> It does not cost anything to simply refrain from some of the most blatant lies. They lie because that's simply the kind of failed human beings that they are, even though it actually hurts their chances of success.

I'm afraid that deception doesn't have to be _good_ to be profitable, or to aid in survival. It only has to be _good enough_. And the blatant lies can be most effective on the most vulnerable people, the least educated, and the least likely to stop halfway through the "support call".

> Just because apparently several companies are stupid and use unsuitable security practices doesn't mean it's not really bad security

It's more than "several", I'm afraid. It's extremely common place. A significant portion of my annual salary comes from helping teach and implement improved security practices. And a large part of that income comes from explaining the trade-offs, time and risk and resources.

> I mean we all refuse to do support for people who put their malware ridden gaming rig into their main LAN, why do companies get away with that?

I'm forced to applaud your optimism. But I'm also forced to pity your naivete. The use of VPN's from home and transfer of laptops into and out of the corporate networks are, themselves, a huge attack vector for environments that consider themselves to have implemented basic firewall and anti-virus tools. "Refusing to do support" for these personnel is basically "refusing to collect a paycheck" for most IT personnel.

> They 'Microsoft' people have to be the most transparent, obvious, and pathetic scams out there, which is saying a lot.

It costs time and money to _execute_ a more sophisticated attack. And the low investment in these calls means it can be executed in a a low cost clal center which is basically a sweat shop of employees who will, in their turn be ripped off by their employers. Also, the poor quality of the scam helps focus the scam on those easiest to victimize.

I'm afraid that, in that sense, it's much like timeshare in Florida, the "US Airways" scam for "you've wone a free vacation", and the "please help me get a place to sleep tonight" begging scam.

> It does, but you loose some of the features people take for granted.

Excuse me, but so what? This is not a "taken for granted" usage of the protocol.

> I seriously wonder how this could spread, after all you don't just have a large Ethernet domain in your international company.

Oh, my dear lord. I'm assuming you've never worked in a large environment. _Of course_ they have a single large or several large domains (in the Microsoft Active Directory sense) for unified email authenticatoin, and potentially for payroll management and corporate ID's. While the particular systems may be somewhat independent, they are _inevitably_ chained together by various poorly secured portals and gateways in a large environment.

If instead you meant "you don't have a large Ethernet domain", again, you clearly haven't dealt with the kind of large environment I have, where the admins leave things open "because we're not a target" or because "if they're inside our network, we're doomed anyway".

> SMB is one of the first things to go.

I'm afraid it's built into every Windows machine. Go looking around for the hidden "C$" share on every windows box, which is critical to the use of "Powershell" for systems administration. Unless you've been extremely cautious about firewalling things in your core switches and quite strict about treating all individual Windows systems as potentially hostile, it's enabled on all of them.

I suspect you are too young to appreciate the difference in weather prediction in the last 20 years, much less the last 50. Understanding of global weather patterns, satellite monitoring, and the ability to gather data from across an entire state and from offshore have profoundly improved storm prediction and especially flood prediction. And the information about mountain snowfall and rainfall is critical to flood reporting and planning.

Even the daily weather reporting, with subtle temperature differences across a single city, is a profound improvement over my lifetime. The monitors simply didn't exist, with available communications and recording tools, to handle all the data. "Looking at the sky" is not enough to predict the size and timing of tropical storms, and certainly not enough to predict flooding anywhere near so effectively and usefully as it is now. If you farm, or if you transport cargo by ship or plain, these are _vital_ factors for every day productivity and safety.

If you feel inclined to scoff, ask an old farmer or pilot or captain about the difference.

> Nonsense. It only doesn't sit well with the fictional, cartoon-grade MBA types that IT people like to conjure up as straw men

And the personnel reviewing the bid I made for a security enhancement last week. They were very clear about it, and we were both very clear on the lost productivity of a "secure" system that would consistently lock employees out of email during off-hours and calling on after hours staff they did not have to do the work.

> Well, let me know when we actually get to the weather-predicting stage

Considering that "the weather predicting stage" has existed throughout human history, with the prediction of the seasons and planting nad harvest and migration times based on both astronomy and local environments, I'd say we've been at the "weather predicting stage" for all of human history. Given the evolution in the last century both explaining and predicting weather well enough to provide a daily prediction, I'd say we've been gotten considerably better at it.

> most of which were specialized enough (and/or small enough) to care.

Or simply accustomed to ignoring ranting trolls. Remember, these are gamers and people who deal with them professionally. The threshold of abusive behavior to be considered unusual is quite high.

Some developers use shared file systems on CIFS, whether Microsoft file server or Samba based. Some of us also inherit code that uses mixed case that maps to the same file name when made single case for legacy reasons: I can name several old UNIX programs that do not compile on CygWin without considerable revision of their source code, due to precisely this sort of issue.

> Why should a driver need special certification to drive people around for money,

Because of the potential for abuse of unsuspecting clients.

                    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wir...

I've had good success with genuine taxis in many cities in many countries. Some cities, and neighborhoods, are noticeably better, and I've certainly had to use a gypsy cab when exhausted and there were no registered cabs available. They've helped save me enormous difficulty and expense, from letting me pay later when I was out of cash, to actually helping get a very sick man off the streets to a hospital when my hands were full and I could not reach to pay with my hands so full. I never did get to reward that cabbie, I'm afraid, but I always try to tip well in memory of that help.

One of the practices I've come to despise, however, is the "you must take the first taxi available" rules at airport and public transit taxi stands. All of the drivers get upset if you select the company you prefer and have done business with.

> x86: I'm pretty sure that Intel had a great deal of legal control of that market, a

And illegal control. Do look into the history of the theft of Alpha technologies from DEC that were used for the Pentium architecture.

              http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05...

Please don't assume that _quality_ camera film maker will be available. The quality of good camera film, at least, was _amazing_ in its heyday. We saw the results in the photography of scientific magazines especially, such as National Geographic and Nature. The economies of scale seem to have been vital to Kodak and Polaroid, partly because the chemicals used can also be quite toxic and required very controlled handling to ensure the quality of the film.

Film based photography is a fascinating technology history, well worth review in technology and business courses.

Given the bans on credit card contributions to WikiLeaks and he behavior of RIAA and MPAA, and the very strange intellectual properties concerning computer software and the DMCA? Yes, I'd say content is being filtered. Also, given laws about child pornography and human torture depictions, I'd say yes, content is blocked in the USA and internationally.

China's filters are much, much broader, but it does not mean speech is completely free elsewhere.

I've noted that the Steam game, "Dungeons of Dredmor", is a nice upgrade to the genre of rogue-like games. It's good, for those who enjoy them and like a bit more graphics. It has different shop mechanics, but I was given a copy and enjoyed it. And I do remember compiling and playing the original Rogue decades ago, along with 'rogomatic' to watch someone _else_ trying to dungeon dive.