ESR writes very well, but will be the subject of increasingly personal attacks by SCO, MSFT and co. It's an old trick, if you're losing the dabate on facts, go ad hominem. I guess the good news is that this means that SCO have no case.
ESR has done a good job so far sticking to the facts and not getting drawn out by the trolls, but the next few weeks will required both patience and tact. SCO and MSFT are in the final phase of circling the drain and are going to try to take others down with them.
It's actually even better than the old.doc formats. The old.doc formats merely forced a new purchase.
The nice things is that since Office 2003 has DRM, Microsoft can use the DMCA to hammer anyone that makes tools to convert to/from the format. Additionally, even if the file formats use XML, the schema are still proprietary and the Economic Espionage Act can be used to hammer anyone that makes tools to handle the schema.
Same goes for anyone that even tries any of the above.
Many computer shops could do more to offer boxed sets. Not only to home users save the time, trouble and expense of downloading and burning the CDs, some of the distros come with some really excellent books.
For the merely curious, nothing beats an excellent book. SuSe, for example, had very isntructive ones.
My bosses answer to this is easy. If they can complete a certain workload in the given time and still have time to spend on something else, they are not working at 100% and could do more work (=more $$$) in the same time with no additional cost.
That's a very good case for why a well-rounded education, including science and math, is necessary especially for managers. Too many "bidness" majors take short cuts which undermine their companies completely. I usually interpret a lot of overtime as a prominent symptom of managerial incompetence.
Where I work, if people let them (and only the stupid do), they will pile stuff on them ad nauseum, no matter what it means in terms of overtime. [My emphasis]
Skinner had a lot to say about this. Basically your boss is punishing hard working or efficient workers and reducing productivity. A proper science class sometime in his education would have fixed this.
Well, sharing MP3's online is a far cry from the fair use clause allowed by most copyrights...
That depends on the content of the MP3s, not the MP3s themselves. The MP3 format is not illegal, nor is spreading copyrighted music. Only if the copyright owner, who is not necessarily the creator, of that particular work prohibits the dissemination, is it a problem. Even then, it's a behavioral problem.
Just sour grapes from MPAA/RIAA for realizing that not only did they miss the boat, but that they've outlived their both their profitability and usefulness.
Not an excuse, merely a fact. Microsoft has worked hard to earn a shoddy reputation among techies as it has to earn a good one among marketeers. Here are just three examples.
People with production systems are reluctant to alpha test microsoft's patches on their production machines.
That's not happenstance, that's policy.
Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie recently suggested that in
the name of security, it may be appropriate to force you to install
Microsoft patches or updates, and if that breaks your existing
applications, well, it's for your own good.
If you think about it, if MS-Support keeps breaking third party apps and/or keeps recommending wiping the hard drive and doing a clean install, they get rid of all third party apps through attritition. It's by wearing down the flunky doing the install or using up all the flunky's time or the end user being unable to use the app until the flunky can fix it. Rather clever, I think, even when considering that Microsoft is more of a marketing company or pyramid scheme than a tech company.
These were inexcusable mistakes: using Windows for mission critical equipment and connecting to the Internet, especially Windows.
With MS systems it's not just a matter of loading a patch, quite often they break something especially third party apps, fail to fix the problem they claim to fix, or open a new vulnerability.
If a model of car were found to be so defective -- bolts breaking, carbonmonixide in the passenger compartment, split drive shaft when you change gears, works with only one brand of gas, plays only approved radio stations, etc. -- no one would think to blame the user.
This brings up an important point about the harm of media aggregation
The false claims about dropping revenue need to be refuted. However, that is difficult because in most countries media is not only becoming increasingly privatized (the size of the wallet determine who speaks) but also decreasingly varied so that there are fewer voices and greater chances for abuse.
P2P sharing itself is fine and, infact, underutilized. P2P sharing of copy righted material is not illegal.
Yes. Let's
put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA/2FMPAA --
sharing of copyrighted material is not illegal if it is done in a way the copyright holder condones and even then there is a fair amount
of flexibility depending on which country, but even in the U.S. and other countries subscribing to the Berne convention there is some flexibility.
The real bite is that client-server file sharing, the kind you do with a file server, is getting neglected.
If even half of the offices around the world actually used their Netware/Samba/AFS servers, there would be no need to do anything other than filter to/dev/null those $%^&* mail
attachments aka MS-Outlook worms.
If these folks don't get the message and soon, you may find yourself asking for permission
to write anything on your machine that moves bits around.
Isn't that what the upcoming software patent vote is about? Just think about the
control you can have with patented file formats and algorithms, backed up by the EUCD/DMCA, the Economic Espionage Act, and the Business Software Alliance. Add restrictions management technology and the lock-in is complete, pretty much killing of the IT sector and most possibility for R & D.
P2P sharing itself is fine and, infact, underutilized. P2P sharing of copy righted material is not illegal.
Yes. Let's put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA -- sharing of copyrighted material is not illegal if it is done in a way the copyright holder condones and even then there is a fair amount of flexibility depending on which country, but even in the U.S. and other countries subscribing to the Berne convention there is some flexibility.
The real bite is that client-server file sharing, the kind you do with a file server, is getting neglected. If even half of the offices around the world actually used their Netware/Samba/AFS servers, there would be no need to do anything other than filter to/dev/null those $%^&* mail attachments aka MS-Outlook worms.
The bell is real, but the teletype itself makes so much darn noise that it would be ideal for notification of alerts needing immediate attention. My anecdote us that a friend once hacked one into a being printer for an Apple][. Not only did it make a din during normal operation, because his was missing some structural support it would occilate and bang into the adjacent metal table. Not everyone in the area had the same level of appreciation of this feature however.;)
I agree. In these financially tight times, it seems that they could be spending the money more effectively. In the last few months, I've seen both bus schedule kiosks and even schedule in the airport hanged with obviously fatal MS-Windows errors.
Especially for airports, it's not a good idea to put something as half-baked as MS-Windows in services that passengers depend on -- it makes you wonder how good the rest of their work is, e.g. safety, security, and maintenance.
With the bus schedules, it's just an inconvenience and mildly aggrevating, but nothing a paper schedule or a ride in a taxi won't solve. Though it is wasted money that could be used more effectively in other activities.
An external unit is the way to go. If it works painlessly with OS X and the various Linux distros, I'd buy one.
For backup, the storage unit should be removable like and ideally external. This is why:
The computer could get stolen - a thief is not going to do the favor of popping out the backup unit.
The building could burn down - for businesses and organizations, off site backups are a must.
A rampant worm, virus or cracker could nuke the machine's BIOS or OS or any data within reach - external would encourage keeping the backup off line and make it easier to load up a new machine.
And the obligatory anecdote: Years ago, thieves broke in to a building I was at and swiped each and every CPU they could get on one and a half floors. In and out by the time the police arrived 15-20 minutes later. Perhaps they could have gotten more, if the building were not physically partitioned. The thieves left the RAM, but more importantly they left the hard drives -- the staff were most people could not remember the last time they had made backups. If the target had been whole computers, then the drives would be gone too.
The sad part is the MSBlast worm is terribly inefficient and poorly designed, yet still has caused this much disruption. Even Slammer, which reached saturation in 8.5 minutes, infected very few machines, caused trouble by eating bandwidth. Think what would have happened if it did something more malevolent.
It's not a new problem. Nor is any amount of wishful thinking is going to fix the problem,
Microsoft's products just aren't engineered for security. It's a problem that would take years to fix. Bill Gates himself made allusions to the U.S. Apollo space program of the 1960's which was $25 billion over 10 years. However, for the time being, the security issue is treated like a PR problem and the customers are taking the lumps.
A this point the problem is sociological or psychological. Like any other cult,
Microsoft provides a sense of purpose and belonging to it supporters. Note that neither a
technical background nor even an analytical way of thinking is a
prerequisite, thus fulfilling even the unconditional acceptance aspect of a cult.
As much as IT staff and, especially IT manangers, admire the personal wealth of Bill Gates, they just need to be able to let
go of Windows and move on.
Move on, either to Macintosh or Linux or QNX or BSD or Novell there are many choice. There will be
some up front costs, but even without the viruses and worms these upfront costs will be offset by the number of maintenance hours saved.
6 or 7 years ago installing apps could be a problem on non-Debian distros.
Nowadays, both apt-get and RPM solve the problem. So if you use Debian, Redhat, Mandrake or others then installing / uninstalling is very simple. There are even GUIs if you are that sort and installation is as simple as clicking.
My last MS-Windows machine was at home and I found it so much more work to maintain that I finally dropped it for Linux. That was a few years ago and the various linux distros + KDE/Gnome are even easier now.
One of the nice things about RPM is that you can give a URL as well as a file name.
In a country with lax copyright/intelectual property laws, why not?
They could install a legacy system, but probably don't, because they must get their work done to stay competitive and installing a copy of legacy systems like Windows would not only be illegal, it would decrease productivity -- more time spent trying to keep the machines running, more time per machine in corrective mainenance, fewer remote admin possiblitities and so on.
Most shops just pay the MS tax and do the very first boot directly from the Linux or *BSD install CD.
I thought the Great Leap Forward was solely about disarming the populace and diffusing unrest. Among other things, it's kind of hard for knife-weilding mobs to take to the streets if absolutly all metal, down to nails, pins and grommets has been melted into slag.
A further risk, I would suspect, would be that by acquiring Ximian, Novell is now standing between Microsoft and what is probably their only chance of implementing.Net. Furthermore, I haven't seen a clear explanation of the relation between Ximian, Microsoft, and Microsoft's patents.
These worries aside, it will be good to see solid tools like Netware and NDS/eDirectory rise.
Actually the media format is about as harmful as the bundled app -- you need WMP to read the file format, you need MS-Windows to run WMP, and you need License 6 to run MS-Windows.
No chance of any competition in that model. Ever.
A big danger is DRM being added into the chain, then Microsoft would have 100% say over who makes files, who reads files, when and where they can read files, and who can make programs that read, write or modify files. And just to make the lock-in complete, 100% control over determining the life span of the file format. No more 100 year old archives.
If the EU starts down that path by using encumbered file formats, it steps on the rights of countries where access to government information is a constitutional right. Sweden and Finland are two such countries where information has been open by default as part of the constitution. There may be other countries, but even countries with weaker freedom of information need to use open formats.
I can't ever remember getting through to a human on the MS support line. Though I do remember putting the speaker phone on for the duration of my shift (usually 2-3 hours back then).
I think that in reality most poeple hit the mailing lists and discussion boards, just like for Linux and other F/OSS products.
Usenet discussion groups, maiIing list archives and various HOWTO web pages are excellent resources. If you do your homework before posing a question ( i.e. search web pages, mailing list archives, and old newsgroups) then these are also great for new questions.
Though it actually happens less often than before, I like to be able to solve a problem posted. It does at least two things - saves someone else time, and save me the time and trouble of having to maintain my own archive.
Support was also a big factor in my dropping even my last MS-Windows workstation and upgrading to Linux+KDE. Over the years I found that, as harsh as it sounds, support from MS via telehpone and their website, as well as in-house MSCE's, was no where near up to the level of Usenet and mailing lists. Since I was already familiar with such sources for solving MS-related problems, making the transition to F/OSS operating systems was pretty easy.
One interesting thing that the security people mentioned, that the article doesn't, is that windows 98/windows 98se is vulnerable but Microsoft has not released a patch because they no longer support the product.
A second interesting thing is why just this particular bug is getting the publicity. There's been no shortage of remote exploits for that product line, old or new, this year. Is it part of the new marketing campaign that's just kicking in?
Along those lines, since most of the design flaws are downplayed for weeks/months/years after exploits are found. Apple, RedHat and SuSe have a good lead time to prepare switch campaigns.
I'm sure a dollar value can be put on the peace of mind and increase productivity that goes with moving to a better workstation platform.
Yes, that area has made advances in irrigation that could be used in the U.S., which is still using modified bronze age methods such as open, unlined canals.
However, regardless of how good the irrigation methods, it was my understanding that all irrigation eventually desroys the soil through salinization. "Better" irrigation methods merely reducing either or both the rate at which salinization occurs and the rate at which water is wasted through evaporation.
How efficient is hydroponics in contrast? It or other more or less closed methods would be useful in farming extreme climates such as underground or space.
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ESR has done a good job so far sticking to the facts and not getting drawn out by the trolls, but the next few weeks will required both patience and tact. SCO and MSFT are in the final phase of circling the drain and are going to try to take others down with them.
The nice things is that since Office 2003 has DRM, Microsoft can use the DMCA to hammer anyone that makes tools to convert to/from the format. Additionally, even if the file formats use XML, the schema are still proprietary and the Economic Espionage Act can be used to hammer anyone that makes tools to handle the schema.
Same goes for anyone that even tries any of the above.
For the merely curious, nothing beats an excellent book. SuSe, for example, had very isntructive ones.
That depends on the content of the MP3s, not the MP3s themselves. The MP3 format is not illegal, nor is spreading copyrighted music. Only if the copyright owner, who is not necessarily the creator, of that particular work prohibits the dissemination, is it a problem. Even then, it's a behavioral problem.
Just sour grapes from MPAA/RIAA for realizing that not only did they miss the boat, but that they've outlived their both their profitability and usefulness.
People with production systems are reluctant to alpha test microsoft's patches on their production machines. That's not happenstance, that's policy. Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie recently suggested that in the name of security, it may be appropriate to force you to install Microsoft patches or updates, and if that breaks your existing applications, well, it's for your own good.
If you think about it, if MS-Support keeps breaking third party apps and/or keeps recommending wiping the hard drive and doing a clean install, they get rid of all third party apps through attritition. It's by wearing down the flunky doing the install or using up all the flunky's time or the end user being unable to use the app until the flunky can fix it. Rather clever, I think, even when considering that Microsoft is more of a marketing company or pyramid scheme than a tech company.
With MS systems it's not just a matter of loading a patch, quite often they break something especially third party apps, fail to fix the problem they claim to fix, or open a new vulnerability.
If a model of car were found to be so defective -- bolts breaking, carbonmonixide in the passenger compartment, split drive shaft when you change gears, works with only one brand of gas, plays only approved radio stations, etc. -- no one would think to blame the user.
The false claims about dropping revenue need to be refuted. However, that is difficult because in most countries media is not only becoming increasingly privatized (the size of the wallet determine who speaks) but also decreasingly varied so that there are fewer voices and greater chances for abuse.
Yes. Let's put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA/2FMPAA -- sharing of copyrighted material is not illegal if it is done in a way the copyright holder condones and even then there is a fair amount of flexibility depending on which country, but even in the U.S. and other countries subscribing to the Berne convention there is some flexibility.
The real bite is that client-server file sharing, the kind you do with a file server, is getting neglected. If even half of the offices around the world actually used their Netware/Samba/AFS servers, there would be no need to do anything other than filter to /dev/null those $%^&* mail
attachments aka MS-Outlook worms.
Isn't that what the upcoming software patent vote is about? Just think about the control you can have with patented file formats and algorithms, backed up by the EUCD/DMCA, the Economic Espionage Act, and the Business Software Alliance. Add restrictions management technology and the lock-in is complete, pretty much killing of the IT sector and most possibility for R & D.Yes. Let's put a bullet in that myth right now and stop spreading misinformation on behalf of the RIAA -- sharing of copyrighted material is not illegal if it is done in a way the copyright holder condones and even then there is a fair amount of flexibility depending on which country, but even in the U.S. and other countries subscribing to the Berne convention there is some flexibility.
The real bite is that client-server file sharing, the kind you do with a file server, is getting neglected. If even half of the offices around the world actually used their Netware/Samba/AFS servers, there would be no need to do anything other than filter to /dev/null those $%^&* mail attachments aka MS-Outlook worms.
The bell is real, but the teletype itself makes so much darn noise that it would be ideal for notification of alerts needing immediate attention. My anecdote us that a friend once hacked one into a being printer for an Apple][. Not only did it make a din during normal operation, because his was missing some structural support it would occilate and bang into the adjacent metal table. Not everyone in the area had the same level of appreciation of this feature however. ;)
Especially for airports, it's not a good idea to put something as half-baked as MS-Windows in services that passengers depend on -- it makes you wonder how good the rest of their work is, e.g. safety, security, and maintenance.
With the bus schedules, it's just an inconvenience and mildly aggrevating, but nothing a paper schedule or a ride in a taxi won't solve. Though it is wasted money that could be used more effectively in other activities.
Since the brand of OS afflicted is only supported one or two service pack back in time, one might ask,
"So is this really just a marketing push to get admin rights on users that refused the terms and conditions of earlier service packs?"
For backup, the storage unit should be removable like and ideally external. This is why:
- The computer could get stolen - a thief is not going to do the favor of popping out the backup unit.
- The building could burn down - for businesses and organizations, off site backups are a must.
- A rampant worm, virus or cracker could nuke the machine's BIOS or OS or any data within reach - external would encourage keeping the backup off line and make it easier to load up a new machine.
And the obligatory anecdote: Years ago, thieves broke in to a building I was at and swiped each and every CPU they could get on one and a half floors. In and out by the time the police arrived 15-20 minutes later. Perhaps they could have gotten more, if the building were not physically partitioned. The thieves left the RAM, but more importantly they left the hard drives -- the staff were most people could not remember the last time they had made backups. If the target had been whole computers, then the drives would be gone too.It's not a new problem. Nor is any amount of wishful thinking is going to fix the problem, Microsoft's products just aren't engineered for security. It's a problem that would take years to fix. Bill Gates himself made allusions to the U.S. Apollo space program of the 1960's which was $25 billion over 10 years. However, for the time being, the security issue is treated like a PR problem and the customers are taking the lumps.
A this point the problem is sociological or psychological. Like any other cult, Microsoft provides a sense of purpose and belonging to it supporters. Note that neither a technical background nor even an analytical way of thinking is a prerequisite, thus fulfilling even the unconditional acceptance aspect of a cult.
As much as IT staff and, especially IT manangers, admire the personal wealth of Bill Gates, they just need to be able to let go of Windows and move on.
Move on, either to Macintosh or Linux or QNX or BSD or Novell there are many choice. There will be some up front costs, but even without the viruses and worms these upfront costs will be offset by the number of maintenance hours saved.
Nowadays, both apt-get and RPM solve the problem. So if you use Debian, Redhat, Mandrake or others then installing / uninstalling is very simple. There are even GUIs if you are that sort and installation is as simple as clicking.
My last MS-Windows machine was at home and I found it so much more work to maintain that I finally dropped it for Linux. That was a few years ago and the various linux distros + KDE/Gnome are even easier now.
One of the nice things about RPM is that you can give a URL as well as a file name.
They could install a legacy system, but probably don't, because they must get their work done to stay competitive and installing a copy of legacy systems like Windows would not only be illegal, it would decrease productivity -- more time spent trying to keep the machines running, more time per machine in corrective mainenance, fewer remote admin possiblitities and so on.
Most shops just pay the MS tax and do the very first boot directly from the Linux or *BSD install CD.
I thought the Great Leap Forward was solely about disarming the populace and diffusing unrest. Among other things, it's kind of hard for knife-weilding mobs to take to the streets if absolutly all metal, down to nails, pins and grommets has been melted into slag.
These worries aside, it will be good to see solid tools like Netware and NDS/eDirectory rise.
No chance of any competition in that model. Ever.
A big danger is DRM being added into the chain, then Microsoft would have 100% say over who makes files, who reads files, when and where they can read files, and who can make programs that read, write or modify files. And just to make the lock-in complete, 100% control over determining the life span of the file format. No more 100 year old archives.
If the EU starts down that path by using encumbered file formats, it steps on the rights of countries where access to government information is a constitutional right. Sweden and Finland are two such countries where information has been open by default as part of the constitution. There may be other countries, but even countries with weaker freedom of information need to use open formats.
But in the mean time,
It's pathetic that so many equate captialism with fraud.
Though it actually happens less often than before, I like to be able to solve a problem posted. It does at least two things - saves someone else time, and save me the time and trouble of having to maintain my own archive.
Support was also a big factor in my dropping even my last MS-Windows workstation and upgrading to Linux+KDE. Over the years I found that, as harsh as it sounds, support from MS via telehpone and their website, as well as in-house MSCE's, was no where near up to the level of Usenet and mailing lists. Since I was already familiar with such sources for solving MS-related problems, making the transition to F/OSS operating systems was pretty easy.
Along those lines, since most of the design flaws are downplayed for weeks/months/years after exploits are found. Apple, RedHat and SuSe have a good lead time to prepare switch campaigns.
I'm sure a dollar value can be put on the peace of mind and increase productivity that goes with moving to a better workstation platform.
However, regardless of how good the irrigation methods, it was my understanding that all irrigation eventually desroys the soil through salinization. "Better" irrigation methods merely reducing either or both the rate at which salinization occurs and the rate at which water is wasted through evaporation.
How efficient is hydroponics in contrast? It or other more or less closed methods would be useful in farming extreme climates such as underground or space.