However, you didn't come to any conclusion. So the problem is not so trivial as you may want to portray it.
"And people like to pretend, probably because they enjoy porn and violence, that it doesn't harm people, but anyone who can seriously believe this is quite frankly mad."
This is not very accurate. Porn and violence on TV have never directly harmed anyone except for casual accidents on the set. To blame the media for something you (or anyone) did is a very immature attitude. As humans, we should be aware that we can control our own behaviour whenever we want to by introspection. You can blame someone or something else all you want, but fact is that blame itself is irrational and only exists in our minds. Without realizing this, you can never truly solve any problem. Relying on others to change is a game of chance at best, with guaranteed negative odds in the long term. Nothing can grow by waiting for others to grow.
There has been lots of molestation, rape and violence before TV and media. However, it was usually hushed down within families and organizations. This is sadly a part of human nature. The reason this is depicted on media now is because we're somehow going to have to deal with what has been done in the past. Fleeing from it, will just make it hunt us down. We are fascinated by history, without realizing it will repeat again and again until we reclaim our power and understanding.
"If you consistently expose people to sex and violence they grow to accept it. It's as obvious as anything. It's conditioning."
Yes, correct conditioning is very important in any society. In fact the most important job, but very lowly valuated in the Western world. This sad fact is creating most of our problems, because we do not care about eachother anymore (we're so damn many in one place). So, outlawing and banning people's freedom of expression and speech is not going to fix our problems.
"For instance, in Muslim countries women aren't leered at and treated as sex objects, because society conditions them not to. In Western societies, women are objectified through their portrayal as breasts on a stick on TV."
Well, in Muslim countries they are conditioned to look at wives and daughters as tradeable property, so what is better? Terror in schools or terror at home? (Obviously none of them) My point is not to 'diss anyone, but give an understanding that covering up the bad things, will only make them go underground. The longer it remains unexpressed, the harder it will be to deal with it later. Openness is the only way to go to make a system grow.
"That's how conditioning works, and that's what's happened here. There is no way that violence has no effect. Just as kids exposed to lots of swearing swear more than those in environemnts where swearing is taboo, those exposed to violence are more violent. Anyone who says otherwise is only doing so because they enjoy violence and sex so much."
Don't forget swearing;-) What happens when you put pressure on a system? The system fights back by heating up. When you limit people's expression, you deny them authority and responsibility of themselves. That is what's been happening in the past, and is why we have more of everything bad now. When people reclaim their power, the process is ugly, but there's no other way. Though, it doesn't have to be so ugly if only people step down from their pedestals and accept higher wisdom and guidance (NOT from me though;).
If you've read this far, let me just conclude with the thought-provoker that the current jail-system is in fact creating much of the problems with crime. Most of the violence and conditioning is happening in our prisons. Do not blame the "system" or prison-management. Realize that it is so, because we fear prisoners so much, the public wouldn't tolerate having them around or treating them nicely. Well.. What comes around, goes around. Do not blame anyone, the world is a big feedback-loop. Things just are the way they are.
So what is a poor geek to do? Well, accept the fact that you can't and shouldn't fix every problem in the world. Focus on yourself, those around you and positive things, don't focus on negativity and fear. What you focus on, you will have more of.
Actually. If the companies had any clue, they would refrain from such practices. It's gonna hit them in their heads that mom & pop don't want to be spammed. They are much easier targets than crackers that spam too. Opt out is opt out, no matter what. Only legitimate notices without advertisements should be accepted then. I can't think of any worse advertisement than making thousands of people pissed. No wonder this company went down.
I guess it went like this: He opted out on their website, then after a while he gets this sent to him. Now, I don't know where you come from but it is clearly spam. The mail is perfectly content-free, it would have been a completely different matter if the email was about the _business-relation_, regarding a transaction for instance.
You might be right, but reading the headlines, this guy has gotten squat yet.
I'm not talking about end-results here. I'm talking about taking an ethical standpoint. For example, would not these hackers protect their boxes if someone hijacked their servers? For instance a company advertising through their client and adding lots of extensions, plus sucking down alot of bandwith. Anyways, that's just hypothetical, to show another perspective to the issue.
What really got my grapes about this article wasn't really that they think they have a fool-proof system in the works, but that this somehow makes enough justification for nuking the opponent totally. Kind of like the victors of any wars are always in the right. Not that I believe we've seen the last of this.
It's basically a question of how far you want to go to win. Not that I believe I know the answer to that. I don't think it's very nice of companies to lock people up in proprietary protocols and clients either.
"I don'st mean to pick on AOL in this article, except that it's the first big company (that I know of) to take the fight against open standards to this level. Because this system is implemented on top of Freenet, it should be trivial to extend it to other applications besides AIM. The point of implementing it is not just to beat AOL, but also to provide a real live deterrent to other companies contemplating the same thing. If companies know that we can trivially and legally circumvent their "control" schemes, they won't bother with them in the first place. And that's what open standards are all about. "
Sorry, but you've lost me. If someone won't play ball with you, you should break into their network and take what you want? AOL is not ethical, but this is not any better. The last paragraph about "open standards" really smells badly in my nose. This is going to be a final solution, just like genocide was/is in all the wars. This is excactly how wars arise, and continue beyond the original participants' lifespans.
Don't take me wrong on this. I respect your right to do as you think is right. It's sort of cool to hack things. However, instead of fighting this over with AOL I would leave AOL networks, and explain my friends why.
True, but then again, all meta-programming (aka creating a language) are hacks. So what is "full-on OOP"?:-)
For me, mixins work the way multiple inheritance and OOP should have worked from the beginning. I no longer have to remember and overload functions for all my base classes to work. I cleanly separate different sets of functions in different modules, and no longer worry about different states in different parts of my class-hierarchy. There are no artificial boundaries between variables in my object(s). IMHO, objects were never meant to be separated vertically and statically into multiple classes, but horizontally and dynamically into multiple modules collaborating at the task. (Just remember to call _functions instead of using variables belonging to other modules).
In Ruby, the best you can do is always begin by creating a module you can mixin into later classes. Too bad this is not a common practice yet. Do you know what I do? If I have modules that usually, but doesn't have to "inherit" (include) from eachother, I instead include them all in my class that I'm defining. I make no code in my classes (except for my libraries, but I really shouldn't there either). Thanks to the order methods are called, super and all other methods are called in the correct order as long as I include them in the correct order (the order I want to for that particular class for instance). Thus, I have no static inheritance hierarchy that I depend on, and further split up my modules. I can statically:( remove and dynamically add modules as I please in my classes. Very simply put: Elegant. Just remember that including modules is semi-horizontal as opposed to inheritance, so widely different modules shouldn't contain the same variable names and methods (but you can alias them if they start conflicting). And yes, I do use single inheritance and include in modules were appropriate. This technique works with deep classes and modules intuitively.
If you want multiple inheritance the C++ way, where every class must know about its parents, just forget about dynamic inheritance. Waaay too static and complicated.
Now, if you REALLY want it. Why don't you create something in Ruby to simulate multiple inheritance, and discover the joys of such programming. It may be done with a delegator, or you can extend Ruby with C code to do it. The language isn't cast in stone, however there are lots of features I thought weren't there, which I later find in a much better way. I really wish Ruby was a relational programming language though, with more concepts of reflectivity available (although it would probably kill the speed unless compiled with alot of constraints).
Heavily extending Ruby is best done in C though. It's not a language very well suited to extend itself in itself yet, although people are working on it I believe.
+4 Insightful? Gee, I wish I knew how to troll like that.
It's clear to me that you don't even know Ruby, or finer art of programming. "Correctness"? As if a language can write you correct programs. Have you ever tried meta-programming? I'd call most meta programming ugly hacks, but they MAY make things cleaner on-top. Just Maybe, if you can sort out all the hideous bugs in your call-stack.
I wouldn't recommend Ruby for correctness at all (whatever THAT is), not even for meta programming. I would recommend it if you'd like to 1) _try_ write beautifully clean object oriented programs, or 2) even messier and shorter code than Perl! (although with less special puke-symbols, Parrot almost looks like a good idea to me;-)
Advertising has nothing to do with IP. To protect your trademark, you hire a bunch of lawyers that send out threatening letters to people using the product names or slogans in any context. While you use advertising to subvert the unconscious consumers to buy your overprized, bug-infested and unhealthy products.
Comparing trademark and copyright really shows lack of insight. A trademark is a short text/logo/sound/smell/fart connected to a product or company, while a copyright is a longer text/picture/music/sound/smell/fart produced by anyone. You may register your copyright too, but it's hardly the same thing.
Wouldn't it really suck if next time you bought a Coca Cola, you got a cheap duplicate that tasted like piss and smelled like urin? Without trademarks on brands and logos, nothing would protect the mindless _consumers_ against such practice. The more they extend this, the more they protect _YOU_ from your mother buying a six-pack of Koka Kola's at the Vall Nart.
In case you didn't notice, this post is dripping with sarcasm, so please don't take any of it personally.
Funny, when loading C64 games we had to sit absolutely tight and not talk at all, lest the cassette-trolls would pay a visit and load errors either screwing the load completely or making the graphics more blurry.
Pixies, trolls, gnomes and elves commonly visit and plague low-tech equipment. You gotta know how to appease them, especially when programming. I only wish someone could devise a cool religion for this, so that our problems might go away.
I've commented on this trend in my previous comments. YOU need to step back and realize that a corporation does not have a RIGHT to earn profit. So if we both step back, we might even realize there is a balance here. I dunno about you, but I can see it.
Btw, small depressions are good for an economy. While stale upward conjunctures are not.
Something tells me columbine had nothing to do with police or government, and more to do with local social events. So you can't really compare that with terrorism.
People (and companies) should learn to communicate with the other party before calling in the lawyers. This is something the judges should strike pretty hard on, to ease the stress on the legal system. Even under complete disagreement, alot of stuff can be resolved by just talking with the other side. Even wakening up some conscience.
"And did you also notice how you can turn it back on if you miss it? Did anyone think for a second that when they said "take it out" they meant that the software would go down in size?"
Well, being commercialized entities and in bed with their biggest customers they can't really do anything that breaks backwards-compatibility now, can they? Unless of course until they "invent" (buy out) The Next Great Thing that everyone must move over to;-)
Dogma was funny, but I didn't enjoy the jokes all that much. They were as old as atheism, really. Yes, I "got" them, but their source is from fear and confusion. You don't have to be religious to be broad-minded you know.. To ridicule what you don't understand, shows very little maturity and know-how of the stuff (duh). Anyhow, it's healthy to laugh, so go ahead. Doesn't bother me;-)
Well, then you may extend the analogy to include more of the universe, and everything is conserved one way or another. However, loss in energy is what resources are there to remedy. Any (known) system cannot be active without losing energy to another, but self-sustaining systems will seek and exploit energy where it can be found. If a system is leeched too much though, it will either free itself from the parasites or become non-sustaining.
In other words a depression can be healthy, since it will in effect change the system so that it can become self-sustaining again (hopefully). Just like prey depends on predators to keep their genetic codes in top shape; nothing is truly evil. It depends on the level of one's perspective and is therefore subjective.
It wasn't a troll. Think about it. Who is going to invest if there is nothing to be gained? Depression is in effect when the majority starts to believe there is nothing to be gained by investing. Which in turn has a negative feedback effect on the industry. In fact, we are dependent on growth in order to have activity. Nobody wants to have investments in static stocks. This goes back to the roots of basic human nature.
Btw, do you know what the government did in the 30's during the depression after the crashing stocks? They paid some people to dig holes and other people to fill these again, just to get employment up and the wheels turning again. Governments are always too afraid to invest too heavily during good times, because it's going to devaluate the currency.
Did you know Norway, which is an oil nation with huge assets from the North Sea actually also have huge loans? We can't just pay down those loans, or else our currency goes to hell.
I don't claim to understand all the aspects of global/national economy. Just wanted you to be aware that it's very delicate stuff that has absolutely nothing with basic math.
The boom and the vast amounts of creativity today in the IT-sector is due to such optimism and belief in new technology. What people should be aware of is that life goes on, and a new gadget every month don't make you happier. The more thing changes, the more it stays the same it seems.
"This work is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux. Security-enhanced Linux is not an attempt to correct any flaws that may currently exist in Linux. Instead, it is simply an example of how mandatory access controls that can confine the actions of any process, including a superuser process, can be added into Linux. The focus of this work has not been on system assurance or other security features such as security auditing, although these elements are also important for a secure system.
The security mechanisms implemented in the system provide flexible support for a wide range of security policies. They make it possible to configure the system to meet a wide range of security requirements. The release includes a general-purpose security policy configuration designed to meet a number of security objectives as an example of how this may be done. The flexibility of the system allows the policy to be modified and extended to customize the security policy as required for any given installation.
There is still much work needed to develop a complete security solution. In addition, due to resource limitations, we have not yet been able to evaluate and optimize the performance of the security mechanisms. Currently, we can only support the x86 architecture and have only been able to test it on Red Hat 6.1 distribution. Nonetheless, we feel we have presented a good starting point to bring valuable security features to Linux. We are looking forward to building upon this work with the Linux community."
This is NOT security fixes of Linux, NOT auditing. It is simply a showcase for how to bolt a more complex security model onto an existing mainstream Open Source OS. The kind of security most normal users DO NOT need in their day-to-day browsing habits. However, I hope the project goes well so that they get more funds to do even more.
Money is to be spent. The economy depends on it. If people don't spend money, we're thrown into a depression. Think of society as a blood-stream, if there is no flow, there is no life.
Slashdot Mirror
How bout CD-ROM and floppydisc while we're at it?
- Steeltoe
However, you didn't come to any conclusion. So the problem is not so trivial as you may want to portray it.
;-) What happens when you put pressure on a system? The system fights back by heating up. When you limit people's expression, you deny them authority and responsibility of themselves. That is what's been happening in the past, and is why we have more of everything bad now. When people reclaim their power, the process is ugly, but there's no other way. Though, it doesn't have to be so ugly if only people step down from their pedestals and accept higher wisdom and guidance (NOT from me though ;).
"And people like to pretend, probably because they enjoy porn and violence, that it doesn't harm people, but anyone who can seriously believe this is quite frankly mad."
This is not very accurate. Porn and violence on TV have never directly harmed anyone except for casual accidents on the set. To blame the media for something you (or anyone) did is a very immature attitude. As humans, we should be aware that we can control our own behaviour whenever we want to by introspection. You can blame someone or something else all you want, but fact is that blame itself is irrational and only exists in our minds. Without realizing this, you can never truly solve any problem. Relying on others to change is a game of chance at best, with guaranteed negative odds in the long term. Nothing can grow by waiting for others to grow.
There has been lots of molestation, rape and violence before TV and media. However, it was usually hushed down within families and organizations. This is sadly a part of human nature. The reason this is depicted on media now is because we're somehow going to have to deal with what has been done in the past. Fleeing from it, will just make it hunt us down. We are fascinated by history, without realizing it will repeat again and again until we reclaim our power and understanding.
"If you consistently expose people to sex and violence they grow to accept it. It's as obvious as anything. It's conditioning."
Yes, correct conditioning is very important in any society. In fact the most important job, but very lowly valuated in the Western world. This sad fact is creating most of our problems, because we do not care about eachother anymore (we're so damn many in one place). So, outlawing and banning people's freedom of expression and speech is not going to fix our problems.
"For instance, in Muslim countries women aren't leered at and treated as sex objects, because society conditions them not to. In Western societies, women are objectified through their portrayal as breasts on a stick on TV."
Well, in Muslim countries they are conditioned to look at wives and daughters as tradeable property, so what is better? Terror in schools or terror at home? (Obviously none of them) My point is not to 'diss anyone, but give an understanding that covering up the bad things, will only make them go underground. The longer it remains unexpressed, the harder it will be to deal with it later. Openness is the only way to go to make a system grow.
"That's how conditioning works, and that's what's happened here. There is no way that violence has no effect. Just as kids exposed to lots of swearing swear more than those in environemnts where swearing is taboo, those exposed to violence are more violent. Anyone who says otherwise is only doing so because they enjoy violence and sex so much."
Don't forget swearing
If you've read this far, let me just conclude with the thought-provoker that the current jail-system is in fact creating much of the problems with crime. Most of the violence and conditioning is happening in our prisons. Do not blame the "system" or prison-management. Realize that it is so, because we fear prisoners so much, the public wouldn't tolerate having them around or treating them nicely. Well.. What comes around, goes around. Do not blame anyone, the world is a big feedback-loop. Things just are the way they are.
So what is a poor geek to do? Well, accept the fact that you can't and shouldn't fix every problem in the world. Focus on yourself, those around you and positive things, don't focus on negativity and fear. What you focus on, you will have more of.
- Steeltoe
To be more precise: Life mimics Onion, Onion mimics life. You mimic me, and I mimic you. Food for thought anyways.
Sorry, couldn't help but generalize your post title.
- Steeltoe
Well... You ARE discussing it at this very moment, aren't you? So I guess we don't really need any great stories ;-)
- Steeltoe
Actually. If the companies had any clue, they would refrain from such practices. It's gonna hit them in their heads that mom & pop don't want to be spammed. They are much easier targets than crackers that spam too. Opt out is opt out, no matter what. Only legitimate notices without advertisements should be accepted then. I can't think of any worse advertisement than making thousands of people pissed. No wonder this company went down.
- Steeltoe
I guess it went like this: He opted out on their website, then after a while he gets this sent to him. Now, I don't know where you come from but it is clearly spam. The mail is perfectly content-free, it would have been a completely different matter if the email was about the _business-relation_, regarding a transaction for instance.
You might be right, but reading the headlines, this guy has gotten squat yet.
- Steeltoe
I'm not talking about end-results here. I'm talking about taking an ethical standpoint. For example, would not these hackers protect their boxes if someone hijacked their servers? For instance a company advertising through their client and adding lots of extensions, plus sucking down alot of bandwith. Anyways, that's just hypothetical, to show another perspective to the issue.
What really got my grapes about this article wasn't really that they think they have a fool-proof system in the works, but that this somehow makes enough justification for nuking the opponent totally. Kind of like the victors of any wars are always in the right. Not that I believe we've seen the last of this.
It's basically a question of how far you want to go to win. Not that I believe I know the answer to that. I don't think it's very nice of companies to lock people up in proprietary protocols and clients either.
- Steeltoe
"I don'st mean to pick on AOL in this article, except that it's the first big company (that I know of) to take the fight against open standards to this level. Because this system is implemented on top of Freenet, it should be trivial to extend it to other applications besides AIM. The point of implementing it is not just to beat AOL, but also to provide a real live deterrent to other companies contemplating the same thing. If companies know that we can trivially and legally circumvent their "control" schemes, they won't bother with them in the first place. And that's what open standards are all about. "
Sorry, but you've lost me. If someone won't play ball with you, you should break into their network and take what you want? AOL is not ethical, but this is not any better. The last paragraph about "open standards" really smells badly in my nose. This is going to be a final solution, just like genocide was/is in all the wars. This is excactly how wars arise, and continue beyond the original participants' lifespans.
Don't take me wrong on this. I respect your right to do as you think is right. It's sort of cool to hack things. However, instead of fighting this over with AOL I would leave AOL networks, and explain my friends why.
- Steeltoe
True, but then again, all meta-programming (aka creating a language) are hacks. So what is "full-on OOP"? :-)
:( remove and dynamically add modules as I please in my classes. Very simply put: Elegant. Just remember that including modules is semi-horizontal as opposed to inheritance, so widely different modules shouldn't contain the same variable names and methods (but you can alias them if they start conflicting). And yes, I do use single inheritance and include in modules were appropriate. This technique works with deep classes and modules intuitively.
For me, mixins work the way multiple inheritance and OOP should have worked from the beginning. I no longer have to remember and overload functions for all my base classes to work. I cleanly separate different sets of functions in different modules, and no longer worry about different states in different parts of my class-hierarchy. There are no artificial boundaries between variables in my object(s). IMHO, objects were never meant to be separated vertically and statically into multiple classes, but horizontally and dynamically into multiple modules collaborating at the task. (Just remember to call _functions instead of using variables belonging to other modules).
In Ruby, the best you can do is always begin by creating a module you can mixin into later classes. Too bad this is not a common practice yet. Do you know what I do? If I have modules that usually, but doesn't have to "inherit" (include) from eachother, I instead include them all in my class that I'm defining. I make no code in my classes (except for my libraries, but I really shouldn't there either). Thanks to the order methods are called, super and all other methods are called in the correct order as long as I include them in the correct order (the order I want to for that particular class for instance). Thus, I have no static inheritance hierarchy that I depend on, and further split up my modules. I can statically
If you want multiple inheritance the C++ way, where every class must know about its parents, just forget about dynamic inheritance. Waaay too static and complicated.
Now, if you REALLY want it. Why don't you create something in Ruby to simulate multiple inheritance, and discover the joys of such programming. It may be done with a delegator, or you can extend Ruby with C code to do it. The language isn't cast in stone, however there are lots of features I thought weren't there, which I later find in a much better way. I really wish Ruby was a relational programming language though, with more concepts of reflectivity available (although it would probably kill the speed unless compiled with alot of constraints).
Heavily extending Ruby is best done in C though. It's not a language very well suited to extend itself in itself yet, although people are working on it I believe.
- Steeltoe
+4 Insightful? Gee, I wish I knew how to troll like that.
;-)
It's clear to me that you don't even know Ruby, or finer art of programming. "Correctness"? As if a language can write you correct programs. Have you ever tried meta-programming? I'd call most meta programming ugly hacks, but they MAY make things cleaner on-top. Just Maybe, if you can sort out all the hideous bugs in your call-stack.
I wouldn't recommend Ruby for correctness at all (whatever THAT is), not even for meta programming. I would recommend it if you'd like to 1) _try_ write beautifully clean object oriented programs, or 2) even messier and shorter code than Perl! (although with less special puke-symbols, Parrot almost looks like a good idea to me
- Steeltoe
Advertising has nothing to do with IP. To protect your trademark, you hire a bunch of lawyers that send out threatening letters to people using the product names or slogans in any context. While you use advertising to subvert the unconscious consumers to buy your overprized, bug-infested and unhealthy products.
Comparing trademark and copyright really shows lack of insight. A trademark is a short text/logo/sound/smell/fart connected to a product or company, while a copyright is a longer text/picture/music/sound/smell/fart produced by anyone. You may register your copyright too, but it's hardly the same thing.
Wouldn't it really suck if next time you bought a Coca Cola, you got a cheap duplicate that tasted like piss and smelled like urin? Without trademarks on brands and logos, nothing would protect the mindless _consumers_ against such practice. The more they extend this, the more they protect _YOU_ from your mother buying a six-pack of Koka Kola's at the Vall Nart.
In case you didn't notice, this post is dripping with sarcasm, so please don't take any of it personally.
- Steeltoe
Funny, when loading C64 games we had to sit absolutely tight and not talk at all, lest the cassette-trolls would pay a visit and load errors either screwing the load completely or making the graphics more blurry.
Pixies, trolls, gnomes and elves commonly visit and plague low-tech equipment. You gotta know how to appease them, especially when programming. I only wish someone could devise a cool religion for this, so that our problems might go away.
- Steeltoe
I disagree. A corporation should reflect human interest, or not exist at all.
- Steeltoe
I've commented on this trend in my previous comments. YOU need to step back and realize that a corporation does not have a RIGHT to earn profit. So if we both step back, we might even realize there is a balance here. I dunno about you, but I can see it.
Btw, small depressions are good for an economy. While stale upward conjunctures are not.
- Steeltoe
Why do americans hold the Consitution so religiously, while doing their best to miss their own conclusions?
- Steeltoe
Something tells me columbine had nothing to do with police or government, and more to do with local social events. So you can't really compare that with terrorism.
- Steeltoe
His point is to get those suit braincells thinking, not actually winning.
- Steeltoe
No.
People (and companies) should learn to communicate with the other party before calling in the lawyers. This is something the judges should strike pretty hard on, to ease the stress on the legal system. Even under complete disagreement, alot of stuff can be resolved by just talking with the other side. Even wakening up some conscience.
- Steeltoe
"Uhh, I'm trying not to be a troll but who cares if you can't use a certain format?"
Duh, that speaks for itself.
- Steeltoe
"And did you also notice how you can turn it back on if you miss it? Did anyone think for a second that when they said "take it out" they meant that the software would go down in size?"
;-)
Well, being commercialized entities and in bed with their biggest customers they can't really do anything that breaks backwards-compatibility now, can they? Unless of course until they "invent" (buy out) The Next Great Thing that everyone must move over to
- Steeltoe
Dogma was funny, but I didn't enjoy the jokes all that much. They were as old as atheism, really. Yes, I "got" them, but their source is from fear and confusion. You don't have to be religious to be broad-minded you know.. To ridicule what you don't understand, shows very little maturity and know-how of the stuff (duh). Anyhow, it's healthy to laugh, so go ahead. Doesn't bother me ;-)
- Steeltoe
Well, then you may extend the analogy to include more of the universe, and everything is conserved one way or another. However, loss in energy is what resources are there to remedy. Any (known) system cannot be active without losing energy to another, but self-sustaining systems will seek and exploit energy where it can be found. If a system is leeched too much though, it will either free itself from the parasites or become non-sustaining.
In other words a depression can be healthy, since it will in effect change the system so that it can become self-sustaining again (hopefully). Just like prey depends on predators to keep their genetic codes in top shape; nothing is truly evil. It depends on the level of one's perspective and is therefore subjective.
- Steeltoe
It wasn't a troll. Think about it. Who is going to invest if there is nothing to be gained? Depression is in effect when the majority starts to believe there is nothing to be gained by investing. Which in turn has a negative feedback effect on the industry. In fact, we are dependent on growth in order to have activity. Nobody wants to have investments in static stocks. This goes back to the roots of basic human nature.
Btw, do you know what the government did in the 30's during the depression after the crashing stocks? They paid some people to dig holes and other people to fill these again, just to get employment up and the wheels turning again. Governments are always too afraid to invest too heavily during good times, because it's going to devaluate the currency.
Did you know Norway, which is an oil nation with huge assets from the North Sea actually also have huge loans? We can't just pay down those loans, or else our currency goes to hell.
I don't claim to understand all the aspects of global/national economy. Just wanted you to be aware that it's very delicate stuff that has absolutely nothing with basic math.
The boom and the vast amounts of creativity today in the IT-sector is due to such optimism and belief in new technology. What people should be aware of is that life goes on, and a new gadget every month don't make you happier. The more thing changes, the more it stays the same it seems.
- Steeltoe
"This work is not intended as a complete security solution for Linux. Security-enhanced Linux is not an attempt to correct any flaws that may currently exist in Linux. Instead, it is simply an example of how mandatory access controls that can confine the actions of any process, including a superuser process, can be added into Linux. The focus of this work has not been on system assurance or other security features such as security auditing, although these elements are also important for a secure system.
The security mechanisms implemented in the system provide flexible support for a wide range of security policies. They make it possible to configure the system to meet a wide range of security requirements. The release includes a general-purpose security policy configuration designed to meet a number of security objectives as an example of how this may be done. The flexibility of the system allows the policy to be modified and extended to customize the security policy as required for any given installation.
There is still much work needed to develop a complete security solution. In addition, due to resource limitations, we have not yet been able to evaluate and optimize the performance of the security mechanisms. Currently, we can only support the x86 architecture and have only been able to test it on Red Hat 6.1 distribution. Nonetheless, we feel we have presented a good starting point to bring valuable security features to Linux. We are looking forward to building upon this work with the Linux community."
This is NOT security fixes of Linux, NOT auditing. It is simply a showcase for how to bolt a more complex security model onto an existing mainstream Open Source OS. The kind of security most normal users DO NOT need in their day-to-day browsing habits. However, I hope the project goes well so that they get more funds to do even more.
- Steeltoe
Money is to be spent. The economy depends on it. If people don't spend money, we're thrown into a depression. Think of society as a blood-stream, if there is no flow, there is no life.
- Steeltoe