Surprising discovery about the Voynich manuscript - it contains hundreds of pictures of naked women, probably outnumbering the pictures of plants. Maybe the focus on botany is misguided!
Indeed. Or even "don't click on suspicious emails or visit suspicious websites" which are actually always harmless. How about simply "don't run a program you don't trust" and we wouldn't need virus scanners at all.
Or at least cause you to consider the risk of loss compared to the value of using the software while not panicking when you receive a spam email with a suspicious looking xls file attached.
Well, I just checked and found information about Java being disabled by default in Firefox and Chrome.
The only resources I found on IE were about how it is difficult to disable.
Because of this, I am going to assume that it is enabled by default on IE. Correct me if I'm wrong.
IE has about an 18-20% share of the browser market [1]. A significant amount of targets by any measure!
So as long as it is true that a large percentage of the target market could benefit from "Don't visit/view!" security advice then it makes sense to include such advice.
Java's sandbox is no more secure than it was before, but because of Firefox and Chrome adding in a ton of mitigating features like requiring "click to play" by default, disabling it as soon as it goes out of date, and Oracle adding the same features internally, it's definitely way less of a threat right now.
Drive bys are still of course possible via Adobe Flash and Reader exploits, the occasional IE exploit, and the rare Firefox exploit.
Depends on who's measuring. IE has over/about half of the browser market. Corporate cubicle farms are dominated by IE, as are aunt's, uncle's, and grandma's computers.
They're probably just trying to be sensitive to their audience and sponsors. Google also censors pornography because a subset of users are offended by it.
Scott Adams' mild political satire is understandably censored because it is comparable in offensiveness to porn?!
By the way, Google doesn't censor porn. They categorises it.
If they were either dropping all porn or replacing all porn images by pictures of little ponies, that would be censorship.
It helps to highlight our cultural biases. In some cultures pornography is more acceptable than homosexuality. These are just different prejudices that different people hold. It's not obvious which is more right or wrong.
2. Provide a methodology by which they can be objectively known.
Is a right to be left alone to one's culture a human right? Is a right not to be deprived by outside powers of one's native language a human right? And who gets to set the limits on the outer limits of such a right? (i.e. is the right to advocate the position that genocide of, say, black folk, is desirable a human right? What about pornography?).
My own sense is that usually these have no epistemology behind them and are based solely on projecting one's a priori assumptions onto the world.
when a private entity chooses what it displays to the public I have no qualms with it, its censorship when a government entity chooses what you can or cannot view, say, or read.
"suburban moms in mid-west buy those stocks" There's no need to blame. Those investors are trying to make free money without doing productive work or even investing in productive companies. They're also the ones who lose the most if it fails so they automatically experience the rewards or blame financially.
Industrial interest in the moon is a good thing for the development of space travel and discovering new things. Also, you might find America's human rights abuses to be worse than China's when you count all the imprisoned American people who shouldn't be there and the forced conscription around the time of America's moon missions. America's pollution is certainly worse than China's when summed over the last century.
Low-polluting, low abussing countries like Tuvalu are typically not well equipped to go to the moon.
"forced conscription" is a tautology. And frankly, "around the time of America's moon mission" was also "around the time of Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'"... where tens of millions of people died due to pure political incompetance. The death count was an order of magnitude worse than the horrific farce that was the Vietnam War. Hell, even when it comes to just the Vietnam war in its own context, US conscription was one of the smaller immoral things about it.
But ultimately, counting past misdeeds doesn't help us plan for the future. We're here now, and we're looking forward. If country X was the worst polluter in 1950 and isn't now, what good comes of castigating X now? We wouldn't castigate modern China because of Mao's Great Leap, why do the same to the US from back then? There's plenty of modern concerns to deal with anyway.
>Industrial interest in the moon is a good thing for the development of space travel and discovering new things.
True, but do you think your nation is ready to go to war for the right to manufacture on the moon?
America certainly has its share of human rights abuses (I'm not American, though, in case it matters to your argument), but pails into insignificance in the face of the mighty China, a land of near-infinite capacity for human misery. No amount of whitewashing will change this opinion - I've been there, seen it. (America too, incidentally).
So, my point being, I'd sure rather the infinite power of Moon-manufacturing not fall, necessarily, into the kind of power for whom human life is not as significant as, say, technological prowess. Would that the Moon changed Chinas' ways, though ..
I don't think this is a valid argument. It seems to be "I'm right because I believe people in the future will agree with me". Maybe so but the author can't know that until the future comes.
That isn't the argument at all. The author is not saying "in the future Snowden will be a hero, therefore let's make him a hero in the present to align ourselves with history". That is not a good argument because history is not moral, and just because things happen it doesn't make them right.
What he is saying is that society is currently evolving in a direction of openness and transparency, and of holding those in power to account. This trend is visible right now; it's not a prediction.
What are the visible signs that "society is currently evolving in a direction of openness and transparency, and of holding those in power to account"? Sure seems like the public at large is ambivalent at best to my eyes, but love to hear otherwise.
It's a circular argument though. Of course if you think you're right you think history will side with you.
It's a silly argument I keep hearing more and more. Pro-life people are on the wrong side of history, pro-choice people are on the wrong side of history, anti-gay marriage are on the wrong side of history...
Traditionally we as a society have moved towards more inclusive policies. There's a clear pattern. Women got basic rights, slavery was abolished, women got the right to vote, blacks got basic rights including voting, homosexuality officially no longer a mental illness, slowly the rights of LGBTs are being recognized. (My history sucks, so I probably got some of those out of order, but anyways.)
Opposing equal rights does put you on the wrong side of history, meaning you oppose this socially progressive pattern. It takes time, but the pattern is still there.
But is that a clear pattern in history or just confirmation bias? For some Snowden is a traitor and history is full of traitors. Those terms are not neutral.
It's like saying terrorists are on the wrong side of history while the resistance are on the good side. Ok, now it's just about deciding which is which.
I'm not arguing against Snowden or whistleblowers here, I share the general sentiment here that what he did was for the greater good, but I find the argument of "the good side of history" particularly weak.
Since the consensus around these parts is that Snowden is a hero we better be careful not to devolve into mindless circlejerking à la reddit and try to keep interesting and insightful discussions.
At this rate tomorrow we'll read "snowden = good; NSA = bad" on the frontpage. That's just preaching to the choir.
It seems that you could argue that his disclosures have been more or less in the interest of the public at large. A traitor tends to steal/sell information for personal gain, providing them to an enemy directly. I can't think of any historical examples of traitors who exposed wrongdoings of the government they are betraying against its own public to said public. (but perhaps there are some?)
A traitor tends to be providing information of a primarily military use. You could try and argue that the mass dragnet of records is a military function... But that would be tantamount to saying that every citizen in America is a military target of their own government (oh wait... /s) and that opens a whole different can of worms.
I agree about not wanting to devolve into mindless high-fiving and preaching to the choir... But it seems difficult at this point to call the public disclosures so far a traitorous act. And public opinion seems to be tilting more and more towards that opinion as the weeks go by.
Regarding terrorists being on the 'wrong side of history' it really all depends who wins right? It also depends somewhat on who's history you are reading. For instance, had the Axis won in WWII, they would probably be referring to the bombing of Dresden as 'terrorism'.
Not quite same thing, but the Optimates who killed Caesar genuinely thought they were liberating Rome from a tyrant (they called themselves the Liberatores) and stuck around expecting to be hailed as saviours. They were not.
Pretty similar to what might have happened to Snowden had he stuck around? Agreed, not comparing the two seriously, because they arn't the same thing at all, but perhaps they should have left then returned after all had settled?
I am afraid it is not. You can objectively analyze the past and draw conclusions about the future, without presuming yourself right. (People usually call that "Science".)
When the guy hosting the weather report tells you it is going to rain, does it mean people hoping for a sunny day are on the "wrong side of history"?
Of course, some people make the "silly argument" you are referring to, but I think the original author is more subtle than that.
