The Dilbert Ego I refer to isn't the character himself. Instead it's all the technologists who read him and pretend that they are society's elite and make smug comments about everybody else.
I simply said that the most important contribution to the society is made by those who create society's technology.
I don't see any reason to single a class of people out and label them as "the most important to society". Also, by equating technocracy with meritocracy, as you did, you are saying that people who aren't technological should not rise in society. Meritocracy is a much broader tent than technocracy. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "The term 'meritocracy' was first used, in a pejorative sense, in Michael Young's 1958 book Rise of the Meritocracy, which is set in a dystopian future in which one's social place is determined by IQ plus effort."
By the way, I'm not "fighting technocracy", whatever that means (some other author said that). I'm fighting arrogance.
I had searched before regarding the native widgets issue, but didn't find a good link, so that's why I asked you for a follow-up.
Anyways, thanks for your answer. Based on that, I did a search for "java desktop api" that led to this page. It's been 11 months since it was updated, but it's a good launching point.
We need all kinds of people in society. Teachers, policemen, managers, doctors, even lawyers. The list goes on. The Dilbert Ego is not something to wear proudly.
The iTunes interface won over many converts from Winamp and Musicmatch Jukebox before they even owned an iPod. Simplicity and power won over again. The iTMS isn't the best selling store by accident.
I hated the iTunes interface when I signed up for it. I was on a Windows box and the thing looked like a damn Mac app. I don't remember the exact details, but getting a list of songs I wanted it to play did not match my intuition, as it had when I had used Winamp (at least I think it was Winamp). The only reason I "chose" the iTunes music store was because at the time, they were pretty much the only choice for $1 a song.
This was several years ago. I have since gone back to Linux. And guess what? iTunes does not work on Linux. From what I've heard, the iPod was innovative and has a great design, but please don't try to transfer that karma to iTunes.
What's your point? Ken Thompson's paper shows that if you get compromised at a deep enough level, you can remain compromised. The point of "trusted" computing is to not get compromised in the first place, and to limit the number of attack points.
You seem to be saying that because there is a deep inherent flaw once a system gets compromised, that we shouldn't try to prevent that compromise from happening. I'm not saying that the current "Trusted Computing" initiative is the right answer (the problem is that it removes choice from the owner of the machine). However, there are other ways to prevent that CD you just bought from Sony from rootkitting your machine, ways that put the ultimate power of what can run on a machine into the hands of the user. We should not abandon them.
Right now there are many, many people in the world who are extraordinarily unhappy with things as they are, and would take down civilization if they could. They lack only the means, not the motive. Eventually, and inevitably, the means will become more and more accessible.
Yes, this is the double-edged sword of technology. The more we depend on it and the more powerful and accessible it becomes, the greater danger we face from some nutjob with a chip on his shoulder.
The idea that we can simply make everybody happy with cheap energy is naive. The Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the people behind 9/11. These weren't poor people. They were people that had some political idea, and wanted to kill people to advance it. Unless you install mind control devices on everybody or have a total surveillance society I don't see how your cheap energy will save the world from radicals.
There is no sequence of steps that you can take that reduces the risk to zero.
Indeed, but we're so far from zero that it's not a problem. Even though I'm many times more knowledgable and cautious than the average user it still distresses me just how much implicit trust I have given to millions of lines of code and thousands of developers.
We need to MAKE THE FUCKING HORSE DRINK.
You're not going to MAKE users secure by beating them with a stick. If computer security was as simple as maintaining a car there wouldn't be the huge problems there are now. So yes, the solution will have to come from the vendors, to make security the easy default.
The right direction is Principle of Least Authority, but neither Unix nor Microsoft has done a good job with this yet. There's huge room for improvement. Take a look at The SkyNet Virus:
Why it is Unstoppable; How to Stop it for a sane approach to security.
The PS2 hardware was finalized around three years before the Xbox was and was able to have almost identical performance(multi-texture advantage for the Xbox/fillrate and floating point advantage for the PS2) for roughly half to a third the cost to manufacture. And the PS2 is still on the market cranking out amazing looking games like God of War and Shadow of the Colossus.
The environments in God of War on the PS2 were amazing. However, besides Kratos, the rest of the characters looked poor, especially the harpies. Compare God of War on the PS2 to a game like Odd World: Stranger's Wrath on the XBox. Hands down, the XBox wins.
I will be buying my Wii and waiting a year or two to see what churns out for the PS3. The potential is there, yes, but whether or not anyone exploits it remains to be seen.
Xbox Live is ok, but it could be so much better. My biggest gripe with it is that online functionality between games is so uneven. There are too many times when something isn't working right, but you have no feedback as to what the problem is. Microsoft should have made some umbrella network monitor that you could escape to in order to see what was going on. Instead networking is just a black box.
Oh by the way, achievements and gamerscore are lame.
These ideas are as old as the hills. Nobody can claim originality on them. Technology has always been shrinking. Eventually there will be fruit-fly sized devices invading our homes.
[The Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battle] ended when the PS3 sold 400,000 units in the past few days.
Umm, there are 100s of millions of DVD players out there. Nobody doubts Sony will sell a few million PS3s. The big question is how fast and how much they will go beyond that.
There's a good chance that nobody wins the war, and players end up supporting both.
Who's going to pay those people to call the customers? [..] An automated process is the only way to go.
If you don't pay your bill they call you and send mail. Even an automated call will do. It really isn't that expensive, and they already have systems in place because of the billing issue.
to expect all the vendors to take full responsibility for security because the end users are too fucking lazy to do the SIMPLEST things is just unfair.
Blaming the users who don't understand the technical issues is wrong. Do you think the average user understands that with a default install of an OS, they can be hacked within minutes of going online, and should instead apply an update offline first? Don't you have any family members who aren't tech savvy? If their machine is hacked, are you going to call them lazy idiots?
Do you think you're safe? Do you realize that you implicitly trust millions of lines of code written by thousands of different users, and it only takes one line/user to make a mistake or be malicious? I suppose you take the time to have everything sandboxed in multiple virtual machines, never mix your online banking with other activivities, have separate firewall zones for different applications to limit spyware, etc?
No, security has to come from the vendor. Leaving millions of machines vulnerable is insane, and this situation will not last. Change will come.
Firewalls and anti-virus software is nice and all, but zero-day exploits and users clicking on things they shouldn't (and ignoring security warnings) defeat all that.
There's nothing stopping botnet owners now from using botnets for other purposes besides spam. Saying that we shouldn't stop spam because they'll do something worse is just giving in to fear (or I can be cynical and guess you're a spammer who doesn't want to be shut down).
Lots of people only pay attention to something when they're forced to.
I agree, but sending the user 1,000s of email messages sounds like childish retaliation. I think it would be more effective and more professional to just drop service for that user and call them on the phone.
That's what happened to a coworker once, when she first got her cable modem. Didn't take her long to get the problem fixed after that. She was actually a coder, but came from a Unix backround and wasn't very wizardly with Windows. This just highlights that security needs to be built-in correctly by default.
I replied to an anonmyous coward that wasn't really anonymous, and that was following the conversation. You're a karma whore, and it was fun to call you on it.
The 360 has already had a year head start. Sony and Nintendo weren't going to give Microsoft a second Christmas season to themselves, especially now that Microsoft has their supply ramped up.
This isn't "Camping out to get something that only happens once," this is "Camping out to get something that anybody will be able to walk into a store and buy in three months."
You're wrong. The PS3 will be in short supply for a lot longer than 3 months. For the people that have money to burn and don't like waiting, then it makes sense for them to pay a premium. For the people that are willing to wait in line to get one to either sell or play, more power to them. Personally I wouldn't pay $2000 or wait in line, but so what?
Slashdot Mirror
The Dilbert Ego I refer to isn't the character himself. Instead it's all the technologists who read him and pretend that they are society's elite and make smug comments about everybody else.
I don't see any reason to single a class of people out and label them as "the most important to society". Also, by equating technocracy with meritocracy, as you did, you are saying that people who aren't technological should not rise in society. Meritocracy is a much broader tent than technocracy. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "The term 'meritocracy' was first used, in a pejorative sense, in Michael Young's 1958 book Rise of the Meritocracy, which is set in a dystopian future in which one's social place is determined by IQ plus effort."
By the way, I'm not "fighting technocracy", whatever that means (some other author said that). I'm fighting arrogance.
I had searched before regarding the native widgets issue, but didn't find a good link, so that's why I asked you for a follow-up.
Anyways, thanks for your answer. Based on that, I did a search for "java desktop api" that led to this page. It's been 11 months since it was updated, but it's a good launching point.
We need all kinds of people in society. Teachers, policemen, managers, doctors, even lawyers. The list goes on. The Dilbert Ego is not something to wear proudly.
I hated the iTunes interface when I signed up for it. I was on a Windows box and the thing looked like a damn Mac app. I don't remember the exact details, but getting a list of songs I wanted it to play did not match my intuition, as it had when I had used Winamp (at least I think it was Winamp). The only reason I "chose" the iTunes music store was because at the time, they were pretty much the only choice for $1 a song.
This was several years ago. I have since gone back to Linux. And guess what? iTunes does not work on Linux. From what I've heard, the iPod was innovative and has a great design, but please don't try to transfer that karma to iTunes.
What's your point? Ken Thompson's paper shows that if you get compromised at a deep enough level, you can remain compromised. The point of "trusted" computing is to not get compromised in the first place, and to limit the number of attack points.
You seem to be saying that because there is a deep inherent flaw once a system gets compromised, that we shouldn't try to prevent that compromise from happening. I'm not saying that the current "Trusted Computing" initiative is the right answer (the problem is that it removes choice from the owner of the machine). However, there are other ways to prevent that CD you just bought from Sony from rootkitting your machine, ways that put the ultimate power of what can run on a machine into the hands of the user. We should not abandon them.
Yes, this is the double-edged sword of technology. The more we depend on it and the more powerful and accessible it becomes, the greater danger we face from some nutjob with a chip on his shoulder.
The idea that we can simply make everybody happy with cheap energy is naive. The Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, the people behind 9/11. These weren't poor people. They were people that had some political idea, and wanted to kill people to advance it. Unless you install mind control devices on everybody or have a total surveillance society I don't see how your cheap energy will save the world from radicals.
Fair enough. Meritocracy is based on ability and talent (meritocracy). Technocracy is based on technological skill and talent (technocracy).
Meaning that you can have technical skills and have merit, but there are more valuable things in society than just technical skills.
Indeed, but we're so far from zero that it's not a problem. Even though I'm many times more knowledgable and cautious than the average user it still distresses me just how much implicit trust I have given to millions of lines of code and thousands of developers.
You're not going to MAKE users secure by beating them with a stick. If computer security was as simple as maintaining a car there wouldn't be the huge problems there are now. So yes, the solution will have to come from the vendors, to make security the easy default.
The right direction is Principle of Least Authority, but neither Unix nor Microsoft has done a good job with this yet. There's huge room for improvement. Take a look at The SkyNet Virus: Why it is Unstoppable; How to Stop it for a sane approach to security.
Was "snarky" word of the day recently? I seem to be seeing it a lot.
The environments in God of War on the PS2 were amazing. However, besides Kratos, the rest of the characters looked poor, especially the harpies. Compare God of War on the PS2 to a game like Odd World: Stranger's Wrath on the XBox. Hands down, the XBox wins.
I agree. I'm looking now at recently completed auctions. Here's a fun one: New_Playstation 3_Sealedinbox@hotmail email address PS3
Some guy sold a hotmail email address for $100.
Ok, besides that, here are the 10 most recent prices (with shipping costs included if listed):
So I guess all those people who thought they'd get $1,500 to $3,000 in profits just got a pay cut.
Good advice.
Xbox Live is ok, but it could be so much better. My biggest gripe with it is that online functionality between games is so uneven. There are too many times when something isn't working right, but you have no feedback as to what the problem is. Microsoft should have made some umbrella network monitor that you could escape to in order to see what was going on. Instead networking is just a black box.
Oh by the way, achievements and gamerscore are lame.
With a handle like "superwiz" it's not suprising you think that way. Get over yourself.
These ideas are as old as the hills. Nobody can claim originality on them. Technology has always been shrinking. Eventually there will be fruit-fly sized devices invading our homes.
Umm, there are 100s of millions of DVD players out there. Nobody doubts Sony will sell a few million PS3s. The big question is how fast and how much they will go beyond that.
There's a good chance that nobody wins the war, and players end up supporting both.
If you don't pay your bill they call you and send mail. Even an automated call will do. It really isn't that expensive, and they already have systems in place because of the billing issue.
Blaming the users who don't understand the technical issues is wrong. Do you think the average user understands that with a default install of an OS, they can be hacked within minutes of going online, and should instead apply an update offline first? Don't you have any family members who aren't tech savvy? If their machine is hacked, are you going to call them lazy idiots?
Do you think you're safe? Do you realize that you implicitly trust millions of lines of code written by thousands of different users, and it only takes one line/user to make a mistake or be malicious? I suppose you take the time to have everything sandboxed in multiple virtual machines, never mix your online banking with other activivities, have separate firewall zones for different applications to limit spyware, etc?
No, security has to come from the vendor. Leaving millions of machines vulnerable is insane, and this situation will not last. Change will come.
Firewalls and anti-virus software is nice and all, but zero-day exploits and users clicking on things they shouldn't (and ignoring security warnings) defeat all that.
There's nothing stopping botnet owners now from using botnets for other purposes besides spam. Saying that we shouldn't stop spam because they'll do something worse is just giving in to fear (or I can be cynical and guess you're a spammer who doesn't want to be shut down).
I agree, but sending the user 1,000s of email messages sounds like childish retaliation. I think it would be more effective and more professional to just drop service for that user and call them on the phone.
That's what happened to a coworker once, when she first got her cable modem. Didn't take her long to get the problem fixed after that. She was actually a coder, but came from a Unix backround and wasn't very wizardly with Windows. This just highlights that security needs to be built-in correctly by default.
I replied to an anonmyous coward that wasn't really anonymous, and that was following the conversation. You're a karma whore, and it was fun to call you on it.
Oddly enough, I once got $4 in cash in the mail from the Nielsen people. It was a "here's four bucks, please participate" thing.
The 360 has already had a year head start. Sony and Nintendo weren't going to give Microsoft a second Christmas season to themselves, especially now that Microsoft has their supply ramped up.
You're wrong. The PS3 will be in short supply for a lot longer than 3 months. For the people that have money to burn and don't like waiting, then it makes sense for them to pay a premium. For the people that are willing to wait in line to get one to either sell or play, more power to them. Personally I wouldn't pay $2000 or wait in line, but so what?
You know it crumbles that way
At least that's what they say when you play the game