The film industry really should do an unbiased and intelligent analysis of the impact of emerging technologies on their product, if they want to actually protect their interests in a constructive and effective manner. Some points which should be considered.
- consumers have had the capability of recording and copying movies to their hearts' content since the advent of the VCR. Videophile and audiophiles may not be happy with the quality, but as far as the average consumer is concerned the quality is "close enough" to perfect. Despite this, movie makers have been selling and renting movies like hotcakes. Being able to copy DVDs will not change this at all
- commercial pirates, for whome the "infinite perfect copy" does make a difference, could already do this by using $5,000 DVD-Rs or buying their own DVD production equipment. One analog copy, reconverted to digital format, and they could produce an infinite supply of nearly perfect DVD copies for sale on the black market. This is a problem, but one which the cracking of the pathetically week css algorithm will not significantly affect.
- high-end consumers do not like having their technology "messed with." The destruction of DAT is an example of consumers refusing to buy into crippled technology. Likewise, DVD playback which is limited to Windows, or by region, is not only an invitation to hack, but worse, creates unnecessary bad relations between the seller and the consumer.
- finally, unlike the RIAA member companies, movie studios are not parasitical entities acting as a paid go-between between artists and their customers. They provide the capital, resources, and equipment for shooting films and play a very necessary role of the art form. Contrast this to the music industry, whose contribution to the art form, beyond providing a distribution channel they happen to enjoy a monopoly on, and perhaps a place to record and master (which any technically savvy musician can do in their own home), is negligable at best and quite often destructive. This suggests that the movie studios aren't nearly as vulnerable to artists switching to an internet medium and cutting them out of the loop as the RIAA member companies are, and have a lot less to fear from open internet standards and distribution channels than their record company counterparts.
Even with copyable DVDs the film industry has little to fear. The target they should be most worried about -- the professional "industrial strength" pirates -- is the group least affected by these developments. The fear that the grassroots mp3 warez phenominon will happen with DVDs is unwarrented, not only because of bandwidth and storage limitations, but also because of a difference in consumer habits, and a fundamental difference in the relationship of the affected artists and consumers with the movie studios vs. the music industry.
Right now computer professionals of all kinds (yes, even MSCE weenies) are in very high demand. This places us in a position of strength when negotiating our contracts, not just in terms of wages, but in terms of other conditions as well. Even back in the early 90s, when demand (and compensation) was lower, I refused to sign non-compete clauses. While this may have cost me one particular opportunity or another, it did not seriously hamper my ability to get a job and make a good living.
An immediate gain is not worth the potentially crippling of one's career down the road, and immobility through a required 1 year hiatus gives your employer far too much of an advantage should you become dissatisfied with the job in any way (wages, working conditions, working hours, toxic boss, or relocation to name just a few possibilities). Far better to shop around a little longer than hamstring oneself by signing such an agreement, even if it impacts one's credit rating a little.
I work (well, am actually a member of) an LLC with a very flat management structure. All of the technical people have the job title of "Systems Engineer" whether we program, manage the telecom system, the LAN, or the WAN. Since most of us wear multiple hats, anything more specific would be deceptive anyway. "Glorified Computer Nerd" would probably be more accurate (and would probably help to weed out perspective employees who are humor impaired if put on one's resume), but even that would be too specific, as some of us manage the phone system as well.
Titles really aren't that meaningful -- any smart employer is going to pay much more attention to the job description, and descriptions of past projects, when looking over resumes, than the job title. I still can't believe people will actually accept job title upgrades/changes in liue of a raise -- indeed, I wouldn't have believed it at all if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, at a previous job. Personally, I work for money, not prestige. My good luck that I was able to make a hobby a career, and really enjoy what I do, and as long as the pay is right, I don't care if they call me "Systems Engineer" or "Computer Custodian".
Freedom of naming our servers is a fundamental systems admin right! They'll take that away when the pry my trackball from my cold, dead hand!
Our naming convention is to name all Windows boxes after dinasaurs (guess why?), all sun workstations and servers after stars (ok, that's kind of boring, but millionair names kept getting more and more diffuclt to come up with and spell, even if you do have to be one to own one of those machines yourself), linux boxes after countries, with some exceptions for firewall, routers, and the like...
Of course, since I define that stuff, I'm free to change it at will. The names do sound reasonably professional, and only insiders really understand why that flakey NT box, due to be phased out soon, is called stegosaurus.:-)
ARGH! I should have reread my previous post one more time before submitting it! It reads like I'm disagreeing with the post I followed up to, when in fact I agree with and merely wanted to expand upon one of the author's points...
Pupil: "I know my rights! I have a right to an attourney, and a real court of law!"
Administration: "You're a problem child. You don't have any rights."
This is a paraphrase of a scene from a Max Headroom episode ("Blanks"). I always considered this to be one of the less realistic, and less prophetic episodes of the show (many of the other themes, such as organ theft, pervasive monitoring and security, and economic crimes carrying heavier punishments than violent crimes, have come true a scant 10-15 years later to varying degrees).
Funny, how that which we least expect to _ever_ be tolerated, has now become accepted, even defended, in a forum where one would expect people to be more acutely aware of just how destructive this kind of thing can be. It isn't about geeks, it's about all of us (and this includes geeks). Geeks may be marginally more vulnerable, being slightly outside of the mythical, homoginized average, but everyone is a potential victim of the misuse of this kind of thing, and if history is any indication, misuse is exactly what we can expect.
Labelling children as "troubled" or not, with or without the adjective "potential", is destructive. People have a tendency to live up (or down) to the expectations society has for them. Even a potentially troubled child can end up being a positive influence in their school and community with the right support and expectations. I fear, however, that the label this screening will place on many children will make that kind of positive outcome much more difficult, if not impossible. In many cases it will probably insure a negative outcome where such would not have been the case otherwise. Then, of course, there are the inevitable false positives... and the young lives they will harm, possibly even destroy. If the overreaction on the part of school and government beaurocrats after the Colombine incident (not to mention numerous other witch hunts in recent history) is any indication, I think it is absurdly naive and optomistic to expect this sort of test to be applied in anything even remotely resembling an approprate use. Frankly, I find this sort of institutionalized stamping and labelling of children to be a far bigger threat to their ability to grow up and become productive members of society (whatever disadvantages they may start out with) than an entire army of drug dealers combing the hallways for new customers would be.
I wouldn't normally post an "I agree" comment, but since I'm the one being accused of having never used NT and not understanding it I will add the following comments:
- I never implied there was no Administrator account, just that any user can make the system vulnerable. This is true (as Gangr33n pointed out), and the existence of the Adminsitrator account may obfuscate that unpleasant fact, but the fact remains nevertheless.
- I have and do administer NT boxes at work (they are thankfully being phased out in favor of Linux) and am all too familiar with just how riddled with holes the entire security structure is. There are plenty of things non-Administrator users are capable of doing which they shouldn't be, and which must be manually disabled after each install. Even after wading through countless FAQs, MS web pages, service packs, etc. you can not even be reasonably confident you've gotten everything.
- I used NT at home for video capture before dumping it in favor of Linux, and had more opportunity to become intimate with how crappy it is.
In short, there is nothing untruthful, or half-untruthful, about anything I said, although I do agree there are plenty of reasons for hating NT that I didn't mention.
In response to your points (I'll be brief because it's late Friday and the weekend summons...)
1. Slash and burn agriculture is untenable in all but the shortest term, for obvious reasons. Yet people do it every day. The fact that poeple are doing something untenable, and have been for a while, doesn't prove, or even necessarilly imply, that the activity is tenable.
I concurr with Alan Cox that using a proprietary OS is untenable for a business, for reasons he stated much more eloquently than I. This is why *bsd and Linux projects have arisen, and are having such success. The business I work for is a strong example of this, and by no means unique.
2. I agree. I think we're arguing the same point from two different directions. I would add that educating management to place more emphesis on solutions and real-world, tangable protection rather than securing an avenue of blame would be more productive. One would likely have to bypass middle management to pull this off, however.
3. I did not mean to imply that there is no place for proprietary software (I use and run a number of commercial apps, including AcceleratedX despite my non-fondness of xig, various games, Word Perfect and Star Office). Alan Cox's arguments (and my rebuttal to yours) were intended to point out the very deep problems with using a proprietary OPERATING SYSTEM as the foundation upon which a company rests, and the dangers inherent in proprietary products of any kind. Using a commercial word processor, cad program, or whatever because it meets your needs and is available is not the same as being held hostage by an OS vendor who has decided their bottom line would be helped by forcing you to upgrade, ready or not. Though I should add, many of the same inherent dangers do exist and should be taken into account (which they generally are not), such as orphaing, build in obsolescence, and forced upgrades. Alan argues, and I concurr, that Windows et. al. basically are not the right product, for anyone (in a business sense). I think he is right. I also think that the majority of people who are suffering real-world business dysfunctions and monetary losses and are at present extremely vulnerable to their vendors don't realize this yet. One hopes that most will survive the unpleasant lessons ahead and learn accordingly. We did, but it wasn't fun, and it is a lesson I would spare others if I could.
Well, so much for being brief.:-) Have a good weekend!
Under windows 95/98/NT any USER can install a trojan, making the entire system vulnerable to attack.
Under Linux, BSD, and other systems which limits common user's rights and priveleges by default, the user can only damage that to which they have priveleges -- i.e. their own private home directory. Only root can cause systemwide harm, and the root account is restricted to a limited number of people (usually just one or two), and only used for specific system maintenance. Normal users are NEVER given root priveleges in a corporate environment. Even home users of Linux are guided through the process of creating a user account to use for everyday purposes, logging in as root only to do system maintenance (which is very rarely required, I might add).
In other words, if Joe Slacker emails Jim Clueless a self installing copy of BO[2K], and Jim Clueless opens the email on his windows box and foolishly (or curiously) clicks on the attachment, the software installs itself and the box is now vulnerable. Whats worse, some default windows installations will run the software and allow it to install without even requiring Jim Clueless to click the attachment!
On the other hand, if Jane Slacker emails Janice Clueless a self installing (no such thing at present) copy of LinuxTrojan, and Janice clicks on the attachment and installs the software, she can at most harm her own home directory. The rest of the system, to which she does not have write priveleges, is not vulnerable, nor are the other twenty users sharing it with her.
This is just one example of how the windows security model is fundamentally broken, and it is unlikely that any number of kludges or quick fixes will be able to repare it in a reliable manner, short of scrapping the entire thing and building a more secure system from the bottom up (perhaps using BSD code as a starting point). If the example above doesn't make the difference clear, I suggest checking out the numerouse security related web pages and news groups for in-depth analysis and discussions relating to computer security in general and Unix vs. Windows security in particular.
Though I disagree with your conclusions, you do make a valid point. The more "accessible" Linux becomes, through easy install, package management, newbie-friendly GUIs, and so forth, the less knowledgable ("brain damaged" to use your colorful expression) the average Linux user will be. This does bring with it a whole host of potential issues on how to preserve and improve Linux's good reputation WRT security. OpenBSD has IMHO found the correct approach, by being proactive about security issues. There is no reason this is incompatable with a system of managed.rpm or.deb packages, but it does require improvements to the underlying default configurations which have not been made yet.
We can fix it ourselves. The beauty of it is, when a security flaw is found, someone does fix it, and the fix propogates as tarballs,.rpms, and.debs for all their various distributions. We all benefit from a level of responsiveness and security which Microsoft will be lucky to achieve sometime late in the next millenium. By adopting the improvements of other products, like OpenBSD, we can keep them green with envy until the universe goes cold, implodes, or whatever...
However, I can't agree with his conclusion. He argues that running a proprietary OS is untenable. This isn't really realistic.
I must respectfully disagree. I can confirm Alan Cox's point about proprietary OSes being untanable from a strategic business perspective from personal experience.
The things that made running a proprietary OS untenable for the company I work for (a trading company with millions of dollars at stake every minute of the day) don't just include stability, reliability, and speed, although these ARE very important, and few proprietary OSes have managed to achieve Linux and FreeBSD's levels of performance in any of these three regards. The problem with proprietary OSes is that they can and do become orphaned, often much sooner than the customer can cope with. Either the company goes out of business, drops the line altogether, or forces the customer into a series of upgrades which are not compatible with their business plan or objectives. Examples include the demise of NextOS, the forced migration from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (which actually drove some companies out of business), not to mention variouse versions of NT, and Sun's deprication of SunOS in favor of Solaris (which in its early incarnations was vastly inferior in most respects). At best it cost their customers vast amounts of money in lost productivity, time, and licensing fees, at worst it led to the companies actually going out of business.
With Open Source operating systems (and software in general) this is not an issue. We have Linux 1.2.x boxes which have been running for years. If we needed to, we could patch the source code of the os itself and never upgrade to 2.0 or 2.2. When we do upgrade, it will be on our schedule, as we require and see fit. And we always have the option of hiring programmers to maintain the OS and any other open source software we require indefinitely, should the Linux community somehow vanish in the next few years (a meteor impact destroying all life is more likely). The publicly available support insures that, even if all the systems engineers were killed in a car wreck, newly hired people could ask for and get help on the net and elsewhere, even for someting as old as Linux 1.2.13.
However, that mechanism, while typically very responsive, isn't truly "responsible", in that no-one is required to support anything.
The only way someone is "responsible" for supporting you is if you purchase a suport contract, in which case the contract itself clearly spells out legal responsibilities on both sides. Such a contract is just as binding on a new startup as it is an established, entrenched firm. In fact, you'll generally find the new startup working harder to provide good service that the more entrenched entity (I have vast experience with this phenominon and can provide specific examples too numerous for this forum if you wish).
In addition, if you check the licensing terms of any of the proprietary operating systems available today, you will see that they not only do not guaruntee support, they don't guaruntee the thing will even boot or, if it does, that it won't destroy all of your hard work, and your company along with it. Any sense of security management might have by believing their lawsuites will bring them anything is illusionary, and for that precious illusion you have sacrificed many of the real, tangible protections an open source solution would have given you.
But closed-source is, for now, the way some organizations and individuals will go, and I have trouble saying to them, "You're wrong."
I would submit that the problem is with you or the situation you are in, that prevents you from making recommendations which you imply you feel are better, because of political concerns. (This is not intended as a flame. I've been in that situation myself and can relate all too well in how uncomfortable it is.) Yes, by recommending open source you are sticking your neck out and taking responsibility that the system will work. This isn't as comfortable as being able to say "yeah, another Microsoft product that's flakey, it is Bill Gates fault." But don't forget, there was also once a time when "no one got fired for buying IBM," but after that time had passed, ironically, many people did in fact get fired specifically for buying IBM, at inflated prices, while their competitors bought competing products with more capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Those on the tail end of that curve paid dearly, with their jobs. I would submit the same will be true of those on the tail end of the "no one got fired for buying [insert proprietry software/os of your choice here]," and that the tail end of that particular curve is very close indeed.
Organizations that lock themselves into inferior solutions because managers are more interested in protecting their own assess through a readilly available chain of blame, at the expense of the company's ability to compete and protect itself against the vagaries of a volitile and fickle marketplace, will in the end find themselves at a terrible disadvantage in their respective industries when going up against firms that do have more solid technical foundations. If nothing else, it is that very disadvantage which will force change, by either requiring the entities in question to adapt, or to cease to exist. This has already worked very much to our advantage in our particular industry, much to my personal delight (and benefit).
...who can?t write...CEO?s...who?s CEO ?qualifies? for ?celebrity? status...
Please use the demoronizer to get rid of these gratuitious question marks in favor of OSI standard (not M$ knockoff) quotes. Although your post made some good points, it took every once of self control to continue reading to the end with such irritating and distracting characters peppered throughout, and it makes you look far less intelligent than your comments imply.
Why bother with Linux for your grandfather? Is it some techie pride that you must install Linux everywhere possible?
I cannot answer for the original person who answered the question, but as one who has given Linux to his own mother, his sister, and numerous non-computer literate friends, I can tell you that, yes, technical pride plays a role. I want my family and friends to have systems they can use and enjoy, as opposed to something which is crash prone, difficult to maintain, and suffers notorious "bit-rot" over time, ultimately resulting in a required reinstall. In addition, I do not want to be fielding tech support calls on how to fix this or that misfeature of Windows, especially on my time off. With Linux, I almost never get calls at all, and when I do, they are questions like "how do I do xxx?" which takes about two seconds to answer, vs. "My Windows system is broken, how do I fix it" which takes anywhere from a few minutes to a trip to reinstall the once-again corrupted OS because dll blah was overwritten by the new version of MS Office).
As an example of someone like the original poster's grandfather, I have a friend (another pilot) who was sick of Windows crashing nearly every time he tried to access the net or do serious work with his IFR flight simulator. I told him about Linux (and the free software philosophy in general) and he was very excited to try it. So one Saturday evening, before going out to Exit to party the night away, we installed Debian Linux on his system. He was on the internet in no time, at which point we downloaded Star Office and FlightGear. The Flight Simulator isn't yet usable for serious IFR work (no panel), but as a toy it is fantastic. Star Office and Netscape fulfill his other needs, and his system has never crashed on him (it's been several months now). He has said on several occasions that he will never go back to windows -- and this is despite the fact that he knows little to nothing about Linux and how to administer it, and despite the fact that his favorite flight simulator does not run under Linux (he won't even dual boot anymore to run the simulator, as he gets too angry when, inevitably, Windows decides to head south during a particularly challenging approach procedure).
and I can bet that the performance will not suffer regardless of the OS on the machine
I would take that bet in a second. If you are using Windows, your performance will suffer with systems crashes (occasional if you never install new software, more frequent if you do) and slower overall speed, to name two. Under FreeBSD or Linux, this will not be the case. Install any one of several friendly X GUI's and the user won't care, except in as much as their system will be both faster and much, much more stable. Where on earth have you been, to believe that the OS makes no difference in a computer's performance (or did I completely misunderstand what you were saying)?
As an athiest I find it very amusing to be suggesting that you check out a passage in the Bible, of all places. However, the Christians have a very apropos parable which should explain to you the fundamental flaw in your reasoning.
When using an operating system as poorly designed, buggy, unreliable, and proprietary (with all that implies: constantly moving technical targets for strategic business reasons, adding to the instability of the product and breaking dependent code -- i.e. programs, etc.) as, say, Microsoft Windows, you are essentially building your house upon a foundation of sand. It may be a very pretty house, with snazzy features that would make any home owner green with envy. But alas, after the first big tide, it will be little more than driftwood.
It doesn't matter how well written your CAD program is, if the operating system it is running on is so unreliable and crash-prone that you are frequently losing hours of work. Add to that the time and money forced upgrades your vendor requires you to make in order to "remain supported", and you have an ideal scenerio for flushing a great quantity of cash and time which would have otherwise been productive down the toilet, directly into your vendors pockets. It may not even be the CAD manufacturer's fault, since they are more than likely chasing a target which Microsoft is moving every few months.
Add the complexity of wanting to use two or three independent apps, which depend on the same, moving platform (but aren't necessarilly being released on the same timetable), and you have a situation wherein at any given time one or more of the apps are incompatable with the very version of the OS the other apps require!
The OS is the very foundation of your system. Ignore it at your own peril.
Re:mp3 is yesterday's breakfast.
on
IBMs 73Gig Drive
·
· Score: 2
Amen brother! Why use lossy compression with that kind of space. Simply digitize the sample raw and, at most, bzip2 it... absolute clarity. Resample as mp3 for the car unit as required...
We use xig's AcceleratedX 5.x to provide multi-headed support. However, it is not at all stable with Red Hat 6.1 (though it is fine with Red Hat 6.0 and Debian 1.2). If you want an example, try running kpackage, then slide the scroll bar for the package tree up and down. You'll be logging in and rebooting remotely in no time!
We use AcceleratedX because it works with our multi-headed hardware today, but we are keeping a very close eye on XFree and anxiously awaiting 4.0 and xenerama as a possible replacement down the road, with plans to switch when XFree 4.0 is stable and well tested.
AcceleratedX's strengths are its early access to hardware specs (providing support for hardware XFree doesn't) and the features it offers today which XFree doesn't yet (multiheaded support being the critical one for us). It is IMHO very foolish of xig to sling mud like this. Their market is comprised of Linux users, many of whom (myself included) take offense at that kind of ridicule against an Open Source project, especially when the ridicule is nothing more than FUD of the worst kind -- something Linux users and administrators are very good at seeing through.
Privacy protection in the United States is extremely third world when compared to that afforded citizens of most other developed countries. Companies routinely SELL one another comprehensive data about us, including our likes, dislikes, interests, and purchasing patterns.
Other countries (such as Germany for example) have very strict laws regulating just how personal information may be used, and severely curtailing the dissemination of the aforsaid information. This sort of regulation, protecting the privacy of the individual, is not only appropriate, it is desperately needed here in the United States and elsewhere. To imply that a satelite snooping into your back yard or through the skylight of your house (or through the roof, if they've got infrared) is the same as glancing across the street at someone entering a grocery store from a public walkway is disingenuous at best. To then argue that therefor any additional or modernized regulations to protect personal privacy is pointless is itself absurd.
The technology which has been developed in the last fifteen or twenty years to allow people to invade one another's privacy would have been unbelievable even a generation ago. Unfortunately legislation to protect our private lives from the prying eyes of corporations, government, or simply rude, snoopy people has not changed significantly in that time. Public apathy, coupled with an appetite for gossip and snooping, and powerful lobbies (broadcasters and direct mail marketers to name two) have helped insure that our privacy has been wittled down to almost nothing. If a satelite taking pictures of some topless sunbathers in the privacy of their own back yard will elicit public interest in this issue, then by all means start taking some pictures!
You make a very good point about the difference in states of mind a person is in when watching TV vs. using a computer, be it for gaming, surfing, serious work, or whatever.
However, I think your conclusion is wrong.
When I want to watch DVD (on a laptop in an airplane, or on my TV), I use my computer's DVD player to do so. When I want to listen to music (perhaps when I'm reading, or just vegging) I use my computer to play random songs from a rather large collection of MP3's (all legally copied from my own, purchased collection, of course).
The most serious drawback I see to settop boxes right now is the horrible resolution of today's televisions. Replace them with an HDTV set, or a large flastscreen monitor with good resolution, and that problem goes away. At that point, combining the two appliances (computer and tv) into one makes a great deal of sense.
Add to that the desirability to click on an icon to watch you're favorite TV show "on-demand" (rather than remembering to tape it or making sure to be at home at such and such a time), and you have the potential for a very, very appealing product. Of course, for this to succeed, they need:
- much more bandwidth, capable of delivering on-demand video and audio - much higher resolution TVs or monitors - a stronger emphesis on open "internet-like" standards, rather than closed and copy-protected "consumer electronic" standards such as DVD - competitive pricing for hardware, net access, and video-on-demand offerings. (Downloading a movie shouldn't cost more than renting it at the store, for example.)
I would argue a "pay-per-view TV shows sans commercials" option would be, while not a requirement, the kind of "killer feature" that would attract many potential customers. I'd willingly pay $3.00 an episode to watch my favorite TV show without commercial interruptions. For shows I'm less fond of (or not interested in taping for my own archive) I'd be willing to watch the commercial in exchange for a free viewing.
I do think computers will "combine" (or replace) most consumer home entertainment electronics. Attempts at crippling the home entertainment product's capabilities (remember DAT?) will only accelerate this trend. Which side the "set-top" boxes find themselves on will go along way toward determining whether they represent a unique step forward, or an obscure curiosity ignored by consumers in favor of other, more capable products (like a PC with a DVD drive, a big hard disk, and a long S-Video cable:-))
This is something a script probably ought to be able to catch, or at least help point out. Clearly hemos didn't know roblimo had already posted this Saturday, but perhaps some kind of a "pre-post" filter could have warned him that an article with nearly identical terms was posted within the last 72 hours, with a link to the article that could be checked and verified to see if it was indeed the same (or very similar) article or not.
Just a suggestion -- this sort of thing happens, but it does have a way of bringing out the malcontents with their flamethrowers set to kill.
But before the malcontents scream too loudly: there is plenty of new stuff on/. to keep one busy. And remember, you can't beat the price of this particular magazine...
The Linux community gets bad press in large part because many of the traditional rags are more than a little dependent on advertising from such industry giants as Microsoft. Linux is the first viable competitor to the MS hegemony in years, and as such it represents a big, fat target regardless of the political or philisophical bent of its users and developers.
In any group as large as the user base of Linux (estimated between 5 and 20 million last I read), there will be those who spout tripe, insults, and are otherwise poor "representatives" of their respective opinions. This is true of MS Windows, Linux, BSD, beos, Macintosh, and probably just about every other product and operating system on the planet. The sometimes incredibly selective quoting of Linux advocates, taken from the bottom of the barrel is interesting, if only because it provides a great deal of insight into the attitudes and biases of those doing the quoting. While I would prefer it if Linux got better press, and if those more zealous and less diplomatic advocates would hold their toungs, I think most informed people realize that the lowest common denominotor quotations which so often appear are hardly representative of the community as a whole.
thank god for beos and bsd flavors. alternative operating systems with a leash on their respective communities.
If I want to wear a leash I'll go visit my dominatrix, thank you very much.
Der Idiot hat offenbar viel zu viel Kölsch getrunken...
(The idiot obviously had way too much Kölsch[1] Beer to drink.)
While I am normally against the death penalty, it does seem uniquely well suited for people like this, who not only try to get a free ride using someone elses work, but do so with deliberate, malicious intent to harm the communal good as widely as possible. Parasites of the lowest order. *sigh*
[1]Kölsch is a type of beer brewed in Cologne, the hometown of the fool trying to trademark "@"
I use.nu and have been pretty happy with them. $25/year, or as low as $20/year if you register for five years. The only catch is that they charge you $10 for each change, but my DNS servers rarely move so this isn't an issue for me.
I dumped jean-michel.com in favor of jean.nu, even though the suffix is much less well known -- the difference in service between the folks at.nu and NSI was that significant.
I looked into registering my name as a.us domain several years ago. The irritating thing about.us domains is that they are geographically organized. I may live in chi.il.us right now, but next month I could move to nyc.ny.us. In this event I'm either saddled with a domain that is long, cluttered, and doesn't even reflect reality, or I'm forced to change my domain name, only to quite possibly find someone else in the nyc.ny.us domain already has it.
Most other nations (e.g..uk,.au,.nl,.de) have wisely avoided this, either by subdomaining themselves along the "com", "edu", etc. heiarchy (e.g. co.uk) or by simply allowing more flexible domains beneath the national domain. I took advantage of this to get "jean.nu", though "jean.personal.us" or even "jean.liddle.private.us" would have been fine with me as well. "jean.chi.il.us" (even if it were still available) becomes really irritating when I've moved to nyc.ny.us. Of course, one could continue this rant forever, discussing the lack of relevance geography has with respect to the internet and the World Wide Web in the first place, but perhaps this is enough to communicate the reason why some (many?) of us aren't all that enthralled with the.us domain, even though the price is right...
1) The comments that the "information industry" supports net censorship is in the best light a distortion and more accurately an untruth of the highest order. Everyone from Microsoft to the smallest ISP has spoken out against censorship and the dangers it represents for the development of the internet and the industry as a whole
2) Even if the comment weren't completely untrue, the notion that "industry" supports a particular political stance should not be construed to imply that the stance is in any way morally or ethically OK, or even good for the populace as a whole. Much of Germany's industry supported and profited from Hitler's campaigns of atrocity through world war II. Much of the Serbian industrial leadership supported Milosevic's policies until recently (at least rhetorically). As another person mentioned, industry throughout the world vehemently resisited and actively circumvented the trade sanctions against apartheid, not to mention those against Iran, Iraq, and, yes, Serbia.
In short, if "industry" is defining our political and ethical agendas, we are not only in very big trouble, we are probably already lost.
One of the main problems is that it doesn't specifically define CT and why it is dangerous.
This is indeed the crux of the issue IMHO. In all of the debate and hysteria being bandied about regarding "cyberterrorism", I have yet to see a coherent, reasonable definition of just what cyberterrorism is? The absurd example of using Bin Laden's use of email and chatrooms to communicate with others as a form of cyberterrorism is clearly alarmist and silly, while the notion of remotely ordering a nuclear powerstation to melt down (hardly realistic perhaps, but an effective image) would certainly be included in any reasonable definition of cyberterrorism. On the other hand, a cracker shutting down the power gird of an entire city or multi-state area appears to fall somewhere in between (disruption and quite possibly mayhem is caused, but no life is directly attacked as such). What about public defacement of web pages? Terrorism? IMHO I hardly think so -- not a single life is threatened or directly attacked. It smacks more of vandalism or graffiti, yet such attacks are consistently used as "examples" of cyberterrorism.
Until reasonable definitions are agreed upon, and adhered to, as to what constitutes cyberterrorism vs., say, cyberwarfare, cybervandalism, cybertresspass, or cyber(information)theft, discussions and articles about this subject will continue to be offpoint, confused, and ultimately of little use in forming coherent policies to combat the threats that these and other criminal (cyber)activity pose. Perhaps the one thing that can be learned from such confusion is just how dangerous it is to allow one's propoganda and misuse of language (as evidenced by the extreme hype and demonization surrounding cracking and such loaded words as "cyberterrorism" all out of proportion to the actual damage or potential damage done) to define one's own thinking when trying to establish responsible and effective public policy.
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The film industry really should do an unbiased and intelligent analysis of the impact of emerging technologies on their product, if they want to actually protect their interests in a constructive and effective manner. Some points which should be considered.
- consumers have had the capability of recording and copying movies to their hearts' content since the advent of the VCR. Videophile and audiophiles may not be happy with the quality, but as far as the average consumer is concerned the quality is "close enough" to perfect. Despite this, movie makers have been selling and renting movies like hotcakes. Being able to copy DVDs will not change this at all
- commercial pirates, for whome the "infinite perfect copy" does make a difference, could already do this by using $5,000 DVD-Rs or buying their own DVD production equipment. One analog copy, reconverted to digital format, and they could produce an infinite supply of nearly perfect DVD copies for sale on the black market. This is a problem, but one which the cracking of the pathetically week css algorithm will not significantly affect.
- high-end consumers do not like having their technology "messed with." The destruction of DAT is an example of consumers refusing to buy into crippled technology. Likewise, DVD playback which is limited to Windows, or by region, is not only an invitation to hack, but worse, creates unnecessary bad relations between the seller and the consumer.
- finally, unlike the RIAA member companies, movie studios are not parasitical entities acting as a paid go-between between artists and their customers. They provide the capital, resources, and equipment for shooting films and play a very necessary role of the art form. Contrast this to the music industry, whose contribution to the art form, beyond providing a distribution channel they happen to enjoy a monopoly on, and perhaps a place to record and master (which any technically savvy musician can do in their own home), is negligable at best and quite often destructive. This suggests that the movie studios aren't nearly as vulnerable to artists switching to an internet medium and cutting them out of the loop as the RIAA member companies are, and have a lot less to fear from open internet standards and distribution channels than their record company counterparts.
Even with copyable DVDs the film industry has little to fear. The target they should be most worried about -- the professional "industrial strength" pirates -- is the group least affected by these developments. The fear that the grassroots mp3 warez phenominon will happen with DVDs is unwarrented, not only because of bandwidth and storage limitations, but also because of a difference in consumer habits, and a fundamental difference in the relationship of the affected artists and consumers with the movie studios vs. the music industry.
Right now computer professionals of all kinds (yes, even MSCE weenies) are in very high demand. This places us in a position of strength when negotiating our contracts, not just in terms of wages, but in terms of other conditions as well. Even back in the early 90s, when demand (and compensation) was lower, I refused to sign non-compete clauses. While this may have cost me one particular opportunity or another, it did not seriously hamper my ability to get a job and make a good living.
An immediate gain is not worth the potentially crippling of one's career down the road, and immobility through a required 1 year hiatus gives your employer far too much of an advantage should you become dissatisfied with the job in any way (wages, working conditions, working hours, toxic boss, or relocation to name just a few possibilities). Far better to shop around a little longer than hamstring oneself by signing such an agreement, even if it impacts one's credit rating a little.
Sad, but true.
I work (well, am actually a member of) an LLC with a very flat management structure. All of the technical people have the job title of "Systems Engineer" whether we program, manage the telecom system, the LAN, or the WAN. Since most of us wear multiple hats, anything more specific would be deceptive anyway. "Glorified Computer Nerd" would probably be more accurate (and would probably help to weed out perspective employees who are humor impaired if put on one's resume), but even that would be too specific, as some of us manage the phone system as well.
Titles really aren't that meaningful -- any smart employer is going to pay much more attention to the job description, and descriptions of past projects, when looking over resumes, than the job title. I still can't believe people will actually accept job title upgrades/changes in liue of a raise -- indeed, I wouldn't have believed it at all if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, at a previous job. Personally, I work for money, not prestige. My good luck that I was able to make a hobby a career, and really enjoy what I do, and as long as the pay is right, I don't care if they call me "Systems Engineer" or "Computer Custodian".
PS - I like your naming convention!
Freedom of naming our servers is a fundamental systems admin right! They'll take that away when the pry my trackball from my cold, dead hand!
...
:-)
Our naming convention is to name all Windows boxes after dinasaurs (guess why?), all sun workstations and servers after stars (ok, that's kind of boring, but millionair names kept getting more and more diffuclt to come up with and spell, even if you do have to be one to own one of those machines yourself), linux boxes after countries, with some exceptions for firewall, routers, and the like
Of course, since I define that stuff, I'm free to change it at will. The names do sound reasonably professional, and only insiders really understand why that flakey NT box, due to be phased out soon, is called stegosaurus.
ARGH! I should have reread my previous post one more time before submitting it! It reads like I'm disagreeing with the post I followed up to, when in fact I agree with and merely wanted to expand upon one of the author's points ...
Acessing Defense Data, Defendent 000000.
...
... and the young lives they will harm, possibly even destroy. If the overreaction on the part of school and government beaurocrats after the Colombine incident (not to mention numerous other witch hunts in recent history) is any indication, I think it is absurdly naive and optomistic to expect this sort of test to be applied in anything even remotely resembling an approprate use. Frankly, I find this sort of institutionalized stamping and labelling of children to be a far bigger threat to their ability to grow up and become productive members of society (whatever disadvantages they may start out with) than an entire army of drug dealers combing the hallways for new customers would be.
Accessing Prosecution Data, Defendent 000000.
Processing, Defendent 000000
GUILTY
Pupil: "I know my rights! I have a right to an attourney, and a real court of law!"
Administration: "You're a problem child. You don't have any rights."
This is a paraphrase of a scene from a Max Headroom episode ("Blanks"). I always considered this to be one of the less realistic, and less prophetic episodes of the show (many of the other themes, such as organ theft, pervasive monitoring and security, and economic crimes carrying heavier punishments than violent crimes, have come true a scant 10-15 years later to varying degrees).
Funny, how that which we least expect to _ever_ be tolerated, has now become accepted, even defended, in a forum where one would expect people to be more acutely aware of just how destructive this kind of thing can be. It isn't about geeks, it's about all of us (and this includes geeks). Geeks may be marginally more vulnerable, being slightly outside of the mythical, homoginized average, but everyone is a potential victim of the misuse of this kind of thing, and if history is any indication, misuse is exactly what we can expect.
Labelling children as "troubled" or not, with or without the adjective "potential", is destructive. People have a tendency to live up (or down) to the expectations society has for them. Even a potentially troubled child can end up being a positive influence in their school and community with the right support and expectations. I fear, however, that the label this screening will place on many children will make that kind of positive outcome much more difficult, if not impossible. In many cases it will probably insure a negative outcome where such would not have been the case otherwise. Then, of course, there are the inevitable false positives
Thank you.
I wouldn't normally post an "I agree" comment, but since I'm the one being accused of having never used NT and not understanding it I will add the following comments:
- I never implied there was no Administrator account, just that any user can make the system vulnerable. This is true (as Gangr33n pointed out), and the existence of the Adminsitrator account may obfuscate that unpleasant fact, but the fact remains nevertheless.
- I have and do administer NT boxes at work (they are thankfully being phased out in favor of Linux) and am all too familiar with just how riddled with holes the entire security structure is. There are plenty of things non-Administrator users are capable of doing which they shouldn't be, and which must be manually disabled after each install. Even after wading through countless FAQs, MS web pages, service packs, etc. you can not even be reasonably confident you've gotten everything.
- I used NT at home for video capture before dumping it in favor of Linux, and had more opportunity to become intimate with how crappy it is.
In short, there is nothing untruthful, or half-untruthful, about anything I said, although I do agree there are plenty of reasons for hating NT that I didn't mention.
In response to your points (I'll be brief because it's late Friday and the weekend summons...)
:-) Have a good weekend!
1. Slash and burn agriculture is untenable in all but the shortest term, for obvious reasons. Yet people do it every day. The fact that poeple are doing something untenable, and have been for a while, doesn't prove, or even necessarilly imply, that the activity is tenable.
I concurr with Alan Cox that using a proprietary OS is untenable for a business, for reasons he stated much more eloquently than I. This is why *bsd and Linux projects have arisen, and are having such success. The business I work for is a strong example of this, and by no means unique.
2. I agree. I think we're arguing the same point from two different directions. I would add that educating management to place more emphesis on solutions and real-world, tangable protection rather than securing an avenue of blame would be more productive. One would likely have to bypass middle management to pull this off, however.
3. I did not mean to imply that there is no place for proprietary software (I use and run a number of commercial apps, including AcceleratedX despite my non-fondness of xig, various games, Word Perfect and Star Office). Alan Cox's arguments (and my rebuttal to yours) were intended to point out the very deep problems with using a proprietary OPERATING SYSTEM as the foundation upon which a company rests, and the dangers inherent in proprietary products of any kind. Using a commercial word processor, cad program, or whatever because it meets your needs and is available is not the same as being held hostage by an OS vendor who has decided their bottom line would be helped by forcing you to upgrade, ready or not. Though I should add, many of the same inherent dangers do exist and should be taken into account (which they generally are not), such as orphaing, build in obsolescence, and forced upgrades. Alan argues, and I concurr, that Windows et. al. basically are not the right product, for anyone (in a business sense). I think he is right. I also think that the majority of people who are suffering real-world business dysfunctions and monetary losses and are at present extremely vulnerable to their vendors don't realize this yet. One hopes that most will survive the unpleasant lessons ahead and learn accordingly. We did, but it wasn't fun, and it is a lesson I would spare others if I could.
Well, so much for being brief.
You really don't get it, do you?
Under windows 95/98/NT any USER can install a trojan, making the entire system vulnerable to attack.
Under Linux, BSD, and other systems which limits common user's rights and priveleges by default, the user can only damage that to which they have priveleges -- i.e. their own private home directory. Only root can cause systemwide harm, and the root account is restricted to a limited number of people (usually just one or two), and only used for specific system maintenance. Normal users are NEVER given root priveleges in a corporate environment. Even home users of Linux are guided through the process of creating a user account to use for everyday purposes, logging in as root only to do system maintenance (which is very rarely required, I might add).
In other words, if Joe Slacker emails Jim Clueless a self installing copy of BO[2K], and Jim Clueless opens the email on his windows box and foolishly (or curiously) clicks on the attachment, the software installs itself and the box is now vulnerable. Whats worse, some default windows installations will run the software and allow it to install without even requiring Jim Clueless to click the attachment!
On the other hand, if Jane Slacker emails Janice Clueless a self installing (no such thing at present) copy of LinuxTrojan, and Janice clicks on the attachment and installs the software, she can at most harm her own home directory. The rest of the system, to which she does not have write priveleges, is not vulnerable, nor are the other twenty users sharing it with her.
This is just one example of how the windows security model is fundamentally broken, and it is unlikely that any number of kludges or quick fixes will be able to repare it in a reliable manner, short of scrapping the entire thing and building a more secure system from the bottom up (perhaps using BSD code as a starting point). If the example above doesn't make the difference clear, I suggest checking out the numerouse security related web pages and news groups for in-depth analysis and discussions relating to computer security in general and Unix vs. Windows security in particular.
Though I disagree with your conclusions, you do make a valid point. The more "accessible" Linux becomes, through easy install, package management, newbie-friendly GUIs, and so forth, the less knowledgable ("brain damaged" to use your colorful expression) the average Linux user will be. This does bring with it a whole host of potential issues on how to preserve and improve Linux's good reputation WRT security. OpenBSD has IMHO found the correct approach, by being proactive about security issues. There is no reason this is incompatable with a system of managed .rpm or .deb packages, but it does require improvements to the underlying default configurations which have not been made yet.
.rpms, and .debs for all their various distributions. We all benefit from a level of responsiveness and security which Microsoft will be lucky to achieve sometime late in the next millenium. By adopting the improvements of other products, like OpenBSD, we can keep them green with envy until the universe goes cold, implodes, or whatever ...
We can fix it ourselves. The beauty of it is, when a security flaw is found, someone does fix it, and the fix propogates as tarballs,
However, I can't agree with his conclusion. He argues that running a proprietary OS is untenable. This isn't really realistic.
I must respectfully disagree. I can confirm Alan Cox's point about proprietary OSes being untanable from a strategic business perspective from personal experience.
The things that made running a proprietary OS untenable for the company I work for (a trading company with millions of dollars at stake every minute of the day) don't just include stability, reliability, and speed, although these ARE very important, and few proprietary OSes have managed to achieve Linux and FreeBSD's levels of performance in any of these three regards. The problem with proprietary OSes is that they can and do become orphaned, often much sooner than the customer can cope with. Either the company goes out of business, drops the line altogether, or forces the customer into a series of upgrades which are not compatible with their business plan or objectives. Examples include the demise of NextOS, the forced migration from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (which actually drove some companies out of business), not to mention variouse versions of NT, and Sun's deprication of SunOS in favor of Solaris (which in its early incarnations was vastly inferior in most respects). At best it cost their customers vast amounts of money in lost productivity, time, and licensing fees, at worst it led to the companies actually going out of business.
With Open Source operating systems (and software in general) this is not an issue. We have Linux 1.2.x boxes which have been running for years. If we needed to, we could patch the source code of the os itself and never upgrade to 2.0 or 2.2. When we do upgrade, it will be on our schedule, as we require and see fit. And we always have the option of hiring programmers to maintain the OS and any other open source software we require indefinitely, should the Linux community somehow vanish in the next few years (a meteor impact destroying all life is more likely). The publicly available support insures that, even if all the systems engineers were killed in a car wreck, newly hired people could ask for and get help on the net and elsewhere, even for someting as old as Linux 1.2.13.
However, that mechanism, while typically very responsive, isn't truly "responsible", in that no-one is required to support anything.
The only way someone is "responsible" for supporting you is if you purchase a suport contract, in which case the contract itself clearly spells out legal responsibilities on both sides. Such a contract is just as binding on a new startup as it is an established, entrenched firm. In fact, you'll generally find the new startup working harder to provide good service that the more entrenched entity (I have vast experience with this phenominon and can provide specific examples too numerous for this forum if you wish).
In addition, if you check the licensing terms of any of the proprietary operating systems available today, you will see that they not only do not guaruntee support, they don't guaruntee the thing will even boot or, if it does, that it won't destroy all of your hard work, and your company along with it. Any sense of security management might have by believing their lawsuites will bring them anything is illusionary, and for that precious illusion you have sacrificed many of the real, tangible protections an open source solution would have given you.
But closed-source is, for now, the way some organizations and individuals will go, and I have trouble saying to them, "You're wrong."
I would submit that the problem is with you or the situation you are in, that prevents you from making recommendations which you imply you feel are better, because of political concerns. (This is not intended as a flame. I've been in that situation myself and can relate all too well in how uncomfortable it is.) Yes, by recommending open source you are sticking your neck out and taking responsibility that the system will work. This isn't as comfortable as being able to say "yeah, another Microsoft product that's flakey, it is Bill Gates fault." But don't forget, there was also once a time when "no one got fired for buying IBM," but after that time had passed, ironically, many people did in fact get fired specifically for buying IBM, at inflated prices, while their competitors bought competing products with more capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Those on the tail end of that curve paid dearly, with their jobs. I would submit the same will be true of those on the tail end of the "no one got fired for buying [insert proprietry software/os of your choice here]," and that the tail end of that particular curve is very close indeed.
Organizations that lock themselves into inferior solutions because managers are more interested in protecting their own assess through a readilly available chain of blame, at the expense of the company's ability to compete and protect itself against the vagaries of a volitile and fickle marketplace, will in the end find themselves at a terrible disadvantage in their respective industries when going up against firms that do have more solid technical foundations. If nothing else, it is that very disadvantage which will force change, by either requiring the entities in question to adapt, or to cease to exist. This has already worked very much to our advantage in our particular industry, much to my personal delight (and benefit).
...who can?t write...CEO?s...who?s CEO ?qualifies? for ?celebrity? status...
Please use the demoronizer to get rid of these gratuitious question marks in favor of OSI standard (not M$ knockoff) quotes. Although your post made some good points, it took every once of self control to continue reading to the end with such irritating and distracting characters peppered throughout, and it makes you look far less intelligent than your comments imply.
Why bother with Linux for your grandfather? Is it some techie pride that you must install Linux
everywhere possible?
I cannot answer for the original person who answered the question, but as one who has given Linux to his own mother, his sister, and numerous non-computer literate friends, I can tell you that, yes, technical pride plays a role. I want my family and friends to have systems they can use and enjoy, as opposed to something which is crash prone, difficult to maintain, and suffers notorious "bit-rot" over time, ultimately resulting in a required reinstall. In addition, I do not want to be fielding tech support calls on how to fix this or that misfeature of Windows, especially on my time off. With Linux, I almost never get calls at all, and when I do, they are questions like "how do I do xxx?" which takes about two seconds to answer, vs. "My Windows system is broken, how do I fix it" which takes anywhere from a few minutes to a trip to reinstall the once-again corrupted OS because dll blah was overwritten by the new version of MS Office).
As an example of someone like the original poster's grandfather, I have a friend (another pilot) who was sick of Windows crashing nearly every time he tried to access the net or do serious work with his IFR flight simulator. I told him about Linux (and the free software philosophy in general) and he was very excited to try it. So one Saturday evening, before going out to Exit to party the night away, we installed Debian Linux on his system. He was on the internet in no time, at which point we downloaded Star Office and FlightGear. The Flight Simulator isn't yet usable for serious IFR work (no panel), but as a toy it is fantastic. Star Office and Netscape fulfill his other needs, and his system has never crashed on him (it's been several months now). He has said on several occasions that he will never go back to windows -- and this is despite the fact that he knows little to nothing about Linux and how to administer it, and despite the fact that his favorite flight simulator does not run under Linux (he won't even dual boot anymore to run the simulator, as he gets too angry when, inevitably, Windows decides to head south during a particularly challenging approach procedure).
and I can bet that the performance will not suffer regardless of the OS on the
machine
I would take that bet in a second. If you are using Windows, your performance will suffer with systems crashes (occasional if you never install new software, more frequent if you do) and slower overall speed, to name two. Under FreeBSD or Linux, this will not be the case. Install any one of several friendly X GUI's and the user won't care, except in as much as their system will be both faster and much, much more stable. Where on earth have you been, to believe that the OS makes no difference in a computer's performance (or did I completely misunderstand what you were saying)?
As an athiest I find it very amusing to be suggesting that you check out a passage in the Bible, of all places. However, the Christians have a very apropos parable which should explain to you the fundamental flaw in your reasoning.
When using an operating system as poorly designed, buggy, unreliable, and proprietary (with all that implies: constantly moving technical targets for strategic business reasons, adding to the instability of the product and breaking dependent code -- i.e. programs, etc.) as, say, Microsoft Windows, you are essentially building your house upon a foundation of sand. It may be a very pretty house, with snazzy features that would make any home owner green with envy. But alas, after the first big tide, it will be little more than driftwood.
It doesn't matter how well written your CAD program is, if the operating system it is running on is so unreliable and crash-prone that you are frequently losing hours of work. Add to that the time and money forced upgrades your vendor requires you to make in order to "remain supported", and you have an ideal scenerio for flushing a great quantity of cash and time which would have otherwise been productive down the toilet, directly into your vendors pockets. It may not even be the CAD manufacturer's fault, since they are more than likely chasing a target which Microsoft is moving every few months.
Add the complexity of wanting to use two or three independent apps, which depend on the same, moving platform (but aren't necessarilly being released on the same timetable), and you have a situation wherein at any given time one or more of the apps are incompatable with the very version of the OS the other apps require!
The OS is the very foundation of your system. Ignore it at your own peril.
Amen brother! Why use lossy compression with that kind of space. Simply digitize the sample raw and, at most, bzip2 it ... absolute clarity. Resample as mp3 for the car unit as required ...
We use xig's AcceleratedX 5.x to provide multi-headed support. However, it is not at all stable with Red Hat 6.1 (though it is fine with Red Hat 6.0 and Debian 1.2). If you want an example, try running kpackage, then slide the scroll bar for the package tree up and down. You'll be logging in and rebooting remotely in no time!
We use AcceleratedX because it works with our multi-headed hardware today, but we are keeping a very close eye on XFree and anxiously awaiting 4.0 and xenerama as a possible replacement down the road, with plans to switch when XFree 4.0 is stable and well tested.
AcceleratedX's strengths are its early access to hardware specs (providing support for hardware XFree doesn't) and the features it offers today which XFree doesn't yet (multiheaded support being the critical one for us). It is IMHO very foolish of xig to sling mud like this. Their market is comprised of Linux users, many of whom (myself included) take offense at that kind of ridicule against an Open Source project, especially when the ridicule is nothing more than FUD of the worst kind -- something Linux users and administrators are very good at seeing through.
Privacy protection in the United States is extremely third world when compared to that afforded citizens of most other developed countries. Companies routinely SELL one another comprehensive data about us, including our likes, dislikes, interests, and purchasing patterns.
Other countries (such as Germany for example) have very strict laws regulating just how personal information may be used, and severely curtailing the dissemination of the aforsaid information. This sort of regulation, protecting the privacy of the individual, is not only appropriate, it is desperately needed here in the United States and elsewhere. To imply that a satelite snooping into your back yard or through the skylight of your house (or through the roof, if they've got infrared) is the same as glancing across the street at someone entering a grocery store from a public walkway is disingenuous at best. To then argue that therefor any additional or modernized regulations to protect personal privacy is pointless is itself absurd.
The technology which has been developed in the last fifteen or twenty years to allow people to invade one another's privacy would have been unbelievable even a generation ago. Unfortunately legislation to protect our private lives from the prying eyes of corporations, government, or simply rude, snoopy people has not changed significantly in that time. Public apathy, coupled with an appetite for gossip and snooping, and powerful lobbies (broadcasters and direct mail marketers to name two) have helped insure that our privacy has been wittled down to almost nothing. If a satelite taking pictures of some topless sunbathers in the privacy of their own back yard will elicit public interest in this issue, then by all means start taking some pictures!
You make a very good point about the difference in states of mind a person is in when watching TV vs. using a computer, be it for gaming, surfing, serious work, or whatever.
:-))
However, I think your conclusion is wrong.
When I want to watch DVD (on a laptop in an airplane, or on my TV), I use my computer's DVD player to do so. When I want to listen to music (perhaps when I'm reading, or just vegging) I use my computer to play random songs from a rather large collection of MP3's (all legally copied from my own, purchased collection, of course).
The most serious drawback I see to settop boxes right now is the horrible resolution of today's televisions. Replace them with an HDTV set, or a large flastscreen monitor with good resolution, and that problem goes away. At that point, combining the two appliances (computer and tv) into one makes a great deal of sense.
Add to that the desirability to click on an icon to watch you're favorite TV show "on-demand" (rather than remembering to tape it or making sure to be at home at such and such a time), and you have the potential for a very, very appealing product. Of course, for this to succeed, they need:
- much more bandwidth, capable of delivering on-demand video and audio
- much higher resolution TVs or monitors
- a stronger emphesis on open "internet-like" standards, rather than closed and copy-protected "consumer electronic" standards such as DVD
- competitive pricing for hardware, net access, and video-on-demand offerings. (Downloading a movie shouldn't cost more than renting it at the store, for example.)
I would argue a "pay-per-view TV shows sans commercials" option would be, while not a requirement, the kind of "killer feature" that would attract many potential customers. I'd willingly pay $3.00 an episode to watch my favorite TV show without commercial interruptions. For shows I'm less fond of (or not interested in taping for my own archive) I'd be willing to watch the commercial in exchange for a free viewing.
I do think computers will "combine" (or replace) most consumer home entertainment electronics. Attempts at crippling the home entertainment product's capabilities (remember DAT?) will only accelerate this trend. Which side the "set-top" boxes find themselves on will go along way toward determining whether they represent a unique step forward, or an obscure curiosity ignored by consumers in favor of other, more capable products (like a PC with a DVD drive, a big hard disk, and a long S-Video cable
This is something a script probably ought to be able to catch, or at least help point out. Clearly hemos didn't know roblimo had already posted this Saturday, but perhaps some kind of a "pre-post" filter could have warned him that an article with nearly identical terms was posted within the last 72 hours, with a link to the article that could be checked and verified to see if it was indeed the same (or very similar) article or not.
/. to keep one busy. And remember, you can't beat the price of this particular magazine ...
Just a suggestion -- this sort of thing happens, but it does have a way of bringing out the malcontents with their flamethrowers set to kill.
But before the malcontents scream too loudly: there is plenty of new stuff on
In any group as large as the user base of Linux (estimated between 5 and 20 million last I read), there will be those who spout tripe, insults, and are otherwise poor "representatives" of their respective opinions. This is true of MS Windows, Linux, BSD, beos, Macintosh, and probably just about every other product and operating system on the planet. The sometimes incredibly selective quoting of Linux advocates, taken from the bottom of the barrel is interesting, if only because it provides a great deal of insight into the attitudes and biases of those doing the quoting. While I would prefer it if Linux got better press, and if those more zealous and less diplomatic advocates would hold their toungs, I think most informed people realize that the lowest common denominotor quotations which so often appear are hardly representative of the community as a whole.
thank god for beos and bsd flavors. alternative operating systems with a leash on their respective communities.
If I want to wear a leash I'll go visit my dominatrix, thank you very much.
Der Idiot hat offenbar viel zu viel Kölsch getrunken ...
(The idiot obviously had way too much Kölsch[1] Beer to drink.)
While I am normally against the death penalty, it does seem uniquely well suited for people like this, who not only try to get a free ride using someone elses work, but do so with deliberate, malicious intent to harm the communal good as widely as possible. Parasites of the lowest order. *sigh*
[1]Kölsch is a type of beer brewed in Cologne, the hometown of the fool trying to trademark "@"
I dumped jean-michel.com in favor of jean.nu, even though the suffix is much less well known -- the difference in service between the folks at .nu and NSI was that significant.
I looked into registering my name as a .us domain several years ago. The irritating thing about .us domains is that they are geographically organized. I may live in chi.il.us right now, but next month I could move to nyc.ny.us. In this event I'm either saddled with a domain that is long, cluttered, and doesn't even reflect reality, or I'm forced to change my domain name, only to quite possibly find someone else in the nyc.ny.us domain already has it.
.uk, .au, .nl, .de) have wisely avoided this, either by subdomaining themselves along the "com", "edu", etc. heiarchy (e.g. co.uk) or by simply allowing more flexible domains beneath the national domain. I took advantage of this to get "jean.nu", though "jean.personal.us" or even "jean.liddle.private.us" would have been fine with me as well. "jean.chi.il.us" (even if it were still available) becomes really irritating when I've moved to nyc.ny.us. Of course, one could continue this rant forever, discussing the lack of relevance geography has with respect to the internet and the World Wide Web in the first place, but perhaps this is enough to communicate the reason why some (many?) of us aren't all that enthralled with the .us domain, even though the price is right ...
Most other nations (e.g.
1) The comments that the "information industry" supports net censorship is in the best light a distortion and more accurately an untruth of the highest order. Everyone from Microsoft to the smallest ISP has spoken out against censorship and the dangers it represents for the development of the internet and the industry as a whole
2) Even if the comment weren't completely untrue, the notion that "industry" supports a particular political stance should not be construed to imply that the stance is in any way morally or ethically OK, or even good for the populace as a whole. Much of Germany's industry supported and profited from Hitler's campaigns of atrocity through world war II. Much of the Serbian industrial leadership supported Milosevic's policies until recently (at least rhetorically). As another person mentioned, industry throughout the world vehemently resisited and actively circumvented the trade sanctions against apartheid, not to mention those against Iran, Iraq, and, yes, Serbia.
In short, if "industry" is defining our political and ethical agendas, we are not only in very big trouble, we are probably already lost.
One of the main problems is that it doesn't specifically define CT and why it is dangerous.
This is indeed the crux of the issue IMHO. In all of the debate and hysteria being bandied about regarding "cyberterrorism", I have yet to see a coherent, reasonable definition of just what cyberterrorism is? The absurd example of using Bin Laden's use of email and chatrooms to communicate with others as a form of cyberterrorism is clearly alarmist and silly, while the notion of remotely ordering a nuclear powerstation to melt down (hardly realistic perhaps, but an effective image) would certainly be included in any reasonable definition of cyberterrorism. On the other hand, a cracker shutting down the power gird of an entire city or multi-state area appears to fall somewhere in between (disruption and quite possibly mayhem is caused, but no life is directly attacked as such). What about public defacement of web pages? Terrorism? IMHO I hardly think so -- not a single life is threatened or directly attacked. It smacks more of vandalism or graffiti, yet such attacks are consistently used as "examples" of cyberterrorism.
Until reasonable definitions are agreed upon, and adhered to, as to what constitutes cyberterrorism vs., say, cyberwarfare, cybervandalism, cybertresspass, or cyber(information)theft, discussions and articles about this subject will continue to be offpoint, confused, and ultimately of little use in forming coherent policies to combat the threats that these and other criminal (cyber)activity pose. Perhaps the one thing that can be learned from such confusion is just how dangerous it is to allow one's propoganda and misuse of language (as evidenced by the extreme hype and demonization surrounding cracking and such loaded words as "cyberterrorism" all out of proportion to the actual damage or potential damage done) to define one's own thinking when trying to establish responsible and effective public policy.