Not to be bombastic or anything (or flaming for that matter), but if it's so easy to remove, why are a lot of people asking how to remove it? Is it unclear in the documentation for Ximian? Or is this just a case of people unfamiliar with Ximian/Gnome/Linux/etc.? I haven't used Ximian so I can't speak as to the ease or lack thereof for the installer.
Although I must applaud the "rivalry" between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union during the Space Race (because had their been no race it's doubtful the moon shot would've ever taken place due to costs, risks, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if we could move beyond "We did it first" and the countering "No, WE did it first" type of comments. Imagine something like:
Human Race: 1st satellite 1st human in orbit 1st moon landing 1st Mars probe etc.
to be followed by: 1st permanent Lunar colony 1st manned mission to Mars 1st permanent Mars colony 1st manned mission to Europa 1st asteroidal mining colony 1st Mercury-based solar powered antimatter generation facility (for antimatter-powered thrusters).
Sadly, even though I'm 29, it's higly doubtful I'll see more than a token manned mission to Mars in my lifetime. My children will see my grandparents's dreams come true, albeit about 80 years too late.
I hope you will understand when I say that although I am Christian, I am not Catholic, and I do have a number of issues with the Catholic Church in general -- most of them having to do with Church policy (edicts) have a great deal of intertwining with political policy. But I shant get into that with you. You have just as much right your beliefs as I do, and I shall not criticize you or the Church because of that.
Your arguments are well thought out, and perhaps our opinions aren't so far apart here. Where we seem to part ways is that you wish to err on the side of conservancy due to the possible "dire consequences". I, on the other had, believe that any system put in place with be both (a) abused and (b) improved over time. No process is static. I firmly believe that while there are possibilities of abuse, the potential good far, far outweighs them, especially since I believe abusers will be villified to the four corners of the earth (not to mention the incredible legal fodder herein). I have more faith that human nature, while quite flawed, generally works out in the end.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. Yes, responsibility ALWAYS must accompany choice. Where abusers get into trouble is when the have too much of the latter and not enough of the former.
Yes, we do all die of something, but arguing that is silly. Following your argument we should all avoid medical treatment altogether. After all, isn't that the "natural" way? Now I hope you see the folly of such an argument. If you broke your arm, would you not want a doctor to set it, care for it, in the hopes that you would regain full use of it? Or would you prefer for it to heal "naturally", and end up with a crooked arm and loss of function? I think I know what your answer would be.
Genetic screening is nothing more than an extension of what we've done before. There is no black and white here, it's a smooth shade of grey. I will state again: no doubt the system will be abused. But that is not a reason to "outlaw" or ban the idea. Following THAT reasoning, we should abandon pianos, because someone might just drop one on me one day. ANYTHING can be abused. You don't outlaw the process, you instead educate, cajole, and influence the abuser until they either (a) stop abusing it or (b) become a niche minority that you simply must accept. No process is perfect. To assume otherwise is stupid.
Using the Tower of Babel to support your argument is not a very good analogy. The builders of the tower wanted to elevate themselves above God. That is not the goal of genetic screening, anymore than innoculating against smallpox is taking away from God. We have had an ability to improve ourselves through genetic selection since the beginning of the race by choosing our mate. Now we have developed that SAME ability to a much more precise point. We've become more efficient, if you will. I fail to see how that profoundly changes the theological question, or that it presents any moral problems whatsoever to those who would use it responsibly. As for those who would NOT, that is between them and God, and they'll be judged for it by far higher and greater powers than you and I.
but that's just it -- what it MIGHT be." No, IS. People are already applying this philosophy to more than eggs.
I'm going to respond by restating my earlier comment: any system can be abused, and any system WILL eventually be abused. That does not make the system a problem, it makes the abuser a problem. Blaming geneticists for the idiocy of the above-mentioned French "mother" would be like blaming Ford because some idiot got drunk and decided to mow down some school children.
People with ridiculously poor decision making skills DO exist, as do people with highly developed decision making skills. You should not penalize the latter because of the former. While I abhor what was mentioned above, she's done it, it's apparently legal where she lives, and I have no say-so in the matter. Neither do you, other than your opinion which you have stated.
I won't get into the abortion angle because that wasn't the point of my post. I was not advocating the aborting of babies with genetic "defects", I was advocating the total opposite: using genetic screening to prevent such defects from ever becoming reality in the first place.
Speaking as a parent who's about to have a baby girl added to our family, I have to ask a very pointed question to those who oppose any sort of genetic "screening". If you have a child, would you not do practically anything on this earth to prevent that child from having to suffer from diabetes, Alzheimer's, or hundreds of other genetically-linked diseases? If you have a child and answer "no", then perhaps you ought to take a good, long look at your child and imagine him/her hooked up to machines, wasting away in a hospital bed. It can happen. It does happen. I hope it never happens to myself, my wife, or any of my children.
We have it within our power now to take a preventative stance towards genetically transmitted diseases. Undoubtedly this system will be abused, as any system can and is abused, but are not the gains worth it? Early last year I lost both grandparents, both of which suffered long bouts of Alzheimer's. It was horrific to watch as the people who I knew and loved forgot who I was, who they were, and regressed to an infantile state. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. If I can prevent my great grandchildren from one day viewing my children in a similar manner, I'm all for it.
Are we playing God? That depends on how radical you want to be about this. I firmly believe that we've been given cognitive abilities that have lead to the discovery of genetics. If God didn't want us tinkering with ourselves, why does he allow us to do so? I'd also love for someone to find some good biblical references that say we shouldn't be doing this.
And, yes, I've seen Gattaca. I know what the consequences of genetic "super babies" might be, but that's just it -- what it MIGHT be. Here's a solution: if you want it, you should be able to have it. If you don't, don't. Your choice. That is what freedom is about, after all? Choice?
After all, it's no longer "Universal", is it? Perhaps it could be called RSB, for "Regional Serial Bus", or perhaps NSB for "National Serial Bus".
Seriously, I can only see one or two reasons why someone would want to implement this region locking:
First, I doubt a domestic company would want to take tech support calls for foreign-made equipment. And, yes, you know some clueless fool will call MS up, waste their time, bitching about why his Far East ContollerPad isn't working. Worse, perhaps they aren't tested to similar standards and could pose a threat to the Xbox. Who knows?
Second, and this is the more insidious one, they might do this because of internal competition, the same reason DVD region locking is used. Regional branches of the same company making the same product may have wildly divergent pricing and release schedules. Since Asia usually gets the cool toys first, the North American division wants to protect its turf by preventing imports of the Asian goods until they can get around to marketing the product domestically. While that makes good business sense, it's typically used to hide a serious case of "head up the ass" when the domestic vendor is slow to put out new products.
I wonder if anyone has ever patented the concept of money. No, really! If totally obvious shit like selling stuff online can be patented, then anything can be. What's next? Patent breathing and eating? You could make a killing!
[sigh] Our wonderful U.S. patent system has once again shown us how horrifically broken it is. While patents serve a useful purpose of allowing inventors to (hopefully) recoup their R&D expenses and actually make some money, now they are being used as legal cudgels to prevent someone else from even doing business.
Anybody got any brave ideas on how we could overhaul the patent system? Doing away with it is NOT a fix, BTW.
Police bomb squads been doing something similar
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Robot Mine Smasher
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· Score: 2
Police bomb squads have been using remotely controlled devices outfitted with special "high velocity" shotguns for years. Although I'm no bomb expert (but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night), the concept is that a special high velocity round can basically destroy the mine/explosive before it has a chance to set itself off.
Contrary to what most folks think, modern high explosives aren't particularly easy to set off. You can pinch off a piece of C4, light it with a match, and it will burn peacefully enough to boil some water for coffee. It can only be detonated with a detonator, and the detonator itself is designed so that it can only be triggered as designed, not by dropping it, smashing it, or burning it. Obviously this doesn't hold true for all explosives or all detonators, but the military stuff I was around in the Marines could be handled as if it were no more dangerous than Play-Doh. Mines are even more complex, where you have a trigger that activates a detonator, the detonator activates a booster charge, the booster charge may even activate yet another booster charge (think anti-tank mines), and finally the main charge is detonated. Interrupt any one of these processes and the mine suddenly becomes a doorstop.
My guess is that the velocity figure in the article are off somehow, as the quoted specs are far too slow to do much of anything except set the mine off. A small, extremely high velocity slug put in exactly the right place would disrupt the mine. A slow, heavy blow would seem to be a good recipe for setting it off.
Re:I honestly can't figure out
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What is .NET?
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Save myself? HAH! You ever hear of a concept called speculation? I guess not according to your rant. Yes, I know what the article says. Yes, I know it's not encrypted or closed right now. Try and think beyond that teeny tiny brain of yours for a change.
Here's what I mean: MS is creating something that doesn't seem to have a purpose that benefits them. We all know that MS *never* does anything that doesn't further their business plans and interests. NEVER. So they're promoting it as it is now -- what about later? Where are they going with this?
So, here we have something supposedly open and free, cross platform and all. Does this creep anyone else out besides me? What possible motive would MS have to do this? If they wanted something that's widespread, cross platform, extensible, open, and flexible, they could've chosen Java. I'm not a programmer, but it doesn't appear to me that.NET has any huge advantage over Java and vice versa. And we all know how MS treated Java in the past, so we know they have no love for open, cross-platform standard.
Here's a possible idea: what if they're using.NET to draw folks away from Java. Suppose they succeed somehow and get the world stuck on.NET. Then, lo and behold, rev 2.0 of.NET is now closed, or expensive, or whatever. There must be a motive here somewhere for MS to do something like this.
Re:I honestly can't figure out
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What is .NET?
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I did read the article. My comment on them not developing for other platforms was meant to convey that I doubt they'd PROMOTE it, as it would tend to cannibalize their OS monopoly. Making something and allowing it to be used w/o a ridiculously strict license are two different things.
I honestly can't figure out
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What is .NET?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...where MS is going with this initiative. They seem to be touting portability, but what kind of portability? Certainly not inter-OS portability, that's for sure. No doubt that their Common Language Runtime is so heavily patented, encrypted, folded, spindled and mutilated that it will be quite difficult for someone to make it run on a non-MS platform. I know that quite a few Linux-heads are working on it. Prediction: if they ever get it right, MS will sue them about four microseconds after they post it on Freshmeat.
That being said, it does seem like MS is trying to wean themselves out of a strictly x86 world, and portable binaries is a good way to do that. What about performance? Java used to be well known for crappy performance because of the abstraction forced on the code. Will.NET have similar limitations, I wonder?
Schroedinger Perl -- All assertions are assumed to be true and false at the same time until such time as someone observes your website, at which time your site is forced into a particular state. Neat, eh?
In related news, the government also said today that liquid water has officially been determined to be wet. Experts predict that other testing will show that grass is green and the sky is blue, but industry pundits are divided on the actual hues involved.
In point of fact, Linux is a better operating system than Windows because it is more reliable and less obtrusive. In other words, it doesn't poke its head above the shell nearly as often as Windows. Both systems do, to one extent or another. For example, Linux's filesystem architecture becomes apparent when you pop a disk out of the floppy drive when/dev/fd0 mounted, and then try to insert and read another. Windows' architecture becomes apparent when you try to move all of those huge MS office binaries from C: to your new, spacious hard drive D: and then try to run Word
If I follow this definition, the DOS must be great as well since it doesn't "poke its head" very often at all. Yes, it's a joke, you can laugh.
I agree with you that to consider RedHat or Windows an "OS" is a generalization, and yes, X isn't Linux. But what I was pointing at is more far reaching that what you speak of. I despise using Gates' terminology, but the entire "experience" of the OS and all likely (or tightly coupled) applications must be taken into account when assessing the usability of a system. Nobody installs an OS and says "hey, neat" and just stares at it. People use them to do things, like word processing, spreadsheets, or CAD.
To compare Windows and Linux (whatever distro) you have to take the above into account -- you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If someone wishes to extole the virtues of StarOffice, they also have to deal with the baggage of X. I personally agree with you that the option to not have a GUI is very likeable (and much more secure), but that is for another discussion. You might be able to use some ncurses program to do your spreadsheet, and vi can do your word processing, but nobody but a dyed in the wool *nix geek would even begin to suggest that those tools are easier to use for the average person than, say, Word or Excel.
Your Logitech example only serves to support my point: Logitech didn't include drivers for your system. Sure, it's Logitech's fault, not X, but I don't care who's fault it is; the point is drivers and/or installers were not available. While it may be easy for you or I to get around these problems, the average person either cannot or will not. And what's worse, they don't have to if they stick to the Windows platform. They will gladly put up with bluescreens and bloatware, they want somethat that is so easy any idiot can do it. How many idiot technophobes do you know of running Linux? When you contact both of them, let me know, as I need their email addresses.
You end up with users that know absolutely nothing about thier systems and can't adjust at all if anything goes wrong
This is where most techies go wrong. I've done it myself, but a little time and experience has shown me why this is such folly.
Would it be nice if every user in every company understood the magical little beige boxes that sit on their desks? Sure. We'd have a helluva easier time if we didn't have to clean Outlook virii, "Elf Bowling" trojans, MS Golf, or cleaning Coke and Maxwell House Columbian Blend out of a keyboard. But that's a very techie-centric view of the world, and it's wrong.
The secretary doesn't, shouldn't need ot know these things in order to do her job. Her skills are clerical, not techical. Same goes for HR, or any other non-technical business field. Knowing how their boxes function is not essential to their job function. If a worker had an option to spend 40 hours improving their primary work knowledge or spending 40 hours boning up on Linux, the average company would benefit far more in the former case. It's the truth. It isn't what you or I want to hear, but it's the truth.
Think outside your own perspective and you'll see the truth of this. Just because something is easy for you does not mean it is so for anyone else in this world. Other people have other priorities, other duties, and other likes/dislikes. I know lots of users who despise their computers and want as little to do with them as possible. I can't even get my mother to let me buy her a computer because she says she has enough of the one at her office all day. If I were to hand her a Mandrake CD she'd just about be able to figure out how to put it in the CD-ROM drive, but I'm not so naive to even dream of her actually properly installing it and using it. I can hear it now "what is this root thing and what does it do?", or "what does dev hda mean?". My God, can you begin to imagine her creating cronjobs? Compiling the kernel? Installing a new device driver?
This is the user that contends Linux is hard to use. You will be unable to convince them otherwise, regardless of how easy it is for you. They will not have your appreciation for technological asthetics, nor your curiosity that helped you to enjoying learning Linux when YOU first got started. They want something that does most of the thinking for them, is difficult to screw up, and is easy for them to get support for. Windows is far, far away from being perfect, but at the moment it's closer to the objective than Linux is.
You are quite correct in that the user will usually interact with an interface, not an OS, but after that I'm going to have to disagree with you. Linux being "hard to use" is not a myth if you look outside the technical community. Many novices can't even understand how to partition a disk in Disk Druid, much less comprehend what's going on after the install. With training and curiosity anyone can overcome these deficiencies, but not everyone has the time (or money) for training and even fewer seem to have curiosity these days.
Does Windows have a learning curve? Only for folks who haven't owned a computer before -- ever. Anyone who's owned or worked on a PC in the last ten years is likely to have done so on a Windows-based machine. The interface paradigms are similar between all iterations of Windows. This is the primary strength of Windows, more so that most other factors. People are used to it. Call it familiarity, usability, whatever, but it is a very, very well known quantity. Businesses and home users like that quantity, that's why they've bypassed more technologically sound OS's (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, and to a certain extent MacOS) in favor of a mediocre one like Windows.
And your statements concerning the viability of X are somewhat narrow in perspective. Video card driver support for Linux is pretty much optional for manufacturers these days. Some do, some don't. Sure, open source coders can usually make a driver, but what about support? And don't say "newsgroups are great". Try pitching that to a VP of I.T. and you'll find it doesn't get far. And for ease of use, how do you think our hypothetical non-geek home user would fare hacking their way through the XFree86 config file? Deciphering/etc/rc.d/init.d? Figuring out how to install widget-i686.rpm when it conflicts with glibc-2.24-i386.rpm? At a business you might have a support team, but at home that poor person is on his/her own. RedHat support isn't much help, and "Linux for Dummies" is at once too deep and too shallow for most newbies. Acres upon acres of books, pamphlets and what-have-you exist for Windows. Why? Because Windows desktop users outnumber Linux users more than 10 to 1, that's why. Remove developers from the mix and I bet that figure would climb to 50 to 1.
I love my Linux, and I always have, but reality is reality. Linux is not easy for just anyone to start using. It requires patience, curiosity, intelligence, and technical aptitude to make Linux shine. Those are skills that 80% of the corporate workforce and perhaps 95% of home users don't possess. The users will not come to Linux, Linux is going to have to come to them if Linux wants them. I personally don't think it's worth it at this juncture.
no problem, I see it done every day. and thousands of people do the same every day
Think about your statement for a moment. Thousands of people do it every day. Millions of people boot up Windows every day. Worldwide it's probably more than one hundred million Windows desktop users versus perhaps a few thousand or hundred thousand daily Linux desktop users. If you remove developers from the mix, the ratio only gets more lopsided. Face the facts: Windows has been adopted for the desktop because businesses found it easy to do so. Do you think for one moment that businesses LIKE spending hundreds of millions of dollars on MS licensing fees? THEY DON'T. If Linux were a drop-in replacement that was just as good, just as stable (the GUI, not the OS), had just as many apps, and was as easy to use and manage, corporations would have migrated en masse a few years ago. The problem is Linux performs poorly in the above listed areas. That is not necessarily a bad thing, and is why I gave my post the subject that I did.
Trying to be all things to all people results in being mediocre at everything. Linux does a damn good job where it's strong right now. I would rather it remain a kick-butt server OS than see someone water it down and bloat it up with the stuff it would need to compete with MS on the desktop. Linux should continue to improve, and perhaps branch to address the desktop, but the server OS should remain server centric and not try to be everything.
The whole "until it achieves ease-of-use" is a damned lie. As Joseph Goebbels said, "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" Nice company...
I sincerely hope you do not actually belive what you just stated. Anyone who believes that setting up a Linux box is easier than setting up a Windows box (for the average human being, not a supergeek) obviously hasn't done so in a while. While I don't like Microsoft's products that much, they have gone out of their way to try and make the setup and use of their product as easy as possible for the end user. My gripe is that in doing so they've frequently made life HARDER for folks who DO know what they're doing, or they've larded it down with features that I'll never, ever use. But you cannot deny they've done quite a lot to make their product appealing and easy to use. Mac folks would disagree, of course, but let's not get into that right now.
Linux, on the other hand, has held onto its roots of the command line. For servers, this is just fine, but this simply will not do for the desktop. CLI's are not a good interface for secretaries, bosses, and the average computer user. Never forget that in the average company, I.T. is outnumbered by 10 to 1 or 20 to 1. The vast majority WANT the features that you scoff at, and their buying power is substantial. You and I may not like it that way, but we cannot change this reality.
Think about that for a minute before you answer. Think about where desktop computing is and where it's going before you answer.
Today's desktops are stressing ease of use and wide application arrays more than anything else. Stability is in there somewhere, but MS has gotten pretty darn good with Win2K and XP, especially if you stick to their office suites.
Linux is NOT easy to use. Sure, it may be easy for US to use, but imagine a secretary, an HR guy, or (God forbid) the boss trying to use it on a daily basis. Give them XWindows and they'll be somewhat happy, but even the best XWindows setup pales in comparison the features and eye candy you'll find on Win2k and XP. And before you belittle that, remember who the end user is. You and I may not care for it, but the vast unwashed masses out there DO. They will demand it, and they don't give two damns about how configurable your window manager is. They want a box that's pretty and functional. Linux does not currently fit that mold very well.
What does Linux do well? It's an awesome server. It stays up longer than Ron Jeremy and Peter North combined, and a competent admin can tweak and tune it all over the place for practically anything. Trying to force that into the desktop market is the classical definition of fitting a nice, sleek roung peg into a very square hole.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Linux may one day dominate the desktop, but it will not much resemble the Linux we know today. Do we really want that? I'd love to see Linux succeed and trounce MS, but I don't want it to compromise the core principals that make it so good today.
True, it won't install many server daemons, but it will install a ton of desktopware (XWindows being a primary offender) that is not needed for a server and poses a HUGE security risk in and of itself. Desktopware isn't usually tested to the same level as server stuff, and only a fool would trust it.
No, they need a "Secure Install" option that further asks if you're making a webserver, DNS, FTP, etc. and will set the machine up appropriately with the most stringent security settings. I'd much rather have a list of security to TURN ON in order to enable some function than a list of things to TURN OFF to make my system more secure. In the former case, it may take me a bit to get the functionality I want, but I probably won't compromise the security. The latter means I can get the functionality immediately but the security is never even mentioned.
Microsoft certainly does little to help those of us trying to secure their systems. The knowledgebase is confusing when it comes to system hardening, and MS loves to ship their products with absolutely every feature and doo-dad turned on. It makes setting up a Win2k webserver such a pain in the ass, but over time we've compiled a checklist that makes things much easier. Much like Linux, we made the checklist with the input and experience of many others.
Contrast this with a typical RedHat install. Sure, you can elect to not install a ton of stuff, but the dependencies can and will drive you nuts if you need widget-1.12-i386.rpm, which conflicts with Perl, glibc, and about ten thousand other things you don't want to fool with. Then couple that with the overwhelmingly nonexistent or conflicting/out-of-date documentation that is (isn't?) available for some Linux modules, and you're reduced to playing Sherlock Holmes again. And what do you do when the HOWTO doesn't answer your question? Posting in a newsgroup results in about 50% of the responses being "read the HOWTO you fucking l00ser", 40% being wrong/misinformed/don't-know-either responses, and only 10% being useful and helpful.
What both Windows and Linux need is a "Secure" install option that by default has nearly everything turned OFF, and then a simple way to add/enable functionality as needed. Templates for webservers, DNS, FTP, mail servers, and such would be great, and they should keep pace with patches and updates for the OS and related applications. Why no one has bother to do this is beyond me, but I think this laziness has resulted in 90% of the exploits seen in ALL OS's on the web.
Granted, you can look at the code, but do you? I run both Linux and Windows environments at our dev company, and I must say that the "hardening" list of things you must do to secure Linux and Windows is pretty much near the same length. In some cases, Linus is harder to secure because so many things lack documentation or have not been tested properly (if at all).
While I have many bones to pick with MS, disclosure of bugs is a tentative one. On one hand, if they find a bug, don't tell anyone, fix it, then tell everyone, all in a short period of time, I'll all for it. If nobody (or very few people) knows about the exploit, the chances of me being hit by it are very small. The closed source prevents hackers from climbing all through the code and pre-emptively looking for bugs to exploit. This can be a Good Thing(tm), but it can also be a Bad Thing(tm) if MS finds an exploit, does nothing about it, and then a wily hacker exploits it.
The ability to see the Linux source does me and my dev team little or no good. We are software developers and don't have the time to run through hundreds of thousands of lines of code looking for vulnerabilities. We don't have the time to try and understand poor documentation, conflicting requirements, and other pitfalls that can strike open source. I would go out on a limb and say that the vast majority of LInux users don't climb around in the code. Who has the time?
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Not to be bombastic or anything (or flaming for that matter), but if it's so easy to remove, why are a lot of people asking how to remove it? Is it unclear in the documentation for Ximian? Or is this just a case of people unfamiliar with Ximian/Gnome/Linux/etc.? I haven't used Ximian so I can't speak as to the ease or lack thereof for the installer.
Although I must applaud the "rivalry" between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union during the Space Race (because had their been no race it's doubtful the moon shot would've ever taken place due to costs, risks, etc.), wouldn't it be nice if we could move beyond "We did it first" and the countering "No, WE did it first" type of comments. Imagine something like:
Human Race:
1st satellite
1st human in orbit
1st moon landing
1st Mars probe
etc.
to be followed by:
1st permanent Lunar colony
1st manned mission to Mars
1st permanent Mars colony
1st manned mission to Europa
1st asteroidal mining colony
1st Mercury-based solar powered antimatter generation facility (for antimatter-powered thrusters).
Sadly, even though I'm 29, it's higly doubtful I'll see more than a token manned mission to Mars in my lifetime. My children will see my grandparents's dreams come true, albeit about 80 years too late.
I hope you will understand when I say that although I am Christian, I am not Catholic, and I do have a number of issues with the Catholic Church in general -- most of them having to do with Church policy (edicts) have a great deal of intertwining with political policy. But I shant get into that with you. You have just as much right your beliefs as I do, and I shall not criticize you or the Church because of that.
Your arguments are well thought out, and perhaps our opinions aren't so far apart here. Where we seem to part ways is that you wish to err on the side of conservancy due to the possible "dire consequences". I, on the other had, believe that any system put in place with be both (a) abused and (b) improved over time. No process is static. I firmly believe that while there are possibilities of abuse, the potential good far, far outweighs them, especially since I believe abusers will be villified to the four corners of the earth (not to mention the incredible legal fodder herein). I have more faith that human nature, while quite flawed, generally works out in the end.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. Yes, responsibility ALWAYS must accompany choice. Where abusers get into trouble is when the have too much of the latter and not enough of the former.
Yes, we do all die of something, but arguing that is silly. Following your argument we should all avoid medical treatment altogether. After all, isn't that the "natural" way? Now I hope you see the folly of such an argument. If you broke your arm, would you not want a doctor to set it, care for it, in the hopes that you would regain full use of it? Or would you prefer for it to heal "naturally", and end up with a crooked arm and loss of function? I think I know what your answer would be.
Genetic screening is nothing more than an extension of what we've done before. There is no black and white here, it's a smooth shade of grey. I will state again: no doubt the system will be abused. But that is not a reason to "outlaw" or ban the idea. Following THAT reasoning, we should abandon pianos, because someone might just drop one on me one day. ANYTHING can be abused. You don't outlaw the process, you instead educate, cajole, and influence the abuser until they either (a) stop abusing it or (b) become a niche minority that you simply must accept. No process is perfect. To assume otherwise is stupid.
Using the Tower of Babel to support your argument is not a very good analogy. The builders of the tower wanted to elevate themselves above God. That is not the goal of genetic screening, anymore than innoculating against smallpox is taking away from God. We have had an ability to improve ourselves through genetic selection since the beginning of the race by choosing our mate. Now we have developed that SAME ability to a much more precise point. We've become more efficient, if you will. I fail to see how that profoundly changes the theological question, or that it presents any moral problems whatsoever to those who would use it responsibly. As for those who would NOT, that is between them and God, and they'll be judged for it by far higher and greater powers than you and I.
but that's just it -- what it MIGHT be." No, IS. People are already applying this philosophy to more than eggs.
I'm going to respond by restating my earlier comment: any system can be abused, and any system WILL eventually be abused. That does not make the system a problem, it makes the abuser a problem. Blaming geneticists for the idiocy of the above-mentioned French "mother" would be like blaming Ford because some idiot got drunk and decided to mow down some school children.
People with ridiculously poor decision making skills DO exist, as do people with highly developed decision making skills. You should not penalize the latter because of the former. While I abhor what was mentioned above, she's done it, it's apparently legal where she lives, and I have no say-so in the matter. Neither do you, other than your opinion which you have stated.
I won't get into the abortion angle because that wasn't the point of my post. I was not advocating the aborting of babies with genetic "defects", I was advocating the total opposite: using genetic screening to prevent such defects from ever becoming reality in the first place.
Speaking as a parent who's about to have a baby girl added to our family, I have to ask a very pointed question to those who oppose any sort of genetic "screening". If you have a child, would you not do practically anything on this earth to prevent that child from having to suffer from diabetes, Alzheimer's, or hundreds of other genetically-linked diseases? If you have a child and answer "no", then perhaps you ought to take a good, long look at your child and imagine him/her hooked up to machines, wasting away in a hospital bed. It can happen. It does happen. I hope it never happens to myself, my wife, or any of my children.
We have it within our power now to take a preventative stance towards genetically transmitted diseases. Undoubtedly this system will be abused, as any system can and is abused, but are not the gains worth it? Early last year I lost both grandparents, both of which suffered long bouts of Alzheimer's. It was horrific to watch as the people who I knew and loved forgot who I was, who they were, and regressed to an infantile state. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. If I can prevent my great grandchildren from one day viewing my children in a similar manner, I'm all for it.
Are we playing God? That depends on how radical you want to be about this. I firmly believe that we've been given cognitive abilities that have lead to the discovery of genetics. If God didn't want us tinkering with ourselves, why does he allow us to do so? I'd also love for someone to find some good biblical references that say we shouldn't be doing this.
And, yes, I've seen Gattaca. I know what the consequences of genetic "super babies" might be, but that's just it -- what it MIGHT be. Here's a solution: if you want it, you should be able to have it. If you don't, don't. Your choice. That is what freedom is about, after all? Choice?
After all, it's no longer "Universal", is it? Perhaps it could be called RSB, for "Regional Serial Bus", or perhaps NSB for "National Serial Bus".
Seriously, I can only see one or two reasons why someone would want to implement this region locking:
First, I doubt a domestic company would want to take tech support calls for foreign-made equipment. And, yes, you know some clueless fool will call MS up, waste their time, bitching about why his Far East ContollerPad isn't working. Worse, perhaps they aren't tested to similar standards and could pose a threat to the Xbox. Who knows?
Second, and this is the more insidious one, they might do this because of internal competition, the same reason DVD region locking is used. Regional branches of the same company making the same product may have wildly divergent pricing and release schedules. Since Asia usually gets the cool toys first, the North American division wants to protect its turf by preventing imports of the Asian goods until they can get around to marketing the product domestically. While that makes good business sense, it's typically used to hide a serious case of "head up the ass" when the domestic vendor is slow to put out new products.
I wonder if anyone has ever patented the concept of money. No, really! If totally obvious shit like selling stuff online can be patented, then anything can be. What's next? Patent breathing and eating? You could make a killing!
[sigh] Our wonderful U.S. patent system has once again shown us how horrifically broken it is. While patents serve a useful purpose of allowing inventors to (hopefully) recoup their R&D expenses and actually make some money, now they are being used as legal cudgels to prevent someone else from even doing business.
Anybody got any brave ideas on how we could overhaul the patent system? Doing away with it is NOT a fix, BTW.
Police bomb squads have been using remotely controlled devices outfitted with special "high velocity" shotguns for years. Although I'm no bomb expert (but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night), the concept is that a special high velocity round can basically destroy the mine/explosive before it has a chance to set itself off.
Contrary to what most folks think, modern high explosives aren't particularly easy to set off. You can pinch off a piece of C4, light it with a match, and it will burn peacefully enough to boil some water for coffee. It can only be detonated with a detonator, and the detonator itself is designed so that it can only be triggered as designed, not by dropping it, smashing it, or burning it. Obviously this doesn't hold true for all explosives or all detonators, but the military stuff I was around in the Marines could be handled as if it were no more dangerous than Play-Doh. Mines are even more complex, where you have a trigger that activates a detonator, the detonator activates a booster charge, the booster charge may even activate yet another booster charge (think anti-tank mines), and finally the main charge is detonated. Interrupt any one of these processes and the mine suddenly becomes a doorstop.
My guess is that the velocity figure in the article are off somehow, as the quoted specs are far too slow to do much of anything except set the mine off. A small, extremely high velocity slug put in exactly the right place would disrupt the mine. A slow, heavy blow would seem to be a good recipe for setting it off.
Save myself? HAH! You ever hear of a concept called speculation? I guess not according to your rant. Yes, I know what the article says. Yes, I know it's not encrypted or closed right now. Try and think beyond that teeny tiny brain of yours for a change.
.NET has any huge advantage over Java and vice versa. And we all know how MS treated Java in the past, so we know they have no love for open, cross-platform standard.
.NET to draw folks away from Java. Suppose they succeed somehow and get the world stuck on .NET. Then, lo and behold, rev 2.0 of .NET is now closed, or expensive, or whatever. There must be a motive here somewhere for MS to do something like this.
Here's what I mean: MS is creating something that doesn't seem to have a purpose that benefits them. We all know that MS *never* does anything that doesn't further their business plans and interests. NEVER. So they're promoting it as it is now -- what about later? Where are they going with this?
So, here we have something supposedly open and free, cross platform and all. Does this creep anyone else out besides me? What possible motive would MS have to do this? If they wanted something that's widespread, cross platform, extensible, open, and flexible, they could've chosen Java. I'm not a programmer, but it doesn't appear to me that
Here's a possible idea: what if they're using
I did read the article. My comment on them not developing for other platforms was meant to convey that I doubt they'd PROMOTE it, as it would tend to cannibalize their OS monopoly. Making something and allowing it to be used w/o a ridiculously strict license are two different things.
...where MS is going with this initiative. They seem to be touting portability, but what kind of portability? Certainly not inter-OS portability, that's for sure. No doubt that their Common Language Runtime is so heavily patented, encrypted, folded, spindled and mutilated that it will be quite difficult for someone to make it run on a non-MS platform. I know that quite a few Linux-heads are working on it. Prediction: if they ever get it right, MS will sue them about four microseconds after they post it on Freshmeat.
.NET have similar limitations, I wonder?
That being said, it does seem like MS is trying to wean themselves out of a strictly x86 world, and portable binaries is a good way to do that. What about performance? Java used to be well known for crappy performance because of the abstraction forced on the code. Will
Schroedinger Perl -- All assertions are assumed to be true and false at the same time until such time as someone observes your website, at which time your site is forced into a particular state. Neat, eh?
In related news, the government also said today that liquid water has officially been determined to be wet. Experts predict that other testing will show that grass is green and the sky is blue, but industry pundits are divided on the actual hues involved.
In point of fact, Linux is a better operating system than Windows because it is more reliable and less obtrusive. In other words, it doesn't poke its head above the shell nearly as often as Windows. Both systems do, to one extent or another. For example, Linux's filesystem architecture becomes apparent when you pop a disk out of the floppy drive when /dev/fd0 mounted, and then try to insert and read another. Windows' architecture becomes apparent when you try to move all of those huge MS office binaries from C: to your new, spacious hard drive D: and then try to run Word
If I follow this definition, the DOS must be great as well since it doesn't "poke its head" very often at all. Yes, it's a joke, you can laugh.
I agree with you that to consider RedHat or Windows an "OS" is a generalization, and yes, X isn't Linux. But what I was pointing at is more far reaching that what you speak of. I despise using Gates' terminology, but the entire "experience" of the OS and all likely (or tightly coupled) applications must be taken into account when assessing the usability of a system. Nobody installs an OS and says "hey, neat" and just stares at it. People use them to do things, like word processing, spreadsheets, or CAD.
To compare Windows and Linux (whatever distro) you have to take the above into account -- you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If someone wishes to extole the virtues of StarOffice, they also have to deal with the baggage of X. I personally agree with you that the option to not have a GUI is very likeable (and much more secure), but that is for another discussion. You might be able to use some ncurses program to do your spreadsheet, and vi can do your word processing, but nobody but a dyed in the wool *nix geek would even begin to suggest that those tools are easier to use for the average person than, say, Word or Excel.
Your Logitech example only serves to support my point: Logitech didn't include drivers for your system. Sure, it's Logitech's fault, not X, but I don't care who's fault it is; the point is drivers and/or installers were not available. While it may be easy for you or I to get around these problems, the average person either cannot or will not. And what's worse, they don't have to if they stick to the Windows platform. They will gladly put up with bluescreens and bloatware, they want somethat that is so easy any idiot can do it. How many idiot technophobes do you know of running Linux? When you contact both of them, let me know, as I need their email addresses.
You end up with users that know absolutely nothing about thier systems and can't adjust at all if anything goes wrong
This is where most techies go wrong. I've done it myself, but a little time and experience has shown me why this is such folly.
Would it be nice if every user in every company understood the magical little beige boxes that sit on their desks? Sure. We'd have a helluva easier time if we didn't have to clean Outlook virii, "Elf Bowling" trojans, MS Golf, or cleaning Coke and Maxwell House Columbian Blend out of a keyboard. But that's a very techie-centric view of the world, and it's wrong.
The secretary doesn't, shouldn't need ot know these things in order to do her job. Her skills are clerical, not techical. Same goes for HR, or any other non-technical business field. Knowing how their boxes function is not essential to their job function. If a worker had an option to spend 40 hours improving their primary work knowledge or spending 40 hours boning up on Linux, the average company would benefit far more in the former case. It's the truth. It isn't what you or I want to hear, but it's the truth.
Think outside your own perspective and you'll see the truth of this. Just because something is easy for you does not mean it is so for anyone else in this world. Other people have other priorities, other duties, and other likes/dislikes. I know lots of users who despise their computers and want as little to do with them as possible. I can't even get my mother to let me buy her a computer because she says she has enough of the one at her office all day. If I were to hand her a Mandrake CD she'd just about be able to figure out how to put it in the CD-ROM drive, but I'm not so naive to even dream of her actually properly installing it and using it. I can hear it now "what is this root thing and what does it do?", or "what does dev hda mean?". My God, can you begin to imagine her creating cronjobs? Compiling the kernel? Installing a new device driver?
This is the user that contends Linux is hard to use. You will be unable to convince them otherwise, regardless of how easy it is for you. They will not have your appreciation for technological asthetics, nor your curiosity that helped you to enjoying learning Linux when YOU first got started. They want something that does most of the thinking for them, is difficult to screw up, and is easy for them to get support for. Windows is far, far away from being perfect, but at the moment it's closer to the objective than Linux is.
You are quite correct in that the user will usually interact with an interface, not an OS, but after that I'm going to have to disagree with you. Linux being "hard to use" is not a myth if you look outside the technical community. Many novices can't even understand how to partition a disk in Disk Druid, much less comprehend what's going on after the install. With training and curiosity anyone can overcome these deficiencies, but not everyone has the time (or money) for training and even fewer seem to have curiosity these days.
/etc/rc.d/init.d? Figuring out how to install widget-i686.rpm when it conflicts with glibc-2.24-i386.rpm? At a business you might have a support team, but at home that poor person is on his/her own. RedHat support isn't much help, and "Linux for Dummies" is at once too deep and too shallow for most newbies. Acres upon acres of books, pamphlets and what-have-you exist for Windows. Why? Because Windows desktop users outnumber Linux users more than 10 to 1, that's why. Remove developers from the mix and I bet that figure would climb to 50 to 1.
Does Windows have a learning curve? Only for folks who haven't owned a computer before -- ever. Anyone who's owned or worked on a PC in the last ten years is likely to have done so on a Windows-based machine. The interface paradigms are similar between all iterations of Windows. This is the primary strength of Windows, more so that most other factors. People are used to it. Call it familiarity, usability, whatever, but it is a very, very well known quantity. Businesses and home users like that quantity, that's why they've bypassed more technologically sound OS's (OS/2, Linux, BeOS, and to a certain extent MacOS) in favor of a mediocre one like Windows.
And your statements concerning the viability of X are somewhat narrow in perspective. Video card driver support for Linux is pretty much optional for manufacturers these days. Some do, some don't. Sure, open source coders can usually make a driver, but what about support? And don't say "newsgroups are great". Try pitching that to a VP of I.T. and you'll find it doesn't get far. And for ease of use, how do you think our hypothetical non-geek home user would fare hacking their way through the XFree86 config file? Deciphering
I love my Linux, and I always have, but reality is reality. Linux is not easy for just anyone to start using. It requires patience, curiosity, intelligence, and technical aptitude to make Linux shine. Those are skills that 80% of the corporate workforce and perhaps 95% of home users don't possess. The users will not come to Linux, Linux is going to have to come to them if Linux wants them. I personally don't think it's worth it at this juncture.
no problem, I see it done every day. and thousands of people do the same every day
Think about your statement for a moment. Thousands of people do it every day. Millions of people boot up Windows every day. Worldwide it's probably more than one hundred million Windows desktop users versus perhaps a few thousand or hundred thousand daily Linux desktop users. If you remove developers from the mix, the ratio only gets more lopsided. Face the facts: Windows has been adopted for the desktop because businesses found it easy to do so. Do you think for one moment that businesses LIKE spending hundreds of millions of dollars on MS licensing fees? THEY DON'T. If Linux were a drop-in replacement that was just as good, just as stable (the GUI, not the OS), had just as many apps, and was as easy to use and manage, corporations would have migrated en masse a few years ago. The problem is Linux performs poorly in the above listed areas. That is not necessarily a bad thing, and is why I gave my post the subject that I did.
Trying to be all things to all people results in being mediocre at everything. Linux does a damn good job where it's strong right now. I would rather it remain a kick-butt server OS than see someone water it down and bloat it up with the stuff it would need to compete with MS on the desktop. Linux should continue to improve, and perhaps branch to address the desktop, but the server OS should remain server centric and not try to be everything.
The whole "until it achieves ease-of-use" is a damned lie. As Joseph Goebbels said, "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" Nice company...
I sincerely hope you do not actually belive what you just stated. Anyone who believes that setting up a Linux box is easier than setting up a Windows box (for the average human being, not a supergeek) obviously hasn't done so in a while. While I don't like Microsoft's products that much, they have gone out of their way to try and make the setup and use of their product as easy as possible for the end user. My gripe is that in doing so they've frequently made life HARDER for folks who DO know what they're doing, or they've larded it down with features that I'll never, ever use. But you cannot deny they've done quite a lot to make their product appealing and easy to use. Mac folks would disagree, of course, but let's not get into that right now.
Linux, on the other hand, has held onto its roots of the command line. For servers, this is just fine, but this simply will not do for the desktop. CLI's are not a good interface for secretaries, bosses, and the average computer user. Never forget that in the average company, I.T. is outnumbered by 10 to 1 or 20 to 1. The vast majority WANT the features that you scoff at, and their buying power is substantial. You and I may not like it that way, but we cannot change this reality.
Think about that for a minute before you answer. Think about where desktop computing is and where it's going before you answer.
Today's desktops are stressing ease of use and wide application arrays more than anything else. Stability is in there somewhere, but MS has gotten pretty darn good with Win2K and XP, especially if you stick to their office suites.
Linux is NOT easy to use. Sure, it may be easy for US to use, but imagine a secretary, an HR guy, or (God forbid) the boss trying to use it on a daily basis. Give them XWindows and they'll be somewhat happy, but even the best XWindows setup pales in comparison the features and eye candy you'll find on Win2k and XP. And before you belittle that, remember who the end user is. You and I may not care for it, but the vast unwashed masses out there DO. They will demand it, and they don't give two damns about how configurable your window manager is. They want a box that's pretty and functional. Linux does not currently fit that mold very well.
What does Linux do well? It's an awesome server. It stays up longer than Ron Jeremy and Peter North combined, and a competent admin can tweak and tune it all over the place for practically anything. Trying to force that into the desktop market is the classical definition of fitting a nice, sleek roung peg into a very square hole.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Linux may one day dominate the desktop, but it will not much resemble the Linux we know today. Do we really want that? I'd love to see Linux succeed and trounce MS, but I don't want it to compromise the core principals that make it so good today.
Mandrake is one of the distros I have yet to try. Based upon your comments, I think I will.
Thanks!
True, it won't install many server daemons, but it will install a ton of desktopware (XWindows being a primary offender) that is not needed for a server and poses a HUGE security risk in and of itself. Desktopware isn't usually tested to the same level as server stuff, and only a fool would trust it.
No, they need a "Secure Install" option that further asks if you're making a webserver, DNS, FTP, etc. and will set the machine up appropriately with the most stringent security settings. I'd much rather have a list of security to TURN ON in order to enable some function than a list of things to TURN OFF to make my system more secure. In the former case, it may take me a bit to get the functionality I want, but I probably won't compromise the security. The latter means I can get the functionality immediately but the security is never even mentioned.
In some cases, Linus is harder to secure because so many things lack documentation
Y'know, I just noticed this typo. I wonder how Torvald's feels about my comment now?
Microsoft certainly does little to help those of us trying to secure their systems. The knowledgebase is confusing when it comes to system hardening, and MS loves to ship their products with absolutely every feature and doo-dad turned on. It makes setting up a Win2k webserver such a pain in the ass, but over time we've compiled a checklist that makes things much easier. Much like Linux, we made the checklist with the input and experience of many others.
Contrast this with a typical RedHat install. Sure, you can elect to not install a ton of stuff, but the dependencies can and will drive you nuts if you need widget-1.12-i386.rpm, which conflicts with Perl, glibc, and about ten thousand other things you don't want to fool with. Then couple that with the overwhelmingly nonexistent or conflicting/out-of-date documentation that is (isn't?) available for some Linux modules, and you're reduced to playing Sherlock Holmes again. And what do you do when the HOWTO doesn't answer your question? Posting in a newsgroup results in about 50% of the responses being "read the HOWTO you fucking l00ser", 40% being wrong/misinformed/don't-know-either responses, and only 10% being useful and helpful.
What both Windows and Linux need is a "Secure" install option that by default has nearly everything turned OFF, and then a simple way to add/enable functionality as needed. Templates for webservers, DNS, FTP, mail servers, and such would be great, and they should keep pace with patches and updates for the OS and related applications. Why no one has bother to do this is beyond me, but I think this laziness has resulted in 90% of the exploits seen in ALL OS's on the web.
Granted, you can look at the code, but do you? I run both Linux and Windows environments at our dev company, and I must say that the "hardening" list of things you must do to secure Linux and Windows is pretty much near the same length. In some cases, Linus is harder to secure because so many things lack documentation or have not been tested properly (if at all).
While I have many bones to pick with MS, disclosure of bugs is a tentative one. On one hand, if they find a bug, don't tell anyone, fix it, then tell everyone, all in a short period of time, I'll all for it. If nobody (or very few people) knows about the exploit, the chances of me being hit by it are very small. The closed source prevents hackers from climbing all through the code and pre-emptively looking for bugs to exploit. This can be a Good Thing(tm), but it can also be a Bad Thing(tm) if MS finds an exploit, does nothing about it, and then a wily hacker exploits it.
The ability to see the Linux source does me and my dev team little or no good. We are software developers and don't have the time to run through hundreds of thousands of lines of code looking for vulnerabilities. We don't have the time to try and understand poor documentation, conflicting requirements, and other pitfalls that can strike open source. I would go out on a limb and say that the vast majority of LInux users don't climb around in the code. Who has the time?