I sort of think we're more in agreement than your tone indicates. However, I have to disagree with you about how well the anti-monopoly laws are working these days. Giant corporate cancers that are "too big too fail" is only one aspect of the pro-greedom taxation system. I don't even regard Facebook as "powerful" or profitable. More like "extremely harmful" and driven to be ever more so by delusional stock prices.
Let me word it differently. The game of business is being rigged by the least ethical gamblers who are siphoning loot from their YUGE companies to bribe the most cheaply bribed politicians. Whatever bad things you think they did, they did 'em, and some more besides.
My basic principles for taxation would be pro-freedom anti-greedom. The notion of progressive taxation on corporations based on market share is just one of the obvious implementations. I also think the approach would justify a different approach to minimum wages at the other end of the competitive scale. When there is too much competition everyone winds up on the edge of starvation, but the minimum wage should be thought of as a way to define where there is too much competition (to minimize or avoid the need for direct government payments to prevent employees and their families from staving).
Rather surprising to see a bit of insight on Slashdot with an appropriate mod. However, if there is no solution, then it isn't actually a problem, but rather it's just part of the universe as it is. You sort of hint that taxes are key, so let me throw in my suggested solution approach:
Pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation.
The basic idea is a progressive tax on corporate profits, but not on the size of the profits. The tax rate would increase based on market share. If a company controls too much market share, then that company is eliminating choices and should get taxed more for crimes against freedom. If the principle of increasing freedom through smarter taxation is clear, then everything falls into place, including how to handle the gamesters.
The main problem is actually with natural monopolies. In that special case, there are also special purposes for the tax money: Regulating the monopoly and driving research into ways to break the monopoly.
As it applies to Facebook, the solution is actually pretty obvious. Divide it into competing companies with standards that define how the personal information can be exchanged between the various flavors of the business. In this case, the standards also need to be backed by laws about protecting our personal information, but that is actually true no matter whether it is one or 10 companies that are collecting the data. (Diaspora could have implemented an interesting version of this solution if the Kickstarter lottery problem hadn't caused it to implode.)
Here's the punchline: It would actually make Zuckerberg richer. From his position as a shareholder, he would start with equal shares in the pieces. He could only work for one of the pieces, but the competition would drive better services and the entire market would grow better and faster and he'd still be the big winner--assuming he sat on his shares.
But there's another joke just under the surface there...
I think UL is a testing organization? Let me see. Ah, yes. Underwriters Laboratories. Not a bad approach.
However I think in the terms of this discussion you basically need a way for the device to run a checksum on it's own code and compare it with the checksum it gets from its home server. If they do not match and the device cannot update itself to make them match, then the device should only be able to do "safe" things. Arbitrary example, but if it was an IoT refrigerator, then it would fall back to normal "traditional refrigerator" functions.
I'm using the IoT example because someone else brought it up, but I am actually thinking at a higher granularity than that. It should even apply to software features within larger systems, and that granularity should be related to the financial support. The original topic was about all of Ubuntu 18.04, but I think that's just too big and the problem needs to be divided and conquered all the way down to the level where individual donors could help decide which features live and die (or evolve or mutate or get replaced or...).
Perhaps it will help to extend my suggestion to the IoT refrigerator example? Your "smart" refrigerator might outlive its support. Let's assume that a smart feature requires an external server, but the funding for that server has expired. Even worse, the funding for the update server has also expired. In that situation, when you tried to use the feature, you would get an error message telling you what was wrong, and you would have the option to help pay for the feature if you want to use it. Most likely you would also be faced with a similar option for the update server. However you would not be expected to pay for the entire thing, but only asked to pledge $10 for a charity share, and your share wouldn't actually be committed until enough people have joined in.
These numbers are just for this arbitrary and imaginary example, but... The feature server might be inexpensive, say $500/year, while the update server is probably going to be much more expensive (because of the programmer support required), say $20,000/year. You could see that the update server is almost funded and buy a share there to support that server for the next year. That translates as 2,000 donors, but if there are 50,000 refrigerators out there (perhaps including different models sharing the same update server), you only need a small percentage of participation to keep it running. It might be more difficult to find 49 more people who agree with you about using the more esoteric feature.
You should be clear that the "I" in your comment is not you, but rather some hypothetical CTO at a giant company. However I'm afraid that you comment mostly reveals that you don't even know how Canonical is structured now.
It would probably help to clarify things if you would summarize your history with Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular. I can't really remember for sure, but I think I've been using Ubuntu since the 3rd or 4th release. There was one with a double-D name, but I can't remember if that was the first install or the upgrade.
However I had reservations about the business model even then. Shuttleworth is rich and can afford to pour a lot of money into his hobby. Now you have me wondering if the real story is that he isn't so rich anymore, which is the other big problem with big-donor charities. Not only can the donor make bad decisions, but his pockets may not be deep enough.
There are responses to your comments. You actually raise some valid points. Not new points. Not points that I have not already considered in some detail. Not points that cannot be addressed. But still valid. They merit response.
However your offensive attitude says it would be a waste of time to make the attempt. Congratulations on being an archetype and poster child for closed minds. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself by thinking too hard.
It's sort of interesting to watch how the Internet in general and Slashdot in particular have devolved over the years. Not any of the happy or positive senses of "interesting".
While I am sorry that I see no other reasonable interpretation for your "position", no apology seems likely from your side. I guess this "discussion" must therefore be regarded as terminated.
Thanks for the reference. Looks worth digging up, but might be hard to find around here...
Two of the first PCs I worked on were S-100s, though I didn't have enough money in those days to buy my own. One of them was owned by a residential coop, and the other was at a commercial real estate company. Both of them were pretty massive machines for their day. I think one of them had a gigantic 5- or even 10-MB hard disk. Pretty sure it had 8-inch platters that you could see though a plastic dome. It had a weird motherboard with two CPUs on it, one that ran 8-bit CP/M and a a 16-bit CPU for a 16-bit version that might have been called CP/M-86. Ancient memories, and a bit of a surprise to find out that such a senior creator of those days was still alive.
I partly agree with you, but my main disagreement would be about the DoS attacks. There has to be a motivation for a sustained DoS attack, and just shutting down someone else's systems has limited benefit. If the goal is simply to deny service, then there are lots of ways to do it, and I don't that forcing devices into their safe modes is likely to be especially effective or damaging (as long as the devices also recover gracefully when communications are restored). In any case, the source of the DoS needs to be found, targeted, and taken off line.
In terms of the IoT device makers, I think it should be addressed via a safety standard. Non-compliant devices would become much harder to sell. At the same time specifying how long the devices are guaranteed to be safe should be a positive sales feature. Actually, there are already a number of safety standards in place, and it's quite likely that I am simply unaware of the ones that are relevant to what I am advocating. It's been a couple of years since I pretty much got out of the business. (Not really my idea, but my age got up there, and if they really insist on kicking me out of the rat race, I can't pretend any enthusiasm for rejoining. I'm happy enough to be doing a bit of teaching and a lot of relaxing these years.)
I absolutely agree with you, but we could both be wrong about how many old machines are out there and how many people might be willing to pony up 10 bucks to keep using an old machine. The essence of my suggestion is that there should be a mechanism to let them be visible, but in a sense of giving them meaningful freedom to choose whether to keep supporting their old distro, switching to and supporting a competing distro, or even "investing" (on a charitable basis) in creating a new distro.
That would be an important economic consideration if Ubuntu were a normal business. However the primary economic model of Ubuntu is big-donor charity, and in that case too many of the crucial decisions depend on what the big donor wants. Another way to interpret my position is that I am advocating for a little-donor model, whereas many of these decisions would depend on what the little donors are willing to donate for. Cost recovery, not profits.
I actually speculate that the big donor behind Ubuntu would love to sell the entire thing if he could only find a buyer as generous (or gullible) as IBM. I spent many years with the big blue machine, and I actually had lunch with one of them since that purchase. My opening question was alone the lines of "So is this the kiss of death for Red Hat or for all of Linux?"
Where is this "free world" of which you speak? Mostly it makes me think you're one of those Libertarians with a totally distorted understanding of reality. Having a theoretical freedom to do something is NOT the same as having any meaningful capability to do that thing. However the real problem with the real world in contrast to the Libertarian fantasy world is that the information is never equally or fairly shared. It's like the delusion that stock prices reflect perfect information of the real value rather than the programmed delusion of some fast computers that some other fast computer will pay a higher price in the future.
My take is that we need different economic models. For example, I think we should have a pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation system as part of the general solution to the monopoly problem. The tax rate on corporate profits should be progressive, but not in absolute terms, but rather based on market share. Excessive domination of a market is reducing freedom, and the company should extra for attacking freedom. It should actually be better for the shareholders to divide the company into two competing companies that would offer more choice and more freedom while paying lower tax rates on their profits.
The main problem is with natural monopolies. In that case the high taxes should mostly be used for (1) regulating the company with the monopoly and (2) researching ways to break the monopoly. You know the monopolist can't be trusted for (1) and is not motivated to do (2) (or even worse, if the monopolist succeeds in (2) the company may sit on it (as in the case of FM radio)).
I'm pretty sure I have at least a dozen more crazy ideas, but time's up for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Mostly just noting that I think we are basically in agreement, though you also seem to be feeding or supporting YuppieScum in some way. I can only see his latest contribution as justified if it's a bid for "Funny" mods, but if so, it's a rather low bid.
Your [KiloByte's] contribution is one implementation approach. My perspective is sort of higher level. Basically I'm trying the say that any device (but especially Internet-connected devices) should not do dangerous things. In the case of a device that needs software updates to be safe, it should check for the updates first BEFORE doing the potentially dangerous things, and the design of the device should include considering what to do when the device or its environment becomes unsafe. Doing nothing is usually relatively safe (but I think there are cases when the safest behavior will be different from nothing (but also different from full functioning)).
Is that your best idea for a constructive solution? Seems really thin, but maybe you want to flesh it out? However you provoked me into solidifying one of my additional suggestions a bit.
Devices or software that need security support should have a fail-safe mechanism. Such a device should know how to check whether or not it is still supported for its security updates, and when it cannot confirm the positive status, then it should be designed to fall back to an unsupported status with whatever limitations its security threats require. In the worst case for a potentially dangerous device, the device would ultimately fall back to the single-function state of only being able to check to see if its support has become available again. When it finally gets a green light, then it can update itself and go back to work.
People who want to use those devices would have to decide what they want to do. They might chip in together to pay for the support. Or maybe one of them is rich and desperate for the device and will pay for all the support required? The users of the device in question also have the option to switch to other devices or look for alternative solutions for whatever problems the device helped solve.
This should be a feel-good story, but... I already upgraded one of my Ubuntu machines past 18.04 and I'm mostly annoyed.
Here's a crazy idea: Why not ASK THE USERS how much support they are actually willing to pay for? As long as there are enough users who are willing to chip in to keep a particular version alive, then it can stay alive. When there are too few users, then it just has to die.
My vision of the "chip in" is on the order of 10 bucks, which isn't much, but you would get to multiply by the number of users. Some users might chip in more, but I think the basic "chip" should be small. Better to call each chip a "charity share", and the wannabe users would buy charity shares in the projects required to keep the software running.
For example, there would be an annual project for kernel support, and as long as there are enough donors paying to support the kernel, then it would be supported. For something so essential, you would want to fund the next year in advance, so as the end of the year approached, you would start encouraging the users to pledge charity shares for next year's support. If too few people are willing to support the required kernel, then you still have various options, but basically you start putting on the pressure to pledge or switch to another kernel or even another distro that still has enough support going.
But won't the free riders be a big problem? No. As long as the actual costs are covered, then who cares how many free riders there are? The whole point is to divide things into reasonable projects to make sure all of the costs are covered. I admit I'd recommend ignoring the free riders when it comes to making decisions, but it should always be open for the free riders to chip in and become financial contributors, eh?
Anyway, time's up for now, but the "charity share brokerage" bids you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
How the heck was that moderated as "Insightful"? Even for today's Slashdot, that's a bit of a stoop. I wonder if any of the comments are coming from people who have read any of the books about WikiLeaks or even today's story in question.
Assange did start with an interesting idea. However he is basically a nutjob and he basically set himself up to be used and abused. He peaked out several years ago when he achieved useful idiot status. Before that, he had actually done some interesting stuff that was on the edge of journalism, but he never developed any mechanisms to deal with the incoming data, so it ultimately became a GIGO operation for anyone with garbage to propagate. While WikiLeaks had some credibility, it was useful to feed him garbage, but now that he lost the credibility, no one actually cares what Assange does.
Notwithstanding, I doubt the useful idiot defense is going to work if they manage to get him into a US court. His best hope might be to seek the trial now and hope he can get the conviction thrown out when Trump tweets some idiotic and prejudicial thing. Except for the problem with the new judges out of Leviticus.
Few enough insightful comments that I could review all of them. Also the keywords for the actual insight are few enough that I could check them, too. (And yes, sadly there was no humor to be found on Slashdot, but perhaps that's reasonable in this case because the topic is intrinsically low on fuel for funny--but that's exactly where the best jokes can appear, where you least expect them.)
So of the small number of insightful comments, I regard this as the closest to actual insight. And yet all it spawned was some minor trollage. That's today's Slashdot for you. No solution in complaining, but trying to do better has also demonstrated its futility...
So I guess I'll just wave a finger in the direction of the actual insight. The brokenness of the notions of democracy and representative government in Japan are largely legacies of American interference. Nominating a totally unqualified political hack to such a crucial position is only a symptom of the problem. Yeah, some of the interference was justified. Japan earned some punishment and the American-written constitution actually has some good and non-punitive ideas in it. Other interference was less or even beyond justification, driven by cold war paranoia. So raise your hands if you know about the dark money hidden in the Marshal Plan funding. Italy and Japan are probably the two leading "beneficiaries".
The real problem is that Japan now has an extremely computer-dependent economy. That means the country is extremely vulnerable to cyber-warfare and needs extra competence on the defense.
Not certain of the source, but I think it was Akio Morita who wrote that it was extremely beneficial in competing with American companies that he had actual engineers managing Sony. Really hard to make good decisions about technology when you don't even know the fundamentals underlying the options.
Well, that could finally explain the free upgrades to Windows 10. The funny part is that they actually sort of convinced me that Microsoft had begun to understand their cancerous reputation was hurting them. Memories are already a bit fuzzy, but I think I had two reach-out-and-touch-a-sucker communications from Microsoft in connection with Windows 10.
One was before my first upgrade, and there was another contact from an engineer after an earlier major upgrade. Amusingly enough, my recollection is that the second contact was actually mediated through Slashdot. The Microsoftian in question was following up on a question that I'd posed on Slashdot. Don't recollect that he was able to do anything about the actual problem, but I almost felt like someone over there cared about the consequences of their incompetence. (Given their motivations, is it even conceivable that Microsoft can make an honest mistake?)
In conclusion, I have become EXTREMELY resistant to the idea of ever again buying anything that I associate with the Microsoft brand. Hmm... The word "resistant" seems a bit weak. How about "abhorrent"? About 5 machines since I bought anything with Windows. Not a real solution. It just means I'm smoking the other corporate cancers.
And today's sick machine remains sick. Mysterious reboot is just the latest symptom.
Anyway, I still think the real solution is to fight the cancers at their roots. However time has already ticked away on this story, and my time counts, too, so I'll just bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
The critical situation of the small Windows 10 machine is not fully stable, so perhaps it's trying to heal itself. Always the optimist.
It's also possible that part of the problem was the not-yet-updated state of the middle-sized Windows 10 machine. Maybe OneDrive is just confused by the transitional state and updating that machine will bring everything back to normal.
It's increasingly hard to be optimistic whenever I notice the flying pigs. Smartphones with 512 GB of memory? Whatever for?
So let me propose a new metric of storage: "What year did the Library of Congress first get that large?"
By that metric, my little Windows 10 machine is much "older" than the big smartphone and my biggest Windows 10 machine is only one or two Moore's-Laws younger.
Nonworking devices, eh? So how well does YOUR computer work when the disk is completely full? Or is it?
Maybe it would be a mercy killing if Windows HAD decided my license was invalid?
No Slashdot comments on this gigantic OneDrive bug yet? Why am I not surprised? Does it have anything to do with the present state of Slashdot? I was sort of considering submitting it as an AskSlashdot question, but at this point, looking over this thoughtful discussion, one has to say "Why bother?" That WEAK joke was just moderated "Insightful". (Small compensation that there is also a buried "Funny" mod in there?)
Anyway, as I understand the current situation, one of my Windows 10 machines is having a near death experience. The disk is suddenly entirely full. Only it isn't. Only it is. Only who TF knows what TF is going on?
My current theory is that OneDrive has somehow metastasized. I only have three machines running Windows 10, and I've done everything I can do to disable OneDrive on the biggest one, but it appears that the smallest one has been flooded with files from somewhere. Elephino if I know where, but I'm currently thinking it must be the second Windows 10 machine, possibly via some kind of perverse link to DropBox, which could, at least in theory, be bringing my Linux boxen into the mess.
I wasted several hours yesterday trying to figure out what was going on, but right now I simply feel like collateral damage in the wars of the corporate cancers. The corporate cancer named Microsoft is desperate to gain traction against the cloud-storage dominance of such corporate cancers as the google, Apple, and Amazon. My situation apparently slipped right through Microsoft's so-called testing, and now I have to figure out what TF the mess means before I can even start shoveling the BS into tidier piles.
Considering the state of today's Slashdot, this is just a rant. The days when Slashdot was a helpful technical resource are LONG gone. So let me see if there is any secret message buried in the caps?
YOUR HAD WEAK LONG!
And you better believe it!
Or maybe the REAL message is buried in the disguised obscenities? Naw, I'll just leave that one as an exercise for the interesting reader. As in there aren't any interesting readers or writers around here these days.
Drop me a line if you [97333] learn to read better. MUCH better.
As MEPR applies in your case, I would, given the option, possibly take the time to lower your reputation for politeness and thoughtfulness. It is conceivable that you might rate highly on some dimensions related to provoking thoughts, and in that case you might remain visible to me, but I'm betting you, being what you are, would pretty much be invisible and would not waste any more of my time.
Since there was nothing resembling a conversation or dialogue here, what was terminated?
Essentially my position is that you should know your sources at the human level. If not the actual author, then the reputation of the person who is pointing you at that author. If a liar wants me to look at something, then I should look carefully.
In keeping with the story, I think it got stuck in a "forever [where's the] beef" loop.
Though that was only a secondary aspect of my comment, your reply does address the internal politics issues. I have seen some evidence of that cliquishness, too. However I tend to attribute a lot of that to Dunbar's Number. Seems appropriate to cite Wikipedia on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually reminds me of the only person I knew pretty well who used to be a honcho over at Wikipedia. But he also thinks that I'm a difficult person, as the joke goes. (He actually is famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page.)
I think what happened is that they got tired of negotiating in good faith and decided it was easier to move the goalposts. The left wing just left the political playing field and went over to science fiction, but the right wingers were much more serious about it and they kept moving the goal posts until they fell down the rabbit hole and wound up in Alice's Wonderland. Really hard to reach rational negotiated settlements with flocks of mad hatters and herds of March hares, but that is where most of the GOP is these days.
Other factors, too, but mostly I'm disappointed that this story generated lots of smoke but very little "funny". Of the 10 matches, 7 were to a sig, one was to the header, one wasn't funny, and the last one was only slightly funny. That's out of 154 posts that are currently visible to me.
Slashdot Mirror
I sort of think we're more in agreement than your tone indicates. However, I have to disagree with you about how well the anti-monopoly laws are working these days. Giant corporate cancers that are "too big too fail" is only one aspect of the pro-greedom taxation system. I don't even regard Facebook as "powerful" or profitable. More like "extremely harmful" and driven to be ever more so by delusional stock prices.
Let me word it differently. The game of business is being rigged by the least ethical gamblers who are siphoning loot from their YUGE companies to bribe the most cheaply bribed politicians. Whatever bad things you think they did, they did 'em, and some more besides.
My basic principles for taxation would be pro-freedom anti-greedom. The notion of progressive taxation on corporations based on market share is just one of the obvious implementations. I also think the approach would justify a different approach to minimum wages at the other end of the competitive scale. When there is too much competition everyone winds up on the edge of starvation, but the minimum wage should be thought of as a way to define where there is too much competition (to minimize or avoid the need for direct government payments to prevent employees and their families from staving).
Rather surprising to see a bit of insight on Slashdot with an appropriate mod. However, if there is no solution, then it isn't actually a problem, but rather it's just part of the universe as it is. You sort of hint that taxes are key, so let me throw in my suggested solution approach:
Pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation.
The basic idea is a progressive tax on corporate profits, but not on the size of the profits. The tax rate would increase based on market share. If a company controls too much market share, then that company is eliminating choices and should get taxed more for crimes against freedom. If the principle of increasing freedom through smarter taxation is clear, then everything falls into place, including how to handle the gamesters.
The main problem is actually with natural monopolies. In that special case, there are also special purposes for the tax money: Regulating the monopoly and driving research into ways to break the monopoly.
As it applies to Facebook, the solution is actually pretty obvious. Divide it into competing companies with standards that define how the personal information can be exchanged between the various flavors of the business. In this case, the standards also need to be backed by laws about protecting our personal information, but that is actually true no matter whether it is one or 10 companies that are collecting the data. (Diaspora could have implemented an interesting version of this solution if the Kickstarter lottery problem hadn't caused it to implode.)
Here's the punchline: It would actually make Zuckerberg richer. From his position as a shareholder, he would start with equal shares in the pieces. He could only work for one of the pieces, but the competition would drive better services and the entire market would grow better and faster and he'd still be the big winner--assuming he sat on his shares.
But there's another joke just under the surface there...
I think UL is a testing organization? Let me see. Ah, yes. Underwriters Laboratories. Not a bad approach.
However I think in the terms of this discussion you basically need a way for the device to run a checksum on it's own code and compare it with the checksum it gets from its home server. If they do not match and the device cannot update itself to make them match, then the device should only be able to do "safe" things. Arbitrary example, but if it was an IoT refrigerator, then it would fall back to normal "traditional refrigerator" functions.
I'm using the IoT example because someone else brought it up, but I am actually thinking at a higher granularity than that. It should even apply to software features within larger systems, and that granularity should be related to the financial support. The original topic was about all of Ubuntu 18.04, but I think that's just too big and the problem needs to be divided and conquered all the way down to the level where individual donors could help decide which features live and die (or evolve or mutate or get replaced or ...).
Perhaps it will help to extend my suggestion to the IoT refrigerator example? Your "smart" refrigerator might outlive its support. Let's assume that a smart feature requires an external server, but the funding for that server has expired. Even worse, the funding for the update server has also expired. In that situation, when you tried to use the feature, you would get an error message telling you what was wrong, and you would have the option to help pay for the feature if you want to use it. Most likely you would also be faced with a similar option for the update server. However you would not be expected to pay for the entire thing, but only asked to pledge $10 for a charity share, and your share wouldn't actually be committed until enough people have joined in.
These numbers are just for this arbitrary and imaginary example, but... The feature server might be inexpensive, say $500/year, while the update server is probably going to be much more expensive (because of the programmer support required), say $20,000/year. You could see that the update server is almost funded and buy a share there to support that server for the next year. That translates as 2,000 donors, but if there are 50,000 refrigerators out there (perhaps including different models sharing the same update server), you only need a small percentage of participation to keep it running. It might be more difficult to find 49 more people who agree with you about using the more esoteric feature.
You should be clear that the "I" in your comment is not you, but rather some hypothetical CTO at a giant company. However I'm afraid that you comment mostly reveals that you don't even know how Canonical is structured now.
It would probably help to clarify things if you would summarize your history with Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular. I can't really remember for sure, but I think I've been using Ubuntu since the 3rd or 4th release. There was one with a double-D name, but I can't remember if that was the first install or the upgrade.
However I had reservations about the business model even then. Shuttleworth is rich and can afford to pour a lot of money into his hobby. Now you have me wondering if the real story is that he isn't so rich anymore, which is the other big problem with big-donor charities. Not only can the donor make bad decisions, but his pockets may not be deep enough.
There are responses to your comments. You actually raise some valid points. Not new points. Not points that I have not already considered in some detail. Not points that cannot be addressed. But still valid. They merit response.
However your offensive attitude says it would be a waste of time to make the attempt. Congratulations on being an archetype and poster child for closed minds. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself by thinking too hard.
It's sort of interesting to watch how the Internet in general and Slashdot in particular have devolved over the years. Not any of the happy or positive senses of "interesting".
While I am sorry that I see no other reasonable interpretation for your "position", no apology seems likely from your side. I guess this "discussion" must therefore be regarded as terminated.
Thanks for the reference. Looks worth digging up, but might be hard to find around here...
Two of the first PCs I worked on were S-100s, though I didn't have enough money in those days to buy my own. One of them was owned by a residential coop, and the other was at a commercial real estate company. Both of them were pretty massive machines for their day. I think one of them had a gigantic 5- or even 10-MB hard disk. Pretty sure it had 8-inch platters that you could see though a plastic dome. It had a weird motherboard with two CPUs on it, one that ran 8-bit CP/M and a a 16-bit CPU for a 16-bit version that might have been called CP/M-86. Ancient memories, and a bit of a surprise to find out that such a senior creator of those days was still alive.
Rather a sad way to go.
I partly agree with you, but my main disagreement would be about the DoS attacks. There has to be a motivation for a sustained DoS attack, and just shutting down someone else's systems has limited benefit. If the goal is simply to deny service, then there are lots of ways to do it, and I don't that forcing devices into their safe modes is likely to be especially effective or damaging (as long as the devices also recover gracefully when communications are restored). In any case, the source of the DoS needs to be found, targeted, and taken off line.
In terms of the IoT device makers, I think it should be addressed via a safety standard. Non-compliant devices would become much harder to sell. At the same time specifying how long the devices are guaranteed to be safe should be a positive sales feature. Actually, there are already a number of safety standards in place, and it's quite likely that I am simply unaware of the ones that are relevant to what I am advocating. It's been a couple of years since I pretty much got out of the business. (Not really my idea, but my age got up there, and if they really insist on kicking me out of the rat race, I can't pretend any enthusiasm for rejoining. I'm happy enough to be doing a bit of teaching and a lot of relaxing these years.)
I absolutely agree with you, but we could both be wrong about how many old machines are out there and how many people might be willing to pony up 10 bucks to keep using an old machine. The essence of my suggestion is that there should be a mechanism to let them be visible, but in a sense of giving them meaningful freedom to choose whether to keep supporting their old distro, switching to and supporting a competing distro, or even "investing" (on a charitable basis) in creating a new distro.
That would be an important economic consideration if Ubuntu were a normal business. However the primary economic model of Ubuntu is big-donor charity, and in that case too many of the crucial decisions depend on what the big donor wants. Another way to interpret my position is that I am advocating for a little-donor model, whereas many of these decisions would depend on what the little donors are willing to donate for. Cost recovery, not profits.
I actually speculate that the big donor behind Ubuntu would love to sell the entire thing if he could only find a buyer as generous (or gullible) as IBM. I spent many years with the big blue machine, and I actually had lunch with one of them since that purchase. My opening question was alone the lines of "So is this the kiss of death for Red Hat or for all of Linux?"
Where is this "free world" of which you speak? Mostly it makes me think you're one of those Libertarians with a totally distorted understanding of reality. Having a theoretical freedom to do something is NOT the same as having any meaningful capability to do that thing. However the real problem with the real world in contrast to the Libertarian fantasy world is that the information is never equally or fairly shared. It's like the delusion that stock prices reflect perfect information of the real value rather than the programmed delusion of some fast computers that some other fast computer will pay a higher price in the future.
My take is that we need different economic models. For example, I think we should have a pro-freedom anti-greedom taxation system as part of the general solution to the monopoly problem. The tax rate on corporate profits should be progressive, but not in absolute terms, but rather based on market share. Excessive domination of a market is reducing freedom, and the company should extra for attacking freedom. It should actually be better for the shareholders to divide the company into two competing companies that would offer more choice and more freedom while paying lower tax rates on their profits.
The main problem is with natural monopolies. In that case the high taxes should mostly be used for (1) regulating the company with the monopoly and (2) researching ways to break the monopoly. You know the monopolist can't be trusted for (1) and is not motivated to do (2) (or even worse, if the monopolist succeeds in (2) the company may sit on it (as in the case of FM radio)).
I'm pretty sure I have at least a dozen more crazy ideas, but time's up for now, so I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Mostly just noting that I think we are basically in agreement, though you also seem to be feeding or supporting YuppieScum in some way. I can only see his latest contribution as justified if it's a bid for "Funny" mods, but if so, it's a rather low bid.
Your [KiloByte's] contribution is one implementation approach. My perspective is sort of higher level. Basically I'm trying the say that any device (but especially Internet-connected devices) should not do dangerous things. In the case of a device that needs software updates to be safe, it should check for the updates first BEFORE doing the potentially dangerous things, and the design of the device should include considering what to do when the device or its environment becomes unsafe. Doing nothing is usually relatively safe (but I think there are cases when the safest behavior will be different from nothing (but also different from full functioning)).
May I ask whether you put any actual money on the horse? I think you're just speaking metaphorically.
Is that your best idea for a constructive solution? Seems really thin, but maybe you want to flesh it out? However you provoked me into solidifying one of my additional suggestions a bit.
Devices or software that need security support should have a fail-safe mechanism. Such a device should know how to check whether or not it is still supported for its security updates, and when it cannot confirm the positive status, then it should be designed to fall back to an unsupported status with whatever limitations its security threats require. In the worst case for a potentially dangerous device, the device would ultimately fall back to the single-function state of only being able to check to see if its support has become available again. When it finally gets a green light, then it can update itself and go back to work.
People who want to use those devices would have to decide what they want to do. They might chip in together to pay for the support. Or maybe one of them is rich and desperate for the device and will pay for all the support required? The users of the device in question also have the option to switch to other devices or look for alternative solutions for whatever problems the device helped solve.
This should be a feel-good story, but... I already upgraded one of my Ubuntu machines past 18.04 and I'm mostly annoyed.
Here's a crazy idea: Why not ASK THE USERS how much support they are actually willing to pay for? As long as there are enough users who are willing to chip in to keep a particular version alive, then it can stay alive. When there are too few users, then it just has to die.
My vision of the "chip in" is on the order of 10 bucks, which isn't much, but you would get to multiply by the number of users. Some users might chip in more, but I think the basic "chip" should be small. Better to call each chip a "charity share", and the wannabe users would buy charity shares in the projects required to keep the software running.
For example, there would be an annual project for kernel support, and as long as there are enough donors paying to support the kernel, then it would be supported. For something so essential, you would want to fund the next year in advance, so as the end of the year approached, you would start encouraging the users to pledge charity shares for next year's support. If too few people are willing to support the required kernel, then you still have various options, but basically you start putting on the pressure to pledge or switch to another kernel or even another distro that still has enough support going.
But won't the free riders be a big problem? No. As long as the actual costs are covered, then who cares how many free riders there are? The whole point is to divide things into reasonable projects to make sure all of the costs are covered. I admit I'd recommend ignoring the free riders when it comes to making decisions, but it should always be open for the free riders to chip in and become financial contributors, eh?
Anyway, time's up for now, but the "charity share brokerage" bids you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
How the heck was that moderated as "Insightful"? Even for today's Slashdot, that's a bit of a stoop. I wonder if any of the comments are coming from people who have read any of the books about WikiLeaks or even today's story in question.
Assange did start with an interesting idea. However he is basically a nutjob and he basically set himself up to be used and abused. He peaked out several years ago when he achieved useful idiot status. Before that, he had actually done some interesting stuff that was on the edge of journalism, but he never developed any mechanisms to deal with the incoming data, so it ultimately became a GIGO operation for anyone with garbage to propagate. While WikiLeaks had some credibility, it was useful to feed him garbage, but now that he lost the credibility, no one actually cares what Assange does.
Notwithstanding, I doubt the useful idiot defense is going to work if they manage to get him into a US court. His best hope might be to seek the trial now and hope he can get the conviction thrown out when Trump tweets some idiotic and prejudicial thing. Except for the problem with the new judges out of Leviticus.
Few enough insightful comments that I could review all of them. Also the keywords for the actual insight are few enough that I could check them, too. (And yes, sadly there was no humor to be found on Slashdot, but perhaps that's reasonable in this case because the topic is intrinsically low on fuel for funny--but that's exactly where the best jokes can appear, where you least expect them.)
So of the small number of insightful comments, I regard this as the closest to actual insight. And yet all it spawned was some minor trollage. That's today's Slashdot for you. No solution in complaining, but trying to do better has also demonstrated its futility...
So I guess I'll just wave a finger in the direction of the actual insight. The brokenness of the notions of democracy and representative government in Japan are largely legacies of American interference. Nominating a totally unqualified political hack to such a crucial position is only a symptom of the problem. Yeah, some of the interference was justified. Japan earned some punishment and the American-written constitution actually has some good and non-punitive ideas in it. Other interference was less or even beyond justification, driven by cold war paranoia. So raise your hands if you know about the dark money hidden in the Marshal Plan funding. Italy and Japan are probably the two leading "beneficiaries".
The real problem is that Japan now has an extremely computer-dependent economy. That means the country is extremely vulnerable to cyber-warfare and needs extra competence on the defense.
Not certain of the source, but I think it was Akio Morita who wrote that it was extremely beneficial in competing with American companies that he had actual engineers managing Sony. Really hard to make good decisions about technology when you don't even know the fundamentals underlying the options.
Well, that could finally explain the free upgrades to Windows 10. The funny part is that they actually sort of convinced me that Microsoft had begun to understand their cancerous reputation was hurting them. Memories are already a bit fuzzy, but I think I had two reach-out-and-touch-a-sucker communications from Microsoft in connection with Windows 10.
One was before my first upgrade, and there was another contact from an engineer after an earlier major upgrade. Amusingly enough, my recollection is that the second contact was actually mediated through Slashdot. The Microsoftian in question was following up on a question that I'd posed on Slashdot. Don't recollect that he was able to do anything about the actual problem, but I almost felt like someone over there cared about the consequences of their incompetence. (Given their motivations, is it even conceivable that Microsoft can make an honest mistake?)
In conclusion, I have become EXTREMELY resistant to the idea of ever again buying anything that I associate with the Microsoft brand. Hmm... The word "resistant" seems a bit weak. How about "abhorrent"? About 5 machines since I bought anything with Windows. Not a real solution. It just means I'm smoking the other corporate cancers.
And today's sick machine remains sick. Mysterious reboot is just the latest symptom.
Anyway, I still think the real solution is to fight the cancers at their roots. However time has already ticked away on this story, and my time counts, too, so I'll just bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
The critical situation of the small Windows 10 machine is not fully stable, so perhaps it's trying to heal itself. Always the optimist.
It's also possible that part of the problem was the not-yet-updated state of the middle-sized Windows 10 machine. Maybe OneDrive is just confused by the transitional state and updating that machine will bring everything back to normal.
It's increasingly hard to be optimistic whenever I notice the flying pigs. Smartphones with 512 GB of memory? Whatever for?
So let me propose a new metric of storage: "What year did the Library of Congress first get that large?"
By that metric, my little Windows 10 machine is much "older" than the big smartphone and my biggest Windows 10 machine is only one or two Moore's-Laws younger.
Nonworking devices, eh? So how well does YOUR computer work when the disk is completely full? Or is it?
Maybe it would be a mercy killing if Windows HAD decided my license was invalid?
No Slashdot comments on this gigantic OneDrive bug yet? Why am I not surprised? Does it have anything to do with the present state of Slashdot? I was sort of considering submitting it as an AskSlashdot question, but at this point, looking over this thoughtful discussion, one has to say "Why bother?" That WEAK joke was just moderated "Insightful". (Small compensation that there is also a buried "Funny" mod in there?)
Anyway, as I understand the current situation, one of my Windows 10 machines is having a near death experience. The disk is suddenly entirely full. Only it isn't. Only it is. Only who TF knows what TF is going on?
My current theory is that OneDrive has somehow metastasized. I only have three machines running Windows 10, and I've done everything I can do to disable OneDrive on the biggest one, but it appears that the smallest one has been flooded with files from somewhere. Elephino if I know where, but I'm currently thinking it must be the second Windows 10 machine, possibly via some kind of perverse link to DropBox, which could, at least in theory, be bringing my Linux boxen into the mess.
I wasted several hours yesterday trying to figure out what was going on, but right now I simply feel like collateral damage in the wars of the corporate cancers. The corporate cancer named Microsoft is desperate to gain traction against the cloud-storage dominance of such corporate cancers as the google, Apple, and Amazon. My situation apparently slipped right through Microsoft's so-called testing, and now I have to figure out what TF the mess means before I can even start shoveling the BS into tidier piles.
Considering the state of today's Slashdot, this is just a rant. The days when Slashdot was a helpful technical resource are LONG gone. So let me see if there is any secret message buried in the caps?
YOUR HAD WEAK LONG!
And you better believe it!
Or maybe the REAL message is buried in the disguised obscenities? Naw, I'll just leave that one as an exercise for the interesting reader. As in there aren't any interesting readers or writers around here these days.
Z^-2
Z^-1
Drop me a line if you [97333] learn to read better. MUCH better.
As MEPR applies in your case, I would, given the option, possibly take the time to lower your reputation for politeness and thoughtfulness. It is conceivable that you might rate highly on some dimensions related to provoking thoughts, and in that case you might remain visible to me, but I'm betting you, being what you are, would pretty much be invisible and would not waste any more of my time.
Since there was nothing resembling a conversation or dialogue here, what was terminated?
I actually suggested something along these line a few months ago... Let me see if I can dig up the link... Ah yes, here it is:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wik...
Essentially my position is that you should know your sources at the human level. If not the actual author, then the reputation of the person who is pointing you at that author. If a liar wants me to look at something, then I should look carefully.
In keeping with the story, I think it got stuck in a "forever [where's the] beef" loop.
Though that was only a secondary aspect of my comment, your reply does address the internal politics issues. I have seen some evidence of that cliquishness, too. However I tend to attribute a lot of that to Dunbar's Number. Seems appropriate to cite Wikipedia on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Actually reminds me of the only person I knew pretty well who used to be a honcho over at Wikipedia. But he also thinks that I'm a difficult person, as the joke goes. (He actually is famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page.)
I think what happened is that they got tired of negotiating in good faith and decided it was easier to move the goalposts. The left wing just left the political playing field and went over to science fiction, but the right wingers were much more serious about it and they kept moving the goal posts until they fell down the rabbit hole and wound up in Alice's Wonderland. Really hard to reach rational negotiated settlements with flocks of mad hatters and herds of March hares, but that is where most of the GOP is these days.
Other factors, too, but mostly I'm disappointed that this story generated lots of smoke but very little "funny". Of the 10 matches, 7 were to a sig, one was to the header, one wasn't funny, and the last one was only slightly funny. That's out of 154 posts that are currently visible to me.