Even if there is such a thing as a "hacktivist," these kids are not it. Activism is about standing up and making your voice heard and organizing to demand change or raise awareness of something, in a peaceful fashion. "Anonymous" is not organized, isn't really demanding anything so much as lashing out as things that make them angry, and is certainly not peaceful. Imagine if all this effort were put into a website, or marches, or something constructive. The discussion would be a lot different than what can easily (and rightly) be dismissed as a bunch of privileged kids being internet vandals.
It's not a question of who is qualified. It's a question of who is entitled. It's their system and they are the PHB. There isn't a metaphysical judge of who should have what, merely practical; the admin arguing that the PHB shouldn't have access "just in case," and the PHB ignoring that and receiving it anyway.
My firm is a pretty small shop, with everything running off ClearOS. It's a really fantastic server/middleware package with a great configuration, plus domain services, etc. Honestly, it can do everything you need, and you even have options (can use local clients, etc, or the well-configured horde/kerberos install). It's running CentOS so if you want to branch into more advanced stuff, then it's all there and relative simple (as simple as anything is with SELinux). They also offer a $1000 box with certified hardware in a blade profile which seems nice, but since we have an actual server I have no actual experience with it. As for the software, however, I recommend it highly.
As for what machines for your clients, it really depends on what they need. If you're small-scale, then thin clients aren't going to save you any money. My advice is to talk to your users/their managers and figure out how they work. Do they do work from home? Are they on-site at all? Do they have a lot of working meetings? In those cases, laptops would make sense. If not, desktops would be cheaper.
The submitter is talking about takedown provisions as "egregious." Considering the alternative to a takedown notice is just opening up with a lawsuit, I'm not sure what about it is so evilly anti-consumer.
In response to the multitude of comments referring to 3D as a gimmick, maybe you should take a step back and realize that pretty much everything about a video game is a "gimmick." Nothing about a video game serves a useful purpose. 3D presentation? gimmick, 2D worked fine. HD graphics? Gimmick, plenty of game showed that SD could give us pretty games.
Everything about video games is a gimmick. I think what you're aiming for is "I'm not interested in this." That's fine, but not a basis for a value judgment.
I knew nothing about this company until you mentioned it, and holy crap their stuff looks cool. Pushing 5 games out of a small dev in one year makes me leery of the quality of the end product, however...
Hopefully the wine project and Valve are working together on this and that linux version of steam pops up soon. I installed DAO via steam in linux the other day and there was an intermediate step about configuring wine (in the windows version of steam) that gives me some hope.
I use openSuSE, as do most of the people I know. It doesn't have the warm fuzzies that people seem to get off Fedora and it doesn't have the nerd chic/new hotness feeling that Ubuntu has (which many, many others have had before, I might add), but it is a very well-maintained and established distro with probably the best configuration/installation (yast is very nice) of the lot, and has benefited from closeness to both the GNOME and KDE projects.
Not actually true. Many states have crimes for wiretapping or even just recording. These are extremely useful laws, especially as a curb on overly enthusiastic law enforcement.
I like how slashdot commenters love to use "won't somebody think of the children?!" as a device for sarcastic mockery of various Internet policies. Then this happens, and we get a thread full of...
I don't know where this myth came from (probably people trying to make moral rather than legal or logical arguments about piracy). There are federal criminal laws regarding copyright and trademark infringement. Many, many states have their own versions.
Most of the problems you raise are pretty trivially solved by remembering that it's the government talking about this. AT&T tries to keep your identity to impersonate you? The government can lock AT&T out of the system, or fine the crap out of them, or whatever sanction they want. This actually reminds me somewhat of the records provisions of HIPAA, which are actually pretty good about making sure records are used properly and are given to the people who are supposed to have them (too bad they're all a bunch of incoherent sheafs of paper).
'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.'
If only someone would create an online service which allowed you to buy music! What kind of twisted mockery of a universe do we live in that has kept this from happening?
Why must the universe mock us so?! WHY?!
(For reference, it is raining behind me, and I am wet. The two are not related.)
Yesterday I needed to boot into windows (the D&DI Character Generator doesn't work in wine, as far as I can tell), and I was greeted after boot with a lovely screen telling me that the system was broken and in need of repair. So my two options were restore from backup or repair. I had no backup, so I went to repair, and under "select drive," there was no system install. Windows had apparently uninstalled itself.
First, he absolutely hijacked it. It doesn't matter that he was the only admin and nobody else "needed" (even allowing this rather hefty value judgment) access. It was their system. He built it for them. They got rid of him, and he decided that he wasn't going to let them have a thing that was theirs by right. If this was a corporation, he'd be sued six ways to sunday. Since it's the government, they're talking about jail.
Your point about exiting angrily and recommendations is completely irrelevant. Exiting gracefully -- handing over access -- would have 100% avoided the situation he is now in. How anyone thinks he is the good guy in this situation is beyond me, but I guess it's just nerd bias.
"They will return Tuesday to start their deliberations. Childs faces five years in prison if he is convicted for disrupting service to the city's computer system by withholding administrative passwords — a verdict that, if rendered, puts all IT admins in danger."
This is true, this puts all IT admins who exit their job angrily, hijack the system and lock everyone else out in danger.
I mean, who hasn't been there, right? I mean, one could just leave the job gracefully but something something something freedom.
"ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court... is likely to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases around the country."
No, it's likely (100% likely, in fact!) to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases in New Jersey. For the rest of the country, it sets nothing, even if it might be useful for other courts dealing with similar problems.
Unless, of course, poster is just being ridiculous optimistic and think that the logic of this ruling is so impressive that all other judges will simply bow in awe and follow it. To which the only response is: d'awwwwww.
Why should devs adopt DX11? Because the last iteration of DX lasted about a year and a half before being ditched and extended/redone? Because the majority of the market doesn't have DX11 cards? Because there's no clear advantage in developing to DX11 rather than DX9c?
Why should developers shift from something they know to something that they don't know as well unless there was significant profit motive to do so? There simply isn't in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if there is such a thing as a "hacktivist," these kids are not it. Activism is about standing up and making your voice heard and organizing to demand change or raise awareness of something, in a peaceful fashion. "Anonymous" is not organized, isn't really demanding anything so much as lashing out as things that make them angry, and is certainly not peaceful. Imagine if all this effort were put into a website, or marches, or something constructive. The discussion would be a lot different than what can easily (and rightly) be dismissed as a bunch of privileged kids being internet vandals.
It's not a question of who is qualified. It's a question of who is entitled. It's their system and they are the PHB. There isn't a metaphysical judge of who should have what, merely practical; the admin arguing that the PHB shouldn't have access "just in case," and the PHB ignoring that and receiving it anyway.
My firm is a pretty small shop, with everything running off ClearOS. It's a really fantastic server/middleware package with a great configuration, plus domain services, etc. Honestly, it can do everything you need, and you even have options (can use local clients, etc, or the well-configured horde/kerberos install). It's running CentOS so if you want to branch into more advanced stuff, then it's all there and relative simple (as simple as anything is with SELinux). They also offer a $1000 box with certified hardware in a blade profile which seems nice, but since we have an actual server I have no actual experience with it. As for the software, however, I recommend it highly.
As for what machines for your clients, it really depends on what they need. If you're small-scale, then thin clients aren't going to save you any money. My advice is to talk to your users/their managers and figure out how they work. Do they do work from home? Are they on-site at all? Do they have a lot of working meetings? In those cases, laptops would make sense. If not, desktops would be cheaper.
Another /. article that is tangentially related to religion, another pissing match between two non-falsifiable premises.
The submitter is talking about takedown provisions as "egregious." Considering the alternative to a takedown notice is just opening up with a lawsuit, I'm not sure what about it is so evilly anti-consumer.
In response to the multitude of comments referring to 3D as a gimmick, maybe you should take a step back and realize that pretty much everything about a video game is a "gimmick." Nothing about a video game serves a useful purpose. 3D presentation? gimmick, 2D worked fine. HD graphics? Gimmick, plenty of game showed that SD could give us pretty games.
Everything about video games is a gimmick. I think what you're aiming for is "I'm not interested in this." That's fine, but not a basis for a value judgment.
I knew nothing about this company until you mentioned it, and holy crap their stuff looks cool. Pushing 5 games out of a small dev in one year makes me leery of the quality of the end product, however ...
More research is in order.
Hopefully the wine project and Valve are working together on this and that linux version of steam pops up soon. I installed DAO via steam in linux the other day and there was an intermediate step about configuring wine (in the windows version of steam) that gives me some hope.
You, sir, have done more to help linux gain respect and use than any of those haters have. Bravo!
The software management module is just a frontend to zypper, which works pretty much identically to apt.
http://susestudio.com/
Build your own image with USB as your target. The process is simple and streamlined (and they have videos).
I use openSuSE, as do most of the people I know. It doesn't have the warm fuzzies that people seem to get off Fedora and it doesn't have the nerd chic/new hotness feeling that Ubuntu has (which many, many others have had before, I might add), but it is a very well-maintained and established distro with probably the best configuration/installation (yast is very nice) of the lot, and has benefited from closeness to both the GNOME and KDE projects.
It's a nice distro.
Not actually true. Many states have crimes for wiretapping or even just recording. These are extremely useful laws, especially as a curb on overly enthusiastic law enforcement.
"In a rare outburst of subjectivity . . . ."
ahahaha what?
I like how slashdot commenters love to use "won't somebody think of the children?!" as a device for sarcastic mockery of various Internet policies. Then this happens, and we get a thread full of ...
"But ... won't somebody think of the children?!"
I don't know where this myth came from (probably people trying to make moral rather than legal or logical arguments about piracy). There are federal criminal laws regarding copyright and trademark infringement. Many, many states have their own versions.
"anyone can put a public key on their homepage and sign everything they write."
You have an interesting definition of "anyone."
Most of the problems you raise are pretty trivially solved by remembering that it's the government talking about this. AT&T tries to keep your identity to impersonate you? The government can lock AT&T out of the system, or fine the crap out of them, or whatever sanction they want. This actually reminds me somewhat of the records provisions of HIPAA, which are actually pretty good about making sure records are used properly and are given to the people who are supposed to have them (too bad they're all a bunch of incoherent sheafs of paper).
Of course, these burdens have other names, like "costs of doing business properly" and "helping to contain liability."
'Most people who illegally download movies, music and TV shows would pay for them if there was a cheap and legal service as convenient as file-sharing tools like BitTorrent.'
If only someone would create an online service which allowed you to buy music! What kind of twisted mockery of a universe do we live in that has kept this from happening?
Why must the universe mock us so?! WHY?!
(For reference, it is raining behind me, and I am wet. The two are not related.)
Yesterday I needed to boot into windows (the D&DI Character Generator doesn't work in wine, as far as I can tell), and I was greeted after boot with a lovely screen telling me that the system was broken and in need of repair. So my two options were restore from backup or repair. I had no backup, so I went to repair, and under "select drive," there was no system install. Windows had apparently uninstalled itself.
I'm still trying to sort out what happened.
First, he absolutely hijacked it. It doesn't matter that he was the only admin and nobody else "needed" (even allowing this rather hefty value judgment) access. It was their system. He built it for them. They got rid of him, and he decided that he wasn't going to let them have a thing that was theirs by right. If this was a corporation, he'd be sued six ways to sunday. Since it's the government, they're talking about jail.
Your point about exiting angrily and recommendations is completely irrelevant. Exiting gracefully -- handing over access -- would have 100% avoided the situation he is now in. How anyone thinks he is the good guy in this situation is beyond me, but I guess it's just nerd bias.
"They will return Tuesday to start their deliberations. Childs faces five years in prison if he is convicted for disrupting service to the city's computer system by withholding administrative passwords — a verdict that, if rendered, puts all IT admins in danger."
This is true, this puts all IT admins who exit their job angrily, hijack the system and lock everyone else out in danger.
I mean, who hasn't been there, right? I mean, one could just leave the job gracefully but something something something freedom.
"ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court ... is likely to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases around the country."
No, it's likely (100% likely, in fact!) to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases in New Jersey. For the rest of the country, it sets nothing, even if it might be useful for other courts dealing with similar problems.
Unless, of course, poster is just being ridiculous optimistic and think that the logic of this ruling is so impressive that all other judges will simply bow in awe and follow it. To which the only response is: d'awwwwww.
Why should devs adopt DX11? Because the last iteration of DX lasted about a year and a half before being ditched and extended/redone? Because the majority of the market doesn't have DX11 cards? Because there's no clear advantage in developing to DX11 rather than DX9c?
Why should developers shift from something they know to something that they don't know as well unless there was significant profit motive to do so? There simply isn't in this case.