

Quit Demanding Purity - mylifeforaiur
http://www.malcognition.com/blog/2009/quit-demanding-purity

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gdp
Is there something wrong with an ideological boycott? If the "cost" to you of
the boycott is less than the perceived importance of the issue, why would you
continue to use something even though you disagree with it?

The nice thing about a boycott is that it provides a direct financial
disincentive to the manufacturer simply ignoring the public's concerns. If
lots of people are upset about an issue, and they change their buying habits
based on that issue, either the manufacturer can choose to change their
strategy to correct that issue, or it provides an opportunity for a
competitor.

And even if you're the only person in the universe who cares about a
particular issue, "everyone else is fine with it" doesn't necessarily mean
that you feel like involving yourself in something you disagree with enough to
believe that you can live without its benefits.

So I'm all for demanding purity if that's more important to you than the
perceived benefits of the impure thing.

~~~
jwilliams
Also, if you never make your case -- then what's the impetus to make things
change?

This article seems is too reductionist for me. Just because things always have
their flaws doesn't mean you don't try to make it better.

~~~
gdp
Yeah, me too. "You won't make a difference, so don't bother trying" seems a
rather dull way to approach life.

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JunkDNA
This is solid advice. When I was a kid, my first computer was a Commodore
Amiga. I _hated_ PC's and felt the need to go trolling on BBSes about how the
Amiga was superior in every way (sorry, keep in mind that I was 12). Of
course, there were lots of PC games I wanted to play that would take over a
year to be ported to Amiga. Not to mention countless other things like various
hardware add-ons that were PC-only.

At some point I realized that I wanted to enjoy computers, and if I went with
the flow and used what lots of other people were using, I would be much
happier. My new philosophy has been "use what works" ever since. It's a much
happier place to be, rather than binding yourself to a set of ideological
restrictions where you only limit your own choices.

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daeken
I demand an SUV that gets 100MPG, but I'm not going to stop using cars in the
meantime; if you support Free software, you don't have to be Stallman; etc.
Being at either extreme, a pure idealist or pragmatist, is cutting off your
nose to spite your face. Take the middle road and get the best of both roads.

~~~
j_baker
I wouldn't view pragmatism as an extreme. If you're truly pragmatic, you have
a guiding philosophy, but aren't fanatical about it. I think it's a good
middle ground.

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jongraehl
This is not a logical argument; it's a collection of unrelated paragraphs.

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sho
_"Here we go: eight years of Linux kernels from 2.4 to 2.6 are vulnerable.
That means, if you stumble along the wrong exploit code your safety is hosed.
But thinking outside the security of your own computer, consider the millions
of nodes out there that are running dangerously — and aren’t to be upgraded
any time soon. And all this on our stone-stable Linux kernel?"_

This is annoying. Yes, there is a critical bug out there, but it's a local
privilege escalation exploit, which is _completely_ different from a remote
exploit.

