Last time the California power crisis came up here, someone quoted an editorial that hit the nail right on the head. Unfortunately I don't remember who wrote the editorial, but I remember well what it said:
Our society is socializing risk and privatizing profit.
This is just another example of the same lamentable phenomenon, and it's a predictable trend in a "democracy" where legislators are bought and paid for by lobbyists.
> What does that make Microsoft, those evil little ghosts?
He was a bit vague on how the GPL is like Pac-Man. It looks like he is saying that the protagonist (that's you, the player) is evil and the bad guys are good.
Of course, in MS's paranoid fantasies, the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good, so maybe this was another internal memo not meant for public distribution.
> When you first saw Star Wars Ep 4, did you doubt for one second that C-3PO was a real robot, Chewbacca was a real Wookie, and that Darth Vadar was a really real bad guy?
> Credit where credit's due, Jar Jar is certainly real enough to actually hate.;)
> Anyone know how Jar-Jar gets translated into other languages? I mean, is it possible to make him sound as obnoxious in French or Japanese as he does in English?
In the Jamaican edition he talks just like Prince Charles.
Au contraire, Hippos gave us good government and low taxes. It was, however, somewhat embarassing when we had to explain to visiting dignitaries why we were ruled by a horse.
[Sorry: pedantic note follows. This does not make your post any less funny.]
Hippocracy: Rule by Hippos (or by horses).
Hypocracy: "Sub-rule", "under-rule", or perhaps "rule from beneath", as in "The Low Dwarves enforced a hypocracy on the High Dwarves, and even tried to extend it to surface dwellers".
FWIW, The Reg is reporting that WSJ is now claiming that there's no deceit involved. Rather, MSNBC published a "pre-lease" version of the article, but the WSJ touched up the article and added the offending phrases after sending the article to MSNBC.
That is correct. And in fact I habitually download pre-compiled binaries to run on my Linux system.
But remember that there is an almost zero-sum tradeoff between convenience and security. For my Linux system at home, getting 0wned would have a small cost, so I only expend a small effort preventing it. If I operated the TVA, a business, a space shuttle, or a government or military computer system, then I would invest a lot more trouble in security.
If the quoted guy doesn't want the TVA 0wned, then he needs to invest an appropriate amount of effort in making sure he doesn't let any trojan horses in the gate. If that means having his staff read code, it's a real simple calculation of the cost of reading the code vs the cost of getting 0wned. And I would estimate that the cost associated with having the TVA get 0wned is pretty darn high.
Even for my ultra-low-security home system, I don't download a precompiled binary from just anywhere. Every time I do it I make a very conscious decision of "how much do I trust this site?" vs "how much trouble would it be to go another route, such as compiling it myself?" vs "what are the consequences of getting 0wned?". Even for my ultra-low-security site, I just get the source if the only binary kit I can find is made by Joe Stranger.
As for reading the code, no, I don't audit the code for everything I run on the system. However, I'm pretty much a middle-of-the-crowd OSS user (not at all a guru), and in spite of that I do read quite a bit of code over a year's time, because I like to submit fixes and enhancements for the OSS that I use. And I know that there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people just like me doing the same thing. Trojans will be found, and the news will spread like wildfire on the internet. The very threat of that will inhibit trojaneers to some extent, because of the risk of getting caught, and the consequences (permanent anathema, no one ever using your software or your download site again, etc).
[Insert note here re the importance of downloading your code from a "mainstream" high-use site, to make sure your code is actually the same code that those thousands of other eyes are looking at. If you download code from Joe Stranger's Fly-by-Night FTP Site, then you may be getting a trojan that your friends aren't looking at, because you didn't get the same code.]
Using OSS doesn't guarantee security, but it seems to me that it is a creditable threat-reduction strategy. I think in the future you will start seeing critical installations like the TVA switch over to OSS as a matter of policy (or if they do stick with COTS software, they will arrange a source agreement with the vendor, and run copies that they compiled themselves to ensure that what they saw is what they really got). We have already seen several non-US governments making noises in that direction, and I think it will become a near-universal reality as the world gets used to the idea of OSS as a quality solution, and becomes aware of the security implications of "trust" vs "knowlege". You just have to look at the number of spyware vendors that got caught in the last 18 months to realize that corporate/governmental paranoia about this kind of thing is not only justified, but perhaps even a moral imperative.
As a side note, the strategy mentioned above about getting the source to CSS directly from the vendor and compiling it is probably less safe than using OSS, because the CSS vendor will never distribute its software as widely as OSS is distributed, so there will never be as many eyes looking at it. I would agree that catching a trojan due to a many-eyes approach is probabilistic, but more eyes slant the odds in your favor.
Also, a dishonest vendor could give you code with an obfuscated trojan, and give trojan-free code to all its other customers that it didn't feel any need to spy on, with the result that the only eyes actually looking at the trojanized code would be the people on your own staff that you assign to it. Bad odds there, unless you spend a lot of money paying a big staff to read code.
As the world becomes more aware of the risks of spyware and trojanized software, and more aware of the viability of OSS for many uses, institutions that absolutely must have security will start adopting OSS, even without reference to the other benefits of sharing source code. This will probably happen sooner rather than later.
The day we see a shareholder suit against a company that lost its ass due to spyware or trojanware will also be the day we start seeing a mass migration of lower-security sites, too.
In our contract-minded society I'm sure lots of suits will try vendor indemnification rather than OSS,but when you start thinking about the dollar cost you would have to assign to having the TVA 0wned by a hostile party (terrorist, extortionist, prankster with no sense of consequences, etc.), then you'll realize that vendor indemnification would be completly meaningless. Which is why I say that society needs to run its computers on "knowlege" rather than "trust". Hopefully the world's suits and lawmakers will figure this out without having to have a incident to elucidate it for them first.
> God, this would just be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.
Actually, it's real simple. SETI@home is closed source. Neither the employee running it nor TVA management has the faintest idea what it really does. Therefore the TVA can reasonably be paranoid about it.
Of course, the same logic applies equally to any other CSS software that they may be running. I think the world at large is slowly maturing to an understanding of the CSS risk, though management types will see it in "toys" like SETI@home before they see it in their precious COTS applications.
> They want our CD's to be rendered useless just like all other media formats before.
With all the formulaic guaranteed-to-sell crap they've been putting out lately, sometimes I wonder whether bugs ate the CDs and left poop in their place before they left the warehouse.
Re:Andromeda = "Herc in Space"
on
Andromeda
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· Score: 1
> realise it had that actor from Hercules, but thats not enough to qualify it as a spin-off.
Sorry; I meant "spin-off" in the economic sense, not in terms of subject matter. In addition to the actors, it looked like essentially the same production team (even to the score writer).
> What I don't understand, is why Microsoft's PR department insists on causing so much controversy.
Because they view it as a life-or-death struggle. (OK, they seem to view everything that way, but they may well be correct this time.)
As many others have pointed out, MS is unlike most other OS vendors in that the OS is their premier product, not something they make so they can sell their expensive hardware. If OSOSes ever replace MSOSes on commodity hardware, MS is toast.
In addition... insert here the oft-repeated explanation that even if OSOSes don't replace MSOSes, MS still has the problem that it requires growth to keep its stock prices up, and OSS is sucking up a big portion of what little uncommitted market still remained to MS for growth.
--
Re:Andromeda = "Herc in Space"
on
Andromeda
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· Score: 2
> There's way better stuff on TV.
I enjoyed the "other" Herc spin-off, Jack of all Trades. Kinda corny, but it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately it got terminated before the writers found their stride.
> I thought that if any states passed it, companies wishing to use UCITA, they could setup their Corp. HQ in one of these states, and everyone would be screwed...
In the USA, the Federal government reserves the right to regulate interstate commerce, so in principle one state cannot force the effects of this kind of legislation onto the citizens of another.
In practice, they are likely to have a bigger legal fund than you are, so the threat is very real.
OTOH, lots of big companies with big legal funds consume software rather than selling it, so they might be willing to throw in a lawyer or two on "our" side if that issue ever comes up in court.
On the, uhm, third or fourth hand (any Moties reading this?), the big companies that consume software will probably have enough clout with the software vendors to buy their software on a contract with more favorable terms than the UCITA offers, essentially selling the rest of us down the river by striking a deal with the devil (if you'll pardon the saturation of metaphors).
> Its adoption is another step toward reversing the earlier equation: now, consumers shall exist to serve business, which shall answer to them only when and as it suits its own interests.
That's why I voted Green in the last election.
I'm not really Green in any deep-dyed sense (though I do recognize that we are quickly converting all our natural resources to garbage in an [almost] closed system, and should give a bit of thought for the future).
But the reason I voted Green was because of the party's ties to consumer interests. Our legislators are going to keep signing off on lobbyist-written legislation until the day some election gives them a scare that they might lose their jobs if they keep on doing it.
(Score -1, Rousing the Rabble) -
I saw the current trend blossoming way back in the '80s, and I still say now what I said then: unbridled corporate power will reduce us to serfdom as surely as the institution of a feudal government would.
It is irony of the finest water that governments sucking up to corporations is now stirring up a new middle-class leftist movement, hardly a decade after the collapse of Soviet communism left many traditional leftist movements without any support.
(Score -1, Nostradamic Pretensions) -
I am beginning to suspect that the next World War will be a Global Civil War, corporate interests vs public interests. The governments of the industrialized nations will generally take the corporatist side, but the governments of many less wealthy nations will nationalize their industries and take the consumerist side, if only to keep from being swallowed up by corporations that are more powerful on the world stage than they are.
Ah, well, there's lots of static on my crystal ball, so maybe things aren't headed in such a dire direction. It should at least be good for the plot of a SF novel, though....
First it was Pascal, then all the Unis switched to C, then to C++, now to Java. One cycle is hardly complete before the next one starts; those eager freshpeople getting Java now will discover that it's old hat by the time they graduate, and the wheel will start another turn.
For my money, use something simple like Pascal or C to introduce the basics, and then introduce OOP after a good semester of abstract data types.
Alternatively, do like a lot of schools and use Scheme, so you can teach beginners to 'think' rather than to 'program'.
> For one who goes to lengths to bash corporations and greedy managers, this statement sure doesn't make you look like one with much of a backbone. Imagine--a whole career spent at places where you didn't respoect the management. Maybe the safety of a paycheck kept you from leaving a place that was philosophically dissatisfying to you?
Oo ow ouch, that stings!
Oh, wait a minute. I haven't had any managers looking over my shoulder for almost eight years now.
Respected maybe, but clueless all the same. Gartner has a long track record of "predicting" for next year exactly the stats that others found for last year. I haven't seen their secret business methods, but I rather suspect that they just collect whatever stats they can get (which will in general reflect what was happening a year ago), change "stats" to "predictions", and sell it to gullible managers... like you.
> To claim this is biased because Microsoft funded it is absolutely ridiculous.
Or not. MS habitually funds studies with a little string attached, which says "You cannot publish the results of this study without our approval."
That doesn't result in an accurate view of what's going on in the world. In fact, it's essentially identical to the "science" practiced by dishonest or self-deluded paranormal researchers, who publish their result from trials when they get lucky, and ignore the results of unlucky trials on the grounds that "the force wasn't with me today".
This kind of thing makes it really easy for people to justify believing whatever they want to believe... whether they be paranormal researchers or corporate managers.
> When my corporation pays for research, we absolutely do not want them to tell us what we want to hear.
I've worked for a number of corporations, and never once met a manager who wouldn't tune out what he didn't want to hear. Most would only pay for information that furthers their careers; anyone who staked his career on converting his company's Sun boxes to Windows boxes will be more than happy to pay for this particular report.
> W2K IS a serious Enterprise-ready scaleable and reliable OS.
Gosh, I'm down to posting a link to the Hot 100 analysis almost once a week anymore. I'll let you find it yourself this time: go to groups.google.com and search comp.os.linux.advocacy for "hot 100 uptimes", and read what you find. Or do a new analysis yourself, and post your results for us.
> Just because Microsoft commissioned the research does not render it invalid.
Repeating it over and over might make you feel better about the money you wasted on the report, but repeating it will not make it come true.
The specific problem for Microsoft is, how can they get Netscape to insert a tag saying Wouldn't you really rather be using IE for your default browser?
> Despite what these people say, most of the crap that they've been flinging around is just plain baseless. I'll be called a "Microsoft shill" or an "astroturfer", but truth is truth: Microsoft's latest server offerings are extremely secure, scalable, and reliable.
Not to imply that I believe you or anything, but you fit the stereotype to a 't': once MS finally does produce an OS that's stable, scalable, and secure, they'll brag their asses off over finally providing the most rudimentary services that an OS is supposed to provide, and that they should have been providing since day one. They'll probably even claim that they invented those concepts.
> It is a mistake for a large part of the community to rely on one site for this sort of thing.
I guess I agree. Sourceforge is a wonderful idea and a generous service to our community, but the community evolved in a decentralized environment, and I'm not sure centralization is the way forward.
Of course, I don't think SourceForge was intended to be a centralization move. By all accounts they were somewhat surprised at the uptake on it.
> I run my own CVS server, and am about to pay a small amount ($10/m) for an ISP to host my hobbyist code. Granted, it doesn't have all the features of sourceforge, but I don't mind.
If enough people do that, a featureful system might well evolve for it. There's lots of free support code floating around, which a talented and dedicated party could probably forge into a nifty kit for small-site developer projects like yours.
Slashdot Mirror
--
> What does that make Microsoft, those evil little ghosts?
He was a bit vague on how the GPL is like Pac-Man. It looks like he is saying that the protagonist (that's you, the player) is evil and the bad guys are good.
Of course, in MS's paranoid fantasies, the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good, so maybe this was another internal memo not meant for public distribution.
--
Hell, n. - The state of being the richest man in the world and knowing something exists that you can't buy.
Have a kleenex, Bill.
--
> When you first saw Star Wars Ep 4, did you doubt for one second that C-3PO was a real robot, Chewbacca was a real Wookie, and that Darth Vadar was a really real bad guy?
;)
> Credit where credit's due, Jar Jar is certainly real enough to actually hate.
Yeah, Jar Jar is a real action figure.
--
What the world needs is a new
--
> Anyone know how Jar-Jar gets translated into other languages? I mean, is it possible to make him sound as obnoxious in French or Japanese as he does in English?
In the Jamaican edition he talks just like Prince Charles.
--
> Hypocracy: Tyrannical rule by Hippos.
Au contraire, Hippos gave us good government and low taxes. It was, however, somewhat embarassing when we had to explain to visiting dignitaries why we were ruled by a horse.
[Sorry: pedantic note follows. This does not make your post any less funny.]
Hippocracy: Rule by Hippos (or by horses).
Hypocracy: "Sub-rule", "under-rule", or perhaps "rule from beneath", as in "The Low Dwarves enforced a hypocracy on the High Dwarves, and even tried to extend it to surface dwellers".
--
FWIW, The Reg is reporting that WSJ is now claiming that there's no deceit involved. Rather, MSNBC published a "pre-lease" version of the article, but the WSJ touched up the article and added the offending phrases after sending the article to MSNBC.
Whatever.
--
> The same goes for open source software.
[In addition to what MWright already said...]
That is correct. And in fact I habitually download pre-compiled binaries to run on my Linux system.
But remember that there is an almost zero-sum tradeoff between convenience and security. For my Linux system at home, getting 0wned would have a small cost, so I only expend a small effort preventing it. If I operated the TVA, a business, a space shuttle, or a government or military computer system, then I would invest a lot more trouble in security.
If the quoted guy doesn't want the TVA 0wned, then he needs to invest an appropriate amount of effort in making sure he doesn't let any trojan horses in the gate. If that means having his staff read code, it's a real simple calculation of the cost of reading the code vs the cost of getting 0wned. And I would estimate that the cost associated with having the TVA get 0wned is pretty darn high.
Even for my ultra-low-security home system, I don't download a precompiled binary from just anywhere. Every time I do it I make a very conscious decision of "how much do I trust this site?" vs "how much trouble would it be to go another route, such as compiling it myself?" vs "what are the consequences of getting 0wned?". Even for my ultra-low-security site, I just get the source if the only binary kit I can find is made by Joe Stranger.
As for reading the code, no, I don't audit the code for everything I run on the system. However, I'm pretty much a middle-of-the-crowd OSS user (not at all a guru), and in spite of that I do read quite a bit of code over a year's time, because I like to submit fixes and enhancements for the OSS that I use. And I know that there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of people just like me doing the same thing. Trojans will be found, and the news will spread like wildfire on the internet. The very threat of that will inhibit trojaneers to some extent, because of the risk of getting caught, and the consequences (permanent anathema, no one ever using your software or your download site again, etc).
[Insert note here re the importance of downloading your code from a "mainstream" high-use site, to make sure your code is actually the same code that those thousands of other eyes are looking at. If you download code from Joe Stranger's Fly-by-Night FTP Site, then you may be getting a trojan that your friends aren't looking at, because you didn't get the same code.]
Using OSS doesn't guarantee security, but it seems to me that it is a creditable threat-reduction strategy. I think in the future you will start seeing critical installations like the TVA switch over to OSS as a matter of policy (or if they do stick with COTS software, they will arrange a source agreement with the vendor, and run copies that they compiled themselves to ensure that what they saw is what they really got). We have already seen several non-US governments making noises in that direction, and I think it will become a near-universal reality as the world gets used to the idea of OSS as a quality solution, and becomes aware of the security implications of "trust" vs "knowlege". You just have to look at the number of spyware vendors that got caught in the last 18 months to realize that corporate/governmental paranoia about this kind of thing is not only justified, but perhaps even a moral imperative.
As a side note, the strategy mentioned above about getting the source to CSS directly from the vendor and compiling it is probably less safe than using OSS, because the CSS vendor will never distribute its software as widely as OSS is distributed, so there will never be as many eyes looking at it. I would agree that catching a trojan due to a many-eyes approach is probabilistic, but more eyes slant the odds in your favor.
Also, a dishonest vendor could give you code with an obfuscated trojan, and give trojan-free code to all its other customers that it didn't feel any need to spy on, with the result that the only eyes actually looking at the trojanized code would be the people on your own staff that you assign to it. Bad odds there, unless you spend a lot of money paying a big staff to read code.
As the world becomes more aware of the risks of spyware and trojanized software, and more aware of the viability of OSS for many uses, institutions that absolutely must have security will start adopting OSS, even without reference to the other benefits of sharing source code. This will probably happen sooner rather than later.
The day we see a shareholder suit against a company that lost its ass due to spyware or trojanware will also be the day we start seeing a mass migration of lower-security sites, too.
In our contract-minded society I'm sure lots of suits will try vendor indemnification rather than OSS,but when you start thinking about the dollar cost you would have to assign to having the TVA 0wned by a hostile party (terrorist, extortionist, prankster with no sense of consequences, etc.), then you'll realize that vendor indemnification would be completly meaningless. Which is why I say that society needs to run its computers on "knowlege" rather than "trust". Hopefully the world's suits and lawmakers will figure this out without having to have a incident to elucidate it for them first.
Just my opinion, as always.
--
> God, this would just be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic.
Actually, it's real simple. SETI@home is closed source. Neither the employee running it nor TVA management has the faintest idea what it really does. Therefore the TVA can reasonably be paranoid about it.
Of course, the same logic applies equally to any other CSS software that they may be running. I think the world at large is slowly maturing to an understanding of the CSS risk, though management types will see it in "toys" like SETI@home before they see it in their precious COTS applications.
--
> They want our CD's to be rendered useless just like all other media formats before.
With all the formulaic guaranteed-to-sell crap they've been putting out lately, sometimes I wonder whether bugs ate the CDs and left poop in their place before they left the warehouse.
--
See this story over at The Reg.
--
> realise it had that actor from Hercules, but thats not enough to qualify it as a spin-off.
Sorry; I meant "spin-off" in the economic sense, not in terms of subject matter. In addition to the actors, it looked like essentially the same production team (even to the score writer).
--
> What I don't understand, is why Microsoft's PR department insists on causing so much controversy.
Because they view it as a life-or-death struggle. (OK, they seem to view everything that way, but they may well be correct this time.)
As many others have pointed out, MS is unlike most other OS vendors in that the OS is their premier product, not something they make so they can sell their expensive hardware. If OSOSes ever replace MSOSes on commodity hardware, MS is toast.
In addition... insert here the oft-repeated explanation that even if OSOSes don't replace MSOSes, MS still has the problem that it requires growth to keep its stock prices up, and OSS is sucking up a big portion of what little uncommitted market still remained to MS for growth.
--
> There's way better stuff on TV.
I enjoyed the "other" Herc spin-off, Jack of all Trades. Kinda corny, but it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately it got terminated before the writers found their stride.
--
> I thought that if any states passed it, companies wishing to use UCITA, they could setup their Corp. HQ in one of these states, and everyone would be screwed...
In the USA, the Federal government reserves the right to regulate interstate commerce, so in principle one state cannot force the effects of this kind of legislation onto the citizens of another.
In practice, they are likely to have a bigger legal fund than you are, so the threat is very real.
OTOH, lots of big companies with big legal funds consume software rather than selling it, so they might be willing to throw in a lawyer or two on "our" side if that issue ever comes up in court.
On the, uhm, third or fourth hand (any Moties reading this?), the big companies that consume software will probably have enough clout with the software vendors to buy their software on a contract with more favorable terms than the UCITA offers, essentially selling the rest of us down the river by striking a deal with the devil (if you'll pardon the saturation of metaphors).
--
> Its adoption is another step toward reversing the earlier equation: now, consumers shall exist to serve business, which shall answer to them only when and as it suits its own interests.
That's why I voted Green in the last election.
I'm not really Green in any deep-dyed sense (though I do recognize that we are quickly converting all our natural resources to garbage in an [almost] closed system, and should give a bit of thought for the future).
But the reason I voted Green was because of the party's ties to consumer interests. Our legislators are going to keep signing off on lobbyist-written legislation until the day some election gives them a scare that they might lose their jobs if they keep on doing it.
(Score -1, Rousing the Rabble) -
I saw the current trend blossoming way back in the '80s, and I still say now what I said then: unbridled corporate power will reduce us to serfdom as surely as the institution of a feudal government would.
It is irony of the finest water that governments sucking up to corporations is now stirring up a new middle-class leftist movement, hardly a decade after the collapse of Soviet communism left many traditional leftist movements without any support.
(Score -1, Nostradamic Pretensions) -
I am beginning to suspect that the next World War will be a Global Civil War, corporate interests vs public interests. The governments of the industrialized nations will generally take the corporatist side, but the governments of many less wealthy nations will nationalize their industries and take the consumerist side, if only to keep from being swallowed up by corporations that are more powerful on the world stage than they are.
Ah, well, there's lots of static on my crystal ball, so maybe things aren't headed in such a dire direction. It should at least be good for the plot of a SF novel, though....
--
First it was Pascal, then all the Unis switched to C, then to C++, now to Java. One cycle is hardly complete before the next one starts; those eager freshpeople getting Java now will discover that it's old hat by the time they graduate, and the wheel will start another turn.
For my money, use something simple like Pascal or C to introduce the basics, and then introduce OOP after a good semester of abstract data types.
Alternatively, do like a lot of schools and use Scheme, so you can teach beginners to 'think' rather than to 'program'.
--
> For one who goes to lengths to bash corporations and greedy managers, this statement sure doesn't make you look like one with much of a backbone. Imagine--a whole career spent at places where you didn't respoect the management. Maybe the safety of a paycheck kept you from leaving a place that was philosophically dissatisfying to you?
Oo ow ouch, that stings!
Oh, wait a minute. I haven't had any managers looking over my shoulder for almost eight years now.
--
> Gartner is very well respected in the industry.
Respected maybe, but clueless all the same. Gartner has a long track record of "predicting" for next year exactly the stats that others found for last year. I haven't seen their secret business methods, but I rather suspect that they just collect whatever stats they can get (which will in general reflect what was happening a year ago), change "stats" to "predictions", and sell it to gullible managers... like you.
> To claim this is biased because Microsoft funded it is absolutely ridiculous.
Or not. MS habitually funds studies with a little string attached, which says "You cannot publish the results of this study without our approval."
That doesn't result in an accurate view of what's going on in the world. In fact, it's essentially identical to the "science" practiced by dishonest or self-deluded paranormal researchers, who publish their result from trials when they get lucky, and ignore the results of unlucky trials on the grounds that "the force wasn't with me today".
This kind of thing makes it really easy for people to justify believing whatever they want to believe... whether they be paranormal researchers or corporate managers.
> When my corporation pays for research, we absolutely do not want them to tell us what we want to hear.
I've worked for a number of corporations, and never once met a manager who wouldn't tune out what he didn't want to hear. Most would only pay for information that furthers their careers; anyone who staked his career on converting his company's Sun boxes to Windows boxes will be more than happy to pay for this particular report.
> W2K IS a serious Enterprise-ready scaleable and reliable OS.
Gosh, I'm down to posting a link to the Hot 100 analysis almost once a week anymore. I'll let you find it yourself this time: go to groups.google.com and search comp.os.linux.advocacy for "hot 100 uptimes", and read what you find. Or do a new analysis yourself, and post your results for us.
> Just because Microsoft commissioned the research does not render it invalid.
Repeating it over and over might make you feel better about the money you wasted on the report, but repeating it will not make it come true.
--
> I can't really see the problem with smart tags.
The specific problem for Microsoft is, how can they get Netscape to insert a tag saying Wouldn't you really rather be using IE for your default browser?
--
> It's the _expectation_ of privacy.
You mean... I can still expect privacy, even if I decide to take down my tin-foil wallpaper?
Cool! Take that, O Black Helicopter Guys.
--
> Despite what these people say, most of the crap that they've been flinging around is just plain baseless. I'll be called a "Microsoft shill" or an "astroturfer", but truth is truth: Microsoft's latest server offerings are extremely secure, scalable, and reliable.
Not to imply that I believe you or anything, but you fit the stereotype to a 't': once MS finally does produce an OS that's stable, scalable, and secure, they'll brag their asses off over finally providing the most rudimentary services that an OS is supposed to provide, and that they should have been providing since day one. They'll probably even claim that they invented those concepts.
--
Yeah, it's a shame that the "liberal elite" insurance industry doesn't support the "conservative just-plain-folk" at Microsoft.
--
> It is a mistake for a large part of the community to rely on one site for this sort of thing.
I guess I agree. Sourceforge is a wonderful idea and a generous service to our community, but the community evolved in a decentralized environment, and I'm not sure centralization is the way forward.
Of course, I don't think SourceForge was intended to be a centralization move. By all accounts they were somewhat surprised at the uptake on it.
> I run my own CVS server, and am about to pay a small amount ($10/m) for an ISP to host my hobbyist code. Granted, it doesn't have all the features of sourceforge, but I don't mind.
If enough people do that, a featureful system might well evolve for it. There's lots of free support code floating around, which a talented and dedicated party could probably forge into a nifty kit for small-site developer projects like yours.
--