You do realize that you could put that money IN TO investments or savings? Or is there some weird new economic system that kicks in when you get that sort of paycheck?
I think the Open Source crowd has demonstrated the difference quite clearly. While some countries are over 50 years behind us in researching weapons of mass destruction, Open Source OSes are almost entirely caught up with the Closed Source OSes. Mozilla is arguably superior to IE, thanks to it's ability to block numerous annoying javascripts. Therefor, obviously, a policy of secrecy will do little to stop dedicated research.
But this is supposed to be about terrorism, and not other countries. Terrorists rarely design things themselves, not when it comes to complex devices. They steal them. It's easy for a terrorist to steal Windows - certainly easier than creating a customized OS.
The only reasonable security threat that an Open Source OS has is that it is -too- secure. A Windows box has numerous exploits that a government could exploit, and it is easier for a government to install backdoors or content control. However, a smart terrorist is going to circumvent all of that. The problem is, as has often been demonstrated, the design of Windows is easily manipulated by the knowledgable. The terrorists are going to have connections if needed. They're going to know the hacks to disable this stuff if they use this stuff at all.
So where does that leave us? It leaves everyone ELSE vulnerable. In fact, it leaves everyone else vulnerable TO the terrorist.
Windows supports terrorism, because it directly facilitates terrorism. Open Source OSes merely give a slight advantage to the terrorists that are stupid and incompetent, and those are rarely the ones we need to worry about, because we have a very skilled intelligence agency who knows exactly how to catch them. If FreeBSD thwarts them, then I'm terribly worried, not because of that, but because it implies that our intelligence agencies have fallen in to a state of incompetence.
This legislation suggests that our intelligence agencies are incompetent, I suppose.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that you could put that money IN TO investments or savings? Or is there some weird new economic system that kicks in when you get that sort of paycheck?
I think the Open Source crowd has demonstrated the difference quite clearly. While some countries are over 50 years behind us in researching weapons of mass destruction, Open Source OSes are almost entirely caught up with the Closed Source OSes. Mozilla is arguably superior to IE, thanks to it's ability to block numerous annoying javascripts. Therefor, obviously, a policy of secrecy will do little to stop dedicated research.
But this is supposed to be about terrorism, and not other countries. Terrorists rarely design things themselves, not when it comes to complex devices. They steal them. It's easy for a terrorist to steal Windows - certainly easier than creating a customized OS.
The only reasonable security threat that an Open Source OS has is that it is -too- secure. A Windows box has numerous exploits that a government could exploit, and it is easier for a government to install backdoors or content control. However, a smart terrorist is going to circumvent all of that. The problem is, as has often been demonstrated, the design of Windows is easily manipulated by the knowledgable. The terrorists are going to have connections if needed. They're going to know the hacks to disable this stuff if they use this stuff at all.
So where does that leave us? It leaves everyone ELSE vulnerable. In fact, it leaves everyone else vulnerable TO the terrorist.
Windows supports terrorism, because it directly facilitates terrorism. Open Source OSes merely give a slight advantage to the terrorists that are stupid and incompetent, and those are rarely the ones we need to worry about, because we have a very skilled intelligence agency who knows exactly how to catch them. If FreeBSD thwarts them, then I'm terribly worried, not because of that, but because it implies that our intelligence agencies have fallen in to a state of incompetence.
This legislation suggests that our intelligence agencies are incompetent, I suppose.
-1: Off topic -1: "First Post" Obviously the meta-moderation system has failed again, or this story wouldn't show up for most people.