I'm not sure you did. His argument was that any technology has the potential for misuse - essentially, that dictators will repress their people with or without this particular piece of assistive technology. Therefore, the conclusion seems to be that any concern about the ease & scale at which a technology enables said repression is misplaced, and irrelevant.
The laptop's usefulness outweighs the near-zero access to information they had before.
The laptop's usefulness to who? Do you really think a repressive regime is going to say, "Well, we don't want you to access that information, but hey it's the internet, have at it?" Or is it more likely that people accessing "unauthorized" content will be flagged & targeted, and that this security system makes flagging that access orders of magnitude easier for the government?
As far as surveillance, that happens on any network, all the time. We're only quibbling about the degree, not if.
And so since it "happens on any network", it's not worth being concerned about?
I'm not sure I understand your point. Or are you not making one?
This system provides a ready-made, wide-scale system for any government to track your internet usage, and then decide "you, right there, you've had enough internet exposure to progressive ideas, no more internet for you. And we'll be by with cable ties & a black hood later on, so you might want to say goodbye to your family and friends."
There is a very real concern here. Dismissing it because "well, anything can be abused, really," is downright retarded. Google and Yahoo, to name 2, have been roundly slagged for making it easier for repressive governments to control their citizenry. I see no reason why the OLPC (and any other project using this technology) should be given a free pass in this regard.
Unless the point is that OLPC seems to be the Open Source advocate's wet dream, and so any negative mention of it is met with knee-jerk ranting and/or hand-waving dismissal?
True, this all is quite a problem, but for every problem, there's a solution. For every surveillance method, there's some talented kid out there figuring a way to circumvent it.
Just as likely, for every talented kid figuring out a way to circumvent the system, there'll be a government agency ready to arrest him and throw him in jail for his troubles...
When hacking becomes, quite literally, a matter of life and death, rather than a cool geek adventure like WarGames, you might be surprised at how quickly the luster fades, and how quickly you'll see that band of merry rebels shrinking.
I think the point of TFA is that the OLPC's security system can be mis-used as an assistive technology for those dictators in their efforts to control their people.
What makes you think that anyone else wants to hear you rant about your personal religious views.
Given the length & intensity of your posts in this thread, the fact that you made that statement is curious.
Here's the full text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Read it closely. The First Amendment prevents the state from establishing a state religion, or restricting people's rights to practice their religion as they see fit. There is no guarantee that someone's religious views won't be offensive to you. There is no provision that politicians must, in an official capacity, disavow any notion of religion or god. They must respect their constitutional obligation to not try to establish a state religion, nor attempt to legislatively restrict the right of citizens to practice religion however they see fit.
A politician talking about religion is *not* the same as a politician establishing a state religion, or attempting to compel you to follow his religion of choice. A politician's religious stance may be offensive, silly, or wrong to you, but if you can point out the part of the Constitution that guarantees your right to not be offended, or have to witness silly & stupid public statements, I should love to see it.
The actual patent in question is posted here, I think. This looks like the system they're describing in the article.
I have to admit, this strikes me as more of a "help" or "usability testing" type of system. The computer thinks you're trying to do X, detects what it believes to be frustration, and checks to see if you need help performing activity X. I don't see much in the patent application saying anything about the users being monitored by managers to see if they're meeting performance goals. I will admit I haven't read the entire patent application, I'm not a lawyer and probably wouldn't understand it fully even if I did read the whole thing... but cursory examination seems to indicate that this patent application is nowhere near the alarming privacy violation that TFS or TFA seem to indicate.
I know that, here on/., Microsoft is judged guilty of any accusation levelled against them by virtue of their name, but you *might* (just might) want to read the patent in question for yourself before you jump to conclusions.
False Dilemma: "The informal fallacy of false dilemma--also known as false choice, false dichotomy, falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false correlative, either/or fallacy, and bifurcation--involves a situation in which two alternative statements are held to be the only possible options, when in reality there exists one or more other options which have not been considered."
Standards are attempts to make a set of behaviors explicit & well-defined -- they are the requirements document which developers work from when they attempt to implement a standards-compliant program. As such, they need to be very clear about what is and what is not allowed, and avoid making lots of limp-wristed "should" and "may" statements -- if you're not willing to say, "this is required," then why put it in the standard if standards implementers are free to disregard it as they see fit?
You're right -- the entire standard is optional to begin with. So why include a bunch of optional recommendations that just allow standards implementers to claim compliance with the standard while ignoring the sections of the standard that are optional and hard to implement? Think about it:
If Apple can legitimately claim HTML5 compliance for Safari while not supporting Ogg Theora; AND
If Mozilla can legitimately claim HTML5 compliance for Firefox while supporting Ogg Theora;
Then what's the point of "recommending" Ogg Theora in the standard to begin with? It's not required, so as someone writing code to be rendered in an HTML5-compliant browser, you can't assume it's supported.
Reading Ian's remarks, and the new paragraph in the spec, it sounds like they recognize the need for some sort of baseline standard audio/video codec in HTML5, and I agree that that's beneficial, and a net good for the standard -- but if they're not willing to say it's required, then including it as "just a recommendation" is simply a way of ensuring that the current confusion and lack of standards continues, while loudly claiming that you've addressed the problem, and I think that would be a net "bad thing" for the standard.
Replace the company name and the subject being discussed, and his argument would be accepted much more readily. Using "Microsoft" would be far too easy, so try it with a company you have a neutral opinion of - perhaps a waste management company. If they go into detail on all the areas of ecology that they are doing well at, and another organization points out major (to them) factors not covered by the company's statement, you're going to naturally assume that it's for the usual reasons - specifically, that PR departments tend to ignore or downplay shortcomings. That's not always the case, and probably is not in the case of Nintendo, but the logic is defensible, at least as a reasonable opinion to express.
No, I would call it what it is: a poorly researched hatchet job, even if it was directed at a company I dislike, much less one I'm neutral about. If Greenpeace had made the request to Nintendo, and Nintendo refused, then Greenpeace would be *reasonably* able to state, "We feel that Nintendo may have something to hide, because they're being far less than fully open about their environment track record. We're going to continue investigating, and report back with our findings!" Instead, they're saying, "Nintendo's web site doesn't fully disclose their environmental practices, therefore they're guilty of poisoning the environment."
The GP poster reasoned that:
Nintendo seems to have a Jobs-like Reality Distortion Field over many, if not most, Slashdot posters & editors
Nintendo does not post the details of their environmental policies & practices on their website
Therefore, Greenpeace is *probably* right.
I don't know what you consider trolling, but I consider insulting most of the readers of the site, and then following that up with a logical fallacy to argue the merits of a Greenpeace study that had nothing but a passing familiarity with facts & data, "Trolling."
And for the record, I *don't* own a Nintendo system, and I never have. So I'm not one of the people for whom mention of Nintendo causes logic to vanish.
Yes, he does deserve to be modded Troll. His logic proclaims that Nintendo is guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Since when does failing to mention that you *don't* do something bad conclusive proof that you *must* do it?
but my experience has been that if a company doesn't mention something, it's for a reason. If Nintendo is willing to brag about environmental steps they've taken, they're going to throw everything that possibly makes them look good in there. They're not going to fail to mention something positive out of humility or anything.
Do you realize how ridiculous that logic is? If you don't publicly state that you're NOT doing something, then you MUST be doing it?
Let's try the same logic with a twist...
"My experience has been that if you don't make the claim that you're not a child-molesting pederast in every Slashdot post, it's for a reason. If you're willing to brag about how you're not a baby-molesting pervert, then you're going to throw everything that possibly makes you look good in that post. You're not going to fail to mention something positivie out of humility or anything."
Can you spot the logical flaws with your argument now?
I'll second this -- and I can't provide links either. I do remember reading an article about this study, and that most peoples' musical tastes were more or less "fixed" by the time they were 25 - 30 years old, with very little "new stuff" making it into their playlists.
Anecdotally, having just turned 32, it seems that the iPod is also helping this phenomenon a bit. The "most often played" playlist gets a lot of use for me -- I've got hundreds of songs that I know I love ready to play in an instant... why go look for new stuff that I may not like? I find myself relying on my ipod & my sirius receiver almost exclusively for any listening I do... I honestly can't recall the last time I turned on an FM station in the Boston area and really found anything that excited me.
What's so revolutionary about a web page with a database back end and some automated scripts that run to send out some notifications here and there?
What's so revolutionary about a pile of steel, rubber, and glass? Hint: It's not the components that give it value, it's the use to which those components are put.
'Social networking' is a particular use to which web pages, databases, and automated scripts *may* be put. Is it revolutionary in the sense that it will change the world? Probably not... it is, after all, a fancy web email application. Facebook is an evolution of earlier "social" sites... they are arguably revolutionary in their "platform" approach to this particular domain, but I don't see them fundamentally changing society by allowing you to communicate with your friends using a web page.
This 'social networking' buzzword/fad is retarded.
I agree that it's probably overblown - I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe Facebook is going to somehow revolutionize how I interact with people, at least. But dismissing the "social networking buzzword / fad" by using your reductionist line of logic ("it's just a database and some scripts!") is pretty retarded, too.
Well said. Perhaps the best way of summing up vernacular usage:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Inigo Montoya
Let's not forget that the law is also not a binary domain -- there's lots of gray area subject to interpretation. No matter how precise we try to be, there's always going to be areas that are subjective, and so those areas will constantly be "patched" with changes that attempt to more precisely define the limits & boundaries of what is and is not legal behavior. Laws attempt to impose a digital model on analog reality, which of course means that you're never going to get it "just right", unless you do away with all laws that do not have an objective criterion. (Not a good solution either, unless you think it's justice to treat someone involved in an accidental death in the same way as another person who commits premeditated murder.)
Given that these legal "patches" occur over hundreds of years of case law & precedent, changing circumstances, and evolving social standards, is it any wonder that we're left with a morass of conflicting & loophole-ridden laws? Look at 10 year old software, which applies to a much smaller binary domain, and you see the same problem in miniature.
And again, you've reduced the point to an absurdity and attacked that. Are you really claiming that there is no possible way for a fan of Stephen King's writing to enjoy any books that are *not* by Stephen King? Are you really claiming that there is no possible way for a fan of Warcraft to enjoy any MMO except for Warcraft? Go back and look at your response, and try to explain to me how that's NOT what you're saying. Unless you'd like to use the Wookie Defense?
The point is, if you enjoy Warcraft, and Blizzard changes the game in a way that makes it *NOT* enjoyable (or not AS enjoyable) anymore for you, then you have two options:
Keep paying them US$15 per month.
DON'T keep paying them US$15 per month.
Of those two, which do you think is going to make Blizzard sit up & take notice more? I'm guessing that a company whose primary goal is to produce software that sells is going to take notice if they stop receiving money from a substantial chunk of their devoted players. Much more so than a petition saying, "Well, you know, if you don't stop doing this, we'll keep paying you, but we'll be REALLY unhappy about it and write whiny blog posts."
If you want to effect change in a marketplace, the most *effective* way of doing this is to prove to the business that it's in their best interests to make that change. You do this by either:
Showing them there's a cost to not doing something (I won't buy your tuna if you don't use dolphin safe nets)
Showing them there's a potential profit to be made (I'll buy that show on DVD if you release it.)
If one were to look at the publishing industry with a magnifying glass, one would see all sorts of hideous warts; the way they treat most authors is abominable, their editorial policies are groupthink L.C.D. crap, etc. etc.. And yet, I think it would be plainly idiotic to suggest to a person that they should just stop reading books because there are problems with the way books are provided as a product.
Actually, in point of fact, what was said was that "if you don't like how WoW provides their product, move to a different, competing product that provides the service in a way you like."
You're twisting that with your book analogy by saying that it's akin to telling somebody "don't read books." It would have a much closer kinship with saying "Buy books from a publishing house that has sensible editorial policies and treats authors well." Which is actually a very reasonable thing to do, come to think of it.
What you've done, perhaps unwittingly, is created a straw man argument. And while you've managed to get lots of sound & fury out of it, the fact remains that you're arguing against a point that the person you're responding to didn't make.
With Vista, "We've eclipsed the entire Apple installed in the first five months of sales," Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, told attendees of FAM.
I find it amusing that sucn an insignificant thorn to MS rates a comparative mention... "We've totally outsold that dinky 5%-of-the-market guy." Why even bring them up or mention them if they're such an insignificant portion of the market?
even if the Apple user base doubles 3 or 4 times, it would still be irrelevant to MS...
Let's run some numbers. First, Apple currently has about 6% of the market, based on the most recent numbers I've seen. Second, I'll be generous and assume you meant "even if the Apple user base grows to 3 or 4 times its present size," since what you actually wrote indicated that Apple would grow to 48 or 96% of the market.
Now, do you *really* think that Microsoft wouldn't take notice if 18% - 24% of the desktop market was owned by Apple? That they wouldn't notice that 1 in 4 or 5 desktops are Macs? I'd humbly submit that if they disregarded that, it would constitute criminal disregard for their fiduciary obligations as a publicly held company!
No, Macs are not about to take over the world in the next 6 months. But they (or someone else) will manage to do so at some point in the next few years if Microsoft ignores those "insignificant" upstarts that only hold a few percent of the market. Happened to IBM, didn't it?
Actually, yes, I do disagree. A successful malware attack requires two things:
A large enough install base to make the return worth your while. Macs are certainly reaching that point.
A piece of software that's easily exploitable to get privileges that are worthwile.
By your reasoning, Linux, Mac OS X, and commercial Unix variants should be seeing an ever-increasing load of threats and exploits in the wild, and that's simply not happening. Of course there will always be malware produced for any OS... but Unix is *harder to attack* in a way that will give you complete admin control of a system to use for sending Spam, starting DDoS attacks, etc.
No rational person would claim that it's impossible to attack any Operating system. But your claim that "macs becoming more popular" will cause more malware to be written for it is logically inaccurate, because you're claiming that the only thing causing the creation of malware for Windows is a large install base, and that if the situation were reversed, and Unix-based OS'es had 90% of the market, they'd be rife with malware and viruses as well.
Finish this sentence for me, please: Defaulting to automatically opening disk images, when there are known instances of specially crafted.dmg files causing kernel panics and buffer overruns is considered a "secure" practice because . . . ?
Besides, when you have installed enough innocent stuff which windows frowns upon because it's unsigned you are not going to mind the warning dialog anyway. Are you sure that the problem between keyboard and chair will react differently on OSX vs. Windows?
No, most probably won't react differently. But that's not a valid reason to ship Safari with a default setting that helps you along in the process of hosing your system. There are known issues in Disk Image (.dmg) handling on Mac OS X which can result in kernel panics and overrun scenarios... automatically opening every.dmg you download from the internet is an unsafe practice, no matter how you parse it, and regardless of how big or small your install base is. You've put a setting out there that people don't know about and which can surprise them in very nasty ways. Turn it off, and let *them* decide to take the risk if they choose to.
No, you never *stated* that it was more insecure. What you stated was misinformation and uncertainty intended to imply that Mac OS X is just as insecure as Windows, perhaps even more so.
This is a textbook example of FUD in action -- criticize Mac OS X based on data you don't have, but which "may" someday be shown to exist. If you make a statement about the security of a system based solely on uncertain speculation, expect to have it called out as FUD, because it is.
Hell, for all we know OSX is just as insecure if not MORE insecure than Windows...people just haven't been making the effort to discover flaws because it wasn't worth the time. With the number of Macs in households growing every day (especially in light of Vista), it is becoming more and more worth the time of malware developers to target Mac systems...
I like your FUD... where can I get some?
Seriously, dude. I'm not going to claim that Macs are somehow magically "totally secure"... but given that Unix operating systems have been around for many years, and they are still nowhere near as rife with exploits, malware and other crap as the Windows ecosystem... don't you think you're overstating the case a bit?
And if you think you're not, then what's your response to all the Linux users who claim that their Unix underpinnings make them much more secure than Windows?
If you're stupid enough to go through all of those steps, you deserve to be infected.
One more time. You're an idiot.
This is an *insecure* default setting. I don't care if it asks you for an admin password, automatically running things downloaded from the internet shouldn't ever be a "default".
This is not a NEW "exploit", I remember hearing about this same exploit in a different form at least a year and a half ago. Apple had plenty of time to disable this feature (or at least turn it off so people would HAVE to do the "dumb" thing and re-enable it) and they have not.
The asshats who write these trojans cost EVERYBODY time, money, and effort. If it were limited in effect to the dumb user, a la "oops, I deleted some files I didn't want to delete!", it would be *slightly* better. But identity theft, break-ins, DDoS attacks, spam, etc. are all costly effects of these "dumb" users "getting what they deserve."
I'm an apple user. I own several of their systems, and find them -- on the whole -- to be incredibly fun and easy to use. But Apple shouldn't get a free pass on this (nor should Microsoft, nor should Canonical or any other Linux distro). By setting this trivial "convenience" up by default, they've made their system more insecure. Yes, there are still people who will double-goddamn-click on anything and everything, but let's at least make it harder for the simpletons to inconvenience all of us. It would be a fairly simple fix for them to make, and one which they should have made a long time back.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -- John F. Kennedy
As others have pointed out, this has exactly zero to do with "terrorism", "George Bush", "religious fundamentalism", or some sort of war against reason. Chemistry sets being "dumbed down" so that kids have to really TRY to kill themselves has been happening for a LONG time before any of those were hot-button issues.
I remember playing with the chemistry set my parents bought for me & my brothers 20 years ago, and finding that just about the only thing I could do with it was make some liquids that stank like old gym socks, and some other liquids that changed colors. This is a safety trend... for the same reason that, 20 years ago, I rode my bike all over town with no helmet on, and now, my parents would be locked up and I'd be a ward of the state if I didn't leave the house with training wheels, a full helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. Our overly litigious nanny state has caused these changes. It has nothing to do with some sweeping anti-terror law.
But you know, I suppose it's more convenient to somehow place all of these developments and social changes at the feet of the Patriot Act and George Bush, because as JFK pointed out... it's a lot easier (and a sight more comfortable) to simply form an opinion, facts be damned.
You've actually got it backwards, and I have to question whether you've actually ever spent more than a few minutes around a 3 year old. Here's why:
Young children mimic the behaviors of the adults around them. It's how they learn to normalize their behavior.
Young children do not have sufficient mental sophistication to deduce that it's okay and funny to hit a punching bag that *looks* like Uncle Matt, but that it's not okay and funny to hit *Uncle Matt*. They must be taught, and this is why you'll often hear parents correcting their young children with statements like, "We don't hit other people!" and "Hitting is not nice!"
Now, assuming you have a firm grounding from a young age, and adults around you who actually pattern "good" behavior for you to emulate, then yes, you're not going to have much difficulty distinguishing a video game behavior from a real behavior. But the simple fact is, if you behave violently around a 3 year old, they do pick up that cue, and learn that hitting things is okay -- they will not deduce these rules until much later -- *if they're lucky* -- when they've reached sufficient logical development that they can understand the simple rules that could have been imparted to them as children.
So if you've been taught at a young age that violence is not right, then you will probably not be adversely affected by a video game showing you violent behavior when you're old enough to distinguish between fantasy and reality. But if you learn that violence is "normal" at a young age, what will that video game show you? That fantasy and reality are vastly different?
I agree that understanding the difference between "real life" and "gaming" is critical, and that many -- perhaps the vast majority -- of people are able to be mindful of the difference. But your analogy to demonstrate this is flawed... there's reams of data showing that children who witness significant violence are more likely to grow up to be abusers themselves, and have a host of other issues with normal "adjustment". So your hypothetical 3 year old watching an adult punch a *real human* actually might result in the 3 year old learning how to behave violently.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure I understand your point. Or are you not making one?
This system provides a ready-made, wide-scale system for any government to track your internet usage, and then decide "you, right there, you've had enough internet exposure to progressive ideas, no more internet for you. And we'll be by with cable ties & a black hood later on, so you might want to say goodbye to your family and friends."
There is a very real concern here. Dismissing it because "well, anything can be abused, really," is downright retarded. Google and Yahoo, to name 2, have been roundly slagged for making it easier for repressive governments to control their citizenry. I see no reason why the OLPC (and any other project using this technology) should be given a free pass in this regard.
Unless the point is that OLPC seems to be the Open Source advocate's wet dream, and so any negative mention of it is met with knee-jerk ranting and/or hand-waving dismissal?
When hacking becomes, quite literally, a matter of life and death, rather than a cool geek adventure like WarGames, you might be surprised at how quickly the luster fades, and how quickly you'll see that band of merry rebels shrinking.
I think the point of TFA is that the OLPC's security system can be mis-used as an assistive technology for those dictators in their efforts to control their people.
I wonder if you'd be equally glib in your dismissal if this article were about Google filtering content at the request of Chinese authorities, or Yahoo disclosing the identities of people advocating democratic reforms?
Here's the full text of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America: Read it closely. The First Amendment prevents the state from establishing a state religion, or restricting people's rights to practice their religion as they see fit. There is no guarantee that someone's religious views won't be offensive to you. There is no provision that politicians must, in an official capacity, disavow any notion of religion or god. They must respect their constitutional obligation to not try to establish a state religion, nor attempt to legislatively restrict the right of citizens to practice religion however they see fit.
A politician talking about religion is *not* the same as a politician establishing a state religion, or attempting to compel you to follow his religion of choice. A politician's religious stance may be offensive, silly, or wrong to you, but if you can point out the part of the Constitution that guarantees your right to not be offended, or have to witness silly & stupid public statements, I should love to see it.
The actual patent in question is posted here, I think. This looks like the system they're describing in the article.
/., Microsoft is judged guilty of any accusation levelled against them by virtue of their name, but you *might* (just might) want to read the patent in question for yourself before you jump to conclusions.
I have to admit, this strikes me as more of a "help" or "usability testing" type of system. The computer thinks you're trying to do X, detects what it believes to be frustration, and checks to see if you need help performing activity X. I don't see much in the patent application saying anything about the users being monitored by managers to see if they're meeting performance goals. I will admit I haven't read the entire patent application, I'm not a lawyer and probably wouldn't understand it fully even if I did read the whole thing... but cursory examination seems to indicate that this patent application is nowhere near the alarming privacy violation that TFS or TFA seem to indicate.
I know that, here on
You're right -- the entire standard is optional to begin with. So why include a bunch of optional recommendations that just allow standards implementers to claim compliance with the standard while ignoring the sections of the standard that are optional and hard to implement? Think about it:
- If Apple can legitimately claim HTML5 compliance for Safari while not supporting Ogg Theora;
- If Mozilla can legitimately claim HTML5 compliance for Firefox while supporting Ogg Theora;
Then what's the point of "recommending" Ogg Theora in the standard to begin with? It's not required, so as someone writing code to be rendered in an HTML5-compliant browser, you can't assume it's supported.AND
Reading Ian's remarks, and the new paragraph in the spec, it sounds like they recognize the need for some sort of baseline standard audio/video codec in HTML5, and I agree that that's beneficial, and a net good for the standard -- but if they're not willing to say it's required, then including it as "just a recommendation" is simply a way of ensuring that the current confusion and lack of standards continues, while loudly claiming that you've addressed the problem, and I think that would be a net "bad thing" for the standard.
The GP poster reasoned that:
- Nintendo seems to have a Jobs-like Reality Distortion Field over many, if not most, Slashdot posters & editors
- Nintendo does not post the details of their environmental policies & practices on their website
- Therefore, Greenpeace is *probably* right.
I don't know what you consider trolling, but I consider insulting most of the readers of the site, and then following that up with a logical fallacy to argue the merits of a Greenpeace study that had nothing but a passing familiarity with facts & data, "Trolling."And for the record, I *don't* own a Nintendo system, and I never have. So I'm not one of the people for whom mention of Nintendo causes logic to vanish.
Yes, he does deserve to be modded Troll. His logic proclaims that Nintendo is guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Since when does failing to mention that you *don't* do something bad conclusive proof that you *must* do it?
Let's try the same logic with a twist...
"My experience has been that if you don't make the claim that you're not a child-molesting pederast in every Slashdot post, it's for a reason. If you're willing to brag about how you're not a baby-molesting pervert, then you're going to throw everything that possibly makes you look good in that post. You're not going to fail to mention something positivie out of humility or anything."
Can you spot the logical flaws with your argument now?
I'll second this -- and I can't provide links either. I do remember reading an article about this study, and that most peoples' musical tastes were more or less "fixed" by the time they were 25 - 30 years old, with very little "new stuff" making it into their playlists.
Anecdotally, having just turned 32, it seems that the iPod is also helping this phenomenon a bit. The "most often played" playlist gets a lot of use for me -- I've got hundreds of songs that I know I love ready to play in an instant... why go look for new stuff that I may not like? I find myself relying on my ipod & my sirius receiver almost exclusively for any listening I do... I honestly can't recall the last time I turned on an FM station in the Boston area and really found anything that excited me.
'Social networking' is a particular use to which web pages, databases, and automated scripts *may* be put. Is it revolutionary in the sense that it will change the world? Probably not... it is, after all, a fancy web email application. Facebook is an evolution of earlier "social" sites... they are arguably revolutionary in their "platform" approach to this particular domain, but I don't see them fundamentally changing society by allowing you to communicate with your friends using a web page. I agree that it's probably overblown - I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe Facebook is going to somehow revolutionize how I interact with people, at least. But dismissing the "social networking buzzword / fad" by using your reductionist line of logic ("it's just a database and some scripts!") is pretty retarded, too.
Let's not forget that the law is also not a binary domain -- there's lots of gray area subject to interpretation. No matter how precise we try to be, there's always going to be areas that are subjective, and so those areas will constantly be "patched" with changes that attempt to more precisely define the limits & boundaries of what is and is not legal behavior. Laws attempt to impose a digital model on analog reality, which of course means that you're never going to get it "just right", unless you do away with all laws that do not have an objective criterion. (Not a good solution either, unless you think it's justice to treat someone involved in an accidental death in the same way as another person who commits premeditated murder.)
Given that these legal "patches" occur over hundreds of years of case law & precedent, changing circumstances, and evolving social standards, is it any wonder that we're left with a morass of conflicting & loophole-ridden laws? Look at 10 year old software, which applies to a much smaller binary domain, and you see the same problem in miniature.
The point is, if you enjoy Warcraft, and Blizzard changes the game in a way that makes it *NOT* enjoyable (or not AS enjoyable) anymore for you, then you have two options:
- Keep paying them US$15 per month.
- DON'T keep paying them US$15 per month.
Of those two, which do you think is going to make Blizzard sit up & take notice more? I'm guessing that a company whose primary goal is to produce software that sells is going to take notice if they stop receiving money from a substantial chunk of their devoted players. Much more so than a petition saying, "Well, you know, if you don't stop doing this, we'll keep paying you, but we'll be REALLY unhappy about it and write whiny blog posts."If you want to effect change in a marketplace, the most *effective* way of doing this is to prove to the business that it's in their best interests to make that change. You do this by either:
You're twisting that with your book analogy by saying that it's akin to telling somebody "don't read books." It would have a much closer kinship with saying "Buy books from a publishing house that has sensible editorial policies and treats authors well." Which is actually a very reasonable thing to do, come to think of it.
What you've done, perhaps unwittingly, is created a straw man argument. And while you've managed to get lots of sound & fury out of it, the fact remains that you're arguing against a point that the person you're responding to didn't make.
I find it amusing that sucn an insignificant thorn to MS rates a comparative mention... "We've totally outsold that dinky 5%-of-the-market guy." Why even bring them up or mention them if they're such an insignificant portion of the market?
Let's run some numbers. First, Apple currently has about 6% of the market, based on the most recent numbers I've seen. Second, I'll be generous and assume you meant "even if the Apple user base grows to 3 or 4 times its present size," since what you actually wrote indicated that Apple would grow to 48 or 96% of the market.
Now, do you *really* think that Microsoft wouldn't take notice if 18% - 24% of the desktop market was owned by Apple? That they wouldn't notice that 1 in 4 or 5 desktops are Macs? I'd humbly submit that if they disregarded that, it would constitute criminal disregard for their fiduciary obligations as a publicly held company!
No, Macs are not about to take over the world in the next 6 months. But they (or someone else) will manage to do so at some point in the next few years if Microsoft ignores those "insignificant" upstarts that only hold a few percent of the market. Happened to IBM, didn't it?
- A large enough install base to make the return worth your while. Macs are certainly reaching that point.
- A piece of software that's easily exploitable to get privileges that are worthwile.
By your reasoning, Linux, Mac OS X, and commercial Unix variants should be seeing an ever-increasing load of threats and exploits in the wild, and that's simply not happening. Of course there will always be malware produced for any OS... but Unix is *harder to attack* in a way that will give you complete admin control of a system to use for sending Spam, starting DDoS attacks, etc.No rational person would claim that it's impossible to attack any Operating system. But your claim that "macs becoming more popular" will cause more malware to be written for it is logically inaccurate, because you're claiming that the only thing causing the creation of malware for Windows is a large install base, and that if the situation were reversed, and Unix-based OS'es had 90% of the market, they'd be rife with malware and viruses as well.
Uh huh.
.dmg files causing kernel panics and buffer overruns is considered a "secure" practice because . . . ?
Finish this sentence for me, please:
Defaulting to automatically opening disk images, when there are known instances of specially crafted
No, you never *stated* that it was more insecure. What you stated was misinformation and uncertainty intended to imply that Mac OS X is just as insecure as Windows, perhaps even more so.
This is a textbook example of FUD in action -- criticize Mac OS X based on data you don't have, but which "may" someday be shown to exist. If you make a statement about the security of a system based solely on uncertain speculation, expect to have it called out as FUD, because it is.
Seriously, dude. I'm not going to claim that Macs are somehow magically "totally secure"... but given that Unix operating systems have been around for many years, and they are still nowhere near as rife with exploits, malware and other crap as the Windows ecosystem... don't you think you're overstating the case a bit?
And if you think you're not, then what's your response to all the Linux users who claim that their Unix underpinnings make them much more secure than Windows?
- This is an *insecure* default setting. I don't care if it asks you for an admin password, automatically running things downloaded from the internet shouldn't ever be a "default".
- This is not a NEW "exploit", I remember hearing about this same exploit in a different form at least a year and a half ago. Apple had plenty of time to disable this feature (or at least turn it off so people would HAVE to do the "dumb" thing and re-enable it) and they have not.
- The asshats who write these trojans cost EVERYBODY time, money, and effort. If it were limited in effect to the dumb user, a la "oops, I deleted some files I didn't want to delete!", it would be *slightly* better. But identity theft, break-ins, DDoS attacks, spam, etc. are all costly effects of these "dumb" users "getting what they deserve."
I'm an apple user. I own several of their systems, and find them -- on the whole -- to be incredibly fun and easy to use. But Apple shouldn't get a free pass on this (nor should Microsoft, nor should Canonical or any other Linux distro). By setting this trivial "convenience" up by default, they've made their system more insecure. Yes, there are still people who will double-goddamn-click on anything and everything, but let's at least make it harder for the simpletons to inconvenience all of us. It would be a fairly simple fix for them to make, and one which they should have made a long time back.I remember playing with the chemistry set my parents bought for me & my brothers 20 years ago, and finding that just about the only thing I could do with it was make some liquids that stank like old gym socks, and some other liquids that changed colors. This is a safety trend... for the same reason that, 20 years ago, I rode my bike all over town with no helmet on, and now, my parents would be locked up and I'd be a ward of the state if I didn't leave the house with training wheels, a full helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. Our overly litigious nanny state has caused these changes. It has nothing to do with some sweeping anti-terror law.
But you know, I suppose it's more convenient to somehow place all of these developments and social changes at the feet of the Patriot Act and George Bush, because as JFK pointed out... it's a lot easier (and a sight more comfortable) to simply form an opinion, facts be damned.
- Young children mimic the behaviors of the adults around them. It's how they learn to normalize their behavior.
- Young children do not have sufficient mental sophistication to deduce that it's okay and funny to hit a punching bag that *looks* like Uncle Matt, but that it's not okay and funny to hit *Uncle Matt*. They must be taught, and this is why you'll often hear parents correcting their young children with statements like, "We don't hit other people!" and "Hitting is not nice!"
Now, assuming you have a firm grounding from a young age, and adults around you who actually pattern "good" behavior for you to emulate, then yes, you're not going to have much difficulty distinguishing a video game behavior from a real behavior. But the simple fact is, if you behave violently around a 3 year old, they do pick up that cue, and learn that hitting things is okay -- they will not deduce these rules until much later -- *if they're lucky* -- when they've reached sufficient logical development that they can understand the simple rules that could have been imparted to them as children.So if you've been taught at a young age that violence is not right, then you will probably not be adversely affected by a video game showing you violent behavior when you're old enough to distinguish between fantasy and reality. But if you learn that violence is "normal" at a young age, what will that video game show you? That fantasy and reality are vastly different?
I agree that understanding the difference between "real life" and "gaming" is critical, and that many -- perhaps the vast majority -- of people are able to be mindful of the difference. But your analogy to demonstrate this is flawed... there's reams of data showing that children who witness significant violence are more likely to grow up to be abusers themselves, and have a host of other issues with normal "adjustment". So your hypothetical 3 year old watching an adult punch a *real human* actually might result in the 3 year old learning how to behave violently.