I am having trouble understanding your point of view. If there are issues with Illinois elections, then do the research, write up an article on it, and work to get it published (as Kennedy did). For my part, I (and I imagine others as well) will evaluate your claims. If your claims are as well supported and documented as Kennedy's are, then I will be every bit as moved and outraged as I am over the 2004 Ohio elections, and will work with you to fix the system.
Or is your point simply: everyone does it, so there is no reason to prosecute this instance of it ?
2 wrongs do not make a right. The "everyone does/did it" argument held no water with me during the Monica Lewinksi scandal. "Everyone thought it" also in no way excuses Bush from fault in starting a war in Iraq under the false pretense of WMDs. "Everyone cheats" is similarly uncompelling with regard to elections. Even if every single election in this country was conducted fraudulently by every single party who has ever run for office, each incident should be treated as a dire threat to the foundation of the United States. To do anything else is moral relativism of the highest order.
If you've ever actually been involved in business at a management level, you'll know that a business simply can't just "switch" anything as significant as a network infrastructure and have the cost be zero.
When I took over the IT management of a troubled shop with 600 users in 4 locations, I immediately put the brakes on a disastrous network upgrade that was planned and budgeted for but that would not provide any improvement in network performance or reliability. I was able to plan an upgrade that would provide switched network connectivity to the desktop (a rather big thing in 1997), and that had a core that was 10 times the capacity. Had the previous "upgrade" moved forward, the company would have spend $700,000. My plan cost $400,000. The price of change in this case was $-300,000, all because the company put the right people in the right place at the right time. It was the appropriate application of expertise.
I have been involved not only in management, but in exactly that sort of upgrade, and know that not only is it possible for the cost to be zero, but for a properly planned and executed project to actually save the company money. Don't settle for less in your business.
Linux admins make about the same as Windows admins. You would need fewer of them, because Linux systems just don't need as much maintenance (rebooting, reinstalling after a virus) as Windows systems.
At no point in your response did you directly speak to the issue of cost. You talked exclusively about expertise.
I'll take the liberty of inserting your reply below:
"But expertise costs money!"
When you hired your current IT expertise, did you buy carbon, water, phosphorus, etc. and construct them from scratch? Or did you have an expectation that they would be an assembled organism and that they (I know this is a wild idea) might actually bring some knowledge and experience with them to the job interview? Do you have expectations for them that they might need to continually brush up on that knowledge and be prepared to deploy new types of systems? Vista != XP != Windows 2000 != Windows 2003 server. Do you have the slightest expectation that they will, as a matter of personal professional development, be prepared to learn new things? Has it occurred to you that you can hire people with the same level of expertise and experience with Linux?
Point - you are already paying for expertise. The question is whether or not that expertise is appropriate to the needs of your organization. The ubiquity of Windows knowledge can blind you to the reality that someone had to learn it from scratch at some point in the past. When you work with IT, and when you hire IT people, that expectation is built in from the start. Are you suggesting that Linux requires expertise and Windows does not? If not, then the option of not investing in expertise is not on the table. Therefore, the question of the cost of Windows expertise vs. Linux expertise is a zero sum game.
First, switching the entire infrastructure from Windows to Linux can be very expensive, especially if there is no prior experience with Linux.
That statement makes no objective sense. If the operating system is free, and the support and documentation are free, then experience with Linux can be derived at no cost.
Third, you really call the ubuntu forums "professional support"?
I've found that the support available from the Ubuntu and Gentoo forums consistently exceeds that from commercial organizations both in terms of quality and timeliness.
Direct support from the developers, guaranteed by contract, *that* is professional support.
You can call Microsoft and talk directly to developers?
If your machines suddenly stop working, you would start a thread in the ubuntu forums and hope for an answer in the next days?
When one of your Windows boxes stops working, is your first action to call Microsoft and ask for their advice as to what to do about it? If an engineer were to do that with a production system during business hours, what would you think of their problem solving abilities and level of expertise? Why would you have a different expectation of the role of technical support with other types of systems?
That convenience of one platform means less management expense. So far, companies are going with lower costs over susceptibility.
Alternatives to Windows are free. As in beer. As in licensing costs: $0. License management costs: $0. Time spent calling to re-license the operating system because you installed a sound card: $0. License audit exposure: $0. As in infinity% cheaper than Windows. As in incremental cost per unit = 0. The cost of alternative supporting application and utility software is $0. Alternative database application software is $0. Alternative firewall softare is $0. Alternative antivirus software (if and as applicable) is $0. Word processing software - $0. Systems/network management tools - wait for it - $0. Documentation,comprehensive howto resources, and technical support - all $0.
Turning away from solutions such as Linux because of cost is like being on fire and turning away from a bucket of water because the water might be too hot. Arguing against alternatives to Windows on the basis of cost is the very height of idiocy and is ultimately disingenuous. The real issue when considering alternatives is the fear of change and organizational inertia. How much of either can your company afford?
We regret to inform you that your services as network administrator will no longer be required. The job of any IT professional confers a tremendous amount of trust that important business or personal data will not be disclosed to third parties for any reason, including sociopathic self aggrandizing glee. Recent highly publicized events have caused us to question your ability to operate within that
relationship of trust with any business. We must reluctantly conclude that you certainly cannot do so in our organization.
Please gather your personal items and report for an exit interview in HR at 9:00 AM.
Set up a pr0n user on your laptop, then encrypt the entire user directory. Not a perfect solution - you still have swap and tmp to worry about, but it's better than trying to keep your history clean.
Oh, and if you surf for porn using the company's connection, you're a moron.
What? You aren't running Linux? You can't encrypt files without the admin having the master decryption key? Sucks to be you.
A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
So let me make sure I understand - Pluto cuts inside the orbit of Neptune and has therefore not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, but Neptune, despite not having cleared Pluto out of its orbit, is still a planet? These criteria strike me as intended simply to eliminate Pluto. They aren't universally applied. There are numerous earth-crossing asteroids. Does that mean that Earth has not cleared its neighborhood?
Let's face facts. Our sun has 4 real, indisputable planets. Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars simply aren't in the same category of object as Jupiter. When you get right down to it, everything else is just dirt. Earth has more in common with Europa than it does with Jupiter. I think the real conflict here is the attempt to continue to think of the Earth as a "planet" while ruling out objects like Pluto. The word "planet" carries a romantic importance that we feel like we must apply to the Earth. I think there are 3 main categories of sun orbiting objects in the solar system:
Planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune
Planetoids - round, orbiting the sun, and within 10 or so degrees of the solar system's accretion plane. Earth, Mars, Venus, etc.
Dirt - asteroids, pluto, etc.
We could even call Jupiter, et. al. superplanets or something. But as long as we're talking objective science here, Mars and Saturn just aren't in the same set.
I think the point is that WGA doesn't even do what it is supposed to do. As has been mentioned, the problem of false positives is well documented outside of this story. WGA wastes my time and my computer's time in a quixotic quest to eliminate "piracy", further demonstrating that when you install a Microsoft operating system on a computer, that computer belongs to *them* and not you.
Colbert's schtick is to demonstrate the stupidity of right wing, nationalistic, religious statists by acting like one. Has it ever occurred to you that he may well have been smart enough to predict that Wikipedia would respond in this way and that this "point" might be part of his schtick?
Who? Where? I've used Linux professionally for close to 10 years, and I don't know anyone who is an entrenched Red Hat user. I know a hell of a lot of former Red Hat users (myself included). I know a lot of people who are forced to use Red Hat because of application requirements (Oracle, etc.), but I don't see a center of gravity in the tech community. Every time Red Hat gets brought up on Slashdot, you see a couple of hundred posts restating continued simmering resentment over the Red Hat/Fedora split. If anything, the Red Hat user base is at best a captive audience - at worst one which is actively looking for something else.
On that point, as soon as Ubuntu server became available, my organization jumped on it. It is a server piece leveraging Debian's absoutely awesome flexibility, but with the commercial backing of a well respected technical organization. We have found it to be, like most things derived from or having to do with Debian, excellent. If we continue to have good success with it, we will start making noise with software vendors to support it. I imagine that we will not be alone.
Wow. Just after announcing yet another Vista delay, he gets the hell out. That gives me confidence in Microsoft and where they are going. Yeah - he's going to work on his charities. Just like Bush's staff 1.0 is spending more time with their families.
Gates is and has always been a rat. Could this mean the ship is officially sinking?
TFA:
"Microsoft releases them more frequently and fixes things more quickly," said Moskowitz.
Sort of like that png lib vulnerability that the Linuxes fixed within days and that Microsoft took 9 months to fix? Yeah. Call me when you get some credibility. Until then, please be courteous of those who live in reality. Bullshit detectors aren't cheap, and when they overload, it makes a hell of a mess.
Obviously you can't remove it by throwing Micorsoft's top engineers at it either..
A very important point that deserves serious emphasis. A common astroturf response to discussion of Windows security/stability problems is "If you know what you're doing, it isn't a problem." I think this story very clearly proves that it is not possible to know what you're doing with Windows. It's a crapshoot at best and every admin who has the misfortune of dealing with Windows knows it. If Microsoft's top engineers can't fix it, then the operating system itself is clearly a problem.
Unless you're a private individual, EULAs will be just fine. The message of the court seems to be that regardless of the letter of the law, computer-related legislation may only work to the benefit of large companies.
Who tagged this article with the password? I find the thought of someone using the password in the tagging system to look for this and related articles to be absurdly hilarious.
Broken hands can take years to heal, and hurt like hell (just ask Fernando Vargas).
Martial arts insight here - Do not attack the human skull with a balled up fist. And whatever you do, don't ever attack a human skull with a fist with the intention of hitting anywhere near where the teeth are. Seriously. Look at the hand of a skeleton. Then look at a mandible. Then bite your knuckle and see how little force is required to make your hand hurt. It's a very bad idea. And this is coming from a Karate guy - it doesn't get much punch happier than we are.
Did you ever have a kid in class when you were in elementary school who always complained that everyone was stealing his pencils? I bet that if you'd looked in his desk, you'd find stacks and stacks of stolen pencils.
Perhaps the reason the State Department is concerned about sabotaged computers from overseas is because they are doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am having trouble understanding your point of view. If there are issues with Illinois elections, then do the research, write up an article on it, and work to get it published (as Kennedy did). For my part, I (and I imagine others as well) will evaluate your claims. If your claims are as well supported and documented as Kennedy's are, then I will be every bit as moved and outraged as I am over the 2004 Ohio elections, and will work with you to fix the system.
Or is your point simply: everyone does it, so there is no reason to prosecute this instance of it ?
2 wrongs do not make a right. The "everyone does/did it" argument held no water with me during the Monica Lewinksi scandal. "Everyone thought it" also in no way excuses Bush from fault in starting a war in Iraq under the false pretense of WMDs. "Everyone cheats" is similarly uncompelling with regard to elections. Even if every single election in this country was conducted fraudulently by every single party who has ever run for office, each incident should be treated as a dire threat to the foundation of the United States. To do anything else is moral relativism of the highest order.
If you've ever actually been involved in business at a management level, you'll know that a business simply can't just "switch" anything as significant as a network infrastructure and have the cost be zero.
When I took over the IT management of a troubled shop with 600 users in 4 locations, I immediately put the brakes on a disastrous network upgrade that was planned and budgeted for but that would not provide any improvement in network performance or reliability. I was able to plan an upgrade that would provide switched network connectivity to the desktop (a rather big thing in 1997), and that had a core that was 10 times the capacity. Had the previous "upgrade" moved forward, the company would have spend $700,000. My plan cost $400,000. The price of change in this case was $-300,000, all because the company put the right people in the right place at the right time. It was the appropriate application of expertise.
I have been involved not only in management, but in exactly that sort of upgrade, and know that not only is it possible for the cost to be zero, but for a properly planned and executed project to actually save the company money. Don't settle for less in your business.
Linux admins make about the same as Windows admins. You would need fewer of them, because Linux systems just don't need as much maintenance (rebooting, reinstalling after a virus) as Windows systems.
At no point in your response did you directly speak to the issue of cost. You talked exclusively about expertise. I'll take the liberty of inserting your reply below:
"But expertise costs money!"
When you hired your current IT expertise, did you buy carbon, water, phosphorus, etc. and construct them from scratch? Or did you have an expectation that they would be an assembled organism and that they (I know this is a wild idea) might actually bring some knowledge and experience with them to the job interview? Do you have expectations for them that they might need to continually brush up on that knowledge and be prepared to deploy new types of systems? Vista != XP != Windows 2000 != Windows 2003 server. Do you have the slightest expectation that they will, as a matter of personal professional development, be prepared to learn new things? Has it occurred to you that you can hire people with the same level of expertise and experience with Linux?
Point - you are already paying for expertise. The question is whether or not that expertise is appropriate to the needs of your organization. The ubiquity of Windows knowledge can blind you to the reality that someone had to learn it from scratch at some point in the past. When you work with IT, and when you hire IT people, that expectation is built in from the start. Are you suggesting that Linux requires expertise and Windows does not? If not, then the option of not investing in expertise is not on the table. Therefore, the question of the cost of Windows expertise vs. Linux expertise is a zero sum game.
I've found that the support available from the Ubuntu and Gentoo forums consistently exceeds that from commercial organizations both in terms of quality and timeliness.
You can call Microsoft and talk directly to developers?
When one of your Windows boxes stops working, is your first action to call Microsoft and ask for their advice as to what to do about it? If an engineer were to do that with a production system during business hours, what would you think of their problem solving abilities and level of expertise? Why would you have a different expectation of the role of technical support with other types of systems?
That convenience of one platform means less management expense. So far, companies are going with lower costs over susceptibility.
Alternatives to Windows are free. As in beer. As in licensing costs: $0. License management costs: $0. Time spent calling to re-license the operating system because you installed a sound card: $0. License audit exposure: $0. As in infinity% cheaper than Windows. As in incremental cost per unit = 0. The cost of alternative supporting application and utility software is $0. Alternative database application software is $0. Alternative firewall softare is $0. Alternative antivirus software (if and as applicable) is $0. Word processing software - $0. Systems/network management tools - wait for it - $0. Documentation,comprehensive howto resources, and technical support - all $0.
Turning away from solutions such as Linux because of cost is like being on fire and turning away from a bucket of water because the water might be too hot. Arguing against alternatives to Windows on the basis of cost is the very height of idiocy and is ultimately disingenuous. The real issue when considering alternatives is the fear of change and organizational inertia. How much of either can your company afford?
Dear Jason Fortuny,
We regret to inform you that your services as network administrator will no longer be required. The job of any IT professional confers a tremendous amount of trust that important business or personal data will not be disclosed to third parties for any reason, including sociopathic self aggrandizing glee. Recent highly publicized events have caused us to question your ability to operate within that relationship of trust with any business. We must reluctantly conclude that you certainly cannot do so in our organization.
Please gather your personal items and report for an exit interview in HR at 9:00 AM.
Sincerely,
Bernard Shifman
Set up a pr0n user on your laptop, then encrypt the entire user directory. Not a perfect solution - you still have swap and tmp to worry about, but it's better than trying to keep your history clean.
Oh, and if you surf for porn using the company's connection, you're a moron.
What? You aren't running Linux? You can't encrypt files without the admin having the master decryption key? Sucks to be you.
What does the slashdot community think of this development in the ongoing cat-and-mouse game going on between big media and what is available online?
Click... Save As...
So let me make sure I understand - Pluto cuts inside the orbit of Neptune and has therefore not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, but Neptune, despite not having cleared Pluto out of its orbit, is still a planet? These criteria strike me as intended simply to eliminate Pluto. They aren't universally applied. There are numerous earth-crossing asteroids. Does that mean that Earth has not cleared its neighborhood?
Let's face facts. Our sun has 4 real, indisputable planets. Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars simply aren't in the same category of object as Jupiter. When you get right down to it, everything else is just dirt. Earth has more in common with Europa than it does with Jupiter. I think the real conflict here is the attempt to continue to think of the Earth as a "planet" while ruling out objects like Pluto. The word "planet" carries a romantic importance that we feel like we must apply to the Earth. I think there are 3 main categories of sun orbiting objects in the solar system:
We could even call Jupiter, et. al. superplanets or something. But as long as we're talking objective science here, Mars and Saturn just aren't in the same set.
Dammit, you beat me to it. Well done.
I think the point is that WGA doesn't even do what it is supposed to do. As has been mentioned, the problem of false positives is well documented outside of this story. WGA wastes my time and my computer's time in a quixotic quest to eliminate "piracy", further demonstrating that when you install a Microsoft operating system on a computer, that computer belongs to *them* and not you.
Like when IE innovated tabbed browsing and pop-up blockers, and then Firefox finally implemented the technology?
Oh, wait...
I think Colbert proved his point quite nicely.
Then the joke may be on you.
Colbert's schtick is to demonstrate the stupidity of right wing, nationalistic, religious statists by acting like one. Has it ever occurred to you that he may well have been smart enough to predict that Wikipedia would respond in this way and that this "point" might be part of his schtick?
2) RedHat has an entrenched userbase.
Who? Where? I've used Linux professionally for close to 10 years, and I don't know anyone who is an entrenched Red Hat user. I know a hell of a lot of former Red Hat users (myself included). I know a lot of people who are forced to use Red Hat because of application requirements (Oracle, etc.), but I don't see a center of gravity in the tech community. Every time Red Hat gets brought up on Slashdot, you see a couple of hundred posts restating continued simmering resentment over the Red Hat/Fedora split. If anything, the Red Hat user base is at best a captive audience - at worst one which is actively looking for something else.
On that point, as soon as Ubuntu server became available, my organization jumped on it. It is a server piece leveraging Debian's absoutely awesome flexibility, but with the commercial backing of a well respected technical organization. We have found it to be, like most things derived from or having to do with Debian, excellent. If we continue to have good success with it, we will start making noise with software vendors to support it. I imagine that we will not be alone.
Because students have proven to be troublesome in the past.
This may be the single best long term decision Microsoft has ever made. At least until Ballamer murders Ozzie with a chair.
Wow. Just after announcing yet another Vista delay, he gets the hell out. That gives me confidence in Microsoft and where they are going. Yeah - he's going to work on his charities. Just like Bush's staff 1.0 is spending more time with their families. Gates is and has always been a rat. Could this mean the ship is officially sinking?
TFA:
"Microsoft releases them more frequently and fixes things more quickly," said Moskowitz.
Sort of like that png lib vulnerability that the Linuxes fixed within days and that Microsoft took 9 months to fix? Yeah. Call me when you get some credibility. Until then, please be courteous of those who live in reality. Bullshit detectors aren't cheap, and when they overload, it makes a hell of a mess.
Obviously you can't remove it by throwing Micorsoft's top engineers at it either..
A very important point that deserves serious emphasis. A common astroturf response to discussion of Windows security/stability problems is "If you know what you're doing, it isn't a problem." I think this story very clearly proves that it is not possible to know what you're doing with Windows. It's a crapshoot at best and every admin who has the misfortune of dealing with Windows knows it. If Microsoft's top engineers can't fix it, then the operating system itself is clearly a problem.
Unless you're a private individual, EULAs will be just fine. The message of the court seems to be that regardless of the letter of the law, computer-related legislation may only work to the benefit of large companies.
[+] mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw, haha, virus, pwned (tagging beta)
Who tagged this article with the password? I find the thought of someone using the password in the tagging system to look for this and related articles to be absurdly hilarious.
Broken hands can take years to heal, and hurt like hell (just ask Fernando Vargas).
Martial arts insight here - Do not attack the human skull with a balled up fist. And whatever you do, don't ever attack a human skull with a fist with the intention of hitting anywhere near where the teeth are. Seriously. Look at the hand of a skeleton. Then look at a mandible. Then bite your knuckle and see how little force is required to make your hand hurt. It's a very bad idea. And this is coming from a Karate guy - it doesn't get much punch happier than we are.
That is so ironic it's almost surreal.
That's like making an operating system that causes a computer not to operate.
Oh, wait...
Did you ever have a kid in class when you were in elementary school who always complained that everyone was stealing his pencils? I bet that if you'd looked in his desk, you'd find stacks and stacks of stolen pencils.
Perhaps the reason the State Department is concerned about sabotaged computers from overseas is because they are doing it.