There comes a point of diminishing returns. I don't think anyone here is going to seriously suggest that using a drive-installed Windows is safer than a live-CD Linux.
To be clear, this is not merely a Windows-vs-Linux thing. It's also a function of the medium. Exploits are often installed on a user's computer because some script kiddie was scanning large ranges, found some targets, and did his thing. The keylogger or whatever could have been sitting there for days before the victim logged into his bank account. Same deal with trojans.
With a live CD, of any type, this problem is virtually eliminated, assuming you only keep it booted for a short time to do your business and then remove it, which is not only what the guy is suggesting, but also how people actually use live CDs in the real world.
As you and others have pointed out there are various vulnerabilities that can still be attacked but the CD itself removes a huge number of attack vectors, and what few remain are almost inconsequential. At some point you have to say "This is as much precaution as can reasonably be taken."
You could design a 100%, absolutely secure OS for accessing your bank, have it tested and verified by every security expert in the world, and be given all sorts of awards for your genius, and still die in a random earthquake.
Total safety just isn't a part of this life. Take the reasonable precautions and keep living. Using a live CD fits that viewpoint.
Hey, in Georgia, they suspend your tag if your insurance lapses for a day. I didn't even know such a thing was possible -- suspended license, sure, for various reasons -- but a suspended tag?
That happened to me in, like, 2005. They didn't bother informing me of this, mind you, and I'd renewed my tag, in person, at the tag office, several times over the next few years, with nary a mention.
One fine day in 2008 I was pulled over and the cop informed me that my tag was expired, and ticketed me. I had to drive all around the state to various out-of-the-way offices collecting paperwork (somehow they expect you to be able to do this without driving), paying fines, renewal fees, surcharges, and other crap, and then show up to court to explain all of this.
I learned that they will also do this if you fail to pay child support. Why child support is in any way related to your ability to drive is beyond me, but I've come to realise that the state loves to yank driving privileges for any absurd reason it can find. The cynic in me believes this is because they know that it wont' actually stop anyone from driving, especially in the urban sprawl with no public transit that is Atlanta and the surrounding metro area... rather, they want you to keep driving, so they can nail you for even more fines.
I'm not sure that's true. Governments just love to make you present paperwork and documentation, then completely ignore it and look it up on their computers anyway. However they will not look it up on the computer if you don't have the paperwork first. If the paperwork says something in your favor but the computer says something against you, they will believe the computer. If, however, the computer supports you, but something is amiss with the paperwork, they'll tell you that the paperwork is invalid.
That's the government mindset.
With driver's licenses, it is no different. If I give my name and DOB to a cop that's usually enough for him to go back to his car, check the computer, see the photo ID on record, and verify that yes, that really is me. But if I don't actually have my license on me when this happens, he'll ticket me. Whether or not anything happens after that is up to the judge -- a scarce few will just say "Yeah, remember to carry your license next time, now get outta here," but most will throw the book at you.
The red matter was just a Macguffin -- it doesn't matter what it was, it only existed to move the story along. The movie was mostly about re-introducing us to the characters in their new universe, and the plot was accordingly light.
It was also not really technobabble; they simply mentioned it long enough to establish that "it's some kind of threat" and then moved on. That's all a Macguffin needs to be. If it were really technobabble in the typical Star Trek sense, they would have given it a much fancier named and droned on at nauseating length about its supposed capabilities, limitations, origins, detailed explanations of how it is deployed and used, equally technobabble contrivances of countermeasures, and probably some Okudagram charts and graphics showing how it works. There was none of this.
Most people I know spend every minute they're at the computer wishing that the software they have to use was better, smarter, more efficient and more adapted to their way of working.
Actually most people I know either go "I'm just not a computer person" and leave it at that, or think they are already experts, but have no desire to improve the software they're using, just to brag about how good they are for assigning static IPs on a Windows machine, and are happy that they know how to do those things.
But regardless, it is still a choice. It's completely up to them if they want to invest the time and effort into learning programming and making a difference. Most people do the cost-benefit calculation, decide it's not worth it, and that's fine.
In fact, there's nothing that says people have to use computers at all. They make life a lot easier for most of us, but there are plenty of people who don't care, and get along fine without them.
People do not have this luxury when it comes to matters of law. You must comply, whether you like it or not. Educated or not, we're all supposed to obey the law.
Finally, failure to understand programming means some idle whining that the menus on this program suck, or that application takes too long to load. Failure to understand law means you get trapped with severe penalties for not abiding by rules you didn't even know existed. Be realistic.
Like any other economic system, capitalism is a system of allocating limited resources amongst the population. Since resources are not infinite, some means of allocation must be used.
In Star Trek's world, resources are, essentially, unlimited. Infinite energy via matter/antimatter reactors. Food, shelter, supplies, all available for the asking via replicators. Nearly instantaneous transit with transporters. What role does "resource allocation" have in an environment where there are no limits to resources? Why does capitalism matter anymore? If everyone having everything they need seems like socialism, well, so what?
That said, while most stuff is free or nearly free in Star Trek's universe, there are a number of things which are not, and capitalists in the show make use of that for economic gain. See the number of episodes revolving around Quark. People in the show are frequently selling or trading in valuable antiques, artifacts, information, and other things that can't be replicated. Civilians often buy passage on commercial ships for interstellar transport.
Capitalism in Star Trek isn't dead, but it's a completely different ballgame when all living needs and the majority of luxury needs are available for the asking.
It's not a meaningful message in the sense of a letter or phone call, but it's still a form of communication, yes, especially when viewed in the context of something like a restraining order, which says, in essence, "leave this person the hell alone". So while your "poke" on Facebook might not be the same as showing up at their door, it is still a deliberate, concious attempt at reminding the target that you are still watching them. That violates not only the letter but the spirit of a restraining order.
Consider this. Let's say that instead of a "poke", the perp had instead placed a call to the victim's house and hung up after one ring. That kind of nonsense occurs all the time in these situations, and everyone pretty much agrees it is a form of harassment that violates the restraining order. The ring itself is exactly the same level of "communication" as the one-ring hang-up move -- it's a way of saying "I'm still here..."
Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.
However, everyone is expected to comply with the law, whether they like it or not. It is an obligation, enforced with guns. The law is so complex that it is understood that the average citizen cannot possibly understand most of it -- hence, specialists such as lawyers. At the same time, the average citizen is expected to fully comply with these laws he cannot possibly understand, under threat of severe penalties.
Perhaps one alternative to complex laws -- at least, ones the average everyday yob is likely to face -- is to clean them up and get judges that actually, you know, make judgements instead of metting out punishment according to what the rule books say. Traffic court is a great example, and one that most people have to tangle with at some point, often over some inane, niggling point of law that most people didn't even know was on the books.
But judges usually adhere to strict letter instead of the actual spirit, the intent, of the law, and pronounce you guilty and send you off with a fine. The only way out is to hire a lawyer for serious money, go through weeks or months of legal hassle, and maybe get some kind of reduction if you're lucky. It's too easy for judges to mindlessly throw the book at everyone instead of making actual judgement calls like "this person clearly meant no infraction, nothing happened because of it, off you go." Instead we get statutes that fill multiple volumes of books, and bewildered citizens being charged with crimes they didn't even know existed and never meant to violate.
To the type of person who would use "gay" or "homo" as an pejorative, yes, it is abuse, in the sense that when they say "You're gay" or "What a homo," they intend these things to be insulting. The recipient might not think it's insulting, but you have to look at the intent of the person saying it.
Journalism is bullshit, journalists cannot be trusted and they never report the truth unless the truth means monetary gain.
Without journalists like Woodward and Bernstein, the Watergate scandal would have gone largely unnoticed and swept under the rug. It was primarily they who uncovered the conspiracy aspect of it:
A journalist named Sam Bannath uncovered a corruption scandal in Cambodia which resulted in the prime minister ordering investigations.
Several reporters were arrested for uncovering another scandal. Reporting government corruption in an environment where you're likely to be arrested doesn't sound like "bias" or "profiteering" to me.
Journalism as a profession is not "bullshit", and there are many more stories of journalists doing work like the above. The shitty journalists are the ones toiling away at sensationalist "news" outlets like Fox, and it doesn't help that with 24-hour news channels and the web, media outlets are expected to churn out headlines nonstop, which generally leads to low-quality nonsense, often senstationalist as you put it, just to remain competetive. But that is a function of the employer, not of journalism as a trade.
On every apt-based system I've ever used, it doesn't just remove unneeded packages. It tells you "These packages are no longer needed, use apt-get autoremove to remove them." And then you can check to see what packages it is talking about and make sure it's correct before doing the autoremove.. or you can let them stay there forever since they're probably not going to hurt anything even if they really are unnecessary.
Your scenario only happens, to my knowledge, if you had some sort of cronjob that kicked off the autoremove after every upgrade or something similar, which would be retarded and you'd have no one but yourself to blame. When do packages just "go away" as you claim?
I run a small business and I was getting by okay. Then a few years ago, some jerk took out a huge billboard on a prime area in the city, advertising my shop, paying for the whole thing out of his own pocket, and more than that, this clown updates his billboard all the time to tell everyone about various specials and deals my shop offers. I didn't ask him to do this, he just does it. So now I'm getting more business than I ever imagined I would and making money hand over fist. The nerve of that guy!
But labor is also a finite resource. I think my point stands -- it's just easier to illustrate with goods instead of services. Either way it is a limited resource, and money is used to represent it in a standard, defined manner. This only works if the money itself is something limited.
Recall the scene in Hitchhiker's Guide where the fools adopted the leaf as legal tender, and ended up with three forests buying one peanut.
That's why gold is a useful standard -- it's limited in quantity. It doesn't have to be gold -- it could be any tangible but limited item. Diamonds, for example -- and it's my understanding that diamonds are used as currency in some places. I'm not sure why gold was adopted instead of any other precious metal or gem, but it doesn't matter; its value as currency is its physical scarcity and the fact that it is easy to quantify as far as raw weight and purity, so there is never any question about how much gold one has.
I suppose you're right in saying that gold only has value if both parties in the trade agree that it does, but as it has been widely accepted as being valuable for millenia, so it doesn't make a difference anymore. People accepting gold as valuable is far, far different from having to accept it because the government says so -- one represents a tangible, limited object with an extremely long history of acceptance. The other represents a politician's say-so.
The only reason gold was ever considered valuable in the "old days" was due to its scarcity
It was valuable because it represented exactly what money is supposed to represent -- a finite resource. I have a limited number of cows and chickens. You have a limited amount of corn and wheat. You want some chickens, and I want some wheat. Let's make a deal.
But we might bicker over exactly how many cows a ton of wheat is worth. It's a hassle. Instead, why don't we just put a numeric price on our items? Something easy to understand. Like, I don't know, gold. Gold works -- we all know what it is, and it's limited in quantity so we can't just claim we have any arbitrary amount. Great, my cow is worth so much gold, and your wheat is worth so much gold. Now we can trade in a sane manner.
But gold is kind of heavy to drag around. Why don't we store the actual gold somewhere safe, and make some documents that prove we own it? Then we can just trade the documents, and if we really need the gold we can always get it from the storage facility. It'll be a hell of a lot easier than carrying actual gold or chickens around, and those documents still represent actual, tangible, finite resources.
That's what money is -- a convenient way of exchanging limited resources. Or rather, that's what money was, and should be. But instead, today, it represents absolutely nothing. Money today is moving imaginary numbers, representative of nothing, from one house of cards to another. It's completley idiotic.
The entire point of an economic system is that resources of any type are limited, and we all need a way to exchange those resources, so we use money to represent said resources. When the money represents nothing, we may as well be pretending that we have infinite resources at our disposal, at which point one wonders why we're bothering with money at all.
On the other hand, I loathe multi-touch anything, and dislike memorising and making inane "gestures" on the surface, especially since they require me to twist and orient my hand into weird contortions, and it's highly unusuable in many positions I prefer to use a laptop. Like for exqample, having it on my lap with my feet propped on the desk.
"More buttons" isn't necessarily the solution either. I've had mice with tons of buttons but never have I used more than left, right, and the scroll wheel. Having tried the others and gaining nothing from the experience I'm really forced to wonder why we feel the need to "innovate" or otherwise alter a perfectly usable paradigm -- the two-button, scroll-wheel mouse.
Unless and until our style of interacting with computers changes in a very fundamental way, it seems to be just a complete waste of time, with a few people adopting the "new" methods, but most going back to the reliable, simple mouse -- because it works.
Just so's ya know, PlcmSpIp is not nonsense. It's shorthand for "Polycom Soundpoint IP", a very common IP phone, and that is the default login (and password) those phones use. Primarily they use that to connect via ftp or http to a fileserver to grab xml configs, but a shocking number of PBX admins don't bother turning off that user's ssh access, modifying/etc/passwd, changing the default logins, securing the directory, or using any other common sense. They just add the user, put the files in its homedir, and wander off.
I have personally had to demonstrate to people how easy it was for me to log into their server knowing nothing but that one piece of information, and get a full list of all the phones they had on that system and their SIP credentials (stored as plaintext xml for the phones to read).
When attackers are trying that username, now you know why!
I think part of the problem is that for every legitimate complaint someone might have against a company, there are about fifty clueless dolts making completely asinine and totally unjustified complaints about the same company. Making a public scene about a company's atrocities is a great idea but in general, looking at complaints about a company just nets the loons, the disturbed, and the just plain goofy. It's not always easy to make a real complaint heard in the sea of idiocy.
people simply won't swap because of the simple fact you have to find the correct drivers for the OS your on for your hardware, you have to install and configure Wine, and even learn to use commands.
Most people won't switch because they don't know there are alternatives, or because change might mean learning something new and they think that's hard.
I can't remember the last time I've had to "find drivers" for a Linux OS, but I sure do have to hunt them down on manufacturer websites for every single Windows install I've ever used, up to and including Windows 7.
Installing Wine is literally a three-click operation with the package manager, and for most people there's nothing to configure.
The majority of people will have to use the Linux command line about as often as they use the Command shell in Windows -- that is to say, basically never. On modern distros you can do pretty much everything through the GUI if you're so inclined.
This has been the case for years.
There may be valid reasons for some people not to switch from Windows to Linux but none of the ones you offered make any sense.
When actual comparisons have been done (as several magazines now have), as opposed to FUD
What magazines have done is irrelevent to me against comparisions *I* have done, for myself, using hardware configurations I care about. You can swing numbers all over the place depending on what options you want, but without fail, I can get the machine I want from IBM or Dell for significantly less than I'd get from Apple. I'd also get a keyboard and touchpad that doesn't make me want to kill myself.
at the same time their physical engineering is superior (that is something that is not under much dispute).
How is that not under dispute? What criteria are you using for this? I personally think Macbooks feel flimsy and I'm hardly alone in this. And as noted above, I loathe their keyboards and touchpads. I find their screens to be generally inferior unless you want to pay a HUGE, ENORMOUS premium for a resolution that isn't 1200 by Suck. In short, I find Apple's engineering to be pretty damned horrible. And I'm not alone in that either. There are millions who will complain about this stuff and more.
a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows,
All three of those are debatable. You will find people in every camp who think one of those three is far superior than the rest. I think Gnome is an excellent, highly usable, unobstrusive desktop. I think Windows is obnoxious and in my face all the time, and I think OS X is a bunch of shiny crap that does nothing but get in my way and has a one-thing-at-a-time mindset that is counterproductive.
Really, your statements are delivered with authority but have no substance behind them. None of what you claim is axiomatic actually is axiomatic. And I could easily supply anecdotal evidence that shows that Macs are great at running OS X, but generally suck wind when it comes to running Windows or Linux, but anecdotes prove nothing. The fact is that Macs are no better than anything else when it comes to "a developer's machine", and are quite often worse, depending on what, precisely, you intend to do with it. But one thing is for sure -- despite your claims to the contrary, they do carry a hefty pricetag.
The cast also keeps you from whacking your appendage into things while the bone is trying to heal. It's not fun, but it serves as both a constant reminder to be careful, and as a bit of armor for random bumps.
The obvious solution is to turn it off or don't answer it and people will get the idea and communicate on your terms.
Yeah right. I never answer my phone, ever. I do not listen to voicemail -- it is deleted immediately, or I let it rot forever until it gets automatically purged. This is how I've operated for years and years. Do you think people have gotten the hint? No, they continue to call and leave inane messages and then, when I finally do talk to them, bitch and bitch that I never answer the phone.:P
My understanding is that Google Wave is basically the equivalent of trying to work on a document while ten people stand around you, shouting suggestions, trying to steal the keyboard from you, and bickering with you and each other about whose turn it is to type and whose suggestions are good and which suggestions suck.
Is anyone surprised that this is NOT PRODUCTIVE AT ALL?
That is only one side of the coin. The other side is being able to express yourself accurately or eloquently. This is not innate; it requires practice. Simple exposure to society will teach you how to talk, and perhaps even to read and write, but most people are very, very poor at explaining their thoughts to others. (One need only glance at an average day's email from my company's customers to confirm this.) That is what art teaches, and not merely as a side effect, but as a fundamental portion of learning art.
Sure you don't graph nonlinear equations every day (maybe never), but don't you use logic?
I can actually recite the quadratic equation to this day, but I have no idea what it means, how it was derived, what possible use it has, or anything else. But I've committed it to memory. Did I learn logic?
Did I learn anything?
This is how math is taught. Long division, in fourth or fifth grade, is another great example. We were all taught how to crunch through those problems but it wasn't until I was 22 or 23 that I realised that long division is really just a shorthand way of doing mass subtraction. This was never, ever explained. Are students learning logic when they learn long division?
Are they learning anything?
Finally, the "math is logic" argument is such a tired one. There's this inate idea that math is pure logic -- it may well be -- and that by learning math, logic will somehow be transferred to the pupil. This, though, is far from axiomatic. If the goal is to teach students logic -- certainly a valuable skill to anyone -- there are many other ways to do this without involving math. "Teach students math and hope that logic somehow rubs off on them" seems to be the theme. Why not "Teach students logic and let them thereby learn logic?"
The side effects of learning art and English (or whatever your language may be) are immediate; that is to say they are not really "side effects" as such, but rather, it is basically impossible to learn art without also learning expression. It is, however, horrifyingly easy to learn how to crunch equations without actually learning any logic.
Teaching math does not imply logic will follow. Any schmuck can add numbers, simplify polynomials, graph linear and nonlinear equations, and plot best-fit averages, just by rote memorisation of the formula, but being able to do that does not imply that the student will have even a tenuous grasp of basic logic like "all A are B but not all B are A."
Being able to do math does not require knowing simple logic. Memorisation alone will suffice. But one cannot memorise art. That is something that must be learned, and it is nearly impossible to learn that without gaining what you call "side effects".
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but then you always end up having to deal with some clueless user or family member over the phone.
"Okay, please go to google dot com, and..."
"DO I NEED THE DOUBLEYEW DOUBLEYEW DOUBLEYEW?"
"No, it doesn't matter, just google dot come will do. Then type..."
"WAIT, DO I NEED THE AITCH TEE TEE PEE?"
"...no. Just type google dot com, okay?"
"IT'S NOT WORKING!"
"What do you mean it's not working?"
"WELL I TYPED AITCH TEE TEE PEE BACKSLASH COLON AND IT DOESN'T WORK."
"...sighghhg..."
There comes a point of diminishing returns. I don't think anyone here is going to seriously suggest that using a drive-installed Windows is safer than a live-CD Linux.
To be clear, this is not merely a Windows-vs-Linux thing. It's also a function of the medium. Exploits are often installed on a user's computer because some script kiddie was scanning large ranges, found some targets, and did his thing. The keylogger or whatever could have been sitting there for days before the victim logged into his bank account. Same deal with trojans.
With a live CD, of any type, this problem is virtually eliminated, assuming you only keep it booted for a short time to do your business and then remove it, which is not only what the guy is suggesting, but also how people actually use live CDs in the real world.
As you and others have pointed out there are various vulnerabilities that can still be attacked but the CD itself removes a huge number of attack vectors, and what few remain are almost inconsequential. At some point you have to say "This is as much precaution as can reasonably be taken."
You could design a 100%, absolutely secure OS for accessing your bank, have it tested and verified by every security expert in the world, and be given all sorts of awards for your genius, and still die in a random earthquake.
Total safety just isn't a part of this life. Take the reasonable precautions and keep living. Using a live CD fits that viewpoint.
Hey, in Georgia, they suspend your tag if your insurance lapses for a day. I didn't even know such a thing was possible -- suspended license, sure, for various reasons -- but a suspended tag?
That happened to me in, like, 2005. They didn't bother informing me of this, mind you, and I'd renewed my tag, in person, at the tag office, several times over the next few years, with nary a mention.
One fine day in 2008 I was pulled over and the cop informed me that my tag was expired, and ticketed me. I had to drive all around the state to various out-of-the-way offices collecting paperwork (somehow they expect you to be able to do this without driving), paying fines, renewal fees, surcharges, and other crap, and then show up to court to explain all of this.
I learned that they will also do this if you fail to pay child support. Why child support is in any way related to your ability to drive is beyond me, but I've come to realise that the state loves to yank driving privileges for any absurd reason it can find. The cynic in me believes this is because they know that it wont' actually stop anyone from driving, especially in the urban sprawl with no public transit that is Atlanta and the surrounding metro area... rather, they want you to keep driving, so they can nail you for even more fines.
I'm not sure that's true. Governments just love to make you present paperwork and documentation, then completely ignore it and look it up on their computers anyway. However they will not look it up on the computer if you don't have the paperwork first. If the paperwork says something in your favor but the computer says something against you, they will believe the computer. If, however, the computer supports you, but something is amiss with the paperwork, they'll tell you that the paperwork is invalid.
That's the government mindset.
With driver's licenses, it is no different. If I give my name and DOB to a cop that's usually enough for him to go back to his car, check the computer, see the photo ID on record, and verify that yes, that really is me. But if I don't actually have my license on me when this happens, he'll ticket me. Whether or not anything happens after that is up to the judge -- a scarce few will just say "Yeah, remember to carry your license next time, now get outta here," but most will throw the book at you.
The red matter was just a Macguffin -- it doesn't matter what it was, it only existed to move the story along. The movie was mostly about re-introducing us to the characters in their new universe, and the plot was accordingly light.
It was also not really technobabble; they simply mentioned it long enough to establish that "it's some kind of threat" and then moved on. That's all a Macguffin needs to be. If it were really technobabble in the typical Star Trek sense, they would have given it a much fancier named and droned on at nauseating length about its supposed capabilities, limitations, origins, detailed explanations of how it is deployed and used, equally technobabble contrivances of countermeasures, and probably some Okudagram charts and graphics showing how it works. There was none of this.
Most people I know spend every minute they're at the computer wishing that the software they have to use was better, smarter, more efficient and more adapted to their way of working.
Actually most people I know either go "I'm just not a computer person" and leave it at that, or think they are already experts, but have no desire to improve the software they're using, just to brag about how good they are for assigning static IPs on a Windows machine, and are happy that they know how to do those things.
But regardless, it is still a choice. It's completely up to them if they want to invest the time and effort into learning programming and making a difference. Most people do the cost-benefit calculation, decide it's not worth it, and that's fine.
In fact, there's nothing that says people have to use computers at all. They make life a lot easier for most of us, but there are plenty of people who don't care, and get along fine without them.
People do not have this luxury when it comes to matters of law. You must comply, whether you like it or not. Educated or not, we're all supposed to obey the law.
Finally, failure to understand programming means some idle whining that the menus on this program suck, or that application takes too long to load. Failure to understand law means you get trapped with severe penalties for not abiding by rules you didn't even know existed. Be realistic.
He has not done anything yet.
He called Kanye West a jackass, didn't he?
Like any other economic system, capitalism is a system of allocating limited resources amongst the population. Since resources are not infinite, some means of allocation must be used.
In Star Trek's world, resources are, essentially, unlimited. Infinite energy via matter/antimatter reactors. Food, shelter, supplies, all available for the asking via replicators. Nearly instantaneous transit with transporters. What role does "resource allocation" have in an environment where there are no limits to resources? Why does capitalism matter anymore? If everyone having everything they need seems like socialism, well, so what?
That said, while most stuff is free or nearly free in Star Trek's universe, there are a number of things which are not, and capitalists in the show make use of that for economic gain. See the number of episodes revolving around Quark. People in the show are frequently selling or trading in valuable antiques, artifacts, information, and other things that can't be replicated. Civilians often buy passage on commercial ships for interstellar transport.
Capitalism in Star Trek isn't dead, but it's a completely different ballgame when all living needs and the majority of luxury needs are available for the asking.
It's not a meaningful message in the sense of a letter or phone call, but it's still a form of communication, yes, especially when viewed in the context of something like a restraining order, which says, in essence, "leave this person the hell alone". So while your "poke" on Facebook might not be the same as showing up at their door, it is still a deliberate, concious attempt at reminding the target that you are still watching them. That violates not only the letter but the spirit of a restraining order.
Consider this. Let's say that instead of a "poke", the perp had instead placed a call to the victim's house and hung up after one ring. That kind of nonsense occurs all the time in these situations, and everyone pretty much agrees it is a form of harassment that violates the restraining order. The ring itself is exactly the same level of "communication" as the one-ring hang-up move -- it's a way of saying "I'm still here..."
Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.
However, everyone is expected to comply with the law, whether they like it or not. It is an obligation, enforced with guns. The law is so complex that it is understood that the average citizen cannot possibly understand most of it -- hence, specialists such as lawyers. At the same time, the average citizen is expected to fully comply with these laws he cannot possibly understand, under threat of severe penalties.
Perhaps one alternative to complex laws -- at least, ones the average everyday yob is likely to face -- is to clean them up and get judges that actually, you know, make judgements instead of metting out punishment according to what the rule books say. Traffic court is a great example, and one that most people have to tangle with at some point, often over some inane, niggling point of law that most people didn't even know was on the books.
But judges usually adhere to strict letter instead of the actual spirit, the intent, of the law, and pronounce you guilty and send you off with a fine. The only way out is to hire a lawyer for serious money, go through weeks or months of legal hassle, and maybe get some kind of reduction if you're lucky. It's too easy for judges to mindlessly throw the book at everyone instead of making actual judgement calls like "this person clearly meant no infraction, nothing happened because of it, off you go." Instead we get statutes that fill multiple volumes of books, and bewildered citizens being charged with crimes they didn't even know existed and never meant to violate.
To the type of person who would use "gay" or "homo" as an pejorative, yes, it is abuse, in the sense that when they say "You're gay" or "What a homo," they intend these things to be insulting. The recipient might not think it's insulting, but you have to look at the intent of the person saying it.
Journalism is bullshit, journalists cannot be trusted and they never report the truth unless the truth means monetary gain.
Without journalists like Woodward and Bernstein, the Watergate scandal would have gone largely unnoticed and swept under the rug. It was primarily they who uncovered the conspiracy aspect of it:
A journalist named Sam Bannath uncovered a corruption scandal in Cambodia which resulted in the prime minister ordering investigations.
Several reporters were arrested for uncovering another scandal. Reporting government corruption in an environment where you're likely to be arrested doesn't sound like "bias" or "profiteering" to me.
It was journalists who brought Jack Abramoff's cons to the public's attention.
Journalism as a profession is not "bullshit", and there are many more stories of journalists doing work like the above. The shitty journalists are the ones toiling away at sensationalist "news" outlets like Fox, and it doesn't help that with 24-hour news channels and the web, media outlets are expected to churn out headlines nonstop, which generally leads to low-quality nonsense, often senstationalist as you put it, just to remain competetive. But that is a function of the employer, not of journalism as a trade.
On every apt-based system I've ever used, it doesn't just remove unneeded packages. It tells you "These packages are no longer needed, use apt-get autoremove to remove them." And then you can check to see what packages it is talking about and make sure it's correct before doing the autoremove.. or you can let them stay there forever since they're probably not going to hurt anything even if they really are unnecessary.
Your scenario only happens, to my knowledge, if you had some sort of cronjob that kicked off the autoremove after every upgrade or something similar, which would be retarded and you'd have no one but yourself to blame. When do packages just "go away" as you claim?
I run a small business and I was getting by okay. Then a few years ago, some jerk took out a huge billboard on a prime area in the city, advertising my shop, paying for the whole thing out of his own pocket, and more than that, this clown updates his billboard all the time to tell everyone about various specials and deals my shop offers. I didn't ask him to do this, he just does it. So now I'm getting more business than I ever imagined I would and making money hand over fist. The nerve of that guy!
But labor is also a finite resource. I think my point stands -- it's just easier to illustrate with goods instead of services. Either way it is a limited resource, and money is used to represent it in a standard, defined manner. This only works if the money itself is something limited.
Recall the scene in Hitchhiker's Guide where the fools adopted the leaf as legal tender, and ended up with three forests buying one peanut.
That's why gold is a useful standard -- it's limited in quantity. It doesn't have to be gold -- it could be any tangible but limited item. Diamonds, for example -- and it's my understanding that diamonds are used as currency in some places. I'm not sure why gold was adopted instead of any other precious metal or gem, but it doesn't matter; its value as currency is its physical scarcity and the fact that it is easy to quantify as far as raw weight and purity, so there is never any question about how much gold one has.
I suppose you're right in saying that gold only has value if both parties in the trade agree that it does, but as it has been widely accepted as being valuable for millenia, so it doesn't make a difference anymore. People accepting gold as valuable is far, far different from having to accept it because the government says so -- one represents a tangible, limited object with an extremely long history of acceptance. The other represents a politician's say-so.
The only reason gold was ever considered valuable in the "old days" was due to its scarcity
It was valuable because it represented exactly what money is supposed to represent -- a finite resource. I have a limited number of cows and chickens. You have a limited amount of corn and wheat. You want some chickens, and I want some wheat. Let's make a deal.
But we might bicker over exactly how many cows a ton of wheat is worth. It's a hassle. Instead, why don't we just put a numeric price on our items? Something easy to understand. Like, I don't know, gold. Gold works -- we all know what it is, and it's limited in quantity so we can't just claim we have any arbitrary amount. Great, my cow is worth so much gold, and your wheat is worth so much gold. Now we can trade in a sane manner.
But gold is kind of heavy to drag around. Why don't we store the actual gold somewhere safe, and make some documents that prove we own it? Then we can just trade the documents, and if we really need the gold we can always get it from the storage facility. It'll be a hell of a lot easier than carrying actual gold or chickens around, and those documents still represent actual, tangible, finite resources.
That's what money is -- a convenient way of exchanging limited resources. Or rather, that's what money was, and should be. But instead, today, it represents absolutely nothing. Money today is moving imaginary numbers, representative of nothing, from one house of cards to another. It's completley idiotic.
The entire point of an economic system is that resources of any type are limited, and we all need a way to exchange those resources, so we use money to represent said resources. When the money represents nothing, we may as well be pretending that we have infinite resources at our disposal, at which point one wonders why we're bothering with money at all.
On the other hand, I loathe multi-touch anything, and dislike memorising and making inane "gestures" on the surface, especially since they require me to twist and orient my hand into weird contortions, and it's highly unusuable in many positions I prefer to use a laptop. Like for exqample, having it on my lap with my feet propped on the desk.
"More buttons" isn't necessarily the solution either. I've had mice with tons of buttons but never have I used more than left, right, and the scroll wheel. Having tried the others and gaining nothing from the experience I'm really forced to wonder why we feel the need to "innovate" or otherwise alter a perfectly usable paradigm -- the two-button, scroll-wheel mouse.
Unless and until our style of interacting with computers changes in a very fundamental way, it seems to be just a complete waste of time, with a few people adopting the "new" methods, but most going back to the reliable, simple mouse -- because it works.
Just so's ya know, PlcmSpIp is not nonsense. It's shorthand for "Polycom Soundpoint IP", a very common IP phone, and that is the default login (and password) those phones use. Primarily they use that to connect via ftp or http to a fileserver to grab xml configs, but a shocking number of PBX admins don't bother turning off that user's ssh access, modifying /etc/passwd, changing the default logins, securing the directory, or using any other common sense. They just add the user, put the files in its homedir, and wander off.
I have personally had to demonstrate to people how easy it was for me to log into their server knowing nothing but that one piece of information, and get a full list of all the phones they had on that system and their SIP credentials (stored as plaintext xml for the phones to read).
When attackers are trying that username, now you know why!
I think part of the problem is that for every legitimate complaint someone might have against a company, there are about fifty clueless dolts making completely asinine and totally unjustified complaints about the same company. Making a public scene about a company's atrocities is a great idea but in general, looking at complaints about a company just nets the loons, the disturbed, and the just plain goofy. It's not always easy to make a real complaint heard in the sea of idiocy.
people simply won't swap because of the simple fact you have to find the correct drivers for the OS your on for your hardware, you have to install and configure Wine, and even learn to use commands.
Most people won't switch because they don't know there are alternatives, or because change might mean learning something new and they think that's hard.
I can't remember the last time I've had to "find drivers" for a Linux OS, but I sure do have to hunt them down on manufacturer websites for every single Windows install I've ever used, up to and including Windows 7.
Installing Wine is literally a three-click operation with the package manager, and for most people there's nothing to configure.
The majority of people will have to use the Linux command line about as often as they use the Command shell in Windows -- that is to say, basically never. On modern distros you can do pretty much everything through the GUI if you're so inclined.
This has been the case for years.
There may be valid reasons for some people not to switch from Windows to Linux but none of the ones you offered make any sense.
When actual comparisons have been done (as several magazines now have), as opposed to FUD
What magazines have done is irrelevent to me against comparisions *I* have done, for myself, using hardware configurations I care about. You can swing numbers all over the place depending on what options you want, but without fail, I can get the machine I want from IBM or Dell for significantly less than I'd get from Apple. I'd also get a keyboard and touchpad that doesn't make me want to kill myself.
at the same time their physical engineering is superior (that is something that is not under much dispute).
How is that not under dispute? What criteria are you using for this? I personally think Macbooks feel flimsy and I'm hardly alone in this. And as noted above, I loathe their keyboards and touchpads. I find their screens to be generally inferior unless you want to pay a HUGE, ENORMOUS premium for a resolution that isn't 1200 by Suck. In short, I find Apple's engineering to be pretty damned horrible. And I'm not alone in that either. There are millions who will complain about this stuff and more.
a superior UI. (Superior to Linux, that is. It is debatable whether the UI is superior to Windows,
All three of those are debatable. You will find people in every camp who think one of those three is far superior than the rest. I think Gnome is an excellent, highly usable, unobstrusive desktop. I think Windows is obnoxious and in my face all the time, and I think OS X is a bunch of shiny crap that does nothing but get in my way and has a one-thing-at-a-time mindset that is counterproductive.
Really, your statements are delivered with authority but have no substance behind them. None of what you claim is axiomatic actually is axiomatic. And I could easily supply anecdotal evidence that shows that Macs are great at running OS X, but generally suck wind when it comes to running Windows or Linux, but anecdotes prove nothing. The fact is that Macs are no better than anything else when it comes to "a developer's machine", and are quite often worse, depending on what, precisely, you intend to do with it. But one thing is for sure -- despite your claims to the contrary, they do carry a hefty pricetag.
The cast also keeps you from whacking your appendage into things while the bone is trying to heal. It's not fun, but it serves as both a constant reminder to be careful, and as a bit of armor for random bumps.
The obvious solution is to turn it off or don't answer it and people will get the idea and communicate on your terms.
:P
Yeah right. I never answer my phone, ever. I do not listen to voicemail -- it is deleted immediately, or I let it rot forever until it gets automatically purged. This is how I've operated for years and years. Do you think people have gotten the hint? No, they continue to call and leave inane messages and then, when I finally do talk to them, bitch and bitch that I never answer the phone.
People never learn.
My understanding is that Google Wave is basically the equivalent of trying to work on a document while ten people stand around you, shouting suggestions, trying to steal the keyboard from you, and bickering with you and each other about whose turn it is to type and whose suggestions are good and which suggestions suck.
Is anyone surprised that this is NOT PRODUCTIVE AT ALL?
People have an innate ability to judge beauty.
That is only one side of the coin. The other side is being able to express yourself accurately or eloquently. This is not innate; it requires practice. Simple exposure to society will teach you how to talk, and perhaps even to read and write, but most people are very, very poor at explaining their thoughts to others. (One need only glance at an average day's email from my company's customers to confirm this.) That is what art teaches, and not merely as a side effect, but as a fundamental portion of learning art.
Sure you don't graph nonlinear equations every day (maybe never), but don't you use logic?
I can actually recite the quadratic equation to this day, but I have no idea what it means, how it was derived, what possible use it has, or anything else. But I've committed it to memory. Did I learn logic?
Did I learn anything?
This is how math is taught. Long division, in fourth or fifth grade, is another great example. We were all taught how to crunch through those problems but it wasn't until I was 22 or 23 that I realised that long division is really just a shorthand way of doing mass subtraction. This was never, ever explained. Are students learning logic when they learn long division?
Are they learning anything?
Finally, the "math is logic" argument is such a tired one. There's this inate idea that math is pure logic -- it may well be -- and that by learning math, logic will somehow be transferred to the pupil. This, though, is far from axiomatic. If the goal is to teach students logic -- certainly a valuable skill to anyone -- there are many other ways to do this without involving math. "Teach students math and hope that logic somehow rubs off on them" seems to be the theme. Why not "Teach students logic and let them thereby learn logic?"
The side effects of learning art and English (or whatever your language may be) are immediate; that is to say they are not really "side effects" as such, but rather, it is basically impossible to learn art without also learning expression. It is, however, horrifyingly easy to learn how to crunch equations without actually learning any logic.
Teaching math does not imply logic will follow. Any schmuck can add numbers, simplify polynomials, graph linear and nonlinear equations, and plot best-fit averages, just by rote memorisation of the formula, but being able to do that does not imply that the student will have even a tenuous grasp of basic logic like "all A are B but not all B are A."
Being able to do math does not require knowing simple logic. Memorisation alone will suffice. But one cannot memorise art. That is something that must be learned, and it is nearly impossible to learn that without gaining what you call "side effects".