My main takeaway from Atlas Shrugged was this:
1) You can pay me to give a shit about you.
2) If I don't seem to give a shit about you, see rule 1.
3) Any unpaid shit-giving is purely voluntary on my part
a) and may be terminated at any time, without reason or prior warning
b) or if someone pays me not to.
That third one may or may not be in the book in some form. I felt it was implied.
All those poor subsistence farmers 200 years ago... all that capitalism and industrialization and automation of farming, it was a total waste of time. Everybody died.
We all die eventually. But in rebuttal to your snark, the subsistence farmers of 200 years ago did not live in urban societies without access to the land to grow what they needed. A lot of those people in between then and now died because they lacked access to medical care and a host of other conveniences we take for granted, because they could not afford them.
In order for a few people to live a life of leisure these days, other people have to work very hard indeed. Sure, some of that work can be automated, but then the people being replaced are surplus to requirements and simply aren't needed, so there there is no need to provide support for them.
This is the modern mentality.
> The best thing that this society can achieve is to automate every single job that we do today, so that people can be freed up to do something else altogether.
These days, "something else altogether" means "starving". They want to automate your job so they don't have to pay you, not to give you ample free time so you can do something more fun.
If you do manage to find something more fun, they want a piece of the revenue from that, as well.
Sure, but the important thing is: how much do I score for taking out a village of unarmed peasants who are so poor that dirt farming is a step up and what can I get at the DARPA online auction house for it?
Ever been to Houston? A cruise missile would improve the place.
The funny thing about all of this is that Iran is just a place name to most people in the U.S. and about as real as Neverland or Hy-Brasil. They have a concept of Iran, but that's about it. If you're Iranian, you don't exist, in their heads, and so what happens to you *doesn't matter*.
Dammit, I don't want one program that does everything. I have to imagine how awesome Opera Browser would be if they weren't also focused on a mail client. And vice versa.
We are quickly finding ourselves in a society where we lack an absolute morality authority. Therefore what is immoral for you may or may not be immoral to others. In other words, we are reaping the fruits of a society where all ideas are given equal worth. Where we are not to condemn someone because what they do is right from their point of view.
Well, depending on who you ask, the only absolute moral authority is some made-up white guy with a beard (hint: not Santa Claus). We could probably stand with better education on matters of right and wrong (without invoking the beard) but this would require delving into classical literature for a background, and actual thinking.
Both of these things are non-testable and non-monetizable, which is anathema to the people in charge of education ATM.
Yes, I'm a cynic. Fortunately, I don't have access to heavy weaponry.
Apple could have done this with the Mac store, and didn't. They could have allowed non-app store installs like Android, and didn't. The only reason not to do repositories or allow non-walled garden applications is greed. Sounds like Windows 8 is going the walled garden route as well, and this is the problem. It becomes more acceptable, and has to get pretty crippled compared to the competition (AOL) before the general public starts to care.
The only other reason is to attempt to provide consistency across the platform in look, feel, and provisioning. Most users can't distinguish between an issue with an installed program and the platform. The benefit to Apple's approach is that it minimizes even the possibility of confusion, now and into the future.
Their thought pattern seems to be: if people want to mess around with a platform, let them go invent their own.
And I don't know that I have a huge issue with that.
Don't fuck with what ain't yours.
Religion and non-interference are mutually exclusive.
Seriously, if I'm a software company, how do I tell the difference between
1) a prominent security researcher
2) a garden-variety hacker
Consider that the incoming notification will probably go to one of several public addresses, but probably to support, feedback, publicity or bugs. Now, do each of those people need to be trained to recognize certain names (which leads us back to original question). Or do they need to be trained to recognize a crank letter from a real letter (no objective means of doing so). Or possibly distinguish technical facts from technical blathering (not at all realistic)?
It's just not realistic that a software company can be on top of every possible vulnerability at all times, and yet this is what it seems all of you expect. There are just too many clever people with time on their hands and a single-focus mentality to be able to combat all of things they might come up with.
The main worry seems to be that the Anti-Virus vendors will be put out of business because they will no longer be necessary. As long as Microsoft allows the user to supplant Microsoft's AV with a third-party AV, there shouldn't be any worry.
However, I'm guessing that the AV vendors also believe that Microsoft should somehow be responsible for keeping them in business, which is ridiculous.
or a political statement, really.
As a game where there is no win condition, it just sucks.
As a political statement, it's kind of catchy, but it's difficult to take PETA seriously anymore.
If they win, it may damage their Twitter reputation more than just leaving it alone.
17,000 followers can spam a Twitter account pretty heavily.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
