Since USA is just a dominate force in the UN, would this really affect us? Yes... it may decrease our freedom of press!
I don't think it would, at least not as the world stands now.
I liken this to the International Criminal Court. (I believe that is the name, but am not sure; whatever it is called, it is basically international law's version of the US Supreme Court.) Basically, the US refuses to recognize it because it is our legal belief that the US Supreme Court is the "highest law in the land," and we don't believe any other court elsewhere has the authority to compel or overrule decisions made by or reserved to the USSC.
Now, what can the UN do if we defy an International Court order? They pass the greivance on to the UN's enforcement arm: The UN Security Council. The UNSC can then impose sanctions on the US... which the US would veto dead before the possibility escaped their lips. The matter is dead. They can complain and issue statements and pass resololutions in the UN General Assembly decrying us but once they're thwarted in their enforcement arm, all they can do is talk.
All in all, I'm more worried about the trampling of my rights from within the US than I am from outside. Getting Bush out of the White House will be an excellent step toward repair and repealing the Patriot Act will be perhaps the greatest victory for individual rights since the country came into being.
As to the matter at hand, there needs to be a very minimal amount of control over the Internet. Mostly, I think, people should be protected from libel and other false, harmful claims (in the form of the ability of the wronged to sue: we don't need a government body of censorship). Child porn should be stopped, but I don't think we need a new branch of governence to deal with it. I can't think of a lot more in terms of regulation that I would accept. Do I care if that regulation comes from within the US or outside? Not a whole lot. I think matters should be handled in the country they originate from, subject to that country's laws, for purposes of fairness. Other than that, and subject to the "minimal enforcement" restriction (which I am aware I have not well defined)? Eh, whatever.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is regardless of whether or not consumers want to give up physical CDs, how long will they last?
Once online music purchases make enough money for the labels to truly realize it's a good thing, with minimal risk to them, they are likely to drastically cut down their production of physical CDs and eventually, I would surmise, end it altogether. Whether ending it is in favor of another physical medium or a digital one will be seen.
On the plus side, once labels realize they can minimize the risk of new artists by releasing music digitally (either exclusively or disproportionately), we will likely see many more new artists and many more new sounds being taken for a test drive.
more prone to read for exact compliance with the letter language of earlier rulings, without questioning larger issues, keeping a careful, limited view.
Judges are given a wide latitude in determining justice, but the above is really what they're supposed to do. Particularly if any decision on the matter has come from a higher court (US Supreme Court or an Appeals Court under whose jurisdiction the lower court falls), they are essentially bound to that precedence.
Now, they can decide that the matters are somehow different--which is what most do--or they can decide that the matter is more important to be decided one way or another than to follow a previous court's decision. The latter will often be overturned on appeal. (It is said, however, that the Supreme Court reviews its decisions every seven years or so.)
Is that the right way to do things? Maybe, maybe not. On the one hand the best thing, in terms of justice, is to evaluate every case individually on their merits and make the determination in a vacuum. However I'm not sure how feasible it is to have different legal decisions floating around in different jurisdictions. Lose your case? Just move to the next town over!
It's not ideal, but it might be the best we can do.
does it take for a spammer to mail the FBI direct before they take action? Surely they must be aware of the volume of scam emails we *all* get, and be taking action anyway?
Proof, probably. I believe I just read a few days ago that they caught (one of?) the people responsible for those Nigerian money scams, so it's not like they don't ever persue things first. But it's tricky on the Internet to track people down reliably. Somebody accused of bringing down computers in a shipping port was just accquited, saying that somebody had installed a trojan on his computer that did the job and which subsequently deleted itself. It's hard to prove otherwise.
Excuse me, but you have misquoted the Amendment. The FULL quote is: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Please practice what you preach. Read the whoe sentence.
However, such an argument fails precisely because a gun couldn't have stopped two airplanes from flying into the WTC.
Oh, I don't know. You sit me on one of those flights with a gun and they are not going to hijack that plane. At least they are not going to order it slammed into a building after they do.
"But you couldn't get on the plane with a gun!!!!" True, but your scenario doesn't make a lot of sense either way. NOT possessing guns wouldn't have prevented 9/11 either. (And may I ask, how did a debate on the Patriot Act turn into one about gun control?)
That's what the Patriot Act is all about, getting these systems to finally work properly so that we can stop another 9/11.
No. As you admitted yourself, we had the intelligence, we simply did not communicate it properly and did not fit all the pieces of the puzzle together properly. The Patriot Act is about increasing the government's ability to spy on us. Once they've decided we're not a threat worth watching, as they evidently did for the 9/11 hijackers, the PA has no effect.
And this one is just ridiculous: I think that many people are finally latching onto the concept that freedom to live safely is more important than freedom to be a criminal.
Do you know that Martin Luther King, JR. was spied on by the FBI? And we all know what a terrible terrorist he was, with all his sit-ins and peaceful protest! The movement to repeal the law isn't about protecting criminals, it is about protecting people who are doing nothing wrong from unjustified surveillance. The entire purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from the government, not from terrorists and regardless of how many more people a single individual nutcase can now kill in one fell swoop. History has proven that government, like most people and organizations, will abuse any power they are given (DMCA, anybody?). The solution is not to give it to them or to ensure what authority they have is locked down so tight it is as hard as possible to abuse.
Apparently these dead white men understood what freedom meant better than people today. If I have to die because a law like the Patriot Act is repealed, I would consider myself lucky to die for freedom. Thank god people like Franklin and Jefferson, true American patriots, were there at the founding of this country and not cowards like yourself.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ahhh, preach it Mr. Dead White Man.
No, it's just the kind of subtle manipulation this administration has perfected. [. ..] then comes up with a moronic bit of doublespeak.
I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but let's be fair: Every press secretary comes up with moronic double-speak that anybody paying attention should pick up on. Most every politician does so. Like it or not, that has simply become a part of our political process.
At IBM's request, Novell employed this right and demanded that SCO waive IBM's purported violations. When SCO did not do so, Novell exercised its right to waive the violations on SCO's behalf.
-- could IBM then turn around and sue SCO for harrasment, recover any loss of stock price and payment for wasted man-hours they could possibly attribute to the situation, and tack on huge punitive damages for good measure?
My understanding is that Novell waived any violations (whether they existed or not). That means SCO is taking IBM to court, wasting their time, money and resources to battle the suit, and have absolutely no further right to enforce the license under which they bring suit?
Sounds like we have a legal issue here. Any lawyers or legal-minded folks out there who can tell me if I'm right or wrong here (based completely on the assumption that the quote is accurate, of course)?
These are just my personal guesses of course, but here's what I think.
First: When you say pencil and paper the word "pencil" pops out at me. Pencil can be erased and changed. Somebody stated elsewhere that changing that to "pen" would make it too hard to let people change mistakes. That may be true. There might be problems with what is crossed out, especially in the case where somebody thought they were wrong, crossed something out and then realized it was right anyway. If we give them another ballot, it might be a problem to keep track of who has had how many. Even if they had to surrender their first ballot before receiving another, it leaves the possibility open of the election officials submitting those multiple ballots (or for that matter, submitting the one with the vote they like and note the other). And then there is the cost of duplication: How many extra ballots do we assume we'll need beyond the number of people registered to vote in this precinct for mistakes, and how much will that cost the nation every two years (for Congressional elections)?
Relying on the voter to police the election official (eg, "ensure that your mistaken ballot is shredded in front of you before you vote on your new ballot") is a dangerous policy because it assumes people know to enforce that and that they will actually do it even if they do know. I suspect many, perhaps most, would not, even with full knowledge.
But I think the real reason we in the US like the idea of electronic voting systems is because not only should they be fairly easy to use (you can even present a confirmation screen to them so if they did make a mistake, they don't submit that mistaken vote) and almost fool-proof but more importantly, it is quick. Election results could be in and tallied the minute the polls closed in a precinct and the final results could be known the minute the last poll closed. That would be a great thing.
Of course the problem with electronic voting machines is security from tampering, corruption, eaves-dropping, vote altering, the transparency of the counting process, and any number of other things that a lot of very smart people here have already mentioned. I'm not sure a person could ever create a system that even the most anal person would say is secure and ready for use, but if that day ever comes, electronic voting would be great. Fast, easy, simple and cheaper, in the long run, than printing up paper or punch-card ballots.
Microsoft needs Linux to push it if they want to improve. But really they don't. Linux does push it to be better, but I am sure the MS execs are all cussing linux out under their breath. It makes them look bad to have a better product out there: they can't simply get away with releasing a truly crappy product and then charging you $99 for a bugfix. Errr, upgrade.
Well, okay, they still do that but that catch far more flack for it now than they would otherwise.
Releasing the world's best and most stable product is not a good commercial angle because, as others have stated, you will sell a ton of software and then not another copy. Much better to screw things up, leave things out, and put new versions out from time to time. Poor Bill.
I agree with your sentiment that "rich people should NOT be able to buy preferential security treatment," but I don't necessarily agree that this is a program for the "rich." $30-50 plus "a few dollars" a month isn't necessarily a huge burden even for the average American. Oh, sure, it will probably eliminate the lowest economic section of American society, but how many of those people would be doing things like boarding a plane anyway?
The bigger problem is ANYBODY being able to bypass security for ANY amount of money. These issues have been discussed well enough for my taste in previous posts so I will not repeat them.
A national ID card might not necessarily be a bad thing, but NOT for the purpose of assuming somebody is not a criminal/terrorist and will not become one.
George Bush, Jr. has been accused (repeatedly) of doing exactly that to win the Presidency. Granted, if true it was done via legal means, not technological, and I'm not prepared to make a case either way.
I don't consider the series of lawsuits that ultimately ended Gore's hopes of a recount subverting the presidency. I hate Bush, don't get me wrong, and will cheerily vote for a trained chimp in the next election, but acting within the legal process is not subversion.
That said, a very real case can be made that votes were tampered with in Florida. Even though the US Supreme Court ordered recounts halted, they proceeded unofficially. The result? Bush won--with a smaller margin. And then they found uncounted ballots locked in an election overseer's cabinet, which closed the margin further.
I'm personally more concerned with the indifferent attitude of the various companies involved, and the (apparently) poor quality of their products.
As my original reply stated quite clearly, I believe the systems to be insecure and provided that if that was the concern that was a matter entirely different. For that matter I consider the paper ballots to be pretty insecure as well, but I am not about to accuse companies who are going to be profiting from software such as this (if it is ever largely adopted) of making systems that intentionally can be subverted. All it takes is one person checking the code for the state to see a glaring hole and terminate the contract, file civil suit or even criminal charges--even if civil/criminal action would be hard to prove. There are other "benefits" of such action than winning the suit, such as smearing the company's name around in the press, drawing attention to the issues, forcing them to spend money on a legal defense, etc. On the other hand, honest implementation of a secure electronic voting system stands to make the company boatloads of money. The risks are not worth it.
Regardless of whether you feel that Americans are apathetic towards voting, the fact is that it is an important process, too important to be left in the hands of incompetents.
I will assume that is a generic "you" since I made no statements to the contrary.
Heck, I live near Chicago, which has a long history of vote-tampering. Supposedly it's gotten better. Or maybe just better hidden. How can you tell?
I live near Chicago as well. It certainly does have a history of vote tampering, as does New York. And yet that is also a part of my point. Election tampering in its various forms has always existed, may still exist--may always exist. To call a potentially new form the "most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes" is ridiculous and deserved exactly the ridiculous response it received. I seem to remember a few thousand people dying when planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I don't even consider that (terrorism) the most serious threat to America in my lifetime.
I was wrong to say "Assuming people" when what I meant was "assuming Diebold," but my point otherwise stands. It is both counter-intuitive for the company and unsupported. The article could not even prove conclusively that the patch process occurred or that it in any way affected the results, much less that it was a deliberate attempt to subvert the election process.
Your comment was nearer the truth: The danger is incompetency, not subversion. These systems are not ready for use and may never be; I doubt they could come up with any system that would make everybody stand up and say, "yeah, that looks good." I have never stated otherwise. Saying it is the nation's greatest threat while our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are dying in a foreign country, whether the war is justified or not, is plain stupid.
The parent may be a conspiracy theorist but you are a complacency theorist.
Please don't make up terms. If you want to call me complacent, that is your prerogative. "Complacency theorist" isn't even sensible and certainly not the way you use it.
This electronic voting is the most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes.This electronic voting is the most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes.They either want to subvert the voting process themselves, or want to create a system that is easy to subvert at a vastly lower cost than current systems.
I have just one question: Was there a shooter on the grassy knoll???
You conspiracy theorists make me sick. If you feel the system is insecure (and it is), that is one thing. Assuming people are deliberately trying to compromise the voting process is quite another. I'd laugh my ass off if these companies popped you with a libel lawsuit.
AI will likely not ever be considered alive, no matter how life-like. Generally speaking, the biological definition of life--which a court would most likely use to render its decisions--is that the being must match the following conditions at least once in its lifetime:
1. Growth
2. Metabolism - The uptake of food, conversion of food into energy and disposal of waste products
3. Motion - Moving itself or having internal motion
4. Reproduction - the ability to create more or less exact copies of itself
5. Stimulus response - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment and to act on certain conditions
Even with fairly generous expansions of the standard definitions of the above (for instance, does a computer worm reproduce?) I doubt situations could be found to fit all of them.
If you don't like it, pack it up and move on. Bitching and moaning about a service others, myself included, find incredibly valuable does no good. Do you think the slashdot folks are running around to change all of their icons and edit all of their articles because you're displeased? Give me a break.
As for point 3, prosecutors, judges, and (I believe) juries are immune from being sued for doing their jobs in good faith, so unless you can prove that the 'government' knowingly prosecuted him wrongfully there's no lawsuit opportunity either.
Wrongful imprisonment is something that can be sued for. It has happened dozens of times in the state of Illinois alone (which is why former Gov. Ryan issued a moratorium on the death penalty). Whether the suit would be against the attorney or the state or who is irrelevant. The money will come from somewhere. And if the government is smart, they will offer a sizeable sum of money as a settlement and avoid the issue being taken to a jury that will award millions for spilling coffee on yourself.
Does it make up for 16 months in prison? No. But what is done is done: All that can be done now is to issue the apology (done) and offer fair compensation.
A bright chap makes in invention in - let's say - Egypt and publishes it. Sells it. A clever greedy American visiting Egypt therefore will get a patent for it from USPTO - only in US; see parent. Greedy American reaps royalties but is up for more.
I don't know if that was an "intended consequence," but it is certainly a valid one. That is assuming, however, that patents are not governed by international law the way most copyrights are (Berne Convention). I do not know if they are or not.
However...
Contacts State Department and complains that Egyptian still makes money in utter disrespect of US patent. Egyptian cannot apply for patent, because greedy American holds it. State Department cite Egyptian Embassador and complains with him about Egyptian contravening greedy American's patent.
This seems entirely too far-fetched. The average Joe who secures a patent is not going to, or going to be able to, run off to the State Department and get them hopping. Maybe massive companies could do so, however most massive companies nowadays have ties outside of the US (or their respective country, whatever that may be) that they need to be wary of. Particularly, international companies would need to be wary as they may very well fall under other law.
Government of Egypt will blow the whistle on Egyptian to stop manufacturing his invention or pay licence fee to greedy American. For fear of reprisals.
Again, maybe, but I doubt it. Governments need to operate under the force of law. Even if the US could, and did, pressure the Egyptian government into coming down on the actual inventor, they need an established authority to enforce an American patent in Egypt, a patent that post-dates the one the Egyptian secured. If that be international law, then see my first point about the validity of the entire scenario. If there is some local law that permits the government to undermine a patent that same government has issued, the problem seems to be with the government of Egypt and a smoke-and-mirror patent system and not necessarily with how the US system affects anybody or anything.
(And yes, I know "Egypt" was only an example and I use it only in keeping with the given scenario; I don't mean to imply that Egypt has any such policies or problems.)
Wow, so the open source community released a patch that wasn't well tested, that caused problems, and probably cost some people a bit of money.
How many times has slashdot bitched and moaned about a certain unnamed corporation doing something similar.
In my mind, there is a vast distinction. The BIND folks, in this case, were responding to what essentially was near an emergency situation where suddenly the services underlying the Internet were unlawfully changed from their specifications. They released their patch, and yes, it was obviously wrong and it will obviously cost people money, but time wasn't a luxery they had. They released it quickly and made their mistake because every minute they let it go unreleased cost money. Even if that money was just diverting the netadmin's attention for a half hour to ensure all their systems blocked the wildcard.
On the other hand, Microsoft is a commercial entity. They are paid to release "quality" software--that is, at least, the expectation. You may debate the reality yourself. They release products like Windows, with literally hundreds of bugs. I'm not talking about mistakes, like BIND did, I'm talking about bugs they know about. They don't do it to save you, the poor, poor user from extra time of Windows-less anarchy, they do it because they want their money now, because continued debugging costs them money and because they understand you don't have much of a choice. It is a Windows world, as sad as that makes some of us. And yeah, they'll try to patch it later and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don't. The point is they release things they know suck to preserve their bottom line.
Am I the only one who sees the distinction between screwing consumers knowingly and accidentally?
All this time I hadn't realized that the Boston Tea Party was really about freedom from religious persecution.
Actually the reality is that the Boston Tea Party and the concept of "taxation without representation" was little more than propaganda people could latch on to and increase the support for a movement toward independence.
Anyway, although I quoted your message to make that point, I actually had more to say about other things.
1. Is "under God" an unfair establishment of religion?
The basic argument that it is is that when schools--a government entity, if they receive federal funding--make the activity mandatory it is equivilent to establishment. Not mandatory in the sense that "you must recite it!" which most schools avoid vehemently for legal reasons exactly such as these, but that it is a part of the school day. The argument goes that although a student can technically feel free to not recite the pledge, that they may be the subject of ridicule and pressure, perhaps even unfair treatment, from their peers if they do not.
I think we can all agree there is some truth to this argument. Certainly not going with the crowd in school leads to a lot of crap from the other school children and I see no reason it should be any different here. In fact, it may be worse in many cases since religion is such a touchy subject and is essentially built upon the idea that the religion is right and others are, in some way, wrong, and then attaching concepts such as heaven and hell to it. In other words, some--perhaps many--religions believe that if you do not believe as they do, and worship as they do, you are going to burn in hell. I have been told so. I see no reason it wouldn't happen in schools. And lately, with a president twisting "patriotism" into meaning "conformity," and the still open wounds of 9/11, I imagine it would be much worse.
2. The argument that it is not establishment.
Basically the argument that it is not establishment is that... it is not establishment. That students are not forced to recite the pledge by the school and that it is not, therefore, an unfair preference by the government for one religion or group of religions over another. The fact that students are not forced to recite the pledge is true and I doubt it is in dispute; what is disputed is the interpretation of what that means.
First of all, I am an athiest. I do not believe in any god. I don't want this to turn into a religous debate, so I will got bother going into why or debating whether I am right or wrong. But in light of that I want to make a few points:
1. The most important point is one I think is misunderstanding. I don't believe most religious people truly understand that as strongly as they believe in their religion and their god, athiests believe there is no god. As easily as many (most?) religious people would be offending by my offhandedly dismissing their religion, or insulting or threatening them for not believing as I do, so too am I, and I believe most athiests, offended by the constant offhanded dismissal of our beliefs (or lack thereof).
2. I do believe that forcing the pledge to be recited, as it stands now, is a violation of the Establishment Clause. In legal terms, I would have to support the movement that it not be required in schools, no matter what degree of requirement the school itself actually places on it.
3. However, all of that said, I still do not believe that the pledge should be changed. I do not believe it should be stricken from the classrooms; in fact, I think it should be put in more. If the law must be invalidated as unconstitutional, I would support a Constitutional ammendment that protected the pledge and "In God We Trust" on our currency. For that matter, I would also support an ammendment making flag burning illegal.
Part of the reason is patriotism. I love the United States and I like the idea of people being asked to recite
Revoking their license over such a trivial breach would be grossly disproportionate.
<p>Legally speaking, if a contract is violated it can be null-and-void. It may very well be disproportionate--isn't this whole thing rather ridiculous?--but it would be within their legal rights.
<p>I personally don't care for the driver's license analogy. The way government has to deal with citizens is always far different from how citizens have to deal with one another. Federal employees are near impossible to fire, for instance, even for incompetence; the same isn't true in the private sector.
The only reason I can think of that 5% of the worlds population needs 50% of the worlds wealth is greed.
Or how about... capitalism? Sure seems to have worked out for us only 5% folks, don't you think? How many non-capitalist economies can stand on their own two feet? And how can you criticize the ideas of capitalism when it is obviously the best economic system out there?
And who says we expect to be treated as the majority? We believe--rightly so--that the American government's first responsibility should be to us, the American citizens. Guess what? India's first responsibility should be to the Indian people, and Nigeria's first responsibility should be to the Nigerian people, and Syria's responsibility should be to the Syrian people, and so on and so forth. If we can lend a hand, great, but not by sacrificing our citizens.
But hey, buddy, if you want to give up your job because a third-world country pays their employees a barely-livable fraction of what they would receive for the same work here, go ahead. Just don't call that America's flaw. Me, I'll keep my job. But I suppose that is just the greed in me.
Look, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but your critique of the article is horrendous and so biased it is worthless.
Ok, yes you do have to stay patched. But this is like blaming people with flawed cars for not going to the car dealer each week to check for recalls. Microsoft's abundance of patches indicates poor design and methodology, period.
Microsoft's abundance of patches does indicate poor design. However, if you or your company choose to use--or must use--a Microsoft product, then you accept that risk and it falls upon you to manage it. You should know it is there and you should do what you can to prevent it. Staring at my inbox, I see plenty of reports on linux packages that if I don't patch them, they may end up getting me rooted. If I ignore the warnings, or do not read them, and somebody uses a hole in them to gain unauthorized access to my system, whose fault is that really? I can tell you I'm not going to be blaming the coders for my unwillingess to keep patched. The only time I would do so is as with the latest MS patch, where their patch fixes the problem in one area but leaves an identical problem open elsewhere.
Ok, so rather than design the apps safely out of the box, we need to handcuff the users and do the dirty work ourselves. I guess all those Outlook viruses were our fault.
It seems to me that the author was essentially suggesting not to run Windows as an administrator. Tell me, do you run your linux box as root? If you do, you're a fool, regardless of how secure or insecure a progam you're running may be.
It's not from the software, it's my fault for actually allowing connectivity!
If you are not running a firewall and blocking potentially dangerous ports, you are, once again, a fool. Why are you criticizing common-sense suggestions because you do not agree with the conclusions the author uses them to support? Are there flaws with Microsoft software? Hell yeah, dozens, maybe hundreds. But you can minimize your risks by instating good security practices yourself, without relying on Microsoft to do it for you--which they have a history of not doing.
Sounds like a way to sell licenses. Ok, since we can't make our product stable, buy 2 copies and hope one works.
No, it sounded like a way to provide a level of fault-tolerance. If a company does not want to shell out the money for backup systems, then they are going to deal with the loss of productivity that can happen if their systems go down for any reason, including ones not related to security. If that cost is acceptable to the institution than they may disregard the suggestion. If it is not, they should consider backup systems regardless of whether the need for them is security-related or otherwise. Personally I wouldn't invest in this suggestion, but I know companies who lose millions of dollars when something goes wrong and for some, probably most, simply moving away from Windows is not a viable option.
Right. Keep sending us your licensing fees, and then spend more money to make up for the gaps in our software. Don't trust any of that 'free software' crap you read on the internet - those Linux guys are a bunch of hacks. Hire an MSCE. Preferably from another country.
Well, I agree with one part of your statement: "Outsourcing" has become a technology buzz-word that most companies don't seem to even understand. It is of question importance, even in the regard of saving money. Yes, a tech support person in India does cost less, but there are less quantifiable costs involved with it too.
As to the rest? Come on. First of all, it is their "[their] software." The guy doesn't work for Microsoft even if he does support them. As for "adding security staff," it isn't a bad idea in big companies: One user who is responsible exclusively for security the company's technology assets. It isn't for everybody or every company, but that does not make it a bad suggestio
I find this an incredibly amusing stance for anyone that programs for a living as if their company were to actually do this they would make no money and they would lose their jobs.
Maybe. There are other sources of software-related revenue such as support. Besides, maybe some people are willing to lose their job to see a broader vision come to life. It used to be that people would give their lives to see that happen.
Generally speaking, I support both copyrights and open-source software. I love open-source software, I have received a lot of great products because of it and I am grateful. I have done what I could, with my limited programming ability and income streams (college, anyone?), to give something back to that community. But I also recognize the desire to be compensated for one's hard work and if that is the direction a person wishes to go, so be it. It is their decision.
Microsoft is a different subject entirely. I would not want a single line of my code present in a Microsoft product (think I can patent "i++" on them?). I do not like the company, I do not like how they do business and I do not like the fact that they are such a massive monopoly that there are literally a huge portion of people in the world who don't even know alternatives exist, or think--perhaps rightly so, in some ways--that alternatives can not work due to Microsoft's dominance of the market. They are a monopoly and they should be shattered. I love to see them busted in any way they can be busted. It makes me smile each and every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Since USA is just a dominate force in the UN, would this really affect us? Yes... it may decrease our freedom of press!
I don't think it would, at least not as the world stands now.
I liken this to the International Criminal Court. (I believe that is the name, but am not sure; whatever it is called, it is basically international law's version of the US Supreme Court.) Basically, the US refuses to recognize it because it is our legal belief that the US Supreme Court is the "highest law in the land," and we don't believe any other court elsewhere has the authority to compel or overrule decisions made by or reserved to the USSC.
Now, what can the UN do if we defy an International Court order? They pass the greivance on to the UN's enforcement arm: The UN Security Council. The UNSC can then impose sanctions on the US... which the US would veto dead before the possibility escaped their lips. The matter is dead. They can complain and issue statements and pass resololutions in the UN General Assembly decrying us but once they're thwarted in their enforcement arm, all they can do is talk.
All in all, I'm more worried about the trampling of my rights from within the US than I am from outside. Getting Bush out of the White House will be an excellent step toward repair and repealing the Patriot Act will be perhaps the greatest victory for individual rights since the country came into being.
As to the matter at hand, there needs to be a very minimal amount of control over the Internet. Mostly, I think, people should be protected from libel and other false, harmful claims (in the form of the ability of the wronged to sue: we don't need a government body of censorship). Child porn should be stopped, but I don't think we need a new branch of governence to deal with it. I can't think of a lot more in terms of regulation that I would accept. Do I care if that regulation comes from within the US or outside? Not a whole lot. I think matters should be handled in the country they originate from, subject to that country's laws, for purposes of fairness. Other than that, and subject to the "minimal enforcement" restriction (which I am aware I have not well defined)? Eh, whatever.
You anonymous cowards crack me up. Since you don't have anything worthwhile to say, you just post some non-sensical crap at it anonymously.
Perhaps the more pertinent question is regardless of whether or not consumers want to give up physical CDs, how long will they last?
Once online music purchases make enough money for the labels to truly realize it's a good thing, with minimal risk to them, they are likely to drastically cut down their production of physical CDs and eventually, I would surmise, end it altogether. Whether ending it is in favor of another physical medium or a digital one will be seen.
On the plus side, once labels realize they can minimize the risk of new artists by releasing music digitally (either exclusively or disproportionately), we will likely see many more new artists and many more new sounds being taken for a test drive.
more prone to read for exact compliance with the letter language of earlier rulings, without questioning larger issues, keeping a careful, limited view.
Judges are given a wide latitude in determining justice, but the above is really what they're supposed to do. Particularly if any decision on the matter has come from a higher court (US Supreme Court or an Appeals Court under whose jurisdiction the lower court falls), they are essentially bound to that precedence.
Now, they can decide that the matters are somehow different--which is what most do--or they can decide that the matter is more important to be decided one way or another than to follow a previous court's decision. The latter will often be overturned on appeal. (It is said, however, that the Supreme Court reviews its decisions every seven years or so.)
Is that the right way to do things? Maybe, maybe not. On the one hand the best thing, in terms of justice, is to evaluate every case individually on their merits and make the determination in a vacuum. However I'm not sure how feasible it is to have different legal decisions floating around in different jurisdictions. Lose your case? Just move to the next town over!
It's not ideal, but it might be the best we can do.
does it take for a spammer to mail the FBI direct before they take action? Surely they must be aware of the volume of scam emails we *all* get, and be taking action anyway?
Proof, probably. I believe I just read a few days ago that they caught (one of?) the people responsible for those Nigerian money scams, so it's not like they don't ever persue things first. But it's tricky on the Internet to track people down reliably. Somebody accused of bringing down computers in a shipping port was just accquited, saying that somebody had installed a trojan on his computer that did the job and which subsequently deleted itself. It's hard to prove otherwise.
Excuse me, but you have misquoted the Amendment. The FULL quote is: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Please practice what you preach. Read the whoe sentence.
However, such an argument fails precisely because a gun couldn't have stopped two airplanes from flying into the WTC.
Oh, I don't know. You sit me on one of those flights with a gun and they are not going to hijack that plane. At least they are not going to order it slammed into a building after they do.
"But you couldn't get on the plane with a gun!!!!" True, but your scenario doesn't make a lot of sense either way. NOT possessing guns wouldn't have prevented 9/11 either. (And may I ask, how did a debate on the Patriot Act turn into one about gun control?)
That's what the Patriot Act is all about, getting these systems to finally work properly so that we can stop another 9/11.
No. As you admitted yourself, we had the intelligence, we simply did not communicate it properly and did not fit all the pieces of the puzzle together properly. The Patriot Act is about increasing the government's ability to spy on us. Once they've decided we're not a threat worth watching, as they evidently did for the 9/11 hijackers, the PA has no effect.
And this one is just ridiculous: I think that many people are finally latching onto the concept that freedom to live safely is more important than freedom to be a criminal.
Do you know that Martin Luther King, JR. was spied on by the FBI? And we all know what a terrible terrorist he was, with all his sit-ins and peaceful protest! The movement to repeal the law isn't about protecting criminals, it is about protecting people who are doing nothing wrong from unjustified surveillance. The entire purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from the government, not from terrorists and regardless of how many more people a single individual nutcase can now kill in one fell swoop. History has proven that government, like most people and organizations, will abuse any power they are given (DMCA, anybody?). The solution is not to give it to them or to ensure what authority they have is locked down so tight it is as hard as possible to abuse.
Apparently these dead white men understood what freedom meant better than people today. If I have to die because a law like the Patriot Act is repealed, I would consider myself lucky to die for freedom. Thank god people like Franklin and Jefferson, true American patriots, were there at the founding of this country and not cowards like yourself.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Ahhh, preach it Mr. Dead White Man.
No, it's just the kind of subtle manipulation this administration has perfected. [. . .] then comes up with a moronic bit of doublespeak.
I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but let's be fair: Every press secretary comes up with moronic double-speak that anybody paying attention should pick up on. Most every politician does so. Like it or not, that has simply become a part of our political process.
Legally speaking, if this were true --
At IBM's request, Novell employed this right and demanded that SCO waive IBM's purported violations. When SCO did not do so, Novell exercised its right to waive the violations on SCO's behalf.
-- could IBM then turn around and sue SCO for harrasment, recover any loss of stock price and payment for wasted man-hours they could possibly attribute to the situation, and tack on huge punitive damages for good measure?
My understanding is that Novell waived any violations (whether they existed or not). That means SCO is taking IBM to court, wasting their time, money and resources to battle the suit, and have absolutely no further right to enforce the license under which they bring suit?
Sounds like we have a legal issue here. Any lawyers or legal-minded folks out there who can tell me if I'm right or wrong here (based completely on the assumption that the quote is accurate, of course)?
Jon
These are just my personal guesses of course, but here's what I think. First: When you say pencil and paper the word "pencil" pops out at me. Pencil can be erased and changed. Somebody stated elsewhere that changing that to "pen" would make it too hard to let people change mistakes. That may be true. There might be problems with what is crossed out, especially in the case where somebody thought they were wrong, crossed something out and then realized it was right anyway. If we give them another ballot, it might be a problem to keep track of who has had how many. Even if they had to surrender their first ballot before receiving another, it leaves the possibility open of the election officials submitting those multiple ballots (or for that matter, submitting the one with the vote they like and note the other). And then there is the cost of duplication: How many extra ballots do we assume we'll need beyond the number of people registered to vote in this precinct for mistakes, and how much will that cost the nation every two years (for Congressional elections)? Relying on the voter to police the election official (eg, "ensure that your mistaken ballot is shredded in front of you before you vote on your new ballot") is a dangerous policy because it assumes people know to enforce that and that they will actually do it even if they do know. I suspect many, perhaps most, would not, even with full knowledge. But I think the real reason we in the US like the idea of electronic voting systems is because not only should they be fairly easy to use (you can even present a confirmation screen to them so if they did make a mistake, they don't submit that mistaken vote) and almost fool-proof but more importantly, it is quick. Election results could be in and tallied the minute the polls closed in a precinct and the final results could be known the minute the last poll closed. That would be a great thing. Of course the problem with electronic voting machines is security from tampering, corruption, eaves-dropping, vote altering, the transparency of the counting process, and any number of other things that a lot of very smart people here have already mentioned. I'm not sure a person could ever create a system that even the most anal person would say is secure and ready for use, but if that day ever comes, electronic voting would be great. Fast, easy, simple and cheaper, in the long run, than printing up paper or punch-card ballots.
Microsoft *needs* linux to push it.
Microsoft needs Linux to push it if they want to improve. But really they don't. Linux does push it to be better, but I am sure the MS execs are all cussing linux out under their breath. It makes them look bad to have a better product out there: they can't simply get away with releasing a truly crappy product and then charging you $99 for a bugfix. Errr, upgrade.
Well, okay, they still do that but that catch far more flack for it now than they would otherwise.
Releasing the world's best and most stable product is not a good commercial angle because, as others have stated, you will sell a ton of software and then not another copy. Much better to screw things up, leave things out, and put new versions out from time to time. Poor Bill.
I agree with your sentiment that "rich people should NOT be able to buy preferential security treatment," but I don't necessarily agree that this is a program for the "rich." $30-50 plus "a few dollars" a month isn't necessarily a huge burden even for the average American. Oh, sure, it will probably eliminate the lowest economic section of American society, but how many of those people would be doing things like boarding a plane anyway? The bigger problem is ANYBODY being able to bypass security for ANY amount of money. These issues have been discussed well enough for my taste in previous posts so I will not repeat them. A national ID card might not necessarily be a bad thing, but NOT for the purpose of assuming somebody is not a criminal/terrorist and will not become one.
George Bush, Jr. has been accused (repeatedly) of doing exactly that to win the Presidency. Granted, if true it was done via legal means, not technological, and I'm not prepared to make a case either way.
I don't consider the series of lawsuits that ultimately ended Gore's hopes of a recount subverting the presidency. I hate Bush, don't get me wrong, and will cheerily vote for a trained chimp in the next election, but acting within the legal process is not subversion.
That said, a very real case can be made that votes were tampered with in Florida. Even though the US Supreme Court ordered recounts halted, they proceeded unofficially. The result? Bush won--with a smaller margin. And then they found uncounted ballots locked in an election overseer's cabinet, which closed the margin further.
I'm personally more concerned with the indifferent attitude of the various companies involved, and the (apparently) poor quality of their products.
As my original reply stated quite clearly, I believe the systems to be insecure and provided that if that was the concern that was a matter entirely different. For that matter I consider the paper ballots to be pretty insecure as well, but I am not about to accuse companies who are going to be profiting from software such as this (if it is ever largely adopted) of making systems that intentionally can be subverted. All it takes is one person checking the code for the state to see a glaring hole and terminate the contract, file civil suit or even criminal charges--even if civil/criminal action would be hard to prove. There are other "benefits" of such action than winning the suit, such as smearing the company's name around in the press, drawing attention to the issues, forcing them to spend money on a legal defense, etc. On the other hand, honest implementation of a secure electronic voting system stands to make the company boatloads of money. The risks are not worth it.
Regardless of whether you feel that Americans are apathetic towards voting, the fact is that it is an important process, too important to be left in the hands of incompetents.
I will assume that is a generic "you" since I made no statements to the contrary.
Heck, I live near Chicago, which has a long history of vote-tampering. Supposedly it's gotten better. Or maybe just better hidden. How can you tell?
I live near Chicago as well. It certainly does have a history of vote tampering, as does New York. And yet that is also a part of my point. Election tampering in its various forms has always existed, may still exist--may always exist. To call a potentially new form the "most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes" is ridiculous and deserved exactly the ridiculous response it received. I seem to remember a few thousand people dying when planes crashed into the World Trade Center. I don't even consider that (terrorism) the most serious threat to America in my lifetime.
I was wrong to say "Assuming people" when what I meant was "assuming Diebold," but my point otherwise stands. It is both counter-intuitive for the company and unsupported. The article could not even prove conclusively that the patch process occurred or that it in any way affected the results, much less that it was a deliberate attempt to subvert the election process.
Your comment was nearer the truth: The danger is incompetency, not subversion. These systems are not ready for use and may never be; I doubt they could come up with any system that would make everybody stand up and say, "yeah, that looks good." I have never stated otherwise. Saying it is the nation's greatest threat while our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters are dying in a foreign country, whether the war is justified or not, is plain stupid.
The parent may be a conspiracy theorist but you are a complacency theorist.
Please don't make up terms. If you want to call me complacent, that is your prerogative. "Complacency theorist" isn't even sensible and certainly not the way you use it.
This electronic voting is the most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes. This electronic voting is the most serious threat to America that we have seen in our lifetimes. They either want to subvert the voting process themselves, or want to create a system that is easy to subvert at a vastly lower cost than current systems. I have just one question: Was there a shooter on the grassy knoll??? You conspiracy theorists make me sick. If you feel the system is insecure (and it is), that is one thing. Assuming people are deliberately trying to compromise the voting process is quite another. I'd laugh my ass off if these companies popped you with a libel lawsuit.
AI will likely not ever be considered alive, no matter how life-like. Generally speaking, the biological definition of life--which a court would most likely use to render its decisions--is that the being must match the following conditions at least once in its lifetime:
1. Growth
2. Metabolism - The uptake of food, conversion of food into energy and disposal of waste products
3. Motion - Moving itself or having internal motion
4. Reproduction - the ability to create more or less exact copies of itself
5. Stimulus response - the ability to measure properties of its surrounding environment and to act on certain conditions
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_life
Even with fairly generous expansions of the standard definitions of the above (for instance, does a computer worm reproduce?) I doubt situations could be found to fit all of them.
If you don't like it, pack it up and move on. Bitching and moaning about a service others, myself included, find incredibly valuable does no good. Do you think the slashdot folks are running around to change all of their icons and edit all of their articles because you're displeased? Give me a break.
As for point 3, prosecutors, judges, and (I believe) juries are immune from being sued for doing their jobs in good faith, so unless you can prove that the 'government' knowingly prosecuted him wrongfully there's no lawsuit opportunity either.
Wrongful imprisonment is something that can be sued for. It has happened dozens of times in the state of Illinois alone (which is why former Gov. Ryan issued a moratorium on the death penalty). Whether the suit would be against the attorney or the state or who is irrelevant. The money will come from somewhere. And if the government is smart, they will offer a sizeable sum of money as a settlement and avoid the issue being taken to a jury that will award millions for spilling coffee on yourself.
Does it make up for 16 months in prison? No. But what is done is done: All that can be done now is to issue the apology (done) and offer fair compensation.
If you've got an infallible justice system in your back pocket, I'm sure everybody is dying to hear.
Well, I agree in part with you.
A bright chap makes in invention in - let's say - Egypt and publishes it. Sells it. A clever greedy American visiting Egypt therefore will get a patent for it from USPTO - only in US; see parent. Greedy American reaps royalties but is up for more.
I don't know if that was an "intended consequence," but it is certainly a valid one. That is assuming, however, that patents are not governed by international law the way most copyrights are (Berne Convention). I do not know if they are or not.
However...
Contacts State Department and complains that Egyptian still makes money in utter disrespect of US patent. Egyptian cannot apply for patent, because greedy American holds it. State Department cite Egyptian Embassador and complains with him about Egyptian contravening greedy American's patent.
This seems entirely too far-fetched. The average Joe who secures a patent is not going to, or going to be able to, run off to the State Department and get them hopping. Maybe massive companies could do so, however most massive companies nowadays have ties outside of the US (or their respective country, whatever that may be) that they need to be wary of. Particularly, international companies would need to be wary as they may very well fall under other law.
Government of Egypt will blow the whistle on Egyptian to stop manufacturing his invention or pay licence fee to greedy American. For fear of reprisals.
Again, maybe, but I doubt it. Governments need to operate under the force of law. Even if the US could, and did, pressure the Egyptian government into coming down on the actual inventor, they need an established authority to enforce an American patent in Egypt, a patent that post-dates the one the Egyptian secured. If that be international law, then see my first point about the validity of the entire scenario. If there is some local law that permits the government to undermine a patent that same government has issued, the problem seems to be with the government of Egypt and a smoke-and-mirror patent system and not necessarily with how the US system affects anybody or anything.
(And yes, I know "Egypt" was only an example and I use it only in keeping with the given scenario; I don't mean to imply that Egypt has any such policies or problems.)
Wow, so the open source community released a patch that wasn't well tested, that caused problems, and probably cost some people a bit of money.
How many times has slashdot bitched and moaned about a certain unnamed corporation doing something similar.
In my mind, there is a vast distinction. The BIND folks, in this case, were responding to what essentially was near an emergency situation where suddenly the services underlying the Internet were unlawfully changed from their specifications. They released their patch, and yes, it was obviously wrong and it will obviously cost people money, but time wasn't a luxery they had. They released it quickly and made their mistake because every minute they let it go unreleased cost money. Even if that money was just diverting the netadmin's attention for a half hour to ensure all their systems blocked the wildcard.
On the other hand, Microsoft is a commercial entity. They are paid to release "quality" software--that is, at least, the expectation. You may debate the reality yourself. They release products like Windows, with literally hundreds of bugs. I'm not talking about mistakes, like BIND did, I'm talking about bugs they know about. They don't do it to save you, the poor, poor user from extra time of Windows-less anarchy, they do it because they want their money now, because continued debugging costs them money and because they understand you don't have much of a choice. It is a Windows world, as sad as that makes some of us. And yeah, they'll try to patch it later and sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don't. The point is they release things they know suck to preserve their bottom line.
Am I the only one who sees the distinction between screwing consumers knowingly and accidentally?
Jon
All this time I hadn't realized that the Boston Tea Party was really about freedom from religious persecution.
Actually the reality is that the Boston Tea Party and the concept of "taxation without representation" was little more than propaganda people could latch on to and increase the support for a movement toward independence.
Anyway, although I quoted your message to make that point, I actually had more to say about other things.
1. Is "under God" an unfair establishment of religion?
The basic argument that it is is that when schools--a government entity, if they receive federal funding--make the activity mandatory it is equivilent to establishment. Not mandatory in the sense that "you must recite it!" which most schools avoid vehemently for legal reasons exactly such as these, but that it is a part of the school day. The argument goes that although a student can technically feel free to not recite the pledge, that they may be the subject of ridicule and pressure, perhaps even unfair treatment, from their peers if they do not.
I think we can all agree there is some truth to this argument. Certainly not going with the crowd in school leads to a lot of crap from the other school children and I see no reason it should be any different here. In fact, it may be worse in many cases since religion is such a touchy subject and is essentially built upon the idea that the religion is right and others are, in some way, wrong, and then attaching concepts such as heaven and hell to it. In other words, some--perhaps many--religions believe that if you do not believe as they do, and worship as they do, you are going to burn in hell. I have been told so. I see no reason it wouldn't happen in schools. And lately, with a president twisting "patriotism" into meaning "conformity," and the still open wounds of 9/11, I imagine it would be much worse.
2. The argument that it is not establishment.
Basically the argument that it is not establishment is that... it is not establishment. That students are not forced to recite the pledge by the school and that it is not, therefore, an unfair preference by the government for one religion or group of religions over another. The fact that students are not forced to recite the pledge is true and I doubt it is in dispute; what is disputed is the interpretation of what that means.
First of all, I am an athiest. I do not believe in any god. I don't want this to turn into a religous debate, so I will got bother going into why or debating whether I am right or wrong. But in light of that I want to make a few points:
1. The most important point is one I think is misunderstanding. I don't believe most religious people truly understand that as strongly as they believe in their religion and their god, athiests believe there is no god. As easily as many (most?) religious people would be offending by my offhandedly dismissing their religion, or insulting or threatening them for not believing as I do, so too am I, and I believe most athiests, offended by the constant offhanded dismissal of our beliefs (or lack thereof).
2. I do believe that forcing the pledge to be recited, as it stands now, is a violation of the Establishment Clause. In legal terms, I would have to support the movement that it not be required in schools, no matter what degree of requirement the school itself actually places on it.
3. However, all of that said, I still do not believe that the pledge should be changed. I do not believe it should be stricken from the classrooms; in fact, I think it should be put in more. If the law must be invalidated as unconstitutional, I would support a Constitutional ammendment that protected the pledge and "In God We Trust" on our currency. For that matter, I would also support an ammendment making flag burning illegal.
Part of the reason is patriotism. I love the United States and I like the idea of people being asked to recite
Revoking their license over such a trivial breach would be grossly disproportionate.
<p>Legally speaking, if a contract is violated it can be null-and-void. It may very well be disproportionate--isn't this whole thing rather ridiculous?--but it would be within their legal rights.
<p>I personally don't care for the driver's license analogy. The way government has to deal with citizens is always far different from how citizens have to deal with one another. Federal employees are near impossible to fire, for instance, even for incompetence; the same isn't true in the private sector.
The only reason I can think of that 5% of the worlds population needs 50% of the worlds wealth is greed.
Or how about... capitalism? Sure seems to have worked out for us only 5% folks, don't you think? How many non-capitalist economies can stand on their own two feet? And how can you criticize the ideas of capitalism when it is obviously the best economic system out there?
And who says we expect to be treated as the majority? We believe--rightly so--that the American government's first responsibility should be to us, the American citizens. Guess what? India's first responsibility should be to the Indian people, and Nigeria's first responsibility should be to the Nigerian people, and Syria's responsibility should be to the Syrian people, and so on and so forth. If we can lend a hand, great, but not by sacrificing our citizens.
But hey, buddy, if you want to give up your job because a third-world country pays their employees a barely-livable fraction of what they would receive for the same work here, go ahead. Just don't call that America's flaw. Me, I'll keep my job. But I suppose that is just the greed in me.
Look, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but your critique of the article is horrendous and so biased it is worthless.
Ok, yes you do have to stay patched. But this is like blaming people with flawed cars for not going to the car dealer each week to check for recalls. Microsoft's abundance of patches indicates poor design and methodology, period.
Microsoft's abundance of patches does indicate poor design. However, if you or your company choose to use--or must use--a Microsoft product, then you accept that risk and it falls upon you to manage it. You should know it is there and you should do what you can to prevent it. Staring at my inbox, I see plenty of reports on linux packages that if I don't patch them, they may end up getting me rooted. If I ignore the warnings, or do not read them, and somebody uses a hole in them to gain unauthorized access to my system, whose fault is that really? I can tell you I'm not going to be blaming the coders for my unwillingess to keep patched. The only time I would do so is as with the latest MS patch, where their patch fixes the problem in one area but leaves an identical problem open elsewhere.
Ok, so rather than design the apps safely out of the box, we need to handcuff the users and do the dirty work ourselves. I guess all those Outlook viruses were our fault.
It seems to me that the author was essentially suggesting not to run Windows as an administrator. Tell me, do you run your linux box as root? If you do, you're a fool, regardless of how secure or insecure a progam you're running may be.
It's not from the software, it's my fault for actually allowing connectivity!
If you are not running a firewall and blocking potentially dangerous ports, you are, once again, a fool. Why are you criticizing common-sense suggestions because you do not agree with the conclusions the author uses them to support? Are there flaws with Microsoft software? Hell yeah, dozens, maybe hundreds. But you can minimize your risks by instating good security practices yourself, without relying on Microsoft to do it for you--which they have a history of not doing.
Sounds like a way to sell licenses. Ok, since we can't make our product stable, buy 2 copies and hope one works.
No, it sounded like a way to provide a level of fault-tolerance. If a company does not want to shell out the money for backup systems, then they are going to deal with the loss of productivity that can happen if their systems go down for any reason, including ones not related to security. If that cost is acceptable to the institution than they may disregard the suggestion. If it is not, they should consider backup systems regardless of whether the need for them is security-related or otherwise. Personally I wouldn't invest in this suggestion, but I know companies who lose millions of dollars when something goes wrong and for some, probably most, simply moving away from Windows is not a viable option.
Right. Keep sending us your licensing fees, and then spend more money to make up for the gaps in our software. Don't trust any of that 'free software' crap you read on the internet - those Linux guys are a bunch of hacks. Hire an MSCE. Preferably from another country.
Well, I agree with one part of your statement: "Outsourcing" has become a technology buzz-word that most companies don't seem to even understand. It is of question importance, even in the regard of saving money. Yes, a tech support person in India does cost less, but there are less quantifiable costs involved with it too.
As to the rest? Come on. First of all, it is their "[their] software." The guy doesn't work for Microsoft even if he does support them. As for "adding security staff," it isn't a bad idea in big companies: One user who is responsible exclusively for security the company's technology assets. It isn't for everybody or every company, but that does not make it a bad suggestio
I find this an incredibly amusing stance for anyone that programs for a living as if their company were to actually do this they would make no money and they would lose their jobs.
Maybe. There are other sources of software-related revenue such as support. Besides, maybe some people are willing to lose their job to see a broader vision come to life. It used to be that people would give their lives to see that happen.
Generally speaking, I support both copyrights and open-source software. I love open-source software, I have received a lot of great products because of it and I am grateful. I have done what I could, with my limited programming ability and income streams (college, anyone?), to give something back to that community. But I also recognize the desire to be compensated for one's hard work and if that is the direction a person wishes to go, so be it. It is their decision.
Microsoft is a different subject entirely. I would not want a single line of my code present in a Microsoft product (think I can patent "i++" on them?). I do not like the company, I do not like how they do business and I do not like the fact that they are such a massive monopoly that there are literally a huge portion of people in the world who don't even know alternatives exist, or think--perhaps rightly so, in some ways--that alternatives can not work due to Microsoft's dominance of the market. They are a monopoly and they should be shattered. I love to see them busted in any way they can be busted. It makes me smile each and every time.