do you think porn sprays are banned in most TF2/CS servers?
I'm glad at the enormous figures involved here (one year x 15 million computers). Hopefully, it'll teach people to backup systematically, cleanly and frequently - after all, the arms race on malware/virii has led to better computer security policies and techniques, even if there were many casualties.
I'm surprised it hasn't come up here yet, but in the USA, I believe that ISPs can't snoop on their users' traffic if they wish to maintain their "common carrier" status. Basically, it means that if they do start prosecuting for piracy, then they'll have to make damn sure that they get every single one, otherwise they're legally liable for letting that one slip. But IANAA(merican), so I'm not certain whether this is 100% accurate.
(On topic) I'm surprised ISPs would shoot themselves in the foot like this - at least that's the one advantage of Australia's omniscent pay-for-your-usage plans, the biggest pirates are also making the ISPs the most money so they're unlikely to act against them.
Thank God we live in the enlightened days of Web 2.0, in a bubble that will never burst!
Does it absorb other liquids as well? If this absorbent power works as well as advertised for other fluids, I may have to petition MIT to release this fabric in sock-form.
Oh.. umm, so I can uhh.. dry my feet. Yeah, that's it. Feet.
Several celebrities came out in favour of the ammendment, stating that they were "excited, because their online content would now deliver all this new internet money". Other celebrities were not as elated about this bill, arguing that "You're not my buddy, guy".
1) Line up a patsy
2) Get some matches/lighter/firestarters
3) Burn down all competing datacentres in your city
4) Set up a webserver company
Seriously though, it's an incredibly overcrowded market - if you have an idea on something new or innovative to offer, then by all means go for it. But as they say, there's nothing new under the sun, and you'd have much better luck trying to compete within a market that isn't so overcrowded. Professional encryption/sensitive data management perhaps?
It's possible that America isn't the only place with a Ted Stevens in high places, claiming that the information regarding relief effort and coordination "got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.". From there, it's a short logical (logic? hah!) bound to say that cutting off all unrelated content will speed the recovery effort up (although there might be a grain of truth to this thought, if you could prove that Chinese pirates are taxing the infrastructure to the limit, which I highly doubt).
Hey! So you're the one who sold me that "brand new core 2 duo 3 gb ram 250gb hdd 15.4" acer"!
Slashdot admins, I demand you ban this "Anonymous Coward" fellow's account. He's been nothing but trouble from day 1!
Does this guy do house calls? If so, my neighbour's laptop might need some "testing".. I know his sound system works thanks to his rigorous 24 hour full-volume test, but I'd like to be just as confident in his laptop's abilities as well.
Oh, and don't tell him you're testing it either. It's a ummmm..surprise birthday present from me. Yeah, that's it. Birthday present.
And when used in conjuction with the CD/DVD edition of AOL's Dream Machine, the Iraq war will have a 10 minute ceasefire every single night!
Am I the only one who thinks that it's a little odd that they used a moving parts hard disk drive for such a paltry amount of data? (If it was solid state then it'd be a power of 2, not a round number). Surely even 2003stonauts could have managed to put together more than 400MBs in solid state, thus saving power, size and reliability?
I'd be interested to know why debian was left out - it's widely used, and it's different enough from Ubuntu (despite Ubuntu being a fork of debian).
My kingdom for some mod points! I'm so glad that someone knowledgeable finally spoke out and dispelled this myth about how Muslims are all sand-bathing, car-bombing people who eat babies as they twirl their mustaches and cackle at their insidious plans! Corruption, greed, religious zealotry as propaganda, massive hypocrisy, warmongering leaders, secret clubs of the ruling elite? Why, they're more westernised that we are! Bravo!
Now to be fair, we Australians will probably hold the record for highest number of convicts per capita forever..
Nyah, nyah!
That's only part of a party game called "kings". You take a deck of cards, go around in a circle drawing the cards.
A: Allocate one shot to somebody.
2: Allocate two shots to one or two people.
3: Allocate three shots to one, two or three people.
4: Bathroom card (return it to the bottom of the pile if you want to take a break - the game continues without you).
5: Guys take a shot.
6: Girls take a shot.
7: Everyone takes a shot.
8: "Buzz".
9: "Fountain" - you can't stop drinking until the person to your left stops. The first person who can stop is the person who pulled the card, the last is the one to their right.
10:"Pick-A-Topic" - pick a topic (States, prime numbers, etc), go around the circle giving examples - whoever can't think of one takes a shot.
J: "Nose Game" - without revealing your card, subtly put your finger on your nose. Last person in the group to put their fingers on their nose takes a shot.
Q: Queen's English - shot for each swear word for the next 3 turns (if your group don't normally swear, make this "no saying people's names").
K: Put a shot in the middle of the pile. Whoever puts the final king in has to take all 4 shots, and this ends the game.