So, to me it seems like a simple contract between the the copyright owner and the purchaser: "you pay to use my copyrighted content and agree that I get to own your computer, or else don't buy my stuff." No problem.
The problem is Kool-aid imbibers who latch on to clever presentation bullets and banners without the slightest analysis of what they're really saying, then repeat, embellish and distort them out of all proportion. Stroll down the street in Crystal City (the area around the Pentagon) some day and ask random suites questions about Net-centric. If they'll talk to you, you'll hear lots of enthusiasm, support, energy, and commitment, but very little understanding beyond an unspoken conviction that if you drink the Kool-aid your job is safer than if you question the Kool-aid.
The trouble is that, maybe, just maybe, there was a glimmer of an idea behind an original Kool-aid bullet or two, but the inside of a Pentagon shape is conducive to ricochet, reverberation and amplification. The seed of the idea is repeated, and embellished, and repeated some more, evolving far beyond its original intent, where any cogent intent existed in the first place. Once an idea becomes a Kool-aid flavor-of-the day it begins to be inserted exponentially by clever tuned-in staffers into their bosses briefings and policy memoranda (Senior Executive Service types compose neither briefings nor policy memoranda themselves, they just listen to them, approve them, put their names on them, and occasionally speak to them). The Kool-aid flavor-of-the-day begins to be used as justification for any idea, initiative, pet-project, or otherwise orphaned funding stream that can't be justified otherwise unless first soaked in Kool-aid.
Eventually even good ideas subjected to enough distortion become worthless, at best, and dangerous at worst. There are currently two big Kool-aid flavors in the Pentagon (well, more, but apropos this conversation, two): Net-centric and Global Information Grid (GIG). Both flavors have original intents that have great merit at their core. Having been subjected to nearly a decade of Power Point Rangers, astute Kool-aid Kommandos all, however, both are used mainly now to justify the most outlandish and wasteful schemes imaginable. Yet, Net-centric is a fantastic idea! Who can argue with an idea that more timely and effective information sharing may enhance operational effectiveness? Net-centric Kool-aid is another thing. Net-centric Kool-aid can be used to justify incredibly stupid ideas like, say, "we don't need armor on this thing - the GIG is our armor (!!!!)." It's the Kool-aid, the freaking Kool-aid.
The amazing thing to me is that having defeated the stupidity and evil of Communism, with all of their empty slogans, banal banners, and political supression, we're becoming more and more like them every day. Go figure.
I agree that the characterization of the bill "defining the internet as..." is misleading and is obviously intended to evoke an emotional response.
The bottom line is that, in my assessment (and I'll bet others), the internet has indeed become a battle-space. It is a battle-space in that mutual adversaries conduct operations against each other in this space. This says nothing about the inherent goodness or badness of the space itself, or even the character of the mutual adversaries, although I know which side I'm on. Many otherwise idyllic tropical isles were battlefields in WWII, for example. But they became battlefields nonetheless, and it behooved the adversaries engaging warfare therein to understand the advantages and disadvantages that the terrain had to offer. Adversaries that got to know the terrain and learned to use it to their benefit gained an advantage.
What this bill appears to suggest is that we should get to know the battle-space that the Internet has become a little better. Doing so will help us defend against our adversaries who seek to use the Internet to their advantage against us. I would agree with that.
"She made a place where people could discuss and analyze the case, thus enabling many different minds to come together and put their different strengths to greater benefit."
-- sounds like Open Source justice to me!
Not sure what you mean by "the Feds are in DC." Some are, some aren't. For example, the Pentagon and CIA are in Virginia, the NSA is in MD, and actually federal agencies are distributed all throughout the region. DC is a relatively small-to-medium size city (pop. ~400k). The surrounding VA & MD region is about 5 million. Something else to keep into perspective is that most of the federal development spending that accrues to this region goes to companies either in MD or VA (or even WV). Since the government doesn't produce anything directly, but just contracts to private industry to do any development, then companies with the lowest bid, ergo overhead, will be advantaged. That means that some migration will likely occur, with companies (which might very well be incorporated elsewhere anyway, for example Delaware), can easily just end their office space lease in MD and lease VA office space, with their workers just changing their commute route. Maybe exchanging an inner-loop to work outer-loop home, to outer-loop to work, inner-loop home on the Beltway. Whatever. No problem.
Its the price we pay for our failure to pay attention to state and local politics, because national politics gets all of the media coverage. A while back when Comrade O'Malley proposed the tax grab (of which this discussion only covers a very small part) I took the time to download my state Senator and three Delegate's email addresses (yes, MD works different from national two Senator and one Congressman model). I've voice my concerns regularly, but of course, with one party domination (Democrats) what do they care? My personal strategy from now on is to reflexively vote against every incumbent at the state level unless I have specific reason not to.
OK, so, I assume that you really do understand the utility of hash algorithms, but others may not, so it's worth being serious for a second, just for their sake.
NIST is concerned with information assurance in toto, which encompasses not just the confidentiality of information (e.g., with good cyphers), but also other aspects of that information such as its assured availability, integrity, authenticity and even non-repudiation. Hash algorithms, by the fact that they compute presumably unique one-way "digests" of an information set, provide a basis for comparing an original information set, with its copy. If a recomputed digest at destination matches the digest computed at origin, then the information can be presumed (given other conditions) to have retained its integrity (and potentially also its authenticity and even non-repudiation).
The reason that new improved algorithms are needed from time to time is that smart people with sufficient computing resources, apropos "Moore's Law," will eventually find a way to produce "collisions," or two different data sets computing to the same digest. Once a collision has been found, not withstanding how difficult it was to produce, the authenticity of a digest produced by that algorithm will always be suspect from then on, to some degree at least.
Further, NIST, by promoting an open competition, better assures widespread, transparent, peer review of competing algorithms. Everybody gets a crack at trying to crack the code, so to speak. Security is better assured through the validity of the math and methods, rather than reliance on non-valid factors such as the reputation of the source and the obscurity of the code.
Excellent question! Although I have no reason whatever to doubt either the credability or import of the think tanks "findings" (confirms my sense of things in fact), I have unfortunately become increasingly sceptical from having been bombarded by advocacy group "studies" over the past few decades in the press. Unfortunately, most "Think-Tanks" and "non-profit research" centers have become nothing more than political advocacy groups. The net effect is that I pay, perhaps unfairly, absolutely no attention to this and that "study" as reported in the press from some group I never heard of. Unfortunately, even for otherwise credable groups, press biases have become increasingly so blatent that if I don't read it myself in a peer reviewed adademic or professional journal, I tend to assume that it probably has been spun. It's a sad state of affairs.
However, regarding sending business to Dell for their Linux machines(which I have no problem with -- good on them), how about rewarding businesses like system 76, (http://www.system76.com/) who have been making high quality Linux ready systems all along? I just ordered a laptop from them (Pangolin) 3 days ago with Ubuntu installed on a high end Linux optimized (with drivers) system and with tech support.
This is no shocker. I've used Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop for work since 5.whatever - what was the version before 6.06? Now I'm on Ubuntu 7.04. Anyway, most people have no ideas that I suck their MS docs, spreads and presentations, etc., into OpenOffice and blow them back out as MS Office files routinely. We use spreads heavily, as an analytics/systems engineering organization. Spreads don't have to be 100% compatible (this vastly applies to most apps). What percent of MS Office feature do you think most people use? I have only occasional experienced interoperability issues with the following, all easily solvable:
- One way issues (MS to OO) with graphics embedded in MS documents that were saved in MS Office proprietary format loading slowly or with distortion. I can usually ctl-x the graphic and paste special to an open standards image format. The problem doesn't go the other way. Any image created in OO and saved out into XP format does not create a problem (my experience -- exhaustive testing with all image fomats not performed).
- Occasionally I'll get an MS document that becomes so distorted due to the accumulation of generational file junk (people tend not to use MS templates incorrectly and keep modifying old examples) that I have to recue it by opening it in oo, saving as ODT, opening it again, then saving it back as.doc -- this cleans the document.
- On the few MS spreads that we use that contain charts, I'll concede that MS does some complex charts better. Occasionally I've had to open in Excel (use Crossover Office for those emergencies -- with my old MS Office that I bought and paid for when I bought this same laptop).
- Same issue on Power Point when people use office graphics formats. Same solution.
I also use the myriad of open source apps such as Umbrello UML, saving out to OMG *STANDARD* XMI or png for others, and several others to intake. I really have come to prefer Ubuntu Gnu/Linux over Windows, and have experienced no real down sides, although I don't play games, so don't experience the issues that I understand others have experienced using their computers as playgounds. However, occasionally somebody enters my office and stops and stares at my screen before noting that my "screen" looks funny.
Hokey smokes Bullwinkle! I just clicked Evolution and it took 4 seconds to load. I've never timed it before, because it never was an issue, which it sure would have been if it ever took anything like 5 minutes to load. Even one minute would drive me nuts. Something isn't right with his Evolution. I'm using Ubuntu 7.04 (started up this session with KDE, i.e., Kubuntu, desktop).
Concur. I loaded OpenOffice.org on the PC's of two of my University student kids when they started (both with BSci type majors) because I didn't want to shell out extra money for MS Office, and refuse for ethical reasons to load copies of my legacy MS Office. My kids used OO with no problems or complaints over the course of their University careers. The only thing that annoys me, although they don't care one way or the other, is that when electronic submission is specified they are compelled to save out to either ".doc", ".xls," or ".ppt" proprietary MS formats. More recently (after I pointed the feature out to them), they started submitting trons in pdf format. Considering that they both attend state run schools, it bothers me that my tax dollars in effect promote Microsoft Corporation. Professors seem to now universally accept pdf, which is a good trend. I use OO almost exclusively myself now, under Gnu/Linux on my laptop, and only use MS on site at work. I do quite a bit of work from home and on travel, however, using my own laptop, and have only found an occasional need to reopen spreadsheets or presentations at work to resolve chart conversion or graphics rendering anomalies before submitting deliverable files in MS format.
I dumped COMCAST a couple of years ago, because they were obviously and openly contemptuous of their customers. First, in their cable television racket, they are a monopoly in most places where they operate, and constantly exploit this by regularly raising prices, often by repackaging the same services over and over. Plus outages were frequent and "service" surly and slow. I now use a satellite TV service and DSL for high-speed and haven't been gouged since.
I dumped COMCAST a couple of years ago, because they were obviously and openly contemptuous of their customers. First, in their cable television racket, they are a monopoly in most places where they operate, and constantly exploit this by regularly raising prices, often by repackaging the same services over and over. Plus outages were frequent and "service" surly and slow. I now use a satellite TV service and DSL for high-speed and haven't been gouged since. I have no sympathy for anyone willing to put up with their abuse.
I was also mildly interested when Dell initially talked about selling Gnu/Linux pre-installed. But I had to admit that my interest was not based entirely on logic. It interested me because it seemed like Dells interest somehow validated the ascendance of the Linux desktop into the mainstream. (I do sometimes ask myself, though, is that necessarily such a great thing?) However, why reward some half-hearted newcomer, Dell, when there are vendors, such as System76 (http://system76.com) that sell excellent quality highly configurable systems with guarenteed harware compatability right out of the box, and with not only tech support, but robust knowedge base and forum support? Why reward the inferior? My next purchase will not be some newbee like Dell, but rather from one of the vendors who were there from the start, like companies from this list: http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/laptop.html.
So, notwithstanding my tongue-in-cheek analogy regarding "racketeering," because it's a lawyer who promises not to sue for a non-existent case in return for a settlement fee that's just below the threshold to make it less damaging to settle than to fight, even if would be a sure win, that's morally OK?
So in Brooklyn, for example, Fingers and Lucky come into your restaurant one day and demand a weekly payment in return for which nothing bad happens to your business or your cute little kids.
See the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeering,quoting definition of Racket, quoting the article: "...best-known is the protection racket, in which criminals demand money from businesses in exchange for the service of "protection" against crimes that the racketeers themselves instigate if unpaid..."
So is there a *RICO case here?
* RICO (from the same article) "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. 1961-1968)...allowed law enforcement to charge a person or group with racketeering, defined as committing multiple violations of certain varieties within a 10 year period.... purpose..."the elimination of the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce."
Riddle me this; how does Microsoft's behavior differ substantially from Lucky and Fingers coming into my store and demanding "protection" money? Has anyone looked at a RICO case?
Cute and pithy notwithstanding, the pre-1947 "War Department" referred to what is now the Department of the Army.
The other "military" Department prior to 1947 was the Department of the Navy (same name as now) which governed, and still governs the U.S. Navy and U.S Marine Corps.
The National Security Act of 1947 "unified" the services under a new Department of Defense (DoD), governed by a new Secretary of Defense cabinet level official. The Act also founded the Department of the Air Force as a separate service from the Army (was the Army Air Corp).
So, the three military Departments under DoD now are the Department of the Army (USA), Department of the Navy (USN & USMC), and Department of the Air Force (USAF), their Secretaries demoted (War and Navy Secretaries anyway) from cabinet level positions.
I agree. I actually bought CrossOver, because it's easier, and cheap. I did so not because I particularly felt that I needed or wanted to be able to "emulate" Windows. However, I'm finishing up a Masters program, and I've occasionally needed to load specialty software for various courses. The last one involved something called "ER Assistant" for building Entity-Relation diagrams. I could have actually accomplished the task just as well with either Dia, Umbrello, or a number of other OSS products, but the course demanded the ER Assistant proprietary file format. Fine. So, if somebody needs Wine, go the "sudo apt-get" route -- not hard, takes about a minute or less -- or buy CrossOver for a paltry (I forget) $30 bucks(?)
Slashdot Mirror
So, to me it seems like a simple contract between the the copyright owner and the purchaser: "you pay to use my copyrighted content and agree that I get to own your computer, or else don't buy my stuff." No problem.
The problem is Kool-aid imbibers who latch on to clever presentation bullets and banners without the slightest analysis of what they're really saying, then repeat, embellish and distort them out of all proportion. Stroll down the street in Crystal City (the area around the Pentagon) some day and ask random suites questions about Net-centric. If they'll talk to you, you'll hear lots of enthusiasm, support, energy, and commitment, but very little understanding beyond an unspoken conviction that if you drink the Kool-aid your job is safer than if you question the Kool-aid.
The trouble is that, maybe, just maybe, there was a glimmer of an idea behind an original Kool-aid bullet or two, but the inside of a Pentagon shape is conducive to ricochet, reverberation and amplification. The seed of the idea is repeated, and embellished, and repeated some more, evolving far beyond its original intent, where any cogent intent existed in the first place. Once an idea becomes a Kool-aid flavor-of-the day it begins to be inserted exponentially by clever tuned-in staffers into their bosses briefings and policy memoranda (Senior Executive Service types compose neither briefings nor policy memoranda themselves, they just listen to them, approve them, put their names on them, and occasionally speak to them). The Kool-aid flavor-of-the-day begins to be used as justification for any idea, initiative, pet-project, or otherwise orphaned funding stream that can't be justified otherwise unless first soaked in Kool-aid.
Eventually even good ideas subjected to enough distortion become worthless, at best, and dangerous at worst. There are currently two big Kool-aid flavors in the Pentagon (well, more, but apropos this conversation, two): Net-centric and Global Information Grid (GIG). Both flavors have original intents that have great merit at their core. Having been subjected to nearly a decade of Power Point Rangers, astute Kool-aid Kommandos all, however, both are used mainly now to justify the most outlandish and wasteful schemes imaginable. Yet, Net-centric is a fantastic idea! Who can argue with an idea that more timely and effective information sharing may enhance operational effectiveness? Net-centric Kool-aid is another thing. Net-centric Kool-aid can be used to justify incredibly stupid ideas like, say, "we don't need armor on this thing - the GIG is our armor (!!!!)." It's the Kool-aid, the freaking Kool-aid.
The amazing thing to me is that having defeated the stupidity and evil of Communism, with all of their empty slogans, banal banners, and political supression, we're becoming more and more like them every day. Go figure.
Does it?
I agree that the characterization of the bill "defining the internet as..." is misleading and is obviously intended to evoke an emotional response. The bottom line is that, in my assessment (and I'll bet others), the internet has indeed become a battle-space. It is a battle-space in that mutual adversaries conduct operations against each other in this space. This says nothing about the inherent goodness or badness of the space itself, or even the character of the mutual adversaries, although I know which side I'm on. Many otherwise idyllic tropical isles were battlefields in WWII, for example. But they became battlefields nonetheless, and it behooved the adversaries engaging warfare therein to understand the advantages and disadvantages that the terrain had to offer. Adversaries that got to know the terrain and learned to use it to their benefit gained an advantage. What this bill appears to suggest is that we should get to know the battle-space that the Internet has become a little better. Doing so will help us defend against our adversaries who seek to use the Internet to their advantage against us. I would agree with that.
"She made a place where people could discuss and analyze the case, thus enabling many different minds to come together and put their different strengths to greater benefit." -- sounds like Open Source justice to me!
Not sure what you mean by "the Feds are in DC." Some are, some aren't. For example, the Pentagon and CIA are in Virginia, the NSA is in MD, and actually federal agencies are distributed all throughout the region. DC is a relatively small-to-medium size city (pop. ~400k). The surrounding VA & MD region is about 5 million. Something else to keep into perspective is that most of the federal development spending that accrues to this region goes to companies either in MD or VA (or even WV). Since the government doesn't produce anything directly, but just contracts to private industry to do any development, then companies with the lowest bid, ergo overhead, will be advantaged. That means that some migration will likely occur, with companies (which might very well be incorporated elsewhere anyway, for example Delaware), can easily just end their office space lease in MD and lease VA office space, with their workers just changing their commute route. Maybe exchanging an inner-loop to work outer-loop home, to outer-loop to work, inner-loop home on the Beltway. Whatever. No problem.
Its the price we pay for our failure to pay attention to state and local politics, because national politics gets all of the media coverage. A while back when Comrade O'Malley proposed the tax grab (of which this discussion only covers a very small part) I took the time to download my state Senator and three Delegate's email addresses (yes, MD works different from national two Senator and one Congressman model). I've voice my concerns regularly, but of course, with one party domination (Democrats) what do they care? My personal strategy from now on is to reflexively vote against every incumbent at the state level unless I have specific reason not to.
Just curious...why would NSA need to be in a room on-site? Also, what exactly is an "NSA clearance?"
OK, so, I assume that you really do understand the utility of hash algorithms, but others may not, so it's worth being serious for a second, just for their sake. NIST is concerned with information assurance in toto, which encompasses not just the confidentiality of information (e.g., with good cyphers), but also other aspects of that information such as its assured availability, integrity, authenticity and even non-repudiation. Hash algorithms, by the fact that they compute presumably unique one-way "digests" of an information set, provide a basis for comparing an original information set, with its copy. If a recomputed digest at destination matches the digest computed at origin, then the information can be presumed (given other conditions) to have retained its integrity (and potentially also its authenticity and even non-repudiation). The reason that new improved algorithms are needed from time to time is that smart people with sufficient computing resources, apropos "Moore's Law," will eventually find a way to produce "collisions," or two different data sets computing to the same digest. Once a collision has been found, not withstanding how difficult it was to produce, the authenticity of a digest produced by that algorithm will always be suspect from then on, to some degree at least. Further, NIST, by promoting an open competition, better assures widespread, transparent, peer review of competing algorithms. Everybody gets a crack at trying to crack the code, so to speak. Security is better assured through the validity of the math and methods, rather than reliance on non-valid factors such as the reputation of the source and the obscurity of the code.
I meant, "Le ""mod-up" s'il vous plait...
Quel dommage! Le > s'il vous plais!
Excellent question! Although I have no reason whatever to doubt either the credability or import of the think tanks "findings" (confirms my sense of things in fact), I have unfortunately become increasingly sceptical from having been bombarded by advocacy group "studies" over the past few decades in the press. Unfortunately, most "Think-Tanks" and "non-profit research" centers have become nothing more than political advocacy groups. The net effect is that I pay, perhaps unfairly, absolutely no attention to this and that "study" as reported in the press from some group I never heard of. Unfortunately, even for otherwise credable groups, press biases have become increasingly so blatent that if I don't read it myself in a peer reviewed adademic or professional journal, I tend to assume that it probably has been spun. It's a sad state of affairs.
Concur regarding IBM.
However, regarding sending business to Dell for their Linux machines(which I have no problem with -- good on them), how about rewarding businesses like system 76, (http://www.system76.com/) who have been making high quality Linux ready systems all along? I just ordered a laptop from them (Pangolin) 3 days ago with Ubuntu installed on a high end Linux optimized (with drivers) system and with tech support.
This is no shocker. I've used Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop for work since 5.whatever - what was the version before 6.06? Now I'm on Ubuntu 7.04. Anyway, most people have no ideas that I suck their MS docs, spreads and presentations, etc., into OpenOffice and blow them back out as MS Office files routinely. We use spreads heavily, as an analytics/systems engineering organization. Spreads don't have to be 100% compatible (this vastly applies to most apps). What percent of MS Office feature do you think most people use? I have only occasional experienced interoperability issues with the following, all easily solvable: - One way issues (MS to OO) with graphics embedded in MS documents that were saved in MS Office proprietary format loading slowly or with distortion. I can usually ctl-x the graphic and paste special to an open standards image format. The problem doesn't go the other way. Any image created in OO and saved out into XP format does not create a problem (my experience -- exhaustive testing with all image fomats not performed). - Occasionally I'll get an MS document that becomes so distorted due to the accumulation of generational file junk (people tend not to use MS templates incorrectly and keep modifying old examples) that I have to recue it by opening it in oo, saving as ODT, opening it again, then saving it back as .doc -- this cleans the document.
- On the few MS spreads that we use that contain charts, I'll concede that MS does some complex charts better. Occasionally I've had to open in Excel (use Crossover Office for those emergencies -- with my old MS Office that I bought and paid for when I bought this same laptop).
- Same issue on Power Point when people use office graphics formats. Same solution.
I also use the myriad of open source apps such as Umbrello UML, saving out to OMG *STANDARD* XMI or png for others, and several others to intake. I really have come to prefer Ubuntu Gnu/Linux over Windows, and have experienced no real down sides, although I don't play games, so don't experience the issues that I understand others have experienced using their computers as playgounds. However, occasionally somebody enters my office and stops and stares at my screen before noting that my "screen" looks funny.
Hokey smokes Bullwinkle! I just clicked Evolution and it took 4 seconds to load. I've never timed it before, because it never was an issue, which it sure would have been if it ever took anything like 5 minutes to load. Even one minute would drive me nuts. Something isn't right with his Evolution. I'm using Ubuntu 7.04 (started up this session with KDE, i.e., Kubuntu, desktop).
Concur. I loaded OpenOffice.org on the PC's of two of my University student kids when they started (both with BSci type majors) because I didn't want to shell out extra money for MS Office, and refuse for ethical reasons to load copies of my legacy MS Office. My kids used OO with no problems or complaints over the course of their University careers. The only thing that annoys me, although they don't care one way or the other, is that when electronic submission is specified they are compelled to save out to either ".doc", ".xls," or ".ppt" proprietary MS formats. More recently (after I pointed the feature out to them), they started submitting trons in pdf format. Considering that they both attend state run schools, it bothers me that my tax dollars in effect promote Microsoft Corporation. Professors seem to now universally accept pdf, which is a good trend. I use OO almost exclusively myself now, under Gnu/Linux on my laptop, and only use MS on site at work. I do quite a bit of work from home and on travel, however, using my own laptop, and have only found an occasional need to reopen spreadsheets or presentations at work to resolve chart conversion or graphics rendering anomalies before submitting deliverable files in MS format.
I dumped COMCAST a couple of years ago, because they were obviously and openly contemptuous of their customers. First, in their cable television racket, they are a monopoly in most places where they operate, and constantly exploit this by regularly raising prices, often by repackaging the same services over and over. Plus outages were frequent and "service" surly and slow. I now use a satellite TV service and DSL for high-speed and haven't been gouged since.
I dumped COMCAST a couple of years ago, because they were obviously and openly contemptuous of their customers. First, in their cable television racket, they are a monopoly in most places where they operate, and constantly exploit this by regularly raising prices, often by repackaging the same services over and over. Plus outages were frequent and "service" surly and slow. I now use a satellite TV service and DSL for high-speed and haven't been gouged since. I have no sympathy for anyone willing to put up with their abuse.
What would a closed international standard be? Why, ooxml, of course. Thank you ECMA!
I was also mildly interested when Dell initially talked about selling Gnu/Linux pre-installed. But I had to admit that my interest was not based entirely on logic. It interested me because it seemed like Dells interest somehow validated the ascendance of the Linux desktop into the mainstream. (I do sometimes ask myself, though, is that necessarily such a great thing?) However, why reward some half-hearted newcomer, Dell, when there are vendors, such as System76 (http://system76.com) that sell excellent quality highly configurable systems with guarenteed harware compatability right out of the box, and with not only tech support, but robust knowedge base and forum support? Why reward the inferior? My next purchase will not be some newbee like Dell, but rather from one of the vendors who were there from the start, like companies from this list: http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/laptop.html.
So, notwithstanding my tongue-in-cheek analogy regarding "racketeering," because it's a lawyer who promises not to sue for a non-existent case in return for a settlement fee that's just below the threshold to make it less damaging to settle than to fight, even if would be a sure win, that's morally OK?
So in Brooklyn, for example, Fingers and Lucky come into your restaurant one day and demand a weekly payment in return for which nothing bad happens to your business or your cute little kids. See the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeering,quoting definition of Racket, quoting the article: "...best-known is the protection racket, in which criminals demand money from businesses in exchange for the service of "protection" against crimes that the racketeers themselves instigate if unpaid..." So is there a *RICO case here? * RICO (from the same article) "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (18 U.S.C. 1961-1968)...allowed law enforcement to charge a person or group with racketeering, defined as committing multiple violations of certain varieties within a 10 year period.... purpose..."the elimination of the infiltration of organized crime and racketeering into legitimate organizations operating in interstate commerce."
Riddle me this; how does Microsoft's behavior differ substantially from Lucky and Fingers coming into my store and demanding "protection" money? Has anyone looked at a RICO case?
Cute and pithy notwithstanding, the pre-1947 "War Department" referred to what is now the Department of the Army. The other "military" Department prior to 1947 was the Department of the Navy (same name as now) which governed, and still governs the U.S. Navy and U.S Marine Corps. The National Security Act of 1947 "unified" the services under a new Department of Defense (DoD), governed by a new Secretary of Defense cabinet level official. The Act also founded the Department of the Air Force as a separate service from the Army (was the Army Air Corp). So, the three military Departments under DoD now are the Department of the Army (USA), Department of the Navy (USN & USMC), and Department of the Air Force (USAF), their Secretaries demoted (War and Navy Secretaries anyway) from cabinet level positions.
I agree. I actually bought CrossOver, because it's easier, and cheap. I did so not because I particularly felt that I needed or wanted to be able to "emulate" Windows. However, I'm finishing up a Masters program, and I've occasionally needed to load specialty software for various courses. The last one involved something called "ER Assistant" for building Entity-Relation diagrams. I could have actually accomplished the task just as well with either Dia, Umbrello, or a number of other OSS products, but the course demanded the ER Assistant proprietary file format. Fine. So, if somebody needs Wine, go the "sudo apt-get" route -- not hard, takes about a minute or less -- or buy CrossOver for a paltry (I forget) $30 bucks(?)