How is this much different from getting a letter via snail mail? Same thing: if you know someone, you can interpret what they're writing; if you don't know them, it's much harder.
And even in a medium where you can hear or see the person, they can still deceive you or you can misinterpret their facial expressions. Communications between two or more people is not something cut-and-dried.
The weight of getting the word out about these things to the average user is going to need to lay on someone, probably ISPs. It should be one of their responsibilities to attempt to keep their users safe. We can educate people about some of the basics, watching out for links that are just IPs and etc (and thunderbird already has some features regarding this), but some of the higher level checks need to be done automatically by software.
But no matter how sophisticated filtering technology gets, the numer of ways that data can be manipulated and the sheer volume of traffic means that some of these things are going to get through. And while extra IQ points don't automatically confer amazing powers, they might allow people to become more suspicious of something that doesn't "look quite right."
We've been educating people from the mid-60s on that smoking is deleterious to their health. Has smoking ceased? No. In that case, it's the addicition to nicotine and the idea that smoking someone cool (ever kiss a smoker? Yuck!). In the case of email, I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of folks who click on these links in phishing emails are: 1) paranoid types, who have so bought into the identity theft idea they can't stand the thought that someone may be stealing their identity, 2) people who have little sophistication in general and virtually none in the world of PCs and the Internet, 3) greedy people, who thin that they'll just fire off a few hundred dollars of their hard-earned money and some friendly guy in Nigeria will make them rich, or 4) lonely folks who just want to talk to someone or feel a part of something.
Look, your average Joe is not sophisticated; they're not going to know to look at the links in a phishing email and note they don't point to their bank's valid web address nor be able to do a DNS lookup to figure out that Joe Whathisface is not the owner of the bank's valid domain name. They don't care about this. It's the same thing that happens when people get those fake sweepstakes things in the mail saying they're won something and, oh by the way, could you sedn us $500 to ship it to you?
Put a Ford Escort engine in a Porsche 911 Turbo body and I bet 70% of the people you pull off the street would drive it and not know any better. For them, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Solution: raises everyone's IQ 50 points. Plausible: not likely.
The simple fact is that most people view their computers as fancy appliances. Hell, they even buy them at places like Best Buy and Circuit City that also sell appliances. They expect to turn it on, use it for its intended purpose of email and pornography, and thats that. They don't have any interest in learning a system, when it should be as simple as the other appliances in the house (yes, I know as well as anybody here that computers are complex machines not unlike cars, but lets look at it from the everyday Joe perspective).
And there you have it. The Linux community would like people to feel that there's an alternative to Windows, which Linux is, but it isn't, simkply because you don't get the "out of the box" experience with it. That doesn't make Linux bad or Windows better, but it does show the disconnect between the development communities for both systems and customers.
Gates and company started off trying to make Windows easy to use and jazzy enough that everyone would feel comfortable with it. It slowly began to dominate the market but had its fair share of problems (the blue screen of death). As years have passed, it's gotten more robust, and the suote of things that runs on Windows is enourmous. But it didn't start out that way and it took MS time to incorporate all the functionality that it does today.
Linux is undergoing the same growth right now. There are many issues, both technical and legal that it will have to overcome if its to become as ubiquitous as Windows. So I can see where right now, a switch to strictly Linux is not as good an experience for the average Windows user. But given time that chasm will shrink as Linux continues to grow and improve and Windows continues to bloat and bust.
NPR does not do EVERYTHING that happens on public radio.
Perhaps not the worst faux pas I have ever made, but certainly an honest mistake. I am fully aware that NPR does not produce Marketplace, but NPR does carry the show, and I should have indicated it that way, or mentioned American Public Media. Guess I have to turn in my Guy Noir trenchcoat now.
And if your speech is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre, or calling someone "monkey butt" on TV, you can bet your speech will be met with a citation in the former case and a slander suit in the latter. Just because we have the right to say what we want in the US, does not mean that all speech is in fact allowable or even desired, and there are standards.
The key to the caffeine test comes from llamas and camels since these camelids happen to be among the few creatures whose immune systems can produce antibodies that aren't destroyed at the high temperatures common to brewed beverages.
...for Perl programmers. We trust anything that can pass the llama or camel test.
"The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical hyperbole,' essentially a statement of opinion, not of fact. The former could be considered libelous, while the latter could not."
Of course, being it's in a blog, the author, Eric Goldman, wiil no doubt stand up in court and claim it's just his opinion, no matter how vehement the statements were. This should prove a cautionary tale: just because you blog does not necessarily mean you can say anything you like. The standard restrictions apply, and if you step over the line, you're just as culpable as a newspaper editor or reporter.
If I had more time, I'd even start this project myself. In fact, I just might anyway, and maybe someone else could be co-lead or something. I wouldn't even mind my company putting in money to buy prototype hardware to run it. I'm sure there'd be lots of donations from the OSS crowd too, so I can't really see hardware being a problem. Once we have something to show, the units can be built to order as they're adopted.
If ever there was a project crying out for citizen involvement, this is it. I'm sure you can find plenty of people (myself included) who would donate time and expertise and capital to make it work. They say if you don't like how things run, vote. Well, if you don't like how voting works, fix it. It would just require some start-up capital and people with time. It can't be as difficult as Diebold makes it look. I think they're pretty much in it for the money and because they have such deep political connections.
All the proposals mentioned in the article are merely band-aids on a system that is fundamentally broken. Any competently designed identification system consists of two parts: the public identifier, and the private key. The problem with SSNs is that you have a system where one number is simultaneously the public and private parts of the system, which dooms it to failure every time.
From the article: The SSN hasn't always had such broad applications. Back in 1935, Congress first directed the Social Security Administration to develop an accounting system to track payments to the fund. Out of that mandate came a unique identifier that has ultimately found applications in everything from issuing food stamps to tracking down money launderers.
This is what happens in the modern age, when previous devices are outstripped by new uses for them. The SSN number started out as simply an identifier for the purposes of calculating benefits and recording taxes. It has turned into a universal identifier, but has not fundamentally changed at all. It's very easy to forge a Social Security card, and the accessibility of SSN data tied to all sorts of other information makes it far too easy to compromise.
As an aside, other than the fact it doesn't contain a photo, the SS card is pretty much a national id card.
Just once I'd like to see a story run on/. that involves MS that starts a discussion of the issue in the story and not just collection of attacks on MS. I'm not a big MS fan but it does get old.
I suggest a trip to an alternate universe... look MS haters are a dime-a-dozen, but you have to admit it's pretty cheeky of MS to take these steps instead of just cutting down on the problem to begin with. It's like the people who say global warming needs more study, when the global average temperature is going up and the polar caps are shrinking. Do we wait until we're all under water before we do something?
It doesn't represent the absolute "proof" required to confirm a causal link, so no it does not.
"Proof" is not an absolute concept; causal ties can be shown by a wide body of evidence which meets the statistical standards you wish to apply, which is why there is so much back and forth on any topic, because altering your level of statistical "validity" allows you to prove your pet theory.
It's a shame that you do not understand the process of scientific inquiry, but your personal opinion does not change the approach any.
Well, my old physics and psych professors might disagree with you there, but I'd be willing to put my knowledge of the scientific method and experimental design up against most people's any day of the week. The fact is, there is a theory here: electromagnetic radiation from the transmission tower is inducing cells in human brain tissue to turn cancerous. This cluster of cases indicates that clearly a process is involved, as the likelihood that such a cluster occurs randomly is very small, compared to a background sample of subjects from the same area. The cluster does not "prove" that the theory is correct, but does support its basic premise. What has to happen now is a background check of all the people affected and not affected, to determine if there is some other plausible causal factor common to them that would explain the cluster's formation (they all smoke, or live in the same area near a toxic waste site, family history of brain cancer, etc.). Sound about right?
Australian Medical Association president Mukesh Haikerwal said there was no proof of a connection but "if you get clusters of disease it's sensible to investigate."
Ya think? Maybe this represents your proof! I like to call this the "Keystone Cops Method" of scientific inquiry.
Dr John Gall, from private health company Southern Medical Services, which has been called in to assess the sick, said last night three of those affected had tumours showing symptoms consistent with radiation.
Indeed, Watson, the killer had a limp... note the dragging of the shoe print to one side and the lightness of the impression on the other...
Given they were working under a tower which is broadcasting radiation, this should probably come as no shock. What I wonder is -- why isn't there shielding protecting the floors below from the radiation from the tower? Answer: then everyone's cell phones would stop working.
I've often thought the chances of contracting cancer from your cell phone was exaggerated, unless you had the damned thing glued to your ear 24/7. This is totally different; those towers are pumping out huge amounts of radiation, to try and make sure you can get a strong signal at great distances. It's not like living inside a nuclear reactor, but its close enough to be a bad idea.
A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.
Black Box Voting was to issue two reports today on the security hole, one of limited distribution that explains the vulnerability fully and one for public release that withholds key technical details.
The computer expert, Harri Hursti, quietly sent word of the vulnerability in March to several computer scientists who advise various states on voting systems. At least two of those scientists verified some or all of Hursti's findings. Several notified their states and requested meetings with Diebold to understand the problem.
Oh, those plucky Finns and the trouble they cause...
Does anybody get the idea that Diebold simply threw these machines together, cobbled the code together from stuff lying around the shop, slapped some paint on them, and expected states to use them no questions asked? You would think somewhere along the line, someone would have stood up at a development meeting and said, "we'd better make sure these things are secure."
Diebold will of course now hem, haw, blame others, attack the media and anti-electronic voting groups, and reluctantly fix the problem. Just in time for the next one to crop up. Do they have any competition in this market? I don't hear a lot about other companies creating voting machines -- either there aren't any or they do a lot better job.
My mother's father was a member of his local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was an officer and I still have his union seal stamp he used to mark union documents. It's one of the few momentoes I have of him, that his sailor's hat from his time in the Navy during WWII.
He grew up in a time when the unions were gaining power, forcing companies to make concessions, improve working conditions, and pay a decent wage to everybody. Unions served an important function in the early history of the industrialization of our nation. But their power is waning and frankly that's a good thing.
It might seem seductive -- hordes of geeks, banded together for the common good, but honestly, would it accomplish anything? In this day and age, workers are disposable. My IT job can be shipped off to India or China in a heartbeat and then what? Is the union going to shut down Microsoft or Oracle for unfair labor practices? Is it right that some other guy in my department gets as much as I do when he can't write code for sh*t?
Nope. I'm not for it, not in my industry, and not if it means I get dragged down by others who aren't interested in being competent programmers. I'm not walking a picket line for them and not striking when I know there's some guy in another country who makes one-third what I do and would be happy to punch keys for it.
...but Michael Johnson's design currently has some weirdness going on in Firefox 1.5.0.3 with the page footer showing up halfway thorugh the page at the tail of the right side boxes.
Really? I'm running 1.5.0.3 and it seems fine. I like his design best of the three. It's stylish while retaining the feel of the original.
If Oracle were to buy Novell or Ubuntu or some such, would that make them the "Microsoft of Linux?" My thought is no, not immediately but possibly over time, assuming they didn't botch the merger and stifle the creativity of their Linux team.
It's been this way since time immemorial. Teenagers are the great misunderstood masses. Their problems are hard for them to deal with because the shine of them being little kids has worn off, but their parents and other adults won't take them seriously.
And kids have been trying to talk about their problems in social groups forever. Now they have a place to do it that allows teens from far and away to share their feelings and try to make sense of their world, and maybe just maybe form some kind of lasting connection that will help them later in life.
Can't have that.
Listen, there have been sexual predators out for kids as long as all this has been going on. Does anyone honestly thing locking down MySpace is going to make them go away? They'll just go back to cruising the streets or hanging out around arcades, movie theatres, and convenience stores. If a sexual predator wants something, he/she will get it, Internet or no.
I think if we were better parents, talked to our teens, treated them like people and not possessions, we wouldn't have to worry about them hanging out in social networks. They might actually be able to take care of themselves. One thing I know: Congress can't run the country, let alone raise my children.
Families are practically becoming prison camps for kids... and you're telling me that the greatest danger are sexual predators on the internet? Are you f*cking kidding me?
Now, now... my kids would be sure to tell you how much they love their home... if I didn't have to keep them in the Cooler for trying to tunnel out...
Well, if it's China, that would be the US. If it's the US... hey, leave us alone... mind your own business... can we buy some more cheap goods?
Supposedly the arrangement is reciprocal: our government protects us form ourselves, and we protect ourselves from our government. Unfortunately, we Americans have gotten a little lackadasical in the upkeep department, and now we can't seem to throw out the bums when they do stupid things.
Actually there are many of us who are more concerned about free speech and access to information than the "problem" of pornography who are opposed to the idea.
Why? How is this a denial of free speech? The.xxx domain allows the pornography to be easily found by those who want to find it, and avoided by those who don't want to see it. It doesn't make it illegal to display porn or have a pornographic web site; only local regulation can do that. Isn't this akin to the adult books at a bookstore being in their own section, available but only accessible to those who meet the age requirement? Where's the harm in that? The fact that this issue is so polarizing, like abortion, shows that the arguments are more driven by belief than actual cold, hard thought.
Let's try a little experiment: replace ".xxx" with ".abortion". A majority of Americans are against abortion, so it seems like a good idea to segregate information about it from the rest of the Internet. Now, who is more likely to be anti-.abortion - fundamentalists or pro-free-speech groups? Doesn't the second group have at least as much legitimate complaint against the idea as the first?
Ok, take the analogy to the next step:.whitesupremacy. I don't think a great majority of the planet likes the idea any more than I do, so let's segregate it as well.
This isn't a free speech issue. Anyone can sign up for a domain name and host a web site. You can have just about any combination of domain and TLD you can think of to represent your business, your ideas, your organization. And it's free for anyone to access (except in China [different topic for a different day]). Not only is it free to access, it's also possible for you to avoid content you don't like. The choice is yours -- it should not be up to any subgroup or splinter faction.
Now, I hate white supremacists, but they have the right to espouse their views just as I have when I post here. Do I go to their web sites? No. I avoid them. Real easy -- I don't search for them and don't follow links to them. If they wanted their own TLD (and ICANN decided [with US Government "assistance"] it was ok) that it was ok, fine by me. It makes it easier for me to find, true, but it also makes it easier for me to avoid. Don't go to sites with the TLD.whitesupremacy. Buy filtering software for my computer so my kids can't go there either.
In the end, this is not some heinous idea. It won't lead to the fall of civilization -- lying, backstabbing, graft, corruption and violence will take care of that. I see your point, but I don't think you've taken into consideration the scope of human belief. THe only way we're going to make things work in this world is to accept the premise that everyone is different, while at the same time those differences can be bridged by common, fundamental rights that all can enjoy without duress.
Slashdot Mirror
How is this much different from getting a letter via snail mail? Same thing: if you know someone, you can interpret what they're writing; if you don't know them, it's much harder.
And even in a medium where you can hear or see the person, they can still deceive you or you can misinterpret their facial expressions. Communications between two or more people is not something cut-and-dried.
The weight of getting the word out about these things to the average user is going to need to lay on someone, probably ISPs. It should be one of their responsibilities to attempt to keep their users safe. We can educate people about some of the basics, watching out for links that are just IPs and etc (and thunderbird already has some features regarding this), but some of the higher level checks need to be done automatically by software.
But no matter how sophisticated filtering technology gets, the numer of ways that data can be manipulated and the sheer volume of traffic means that some of these things are going to get through. And while extra IQ points don't automatically confer amazing powers, they might allow people to become more suspicious of something that doesn't "look quite right."
We've been educating people from the mid-60s on that smoking is deleterious to their health. Has smoking ceased? No. In that case, it's the addicition to nicotine and the idea that smoking someone cool (ever kiss a smoker? Yuck!). In the case of email, I'd be willing to bet the vast majority of folks who click on these links in phishing emails are: 1) paranoid types, who have so bought into the identity theft idea they can't stand the thought that someone may be stealing their identity, 2) people who have little sophistication in general and virtually none in the world of PCs and the Internet, 3) greedy people, who thin that they'll just fire off a few hundred dollars of their hard-earned money and some friendly guy in Nigeria will make them rich, or 4) lonely folks who just want to talk to someone or feel a part of something.
Duuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!
Look, your average Joe is not sophisticated; they're not going to know to look at the links in a phishing email and note they don't point to their bank's valid web address nor be able to do a DNS lookup to figure out that Joe Whathisface is not the owner of the bank's valid domain name. They don't care about this. It's the same thing that happens when people get those fake sweepstakes things in the mail saying they're won something and, oh by the way, could you sedn us $500 to ship it to you?
Put a Ford Escort engine in a Porsche 911 Turbo body and I bet 70% of the people you pull off the street would drive it and not know any better. For them, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
Solution: raises everyone's IQ 50 points. Plausible: not likely.
The simple fact is that most people view their computers as fancy appliances. Hell, they even buy them at places like Best Buy and Circuit City that also sell appliances. They expect to turn it on, use it for its intended purpose of email and pornography, and thats that. They don't have any interest in learning a system, when it should be as simple as the other appliances in the house (yes, I know as well as anybody here that computers are complex machines not unlike cars, but lets look at it from the everyday Joe perspective).
And there you have it. The Linux community would like people to feel that there's an alternative to Windows, which Linux is, but it isn't, simkply because you don't get the "out of the box" experience with it. That doesn't make Linux bad or Windows better, but it does show the disconnect between the development communities for both systems and customers.
Gates and company started off trying to make Windows easy to use and jazzy enough that everyone would feel comfortable with it. It slowly began to dominate the market but had its fair share of problems (the blue screen of death). As years have passed, it's gotten more robust, and the suote of things that runs on Windows is enourmous. But it didn't start out that way and it took MS time to incorporate all the functionality that it does today.
Linux is undergoing the same growth right now. There are many issues, both technical and legal that it will have to overcome if its to become as ubiquitous as Windows. So I can see where right now, a switch to strictly Linux is not as good an experience for the average Windows user. But given time that chasm will shrink as Linux continues to grow and improve and Windows continues to bloat and bust.
Perhaps not the worst faux pas I have ever made, but certainly an honest mistake. I am fully aware that NPR does not produce Marketplace, but NPR does carry the show, and I should have indicated it that way, or mentioned American Public Media. Guess I have to turn in my Guy Noir trenchcoat now.
And if your speech is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre, or calling someone "monkey butt" on TV, you can bet your speech will be met with a citation in the former case and a slander suit in the latter. Just because we have the right to say what we want in the US, does not mean that all speech is in fact allowable or even desired, and there are standards.
...for Perl programmers. We trust anything that can pass the llama or camel test.
"The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical hyperbole,' essentially a statement of opinion, not of fact. The former could be considered libelous, while the latter could not."
Of course, being it's in a blog, the author, Eric Goldman, wiil no doubt stand up in court and claim it's just his opinion, no matter how vehement the statements were. This should prove a cautionary tale: just because you blog does not necessarily mean you can say anything you like. The standard restrictions apply, and if you step over the line, you're just as culpable as a newspaper editor or reporter.
If ever there was a project crying out for citizen involvement, this is it. I'm sure you can find plenty of people (myself included) who would donate time and expertise and capital to make it work. They say if you don't like how things run, vote. Well, if you don't like how voting works, fix it. It would just require some start-up capital and people with time. It can't be as difficult as Diebold makes it look. I think they're pretty much in it for the money and because they have such deep political connections.
From the article: The SSN hasn't always had such broad applications. Back in 1935, Congress first directed the Social Security Administration to develop an accounting system to track payments to the fund. Out of that mandate came a unique identifier that has ultimately found applications in everything from issuing food stamps to tracking down money launderers.
This is what happens in the modern age, when previous devices are outstripped by new uses for them. The SSN number started out as simply an identifier for the purposes of calculating benefits and recording taxes. It has turned into a universal identifier, but has not fundamentally changed at all. It's very easy to forge a Social Security card, and the accessibility of SSN data tied to all sorts of other information makes it far too easy to compromise.
As an aside, other than the fact it doesn't contain a photo, the SS card is pretty much a national id card.
I suggest a trip to an alternate universe... look MS haters are a dime-a-dozen, but you have to admit it's pretty cheeky of MS to take these steps instead of just cutting down on the problem to begin with. It's like the people who say global warming needs more study, when the global average temperature is going up and the polar caps are shrinking. Do we wait until we're all under water before we do something?
"Proof" is not an absolute concept; causal ties can be shown by a wide body of evidence which meets the statistical standards you wish to apply, which is why there is so much back and forth on any topic, because altering your level of statistical "validity" allows you to prove your pet theory.
It's a shame that you do not understand the process of scientific inquiry, but your personal opinion does not change the approach any.Well, my old physics and psych professors might disagree with you there, but I'd be willing to put my knowledge of the scientific method and experimental design up against most people's any day of the week. The fact is, there is a theory here: electromagnetic radiation from the transmission tower is inducing cells in human brain tissue to turn cancerous. This cluster of cases indicates that clearly a process is involved, as the likelihood that such a cluster occurs randomly is very small, compared to a background sample of subjects from the same area. The cluster does not "prove" that the theory is correct, but does support its basic premise. What has to happen now is a background check of all the people affected and not affected, to determine if there is some other plausible causal factor common to them that would explain the cluster's formation (they all smoke, or live in the same area near a toxic waste site, family history of brain cancer, etc.). Sound about right?
Australian Medical Association president Mukesh Haikerwal said there was no proof of a connection but "if you get clusters of disease it's sensible to investigate."
Ya think? Maybe this represents your proof! I like to call this the "Keystone Cops Method" of scientific inquiry.
Dr John Gall, from private health company Southern Medical Services, which has been called in to assess the sick, said last night three of those affected had tumours showing symptoms consistent with radiation.
Indeed, Watson, the killer had a limp... note the dragging of the shoe print to one side and the lightness of the impression on the other...
Given they were working under a tower which is broadcasting radiation, this should probably come as no shock. What I wonder is -- why isn't there shielding protecting the floors below from the radiation from the tower? Answer: then everyone's cell phones would stop working.
I've often thought the chances of contracting cancer from your cell phone was exaggerated, unless you had the damned thing glued to your ear 24/7. This is totally different; those towers are pumping out huge amounts of radiation, to try and make sure you can get a strong signal at great distances. It's not like living inside a nuclear reactor, but its close enough to be a bad idea.
A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.
Black Box Voting was to issue two reports today on the security hole, one of limited distribution that explains the vulnerability fully and one for public release that withholds key technical details.
The computer expert, Harri Hursti, quietly sent word of the vulnerability in March to several computer scientists who advise various states on voting systems. At least two of those scientists verified some or all of Hursti's findings. Several notified their states and requested meetings with Diebold to understand the problem.
Oh, those plucky Finns and the trouble they cause...
Does anybody get the idea that Diebold simply threw these machines together, cobbled the code together from stuff lying around the shop, slapped some paint on them, and expected states to use them no questions asked? You would think somewhere along the line, someone would have stood up at a development meeting and said, "we'd better make sure these things are secure."
Diebold will of course now hem, haw, blame others, attack the media and anti-electronic voting groups, and reluctantly fix the problem. Just in time for the next one to crop up. Do they have any competition in this market? I don't hear a lot about other companies creating voting machines -- either there aren't any or they do a lot better job.
My mother's father was a member of his local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He was an officer and I still have his union seal stamp he used to mark union documents. It's one of the few momentoes I have of him, that his sailor's hat from his time in the Navy during WWII.
He grew up in a time when the unions were gaining power, forcing companies to make concessions, improve working conditions, and pay a decent wage to everybody. Unions served an important function in the early history of the industrialization of our nation. But their power is waning and frankly that's a good thing.
It might seem seductive -- hordes of geeks, banded together for the common good, but honestly, would it accomplish anything? In this day and age, workers are disposable. My IT job can be shipped off to India or China in a heartbeat and then what? Is the union going to shut down Microsoft or Oracle for unfair labor practices? Is it right that some other guy in my department gets as much as I do when he can't write code for sh*t?
Nope. I'm not for it, not in my industry, and not if it means I get dragged down by others who aren't interested in being competent programmers. I'm not walking a picket line for them and not striking when I know there's some guy in another country who makes one-third what I do and would be happy to punch keys for it.
Now I see it... weird. Since it's a little messed up in both FF and IE, I assume some common CSS element that's a little off.
Really? I'm running 1.5.0.3 and it seems fine. I like his design best of the three. It's stylish while retaining the feel of the original.
If Oracle were to buy Novell or Ubuntu or some such, would that make them the "Microsoft of Linux?" My thought is no, not immediately but possibly over time, assuming they didn't botch the merger and stifle the creativity of their Linux team.
It's been this way since time immemorial. Teenagers are the great misunderstood masses. Their problems are hard for them to deal with because the shine of them being little kids has worn off, but their parents and other adults won't take them seriously.
And kids have been trying to talk about their problems in social groups forever. Now they have a place to do it that allows teens from far and away to share their feelings and try to make sense of their world, and maybe just maybe form some kind of lasting connection that will help them later in life.
Can't have that.
Listen, there have been sexual predators out for kids as long as all this has been going on. Does anyone honestly thing locking down MySpace is going to make them go away? They'll just go back to cruising the streets or hanging out around arcades, movie theatres, and convenience stores. If a sexual predator wants something, he/she will get it, Internet or no.
I think if we were better parents, talked to our teens, treated them like people and not possessions, we wouldn't have to worry about them hanging out in social networks. They might actually be able to take care of themselves. One thing I know: Congress can't run the country, let alone raise my children.
So who protects the people from their government?
Terrorists.
I thought it was David Hasselhoff...
Now, now... my kids would be sure to tell you how much they love their home... if I didn't have to keep them in the Cooler for trying to tunnel out...
Well, if it's China, that would be the US. If it's the US... hey, leave us alone... mind your own business... can we buy some more cheap goods?
Supposedly the arrangement is reciprocal: our government protects us form ourselves, and we protect ourselves from our government. Unfortunately, we Americans have gotten a little lackadasical in the upkeep department, and now we can't seem to throw out the bums when they do stupid things.
...that next week there will be an article on Slashdot to the effect that Google has announced new services.
Why? How is this a denial of free speech? The .xxx domain allows the pornography to be easily found by those who want to find it, and avoided by those who don't want to see it. It doesn't make it illegal to display porn or have a pornographic web site; only local regulation can do that. Isn't this akin to the adult books at a bookstore being in their own section, available but only accessible to those who meet the age requirement? Where's the harm in that? The fact that this issue is so polarizing, like abortion, shows that the arguments are more driven by belief than actual cold, hard thought.
Ok, take the analogy to the next step: .whitesupremacy. I don't think a great majority of the planet likes the idea any more than I do, so let's segregate it as well.
This isn't a free speech issue. Anyone can sign up for a domain name and host a web site. You can have just about any combination of domain and TLD you can think of to represent your business, your ideas, your organization. And it's free for anyone to access (except in China [different topic for a different day]). Not only is it free to access, it's also possible for you to avoid content you don't like. The choice is yours -- it should not be up to any subgroup or splinter faction.
Now, I hate white supremacists, but they have the right to espouse their views just as I have when I post here. Do I go to their web sites? No. I avoid them. Real easy -- I don't search for them and don't follow links to them. If they wanted their own TLD (and ICANN decided [with US Government "assistance"] it was ok) that it was ok, fine by me. It makes it easier for me to find, true, but it also makes it easier for me to avoid. Don't go to sites with the TLD .whitesupremacy. Buy filtering software for my computer so my kids can't go there either.
In the end, this is not some heinous idea. It won't lead to the fall of civilization -- lying, backstabbing, graft, corruption and violence will take care of that. I see your point, but I don't think you've taken into consideration the scope of human belief. THe only way we're going to make things work in this world is to accept the premise that everyone is different, while at the same time those differences can be bridged by common, fundamental rights that all can enjoy without duress.