"You may want to dispute when exactly the age of majority should be..."
The idea of an "age of majority" strikes me precisely the same as the idea of a "maximum permissable fraction of Colored blood" would strike you. It's ludicrous. People are individuals and should be judged as such, and restricting all young people because a greater percentage of young people are (immature, unintelligent, whatever) is no different from restricting all black people because a greater percentage of back people are (uneducated, criminal, violent, speak in Ebonics, whatever). So far, the "best" counterargument I've heard to my stance is "well, you grow out of childhood, but you don't grow out of your race". It speaks volumes that this is the most logical counterargument anyone can seem to muster.
It is an outrage that I (or you, or most other people on SlashDot), at 12, was given fewer privileges than Joe Average Drunken Twentysomething. The difference between me and you is that I still care about the plight of those presently suffering from this sort of law, rather than adopting a "oh well, I had to go through that, so will they" sort of devil-may-care stance.
We were all kids once. To me, an intelligent and capable adult who doesn't care about the rights of intelligent and capable youths is somewhat akin to an African-American who doesn't care about slavery or starvation or HIV in Africa. We all came out of that oppression, and it is up to us to fight it.
It may be that a part of the reason for this change is the shift in importance from hardware to software.
It seems to me like more and more, people simply do not care what the hardware is so much as they care about what the software is. A few years ago, clueless consumers were demanding the "Pentium" brand (not even knowing what that word really meant); now, they simply ask "Does it have 'Microsoft XP'?" The answer, of course, is always "yes", so they ask no further.
Now that Mac OS X runs on both PPC and x86 machines and Windows XP on both x86 and x86-64, I think we are moving towards an era where the software matters more than the hardware (at least, from the perspective of Joe User).
Since when did the punishment fit the crime in America? People regularly get longer sentences for engaging in consensual drug-related "crimes" (taking drugs as a consenting adult or dealing drugs to consenting adults) than rapists, murderers, etc. And don't even get me stared on the maximum sentences allowed for warezing a copy of Windows or the latest Britney Spears album...
Kindly explain why it is alright to restrict the sexual behavior of even highly intelligent people "for their own good" simply on the basis of their age, whilst even the dullest (non-retarded, non-brain-damaged) person over 18 is allowed to have sex.
Most people look at the laws against sex between "adults" and "children" as protecting the "children" from rape and abuse by the "adults". As someone who finds it morally reprehensible to abandon the needs of intelligent youths deprived of rights solely on the basis of their age (having "been there" and "done that"-- or, rather, had that "done" to me!), I perceive the primary effect of these laws as the opposite: restricting the rights of the "children".
Rape is rape, and rape should always be illegal. And, yes, it is worse to rape a child than to rape an adult. But not all sex between adults and children is rape! My God, if I had been approached by a comely 25-year-old as a 12-year-old, I would have accepted in a heartbeat. AND I would have used protection, so that old saw that goes "oh, kids aren't mature enough to have sex safely" is utter rubbish.
Kindly peddle your ageism elsewhere. It is no more moral to restrict sexual behavior by age than it is by race. A FAR greater proportion of black males than white females are violent criminals; does that make it moral to restrict all black males from working?
Of course not.
Yes, a "higher" percentage of youth than adults are intellectually and emotionally incapable of handling sex. But, again, a "higher" percentage of blacks than whites are criminals. Why is it justifiable to pass laws restricting all youths on such logic, but not similar laws restricting all blacks? They are one and the same, and I do not accept that either is morally defensible.
There are many, many millions of "children" whose intellectual and emotional capabilities exceed those of the "average" 18-year-old, or even the "average" 40-year-old. "Adults" far more unintelligent, immature, and reckless than I (or most other people on SlashDot) was at 12 (or even 10) are permitted rights based solely on their age. This is wrong. Drawing the line based solely (or nearly so) on age is like drawing the line based solely on race.
There's no more sure-fire way to push people's buttons than to mention child porn... bah.
Correct. A similar tactic nowadays is to mention "terrorism". Throw "this is necessary to further our War On Terrorism(TM) at the end of a statement, and at least half of Americans will accept it simply based on that.
See also: "Red Scare", "Joseph McCarthy", "it's for the children", etc.
Luckily, even if I wasn't sharp enough to see through this sort of obvious manipulation, this particular route of manipulation doesn't work on me. Unlike most Americans, I recall that as a "child", (12, 13, etc.) I was quite horny and would have welcomed the opportunity to have intercourse with an adult, regardless of whether there was a camera rolling or not. I thus don't see "child porn" as a universal evil.
This is similar to how so many people interpret "anarchist" to mean "bomb-throwing terrorist". "Anarchy" implies a lack of laws in books, not a lack of morals or a predilection towards violence. Likewise, many people interpret "child porn" as "child rape or exploitation", which is ludicrous. At 12 or 13, with an IQ in at least the 140s, I was arguably more capable than the average adult of giving "informed consent" (whatever that means; it seems that legally speaking, "informed consent" means approximately "you've lived for at least 18 years and have an IQ above 50", which is a truly abhorrent approximation of the pool of people actually intellectually capable of comprehending the aftereffects of sexual context). And as a 12-year-old-- a "child"-- I wanted sex and would have welcomed sex. I also was astute enough to comprehend the issues of STDs, pregnancy, and the like-- a great deal more than I could say of the "average", say, 21-year-old. I would have used protection; would the average 18-year-old? Yet I was considered incapable of understanding the mystical "adult" issues involved with sex. This is absurd.
This "child porn" scare is ludicrous. It's very telling that people get worked up about "child porn" but not "child rape"-- i.e. something which actually is universally WRONG. Participation in child "porn" can be voluntary, forced, or somewhere in between (coerced?); the actual sex depicted can be consensual, rape, or somewhere in between (i.e. with a child incapable of truly giving "informed consent").
But most people nowadays (at least here in the States) don't like to judge things on a case-by-case basis; they like blanket statements, sweeping moral judgements that apply to all instances of a particular thing.
Anyone with a properly calibrated moral compass and a lack of the cultural baggage which states that anyone under (18|16|$INSERT_AGE_HERE) is automatically incapable of giving "informed consent" can comprehend that some sex between "minors" and "adults" is, in fact, consensual and, thus, moral. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of the American public assumes that "sex with kids" is automatically "rape", and thus evil. Tie the (completely justified) stigma of rape in with this (ludicrous) assumption that all "intergenerational sex" (ha) is automatically rape and the (religiously motivated and laughable) stigma against "porn" in general, and you have a recipe for Instant Outrage: Just Add Americans.
We have forgotten what "rape" is. We have forgotten what "consent" constitutes. We have also managed, as I've mentioned before, to become the sole species on the face of the planet (as far as I know) cruel and stupid enough to deny sex to a significant minority of those who want it, based simply upon their age. Saying to a horny 12-year-old "No, you can't have sex, even if you use protection, even if you take every precaution, simply because you're young" is beyond cruel, and quite bigoted.
At first, I thought that you might have simply been conjecturing or being sarcastic. Nevertheless, I searched for the quote:
"We need to see how much of the political commentary online is speech protected by the First Amendment, and how much is dangerous speech that can't be allowed in these extraordinary times," a Whitehouse spokesman said.
I cannot find this quote anywhere on Google. (And yes, I Googled subphrases; it's nowhere, nor is a close alteration of it.)
Sorry if I'm interpreting your comment unnecessarily literally, but this isn't a real quote. Just wanted to point that out.
For that matter, if I have your attention, I wish to be a bit more blunt: If you give an average end user a computer with a factory install of Windows from Dell or Compaq and have them use it without any intervention from a techie or "power user", they WILL get tons and tons of spyware. Period. They will use IE instead of Firefox, they will click on pop-ups, they will blindly click "OK" to all sorts of dialogs, and within six months, they will be wondering why their computer "is slower than it used to be".
And if you ask them about security, they will tell you that they are running Norton/McAfee/Symantec, as if that makes them completely safe. (It doesn't, of course.)
I'm frankly curious as to whether or not you are even aware of this phenomenon. Many corporate people seem ignorant of life outside of the Fortune 500 world (where computers are managed by high-paid techies and significantly "locked down"). Outside of the Fortune 500 world and the geek world, it's hard to find a Windows system that isn't full of malware after six months of use. I cannot stress this enough. This is the rule and not the exception.
Of that count, surely no more than 50% (and probably much less than that) are programmers. Remember, that count includes not only the veritable hordes of management types and marketroids, but the guys who clean the toilets and the ladies who answer the phones. (And the ladies who clean the toilets, and the guys who answer the phones. And the guys who clean the phones, and the ladies who answer the toilets...)
Time and again, I've seen average end-users-- grandmothers, "soccer mom" types, businessmen-- whose computers are positively clogged to the gills with spyware, viruses, and other sorts of malware, the overwhelming majority of which they were infected with via the exploitation of security flaws in Microsoft software. I'm often tasked with disinfecting their computers.
How often do you (and the members of your team) spend time with average end-users-- not just in large corporate settings but in small businesses and (just as importantly) in real-world home settings? I believe that if you would spend time with Joe Average and see just how badly his computer's performance (not to mention his personal privacy and the integrity of his data) is suffering from the exploitation of certain bugs and design decisions (e.g. the fact that most end-users run with Administrator privileges) in Microsoft software, it would cause a significant shift in Microsoft's security strategy.
No matter how often $LATEST_WINDOWS_VERSION is touted as more secure than its predecessors, I still keep getting called to average homes to remove countless items of spyware which infected Windows systems via holes (and/or poor design decisions, e.g. the handling of ActiveX controls and the abilities they can have to alter files on the system) in Internet Explorer, and to this day (despite the wide use of antivirus software) most end-user systems I examine do contain at least a few viruses (which entered the system via Microsoft Outlook).
What are you doing to secure Joe Average's PC? Do you have any interaction with average end-users? And if not, why not?
I'm a Microsoft fanboy???! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! That's rich!
No, I hate MS deeply. But I'm also a realist (read: pessimist), so I know they are likely to win in the end. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished (and no bad deed gets punished).
There's an old saying: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." (There's also an alternative version: "Make a man a fire, he's warm for a while. Set a man on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life.")
The problem here is that most end-users just want you to give them a fish. Then, a week later, they want you to give them another fish. Then another. And another. And another...
Many end-users I've dealt with say things like "Just tell me where to click." That's what they want; they want you to give them the "magical incantation" for them to follow, and they want you to give them a new "magical incantation" every time their operating system, computer, software version, mouse, condom brand or tie tack changes. They don't want to learn, even if they spend hours and hours a day in front of a computer just like us geeks.
What us geeks need to do is simply refuse to just dole out "magical incantations"-- you know, the stupid-assed instructions written out on yellow sticky notes, or even typed into icon titles (e.g. "Foo Program-- DOUBLE CLICK ON ME FIRST!"). We need to teach the users to self-teach. This means teaching them to be unafraid to experiment within reason, and it also means teaching them what (in the context of computing) "reason" means. (I.e.: Actually read messages if you aren't 100% sure of what you're doing, don't tell the computer to "delete" or "erase" or "format" anything unless you want it gone, etc.)
At one point, my mom had a sticky note by her computer reading "PRESS ENTER". Without that note, she wouldn't know how to log on to Windows 98.
We shouldn't tolerate this crap unless we're being paid by the hour.
Also, spare me the flood of anecdotal "Well, I go to church, and I use Firefox" posts. I swear, sometimes it seems like nowadays, you can't even say "most Christians are xxxxxxxxxx" without fifty people popping out of the woodwork with anecdotes of exceptions to the rule. I wonder if I could even get away with tautologies like "most Christians are Christian" or "most churchgoers go to church"...
The fact that all the measurements were taken on a Sunday...
...ALSO means that a significant percentage of the churchgoing population (who, in turn, are a significant percentage of the population at large) are not included in the results. Churchgoing folks are generally conservative, and thus more likely to use more typically corporate/conservative software (thus IE).
Probably won't alter the results much, but I'm sure it impacts them some.
MS is going to crank up their FUD machine to full blast once they finish formulating their strategy to counter this. Prepare for the death of Sun.
Call it "doom and gloom", but I can't see MS taking this sitting down. I'm rooting for Sun, but I don't think they have the power to take on MS this directly.:/
"[T]he reviewers use special players from Dolby that prevent the pirating of 'screeners'..."
Wait, are these standard DVDs they're using, or is it some special setup where the special "screener" DVDs will only work on special "screener" DVD players?
Oh yes, I almost forgot! Another word: "Sony". Their rootkit is the future. Sure, people bitch now, but in time, the companies will either find a "compromise" solution that infuriates people less (for instance, a rootkit without horrific security flaws), or simply establish rootkits and other malware as the "industry standard", critics (read: angry geeks) be damned.
My God, the grammatical errors in that paper are painful. Is a paper displaying such an appalling lack of quality really worthy of the attention of hundreds of thousands of SlashDot geeks?
Malware meets so many of the deep desires of the marketing world (and the corporate world in general). It can provides market data in bulk, practically "for free" (from the company's perspective). It can provide a further degree of control over a user's computer. It can enforce DRM. It can force ads on people.
Thus, I can only conclude that the future of malware is for it to go from something created by shady companies like Gator (a.k.a. "Claria") and 419WebSolutions (or whatever) to something created (or at least branded) by "household name" companies like HP, Dell, etc. A first step towards a future in which major corporations embrace malware has already occurred; just look at all the crap Dell shovels onto their much-maligned default software installations.
Slashdot Mirror
I know. That's the point. It was a joke. (Is it ironic that you didn't get the humor?)
The idea of an "age of majority" strikes me precisely the same as the idea of a "maximum permissable fraction of Colored blood" would strike you. It's ludicrous. People are individuals and should be judged as such, and restricting all young people because a greater percentage of young people are (immature, unintelligent, whatever) is no different from restricting all black people because a greater percentage of back people are (uneducated, criminal, violent, speak in Ebonics, whatever). So far, the "best" counterargument I've heard to my stance is "well, you grow out of childhood, but you don't grow out of your race". It speaks volumes that this is the most logical counterargument anyone can seem to muster.
It is an outrage that I (or you, or most other people on SlashDot), at 12, was given fewer privileges than Joe Average Drunken Twentysomething. The difference between me and you is that I still care about the plight of those presently suffering from this sort of law, rather than adopting a "oh well, I had to go through that, so will they" sort of devil-may-care stance.
We were all kids once. To me, an intelligent and capable adult who doesn't care about the rights of intelligent and capable youths is somewhat akin to an African-American who doesn't care about slavery or starvation or HIV in Africa. We all came out of that oppression, and it is up to us to fight it.
Apple is going with Intel because their competitors' chips "are power-hungry and generate a lot of heat".
It's like rain on your wedding day!
It may be that a part of the reason for this change is the shift in importance from hardware to software.
It seems to me like more and more, people simply do not care what the hardware is so much as they care about what the software is. A few years ago, clueless consumers were demanding the "Pentium" brand (not even knowing what that word really meant); now, they simply ask "Does it have 'Microsoft XP'?" The answer, of course, is always "yes", so they ask no further.
Now that Mac OS X runs on both PPC and x86 machines and Windows XP on both x86 and x86-64, I think we are moving towards an era where the software matters more than the hardware (at least, from the perspective of Joe User).
Since when did the punishment fit the crime in America? People regularly get longer sentences for engaging in consensual drug-related "crimes" (taking drugs as a consenting adult or dealing drugs to consenting adults) than rapists, murderers, etc. And don't even get me stared on the maximum sentences allowed for warezing a copy of Windows or the latest Britney Spears album...
Kindly explain why it is alright to restrict the sexual behavior of even highly intelligent people "for their own good" simply on the basis of their age, whilst even the dullest (non-retarded, non-brain-damaged) person over 18 is allowed to have sex.
Most people look at the laws against sex between "adults" and "children" as protecting the "children" from rape and abuse by the "adults". As someone who finds it morally reprehensible to abandon the needs of intelligent youths deprived of rights solely on the basis of their age (having "been there" and "done that"-- or, rather, had that "done" to me!), I perceive the primary effect of these laws as the opposite: restricting the rights of the "children".
Rape is rape, and rape should always be illegal. And, yes, it is worse to rape a child than to rape an adult. But not all sex between adults and children is rape! My God, if I had been approached by a comely 25-year-old as a 12-year-old, I would have accepted in a heartbeat. AND I would have used protection, so that old saw that goes "oh, kids aren't mature enough to have sex safely" is utter rubbish.
Kindly peddle your ageism elsewhere. It is no more moral to restrict sexual behavior by age than it is by race. A FAR greater proportion of black males than white females are violent criminals; does that make it moral to restrict all black males from working?
Of course not.
Yes, a "higher" percentage of youth than adults are intellectually and emotionally incapable of handling sex. But, again, a "higher" percentage of blacks than whites are criminals. Why is it justifiable to pass laws restricting all youths on such logic, but not similar laws restricting all blacks? They are one and the same, and I do not accept that either is morally defensible.
There are many, many millions of "children" whose intellectual and emotional capabilities exceed those of the "average" 18-year-old, or even the "average" 40-year-old. "Adults" far more unintelligent, immature, and reckless than I (or most other people on SlashDot) was at 12 (or even 10) are permitted rights based solely on their age. This is wrong. Drawing the line based solely (or nearly so) on age is like drawing the line based solely on race.
Correct. A similar tactic nowadays is to mention "terrorism". Throw "this is necessary to further our War On Terrorism(TM) at the end of a statement, and at least half of Americans will accept it simply based on that.
See also: "Red Scare", "Joseph McCarthy", "it's for the children", etc.
Luckily, even if I wasn't sharp enough to see through this sort of obvious manipulation, this particular route of manipulation doesn't work on me. Unlike most Americans, I recall that as a "child", (12, 13, etc.) I was quite horny and would have welcomed the opportunity to have intercourse with an adult, regardless of whether there was a camera rolling or not. I thus don't see "child porn" as a universal evil.
This is similar to how so many people interpret "anarchist" to mean "bomb-throwing terrorist". "Anarchy" implies a lack of laws in books, not a lack of morals or a predilection towards violence. Likewise, many people interpret "child porn" as "child rape or exploitation", which is ludicrous. At 12 or 13, with an IQ in at least the 140s, I was arguably more capable than the average adult of giving "informed consent" (whatever that means; it seems that legally speaking, "informed consent" means approximately "you've lived for at least 18 years and have an IQ above 50", which is a truly abhorrent approximation of the pool of people actually intellectually capable of comprehending the aftereffects of sexual context). And as a 12-year-old-- a "child"-- I wanted sex and would have welcomed sex. I also was astute enough to comprehend the issues of STDs, pregnancy, and the like-- a great deal more than I could say of the "average", say, 21-year-old. I would have used protection; would the average 18-year-old? Yet I was considered incapable of understanding the mystical "adult" issues involved with sex. This is absurd.
This "child porn" scare is ludicrous. It's very telling that people get worked up about "child porn" but not "child rape"-- i.e. something which actually is universally WRONG. Participation in child "porn" can be voluntary, forced, or somewhere in between (coerced?); the actual sex depicted can be consensual, rape, or somewhere in between (i.e. with a child incapable of truly giving "informed consent").
But most people nowadays (at least here in the States) don't like to judge things on a case-by-case basis; they like blanket statements, sweeping moral judgements that apply to all instances of a particular thing.
Anyone with a properly calibrated moral compass and a lack of the cultural baggage which states that anyone under (18|16|$INSERT_AGE_HERE) is automatically incapable of giving "informed consent" can comprehend that some sex between "minors" and "adults" is, in fact, consensual and, thus, moral. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of the American public assumes that "sex with kids" is automatically "rape", and thus evil. Tie the (completely justified) stigma of rape in with this (ludicrous) assumption that all "intergenerational sex" (ha) is automatically rape and the (religiously motivated and laughable) stigma against "porn" in general, and you have a recipe for Instant Outrage: Just Add Americans .
We have forgotten what "rape" is. We have forgotten what "consent" constitutes. We have also managed, as I've mentioned before, to become the sole species on the face of the planet (as far as I know) cruel and stupid enough to deny sex to a significant minority of those who want it, based simply upon their age. Saying to a horny 12-year-old "No, you can't have sex, even if you use protection, even if you take every precaution, simply because you're young" is beyond cruel, and quite bigoted.
Sorry if I'm interpreting your comment unnecessarily literally, but this isn't a real quote. Just wanted to point that out.
For that matter, if I have your attention, I wish to be a bit more blunt: If you give an average end user a computer with a factory install of Windows from Dell or Compaq and have them use it without any intervention from a techie or "power user", they WILL get tons and tons of spyware. Period. They will use IE instead of Firefox, they will click on pop-ups, they will blindly click "OK" to all sorts of dialogs, and within six months, they will be wondering why their computer "is slower than it used to be".
And if you ask them about security, they will tell you that they are running Norton/McAfee/Symantec, as if that makes them completely safe. (It doesn't, of course.)
I'm frankly curious as to whether or not you are even aware of this phenomenon. Many corporate people seem ignorant of life outside of the Fortune 500 world (where computers are managed by high-paid techies and significantly "locked down"). Outside of the Fortune 500 world and the geek world, it's hard to find a Windows system that isn't full of malware after six months of use. I cannot stress this enough. This is the rule and not the exception.
Yeesh. This sort of quote reminds me of when I was a naive little proto-geek, wondering what sort of supercomputer my favorite MU* ran on.
Microsoft has only 60,000 employees TOTAL.
Of that count, surely no more than 50% (and probably much less than that) are programmers. Remember, that count includes not only the veritable hordes of management types and marketroids, but the guys who clean the toilets and the ladies who answer the phones. (And the ladies who clean the toilets, and the guys who answer the phones. And the guys who clean the phones, and the ladies who answer the toilets...)
So you're off by at least a factor of ten.
Time and again, I've seen average end-users-- grandmothers, "soccer mom" types, businessmen-- whose computers are positively clogged to the gills with spyware, viruses, and other sorts of malware, the overwhelming majority of which they were infected with via the exploitation of security flaws in Microsoft software. I'm often tasked with disinfecting their computers.
How often do you (and the members of your team) spend time with average end-users-- not just in large corporate settings but in small businesses and (just as importantly) in real-world home settings? I believe that if you would spend time with Joe Average and see just how badly his computer's performance (not to mention his personal privacy and the integrity of his data) is suffering from the exploitation of certain bugs and design decisions (e.g. the fact that most end-users run with Administrator privileges) in Microsoft software, it would cause a significant shift in Microsoft's security strategy.
No matter how often $LATEST_WINDOWS_VERSION is touted as more secure than its predecessors, I still keep getting called to average homes to remove countless items of spyware which infected Windows systems via holes (and/or poor design decisions, e.g. the handling of ActiveX controls and the abilities they can have to alter files on the system) in Internet Explorer, and to this day (despite the wide use of antivirus software) most end-user systems I examine do contain at least a few viruses (which entered the system via Microsoft Outlook).
What are you doing to secure Joe Average's PC? Do you have any interaction with average end-users? And if not, why not?
I'm a Microsoft fanboy???! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! That's rich!
No, I hate MS deeply. But I'm also a realist (read: pessimist), so I know they are likely to win in the end. In this world, no good deed goes unpunished (and no bad deed gets punished).
There's an old saying: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime." (There's also an alternative version: "Make a man a fire, he's warm for a while. Set a man on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life.")
The problem here is that most end-users just want you to give them a fish. Then, a week later, they want you to give them another fish. Then another. And another. And another...
Many end-users I've dealt with say things like "Just tell me where to click." That's what they want; they want you to give them the "magical incantation" for them to follow, and they want you to give them a new "magical incantation" every time their operating system, computer, software version, mouse, condom brand or tie tack changes. They don't want to learn, even if they spend hours and hours a day in front of a computer just like us geeks.
What us geeks need to do is simply refuse to just dole out "magical incantations"-- you know, the stupid-assed instructions written out on yellow sticky notes, or even typed into icon titles (e.g. "Foo Program-- DOUBLE CLICK ON ME FIRST!"). We need to teach the users to self-teach. This means teaching them to be unafraid to experiment within reason, and it also means teaching them what (in the context of computing) "reason" means. (I.e.: Actually read messages if you aren't 100% sure of what you're doing, don't tell the computer to "delete" or "erase" or "format" anything unless you want it gone, etc.)
At one point, my mom had a sticky note by her computer reading "PRESS ENTER". Without that note, she wouldn't know how to log on to Windows 98.
We shouldn't tolerate this crap unless we're being paid by the hour.
Also, spare me the flood of anecdotal "Well, I go to church, and I use Firefox" posts. I swear, sometimes it seems like nowadays, you can't even say "most Christians are xxxxxxxxxx" without fifty people popping out of the woodwork with anecdotes of exceptions to the rule. I wonder if I could even get away with tautologies like "most Christians are Christian" or "most churchgoers go to church"...
Probably won't alter the results much, but I'm sure it impacts them some.
MS is going to crank up their FUD machine to full blast once they finish formulating their strategy to counter this. Prepare for the death of Sun.
:/
Call it "doom and gloom", but I can't see MS taking this sitting down. I'm rooting for Sun, but I don't think they have the power to take on MS this directly.
Your post is logical, well-reasoned, and invokes Canada. Nevertheless, I still stand by my statements; American politics don't generally make sense.
...will be for the list to get into the hands of one child molestor.
Then the whole affair will be killed faster than you can say "Don't touch me there, Father Geoghan".
The word you're looking for is "brake", not "break".
What is a "girlfriend"?
Wait, are these standard DVDs they're using, or is it some special setup where the special "screener" DVDs will only work on special "screener" DVD players?
Anyone have any info on the tech involved?
Oh yes, I almost forgot! Another word: "Sony". Their rootkit is the future. Sure, people bitch now, but in time, the companies will either find a "compromise" solution that infuriates people less (for instance, a rootkit without horrific security flaws), or simply establish rootkits and other malware as the "industry standard", critics (read: angry geeks) be damned.
My God, the grammatical errors in that paper are painful. Is a paper displaying such an appalling lack of quality really worthy of the attention of hundreds of thousands of SlashDot geeks?
Malware meets so many of the deep desires of the marketing world (and the corporate world in general). It can provides market data in bulk, practically "for free" (from the company's perspective). It can provide a further degree of control over a user's computer. It can enforce DRM. It can force ads on people.
Thus, I can only conclude that the future of malware is for it to go from something created by shady companies like Gator (a.k.a. "Claria") and 419WebSolutions (or whatever) to something created (or at least branded) by "household name" companies like HP, Dell, etc. A first step towards a future in which major corporations embrace malware has already occurred; just look at all the crap Dell shovels onto their much-maligned default software installations.