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Comment Re:Censorship (Score 2) 113

The problem is less that people think they're anonymous. The problem is more that it's usually not they themselves that post "incriminating" content but their peers, and with the internet this means it's here to stay.

For reference, take Star Wars Kid and all the other involuntary internet celebrities.

Comment Re:As expected from google (Score 2) 113

While I agree that this would be the best way to deal with it, you seem to forget what most politicians also conveniently ignore: Their laws don't mean jack in Generistan. Slander isn't really a crime in some countries. At least countries that have real problems instead of first world problems are usually a wee bit, let's say, sluggish when it comes to your request to take down some article you don't like.

For a time I was busy trying to fight malware. Part of that fight included trying to take down command&control servers. You have NO idea how much trouble it can be to convince the executive in some far east countries to cooperate in something like shutting down such a C&C server. Even if said country does actually have laws against computer crime. Now take a wild guess how easy it may be to convince a provider in said country to do something against an article the content of which is possibly not even violating their local law (but is violating EU laws).

The EU can only policy the territory it controls. Some countries may think they own the world and can enforce their laws anywhere, I'm kinda glad the EU doesn't follow that train of thought. And I am DAMN glad they try to control it that way instead of the "Chinese firewall" approach!

Comment Could, would, should... you be any more vague? (Score 1) 252

I think MS would complain if I called that vaporware, because even they didn't steep that low. This ain't even a "we kinda sorta think we might one day" announcement. It's some leaked (yeah, right) rumors about what some tech giant could be thinking about making.

How the fuck is this relevant in ANY way?

Comment Re:The Middle Class is the Bedrock of Society (Score 1) 839

The problem is that the first, last and only point at which goods becomes valuable for the market is at their consumption. Only when something is consumed, i.e. eliminated from the economy, it generates the need for more. Someone has to go and make a new one that can be consumed again. No other economic action adds value to it.

When I produce something, that product (be it good or service, doesn't matter too much) does of course have a cost of its production. It has no value yet, though. Only when I can sell it, it gets a value and I get revenue. If this good is now in turn used to create more goods or services (i.e. if it's an investment rather than consumption), this only adds to the cost burden of whatever it generates, because whoever bought the good/service from me will have to reimburse that investment by means of selling himself. Either that or he will go bankrupt. But I hope we can agree that it's not really a viable business model on a global scale if we drive a good portion of the players in our economy into bankruptcy to keep some other businesses afloat.

Only when someone finally takes a product and removes it from the pool entirely by using it, the value of that good is returned to the market. Note that "use" doesn't necessarily mean "use up". I can consume a house by living in it. You can't live in a house I live in, so if you want a house too, you have to build one. If I use a car, it's mine and not yours, so another one has to be built to sell it to you.

Everything you say contributes to this basic problem, but the underlying issue is simply that goods have to be removed from the market to add value and to drive the economy. As long as they stay in circulation, producing more only devalues them.

Comment Re:The Middle Class is the Bedrock of Society (Score 1) 839

The core problem is that they can choose to sit on it. That's the whole point. If the cost of living is 100 and both you and me have 100, we will both spend 100. Why? Because we want to live. Duh. If I have 150 and you have 50, you will have to cut back on expenses while I have 50 that I can CHOOSE not to spend.

The point is, with more equality, it doesn't matter whether people have "confidence" in anything. They have to participate in the market. And yes, I consider that a good thing. Human is generally a greedy, selfish bastard. To the point where he will usually even work against his own best interest, because he is an irrational idiot.

Restore people's ability to live their life and your economy will thrive, whether people have faith in it or not.

Comment Re:It's not that hard to do it right (Score 1) 54

Sure but in Java you have things like Spring Framework, Hibernate, Java EE standards that have been around for a decade and they are rock-solid foundations to build upon.

To be fair, the mysqli extension in PHP which supports prepared statements has also been around for over a decade. But you can still go and find any number of tutorials teaching people how to write vulnerable queries by concatenating strings and using the deprecated mysql extension, and you can go to any PHP forum and find people posting questions about code which uses the same. And when you try to teach those people how to do it the correct way, roughly 95% of the time their response is along the lines of "I just need to make it work, then I'll learn about prepared statements." It's a failure of the programmers and tutorials far more than it is a failure of the language. It would be fantastic if PHP outright removed the mysql extension and the mysqli_query function, but that would break a ton of existing applications. And, even so, even when you point people to tutorials about prepared statements they gloss over everything and come back with code like:

$mysqli->prepare('SELECT * FROM table WHERE id=' . $_GET['id']);

Look, I used a prepared statement!

Like I said, it's a failure of the programmers who want the quick and easy way instead of the correct way.

Comment Re:Judging by salary and the "supply vs demand" lo (Score 1) 213

No, I want to move away from our planned economy. It doesn't matter how you choose the nomenclatura, whether they're the ones who sing the right hymns, the ones who follow the right doctrine or the ones who went to the right school, neither results in a rule of the best and brightest, either is simply and plainly nepotism.

I can't honestly think of any existing system ever that didn't end up with a small lining of aristocracy (however that was called, whether it's the aristocracy of the good ol' times of nobility, whether it's the aristocracy of the communist politburo or whether it's our aristocracy of money).

By the way: The system you might describe as "communist" (which I refuse to accept, it was much but certainly not communist) failed for the same reasons, oddly, that the system we live in today will fail (which I refuse to consider even remotely capitalist). I'm fairly sure true communism can work. I'd still prefer true capitalism. Not because it's better, but it's far easier to implement.

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