If everyone used Macs today, it would be Macs, and if everyone used Linux, it would be Linux boxes.
This is a widespread misconception, akin to saying that if everyone drove Volvos, just as many people would die in traffic accidents as they do now. Millions of Americans have purchased large SUVs that tend to roll over three times more frequently than other automobiles. Volvos, on the other hand, are built with safety as a primary goal.
By the same token, would you expect an OpenBSD server to have the same level of default security protection as a Windows 2000 server? OpenBSD is built with the primary intention of being the world's most secure OS. Nowhere on the Windows 2000 product page do we see anything at all relating to security.
You can't assign positive characteristics to an OS on one hand (Windows XP doesn't crash as often as Windows 98) and then dismiss negative comparisons (Windows is less secure by default than Mac OS X or Linux).
Blame users all you want, but there are millions of uninformed Mac users out there. Believe it or not, in spite of their uninformed nature, they don't have to deal with anything like the litany of security and stability issues that confront Windows users.
It's hard to believe when you've been struggling with Windows for years and have grown accustomed to it, but while Linux and Macintosh aren't immune to security problems, the trojan horses and viruses that plague Windows users are a direct result of Microsoft's development philosophy, which emphasizes market dominance over quality.
Sadly in the America of 2004, it does. A lot of Americans seem to have a completely skewed view of what the word really means. It's no longer about being able to say what you want or think what you want, it's about being able to buy what you want when you want it.
We are all taught about Washington chopping down cherry trees, but precious little about Patrick Henry.
Is the word "lame" now a noun? I need to get out more so I can hear how all the hip young kids are speaking these days. All this newfangled speech is just hard for my old ears to adjust to.
Or maybe it's short for "Lying Apple Makes Excuses".
Hawkins is doing what Apple did in the 1980s - totally discounting the effect that games have on the PC industry. The race for faster graphics cards would still have happened without PC games as a stimulus for competition, but my guess is that demand for faster graphics would have been less widespread and therefore less attractive as a revenue stream for hardware companies.
The CPU speed race between Intel and AMD in recent years has been fueled tremendously by gaming. Once processor speeds caught up finally with the code bloat of business apps like MS Office, most business users really didn't *need* more speed. But PC games constantly push the hardware envelope, and as AMD provided faster chips and the gamer market bought them, Intel was forced to keep up.
While phones are definitely adapting more features and becoming more powerful, more people are using PCs and game consoles as the center of their home entertainment. Even without digital music, digital video manipulation and playback, and other uses for PCs, the PC gaming market is huge:
"Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales. Total game software sales in 2002 were USD 6.9 billion, with console games bringing in USD 5.5 billion in sales and computer games accounting for USD 1.4 billion. (Note: The numbers released by the ESA today do not include sales of game hardware or accessories.)"
The PC is continuing to evolve. I remember years ago when my dad told me he couldn't understand why he should buy a computer, aside from using it for accounting and occasional letter-writing. Now he uses it daily to run his business, communicate with other people, listen to music, find information, and so on.
A proliferation of other computing devices doesn't mean that the PC is going away any time soon.
But, your views are understandable since I think that we can take it that you will be voting for the French looking, Swiss educated son of a Foreign Service officer who speaks French at home and whose disdain for America is almost equal to his father's. May your affection and respect for him bloom to equal his respect for the American soldier. May you both find his popularity reaching its nadir come the election. As for me, I have another plan entirely. Vive le differnce!
Actually I was referring not just to Iraq, but also to Afghanistan, and to the whole of our foreign policy. While Clinton enacted a directive that made it US policy to oust Saddam, Bush has made it US policy to oust whomever it pleases.
Maybe you and I mean different things when we say "pre-emptive". To me, the term means to attack another country when it has not directly attacked you. I understand and agree with your point that Saddam had been thumbing his nose at the world community for 12 years, but I don't believe that he was a greater threat to us in 2003 than he was in 2001 or 1999, or 1997....
My use of the term "long-standing European alliances" may be a point of contention as well. I was thinking a little bit more broadly than you, in the sense that since Lafayette (remember him?), the French and Americans have been allies. I also would count Germany as a strong European ally - for most of the Cold War they were our primary bulwhark against Communism on the European continent. Some alliances require paper - others don't, or at least shouldn't.
I understand your anger at the French for selling Saddam weapons, but getting self-righteous about it isn't exactly helpful. After all, the US set him up in the first place, in an effort to offset the Revolutionary Iranian government. This is not the only time we have supported leaders whom we later had to remove. The French are not without fault, but Saddam the Slaughterer really only became our enemy after he screwed up by invading Kuwait. Our high horse isn't so tall.
Your assessment of the administration's post-war planning is charitable at best, and ignores the fact that there were many well-qualified people who attempted to help the administration plan for the post-invasion rebuilding, only to be rebuffed. In fact, the administration gunned down Gen. Shinseki when he told Congress that it would take far more troops than Rumsfeld committed to manage Iraq. To blame our own lack of planning on Saddam is to ignore a large body of evidence that very directly shows the administration's failure to plan properly.
You have leapt to the assumption that I hold a special place in my heart for Kerry, which I don't. As an aside, I don't know what "French-looking" means to you or why that has to do with anything, but I will be voting for him because I believe that his foreign policy will be more rational and ultimately useful in the war against reactionary terrorists than Bush's has been. You presume to know my background and my political inclinations, but I'd suggest to you that such inferences can be misleading at best.
One final note. Try posting as a member, rather than as an AC. More people will read your post if you do, and it will be easier to take your comments as more than just angry flaming.
It isn't a matter of changing out one group of people for another, because that won't improve things.
Right. They're all the same. Always have been, always will be.
* Carter tried to distance the US from dictators, took the Soviets at face value when they claimed to desire co-existence, and was shocked when they invaded Afghanistan.
* Reagan believed in the notion that it's better to have a dictator who is on our side than a totalitarian ruler opposed to us, and he pushed the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing them into an arms race they couldn't win.
* Bush 1 put together a very strong alliance to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, but didn't take over Iraq for fear of breaking the trust he had established with the Coalition partners.
* Clinton believed in working in close concert with America's European allies wherever possible, did not believe in unilateral "regime change," and deliberately limited the scope of operations against Serbia and in the Middle East, believing that effective use of American "soft power" ultimately provided better results than constant use of "hard power."
* Bush 2 eschewed long-standing European alliances and incorporated pre-emptive invasion and regime change as a core element in American foreign policy oriented almost exclusively around hard power. His post-liberation plans were based on faith-based intelligence and wishful thinking.
You're so right. No differences between them. Give up your right to vote, and let the knee-jerk flag-waving "Creationism is science" crowd take over America.
from a consumer standpoint - for almost $600 what am I getting?
Well, for $300 you can get 15Gb of storage on the low-end iPod. For $500 you can get $40Gb of storage on the high-end iPod.
The iPod/iTunes combo has become the core of my audio system. I don't have a boom box or home stereo system. I hook my iPod into my stereo TV when I want to listen to tunes downstairs. When I want to listen to tunes upstairs, I listen to the tunes through my computer's speakers. When I'm driving in the car, I plug in my tape deck adapter and go.
When I go for a run or go to work out, I take my iPod and have all of my tunes with me. So in that sense it's not just "a Walkman that doesn't need CDs or tapes." A CD Walkman is fine if I just want to listen to whatever CDs I happen to have with me at the time. But when I'm mobile, the last thing I want to do is decide which tunes I think I'll want to listen to at some point in the future. I want the whole range of my music library available.
I'm not rich. Not even close. I like my music a lot, but I'm not the music freak I was when I was in my teens. All the same, the iPod has really changed my listening habits quite a bit. It allows me to listen to a broader range of my own music than I otherwise would, lets me listen to music pretty much anywhere, and eliminates the need to haul around discs or tapes wherever I go.
Prices will doubtless drop on these devices as they become commoditized. Someday they'll drop to a price that will be acceptable to you. In the mean time, the investment in my iPod has more than justified the cost several times over for me (and for my non-technophile wife, who is an iPod addict as well).
I'm not sure what you mean by "nearly an entire contintent that thinks it can devote nearly 0% of its resources to its military...".
You're not talking about Africa, I'd guess. Most of the nations in Africa have low GNPs anyway, and they're not exactly trying to exert their influence around the world. They're trying to fight AIDS and keep their people fed.
You're not talking about Australia, as they're involved in the Iraq operation and had a military budget of $7.6 billion for 2003-2004.
You're not talking about Asia, as Russia, China and Japan alone had a combined military budget of $154.6 billion.
You're not talking about South America, as Brazil and Argentina alone spent a combined $11 billion on their militaries.
You're obviously not referring to North America, as the US alone spent $399.1 billion dollars last year and is continuing to spend billions more this year.
Maybe you're referring to Europe. Nope, that can't be right. After all, the military budgets of the top four European spenders (Russia not included) add up to $112.2 billion. That's certainly nothing like 0% of GNP. But maybe you were referring to the fact that European forces are never actually fielded in real-world operations.
Wait a minute. They actually ARE fielded in real-world operations. There are German troops in Afghanistan, and Norwegian troops in Afghanistan. There are British troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are Italian, Portugese, Polish, Ukranian, Dutch, Romanian, Danish, and other European soldiers in Iraq.
Their numbers pale in comparison to the number of American troops, but one wonders if the numbers would be higher had the Bush administration not bullied its allies into acquiescence on Iraq, rather than building a strong coalition the way the first Bush administration did. Perhaps the presence of forces from Germany and France, the most militarily powerful and politically influential of the continental nations, would have changed the overall calculus of the war.
But to say that Europeans are seeking diplomatic relevance without putting forth the force to back it up ignores the fact that many European nations are fielding units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many more might have been engaged had it not been for the brain-dead approach taken by the Bush administration.
No, you're not missing anything. The business/technology press makes money by selling advertising, and conflict stories sell their publications. It's obvious that Dell needs innovators to show them the way, just as it is obvious that innovators can never completely dominate a market as their innovations become commoditized. But don't tell that to the press:
May 27, 2004: "Michael Dell announces that sleeping with underage gerbils is the only path to transformative strategic insights."
May 28, 2004: "Carly Fiorina declares death of gerbil-inspired strategy and outlines new meerkat-based inspiration management system."
There's an excellent explanation in Legal Affairs of the legal powers Spitzer wields. His primary tool is the Martin Act, which gives him frighteningly wide-ranging authority to go after a wide range of targets.
Re:American justice is based on many things
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don't know if your post is meant to defend the system or damn it.
Neither. I probably didn't put it very clearly.
I don't profess to be a legal expert, but the American legal system was based on common law. That means that to a great extent the law is what "makes sense" (as interpreted at the time) rather than what is "universally true".
My primary intention was to point out that to simplify something as vast and complex as the American legal system down to a statement that money is the sole determinant of the law is a distortion of the truth. I say that because it is my feeling that the first step in abandoning your own social responsibility is to say that you can do absolutely nothing to shape events because everyting is being controlled by monied interests. Apathy suits the needs only of those who depend in it for cover.
American justice is based on many things
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"The thing about American Justice though... it's based on money."
That's a gross oversimplification. Trial by jury is prone to the influence of money in that better lawyers can be hired by one side or the other, but in the end it's even more prone to the social context in which the case takes place.
For example, jury trials in the American South before the enacting of federal Civil Rights legislation were absurdly biased in favor of whites and against blacks. This had nothing to do with money and everything to do with racism.
Big companies in the age of Rockafeller and Carnegie were left relatively unfettered until Americans began to resent the range and depth of the Robber Barons' influence. Then in trial after trial, the monopolies were hit hard by plaintiffs seeking damages from large companies. When Americans perceive a powerful entity as being generally useful, they tend not to press it too hard, but when they see it as having overstepped its bounds, juries tend to come down against Big Business.
Witness the recent spate of Wall Street trials. While there was certainly widespread malfeasance during the Dot-Com era, the Tyco execs, Martha Stewart, et. al. are in some ways being convicted not because of what they specifically did, but because the American public, as represented by jurors, is tired of this sort of rampant greed and wants to send a message to the executive class.
Lawrence Friedman's Law in America is a great primer (only 200 pages) on how the American legal system evolved, and how it has shaped and been shaped by American society.
... which seems quite appropriate to me. Just read this to see the author get very excited about his Webby award, and also to see why he definitely deserved to win in the "weird" category.
Yeah, the power thing is a bitch. You're absolutely right about the inherent difficulties. But I can't think about something that actually happened to me in my youth. I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I was haing a conversation with my mother.
"Man, I wish you could just play whatever movie you wanted to on your TV." (This was the mid-1970s, mind you) I continued, trying to be practical. "But it'll never happen."
Mom looked over at me and said, "Do you think the settlers crossing the midwest in their covered wagons could have even imagined television? Sometimes things that seem impossible turn out not to be so impossible after all."
Of course now I can pop a DVD of practically any movie I want and watch it at my leisure. I don't claim to have the answers to making the world wireless, but I have learned not to rule things out.
While it's a ways off, and there are glitches (Bluetooth security concerns, etc.), I for one will be happy as hell when I can go behind my entertainment center and not have to spend 15 minutes untangling cords and cables just to move something. Ditto for the computer setup. Imagine a truly wireless office, where nothing (keyboard, external monitor, network) is connected by wires or cables. Sure, there are some folks who will doubtless brag about how they already have such a setup, but I'm talking about widespread adoption.
Extending FireWire is one piece of the puzzle, and I for one am anxious to see the products that will result.
Way back (way back!) in 1990, Steve Jackson Games roused the ire of the US Secret Service for making a pencil and paper RPG called Cyberpunk, which was supposedly a handbook for computer crime. Never mind the fact that the game took place in a speculative future, SJG was raided. Thus began a legal wrangle that involved the nascent Electronic Frontier Foundation and sparked a much wider discussion about electronic civil liberties.
In the process of fighting the Secret Service, even with help from the EFF, Steve Jackson Games almost went under.
BTW, I'm not saying that the Steve Jackson case is the same as the FBI's current screw-up. But law enforcement makes mistakes, and sometimes they make big mistakes because they're simply not clued in to popular culture, not to mention computer technology as it is actually used in society.
You're making the assumption that because an artist is on an independent label, I'm going to like their music. While I do like a lot of independent music, like most people for better or worse my listening habits have been built around music distributed by major labels.
Using a collection of smaller download services is time-consuming, because you have to go from one service to the next in order to find what you're looking for, and it still doesn't expose you to the breadth of music that iTunes does.
Unfortunately for the indies, consumers like a very broad selection all in one place. There are thousands and thousands of Windows apps, most of them very crappy, but consumers like the fact that they can find any type of application under the sun for Windows. Apple has been fighting an uphill battle against this perception for years with the Macintosh, and they've learned a lot from it.
It's also important to remember that most people aren't even aware of independent music. For every person who thinks Rhino Records is a bunch of sell-outs, there are 9 people who don't even know who Rhino is, much less No Idea Records.
Don't get me wrong - supporting indie music is definitely a way to keep good music alive. But don't expect that the majority of people will ever get into indie music. Even in the heyday of punk, only a miniscule percentage of the population had even heard of the biggest names in the punk scene.
Nibbling at the edges won't get the RIAA to mend its ways. It'll take an outfit with big-time commercial clout and a lot of money to get them to clue in, unfortunately.
Every news rag has to have their own "Google story" or they'll feel left out in the cold. The poor Guardian was just trying to be with the in-crowd.
It's a pity they chose such an unscientific and biased comparison. But then, I'm sure it's selling copies of the Guardian, which is ulitmately what it's all about anyway.
End user software is generally treated with a more cavalier attitude -- in part (probably) to keep costs down but the rush to market plays a huge part in that. Even in OSS, when there is no rush to market, bugs are consistently found. I'm sure that if there was a market that was willing to shell out for end-user apps developed with this type of care, a company would step forward. However, I'm not sure that there is a market for that.
I'm not sure that either of our proposed solutions will work in real life. So... what should be done?
That's the crux of the biscuit.
Your points about how easy it is to apply patches are well-taken. I think part of it has to do with how computers have been presented to the public. As you mention, consumer products and services have been marketed as being effortless. Hell, it even happens in the IT world. Software and hardware are marketed as silver bullets, and even people who should know better take the bait.
I seriously doubt that Microsoft or anyone else is going to lead their marketing with some sort of OpenBSD-like approach. We've got this crazed fixation with features: more, more, more! So people want features but won't pay for better-engineered sofware. And if consumers don't think it's important enough, how can any company (or OSS project) convince them that solid engineering is worth the cost?
If you're gonna drive a car, you'd better understand the rules of the road, and you'd better know how to change a tire if you get a flat.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that ignorance keeps worms alive. But it seems to me that our automobile analogy illustrates what my point. When you drive a car you do need to know how to fix a flat, but you shouldn't have to know how to fix your engine in order to use the car. If my grandmother wants to use email, the Web, and Microsoft Office on occasion, should she have to get a certification in order to do so?
The fact is that computers are intertwined with our everyday lives to an enormous degree, yet networked systems are fundamentally unstable and prone to attack. If you drove your car and it broke down every five miles, would you blame yourself for not having the wherewithall to fix a cracked head gasket, or would you blame the manufacturer?
Most people aren't auto mechanics, and most people aren't sysads. Like it or not, most people who are fulfilling some sort of sysad role (the "office computer guy" for example) have very uneven education. But should we be blaming them because they're trying to get things done with their computers and might not be as capable as we'd like them to be?
We are definitely all in it together, but my feeling is that the people who develop operating systems are like engineers, in that they should be held to a higher standard of performance than a layman. But computer science isn't nearly as evolved as the engineering profession, and as a result, we all suffer with systems that are profoundly flawed.
I hear what you're saying, and I agree that far too many computer users have no clue about the machines they're using. But no amount of venting will help this circumstance. For one thing, the computer industry moves so rapidly that even for someone immersed in it, it's difficult to stay on top of the latest technology. Imagine how difficult it is for the average user, who just wants the product they purchased to work as advertised, without having to be constantly fixed, upgraded, updated, and re-installed.
The tone of the article seems to lay blame largely upon the worm itself.
Well, yes. The worm is what's doing the damage.
If you fail to lock your car door as you mention, you'd likely be pissed off at yourself when you realize it's been stolen. But if you get in and out of your car thousands of times each year, you're bound to forget to lock it once or twice. Or perhaps you're in a hurry to get into the bank before it closes, or you only left the car for a second while you jumped into 7-Eleven for a soda.
There are people who generally know what they're doing, but sometimes are unable to apply patches as soon as they come out. There are workplace issues of all sorts that get in the way of good system administration, even when the best intentions are present.
Finally, let's get clear on who really is to blame here. People who write malicious code that is designed to spread across the Net and disrupt other people's lives are fucking assholes. It's that simple. You can place the blame on their victims all you want, but when someone steals my car, regardless of whether I left the car door unlocked or not, I'm going to want their head on a stake.
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This is a widespread misconception, akin to saying that if everyone drove Volvos, just as many people would die in traffic accidents as they do now. Millions of Americans have purchased large SUVs that tend to roll over three times more frequently than other automobiles. Volvos, on the other hand, are built with safety as a primary goal.
By the same token, would you expect an OpenBSD server to have the same level of default security protection as a Windows 2000 server? OpenBSD is built with the primary intention of being the world's most secure OS. Nowhere on the Windows 2000 product page do we see anything at all relating to security.
You can't assign positive characteristics to an OS on one hand (Windows XP doesn't crash as often as Windows 98) and then dismiss negative comparisons (Windows is less secure by default than Mac OS X or Linux).
Blame users all you want, but there are millions of uninformed Mac users out there. Believe it or not, in spite of their uninformed nature, they don't have to deal with anything like the litany of security and stability issues that confront Windows users.
It's hard to believe when you've been struggling with Windows for years and have grown accustomed to it, but while Linux and Macintosh aren't immune to security problems, the trojan horses and viruses that plague Windows users are a direct result of Microsoft's development philosophy, which emphasizes market dominance over quality.
Sadly in the America of 2004, it does. A lot of Americans seem to have a completely skewed view of what the word really means. It's no longer about being able to say what you want or think what you want, it's about being able to buy what you want when you want it.
We are all taught about Washington chopping down cherry trees, but precious little about Patrick Henry.
That's the first time I've heard Apple get dissed for selling something too inexpensively. You just can't please people. ;-)
Or maybe it's short for "Lying Apple Makes Excuses".
The CPU speed race between Intel and AMD in recent years has been fueled tremendously by gaming. Once processor speeds caught up finally with the code bloat of business apps like MS Office, most business users really didn't *need* more speed. But PC games constantly push the hardware envelope, and as AMD provided faster chips and the gamer market bought them, Intel was forced to keep up.
While phones are definitely adapting more features and becoming more powerful, more people are using PCs and game consoles as the center of their home entertainment. Even without digital music, digital video manipulation and playback, and other uses for PCs, the PC gaming market is huge:
"Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales. Total game software sales in 2002 were USD 6.9 billion, with console games bringing in USD 5.5 billion in sales and computer games accounting for USD 1.4 billion. (Note: The numbers released by the ESA today do not include sales of game hardware or accessories.)"
The PC is continuing to evolve. I remember years ago when my dad told me he couldn't understand why he should buy a computer, aside from using it for accounting and occasional letter-writing. Now he uses it daily to run his business, communicate with other people, listen to music, find information, and so on.
A proliferation of other computing devices doesn't mean that the PC is going away any time soon.
Actually I was referring not just to Iraq, but also to Afghanistan, and to the whole of our foreign policy. While Clinton enacted a directive that made it US policy to oust Saddam, Bush has made it US policy to oust whomever it pleases.
Maybe you and I mean different things when we say "pre-emptive". To me, the term means to attack another country when it has not directly attacked you. I understand and agree with your point that Saddam had been thumbing his nose at the world community for 12 years, but I don't believe that he was a greater threat to us in 2003 than he was in 2001 or 1999, or 1997... .
My use of the term "long-standing European alliances" may be a point of contention as well. I was thinking a little bit more broadly than you, in the sense that since Lafayette (remember him?), the French and Americans have been allies. I also would count Germany as a strong European ally - for most of the Cold War they were our primary bulwhark against Communism on the European continent. Some alliances require paper - others don't, or at least shouldn't.
I understand your anger at the French for selling Saddam weapons, but getting self-righteous about it isn't exactly helpful. After all, the US set him up in the first place, in an effort to offset the Revolutionary Iranian government. This is not the only time we have supported leaders whom we later had to remove. The French are not without fault, but Saddam the Slaughterer really only became our enemy after he screwed up by invading Kuwait. Our high horse isn't so tall.
Your assessment of the administration's post-war planning is charitable at best, and ignores the fact that there were many well-qualified people who attempted to help the administration plan for the post-invasion rebuilding, only to be rebuffed. In fact, the administration gunned down Gen. Shinseki when he told Congress that it would take far more troops than Rumsfeld committed to manage Iraq. To blame our own lack of planning on Saddam is to ignore a large body of evidence that very directly shows the administration's failure to plan properly.
You have leapt to the assumption that I hold a special place in my heart for Kerry, which I don't. As an aside, I don't know what "French-looking" means to you or why that has to do with anything, but I will be voting for him because I believe that his foreign policy will be more rational and ultimately useful in the war against reactionary terrorists than Bush's has been. You presume to know my background and my political inclinations, but I'd suggest to you that such inferences can be misleading at best.
One final note. Try posting as a member, rather than as an AC. More people will read your post if you do, and it will be easier to take your comments as more than just angry flaming.
Right. They're all the same. Always have been, always will be.
* Carter tried to distance the US from dictators, took the Soviets at face value when they claimed to desire co-existence, and was shocked when they invaded Afghanistan.
* Reagan believed in the notion that it's better to have a dictator who is on our side than a totalitarian ruler opposed to us, and he pushed the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing them into an arms race they couldn't win.
* Bush 1 put together a very strong alliance to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, but didn't take over Iraq for fear of breaking the trust he had established with the Coalition partners.
* Clinton believed in working in close concert with America's European allies wherever possible, did not believe in unilateral "regime change," and deliberately limited the scope of operations against Serbia and in the Middle East, believing that effective use of American "soft power" ultimately provided better results than constant use of "hard power."
* Bush 2 eschewed long-standing European alliances and incorporated pre-emptive invasion and regime change as a core element in American foreign policy oriented almost exclusively around hard power. His post-liberation plans were based on faith-based intelligence and wishful thinking.
You're so right. No differences between them. Give up your right to vote, and let the knee-jerk flag-waving "Creationism is science" crowd take over America.
Well, for $300 you can get 15Gb of storage on the low-end iPod. For $500 you can get $40Gb of storage on the high-end iPod.
The iPod/iTunes combo has become the core of my audio system. I don't have a boom box or home stereo system. I hook my iPod into my stereo TV when I want to listen to tunes downstairs. When I want to listen to tunes upstairs, I listen to the tunes through my computer's speakers. When I'm driving in the car, I plug in my tape deck adapter and go.
When I go for a run or go to work out, I take my iPod and have all of my tunes with me. So in that sense it's not just "a Walkman that doesn't need CDs or tapes." A CD Walkman is fine if I just want to listen to whatever CDs I happen to have with me at the time. But when I'm mobile, the last thing I want to do is decide which tunes I think I'll want to listen to at some point in the future. I want the whole range of my music library available.
I'm not rich. Not even close. I like my music a lot, but I'm not the music freak I was when I was in my teens. All the same, the iPod has really changed my listening habits quite a bit. It allows me to listen to a broader range of my own music than I otherwise would, lets me listen to music pretty much anywhere, and eliminates the need to haul around discs or tapes wherever I go.
Prices will doubtless drop on these devices as they become commoditized. Someday they'll drop to a price that will be acceptable to you. In the mean time, the investment in my iPod has more than justified the cost several times over for me (and for my non-technophile wife, who is an iPod addict as well).
You're not talking about Africa, I'd guess. Most of the nations in Africa have low GNPs anyway, and they're not exactly trying to exert their influence around the world. They're trying to fight AIDS and keep their people fed.
You're not talking about Australia, as they're involved in the Iraq operation and had a military budget of $7.6 billion for 2003-2004.
You're not talking about Asia, as Russia, China and Japan alone had a combined military budget of $154.6 billion.
You're not talking about South America, as Brazil and Argentina alone spent a combined $11 billion on their militaries.
You're obviously not referring to North America, as the US alone spent $399.1 billion dollars last year and is continuing to spend billions more this year.
Maybe you're referring to Europe. Nope, that can't be right. After all, the military budgets of the top four European spenders (Russia not included) add up to $112.2 billion. That's certainly nothing like 0% of GNP. But maybe you were referring to the fact that European forces are never actually fielded in real-world operations.
Wait a minute. They actually ARE fielded in real-world operations. There are German troops in Afghanistan, and Norwegian troops in Afghanistan. There are British troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are Italian, Portugese, Polish, Ukranian, Dutch, Romanian, Danish, and other European soldiers in Iraq.
Their numbers pale in comparison to the number of American troops, but one wonders if the numbers would be higher had the Bush administration not bullied its allies into acquiescence on Iraq, rather than building a strong coalition the way the first Bush administration did. Perhaps the presence of forces from Germany and France, the most militarily powerful and politically influential of the continental nations, would have changed the overall calculus of the war.
But to say that Europeans are seeking diplomatic relevance without putting forth the force to back it up ignores the fact that many European nations are fielding units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that many more might have been engaged had it not been for the brain-dead approach taken by the Bush administration.
All budget figures from the Center for Defense Information.
May 27, 2004: "Michael Dell announces that sleeping with underage gerbils is the only path to transformative strategic insights."
May 28, 2004: "Carly Fiorina declares death of gerbil-inspired strategy and outlines new meerkat-based inspiration management system."
Who needs the Enquirer?
It's not enough that popular culture bashes geeks, but to have geeks wholeheartedly embrace the stereotype is just plain perverse.
Shouldn't we embrace the notion that geeks come in both genders, all sizes, and with a wide range of characteristics, hobbies, and non-geek pursuits?
Neither. I probably didn't put it very clearly.
I don't profess to be a legal expert, but the American legal system was based on common law. That means that to a great extent the law is what "makes sense" (as interpreted at the time) rather than what is "universally true".
My primary intention was to point out that to simplify something as vast and complex as the American legal system down to a statement that money is the sole determinant of the law is a distortion of the truth. I say that because it is my feeling that the first step in abandoning your own social responsibility is to say that you can do absolutely nothing to shape events because everyting is being controlled by monied interests. Apathy suits the needs only of those who depend in it for cover.
That's a gross oversimplification. Trial by jury is prone to the influence of money in that better lawyers can be hired by one side or the other, but in the end it's even more prone to the social context in which the case takes place.
For example, jury trials in the American South before the enacting of federal Civil Rights legislation were absurdly biased in favor of whites and against blacks. This had nothing to do with money and everything to do with racism.
Big companies in the age of Rockafeller and Carnegie were left relatively unfettered until Americans began to resent the range and depth of the Robber Barons' influence. Then in trial after trial, the monopolies were hit hard by plaintiffs seeking damages from large companies. When Americans perceive a powerful entity as being generally useful, they tend not to press it too hard, but when they see it as having overstepped its bounds, juries tend to come down against Big Business.
Witness the recent spate of Wall Street trials. While there was certainly widespread malfeasance during the Dot-Com era, the Tyco execs, Martha Stewart, et. al. are in some ways being convicted not because of what they specifically did, but because the American public, as represented by jurors, is tired of this sort of rampant greed and wants to send a message to the executive class.
Lawrence Friedman's Law in America is a great primer (only 200 pages) on how the American legal system evolved, and how it has shaped and been shaped by American society.
Obviously I can't think. ;-)
I meant to say, "obviously I can't help but think..."
Yeah, the power thing is a bitch. You're absolutely right about the inherent difficulties. But I can't think about something that actually happened to me in my youth. I was about 7 or 8 years old, and I was haing a conversation with my mother.
"Man, I wish you could just play whatever movie you wanted to on your TV." (This was the mid-1970s, mind you) I continued, trying to be practical. "But it'll never happen."
Mom looked over at me and said, "Do you think the settlers crossing the midwest in their covered wagons could have even imagined television? Sometimes things that seem impossible turn out not to be so impossible after all."
Of course now I can pop a DVD of practically any movie I want and watch it at my leisure. I don't claim to have the answers to making the world wireless, but I have learned not to rule things out.
Extending FireWire is one piece of the puzzle, and I for one am anxious to see the products that will result.
In the process of fighting the Secret Service, even with help from the EFF, Steve Jackson Games almost went under.
BTW, I'm not saying that the Steve Jackson case is the same as the FBI's current screw-up. But law enforcement makes mistakes, and sometimes they make big mistakes because they're simply not clued in to popular culture, not to mention computer technology as it is actually used in society.
You're making the assumption that because an artist is on an independent label, I'm going to like their music. While I do like a lot of independent music, like most people for better or worse my listening habits have been built around music distributed by major labels.
Using a collection of smaller download services is time-consuming, because you have to go from one service to the next in order to find what you're looking for, and it still doesn't expose you to the breadth of music that iTunes does.
Unfortunately for the indies, consumers like a very broad selection all in one place. There are thousands and thousands of Windows apps, most of them very crappy, but consumers like the fact that they can find any type of application under the sun for Windows. Apple has been fighting an uphill battle against this perception for years with the Macintosh, and they've learned a lot from it.
It's also important to remember that most people aren't even aware of independent music. For every person who thinks Rhino Records is a bunch of sell-outs, there are 9 people who don't even know who Rhino is, much less No Idea Records.
Don't get me wrong - supporting indie music is definitely a way to keep good music alive. But don't expect that the majority of people will ever get into indie music. Even in the heyday of punk, only a miniscule percentage of the population had even heard of the biggest names in the punk scene.
Nibbling at the edges won't get the RIAA to mend its ways. It'll take an outfit with big-time commercial clout and a lot of money to get them to clue in, unfortunately.
It's a pity they chose such an unscientific and biased comparison. But then, I'm sure it's selling copies of the Guardian, which is ulitmately what it's all about anyway.
I'm not sure that either of our proposed solutions will work in real life. So... what should be done?
That's the crux of the biscuit.
Your points about how easy it is to apply patches are well-taken. I think part of it has to do with how computers have been presented to the public. As you mention, consumer products and services have been marketed as being effortless. Hell, it even happens in the IT world. Software and hardware are marketed as silver bullets, and even people who should know better take the bait.
I seriously doubt that Microsoft or anyone else is going to lead their marketing with some sort of OpenBSD-like approach. We've got this crazed fixation with features: more, more, more! So people want features but won't pay for better-engineered sofware. And if consumers don't think it's important enough, how can any company (or OSS project) convince them that solid engineering is worth the cost?
Very annoying indeed.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that ignorance keeps worms alive. But it seems to me that our automobile analogy illustrates what my point. When you drive a car you do need to know how to fix a flat, but you shouldn't have to know how to fix your engine in order to use the car. If my grandmother wants to use email, the Web, and Microsoft Office on occasion, should she have to get a certification in order to do so?
The fact is that computers are intertwined with our everyday lives to an enormous degree, yet networked systems are fundamentally unstable and prone to attack. If you drove your car and it broke down every five miles, would you blame yourself for not having the wherewithall to fix a cracked head gasket, or would you blame the manufacturer?
Most people aren't auto mechanics, and most people aren't sysads. Like it or not, most people who are fulfilling some sort of sysad role (the "office computer guy" for example) have very uneven education. But should we be blaming them because they're trying to get things done with their computers and might not be as capable as we'd like them to be?
We are definitely all in it together, but my feeling is that the people who develop operating systems are like engineers, in that they should be held to a higher standard of performance than a layman. But computer science isn't nearly as evolved as the engineering profession, and as a result, we all suffer with systems that are profoundly flawed.
I hear what you're saying, and I agree that far too many computer users have no clue about the machines they're using. But no amount of venting will help this circumstance. For one thing, the computer industry moves so rapidly that even for someone immersed in it, it's difficult to stay on top of the latest technology. Imagine how difficult it is for the average user, who just wants the product they purchased to work as advertised, without having to be constantly fixed, upgraded, updated, and re-installed.
Well, yes. The worm is what's doing the damage.
If you fail to lock your car door as you mention, you'd likely be pissed off at yourself when you realize it's been stolen. But if you get in and out of your car thousands of times each year, you're bound to forget to lock it once or twice. Or perhaps you're in a hurry to get into the bank before it closes, or you only left the car for a second while you jumped into 7-Eleven for a soda.
There are people who generally know what they're doing, but sometimes are unable to apply patches as soon as they come out. There are workplace issues of all sorts that get in the way of good system administration, even when the best intentions are present.
Finally, let's get clear on who really is to blame here. People who write malicious code that is designed to spread across the Net and disrupt other people's lives are fucking assholes. It's that simple. You can place the blame on their victims all you want, but when someone steals my car, regardless of whether I left the car door unlocked or not, I'm going to want their head on a stake.