Why would you buy a new keyboard? Just rearrange the keys on a QWERTY and choose a new keymap file (or change your Control Panel settings). Should handle most of the differences. I haven't tried this myself, but now I'm tempted.:)
Obvious poppycock. There are huge corporate investments in Free Software development for a variety of purposes-- and the target users are most emphatically not open source developers. I doubt that IBM, RedHat, SUSE, Lindows, TrollTech, etc, are just producing or funding the development of open source code just for themselves.
E-voting project? Well, what do you call the Slashdot poll? Criminal history database? How? Do any of us have criminal history data to put in such a database? There are open source databases. I'd be glad to load the heck out of one and build a front-end if I had some data to work from (and if I thought I could make any money off the project to cover my time and likely bandwidth concerns). For that matter, I'd be glad to develop such a system under contract. Air traffic control system? A whole different situation. My hunch is that most major air traffic control software customers DO get the source code to their system-- so they can have dedicated developers working on updates, bug fixes, etc. While they might be prevented from sharing the software and their changes, they at least seem likely to have the most important of the freedoms the Free Software movement holds dear.
As to stuff developed with government money... it should be noted that the (US federal) government cannot claim a copyright on any of its works. That doesn't obligate them to release either source or object code, but it does make it quite unlikely that the government would seek to hinder same, except where such information is somehow classified in nature.
Not that you don't raise an excellent point (although it gets more to backup strategy than anything), but part of why this particular aspect of Linux security gets raised is the history of Linux as part of the Unix family. When you have more than one user on a machine, preventing any one user from trashing everyone's/home directory or a key system binary is vital. Even so, in a single user environment, you might be able to clobber a single user's data, but installing an undetectable rootkit? Not so easy. Now, which would you rather have (if you were a virus/worm writer): a few deleted letters to Mom and pictures of the dog or a vast army of zombie systems waiting to do your bidding?
Well, they rejected my early Friday morning submission of this for some reason. I pointed out nicely that the worm exploits the most vulnerable weakness of Microsoft Windows: the user. I also pointed out that I'd gotten lots of these already (but the volume seems to have dropped off pretty quick, too-- not sure if someone upstream from my mailbox started filtering or what). *sigh*:)
Hmmm. So are you making the case for not migrating to Linux as soon as possible or what? What you describe are even more compelling reasons to switch to Linux ASAP. The system code is available, thus making it much more likely that someone down the road (either geographically or sequentially) will be able to duplicate your results. Ditto for the peer review aspects of the work, open code is, well, open-- meaning that software flaws can at least be analyzed.
As for the rest of what you said, the types of systems you're talking about are large mainframes-- not something any sane person would be migrating to Linux any time soon. And I think you're wrong about payroll. PeopleSoft's most recent versions are hardly seven years old (although there may be seven-year-old code in their code base). In fact, given their whole company was founded in 1987 and is therefore only sixteen years old in the first place... I'd have to say your information is woefully out of date. And don't even get me started on the financial services where the ONLY systems that last more than five years are the big COBOL transaction systems that handle the basic account activities. But then, again, those are not likely systems for Linux migration. The thousands of desktops, clients, analysis databases, etc, are.
If your current platform works, there shouldn't be a reason to change.
Anyone who says something like this is just looking to argue (oops, I have been trolled). Computing platforms have been rapidly changing since the invention of the computer. I would peg full upgrade cycles at around five years on average (and interestingly this is how long it takes to fully depreciate the value of a computer purchase according to the IRS). This means that about every five years you are fully reinvesting in new hardware and software. Some software packages allow for (still expensive) upgrades, but that's small comfort against all the other expenses involved. And in a larger environment, you are likely to constantly be retiring old machines and replacing with new. So it's not likely you even have a single "platform" that "works". The problem here is how to explain a migration to Linux as a way to reduce future expenses, increase productivity, or whatever-- de facto migration to the next upgrade cycle of the current platform should require just as much justification.
Exactly, the widget approach is not viable unless you can find and enter a niche as it emerges. I mean, good luck writing a word processor and getting it to take off!
Writing software is a service. And most of the software written is written on that model-- coders are hired to write specific stuff. And a large base of Free Software only makes that easier. After all, the defining point in any transaction is where utility for the customer meets price. Free Software lowers the barriers to entry for the coder (who won't have to code or purchase extensive libraries to get an app up to speed), this passes through as a cost savings for the customer. Plus, wise customers will love using Free software as it prevents them from being locked into a vendor. Witness the rising trend outside the U.S. towards governmental usage of open software. They know better than to risk having their IT infrastructure held hostage like that.
How can you hate dependencies? Dependencies are a software fact of life. Or doesn't RPM automatically grab dependencies and install them like apt-get and emerge do? Doesn't RH have something called up2date or whatever that works more like apt-get?
If the customer is only paying $9.95/month for the site they either have traffic limits set in terms of rate of activity (i.e. your site will never send out at a speed that would tax a 28.8 modem-- this is not a common approach, if it's used at all) or total periodic bandwidth allowance (you can't transfer more than a set GB limit a month without paying extra). Some script-allowed hosts will also set CPU limits on CGIs.
This rate of monitoring is no way going to come in under the transfer caps at the end of the month and these discount hosting customers would get SCREWED in terms of their bill, I'd think. Or maybe they deserve those bills for being so braindead about the impact of the monitoring service on the servers and the network.
What this really smells like is bad admin in terms of log size/rotation policy. Never once did the poster mention that there was a choke on transfer rate-- rather that the servers went down due to software crashes (running out of disk/RAM can do that, no?).
I would lay blame on everyone involved, personally. The "monitoring company" for being a crappy service and not working with the ISP. The ISP for having bad server management policies that lead to crashing during perfectly predictable events (what happens if one of their customers gets Slashdotted? would their logs have been able to handle that, too?). And the customers who arranged for this monitoring without talking to the ISP about it first or at least properly understanding the impact it would have on the network.
Especially in the realm of copyright (the topic at hand) there is not a more conflicted group than the people who call themselves libertarians. One side of their fence is adamant that creative works, inventions and the like constitute the product of one's work and are therefore property. Ergo, they will blast you in the face with a 12 gauge before they let you copy something. Ever. Property rights don't go away.
The other side of the fence believes that because free speech and property rights are of primary concern, one's ability to relate (even excruciating bit-for-bit detail) the content of a digital file or one's right to fashion one's own raw materials into a duplicate of the original is therefore essential. Any sort of "copyright", to these folks, constitutes a threat (and one backed by "force" no less) to natural human rights and property rights... and must therefore be defended against-- preferably with large caliber portable projectile weapons.
In this respect they're as bad as the Republicans, who have the Bono act to their credit, but then turn around and you find Senator Norm Coleman from MN asking questions about these RIAA subpoenas/lawsuits. Or was it the Democrats? There we get guys like Hollings (D-Disney) trying to make it illegal to own a computer that is more functional than a TV, but then there are other sane Democrats proposing various loosenings of copyright law.
You don't need signatures. Just a trustable list of hashes. BT and Gentoo's emerge already have controls for verifying the contents of the file with a hash. You'll still have to get your package list from the central server, so the updated package listings will contain the new hashes. And the new files will still need to be seeded by the source anyway (to answer the other poster's concern about no-one having the files). BT is not true P2P because a seed is needed that matches the.torrent file the tracker handles.
At the moment that seems to be pretty limited. Of course, I could be wrong, but I haven't been noticing a lot of upstream on the two Linux files I've got running on BT right now (LNX-BBC and Knoppix ISOs)...
what we really need is BT sharing of individual.[rpm|deb] files or the source tarballs used by ebuilds for Gentoo. And BT isn't really P2P at the moment, it's swarming-- I think the difference is subtle, but important. Until BT has a networkable tracker solution (where one or more trackers share information) and there's an obvious way to query a tracker about which files it knows about rather than finding a.torrent file on a web site) BT isn't very useful for large scale sharing.
But imagine if emerge for Gentoo or apt-get for Debian relied on files mirrored by BT... and when you download those files your/usr/portage/distfiles or/var/cache/apt directories automatically got shared back out. That would practically eliminate the need for mirrors, no? Oh well, just a thought.
1) Most office workers barely know how to use the software they have. The transition will require training them to not know how to use a whole different set of software. Oh, wait, it won't because no one needs to be trained to not know stuff.
2) Which is?
3) Benchmarks are where?
4) Not nearly enough said. Again, benchmarks are where? And why are they "Linux" FSs in #3, but now we're talking Solaris? Which is it?
5) People had to learn to use both Word and Excel as they migrated from packages like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Not to mention the changes from version to version of just the MS software. I think your users will survive.
Great. So it sounds like you're actively funding the other half of the anti-consumer crusade. Last theater movie I went to (Seabiscuit) they had an anti-piracy blurb at the beginning of the film. MPAA are also the people going after Jon Johansen and the other DeCSS folks. So Hollywood knows how to price DVDs... this is not as great as it sounds. The profits on movies are front-loaded at the box office, so the residuals from DVD sales are largely gravy (although admittedly they are spending a lot more on films, hoping to make it up on home releases... and the DVD does have additional material you won't see in theaters).
Thanks, after I asked the question I did look around a bit. Cheapbyte's didn't look so bad, but XPLinux has what appear to be nice discs at a much lower price ($2.99). All that said, I found one place that will print blank CDs in 50 disc lots for $1.29 (printing is thermal printing in black, prices go up and down from there depending on better printing methods or quantity respectively).
While I don't relish the idea of minding the burner, I do like the idea of being able to create a custom print that would serve as advertising as well. Plus, that's a savings of $1.70 per CD.
Anyone know if there are any bulk sellers of attractively printed Knoppix/Gnoppix/Whateverix CDs? This seems like a fun thing to have sitting on my desk at work to give away. I mean, I'd go for CD-Rs since they're all of 30 cents a blank, but it would be a lot more fun if the CD had some eye-candy on it. Plus, then potential victims, er, users would be more likely to give it a try I think (and I won't have to sit at the burner all day either).
That seems like a pretty shallow analysis to me. Competition does promote progress. Question is: do we have a level playing field that promotes competition? With the way copyright and patent law work, and with increasing regulation and taxation, I have to wonder.
But of course businesses run their ideas through marketing to see if they'll sell. Unlike the guys at a university, businesses don't have the force of taxation to help pay for their research... if the goods don't sell, businesses lose money. Managers who allow that sort of thing are irresponsible. When a business doesn't do well, people lose their jobs and investors lose their investment.
Well, it's always good to have a mirror of the article here on/. so that if a similar newsworthy event occurs we can ignore it and continue to argue about Linux v. Windows, no?
If that's the case, then the date of May 2003 seems like a bizarre cutoff date. You'd have to avoid pretty much anyone who ever worked for SCO if your true concern was to avoid potential litigation related to derivative works.
Well, the trick is whether it's 20% of clothing consumers or 20% of the clothing itself. One in five consumers buying a computerized item of clothing I'll believe, one in five items of clothing? I doubt that, unless they are planning to computerize t-shirts, underwear, and socks.
From the Damage Studios page: (C) Copyright 2002-2403 Damage Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I mean, I don't know what's the worse "intellectual property" faux pas, SCO claiming they own every type of Unix ever imagined or Damage assuming that their copyright will be valid for another 400 years.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, in reading the article(s) I linked it looks like relabeling might be a nice short-term option for trying it out, but not a long-term solution.
Why would you buy a new keyboard? Just rearrange the keys on a QWERTY and choose a new keymap file (or change your Control Panel settings). Should handle most of the differences. I haven't tried this myself, but now I'm tempted. :)
Obvious poppycock. There are huge corporate investments in Free Software development for a variety of purposes-- and the target users are most emphatically not open source developers. I doubt that IBM, RedHat, SUSE, Lindows, TrollTech, etc, are just producing or funding the development of open source code just for themselves.
E-voting project? Well, what do you call the Slashdot poll? Criminal history database? How? Do any of us have criminal history data to put in such a database? There are open source databases. I'd be glad to load the heck out of one and build a front-end if I had some data to work from (and if I thought I could make any money off the project to cover my time and likely bandwidth concerns). For that matter, I'd be glad to develop such a system under contract. Air traffic control system? A whole different situation. My hunch is that most major air traffic control software customers DO get the source code to their system-- so they can have dedicated developers working on updates, bug fixes, etc. While they might be prevented from sharing the software and their changes, they at least seem likely to have the most important of the freedoms the Free Software movement holds dear.
As to stuff developed with government money... it should be noted that the (US federal) government cannot claim a copyright on any of its works. That doesn't obligate them to release either source or object code, but it does make it quite unlikely that the government would seek to hinder same, except where such information is somehow classified in nature.
Not that you don't raise an excellent point (although it gets more to backup strategy than anything), but part of why this particular aspect of Linux security gets raised is the history of Linux as part of the Unix family. When you have more than one user on a machine, preventing any one user from trashing everyone's /home directory or a key system binary is vital. Even so, in a single user environment, you might be able to clobber a single user's data, but installing an undetectable rootkit? Not so easy. Now, which would you rather have (if you were a virus/worm writer): a few deleted letters to Mom and pictures of the dog or a vast army of zombie systems waiting to do your bidding?
Well, they rejected my early Friday morning submission of this for some reason. I pointed out nicely that the worm exploits the most vulnerable weakness of Microsoft Windows: the user. I also pointed out that I'd gotten lots of these already (but the volume seems to have dropped off pretty quick, too-- not sure if someone upstream from my mailbox started filtering or what). *sigh* :)
Hmmm. So are you making the case for not migrating to Linux as soon as possible or what? What you describe are even more compelling reasons to switch to Linux ASAP. The system code is available, thus making it much more likely that someone down the road (either geographically or sequentially) will be able to duplicate your results. Ditto for the peer review aspects of the work, open code is, well, open-- meaning that software flaws can at least be analyzed.
As for the rest of what you said, the types of systems you're talking about are large mainframes-- not something any sane person would be migrating to Linux any time soon. And I think you're wrong about payroll. PeopleSoft's most recent versions are hardly seven years old (although there may be seven-year-old code in their code base). In fact, given their whole company was founded in 1987 and is therefore only sixteen years old in the first place... I'd have to say your information is woefully out of date. And don't even get me started on the financial services where the ONLY systems that last more than five years are the big COBOL transaction systems that handle the basic account activities. But then, again, those are not likely systems for Linux migration. The thousands of desktops, clients, analysis databases, etc, are.
If your current platform works, there shouldn't be a reason to change.
Anyone who says something like this is just looking to argue (oops, I have been trolled). Computing platforms have been rapidly changing since the invention of the computer. I would peg full upgrade cycles at around five years on average (and interestingly this is how long it takes to fully depreciate the value of a computer purchase according to the IRS). This means that about every five years you are fully reinvesting in new hardware and software. Some software packages allow for (still expensive) upgrades, but that's small comfort against all the other expenses involved. And in a larger environment, you are likely to constantly be retiring old machines and replacing with new. So it's not likely you even have a single "platform" that "works". The problem here is how to explain a migration to Linux as a way to reduce future expenses, increase productivity, or whatever-- de facto migration to the next upgrade cycle of the current platform should require just as much justification.
Exactly, the widget approach is not viable unless you can find and enter a niche as it emerges. I mean, good luck writing a word processor and getting it to take off!
Writing software is a service. And most of the software written is written on that model-- coders are hired to write specific stuff. And a large base of Free Software only makes that easier. After all, the defining point in any transaction is where utility for the customer meets price. Free Software lowers the barriers to entry for the coder (who won't have to code or purchase extensive libraries to get an app up to speed), this passes through as a cost savings for the customer. Plus, wise customers will love using Free software as it prevents them from being locked into a vendor. Witness the rising trend outside the U.S. towards governmental usage of open software. They know better than to risk having their IT infrastructure held hostage like that.
How can you hate dependencies? Dependencies are a software fact of life. Or doesn't RPM automatically grab dependencies and install them like apt-get and emerge do? Doesn't RH have something called up2date or whatever that works more like apt-get?
Forget that! I have code (if you read machine language, that is) for an update which allows for 80 columns. Oh, and GEOS, which is the One True GUI. ;)
Bourbon is a kind of whiskey. Just FYI.
If the customer is only paying $9.95/month for the site they either have traffic limits set in terms of rate of activity (i.e. your site will never send out at a speed that would tax a 28.8 modem-- this is not a common approach, if it's used at all) or total periodic bandwidth allowance (you can't transfer more than a set GB limit a month without paying extra). Some script-allowed hosts will also set CPU limits on CGIs.
This rate of monitoring is no way going to come in under the transfer caps at the end of the month and these discount hosting customers would get SCREWED in terms of their bill, I'd think. Or maybe they deserve those bills for being so braindead about the impact of the monitoring service on the servers and the network.
What this really smells like is bad admin in terms of log size/rotation policy. Never once did the poster mention that there was a choke on transfer rate-- rather that the servers went down due to software crashes (running out of disk/RAM can do that, no?).
I would lay blame on everyone involved, personally. The "monitoring company" for being a crappy service and not working with the ISP. The ISP for having bad server management policies that lead to crashing during perfectly predictable events (what happens if one of their customers gets Slashdotted? would their logs have been able to handle that, too?). And the customers who arranged for this monitoring without talking to the ISP about it first or at least properly understanding the impact it would have on the network.
Except that it's not. :)
Especially in the realm of copyright (the topic at hand) there is not a more conflicted group than the people who call themselves libertarians. One side of their fence is adamant that creative works, inventions and the like constitute the product of one's work and are therefore property. Ergo, they will blast you in the face with a 12 gauge before they let you copy something. Ever. Property rights don't go away.
The other side of the fence believes that because free speech and property rights are of primary concern, one's ability to relate (even excruciating bit-for-bit detail) the content of a digital file or one's right to fashion one's own raw materials into a duplicate of the original is therefore essential. Any sort of "copyright", to these folks, constitutes a threat (and one backed by "force" no less) to natural human rights and property rights... and must therefore be defended against-- preferably with large caliber portable projectile weapons.
In this respect they're as bad as the Republicans, who have the Bono act to their credit, but then turn around and you find Senator Norm Coleman from MN asking questions about these RIAA subpoenas/lawsuits. Or was it the Democrats? There we get guys like Hollings (D-Disney) trying to make it illegal to own a computer that is more functional than a TV, but then there are other sane Democrats proposing various loosenings of copyright law.
You don't need signatures. Just a trustable list of hashes. BT and Gentoo's emerge already have controls for verifying the contents of the file with a hash. You'll still have to get your package list from the central server, so the updated package listings will contain the new hashes. And the new files will still need to be seeded by the source anyway (to answer the other poster's concern about no-one having the files). BT is not true P2P because a seed is needed that matches the .torrent file the tracker handles.
At the moment that seems to be pretty limited. Of course, I could be wrong, but I haven't been noticing a lot of upstream on the two Linux files I've got running on BT right now (LNX-BBC and Knoppix ISOs)...
.[rpm|deb] files or the source tarballs used by ebuilds for Gentoo. And BT isn't really P2P at the moment, it's swarming-- I think the difference is subtle, but important. Until BT has a networkable tracker solution (where one or more trackers share information) and there's an obvious way to query a tracker about which files it knows about rather than finding a .torrent file on a web site) BT isn't very useful for large scale sharing.
/usr/portage/distfiles or /var/cache/apt directories automatically got shared back out. That would practically eliminate the need for mirrors, no? Oh well, just a thought.
what we really need is BT sharing of individual
But imagine if emerge for Gentoo or apt-get for Debian relied on files mirrored by BT... and when you download those files your
My money is on RedHat.
1) Most office workers barely know how to use the software they have. The transition will require training them to not know how to use a whole different set of software. Oh, wait, it won't because no one needs to be trained to not know stuff.
2) Which is?
3) Benchmarks are where?
4) Not nearly enough said. Again, benchmarks are where? And why are they "Linux" FSs in #3, but now we're talking Solaris? Which is it?
5) People had to learn to use both Word and Excel as they migrated from packages like WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Not to mention the changes from version to version of just the MS software. I think your users will survive.
Great. So it sounds like you're actively funding the other half of the anti-consumer crusade. Last theater movie I went to (Seabiscuit) they had an anti-piracy blurb at the beginning of the film. MPAA are also the people going after Jon Johansen and the other DeCSS folks. So Hollywood knows how to price DVDs... this is not as great as it sounds. The profits on movies are front-loaded at the box office, so the residuals from DVD sales are largely gravy (although admittedly they are spending a lot more on films, hoping to make it up on home releases... and the DVD does have additional material you won't see in theaters).
Thanks, after I asked the question I did look around a bit. Cheapbyte's didn't look so bad, but XPLinux has what appear to be nice discs at a much lower price ($2.99). All that said, I found one place that will print blank CDs in 50 disc lots for $1.29 (printing is thermal printing in black, prices go up and down from there depending on better printing methods or quantity respectively).
While I don't relish the idea of minding the burner, I do like the idea of being able to create a custom print that would serve as advertising as well. Plus, that's a savings of $1.70 per CD.
Anyone know if there are any bulk sellers of attractively printed Knoppix/Gnoppix/Whateverix CDs? This seems like a fun thing to have sitting on my desk at work to give away. I mean, I'd go for CD-Rs since they're all of 30 cents a blank, but it would be a lot more fun if the CD had some eye-candy on it. Plus, then potential victims, er, users would be more likely to give it a try I think (and I won't have to sit at the burner all day either).
That seems like a pretty shallow analysis to me. Competition does promote progress. Question is: do we have a level playing field that promotes competition? With the way copyright and patent law work, and with increasing regulation and taxation, I have to wonder.
But of course businesses run their ideas through marketing to see if they'll sell. Unlike the guys at a university, businesses don't have the force of taxation to help pay for their research... if the goods don't sell, businesses lose money. Managers who allow that sort of thing are irresponsible. When a business doesn't do well, people lose their jobs and investors lose their investment.
Well, it's always good to have a mirror of the article here on /. so that if a similar newsworthy event occurs we can ignore it and continue to argue about Linux v. Windows, no?
If that's the case, then the date of May 2003 seems like a bizarre cutoff date. You'd have to avoid pretty much anyone who ever worked for SCO if your true concern was to avoid potential litigation related to derivative works.
Well, the trick is whether it's 20% of clothing consumers or 20% of the clothing itself. One in five consumers buying a computerized item of clothing I'll believe, one in five items of clothing? I doubt that, unless they are planning to computerize t-shirts, underwear, and socks.
From the Damage Studios page: (C) Copyright 2002-2403 Damage Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.
:)
I mean, I don't know what's the worse "intellectual property" faux pas, SCO claiming they own every type of Unix ever imagined or Damage assuming that their copyright will be valid for another 400 years.