Chilling thought, isn't it? Let someone like Microsoft write the code for your psych evaluation test... it'll be bug-free, yeah, that's the ticket.
I don't think Katz is overreacting to this issue. It is yet another lame attempt by clueless administrators who don't think they are a pointy-haired boss to automate the process of managing increasingly desocialized kids.
Kids at Columbine who are the typical wide receivers for jock abuse report that nothing has changed at that school, in terms of the jock hierarchy, or the lack of non-jock support from authority figures.
And now, let's use an Automated Solution(TM) to this problem of understanding why these kids are increasingly fantasizing about blowing the place up and taking all the teachers with them.
Back when I was younger and more foolish, I worked for the Aerospace Industry. I thought it would be cool to actually be one of those people who build rockets. And yeah, it was fun for a while. But working for Federal agencies really sucks. You have no rights, and no allowances are made for 'different' behavior.
I was once required to take a psych test from the security department, which consisted of me sitting in a sound-proof room at a desk with a phone. This phone was connected to a computer that would use a voice generation program that asked me a series of Lifestyle questions. I was to press the star button for yes, and pound button for no answers. I was instructed to answer as quickly as possible, but, of course, truthfully.
The object of the test was, ostensibly, to gauge subconscious reactions to these questions, in order to ferret out people who might be potentual security risks. You know, people who might be using drugs (oh, only the illegal kind... caffeine, alcohol, and prozac are on the approved list), blackmail sufferers, people who can't manage their own finances, religious crackpots, and the like.
I found the questions to be insulting, and nothing that someone would ask me to my face, such as:
"Do you ever hear disembodied voices?"
"If a friend betrayed you, could you forgive them?"
"Have you ever considered experimenting with a homosexual relationship?"
"If you witnessed a coworker stealing office supplies, would you report them?"
...and stuff like that. There might have been 200 such questions.
I was so angry at the ridiculousness of the whole thing that, by the end, I was randomly answering and wasn't even listening to the questions.
The security guy who ran the tests came over after the test was done, and asked my opinion of the procedure. He was grinning, and I could see that he probably had a technology woodie that he'd have to deal with after I left.
I said that it was the stupidest waste of government money I had ever witnessed. The questions asked were transparent enough that anyone with half a brain could give whatever answers they wanted, and the system would not be able to detect that they were diverging from their own real answers. Why in God's name did the company drag me away from the work I was doing, in order that I might be a lab rat for some fat boy's techno-security fantasies???
His face went from Mr. Happy to insulted Nazi in about a quarter of a second. Apparently, the time for giving honest answers had passed.
Folks, we have got to just say Eat My Shorts to these kinds of dehumanizing Fascist tactics to categorize us as in compliance with Federal standards of behavior or not. Every day that we allow such imbecillic activities to erode our civil liberties, we crawl closer to an Orwellian state from which there will be no escape.
Subject says it all. Media attention is great when your OS|Application|Driver|Hardware|Whatever is on the growth part of its lifecycle, but it really stinks when your product is on the backend of the cycle and the next product comes along and steals the limelight.
Like others have said here, the Media doesn't get Linux any more than they really get the elegence of shared memory. But the Media has become a fine-honed nose for that ineffable shift in social winds, and they pounce on it.
So, in the case of Linux, what are they really sensing? There's several assumptions that have been laid down by interested parties in the IT industry that are being challenged by Linux:
1) Quality software can't be created unless it is by a micro-managed team of programmers.
2) The commercial marketplace will never stand for an 'unsupported' product for their mission-critical applications.
3) Closed source software is inherently more secure than open source versions of same.
4) The best programmers are motivated by money, not fame, or the satisfaction of producing a quality product.
Obviously, we in the Linux community know these assumptions to be nothing but commercial pap. But as more commercial users quietly integrate Linux and its bretheren into their IT workloads, enlightenment occurs, and the established closed source companies start feeling pressure from lost sales and less control.
That is the phenomenon that the Media senses and is reporting on. They may or may not connect the dots, and realise that the internet and linux have blown open the doors of information distribution in other ways, eventually toppling dictatorships and two-party systems alike. Now there is a story worthy of print.
But beware: there will come a time when Linux is on the downslope of its lifecycle. Most of the hip hackers will have moved on to the Next Great Thing, and those who stubbornly cling to the glory days of linux will be viewed much like the BBS operators today who view the internet as the technology which put them out of business, and out of control of their own little domains.
Carnegie Mellon University did some studies about 5 years ago which conclusively showed that programmers get less work done when they listen to music (of whatever flavor) instead of just having a quiet environment.
I thought it was a relevant article. I don't like everything Katz writes, but I do like some of his stuff.
I don't know what Jon's age is, but I'd guess between 35-45. Although/. started out as a deep technical forum, it has mutated over time to include issues more fitted to print in Salon or some other similar outfit. I'd say that Jon is getting hip, or at least pecking about hip-ness. He's trying to connect to a younger generation, and understand what life is like through your eyes. And occassionally he brings up some interesting points.
I thought the BWP was all hype, because it didn't percolate in to my attention until the media really latched on to it. Ok, so there's art, and a 'thumb your nose' attitude at Hollywood, and shrift for lots of discussion. Cool! There shouldn't be a sequel, so if there is one, it will suck.
A tax on email would be a double tax, in addition to the outragous taxes already nailing all of all for phone service and long distance service. How is it reasonable in any way to tax me $8 on 5 cents of long distance?
What kind of a bozo are you anyway, to insist that the ISP spend the extra monies necessary to set up and support another server? The problem lies with Cyber Patrol, not your ISP.
So what if they didn't tell you that Cyber Control blocks their whole CIDR block? They can't possibly keep track of all the possible filtering permutations possible, let alone waste time informing idiot customers like you who try to squeeze them for five more bucks off their dialup service.
Cyber Patrol, the V-chip, and all those other hysterical efforts at 'saving the Children from the Internet' are mind-numbingly ineffective solutions to a non-problem. Get over it, and get a panty-waste ISP who meets with Puritan America's politically correct approval.
So you mean to say that mass media isn't living up to the 'political good' set of assumptions we've been force-fed since America started up and Free Press was one of the issues on the table? BFD.
My first reaction when I saw JFK headlines screaming on cnn.com was that yet another Kennedy was shot, oh, boo-hoo. Could there ever be a more loathsome, rich, legally untouchable, hypocritical, boozing family on the face of this planet? If there is, please, shoot them too.
My second reaction was that someone or something really has it out for the Kennedys, and they deserve whatever they get.
I emerged from the womb the year before JFK was shot, and I have never had any feelings other than extreme distaste for that clan, and I wonder about the sanity of the people who wax nostalgic whenever yet another 'tragedy' happens to them.
Jon, where's your outrage about the USA-UK intelligence cabal that gets around the legal issue of wiretapping by sharing each other's data? You know, the deal about that spy tower in Northern England that wiretapped Irish communications for ten years, in a completely illegal fashion? There will be no reprisals, no arrests, and no change in government policy or intelligence activities, either across the pond or here at home in America. Now there is a technology story (or series, like your excellent work on the Columbine shootings and how geeks are social targets for bully-boy jocks) that Slashdot readers would love to froth about.
This article was a swing and a miss. Slashdot is about technology, paranoia, Linux, and hatred of Microsoft. Stick to the topic, sport. And keep writing.
I am working with a major telecom company who has invested about $1 million in SGI hardware and configuration services, and I have to say that I am unimpressed, at least so far, with SGI's MediaServer thingie. Go with SUN.
First of all, it's good to see that/.-ers think that a talking, iris-scanning ATM is an idea only a pinhead would like. The only machine I'd possibly like to have a conversation with is a sex robot, and only until that becomes tedious.
Secondly, iris scanning, or any other biometric security, is inherently insecure, as well as completely damaging to citizen privacy. Because biometrics is not tolerant of failure and has a very narrow application window, I wouldn't want to trust it. Further, I am more and more shocked at how poorly the information systems are being managed at banks across the country. They can't even get my checkbook balance right, let alone maintain something as complex as a biometric database.
What seems to be an even more disturbing trend is how non-technical people automatically assume the system is inherently secure. An example is when I went in six months ago to cash a paycheck at my bank, who had finally installed a fingerprint system for certain types of transactions. I struck up a conversation with the teller (a bad first mistake) by saying that their fingerprint system was extremely easy to crack, and I could think of at least three ways to do it, just while I was standing there waiting for her to complete my transaction. This teller looked at me like I had just slid a paper bag across the counter and announced I had a gun. She gave some kind of 'fingerprints are infallible' argument, and so I responded: "1) What if I wanted to emulate a fingerprint of a target customer of your bank by inviting them over for drinks, and got their print that way? How hard would it be to make a plastic or rubber copy of that print and secrete it to my thumb? 2) What if I falsely claimed to be one of your wealthy clients, and used a small gadget to heat up, cool down, or humidify your thumb scanner outside its environmental tolerances, so you had to go with a signature or some similarly easy method of forgery? No? Ok, 3) what if I obtained a job at the vendor who made your security system, and replaced a wealthy patron's thumb print with my own long enough to withdraw a pile of cash?"
The supervisor came over. That means the teller had to have pressed the psycho button behind the counter... anyway, after recounting the conversation, the supervisor repeated the same lame argument that the teller had, and obviously was gauging how far away the rent-a-cop was, and judging if he was paying enough attention to be of any help, should I go postal.
I closed the conversation by saying that I was deeply concerned about the safety of my money, because the bank was run by incompetent, ignorant boobs, and had to leave before I threw up all over the carpet. The problem is that there isn't a single consumer bank anywhere in the USA which doesn't have the same dim bulbs holding my money.
Thirdly, I don't use ATMs. I plan ahead and have cash when I need it. I don't like law enforcement's growing presumption that if you carry more than, say, $500 in cash, you have simply got to be a drug dealer. I think the populous needs to fight this kind of descrimination tooth and nail.
Huzzah to the author who wrote this reply, that the world is not required to provide witless gimps with their intellectual property for zero compensation!
What will be interesting is that RIAA has to know that FUD ain't going to cut it for very long with an Internet crowd, and that they will be forced to fall back to their next line of defense, the artists they've already signed, and the network of radio stations, concert promoters, ad execs, and the like. I predict that RIAA will pressure these vassals to refuse air time to Internet-only artists, and try to lock them out of 'traditional' forums, even more so than they already do by controlling the marketplace.
The big argument that RIAA and their lapdogs will soon put forth is that they have all the marketable acts, and the no-name bands who are trying to self-publish aren't worth listening to. So it becomes of vital importance that several Internet-only artists get enough attention and sales that RIAA is forced to deal with them on the artist's terms.
I also agree that the implications of technologies such as MP3, Linux, the Open Source model, and the publishing power of the Internet will cascade from market segment to market segment. This really is the Information Age, baby, and you better be looking at how your business is going to be a part of it.
Privacy isn't protected in our Constitution, but illegal search and seizure is specifically addressed.
Our gov'mint has come to the mistaken conclusion that because passive surveillance became the norm during the Cold War, that such is acceptable to do to its own population.
What I find ironic is that the government's strongest argument against citizen access to strong encryption is that some miniscule portion of the population might use it to facilitate illegal activities, such as drug deals. If that is a valid reason to deny everyone the use of such technology, because of the abuses of the few, then I argue that the government may not legally wiretap digitally (for instance), because the potentual for abuse by a miniscule population within our law enforcement community renders the whole concept unworkable.
I disagree with the writer I'm replying to, in that just because we've lost a great deal of privacy now, doesn't mean it can't be gotten back with the proper political activism.
There's lots of developers who have become accustomed to developing code in their respective operating systems, and that legacy carries forward.
I have no problem with supporting various Unix versions, (or Unix-like versions) if they are assigned the jobs that they do best. For instance, my company has BSDI running Stronghold, DNS, email, and a lot of routing, on a Pentium 133 system with 64megs of RAM, supporting 500 clients. This system almost never breaks a sweat.
My netnews server also manages our listserves, and it runs on RedHat 5.2. This is a Pentium 100 with 48 megs of RAM. Oh yeah, it is also running SETI.:)
All the employees dual boot Lose95 and RedHat 5.2, and we all like to use KDE. So, the workstation function at our company is primarily Linux.
The ecommerce support here runs on Solaris 2.6, on a Sparc platform, and does very well. We run Intershop 3 on an Ultra 1, and haven't bogged that system down yet. We also run ColdFusion Enterprise version on this system, and it screams compared to Intel-based platforms.
Our RADIUS server runs FreeBSD, my personal favorite for server functions. It also does a great job running Squid for web caching.
Don't tell anyone, but we also use one NT system to run WebTrends monthly, ColdFusion when needed for Access container files, and of course, the cool SETI screensaver.:)
Typical IT wisdom has been to standardize on one operating system, in order to minimize support costs. We've found that the money we've saved by recycling older computers and pressing them into service using the OS that best fits the function, has been worth it.
We watch the my OS is best religious wars with a bit of headshaking, and then get back to work on the team of platforms which pays our salary.
We have seen example after example of real market demand destroying proprietary ownership of resources, any time there is competition.
The American Steel industry tried to keep Japanese steel makers from dumping their products in our markets - rasberry.
American car makers tried to FUD their way through the invasion of higher quality products from foriegn shores. Result: major marketshare losses, layoffs, and a long road to retooling before they recovered.
IBM's stubborn insistance that PCs were toys unworthy of competing against the mainframe world was a blunder of titanic proportions.
The Baby Bells are fighting tooth and nail against hungrier competitors, including ISPs and CLECs, by tying up access to the public switched network in the courts.
RIAA is just another bloated protectionist special interest group whose tight-fisted clutch on content providers is loosening, due to vast incentives in the open market to get around them. They can't stop it, but they can sure pursue a policy of slowing down the process of loss of market control.
The riding crop makers are squalling again. The market will spank them severely, and we'll all get on to the Next Big Thing.
Thanks for your well-reasoned arguments about DreamWeaver. I get so tired of the 'EMACS Rulz' statements, which are just as fluffy as a Microsoft press release.
Although the issue of Crypto's regulation touches on Free Speech rights, it seems to me that such is a side issue when compared to the right to be free from illegal search and seizure.
What nobody seems to be dealing with in the courts is the issue of the US gvmt engaging in unfettered spying on its citizens, in the name of the 'drug war'. The intelligence apparatus of America is operating under the false assumption that since they arrived at a nice 'gentlemens agreement' with Russia during the Cold War, to allow each side to passively spy on each other, that the same methods could acceptably be employed against fellow citizens. The rights of protection against illegal search and seizure directly address this issue.
Never before in the history of mankind has a nation been so able to spy in such minute detail on its citizenry. Roving wiretaps, network sniffing, heartbeat monitors at the borders, radar which can see underground and through buildings, and electronic emmisions snooping are all technologies which enable our gvmt to put selected citizens under a very powerful political microscope. The information gathered on such an unfortunate citizen could easily be used by an unscrupulous and well-funded intelligence organization to squish that citizen like a bug.
Imagine all your preferences, habits, the people you associate with, your sexual desires, political affiliations, and all other aspects of your life being available to CIA, to be used against you if you become the target of a persuasion campaign.
The real issue of encryption is safety against illegal search and seizure.
It looks an awful lot like the hardware for this third test is slanted to favor NT. Another consideration is that Mindcraft insists on holding down the software revs to the date of the second unpublished test. To me, this rule eliminates one of the greatest strengths of Linux: that it enjoys a far faster software upgrade lifecycle than a commercial product can ever hope to achieve.
Everyone knows that Linux performs far better on lower-end hardware than NT. For instance, my own web server runs on a P133 with 64MB of RAM, and would stomp all over a similarly-configured NT system, even without tuning.
In my opinion, the fact that it takes three tests before the two operating system communities agree that the tests were unbiased puts MindCraft in a no-win position. If I were looking for an independent lab to do tests for my company, MindCraft would never be considered, based on their performance regarding this issue.
I really don't care if Linux 'loses' this third test, because I find it much easier to compete with clueless Internet service companies who choose NT as their solution. If Linux even comes close to NT's performance, then what does that say about the technical merits of commercially developed software from a company with hundreds of programmers and millions of budgeted dollars?
If Linux 'loses', then you can bet the legions of programmers will tune the code to beat the next benchmark. Result: even faster service on high-end hardware, as well as middle- and low-end real world hardware.
If Linux wins, well then... *chuckle*, we knew that, anyway.
Finally, I get to tell my story in a relevent forum, and to give advice to geeks, that was never available while I was in school.
I was a geek before the word existed. In middle school and high school, I loved to read, watch Star Trek, and hang around after school with the science teachers and learn 'the stuff that really mattered.'
Consequently, I was a target for every bloated jock whose path I crossed. I grew up in a small West Virginia town who worshipped athletics above all other activities. Football was considered to be the highest pursuit a man could attain, and the 'popular' kids were atheletes. Any form of thought which wasn't in line with what the alpha thugs laid down as acceptable social norms were stomped on without hesitation. Not all intructors at these schools tolerated such bullying, but the majority of teachers not only tolerated this behavior, but encouraged it.
It is fair to say that not all jocks maintained a bullying demeanor, but certainly 90% or more did.
Because I was born in June, I was physically smaller than most of my classmates. Also, I was a slow grower (in fact, I am still getting taller, and I'm 36 years old!) I simply didn't think that wearing the latest clothes, or going to 'pep' rallies to mindlessly cheer on the biggest goons were important activities. I was shy, also, because anything I had to say was typically thoughtful and at an adult level, and therefore made me an immediate target for physical and verbal abuse.
My parents were split on the issue. Mom couldn't believe that such institutional cruelty existed, and her only answer was to 'ignore the bullies and eventually they will go away.' Not. Dad was basically a non-violent guy, but he said that bullies will keep at you if you don't stand up for yourself, and suggested that, the next time I got physical abuse from someone, kick 'em in the kneecap or similar region, so that they couldn't respond.
I decided that taking a nightstick to school in order to defend myself might result in an injury to a jock which would put him out of sports permanently, and I knew that there would be no sympathy for me in that town afterwards. So my solution was to beat them at their own game. I got active in sports.
Specifically, I picked a sport which none of the most popular jocks were involved with, and which I had some talent in: swimming. During the three years I swam, I set records at my high school which probably still stand today.
One payoff came during my junior year when I was getting verbally hazed in class from the guy who was our varsity center on the football team, and I piped up: 'Look, fat boy, I may not play sacred football, but any time you want to try to beat me at my sport, come on down to the pool so I can humiliate you in front of as large an audience as you can stand. What? You don't want to accept my challenge? Then shut up, and know that there is an athletic activity at which I will always be better than you.'
There was stunned silence in the room, then, for once, laughter and jeering at the jock instead of at me. The English teacher winked at me, and continued the class, but Fat Boy stayed humiliated, and I got more popular after that.
To this day, I despise professional football, baseball, and basketball. I hate business people who use sports analogies when I'm dealing with them, and usually say so. I'm glad that soccer, hockey, and other sports get more attention than when I was in high school.
Geeks: hang in there. Popular atheletes are for the most part lazy and stupid, and they will get theirs when they have to start dealing with the real world. Go on to college, where scholastic inclinations are rewarded. You will find many people who think like you do, read the same books as you, and are looking for friends like you. The game changes completely... you will be treated like an adult, and liked for your mind. And, there's girls...:)
Once out of the prison (oops, school) system, you will find that you've got the skills to get a job that allows you to attain the level of success that your oppressors can never hope for. (I checked; most of the popular goons from my high school class are mall security guards and the like.)
If you can't get away from bullies, and they won't let up on you, use your mind to find a way to embarrass, harass, or get back at them. Shooting them is an unacceptable solution. But a surprise kick in the groin and an explanation that you ain't gonna take it no more, works wonders.
The only UNIX I've disliked more than SCO was DGUX, which is now, thankfully dead and buried.
My own personal experience with SCO has been that it crashes at any hint of demand on the server. I can say without fear of argument that NT 4.0 is far more reliable than SCO. Imagine that.
The only people I know who run SCO now are ones who are stuck with legacy software that only runs on SCO.
When your product is crap, it doesn't matter if it swirls at the bottom of the bowl!
Ok, enough rants, here's where I address some of his issues:
(Paraphrased) Linux has no central support, and that scares away corporate customers.
This only scares middle managers in large corporations who habitually spend most of their calories seeking out scapegoats when their poorly managed staff using inadequate tools don't get their unrealistic deadlines completed on time. Expensive support contracts are way overrated. Now that I run my own business, I'd never spend the gobs of money support outfits require for some of their products. $195/hour for wimpy Microsoft tech support? Not.
Linux has no 'roadmap'.
I have news for corporate America: There aren't any roads in today's software market. The days of monopoly control of a particular software market segment are gone, gone, gone; and the Four Horsemen who are making it so are the Internet, Linux, MP3, and data encryption. And there's a whole mongol army of marauders just behind the hill, who are ready to trample on any company that can't change fast enough to meet the next competitive threat. No software house can hope to maintain the short turnaround that Open Source software, with its hoards of volunteer programmers, achieves each and every day.
Linux isn't UNIX; SCO owns it.
SCO may own a brand name, but there's lots of UNIXes out there, or UNIX-like operating systems, that kick the snot out of it. If SCO is UNIX, then I'll have none, thanks.
'Punks' stole UNIX, and play at making a viable OS.
This was an unfortunate comment, and will likely be engraved on his tombstone. In any case, anyone who has touched both operating systems knows that Linux is much stronger than SCO, so trying to dis the way Linux came to be is immaterial. Using the word punk just shows that this guy has his head, and therefore his company's head, stuck in the old ways of thinking. Here's roadkill waiting to happen.
Enough venting for the day! I'm off to use my Linux workstation to get real work done at my ISP business.
It is funny how I completely agree with you about your assessment of what the author was trying to say, then completely disagree that 'intellectual property' is wrong.
The author makes a very valid point that, sooner or later, MP3 will be left to twist in the wind for the sake of the Next Big Audio Thing. After all, only the insane among us will fail to admit that our most Holy of Holies, Linux, is a passing thing, too. If you are at least 30 years old, then you may remember, for instance, when Microsoft was going to save us from IBM.
The idea, however, that intellectual property is a nonworkable concept, rubs my Capitalist fur the wrong way. If you want to give away your talents to anyone with a tape recorder, and starve to death, to be buried in an unmarked grave next to Joan Baez, well, go ahead.
What I've found is that, by and large, Humanity is Lazy. Less than 10% of us create new content. The other 90% copy it, consume it, or ignore it, but don't contribute to it. So, the heck with them! Since our primary rate of exchange is money, then make the sheep pay for what they yearn for.
I'm willing to bet that almost everyone who has anything, doesn't want to share it; and those that have nothing, want everyone who has stuff to be required to share it.
The whole legal precedent that because one could potentually break the law because of a given technology, justifies that technology being outlawed, is insane.
For instance, gun control advocates actually argue that because someone might shoot someone else with a handgun, that all handguns should be illegal for citizens to own. We might as well ban any sharp instrument, because I might have a mind to walk out and jam it into someone's eye socket.
The Clinton administration's stance that encryption allows some miniscule percentage of the population to inconvenience law enforcement in their attempts to bug known drug lords simply doesn't justify the danger of exposure of unencrypted data that the rest of us have to put up with, thanks to Cold War thinking.
RIAA doesn't seem to have any problem with me buying a CD, and copying it via a CD-rewritable widget, so that I can have a copy for my car. As long as I don't give the copy to anyone else, they should shut up and go back to counting their royalties.
Slashdot Mirror
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I don't think Katz is overreacting to this issue. It is yet another lame attempt by clueless administrators who don't think they are a pointy-haired boss to automate the process of managing increasingly desocialized kids.
Kids at Columbine who are the typical wide receivers for jock abuse report that nothing has changed at that school, in terms of the jock hierarchy, or the lack of non-jock support from authority figures.
And now, let's use an Automated Solution(TM) to this problem of understanding why these kids are increasingly fantasizing about blowing the place up and taking all the teachers with them.
Back when I was younger and more foolish, I worked for the Aerospace Industry. I thought it would be cool to actually be one of those people who build rockets. And yeah, it was fun for a while. But working for Federal agencies really sucks. You have no rights, and no allowances are made for 'different' behavior.
I was once required to take a psych test from the security department, which consisted of me sitting in a sound-proof room at a desk with a phone. This phone was connected to a computer that would use a voice generation program that asked me a series of Lifestyle questions. I was to press the star button for yes, and pound button for no answers. I was instructed to answer as quickly as possible, but, of course, truthfully.
The object of the test was, ostensibly, to gauge subconscious reactions to these questions, in order to ferret out people who might be potentual security risks. You know, people who might be using drugs (oh, only the illegal kind... caffeine, alcohol, and prozac are on the approved list), blackmail sufferers, people who can't manage their own finances, religious crackpots, and the like.
I found the questions to be insulting, and nothing that someone would ask me to my face, such as:
"Do you ever hear disembodied voices?"
"If a friend betrayed you, could you forgive them?"
"Have you ever considered experimenting with a homosexual relationship?"
"If you witnessed a coworker stealing office supplies, would you report them?"
I was so angry at the ridiculousness of the whole thing that, by the end, I was randomly answering and wasn't even listening to the questions.
The security guy who ran the tests came over after the test was done, and asked my opinion of the procedure. He was grinning, and I could see that he probably had a technology woodie that he'd have to deal with after I left.
I said that it was the stupidest waste of government money I had ever witnessed. The questions asked were transparent enough that anyone with half a brain could give whatever answers they wanted, and the system would not be able to detect that they were diverging from their own real answers. Why in God's name did the company drag me away from the work I was doing, in order that I might be a lab rat for some fat boy's techno-security fantasies???
His face went from Mr. Happy to insulted Nazi in about a quarter of a second. Apparently, the time for giving honest answers had passed.
Folks, we have got to just say Eat My Shorts to these kinds of dehumanizing Fascist tactics to categorize us as in compliance with Federal standards of behavior or not. Every day that we allow such imbecillic activities to erode our civil liberties, we crawl closer to an Orwellian state from which there will be no escape.
Like others have said here, the Media doesn't get Linux any more than they really get the elegence of shared memory. But the Media has become a fine-honed nose for that ineffable shift in social winds, and they pounce on it.
So, in the case of Linux, what are they really sensing? There's several assumptions that have been laid down by interested parties in the IT industry that are being challenged by Linux:
1) Quality software can't be created unless it is by a micro-managed team of programmers.
2) The commercial marketplace will never stand for an 'unsupported' product for their mission-critical applications.
3) Closed source software is inherently more secure than open source versions of same.
4) The best programmers are motivated by money, not fame, or the satisfaction of producing a quality product.
Obviously, we in the Linux community know these assumptions to be nothing but commercial pap. But as more commercial users quietly integrate Linux and its bretheren into their IT workloads, enlightenment occurs, and the established closed source companies start feeling pressure from lost sales and less control.
That is the phenomenon that the Media senses and is reporting on. They may or may not connect the dots, and realise that the internet and linux have blown open the doors of information distribution in other ways, eventually toppling dictatorships and two-party systems alike. Now there is a story worthy of print.
But beware: there will come a time when Linux is on the downslope of its lifecycle. Most of the hip hackers will have moved on to the Next Great Thing, and those who stubbornly cling to the glory days of linux will be viewed much like the BBS operators today who view the internet as the technology which put them out of business, and out of control of their own little domains.
That being said, it's Blues and Jazz for me!
Waa. Get a job flipping burgers or herding sheep, then.
I don't know what Jon's age is, but I'd guess between 35-45. Although /. started out as a deep technical forum, it has mutated over time to include issues more fitted to print in Salon or some other similar outfit. I'd say that Jon is getting hip, or at least pecking about hip-ness. He's trying to connect to a younger generation, and understand what life is like through your eyes. And occassionally he brings up some interesting points.
I thought the BWP was all hype, because it didn't percolate in to my attention until the media really latched on to it. Ok, so there's art, and a 'thumb your nose' attitude at Hollywood, and shrift for lots of discussion. Cool! There shouldn't be a sequel, so if there is one, it will suck.
A tax on email would be a double tax, in addition to the outragous taxes already nailing all of all for phone service and long distance service. How is it reasonable in any way to tax me $8 on 5 cents of long distance?
Aren't such actions Acts of War?
So what if they didn't tell you that Cyber Control blocks their whole CIDR block? They can't possibly keep track of all the possible filtering permutations possible, let alone waste time informing idiot customers like you who try to squeeze them for five more bucks off their dialup service.
Cyber Patrol, the V-chip, and all those other hysterical efforts at 'saving the Children from the Internet' are mind-numbingly ineffective solutions to a non-problem. Get over it, and get a panty-waste ISP who meets with Puritan America's politically correct approval.
So you mean to say that mass media isn't living up to the 'political good' set of assumptions we've been force-fed since America started up and Free Press was one of the issues on the table? BFD.
My first reaction when I saw JFK headlines screaming on cnn.com was that yet another Kennedy was shot, oh, boo-hoo. Could there ever be a more loathsome, rich, legally untouchable, hypocritical, boozing family on the face of this planet? If there is, please, shoot them too.
My second reaction was that someone or something really has it out for the Kennedys, and they deserve whatever they get.
I emerged from the womb the year before JFK was shot, and I have never had any feelings other than extreme distaste for that clan, and I wonder about the sanity of the people who wax nostalgic whenever yet another 'tragedy' happens to them.
Jon, where's your outrage about the USA-UK intelligence cabal that gets around the legal issue of wiretapping by sharing each other's data? You know, the deal about that spy tower in Northern England that wiretapped Irish communications for ten years, in a completely illegal fashion? There will be no reprisals, no arrests, and no change in government policy or intelligence activities, either across the pond or here at home in America. Now there is a technology story (or series, like your excellent work on the Columbine shootings and how geeks are social targets for bully-boy jocks) that Slashdot readers would love to froth about.
This article was a swing and a miss. Slashdot is about technology, paranoia, Linux, and hatred of Microsoft. Stick to the topic, sport. And keep writing.
I am working with a major telecom company who has invested about $1 million in SGI hardware and configuration services, and I have to say that I am unimpressed, at least so far, with SGI's MediaServer thingie. Go with SUN.
Secondly, iris scanning, or any other biometric security, is inherently insecure, as well as completely damaging to citizen privacy. Because biometrics is not tolerant of failure and has a very narrow application window, I wouldn't want to trust it. Further, I am more and more shocked at how poorly the information systems are being managed at banks across the country. They can't even get my checkbook balance right, let alone maintain something as complex as a biometric database.
What seems to be an even more disturbing trend is how non-technical people automatically assume the system is inherently secure. An example is when I went in six months ago to cash a paycheck at my bank, who had finally installed a fingerprint system for certain types of transactions. I struck up a conversation with the teller (a bad first mistake) by saying that their fingerprint system was extremely easy to crack, and I could think of at least three ways to do it, just while I was standing there waiting for her to complete my transaction. This teller looked at me like I had just slid a paper bag across the counter and announced I had a gun. She gave some kind of 'fingerprints are infallible' argument, and so I responded: "1) What if I wanted to emulate a fingerprint of a target customer of your bank by inviting them over for drinks, and got their print that way? How hard would it be to make a plastic or rubber copy of that print and secrete it to my thumb? 2) What if I falsely claimed to be one of your wealthy clients, and used a small gadget to heat up, cool down, or humidify your thumb scanner outside its environmental tolerances, so you had to go with a signature or some similarly easy method of forgery? No? Ok, 3) what if I obtained a job at the vendor who made your security system, and replaced a wealthy patron's thumb print with my own long enough to withdraw a pile of cash?"
The supervisor came over. That means the teller had to have pressed the psycho button behind the counter... anyway, after recounting the conversation, the supervisor repeated the same lame argument that the teller had, and obviously was gauging how far away the rent-a-cop was, and judging if he was paying enough attention to be of any help, should I go postal.
I closed the conversation by saying that I was deeply concerned about the safety of my money, because the bank was run by incompetent, ignorant boobs, and had to leave before I threw up all over the carpet. The problem is that there isn't a single consumer bank anywhere in the USA which doesn't have the same dim bulbs holding my money.
Thirdly, I don't use ATMs. I plan ahead and have cash when I need it. I don't like law enforcement's growing presumption that if you carry more than, say, $500 in cash, you have simply got to be a drug dealer. I think the populous needs to fight this kind of descrimination tooth and nail.
What will be interesting is that RIAA has to know that FUD ain't going to cut it for very long with an Internet crowd, and that they will be forced to fall back to their next line of defense, the artists they've already signed, and the network of radio stations, concert promoters, ad execs, and the like. I predict that RIAA will pressure these vassals to refuse air time to Internet-only artists, and try to lock them out of 'traditional' forums, even more so than they already do by controlling the marketplace.
The big argument that RIAA and their lapdogs will soon put forth is that they have all the marketable acts, and the no-name bands who are trying to self-publish aren't worth listening to. So it becomes of vital importance that several Internet-only artists get enough attention and sales that RIAA is forced to deal with them on the artist's terms.
I also agree that the implications of technologies such as MP3, Linux, the Open Source model, and the publishing power of the Internet will cascade from market segment to market segment. This really is the Information Age, baby, and you better be looking at how your business is going to be a part of it.
Our gov'mint has come to the mistaken conclusion that because passive surveillance became the norm during the Cold War, that such is acceptable to do to its own population.
What I find ironic is that the government's strongest argument against citizen access to strong encryption is that some miniscule portion of the population might use it to facilitate illegal activities, such as drug deals. If that is a valid reason to deny everyone the use of such technology, because of the abuses of the few, then I argue that the government may not legally wiretap digitally (for instance), because the potentual for abuse by a miniscule population within our law enforcement community renders the whole concept unworkable.
I disagree with the writer I'm replying to, in that just because we've lost a great deal of privacy now, doesn't mean it can't be gotten back with the proper political activism.
There's lots of developers who have become accustomed to developing code in their respective operating systems, and that legacy carries forward.
I have no problem with supporting various Unix versions, (or Unix-like versions) if they are assigned the jobs that they do best. For instance, my company has BSDI running Stronghold, DNS, email, and a lot of routing, on a Pentium 133 system with 64megs of RAM, supporting 500 clients. This system almost never breaks a sweat.
My netnews server also manages our listserves, and it runs on RedHat 5.2. This is a Pentium 100 with 48 megs of RAM. Oh yeah, it is also running SETI. :)
All the employees dual boot Lose95 and RedHat 5.2, and we all like to use KDE. So, the workstation function at our company is primarily Linux.
The ecommerce support here runs on Solaris 2.6, on a Sparc platform, and does very well. We run Intershop 3 on an Ultra 1, and haven't bogged that system down yet. We also run ColdFusion Enterprise version on this system, and it screams compared to Intel-based platforms.
Our RADIUS server runs FreeBSD, my personal favorite for server functions. It also does a great job running Squid for web caching.
Don't tell anyone, but we also use one NT system to run WebTrends monthly, ColdFusion when needed for Access container files, and of course, the cool SETI screensaver. :)
Typical IT wisdom has been to standardize on one operating system, in order to minimize support costs. We've found that the money we've saved by recycling older computers and pressing them into service using the OS that best fits the function, has been worth it.
We watch the my OS is best religious wars with a bit of headshaking, and then get back to work on the team of platforms which pays our salary.
There's been many scathing observations already made by the ever-alert Linux community, so I'll only add mine:
Automobiles are a wagon-maker's project gone astray.
We have seen example after example of real market demand destroying proprietary ownership of resources, any time there is competition.
The American Steel industry tried to keep Japanese steel makers from dumping their products in our markets - rasberry.
American car makers tried to FUD their way through the invasion of higher quality products from foriegn shores. Result: major marketshare losses, layoffs, and a long road to retooling before they recovered.
IBM's stubborn insistance that PCs were toys unworthy of competing against the mainframe world was a blunder of titanic proportions.
The Baby Bells are fighting tooth and nail against hungrier competitors, including ISPs and CLECs, by tying up access to the public switched network in the courts.
RIAA is just another bloated protectionist special interest group whose tight-fisted clutch on content providers is loosening, due to vast incentives in the open market to get around them. They can't stop it, but they can sure pursue a policy of slowing down the process of loss of market control.
The riding crop makers are squalling again. The market will spank them severely, and we'll all get on to the Next Big Thing.
Thanks for your well-reasoned arguments about DreamWeaver. I get so tired of the 'EMACS Rulz' statements, which are just as fluffy as a Microsoft press release.
What nobody seems to be dealing with in the courts is the issue of the US gvmt engaging in unfettered spying on its citizens, in the name of the 'drug war'. The intelligence apparatus of America is operating under the false assumption that since they arrived at a nice 'gentlemens agreement' with Russia during the Cold War, to allow each side to passively spy on each other, that the same methods could acceptably be employed against fellow citizens. The rights of protection against illegal search and seizure directly address this issue.
Never before in the history of mankind has a nation been so able to spy in such minute detail on its citizenry. Roving wiretaps, network sniffing, heartbeat monitors at the borders, radar which can see underground and through buildings, and electronic emmisions snooping are all technologies which enable our gvmt to put selected citizens under a very powerful political microscope. The information gathered on such an unfortunate citizen could easily be used by an unscrupulous and well-funded intelligence organization to squish that citizen like a bug.
Imagine all your preferences, habits, the people you associate with, your sexual desires, political affiliations, and all other aspects of your life being available to CIA, to be used against you if you become the target of a persuasion campaign.
The real issue of encryption is safety against illegal search and seizure.
It looks an awful lot like the hardware for this third test is slanted to favor NT. Another consideration is that Mindcraft insists on holding down the software revs to the date of the second unpublished test. To me, this rule eliminates one of the greatest strengths of Linux: that it enjoys a far faster software upgrade lifecycle than a commercial product can ever hope to achieve.
Everyone knows that Linux performs far better on lower-end hardware than NT. For instance, my own web server runs on a P133 with 64MB of RAM, and would stomp all over a similarly-configured NT system, even without tuning.
In my opinion, the fact that it takes three tests before the two operating system communities agree that the tests were unbiased puts MindCraft in a no-win position. If I were looking for an independent lab to do tests for my company, MindCraft would never be considered, based on their performance regarding this issue.
I really don't care if Linux 'loses' this third test, because I find it much easier to compete with clueless Internet service companies who choose NT as their solution. If Linux even comes close to NT's performance, then what does that say about the technical merits of commercially developed software from a company with hundreds of programmers and millions of budgeted dollars?
If Linux 'loses', then you can bet the legions of programmers will tune the code to beat the next benchmark. Result: even faster service on high-end hardware, as well as middle- and low-end real world hardware.
If Linux wins, well then... *chuckle*, we knew that, anyway.
I was a geek before the word existed. In middle school and high school, I loved to read, watch Star Trek, and hang around after school with the science teachers and learn 'the stuff that really mattered.'
Consequently, I was a target for every bloated jock whose path I crossed. I grew up in a small West Virginia town who worshipped athletics above all other activities. Football was considered to be the highest pursuit a man could attain, and the 'popular' kids were atheletes. Any form of thought which wasn't in line with what the alpha thugs laid down as acceptable social norms were stomped on without hesitation. Not all intructors at these schools tolerated such bullying, but the majority of teachers not only tolerated this behavior, but encouraged it.
It is fair to say that not all jocks maintained a bullying demeanor, but certainly 90% or more did.
Because I was born in June, I was physically smaller than most of my classmates. Also, I was a slow grower (in fact, I am still getting taller, and I'm 36 years old!) I simply didn't think that wearing the latest clothes, or going to 'pep' rallies to mindlessly cheer on the biggest goons were important activities. I was shy, also, because anything I had to say was typically thoughtful and at an adult level, and therefore made me an immediate target for physical and verbal abuse.
My parents were split on the issue. Mom couldn't believe that such institutional cruelty existed, and her only answer was to 'ignore the bullies and eventually they will go away.' Not. Dad was basically a non-violent guy, but he said that bullies will keep at you if you don't stand up for yourself, and suggested that, the next time I got physical abuse from someone, kick 'em in the kneecap or similar region, so that they couldn't respond.
I decided that taking a nightstick to school in order to defend myself might result in an injury to a jock which would put him out of sports permanently, and I knew that there would be no sympathy for me in that town afterwards. So my solution was to beat them at their own game. I got active in sports.
Specifically, I picked a sport which none of the most popular jocks were involved with, and which I had some talent in: swimming. During the three years I swam, I set records at my high school which probably still stand today.
One payoff came during my junior year when I was getting verbally hazed in class from the guy who was our varsity center on the football team, and I piped up: 'Look, fat boy, I may not play sacred football, but any time you want to try to beat me at my sport, come on down to the pool so I can humiliate you in front of as large an audience as you can stand. What? You don't want to accept my challenge? Then shut up, and know that there is an athletic activity at which I will always be better than you.'
There was stunned silence in the room, then, for once, laughter and jeering at the jock instead of at me. The English teacher winked at me, and continued the class, but Fat Boy stayed humiliated, and I got more popular after that.
To this day, I despise professional football, baseball, and basketball. I hate business people who use sports analogies when I'm dealing with them, and usually say so. I'm glad that soccer, hockey, and other sports get more attention than when I was in high school.
Geeks: hang in there. Popular atheletes are for the most part lazy and stupid, and they will get theirs when they have to start dealing with the real world. Go on to college, where scholastic inclinations are rewarded. You will find many people who think like you do, read the same books as you, and are looking for friends like you. The game changes completely... you will be treated like an adult, and liked for your mind. And, there's girls... :)
Once out of the prison (oops, school) system, you will find that you've got the skills to get a job that allows you to attain the level of success that your oppressors can never hope for. (I checked; most of the popular goons from my high school class are mall security guards and the like.)
If you can't get away from bullies, and they won't let up on you, use your mind to find a way to embarrass, harass, or get back at them. Shooting them is an unacceptable solution. But a surprise kick in the groin and an explanation that you ain't gonna take it no more, works wonders.
Good luck!
My own personal experience with SCO has been that it crashes at any hint of demand on the server. I can say without fear of argument that NT 4.0 is far more reliable than SCO. Imagine that.
The only people I know who run SCO now are ones who are stuck with legacy software that only runs on SCO.
When your product is crap, it doesn't matter if it swirls at the bottom of the bowl!
Ok, enough rants, here's where I address some of his issues:
(Paraphrased) Linux has no central support, and that scares away corporate customers.
This only scares middle managers in large corporations who habitually spend most of their calories seeking out scapegoats when their poorly managed staff using inadequate tools don't get their unrealistic deadlines completed on time. Expensive support contracts are way overrated. Now that I run my own business, I'd never spend the gobs of money support outfits require for some of their products. $195/hour for wimpy Microsoft tech support? Not.
Linux has no 'roadmap'.
I have news for corporate America: There aren't any roads in today's software market. The days of monopoly control of a particular software market segment are gone, gone, gone; and the Four Horsemen who are making it so are the Internet, Linux, MP3, and data encryption. And there's a whole mongol army of marauders just behind the hill, who are ready to trample on any company that can't change fast enough to meet the next competitive threat. No software house can hope to maintain the short turnaround that Open Source software, with its hoards of volunteer programmers, achieves each and every day.
Linux isn't UNIX; SCO owns it.
SCO may own a brand name, but there's lots of UNIXes out there, or UNIX-like operating systems, that kick the snot out of it. If SCO is UNIX, then I'll have none, thanks.
'Punks' stole UNIX, and play at making a viable OS.
This was an unfortunate comment, and will likely be engraved on his tombstone. In any case, anyone who has touched both operating systems knows that Linux is much stronger than SCO, so trying to dis the way Linux came to be is immaterial. Using the word punk just shows that this guy has his head, and therefore his company's head, stuck in the old ways of thinking. Here's roadkill waiting to happen.
Enough venting for the day! I'm off to use my Linux workstation to get real work done at my ISP business.
The author makes a very valid point that, sooner or later, MP3 will be left to twist in the wind for the sake of the Next Big Audio Thing. After all, only the insane among us will fail to admit that our most Holy of Holies, Linux, is a passing thing, too. If you are at least 30 years old, then you may remember, for instance, when Microsoft was going to save us from IBM.
The idea, however, that intellectual property is a nonworkable concept, rubs my Capitalist fur the wrong way. If you want to give away your talents to anyone with a tape recorder, and starve to death, to be buried in an unmarked grave next to Joan Baez, well, go ahead.
What I've found is that, by and large, Humanity is Lazy. Less than 10% of us create new content. The other 90% copy it, consume it, or ignore it, but don't contribute to it. So, the heck with them! Since our primary rate of exchange is money, then make the sheep pay for what they yearn for.
I'm willing to bet that almost everyone who has anything, doesn't want to share it; and those that have nothing, want everyone who has stuff to be required to share it.
For instance, gun control advocates actually argue that because someone might shoot someone else with a handgun, that all handguns should be illegal for citizens to own. We might as well ban any sharp instrument, because I might have a mind to walk out and jam it into someone's eye socket.
The Clinton administration's stance that encryption allows some miniscule percentage of the population to inconvenience law enforcement in their attempts to bug known drug lords simply doesn't justify the danger of exposure of unencrypted data that the rest of us have to put up with, thanks to Cold War thinking.
RIAA doesn't seem to have any problem with me buying a CD, and copying it via a CD-rewritable widget, so that I can have a copy for my car. As long as I don't give the copy to anyone else, they should shut up and go back to counting their royalties.