I'm sorry, but there are two entirely distinct topics in this article:
1) Wargames 2) Linux
Part of the article talks in depth about the wargames, the way they're going about it, what they hope to accomplish, etc.
However, other parts of the article talk about Linux controlling these wargames, as though that was the crux of the article. Now it's not impossible (or bad) to write an article that ties these two subjects together, but this comes across as either (a) two articles smooshed into one, or (b) An article about wargames written by a Linux evangelist.
Just a thought. Not everything that involves Linux is about Linux.
I think a lot of people who say he misses the point, are in fact TEHMSELVES missing the point.
Linux, as a collective and generalised OS, is a process.
Debian Linux, RedHat, Slackware, etc. etc., are products. Furthermore, they're comprised of dozens of sub-products, so to speak, each with its own lifespan and schedule.
The general entity called Linux is a procedural entity, or a way of putting together a bunch of products (the kernel, the utilities, the startup scripts, etc.) such that you can make a product with them.
Now this is all fine and dandy. Unfortunately, there are two conflicting results to this: 1) By pushing Linux as a product, you're pushing specific distros which are in effect, proprietary bundles. (Source code notwithstanding, in a professional environment, a bundled distro is _treated_ as a proprietary distro--partly for good reasons!) This is damaging to Linux as a process or concept. 2) Companies don't want to run processes on their computers. They want to buy products. 3) Due to the process nature of Linux, a resulting product (say Debian) is a snapshot in time of all of the subproducts travelling along at different rates. This makes it a big pain for the vendor (and to a lesser extent, the user) to keep current in Linux. This is effectively fallout from Linux "versionitis," and there are no easy ways around it.
First of all, I don't do desktop support--I work entirely on the heavy server end, and am fairly regularly calling the desktop guys for permission to install this software or that on my PC (if I have one--most of the time these days, a Sun box does everything I need).
But any medium+ sized company will have a policy (and it's generally a blanket policy) about installing software without authorisation. This is a Good Thing, with a Good Reason: Companies are LIABLE for their machines!
Install a virus on your work PC and infect half the planet? The company is liable. Put Kazaa (etc.) on your machine and download (or worse--share out) hundreds of movies? The company is liable for the copyright violations. Install Linux and cause various problems due to bad software (which is what the article indicated), and the company's liable. Install Linux, lock it down intelligently, and do your job productively with it, and...there's no real liability. Should the company then have a SPECIAL rule for ***YOU*** because you're so elite and well, special? No. It's very simple. If the policy is there, then anyone who violates it deserves to be dealt with ruthlessly, regardless of the motives.
ASK your administrator, dammit! Even those funny Windows folks are usually Good People, and quite happy to let you do your job better, as long as it doesn't screw up the rest of the company. If you decide to ignore them and do what you want, and then get in trouble, do you know how much sympathy you get?
OK, I'll try to argue this, without using the 'fight the man' argument, at least not blindly. Fundamentally I agree with you (which is why I have over 500 purchased CDs, and less than 15 downloaded songs)
My goal is to buy music that I like, and support the artist. Unfortunately under the current system, if I buy music from the major labels I'm not supporting the artist substantially more than if I downloaded (stole, yes I agree that it's morally stealing) the song. Consider that out of the roughly ten thousand dollars I've spent on CDs, the combined artists would have received a total of $75. (I say would have, because MANY of those CDs were purchased directly from the artists.) Whee. I'm certainly helping them out.
The problme here, as I see it, is that the RIAA and the record labels are so utterly corrupt that people just don't see any advantage to the artist to buying their music, other than to support the Industry.
Sure. It's called IPv6. Pity no one uses it. Of course, along with inherent encryption, you also get inherent locatability. Sigh.
Alternatively, a public-key encrypted P2P network would be an interesting idea. The RIAA could find out who you were, same as always, but unless they could track the connection to the (unencrpted) originating file, they couldn't prove what you were downloading.
...then you're almost definitely not using Solaris.
I live and breathe solaris 14 hours/day (professionally and personally) and man, I can't even remember the last time I had to build a kernel. Probably not since the Solaris 2.3 days.
OK, as the original poster, I'm really terribly amused to see it get modded up (to 5, no less!) as insightful, then down as overrated, and down as as a troll, and back up as insightful again.
I'm even more amused to find people interpreting it as a defense of republican fiscal policy (ack! Not something I'd ever do!), or a damnation of one party vs. the other, not to mention the implication that I'm an American citizen (despite the "you folks in the US" phrase).
In all honesty, it was just a flippant off-the-cuff remark, suggesting (I hoped) that given the state of the current republican administration, jack-boots were a prerequisite to joining the party, so this guy would already have a pair.
There's one reason that telemarketers hate this, and that reason is the 'weak-nos.'
Consider the people who will probably sign up for the list, because they have a hard time saying 'no' to people on the phone. This is where telemarketers make their money--by wearing down people who don't really want to buy their junk, but feel bad about saying no.
Telemarketers know that if they were limited to people who actually _wanted_ their services, there wouldn't be enough of a market to survive.
"I don't understand that position, but it's valid enough."
It's a fairly simple position, at least from my point of view. If someone is paying to honestly advertise to me, it's less offensive than if they're forcing me to pay for them to advertise to me. For instance, I don't have any problems with corporate sponsorship of local events--as long as there's no undue influence on the event, or insistence on me becoming a consumer.
Honestly, if you object to all advertising as being fundamentally evil, then we're at a crossroads here, despite our fairly similar opinions.
"And how do you _not_ pay for your telephone, mailbox, or the property leading up to your front door? You pay for people to call you, mail you, or personally solicit you, or at least are harmed by it, probably about as much as you're harmed by spam."
I pay for my telephone. I pay for my phone service. Currently I'm paying $20/month (cdn) for unlimited long distance calling in Canada. Without telemarketers, it would be about $28/month for the same service, if it was available. I'm willing to say "no" to telemarketers once every few days for that saving.
On the other hand, I pay about $40 for my high-speed internet service. Without spammers, I'd pay about $35 for it, at a guess.
In effect, the phone marketers are paying me $8 month for the right to peddle their wares (and I say no). The spammers, on the other hand, are CHARGING ME $5/month, to hear their shite. That's criminal. That's worse than telemarketers. That's in the same category as bank robbers, in fact.
I had a choice: Do I use my last moderation point to sink this post, or do I reply? I decided to reply.
All advertising is evil? Nah. Advertising is only evil when (a) it's theft, or (b) it's misleading. Product placement in movies, TV shows, etc. is misleading. Any and all subliminal advertising is misleading. Selling a non-sexual product with sex is misleading.
Spam, on the other hand, is theft. I pay for my server space. I pay for my bandwidth. ***I*** pay for the spammers to semd me there shite, which is why spam is wrong.
Telemarketers pay for my time. bulk mailers pay for my letters to the in-laws. That's why I'm willing to put up with those ads. It comes down to this:
An opt-out advertising system is only morally acceptable if the originator of the ads incurs the bulk of the costs.
Maybe you need to either (a)hang out at better bars, or (b)learn some social grace. I say this because they're the most likely reasons for lousy service.
I find that decent tipping decently, behaving decently, and being a regular are a GREAT way of getting excellent service. If not, then the place isn't worth my patronage.
As for the tip analysis, waitresses already do that predictively with uncanny accuracy. A waitress with a brain and some experience can tell almost as soon as someone comes in how much they'll drink, how well they'll tip, and how difficult they'll be to wait on.
I have yet to meet a well-educated Indian who has not been bilingual from the age of four. Most of my Indian friends learned Punjab and English side-by-side in school, and spoke English regularly in India before moving to North America. Comes from having been an English colony.
"2) There's no face to face communication"
Agreed, but if it's help-desk outsourcing, then there never was any. If you're a company of 5000 spread out across half a continent or more, you're likely never going to meet your help-desk people face to face.
"3) They're 12 hours ahead"
Um...so what??! Some people work nights. Some people in the US even work nights! In fact, some people man 24-hour help desk support lines, IN NORTH AMERICA!!! Amazing but true.
"In my mind you don't create laws and then selectively enforce them. It too easily gives the appearance of favoritism/negligence/stupidity."
Agreed, and as you imply later on in your post, it also encourages criminal behaviour to flourish, by keeping 'under the radar.'
Prosecuting evenly for copyright violations would be interesting, though--probably 80+% of the population of the western world would be guilty to some degree.
As an aside, there's one problem with your A-B-C scenario. Without some incentive, you won't find a criminal rat on C. The problem is that there's a DISincentive (i.e. the threat of death) which is likely to keep most people's mouth shut. That is to say: I was busted, I'm going to jail no matter what. Now if I rat out C, then there'll be a price on my head in jail in addition to the other problems. No THANKS!
So you lose informants. How do you go after C then?
"To me this clearly makes software ineligible for patent protection because people will write software with or without patent protection. So the need for patents is not met."
Will they?
If you take this discussion outside of the realm of open source software, will companies invest heavily in software
innovation
if they can't obtain the protection of a patent after achieving something brilliant?
I'm not convinced. I don't like software patents much as a category, but I'm not convinced they fail to promote innovation.
Heh. When I was in university, about 15 years ago (ack! How'd that happen?!), I needed to point every single brain cell at the lecturer in most of my classes. (And then there was 'introduction to statistics,' which was where we played poker under our desks.:-)
Maybe it's a matter of course material. I don't honestly thing that University is getting any easier--probably the opposite in fact--but laptops and wireless might be leading the charge away from frantically taking page after page of notes with a cramped hand, while trying to absorb the information at the same time. If so, it's probably a Good Thing. (Of course, some fields are harder to move to the computer. Writing out the formulae in phys. chem. and quantum mechanics strikes me as still a pen-and-paper exercise)
Yoga and meditation as practices (rather than religious teachings)[1] can be a great balm for the body and soul. Having calmer, more relaxed, more alert, and clearer employees is wonderful, right?
Unfortunately, the companies who bring in this sort of thing are usually the companies who NEED it--the same companies that have downsized until their remaining staff is starting to gnaw on their wrists to escape the bad decisions and hellish environment.
In other words, the thinking amounts to this: Tighten the work environment until it's inhumane, and when people start to crack, we'll get them to meditate so we can keep up the same stupid pace.
Treating the symptoms, not the disease.
The good news is that it's likely to backfire. If people meditate with conviction and sincerity, they're likely to see more clearly how silly it is to stay in a job like that, and have the confidence to leave it.
[1]Not that I object to the religious and spiritual practices of them, but that's not something that a company should be promoting and sponsoring in a heterogeneous environment.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but there are two entirely distinct topics in this article:
1) Wargames
2) Linux
Part of the article talks in depth about the wargames, the way they're going about it, what they hope to accomplish, etc.
However, other parts of the article talk about Linux controlling these wargames, as though that was the crux of the article. Now it's not impossible (or bad) to write an article that ties these two subjects together, but this comes across as either (a) two articles smooshed into one, or (b) An article about wargames written by a Linux evangelist.
Just a thought. Not everything that involves Linux is about Linux.
Ouch! Did I really say that? Um...oops. :-)
Ah well, you know what I mean. I hope.
I think a lot of people who say he misses the point, are in fact TEHMSELVES missing the point.
Linux, as a collective and generalised OS, is a process.
Debian Linux, RedHat, Slackware, etc. etc., are products. Furthermore, they're comprised of dozens of sub-products, so to speak, each with its own lifespan and schedule.
The general entity called Linux is a procedural entity, or a way of putting together a bunch of products (the kernel, the utilities, the startup scripts, etc.) such that you can make a product with them.
Now this is all fine and dandy. Unfortunately, there are two conflicting results to this:
1) By pushing Linux as a product, you're pushing specific distros which are in effect, proprietary bundles. (Source code notwithstanding, in a professional environment, a bundled distro is _treated_ as a proprietary distro--partly for good reasons!) This is damaging to Linux as a process or concept.
2) Companies don't want to run processes on their computers. They want to buy products.
3) Due to the process nature of Linux, a resulting product (say Debian) is a snapshot in time of all of the subproducts travelling along at different rates. This makes it a big pain for the vendor (and to a lesser extent, the user) to keep current in Linux. This is effectively fallout from Linux "versionitis," and there are no easy ways around it.
Balls!
First of all, I don't do desktop support--I work entirely on the heavy server end, and am fairly regularly calling the desktop guys for permission to install this software or that on my PC (if I have one--most of the time these days, a Sun box does everything I need).
But any medium+ sized company will have a policy (and it's generally a blanket policy) about installing software without authorisation. This is a Good Thing, with a Good Reason: Companies are LIABLE for their machines!
Install a virus on your work PC and infect half the planet? The company is liable. Put Kazaa (etc.) on your machine and download (or worse--share out) hundreds of movies? The company is liable for the copyright violations. Install Linux and cause various problems due to bad software (which is what the article indicated), and the company's liable. Install Linux, lock it down intelligently, and do your job productively with it, and...there's no real liability. Should the company then have a SPECIAL rule for ***YOU*** because you're so elite and well, special? No. It's very simple. If the policy is there, then anyone who violates it deserves to be dealt with ruthlessly, regardless of the motives.
ASK your administrator, dammit! Even those funny Windows folks are usually Good People, and quite happy to let you do your job better, as long as it doesn't screw up the rest of the company. If you decide to ignore them and do what you want, and then get in trouble, do you know how much sympathy you get?
Zero.
And do you know how much sympathy you deserve?
Zero.
OK, I'll try to argue this, without using the 'fight the man' argument, at least not blindly. Fundamentally I agree with you (which is why I have over 500 purchased CDs, and less than 15 downloaded songs)
My goal is to buy music that I like, and support the artist. Unfortunately under the current system, if I buy music from the major labels I'm not supporting the artist substantially more than if I downloaded (stole, yes I agree that it's morally stealing) the song. Consider that out of the roughly ten thousand dollars I've spent on CDs, the combined artists would have received a total of $75. (I say would have, because MANY of those CDs were purchased directly from the artists.) Whee. I'm certainly helping them out.
The problme here, as I see it, is that the RIAA and the record labels are so utterly corrupt that people just don't see any advantage to the artist to buying their music, other than to support the Industry.
Conflict? The only conflict I see if if you amend your first point to:
1. People should be able to enjoy all of the arts for free, on their terms, no matter what the artist wants.
Otherwise, these statements go together perfectly.
Sure. It's called IPv6. Pity no one uses it. Of course, along with inherent encryption, you also get inherent locatability. Sigh.
Alternatively, a public-key encrypted P2P network would be an interesting idea. The RIAA could find out who you were, same as always, but unless they could track the connection to the (unencrpted) originating file, they couldn't prove what you were downloading.
The squirrel nut zippers are getting fatter and fatter? I don't get it.
OK, so how do WE download the real files?
...then you're almost definitely not using Solaris.
I live and breathe solaris 14 hours/day (professionally and personally) and man, I can't even remember the last time I had to build a kernel. Probably not since the Solaris 2.3 days.
Forth.
After years of basic, fortran, 6502 assembler, pascal, and probably something else that I've forgotten, forth was magical. Still is.
OK, as the original poster, I'm really terribly amused to see it get modded up (to 5, no less!) as insightful, then down as overrated, and down as as a troll, and back up as insightful again.
I'm even more amused to find people interpreting it as a defense of republican fiscal policy (ack! Not something I'd ever do!), or a damnation of one party vs. the other, not to mention the implication that I'm an American citizen (despite the "you folks in the US" phrase).
In all honesty, it was just a flippant off-the-cuff remark, suggesting (I hoped) that given the state of the current republican administration, jack-boots were a prerequisite to joining the party, so this guy would already have a pair.
Honestly, it was just a bit of fun!
There's one reason that telemarketers hate this, and that reason is the 'weak-nos.'
Consider the people who will probably sign up for the list, because they have a hard time saying 'no' to people on the phone. This is where telemarketers make their money--by wearing down people who don't really want to buy their junk, but feel bad about saying no.
Telemarketers know that if they were limited to people who actually _wanted_ their services, there wouldn't be enough of a market to survive.
Heh. Quite a lot of interest for such a random, off-the-cuff remark.
I just meant that to be a member of the Republican party these days, one would require jackboots before being approved.
Well, being a republican at least means that you folks in the US are less likely to have to foot the bill for his jackboots.
Hmm. OK.
"I don't understand that position, but it's valid enough."
It's a fairly simple position, at least from my point of view. If someone is paying to honestly advertise to me, it's less offensive than if they're forcing me to pay for them to advertise to me. For instance, I don't have any problems with corporate sponsorship of local events--as long as there's no undue influence on the event, or insistence on me becoming a consumer.
Honestly, if you object to all advertising as being fundamentally evil, then we're at a crossroads here, despite our fairly similar opinions.
"And how do you _not_ pay for your telephone, mailbox, or the property leading up to your front door? You pay for people to call you, mail you, or personally solicit you, or at least are harmed by it, probably about as much as you're harmed by spam."
I pay for my telephone. I pay for my phone service. Currently I'm paying $20/month (cdn) for unlimited long distance calling in Canada. Without telemarketers, it would be about $28/month for the same service, if it was available. I'm willing to say "no" to telemarketers once every few days for that saving.
On the other hand, I pay about $40 for my high-speed internet service. Without spammers, I'd pay about $35 for it, at a guess.
In effect, the phone marketers are paying me $8 month for the right to peddle their wares (and I say no). The spammers, on the other hand, are CHARGING ME $5/month, to hear their shite. That's criminal. That's worse than telemarketers. That's in the same category as bank robbers, in fact.
I had a choice: Do I use my last moderation point to sink this post, or do I reply? I decided to reply.
All advertising is evil? Nah. Advertising is only evil when (a) it's theft, or (b) it's misleading. Product placement in movies, TV shows, etc. is misleading. Any and all subliminal advertising is misleading. Selling a non-sexual product with sex is misleading.
Spam, on the other hand, is theft. I pay for my server space. I pay for my bandwidth. ***I*** pay for the spammers to semd me there shite, which is why spam is wrong.
Telemarketers pay for my time. bulk mailers pay for my letters to the in-laws. That's why I'm willing to put up with those ads. It comes down to this:
An opt-out advertising system is only morally acceptable if the originator of the ads incurs the bulk of the costs.
Anything else is theft.
Maybe you need to either (a)hang out at better bars, or (b)learn some social grace. I say this because they're the most likely reasons for lousy service.
I find that decent tipping decently, behaving decently, and being a regular are a GREAT way of getting excellent service. If not, then the place isn't worth my patronage.
As for the tip analysis, waitresses already do that predictively with uncanny accuracy. A waitress with a brain and some experience can tell almost as soon as someone comes in how much they'll drink, how well they'll tip, and how difficult they'll be to wait on.
"1) English is not their native language"
WRONG!
I have yet to meet a well-educated Indian who has not been bilingual from the age of four. Most of my Indian friends learned Punjab and English side-by-side in school, and spoke English regularly in India before moving to North America. Comes from having been an English colony.
"2) There's no face to face communication"
Agreed, but if it's help-desk outsourcing, then there never was any. If you're a company of 5000 spread out across half a continent or more, you're likely never going to meet your help-desk people face to face.
"3) They're 12 hours ahead"
Um...so what??! Some people work nights. Some people in the US even work nights! In fact, some people man 24-hour help desk support lines, IN NORTH AMERICA!!! Amazing but true.
"In my mind you don't create laws and then selectively enforce them. It too easily gives the appearance of favoritism/negligence/stupidity."
Agreed, and as you imply later on in your post, it also encourages criminal behaviour to flourish, by keeping 'under the radar.'
Prosecuting evenly for copyright violations would be interesting, though--probably 80+% of the population of the western world would be guilty to some degree.
As an aside, there's one problem with your A-B-C scenario. Without some incentive, you won't find a criminal rat on C. The problem is that there's a DISincentive (i.e. the threat of death) which is likely to keep most people's mouth shut. That is to say: I was busted, I'm going to jail no matter what. Now if I rat out C, then there'll be a price on my head in jail in addition to the other problems. No THANKS!
So you lose informants. How do you go after C then?
Sure it does. Read this part again:
" the purpose and character of the use"
They didn't quote the entire law verbatim, but it should be clear that burning my records onto CD is a 'fair' exception under this very point.
Heh. That's OK, I've moved from brilliant young student to frightening old cantankerous eccentric. They'd be LOST without me! :-)
Will they?
If you take this discussion outside of the realm of open source software, will companies invest heavily in software
- innovation
if they can't obtain the protection of a patent after achieving something brilliant?I'm not convinced. I don't like software patents much as a category, but I'm not convinced they fail to promote innovation.
Heh. When I was in university, about 15 years ago (ack! How'd that happen?!), I needed to point every single brain cell at the lecturer in most of my classes. (And then there was 'introduction to statistics,' which was where we played poker under our desks. :-)
Maybe it's a matter of course material. I don't honestly thing that University is getting any easier--probably the opposite in fact--but laptops and wireless might be leading the charge away from frantically taking page after page of notes with a cramped hand, while trying to absorb the information at the same time. If so, it's probably a Good Thing. (Of course, some fields are harder to move to the computer. Writing out the formulae in phys. chem. and quantum mechanics strikes me as still a pen-and-paper exercise)
Yoga and meditation as practices (rather than religious teachings)[1] can be a great balm for the body and soul. Having calmer, more relaxed, more alert, and clearer employees is wonderful, right?
Unfortunately, the companies who bring in this sort of thing are usually the companies who NEED it--the same companies that have downsized until their remaining staff is starting to gnaw on their wrists to escape the bad decisions and hellish environment.
In other words, the thinking amounts to this: Tighten the work environment until it's inhumane, and when people start to crack, we'll get them to meditate so we can keep up the same stupid pace.
Treating the symptoms, not the disease.
The good news is that it's likely to backfire. If people meditate with conviction and sincerity, they're likely to see more clearly how silly it is to stay in a job like that, and have the confidence to leave it.
[1]Not that I object to the religious and spiritual practices of them, but that's not something that a company should be promoting and sponsoring in a heterogeneous environment.