The "How?" portion is an important question. The article mentions getting access to someone's hard drive, which is a very specific form of hacking. They specifically mention sending a malware email attachment and using keyloggers (hardware/software is not clear.)
The method really does make a very significant difference. If the malware email is the primary method then that limits successful hacks to those with hopelessly outdated email clients and people who open attachments that they shouldn't. Effectively this becomes a way to catch the most careless of criminals. Lets take an example, Mr. Dolt. Mr. Dolt is running an illegal gambling ring and he has to be 1.) Silly enough to use his computer to discuss it or keep records 2.) Using it in an insecure way, such as Administrator for everything 3.) Using an insecure email approach, old Outlook or clicking DancingBaby.pif from whomever sends it 4.) Using a targetable OS, Windows.
If all those things happen, then the criminal investigation may go somewhere. This makes it mostly useful as a spam type approach. They might set up a chat-bot for example and have it ask 500,000 users if they know where "he" can find some action on the next race, then spam out the malware to all responders. As with any spam system, the rate of return can be pretty low and still seem profitable, 0.15% in this example would give a headline like "Cyber-Police squad arrests 750 criminals."
In a slightly more paranoid scenario the police target 1000 suspected criminals and compromise all of those using Windows with a super script kiddie type toolbox composed of deliberately undisclosed backdoor hacks. The rate of success would be higher for compromise, say 95%, and they are able to monitor email and successfully garner a 10% successful rate of condemning evidence. This still leads to 85 successful arrests and a nice headline or two.
Then there is tinfoil-hat type paranoid where the police target 5,000,000,000 users without any reason, have a script break into all of them that it can and do a search for any probable cause type stuff, then have the resulting list be provided by informants so that they can have a good reason to investigate anybody that turns up.
Best reasonable defense against being incriminated in this manner: Use an OS that is less likely to be easy to break into (BSD, Linux) and don't keep incriminating stuff on your computer.
Disclaimer: Remember that I'm guessing based on information that may have been reported less than accurately which was in turn based on deliberate misinformation.
Not really, not for me anyway. Developers who make software which is easy to use get paid better than those who don't, so my expectations are usually fulfilled.
EditPlus and Winzip are great examples. There are dozens of text editors and compression tools, many free, but people still pay for the ones that are easy to use.
My ego may know few bounds (check my previous posts) and you may enjoy a feeling of superiority (I checked your previous posts) from learning complex software, but most people would rather get a job done easily than feed their superiority complex and they vote with their wallets.
I've developed a little in C and Java, but when it comes time to do something quick, I use perl, bash and php. I've done LFS and Gentoo from Stage 1, but when I want a quick gui, I boot Slax. Objectively I can see that my programs are better with more complex languages and my system is faster and more efficient when custom built, but 95% of the time, I choose easy.
Absofrickinloutly! People get used to using the tools that they've painstakingly learned over the years and think "Hey, I rock! More people should be like me." Okay, fine, I can agree that a good set of platform independent skills are useful, but it is a philosophy, not a solution to a specific problem.
When I sit down on an unfamiliar machine, I expect to be able to do some things without having to consult a help file. The pointer moves up when I move the mouse toward the back of the desk, it doesn't have to be that way but it makes it easier to start using it.
User friendly means that I can guess how to get what I want. I love vim (and tolerate vi) but that doesn't mean I want to edit a text file every time I want to do something. My servers may not have gui's but when I sit down to browse the web, I don't want to need to configure a text file for my browser to work within normal ranges.
If your program doesn't do what people need it to do and they have difficulty fixing it, then it is your fault and not theirs. I'm looking at you Firefox! Opera, Konqueror and Firefox 2 show pictures correctly, but not FF3 and they say it is the fault of the X config, it is not a bug. Bull.
There is no File menu in Office 2007? What kind of crack smoke fest led tot hat brilliant decision? Do you know how many people have needed me to point it out to them weeks, WEEKS! after upgrading from Office 2003?
Make your program do these things in this order:
It must actually work
It should be easy to use correctly
It should be hard to use wrong
Make it efficient and/or beautiful to your own preferences
The surest way to appeal to a market is to target people who are likely to be interested. Can you really think of anything more likely to appeal to the Linux demographic?
This sounds like a Gentoo or LFS reference. That's really the problem with trying to cram Linux into the "Hi. I'm an OS" shtick. I think my original scenario fits for OpenSuse, Mandriva or Ubuntu, but what about all the other distros? I guess it depends on who is paying the piper.
Remember all the PCs on their way to tech support? If it were just a general Linux push, and you wanted to give all the distros a representative, you'd need something like a dating site.
LFS - "bugger off unless you are ready to commit to a long term relationship" [Librarian]
Gentoo - "Anything you want baby, any way you want it, but only if you ask very nicely." [dominatrix]
Mandriva - "Show me where it hurts and I'll make it all feel better" [bimbo nurse]
OpenSuse - "You're so dirty" [french maid]
Fedora - "Want a cookie?" [little red riding hood]
Slackware - "Mechanics are sexy, you're not afraid of a little grease are you?" [Daisy Duke mechanic type]
RHEL - "You have a meeting with a client at two, I'll have your report ready for review by three and I'll schedule Helga for a massage at five-thirty" [Secretary]
Knoppix - "I'm studying dancing... pole dancing." [Stripper]
Debian - "I've got recipies, lots of recipies." [Chef]
The list could go on and on. This would make a great flash brochure type website actually. You would want something like Youtube's related videos list with just the distro logos, but when you click on one it brings up the logo for one second then switches to a model with a tagline and then a ten second interview type format where the model is explaining what kind of personality she (as the distro) has and built in links to the distro main page and a three minute interview which would discuss the distro in detail. The video advertisement could be nothing more elaborate than showing a screen with the logos and a couple banner ads for Mac and Windows which are promptly disappeared from then firefox browser by enabling Adblock Plus (most Windows users would be shocked to see that alone,) then clicking on three or four of the logos for the ten second summaries then the phrase "What are you looking for?" in white letters on black screen. (Which I think would make a decent slogan for the entire campaign.)
Little RED riding hood, get it? I crack myself up.
At the beginning of last year, I switched to Vista along with a massively more powerful workstation. The upgrade in machine more than made up for the Vista bloat, so for me it was a minor improvement in responsiveness. My job requires me to regularly log into a variety of workstations, the majority of them Server 2003, but almost all of the others running XP. Every single day I get to compare XP to Vista.
My evaluation could move us to adopting Vista, but I cannot recommend it. Vista is simply too difficult to get to work with some of our required applications for us to transition yet. I use it, but supporting our average user in using it would still significantly increase my workload, though it will be unavoidable at some point, since we will probably make the jump direct from XP to Windows 7. I dread the day that all my carefully scripted registry edits will no longer be viable. Still, I like Vista.
There is nothing that makes Vista really better than XP, but there are a few nice creature comforts:
The search as you type thing reminded me instantly of Beagle which I'd used on OpenSuse and was a welcome addition.
The theme was attractive and reminded me instantly of the Mac I'd been using as an alternate laptop, but it took me months to actually benefit (an opaque border allowed me to notice something significant)
The gadgets thing looked nifty, but I've never gotten much use from it
Run As Administrator works better than the Run As command because it works from EVERY shortcut
The one thing that I most appreciate is the Alt+Tab task switch control
With XP the Alt+Tab combo brings up a list of icons for the applications you're running, and I tend to have around a couple dozen open when I'm really busy. First off is the huge benefit of being able to see more of them at a time. In XP I'd sometimes have to scroll for a while to find the one I wanted, but in Vista I almost never have more than I can see. The icons in Vista are really little preview windows which show a thumbnail of the applications as they are running. So if the shared desktop session is active, I can see it happening. If I want to click on a thumbnail with my mouse, that works. I can use the up and down arrows to navigate the table of thumbnails. The task control is the one feature that I would really miss if I switched back to XP.
Sometime in my lifetime I hope to own a cell phone complete with high quality projector and surround sound and with a very high speed connection to a bittorrent successor which allows me to effectively stream any movies I can download. Therefore, all my movies should be uploaded to the cloud for future retrieval.
Pity I'm not brave enough to try it and further pity I don't have enough money to have a bevy of lawyers to protect my rights to do so.
Abiding by the law is important to me, and honestly I believe my backup proposal here would be illegal. I believe the law will change eventually however, for the better. Eventually I believe that world opinion will shift toward the idea that value comes from service, not ideas alone. Providing ideas is itself a service, as is moving those ideas to a usable format. In my utopian future there will be no patents, but there will be highly paid idea generators, wealthy producers and comfortably well compensated delivery providers, but they won't make money from protecting their markets, but rather from doing a better job than their competitors. Open source is the beginning of this shift in the digital world; I hope that the transition is gentle and that I live long enough to see it come to fruition.
I was watching cops (not a regular viewer but was being sociable) and saw a cop search a car claiming a "furtive gesture" as probable cause. I could hardly believe it, here was a guy who knew he was being filmed who apparently decided that showing his ability to get around the need for a warrant was going to be taken as a good thing by viewers. What sticks with me isn't the injustice of it all, it was that a potential jury of peers sitting around watching TV seemed to support the action.
I actually decided not to post and didn't realize I had until I noticed an unexpected reply. I thought it too over the top and likely to irritate rather than entertain, but, well... clicky is as clicky does right?
These days I'm more of a Dallas person, but kudos for taking the time to look me up. If timing and opportunity arise, remind me and I'll be glad to spot you a beer. (Think of it as a government type loan, repaid when and if you ever feel like it.)
I'm afraid that you're somewhat right about the TEA, but while I'm no expert, I wouldn't say that the short-sighted teacher from TFA represents even a majority. To tell the truth, I was tempted to see if I could get in touch and offer to educate and mediate. Sadly, I've found that a little understanding and empathy don't change the mind of a lot of people and rather suspect she is one of those who wouldn't appreciate the effort.
Don't forget armed, mounted and blood thirsty. We Texans like our guns, horses and executions. Oh yeah, and feuds, don't forget feuds!
On a totally unrelated note, you're from Tampa right?
Disclaimer: No, this is not a death threat, it is humor. To those of you with a good sense of humor, I apologize for wasting your time stating what should be obvious.
Agreed, now to move on to a broader subject: where does this all lead?
I think that FOSS and particularly GPL do something extremely valuable for society, it forces innovation. FOSS is a lever that changes the market from one where ideas are sold over and over into one where services are sold until they are no longer valuable. Closed source software used to be the only game in town, but with FOSS alternatives, it becomes a race to improve enough to still provide value.
Take OS virtualization as an example. MS Virtual Server 2005, Hyper-V, VMWare Player and Server are all free and solidly develop(ed/ing) products. I don't think that any of them would be free however, if it weren't for the pressure that Suse and RedHat applied to the market when they started offering Xen based virtualization in order to make their own systems more attractive. Xen by itself didn't make much in the way of money, but it both gave leverage and increased value to FOSS based solutions and changed the value of CSS similar solutions.
FOSS comes at a price and value to everyone. The cost is that it makes CSS without innovation less valuable, but the value is that it forces companies to innovate or lose profits. In my opinion, the greatest value of FOSS is that it makes innovation and service more valuable in a competitive market.
I might quibble on details, but overall you're exactly right. The problem with a five sentence business plan is that it doesn't really provide enough detail to determine things like goals, tactics and marketing.
Zabbix makes money by training people and servicing a product, the development and maintenance of FOSS are crucial and beneficial, but not profitable alone. NB uses and, to quibble, contributes to FOSS, but they do it in order to provide a service for which they can charge. CodeWeavers contribute in a variety of ways to FOSS, but they do it in order to have a better product to sell. RedHat and Novell do development and make significant contributions to FOSS, but they do it in order to make their services and support attractive enough to be marketable. Third Brigade's Ossec is an outstandingly useful FOSS product, but the income generated comes from support. Sun, though I hesitate to use them as an example, do significant development and maintenance on a variety of products but if they ever manage to make a buck from it, it will be because they sell their bundle of products as a whole, not directly because of what they've given away.
The whole point of FOSS as part of a strategy to generate income is to have something that people want to use and trust. FOSS is valuable because it can be thoroughly tested by a million monkeys and improved by anyone who has a need. Giving away software makes it a viable option for people who might not try it otherwise and when they do have money to spend, there is a tendency to buy from the companies that make it possible for you to do a better job with things you already know and trust.
In the end, I must agree that people get income by exchanging a service of some kind for payment, not by offering service for free. The part I wanted to highlight is that they can develop and contribute to FOSS for the good of many as a part of their strategy to make money. FOSS isn't a business plan, but it can be a part of a business plan.
Except that you have to pay for development and support of the OSS, with the payoff of being able to reap the benefits of community contribution toward it. So you can't ignore the OSS development and support cost as part of your business model.
We use Network Box (network-box.com) and they do perimeter virus scanning, IDS/IDP, firewalls for internal and external systems including our DMZ, VPNs to secure communications between ourselves and three other vendors and for our staff, feedback, smtp relay and stand in with anti-virus scanning, traffic analysis, policy filtering and reporting for all of that. They do this for about one tenth the cost of an employee. Pretty much everything they're using is OSS, but the care and feeding and expertise is beyond our budget to handle in house. I don't know if I can provide a second example, I suspect we could handle any two of those tasks without requiring additional staff, but not all of it and probably not as well.
I hesitated to use Zabbix as an example because I haven't decided whether or not to pay them yet, but I have used their product and recognize the need for significant training to use it more effectively. We currently use other products for most of the functionality but not as effectively as Zabbix could provide it if I had trained to configure it.
The point of the closed software collusion system is not that it is an FLOSS model, but a way to generate income which couldn't be done as well without a FLOSS contribution. No argument there, I actually think your outline is beautiful except it ignores the ongoing development cost of the FLOSS portion.
Odd, I can think how people are making your equation work with varying choices for step 4.
4) Make it do a complex task that requires skilled labor you provide cheaper than training staff to handle it internally
This works for several companies, a couple of which we pay where I work. The task of consolidating threat profiles, keeping them current, providing solid feedback and rapid response as well as managing secure channels with a variety of companies is something our company could hire a couple full time employees to manage. Rather than be out the cost of staff, we hire an outside vendor who does it very well at a fraction of the expense.
4) Build a small closed source application that utilizes the open source software. We use software built to work with a MySQL database system. The tasks done by the configuration, maintenance and integration are within the reach of a moderately talented programmer, but they are able to do it for hundreds of clients who all benefit from solid testing, research and experience of a few experienced and skilled developers who also contribute back to the open source system. This improves MySQL for anyone who cares to use it, but at the same time benefits the company who own the closed source application utilizing it. (For this example the model has to change step 1 to "Promote and contribute to a really cool product.") This is similar to the business model for Crossover Office where you pay for the expertise that has gone into the development of a product that does nothing you couldn't manage by hiring talented developers but for a price that makes sense for small business.
4) Make your staff the source for training required to manage a complex system. Zabbix is an example of this type of product. You can download and work on Zabbix for free, but it is complex enough that for significant implementation, you really need to get solid training, and that will cost you.
Our core transactional system in fact, would be a great example except that it is a closed source system. The software is good, but there is plenty of similar software that we could use. What we really pay for is the ongoing development, support and integration they offer. They protect themselves from competition by keeping it closed, allowing them to charge a higher fee, but if they were to manage a transition to open source they could potentially drop their development costs significantly, increase market penetration and undercut their competitors while still maintaining the same profits. They would have to face the risk that another company could do a better job pricing or servicing their current customers with the same software, however, and I honestly don't believe they have enough talent in programming, support and management to make it worth the gamble.
To disagree with all your points would require a lot more clarification that I have to go on, but I do disagree with your use of the term religion and whether the beliefs rather than the statements of belief matter.
Religion is a general term that refers to a set of beliefs and practices, which may include having spiritual beliefs or faith in something bigger than yourself. Having faith is also generic, however, and has to do with trusting rather than believing. Both terms are too generic to condemn or condone alone. Arguing that "People who have religion don't have faith; they just have religion" is an exercise in semantic debate rather than addressing the real points.
Based on his statements, Obama does not hold the same beliefs as the majority of those who call themselves Evangelical Christians. Very few would say the same for McCain.
What someone says they believe isn't as important as what they actually believe, because while statements may convince enough voters to get someone elected, they don't necessarily reflect what someone will do after they are elected. To take a couple of examples:
Obama is strongly pro-choice which directly contradicts the views held by the majority of Evangelical Christians. If he says he holds the views of Evangelicals but votes, vetos or proposes legislation to support his stated stance on the issue, then his beliefs rather than his statements are important
Obama questions which parts of the Bible should shape public policy by pointing to Leviticus as "suggests slavery is okay" when most Evangelicals would view the same book as dealing with those in authority under non-applicable Old Testament law and not as an endorsement of slavery at all. If he disagrees with the majority of Evangelicals on that, questioning what he believes about the rest of the Bible is a legitimate issue for many, particularly where it concerns the central text of their belief and what legislation he might support, justices he might appoint and what he might veto
In the end, it is the beliefs of the candidates that are absolutely critical to voters, rather than the statements they make for the sake of getting power. Disputing based on terminology, particularly religion as opposed to faith, does not further the discussion.
And I'm not big on Christian ideology either. Why should women be quiet in church? Why do I have to marry before having sex? Why should I give 10% of my earnings to the church? Why should I condemn homosexuals and treat them as inferior? etc etc.
Christian ideology is somewhat of a mixed bag. For your examples, the answers would be:
Women aren't required to be quiet in church, the verses cited are usually from 1 Tim. 2. The teaching was addressing a problem that was arising where women were seated separately from men and interrupting services to talk to their husbands and to ask them questions across the aisle. There is plenty of commentary on the subject, but just noticing how most protestant services include women speaking and some include women preaching should make the point.
The consensus is that sex before marriage is a bad thing, but this is based on a mildly debatable interpretation of "fornication." You'd need to check out the Greek and Hebrew for yourself to decide if it is legitimate. The question of "why" doesn't need to be tied to religion though, society tends to be able to substain larger cohesive groups where XX+XY=1. Theories on the reasons can vary but there are plenty of examples to test the observation, both Christian and non.
If you ask "why should I" then you should not give 10% of your earnings to the church, in fact contributions against personal inner desire are strictly prohibited. Some do out of desire to please God or do good for their neighbors, but it isn't mandatory. The 10% thing isn't even upheld by all denominations (though there are plenty that do.) The point of 10% was to support a theocratic nation, so you should be saying "Why aren't everyone's taxes set at 10% since that is the Biblical model of taxation and the majority of the legislators say they are Christian?"
Christians are specifically prohibited from condemning homosexuals, but also strictly prohibited from endorsing actions of sin. The whole point of Christianity is that we're all sinners, we recognize that God hates sin but still loves us enough to pay the cost of our sins himself. While there are plenty of Christians who will act otherwise, the Biblical Christian views the homosexual as someone who deserves God's compassion displayed by that Christian as much as the Christian himself.
The Constitution does not separate church from state the way people think it does. You should research this for yourself, because you'd never believe it unless you do. The reason Congress begins session with a prayer, the reason for the words "endowed by their Creator" and "in God we trust" is directly tied to this. The Constitution's actual statements are to prevent the state from stopping people from practicing their religion however they choose, not to stop religious beliefs from shaping policies. The term "separation of church and state" isn't even in the Constitution.
When I was in grade school, I had a problem with a bully. I was nice, then I ignored him. It didn't get better, it got worse. Finally I bloodied his nose. It got better immediately. We face the same problem with radical Islamic terrorists, we can't make it better by being nice.
A1. Because we couldn't ignore the bully any longer.
A2. We didn't punch them in the nose soon enough. Seven years of no terrorist planes in buildings is better.
Q3. What should we do? (I know, strawman, blah blah)
A3. Fight like we mean it. When the safety and freedom of me and mine is on the line, I want someone who knows to that to prevent war, you salt the ground.
President Clinton was impeached by the House, but not by the Senate. So, we have recent history showing that impeachment doesn't end the effective term of a president.
I'm not exactly a Clinton fan, and I'm opposed to lying under oath, so despite my quiet opinion that it was a farce from the beginning, I believed he should have been impeached. If you get to the point where you've convicted the sitting president of lying under oath, regardless of the reasons, impeachment makes sense. I remember asking my favorite right wing pundit at the time, what happens if he is impeached by the Republican majority house but not by the majority Democratic senate? He told me that senators have a higher oath than the house and so would feel compelled to uphold it regardless of political affiliation. It did wonders for my faith in my country to hear that the senate would do their job even when it was against their party's political interest.
Looking back to the day they announced that Clinton was not impeached by the senate, I think that was the day that cynicism finally blotted out almost all the last few rays of idealism in my soul. The last few were crushed later when I read about the votes of the Republicans in congress on pork barrel spending. I voted for some of those clowns because I believe in fiscal conservatism. Won't happen again.
(Note: I may still vote for Republican or not, but it won't be because I think they will spend less. I already voted this election, and for the first time in my life "threw my vote away" with third party votes. I decided that some battles were worth fighting even when you expect to lose.)
Everything in its place. I typically allow sites permanently if I recognize them to be legitimate and likely to be free of malicious content. There are quite a few though that I allow temporarily because I expect them to be benign, but I don't know them well enough to know that they'll still be reliable the next time I visit. For the most part that allows me a rich browsing experience without any hassle and what hassle I do experience is minor and a small trade for the slight security increase. Where it really pays off is when I'm searching and following links for obscure, virus and hacking topics where I know there is a decent chance I will visit sites that are malicious. It is on the sites that I know I can't trust, and those I have no reason to trust, that I really appreciate NoScript.
I guess you could be right, after all, while I'm from the area of some of the biggest ranches in the US, they do have fences around them, making them "pastures" rather than "on the range." Ranch hands on the King ranch, the Wagoneer, and Four Sixes refer to pastures, and sometimes use exactly the same techniques I described, but I guess they only "claim to know cattle."
You'd be hard pressed to find cattle anywhere in the US intentionally running free where there is no fence, but those very few cattle must be what this is about. All those ranchers, the ones responsible for practically all of the beef cattle raised in the country, are completely outside the scope of this discussion.
I've noticed that sarcasm tends to be mistaken for sincerity, so let me be clear: You're an idiot for correcting me when you don't know what you're talking about. If you think that the electronics described don't apply to cattle who are in fenced areas, you're an even bigger idiot.
Both of my grandfathers raised beef cattle and my father still does. Normally my father (and his father before him) would drive into a pasture where they wanted to gather the cattle, honk the horn for a few minutes and then lay a line of feed. The cattle come to the sound of a horn where they're counted as they line up and eat. This makes it easy to tell if any have been left behind by the herd (injured or strayed) or have left the herd to give birth. I've seen much the same thing from my other grandfather, but there was a long stretch of time when his pickup horn didn't work and he would literally call them in with his voice.
These days my parents don't enjoy the rough lifestyle as much as they did when I was growing up. In those days we would gather the herds with horses, herding them into the pen. These days, they feed the cattle in the corrals a few times over weeks leading up to times when we need to pen them, and on the days when we need them penned, they close the gate after all the cattle trot into the pens.
The price tag on this bit of equipment sounds pretty high, but consider that you can get a phone now that has more processing power than most government computers twenty years ago for about $100 (or $20 used.) Lets say that that price: $100, is our regularly adoptable technology rate, and assume prices are adjusted to today's values. Consider that these should have a lifetime of about five years, which takes the price to $20/yr. Then assume that you put one of these on every fifth cow, which takes the average price down to $4/yr/cow.
I suspect this tech is more geek motivated than rancher motivated and over complex due to it. A very simplistic device will have one low tone and a varying pitch between two others, plus a built in compass and tracking utility. You program your hand held master to send pulses rising in tone as the cattle turn toward the desired location, increasing in beep frequency as they move toward the goal and switching to a low hum when they reach the desired point.
With the device described, you program in a location near the herd the first couple times and feed them there. After a while, you feed further away so that they get used to following the audible cues. The stop signal comes into play so that you can gather several smaller groups together by having them wait at a location before continuing to the final goal. The rancher will need a couple months to get the herd trained the first time, then just a few reminders throughout the season to keep the training established. Since most ranchers feed regularly anyway, this would not be an undue cost or difficulty. After five years or so, you would have a well trained herd of cattle at a cost of $5/cow annually (factoring in a mild service and battery upkeep fee.) I think that most ranchers would go for that cost, and many would get by with far fewer than one in five cattle needing the tracking device.
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The "How?" portion is an important question. The article mentions getting access to someone's hard drive, which is a very specific form of hacking. They specifically mention sending a malware email attachment and using keyloggers (hardware/software is not clear.)
The method really does make a very significant difference. If the malware email is the primary method then that limits successful hacks to those with hopelessly outdated email clients and people who open attachments that they shouldn't. Effectively this becomes a way to catch the most careless of criminals. Lets take an example, Mr. Dolt. Mr. Dolt is running an illegal gambling ring and he has to be 1.) Silly enough to use his computer to discuss it or keep records 2.) Using it in an insecure way, such as Administrator for everything 3.) Using an insecure email approach, old Outlook or clicking DancingBaby.pif from whomever sends it 4.) Using a targetable OS, Windows.
If all those things happen, then the criminal investigation may go somewhere. This makes it mostly useful as a spam type approach. They might set up a chat-bot for example and have it ask 500,000 users if they know where "he" can find some action on the next race, then spam out the malware to all responders. As with any spam system, the rate of return can be pretty low and still seem profitable, 0.15% in this example would give a headline like "Cyber-Police squad arrests 750 criminals."
In a slightly more paranoid scenario the police target 1000 suspected criminals and compromise all of those using Windows with a super script kiddie type toolbox composed of deliberately undisclosed backdoor hacks. The rate of success would be higher for compromise, say 95%, and they are able to monitor email and successfully garner a 10% successful rate of condemning evidence. This still leads to 85 successful arrests and a nice headline or two.
Then there is tinfoil-hat type paranoid where the police target 5,000,000,000 users without any reason, have a script break into all of them that it can and do a search for any probable cause type stuff, then have the resulting list be provided by informants so that they can have a good reason to investigate anybody that turns up.
Best reasonable defense against being incriminated in this manner: Use an OS that is less likely to be easy to break into (BSD, Linux) and don't keep incriminating stuff on your computer.
Disclaimer: Remember that I'm guessing based on information that may have been reported less than accurately which was in turn based on deliberate misinformation.
Not really, not for me anyway. Developers who make software which is easy to use get paid better than those who don't, so my expectations are usually fulfilled.
EditPlus and Winzip are great examples. There are dozens of text editors and compression tools, many free, but people still pay for the ones that are easy to use.
My ego may know few bounds (check my previous posts) and you may enjoy a feeling of superiority (I checked your previous posts) from learning complex software, but most people would rather get a job done easily than feed their superiority complex and they vote with their wallets.
I've developed a little in C and Java, but when it comes time to do something quick, I use perl, bash and php. I've done LFS and Gentoo from Stage 1, but when I want a quick gui, I boot Slax. Objectively I can see that my programs are better with more complex languages and my system is faster and more efficient when custom built, but 95% of the time, I choose easy.
Absofrickinloutly! People get used to using the tools that they've painstakingly learned over the years and think "Hey, I rock! More people should be like me." Okay, fine, I can agree that a good set of platform independent skills are useful, but it is a philosophy, not a solution to a specific problem.
When I sit down on an unfamiliar machine, I expect to be able to do some things without having to consult a help file. The pointer moves up when I move the mouse toward the back of the desk, it doesn't have to be that way but it makes it easier to start using it.
User friendly means that I can guess how to get what I want. I love vim (and tolerate vi) but that doesn't mean I want to edit a text file every time I want to do something. My servers may not have gui's but when I sit down to browse the web, I don't want to need to configure a text file for my browser to work within normal ranges.
If your program doesn't do what people need it to do and they have difficulty fixing it, then it is your fault and not theirs. I'm looking at you Firefox! Opera, Konqueror and Firefox 2 show pictures correctly, but not FF3 and they say it is the fault of the X config, it is not a bug. Bull.
There is no File menu in Office 2007? What kind of crack smoke fest led tot hat brilliant decision? Do you know how many people have needed me to point it out to them weeks, WEEKS! after upgrading from Office 2003?
Make your program do these things in this order:
The surest way to appeal to a market is to target people who are likely to be interested. Can you really think of anything more likely to appeal to the Linux demographic?
This sounds like a Gentoo or LFS reference. That's really the problem with trying to cram Linux into the "Hi. I'm an OS" shtick. I think my original scenario fits for OpenSuse, Mandriva or Ubuntu, but what about all the other distros? I guess it depends on who is paying the piper.
Remember all the PCs on their way to tech support? If it were just a general Linux push, and you wanted to give all the distros a representative, you'd need something like a dating site.
The list could go on and on. This would make a great flash brochure type website actually. You would want something like Youtube's related videos list with just the distro logos, but when you click on one it brings up the logo for one second then switches to a model with a tagline and then a ten second interview type format where the model is explaining what kind of personality she (as the distro) has and built in links to the distro main page and a three minute interview which would discuss the distro in detail. The video advertisement could be nothing more elaborate than showing a screen with the logos and a couple banner ads for Mac and Windows which are promptly disappeared from then firefox browser by enabling Adblock Plus (most Windows users would be shocked to see that alone,) then clicking on three or four of the logos for the ten second summaries then the phrase "What are you looking for?" in white letters on black screen. (Which I think would make a decent slogan for the entire campaign.)
Little RED riding hood, get it? I crack myself up.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
A man walks to a corner and is solicited by two ladies of the evening.
(Windows) [dressed in fishnet and miniskirt] - "Wanna have a good time baby? I'm very popular, I do _all_ the fun things. [pause] I'm cheap."
(Mac) [catholic schoolgirl look with heavy makeup] - "Take me sweetie! I'm fun too and I'm cuter! [giggle, then dead serious] Not cheap."
[Mac and Windows get into a hair pulling fight while Marketing, old leering suited man, pulls up a jello filled wading pool.]
(Linux) [A girl next door type walks up] "Hi again, wanna grab dinner, [pause] I'm buying."
(Man) "Sure. Wait, you're buying? Do you expect to get paid?"
(Linux) "No, it might be nice if you buy some time, but that's up to you.
(Man) Dutch?
At the beginning of last year, I switched to Vista along with a massively more powerful workstation. The upgrade in machine more than made up for the Vista bloat, so for me it was a minor improvement in responsiveness. My job requires me to regularly log into a variety of workstations, the majority of them Server 2003, but almost all of the others running XP. Every single day I get to compare XP to Vista. My evaluation could move us to adopting Vista, but I cannot recommend it. Vista is simply too difficult to get to work with some of our required applications for us to transition yet. I use it, but supporting our average user in using it would still significantly increase my workload, though it will be unavoidable at some point, since we will probably make the jump direct from XP to Windows 7. I dread the day that all my carefully scripted registry edits will no longer be viable. Still, I like Vista.
There is nothing that makes Vista really better than XP, but there are a few nice creature comforts:
With XP the Alt+Tab combo brings up a list of icons for the applications you're running, and I tend to have around a couple dozen open when I'm really busy. First off is the huge benefit of being able to see more of them at a time. In XP I'd sometimes have to scroll for a while to find the one I wanted, but in Vista I almost never have more than I can see. The icons in Vista are really little preview windows which show a thumbnail of the applications as they are running. So if the shared desktop session is active, I can see it happening. If I want to click on a thumbnail with my mouse, that works. I can use the up and down arrows to navigate the table of thumbnails. The task control is the one feature that I would really miss if I switched back to XP.
Sometime in my lifetime I hope to own a cell phone complete with high quality projector and surround sound and with a very high speed connection to a bittorrent successor which allows me to effectively stream any movies I can download. Therefore, all my movies should be uploaded to the cloud for future retrieval.
Pity I'm not brave enough to try it and further pity I don't have enough money to have a bevy of lawyers to protect my rights to do so.
Abiding by the law is important to me, and honestly I believe my backup proposal here would be illegal. I believe the law will change eventually however, for the better. Eventually I believe that world opinion will shift toward the idea that value comes from service, not ideas alone. Providing ideas is itself a service, as is moving those ideas to a usable format. In my utopian future there will be no patents, but there will be highly paid idea generators, wealthy producers and comfortably well compensated delivery providers, but they won't make money from protecting their markets, but rather from doing a better job than their competitors. Open source is the beginning of this shift in the digital world; I hope that the transition is gentle and that I live long enough to see it come to fruition.
I was watching cops (not a regular viewer but was being sociable) and saw a cop search a car claiming a "furtive gesture" as probable cause. I could hardly believe it, here was a guy who knew he was being filmed who apparently decided that showing his ability to get around the need for a warrant was going to be taken as a good thing by viewers. What sticks with me isn't the injustice of it all, it was that a potential jury of peers sitting around watching TV seemed to support the action.
Bravo!!!
I actually decided not to post and didn't realize I had until I noticed an unexpected reply. I thought it too over the top and likely to irritate rather than entertain, but, well... clicky is as clicky does right?
These days I'm more of a Dallas person, but kudos for taking the time to look me up. If timing and opportunity arise, remind me and I'll be glad to spot you a beer. (Think of it as a government type loan, repaid when and if you ever feel like it.)
I'm afraid that you're somewhat right about the TEA, but while I'm no expert, I wouldn't say that the short-sighted teacher from TFA represents even a majority. To tell the truth, I was tempted to see if I could get in touch and offer to educate and mediate. Sadly, I've found that a little understanding and empathy don't change the mind of a lot of people and rather suspect she is one of those who wouldn't appreciate the effort.
Don't forget armed, mounted and blood thirsty. We Texans like our guns, horses and executions. Oh yeah, and feuds, don't forget feuds!
On a totally unrelated note, you're from Tampa right?
Disclaimer: No, this is not a death threat, it is humor. To those of you with a good sense of humor, I apologize for wasting your time stating what should be obvious.
As I use it, it runs from RAM.
Agreed, now to move on to a broader subject: where does this all lead?
I think that FOSS and particularly GPL do something extremely valuable for society, it forces innovation. FOSS is a lever that changes the market from one where ideas are sold over and over into one where services are sold until they are no longer valuable. Closed source software used to be the only game in town, but with FOSS alternatives, it becomes a race to improve enough to still provide value.
Take OS virtualization as an example. MS Virtual Server 2005, Hyper-V, VMWare Player and Server are all free and solidly develop(ed/ing) products. I don't think that any of them would be free however, if it weren't for the pressure that Suse and RedHat applied to the market when they started offering Xen based virtualization in order to make their own systems more attractive. Xen by itself didn't make much in the way of money, but it both gave leverage and increased value to FOSS based solutions and changed the value of CSS similar solutions.
FOSS comes at a price and value to everyone. The cost is that it makes CSS without innovation less valuable, but the value is that it forces companies to innovate or lose profits. In my opinion, the greatest value of FOSS is that it makes innovation and service more valuable in a competitive market.
I might quibble on details, but overall you're exactly right. The problem with a five sentence business plan is that it doesn't really provide enough detail to determine things like goals, tactics and marketing.
Zabbix makes money by training people and servicing a product, the development and maintenance of FOSS are crucial and beneficial, but not profitable alone. NB uses and, to quibble, contributes to FOSS, but they do it in order to provide a service for which they can charge. CodeWeavers contribute in a variety of ways to FOSS, but they do it in order to have a better product to sell. RedHat and Novell do development and make significant contributions to FOSS, but they do it in order to make their services and support attractive enough to be marketable. Third Brigade's Ossec is an outstandingly useful FOSS product, but the income generated comes from support. Sun, though I hesitate to use them as an example, do significant development and maintenance on a variety of products but if they ever manage to make a buck from it, it will be because they sell their bundle of products as a whole, not directly because of what they've given away.
The whole point of FOSS as part of a strategy to generate income is to have something that people want to use and trust. FOSS is valuable because it can be thoroughly tested by a million monkeys and improved by anyone who has a need. Giving away software makes it a viable option for people who might not try it otherwise and when they do have money to spend, there is a tendency to buy from the companies that make it possible for you to do a better job with things you already know and trust.
In the end, I must agree that people get income by exchanging a service of some kind for payment, not by offering service for free. The part I wanted to highlight is that they can develop and contribute to FOSS for the good of many as a part of their strategy to make money. FOSS isn't a business plan, but it can be a part of a business plan.
Except that you have to pay for development and support of the OSS, with the payoff of being able to reap the benefits of community contribution toward it. So you can't ignore the OSS development and support cost as part of your business model.
We use Network Box (network-box.com) and they do perimeter virus scanning, IDS/IDP, firewalls for internal and external systems including our DMZ, VPNs to secure communications between ourselves and three other vendors and for our staff, feedback, smtp relay and stand in with anti-virus scanning, traffic analysis, policy filtering and reporting for all of that. They do this for about one tenth the cost of an employee. Pretty much everything they're using is OSS, but the care and feeding and expertise is beyond our budget to handle in house. I don't know if I can provide a second example, I suspect we could handle any two of those tasks without requiring additional staff, but not all of it and probably not as well.
I hesitated to use Zabbix as an example because I haven't decided whether or not to pay them yet, but I have used their product and recognize the need for significant training to use it more effectively. We currently use other products for most of the functionality but not as effectively as Zabbix could provide it if I had trained to configure it.
The point of the closed software collusion system is not that it is an FLOSS model, but a way to generate income which couldn't be done as well without a FLOSS contribution. No argument there, I actually think your outline is beautiful except it ignores the ongoing development cost of the FLOSS portion.
Odd, I can think how people are making your equation work with varying choices for step 4.
4) Make it do a complex task that requires skilled labor you provide cheaper than training staff to handle it internally
This works for several companies, a couple of which we pay where I work. The task of consolidating threat profiles, keeping them current, providing solid feedback and rapid response as well as managing secure channels with a variety of companies is something our company could hire a couple full time employees to manage. Rather than be out the cost of staff, we hire an outside vendor who does it very well at a fraction of the expense.
4) Build a small closed source application that utilizes the open source software. We use software built to work with a MySQL database system. The tasks done by the configuration, maintenance and integration are within the reach of a moderately talented programmer, but they are able to do it for hundreds of clients who all benefit from solid testing, research and experience of a few experienced and skilled developers who also contribute back to the open source system. This improves MySQL for anyone who cares to use it, but at the same time benefits the company who own the closed source application utilizing it. (For this example the model has to change step 1 to "Promote and contribute to a really cool product.") This is similar to the business model for Crossover Office where you pay for the expertise that has gone into the development of a product that does nothing you couldn't manage by hiring talented developers but for a price that makes sense for small business.
4) Make your staff the source for training required to manage a complex system. Zabbix is an example of this type of product. You can download and work on Zabbix for free, but it is complex enough that for significant implementation, you really need to get solid training, and that will cost you.
Our core transactional system in fact, would be a great example except that it is a closed source system. The software is good, but there is plenty of similar software that we could use. What we really pay for is the ongoing development, support and integration they offer. They protect themselves from competition by keeping it closed, allowing them to charge a higher fee, but if they were to manage a transition to open source they could potentially drop their development costs significantly, increase market penetration and undercut their competitors while still maintaining the same profits. They would have to face the risk that another company could do a better job pricing or servicing their current customers with the same software, however, and I honestly don't believe they have enough talent in programming, support and management to make it worth the gamble.
To disagree with all your points would require a lot more clarification that I have to go on, but I do disagree with your use of the term religion and whether the beliefs rather than the statements of belief matter.
Religion is a general term that refers to a set of beliefs and practices, which may include having spiritual beliefs or faith in something bigger than yourself. Having faith is also generic, however, and has to do with trusting rather than believing. Both terms are too generic to condemn or condone alone. Arguing that "People who have religion don't have faith; they just have religion" is an exercise in semantic debate rather than addressing the real points.
Based on his statements, Obama does not hold the same beliefs as the majority of those who call themselves Evangelical Christians. Very few would say the same for McCain.
What someone says they believe isn't as important as what they actually believe, because while statements may convince enough voters to get someone elected, they don't necessarily reflect what someone will do after they are elected. To take a couple of examples:
Obama questions which parts of the Bible should shape public policy by pointing to Leviticus as "suggests slavery is okay" when most Evangelicals would view the same book as dealing with those in authority under non-applicable Old Testament law and not as an endorsement of slavery at all. If he disagrees with the majority of Evangelicals on that, questioning what he believes about the rest of the Bible is a legitimate issue for many, particularly where it concerns the central text of their belief and what legislation he might support, justices he might appoint and what he might veto
In the end, it is the beliefs of the candidates that are absolutely critical to voters, rather than the statements they make for the sake of getting power. Disputing based on terminology, particularly religion as opposed to faith, does not further the discussion.
Christian ideology is somewhat of a mixed bag. For your examples, the answers would be:
The Constitution does not separate church from state the way people think it does. You should research this for yourself, because you'd never believe it unless you do. The reason Congress begins session with a prayer, the reason for the words "endowed by their Creator" and "in God we trust" is directly tied to this. The Constitution's actual statements are to prevent the state from stopping people from practicing their religion however they choose, not to stop religious beliefs from shaping policies. The term "separation of church and state" isn't even in the Constitution.
When I was in grade school, I had a problem with a bully. I was nice, then I ignored him. It didn't get better, it got worse. Finally I bloodied his nose. It got better immediately. We face the same problem with radical Islamic terrorists, we can't make it better by being nice.
A1. Because we couldn't ignore the bully any longer.
A2. We didn't punch them in the nose soon enough. Seven years of no terrorist planes in buildings is better.
Q3. What should we do? (I know, strawman, blah blah)
A3. Fight like we mean it. When the safety and freedom of me and mine is on the line, I want someone who knows to that to prevent war, you salt the ground.
President Clinton was impeached by the House, but not by the Senate. So, we have recent history showing that impeachment doesn't end the effective term of a president.
I'm not exactly a Clinton fan, and I'm opposed to lying under oath, so despite my quiet opinion that it was a farce from the beginning, I believed he should have been impeached. If you get to the point where you've convicted the sitting president of lying under oath, regardless of the reasons, impeachment makes sense. I remember asking my favorite right wing pundit at the time, what happens if he is impeached by the Republican majority house but not by the majority Democratic senate? He told me that senators have a higher oath than the house and so would feel compelled to uphold it regardless of political affiliation. It did wonders for my faith in my country to hear that the senate would do their job even when it was against their party's political interest.
Looking back to the day they announced that Clinton was not impeached by the senate, I think that was the day that cynicism finally blotted out almost all the last few rays of idealism in my soul. The last few were crushed later when I read about the votes of the Republicans in congress on pork barrel spending. I voted for some of those clowns because I believe in fiscal conservatism. Won't happen again.
(Note: I may still vote for Republican or not, but it won't be because I think they will spend less. I already voted this election, and for the first time in my life "threw my vote away" with third party votes. I decided that some battles were worth fighting even when you expect to lose.)
Everything in its place. I typically allow sites permanently if I recognize them to be legitimate and likely to be free of malicious content. There are quite a few though that I allow temporarily because I expect them to be benign, but I don't know them well enough to know that they'll still be reliable the next time I visit. For the most part that allows me a rich browsing experience without any hassle and what hassle I do experience is minor and a small trade for the slight security increase. Where it really pays off is when I'm searching and following links for obscure, virus and hacking topics where I know there is a decent chance I will visit sites that are malicious. It is on the sites that I know I can't trust, and those I have no reason to trust, that I really appreciate NoScript.
I guess you could be right, after all, while I'm from the area of some of the biggest ranches in the US, they do have fences around them, making them "pastures" rather than "on the range." Ranch hands on the King ranch, the Wagoneer, and Four Sixes refer to pastures, and sometimes use exactly the same techniques I described, but I guess they only "claim to know cattle."
You'd be hard pressed to find cattle anywhere in the US intentionally running free where there is no fence, but those very few cattle must be what this is about. All those ranchers, the ones responsible for practically all of the beef cattle raised in the country, are completely outside the scope of this discussion.
I've noticed that sarcasm tends to be mistaken for sincerity, so let me be clear: You're an idiot for correcting me when you don't know what you're talking about. If you think that the electronics described don't apply to cattle who are in fenced areas, you're an even bigger idiot.
Both of my grandfathers raised beef cattle and my father still does. Normally my father (and his father before him) would drive into a pasture where they wanted to gather the cattle, honk the horn for a few minutes and then lay a line of feed. The cattle come to the sound of a horn where they're counted as they line up and eat. This makes it easy to tell if any have been left behind by the herd (injured or strayed) or have left the herd to give birth. I've seen much the same thing from my other grandfather, but there was a long stretch of time when his pickup horn didn't work and he would literally call them in with his voice.
These days my parents don't enjoy the rough lifestyle as much as they did when I was growing up. In those days we would gather the herds with horses, herding them into the pen. These days, they feed the cattle in the corrals a few times over weeks leading up to times when we need to pen them, and on the days when we need them penned, they close the gate after all the cattle trot into the pens.
The price tag on this bit of equipment sounds pretty high, but consider that you can get a phone now that has more processing power than most government computers twenty years ago for about $100 (or $20 used.) Lets say that that price: $100, is our regularly adoptable technology rate, and assume prices are adjusted to today's values. Consider that these should have a lifetime of about five years, which takes the price to $20/yr. Then assume that you put one of these on every fifth cow, which takes the average price down to $4/yr/cow.
I suspect this tech is more geek motivated than rancher motivated and over complex due to it. A very simplistic device will have one low tone and a varying pitch between two others, plus a built in compass and tracking utility. You program your hand held master to send pulses rising in tone as the cattle turn toward the desired location, increasing in beep frequency as they move toward the goal and switching to a low hum when they reach the desired point.
With the device described, you program in a location near the herd the first couple times and feed them there. After a while, you feed further away so that they get used to following the audible cues. The stop signal comes into play so that you can gather several smaller groups together by having them wait at a location before continuing to the final goal. The rancher will need a couple months to get the herd trained the first time, then just a few reminders throughout the season to keep the training established. Since most ranchers feed regularly anyway, this would not be an undue cost or difficulty. After five years or so, you would have a well trained herd of cattle at a cost of $5/cow annually (factoring in a mild service and battery upkeep fee.) I think that most ranchers would go for that cost, and many would get by with far fewer than one in five cattle needing the tracking device.