drcube

I'm not talking about social security, I'm talking about pensions. To which a 401k or IRA is infinitely preferable. But SS has the same problem as pensions: there's nothing to stop future politicians from eliminating it at any time to free up some headroom in the budget.

Perhaps a mandatory 401k everyone must have, contribute to and refrain from using until age 65 would be the best of both worlds?

Pensions are a foolish idea and I seriously hope no one under the age of 50 takes a job with a pension, expecting it to actually materialize. But the workers of the past didn't have our benefit of hindsight, and we should do what we can to keep our promises to them.

But seriously, guys, don't offer your employees a pension, and if a potential employer offers you one, laugh in their face. Let us manage our own retirements.

Drones are unmanned planes. They're not time machines or matter annihilators or teleporters. What makes these devices so scary to certain people?

It's not about $300. It's about everybody else from now on who will discover getting $300 from Ignitiondeck is as easy as threatening some bad reviews.

Think of the bad PR as an investment. These people will hopefully move on to easier targets now.

Not saying I agree, but I think that's the rationale.

> At some point you have to trust someone, and I doubt with all the eyes on windows, both within and without, that any extant backdoor would have remained hidden until now.

Right, but A) I like to choose who I trust. Get a second opinion. Verify a few things myself, if I feel I'm up to the task. I get none of these options with Windows.

B) If you doubt, with all the eyes on Windows, that a backdoor would have persisted, why do you act as if more eyes is not better? Or, perhaps more importantly, a greater variety of eyes?

Microsoft gets to pick who studies their code, and may or may not prevent them from revealing vulnerabilities and bugs anyway. Popular open source projects may get actively hostile researchers studying their code specifically to shout any bugs they find from the rooftops. Or they may get the world's foremost expert in some aspect of their code to study it for fun. And nobody can stop them from revealing anything the find.

If MS giving a few hand-picked organizations their source code under strict terms, who may or may not be allowed to report what they find honestly, is good, why wouldn't fully open software be better?

Nobody is saying that giving governments and a few organizations a look at the Windows source isn't better than having it completely locked down. But it just doesn't go far enough.

Okay, who? And why should I trust them? How do I know they didn't sign an NDA promising to keep any security vulnerabilities secret?

At least with FOSS, I get to choose the third party I trust to verify my software's security. And I don't have to take it on faith, I can get a second opinion, or audit the parts I care most about myself.

So the NSA can see Windows source code, but Windows users can't? And users are supposed to feel secure about this? Why?

I think it's A) a callback to the "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" book/concept. And B) trying to overcome the macho, ego mentality that they feel is driving professionals to sleep less.

If the site doesn't work, you can enable scripts one by one until it does. Usually you just have to allow scripts from the domain you're visiting, and you can prevent most abuses that use third party scripts that way.

Occasionally you'll run across a site that has scripts from 30-odd domains, and after enabling a few, it still doesn't work. Those sites aren't worth visiting.

But NoScript gives you the degree of control you want. It's possible to enable all scripts by default, disabling them only when you feel there is a problem. Or you can use it for information purposes only, so you know what third party domains have scripts running on that page.

Advertising is basically all manipulation and lies. If it isn't, we just call it "information".

Look at what they call "underwriting" on nonprofit independent or public radio stations. "This production is brought to you by Bill's Shoes, 123 Main Street, Saginaw. Selling Men's and Women's shoes, boots and sandals since 1982."

Advertising goes beyond that, using false superlatives, misleading copy, calls to action, and peer pressure, at best. At worst it's just lies. There is nothing free about "buy one get one free", for instance. It's a lie. Sales, "deals", "limited time only" -- these are psychological games. Manipulation. Often, the "everyday" price the sale prices is marked down from, is a lie. Misleading propaganda at best. Straight up fraud at worst. This is the everyday "harmless" content we allow our children and politicians to watch.

And that's just traditional television, radio and print advertising. What passes for advertising on the internet is uniformly awful. I'd call most of it malware.

It's rude to link to an ugly site when you could link to a better, more readable one. It's rude to lie and manipulate people for money, when you could easily avoid doing so. Advertising should not be encouraged, ever.

When you have the opportunity to show someone an ad-free, single page, uncluttered version of a piece of literature, do it. Please. Always.

If you don't want people to view something on the public web, don't post it there.

This page design is infinitely better than the other one, also linked on the HN front page. Seems like you get a choice. Hooray for freedom!

They certainly do if it's your first job out of college. Once you've got work experience, you're right, no one cares about your GPA.

Not only that, but bullets aren't magic body vaporizers. If you shoot the guy in the right hand, he can still shoot you back with his left. Firing center mass has the best chance at stopping the threat, both because it's the largest in area and because the most important organs are in there.

And you may need to hit center mass a few times before they actually stop, so don't get cute trying to shoot off fingers when innocent lives are on the line. Which is the only time it is acceptable to shoot anyone, ever.

No. Police aren't Annie Oakley. Chances are, they wounded the suspect while trying to kill.

In a life or death situation (which is the only time it is acceptable to shoot a person), nobody has time to make trick shots. If the target deserves to die, aim center mass. If not, don't shoot at all.

Imagine if the cops tried to "shoot to non-fatally disable" someone who didn't deserve to die, but killed him anyway? That would be murder. You don't shoot at anyone if killing them isn't justified.

Then if you miss and shoot the gun out of their hand, or whatever the movies have told you is the easy, humane thing to do, well, that's a bonus. You can breathe easy knowing you didn't end up killing anyone.

But certainly, CD-ROMs (or today's equivalent: Khan Academy and MOOCs) can take the place of no teacher?

There is free education to be had today that wasn't available in 1995. It's not better than the face-to-face education we had then or now, but it's quite a bit better than going without any education at all due to location, circumstances or finance.

> Honestly, does it really matter if someone reads the articles that you submit or not?

Why submit it if you think otherwise?

This is how it works on most message boards. I wouldn't be opposed to it being the MO for this site too. I figure the OP ought to be able to frame their submission however they want. The main problem is you'd get a lot more duplicate submissions.

My old Motorola Backflip, for one. Apparently AT&T removed the "unknown sources" setting from their phones prior to 2011[1]. I think my girlfriend's Samsung Exhilarate from a year or two ago is locked out of installing apps from unknown sources, but I should make sure before I go talking out of my ass again.

[1] http://www.sleetherz.com/2011/05/att-users-now-you-can-insta...

Fair enough. I've seen phones that disable the setting for allowing sideloaded apps. But fortunately it's not as prevalent as I thought.

I swear that's just what PHB said on last week's Dilbert.

Means testing is a lot of bureaucracy for less effectiveness. Giving everyone a basic income eliminates those issues.

Well the banks might have to change their tune when >50% of their clients are using Tor. In fact, when security and anonymity are commonplace, most websites will have to reexamine their policies.

Can you sideload anything on Windows or Apple phones? No. And on most carrier locked Android phones, you have to find an exploit to root your device before they let you sideload apps. So my point, that you are less free today with modern smartphones than you were with your PC under MS dominance in the 90s, stands.

This isn't like some test to pass before changing your oil. It's like requiring Ford's permission to install some fuzzy dice or a custom seat cover.

You can install what you want -- maybe, if your carrier lets you or you find an exploit to root your non-Nexus phone -- on Android only. That's not the case with iPhones or Windows phones. And yes, this is worse (read: less freedom) than you got with a Windows machine in the 90s.

It doesn't void my warranty. Nor millions of others'.

The freedom to install the software of your choosing? The freedom to actually own your own computer? Seriously?

No. If you have a contract to get paid for work, it really doesn't matter whether you "own" the end product in any meaningful way. You should get paid according to the terms of the contract, even if it was just a verbal contract.

And taking credit for someone's work is not remotely the same as copying it without their permission, attribution intact. Can you not tell the difference?

This has nothing to do with that.

If you publish something in public for all the world to see, don't expect random strangers to just hand you money for the privilege of seeing it.

But if someone tells you they will pay you for your work, and then when you spend two months working on it, they refuse to pay and furthermore pass the work off as their own, that's fucked up no matter what the copyright laws are in your country.