And any organization doing this sort of test is STILL vulnerable. That's the problem with trying to prove a negative. Just because an intrusion failed this time does not mean that it will next time. Now, I'm not arguing against performing the kind of assessment and audit you are talking about here, but such tests are only part of the process.
I'm a bit sad that this has turned into an "open source is STILL better than Windows" thing (even though I think it is). When it comes to security, everybody in the software game has problems. The finger pointing is useless. The lessons of this attack are exactly the same as the lessons of previous attacks, whether on close or open code:
1. Software engineering needs to improve. The exploitable errors are patterns that keep on happening. As a programmer myself, I have made these mistakes. As a trade/guild/profession we need to take the time to learn these patterns and methods to avoid them. We (and I definitely include myself in this) are doing a lousy job.
2. Computer operations are doing a lousy job of keeping systems secure. This one is important, but less important than issue one, becuase system admins shouldn't have to patch systems constantly. That they have to is more a measure of the failures of software engineering than the failures of system admins. That said, until we programmers get our house in order, it does fall on admins to patch, patch, patch. This sounds simple, but it isn't. When you are talking about mission-critical systems, it is extremely dangerous to apply untested patches to production machines. So dangerous that good admins don't do it. They test patches on their test machines, and well run systems will go through applications regression testing for each set of patches. This takes time. Time during which the production systems run unpatched. Sometimes these patches come in stochastic bunches such that some patches go unapplied for months, simply because the patch came in after regression testing is too far along to start over. This leads to an ironic situation: The most critical systems to a business are often the most vulnerable. Judgement about whether a patch is for an issue is so critical that it should short-circuit regression testing is a difficult art. And what if the production systems doesn't work after the patch? Sure, you can back up; you might keep your deployments in a CVS-like archive so you can roll back in minutes, but what if even a few minutes is a few hundred thousand dollars, or a few million? How many times can you afford the risk?
One problem with many of my fellow Free Software advocates (note I said "many" and not "all") is that they have not worked in mission-critical production environments in multi-billion dollar enterprises. Many of my fellow Open Source fans have worked in environments where it is no big deal to bring the server down for ten or fifteen minutes. When those are the only kind of shops you have worked in, it is difficult to understand how serious and difficult these issues can be for some.
So don't turn this into a Windows vs. Open Source thing. We (Open Source folks) have to suck it up this time. So what? The issues are the same. Our track record is still better, but, in this situation, the past is meaningless. Where are we now? Unfortunately we are in the same place (and so is the closed world): We are still making the same mistakes in software development and asking the admins to clean up the mess. We are even blaming the admins for it, when it really is not their fault.
All of this was triggered by the previous poster's correct comments about audit and assessment. He/She's right, except that these measures are locking the stable door after the horse has bolted (except sometimes the horse hasn't yet bolted -- that's why you still do it). The problem is we software developers have made a stable door that you can walk away from with it unlocked. If we hadn't done that in the first place...
It is getting better. I'm seeing more books on programming to avoid security problems. We're learning. But there are a lot of us, and we aren't all getting the education.
Yes, but we then use punctuation to indicate our meaning. For example, since you left out the comma between "words" and "people" in your example, I was not sure until I reached the end of the sentence if you were concerned with words in general, or if you were concerned merely with "words people must be able to understand." Since reading the sentence in the latter way left a dangling participle, I had to go back and try it the other way. The fact that I did this in a fraction of a second doesn't mean that it didn't slow me down and cause me a moment of confusion.
Sure, you can break the rules and still be understood. That's a bit rude, though. The rules aren't there to constrain your freedom. They are there to ensure our mutual understanding.
When you break a rule artfully and with intent, you are doing something of real value to the language. When you break a rule out of ignorance or laziness, you are asking the rest of us to do your work for you. That is rude.
Please understand that I recognize slashdot and other such forums (fora?) are an informal and ad hoc place for language. I think it was perfectly okay to leave out the comma where you did. I don't take people to task for spelling, punctuation, and grammar here or on usenet or any such place. I was using your sentence merely as an example. You would have to be writing pure gibberish for me to complain.
The "rules" of usage are an "open standard." They are like any other protocol. They define the way messages are encoded and decoded. When you fail to comply with the rules through ignorance, you are like a poorly designed IP stack, spitting out bad packets and expecting the rest of us to deal with it. When you fail to comply through concious defiance, you are like a certain monopolistic company, trying to "embrace and extend" the language. In either case, it is not a good thing.
There is, of course, a third case. When you fail to comply with the rules because you are trying to enhance the protocol, you are not doing harm per se, but you are trying to create. In English, this tends to happen in fiction and poetry, which are the test networks of the language.
I won't say we will never see poetry on slashdot, but few posts I see rise to the standard.
My post is redundant, so feel free to mark it so, but it doesn't seem to be getting through: Commercial stations are required to ID once an hour. Radio amateurs are required to ID every ten minutes. The licenses and regulations are entirely different.
One gets different kinds of pleasure from different kinds of art. London (along with Stephen Crane and others) falls into a school the academics called "Naturalists." London's concern is the animal Man. That our true natures are what lies beneath the veneer of civilization, and he is deeply pessmistic about our ture nature. "The Sea Wolf" involves a civilized young man cast overboard following a collision at sea in a fog. He ends up on a working boat captained by Wolf Larsen, who is an archetype of the elemental man. I think London was simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by human brutishness. The themes of good and evil vs. power (the book is an exploration and ultimately a rejection of Neitzsche), individuality, humanity, manhood, and, ultimately, life and death are woven so seamlessly into what on a casual read is a simple sea adventure that I cannot help but admire London's skill. I think that a great many of London's contemporaries didn't even realize how educated he was and how deeply he was delving into elemental human questions.
I put "The Sea Wolf" up alongside "Heart of Darkness" by Joeseph Conrad as books with about as much truth in them as I'd care to face.
This is not the only branch of literature that interests me, however. I love the lyricism of "Paradise Lost," the Romanticism of "Frankenstien" (a book that I think many underrate), the sublime satire of "Nicholas Nickelby," the even more sublime satire of "Huckleberry Finn," what I would call the lyrical realism of almost anything by Toni Morisson, and many, many others. So many wonderful books, and nowhere near enough time...
My guilty pleasures are all turn-of-the-century adventure novels and stories. Anything by Raphael Sabatini, Anthony Hope, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (not just the Sherlock Holmes, although they are favorites), Alexandre Dumas, etc. I've always had a weakness for these. They are rarely in the same league in terms of art, but they beat the average television script to within an inch of its life.
Wow! No, I'm just a Democrat, active in my local party, going to precinct caucases, voting, and in general being a citizen of these here United States. What are you doing? A web broswer is hardly a good tool for learning about democracy and politics. Libraries are still better places for learning economics and political science.
Have you read your:
o Adam Smith
o John Locke
o Jean-Jaques Rousseau
o Thomas Jefferson
o Thomas Paine
o Marx and Engels (don't grind your axe, you should know what they said)
o Abraham Lincoln
o William Graham Sumner
o Ayn Rand
o John Keynes
o Thorston Veblen
o Alexis De Tocqueville
And on more recent issues:
o David Stockman
o Robert Reich
There are countless others, but if you have read up on these folks and cen tell me what they have to say about wealth and power, then we can assume you are prepared to judge my education or lack thereof.
If you cannot, then I don't think a discussion between us would be particularly constructive or instructive. Try not to assume (note that I'm not assuming what you have read either way) what one knows from a two-sentence slashdot posting. Also it is best to avoid categorizing people based on their proximity to your own beliefs.
You will note some arch conservative thinkers on my list (along with some damned liberal ones). I haven't found a political philosophy that claims as its adherents all persons of intelligence and wisdom.
Again, I ask, where have any of the people mentioned in original post advocated the abolition of private property? And I am still waiting for an answer.
What am I giving up? My knowledge, creativity, time, and labor. (Well, as is often pointed out, I am not out my knowledge and creativity, but I am my time and labor).
I do not think I am "entitled" to annuity. I think the law gives me an annuity to encourage me to produce. There is no requirement that law be "natural." To the contrary, law is where reason trumps power. In a natural state, the brutes always win.
Society gets back the work when the copyright expires. That's the social benefit. I believe in copyright and most other forms of IP law. But I would be perfectly content if copyright went back to a 14 year protection. Life of the author plus 80 years is insane. Life of the author is the most I think we as a society should swallow.
The real problem, IMHO, is corporate ownership of IP. What does "life of the author" mean if the owner is a corporation?
Thomas Jefferson did a beautiful job of explaining both the "natural" condition of ideas, and the very good reasons for law to constrain temporarily this natural condition. Read his writings (which, mercifully, are in the public domain).
You must understand that "nature" protected creation prior to IP law. When a book had to be copied by hand, you didn't have to worry much about copying. That's why IP law was not only not needed, it wasn't even tought of. When printing came along, this changed a bit.
Of course, printing coincides with the Renaissance, and I don't think that is a mere coincidence. All that information freely reusable fueled the process. But I think it would not have been sustained if law hadn't offered protection. Certainly we never would have moved past a pure patronage system.
So, yes, I do believe I am entitled to an annuity, but I don't necessarily assume that I am so entitled for the rest of my natural life, nor that my heirs are entitled to an annuity from my work, nor that a corporation is entitled to "buy" my annuity and maintain it indefinitely.
IP law is a give and take. Once the "give" goes beyond what is required to encourage production, then I think I would agree with what you seem to argue: that it is a harm to society, not a benefit.
So I think people who argue for "no IP" are deluded, and people who argue for the extension of IP are likewise deluded.
I don't think corporate ownership or IP beyond life of the creator are ever reasonable. It's off topic, but let me reveal how radically I think along these lines. I wonder if the world would not be better if there were no income or property tax AT ALL, but there was a 90% estate tax. Period. I don't know for sure, but what if it worked this way? Unfettered income during your life, but BAM, it gets taken away upon death? Would the world be worse off? Would you? (I would allow marriage to extend the estate tax payment until both people in the marriage die).
Thank you for your comments, but I would still correct students (although not punish them -- how does that inspire love of language?) unless their "creative usage" were in an appropriate context such as blank verse, dialogue in fiction, or some other format of free expression. I wouldn't accept it in a research paper or an article for the school newspaper.
The schools do have the responsibility of teaching the standards, but they do not have the responsility (or the right) to knock the life out of the students or their own "native" language.
Another point I would make is that "incorrect" and "wrong" are not precise synonyms. Something may be "incorrect" meaning not in conformance with "Standard English," but how can you say that the way a family naturally uses the language with one another is "wrong?" If that family then expects me (assuming I come from some other English dialect) to understand them without ambiguity, well, that is precisely why we have and keep "Standard English" and why it should be taught.
It is a reference point, a safe harbor for people to communicate. It is not holy writ to be jammed into the mind in place of a local or "natural" dialect. Still, I think we should all have it.
This discussion is very old. The ongoing popularity of Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" and its musical descendant "My Fair Lady" are ample proof of that.
So again, thank you for your comments, with which I largely agree, but I would mark the students down for using "l337" speech.
Now that I've said that with excessive attention to Standard English grammar and usage, I must admit that this is all IMHO.;-)
Oh, yes, on James Joyce, I'm afraid I'm one of those many people who have only read the first third of "Ulysses" and try to claim that they've "read Joyce." I've spent a great deal of time over the last couple of years reading for pleasure the books I was forced to read during my education. In most cases, I was far to young and arrogant to appreciate them, or for them to affect me in any profound way. I suppose being old and arrogant works better. The last one to shake me to my foundations was "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. James Joyce is out there waiting for me though. Perhaps when I've worked through it, I will better appreciate your insight. Thanks again!
One of the the things I have always loved about the English language is its democratic elitism. Permit me to explain. Some languages, such as French, actually have a body that decides formally what consitutes the language.
English doesn't do that. English does have an elite that decides what is in the standard language, but that elite is the collection of writers, editors, and lexicographers who work with the language in the modes of cultural production. So, what Standard English is is decided by a literate elite, but membership in this literate elite is open to anyone based on merit.
But that is not all. Beneath that "high brow" crowd who write literature and scan literature for new usage, there are hundreds of thousands of idiomatic communities speaking and using untold varieties of English. These are not "Standard English," but they are living, breathing, socially functional dialects of English. From time to time, a writer of genius emerges from such a community and brings new usage, idioms, and ways of speaking into that "staid and stuffy" elite. Those portions that speak in new ways, ways that other communities of English find useful, get taken up by the English speaking world at large. Then we find these new usages showing up both in other dialect communities, and in the elite world of "Standard English."
Thus the world of Standard English is reactionary, conservative, and resistant to change, but this is as it should be. This is the force of stability that allows us to read (albeit with difficulty for some) six hundred year old Elizabethan English, like Shakespeare, and should allow English speakers six hundred years from now to read Toni Morrison or Neal Stephenson. At the same time, the vernacular throbs with creativity. Vibrant and electric new words, phrases and idioms crackle into being every day. Most are lost. Some appear only in the margins, in the throw away dialoge of television scripts, or in idiom spoken by characters in novels; mere markers in the history of the language. Some, however, merge into that conservative realm where they join such everyday poetry as "being blue," or "flight of stairs."
I've studied only a few of the world's languages, but so far English is my one true love. Latin and French have their charms for me, but English owns my mind. I treasure both the stodgy elite (which anyone may join; all one must do is add to the great literature of the English language -- no problem!), and the endless, almost frantic, creativity of everyday speakers of English.
Bearing in mind all of the foregoing, schools are not there to institutionalize the random creativity of English. That takes care of itself. They are there to be sure that we all have access to the stodgy collection of Standard English, so we may get our random creativity past the reactionary gatekeepers of the language. All good literature simultaneously reveres the language and subverts it. The most striking example, to me, is "Huckleberry Finn," the first novel with real American voices in it, as opposed to a bunch of Americans speaking more or less just like British speakers of English. Reverence and subversion.
I meant "stolen" in the "bad artists copy, good artists steal" sense. I was not suggesting that any crime was comitted. In this case, the poster was making a new satirical point using an existing form. IMHO, a new creative act and one that, as you say, illustrates the point.
As a Linux user, programmer, writer, and advocate, I'm interested in this. But what I'm wondering is has a major newspaper used its editorial page to endorse a product before? A candidate, yes. A stand on an issue, yes. But a product? Or do people see this differently? Is choosing an OS a matter of public policy?
This is a load. Linux is impossible for Joe or Jane average only because it must be installed on their system. When the MS OEM strangelhold gets broken (someday), Linux will be just as happy a place as Windows. I set up a Linux based system for my mother-in-law and she send e-mail, IM's her niece, and surfs the web just fine. She doesn't know Windows. She doesn't know Linux. She's just using her computer. So what's the big deal? It's not Linux that needs big improvements, it's the oft debated monopoly of a company whose name shall remain Microsoft that is the real issue.
And just to deflect some of the counter arguments sure to come my way, yes, indeed, Linux is deficient in a couple of areas, notably games (games are a big deal, I know that) and personal finance software (there's a lot of good finance software for Linux, but they aren't hot on the service side -- direct support for on-line reconciliation and such -- that come with business relationships between the ISV and financial institutions). But as a general internet console and word processing platform, my mother-in-law does just fine.
Also, as others point out in this same discussion, the Linux market must grow before the applications base grows. There's a chicken and egg thing here. But little progress will be made so long as MS has their OEM pricing agreements and they threaten to stomp anyone who doesn't toe the line.
Absolutely nothing. I was responding to an abusive AC who claimed knowledge that I was one who performed fellatio and said that I would probably claimed never to have jaywalked (all this may be read in the parent to my post) because I was such a morilistic prig (He/She didn't put it quite that way, but you get the gist). I was merely setting the record straight on each of the AC's assertions. I do not bring up specifics of my sexual proclivities in everyday conversation (much to the relief of everyone who has met me).
Did you notice how much better TNG got after he died? Did you notice that Roddenberry was egomaniac who claimed he had every good idea? Read Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" for a strongly opinionated (from Harlan? No way!) and documented (Harlan kept track? No way!) counter-view of "The Great Bird of the Galaxy."
I know this is a troll or a joke, but up until the DMCA we had established in the courts, and then later by statute, that consumers of intellectual property had so-called "fair use" rights. So long as our friend was copying and repeatedly watching for himself, he was within the law (not necessarily so under the DMCA, one of the worst pieces of legislation I have seen). You see, I do believe in the idea of intellectual property law as a method to encourage cultural production by granting a time-limited monopoly on its use.
The natural world used to protect the consumer's rights. Once you bought a book, it was basically impossible to keep you from reading it more than once, or to prevent you passing it on to a third party. No big deal -- once that third party has it, if you want to read it again, you need to buy a new one.
Not so with digital media. They can count how many times you read it. They may, in future, be able to tell when you pass it on. They certainly can tell when you copy it. They can have perfect control. Fair use goes right out the window.
I have gotten angry on other discussions with the IP thieves who say "everyone copies software." I don't. I don't download mp3s. But I do want my fair use rights. If I want to copy a CD onto a cassette or make a CD of my favorite songs, or time-shift a broadcast, or re-read a book, then I think I should be able to.
As a writer myself (with a book out under copyright), I want my annuity from my act of creation. But do I really need my lifetime plus seventy years? I'd like to see copyright capped at life of the author, or, say, 50 years from filing to expiration. I'd like to see the DMCA repealed. It wasn't necessary. And it makes a pencil a circumvention device. It's ridculous. If we are going to have software patents, they ought to expire faster than patents for "real" inventions -- say in 3 years. I'd rather not have software patents.
On my more radical days, I'd like to see it impossible for corporations to own IP. I'd like to see it such that only individuals may own it. An awful lot of the abuse of these laws (IMHO) comes from corporations owning the IP. I mentioned that I wrote a book. One of the prices I had to pay to get my work published was that the publisher holds the copyright. I don't really own my own book. Yes, I'm being modestly compensated, but not so well as I might. I'm not accusing my publisher of anything -- I walked in with my eyes open -- but a lot of eager young bands, for instance, aren't aware of what not owning their music might cost them. If corporations couldn't own IP, this particular kind of abuse would diminish dramatically.
So, despite my convictions about the wrongness of copying and distributing copyrighted works, there is plenty wrong on the IP ownership side as well.
There is some comfort to be taken in the fact that this has erupted before. The copying machine and the VCR both caused firestorms. Things worked out. Not necessarily perfectly, but decently for all concerned. There is hope that this newest will as well. But there is no room for complacency. The entertainment lobby learned from their losses in the courts over Xerox and Sony. This time the did a legislative pre-emptive strike (the DMCA). This fight will be harder and there isn't room to sit on the sidelines.
If you haven't already, I urge you to check out the EFF. Think about it, and if you agree with them, consider contributing. We need a lobby that has at least a significant fraction of the power of the entertainment lobby if we want the idea of "fair use" to continue to exist.
Look, I really put my name on this stuff. I'm going to remain vague just so I don't have this handed to me during a job interview. Although, as someone else pointed out, if I were to succeed, that might be worth reporting...
You said, "It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong." That would indicate that you do, in fact, care what we do.
What I mean is that my moral code controls only my own behavior. I can judge what you do, but I can't control it. Only may decide what my judgement means to you. My moral censure may mean nothing to you. It might mean something. This is how the community "imposes" its collective morals.
Morality is a word bandied about either as utterly without meaning because of a belief in relativism, or some bandy about as if there were One True Standard. To me, I have a sense of right and wrong that gives me a moral feeling about an issue or a decision. I do NOT believe that my take has to be your take. But I can and should express my judgement. What you do with it is up to you. So for me, morality is internally absolute, but I recognize that others have different priorities. Morality isn't hard when you just ask if a simple act is right or wrong. It gets very difficult when one asks if a given act or choice is better or worse.
However, all of the moral stance has no relevance in the question of whether an act is legal.
I am certain of my judgement. I am not certain of its objective correctness. I accept that "social norms" are influenced by my indivdual morals, but not dictated by them. My original "pronouncement" was an attempt to influence, not control. I think a number of ACs indicated what they thought of my proposition.
I think the fact that I don't copy software or download MP3s is a stronger statement than my moral pronouncement in any case. Do as I do is stronger than do as I say.
I agree with this partially. I was being sloppy when I equated a EULA with the GPL, but both depend on the property rights created by copyright to form the basis for what is, in essence, a license for use. Copyright creates the property rights, the license stipulates the terms of use. The GPL is also a contract.
Also, while I was taking a moral stance in my post, there is a marked difference between what is moral and what is legal.
I have jaywalked. I have made mp3s (and lately ogg files) of CDs I legitimately own. I have sped. I have got tickets. I paid them becuase I was guilty. I have never sucked a cock, although as a teenager I probably tried to reach my own. I am not self-righteous. I am righteous. There's a difference. People justify themselves by saying "everyone does it" and they hate no one more than someone who does not, because it makes them examine their own behavior. They sometimes even show up as abusive AC's.
I don't care what you do. That's your own business. That what makes me righteous as opposed to self-righteous. All I am doing is calmly trying to point out that there are people who do NOT steal intellectual property. I am a member of the EFF. I fight the growing DRM efforts and the DMCA by writing my congresscritters. I hope you do the same. Also, if you download mp3s and rip warez as an act of civil disobedience, I admire you. Your willingness to go to prison for your beliefs is admirable. I'm not willing to do that.
Damn it! I am sick of this shit (pardon the language, but I'm getting tired of it). We do not ALL do it. I do not do it. I use Free Software. I haven't even been tempted to steal a bit of code for four years. And even when I was tempted, I DIDN'T DO IT.
It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong.
I also think the closed proprietary model of software development is wrong, but the same laws that uphold their proprietary licenses uphold my GPL and BSD licenses. If it is wrong for people to violate those licenses (and I think it is), then it is wrong to break a EULA from Microsquish or whomever.
We do not ALL do it. There is at least one person who does not (and I'm willing to bet thousands if not millions of others).
Just to follow up to my own post: Figuring out net energy benefit/cost is particularly difficult. For example, I claim that you can make a dramatic improvement in domestic energy consumption by replacing old refrigerators. That's true on the surface. But how much energy did it take to manufacture that refrigerator? You must "subtract" that energy to manufacture from the net energy savings in use. My guess is that it pays back in some fairly reasonable time frame, but whether that is six months or six years, I don't have any idea. And that makes producing clean energy the surest environmental benefit. (Not necessarily best, just surest).
I said something similar to this in a carnivore/herbivore (meat eater/vegan) debate elsewhere. I said I eat meat, but that I lament the general lack of information available on the "real" cost of goods. Price is something of an indicator, but we "dump" a lot of energy, waste, garbage, and by-products into the enironment assuming it has an infinite capacity to take it. We "write off" those costs. I'd like to see information on inputs and wastes for common purchases. This information is very hard to come by.
I think you are misinformed. Crystalline silicon PV systems have efficiencies greater than 20%. Thin film PV technologies have even greater efficiency. There is more than enough sunlight to provide more than enough power. If every roof had PV shingles we would provide a substantial portion of our electric power needs.
PV isn't "the solution," however. The real problems with PV are that the sun doesn't shine on them all the time, and thus batteries (or some other energy storage) are required. Electrochemical batteries are both an efficiency and environmental problem. So, PV cannot supply 100% of our energy. So why does something have to supply 100% to be useful? NOTHING provides 100% of our electicity. Not coal, not uranium, not natural gas, not fuel oil, not wind, not sun.
I maintain a FAQ on solar PV. One of the reasons I wrote the FAQ is that while there are dedicated folks who do get 100% of their power from the sun, I always felt it would do more good for 50% of the pupulation to get 10% of their electricty from the sun than it does for 0.0003% of the population to get 100% of their power from the sun.
As for wind turbines killing birds, this is a problem of early turbine designs. Newer turbines have larger blades that turn much more slowly. They don't kill birds in large numbers.
The point is not that we must find the "one true answer." We need to improve efficiency by moving up the "energy food chain."
You could do as much good as my 50% getting 10% scenario just by getting rid of every refrigerator that is more than 15 years old and replacing it with a new one. Replace incadescent bulbs with CF ones. Use less. Shut off what you are not using. Get rid of "phantom loads" (I think it is ridiculous that virtually every piece of consumer electronics uses power when it is OFF!).
The sun provides 1kW per square meter at the earth's surface. At 20% capture (common for PV) that's 200W per square meter. How many square meters of south facing roof are there? Don't try to tell me that isn't a significant source of energy.
I never tried to say that PV would provide all of our energy -- just that a significant portion can be produced that way.
So why isn't PV everywhere already? Inertia. Subsidies (the grid is everywhere because our tax dollars PUT it everywhere: See the Rural Electrifcation Act). High energy cost for monocrystalline silicon. Low production (economies of scale). Environmental puritanism (nobody seems to be commoditizing PV systems to make them "plug and play" for the average homeowner -- they are highly customized and manually installed, making them less appealing to consumers). Regulation (See article 690 of the NEC). Utility resistance (many local utilties are either ignorant of these systems, or have legitimate engineering and safety concerns that make them resist even well designed and safe systems).
It does not make sense to build massive centralized PV farms. Only utilities want this because they want to maintain a monopoly on energy production. Sunlight is not a centralized resource, and transmission line efficiency is NOT good. It make much more sense to produce the power as close as possible to where it is used, so there need not be "PV farms."
As for orbital PV, well, you may then have the sun shining all the time and you don't lose any power to the atmosphere, but whether you use wires or microwaves or any other possible transmission method, you will lose so much getting it down to the earth that (and I haven't seen numbers, mind) I cannot imagine it would be worth the cost to orbit them. PV will be (and is) heavily used in space, but to provide power for spacecraft, not the earth. (CIS cells were invented for space applications -- high efficiency solar cells are, to a great extent, a product of the space program).
Slashdot Mirror
And any organization doing this sort of test is STILL vulnerable. That's the problem with trying to prove a negative. Just because an intrusion failed this time does not mean that it will next time. Now, I'm not arguing against performing the kind of assessment and audit you are talking about here, but such tests are only part of the process.
I'm a bit sad that this has turned into an "open source is STILL better than Windows" thing (even though I think it is). When it comes to security, everybody in the software game has problems. The finger pointing is useless. The lessons of this attack are exactly the same as the lessons of previous attacks, whether on close or open code:
1. Software engineering needs to improve. The exploitable errors are patterns that keep on happening. As a programmer myself, I have made these mistakes. As a trade/guild/profession we need to take the time to learn these patterns and methods to avoid them. We (and I definitely include myself in this) are doing a lousy job.
2. Computer operations are doing a lousy job of keeping systems secure. This one is important, but less important than issue one, becuase system admins shouldn't have to patch systems constantly. That they have to is more a measure of the failures of software engineering than the failures of system admins. That said, until we programmers get our house in order, it does fall on admins to patch, patch, patch. This sounds simple, but it isn't. When you are talking about mission-critical systems, it is extremely dangerous to apply untested patches to production machines. So dangerous that good admins don't do it. They test patches on their test machines, and well run systems will go through applications regression testing for each set of patches. This takes time. Time during which the production systems run unpatched. Sometimes these patches come in stochastic bunches such that some patches go unapplied for months, simply because the patch came in after regression testing is too far along to start over. This leads to an ironic situation: The most critical systems to a business are often the most vulnerable. Judgement about whether a patch is for an issue is so critical that it should short-circuit regression testing is a difficult art. And what if the production systems doesn't work after the patch? Sure, you can back up; you might keep your deployments in a CVS-like archive so you can roll back in minutes, but what if even a few minutes is a few hundred thousand dollars, or a few million? How many times can you afford the risk?
One problem with many of my fellow Free Software advocates (note I said "many" and not "all") is that they have not worked in mission-critical production environments in multi-billion dollar enterprises. Many of my fellow Open Source fans have worked in environments where it is no big deal to bring the server down for ten or fifteen minutes. When those are the only kind of shops you have worked in, it is difficult to understand how serious and difficult these issues can be for some.
So don't turn this into a Windows vs. Open Source thing. We (Open Source folks) have to suck it up this time. So what? The issues are the same. Our track record is still better, but, in this situation, the past is meaningless. Where are we now? Unfortunately we are in the same place (and so is the closed world): We are still making the same mistakes in software development and asking the admins to clean up the mess. We are even blaming the admins for it, when it really is not their fault.
All of this was triggered by the previous poster's correct comments about audit and assessment. He/She's right, except that these measures are locking the stable door after the horse has bolted (except sometimes the horse hasn't yet bolted -- that's why you still do it). The problem is we software developers have made a stable door that you can walk away from with it unlocked. If we hadn't done that in the first place...
It is getting better. I'm seeing more books on programming to avoid security problems. We're learning. But there are a lot of us, and we aren't all getting the education.
Yes, but we then use punctuation to indicate our meaning. For example, since you left out the comma between "words" and "people" in your example, I was not sure until I reached the end of the sentence if you were concerned with words in general, or if you were concerned merely with "words people must be able to understand." Since reading the sentence in the latter way left a dangling participle, I had to go back and try it the other way. The fact that I did this in a fraction of a second doesn't mean that it didn't slow me down and cause me a moment of confusion.
Sure, you can break the rules and still be understood. That's a bit rude, though. The rules aren't there to constrain your freedom. They are there to ensure our mutual understanding.
When you break a rule artfully and with intent, you are doing something of real value to the language. When you break a rule out of ignorance or laziness, you are asking the rest of us to do your work for you. That is rude.
Please understand that I recognize slashdot and other such forums (fora?) are an informal and ad hoc place for language. I think it was perfectly okay to leave out the comma where you did. I don't take people to task for spelling, punctuation, and grammar here or on usenet or any such place. I was using your sentence merely as an example. You would have to be writing pure gibberish for me to complain.
The "rules" of usage are an "open standard." They are like any other protocol. They define the way messages are encoded and decoded. When you fail to comply with the rules through ignorance, you are like a poorly designed IP stack, spitting out bad packets and expecting the rest of us to deal with it. When you fail to comply through concious defiance, you are like a certain monopolistic company, trying to "embrace and extend" the language. In either case, it is not a good thing.
There is, of course, a third case. When you fail to comply with the rules because you are trying to enhance the protocol, you are not doing harm per se, but you are trying to create. In English, this tends to happen in fiction and poetry, which are the test networks of the language.
I won't say we will never see poetry on slashdot, but few posts I see rise to the standard.
My post is redundant, so feel free to mark it so, but it doesn't seem to be getting through: Commercial stations are required to ID once an hour. Radio amateurs are required to ID every ten minutes. The licenses and regulations are entirely different.
73 DE N0ZES
One gets different kinds of pleasure from different kinds of art. London (along with Stephen Crane and others) falls into a school the academics called "Naturalists." London's concern is the animal Man. That our true natures are what lies beneath the veneer of civilization, and he is deeply pessmistic about our ture nature. "The Sea Wolf" involves a civilized young man cast overboard following a collision at sea in a fog. He ends up on a working boat captained by Wolf Larsen, who is an archetype of the elemental man. I think London was simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by human brutishness. The themes of good and evil vs. power (the book is an exploration and ultimately a rejection of Neitzsche), individuality, humanity, manhood, and, ultimately, life and death are woven so seamlessly into what on a casual read is a simple sea adventure that I cannot help but admire London's skill. I think that a great many of London's contemporaries didn't even realize how educated he was and how deeply he was delving into elemental human questions.
I put "The Sea Wolf" up alongside "Heart of Darkness" by Joeseph Conrad as books with about as much truth in them as I'd care to face.
This is not the only branch of literature that interests me, however. I love the lyricism of "Paradise Lost," the Romanticism of "Frankenstien" (a book that I think many underrate), the sublime satire of "Nicholas Nickelby," the even more sublime satire of "Huckleberry Finn," what I would call the lyrical realism of almost anything by Toni Morisson, and many, many others. So many wonderful books, and nowhere near enough time...
My guilty pleasures are all turn-of-the-century adventure novels and stories. Anything by Raphael Sabatini, Anthony Hope, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (not just the Sherlock Holmes, although they are favorites), Alexandre Dumas, etc. I've always had a weakness for these. They are rarely in the same league in terms of art, but they beat the average television script to within an inch of its life.
And of course it is "Jean-Jacques Rousseau." Sorry about the typo...
Wow! No, I'm just a Democrat, active in my local party, going to precinct caucases, voting, and in general being a citizen of these here United States. What are you doing? A web broswer is hardly a good tool for learning about democracy and politics. Libraries are still better places for learning economics and political science.
Have you read your:
o Adam Smith
o John Locke
o Jean-Jaques Rousseau
o Thomas Jefferson
o Thomas Paine
o Marx and Engels (don't grind your axe, you should know what they said)
o Abraham Lincoln
o William Graham Sumner
o Ayn Rand
o John Keynes
o Thorston Veblen
o Alexis De Tocqueville
And on more recent issues:
o David Stockman
o Robert Reich
There are countless others, but if you have read up on these folks and cen tell me what they have to say about wealth and power, then we can assume you are prepared to judge my education or lack thereof.
If you cannot, then I don't think a discussion between us would be particularly constructive or instructive. Try not to assume (note that I'm not assuming what you have read either way) what one knows from a two-sentence slashdot posting. Also it is best to avoid categorizing people based on their proximity to your own beliefs.
You will note some arch conservative thinkers on my list (along with some damned liberal ones). I haven't found a political philosophy that claims as its adherents all persons of intelligence and wisdom.
Again, I ask, where have any of the people mentioned in original post advocated the abolition of private property? And I am still waiting for an answer.
What am I giving up? My knowledge, creativity, time, and labor. (Well, as is often pointed out, I am not out my knowledge and creativity, but I am my time and labor).
I do not think I am "entitled" to annuity. I think the law gives me an annuity to encourage me to produce. There is no requirement that law be "natural." To the contrary, law is where reason trumps power. In a natural state, the brutes always win.
Society gets back the work when the copyright expires. That's the social benefit. I believe in copyright and most other forms of IP law. But I would be perfectly content if copyright went back to a 14 year protection. Life of the author plus 80 years is insane. Life of the author is the most I think we as a society should swallow.
The real problem, IMHO, is corporate ownership of IP. What does "life of the author" mean if the owner is a corporation?
Thomas Jefferson did a beautiful job of explaining both the "natural" condition of ideas, and the very good reasons for law to constrain temporarily this natural condition. Read his writings (which, mercifully, are in the public domain).
You must understand that "nature" protected creation prior to IP law. When a book had to be copied by hand, you didn't have to worry much about copying. That's why IP law was not only not needed, it wasn't even tought of. When printing came along, this changed a bit.
Of course, printing coincides with the Renaissance, and I don't think that is a mere coincidence. All that information freely reusable fueled the process. But I think it would not have been sustained if law hadn't offered protection. Certainly we never would have moved past a pure patronage system.
So, yes, I do believe I am entitled to an annuity, but I don't necessarily assume that I am so entitled for the rest of my natural life, nor that my heirs are entitled to an annuity from my work, nor that a corporation is entitled to "buy" my annuity and maintain it indefinitely.
IP law is a give and take. Once the "give" goes beyond what is required to encourage production, then I think I would agree with what you seem to argue: that it is a harm to society, not a benefit.
So I think people who argue for "no IP" are deluded, and people who argue for the extension of IP are likewise deluded.
I don't think corporate ownership or IP beyond life of the creator are ever reasonable. It's off topic, but let me reveal how radically I think along these lines. I wonder if the world would not be better if there were no income or property tax AT ALL, but there was a 90% estate tax. Period. I don't know for sure, but what if it worked this way? Unfettered income during your life, but BAM, it gets taken away upon death? Would the world be worse off? Would you? (I would allow marriage to extend the estate tax payment until both people in the marriage die).
Thank you for your comments, but I would still correct students (although not punish them -- how does that inspire love of language?) unless their "creative usage" were in an appropriate context such as blank verse, dialogue in fiction, or some other format of free expression. I wouldn't accept it in a research paper or an article for the school newspaper.
;-)
The schools do have the responsibility of teaching the standards, but they do not have the responsility (or the right) to knock the life out of the students or their own "native" language.
Another point I would make is that "incorrect" and "wrong" are not precise synonyms. Something may be "incorrect" meaning not in conformance with "Standard English," but how can you say that the way a family naturally uses the language with one another is "wrong?" If that family then expects me (assuming I come from some other English dialect) to understand them without ambiguity, well, that is precisely why we have and keep "Standard English" and why it should be taught.
It is a reference point, a safe harbor for people to communicate. It is not holy writ to be jammed into the mind in place of a local or "natural" dialect. Still, I think we should all have it.
This discussion is very old. The ongoing popularity of Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" and its musical descendant "My Fair Lady" are ample proof of that.
So again, thank you for your comments, with which I largely agree, but I would mark the students down for using "l337" speech.
Now that I've said that with excessive attention to Standard English grammar and usage, I must admit that this is all IMHO.
Oh, yes, on James Joyce, I'm afraid I'm one of those many people who have only read the first third of "Ulysses" and try to claim that they've "read Joyce." I've spent a great deal of time over the last couple of years reading for pleasure the books I was forced to read during my education. In most cases, I was far to young and arrogant to appreciate them, or for them to affect me in any profound way. I suppose being old and arrogant works better. The last one to shake me to my foundations was "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. James Joyce is out there waiting for me though. Perhaps when I've worked through it, I will better appreciate your insight. Thanks again!
One of the the things I have always loved about the English language is its democratic elitism. Permit me to explain. Some languages, such as French, actually have a body that decides formally what consitutes the language.
English doesn't do that. English does have an elite that decides what is in the standard language, but that elite is the collection of writers, editors, and lexicographers who work with the language in the modes of cultural production. So, what Standard English is is decided by a literate elite, but membership in this literate elite is open to anyone based on merit.
But that is not all. Beneath that "high brow" crowd who write literature and scan literature for new usage, there are hundreds of thousands of idiomatic communities speaking and using untold varieties of English. These are not "Standard English," but they are living, breathing, socially functional dialects of English. From time to time, a writer of genius emerges from such a community and brings new usage, idioms, and ways of speaking into that "staid and stuffy" elite. Those portions that speak in new ways, ways that other communities of English find useful, get taken up by the English speaking world at large. Then we find these new usages showing up both in other dialect communities, and in the elite world of "Standard English."
Thus the world of Standard English is reactionary, conservative, and resistant to change, but this is as it should be. This is the force of stability that allows us to read (albeit with difficulty for some) six hundred year old Elizabethan English, like Shakespeare, and should allow English speakers six hundred years from now to read Toni Morrison or Neal Stephenson. At the same time, the vernacular throbs with creativity. Vibrant and electric new words, phrases and idioms crackle into being every day. Most are lost. Some appear only in the margins, in the throw away dialoge of television scripts, or in idiom spoken by characters in novels; mere markers in the history of the language. Some, however, merge into that conservative realm where they join such everyday poetry as "being blue," or "flight of stairs."
I've studied only a few of the world's languages, but so far English is my one true love. Latin and French have their charms for me, but English owns my mind. I treasure both the stodgy elite (which anyone may join; all one must do is add to the great literature of the English language -- no problem!), and the endless, almost frantic, creativity of everyday speakers of English.
Bearing in mind all of the foregoing, schools are not there to institutionalize the random creativity of English. That takes care of itself. They are there to be sure that we all have access to the stodgy collection of Standard English, so we may get our random creativity past the reactionary gatekeepers of the language. All good literature simultaneously reveres the language and subverts it. The most striking example, to me, is "Huckleberry Finn," the first novel with real American voices in it, as opposed to a bunch of Americans speaking more or less just like British speakers of English. Reverence and subversion.
I meant "stolen" in the "bad artists copy, good artists steal" sense. I was not suggesting that any crime was comitted. In this case, the poster was making a new satirical point using an existing form. IMHO, a new creative act and one that, as you say, illustrates the point.
I'll fall for the troll. Show me where any of the people you mention advocate the abolition of private property.
Well, I don't think it was shite, but it was stolen from Monty Python...
As a Linux user, programmer, writer, and advocate, I'm interested in this. But what I'm wondering is has a major newspaper used its editorial page to endorse a product before? A candidate, yes. A stand on an issue, yes. But a product? Or do people see this differently? Is choosing an OS a matter of public policy?
This is a load. Linux is impossible for Joe or Jane average only because it must be installed on their system. When the MS OEM strangelhold gets broken (someday), Linux will be just as happy a place as Windows. I set up a Linux based system for my mother-in-law and she send e-mail, IM's her niece, and surfs the web just fine. She doesn't know Windows. She doesn't know Linux. She's just using her computer. So what's the big deal? It's not Linux that needs big improvements, it's the oft debated monopoly of a company whose name shall remain Microsoft that is the real issue.
And just to deflect some of the counter arguments sure to come my way, yes, indeed, Linux is deficient in a couple of areas, notably games (games are a big deal, I know that) and personal finance software (there's a lot of good finance software for Linux, but they aren't hot on the service side -- direct support for on-line reconciliation and such -- that come with business relationships between the ISV and financial institutions). But as a general internet console and word processing platform, my mother-in-law does just fine.
Also, as others point out in this same discussion, the Linux market must grow before the applications base grows. There's a chicken and egg thing here. But little progress will be made so long as MS has their OEM pricing agreements and they threaten to stomp anyone who doesn't toe the line.
Absolutely nothing. I was responding to an abusive AC who claimed knowledge that I was one who performed fellatio and said that I would probably claimed never to have jaywalked (all this may be read in the parent to my post) because I was such a morilistic prig (He/She didn't put it quite that way, but you get the gist). I was merely setting the record straight on each of the AC's assertions. I do not bring up specifics of my sexual proclivities in everyday conversation (much to the relief of everyone who has met me).
Did you notice how much better TNG got after he died? Did you notice that Roddenberry was egomaniac who claimed he had every good idea? Read Harlan Ellison's "City on the Edge of Forever" for a strongly opinionated (from Harlan? No way!) and documented (Harlan kept track? No way!) counter-view of "The Great Bird of the Galaxy."
I know this is a troll or a joke, but up until the DMCA we had established in the courts, and then later by statute, that consumers of intellectual property had so-called "fair use" rights. So long as our friend was copying and repeatedly watching for himself, he was within the law (not necessarily so under the DMCA, one of the worst pieces of legislation I have seen). You see, I do believe in the idea of intellectual property law as a method to encourage cultural production by granting a time-limited monopoly on its use.
The natural world used to protect the consumer's rights. Once you bought a book, it was basically impossible to keep you from reading it more than once, or to prevent you passing it on to a third party. No big deal -- once that third party has it, if you want to read it again, you need to buy a new one.
Not so with digital media. They can count how many times you read it. They may, in future, be able to tell when you pass it on. They certainly can tell when you copy it. They can have perfect control. Fair use goes right out the window.
I have gotten angry on other discussions with the IP thieves who say "everyone copies software." I don't. I don't download mp3s. But I do want my fair use rights. If I want to copy a CD onto a cassette or make a CD of my favorite songs, or time-shift a broadcast, or re-read a book, then I think I should be able to.
As a writer myself (with a book out under copyright), I want my annuity from my act of creation. But do I really need my lifetime plus seventy years? I'd like to see copyright capped at life of the author, or, say, 50 years from filing to expiration. I'd like to see the DMCA repealed. It wasn't necessary. And it makes a pencil a circumvention device. It's ridculous. If we are going to have software patents, they ought to expire faster than patents for "real" inventions -- say in 3 years. I'd rather not have software patents.
On my more radical days, I'd like to see it impossible for corporations to own IP. I'd like to see it such that only individuals may own it. An awful lot of the abuse of these laws (IMHO) comes from corporations owning the IP. I mentioned that I wrote a book. One of the prices I had to pay to get my work published was that the publisher holds the copyright. I don't really own my own book. Yes, I'm being modestly compensated, but not so well as I might. I'm not accusing my publisher of anything -- I walked in with my eyes open -- but a lot of eager young bands, for instance, aren't aware of what not owning their music might cost them. If corporations couldn't own IP, this particular kind of abuse would diminish dramatically.
So, despite my convictions about the wrongness of copying and distributing copyrighted works, there is plenty wrong on the IP ownership side as well.
There is some comfort to be taken in the fact that this has erupted before. The copying machine and the VCR both caused firestorms. Things worked out. Not necessarily perfectly, but decently for all concerned. There is hope that this newest will as well. But there is no room for complacency. The entertainment lobby learned from their losses in the courts over Xerox and Sony. This time the did a legislative pre-emptive strike (the DMCA). This fight will be harder and there isn't room to sit on the sidelines.
If you haven't already, I urge you to check out the EFF. Think about it, and if you agree with them, consider contributing. We need a lobby that has at least a significant fraction of the power of the entertainment lobby if we want the idea of "fair use" to continue to exist.
Look, I really put my name on this stuff. I'm going to remain vague just so I don't have this handed to me during a job interview. Although, as someone else pointed out, if I were to succeed, that might be worth reporting...
What I mean is that my moral code controls only my own behavior. I can judge what you do, but I can't control it. Only may decide what my judgement means to you. My moral censure may mean nothing to you. It might mean something. This is how the community "imposes" its collective morals.
Morality is a word bandied about either as utterly without meaning because of a belief in relativism, or some bandy about as if there were One True Standard. To me, I have a sense of right and wrong that gives me a moral feeling about an issue or a decision. I do NOT believe that my take has to be your take. But I can and should express my judgement. What you do with it is up to you. So for me, morality is internally absolute, but I recognize that others have different priorities. Morality isn't hard when you just ask if a simple act is right or wrong. It gets very difficult when one asks if a given act or choice is better or worse.
However, all of the moral stance has no relevance in the question of whether an act is legal.
I am certain of my judgement. I am not certain of its objective correctness. I accept that "social norms" are influenced by my indivdual morals, but not dictated by them. My original "pronouncement" was an attempt to influence, not control. I think a number of ACs indicated what they thought of my proposition.
I think the fact that I don't copy software or download MP3s is a stronger statement than my moral pronouncement in any case. Do as I do is stronger than do as I say.
I agree with this partially. I was being sloppy when I equated a EULA with the GPL, but both depend on the property rights created by copyright to form the basis for what is, in essence, a license for use. Copyright creates the property rights, the license stipulates the terms of use. The GPL is also a contract.
Also, while I was taking a moral stance in my post, there is a marked difference between what is moral and what is legal.
I have jaywalked. I have made mp3s (and lately ogg files) of CDs I legitimately own. I have sped. I have got tickets. I paid them becuase I was guilty. I have never sucked a cock, although as a teenager I probably tried to reach my own. I am not self-righteous. I am righteous. There's a difference. People justify themselves by saying "everyone does it" and they hate no one more than someone who does not, because it makes them examine their own behavior. They sometimes even show up as abusive AC's.
I don't care what you do. That's your own business. That what makes me righteous as opposed to self-righteous. All I am doing is calmly trying to point out that there are people who do NOT steal intellectual property. I am a member of the EFF. I fight the growing DRM efforts and the DMCA by writing my congresscritters. I hope you do the same. Also, if you download mp3s and rip warez as an act of civil disobedience, I admire you. Your willingness to go to prison for your beliefs is admirable. I'm not willing to do that.
No. I've never download a single MP3.
Damn it! I am sick of this shit (pardon the language, but I'm getting tired of it). We do not ALL do it. I do not do it. I use Free Software. I haven't even been tempted to steal a bit of code for four years. And even when I was tempted, I DIDN'T DO IT.
It is not only illegal to steal code, it is wrong.
I also think the closed proprietary model of software development is wrong, but the same laws that uphold their proprietary licenses uphold my GPL and BSD licenses. If it is wrong for people to violate those licenses (and I think it is), then it is wrong to break a EULA from Microsquish or whomever.
We do not ALL do it. There is at least one person who does not (and I'm willing to bet thousands if not millions of others).
Just to follow up to my own post: Figuring out net energy benefit/cost is particularly difficult. For example, I claim that you can make a dramatic improvement in domestic energy consumption by replacing old refrigerators. That's true on the surface. But how much energy did it take to manufacture that refrigerator? You must "subtract" that energy to manufacture from the net energy savings in use. My guess is that it pays back in some fairly reasonable time frame, but whether that is six months or six years, I don't have any idea. And that makes producing clean energy the surest environmental benefit. (Not necessarily best, just surest).
I said something similar to this in a carnivore/herbivore (meat eater/vegan) debate elsewhere. I said I eat meat, but that I lament the general lack of information available on the "real" cost of goods. Price is something of an indicator, but we "dump" a lot of energy, waste, garbage, and by-products into the enironment assuming it has an infinite capacity to take it. We "write off" those costs. I'd like to see information on inputs and wastes for common purchases. This information is very hard to come by.
I think you are misinformed. Crystalline silicon PV systems have efficiencies greater than 20%. Thin film PV technologies have even greater efficiency. There is more than enough sunlight to provide more than enough power. If every roof had PV shingles we would provide a substantial portion of our electric power needs.
PV isn't "the solution," however. The real problems with PV are that the sun doesn't shine on them all the time, and thus batteries (or some other energy storage) are required. Electrochemical batteries are both an efficiency and environmental problem. So, PV cannot supply 100% of our energy. So why does something have to supply 100% to be useful? NOTHING provides 100% of our electicity. Not coal, not uranium, not natural gas, not fuel oil, not wind, not sun.
I maintain a FAQ on solar PV. One of the reasons I wrote the FAQ is that while there are dedicated folks who do get 100% of their power from the sun, I always felt it would do more good for 50% of the pupulation to get 10% of their electricty from the sun than it does for 0.0003% of the population to get 100% of their power from the sun.
As for wind turbines killing birds, this is a problem of early turbine designs. Newer turbines have larger blades that turn much more slowly. They don't kill birds in large numbers.
The point is not that we must find the "one true answer." We need to improve efficiency by moving up the "energy food chain."
You could do as much good as my 50% getting 10% scenario just by getting rid of every refrigerator that is more than 15 years old and replacing it with a new one. Replace incadescent bulbs with CF ones. Use less. Shut off what you are not using. Get rid of "phantom loads" (I think it is ridiculous that virtually every piece of consumer electronics uses power when it is OFF!).
The sun provides 1kW per square meter at the earth's surface. At 20% capture (common for PV) that's 200W per square meter. How many square meters of south facing roof are there? Don't try to tell me that isn't a significant source of energy.
I never tried to say that PV would provide all of our energy -- just that a significant portion can be produced that way.
So why isn't PV everywhere already? Inertia. Subsidies (the grid is everywhere because our tax dollars PUT it everywhere: See the Rural Electrifcation Act). High energy cost for monocrystalline silicon. Low production (economies of scale). Environmental puritanism (nobody seems to be commoditizing PV systems to make them "plug and play" for the average homeowner -- they are highly customized and manually installed, making them less appealing to consumers). Regulation (See article 690 of the NEC). Utility resistance (many local utilties are either ignorant of these systems, or have legitimate engineering and safety concerns that make them resist even well designed and safe systems).
It does not make sense to build massive centralized PV farms. Only utilities want this because they want to maintain a monopoly on energy production. Sunlight is not a centralized resource, and transmission line efficiency is NOT good. It make much more sense to produce the power as close as possible to where it is used, so there need not be "PV farms."
As for orbital PV, well, you may then have the sun shining all the time and you don't lose any power to the atmosphere, but whether you use wires or microwaves or any other possible transmission method, you will lose so much getting it down to the earth that (and I haven't seen numbers, mind) I cannot imagine it would be worth the cost to orbit them. PV will be (and is) heavily used in space, but to provide power for spacecraft, not the earth. (CIS cells were invented for space applications -- high efficiency solar cells are, to a great extent, a product of the space program).