Now... if an alternative energy source is found and it's ready and it's cheaper than oil and for some reason it just isn't adopted then, yes, raise taxes on oil to push people to the alternative energy souce. But only do that when we have a viable alternative! Of course once we have a viable alternative it won't be necessary to raise taxes to convince people to use it. The market will adopt it immediately if it makes financial sense.
There ARE viable alternatives in many sectors of the energy economy which WOULD be cheaper IF they had the benefit of the economy of scale oil enjoys. But, since they don't enjoy the same economy of scale, they aren't presently cheaper, and so people aren't adopting them. At what point do you consider it acceptable for the government to try and tip that balance? Or do you expect a new technology to be so much cheaper at inception that the economy of scale advantage is irrelevant?
Sorry, but present reality doesn't bear out your assumptions. In a perfect market with intelligent , informed consumers it would certainly work out that way. I think we can both agree, though, that intelligent, informed consumers is not what we have.
I characterized the idea as a typical liberal solution.
I'll happily concede that point, as long as you will concede that "typical liberal solution" really means "willing to pay up-front cost to more quickly realize long-term gains".
There is more than one recipe for Soy Sauce, and it is entirely possible that it is the recipe they consider their IP.
My wife is a waitress at a sushi restaurant which is owned and operated by japanese immigrants. They bought the restaurant from an older japanese couple who were ready to retire. As part of the sale the husband (and sushi chef) got a recipe for soy sauce, and his hand made soy sauce is the only soy sauce you will get in his restaurant (which is fine by me, because now that I've had his I realize that Kikoman is crap). Additionally, his wife was given recipes for sesame seed salad dressing and green tea ice cream.
Buying recipes with a restaurant is not unusual (why else would you buy a restaurant instead of just opening your own?), and they are generally as closely guarded as any mission critical IP. The real difference with them is that they don't even share the recipes with each other. If the wife goes out of town and didn't make enough, well... sorry, no salad or ice cream for you.
With old compilers, you could make...a compiler. This results in recursion, which points out the flaw in the system (how many generations do I have to be removed before I can use the tool wherever I like?). This is totally different here, since recursion is not present - the tool you make doesn't perform the same functions as the tool you licensed.
RTFA
The tool is specifically described as a "jig for making jigs", and their FAQ specifically states that the reason for the EULA is that the purpose of the tool is to clone itself. That sure sounds like recursion to me.
Also, since you seem to be unfamiliar with the term, a jig is the closest thing there is to a compiler in woodworking..
Sorry, but the analogy is quite solid, it is your understanding of the situation which is completely flawed.
I'm sure there is great documentation for Windows, but where is it? With Linux, while it may be difficult for the newbie to understand, at least it's easy to find, and you don't have to pay extra for it.
Simple installation
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. SuSE has been beating the crap out of Microsoft on this point for at least the last 3 years.
If you let an inventor write laws, of course he is going to write laws that favor inventors. Then lawyers, who are much better with laws than inventors, will interpret those laws in the way that makes the most money for whoever hired them.
This is the most insightful comment I've read in a long time. It's almost sad that it was posted AC.
I use to use SuSE in the past. It has become quite slow and bloated, even on my athlonXP.
I know what you mean, but the problem was not SuSE, it was KDE. Newer versions of KDE are much better, or you could use one of the lightweight WMs and enjoy the related performance boost.
Furthermore, most people here are posting things about Windows which are entirely untrue, especially concerning what it can and cant do. They are speaking authoritatively from a position of ignorance, which I find very annoying.
Perhaps you should avoid doing so yourself, then:
For example, Linux may be good as a desktop OS for some people, but for your average non-technical user? No way. These people FEAR a CLI.
There are several distros available on which the user will never even have to think about the CLI. To suggest that using the CLI is a requirement for using Linux is to either spread deliberate lies, or to speak from a position of ignorance.
The problem I see is that around here, each petty Windows patch goes up on a times square billboard, while Linux and other OSS patches arent even mentioned.
I think if you were to remove your bias filters you would find that security holes of equal severity recieve equal attention, regardless of the OS. It is not Slashdot's fault that almost every Windows hole allows remote execution of arbitrary code.
Part of it is that a lot of OSS doesnt use patches, they just save it all for the next version. Then they can just gloss over the update by giving people different colored buttons or some such fluff.
Would you care to provide some examples? From what I've seen this is demonstrably not true, but I'll concede the point if you can provide some actual evidence.
They have JUST as many updates as MS.
See my above comment regarding exploit severity. Think "quantity vs. quality".
Actually, I've thought about how emacs fits into the Unix philosophy of "do one thing and do it well" and I've decided that emacs does not in fact violate that principle. The one thing that emacs does is...
Editor MACroS!
That people decide to include all these macros rather than making the user find or create them on their own is not the fault of emacs.
Of course, I'm a vi user, so I could be totally wrong.
I read somewhere recently that Intuit had issued an apology to their customers about that.
I read that too. Too little too late in my opinion, the damage is done, they've already lost me as a customer. If they'd recanted when people first started complaining about it it might have mattered, but a year later just doesn't cut it.
a reported severe security hole may sit around for months before it reaches developers flagged as a MUSTFIX bug with MS's internal bug tracking system
That was exactly my first thought.
given that this is currently a senstive Microsoft weak point, I'd be expecting at least a bit of coloring of the truth.
I've come to the conclusion that corporations advertise according to their weaknesses; e.g. Hyundai advertising their "dependability" when they are in fact the most unreliable cars I've seen, or any kids cereal being "a healthy part of this complete breakfast".
It's sad to me that they see more value in fixing the perception through marketing than in actually improving their product, but maybe that's an inevitability in a profit-driven/materialistic society.
Specifically, SETI et al. don't have the money to buy, power, house, and maintain the kind of computational resources they can leverage through a distributed system. People donate those resources instead of just directly donating money.
IMHO it works out pretty well for both sides. People feel like they're actually doing something for their chosen cause, and that's more fulfilling than just writing a check. The NPO probably saves money in the long run since they will never have to pay all the other costs associated with that computing power, not just when it's in use, but also storage or disposal when it becomes obsolete.
And does anyone else see the possible conflict of interest with PC World running these benchmarks?... Does anyone really believe these benchmarks are any more fair and unbiased than Apple's own???
In the blurb beneath the benchmark table it says that the Mac benchmarking was done by MacWorld. I don't read either publication, so I don't know how biased they might be, but it seems to me that the MacWorld folks would want the Mac to look good.
Y'see, there is a need for BSD-type licenses, for people who don't want to redistribute their source.
Yeah, great, but BSD was available and Linksys chose to use the GPLed Linux code instead. Again, nobody was forcing Linksys to use GPL code. They knew what they were getting into and they made a choice. Now they are breaking the law. Period.
Not the GPL per se, but that the GPL creates a second, separate "public domain" distinct from the BSD/default public domain.
BSD != Public Domain!!! GPL != Public Domain!!!
This is a meme that needs to die. With the GPL it should be obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of copyright that it is not the same as public domain, and more importantly it doesn't even try to be. With BSD the difference is a little more tricky, but any code licensed under the BSD license is copyrighted. If it was public domain it wouldn't need a license!
Yes, in most cases you can treat BSD code the same as if it were public domain, but that does not change the fact that it is copyrighted for the author's life plus 75 years, or 95 years if it was work-for-hire.
Public domain means no copyright, and no copyright means no license.
Irrelevant. You're paying a flat fee for access to the network for a period of time, regardless of how many calls you get or how long they last. Since a specific cost cannot be attached to any individual call they are considered "free" in the eyes of the law. Note that if they were calling you collect, or if you were on some sort of phone plan where you had to pay for incomming calls (like if they were calling you on an 800 number), you would have grounds to sue.
In the case of junk faxes, you have to pay for the paper and/or ink that's used to print out the message. In the case of cell phones you have to pay for minutes, and incomming calls use those minutes. In both cases a resource that belongs to you and which has a specific cost to you is being used without your permission, and that is what gives you the right to sue.
In the eyes of the law it is only the "extra" cost that matters.
The telemarketers do, since you will be able to sue them the same as you would sue someone sending junk faxes. In both cases the *marketer is using resources you pay for to deliver their message without your prior consent.
Teach it to someone else and base the documentation on their notes, or even better have them write the documentation.
I'm not suggesting this as a lazy-man's solution or a way to to delegate all your work away. Your intimate knowledge of the installation makes some things seem obvious to you that would never occur to someone else. The person you're teaching it to is approaching it from the perspective of someone who knows nothing (beyond what's considered required knowledge for the position) and their notes will reflect that. You don't have to wrack your brain trying to figure out what the reader will need to know, your student will ask. If you really want it solid, have your student repeat the process with someone else.
The best documentation/procedures I've encountered were written this way, and it's become my technique of choice when faced with a similar task.
Open Office and Mozilla will take care of probably 95% of your families needs. Both are cross-platform, so there shouldn't be any familiarity issues if you later decide you want to switch the whole family over to Linux (which I did, and it's worked out great for me).
Using Mozilla for browsing and email gives a suprising amount of virus protection. I've been quite happy with Moz mail, though the news portion could use a few more features.
On the Windows side I like FileZilla for FTP and 7-Zip for opening various compressed files. You'll probably also want Quicktime and RealOne for those formats WMP doesn't handle. Optionally, you may want WinAmp as well, though if you don't spend a lot of time listening to music on your computer it's kinda pointless. If you have a burner or DVD drive the software that came with it is probably fine (I was partial to Nero and PowerDVD respectively, but YMMV).
On Linux, the one media player you need is mplayer. There will be some pain getting everything downloaded and compiled, but it's worth the effort (note: even if it comes in the distro, which it probably does, download all the codecs and the cvs and compile it yourself anyway, it's not THAT hard). XMMS is nice for listening to CDs, MP3s, etc. I haven't done any FTP uploading on Linux, so I have no idea what I'd use for that. Moz or Konqueror take care of my download needs, and I use either Konq or tar/gzip to open compressed files (depending on my objective).
I think that pretty much covers the stuff my family uses.
This list doesn't seem to be about either. As far as I can tell it's based only on notoriety. Honestly, what other reason would there be for putting Skylarov on the list? He has neither influence nor power.
I'm sorry. Did you just imply that the editors ever read the articles? That must have been before I started reading this site.
It certainly seemed like they did at one point. If your user number is any indication of when you started reading this site then yes, it was before that.
Hell, they HAD to at some point, it's not like/. sprung forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.
Note the term Hacker in all the writeups, the incorrect use term the establishment uses to paint Linux hackers black ?
Oh, give it up. The usage war is over, and you lost before it even started. ESR can whine all he wantsa, but a person who breaks into computers is a "hacker". That isn't the only meaning the word has, but it's the most common one. "Cracker" already has meaning and connotation when applied to a person, and it has nothing to do with computers! Are to trying to suggest that only poor southern white people break into computers?
If they really want some competition, shouldn't they offer at least some TopCoder-scale money - for instance, how about $10k, but have tiered competitions, so that only the top 5 hackers are trying to get in? That would avoid the DoS issues.
Because a Top 5 competition doesn't seem to be what they're looking for. They aren't studying Windows security, they're studying hacker methodology, and depending on what exactly they're looking for quantity may be more relevant to them than quality.
Slashdot Mirror
Now... if an alternative energy source is found and it's ready and it's cheaper than oil and for some reason it just isn't adopted then, yes, raise taxes on oil to push people to the alternative energy souce. But only do that when we have a viable alternative! Of course once we have a viable alternative it won't be necessary to raise taxes to convince people to use it. The market will adopt it immediately if it makes financial sense.
There ARE viable alternatives in many sectors of the energy economy which WOULD be cheaper IF they had the benefit of the economy of scale oil enjoys. But, since they don't enjoy the same economy of scale, they aren't presently cheaper, and so people aren't adopting them. At what point do you consider it acceptable for the government to try and tip that balance? Or do you expect a new technology to be so much cheaper at inception that the economy of scale advantage is irrelevant?
Sorry, but present reality doesn't bear out your assumptions. In a perfect market with intelligent , informed consumers it would certainly work out that way. I think we can both agree, though, that intelligent, informed consumers is not what we have.
I characterized the idea as a typical liberal solution.
I'll happily concede that point, as long as you will concede that "typical liberal solution" really means "willing to pay up-front cost to more quickly realize long-term gains".
There is more than one recipe for Soy Sauce, and it is entirely possible that it is the recipe they consider their IP.
My wife is a waitress at a sushi restaurant which is owned and operated by japanese immigrants. They bought the restaurant from an older japanese couple who were ready to retire. As part of the sale the husband (and sushi chef) got a recipe for soy sauce, and his hand made soy sauce is the only soy sauce you will get in his restaurant (which is fine by me, because now that I've had his I realize that Kikoman is crap). Additionally, his wife was given recipes for sesame seed salad dressing and green tea ice cream.
Buying recipes with a restaurant is not unusual (why else would you buy a restaurant instead of just opening your own?), and they are generally as closely guarded as any mission critical IP. The real difference with them is that they don't even share the recipes with each other. If the wife goes out of town and didn't make enough, well... sorry, no salad or ice cream for you.
With old compilers, you could make...a compiler. This results in recursion, which points out the flaw in the system (how many generations do I have to be removed before I can use the tool wherever I like?). This is totally different here, since recursion is not present - the tool you make doesn't perform the same functions as the tool you licensed.
RTFA
The tool is specifically described as a "jig for making jigs", and their FAQ specifically states that the reason for the EULA is that the purpose of the tool is to clone itself. That sure sounds like recursion to me.
Also, since you seem to be unfamiliar with the term, a jig is the closest thing there is to a compiler in woodworking..
Sorry, but the analogy is quite solid, it is your understanding of the situation which is completely flawed.
Great documentation
I'm sure there is great documentation for Windows, but where is it? With Linux, while it may be difficult for the newbie to understand, at least it's easy to find, and you don't have to pay extra for it.
Simple installation
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. SuSE has been beating the crap out of Microsoft on this point for at least the last 3 years.
If you let an inventor write laws, of course he is going to write laws that favor inventors. Then lawyers, who are much better with laws than inventors, will interpret those laws in the way that makes the most money for whoever hired them.
This is the most insightful comment I've read in a long time. It's almost sad that it was posted AC.
I use to use SuSE in the past. It has become quite slow and bloated, even on my athlonXP.
I know what you mean, but the problem was not SuSE, it was KDE. Newer versions of KDE are much better, or you could use one of the lightweight WMs and enjoy the related performance boost.
I don't know how that compares to FreeBSD though.
Furthermore, most people here are posting things about Windows which are entirely untrue, especially concerning what it can and cant do. They are speaking authoritatively from a position of ignorance, which I find very annoying.
Perhaps you should avoid doing so yourself, then:
For example, Linux may be good as a desktop OS for some people, but for your average non-technical user? No way. These people FEAR a CLI.
There are several distros available on which the user will never even have to think about the CLI. To suggest that using the CLI is a requirement for using Linux is to either spread deliberate lies, or to speak from a position of ignorance.
The problem I see is that around here, each petty Windows patch goes up on a times square billboard, while Linux and other OSS patches arent even mentioned.
I think if you were to remove your bias filters you would find that security holes of equal severity recieve equal attention, regardless of the OS. It is not Slashdot's fault that almost every Windows hole allows remote execution of arbitrary code.
Part of it is that a lot of OSS doesnt use patches, they just save it all for the next version. Then they can just gloss over the update by giving people different colored buttons or some such fluff.
Would you care to provide some examples? From what I've seen this is demonstrably not true, but I'll concede the point if you can provide some actual evidence.
They have JUST as many updates as MS.
See my above comment regarding exploit severity. Think "quantity vs. quality".
See for example the DDOS attack on SCO.
You mean the one that quite likely never happened?
SCO themselves issued a statement a while back saying that there was no DDoS attack, that the server was just down for regular maintenance.
Actually, I've thought about how emacs fits into the Unix philosophy of "do one thing and do it well" and I've decided that emacs does not in fact violate that principle. The one thing that emacs does is...
Editor MACroS!
That people decide to include all these macros rather than making the user find or create them on their own is not the fault of emacs.
Of course, I'm a vi user, so I could be totally wrong.
Dude, he said: "non-adobe windows pdf viewers"
I read somewhere recently that Intuit had issued an apology to their customers about that.
I read that too. Too little too late in my opinion, the damage is done, they've already lost me as a customer. If they'd recanted when people first started complaining about it it might have mattered, but a year later just doesn't cut it.
All we need now are some sacrificial crackers...
We'd have to import them, since California isn't considered a southern state.
a reported severe security hole may sit around for months before it reaches developers flagged as a MUSTFIX bug with MS's internal bug tracking system
That was exactly my first thought.
given that this is currently a senstive Microsoft weak point, I'd be expecting at least a bit of coloring of the truth.
I've come to the conclusion that corporations advertise according to their weaknesses; e.g. Hyundai advertising their "dependability" when they are in fact the most unreliable cars I've seen, or any kids cereal being "a healthy part of this complete breakfast".
It's sad to me that they see more value in fixing the perception through marketing than in actually improving their product, but maybe that's an inevitability in a profit-driven/materialistic society.
RTFA
The blurb above totally misrepresents the intentions of the author, which are quite clear from the introductory paragraphs.
The article is about why that stuff is bad and how it can be used to restrict freedoms.
It is about money.
Specifically, SETI et al. don't have the money to buy, power, house, and maintain the kind of computational resources they can leverage through a distributed system. People donate those resources instead of just directly donating money.
IMHO it works out pretty well for both sides. People feel like they're actually doing something for their chosen cause, and that's more fulfilling than just writing a check. The NPO probably saves money in the long run since they will never have to pay all the other costs associated with that computing power, not just when it's in use, but also storage or disposal when it becomes obsolete.
And does anyone else see the possible conflict of interest with PC World running these benchmarks?... Does anyone really believe these benchmarks are any more fair and unbiased than Apple's own???
In the blurb beneath the benchmark table it says that the Mac benchmarking was done by MacWorld. I don't read either publication, so I don't know how biased they might be, but it seems to me that the MacWorld folks would want the Mac to look good.
Y'see, there is a need for BSD-type licenses, for people who don't want to redistribute their source.
Yeah, great, but BSD was available and Linksys chose to use the GPLed Linux code instead. Again, nobody was forcing Linksys to use GPL code. They knew what they were getting into and they made a choice. Now they are breaking the law. Period.
Not the GPL per se, but that the GPL creates a second, separate "public domain" distinct from the BSD/default public domain.
BSD != Public Domain!!!
GPL != Public Domain!!!
This is a meme that needs to die. With the GPL it should be obvious to anyone with even a basic understanding of copyright that it is not the same as public domain, and more importantly it doesn't even try to be. With BSD the difference is a little more tricky, but any code licensed under the BSD license is copyrighted. If it was public domain it wouldn't need a license!
Yes, in most cases you can treat BSD code the same as if it were public domain, but that does not change the fact that it is copyrighted for the author's life plus 75 years, or 95 years if it was work-for-hire.
Public domain means no copyright, and no copyright means no license.
Irrelevant. You're paying a flat fee for access to the network for a period of time, regardless of how many calls you get or how long they last. Since a specific cost cannot be attached to any individual call they are considered "free" in the eyes of the law. Note that if they were calling you collect, or if you were on some sort of phone plan where you had to pay for incomming calls (like if they were calling you on an 800 number), you would have grounds to sue.
In the case of junk faxes, you have to pay for the paper and/or ink that's used to print out the message. In the case of cell phones you have to pay for minutes, and incomming calls use those minutes. In both cases a resource that belongs to you and which has a specific cost to you is being used without your permission, and that is what gives you the right to sue.
In the eyes of the law it is only the "extra" cost that matters.
The telemarketers do, since you will be able to sue them the same as you would sue someone sending junk faxes. In both cases the *marketer is using resources you pay for to deliver their message without your prior consent.
Teach it to someone else and base the documentation on their notes, or even better have them write the documentation.
I'm not suggesting this as a lazy-man's solution or a way to to delegate all your work away. Your intimate knowledge of the installation makes some things seem obvious to you that would never occur to someone else. The person you're teaching it to is approaching it from the perspective of someone who knows nothing (beyond what's considered required knowledge for the position) and their notes will reflect that. You don't have to wrack your brain trying to figure out what the reader will need to know, your student will ask. If you really want it solid, have your student repeat the process with someone else.
The best documentation/procedures I've encountered were written this way, and it's become my technique of choice when faced with a similar task.
Open Office and Mozilla will take care of probably 95% of your families needs. Both are cross-platform, so there shouldn't be any familiarity issues if you later decide you want to switch the whole family over to Linux (which I did, and it's worked out great for me).
Using Mozilla for browsing and email gives a suprising amount of virus protection. I've been quite happy with Moz mail, though the news portion could use a few more features.
On the Windows side I like FileZilla for FTP and 7-Zip for opening various compressed files. You'll probably also want Quicktime and RealOne for those formats WMP doesn't handle. Optionally, you may want WinAmp as well, though if you don't spend a lot of time listening to music on your computer it's kinda pointless. If you have a burner or DVD drive the software that came with it is probably fine (I was partial to Nero and PowerDVD respectively, but YMMV).
On Linux, the one media player you need is mplayer. There will be some pain getting everything downloaded and compiled, but it's worth the effort (note: even if it comes in the distro, which it probably does, download all the codecs and the cvs and compile it yourself anyway, it's not THAT hard). XMMS is nice for listening to CDs, MP3s, etc. I haven't done any FTP uploading on Linux, so I have no idea what I'd use for that. Moz or Konqueror take care of my download needs, and I use either Konq or tar/gzip to open compressed files (depending on my objective).
I think that pretty much covers the stuff my family uses.
This list doesn't seem to be about either. As far as I can tell it's based only on notoriety. Honestly, what other reason would there be for putting Skylarov on the list? He has neither influence nor power.
I'm sorry. Did you just imply that the editors ever read the articles? That must have been before I started reading this site.
/. sprung forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.
It certainly seemed like they did at one point. If your user number is any indication of when you started reading this site then yes, it was before that.
Hell, they HAD to at some point, it's not like
Note the term Hacker in all the writeups, the incorrect use term the establishment uses to paint Linux hackers black ?
Oh, give it up. The usage war is over, and you lost before it even started. ESR can whine all he wantsa, but a person who breaks into computers is a "hacker". That isn't the only meaning the word has, but it's the most common one. "Cracker" already has meaning and connotation when applied to a person, and it has nothing to do with computers! Are to trying to suggest that only poor southern white people break into computers?
If they really want some competition, shouldn't they offer at least some TopCoder-scale money - for instance, how about $10k, but have tiered competitions, so that only the top 5 hackers are trying to get in? That would avoid the DoS issues.
Because a Top 5 competition doesn't seem to be what they're looking for. They aren't studying Windows security, they're studying hacker methodology, and depending on what exactly they're looking for quantity may be more relevant to them than quality.