"With Qt, you have to pay a one time fee to do commercial development."
Unless I have completely misunderstood Bruce (which may well be the case), the goal for UserLinux is to provide for an enterprise solution based on Linux and coming with a series of features that are specifically addressing the needs of medium to large enterprises.
That is what I would call a commercial product and it is a product that is completely useless, unless it comes with a package of installation, support, upgrades, scalability and extendability.
The codebase of such product may well be free (and it should be), but an enterprise that will decide to deploy UserLinux will find large comfort in having a commercial partner for the tiny part of developping applications for their own need.
Trolltech is such a partner and it is a unique partner that it offers two identical products with different licensing schemes.
A large company, distributed all over the world has specific needs for its IT-infrastructure. Key factors for the successful migration to Linux are scalability, flexibility and manageability. These things can be achieved by UserLinux and KDE with its enterprise features that will support this kind of deployment by providing a management subsystem designed to do the very job.
Not only are these key features missing in GNOME, they don't even appear in any paper by the GNOME foundation announcing the stringent development of such features. Without these features, however, what exactly is the point of UserLinux? Right, there is none, it's just one more distribution, not more.
As to the license: The commercial licensing scheme only becomes relevant when the enterprise hires developpers to write software that will commercially be exploited at one point. The costs for this are negligible and transparent (http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html ).
Given the target audience (large enterprises with funds large enough to consider a migration to Linux on a large scale), the costs for licensing QT are low, ridiculously low when compared to other development platforms and you know what you are buying, since the codebase is open.
I can't think of any restriction in connection with this pricing that would outweigh the huge advantages of KDE over GNOME in an enterprise environment.
As a salesman I sometimes deal with CEOs in large scale enterprises and they could not care less about licensing schemes of this magnitude. In my opinion Bruce's arguments don't hold water for the target audience, which makes UserLinux redundant even before it has been released.
If you think this is another KDE vs. GNOME flamewar, you are dead wrong. The whole discussion is about a product worth millions of Dollars in planning, supporting, migrating and deploying large, complex infrastructures and for that you want to have the best tools for the job.
These tools cannot be found in GNOME, not even in a preliminary strategic paper of the GNOME foundation, let alone in workable code.
This licensing discussion seems like an ideological smokescreen, blinding people's eyes for the reality in large enterprises.
We will probably end up with UserLinux/GNOME and EnterpriseDebian/KDE at one point, because the KDE core will certainly not burn its vision on enterprise features in KDE.
"People want the freedom to do whatever they want: GPL allows this, Trolltech does not."
"I am very pleased to see that Qt is now available under the GPL," said Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation. "This is a big win for free software and a great gift from Trolltech to the community."
" My understanding is this is to be an enterprise user system, not a home user or personal user. The whole point is enterprise management and distribution management. "
'Zakly.
What is it that GNOME has to offer in this regard?
1.
KDE Kiosk Mode, also known as lock-down mode, makes it possible to restrict the capabilities of the KDE3 environment in powerful and flexible ways including but not limited to the ability to:
1. Restrict desktop, application, and printing actions.
2. Restrict internet access on a URL basis at a desktop-wide level.
3. Restrict desktop resource customizations.
Such functionality is invaluable for unattended operation of UserLinux in a kiosk setting as well as for wide-scale enterprise deployment of a controlled environment.
2.
A new easy-to-use administration tool, yet in the stages of development, will build on top of the KDE Kiosk Mode and expand upon the features in an exciting direction. The tool will enable scalable management of users, their settings and IT privileges. The design goals include:
1. Full scalability from medium to large organisations.
2. Usable by both KDE and non-KDE applications.
3. Seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure.
4. Roaming support.
Please expect more detail and an official announcement in 2004 Q1. 3.
An Integrated Terminal Server and Client employing a new and highly efficient X compression technology thereby enabling seamless desktop integration of applications based on a remote compute server. This feature will be in addition to KDE's existing remote desktop support (VNC and RDP) and is especially exciting in light of the fact that it enables a satisfying desktop experience on a thin client even with a low-bandwidth connection (e.g. dialup) to the application server. The technology will bring us on par with Citrix, Tarantella, SunRay and Windows Terminal Server offerings.
4.
KDE Print: Enterprise-grade technology for intimate management of printers and print jobs, adaptable to innumerable creative tasks.
5.
KDE Core Killer Apps: Whilst too numerous to list here, we expect to leverage core KDE applications where appropriate. In addition to the well-known applications several pertain directly to the enterprise including:
1. The upcoming Kontact, an integrated personal information management suite, which in conjunction with the Kolab Server will provide a powerful standards-based groupware solution.
2. The upcoming KERP, an Enterprise Resource Planner.
3. A set of financial trading tools currently in development.
ISVs in particular will be pleased to note that the KDE/Qt environment sports a rich body of development tools that leverage the elegant and powerful framework provided by KDE/Qt as well as tools enabling development in areas ranging from HTML production to UML modelling, CAD design and document publishing.
6.
KDE brings an impressive body of localization and internationalization effort to the table. With over 80 translation teams and KDE 3.2.x to be available in an estimated 50+ languages, KDE is a compelling choice for an enterprise desktop with an international audience.
Where is GNOME's visionary roadmap for a subsystem as powerful as that?
"KDE has no plan or vision for the license, except it's proprietary."
I have no idea what you are talking about. The Trolltech license gives you all the freedom of the Free Software world, as long as you are staying within this world. Once you are in the commercial world, a proprietary license gives you all the possibilities of proprietary software development and marketing of such.
Pray tell, what is wrong with the Trolltech license? It sure works for QCad, Opera and others.
However, what the Trolltech license definitely avoids is a total vendor lock in, due to its Open Source pendant.
Here is some bad news for you: It is NOT about a stable usable business desktop, it is about an enterprise operating system with all the clockwork needed to make an enterprise tick. That includes desktop management for a huge userbase, central administration of storage, software deployment, network control, printer administration, user help desk, seamless integration of data retrieval, processing and development.
An enterprise Linux has to compete with IBM, Microsoft, Sun or HP, but not with your choice of a desktop Linux distribution.
KDE provides for a vision that embraces these key requirements, whereas GNOME does not. Bruce made a bad choice and in his reply he sounds rather apologetic, but not very convinced or convincing.
I very much appreciate Bruce Peren's activities and believe that we need people like him who want to promote Linux as a serious contender in the market of enterprise systems.
Having said that, I was quite surprised to read Bruce's reply to the KDE-group. Nowhere does he address the real issue, which in this case is not the question of providing for another desktop solution, it is the question of providing for an enterprise Linux as a worthy contender to other "solutions" on an enterprise level.
In that respect GNOME loses big time for the simple reason that no one in the GNOME foundation seems to have a clear vision of where their development is going, in particular with respect to these points:
- Central administration of large scale desktop deployments - Enterprise level printing administration - Enterprise level Resource Planning
and many others more which can be read in detail on http://desktop.kdenews.org/strategy.html
KDE provides its user base with a clear and focussed vision of where enterprise Linux is going.
Where are the GNOME visions in this regard? There are none.
If UserLinux (What a bad name, it should be called Enterprise Linux or Debian Enterprise, whatever) wants to reach its intended audience, it has to provide a stringent concept for usability, scalability, support and enterprise features and commitment to care for the development.
All of this is missing from GNOME and this makes the licensing argument rather moot.
Either UserLinux wants to reach enterprises on a comprehensive level, in which case it has to provide for a framework enterprises need, or it wants to deploy some servers and some desktops without the technical merits of a real enterprise solution. The latter case is fine, if you want to show people that Linux is not bad and works fine in an enterprise environment.
However, if we are talking real enterprise level, GNOME cannot come up with the necessary features and the long term vision to compete with the large solution vendors.
As a technical salesman I would have a hard time making decision makers understand why the GNOME-UI is of real merit to their enterprise. The different licensing scheme is of only marginal interest for large scale deployments of a comprehensive framework.
Given the KDE strategy and the nonexistence of such in GNOME, one can only wonder, why UserLinux thinks it will make a difference in the corporate world.
"You mean the same France and Germany who to this day have never repayed the Marshall Plan loans?"
Here is a cluestick for you. You deserve the beating:
"The United States later on decided that Germany - like the other countries that got Marshall Plan aid - would not have to pay back the money. Germany, therefore, paid back a small amount of the received support. In 1972 the German government decided to pay back more money as a kind of present to say thank you to the American people. To do something good for the future, it was decided to create The German Marshall Fund of the United States. Over the first 15 years the GMF got an annual support of 15 million D-Mark. In 1987 this financial support was extended for another 10 years. The purpose of the GMF activities is to help to improve the transatlantic relations. In that sense the initial Marshall Plan became a permanent institution."
" The US taxpayers sure are getting reamed on this arent' they. They pay for the bombs, they pay to destroy things, then they pay to get them repaired. What's worse this money will be spread around to 60 different countries making other people rich."
This will probably have slipped your mind, but there was an alternative to go going to war andit would have saved the lives of your boys and the taxpayers' money.
It would have made life a little less pleasant for Halliburton though.
It strikes me as unusual to see that both your source and the story in Globetechnology fail to mention that last week's "skirmish court meeting" saw another lawyer as well: Mr. Brent Hatch, son of Mr. Orrin Hatch.
What's even worse is that in July I went to the USA and signed a heads-of-agreement with a US company who were going to commence manufacture of my X-Jet engine for use in UAVs and RPVs. This deal alone was worth a huge amount of money to the NZ taxman and would have also created new jobs and export earnings for this country.
That the NZ government were also prepared to let that deal fail through lends further credibility to the suggestion that their moves were not motivated by any desire to recover what was a rather trivial debt -- but more by a desire to shut down my missile project.
What I don't get is why you are blaming the government for a deal falling through. What is the government's role in your dealing with an investor, partner or customer?
Did you have a contract? What exactly did the government do to prevent you from fulfilling contractual obligations? What's a lawyer's point of view in this matter? I gather you have one, don't you?
" I believe that only the English-language version of North Korea's news agency is hosted in Japan. The original Korean-language content definitely originates from and is hosted in North Korea."
Sure you can back this up by traceroute, can't you?
" First let me revise the 30% figure I gave, the CIA world fact book reports North Korea spending 33.9% of Gross Domenstic Product on their military. US spends 3.2%."
What is it that you are trying to tell us?
The US spends some 350 Billion USD (give or take a few) on the military and that excludes anything the CIA, NSA, DHS, Border Patrol and the rest of the semi-military have in their own budgets and it does not contain the lumpy 87 Billion for the Iraq war.
It's a lot more interesting to compare military spending with education spending or to see it in context of the entire budget.
Read http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget and weep.
Just to give you an idea of the dimensions:
The US spends 60 Billion USD on education. Germany, which has about one third of the US' pouplation spends some 110 Billion USD.
Do us all a favor and get down from your high horse.
" I believe there is already a way for set top satellite HDTV boxes to spew the MPEG2 stream straight into a computer. It might be a hack in some instances but I think it's possible."
The Nokia DBox2 is such a device. It has an ethernet connection and can run Linux in all its glory.
"I don't want kiosk mode. I don't want limited file permission. I want the user to have root privleges basically. [...] I don't want to lock the systems down in any way shape or form (well about the only thing they can't do is shut off antivirus)."
You *do* realize that you come off as an idiot, don't you?
Giving users root permission and worry about antivirus is, ahem, not even close to a competence simulation.
"This statement is missing a qualifier that is very important: 'That we know of so far'. How do you know that there is only one person who has the exploit? How do you know that said person only rooted the Debian boxes. How do you know that a larger group of people don't have this exploit and don't already own a flotilla of zombie systems? How do you know that your box isn't owned by such a group at this very moment?"
This particular kernel exploit needs a valid user account. If you don't trust your system with your own user accounts, why would you even start caring about obscure kernel bugs?
In that sense I know that my servers are not taken.
What scares me in this entire discussion is the fact that many people seem to completely lose their sense of proportion when it comes to security. The kernel bug itself was not the security hole; it was just one of the possible (and well thought out) points of attack. Anyone with a local account and access to the machine can get it rooted, given enough time and resources.
What failed was Debian's security model, by which a developer's user account was used to gain access. No hacking other than social hacking involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Boycott
"With Qt, you have to pay a one time fee to do commercial development."
l ).
Unless I have completely misunderstood Bruce (which may well be the case), the goal for UserLinux is to provide for an enterprise solution based on Linux and coming with a series of features that are specifically addressing the needs of medium to large enterprises.
That is what I would call a commercial product and it is a product that is completely useless, unless it comes with a package of installation, support, upgrades, scalability and extendability.
The codebase of such product may well be free (and it should be), but an enterprise that will decide to deploy UserLinux will find large comfort in having a commercial partner for the tiny part of developping applications for their own need.
Trolltech is such a partner and it is a unique partner that it offers two identical products with different licensing schemes.
A large company, distributed all over the world has specific needs for its IT-infrastructure. Key factors for the successful migration to Linux are scalability, flexibility and manageability. These things can be achieved by UserLinux and KDE with its enterprise features that will support this kind of deployment by providing a management subsystem designed to do the very job.
Not only are these key features missing in GNOME, they don't even appear in any paper by the GNOME foundation announcing the stringent development of such features. Without these features, however, what exactly is the point of UserLinux? Right, there is none, it's just one more distribution, not more.
As to the license: The commercial licensing scheme only becomes relevant when the enterprise hires developpers to write software that will commercially be exploited at one point. The costs for this are negligible and transparent (http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.htm
Given the target audience (large enterprises with funds large enough to consider a migration to Linux on a large scale), the costs for licensing QT are low, ridiculously low when compared to other development platforms and you know what you are buying, since the codebase is open.
I can't think of any restriction in connection with this pricing that would outweigh the huge advantages of KDE over GNOME in an enterprise environment.
As a salesman I sometimes deal with CEOs in large scale enterprises and they could not care less about licensing schemes of this magnitude. In my opinion Bruce's arguments don't hold water for the target audience, which makes UserLinux redundant even before it has been released.
If you think this is another KDE vs. GNOME flamewar, you are dead wrong. The whole discussion is about a product worth millions of Dollars in planning, supporting, migrating and deploying large, complex infrastructures and for that you want to have the best tools for the job.
These tools cannot be found in GNOME, not even in a preliminary strategic paper of the GNOME foundation, let alone in workable code.
This licensing discussion seems like an ideological smokescreen, blinding people's eyes for the reality in large enterprises.
We will probably end up with UserLinux/GNOME and EnterpriseDebian/KDE at one point, because the KDE core will certainly not burn its vision on enterprise features in KDE.
"People want the freedom to do whatever they want: GPL allows this, Trolltech does not."
"I am very pleased to see that Qt is now available under the GPL," said Richard Stallman, President of the Free Software Foundation. "This is a big win for free software and a great gift from Trolltech to the community."
What was your point again?
" My understanding is this is to be an enterprise user system, not a home user or personal user. The whole point is enterprise management and distribution management. "
'Zakly.
What is it that GNOME has to offer in this regard?
1.
KDE Kiosk Mode, also known as lock-down mode, makes it possible to restrict the capabilities of the KDE3 environment in powerful and flexible ways including but not limited to the ability to:
1. Restrict desktop, application, and printing actions.
2. Restrict internet access on a URL basis at a desktop-wide level.
3. Restrict desktop resource customizations.
Such functionality is invaluable for unattended operation of UserLinux in a kiosk setting as well as for wide-scale enterprise deployment of a controlled environment.
2.
A new easy-to-use administration tool, yet in the stages of development, will build on top of the KDE Kiosk Mode and expand upon the features in an exciting direction. The tool will enable scalable management of users, their settings and IT privileges. The design goals include:
1. Full scalability from medium to large organisations.
2. Usable by both KDE and non-KDE applications.
3. Seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure.
4. Roaming support.
Please expect more detail and an official announcement in 2004 Q1.
3.
An Integrated Terminal Server and Client employing a new and highly efficient X compression technology thereby enabling seamless desktop integration of applications based on a remote compute server. This feature will be in addition to KDE's existing remote desktop support (VNC and RDP) and is especially exciting in light of the fact that it enables a satisfying desktop experience on a thin client even with a low-bandwidth connection (e.g. dialup) to the application server. The technology will bring us on par with Citrix, Tarantella, SunRay and Windows Terminal Server offerings.
4.
KDE Print: Enterprise-grade technology for intimate management of printers and print jobs, adaptable to innumerable creative tasks.
5.
KDE Core Killer Apps: Whilst too numerous to list here, we expect to leverage core KDE applications where appropriate. In addition to the well-known applications several pertain directly to the enterprise including:
1. The upcoming Kontact, an integrated personal information management suite, which in conjunction with the Kolab Server will provide a powerful standards-based groupware solution.
2. The upcoming KERP, an Enterprise Resource Planner.
3. A set of financial trading tools currently in development.
ISVs in particular will be pleased to note that the KDE/Qt environment sports a rich body of development tools that leverage the elegant and powerful framework provided by KDE/Qt as well as tools enabling development in areas ranging from HTML production to UML modelling, CAD design and document publishing.
6.
KDE brings an impressive body of localization and internationalization effort to the table. With over 80 translation teams and KDE 3.2.x to be available in an estimated 50+ languages, KDE is a compelling choice for an enterprise desktop with an international audience.
Where is GNOME's visionary roadmap for a subsystem as powerful as that?
Thought so.
"KDE has no plan or vision for the license, except it's proprietary."
I have no idea what you are talking about. The Trolltech license gives you all the freedom of the Free Software world, as long as you are staying within this world. Once you are in the commercial world, a proprietary license gives you all the possibilities of proprietary software development and marketing of such.
Pray tell, what is wrong with the Trolltech license? It sure works for QCad, Opera and others.
However, what the Trolltech license definitely avoids is a total vendor lock in, due to its Open Source pendant.
That IS visionary.
"If it's about a stable usable business desktop"
Here is some bad news for you: It is NOT about a stable usable business desktop, it is about an enterprise operating system with all the clockwork needed to make an enterprise tick. That includes desktop management for a huge userbase, central administration of storage, software deployment, network control, printer administration, user help desk, seamless integration of data retrieval, processing and development.
An enterprise Linux has to compete with IBM, Microsoft, Sun or HP, but not with your choice of a desktop Linux distribution.
KDE provides for a vision that embraces these key requirements, whereas GNOME does not. Bruce made a bad choice and in his reply he sounds rather apologetic, but not very convinced or convincing.
I very much appreciate Bruce Peren's activities and believe that we need people like him who want to promote Linux as a serious contender in the market of enterprise systems.
Having said that, I was quite surprised to read Bruce's reply to the KDE-group. Nowhere does he address the real issue, which in this case is not the question of providing for another desktop solution, it is the question of providing for an enterprise Linux as a worthy contender to other "solutions" on an enterprise level.
In that respect GNOME loses big time for the simple reason that no one in the GNOME foundation seems to have a clear vision of where their development is going, in particular with respect to these points:
- Central administration of large scale desktop deployments
- Enterprise level printing administration
- Enterprise level Resource Planning
and many others more which can be read in detail on http://desktop.kdenews.org/strategy.html
KDE provides its user base with a clear and focussed vision of where enterprise Linux is going.
Where are the GNOME visions in this regard? There are none.
If UserLinux (What a bad name, it should be called Enterprise Linux or Debian Enterprise, whatever) wants to reach its intended audience, it has to provide a stringent concept for usability, scalability, support and enterprise features and commitment to care for the development.
All of this is missing from GNOME and this makes the licensing argument rather moot.
Either UserLinux wants to reach enterprises on a comprehensive level, in which case it has to provide for a framework enterprises need, or it wants to deploy some servers and some desktops without the technical merits of a real enterprise solution. The latter case is fine, if you want to show people that Linux is not bad and works fine in an enterprise environment.
However, if we are talking real enterprise level, GNOME cannot come up with the necessary features and the long term vision to compete with the large solution vendors.
As a technical salesman I would have a hard time making decision makers understand why the GNOME-UI is of real merit to their enterprise. The different licensing scheme is of only marginal interest for large scale deployments of a comprehensive framework.
Given the KDE strategy and the nonexistence of such in GNOME, one can only wonder, why UserLinux thinks it will make a difference in the corporate world.
"1. Get everybody food and water
2. Get everybody feeling reasonably secure in their safety.
3. Setup a stable, fair and working government."
Way back in the middle ages all this could have been achieved without the need for computers and telecommunications.
However, last time I checked the Middle Ages were gone since the Middle Ages.
"If anyone has any insight on how to get decent Arabic support under Linux, please let me know!"
How? You don't have a mail address...
"It may not be about the Benjamins, but its about the Francs and Marks."
This is so last century, buddy...
"You mean the same France and Germany who to this day have never repayed the Marshall Plan loans?"
Here is a cluestick for you. You deserve the beating:
"The United States later on decided that Germany - like the other countries that got Marshall Plan aid - would not have to pay back the money. Germany, therefore, paid back a small amount of the received support. In 1972 the German government decided to pay back more money as a kind of present to say thank you to the American people. To do something good for the future, it was decided to create The German Marshall Fund of the United States. Over the first 15 years the GMF got an annual support of 15 million D-Mark. In 1987 this financial support was extended for another 10 years. The purpose of the GMF activities is to help to improve the transatlantic relations. In that sense the initial Marshall Plan became a permanent institution."
From: http://www.dgap.org/texte/marshallplan.html
> Yeah, fuck 'em
I hope you feel a lot better now.
"Why should France or Germany - who opposed the war and contributed nothing - reap the benefits of our hard work? They shouldnt."
Because they provided for money and troops in Afghanistan to fight *your* war over there?
" The US taxpayers sure are getting reamed on this arent' they. They pay for the bombs, they pay to destroy things, then they pay to get them repaired. What's worse this money will be spread around to 60 different countries making other people rich."
This will probably have slipped your mind, but there was an alternative to go going to war andit would have saved the lives of your boys and the taxpayers' money.
It would have made life a little less pleasant for Halliburton though.
"Keep in mind that the US already has military bases in that area with the blessings of a country glad for its liberation. Kuwait."
Yes, but Kuwait's oil is not in the hand of the US to pay for its presence in a strategically perfect location. Comes in handy, doesn't it?
It strikes me as unusual to see that both your source and the story in Globetechnology fail to mention that last week's "skirmish court meeting" saw another lawyer as well: Mr. Brent Hatch, son of Mr. Orrin Hatch.
What's even worse is that in July I went to the USA and signed a heads-of-agreement with a US company who were going to commence manufacture of my X-Jet engine for use in UAVs and RPVs. This deal alone was worth a huge amount of money to the NZ taxman and would have also created new jobs and export earnings for this country. That the NZ government were also prepared to let that deal fail through lends further credibility to the suggestion that their moves were not motivated by any desire to recover what was a rather trivial debt -- but more by a desire to shut down my missile project.
What I don't get is why you are blaming the government for a deal falling through. What is the government's role in your dealing with an investor, partner or customer?
Did you have a contract? What exactly did the government do to prevent you from fulfilling contractual obligations? What's a lawyer's point of view in this matter? I gather you have one, don't you?
"I'm surprised they don't try banning film reviews since it must be such a drain on their right to massive profits."
Give them a break. These things take time.
> They better be careful or SCO may sue the judge.
I think thats what they meant by filing a complaint on copyright violations.
Either that or they were just pulling something out of their ass.
" I believe that only the English-language version of North Korea's news agency is hosted in Japan. The original Korean-language content definitely originates from and is hosted in North Korea."
Sure you can back this up by traceroute, can't you?
|From: Dear Leader (Kim.Jong-Il@securemail.gov.kp)
3 00 512.stm
l l l
|To: orders@pizzahut.com
|Date: Dec. 2, 2003 18:53
|Subject: our order
------------
|We take 50,000,000 super-size meat-lover special.
|Hold anchovy. Deliver President Palace, Pyongyang,
|Illustrious Democratic Peoples Republic North Korea.
I don't think so. The Great leader prefers flying in his personal Pizza maker from Italy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/DK21Dg03.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/DK22Dg01.htm
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/DK23Dg01.htm
"Someone mod me Stupid. :)"
You are doing just fine.
" First let me revise the 30% figure I gave, the CIA world fact book reports North Korea spending 33.9% of Gross Domenstic Product on their military. US spends 3.2%."
What is it that you are trying to tell us?
The US spends some 350 Billion USD (give or take a few) on the military and that excludes anything the CIA, NSA, DHS, Border Patrol and the rest of the semi-military have in their own budgets and it does not contain the lumpy 87 Billion for the Iraq war.
It's a lot more interesting to compare military spending with education spending or to see it in context of the entire budget.
Read http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget and weep.
Just to give you an idea of the dimensions:
The US spends 60 Billion USD on education. Germany, which has about one third of the US' pouplation spends some 110 Billion USD.
Do us all a favor and get down from your high horse.
" I believe there is already a way for set top satellite HDTV boxes to spew the MPEG2 stream straight into a computer. It might be a hack in some instances but I think it's possible."
The Nokia DBox2 is such a device. It has an ethernet connection and can run Linux in all its glory.
"I don't want kiosk mode. I don't want limited file permission. I want the user to have root privleges basically. [...] I don't want to lock the systems down in any way shape or form (well about the only thing they can't do is shut off antivirus)."
You *do* realize that you come off as an idiot, don't you?
Giving users root permission and worry about antivirus is, ahem, not even close to a competence simulation.
"This statement is missing a qualifier that is very important: 'That we know of so far'. How do you know that there is only one person who has the exploit? How do you know that said person only rooted the Debian boxes. How do you know that a larger group of people don't have this exploit and don't already own a flotilla of zombie systems? How do you know that your box isn't owned by such a group at this very moment?"
This particular kernel exploit needs a valid user account. If you don't trust your system with your own user accounts, why would you even start caring about obscure kernel bugs?
In that sense I know that my servers are not taken.
What scares me in this entire discussion is the fact that many people seem to completely lose their sense of proportion when it comes to security. The kernel bug itself was not the security hole; it was just one of the possible (and well thought out) points of attack. Anyone with a local account and access to the machine can get it rooted, given enough time and resources.
What failed was Debian's security model, by which a developer's user account was used to gain access. No hacking other than social hacking involved.