The "Security Hardening Package" makes security harder (to implement). For some reason, I'm suddenly reminded of Marvin Martian's "ACME Disintegrating Pistol".
A few people have suggested the military applications for these robotic butterflies, particularly in the area of espionage. The problem is this: butterflies make terrible spies, because everyone notices them!
How many times have you heard someone say, "look at the pretty horsefly on the windowsill"? Eh, never right? But we notice butterflies, because they are beautiful and elegant. In fact, of all of the insects around, I'd say butterflies are the ones most likely to be noticed, picked up, and examined because they are colorful and generally harmless. Well, that's probably the last thing you want, someone picking up your robot spy. "Hey, this butterfly has a resistor soldered to it's back..."
So the idea of making a robotic butterfly spy is probably not workable. Maybe a robotic cockroach spy..? Never mind, they'd just get stomped on sight. That might just be the real problem, trying to find an insect that wouldn't provoke interest, either positive or negative.
Why is it when you mention any problem, people always think that you can educate the problem away, that it's an inequity in educatrional level that causes people to be out of work?
Because it's true, probably. The problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs. The problem is that there aren't enough jobs for unskilled labor. There are only two solutions to the problem:
1) Artificially create job demand for ditch-diggers.
2) Train your unskilled workforce so that they can be productive in skilled and semi-skilled professions.
The truth is that there are more people than we need to have to produce everything that we consume.
Brilliant. So I guess we just keep our fingers crossed for world war, a meteor strike, a supervolcano, or a plague. Good plan. Unless of course, you want to get "proactive"...
PS: The reason everyone always things "IT training" when people talk about skill retraining is because that's the area that, according to popular perception, has all the money.
Why is it that when you mention skills retraining, people always assume you mean IT skill retraining? There are a lot of other fields that we can retrain workers for, especially tradecrafts. Plumber? Electrician? Tailor? HVAC technician? Mason? Carpenter? These are all good jobs that pay well, and for which there is some demand.
1) Low-cost housing for low-wage Americans to eleviate the national homelessness problem.
2) Government training programs and day-care centers to get people off of welfare and out working.
3) Funding of federal free lunch programs and food stamp supplements to insure that no American child goes to bed hungry.
Scientific endeavor is noble and inspiring. But let's fix the problems here on Earth first.
I felt Taken for wasting two hours watching it...
on
Spielberg's Taken
·
· Score: 2
My wife and I (both sci-fi fans as well as SF fans, for those keen enough to know the difference) tuned in to watch Taken last night, somewhat put out that it preempted our usual Monday night four-hour Stargate fix, but hopeful nonetheless.
Well, my wife was Taken by the sandman about halfway through, and I was Taken by a game of Rolling Thunder on my laptop. What a SNOOZEFEST! After about an hour, I found myself scrolling through the onscreen guide to see what I was missing.
I finished watching it out of the hope for some twist to keep me hanging on for the next episode... no luck. I think I'll pass on this series.
Okay, so how far off are we from actually creating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something...
Today, intelligent mice. Tomorrow, a giant turtle with nunchucks. The future's so bright, I got to wear shades.
I wonder if the new Sony CD's will be playable in Sony's PS or PS2? Being a CD and DVD player in addition to being a game station has always been a draw of the PS2 (at least, to budget-conscious consumers, like college students). If not, they just removed one of the PS2's selling points. Seems kind of cannibalistic.
Lucas went on to say that the proliferation of free and illegal downloading of content on the Internet could eventually lead studios to shy away from spending as much as they do on blockbuster movies since it won't be nearly as profitable for them to do so.
Great! Why don't you cut the $50M special effects budget in half and use some of the savings on a decent script and a good director?
This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Studiotalk translation:
"popcorn movies" == Mindless garbage with no story, poor acting, and lots of big explosions.
"artsy films" == Anything with a plot.
Too bad that 95% of the films to come out of Hollywood fall into the "popcorn movies" category.
Here's a clue for the studios and the MPAA: make some decent material that I would be willing to spend $20 on to buy the DVD.
I doubt very much that LoTR DVD sales will be disappointing, and I bet that there will be a lot of piracy of "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" DivX copies on P2P. Simple reason: people don't like to pay good money for garbage. Either make movies worth the sticker price, or lower the sticker price.
Personally, I don't know why Microsoft would have released.NET server next year, and then followed a year later with Longhorn. It doesn't make any sense. Every shop I've ever worked in or worked with as a consultant had a general rule of never upgrading Microsoft's server platform until it had been out for at least 6 months, if not a year. By the time these guys finished doing a deployment of.NET, Longhorn would be hitting the streets. At least by pushing the schedule back to Blackcomb, they are getting to a more reasonable timeline.
Personally, I think Microsoft should maintain a 4 year release cycle on their server OS, and a 2 year cycle on the desktop OS/productivity suite. Anything shorter and you are going to outrun your customers. I mean, if you are running a big, multisite network with 2000+ users, do you really want to deploy an OS upgrade every year or two? Hell, I know of at least one large, multinational company that is still standardized on NT 4.0 Server and Windows 95 (and as far as I know, they are going to milk it as long as they can). Besides, a 4/2 cycle is pretty close to your average lease times on hardware, which simplifies deployment since you can time your OS upgrades with your hardware upgrades (at least, on the desktop).
The only thing Microsoft gets by releasing a new OS every year is a lot of people skipping versions. Maybe they finally clued in to that fact?
A couple people have compared this "airplane home" to the concept of silo homes. The difference between the two is that a silo home has tons of usable space. I would jump at the chance to have a home built on top of an old silo, which effectively serves as an enourmous basement. Forget the paranoid bomb shelter aspect (although, it's only funny until bombs start dropping), think of the square footage. Especially if you could get one cheap a government auction. I once saw a guy on one of those "unusual home" shows on TLC or something, that bought a silo at auction for $40,000.
One of these airplane homes goes for what - $300,000? - and you're getting 1200 sq feet of living space. I'd pay that for an apartment off Central Park West or something, but for a plane on a stick? Eh, I think not.
No, I haven't. I'm glad to see that a manufacturer is taking a little more proactive approach to wireless security. Does the product come with some obvious documentation to inform the user as to why the encryption is necessary? Most I've seen, make mention of it in a footnote buried deep in the book. I think they are trying to keep from scaring consumers away from the wireless products by warning them about security.
WEP can never be a "good enough" security protocol
If you are going to quote me, do so in context. What I said was:
"WEP would be a 'good enough' security protocol for the average application..."
The key phrase here is "for the average application". Meaning, home LAN, small business, or anything where high security is not a tantamount concern. WEP is "good enough" to provide a reasonable level of deterance against the casual intruder. Is WEP an end-all-be-all security panacea? No. And I don't think anyone said it was, least of all me.
if the manufacturers all ship with WEP on by default, the people using it would be lulled into a -false sense of security
People have a false sense of security about a lot of things. Do you think having an alarm system on your house makes you "secure"? No, but it's more secure than having nothing at all. The main problem with wireless networking today is that people ALREADY have a false sense of security. Most people don't realize that having an AP on a small LAN in their house, is like inviting public access to their systems. These are the same type of people that hook up a PC to a broadband connection without a firewall. They already have a false sense of security, because they are ignorant of the dangers.
And if the manufacturers ship with WEP by default, then there'd be quite a few people leaving them on with the default keys...
Like I said, force the user to choose a unique SSID and passphrase when they setup the AP or card. In other words, don't provide a default, require that the user enter their own information before the product will work. One thing to remember here is that in most cases we are simply trying to deter casual intruders. Anyone who REALLY wants to get into your system, will find a way. What we really need is just a measure in place to make things harder for the average script kiddie with a laptop and a Pringles can.
I think it's great that wireless standards are expanding to include better security, but I think the real problem is with the way the products ship from the manufacturers. WEP would be a "good enough" security protocol for the average application, IF IT WAS USED CONSISTENTLY.
But every wireless product I've ever used (and there have been a lot of them) shipped by default with WEP disabled, I guess to make it more plug-and-play. In my mind if you want to make wireless networking more secure, start by shipping the products with WEP enabled by default, and require the user to configure a unique SSID and WEP passphrase when they setup the equipment.
I mean, you could have a rock-solid encryption protocol, but if nobody is using it... what's the point?
I'm not very inclined to agree with the position that debian should somehow change a very flexible working system just for the impatient.
I guess it all depends on one's definition of a "working" system then. As you said, if a system works for you, then use it. If not, fix it, or find a better system. I was just suggesting ideas regarding something I personally see as a shortcoming, which is ever-growing release cycles, and a possible solution to fix it.
One of the major complaints regarding Woody was that it took so long to release, and then had rather outdated software. Between the time the distro was frozen, and the time it was released, so much software was updated, including some pretty significant packages.
Personally, I think Debian should change their release focus. I think a good strategy would be that of having a regular, six month release cycle that focuses on moving packages from testing to stable in a concise manner. Rather than trying to put out a mammoth update which takes two years to ship and is obsolete the day it is released, I think the needs of the users would be better addressed with two annual releases spaced six months apart, but of more of a minor nature than a major. This kind of "rolling update" would make sure that reasonably recent packages are steadily making their way into stable. It would also shorten the freeze to release period, since less packages would be updating (usually) with these minor releases.
Some people have proposed splitting the distribution into subdivisions (core, desktop apps, games, development) and this might not be a bad idea, either. Provided of course, that certain inter-division dependencies were properly managed. The Debian core team could focus on the base system and server packages, while letting the desktop team handle UI's and applications, and the games team handle.. well, games. Each group could release updates independently of each other, perhaps with core as the baseline to which the others must adhere for library versions, etc.
As for impatience, I personally think that two years is too long to wait for a stable release, especially in the open source world where software is such a moving target. And yes, I know testing is more frequently updated and mostly stable, but try telling that to an IT manager. IT managers want "stable", not "testing". It's a political thing and it's stupid, but it's reality. Which is why I come across more and more Red Hat shops every day.
You are right, FreeBSD does also offer a binary distribution for x86 and Alpha, and they offer the choice of both packages and ports. Most new installations will be done via binary install, but from then on maintained with source-built updates. But I was more referring to FreeBSD as a model of how source-distribution has been proven to work (and isn't all that immature).
As to Gentoo, I know there was talk at one time of doing a pre-built binary distribution to simplify installation. I don't know if this was ever done, or if it's even still on the agenda.
If you look at that nifty chart provided at the beginning of the paper, you can easily see that the release time for stable is stretching out further and further as more packages and architectures are added to the fold. At 9,000 packages and 11 architectures, it took 2 YEARS to ship a stable release. If they are right, and 2004 will bring 30,000 packages (and probably another arch or two), how long is the release cycle going to stretch out to? And will people tolerate that long between stables? Look at the grumbling and outcry about the delay in getting Woody out the door.
I find it very interesting that the article would point out several times how difficult it is to maintain all of those packages and the diffs as they are updated, then point out how using a source-based distribution makes that kind of thing much easier. And yet, the author seems to suggest that source-based distros are somehow not as feasible as binary-based distros. He even goes on to call source-based distros "immature". Perhaps in the Linux world, but how long has FreeBSD been around? It's okay to borrow ideas from other groups when those ideas seem to be working. I think that the Gentoo project has done a great job in taking the idea of a "ports" system, addressing the shortcomings, and putting a workable source distribution system on the Linux platform.
In my mind, if Debian is going to continue scaling to 5-digit package listings, the project might want to look into the possible benefits of switching to a source-based distribution system. Look at what Gentoo has done, address any shortcomings, and develop a better source distribution system. Doing it the current way with 30,000 packages to maintain, we might not see Debian 4.0 until 2010. And there are probably a lot of people who can't or won't wait that long.
I don't know, does this sound like extortion to anyone else? They seem to be saying "police your corporate networks for our benefit, or we will sue you."
Now, most companies with intelligently run IT departments are policing their networks anyway. But this kind of thing seems to be saying that if an employee should happen to figure out a way to circumvent a company's firewall or proxy and swap files illegally on corporate bandwidth, that the company is somehow responsible and could be held liable. I think this goes beyond the level of reasonable control that companies should be required to exercise.
It seems to me that the RIAA is going after the people with deep pockets, looking to make an example of a few companies. Why go after Joe User, when you can go after Joe's employer? It's a higher profile target, and there's more to gain.
I listened to the samples from the various missions, and it sounds like any other radio noise you would get by playing with the tuning knob on an old radio. Some other sounds were very similar to the noises you can make by dragging your finger nail along a guitar string. I was greatly underwhelmed. I guess some people are just like, "if it comes from space it's cool". But it just sounded like noise to me.
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How can someone just walk out of a building with a computer?
Smash window, climb through, grab computer, walk out.
Isnt the data encrypted on disk?
Don't count on it.
Why does a contractor even need SSN's, etc?
A soldier's military service number is his SSN (been that way since the 70's or so). All of a soldier's records are tied to it.
The "Security Hardening Package" makes security harder (to implement). For some reason, I'm suddenly reminded of Marvin Martian's "ACME Disintegrating Pistol".
A few people have suggested the military applications for these robotic butterflies, particularly in the area of espionage. The problem is this: butterflies make terrible spies, because everyone notices them!
How many times have you heard someone say, "look at the pretty horsefly on the windowsill"? Eh, never right? But we notice butterflies, because they are beautiful and elegant. In fact, of all of the insects around, I'd say butterflies are the ones most likely to be noticed, picked up, and examined because they are colorful and generally harmless. Well, that's probably the last thing you want, someone picking up your robot spy. "Hey, this butterfly has a resistor soldered to it's back..."
So the idea of making a robotic butterfly spy is probably not workable. Maybe a robotic cockroach spy..? Never mind, they'd just get stomped on sight. That might just be the real problem, trying to find an insect that wouldn't provoke interest, either positive or negative.
4. Allow the people that actually earned the money to keep a bit more of it.
In other words, the "screw-you-it-ain't-my-problem" approach. Brilliant.
Why is it when you mention any problem, people always think that you can educate the problem away, that it's an inequity in educatrional level that causes people to be out of work?
Because it's true, probably. The problem isn't that there aren't enough jobs. The problem is that there aren't enough jobs for unskilled labor. There are only two solutions to the problem:
1) Artificially create job demand for ditch-diggers.
2) Train your unskilled workforce so that they can be productive in skilled and semi-skilled professions.
The truth is that there are more people than we need to have to produce everything that we consume.
Brilliant. So I guess we just keep our fingers crossed for world war, a meteor strike, a supervolcano, or a plague. Good plan. Unless of course, you want to get "proactive"...
PS: The reason everyone always things "IT training" when people talk about skill retraining is because that's the area that, according to popular perception, has all the money.
There's the real fallacy.
Why is it that when you mention skills retraining, people always assume you mean IT skill retraining? There are a lot of other fields that we can retrain workers for, especially tradecrafts. Plumber? Electrician? Tailor? HVAC technician? Mason? Carpenter? These are all good jobs that pay well, and for which there is some demand.
1) Low-cost housing for low-wage Americans to eleviate the national homelessness problem.
2) Government training programs and day-care centers to get people off of welfare and out working.
3) Funding of federal free lunch programs and food stamp supplements to insure that no American child goes to bed hungry.
Scientific endeavor is noble and inspiring. But let's fix the problems here on Earth first.
My wife and I (both sci-fi fans as well as SF fans, for those keen enough to know the difference) tuned in to watch Taken last night, somewhat put out that it preempted our usual Monday night four-hour Stargate fix, but hopeful nonetheless.
Well, my wife was Taken by the sandman about halfway through, and I was Taken by a game of Rolling Thunder on my laptop. What a SNOOZEFEST! After about an hour, I found myself scrolling through the onscreen guide to see what I was missing.
I finished watching it out of the hope for some twist to keep me hanging on for the next episode... no luck. I think I'll pass on this series.
Okay, so how far off are we from actually creating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or something... Today, intelligent mice. Tomorrow, a giant turtle with nunchucks. The future's so bright, I got to wear shades.
Or you could just get one decent box and invest in a copy of VMWare. Just a suggestion. You might save on KVM's and the electric bill.
I wonder if the new Sony CD's will be playable in Sony's PS or PS2? Being a CD and DVD player in addition to being a game station has always been a draw of the PS2 (at least, to budget-conscious consumers, like college students). If not, they just removed one of the PS2's selling points. Seems kind of cannibalistic.
... by the fine folks at Acme, Inc.
There wasn't a coyote strapped to that rocket by any chance, was there?
Lucas went on to say that the proliferation of free and illegal downloading of content on the Internet could eventually lead studios to shy away from spending as much as they do on blockbuster movies since it won't be nearly as profitable for them to do so.
Great! Why don't you cut the $50M special effects budget in half and use some of the savings on a decent script and a good director?
This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Studiotalk translation:
"popcorn movies" == Mindless garbage with no story, poor acting, and lots of big explosions.
"artsy films" == Anything with a plot.
Too bad that 95% of the films to come out of Hollywood fall into the "popcorn movies" category.
Here's a clue for the studios and the MPAA: make some decent material that I would be willing to spend $20 on to buy the DVD.
I doubt very much that LoTR DVD sales will be disappointing, and I bet that there will be a lot of piracy of "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" DivX copies on P2P. Simple reason: people don't like to pay good money for garbage. Either make movies worth the sticker price, or lower the sticker price.
Personally, I don't know why Microsoft would have released .NET server next year, and then followed a year later with Longhorn. It doesn't make any sense. Every shop I've ever worked in or worked with as a consultant had a general rule of never upgrading Microsoft's server platform until it had been out for at least 6 months, if not a year. By the time these guys finished doing a deployment of .NET, Longhorn would be hitting the streets. At least by pushing the schedule back to Blackcomb, they are getting to a more reasonable timeline.
Personally, I think Microsoft should maintain a 4 year release cycle on their server OS, and a 2 year cycle on the desktop OS/productivity suite. Anything shorter and you are going to outrun your customers. I mean, if you are running a big, multisite network with 2000+ users, do you really want to deploy an OS upgrade every year or two? Hell, I know of at least one large, multinational company that is still standardized on NT 4.0 Server and Windows 95 (and as far as I know, they are going to milk it as long as they can). Besides, a 4/2 cycle is pretty close to your average lease times on hardware, which simplifies deployment since you can time your OS upgrades with your hardware upgrades (at least, on the desktop).
The only thing Microsoft gets by releasing a new OS every year is a lot of people skipping versions. Maybe they finally clued in to that fact?
A couple people have compared this "airplane home" to the concept of silo homes. The difference between the two is that a silo home has tons of usable space. I would jump at the chance to have a home built on top of an old silo, which effectively serves as an enourmous basement. Forget the paranoid bomb shelter aspect (although, it's only funny until bombs start dropping), think of the square footage. Especially if you could get one cheap a government auction. I once saw a guy on one of those "unusual home" shows on TLC or something, that bought a silo at auction for $40,000.
One of these airplane homes goes for what - $300,000? - and you're getting 1200 sq feet of living space. I'd pay that for an apartment off Central Park West or something, but for a plane on a stick? Eh, I think not.
... I'd settle for cheaper, better quality LCDs.
No, I haven't. I'm glad to see that a manufacturer is taking a little more proactive approach to wireless security. Does the product come with some obvious documentation to inform the user as to why the encryption is necessary? Most I've seen, make mention of it in a footnote buried deep in the book. I think they are trying to keep from scaring consumers away from the wireless products by warning them about security.
WEP can never be a "good enough" security protocol
If you are going to quote me, do so in context. What I said was:
"WEP would be a 'good enough' security protocol for the average application..."
The key phrase here is "for the average application". Meaning, home LAN, small business, or anything where high security is not a tantamount concern. WEP is "good enough" to provide a reasonable level of deterance against the casual intruder. Is WEP an end-all-be-all security panacea? No. And I don't think anyone said it was, least of all me.
if the manufacturers all ship with WEP on by default, the people using it would be lulled into a -false sense of security
People have a false sense of security about a lot of things. Do you think having an alarm system on your house makes you "secure"? No, but it's more secure than having nothing at all. The main problem with wireless networking today is that people ALREADY have a false sense of security. Most people don't realize that having an AP on a small LAN in their house, is like inviting public access to their systems. These are the same type of people that hook up a PC to a broadband connection without a firewall. They already have a false sense of security, because they are ignorant of the dangers.
And if the manufacturers ship with WEP by default, then there'd be quite a few people leaving them on with the default keys...
Like I said, force the user to choose a unique SSID and passphrase when they setup the AP or card. In other words, don't provide a default, require that the user enter their own information before the product will work. One thing to remember here is that in most cases we are simply trying to deter casual intruders. Anyone who REALLY wants to get into your system, will find a way. What we really need is just a measure in place to make things harder for the average script kiddie with a laptop and a Pringles can.
I think it's great that wireless standards are expanding to include better security, but I think the real problem is with the way the products ship from the manufacturers. WEP would be a "good enough" security protocol for the average application, IF IT WAS USED CONSISTENTLY.
But every wireless product I've ever used (and there have been a lot of them) shipped by default with WEP disabled, I guess to make it more plug-and-play. In my mind if you want to make wireless networking more secure, start by shipping the products with WEP enabled by default, and require the user to configure a unique SSID and WEP passphrase when they setup the equipment.
I mean, you could have a rock-solid encryption protocol, but if nobody is using it... what's the point?
I'm not very inclined to agree with the position that debian should somehow change a very flexible working system just for the impatient.
I guess it all depends on one's definition of a "working" system then. As you said, if a system works for you, then use it. If not, fix it, or find a better system. I was just suggesting ideas regarding something I personally see as a shortcoming, which is ever-growing release cycles, and a possible solution to fix it.
One of the major complaints regarding Woody was that it took so long to release, and then had rather outdated software. Between the time the distro was frozen, and the time it was released, so much software was updated, including some pretty significant packages.
Personally, I think Debian should change their release focus. I think a good strategy would be that of having a regular, six month release cycle that focuses on moving packages from testing to stable in a concise manner. Rather than trying to put out a mammoth update which takes two years to ship and is obsolete the day it is released, I think the needs of the users would be better addressed with two annual releases spaced six months apart, but of more of a minor nature than a major. This kind of "rolling update" would make sure that reasonably recent packages are steadily making their way into stable. It would also shorten the freeze to release period, since less packages would be updating (usually) with these minor releases.
Some people have proposed splitting the distribution into subdivisions (core, desktop apps, games, development) and this might not be a bad idea, either. Provided of course, that certain inter-division dependencies were properly managed. The Debian core team could focus on the base system and server packages, while letting the desktop team handle UI's and applications, and the games team handle.. well, games. Each group could release updates independently of each other, perhaps with core as the baseline to which the others must adhere for library versions, etc.
As for impatience, I personally think that two years is too long to wait for a stable release, especially in the open source world where software is such a moving target. And yes, I know testing is more frequently updated and mostly stable, but try telling that to an IT manager. IT managers want "stable", not "testing". It's a political thing and it's stupid, but it's reality. Which is why I come across more and more Red Hat shops every day.
You are right, FreeBSD does also offer a binary distribution for x86 and Alpha, and they offer the choice of both packages and ports. Most new installations will be done via binary install, but from then on maintained with source-built updates. But I was more referring to FreeBSD as a model of how source-distribution has been proven to work (and isn't all that immature).
As to Gentoo, I know there was talk at one time of doing a pre-built binary distribution to simplify installation. I don't know if this was ever done, or if it's even still on the agenda.
If you look at that nifty chart provided at the beginning of the paper, you can easily see that the release time for stable is stretching out further and further as more packages and architectures are added to the fold. At 9,000 packages and 11 architectures, it took 2 YEARS to ship a stable release. If they are right, and 2004 will bring 30,000 packages (and probably another arch or two), how long is the release cycle going to stretch out to? And will people tolerate that long between stables? Look at the grumbling and outcry about the delay in getting Woody out the door.
I find it very interesting that the article would point out several times how difficult it is to maintain all of those packages and the diffs as they are updated, then point out how using a source-based distribution makes that kind of thing much easier. And yet, the author seems to suggest that source-based distros are somehow not as feasible as binary-based distros. He even goes on to call source-based distros "immature". Perhaps in the Linux world, but how long has FreeBSD been around? It's okay to borrow ideas from other groups when those ideas seem to be working. I think that the Gentoo project has done a great job in taking the idea of a "ports" system, addressing the shortcomings, and putting a workable source distribution system on the Linux platform.
In my mind, if Debian is going to continue scaling to 5-digit package listings, the project might want to look into the possible benefits of switching to a source-based distribution system. Look at what Gentoo has done, address any shortcomings, and develop a better source distribution system. Doing it the current way with 30,000 packages to maintain, we might not see Debian 4.0 until 2010. And there are probably a lot of people who can't or won't wait that long.
I don't know, does this sound like extortion to anyone else? They seem to be saying "police your corporate networks for our benefit, or we will sue you."
Now, most companies with intelligently run IT departments are policing their networks anyway. But this kind of thing seems to be saying that if an employee should happen to figure out a way to circumvent a company's firewall or proxy and swap files illegally on corporate bandwidth, that the company is somehow responsible and could be held liable. I think this goes beyond the level of reasonable control that companies should be required to exercise.
It seems to me that the RIAA is going after the people with deep pockets, looking to make an example of a few companies. Why go after Joe User, when you can go after Joe's employer? It's a higher profile target, and there's more to gain.
I listened to the samples from the various missions, and it sounds like any other radio noise you would get by playing with the tuning knob on an old radio. Some other sounds were very similar to the noises you can make by dragging your finger nail along a guitar string. I was greatly underwhelmed. I guess some people are just like, "if it comes from space it's cool". But it just sounded like noise to me.