Economic growth is a measure of the productivity of our society. Basically, the idea is this: If I have a cow and you don't. Between us we have 1 cow's worth of value. If, on the other hand, you do some work and acquire a tree, you and I might agree to swap the tree for the cow. Now, between us we have two cow's worth of value (or two tree's worth of value). In our tiny little system, we've experienced economic growth.
Failure to grow economically means that some people go without. Some people go without as it is, but failure to grow economically means many more people go without. And by "without" I mean, without food, without shelter, etc. Economic growth is a measure of the fight against poverty. Failure to grow economically, or contraction, is a measure of the increase in poverty.
You seem to think that we could cut back on leisure/service. I don't know. But cutting back on those parts of the economy will impoverish the people working in them, which will have a ripple effect and eventually impact you and me. The economy is a significantly more fragile thing than most ecosystems. And the impact of failures of the US economy would impoverish huge portions of the world.
I don't mean to imply that we can't cut back on some unnecessary things. But it's not a simple thing to do and there can be huge consequences to doing it.
What if the device manufacturer does *NOT* want to release the source code for their driver?
For the vendors that do release source for their driver, in order to compile a kernel module you need to know where the linux source code is for the running kernel. Most distros do not come with the source code for the running kernel installed or unpacked. What assumptions should a device manufacturer make about the configuration of a non-techie environment in which he needs to compile his driver? Can those assumptions be universal?
Given the above, how can a device manufacturer support linux device drivers without dramatically increasing their costs?
Developers must be persuaded to provide Linux drivers, especially for "Winmodems," and to port their software products to Linux.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Developers don't have a way of providing a universal device driver that will work under any release of a kernel. Heck, a device driver for 2.4.10 won't easily work in 2.4.17! Exactly how is a device manufacturer going to release a driver (either open source or binary) that an end user can *easily* install? As it is right now, device manufacturers who support Linux have to do so with little added expense. Mostly because most of the people using Linux are technically adept enough to get their devices drivers working. But if Linux gets more popular on the desktop, the cost to device manufacturers of supporting Linux is going to dramatically increase as end users aren't able to install their device driver by themselves.
I think this is going to be a limiting factor on Linux's popularity.
Until a device manufacturer can easily install their device driver in to just about any running linux kernel, I don't see them jumping on board to provide linux drivers. Until that happens, I don't see linux making much headway on the desktop.
I don't like this. I run debian on every computer I own. I'd really like to see Linux become popular on the desktop, but I think it has to overcome many hurdles. One of which is easily allowing device manufacturers to install their drivers.
I like how this article seems to want to tie a decline in music sales to Napster, and not to the fact (Ok, it's actually my opinion) that music seems to really suck right now.
Or how about the possibility that the decline in record sales coincides with the shutdown of Napster?
Hmm. Perhaps my SMTP server should keep track of who I send email to, so it can automatically accept the replies and block the others. There'd be problems with that of course, since replies don't always come from the same address. But it's an idea to play with.
Check out TMDA. It will allow you to do exactly that. You can set it up so that all outgoing email get's a "dated" return address. That return address will be valid for 5days (by default). After which TMDA will reject any responses.
I think you might be interested in using self destructing email addresses. I've just started using TMDA. You can set it up so that all outgoing email to someone that you don't know will generate a "dated" address. This address will be valid (by default) for 5 days. After 5 days, TMDA will automatically reject any email directed to it.
Other things you can do with TMDA include:
Requring anyone unknown to you to send a confirmation
Automatically adding all valid confirmations to your "known" list
Generating sender email addresses, that will allow a specific sender (such as a mailing list) to send you email. No one other than that specific sender will be able to use a sender address
Generating keyword email addresses. This is similar to what you're talking about already. Where you generate unique addresses, each of which will be allowed to get to your mailbox. But will also allow you to track who is giving out your email address.
TMDA takes a little bit of work to be able to understand what's going on, but once you get it set up, it's pretty effective.
You don't need to use an external service to do this. You can do it yourself. There are several programs that do this. The one that I use is TMDA. Another is Kiwispam.
Does SpamAssassin. . . allow you to define your own rules? I haven't figured out how yet, but I haven't looked very hard either.
Yes it does. In $HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefs you can define rules. Here's an example of a rule that I've added to filter ICQ requests as spam:
header ICQ_REQUEST Subject =~/^Please let me add you to my ICQ Contact List$/
describe ICQ_REQUEST Subject contains request for ICQ
score ICQ_REQUEST 10.00
Check here for instructions on how to specify rules.
Why? Why is this significantly different than me buying a space on a web site? Are you saying that there is a limit to which a person is allowed to express him/herself, and that limit is determined by how much a person ought to be able to spend? This just strikes me as the government *way* over extending into things that the constitution doesn't allow it to govern. Namely my ability to express my opinion. Why exactly should the government impose some limit on how much I can spend to express my opinion?
What if the opinion is not on who I think should be elected. What if I have the opinion that abortion should be illegal? What if I have the opinion that a woman's right to choose is overly restricted? Should the government come in and impose limits on how much I can spend to express either of those opinions?
If the answer is that the government can't impose prior constraints on the expression of opinions (i.e. the 1st amendment), then it can't also do it in terms of expressing an opinion about who to elect.
And this is still the question that I have: how do we do effective campaign finance reform without imposing prior resraints on 1st amendment rights.
No one is saying you cannot contribute, no one is saying you can't use any public forum to express your opinion or political views. But an election must be fair!
How exactly does restricting a person's ability to express their opinion make an election fair?
It's not that you cannot contribute, it's that someone richer that you can contribute more. Is that fair to you or your candidate?
I don't know if its fair or not. But if that guy wants to spend a lot of money expressing his opinion, it's his prerogative. If he only wants to spend enough money on a pen and paper, that's his prerogative too. If he wants to spend enough money to buy a slot on network TV, who am I to stop him from expressing his opinion?
The biggest problem with campaign finance reform is not controlling the spending that gets done for a particular candidate, but doing so in such a way that doesn't prevent anyone from expressing their opinion.
Answer this question. If we eliminate so called "soft money" will my writing "Vote Jeremy Blumenthal" on my web site be illegal? Remember, I paid for that web site, and I'm using it in support of a candidate. So that's a "soft money" contribution.
If I gave you the impression that I claimed to know all things and that I could teach them to you cheaply and quickly, that was a mistake. I did not intend to leave that impression.
I simply hoped by mentioning this information that someone with more knowledge of the subject than I would be able to comment more authoritatively than I had.
So what are you saying, that I can't spend any money in the exercise of speech? If that's true, then *anything* that you say on the Internet can't be considered speech if you pay for an ISP! That seems ridiculous to me. Heck, I pay someone to provide me with a paper and pen. Is the thing that I write on that paper with that pen not also protected under the 1st amendment?
I'm not saying that spending money is equal to free speech. I'm saying that I have a right to spend money to help facilitate my freedom to express myself. And if you limit my ability to spend money, you are also limiting my facilities to exercise free speech. Which to me, at least, is a prior constraint on speech and ought to be unconstitutional.
I'd love to see effective campaign finance reform. But I'd also like to introduce to the disucssion the issue that doing so might imply violation of 1st amendment rights. I don't know for sure if this is the case, but it sure seems like a possibility. I'm hoping that people with more knowledge than me will be able to provide better insight.
I can't believe that/. as such a huge promoter of 1st amendment rights, doesn't see the relationship that limiting or banning soft money has to limiting the freedom of speech.
Here's the deal. If I pay for an advert in support of electing Jimmy Schlessenbaum, that money is counted as a soft money donation to Mr Schlessenbaum. If I give him the money for the ad, and his campaign pays for it, that's a hard contribution and it gets handled under the existing rules and limitations.
This is the problem. I have a right to express my opinion of who to vote for. If we start saying that there are limits on soft money contributions, then we're volunteering for legalized limits of individuals to express their opinions.
For a better description of this, see This article.
I don't like the fact that corporations can buy elections. But I'd rather have an undamaged 1st amendment, than limits on soft contributions.
I don't know if varying feeding time is part of their program, but I hope it is, otherwise thew experiment means very little.
Uhh... why? If the purpose of the project is to demonstrate a particular characteristic of a biological ecosystem, then trying to artifically replicate as much of that ecosystem as possible is critical. If, on the other hand, you're trying to engineer a different ecosystem based on some basic rules from an existing ecosystem, then an identical reproduction doesn't matter.
The situation is similar to studying birds in order to understand flight. For a long time we assumed that the only way to fly was to try and identically replicate the flight of birds - i.e. flapping wings. It was only when we started to understand the basic components of flight - that the shape of the wing allowed the exploitation of the bernouli principle - that humans began to fly. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there is no flapping wing aparatus that can enable human flight. In other words, the most effective way towards human engineered flight was to eliminate some of the factors in biological evolved flight.
So, even if this experiment isn't a complete biological replication, it doesn't matter. It's simply studying one aspect of biology and intelligence in order to see what things are/aren't important in being able to engineer an intelligence.
Reading Miguel's response makes me better understand why it is that he's so enthusiastic about the.NET framework (as he calls it).
One thing though. Miguel says:
So when you copy your binary from Windows that was compiled with the Visual Studio.NET and run it on your Unix platform, it will just integrate nicely with your GNOME desktop.
This just strikes me as overly hopeful optimism to think that Microsoft is going to give up their hard fought and long defeneded applications barrier to entry.
When we responded to the Complaint, we made several alternative motions, one being that a court in California lacked personal jurisdiction over Chip, not only because he's in Texas, but also because he does not have sufficient contacts with California to make it reasonable for him to be dragged into court here.
Ok. So in the ruling, it says:
Here, Plaintiff has failed to establish that Defendant's internet activities are purposefull directed at California in a substantial way. The only portion of Defendant's website that Plaintiff claims is "presumably" commercial is the copy of his resume. This is nothing more than a passive "advertisement" for Defendant's services akin to the web site in Cybersell. Unlike Colt or Stomp where California consumers purchased goods or services directly online, Defendant's resume does not enable people to automatically hire his services online.
Is this saying that had unicom.com been offering the sale of products or services to anywhere, including California, that would have justified jurisdiction for California courts in this case?
That seems strange to me. Why would his selling products and services to California justify jurisdiction? Hypothetically, what if a website offered products that are legal in the state that it resides but illegal in California. For example a cheap system for disconnecting California emmissions systems on automobiles. This is something that might be valuable and legal to someone living outside of CA. Is it now the responsibility of the seller to refuse to sell the product to CA residents?
If so, what does that say about the Skylarov case. Does California, or anywhere in the US justifiably have jurisdiction, and justification for arresting Skylarov based on his selling software that is (stupidly) illegal in California and the rest of the US?
My concern about this is that it seems like it's setting a precedent for making it impossible to sell things over the web. The seller has to not just take into account the laws that govern the selling of the product where he lives. He has to be aware of the laws that govern the buyer of his product. This seems to me to be an unreasonable burden for the seller of products and services over the web to carry.
However, I'd still agree that the WinInformant article is badly researched
I've read a lot of "information" articles at WinInformant. Enough to know that their use of the prefixes "Win" and "dis" are roughly equivalent when applied to any form of the word "information".
Maybe it's just my connection, but I can't seem to get to this site very well. If it can't suvive the/. effect, exactly how are they going to succesfully stream video?
as the article pointed out, the networks stopped running commercials for TiVo because they realized its potential threat to kill their advertising revenue
Interestingly enough, this week there was a 2nd episode of friends after the new episode. In that episode, Rachel had to tell her dad that she was pregnant, but she was afraid of his reaction. So when he asked what was new in her life, she stalled and said, "I've got a tivo!"
Or how about not actually collecting the information. So, for example when you give the credit card info it takes you to a page that, in addtion to gotcha, it says, "None of the information that you provided in the previous screen was stored anywhere on our site. We have no record of any information that you gave us." They could, of course, provide the source code to the CGI that accepts the data for audit purposes.
But the previous poster is probably right. There's probably no way that they can do this w/out getting into a very serious PR problem. And as anyone who's ever worked for the government can attest, your first job (above all else) is to stay out of the newspapers.
I don't think the SEC really gets it. I've been wrong lots of times before and I might be here. Personally, whenever I see a website that contains something that I'm even moderately curious about, I click on their "order here" button even if I'm not going to order anything. My hopes is that they might have some additional piece of critical information that wasn't obvious in the rest of their sight (for example shipping costs, payment options, etc). The point is that I generally investigate a site pretty thoroughly before I commit to sending any of *my* information to them.
I doubt that I'm alone in this practice. What this means is that clicking on the "gotcha link" at McWhortle.com isn't really a gotcha. It's just part of trying to find out additional information about the company. If you really want to implement the "gotcha" I would think you'd have to delay the "gotcha" right up until someone actually is really ready to bid/purchase/whatever. You got to get to the point, I'd think, where people are actually thinking about doing this, and *then* hit them with the "gotcha". Otherwise, anyone who gets to the current "gotcha page" is going to dismiss it with, "Well, yeah I kinda thought this wasn't right. Glad I don't get caught by these things. Glad I don't have to worry about these kind of scams... on the other hand, check out this other site! Wow, investments in working cold fusion?"
I would think if you're trying to convince someone that they are too gullible, you got to catch them in the process of actually having taken the bait. Otherwise, they're not likely to learn.
I'm reading lots of comments on this list about "the patch penguin will scale only as well as Linus, or maybe worse", or "Linus is right". But I'm not so sure that I agree. Having read the original proposal and the entire thread (as of last night around 1am EDT) I think that the proposal is a way of getting Linus to do what he does best (architecture) and relieving him from the mundane duties like trying to make sure that a submitted patch actually applies properly. Once the patch penguine does that kind of stuff, then Linus can review it.
Of course the advantage of this is that the mundane stuff can be done in parallel to the architectural stuff.. thus allowing more than one thing to get done at a time. Where as Linus himself can only do this serially.
The reason that this is important is that there is a very large backlog of patches that are simply not getting applied. Allegedly the whole VM issue could have been resolved if Linus had enough time to look at and apply RvR's patches. What this means is that Linux, with the inability of kernel maintainers to effectively submit patches, is turning into Minix. Remember that Linux was born out of Linus & others reaction to the fact that patches submitted to Minix couldn't get applied and redistributed (for copyright reasons). Which meant that in order to get a reasonable system, you first had to download the unpatched code, then go through a little patch-o-rama. It was ineffective. The current patch log reminds some of that situation, and has some fearing a potential kernel fork.
Of course, the biggest question that I have for the proposal is that Rob wants to just "formalize" a position that already exists and is being done, to some extent, already. If the position is already in place and already operating, then why is there still a patch backlog? How does formalizing it actually improve the situation?
1.Stick "security.debian.org" in your sources file
2. apt-get update
3. apt-get upgrade
Done
What's the problem?
350 machines. Need to track the package status of 350 machines. How exactly, are you going to tell me the status of 350 machines using that technique without going to each of the individual machines? Right now, you either:
login 350 times
write an ad hoc script, taking care to make sure it's secure and scalable
wait until a debian developer writes a different ad hoc script or program and puts it into the debian tree
The point is that the red hat network (allegedly) manages large numbers of machines better than debian. Of course, this is untested by me, right now. But it's an attractive feature.
Slashdot Mirror
Failure to grow economically means that some people go without. Some people go without as it is, but failure to grow economically means many more people go without. And by "without" I mean, without food, without shelter, etc. Economic growth is a measure of the fight against poverty. Failure to grow economically, or contraction, is a measure of the increase in poverty.
You seem to think that we could cut back on leisure/service. I don't know. But cutting back on those parts of the economy will impoverish the people working in them, which will have a ripple effect and eventually impact you and me. The economy is a significantly more fragile thing than most ecosystems. And the impact of failures of the US economy would impoverish huge portions of the world.
I don't mean to imply that we can't cut back on some unnecessary things. But it's not a simple thing to do and there can be huge consequences to doing it.
I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Developers don't have a way of providing a universal device driver that will work under any release of a kernel. Heck, a device driver for 2.4.10 won't easily work in 2.4.17! Exactly how is a device manufacturer going to release a driver (either open source or binary) that an end user can *easily* install? As it is right now, device manufacturers who support Linux have to do so with little added expense. Mostly because most of the people using Linux are technically adept enough to get their devices drivers working. But if Linux gets more popular on the desktop, the cost to device manufacturers of supporting Linux is going to dramatically increase as end users aren't able to install their device driver by themselves. I think this is going to be a limiting factor on Linux's popularity.
Until a device manufacturer can easily install their device driver in to just about any running linux kernel, I don't see them jumping on board to provide linux drivers. Until that happens, I don't see linux making much headway on the desktop.
I don't like this. I run debian on every computer I own. I'd really like to see Linux become popular on the desktop, but I think it has to overcome many hurdles. One of which is easily allowing device manufacturers to install their drivers.
$.02.
TMDA does quite a bit more than that, too.
Other things you can do with TMDA include:
- Requring anyone unknown to you to send a confirmation
- Automatically adding all valid confirmations to your "known" list
- Generating sender email addresses, that will allow a specific sender (such as a mailing list) to send you email. No one other than that specific sender will be able to use a sender address
- Generating keyword email addresses. This is similar to what you're talking about already. Where you generate unique addresses, each of which will be allowed to get to your mailbox. But will also allow you to track who is giving out your email address.
TMDA takes a little bit of work to be able to understand what's going on, but once you get it set up, it's pretty effective.Good luck.
You don't need to use an external service to do this. You can do it yourself. There are several programs that do this. The one that I use is TMDA. Another is Kiwispam.
Yes it does. In $HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefs you can define rules. Here's an example of a rule that I've added to filter ICQ requests as spam:
Check here for instructions on how to specify rules.
I wonder if the significance of the states asking for WinXP embedded is that they intend to show that Microsoft already has removed IE from windows.
Why? Why is this significantly different than me buying a space on a web site? Are you saying that there is a limit to which a person is allowed to express him/herself, and that limit is determined by how much a person ought to be able to spend? This just strikes me as the government *way* over extending into things that the constitution doesn't allow it to govern. Namely my ability to express my opinion. Why exactly should the government impose some limit on how much I can spend to express my opinion?
What if the opinion is not on who I think should be elected. What if I have the opinion that abortion should be illegal? What if I have the opinion that a woman's right to choose is overly restricted? Should the government come in and impose limits on how much I can spend to express either of those opinions?
If the answer is that the government can't impose prior constraints on the expression of opinions (i.e. the 1st amendment), then it can't also do it in terms of expressing an opinion about who to elect.
And this is still the question that I have: how do we do effective campaign finance reform without imposing prior resraints on 1st amendment rights.
How exactly does restricting a person's ability to express their opinion make an election fair?
I don't know if its fair or not. But if that guy wants to spend a lot of money expressing his opinion, it's his prerogative. If he only wants to spend enough money on a pen and paper, that's his prerogative too. If he wants to spend enough money to buy a slot on network TV, who am I to stop him from expressing his opinion?
The biggest problem with campaign finance reform is not controlling the spending that gets done for a particular candidate, but doing so in such a way that doesn't prevent anyone from expressing their opinion.
Answer this question. If we eliminate so called "soft money" will my writing "Vote Jeremy Blumenthal" on my web site be illegal? Remember, I paid for that web site, and I'm using it in support of a candidate. So that's a "soft money" contribution.
If I gave you the impression that I claimed to know all things and that I could teach them to you cheaply and quickly, that was a mistake. I did not intend to leave that impression.
I simply hoped by mentioning this information that someone with more knowledge of the subject than I would be able to comment more authoritatively than I had.
So what are you saying, that I can't spend any money in the exercise of speech? If that's true, then *anything* that you say on the Internet can't be considered speech if you pay for an ISP! That seems ridiculous to me. Heck, I pay someone to provide me with a paper and pen. Is the thing that I write on that paper with that pen not also protected under the 1st amendment?
I'm not saying that spending money is equal to free speech. I'm saying that I have a right to spend money to help facilitate my freedom to express myself. And if you limit my ability to spend money, you are also limiting my facilities to exercise free speech. Which to me, at least, is a prior constraint on speech and ought to be unconstitutional.
I'd love to see effective campaign finance reform. But I'd also like to introduce to the disucssion the issue that doing so might imply violation of 1st amendment rights. I don't know for sure if this is the case, but it sure seems like a possibility. I'm hoping that people with more knowledge than me will be able to provide better insight.
I can't believe that /. as such a huge promoter of 1st amendment rights, doesn't see the relationship that limiting or banning soft money has to limiting the freedom of speech.
Here's the deal. If I pay for an advert in support of electing Jimmy Schlessenbaum, that money is counted as a soft money donation to Mr Schlessenbaum. If I give him the money for the ad, and his campaign pays for it, that's a hard contribution and it gets handled under the existing rules and limitations.
This is the problem. I have a right to express my opinion of who to vote for. If we start saying that there are limits on soft money contributions, then we're volunteering for legalized limits of individuals to express their opinions.
For a better description of this, see This article.
I don't like the fact that corporations can buy elections. But I'd rather have an undamaged 1st amendment, than limits on soft contributions.
Uhh... why? If the purpose of the project is to demonstrate a particular characteristic of a biological ecosystem, then trying to artifically replicate as much of that ecosystem as possible is critical. If, on the other hand, you're trying to engineer a different ecosystem based on some basic rules from an existing ecosystem, then an identical reproduction doesn't matter.
The situation is similar to studying birds in order to understand flight. For a long time we assumed that the only way to fly was to try and identically replicate the flight of birds - i.e. flapping wings. It was only when we started to understand the basic components of flight - that the shape of the wing allowed the exploitation of the bernouli principle - that humans began to fly. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there is no flapping wing aparatus that can enable human flight. In other words, the most effective way towards human engineered flight was to eliminate some of the factors in biological evolved flight.
So, even if this experiment isn't a complete biological replication, it doesn't matter. It's simply studying one aspect of biology and intelligence in order to see what things are/aren't important in being able to engineer an intelligence.
$.02
One thing though. Miguel says:
This just strikes me as overly hopeful optimism to think that Microsoft is going to give up their hard fought and long defeneded applications barrier to entry.
Ok. So in the ruling, it says:
Is this saying that had unicom.com been offering the sale of products or services to anywhere, including California, that would have justified jurisdiction for California courts in this case?
That seems strange to me. Why would his selling products and services to California justify jurisdiction? Hypothetically, what if a website offered products that are legal in the state that it resides but illegal in California. For example a cheap system for disconnecting California emmissions systems on automobiles. This is something that might be valuable and legal to someone living outside of CA. Is it now the responsibility of the seller to refuse to sell the product to CA residents?
If so, what does that say about the Skylarov case. Does California, or anywhere in the US justifiably have jurisdiction, and justification for arresting Skylarov based on his selling software that is (stupidly) illegal in California and the rest of the US?
My concern about this is that it seems like it's setting a precedent for making it impossible to sell things over the web. The seller has to not just take into account the laws that govern the selling of the product where he lives. He has to be aware of the laws that govern the buyer of his product. This seems to me to be an unreasonable burden for the seller of products and services over the web to carry.
IANAL. Did I get this wrong?
Maybe it's just my connection, but I can't seem to get to this site very well. If it can't suvive the /. effect, exactly how are they going to succesfully stream video ?
Interestingly enough, this week there was a 2nd episode of friends after the new episode. In that episode, Rachel had to tell her dad that she was pregnant, but she was afraid of his reaction. So when he asked what was new in her life, she stalled and said, "I've got a tivo!"
Right there on network TV!
Excellent point!
Score:+1,Insightful (Virtual Moderator Point).
Or how about not actually collecting the information. So, for example when you give the credit card info it takes you to a page that, in addtion to gotcha, it says, "None of the information that you provided in the previous screen was stored anywhere on our site. We have no record of any information that you gave us." They could, of course, provide the source code to the CGI that accepts the data for audit purposes.
But the previous poster is probably right. There's probably no way that they can do this w/out getting into a very serious PR problem. And as anyone who's ever worked for the government can attest, your first job (above all else) is to stay out of the newspapers.
I don't think the SEC really gets it. I've been wrong lots of times before and I might be here. Personally, whenever I see a website that contains something that I'm even moderately curious about, I click on their "order here" button even if I'm not going to order anything. My hopes is that they might have some additional piece of critical information that wasn't obvious in the rest of their sight (for example shipping costs, payment options, etc). The point is that I generally investigate a site pretty thoroughly before I commit to sending any of *my* information to them.
I doubt that I'm alone in this practice. What this means is that clicking on the "gotcha link" at McWhortle.com isn't really a gotcha. It's just part of trying to find out additional information about the company. If you really want to implement the "gotcha" I would think you'd have to delay the "gotcha" right up until someone actually is really ready to bid/purchase/whatever. You got to get to the point, I'd think, where people are actually thinking about doing this, and *then* hit them with the "gotcha". Otherwise, anyone who gets to the current "gotcha page" is going to dismiss it with, "Well, yeah I kinda thought this wasn't right. Glad I don't get caught by these things. Glad I don't have to worry about these kind of scams... on the other hand, check out this other site! Wow, investments in working cold fusion?"
I would think if you're trying to convince someone that they are too gullible, you got to catch them in the process of actually having taken the bait. Otherwise, they're not likely to learn.
$.02. Am I off my rocker?
I'm reading lots of comments on this list about "the patch penguin will scale only as well as Linus, or maybe worse", or "Linus is right". But I'm not so sure that I agree. Having read the original proposal and the entire thread (as of last night around 1am EDT) I think that the proposal is a way of getting Linus to do what he does best (architecture) and relieving him from the mundane duties like trying to make sure that a submitted patch actually applies properly. Once the patch penguine does that kind of stuff, then Linus can review it.
Of course the advantage of this is that the mundane stuff can be done in parallel to the architectural stuff.. thus allowing more than one thing to get done at a time. Where as Linus himself can only do this serially.
The reason that this is important is that there is a very large backlog of patches that are simply not getting applied. Allegedly the whole VM issue could have been resolved if Linus had enough time to look at and apply RvR's patches. What this means is that Linux, with the inability of kernel maintainers to effectively submit patches, is turning into Minix. Remember that Linux was born out of Linus & others reaction to the fact that patches submitted to Minix couldn't get applied and redistributed (for copyright reasons). Which meant that in order to get a reasonable system, you first had to download the unpatched code, then go through a little patch-o-rama. It was ineffective. The current patch log reminds some of that situation, and has some fearing a potential kernel fork.
Of course, the biggest question that I have for the proposal is that Rob wants to just "formalize" a position that already exists and is being done, to some extent, already. If the position is already in place and already operating, then why is there still a patch backlog? How does formalizing it actually improve the situation?
Done
350 machines. Need to track the package status of 350 machines. How exactly, are you going to tell me the status of 350 machines using that technique without going to each of the individual machines? Right now, you either:
The point is that the red hat network (allegedly) manages large numbers of machines better than debian. Of course, this is untested by me, right now. But it's an attractive feature.