It provides a form of stability for the supplier (Microsoft) and the consumer (in this case a corporation). Microsoft can then better plan it's economic future and budget outlays on the basis of return from uncompleted contracts, which provides reassurance to the stockholders. This is a fairly common business practice for all companies: sell a long-term contract to supply a product at a fixed price.
Come to think of it, this may be part of the problem with the perception of Linux. The Linux OS and associated tools are in a state of constant change. This is sound from a software evolution point of view: bugs get removed, the software get stronger. However, there is no company backing Linux - one can't say with absolute certainty that a particular bug will be fixed or a feature added because Linux development is not as market-driven as Windows.
Business understands market-driven software. If you throw enough money at the problem, it will be fixed or go away (or in some businesses, be taken for a long walk off a short pier; I digress from my digression). That guarantee doesn't hold with Linux in a way that business can understand.
A brave business can buy long term support contracts from RedHat and several others, but business is generally conservative and not as comfortable with change as the individual. It wants the stability of Microsoft and thus is willing to buy into long-term contracts that restrict change.
The issue under the law is not what cycles a program may or may not use, but rather whether or not McOwen was guilty of utilizing the machines for unauthorized purposes.
Even if the machine was sitting there, doing absolutely nothing except using up electricity, he lack the proper authority to run the software.
We're splitting hairs by arguing whether or not the used cycles were "trash" or not.
Perhaps the law should be reasonable, but define reasonable. I am of the opinion that the software served no definite educational purpose in the way that it was installed. Perhaps if students had been allowed to participate or even write the software for that node, it would have had a purpose, but that was not the case.
If your work is at a company, but McOwen (my mistake earlier) did not work for a company - he worked for the State of Georgia. Government does not function like a corporation. Perhaps it might be better if it did, perhaps not.
Be that as it may, the state has different rules than a company. Wasting resources can be legally defined as stealing depending on who's doing the defining. Consider: the school is given a certain amount of bandwidth to use for educational purposes as defined by the state. Any use outside of those purposes costs the state money and they do not recieve a portion of that service for which they paid. McOwen chose to use some of the bandwidth for other than state-allowed purposes, which is misappropriation.
Which is theft.
Note the use of the word "chose". He may not have thought about it much beforehand, other than technical issues, but he did choose to install the software. It didn't just suddenly appear on the computers. He chose to go outside policy.
Now, I will agree that what the state originally asked for as punishment was too harsh - we need to save such penalties for actual hackers (in the pejorative sense of the word), but some punishment for misappropriation of public resources is definitely in order, which he received.
Misappropriation happens all the time in state government, some well-intentioned, some not, even in some cases unintentional. McOwen happened to get caught - that's all. The law does not allow for excuses and it shouldn't; otherwise, everyone would have some sort of "dog ate my homework" for every crime committed and we would cease to function as a society. The law also does not allow ignorance as an excuse. It is incumbent on each individual to be aware of the laws of the State.
In short: McOwen was wrong, he got his punishment and system administrators had better start getting some clarification on exactly what company policy is toward installing software. A non-state corporation could start looking at such "trangressions" as misappropriation.
It might be helpful to think of the sysadmin as more of a caretaker of the system, rather than as an absolute master of the machine. Owen's job (as I understand it) was to maintain the systems in a running state to provide computing services to faculty, staff, and students. While this occasionally includes installing software, it does not include installing software that is not necessary to the mission of the school.
The presumption that he was the absolute master of the machines was in error. In this case, the System Administrator's job was not to set policy, but rather to advise. You would do well to clarify whether this is the administration policy with whatever company you work for.
Owen's got lucky - and probably got about what he deserved for screwing around with state equipment.
A question arises: why should our public dollars fund research that aids those who don't contribute tax funds?
If a company in Slovakistan is able to reap the benefits of our research without paying into our tax system, are we, in effect, giving them a free ride?
We pay twice: once in taxes to fund research, once again to purchase the product made in Slovakistan.
It would seem that privatizing the results of research at least keeps some of the return in among the population from which it originated.
Even if tax-funded software research is released to a BSD or GPL license, how fair is it that such products can be used by people who never paid taxes on it, thus saving themselves a bundle in basic research costs?
I am, of course, talking about people outside the country (ie., them crafty furriners). If a company in Slovakistan can reap the benefits of our research, turn around and create a product, then how are we compensated for it? In effect, we pay twice: once for the research, once for the product.
Play up the savings in software acquisition costs and the savings due to the use of recycled hardware (since you won't have to upgrade anymore). Minimal mention of retraining and support costs. Do not go into great detail on the Open Source movement, since most voters will not care and many business involved in selling software service to the city will become alarmed.
Make it look like the taxpayer is getting something for free here. Damn all your opponents to hell for overspending on software and hardware when the solution has been under their noses for several years now.
Charge for a subscription to a root DNS server. One can make money off both ends: charge the domain name holder for the reservation on your server, AND charge the end user a yearly or a per use fee for DNS resolution. The latter requires some form of micropayment, but it's probably quite workable.
The benefit to the end user is that one could subscribe to a completely Disne-fied root that would have only family-friendly sites, whereas another server would have all those wacky pr0n sites you could ask for. Somebody would probably even have a free root server out there based on his/her special interest groups.
Heck, you could even charge for translating addresses to other systems. No need to worry about foreign DNS servers - if they don't pay up, they don't get access to your root.
Some people would still get around the whole thing by just typing in the octet directly, but that would be such a small percentage that it wouldn't even matter.
Actually, it only prevents the government from doing looking through your house, etc. without a reasonable need (as defined by a court who then issues a warrant). The Constitution says nothing about corporations or individuals doing the same. That particular area is covered under the laws against burglary, theft, etc. On the face of it, the contract appears to be perfectly legal, though extremely odious. I doubt that it would hold up in court, though, provided you spent more on your lawyers than they spent on theirs.
Remember, the law is not about right and wrong, but more about who has the better lawyer.
Maybe it's just my perverse sense of humor, but I really wish I had some vital document that he couldn't live without, just so I could send it to him Word format.
And then refuse to provide another format.
Look, like it or not, Word has become a standard for business, just as Photoshop is a standard in the graphic design industry. It's going to take more than just politics and wishful thinking to change it. When a format arises that provides more capability than the Word format, then start talking replacement.
Until then, there's plenty of other brick walls to ram your head against.
As much as I love Dreamweaver, the "clean up Word HTML" feature is pretty half-assed. It still leaves the inline CSS stuff in place, which is usually what needs to be gotten rid of.
$100 is not enormously high for a commercial operating system provided that the support is decent and the company is responsive to customer feedback. That being said, I'd still rather run Windows and potentially have access to thousands of commercial packages rather than just ten or so.
Why the hell have a mascot? Why not just have some sort of representative design? Sure, GNU's got a badly-shaved yak (no, wait - that's RMS), but why do people feel compelled to have an animal when it's not even relevant to the product?
I don't know about you, but the last time I saw a dolphin using a database was...
NEVER!
Hey, slashdot! How about a story about GPS-locating lost kittens next or some other cutesy, only-vaguely tech-related story? Or perhaps get some journalistic sanity and stop acting as an advertising shill!
O.K., I feel much better now. But I'm still miffed about the dolphin.
You know, I never have quite figured out what the policy is on accepting/rejecting stories.
I posted a story about an independent film where Bill Gates gets assassinated and nothing. I figured that this sort of thing would be right up the average/.'ers alley (you know, lots of tacky remarks and finding some way to blame it all on Microsoft). Personally, I think the editors were either: 1) way off base, 2) holding out so they can post it themselves later on. It's a conspiracy by Linux users!
How about a way to check what stories we've submitted (other than having to submit another one) and why they were rejected?
Politics was the motivating factor - just as it always is. If the Democrats say something is white, then Republicans will say it is black as a matter of course. Then, later, they will come back saying that the thing is white and always has been when the public has forgotten what the color was or no longer gives a damn.
Neither party really cares to take a stand on something, except safe issues (and only after extensive polling). Republicans used to be about keeping the world safe from Communism and the Democrats used to be about keeping the world safe from Republicans. Neither one really cares about human rights anymore and neither one seems to think about the deeper issues behind the uses of technology.
Is it any wonder that we have become disillusioned with our political process?
If all of geekdom decided to stop working for a day, 1 day, the world would stop.
The same thing that makes us geeks also will not allow us to stop working for 1 day. Do you know how guilty I feel if I take a three-day weekend? I haven't had a decent nights sleep without chemical assistance in over 10 years. I fully expect to die of a heart attack by the time I am 50.
I'd give just about anything to be one of those mindless jockstraps I see crowding the bars.
Your argument worries me because it basically excuses children to go out and commit mayhem on the web with no consequences. Who become responsible for their actions if the kids themselves are not? Parents? Hah!
Parents refuse to take responsibility for their own children these days, abdicating it to the community at large ("It takes a village..."). When I want responsibility for a child, I will have my own, thank you, not yours.
If they spraypaint my windows, stomp my flowerbeds, etc. then charge them with vandalism and if the law says that they are too young to be charged, then hold the parents responsible. There need to be firm consequences for wrong actions.
The voice-overs for American-released anime are done by professional actors from a "gist" script sent by the producers. The original script is translated into English in such a way that the English-language script writers know what the character is trying to say, but without knowing the actual wording. The scriptwriters then create an English-language version of the script that matches the meaning, but also has to match to number of syllables that the character appears to be saying on-screen (mouth-flaps). So you may only get 15 syllables to say "Your grandmother killed my grandfather twice-removed in a swordfight - prepare to die, you bastard" (23 or so syllables in English). The actors record the dialogue in a booth while watching the movie and it has to match visually.
I have this on excellent authority, from a friend who is a scriptwriter for ADV Films and another who is a voice actor.
Watch the subtitles if you like, but don't knock the translation too much - there's very little that can be done to improve it without re-doing the animated sequences to match the syllabization of American language.
Wow! Someone else actually thinks X sucks? I thought I was the only one (I'm secretly crying for joy).
My suggestion for the Linux killer app would be some sort of animation software (similar to Flash, but able to address multiple types of animation). Perhaps a 3D Studio Max on steroids.
It need not necessarily be free - in fact, it probably shouldn't be, considering the amount of support it would require (ie., charge for software AND support).
I tried KDE, Gnome, and Windowmaker. While not terribly confusing (or useful), I finally gave up on all of them.
If I need a windowed interface into a computer - I use Windows. X just doesn't seem appropriate - why have a server capable of handling multiple clients when I'm the only one on the machine?
Slashdot Mirror
It provides a form of stability for the supplier (Microsoft) and the consumer (in this case a corporation). Microsoft can then better plan it's economic future and budget outlays on the basis of return from uncompleted contracts, which provides reassurance to the stockholders. This is a fairly common business practice for all companies: sell a long-term contract to supply a product at a fixed price.
Come to think of it, this may be part of the problem with the perception of Linux. The Linux OS and associated tools are in a state of constant change. This is sound from a software evolution point of view: bugs get removed, the software get stronger. However, there is no company backing Linux - one can't say with absolute certainty that a particular bug will be fixed or a feature added because Linux development is not as market-driven as Windows.
Business understands market-driven software. If you throw enough money at the problem, it will be fixed or go away (or in some businesses, be taken for a long walk off a short pier; I digress from my digression). That guarantee doesn't hold with Linux in a way that business can understand.
A brave business can buy long term support contracts from RedHat and several others, but business is generally conservative and not as comfortable with change as the individual. It wants the stability of Microsoft and thus is willing to buy into long-term contracts that restrict change.
MSOffice formats are not, and never were recognised, as any type of standard file format
Except maybe by consumers - which, in the end, is the only thing that really counts.
The issue under the law is not what cycles a program may or may not use, but rather whether or not McOwen was guilty of utilizing the machines for unauthorized purposes.
Even if the machine was sitting there, doing absolutely nothing except using up electricity, he lack the proper authority to run the software.
We're splitting hairs by arguing whether or not the used cycles were "trash" or not.
Perhaps the law should be reasonable, but define reasonable. I am of the opinion that the software served no definite educational purpose in the way that it was installed. Perhaps if students had been allowed to participate or even write the software for that node, it would have had a purpose, but that was not the case.
If your work is at a company, but McOwen (my mistake earlier) did not work for a company - he worked for the State of Georgia. Government does not function like a corporation. Perhaps it might be better if it did, perhaps not.
Be that as it may, the state has different rules than a company. Wasting resources can be legally defined as stealing depending on who's doing the defining. Consider: the school is given a certain amount of bandwidth to use for educational purposes as defined by the state. Any use outside of those purposes costs the state money and they do not recieve a portion of that service for which they paid. McOwen chose to use some of the bandwidth for other than state-allowed purposes, which is misappropriation.
Which is theft.
Note the use of the word "chose". He may not have thought about it much beforehand, other than technical issues, but he did choose to install the software. It didn't just suddenly appear on the computers. He chose to go outside policy.
Now, I will agree that what the state originally asked for as punishment was too harsh - we need to save such penalties for actual hackers (in the pejorative sense of the word), but some punishment for misappropriation of public resources is definitely in order, which he received.
Misappropriation happens all the time in state government, some well-intentioned, some not, even in some cases unintentional. McOwen happened to get caught - that's all. The law does not allow for excuses and it shouldn't; otherwise, everyone would have some sort of "dog ate my homework" for every crime committed and we would cease to function as a society. The law also does not allow ignorance as an excuse. It is incumbent on each individual to be aware of the laws of the State.
In short: McOwen was wrong, he got his punishment and system administrators had better start getting some clarification on exactly what company policy is toward installing software. A non-state corporation could start looking at such "trangressions" as misappropriation.
No sysadmin is safe tonight.
It might be helpful to think of the sysadmin as more of a caretaker of the system, rather than as an absolute master of the machine. Owen's job (as I understand it) was to maintain the systems in a running state to provide computing services to faculty, staff, and students. While this occasionally includes installing software, it does not include installing software that is not necessary to the mission of the school.
The presumption that he was the absolute master of the machines was in error. In this case, the System Administrator's job was not to set policy, but rather to advise. You would do well to clarify whether this is the administration policy with whatever company you work for.
Owen's got lucky - and probably got about what he deserved for screwing around with state equipment.
A question arises: why should our public dollars fund research that aids those who don't contribute tax funds?
If a company in Slovakistan is able to reap the benefits of our research without paying into our tax system, are we, in effect, giving them a free ride?
We pay twice: once in taxes to fund research, once again to purchase the product made in Slovakistan.
It would seem that privatizing the results of research at least keeps some of the return in among the population from which it originated.
Even if tax-funded software research is released to a BSD or GPL license, how fair is it that such products can be used by people who never paid taxes on it, thus saving themselves a bundle in basic research costs?
I am, of course, talking about people outside the country (ie., them crafty furriners). If a company in Slovakistan can reap the benefits of our research, turn around and create a product, then how are we compensated for it? In effect, we pay twice: once for the research, once for the product.
Something to think about, at least.
Play up the savings in software acquisition costs and the savings due to the use of recycled hardware (since you won't have to upgrade anymore). Minimal mention of retraining and support costs. Do not go into great detail on the Open Source movement, since most voters will not care and many business involved in selling software service to the city will become alarmed.
Make it look like the taxpayer is getting something for free here. Damn all your opponents to hell for overspending on software and hardware when the solution has been under their noses for several years now.
Good luck.
Charge for a subscription to a root DNS server. One can make money off both ends: charge the domain name holder for the reservation on your server, AND charge the end user a yearly or a per use fee for DNS resolution. The latter requires some form of micropayment, but it's probably quite workable.
The benefit to the end user is that one could subscribe to a completely Disne-fied root that would have only family-friendly sites, whereas another server would have all those wacky pr0n sites you could ask for. Somebody would probably even have a free root server out there based on his/her special interest groups.
Heck, you could even charge for translating addresses to other systems. No need to worry about foreign DNS servers - if they don't pay up, they don't get access to your root.
Some people would still get around the whole thing by just typing in the octet directly, but that would be such a small percentage that it wouldn't even matter.
Actually, it only prevents the government from doing looking through your house, etc. without a reasonable need (as defined by a court who then issues a warrant). The Constitution says nothing about corporations or individuals doing the same. That particular area is covered under the laws against burglary, theft, etc. On the face of it, the contract appears to be perfectly legal, though extremely odious. I doubt that it would hold up in court, though, provided you spent more on your lawyers than they spent on theirs.
Remember, the law is not about right and wrong, but more about who has the better lawyer.
Maybe it's just my perverse sense of humor, but I really wish I had some vital document that he couldn't live without, just so I could send it to him Word format.
And then refuse to provide another format.
Look, like it or not, Word has become a standard for business, just as Photoshop is a standard in the graphic design industry. It's going to take more than just politics and wishful thinking to change it. When a format arises that provides more capability than the Word format, then start talking replacement.
Until then, there's plenty of other brick walls to ram your head against.
As much as I love Dreamweaver, the "clean up Word HTML" feature is pretty half-assed. It still leaves the inline CSS stuff in place, which is usually what needs to be gotten rid of.
$100 is not enormously high for a commercial operating system provided that the support is decent and the company is responsive to customer feedback. That being said, I'd still rather run Windows and potentially have access to thousands of commercial packages rather than just ten or so.
I agree.
Why the hell have a mascot? Why not just have some sort of representative design? Sure, GNU's got a badly-shaved yak (no, wait - that's RMS), but why do people feel compelled to have an animal when it's not even relevant to the product?
I don't know about you, but the last time I saw a dolphin using a database was ...
NEVER!
Hey, slashdot! How about a story about GPS-locating lost kittens next or some other cutesy, only-vaguely tech-related story? Or perhaps get some journalistic sanity and stop acting as an advertising shill!
O.K., I feel much better now. But I'm still miffed about the dolphin.
I think that probably includes AMD chips as well, since AMD is a clone (of sorts) of the Intel chip. The instruction sets are compatible.
You know, I never have quite figured out what the policy is on accepting/rejecting stories.
I posted a story about an independent film where Bill Gates gets assassinated and nothing. I figured that this sort of thing would be right up the average /.'ers alley (you know, lots of tacky remarks and finding some way to blame it all on Microsoft). Personally, I think the editors were either: 1) way off base, 2) holding out so they can post it themselves later on. It's a conspiracy by Linux users!
How about a way to check what stories we've submitted (other than having to submit another one) and why they were rejected?
I'd definitely go along with killing off social security, but I want back the money that I've paid into it.
Oh, wait - The government already spent that years ago. Don't you just love government sanctioned Ponzi schemes?
Politics was the motivating factor - just as it always is. If the Democrats say something is white, then Republicans will say it is black as a matter of course. Then, later, they will come back saying that the thing is white and always has been when the public has forgotten what the color was or no longer gives a damn.
Neither party really cares to take a stand on something, except safe issues (and only after extensive polling). Republicans used to be about keeping the world safe from Communism and the Democrats used to be about keeping the world safe from Republicans. Neither one really cares about human rights anymore and neither one seems to think about the deeper issues behind the uses of technology.
Is it any wonder that we have become disillusioned with our political process?
For the same reason that I won't charge you for the bandwidth required to read your post.
If all of geekdom decided to stop working for a day, 1 day, the world would stop.
The same thing that makes us geeks also will not allow us to stop working for 1 day. Do you know how guilty I feel if I take a three-day weekend? I haven't had a decent nights sleep without chemical assistance in over 10 years. I fully expect to die of a heart attack by the time I am 50.
I'd give just about anything to be one of those mindless jockstraps I see crowding the bars.
O.K. Enough bitching. Back to work
Your argument worries me because it basically excuses children to go out and commit mayhem on the web with no consequences. Who become responsible for their actions if the kids themselves are not? Parents? Hah!
..."). When I want responsibility for a child, I will have my own, thank you, not yours.
Parents refuse to take responsibility for their own children these days, abdicating it to the community at large ("It takes a village
If they spraypaint my windows, stomp my flowerbeds, etc. then charge them with vandalism and if the law says that they are too young to be charged, then hold the parents responsible. There need to be firm consequences for wrong actions.
Then perhaps we should take matters into our own hands, so to speak, and put out hits on script kiddies. DOS = DOA.
I'm kidding, of course.
Or am I?
The voice-overs for American-released anime are done by professional actors from a "gist" script sent by the producers. The original script is translated into English in such a way that the English-language script writers know what the character is trying to say, but without knowing the actual wording. The scriptwriters then create an English-language version of the script that matches the meaning, but also has to match to number of syllables that the character appears to be saying on-screen (mouth-flaps). So you may only get 15 syllables to say "Your grandmother killed my grandfather twice-removed in a swordfight - prepare to die, you bastard" (23 or so syllables in English). The actors record the dialogue in a booth while watching the movie and it has to match visually.
I have this on excellent authority, from a friend who is a scriptwriter for ADV Films and another who is a voice actor.
Watch the subtitles if you like, but don't knock the translation too much - there's very little that can be done to improve it without re-doing the animated sequences to match the syllabization of American language.
Wow! Someone else actually thinks X sucks? I thought I was the only one (I'm secretly crying for joy).
My suggestion for the Linux killer app would be some sort of animation software (similar to Flash, but able to address multiple types of animation). Perhaps a 3D Studio Max on steroids.
It need not necessarily be free - in fact, it probably shouldn't be, considering the amount of support it would require (ie., charge for software AND support).
My two cents. Happy Holidays!
I tried KDE, Gnome, and Windowmaker. While not terribly confusing (or useful), I finally gave up on all of them.
If I need a windowed interface into a computer - I use Windows. X just doesn't seem appropriate - why have a server capable of handling multiple clients when I'm the only one on the machine?
When I want CLI, I use Linux.