Okay, I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I just can't let this one go. No, I'm not a fan of the DMCA, no, I'm not a big fan of the Patriot Act (though I certainly don't disagree with all of its provisions). However, do you have anything at all to back up this statement? At all? Even one scrap of evidence to suggest that the FBI is breaking down the doors of people who write viruses and locking them up forever without a trial? Even in the case of terrorists (Hamdi and Padilla), they may be currently held without trial, but they are clearly getting legal review of their cases, as are the Guantanamo Bay detainees, who are (1) not American citizens, and (2) not being held on American soil (no, it's not American soil, that's spelled out in the agreement with Cuba...go check.) Statements like this that make legitimate attempts to reform bad law difficult because they make us look like raving lunatics instead of calm, reasonable, intelligent people. From now on, please think before you post.
First, I agree with your comment regarding the Ansaris. I never said that they were suspect, I merely said it raised my suspicions. In other words, on the scale of "completely trusted" to "trust them as far as I can throw them", I would shift them slightly to the untrusted side of neutral. Being accomplished businesspeople or even US residents has no bearing on my decision...members of the bin Laden family have resided in the States for periods of time, and they are relatively wealthy businesspeople. If they are, as you guess, US citizens, that would shift them back toward the trusted side. I am not saying that they should be arrested, detained, or even questioned. People still have basic rights under the Constitution. I am just saying that, after September 11th, a Middle Eastern name makes me personally somewhat suspicious.
Second, I never asserted that sponsoring the X-Prize would give the Ansaris exclusive access to the aerodynamic information of entrants or the winner. That was an assertion made by the parent to the post to which I replied. Also, I agree with you when you say that the science of missiles is basically well understood, especially when it comes to large-yield weapons like nuclear missiles which do not have to hit a precise target to be effective. Nevertheless, if the Ansaris are given even partial rights to this technology and they are working for the Iranian government (a completely unfounded conjecture on my part), that would still give the Iranians a significant piece of technological information which they do not currently have, would it not?
Third, I am aware of the satire currently popular in Iran. I am also aware of the numerous protests and other demonstrations that have taken place against the religious government. Nevertheless, they still hold power. Do we assume that China is a peaceful, democratic country because - despite the fact that they have a repressive communist government - there are occasional instances where the people express views contrary to the government? No, of course not...primarily because those contrary views are usually swiftly and viciously suppressed.
Finally, with regards to your final statement, that was a mistake on my part. I more correctly should have said "retribution ala Afghanistan or military action ala Iraq." Forgive me for not spelling out every detail. Afghanistan was clearly part retribution, part liberation, part preemptive action. While the Taliban did not directly attack the United States, there is no question that they gave aid and shelter to bin Laden, which makes them just as culpable. Iraq is a murkier issue, but is actually more applicable, because if we believed Iran had weapons that posed a significant threat to the United States, well...I think you can see where I'm going here...
Umm...he didn't say that everyone in the Middle East wanted to nuke America. He specifically mentioned Iranians. With all due respect to the Ansaris and the vast majority of the Iranian people, it would raise my suspicions, too. The simple fact is that despite the current "moderate" executive branch of the Iranian government, the religious extremists actually hold all the power. They've demonstrated this by vetoing attempts at reform by the President and, most recently, disqualifying a vast portion of the legislature from reelection for ambiguous "religious" reasons. These hard-liners would like nothing better than to see more planes flown into American buildings. Absolutely the only thing stopping them is fear of retribution ala Afghanistan or Iraq.
Whoa, whoa, hang on. Weinstein is entirely correct. When he tried to make an argument about the broadcast flag, Valenti argued that the law had to be crafted to reflect the majority and that small segments of the population who had legitimate gripes would always exist (which isn't entirely true...law must reflect the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority.)
Weinstein then made the point that Linux users were a not-insubstantial portion of the population. This much is true. In addition, he made the point that this rather large segment of the population could not legally view DVDs on their computer without buying a separate DVD player or another operating system. I don't view this as a terribly technical problem. If I buy a DVD drive, I expect to be able to watch DVDs, just like I would have expected to be able to listen to music CDs if I bought a CD drive.
Further proof that this is neither a small nor an especially technical problem is the fact that Valenti himself has addressed it before. He has banked on the promise of DVD software soon being available for Linux, but that has yet to materialize. However, it has not and, but for the DMCA, United States copyright law would have no qualms about me finding some way to watch the content that I own. That is what's wrong.
The thing is, last time I checked, IBM had never stopped development of new software and products. They have never stopped creating and selling innovative technology. A legal department is necessary for any large business. However, it only beceomes a problem when you are spending a disproportionate amount of employee time and revenue on legal proceedings. Anyone who has been following the SCO case knows that, based on the amount of information they've put out regarding their products vs. the amount they've put out regarding their legal case, they're clearly in the latter category. Same goes for their public financial filings. These elements clearly point to a company in its death throes wanting desperately to get bought out. Nothing about IBM's behavior indicates that they are in similar straits.
Re:So where do all these phones land?
on
Listen to the Sky
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Right, but if you'd read the site, you would realize that the whole structure is enclosed in a net which, presumably, they plan on hauling back to earth when finished.
Umm...you would be correct, but look at what Disney has done when they have the rights to popular characters. Instead of letting us simply remember the wonderful movies we watched during our childhood (mine, at least), they try to jam more crap down our throats. Lion King 2, Beauty and the Beast 2, Little Mermaid 2, Pocahontas 2, etc., etc. Does anyone really believe that Disney will make a decent Finding Nemo II? Even a franchise is not just about the characters, it's about the storytelling and the animation. There's a reason that all of Disney's sequel releases have been direct-to-video. They realize that they're bad. But instead of seeing that the best thing they can do is make quality film (and then sell tons of merchandise on the side), they believe that the low cost of production of these direct-to-video disasters justifies their creation and sale. Good move, Pixar. Get out while you still can.
I am assuming for a second that you live in a Western nation, specifically one that exacts taxes and grants some sort of compensation to its citizens in return. If that is not true, then feel free to correct me. However, living in a Western society, you benefit from both its laws and its social programs, both of which are paid for by taxes. If you live in a democratic society, you have two choices: you can work within the system it establishes for changing the law and tailor the society more to your liking, or you can leave. For someone deriving benefits from living in such a society, there is no excuse for not paying taxes. If you don't want to participate in evil, then don't participate in evil, but don't benefit from it either. If you do, you're nothing more than a hypocrite.
IANAL (at least not yet), but last I checked, courts weren't just allowed to blatantly ignore Congress. If I remember correctly, Congress passed a law a few years back giving digital signatures the same legal standing as physical signatures. So if a Court is saying otherwise, that court's order is invalid, unless they're challenging the digital signature law itself.
-Mike-
Re:Freedom of Speech anymore?
on
Linking Dangerously
·
· Score: 2, Informative
While I disagree with the outcome of this particular case, I have to make a comment about your over-general statement regarding civil liberties. Civil liberties are a a God-given part of being human, and as citizens in a free society we have the right to demand them. Chief amongst these are free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. However, many of these rights (though they cannot be taken away by the government acting of its own volition) can be taken away by the people as punishment for actions outside legal and societal norms. For example, if I've been convicted of being involved in a corrupt enterprise (the Mafia, for example), a jury of my peers has found (or I've plead guilty) that my association with these people endangers society. Therefore, as a result of my actions, the people (acting through the state) have the right to restrict my freedom to associate (assemble) with my former conspirators.
I agree with the "AOL wins" section of your post, but with regards to the "AOL loses" section, you obviously haven't read the Grokster decision if you think that releasing a P2P client suddenly makes AOL liable.
I take issue with that. As the Director of Technology Affairs for Penn State's Undergraduate Student Government, I'd just like to say that Penn State is not spineless in the slightest. However, they only show this amazing amount of courage when slapping around students. As you may have noticed in all sorts of press (NYTimes, USA Today, others...), Penn State recently nailed a bunch of students with violations of the DMCA. What they didn't tell you (thank you, press) was that Penn State blatantly violated its own policy of not monitoring student network activity. I know what you're thinking...but they could be sued if they didn't comply, right? Nope. Penn State INITIATED the investigation. They didn't get any kind of takedown notice. Fortunately, a student body of 40,000 does give us SOME pull in the student government. One of the people in Judicial Affairs was quoted in the school newspaper as saying that they only gave them a slap on the wrist because they wanted to avoid a lawsuit...which any student would have been perfectly justified in filing. Unfortunately, since we're poor college students, it's too damn easy to kick us around.
The problem is that the RIAA, as much as we might hate to admit it, is damn smart. They made sure that all the kids they nailed on contributory infringement (search engines), they also had on direct infringement (downloading / sharing songs themselves.) They offered to settle so that they could set the precedent on both: the direct (which was cut-and-dry legally), and the indirect (which was also pretty cut-and-dry, but in favor of the students.) I'm not a lawyer, but from my understanding this has no legal precedent value. However, it certainly has value in that now the RIAA has set in the mind of students that even if they're doing something COMPLETELY LEGAL, they can get nailed. As always, the RIAA is playing on people's fears.
Well, it didn't really survive, but this seems to fit in with the stories of hardware abuse:
At my old high school, where I did tech work, laptops were given out to teachers for free. One of the teachers (big surprise) put a BIOS password on the computer and promptly forgot it. To reset it on this particular laptop would've required soldering a chip on the motherboard. We called up the manufacturer, but they said that the warranty didn't cover it. They could do the repair, but it would cost us an arm and a leg. We quickly realized, however, that destruction of the motherboard was covered under warranty. A few minutes later, I look into the next room and I see two of my fellow techs. One has a desktop power cable in his hands with two paper clips stuck into the slots where it would normally connect to the computer. The other is holding the laptop open with one hand and shielding his face with the other. This was quickly followed by a tripped circuit breaker and a large scorch mark on the motherboard. One warranty claim and a few weeks later, we had a brand new, non-passworded laptop.
To be honest, I would have no problem with submitting my retinal scans and fingerprints: as long as it was mandated by law that no government agency could retain this data. Instead, it would be encoded on the card itself. That way (assuming sufficiently strong encryption - something on the order of AES, preferably - on the card), we would have a secure identification system (with only the card ID being verified by a central server). Honestly, there are plenty of intelligent ways of doing this. With a sufficiently intelligent processor, it could be done very securely. A simple challenge-response system could be set up. Scan your retina, verify the card, then the reader asks the card if the scan matches the retina on file. Simple as that, without even an opportunity for nosy people to pull data off the card.
Side by side mapping for the most recent build of the mouse genome (alignment dated in August 2002) is finished. It's only the question of analysis that's now important. The article in Nature (I'm one of the co-authors) explores a variety of different methods for explaining the differences between the human and the mouse genomes, and (hopefully) for eventually explaining (or at least predicting) the process of evolution at the genetic level. It's hard to explain how massive this project was...a lot of the information was spun of into papers in other journals simply because Nature couldn't fit it all.
Your analogy is flawed. While you address the difference between Windows and Linux, you fail to see what really makes Linux more reliable than Windows: listening to the users, rather than the bottom line. Code contributions are made and accepted on the basis of their quality and whether they add critical functionality. Windows code contributions seem consistently to be included because they implement the snazziest new feature, regardless of the stability and reliability of the code. A more accurate picture of the value of XP would be in the practices of the NASA through (I believe) the Goddard Space Flight Center Development Team. They produce a complex, but robust and almost flawless piece of software only because they have constant interaction between programmers, and constant feedback communication to which they actually listen.
Another issue is responsibility. Microsoft has, I am certain, become desensitized to security issues, regardless of their "reliable computing" initiative. Priority is not given to fixing old bugs (except for, apparently, a few months in the entire existence of the company...because we all know it took the OpenBSD team just a few months to vet all that code, right?) In the open-source community, you are judged on the quality of your code. It is similar at Goddard. Competitions are held for the most bug-free code, and teams of programmers fight it out trying to write bug-free code and trying to find and exploit bugs, respectively.
So, with all due respect, I must disagree with your assessment that distributive is inherently better than collaborative.
Huh? You mention Unix, you mention an OS I've never even heard of called CP/M, but you don't deign to mention Apple and the Mac? Talk about selective memory there. Next time you feel like putting up a confusing post that bounces around (from the psychology of users to the history of Microsoft and its competitors), please please at least try to cover all the bases. Otherwise, it just becomes hard to understand.
Microsoft Getting Out of Legal Damages, Sun is Not
on
Sun To Sell Linux PCs
·
· Score: 1
The article makes some decent points, but while I questioned Microsoft's motives, I never really had a problem with them giving away free stuff to schools, even if it did mean people were "embracing the Microsoft future." But what really pissed me off was Microsoft trying (and succeeding? I can't remember the resolution of the case.) to push "donations" of software and hardware as reparation for a civil suit they lost in a court of law. I don't think Microsoft should be able to backdoor their way out of legal damages by throwing in some token hardware, and then just picking whatever price they want for the software, to make up the difference. Until Sun starts doing that, I say good for them that they're helping schools.
Looks like this site has experienced the first-ever Secondary Slashdot Effect (an offshoot of the Slashdot effect, where Slashdot's massive traffic causes even the pages linked from the page Slashdot links to fail). For those of you who didn't notice, this how-to is also prominently mentioned in the lecture / slideshow.
Now I get it. Microsoft is actually devoting a month to working on security...both by (yeah right) trying to fix the holes in the code and by trying to rewrite history. You do have to admire their multi-pronged approach.
Alright--that was dumb of me. Was planning on previewing it, but my mouse went straight for the first button in the line (think we could get those swapped, Rob?). Actually, I think maybe eliminating straight submission altogether would be a good idea-at least one preview required. I prolly should've read the allowed HTML list, as well. The title would've been a lot funnier if strike-through worked. Anyway, I hope my point was clear. I mean, you guys ever see the Simpsons episode where Homer's in trouble with the IRS, and the IRS guy just sits down and up pops the FBI (or was it Treasury?) guy? I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI is recruiting for the NSA.
Slashdot Mirror
No active services or servers. Key word: active. Passive monitoring would seem to be the rule.
Okay, I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I just can't let this one go. No, I'm not a fan of the DMCA, no, I'm not a big fan of the Patriot Act (though I certainly don't disagree with all of its provisions). However, do you have anything at all to back up this statement? At all? Even one scrap of evidence to suggest that the FBI is breaking down the doors of people who write viruses and locking them up forever without a trial? Even in the case of terrorists (Hamdi and Padilla), they may be currently held without trial, but they are clearly getting legal review of their cases, as are the Guantanamo Bay detainees, who are (1) not American citizens, and (2) not being held on American soil (no, it's not American soil, that's spelled out in the agreement with Cuba...go check.) Statements like this that make legitimate attempts to reform bad law difficult because they make us look like raving lunatics instead of calm, reasonable, intelligent people. From now on, please think before you post.
First, I agree with your comment regarding the Ansaris. I never said that they were suspect, I merely said it raised my suspicions. In other words, on the scale of "completely trusted" to "trust them as far as I can throw them", I would shift them slightly to the untrusted side of neutral. Being accomplished businesspeople or even US residents has no bearing on my decision...members of the bin Laden family have resided in the States for periods of time, and they are relatively wealthy businesspeople. If they are, as you guess, US citizens, that would shift them back toward the trusted side. I am not saying that they should be arrested, detained, or even questioned. People still have basic rights under the Constitution. I am just saying that, after September 11th, a Middle Eastern name makes me personally somewhat suspicious.
Second, I never asserted that sponsoring the X-Prize would give the Ansaris exclusive access to the aerodynamic information of entrants or the winner. That was an assertion made by the parent to the post to which I replied. Also, I agree with you when you say that the science of missiles is basically well understood, especially when it comes to large-yield weapons like nuclear missiles which do not have to hit a precise target to be effective. Nevertheless, if the Ansaris are given even partial rights to this technology and they are working for the Iranian government (a completely unfounded conjecture on my part), that would still give the Iranians a significant piece of technological information which they do not currently have, would it not?
Third, I am aware of the satire currently popular in Iran. I am also aware of the numerous protests and other demonstrations that have taken place against the religious government. Nevertheless, they still hold power. Do we assume that China is a peaceful, democratic country because - despite the fact that they have a repressive communist government - there are occasional instances where the people express views contrary to the government? No, of course not...primarily because those contrary views are usually swiftly and viciously suppressed.
Finally, with regards to your final statement, that was a mistake on my part. I more correctly should have said "retribution ala Afghanistan or military action ala Iraq." Forgive me for not spelling out every detail. Afghanistan was clearly part retribution, part liberation, part preemptive action. While the Taliban did not directly attack the United States, there is no question that they gave aid and shelter to bin Laden, which makes them just as culpable. Iraq is a murkier issue, but is actually more applicable, because if we believed Iran had weapons that posed a significant threat to the United States, well...I think you can see where I'm going here...
Umm...he didn't say that everyone in the Middle East wanted to nuke America. He specifically mentioned Iranians. With all due respect to the Ansaris and the vast majority of the Iranian people, it would raise my suspicions, too. The simple fact is that despite the current "moderate" executive branch of the Iranian government, the religious extremists actually hold all the power. They've demonstrated this by vetoing attempts at reform by the President and, most recently, disqualifying a vast portion of the legislature from reelection for ambiguous "religious" reasons. These hard-liners would like nothing better than to see more planes flown into American buildings. Absolutely the only thing stopping them is fear of retribution ala Afghanistan or Iraq.
Whoa, whoa, hang on. Weinstein is entirely correct. When he tried to make an argument about the broadcast flag, Valenti argued that the law had to be crafted to reflect the majority and that small segments of the population who had legitimate gripes would always exist (which isn't entirely true...law must reflect the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority.)
Weinstein then made the point that Linux users were a not-insubstantial portion of the population. This much is true. In addition, he made the point that this rather large segment of the population could not legally view DVDs on their computer without buying a separate DVD player or another operating system. I don't view this as a terribly technical problem. If I buy a DVD drive, I expect to be able to watch DVDs, just like I would have expected to be able to listen to music CDs if I bought a CD drive.
Further proof that this is neither a small nor an especially technical problem is the fact that Valenti himself has addressed it before. He has banked on the promise of DVD software soon being available for Linux, but that has yet to materialize. However, it has not and, but for the DMCA, United States copyright law would have no qualms about me finding some way to watch the content that I own. That is what's wrong.
The thing is, last time I checked, IBM had never stopped development of new software and products. They have never stopped creating and selling innovative technology. A legal department is necessary for any large business. However, it only beceomes a problem when you are spending a disproportionate amount of employee time and revenue on legal proceedings. Anyone who has been following the SCO case knows that, based on the amount of information they've put out regarding their products vs. the amount they've put out regarding their legal case, they're clearly in the latter category. Same goes for their public financial filings. These elements clearly point to a company in its death throes wanting desperately to get bought out. Nothing about IBM's behavior indicates that they are in similar straits.
Right, but if you'd read the site, you would realize that the whole structure is enclosed in a net which, presumably, they plan on hauling back to earth when finished.
-Mike-
Umm...you would be correct, but look at what Disney has done when they have the rights to popular characters. Instead of letting us simply remember the wonderful movies we watched during our childhood (mine, at least), they try to jam more crap down our throats. Lion King 2, Beauty and the Beast 2, Little Mermaid 2, Pocahontas 2, etc., etc. Does anyone really believe that Disney will make a decent Finding Nemo II? Even a franchise is not just about the characters, it's about the storytelling and the animation. There's a reason that all of Disney's sequel releases have been direct-to-video. They realize that they're bad. But instead of seeing that the best thing they can do is make quality film (and then sell tons of merchandise on the side), they believe that the low cost of production of these direct-to-video disasters justifies their creation and sale. Good move, Pixar. Get out while you still can.
-Mike-
I am assuming for a second that you live in a Western nation, specifically one that exacts taxes and grants some sort of compensation to its citizens in return. If that is not true, then feel free to correct me. However, living in a Western society, you benefit from both its laws and its social programs, both of which are paid for by taxes. If you live in a democratic society, you have two choices: you can work within the system it establishes for changing the law and tailor the society more to your liking, or you can leave. For someone deriving benefits from living in such a society, there is no excuse for not paying taxes. If you don't want to participate in evil, then don't participate in evil, but don't benefit from it either. If you do, you're nothing more than a hypocrite.
-Mike-
IANAL (at least not yet), but last I checked, courts weren't just allowed to blatantly ignore Congress. If I remember correctly, Congress passed a law a few years back giving digital signatures the same legal standing as physical signatures. So if a Court is saying otherwise, that court's order is invalid, unless they're challenging the digital signature law itself.
-Mike-
While I disagree with the outcome of this particular case, I have to make a comment about your over-general statement regarding civil liberties. Civil liberties are a a God-given part of being human, and as citizens in a free society we have the right to demand them. Chief amongst these are free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. However, many of these rights (though they cannot be taken away by the government acting of its own volition) can be taken away by the people as punishment for actions outside legal and societal norms. For example, if I've been convicted of being involved in a corrupt enterprise (the Mafia, for example), a jury of my peers has found (or I've plead guilty) that my association with these people endangers society. Therefore, as a result of my actions, the people (acting through the state) have the right to restrict my freedom to associate (assemble) with my former conspirators.
Actually, in case you hadn't noticed, they mentioned both.
I agree with the "AOL wins" section of your post, but with regards to the "AOL loses" section, you obviously haven't read the Grokster decision if you think that releasing a P2P client suddenly makes AOL liable.
-Mike-
I take issue with that. As the Director of Technology Affairs for Penn State's Undergraduate Student Government, I'd just like to say that Penn State is not spineless in the slightest. However, they only show this amazing amount of courage when slapping around students. As you may have noticed in all sorts of press (NYTimes, USA Today, others...), Penn State recently nailed a bunch of students with violations of the DMCA. What they didn't tell you (thank you, press) was that Penn State blatantly violated its own policy of not monitoring student network activity. I know what you're thinking...but they could be sued if they didn't comply, right? Nope. Penn State INITIATED the investigation. They didn't get any kind of takedown notice. Fortunately, a student body of 40,000 does give us SOME pull in the student government. One of the people in Judicial Affairs was quoted in the school newspaper as saying that they only gave them a slap on the wrist because they wanted to avoid a lawsuit...which any student would have been perfectly justified in filing. Unfortunately, since we're poor college students, it's too damn easy to kick us around.
-Mike-
The problem is that the RIAA, as much as we might hate to admit it, is damn smart. They made sure that all the kids they nailed on contributory infringement (search engines), they also had on direct infringement (downloading / sharing songs themselves.) They offered to settle so that they could set the precedent on both: the direct (which was cut-and-dry legally), and the indirect (which was also pretty cut-and-dry, but in favor of the students.) I'm not a lawyer, but from my understanding this has no legal precedent value. However, it certainly has value in that now the RIAA has set in the mind of students that even if they're doing something COMPLETELY LEGAL, they can get nailed. As always, the RIAA is playing on people's fears.
-Mike-
Well, it didn't really survive, but this seems to fit in with the stories of hardware abuse:
At my old high school, where I did tech work, laptops were given out to teachers for free. One of the teachers (big surprise) put a BIOS password on the computer and promptly forgot it. To reset it on this particular laptop would've required soldering a chip on the motherboard. We called up the manufacturer, but they said that the warranty didn't cover it. They could do the repair, but it would cost us an arm and a leg. We quickly realized, however, that destruction of the motherboard was covered under warranty. A few minutes later, I look into the next room and I see two of my fellow techs. One has a desktop power cable in his hands with two paper clips stuck into the slots where it would normally connect to the computer. The other is holding the laptop open with one hand and shielding his face with the other. This was quickly followed by a tripped circuit breaker and a large scorch mark on the motherboard. One warranty claim and a few weeks later, we had a brand new, non-passworded laptop.
-Mike-
To be honest, I would have no problem with submitting my retinal scans and fingerprints: as long as it was mandated by law that no government agency could retain this data. Instead, it would be encoded on the card itself. That way (assuming sufficiently strong encryption - something on the order of AES, preferably - on the card), we would have a secure identification system (with only the card ID being verified by a central server). Honestly, there are plenty of intelligent ways of doing this. With a sufficiently intelligent processor, it could be done very securely. A simple challenge-response system could be set up. Scan your retina, verify the card, then the reader asks the card if the scan matches the retina on file. Simple as that, without even an opportunity for nosy people to pull data off the card.
-Mike-Side by side mapping for the most recent build of the mouse genome (alignment dated in August 2002) is finished. It's only the question of analysis that's now important. The article in Nature (I'm one of the co-authors) explores a variety of different methods for explaining the differences between the human and the mouse genomes, and (hopefully) for eventually explaining (or at least predicting) the process of evolution at the genetic level. It's hard to explain how massive this project was...a lot of the information was spun of into papers in other journals simply because Nature couldn't fit it all.
Your analogy is flawed. While you address the difference between Windows and Linux, you fail to see what really makes Linux more reliable than Windows: listening to the users, rather than the bottom line. Code contributions are made and accepted on the basis of their quality and whether they add critical functionality. Windows code contributions seem consistently to be included because they implement the snazziest new feature, regardless of the stability and reliability of the code. A more accurate picture of the value of XP would be in the practices of the NASA through (I believe) the Goddard Space Flight Center Development Team. They produce a complex, but robust and almost flawless piece of software only because they have constant interaction between programmers, and constant feedback communication to which they actually listen.
Another issue is responsibility. Microsoft has, I am certain, become desensitized to security issues, regardless of their "reliable computing" initiative. Priority is not given to fixing old bugs (except for, apparently, a few months in the entire existence of the company...because we all know it took the OpenBSD team just a few months to vet all that code, right?) In the open-source community, you are judged on the quality of your code. It is similar at Goddard. Competitions are held for the most bug-free code, and teams of programmers fight it out trying to write bug-free code and trying to find and exploit bugs, respectively.
So, with all due respect, I must disagree with your assessment that distributive is inherently better than collaborative.
-Mike-
Huh? You mention Unix, you mention an OS I've never even heard of called CP/M, but you don't deign to mention Apple and the Mac? Talk about selective memory there. Next time you feel like putting up a confusing post that bounces around (from the psychology of users to the history of Microsoft and its competitors), please please at least try to cover all the bases. Otherwise, it just becomes hard to understand.
The article makes some decent points, but while I questioned Microsoft's motives, I never really had a problem with them giving away free stuff to schools, even if it did mean people were "embracing the Microsoft future." But what really pissed me off was Microsoft trying (and succeeding? I can't remember the resolution of the case.) to push "donations" of software and hardware as reparation for a civil suit they lost in a court of law. I don't think Microsoft should be able to backdoor their way out of legal damages by throwing in some token hardware, and then just picking whatever price they want for the software, to make up the difference. Until Sun starts doing that, I say good for them that they're helping schools.
-Mike-
"...a slower, much less user friendly Windows that would be a support nightmare."
How would that change things? Sounds like Windows to me.
Looks like this site has experienced the first-ever Secondary Slashdot Effect (an offshoot of the Slashdot effect, where Slashdot's massive traffic causes even the pages linked from the page Slashdot links to fail). For those of you who didn't notice, this how-to is also prominently mentioned in the lecture / slideshow.
-Mike-
Now I get it. Microsoft is actually devoting a month to working on security...both by (yeah right) trying to fix the holes in the code and by trying to rewrite history. You do have to admire their multi-pronged approach.
-Mike-
Alright--that was dumb of me. Was planning on previewing it, but my mouse went straight for the first button in the line (think we could get those swapped, Rob?). Actually, I think maybe eliminating straight submission altogether would be a good idea-at least one preview required. I prolly should've read the allowed HTML list, as well. The title would've been a lot funnier if strike-through worked. Anyway, I hope my point was clear. I mean, you guys ever see the Simpsons episode where Homer's in trouble with the IRS, and the IRS guy just sits down and up pops the FBI (or was it Treasury?) guy? I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI is recruiting for the NSA.
-Mike-