That would depend on who the teroists are. Al Queda are not the only teroist group, and they are considered unusual because they are prepared (even eager) to commit attrocites with a high civilian death toll.
Assuming that there is only one entity called "Al-Queda". As opposed to the name being a generic term used by journalists, governments and terrorists.
According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding).
It's likely that a terrorist group causing large numbers of civilian casualties will be drawing support from somewhere else. (Including from nation states.) In many conficts there can be several terrorist groups involved. Terrorist group B may well want terrorist group A to be blamed.
All those "terrorists" which are part of the conspiracy theories being pushed by the US Government and corporate media.
From the US intelligence (we'll let the oxymoron pass) that we've been permitted to see, there is no evidence that Iraq has anything to do with terrorism.
You shouldn't be wanting evidence, you should just take what CNN etc tell you as being the truth:)
I fail to see that dropping bombs on innocent civilians is accomplishing much for US (or anybody's) security.
You'd better report to the Ministry of Truth for re-education...
A Sociopath has a lack of conscience. The incidence is between 1 and 5 percent of the population. You know some of these people. They tend to be of above average intelligence and are very good at hiding their sociopathy.
Assuming they always have to hide it. Especially where such people are in a position of power within business or politics.
They are excellent manipulators.
Which is likely to be a help getting into a position of power.
And they would kill you with no mor qualms than you would spray disinfectant on some a bacteria laden surface,
Alternativly they could get others to do their killing...
The Desktop is NOT fine. There is a mess of mixed layouts, no standardization to application UI design, and the configuration hell that makes up that desktop is above and beyond what most users want to deal with.
Yet somehow people are expected to cope with all of these when they happen on a Windows desktop.
I thought I'd do some masterful cut & paste there to illustrate a point. You're not the only one to mention KDE & GNOME in respect to problems with the Linux desktop. I mention this simply because 4 years ago my then employer had Linux systems as the desktop for regular joe users (english majors, part-time housewives, etc - no geek factors) and the users thought they were wonderful, and were extremely irate when office politics meant they were replaced with MS Windows
At a guess these are actual users as opposed to "power users" or "tweakers". People who just want to be able to use a machine. Not fiddle about with it's settings, install software, etc.
If 4 years ago Linux on the desktop made users extremely happy, what has changed? I believe it is the focus on these desktop environments, and their focus on duplicating the warts of Windows.
Of which Windows has many. Including the way in which quite a few people appear to think that whatever the current version of Windows is should be considered "the standard" in terms of ease of use, user friendliness, etc.
Don't get me wrong, it did take the best part of a week for the users who had no prior non-Windows exposure to familiarise themselves with the new desktop they had.
How long would it take someone familiar with 95/98 to get used to XP?
But it wasn't long after that they were working out for themselves some of the "power features" and asking questions along those veins to make their day more productive, including using virtual desktops, the keyboard bindings for navigation & application execution, saving sessions, etc.
Notice that these questions do not include installing XYZ piece of hardware, downloading software, reinstalling the operating system, etc. Even though "MS geeks" consider these things important...
I agree that that one of the biggest problems with a "Desktop" Linux is software installation (the other being look-and-feel consistency). I see that most people mention apt-get or similar solutions to software install and dependency problems; however, not everyone is permamnently online, with most people still using dialup at home.
Actually this isn't the major problem. The real problem is that it's very difficult to allow end user installs whilst maintaining any kind of security model.
One solution, as I see it, would be for applications to be self contained. They can use the libraries available in the system, if they need extra, they can install them in their own folders. I think that's how OSX does it.
How do you ensure that user installed application D cannot interfere with user installed applications A, B or C?
The argument that moron administrators forgot to do something misses the point. Microsoft should know that most administrators don't have the time, training or resources available to discover and understand all the OS settings required to secure their servers.
Especially when important things are not clearly documented. E.g. that the default "guest" account isn't simply an account with minimal privs.
That's why vendors who sell secure systems set strict default settings. A real security initiative would lock down the OS a tight as Guantanamo Bay, but MS rightly fears that would alienate their customers.
Also it would break plenty of apps. Not just third party appsi, MS Office's "install on first use", is the kind of thing which no secure system would allow. Also anti-virus tools are likely to be a problem. Since "sandboxing" such programs would render them potentially useless.
Early on MS's goal was market share and control. They targeted 'ease of use' and adopted a policy of tight integration between the OS and applications, including massive auto-enabling (by default!) of applications via application data like documents, e-mails, etc.
The biggest problems here are the bluring of "data"/"code" and deliberatly writing unstructured code to ensure "integration" between "operating system" and "applications". To the point where it isn't even clear if a random bit of code is part of the OS or an application...
The result is that the current Microsoft server is merely a single user system on steroids. Even with their previous Internet initiative (which basically produced a free embedded browser and a lot of service packs) the MS OS still suffers from the single user mindset.
Which also has the result that end users are able, even expected, to mess around with the innards of the system in ways they don't understand.
Witness all the 'way too friendly' default settings on most Microsoft systems.
Problem is that there are people, especially so called "Power Users", who see such things as the right way for computers to be. e.g. seeing the ability to install software by clicking on an Internet URL as being a good thing.
The problem has nothing to do with Exchange, or SMTP itself. It has to do with SMTP AUTH -- an extension that allows clients to authenticate themselves. This allows a roaming client (connecting from anywhere) to authenticate via username and password, and they are then given relaying rights as if they were directly on the ISPs network.
The interesting thing is that there is no requirement in the SMTP spec for third party relaying to be supported in the first place. This is a hack which has got completly out of hand.
So many people install irc servers, web servers, etc.etc. as "nobody", yet if one is compromised, the hacker has access to all the stuff running as nobody.. You should use DIFFERENT and SEPERATE "nobodys" for each service, not rely on the stock "nobody"
The default in most modern Linux distros is to have different accounts for different services. It's not as if there is any advantage in having a specific "nobody"/"guest", etc.
The bigger a company gets, the more they seem to staff frontline support with grunts with a tier of support levels behind them.
If a company has a few million customers they arn't going to be bothered about losing a few, even a few thousand. If a company has only a few hundred customers losing one means losing a significent part of their customer base.
Without exaggeration, I can say that *every single* time we have had a significant problem with those applications that cannot be solved by looking in a manual, the support lines have been at best marginally helpful and usually completely hopeless.
Quite possibly the person at the other end of the line has similar documentation to you... It's not impossible that you could know more about the program than whoever you are calling for support:)
We usually work the problem out ourselves, or get it a fix from somebody on usenet.
Which you could just as easily do with open source. Probably more easily since everyone involved can see what the software is actually doing it and there is a reasonable chance of getting in contact with the person who actually wrote the thing in the first place.
There is a HUGE gap between the theory of commercial software support, and the practice.
It's more that there are two definitions of "software support". One is along the lines of "something to help fix it when it breaks and hopefully make sure it won't break in the first place". This you could call the "techie definition", following this definition the vast majority of commercial software support is an utter waste of time and money. The other definition is more along the lines of "someone to pass the buck to if/when things go wrong", here it dosn't appear to matter if the "support" is actually of any practical use.
Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Depending on how broadly the no-compete clause was written, if it covers linux, there's a chance the same would apply to NetWare as well, cause NetWare isn't Unix either.
Possibly even apply to just about any current operating system. If the "no-compete" clause is very broad a court might well dismiss it as unenforcable.
On the other hand, hasn't SCO changed their core products to litigation and (trying) to sell licenses for other company's software?
You missed out "Commercial Software Piracy".
Re:Good news for SCO
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It's possible they don't want their evidence tainted in 'the court of popular opinion' so they choose to wait until their day in court to reveal it.
Except that this isn't the way the court system works. It's a requirement that the plaintiff tell the defendent what the case against them actually is. The plaintiff can't simply withhold evidence on the basis of "the public might see it", since there are procedures for any documents submitted by any party not to be made a matter of public record. In order for this to happen a judge needs to be convinced that there is a good reason not to make such documents public.
I'm just saying. I am not on SCO's side. I do think that there's a considerable body of 'popular opinion' out there that doesn't care if SCO is right or not.
If SCO does not want to infuence "popular opinion" then they should not be issuing press releases. Let alone demanding money from third parties. Anyway their case with IBM is irrelevent to their copyright infringement and copyright fraud.
The real problem about this is the EU is not a very democratic organisation, ie the EU Commission isn't even an elected body and Euro MPs don't expect to be bothered by those who vote for them (like when anti-software-patent activists were accused of "harassing" their Euro-MPs by lobbying them).
Probably because they were actual voters, rather than "professionals". Somehow I doubt it's just MEPs who have this kind of attitude.
If the government wanted to work on reducing social security costs, the first thing they'd do is link up the NI databases with the benefits databases - believe me, they're not connected AT ALL.
Even checking that the NI number was ever issued, let alone that the name matches.
Yes, our taxes will go down by large amounts because we will no longer be paying for thousands if not millions of illegals to live from the social system. The govt itself admits it has no clue how many are in the country.
Exactly what's to stop these people getting hold of forged/stolen identities?
If they don't make them mandatory for at least a short time then it won't actually solve the problems they're looking for.
Mandatory identity documents at best are a minor inconvenience to criminals. Indeed they make crimes involving identity theft easier.
There are all sorts of checks and balances limiting the actions of Government, not least of which is the opposition of non-Cabinet MPs and the House of Lords.
There's also the matter of an independent judiciary and press, to the point where MPs start moaning about "bias".
It's true that the incumbent Government gets around these "obstacles" by ignoring Parliament altogether in some instances and peddling thinly veiled propoganda which oppositions MPs find difficult to refute, but that's a very different argument.
Having more than 2 political parties tends to help matters too.
The parent wasn't insightful, it was wishful thinking. Copyright law in the UK has never allowed people the automatic right to make back-ups. Everybody does, and no-one's stupid enough to sue them for it, but technically it's only legal if the licence agreement allows for it.
It's even got to the point where some "law makers" will admit that the whole thing is stupid and getting stupider. But none of them want to stick their neck out and propose radically new legislation.
How exactly were you proposing that this law would be challenged? We have no written Constitution, in the sense that the US does, so the usual mechanism for overturning silly laws across the pond is out.
A written Constitution isn't that magic. Challenges to US laws on the basis of the US Constitution tend to be expensive and time consuming. A Constitution, written or unwritten, is only as good as the people prepared to defend it.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this law in a legal sense: what it says sucks, but it was passed by the usual means.
The problem is not in the mechanism, except that copyright extension never appears to get mentioned in the election literature of any political party on the planet.
Sure, we can hope that in time copyright law in the UK will be changed to reflect common sense (in particular, explicitly recognising various fair uses in the sense that US copyright law does) but for now, there's simply no basis in law to challenge this.
You will not get "common sense" in copyright laws so long as they are effectivly being written by a fairly small number of "media companies".
Didn't the court forbid M$ from creating restrictive licensing plans for distributers a few years ago? I'm *sure* I heard something about that. They were fining distributers who put a different O/S on computers, saying it was against the licensing agreement. At one of the anti-trust trials the judge ruled against allowing that.
Would this be the trial where Microsoft were told if they didn#t behave they would be told to "behave" in a stern tone of voice...
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That would depend on who the teroists are. Al Queda are not the only teroist group, and they are considered unusual because they are prepared (even eager) to commit attrocites with a high civilian death toll.
Assuming that there is only one entity called "Al-Queda". As opposed to the name being a generic term used by journalists, governments and terrorists.
According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding).
It's likely that a terrorist group causing large numbers of civilian casualties will be drawing support from somewhere else. (Including from nation states.)
In many conficts there can be several terrorist groups involved. Terrorist group B may well want terrorist group A to be blamed.
It is a failure because it cannot be won.
Assuming the aim is to "win". Any more than that is the aim with the "War on Drugs".
Killing people will never convince others to not want to kill us.
Typically it has the opposite effect.
What terrorists?
:)
All those "terrorists" which are part of the conspiracy theories being pushed by the US Government and corporate media.
From the US intelligence (we'll let the oxymoron pass) that we've been permitted to see, there is no evidence that Iraq has anything to do with terrorism.
You shouldn't be wanting evidence, you should just take what CNN etc tell you as being the truth
I fail to see that dropping bombs on innocent civilians is accomplishing much for US (or anybody's) security.
You'd better report to the Ministry of Truth for re-education...
The problem is that most of the generals wear pacemakers, and these bombs would kill them, thus causing the US to respond with nukes.
Respond against who exactly? To the rest of the world it would look like the US was launching an unprovoked nuclear strike.
This makes you wonder how often other 'critical systems' get compromised, and get fixed without any public reports.
Assuming they do get fixed at all.
A Sociopath has a lack of conscience. The incidence is between 1 and 5 percent of the population. You know some of these people. They tend to be of above average intelligence and are very good at hiding their sociopathy.
Assuming they always have to hide it. Especially where such people are in a position of power within business or politics.
They are excellent manipulators.
Which is likely to be a help getting into a position of power.
And they would kill you with no mor qualms than you would spray disinfectant on some a bacteria laden surface,
Alternativly they could get others to do their killing...
The Desktop is NOT fine. There is a mess of mixed layouts, no standardization to application UI design, and the configuration hell that makes up that desktop is above and beyond what most users want to deal with.
Yet somehow people are expected to cope with all of these when they happen on a Windows desktop.
I thought I'd do some masterful cut & paste there to illustrate a point. You're not the only one to mention KDE & GNOME in respect to problems with the Linux desktop. I mention this simply because 4 years ago my then employer had Linux systems as the desktop for regular joe users (english majors, part-time housewives, etc - no geek factors) and the users thought they were wonderful, and were extremely irate when office politics meant they were replaced with MS Windows
At a guess these are actual users as opposed to "power users" or "tweakers". People who just want to be able to use a machine. Not fiddle about with it's settings, install software, etc.
If 4 years ago Linux on the desktop made users extremely happy, what has changed? I believe it is the focus on these desktop environments, and their focus on duplicating the warts of Windows.
Of which Windows has many. Including the way in which quite a few people appear to think that whatever the current version of Windows is should be considered "the standard" in terms of ease of use, user friendliness, etc.
Don't get me wrong, it did take the best part of a week for the users who had no prior non-Windows exposure to familiarise themselves with the new desktop they had.
How long would it take someone familiar with 95/98 to get used to XP?
But it wasn't long after that they were working out for themselves some of the "power features" and asking questions along those veins to make their day more productive, including using virtual desktops, the keyboard bindings for navigation & application execution, saving sessions, etc.
Notice that these questions do not include installing XYZ piece of hardware, downloading software, reinstalling the operating system, etc. Even though "MS geeks" consider these things important...
I agree that that one of the biggest problems with a "Desktop" Linux is software installation (the other being look-and-feel consistency). I see that most people mention apt-get or similar solutions to software install and dependency problems; however, not everyone is permamnently online, with most people still using dialup at home.
Actually this isn't the major problem. The real problem is that it's very difficult to allow end user installs whilst maintaining any kind of security model.
One solution, as I see it, would be for applications to be self contained. They can use the libraries available in the system, if they need extra, they can install them in their own folders. I think that's how OSX does it.
How do you ensure that user installed application D cannot interfere with user installed applications A, B or C?
Why do you want to control your email program from OpenOffice? Can't you just save the file and then email it?
Especially since it's likely to make more sense to be sending a PDF...
Or save the attachment before opening it with OOo?
Or you just click on the attachment and the apropriate program is run to display whatever it might be...
Find me any app that can do the above with zero learning curve.
Too many MS advocates like to pretend that Microsoft software has zero learning time.
If Microsoft had any product with zero learning curve, it would probably reduce their TCO 50-90%!
Nor does it help that Microsoft's products are a moving target, with things changing fairly frequently.
Imagine replacing all of your exchange admins with wino's pulled off the street and have them be automagicaly proficient and productive!
Any actual exchange setup is going to have specific customisations and policies attached to it.
The argument that moron administrators forgot to do something misses the point. Microsoft should know that most administrators don't have the time, training or resources available to discover and understand all the OS settings required to secure their servers.
Especially when important things are not clearly documented. E.g. that the default "guest" account isn't simply an account with minimal privs.
That's why vendors who sell secure systems set strict default settings. A real security initiative would lock down the OS a tight as Guantanamo Bay, but MS rightly fears that would alienate their customers.
Also it would break plenty of apps. Not just third party appsi, MS Office's "install on first use", is the kind of thing which no secure system would allow. Also anti-virus tools are likely to be a problem. Since "sandboxing" such programs would render them potentially useless.
Early on MS's goal was market share and control. They targeted 'ease of use' and adopted a policy of tight integration between the OS and applications, including massive auto-enabling (by default!) of applications via application data like documents, e-mails, etc.
The biggest problems here are the bluring of "data"/"code" and deliberatly writing unstructured code to ensure "integration" between "operating system" and "applications". To the point where it isn't even clear if a random bit of code is part of the OS or an application...
The result is that the current Microsoft server is merely a single user system on steroids. Even with their previous Internet initiative (which basically produced a free embedded browser and a lot of service packs) the MS OS still suffers from the single user mindset.
Which also has the result that end users are able, even expected, to mess around with the innards of the system in ways they don't understand.
Witness all the 'way too friendly' default settings on most Microsoft systems.
Problem is that there are people, especially so called "Power Users", who see such things as the right way for computers to be. e.g. seeing the ability to install software by clicking on an Internet URL as being a good thing.
The problem has nothing to do with Exchange, or SMTP itself. It has to do with SMTP AUTH -- an extension that allows clients to authenticate themselves. This allows a roaming client (connecting from anywhere) to authenticate via username and password, and they are then given relaying rights as if they were directly on the ISPs network.
The interesting thing is that there is no requirement in the SMTP spec for third party relaying to be supported in the first place. This is a hack which has got completly out of hand.
So many people install irc servers, web servers, etc.etc. as "nobody", yet if one is compromised, the hacker has access to all the stuff running as nobody.. You should use DIFFERENT and SEPERATE "nobodys" for each service, not rely on the stock "nobody"
The default in most modern Linux distros is to have different accounts for different services. It's not as if there is any advantage in having a specific "nobody"/"guest", etc.
In many cases, multiple organizations need to collaborate and share information in order to pursue common goals.
They don't need an account called "guest" to do this. Nor does every external entity need to be using the same account even the same access method.
The bigger a company gets, the more they seem to staff frontline support with grunts with a tier of support levels behind them.
If a company has a few million customers they arn't going to be bothered about losing a few, even a few thousand. If a company has only a few hundred customers losing one means losing a significent part of their customer base.
Without exaggeration, I can say that *every single* time we have had a significant problem with those applications that cannot be solved by looking in a manual, the support lines have been at best marginally helpful and usually completely hopeless.
:)
Quite possibly the person at the other end of the line has similar documentation to you... It's not impossible that you could know more about the program than whoever you are calling for support
We usually work the problem out ourselves, or get it a fix from somebody on usenet.
Which you could just as easily do with open source. Probably more easily since everyone involved can see what the software is actually doing it and there is a reasonable chance of getting in contact with the person who actually wrote the thing in the first place.
There is a HUGE gap between the theory of commercial software support, and the practice.
It's more that there are two definitions of "software support". One is along the lines of "something to help fix it when it breaks and hopefully make sure it won't break in the first place". This you could call the "techie definition", following this definition the vast majority of commercial software support is an utter waste of time and money. The other definition is more along the lines of "someone to pass the buck to if/when things go wrong", here it dosn't appear to matter if the "support" is actually of any practical use.
Depending on how broadly the no-compete clause was written, if it covers linux, there's a chance the same would apply to NetWare as well, cause NetWare isn't Unix either.
Possibly even apply to just about any current operating system. If the "no-compete" clause is very broad a court might well dismiss it as unenforcable.
On the other hand, hasn't SCO changed their core products to litigation and (trying) to sell licenses for other company's software?
You missed out "Commercial Software Piracy".
It's possible they don't want their evidence tainted in 'the court of popular opinion' so they choose to wait until their day in court to reveal it.
Except that this isn't the way the court system works. It's a requirement that the plaintiff tell the defendent what the case against them actually is.
The plaintiff can't simply withhold evidence on the basis of "the public might see it", since there are procedures for any documents submitted by any party not to be made a matter of public record. In order for this to happen a judge needs to be convinced that there is a good reason not to make such documents public.
I'm just saying. I am not on SCO's side. I do think that there's a considerable body of 'popular opinion' out there that doesn't care if SCO is right or not.
If SCO does not want to infuence "popular opinion" then they should not be issuing press releases. Let alone demanding money from third parties. Anyway their case with IBM is irrelevent to their copyright infringement and copyright fraud.
The real problem about this is the EU is not a very democratic organisation, ie the EU Commission isn't even an elected body and Euro MPs don't expect to be bothered by those who vote for them (like when anti-software-patent activists were accused of "harassing" their Euro-MPs by lobbying them).
Probably because they were actual voters, rather than "professionals". Somehow I doubt it's just MEPs who have this kind of attitude.
If the government wanted to work on reducing social security costs, the first thing they'd do is link up the NI databases with the benefits databases - believe me, they're not connected AT ALL.
Even checking that the NI number was ever issued, let alone that the name matches.
Yes, our taxes will go down by large amounts because we will no longer be paying for thousands if not millions of illegals to live from the social system. The govt itself admits it has no clue how many are in the country.
Exactly what's to stop these people getting hold of forged/stolen identities?
If they don't make them mandatory for at least a short time then it won't actually solve the problems they're looking for.
Mandatory identity documents at best are a minor inconvenience to criminals. Indeed they make crimes involving identity theft easier.
There are all sorts of checks and balances limiting the actions of Government, not least of which is the opposition of non-Cabinet MPs and the House of Lords.
There's also the matter of an independent judiciary and press, to the point where MPs start moaning about "bias".
It's true that the incumbent Government gets around these "obstacles" by ignoring Parliament altogether in some instances and peddling thinly veiled propoganda which oppositions MPs find difficult to refute, but that's a very different argument.
Having more than 2 political parties tends to help matters too.
The parent wasn't insightful, it was wishful thinking. Copyright law in the UK has never allowed people the automatic right to make back-ups. Everybody does, and no-one's stupid enough to sue them for it, but technically it's only legal if the licence agreement allows for it.
It's even got to the point where some "law makers" will admit that the whole thing is stupid and getting stupider. But none of them want to stick their neck out and propose radically new legislation.
How exactly were you proposing that this law would be challenged? We have no written Constitution, in the sense that the US does, so the usual mechanism for overturning silly laws across the pond is out.
A written Constitution isn't that magic. Challenges to US laws on the basis of the US Constitution tend to be expensive and time consuming. A Constitution, written or unwritten, is only as good as the people prepared to defend it.
There's nothing inherently wrong with this law in a legal sense: what it says sucks, but it was passed by the usual means.
The problem is not in the mechanism, except that copyright extension never appears to get mentioned in the election literature of any political party on the planet.
Sure, we can hope that in time copyright law in the UK will be changed to reflect common sense (in particular, explicitly recognising various fair uses in the sense that US copyright law does) but for now, there's simply no basis in law to challenge this.
You will not get "common sense" in copyright laws so long as they are effectivly being written by a fairly small number of "media companies".
Didn't the court forbid M$ from creating restrictive licensing plans for distributers a few years ago? I'm *sure* I heard something about that. They were fining distributers who put a different O/S on computers, saying it was against the licensing agreement. At one of the anti-trust trials the judge ruled against allowing that.
Would this be the trial where Microsoft were told if they didn#t behave they would be told to "behave" in a stern tone of voice...