Advocating the death penalty is not an intellectually dishonest position nor one which should result in such a screed.
There are numerous people who have committed heinous crimes, the nature of which indicates that they can be neither rehabilitated nor allowed to roam free. Charles Manson is one which immediately springs to mind. Questions of their upbringing or "why they did it" do not matter, these are people who are either truely evil(in this sense totally in disagreement with almost all societal norms and laws, not necessarily in the sense of religion), or simply so freakin' warped they have no hope of being saved. Killing such a person when the evidence is "without a doubt" not simply "without a reasonable doubt", is not necessarily something that should so blithely be dismissed.
By the way, advocating an idea isn't a crime, so your attempt at analogy simply isn't even reasonable.
So what exactly is your basic problem with having a punishment for a crime?
Specifically, how is tracking someone for life because they committed murder worse than throwing them in jail for 20 years or so? Each is a removal of a persons civil liberties, incarceration is currently deemed an appropriate removal of civil liberties, why shouldn't the tracking of an offender be likewise deemed appropriate? Hell, as far as I know, if you've only been charged with a crime the police will take your fingerprints and those are kept on file indefinitely. That is a real abuse of civil liberties since you haven't been convicted.
Once your convicted of a crime, the punishment is simply based on what society deems fit. While I could reasonably allow that there are arguments against a lifetime tag, I don't believe you've provided one here. I think it is far worse to incarcerate someone for a period of time than track them for life but I still think that people should go to jail for certain crimes.
Note that this assumes that the tracking device is "easily" removed should it later be "proven" you didn't commit the crime.
How much more "erosion" of your civil liberties is this compared to being thrown in to jail? We accept that as due punishment for a crime, why is tagging someone with an RFID chip not an appropriate sentence? If people know that this will be a possibility maybe they won't commit the crime. Doubtful I know as it's not much of a deterrent really but than would you have had the same reaction if the change in law was simply to make the sentence automatic life in prison?
My point is of course, that we certainly do accept the erosion of civil liberties for criminals exactly because they have shown that they are unable to accept the responsibility that the liberties require.
However, there also must be a way to remove these tags should it be later "proven" that you didn't commit the crime. As long as that's in place I don't see that anyone has an argument.
This is simply a case of whether or not you agree that the punishment fits the crime. For child sex offenders many would say this is letting them off too easy.
Just a second are you saying The Register wasted 4 good web pages, the Reporter's time, our time, and our energy to tell us in a not very straight forward way that Groklaw is inhabited by biased, Anti-SCO users? Oh MY GOD! Who would have thunk it. Damn good thing the Register brought that to our attention.
Psst, over here, yeah you, don't tell anyone but did you know that Slashdot is inhabited by a bunch of Techno-Geeks, no really, mostly Linux users, quite a few rabid ones. Think maybe I should have this posted on THE REGISTER? This might make for a really good story, maybe 6 pages.
If that's the Register's point than they totally, utterly failed, because they weren't very straight forward about it AND they demonstrate the very failure you think exists on Groklaw. The "New facts produced...jumped upon by the majority", is more attributable to the Register than it was to Groklaw, at least in this case.
The "fact" that The Register article took out of context was PJ's speculation of Monterey as a "stopgap" towards Linux. That speculation was a minor point in a series of articles 'dedicated' to show that SCO knew or reasonably should have known that Monterey was to run on the POWER architecture from the start. The Register's reporter didn't do his homework, or if he did he ignored the main thrust of the "evidence" gathering, and decided to latch on to PJ's mere speculation.
The evidence gathered by Groklaw regarding Monterey on POWER would go a LONG way in court to defeating the 3rd Amended Counterclaim by SCO. This is the one where they claim IBM broke a contract with SCO by developing Monterey on POWER. Groklaw's evidence showed that SCO knew or reasonably should have known that Monterey was being developed on POWER from the beginning. Of course IBM has some of the best lawyers working for them so they didn't need Groklaw, but none the less the evidence was there.
Well in this case it is Orlowski taking "facts" out of context.
The point of the Groklaw interest in Monterey was to gather information on SCO's claim that IBM broke their contract with SCO by developing Monterey on POWER. This was always the main focus for the fact gathering. Thus the majority of the statements and "revelations" made were regarding this position taken by SCO. That Monterey on POWER isn't much of a revelation for Orlowski is not really surprising given the mountain of "evidence" gathered by Groklaw. But maybe he should be contacting SCO to ask them why SCO thinks otherwise rather than quibbling with Groklaw over a speculation by PJ on a minor point eg. "Monterey being a stopgap towards Linux".
So Orlowski takes a speculation and blows it up in to a 4 "page" story, that basically comes down to that PJ's speculation was 2 years too early, e.g. Monterey wasn't a "stopgap" from the beginning but it certainly seemed abandoned by the beginning of 2000 and certainly by Aug. 2000, and thus could be characterised as being possibly a "stopgap".
Now that is all that Orlowski's article is about, an attempt to deride Groklaw based on a speculation by PJ in the midst of an article used to gather information not really connected to the speculation.
It is obvious to me that Orlowski did not take the time to understand what the whole point of Groklaw's Monterey fact gathering mission was about. It seems to me he came in part way through, didn't read the previous discussion and took issue with a minor speculation. If that isn't taking something out of context I don't know what is. The worst part is that it is Orlowski who is supposed to be the "Journalist", but than maybe this isn't surprising because that is what I have come to expect from mainstream journalists anyway.
How you choose to f*(k up your own country is your choice, the gall of this is that your government thinks that Canada is too stupid to know how we should best run our own country and meet our own international responsibilities. The report from your government suggests that our laws will not meet our obligations under WIPO treaties, well guess what, we have lawyers up here too ya know, we don't need any help from you guys to "tell" us what to do.
"Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do)."
Right than, I'll hop right on the next flight from Saskatoon and take in the proceedings. That this is "open to the public" is a sham. It is open to "some of the public", only those who have the means or proximity to actually take them in. Nice "public" inquiry.
It took a bit of searching but here's an article that implies that IBM receives about $1 billion per year in revenue from IP license rights. Note this is
all IP licensing both hardware & software and the article is dated 2003.
While I have grown to "trust" IBM more, they are still far from being in the ranks of the "free as in freedom" crowd. In fact the article implies that as far as IP goes they are going in the other direction. On the other hand this 500 patent overture may be their way of having their cake and eat it too. If OpenSource really does take over the world IBM is in a great position to capitalize. They lose at most $1billion/year from IP but gain untold billions from consulting.
Note as well that IBM's 500 patent give away only applies to OSI approved licenses, they can still sue their competitors. This is great for OS because IBM's competitors fight back against IBM but not OSI projects. Consider SUN's move with the 1600 patents, they tried a quick bait-and-switch but people caught them on it. Now SUN only has two choices, 1) really open OpenSolaris or 2) watch OpenSolaris die and whither along with SUN's formerly good name.
The difference between the two is like this, for SUN we have a case of "The emperor isn't wearing any clothes." With IBM it's "The emperor may not be wearing clothes but he's gone to the laundry to see if there's anything there that fits." In other words I am cautiously optomistic with IBM, but I think SUN is outright trying to game the OS system. In fact, for me personally, SUN has shown themselves to be totally devoid of any redeeming qualities. They had a chance and blew it, I don't buy at all their little act that they are working the kinks out of their CDDL. SUN knows EXACTLY what they want and it totally conflicts with 71% of the OSI world(this is the percentage of OSI projects on sourceforge using either the GPL or LGPL, 67% use straight GPL). So SUN is trying to make "overtures" in the hopes that we will let them slide by. They have reams of lawyers, they don't need us to tell them what is wrong with their CDDL, hell they already distribute loads of GPL software with their proprietary stuff. At the very least their first attempt should have been better than it was.
It's worse than that, the ReactOS submitter doesn't need to admit to having read the OpenSolaris code except if it's about copyright infringement. You can implement an idea totally independent of OpenSolaris, without even seeing it, but if it infringes a patent you will be liable.
The dire consequences of reading the OpenSolaris code isn't that you will infringe the copyright as few people can remember whole swaths of C code. The danger rather is that you will recall an "idea" you saw "somewhere" but don't remember where exactly, but "gee this is software what's the big deal". So you write the code, it turns out completely different than the OpenSolaris code but does substantially similar things, than BOOM! SUN hits you with the patent suit.
Since other's have commented on the semi-usefulness of the patents IBM released I don't really think you characterize it fairly. It's not like your the only one who has noticed. Especially since SUN themselves was more than happy to point it out to all of us.
However, the critics of the IBM release fail to recognize something, it is obvious that IBM now has a very specific process to vet their patents to determine whether or not they should be released. Whereas it is clear that SUN's release was not vetted in so much as their patent's cannot be used except in the very specific case of a CDDL licensee.
Consider this, while I can look at IBM's patents and decide on their usefulness without fear, I should not technically look at SUN's patents in case I should be influenced in my software development and infringe one of their patents in a non-CDDL project.
Since you include a quote from the article I can only presume you read the whole thing. In which case it should have been obvious that while RMS "praised" IBM for their "significant step" he also indicated that he wasn't happy with them either.
So your analogy would be more like "thanks for letting those hostages go but I note that you still have thousands of other captives."
Given that the "blast" against SUN is independent of the GPL I don't see that you have a point. But if you did have a point I'm sure it would be a good one.
Note that in the article in question RMS uses the GPL only in way of comparison. He doesn't care one iota what license you use in so much as the license you do choose provides the same freedoms as the GPL. In this instance what he is saying is that SUN is crowing about their "gift" of software patents when in actual fact the gift is really a poisoned pill. Consider that he compares SUN's patent release to IBM's, note that IBM's release has nothing to do with the GPL EXCEPT that the patent license grant is GPL compatible.
As well, since others have also noted the difficiencies in the CDDL and the "patent grant", it's not like RMS is out on a limb alone.
Lastly, RMS may indeed be a zealot but thank Allah he is because it means there's someone making sure that the things that need watching are watched. In the meantime you can continue on your merry way secure in the knowledge that you don't have a clue.
Actually it would make a great deal of difference. I'm a little lazy today but if you go search google for IBM's announcement regarding their 500 patents you will see that it is given in very specific legalese that I'm quite convinced would stand up in court as a "license" to use their patents.
So the "promise" requested from Sun isn't just a "we promise not to sue", it is a very specific request for a "use license" for the patents. Such a license can be posted on their website independent of their CDDL license which is a copyright license only.
Didn't anyone mention to you in statistics class that simulations don't mean a damn thing. The fact is that exactly 1 reality will evolve, it could be any one of the 60,000 simulations or it could be none of them.
Granting that the article is short on facts, the ones provided don't give any indication of the probability of the temperatures. The distribution was generated simply by varying a bunch of parameters. Big frickin' deal. I can come up with a simulation that does the same thing and I don't need a distributed network to generate the results.
The biggest problem with reports like these is they give no indication of the scientific error in the results. They just report a the high, low and maybe the average. No mention at all that it isn't a probability distribution of any sort.
If just one parameter is wrong, one term missed and the whole damn thing is worthless.
You should change that to just "better at raising children" because men are better cooks too based on the observations that most of the best chefs are men. No this isn't scientific, it could easily be bias, yadda,yadda,yadda...
Except that the very same statement can be said about books, music, art etc. Or even about patents. Just because you are awarded a patent doesn't mean its viable. Nothing is truely "viable" until your sued and you win or lose. Having a patent granted only gives the patent holder a stronger case in court.
Besides which copyright isn't about an idea, its about the expression of that idea. So any number of people can have the same idea and code it differently. They are all equally protected. In fact it's easier to defend a copyright in court as all you need to show is "substantial simularity", and there appear to be well established methods of determining "substantial simularity".
The only thing wrong with copyright is that it lasts way too long.
But having said that, will you people get off your collective behinds and fix your g*d d*mn patent system. Enough is enough. This is the most ludicrous one I've seen yet. How, could the patent examiner possible let this get by. The only reason for its existance is because MS thinks that IsNot(NOT(a Is b) grammatical), oops I think I just violated the patent. Oh, not only that it's not grammatical either I better invent another operator, I'm going to call it the IsIsNot operator.
Come on people, start a "million geek march" or something. Fill the WhiteHouse lawn and don't leave until your employees fix their mess. Note I was going to say leaders, but their not your leaders, you pay them good money to act on your behalf, people often forget this.
Well if you want to rely on yet another reason why MS software sucks BY DESIGN, than go right ahead.
Now, do any distros actually install Apache on any configuration not considered a server? I install it but I know what I'm doing. Most users will in fact simply choose "workstation" if they install their own OS at all.
But ultimately you misread the evidence once again, which is not surprising since it obviously doesn't meet with your desires.
An increase in use might imply an increase in attacks, it does not follow that this also implies a proportional increase in successful attacks.
Which just goes to show that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
I'm going to go out on a limb here but take your Windows' blinders off and reread the article it will be much more informative.
To Wit:
1) He doesn't use Apache as an example that Linux is attacked as often as Windows. He uses it to combat the argument that greater market share naturally leads to more successful attacks. E.g. Apache has greater market share than IIS but fewer successful attacks(historically, IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 may be better now but there's no evidence of that.). The point is that if Linux is inherently less secure you would expect a disproprotionate number of successful attacks compared to market share. 2) As others have pointed out, it's not the number of vulnerabilities but a combination of factors a)potential damage, b) technical ease of implimentation c) access(e.g. internet/network based or requires local access). So your examples of the number of alerts sent goes directly counter to the point of the article. In fact you fall right in line with the MS thinking.
The problem isn't that the potential bias was pointed out, it was clearly there for anyone to see. The problem is in pointing out the potential bias but not pointing out any actual problems with the article.
For instance, I'm a Linux user and an advocate only by way of having to administer my friends boxes. If they want my help, than they have to be prepared to use what I suggest.
So having said that, I can point out that Petreley makes too much of the technical history of single-user Windows. Windows OS's after WinNT were designed to be more multi-user than DOS/Win95 heritage. However, it is clear that the "thought process" within Microsoft is NOT multiuser driven. This "culture" permeates 3rd parties as well who take their direction from MS. Until MS recognize that all their systems must be designed from a multi-user perspective 3rd party software isn't going to do any better.
Now, the next question is how does Petreley's overstating of the facts affect his analysis? In the end it doesn't because this argument was used to try to explain Windows vulnerability vectors NOT whether it was actually more or less secure.
In fact I found the middle part of the report to be the most biased and technically inaccurate, but that portion was being used to explain why believing Windows is less vulnerable than Linux should be questioned on its face.
The actual results of his study appear to show that Windows is less secure based on his metrics. So unless you have a problem with his numbers or his metrics, than his bias is mute.
Go ahead and take it with a grain of salt, but in doing so that doesn't mean you totally dismiss it. If after reading it you have significant difficulties with his methodology or facts than by all means share them.
But the fact is Microsoft is out there touting how "Windows is more secure than Linux", not even stating that the metric used is faulty at best and ignoring the rest of the report that they use to back their statement. When I first saw Microsoft's statement I was naturally incredulous simply because it was Microsoft. When I found out it came from a Microsoft funded study I became more incredulous, but when I found out that their metric had nothing to do with severity of attack than their statement became pure FUD(to me).
Furthermore, knowing that there are Windows vulnerabilities that will never be patched and yet have Microsoft state that they have a 100% fix rate is not just misleading its a lie.
First off this was not a "you should switch article".
Secondly if you read the article at all you would see that Petreley bends over backwards to state that his methodology is one way of doing things and others may be used.
Thirdly, since the point of the comparison was to determine the truth of a broad statement such as "X is more/less vulnerable than Y" it is reasonable to look at the data the way he described.
Lastly, an unstated goal of the paper was to determine if Microsoft's statements regarding Windows being more secure than Linux is true or not. In that respect it is imperative that the researcher use a broad description rather than rely on a specific application or set of circumstances.
The most important point of the article was that security can't just come down to which system has the most vulnerabilities reported but must take in to account at LEAST 3 factors, "potential damage", "technical feasibility of the attack", and the attackers ability to execute the attack(e.g. internet connection only required or local login necessary).
Microsoft never does such a good job of setting up a comparison and than actually reporting the results reasonably fairly. Certainly their current marketing drive isn't presenting the facts fairly.
His point is irrespective of the version of Apache.
His point is that Apache is the "most popular"(which it is), and is less likely to be attacked. This argument was in response to the idea that Windows is not more vulnerable simply the most prevalent. His counter example of Apache was used to point out that popularity does not directly lead to more attacks.
Thus it does not follow that as Linux grows in popularity that the number of successful attacks will increase disproportionally.
Forrester, Gartner, IDC et.al. frequently pay for their own research and than SELL the research results. This is significantly better than being funded by an entity which invariably ends up giving the results that entity wanted to see in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Advocating the death penalty is not an intellectually dishonest position nor one which should result in such a screed.
There are numerous people who have committed heinous crimes, the nature of which indicates that they can be neither rehabilitated nor allowed to roam free. Charles Manson is one which immediately springs to mind. Questions of their upbringing or "why they did it" do not matter, these are people who are either truely evil(in this sense totally in disagreement with almost all societal norms and laws, not necessarily in the sense of religion), or simply so freakin' warped they have no hope of being saved. Killing such a person when the evidence is "without a doubt" not simply "without a reasonable doubt", is not necessarily something that should so blithely be dismissed.
By the way, advocating an idea isn't a crime, so your attempt at analogy simply isn't even reasonable.
So what exactly is your basic problem with having a punishment for a crime?
Specifically, how is tracking someone for life because they committed murder worse than throwing them in jail for 20 years or so? Each is a removal of a persons civil liberties, incarceration is currently deemed an appropriate removal of civil liberties, why shouldn't the tracking of an offender be likewise deemed appropriate? Hell, as far as I know, if you've only been charged with a crime the police will take your fingerprints and those are kept on file indefinitely. That is a real abuse of civil liberties since you haven't been convicted.
Once your convicted of a crime, the punishment is simply based on what society deems fit. While I could reasonably allow that there are arguments against a lifetime tag, I don't believe you've provided one here. I think it is far worse to incarcerate someone for a period of time than track them for life but I still think that people should go to jail for certain crimes.
Note that this assumes that the tracking device is "easily" removed should it later be "proven" you didn't commit the crime.
How much more "erosion" of your civil liberties is this compared to being thrown in to jail? We accept that as due punishment for a crime, why is tagging someone with an RFID chip not an appropriate sentence? If people know that this will be a possibility maybe they won't commit the crime. Doubtful I know as it's not much of a deterrent really but than would you have had the same reaction if the change in law was simply to make the sentence automatic life in prison?
My point is of course, that we certainly do accept the erosion of civil liberties for criminals exactly because they have shown that they are unable to accept the responsibility that the liberties require.
However, there also must be a way to remove these tags should it be later "proven" that you didn't commit the crime. As long as that's in place I don't see that anyone has an argument.
This is simply a case of whether or not you agree that the punishment fits the crime. For child sex offenders many would say this is letting them off too easy.
Just a second are you saying The Register wasted 4 good web pages, the Reporter's time, our time, and our energy to tell us in a not very straight forward way that Groklaw is inhabited by biased, Anti-SCO users? Oh MY GOD! Who would have thunk it. Damn good thing the Register brought that to our attention.
Psst, over here, yeah you, don't tell anyone but did you know that Slashdot is inhabited by a bunch of Techno-Geeks, no really, mostly Linux users, quite a few rabid ones. Think maybe I should have this posted on THE REGISTER? This might make for a really good story, maybe 6 pages.
If that's the Register's point than they totally, utterly failed, because they weren't very straight forward about it AND they demonstrate the very failure you think exists on Groklaw. The "New facts produced...jumped upon by the majority", is more attributable to the Register than it was to Groklaw, at least in this case.
The "fact" that The Register article took out of context was PJ's speculation of Monterey as a "stopgap" towards Linux. That speculation was a minor point in a series of articles 'dedicated' to show that SCO knew or reasonably should have known that Monterey was to run on the POWER architecture from the start. The Register's reporter didn't do his homework, or if he did he ignored the main thrust of the "evidence" gathering, and decided to latch on to PJ's mere speculation.
The evidence gathered by Groklaw regarding Monterey on POWER would go a LONG way in court to defeating the 3rd Amended Counterclaim by SCO. This is the one where they claim IBM broke a contract with SCO by developing Monterey on POWER. Groklaw's evidence showed that SCO knew or reasonably should have known that Monterey was being developed on POWER from the beginning. Of course IBM has some of the best lawyers working for them so they didn't need Groklaw, but none the less the evidence was there.
Well in this case it is Orlowski taking "facts" out of context.
The point of the Groklaw interest in Monterey was to gather information on SCO's claim that IBM broke their contract with SCO by developing Monterey on POWER. This was always the main focus for the fact gathering. Thus the majority of the statements and "revelations" made were regarding this position taken by SCO. That Monterey on POWER isn't much of a revelation for Orlowski is not really surprising given the mountain of "evidence" gathered by Groklaw. But maybe he should be contacting SCO to ask them why SCO thinks otherwise rather than quibbling with Groklaw over a speculation by PJ on a minor point eg. "Monterey being a stopgap towards Linux".
So Orlowski takes a speculation and blows it up in to a 4 "page" story, that basically comes down to that PJ's speculation was 2 years too early, e.g. Monterey wasn't a "stopgap" from the beginning but it certainly seemed abandoned by the beginning of 2000 and certainly by Aug. 2000, and thus could be characterised as being possibly a "stopgap".
Now that is all that Orlowski's article is about, an attempt to deride Groklaw based on a speculation by PJ in the midst of an article used to gather information not really connected to the speculation.
It is obvious to me that Orlowski did not take the time to understand what the whole point of Groklaw's Monterey fact gathering mission was about. It seems to me he came in part way through, didn't read the previous discussion and took issue with a minor speculation. If that isn't taking something out of context I don't know what is. The worst part is that it is Orlowski who is supposed to be the "Journalist", but than maybe this isn't surprising because that is what I have come to expect from mainstream journalists anyway.
How you choose to f*(k up your own country is your choice, the gall of this is that your government thinks that Canada is too stupid to know how we should best run our own country and meet our own international responsibilities. The report from your government suggests that our laws will not meet our obligations under WIPO treaties, well guess what, we have lawyers up here too ya know, we don't need any help from you guys to "tell" us what to do.
So just go sod off already.
"Note that this isn't censorship or a closed trial or any of that nonsense. You can physically go down and sit in the courtroom if you really want to (and lots of the public do)."
Right than, I'll hop right on the next flight from Saskatoon and take in the proceedings. That this is "open to the public" is a sham. It is open to "some of the public", only those who have the means or proximity to actually take them in. Nice "public" inquiry.
http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentArticles/asp/ar ticles.asp?ArticleID=1400
While I have grown to "trust" IBM more, they are still far from being in the ranks of the "free as in freedom" crowd. In fact the article implies that as far as IP goes they are going in the other direction. On the other hand this 500 patent overture may be their way of having their cake and eat it too. If OpenSource really does take over the world IBM is in a great position to capitalize. They lose at most $1billion/year from IP but gain untold billions from consulting.
Note as well that IBM's 500 patent give away only applies to OSI approved licenses, they can still sue their competitors. This is great for OS because IBM's competitors fight back against IBM but not OSI projects. Consider SUN's move with the 1600 patents, they tried a quick bait-and-switch but people caught them on it. Now SUN only has two choices, 1) really open OpenSolaris or 2) watch OpenSolaris die and whither along with SUN's formerly good name.
The difference between the two is like this, for SUN we have a case of "The emperor isn't wearing any clothes." With IBM it's "The emperor may not be wearing clothes but he's gone to the laundry to see if there's anything there that fits." In other words I am cautiously optomistic with IBM, but I think SUN is outright trying to game the OS system. In fact, for me personally, SUN has shown themselves to be totally devoid of any redeeming qualities. They had a chance and blew it, I don't buy at all their little act that they are working the kinks out of their CDDL. SUN knows EXACTLY what they want and it totally conflicts with 71% of the OSI world(this is the percentage of OSI projects on sourceforge using either the GPL or LGPL, 67% use straight GPL). So SUN is trying to make "overtures" in the hopes that we will let them slide by. They have reams of lawyers, they don't need us to tell them what is wrong with their CDDL, hell they already distribute loads of GPL software with their proprietary stuff. At the very least their first attempt should have been better than it was.
It's worse than that, the ReactOS submitter doesn't need to admit to having read the OpenSolaris code except if it's about copyright infringement. You can implement an idea totally independent of OpenSolaris, without even seeing it, but if it infringes a patent you will be liable.
The dire consequences of reading the OpenSolaris code isn't that you will infringe the copyright as few people can remember whole swaths of C code. The danger rather is that you will recall an "idea" you saw "somewhere" but don't remember where exactly, but "gee this is software what's the big deal". So you write the code, it turns out completely different than the OpenSolaris code but does substantially similar things, than BOOM! SUN hits you with the patent suit.
Since other's have commented on the semi-usefulness of the patents IBM released I don't really think you characterize it fairly. It's not like your the only one who has noticed. Especially since SUN themselves was more than happy to point it out to all of us.
However, the critics of the IBM release fail to recognize something, it is obvious that IBM now has a very specific process to vet their patents to determine whether or not they should be released. Whereas it is clear that SUN's release was not vetted in so much as their patent's cannot be used except in the very specific case of a CDDL licensee.
Consider this, while I can look at IBM's patents and decide on their usefulness without fear, I should not technically look at SUN's patents in case I should be influenced in my software development and infringe one of their patents in a non-CDDL project.
Since you include a quote from the article I can only presume you read the whole thing. In which case it should have been obvious that while RMS "praised" IBM for their "significant step" he also indicated that he wasn't happy with them either.
So your analogy would be more like "thanks for letting those hostages go but I note that you still have thousands of other captives."
Criticising a person should be marked as flamebait, criticising his stance if stated in reasonable language will be given appropriate moderation.
So if you can point to one of the posts that actually makes a good criticism about RMS's article rather than the man himself I'd like to see it.
Given that the "blast" against SUN is independent of the GPL I don't see that you have a point. But if you did have a point I'm sure it would be a good one.
Note that in the article in question RMS uses the GPL only in way of comparison. He doesn't care one iota what license you use in so much as the license you do choose provides the same freedoms as the GPL. In this instance what he is saying is that SUN is crowing about their "gift" of software patents when in actual fact the gift is really a poisoned pill. Consider that he compares SUN's patent release to IBM's, note that IBM's release has nothing to do with the GPL EXCEPT that the patent license grant is GPL compatible.
As well, since others have also noted the difficiencies in the CDDL and the "patent grant", it's not like RMS is out on a limb alone.
Lastly, RMS may indeed be a zealot but thank Allah he is because it means there's someone making sure that the things that need watching are watched. In the meantime you can continue on your merry way secure in the knowledge that you don't have a clue.
Actually it would make a great deal of difference. I'm a little lazy today but if you go search google for IBM's announcement regarding their 500 patents you will see that it is given in very specific legalese that I'm quite convinced would stand up in court as a "license" to use their patents.
So the "promise" requested from Sun isn't just a "we promise not to sue", it is a very specific request for a "use license" for the patents. Such a license can be posted on their website independent of their CDDL license which is a copyright license only.
Didn't anyone mention to you in statistics class that simulations don't mean a damn thing. The fact is that exactly 1 reality will evolve, it could be any one of the 60,000 simulations or it could be none of them.
Granting that the article is short on facts, the ones provided don't give any indication of the probability of the temperatures. The distribution was generated simply by varying a bunch of parameters. Big frickin' deal. I can come up with a simulation that does the same thing and I don't need a distributed network to generate the results.
The biggest problem with reports like these is they give no indication of the scientific error in the results. They just report a the high, low and maybe the average. No mention at all that it isn't a probability distribution of any sort.
If just one parameter is wrong, one term missed and the whole damn thing is worthless.
O.k. I'm going to really be a devil's advocate.
You should change that to just "better at raising children" because men are better cooks too based on the observations that most of the best chefs are men. No this isn't scientific, it could easily be bias, yadda,yadda,yadda...
Except that the very same statement can be said about books, music, art etc. Or even about patents. Just because you are awarded a patent doesn't mean its viable. Nothing is truely "viable" until your sued and you win or lose. Having a patent granted only gives the patent holder a stronger case in court.
Besides which copyright isn't about an idea, its about the expression of that idea. So any number of people can have the same idea and code it differently. They are all equally protected. In fact it's easier to defend a copyright in court as all you need to show is "substantial simularity", and there appear to be well established methods of determining "substantial simularity".
The only thing wrong with copyright is that it lasts way too long.
O.k. it's not all of you, I'm just really pissed.
But having said that, will you people get off your collective behinds and fix your g*d d*mn patent system. Enough is enough. This is the most ludicrous one I've seen yet. How, could the patent examiner possible let this get by. The only reason for its existance is because MS thinks that
IsNot(NOT(a Is b) grammatical), oops I think I just violated the patent. Oh, not only that it's not grammatical either I better invent another operator, I'm going to call it the IsIsNot operator.
Come on people, start a "million geek march" or something. Fill the WhiteHouse lawn and don't leave until your employees fix their mess. Note I was going to say leaders, but their not your leaders, you pay them good money to act on your behalf, people often forget this.
Well if you want to rely on yet another reason why MS software sucks BY DESIGN, than go right ahead.
Now, do any distros actually install Apache on any configuration not considered a server? I install it but I know what I'm doing. Most users will in fact simply choose "workstation" if they install their own OS at all.
But ultimately you misread the evidence once again, which is not surprising since it obviously doesn't meet with your desires.
An increase in use might imply an increase in attacks, it does not follow that this also implies a proportional increase in successful attacks.
Which just goes to show that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
I'm going to go out on a limb here but take your Windows' blinders off and reread the article it will be much more informative.
To Wit:
1) He doesn't use Apache as an example that Linux is attacked as often as Windows. He uses it to combat the argument that greater market share naturally leads to more successful attacks. E.g. Apache has greater market share than IIS but fewer successful attacks(historically, IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 may be better now but there's no evidence of that.). The point is that if Linux is inherently less secure you would expect a disproprotionate number of successful attacks compared to market share.
2) As others have pointed out, it's not the number of vulnerabilities but a combination of factors a)potential damage, b) technical ease of implimentation c) access(e.g. internet/network based or requires local access). So your examples of the number of alerts sent goes directly counter to the point of the article. In fact you fall right in line with the MS thinking.
The problem isn't that the potential bias was pointed out, it was clearly there for anyone to see. The problem is in pointing out the potential bias but not pointing out any actual problems with the article.
For instance, I'm a Linux user and an advocate only by way of having to administer my friends boxes. If they want my help, than they have to be prepared to use what I suggest.
So having said that, I can point out that Petreley makes too much of the technical history of single-user Windows. Windows OS's after WinNT were designed to be more multi-user than DOS/Win95 heritage. However, it is clear that the "thought process" within Microsoft is NOT multiuser driven. This "culture" permeates 3rd parties as well who take their direction from MS. Until MS recognize that all their systems must be designed from a multi-user perspective 3rd party software isn't going to do any better.
Now, the next question is how does Petreley's overstating of the facts affect his analysis? In the end it doesn't because this argument was used to try to explain Windows vulnerability vectors NOT whether it was actually more or less secure.
In fact I found the middle part of the report to be the most biased and technically inaccurate, but that portion was being used to explain why believing Windows is less vulnerable than Linux should be questioned on its face.
The actual results of his study appear to show that Windows is less secure based on his metrics. So unless you have a problem with his numbers or his metrics, than his bias is mute.
Go ahead and take it with a grain of salt, but in doing so that doesn't mean you totally dismiss it. If after reading it you have significant difficulties with his methodology or facts than by all means share them.
But the fact is Microsoft is out there touting how "Windows is more secure than Linux", not even stating that the metric used is faulty at best and ignoring the rest of the report that they use to back their statement. When I first saw Microsoft's statement I was naturally incredulous simply because it was Microsoft. When I found out it came from a Microsoft funded study I became more incredulous, but when I found out that their metric had nothing to do with severity of attack than their statement became pure FUD(to me).
Furthermore, knowing that there are Windows vulnerabilities that will never be patched and yet have Microsoft state that they have a 100% fix rate is not just misleading its a lie.
First off this was not a "you should switch article".
Secondly if you read the article at all you would see that Petreley bends over backwards to state that his methodology is one way of doing things and others may be used.
Thirdly, since the point of the comparison was to determine the truth of a broad statement such as "X is more/less vulnerable than Y" it is reasonable to look at the data the way he described.
Lastly, an unstated goal of the paper was to determine if Microsoft's statements regarding Windows being more secure than Linux is true or not. In that respect it is imperative that the researcher use a broad description rather than rely on a specific application or set of circumstances.
The most important point of the article was that security can't just come down to which system has the most vulnerabilities reported but must take in to account at LEAST 3 factors, "potential damage", "technical feasibility of the attack", and the attackers ability to execute the attack(e.g. internet connection only required or local login necessary).
Microsoft never does such a good job of setting up a comparison and than actually reporting the results reasonably fairly. Certainly their current marketing drive isn't presenting the facts fairly.
His point is irrespective of the version of Apache.
His point is that Apache is the "most popular"(which it is), and is less likely to be attacked. This argument was in response to the idea that Windows is not more vulnerable simply the most prevalent. His counter example of Apache was used to point out that popularity does not directly lead to more attacks.
Thus it does not follow that as Linux grows in popularity that the number of successful attacks will increase disproportionally.
Forrester, Gartner, IDC et.al. frequently pay for their own research and than SELL the research results. This is significantly better than being funded by an entity which invariably ends up giving the results that entity wanted to see in the first place.