Charlotte is indeed quite the wordsmith. I can totally relate to what you're saying too, Charlotte. I have a feeling that, like me, you've seen this overall decline during your lifetime. You mentioned TV, I clearly recall, as a teenager, sitting in the living room of my childhood home, watching TV with my mother and seeing a condom commercial (one of the first). I wanted to squirm out of my skin. That seems minor in comparison to more modern commercials. I nearly lost it when I began seeing men and women standing in front of the camera and proudly declaring to the world that they have genital herpes. I couldn't decide what was more ludicrous, the fact that the commercial itself was considered acceptable, or the fact that, apparently, enough people have the condition that drug manufacturers considered the air-time worthwhile.

Please forgive me for this, but I have to:

[youtubebyurl]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oMY6sC7wQ[/youtubebyurl]

Dear God!

And yeah, I get it. It permeates society at large.

I really enjoy reading your posts, CharlotteTheHarlot. They make me feel smarter and that I have actually gained something intellectual. Frankly, most of the posters in here are good. One of the very few places where you don't feel that you are wasting your time being there. ::clap::

Where I come from, there is an old saying that is basically about how your friends and those who you rub shoulders with must not be equal but BETTER than you in order for you to be able to evolve into a better person rather than degenerate into a cesspool of one's own bodily fluids. Steven put it so well, calling the youth "(de)generation".

Sometimes, it feels that a new dark age is at hand. :|

Understood, and I should say that I don't believe Microsoft is the worst offender, just the Johnny Come-Lately.

It's everywhere really. Racing to the bottom like water finding its own level, it is the real life inversion of the old cliché that "a rising tide lifts all ships". Lots of ships everywhere all trying to go someplace and willing to run the others aground. Its that "rising tide" part that is in short supply. Also a lack of captains on the ships willing to force a few to walk the planks.

Imagine a hypothetical of putting 100 people on an Island whose IQ range from 60 to 160. Now what would should we expect to find when we revisit the Island 10 years later? Arrogant modern humans who believe in their own superiority seem to believe that they expect the geniuses on the Island will pull the slow and dull witted up to their higher levels and they would find the Islanders all reading Einstein with one hand while playing Mozart with the other. The real world in the past generation has taught me different. I expect we would find them stuffing their face with coconuts with one hand, the other pulling their pud. Essentially the opening scene of Idiocracy.

In TV, someone takes the step of crossing some risqué threshold. Others quickly leapfrog it, rinse, repeat and soon it's vibrator commercials, and just wait until next year. I'm no prude and am not even talking about morality at all here ( I love South Park too ) this is about the lemming-like behavior that is the norm for humans. It could be anything on TV, like those fake cop or CSI shows. First Dragnet or Hill Street Blues comes along and eventually there are 10 playing at a given time ( and giving the false sense of security to those viewers that crime is neatly solved by wise cracking sharp dressed yuppies holding cellphones and magic blue lights ). Or in music where you have Aretha Franklin who is full of talent but sells few records, then you get a Madonna who is the opposite and before you know it there are 30 talentless divas polluting the scene. Again, it's monkey-see monkey-do regardless of subject. Actually it is somewhat easy to explain, because it is the inclination of most to take the path of least effort like electricity takes the path of least resistance. Where it all leads is not hard to predict.

So it is no surprise in technology, especially in software where we devolved applications to apps, then invited in everyone using crap-maker tools that we find a huge landscape change from solid products of high quality to fart apps and fanboys. Its much easier to not worry about malware affecting your reputation and your customers and supporters than to police it. Same goes for the User Interface ( as this site has so well documented ). Same goes for everything, everywhere, every time.

There must be dozens of philosophical theories that explain this phenomenon ( can't think of any at the moment except the Peter Principle ) but it seems like a congenital flaw in our DNA pre-programming us ( like bees in a hive, ants in a hill ) to start on a path, strive forward with great improvements, eventually turn a corner and then begin the great descent towards chaos. Everything comes back to a Bell curve I guess.

[youtubebyurl]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8[/youtubebyurl]

I was going to write about this some time ago, but decided not to. Your post reminded me of it, Charlotte. Several years ago, I was running a Kubuntu distro. Of course I wanted to be able to play MP3s and watch Flash videos, so I got the "restricted extras" enabling all of that. Big warnings, a click-through dialog, yada, yada. Well after a while I decided to try out Amarok. Well it installs no issue, but I realize quickly it's tied up with 1.fm. So, I'm thinking to myself let's give out warnings that we're downloading proprietary stuff, but when we link up with third-party, for-profit, commercial entities -- nothing. Went to the KDE forums and I'll be the first to admit, I could've done a better job getting the point across, at least at first. Well after several posts, I think my point was finally made. I didn't necessarily want the functionality just gone, but felt that it should be an "add-on" that was a few clicks away. The invariable "OMG Amarok devs don't take away 1.fm functionality or the sky will fall" post had to be put in there too. Again, not what I was saying, just questioning the comfort level with this third-party stuff. Well end result was that the devs felt it was up to the distros to decide how to handle it. I'm not going to say this was either correct or incorrect. I have to admit they did walk me through removing it, and the files that I deleted, could easily have been set up in a separate download.

I don't wanna give the impression that I'm singling out KDE/Amarok or Ubuntu/Kubuntu for this. I could, now, point out quite a few open source programs you could download that are, *by default*, compiled with commercial third-party links/support built in to them. I know you're speaking of MS, Charlotte. Windows Media Player 7.x and above come to mind. Facebook APIs (Jesus Fucking Christ). I think the younger (de)generation has come to accept this crap as a norm.

Considering how often they fail, I mean MSSE ( Security Essentials ) and Defender ( and now they are merged further confusing things ) it's not worth the trouble. The only time I install either of them is when a client's computer has nothing or their McAfee/Norton subscription ran out and this is really only to cover my own ass since these folks will certainly get infected again and should it occur in a timeframe close to when I last had their computer I get the blame. I expect many other people have this same experience. It's bad enough that the customer "yes's" everything you tell them and the promptly ignores it and does the normal dumb thing again, but to rub salt in the wounds they look for a scapegoat for their own stupidity which is almost legendary in scale.

They also have that MSRT ( malicious software removal tool ) a supposedly highly focused software for specific threats which is pushed out via Windows Update, and is yet another legitimate avenue for questions about spying. The problem is that none of their anti-virus/anti-malware tools have any useful logs or feedback to the enduser that even indicates it is working or what it actually did, if anything. This worries me the most. They could be doing anything in there including looking for weaknesses that when cataloged in their database allows a massive master-key index for spooks to 1.5 billion targets.

We have allowed way too many things to occur since the early days of Windows when every little example of spyware ( Gator, Real Player, etc ) was scrutinized. Now those early examples are rank amateurs compared to what Windows itself does routinely.

Maybe we'll get very lucky and it'll do both.

I would not be surprised if the idea of MS is to keep applications out that THEY consider "unwanted"...

For some reason, Windows Defender never bothered me but CharlotteTheHarlot indeed has a point there. Perhaps in the brave new world of the future, unless you are running some kind of "approved" "antivirus" software, you won't be able to connect to the Internet. All, for your own security, of course. 8-)

@HelloItsMe,

I haven't personally tried it but I doubt it would give you any issues.

Check this: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-disable-uninstall-or-remove-windows-defender-in-vista/
Has anyone tried the manual removal at the end?
Without having trouble afterwards?
JE

Read that quote correctly as ...

[quote]Microsoft's goal is to move as many of its customers off of pre-9/11 pre-PRISM operating systems onto something more compromised and amenable to government surveillance, by any means necessary.[/quote]