Hmmm...The link is dead, but does not appear to be Slashdotted as it responses quickly to a ping. Is this a case of dynamic cencorship in action?
More seriously, given the trend towards totalitarianism here in the U.S. I won't be surprised when this sort of thing begins here. After all, what better way to control a population than to deprive the people of information, particularly information that reflects badly on the government? Anyone want to start a pool about when this begins here in the U.S.?
I absolutely agree with your comments, particularly about the need to somehow get the majority of the American people to be concerned about the loss of their liberties. The problem, as always with this sort of educational project, is: how does one accomplish it? Spending time writing comments for Slashdot is one way. There are a lot of misguided souls on this site, a minority thankfully, who think that the loss of civil liberty is nothing to get concerned about because President Bush "is a good man" or he's "just keeping us safe" and they need to be disabused of those notions. The first of these responses points out how effective our government is at propaganda, while the second betrays a fundamental mistake in thinking about the true nature of freedom. Both responses can be traced to the government's educational system, which fails to teach students how to think, besides not teaching them how to read, write, and do math. The recent actions of the new dictator in the White House are the result of decades of dereliction of their duties as citizens by the majority of Americans.
How does one get the idea that freedom is fundamental to being an American across to Americans whose biggest concern seems to be who gets kicked off the island next? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the Bush administration is taking advantage of trends that have been developing in our society for decades to take the final steps needed to convert this nation into a fascist police-state. They've taken advantage of the fact that most Americans believe that "rights" are something the government gives them - such as the "right to drive a car" or the "right to an unemployment check" or the "right to decent housing". They fail to understand that the inalienable rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence are natural Rights, inherent in simply being a human as opposed to being a cow. I dare say that the vast majority of Americans could not define the difference between those who believe in Positivist rights and those who understand that Natural rights are the ones that count.
How do we change this? Figuring that out, as you rightly note, needs to be the focus of our efforts now that the government has effectively abolished the Constitution and the civil judiciary to replace them with the arbitrary rule of men instead of the dispassionate rule of law. Marching in the streets might be a start, but unless massive popular support is gained quickly, the fascist in the White House will merely declare that such actions provide aid and comfort to the enemy and that anyone who takes part in them will automatically be named as an unlawful enemy combatant. How many people are going to be willing to continue public dissent once a few of them disappear never to be heard from again, unless it's in a government announcement that the military tribunals handling the cases have decided that death was an appropriate penalty and that, "in the interests of justice", the sentences have already been carried out? The problem, once a police-state gets established, as the complacent fools in this country have allowed to happen, the government is able to rapidly infect the majority of the people with the fear of "doing something the government wouldn't like" and thereby get them to muzzle themselves, thus making the government's job of repressing dissent easier. In order to further increase the police powers of the State the next step will be the repeal of the posse comitatus laws which currently prohibit the use of the military in civilian police roles. Though I suspect that most people have forgotten, it wasn't a year ago that President Bush asked that this very thing be done to make it easier for the government to "secure our border with Mexico". I figure six months, tops, before that little impediment to government power is removed.
If we are going to stop this government it must be done soon, before the police-state mindset takes real root in most of our fellow citizens. After the Republicans steal the upcoming e
Why is this news? THe Bush administration has been acting in extra-legal and unconstitutional ways since 9/11/2001. Why should they stop? The majority of the American people obviously care more about being kept "safe" from supposed terrorists than they do about losing their civil liberties; after all, "No one that I know, from personal acquaintance, to be innocent has been arrested by the Bush administration". That line was actually written to me, by someone whose opinion I used to respect, by way of questioning why I expressed concern and outrage over G.W. Bush's grab for dictatorial power. So long as that sort of opinion prevails and it will, because most Americans have no idea what the difference between Natural Law rights and Positivist Law rights is, there will be no change in government policy. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, "How many divisions does Chief Justice Roberts have?"
I asked the rhetorical question "Why is this news?" because anyone who expects that the Bush administration will respect the ruling of any court is in for a shock. They've already set the precedent with last week's passage of the "Military Commissions Act of 2006"; you know, that's the one that not only makes G.W.'s prior military tribunals legal, but goes several steps further in that the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" is now (quoting from the Act itself):
948a. Definitions In this chapter: (1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.(A) The term unlawful enemy combatant means (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."
Notice how this language does not exclude the possibility of designating American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants". Note further how the power of determining who is an unlawful enemy combatant rests solely with "a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense." and that there is no requirement that such findings be based on meeting any part of the defintion given in part (i), e.g., the President can declare anyone he wishes to be an enemy of the State. There is no recourse to the criminal justice system to appeal any such ruling, nor are writs of habeus corpus allowed, nor are civilian defense attorneys to be part of any Military Tribunal process, nor does the defendant any longer have the privilege of invoking his 5th Amendment right agains self-incrimination. Other civil liberties are also trampled upon by this act, including the right to a speedy trial and the right to examine the evidence against one. Again, from the Act itself: (these refer to parts of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which are not to apply to "unlawful enemy combatants")
(d) INAPPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN PROVISIONS.(1) The following provisions of this title shall not apply to trial by military commission under this chapter: (A) Section 810 (article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to speedy trial, including any rule of courts martial relating to speedy trial. (B) Sections 831(a), (b), and (d) (articles 31(a), (b), and (d) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to compulsory self-incrimination. (C) Section 832 (article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to pretrial investigation. (2) Other provisions of chapter 47 of this title shall apply to trial by military commission under this chapter only to the extent provided by this chapter."
The Act further specifies that the Geneva Convention may not b
I concur with your concerns over this technology. It seems to me that this could very easily be a beta-test for software that the government will then begin to use to search through the mass of information that that the NSA collects every day on millions of Americans. One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion is an old intelligence adage that goes basically like this, "You need to base your threat analyses on capabilities not intentions." So, from a threat to civil liberties viewpoint, this program represents a potential huge step forward in the ability of the U.S. Government to monitor the communications of its citizens and automatically flag anything that "looks like a threat". When one then adds the law that Congress just passed concerning who may be declared an "illegal enemy combatant" (which now includes U.S. citizens) our government now has the capability to monitor our email or other electronic communication, analyse it with software which no one will know anything about regarding false-positive rates, failure modes, etc., then use that analysis to declare a citizen to be a "threat" and thus an "illegal enemy combatant", then arrest that person, strip them of their civil liberties, and turn them over to the gentle care of military tribunals which may, at the discretion of the tribunal judge, allow the use of "coerced self-incriminatory testimony". Maybe I'm just paranoid, but this sounds an awful lot like Orwell's description of the the functions of the "Thought Police" in "1984".
I absolutely agree with you on this. It's the parent's responsibility to make sure that their children aren't doing things they don't wnat them to do. The last thing that we need here is yet another government program, which has got to be the next proposal coming down the pike, to "regulate" what minors can view on-line. But, as you mentioned, this is an election year and we're bound to hear idiotic proposals for 'curing this problem" from the same bunch of bozos that brought you the wonderfully insightful comments about "Net Neutrality" a couple of months ago. It's time that people start taking some responsibilty for not only their actions, but those of any minor children they may have. If parents don't have the time to talk to their children perhaps they need to re-examine their priorities in life. I was brought up to believe that raising children was the most important thing in life once you'd brought them into the world. This acceptance of the excuse of too many parents that" I don't have the time" to watch over and educate their children is just another symptom of the whole "blame someone else when bad things happen" syndrome that our society suffers from. Spying on your children because its easier than sitting them down and talking to them only sets a bad example and encourages the children to simply bypass whatever electronic spies you put in place and not even ask "Why" you may have put something like that on their PC.
I agree. I've joined the Libertarians not only because they don't do calls of this sort, but also because I firmly believe that it's time to get government off our backs. However, that's kind of beside the point here.
A good friend of mine turns these calls into what he terms the "How Long can I String Them Along Game" in which the goal is to see how long you can keep the idiot making the call on the line. The technique works like this:
Caller: Hi, I'm calling in regard to Senator Joe Congresscritter's campaign. Do you have a few moments to discuss the very important issues that Senator Congresscritter believes need to be addressed by the government?
Callee: Sure. I'd love to discuss those issues. Can you hold on for a minute, you caught me preparing dinner and I've got to get something out of the oven?
Caller: OK.
Callee: (goes off and does things he wants for 3 to 5 minutes then returns) Sorry, now where were we? Oh, right, you want to talk about politics.
Caller: Yes, Senator Congresscritter is very concerned about the future of this great nation of ours and wants you to know that he's worried about the future of Social Security. In fact, he has put together a plan for...
Callee: Oh, just a moment...my cat needs to go out (goes away and does other things for 3 to 5 minutes...comes back) Now, about Social Security...
This process is repeated for however long it takes for the telelmarketing idiot to realize that he's being played. Mark's record is somewhere around an hour now, though I think that was with a commercial telemarketer, for whom this game is also appropriate. Don't get annoyed...get even.
You left out "salt the ground on which he lived". We wouldn't want any trace to remain, not even weeds.
Although this reply is light-hearted I think the parent is right on. It's time that we believers in F/OSS show our strength by pursuing and punishing all those involved in this case who supported SCO and their pack of lies and lawyers. If enough of us boycott the companies that bought "Linux licences" (and tell them why we're doing so) it could make anyone else thinking about filing a lawsuit think twice. Also, if enough of us make it a point to tell the world about Laura Didio's (and other so-called "pundits") part in all this they may find their reputations sliding down into the muck where they belong. Just be polite, avoid ad hominem arguments, and make sure you've got your facts straight when presenting your arguments.
The problem is that this process can't stop with immigrants. If the idea is to make it possible for employers to tell if the person they want to hire is legal or for INS to tell the same thing, then the lack of an ID chip will leave one in a non-verifiable condition. Obviously, the government can't have that, after all that non-chipped person may be a "terrorist". Thus, sooner rather than later, everyone who has a legal right to be in this country will be required to get "chipped" and lack of a chip will be taken as de facto evidence of illegal activity of some sort. This idea needs to be squashed ASAP and not quietly either, lest it be snuck back in to the immigration debate later on. Allowing this step to be taken is merely letting the camel get most of the way into the tent and soon our children will be "chipped" at birth.
Not a bad idea, but the idea of the Internet, IMHO, is to avoid government regulations entirely, in so far as that's possible in our regulation-mad society. However, what really bothers me about this whole discussion is that we've allowed the telecoms to spread the Big Lie(tm) that "we don't make any money from providing the bandwidth to ISPs, content providers, etc.". That's so much bushwa: they don't provide the network for free folks. Everybody is paying for a piece of it in some way: some of the money you pay your ISP goes to the telecoms for Internet access, the money those of us that use DSL pay goes mainly to support network costs and provide a profit, any of the big "content-providers" (a term I despise, but that's not the issue here) that have their own OC3 lines certainly pay for them and the telecoms make a profit from those fees.
It's time that those of us who oppose the whole "tiered Internet" idea start pointing these things out at every opportunity. Write your Congresscritters and enlighten them as to the fraud that the telecoms are trying to pull off. They want tiered service, instead of operating more-or-less as "common carriers" simply because they want more money. It's that simple and every Congresscritter that votes to allow the telecoms to institute tiered pricing is voting to take money directly from your pocket and give it to the telecoms. I'm not against anyone making an honest profit, but I do object to outright government-abetted plundering operations.
Aside from the fact that this is more MS FUD I think that it's high time the F/OSS community started acting as though what MS has to say about us, the F/OSS movement, and the products we turn out doesn't matter. I think that we've been around long enough and have put together a track-record that MS can only envy to allow us to not be driven by what MS says. MS is under extreme pressure trying to figure out how to deal with F/OSS and have yet to come up with an effective strategy. Thus, they are reduced to calling us names and spreading lies about the movement and the software we produce. Stooping to ad hominem attacks is the last step before losing the battle entirely.
Anyone who has been in IT for more than five years is well aware of F/OSS, whether they currently use it or not. Even the most pointy-haired of CIOs, CTOs, etc. know the inroads our products have made into the data center. That battle seems to be pretty well over with more and more companies, including SMBs, making the switch to F/OSS OSes and server products. The debate is moving to whether or not Linux or BSD is "ready for the desktop". Given the minimum hardware requirements for MS Vista it would surprise me if a lot of businesses didn't start giving the various F/OSS desktops some serious testing if not outright adoption. I think that this will be especially true after the release of Vista and the same old security holes start popping up again.
The F/OSS community is on the verge of winning the war against MS. This is especially true overseas. More and more governments and businesses in Europe, Africa, and Asia are making the migration from MS products to those of the F/OSS world. This process will continue to accelerate and, as it does, the people who use F/OSS software at work will become increasingly willing to try it at home. Once F/OSS gets out of the office and into the home MS will begin to weaken more rapidly and will be forced to change and accept that F/OSS software is a major force in the IT world or they'll go the way of other companies that haven't been able or willing to change with the times: straight into oblivion.
Now, none of this is to say that we don't still have a major struggle ahead of us. MS will not give up the fight easily and I think that we'll see the battles move more into the political realm as MS and its DRM allies, the MPAA and RIAA, attempt to maintain their dominant positions by buying legislation that will effectively mandate the use of MS products to "protect" the copyright holders. That is the battlefield that our community must start to establish a position on. We could still lose this war if we can't stop the legislatures of the world from giving MS the victory it is unable to win through technical excellence.
However, in order to win political battles it's necessary to start acting on our position of dominance within the data centers of the world. We need to make it clear to the politicians that changing the rules to force the use of proprietary software will be extremely expensive and difficult. We also need to start banging the "National Security" drum and pointing out the problems associated with MS products and the security issues that MS can't solve. We need to start a campaign aimed a getting the point across that a computing and network infrastructure dominated by MS products, particularly if that infrastructure is effectively mandated by the adoption of DRM requirements, will be an infrastructure riddled with security holes. We need to come up with some realistic pictures of a future in which MS rules the software world and the terrorists romp through our computers and networks largely unhindered by the products of a company no longer motiviated by the need to compete or improve by virtue of their government-granted monopoly.
When all is said and done the F/OSS community is on the verge of truly great things. We need to begin acting from that position of strength. It's time to stop answering MS FUD and begin a counter-offensive, based on the technic
Why not rely on the market to take care of this problem, at least as far as businesses are concerned? With the rapidity that information about rootkits, virii, trojans, etc. is available letting people decide on their own whether or not to buy the infected product is certainly feasible. If a corporation's sales take a plunge after the release of a product such as the Sony malware the executives will decide that letting that sort of thing out is a bad idea. Should they fail to make the connection the stockholders will see to it that they end up having to resign or just flat-out get fired.
There is no reason to add yet another statue to the books. There is already legislation prohibiting the deliberate spread of malware. IANAL, but I imagine that there are probably several crimes that Sony could be charged with in this instance. Asking the government to "pass a law" is asking for further regulation of what we can do with our computers. We should certainly not be asking the government to restrict our freedom more that it already is. Once the government gets involved in regulating some area of commerce or other activity the regulation only grows over time as the bureaucratic drones justify their continued gorging at the public trough by promulgating more layers of regulation and restrictions.
Anyone who wants to keep the 'Net as free of government interferance as possible needs to devote time and thought to developing a non-governmental response to problems such as that casued by Sony. If nothing else I suspect that some suitably motivated attorney would be able to figure out some grounds on which to sue Sony. It's time that people stop looking towards the government as the solution to problems, whatever they may be. Just ask yourself, "When was the last time government intervention really improved a situation?" and you'll realize that the times when government action helps are few and far between. The advance of technology is too rapid for government drones to keep up with so we start seeing stupid decisions, made by ill-informed regulators, being made. Just look at the mess that the ability to patent software and business practices has made of software development for one example of regulation gone berserk and, in the end, threatening the very market which provides the reason for the regulation in the first place. Turning to the government is almost always a sure way to stifle an area of innovation.
You make some good points. However, if fraud becomes a real problem on eBay, say 10% of the auctions end in fraud, then I think that public opinion would quickly force them to take some sort of action, for the reasons I mentioned in my original post. When one considers how many millions of transactions eBay handles there is bound to be some number of frauds. Should these incidents be taken seriously?, yes; should eBay devote more time and expense to the issue?, maybe. It really depends on how big an issue this becomes in either number of fradulent transactions or reputation cost to eBay: should either become too great they will be forced, by their own self-interest, to devote resources to taking care of the problems.
Fraudulent deals on eBay are certainly a problem for those who are defrauded and I'm not unsympathetic to their problems and losses. However, it would be interesting to know a couple of things about the cases of fraud: how many of the buyers used PayPal, which offers automatic protection up to $1000 and the ability to purchase more if desired; how many buyers waited until they got a confirmation notice from the seller and then requested the seller's email or snail-mail address before making payment? Whenever I've bought anything for more than a couple of hundred dollars on eBay I've always contacted the seller via email or snail-mail prior to sending the payment. If the seller were not to provide, at minimum, an email address I would contact eBay about it and not pay for the item until I was satisifed that I'm not dealing with a con artist. Do these steps take extra time?; yes, but it seems to me to be simple commonsense to make sure that one has non-eBay provided information about how to contact the seller so that, in the event of fraud, one has something more to give both eBay and the police other than an eBay transaction number. I think it would be worthwhile to try to find out how many of the defrauded eBay customers took precautions to find out with whom the were dealing with prior to sending their payment.
I am against having the government, other than necessary police investigators, get involved in this type of issue. There are already mumerous laws ragarding fraud in place in most countries; certainly here in the U.S. Calling for some sort of "special" government rules to cover on-line auctions is merely asking for costs, in the form of government registrations, licenses, paperwork, and general snooping about, than is justified by the situation. When has government regulatory involvement, in almost anything you care to mention, not ended up being a "cure" that is far worse than the original disease? The only way the 'Net is going to remain a free marketplace of ideas, trade, etc. is for the 'Net community to figure out how to handle the problems. As I mentioned in my first post it seems to me that allowing the market to respond to the problem of fraud will result in the best possible solution; it may take a while, but in the long-term a combination of market pressure on eBay (and other auction companies) and normal police investigation of fraud will be sufficient to cure the ill.
They should care because, in the long run, a reputation for not taking care of customers will come back and bite them in the ass. In pre-'Net days reputation loss could take a long time, simply because it was not possible to spread information far enough to make a difference, in the short-term, without spending a lot of money for things such as newspaper ads pointing out the problem; it was also more difficult to gather information about problems because rapid communications for the average person wasn't a reality.
In this day very rapid communications the quick information dissemination via the 'Net means that companies no longer have a long time in which to fix or ignore problems. If eBay is truly having a problem with widespread account fraud they will have to fix it quickly before their reputation is tarnished. Items such as this article, and information in general, get spread much more quickly than used to be the case simply because of the 'Net. If enough people become concerned about eBay's reliability it won't take long for someone else to set up an on-line auction service. Competitors, such as Amazon, will quickly step up their push to get into the on-line auction business and eBay will show a decline in use and profits. If eBay's management is stupid enough to not care about how the public percieves their handling of this issue, then they will rapidly find out that they should have. A free market, which the 'Net still is, will not long tolerate companies who don't take care of customer problems; it's simply to easy for competitors to step into the credibility gap and gain market-share at the expense of those foolish enough to not care about their reputation.
This is a self-correcting problem and one that does not call for government interference, in the form of regulations. The police and the court system have a lot of experience handling fraud issues and that's what this is. Governments are looking for reasons to get involved with regulating the 'Net and it behooves us to work to keep that particular camel's nose from getting under the tent. My advice to eBay fraud victims is to notify eBay of the problem, they can't fix a problem they don't know about; contact the police and report the fraud; let the world know if the problem is not handled in a proper manner, take your business elsewhere and tell eBay why. Yes, eBay may not be taking proper steps to address this issue, but their self-interest will require that they fix things or the Darwinism of the market-place will eliminate the problem for them, by eliminating or badly damaging the company.
I have to agree and I'd add that Windows is also more consistent: it crashes consistently despite all of MS's efforts to eliminate the BOD (it's still there, just changed appearence), it has much more consistent security problems (you know that next week will see as many or more reported problems as this week), it is easier to deploy (how much deployment effort is required when the hardware vendor does the install for you), and finally, Windows is consistently more expensive in the long run when one figures in lost productivity from all of the many problems that Windows inherently suffers from.
If the Supreme Court decision, in its recent case regarding P2P software, is followed the makers of software may be responsbile for the illegal use of their products. All it takes is a reasonable (for some value of reasonable) chance that users will put your software to illegal uses and you get a ticket to jail or years of penury as you attempt to pay off the civil penalties that may be assessed against you. Now all it will take is for the FBI to discover that some "potential terrorist" used this software and Mr. Perez can kiss his rights to trial, an attorney, etc. goodbye thanks to THE PATRIOT Act.
I have to agree and it's unfortunate that the situation is as it is. We're seeing the result of the management philosophy, taught in a lot of MBA courses, that you don't need to understand the technology in order to "manage" the people who report to you. Adding to the problem is the perception that geeks are not socially adept and therefore are not able to be managers. Given some of the egregious spelling and grammer errors that I see here on/., to say nothing of the flaming and religious wars, we geeks are at least partially responsible for that viewpoint of upper management.
Based on my experience, with six employers over a nearly twenty year career, it's rare to find a technically savvy manager above the level of team leader. I had one such boss and he was a joy to work for. Not only did he understand the technology, he also knew that he didn't know everything. Furthermore, he was not a micromanager and, after I'd worked for him for a couple of months, he would simply tell me what needed to be done and then trusted me to get the job finished. If you ever get a manager like that you are indeed lucky. A boss like that is easily worth, at least for me, passing up the chance to move to another company for more money, etc. I knew I had a good thing going and knew that my chances of having such a thing happen again was small.
One thing that I did find worked to a degree was educating the boss. This needs to be done in a non-threatening way. My method was to take magazine articles in to work and just say, "I think you might find this interesting." If the boss is not a true PHB, over time you'll likely see an increase in his/her understanding of the technical end of your job, beware - YMMV.
You're suggestion is a good one as far as it goes. I think I'll add a paragraph citing the DHS' concern regarding the security problems of using IE as a browser. Also, I'm thinking it will be a good idea to emphasize the potential harm done if the cross-browser changes are not quickly forthcoming. I think I'll suggest that they put off their conversion until they develop a standards compatible website.
Thanks for giving us all a great start on our letters to the USCO.
I notice that the Copyright Office doesn't make it easy for people to send them responses to their proposal. Note that there is no provision for sending email responses; only hard copy (consisting of "the original and five copies") may be sent to the Feds. Your choices of delivery are hand delivery by private citizen, hand delivery by commercial courier, or snail mail. Looks like the Post Office is going to get some of my money as this sort of thing needs to be responded to loudly and persistently until goofy schemes like this go away. So send those cards and letters to the Copyright Office, paying attention to the following rules:
If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401 of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows: Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays in processing receipt of such deliveries.
I'd apologize for coping so much from the government site, but so many people don't RTFA that I figure it's necessary in this case.
Just my $.02, Ron P.S. There is considerable irony in the fact that comments need to go to the James Madison Memorial Bldg. That noise you hear is probably Madison spinning in his grave.
Actually, I suspect that the fact that SCO has been absolutely unable to show any infringing code is part of the driver behind this. Insurance companies don't make money by paying out claims, so they're not usually in a hurry to bet on anything short of a certainty. The fact that both Lloyds' and OSRM are beginning to develop this market tells me that not only do they feel that there isn't much risk of them having to pay out large amounts in claims, but it also demonstrates that the Linux market is maturing. Only a reasonably mature, and thus stable, marketplace will attract organizations willing to offer insurance within that market.
What's even more interesting is that, so far as I know, there is no similar insurance offered to MS software users. I realize that MS indemnifies its users to a degree, but I wonder if that would be enough if some suitably large copyright or patent violation were found in MS' software.
I find it interesting that Taylor gives no concrete examples of "things" which break when you add them to Linux. All we get is assertions with nothing that could even charitably be called evidence. I'm just thinking of the things that I've added to my Fedora Core install over the past couple of years:
- USB to serial converter to allow me to control my CD jukeboxes from my computer, nothing broke,
- Open Office, works great,
- KDE runs fine.
I can't think of anything that I've done with Linux in the past six or seven years that "broke" the OS. I did have two system crashes when using v0.99 way back in 1992-93, but that's what I get for playing around with kernel code. Aside from those incidents I've never had an OS crash using Linux, aand I worked as a Unix/Linux sysadmin for years before retiring a couple of years ago. The folks I worked with that had responsibility for adminning Windows boxen seemed to always be rushing about putting out fires instead of being able to take time to add improvements to their systems. Oh, I forgot, MS doesn't really allow you to add things to their systems as they've already thought of everything you might want to do and make it well-nigh impossible to to anything they didn't think of.
All in all the interview was more classic MS FUD. A cunning combination of inuendo, damning with faint praise, making unsubstantiated assertions of problems, attempting to equate the MS "Shared Source" program with true F/OSS software (why look some people can see up to 65% of MS source code for selected products), and misinformation in general. In the final analysis we're back to "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
I think that it's also a case of Amazon playing by the rules that currently exist, while also trying to get the rules changed. I think that Jeff Bezos is probably sincere in his desire to see the software and business method patenting issues resolved. It's entirely possible to do both things simultaneously and still be true to one's principles.
That said, however, it would be interesting to know what went on behind the scenes between Amazon and Cendant. Was there any attempt made on Amazon's part to resolve the issue without going to court? Also, I haven't seen anything recently about any attempts by Jeff Bezos and Amazon to eliminate software and business method patents entirely. Until that happens I'm afraid that the situation will only get worse. Now that Europe seems to have rejected the idea of software patents we may see some real action on this side of the pond. Keep those cards and letters going to your Congresscritters and maybe we'll eventually see the end of this whole mess.
I join you in being astonished at the thought that it will take MS five - count'em five - years to get a command line shell ready. It seems to me that this is further proof that MS is not really doing anything with Longhorn except putting more crap on top of the over-loaded mess they currently call an OS. Only an architecture that resembles spaghetti would make it neccessary to take that long to build a shell. This length of time seems particularly excessive when one compares it to the amount of time and effort it takes to develop another shell for Linux/Unix. Of course, the other explanation is that His Billness got too many questions along the line of "What the hell is a shell?" and gave it up as a bad deal.
What planet did you just come from?;) Here on the section of Earth known as the USA it is no longer permitted for one to question anything that relates to increasing the security of the state. That goes double for projects that are also related to anything touching on terrorism. Those who doubt the wisdom of "The Great and Powerful OZ" (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) will be told that they obviously hate the USA and all it stands for.
It seems that anything goes when it comes to throwing money at projects that are supposed to make us "safer." The most unfortunate thing is that these "safety" programs have nothing to do with making the lives of average citizens safer, but translate directly into more police power and greater security for the State. The US government no longer even pretends to follow the provisions in the Constitution pertaining to limits on the power of the Federal government; except in statements insisting the "The US supports freedom and democracy."
As an earlier poster said, "Man, I'm so going to be on their list..."
I think that Novell is worthy of the Linux community's support. They're on our side in the Great SCO Caper(tm). They are busy adding system mamnagement apps to Linux to the benefit of all of us. I realize that those tools are still proprietary, but I think that will change with time; once Novell decides that the way to make money is through services, not software. They provide additional competition to IBM and HP and help to insure that those companies stay the course of the One True Faith - FOSS and don't try sidetracking the movement down some alley. They show the other SCOs of the world that it is possible to be small and good (as opposed to evil) and still get by in this world.
Yeah, but it's such fun to clobber the stupid troll when he comes to take the bait. Given the utter vacuousness of Mr. Brown's reasoning processes, at least those concerning OSS, it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel. The man simply doesn't seem to notice that his extremely biased and incendiary comments only make it obvious that he is spreading nothing , but FUD bought with MS money. We should encourage Bill to waste more money on this guy; we'll get a good laugh out of it, the money will stimulate the economy, and businesses will transfer more of their computing resources to Linux and F/OSS.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm...The link is dead, but does not appear to be Slashdotted as it responses quickly to a ping. Is this a case of dynamic cencorship in action?
More seriously, given the trend towards totalitarianism here in the U.S. I won't be surprised when this sort of thing begins here. After all, what better way to control a population than to deprive the people of information, particularly information that reflects badly on the government? Anyone want to start a pool about when this begins here in the U.S.?
Just my $.02,
Ron
I absolutely agree with your comments, particularly about the need to somehow get the majority of the American people to be concerned about the loss of their liberties. The problem, as always with this sort of educational project, is: how does one accomplish it? Spending time writing comments for Slashdot is one way. There are a lot of misguided souls on this site, a minority thankfully, who think that the loss of civil liberty is nothing to get concerned about because President Bush "is a good man" or he's "just keeping us safe" and they need to be disabused of those notions. The first of these responses points out how effective our government is at propaganda, while the second betrays a fundamental mistake in thinking about the true nature of freedom. Both responses can be traced to the government's educational system, which fails to teach students how to think, besides not teaching them how to read, write, and do math. The recent actions of the new dictator in the White House are the result of decades of dereliction of their duties as citizens by the majority of Americans.
How does one get the idea that freedom is fundamental to being an American across to Americans whose biggest concern seems to be who gets kicked off the island next? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that the Bush administration is taking advantage of trends that have been developing in our society for decades to take the final steps needed to convert this nation into a fascist police-state. They've taken advantage of the fact that most Americans believe that "rights" are something the government gives them - such as the "right to drive a car" or the "right to an unemployment check" or the "right to decent housing". They fail to understand that the inalienable rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence are natural Rights, inherent in simply being a human as opposed to being a cow. I dare say that the vast majority of Americans could not define the difference between those who believe in Positivist rights and those who understand that Natural rights are the ones that count.
How do we change this? Figuring that out, as you rightly note, needs to be the focus of our efforts now that the government has effectively abolished the Constitution and the civil judiciary to replace them with the arbitrary rule of men instead of the dispassionate rule of law. Marching in the streets might be a start, but unless massive popular support is gained quickly, the fascist in the White House will merely declare that such actions provide aid and comfort to the enemy and that anyone who takes part in them will automatically be named as an unlawful enemy combatant. How many people are going to be willing to continue public dissent once a few of them disappear never to be heard from again, unless it's in a government announcement that the military tribunals handling the cases have decided that death was an appropriate penalty and that, "in the interests of justice", the sentences have already been carried out? The problem, once a police-state gets established, as the complacent fools in this country have allowed to happen, the government is able to rapidly infect the majority of the people with the fear of "doing something the government wouldn't like" and thereby get them to muzzle themselves, thus making the government's job of repressing dissent easier. In order to further increase the police powers of the State the next step will be the repeal of the posse comitatus laws which currently prohibit the use of the military in civilian police roles. Though I suspect that most people have forgotten, it wasn't a year ago that President Bush asked that this very thing be done to make it easier for the government to "secure our border with Mexico". I figure six months, tops, before that little impediment to government power is removed.
If we are going to stop this government it must be done soon, before the police-state mindset takes real root in most of our fellow citizens. After the Republicans steal the upcoming e
Why is this news? THe Bush administration has been acting in extra-legal and unconstitutional ways since 9/11/2001. Why should they stop? The majority of the American people obviously care more about being kept "safe" from supposed terrorists than they do about losing their civil liberties; after all, "No one that I know, from personal acquaintance, to be innocent has been arrested by the Bush administration". That line was actually written to me, by someone whose opinion I used to respect, by way of questioning why I expressed concern and outrage over G.W. Bush's grab for dictatorial power. So long as that sort of opinion prevails and it will, because most Americans have no idea what the difference between Natural Law rights and Positivist Law rights is, there will be no change in government policy. To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, "How many divisions does Chief Justice Roberts have?"
I asked the rhetorical question "Why is this news?" because anyone who expects that the Bush administration will respect the ruling of any court is in for a shock. They've already set the precedent with last week's passage of the "Military Commissions Act of 2006"; you know, that's the one that not only makes G.W.'s prior military tribunals legal, but goes several steps further in that the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" is now (quoting from the Act itself):
948a. Definitions
In this chapter:
(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.(A) The term unlawful enemy combatant means
(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces); or
(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."
Notice how this language does not exclude the possibility of designating American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants". Note further how the power of determining who is an unlawful enemy combatant rests solely with "a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense." and that there is no requirement that such findings be based on meeting any part of the defintion given in part (i), e.g., the President can declare anyone he wishes to be an enemy of the State. There is no recourse to the criminal justice system to appeal any such ruling, nor are writs of habeus corpus allowed, nor are civilian defense attorneys to be part of any Military Tribunal process, nor does the defendant any longer have the privilege of invoking his 5th Amendment right agains self-incrimination. Other civil liberties are also trampled upon by this act, including the right to a speedy trial and the right to examine the evidence against one. Again, from the Act itself: (these refer to parts of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which are not to apply to "unlawful enemy combatants")
(d) INAPPLICABILITY OF CERTAIN PROVISIONS.(1) The following provisions of this title shall not apply to trial by military
commission under this chapter:
(A) Section 810 (article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to speedy trial, including any rule of courts martial
relating to speedy trial.
(B) Sections 831(a), (b), and (d) (articles 31(a), (b), and (d) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to compulsory
self-incrimination.
(C) Section 832 (article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to pretrial investigation.
(2) Other provisions of chapter 47 of this title shall apply to trial by military commission under this chapter only to the extent provided by this chapter."
The Act further specifies that the Geneva Convention may not b
I concur with your concerns over this technology. It seems to me that this could very easily be a beta-test for software that the government will then begin to use to search through the mass of information that that the NSA collects every day on millions of Americans. One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion is an old intelligence adage that goes basically like this, "You need to base your threat analyses on capabilities not intentions." So, from a threat to civil liberties viewpoint, this program represents a potential huge step forward in the ability of the U.S. Government to monitor the communications of its citizens and automatically flag anything that "looks like a threat". When one then adds the law that Congress just passed concerning who may be declared an "illegal enemy combatant" (which now includes U.S. citizens) our government now has the capability to monitor our email or other electronic communication, analyse it with software which no one will know anything about regarding false-positive rates, failure modes, etc., then use that analysis to declare a citizen to be a "threat" and thus an "illegal enemy combatant", then arrest that person, strip them of their civil liberties, and turn them over to the gentle care of military tribunals which may, at the discretion of the tribunal judge, allow the use of "coerced self-incriminatory testimony". Maybe I'm just paranoid, but this sounds an awful lot like Orwell's description of the the functions of the "Thought Police" in "1984".
Just my $.02,
Ron
I absolutely agree with you on this. It's the parent's responsibility to make sure that their children aren't doing things they don't wnat them to do. The last thing that we need here is yet another government program, which has got to be the next proposal coming down the pike, to "regulate" what minors can view on-line. But, as you mentioned, this is an election year and we're bound to hear idiotic proposals for 'curing this problem" from the same bunch of bozos that brought you the wonderfully insightful comments about "Net Neutrality" a couple of months ago. It's time that people start taking some responsibilty for not only their actions, but those of any minor children they may have. If parents don't have the time to talk to their children perhaps they need to re-examine their priorities in life. I was brought up to believe that raising children was the most important thing in life once you'd brought them into the world. This acceptance of the excuse of too many parents that" I don't have the time" to watch over and educate their children is just another symptom of the whole "blame someone else when bad things happen" syndrome that our society suffers from. Spying on your children because its easier than sitting them down and talking to them only sets a bad example and encourages the children to simply bypass whatever electronic spies you put in place and not even ask "Why" you may have put something like that on their PC.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I agree. I've joined the Libertarians not only because they don't do calls of this sort, but also because I firmly believe that it's time to get government off our backs. However, that's kind of beside the point here.
A good friend of mine turns these calls into what he terms the "How Long can I String Them Along Game" in which the goal is to see how long you can keep the idiot making the call on the line. The technique works like this:
Caller: Hi, I'm calling in regard to Senator Joe Congresscritter's campaign. Do you have a few moments to discuss the very important issues that Senator Congresscritter believes need to be addressed by the government?
Callee: Sure. I'd love to discuss those issues. Can you hold on for a minute, you caught me preparing dinner and I've got to get something out of the oven?
Caller: OK.
Callee: (goes off and does things he wants for 3 to 5 minutes then returns) Sorry, now where were we? Oh, right, you want to talk about politics.
Caller: Yes, Senator Congresscritter is very concerned about the future of this great nation of ours and wants you to know that he's worried about the future of Social Security. In fact, he has put together a plan for...
Callee: Oh, just a moment...my cat needs to go out (goes away and does other things for 3 to 5 minutes...comes back) Now, about Social Security...
This process is repeated for however long it takes for the telelmarketing idiot to realize that he's being played. Mark's record is somewhere around an hour now, though I think that was with a commercial telemarketer, for whom this game is also appropriate. Don't get annoyed...get even.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You left out "salt the ground on which he lived". We wouldn't want any trace to remain, not even weeds.
Although this reply is light-hearted I think the parent is right on. It's time that we believers in F/OSS show our strength by pursuing and punishing all those involved in this case who supported SCO and their pack of lies and lawyers. If enough of us boycott the companies that bought "Linux licences" (and tell them why we're doing so) it could make anyone else thinking about filing a lawsuit think twice. Also, if enough of us make it a point to tell the world about Laura Didio's (and other so-called "pundits") part in all this they may find their reputations sliding down into the muck where they belong. Just be polite, avoid ad hominem arguments, and make sure you've got your facts straight when presenting your arguments.
Just my $.02,
Ron
The problem is that this process can't stop with immigrants. If the idea is to make it possible for employers to tell if the person they want to hire is legal or for INS to tell the same thing, then the lack of an ID chip will leave one in a non-verifiable condition. Obviously, the government can't have that, after all that non-chipped person may be a "terrorist". Thus, sooner rather than later, everyone who has a legal right to be in this country will be required to get "chipped" and lack of a chip will be taken as de facto evidence of illegal activity of some sort. This idea needs to be squashed ASAP and not quietly either, lest it be snuck back in to the immigration debate later on. Allowing this step to be taken is merely letting the camel get most of the way into the tent and soon our children will be "chipped" at birth.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Not a bad idea, but the idea of the Internet, IMHO, is to avoid government regulations entirely, in so far as that's possible in our regulation-mad society. However, what really bothers me about this whole discussion is that we've allowed the telecoms to spread the Big Lie(tm) that "we don't make any money from providing the bandwidth to ISPs, content providers, etc.". That's so much bushwa: they don't provide the network for free folks. Everybody is paying for a piece of it in some way: some of the money you pay your ISP goes to the telecoms for Internet access, the money those of us that use DSL pay goes mainly to support network costs and provide a profit, any of the big "content-providers" (a term I despise, but that's not the issue here) that have their own OC3 lines certainly pay for them and the telecoms make a profit from those fees.
It's time that those of us who oppose the whole "tiered Internet" idea start pointing these things out at every opportunity. Write your Congresscritters and enlighten them as to the fraud that the telecoms are trying to pull off. They want tiered service, instead of operating more-or-less as "common carriers" simply because they want more money. It's that simple and every Congresscritter that votes to allow the telecoms to institute tiered pricing is voting to take money directly from your pocket and give it to the telecoms. I'm not against anyone making an honest profit, but I do object to outright government-abetted plundering operations.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Aside from the fact that this is more MS FUD I think that it's high time the F/OSS community started acting as though what MS has to say about us, the F/OSS movement, and the products we turn out doesn't matter. I think that we've been around long enough and have put together a track-record that MS can only envy to allow us to not be driven by what MS says. MS is under extreme pressure trying to figure out how to deal with F/OSS and have yet to come up with an effective strategy. Thus, they are reduced to calling us names and spreading lies about the movement and the software we produce. Stooping to ad hominem attacks is the last step before losing the battle entirely.
Anyone who has been in IT for more than five years is well aware of F/OSS, whether they currently use it or not. Even the most pointy-haired of CIOs, CTOs, etc. know the inroads our products have made into the data center. That battle seems to be pretty well over with more and more companies, including SMBs, making the switch to F/OSS OSes and server products. The debate is moving to whether or not Linux or BSD is "ready for the desktop". Given the minimum hardware requirements for MS Vista it would surprise me if a lot of businesses didn't start giving the various F/OSS desktops some serious testing if not outright adoption. I think that this will be especially true after the release of Vista and the same old security holes start popping up again.
The F/OSS community is on the verge of winning the war against MS. This is especially true overseas. More and more governments and businesses in Europe, Africa, and Asia are making the migration from MS products to those of the F/OSS world. This process will continue to accelerate and, as it does, the people who use F/OSS software at work will become increasingly willing to try it at home. Once F/OSS gets out of the office and into the home MS will begin to weaken more rapidly and will be forced to change and accept that F/OSS software is a major force in the IT world or they'll go the way of other companies that haven't been able or willing to change with the times: straight into oblivion.
Now, none of this is to say that we don't still have a major struggle ahead of us. MS will not give up the fight easily and I think that we'll see the battles move more into the political realm as MS and its DRM allies, the MPAA and RIAA, attempt to maintain their dominant positions by buying legislation that will effectively mandate the use of MS products to "protect" the copyright holders. That is the battlefield that our community must start to establish a position on. We could still lose this war if we can't stop the legislatures of the world from giving MS the victory it is unable to win through technical excellence.
However, in order to win political battles it's necessary to start acting on our position of dominance within the data centers of the world. We need to make it clear to the politicians that changing the rules to force the use of proprietary software will be extremely expensive and difficult. We also need to start banging the "National Security" drum and pointing out the problems associated with MS products and the security issues that MS can't solve. We need to start a campaign aimed a getting the point across that a computing and network infrastructure dominated by MS products, particularly if that infrastructure is effectively mandated by the adoption of DRM requirements, will be an infrastructure riddled with security holes. We need to come up with some realistic pictures of a future in which MS rules the software world and the terrorists romp through our computers and networks largely unhindered by the products of a company no longer motiviated by the need to compete or improve by virtue of their government-granted monopoly.
When all is said and done the F/OSS community is on the verge of truly great things. We need to begin acting from that position of strength. It's time to stop answering MS FUD and begin a counter-offensive, based on the technic
Why not rely on the market to take care of this problem, at least as far as businesses are concerned? With the rapidity that information about rootkits, virii, trojans, etc. is available letting people decide on their own whether or not to buy the infected product is certainly feasible. If a corporation's sales take a plunge after the release of a product such as the Sony malware the executives will decide that letting that sort of thing out is a bad idea. Should they fail to make the connection the stockholders will see to it that they end up having to resign or just flat-out get fired.
There is no reason to add yet another statue to the books. There is already legislation prohibiting the deliberate spread of malware. IANAL, but I imagine that there are probably several crimes that Sony could be charged with in this instance. Asking the government to "pass a law" is asking for further regulation of what we can do with our computers. We should certainly not be asking the government to restrict our freedom more that it already is. Once the government gets involved in regulating some area of commerce or other activity the regulation only grows over time as the bureaucratic drones justify their continued gorging at the public trough by promulgating more layers of regulation and restrictions.
Anyone who wants to keep the 'Net as free of government interferance as possible needs to devote time and thought to developing a non-governmental response to problems such as that casued by Sony. If nothing else I suspect that some suitably motivated attorney would be able to figure out some grounds on which to sue Sony. It's time that people stop looking towards the government as the solution to problems, whatever they may be. Just ask yourself, "When was the last time government intervention really improved a situation?" and you'll realize that the times when government action helps are few and far between. The advance of technology is too rapid for government drones to keep up with so we start seeing stupid decisions, made by ill-informed regulators, being made. Just look at the mess that the ability to patent software and business practices has made of software development for one example of regulation gone berserk and, in the end, threatening the very market which provides the reason for the regulation in the first place. Turning to the government is almost always a sure way to stifle an area of innovation.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You make some good points. However, if fraud becomes a real problem on eBay, say 10% of the auctions end in fraud, then I think that public opinion would quickly force them to take some sort of action, for the reasons I mentioned in my original post. When one considers how many millions of transactions eBay handles there is bound to be some number of frauds. Should these incidents be taken seriously?, yes; should eBay devote more time and expense to the issue?, maybe. It really depends on how big an issue this becomes in either number of fradulent transactions or reputation cost to eBay: should either become too great they will be forced, by their own self-interest, to devote resources to taking care of the problems.
Fraudulent deals on eBay are certainly a problem for those who are defrauded and I'm not unsympathetic to their problems and losses. However, it would be interesting to know a couple of things about the cases of fraud: how many of the buyers used PayPal, which offers automatic protection up to $1000 and the ability to purchase more if desired; how many buyers waited until they got a confirmation notice from the seller and then requested the seller's email or snail-mail address before making payment? Whenever I've bought anything for more than a couple of hundred dollars on eBay I've always contacted the seller via email or snail-mail prior to sending the payment. If the seller were not to provide, at minimum, an email address I would contact eBay about it and not pay for the item until I was satisifed that I'm not dealing with a con artist. Do these steps take extra time?; yes, but it seems to me to be simple commonsense to make sure that one has non-eBay provided information about how to contact the seller so that, in the event of fraud, one has something more to give both eBay and the police other than an eBay transaction number. I think it would be worthwhile to try to find out how many of the defrauded eBay customers took precautions to find out with whom the were dealing with prior to sending their payment.
I am against having the government, other than necessary police investigators, get involved in this type of issue. There are already mumerous laws ragarding fraud in place in most countries; certainly here in the U.S. Calling for some sort of "special" government rules to cover on-line auctions is merely asking for costs, in the form of government registrations, licenses, paperwork, and general snooping about, than is justified by the situation. When has government regulatory involvement, in almost anything you care to mention, not ended up being a "cure" that is far worse than the original disease? The only way the 'Net is going to remain a free marketplace of ideas, trade, etc. is for the 'Net community to figure out how to handle the problems. As I mentioned in my first post it seems to me that allowing the market to respond to the problem of fraud will result in the best possible solution; it may take a while, but in the long-term a combination of market pressure on eBay (and other auction companies) and normal police investigation of fraud will be sufficient to cure the ill.
Just my $.02,
Ron
They should care because, in the long run, a reputation for not taking care of customers will come back and bite them in the ass. In pre-'Net days reputation loss could take a long time, simply because it was not possible to spread information far enough to make a difference, in the short-term, without spending a lot of money for things such as newspaper ads pointing out the problem; it was also more difficult to gather information about problems because rapid communications for the average person wasn't a reality.
In this day very rapid communications the quick information dissemination via the 'Net means that companies no longer have a long time in which to fix or ignore problems. If eBay is truly having a problem with widespread account fraud they will have to fix it quickly before their reputation is tarnished. Items such as this article, and information in general, get spread much more quickly than used to be the case simply because of the 'Net. If enough people become concerned about eBay's reliability it won't take long for someone else to set up an on-line auction service. Competitors, such as Amazon, will quickly step up their push to get into the on-line auction business and eBay will show a decline in use and profits. If eBay's management is stupid enough to not care about how the public percieves their handling of this issue, then they will rapidly find out that they should have. A free market, which the 'Net still is, will not long tolerate companies who don't take care of customer problems; it's simply to easy for competitors to step into the credibility gap and gain market-share at the expense of those foolish enough to not care about their reputation.
This is a self-correcting problem and one that does not call for government interference, in the form of regulations. The police and the court system have a lot of experience handling fraud issues and that's what this is. Governments are looking for reasons to get involved with regulating the 'Net and it behooves us to work to keep that particular camel's nose from getting under the tent. My advice to eBay fraud victims is to notify eBay of the problem, they can't fix a problem they don't know about; contact the police and report the fraud; let the world know if the problem is not handled in a proper manner, take your business elsewhere and tell eBay why. Yes, eBay may not be taking proper steps to address this issue, but their self-interest will require that they fix things or the Darwinism of the market-place will eliminate the problem for them, by eliminating or badly damaging the company.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I have to agree and I'd add that Windows is also more consistent: it crashes consistently despite all of MS's efforts to eliminate the BOD (it's still there, just changed appearence), it has much more consistent security problems (you know that next week will see as many or more reported problems as this week), it is easier to deploy (how much deployment effort is required when the hardware vendor does the install for you), and finally, Windows is consistently more expensive in the long run when one figures in lost productivity from all of the many problems that Windows inherently suffers from.
Just my $.02,
Ron
If the Supreme Court decision, in its recent case regarding P2P software, is followed the makers of software may be responsbile for the illegal use of their products. All it takes is a reasonable (for some value of reasonable) chance that users will put your software to illegal uses and you get a ticket to jail or years of penury as you attempt to pay off the civil penalties that may be assessed against you. Now all it will take is for the FBI to discover that some "potential terrorist" used this software and Mr. Perez can kiss his rights to trial, an attorney, etc. goodbye thanks to THE PATRIOT Act.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I have to agree and it's unfortunate that the situation is as it is. We're seeing the result of the management philosophy, taught in a lot of MBA courses, that you don't need to understand the technology in order to "manage" the people who report to you. Adding to the problem is the perception that geeks are not socially adept and therefore are not able to be managers. Given some of the egregious spelling and grammer errors that I see here on /., to say nothing of the flaming and religious wars, we geeks are at least partially responsible for that viewpoint of upper management.
Based on my experience, with six employers over a nearly twenty year career, it's rare to find a technically savvy manager above the level of team leader. I had one such boss and he was a joy to work for. Not only did he understand the technology, he also knew that he didn't know everything. Furthermore, he was not a micromanager and, after I'd worked for him for a couple of months, he would simply tell me what needed to be done and then trusted me to get the job finished. If you ever get a manager like that you are indeed lucky. A boss like that is easily worth, at least for me, passing up the chance to move to another company for more money, etc. I knew I had a good thing going and knew that my chances of having such a thing happen again was small.
One thing that I did find worked to a degree was educating the boss. This needs to be done in a non-threatening way. My method was to take magazine articles in to work and just say, "I think you might find this interesting." If the boss is not a true PHB, over time you'll likely see an increase in his/her understanding of the technical end of your job, beware - YMMV.
Just my $.02,
Ron
You're suggestion is a good one as far as it goes. I think I'll add a paragraph citing the DHS' concern regarding the security problems of using IE as a browser. Also, I'm thinking it will be a good idea to emphasize the potential harm done if the cross-browser changes are not quickly forthcoming. I think I'll suggest that they put off their conversion until they develop a standards compatible website.
Thanks for giving us all a great start on our letters to the USCO.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I notice that the Copyright Office doesn't make it easy for people to send them responses to their proposal. Note that there is no provision for sending email responses; only hard copy (consisting of "the original and five copies") may be sent to the Feds. Your choices of delivery are hand delivery by private citizen, hand delivery by commercial courier, or snail mail. Looks like the Post Office is going to get some of my money as this sort of thing needs to be responded to loudly and persistently until goofy schemes like this go away. So send those cards and letters to the Copyright Office, paying attention to the following rules:
If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401 of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows: Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays in processing receipt of such deliveries.
I'd apologize for coping so much from the government site, but so many people don't RTFA that I figure it's necessary in this case.
Just my $.02,
Ron
P.S. There is considerable irony in the fact that comments need to go to the James Madison Memorial Bldg. That noise you hear is probably Madison spinning in his grave.
Actually, I suspect that the fact that SCO has been absolutely unable to show any infringing code is part of the driver behind this. Insurance companies don't make money by paying out claims, so they're not usually in a hurry to bet on anything short of a certainty. The fact that both Lloyds' and OSRM are beginning to develop this market tells me that not only do they feel that there isn't much risk of them having to pay out large amounts in claims, but it also demonstrates that the Linux market is maturing. Only a reasonably mature, and thus stable, marketplace will attract organizations willing to offer insurance within that market.
What's even more interesting is that, so far as I know, there is no similar insurance offered to MS software users. I realize that MS indemnifies its users to a degree, but I wonder if that would be enough if some suitably large copyright or patent violation were found in MS' software.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I find it interesting that Taylor gives no concrete examples of "things" which break when you add them to Linux. All we get is assertions with nothing that could even charitably be called evidence. I'm just thinking of the things that I've added to my Fedora Core install over the past couple of years:
- USB to serial converter to allow me to control my CD jukeboxes from my computer, nothing broke,
- Open Office, works great,
- KDE runs fine.
I can't think of anything that I've done with Linux in the past six or seven years that "broke" the OS. I did have two system crashes when using v0.99 way back in 1992-93, but that's what I get for playing around with kernel code. Aside from those incidents I've never had an OS crash using Linux, aand I worked as a Unix/Linux sysadmin for years before retiring a couple of years ago. The folks I worked with that had responsibility for adminning Windows boxen seemed to always be rushing about putting out fires instead of being able to take time to add improvements to their systems. Oh, I forgot, MS doesn't really allow you to add things to their systems as they've already thought of everything you might want to do and make it well-nigh impossible to to anything they didn't think of.
All in all the interview was more classic MS FUD. A cunning combination of inuendo, damning with faint praise, making unsubstantiated assertions of problems, attempting to equate the MS "Shared Source" program with true F/OSS software (why look some people can see up to 65% of MS source code for selected products), and misinformation in general. In the final analysis we're back to "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
Just my $.02,
Ron
I think that it's also a case of Amazon playing by the rules that currently exist, while also trying to get the rules changed. I think that Jeff Bezos is probably sincere in his desire to see the software and business method patenting issues resolved. It's entirely possible to do both things simultaneously and still be true to one's principles.
That said, however, it would be interesting to know what went on behind the scenes between Amazon and Cendant. Was there any attempt made on Amazon's part to resolve the issue without going to court? Also, I haven't seen anything recently about any attempts by Jeff Bezos and Amazon to eliminate software and business method patents entirely. Until that happens I'm afraid that the situation will only get worse. Now that Europe seems to have rejected the idea of software patents we may see some real action on this side of the pond. Keep those cards and letters going to your Congresscritters and maybe we'll eventually see the end of this whole mess.
Just my $.02,
Ron
I join you in being astonished at the thought that it will take MS five - count'em five - years to get a command line shell ready. It seems to me that this is further proof that MS is not really doing anything with Longhorn except putting more crap on top of the over-loaded mess they currently call an OS. Only an architecture that resembles spaghetti would make it neccessary to take that long to build a shell. This length of time seems particularly excessive when one compares it to the amount of time and effort it takes to develop another shell for Linux/Unix. Of course, the other explanation is that His Billness got too many questions along the line of "What the hell is a shell?" and gave it up as a bad deal.
Just my $.02,
Ron
What planet did you just come from? ;) Here on the section of Earth known as the USA it is no longer permitted for one to question anything that relates to increasing the security of the state. That goes double for projects that are also related to anything touching on terrorism. Those who doubt the wisdom of "The Great and Powerful OZ" (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain) will be told that they obviously hate the USA and all it stands for.
It seems that anything goes when it comes to throwing money at projects that are supposed to make us "safer." The most unfortunate thing is that these "safety" programs have nothing to do with making the lives of average citizens safer, but translate directly into more police power and greater security for the State. The US government no longer even pretends to follow the provisions in the Constitution pertaining to limits on the power of the Federal government; except in statements insisting the "The US supports freedom and democracy."
As an earlier poster said, "Man, I'm so going to be on their list..."
Just my $.02,
Ron
I think that Novell is worthy of the Linux community's support. They're on our side in the Great SCO Caper(tm). They are busy adding system mamnagement apps to Linux to the benefit of all of us. I realize that those tools are still proprietary, but I think that will change with time; once Novell decides that the way to make money is through services, not software. They provide additional competition to IBM and HP and help to insure that those companies stay the course of the One True Faith - FOSS and don't try sidetracking the movement down some alley. They show the other SCOs of the world that it is possible to be small and good (as opposed to evil) and still get by in this world.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Yeah, but it's such fun to clobber the stupid troll when he comes to take the bait. Given the utter vacuousness of Mr. Brown's reasoning processes, at least those concerning OSS, it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel. The man simply doesn't seem to notice that his extremely biased and incendiary comments only make it obvious that he is spreading nothing , but FUD bought with MS money. We should encourage Bill to waste more money on this guy; we'll get a good laugh out of it, the money will stimulate the economy, and businesses will transfer more of their computing resources to Linux and F/OSS.
Just my $.02,
Ron