Don't blame the technology -- you could have bought a Kevlar raft (probably expensive), or had your cat surgically modified (declawed), or kept the raft in a cat-proof container, you just didn't.
It's an issue of budget and management on your part, not an issue of insufficiant available technology.
Well, he does have a point: the Space Program as it exists now isn't going anyplace -- it's just endlessly circling the earth. And there is noplace to go, at least not with the current beancounter PHB management.
Before we spend billions of dollars designing a new space plane, I think it's reasonable to ask exactly what we want to do with it. I'm not so sure that having people in space for the sake of having people in space is worthwhile anymore. It seems like just about everything the astronauts do these days could be simulated or automated, and yet there are no grander ambitions being seriously bandied about by NASA.
The space program can't take another shuttle or space station -- huge stacks of money wasted on things that don't do what we need them to do very well. No, they need a *visionary* program right now, not a space plane...
Well, that pretty much goes for the entire US economy, in this recession, workers are being laid off due to a lack of sales, creating a larger group of people that cannot afford their products, or even afford living.
I made this arguement to a senior manager of mine a while ago -- we're a health insurance company, and I pointed out that if we were to spend a few million to lobby and get heavy tarrifs passed on outsourced labor, the number of new customers we'd gain/save in the next few years would *far* outweigh the money we save outsourcing our QA (and we don't save that much... We would save some money if it didn't need to be re-QA'ed in the States, but that ain't the way it works in reality).
He didn't get it. Why? Because he couldn't see past the next quarter's budget. Asshat.
Thank God that someone out there with a little bit of cred is finally saying what we all who work in the industry have known for so long.
Now, how to stop it? I favor use of tariffs to force up the price of offshore workers (might be tough to enforce, but if a company *sells* in the US, which is where you want to sell if you want to make the big bucks, we have some influence; if they can keep the Big 3 in business, they can help us out, too).
My jerkoff company just shipped a huge section of its QA effort to India and laid off a lot of my friends -- the V-Pee had the audacity to send out something trying to twist this as being *good* for the employees... "Freeing us from routine or boring work".
Anyhow, I think that the *actual* costs of overseas labor are going to start getting serious press soon as well, so hopefully that'll discourage the flava-of-the-month pointy hairs from shipping our work overseas, but I want a backup plan in case....
While technically you could sue for $1 just to get the GPL "tested", I'd prefer to have it actually attacked by people who want to beat it -- how else can you know you can depend on it?
The best way to evaluate anything is to put it up against real honest competition. Why do you think football teams do real hitting in practice? Why risk having someone get injured when it doesn't count? Because it's the only way to really evaluate how a player is likely to do on the field on Sunday when the games count.
In the final analysis, this whole production might end up being a Good Thing.
First and foremost, it's good to be kept honest -- having other people's IP slipped into your codebase by well-meaning (or otherwise) people is a risk in all development projects. At least with OSS, a company can find the code and get it removed; someday, this will probably be used by a company acting in good faith (as opposed to SCO).
Second, it'll be nice to have the GPL tested out in court if for no other reason than the ability to point to it and say "it's been tested, it stands up". Given that a lot of important development in the next 10-15 years will be utilizing the GPL as Free-as-in-Speech products slowly displace proprietary fundementals like operating systems, it's important to the industry in general to work out any "bugs" in the GPL and get a prescident established sooner than later.
And hey, it'll be nice to see McBride brought up on those fraud charges, too -- you can't defraud your investors like this and expect to skate unless you're buddies with the guy in the White House, after all.
The trouble is that you just can't mass produce DVDs and include this sort of serialization... DVDs that you buy in the stores are pressed (instead of burned), so by definition they all end up having the same image.
I would imagine that the next gen of video recording format (whatever replaces DVD) will have built-in rights management a la Windows registration. This might be a Good Thing from a pure "rights" point of view: if you could, say, allow a certain player to play only certain titles (to which it has a license), you'd be able to allow backup copies and even concievably control fair use (albiet in a terrifically annoying Big Brother fashion). That's why they're fighting the DeCSS so hard -- if they lose control of the player, they effectively lose control of the whole ball of wax -- anybody could build a player or player software which disregards the rights management.
Eventually, though, I'm confident they'll work out a way to restrict digital copies well enough that only a very few dedicated people will still be able to produce them, at which point it's not really a problem (from the MPAA/RIAA's standpoint) anymore. This only works when it's easy, after all...
Hey, it worked for Metallica. How many people do you honestly think kept a copy of St. Anger on their hard drive?
I have 100 gigs of space, and I still wouldn't spare three megs of my valuable diskspace for that piece of crapola....
Re:Best example of how to speak about Security
on
Beyond Fear
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The trouble with that is the tendancy to run into serious "metaphor sheer" when using an example you're making up on the fly...
Here's a book idea: Come up with metaphors for computer-related ideas which will stand up reasonably well even as the user/cluebie/PHB makes assumptions based on them. I'd buy two compies, one for work and one for home, and keep 'em right next to the phone. I can't tell you how often it'd be useful...
"Not for you"?
on
Beyond Fear
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Key bit from the review:
...he describes a five-step process to analyze any particular security system or practice. The process helps you make sure you understand what you are protecting, what the tradeoffs are, and whether, in the end if it is worthwhile to implement the system.
This might seem like common sense, but a IMO *lot* of otherwise Clueful people could use having this sort of process tatooed in reverse on their forehead so they'd have to review it every morning when they looked in the mirror.
The trouble with any job that involves detail and careful attention is that the forest tends to duck behind all the damned trees, and this is especially true for IT. Hell, look at all the/.'ers in our recent discussions about programs or products that are "useless" or "should have waited longer to be released" because it doesn't provide absolute security, whereas in reality security is a *step by step* type of deal, not one of absolutes.
Anyhow, in my experience it often benefits even the "experts" to have the blatently obvious spelled out in this way and laid out before them. Security isn't alone here -- this goes for just about all disciplines, IT or not. Given that, I think it's dangerous to dismiss something like this as too basic.
Can't fight the future, or did Linux finally reach maturity? There's a big difference between fighting it kicking and screaming and simply not being able to use it because there's things it wasn't able to do.
Given their attitude and the fact that this was relatively recently, I'd say "fighting it kicking and screaming" is a much better representation than "waiting for functionality".
And I would argue that anyone who does not see the
*potential* of Linux, both in terms of technology development and the bottom line, is an idiot. What I mean here are the folks who, despite the staggering amount of evidence and press to the contrary, still think of Linux and OSS software as some sort of quaint ameature effort. The head of my division is one of these guys -- we've taken to calling him "executivus obsoletus". The Wind River folks, at least the ones I talked to, were the same sorts.
It's still surprising that it's Wind River -- these guys were *hardcore* anti-Linux anti-GPL folk not two years ago.
I had a phone interview with them Back In The Day (2000 or 2001) for a release manager position, and we got to talking about how I'd be a sysadmin and specialized in the area. They asked me what platform I was most comfortable with, and when I mentioned Linux I got a rather haughty answer (along the lines of "Well, what *real* platforms?").
Anyhow, you're right. And that's the beauty of the GPL -- it lets people change their minds when it becomes clear they can't fight the future. Still, you gotta admit, it'd be satisfying to make these folks grovel a little bit...
1. Sharpie Silver Metallic, which works great (not like the old silver or gold paint pens).
2. A link to PriceWatch, where you can get a new IDE CD drive for like $18. I'd send you one myself, but my 2x on my Linux box finally died yesterday so I'm back to using 'em all. Alternatively, you could break into the UPL and steal one of theirs -- go now! The webcam shows nobody home...
It seems like these development houses need some sort of code control technology. Given that bits are inherantly copyable and the ease with which they're moved in large numbers (net, DVD-Rs, etc), companies can't rely on conventional security methods to protect themselves from serious employee theft.
But how?
At my company, we control access to code using good 'ol fashioned groups, but that leaves a relatively large number of people with access to everything. Maybe you could enhance that security with encryption of the codebase (you can decrypt the parts you need to change and that's it), but that doesn't seem like a great solution, either. Or maybe somehow watermark the code to each person in a way not easy to detect -- maybe dynamically change their variable names so they're individual-specific...
Anyhow, interesting problem. There's always air-gap, searched-by-security on the way out solutions, but given that my keychain holds more data than my first (or second, or third) hard drive, I'm not sure how effective even a police-state style could be against a determined thief....
Technology is only an advantage if it either lowers your cost of doing business or makes your people more productive. This might seem obvious, but for some unfathomable reason the basic wisdom of this tends to get ignored.
My company and my fiance's company are on different ends of the spectrum here. My company spends truly awsome amounts of money on technology development efforts, many of which (lately) come to absolutely nothing. Of those that actually make it into use, many won't recoup the money we spent developing them. This is a Bad Thing, especially since eventually upper management might realize we're a huge money pit and shitcan the lot of us.
My girlfriend's company, OTOH, won't spend money on tech to save their lives, even when it means they're losing money. For instance, they have a hard limit on their email inbox of about 500 megs. This is a problem since they're a publications company and pass around large files, so each person ends up spending about two hours a week managing their email -- they bill out at $135/hour, so just in her 20 person office (and there are several other offices scattered around) that's $280k lost each year in the interests of saving the couple grand a new disk array would cost.
The trouble, as far as I can tell, is that my division is run by a geek who is stuck on having the latest-and-greatest and her company is run by a short-sighted beancounter. Both are equally destructive to the bottom line in the end -- the geek can't say no to things that sound cool (tell me if this reminds you of anyone) and the beancounter can't see beyond the invoices on his desk.
Looks like there were "a number" of vulnerabilities. Perhaps they should have waited?
Waited for what, perfection?
In a Real World environment, "pretty safe" is a whole hell of a lot better than nothing. So long as flaws are fixed quickly after being identified, I don't see what the problem is.
If you want *real* security, you need an air gap. Otherwise, quit yer bitchin'.
What's you're alternative to living in a free society, as opposed to one where you can go to jail for trying to watch a DVD you purchased? What's you alternative to freedom of speech, as opposed to one where you can go to jail for talking about security problems in software?
This isn't anything out of the ordinary for American thought, but it's worth pointing out: Your stupid fucking materialism shouldn't be more important that your freedoms, ethics or soul. When you buy shoes stitched together by oppressed third world children living in sub-par conditions, you're as much a part of the problem as Nike. When you buy anything cruelly tested on helpless animals, you're as much of an animal abuser as the assholes who do the testing.
So, on behalf of the Americans and other inhabitants of the world out here who aren't willing to sell their morality for the utility granted by some shitty piece of software, let me say: Fuck you.
What's that? Slashdotters complaining about a company/organization's abusive practices in one thread and then shamelessly whoring themselves to said company/organization's products or services in the next? Be still my beating heart.
The sad fact is that most of the folks here have a powerful capacity for outrage that stops *just* short of actually depriving themselves of anything. We all still go to movies and support the MPAA, we all still buy software from corporate bullies, and hell, a whole lot of us still recommend MS product at work rather than battle the status quo.
Anyhow, I've been around here for a while now, and I can tell you: It ain't worth getting worked up over. It'll never change because the bulk of the geeks here are too in love with their lifestyle to mess with it just to make so puny a point as "we should have the rights the Constitution grants us" or "having big companies blatently buy our elected officials is a bad thing".
(sigh) Ignore me, I'm feeling especially defeated today because I'm heading into a three hour "status meeting" in a little while...
Since you brought up the Vingean Singularity, I feel like I should point out a good short story I read just this morning that takes place in a decidedly posthuman era: Coelacanths by Robert Reed.
Worth a check-out if you're looking to entertain yourself for a while and don't what to switch on the idiot box...
Just happened to pick up this book in a Borders one Saturday when my girlfriend was out of town and started reading, intending to cover the first few pages and see if it was worth buying.
I sat in the cafe for six hours reading and swilling coffee, until they started closing up and I had to buy it and get out.
Since then, I've read a lot of Vinge (including his Zones-of-Thought followup, Deepness in the Sky), but this is IMO his best work. Good hard scifi, original alien species (both the Riders and the Tines are refreshing in a world of Star-Trek-Weird-Nose aliens), good plot progression... Really, I thought the Usenet portion that the reviewer got so stuck on was the least of the reasons to recommend this book.
Even if they were to release the PC client today, that's a *four month* chunk of time where they could have been all alone in the market for everybody (instead of all alone in the market for, what, 5% of the population).
The value of that time just cannot be overstated. Look at eBay: there's nothing difficult about what they do, it's not (relatively) hard to replicate. But who goes to Amazon or other places for auctions? Almost nobody (again, relatively). Why? Mindshare.
I know "mindshare" stil suffers from the idiotic devotion to it that was around in '99-2000, but it's still very valid. By now, millions of Windows users should have had good experiences using iTunes, but they don't. Now, Apple has to compete against a company that's going to put their service's icon on the desktop of every computer they sell (which is quite a few).
Look, I like Apple. I think they do great things and make terrific innovations. That's why I hate seeing them blow it like this time and time again... I'm starting to think that one of the Xerox PARC folks must have put a Voodoo curse on them after they "appropriated" the GUI so that they'd be doomed to have the same thing happen to them over and over again....
nothing better than selling generic computers at an extreme markup.
Yeah, 'cause that's the secret of Dell's success.
(sigh) I can tell this is going to become a "Dell sux!" and "Dell is just copying Apple!" thread, but the truth is that Dell is moving in a fairly purposeful way to fill an enormous gaping hole that Apple left in the market when they didn't release iTunes for the PC right away. When Apple loses all of that potential for market share to Dell, you gotta just come clean and admit: "Apple screwed up again".
Dell has become an enormously wealthy company because they're good at taking other people's well-concieved-yet-poorly-implemented ideas and improving on them or making them easier to sell. This isn't a small deal -- hugely promising companies full of smart people have suffered from an inability to do this for ages (SGI, anyone)? From selling computers customized on the web to rebranding their own peripherals to packaging the right software, Dell's made one smart business decision after another.
Anyhow, here's the real spin here: Apple fucked up, and now they're going to pay.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect there's a fine line between "fearless and brave" and "suicidally stupid" that you're overlooking....
It's an issue of budget and management on your part, not an issue of insufficiant available technology.
Before we spend billions of dollars designing a new space plane, I think it's reasonable to ask exactly what we want to do with it. I'm not so sure that having people in space for the sake of having people in space is worthwhile anymore. It seems like just about everything the astronauts do these days could be simulated or automated, and yet there are no grander ambitions being seriously bandied about by NASA.
The space program can't take another shuttle or space station -- huge stacks of money wasted on things that don't do what we need them to do very well. No, they need a *visionary* program right now, not a space plane...
Mars Direct, anyone?
I made this arguement to a senior manager of mine a while ago -- we're a health insurance company, and I pointed out that if we were to spend a few million to lobby and get heavy tarrifs passed on outsourced labor, the number of new customers we'd gain/save in the next few years would *far* outweigh the money we save outsourcing our QA (and we don't save that much... We would save some money if it didn't need to be re-QA'ed in the States, but that ain't the way it works in reality).
He didn't get it. Why? Because he couldn't see past the next quarter's budget. Asshat.
Now, how to stop it? I favor use of tariffs to force up the price of offshore workers (might be tough to enforce, but if a company *sells* in the US, which is where you want to sell if you want to make the big bucks, we have some influence; if they can keep the Big 3 in business, they can help us out, too).
My jerkoff company just shipped a huge section of its QA effort to India and laid off a lot of my friends -- the V-Pee had the audacity to send out something trying to twist this as being *good* for the employees... "Freeing us from routine or boring work".
Anyhow, I think that the *actual* costs of overseas labor are going to start getting serious press soon as well, so hopefully that'll discourage the flava-of-the-month pointy hairs from shipping our work overseas, but I want a backup plan in case....
The best way to evaluate anything is to put it up against real honest competition. Why do you think football teams do real hitting in practice? Why risk having someone get injured when it doesn't count? Because it's the only way to really evaluate how a player is likely to do on the field on Sunday when the games count.
First and foremost, it's good to be kept honest -- having other people's IP slipped into your codebase by well-meaning (or otherwise) people is a risk in all development projects. At least with OSS, a company can find the code and get it removed; someday, this will probably be used by a company acting in good faith (as opposed to SCO).
Second, it'll be nice to have the GPL tested out in court if for no other reason than the ability to point to it and say "it's been tested, it stands up". Given that a lot of important development in the next 10-15 years will be utilizing the GPL as Free-as-in-Speech products slowly displace proprietary fundementals like operating systems, it's important to the industry in general to work out any "bugs" in the GPL and get a prescident established sooner than later.
And hey, it'll be nice to see McBride brought up on those fraud charges, too -- you can't defraud your investors like this and expect to skate unless you're buddies with the guy in the White House, after all.
I would imagine that the next gen of video recording format (whatever replaces DVD) will have built-in rights management a la Windows registration. This might be a Good Thing from a pure "rights" point of view: if you could, say, allow a certain player to play only certain titles (to which it has a license), you'd be able to allow backup copies and even concievably control fair use (albiet in a terrifically annoying Big Brother fashion). That's why they're fighting the DeCSS so hard -- if they lose control of the player, they effectively lose control of the whole ball of wax -- anybody could build a player or player software which disregards the rights management.
Eventually, though, I'm confident they'll work out a way to restrict digital copies well enough that only a very few dedicated people will still be able to produce them, at which point it's not really a problem (from the MPAA/RIAA's standpoint) anymore. This only works when it's easy, after all...
I have 100 gigs of space, and I still wouldn't spare three megs of my valuable diskspace for that piece of crapola....
Here's a book idea: Come up with metaphors for computer-related ideas which will stand up reasonably well even as the user/cluebie/PHB makes assumptions based on them. I'd buy two compies, one for work and one for home, and keep 'em right next to the phone. I can't tell you how often it'd be useful...
This might seem like common sense, but a IMO *lot* of otherwise Clueful people could use having this sort of process tatooed in reverse on their forehead so they'd have to review it every morning when they looked in the mirror.
The trouble with any job that involves detail and careful attention is that the forest tends to duck behind all the damned trees, and this is especially true for IT. Hell, look at all the /.'ers in our recent discussions about programs or products that are "useless" or "should have waited longer to be released" because it doesn't provide absolute security, whereas in reality security is a *step by step* type of deal, not one of absolutes.
Anyhow, in my experience it often benefits even the "experts" to have the blatently obvious spelled out in this way and laid out before them. Security isn't alone here -- this goes for just about all disciplines, IT or not. Given that, I think it's dangerous to dismiss something like this as too basic.
Given their attitude and the fact that this was relatively recently, I'd say "fighting it kicking and screaming" is a much better representation than "waiting for functionality".
And I would argue that anyone who does not see the *potential* of Linux, both in terms of technology development and the bottom line, is an idiot. What I mean here are the folks who, despite the staggering amount of evidence and press to the contrary, still think of Linux and OSS software as some sort of quaint ameature effort. The head of my division is one of these guys -- we've taken to calling him "executivus obsoletus". The Wind River folks, at least the ones I talked to, were the same sorts.
I had a phone interview with them Back In The Day (2000 or 2001) for a release manager position, and we got to talking about how I'd be a sysadmin and specialized in the area. They asked me what platform I was most comfortable with, and when I mentioned Linux I got a rather haughty answer (along the lines of "Well, what *real* platforms?").
Anyhow, you're right. And that's the beauty of the GPL -- it lets people change their minds when it becomes clear they can't fight the future. Still, you gotta admit, it'd be satisfying to make these folks grovel a little bit...
Somebody direct these guys to the "Supplicants" door. =)
1. Sharpie Silver Metallic, which works great (not like the old silver or gold paint pens).
2. A link to PriceWatch, where you can get a new IDE CD drive for like $18. I'd send you one myself, but my 2x on my Linux box finally died yesterday so I'm back to using 'em all. Alternatively, you could break into the UPL and steal one of theirs -- go now! The webcam shows nobody home...
But how?
At my company, we control access to code using good 'ol fashioned groups, but that leaves a relatively large number of people with access to everything. Maybe you could enhance that security with encryption of the codebase (you can decrypt the parts you need to change and that's it), but that doesn't seem like a great solution, either. Or maybe somehow watermark the code to each person in a way not easy to detect -- maybe dynamically change their variable names so they're individual-specific...
Anyhow, interesting problem. There's always air-gap, searched-by-security on the way out solutions, but given that my keychain holds more data than my first (or second, or third) hard drive, I'm not sure how effective even a police-state style could be against a determined thief....
Technology is only an advantage if it either lowers your cost of doing business or makes your people more productive. This might seem obvious, but for some unfathomable reason the basic wisdom of this tends to get ignored.
My company and my fiance's company are on different ends of the spectrum here. My company spends truly awsome amounts of money on technology development efforts, many of which (lately) come to absolutely nothing. Of those that actually make it into use, many won't recoup the money we spent developing them. This is a Bad Thing, especially since eventually upper management might realize we're a huge money pit and shitcan the lot of us.
My girlfriend's company, OTOH, won't spend money on tech to save their lives, even when it means they're losing money. For instance, they have a hard limit on their email inbox of about 500 megs. This is a problem since they're a publications company and pass around large files, so each person ends up spending about two hours a week managing their email -- they bill out at $135/hour, so just in her 20 person office (and there are several other offices scattered around) that's $280k lost each year in the interests of saving the couple grand a new disk array would cost.
The trouble, as far as I can tell, is that my division is run by a geek who is stuck on having the latest-and-greatest and her company is run by a short-sighted beancounter. Both are equally destructive to the bottom line in the end -- the geek can't say no to things that sound cool (tell me if this reminds you of anyone) and the beancounter can't see beyond the invoices on his desk.
Waited for what, perfection?
In a Real World environment, "pretty safe" is a whole hell of a lot better than nothing. So long as flaws are fixed quickly after being identified, I don't see what the problem is.
If you want *real* security, you need an air gap. Otherwise, quit yer bitchin'.
What's you're alternative to living in a free society, as opposed to one where you can go to jail for trying to watch a DVD you purchased? What's you alternative to freedom of speech, as opposed to one where you can go to jail for talking about security problems in software?
This isn't anything out of the ordinary for American thought, but it's worth pointing out: Your stupid fucking materialism shouldn't be more important that your freedoms, ethics or soul. When you buy shoes stitched together by oppressed third world children living in sub-par conditions, you're as much a part of the problem as Nike. When you buy anything cruelly tested on helpless animals, you're as much of an animal abuser as the assholes who do the testing.
So, on behalf of the Americans and other inhabitants of the world out here who aren't willing to sell their morality for the utility granted by some shitty piece of software, let me say: Fuck you.
The sad fact is that most of the folks here have a powerful capacity for outrage that stops *just* short of actually depriving themselves of anything. We all still go to movies and support the MPAA, we all still buy software from corporate bullies, and hell, a whole lot of us still recommend MS product at work rather than battle the status quo.
Anyhow, I've been around here for a while now, and I can tell you: It ain't worth getting worked up over. It'll never change because the bulk of the geeks here are too in love with their lifestyle to mess with it just to make so puny a point as "we should have the rights the Constitution grants us" or "having big companies blatently buy our elected officials is a bad thing".
(sigh) Ignore me, I'm feeling especially defeated today because I'm heading into a three hour "status meeting" in a little while...
It was in "The Year's Best Science Fiction" anthology, the 20th annual edition. Edited by Gardner Dozois.
Worth a check-out if you're looking to entertain yourself for a while and don't what to switch on the idiot box...
I sat in the cafe for six hours reading and swilling coffee, until they started closing up and I had to buy it and get out.
Since then, I've read a lot of Vinge (including his Zones-of-Thought followup, Deepness in the Sky), but this is IMO his best work. Good hard scifi, original alien species (both the Riders and the Tines are refreshing in a world of Star-Trek-Weird-Nose aliens), good plot progression... Really, I thought the Usenet portion that the reviewer got so stuck on was the least of the reasons to recommend this book.
Anyhow, go get it if you haven't already.
Even if they were to release the PC client today, that's a *four month* chunk of time where they could have been all alone in the market for everybody (instead of all alone in the market for, what, 5% of the population).
The value of that time just cannot be overstated. Look at eBay: there's nothing difficult about what they do, it's not (relatively) hard to replicate. But who goes to Amazon or other places for auctions? Almost nobody (again, relatively). Why? Mindshare.
I know "mindshare" stil suffers from the idiotic devotion to it that was around in '99-2000, but it's still very valid. By now, millions of Windows users should have had good experiences using iTunes, but they don't. Now, Apple has to compete against a company that's going to put their service's icon on the desktop of every computer they sell (which is quite a few).
Look, I like Apple. I think they do great things and make terrific innovations. That's why I hate seeing them blow it like this time and time again... I'm starting to think that one of the Xerox PARC folks must have put a Voodoo curse on them after they "appropriated" the GUI so that they'd be doomed to have the same thing happen to them over and over again....
Yeah, 'cause that's the secret of Dell's success.
(sigh) I can tell this is going to become a "Dell sux!" and "Dell is just copying Apple!" thread, but the truth is that Dell is moving in a fairly purposeful way to fill an enormous gaping hole that Apple left in the market when they didn't release iTunes for the PC right away. When Apple loses all of that potential for market share to Dell, you gotta just come clean and admit: "Apple screwed up again".
Dell has become an enormously wealthy company because they're good at taking other people's well-concieved-yet-poorly-implemented ideas and improving on them or making them easier to sell. This isn't a small deal -- hugely promising companies full of smart people have suffered from an inability to do this for ages (SGI, anyone)? From selling computers customized on the web to rebranding their own peripherals to packaging the right software, Dell's made one smart business decision after another.
Anyhow, here's the real spin here: Apple fucked up, and now they're going to pay.