Let's see. You said in your original post that you might be off-topic, but now you're complaining that being moderated as off-topic is fscked up?
BTW, complaining about or posting about moderation at all is not improving the site. Do your part and stick to the story, or at least the tangent thread at hand. If not, there's always metamoderation, if you want to provide feedback about the practice of moderation.
Grip is not a one-step process. It is a two-step process, first the files are ripped to.wav (which can be some very large files, so make sure you have room or limit number of unencoded.wav files) then the files are encoded as.ogg. But once Grip is correctly configured it takes a single right-click to select all tracks, a second click to switch tabs, and another click to press the button that does it all. And three clicks to convert from CD to usable tracks ain't bad.
Also, Ogg Vorbis contains comments which serve the function of id3. But as far as I can tell, the XMMS plug-in does not correctly recognize that information if you select its "File Information" option. This will likely improve, just as the early Ogg encoders did not allow for automatically including comments at encode time.
Yuck! How about if it just deinstalls IIS altogether and sends an email to root (or whatever it's called on NT) explaining that they have forfeited their right to host web services since they can't be bothered to secure them with known patches for worms that are making headlines in non-tech journals even? And considering that.ida sounds like something that should be turned OFF by default and certainly should NOT include a default.ida page (which I'm guessing some "thoughtful" developer included to prevent 404 errors in the default install/demo install), they might consider finding server software that comes preconfigured to be a little more sensible than that.
First of all, they are not selling other people's work. They are charging a reasonable fee for the distribution of Free Software (not to mention that it takes considerable effort to build and compile the hundreds of different pieces of software on a Red Hat system and testing them to make sure they work). It's not like they're out there selling software they have no right to distribute. They are doing exactly as anyone who distributed his or her software under the GPL intended!
Second, Red Hat employs Free Software developers. One of them was even interviewed for this article. Were you paying any attention at all? Yes, Linus wrote the core of Linux, but over the years do you think the kernel would be where it is if not for people like Bero and some other developers employed by Red Hat? Along these lines, do you really think that RPM is such a minor feat? It is Free Software, no? While you may have enjoyed finding and downloading and compiling the source to every Free package you wanted to use, and building your Linux system from scratch, most of us are not so inclined.
Third, I don't know when the last time you actually read Red Hat's annual report was, but they don't seem to be raking it in, like some proprietary software houses we might name. In fact, they are struggling to break even and have done so because they have taken on a lot of work besides selling Linux distributions. Don't forget the enormous expense that goes into maintaining servers where anyone can download the entire Red Hat software for no charge (and they even conveniently provide images to burn CD-ROMs). I mean, have you priced the cost of hosting something like that lately? You have to sell a lot of boxed sets at $99 a pop to cover that expense-- and don't forget that most companies only need to buy one boxed set, which they can copy in-house easily, or simply install multiple systems from that single image.
So who the fuck are you anyway? Craig Mundie? Bill Gates? The only people who oppose what Red Hat is doing are either braindead zealots (you'll notice that even hardliners like RMS seem to be in favor of companies like Red Hat, so where these zealots are coming from is beyond me) or people who want to equate selling software they didn't write with piracy. And either of these is a distortion that is not healthy for Free Software.
If you really don't like what Red Hat is doing, then send your donations to the FSF and Debian. Don't download Linux from RH, use something else. But as long as they are playing by the rules of the GPL, leave them alone and stop trying to infer that they are acting unethically. Free Software is about user freedom, nothing else-- and Red Hat is doing a pretty decent job of making sure that users can get into the Free world.
Yuck. I hope what comes out of this is less developers putting a bunch of superfluous javaNonsense on their web pages-- maybe they'll learn a little better HTML at the same time. Assuming of course they don't simply flee to some "supported" proprietary crap like Flash,.NET, or whatever other might come to mind.
Um. They aren't taking anything away. Consumers and politicians are giving it away. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't mean they are obligated to make it possible for you to do so.
If we implemented the all new CryptoKey plug-in, and required it to view our website, then this yellowlink thing would be illegal if it interfered with our plug-in, per the DMCA. As plain text, I'd say Fair Use reigns. While Fair Use is protected by the fact that there are exceptions for it written into the law, nothing in the law says that a content provider has to make it possible for you to Fairly Use their materials. (It would be nice if more consumers would refuse to buy things that take away Fair Use, but so goes life...)
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with these yellow links, or smart tags. If the users like it and continue to support it by using it or paying for it, then that's their problem. It's no different than if I want to use my own CSS to make pages readable, or if I want to run the page through a translator, or out to the speech synthesizer. Well it is different... because in this case the installation of the program is done somewhat sneakily, and in the case of Smart Tags, well, it's dodgy because it's Microsoft. But the underlying principle is the same.
While that is true of widgets you receive in the mail, you do not, by receiving mail automatically receive the right to reproduce the contents of the mail as well.
Anyone wishing to "use" the contents of the information they receive as a result of SirCam is still subject to copyright, trademark, insider trading regulations, etc etc.
So getting a.doc from a hapless MS employee that details their impending takeover of some Linux company or dotcom is not technically useful information since you can't go trading stock based on it. Getting nude pictures of your ex taken by his/her new partner (because he/she was too lazy to take you out of the address book) is nice, but you can't share them.
Now ethically, you'd probably just want to hit delete on all those emails without even bothering to look at them.
You bring up a good point. You can't. It is easier to simply disable all javascript and then explicitly allow it on sites that you trust with that stuff.
No. It's proof that dotcommers are in such a rush to be first and get all kinds of attention that they are sloppy. Maybe if we all stop trying to accomplish everything at the pace of eBusiness, this sort of nonsense will get caught in the process.
and nothing ever firmed in my mind more that I would no longer do business with Microsoft than a letter that started off with the following checkbox choices:
A. Big fines from the BSA, or
B. Big savings from Microsoft.
(paraphrased)
And they sent it to the mailing label name/address combo I get all kinds of small-business related junkmail at-- which contains a serious typo so I already recognize it.
Eventually, the people get used to the technique of keyboard wiretaps, the barrier for using it will go down, and then what? They can use it on innocent people.
And this is a problem how?:)
Either they find out that people are not so innocent after all, or tracking the innocent people wastes inordinate amounts of FBI time, making it easier for criminals to slip under the radar.
Disclaimer: when I'm not being sarcastic I fully support the rights of the non-to privacy and security in their persons. That some crime is undetectable without the invasion of privacy is a price that society must pay to protect the liberty of all.
I still maintain that the risk is obvious, DefCon is crawling with FBI agents for a reason (legitimate or not, the antagonism between hackers and the FBI is not new or unknown). I hope Dmitry understood or that the people who arranged for him to speak at DefCon informed him of the risks that his speech and his association with this software posed. I don't want him, or anybody else, in jail over this issue. The DMCA is wrong. Even the non-DMCA copyright law isn't permissive enough when it comes to user rights, IMHO.
I think it's safe to say that almost all victims of unjust laws are unwilling participants in the battle surrounding that law. And I'm not saying I want the guy to be subjected to this nonsense... I am only asking how he came to be such an unwilling participant in it? Was he totally uninformed that this was a risk? Did he know it was a risk, and went ahead anyway? Has the FBI gone beyond capricious in enforcement, so that if any large US corp has issue with a foreign national that the FBI will step in? I'm not criticizing Dmitry (if it were my decision he'd be on a US tax-payer subsidized flight home this instant), I'm asking...
I don't think this case is that obscure is all I'm saying. I mean, this is a conference that anybody with half a clue knows the FBI will be crawling all over. This isn't the O'Reilly Open Source convention, or the launch of Windows XP, this is a group dedicated to hacking, cracking, and security issues. To me that means that just about anyone doing a presentation on how to avoid some security hurdle (no matter how lame it is) should know that he/she is into the grey area and runs some sort of risk. Should Dmitry be in jail over this? No way. I think the law is unjust to begin with, and this application of it serves no benefit to the American people.
And from the lengthy discussion of the movie below, I'm glad Katz posted any review at all just to get all those posts posted. This movie sounds awful. At least the Matrix had a lot of interesting drug/bent-reality referencees to make up for the incredibly bad acting and inept plot. And when Matrix did all its cool effects it was mostly original. This new PotA sounds like it is heavy on effects and light on storyline enjoyment. A disturbing trend.
Before everyone jumps on me for not just being willing to roll over and suspend disbelief... I just want to say that it's impossible to suspend disbelief when the films keep leaving Mack truck sized holes laying around. Like Swordfish, some great effects and Halle Berre's boobs could not take away the pain of constantly being reminded that the writers knew less about computers and hacking than, well, anyone who'd actually used a computer.
It's irresponsible. I don't mind a few plot holes and glaring errors here and there, but over and over? And when the plot hinges on so many of them? It makes a movie downright unwatchable. It's like having someone pinching you every five minutes to make sure you're not dreaming-- when you're dreaming.
It's pointless, that's why. Unless they have an instant drug test each morning before and a breathalyzer that must be passed before the bus will power on, it's pointless. There are a good many legal and illegal drugs that may or may not be detected. Also, unless they've fixed the problem, eating poppy seeds can trigger a false positive on some tests. So if we give you the test when you're hired, what's to say you just haven't been able to afford drugs, you being unemployed and all, but now that you're getting paid you go buy an eighth and start sparking up on the weekend.
Did I mention that in addition to invading the privacy of the persons in question, it's pointless?:)
What I still don't understand is how a guy smart enough to program something cool enough to be asked to speak at DefCon wasn't able to understand that he was running afoul of the US law on this topic and that he might get entangled in our legal system while he was in the US. I mean, not more than a few months ago Russian hackers were lured here and arrested by the FBI. Wouldn't Adobe have at least sent him nastygrams for selling his program prior to his presentation at DefCon? With all due respect, is it really a good idea to knowingly enter a country whose laws you are planning to violate while you are here? If Dmitry wasn't aware of these risks, who the heck asked him to come here and didn't advise him of the situation vis-a-vis the DMCA?
I wasn't trying to be ironic, and I don't know how you interpreted what I said as supporting drug testing-- I am firmly against it for any job.
And no, customer service workers are not white collar-- white collar means management or professional work, which does not include clerks, cashiers, call-center operators, and the like. At least these jobs are no longer what I would consider white collar, nor would I consider them blue collar, they are currently workers-without-collar-color. Maybe that's because their uniforms often don't have collars.
It's not just surfing, it's sending email to family/friends, and I suppose other things. Even so, the question isn't really whether you are spending time on it (most companies won't fire you for a little personal surfing/email, just like it's often okay to make a personal phone call), it's whether you have any right to privacy while doing it.
Personally I think it's laughable that white collar workers in large corporations would expect privacy (and a host of other comforts) that customer service workers in the same company have no chance of getting-- or that any reasonable adult would tolerate some of the things some corporations try. I mean, some of these companies actually require you to submit your bodily fluids before taking a desk job. Talk about an invasion of privacy!
Is it really that fun to work on a software project of any real complexity for which no design work has been done and which fails miserably to do anything well but the first feature programmed? I would think the feature creep and bug-squashing alone would drive the developer nuts after the alpha skeleton code was created. Even so, some prototyping might be in order to see if any serious design flaws come to mind.
And I still wouldn't rule out the notion that even a lot of planning can't undo the damage that a really great idea 80% of the way into the work would have on the overall design. And since software design is complex engineering that takes time to learn, I don't think we should fault the hobbyists and students who litter code repositories like SourceForge with projects for applying the paradigm for writing they learned in high school and English class-- that of the rough draft, revisions, final version. And until you spend time studying software design, all this talk of alphas and betas doesn't really clue you in to how much non-code upfront work goes into a successful software project.
And here I thought it had gone downhill (except for the binaries, those are still as great as they were several years ago) because of the endless flame wars and OT cross-posting has gotten out of hand. Or maybe it has always been out of hand, but seems worse now because the volumes are higher. You can only participate in a religious war once and find it interesting. Reading emacs vs. vi, Windows vs. Linux, Democrat vs. Republican, God vs. no god, post after post, year after year is DULL. And it seems all too easily threads that start out with good intentions devolve into duelling simplifications.
Yeah, it's way too much trouble to just write all my passwords down on a single piece of paper (and besides the dog might eat that, or my wife might find it and wonder why there are so many passwords to pr0n sites)... So, I know! I'll let a third party currently involved in a major lawsuit related to its ethically-questionable business practices handle my authentication needs.
AC, I realize that it's best that they require documentation before changing a record. However, in this case they could view the entire record history and see when the change was made without supporting documentation or authorization. The fact that they require documentation to fix their own mistake of changing it in the first place is what I find amusing/found annoying.
I know, let's turn every story that mentions a specific linux distribution into a distro flame war by mentioning which distro we like more for which task! Your comment is, of course, completely bizarre, since RH, like many other distros is perfectly configurable at the/etc/* level and man pages, HOW-TOs, and ESP will all help just as much on RH as any other distro.
Frankly, I think the variety of software available for any given distro and the variety of tasks to which any given linux is suited makes writing a comprehensive book about any linux a difficult task. Couple that with the tremendous rate of change, and by the time a book is in print it is likely to have large sections that are competely stale.
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Let's see. You said in your original post that you might be off-topic, but now you're complaining that being moderated as off-topic is fscked up?
BTW, complaining about or posting about moderation at all is not improving the site. Do your part and stick to the story, or at least the tangent thread at hand. If not, there's always metamoderation, if you want to provide feedback about the practice of moderation.
Grip is not a one-step process. It is a two-step process, first the files are ripped to .wav (which can be some very large files, so make sure you have room or limit number of unencoded .wav files) then the files are encoded as .ogg. But once Grip is correctly configured it takes a single right-click to select all tracks, a second click to switch tabs, and another click to press the button that does it all. And three clicks to convert from CD to usable tracks ain't bad.
Also, Ogg Vorbis contains comments which serve the function of id3. But as far as I can tell, the XMMS plug-in does not correctly recognize that information if you select its "File Information" option. This will likely improve, just as the early Ogg encoders did not allow for automatically including comments at encode time.
Yuck! How about if it just deinstalls IIS altogether and sends an email to root (or whatever it's called on NT) explaining that they have forfeited their right to host web services since they can't be bothered to secure them with known patches for worms that are making headlines in non-tech journals even? And considering that .ida sounds like something that should be turned OFF by default and certainly should NOT include a default.ida page (which I'm guessing some "thoughtful" developer included to prevent 404 errors in the default install/demo install), they might consider finding server software that comes preconfigured to be a little more sensible than that.
Bullshit alert!
First of all, they are not selling other people's work. They are charging a reasonable fee for the distribution of Free Software (not to mention that it takes considerable effort to build and compile the hundreds of different pieces of software on a Red Hat system and testing them to make sure they work). It's not like they're out there selling software they have no right to distribute. They are doing exactly as anyone who distributed his or her software under the GPL intended!
Second, Red Hat employs Free Software developers. One of them was even interviewed for this article. Were you paying any attention at all? Yes, Linus wrote the core of Linux, but over the years do you think the kernel would be where it is if not for people like Bero and some other developers employed by Red Hat? Along these lines, do you really think that RPM is such a minor feat? It is Free Software, no? While you may have enjoyed finding and downloading and compiling the source to every Free package you wanted to use, and building your Linux system from scratch, most of us are not so inclined.
Third, I don't know when the last time you actually read Red Hat's annual report was, but they don't seem to be raking it in, like some proprietary software houses we might name. In fact, they are struggling to break even and have done so because they have taken on a lot of work besides selling Linux distributions. Don't forget the enormous expense that goes into maintaining servers where anyone can download the entire Red Hat software for no charge (and they even conveniently provide images to burn CD-ROMs). I mean, have you priced the cost of hosting something like that lately? You have to sell a lot of boxed sets at $99 a pop to cover that expense-- and don't forget that most companies only need to buy one boxed set, which they can copy in-house easily, or simply install multiple systems from that single image.
So who the fuck are you anyway? Craig Mundie? Bill Gates? The only people who oppose what Red Hat is doing are either braindead zealots (you'll notice that even hardliners like RMS seem to be in favor of companies like Red Hat, so where these zealots are coming from is beyond me) or people who want to equate selling software they didn't write with piracy. And either of these is a distortion that is not healthy for Free Software.
If you really don't like what Red Hat is doing, then send your donations to the FSF and Debian. Don't download Linux from RH, use something else. But as long as they are playing by the rules of the GPL, leave them alone and stop trying to infer that they are acting unethically. Free Software is about user freedom, nothing else-- and Red Hat is doing a pretty decent job of making sure that users can get into the Free world.
I thought it was called "presidential election".
Yuck. I hope what comes out of this is less developers putting a bunch of superfluous javaNonsense on their web pages-- maybe they'll learn a little better HTML at the same time. Assuming of course they don't simply flee to some "supported" proprietary crap like Flash, .NET, or whatever other might come to mind.
Um. They aren't taking anything away. Consumers and politicians are giving it away. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't mean they are obligated to make it possible for you to do so.
Nice try. :)
If we implemented the all new CryptoKey plug-in, and required it to view our website, then this yellowlink thing would be illegal if it interfered with our plug-in, per the DMCA. As plain text, I'd say Fair Use reigns. While Fair Use is protected by the fact that there are exceptions for it written into the law, nothing in the law says that a content provider has to make it possible for you to Fairly Use their materials. (It would be nice if more consumers would refuse to buy things that take away Fair Use, but so goes life...)
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with these yellow links, or smart tags. If the users like it and continue to support it by using it or paying for it, then that's their problem. It's no different than if I want to use my own CSS to make pages readable, or if I want to run the page through a translator, or out to the speech synthesizer. Well it is different... because in this case the installation of the program is done somewhat sneakily, and in the case of Smart Tags, well, it's dodgy because it's Microsoft. But the underlying principle is the same.
While that is true of widgets you receive in the mail, you do not, by receiving mail automatically receive the right to reproduce the contents of the mail as well.
.doc from a hapless MS employee that details their impending takeover of some Linux company or dotcom is not technically useful information since you can't go trading stock based on it. Getting nude pictures of your ex taken by his/her new partner (because he/she was too lazy to take you out of the address book) is nice, but you can't share them.
Anyone wishing to "use" the contents of the information they receive as a result of SirCam is still subject to copyright, trademark, insider trading regulations, etc etc.
So getting a
Now ethically, you'd probably just want to hit delete on all those emails without even bothering to look at them.
You bring up a good point. You can't. It is easier to simply disable all javascript and then explicitly allow it on sites that you trust with that stuff.
No. It's proof that dotcommers are in such a rush to be first and get all kinds of attention that they are sloppy. Maybe if we all stop trying to accomplish everything at the pace of eBusiness, this sort of nonsense will get caught in the process.
and nothing ever firmed in my mind more that I would no longer do business with Microsoft than a letter that started off with the following checkbox choices:
A. Big fines from the BSA, or B. Big savings from Microsoft.
(paraphrased)
And they sent it to the mailing label name/address combo I get all kinds of small-business related junkmail at-- which contains a serious typo so I already recognize it.
Eventually, the people get used to the technique of keyboard wiretaps, the barrier for using it will go down, and then what? They can use it on innocent people.
:)
And this is a problem how?
Either they find out that people are not so innocent after all, or tracking the innocent people wastes inordinate amounts of FBI time, making it easier for criminals to slip under the radar.
Disclaimer: when I'm not being sarcastic I fully support the rights of the non-to privacy and security in their persons. That some crime is undetectable without the invasion of privacy is a price that society must pay to protect the liberty of all.
I still maintain that the risk is obvious, DefCon is crawling with FBI agents for a reason (legitimate or not, the antagonism between hackers and the FBI is not new or unknown). I hope Dmitry understood or that the people who arranged for him to speak at DefCon informed him of the risks that his speech and his association with this software posed. I don't want him, or anybody else, in jail over this issue. The DMCA is wrong. Even the non-DMCA copyright law isn't permissive enough when it comes to user rights, IMHO.
I think it's safe to say that almost all victims of unjust laws are unwilling participants in the battle surrounding that law. And I'm not saying I want the guy to be subjected to this nonsense... I am only asking how he came to be such an unwilling participant in it? Was he totally uninformed that this was a risk? Did he know it was a risk, and went ahead anyway? Has the FBI gone beyond capricious in enforcement, so that if any large US corp has issue with a foreign national that the FBI will step in? I'm not criticizing Dmitry (if it were my decision he'd be on a US tax-payer subsidized flight home this instant), I'm asking...
I don't think this case is that obscure is all I'm saying. I mean, this is a conference that anybody with half a clue knows the FBI will be crawling all over. This isn't the O'Reilly Open Source convention, or the launch of Windows XP, this is a group dedicated to hacking, cracking, and security issues. To me that means that just about anyone doing a presentation on how to avoid some security hurdle (no matter how lame it is) should know that he/she is into the grey area and runs some sort of risk. Should Dmitry be in jail over this? No way. I think the law is unjust to begin with, and this application of it serves no benefit to the American people.
And from the lengthy discussion of the movie below, I'm glad Katz posted any review at all just to get all those posts posted. This movie sounds awful. At least the Matrix had a lot of interesting drug/bent-reality referencees to make up for the incredibly bad acting and inept plot. And when Matrix did all its cool effects it was mostly original. This new PotA sounds like it is heavy on effects and light on storyline enjoyment. A disturbing trend.
Before everyone jumps on me for not just being willing to roll over and suspend disbelief... I just want to say that it's impossible to suspend disbelief when the films keep leaving Mack truck sized holes laying around. Like Swordfish, some great effects and Halle Berre's boobs could not take away the pain of constantly being reminded that the writers knew less about computers and hacking than, well, anyone who'd actually used a computer.
It's irresponsible. I don't mind a few plot holes and glaring errors here and there, but over and over? And when the plot hinges on so many of them? It makes a movie downright unwatchable. It's like having someone pinching you every five minutes to make sure you're not dreaming-- when you're dreaming.
It's pointless, that's why. Unless they have an instant drug test each morning before and a breathalyzer that must be passed before the bus will power on, it's pointless. There are a good many legal and illegal drugs that may or may not be detected. Also, unless they've fixed the problem, eating poppy seeds can trigger a false positive on some tests. So if we give you the test when you're hired, what's to say you just haven't been able to afford drugs, you being unemployed and all, but now that you're getting paid you go buy an eighth and start sparking up on the weekend.
:)
Did I mention that in addition to invading the privacy of the persons in question, it's pointless?
What I still don't understand is how a guy smart enough to program something cool enough to be asked to speak at DefCon wasn't able to understand that he was running afoul of the US law on this topic and that he might get entangled in our legal system while he was in the US. I mean, not more than a few months ago Russian hackers were lured here and arrested by the FBI. Wouldn't Adobe have at least sent him nastygrams for selling his program prior to his presentation at DefCon? With all due respect, is it really a good idea to knowingly enter a country whose laws you are planning to violate while you are here? If Dmitry wasn't aware of these risks, who the heck asked him to come here and didn't advise him of the situation vis-a-vis the DMCA?
I wasn't trying to be ironic, and I don't know how you interpreted what I said as supporting drug testing-- I am firmly against it for any job.
And no, customer service workers are not white collar-- white collar means management or professional work, which does not include clerks, cashiers, call-center operators, and the like. At least these jobs are no longer what I would consider white collar, nor would I consider them blue collar, they are currently workers-without-collar-color. Maybe that's because their uniforms often don't have collars.
It's not just surfing, it's sending email to family/friends, and I suppose other things. Even so, the question isn't really whether you are spending time on it (most companies won't fire you for a little personal surfing/email, just like it's often okay to make a personal phone call), it's whether you have any right to privacy while doing it.
Personally I think it's laughable that white collar workers in large corporations would expect privacy (and a host of other comforts) that customer service workers in the same company have no chance of getting-- or that any reasonable adult would tolerate some of the things some corporations try. I mean, some of these companies actually require you to submit your bodily fluids before taking a desk job. Talk about an invasion of privacy!
Is it really that fun to work on a software project of any real complexity for which no design work has been done and which fails miserably to do anything well but the first feature programmed? I would think the feature creep and bug-squashing alone would drive the developer nuts after the alpha skeleton code was created. Even so, some prototyping might be in order to see if any serious design flaws come to mind.
And I still wouldn't rule out the notion that even a lot of planning can't undo the damage that a really great idea 80% of the way into the work would have on the overall design. And since software design is complex engineering that takes time to learn, I don't think we should fault the hobbyists and students who litter code repositories like SourceForge with projects for applying the paradigm for writing they learned in high school and English class-- that of the rough draft, revisions, final version. And until you spend time studying software design, all this talk of alphas and betas doesn't really clue you in to how much non-code upfront work goes into a successful software project.
And here I thought it had gone downhill (except for the binaries, those are still as great as they were several years ago) because of the endless flame wars and OT cross-posting has gotten out of hand. Or maybe it has always been out of hand, but seems worse now because the volumes are higher. You can only participate in a religious war once and find it interesting. Reading emacs vs. vi, Windows vs. Linux, Democrat vs. Republican, God vs. no god, post after post, year after year is DULL. And it seems all too easily threads that start out with good intentions devolve into duelling simplifications.
Yeah, it's way too much trouble to just write all my passwords down on a single piece of paper (and besides the dog might eat that, or my wife might find it and wonder why there are so many passwords to pr0n sites)... So, I know! I'll let a third party currently involved in a major lawsuit related to its ethically-questionable business practices handle my authentication needs.
AC, I realize that it's best that they require documentation before changing a record. However, in this case they could view the entire record history and see when the change was made without supporting documentation or authorization. The fact that they require documentation to fix their own mistake of changing it in the first place is what I find amusing/found annoying.
I know, let's turn every story that mentions a specific linux distribution into a distro flame war by mentioning which distro we like more for which task! Your comment is, of course, completely bizarre, since RH, like many other distros is perfectly configurable at the /etc/* level and man pages, HOW-TOs, and ESP will all help just as much on RH as any other distro.
Frankly, I think the variety of software available for any given distro and the variety of tasks to which any given linux is suited makes writing a comprehensive book about any linux a difficult task. Couple that with the tremendous rate of change, and by the time a book is in print it is likely to have large sections that are competely stale.