Yeah yeah, I will get modded troll for the word ' Ultimate' in the subject. See if I care.
A virus/worm I would write would:
Snort the network for arps and only contact addressess it sees on the wire.
Lend the OS detection and possibly more of the stealth features from nmap.
Be multi-os (windows, mac, linux) (not multi-platform, i386 will do nicely, thank you.)
Use a trick devised by another slashdotter to find follow-up code by doing a google search (possibly hidden in an existing HTTP connection)
Spite the system-administrator for his not patching known vulnerabilities
Leave the Linux/BSD admins off the hook (mostly because it's much more difficult to do real damage, oh, and because it's pointless to code for BSD vulnerabilities)
Kill the windows boxes (without refering to O/S. Don't want give O/S bad publicity now do we? */sarcasm*)
After a time-out based on the amount of times that we've hit an already infected box within the same sub-net
Using a decent IP-# generation trick.
It isn't so hard to create a really damaging virus/worm, you just have to put some effort in it... (To nay-sayers on the multi-o/s part: if your worm is able to find vulnerabilities, it can use them to install any binary you like. I would think you start out spreading the windows worm with the linux/mac/other payloads in it and making it so that, when installed on the target platform, contain the code to infect all other platforms.)
There's one little problem with this idea: the last time I did real coding, as opposed to scripting, was almost ten years back.
(Would 'they' come after me if a virus writer confesses to have used my ideas?;-)
Coming late to this discussion but I still have to say this even if nobody reads it...
The quote from this article in a highly visible magazine is:
The chance of a patch wrecking Windows is dwarfed by the odds that an unpatched PC will get hit.
And for those saying they don't trust Microsoft to fix their systems, I have one question: If you don't trust this company, why did you give it your money?
(emphasis mine).
This is the one question. Why are there so many technical people that, knowing all the risks and odds, still don't dare patch the systems for fear that the cure will be worse than the dissease?
I know that the writer is mostly concerned with all the ignorant people at home, but when Microsoft itself tells people to not connect to the Internet because of security concerns, then logic fails. How should these people get their updates then?!
Enough ranting since chances of this being read are small anyway. No sense in wasting time.
I'm glad to hear you're still having fun. Over here, it's too hot to have fun.;-)
Anyway, I stand corrected. I 'overlooked' France, my bad. Thank you for completing the list though, France indeed has a German speaking population too.
I meant to say 'as somebody living in Germany' but I felt it would complicate things. Your name seems to suggest you are from one of the Scandinavian countries but given the enormous ammounts of 'austausch' between neighbouring countries in Europe one can only guess at someones nationality. Still, if you are indeed a foreigner living in Germany, it may explain why you are in favour of English instead of the local tongue.
As someone who works with many international co-workers, with whom I communicate in English only, I understand the importance of a common language. The problem with that one language is that only few people really master it and this causes all kinds of major trouble. What I find annoying, and why I am taking this so seriously is because I have a few co-workers that have lived and worked in this country for almost a decade who still don't speak the local language at all!
The point? When in Rome, do like the Romans. Learn the local language, or not, but let people in a country use their own language and stop bitching about the audience being too small. It simply isn't your call to make.
At least somebody is having fun then. I didn't mention the French because you yourself dutifully left them out of your list for some reason.
I do not disagree that English is spoken by most here in Europe. However, I find it disturbing that a German thinks English is more appropriate than German on a congress in Germany. I think it to be no more than common decency to use the native language if at all possible.
You seem to be of the opinion that everybody everywhere should learn english asap so that we can do away with the rest of the languages. How convenient.
The French the Americans are more alike than they know: neither will speak a foreign language, even at gun-point.
[RANT] Let me enlighten you on the state of affairs in Europe, taking the countries you named to make an example:
Switzerland has the following national languages. (The first three are official, see this site for details.)
German (Sweitzerdeutsch, a dialect of German)
French
Italian
Retro-romanian (Rhaeto-Rumantsch, last place where this is spoken, like Basque it is completely different from all other languages in Europe).
Belgium has the following national languages:
French
Dutch (Flemish, a dialect of Dutch is actually spoken but in school official Dutch is thaught)
German
In Luxembourgh, the following languages are in wide spread use:
Lëtzebuergesch (A derivative of German, spoken only)
German
French
To close it off, in the Netherlands, us poor souls have only one official language (Dutch) and one language local to a region (Fries). However, since we have been trading with the whole wide world since $DEITY knows when these languages are thaught in school to all children for at least a few years:
Dutch
English
German
French
Now if you look closely at this list you will notice one thing: German is in all of these countries... The reason? because we are all only a few hours away from each other!Please remove your xenophobic head from your xenophobic behind and get a few language classes. Or just decide to stay at home and go to a local conference. Given the fact that the whole point of this article was that the attendance is high, despite most topics being in German, I doubt that you'll be missed.
"There's matching behavior, and then reimplementing without first understanding. The latter is 1) irresponsible 2) lazy, 3) contemptable, and those that practice should not be protected by reverse-engineering rights. I claim that shouldn't be called reverse-engineering, but something else."
Correct. That term would be "copying" and please let's not get into that area? I've seen enough on copy protection lately...;-)
Thanks for the reply. I'll be thinking about your arguments for some time but this thread will close soon enough so I would like to divert further discussion to a thread on a new article on this issue. (We probably won't have to wait long, this being/. and all.)
For one, they could have taken a few smaller steps in going from solar powered day-flight to an ultra-heavy, fuel-cell strapped night-flight test. For instance first fly with dead weight on the plane instead of the full fuel-cell gear, to test its stability. That would have made the double whammy of installing a new power system _and_ changing the controls unnecesarry and might have provided a bit more margin for failure.
Oh, and I resent the fact that you imply that I'm back-stabbing NASA. I like NASA, I just think that they need to shape up.
And another thing: the Helios has had several succesfull test flights. Not just one. Which makes it all the sadder that it has gone down the tube like it hass.
"The odd 747 full of paying commercial passengers has been known to fall out of the sky as well.
You pick up the pieces, figure out what went wrong, start over and hope to do better next time."
Unfortunatly, picking up the pieces does little to console the relatives of those onboard said 747 or, as in this case, the people who have seen their hard work of the past years quite literally fall to bits.
I agree that one has to learn from ones mistakes, but I can't help to think that one should always seek to minimize the impact of any possible mistake beforehand. This is where NASA seems to need some lessons. The fact that they get them now at exorbitant prices is only very slightly comforting.
I have little hope of you still reading this but here goes:
I _have_ to agree with you that Win2k is the best operating system ever to be produced by Microsoft. Yes I'm counting XP.
When W2k came out I was saying to people: if they keep this up, they have a very good chance of keeping the lead for virtually forever. Then came the new licensing and other 'misbehaviour' (on the bussiness part) and I gave up on them.
The most insightfull part about your comment I find the part where you say
"We'll see how stable your Linux machine gets when games start becoming available. You'll find out just how 'rock-solid' it is then. Linux machines are not being used like Windows machines are, so drawing comparisons like that is not very informative."
I think it will depend on how willing the graphics hardware designers are to let the drivers be developped by the open source community and not much else. Which may mean that this particular part of stability comparisons isn't on the Operating System but on the graphical drivers, or at least the graphical sub-system. I think that Linux will be better than Windows at this part too, once the graphics part is nailed down. What I'm basically saying is: Linux is ready for the office desktop, not for the home desktop.
So, you're right that if you use Linux in the same way that people use Windows for tasks that Linux currently isn't "fit" for yet, Windows comes out on top. However on tasks that they can both do (in terms of "designed for the task") I think Linux, and any Unix for that matter will beat the pants off of Windows for the same hardware and demand, both in performance and stability. (Turning your argument around).
When Linux becomes a real contender, the nicest thing about that is, I think, that it became popular in the office environment first, then spread to the home which is completely reversed from how Windows became ubiquitous. It probably is also the reason why people at home will get a better computer experience from it when this happens.
As a closing remark: it is people like you, with whom one can argue with on the facts, that keep me coming back here.
It seems that you haven't read much of the rest of the thread, including my other responses.
First of all: I said myself that I hadn't seen the law-text itself so I was guessing. When I did see the full text of the proposed change I said it seemed better than expected because it obligates to use OSS before propriety software.
So now we have a difference of opinion: you say that everything should be treated equal, I say that 'affirmative action' is warranted for OSS solutions.
My arguments for thinking the way I do are simple: I think that from a strategic point of view, OSS has several special benefits for governements. Furthermore, I think that those benefits are mostly ignored in current selection procedures because nobody is used to take them into account because of a long history of selecting propriety software only where these benefits were unobtainable anyway. So for the governement to get its way in achieving the strategic benefits, the only real way it has is to use laws. Hence I think the law is fine.
For more reasoning behind these arguments, please see my other posts in the discussion.
I think you're right about this, but I also think that what you consider 'secondary' can be quite important to governements.
Open document formats would allow for easier competition but that goes for both OSS and propriety solutions alike so I think the argument is out of the scope of this discussion.
You are forgetting: - The ability to change things to your own requirements without having to pay through the nose for those changes to be implemented by the software creator. - The ability to be able to keep doing bussiness long after the company that sold you the software has 'died', including but not limited to getting support for said software. - The ability to get another company in to do maintanance, upgrades and additions for you because they're cheaper. - Not depend on a company that may be in a country where other laws apply. - Be able to audit the code (including being able to verify that the source you get to see is what is used to build your binaries) as to make sure there are no nasty surprises like: damaging errors, spy-ware, back doors, etc.
These are the kinds of strategic advantages to OSS that I'm talking about. They tend to matter more to governements than to other types of software buyers but these requirements haven't been codified by many governements.
First of all: thanks for the law-texts. To other readers: in this reply is a link to a site with the original document in pdf.
So the law is a bit better than I expected. It also lacks some crucial aspects.
It's better because: - it concentrates on the upsides of the "free as in speech" argument. - it doesn't exclude propriety, it says that open source should be considered first.
What could be added: - Concentrate more on interoperability and open data formats.
As I've stated in another reply under this subject: Strategy first, then tactics, then operational issues.
The benefits of OSS usually are more on a strategic level. If you can do without those benefits for now and the drawbacks won't keep you from enjoying those benefits a few years down the road, you're right. If not (read: stuck to propriety standards without a way to get out) then maybe you should think again about those 'benefits' you get from going with MS Windows right now.
Whatever you choose, please remember that if you think you've done everything to make the right choice, everbody proclaiming you are nuts to choose whatever you choose is wrong (and probably a troll). Good luck on your decission.
With due thanks to the poster of the relevant proposed law-text.
If you are doing bussiness it's always good to keep the order of how to plan things in mind: 1) Decide on strategy 2) Decide on tactics 3) Decide on operational issues
On a tactical level, propriety software may come out on top when making choices based on input from the operational side while on a strategic level it would be the worst choice you can make. It is therefore necesarry that tactics are dictated by strategy which may mean that you have a totally different set of requirements on the tactical level.
The considerations that favour OSS are usually more of the strategic kind. That's why it is good that somebody at a higher level, with a broader view, gets the lower levels to look in the right direction. In governement this is done through laws.
Agreed. That is the best argument for governement institutions. Usually that's not the first argument that is used by governement officials though. Reason: it doesn't sell...
Hook, line and sinker. Why do I always go at it again? Oh well, lets get on with it:
I agree that the best solution should be sought for the problem, regardless of the origin. However, the specific benefits of open source are not engrained in the selection criteria for governement software selction procedures because these procedures have always been directed at propriety software. (Primary criteria like open data formats, access to the source code if the company goes bust. Secondary things like being able to tinker with it, audit the code during its lifetime, being able to choose another company to maintain it if they're cheaper. That sort of thing.)
By putting into law that open source should be considered, you take away a disadvantage for open source (equal opportunity). You don't give it an unfair advantage.
Because the article doesn't state the precise content of the law or an explanation of it, we can only guess whether it makes it impossible to select the best solution for the problem (oss or propriety).
This is why I say: lets just leave this one alone unless we get more info. It's not worth the fight.
To be honest, I agree that a "heated discussion" can help to form ones mind on a topic. I do think, however, that it may not be the best or even the fastest way to change someones mind.
Please remember this comes from a person who is renowned for his hard-headedness.
(fwiw, I agree with your arguments too, but that's my opinion. I also think there are other arguments in favour of government regulating in favour of OSS which is, again, my opinion.)
The article doesn't detail the intricacies of the law so I'll just guess: government wants to make itself consider Open Source first before spending money on the propriety route.
Naturally, propriety software producers' lobying group sees their collective future sales go to hell and starts whining.
Next steps: - Condemn the lobying group - call on all local geeks to pressure the governement to accept the proposed ammendment. - start an all out flamewar with the trolls on " the relative merrits of both types of software".
Now if somebody mods this up high enough fast enough, we can get this over with real soon... *grin*.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah yeah, I will get modded troll for the word ' Ultimate' in the subject. See if I care.
A virus/worm I would write would:
- Snort the network for arps and only contact addressess it sees on the wire.
- Lend the OS detection and possibly more of the stealth features from nmap.
- Be multi-os (windows, mac, linux) (not multi-platform, i386 will do nicely, thank you.)
- Use a trick devised by another slashdotter to find follow-up code by doing a google search (possibly hidden in an existing HTTP connection)
- Spite the system-administrator for his not patching known vulnerabilities
- Leave the Linux/BSD admins off the hook (mostly because it's much more difficult to do real damage, oh, and because it's pointless to code for BSD vulnerabilities)
- Kill the windows boxes (without refering to O/S. Don't want give O/S bad publicity now do we? */sarcasm*)
- After a time-out based on the amount of times that we've hit an already infected box within the same sub-net
- Using a decent IP-# generation trick.
It isn't so hard to create a really damaging virus/worm, you just have to put some effort in it(To nay-sayers on the multi-o/s part: if your worm is able to find vulnerabilities, it can use them to install any binary you like. I would think you start out spreading the windows worm with the linux/mac/other payloads in it and making it so that, when installed on the target platform, contain the code to infect all other platforms.)
There's one little problem with this idea: the last time I did real coding, as opposed to scripting, was almost ten years back.
(Would 'they' come after me if a virus writer confesses to have used my ideas?
Coming late to this discussion but I still have to say this even if nobody reads it...
(emphasis mine).The quote from this article in a highly visible magazine is:
This is the one question. Why are there so many technical people that, knowing all the risks and odds, still don't dare patch the systems for fear that the cure will be worse than the dissease?
I know that the writer is mostly concerned with all the ignorant people at home, but when Microsoft itself tells people to not connect to the Internet because of security concerns, then logic fails. How should these people get their updates then?!
Enough ranting since chances of this being read are small anyway. No sense in wasting time.
Poetic justice at its best:
Twenty years ago Microsoft made IBM computers a commodity, now IBM is going to make MS' operating system a commodity.
I'm glad to hear you're still having fun. Over here, it's too hot to have fun. ;-)
Anyway, I stand corrected. I 'overlooked' France, my bad. Thank you for completing the list though, France indeed has a German speaking population too.
I meant to say 'as somebody living in Germany' but I felt it would complicate things. Your name seems to suggest you are from one of the Scandinavian countries but given the enormous ammounts of 'austausch' between neighbouring countries in Europe one can only guess at someones nationality. Still, if you are indeed a foreigner living in Germany, it may explain why you are in favour of English instead of the local tongue.
As someone who works with many international co-workers, with whom I communicate in English only, I understand the importance of a common language. The problem with that one language is that only few people really master it and this causes all kinds of major trouble. What I find annoying, and why I am taking this so seriously is because I have a few co-workers that have lived and worked in this country for almost a decade who still don't speak the local language at all!
The point? When in Rome, do like the Romans. Learn the local language, or not, but let people in a country use their own language and stop bitching about the audience being too small. It simply isn't your call to make.
At least somebody is having fun then. I didn't mention the French because you yourself dutifully left them out of your list for some reason.
I do not disagree that English is spoken by most here in Europe. However, I find it disturbing that a German thinks English is more appropriate than German on a congress in Germany. I think it to be no more than common decency to use the native language if at all possible.
You seem to be of the opinion that everybody everywhere should learn english asap so that we can do away with the rest of the languages. How convenient.
The French the Americans are more alike than they know: neither will speak a foreign language, even at gun-point.
[RANT]
Let me enlighten you on the state of affairs in Europe, taking the countries you named to make an example:
- Switzerland has the following national languages. (The first three are official, see this site for details.)
- German (Sweitzerdeutsch, a dialect of German)
- French
- Italian
- Retro-romanian (Rhaeto-Rumantsch, last place where this is spoken, like Basque it is completely different from all other languages in Europe).
- Belgium has the following national languages:
- French
- Dutch (Flemish, a dialect of Dutch is actually spoken but in school official Dutch is thaught)
- German
- In Luxembourgh, the following languages are in wide spread use:
- Lëtzebuergesch (A derivative of German, spoken only)
- German
- French
- To close it off, in the Netherlands, us poor souls have only one official language (Dutch) and one language local to a region (Fries). However, since we have been trading with the whole wide world since $DEITY knows when these languages are thaught in school to all children for at least a few years:
- Dutch
- English
- German
- French
Now if you look closely at this list you will notice one thing: German is in all of these countries... The reason? because we are all only a few hours away from each other!Please remove your xenophobic head from your xenophobic behind and get a few language classes. Or just decide to stay at home and go to a local conference. Given the fact that the whole point of this article was that the attendance is high, despite most topics being in German, I doubt that you'll be missed.[/RANT]
"There's matching behavior, and then reimplementing without first understanding. The latter is 1) irresponsible 2) lazy, 3) contemptable, and those that practice should not be protected by reverse-engineering rights. I claim that shouldn't be called reverse-engineering, but something else."
;-)
Correct. That term would be "copying" and please let's not get into that area? I've seen enough on copy protection lately...
Thanks for the reply. I'll be thinking about your arguments for some time but this thread will close soon enough so I would like to divert further discussion to a thread on a new article on this issue. (We probably won't have to wait long, this being /. and all.)
For one, they could have taken a few smaller steps in going from solar powered day-flight to an ultra-heavy, fuel-cell strapped night-flight test. For instance first fly with dead weight on the plane instead of the full fuel-cell gear, to test its stability. That would have made the double whammy of installing a new power system _and_ changing the controls unnecesarry and might have provided a bit more margin for failure.
Oh, and I resent the fact that you imply that I'm back-stabbing NASA. I like NASA, I just think that they need to shape up.
And another thing: the Helios has had several succesfull test flights. Not just one. Which makes it all the sadder that it has gone down the tube like it hass.
You state:
Unfortunatly, picking up the pieces does little to console the relatives of those onboard said 747 or, as in this case, the people who have seen their hard work of the past years quite literally fall to bits.I agree that one has to learn from ones mistakes, but I can't help to think that one should always seek to minimize the impact of any possible mistake beforehand. This is where NASA seems to need some lessons. The fact that they get them now at exorbitant prices is only very slightly comforting.
I have little hope of you still reading this but here goes:
I _have_ to agree with you that Win2k is the best operating system ever to be produced by Microsoft. Yes I'm counting XP.
When W2k came out I was saying to people: if they keep this up, they have a very good chance of keeping the lead for virtually forever. Then came the new licensing and other 'misbehaviour' (on the bussiness part) and I gave up on them.
The most insightfull part about your comment I find the part where you say
I think it will depend on how willing the graphics hardware designers are to let the drivers be developped by the open source community and not much else. Which may mean that this particular part of stability comparisons isn't on the Operating System but on the graphical drivers, or at least the graphical sub-system. I think that Linux will be better than Windows at this part too, once the graphics part is nailed down. What I'm basically saying is: Linux is ready for the office desktop, not for the home desktop.
So, you're right that if you use Linux in the same way that people use Windows for tasks that Linux currently isn't "fit" for yet, Windows comes out on top. However on tasks that they can both do (in terms of "designed for the task") I think Linux, and any Unix for that matter will beat the pants off of Windows for the same hardware and demand, both in performance and stability. (Turning your argument around).
When Linux becomes a real contender, the nicest thing about that is, I think, that it became popular in the office environment first, then spread to the home which is completely reversed from how Windows became ubiquitous. It probably is also the reason why people at home will get a better computer experience from it when this happens.
As a closing remark: it is people like you, with whom one can argue with on the facts, that keep me coming back here.
It's:
;-)
;-)
"SSH"!
Don't give them any ideas.
Won't you ever learn?!
It seems that you haven't read much of the rest of the thread, including my other responses.
First of all: I said myself that I hadn't seen the law-text itself so I was guessing. When I did see the full text of the proposed change I said it seemed better than expected because it obligates to use OSS before propriety software.
So now we have a difference of opinion: you say that everything should be treated equal, I say that 'affirmative action' is warranted for OSS solutions.
My arguments for thinking the way I do are simple: I think that from a strategic point of view, OSS has several special benefits for governements. Furthermore, I think that those benefits are mostly ignored in current selection procedures because nobody is used to take them into account because of a long history of selecting propriety software only where these benefits were unobtainable anyway. So for the governement to get its way in achieving the strategic benefits, the only real way it has is to use laws. Hence I think the law is fine.
For more reasoning behind these arguments, please see my other posts in the discussion.
I think you're right about this, but I also think that what you consider 'secondary' can be quite important to governements.
Open document formats would allow for easier competition but that goes for both OSS and propriety solutions alike so I think the argument is out of the scope of this discussion.
You are forgetting:
- The ability to change things to your own requirements without having to pay through the nose for those changes to be implemented by the software creator.
- The ability to be able to keep doing bussiness long after the company that sold you the software has 'died', including but not limited to getting support for said software.
- The ability to get another company in to do maintanance, upgrades and additions for you because they're cheaper.
- Not depend on a company that may be in a country where other laws apply.
- Be able to audit the code (including being able to verify that the source you get to see is what is used to build your binaries) as to make sure there are no nasty surprises like: damaging errors, spy-ware, back doors, etc.
These are the kinds of strategic advantages to OSS that I'm talking about. They tend to matter more to governements than to other types of software buyers but these requirements haven't been codified by many governements.
First of all: thanks for the law-texts. To other readers: in this reply is a link to a site with the original document in pdf.
So the law is a bit better than I expected. It also lacks some crucial aspects.
It's better because:
- it concentrates on the upsides of the "free as in speech" argument.
- it doesn't exclude propriety, it says that open source should be considered first.
What could be added:
- Concentrate more on interoperability and open data formats.
Thank you. I wish I could mod this up as informative. (moderators:*hint*)
As I've stated in another reply under this subject: Strategy first, then tactics, then operational issues.
The benefits of OSS usually are more on a strategic level. If you can do without those benefits for now and the drawbacks won't keep you from enjoying those benefits a few years down the road, you're right. If not (read: stuck to propriety standards without a way to get out) then maybe you should think again about those 'benefits' you get from going with MS Windows right now.
Whatever you choose, please remember that if you think you've done everything to make the right choice, everbody proclaiming you are nuts to choose whatever you choose is wrong (and probably a troll). Good luck on your decission.
With due thanks to the poster of the relevant proposed law-text.
If you are doing bussiness it's always good to keep the order of how to plan things in mind:
1) Decide on strategy
2) Decide on tactics
3) Decide on operational issues
On a tactical level, propriety software may come out on top when making choices based on input from the operational side while on a strategic level it would be the worst choice you can make. It is therefore necesarry that tactics are dictated by strategy which may mean that you have a totally different set of requirements on the tactical level.
The considerations that favour OSS are usually more of the strategic kind. That's why it is good that somebody at a higher level, with a broader view, gets the lower levels to look in the right direction. In governement this is done through laws.
Agreed. That is the best argument for governement institutions. Usually that's not the first argument that is used by governement officials though. Reason: it doesn't sell...
Hook, line and sinker. Why do I always go at it again? Oh well, lets get on with it:
I agree that the best solution should be sought for the problem, regardless of the origin. However, the specific benefits of open source are not engrained in the selection criteria for governement software selction procedures because these procedures have always been directed at propriety software. (Primary criteria like open data formats, access to the source code if the company goes bust. Secondary things like being able to tinker with it, audit the code during its lifetime, being able to choose another company to maintain it if they're cheaper. That sort of thing.)
By putting into law that open source should be considered, you take away a disadvantage for open source (equal opportunity). You don't give it an unfair advantage.
Because the article doesn't state the precise content of the law or an explanation of it, we can only guess whether it makes it impossible to select the best solution for the problem (oss or propriety).
This is why I say: lets just leave this one alone unless we get more info. It's not worth the fight.
To be honest, I agree that a "heated discussion" can help to form ones mind on a topic. I do think, however, that it may not be the best or even the fastest way to change someones mind.
Please remember this comes from a person who is renowned for his hard-headedness.
(fwiw, I agree with your arguments too, but that's my opinion. I also think there are other arguments in favour of government regulating in favour of OSS which is, again, my opinion.)
The article doesn't detail the intricacies of the law so I'll just guess: government wants to make itself consider Open Source first before spending money on the propriety route.
Naturally, propriety software producers' lobying group sees their collective future sales go to hell and starts whining.
Next steps:
- Condemn the lobying group
- call on all local geeks to pressure the governement to accept the proposed ammendment.
- start an all out flamewar with the trolls on " the relative merrits of both types of software".
Now if somebody mods this up high enough fast enough, we can get this over with real soon... *grin*.
Although I agree with your general statement, I want to say one thing about the conversion to the Euro:
A rather dramatic side-effect that all the proponents said wouldn't happen and wasn't happening is the increase in inflation.
Guess what, after recalculation they had to admit that this effect was very real and worse than expected even by the nay-sayers...
The only response: oops...
Our inflation rates doubled and in some places trippled for well over a year and I can tell you that _hurts_.
[jest]
I'm so sorry for your lost childhood. It must not have been easy, being a red-headed stepchild and all...
[/jest]