The problem with that analogy is that you can clearly determine whether or not they took or changed something. In the case of a system storing all kinds of data, this cannot be so easily determined.
This just in...
Psychologists say k1dd13z are 50cc33r m0mz.
According leading psychologists studying a particular kind of hacker, called "script kiddies", have reason to believe that they aren't really kids at all. According to the latest profile, the average script kiddie has an affinity for SUV's, cocker spaniels, and anything from the Pottery Barn. This startling discovery has led them to believe that the average "script kiddie" is actually a "soccer mom"...
Because you still have to find out what they did. At least if you want to protect yourself in the future. Its also prudent to find out if there has been a theft of data.
The two situations are completely different! I would argue that $2000 is a low estimate. That amount only reflects the cost of the Admin(s) time spent investigating a security incident and fails to even cover the costs of data loss, downtime, or even possible legal action.
What if the company is a health care provider and confidential medical records are compromised? The legal firestorm and damages would make $2000 look like a penny on the sidewalk.
Now if that bag of M&M's had been an instant winner for a new car, then you might have had something there.
Is there such a thing as "executive privalege" that could be used to keep these things private?
No. They could be prevented from available to public scrutiny due to national security measures, but they would certainly still be read by someone other than the sender and the intended recipient, be it a closed Senate hearing, Independet Counsel, etc.
Also, does anyone know the basis for the president's private e-mail (say, to his daughters about family matters) being public record? If he wrote them paper letters, would that be public record? Why is e-mail different?
It doesn't make any difference if the letters are paper or electronic. It doesn't even matter if he's President or John Doe or who its to, all correspondence is discoverable in legal action. It just so happens that the President's correspondence, especially email is an easy target for any investigation. Sounds like he's just being cautious, I don't think he wants his own version of the "Nixon Tapes".
Would it make a difference if he used a computer owned by him personally instead of by the government, and used and ISP he paid for himself instead of the government's connection?
In the event of some kind of investigation, they could get those too.
Also, how do we know he'd be forced to reveal the private key or plaintext, instead of just the ciphertext? Is there legal precedent for this in other cases?
I have no idea if there is precedent, but I would be pretty confident that failure to turn over the key would become immediate grounds for contempt. As for the long haul, I would also be pretty certain that the Prez would be nailed with obstruction.
"maybe we should make some money"
They are a For Profit business are they not. Furthermore, this isn't anything new, it's called Value Add and it was always their intention to make more money on services than on product. In fact, that's the whole point of the Open Source _business_ model.
p.s. Don't expect Eazel's or even Ximian's services to be completely free for long either. Mostly because all three companies stated early on in their founding that this was _exactly_ how they planned on making money. When they take away your source and dominate the computer industry with an iron fist, then you can say they're becoming MS. Until then, chill out and realize that if they don't make money and go out of business a lot of damn good programmers who work on Linux full-time will be out of work.
But what if they've got a "bad" fight. Laws don't get overturned just because you stand up and fight. You've got to have a case. Slashdot doesn't have one.
I agree someone has to fight it, but if you go up against a law like this without a chance, then all your going to accomplish is create bad precedent for the next guy who tries to fight it.
Rob's right, you've got to pick you battles.....an then open the "Can of WhoopAss" that is the Slashdot readership.
There are two distinct ways to fight injustice. The first is to go underground and literally fight a "guerrilla" war of sorts. Neither Rob or VA can do that. It just isn't possible. The second method is to meet your opponent on the battlefield. The problem is, this issue will not garner much media attention and thus popular support. Just look at the DeCSS case, believe it or not that case has better odds than this one ever could. The problem is the only way Slashdot can win is to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or somehow manage to lobby enough Congressmen to repeal or ammend the DMCA. The former is unlikely and the latter will never happen. Congress doesn't like to admit they screwed up, and it usually takes until nearly everyone who voted in a law is gone before its repealed.
Not only would taking this case to court be a colossal waste of money, it would end up making the DMCA stonger through precedent. The old adage, "What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" applies more than ever to law. That which doesn't kill a law, only makes it stronger. Taking this to court would be a HUGE mistake.
I'd certainly like to see some _meaningful_ standards in the Linux space. It bugs me that some of the differences between distros serve no real purpose at all.
No matter how you cut it people are going to find ways around it. If I'm real desperate to "stick it to da man" I'll have it shipped to a friend's in the next state over and go visist. Of course this doesn't work if you live in the middle of Texas.:)
Three reasons why multiple distributions are better then a few.
Direction
If you've ever worked on a team of equals (or close to it) you will have noticed that it is often very difficult to agree on a common direction. Half the group may want to work on X while the other half wants to work on Y. When this happens Project Leaders have to get their developers to compromise more than they collaborate. Force the issue and you'll end up with a product that fails to meets either goal.
I think this philosophy is best illustrated by the recent "fork" of the Samba project. A contingency of developers decided that they really wanted to try some new avenues. Avenues that didn't necessarily coincide with the short term vision of the main development effort. Rather than try and compromise, the project leads thought it a better idea to split their forces and hopefully meet again somewhere down the road. While its true that this decreased the number of eyes on the "core" Samba effort, it may very well lead to more quantum leaps in the future.
The same holds true for Linux because the code is open. If Mandrake sees that SuSE has made some great strides in a given area, they can incorporate those changes and vice versa. This in effect puts them in the same development community, but allows them the freedom to explore those areas that interest them.
Competition
Competition fuels innovation. Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera are all trying to make a buck on Linux. A market without a lot of bucks to go around (at least at the moment). If they want to sell more boxes they've got to demonstrate why their Linux is better than the next guys. Competition is a huge motivator and one that diminishes with fewer players.
Choice
Choice isn't really a reason all its own, in fact it greatly depends on the other two. If they don't exist then we won't have many choices at all. Limit choice, and the next thing you know a young college student is writing his own kernel for his own enjoyment and educational purposes. (which is a good thing by the way, because it reintroduces choice)
It must differ from state to state, because Mass definitely considers delivery point of sale.
To even complicate matters, when my parents bought their car in Mass. and picked it up in Mass. they did not have to pay any tax. According to the Sales Manager, the State of Mass. goes by where you register your vehicle as the determing factor.
Yes you're right there is a difference, but not as different as you think. I currently have to deal with a server room full of Solaris, HP-UX, and Irix. Of those three operating systems alone, there are no fewer than three disparate versions of each. Of those three or more different versions you are going to find different revs, slight differences in commands, missing commands, and even software install methods all within the same OS family. Our Unix Admins have to deal with all of this and do so on a daily basis. A couple of Linux distros in the mix would be childs play for these guys. Hell about half of them run Linux on their work laptops.
I think my point, which I invariably did a poor job of conveying is that the minute differences between distributions, especially those within in the same family (ie. red hat based versus debian based), is nothing that SysAdmins can't handle. Sure it would be better from an administrator's perspective, if you could have all your machines running the same version of the same operating system, but it isn't always practical. It's a fact of IT life that AppX runs better on SomeOS4 then it does on AnotherOS5 or even SomeOS2 which you decided to standardize on. While a homogenous infrastructure may get the job done, more often than not its nothing but a pipe dream that PHB's still cling to in hopes of lowering their beloved TCO. IMHO, the goal should be to use the best operating system available for a given task, whether its Solaris, Linux, Windows, or Mac.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Linux for the sake of defending Linux. In fact, I agree with you completely that there are some serious issues like those you mentioned. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with it that a few standards can't remedy.
I believe it is going to be calculated based upon the customer's location.
That's fine with me, I live in New Hampshire, where we _currently_ don't have a sales tax.
This brings up several other questions, though. What if the customer's billing and shipping locations are different? Would the shipping address or billing address be the taxable location?
I was about to say that the obvious choice is the billing, but it isn't. In fact, the shipping very easily could be.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who lived in Andover, MA needed some furniture. We went to a couple of places in NH and he found a living room set. When he asked about delivery, they told him if the furniture was delivered to him, then he would have to pay Mass sales tax. However, if he picked it up, he wouldn't have to pay any. Apparently, the way the law works in regards to taxes (at least AFAIK) the transaction's location is determined by where the goods are received.
How would the taxes collected be distributed to each locality. Would the taxes be payable to the federal government, who would in turn distribute monies to the appropriate localities, or would the web merchant be responsible for mailing out tax revenue to hundreds of different local governments?
Well, I don't see how the first option could ever work, call me skeptical, but I don't think the states will be crazy about this one. On the other hand, if I recall correctly, businesses are under no obligation to pay taxes to governments they do not have a presence in. In fact, I think I remember seeing the arguement made that online businesses should be treated the same as mail order businesses the last time this debate came around. This is why you'll often see that box on the bottom of mail order forms that say something like "CA Residents Only add xx.x%".
How would this system be integrated into existing e-commerce solutions? How much time and money would it cost to upgrade current order processing software to automatically charge and allocate local sales tax for each order?
Well, I suppose it depends on the e-com solution in place. For the ones that were well thought out, it might actually be a breeze. I would think companies who already do some form of their business in the retail or catalog space this will be an easy thing to do. The online only "e-tailers" may have rough seas ahead. Of course, all this would depend greatly on how this tax plan is put in place.
How would the government propose to enforce that sales tax is actually being collected and paid out? What measures are in place to ensure that vendors abide by these regulations?
I'm not sure about this one, but we could probably see a greater emergence of eCom in "tax havens" (using the term very loosely). Depending on the implementation of this tax, some of these businesses could move into more "tax-friendly" states or even countries. As for enforcement, the big guys in the ecom world would probably be watched pretty closely, while the smaller vendors could/would slip through the cracks, at least for a little while.
How would orders placed on international websites for delivery in the US be affected?
I'm pretty confident that this base will be covered to some extent. It'll be hard to enforce, damn near impossible, on the consumer level, but business would probably be hit with use taxes or some other kind of delivery clause. Something like I mentioned above.
The idea is feasible, but it seems like there are quite a few questions that need be answered prior to implementation.
Definitely!
Ok, so why not add pirana to RedHat then instead of a new distro entirely? Even better why not just develop apache to use mod_proxy and make it a non Linux specific solution.
Because at the time Piranha was still in its infancy, and Red Hat hadn't introduced the HA server for atleast another couple of months. By that time, I wasn't there and don't know if they ever switched. Furthermore, the Cluster server from Turbo was very reliable, quick, and easy to administer.
What's the benefit or why does it matter if Linux fits on a floppy for a firewall?
For one its small, and its highly portable. This can be a very useful tool, but more specifically it was merely an example of the flexibility of Linux. There are a couple of distros out there that fit onto a floppy disk. I can't remember the names, but we had a couple tailored for a number tasks, most of which were diagnostic in nature. Don't read too into this, its only an example.
Let's say the environment is grown to 200-300 Linux boxes strong and each one is totally different. How does having a machine that's nothing like the rest help make the admin's job any easier at 2:00am when it goes down? Or what if a new person walks in the door to take over the environment and has to figure out wtf is going on and how each one works, learning curve goes waaay up.
First of all, 3 to 4 different distros is a long way from 200-300 in a server room. Secondly, anyone fool enough to install 200-300 "completely" different operating systems is insane. Furthermore, the differences between Mandrake, Red Hat, Caldera, and TurboLinux are minute. So much so, that an admin who can administer one but not the other is obviously an idiot. In fact, I would rather admin a server room with five different "specialized" distros of Linux than I would one with a mix of AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, and Digital Unix.
Not trying to start a war, but it's the custimization and optimization that makes it harder to administrate in my opinion. It makes it an elegant hack job of bubble gum and duct tape.
Think of it this way. Even if a company standardizes on one platform (I'll use Solaris for example) there are going to be differences, possibly even significant ones, from one system to the next. My Solaris boxes for Oracle are going to have different kernel parameters for larger shared memory. My web servers are going to have optimizations for iPlanet or some other web server. This is going to continue right down the line from mail servers to NFS servers to NIS servers all the way down to the workstations. So even though I've theoretically standardized on Solaris, my admins are going to have to approach each box differently, by role that is.
You wouldn't use a framing hammer to tack up a picture and you wouldn't use a tack hammer to frame a house. Carpenters don't use just one hammer and SysAdmins shouldn't limit themselves to a so-called "one size fits all" solution. Hell, even NT has optimizations for specific roles.
Not necessarily! I was once a sysadmin and I would say that my job would have been much harder if we only had one distro.
My company used to use a couple different distros for different things. We used Red Hat 6.2 for our Oracle machines, because it was the best Linux at the time for Oracle. TurboLinux's Cluster server for our web farms, because it was a breeze to set up and manage. We also used Caldera, Red Hat, and Mandrake on desktops based on that user's personal preference.
The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as "one size fits all". Windows, Solaris, AIX, Mac OS-X will never be able to solve everyone's IT needs all by themselves. If they could then they would have already. They each have their strengths and their weaknesses. Linux's strength is that it can very easily be customized/optimized (without vendor approval) to suit _your_ needs. Try and shoe horn WinNT or even Solaris for that matter onto a floppy disk to provide the complete operating system for a firewall system.
One distribution could never have achieved what many have already done.
I have to disagree with you there. I've been a big Red Hat user for many years, and the 7.0 release persuaded me to run other distros in concert. At home I have a firewall machine, laptop, Oracle/Apache server, and a desktop. At first I was a little hesitant about having a mix of distros on different machines for "self-support" reasons, but my fears were quickly proved unfounded. I now run Mandrake 7.2 on my firewall, SuSE 7.0 on my laptop, Red Hat 6.2 on my server, and both Red Hat 7.0 and Mandrake 7.2 on my desktop. I've found that they all have there little quirks, but for the most part they are still very much alike. I think the only exception is Debian. I gave it a quick glance, only to determine that while I liked what I saw, I wasn't prepared to go down that road just yet.
BTW, I definitely wouldn't use Red Hat 7.0 on my Oracle box (tried, not pretty), but its hardly bullshit. Well, I suppose that's just my opinion and you have yours. C'est La Vie.
People only think they are too stupid to use powerful command line tools, but in fact with a little help almost everyone can use it and can be more productive with it. Most are too lazy though, and thus because they don't want to spend the initial 30 minutes, they loose 30 minutes each day.
For some people, yes this is the case, but I've always found the CLI versus GUI argument to be pointless. In my experience, for some things the CLI is faster and in some things it isn't. I kind of like the old analogy that when you want to dig a ditch, the shovel is your tool. If you want to dig a canal, then you'd better get a steam shovel.
I love the CLI, but sometimes it can't quite do the job that a particular GUI can quite as easily. And, Nautilus looks like it could be a pretty good shovel.
WAIT!!!!!
I must have read that wrong....
Unix terminals replaced by a bunch of PCs running terminal emulators(!) on Windows ....No I guess I did read that right.
Now that's what I call TCO savings.
I never read UNIXinsider, but I definitely read LinuxWorld. They were an excellent portal. I especially enjoyed the writings of Nick Petreley, Joe Barr, and Colin Mattoon. I think they did a marvelous job of extolling the benefits as well as exposing the warts of Linux. They weren't afraid to voice controversial ideas and in fact encouraged critical discussion of those ideas.
I'm going to miss reading their work, because while I agree that they will provide some nice "round-out" content for ITworld, I'm afraid that no one will ever see it. The ITworld front page has got to be one of the most cluttered ones I've ever seen. I think if anything they suffer from too much content, for my taste.
Slashdot Mirror
DING! DING! DING!
We have a winner!
I couldn't even get a phone line in my room.
The problem with that analogy is that you can clearly determine whether or not they took or changed something. In the case of a system storing all kinds of data, this cannot be so easily determined.
This just in...
Psychologists say k1dd13z are 50cc33r m0mz.
According leading psychologists studying a particular kind of hacker, called "script kiddies", have reason to believe that they aren't really kids at all. According to the latest profile, the average script kiddie has an affinity for SUV's, cocker spaniels, and anything from the Pottery Barn. This startling discovery has led them to believe that the average "script kiddie" is actually a "soccer mom"...
Because you still have to find out what they did. At least if you want to protect yourself in the future. Its also prudent to find out if there has been a theft of data.
The two situations are completely different! I would argue that $2000 is a low estimate. That amount only reflects the cost of the Admin(s) time spent investigating a security incident and fails to even cover the costs of data loss, downtime, or even possible legal action.
What if the company is a health care provider and confidential medical records are compromised? The legal firestorm and damages would make $2000 look like a penny on the sidewalk.
Now if that bag of M&M's had been an instant winner for a new car, then you might have had something there.
Is there such a thing as "executive privalege" that could be used to keep these things private?
No. They could be prevented from available to public scrutiny due to national security measures, but they would certainly still be read by someone other than the sender and the intended recipient, be it a closed Senate hearing, Independet Counsel, etc.
Also, does anyone know the basis for the president's private e-mail (say, to his daughters about family matters) being public record? If he wrote them paper letters, would that be public record? Why is e-mail different?
It doesn't make any difference if the letters are paper or electronic. It doesn't even matter if he's President or John Doe or who its to, all correspondence is discoverable in legal action. It just so happens that the President's correspondence, especially email is an easy target for any investigation. Sounds like he's just being cautious, I don't think he wants his own version of the "Nixon Tapes".
Would it make a difference if he used a computer owned by him personally instead of by the government, and used and ISP he paid for himself instead of the government's connection?
In the event of some kind of investigation, they could get those too.
Also, how do we know he'd be forced to reveal the private key or plaintext, instead of just the ciphertext? Is there legal precedent for this in other cases?
I have no idea if there is precedent, but I would be pretty confident that failure to turn over the key would become immediate grounds for contempt. As for the long haul, I would also be pretty certain that the Prez would be nailed with obstruction.
"maybe we should make some money"
They are a For Profit business are they not. Furthermore, this isn't anything new, it's called Value Add and it was always their intention to make more money on services than on product. In fact, that's the whole point of the Open Source _business_ model.
p.s. Don't expect Eazel's or even Ximian's services to be completely free for long either. Mostly because all three companies stated early on in their founding that this was _exactly_ how they planned on making money. When they take away your source and dominate the computer industry with an iron fist, then you can say they're becoming MS. Until then, chill out and realize that if they don't make money and go out of business a lot of damn good programmers who work on Linux full-time will be out of work.
But what if they've got a "bad" fight. Laws don't get overturned just because you stand up and fight. You've got to have a case. Slashdot doesn't have one.
I agree someone has to fight it, but if you go up against a law like this without a chance, then all your going to accomplish is create bad precedent for the next guy who tries to fight it.
Rob's right, you've got to pick you battles.....an then open the "Can of WhoopAss" that is the Slashdot readership.
But your not in Rob's or even VA's position.
There are two distinct ways to fight injustice. The first is to go underground and literally fight a "guerrilla" war of sorts. Neither Rob or VA can do that. It just isn't possible. The second method is to meet your opponent on the battlefield. The problem is, this issue will not garner much media attention and thus popular support. Just look at the DeCSS case, believe it or not that case has better odds than this one ever could. The problem is the only way Slashdot can win is to get the DMCA declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or somehow manage to lobby enough Congressmen to repeal or ammend the DMCA. The former is unlikely and the latter will never happen. Congress doesn't like to admit they screwed up, and it usually takes until nearly everyone who voted in a law is gone before its repealed.
Not only would taking this case to court be a colossal waste of money, it would end up making the DMCA stonger through precedent. The old adage, "What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" applies more than ever to law. That which doesn't kill a law, only makes it stronger. Taking this to court would be a HUGE mistake.
No they can't. The DMCA clearly removes that "out". It sucks, but they cannot win period unless the DMCA is overturned.
I totally agree.
I'd certainly like to see some _meaningful_ standards in the Linux space. It bugs me that some of the differences between distros serve no real purpose at all.
No matter how you cut it people are going to find ways around it. If I'm real desperate to "stick it to da man" I'll have it shipped to a friend's in the next state over and go visist. Of course this doesn't work if you live in the middle of Texas. :)
Somebody PLEASE give this person karma!
Three reasons why multiple distributions are better then a few.
Direction
If you've ever worked on a team of equals (or close to it) you will have noticed that it is often very difficult to agree on a common direction. Half the group may want to work on X while the other half wants to work on Y. When this happens Project Leaders have to get their developers to compromise more than they collaborate. Force the issue and you'll end up with a product that fails to meets either goal.
I think this philosophy is best illustrated by the recent "fork" of the Samba project. A contingency of developers decided that they really wanted to try some new avenues. Avenues that didn't necessarily coincide with the short term vision of the main development effort. Rather than try and compromise, the project leads thought it a better idea to split their forces and hopefully meet again somewhere down the road. While its true that this decreased the number of eyes on the "core" Samba effort, it may very well lead to more quantum leaps in the future.
The same holds true for Linux because the code is open. If Mandrake sees that SuSE has made some great strides in a given area, they can incorporate those changes and vice versa. This in effect puts them in the same development community, but allows them the freedom to explore those areas that interest them.
Competition
Competition fuels innovation. Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera are all trying to make a buck on Linux. A market without a lot of bucks to go around (at least at the moment). If they want to sell more boxes they've got to demonstrate why their Linux is better than the next guys. Competition is a huge motivator and one that diminishes with fewer players.
Choice
Choice isn't really a reason all its own, in fact it greatly depends on the other two. If they don't exist then we won't have many choices at all. Limit choice, and the next thing you know a young college student is writing his own kernel for his own enjoyment and educational purposes. (which is a good thing by the way, because it reintroduces choice)
It must differ from state to state, because Mass definitely considers delivery point of sale.
To even complicate matters, when my parents bought their car in Mass. and picked it up in Mass. they did not have to pay any tax. According to the Sales Manager, the State of Mass. goes by where you register your vehicle as the determing factor.
Just more proof that tax laws are complex.
I found that out the hard way....After I tried.
Yes you're right there is a difference, but not as different as you think. I currently have to deal with a server room full of Solaris, HP-UX, and Irix. Of those three operating systems alone, there are no fewer than three disparate versions of each. Of those three or more different versions you are going to find different revs, slight differences in commands, missing commands, and even software install methods all within the same OS family. Our Unix Admins have to deal with all of this and do so on a daily basis. A couple of Linux distros in the mix would be childs play for these guys. Hell about half of them run Linux on their work laptops.
I think my point, which I invariably did a poor job of conveying is that the minute differences between distributions, especially those within in the same family (ie. red hat based versus debian based), is nothing that SysAdmins can't handle. Sure it would be better from an administrator's perspective, if you could have all your machines running the same version of the same operating system, but it isn't always practical. It's a fact of IT life that AppX runs better on SomeOS4 then it does on AnotherOS5 or even SomeOS2 which you decided to standardize on. While a homogenous infrastructure may get the job done, more often than not its nothing but a pipe dream that PHB's still cling to in hopes of lowering their beloved TCO. IMHO, the goal should be to use the best operating system available for a given task, whether its Solaris, Linux, Windows, or Mac.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Linux for the sake of defending Linux. In fact, I agree with you completely that there are some serious issues like those you mentioned. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with it that a few standards can't remedy.
I believe it is going to be calculated based upon the customer's location.
That's fine with me, I live in New Hampshire, where we _currently_ don't have a sales tax.
This brings up several other questions, though. What if the customer's billing and shipping locations are different? Would the shipping address or billing address be the taxable location?
I was about to say that the obvious choice is the billing, but it isn't. In fact, the shipping very easily could be.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine who lived in Andover, MA needed some furniture. We went to a couple of places in NH and he found a living room set. When he asked about delivery, they told him if the furniture was delivered to him, then he would have to pay Mass sales tax. However, if he picked it up, he wouldn't have to pay any. Apparently, the way the law works in regards to taxes (at least AFAIK) the transaction's location is determined by where the goods are received.
How would the taxes collected be distributed to each locality. Would the taxes be payable to the federal government, who would in turn distribute monies to the appropriate localities, or would the web merchant be responsible for mailing out tax revenue to hundreds of different local governments?
Well, I don't see how the first option could ever work, call me skeptical, but I don't think the states will be crazy about this one. On the other hand, if I recall correctly, businesses are under no obligation to pay taxes to governments they do not have a presence in. In fact, I think I remember seeing the arguement made that online businesses should be treated the same as mail order businesses the last time this debate came around. This is why you'll often see that box on the bottom of mail order forms that say something like "CA Residents Only add xx.x%".
How would this system be integrated into existing e-commerce solutions? How much time and money would it cost to upgrade current order processing software to automatically charge and allocate local sales tax for each order?
Well, I suppose it depends on the e-com solution in place. For the ones that were well thought out, it might actually be a breeze. I would think companies who already do some form of their business in the retail or catalog space this will be an easy thing to do. The online only "e-tailers" may have rough seas ahead. Of course, all this would depend greatly on how this tax plan is put in place.
How would the government propose to enforce that sales tax is actually being collected and paid out? What measures are in place to ensure that vendors abide by these regulations?
I'm not sure about this one, but we could probably see a greater emergence of eCom in "tax havens" (using the term very loosely). Depending on the implementation of this tax, some of these businesses could move into more "tax-friendly" states or even countries. As for enforcement, the big guys in the ecom world would probably be watched pretty closely, while the smaller vendors could/would slip through the cracks, at least for a little while.
How would orders placed on international websites for delivery in the US be affected?
I'm pretty confident that this base will be covered to some extent. It'll be hard to enforce, damn near impossible, on the consumer level, but business would probably be hit with use taxes or some other kind of delivery clause. Something like I mentioned above.
The idea is feasible, but it seems like there are quite a few questions that need be answered prior to implementation.
Definitely!
Ok, so why not add pirana to RedHat then instead of a new distro entirely? Even better why not just develop apache to use mod_proxy and make it a non Linux specific solution.
Because at the time Piranha was still in its infancy, and Red Hat hadn't introduced the HA server for atleast another couple of months. By that time, I wasn't there and don't know if they ever switched. Furthermore, the Cluster server from Turbo was very reliable, quick, and easy to administer.
What's the benefit or why does it matter if Linux fits on a floppy for a firewall?
For one its small, and its highly portable. This can be a very useful tool, but more specifically it was merely an example of the flexibility of Linux. There are a couple of distros out there that fit onto a floppy disk. I can't remember the names, but we had a couple tailored for a number tasks, most of which were diagnostic in nature. Don't read too into this, its only an example.
Let's say the environment is grown to 200-300 Linux boxes strong and each one is totally different. How does having a machine that's nothing like the rest help make the admin's job any easier at 2:00am when it goes down? Or what if a new person walks in the door to take over the environment and has to figure out wtf is going on and how each one works, learning curve goes waaay up.
First of all, 3 to 4 different distros is a long way from 200-300 in a server room. Secondly, anyone fool enough to install 200-300 "completely" different operating systems is insane. Furthermore, the differences between Mandrake, Red Hat, Caldera, and TurboLinux are minute. So much so, that an admin who can administer one but not the other is obviously an idiot. In fact, I would rather admin a server room with five different "specialized" distros of Linux than I would one with a mix of AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, and Digital Unix.
Not trying to start a war, but it's the custimization and optimization that makes it harder to administrate in my opinion. It makes it an elegant hack job of bubble gum and duct tape.
Think of it this way. Even if a company standardizes on one platform (I'll use Solaris for example) there are going to be differences, possibly even significant ones, from one system to the next. My Solaris boxes for Oracle are going to have different kernel parameters for larger shared memory. My web servers are going to have optimizations for iPlanet or some other web server. This is going to continue right down the line from mail servers to NFS servers to NIS servers all the way down to the workstations. So even though I've theoretically standardized on Solaris, my admins are going to have to approach each box differently, by role that is.
You wouldn't use a framing hammer to tack up a picture and you wouldn't use a tack hammer to frame a house. Carpenters don't use just one hammer and SysAdmins shouldn't limit themselves to a so-called "one size fits all" solution. Hell, even NT has optimizations for specific roles.
Not necessarily! I was once a sysadmin and I would say that my job would have been much harder if we only had one distro.
My company used to use a couple different distros for different things. We used Red Hat 6.2 for our Oracle machines, because it was the best Linux at the time for Oracle. TurboLinux's Cluster server for our web farms, because it was a breeze to set up and manage. We also used Caldera, Red Hat, and Mandrake on desktops based on that user's personal preference.
The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing as "one size fits all". Windows, Solaris, AIX, Mac OS-X will never be able to solve everyone's IT needs all by themselves. If they could then they would have already. They each have their strengths and their weaknesses. Linux's strength is that it can very easily be customized/optimized (without vendor approval) to suit _your_ needs. Try and shoe horn WinNT or even Solaris for that matter onto a floppy disk to provide the complete operating system for a firewall system.
One distribution could never have achieved what many have already done.
I have to disagree with you there. I've been a big Red Hat user for many years, and the 7.0 release persuaded me to run other distros in concert. At home I have a firewall machine, laptop, Oracle/Apache server, and a desktop. At first I was a little hesitant about having a mix of distros on different machines for "self-support" reasons, but my fears were quickly proved unfounded. I now run Mandrake 7.2 on my firewall, SuSE 7.0 on my laptop, Red Hat 6.2 on my server, and both Red Hat 7.0 and Mandrake 7.2 on my desktop. I've found that they all have there little quirks, but for the most part they are still very much alike. I think the only exception is Debian. I gave it a quick glance, only to determine that while I liked what I saw, I wasn't prepared to go down that road just yet.
BTW, I definitely wouldn't use Red Hat 7.0 on my Oracle box (tried, not pretty), but its hardly bullshit. Well, I suppose that's just my opinion and you have yours. C'est La Vie.
People only think they are too stupid to use powerful command line tools, but in fact with a little help almost everyone can use it and can be more productive with it. Most are too lazy though, and thus because they don't want to spend the initial 30 minutes, they loose 30 minutes each day.
For some people, yes this is the case, but I've always found the CLI versus GUI argument to be pointless. In my experience, for some things the CLI is faster and in some things it isn't. I kind of like the old analogy that when you want to dig a ditch, the shovel is your tool. If you want to dig a canal, then you'd better get a steam shovel.
I love the CLI, but sometimes it can't quite do the job that a particular GUI can quite as easily. And, Nautilus looks like it could be a pretty good shovel.
WAIT!!!!!
....No I guess I did read that right.
I must have read that wrong....
Unix terminals replaced by a bunch of PCs running terminal emulators(!) on Windows
Now that's what I call TCO savings.
Excellent Points! Especially the part about Bob Metcalfe, I never thought I'd miss him, but I do.
I never read UNIXinsider, but I definitely read LinuxWorld. They were an excellent portal. I especially enjoyed the writings of Nick Petreley, Joe Barr, and Colin Mattoon. I think they did a marvelous job of extolling the benefits as well as exposing the warts of Linux. They weren't afraid to voice controversial ideas and in fact encouraged critical discussion of those ideas.
I'm going to miss reading their work, because while I agree that they will provide some nice "round-out" content for ITworld, I'm afraid that no one will ever see it. The ITworld front page has got to be one of the most cluttered ones I've ever seen. I think if anything they suffer from too much content, for my taste.
Just my $0.02