The behavior of the department of homeland security is utterly predictable; it is exactly the behavior of wildebeests. Rather than do something about the lions, wildebeest bulls push the herd around. All of our current 'security' is based on looking suspiciously at all of the wildebeests to make sure that they aren't lions is disguise; one could scarcely come up with more idiotic behavior.
Animal herds respond to pressure - not to vacuum - as a result herds stampede away from danger. If herds stampeded as a response to 'vacuum' then it would follow attacking bulls and trample predators - instead of running from them. That simple change would be the end of the lions who are built to attack the spine of a fleeing animal - not respond to the charging attacks of raging bulls.
What prevents the United States from charging? The answer is 'Political Correctness'. I will tell you how to forever end 'Political Correctness' as a force.. Simply invite all of the politically correct college professors to the local high schools to give a lecture to the student body on political correctness. Before the professors can start speaking the high school football team goes on stage and drags the professors into the nearest girls bathroom and starts dunking the professors' heads in the toilets while the cheerleaders all stand around laughing at them. This would expose "Political Correctness' for what it really is; a bunch of passive aggressive weenies who are trying to make people feel bad.
The fact that 'Political Correctness' wouldn't survive the 'dunk' test makes the physical demonstration unnecessary; the movement collapses from its own internal weakness and corruption. Passive aggression is just pathetic behavior to try basing anything on.
Even Ghandi's form of passive aggression can't survive the girls bathroom treatment. By the way - how many of you knew Ghandi was islamic? Kind of changes your view of what he had to say doesn't it? It is one thing when a 'rabbit' tells you to adopt the posture of never fighting back - he does so from a position of courage - it is something entirely different when it is a 'crocodile' telling you to never fight back; one has to suspect the latter of having a rather obvious agenda.
I have long listened to the argument that a business man deserves the greatest share because he is the one taking the risks.
OK. Exactly what risks is he taking? Well, if things go wrong he will lose everything he has got and wind up having to work for someone else. It is true that is not a risk his employees take; but only because they are already on the down side of that situation.
It has been my observation that it is a very difficult task to make money honestly in a business. Because it is very difficult only the very best in a given field are ever able to do so. Most people who are successful at running a business do so by stealing from someone. If they steal from the government they risk prison, if they steal from their customers they risk losing them (1), if they steal from their suppliers they risk being cut off from the material they need to stay in business. About the only remaining avenue is to steal from employees; this seems to be a universally accepted way of doing business. The fact that the vast majority of businesses do steal from employees is the main way that most business stay solvent.
If stealing from employees were eliminated from business only the very best companies in a given field would remain. The huge numbers of incompetent people who would find themselves unemployed would probably trigger a massive depression.
Because of this we maintain the fiction that people are paid what they are worth in a free market economy. The truth is that people are paid as little as the businesses figure they can get away with.
If you were to eliminate the greed angle - so that business owners didn't make substantially more than employees for the same amount of work - very few people would ever start a business; the greatly increased responsibility and pressure of running a business compared to being an employee would ensure that was so.
(1) Yes I know that Microsoft has been eminently successful in stealing from their customers: $299 for a product that costs them under a dollar to produce qualifies as theft in my book. However people are slowly starting to catch on to them. Oh, by the way please don't give me the corporate line about how much it costs to write Microsoft XXX product in the first place; Microsoft net profits (after every accounting trick in the book to lower them) are in the 40% of gross sales range - it typically costs MS more to advertise a product than it ever cost them to write it. The actual costs of writing software are so low that it is possible to write a major operating system using the programmers' donated spare time. Come to think of it Microsoft steals from the government also; last year they paid not one thin dime if federal corporate income taxes. They also steal from their shareholders, since contrary to federal law they don't distribute any of their massive profits in the form of dividends.
The the only movie I can remember with a robot tattooing someone is "Starship Trooper" - any other examples?
A failure to understand
on
More on Longhorn
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Everybody out there is missing the big picture; Bill Gates' goal. What Bill Gates wants is to force everyone to change the rules; he wants to be the Wilt Chamberlain of the business world. To Wilt Chamberlain the proof of his own superiority was that he forced basketball to change its rules - he was so overwhelming that he left a permanent mark on the game.
Bill Gates wants to force everyone to change the rules to deal with him and his company. Being the richest man who ever lived is not enough - like Montgomery Burns he'd "give it all up for just a little more". The little more that he wants is to be so oppressive and intrusive a part of people's lives that they are forced to change the law forever to control what he has done. He has already proven that existing monopoly laws are insufficient to keep him from doing as he pleases.
He wants to be able to answer a tech call and say: "This is Bill Gates speaking; bark like a dog - or I'll cut off your computing forever. Bark... That's a good boy." 'Trusted computing' is the last gear in the machine to allow him to do that. With trusted computing he will be able to shut down anyone at anytime; after all what power has trusted computing got except to break the machine and thus force the user to do exactly what the operating system designers want them to do? If that includes wearing a Microsoft dog collar that ties them to a particular computer - so be it.
All Microsoft is doing is running a bluff. Companies do this sort of thing all the time. For example when they give you an employment contract to sign they don't tell you that you can change the contract; they try to bluff you into signing it as it is.
If the companies back down Microsoft wins. If they go to court Microsoft will eventually fold - but only after it costs the other company a lot of money. Most companies fold because they can't afford the monetary hit; even though Microsoft hasn't got a legal leg to stand on, and has lost in court every time they have tried to enforce a trademark on the word "windows".
Guess what? Not everything in life is fair. Microsoft's behavior - if you don't recognize it - is exactly that of a school yard bully. They figure they can get away with it, and so far no court has been willing to give them a bloody enough nose to get them to stop.
For any individual viewer observing the Meteor Shower is a safe event; the risk of damage from a meteor is much lower than the chance of being eaten by a bear during the same time frame.
However - for the Earth as a whole that is not true. If one of the meteors which broke off the comet is only 50 or 60 meters in diameter the result would be an impact similar to Tunguska in the last century; a 20 to 30 megaton blast capable of destroying a city and killing millions.
The chance that we will lose a city somewhere on earth to an impact event during this century is about one in five.
Here are the two fundamental problems of computer science:
Bad programmers write bad code.
There are many more bad programmers than good programmers.
Programming is a bit like chess; you can't point to anything specific that a bad chess player does wrong. It is not that a bad chess player moves his pieces incorrectly - bad players are constrained by the same rules of the game that good players are; a bishop stays on its color for both the good and bad players. The only difference between good and bad players is that poor players make poor choices of moves.
In a similar fashion poor programmers use the same tools as good programmers - they both get their programs to compile and run - but poor programmers just make poor programming choices.
Here is an example of something which poor programmers don't seem to get. When you put a nice shiny new paint job on a layer of crap - it might look ok - but it is still a layer of crap.
That simple observation explains why Microsoft's operating systems stink.
By far - the most important thing for geeks to know about the law is: that the law is not something that geeks understand; the law is something that geeks think they understand.
What I mean by that is this: if technical people agree on a set of rules or protocols - that is the way things are - virtually without exception. If a program fails to abide by a protocol - it generally won't work.
The law looks similar and so we think we understand what is going on; we are wrong.
The law is nothing of the kind; the law is quite literally what ever a clever lawyer can talk a judge or jury into believing at that given moment. As such it has a malleable quality quite unacceptable to anyone who has the ability to think honestly.
Imagine the chaos that would rule in the technical world if clueless pointy hair bosses controlled - from minute to minute - based purely on whim - what protocols meant. That is an accurate description of the situation in the legal world.
The law is a system constructed by weasel brains for the benefit of weasel brains and nothing else. Of course the weasel brains realize that if the thinkers ever catch on to what is happening to them - that the game is over. Because of that the weasels go to great lengths to insure that no one who is honest and intelligent ever looks too closely and critically at the basic design and structure of the law. The law is designed so that if the technically sharp study it that they will be so surrounded by trees that they will never notice the shape of the forrest.
If this causes you realize that the law is, in fact,nothing but a gigantic fraud of the first magnitude - then you have begun to understand what is going on in the world.
The law - a real time operating system for life critical functions - consisting of billions of lines of code - not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
Switching to a new processor almost put Apple out of business. They had to run in place for years to get back to where they had been with the 68K series. Why do you think Apple was in so much trouble before Jobs rejoined them?
Only with the most recent series of Operating Systems is Apple actually ahead of where it was with the 68K, It could have done OS X years ago if they hadn't had to struggle to catch up to where they were.
The law doesn't work like that. What a lawyer will do is give you legal advice. That advice may or may not stand up in court.
People in technical fields seem to think that the law is a black and white list of rules like engineers might write down and other engineers might use. The law is not like that. The law is whatever a lawyer can sell to a judge or jury at a particular moment. The quality of the lawyers in a given case is much more important to the outcome of the case than whatever it is that the law says; if you have the law and a bad lawyer on your side you are probably going to lose.
A court room is a fight, and fights are generally won by the best fighters - not necessarily by the side that is in the right. Because of this it is very easy to be on the side that is in the right and lose.
The definition of stupidity is doing something just because you can, and for no other reason.
Evidently these people don't understand the difference between 'could' and 'should'.
Since these ethical idiots have now demonstrated that building an artificial virus is possible it is only a matter of time before someone (since the gnome is available) rebuilds a small pox virus and lets that loose on the world.
So what you are saying is that Linux is like trying to have a relationship with a woman while Windows is more like having a relationship with a lifesize cardboard cut out of a woman?
Things are difficult in the unix world for all the same reasons that things are difficult in life: there is a tremendous amount going on, and no one can learn all of it. Why do unix programs have different installs and methods of operation? For all the same reasons that people have quirks and personalities; an engineer differs from a secretary in mind set - they operate differently. You wouldn't expect to talk to them the same way would you?
Suppose we tried to set up life so that it was consistent the way Windows is, can you see how inefficient and lifeless existence would quickly get to be if you spoke to everyone the same way?
"I see by your name tag that you are Betty Smith. My name is Bob Smith. My wife's name is Betty Smith, are you my wife? How are you today? Good, I just wanted to tell you that the house is on fire."
Once you realize that programs have 'personalities' - like people do - the 'differing interface' problem in computer software vanishes.You learn to how to handle the issue without even thinking about it.
Sorry I didn't read this yesterday but I was out doing more important things.
I spend less time fighting with the operating system with Linux than I did when I ran Windows; I am more productive with Linux than Windows. How can anybody claim that there is a time cost which is some how greater in Linux? English translation: you sir, are a blithering Idiot.
Here is a more accurate statement of reality: "Windows is costly only if you are trying to do something important."
And by the way I have given code away to public domain also
You are a paid shill planted by Microsoft in this newsgroup to spread Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - which is literally the only thing which Microsoft has left to offer anyone. Since you believe nothing that you say - the entire Microsoft organization from top to bottom is full of people who lie so habitually that they will knowingly fabricate evidence for use under oath in a court of law; there is little point in saying anything else to you.
I'll try to explain what it is that other people are seeing that causes them to have a different perspective than you have got.
I have long heard the argument that the reason that owners get to keep the majority of the money in a company is that they are taking all of the risks - so that they get to keep the rewards.
But what exactly is the risk that a business owner takes? The answer is: if things don't work out he will wind up as poor as his employees and have to go to work for somebody else. That is not a risk for an employee - that is an iron clad guarantee!
The thousands of employees at Microsoft who did all of the actual work of creating the code are not together worth as much as Bill Gates. People who think that is OK - do so because they have greed and larceny in their hearts; they want to be able to steal from their employees the way that Gates and millions of others have stolen from theirs. When your highest morality is "I can get away with it" you will create a structure that lets you get away with it. Heaven forbid that you should treat your employees ethically.
In a sense the people who write software know that their time is practically worthless - so some of us have decided to become software philanthropists and give our code away - we really have little to lose in doing so; the 'Bill Gates' of the world are going to replace us with hordes of cheap programmers from third world countries in any case.
Mostly we give our code away because we love programming, and we want good software to always be available, but a small part of our motivation is malicious: in response to the way that we have been treated we want to say to the 'Bill Gates' of the world "You want to treat us like dirt? Fine, asshole, try competing with something that costs nothing."
Do you now understand why we might find it objectionable to see business men trying to exploit programmers work by something like 'per seat licensing'?
Did Geos kick Window's ass? Oh yes, Geos was written in 8086 assembler - it was much tighter and faster than Windows, and a total embarrassment to Microsoft. Even had Geos released the API it would have been out of reach of most developers - professional or otherwise; most programmers can't write applications in assembly. Because of the 640 K non protected mode limit on OS and applications, the programs would have needed to be either very elementary or written in assembly to fit. (It would have been possible to do something with LIM memory to have paged non running programs out to additional memory the way Lotus paged out sections of 123.)
At the time Geos was started it was a good idea; there were many 808X computers in use that did not have protected mode available so there was a much bigger market for a Geos type system than for something which used protected mode. By the time it hit the market the situation had changed: many people had 286's or better with protected mode capabilities.
Windows existed as a non protected mode version before 3.0 but it was a useless flop. It wasn't until a (286) protected mode version of Windows was made that it became successful.
Remember that a protected mode operating system from Microsoft had existed for a considerable period of time: OS/2. The main reason that OS/2 didn't win is that its DOS computability was very poor, and that few people had written apps for the GUI; so the perception of the public was that you couldn't do much with it. Microsoft created the perception in the minds of the public that Windows had better DOS computability and that there were more programs for Windows.
Inside of Microsoft everybody knew the reality: which was that OS/2 was far superior to Windows as an operating system - after all Microsoft had written most of OS/2. With Windows, Microsoft saw a chance to cut IBM off at the knees; which they did. Had people's perceptions come closer to reality Windows would have been dismissed as a poor joke and OS/2 would have won the day.
Microsoft knows from experience (reinforced with W95 vs OS/2 Warp) that inferior products can win in the market place as long as the public doesn't know that they are inferior. Microsoft knows that no matter how good any variant of Linux actually is as long as people perceive that Windows is better that they are home free. For example Red Hat is easier to install than Windows - but most people don't know that because they don't install Windows.
When your perceptions match reality it is difficult to see the world from the perspective of the vast majority of humanity - who live in the reality distortion field which caused by a lack of understanding.
The Linux community is faced with a fundamental problem: the difficulty of raising the educational level of the masses to a sufficient level that they can understand the reality of Linux vs Microsoft; as Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated a plausible lie is a much easier sell than an implausible truth.
I had my first experience with a computer in 1966 - before most people here on Slashdot were born. The machine was an IBM 360 and the 'user interface' was a card punch - you handed the deck of cards to an operator when you were done creating them.
In the many years of using computers since I have arrived at one conclusion; for me the most important thing about interfacing with a machine is minimizing the amount of 'wrestling with the machine' which I have to do in order to accomplish my task.
I'll show you what I mean by 'wrestling with the computer'. Suppose that I want to copy all of the emails that I have in my nsmail directory to a cd for archive purposes. I type 'burncd nsmail' to start the process from the command line in Linux. (burncd is a wrapper I have put around the 'mkisofs' and 'cdrecord' command line programs which presuppose them with the correct options for my system.)
Contrast that with using a cd burning program from a GUI:
First find the program in the start menu and select it.
Wait for the program to load.
Pull down File menu - select open.
Find the directory I want to copy in the tree structure. Select the directory with the mouse.
Select the type of cd I want to burn.
Etc.
I am going to stop the GUI example here; real GUI cdburning programs are far more complex than I want to write about. The few that I have used make the process of burning a cd quite a lengthy and complex process from the users point of view. I don't want to wave a mouse around pointing and clicking for 30 seconds; I want to burn a damn CD!
The amount of time and effort that it takes to get the computer to do what I want it to do is what I mean by 'wrestling with the computer'.
There are times when a GUI is the way to go: I would hate to try doing a PC board layout from a command line. It is easier to move chips around with a mouse than to type 'move U1.03 inches to the right'.
Minimum work on my part - maximum output from the computer is what is important to me as an experienced user. I want the computer to do as much work as possible - I want to do as little as possible.
Computers are the intellectual equivalent of a fork lift; they allow me to handle far heavier intellectual tasks than I would be able to do without one. The problem with a fork lift is that you have to know what you want to pick up and move. The same is true of a computer; if you don't know what you want to do - you can't do it.
A fork lift is a dangerous machine because it will happily amplify the strength of a fool. In a similar fashion a fool with a computer can do tremendous damage in the intellectual world. An interface which puts obstacles in the paths of fools - while letting people - who know what they are doing - quickly and easily accomplish their tasks is ideal. In a very real sense that is what I like about unix; it doesn't impede me - but it keeps the people who don't know what they are doing from being able to do too much harm.
That is absolutely true - I don't have a right to bitch about anything I can do something about - neither does anyone else, and I don't bitch about things like medical care - period.
The article was a series of complaints about the design and implementation of an open source piece of code. My point is that unless you are a coder you don't have any business complaining about it.
I am an open source coder - I have contributed several thousand lines of GPL software; that contribution gives me a right to say something on the subject. If you haven't written open source code - and the author of this article evidently hasn't - you don't have any right to be critical.
People seem to think that they have a right to be critical of anything at anytime, they don't, and it is time they were told so.
Children function by attempting to manipulate adults - since children have nothing and adults do - they try to be clever and get things from the adults who have earned them. We as adults know this, and I did it when I was young - but not for very long. Maturity cones when you quit trying to manipulate people and start earning your own way.
By the way - coding around a problem is the way to get people to accept your solution.
To the clueless moderator who marked my original post 'flamebait' - that was not an attempt to draw flames - that was a lecture for a bunch of people who need to think about what they are doing.
I don't want to hear one word from anyone who isn't an open source contributor - your opinions on the subject are of zero value to anyone.
Something obvious
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Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
RPM itself is freeware.
Bitching about freeware is in very poor taste. People can bitch about the way Microsoft does things because they can't do anything about it. However, people have no moral right to bitch about any freeware; they have the source code - they can fix the problems themselves.
Doubtless some people will say: "But I don't have the skill"; to which I can only reply: Boo Hoo.
You forfeit the moral right to bitch because you have chosen not to do the work to fix the problem.
Fixing software problems is not easy for anyone.
Grow up. Quit trying to manipulate people who are willing to do the work. Join in yourself. Get your hands dirty, and see how much you enjoy listening to slackers bitching about your work.
As another poster pointed out the Federal whistle blower act covers only Federal authorities - I was covered by my state whistle blower act. Sorry- I had forgotten that.
While most people don't realize it there is more than an ethical problem here; there is a legal one. Assuming that an administrator works in the U.S. here is the legal situation:
Anyone who has knowledge of a Federal Felony in the U.S. is required by law to report it to the proper law enforcement authorities ( U.S. Attorney, FBI etc.). Failure to do so makes that person an indictable co-conspirator.
Computer break-ins and credit card theft are Federal Felonies; if 'Dana' is in the U.S. he has no choice but to report or become a criminal himself.
Federal whistle blower statutes apply once something has been reported to the legal authorities but not before; Dana could be fired now - but not once he reports the theft and invokes the whistle blower act.
Found out about this from some federal agents and attorneys I work out with after some bad personal experiences with a company.
I suggest that 'Dana' talk to an attorney and make a decision about how good his information is. Like Spider Man ignoring the theft of the gate receipts - a failure to act can come back to bite you; how does he know that this theft was not an Al-Qaeda action?
The Boeing design was known as "Monica" after Lewinsky. The Air Force was not to happy with the way it looked. The better design, in my opinion, won the competition.
The Lockheed plane can fly nose down at speeds as low as 20 Knots (for strafing) - while being able to run away from an F-15 on the top end. It has the radar profile of a bird. The plane is unlike anything that has ever flown before. It can cruise at supersonic speeds without afterburners. The Marine Corps version can take off vertically - go supersonic - then land vertically at the end of the mission. It is a better air superiority fighter than anything we have in service now - while being a better ground support plane than an A-10 Warthog. Computerized control is what makes all of that possible.
This will probably be the last manned fighter that the U.S. builds. Drones are cheaper, don't put a pilot at risk, and can make more violent maneuvers than any manned airplane - eventually they'll take over the air.
The series of unmanned fighting aircraft that Boeing is developing can be thought of as reusable cruise missiles; instead of crashing into their targets they drop bombs and return for another mission.
If Microsoft really wanted to sabotage Linux they would port Outlook to Linux - except that none of the distributions would have it on their disks and the Linux community would roar in anger if they did.
The reason that we don't have horrible design decisions in Linux like exist in Outlook is that Linux programs are designed by the people who write them - while programs like Outlook get features grafted onto them by clueless managers who couldn't write the programs if their lives depended on it.
The open source model tends to protect the code by the simple barrier of the requisite skill level needed to produce open source code; open source code effectively can't be produced by dumb asses.
Suppose we ask ZDnet some inconvenient questions, and see how much they start squirming:
Who is ZDnet's source on the story?
Did the think tank leak the results of their own study?
Did the information for this story come from Microsoft - who already knew the results before they were published because they bought and paid for them?
What exactly qualifies the people at the think tank to have an opinion on computer security?
Does the think tank have a history of expertise in the field of computer security?
Are any of the people involved in the report even computer programmers?
This story just might wind up biting Microsoft in the ass; if the rest of the sharks in the press start smelling blood in the water.
Slashdot Mirror
The behavior of the department of homeland security is utterly predictable; it is exactly the behavior of wildebeests. Rather than do something about the lions, wildebeest bulls push the herd around. All of our current 'security' is based on looking suspiciously at all of the wildebeests to make sure that they aren't lions is disguise; one could scarcely come up with more idiotic behavior.
Animal herds respond to pressure - not to vacuum - as a result herds stampede away from danger. If herds stampeded as a response to 'vacuum' then it would follow attacking bulls and trample predators - instead of running from them. That simple change would be the end of the lions who are built to attack the spine of a fleeing animal - not respond to the charging attacks of raging bulls.
What prevents the United States from charging? The answer is 'Political Correctness'. I will tell you how to forever end 'Political Correctness' as a force.. Simply invite all of the politically correct college professors to the local high schools to give a lecture to the student body on political correctness. Before the professors can start speaking the high school football team goes on stage and drags the professors into the nearest girls bathroom and starts dunking the professors' heads in the toilets while the cheerleaders all stand around laughing at them. This would expose "Political Correctness' for what it really is; a bunch of passive aggressive weenies who are trying to make people feel bad.
The fact that 'Political Correctness' wouldn't survive the 'dunk' test makes the physical demonstration unnecessary; the movement collapses from its own internal weakness and corruption. Passive aggression is just pathetic behavior to try basing anything on.
Even Ghandi's form of passive aggression can't survive the girls bathroom treatment. By the way - how many of you knew Ghandi was islamic? Kind of changes your view of what he had to say doesn't it? It is one thing when a 'rabbit' tells you to adopt the posture of never fighting back - he does so from a position of courage - it is something entirely different when it is a 'crocodile' telling you to never fight back; one has to suspect the latter of having a rather obvious agenda.
I have long listened to the argument that a business man deserves the greatest share because he is the one taking the risks.
OK. Exactly what risks is he taking? Well, if things go wrong he will lose everything he has got and wind up having to work for someone else. It is true that is not a risk his employees take; but only because they are already on the down side of that situation.
It has been my observation that it is a very difficult task to make money honestly in a business. Because it is very difficult only the very best in a given field are ever able to do so. Most people who are successful at running a business do so by stealing from someone. If they steal from the government they risk prison, if they steal from their customers they risk losing them (1), if they steal from their suppliers they risk being cut off from the material they need to stay in business. About the only remaining avenue is to steal from employees; this seems to be a universally accepted way of doing business. The fact that the vast majority of businesses do steal from employees is the main way that most business stay solvent.
If stealing from employees were eliminated from business only the very best companies in a given field would remain. The huge numbers of incompetent people who would find themselves unemployed would probably trigger a massive depression.
Because of this we maintain the fiction that people are paid what they are worth in a free market economy. The truth is that people are paid as little as the businesses figure they can get away with.
If you were to eliminate the greed angle - so that business owners didn't make substantially more than employees for the same amount of work - very few people would ever start a business; the greatly increased responsibility and pressure of running a business compared to being an employee would ensure that was so.
(1) Yes I know that Microsoft has been eminently successful in stealing from their customers: $299 for a product that costs them under a dollar to produce qualifies as theft in my book. However people are slowly starting to catch on to them. Oh, by the way please don't give me the corporate line about how much it costs to write Microsoft XXX product in the first place; Microsoft net profits (after every accounting trick in the book to lower them) are in the 40% of gross sales range - it typically costs MS more to advertise a product than it ever cost them to write it. The actual costs of writing software are so low that it is possible to write a major operating system using the programmers' donated spare time. Come to think of it Microsoft steals from the government also; last year they paid not one thin dime if federal corporate income taxes. They also steal from their shareholders, since contrary to federal law they don't distribute any of their massive profits in the form of dividends.
The the only movie I can remember with a robot tattooing someone is "Starship Trooper" - any other examples?
Everybody out there is missing the big picture; Bill Gates' goal. What Bill Gates wants is to force everyone to change the rules; he wants to be the Wilt Chamberlain of the business world. To Wilt Chamberlain the proof of his own superiority was that he forced basketball to change its rules - he was so overwhelming that he left a permanent mark on the game.
Bill Gates wants to force everyone to change the rules to deal with him and his company. Being the richest man who ever lived is not enough - like Montgomery Burns he'd "give it all up for just a little more". The little more that he wants is to be so oppressive and intrusive a part of people's lives that they are forced to change the law forever to control what he has done. He has already proven that existing monopoly laws are insufficient to keep him from doing as he pleases.
He wants to be able to answer a tech call and say: "This is Bill Gates speaking; bark like a dog - or I'll cut off your computing forever. Bark... That's a good boy." 'Trusted computing' is the last gear in the machine to allow him to do that. With trusted computing he will be able to shut down anyone at anytime; after all what power has trusted computing got except to break the machine and thus force the user to do exactly what the operating system designers want them to do? If that includes wearing a Microsoft dog collar that ties them to a particular computer - so be it.
All Microsoft is doing is running a bluff. Companies do this sort of thing all the time. For example when they give you an employment contract to sign they don't tell you that you can change the contract; they try to bluff you into signing it as it is.
If the companies back down Microsoft wins. If they go to court Microsoft will eventually fold - but only after it costs the other company a lot of money. Most companies fold because they can't afford the monetary hit; even though Microsoft hasn't got a legal leg to stand on, and has lost in court every time they have tried to enforce a trademark on the word "windows".
Guess what? Not everything in life is fair. Microsoft's behavior - if you don't recognize it - is exactly that of a school yard bully. They figure they can get away with it, and so far no court has been willing to give them a bloody enough nose to get them to stop.
For any individual viewer observing the Meteor Shower is a safe event; the risk of damage from a meteor is much lower than the chance of being eaten by a bear during the same time frame.
However - for the Earth as a whole that is not true. If one of the meteors which broke off the comet is only 50 or 60 meters in diameter the result would be an impact similar to Tunguska in the last century; a 20 to 30 megaton blast capable of destroying a city and killing millions.
The chance that we will lose a city somewhere on earth to an impact event during this century is about one in five.
Of course since Slashdot accepts advertising revenue that would mean that this site is using text and graphics for commerce - so pay up guys.
Programming is a bit like chess; you can't point to anything specific that a bad chess player
does wrong. It is not that a bad chess player moves his pieces incorrectly - bad players are constrained by the same rules of the game that good players are; a bishop stays on its color for both the good and bad players. The only difference between good and bad players is that poor players make poor choices of moves.
In a similar fashion poor programmers use the same tools as good programmers - they both get their programs to compile and run - but poor programmers just make poor programming choices.
Here is an example of something which poor programmers don't seem to get. When you put a nice shiny new paint job on a layer of crap - it might look ok - but it is still a layer of crap.
That simple observation explains why Microsoft's operating systems stink.
By far - the most important thing for geeks to know about the law is: that the law is not something that geeks understand; the law is something that geeks think they understand.
What I mean by that is this: if technical people agree on a set of rules or protocols - that is the way things are - virtually without exception. If a program fails to abide by a protocol - it generally won't work.
The law looks similar and so we think we understand what is going on; we are wrong.
The law is nothing of the kind; the law is quite literally what ever a clever lawyer can talk a judge or jury into believing at that given moment. As such it has a malleable quality quite unacceptable to anyone who has the ability to think honestly.
Imagine the chaos that would rule in the technical world if clueless pointy hair bosses controlled - from minute to minute - based purely on whim - what protocols meant. That is an accurate description of the situation in the legal world.
The law is a system constructed by weasel brains for the benefit of weasel brains and nothing else. Of course the weasel brains realize that if the thinkers ever catch on to what is happening to them - that the game is over. Because of that the weasels go to great lengths to insure that no one who is honest and intelligent ever looks too closely and critically at the basic design and structure of the law. The law is designed so that if the technically sharp study it that they will be so surrounded by trees that they will never notice the shape of the forrest.
If this causes you realize that the law is, in fact,nothing but a gigantic fraud of the first magnitude - then you have begun to understand what is going on in the world.
The law - a real time operating system for life critical functions - consisting of billions of lines of code - not one line of which has ever been tested to see if it works.
Switching to a new processor almost put Apple out of business. They had to run in place for years to get back to where they had been with the 68K series. Why do you think Apple was in so much trouble before Jobs rejoined them?
Only with the most recent series of Operating Systems is Apple actually ahead of where it was with the 68K, It could have done OS X years ago if they hadn't had to struggle to catch up to where they were.
Switching instruction sets is a big deal.
The law doesn't work like that. What a lawyer will do is give you legal advice. That advice may or may not stand up in court.
People in technical fields seem to think that the law is a black and white list of rules like engineers might write down and other engineers might use. The law is not like that. The law is whatever a lawyer can sell to a judge or jury at a particular moment. The quality of the lawyers in a given case is much more important to the outcome of the case than whatever it is that the law says; if you have the law and a bad lawyer on your side you are probably going to lose.
A court room is a fight, and fights are generally won by the best fighters - not necessarily by the side that is in the right. Because of this it is very easy to be on the side that is in the right and lose.
The definition of stupidity is doing something just because you can, and for no other reason.
Evidently these people don't understand the difference between 'could' and 'should'.
Since these ethical idiots have now demonstrated that building an artificial virus is possible it is only a matter of time before someone (since the gnome is available) rebuilds a small pox virus and lets that loose on the world.
So what you are saying is that Linux is like trying to have a relationship with a woman while Windows is more like having a relationship with a lifesize cardboard cut out of a woman?
Things are difficult in the unix world for all the same reasons that things are difficult in life: there is a tremendous amount going on, and no one can learn all of it. Why do unix programs have different installs and methods of operation? For all the same reasons that people have quirks and personalities; an engineer differs from a secretary in mind set - they operate differently. You wouldn't expect to talk to them the same way would you?
Suppose we tried to set up life so that it was consistent the way Windows is, can you see how inefficient and lifeless existence would quickly get to be if you spoke to everyone the same way?
"I see by your name tag that you are Betty Smith. My name is Bob Smith. My wife's name is Betty Smith, are you my wife? How are you today? Good, I just wanted to tell you that the house is on fire."
Once you realize that programs have 'personalities' - like people do - the 'differing interface' problem in computer software vanishes.You learn to how to handle the issue without even thinking about it.
Sorry I didn't read this yesterday but I was out doing more important things.
I spend less time fighting with the operating system with Linux than I did when I ran Windows; I am more productive with Linux than Windows. How can anybody claim that there is a time cost which is some how greater in Linux? English translation: you sir, are a blithering Idiot.
Here is a more accurate statement of reality: "Windows is costly only if you are trying to do something important."
And by the way I have given code away to public domain also
You are a paid shill planted by Microsoft in this newsgroup to spread Fear Uncertainty and Doubt - which is literally the only thing which Microsoft has left to offer anyone. Since you believe nothing that you say - the entire Microsoft organization from top to bottom is full of people who lie so habitually that they will knowingly fabricate evidence for use under oath in a court of law; there is little point in saying anything else to you.
I'll try to explain what it is that other people are seeing that causes them to have a different perspective than you have got.
I have long heard the argument that the reason that owners get to keep the majority of the money in a company is that they are taking all of the risks - so that they get to keep the rewards.
But what exactly is the risk that a business owner takes? The answer is: if things don't work out he will wind up as poor as his employees and have to go to work for somebody else. That is not a risk for an employee - that is an iron clad guarantee!
The thousands of employees at Microsoft who did all of the actual work of creating the code are not together worth as much as Bill Gates. People who think that is OK - do so because they have greed and larceny in their hearts; they want to be able to steal from their employees the way that Gates and millions of others have stolen from theirs. When your highest morality is "I can get away with it" you will create a structure that lets you get away with it. Heaven forbid that you should treat your employees ethically.
In a sense the people who write software know that their time is practically worthless - so some of us have decided to become software philanthropists and give our code away - we really have little to lose in doing so; the 'Bill Gates' of the world are going to replace us with hordes of cheap programmers from third world countries in any case.
Mostly we give our code away because we love programming, and we want good software to always be available, but a small part of our motivation is malicious: in response to the way that we have been treated we want to say to the 'Bill Gates' of the world "You want to treat us like dirt? Fine, asshole, try competing with something that costs nothing."
Do you now understand why we might find it objectionable to see business men trying to exploit programmers work by something like 'per seat licensing'?
Did Geos kick Window's ass? Oh yes, Geos was written in 8086 assembler - it was much tighter and faster than Windows, and a total embarrassment to Microsoft. Even had Geos released the API it would have been out of reach of most developers - professional or otherwise; most programmers can't write applications in assembly. Because of the 640 K non protected mode limit on OS and applications, the programs would have needed to be either very elementary or written in assembly to fit. (It would have been possible to do something with LIM memory to have paged non running programs out to additional memory the way Lotus paged out sections of 123.)
At the time Geos was started it was a good idea; there were many 808X computers in use that did not have protected mode available so there was a much bigger market for a Geos type system than for something which used protected mode. By the time it hit the market the situation had changed: many people had 286's or better with protected mode capabilities.
Windows existed as a non protected mode version before 3.0 but it was a useless flop. It wasn't until a (286) protected mode version of Windows was made that it became successful.
Remember that a protected mode operating system from Microsoft had existed for a considerable period of time: OS/2. The main reason that OS/2 didn't win is that its DOS computability was very poor, and that few people had written apps for the GUI; so the perception of the public was that you couldn't do much with it. Microsoft created the perception in the minds of the public that Windows had better DOS computability and that there were more programs for Windows.
Inside of Microsoft everybody knew the reality: which was that OS/2 was far superior to Windows as an operating system - after all Microsoft had written most of OS/2. With Windows, Microsoft saw a chance to cut IBM off at the knees; which they did. Had people's perceptions come closer to reality Windows would have been dismissed as a poor joke and OS/2 would have won the day.
Microsoft knows from experience (reinforced with W95 vs OS/2 Warp) that inferior products can win in the market place as long as the public doesn't know that they are inferior. Microsoft knows that no matter how good any variant of Linux actually is as long as people perceive that Windows is better that they are home free. For example Red Hat is easier to install than Windows - but most people don't know that because they don't install Windows.
When your perceptions match reality it is difficult to see the world from the perspective of the vast majority of humanity - who live in the reality distortion field which caused by a lack of understanding.
The Linux community is faced with a fundamental problem: the difficulty of raising the educational level of the masses to a sufficient level that they can understand the reality of Linux vs Microsoft; as Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated a plausible lie is a much easier sell than an implausible truth.
Uh guys, the MS in MSNBC stands for Microsoft - of course they are going to say "Linux has failed" what do you expect?
In the many years of using computers since I have arrived at one conclusion; for me the most important thing about interfacing with a machine is minimizing the amount of 'wrestling with the machine' which I have to do in order to accomplish my task.
I'll show you what I mean by 'wrestling with the computer'. Suppose that I want to copy all of the emails that I have in my nsmail directory to a cd for archive purposes. I type 'burncd nsmail' to start the process from the command line in Linux. (burncd is a wrapper I have put around the 'mkisofs' and 'cdrecord' command line programs which presuppose them with the correct options for my system.)
Contrast that with using a cd burning program from a GUI:
I am going to stop the GUI example here; real GUI cdburning programs are far more complex than I want to write about. The few that I have used make the process of burning a cd quite a lengthy and complex process from the users point of view. I don't want to wave a mouse around pointing and clicking for 30 seconds; I want to burn a damn CD!
The amount of time and effort that it takes to get the computer to do what I want it to do is what I mean by 'wrestling with the computer'.
There are times when a GUI is the way to go: I would hate to try doing a PC board layout from a command line. It is easier to move chips around with a mouse than to type 'move U1
Minimum work on my part - maximum output from the computer is what is important to me as an experienced user. I want the computer to do as much work as possible - I want to do as little as possible.
Computers are the intellectual equivalent of a fork lift; they allow me to handle far heavier intellectual tasks than I would be able to do without one. The problem with a fork lift is that you have to know what you want to pick up and move. The same is true of a computer; if you don't know what you want to do - you can't do it.
A fork lift is a dangerous machine because it will happily amplify the strength of a fool. In a similar fashion a fool with a computer can do tremendous damage in the intellectual world. An interface which puts obstacles in the paths of fools - while letting people - who know what they are doing - quickly and easily accomplish their tasks is ideal. In a very real sense that is what I like about unix; it doesn't impede me - but it keeps the people who don't know what they are doing from being able to do too much harm.
That is absolutely true - I don't have a right to bitch about anything I can do something about - neither does anyone else, and I don't bitch about things like medical care - period.
The article was a series of complaints about the design and implementation of an open source piece of code. My point is that unless you are a coder you don't have any business complaining about it.
I am an open source coder - I have contributed several thousand lines of GPL software; that contribution gives me a right to say something on the subject. If you haven't written open source code - and the author of this article evidently hasn't - you don't have any right to be critical.
People seem to think that they have a right to be critical of anything at anytime, they don't, and it is time they were told so.
Children function by attempting to manipulate adults - since children have nothing and adults do - they try to be clever and get things from the adults who have earned them. We as adults know this, and I did it when I was young - but not for very long. Maturity cones when you quit trying to manipulate people and start earning your own way.
By the way - coding around a problem is the way to get people to accept your solution.
To the clueless moderator who marked my original post 'flamebait' - that was not an attempt to draw flames - that was a lecture for a bunch of people who need to think about what they are doing.
I don't want to hear one word from anyone who isn't an open source contributor - your opinions on the subject are of zero value to anyone.
RPM itself is freeware.
Bitching about freeware is in very poor taste. People can bitch about the way Microsoft does things because they can't do anything about it. However, people have no moral right to bitch about any freeware; they have the source code - they can fix the problems themselves.
Doubtless some people will say: "But I don't have the skill"; to which I can only reply: Boo Hoo.
You forfeit the moral right to bitch because you have chosen not to do the work to fix the problem.
Fixing software problems is not easy for anyone.
Grow up. Quit trying to manipulate people who are willing to do the work. Join in yourself. Get your hands dirty, and see how much you enjoy listening to slackers bitching about your work.
As another poster pointed out the Federal whistle blower act covers only Federal authorities - I was covered by my state whistle blower act. Sorry- I had forgotten that.
While most people don't realize it there is more than an ethical problem here; there is a legal one. Assuming that an administrator works in the U.S. here is the legal situation:
Anyone who has knowledge of a Federal Felony in the U.S. is required by law to report it to the proper law enforcement authorities ( U.S. Attorney, FBI etc.). Failure to do so makes that person an indictable co-conspirator.
Computer break-ins and credit card theft are Federal Felonies; if 'Dana' is in the U.S. he has no choice but to report or become a criminal himself.
Federal whistle blower statutes apply once something has been reported to the legal authorities but not before; Dana could be fired now - but not once he reports the theft and invokes the whistle blower act.
Found out about this from some federal agents and attorneys I work out with after some bad personal experiences with a company.
I suggest that 'Dana' talk to an attorney and make a decision about how good his information is. Like Spider Man ignoring the theft of the gate receipts - a failure to act can come back to bite you; how does he know that this theft was not an Al-Qaeda action?
The Boeing design was known as "Monica" after Lewinsky. The Air Force was not to happy with the way it looked. The better design, in my opinion, won the competition.
The Lockheed plane can fly nose down at speeds as low as 20 Knots (for strafing) - while being able to run away from an F-15 on the top end. It has the radar profile of a bird. The plane is unlike anything that has ever flown before. It can cruise at supersonic speeds without afterburners. The Marine Corps version can take off vertically - go supersonic - then land vertically at the end of the mission. It is a better air superiority fighter than anything we have in service now - while being a better ground support plane than an A-10 Warthog. Computerized control is what makes all of that possible.
This will probably be the last manned fighter that the U.S. builds. Drones are cheaper, don't put a pilot at risk, and can make more violent maneuvers than any manned airplane - eventually they'll take over the air.
The series of unmanned fighting aircraft that Boeing is developing can be thought of as reusable cruise missiles; instead of crashing into their targets they drop bombs and return for another mission.
If Microsoft really wanted to sabotage Linux they would port Outlook to Linux - except that none of the distributions would have it on their disks and the Linux community would roar in anger if they did.
The reason that we don't have horrible design decisions in Linux like exist in Outlook is that Linux programs are designed by the people who write them - while programs like Outlook get features grafted onto them by clueless managers who couldn't write the programs if their lives depended on it.
The open source model tends to protect the code by the simple barrier of the requisite skill level needed to produce open source code; open source code effectively can't be produced by dumb asses.
This story just might wind up biting Microsoft in the ass; if the rest of the sharks in the press start smelling blood in the water.