Actually it goes a lot further than Fortune 500 companies. It is all USA companies, large or small.
Anyone who has been successful in running their own business can tell you that the Federal Income Tax law is written in such a way that it pretty much requires a business to use accounting procedures that are not intuitively obvious to the outsider. If you don't do so, you will not be in business for very long.
Consider that a common way for a USA start-up to fail is to show too much profit too early in the game-- and get trounced by competitors who are not making as much profit and so have a much lower tax expense and can undercut your prices. The first thing a USA start up company should do, even before making their first sale, is to find a good business tax consultant and follow his advice on how to set up the books and how to conduct business to maximize legitimate expenses and minimize the profits that will be taxed.
Sir, you remind me of a certain Southern politician who won many votes in the rural counties by accusing his opponent of being a "thespian and a masticator". Many were unsure of what exactly he meant but it sure didn't sound good. Nosireebob.
Drop the circus act. Slashdot fails to be many things, and one of those ways in which it fails is that it is not entirely populated by idiots and the ignorant.
It does however have a large number of intelligent readers for whom English is not their primary language. Your deliberate abuse of English semantics does these readers a disservice.
To repeat: "profit" is not the inverse of "cost". If two items have the same cost, that says nothing about which one is more profitable for the sellers.
And pointing out that the validity of a study is suspect because the publisher has a demonstrated history of self-interested bias in that area is not an ad hominem attack. It is definitely an attack on the credibility of the study. But not a slander of the persons involved. The reader must make his own judgments about the ethics of the sponsoring organization.
Note that this post comes closer to being an ad hominem attack than any I have done on slashdot, yet I have stayed well clear of ad hominem by addressing only the expressed behaviors shown in your postings. I have not, and will not, attack you personally. It is your behavior that is out of line:
You clearly have a strong command of the English language, so your continued abuse of its semantics must be by your deliberate choice. You could choose to use the language to inform and persuade, which are excellent tools in argument and discussion. But instead you have on more than one occasion chosen to sow disinformation and attempted to make your points by deliberate confusion.
Don't do that. It can lead to a public chastisement, which would bring your personal credibility into question. Which in turn may decrease your lifetime earnings potential and adversely affect your love life.
Parent post appears to regard "cost" and "profit" as the flip sides of the same coin.
Even accepting the pp's premise that the over-all cost of preventive medicine and "heroic care" is the same, it is still true that in the USA, the greater total profit for the health care and health insurance industries is in interventions after the fact rather than preventive medicine. It is these late interventions that fill the hospital beds, keep the fancy equipment humming, and keep the highly profitable drugs flowing. These in turn are the reasons why most of the USA populace is so willing to part with so much of their paychecks for health insurance.
There just are not the profit opportunities in preventive health care as there are in treatment of diseases.
Parent post states that the study comparing the costs of preventive medicine with USA practices was published by JAMA. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, is known to be highly biased in favor of preserving the status quo. The premise that over the long term preventive medicine is as costly as intervention after disease or injury has happened is not demonstrated, and is highly unlikely on the fac of it.
TFA is consistent with the observation that 90% of American health care dollars are spent during the last few months of the patient's life.
If USA health care invested more money in early and preventive treatment, people might not live any longer, but they would be in better health until old age problems caught up with them. That is clear from TFA when viewed within the context of the differences between USA and UK health care delivery systems.
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling cures and disease treatments than there is in preventing diseases. Not only does preventive health care lack as much opportunity for profit, it reduces the market for such money makers as AIDS drugs, cancer therapies, antihypertensive agents, and antidepressants.
The USA needs a major reform of health care. Even if the recent legislation is put fully into effect, it won't go far enough; it will be band aid approach to broken bones. There needs to be a break-up of the current system. Prohibiting the sale of health insurance for profit would be a good place to start.
So the editor should have kicked the EN-US spell checker to the kerb, and loaded the EN-UK or EN-AU spell checker instead? I don't think so. I think he should work with the tools of syntax that slashdot has chosen, and focus on the semantics of the job.
I believe that it was Churchill who said that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. Same goes for Australia, Canada, etc. A bit of tolerance for the way everyone else mangles the language in the wrong way seems appropriate.
You really need to look into Ubuntu. With its more efficient use of hardware resources and its strategy of nearly-automatic upgrades (and of course its ease of installation), it would be very easy to get another decade of use from that old WinXP hardware.
Oracle is picking legal fights with everyone around them. It reminds me of Lotus, and how that company went from dominant to dregs real quick when it decided its legal department was more important than the software development team.
I am glad that LibreOffice has abandoned ship; Oracle is looking too much like the Titanic. I hope that MySQL comes through this okay-- what it does, it does quite well, and it would be a pain to have to replace it.
If all you want the browser for is to do the same kind of stuff that we were doing ten years ago, then Javascript "should be a thin layer of glue". And your modern browser should be seen as nothing more than a pimped up version of Lynx.
That is not what I want. The combination of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and big pipes make it possible to write applications that can run on multiple platforms, and (more to the point) be updated across their entire user base by simply uploading the new version to your website. Not to mention that the browser provides all the fussy user interface code already, so you can concentrate on getting the app's core functions right.
I agree that the most egregious problems with JS coding have to do with poor programming, but that is not a technical issue. Faster JS will allow Google and other "Web 2.0" players to write more interesting web apps. Novice programmers will always be with us-- there is no technical way to avoid that.
However it is nearly possible now to use Javascript routines that prefetched links, did background evaluations of the page's conformance with generally accepted standards, and then color coded the links so you could avoid going to sites that were too amateurish to tolerate. But that kind of thing will require fast JS (and a biggish pipe).
If you want to target the young and cause anyone over 50 to skip to some other web site, the answer is simple: use a small font size and minimal contrast between the lettering and its background. 'font-size: 0.7em; color: #444; background-color: #000;' should just about do it.
Google "define: dysfluency" and you will see that EVERY definition of the word that Google has found on the web refers to the spoken tongue.
The use of "dysfluency" in written language is a new use that has not as yet been accepted to any significant degree (or Google would have some reference to it). This raises the question of whether the part of TFA where "dysfluency" is (mis|ab)used has any validity or is just so much buzz.
OTOH, I found that the Google page was very easy to read so of course I may not have learned anything there.
I'm gonna pass on the Meerkat though since I need to buckle down and do some serious work and the LTS Lynx provides everything I need for that. I've been using Ubuntu for about 4 years and it is now an excellent desktop. It is also great on my Acer netbook. The improvements between the Lynx and the Meerkat would not affect my work so why should I upgrade? I'll wait another six months or maybe longer.
I mention this because I think this shows why Linux and FOSS will eventually dominate the desktop world. Microsoft and Apple are now past the peak penetration of their desktop markets: for both companies, successfully selling a new desktop OS means mostly convincing their users that it is time to upgrade. But the desktop software is now so mature there is little need for anyone using a 10 year old OS like WinXP to give it up. Upgrades are being done to meet marginal demands like better entertainment experiences. Meanwhile, Linux and FOSS have now caught up with the proprietaries in desktop apps... but Linux and FOSS apps don't care whether you ever upgrade. You can if it suits your needs, but you don't have to and you won't be pressured to.
Also, as far as old Windows machines are concerned, Linux and FOSS apps run better on the old hardware than Windows ever did. Linux is a lot more efficient in its use of hardware, making old machines behave as if they were younger and faster. The migration path is going to become obvious to a lot of users: when WinXP/Vista/Win7 no longer does the job, set up a dual boot with Ubuntu and easily move your workflows over to FOSS, and then take the money you would have spent on a new computer and buy a decent purpose-specific entertainment center.
Linux is going to win out on the desktop because the FOSS approach allows it to reach optimum user experience and then just sit there. While the need to support a revenue stream forces Microsoft and Apple to somehow push their users beyond the optimum user experience. Sooner or later even the least savvy user is going to realize that having umpteen dozen more widgets that he'll never use does not make for a better desktop.
While "Libre Office" does not easily roll off the tongue of English speakers, it may very well be a good choice for the majority of those who are likely to use the product. Persons who speak English as a second language are a huge segment of the OpenOffice users, and very possibly outnumber the native English speakers.
The whole context surrounding Free Open Source Software is too complex because it is so easy in English to confuse very different meanings of the word "free". The whole "free as in beer" and "free as in liberty" thing. It would have been far better if instead both meanings had been explicitly used: "Gratis Libre Open Source Software", or GLOSS. (I have also heard of FLOSS, but that's just silly.) I think that since Libre Office helps bring attention to the true meanings of FOSS, it is a good naming choice. It is likely to stimulate some useful conversations that will help persons who are starting to look beyond proprietary solutions to begin to see the broader implications of gratis, libre, free, open source solutions.
Knowingly receiving stolen property makes you accessory after the fact.
True enough in most western cultures with regard to tangible goods. However what was "stolen" and then received by Wikileaks was information and the quote does not apply to it.
I suppose you could argue that it is "intellectual property", but then you have to face the question of who is the legal owner of the leaked material when there is an established history that writings developed by USA agencies funded by taxpayer money are part of the public domain. How the courts should apply that principle in this day and age is something that no government agency wants to test. Up and down the hierarchy, each manager, drone, and workerbee wants to be able to copyright the PowerPoint presentations they produce. The USA could claim that the leaked documents were intellectual property and governed by the copyright laws... that would be farcical.
Perhaps more to the point, this situation parallels the handling of hidden information by investigative reporters and their publishers. What Wikileaks has done is fully legal under USA laws and I believe under all European laws. Otherwise arrests would certainly have already been made.
Why would I run any Linux binary that you might mail to me?
Security issues aside, it requires more technical skills and time to prepare and run such a binary in Linux than it does to simply download the same binary from my distro's repositories. Which are rather more closely guarded by persons with security skills than what any Joe Sixpack or even I could do. If what you sent me isn't in a repository, then it would be kind of suspect to even the greenest newbie. Again, even if he trusted you fully and had no concerns about security, he's still gonna wonder why he's got to dance through all these hoops when you could have put the thing in a repository.
On a broader note, all these arguments that Linux would be as bad as Windows if only it was a larger target are massive fail. They ignore the fundamental differences in basic design between Linux and Windows, and the way in which those differences have been magnified by the ecosystems that have grown up around the Linux distros.
For malware to succeed under Windows, it has to be able to fool the most gullible Windows users faster than their betters can educate them. Which has proven to be a very, very big window.
For malware to succeed under a Linux distro, it has to be able to fool the gatekeepers of the repositories who are generally pretty knowledgeable about security issues.
Well, when all you've got is a hammer every problem looks like a...
Oh, wait. In this instance, where it is Microsoft as the problem solver, and digital security as the problem, it is more like the guy who dropped his keys in the darkest corner of the parking lot, but is looking for them 20 yards away, because that area is lit by a street light.
So Microsoft has found that using lawyers and courts is a more effective way for them to combat malware and botnets than building good security into their products.
Why am I not surprised?
On a related matter, I am starting to see more reports of the possibility of malware in the Linux ecosystem. So far it is mostly a matter of an increase in security patches for Ubuntu and Debian apps, to fix vulnerabilities that no one has managed as yet to exploit to any significant degree. So its not really an issue, simply a minor annoyance that I've been saying okay to more automated updates in the last month or so than I was seeing this time last year.
It needs to be noted that Brazil has a much higher rate of use of Linux than the USA. It is certainly high enough to skew these statistics and might be high enough that, if it were taken into account, would cause Brazil to fall out of worst place.
Of course there is the notoriously difficult problem of assessing how many persons are using Linux, so there is probably no way to estimate the penetration of malware in all computers in use.
I don't believe I have ever visited Debka before, and I doubt I will again visit any time soon.
It seemed to me to be one of the CIA's interfaces for delivering dysinformation to the Grassy Knoll - Area 51 Aliens crowd.
But with that in mind, this particular article did seem germane to the Stuxnet story. The branch of the CIA that pumps out dysinformation is not going to have any direct knowledge of Stuxnet of course, even if Stuxnet was a CIA effort. But that would not stop them from opportunistically exploiting Stuxnet, and it is interesting to see the kind of spin they are putting on it. Since the group that did launch Stuxnet would have been very much aware of how the CIA would react to the story, they almost certainly factored in the damage this kind of FUD would do to Iran's regime.
Underground Iranian groups might well be involved, especially in distributing the USB sticks. But it would be impossible for any underground Iranian group to have gathered the intelligence data needed to so finely tune Stuxnet to the regime's infrastructure. That argues for the collaboration of nations that have established intelligence communities.
Israel's concern about Iran is certainly much greater than the USA's, and no doubt they are heavily involved in the Stuxnet effort. But they are not in a position to lead the consortium that must have built the thing. Stuxnet's operations are so tightly constrained that it must have been developed with data shared from several intelligence agencies. I don't see Israel being able to convince Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or even Germany or Russia, to share such information with them.
The USA is uniquely positioned to have coordinated the building of a Stuxnet development effort. The kind of secret agreements and so on that would have to be hammered out are central to the job description of the USA Secretary of State, and the woman currently in that position has the intellect and the training to make this kind of thing possible.
Stuxnet is clearly a precisely targeted weapon, and from all that I have heard about it to date, the targeting has been done by exploiting features that are unique to Iran's infrastructure. Which suggests that Stuxnet is a one-shot: that it cannot be repurposed to use against any other target.
As the Stuxnet story unfolds, it is beginning to look like it is the exact opposite of the mythical neutron bomb: that device that was supposed to eradicate all life while leaving the buildings standing. In contrast, Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy the infrastructure of the current Iranian regime while not harming any civilians or their day to day activities.
Because of these qualities, only players with the kind of intelligence gathering capabilities that the USA has could have constructed the thing. To be so devastating and tenacious within such a tightly constrained region of cyberspace requires an intimate knowledge of Iranian Top Secret material as well as a development team with skills and resources far beyond what went into producing Avatar or any other publicly available computer product.
It makes sense that the USA is deeply involved in constructing Stuxnet. It makes even more sense that the USA would not do this alone. It is also doubtful that the USA, or any other single nation, would put so much effort into assuring that Stuxnet could not be used against any other potential enemies. Only the conflicting interests of several nations would provide the kinds of checks and balances that would guide the code development to this end.
There are a large number of countries in Europe, the Mid East, and middle Asia who are threatened by Iran's increasingly irrational behavior, and who would willingly contribute to a multinational covert effort to cripple Iran's nuclear and missile programs. It would not serve the USA's long term best interests to go this route alone; that would risk the trade agreements and treaties the USA desperately needs to regain its economic footing. The USA would have no trouble gathering allies for this kind of effort, and it would be incredibly stupid of them not to do so, That would also be in opposition to current USA policy, which is to avoid any appearance that the USA is going back to the Bush-era "go it alone" approach to world politics.
So I think there are a consortium of governments involved, supporting a software development team no larger than the teams active on Linux core development, or LibreOffice, or Apache, but obviously with some different kinds of skills. This would be a low budget operation: only personnel costs-- nothing like the costs of developing a uranium processing industry (Manhattan Project) or manufacture of precision titanium parts (SR-71 Blacbird)-- and costs could be borne easily by any nation, and easily hidden within their bookkeeping systems. The costs of the delivery system, perhaps a few hundred USB sticks, could be buried within the funding of some small city's budget for K-12 schools.
Who are likely members of the Stuxnet consortium? You could list all the countries within range of Iran's latest missiles as a start. Or going at it another way, you could list all the countries that the USA Secretary of State has visited since taking office, where she has had top-level private conversations. Hiliary Clinton is very adept stateswoman, and you could not find a better person to put an effort like this together. Also, this kind of thing is dead center in her job description.
I agree. Stuxnet, and who knows what will follow it, are similar to the USA Skunkworks that managed to develop and deploy the SR-71 Blackbird in complete secrecy, or before that the Manhattan Project in the USA, and the Enigma work done in Great Britain.
We have a new player on the world stage, and data security is never going to be the same again. Actually we probably have more than one new player, since there are a probably a dozen countries that are capable of doing this kind of thing. And quite possibly they've been around for a long time, hiding behind spammer botnet facades, etc. I find it suspicious that while spammer botnets are supposed to be making their fortunes by selling advertising, there has never been a serious effort to go after the companies that are apparently buying these services. I wonder how many distributors of v14gRuh there really are, and how many are virtual fronts for information gathering and disinformation distribution activities?
Hmm. I prolly read too much Philip K Dick in a younger day.
Why do we need specific laws to cover IT infrastructure?
This is a question you should bring up in your Civics 101 class. Discussion should include the difference between legislative law and law established by judiciary processes, and should definitely include the difference between "law" and "legal definition" and how both legislation and judiciary actions can affect the latter.
If you do not plan to take a Civics 101 course or its equivalent, then please reconsider since that is one of the prerequisites for becoming an informed voter (we have more than an adequate supply of uninformed voters, so please don't add yourself to that statistic). Your other choice is to not vote at all, but if you intend to opt out of the political process, then please STFU since the conversations among those who choose to be politically responsible don't need any further increase in the noise level.
The rest of parent post is rooted in "the world ought to be this way" thinking. I believe that brand of logic was popular in Aristotle's time, but outside of some religious cults it is no longer recognized as having any validity. Courses in logic, the history of science, or rhetoric might be useful.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually it goes a lot further than Fortune 500 companies. It is all USA companies, large or small.
Anyone who has been successful in running their own business can tell you that the Federal Income Tax law is written in such a way that it pretty much requires a business to use accounting procedures that are not intuitively obvious to the outsider. If you don't do so, you will not be in business for very long.
Consider that a common way for a USA start-up to fail is to show too much profit too early in the game-- and get trounced by competitors who are not making as much profit and so have a much lower tax expense and can undercut your prices. The first thing a USA start up company should do, even before making their first sale, is to find a good business tax consultant and follow his advice on how to set up the books and how to conduct business to maximize legitimate expenses and minimize the profits that will be taxed.
Sometimes I wish there was a moderation for "1+ Inscrutable".
Mr. Pigwiggly:
Sir, you remind me of a certain Southern politician who won many votes in the rural counties by accusing his opponent of being a "thespian and a masticator". Many were unsure of what exactly he meant but it sure didn't sound good. Nosireebob.
Drop the circus act. Slashdot fails to be many things, and one of those ways in which it fails is that it is not entirely populated by idiots and the ignorant.
It does however have a large number of intelligent readers for whom English is not their primary language. Your deliberate abuse of English semantics does these readers a disservice.
To repeat: "profit" is not the inverse of "cost". If two items have the same cost, that says nothing about which one is more profitable for the sellers.
And pointing out that the validity of a study is suspect because the publisher has a demonstrated history of self-interested bias in that area is not an ad hominem attack. It is definitely an attack on the credibility of the study. But not a slander of the persons involved. The reader must make his own judgments about the ethics of the sponsoring organization.
Note that this post comes closer to being an ad hominem attack than any I have done on slashdot, yet I have stayed well clear of ad hominem by addressing only the expressed behaviors shown in your postings. I have not, and will not, attack you personally. It is your behavior that is out of line:
You clearly have a strong command of the English language, so your continued abuse of its semantics must be by your deliberate choice. You could choose to use the language to inform and persuade, which are excellent tools in argument and discussion. But instead you have on more than one occasion chosen to sow disinformation and attempted to make your points by deliberate confusion.
Don't do that. It can lead to a public chastisement, which would bring your personal credibility into question. Which in turn may decrease your lifetime earnings potential and adversely affect your love life.
Have a nice day.
Parent post appears to regard "cost" and "profit" as the flip sides of the same coin.
Even accepting the pp's premise that the over-all cost of preventive medicine and "heroic care" is the same, it is still true that in the USA, the greater total profit for the health care and health insurance industries is in interventions after the fact rather than preventive medicine. It is these late interventions that fill the hospital beds, keep the fancy equipment humming, and keep the highly profitable drugs flowing. These in turn are the reasons why most of the USA populace is so willing to part with so much of their paychecks for health insurance.
There just are not the profit opportunities in preventive health care as there are in treatment of diseases.
Parent post states that the study comparing the costs of preventive medicine with USA practices was published by JAMA. JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, is known to be highly biased in favor of preserving the status quo. The premise that over the long term preventive medicine is as costly as intervention after disease or injury has happened is not demonstrated, and is highly unlikely on the fac of it.
TFA is consistent with the observation that 90% of American health care dollars are spent during the last few months of the patient's life.
If USA health care invested more money in early and preventive treatment, people might not live any longer, but they would be in better health until old age problems caught up with them. That is clear from TFA when viewed within the context of the differences between USA and UK health care delivery systems.
But USA health care is profit oriented, and there is more profit to be made in selling cures and disease treatments than there is in preventing diseases. Not only does preventive health care lack as much opportunity for profit, it reduces the market for such money makers as AIDS drugs, cancer therapies, antihypertensive agents, and antidepressants.
The USA needs a major reform of health care. Even if the recent legislation is put fully into effect, it won't go far enough; it will be band aid approach to broken bones. There needs to be a break-up of the current system. Prohibiting the sale of health insurance for profit would be a good place to start.
So the editor should have kicked the EN-US spell checker to the kerb, and loaded the EN-UK or EN-AU spell checker instead? I don't think so. I think he should work with the tools of syntax that slashdot has chosen, and focus on the semantics of the job.
I believe that it was Churchill who said that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language. Same goes for Australia, Canada, etc. A bit of tolerance for the way everyone else mangles the language in the wrong way seems appropriate.
You really need to look into Ubuntu. With its more efficient use of hardware resources and its strategy of nearly-automatic upgrades (and of course its ease of installation), it would be very easy to get another decade of use from that old WinXP hardware.
Oracle is picking legal fights with everyone around them. It reminds me of Lotus, and how that company went from dominant to dregs real quick when it decided its legal department was more important than the software development team.
I am glad that LibreOffice has abandoned ship; Oracle is looking too much like the Titanic. I hope that MySQL comes through this okay-- what it does, it does quite well, and it would be a pain to have to replace it.
If all you want the browser for is to do the same kind of stuff that we were doing ten years ago, then Javascript "should be a thin layer of glue". And your modern browser should be seen as nothing more than a pimped up version of Lynx.
That is not what I want. The combination of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and big pipes make it possible to write applications that can run on multiple platforms, and (more to the point) be updated across their entire user base by simply uploading the new version to your website. Not to mention that the browser provides all the fussy user interface code already, so you can concentrate on getting the app's core functions right.
I agree that the most egregious problems with JS coding have to do with poor programming, but that is not a technical issue. Faster JS will allow Google and other "Web 2.0" players to write more interesting web apps. Novice programmers will always be with us-- there is no technical way to avoid that.
However it is nearly possible now to use Javascript routines that prefetched links, did background evaluations of the page's conformance with generally accepted standards, and then color coded the links so you could avoid going to sites that were too amateurish to tolerate. But that kind of thing will require fast JS (and a biggish pipe).
If you want to target the young and cause anyone over 50 to skip to some other web site, the answer is simple: use a small font size and minimal contrast between the lettering and its background. 'font-size: 0.7em; color: #444; background-color: #000;' should just about do it.
Ahem to your ahem....
Google "define: dysfluency" and you will see that EVERY definition of the word that Google has found on the web refers to the spoken tongue.
The use of "dysfluency" in written language is a new use that has not as yet been accepted to any significant degree (or Google would have some reference to it). This raises the question of whether the part of TFA where "dysfluency" is (mis|ab)used has any validity or is just so much buzz.
OTOH, I found that the Google page was very easy to read so of course I may not have learned anything there.
I understand the feeling.
I'm gonna pass on the Meerkat though since I need to buckle down and do some serious work and the LTS Lynx provides everything I need for that. I've been using Ubuntu for about 4 years and it is now an excellent desktop. It is also great on my Acer netbook. The improvements between the Lynx and the Meerkat would not affect my work so why should I upgrade? I'll wait another six months or maybe longer.
I mention this because I think this shows why Linux and FOSS will eventually dominate the desktop world. Microsoft and Apple are now past the peak penetration of their desktop markets: for both companies, successfully selling a new desktop OS means mostly convincing their users that it is time to upgrade. But the desktop software is now so mature there is little need for anyone using a 10 year old OS like WinXP to give it up. Upgrades are being done to meet marginal demands like better entertainment experiences. Meanwhile, Linux and FOSS have now caught up with the proprietaries in desktop apps... but Linux and FOSS apps don't care whether you ever upgrade. You can if it suits your needs, but you don't have to and you won't be pressured to.
Also, as far as old Windows machines are concerned, Linux and FOSS apps run better on the old hardware than Windows ever did. Linux is a lot more efficient in its use of hardware, making old machines behave as if they were younger and faster. The migration path is going to become obvious to a lot of users: when WinXP/Vista/Win7 no longer does the job, set up a dual boot with Ubuntu and easily move your workflows over to FOSS, and then take the money you would have spent on a new computer and buy a decent purpose-specific entertainment center.
Linux is going to win out on the desktop because the FOSS approach allows it to reach optimum user experience and then just sit there. While the need to support a revenue stream forces Microsoft and Apple to somehow push their users beyond the optimum user experience. Sooner or later even the least savvy user is going to realize that having umpteen dozen more widgets that he'll never use does not make for a better desktop.
While "Libre Office" does not easily roll off the tongue of English speakers, it may very well be a good choice for the majority of those who are likely to use the product. Persons who speak English as a second language are a huge segment of the OpenOffice users, and very possibly outnumber the native English speakers.
The whole context surrounding Free Open Source Software is too complex because it is so easy in English to confuse very different meanings of the word "free". The whole "free as in beer" and "free as in liberty" thing. It would have been far better if instead both meanings had been explicitly used: "Gratis Libre Open Source Software", or GLOSS. (I have also heard of FLOSS, but that's just silly.) I think that since Libre Office helps bring attention to the true meanings of FOSS, it is a good naming choice. It is likely to stimulate some useful conversations that will help persons who are starting to look beyond proprietary solutions to begin to see the broader implications of gratis, libre, free, open source solutions.
Knowingly receiving stolen property makes you accessory after the fact.
True enough in most western cultures with regard to tangible goods. However what was "stolen" and then received by Wikileaks was information and the quote does not apply to it.
I suppose you could argue that it is "intellectual property", but then you have to face the question of who is the legal owner of the leaked material when there is an established history that writings developed by USA agencies funded by taxpayer money are part of the public domain. How the courts should apply that principle in this day and age is something that no government agency wants to test. Up and down the hierarchy, each manager, drone, and workerbee wants to be able to copyright the PowerPoint presentations they produce. The USA could claim that the leaked documents were intellectual property and governed by the copyright laws... that would be farcical.
Perhaps more to the point, this situation parallels the handling of hidden information by investigative reporters and their publishers. What Wikileaks has done is fully legal under USA laws and I believe under all European laws. Otherwise arrests would certainly have already been made.
Why would I run any Linux binary that you might mail to me?
Security issues aside, it requires more technical skills and time to prepare and run such a binary in Linux than it does to simply download the same binary from my distro's repositories. Which are rather more closely guarded by persons with security skills than what any Joe Sixpack or even I could do. If what you sent me isn't in a repository, then it would be kind of suspect to even the greenest newbie. Again, even if he trusted you fully and had no concerns about security, he's still gonna wonder why he's got to dance through all these hoops when you could have put the thing in a repository.
On a broader note, all these arguments that Linux would be as bad as Windows if only it was a larger target are massive fail. They ignore the fundamental differences in basic design between Linux and Windows, and the way in which those differences have been magnified by the ecosystems that have grown up around the Linux distros.
Well, when all you've got is a hammer every problem looks like a ...
Oh, wait. In this instance, where it is Microsoft as the problem solver, and digital security as the problem, it is more like the guy who dropped his keys in the darkest corner of the parking lot, but is looking for them 20 yards away, because that area is lit by a street light.
So Microsoft has found that using lawyers and courts is a more effective way for them to combat malware and botnets than building good security into their products.
Why am I not surprised?
On a related matter, I am starting to see more reports of the possibility of malware in the Linux ecosystem. So far it is mostly a matter of an increase in security patches for Ubuntu and Debian apps, to fix vulnerabilities that no one has managed as yet to exploit to any significant degree. So its not really an issue, simply a minor annoyance that I've been saying okay to more automated updates in the last month or so than I was seeing this time last year.
It needs to be noted that Brazil has a much higher rate of use of Linux than the USA. It is certainly high enough to skew these statistics and might be high enough that, if it were taken into account, would cause Brazil to fall out of worst place.
Of course there is the notoriously difficult problem of assessing how many persons are using Linux, so there is probably no way to estimate the penetration of malware in all computers in use.
I don't believe I have ever visited Debka before, and I doubt I will again visit any time soon.
It seemed to me to be one of the CIA's interfaces for delivering dysinformation to the Grassy Knoll - Area 51 Aliens crowd.
But with that in mind, this particular article did seem germane to the Stuxnet story. The branch of the CIA that pumps out dysinformation is not going to have any direct knowledge of Stuxnet of course, even if Stuxnet was a CIA effort. But that would not stop them from opportunistically exploiting Stuxnet, and it is interesting to see the kind of spin they are putting on it. Since the group that did launch Stuxnet would have been very much aware of how the CIA would react to the story, they almost certainly factored in the damage this kind of FUD would do to Iran's regime.
Or it could be the Internet itself, finally beginning to demonstrate its sentience...
cue Terminator references (mmm hot grits...)
Do you really think the similarity between "Stuxnet" and "Skynet" is merely coincidental?
Underground Iranian groups might well be involved, especially in distributing the USB sticks. But it would be impossible for any underground Iranian group to have gathered the intelligence data needed to so finely tune Stuxnet to the regime's infrastructure. That argues for the collaboration of nations that have established intelligence communities.
Israel's concern about Iran is certainly much greater than the USA's, and no doubt they are heavily involved in the Stuxnet effort. But they are not in a position to lead the consortium that must have built the thing. Stuxnet's operations are so tightly constrained that it must have been developed with data shared from several intelligence agencies. I don't see Israel being able to convince Saudi Arabia or Turkey, or even Germany or Russia, to share such information with them.
The USA is uniquely positioned to have coordinated the building of a Stuxnet development effort. The kind of secret agreements and so on that would have to be hammered out are central to the job description of the USA Secretary of State, and the woman currently in that position has the intellect and the training to make this kind of thing possible.
Stuxnet is clearly a precisely targeted weapon, and from all that I have heard about it to date, the targeting has been done by exploiting features that are unique to Iran's infrastructure. Which suggests that Stuxnet is a one-shot: that it cannot be repurposed to use against any other target.
As the Stuxnet story unfolds, it is beginning to look like it is the exact opposite of the mythical neutron bomb: that device that was supposed to eradicate all life while leaving the buildings standing. In contrast, Stuxnet appears to be designed to destroy the infrastructure of the current Iranian regime while not harming any civilians or their day to day activities.
Because of these qualities, only players with the kind of intelligence gathering capabilities that the USA has could have constructed the thing. To be so devastating and tenacious within such a tightly constrained region of cyberspace requires an intimate knowledge of Iranian Top Secret material as well as a development team with skills and resources far beyond what went into producing Avatar or any other publicly available computer product.
It makes sense that the USA is deeply involved in constructing Stuxnet. It makes even more sense that the USA would not do this alone. It is also doubtful that the USA, or any other single nation, would put so much effort into assuring that Stuxnet could not be used against any other potential enemies. Only the conflicting interests of several nations would provide the kinds of checks and balances that would guide the code development to this end.
There are a large number of countries in Europe, the Mid East, and middle Asia who are threatened by Iran's increasingly irrational behavior, and who would willingly contribute to a multinational covert effort to cripple Iran's nuclear and missile programs. It would not serve the USA's long term best interests to go this route alone; that would risk the trade agreements and treaties the USA desperately needs to regain its economic footing. The USA would have no trouble gathering allies for this kind of effort, and it would be incredibly stupid of them not to do so, That would also be in opposition to current USA policy, which is to avoid any appearance that the USA is going back to the Bush-era "go it alone" approach to world politics.
So I think there are a consortium of governments involved, supporting a software development team no larger than the teams active on Linux core development, or LibreOffice, or Apache, but obviously with some different kinds of skills. This would be a low budget operation: only personnel costs-- nothing like the costs of developing a uranium processing industry (Manhattan Project) or manufacture of precision titanium parts (SR-71 Blacbird)-- and costs could be borne easily by any nation, and easily hidden within their bookkeeping systems. The costs of the delivery system, perhaps a few hundred USB sticks, could be buried within the funding of some small city's budget for K-12 schools.
Who are likely members of the Stuxnet consortium? You could list all the countries within range of Iran's latest missiles as a start. Or going at it another way, you could list all the countries that the USA Secretary of State has visited since taking office, where she has had top-level private conversations. Hiliary Clinton is very adept stateswoman, and you could not find a better person to put an effort like this together. Also, this kind of thing is dead center in her job description.
I agree. Stuxnet, and who knows what will follow it, are similar to the USA Skunkworks that managed to develop and deploy the SR-71 Blackbird in complete secrecy, or before that the Manhattan Project in the USA, and the Enigma work done in Great Britain.
We have a new player on the world stage, and data security is never going to be the same again. Actually we probably have more than one new player, since there are a probably a dozen countries that are capable of doing this kind of thing. And quite possibly they've been around for a long time, hiding behind spammer botnet facades, etc. I find it suspicious that while spammer botnets are supposed to be making their fortunes by selling advertising, there has never been a serious effort to go after the companies that are apparently buying these services. I wonder how many distributors of v14gRuh there really are, and how many are virtual fronts for information gathering and disinformation distribution activities?
Hmm. I prolly read too much Philip K Dick in a younger day.
Why do we need specific laws to cover IT infrastructure?
This is a question you should bring up in your Civics 101 class. Discussion should include the difference between legislative law and law established by judiciary processes, and should definitely include the difference between "law" and "legal definition" and how both legislation and judiciary actions can affect the latter.
If you do not plan to take a Civics 101 course or its equivalent, then please reconsider since that is one of the prerequisites for becoming an informed voter (we have more than an adequate supply of uninformed voters, so please don't add yourself to that statistic). Your other choice is to not vote at all, but if you intend to opt out of the political process, then please STFU since the conversations among those who choose to be politically responsible don't need any further increase in the noise level.
The rest of parent post is rooted in "the world ought to be this way" thinking. I believe that brand of logic was popular in Aristotle's time, but outside of some religious cults it is no longer recognized as having any validity. Courses in logic, the history of science, or rhetoric might be useful.
Have a nice day.