* Use a bootable linux-cd, like Knoppix for daily work.
Okay, both of these are very unpractical...
I've been there.. I've installed a knoppix CD image on an external drive in a USB enclosure. I can then use a (modified) Knoppix CD that uses 'fromhd=/dev/sda5', to finish the boot from USB.
I've also installed a CD image on my main box, and setup GRUB to boot from it.
I can then mount/home/knoppix from another partition (in KNOPPIX/knoppix.sh) (or even the same partition if I remount the CD image partition R/W and load any extra packages from either the CD (safest) or the HD partion (more convenient). I've used that kind of setup for my basic desktop CD for most of this year (Just switched to a real ubuntu setup this month for various technical reasons).
Updates are a breeze -- I copy the latest Knoppix CD to another partition, copy in the extra DEB files and setup a GRUB stanza. One nice thing about it, from a security standpoint, is that the compressed disk image is relatively hard to compromise (and easy enough to check from the CD miniroot if I want to be paranoid).
As a proof-of-concept, it's been pretty effective. If I move the setup to an external USB HD, and combine it with a (credit-card sized) knoppix boot CD, then I've got a fully portable knoppix desktop. If I put it on a 2" laptop drive, then I can fit the whole thing in my shirt pocket. (( I'm currently using a full-sized USB enclosure)).
Well, back in the '80s games manufacturers figured out that copy protection just pissed off their legitimate customers. That was back when games manufacturers were small, and executives were in relatively close contact with their customer base.
Nowadays, game production is "big business" I guess that copy-protection salesmen now have easier access to the game company executives than their customers do... They don't quite get that the people who are intent on pirating their works are unlikely to buy them in any event, and people who are willing to buy them are simply annoyed by anything but the most benign copy protection schemes.
In any case, the current situation supports my contention -- People who want to break the system sometimes get inside information -- and, even when they don't, they still manage to break most methods. In either case, you have greeblies walking all over your network data, and cops able to do illegal surveilance with no oversight -- the worst of both worlds (unless you're a terrorist or a criminal).
Do you have something against the regular police wiretaps done with warrants?
No. I have something against irregular wiretaps done without warrents. Possibly even without the involvement of the police.
If you think that nobody outside of the police forces is going to have the codes to break into your network a week after the date is available, you've got your head in the sand.
Back in the '80s when it was common for the games companies to copy-protect their games (before they finally figured out that this just upset their legitimate customers), a friend of mine came in with a cracked copy of the latest game -- weeks before the game was available to legitimate purchasers. Network backdoor codes are going to be like that. The 2% of crooked cops will ensure that no spammer is going to lack for that information.
Osamma Bin Laden was trained and armed by the CIA. Do you really think he suddenly changed his tactics when his focus changed from Russians in Afghanistan to Americans?
The only real difference is that when he was blowing up Russian buildings and killing Russian kids, the US called him a freedom fighter. It's only now that he's turned on his old trainers and suppliers that he's called a bad man.
Similarly for Argentina's 'dirty war', El Salvadoran and Guatmamalan death squads, Chili's right wing government which overthrew a recently elected (oops, socialist) government killed the country's former leader and brutally tortured and murdered all sorts of people asociated with the (overthrown) elected government.
Democracy? Oh. that's any process that brings in a government that we like.
Well, if you go back a little more than 20 years, you will find a huge shitload of terrorism by the KKK, who killed a teenager for saying 'hi' to a white girl, and killed people for registering blacks to vote, and...... Serious terrorists.
Menachem Begin was a well-known terrorist leader before he was elected prime minister of Israel.
As others have mentioned, Timothy McVeigh and his friends commited the second worst terrorist act in US history.
And, of course, Israel bombing civilian infrastructure to force the release of a soldier (who could be considered little more than a prisoner of war), is at least arguably an act of terrorism.
-- I mean, how many innocent civilians have to be killed by Israel in the name of freeing these two soldiers? -- Oh, yeah, that's right. They're members of a different ethnic group, so they don't count.
It also depends on what you call a "kill Switch".
I can just see it now, though....
Lt: Seaman! There are two battle cruisers about come inside targeting range! What *are* you doing????!!!.
seaman: It says: "Functionality temporarily disabled. Please insert installation CD and enter activation code." I'm looking for the installation CD, but I don't even know if we have a CD player.
Lt: Oh, man... They were removed for security reasons....
Intercom: Brace for incomming round!
There are some indications that activating the immune system helps AIDS attack the immune system, so infecting someone with an autoimmune disease with HIV might just be a really really bad idea.
Lesse now, we've now killed how many tens of thousands in Iraq (a country which, incidentaly, tossed Osama out on his ear),
because a psychotic maniac who was trained and supported by the US CIA for more than a decade, managed to kill 3000 people in New York.
Osama is as much an example of Islam as the KKK is an example of Christianity, or Hitler (both of them used religion as an excuse for their excesses), or Timothy McVeigh -- or, for that matter George W. Bush, who hasn't even learned the Christian imperative "Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself".
If we were to treat the People of the Middle East (including the residents of the Middle East) with the same kind of respect as we would demand for US citizens, we wouldn't have so many widows, orphans and disillusioned youth clamoring to get their revenge on US.
It's got almost nothing to do with religion and way more to do with what we've done to other people in the name of our security or comfort, or even just money.
And if you don't think white Christians can be stupid, how about the guy with a sign telling freaking Native Indians to "go back where they came from"? (yes, it really happened).
The only problem with that analogy is that if I am a newcomer to the town, I can walk right up to the barn, pull out my screwdriver, and rip off the door.
The open source equivalent is that you can walk up, take a digital 3D snapshot of my barn and go home and put up an instant copy... You can then take your screwdriver, rip off the door and design a better one.
If I like your new door, then I can take a snapshot of it and use that snapshot to replace my door with your new and improved model... and if lots of people like your new door, it will quickly become the community standard.
In other words, the biggest difference in the analogy is that, as the digital community learns to build a better barn everybody is able to benefit from the improvement at relatively low cost.
One day a woman comes to see Gandhi, with her son in tow...
"Tell my son to stop eating sugar!" she demanded of Ghandi.
Gandhi thought for a moment and replied "Come back tomorrow."
The woman (and her son) returned the next day, expecting some sort of display. Gandhi motioned the son forward. "Stop eating sugar", he said to the son.
The son bowed his head, nodded, and started to walk away, but his mother stopped him and turned to Gandhi.
"You could have said that yesterday. Why did you have us come back today?" she asked.
"Yesterday", Gandhi replied "I was still eating sugar".
Bush, on the other hand, is sitting there with a half chewed chocolate bar dangling out of his mouth.
They'd like nothing better than to turn the rest of us into "devout muslims".
No. They just don't want us to turn them into a bunch of Devout Christians -- or, worse yet, a bunch of dead Muslims.
The US has already forced a regime change in Iran in the early '60s -- It was fear of a repeat of that that led to the hostage taking in 1979. The US responded by trashing the political fortunes of every moderate (then) alive within Iran. Since then the US has been making noises about overthrowing their government (again).
Fears of the US trying again have intensified since Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and started sabre-rattling at Iraq's neighbours.
It's a bit disappointing, but not a complete shock that Iran decided to push for a nuclear option. The US reneging on it's own non-proliferation responsibilities doesn't really help them (or any body else) feel safe about US intentions in the future.
I'm not sure what distribution developers are expected to do. Tell users what hardware they should buy so that their distros will work?
Basically, yes. If distributors could put up a list of what hardware (either accidently or on purpose) have enough data out there that developers have been able to create fully libre support, then people would tend to buy that software more often.... I know that I would if I had such a list, and I could probably convince all sorts of non-geek friends to do so simply because -- all other issues being equal -- it's better for them to keep their options open should they decide that MS's EULA mania becomes unbearable with the release of VISTA (or whatever), or they just decide that they's like to dabble in Linux.
Now, if having a Libre driver for their hardware drives up sales noticably, then manufacturers are going to be more likely to make sure that ( the necessary data for ) a GPL/BSD driver is out there. That would improve the usability of Linux, which would increase the willingness of manufacturers to support it.... Rinse repeat.
___
On the other hand,
I remember spending a freaking week trying different WIFI baubles to find stuff that worked well with Linux and encrypted networks. Thinking back now, I should have docuemnted my (mis)adventures, but the thing is that the absolute hell that I went through trying to get Linux to work with wireless turned my roommate off of Linux (one of the first times that I've had that happen with a roommate). If, on the other hand, I had an easy place to go for a list of all the different models out there that have supported chipsets, I could have been in and out of the store in 1/2 an hour and known that -- even though it might be a bit of work to get things working -- I had a model that I knew worked with Linux.
Where having source capability helps distributors in the long run is that, if something goes wrong (e.g. because of an otherwise inoccuous kernel change), you don't have to wait (possibly forever) for the manufacturer to fix whatever problem it is that cropped up. If the chip is used by a lot of people, then somebody is going to get it fixed in relatively short order.
I thought the way they rolled these out was to cities and densely populated areas first
It makes some sense to do the first rollout in relatively unknown places where initial rollout problems are less likely to give it a bad reputation to an entire major city... Another good place to do an initial rollout would be someplace where there are problems with DSL.. (there are various things that work well for POTS phones that just kill adsl delivery).
Fiber is really good in places that are just too widespread for regular ADSL connections... depending on the kind of cable you have, you can run it 10KM or more (way more), so this would make lots of sense in a rural setting where a regular ADSL DSLAM would only reach the nearest 4 farms.
Oh yeah... and some places just have good demographics... There are some "old folks" communities where all the old folks are former professers/techies who have a pretty decent pension (and have paid off their houses), so the price of FTTP wouldn't make them blink.
Gee, I'm strangely not that impressed. I can get 10Mbps cable modem service right now ($44.95/mo), and I'm in Kansas. I just checked AT&T/SBC's site and it looks like their top of the line service in my area is only 3-6mbps
.
That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you might end up as low as voice modem speeds (at least that was the experience of my friends in the early dayS when cable-modem installations were delivering to obscenely large customer groups).
It's just the nature of the product -- but it make for really good PR lines
ADSL (and similarly, FTTP) -- allows the backend to be whatever the ISP figures is appropriate to provision -- this means that, if they have a decent backbone, you should be able to get the full bandwidth of your connection modulo the link between your ISP's Central Office and the server(s) you're downloading from.
This was my experience when using ADSL... I could almost always get full speed connections (as long as the server in question had a reasonably low load and a good connection). Cable, on the other hand, would be more variable -- sometimes I could get good speeds (mostly late at night), but during prime time, my links would rarely get near full speed.
This article is about a BSA comment, and the BSA is (as much as anything else) a Microsoft mouthpiece.
Autocad isn't in that much a different case than Microsoft -- People use many people also use their product 'because everybody does' and 'what else is there?'. I would bet that most professionals who use it also pay for it, and 'cracked' copies are mostly used by home users who can't justify paying $600+ for what is essentially a toy.
You absolutely try to disprove your theory. Good grief, I suppose this is a good example of what the article was talking about.
Most sane scientists will try to prove their theory (unless the theory they have is so disturbing that they'd rather that they were wrong).
Thing is that an experiment that provides a good proof of your theory has to be capable of disproving it - but, in most cases, the hope is that the results of the experiment will prove that you have your head on right.
In most cases, new theories don't so much disprove the current theory as refine it. It's actually a relatively rare case where currently accepted theory is proven to be outright wrong (but those rare cases are more likely to grab headlines).
It's a bit of both. Sometimes people who could easily afford to buy a copy of some software will still pirate it "because everybody else is doing it" --- The fact that microsoft officially winks at pirated copies doesn't quite help reduce the volume. Microsoft knows that if they were to press too hard on pirated copies, people would simply go to cheaper alternatives (including Free and Open Source) that do a completely adequate job.
Having "everybody" running MS software is to MS's advantage -- especially when they're trying to talk MA out of going with ODF.
Where the real falacy is is declaring these theoretical sales to be money "Lost to the economy" -- when the truth is that most of the hush money people pay for software immediately leaves the country (going to the Bahamas, or Ireland or wherever it is the gives Microsoft the best discount on income tax).
Countries like Canada don't even have the advantage of a significant income from R&D spending to offset what is actually lost to the national economy from via Microsoft Software sales.
The new Windows 'protection' scheme will browbeat the user until they disable the security system (in some way or another).
That way, when the inevitable virus and spyware hits the system, Microsoft can wash their hands and say that it's all the user's fault for making use of their computer bearable.
You need the factory scan tool to assign a new radio module to the ECU.
So, in other words, all I have to do is dupicate the factory scan tool(s) -- or the minimal parts of them necessary to circumvent the anti-theft module(s), and VOILA -- one cheap car (or one hundred, as the case may be).
If it hasn't happened yet, it'll happen sooner or later.
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Okay, both of these are very unpractical...
I've been there.. I've installed a knoppix CD image on an external drive in a USB enclosure. I can then use a (modified) Knoppix CD that uses 'fromhd=/dev/sda5', to finish the boot from USB.
I've also installed a CD image on my main box, and setup GRUB to boot from it. I can then mount /home/knoppix from another partition (in KNOPPIX/knoppix.sh) (or even the same partition if I remount the CD image partition R/W and load any extra packages from either the CD (safest) or the HD partion (more convenient). I've used that kind of setup for my basic desktop CD for most of this year (Just switched to a real ubuntu setup this month for various technical reasons).
Updates are a breeze -- I copy the latest Knoppix CD to another partition, copy in the extra DEB files and setup a GRUB stanza. One nice thing about it, from a security standpoint, is that the compressed disk image is relatively hard to compromise (and easy enough to check from the CD miniroot if I want to be paranoid).
As a proof-of-concept, it's been pretty effective. If I move the setup to an external USB HD, and combine it with a (credit-card sized) knoppix boot CD, then I've got a fully portable knoppix desktop. If I put it on a 2" laptop drive, then I can fit the whole thing in my shirt pocket. (( I'm currently using a full-sized USB enclosure)).
Nowadays, game production is "big business" I guess that copy-protection salesmen now have easier access to the game company executives than their customers do... They don't quite get that the people who are intent on pirating their works are unlikely to buy them in any event, and people who are willing to buy them are simply annoyed by anything but the most benign copy protection schemes.
In any case, the current situation supports my contention -- People who want to break the system sometimes get inside information -- and, even when they don't, they still manage to break most methods. In either case, you have greeblies walking all over your network data, and cops able to do illegal surveilance with no oversight -- the worst of both worlds (unless you're a terrorist or a criminal).
No. I have something against irregular wiretaps done without warrents. Possibly even without the involvement of the police.
If you think that nobody outside of the police forces is going to have the codes to break into your network a week after the date is available, you've got your head in the sand.
Back in the '80s when it was common for the games companies to copy-protect their games (before they finally figured out that this just upset their legitimate customers), a friend of mine came in with a cracked copy of the latest game -- weeks before the game was available to legitimate purchasers. Network backdoor codes are going to be like that. The 2% of crooked cops will ensure that no spammer is going to lack for that information.
The only real difference is that when he was blowing up Russian buildings and killing Russian kids, the US called him a freedom fighter. It's only now that he's turned on his old trainers and suppliers that he's called a bad man.
Similarly for Argentina's 'dirty war', El Salvadoran and Guatmamalan death squads, Chili's right wing government which overthrew a recently elected (oops, socialist) government killed the country's former leader and brutally tortured and murdered all sorts of people asociated with the (overthrown) elected government.
Democracy? Oh. that's any process that brings in a government that we like.
Menachem Begin was a well-known terrorist leader before he was elected prime minister of Israel.
As others have mentioned, Timothy McVeigh and his friends commited the second worst terrorist act in US history.
And, of course, Israel bombing civilian infrastructure to force the release of a soldier (who could be considered little more than a prisoner of war), is at least arguably an act of terrorism. -- I mean, how many innocent civilians have to be killed by Israel in the name of freeing these two soldiers? -- Oh, yeah, that's right. They're members of a different ethnic group, so they don't count.
Where do you think terrorism comes from?
There is a difference, isn't there?
It also depends on what you call a "kill Switch".
I can just see it now, though....
There are some indications that activating the immune system helps AIDS attack the immune system, so infecting someone with an autoimmune disease with HIV might just be a really really bad idea.
When Bush says that your war is on the side of good and right, you know that you're in trouble.
Hmmm... The US and the UK joining together to trash a Middle East country .... Now That sounds familiar. Something recent.
And, with "a nice, jewish name like samuel", you figure I'm Islamist, eh??? (I'm not jewish, either, but that's beside the point).
BTW: Is being 'bushist' a religion?
Lesse now, we've now killed how many tens of thousands in Iraq (a country which, incidentaly, tossed Osama out on his ear), because a psychotic maniac who was trained and supported by the US CIA for more than a decade, managed to kill 3000 people in New York.
Osama is as much an example of Islam as the KKK is an example of Christianity, or Hitler (both of them used religion as an excuse for their excesses), or Timothy McVeigh -- or, for that matter George W. Bush, who hasn't even learned the Christian imperative "Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself".
If we were to treat the People of the Middle East (including the residents of the Middle East) with the same kind of respect as we would demand for US citizens, we wouldn't have so many widows, orphans and disillusioned youth clamoring to get their revenge on US.
It's got almost nothing to do with religion and way more to do with what we've done to other people in the name of our security or comfort, or even just money.
And if you don't think white Christians can be stupid, how about the guy with a sign telling freaking Native Indians to "go back where they came from"? (yes, it really happened).
The open source equivalent is that you can walk up, take a digital 3D snapshot of my barn and go home and put up an instant copy... You can then take your screwdriver, rip off the door and design a better one.
If I like your new door, then I can take a snapshot of it and use that snapshot to replace my door with your new and improved model ... and if lots of people like your new door, it will quickly become the community standard.
In other words, the biggest difference in the analogy is that, as the digital community learns to build a better barn everybody is able to benefit from the improvement at relatively low cost.
You forgot to mention the old Homestead practice of community Barn Raisings. -- Probably the nicest pre-computing analogy to Open Source.
No. They just don't want us to turn them into a bunch of Devout Christians -- or, worse yet, a bunch of dead Muslims.
The US has already forced a regime change in Iran in the early '60s -- It was fear of a repeat of that that led to the hostage taking in 1979. The US responded by trashing the political fortunes of every moderate (then) alive within Iran. Since then the US has been making noises about overthrowing their government (again).
Fears of the US trying again have intensified since Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and started sabre-rattling at Iraq's neighbours.
It's a bit disappointing, but not a complete shock that Iran decided to push for a nuclear option. The US reneging on it's own non-proliferation responsibilities doesn't really help them (or any body else) feel safe about US intentions in the future.
I'll build it, but I'm not going to test it....
Basically, yes. If distributors could put up a list of what hardware (either accidently or on purpose) have enough data out there that developers have been able to create fully libre support, then people would tend to buy that software more often.... I know that I would if I had such a list, and I could probably convince all sorts of non-geek friends to do so simply because -- all other issues being equal -- it's better for them to keep their options open should they decide that MS's EULA mania becomes unbearable with the release of VISTA (or whatever), or they just decide that they's like to dabble in Linux.
Now, if having a Libre driver for their hardware drives up sales noticably, then manufacturers are going to be more likely to make sure that ( the necessary data for ) a GPL/BSD driver is out there. That would improve the usability of Linux, which would increase the willingness of manufacturers to support it .... Rinse repeat.
___
On the other hand, I remember spending a freaking week trying different WIFI baubles to find stuff that worked well with Linux and encrypted networks. Thinking back now, I should have docuemnted my (mis)adventures, but the thing is that the absolute hell that I went through trying to get Linux to work with wireless turned my roommate off of Linux (one of the first times that I've had that happen with a roommate). If, on the other hand, I had an easy place to go for a list of all the different models out there that have supported chipsets, I could have been in and out of the store in 1/2 an hour and known that -- even though it might be a bit of work to get things working -- I had a model that I knew worked with Linux.
Where having source capability helps distributors in the long run is that, if something goes wrong (e.g. because of an otherwise inoccuous kernel change), you don't have to wait (possibly forever) for the manufacturer to fix whatever problem it is that cropped up. If the chip is used by a lot of people, then somebody is going to get it fixed in relatively short order.
It makes some sense to do the first rollout in relatively unknown places where initial rollout problems are less likely to give it a bad reputation to an entire major city... Another good place to do an initial rollout would be someplace where there are problems with DSL.. (there are various things that work well for POTS phones that just kill adsl delivery).
Fiber is really good in places that are just too widespread for regular ADSL connections... depending on the kind of cable you have, you can run it 10KM or more (way more), so this would make lots of sense in a rural setting where a regular ADSL DSLAM would only reach the nearest 4 farms.
Oh yeah... and some places just have good demographics... There are some "old folks" communities where all the old folks are former professers/techies who have a pretty decent pension (and have paid off their houses), so the price of FTTP wouldn't make them blink.
That's fine, but the 10Megabit service you get from cable is, in all probability shared between your entire neighbourhood. i.e. you MIGHT be able to get a 1Megabyte/second download at 4AM on a weeknight, but if everybody in the neighbourhood is trying to do a download, you might end up as low as voice modem speeds (at least that was the experience of my friends in the early dayS when cable-modem installations were delivering to obscenely large customer groups). It's just the nature of the product -- but it make for really good PR lines
ADSL (and similarly, FTTP) -- allows the backend to be whatever the ISP figures is appropriate to provision -- this means that, if they have a decent backbone, you should be able to get the full bandwidth of your connection modulo the link between your ISP's Central Office and the server(s) you're downloading from.
This was my experience when using ADSL... I could almost always get full speed connections (as long as the server in question had a reasonably low load and a good connection). Cable, on the other hand, would be more variable -- sometimes I could get good speeds (mostly late at night), but during prime time, my links would rarely get near full speed.
This article is about a BSA comment, and the BSA is (as much as anything else) a Microsoft mouthpiece.
Autocad isn't in that much a different case than Microsoft -- People use many people also use their product 'because everybody does' and 'what else is there?'. I would bet that most professionals who use it also pay for it, and 'cracked' copies are mostly used by home users who can't justify paying $600+ for what is essentially a toy.
Most sane scientists will try to prove their theory (unless the theory they have is so disturbing that they'd rather that they were wrong).
Thing is that an experiment that provides a good proof of your theory has to be capable of disproving it - but, in most cases, the hope is that the results of the experiment will prove that you have your head on right.
In most cases, new theories don't so much disprove the current theory as refine it. It's actually a relatively rare case where currently accepted theory is proven to be outright wrong (but those rare cases are more likely to grab headlines).
Having "everybody" running MS software is to MS's advantage -- especially when they're trying to talk MA out of going with ODF.
Where the real falacy is is declaring these theoretical sales to be money "Lost to the economy" -- when the truth is that most of the hush money people pay for software immediately leaves the country (going to the Bahamas, or Ireland or wherever it is the gives Microsoft the best discount on income tax).
Countries like Canada don't even have the advantage of a significant income from R&D spending to offset what is actually lost to the national economy from via Microsoft Software sales.
The new Windows 'protection' scheme will browbeat the user until they disable the security system (in some way or another).
That way, when the inevitable virus and spyware hits the system, Microsoft can wash their hands and say that it's all the user's fault for making use of their computer bearable.
Video and image display software (including web browsers) fight against similar restrictionx.
I don't own a car....
But I do have a laptop..... (( bwahahahahaah! ))
So, in other words, all I have to do is dupicate the factory scan tool(s) -- or the minimal parts of them necessary to circumvent the anti-theft module(s), and VOILA -- one cheap car (or one hundred, as the case may be).
If it hasn't happened yet, it'll happen sooner or later.