In priniciple this just means that Goverment is going to start tracking people as they access goverment online services... kinda like they already do using our Social Security numbers in meat-space - and/or cookies set by goverment servers in cyber-space. (I think it would be foolishly naive to imagine that people aren't already being tracked.)
You forget the bigger picture... choice.
I don't have to show my Social Security Card to get on a plane, or to pay my taxes, or to buy postal stamps at the USPO. It's optional.
Implementing National I.D. cards like this will make it mandatory for you to present it.. everywhere.
"Who are you?"
"Me? I'm just buying some coffee and donuts.."
"Show me your national I.D. card right now, son!"
"Uhm, I forgot it at home."
"You're under arrest for 'failure to represent yourself to an officer' and for 'failure to carry your mandatory National I.D. card'."
No thanks, I'll take my chances. I don't commit crimes, nor am I wanted for any crimes. I also don't think I need to be required to "prove" myself to anyone as an innocent, tax-paying, voting citizen of the country I represent by living here.
Last I knew, this was (mostly) a free country, but it seems when privacy and money and freedom are concerned, honest citizens lose.
When the music industry realizes that people are buying media, not music, we'll all be better off. To make it more attractive, we would probably see better quality album inserts and other items that make buying the CD worth the money.
Except that the RIAA and MPAA would then charge much more for that same disk, thus starting the whole cycle over again. CDs cost too much already. The recording industry makes billions a year, while artists are being sued because they need to claim bankruptcy just to eat and pay the rent.
Just because you see them on MTV or hear them on the radio doesn't mean they're not slaves to their record contract, and the threat of being sued for trying to get out of the contract weighs over their heads.
The whole record industry, movie industry, copyright/trademark/intellectual property law industry is dirty, and needs a really healthy washing.
My fear is that soon the SSSCA/CBDTPA or a similar law will be passed, and free will be illegal. "If you didn't pay for it, you must be breaking the law, because we have to make money on everything you do!"
Plus you're forgetting that the record labels *pay* very very large amounts of money to *get* these artists songs to be played on pop radio/MTV.
And you're forgetting that the radio stations are now required to pay back the RIAA and record labels for every song played, per listener. The streaming radio stations are required to pay double the rate. Trust me, the RIAA is well into the black on their outlay for payola to the radio stations.
If the guy says he'll release the code, give him a chance. These dirty-laundry-in-public attacks damage open-source credibility, and that is not a good thing.
Actually, you're wrong.
The GPL does not allow for a "phased" release of source code. What if they release binaries in 2002, and it takes them 7 years to "fix up" the code, and then release the source in 2009. The GPL specifically states that you have to release the source to the binaries that you distribute. The source which was used to build those binaries must be made available upon request. If these people paid for a distribution of binaries, and were sent a cdrom of those binaries, the cost of distributing the source on another cdrom or the same cdrom is nil, and is required.
Lindows is wrong, and are in direct violation of several sections of the GPL.
Shouldn't they be working around the hardware instead of expecting to dictate how the hardware works...
We are still talking about Microsoft, right? Of course they're trying to define the standards.
With the past realiability of Microsoft products the last thing I want them doing is playing with the BIOS. I can imagine now all the queue's in PCWORLD at the service desk because they tried installing Windows X and now their computer won't even switch on..
...or even worse, deciding that Microsoft products are no longer useful to you, and you decide to run Linux or BSD on your PC.. but nOOooo.. now the BIOS is incompatible, and circumventing that bios with another version (such as linbios) would now be in violation of the DMCA.
Yes it would be illegal if you and your spouse were listening to separate copies of the CD.
...actually, it's not, unless you were simultaneously listening to the same CD at the same time on two different media.. however, my purchase of the CD guarantees me the right to make a backup of it, and having purchased a blank CDR, the royalty I paid on that disk also guarantees me the right to make a copy. This is what a royalty is for!
It's "Food and Drug Administration," not "Federal Drug Administration."
Actally, it's "U.S. Food and Drug Administration', and if you ever went to the website, it's fda.gov. Trust me, this body determines the standards by which the government enforces for many things, including almost every single drug you've ever taken, almost all the foods you consume. They are very much a "federal" body of the government arm.
So, if Sony has enabled this 'protection' technology on the CD's, then they are (in theory) stopping 'pirates' from making unauthorized copies. Therefore, they are not losing as much money.
It's also stopping honest customers from using a legitimately-purchased copy of their shiny new Celine Dion cd in their computers. Some of us don't have cdrom rack equipment, and can only listen to music on our computers and laptops. They're not "protecting" us from anything, they're "restricting" us from being able to use the music we may have legally purchased in any way we see fit.
I wonder if Microsoft is going to fight this. What about their.NET initiative, Office.NET? Visual Interdev.NET? All of their OS is being re-engineered to work with the browser, over port 80. That's a much scarier security breach than online shopping, which you won't be able to do from your shiny new Windows XP workstation using your Passport Login, if they decide to ban extranet usage from inside the corporation.
I'm all for it. Maybe companies will begin to be productive again, and Microsoft will have to find some other means to maintain their stranglehold on the monolithic legacy desktop computing environment instead of trying to push all of the user's data out to the web into some Microsoft-controlled, centralized environment.
This is completely unfair for independant artists who release their tracks exclusively in MP3- their fans are effectively paying the recording industry to buy independant music.
You bring up an interesting point. The RIAA only controls 5 recording companies out of literally thousands of other recording companies. Many artists allow ripping and re-distribution of their works, in order to get their name out.
These artists may be on their own (non-RIAA) label.
Why am I paying the RIAA for the right to record mp3s of a band that isn't even covered by any RIAA recording company contracts?
How can I ensure that the RIAA is giving a band that they don't represent, a share of these monies?
How do they meter this?
Clearly this is a complete scam, since more than RIAA-controlled music can be legally ripped and re-distributed from bands.
Something else that I find humourous is that one of the leading bands that originally supported the RIAA, Metallica, used to give away audio tapes of their concerts at shows and told their audiences to record them, give them to their friends, and hand them to everyone. It's amazing how the tables turned when they saw the RIAA siphoning so much of their own income off and blaming it on mp3 trading.
The "societal benefit" is that it's protecting jobs of the people who work in that industry in that country.
You're kidding, right. Have you read anything about how the RIAA, MPAA, and other mob-like interests are stealing billions of dollars from the artists. Now the RIAA is trying to make it illegal for artists to claim bankruptcy so they can simply pay their rent!. The artists are given a pittance for their work, and barely scrape by. Most major recording artists make 2/3 of what I make as an income, and believe me, I don't make much.
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?
They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.
That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.
That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.
The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)
So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.
The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.
The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.
All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.
Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.
If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.
Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals... zero!
How much does the record company make?
They grossed $11 million.
Go read it. Do the research. These tariffs are completely grossly out of scope.
One thing people don't seem to realize also, is that by paying a royalty on blank media, you are legally allowed to use that media to make a copy of anything you want on it, files, data, music, whatever.. without being required to implement copy-protection schemes on that data. The RIAA is trying to "double-dip" on this by requiring that you pay a royalty on the original purchase as well as require that you record that media on a device which implements copy-protection. Sorry, not allowed. Pick one or the other, you can't have both. That's the law.
There's a lot of new things in Plucker's future, including a new http://my.plkr.org website I'm putting together that will allow you to create, organized, manage, and deal with your Plucker content (you still will not be able to sync "to" the server, however, which is one of the great advantages of Plucker. Your Palm isn't bound to the cradle at content creation time like AvantGo and other alternatives).
There's still quite a bit of things we're toying around with for features, code, and other functionality in the viewer, the parser, the desktop tools, a desktop gui, and other projects.
Join the mailing lists, throw out ideas, patches, and see if anyone bites into them. We're already dozens of features ahead of any of the alternatives (see my previous post that compares two of them.
The content provider websites aren't always "hidden", if you're creative enough to locate them, email the providers, or find other methods.
If you find the sites you want, just email me directly, and I'll add them to the database I have here (I only have about 562 sites currently, but I can't publish them all because I would put the content providers in violation of their own agreements with AvantGo, however).
The content belongs to the content providers. It's their content, not AvantGo's, so you can simply ask nicely for a url to fetch it. I've had much success with this. Just be nice, and promote the distribution of the content, not the undercutting of other content distributors like AvantGo.
Why are you using MUSIC CDs for data? I thought that only MUSIC CDs (they're even labeled that way!) have the RIAA tax; plain CD-Rs don't.
That only applies to US purchases. In Canada, all CDR is taxed the same, and it's quite high.. I forget exactly, something over 5%
Re:wont work
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The laws have been in place. And every law has a loophole. It is illegal to murder
The parallel to the SSSCA would be that people will be required to be encased in impenetrable steel garments, so that they cannot be killed by any means.
The difference between a law that forbids something, and a law that requires something is passive vs. active. You know you're not supposed to speed, but you don't see car manufacturers having limiters that refuse to go over 65mph, do you?
illegal to steal. nobody stops.
Parallel to the SSSCA: Everything is chained, tied, and locked down. You literally cannot steal, since you can't remove the item.
This law will only make life of ordinary people hard, who wont be able to make copies even for personal use.
I wonder how they'll consider backing up proprietary data, such as federal pharmeceutical filings, which are required by law to have multiple copies in multiple locations.
Also, when I go out and burn a fresh copy of Linux onto a CDR, I am paying a royalty to the MPAA and RIAA, on the purchase of that blank recording media, even though it will never contain music or movies. I back up my mail spool to CDR, I've just kicked some more cash over to the RIAA, who uses that money to fund and further restrict what I can do with my own data.
This is out of control.
Re:THE BIG FREAKING POINT.
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
copyright is there to guarantee that society has literature, art, and music, by making sure artists can earn money through creation.
You realize that without open, free, sharing of knowledge, you wouldn't have a single working medicine, or the printing press, or the US Postal Service. Each of these copyrighted things was due to the sharing of anatomy models, typography, and a common ground to spread this information. I think the medical industry, authors, theologans, the Post Office, publishers and book, magazine, and newspaper distribution facilities are making off pretty well on the free, spread of information.
Companies like the MPAA and RIAA are afraid of losing the distribution market, one which they have strong-walled for so long, but missed the Internet as a valid, financially lucrative, distribution medium. They missed the boat.
I for one, copy every single piece of software I get, and every single music and data cdrom I purchase, and store the originals away. If I break or lose the copy, I still have a master. Since I don't have a home stereo, my only way to play the music I've already purchased is to rip it to Ogg and play it on my computer. I don't share it with anyone, unless I have the band's permission (and I've gotten quite a few already).
The SSSCA and all of it's bastard children is just another way for them to control media, and put lethal companies like Microsoft in control, as the gatekeepers of this "security", inherent in the OS itself.
Next, you'll see OS' like Linux and BSD banned as "illegal", because you can factor out the cryptographic controls themselves.
"You must run an approved Microsoft operating system on your 'electronic data-sharing device' in order to connect to the Internet, or communicate with any other device."
Publishing cryptographic algorithms will soon be included here also.
Oh, and we might as well stop printing math in books too, and while we're at it, stop teaching kids about math, because then they can write their own algorithms.
Heck, why even send them to school. We don't want to be educating them to be pirates and infringing on copyrighted works, do we?
If they're educated, maybe they'll eventually learn that this is all ridiculous, and vote us out of office! We can't have that.
What good is learning for anyway, just sit inside the house and stare at your "Media Terminal", and let's just feed you all the information you'll need.
I just moved from South San Francisco, CA to Westerly, RI. I was paying $99.00/mo. for 144k SDSL in SSF (there was literally nothing else available other than dialup, and with that copper, no way I'd get more than 14.4k).
I moved to Westerly, and Cable here is $109.00/mo. for 256/256, 1 static, on an independant segment (no shared bandwidth with the "neighbors"). When I moved in two weeks ago, cable was all there was.
10 minutes ago, I called and found out DSL was just made available, and I'm 3,200 feet from the CO! They want $119.00/mo. for 128k SDSL, $139.00/mo. for 256k SDSL, and $399.00/mo. for 1.0M SDSL, all through "Choice One Communications".
It's a complete rape job out here. Save me. A full T1 to the house (minus CSU/DSU and router) is $512.00/mo. I'm thinking about getting one, slapping up a helical 7802.11 antenna and selling wireless to the neighbors at $50.00/mo.
...Windows has more than it's fair share of faults, but the simple fact is that Windows contains dozens of *USEFUL* features -- many of which are not found in Linux.
Actually, the same features can be found in each, other than very obscure features. The point you're trying to make it that those features in Linux may not be "enhanced" with a GUI, or some slick Druid to walk you through setting it up. That's just a personal choice of the developer. We write the code, let someone else add the pretty gui and icons to make "Joe User" capable of using it.
Really until my dad can install applications without having to open a console window, Linux isn't ready for the average home user.
Well, then let him continue to run Windows. Linux was not designed for the 'average home user' to run. You don't use a coffee cup for a hammer, just because you want to try a new hammer do you? The right tool for the right job. If he can't do 'Next->Next->Finish' in Linux, then it's not the right tool for the job.
So I don't know that it's not ready, except for thoses who don't understand or are against change. I agree that it is not quite where windows is at, after all these years, but don't throw it away either. Many offices could readily change and have the tools they need using Linux, and gain the stability and speed we come to love.
The single common denominator I've seen so far is that all Windows users switching to Linux, expect Linux to _BE_ Windows. They want to right-click on the desktop and get "Properties", and they want a "Start->Run" paradigm. They try to "de-configure" the Linux machine to live and breathe like their previous Windows environment, instead of learning why Linux _EXCELS_ past Windows, and exceeds where Windows fails, they just want Windows.. on Linux.
People who are too lazy to learn a new environment, are not going to be users you want helping to contribute to the advance of Linux in general.
Linux requires work. Linux requires time. People need to understand there is no "Linux, Inc." that manages this. It advances at the speed of.. well, nothing. Whenever something needs to get done, it gets done... or doesn't.
Migrating users also need to understand that Linux _IS NOT FREE_. It costs money, lots of money in fact. Time, bandwidth, servers, payrolls, salaries, equipment. Just because something doesn't work, or "sucks", does not mean that it will get fixed. I see literally _THOUSANDS_ of people complaining about Linux problems. When I ask them if they have reported the issue, they say "No, I'll just wait until it's fixed". _THIS_ is the real problem with the "professional" quality of Linux. We have talented programmers, documenters, packagers. We just don't have talented users that provide _USEFUL_ feedback so we can improve the software we write every day.
Linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for years. Are migrating desktop users willing to learn how to use Linux on the desktop? Not yet.
AudioCatalyst does the same thing - but it's tracking not only what you play, but also what you rip to MP3. Surely, if you are looking for a conspiracy, that is where to look?
As you probably know, ripping CD media to mp3 or ogg format is NOT illegal at all. Every single cdrom I purchase goes right from freshly opened jewel case to CDR, where it's duped and dumped to ogg/rc3 format. The original cdrom then goes back in the jewel case, and sits on a shelf, undisturbed.
Why? Because my stereo was stolen, and the only way I can listen to the music I purchase is on my computer. When I travel with my laptop, or drive in the car, that duplicate CD copy is brought with me.
What IS illegal is the re-distribution of those disks or mp3/ogg files. In many cases, you can write to the band, and get their permission. I have done that, actually, in the past, after explaining my position to them. The band holds the original copyright to the music, not the RIAA. They have the final say.
The problem isn't with the lack of a standardized configuration tools, its a lack of standardized configuration file formats.
This is not rocket science. Why not use the standard tools we're already using today... autoconf, m4, automake, libtool.. and have them build a "standard" config file for us at configure/build time? Why do we have to hand-roll and hand-parse our own formats all the time? We don't.
The complaints about Webmin is that it isn't perfect. It doesn't solve the desire for a universal config mechanism or encourage the editing of files directly. OK. It doesn't. Yet, it exists now and is a lifesaver when using multiple UNIXs.
Get Webmin. Setup Webmin. Open a huge exploitable hole in your system via an open port.
Seriously though, ssh is your friend. Using Webmin on a LAN, where you expect it to be accessible from multiple (unknown interface) machines is a huge security hole. On production machines, opening up a port that allows an authorized, local account to administer the machine, making system-level changes, is really a bad idea.
Each to his own though.. on a single-machine, non-networked, it's probably a wonderful solution. Then again, so is vi.
On that thread what the hell is/usr/etc used for, or/usr/local/etc? won't it make more sense to move/etc here instead?
/usr/local/etc exists because you screwed up when you configured the package, by not properly adding the autoconf --sysconfdir=/etc flag, which is assumed if you also use the --prefix=/usr flag.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have to show my Social Security Card to get on a plane, or to pay my taxes, or to buy postal stamps at the USPO. It's optional.
Implementing National I.D. cards like this will make it mandatory for you to present it.. everywhere.
No thanks, I'll take my chances. I don't commit crimes, nor am I wanted for any crimes. I also don't think I need to be required to "prove" myself to anyone as an innocent, tax-paying, voting citizen of the country I represent by living here.Last I knew, this was (mostly) a free country, but it seems when privacy and money and freedom are concerned, honest citizens lose.
Just because you see them on MTV or hear them on the radio doesn't mean they're not slaves to their record contract, and the threat of being sued for trying to get out of the contract weighs over their heads.
The whole record industry, movie industry, copyright/trademark/intellectual property law industry is dirty, and needs a really healthy washing.
My fear is that soon the SSSCA/CBDTPA or a similar law will be passed, and free will be illegal. "If you didn't pay for it, you must be breaking the law, because we have to make money on everything you do!"
The GPL does not allow for a "phased" release of source code. What if they release binaries in 2002, and it takes them 7 years to "fix up" the code, and then release the source in 2009. The GPL specifically states that you have to release the source to the binaries that you distribute. The source which was used to build those binaries must be made available upon request. If these people paid for a distribution of binaries, and were sent a cdrom of those binaries, the cost of distributing the source on another cdrom or the same cdrom is nil, and is required.
Lindows is wrong, and are in direct violation of several sections of the GPL.
Lovely.
Please go do some reading.
I'm all for it. Maybe companies will begin to be productive again, and Microsoft will have to find some other means to maintain their stranglehold on the monolithic legacy desktop computing environment instead of trying to push all of the user's data out to the web into some Microsoft-controlled, centralized environment.
We were always at war with Eurasia.
These artists may be on their own (non-RIAA) label.
Why am I paying the RIAA for the right to record mp3s of a band that isn't even covered by any RIAA recording company contracts?
How can I ensure that the RIAA is giving a band that they don't represent, a share of these monies?
How do they meter this?
Clearly this is a complete scam, since more than RIAA-controlled music can be legally ripped and re-distributed from bands.
Something else that I find humourous is that one of the leading bands that originally supported the RIAA, Metallica, used to give away audio tapes of their concerts at shows and told their audiences to record them, give them to their friends, and hand them to everyone. It's amazing how the tables turned when they saw the RIAA siphoning so much of their own income off and blaming it on mp3 trading.
I suggest you read Courtney Does the Math and educate yourself. Here's an excerpt:
Go read it. Do the research. These tariffs are completely grossly out of scope.
One thing people don't seem to realize also, is that by paying a royalty on blank media, you are legally allowed to use that media to make a copy of anything you want on it, files, data, music, whatever.. without being required to implement copy-protection schemes on that data. The RIAA is trying to "double-dip" on this by requiring that you pay a royalty on the original purchase as well as require that you record that media on a device which implements copy-protection. Sorry, not allowed. Pick one or the other, you can't have both. That's the law.
There's a lot of new things in Plucker's future, including a new http://my.plkr.org website I'm putting together that will allow you to create, organized, manage, and deal with your Plucker content (you still will not be able to sync "to" the server, however, which is one of the great advantages of Plucker. Your Palm isn't bound to the cradle at content creation time like AvantGo and other alternatives).
There's still quite a bit of things we're toying around with for features, code, and other functionality in the viewer, the parser, the desktop tools, a desktop gui, and other projects.
Join the mailing lists, throw out ideas, patches, and see if anyone bites into them. We're already dozens of features ahead of any of the alternatives (see my previous post that compares two of them.
The content provider websites aren't always "hidden", if you're creative enough to locate them, email the providers, or find other methods.
If you find the sites you want, just email me directly, and I'll add them to the database I have here (I only have about 562 sites currently, but I can't publish them all because I would put the content providers in violation of their own agreements with AvantGo, however).
The content belongs to the content providers. It's their content, not AvantGo's, so you can simply ask nicely for a url to fetch it. I've had much success with this. Just be nice, and promote the distribution of the content, not the undercutting of other content distributors like AvantGo.
The parallel to the SSSCA would be that people will be required to be encased in impenetrable steel garments, so that they cannot be killed by any means.
The difference between a law that forbids something, and a law that requires something is passive vs. active. You know you're not supposed to speed, but you don't see car manufacturers having limiters that refuse to go over 65mph, do you?
Parallel to the SSSCA: Everything is chained, tied, and locked down. You literally cannot steal, since you can't remove the item. I wonder how they'll consider backing up proprietary data, such as federal pharmeceutical filings, which are required by law to have multiple copies in multiple locations.Also, when I go out and burn a fresh copy of Linux onto a CDR, I am paying a royalty to the MPAA and RIAA, on the purchase of that blank recording media, even though it will never contain music or movies. I back up my mail spool to CDR, I've just kicked some more cash over to the RIAA, who uses that money to fund and further restrict what I can do with my own data.
This is out of control.
Companies like the MPAA and RIAA are afraid of losing the distribution market, one which they have strong-walled for so long, but missed the Internet as a valid, financially lucrative, distribution medium. They missed the boat.
I for one, copy every single piece of software I get, and every single music and data cdrom I purchase, and store the originals away. If I break or lose the copy, I still have a master. Since I don't have a home stereo, my only way to play the music I've already purchased is to rip it to Ogg and play it on my computer. I don't share it with anyone, unless I have the band's permission (and I've gotten quite a few already).
The SSSCA and all of it's bastard children is just another way for them to control media, and put lethal companies like Microsoft in control, as the gatekeepers of this "security", inherent in the OS itself.
Next, you'll see OS' like Linux and BSD banned as "illegal", because you can factor out the cryptographic controls themselves.
Publishing cryptographic algorithms will soon be included here also.
Oh, and we might as well stop printing math in books too, and while we're at it, stop teaching kids about math, because then they can write their own algorithms.
Heck, why even send them to school. We don't want to be educating them to be pirates and infringing on copyrighted works, do we?
If they're educated, maybe they'll eventually learn that this is all ridiculous, and vote us out of office! We can't have that.
What good is learning for anyway, just sit inside the house and stare at your "Media Terminal", and let's just feed you all the information you'll need.
I see it coming now.. blecch.
I moved to Westerly, and Cable here is $109.00/mo. for 256/256, 1 static, on an independant segment (no shared bandwidth with the "neighbors"). When I moved in two weeks ago, cable was all there was.
10 minutes ago, I called and found out DSL was just made available, and I'm 3,200 feet from the CO! They want $119.00/mo. for 128k SDSL, $139.00/mo. for 256k SDSL, and $399.00/mo. for 1.0M SDSL, all through "Choice One Communications".
It's a complete rape job out here. Save me. A full T1 to the house (minus CSU/DSU and router) is $512.00/mo. I'm thinking about getting one, slapping up a helical 7802.11 antenna and selling wireless to the neighbors at $50.00/mo.
Well, then let him continue to run Windows. Linux was not designed for the 'average home user' to run. You don't use a coffee cup for a hammer, just because you want to try a new hammer do you? The right tool for the right job. If he can't do 'Next->Next->Finish' in Linux, then it's not the right tool for the job.
The single common denominator I've seen so far is that all Windows users switching to Linux, expect Linux to _BE_ Windows. They want to right-click on the desktop and get "Properties", and they want a "Start->Run" paradigm. They try to "de-configure" the Linux machine to live and breathe like their previous Windows environment, instead of learning why Linux _EXCELS_ past Windows, and exceeds where Windows fails, they just want Windows.. on Linux.
People who are too lazy to learn a new environment, are not going to be users you want helping to contribute to the advance of Linux in general.
Linux requires work. Linux requires time. People need to understand there is no "Linux, Inc." that manages this. It advances at the speed of.. well, nothing. Whenever something needs to get done, it gets done... or doesn't.
Migrating users also need to understand that Linux _IS NOT FREE_. It costs money, lots of money in fact. Time, bandwidth, servers, payrolls, salaries, equipment. Just because something doesn't work, or "sucks", does not mean that it will get fixed. I see literally _THOUSANDS_ of people complaining about Linux problems. When I ask them if they have reported the issue, they say "No, I'll just wait until it's fixed". _THIS_ is the real problem with the "professional" quality of Linux. We have talented programmers, documenters, packagers. We just don't have talented users that provide _USEFUL_ feedback so we can improve the software we write every day.
Linux is ready for the desktop, and has been for years. Are migrating desktop users willing to learn how to use Linux on the desktop? Not yet.
Why? Because my stereo was stolen, and the only way I can listen to the music I purchase is on my computer. When I travel with my laptop, or drive in the car, that duplicate CD copy is brought with me.
What IS illegal is the re-distribution of those disks or mp3/ogg files. In many cases, you can write to the band, and get their permission. I have done that, actually, in the past, after explaining my position to them. The band holds the original copyright to the music, not the RIAA. They have the final say.
This is not rocket science. Why not use the standard tools we're already using today... autoconf, m4, automake, libtool.. and have them build a "standard" config file for us at configure/build time? Why do we have to hand-roll and hand-parse our own formats all the time? We don't.
And if you man grep you'll see the -C switch, which you can then do:
grep -C2 DocumentRoot MyFile.xml
/some/path
<DocumentRoot>
</DocumentRoot>