No, a few lives are not more important than freedom. However, the genie is out of the bottle as regards smell based identification (at least in a primitive way). My point is, technology is not inherently freedom-limiting, it's how the technology is applied. It is my sincere hope that this technology can exist, and be put to good use, whithout infringing on freedom. --
The area where I see where this having the most popularity is in spying^H^H^H^H^H^Hlaw enforcement. We already have
police dogs that sniff out criminals; electronic smell recognition seems to be a (un)natural extension of this. Can't you imagine
the FBI or NSA with a huge database of peoples' "smells" and matching them with gloves left behind at a crime or sperm
samples from a rape? Of course, you wouldn't have to register your smell with them -- after all, you don't really need that
driver's license!
Actually, this is by no means a new idea. The East German Stasi had a program where smells were gathered through a variety of means and stored in sealed jars. The jars could be opened months, even years later and the scents (usually preserved on a piece of fabric) presented to bloodhounds and the like. Surprisingly enough, this actually worked pretty well.
So it's fairly clear that people and governments are not only capable of doing this sort of thing, but, in fact, it has been done (and will be done again if it's deemed valuable, I have no doubt). However, it must be pointed out that the usefulness of electronic bomb sniffers and smell based weapons locators is huge, and, properly applied, would likely save many lives.
--
Have you ever been overheard a conversation between a couple of your coworkers/family/etc. full of concern, speculation, and drama, only to find out that they were talking about soap opera characters rather than real people? As many people, including Pat Cadigan, I believe, have noted this seems to be a fine indicator of the level of "reality" that people ascribe to television. It's not just video either, but television. Odds are if you show it on the news there are a whole lot of people who will believe it. I'm not quite sure when we ended up in a culture that's quite so trusting of media (heck, maybe it's just human nature), but it's quite disturbing.
"Live" TV was one of the last forms of broadcast that I felt had any integrity, but now that's going the way of the evening news. Where, exactly, does that leave me for finding out what's _actually_ going on in the world? --
Did anyone read the description of the research used to determine that Danni Ashe is the most downloaded woman? It's almost art the way they whittle down the possibilities by eliminating them from the study. I mean, if I could use methods like these I'd surely be able to prove (as I have always known) that I'm the best person in the world at everything!
IMUnified comes up with an open standard for instant messaging. Assuming a large enough user base recognizes this as a good thing (and they likely will as the next "upgrade" of Yahoo! IM will be both standards and backwards compatible) then the worry about getting messages to my cohorts (each of whom use different services) dissapears... but what else happens?
Well, if there is a single (or, almost single) standard for IM then writing a client that's useful becomes a much easier task. Having, say, a client which knows how to do MIME would be useful in a nubmer of ways, not the least of which is that PGPMIME is a handy way (and one of many) to move around encrypted dated with arbitrary encapsulation (in this case the IM standard protocol). Suddenly a secure IM platform is available with only a few days coding time, and if the poor sod on the other end of my message doesn't know how to interpret PGPMIME (or whatever else I use) all he gets is a nice ASCII block which is conviently labeled, oh, I don't know, "PGP Encrypted Message"...
> Privacy is not a "right"; it is an encumberment to freedom. You can't have both free data > and privacy. And when it comes to down to the decision, data can only help us move forward. > You can't say that about privacy.
While I can see that privacy might be considered an "encumberment to freedom" in an ideal situation, I can't help but think that that is a very nieve point of view in the real world. As far as I can tell, privacy is an enabler of freedom, not a hinderence. Privacy, and to a certain degree anonymity, are in fact essential for a tolerable life in a data rich environment. Why do I say this? Because historically detailed and accurate information regarding individuals has been used rather often for oppression, containment, and supression of ideas.
It's also worth pointing out that privacy and a data rich environment are not, IMHO, nearly as contradictory as your post would have us believe. For example, there is a good deal of information regarding me available in the world. You can find out who I am (assuming for a moment I've been honest) by checking out my domain, web site, people searches, etc. From this data you can link me to an IP range, and potentially monitor my online behaviours. Throw well crafted cookies into the mix and you just get more accuracy. But the fact that so much identifying data is available regarding me, the person, doesn't mean that my privacy need be so thoroughly comprimised every time I log on to the net. Anonymizer services, networks like Freedom.net, group tracking for demographic purposes (as opposed to individual tracking), these are all ways that there can still be a wealth of data freely available while still maintaining a certain degree of privacy.
Ultimately it isn't data which is a threat to privacy (and by extension freedom) but how that data is linked to actions. And for my money, greater linkage between that data and my actions does not "move us forward" by any means. The whole point of privacy, really, is that deep at the root of our freedom is the freedom to recognize that our governement/organizations in power are corrupt, or no longer capable of serving the people, and to organize against them. The true political reason for privacy is to ensure the posibility of revolution.
So I don't think that we should let privacy go the way of the wind, but neither do I feel that the cause of privacy is inherently in conflict with the freedom of data.
Assuming that you find a hosting provider who meets your needs, a great way to choose between them is by who will give you the best SLA (Service Level Agreement). It is often possible to craft your SLA in such a way as to force the hosting provider to address your problems quickly or you simply don't have to pay them. Forcing them to back up their promises regarding latency, uptime, etc. with $$ is a great way to find out who actually believes their own hype.
Heck, the company I work for got their first six months of hosting free due to SLA violations, and I bet it won't be the last time, either. --
It's also possible that SCEI will have to deal with formal complaints and legal action from U.S. film studios over this debacle.
A lawsuit at this point would set an interesting precedent, don't you think. I mean,what about the region free DVD players that are available from places like http://www.dvdcity.com, among other sources? Are these modification outlets going to start getting sued over producing region free players?
Too bad they can't stick with producing region free players. Heck, that shoots the value of the PS2 way up in my book. --
Argus Systems Group, Inc. has announced it's intent to produce a Linux version of it's PitBull compartmentalized OS. PitBull is a B1 certified, compartmentalized version of Solaris (currently Solaris 7) which I have used to much success. While all they have announced is an intent to produce a Linux version, the company moves fast enough that we might see something as soon as a year from now. This isn't exactly ideal, I understand, but in DoD time it isn't that far away. --
SSH Inc. has a very solid IPSec implementation for Linux which would seem to address the privacy issues of a wireless lan. The ssh implementation isn't free at this point, but I can't imagine it will be too long before this issue is addressed in a more open source way. Heck, the Kame IPSec project for BSD also seems quite solid, and it's completely open/free. Is there an equivilent for Linux yet? --
To begin with, this sort of advancement scares the pants off me. Human history is chock full of examples of violent, exploitive uses of technology. In that light, the possibilities opened up by such a deep and thorough understanding of life are more than a bit frightening. But let's be realistic here, it really is only a matter of time. It's not as though we're going to stop trying to figure out how things work any time soon. Heck, that seems to be one of the major drives behind the human condition. And it must be admitted that as frightening as the potential misuses of such knowlege may be, the positive possibilities may be even more exciting.
In the end, I figure this sort of thing is inevitable. Now I'm just trying to figure out if my fears are reasonable, or if I'm just reliving the standard 'fear of new technology' that seems to come around every few years. If I recall, there was quite a bit of resistence to electric lighting in homes as many were afraid it would cause horrible disease or insanity. --
I have tried both Cybex and Belkin switch boxes, and in every case the video distortion has driven me away. Even with heavily shielded cables I was always bothered by "echos" on screen (with an unshielded Belkin it was especially horrible) and a generally fuzzy look to the video. I found I couldn't work with for long without major headaches and the like. --
I have an Ultra 5 on my desk at work, so I've had a pretty good shot at finding out how it's put together. Granted, running as a workstation bears very little similarity to doing serious server stuff, but here goes in any case:
Hardware: I think that Sun really made a mistake here. I'm not too unhappy that they threw out SBus and went to PCI, that really does strike me as a good idea, but dropping onboard SCSI in favour of onboard IDE, well, that was just plain stupid. As it is, every time we buy and Ultra 5 we have to burn a slot to get SCSI into the thing. I notice performance problems with my IDE disks on my workstation, I'd hate to imagine them in any kind of server. Likewise, they seem to have redesigned the case with inconvienience in mind. You have to eviscerate the damn thing every time you want to change anything (memory being the worst) and all the little bits and pieces seem to be fairly low quality.
In the end, the only reason that I upgraded from an Ultra 1 was the frambuffer. 24 (or 32) bit graphics are nice, especially when compared to the measley 8 bits I had before. I don't really have any one application that takes advantage of the extra colors, but color map conflicts (and thus epileptic flickering as maps are switched) are a thing of the past.
And, of course, there's the Mystery Bay. On the front of Ultra 5s is a little flip door that looks just about the right size to admit a 4mm tape. Of course, it isn't the right size, and no tape drive would fit inside anyway. When asked Sun said (after _much_ internal research and many days of not calling me back) that it was for a PCMCIA card reader. Great! I said, and where can I find this reader? "Well," they said, "we don't know. I actually don't think there is one. But when there is, you'll have a bay for it." -- wonderful.
OS: Solaris 7 is the standard these days, ships preinstalled on the Ultra 5. I ran Solaris 7 for two whole weeks on my Ultra 5 before purging it from the disks in a fit of retribution. To say that it's slow is an understatement. My TI-85 can serve web pages faster! I don't know if Solaris 7 is just broken (note the short time between Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 releases) or if it's only broken when it runs on Sun's new hardware. In any case, I dropped back to Solaris 2.6 and am much happier.
On an Ultra 1 Solaris 2.6 shows significant speed increases over 2.5.1, but all of these speed increases seems to have been effectively countered by the hardware in the Ultra 5. The end result: my Ultra 5 running Solaris 2.6 is now just about as fast as my old Ultra 1 running 2.5.1.
Marketing: Given all of these experiences I decided to go check out Sun's site to see what they had to say about Ultra 5s and new Solaris versions. I was somewhat amazed to find that they seemed to be marketing the thing as a desktop machine, trying (or so it seems) to compete with PC manufacturers. Now I'll admit that I like having a Sparc on my desktop, but a PC it ain't! The complete lack of emphasis on marketing the machines as servers was simply amazing. And this pattern seemed to be repeated for the other new Ultra machines.
It's really not clear to me what the heck Sun is up to, but I think that they have some serious thinking to do about their direction in the market. Presumably there's a reason to be (seemingly) ignoring their strengths, but I sure don't know what it is. --
It boils down to what you believe. not what is true.
Certainly it comes down to what I believe in the end, that's always the case in the absence of proof. I choose to give Red Hat the benefit of the doubt, so I don't believe that they are up to anything nasty.
In exactly the same way that my believing that doesn't autmatically make it true, my believing that doesn't automatically make it false either. Many people seem very ready to believe that Red Hat is guilty -- based on no real evidance. How is that opinion any more "truthful" than mine? --
Certainly the number of products markets as for X distro only will have an effect on the "joe blow" level user's perception of that distro, that's to be expected. I guess my point was that Red Hat wasn't setting up that situation a) on purpose (though that may not be wrong in and of itself) or b) with the intention of limiting the functionality of other distros. I count it as a much different situation if a company makes a move in order to hamper the operating capabilities of it's competitors. Red Hat doesn't seem to do that. In fact, because of the liscensing of their developments (mentioned in the article as GPL, I believe) competitors (not used in the usual sense, given the open source situation) are uniquely able to benefit from Red Had developments.
For me it boils down to an issue of intent: Is Red Hat out to kill Debian (or whoever)? No.
I went ahead and asked Metrowerks about this (they have a "Redhat Linux Only" version of Code Warrior) just to find out what they had to say about it. Here's the response I got:
CodeWarrior for Linux (GNU Edition) can run on any moderately recent distribution of Linux that can be made to use RPM's (for intance, we have had customers use it successfully with Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 and SuSE 6.1). If you can "match" Red Hat 5.2, you'd have a pretty good shot. However, we currently only offer technical support on it for Red Hat 5.2+ distributions. Since we take our tech support obligations very seriously, we are wary of recommending it for other distributions. For this reason, we are working on validating CodeWarrior against other distributions right now.
The important thing, IMO, about this response is that it doesn't indicate Red Hat only compatibility, but rather Red Hat only support, which is a vastly different thing. It makes perfect sense to me that a company like Metrowerks would want to explicitly limit the environment they have to support. At the same time, it seems to me that if Red Hat wanted to do something nasty (a la Microsoft) they would have asked for Redhat only compatibility.
In the end, I think that Red Hat is just a little company that's trying to do the right thing. So far they haven't done anything to be upset about, not that I've seen anyway. In fact, their only sin seems to have been success, and if we (as a community) don't get past the success == sin idea then we're doomed to destroy ourselvs.
Like the article said: Red Hat has given a lot back. Let's not lose sight of that just because a witch hunt is exciting. --
I've noticed something interesting about the conversations I see regarding FBI 'crackdowns' on hacker/cracker types. Though there are always long discussions about terminology and the nature of fredom of information, I almost never see anyone discuss the confiscation of computer equiptment.
Now, it's quite possible that I'm terribly out of date, but if I recall correctly the confiscation of equipment is not based on conviction (or even arrest!), only suspicion, and that confiscated equiptment is non-recoverable. Is this still the case?
It seems to me that there is a genuinely usefull (and eminently abusable) power there. If the fear is of governement opression (as it so often is) then the FBI's ability to seize my computer systems without warning, explanation, or recourse, seems to represent a true ability to cripple my effectiveness as a hacker/cracker, social activist, or business person. Granted there are always resources to be had, but to get right down to it I could not afford to have my servers and workstations replaced. Certainly not right away. (or my DVD player, or play station, or speak'n'spell -- they take it all -- for that mater) Worse, even assuming a fairly paranoid set of offsite (unknown to the feds) backups, the amount of intelectual property (I almost hate to use the term in this context) loss can be immense.
Is there a way that this doesn't amount to unchecked punative action by the FBI? I figure I must be missing somthing, because I never hear anyone talk about this at all...
What about the PSX emulator from Connectix? I think it runs it's games off authentic PSX style CDs -- no need to infringe on anyone's copyright there. NOA just has a problem becuase they're still stuck in the cartridge era. --
The rest of the article aside, it seems to me that there is an important (and flawed) assumption burried under there somewhere. So many articles that I read lately seem to equate the success of an operating system with distribution to the masses. Now, I'm as much of a world domination advocate as the next guy, but I'm not sure that success means penetration into all markets. I would say that Linux can be honestly considered successful when (not if) it takes hold of a significant portion of the developer and server markets. I don't want this to be another Stupid Users are Bad rant, but hey, what about the concept of the right tool for the right job?
By rushing into making Linux the right tool for every job, there seems to be a real danger of turning it into the wrong tool for every job.
Frankly, if the options are making Linux more Windows-like or keeping it too arcane for the common man, I'd like to see what's behind door number 3. --
Slashdot Mirror
No, a few lives are not more important than freedom. However, the genie is out of the bottle as regards smell based identification (at least in a primitive way). My point is, technology is not inherently freedom-limiting, it's how the technology is applied. It is my sincere hope that this technology can exist, and be put to good use, whithout infringing on freedom.
--
Actually, this is by no means a new idea. The East German Stasi had a program where smells were gathered through a variety of means and stored in sealed jars. The jars could be opened months, even years later and the scents (usually preserved on a piece of fabric) presented to bloodhounds and the like. Surprisingly enough, this actually worked pretty well.
References to this practice can be found in a number of places, including reporter's notes (search for "smell samples") archived at the Federation of American Scientists.
So it's fairly clear that people and governments are not only capable of doing this sort of thing, but, in fact, it has been done (and will be done again if it's deemed valuable, I have no doubt). However, it must be pointed out that the usefulness of electronic bomb sniffers and smell based weapons locators is huge, and, properly applied, would likely save many lives.
--
Have you ever been overheard a conversation between a couple of your coworkers/family/etc. full of concern, speculation, and drama, only to find out that they were talking about soap opera characters rather than real people? As many people, including Pat Cadigan, I believe, have noted this seems to be a fine indicator of the level of "reality" that people ascribe to television. It's not just video either, but television. Odds are if you show it on the news there are a whole lot of people who will believe it. I'm not quite sure when we ended up in a culture that's quite so trusting of media (heck, maybe it's just human nature), but it's quite disturbing.
"Live" TV was one of the last forms of broadcast that I felt had any integrity, but now that's going the way of the evening news. Where, exactly, does that leave me for finding out what's _actually_ going on in the world?
--
Did anyone read the description of the research used to determine that Danni Ashe is the most downloaded woman? It's almost art the way they whittle down the possibilities by eliminating them from the study. I mean, if I could use methods like these I'd surely be able to prove (as I have always known) that I'm the best person in the world at everything!
sheesh.
--
So let's see if my math here is good:
IMUnified comes up with an open standard for instant messaging. Assuming a large enough user base recognizes this as a good thing (and they likely will as the next "upgrade" of Yahoo! IM will be both standards and backwards compatible) then the worry about getting messages to my cohorts (each of whom use different services) dissapears... but what else happens?
Well, if there is a single (or, almost single) standard for IM then writing a client that's useful becomes a much easier task. Having, say, a client which knows how to do MIME would be useful in a nubmer of ways, not the least of which is that PGPMIME is a handy way (and one of many) to move around encrypted dated with arbitrary encapsulation (in this case the IM standard protocol). Suddenly a secure IM platform is available with only a few days coding time, and if the poor sod on the other end of my message doesn't know how to interpret PGPMIME (or whatever else I use) all he gets is a nice ASCII block which is conviently labeled, oh, I don't know, "PGP Encrypted Message"...
hmmmm, I think I like where this is going.
--
> Privacy is not a "right"; it is an encumberment to freedom. You can't have both free data
> and privacy. And when it comes to down to the decision, data can only help us move forward.
> You can't say that about privacy.
While I can see that privacy might be
considered an "encumberment to freedom" in an ideal situation, I can't help but think that that is a very nieve point of view in the real world. As far as I can tell, privacy is an enabler of freedom, not a hinderence. Privacy, and to a certain degree anonymity, are in fact essential for a tolerable life in a data rich environment. Why do I say this? Because historically detailed and accurate information regarding individuals has been used rather often for oppression, containment, and supression of ideas.
It's also worth pointing out that privacy and a data rich environment are not, IMHO, nearly as contradictory as your post would have us believe. For example, there is a good deal of information regarding me available in the world. You can find out who I am (assuming for a moment I've been honest) by checking out my domain, web site, people searches, etc. From this data you can link me to an IP range, and potentially monitor my online behaviours. Throw well crafted cookies into the mix and you just get more accuracy. But the fact that so much identifying data is available regarding me, the person, doesn't mean that my privacy need be so thoroughly comprimised every time I log on to the net. Anonymizer services, networks like Freedom.net, group tracking for demographic purposes (as opposed to individual tracking), these are all ways that there can still be a wealth of data freely available while still maintaining a certain degree of privacy.
Ultimately it isn't data which is a threat to privacy (and by extension freedom) but how that data is linked to actions. And for my money, greater linkage between that data and my actions does not "move us forward" by any means. The whole point of privacy, really, is that deep at the root of our freedom is the freedom to recognize that our governement/organizations in power are corrupt, or no longer capable of serving the people, and to organize against them. The true political reason for privacy is to ensure the posibility of revolution.
So I don't think that we should let privacy go the way of the wind, but neither do I feel that the cause of privacy is inherently in conflict with the freedom of data.
Just my $0.02
--
Assuming that you find a hosting provider who meets your needs, a great way to choose between them is by who will give you the best SLA (Service Level Agreement). It is often possible to craft your SLA in such a way as to force the hosting provider to address your problems quickly or you simply don't have to pay them. Forcing them to back up their promises regarding latency, uptime, etc. with $$ is a great way to find out who actually believes their own hype.
Heck, the company I work for got their first six months of hosting free due to SLA violations, and I bet it won't be the last time, either.
--
A lawsuit at this point would set an interesting precedent, don't you think. I mean,what about the region free DVD players that are available from places like http://www.dvdcity.com, among other sources? Are these modification outlets going to start getting sued over producing region free players?
Too bad they can't stick with producing region free players. Heck, that shoots the value of the PS2 way up in my book.
--
Argus Systems Group, Inc. has announced it's intent to produce a Linux version of it's PitBull compartmentalized OS. PitBull is a B1 certified, compartmentalized version of Solaris (currently Solaris 7) which I have used to much success. While all they have announced is an intent to produce a Linux version, the company moves fast enough that we might see something as soon as a year from now. This isn't exactly ideal, I understand, but in DoD time it isn't that far away.
--
SSH Inc. has a very solid IPSec implementation for
Linux which would seem to address the privacy issues of a wireless lan. The ssh implementation isn't free at this point, but I can't imagine it will be too long before this issue is addressed in a more open source way. Heck, the Kame IPSec project for BSD also seems quite solid, and it's completely open/free. Is there an equivilent for Linux yet?
--
To begin with, this sort of advancement scares the pants off me. Human history is chock full of examples of violent, exploitive uses of technology. In that light, the possibilities opened up by such a deep and thorough understanding of life are more than a bit frightening. But let's be realistic here, it really is only a matter of time. It's not as though we're going to stop trying to figure out how things work any time soon. Heck, that seems to be one of the major drives behind the human condition. And it must be admitted that as frightening as the potential misuses of such knowlege may be, the positive possibilities may be even more exciting.
In the end, I figure this sort of thing is inevitable. Now I'm just trying to figure out if my fears are reasonable, or if I'm just reliving the standard 'fear of new technology' that seems to come around every few years. If I recall, there was quite a bit of resistence to electric lighting in homes as many were afraid it would cause horrible disease or insanity.
--
Here's a link to an analysis by the Center for Democracy & Technology. It's actually a bit more informative than the House of Representatives page.
--
I have tried both Cybex and Belkin switch boxes, and in every case the video distortion has driven me away. Even with heavily shielded cables I was always bothered by "echos" on screen (with an unshielded Belkin it was especially horrible) and a generally fuzzy look to the video. I found I couldn't work with for long without major headaches and the like.
--
Hardware: I think that Sun really made a mistake here. I'm not too unhappy that they threw out SBus and went to PCI, that really does strike me as a good idea, but dropping onboard SCSI in favour of onboard IDE, well, that was just plain stupid. As it is, every time we buy and Ultra 5 we have to burn a slot to get SCSI into the thing. I notice performance problems with my IDE disks on my workstation, I'd hate to imagine them in any kind of server. Likewise, they seem to have redesigned the case with inconvienience in mind. You have to eviscerate the damn thing every time you want to change anything (memory being the worst) and all the little bits and pieces seem to be fairly low quality.
In the end, the only reason that I upgraded from an Ultra 1 was the frambuffer. 24 (or 32) bit graphics are nice, especially when compared to the measley 8 bits I had before. I don't really have any one application that takes advantage of the extra colors, but color map conflicts (and thus epileptic flickering as maps are switched) are a thing of the past.
And, of course, there's the Mystery Bay. On the front of Ultra 5s is a little flip door that looks just about the right size to admit a 4mm tape. Of course, it isn't the right size, and no tape drive would fit inside anyway. When asked Sun said (after _much_ internal research and many days of not calling me back) that it was for a PCMCIA card reader. Great! I said, and where can I find this reader? "Well," they said, "we don't know. I actually don't think there is one. But when there is, you'll have a bay for it." -- wonderful.
OS: Solaris 7 is the standard these days, ships preinstalled on the Ultra 5. I ran Solaris 7 for two whole weeks on my Ultra 5 before purging it from the disks in a fit of retribution. To say that it's slow is an understatement. My TI-85 can serve web pages faster! I don't know if Solaris 7 is just broken (note the short time between Solaris 2.6 and Solaris 7 releases) or if it's only broken when it runs on Sun's new hardware. In any case, I dropped back to Solaris 2.6 and am much happier.
On an Ultra 1 Solaris 2.6 shows significant speed increases over 2.5.1, but all of these speed increases seems to have been effectively countered by the hardware in the Ultra 5. The end result: my Ultra 5 running Solaris 2.6 is now just about as fast as my old Ultra 1 running 2.5.1.
Marketing: Given all of these experiences I decided to go check out Sun's site to see what they had to say about Ultra 5s and new Solaris versions. I was somewhat amazed to find that they seemed to be marketing the thing as a desktop machine, trying (or so it seems) to compete with PC manufacturers. Now I'll admit that I like having a Sparc on my desktop, but a PC it ain't! The complete lack of emphasis on marketing the machines as servers was simply amazing. And this pattern seemed to be repeated for the other new Ultra machines.
It's really not clear to me what the heck Sun is up to, but I think that they have some serious thinking to do about their direction in the market. Presumably there's a reason to be (seemingly) ignoring their strengths, but I sure don't know what it is.
--
Certainly it comes down to what I believe in the end, that's always the case in the absence of proof. I choose to give Red Hat the benefit of the doubt, so I don't believe that they are up to anything nasty.
In exactly the same way that my believing that doesn't autmatically make it true, my believing that doesn't automatically make it false either. Many people seem very ready to believe that Red Hat is guilty -- based on no real evidance. How is that opinion any more "truthful" than mine?
--
Certainly the number of products markets as for X distro only will have an effect on the "joe blow" level user's perception of that distro, that's to be expected. I guess my point was that Red Hat wasn't setting up that situation a) on purpose (though that may not be wrong in and of itself) or b) with the intention of limiting the functionality of other distros. I count it as a much different situation if a company makes a move in order to hamper the operating capabilities of it's competitors. Red Hat doesn't seem to do that. In fact, because of the liscensing of their developments (mentioned in the article as GPL, I believe) competitors (not used in the usual sense, given the open source situation) are uniquely able to benefit from Red Had developments.
For me it boils down to an issue of intent:
Is Red Hat out to kill Debian (or whoever)? No.
--
The important thing, IMO, about this response is that it doesn't indicate Red Hat only compatibility, but rather Red Hat only support, which is a vastly different thing. It makes perfect sense to me that a company like Metrowerks would want to explicitly limit the environment they have to support. At the same time, it seems to me that if Red Hat wanted to do something nasty (a la Microsoft) they would have asked for Redhat only compatibility.
In the end, I think that Red Hat is just a little company that's trying to do the right thing. So far they haven't done anything to be upset about, not that I've seen anyway. In fact, their only sin seems to have been success, and if we (as a community) don't get past the success == sin idea then we're doomed to destroy ourselvs.
Like the article said: Red Hat has given a lot back. Let's not lose sight of that just because a witch hunt is exciting.
--
Now, it's quite possible that I'm terribly out of date, but if I recall correctly the confiscation of equipment is not based on conviction (or even arrest!), only suspicion, and that confiscated equiptment is non-recoverable. Is this still the case?
It seems to me that there is a genuinely usefull (and eminently abusable) power there. If the fear is of governement opression (as it so often is) then the FBI's ability to seize my computer systems without warning, explanation, or recourse, seems to represent a true ability to cripple my effectiveness as a hacker/cracker, social activist, or business person. Granted there are always resources to be had, but to get right down to it I could not afford to have my servers and workstations replaced. Certainly not right away. (or my DVD player, or play station, or speak'n'spell -- they take it all -- for that mater) Worse, even assuming a fairly paranoid set of offsite (unknown to the feds) backups, the amount of intelectual property (I almost hate to use the term in this context) loss can be immense.
Is there a way that this doesn't amount to unchecked punative action by the FBI? I figure I must be missing somthing, because I never hear anyone talk about this at all...
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What about the PSX emulator from Connectix? I think it runs it's games off authentic PSX style CDs -- no need to infringe on anyone's copyright there. NOA just has a problem becuase they're still stuck in the cartridge era.
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Oh certainly it's succeeded! Heck, I thought it was a success the first time I ran gcc ;)
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there is an important (and flawed) assumption
burried under there somewhere. So many articles
that I read lately seem to equate the success of
an operating system with distribution to the masses. Now, I'm as much of a world domination advocate as the next guy, but I'm not sure that success means penetration into all markets. I would say that Linux can be honestly considered successful when (not if) it takes hold of a significant portion of the developer and server markets. I don't want this to be another Stupid Users are Bad rant, but hey, what about the concept of the right tool for the right job?
By rushing into making Linux the right tool for every job, there seems to be a real danger of turning it into the wrong tool for every job.
Frankly, if the options are making Linux more Windows-like or keeping it too arcane for the common man, I'd like to see what's behind door number 3.
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