Then tell me this: if you realised how bad it was, why did you do it? Doesn't it prove your baser instincts DID control you?
I made a personal choice to give in to my baser instincts. What if I had killed somebody instead? Or raped some women? Or robbed a bank? In the end, it comes down to choice. By saying somebody has a disease and no choice, you are removing personal responsibility and giving people an excuse to do whatever the hell they want.
Did the concept of personal responsibility help you eat any better?
In the end, it did. Type 2 diabetes is a gradual disease. I changed my lifestyle and turned my health around. It was hard as hell, too, but I made the choice. The alternative was to continue as I was doing and rely on drugs that aren't very effective.
Would you tell a diabetic that he "should stop complaining and not eat so much sugar"?
Anybody who's diabetic should definitely not be eating sugar.
After all, both diabetes and skin cancer are often caused by life-style choices. Why is it more socially acceptable to assume obese people are idiots?
Having lived a life of junk-food and binging on sweets, and ending up diabetic myself, I can tell you I accept personal responsibility for it. I knew eating like that wasn't good for me. Without personal responsibility, what do you have? Might as well say every wrong action is a disease, because you had no choice but to give in to your baser instincts.
These were otherwise successful people who were not obviously weak-willed.
If they can't stop and they rationally want to, they are weak-willed. As much as they may desire their drug of choice, they always have the choice.
Imagine if they had a kill device hooked up to them that would instantly kill them if they took their drug again. As miserable as it would make them, I bet most people would not take the drug. It clearly is a matter of choice.
The other thing is that addiction doesn't happen overnight, and the problems of addiction are well-known. If you start down that path, you do so voluntarily. Personal responsibility has to count for something.
Somebody who gets leukemia didn't have a choice. They have a disease. Somebody who's addicted is not in the same boat.
That doesn't look like what he said at all. Noticed him saying he didn't pirate games, and him saying he has shelves full of paid for games?
Did you miss the part where he found an excuse to pirate Arkham Asylum and not pay for it? He got his kicks from the game, a game which I'm sure took millions to develop.
Game companies are trying to harm me as a customer, and often times have no problems with screwing me over. Why the hell should I care about them? Should I really have moral qualms about pirating their content? Why?
Maybe the game companies feel the same way about consumers? It's easy to find an excuse that ends up self-serving.
If you take the moral high ground and support the products that don't have DRM, then you encourage that model. If you just pirate the DRM games, then you aren't supporting anything. Consider that if you're playing a DRM game, then that takes away time and motivation from alternatives.
Also, since when should I empathize with a giant corporation who doesn't give two shits about me, and will screw me over for an extra $0.02 in the bank? Did they do anything to earn my empathy or respect?
Just like how many consumers will screw over companies for their own self-interests. They get taken advantage of all the time, with the justification that's it's a faceless corporation. Yet these corporations employ people and are run by people. They're not all totally evil, either, though there will always be something you don't approve of.
"You agree that you will not use any unauthorized hardware, including peripherals not sold or licensed by a Sony company such as, by way of example only, non-licensed game enhancement devices, controllers, adaptors and power supply devices (collectively, "Non-Licensed Peripherals") or software to access or use Sony Online Services or any content or service provided on or through Sony Online Services."
I've read it through several times before, and I can't be bothered doing it again
Yeah, that was the final straw with me. You had to agree one more time to a legal agreement pages and pages long just to play some games. Fuck it, among everything else, I'm just sick of the corporate bullshit.
It also doesn't use any form of internal protection to prevent it. Go ahead, plug in a Dell keyboard or use a ThinkGeek roll-out Bluetooth one. They'll both work fine. Its called conforming to standards.
Which is great, except then there's this bullshit license agreement saying you can't do that while online.
Notably of course in your mind, this didn't happen and neither did Microsoft suing over its own mod chip issues.
You have me confused with somebody else. I'm not an apologist for Microsoft or Nintendo when it comes to game consoles.
The average home user won't use the command line to install software, if its not in the repositories.
The average user can follow simple instructions. "click here in the menu, type this in".
If I remember correctly, Ubuntu by default is set to pop up the update manager daily.
Which means it'll just get ignored by a large percentage of people.
I think they do some updates automatically in the background as well, but I couldn't swear to it.
There is an option, but I don't think it's enabled by default. It isn't in the 10.10 amd64 version I'm running. I think Microsoft got it right by making security updates happen automatically by default.
As I said, I'm not claiming Linux to be unhackable... just that there are some legitimate areas where it is by default more secure.
The problem is that these days it really isn't. Having the repositories is a bit more secure, but people will always be tempted to install or run random stuff.
Also keep in mind that today's viruses are usually benign - annoying, but non-destructive - they install some fraudware to run on startup, which either hijacks passwords/financial info
I wouldn't call malware that hijacks my financial info "benign".
Heavy fuckin' Rain. Great movie that plays like a game.
I played the demo and it was just awful. The first problem was the horrible controls: no free-look, awkward swiping motions, and just terrible walking animations. I felt like I was awkwardly controlling a zombie. They really should have just licensed an engine that didn't suck, something like GTA IV.
The second, and even more fundamental problem, was having to separate your attention between control prompts on the screen and following the "movie". Trying to do both at the same time takes the enjoyment out of each.
I really wanted to like Heavy Rain. I thought the atmosphere and story idea was cool, right down to the title. Unfortunately, as a game it sucked.
Most people probably use the central repositories which mean that they aren't running random code, but rather only code that has been admitted into the repostitory.
Yet there's often software people want to use that is not in the repository, and I see it advised all the time on how to grab a package file from a 3rd party site and run a sudo command to install it. Ditto for things like Firefox Add-ons.
In addition use of the Linux repositories means that ALL your programs get updated as the updates are available, compared to windows where individual software either has to install its own update, or wait for the user to manually check for an update.
And how many people actually update diligently? Is the default in Ubuntu to automatically apply security updates?
Its also worthy to note that until Vista/7 users pretty much had to run as admin to actually use their computers. This left the entire system open to attack rather than just the user account.
Installing all your software as admin isn't much better. Also, if your user account is cracked, it's pretty much game over anyways. You can be part of a botnet. All your sensitive information is available.
In other words, there isn't much difference here. If the masses moved to a Linux desktop, you'd see the same problems.
You need a basic lesson in logic if you think that confirms what he says.
The facts are what they are. You were running an old Adobe and Security Essentials saved you. The best security is layered and not an all-or-nothing proposition.
Are you kidding me????? What do I want? An environment where browsing to a web page doesn't automatically execute anything outside the browser. A product that is patched well enough so that new exploits aren't discovered every other week. Are you seriously telling me a product that requires updates every week to stay safe is a good one?
Yet if you installed Adobe Reader on Linux, or at the very least Flash, as many people do, you'll get the same bugs. In this case it isn't particular to Microsoft.
I agree, the huge amount of trust you give to running something like a PDF reader or Flash is a problem. However, it isn't unique to Microsoft. In the meantime, all you can do is stay up-to-date on patches and don't allow useless features like web integration for a PDF reader. At least Adobe gives you an option to disable it.
Yes, it does sound like bullshit. It sounds like you've been listening to stories at hacker conventions, and adopting them as first-hand knowledge.
I don't believe for a minute somebody's college info would be wiped out like that -- and why would it need to be? And the claim about being framed, well which is it, was this guy caught in a crime as you said, or was he framed? Since you claim the former, this latter bit is just making stuff up that fits your worldview.
Sorry, but your story isn't credible. I might believe there's a grain of truth to it, but most of it sounds like fantastical musings.
It's valid in this case because the US system was being compared to the rest of the "free world". If you want to claim a superiority, then you have to do the comparison.
Who's moving the goalposts? You are the one who started talking about Linux servers, when before we were talking about desktops. They're different markets with different attack vectors.
However, just search for "linux botnet" if you don't think that Linux servers aren't compromised.
But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law.
That's just authoritarian bullshit. As long as you don't redistribute your changes, you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with your copy, especially when the software is limiting your use of the hardware.
"Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."
Attacking GoDaddy's trust because Bob Parsons went hunting in Africa to help farmers. Way to bring politics into a supposed technical discussion.
I agree bringing in politics was a bad call. Then again, you're going to defend that dickhead CEO as "helping farmers"? Seriously, get real. He's just out to shoot some big elephants and give himself an erection. If he really wants to help farmers, he'd help them put up fences and use their wildlife for tourism.
The USA's court system has upheld nonsense like "corporate personhood" (something completely unnecessary for limitation of liability).
There's lot of bullshit to go around. Tell me the country you live in, Anonymous Coward, and I'll dig it up.
I'm not sure you know what tulipmania means, either. Other countries still have imaginary property bullshit, yes, but only in the USA is it revered and speculated on to such an extent.
Just like those "database rights" that EU adopted, and all the royalty collection that goes on, like taxes collected on televisions and blank media, to the point of idiocy where somebody playing a radio in an office owes a license fee.
It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to the free world's
Is that so? Where do you live that is such a paradise? I'm sure I can dig up a list of injustices.
the USA's imaginary property tulipmania, it's understandable.
Most countries recognize patents and copyrights. The EU has "database rights", a right that the US doesn't recognize. Europe and Canada has royalty collection societies. I'm not happy with the DMCA or the disgusting state of the patent system, but don't pretend that other countries are so different.
Market share and stupid users? There are plenty enough Macs out there to form a nice botnet, especially since so many are unprotected.
But why bother, when there's so many more Windows machines?
Now, since you've thought to make me look like a fool, how about telling me the precise mechanism of how Linux and OSX are equally as vulnerable as the Windows platform?
Simple. They have the same kinds of vulnerabilities and essentially the same security model. Let's say you want to run some random application being offered on the Net. You run it, and it now has access to everything your account does. No, it doesn't have admin access, but it doesn't need to. It can participate in a botnet, spy on your tax documents, etc.
And what about software exploits, where a trusted app has a security bug? Linux and OS X have those, too. Fall behind on your updates or get hit with a zero-day, and it's the same thing.
Servers don't run web browsers and email clients, and in general don't have consumers who know next to nothing about security, like installing random video codes.
However, for sure there are Linux servers out there running unpatched software, and there have been plenty of security issues released over the years for Linux.
Does my answer's precision make or break the accuracy of my statement?
Your statement was unfounded FUD. The question is whether Windows is fundamentally less secure than Linux. Too many Linux fanboys just repeat memes that have been passed around for about 20 years.
Although I suspect that you were responding to Raenex's post
I wasn't talking to myself.
The Linux box and Macs run bareback. Imagine if that was a Windows machine?
I've run for years without a virus scanner, since the DOS days. I've never had a problem. I'm only running Security Essentials now because of work and VPN policy.
But the Windows culture doesn't see their problems as problems. It has to be stupid users, market share, or anything other than Windows responsibility.
That's because it is stupid users and market share that make Windows less secure. That's why I ask what, in particular, makes you think Linux is more secure. Either you have an answer or you don't.
Linux has something like 1% of the desktop market. It just isn't a target. Now if everybody switched to Linux because of mythological security, it would be a different story.
I ran for years without a virus scanner on Windows without a problem, but then I know basic computer security. A firewall is just good hygiene, whether it's Windows or Linux, though most home routers have one built-in nowadays anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Then tell me this: if you realised how bad it was, why did you do it? Doesn't it prove your baser instincts DID control you?
I made a personal choice to give in to my baser instincts. What if I had killed somebody instead? Or raped some women? Or robbed a bank? In the end, it comes down to choice. By saying somebody has a disease and no choice, you are removing personal responsibility and giving people an excuse to do whatever the hell they want.
Did the concept of personal responsibility help you eat any better?
In the end, it did. Type 2 diabetes is a gradual disease. I changed my lifestyle and turned my health around. It was hard as hell, too, but I made the choice. The alternative was to continue as I was doing and rely on drugs that aren't very effective.
There's an old saying "when you're in a hole, stop digging."
So shouldn't the addicts or on the path to become addicts follow that advice?
Would you tell a diabetic that he "should stop complaining and not eat so much sugar"?
Anybody who's diabetic should definitely not be eating sugar.
After all, both diabetes and skin cancer are often caused by life-style choices. Why is it more socially acceptable to assume obese people are idiots?
Having lived a life of junk-food and binging on sweets, and ending up diabetic myself, I can tell you I accept personal responsibility for it. I knew eating like that wasn't good for me. Without personal responsibility, what do you have? Might as well say every wrong action is a disease, because you had no choice but to give in to your baser instincts.
These were otherwise successful people who were not obviously weak-willed.
If they can't stop and they rationally want to, they are weak-willed. As much as they may desire their drug of choice, they always have the choice.
Imagine if they had a kill device hooked up to them that would instantly kill them if they took their drug again. As miserable as it would make them, I bet most people would not take the drug. It clearly is a matter of choice.
The other thing is that addiction doesn't happen overnight, and the problems of addiction are well-known. If you start down that path, you do so voluntarily. Personal responsibility has to count for something.
Somebody who gets leukemia didn't have a choice. They have a disease. Somebody who's addicted is not in the same boat.
That doesn't look like what he said at all. Noticed him saying he didn't pirate games, and him saying he has shelves full of paid for games?
Did you miss the part where he found an excuse to pirate Arkham Asylum and not pay for it? He got his kicks from the game, a game which I'm sure took millions to develop.
Game companies are trying to harm me as a customer, and often times have no problems with screwing me over. Why the hell should I care about them? Should I really have moral qualms about pirating their content? Why?
Maybe the game companies feel the same way about consumers? It's easy to find an excuse that ends up self-serving.
If you take the moral high ground and support the products that don't have DRM, then you encourage that model. If you just pirate the DRM games, then you aren't supporting anything. Consider that if you're playing a DRM game, then that takes away time and motivation from alternatives.
Also, since when should I empathize with a giant corporation who doesn't give two shits about me, and will screw me over for an extra $0.02 in the bank? Did they do anything to earn my empathy or respect?
Just like how many consumers will screw over companies for their own self-interests. They get taken advantage of all the time, with the justification that's it's a faceless corporation. Yet these corporations employ people and are run by people. They're not all totally evil, either, though there will always be something you don't approve of.
Chapter and verse please.
"You agree that you will not use any unauthorized hardware, including peripherals not sold or licensed by a Sony company such as, by way of example only, non-licensed game enhancement devices, controllers, adaptors and power supply devices (collectively, "Non-Licensed Peripherals") or software to access or use Sony Online Services or any content or service provided on or through Sony Online Services."
http://us.playstation.com/support/useragreements/termsserviceagreemt/
I've read it through several times before, and I can't be bothered doing it again
Yeah, that was the final straw with me. You had to agree one more time to a legal agreement pages and pages long just to play some games. Fuck it, among everything else, I'm just sick of the corporate bullshit.
It also doesn't use any form of internal protection to prevent it. Go ahead, plug in a Dell keyboard or use a ThinkGeek roll-out Bluetooth one. They'll both work fine. Its called conforming to standards.
Which is great, except then there's this bullshit license agreement saying you can't do that while online.
Notably of course in your mind, this didn't happen and neither did Microsoft suing over its own mod chip issues.
You have me confused with somebody else. I'm not an apologist for Microsoft or Nintendo when it comes to game consoles.
The average home user won't use the command line to install software, if its not in the repositories.
The average user can follow simple instructions. "click here in the menu, type this in".
If I remember correctly, Ubuntu by default is set to pop up the update manager daily.
Which means it'll just get ignored by a large percentage of people.
I think they do some updates automatically in the background as well, but I couldn't swear to it.
There is an option, but I don't think it's enabled by default. It isn't in the 10.10 amd64 version I'm running. I think Microsoft got it right by making security updates happen automatically by default.
As I said, I'm not claiming Linux to be unhackable... just that there are some legitimate areas where it is by default more secure.
The problem is that these days it really isn't. Having the repositories is a bit more secure, but people will always be tempted to install or run random stuff.
Also keep in mind that today's viruses are usually benign - annoying, but non-destructive - they install some fraudware to run on startup, which either hijacks passwords/financial info
I wouldn't call malware that hijacks my financial info "benign".
In other words, you rationalized your decision to get something for free.
Heavy fuckin' Rain. Great movie that plays like a game.
I played the demo and it was just awful. The first problem was the horrible controls: no free-look, awkward swiping motions, and just terrible walking animations. I felt like I was awkwardly controlling a zombie. They really should have just licensed an engine that didn't suck, something like GTA IV.
The second, and even more fundamental problem, was having to separate your attention between control prompts on the screen and following the "movie". Trying to do both at the same time takes the enjoyment out of each.
I really wanted to like Heavy Rain. I thought the atmosphere and story idea was cool, right down to the title. Unfortunately, as a game it sucked.
Most people probably use the central repositories which mean that they aren't running random code, but rather only code that has been admitted into the repostitory.
Yet there's often software people want to use that is not in the repository, and I see it advised all the time on how to grab a package file from a 3rd party site and run a sudo command to install it. Ditto for things like Firefox Add-ons.
In addition use of the Linux repositories means that ALL your programs get updated as the updates are available, compared to windows where individual software either has to install its own update, or wait for the user to manually check for an update.
And how many people actually update diligently? Is the default in Ubuntu to automatically apply security updates?
Its also worthy to note that until Vista/7 users pretty much had to run as admin to actually use their computers. This left the entire system open to attack rather than just the user account.
Installing all your software as admin isn't much better. Also, if your user account is cracked, it's pretty much game over anyways. You can be part of a botnet. All your sensitive information is available.
In other words, there isn't much difference here. If the masses moved to a Linux desktop, you'd see the same problems.
You need a basic lesson in logic if you think that confirms what he says.
The facts are what they are. You were running an old Adobe and Security Essentials saved you. The best security is layered and not an all-or-nothing proposition.
Are you kidding me????? What do I want? An environment where browsing to a web page doesn't automatically execute anything outside the browser. A product that is patched well enough so that new exploits aren't discovered every other week. Are you seriously telling me a product that requires updates every week to stay safe is a good one?
Yet if you installed Adobe Reader on Linux, or at the very least Flash, as many people do, you'll get the same bugs. In this case it isn't particular to Microsoft.
I agree, the huge amount of trust you give to running something like a PDF reader or Flash is a problem. However, it isn't unique to Microsoft. In the meantime, all you can do is stay up-to-date on patches and don't allow useless features like web integration for a PDF reader. At least Adobe gives you an option to disable it.
Yes, it does sound like bullshit. It sounds like you've been listening to stories at hacker conventions, and adopting them as first-hand knowledge.
I don't believe for a minute somebody's college info would be wiped out like that -- and why would it need to be? And the claim about being framed, well which is it, was this guy caught in a crime as you said, or was he framed? Since you claim the former, this latter bit is just making stuff up that fits your worldview.
Sorry, but your story isn't credible. I might believe there's a grain of truth to it, but most of it sounds like fantastical musings.
It's valid in this case because the US system was being compared to the rest of the "free world". If you want to claim a superiority, then you have to do the comparison.
Who's moving the goalposts? You are the one who started talking about Linux servers, when before we were talking about desktops. They're different markets with different attack vectors.
However, just search for "linux botnet" if you don't think that Linux servers aren't compromised.
But under the current law Sony has a legal expectation that users not modify their software. If we don't like that we should work on modifying IP law.
That's just authoritarian bullshit. As long as you don't redistribute your changes, you should be able to do whatever the hell you want with your copy, especially when the software is limiting your use of the hardware.
"Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. The DMCA prohibits only forms of access that would violate or impinge on the protections that the Copyright Act otherwise affords copyright owners."
http://gigaom.com/video/new-dmca-exemptions-ripping-dvds-for-online-video-now-legal/
Attacking GoDaddy's trust because Bob Parsons went hunting in Africa to help farmers. Way to bring politics into a supposed technical discussion.
I agree bringing in politics was a bad call. Then again, you're going to defend that dickhead CEO as "helping farmers"? Seriously, get real. He's just out to shoot some big elephants and give himself an erection. If he really wants to help farmers, he'd help them put up fences and use their wildlife for tourism.
The USA's court system has upheld nonsense like "corporate personhood" (something completely unnecessary for limitation of liability).
There's lot of bullshit to go around. Tell me the country you live in, Anonymous Coward, and I'll dig it up.
I'm not sure you know what tulipmania means, either. Other countries still have imaginary property bullshit, yes, but only in the USA is it revered and speculated on to such an extent.
Just like those "database rights" that EU adopted, and all the royalty collection that goes on, like taxes collected on televisions and blank media, to the point of idiocy where somebody playing a radio in an office owes a license fee.
It's a pity he settled, but given the corruption of the USA's court system compared to the free world's
Is that so? Where do you live that is such a paradise? I'm sure I can dig up a list of injustices.
the USA's imaginary property tulipmania, it's understandable.
Most countries recognize patents and copyrights. The EU has "database rights", a right that the US doesn't recognize. Europe and Canada has royalty collection societies. I'm not happy with the DMCA or the disgusting state of the patent system, but don't pretend that other countries are so different.
Market share and stupid users? There are plenty enough Macs out there to form a nice botnet, especially since so many are unprotected.
But why bother, when there's so many more Windows machines?
Now, since you've thought to make me look like a fool, how about telling me the precise mechanism of how Linux and OSX are equally as vulnerable as the Windows platform?
Simple. They have the same kinds of vulnerabilities and essentially the same security model. Let's say you want to run some random application being offered on the Net. You run it, and it now has access to everything your account does. No, it doesn't have admin access, but it doesn't need to. It can participate in a botnet, spy on your tax documents, etc.
And what about software exploits, where a trusted app has a security bug? Linux and OS X have those, too. Fall behind on your updates or get hit with a zero-day, and it's the same thing.
Servers don't run web browsers and email clients, and in general don't have consumers who know next to nothing about security, like installing random video codes.
However, for sure there are Linux servers out there running unpatched software, and there have been plenty of security issues released over the years for Linux.
Does my answer's precision make or break the accuracy of my statement?
Your statement was unfounded FUD. The question is whether Windows is fundamentally less secure than Linux. Too many Linux fanboys just repeat memes that have been passed around for about 20 years.
Although I suspect that you were responding to Raenex's post
I wasn't talking to myself.
The Linux box and Macs run bareback. Imagine if that was a Windows machine?
I've run for years without a virus scanner, since the DOS days. I've never had a problem. I'm only running Security Essentials now because of work and VPN policy.
But the Windows culture doesn't see their problems as problems. It has to be stupid users, market share, or anything other than Windows responsibility.
That's because it is stupid users and market share that make Windows less secure. That's why I ask what, in particular, makes you think Linux is more secure. Either you have an answer or you don't.
Linux has something like 1% of the desktop market. It just isn't a target. Now if everybody switched to Linux because of mythological security, it would be a different story.
I ran for years without a virus scanner on Windows without a problem, but then I know basic computer security. A firewall is just good hygiene, whether it's Windows or Linux, though most home routers have one built-in nowadays anyways.
What distribution do you use? Could you describe, precisely, in what way it is more secure than Windows 7?
No, the original poster claimed it took more work to secure Windows than Linux.
And you agreed with it and said that's one of the reasons why you use Linux. So you can't just pass it off now that you can't defend your statement.
Who's got time to fiddle about that that stuff? Just get something that works.
And there you go again.