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Software Libre: DoHS Switches, Commerce Slights
An anonymous reader writes "Some excellent Pigdog investigative journalism: Apparently, The state department is trying to block international support of OSS and Free (Libre) Software. See also this InfoWorld article." Contrast that with this NewsForge report of a switch from Windows 2000 to Linux+Oracle at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They picked a good week for it.
"An experienced sysadmin can just do so much more to lock down a Unix-based operating system, especially Linux," says Beale. "Windows 2000 doesn't offer either the same kind of granularity of configuration or the equivalent ability to inspect pieces of the operating system."
now is this true?
i know zero about windows administration, but i always thought it was that unix admins were more security conscious, better trained, or better paid, but that windows itself inherited alot of really cool security features from VMS, which in theory could make the box even more lock downable.
-- p
btw, the most productive follow-ups would be objective assesments from those who have administered both unixen and windows.
It's not true in the slightest. There are many complaints you can legitimately make about NT's security model, but a lack of options and flexibility with regard to locking down boxes is not and has never been one of them.
Frankly, complaints like this about NT/2000 seem to largely come from 2-bit linux "admins" who freak out at the notion that they can't administer a modern server OS by running vi on a text file (the HORROR!) and don't bother to RTFM before spouting off about how "insecure" Windows 2000 is.
Speaking as someone who has had to lock down both 2000 Advanced Server and many assorted flavors of Unix professionally, I'd say that the difficulty of securing them is about the same, and no unix admin should ever cast stones at Exchange so long as sendmail remains the default MTA for just about every major unix flavor out there.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
In the realm of personal injury and liability lawsuits, there exists a what is called an "attractive nuisance". Like when someone parks their shiny, chromed Harley in a supermarket parking lot and goes inside. Joe Sixpack, his stupid fat wife and amok-running kids park their minivan across from the bike and immediately the kids jump out of the minivan and run over to check out the bike. One of the kids jumps up on the bike, knocking the bike off the kickstand on top of himself, breaking his leg and getting burns from the still-hot engine. Joe Sixpack, of course, sues the crap out of the bike's owner and insurance, and wins big-time... it matters not that he failed to control his kid's behavior and that the kid basically trespassed on the bike. Why? Because the bike presents what is called an "attractive nuisance". This has happened more times than you can imagine, and is usually the norm in such lawsuit cases. Rarely does the bike owner prevail.
How does this tie in with Open Source, the Slashdot crowd's way of MS bashing, and the latest MS server worm?
Well, don't you think it's about time that someone applied the doctrine of "attractive nuisance" to any MS servers that are placed onto the Internet? After all, the stuffed bandwidth and denial of service resulting from these events hurt more than just the businesses who run these servers.
What a sick joke.
.. by buying 4 or 5 stores (they admit to going specifically after trying to buy the leases out of already-existing entrenched local coffee shops) in a 3 or 4 span block, you couldn't escape them.
.. or as pure evil for somehow getting my fellow man into thinking they made it based on the merit of their product.
Starbucks employed the most agressive expansion strategy in the history of retail.
They themselves are responsible for the term 'clusterbombing' neighbourhoods
It was only people's desire to think they had control over their little universe that led them to think Starbucks multiplied in size a zillion times over the span of 5 years because they innately discovered a better coffee than all existing coffee shops.
What a joke. Anybody that takes an interest in corperate strategy either revears Starbucks as a hero, for successfully expanding faster than any retail gig in known history, for pioneering a few new coperate-expantion strategies like clusterbombing, for gutlessly buying out the leases of local favorite coffee shops (despite protests by local populations and local celebrities and dignataries)
I wont even touch on what they did to international coffee prices. Now, 0.5% of their coffee beans are bought, in their words, "at a fair price." This was to silence those who rallied valiently to save the livings of coffee farmers the world over.
"Old man yells at systemd"
What do you do when you get an error during the "Secure Your System Wizard"?
How can you be sure the new development enivronment you just installed did not just open port 1434?
Can you run services like IIS in their own "jail"?
I don't know, I can't afford the Server versions of these OSes. That's why I'm asking?
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Eluding tariffs
We can see the same thing elsewhere, with copyright, the DMCA, softwood tarrifs(designed to increase logging profits in the US which is faced with Canadian competition) and the like.
The essence of mercantilism is to reward your cronies with government favors (corporate welfare, monopolies, tax breaks) while harming their competitors, and anyone else who happens to get in their way.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that Microsoft has secured its position as a beneficiary of "honest graft"
I mean, I hope no one thinks it was in the interests of justice that they got a slap on the wrist in the anti-trust case.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It's not as though this is a statute or a court decision or some other kind of statement that's going to be enforced, either. In fact, this isn't even the actual statement.Since this is a draft of a statement that will be written in December and won't actually have any effect, the delegates are of course free to 'raise awareness' of all kinds of issues without having anything resembling a plan for how to deal with them. Example:Well, who could possibly argue with 'fairness'?. I agree with that statement, and I'll bet Jack Valenti would agree too[0]. So, pray tell, what balance is 'fair'? Does this document define "fair use"? Does it propose a maximum copyright term? Does it discuss the Lessig tax, or any of the other copyright-reform proposals we've heard? No, but it 'recognized', in the same sense that Pratchett's Personal Dis-Organizer could recognize handwriting.[1]
Somewhere in this sucking vortex of stupidity, the US delegation asked them to change 'support' to 'encourage'. The author of the Pigdog article decided (with no evidence) that this was an attempt to "stomp on free software", and some Slashdot reader thought that such an arbitrary slander deserved to be celebrated as "excellent investigative journalism", despite its total failure to notice the sucking vortex.
Of course, it wouldn't be a UN conference without lip-service to "human rights" while kowtowing to brutal despots:I suppose the Taiwanese delegates shouldn't have been too offended at being kicked out of a pointless conference, but maybe they were looking forward to the sushi.
[0] Assuming he could get past the concern that agreeing with their declaration without permission would be stealing.
[1] "Yes, that's handwriting."
The closed source companies will have to change or die.
Actually, it's the open-source companies that are having to change or die. The closed-source companies are humming along the same as ever.
We can argue all we want about whether open-source software is morally superior to closed-source software or whatever else, but the bottom line is that the companies that base their business model on closed-source software are surviving, while the companies that base their business model on open-source software are dying.
I write in my journal
The apparent bias of an author changes neither the seriousness nor the importance of an article. Often, the most telling evidence is reported in the most biased journals.
/. . However, some of this conversation will impact someone, somewhere, probably without either of us ever knowing.
This is the face of new journalism: everyone is a journalist. The most important effect of the internet is also one of the most subtle. You and I are communicating, in a rather disjointed way; moreover, we are communicating in public. This elevates our words beyond mere conversation.
Since 99% of everything is crap (used to be 90% before the internet), most of our public conversation will amount to nothing but an archive on
So, this "report" is still important (in a minor sort of way), even without the sterling stamp of unbiased reporting. Hell, it's nothing more than a blog entry. It serves at least on major purpose: it helps us realize we are not alone, that there are others who feel and think some of the things we feel and think. This alone is worth the time cost of reading it. The fact it is entertaining helps.
Anyway, I'd rather see blatant bias than the subtle bias most respected news sources employ -- the small censorships, the subjective language disguised as objective, the stern seriousness with which they present the most trivial garbage, the dumbing-down of gut-shot-serious current events.
Just my $.02, sure, and biased to boot. But intelligent bias is a hell of a lot better than idiotic objectivity.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The way I see it there are basically two ways to look at this:
1. The U.S. government has been taking huge political contributions from Microsoft and has had to sit down and listen to their lobbyists give these speeches about how Free Software=Communism and by supporting Free Software you're supporting communism. Thus, they are taking some kind of moral stand because as you know the primary mission of our country is to promote democracy and capitalism throughout the world. I'm saying this all half tongue-in-cheek, but it could be possible that they actually bought into some of the OSS=Communism rhetoric.
2. The more likely probability is that software sold by Microsoft and other closed-source US software companies is billions of dollars in exports from our country. By promoting commercial products that are closed-source in nature our economy gets a boost from all of the international commerce and money coming in from other developing nations. Although this sounds like a shitty way to run a country, this is the way the world works. We have to convince/prod/force other countries to buy our poorly manufactured Microsoft software because it helps our economy...
Oh well. Guess we should all just drop out of the international financial system all together and go back to bartering for goods... Once you work out all of the delivery and manufacturing headaches bartering is actually a very good economic system.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Reasons for success of a company:
1. good/unique product
2. consistent product
3. well adverstized product.
4. addictive product
5. monopoly on product
Starbucks is 2,3,4
Coke/Pepsi is 2,3,4
McD's is 2,3
Microsoft is 3,5
It is the selling of a consistently good product at all stores, day in and day, that appeals to wide audience is what sells.
No, it is the selling of a consistent product at all stores, day in day [out], that doesn't disgust a wide audience that sells.
McDonalds does not make good hamburgers, but that doesn't seem to have hurt them at all. Why? Because I can walk into any McDonalds anywhere in the world and point at the picture of the Big Mac behind the cashier and get exactly the same crappy hamburger with exactly the same special sauce. I know exactly what I'm going to get, and people are willing to pay for that, generally regardless of actual quality.
What needs to happen is you anti-free market and anti-capitalism wanna be do-gooders need to do is go back to econ 101 and learn that a product sells when people desire it or need it, people know about it and can buy it.
I hope you'll take your blinders off when you decide to grow up. In the modern market economy peoples buying decisions rarely have anything to do with either need or quality of the product. The idealistic supply/demand model only works in commodity markets.
Nobody buys Kraft cheese or Wonderbread because they're superior products. They buy them because that's the bland, tasteless, lowest common denominator product from a brand name they recognize.
It might come as a big shock, but any Starbucks, anywhere in the world, is better than 95% of the non-chain Coffee Houses.
I don't know where you've been buying your coffee, but I think it's clear to most of the people reading this thread that you need to get out more.
Starbucks makes stuff that isn't bad, but I can get equivalent or better, with faster more personal service, at the same price, at any of my local non-chain coffee houses.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
corporate control is concentrated by proxy, and is a separate concept from corporate ownership.
I prefer the terms individualism and collectivism instead, most eloquently explained in F. A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom. The basic gist of the book is that socialism inevitably leads to totalitarianism, demonstrated in the Soviet Union and Third Reich Germany.
Individualism (aka capitalism) allows each person to make their own decisions how they will spend their time, money, and resources. People may own property and benefit from its use. This encourages them to work hard and be productive.
Collectivism (aka socialism, fascism, or communism) controls prices, trade, and consumption, based on the group's goals and values. Unfortunately, for any sufficiently large group, it's impossible to define these to each member's satisfaction. Whoever makes decisions must ultimately impose on the group what they perceive as its goals and values.
Here's a good quote from playwright and current Czech President, Vaclav Havel:And another on the benefits of ownership from Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury and current Harvard President, Lawrence Summers: