Here in Europe, it is quite usual to receive some financial help while unemployed - a "by product" of various taxes and/or insurances we have to pay.
So, if the developer get unemployed, he can spend that time with such financial support doing what? Yes, making his resume look better by participating on some FOSS development. Or simply enjoying the participation like some kind of vacation.
That of course for all those few days any good developer will stay unemployed.:)
... "maybe more humorous" but still +5 insightfull.
Without the first step ("very good because of what it did, but very poor because of its code structure") there would never be second step (very good because of what it did with better code structure).
And this second step provides foundation for the third step. Etc.
So I agree with 'dvice_null' that it is not worthless to invest in the Open Source code even if the code gets rewritten maybe a lot in say 10-15 years. Still a lot long term benefits there.
And there is the propblem in the USA. For most USAans, there is no real competiton amongst Internet Service providers -- there is a duopoly. It's either the "Big Phone Company" (with its history of bad customer service) or the "big Cable Company" (rapidly expanding the scope of its bad customer service).
... And this problem wont be solved by any "packet shaping" ever no matter which of those two will be doing it.:)
It still boils down to (some) ISPs overselling their network to the point where "last mile" capacities greatly overwhelm the capacity of ISP's backbone and uplinks. Overselling is good for ISP - more profit. But overselling is bad for consumers - they do pay for X megabits per second but in reality get only fraction of that.
Of course such ISPs usually do not wont to either admit they are ripping the customers off nor to lower their profit by investing into the infrastructure. What's worse, quite a lot of ISP have a bussiness model so tuned to "oversell" that they can't start providing decent service without rising prices significantly.
And that usually leads to such nonsense as "users of BT are declaring war against users of VoIP" etc.
People please - if you hear any such nonsense from your ISP, switch the ISP.
And if you are unable to switch then its a good indication that the "market with Internet connectivity" you live in is not "healthy" and is most probably not able to provide you with good service for good price. So then take propers steps to fix that (like complain to FCC? or anti-monopoly office?)
And it all started with her parents giving her a solar energy kit when she was 10..."
Now that clearly illustrates that purchase of solar energy kits should be outlawed or at least limited in a similar fashion as distribution of chemical kits, etc.
You know, think of the children... what if they harm themselves with a high voltage they may generated with such kits?
Or what if some terrorist got hold of 'em?
...
You know, I'm kidding. But still such course of action (i.e. banning such kit) may still happen for millions of reasons "our" (and "their") representatives can come up with.
(Sorry, just saw some remarks from G.W. Bush, C. Rize and J. McCain about Russia invading Georgia and could not resist.
BTW I'm sorry for what's happening in Georgia but at the end I think I know shit about what's really happening there and I know only slightly more about what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968. But given that, how did the US got rid of Hussein? And in which century?)
Microsoft is not after that 1% of Linux users. Its after the rest of the users.
But this 1% is still quite a good PR tool so if they do manage to get Linux users on Silverlight bandwagon it will be a strong argument for Silverlight ("see, even those strage open source people like it" or "see, we play nice with open source" - rings bells with example with EU commision and in much broader sense than just silverlight etc.)
So I hope you take your own advice too when commenting next time.
"The short answer is Limelight Networks of Tempe, Arizona."
At first I read it as "The short answer is Limewire blah blah". And I've though: "yes, as usual, peer-to-peer, maybe even that "destroying *IAA profits" one. Maybe sad but quite logical - people wants control themselves so if peer-to-peer is the answer...
Then I reread the summary and realized I got it wrong: Limelight, not Limewire.
But after thinking some more I came back: Yes, maybe this "dedicated private network optimized for this kind of delivery" did save some problems with Internet connectivity by making shortcuts around the Internet itself but at the end I think another big contributors which helped to avoid "the meltdown" are:
stupid (from the viewer point of view) streaming restrictions put in place by whoever is managing "streaming right", then...
sometimes stupid implementation of the streaming itself (ridiculous software requirements,...), which combined with [1] leads to...
usage of peer-to-peer networks (so that viewers can get what they want in format they like at a time they almost like with transmission maybe not that efficient as multicasting but still better than unicasting)
Well, people start notice when they later found out they (or their kids) are quite a porn star... just because they've got some of their private photos on the notebook while crossing the border and images "somehow jumped away" from the guy who searched the notebook. (photos in question can be sexual in nature but they may simply be from a nudist beach, spa, regular beach,...)
The question is, how for long will such a thing hold attention in the news. And that of course depends...:)
But now, as I read it after myself... WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF CHILDREN?!?!?! I think it's quite probable that quite a lot of notebooks crossing the border contain photos of the children of the notebook owner, some of them even naked. And who's making sure that the guy searching the notebooks is not a paedophile?! Or some other kind of sexual predator?
Well, if our politicians, soldiers, policemen... who are doing such stuff on our borders (also) to us are something like "elite" of the nation...
... and...
... if I'm not mistaken, UN is staffed from this above mentioned pool (i.e. state representatives are sending people to UN)...
... then it is not going to help much.
I guess it would be better to simply say "we do not need such protections". Problems is, quite a lot of people genuinely think that such "security theatres" actually do protect us from something bad.
I would like your attitude being put into law but it still wont be enought for me.
As anybody who lost some vital information (thanks to for example hard drive crash and lack of backups) can tell, information on the hard drive is usually much more valuable than the hard drive itself.
So if given a choice, I would gladly "lent them my notebook for an indefinite while" but only *AFTER* I properly wipe out all my data. Much better and "cheaper" then giving them a copy of my data and then having no ability whatsoever to discover how they worked with it (mainly: how many copies and to whom it spanned).
Somebody said: Information is power.
So I consider such information gathering as quite dangerous "arms race".
But given the physical history (few billions of years) and human history (few tens of thousands of years) recent "democracy" and "rights" stuff is very very young and still incomplete when compared to "brutal" laws of nature. State is big, so it shows muscles and maintains its dominancy as any other "big fella" in the past. Fight for freedom is continuing.:)
From neighbour to neighbour. And to bridge longer distances, organize properly and ask a commercial telco (or whoever has cable in place) to simply lease a cable to us. I repeat, lease the cable. Not "provide connectivity".
That way I think we can get back the control of what's going through the cables. Thus "feeing the Internets".
All the agency needs to do is come up with some story which proves that that engineer by doing what he is doing is a terrorist. After that they can use great anti-terror powers to resolve the problem.
Making stories is easier than figuring out why is is disgruntled.
Plus, advice to agency principals: Be sure to never try to find out why is he disgruntled because you may find out it's because of you.:)
If the other Mail Transfer Agents are accepting your self signed certificate without verification, then the Swiss can just generate their own certificate and pull a man in the middle attack on any of your traffic that goes through them.
And IMHO we all know that.
But for now it looks like that "wiretapping" is done mostly with something like 'tcpdump'.
And implementing "man in the middle" attack is harder than just running tcpdump on the router.
So for now we may - being aware of the shortcommings - just enable TLS for SMTP with self-signed certificates thus making it harder for whoever to wiretap using tcpdump.
Then, when there will be enough evidence (or eve simply paranoia on out part) that "man in the middle" is deployed quite often, we escalate further by abandoning self signed certificate and deploy some web of trust (either existing ones or maybe some brand new - cheper, more trustworthy,...).
Microsoft products don't force you to use more Microsoft products, it's just generally more efficient if you do.
Well, I tend to disagree.
Imagine you are responsible for the whole IT infrastructure of some company. The size of the company does not matter. Imagine you choose to deploy say Microsoft Office 2003 or (if you are more oriented or pushed towards smaller costs and/or increased "freedom") even OpenOffice.org.
Now try to imagine a reaction of a CEO of given company after:
some potential client of the company sends you a document created in Microsoft Office 2007
your coworkers (sales, engineering,...) failed to open the document or failed to open it properly thus creating some problem
thanks to that problem client takes the business elsewhere and your company looses revenue
you tell to CEO: "we did not lost income, we are just slighly less efficient"
To add more spice, imagine that client was a big one and potential income (and thus real loses) are quite big.
:)
All that thanks to inability or whatever of Microsoft to use and follow open standards or at least some decent backward compatibility and our quite small ability to push them toward that (thanks in quite big proportion to what some people call "dominant position in the OS market for PC" or, more importantly "dominant position in the office document format market for document exchange" which stems from the firts one), which would ussualy make the above example non issue.
Well, a giant amount of traffic on the backbone is spam, viruses, and illegal copying, so I can't really blame the telcos for not wanting their networks to turn into that...
Then they should push users to adopt something (almost anything) else than Microsoft Windows.
Oh, sorry, cheap shot.:)
But really. The solution is simple (even though maybe painful to some): People should bear the consequences of their decisions.
So, if user chooses to use Windows (or Linux, Mac or whatever), is not able to keep it secure and in shape and thus become part of a botnet propagating large quantities of SPAM and malware, he should at least see his connection bill to go up. Or we can turn that around and give discounts to users who are able to not be part of botnet.
Or, if a backbone (or any other network) operator choose not to go after his users when they generate a lot of junk on the network, well, he has to bear the consequences and either accept that he's providing crappy service on overloaded network or invest much more money to handle the overhead.
I think that very clean solution is for network providers to pass the costs to users, but on individual basis, not by dividing the whole costs evently, so as top properly distribute the "consequences": "We do not care what are you using the bandwidth for (nor do we know or able to tell - we're providing "neutral network", we're not snooping, filtering,... - just simply measuring the throughoutput). But you use 10% of our total bandwidth so here's the invoice for 10% of the costs.".
The only problem with all of this snark is the fact that
software is often installed without the knowledge or full
understanding of the end user.
That's why users should buy something which is sufficiently secure and dumbed down so that they DO understand what's going on and how to use and control it. Or they should require more guarantees from the supplier of the software.
I get it that you are responsible for your property. Not only in a sense "I'm protecting it against damage so that I do not have to spend effort on repairs or replacement" but also in a sense "if they malfunction and damage something or someone I'm responsible".
Example: If I have a driver license in Slovakia and I have a car at my disposal (presumably for driving it) I'm obliged to make sure that no inappropriate person can get the car from me and drive it (inappropriate = without a drivers license, under age, drunk,...). That ussualy means I'm not leaving a car unattended, open and with key in ignition.
So yes, I can try to argue that "I did not know that he would be able to drive away when I leave key in ignition - I closed the door, that should be enough". I think that wont help me.
But if I do close that car and take the keys and somebody break into it - that's quite sure not my fault. It's the fault of bulglar along with all the subsequent damage.
Or if the door and ignition is incorrectly designed or manufactured and allow some uninvited guest in even if I lock the car and take the keys. Then I can use a guarantee and "shift" the blame and responsibility where it belongs - to the manufacturer.
That means, I'm trying to avoid any car whose for example locks and doors do not work properly. Yes, it may be cheap or great atherwise but it would pose quite a big risk to me.:)
Sad thing is, software is not like "real" (tangible) stuff:
you do not buy it, you license it (at least that's what the vendors are telling us so far)
after paying and getting the product (or being allowed to use it:) you may read in the so called EULA that essentialy there is *no guarantee for the software*
...
So I would like to repeat...
People who use computers should not buy the software just because of ussual justifications (I want to write an email, Because everybody has Windows,...) but should demand also that it is of sufficient quality (performance, security,...) and that guarantee is provided if the quality criteria are not met. So as to protect themselves when their computer cause some damage to something or somebody because of faulty or inappropriate software.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, just do not let it drop into the river, lake or ocean!!!
Quite dumb-proof, isn't it? :)
_____________
Btw, its ice-nine by Kurt Vonegut if anybody is wondering.
Two things:
Here in Europe, it is quite usual to receive some financial help while unemployed - a "by product" of various taxes and/or insurances we have to pay.
So, if the developer get unemployed, he can spend that time with such financial support doing what? Yes, making his resume look better by participating on some FOSS development. Or simply enjoying the participation like some kind of vacation.
That of course for all those few days any good developer will stay unemployed. :)
I meant "reasonable" ... but even "treasonable" might be. :)
Keeping the cost of network infrastructure at treasonable level?
... "maybe more humorous" but still +5 insightfull.
Without the first step ("very good because of what it did, but very poor because of its code structure") there would never be second step (very good because of what it did with better code structure).
And this second step provides foundation for the third step. Etc.
So I agree with 'dvice_null' that it is not worthless to invest in the Open Source code even if the code gets rewritten maybe a lot in say 10-15 years. Still a lot long term benefits there.
(And it can be also humorous at the same time :)
... And this problem wont be solved by any "packet shaping" ever no matter which of those two will be doing it. :)
It still boils down to (some) ISPs overselling their network to the point where "last mile" capacities greatly overwhelm the capacity of ISP's backbone and uplinks. Overselling is good for ISP - more profit. But overselling is bad for consumers - they do pay for X megabits per second but in reality get only fraction of that.
Of course such ISPs usually do not wont to either admit they are ripping the customers off nor to lower their profit by investing into the infrastructure. What's worse, quite a lot of ISP have a bussiness model so tuned to "oversell" that they can't start providing decent service without rising prices significantly.
And that usually leads to such nonsense as "users of BT are declaring war against users of VoIP" etc.
People please - if you hear any such nonsense from your ISP, switch the ISP.
And if you are unable to switch then its a good indication that the "market with Internet connectivity" you live in is not "healthy" and is most probably not able to provide you with good service for good price. So then take propers steps to fix that (like complain to FCC? or anti-monopoly office?)
Now that clearly illustrates that purchase of solar energy kits should be outlawed or at least limited in a similar fashion as distribution of chemical kits, etc.
You know, think of the children ... what if they harm themselves with a high voltage they may generated with such kits?
Or what if some terrorist got hold of 'em?
...
You know, I'm kidding. But still such course of action (i.e. banning such kit) may still happen for millions of reasons "our" (and "their") representatives can come up with.
Amen to that. :)
Bias or whatever.
You mean like invading other countries?
(Sorry, just saw some remarks from G.W. Bush, C. Rize and J. McCain about Russia invading Georgia and could not resist.
BTW I'm sorry for what's happening in Georgia but at the end I think I know shit about what's really happening there and I know only slightly more about what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968. But given that, how did the US got rid of Hussein? And in which century?)
Microsoft is not after that 1% of Linux users. Its after the rest of the users.
But this 1% is still quite a good PR tool so if they do manage to get Linux users on Silverlight bandwagon it will be a strong argument for Silverlight ("see, even those strage open source people like it" or "see, we play nice with open source" - rings bells with example with EU commision and in much broader sense than just silverlight etc.)
So I hope you take your own advice too when commenting next time.
At first I read it as "The short answer is Limewire blah blah". And I've though: "yes, as usual, peer-to-peer, maybe even that "destroying *IAA profits" one. Maybe sad but quite logical - people wants control themselves so if peer-to-peer is the answer ...
Then I reread the summary and realized I got it wrong: Limelight, not Limewire.
But after thinking some more I came back: Yes, maybe this "dedicated private network optimized for this kind of delivery" did save some problems with Internet connectivity by making shortcuts around the Internet itself but at the end I think another big contributors which helped to avoid "the meltdown" are:
You know that you should read ./ before you do any actual work. Don't you?
:)
Was it not used (along with other "famous characters") also in the opening ceremony of current Olympic games?
If so, how much has been paid? And from whom to whom?
Well, people start notice when they later found out they (or their kids) are quite a porn star ... just because they've got some of their private photos on the notebook while crossing the border and images "somehow jumped away" from the guy who searched the notebook. (photos in question can be sexual in nature but they may simply be from a nudist beach, spa, regular beach, ...)
The question is, how for long will such a thing hold attention in the news. And that of course depends ... :)
But now, as I read it after myself ... WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF CHILDREN?!?!?! I think it's quite probable that quite a lot of notebooks crossing the border contain photos of the children of the notebook owner, some of them even naked. And who's making sure that the guy searching the notebooks is not a paedophile?! Or some other kind of sexual predator?
Well, if our politicians, soldiers, policemen ... who are doing such stuff on our borders (also) to us are something like "elite" of the nation ...
... and ...
... then it is not going to help much.
I guess it would be better to simply say "we do not need such protections". Problems is, quite a lot of people genuinely think that such "security theatres" actually do protect us from something bad.
I would like your attitude being put into law but it still wont be enought for me.
As anybody who lost some vital information (thanks to for example hard drive crash and lack of backups) can tell, information on the hard drive is usually much more valuable than the hard drive itself.
So if given a choice, I would gladly "lent them my notebook for an indefinite while" but only *AFTER* I properly wipe out all my data. Much better and "cheaper" then giving them a copy of my data and then having no ability whatsoever to discover how they worked with it (mainly: how many copies and to whom it spanned).
Somebody said: Information is power.
So I consider such information gathering as quite dangerous "arms race".
But given the physical history (few billions of years) and human history (few tens of thousands of years) recent "democracy" and "rights" stuff is very very young and still incomplete when compared to "brutal" laws of nature. State is big, so it shows muscles and maintains its dominancy as any other "big fella" in the past. Fight for freedom is continuing. :)
IIRC (If I Remember Correctly) and IIUC (If I Understand Correctly) it does not matter what laws you have "in" the USA.
As long as you are at the so called neutral territory at the border you are "outside" of the USA so laws of the USA does not apply to you.
The guns and uniforms are just a nice little addition to the above stated. :)
I think it's time to lie down our own cables.
From neighbour to neighbour. And to bridge longer distances, organize properly and ask a commercial telco (or whoever has cable in place) to simply lease a cable to us. I repeat, lease the cable. Not "provide connectivity".
That way I think we can get back the control of what's going through the cables. Thus "feeing the Internets".
All the agency needs to do is come up with some story which proves that that engineer by doing what he is doing is a terrorist. After that they can use great anti-terror powers to resolve the problem.
Making stories is easier than figuring out why is is disgruntled.
Plus, advice to agency principals: Be sure to never try to find out why is he disgruntled because you may find out it's because of you. :)
Just a thought: Are the terrorists on the right track to win?
Here's why (assuming they view the democracy and christianity as enemy and U.S.A. as the main strategic ground in fight against both):
Is that it?
And IMHO we all know that.
But for now it looks like that "wiretapping" is done mostly with something like 'tcpdump'.
And implementing "man in the middle" attack is harder than just running tcpdump on the router.
So for now we may - being aware of the shortcommings - just enable TLS for SMTP with self-signed certificates thus making it harder for whoever to wiretap using tcpdump.
Then, when there will be enough evidence (or eve simply paranoia on out part) that "man in the middle" is deployed quite often, we escalate further by abandoning self signed certificate and deploy some web of trust (either existing ones or maybe some brand new - cheper, more trustworthy, ...).
Well, I tend to disagree.
Imagine you are responsible for the whole IT infrastructure of some company. The size of the company does not matter. Imagine you choose to deploy say Microsoft Office 2003 or (if you are more oriented or pushed towards smaller costs and/or increased "freedom") even OpenOffice.org .
Now try to imagine a reaction of a CEO of given company after:
To add more spice, imagine that client was a big one and potential income (and thus real loses) are quite big.
:)
All that thanks to inability or whatever of Microsoft to use and follow open standards or at least some decent backward compatibility and our quite small ability to push them toward that (thanks in quite big proportion to what some people call "dominant position in the OS market for PC" or, more importantly "dominant position in the office document format market for document exchange" which stems from the firts one), which would ussualy make the above example non issue.
Then they should push users to adopt something (almost anything) else than Microsoft Windows.
Oh, sorry, cheap shot. :)
But really. The solution is simple (even though maybe painful to some): People should bear the consequences of their decisions.
So, if user chooses to use Windows (or Linux, Mac or whatever), is not able to keep it secure and in shape and thus become part of a botnet propagating large quantities of SPAM and malware, he should at least see his connection bill to go up. Or we can turn that around and give discounts to users who are able to not be part of botnet.
Or, if a backbone (or any other network) operator choose not to go after his users when they generate a lot of junk on the network, well, he has to bear the consequences and either accept that he's providing crappy service on overloaded network or invest much more money to handle the overhead.
I think that very clean solution is for network providers to pass the costs to users, but on individual basis, not by dividing the whole costs evently, so as top properly distribute the "consequences": "We do not care what are you using the bandwidth for (nor do we know or able to tell - we're providing "neutral network", we're not snooping, filtering, ... - just simply measuring the throughoutput). But you use 10% of our total bandwidth so here's the invoice for 10% of the costs.".
That's why users should buy something which is sufficiently secure and dumbed down so that they DO understand what's going on and how to use and control it. Or they should require more guarantees from the supplier of the software.
I get it that you are responsible for your property. Not only in a sense "I'm protecting it against damage so that I do not have to spend effort on repairs or replacement" but also in a sense "if they malfunction and damage something or someone I'm responsible".
Example: If I have a driver license in Slovakia and I have a car at my disposal (presumably for driving it) I'm obliged to make sure that no inappropriate person can get the car from me and drive it (inappropriate = without a drivers license, under age, drunk, ...). That ussualy means I'm not leaving a car unattended, open and with key in ignition.
So yes, I can try to argue that "I did not know that he would be able to drive away when I leave key in ignition - I closed the door, that should be enough". I think that wont help me.
But if I do close that car and take the keys and somebody break into it - that's quite sure not my fault. It's the fault of bulglar along with all the subsequent damage.
Or if the door and ignition is incorrectly designed or manufactured and allow some uninvited guest in even if I lock the car and take the keys. Then I can use a guarantee and "shift" the blame and responsibility where it belongs - to the manufacturer.
That means, I'm trying to avoid any car whose for example locks and doors do not work properly. Yes, it may be cheap or great atherwise but it would pose quite a big risk to me. :)
Sad thing is, software is not like "real" (tangible) stuff:
So I would like to repeat...
People who use computers should not buy the software just because of ussual justifications (I want to write an email, Because everybody has Windows, ...) but should demand also that it is of sufficient quality (performance, security, ...) and that guarantee is provided if the quality criteria are not met. So as to protect themselves when their computer cause some damage to something or somebody because of faulty or inappropriate software.
So that's all for another car analogy. :)