'Inability to set up Sendmail properly is in and of itself a security risk. You may quib that any admin who cannot set up Sendmail properly shouldn't be an admin, but this elitist attitude is counterintuitive.'
Agreed but it goes beyond that. An admin who never bothered to learn sendmail configuration isn't lesser than one who has. The quality of an admin isn't defined by the skills he can list on his resume but by his ability to choose his tools wisely and to abandon tools (and the investment spent learning them) when better tools come along. Sendmail hasn't been the best tool for the job anytime in the past 10 years so anyone with less than 10 years experience wouldn't really need it in their skill set.
We aren't talking about VI vs Notepad where the end of the learning curve results in mastery of vastly more powerful tool. There are a number of sendmail replacements that do the job as well. Postfix is an excellent example, it scales, it outperforms sendmail, has a superior security track record, and can be configured properly in a tenth of the time.
Basically postfix (and others) does everything sendmail does, does it as well or better, has a much gentler learning curve and has a much better security track record. I would argue that the admin who installs sendmail today should have the salary cut, not the other way around. We are admins, we invest time to learn and master tools our competency is defined not only by our ability to accomplish that but by our ability to toss aside those tools and the hours spent learning them to learn and master new ones.
'Like it or not, open source software is a huge boon to small businesses and we should strive to empower them with easy to use software, not bash them for not hiring better administrators.'
Agreed, this is a huge and largely ignored segment. Besides that, Postfix configuration may be a walk in the park compared sendmail configuration but there is definitely a learning curve. Postfix is not configured with 'are you sure' wizards that would allow someone who did not understand what they were doing to configure anything but the most trivial configuration. You still have to understand the protocol and how the servers communicate with one another, processes, storage concerns, logging and permissions.
Email and MTA's really aren't all that complex. The only reason to justify a dedicated mail admin would be large numbers of users with enough petty issues to monopolize an admin's time. There simply is no excuse for an admin only knowing mail server administration anymore.
P.S. Old guy who loves sendmail. No I am not a whipper snapper who lacks the experience to understand or who didn't get sendmail and so dismisses it. I get sendmail, I've worked with it many times in many different configurations. It works very well. But it is cumbersome, slow and the only justification left for using it is 'if it aint broke don't fix it'. Sendmail was once the most flexible and powerful MTA available and it scaled up to any task. Sendmail never lost those traits but other programs sprang up that could match that power, flexibility and eventually scalability. Sendmail still made sense for serious users who would rather have the tried and true over spring chickens. But now those alternatives have rock solid tenure of their own. Programs like Postfix have tenure in their own right.
Far too many large providers and organizations run sendmail. They do it because their old hat admins spent years mastering sendmail, not because it scales or performs better. Postfix is easier to configure, every bit as flexible (rare combination), generally outperforms sendmail and scales just as well.
Bad moderation at its finest. Believe it or not, people with opinions you don't like or even unpopular opinions are not trolls or flamebait. Sendmail has a terrible security record.
The tally of security flaws is a lousy metric. First you have to question severity and ease of exploit. Then you have to debate whether finding more flaws means more vigilant and effective bug fixing and therefore raises the bar to exploit the application (my inclination) or it means the program is less secure because it had less flaws (I don't buy this, every program has flaws).
The reality is that the count of flaws found and patched is not a useful metric of security. Beyond all the conditions that can completely change the meaning of those exploit counts is the fact the number of flaws reported and patched is NOT how many flaws the program had. The kid who hacked your server and stole 10,000 credit cards successfully did so with unreported exploit and probably covered his tracks so that you will never know.
The most useful metric I have found is actual in the wild exploitation. Every remotely compromised *nix system I have ever seen (I'm not counting social engineering or password guessing of course) was compromised via Sendmail or bind. Exploited or not I rarely see a securely configured sendmail due to the complexity of configuration and since that complexity doesn't bring added function over competitors like postfix it is fair to call it a critical flaw.
There are replacements for sendmail that scale as well, perform as well, have no greater number of security holes, and are equally flexible. I'm sorry old hat sendmail gurus who put time and effort into mastering sendmail fu but the only excuse you could have for using sendmail in modern times is a desire for job security. That said, there are still zillions of sendmail installations out there.
Unfortunately, I am unaware of a replacement for bind that is as stable, scalable and flexible. There are many that have great security track records and can lap bind on the racetrack time and again but security issues or no I don't anything else is ready to support the structure of the internet.
Kernels are by definition operating systems in the technical sense. The terms are synonymous. Incorrect usage has caused the term 'operating system' to take on a second meaning that is more or less synonymous with distribution that is easily clarified by using the complete term 'operating system distribution' to distinguish between the two. For instance, Windows XP is an operating system distribution that includes an operating system as the core functional piece that all other components of the system depend upon.
P.S. Grammar corrections have a place in classrooms or with non-native speakers. When you harass native speakers with grammar corrections it is simple trolling. That is doubly true when the correction is a syntax error that literally serves no function and conveys no meaning.
'But Photoshop was already the industry standard well before "web artists" came to exist.'
A publishing industry standard. Yup, that constitutes thousands of licenses. But thousands is still dwarfed by millions of web designers. I think you will be hard pressed to find web artists who didn't pirate software in the beginning. Few suddenly say 'hey I think i'll be a graphic designer' and enrolls in courses. Most have an interest and pirate software for graphics design. The software they will find first is Photoshop. As time passed and there have been increasing numbers formal credentials have become more and more essential.
The warez sites we are discussing don't really exist anymore of course. The days of actual warez sites and top lists are gone, warez are distributed by other means now. Now web artists and warez distribution are two separate things. Once upon a time warez distributors WERE web artists.
'I don't have anything against web artists. I thought you were talking about warez distributors, not web artists.'
Which implies you have a problem with warez distributors. That is a poor attitude for a group that is responsible for providing the tools used for almost all self-taught computer learning.
' * Photoshop being a generally kick-ass,revolutionary application
* The shift in the publishing industry from cut-n-paste and darkrooms to imagesetters and electronic publishing
* The rise of "desktop publishing"
* The massive amounts of money spent in the advertising and publishing industries '
Photoshop is a great application for publishing. It was widely accepted in the publishing industry even as the warez kiddies spread it to all those amateur designers with their little toy graphics on websites (trying for a tone that the snobby designers in the publishing and advertising industries will feel appropriate since they think they are the 'real' professionals). That was a given, I mean we are talking about a product made by the postscript gods. The thousands of professionals designing graphics in those industries no doubt amount to almost the exact same number of photoshop licenses.
That is all very impressive that those real designers use this excellent application that is killer app for the work they are doing. Then again, I imagine adobe being the monster it is MIGHT also have something to do with the MILLIONS of licenses owned by web designers. Those MILLIONS of licenses are the result of the massive promotion of photoshop for use in making snazzy web graphics by warez kiddies.
Of course you are probably right. A snobby publishing designer probably gave one of those warez kiddies a copy of paintshop pro while explaining how 'real' designers use this photoshop thing. That is probably how it all began.
Publishing artists vs other graphics artists are much like hardware engineers vs software engineers. In both cases the former group believes itself to be the real and important professionals and the latter to be second class citizens despite the fact there is no legitimate basis in reality for that view.
'The Linux kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers.'
Should read:
'The Linux kernel is a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers.'
Although based upon the comments from those who claim to have read the article it doesn't look like the article covers anything but compiling the Linux operating system with make menuconfig. It does apparently include information about the other software that is included with the operating system to make up complete operating system distributions.
'albeit overstated. "Dozens of warez webmasters" made photoshop popular;'
Yes, actually hundreds of webmasters but there were a few dozen core sites. These are content providers not individuals. Millions of people downloaded the materials these sites offered and the links that consistently worked were whatever was popular among the webmasters. Of course then most people didn't pirate their own software. A smaller number of competent users ferreted out these warez sites and they would distribute the software to their friends.
I'm not talking about a couple dozen or even a couple hundred users, I'm talking about a couple hundred distribution outlets that in turn distributed to millions of people.
Apparently you yourself were exposed to the scene I am referring to and its myriad of cool filter effects.
The warez scene made photoshop popular. Remember back in the land of dial up where you searched through dozens of websites to find a few that had working links to applications? Back then, there were dozens of warez webmasters competing for the coolest apps and Photoshop 4 was in vogue. This was significant because all those warez runners then used photoshop to make cool graphics for their sites. Other sites drooled and so photoshop spread. As the piracy grew so did the rep, as the rep grew so did the legitimate user base.
Not that adobe will admit rampant photoshop piracy has been the best thing that ever happened to them. The real reason they and other software leaders want to shut it down is that they don't any competitor taking that freeway to success. It is in the interest of market leaders to raise the bar to market entry as much as possible.
'It is precisely the greed that means there is always competition, as long as potential competitors can find a better way to do it and they aren't hampered in entering the industry there will be competition. I think not allowing government in the first place to enter this field is more beneficial overall because they would not be tempted to expand further.'
Which field are you referring to? If you mean monopolies then perhaps I wasn't clear. I don't favor the current method for dealing with single company monopolies. Since the experts have gone through the rounds and determined that monopolies are an inevitable flaw in capitalism and basically poison to the market. I believe once it is determined that a company is a monopoly the time for tiptoeing around should stop. Imminent domain should be exercised, the shareholders should be given what the government chooses to pay and all assets and money belonging to the company will be seized (including anything in allied nations). If need be, IP should be rendered into the public domain, all trade secrets revealed and physical assets.
That would cost investors money, put people out of work, etc. Ultimately the monopoly would cause greater economic upheaval. Best of all, there is no need to impose regulations. Again, just to make sure there is no confusion. I am not claiming being successful is wrong or that there is a moral need for this, I am saying we have a flaw in our system and it is necessary to patch that system.
'I agree with your take on removing protections for officers and investors, they should be held accountable.'
What would your insurance company do? Go to jail for them? You seem to envision a world where everything has a price tag on it and everything is dictated by value and property. I favor the replacement of regulations with recognition of the fact that acting unconscionably to ones neighbor is a criminal act whether you walk up and shoot him or harm him for the sake of making a profit. Locking up people who commit crimes against one another is one of the few legitimate functions of government.
I do not favor the breaking the world up into dollar signs and property rights where those with more property have more rights. Actually I think a lot more of the opposite needs to happen. Currently the crimes more often committed by the poor are extremely harshly punished while the crimes of the wealthy remain legal and usually unpunished. Stop and think about it, if a desperate and poor man robs a gas station (certainly nothing the financially secure would do) how severe is the punishement? Lets make it worse, he shoots and kills someone in the act. Now, what is the punishment for a pharmaceutical executive who orders the intentional development of a drug that is in reality no more effective than the one it replaces.
The executives drug will be pushed to doctors who will in turn prescribe it over the equally effective generic. Not only will the drug company have stolen billions of dollars but that theft has dramatic indirect consequences. First it increases the cost of health care and thus assures that everyone needs insurance. Second, those billions come from the insurance companies which then recover it from consumers. This makes sure that quality health insurance is out of reach for millions.
The robber has ultimately impacted the lives of a handful of people. They are more difficult to measure but the executive has caused millions to live in poor health, many lives shortened, and probably deaths. That is all in an attempt to utilize fraud and steal billions of dollars.
Under the current system the robber will go to prison for 20 years or possibly even life. The executive hasn't even broken the law. The worst he has to fear is a lawsuit that might cost a few dollars. If he were held financially liable the worst he would have to fear is having his wealth taken away and being reduced to the financial level of his victims. He files bankruptcy and in a couple years is probably quietly back in a seat at another dr
'Otherwise their growth would be entirely because they provided a much better service than anyone else could, and that won't last for ever'
No but once a company has a monopoly and is the de facto standard they can leverage that position in ways that assures they remain a monopoly. They can also leverage their monopoly to gain more monopolies. They will eventually crash, just as any empire does, but the a monopoly is never beneficial to anyone but the monopolist and empires take a very long time to fall. Monopolies are known flaw in capitalism and any economist can tell you that capitalism and the free market does not fix them once they come into being. Whether they come into being through legitimate or illegitimate means doesn't really matter.
'I think many people forget about property rights and upholding contracts and that's why they demand government regulations.'
I think people demand government regulations because corporations and people in general are slimy self serving greedy bastards. Lets face it, if people weren't greedy and lazy chasing the ultimate goal of taking a portion of the production of others rather than producing themselves, then communism (as an economic system) would be an ideal system.
There will always be greedy and ambitious people who don't care about what they produce (if anything) and instead focus on profit, producing only the minimum required to get people to pay them money. This certainly results in junk merchandise but it also sometimes results in conditions that are unsafe for workers, food products that are unsafe for consumers, drugs that are unsafe, etc. The fact that all of these things occur and have even become common practice until stopped by regulation proves this. The free market won't get rid of something unsafe if the consumer doesn't understand the danger and all the competitors engage in the practice.
The solution is not merely to enforce EXISTING laws and honor contracts. The solution is to remove protections for the officers and investors of corporations and business owners. Further, the solution is not to make them merely financially liable so their ultimate consequence is to be lowered to the position of the average man living paycheck to paycheck with unpayable debt. The solution is to make them criminally liable. If you authorize the sale of leaded gasoline knowing their is a significant risk to consumers you shouldn't merely open your company to liability and fines. You shouldn't even merely open yourself to those risks. You should go to prison. If someone dies because of your willful actions then you are guilty of first degree murder. You authorize the dumping of toxic waste into the water supply of thousands of people. Congratulations, that is several thousand counts of attempted murder.
Would this slow and disrupt the actions of businesses? Yes. And that my friend is a good thing, that slowing is the sound of being concerned about and researching the consequences of actions. Let juries and judges decide what constitutes putting profit before people not thousands of pages of red tape and micro-managing legislation. If you do that and allow severe criminal consequences to follow these actions you can bet that private industry will impose more thorough and up to date restrictions on itself than any government could.
Of course the IM needs to be GPL'd, free as in beer, and available for windows and linux. (Sorry BSD guys, I think your project is a waste of resources UNTIL the day that the borg is toppled and real healthy competition can begin.)
No advertising. Support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, and YAHOO. Support for encrypted messaging with others using the same client (this should work out of the box with automatic key generation). Support for voice and video features of the above networks. Support for voice conferences ala ventrillo. The ability to backup and import settings directly from the menus. The ability to categorize contacts but all contacts should be dropped into a single default list unless you move them manually. Creating multiple accounts on each network. The ability to configure status, default status changes after a period of time (including disabling), auto-reponses, etc. On windows the program should minimize to the system tray rather than the task bar.
That's it, fancy text, avatars, graphical smilies, and all other make my text pretty features shouldn't be implemented until the actual functionality is already in place.
Because inattentive sysadmins is not the common factor, windows isn't even the common factor; IIS is. There are plenty of apache installs on windows but those servers aren't being exploited. There are inattentive sysadmins using every system, if there are more in the windows webserver market (despite the fact that windows and IIS aren't dominant players in that market) then there is a flaw in these systems that attracts them. That flaw might be a design methodology the spreads the myths that enough knowledge to setup an IIS webserver is enough to competently administrate that server when in reality it isn't even enough to competently administrate a desktop.
'Has IIS had any remotely exploitable holes since version 5?'
Who knows? All I know is how many of the remotely exploitable holes Microsoft has managed to patch since version 5. As far as I can tell they haven't managed to patch any and based upon the real world results it looks like IIS is being remotely exploited left and right.
It's the heavy taxation and strict regulation I am opposed to. These are all things that should be controlled entirely by private citizens. Good old capitalism can handle these problems and there is no more justification for government regulation than any other industry.
Here is a wild thought, instead of trying to micro-manage every industry where businesses could endanger the health of individuals with poor standards or swindle individuals we start making the executives and investors in ALL businesses criminally liable for the actions. If food or drug processor took an action that harmed or endangered people then the ones who made the call should go to pound me in the arse prison. The same is true of casinos that use rigged machines that constitute fraud. Right now a company can use a dangerous chemical that will hurt people to cut corners and make hundreds of millions doing so. IF they get caught, the worst they face will be a few million in fines and lawsuits and probably will make a net profit on the affair. Even if they break even they will profit from the practice overall since any punk kid can tell you that the cops don't even know most crimes happen let alone catch the bad guys. If you make white collar decision makers subject to the same sort of consequences as the hungry crack addict on the street you can bet the decisions they make will reflect that.
Aside from enforcing criminal law, the only time the government needs to interfere with industry is fix the fundamental flaw in the free market. The flaw is of course companies that are too large to allow real competition. Of course single company monopolies aren't the only problem that needs to be solved, it is common practice now for several supposed competitors to collude in a manner that has the same effect as a monopoly. In both of these situations it is necessary for the government to step in and the right to property has to be considered secondary to the interests of the nation as a whole.
'I have read of people who had their computers' fans stop working while using Ubuntu.'
Fans are hardware, not software. The only way software can affect fans if you turn on some stupid software control mechanism to make your fans run at partial capacity so they sound less noisy. If you do something stupid like run cooling systems at less than maximum capacity your warranty should be voided just as if you overclocked your processor. Second, when Dell sells a laptop with that feature they are certifying that the software included with the laptop supports the functionality. Therefore, if the hardware fails because of a lack of that support, it is again Dell's responsibility.
Your response is the real reason why the term should not be used. It implies that patents, copyrights and so forth are actually property and should in some way be treated as if they were. This misconception results in bad court rulings, bad laws, and a confused public. Property is material, none of the things grouped under umbrella term are property, none of them share a legal or moral relativity to property, and most of the things grouped under that term don't even share moral and legal relativity with one another.
'we need to stop using the term "Intellectual Property"'
Definitely, that term makes it sound as if we are referring to property. There is no actual tangible property when we are talking about any form of IP.
Slashdot Mirror
'Inability to set up Sendmail properly is in and of itself a security risk. You may quib that any admin who cannot set up Sendmail properly shouldn't be an admin, but this elitist attitude is counterintuitive.'
Agreed but it goes beyond that. An admin who never bothered to learn sendmail configuration isn't lesser than one who has. The quality of an admin isn't defined by the skills he can list on his resume but by his ability to choose his tools wisely and to abandon tools (and the investment spent learning them) when better tools come along. Sendmail hasn't been the best tool for the job anytime in the past 10 years so anyone with less than 10 years experience wouldn't really need it in their skill set.
We aren't talking about VI vs Notepad where the end of the learning curve results in mastery of vastly more powerful tool. There are a number of sendmail replacements that do the job as well. Postfix is an excellent example, it scales, it outperforms sendmail, has a superior security track record, and can be configured properly in a tenth of the time.
Basically postfix (and others) does everything sendmail does, does it as well or better, has a much gentler learning curve and has a much better security track record. I would argue that the admin who installs sendmail today should have the salary cut, not the other way around. We are admins, we invest time to learn and master tools our competency is defined not only by our ability to accomplish that but by our ability to toss aside those tools and the hours spent learning them to learn and master new ones.
'Like it or not, open source software is a huge boon to small businesses and we should strive to empower them with easy to use software, not bash them for not hiring better administrators.'
Agreed, this is a huge and largely ignored segment. Besides that, Postfix configuration may be a walk in the park compared sendmail configuration but there is definitely a learning curve. Postfix is not configured with 'are you sure' wizards that would allow someone who did not understand what they were doing to configure anything but the most trivial configuration. You still have to understand the protocol and how the servers communicate with one another, processes, storage concerns, logging and permissions.
Email and MTA's really aren't all that complex. The only reason to justify a dedicated mail admin would be large numbers of users with enough petty issues to monopolize an admin's time. There simply is no excuse for an admin only knowing mail server administration anymore.
P.S. Old guy who loves sendmail. No I am not a whipper snapper who lacks the experience to understand or who didn't get sendmail and so dismisses it. I get sendmail, I've worked with it many times in many different configurations. It works very well. But it is cumbersome, slow and the only justification left for using it is 'if it aint broke don't fix it'. Sendmail was once the most flexible and powerful MTA available and it scaled up to any task. Sendmail never lost those traits but other programs sprang up that could match that power, flexibility and eventually scalability. Sendmail still made sense for serious users who would rather have the tried and true over spring chickens. But now those alternatives have rock solid tenure of their own. Programs like Postfix have tenure in their own right.
Far too many large providers and organizations run sendmail. They do it because their old hat admins spent years mastering sendmail, not because it scales or performs better. Postfix is easier to configure, every bit as flexible (rare combination), generally outperforms sendmail and scales just as well.
Bad moderation at its finest. Believe it or not, people with opinions you don't like or even unpopular opinions are not trolls or flamebait. Sendmail has a terrible security record.
The tally of security flaws is a lousy metric. First you have to question severity and ease of exploit. Then you have to debate whether finding more flaws means more vigilant and effective bug fixing and therefore raises the bar to exploit the application (my inclination) or it means the program is less secure because it had less flaws (I don't buy this, every program has flaws).
The reality is that the count of flaws found and patched is not a useful metric of security. Beyond all the conditions that can completely change the meaning of those exploit counts is the fact the number of flaws reported and patched is NOT how many flaws the program had. The kid who hacked your server and stole 10,000 credit cards successfully did so with unreported exploit and probably covered his tracks so that you will never know.
The most useful metric I have found is actual in the wild exploitation. Every remotely compromised *nix system I have ever seen (I'm not counting social engineering or password guessing of course) was compromised via Sendmail or bind. Exploited or not I rarely see a securely configured sendmail due to the complexity of configuration and since that complexity doesn't bring added function over competitors like postfix it is fair to call it a critical flaw.
There are replacements for sendmail that scale as well, perform as well, have no greater number of security holes, and are equally flexible. I'm sorry old hat sendmail gurus who put time and effort into mastering sendmail fu but the only excuse you could have for using sendmail in modern times is a desire for job security. That said, there are still zillions of sendmail installations out there.
Unfortunately, I am unaware of a replacement for bind that is as stable, scalable and flexible. There are many that have great security track records and can lap bind on the racetrack time and again but security issues or no I don't anything else is ready to support the structure of the internet.
Kernels are by definition operating systems in the technical sense. The terms are synonymous. Incorrect usage has caused the term 'operating system' to take on a second meaning that is more or less synonymous with distribution that is easily clarified by using the complete term 'operating system distribution' to distinguish between the two. For instance, Windows XP is an operating system distribution that includes an operating system as the core functional piece that all other components of the system depend upon.
P.S. Grammar corrections have a place in classrooms or with non-native speakers. When you harass native speakers with grammar corrections it is simple trolling. That is doubly true when the correction is a syntax error that literally serves no function and conveys no meaning.
'But Photoshop was already the industry standard well before "web artists" came to exist.'
A publishing industry standard. Yup, that constitutes thousands of licenses. But thousands is still dwarfed by millions of web designers. I think you will be hard pressed to find web artists who didn't pirate software in the beginning. Few suddenly say 'hey I think i'll be a graphic designer' and enrolls in courses. Most have an interest and pirate software for graphics design. The software they will find first is Photoshop. As time passed and there have been increasing numbers formal credentials have become more and more essential.
The warez sites we are discussing don't really exist anymore of course. The days of actual warez sites and top lists are gone, warez are distributed by other means now. Now web artists and warez distribution are two separate things. Once upon a time warez distributors WERE web artists.
'I don't have anything against web artists. I thought you were talking about warez distributors, not web artists.'
Which implies you have a problem with warez distributors. That is a poor attitude for a group that is responsible for providing the tools used for almost all self-taught computer learning.
' * Photoshop being a generally kick-ass,revolutionary application
* The shift in the publishing industry from cut-n-paste and darkrooms to imagesetters and electronic publishing
* The rise of "desktop publishing"
* The massive amounts of money spent in the advertising and publishing industries
'
Photoshop is a great application for publishing. It was widely accepted in the publishing industry even as the warez kiddies spread it to all those amateur designers with their little toy graphics on websites (trying for a tone that the snobby designers in the publishing and advertising industries will feel appropriate since they think they are the 'real' professionals). That was a given, I mean we are talking about a product made by the postscript gods. The thousands of professionals designing graphics in those industries no doubt amount to almost the exact same number of photoshop licenses.
That is all very impressive that those real designers use this excellent application that is killer app for the work they are doing. Then again, I imagine adobe being the monster it is MIGHT also have something to do with the MILLIONS of licenses owned by web designers. Those MILLIONS of licenses are the result of the massive promotion of photoshop for use in making snazzy web graphics by warez kiddies.
Of course you are probably right. A snobby publishing designer probably gave one of those warez kiddies a copy of paintshop pro while explaining how 'real' designers use this photoshop thing. That is probably how it all began.
Publishing artists vs other graphics artists are much like hardware engineers vs software engineers. In both cases the former group believes itself to be the real and important professionals and the latter to be second class citizens despite the fact there is no legitimate basis in reality for that view.
'The Linux kernel is the core of a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers.'
Should read:
'The Linux kernel is a large and complex operating system, and while it's huge, it is well organized in terms of subsystems and layers.'
Although based upon the comments from those who claim to have read the article it doesn't look like the article covers anything but compiling the Linux operating system with make menuconfig. It does apparently include information about the other software that is included with the operating system to make up complete operating system distributions.
'albeit overstated. "Dozens of warez webmasters" made photoshop popular;'
Yes, actually hundreds of webmasters but there were a few dozen core sites. These are content providers not individuals. Millions of people downloaded the materials these sites offered and the links that consistently worked were whatever was popular among the webmasters. Of course then most people didn't pirate their own software. A smaller number of competent users ferreted out these warez sites and they would distribute the software to their friends.
I'm not talking about a couple dozen or even a couple hundred users, I'm talking about a couple hundred distribution outlets that in turn distributed to millions of people.
Apparently you yourself were exposed to the scene I am referring to and its myriad of cool filter effects.
The warez scene made photoshop popular. Remember back in the land of dial up where you searched through dozens of websites to find a few that had working links to applications? Back then, there were dozens of warez webmasters competing for the coolest apps and Photoshop 4 was in vogue. This was significant because all those warez runners then used photoshop to make cool graphics for their sites. Other sites drooled and so photoshop spread. As the piracy grew so did the rep, as the rep grew so did the legitimate user base.
Not that adobe will admit rampant photoshop piracy has been the best thing that ever happened to them. The real reason they and other software leaders want to shut it down is that they don't any competitor taking that freeway to success. It is in the interest of market leaders to raise the bar to market entry as much as possible.
'It is precisely the greed that means there is always competition, as long as potential competitors can find a better way to do it and they aren't hampered in entering the industry there will be competition. I think not allowing government in the first place to enter this field is more beneficial overall because they would not be tempted to expand further.'
Which field are you referring to? If you mean monopolies then perhaps I wasn't clear. I don't favor the current method for dealing with single company monopolies. Since the experts have gone through the rounds and determined that monopolies are an inevitable flaw in capitalism and basically poison to the market. I believe once it is determined that a company is a monopoly the time for tiptoeing around should stop. Imminent domain should be exercised, the shareholders should be given what the government chooses to pay and all assets and money belonging to the company will be seized (including anything in allied nations). If need be, IP should be rendered into the public domain, all trade secrets revealed and physical assets.
That would cost investors money, put people out of work, etc. Ultimately the monopoly would cause greater economic upheaval. Best of all, there is no need to impose regulations. Again, just to make sure there is no confusion. I am not claiming being successful is wrong or that there is a moral need for this, I am saying we have a flaw in our system and it is necessary to patch that system.
'I agree with your take on removing protections for officers and investors, they should be held accountable.'
What would your insurance company do? Go to jail for them? You seem to envision a world where everything has a price tag on it and everything is dictated by value and property. I favor the replacement of regulations with recognition of the fact that acting unconscionably to ones neighbor is a criminal act whether you walk up and shoot him or harm him for the sake of making a profit. Locking up people who commit crimes against one another is one of the few legitimate functions of government.
I do not favor the breaking the world up into dollar signs and property rights where those with more property have more rights. Actually I think a lot more of the opposite needs to happen. Currently the crimes more often committed by the poor are extremely harshly punished while the crimes of the wealthy remain legal and usually unpunished. Stop and think about it, if a desperate and poor man robs a gas station (certainly nothing the financially secure would do) how severe is the punishement? Lets make it worse, he shoots and kills someone in the act. Now, what is the punishment for a pharmaceutical executive who orders the intentional development of a drug that is in reality no more effective than the one it replaces.
The executives drug will be pushed to doctors who will in turn prescribe it over the equally effective generic. Not only will the drug company have stolen billions of dollars but that theft has dramatic indirect consequences. First it increases the cost of health care and thus assures that everyone needs insurance. Second, those billions come from the insurance companies which then recover it from consumers. This makes sure that quality health insurance is out of reach for millions.
The robber has ultimately impacted the lives of a handful of people. They are more difficult to measure but the executive has caused millions to live in poor health, many lives shortened, and probably deaths. That is all in an attempt to utilize fraud and steal billions of dollars.
Under the current system the robber will go to prison for 20 years or possibly even life. The executive hasn't even broken the law. The worst he has to fear is a lawsuit that might cost a few dollars. If he were held financially liable the worst he would have to fear is having his wealth taken away and being reduced to the financial level of his victims. He files bankruptcy and in a couple years is probably quietly back in a seat at another dr
Hey, the BSD guys can have a port and Solaris too for all I care. It just isn't a requirement for being my perfect imaginary IM.
'Otherwise their growth would be entirely because they provided a much better service than anyone else could, and that won't last for ever'
No but once a company has a monopoly and is the de facto standard they can leverage that position in ways that assures they remain a monopoly. They can also leverage their monopoly to gain more monopolies. They will eventually crash, just as any empire does, but the a monopoly is never beneficial to anyone but the monopolist and empires take a very long time to fall. Monopolies are known flaw in capitalism and any economist can tell you that capitalism and the free market does not fix them once they come into being. Whether they come into being through legitimate or illegitimate means doesn't really matter.
'I think many people forget about property rights and upholding contracts and that's why they demand government regulations.'
I think people demand government regulations because corporations and people in general are slimy self serving greedy bastards. Lets face it, if people weren't greedy and lazy chasing the ultimate goal of taking a portion of the production of others rather than producing themselves, then communism (as an economic system) would be an ideal system.
There will always be greedy and ambitious people who don't care about what they produce (if anything) and instead focus on profit, producing only the minimum required to get people to pay them money. This certainly results in junk merchandise but it also sometimes results in conditions that are unsafe for workers, food products that are unsafe for consumers, drugs that are unsafe, etc. The fact that all of these things occur and have even become common practice until stopped by regulation proves this. The free market won't get rid of something unsafe if the consumer doesn't understand the danger and all the competitors engage in the practice.
The solution is not merely to enforce EXISTING laws and honor contracts. The solution is to remove protections for the officers and investors of corporations and business owners. Further, the solution is not to make them merely financially liable so their ultimate consequence is to be lowered to the position of the average man living paycheck to paycheck with unpayable debt. The solution is to make them criminally liable. If you authorize the sale of leaded gasoline knowing their is a significant risk to consumers you shouldn't merely open your company to liability and fines. You shouldn't even merely open yourself to those risks. You should go to prison. If someone dies because of your willful actions then you are guilty of first degree murder. You authorize the dumping of toxic waste into the water supply of thousands of people. Congratulations, that is several thousand counts of attempted murder.
Would this slow and disrupt the actions of businesses? Yes. And that my friend is a good thing, that slowing is the sound of being concerned about and researching the consequences of actions. Let juries and judges decide what constitutes putting profit before people not thousands of pages of red tape and micro-managing legislation. If you do that and allow severe criminal consequences to follow these actions you can bet that private industry will impose more thorough and up to date restrictions on itself than any government could.
Of course the IM needs to be GPL'd, free as in beer, and available for windows and linux. (Sorry BSD guys, I think your project is a waste of resources UNTIL the day that the borg is toppled and real healthy competition can begin.)
No advertising.
Support for ICQ, AIM, MSN, and YAHOO.
Support for encrypted messaging with others using the same client (this should work out of the box with automatic key generation).
Support for voice and video features of the above networks.
Support for voice conferences ala ventrillo.
The ability to backup and import settings directly from the menus.
The ability to categorize contacts but all contacts should be dropped into a single default list unless you move them manually.
Creating multiple accounts on each network.
The ability to configure status, default status changes after a period of time (including disabling), auto-reponses, etc.
On windows the program should minimize to the system tray rather than the task bar.
That's it, fancy text, avatars, graphical smilies, and all other make my text pretty features shouldn't be implemented until the actual functionality is already in place.
'Why do you blame Windows and IIS then?'
Because inattentive sysadmins is not the common factor, windows isn't even the common factor; IIS is. There are plenty of apache installs on windows but those servers aren't being exploited. There are inattentive sysadmins using every system, if there are more in the windows webserver market (despite the fact that windows and IIS aren't dominant players in that market) then there is a flaw in these systems that attracts them. That flaw might be a design methodology the spreads the myths that enough knowledge to setup an IIS webserver is enough to competently administrate that server when in reality it isn't even enough to competently administrate a desktop.
'Has IIS had any remotely exploitable holes since version 5?'
Who knows? All I know is how many of the remotely exploitable holes Microsoft has managed to patch since version 5. As far as I can tell they haven't managed to patch any and based upon the real world results it looks like IIS is being remotely exploited left and right.
It's the heavy taxation and strict regulation I am opposed to. These are all things that should be controlled entirely by private citizens. Good old capitalism can handle these problems and there is no more justification for government regulation than any other industry.
Here is a wild thought, instead of trying to micro-manage every industry where businesses could endanger the health of individuals with poor standards or swindle individuals we start making the executives and investors in ALL businesses criminally liable for the actions. If food or drug processor took an action that harmed or endangered people then the ones who made the call should go to pound me in the arse prison. The same is true of casinos that use rigged machines that constitute fraud. Right now a company can use a dangerous chemical that will hurt people to cut corners and make hundreds of millions doing so. IF they get caught, the worst they face will be a few million in fines and lawsuits and probably will make a net profit on the affair. Even if they break even they will profit from the practice overall since any punk kid can tell you that the cops don't even know most crimes happen let alone catch the bad guys. If you make white collar decision makers subject to the same sort of consequences as the hungry crack addict on the street you can bet the decisions they make will reflect that.
Aside from enforcing criminal law, the only time the government needs to interfere with industry is fix the fundamental flaw in the free market. The flaw is of course companies that are too large to allow real competition. Of course single company monopolies aren't the only problem that needs to be solved, it is common practice now for several supposed competitors to collude in a manner that has the same effect as a monopoly. In both of these situations it is necessary for the government to step in and the right to property has to be considered secondary to the interests of the nation as a whole.
This entire article of Linux praise is blanketed on all sides with windows 2003 server ads.
'I have read of people who had their computers' fans stop working while using Ubuntu.'
Fans are hardware, not software. The only way software can affect fans if you turn on some stupid software control mechanism to make your fans run at partial capacity so they sound less noisy. If you do something stupid like run cooling systems at less than maximum capacity your warranty should be voided just as if you overclocked your processor. Second, when Dell sells a laptop with that feature they are certifying that the software included with the laptop supports the functionality. Therefore, if the hardware fails because of a lack of that support, it is again Dell's responsibility.
Your response is the real reason why the term should not be used. It implies that patents, copyrights and so forth are actually property and should in some way be treated as if they were. This misconception results in bad court rulings, bad laws, and a confused public. Property is material, none of the things grouped under umbrella term are property, none of them share a legal or moral relativity to property, and most of the things grouped under that term don't even share moral and legal relativity with one another.
'we need to stop using the term "Intellectual Property"'
Definitely, that term makes it sound as if we are referring to property. There is no actual tangible property when we are talking about any form of IP.
Exactly and most soldiers aren't snipers, they don't have time to do more than point and shoot from relatively short range in live combat anyway.
'be sued into oblivion by the content companies.'
For what? Manufacturing a VCR?
Or... they could just drop the pointless anti-user DRM.
'allowed AMD to penetrate MS marketshare'
Should obviously be 'allowed AMD to penetrate Intel marketshare'