Please, let's remember that the mentally ill aren't 'evil alien[s]', as the author describes her father. People considered mentally ill are those who generally have emotional and/or cognitive irregularities, be they subtle or strong. That still makes them human.
I recognize the need to expand involuntary commitment laws to include evidence of recent events beyond the past 15 minutes of an interview. I agree that something does need to be done about dangerous people in general, regardless of whether they are mentally ill or not. This is a problem that needs restrictive and supportive measures on many fronts.
However, most mentally ill people are not dangerous. The author's use of circumstantial stories, instead of statistical evidence strongly distorts the reader's understanding of a typically mentally ill person. In her story, almost every mentally ill person she mentions kills someone. But as the author says in the end, the mentally ill are statistically less likely to harm another than to be harmed by someone else.
I think that some of what the author hopes for is a good idea, but if people could be forcibly treated for mere delusions or minor symptoms, then that also includes the huge percentage of normal Americans who believe in or claim to have seen ghosts. Do unusual religious beliefs count as insanity? Are your political views ever considered 'irrational' by someone else? What happens to free thought and religion?
The problem with creating laws that chip away at civil liberties is that these laws can be abused or stretched to cover people who are in a 'grey area' and aren't a real danger. Those in power can take laws and apply them according to their personal preferences and values, at the expense of those who do little harm.
I think it's a good idea to have involuntary commitment laws only for the rare dangerous cases that exist. But in addition to that, human support is needed. Treating people well and showing gentle empathy will help win them over to the side of those who are trying to help. In the end, let's not harm the large majority who are closer to the middle of the grey area, and aren't dangerous.
This is one thing I love about free software: the ability to extend a set of code to other devices and purposes. Somebody has an itch to scratch, shares those changes, and other people benefit as well. :) I just wish that hardware manufacturers in general would release the specifications for their devices, so that hackers could write more free firmware blobs and drivers without having to split hairs. Ideally, the manufacturers would release the code themselves, so that there would be wider support for hardware, and you wouldn't see things like "sound isn't working yet" in the known issues list.
P.S. While this project describes themselves as "open source", it is also a free software project since they use a free license. Otherwise, what would be the point, if hackers couldn't share their contributions with each other and the world?
This general problem is a symptom of a major issue regarding the use of software that does not respect the freedom of its users. Every non-apple developer and user is required to bend to the will of the programmers who develop the proprietary iOS. Any negative choices or limitations imposed by Apple Inc. are virtually uncircumventable.
On the other hand, if users and developers in a community are free to view, modify and share the source code of the operating system and programs they are using, then that creates a dynamic where software cannot remain defective by design, something which cannot be said about Apple's hardware or software.
If we were talking about free (as in speech) software, users would have control of their data, and their choice of how to manage it; not some distant programmers working for a corporation's bottom line.
> defective by design, free (as in speech), respect the freedom of its users
Is it just me, or has the free software community gotten so disciplined and precise with their talking points that it would make Karl Rove blush?
It comes down to this: different people want different things. Some people want Kramer's vision of building your own pizza, both for fun and to get exactly the pizza you want. Most people would rather have pizza driven to their house after a 1 minute phone call, and if they lose some freedom over the exact topping placement and the kind of crust used, they're quite fine with that.
Yeah, this was a really boneheaded platform decision, and I'll be very frustrated if Apple doesn't fix it. But you can't seriously tell me that open-source software doesn't sometimes make blunders or suffer from flawed usability. And the idea that I can theoretically crack open the source to my app (the Venn intersection of those with the time, ability, and willingness to do so are a speck, by the way) doesn't help me after the cache is already cleared while I'm sitting on the plane.
I don't care whether something is defective by design, or defective by lack of design: I care that it's defective, period.
The day that technology vendors start engaging in things like free speech suppression or non-consensual privacy invasion is the day I'm willing to think of computing as being a political issue. What we have here is nothing more than tech which you think sucks, and in this instance, you're very right. If it sucks enough, people will stop buying it, and/or the vendor will make it suck it less. But for god's sake, get off the the soapbox and go back to making things; everybody has exactly as much freedom as they want.
tl;dr: FOSS needs to get better at delivering pizzas instead of bitching about Domino's.
> I don't care whether something is defective by design, or defective by lack of design: I care that it's defective, period.
Interesting. As an engineer, I very much care about causes. Especially systematic ones. They allow me to better reason about the kinds of problems my system is likely to have, and to proactively mitigate them.
I believe that sudoman's tl;dr is something like "If Domino's executives ate at Domino's, the pizza would taste better", which is to say that (as for most iOS APIs), Apple's own software almost certainly uses different APIs than what they force developer apps to use.
Even if you don't find comments like that interesting, I do. Your comment however (and the other replies to sudoman) miss the point entirely, and instead of discussing why the Domino's executives don't eat Domino's pizza, you spend your time arguing the importance of executives.
> Apple's own software almost certainly uses different APIs than what they force developer apps to use.
I think it's foolish to think that Apple uses private frameworks for their apps exclusively, when they could be using the public frameworks that other 3rd party apps use.
It's more likely to be: Apple uses the public frameworks for the majority of their apps but use the private frameworks for controlling the underlying hardware and subsystems of the OS [stuff like communications which could cost the user money, SMS, phone calls].
And I don't understand why you post random links about issues you are not familiar with, which is what you would need to digest them.
Some APIs are not ready for developer use, end of story. Apple does right to forbid their use to avoid crashes on the next iOS upgrade. It's not some plot to gain advantage. CoverFlow clones were always welcome, page curl is already published (clones were welcome before that, I coded one btw), JSON parser already published, some other APIs have no place on developer space.
Your complain should be: Apple doesn't open source their system.
> Apple does right to forbid their use to avoid crashes on the next iOS upgrade
Why doesn't this argument apply to apple? Are there any other methods of preventing crashing?
> Your complain should be: Apple doesn't open source their system.
No. My complaint is that apple doesn't treat developers as fellow programmers, but more like "end developers" or something. Apple gets to do it differently. Case in point being OP's post.
> And I don't understand why you post random links about issues you are not familiar with
> If we were talking about free software, users would have control of their data; not some distant programmers
Example Gnome3, which is free software, even a officially sanctioned GNU project. Overnight, a few key people decide to abandon the traditional desktop metaphor, against the will of a majority of their users and to the detriment of the whole linux desktop. The users hated it and are still hating it, but nobody has the ressources to modify it. Nobody has even the ressources to keep Gnome2 alive, let alone fork Gnome3.
Yes, in theory users could make only those changes they want, but only in theory. In practice, if a significantly influential player says that Gnome2 is gone, Gnome2 is gone. Even if iOS was free software, if Apple decided to make a change, they would be still big enough to force a majority of users to accept their way.
Wonderful comment. This is one reason I always laughed at the argument "yea, but... we have all the source code!". Great, so the solution is we pay to maintain it? How is this free again?
The unsaid thing about freedoms is you cannot exercise them unless you have the means to do so. If you don't have that, the only value freedoms afford you is aspirational.
Given that the potential to do something is worth a whole lot less than the activity itself, it's easy to see why FOSS is in is current state and will remain that way for a long time.
Nobody is suggesting that. In any case it's a false comparison, since anybody has the ability to fully exercise their freedom of speech. To exercise your open-source freedoms fully require skills, time, and/or money (to pay others to do it for you).
If the overall noise level is too high and you don't own a microphone, your freedom of speech can't be used effectively, you talk any nobody hears you. It is not a reason to drop freedom of speech, right? It's just the same with free software, the mere fact that you are allowed to read, change and distribute source code IS the key. Doing so is hard but not a reason to dismiss this freedom as irrelevant.
Ubuntu has put hard money into an alternative to Gnome3, yet they chose not to put effort into Gnome2 either. Which suggests that perhaps Gnome2 has been abandoned for good reasons, even if you don't agree with them.
If you're not paying for their time (or willing to put your own time in), you don't get to chose how the people who are putting the effort in spend their programming time.
With free software, you have the option to do whatever you like to it, but no-one has the obligation to work on it on your behalf.
> With free software, you have the option to do whatever you like to it, but no-one has the obligation to work on it on your behalf.
Absolutely and that's the problem. Say my wife (not a programmer) doesn't like it, she isn't going to learn to program, understand the code, make the changes she wants and implement them.
While it's theoretically possible, it's so impractical as to effectively be impossible.
The number of people for whom free as in speech software is actually freer than close software is a very small percentage - for others, such as my wife, Android or Linux is no freer (as in speech) than iOS or Windows.
But it is possible in the free software domain, for your new-Gnome hating wife to read a blog or article about other people who also hate new-Gnome and who have put together, or suggest, an alternative. That alternative can be as little work for her as installing something else from the package manager (which can be at the skill level of a search and point and click).
This doesn't take skill in programming, no more than (in the venerable tradition of car metaphors) it takes mechanical skil to know that the dealer can install the leather seat or roof-rack options for your car if you request that of them.
You drastically understate the percentage of people who have alternatives to choose from at their skill level.
I think you're over estimating how IT literate my wife and many others are. I bought her a MacBook because she used to shout at the PC too much.
And it's not just her. My mum wouldn't get a Mac as she didn't want to have to relearn Windows. My aunty had Linux installed by one of her sons on her PC (for security reasons) and couldn't do a thing (another one returned it to Windows so she could go back to reading her mail and looking at the funny things her friends sent her). And before anyone asks about how all these examples are about women, my father is so IT illiterate I can't even form a coherent example of his lack of knowledge because there's so little of it (though he still surfs the web and looks at his photos).
For these people the idea that you'd go and look for an alternative is a pretty big stretch and that's before you ask whether they actually have the skills to carry out a proper assessment of what is available, what meets their needs, what's robust, what's actively developed (a major consideration in the FOSS world) and so on to make a choice. And even if they do do all that suddenly a major part of their world changes and there is (for them) a major investment in relearning how things work.
If you've got the skills and genuinely worry about these things then I agree FOSS is great but for a massive, massive number of people they just want something basic that makes some sensible choices they can live with and get on with doing stuff. Right now that's a need FOSS is doing little to meet.
for others, such as my wife, Android or Linux is no freer (as in speech) than iOS or Windows.
Not entirely true. Windows can run into licensing problems from time to time, which you don't get with the other major OSes. Buy a used macbook? OS is fine. Buy a used Windows PC? Well... the vendor said it was genuine. Turns out if you try to get the security updates, it starts complaining about not being genuine. I had to sort out exactly this problem for a nontechnical ex-colleague of mine who'd bought such a PC for her new small business.
That's an argument for free as in beer, not free as in speech.
But I'd say that's a pretty niche scenario. In over 20 years of PC use I can't say that I've ever come across it, either personally or seeing a friend or colleague go through it.
I think it's less niche than you say. Instead, there's been an entire culture built up around avoiding windows licensing. Non-technical users have frequently asked me for 'free' windows, and many folks know they have pirated stuff but avoid the security upates because they know it'll break their licensing. Others have Windows installer discs that are pirated but valid - 'free, working Windows'.
For the most part, it 'just works', but it's not doing so in a legal way.
That's different though. The first example was someone who thought they'd bought a valid license but had been duped. This one seems to be about people who want Windows but don't want to pay for it.
Those people need to do a total cost of ownership assessment and work out whether they go with something FOSS or something closed. While FOSS is great in cash out the door terms if you value your time it may not be as good a choice.
But again both are scenarios around free as in beer, not free as in speech.
* Incidentally, I should note I'm not against FOSS. I'm typing this into Chrome and I work for a company who build their products using Java and JBoss and who run an extensive Linux infrastructure. For us those have been great decisions but for my family who are not IT literate, I think the FOSS assessment looks very different.
Your wife and all non-programmers get a major benefit when they use free software. When your wife uses proprietary software, she can never have any level of confidence that the software does what it claims to do and nothing more. Microsoft or Apple can do anything they want behind her back, and the only chance she'll ever have of knowing about it is if some disgruntled employee decides to spill the beans and doesn't immediately get silenced by Microsoft or Apple's huge legal team.
But when she uses a program whose the source code can be examined by a worldwide community of programmers, her chances are greatly improved that if the code plays any dirty tricks someone will already have discovered the offending code, they will have screamed bloody murder, and the offending code will already have been removed. Even if she's unfortunate enough to have encountered the malicious code before it's been discovered, she can be confident that when it is discovered: 1) it will quickly be fixed, and 2) since it's in Microsoft's and Apple's interests to disparage F/OSS software, it will be prominently reported on the 11:00 news.
But I am claiming that her chances of being harmed by having her data misused are far, far greater when she uses software that can only be examined by a very few programmers inside an organization that has a vested interest in hiding the misuse. She's much safer when she uses software that can be examined by a worldwide community of programmers whose vested interest is in achieving status within the programmer community by producing code they can be proud of.
I don't dispute that that's a benefit, I do dispute that it's a big enough benefit to counter all the downsides from the perspective of a regular user.
Part of this is that I think the whole "programmers eyes" benefit is over stated.
"Can be examined" and "is examined by people who know enough to do a useful assessment" are different things. The number of programmers who really understand security isn't that high and the number of those who are committing time to review this sort of code is a fraction of this.
Most exploits aren't down to subterfuge, they're down to incompetence and the people coding (and reviewing) Linux are no less prone to that than those working on Windows or OSX. Those programmers are still human and still make mistakes. Oh, and not everyone reviewing the code has my best interests at heart. I'm not saying that security through obfuscation is good (it's not) but nor is openness without some drawbacks - on balance it's good but it's two steps forward, one step back.
And even if there are exploits in there for the NSA and the like, that's not actually that big a deal for most people. Don't get me wrong, I don't subscribe to the "privacy is only for those with something to hide" line, but security is about trade offs, and I can't see that the potentially greater security that comes from the code being open isn't worth the trade offs that come with it for non-technical users.
For me the positive thing about OSS is that to a large degree it keeps the competition honest. OSS keeps a focus on security and openness that I don't think existed in the same way before it was so prominent. I think this is a massive benefit, just one that I don't have to use OSS to take advantage of.
Because of this I love that OSS exists, and benefits from the fact it does, I just don't want to use it.
Yes, there is the inconvenience of people having different ideas of what makes an optimal program. However, in the case of Gnome3, the Gnome team has been developing fallback mode, which will be used in some GNU/Linux distros in their next releases. So there is still a good deal of original functionality still in place. (And yes there are still variants like XFCE, and other alternatives.)
However, the main point isn't whether we can get as much eye-candy as humanly possible. Free software operating systems may always be lacking some set of features that are present in proprietary systems. But the real issue is how many _anti-features_ there are. We know about Apple's decision on storage policies because it is blatant and they were up-front about it. But there is so much in a proprietary program that we can't easily monitor. It may sound paranoid, but there are likely backdoors, etc. in many of our cell phones, allowing paying governments to listen to converstaions, even when it's sitting in your pocket, or it looks like it's off but still has the battery in. http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/29/gmail-hackers-used-us-go... Gmail and others are _known_ to have backdoors to user data for governments, for example. How comfortable are you with that?
And it's not limited to backdoors and spying. Apple once installed a hardware chip in one of their computers to remove certain features and sell it at a cheaper price. Removing the chip allowed users to use those features. While we usually don't have much control at the hardware level, I personally don't want to use an operating system that is defective by design http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ , with forced obsolescence just being one example of a dirty tactic that is often used. (Get the latest phone, the previous one isn't cool anymore and the new OS works like crap on your "old" hardware!)
If it weren't for Firefox, there would hardly be any web standards to speak of, and the internet would basically cater to Microsoft Windows' Internet Explorer. Microsoft resisted the development of the internet in its current form because it allows users of virtually any operating system to use the web to its fullest potential. I don't think Apple is very much above that kind of thinking. When there weren't many apps for the iPhone, Apple touted the idea of web-based apps, because it was an easy entry point, and there weren't many binary alternatives in the "ecosystem". Once there were lots of programs in Apple's (censored) store, they began discouraging the use of web-based applications and encouraged everyone to make programs compiled for the iPhone, largely because a user of any device can use a web-based app, but you have to buy an iPhone to use the any of the programs that have been written by programmers for that device. (No cross-compiling allowed by Apple, btw.)
So whether or not we like where development is heading with a given free software project, there is a sanity to the development process in that there are no anti-features that I can really think of. If any get made, then all it takes is _one_ programmer to say, "I don't like that idea, I'll just delete that code and share the change with others, because it suits me, and because I can."
"Overnight, a few key people decide to abandon the traditional desktop metaphor,
against the will of a majority of their users and to the detriment of the whole
linux desktop. The users hated it and are still hating it..."
Seriously? I'm not a Wikipedia guy, but.. Care to provide some sources here? Back up
- "overnight" - Versus an open discussion among everyone interested, with lots of early prototypes available to discuss the changes.
- "against the majority of their users" - Got numbers? Reasonable surveys? Or are we just trusting that the loud crowd that curses about this change is not a vocal minority, but really 'the userbase'?
- "the detriment of the whole linux desktop" - Puh - lease.. That's not even funny. This part is just sad..
- "Users hated it and are still hating it" - Generalization, care to provide numbers, surveys - ah, right. It's just a repetition of the second point, right? To really make it stick?
Really, that was uncalled for and totally useless. You could've made your point about not being able to 'use the source' without adding unqualified attacks.
For the vast majority of developers of iOS apps the specifics of how their data is stored and backed up do not matter. If they were not forced by Apple to adopt this set of constraints they would make decisions on a whim, it would lead to less freedom for user, because where there is uniformity, there is a power to abstract, there is a freedom to not micromanage.
Circumventing design decicions is hard. Learning the specifics of particular design is hard practically in the same way. Hacking in an intentionally prohibitive environment is not much different from hacking in an overtly permissive environment — there's a pile of poorly undocumented design decisions which you have to grock before you get anywhere in this system.
So the actual difference it political. I won't argue that preventing little Joe to write the coolest Doom clone ever by requiring all software to be cryptographically signed before running it on a particular game console is somehow more evil than forcing him to spend years learning the ropes and working late hours in QA.
But I believe that imposing certain constrains on people willing to build on your platform is a good thing, because the resulting uniformity gives the platform more leverage.
Whethere the constraints are technical or political /in origin/ is irrelevant.
So let's all wear the same clothes, eat the same foods, engage in the same pastimes, work the same hours, walk at the same speeds, drive the same car. Then the only abstraction will be in our dreams - the only place we will be free! Our dreams will then be the blessed relief that we will always look forward to as our own little free moment.
Point is, such didactic statements are stupid, as is the whole 'less choice is actually more freedom' mantra.
Put it this way. Say the government mandated one phone. One car. One style of house. One fashion outfit. You don't need any more than that. You're freed from having to micromanage your stuff. Sure, you can wear your outfit any way you want, and get your one car in whatever colour, but hey, uniformity breeds freedom from the enduser, right? Because 'micromanagement' is bad, right?
So let's all make our own clothes, grow our own foods, invent our own pastimes, work random hours, ignore road signs, and build our own cars.
There's a happy middle, and I think we're approaching it (given the mobile ecosystem, from both sides). I enjoy using iOS, and for most of my apps I don't care where they store it. I do agree that there appears to be a design flaw in iOS surrounding this, but allowing users complete control over their system only allows them (including me) a greater opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot.
But we're already at the happy middle. I don't design my phone hardware, I don't design my operating system, I don't grow my own food...
... but I am free to do all of those, plus free to modify all of those in the way I choose, should I want a better fit. Sure, I may have to be a dev, and have background knowledge in how to engage in some of those, but the capability is there. Granny Jones isn't going to shoot herself in the foot because of some downloaded maps.
> So let's all wear the same clothes, eat the same foods, engage in the same pastimes, work the same hours, walk at the same speeds, drive the same car.
Yes, clearly restrictions for the space available to apps on a mobile phone is the same as political totalitarianism.
And user space apps not being able to address/change kernel space in Unix is also a major blow to our freedom.
Wow, is that what all the downmodding is about? Way to miss the point, HN.
I'm trying to say that choice is not equivalatable to micromanagement - if it was, and the elimination of micromanagement is good, then the elimination of choice would be good - which it patently isn't. You have choice over a great many things in your life which are trivial, yet which people find important to have.
It was an analogy - "put it this way. say the X" kinda makes that clear.
The older I get the less tolerant I get of wild-eyed zealots like this. This sloganizing reminds me of the Mao days when lots of impressionable youths would wave the little red book and unthinkingly chant extracts, this is really no different.
> This general problem is a symptom of a major issue regarding the use of software that does not respect the freedom of its users.
Developers are not users. I don't particularly want my mobile phone to respect the "freedom of its developers". I do want to be sure that no app I install at a whim hogs the disk down, installs spyware or f*ks the phone when I'm in need to make an important call. If I wanted "developer freedom" I'd choose OpenMoko. Strangely, millions of us did not.
> Every non-apple developer and user is required to bend to the will of the programmers who develop the proprietary iOS.
He's only "required" so if he chooses to use iOS. And if he chooses to use iOS, it's because the platform attracted him, and one thing that attracts a lot of people to it it's the "it just works" and "you don't have to manage it".
> Any negative choices or limitations imposed by Apple Inc. are virtually uncircumventable.
Yeah. Except if you jailbreak.
> On the other hand, if users and developers in a community are free to view, modify and share the source code of the operating system and programs they are using, then that creates a dynamic where software cannot remain defective by design, something which cannot be said about Apple's hardware or software.
Yes. Then you get the mighty OpenMoko. Not defective by design. Yay!
> If we were talking about free (as in speech) software, users would have control of their data, and their choice of how to manage it; not some distant programmers working for a corporation's bottom line.
Yes, for a brief time in college I'd quote RMS too. You'll get over it.
> He's only "required" [to do] so if he chooses to use iOS. And if he chooses to use iOS, it's because the platform attracted him, and one thing that attracts a lot of people to it it's the "it just works" and "you don't have to manage it".
That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative?
> Except if you jailbreak
Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.
Free software isn't all about nice looking features (though they tend to get developed in time), it's largely about creating a dynamic that ensures the freedom of the user, and that protects them from anti-features, both blatant and subtle. It may not sound like much on the surface, but it's an important issue, especially if someday someone in power says that they don't approve of what you do with your computing devices.
The user of a program is controlled by the program and the program is controlled by the programmer. Do you wish to be controlled by someone who won't show you what the program does, and doesn't allow others to make improvements? There _are_ alternatives, and they are not perfect. I don't expect everyone to be an early adopter of every free technology, but there are many, especially at HN, who would be able to use them and to help them grow to the point where most people would be able to use them quite easily. Developing free software is an act of generosity, because it is much needed in our world, where we are becoming so dependent upon computing technology.
>That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative?
Well, for one our room was fairly small itself before the iPhone. Actually, not small --inexistent. The only reason the touch-smartphone room exists is because Apple made the iPhone and then everybody copied it. So, if they have no competitor in 10 years, more power to them.
But I think that that can't happen. Even MS at the height of its power has had competitors... And today we have Android in several versions already.
> Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.
Why that is? Because the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled? Because it took Apple (and Google after that) to show that a mobile OS can be a nice platform to use.
> the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled?
Your comment is completely salient and relevant here, but it's received down-votes because it proposes sacrificing profits (i.e., hand-holding, generally cloud-hosted software) for freedom, and Hacker News is simply too sophisticated for such idealism.
I find your usage of the word "freedom" here highly suspect.
This "freedom" is reserved for a very, very small class of people. Conversely, as much as you might not like it, an experience that hand-holds offers a kind of freedom for people who wouldn't otherwise be able to take advantage of modern hardware and/or software.
In theory, there doesn't have to be such a dichotomy between freedom and superior polish/UX. In practice, I feel strongly that there is. The popularity of such hand-holding, "freedom"-restricting devices is also highly suggestive.
Depending on where you sit, Android seems to bridge the gap, but as an Android user for years, I'm not completely convinced it's a superior experience.
I'm not unsympathetic, but I think the above view is detached from the reality of modern computing as the majority of people experience it.
Ok, but Sony is still trying to block class action lawsuits. There are now millions of PSN users who are signing away their right to participate in and benefit from such an action if Sony is abusive or careless again.
That is a good thing. Judging from past results, rather than anti-business rhetoric, the only people who usually benefit from class action suits are lawyers. Many plaintiffs in class action suits end up with a few dollars or even just coupons while the lawyers get rich.
ADDED: Responding to a comment I read further down the stack; as for "punishing the company", in reality you are only "punishing" those who buy from them since they will just increase the price to cover the expected cost of dealing with suits.
If a suit wasn't expected, so they hadn't built it into the price, or other companies were keeping their prices low enough that they couldn't raise their prices, it might actually hit their stock price or dividends. Since, from comments from many PlayStation owners suggest neither is the case, my point that class action suits will just benefit lawyers and raise prices for PS users stands.
Hilarious that you talk about "anti-business" rhetoric and then respond with gems like:
>as for "punishing the company", in reality you are only "punishing" those who buy from them since they will just increase the price to cover the expected cost of dealing with suits.
Well, I guess there's nothing we can ever do to a company then! Wouldn't want them to raise prices.
I wouldn't necessarily say that it's human nature, but Western culture. Yes, there are those who most value surpassing others at any cost, but that is their personal culture, and not the singularity of human nature. I think that people choose which roles of their multi-faceted human nature to act upon and which ones to avoid.
It's possible that an education that teaches the values mentioned in the article would give similar advantages as those in the past. The difficulty is that a large source of people's education is the surrounding culture itself, so people pick up values that they see others pursuing. So if young people see the example of adults endlessly accumulating wealth and spending frivolously, then those observing think, "hm, maybe this is a good idea," and so they emulate, and the problem continues. And for those who have been doing and valuing the same the same thing as their neighbours for so long, just assume that it's "human nature," and not some human choice with many advantages and disadvantages.
If the brain only had a couple of neurons, then it might make sense to pump up the transmitters between them to get a more intense response because you don't need very refined control. However there are 100 billion neurons in the brain, and are connected in very complicated ways.
Since there's evidence that cranking up the seratonin for _every_ neuron or suppressing the dopamine for _every_ neuron isn't healthy, it stands to reason that treating "mental illness" is more complicated than turning a water faucet on or off. Who knows exactly what causes it? It could be related to patterns of connection, i.e. neuron A is better off connected to neuron B at site C, but is connected strongly to neuron D at site E. And then comes the question of whether the neuron is sending weird patterns of action potentials. Or it could be the timing, speed or synchronization compared to other neurons is off. Or it could be poor overall health of each individual neuron. Or subtle brain damage. And the problem might be localized to just some neurons in one part of the brain, and not another, making treatment of the whole brain with drugs a messy approach. You see, there are no obvious answers right now, but there are plenty of alternate explanations besides global chemical imbalance. :)
EDIT: Also, you could think of mental illness as being psychological, and something that the brain can heal on its own, given the right environment.
The way I understand meditation is that it is a way of stepping out of "worlds of becoming" that the mind is constantly entering and wandering around in. (Until things go bad, and then it jumps to another world.) The way I try to deal with this is through the ongoing practice of calming the mind and giving it good mental food. A good source of this food is the blameless pleasure that comes from the ability to settle on a single range of awareness such as the body or the breath, and then to stay there for long periods of time, which is actually more satisfying than it sounds at first. It's inevitable that the mind will keep pulling itself away to harmful yet tempting subjects, so learning how to return peacefully, yet firmly and repeatedly is a skill that I've been trying to develop.
It becomes somewhat obvious as one begins to meditate that this wandering, and the repetition of unskillful mental qualities, is connected with what stress and suffering there is in life. The accompanying insight into these thought worlds and how they keep originating and pulling stress and suffering with them can supposedly allow one to grow dispassionate for those addictions and give them up to at least a greater or lesser extent. It's interesting to see what repeated mental habits the mind thinks are good ideas, simply because it hasn't taken a good look at them since before the age of two. Giving those habits up, even if only temporarily, can be a great relief for the mind.
The tough part about all this is putting in the effort on a regular/continual basis when the initial results can come and go without your really seeing why. Looking at my own practice, I can say it's worth the effort so far, despite the difficulties. When I'm in a tough spot, remembering the moments that I have been at greater ease in the meditation give me reason to keep working in that direction.
I recognize the need to expand involuntary commitment laws to include evidence of recent events beyond the past 15 minutes of an interview. I agree that something does need to be done about dangerous people in general, regardless of whether they are mentally ill or not. This is a problem that needs restrictive and supportive measures on many fronts.
However, most mentally ill people are not dangerous. The author's use of circumstantial stories, instead of statistical evidence strongly distorts the reader's understanding of a typically mentally ill person. In her story, almost every mentally ill person she mentions kills someone. But as the author says in the end, the mentally ill are statistically less likely to harm another than to be harmed by someone else.
I think that some of what the author hopes for is a good idea, but if people could be forcibly treated for mere delusions or minor symptoms, then that also includes the huge percentage of normal Americans who believe in or claim to have seen ghosts. Do unusual religious beliefs count as insanity? Are your political views ever considered 'irrational' by someone else? What happens to free thought and religion?
The problem with creating laws that chip away at civil liberties is that these laws can be abused or stretched to cover people who are in a 'grey area' and aren't a real danger. Those in power can take laws and apply them according to their personal preferences and values, at the expense of those who do little harm.
I think it's a good idea to have involuntary commitment laws only for the rare dangerous cases that exist. But in addition to that, human support is needed. Treating people well and showing gentle empathy will help win them over to the side of those who are trying to help. In the end, let's not harm the large majority who are closer to the middle of the grey area, and aren't dangerous.