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If you had read the reviews, you would have found them to be positive. In fact all the reviews I have read are good, but point out that this movie is far from objective. That isn't to say it's a bad movie, continue the reviewers.

Please put on your tin foil hat and return to your regularly scheduled dogma. Better yet, please try to follow the points made in the post, instead of the points imagined.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

I've read several reviews, and they all contain 2 points that give me pause. The first is that this film is a "documentary" and the second is that it's very, very biased with only one point of view provided. Take the recent CNN, or NYT reviews for example.

According to webster a documenary is "factual and objective". How can this film be considered a "documentary" when even the most favorable reviewer(CNN in our example) comments that it's not even close to fair or balanced?

Considering Michaels last error and bias filled "documentary" aren't Michael Moores movies more "commentary" or propoganda? Why do people insist in calling obviously biased (ie not objective) and factually inaccurate movies "documentaries"? With so much questionable content - can these films even be called good movies? Remember the first amendment protects false speech just as much as it protects truthful speech.

http://www.mooreexposed.com/

http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/

Whats even sadder is that many people will simply ignore the facts if they don't agree with their opinion. With that fact in play, perhaps an objective documentary is dead. After all - a clear and objective presentation would require a great deal of thought on a complicated issue with no easy answers.

Instead of honest debate we get comments like "The arabs aren't ready for democracy". At one time, blacks weren't ready to sit at the front of the bus, women weren't ready to vote and latino's weren't ready for white schools. The pundits that made the aforementioned comments were wrong and bigotted. Some things never change.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

there is no mention as to whether the news report was accurate or inaccurate.

Highly inaccurate - they implied that the Audi's had a simultaneous failure of the braking system while accelerating out of control. Neither was the case. Thousands, perhaps millions of dollars spent on study after study found the fault to be the driver, not the car. Additionally 60 minutes rigged a car by drilling through the transmission housing and connecting a high pressure line to "demonstrate" what "could" happen. This was never divulged to the audience. Neither was the fact that the pressures exerted by this technique simply can't happen without external intervention.

Audi sales went from stellar to almost nothing after the 60 minutes report. The drop off was close to 70% drop in sales. "The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the U.S., which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts (see chart, page 55). "It was a nightmare for the company," says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi's parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. "We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues." Audi's average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre-60 Minutes peak."

Inconclusive evidence and exaggeration.

Neither exist sir -

1. My evidence is backed up by at least 3 seperate NHTSA reports.
2. My evidence is backed up by the engineers at Audi.
3. My evidence comes from sales numbers that Audi reported. Please feel free to look these up. You can verify this either with Audi USA import records, or Audi of Germany's sales figures for the US market. (Oh yeah, even Ed Bradley says that Audi's sales plummet of almost "2/3" was 60 minutes fault.)

POINT: I am not a "news magazine" I'm a poster on slashdot. Yet my ethical base doesn't give me the latitude that the ethics model that 60 minutes uses. Notice in my original post, where in my haste I made a mistake. I posted a correction pretty quickly (In fact before anyone else caught my error). 60 minutes doesn't even have the decency to admit any error.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

But they have done and continue to do good journalism alongside their puff pieces

Baloney - ask Audi how good their "journalism" is. Do some research. CBS/60 minutes never even apologized for their fraud.

If that show had aired in Germany, you could have sued CBS for presenting obviously fradualent and misleading evidence. The first amendament doesn't say you have to speak the truth. 60 minutes has been taking advantage of that fact for 20 plus years.

For every 1 "good" piece, I woudl see 2 heavily slanted and obvioulsy biased pieces of bovine feces. Those odds lead me to give up paying attention to the miserable excuse for "hard journalism" a long time ago. In college I used to do research before almost every 60 minutes episode for a class in world history. We would get a small description of the segments before they aired.

After that semester I never watched the program again. I was that dissapointed in them. Previously I had thought that such hard biases and bad reporting were aberations. After watching for a full semster and doing my own research - I came to the conclusion that it was the rule.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

Sorry the GM truck pyrotechnics was NBC NOT CBS. CBS/ 60 minutes was the Nissan debacle. I had the right link - but got description was wrong.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

One can't help but feel sorry for the legit news folks over at CBS' "60 Minutes" and other excellent news programs....

You are kidding right? The news program that almost drove Audi out of business with it's false inaccurate reporting?[ http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412145a_pr int.html] The same news program that lines up it's guests to co-incide with their book releases (See Bill Clinton)? The same network (CBS) that uses pyrotechnics (20/20) to "demonstrate" what happens when a full sized pickup was hit - because it wouldn't catch on fire otherwise? [http://www.car-forums.com/s10/t2240.html]

I thought the author was a bright guy, up until that comment. 60 minutes may have at one time been a respectable news magazine. That has not been the case for almost 2 decades IMHO. If 60 minutes knocks on your door and they have decided your "guilty", you have a better chance at getting your side of the story heard on cross balls.

In the end - isn't that whats the most sad?

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

One of the biggest problems with voting machines is cost per use. Voting machines are relatively" expensive and are used at most twice a year, and often only once every 2-4 years. If they aren't being used, they are simple taking up room in storage (which costs money).

Cost Advantages:
NOW as distros like knoppix have proven, putting a full featured desktop on a CD is possible. That being said - putting your "voting machine" on a CD, and using standard PC hardware makes a lot of sense. You don't have to buy a bunch of larg proprietary machines that only get used ones in a while. The CD's can be verified. If one is careful it would even be easy to use hardware already in place - or obsoleted hardware. Such a system would also use a simple standard printer to print an encrypted voter verification (audit) record in case a recount is requested. This should eliminate the long standing problem with most other electronic voting systems (no real audit trail).

Development is spread out over a large not for profit group of programmers with the end result being free. The only real cost is the certification procedure each state decides to institute - and thus it is the state that becomes accountable. If a states procedures are not robust enough to catch dangerous bugs then it's their own fault. I would think that several states go in together and split the certification costs. Since the buy in price is almost nothing (essentially media) the states have more money to play with and spend on voter training AND certification.

Considering Diebold and others - this seems like a natural, easy and simple solution.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country - Come up with a simple, secure, reliable voting system on a CD that will boot from standard PC hardware.

SIDE NOTE: If my county uses electronic voting machines that do not have a paper trail - then I will vote by absentee ballot. I would STRONGLY urge any US voter to do the same.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

Lets see - the large RBOC's and ILEC's have convinced the FCC that UNEP should be killed. God forbid that everyone has access to the infrastructure that your tax dollar helped build. Considering that many of the RBOC's are loosing money on DSL - it makes a lot of sense to not have competition in the area.

These same people have been working very hard and were able to convince some PSC that rate hikes were in order. [This besides the fact that they had highly profitable quarters even during the economic down turn] Thus stuffing the war chests of the big guys, helping them roll out their "loss leaders" in an effort to crush any competition.

Now they are agitating for VoIP with no taxes. Why? Simple. They've finally agreed to come to the party. Many companies have been doing VoIP for some time, and the idea that VoIP would be taxed has been held out, but now that the RBOC's and ILECS all have made major VoIP announcements suddenly we're considering legislation! IMAGNINE THAT!

At VON this year everyone was screaming that the government should take a "hand off approach". This included a rep from the FCC, AT&T legal, california and florida PSD reps. No one wants to "kill the goose that lays the golden egg". From my POV that is ideal. Let us compete and we will crush the inefficient, lazy, technically inept RBOC and ILECS. The problem is that I don't see this hands off approach staying that way. The FCC and california PSC guy hinted that some sort fo universal access fee may be in order. The other thing that was strongly hinted at is that the state's are going to loose a larege source of recouring revenue that they can't afford to loose. so a state tax may be considered.

In the end, I see VoIP taxes heading the same way as our current PSC and FCC. Favor the big guy (ie campaign contributers), and lets not have too much competition. It wasn't more than 2 years ago when somone said that VoIP will take 2 decades to become mainstream. Sprint, AT&T, Bell South and Verizon will all be switching voice at their cores within 7.

This bill is a step in the right direction. Lets see if the congress can keep the playing field even. If they do - the RBOC's and ILECs are in trouble unless they make some fundemental changes to their corporate cultures. I bet they will protect their little fiefdoms - look for modified legislation in the next 12-18 months to give them a leg up. (As if their monopoly's weren't enough)

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

Some things that probably meet the such a broad definition of spyware -

Windows XP
Windows Media Player
Internet Explorer

All of these programs transmit personal information without your consent (sometimes this depends on your patch level and the virus du jour as well). That being said, as soon as you turned the computer on, or opened the shrink wrap you accepted the EULA. Thus you explicitly accept that your personal information will be transmitted. The same types of wording are in the EULA's often accompany spyware that people install. In the end - it's probably a mute point. Personally I think it would be more important to look at EULA as a whole and how they are used to take away the rights of consumers, as well a shield companies that knowingly sell out defective software.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

**note location of tongue**
Of all the odd places to find anti-spam technology, was this killer solution in WalMart. Yep, it turns out they have a remarkable tool that convinces spammers to stop spamming! I was AMAZED. This tool usually only has to be applied once, and the affect lasts for years. It doesn't require updating or re-installation. I was also suprised to find these very same tools in other places, like sears, and even in a "sneaker" store. What is this tool you ask? An aluminem baseball bat. It seems sadly though that there is a law protecting spammers. I believe useing this AWESOME anti spam technology falls under something called assault There is hope that exceptions for spammers could be provided for in a constitutional amendment!
**note location of cheek**

AngryPeopleRule

The more you dig into SCO, the more bovine feces you find. Some of these feces have a the distinct "redmond feces" smell, while other feces seem to have a vague odor of "corruption" and "bad legal advice". It's hard to tell the last 2 apart.

The fact is that Microsoft had dominated the software market because the identified who/what was the industry standard and they under cut their price, and/or provided the product free OR bought out the competitor and silently buried the product. With Linux - it becomes very hard to utilize this successful strategy. This article seems to point to the developing theory that MS has taken the low road. When you can't compete, sue (in thise case finance the suer, keeping pretty hands "clean").

In the end - this deserves more investigation. I'm still not convinced that this isn't just the most ellaborate pump and dump scheme yet devised.

AngryPeopleRule

Someone needs to charge SCO with raqueteering and extortion. SCO has made several claims, but has yet to offer proof, and it's own case has changed so much that it barely resembles the original case presented almost a year ago.

By suing a Linux end users, SCO is in effect trying to use courts to extort money. The definition of extort is "to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power". I cannot see the difference between SCO's actions, press releases and the running a criminal enterprise.

If they (SCO) truly wished to protect their IP, they would proceed with their case and quit stalling. The Linux community would respond, in defference to and in respect to an IP rights. I think that is the crux of SCO's problem, Linux would respond by respectfully removing any proven IP content. If they can extort money from people instead of actually proving their case, then the profit margin goes up. So what if extortion is illegal.

AngryPeoplePeopleRule

Hurray FyDoR! But nmap is one of many, many open source programs distributed by SCO. Why isn't the entire open source community tell SCO that their software can't be distrubted, things like KDE, Gnome, and the GNU projects tar, make et al? I belive that other open source projects should start demanding that SCO stop distributing them.

What to do with for enforcement? With so many pending legal battles against SCO, it would only be a matter of time before an IBM, Novel/Suse, or Redhat picks up the illegal acticity and uses it in court. Additionally it is an election year. I'm quite sure that if we as a community looked hard enough we could find a hungry DA.

AngryPeopleRule

I find extremely disheartening that our tax dollars go into products, ideas and research that is then turned around and used for the benefeit of ONE company (see big drug companies, defense contractors, and certain university proffesors). That just seems plain "un-american". Here we have a rare exception, our tax dollar going to improve something for ALL americans (and the world too).

Sadly Microsoft is lobbying to shut down the NSA's involvement in free software, claiming that the government is essentially "competing" with them. Somehow our tax dollar going to work securing windows isn't communist according to MS. Just if it also helps someone that ISN'T MS. Lets hope they fail.

In the end, this can only be a good thing for ALL OS designers. It helps them look at how the people that stay awake at night worrying a lot think about security in an operating system.

AngryPeopleRule

This is no suprise for people involved in the anti-spam community. It has been discussed for some time in NANAE. What is REALLY sad is that some networks really don't seem to care, or don't have the time to police against this sort of thing. When I was Joe Jobbed by one of these spam gangs, using infected machines for webservers, I reported it to RR and comcast security. They were hosting their site all-oem.biz on several obviously compromised machines AND using my e-mail address in advertisements about their company. What did I get for my trouble? E-mail after e-mail that said - "To the best of our knowledge, the incident that was the basis of your complaint was neither posted by an individual using the Road Runner (Or Comcast) system, nor is it in any way related to the Road Runner (or Comcast) system or content maintained by Road Runner." What was funny is that if you did a dig on the domain being advertised it ALWAYS contained a road runner cable modem account.

Lets try it again for a test shall we?
# host www.all-oem.biz
www.all-oem.biz is an alias for all-oem.biz.
all-oem.biz has address 217.81.243.206
all-oem.biz has address 24.98.35.54
all-oem.biz has address 212.83.89.135
all-oem.biz has address 213.33.0.67
all-oem.biz has address 24.6.6.196

And again, what do we have, 2 comcast cable modems working away trying to sell software that APPEARS to be pirated, and is advertised via spam with false headers.

Lets check the DNS shall we, the dns servers for the domain are listed as follows

Name Server:NS1.MOROZREG.BIZ
Name Server:NS2.MOROZREG.BIZ
Name Server:NS3.MOROZREG.BIZ
Name Server:NS4.MOROZREG.BIZ
Name Server:NS5.MOROZREG.BIZ

Each of these name servers is also hosted on compromised machines, mostly broadband connections. Don't take my word for it, haul out nmap and take a look for yourself. The IP's for these name servers change pretty often. At this time no road runner accounts are showing up. I give it an hour before we get a few more.

In short this is nothing new, and no one should be shocked. Spammers have shown themselves to be an unscrupulous lot. What IS good is that this is starting to get some press. Perhaps this will put pressure on providers to police their networks better. Otherwise more drastic action may be required to be taken by other networks to simply protect themselves.

AngryPeopleRule

1. What is the best distro for servers?
a. ease of setup up
b. security
c. ease of upgrade
d. longevity of support
e. remote management ability

2. What is the best distro for the desktop
a. speed of setup
b. has the apps I need
c. ease of upgrade/patches
d. supports my hardware
e. ease of use for newbies

3. What is the best of both worlds (1 plus 2)

Just because something is the fastest growing doesn't mean it's the best. While I've read tons of reviews most have such a bias as to be laughable. I'll keep using my tried and true redhat/debian/mandrake/fedora box for now :)

AngryPeopleRule

Rule 1: Spammers lie Take a look at a few of his quotes here

The article about him from the BBC is what scares me. "We are very excited [about the new CAN-SPAM law]," said Scott Richter, the president of OptInRealBig, an e-mail marketing firm in Westminster, Colo. "All of our clients had been worried about the California law. In the last two hours we have been booking a lot of orders for January."
This guy is the kind of guy that would piss in your pool. Now that he's got the internet, he gets to piss on millions of people at a time.

AngryPeopleRule

It's simple really, I want to be able to plug into my phone and think the words, and they person calling me can hear them. Thats all I want, no camera, no games, I'd rather think talk than think how many times do I push 4 to get the letter captial 'I'.

I wouldn't bother anyone by needing to speak loudly in public. That is the most important thing of all. A cell phone that allows me to communicate, while extending the courtesy of silence to those around me. THAT is the killer feature I am waiting for.

AngrPeopleRule

1. This virus makes a machine an open relay. Considering recent legislation and other anti-spam techniques I smell spammer bovine feces here.

2. More and more spammers used high jacked machines for DNS, web service as well as relaying their crap. spammers Check out the nanae news group for more examples

3. The open source community is coming up with various anti-spam measures. Don't you think the spammers would love painting their enemy as petulant child - as they have proven themselves to be?

MyDOOM isn't the open source community pissing on on SCO, it's spammers pissing on all of us.

AngryPeopleRule

Clueless Manager:
hmmmm..... yeah..... I'm going to need those TPS reports. Yeah, and uhm, no faxes. I don't know where you hide, but I'm going to have to ask you to walk right up here and hand those TPS reports to me. Yeah..

Response:
Your willing to pay for me to come to your office, very well sir.

Clueless Manager:

Yeah, and don't park in my spot when you get here.

AngryPeopleRule

The idea for solving "Information Pollution" is interesting, but what of the quality of the information that is delivered? In this day and age when you can find web sites devoted to "Proof we never made it to the moon" and hard facts are often replaced with "that sounds about right" isn't the real pollution the content we supposedly want - and not the advertisers?

Find me a system to easily and quickly verify the "facts" with something I can trust.

AngryPeopleRule

Stop faking things like the contents of this post.

Cowards are just that. Why don't you go purchase a clue? Also check out the story here for references on Intel's quality control. You also might want to check out who's designing your new Intel chips (can you spell alpha moron). For a story related to that, check here then of course there is the denial that the alpha design has influenced Intel here

You may also want to check out sources like EEtimes, shannon knows DEC/Compaq/HP and of course the intel web site. BTW VMS is running on IA64 hardware. Do you know what VMS is little girl?

AngryPeopleRule

I know this isn't quite on topic, but I wonder how the latest Alpha design would fair. The alpha was the first mass produced 64 bit chip that had any commercial success. It was introduced in the early nineties. IN fact Linus had one. Basically the curret EV78 is a 6 or 7 year old design, but in most serious tests of processor power it has done quite good. It's amazing that such an "old" design still works so well. The last SPEC numbers I can find are here. Considering the platorm has been ignored and basically orphaned, it's suprising that this chip still powers many of the worlds top rated super computers.

How does all this relate to the G5 and Opteron? Well AMD gets it's bus design from the Alpha lineage. The G5 is built by IBM, who I believe is building the alpha cores as well (I could be wrong, I can't keep up). The irony? Every current intel pentium chip is quality control checked by machines with alpha processors. Funny world huh?

AngryPeopleRule

At one time we didn't NEED internet law. It was understood that certain standards of behavior we're required so that we could all "get along". People that refused to follow the rules were "banned", essentially made non citizens of the global eletronic world. It was a brutally effective punishment.

Now we have no real accepted standard of behavior, and no penalty that is effective. Thus we have to create "Internet Laws" and find someway to enforce them. The early system was elegant and egalitarian. The current system is simply a miserable failure. I do not pine for the early days, I do not secretly sit in a dark corner complaining about the unwashed masses. I am vocal and write to my representatives when internet issues come before them, I try to enlighten my friends and family on the issues. Perhaps someday we will have some represntatives with a modicum of internet savvy. Then and only then can we start to write good internet law. Until then, 2003 was merely a stepping stone in a long arduous process.

AngryPeopleRule

It is still early in this companies lifetime - so it remains to be seen if they will keep to their own rules. The fact that they published the rules is indeed a heartening step in the right direction. I hope that other distros follow suit, especially in the category of product lifetime. If Mandrake can follow these rules, they become a more attractive alternative to the jaugernaut that is RedHat, and Suse. This is especially so for corporate rollouts where EOL is important and so is ease of installation. As the "linux market" becomes mor mature each vendor will have to carve out a niche. Mandrakes may be "Easy to install and our support lasts longer than your computer". Refreshing in these days of "rental OS" and forced upgrades.

AngryPeopleRule

Ahh my first loves, that PDP 11 that was on the other end of the 9600 baud dedicated circuit when I was 10. Then came our first home computer, chicklet keyboards, basic and I got it at Radio Shack - wow - what a stunner, color graphics and everything. Yes my 6809E powered Color computer

It all went downhill from there - in the room with me now are 3 alpha powered multias. Including the First box I ever ran Linux on. Now I'm surrounded by obsolete sparq boxes, some old X86s and somewhere around here is a
dragon 32 I've been thinking of playing with for X10 stuff. Eventually I'll have to get a pdp 11, just so I can say I've come full circle.

AngryPeopleRule

On the basis of a lie, the letter coporation XYZ gets from SCO they decide to take action. Mr. coporated uninformed doo doo head purchase a SCO lisence to "protect" his company. Then finds out that the files they claim to have IP rights over were actually authored by someone else. That would be fraud - which is according to webster -
DECEIT, TRICKERY; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right

OR

I am small company y barely breaking even. SCO knocks on my door and threatens to sue me if I don't "come into compliance". Since I don't have the money to fight such a suit, and the chance of me delaying it longer than SCO's 9 million/quarter lawyers is about .00000000001, I am forced to pay up or go out of business. That would be extortion
which is according to webster - the act or practice of extorting especially money or other property; And the definition of extort would be - to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power

No matter how you slice it, it sounds like a case for a criminal court at this point. Unfortunately the legal definition is often QUITE different from the language definition. Otherwise the members of the RIAA would be doing 15-20 in sing-sing.

AngryPeopleRule

Has anyone taken the time to send an official complaint to the SEC? It seems VERY strange that these "revelations" always seem to co-inside with poor stock performance annoucements. It would seem that SCO is intentionally trying to boost it's stock performance by making clearly false statements. I do believe that would be illegal - fraudulent speech isn't protected by the first amendment. IANAL so - is it?

AngryPeopleRule

With this decision, perhaps people will be brave enough to go after the bad provisions of the DMCA. While intended to protect copyrighted material the DMCA has been used to stifle research, threaten researchers, prevent disclosure of security bugs and all but make reverse engineering illegal. I believe that the United States needs it's own "DVD-Jon" that will show people that the DMCA is an ill considered poorly written law. So far when the DMCA has been brought into force against teachers, the people pressing charges have backed down. Thus the law stands and there is no clear lightening rod get the publics attention.

The US needs a DVD-Jon - any takers?

AngryPeopleRule

You don't _own_ Linux. End of story. There are definite limitations on what you can and can't do with it.

To me "owning" the software means:

I can install it on more than one machine.
I can buy a used machine with linux on it and not have to pay the software producer a lisence fee.
I can make legal backup copies of the install media.

2 is just silly. Software has bugs, including Linux.

Since the Timberline case, consumers of software don't even have the most rudimentary of protections. If I find a bug in MS software, by some eulas, I cannot tell anyone else about it. In practice it doesn't work this way, but by the book - it should and may someday unless lawmakers step in. Software bugs are one thing, but a totally unreliable product rushed to market that doesn't work is another (Windows ME anyone?) YMMV, but I know of companies that wiped their ME laptops and installed windows 98 as soon as they arrived. Yes - it was that bad.

3. Bullshit. Linux has patches all the time, too.

Yes, but the linux patch for the kernel doesn't force me to download a seperate media player, and associate all media formats with it does it?

4. Umm, hey genius - what do you think you're doing when you download anything that's GPLd? You're giving up reasonable (like the ability to use the software in an internal, proprietary product without giving out YOUR source) rights.

I can tell your the Genius here - Come on now, I know that I miss spelled a word or two in my haste, but really - did you read my post? I said "I expect to not be forced to give up all and any reasonable legal rights". The GPL doesn't force me to give up ANY resonable right. For instance, the right to report a bug to a public forum??

5. Bullshit.

A certain government contractor is now looking at workstations from a company who is named after the star in our solar system. Why? The lisence agreement on XP was deemed "non compatible" with the classified work being done. Apparently the terms of the EULA violate the contractors agreement with the DOD. Not bovine fecal material, but lots of dollars of your tax payer money at work paying the best lawyers in the land to make sure your it's all done "by the book".

Even if your ignorant of the facts, it doensn't change what the facts are.

AngryPeopleRule

Dear Mr MS Marketing,

I use linux because

1. I expect to own software I pay for
2. I expect software I pay for to work as advertised
3. I expect not to be foreced into downloading other components I don't want of said software to keep my machine secure. (IE media player has to be downloaded to make explorer secure)
4. I expect to not be forced to give up all and any reasonable legal rights when I open the package.
5. I do not want to deal with software that guarantees via the liscence agreeement that the publisher can remotely look at my computer at will.

As soon as the law makers get their opposable digit out of their anal orpheus, and restore a modicum of protection to consumers I don't have any faith that any of the points that I have outlined above will be addressed. Lets face it, you pay for the software, break open the box, and you have no legal expectation that the software will work, in any way shape or form.

AngryPeopleRule

2 ideas that spring to mind here:

One: What happens if this rush to off shore "skilled" starts to succeed? We (the US) is the largest consumer of products from around the world, but if skilled labor follows blue collar labor, the amount of people left to spend money on anything goes down. Even though moving that labor forces off shore will increase the purchasing power of the people in the country where the labor went to, their combined purchasing power and demand to purchase anything will not be anywhere close to what the same jobs in the US could produce (at least short to mid term). Judging by what happens to the world economy when the US economy suffers, just how much outsourcing is a good idea? When does it stop benefieting the companies and starts hurting them because they can't sell their products in a poor economic climate?

Two: In the US the commonly held belief is that if you want to get ahead, you get an education, and your hard work and academic achievement will be the keys to your success (Unlike India or China where there are relegious and other cultural pushes for education). If the people stop believing in that, and an education isn't seen as a step up, or providing an advantage less people will pursue it. In an information age isn't one of the most important factos in the labor pool is it's education and technical skill?

It's all about global competition - or so they say. I wonder what the ROI is long term. Since more and more companies are only looking ahead a quarter at a time, just to satisfy the wall street pundits, I bet the ROI is pretty good short term. So how do Western Europeon and American workers compete? Our salaries are higher, and our standard of living is higher. Eventually with enough investement and time India will be a developed nation and these differences will slowly dissapear. Jobs will also probably leak back to the US - but how long do we have to wait, and how do we survive?

In the end the US worker has to offer something that his/her indian counterpart can't. Language, proximity to the project, and superiour skill and/or inovation are just some advantages that people might leverage.

AngryPeopleRule

With variation from time to time, the rules that ALWAYS applies to spammers are[From news.admin.net-abuse.email]:

Rule #1: Spammers lie.
[(Proposed) Sharp's Corollary: Spammers attempt to re-define "spamming" as that which they do not do.]

Rule #2: If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Chrissman's Corollary: A spammer, when caught, blames his victims.

Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
Krueger's Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid. Pickett's Commentary: Spammer lies are boring. Russell's Corollary: Never underestimate the stupidity of spammers.

I say see rule #1 when listening to a spammer.

AngryPeopleRule

Alan Cox did a lot of work on the "Alpha Linux" stuff for redhat. He always seemed to have the answers when those of us that used Alpha based machines ran into problems. His "online diary" can be found at http://www.linux.org.uk/diary/ and when he was deeply involved in the kernel, I used to read it constantly because the stuff he was working on was the stuff that interested me. This interview just confirms one thing for me. I owe him a great big Thank You, his help to Linux over the years has been invaluable. Should I ever meet Alan, he's going to get a beer on me.

AngryPeopleRule

There is more than one way. Anyone that insists that there is only one way, and that is their way, is probably wrong. KDE has advatages over GNOME, and vice versa. Let the flame wars begin - err continue.

AngryPeopleRule

The RIAA hasn't learned that necessity is the mother of invention. While they try hard to shove substandard products down our throats (oh yeah I'm sorry, the last Brittany album is a "work of art", my bad") we try hard to pick the weat from teh chaff. Lets face it, if I could by an album with at least 5 good cuts on it, I woulnd't be spending my time taking the albums I own and making MP3 version of just he "good songs". If the Recording industry even paid the artists what they agreed to I might feel guilty about the occasional MP3 download. Since the recording industry has a regular habit of screwing their "artists", I don't.

PS: RIAA - can you prove that I didn't by that PIL album back in 1986, and am now just D/L ing a legitimate eletronique copy? If the encryption on mute is any good, the answer is no. Thankfully I still have my PIL vinyl in case I get dragged into court.

AngryPeopleRule

Will make it easier for thieves to steal but limit and possibly track them as well. All the thief would have to do is walk up to the register and the victims card is charged. KA CHING It becomes a race, how long can the thief use it before it's discovered stolen and they have to leave it in the submway? Do the police keep the phone running and charges piling up but use the phone to trace the thief to his residence? Is the encryption used by the phone/wireless any better than the encryption used by standard wireless cards (ie how easy is it to sniff for credit card numbers).

The world of thievery just got more interesting

AngryPeopleRule

The FTC has proven extraordinarily effective combating adds that sell fradulent products. That is why I never recieve adds telling me how to grow bigger/get, tits, dick, wealth or Gold in south africa. We all know that a law that threatens people with government enforcement is going to REALLY scare the spammers.

The only effective law against spammers will be one that allows the spammed to take the consequences out of the cyber world and put it into the real one. The law goes like this. If you have been spammed, goto a judge and prove what machine/person did it. Once done you get a "spammer hunting liscence". This liscence allows you to attack the people that spammed you, and their computers. Acceptable hunting weapons include baseball bats, chainsaws and piano wire. I like the bounty hunter idea, in case your too squeamish to deal with spammers yourself.

Am I pissed off about spam? You bet I am
AngryPeopleRule

Supposedly this is protected information, and as such the court needs to prevent it from becoming part of the "public record". Here is what concerns me.

What if a few lines of code ARE found to be infringing? SCO doesn't have to tell the world what the code is, it just has to prove that the code is in violation. If so SCO can then start trying to collect $$$ from linux users with a fresh court ruling in hand saying that linux 2.4 is in violation. Lets be honest, SCO isn't going to tell you WHERE the offending code is so that you can rip it out and replace it with something else.

I guess it's time to get out my 2.2 series kernels and dust them off.

AngryPeopleRule

Some technology in the phone that isn't talked about

It will automatically phone police when if you text "Falun Gong". Also the words democracy, voting and human rights will also cause the phone to dial the appropriate authorities to protect the poor citizen from potential harm. It also helps identify and track citizens that need to be re-educated.

Isn't technology great? **remove tongue from cheek**

AngryPeopleRule

Since I've been admining mail servers since 1992, here is what I can tell you.

1. The amount of spam has increased dramatically, and the amount of computing horsepower required to run a mail server has increased as well.

2. Currently we routinely refuse connections from more than 75% of all computers that ATTEMPT an SMTP connection - private open relay block lists. If we didn't do that, double the amount of disk space and computing horsepower required to continue

3. We loose customers when spam assassin doesn't keep up with spammers. They move to Earthlink and other providers that have more money to throw at the problem

4. A server with a common domain name associated with it, that has about ONLY 40 legitimate accounts on it routinely gets more than 100,000 connection attempts every day.

Filtering costs money, CPU disk space and adds expense and complexity to a very simple protocol. The amount of spam is such that some companies have stopped getting mail at their primary domain all together. This is becoming an option exercised more and more. Spam is stopping companies from posting contact information on their website, and pornographic spam, even filtered, makes getting a child an e-mail account risky unless you personally approve every message.

In the end, it's time, money, time and money time and money that the provider spends, that could be used to bring the cost of yoru internet service down, instead of inflating it.

AngryPeopleRule

So now we have an AARP member spamming. Does it make any difference to me? It doesn't matter if the theif is a grandma wearing a WWJD T-shirt or a young fella with a ski mask. Theft is theft, and a thief is a thief.

Whats she say to defend her theft - things like "....This (spam) lets the little guy compete". What does she think about the time, energy and costs small providers have to dish out to defend their network against SPAM? How many small guys have had their machines shut down because of false return addresses, or an onslaught of spam that makes mail services crawl? What about those small guys BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!

She doesn't stop there, she goes on to say the even more bizzare "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech". I looked at the constitution to be sure and nowhere did it say "You may steal from others, and then force them to accept your speech into their homes". I believe the consitution protects speech, but doesn't force others to have to accept/listen to ones speech. The amendment is about government cesorship, NOT about theft of services to promote a get rich schemes. BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!

So she makes 2000 - 4000 / week. After several years of college I don't make 4k a week, but then again, even if I could improve my economic situation, my personal moral compass wouldn't allow me to what she does. Perhaps she needs to read the bible more. What was it again?? Thou shall not steal?? Thou shall not bear false witness?? - Stuff like that.

With 80% or more of all e-mail being spam, the signal to noise ratio is heading south fast. To stop spam you have to stop spammers.

Here is the towns website
http://www.slidell.la.us

Now can any one let me know which provider provides this type of person with access? I have some IP blocks to add to my blacklist.

According to information -
Flo Fox - Slidell LA
985 646 2225

I don't know if that number is correct - but it's publically listed.

AngryPeopleRule

That doesn't mean that SCO won't claim otherwise, or claim that the person that authorized such contributions didn't have the authority to do so. Lets face it, it's not like telling a falsehood is a problem for SCO. That is my point from the first post albeit not well made. I assumed everyone had read the article and would infer that I was impying that SCO would lie about the companies past contributions :) - I posted too quickly -

Angry People Rule

That doesn't mean that SCO won't claim otherwise, or claim that the person that authorized such contributions didn't have the authority to do so. Lets face it, it's not like telling a falsehood is a problem for SCO. That is my point from the first post albeit not well made. I assumed everyone had read the article and would infer that I was impying that SCO would lie about the companies past contributions :) - I posted too quickly -

While your analysis is interesting, I think there is enough legal history in the BSD case to make it hard for SCO to pursue that "all of linux is in violation".

AngryPeopleRule

"Groklaw today reported that they have discovered another SCO programmer, Tigran Aivazian, who has committed code to the Linux kernel."

My take is that if a SCO programmer contributed code, then of course SCO wanted the code contributed and it then falls under the GPL. This seems reasonable. The idea that worries me is that SCO may claim that the programmer(s) was/were rogue and made the contributions against their "corporate policy". Then what do you do? The genie is out of the bottle, you can't take it back and who does SCO go after - the programer or the Linux community?

AngryPeopleRule

• Time heals all wounds
• People know what people know, and generally are scared of change (thus MS gives us the "classic" look in XP)
• Bad word of mouth travels twice as fast and twice as far as good word of mouth

Have you used SCO UNIX? The DOS is probably SCO admins who just wished their OS could have features that have only been available in other OSes for YEARS!

Angry People Rule

Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet". The gentleman from ICANN wasn't a native French speaker, he definitely shouldn't be allowed to participate.

The Internet is a wonderful experiment, but it is almost entirely dominated by the US, and the english language. That rubs many the wrong way. I'd am VERY suspicious of such meetings, the motives behind them dont seem very "egalitarian". They are self serving, and mostly trying to prevent the free exchange of ideas IMHO.

Angry People Rule

ATF - Wonderful - weren't the first shots fired at the Koresh compound fired by an ATF agent shooting himself in the thigh?

Judging by the reports that I have read, we can expect the following healines soon.

ATF RAIDS HOME
(ATF press release) In an effort to stamp out musical piracy, which leads to terrorism - the ATF today raided the home of Amanda Johnson (age 12) and her brother brad (age 9). Both pirates were taken down. One of the pirates was shot in the raid when he attacked the ATF agents with a fluid projectile weapon. The ATF agent is expected to make a full recovery, while the pirate is listed in stable but critical condition.

"We're just trying to protect our American way of life", said Butch Howitzer. "These pirates are destroying the ability of the RIAA to run a good monopoly, besides, if this piracy thing gets out of hand we might actually have to pay artists. Ticketmaster and the record label executives can't afford this. Lets be honest, the money these pirates steal prevents a record executive from getting the thereapy they need every day."

AngryPeopleRule

When we first tested JFS wasn't really ready. We couldn't get it to work on the boot partition and had some bad oopses under heavy load. I understand that these have been fixed now. As far as straight testing is concerned they were pretty close. When the DB files got really big (1.3 GB or larger) XFS started to outshine JFS.

Angry People Rule