Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
The SS United States, a fast and beautiful passenger liner, was built in 1952 and operated in commercial service until 1969. She is now in danger of being scrapped.
Lots of pictures in the slideshow at the link; also, some of the comments are interesting.
More about the ship at Wikipedia, and here is an organization which is attempting to save this vessel.
This panel below is from a the web comic “Escape From Terra”. It’s a pretty good hard science fiction story which examines how a libertarian/anarchist society might function in space. The centeral conflict revolves around those in space trying to keep their freedoms in the face of ever-present encroachment from the statist world-government of Earth (it’s modelled on the EU).
In the story, two pilots deliver a chunk of a comet to a self-made billionaire who is hiding out on his own little artificial habitat. The billionaire has to hide because he keeps creating disruptive technologies that empower ordinary people to live their lives independently of the state, and the government doesn’t like that — to the point it wants to see him dead.
In this panel, the billionaire explains his motivations:
[Source]
Every geek in the world should strive to emulate the late Norman Borlaug. Geeks and business people have done more good for the world than all the politicians and wannabe-politicians combined.
In 1969, the people who changed the world for the better weren’t left-wing, pro-communist-victory “activists” but the engineers and scientists who landed men on the moon and fired up the first two nodes of the Internet. People who view “progress” in terms of politics first and foremost have done far more harm than good. Yet, as the comic points out, we know their names while the names of those who made our lives so much better are erased from common history .
People in the developed world (and increasingly the rest of the world as well) have lives of physical comfort, social equality and political freedom mostly because of the efforts of geeks like Borlaug who use knowledge and hard work to turn dirt and water into happiness.
When artists whip out posters of people like Borloug instead of the glorious leader du jour, we will know we have become a truly wise civilization.
If malware was water falling from the sky, the experience of people running the big three desktop operating systems would go something like this:
Mac OS X: “Is it sprinkling? I thought I felt a drop there. Did anyone else feel a drop? No? Maybe I just imagined it.”
Linux: “Oh, yeah… I definitely felt a sprinkle or two there.”
Windows: [Can’t say anything because they’re pinned to the foot of Niagara Falls by tons of down rushing water.]
For the last ten years, there has been a raging debate among computer geeks as to why Mac OS X and Linux have virtually no problems with malware while Windows is often almost crippled by it. The most commonly accepted explanation is called “Security Through Rarity.” This concept holds that on a technological level Mac OS X and Linux are just as insecure as Windows but that the relatively small market share of the first two operating systems makes it unprofitable for malware programmers to spend the time trying to infect them.
I have longed believed that the basic premise of “Security Through Rarity” largely explained why I can run my Mac OS X machines without any additional anti-malware software but don’t dare do the same for my Windows machines. For the last decade, I and everyone else who believed in the concept have expected that “any day now” the Mac’s immunity from malware would end in a shocking gotterdammerung of a Mac malware pandemic but it hasn’t happened yet. Just as the failure of other types of apocalyptic prophesies undermine people’s faith in those prophesies, the fact that the long-prophesied Mac malware apocalypse has never manifested in more than a trivial manner has caused me to reexamine my belief in the “Security Through Rarity” concept.
There are several good reasons to doubt that “Security Through Rarity” explains the lack of malware that exploits Mac OS X in particular.
From Instapundit:
WELL, MAYBE I’LL WAIT A BIT: I mentioned Snow Leopard’s [Mac OS 10.6] malware protection earlier, but this says it only scans for two trojans. [bold added]
Why would Apple bother to create a system that only scans for two pieces of malware? Well, firstly, the system is designed to automatically update using Mac OS X’s software update feature. More malware definitions can be added in the future.
Secondly, there are really only two pieces of active Mac OS X malware .
Popular Science bitches and moans about how the rumored Apple Tablet could ruin computing. [h/t Instapundit]
The Apple Tablet is rumored to be a cross between a laptop and an iPhone. The iPhone isn’t really a cell phone, rather, it is a handheld computer employing a touch interface with a cell phone built-in. It uses a slimmed down version of Apple’s MacOS X operating system that Apple uses on all its computers. This makes it easy to make an actual laptop-like device that uses the iPhone’s operating system complete with the special cell-phone associated attributes of the handheld.
In PopSci’s thinking, this is a problem because the iPhone’s default setup only allows people to use software written by independent developers but approved by Apple installed exclusively by being downloaded from Apple’s App Store. According to PopSci, this is bad because if this model spreads to all computers, people wouldn’t have the same level of flexibility to run any software they please on the new type of computer as they do on current ones.
PopSci needs to rethink that because without a new business model to pay for the creation and distribution of software, there won’t be any software for people to run. You can’t make money anymore writing and selling software using the current business models. PopSci isn’t saving freedom for end users, they’re killing it. Apple is saving the freedom of end users by making it possible for software developers who aren’t giant corporations to make a living at writing software.
The iPhone and its App store recently convinced me to return to writing software directly for end users and I am far from alone in doing so. The iPhone app store has ignited a renaissance in software development and PopSci shouldn’t be trying to abort that. We don’t need a software Bonfire of the Vanities.