by Angoid » January 3rd, 2007, 9:30 am
I can't open the blog, but the title bar says, "A Machiavellian perspective on the Middle East Crisis", so maybe it's changed .... I get a blank window though.
Anyway.....
We all rant and rave about things we feel strongly about, and will often argue something to "guide" the audience down a particular way of thinking. It's inevitable, it's going to happen. I know I've done it, but I also know there are times when I have tried to be fair to the opposing viewpoint, and bring its arguments into the explanation. Not to debunk them, but to show that there is some validity in an argument that disagrees with my own viewpoint.
For me, I like hearing opposing viewpoints and being able to present mine as it creates good dialogue. Just before Christmas, I was talking to some people who REFUSED to listen to me .... they just kept cutting me off mid-sentence and shooting me down for a conclusion that I hadn't come to, and was never going to come to either. That .REALLY. annoys me! In this case, it was something serious I needed to understand but in the end I just had to create some way of winding the conversation down and changing the subject, because I was getting nowhere at all.
When it comes to spyware, we preach what we know about. We know what it does to people's PCs, both from a usability point of view and from a technical point of view. We can educate from this position of knowledge.
I heard a news story once of a child whose parents had sadly divorced. The child was visiting his father when all this nasty child porn was coming up on his PC ..... the child mentioned it to his mother who then reported it to the police, with the result that they came and visited the man to investigate. He had to get a computer expert to testify in court what the malware had done, and that he hda no control over the pop-ups. Thankfully, he got off any charges, but this could have ruined his life.