Last time I checked, "capital" == "money", so "capital-ism" == "money-ism". It has nothing to do with voluntary, and in fact it's completely possible to have an oligarchial, aristocratic, socialistic, authoritarian, or even totalitarian capitalist system rather than a democratic one. Capitalism is quite simply a belief in money -- most especially money used for investment. Materialism would be a belief in money used to gain "things" rather than to make investments, and it often finds its place naturally and neatly alongside capitalism in the hearts of the Investor Class.
I think you may have been referring to Humanism, in a bleak, scaled-down sort of way, but the "appeal to ridicule" invoked by calling the parent ignorant (right before shooting yourself in the foot) didn't really help your argument much.
No, actually, he just fixed it to be more plain-language. The shareholders are the ones in power, duh. No black hat and curly mustache needed -- sometimes oppression is built into the system without any need for conspiracy or other evil plans at work... and pure capitalism, it has this.
You even noted it when you pointed out the problem with counting "best" as "most profit".
Of course, the problem with shareholders having so much power is that so many shareholders don't even know they have power, so they turn it over to a broker and/or a computer to make automatic decisions for them, deciding purely in favor of profit, of course, and thus programmatically removing any humanistic balance from the capitalist system... all because they don't even know that being an investor carries social responsibility!
I hate to burst your black-and-white world bubble, but "fighting slavery", which you mention, is in fact an imposition of restrictions on the "free trade" of working people, in the extreme case of their wages approaching zero.
Without slavery, we don't really have "free trade" of workers to begin with, now do we? I suggest to you that there is actually a whole continuum of balancing freedoms to consider, not just the freedoms of the employer and the "market"...
The more "free" (ie, unrestricted) the "business transactions" between employers and employees become, the more closely the relationship may be made to resemble slavery. That's what the restrictions against slavery are for... to reduce the effect of "market forces" and "free trade" on workers, in the extreme case of wages being at or near zero. Minimum wage is one example of such a restriction designed to fight slavery, as are overtime laws, age limits, FMLA, etc. The parent poster is simply pointing out this fact.
It's astonishing that you also pointed it out, yet still referred to the parent as spouting "Marxist bullshit", even after citing the Industrial Revolution (which carried a flawed Social Darwinism that spurred working conditions so horrible that we got the *first* of any regulatory employment laws because of it!).
In the case of wages being significantly greater than zero, but still less than that of the Capitalist class (also called the Investor class -- the employers and owners of other large businesses, who together as a group have far more power over "market forces" than the individual employees), the restrictions are somewhat less necessary, but not yet completely, as complete freedom for the employer would still leave many employers free to practically enslave their workers, purely by virtue of their financial and political power, and therefore many would, and do, to the fullest extent they can get away with it.
This obvious power imbalance is the sole reason for any restrictions on employer-employee "business transactions".
Newborn babies have to sleep on their father's chests, or near their necks or armpits, several times and for at least a few hours a day, or else they won't know him as their father. They know their father by his scent.
No, a good portion of people haven't had one, but unless the same good portion of people find it within themselves to *decide* to make their family lives better than the ones they were not-so-blessed with growing up, we'll continue the cycle of abuse, hatred, callousness and violence, and ensure that the next generation of people also have shitty family lives, and the next generation after that. Stand up and break it whenever you want. It takes more guts if you don't have a role-model, for sure, but that makes it even *more* rewarding in the end:)
Well, it does happen to be *true*, regardless of joke status, but it also sort of points out an obvious detail that many of us nevertheless would have failed to consider, so IMHO, an "Insightful" mod suits;)
Hospitals can't afford a Dremel (or similar) with a diamond-covered cutter wheel? I think that's the tool that jewelers use to etch into titanium...
Sure, it might get the metal hot and burn the finger, or you might cut too far and cut the finger, but either way it seems better than losing a finger!
This case has nothing to do with government deciding what should and shouldn't be considered essential elements of a website or not. Rather, they are simply making a "truth in advertising" judgment, which is rather easy against Apple's claim that begins with "all parts...". It only takes a single excluded element to make that claim false, so Apple's just silly for wording their ad that way. They should have seen this suit coming with such a bogus claim in their ad.
Seriously. You really, really cannot possibly test for every possible vulnerability in every possible app, especially without the source available! The best you can do, IMHO, is to structure your network and systems to primarily isolate any possible bugs from spreading or from compromising integral data. In this way, if bugs or other breaches of security really *are* arising due to users installing insecure apps, you'll know which users did it because only their own systems will be f*ckd. Further, the users, being employees, need their computers to do their jobs and are not trying to maliciously break them (hard as that may be to believe). Indeed, the guy who's computer is broken all the time obviously can't get his job done, so why would someone sabotage their own job by breaking their own machine? Since I'm sure they really want to *keep* their jobs, many users will be happy to attend more training about good security practices, possibly even taught by you. This has the added bonus that you get to help close the human security loopholes that exist despite your courageous efforts to shelter the users from their own demise: you can remind them not to share their passwords, to check ID of visitors, to keep documents off their desk and screensavers locked when they're away, and all those other *ordinary security* measures without which could give a very malicious or opportunistic person direct access to the hardware on your precious network, a way bigger risk than any software bugs could present...
Give your employer a cost-benefit analysis comparing the migration to either a Linux or Mac server backbone that won't let users f*ck it up so easily, to the zillions of hours of overtime they'd have to pay a whole crew of code-monkeys and network goons to moonlight scrutinize all possible apps for all possible vulnerabilities, and let them decide;)
Fortunately, anyone who knows how science works is in a position to teach themselves most of that other stuff, since science is the business of learning anything. That's why it gets emphasized so much in regard to the education system, and people who didn't learn it in school themselves (English and History teachers), aren't going to get that point across to students. Science teaches logic, critical reasoning, analysis, and problem solving like no other subject has the ability to. You can't deduce the rules of business/marketing/finance from sentence structures rules in English, but you can get there just fine with only a little science and math. Hopefully, if we can upgrade the science part, future players in the education system will have the problem solving skills they need to fix the whole thing from the inside out.
Something in our society kills the natural curiosity that all children have.
What do you mean "WHY"? How dare you question me! Because I said so, that's Why! Now shut up before I whup your ass! And quit crying! Babies cry! Get in your room before I whup you!
Hmmmm..... yeah, "something" kills it.... it's a big mystery. I'm sure disaffectionate parents that consider drinking beer and watching TV "quality time" with their children have nothing to do with it.
Words can't describe how stoked I am that distributed computing technology is finally being implemented on a large, public scale. So far, I've noticed many/.'ers here concerned about personal security, liability, and energy cost associated with this sort of move, but consider this:
The boxes will likely be intended to function as a single large data-center cluster, spread out over the entire net, with the "distributedness" of it all being transparent to the user of any particular node. This means that they will probably encrypt the locally-stored data caches, both to protect the data from tampering by the local user, and to protect the local user from liability associated with the data.
Likely, individual files will be stored in pieces across the network, much like a striped raid, or existing BitTorrent networks, but with the potential of additional redundancy of the pieces mirrored across several nodes. Files may even be mirrored to more nodes the more often they are requested or accessed. This should allow for ruthless checksumming, and for files to be rebuilt in the event that a node's cache has become damaged, corrupted, infected, or whatever, not to mention that files could be fetched from elsewhere if a particular node is simply not available.
Energy costs to the individual user will probably increase, but bandwidth costs don't ultimately have to. Once the data and transmission methods have been successfully decentralized, then bandwidth can be decentralized too!
Imagine if all you needed in order to have a gigabit internet connection in your home was a single gigabit-wireless router (which might be invented by the time this is plausible)... because it just connects to your immediate neighbors' gigabit-wireless, which just connects the whole damn city on an ad-hoc network, connected to other cities with existing wireless transmission lines (cellphone towers that might have been/could be publicly funded)... and since the data is all spread-out, the network traffic is all spread-out too, limiting congestion largely to those long-distance transmission lines.
Although I am generally against increasing energy cost to individuals, this new network model, together with increasing pressure and prices from centralized energy providers, may spawn more public interest in a distrubuted switching power grid of home solar cells, windmills, etc, to power the distrubed network evenly.
The result of these two possibilites combined... decentralizing networks at the same time as decentralizing energy resources, has the potential to effectively rebalance the power structure of the western world by neutering greedy telcos and oil profiteers of power while enabling and empowering individuals and communities to have a more effective, participatory democracy.
This isn't really too much different from Freenet or many Grid Computing initiatives that have come and changed.
Presumably, the data on the Nano Data Center will be encrypted and essentially stripe raid-ed across the network. This is how modern wide-area data distribution networks are currently being implemented privately, and the technology itself circumvents most of the problems you mention.
Responsibility: It's hard to argue that a user is responsible for encrypted content on his/her node, given that it just isn't accessible for review in the first place.
Redundancy: Files can be kept in pieces, with info (like checksums, etc) available elsewhere on the net to reconstruct the data in the case of loss.
Malware: This problem will probably be avoided along with the redundancy problem, by checking checksums of file parts and reconstructing the files if the check goes bad.
Overall, a distributed network is much more difficult to attack than a centralized one, since the missing pieces can easily be rebuilt or reconstructed if a node goes down or goes haywire.
Use Gmail's "Get mail from other accounts" feature to automatically retrieve the mail via POP3 from your private server, rather than having your server forward its mail to Gmail.
...we would conclude that the provider of computer forensic services must be licensed as an investigator, insofar as the service involves the analysis of the data for the purposes described above.
The article you referenced explicitly mentions that if the "analysis" is simply a retrieval of data supplied to the client, but not summarized and interpreted for the purpose of describing a crime, then there is not supposed to be liability for the tech.
A sincere thanks for pointing me to that article... I actually feel even better about continuing the consulting work now, since I can just tell the client "Now that I have furnished you with this report and recommended that you have it reviewed by a licensed investigator, our consulting session is over, and this marks the conclusion of my professional advice today. Once I have received payment, we can discuss anything you'd like, as friends."
Not a good idea for the PI... the law calls it "self-defense" in Texas for a property owner to kill someone threating him on his own property, further legitimized if the threatening person is armed.
Worth noting is that it's completely legal in Texas to openly carry, without even registering, just about any guns which can be legally owned by an individual, except on premises where all personal firearms are illegal, such as liquor stores, public schools, and government buildings. The exception is handguns... one must register these.
Basically though, anyone in Texas who isn't a felon can openly tote a shotgun, hunting rifle, or even some kinds of assault rifles around without any sort of license or registration for it.
(a) A person acts as an investigations company for the purposes of this chapter if the person:
(1) engages in the business of obtaining or
furnishing, or accepts employment to obtain or furnish, information
related to:
(A) crime or wrongs done or threatened against a
state or the United States; (B) the identity, habits, business, occupation,
knowledge, efficiency, loyalty, movement, location, affiliations,
associations, transactions, acts, reputation, or character of a person; (C) the location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property; or (D) the cause or responsibility for a fire, libel, loss, accident, damage, or injury to a person or to property;
...
(b) For purposes of Subsection (a)(1), obtaining or
furnishing information includes information obtained or furnished
through the review and analysis of, and the investigation into the
content of, computer-based data not available to the public.
From this, it seems to me that most computer repair activities wouldn't count as investigation company activities unless they fall under part (D), such as explaining to a client that a computer crash was due to a lightning-induced power surge, or that their wireless network is broken because the neighbors' kids seem to have hacked the WEP key and changed the network settings.
Personally, I'm going to continue consulting-as-usual here in Austin, but I might update my client agreement to include a line like "We are not a licensed private investigations company, and hence cannot legally perform investigative activities concerning your computer data. You agree that the scope of any work to be performed concerning your data will be limited to troubleshooting, problem solving, and analysis." Or some such;)
... AFAIK. That would mean anything from solid-state hard drives to USB thumbdrives to micro-SD cards would be a good bet.
However, I think they are also manufactured quite cheaply and more susceptible to sudden physical failure due to defects than are hard drives or tapes. This is significantly lessened if they're kept somewhere secure like a safe deposit box rather than somewhere dangerous like your pocket, but still a risk to keep in mind. So, be sure to make at least one redundant backup of each stick, and then keep the redundant backups in a separate secure location. I don't think the particular interface matters so much after that, since you'll probably want to upgrade it when that type begins to be phased out, regardless of what it is (USB, SD card, solid-state e-PATA, etc). Don't forget to store a reader/player with the sticks, if possible. A player that has a screen and/or the capability to output to plain RCA A/V would probably be even better, IMO.:)
Most people who are good at technical jobs are good at them because they don't have to deal with the distraction of managerial tasks. That's why technical people that start businesses hire managers.
To suggest that to make a halfway decent living, you not only have to have the technical skills *but also* the business skills *and* the financial means to start your own company--how do you propose that one achieves this? It's simply not an option for the vast majority. Declaring options impossible is the primary means of discouraging people from finding creative ways to accomplish this. OF COURSE IT'S POSSIBLE! It's a lot more work than driving back and forth to the same cubicle day after day, and you have to start that work in poverty and frustration when you lack the financial means, but (here's the trick): there's nothing restricting anyone to use a traditional business model, traditional goals, or traditional methods. Having such a challenge as a career goal is what breeds innovation!
For instance, the last decade has seen a gigantic surge in the startup of not only ordinary small businesses, but also in small non-profits, collectives, cooperatives, and plenty of experimental business models. A person who has technical skills, and ethics, and feels shafted by the lack of ethics displayed by their employer, might see a need in their local community that seems like anyone with a little bit of tech know-how could address, but isn't being addressed by existing organizations (or government) for whatever reason. If others in the community agree on the need, then it won't be financially difficult to start a non-profit organization to fill the gap, since you can ethically request donations for startup capital. (And once you get 510(c)(3) status, states will allow people to fulfill their community service obligations by donating free work to your org). Further, you don't have to go without a livable salary once you've got support - it's part of the project cost, and supporters understand paying for it. In other situations, a small collective might work better, i.e. financial support for the project can come from other activities in the collective, and even better, if your goals are ethical, you can probably just join up with an existing collective rather than go to all the trouble of organizing the formation of a new one. Even in the latter case, it's ultimately just a matter of connecting synergistic people and projects to each other.
Of course, if you have good credit, you can even skip all that and just plain get a loan for startup capital as long as your business model looks like it won't bankrupt itself. Additionally, if you have good credit and great presentation skills, you can probably find an investor and negotiate custom terms for startup capital.
The option of independent business isn't inherently closed, ever, to anyone in the US, regardless of age, sex, gender, disability, criminal history, or citizenship status. A lack of education might make it more difficult, but still not impossible. It's one of the only remaining ways we're actually still free - the freedom to do business with whom we choose.
Incidentally, to make a halfway decent living, you DO need business skills, no way around it. Fortunately, you don't need a degree in business, just basic business skills you can probably learn from some books, a little practice and some mentoring - the rest amounts to finding other people to work with rather than for. And as the "vast majority" you speak of don't make a halfway decent living as it is, independent business is becoming a more favorable option as time goes by.
If you don't get credit for your accomplishments how can you expect to be fairly evaluated or fairly compensated? You can't.
Agreed! A person doesn't have to be fussy, demanding, or annoying about it, but at least mentioning what your contributions to the company have been will keep your peers and superiors from wondering whether you've actually been doing anything at all. They won't often just notice on their own, especially with regard to small contributions. Even worse, they might be under the impression that one of your peers did that work, or even fail to notice that the work has been done! A great way to do this is to simply ask questions at meetings -- it works like this: others are glad to see your interest in the project, the organization, and their work, and you're rewarded with interest in yours (which sometimes comes as a challenge, if someone felt challenged by your question), giving you the opportunity to highlight what significant thing you've done recently. Presto - instant rapport if you play it well.
(Mod parent up!!)
I'm glad to see a growing trend in favor of strategic thinking that *includes* ethical consequences. It's a factor affecting the bottom line just like any other when making a management decision, and can't realistically be left out.
Props!
There aren't any legal concerns at all using VMWare or WinE, especially not for any of those "typical" applications mentioned in the parent. Are you even familiar with these programs? VMWare creates a virtual machine into which you can install any operating system you want - like a version of Windows you own, for instance. WinE uses a free alternative to the Windows API that you can use to install and run Windows-based programs. There's nothing even legally challenging here - users install programs they own.
I made no representations on how easy it is to get that stuff working at the current time, but presumably a distribution could be built with WinE pre-configured and tested, if one doesn't already exist.
The point is that all bitching about Linux not having applications gets directed to/dev/null because Linux already has full support. Linux already has the capability to host the applications users want, it's just a matter of installing them, and if it isn't easy enough, then complain to your non-Linux software vendor that you want a Linux-native version that's easy to install. Linux can't make that any easier. In fact, there isn't any Linux project on earth that even could, in principle, make that process easier.
If we're really going to compare apples to apples, then Vista doesn't have applications either - Photoshop, MS Office, iTunes, and your favorite business admin software ARE NOT INCLUDED - you have to purchase third-party software and install them separately. Uh, that's also true on OSX. And hey, go figure, the EXACT SAME THING is true under Linux. The difference? Microsoft and Apple themselves have $$ to make sure that vendors release software on their platforms. Linux is a kernel, not a company, and therefore has no $$ to bargain with.
I don't take the position that anyone should use any platform or software that pisses them off, so if installing add-ons to get your favorite off-platform software to work isn't your idea of a Sunday afternoon, then use another platform. I'm simply responding to the complaint that the software isn't available. With virtualization, nearly ALL software is available, on nearly EVERY platform. Blaming Linux or the Linux community for lacking application support, though, is completely short-sighted and naive, as we've stepped up to the challenge over the last 10 years and done everything in our power to provide support for all those typical applications people seem to crave, and a vast majority are now fully supported... which has put the ball outside of the Linux court for a while. Linux can't really do much better in this arena - it's up to the software vendors from here.
Slashdot Mirror
Last time I checked, "capital" == "money", so "capital-ism" == "money-ism". It has nothing to do with voluntary, and in fact it's completely possible to have an oligarchial, aristocratic, socialistic, authoritarian, or even totalitarian capitalist system rather than a democratic one. Capitalism is quite simply a belief in money -- most especially money used for investment. Materialism would be a belief in money used to gain "things" rather than to make investments, and it often finds its place naturally and neatly alongside capitalism in the hearts of the Investor Class.
I think you may have been referring to Humanism, in a bleak, scaled-down sort of way, but the "appeal to ridicule" invoked by calling the parent ignorant (right before shooting yourself in the foot) didn't really help your argument much.
No, actually, he just fixed it to be more plain-language. The shareholders are the ones in power, duh. No black hat and curly mustache needed -- sometimes oppression is built into the system without any need for conspiracy or other evil plans at work... and pure capitalism, it has this. You even noted it when you pointed out the problem with counting "best" as "most profit".
Of course, the problem with shareholders having so much power is that so many shareholders don't even know they have power, so they turn it over to a broker and/or a computer to make automatic decisions for them, deciding purely in favor of profit, of course, and thus programmatically removing any humanistic balance from the capitalist system... all because they don't even know that being an investor carries social responsibility!
I hate to burst your black-and-white world bubble, but "fighting slavery", which you mention, is in fact an imposition of restrictions on the "free trade" of working people, in the extreme case of their wages approaching zero.
Without slavery, we don't really have "free trade" of workers to begin with, now do we? I suggest to you that there is actually a whole continuum of balancing freedoms to consider, not just the freedoms of the employer and the "market"...
The more "free" (ie, unrestricted) the "business transactions" between employers and employees become, the more closely the relationship may be made to resemble slavery. That's what the restrictions against slavery are for... to reduce the effect of "market forces" and "free trade" on workers, in the extreme case of wages being at or near zero. Minimum wage is one example of such a restriction designed to fight slavery, as are overtime laws, age limits, FMLA, etc. The parent poster is simply pointing out this fact.
It's astonishing that you also pointed it out, yet still referred to the parent as spouting "Marxist bullshit", even after citing the Industrial Revolution (which carried a flawed Social Darwinism that spurred working conditions so horrible that we got the *first* of any regulatory employment laws because of it!).
In the case of wages being significantly greater than zero, but still less than that of the Capitalist class (also called the Investor class -- the employers and owners of other large businesses, who together as a group have far more power over "market forces" than the individual employees), the restrictions are somewhat less necessary, but not yet completely, as complete freedom for the employer would still leave many employers free to practically enslave their workers, purely by virtue of their financial and political power, and therefore many would, and do, to the fullest extent they can get away with it.
This obvious power imbalance is the sole reason for any restrictions on employer-employee "business transactions".
Do you really keep mirrors so far up your ass?
Newborn babies have to sleep on their father's chests, or near their necks or armpits, several times and for at least a few hours a day, or else they won't know him as their father. They know their father by his scent.
No, a good portion of people haven't had one, but unless the same good portion of people find it within themselves to *decide* to make their family lives better than the ones they were not-so-blessed with growing up, we'll continue the cycle of abuse, hatred, callousness and violence, and ensure that the next generation of people also have shitty family lives, and the next generation after that. Stand up and break it whenever you want. It takes more guts if you don't have a role-model, for sure, but that makes it even *more* rewarding in the end :)
Well, it does happen to be *true*, regardless of joke status, but it also sort of points out an obvious detail that many of us nevertheless would have failed to consider, so IMHO, an "Insightful" mod suits ;)
Hospitals can't afford a Dremel (or similar) with a diamond-covered cutter wheel? I think that's the tool that jewelers use to etch into titanium... Sure, it might get the metal hot and burn the finger, or you might cut too far and cut the finger, but either way it seems better than losing a finger!
This case has nothing to do with government deciding what should and shouldn't be considered essential elements of a website or not. Rather, they are simply making a "truth in advertising" judgment, which is rather easy against Apple's claim that begins with "all parts...". It only takes a single excluded element to make that claim false, so Apple's just silly for wording their ad that way. They should have seen this suit coming with such a bogus claim in their ad.
CRAIGSLIST!!! There are ppl in your area waiting for this junk... let them have it! (The "someone else's problem" solution)
Seriously. You really, really cannot possibly test for every possible vulnerability in every possible app, especially without the source available! The best you can do, IMHO, is to structure your network and systems to primarily isolate any possible bugs from spreading or from compromising integral data. In this way, if bugs or other breaches of security really *are* arising due to users installing insecure apps, you'll know which users did it because only their own systems will be f*ckd. Further, the users, being employees, need their computers to do their jobs and are not trying to maliciously break them (hard as that may be to believe). Indeed, the guy who's computer is broken all the time obviously can't get his job done, so why would someone sabotage their own job by breaking their own machine? Since I'm sure they really want to *keep* their jobs, many users will be happy to attend more training about good security practices, possibly even taught by you. This has the added bonus that you get to help close the human security loopholes that exist despite your courageous efforts to shelter the users from their own demise: you can remind them not to share their passwords, to check ID of visitors, to keep documents off their desk and screensavers locked when they're away, and all those other *ordinary security* measures without which could give a very malicious or opportunistic person direct access to the hardware on your precious network, a way bigger risk than any software bugs could present...
;)
Give your employer a cost-benefit analysis comparing the migration to either a Linux or Mac server backbone that won't let users f*ck it up so easily, to the zillions of hours of overtime they'd have to pay a whole crew of code-monkeys and network goons to moonlight scrutinize all possible apps for all possible vulnerabilities, and let them decide
Fortunately, anyone who knows how science works is in a position to teach themselves most of that other stuff, since science is the business of learning anything. That's why it gets emphasized so much in regard to the education system, and people who didn't learn it in school themselves (English and History teachers), aren't going to get that point across to students. Science teaches logic, critical reasoning, analysis, and problem solving like no other subject has the ability to. You can't deduce the rules of business/marketing/finance from sentence structures rules in English, but you can get there just fine with only a little science and math. Hopefully, if we can upgrade the science part, future players in the education system will have the problem solving skills they need to fix the whole thing from the inside out.
What do you mean "WHY"? How dare you question me! Because I said so, that's Why! Now shut up before I whup your ass! And quit crying! Babies cry! Get in your room before I whup you!
Hmmmm..... yeah, "something" kills it.... it's a big mystery. I'm sure disaffectionate parents that consider drinking beer and watching TV "quality time" with their children have nothing to do with it.
FINALLY, IT'S HERE!!!!
/.'ers here concerned about personal security, liability, and energy cost associated with this sort of move, but consider this:
... decentralizing networks at the same time as decentralizing energy resources, has the potential to effectively rebalance the power structure of the western world by neutering greedy telcos and oil profiteers of power while enabling and empowering individuals and communities to have a more effective, participatory democracy.
Words can't describe how stoked I am that distributed computing technology is finally being implemented on a large, public scale. So far, I've noticed many
The boxes will likely be intended to function as a single large data-center cluster, spread out over the entire net, with the "distributedness" of it all being transparent to the user of any particular node. This means that they will probably encrypt the locally-stored data caches , both to protect the data from tampering by the local user, and to protect the local user from liability associated with the data.
Likely, individual files will be stored in pieces across the network, much like a striped raid, or existing BitTorrent networks, but with the potential of additional redundancy of the pieces mirrored across several nodes. Files may even be mirrored to more nodes the more often they are requested or accessed. This should allow for ruthless checksumming, and for files to be rebuilt in the event that a node's cache has become damaged, corrupted, infected, or whatever, not to mention that files could be fetched from elsewhere if a particular node is simply not available.
Energy costs to the individual user will probably increase, but bandwidth costs don't ultimately have to. Once the data and transmission methods have been successfully decentralized, then bandwidth can be decentralized too! Imagine if all you needed in order to have a gigabit internet connection in your home was a single gigabit-wireless router (which might be invented by the time this is plausible)... because it just connects to your immediate neighbors' gigabit-wireless, which just connects the whole damn city on an ad-hoc network, connected to other cities with existing wireless transmission lines (cellphone towers that might have been/could be publicly funded)... and since the data is all spread-out, the network traffic is all spread-out too, limiting congestion largely to those long-distance transmission lines.
Although I am generally against increasing energy cost to individuals, this new network model, together with increasing pressure and prices from centralized energy providers, may spawn more public interest in a distrubuted switching power grid of home solar cells, windmills, etc, to power the distrubed network evenly.
The result of these two possibilites combined
LET FREEDOM RING!! I'm on board!!! Who's with me?
This isn't really too much different from Freenet or many Grid Computing initiatives that have come and changed.
;)
Presumably, the data on the Nano Data Center will be encrypted and essentially stripe raid-ed across the network. This is how modern wide-area data distribution networks are currently being implemented privately, and the technology itself circumvents most of the problems you mention.
Responsibility: It's hard to argue that a user is responsible for encrypted content on his/her node, given that it just isn't accessible for review in the first place.
Redundancy: Files can be kept in pieces, with info (like checksums, etc) available elsewhere on the net to reconstruct the data in the case of loss.
Malware: This problem will probably be avoided along with the redundancy problem, by checking checksums of file parts and reconstructing the files if the check goes bad.
Overall, a distributed network is much more difficult to attack than a centralized one, since the missing pieces can easily be rebuilt or reconstructed if a node goes down or goes haywire.
But that's just my opinion
Mac OS X?
Use Gmail's "Get mail from other accounts" feature to automatically retrieve the mail via POP3 from your private server, rather than having your server forward its mail to Gmail.
That should fix the problem.
Next?
The article you referenced explicitly mentions that if the "analysis" is simply a retrieval of data supplied to the client, but not summarized and interpreted for the purpose of describing a crime, then there is not supposed to be liability for the tech.
A sincere thanks for pointing me to that article... I actually feel even better about continuing the consulting work now, since I can just tell the client "Now that I have furnished you with this report and recommended that you have it reviewed by a licensed investigator, our consulting session is over, and this marks the conclusion of my professional advice today. Once I have received payment, we can discuss anything you'd like, as friends."
Not a good idea for the PI ... the law calls it "self-defense" in Texas for a property owner to kill someone threating him on his own property, further legitimized if the threatening person is armed.
The PI in your story is dead man in Texas.
Worth noting is that it's completely legal in Texas to openly carry, without even registering, just about any guns which can be legally owned by an individual, except on premises where all personal firearms are illegal, such as liquor stores, public schools, and government buildings. The exception is handguns... one must register these.
Basically though, anyone in Texas who isn't a felon can openly tote a shotgun, hunting rifle, or even some kinds of assault rifles around without any sort of license or registration for it.
From this, it seems to me that most computer repair activities wouldn't count as investigation company activities unless they fall under part (D), such as explaining to a client that a computer crash was due to a lightning-induced power surge, or that their wireless network is broken because the neighbors' kids seem to have hacked the WEP key and changed the network settings.
;)
Personally, I'm going to continue consulting-as-usual here in Austin, but I might update my client agreement to include a line like "We are not a licensed private investigations company, and hence cannot legally perform investigative activities concerning your computer data. You agree that the scope of any work to be performed concerning your data will be limited to troubleshooting, problem solving, and analysis." Or some such
... AFAIK. That would mean anything from solid-state hard drives to USB thumbdrives to micro-SD cards would be a good bet.
:)
However, I think they are also manufactured quite cheaply and more susceptible to sudden physical failure due to defects than are hard drives or tapes. This is significantly lessened if they're kept somewhere secure like a safe deposit box rather than somewhere dangerous like your pocket, but still a risk to keep in mind. So, be sure to make at least one redundant backup of each stick, and then keep the redundant backups in a separate secure location. I don't think the particular interface matters so much after that, since you'll probably want to upgrade it when that type begins to be phased out, regardless of what it is (USB, SD card, solid-state e-PATA, etc). Don't forget to store a reader/player with the sticks, if possible. A player that has a screen and/or the capability to output to plain RCA A/V would probably be even better, IMO.
For instance, the last decade has seen a gigantic surge in the startup of not only ordinary small businesses, but also in small non-profits, collectives, cooperatives, and plenty of experimental business models. A person who has technical skills, and ethics, and feels shafted by the lack of ethics displayed by their employer, might see a need in their local community that seems like anyone with a little bit of tech know-how could address, but isn't being addressed by existing organizations (or government) for whatever reason. If others in the community agree on the need, then it won't be financially difficult to start a non-profit organization to fill the gap, since you can ethically request donations for startup capital. (And once you get 510(c)(3) status, states will allow people to fulfill their community service obligations by donating free work to your org). Further, you don't have to go without a livable salary once you've got support - it's part of the project cost, and supporters understand paying for it. In other situations, a small collective might work better, i.e. financial support for the project can come from other activities in the collective, and even better, if your goals are ethical, you can probably just join up with an existing collective rather than go to all the trouble of organizing the formation of a new one. Even in the latter case, it's ultimately just a matter of connecting synergistic people and projects to each other.
Of course, if you have good credit, you can even skip all that and just plain get a loan for startup capital as long as your business model looks like it won't bankrupt itself. Additionally, if you have good credit and great presentation skills, you can probably find an investor and negotiate custom terms for startup capital.
The option of independent business isn't inherently closed, ever, to anyone in the US, regardless of age, sex, gender, disability, criminal history, or citizenship status. A lack of education might make it more difficult, but still not impossible. It's one of the only remaining ways we're actually still free - the freedom to do business with whom we choose.
Incidentally, to make a halfway decent living, you DO need business skills, no way around it. Fortunately, you don't need a degree in business, just basic business skills you can probably learn from some books, a little practice and some mentoring - the rest amounts to finding other people to work with rather than for. And as the "vast majority" you speak of don't make a halfway decent living as it is, independent business is becoming a more favorable option as time goes by.
Here are some resources for startups:
Agreed! A person doesn't have to be fussy, demanding, or annoying about it, but at least mentioning what your contributions to the company have been will keep your peers and superiors from wondering whether you've actually been doing anything at all. They won't often just notice on their own, especially with regard to small contributions. Even worse, they might be under the impression that one of your peers did that work, or even fail to notice that the work has been done! A great way to do this is to simply ask questions at meetings -- it works like this: others are glad to see your interest in the project, the organization, and their work, and you're rewarded with interest in yours (which sometimes comes as a challenge, if someone felt challenged by your question), giving you the opportunity to highlight what significant thing you've done recently. Presto - instant rapport if you play it well.
(Mod parent up!!) I'm glad to see a growing trend in favor of strategic thinking that *includes* ethical consequences. It's a factor affecting the bottom line just like any other when making a management decision, and can't realistically be left out. Props!
There aren't any legal concerns at all using VMWare or WinE, especially not for any of those "typical" applications mentioned in the parent. Are you even familiar with these programs? VMWare creates a virtual machine into which you can install any operating system you want - like a version of Windows you own, for instance. WinE uses a free alternative to the Windows API that you can use to install and run Windows-based programs. There's nothing even legally challenging here - users install programs they own.
/dev/null because Linux already has full support. Linux already has the capability to host the applications users want, it's just a matter of installing them, and if it isn't easy enough, then complain to your non-Linux software vendor that you want a Linux-native version that's easy to install. Linux can't make that any easier. In fact, there isn't any Linux project on earth that even could, in principle, make that process easier.
I made no representations on how easy it is to get that stuff working at the current time, but presumably a distribution could be built with WinE pre-configured and tested, if one doesn't already exist.
The point is that all bitching about Linux not having applications gets directed to
If we're really going to compare apples to apples, then Vista doesn't have applications either - Photoshop, MS Office, iTunes, and your favorite business admin software ARE NOT INCLUDED - you have to purchase third-party software and install them separately. Uh, that's also true on OSX. And hey, go figure, the EXACT SAME THING is true under Linux. The difference? Microsoft and Apple themselves have $$ to make sure that vendors release software on their platforms. Linux is a kernel, not a company, and therefore has no $$ to bargain with.
I don't take the position that anyone should use any platform or software that pisses them off, so if installing add-ons to get your favorite off-platform software to work isn't your idea of a Sunday afternoon, then use another platform. I'm simply responding to the complaint that the software isn't available. With virtualization, nearly ALL software is available, on nearly EVERY platform. Blaming Linux or the Linux community for lacking application support, though, is completely short-sighted and naive, as we've stepped up to the challenge over the last 10 years and done everything in our power to provide support for all those typical applications people seem to crave, and a vast majority are now fully supported... which has put the ball outside of the Linux court for a while. Linux can't really do much better in this arena - it's up to the software vendors from here.