All of the virtualization platforms out there are essentially based on QEMU. All of them read the QCOW file format. All of them have their own implementation and direction of that initial vision.
My experience with KVM is that it is focused on Linux and Windows support. There may be less you can configure under the hood with KVM than with Xen, but if you are a windows and linux shop, or just a linux shop, KVM is awesome. KVM is also the ONLY solution I would try to deploy under RHEL or derivatives, as they dropped Xen support in 6.x. Xen support will be back in 7.x, but that is because RHEL's dropping of support for Xen open source pissed off people on the kernel dev team, so they decided to add it to the kernel directly.
My experience with Xen is that it has a much broader focus, and is more component accessible. The virtual machine hardware and the management tool sets can be easily swapped out for custom ones. I have a number of virtual machine BIOS to pick from if I run into a BIOS bug. I can support BSD and other systems that KVM doesn't, or doesn't do as well. We use Xen as our go to platform, but deployment of KVM would have been faster in some aspects if we didn't need multi-platform support. Xen documentation I've found is also more mature. AFAIK, Xen is the basis for the Amazon EC2 cloud platform (I could be wrong about that). Ubuntu and debian have good support for Xen, but documentation of, say, building a multiple vlan 802.1q networked solution is a situation of YMMV.
My experience with VMWare is that it is a great pay virtualization environment, provided you are willing to shell out for their recommended hardware as well. Setting up things like live migration and cloning are easier with their GUI and step by step instructions. If your company is going to pay for all of that, then it is definitely something worth taking advantage of, as the learning curve is much more accessible (but, it also means you can shoot yourself in the foot faster as well). But the moving target of licensing and hardware requirements are an issue, and my workplace is migrating away from VMWare to Xen because of those issues. Again, if the will to spend is there, it is just fine. I would only use the free solution as something to learn on.
Jails and chroots are nice in a single platform environment, because why waste time on overhead? But the downside is that it is single platform. I'd go more into that, but it isn't really relevant to this discussion. What I would really love to see is something new under the BSD's that offered multi-platform guest support as a host.
All of the the three big players- KVM, XEN, and VMWare are part of OpenStack, so you can use the OpenStack API. If you are ever going to migrate, or have to have cross-compatibility with other virtualization platforms (business parternships can warrant this), then having OpenStack tools available can be really helpful if you want to write the code for it. All three are also supported by OpenNebula, which is an open source pointy clicky interface that can manage all three platforms- provided you can code in your customizations, which could include live migration, etc.
Certification and education are another factor. VMWare wins that one hands down, as they have web accessible training and an easy certification path. The only way you can easily certify on Xen is to get LPIC-3 certified, which will also certify for KVM. The other option is to take the RHEL series (woah, big dollars!), and get certified at the RH Architect level in KVM. The LPIC route actually costs less than the other two, but there are no classes available at that level. Most businesses are familiar only with the VMWare cert path. Also, most companies that have a strong need for someone to fix their problems don't really care which virt solution one has experience with- they care about having an understanding about how all of them work under the hood so that their structural issues are addressed.
Agreed. I haven't seen any serious technological innovation come from gaming in a long time. The article in question gushes, erm, discusses how gaming companies are *using* technologies like Hadoop. Same goes for "the cloud", essentially someone bragging about how they wrote some scripts/apps to make their deployments faster. Essentially, these shops are bragging about work that many very experienced senior network and systems admins (ok, some are called devops now, etc) do already. Woo.
A serious innovation would be coming up with something more robust or efficient than Hadoop or GlusterFS. Maybe a new paradigm shift away from the QEMU based vitualization systems that currently exist (that would be all of them, btw). Or possibly a new distributed secure communications protocol (Friendica's RED, and work by the Calyx Institute both come to mind) to be the basis of a new kind of communications framework.
Most importantly, none of these shops are bragging about their contribution back to the open source projects they are happy to borrow from. Talking about performancing on Hadoop isn't the same as submitting and having accepted performance enhancing code into the Hadoop source tree.
Same here. My wife insisted on tons of pictures and films being taken early on in our marriage and the birth of our first kid. Over 4gig worth of pictures alone. There is no nightmare like having a partner going through a major freak out over a dying hard drive. And, yes, she hasn't gone through a damned one of the pictures or video and added any context to any of them.
If I were going to record my life for posterity, I would look at creating a blog with picture and video entries. One that I host on my own system, and not in the cloud (replace the phrase "the cloud" with "some other guy's computer"). Even dedicating an hour a day to the task of entering and editing the data may not be enough time for random snapshots and video entries. I would try that first, for about a year, before making any decisions on how best to record the rest of my life.
I know that in California, it is illegal to record conversations unless you are out in public, and even then, it is because you are recording everything in public, and not just one person or group of people. My wife also had memory issues due to medication she was taking for a while, and whenever we would break out with a recording device and ask permission at the doctor or our kid's school, attitudes and what would be discussed changed pretty quickly. We weren't doing this as a "gotcha", but that is how it was always treated, and that was for someone who needed the recordings due to intermittent memory impairment.
On the other hand, I have my own private blog that I use as a journal. I will probably be bringing that in house, onto my own laptop, just so I can ensure my data will remain private. As new distributed social media platforms develop (Friendica's RED comes to mind), then I will probably be putting more of my data back online in the future, provided I can scale down who can read and share. For my own family, and especially my daughter, I want to have more data recorded so that they will have something of me that they can refer to later on, mostly for children and grandchildren of their own. But, really, unless someone knows how to find that data once I am dead, they will never see it as things stand today. Maybe tomorrow, when we have more reliable and secure self-hosted social media options, I might consider putting more out there, but that is still going to be dependent upon family gaining access to and maintaining such a system on their own. That will only happen if they are involved from day 1 with the whole experiment of journalling. Which I don't see happening soon, as I have a hard time getting my daughter to empty her lunch bag, and my wife hasn't read my blog since I started it.
Actually, this "advanced" leech doesn't seem so advanced, or he/she would have done a better job at masking their MAC ID footprints. The person is probably using some kind of cracking script they cooked up or copied off the 'net, and may not understand much about networking beyond how to connect.
For my own security, I only allow access to the AP by MAC IDs I register manually into the system. Guest access is turned on when people arrive to the home, and is turned off when they leave. Most wifi access points have MAC configuration parameters, so that MAC IDs can be blacklisted or whitelisted. I go for whitelisting, because if I see logs for someone connecting as me while I am away from home, I know I have a problem.
Yep, since it looks like the poster is getting a cash payout, it would be better to wait. My wife's laptop died, and instead of buying her a new one, we took some time to consider her usage, and she found she was much happier with a tablet instead (which was about half as much). Once she started using the tablet, most of her media consumption on the TV/media center went way down. Now we don't have one of those anymore. We also got rid of her digital camera when she upgraded her cell phone.
I would look at investing in anti-theft tech for all of the devices in use, and ensuring that future devices meet whatever security requirements I determine would mitigate future break-ins or device losses. We have had no less than 3 households of friends that were "cleared out" by thieves in the past few years. Our new policy is that everything is encrypted, and any non-portable devices are security locked to something large and sturdy, or locked in a box (like backup disks, also encrypted). Portable devices all have tracking and remote shutoff software, personal info is in encrypted volumes, a person's device goes with them whenever they leave the house, and every device also has to have a user password to unlock. This limits what will get stolen (and how much personal data we can lose) if there is a break-in, which has happened to people we know far more often than being mugged. All of our personal paper data gets scanned onto one system that is securely backed up, and then that paper is shredded.
Well, it certainly doesn't help when I'm not receiving my initial sign on email from the petition site! Basically, account creation is done, but I'm blocked from logging in because I never receive an email:/
Yep. There are plenty of examples out there, the US pub ed system just doesn't discuss them much. A Peoples' History Of The United States by Howard Zinn makes a pretty good starting point.
I've used Linux since I could get RedHat on Floppies. I personally like BSD based systems, but for my family who play more games, I typically have used Ubuntu. I work as a senior systems admin, and I make the purchasing and installation decisions at the company where I work.
I don't like the idea of spyware coming as a default solution on my kid's laptop. Or my aunt's, or my wife's, or my grandmother's, or my friends'. I don't like the idea of recommending Ubuntu on any system at the Linux User's Group in my region. That is because I don't like the idea of spyware, period. This was one of the reasons why I walked away from anything Windows for personal use a while back. I've been recommending various Linux distributions for home and production work for over two decades now, and this is the first time I'll be telling everyone to find something other than Ubuntu, and to avoid that distro, as well as anything heavily comingled with the Ubuntu source tree.
Yes, I did know about the Unity key logging issue prior to this, but I had expected that this was an oversight of Canonical, not an intended feature design. Now that this is confirmed as being deliberate (and not deliberately stupid), I'm of the opinion that they could easily introduce other spyware "features" as they see fit in the future, probably without any pesky public outcry. Because of Canonical's dishonesty and general smarminess in regard to the stealthy introduction of spyware onto one of the critical user interfaces of their distro, I simply cannot trust anything coming from them. I consider their tree tainted. I will be suggesting to ALL of those people that I give recommendations to either move to Debian, or CentOS, or something else NOT based on the Ubuntu tree. I will be recommending that Ubuntu based distro installs be unsupported at future LUG install fests. It will not matter to me if they reverse course at a later point, because Shuttleworth has already responded to this problem with a rather dismissive wave of his hand, and any reversal of his opinion would strictly be due to a damaged reputation, and not because, I feel, that he or Canonical has any integrity to begin with.
More importantly in terms of my own time, I now have to come up with migration plans for those family members I do support. I am not thrilled about this, because I am their "tech support", and they, as users, have serious problems with changes to how the GUI looks and operates. I also have friends who have bought laptops through System76 who are infuriated about Canonical's antics as well. Canonical may seem to feel that people like me and my friends can now simply go away as soon as they think they are more successful, but Canonical is forgetting the kind of people who put them into their lofty position. I will be working on taking this away from them, as hard if not harder than I promoted them in the past.
Well, considering that the local FBI office was the one that certified that LAPD could be released from federal supervision after the Rampart corruption scandal... I'd say that the FBI has at least as much to lose in terms of credibility over this whole fiasco.
"...to incorporate the needs of artists, not just record labels. What are those needs? Linking of avid listeners with artists for concert tickets, merch, music purchases, etc; crowdsourcing tours; providing listener stats and location data, maybe even emails; your idea here, etc, etc."
I think I'd like to see this bill at least tied to the following:
1. No more questions about prior felony convictions. It is too easy to get popped with a felony, a class of crime that used to be limited to serious criminal offenses. 2. Tie this to an additional H1-B payroll tax, with the revenue going to online certification training (much like the ACM offers as part of their membership), as well as vouchers for a certain amount of tests. 3. Make it more desirable to hire and promote junior staff. H1-B is attractive because they have fewer workplace protections, and have to take a bigger gamble to come to the US to work. Fix some of those restrictions (such as severe limitations in job-hopping), and institute measures that promote hiring interns and junior IT people.
Right now, it is harder than heck to find qualified IT staff, and HR departments are all asking for 3-5 years of experience in whatever they are hiring for. The problem isn't in the lack of willing senior staff who want to train and mentor people. It isn't in the lack of available training for the unemployed. It is in the lack of will on the part of C level execs who don't want it, and can't see the labor shortage coming up on them, or what that can mean in the long term (in my view, out past 5 years. In the view of a CEO, the long view is not more than 5 years).
I don't know how light rail is run in Austin, but in 11% of commuters in Sacramento use light rail exclusively. That is a pretty sizable number. If it doesn't work for Austin, then that is an Austin problem, not a Californian or progressive one.
No, much of the national deficit actually cannot be laid at CA's doorstep. Those decisions get made in Washington, DC. California has always been a net contributor, being still the eighth largest world economy in spite of the recession. You must be thinking of those red states... http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union
*Certain* businesses flock to CA because the laws, business environment, and climate support their businesses well. Tech companies can find plenty of highly qualified staff because there are three public college systems, the local governments also help support the private ones, and employment/IP law favors job-hopping and entrepreneurship (making it possible for employees to leave disgruntled employers without fear of retribution). Ag companies like it here because you can farm year round, and CA ports are on the Pacific Rim. Manufacturers like it as well, but those who can't or won't avoid dumping pollutants into the water table (see ag) don't like CA, so they go to places like Louisiana instead.
Mexico couldn't keep CA. They were run by the Spanish at the time, and nobody wanted to deal with trying to maintain garrisons during a time of tall ships with months long voyages. That is why, when the US took over, they built the trans-continental railroad. Problem solved.
And, in fact, they have NEVER fought one of these requests. Ever. The only ISP operator to fight one of these requests is Nick Merrill, and he had to enlist the ACLU and others just to get the right to be represented by an attorney, much less make his fight public. Otherwise, the only other people to fight these requests were a few librarians. Considering that these requests can actually dragnet in huge amounts of data from multiple accounts, I wouldn't feel so sanguine about Google's "pushing back".
Major downside is that he doesn't have proof that I will be able to type faster or more effectively. Changing keyboard layouts to such a degree can take a lot out of my productivity.
Upsides is that he isn't married to any one shape for his input platform. Having the wraparound for the game controller could be handy. Same with the steering wheel option. I do hope that he offers some better design options for the handheld, as I'm not keen on pushing a little box up to my chest in order to type quickly.
That may be because prosecutors view anyone with even a whiff of technical expertise to be the new witch. You know, back before the Enlightenment, people persecuted folks with skills and abilities they didn't understand as witches. Call them a witch, it is ok to do whatever you like to get a conviction. Even if all they know is some trig and geometry, and something about medicinal herbs.
People with any technical abilities are the new witch. Look at the sentencing disparity between other physical crimes, and the putative accusations levied against those with skills. Almost every person accused of using tech skills to commit a crime ends up being owned by the government, either in prison or through snitch deals to stay out, even if their alleged crimes are arguably minor. Most people have absolutely no comprehension of how people can use computers to commit crime, or if a crime was even really committed. It is back down to "He's a hacker. He will always have some special (read magical) way of getting around us. Let's nail him to the wall."
You have the incentive correct, but prosecutors view their role as transitory, a step up to a better private law partnership or political office, and also they are paid out a percentage of the fines they are able to levy in court as an annual bonus. They have NO incentive whatsoever to be fair minded or reasonable, or even to care about justice. They want to win, and they have the power of the state apparatus behind them to ensure that.
The defendant? They have whatever lawyer they can afford. Well, after the prosecution freezes their assets and costs him or her their job. So, whatever money is left over after that, that can be used to hire an attorney, who doesn't get paid a bonus unless it comes from his client. That is why the phenomenally wealthy are able to do well when prosecuted, and everyone else gets a 90%+ conviction rate.
Or Strategy 4.a, a la John F. Woods: Hire the proverbial homicidal sysadmin, let them support the code for a few months, and then let that person hold some code review meetings. There may be expenses for plastic drop cloths and quick lye, however, so ensure the new sysadmin has access to a company credit card and a van.
Either way, it is easy enough to do with the Evernote app on an Android phone- just push a widget button. It will upload your audio for you, so you don't have to worry much about someone destroying or confiscating the phone. Sound quality is quite good, and plenty of people put their phones down in front of them along with their notepads during meetings;)
My father in law has a Google wireless node outside of his house in Mountain View. He pays for DSL, because he hasn't found the signal to be strong enough, and the service hasn't been reliable or robust enough when he could get signal. Yes, he tried setting up a repeater, but that only got him the latter results.:\
That, and most people never really read their hiring agreements or workplace policies. Not every company is like HP or the one I used as an example, but as an employee, you can be over a barrel if you don't have other options lined up in a state that doesn't have a lot of protections. Mostly, what I wrote was for the benefit of people who either don't have to sign these kinds of agreements or those who would never be bound to them so they can understand just how screwed those HP employees may be right now. Not a lot of Californians really understand how employment agreements factor in choosing where to live. Texas, Arizona, Washington State, FL, NY all have much more limited employee protections than CA in regards to hiring contracts.
As far as Texas goes, I have nothing against it. It's a friendly state, and I've liked visiting there. I have friends out there, they work for good companies that don't consider their staff chattel, and would consider Austin as a place to relocate if I were running my own business.
Ok, so you want it terse. Presuming you read the article. 1) No. Hardly. 2)Conclusion: Those IT folks down in Austin are gunna git screwed so bad that they might unionize out of spite if GM doesn't go to the mat for them. 3)None of the above. If I wanted to do that, I would have written it in Perl, with a single comment lauding my benefactor.;)
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Well, it depends.
All of the virtualization platforms out there are essentially based on QEMU. All of them read the QCOW file format. All of them have their own implementation and direction of that initial vision.
My experience with KVM is that it is focused on Linux and Windows support. There may be less you can configure under the hood with KVM than with Xen, but if you are a windows and linux shop, or just a linux shop, KVM is awesome. KVM is also the ONLY solution I would try to deploy under RHEL or derivatives, as they dropped Xen support in 6.x. Xen support will be back in 7.x, but that is because RHEL's dropping of support for Xen open source pissed off people on the kernel dev team, so they decided to add it to the kernel directly.
My experience with Xen is that it has a much broader focus, and is more component accessible. The virtual machine hardware and the management tool sets can be easily swapped out for custom ones. I have a number of virtual machine BIOS to pick from if I run into a BIOS bug. I can support BSD and other systems that KVM doesn't, or doesn't do as well. We use Xen as our go to platform, but deployment of KVM would have been faster in some aspects if we didn't need multi-platform support. Xen documentation I've found is also more mature. AFAIK, Xen is the basis for the Amazon EC2 cloud platform (I could be wrong about that). Ubuntu and debian have good support for Xen, but documentation of, say, building a multiple vlan 802.1q networked solution is a situation of YMMV.
My experience with VMWare is that it is a great pay virtualization environment, provided you are willing to shell out for their recommended hardware as well. Setting up things like live migration and cloning are easier with their GUI and step by step instructions. If your company is going to pay for all of that, then it is definitely something worth taking advantage of, as the learning curve is much more accessible (but, it also means you can shoot yourself in the foot faster as well). But the moving target of licensing and hardware requirements are an issue, and my workplace is migrating away from VMWare to Xen because of those issues. Again, if the will to spend is there, it is just fine. I would only use the free solution as something to learn on.
Jails and chroots are nice in a single platform environment, because why waste time on overhead? But the downside is that it is single platform. I'd go more into that, but it isn't really relevant to this discussion. What I would really love to see is something new under the BSD's that offered multi-platform guest support as a host.
All of the the three big players- KVM, XEN, and VMWare are part of OpenStack, so you can use the OpenStack API. If you are ever going to migrate, or have to have cross-compatibility with other virtualization platforms (business parternships can warrant this), then having OpenStack tools available can be really helpful if you want to write the code for it. All three are also supported by OpenNebula, which is an open source pointy clicky interface that can manage all three platforms- provided you can code in your customizations, which could include live migration, etc.
Certification and education are another factor. VMWare wins that one hands down, as they have web accessible training and an easy certification path. The only way you can easily certify on Xen is to get LPIC-3 certified, which will also certify for KVM. The other option is to take the RHEL series (woah, big dollars!), and get certified at the RH Architect level in KVM. The LPIC route actually costs less than the other two, but there are no classes available at that level. Most businesses are familiar only with the VMWare cert path. Also, most companies that have a strong need for someone to fix their problems don't really care which virt solution one has experience with- they care about having an understanding about how all of them work under the hood so that their structural issues are addressed.
Agreed. I haven't seen any serious technological innovation come from gaming in a long time. The article in question gushes, erm, discusses how gaming companies are *using* technologies like Hadoop. Same goes for "the cloud", essentially someone bragging about how they wrote some scripts/apps to make their deployments faster. Essentially, these shops are bragging about work that many very experienced senior network and systems admins (ok, some are called devops now, etc) do already. Woo.
A serious innovation would be coming up with something more robust or efficient than Hadoop or GlusterFS. Maybe a new paradigm shift away from the QEMU based vitualization systems that currently exist (that would be all of them, btw). Or possibly a new distributed secure communications protocol (Friendica's RED, and work by the Calyx Institute both come to mind) to be the basis of a new kind of communications framework.
Most importantly, none of these shops are bragging about their contribution back to the open source projects they are happy to borrow from. Talking about performancing on Hadoop isn't the same as submitting and having accepted performance enhancing code into the Hadoop source tree.
Same here. My wife insisted on tons of pictures and films being taken early on in our marriage and the birth of our first kid. Over 4gig worth of pictures alone. There is no nightmare like having a partner going through a major freak out over a dying hard drive. And, yes, she hasn't gone through a damned one of the pictures or video and added any context to any of them.
If I were going to record my life for posterity, I would look at creating a blog with picture and video entries. One that I host on my own system, and not in the cloud (replace the phrase "the cloud" with "some other guy's computer"). Even dedicating an hour a day to the task of entering and editing the data may not be enough time for random snapshots and video entries. I would try that first, for about a year, before making any decisions on how best to record the rest of my life.
I know that in California, it is illegal to record conversations unless you are out in public, and even then, it is because you are recording everything in public, and not just one person or group of people. My wife also had memory issues due to medication she was taking for a while, and whenever we would break out with a recording device and ask permission at the doctor or our kid's school, attitudes and what would be discussed changed pretty quickly. We weren't doing this as a "gotcha", but that is how it was always treated, and that was for someone who needed the recordings due to intermittent memory impairment.
On the other hand, I have my own private blog that I use as a journal. I will probably be bringing that in house, onto my own laptop, just so I can ensure my data will remain private. As new distributed social media platforms develop (Friendica's RED comes to mind), then I will probably be putting more of my data back online in the future, provided I can scale down who can read and share. For my own family, and especially my daughter, I want to have more data recorded so that they will have something of me that they can refer to later on, mostly for children and grandchildren of their own. But, really, unless someone knows how to find that data once I am dead, they will never see it as things stand today. Maybe tomorrow, when we have more reliable and secure self-hosted social media options, I might consider putting more out there, but that is still going to be dependent upon family gaining access to and maintaining such a system on their own. That will only happen if they are involved from day 1 with the whole experiment of journalling. Which I don't see happening soon, as I have a hard time getting my daughter to empty her lunch bag, and my wife hasn't read my blog since I started it.
Actually, this "advanced" leech doesn't seem so advanced, or he/she would have done a better job at masking their MAC ID footprints. The person is probably using some kind of cracking script they cooked up or copied off the 'net, and may not understand much about networking beyond how to connect.
For my own security, I only allow access to the AP by MAC IDs I register manually into the system. Guest access is turned on when people arrive to the home, and is turned off when they leave. Most wifi access points have MAC configuration parameters, so that MAC IDs can be blacklisted or whitelisted. I go for whitelisting, because if I see logs for someone connecting as me while I am away from home, I know I have a problem.
Yep, since it looks like the poster is getting a cash payout, it would be better to wait. My wife's laptop died, and instead of buying her a new one, we took some time to consider her usage, and she found she was much happier with a tablet instead (which was about half as much). Once she started using the tablet, most of her media consumption on the TV/media center went way down. Now we don't have one of those anymore. We also got rid of her digital camera when she upgraded her cell phone.
I would look at investing in anti-theft tech for all of the devices in use, and ensuring that future devices meet whatever security requirements I determine would mitigate future break-ins or device losses. We have had no less than 3 households of friends that were "cleared out" by thieves in the past few years. Our new policy is that everything is encrypted, and any non-portable devices are security locked to something large and sturdy, or locked in a box (like backup disks, also encrypted). Portable devices all have tracking and remote shutoff software, personal info is in encrypted volumes, a person's device goes with them whenever they leave the house, and every device also has to have a user password to unlock. This limits what will get stolen (and how much personal data we can lose) if there is a break-in, which has happened to people we know far more often than being mugged. All of our personal paper data gets scanned onto one system that is securely backed up, and then that paper is shredded.
Well, it certainly doesn't help when I'm not receiving my initial sign on email from the petition site! Basically, account creation is done, but I'm blocked from logging in because I never receive an email :/
Yep. There are plenty of examples out there, the US pub ed system just doesn't discuss them much. A Peoples' History Of The United States by Howard Zinn makes a pretty good starting point.
I've used Linux since I could get RedHat on Floppies. I personally like BSD based systems, but for my family who play more games, I typically have used Ubuntu. I work as a senior systems admin, and I make the purchasing and installation decisions at the company where I work.
I don't like the idea of spyware coming as a default solution on my kid's laptop. Or my aunt's, or my wife's, or my grandmother's, or my friends'. I don't like the idea of recommending Ubuntu on any system at the Linux User's Group in my region. That is because I don't like the idea of spyware, period. This was one of the reasons why I walked away from anything Windows for personal use a while back. I've been recommending various Linux distributions for home and production work for over two decades now, and this is the first time I'll be telling everyone to find something other than Ubuntu, and to avoid that distro, as well as anything heavily comingled with the Ubuntu source tree.
Yes, I did know about the Unity key logging issue prior to this, but I had expected that this was an oversight of Canonical, not an intended feature design. Now that this is confirmed as being deliberate (and not deliberately stupid), I'm of the opinion that they could easily introduce other spyware "features" as they see fit in the future, probably without any pesky public outcry. Because of Canonical's dishonesty and general smarminess in regard to the stealthy introduction of spyware onto one of the critical user interfaces of their distro, I simply cannot trust anything coming from them. I consider their tree tainted. I will be suggesting to ALL of those people that I give recommendations to either move to Debian, or CentOS, or something else NOT based on the Ubuntu tree. I will be recommending that Ubuntu based distro installs be unsupported at future LUG install fests. It will not matter to me if they reverse course at a later point, because Shuttleworth has already responded to this problem with a rather dismissive wave of his hand, and any reversal of his opinion would strictly be due to a damaged reputation, and not because, I feel, that he or Canonical has any integrity to begin with.
More importantly in terms of my own time, I now have to come up with migration plans for those family members I do support. I am not thrilled about this, because I am their "tech support", and they, as users, have serious problems with changes to how the GUI looks and operates. I also have friends who have bought laptops through System76 who are infuriated about Canonical's antics as well. Canonical may seem to feel that people like me and my friends can now simply go away as soon as they think they are more successful, but Canonical is forgetting the kind of people who put them into their lofty position. I will be working on taking this away from them, as hard if not harder than I promoted them in the past.
Chinese-American task force to liberate NK from its leaders, anyone? Oh, wait, that would make DPRK the Browncoats... that is just so wrong.
Well, considering that the local FBI office was the one that certified that LAPD could be released from federal supervision after the Rampart corruption scandal... I'd say that the FBI has at least as much to lose in terms of credibility over this whole fiasco.
Wow! Thanks for replying to the article. I'm sure some of the people here will find it interesting. :)
"...to incorporate the needs of artists, not just record labels. What are those needs? Linking of avid listeners with artists for concert tickets, merch, music purchases, etc; crowdsourcing tours; providing listener stats and location data, maybe even emails; your idea here, etc, etc."
You mean like Last.FM does, on all counts?
I think I'd like to see this bill at least tied to the following:
1. No more questions about prior felony convictions. It is too easy to get popped with a felony, a class of crime that used to be limited to serious criminal offenses.
2. Tie this to an additional H1-B payroll tax, with the revenue going to online certification training (much like the ACM offers as part of their membership), as well as vouchers for a certain amount of tests.
3. Make it more desirable to hire and promote junior staff. H1-B is attractive because they have fewer workplace protections, and have to take a bigger gamble to come to the US to work. Fix some of those restrictions (such as severe limitations in job-hopping), and institute measures that promote hiring interns and junior IT people.
Right now, it is harder than heck to find qualified IT staff, and HR departments are all asking for 3-5 years of experience in whatever they are hiring for. The problem isn't in the lack of willing senior staff who want to train and mentor people. It isn't in the lack of available training for the unemployed. It is in the lack of will on the part of C level execs who don't want it, and can't see the labor shortage coming up on them, or what that can mean in the long term (in my view, out past 5 years. In the view of a CEO, the long view is not more than 5 years).
I don't know how light rail is run in Austin, but in 11% of commuters in Sacramento use light rail exclusively. That is a pretty sizable number. If it doesn't work for Austin, then that is an Austin problem, not a Californian or progressive one.
No, much of the national deficit actually cannot be laid at CA's doorstep. Those decisions get made in Washington, DC. California has always been a net contributor, being still the eighth largest world economy in spite of the recession. You must be thinking of those red states... http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union
*Certain* businesses flock to CA because the laws, business environment, and climate support their businesses well. Tech companies can find plenty of highly qualified staff because there are three public college systems, the local governments also help support the private ones, and employment/IP law favors job-hopping and entrepreneurship (making it possible for employees to leave disgruntled employers without fear of retribution). Ag companies like it here because you can farm year round, and CA ports are on the Pacific Rim. Manufacturers like it as well, but those who can't or won't avoid dumping pollutants into the water table (see ag) don't like CA, so they go to places like Louisiana instead.
Mexico couldn't keep CA. They were run by the Spanish at the time, and nobody wanted to deal with trying to maintain garrisons during a time of tall ships with months long voyages. That is why, when the US took over, they built the trans-continental railroad. Problem solved.
And, in fact, they have NEVER fought one of these requests. Ever. The only ISP operator to fight one of these requests is Nick Merrill, and he had to enlist the ACLU and others just to get the right to be represented by an attorney, much less make his fight public. Otherwise, the only other people to fight these requests were a few librarians. Considering that these requests can actually dragnet in huge amounts of data from multiple accounts, I wouldn't feel so sanguine about Google's "pushing back".
Major downside is that he doesn't have proof that I will be able to type faster or more effectively. Changing keyboard layouts to such a degree can take a lot out of my productivity.
Upsides is that he isn't married to any one shape for his input platform. Having the wraparound for the game controller could be handy. Same with the steering wheel option. I do hope that he offers some better design options for the handheld, as I'm not keen on pushing a little box up to my chest in order to type quickly.
That may be because prosecutors view anyone with even a whiff of technical expertise to be the new witch. You know, back before the Enlightenment, people persecuted folks with skills and abilities they didn't understand as witches. Call them a witch, it is ok to do whatever you like to get a conviction. Even if all they know is some trig and geometry, and something about medicinal herbs.
People with any technical abilities are the new witch. Look at the sentencing disparity between other physical crimes, and the putative accusations levied against those with skills. Almost every person accused of using tech skills to commit a crime ends up being owned by the government, either in prison or through snitch deals to stay out, even if their alleged crimes are arguably minor. Most people have absolutely no comprehension of how people can use computers to commit crime, or if a crime was even really committed. It is back down to "He's a hacker. He will always have some special (read magical) way of getting around us. Let's nail him to the wall."
You have the incentive correct, but prosecutors view their role as transitory, a step up to a better private law partnership or political office, and also they are paid out a percentage of the fines they are able to levy in court as an annual bonus. They have NO incentive whatsoever to be fair minded or reasonable, or even to care about justice. They want to win, and they have the power of the state apparatus behind them to ensure that.
The defendant? They have whatever lawyer they can afford. Well, after the prosecution freezes their assets and costs him or her their job. So, whatever money is left over after that, that can be used to hire an attorney, who doesn't get paid a bonus unless it comes from his client. That is why the phenomenally wealthy are able to do well when prosecuted, and everyone else gets a 90%+ conviction rate.
Or Strategy 4.a, a la John F. Woods: Hire the proverbial homicidal sysadmin, let them support the code for a few months, and then let that person hold some code review meetings. There may be expenses for plastic drop cloths and quick lye, however, so ensure the new sysadmin has access to a company credit card and a van.
And let's not forget shutting down the CDC, NIST, NOAA, and NASA. Ron Paul is all for that. Woo.
Either way, it is easy enough to do with the Evernote app on an Android phone- just push a widget button. It will upload your audio for you, so you don't have to worry much about someone destroying or confiscating the phone. Sound quality is quite good, and plenty of people put their phones down in front of them along with their notepads during meetings ;)
My father in law has a Google wireless node outside of his house in Mountain View. He pays for DSL, because he hasn't found the signal to be strong enough, and the service hasn't been reliable or robust enough when he could get signal. Yes, he tried setting up a repeater, but that only got him the latter results. :\
I guess ya gets what ya pays for.
That, and most people never really read their hiring agreements or workplace policies. Not every company is like HP or the one I used as an example, but as an employee, you can be over a barrel if you don't have other options lined up in a state that doesn't have a lot of protections. Mostly, what I wrote was for the benefit of people who either don't have to sign these kinds of agreements or those who would never be bound to them so they can understand just how screwed those HP employees may be right now. Not a lot of Californians really understand how employment agreements factor in choosing where to live. Texas, Arizona, Washington State, FL, NY all have much more limited employee protections than CA in regards to hiring contracts.
As far as Texas goes, I have nothing against it. It's a friendly state, and I've liked visiting there. I have friends out there, they work for good companies that don't consider their staff chattel, and would consider Austin as a place to relocate if I were running my own business.
Ok, so you want it terse. Presuming you read the article. 1) No. Hardly. 2)Conclusion: Those IT folks down in Austin are gunna git screwed so bad that they might unionize out of spite if GM doesn't go to the mat for them. 3)None of the above. If I wanted to do that, I would have written it in Perl, with a single comment lauding my benefactor. ;)