CMF is the current "state of the art" content management system for Zope -- I agree that it's better than Squishdot. Considering what Squish code looks like "out of the box", your derrogatory comments are not entirely without merit.
On the other hand, Squishdot can be considered "content management for dummies". I originally installed Squishdot to handle a very small, unique specification where we just wanted a "no effort/no cost" repository of files searchable & accessible via web browser. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature can get a vanilla install of Zope & Squishdot running. I thought this project would educate our user community and let them provide feedback so we would learn what was important to them in a "real" content management system. It just so happened that everything we disliked in Squishdot was readily fixable in DTML code. Today, we have a customized version of Squishdot that is tailored to our unique requirements. Along the way, we discovered that the simplistic interface in Squishdot was actually helping us win the hearts & minds of clients who were confused by the more elaborate offerings of our competitors (who spent $1 million+) developing some really snazzy stuff.
Today's IT management has better options than Squishdot, but anyone new to the concept of content management should play with it to form a basis of comparison.
Last but not least: handling everything via the web is not always the perfect choice for everyone, but when you have offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, it sure helps when you can manage via browser. Beats the hell out of Windows Terminal Server.
You could rescue an old Pentium clone from the dumpster and install Linux + Zope + Squishdot, all at a cost of $0. Not exactly a production environment, but more than enough for "proof of concept" and a smoke & mirrors demo.
I had a similar lack of funding problem. My organization has a capital spending authorization procedure that rivals that of the Pentagon. I installed Linux, Zope & Squishdot on a piece of Pentium-100 junkware, and customized some of the Squishdot screens so as to make it look like series of customized portals to deliver reports as PDF file attachments. The powers that be couldn't wait to spend $7K on a Dell Poweredge server. There is so much more I would like to say about Zope + Squishdot, but I have to avoid needlessly educating my competitors. I can't mention where I work, my employer's line of business, the clients we serve, or any of the specifics, but I can say with authority that Linux, Zope & Squishdot can be turned into a "wonder weapon" against larger competitors who have more money to spend.
Correct, Zope is more of an app server. CMF (Content Management Framework) is a plug-in for Zope. Considering it's all free for the taking, anyone interested in content management would be foolish to pass up the chance to evaluate the Zope + CMF option.
In government, you have a level of incompentence by design, with low salaries and corresponding skill level. For some low-priority services, it's OK to have disposable people doing a mediocre job. At some level, this doesn't work; something has to give. When I worked in state government (not Michigan), I noticed most of the smaller agencies were Battle Creek style operations, while there were a few with decent size data centers and reasonable staff that occasionally had a clue. The "poor" depend on the "rich" for guidance & services. I worked in a state agency where the entire IT staff was designated "management/exempt" for the purpose of establishing salaries that were outside (above) the offical state job classifications. By world standards, we were OK; by government standards, we were like Starfleet Command.
My point is this: Even municipal government occasionally needs computers that work, and has procedures to make it happen. Either they have some exempt people who have non-traditional titles and salaries >$35000 or they have outsourced services (provided by people who make more than $35000). The no-brainer solution to programmed incompetence is to hire the people you need at market rates and then disguise them as "consultants". The "temporary" consulting contract gets miraculously renewed every year, and you have in essence a real person doing a real job for real money (in an Oliver North/Iran Contra sort of way). This approach actually costs more than the staightforward concept of repairing the broken job classes & salaries, but it completely circumvents the HR dept, and that's usually a good thing.
Private industry does the same thing. In a hot market, they hire consultants at market rates because their salary structure is too low. In tough times, they dump the consultants because they're "expendable". If you think about it, there isn't enough "temporary" IT work to explain the number of people who work as consultants.
To me, the Lotus/Domino guru of Battle Creek is probably performing at a level commensurate with her salary. You get what you pay for.
First, the writer [of the press release] describes spam as a "computer prank" instead of unsolicited commercial e-mail. The comment proves they don't know what spam is! Then we have the unmentioned IT person who somehow traced back the activity to ORBZ without realizing their Lotus server was a sitting duck for a DOS attack (intentional or not).
Let me guess (based on pure speculation):
Lotus sever set up by the "consultant du jour", who handles support on a pay-as-you-go basis
City calls for support, consultant quickly scans the log & points finger to ORBZ
City mgmt. goes bezerk; legal dept. goes to DEFCON 1; unleashes nastygrams vs. ORBZ
ORBZ explains cluelessness involved in having unpatched Lotus server; makes consultant look like idiot
City finds new consultant; recommends upgrade to Linux+Sendmail+Amavis+Sophos
There are always exceptions, but the average municipality is not stealing the top minds from NASA to run their IT operations. Every once in a while, I peruse IT job listings. When I see a huge list of unrelated requirements combined with a pitiful salary, it's usually (a) municipal gov't, (b) school systems (same thing), or (c) retail. Before I get flamed by an army of municipal IT workers, I will clarify this sweeping generality: Municipalities hire too few people, they overcommit their resources, and the salaries encourage turnover. Surely, any reasonably qualified sysadmin (certified or not) would have detected & fixed the Lotus vulnerability (even if after-the-fact). The press release tells a story that makes it look like they have no dedicated IT staff whatsoever. I could be wrong on this, but if they spent less on lawyers and more on IT, this problem would have been prevented or quickly resolved.
According to Netcraft, the website at ci.battle-creek.mi.us is running "Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000." The prosecution rests. This Battle Creek operation must have been a real bundle of joy when they discovered the "Code Red" worm.
"So, he thinks he's valued at $44,999.00 / hour. "
When the spammers decide that $44,999.00 is too much for his services, perhaps they will seek cheaper alternatives. I would value my time similarly. I don't expect anyone to cheerfully pay me -- I expect them to avoid paying my price by sending their garbage elsewhere!
"People always say that stupid "M$" thing - really get over it - its not funny, its not that creative, and its kind of juvinile."
It's an abbreviation. Deal with it. If it bothers you so much, go ahead a publish a list of authorized abbreviations for everyone to use. Good luck.
"But on the meat of the conversation. 1. No one ever switches from MS. Well, some people do. But all of the people here, who bitch, who moan - they never switch..."
It's easier to dump M$ servers than it is desktops. I'm choosing Linux over M$ where it makes sense -- it's happens more and more as time goes by, the latest example being the remote control restrictions. Thanks to this little stunt, M$ is now totally unsuitable for my applications in Mexico & Switzerland. Adios M$!
"2. I have no respect for any of the anti-MS's around here who stick with MS. Make a stand. Switch and tell them why..."
That's the one thing you got right. Lost revenue is the only language M$ understands. I hate their XP corporate licensing, specifically the "Software Assurance" feature. As a result, I'm freezing deployment of M$ apps at the "2000" product level for North America, Asia, and Europe. We're not buying the upgrades unless they offer a better deal, and if they don't hurry up, we'll phase them out over time. It's only about 750 seats plus 20 servers, but I'm not the only one doing this. Believe me, they know XP licensing is a big problem.
"Here's a tip. IF YOU DON'T LIKE MS SOFTARE ACTUALLY SWITCH TO SOMETHING ELSE. ITS ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY."
I would elaborate more on how much I'm deleting M$, but I wouldn't want my competitors to find out how easy it is or how much money can be saved. Let them learn on their own.
"And I knwo the responses that come from that type of statement - "but but my boss makes me" or "but but learning something is hard". Well suck it up.
My boss counts on me to not leave the company stuck with expensive, nonstandard, unsecure, and unstable software. Therefore I'm always investigating M$ alternatives. The basic idea is to have an exit strategy for every technology product that you bring in the door. Platform independance is what ultimately gives you choices when the vendors get out of control.
How many reasons do we need to abandon M$ server platform? Evidently, M$ thinks we need even more reasons, so they "embracing & extending" the "Dump M$" movement.
Keep it up, M$. Make the EULA tricky enough, and people will start thinking they have a license problem with every product in the M$ world.
FUD is a two-edged sword. If I have to wonder about the licensing viability of remote-controlling a Microsoft server, then it doesn't have to stay as a Microsoft server.
Here in the US, we have a tax (more like a subsidy) on recordable media. This is supposed to compensate the recording industry for what they perceive to be "piracy". Part of the problem is that the recording industry seems to believe that "fair use" is for them to define, which means no "fair use" rights at all, with or without (preferrably with) a subsidy on media!
Even after giving them a subsidy, the recording industry continues to whine about piracy and harrasses those who actually tries to use the recordable media for which they already paid a subsidy!!! Whatever amount of money the recording industry gets, it will never be enough because they will continuously evalute the cost/benefit ratio of more whining, more lobbying, in pursuit of more subsidies.
Of all the things the government could subsidize, I would rank the recording/entertainment industry as dead last in terms of social or economic benefits. I'd rather not subsidize these people, but if we must subsidize something, then I would rather spend it on military hardware. At least it creates high-paying jobs, which is more than I can say for the recording/entertainment industry. "Who do you want to bomb today?"
The sure-fire way to end the whining, lying, congressional lobbying, media spin, and court action is to bag the subsidies altogether and let the recording industry face the wrath of unhappy customers. If ever there was an industry that needed to learn the hard way about the consequences of failing to satisfy its customers, this is the one.
Metal-coated glass would certainly be a show-stopper, but none of the other stuff you mention is much of a problem. A clever antenna design might even make use of the metal coated glass or perhaps a metal window frame as part of the antenna or as a ground plane.
I would estimate the risk per node as under $200 because you might be able to use low-cost access points until you get to a more secure "super-node" that performs the gateway function. Add in the cost of booking a hotel room for the purpose of installing the gear, and you're up to maybe $350 or so.
There are some serious problems with this as a business model, and I'm not suggesting that someone go out and do this. However, there are spammers who violate most of the same laws you mention. My "rogue ISP" concept is just a variation of spam -- use other people's resources to deliver your product. Sleazy but effective, probably illegal, dubious enforcement, what's the difference?
A realistic business model would be as a legitimate 802.11 ISP "entering through the front door", but that's not as much fun.
This concept might be more useful as a CIA or NSA program to support the use of all kinds of little gizmos in buildings where wireless high-speed data would be useful. If I can think of it, they are probably doing it already.
Having read the part about using a laptop as an 802.11b gateway, I immediate thought about the technical possibility of reselling the overpriced broadband they sell at hotels. The target market for resold broadband is not the hotel you stay in, it's the hotel on the other side of the street whose windows are a direct shot from your window. Even better if the hotel across the street lacks broadband. Now, all they need is a freeware client that people can download to search for "renegade ISPs".
What would stop someone from setting up a bunch of these things concealed in suspended ceilings and remotely controllable, offering service all over a metropolitan area just by staying in various hotel rooms and leaving behind some cleverly concealed hardware?
PGP is a nifty little package for encrypting files & e-mail. If it had been sold as a nifty little package at a low price, NAI would not be looking to dump it.
I played with PGP when it was freeware. In a pilot project, I exchanged office gossip with a co-worker to see if ordinary people could use it effectively for secure e-mail communications. It worked quite well, but we didn't have a pressing need for the technology so deployment went nowhere.
Years later, I'm at a different company and now I have a use for it. I visit NAI to see if I can buy just the basic file & e-mail encryption. I discover all they really want to sell is the entire PGP Desktop bundle, for a price that IMHO far exceeds what basic encrypted e-mail should be worth. Eventually, I managed to buy the basic package, but only after making phone calls and finding a reseller who could do such a thing. The licensing complexities of the whole process was as if I was buying an nuclear reactor! Had this been an easier process, I might have deployed it on hundreds of PCs, instead it's only a handful.
I am the customer; I am always right. I want an easy-to-buy, easy-to-use, cheap-to-deploy package that encrypts the 5% of my users' e-mail & files that are worthy of encryption. NAI could have marketed PGP successfully to a high percentage of business and home PC owners, but for whatever reason they chose to go after the ultra-paranoid, encrypt-everything, price-is-no-object crowd instead. PGP is a great product; better management could have made it profitable. Maybe someone will buy the product and figure out how to broaden its appeal.
Instead of the traditional Windoze or Office artwork/logo, they would have to show a large, full-color picture of OJ Simpson on every product package. Think of it -- OJ could use the royalties to pay the civil judgment against him, and M$ would have a celebrity endorsement.
Does he really write this stuff or does M$ use him as a front man who can be golden-parachuted & replaced when his credibility runs out? If he is the executive version of a styrofoam cup, how many replacements does M$ have in reserve? It seems like they send him on every public relations suicide mission that comes along.
A few more like this and he'll have his name turned into a verb...
Mundie (verb) To be designated by your employer to face the wrath of your employer's enemies, most often done in the context of public speaking opportunities. Example: Joe was assigned to give a speech at DEFcon explaining the uncrackable security in M$ Passport -- he sure got Mundied.
I agree they're heading in the wrong direction, but the net result is still inevitable:
Massive disregard for the law
Ineffective enforcement
Technical countermeasures that will always be one step ahead of the foolishness
It will have to be easily crippled...
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SSSCA Hearing
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Otherwise the hardware companies would face a potential boycott. The mere threat of such a thing would force the manufacturers to have some kind of "exit strategy" that would not involve depositing billions of dollars of hardware in a landfill (right next to the Circuit City DIVX players). Total cost of disabling copy protection has to be kept under $1; they have no choice.
Yes, but when you have a high enough percentage of people disobeying the law, you have (1) a bad law, and (2) a lost cause. Back in ancient times, the US foolishly adopted a national 55 mph speed limit. Did ANYONE slow down because the idiots put up new signs? The law was somewhere between a nuisance and a non-issue.
IMHO, the music industry is dangerously close to removing all compensation for the artists. If it gets any worse, music will not be a viable profession. As a Republican, I don't have a problem with that. There will always be "amateur" or small-time musicians. For these people, music is more of a break-even hobby than a profession. If they all distribute their stuff for free or cheaply via P2P, they will do no worse than what the music industry would have offered, and a few of them will be interesting enough to take away market share from the record labels. This will further deplete their supply of indentured servants. By trying to keep 100% of the pie, the recording industry will eventually have 100% of $0. The sooner they hit bottom, the sooner the free market will correct this out-of-balance condition. Finding a way to pay the artists is a fairly difficult problem. Fortunately, we don't need to solve it yet because the record companies look like they have no intention of paying the artists anyway.
People are sure to wonder "Who would make a product and then give it away?" Open Source programmers give away all kinds of software -- they certainly have attracted Microsoft's attention! Open source is one of the few things that can keep the M$ monopoly from getting totally out of hand. I see no reason why "open music" would not have a similar impact on the recording industry.
Considering M$ well-documented shenanigans in survey responses, you would think they could do better than 7,500 letters. Even so, it's interesting to see DOJ admit a 2:1 dissent ratio. It would be much higher than 2:1 if you factored out the people who work for M$ and have something to gain by perpetuating the alleged monopoly.
If we were soliciting comment about the war on terrorism, should we count the opinions of the terrorists themselves?
You're absolutely right about Oracle being the killer app for the E15K. Hell, it's the killer app for almost all SPARC boxes. Considering the price/performance of SPARC, it's not worth buying unless you are going to run Oracle.
There is no demand for an E15K Linux box because Oracle currently supports Solaris as a tier-1 platform, with varying degrees of support for anything else. I am an Oracle customer. To me, it looks like every patch or install kit is written and tested on Solaris, and then ported to the other systems. I once worked at a DEC/VMS shop and saw what it's like to be at the other end of the Oracle support spectrum.
If Oracle is serious about migrating their corporate systems to Linux, then it follows that the best support will someday be for Linux boxes instead of Solaris. If we ever get to that point, someone will bring Linux to the E15K. New customers will choose Linux for the same reason I chose Solaris: it's a matter of choosing the best-supported platform for Oracle. No matter what the merits of any OS, it's not worth the headache of being the stepchild of Oracle support.
It sure looks that way, but they can't hang on like this forever.
In any company, you have some staff and management whose very existance depends on maintaining the status quo; in this case that means Solaris. If history serves as a guide, they will continue to maintain the status quo until the liquidators come to dismantle the cubicles.
I have no more insight into Sun than you do, but Oracle's shift towards Linux will for Sun to follow, no matter how much they try not to.
Of all the reasons why hardware companies fail, one of the biggest is the tendency to hang on to proprietary systems until the last dollar of revenue has been extracted. By then, low-ball competitors have commoditized the market, and it's too late to salvage anything.
Sun's main purpose in life seems to be as the launching platform for Oracle. Some of Sun's competitors have better performance, some have better prices, some claim to have both, but nobody has the level of Oracle support that Sun/Solaris gets. Without Oracle, there would be no Sun. Considering Larry's announcement about migrating all of Oracle's corporate systems to Linux, the handwriting is on the wall for Solaris. From Oracle's perspective, Linux is a great way to enhance their position vs. M$ SQL server on the low end, and go after IBM DB2 on the high end, all at the same time.
If anyone believes what Larry says, it looks like Oracle will elevate Linux to the top tier of supported OS, probably at the expense of Solaris. This really sucks for me because I committed to the SPARC/Solaris platform about 8 months ago. Oracle support of Linux wasn't quite there yet and I didn't have time on my side. I always thought a transition to Linux was inevitable, but I thought it would take another year or two.
From Sun's point of view, they are probably looking for a smooth way to transition SPARC Solaris to SPARC Linux, so as to drop Solaris entirely as a cost-cutting measure. Sun needs either a huge boost in SPARC CPU performance or lower pricing, preferrably both. Otherwise they will get killed by high-end X86 systems.
I think the ultimate fate of Sun/Solaris will be the same as Digital/VMS: It's another attack from the commodity boxes, armed with a standard operating system, this time without the M$ nonsense.
If our little group of volunteer pilots had the same political clout as the entertainment industry, we would simply write the letter of marque ourselves and get Congress to rubber-stamp it. At that point, we would have unrestricted rights to attack just about anything, anywhere, using weapons of our own choosing, without any liability for whatever might go wrong. Any would-be competitors like "Bombster" would be sued out of existance, using the "Destructive Media Entertainment Act" (DMEA).
Now that I think of it, what prevents a private company from offering my humorous-but-technically-plausible concept in a place like Somalia? The lack of authoritative government is precisely what attracts the terrorists. It also sets the stage for a capitalist entrepreneur to turn the whole country into an amusement park for destructive toys. Actually, the terrorists have done that already, we're just Americanizing the concept.
Is this idea too crazy for anyone to try? It's not any crazier than building Euro-Disney or putting an NHL team in North Carolina.
This is a joke, not to be taken seriously; none of this stuff even exists
Anyone could build and use a GPS-guided weapon against us, but Al Qaeda has a supply of low-tech disposable martyrs that is just as effective, not to mention easier on their payroll department. As for their use of a remote-control system like the one I described, that would expose their command and control to all kinds of high-tech countermeasures. If nothing else worked, we could spam them to death.
My suggestion was jokingly intended to even the playing field -- we match our disposable planes against their disposable people.
If we can get Al Qaeda to base their entire weapons program on "Microsoft Martyr XP", it will surely GPF or BSOD before anything dangerous happens! You ask for a creative weapon, I give you the prepaid M$ Enterprise Agreement. We send it via Fed Ex to Al Jazeera; they'll find a way to deliver it. If they somehow manage to make something that works, we hit them with the "ground zero" virus that sends their missiles back to 127.0.0.1.
Slashdot Mirror
CMF is the current "state of the art" content management system for Zope -- I agree that it's better than Squishdot. Considering what Squish code looks like "out of the box", your derrogatory comments are not entirely without merit.
On the other hand, Squishdot can be considered "content management for dummies". I originally installed Squishdot to handle a very small, unique specification where we just wanted a "no effort/no cost" repository of files searchable & accessible via web browser. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature can get a vanilla install of Zope & Squishdot running. I thought this project would educate our user community and let them provide feedback so we would learn what was important to them in a "real" content management system. It just so happened that everything we disliked in Squishdot was readily fixable in DTML code. Today, we have a customized version of Squishdot that is tailored to our unique requirements. Along the way, we discovered that the simplistic interface in Squishdot was actually helping us win the hearts & minds of clients who were confused by the more elaborate offerings of our competitors (who spent $1 million+) developing some really snazzy stuff.
Today's IT management has better options than Squishdot, but anyone new to the concept of content management should play with it to form a basis of comparison.
Last but not least: handling everything via the web is not always the perfect choice for everyone, but when you have offices in North America, Europe, and Asia, it sure helps when you can manage via browser. Beats the hell out of Windows Terminal Server.
You could rescue an old Pentium clone from the dumpster and install Linux + Zope + Squishdot, all at a cost of $0. Not exactly a production environment, but more than enough for "proof of concept" and a smoke & mirrors demo.
I had a similar lack of funding problem. My organization has a capital spending authorization procedure that rivals that of the Pentagon. I installed Linux, Zope & Squishdot on a piece of Pentium-100 junkware, and customized some of the Squishdot screens so as to make it look like series of customized portals to deliver reports as PDF file attachments. The powers that be couldn't wait to spend $7K on a Dell Poweredge server. There is so much more I would like to say about Zope + Squishdot, but I have to avoid needlessly educating my competitors. I can't mention where I work, my employer's line of business, the clients we serve, or any of the specifics, but I can say with authority that Linux, Zope & Squishdot can be turned into a "wonder weapon" against larger competitors who have more money to spend.
Correct, Zope is more of an app server. CMF (Content Management Framework) is a plug-in for Zope. Considering it's all free for the taking, anyone interested in content management would be foolish to pass up the chance to evaluate the Zope + CMF option.
In government, you have a level of incompentence by design, with low salaries and corresponding skill level. For some low-priority services, it's OK to have disposable people doing a mediocre job. At some level, this doesn't work; something has to give. When I worked in state government (not Michigan), I noticed most of the smaller agencies were Battle Creek style operations, while there were a few with decent size data centers and reasonable staff that occasionally had a clue. The "poor" depend on the "rich" for guidance & services. I worked in a state agency where the entire IT staff was designated "management/exempt" for the purpose of establishing salaries that were outside (above) the offical state job classifications. By world standards, we were OK; by government standards, we were like Starfleet Command.
My point is this: Even municipal government occasionally needs computers that work, and has procedures to make it happen. Either they have some exempt people who have non-traditional titles and salaries >$35000 or they have outsourced services (provided by people who make more than $35000). The no-brainer solution to programmed incompetence is to hire the people you need at market rates and then disguise them as "consultants". The "temporary" consulting contract gets miraculously renewed every year, and you have in essence a real person doing a real job for real money (in an Oliver North/Iran Contra sort of way). This approach actually costs more than the staightforward concept of repairing the broken job classes & salaries, but it completely circumvents the HR dept, and that's usually a good thing.
Private industry does the same thing. In a hot market, they hire consultants at market rates because their salary structure is too low. In tough times, they dump the consultants because they're "expendable". If you think about it, there isn't enough "temporary" IT work to explain the number of people who work as consultants.
To me, the Lotus/Domino guru of Battle Creek is probably performing at a level commensurate with her salary. You get what you pay for.
Let me guess (based on pure speculation):
There are always exceptions, but the average municipality is not stealing the top minds from NASA to run their IT operations. Every once in a while, I peruse IT job listings. When I see a huge list of unrelated requirements combined with a pitiful salary, it's usually (a) municipal gov't, (b) school systems (same thing), or (c) retail. Before I get flamed by an army of municipal IT workers, I will clarify this sweeping generality: Municipalities hire too few people, they overcommit their resources, and the salaries encourage turnover. Surely, any reasonably qualified sysadmin (certified or not) would have detected & fixed the Lotus vulnerability (even if after-the-fact). The press release tells a story that makes it look like they have no dedicated IT staff whatsoever. I could be wrong on this, but if they spent less on lawyers and more on IT, this problem would have been prevented or quickly resolved.
According to Netcraft, the website at ci.battle-creek.mi.us is running "Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000." The prosecution rests. This Battle Creek operation must have been a real bundle of joy when they discovered the "Code Red" worm.
"So, he thinks he's valued at $44,999.00 / hour. "
When the spammers decide that $44,999.00 is too much for his services, perhaps they will seek cheaper alternatives. I would value my time similarly. I don't expect anyone to cheerfully pay me -- I expect them to avoid paying my price by sending their garbage elsewhere!
"People always say that stupid "M$" thing - really get over it - its not funny, its not that creative, and its kind of juvinile."
It's an abbreviation. Deal with it. If it bothers you so much, go ahead a publish a list of authorized abbreviations for everyone to use. Good luck.
"But on the meat of the conversation.
1. No one ever switches from MS. Well, some people do. But all of the people here, who bitch, who moan - they never switch..."
It's easier to dump M$ servers than it is desktops. I'm choosing Linux over M$ where it makes sense -- it's happens more and more as time goes by, the latest example being the remote control restrictions. Thanks to this little stunt, M$ is now totally unsuitable for my applications in Mexico & Switzerland. Adios M$!
"2. I have no respect for any of the anti-MS's around here who stick with MS. Make a stand. Switch and tell them why..."
That's the one thing you got right. Lost revenue is the only language M$ understands. I hate their XP corporate licensing, specifically the "Software Assurance" feature. As a result, I'm freezing deployment of M$ apps at the "2000" product level for North America, Asia, and Europe. We're not buying the upgrades unless they offer a better deal, and if they don't hurry up, we'll phase them out over time. It's only about 750 seats plus 20 servers, but I'm not the only one doing this. Believe me, they know XP licensing is a big problem.
"Here's a tip. IF YOU DON'T LIKE MS SOFTARE ACTUALLY SWITCH TO SOMETHING ELSE. ITS ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY."
I would elaborate more on how much I'm deleting M$, but I wouldn't want my competitors to find out how easy it is or how much money can be saved. Let them learn on their own.
"And I knwo the responses that come from that type of statement - "but but my boss makes me" or "but but learning something is hard". Well suck it up.
My boss counts on me to not leave the company stuck with expensive, nonstandard, unsecure, and unstable software. Therefore I'm always investigating M$ alternatives. The basic idea is to have an exit strategy for every technology product that you bring in the door. Platform independance is what ultimately gives you choices when the vendors get out of control.
How many reasons do we need to abandon M$ server platform? Evidently, M$ thinks we need even more reasons, so they "embracing & extending" the "Dump M$" movement.
Keep it up, M$. Make the EULA tricky enough, and people will start thinking they have a license problem with every product in the M$ world.
FUD is a two-edged sword. If I have to wonder about the licensing viability of remote-controlling a Microsoft server, then it doesn't have to stay as a Microsoft server.
Even after giving them a subsidy, the recording industry continues to whine about piracy and harrasses those who actually tries to use the recordable media for which they already paid a subsidy!!! Whatever amount of money the recording industry gets, it will never be enough because they will continuously evalute the cost/benefit ratio of more whining, more lobbying, in pursuit of more subsidies.
Of all the things the government could subsidize, I would rank the recording/entertainment industry as dead last in terms of social or economic benefits. I'd rather not subsidize these people, but if we must subsidize something, then I would rather spend it on military hardware. At least it creates high-paying jobs, which is more than I can say for the recording/entertainment industry. "Who do you want to bomb today?"
The sure-fire way to end the whining, lying, congressional lobbying, media spin, and court action is to bag the subsidies altogether and let the recording industry face the wrath of unhappy customers. If ever there was an industry that needed to learn the hard way about the consequences of failing to satisfy its customers, this is the one.
Metal-coated glass would certainly be a show-stopper, but none of the other stuff you mention is much of a problem. A clever antenna design might even make use of the metal coated glass or perhaps a metal window frame as part of the antenna or as a ground plane.
I would estimate the risk per node as under $200 because you might be able to use low-cost access points until you get to a more secure "super-node" that performs the gateway function. Add in the cost of booking a hotel room for the purpose of installing the gear, and you're up to maybe $350 or so.
There are some serious problems with this as a business model, and I'm not suggesting that someone go out and do this. However, there are spammers who violate most of the same laws you mention. My "rogue ISP" concept is just a variation of spam -- use other people's resources to deliver your product. Sleazy but effective, probably illegal, dubious enforcement, what's the difference?
A realistic business model would be as a legitimate 802.11 ISP "entering through the front door", but that's not as much fun.
This concept might be more useful as a CIA or NSA program to support the use of all kinds of little gizmos in buildings where wireless high-speed data would be useful. If I can think of it, they are probably doing it already.
Having read the part about using a laptop as an 802.11b gateway, I immediate thought about the technical possibility of reselling the overpriced broadband they sell at hotels. The target market for resold broadband is not the hotel you stay in, it's the hotel on the other side of the street whose windows are a direct shot from your window. Even better if the hotel across the street lacks broadband. Now, all they need is a freeware client that people can download to search for "renegade ISPs".
What would stop someone from setting up a bunch of these things concealed in suspended ceilings and remotely controllable, offering service all over a metropolitan area just by staying in various hotel rooms and leaving behind some cleverly concealed hardware?
PGP is a nifty little package for encrypting files & e-mail. If it had been sold as a nifty little package at a low price, NAI would not be looking to dump it.
I played with PGP when it was freeware. In a pilot project, I exchanged office gossip with a co-worker to see if ordinary people could use it effectively for secure e-mail communications. It worked quite well, but we didn't have a pressing need for the technology so deployment went nowhere.
Years later, I'm at a different company and now I have a use for it. I visit NAI to see if I can buy just the basic file & e-mail encryption. I discover all they really want to sell is the entire PGP Desktop bundle, for a price that IMHO far exceeds what basic encrypted e-mail should be worth. Eventually, I managed to buy the basic package, but only after making phone calls and finding a reseller who could do such a thing. The licensing complexities of the whole process was as if I was buying an nuclear reactor! Had this been an easier process, I might have deployed it on hundreds of PCs, instead it's only a handful.
I am the customer; I am always right. I want an easy-to-buy, easy-to-use, cheap-to-deploy package that encrypts the 5% of my users' e-mail & files that are worthy of encryption. NAI could have marketed PGP successfully to a high percentage of business and home PC owners, but for whatever reason they chose to go after the ultra-paranoid, encrypt-everything, price-is-no-object crowd instead. PGP is a great product; better management could have made it profitable. Maybe someone will buy the product and figure out how to broaden its appeal.
Instead of the traditional Windoze or Office artwork/logo, they would have to show a large, full-color picture of OJ Simpson on every product package. Think of it -- OJ could use the royalties to pay the civil judgment against him, and M$ would have a celebrity endorsement.
A few more like this and he'll have his name turned into a verb...
Mundie (verb) To be designated by your employer to face the wrath of your employer's enemies, most often done in the context of public speaking opportunities. Example: Joe was assigned to give a speech at DEFcon explaining the uncrackable security in M$ Passport -- he sure got Mundied.
Otherwise the hardware companies would face a potential boycott. The mere threat of such a thing would force the manufacturers to have some kind of "exit strategy" that would not involve depositing billions of dollars of hardware in a landfill (right next to the Circuit City DIVX players). Total cost of disabling copy protection has to be kept under $1; they have no choice.
Yes, but when you have a high enough percentage of people disobeying the law, you have (1) a bad law, and (2) a lost cause. Back in ancient times, the US foolishly adopted a national 55 mph speed limit. Did ANYONE slow down because the idiots put up new signs? The law was somewhere between a nuisance and a non-issue.
IMHO, the music industry is dangerously close to removing all compensation for the artists. If it gets any worse, music will not be a viable profession. As a Republican, I don't have a problem with that. There will always be "amateur" or small-time musicians. For these people, music is more of a break-even hobby than a profession. If they all distribute their stuff for free or cheaply via P2P, they will do no worse than what the music industry would have offered, and a few of them will be interesting enough to take away market share from the record labels. This will further deplete their supply of indentured servants. By trying to keep 100% of the pie, the recording industry will eventually have 100% of $0. The sooner they hit bottom, the sooner the free market will correct this out-of-balance condition. Finding a way to pay the artists is a fairly difficult problem. Fortunately, we don't need to solve it yet because the record companies look like they have no intention of paying the artists anyway.
People are sure to wonder "Who would make a product and then give it away?" Open Source programmers give away all kinds of software -- they certainly have attracted Microsoft's attention! Open source is one of the few things that can keep the M$ monopoly from getting totally out of hand. I see no reason why "open music" would not have a similar impact on the recording industry.
Considering M$ well-documented shenanigans in survey responses, you would think they could do better than 7,500 letters. Even so, it's interesting to see DOJ admit a 2:1 dissent ratio. It would be much higher than 2:1 if you factored out the people who work for M$ and have something to gain by perpetuating the alleged monopoly.
If we were soliciting comment about the war on terrorism, should we count the opinions of the terrorists themselves?
You're absolutely right about Oracle being the killer app for the E15K. Hell, it's the killer app for almost all SPARC boxes. Considering the price/performance of SPARC, it's not worth buying unless you are going to run Oracle.
There is no demand for an E15K Linux box because Oracle currently supports Solaris as a tier-1 platform, with varying degrees of support for anything else. I am an Oracle customer. To me, it looks like every patch or install kit is written and tested on Solaris, and then ported to the other systems. I once worked at a DEC/VMS shop and saw what it's like to be at the other end of the Oracle support spectrum.
If Oracle is serious about migrating their corporate systems to Linux, then it follows that the best support will someday be for Linux boxes instead of Solaris. If we ever get to that point, someone will bring Linux to the E15K. New customers will choose Linux for the same reason I chose Solaris: it's a matter of choosing the best-supported platform for Oracle. No matter what the merits of any OS, it's not worth the headache of being the stepchild of Oracle support.
"...they've been arrogantly avoiding that idea"
It sure looks that way, but they can't hang on like this forever.
In any company, you have some staff and management whose very existance depends on maintaining the status quo; in this case that means Solaris. If history serves as a guide, they will continue to maintain the status quo until the liquidators come to dismantle the cubicles.
I have no more insight into Sun than you do, but Oracle's shift towards Linux will for Sun to follow, no matter how much they try not to.
Of all the reasons why hardware companies fail, one of the biggest is the tendency to hang on to proprietary systems until the last dollar of revenue has been extracted. By then, low-ball competitors have commoditized the market, and it's too late to salvage anything.
Sun's main purpose in life seems to be as the launching platform for Oracle. Some of Sun's competitors have better performance, some have better prices, some claim to have both, but nobody has the level of Oracle support that Sun/Solaris gets. Without Oracle, there would be no Sun. Considering Larry's announcement about migrating all of Oracle's corporate systems to Linux, the handwriting is on the wall for Solaris. From Oracle's perspective, Linux is a great way to enhance their position vs. M$ SQL server on the low end, and go after IBM DB2 on the high end, all at the same time.
If anyone believes what Larry says, it looks like Oracle will elevate Linux to the top tier of supported OS, probably at the expense of Solaris. This really sucks for me because I committed to the SPARC/Solaris platform about 8 months ago. Oracle support of Linux wasn't quite there yet and I didn't have time on my side. I always thought a transition to Linux was inevitable, but I thought it would take another year or two.
From Sun's point of view, they are probably looking for a smooth way to transition SPARC Solaris to SPARC Linux, so as to drop Solaris entirely as a cost-cutting measure. Sun needs either a huge boost in SPARC CPU performance or lower pricing, preferrably both. Otherwise they will get killed by high-end X86 systems.
I think the ultimate fate of Sun/Solaris will be the same as Digital/VMS: It's another attack from the commodity boxes, armed with a standard operating system, this time without the M$ nonsense.
If our little group of volunteer pilots had the same political clout as the entertainment industry, we would simply write the letter of marque ourselves and get Congress to rubber-stamp it. At that point, we would have unrestricted rights to attack just about anything, anywhere, using weapons of our own choosing, without any liability for whatever might go wrong. Any would-be competitors like "Bombster" would be sued out of existance, using the "Destructive Media Entertainment Act" (DMEA).
Now that I think of it, what prevents a private company from offering my humorous-but-technically-plausible concept in a place like Somalia? The lack of authoritative government is precisely what attracts the terrorists. It also sets the stage for a capitalist entrepreneur to turn the whole country into an amusement park for destructive toys. Actually, the terrorists have done that already, we're just Americanizing the concept.
Is this idea too crazy for anyone to try? It's not any crazier than building Euro-Disney or putting an NHL team in North Carolina.
Therefore, the Israelis will do it instead, using mostly U.S. and Japanese technology, along with tons of parts from Tower Hobbies and Home Depot.
Anyone could build and use a GPS-guided weapon against us, but Al Qaeda has a supply of low-tech disposable martyrs that is just as effective, not to mention easier on their payroll department. As for their use of a remote-control system like the one I described, that would expose their command and control to all kinds of high-tech countermeasures. If nothing else worked, we could spam them to death.
My suggestion was jokingly intended to even the playing field -- we match our disposable planes against their disposable people.
If we can get Al Qaeda to base their entire weapons program on "Microsoft Martyr XP", it will surely GPF or BSOD before anything dangerous happens! You ask for a creative weapon, I give you the prepaid M$ Enterprise Agreement. We send it via Fed Ex to Al Jazeera; they'll find a way to deliver it. If they somehow manage to make something that works, we hit them with the "ground zero" virus that sends their missiles back to 127.0.0.1.