AFAIK, Washington doesn't really hand out checks for projects of that magnitude. Boston (my 2nd home) spent the better part of a decade planing and requesting funds for the Big Dig... so I really think it's the fault of New Orleans (and not Bush, for once).
But I wholeheartedly agree with you that Bush has grossly missused funds and manpower (THIS is what the Guard is for). My only bit of optimism out of this tragedy is that people realize the real threats to our cities, and how important it is to work towards a clean, sustainable, energy infrastructure.
Well its not that simple. Given the amount of oil in the gulf coast, and the amount of shipping going through the Mississippi, something HAS to be on the Louisana coast... its just unfortunate that the whole area is a bayou (must avoid Monty python references to Swamp Castle). There is a very good reason places like Nawlins flourish, the location isn't chosen randomly.
And these bad areas you refer to - what areas in the US are free from natural disasters? California is prone to earthquakes, the Southwest to extreme heat (brushfireds/drought/ect), the Midwest to tornadoes, and the North to blizzards & extreme cold. So that leaves everything north of the Gulf Coast and south of Maryland - which remains largely undeveloped due to the lack of waterways and safe inland ports.
a lack of preparation? New Orleans has known for a long time how vulnerable it was, but the levee system wasn't built to sustain anything above a category 3 storm.
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause.
I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
Why the Free State Project claims it is the best place to live: lowest state and local tax burden in the continental U.S., the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending in the U.S., a citizen legislature where state house representatives have not raised their $100 per year salary since 1889, the lowest crime levels in the U.S., a dynamic economy with plenty of jobs and investment, and a culture of individual responsibility indicated by, for example, a lack of seatbelt and helmet requirements for adults
BS. Anyone from the region knows that southern New Hampshire is a handful of third-tier cities feeding off of the Greater Boston are (Portsmouth/Salem/Manchester/ect), and the northern 2/3rds of the state is state is quaint vacation towns, ski resorts, and campgrounds. The only reason they're able to keep property taxes & crime down is because they have very few people there, and so much money coming in from well-to-do out of staters. Besides, State taxes are largely for roads and education - the real bloat is at the federal level.
New Hampshire has this whole 'live free or die' mantra because they hate taxes and love guns, but it's a rather naive mentality considering that the state is NOT self-sufficient, and that lax gun & environmental regulations would be an absolute disaster in any populated area.
Ohio has a growing population of young hackers and tech-enthusiasts
Sure, and then the good ones head to Silicon Valley and the Northeast.
Seriously though, I don't mean to troll. I know there's plenty of industry in Ohio. They're famous for Chem R&D (with P&G and whatnot)... but are there really any players in the software industry there? Most of the major tech conventions happen once on the west coast (usually SF, sometimes LA), often a second on the east coast (typicaly Boston or NY), and every now and then a third time in Chicago if there is enough interest. So is this thing really a big deal? And if so, what is the reason for holding it there?
Hey, Ohio and New Hampshire have done plenty of interesting things recently. Why without them, we wouldn't have re-elected a dangerously underquallified president, and we wouldn't have pruned out all of the interesting & capable Democrats from the primaries. Just imagine where we would be without them...
While I certainly understand why one would chose OOo over MSO (and vice versa) - I don't see any pressing reason for Massachusetts to make a total switch now.
Sure.doc is closed, but OOo does a damn good job figuring them out, and MS provides a free Document Reader - so it seems to me that the cited reasons of inter-office compatibility & free distribution to the public have already been achieved. Perhaps the real motivation is long term savings in software, and a very rational fear of the MS lisence?
And by the way, communism and naziism are not polar opposites. Really, we should be talking about facism rather than Naziism (as Naziism is just facism with racial overtones, specific to Hitler's Germany - and often used as hyperbole in these kinds of discussions). Anyways, they both ephasize the good over the good of the state, and communism requies a facist-like government to turn the wheels before dissolving into 'ideal' communism. Really, the the polar opposite of a Communist is an old school Republican or Libertarian (the current "Republicans" or neo-conservatives are closer to facists).
It doesn't matter, MS won't have to add anything. The article says every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007, it does NOT say state documents cannont be in.doc form. More than likely, this just means that public information will be available in multiple formats, one of which must be free.
Not really, because you're implying that the majority make money off of Linux rather than saving a few bucks by using it... systems people are needed regardless of the platform, and there are very few people paid to develop OS Linux-only apps (a number that won't change as long as it is mature as a server, and infintile as a desktop).
It's more of a political/religous idealology; kind of like how cult leaders gets when one of their own wants out.
I moved up to Canada so as to not pay US taxes (I am a us citizen.) So, don't blame Canada, the US screws them over every day
So let me get this striaght: you moved to Canada to avoid US taxes while enjoing the fruit of the US economy... and claim the Americans are screwing the Canadians? Interesting.
Probably none. Sure its a double standard, but would you rather trade places with any other nation?
But don't worry, much like the Europeans before us, our success has lead to decadence... it won't be long before we too fall from international relevance and can critque the rest of the world without being expected to be part of the solution.
Well I don't think there is any relationship between the industrial diamond market and the jewelry market , as imperfections/discoloration/ect is a wee bit more acceptable in drill bits & quite a bit of polishing/shaping goes into jewelry.
But frankly, of all the monopolies out there, I'm hardly concerned with the allged diamond one - they're anything but essential to daily life, so what if they gouge rich idiots? Really, the thing that burns me up about the diamond trade is the sheer number of Conflict Diamonds out there.
And by the way, whom is one attempting to impress with diamonds? I sure as hell can't tell the difference between a real diamond and a cubic zirconia - or even cheap cut glass - and I bet most people out there can't tell the difference either (sure, some women say they can, but I'd love to put them to the test). Never did understand the whole jewelry/fashion thing. Methinks I'm in the wrong industry... seems a lot easier to get rich by selling dumb women artificaly priced garbage rather than inventing/engineering useful things...
I wholehartedly agree. I'm a bit tired of all of these +5 Insightfull 'M$ is evil, x is better because it is Open Source' posts.
But back to the topic: I don't like comparing MS Office and OOo. Frankly, my fear is that OOo is trying to hard to simply clone every feature MS office - a rather tall order, and IMHO doomed to fail. The only advantage that OOo has is that it's free. Meaning that the target userbase would be home users/schools/nonprofit orgs who don't require all the bells and whistles of a html editor, advanced statistics functions, database integration, or mathcad mathcad/access clones. Anyone that requires said features certainly doesn't care less about droping a couple hundered on an industrial productivity suite.
Why the OOo crew is wasting precious development resources and bloating their code on this nonsense rather than producing a usable, streamlined app that is 'mostly' compatble with.doc,.xls, and.ppt and producing a decent port for the rapidly growing Mac userbase* is beyond me.
* Yes, I've heard of X11 emulation and NeoOffice. They're both, um, sub-optimal.
What's funny is that every one of those features is available today in a Linux distro near you. Yet still nobody listens and switches to linux in droves, but many wait for vista
Come on now, Linux has A LONG way to go to compete on the destop (I could rant about the inconsistent GUI/lack of human-readable documentation/the fsking packge system/endless config files/missing apps, but I digress).
The reality is that MS is terrified of OSX at this point. Mac is growing rapidly (I'd even call it trendy at this point) because of its rather attractive and functional GUI and stability, and Vista is nothing more than an attempt to close that gap. Really, 90% of the average Joe's complaints regarding Windows are issues with malware, and if MS can reduce that problem and throw in some eye candy to make Windows fun to use , Vista will be a roaring success.
OTOH, MS is losing to Linux BIG TIME in the server market. Ask Google, Yahoo, Ebay, or just about anybody who hosts large commercial sites what platform their backend is. MS simply has no advantage to Linux here - the TCO is comparable, but Linux wins in stability & licensing. Contrary to your belief, people are flocking to it in droves.
For the record, I'm not an OS zealot by any means. I use Linux on my workstation & home server (cheap, stable, great programming environment), Windows on my home desktop (I just want to watch movies and play Half-life), and my laptop is a Powerbook (I won't buy an expensive desktop that I can't fix/upgrade myself, but I can deal with it in a notebook - their stuff really is the best).
I don't know about Frist, a bit too crazy - but I'll put money down on Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (capable, right wing, and can win in the bluest of states) or Senator John McCain (the most honest and charismatic figure the party has had in years).
Regardless, right-wing politicians attacking stem-cell research is largely an election year show - just like abortion & gay marrage. When you can't win on your record, just energize you're base on emotional 'moral issues'. I doubt few of them actually care; look how much the discussion has quieted in the last 6 months despite several major breakthroughs in the science.
Well the code the I deal with at work is about 50% Java and 50% PHP. They were chosen over C# and ASP.NET for platform independence; we don't consider vendor lock-in and a costly OS 'free'..NET is great for quickly developing robust apps for windows users... but what else? Any one of these languages is just another tool, the reason there are so many is precicely because there is no be-all-end-all solution.
At least we know what the liberal politicians want to do with "fly-over-country". A vast zoo would certainly take care of all those people who voted conservative in the last election.
Its interesting how anyone can believe in a liberal conspiracy after seeing every great progressive leader of the 60's (JFK, RFK, King, ect) mysteriously assassinated and the subsequent shift to the right in American politics, the public crucificition of Clinton, and the cou'de'etat by GW Bush in front of our very eyes.
I also object to the use of the phrase 'all those people who voted conservative' - because really, the sheer number of sparsley populated midwest states has destroyed the balance of power in the senate & electoral college, disenfranchising more than a few people.
Um just about anywhere really. The population density of the US is actually very low, with the vast majority of living in cities along the Coasts/Great Lakes/Major Rivers. Conveniently enough, the natural habitat of lions/cheetahs/elephants is the African savannah, the closest match in the US would be the sparsley-populated midwestern plains.
Given that US population growth is comparitvely low & stable, that we have a food surplus, and that the midwest is largely an undesirable place to live - I don't forsee people flocking to these areas in desperate search for arable land anytime soon (along with poaching, the primary cause of problems in the African plains).
You've already got the monetary value of your opinion - free content & cheaper online prices.
Any content provider only has two realistic options for revenue - paid subscriptions and/or advertising. Online stores are able to undercut 'traditional' stores and operate on much thinner margins because of the lack of 'middlemen' and their ability to track user patterns and adjust their inventory rapidly. If you want content from somebody, is it unreasonable to ask for something of value from you? If you don't want to provide information, be preparied to provide $. Slashdotters can scream 'all information should be free' all they like, but I don't see to many giving away their work for free & paying for the hosting costs of a large distributed site.
Honestly, I think they are heros. Worms can do truely hideous things, the worms going around don't do anything that harmful. They are warnings that our infrastructure is unsafe
I don't buy that argument simply because the vast majority of these worms hitting MS machines come out after MS identifies or fixes the hole. They're letting MS tell them which piece of code is vunerable, and they're banking on the fact that so many windows users don't bother to patch regurlarly. I fail to see the heroism in that.
If you think that they "aren't doing anything that harmful", you're mistaken. The reason they don't trash the machine is simple - there is nothing to gain from doing so, and a dead machine can't propagate a worm. The point of infecting a home user's PC isn't to disrupt or steal from that user (its unlikely that there is anything more valuble on the machine than a low-limit CC#, if that), it's in having said PC's resources at your disposal. With a sufficently large zombie network you can go after something that actually matters.
I ask myself what drives the sick people who create such things
That can be said of any (non-victimless) crime really, and just about every crime out there is committed for money and/or passion (revenge, political/religious ideals, whatever). For the past couple years in the US, times have not been good for software engineers - the fortunate ones with jobs are often underpaid and overworked and considered dispensable. In Russia, where the mob has a rather large influence, there is money to be made of creating & selling zombie networks. To top it off, the largest software maker on the planet isn't exactly well liked to say the least. Sounds like an awful lot of educated people with awful good motives.
What can we do to provide more disincentives to keep them from being jerks?
Well, I would argue that alternate approach of fixing the problems I mentioned would be more productive. But, unless I'm missing something, the only possible disincentives are:
Appeal the the ethics of said would-be-criminals
Tougher laws & punishments
Improve computer literacy & demand better security from vendors
Given that the first is unlikely the second is moot when the problem frequently originates in places outside of your country's jurisdiction, it seems like there is only one thing you can do. I'd like to avoid the (very) tired Linux/Apple-vs-MS security debate here, because I think that user ignorance is by far the biggest problem (I'm well aware MS's *default* settings are inadequate - but that doesn't mean securing the box is impossible).
Unfortunately though, despite all of the worms/viruses we've seen and the amount of $ they've cost everybody, and despite how easy it is to properly secure a PC - the end user remains largely apathetic. I wonder, at what point can we hold software makers or even the end users responsible? I would argue that after a point, the ignorance could constitute negligence or even an accessory to the crime. I don't mean to blame the victim or sound like big brother here - but think about your car for a moment - you need inspection, registration, a license, and insurance just to run the damn thing. And if something on the vehicle breaks and causes an accident - a poorly maintained or defective part could hold you or the manufacturer responsible, respectivley.
There is no such think as UK English. It's English. Just because other cultures have bastardised it, it doesn't mean we have to accept it... I really hate when software only gives the choice of American English. Can we possibly have the options "Funny sounding, slurry English. Annoyingly brazen and talks about BBQ's English. I cannot understand a word of it, is it really English?
I can't stand this kind of pretentiousness from the British. Language is dynamic, deal with it (what gives with all of your silent u's, by the way?). The implication that all Americans are incoherent rednecks is as incorrect as asserting that every Brit is an illiterate Cockney-speaking retard.
Don't like the fact that US software is written for US English, and ports to other languages ant their leisure? Write your own. Oh wait, the entire industry is in San Fransisco, Boston, and Seattle.
I mean I'm aware you guys don't really like the fact that the people you didn't want on your foggy little island have surpassed you economically, technologically, militarily, and politically (present administration excluded, of course). We don't rip on you (much) for it, but to have the nerve to call us dumb? Really.
Sorry, that too was a rant just waiting to get out.
This technology is annoying because some researcher in some lab somewhere cooks up their perfect "metric" for what nice talk is, then it gets enforced on the rest of us, despite massive variation in speech patterns and types.
Indeed. I'm a New Englander myself, and if these MIT guys are using typical Bostonian speech patterns as the norm when measuring "levels of stress and empathy in a person's voice" (from TFA), I would assume that anyone with a melodic Irish or slight Southern accent would rate nicely, and determine that anyone with a Jersey accent is a complete prick. Which would probably be a lot closer to the truth than these researchers intended, particularly if said Jersey resident is talking baseball.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK, Washington doesn't really hand out checks for projects of that magnitude. Boston (my 2nd home) spent the better part of a decade planing and requesting funds for the Big Dig... so I really think it's the fault of New Orleans (and not Bush, for once).
But I wholeheartedly agree with you that Bush has grossly missused funds and manpower (THIS is what the Guard is for). My only bit of optimism out of this tragedy is that people realize the real threats to our cities, and how important it is to work towards a clean, sustainable, energy infrastructure.
Well its not that simple. Given the amount of oil in the gulf coast, and the amount of shipping going through the Mississippi, something HAS to be on the Louisana coast... its just unfortunate that the whole area is a bayou (must avoid Monty python references to Swamp Castle). There is a very good reason places like Nawlins flourish, the location isn't chosen randomly.
And these bad areas you refer to - what areas in the US are free from natural disasters? California is prone to earthquakes, the Southwest to extreme heat (brushfireds/drought/ect), the Midwest to tornadoes, and the North to blizzards & extreme cold. So that leaves everything north of the Gulf Coast and south of Maryland - which remains largely undeveloped due to the lack of waterways and safe inland ports.
a lack of preparation? New Orleans has known for a long time how vulnerable it was, but the levee system wasn't built to sustain anything above a category 3 storm.
The first rule of risk management is that the amount of time, effort, and money that you spend on security should be proprortional to the probability of a breach times the amount of damage it would cause. I guess Louisana didn't get the memo.
Why the Free State Project claims it is the best place to live: lowest state and local tax burden in the continental U.S., the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending in the U.S., a citizen legislature where state house representatives have not raised their $100 per year salary since 1889, the lowest crime levels in the U.S., a dynamic economy with plenty of jobs and investment, and a culture of individual responsibility indicated by, for example, a lack of seatbelt and helmet requirements for adults
BS. Anyone from the region knows that southern New Hampshire is a handful of third-tier cities feeding off of the Greater Boston are (Portsmouth/Salem/Manchester/ect), and the northern 2/3rds of the state is state is quaint vacation towns, ski resorts, and campgrounds. The only reason they're able to keep property taxes & crime down is because they have very few people there, and so much money coming in from well-to-do out of staters. Besides, State taxes are largely for roads and education - the real bloat is at the federal level.
New Hampshire has this whole 'live free or die' mantra because they hate taxes and love guns, but it's a rather naive mentality considering that the state is NOT self-sufficient, and that lax gun & environmental regulations would be an absolute disaster in any populated area.
Ohio has a growing population of young hackers and tech-enthusiasts
Sure, and then the good ones head to Silicon Valley and the Northeast.
Seriously though, I don't mean to troll. I know there's plenty of industry in Ohio. They're famous for Chem R&D (with P&G and whatnot)... but are there really any players in the software industry there? Most of the major tech conventions happen once on the west coast (usually SF, sometimes LA), often a second on the east coast (typicaly Boston or NY), and every now and then a third time in Chicago if there is enough interest. So is this thing really a big deal? And if so, what is the reason for holding it there?
Hey, Ohio and New Hampshire have done plenty of interesting things recently. Why without them, we wouldn't have re-elected a dangerously underquallified president, and we wouldn't have pruned out all of the interesting & capable Democrats from the primaries. Just imagine where we would be without them...
While I certainly understand why one would chose OOo over MSO (and vice versa) - I don't see any pressing reason for Massachusetts to make a total switch now. Sure .doc is closed, but OOo does a damn good job figuring them out, and MS provides a free Document Reader - so it seems to me that the cited reasons of inter-office compatibility & free distribution to the public have already been achieved. Perhaps the real motivation is long term savings in software, and a very rational fear of the MS lisence?
And by the way, communism and naziism are not polar opposites. Really, we should be talking about facism rather than Naziism (as Naziism is just facism with racial overtones, specific to Hitler's Germany - and often used as hyperbole in these kinds of discussions). Anyways, they both ephasize the good over the good of the state, and communism requies a facist-like government to turn the wheels before dissolving into 'ideal' communism. Really, the the polar opposite of a Communist is an old school Republican or Libertarian (the current "Republicans" or neo-conservatives are closer to facists).
It doesn't matter, MS won't have to add anything. The article says every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007, it does NOT say state documents cannont be in .doc form. More than likely, this just means that public information will be available in multiple formats, one of which must be free.
Not really, because you're implying that the majority make money off of Linux rather than saving a few bucks by using it... systems people are needed regardless of the platform, and there are very few people paid to develop OS Linux-only apps (a number that won't change as long as it is mature as a server, and infintile as a desktop).
It's more of a political/religous idealology; kind of like how cult leaders gets when one of their own wants out.
Sure, but when the basis of comparison is Houston, what isn't cute?
I moved up to Canada so as to not pay US taxes (I am a us citizen.) So, don't blame Canada, the US screws them over every day
So let me get this striaght: you moved to Canada to avoid US taxes while enjoing the fruit of the US economy... and claim the Americans are screwing the Canadians? Interesting.
Probably none. Sure its a double standard, but would you rather trade places with any other nation?
But don't worry, much like the Europeans before us, our success has lead to decadence... it won't be long before we too fall from international relevance and can critque the rest of the world without being expected to be part of the solution.
Well I don't think there is any relationship between the industrial diamond market and the jewelry market , as imperfections/discoloration/ect is a wee bit more acceptable in drill bits & quite a bit of polishing/shaping goes into jewelry.
But frankly, of all the monopolies out there, I'm hardly concerned with the allged diamond one - they're anything but essential to daily life, so what if they gouge rich idiots? Really, the thing that burns me up about the diamond trade is the sheer number of Conflict Diamonds out there.
And by the way, whom is one attempting to impress with diamonds? I sure as hell can't tell the difference between a real diamond and a cubic zirconia - or even cheap cut glass - and I bet most people out there can't tell the difference either (sure, some women say they can, but I'd love to put them to the test). Never did understand the whole jewelry/fashion thing. Methinks I'm in the wrong industry... seems a lot easier to get rich by selling dumb women artificaly priced garbage rather than inventing/engineering useful things...
I wholehartedly agree. I'm a bit tired of all of these +5 Insightfull 'M$ is evil, x is better because it is Open Source' posts.
.doc, .xls, and .ppt and producing a decent port for the rapidly growing Mac userbase* is beyond me.
But back to the topic: I don't like comparing MS Office and OOo. Frankly, my fear is that OOo is trying to hard to simply clone every feature MS office - a rather tall order, and IMHO doomed to fail. The only advantage that OOo has is that it's free. Meaning that the target userbase would be home users/schools/nonprofit orgs who don't require all the bells and whistles of a html editor, advanced statistics functions, database integration, or mathcad mathcad/access clones. Anyone that requires said features certainly doesn't care less about droping a couple hundered on an industrial productivity suite.
Why the OOo crew is wasting precious development resources and bloating their code on this nonsense rather than producing a usable, streamlined app that is 'mostly' compatble with
* Yes, I've heard of X11 emulation and NeoOffice. They're both, um, sub-optimal.
What's funny is that every one of those features is available today in a Linux distro near you. Yet still nobody listens and switches to linux in droves, but many wait for vista
Come on now, Linux has A LONG way to go to compete on the destop (I could rant about the inconsistent GUI/lack of human-readable documentation/the fsking packge system/endless config files/missing apps, but I digress).
The reality is that MS is terrified of OSX at this point. Mac is growing rapidly (I'd even call it trendy at this point) because of its rather attractive and functional GUI and stability, and Vista is nothing more than an attempt to close that gap. Really, 90% of the average Joe's complaints regarding Windows are issues with malware, and if MS can reduce that problem and throw in some eye candy to make Windows fun to use , Vista will be a roaring success.
OTOH, MS is losing to Linux BIG TIME in the server market. Ask Google, Yahoo, Ebay, or just about anybody who hosts large commercial sites what platform their backend is. MS simply has no advantage to Linux here - the TCO is comparable, but Linux wins in stability & licensing. Contrary to your belief, people are flocking to it in droves.
For the record, I'm not an OS zealot by any means. I use Linux on my workstation & home server (cheap, stable, great programming environment), Windows on my home desktop (I just want to watch movies and play Half-life), and my laptop is a Powerbook (I won't buy an expensive desktop that I can't fix/upgrade myself, but I can deal with it in a notebook - their stuff really is the best).
I don't know about Frist, a bit too crazy - but I'll put money down on Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (capable, right wing, and can win in the bluest of states) or Senator John McCain (the most honest and charismatic figure the party has had in years).
Regardless, right-wing politicians attacking stem-cell research is largely an election year show - just like abortion & gay marrage. When you can't win on your record, just energize you're base on emotional 'moral issues'. I doubt few of them actually care; look how much the discussion has quieted in the last 6 months despite several major breakthroughs in the science.
How will AMD react?
Probably by selling another superior chip for substantialy less, only to be largely shut out of the market by supply problems and PC maker contracts.
Well the code the I deal with at work is about 50% Java and 50% PHP. They were chosen over C# and ASP.NET for platform independence; we don't consider vendor lock-in and a costly OS 'free'. .NET is great for quickly developing robust apps for windows users... but what else? Any one of these languages is just another tool, the reason there are so many is precicely because there is no be-all-end-all solution.
At least we know what the liberal politicians want to do with "fly-over-country". A vast zoo would certainly take care of all those people who voted conservative in the last election.
Its interesting how anyone can believe in a liberal conspiracy after seeing every great progressive leader of the 60's (JFK, RFK, King, ect) mysteriously assassinated and the subsequent shift to the right in American politics, the public crucificition of Clinton, and the cou'de'etat by GW Bush in front of our very eyes.
I also object to the use of the phrase 'all those people who voted conservative' - because really, the sheer number of sparsley populated midwest states has destroyed the balance of power in the senate & electoral college, disenfranchising more than a few people.
Um just about anywhere really. The population density of the US is actually very low, with the vast majority of living in cities along the Coasts/Great Lakes/Major Rivers. Conveniently enough, the natural habitat of lions/cheetahs/elephants is the African savannah, the closest match in the US would be the sparsley-populated midwestern plains.
Given that US population growth is comparitvely low & stable, that we have a food surplus, and that the midwest is largely an undesirable place to live - I don't forsee people flocking to these areas in desperate search for arable land anytime soon (along with poaching, the primary cause of problems in the African plains).
I want the monetary value of my opinion
You've already got the monetary value of your opinion - free content & cheaper online prices.
Any content provider only has two realistic options for revenue - paid subscriptions and/or advertising. Online stores are able to undercut 'traditional' stores and operate on much thinner margins because of the lack of 'middlemen' and their ability to track user patterns and adjust their inventory rapidly. If you want content from somebody, is it unreasonable to ask for something of value from you? If you don't want to provide information, be preparied to provide $. Slashdotters can scream 'all information should be free' all they like, but I don't see to many giving away their work for free & paying for the hosting costs of a large distributed site.
Honestly, I think they are heros. Worms can do truely hideous things, the worms going around don't do anything that harmful. They are warnings that our infrastructure is unsafe
I don't buy that argument simply because the vast majority of these worms hitting MS machines come out after MS identifies or fixes the hole. They're letting MS tell them which piece of code is vunerable, and they're banking on the fact that so many windows users don't bother to patch regurlarly. I fail to see the heroism in that.
If you think that they "aren't doing anything that harmful", you're mistaken. The reason they don't trash the machine is simple - there is nothing to gain from doing so, and a dead machine can't propagate a worm. The point of infecting a home user's PC isn't to disrupt or steal from that user (its unlikely that there is anything more valuble on the machine than a low-limit CC#, if that), it's in having said PC's resources at your disposal. With a sufficently large zombie network you can go after something that actually matters.
That can be said of any (non-victimless) crime really, and just about every crime out there is committed for money and/or passion (revenge, political/religious ideals, whatever). For the past couple years in the US, times have not been good for software engineers - the fortunate ones with jobs are often underpaid and overworked and considered dispensable. In Russia, where the mob has a rather large influence, there is money to be made of creating & selling zombie networks. To top it off, the largest software maker on the planet isn't exactly well liked to say the least. Sounds like an awful lot of educated people with awful good motives.
What can we do to provide more disincentives to keep them from being jerks?
Well, I would argue that alternate approach of fixing the problems I mentioned would be more productive. But, unless I'm missing something, the only possible disincentives are:
Given that the first is unlikely the second is moot when the problem frequently originates in places outside of your country's jurisdiction, it seems like there is only one thing you can do. I'd like to avoid the (very) tired Linux/Apple-vs-MS security debate here, because I think that user ignorance is by far the biggest problem (I'm well aware MS's *default* settings are inadequate - but that doesn't mean securing the box is impossible).
Unfortunately though, despite all of the worms/viruses we've seen and the amount of $ they've cost everybody, and despite how easy it is to properly secure a PC - the end user remains largely apathetic. I wonder, at what point can we hold software makers or even the end users responsible? I would argue that after a point, the ignorance could constitute negligence or even an accessory to the crime. I don't mean to blame the victim or sound like big brother here - but think about your car for a moment - you need inspection, registration, a license, and insurance just to run the damn thing. And if something on the vehicle breaks and causes an accident - a poorly maintained or defective part could hold you or the manufacturer responsible, respectivley.
There is no such think as UK English. It's English. Just because other cultures have bastardised it, it doesn't mean we have to accept it ... I really hate when software only gives the choice of American English. Can we possibly have the options "Funny sounding, slurry English. Annoyingly brazen and talks about BBQ's English. I cannot understand a word of it, is it really English?
I can't stand this kind of pretentiousness from the British. Language is dynamic, deal with it (what gives with all of your silent u's, by the way?). The implication that all Americans are incoherent rednecks is as incorrect as asserting that every Brit is an illiterate Cockney-speaking retard.
Don't like the fact that US software is written for US English, and ports to other languages ant their leisure? Write your own. Oh wait, the entire industry is in San Fransisco, Boston, and Seattle.
I mean I'm aware you guys don't really like the fact that the people you didn't want on your foggy little island have surpassed you economically, technologically, militarily, and politically (present administration excluded, of course). We don't rip on you (much) for it, but to have the nerve to call us dumb? Really.
Sorry, that too was a rant just waiting to get out.
This technology is annoying because some researcher in some lab somewhere cooks up their perfect "metric" for what nice talk is, then it gets enforced on the rest of us, despite massive variation in speech patterns and types.
Indeed. I'm a New Englander myself, and if these MIT guys are using typical Bostonian speech patterns as the norm when measuring "levels of stress and empathy in a person's voice" (from TFA), I would assume that anyone with a melodic Irish or slight Southern accent would rate nicely, and determine that anyone with a Jersey accent is a complete prick. Which would probably be a lot closer to the truth than these researchers intended, particularly if said Jersey resident is talking baseball.