New Zealand is obliged (morally, if not contractually) to provide it
You make some very solid arguments here. I feel I should clarify this point however; Under the 1974 agreement (which is in fact a mutually agreed addition to the Statute of Westminister) New Zealand is contractually obligated to provide assistance.
The relationship between NZ and the various pacific island nations is a close one. For instance, most nationals of those countries are afforded NZ citizenship as a birthright and many of them use the NZ currency. Assistance and aid (despite the grandparent comment) are gladly provided by NZ to those nations, and their contribution to our collective culture is generally appreciated.
As the leader of the Apache project, Brian Behlendorf is quite high profile.
If you haven't seen Revolution OS purchase it, watch it, lend it to your friends.
Behlendorf is interviewed extensively in it, comes across well, is extremely eloquent and has a lot of worthwile things to say. His most interesting comment from my perspective was that the primary focus of Apache was to support open standards as opposed to free software.
Why not do everything inside of Debian? Because Debian is a non-profit, and needs the synergistic relationship with for-profit engineering and service providers to achieve the goals I am proposing.
Ah, I think that this is the crux of the matter. You are not proposing a free distribution suitable for the enterprise that happens to be based on Debian. Rather, you are interested in creating a veneer of corporate respectablity for Debian; an arduous task, given the culture of Debian and it's shortcomings (which you of all people don't need itemised.)
Here's the thing; I really need a User Linux option, so do other people. You have identified this need. My proselytizing in corporate environments currently has to be Suse or Redhat for the server and the desktop for the obvious reason- Oracle (and like companies') certification causes these two distributions to be the only option in the data centre, with the trickle-down effect that it makes sense for me to push out the end user versions of these products to developer workstations. That they are easy distributions to install and maintain and contain recent software is a bonus that means the transition for users unfamiliar with the platform is smoother - the value of which should not be under-estimated.
Oh for an alternative! Unfortunately the equation you offer is chosing the lesser of two evils; RHE/Fedora | Suse E/Suse or UserLinux/Debian. I think that Debian is the major distribution least suitable for the corporate environment, and I don't see that changing in a hurry. For the forseeable future the decision is no contest; people like me simply do not have the time to mess around with Debian because we happen to share an ideological affinity with it when our employers demand best-of-breed.
Well, I don't agree with your criticism of Debian.
Therein lies the downfall I think Bruce.
Reading through your white paper, I agreee entirely with your analysis and proposals. We desperately need something like this, but a Debian base and iterative development with that project is not going to fly. I think that you have a tendancy to overlook the shortcomings of Debian and that you don't appreciate that the corporate market has little use for Debian-obsolete and Debian-broken.
Further, to get buy-in from the current Linux install base, you need to be offering a viable alternative to the distributions most are accustomed to. Current Redhat users are ripe for conversion, but not if it means a step backwards to Debian-by-another-name.
It strikes me that one of your unstated objectives is to revitalised Debian. If Debian is suitable for your stated objectives out of the box, why is it that you are proposing a new project, as opposed to working inside the existing Debian framework?
First time I saw this happen was in Turkey; "ANZAC Cove" cellsite becomes a flashing "ANZAC ceremony" between 6am and midday on ANZAC day, visible all over the Gallipoli penisnsula.
A gift from Turkish Telecom to Kiwis and Aussies apparently.
I disgaree with this, having spent some time evaluating both products on three platforms.
Star Office 7 does include features that OpenOffice does not, but Star Office is an absolute pig in terms of comparative performance. I am recommending to my client that Open Office is a better selection because the functionality advantages of Star Office do not outweigh the poor performance in my opinion.
(MOST of the code is the same, not all)
I'm not sure that that's something to be shouting about as it's not necessarily a factor in Sun's favour.
Remember that Star Office 7 is a fork of Open Office 1.0 (i.e. NOT derived from Star Office 6.0) because Sun realised that the OpenOffice code base was superior to Sun's internal Star Office codebase. I suggest to you that if Sun's internal development was superior they would have continued to develop from their own tree.
My guess is that he's thinking about competition from other Linux vendors.
It's not in Redhat's commercial interest for another Linux vendor to gain market share by excelling in the home desktop Linux market that Redhat has just vacated.
Perhaps Redhat has taken the decision that they would prefer see Microsoft dominate the home desktop rather than allow other Linux vendors to gain market share.
If this is the case (and I strongly suspect that it is) then Redhat has made a commercial decision that has a detrimental effect on Linux adoption deliberately. This is not the sort of behaviour we expect from one of our companies, yet I think is an inevitable consequence of the co-opting of Linux by commercial entities.
Seriously - did we all think that heavyweights like Novell and IBM weighing in on Linux would only have a positive impact? Brace yourself; there's a downside, and it's only going to get bigger.
Sorry to be pedantic, but there is no such thing as the "Nobel Prize for Economics."
Alfred Nobel's will makes provision for four Swedish prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature) and one Norwegian prize (Peace.) The reason for the seperation is due to Nobel's analysis of the relative merits of the two cultures - he believed that Norwegian society was more enlightened than Sweden thus better equiped to award the Peace prize.
There is an additional prize called the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel" Which is (as the name suggests) awarded by the Bank of Sweden, NOT by the Swedish or Norwegian Nobel committees. Prestigious as it is, it is not a Nobel Prize.
A while back I read a post which (to paraphrase) went something like this;
In fifty years, Stallman will be considered the most important luminary, with whole chapters devoted to his exploits. By contrast, Bill Gates will warrant only a footnote.
I'm not convinced that there will be a clear winner between these two extremes of principle. I think it's more likely that our current software ecology will continue to evolve a symbiotic relationshhip between F/OSS and proprietary, but that's speculation.
Stallman's Post contrasts nicely with the famous Open Letter to Hobbyists by Bill Gates during the same era. I think that those yet to be written history books would do well to juxtapose the two letters for an insight into the philosophical difference between the two men.
The data centre and the server room are full of Unix. The systems in the data centre are core business and mission critical.
Windows does not play well with Unix by design, therefore Linux as the corporate desktop is the best solution.
With Linux I can give every user in my organisation a custom made desktop optimised for the department that they work in and the job that they do.
The machine in front of them is locked down by default, standard in Unix since before most of us where born. If that isn't enough, I can give my users a chroot environment.
I can use LDAP or NIS or any number of alternatives for centralised access controls.
I can use NFS for file system sharing across the enterprise, with benefits like backing up every user's data simply by backing up one or several NFS servers. I can also deploy updated versions of applications to every workstation from a centralised location in seconds.
I can keep every workstation at the latest patch level with any number of "set and forget" automated tools.
I can remotely administer every workstation in my organisation easily and securely with SSH.
I can provide Mozilla, OpenOffice and Evolution to my users to provide 80% of them with 100% of the tools that they need to do their job and interact with users in other organisations who are still using obsolete Microsft desktops. For the 20% of users who require additional tools, I can provide them from other Open Source projects in most cases.
My users can interact with the core systems easily and securely, because the desktop that they run is a variant of the server OS used in our organisation's mission critical systems, meaning that there will be no incompatabilities between file formats and protocl implementations.
As other posters have pointed out, legislating HotSpot operators to force the retention of access logs is a future possibility, with the result that organisations like the RIAA can treat HotSpot operators in the same manner that they currently treat ISPs.
A flaw in that plan however is peer to peer routing protocols, such as AODV. While still in development (ostensibly for use in wireless networks) AODV enabled devices are capable of routing to one another peer to peer, rather than the star topology currently used by most HotSpots (and wired networks.)
Good luck to the RIAA trying to detect two people wirelessly swapping files as they walk anonymously past one another in the street.
To: chris.due@softwareimages.com Cc: logan.jay@softwareimages.com, cristian.giurgiu@softwareimages.com,
rudy.clavel@softwareimages.com Subject: Refusal of Linux CD Order
Dear Chris,
I have just read with dismay the Slashdot and NZ Herald stories regarding your refusal to copy CD images of the Linux operating system for use at an upcoming Linux Installfest to be held in New Zealand.
I understand that this refusal is due to a deal that your organisation has with Microsoft Corporation, your unfounded protestations of copyright infringement concerning Linux not withstanding.
I believe that you are fully within your rights to make such a deal, sordid though I believe it to be, and to refuse work orders from your customers as you see fit.
Like many others however, I dislike your decision and chose not to use your services or buy your products until such time as your decision is reversed and you make adequate restitution to the Open Source community.
Further, I am in the process of contacting every person I can think of who might be in a position to do business with you to explain my decision, in the hope that they also may chose to do business with one of your competitors.
I hope that the loss of business that results, along with the terrible press you have been getting encourages you to rethink your decision.
Please withold any platitudes regarding the SCO Group suit against IBM, they are neither relevant to your decision or in themselves have any basis in fact.
Hezbollah resisting Zionist incursions into the sovereign territory of Lebanon and Palestinian groups like Hamas resisting the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Jews do not count as terrorists, they are Freedom Fighters legitimately resisting the daily crimes of occupation, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace perpetrated the Jews.
Perhaps if you and your neighbours in New York took the time to pull your head out of your arses long enough to take a good look at the world around you, with particular focus towards your Government's despicable international relations record, you might discover that avoiding further terrorist attacks can be achieved by changing your fucked-up attitude.
It is bizarre reading these posts and seeing people quote as fact the propaganda of the American government and media.
That the American public is completely unfamiliar with the modern history of Iraq and with their own government's history of creating instablity in the region is quite shocking. I think it's the reason why Americans swallow whole the misinformation and outright lies spoon fed to them by their media and politicians.
After WWII and continuing today, the UN mandates the teaching of the Nazi era to all German school children at all levels, in an attempt to ensure that Germans cannot hide from the legacy of the last world conflict.
I think that a similar UN mandate is warranted here. The uninformed/misinformed American public are creating real difficulties for the world by supporting extremist politicians in their government. I would like to see the U.N. step in and make an effort to teach American school children some basic facts about life outside the U.S. and the long history of America's damage to the wider world. Such an effort might go a long way towards helping Americans learn to behave in a civilised manner both as individuals and as a society.
American media (which we see here in Britain) is absolutely shocking. The only examples of blatant propaganda that come even close to it are Stalinst-era Soviet broadcasts and the works of Goebels in Nazi Germany.
It would be too much to ask that the power structures behind the American media begin to show Americans the truth, but perhaps with a U.N. education effort for young Americans they will become less susceptible to the lies that they are force-fed and gleefully regurgitate here in such a repugnantly belligerent manner.
burry the cable in a 6" deep slit just wide enough to fit it where it crosses the yard and use enough water pipe where it comes up the wall to shield it from dog attack.
Microsoft's avowed intention is to destroy Open Source.
We don't have their ability to take out primetime advertising, buy politicans to push forward our agenda or look the other way when we are convicted of a crime.
As a community, we should not be providing our primary enemy with ammunition to use against us, nor should we provide it with a platform from which to do it.
Linux conferences are no longer populated with the hard core enthusiasts that they once were. Atendees are often decision makers from organisations considering Open Source as an alternative to proprietary solutions. It is not in our best interests to allow Microsoft to muddy the waters for this, our target audience.
Those of you preaching "intelligent dialogue" with Microsoft (let's call it the Miguel de Icaza argument) should remember that nothing Microsoft has ever done has been beneficial to the Open Source community (at least by design) and that they will not reciprocate this invitation to us via primetime advertisments or political contributions.
Think about it the next time a Microsoft spokesperson calls you, the software you wrote, the software you use and the community you're a part of a cancer.
There is no fixed term contract (I pay month by month), no traffic restrictions, no closed ports and very little downtime. Static IP addresses are standard and more are easy to obtain. In addition, all the usual webspace, mail and news stuff are included in the standard price.
I share the 512kb/s uplink with the three people I live with and two of our neighbours via a 802.11b. Between us we have a number of servers running so pretty much max out our bandwidth all of the time.
I suggest that anyone considering a switch from NTL consider them.
I've been a Lonestar user for 7 around years, it is an extremely useful service and a great community. I pay a nominal amount for what is called an "ARPA" (meaning fully featured) shell account that is at least as good as other shell accounts that I hold with commercial providers.
One of the commercial providers that I use explicity disallows users from using IRC or running bots from their account, for the reason that IRC attracts DDoS. Some user gets into a disagreement with some little script kiddie fuckhead then Wham-O! The systems are knocked over or inaccessible and lots of users are inconvenienced. In this case, inconvenienced beyond the script kiddies wildest dreams. Right now the culprits will be laughing about it between frantic bouts of mutual masturbation.
Once Lonestar is moved to it's new provider or an amiable solution is found with it's current provider, I think it would be wise for to cease all IRC activity so that it can minimise the chances of this happening again.
The road is entirely inside New Zealand territory, which makes it New Zeland property and of course it's creation must come with New Zealand approval.
Given New Zealand's extreme commitment to protecting the environment, this road must have a very low environmental impact, or has the Kiwi government been induced to look the other way?
Slashdot Mirror
Guet, if you haven't read his stuff already, I think you will enjoy Ken MacLeod's books.
Dystopian near-future Science Fiction written by a Scottish ex-Trotskyite programmer with degrees in Zoology and Biomechanics.
MacLeod is an astonishing writting talent and I think you will enjoy the political aspect of his books.
New Zealand is obliged (morally, if not contractually) to provide it
You make some very solid arguments here. I feel I should clarify this point however; Under the 1974 agreement (which is in fact a mutually agreed addition to the Statute of Westminister) New Zealand is contractually obligated to provide assistance.
The relationship between NZ and the various pacific island nations is a close one. For instance, most nationals of those countries are afforded NZ citizenship as a birthright and many of them use the NZ currency. Assistance and aid (despite the grandparent comment) are gladly provided by NZ to those nations, and their contribution to our collective culture is generally appreciated.
As the leader of the Apache project, Brian Behlendorf is quite high profile.
If you haven't seen Revolution OS purchase it, watch it, lend it to your friends.
Behlendorf is interviewed extensively in it, comes across well, is extremely eloquent and has a lot of worthwile things to say. His most interesting comment from my perspective was that the primary focus of Apache was to support open standards as opposed to free software.
Why not do everything inside of Debian? Because Debian is a non-profit, and needs the synergistic relationship with for-profit engineering and service providers to achieve the goals I am proposing.
Ah, I think that this is the crux of the matter. You are not proposing a free distribution suitable for the enterprise that happens to be based on Debian. Rather, you are interested in creating a veneer of corporate respectablity for Debian; an arduous task, given the culture of Debian and it's shortcomings (which you of all people don't need itemised.)
Here's the thing; I really need a User Linux option, so do other people. You have identified this need. My proselytizing in corporate environments currently has to be Suse or Redhat for the server and the desktop for the obvious reason- Oracle (and like companies') certification causes these two distributions to be the only option in the data centre, with the trickle-down effect that it makes sense for me to push out the end user versions of these products to developer workstations. That they are easy distributions to install and maintain and contain recent software is a bonus that means the transition for users unfamiliar with the platform is smoother - the value of which should not be under-estimated.
Oh for an alternative! Unfortunately the equation you offer is chosing the lesser of two evils; RHE/Fedora | Suse E/Suse or UserLinux/Debian. I think that Debian is the major distribution least suitable for the corporate environment, and I don't see that changing in a hurry. For the forseeable future the decision is no contest; people like me simply do not have the time to mess around with Debian because we happen to share an ideological affinity with it when our employers demand best-of-breed.
Though I hope you prove me wrong.
Well, I don't agree with your criticism of Debian.
Therein lies the downfall I think Bruce.
Reading through your white paper, I agreee entirely with your analysis and proposals. We desperately need something like this, but a Debian base and iterative development with that project is not going to fly. I think that you have a tendancy to overlook the shortcomings of Debian and that you don't appreciate that the corporate market has little use for Debian-obsolete and Debian-broken.
Further, to get buy-in from the current Linux install base, you need to be offering a viable alternative to the distributions most are accustomed to. Current Redhat users are ripe for conversion, but not if it means a step backwards to Debian-by-another-name.
It strikes me that one of your unstated objectives is to revitalised Debian. If Debian is suitable for your stated objectives out of the box, why is it that you are proposing a new project, as opposed to working inside the existing Debian framework?
So is mine in the Hutt.
First time I saw this happen was in Turkey; "ANZAC Cove" cellsite becomes a flashing "ANZAC ceremony" between 6am and midday on ANZAC day, visible all over the Gallipoli penisnsula.
A gift from Turkish Telecom to Kiwis and Aussies apparently.
because star office is better than openoffice
I disgaree with this, having spent some time evaluating both products on three platforms.
Star Office 7 does include features that OpenOffice does not, but Star Office is an absolute pig in terms of comparative performance. I am recommending to my client that Open Office is a better selection because the functionality advantages of Star Office do not outweigh the poor performance in my opinion.
(MOST of the code is the same, not all)
I'm not sure that that's something to be shouting about as it's not necessarily a factor in Sun's favour.
Remember that Star Office 7 is a fork of Open Office 1.0 (i.e. NOT derived from Star Office 6.0) because Sun realised that the OpenOffice code base was superior to Sun's internal Star Office codebase. I suggest to you that if Sun's internal development was superior they would have continued to develop from their own tree.
GK was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. While Azerbaijan was once a member state of the Soviet Union, this does not make him Russian.
What the hell is this idiot thinking?
My guess is that he's thinking about competition from other Linux vendors.
It's not in Redhat's commercial interest for another Linux vendor to gain market share by excelling in the home desktop Linux market that Redhat has just vacated.
Perhaps Redhat has taken the decision that they would prefer see Microsoft dominate the home desktop rather than allow other Linux vendors to gain market share.
If this is the case (and I strongly suspect that it is) then Redhat has made a commercial decision that has a detrimental effect on Linux adoption deliberately. This is not the sort of behaviour we expect from one of our companies, yet I think is an inevitable consequence of the co-opting of Linux by commercial entities.
Seriously - did we all think that heavyweights like Novell and IBM weighing in on Linux would only have a positive impact? Brace yourself; there's a downside, and it's only going to get bigger.
Sorry to be pedantic, but there is no such thing as the "Nobel Prize for Economics."
Alfred Nobel's will makes provision for four Swedish prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature) and one Norwegian prize (Peace.) The reason for the seperation is due to Nobel's analysis of the relative merits of the two cultures - he believed that Norwegian society was more enlightened than Sweden thus better equiped to award the Peace prize.
There is an additional prize called the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel" Which is (as the name suggests) awarded by the Bank of Sweden, NOT by the Swedish or Norwegian Nobel committees. Prestigious as it is, it is not a Nobel Prize.
More information on the prizes is available here
Great post.
A while back I read a post which (to paraphrase) went something like this;
In fifty years, Stallman will be considered the most important luminary, with whole chapters devoted to his exploits. By contrast, Bill Gates will warrant only a footnote.
I'm not convinced that there will be a clear winner between these two extremes of principle. I think it's more likely that our current software ecology will continue to evolve a symbiotic relationshhip between F/OSS and proprietary, but that's speculation.
Stallman's Post contrasts nicely with the famous Open Letter to Hobbyists by Bill Gates during the same era. I think that those yet to be written history books would do well to juxtapose the two letters for an insight into the philosophical difference between the two men.
You make a great point in regards to servers.
The data centre and the server room are full of Unix. The systems in the data centre are core business and mission critical.
Windows does not play well with Unix by design, therefore Linux as the corporate desktop is the best solution.
With Linux I can give every user in my organisation a custom made desktop optimised for the department that they work in and the job that they do.
The machine in front of them is locked down by default, standard in Unix since before most of us where born. If that isn't enough, I can give my users a chroot environment.
I can use LDAP or NIS or any number of alternatives for centralised access controls.
I can use NFS for file system sharing across the enterprise, with benefits like backing up every user's data simply by backing up one or several NFS servers. I can also deploy updated versions of applications to every workstation from a centralised location in seconds.
I can keep every workstation at the latest patch level with any number of "set and forget" automated tools.
I can remotely administer every workstation in my organisation easily and securely with SSH.
I can provide Mozilla, OpenOffice and Evolution to my users to provide 80% of them with 100% of the tools that they need to do their job and interact with users in other organisations who are still using obsolete Microsft desktops. For the 20% of users who require additional tools, I can provide them from other Open Source projects in most cases.
My users can interact with the core systems easily and securely, because the desktop that they run is a variant of the server OS used in our organisation's mission critical systems, meaning that there will be no incompatabilities between file formats and protocl implementations.
Linux on the corporate desktop is a no brainer.
I've been busting my arse to put together a suitable Linux Wireless Access Point HOWTO for months.
m l
Finally it's in the process of getting published at the Linux Documentation Project.
Slashdot links to some chucklehead's one pager.
http://oob.freeshell.org/nzwireless/LWAP-HOWTO.ht
As other posters have pointed out, legislating HotSpot operators to force the retention of access logs is a future possibility, with the result that organisations like the RIAA can treat HotSpot operators in the same manner that they currently treat ISPs.
A flaw in that plan however is peer to peer routing protocols, such as AODV. While still in development (ostensibly for use in wireless networks) AODV enabled devices are capable of routing to one another peer to peer, rather than the star topology currently used by most HotSpots (and wired networks.)
Good luck to the RIAA trying to detect two people wirelessly swapping files as they walk anonymously past one another in the street.
Another logging option popular with hotspot operators is NoCatAuth as it provides access controls and logging can be easily implemented.
Linux and WiFi make a great combination.
Here's a HOWTO (soon to be published at the Linux Documentation Project) about using Linux as a WiFi Access Point.
To: chris.due@softwareimages.com
Cc: logan.jay@softwareimages.com, cristian.giurgiu@softwareimages.com,
rudy.clavel@softwareimages.com
Subject: Refusal of Linux CD Order
Dear Chris,
I have just read with dismay the Slashdot and NZ Herald stories regarding your refusal to copy CD images of the Linux operating system for use at an
upcoming Linux Installfest to be held in New Zealand.
I understand that this refusal is due to a deal that your organisation has with Microsoft Corporation, your unfounded protestations of copyright infringement concerning Linux not withstanding.
I believe that you are fully within your rights to make such a deal, sordid though I believe it to be, and to refuse work orders from your customers as you see fit.
Like many others however, I dislike your decision and chose not to use your services or buy your products until such time as your decision is reversed and you make adequate restitution to the Open Source community.
Further, I am in the process of contacting every person I can think of who might be in a position to do business with you to explain my decision, in the hope that they also may chose to do business with one of your competitors.
I hope that the loss of business that results, along with the terrible press you have been getting encourages you to rethink your decision.
Please withold any platitudes regarding the SCO Group suit against IBM, they are neither relevant to your decision or in themselves have any basis in fact.
Regards,
Hezbollah resisting Zionist incursions into the sovereign territory of Lebanon and Palestinian groups like Hamas resisting the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Jews do not count as terrorists, they are Freedom Fighters legitimately resisting the daily crimes of occupation, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace perpetrated the Jews.
Perhaps if you and your neighbours in New York took the time to pull your head out of your arses long enough to take a good look at the world around you, with particular focus towards your Government's despicable international relations record, you might discover that avoiding further terrorist attacks can be achieved by changing your fucked-up attitude.
Oh wait, al Qaeda hates Australia and New Zealand now, too!
Why would Al Qaeda or any Arab/Muslim group target New Zealand? Unlike Australia, New Zealand didn't join up to America's "Oil for Zionism" crusade.
It is bizarre reading these posts and seeing people quote as fact the propaganda of the American government and media.
That the American public is completely unfamiliar with the modern history of Iraq and with their own government's history of creating instablity in the region is quite shocking. I think it's the reason why Americans swallow whole the misinformation and outright lies spoon fed to them by their media and politicians.
After WWII and continuing today, the UN mandates the teaching of the Nazi era to all German school children at all levels, in an attempt to ensure that Germans cannot hide from the legacy of the last world conflict.
I think that a similar UN mandate is warranted here. The uninformed/misinformed American public are creating real difficulties for the world by supporting extremist politicians in their government. I would like to see the U.N. step in and make an effort to teach American school children some basic facts about life outside the U.S. and the long history of America's damage to the wider world. Such an effort might go a long way towards helping Americans learn to behave in a civilised manner both as individuals and as a society.
American media (which we see here in Britain) is absolutely shocking. The only examples of blatant propaganda that come even close to it are Stalinst-era Soviet broadcasts and the works of Goebels in Nazi Germany.
It would be too much to ask that the power structures behind the American media begin to show Americans the truth, but perhaps with a U.N. education effort for young Americans they will become less susceptible to the lies that they are force-fed and gleefully regurgitate here in such a repugnantly belligerent manner.
burry the cable in a 6" deep slit just wide enough to fit it where it crosses the yard and use enough water pipe where it comes up the wall to shield it from dog attack.
Shoot the dog.
Microsoft's avowed intention is to destroy Open Source.
We don't have their ability to take out primetime advertising, buy politicans to push forward our agenda or look the other way when we are convicted of a crime.
As a community, we should not be providing our primary enemy with ammunition to use against us, nor should we provide it with a platform from which to do it.
Linux conferences are no longer populated with the hard core enthusiasts that they once were. Atendees are often decision makers from organisations considering Open Source as an alternative to proprietary solutions. It is not in our best interests to allow Microsoft to muddy the waters for this, our target audience.
Those of you preaching "intelligent dialogue" with Microsoft (let's call it the Miguel de Icaza argument) should remember that nothing Microsoft has ever done has been beneficial to the Open Source community (at least by design) and that they will not reciprocate this invitation to us via primetime advertisments or political contributions.
Think about it the next time a Microsoft spokesperson calls you, the software you wrote, the software you use and the community you're a part of a cancer.
I use Eclipse Internet for ADSL here in the U.K.
Around GBP 25/month buys me a connection to the second fastest ADSL provider in the country.
There is no fixed term contract (I pay month by month), no traffic restrictions, no closed ports and very little downtime. Static IP addresses are standard and more are easy to obtain. In addition, all the usual webspace, mail and news stuff are included in the standard price.
I share the 512kb/s uplink with the three people I live with and two of our neighbours via a 802.11b. Between us we have a number of servers running so pretty much max out our bandwidth all of the time.
I suggest that anyone considering a switch from NTL consider them.
I've been a Lonestar user for 7 around years, it is an extremely useful service and a great community. I pay a nominal amount for what is called an "ARPA" (meaning fully featured) shell account that is at least as good as other shell accounts that I hold with commercial providers.
One of the commercial providers that I use explicity disallows users from using IRC or running bots from their account, for the reason that IRC attracts DDoS. Some user gets into a disagreement with some little script kiddie fuckhead then Wham-O! The systems are knocked over or inaccessible and lots of users are inconvenienced. In this case, inconvenienced beyond the script kiddies wildest dreams. Right now the culprits will be laughing about it between frantic bouts of mutual masturbation.
Once Lonestar is moved to it's new provider or an amiable solution is found with it's current provider, I think it would be wise for to cease all IRC activity so that it can minimise the chances of this happening again.
The road is entirely inside New Zealand territory, which makes it New Zeland property and of course it's creation must come with New Zealand approval.
Given New Zealand's extreme commitment to protecting the environment, this road must have a very low environmental impact, or has the Kiwi government been induced to look the other way?