Those programs would never have gained the broad-based community support that they enjoy now because without the ethical standards of the FSF and the GPL.
Face it, law and ethics are important. Slashdot and the community the frequents it would be nothing without these ideals. Ever visited a Microsoft forum? Not a happy place, filled with lots and lots of people posting problems and only paid Microsoft employees posting answers. There is no, or very little, community spirit.
The software and it's creation is not the most important thing. The community is most important, and this was what Stallman sought to reproduce when he quit his MIT job. And what best creates that community is a strong system of ethics, a culture if you will. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar again -- you'll see ESR defining the hacker community. Read his recent work -- you'll see ESR defending the community standards and reaching out to newbies, not teaching courses on how to best copy existing closed-source work.
In short, you missed the point. The AC was asking you to give a damn, and all you can do is bicker about an insignificant fact.
No, it just takes an idiot administrative staff/person to bring down the whole company.
Look, this virus executes automatically if you haven't applied the security patches to all the desktops in your company. An administrator worth his salt stops the virus at the door, long before the blasted things ever reach a user.
My company's email is first taken off the wire by postfix on Linux, because we trust it's security. Next it's relayed to a special anti-virus smtp server, which scans all the email, blocks any attachment types that we've disallowed, and then relays the email (finally) to our exchange server.
The anti-virus relay updates it's dat files every hour, every day of the week. On top of that, all the desktops in the company have virus scanners installed. When they log in, my python script will take care of updating their dat files from an internal mirror -- and if it's unsuccessful, they're told to contact the helpdesk, and then they're promptly booted out of Windows.
Since I've been at the company, there has not been one exploit of our security. Nor has there been one virus infection. Sometimes we have been lucky, but it's mostly preparation.
Don't blame the users. For god's sake, they think the *monitor* is their computer. Blame the staff, and hire some Linux administrators.
How is this difference from the pseudo-psychology that parents have been practicing for years?
Parents have been told that putting Mozart close to this stomachs during pregnancy will help them rear a child more attuned to music. I'll be that's all this new technology will be used for -- call me a skeptic.
- Mike Johnson
"Who can't find a link to start a new thread."
I wish they would, that would take monetary necessity out of the equation.
That's the exact idea, I thank you for pointing it out. Look, I have no trouble with people giving of themselves to benefit science, or to save another's life. That should be commended. It's this selling of body parts that I don't like.
Is it ethical to sell one's blood?
No, it's not. The same way it would be unethical to demand money for a kidney from a dying man. Do we do it anyhow? Of course.
I'm confused are you fearful of the selling of human cells, or are you fearful of the research done on human cells?
I sure don't want to see the selling of human cells, as you call it. But I'm not fearful of the research itself.
Basically, in any new field, those that have gone first have had the greatest freedoms from the law, ethical boundaries, and public scrutiny. It wasn't the research into trains that should have been condemned. It was the use of millions of Chinese to build them that should have been condemned. Likewise, it wasn't the research into nucular power to be condemned, it was the building of rocket sites all over the world, capable of destroying the world several times over, to be condemned. The discovery of oil and coal was fine, but did we need to level entire mountains to get at it?
Good things may come of this, but bad things will also. That's why I'm fearful.
"I find it somewhat ironic that so much research goes on with materials that have the potential to kill large amounts of human life...but research with the potential to create human life is so strongly opposed."
People are worried what this will bring us in the future.
Neatly tucked away in a separate article was a discussion on the ethics of cloning humans, particularly cloning humans for research purposes. I found this paragraph disturbing. Here, they try to explain the rectitude of seeking "human eggs for scientific research". Their response was disturbing:
"First, a substantial market in human eggs for reproductive purposes already exists. Young women are being paid substantial sums to provide eggs that can help single women or couples have children. If women can undergo risks for this purpose, we asked, why should they not be allowed to undertake the same risks to further medical research that could save human lives? And if they can be paid for the time and discomfort that egg donation for reproductive purposes involves, why can't they receive reasonable payment for ovulation induction for research purposes?"
In just the paragraph before, they were rebutting a "slippery slope" argument. Meaning, we'll do one thing, become desensitized to it, and then we'll move on again. Before you know it, we'll be cloning humans for all sorts of unethical reasons, the argument goes.
In that paragraph, the clearly are following that slope -- who said that selling eggs is ethical? These women are mostly poor, and some of them go through quite a bit of pain so some rich couple can buy their egg. Is this ethical? Furthermore, is it a basis for a rational?
-The best models I have seen have different groups responsible for the design, the coding, and the hardware.-
I definitely agree with you, but his boss and the other department heads are going to be worried about another power play. So he's going to be perpetually under staffed.
If this guy wants to get the job done under these circumstances and still have time to occasionally sleep, he's going to have to work on streamlining everything. My suggestion: start small. Get together the smartest people that you can get your hands on. Make them design something *simple*, something that will grow into a full-fledged site later on.
Most importantly with such a large site, it should take no longer than five minutes to add a new page. Period. Insist on it.
By emphasizing planning early on, you'll be able to make the changes you know they're going to request down the road. You won't get the resources you need right away (or maybe ever), so focus on being a *really* nice guy, and make some friends. Have a good time, but be forceful when you need to be.
> You missed the point. Colin Baker was saying that while this is supposedly a stable series 2.4.x, it's been anything but stable.
eh? It's been plenty stable for me. I've taken to accepting Red Hat's installation of 2.4.9 on the servers. It works fine for me... And the uptime keeps counting.:-)
> 1. Kernel 2.4.0 was released much too early.
Heh. It might have been. I remember several bugs with the early ones. But, as Linus said, it doesn't help much to have the same people testing the same kernels over and over again. Things were fixed quickly after the release to the public.
> 2. There aren't enough eyeballs testing kernels, as there supposedly should be with OSS.
Hm... This kernel was released yesterday. Today we have two (?) fixes for it, and articles on the subject from both/. and LT.
Slashdot Mirror
sure, alpha centari... :-)
No... I think the most outspoken, most annoying trolls use windows. Just an empirical observation. :-)
What makes you so sure Windows is so prevalent? And if you're right, then where did all the Linux and BSD users run off to?
No doubt. First off, it runs on Windows -- making it totally useless to me and most of the slashdot crowd, but... *where's the source*?
Anybody who would install such a thing is asking for trouble.
No, really.
What does that mean? Will I be able to play that on my linux box (d4d)?
I'm not buying the thing if they're including draconian DRM in it.
Uh... I fear you're just trolling.
My laptop's native resolution is 1600x1280, and X is plenty happy at that.
Those programs would never have gained the broad-based community support that they enjoy now because without the ethical standards of the FSF and the GPL.
Face it, law and ethics are important. Slashdot and the community the frequents it would be nothing without these ideals. Ever visited a Microsoft forum? Not a happy place, filled with lots and lots of people posting problems and only paid Microsoft employees posting answers. There is no, or very little, community spirit.
The software and it's creation is not the most important thing. The community is most important, and this was what Stallman sought to reproduce when he quit his MIT job. And what best creates that community is a strong system of ethics, a culture if you will. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar again -- you'll see ESR defining the hacker community. Read his recent work -- you'll see ESR defending the community standards and reaching out to newbies, not teaching courses on how to best copy existing closed-source work.
In short, you missed the point. The AC was asking you to give a damn, and all you can do is bicker about an insignificant fact.
- Mike Johnson
No, it just takes an idiot administrative staff/person to bring down the whole company.
Look, this virus executes automatically if you haven't applied the security patches to all the desktops in your company. An administrator worth his salt stops the virus at the door, long before the blasted things ever reach a user.
My company's email is first taken off the wire by postfix on Linux, because we trust it's security. Next it's relayed to a special anti-virus smtp server, which scans all the email, blocks any attachment types that we've disallowed, and then relays the email (finally) to our exchange server.
The anti-virus relay updates it's dat files every hour, every day of the week. On top of that, all the desktops in the company have virus scanners installed. When they log in, my python script will take care of updating their dat files from an internal mirror -- and if it's unsuccessful, they're told to contact the helpdesk, and then they're promptly booted out of Windows.
Since I've been at the company, there has not been one exploit of our security. Nor has there been one virus infection. Sometimes we have been lucky, but it's mostly preparation.
Don't blame the users. For god's sake, they think the *monitor* is their computer. Blame the staff, and hire some Linux administrators.
How is this difference from the pseudo-psychology that parents have been practicing for years?
Parents have been told that putting Mozart close to this stomachs during pregnancy will help them rear a child more attuned to music. I'll be that's all this new technology will be used for -- call me a skeptic.
- Mike Johnson
"Who can't find a link to start a new thread."
I wish they would, that would take monetary necessity out of the equation.
That's the exact idea, I thank you for pointing it out. Look, I have no trouble with people giving of themselves to benefit science, or to save another's life. That should be commended. It's this selling of body parts that I don't like.
Is it ethical to sell one's blood?
No, it's not. The same way it would be unethical to demand money for a kidney from a dying man. Do we do it anyhow? Of course.
I'm confused are you fearful of the selling of human cells, or are you fearful of the research done on human cells?
I sure don't want to see the selling of human cells, as you call it. But I'm not fearful of the research itself.
Basically, in any new field, those that have gone first have had the greatest freedoms from the law, ethical boundaries, and public scrutiny. It wasn't the research into trains that should have been condemned. It was the use of millions of Chinese to build them that should have been condemned. Likewise, it wasn't the research into nucular power to be condemned, it was the building of rocket sites all over the world, capable of destroying the world several times over, to be condemned. The discovery of oil and coal was fine, but did we need to level entire mountains to get at it?
Good things may come of this, but bad things will also. That's why I'm fearful.
"I find it somewhat ironic that so much research goes on with materials that have the potential to kill large amounts of human life...but research with the potential to create human life is so strongly opposed."
People are worried what this will bring us in the future.
Neatly tucked away in a separate article was a discussion on the ethics of cloning humans, particularly cloning humans for research purposes. I found this paragraph disturbing. Here, they try to explain the rectitude of seeking "human eggs for scientific research". Their response was disturbing:
"First, a substantial market in human eggs for reproductive purposes already exists. Young women are being paid substantial sums to provide eggs that can help single women or couples have children. If women can undergo risks for this purpose, we asked, why should they not be allowed to undertake the same risks to further medical research that could save human lives? And if they can be paid for the time and discomfort that egg donation for reproductive purposes involves, why can't they receive reasonable payment for ovulation induction for research purposes?"
In just the paragraph before, they were rebutting a "slippery slope" argument. Meaning, we'll do one thing, become desensitized to it, and then we'll move on again. Before you know it, we'll be cloning humans for all sorts of unethical reasons, the argument goes.
In that paragraph, the clearly are following that slope -- who said that selling eggs is ethical? These women are mostly poor, and some of them go through quite a bit of pain so some rich couple can buy their egg. Is this ethical? Furthermore, is it a basis for a rational?
I fear were this will all lead us.
-The best models I have seen have different groups responsible for the design, the coding, and the hardware.-
I definitely agree with you, but his boss and the other department heads are going to be worried about another power play. So he's going to be perpetually under staffed.
If this guy wants to get the job done under these circumstances and still have time to occasionally sleep, he's going to have to work on streamlining everything. My suggestion: start small. Get together the smartest people that you can get your hands on. Make them design something *simple*, something that will grow into a full-fledged site later on.
Most importantly with such a large site, it should take no longer than five minutes to add a new page. Period. Insist on it.
By emphasizing planning early on, you'll be able to make the changes you know they're going to request down the road. You won't get the resources you need right away (or maybe ever), so focus on being a *really* nice guy, and make some friends. Have a good time, but be forceful when you need to be.
> You missed the point. Colin Baker was saying that while this is supposedly a stable series 2.4.x, it's been anything but stable.
:-)
/. and LT.
eh? It's been plenty stable for me. I've taken to accepting Red Hat's installation of 2.4.9 on the servers. It works fine for me... And the uptime keeps counting.
> 1. Kernel 2.4.0 was released much too early.
Heh. It might have been. I remember several bugs with the early ones. But, as Linus said, it doesn't help much to have the same people testing the same kernels over and over again. Things were fixed quickly after the release to the public.
> 2. There aren't enough eyeballs testing kernels, as there supposedly should be with OSS.
Hm... This kernel was released yesterday. Today we have two (?) fixes for it, and articles on the subject from both
Seems as if lots of eyeballs spotted this one.