LINK CORRECTION... [debian.org]... should be... [slackware.com]
heh!
But of course, that should actually read:
I'll just stick to the bestdistributions and watch the fun from afar
[grin]
Seriously, though, it is this choice that allows you to use and enjoy slackware, and me to use and enjoy Source Mage and Gentoo, others to use and enjoy Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, and so on, that makes the GNU/Linux community, and the Free Software community in general, so dynamic and so productive.
It is this choice the efforts like UL are trying to undermine, by promoting the myth that commercial and proprietary software vendors should (or need to) package their wares up for one or two reference distributions, rather than packaging them up in a distribution-agnostic manner as Blender, VMWare, Id, and Loki have done. This myth may serve the interests of the distribution promoters in question (in this case, UL), but it is a disservice to the GNU/Linux community as a whole by creating unneeded incompatabilities with other distributions and excercizing some degree of coercion for people to adopt the reference distribution instead. What is more, as other binary releases have proven, it is absolutly unnecessary.
It behooves us all, slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, and Source Mage enthusiasts alike, to stand up and make sure the word gets out to commercial vendors that they can, and should, package their software in a distribution-agnostic manner so that they can target their entire marketplace, and not just a portion thereof, by packaging their software in standard tarballs, documenting precisely which versions of which dynamically linked libraries their software requires, and providing a statically linked binary-of-last-resort in parallel that will run regardless (this is important as distros mature and the old version of the software remains desirable anyway, so it not only allows any distro access to the software, it also provides insurance that the software will run on most any GNU/Linux distro 5 years hence, or even longer, long after the state of the art has moved a great deal further along).
Best distro eh? Thats just *begging* to begin a flame war!
Well, yes, considering the best distros can be found here and here.
Personally I like the idea of United Linux. There's no reason that all Linux venders can't use the same base for rpm compatibility, etc. It'll hapen one way or another. Do you want one company to control the standards, or a shared effort?
I think the idea of UL is horribly flawed (and rather arrogant on its part), and the underlying premise of your reasoning for supporting UL equally flawed.
It isn't necessary to have One True packaging scheme, or One True distro to which all must maintain binary compatability, in order to effectively release binaries.
It has already been demonstrated by the folks at Blender, VMWare, Id, Loki, and others that it is quite possible to release binaries that are distribution agnostic. These real world examples, all of which install and run just fine on my Source Mage and Gentoo boxes, as well as my Debian, Mandrake, and Suse boxes, exist despite naysayers saying it isn't possible, and claiming that UL, or UL+Red Hat, bring a much needed cohesion to GNU/Linux.
Nonsense. It is an effort to impose a proprietary embrace-and-extended standard on a community that is doing just fine with consensual standards where they make sense, and a wide open, free and fair marktetplace that encourages choice everywhere else.
Telling commercial vendors that they should package their wares up as RPMs aimed at one (or two) distributions, when it is quite possible, and vastly more desirable, to package them up in standard tar.bz2 or tar.gz format along with a README listing the required libraries+versions, as well as a statically linked "last resort" fallback binary in parallel with the dynamically linked binary and thereby make them compatible with almost every distribution out there, is a terrible disservice to both the Linux community at large, and the vendors themselves who are being misled and excluding a big chunk of their target market.
This nonsense only serves the interests of the purveyors of UL, at the expense of virtually everyone else, and at the cost of our freedom of choice as GNU/Linux users. There is IMHO absolutely nothing good about this whatsoever, regardless of what your favorite distro happens to be, and even though I am not a Mandrake fan per se, I applaud them for their courage in standing up to this nonsense.
Interesting idea, but according to Goodwin's Law, the first party in a discussion to mention "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion.
Godwins Law is a joke.
Seriously, it was a tounge in cheek joke about USENET flames of its day. It was never considered by its creator to be an actual, accurate commentary on internet speech, much less some deeply wise insight into the human psyche, and certainly not as a new "rule" of debate.
In other words, Godwins Law was never intended to be used as relative newcomers to the net have come to use it today: to make the most potent lessons of modern history offlimits to any discussion that might benefit from contemplating those lessons, not least of which is a discussion of technology that is designed to excersize draconian prior restraint on how and perhaps even when people can use their own property, within their own home, by a large, convicted monopolist.
NAZIWARE is the most appropriate term I've heard for Palladium/DRM since this entire debate began a few months ago. We should not dismiss it because of some misguided references to a tired old joke being bandied about as though they were some kind of deep Internet Wisdom.
Trains were not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to get from point a to point b, a train just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for trains would need to be made.
It could be argued that "the internet is not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to communicate with one another across great distances, the internet just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for the internet would need to be made."
Do we need laws to govern the internet? I would say that it is unlikely that we do, and that at the very least we need to proceed very, very carefully. Far better to pass a needed law too late, than to pass unnecessary, and harmful, legislation too early.
Do we need to restrict speech on the internet? No, not any more than we need to in real life.
What about child pornography? Already illegal... apply the same law to the net as you would to physical copies of the same crap in the real world.
What about commerce? Our existing interstate commerce laws, tax regimes, etc. are more than sufficient and can be applied equally to online commerce as they are to brick and morter commerce. Buying something online should be no different, legally, than picking up the phone and ordering someting by voice.
What about 'online stalking.?' No different than making obscene or prank phone calls in the real world, or verbally harassing someone in person
What about the children?!? They are in no greater danger than they are when they are out on a public street, and just like in the physical world, it is the parent's responsibility to see to their children's safety, not the government, and certainly not at the expense of my constitutional rights.
I could go on and list virtually every subject which gets raised WRT the "need" to regulate the internet, and in each case point out that the application of existing law is more than sufficient to keep society on roughly the same even keel it has generally been all along.
The problem is that the media and copyright cartels see an opportunity to grab immense power, power that the courts (and even congress) has deliberately denied them in the past. However, the ludditism of Hollywood, the digital illiteracy of congress, and the legalized bribery we call campaign financing have all come together to produce a very dangerous mixture of political cluelessness and political will that may just result in these very powers being extended, with manditory DRM technology enshringing Microsoft's desktop monopoly into law and granting those very same Hollywood Luddites veto powers over the deployment of all new consumer technologies.
This should scare the shit out of any clear thinking individual.
You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property.
No, you can't. That sentance is in direct conflict with the very definition of stealing, as has been rehashed here and elsewhere numerous times.
Copyright Violation is not theft. It is not recognized as theft by the law or by any of the freely accessible dictionaries online.
In fact, the only place where copyright violation is considered theft is in the minds, and newspeak, of the copyright cartels, and those who thoughtlessly echo their propoganda.
Even in a nation increasingly afflicted with fictitious legal absurdities (like equating a corporation with a real, thinking, breathing person) we haven't even gone so far as to equate copyright violation and theft.
We should not engage in the absurd, legal fiction that communication over the internet is somehow fundamentally different than communication by telegraph, telephone, fax, snail mail, or an in person meeting over lunch. Fundamentally it isn't any different, it is merely more effecient.
Unfortunatly some of the fault rests with the government in this case. They really don't leave the company that much of a choice, either sue the people who are using it in a generic way, or lose substantial rights to the mark.
You make an intersting point. I think the best fix would be something as follows:
Limit the duration of a trademark to some relatively short time, e.g. 10 years.
Require active protection of the trademark in the commercial setting, but explicitly disallow the suing of individuals for using the term in a "generic" sense.
Allow trademarks to be renewed, but disallow renewal for trademarks that have entered the mainstream language in a generic fashion (e.g. Xerox, Kleenex).
It is intolerable that letigious thuggary can be used to coerce the common use of language. If (for example) SnowBlowz become a generic term for nasal drip suppressent, then the company can revert to "Johnson & Johnson SnowBlowz" as their trademark instead.
This regime that encourages, even requires, the wholesale attack of individuals by corporations for using their trademark in common everyday language is absolutely intolerable.
With all due respect, even having some temptation to kill someone just because you don't like the way he distributes a freaking MUSIC CD totally kills your entire argument. What he is doing is legal and perfectly moral. He is trying to protect the property that he is responsible for.
What he is doing is trying to legislate away most, if not all, of my personal autonomy and freedom in the digital sphere (which, these days, is a sizable portion of our lives) in order to protect his personal cartel.
This may be legal (but that isn't a given. Indeed, what he, Hollings, and others are doing may in fact be very illegal, if you accept the premise that it is unconstitutional. Conspiring to violate the highest law of the land is very arguably an illegal act), but it is most certainly not moral and it does constitute a very real attack on me, personally.
Hence, the temptation is very justified and even quite reasonable, even if acting on it wouldn't be.
You may disagree with how they are doing business, but ANY desire to kill Jack Valenti for such a trivial reason is just as sick as the guy willing to hit the button for money.
The peasant is not actively working to oppress me, personally. Jack Valenti is. The two examples are not even remotely similiar. You may disagree with the validity of my being tempted to off Mr. Valenti for his efforts to abridge and in some cases eradicate our personal freedoms, but you cannot reasonably argue that killing him is identical to killing a nameless, harmless peasant in a distant country who has never, ever caused, me direct harm, and likely has never even wanted to. Jack Valenti, on the other hand, is causing harm and is doing everything he can to cause even more.
All that having been said, I agree that killing him would be a reprehensible act... but that doesn't mean the temptation isn't there, particularly as the authoritarian fist that is the media and copyright cartels, backed by the force of our government, closes ever tighter on each of our lives. And it certainly doesn't mean being tempted to kill him is somehow equivelent, or even remotely as sick as, being tempted to kill an innocent elsewhere in the world.
Apple doesn't consider Macs as being PCs. In their commercials all comparisons are made Mac to PC (although it's obvious they are just bashing Windows, even though they only say "PC")
Apple may not consider their Macs as being personal computers (PCs), but just because their marketing department is trying to disassiate their product with what it is doesn't make it so.
Apple Macintoshes are personal computers.
And though their marketing bashes Windows (and Intel, since they say WINTEL), it is clearly designed to imply one must dump the hardware to be free of Microsoft, which anyone who runs FreeBSD or GNU/Linux knows to be a false implication.
If the total is just PCs, what about Macintoshes and other non-PC computers?
PC:= Personal Computer
Macintoshes are PCs, just as Ataris, AT&T 3b2s, etc. were. Just because they aren't WINTEL boxes doesn't mean they aren't personal computers, marketing newspeak drivel (from both the Intel and Apple camps) aside.
That having been said, your question is a good one: does that statistic include non-intel PCs such as Macintosh, and does Macintosh make up a signficant enough portion of the market for the difference to be statistically relevant?
If not, at what price would you? [scenerio of destitution and desparation snipped]
Better yet, for a little irony: what if the person at the other end of the button was Jack Valenti, George Bush, Osama bin Laden? Would your views be different then?
First, if someone is sufficiently despearate for food they will do despearate things. Many (though, very notably, not all) will kill for food under such circumstances, even though the act is considered by most to be immoral even under such extreme circumstances.
However, the question assumes a non-descript, clearly innocent by most definitions, peasant who lacks the power to do any harm (and, quite probably, the desire to do any harm).
Changing it to an opportunity to kill someone who is clearly guilty (e.g. Jack Valenti, Osama bin Laden, etc.) modifies the entire premise.
Being willing to kill Osama bin Laden (who has killed thousands of innocents already and will likely kill thousands more) is not the moral equivelent of being willing to kill a nameless, innocent peasant in a far away land for a cash prize (or for the hell of it), at leat not by the ethics I subscribe to and, I dare say, the majority of good-willed people in the world subscribe to.
So, in my particular case, I would kill Osama bin Laden in a heartbeat without monetary compensation. George Bush I wouldn't be willing to kill under any circumstances I can imagine, despite loathing him and having voted for one of his opponents. Jack Valenti is a gray area... I admint the temptation is there, even if I would be unlikely to act on it.
But an innocent (or even not-so-innocent, but never having harmed me) peasant in a far away land? Not in a billion years, not for a billion dollars, not even if my children were starving.
Anyone stupid enough to eqaute an insect's life with a human life, particularly in the context of this discussion, doesn't deserve a response.
Consider yourself lucky: you just got far more than you deserve. Now why don't you go back to PETA where you belong while I enjoy this nice juicy steak.
So, then, the people that would push the button are not evil monsters, more like people with a George Jetson complex...
I suppose this depends on your definition of evil
If your definition is limited to the Hollywood Serial Killer Antihero modus operandi, where the person must take visceral pleasure in doing harm to others, then perhaps you would be correct.
However, I think someone who is willing to push a button and kill 1, 100, or 1000000 people because it is convinient or facilitates something they want ($1M, a nicer pair of running shoes, whatever) is profoundly evil whether or not they derive the least bit of pleasure from the actual killing itself.
Indeed, I would go further and say that someone who would push a button "just because it is there" knowing that it would result in a human death is a profoundly evil person, whether or not they get any benefit from pushing the button, and irrespective of whether or not they derive some form a pleasure from doing so.
Indeed, one could argue that anyone who doesn't immediately disable the switch so that it cannot be pressed, even by accident, isn't someone you'd want to spend any time with, much less live next door to.
Various Metra (city train) stops in the Chicagoland area have free (beer) books available... paperbacks, mostly romance crap, but every once in a while a particularly interesting sci-fi novel sneaks in.
The books are generally donated by the local library and would likely have been thrown out otherwise, but it is still a start... gratis reading material for those who forgot their paper.
Microsoft produces something that has value, whereas the Robber Barrons did not. If what Microsoft created had no value, you would not be using it or whining about it.
From my point of view, Microsoft does not produce anything of value and I do not use it. What I, and others, express concern over is their ongoing efforts (through things like Palladium) to deny me the choice of continuing to not use their products.
However, all of that is neither here nor there, nor relevant to the discussion at hand.
The question was "if it is bad for Microsoft's business, how can it be good for business?"
I cited a historical example that shows that when a business is detrimental to other businessess, as Microsoft arguably is, the destruction of one harmful business can be very good for a plethora of other businesses. That is not subject to debate: there is ample, well documented historical evidence to back that up.
What is open to question is whether or not Microsoft is sufficiently harmful to other businesses that its demise would result in a net gain vs. a net loss to the economy over the medium to long term.
Were it merely a competitor in a free marketplace the answer would likely be no.
But, as a convicted monopolist who appears to be unwilling to change its illegal behavior in the least, and is going even further and doing everything in its power to have its Monopoly codified into law through DRM legislation and Palladium, not to mention its efforts to label software freedom as "unamerican," the answer appears to quite probably be a resounding "Yes, the economy and the world would probably be much better off if Microsoft were gone."
The thing I don't understand is... why do people continue to compare nowadays linux (or IRIX, Solaris, *BSD) etc... to things like Win98, which is _over 4 years_ old by now
The data that was studied for the last two or three years was collected prior to the study commencing, i.e. at least two or three years ago. If you'd bothered to read the paper, you would have noticed that the versions of *BSD and Linux being compared are equally as old (kernel 2.2.x of Linux, for example).
When you conduct a scientific study (not to be confused with the marketing drivel often sold as science and frequently purchased by the likes of Microsoft, and just as frequently disgraced and utterly rebutted a few days later by the scientific community) you collect the data, then you analize the data and draw conclusions from that data. All of that takes time, so any rigorous study conducted is going to be working with data collected at some time in the past.
[opinion] I'm sure a study will come out showing the appalling weaknesses of Windows XP, but such a study will likely be reviled by Microsoft enthusiasts because, by the time the rigorous work is done, there will be some newer, even more invasive and buggy release of Windows out. That will not, however, make the study any less valid or accurate, any more than it would the study conducted here. [/opinion]
Does the same analogy hold true for the snail mail industry? NO. The spam idiots pay for the media, and pay for postage to my house.
Yes, it does hold true for the snail mail industry.
FedEx, UPS, and others can (and do) chose not to do business with some people (usually, but not always, based on geography). This is their right.
The U.S. Postal Service, however, is a government entity, and is thus subject to different rules of conduct which tend to err on the side of avoiding discrimination, rather than erring in the other direction.
The two are not comparable. Unless the government nationalizes the entire ISP and telco industry (not just the copper, mind you, but the entire services) this comparison does not hold, and the right of a company to "fire" one of its ill-behavied clients remains intact.
I wonder how it came to be that you didn't publish the only meaningful indications of Microsoft's security? Oh, I know. It's because they are about 1/6th as bad as the outdated versions you impartially decided to cite.
That may be, but probably isn't, true.
If you read the article carefully you'll notice that the versions of *BSD and the Linux kernel (2.2.x) are also outdated. This isn't some neferious plot to diss Microsoft (hell, that isn't all that hard to do with cold, hard, factual data in the first place, so there is no need for anyone to cook the data, least of all this study), it is a result of the fact that research and study take time.
I'm sure if the author had looked at Linux 2.4.x and current versions of the BSDs the results would have been significantly better (Mac OS X as well, being a BSD derivative).
As for whether or not the various Windows versions would have been better, that is an assumption we really cannot make. Not for any prejudicial reasons, but because historically they generally haven't always improved, and indeed on at least one occasion (95->98) got considerably worse. We can hope that the security of Windows 2k has improved since then, but there is no real historical precendence to support that hope, in contrast with most other competitors products including the BSDs and Linux products cited here.
The comparison was fair: it was a snapshot of the state of the art taken a couple of years ago, then studied and analized in detail over those past two years. This is how every study that bases itself on factual research works, as opposed to corporate marketing drivel purchased to look like research, as has come from the Microsoft camp on numerous occasions in the last couple of years, and has in every case been thoroughly, and utterly obliterated in public rebuttal.
Happens that way with real property all the time. Why do you think so much is involved in buying a house, including buying insurance to protect the deed's validity?
Uh, no.
The government doesn't have the authority to seize a property as "stolen" even if you have been foolish enough not to do a proper audit on the property's history or buy insurance to protect the deed's validity.
Doing so is generally required by your bank, you know, the one who lent you the $300,000 you needed for that nice 5 bedroom ranch with the three car garage and the view across the street of the neighborhood pond.
While it would be incredibly foolish not to follow this procedure if you as an individual were laying down $300,000 cash for the property, there is nothing requiring you to do so. It is merely a Cover Your Ass strategy to minimize the liklihood of some unknown lein against your property causing you trouble (and a lawsuit), to minimize the probability of lawsuits, and limit your liability if an oversight did occur and you are sued (and lose).
The presumption of innocence remains, the government cannot seize your land willy nilly even if you haven't done the proper paper trail and gotten the proper insurance... they still have to take you to court and prove that the land is not yours.
This is in contrast to the absurd legal nonsense that surrounds lunar material, where the guilt is presumed to begin with. In an age where we've already had two kids build nuclear reactors in their dorm room/garage (both reports linked to here on/. and elsewhere), is it so difficult to imagine that kids in 10 or 20 years won't be sending up unmanned missions to the moon and bringing back rocks for their collections? Hell, the most difficult part of the moon launch was insuring the human cargo inside would not be turned to mush, asphixiated, burned, or frozen in the process. Take away those constraints and the feasability of private individuals or corporations obtaining lunar material on their own, much less competing governments like the Russians (who brought their own samples back), becomes a lot more reasonable.
When this begins to happen in earnest the entire legal structure around our treatment of lunar material is going to implode, perhaps spectacularly. Perhaps a return to rule of law, and presumption of innocence as it is required by the constitution, would be wise before, rather than after, this happens.
And also, I happened notice how you specifically failed to mention the reasonable improvements made in recent versions of Windows - specifically how its around ~10% attack feasability compared to 100% with older versions.
You mean, like this improvement?
Windows 95 sequence numbers are very weak. But it is really difficult to understand is why this algorithm was further "weakened" in Windows 98 (SE), decreasing estimated error and number of elements required to get the right guess, in average, 99.488%.
Seriously, the post was entitled "for those wondering how insecure Microsoft is", not "for those wondering how Microsoft stacks up against other systems" which, as you point out, would indicate that consumer OSes are pathetic, while 'professional' OSes like NT and 2000 are making modest improvements, and that while the *BSDs are pretty good, and GNU/Linux quite good, there are plenty of older UNIX implimentations that were quite poor, and even pathetic, as well, not to mention CISCO, which makes up much of the internet backbone.
But, since Microsoft is conducting a wholesale attack on our very freedom of choice through it Palladium and DRM efforts, pointing out additional, purely technical reasons for moving away from Microsoft to *BSD and GNU/Linux alternatives and thereby protecting your security as well as your freedom isn't such an ignoble thing to be doing at all.
This scares me a bit, though. How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
And whatever happened to posession being 9/10ths of the law?
What should be bothering you isn't that possession isn't 9/10ths of the law (it's a clever statement, but is an implication of a degree of lawlessness, not a founding legal principle), its that the presumption of innocence that is a fundamental principle of (American) law is being ignored, turned on its ear, and reversed into a presumption of guilt.
Whether it is a lunar rock or a piece of candy, it should not be the possessor's responsiblity to prove ownership, it should be the government's responsibility to prove theft.
What is going to happen once civilian spacecraft start going to the moon? Or when other governments (e.g. China) start going to the moon and handing out moon rocks as party favors at state visits? NASA's little paper trail and presumption of guilt is going to fall to pieces then...are we still going to presume guilt, or return to the rule of law (including the highest law of the land, the constitution) we should have been employing the entire time?
Microsoft's Big Brother features in XP and beyond log your system usage for just such an occasion.
However, you have to say "I didn't click agree.". You can't say "I clicked it but it shouldn't stand because it was not a signature." The burden of proof is indeed on them to show that you agreed to it.
Then Micro$oft trots out the logs on your system, where they've been tracking every movie you watch and every song you play (I'm not going to bother to link to the previous/. story pointing this out... use the search feature if you really want to look it up), and presents the fact that you watched The Matrix DVD 5 days after installing the patch as proof that you "agreed" to the change in EULA terms.
Which of course, is akin to someone agreeing to sell the first born, with a gun to their head.
Of course, you could simply dump Windows and run GNU/Linux, and accept whatever tradeoffs that requires because at least then you would be a free person not subject to nonsense like this at all, and not required to live in fear of the Long Arm of Microsoft, the BSA, or Hollywood.
doesnt this sound a little contradictory? How can something that is good for buisness be bad for software vendors, which, last time i checked, software venders were a pretty large buisness.
Think back to the time of the Robber Barrons in Germany, who built castles along the Rhein and charged tolls every few miles to merchant ships.
Destroying the Robber Barrons business was bad for the Robber Barrons, but immensly good for trade, and hence virtually every other business, in the region.
Microsoft is analogous to the Robber Barrons along the Rhein in several respects: they charge a toll (tax), they deliberately break compatability (block your movement up the river for a time), they move the target every few months (each trip up the river terms and conditions for passage changed), costing you time and money to get your stuff working after a fashion (again), and so forth. Getting rid of this parasite does wonders for your business... it certainly did wonders for ours.
They use DHCP and non-static IPs, have server restrictions, BUT they have an excellent USENET news server. The cost is $10/month (the Condo Association got a deal on net access, included in the cable service) for the modem rental.
I also have Sprint Business DSL for $160/month, which gives me 6 usable static IPs, 7.8 Mbit download (I'm not too far from the DSLAM and I have good wire) and 847 kbit upload, no caps on how much data I can push through that, no limits on servers, VPNs or whatever. However, in contrast to RCN, Sprint's USENET servers require login and password accounts, are slow, don't carry all the newsgroups I want... in a word, they suck.
I'd much rather pay $10/month than $160/month, but the FREEDOM I get with the business service to do whatever I want without hassle is worth it. Now I creatively route my USENE traffic through the RCN network (those Dr. Who episodes take up a chunk of bandwidth) and it doesn't affect my DSL speeds at all, through which everything else goes.
If they decide to release a linux version of Doom3, and given Carmack's good attitude towards open source and OpenGL, I really really would love if they go and piss off Mr Gates by releasing the test for Linux first.
I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for years!!
That would really rock.
I have friends flocking to GNU/Linux anyway (literally people I do not do any evangelizing to coming up and asking me to install GNU/Linux on their systems... its truly amazing how many lay people are simply sick of Microsoft in virtually every resepct), but this would be a remarkable thing from the coolness factor point of view ("now you get to try out Doom 3 weeks ahead of all your friends who run the 'Doze")
Even cooler: ship a bootable CD that starts up GNU/Linux, snatches the network settings from the windows hard drive, and runs the game, allowing Windows users to run Linux+Doom3 without having installed Linux, and never release a windows version [evil grin]. No game or OS installation required, and no Microsoft compromises in speed or stability required. Well, one can dream [grin]
Bandwidth is something bought, and therefore owned.
Here is I believe the core of our disagreement (and I suspect we are going to have to agree to disagree).
Bandwidth isn't a possession that can be possessed, or stolen (indeed, in any real sense it can't really be bought or sold as such, though, just like 7 days in the sun, it is perhaps being represented as being bought or sold when in fact you are purchasing, and selling, something quite different).
To clarify, you cannot buy or sell 7 days in the sun, but you can buy and sell a ticket for a flight to Bermuda, and 6 nights in a hotel, with the expectation that this will mean the purchaser will enjoy 7 days in the sun (but perhaps won't).
Bandwidth, like temperature, air pressure, or voltage, is a measure of capacity, and while you can sell (or rent) equipment, cabling, and so on, along with a contract that specifies how you will (and won't) use said equipment, you cannot sell the actual capacity in any meaningful sense of the word (though marketers often like to represent that differently).
The equipment was (perhaps) misused (though one wonders (a) if the sale wasn't made representing the full bandwidth, which was then reduced on the sly... this happened to a colleague of mine with his once 1.5 MBit/1.5Mbit SDSL line that was quietly switched to 768kbit/348kbit ADSL, and (b) if the contract wasn't 'rewritten' on the sly, using the very controversial, and likely unenforcable, clause stating something to the effect of 'we can change the terms of this contract on you any time we like and you agree to this.')
Getting back to my point, bandwidth is not something that can be possessed, any more than time, sunlight, or air temperature, and those who represent its sale as such are really selling you something quite different (e.g. a contract agreeing to some form of behavior and payment, and perhaps some equipment).
What these people did may have been a breach of contract, but (if any of the suspicions voiced above are true) perhaps even is so doing they did nothing illegal. Certainly nothing whatsoever was ever stolen, except their equipment, by the F.B.I, at the behest of their ISP.
Slashdot Mirror
LINK CORRECTION ... [debian.org] ... should be ... [slackware.com]
heh!
But of course, that should actually read:
I'll just stick to the best distributions and watch the fun from afar
[grin]
Seriously, though, it is this choice that allows you to use and enjoy slackware, and me to use and enjoy Source Mage and Gentoo, others to use and enjoy Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake, and so on, that makes the GNU/Linux community, and the Free Software community in general, so dynamic and so productive.
It is this choice the efforts like UL are trying to undermine, by promoting the myth that commercial and proprietary software vendors should (or need to) package their wares up for one or two reference distributions, rather than packaging them up in a distribution-agnostic manner as Blender, VMWare, Id, and Loki have done. This myth may serve the interests of the distribution promoters in question (in this case, UL), but it is a disservice to the GNU/Linux community as a whole by creating unneeded incompatabilities with other distributions and excercizing some degree of coercion for people to adopt the reference distribution instead. What is more, as other binary releases have proven, it is absolutly unnecessary.
It behooves us all, slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, and Source Mage enthusiasts alike, to stand up and make sure the word gets out to commercial vendors that they can, and should, package their software in a distribution-agnostic manner so that they can target their entire marketplace, and not just a portion thereof, by packaging their software in standard tarballs, documenting precisely which versions of which dynamically linked libraries their software requires, and providing a statically linked binary-of-last-resort in parallel that will run regardless (this is important as distros mature and the old version of the software remains desirable anyway, so it not only allows any distro access to the software, it also provides insurance that the software will run on most any GNU/Linux distro 5 years hence, or even longer, long after the state of the art has moved a great deal further along).
Best distro eh? Thats just *begging* to begin a flame war!
Well, yes, considering the best distros can be found here and here.
Personally I like the idea of United Linux. There's no reason that all Linux venders can't use the same base for rpm compatibility, etc. It'll hapen one way or another. Do you want one company to control the standards, or a shared effort?
I think the idea of UL is horribly flawed (and rather arrogant on its part), and the underlying premise of your reasoning for supporting UL equally flawed.
It isn't necessary to have One True packaging scheme, or One True distro to which all must maintain binary compatability, in order to effectively release binaries.
It has already been demonstrated by the folks at Blender, VMWare, Id, Loki, and others that it is quite possible to release binaries that are distribution agnostic. These real world examples, all of which install and run just fine on my Source Mage and Gentoo boxes, as well as my Debian, Mandrake, and Suse boxes, exist despite naysayers saying it isn't possible, and claiming that UL, or UL+Red Hat, bring a much needed cohesion to GNU/Linux.
Nonsense. It is an effort to impose a proprietary embrace-and-extended standard on a community that is doing just fine with consensual standards where they make sense, and a wide open, free and fair marktetplace that encourages choice everywhere else.
Telling commercial vendors that they should package their wares up as RPMs aimed at one (or two) distributions, when it is quite possible, and vastly more desirable, to package them up in standard tar.bz2 or tar.gz format along with a README listing the required libraries+versions, as well as a statically linked "last resort" fallback binary in parallel with the dynamically linked binary and thereby make them compatible with almost every distribution out there, is a terrible disservice to both the Linux community at large, and the vendors themselves who are being misled and excluding a big chunk of their target market.
This nonsense only serves the interests of the purveyors of UL, at the expense of virtually everyone else, and at the cost of our freedom of choice as GNU/Linux users. There is IMHO absolutely nothing good about this whatsoever, regardless of what your favorite distro happens to be, and even though I am not a Mandrake fan per se, I applaud them for their courage in standing up to this nonsense.
Interesting idea, but according to Goodwin's Law, the first party in a discussion to mention "Hitler" or "Nazi" has lost the discussion.
Godwins Law is a joke.
Seriously, it was a tounge in cheek joke about USENET flames of its day. It was never considered by its creator to be an actual, accurate commentary on internet speech, much less some deeply wise insight into the human psyche, and certainly not as a new "rule" of debate.
In other words, Godwins Law was never intended to be used as relative newcomers to the net have come to use it today: to make the most potent lessons of modern history offlimits to any discussion that might benefit from contemplating those lessons, not least of which is a discussion of technology that is designed to excersize draconian prior restraint on how and perhaps even when people can use their own property, within their own home, by a large, convicted monopolist.
NAZIWARE is the most appropriate term I've heard for Palladium/DRM since this entire debate began a few months ago. We should not dismiss it because of some misguided references to a tired old joke being bandied about as though they were some kind of deep Internet Wisdom.
Trains were not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to get from point a to point b, a train just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for trains would need to be made.
... apply the same law to the net as you would to physical copies of the same crap in the real world.
It could be argued that "the internet is not a revolution, just an evolution. People already knew how to communicate with one another across great distances, the internet just made the process faster. There's no reason laws for the internet would need to be made."
Do we need laws to govern the internet? I would say that it is unlikely that we do, and that at the very least we need to proceed very, very carefully. Far better to pass a needed law too late, than to pass unnecessary, and harmful, legislation too early.
Do we need to restrict speech on the internet? No, not any more than we need to in real life.
What about child pornography? Already illegal
What about commerce? Our existing interstate commerce laws, tax regimes, etc. are more than sufficient and can be applied equally to online commerce as they are to brick and morter commerce. Buying something online should be no different, legally, than picking up the phone and ordering someting by voice.
What about 'online stalking.?' No different than making obscene or prank phone calls in the real world, or verbally harassing someone in person
What about the children?!? They are in no greater danger than they are when they are out on a public street, and just like in the physical world, it is the parent's responsibility to see to their children's safety, not the government, and certainly not at the expense of my constitutional rights.
I could go on and list virtually every subject which gets raised WRT the "need" to regulate the internet, and in each case point out that the application of existing law is more than sufficient to keep society on roughly the same even keel it has generally been all along.
The problem is that the media and copyright cartels see an opportunity to grab immense power, power that the courts (and even congress) has deliberately denied them in the past. However, the ludditism of Hollywood, the digital illiteracy of congress, and the legalized bribery we call campaign financing have all come together to produce a very dangerous mixture of political cluelessness and political will that may just result in these very powers being extended, with manditory DRM technology enshringing Microsoft's desktop monopoly into law and granting those very same Hollywood Luddites veto powers over the deployment of all new consumer technologies.
This should scare the shit out of any clear thinking individual.
You can steal something, without depriving it's owner of his property.
No, you can't. That sentance is in direct conflict with the very definition of stealing, as has been rehashed here and elsewhere numerous times.
Copyright Violation is not theft. It is not recognized as theft by the law or by any of the freely accessible dictionaries online.
In fact, the only place where copyright violation is considered theft is in the minds, and newspeak, of the copyright cartels, and those who thoughtlessly echo their propoganda.
Even in a nation increasingly afflicted with fictitious legal absurdities (like equating a corporation with a real, thinking, breathing person) we haven't even gone so far as to equate copyright violation and theft.
We should not engage in the absurd, legal fiction that communication over the internet is somehow fundamentally different than communication by telegraph, telephone, fax, snail mail, or an in person meeting over lunch. Fundamentally it isn't any different, it is merely more effecient.
You make an intersting point. I think the best fix would be something as follows:
It is intolerable that letigious thuggary can be used to coerce the common use of language. If (for example) SnowBlowz become a generic term for nasal drip suppressent, then the company can revert to "Johnson & Johnson SnowBlowz" as their trademark instead.
This regime that encourages, even requires, the wholesale attack of individuals by corporations for using their trademark in common everyday language is absolutely intolerable.
With all due respect, even having some temptation to kill someone just because you don't like the way he distributes a freaking MUSIC CD totally kills your entire argument. What he is doing is legal and perfectly moral. He is trying to protect the property that he is responsible for.
... but that doesn't mean the temptation isn't there, particularly as the authoritarian fist that is the media and copyright cartels, backed by the force of our government, closes ever tighter on each of our lives. And it certainly doesn't mean being tempted to kill him is somehow equivelent, or even remotely as sick as, being tempted to kill an innocent elsewhere in the world.
What he is doing is trying to legislate away most, if not all, of my personal autonomy and freedom in the digital sphere (which, these days, is a sizable portion of our lives) in order to protect his personal cartel.
This may be legal (but that isn't a given. Indeed, what he, Hollings, and others are doing may in fact be very illegal, if you accept the premise that it is unconstitutional. Conspiring to violate the highest law of the land is very arguably an illegal act), but it is most certainly not moral and it does constitute a very real attack on me, personally.
Hence, the temptation is very justified and even quite reasonable, even if acting on it wouldn't be.
You may disagree with how they are doing business, but ANY desire to kill Jack Valenti for such a trivial reason is just as sick as the guy willing to hit the button for money.
The peasant is not actively working to oppress me, personally. Jack Valenti is. The two examples are not even remotely similiar. You may disagree with the validity of my being tempted to off Mr. Valenti for his efforts to abridge and in some cases eradicate our personal freedoms, but you cannot reasonably argue that killing him is identical to killing a nameless, harmless peasant in a distant country who has never, ever caused, me direct harm, and likely has never even wanted to. Jack Valenti, on the other hand, is causing harm and is doing everything he can to cause even more.
All that having been said, I agree that killing him would be a reprehensible act
Apple doesn't consider Macs as being PCs. In their commercials all comparisons are made Mac to PC (although it's obvious they are just bashing Windows, even though they only say "PC")
Apple may not consider their Macs as being personal computers (PCs), but just because their marketing department is trying to disassiate their product with what it is doesn't make it so.
Apple Macintoshes are personal computers.
And though their marketing bashes Windows (and Intel, since they say WINTEL), it is clearly designed to imply one must dump the hardware to be free of Microsoft, which anyone who runs FreeBSD or GNU/Linux knows to be a false implication.
If the total is just PCs, what about Macintoshes and other non-PC computers?
:= Personal Computer
PC
Macintoshes are PCs, just as Ataris, AT&T 3b2s, etc. were. Just because they aren't WINTEL boxes doesn't mean they aren't personal computers, marketing newspeak drivel (from both the Intel and Apple camps) aside.
That having been said, your question is a good one: does that statistic include non-intel PCs such as Macintosh, and does Macintosh make up a signficant enough portion of the market for the difference to be statistically relevant?
If not, at what price would you? [scenerio of destitution and desparation snipped]
... I admint the temptation is there, even if I would be unlikely to act on it.
Better yet, for a little irony: what if the person at the other end of the button was Jack Valenti, George Bush, Osama bin Laden? Would your views be different then?
First, if someone is sufficiently despearate for food they will do despearate things. Many (though, very notably, not all) will kill for food under such circumstances, even though the act is considered by most to be immoral even under such extreme circumstances.
However, the question assumes a non-descript, clearly innocent by most definitions, peasant who lacks the power to do any harm (and, quite probably, the desire to do any harm).
Changing it to an opportunity to kill someone who is clearly guilty (e.g. Jack Valenti, Osama bin Laden, etc.) modifies the entire premise.
Being willing to kill Osama bin Laden (who has killed thousands of innocents already and will likely kill thousands more) is not the moral equivelent of being willing to kill a nameless, innocent peasant in a far away land for a cash prize (or for the hell of it), at leat not by the ethics I subscribe to and, I dare say, the majority of good-willed people in the world subscribe to.
So, in my particular case, I would kill Osama bin Laden in a heartbeat without monetary compensation. George Bush I wouldn't be willing to kill under any circumstances I can imagine, despite loathing him and having voted for one of his opponents. Jack Valenti is a gray area
But an innocent (or even not-so-innocent, but never having harmed me) peasant in a far away land? Not in a billion years, not for a billion dollars, not even if my children were starving.
you ever killed an insect?
Anyone stupid enough to eqaute an insect's life with a human life, particularly in the context of this discussion, doesn't deserve a response.
Consider yourself lucky: you just got far more than you deserve. Now why don't you go back to PETA where you belong while I enjoy this nice juicy steak.
So, then, the people that would push the button are not evil monsters, more like people with a George Jetson complex...
I suppose this depends on your definition of evil
If your definition is limited to the Hollywood Serial Killer Antihero modus operandi, where the person must take visceral pleasure in doing harm to others, then perhaps you would be correct.
However, I think someone who is willing to push a button and kill 1, 100, or 1000000 people because it is convinient or facilitates something they want ($1M, a nicer pair of running shoes, whatever) is profoundly evil whether or not they derive the least bit of pleasure from the actual killing itself.
Indeed, I would go further and say that someone who would push a button "just because it is there" knowing that it would result in a human death is a profoundly evil person, whether or not they get any benefit from pushing the button, and irrespective of whether or not they derive some form a pleasure from doing so.
Indeed, one could argue that anyone who doesn't immediately disable the switch so that it cannot be pressed, even by accident, isn't someone you'd want to spend any time with, much less live next door to.
Various Metra (city train) stops in the Chicagoland area have free (beer) books available ... paperbacks, mostly romance crap, but every once in a while a particularly interesting sci-fi novel sneaks in.
... gratis reading material for those who forgot their paper.
The books are generally donated by the local library and would likely have been thrown out otherwise, but it is still a start
Speaking of the late John Entwistle:
... alas.
Best of luck to you John.
Ahem. It's a little late for that.
The guy doesn't exist anymore
Microsoft produces something that has value, whereas the Robber Barrons did not. If what Microsoft created had no value, you would not be using it or whining about it.
From my point of view, Microsoft does not produce anything of value and I do not use it. What I, and others, express concern over is their ongoing efforts (through things like Palladium) to deny me the choice of continuing to not use their products.
However, all of that is neither here nor there, nor relevant to the discussion at hand.
The question was "if it is bad for Microsoft's business, how can it be good for business?"
I cited a historical example that shows that when a business is detrimental to other businessess, as Microsoft arguably is, the destruction of one harmful business can be very good for a plethora of other businesses. That is not subject to debate: there is ample, well documented historical evidence to back that up.
What is open to question is whether or not Microsoft is sufficiently harmful to other businesses that its demise would result in a net gain vs. a net loss to the economy over the medium to long term.
Were it merely a competitor in a free marketplace the answer would likely be no.
But, as a convicted monopolist who appears to be unwilling to change its illegal behavior in the least, and is going even further and doing everything in its power to have its Monopoly codified into law through DRM legislation and Palladium, not to mention its efforts to label software freedom as "unamerican," the answer appears to quite probably be a resounding "Yes, the economy and the world would probably be much better off if Microsoft were gone."
The thing I don't understand is... why do people continue to compare nowadays linux (or IRIX, Solaris, *BSD) etc... to things like Win98, which is _over 4 years_ old by now
The data that was studied for the last two or three years was collected prior to the study commencing, i.e. at least two or three years ago. If you'd bothered to read the paper, you would have noticed that the versions of *BSD and Linux being compared are equally as old (kernel 2.2.x of Linux, for example).
When you conduct a scientific study (not to be confused with the marketing drivel often sold as science and frequently purchased by the likes of Microsoft, and just as frequently disgraced and utterly rebutted a few days later by the scientific community) you collect the data, then you analize the data and draw conclusions from that data. All of that takes time, so any rigorous study conducted is going to be working with data collected at some time in the past.
[opinion]
I'm sure a study will come out showing the appalling weaknesses of Windows XP, but such a study will likely be reviled by Microsoft enthusiasts because, by the time the rigorous work is done, there will be some newer, even more invasive and buggy release of Windows out. That will not, however, make the study any less valid or accurate, any more than it would the study conducted here.
[/opinion]
Does the same analogy hold true for the snail mail industry? NO. The spam idiots pay for the media, and pay for postage to my house.
Yes, it does hold true for the snail mail industry.
FedEx, UPS, and others can (and do) chose not to do business with some people (usually, but not always, based on geography). This is their right.
The U.S. Postal Service, however, is a government entity, and is thus subject to different rules of conduct which tend to err on the side of avoiding discrimination, rather than erring in the other direction.
The two are not comparable. Unless the government nationalizes the entire ISP and telco industry (not just the copper, mind you, but the entire services) this comparison does not hold, and the right of a company to "fire" one of its ill-behavied clients remains intact.
I wonder how it came to be that you didn't publish the only meaningful indications of Microsoft's security? Oh, I know. It's because they are about 1/6th as bad as the outdated versions you impartially decided to cite.
That may be, but probably isn't, true.
If you read the article carefully you'll notice that the versions of *BSD and the Linux kernel (2.2.x) are also outdated. This isn't some neferious plot to diss Microsoft (hell, that isn't all that hard to do with cold, hard, factual data in the first place, so there is no need for anyone to cook the data, least of all this study), it is a result of the fact that research and study take time.
I'm sure if the author had looked at Linux 2.4.x and current versions of the BSDs the results would have been significantly better (Mac OS X as well, being a BSD derivative).
As for whether or not the various Windows versions would have been better, that is an assumption we really cannot make. Not for any prejudicial reasons, but because historically they generally haven't always improved, and indeed on at least one occasion (95->98) got considerably worse. We can hope that the security of Windows 2k has improved since then, but there is no real historical precendence to support that hope, in contrast with most other competitors products including the BSDs and Linux products cited here.
The comparison was fair: it was a snapshot of the state of the art taken a couple of years ago, then studied and analized in detail over those past two years. This is how every study that bases itself on factual research works, as opposed to corporate marketing drivel purchased to look like research, as has come from the Microsoft camp on numerous occasions in the last couple of years, and has in every case been thoroughly, and utterly obliterated in public rebuttal.
Happens that way with real property all the time. Why do you think so much is involved in buying a house, including buying insurance to protect the deed's validity?
... they still have to take you to court and prove that the land is not yours.
/. and elsewhere), is it so difficult to imagine that kids in 10 or 20 years won't be sending up unmanned missions to the moon and bringing back rocks for their collections? Hell, the most difficult part of the moon launch was insuring the human cargo inside would not be turned to mush, asphixiated, burned, or frozen in the process. Take away those constraints and the feasability of private individuals or corporations obtaining lunar material on their own, much less competing governments like the Russians (who brought their own samples back), becomes a lot more reasonable.
Uh, no.
The government doesn't have the authority to seize a property as "stolen" even if you have been foolish enough not to do a proper audit on the property's history or buy insurance to protect the deed's validity.
Doing so is generally required by your bank, you know, the one who lent you the $300,000 you needed for that nice 5 bedroom ranch with the three car garage and the view across the street of the neighborhood pond.
While it would be incredibly foolish not to follow this procedure if you as an individual were laying down $300,000 cash for the property, there is nothing requiring you to do so. It is merely a Cover Your Ass strategy to minimize the liklihood of some unknown lein against your property causing you trouble (and a lawsuit), to minimize the probability of lawsuits, and limit your liability if an oversight did occur and you are sued (and lose).
The presumption of innocence remains, the government cannot seize your land willy nilly even if you haven't done the proper paper trail and gotten the proper insurance
This is in contrast to the absurd legal nonsense that surrounds lunar material, where the guilt is presumed to begin with. In an age where we've already had two kids build nuclear reactors in their dorm room/garage (both reports linked to here on
When this begins to happen in earnest the entire legal structure around our treatment of lunar material is going to implode, perhaps spectacularly. Perhaps a return to rule of law, and presumption of innocence as it is required by the constitution, would be wise before, rather than after, this happens.
You mean, like this improvement?
Seriously, the post was entitled "for those wondering how insecure Microsoft is", not "for those wondering how Microsoft stacks up against other systems" which, as you point out, would indicate that consumer OSes are pathetic, while 'professional' OSes like NT and 2000 are making modest improvements, and that while the *BSDs are pretty good, and GNU/Linux quite good, there are plenty of older UNIX implimentations that were quite poor, and even pathetic, as well, not to mention CISCO, which makes up much of the internet backbone.
But, since Microsoft is conducting a wholesale attack on our very freedom of choice through it Palladium and DRM efforts, pointing out additional, purely technical reasons for moving away from Microsoft to *BSD and GNU/Linux alternatives and thereby protecting your security as well as your freedom isn't such an ignoble thing to be doing at all.
This scares me a bit, though. How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
And whatever happened to posession being 9/10ths of the law?
What should be bothering you isn't that possession isn't 9/10ths of the law (it's a clever statement, but is an implication of a degree of lawlessness, not a founding legal principle), its that the presumption of innocence that is a fundamental principle of (American) law is being ignored, turned on its ear, and reversed into a presumption of guilt.
Whether it is a lunar rock or a piece of candy, it should not be the possessor's responsiblity to prove ownership, it should be the government's responsibility to prove theft.
What is going to happen once civilian spacecraft start going to the moon? Or when other governments (e.g. China) start going to the moon and handing out moon rocks as party favors at state visits? NASA's little paper trail and presumption of guilt is going to fall to pieces then...are we still going to presume guilt, or return to the rule of law (including the highest law of the land, the constitution) we should have been employing the entire time?
Microsoft's Big Brother features in XP and beyond log your system usage for just such an occasion.
/. story pointing this out ... use the search feature if you really want to look it up), and presents the fact that you watched The Matrix DVD 5 days after installing the patch as proof that you "agreed" to the change in EULA terms.
However, you have to say "I didn't click agree.". You can't say "I clicked it but it shouldn't stand because it was not a signature." The burden of proof is indeed on them to show that you agreed to it.
Then Micro$oft trots out the logs on your system, where they've been tracking every movie you watch and every song you play (I'm not going to bother to link to the previous
Which of course, is akin to someone agreeing to sell the first born, with a gun to their head.
Of course, you could simply dump Windows and run GNU/Linux, and accept whatever tradeoffs that requires because at least then you would be a free person not subject to nonsense like this at all, and not required to live in fear of the Long Arm of Microsoft, the BSA, or Hollywood.
doesnt this sound a little contradictory? How can something that is good for buisness be bad for software vendors, which, last time i checked, software venders were a pretty large buisness.
... it certainly did wonders for ours.
Think back to the time of the Robber Barrons in Germany, who built castles along the Rhein and charged tolls every few miles to merchant ships.
Destroying the Robber Barrons business was bad for the Robber Barrons, but immensly good for trade, and hence virtually every other business, in the region.
Microsoft is analogous to the Robber Barrons along the Rhein in several respects: they charge a toll (tax), they deliberately break compatability (block your movement up the river for a time), they move the target every few months (each trip up the river terms and conditions for passage changed), costing you time and money to get your stuff working after a fashion (again), and so forth. Getting rid of this parasite does wonders for your business
I have a cable modem through 21st Century (RCN).
... in a word, they suck.
They use DHCP and non-static IPs, have server restrictions, BUT they have an excellent USENET news server. The cost is $10/month (the Condo Association got a deal on net access, included in the cable service) for the modem rental.
I also have Sprint Business DSL for $160/month, which gives me 6 usable static IPs, 7.8 Mbit download (I'm not too far from the DSLAM and I have good wire) and 847 kbit upload, no caps on how much data I can push through that, no limits on servers, VPNs or whatever. However, in contrast to RCN, Sprint's USENET servers require login and password accounts, are slow, don't carry all the newsgroups I want
I'd much rather pay $10/month than $160/month, but the FREEDOM I get with the business service to do whatever I want without hassle is worth it. Now I creatively route my USENE traffic through the RCN network (those Dr. Who episodes take up a chunk of bandwidth) and it doesn't affect my DSL speeds at all, through which everything else goes.
If they decide to release a linux version of Doom3, and given Carmack's good attitude towards open source and OpenGL, I really really would love if they go and piss off Mr Gates by releasing the test for Linux first.
... its truly amazing how many lay people are simply sick of Microsoft in virtually every resepct), but this would be a remarkable thing from the coolness factor point of view ("now you get to try out Doom 3 weeks ahead of all your friends who run the 'Doze")
I bet that a zillion gamers would install Linux just to be able to test Doom3. They have been waiting for years!!
That would really rock.
I have friends flocking to GNU/Linux anyway (literally people I do not do any evangelizing to coming up and asking me to install GNU/Linux on their systems
Even cooler: ship a bootable CD that starts up GNU/Linux, snatches the network settings from the windows hard drive, and runs the game, allowing Windows users to run Linux+Doom3 without having installed Linux, and never release a windows version [evil grin]. No game or OS installation required, and no Microsoft compromises in speed or stability required. Well, one can dream [grin]
Bandwidth is something bought, and therefore owned.
... this happened to a colleague of mine with his once 1.5 MBit/1.5Mbit SDSL line that was quietly switched to 768kbit/348kbit ADSL, and (b) if the contract wasn't 'rewritten' on the sly, using the very controversial, and likely unenforcable, clause stating something to the effect of 'we can change the terms of this contract on you any time we like and you agree to this.')
Here is I believe the core of our disagreement (and I suspect we are going to have to agree to disagree).
Bandwidth isn't a possession that can be possessed, or stolen (indeed, in any real sense it can't really be bought or sold as such, though, just like 7 days in the sun, it is perhaps being represented as being bought or sold when in fact you are purchasing, and selling, something quite different).
To clarify, you cannot buy or sell 7 days in the sun, but you can buy and sell a ticket for a flight to Bermuda, and 6 nights in a hotel, with the expectation that this will mean the purchaser will enjoy 7 days in the sun (but perhaps won't).
Bandwidth, like temperature, air pressure, or voltage, is a measure of capacity, and while you can sell (or rent) equipment, cabling, and so on, along with a contract that specifies how you will (and won't) use said equipment, you cannot sell the actual capacity in any meaningful sense of the word (though marketers often like to represent that differently).
The equipment was (perhaps) misused (though one wonders (a) if the sale wasn't made representing the full bandwidth, which was then reduced on the sly
Getting back to my point, bandwidth is not something that can be possessed, any more than time, sunlight, or air temperature, and those who represent its sale as such are really selling you something quite different (e.g. a contract agreeing to some form of behavior and payment, and perhaps some equipment).
What these people did may have been a breach of contract, but (if any of the suspicions voiced above are true) perhaps even is so doing they did nothing illegal. Certainly nothing whatsoever was ever stolen, except their equipment, by the F.B.I, at the behest of their ISP.