We do not live in a binary world. Shades of grey exist everywhere, and this is no exception. The debate should be over where to draw the line, and who gets to draw it - not whether it should exist at all.
Let's take the examples you provide. Which of them allows millions of devices, operated by billions of people or with complete autonomy, to access everything associated with your name in seconds? Even this information is not equal to your examples. The source of much of it is near impossible to determine, the accuracy far more suspect and in many cases it's impossible to change that which is in error.
You know what else has existed in nearly the entire history of man? Privacy by obscurity. The fact that information could have been accessed doesn't mean it was. There was never a need to codify such things, as the level of current intrusion couldn't possibly have been predicted by anyone until relatively recent times - after which, it was too late.
> You were never allowed to fly your glider within 10 miles of controlled airport, and 2 or 5 miles of an uncontrolled airport. Ever.
The above is demonstrably false.
Our AMA field boundary is less than 500' from the end of the runway of an uncontrolled, International US Airport - not in line with approach/departure obviously, but perpendicular to the runway. It's been there for 20+ years. We see commercial flights daily, and from our flight stations can easily make out the tail numbers on aircraft landing and taking off.
Further, the same government entity that owns the airport leases the land the field is on to us.
There's zero chance the FAA isn't well aware of our site.
FWIW, one of the worst was Proposition 13, the Jarvis-Gann initiative to freeze property tax rates and assessed values in the late 70's.
Surely, you jest. Without Prop 13, CA's numerous runups in property value would have forced countless fixed-income residents from their homes.
My parents bought a home in the Bay Area in the early 60's, and live on a tiny pension and social security. The property taxes in their neighborhood at the height of things, would have been 40% of their gross income. Apparently your solution for them, is "tough shit"...force them to sell the home they raised their kids in, take the proceeds and go live in the slums where they can afford the taxes.
More to the point - feel free to explain why the government deserves a 100% increase in revenues, when our values shoot up that much over a 5-6 year span? That level of appreciation has happened twice where I live in the past 20 years.
Yet another weasel approach...what if you make your password something incriminating?
If they really wanted the contents of the encrypted drive/partition, they could grant immunity for the contents of the password - in which case, "iCheatedOnMy2002Taxes" might not be such a big deal to them.
In all seriousness...there are likely many that were bought with XP, to be replaced with Linux.
Reason being - there have been some tremendous sales in the Dell Outlet Store over the last couple of months, but they are usually loaded with XP. The refurb I picked up, was far cheaper than a new Ubuntu Mini 9, with more options - but came loaded with XP.
You're assuming your employer doesn't get either a) get driven out of business to maintain these benefits or b) your benefits get negotiated away when hard times arise.
True...but no different than being employed in a typical non-represented IT position elsewhere in the industry. Risk of layoff is always present, in any job.
The pension alone I bet you don't end up getting (depending on how old you are) since that's something in the future the company can agree to now and simply go bankrupt on later.
Pension plans vary significantly, and the good ones don't allow ANY employer access other than agreed upon contribution amounts. Ours is one such plan, is independently audited annually, and the employer can't touch it.
Compared to stock options offered in a tech company, many might suggest such a plan is a far safer bet - albeit with lower risk/lower return potential.
I don't want to count my work hours -- I'll take flexibility over 40-hours max
Show me any well-paying IT job, where you are able to work 40 hours or less per week. If it's your's, congrats - your situation is more rare than mine.
I don't want a pension -- I'd take higher pay over an employer-funded plan that prevents me from changing jobs
My pay doesn't suffer - I make the same as other senior level systems folks in the industry. More, if I choose to work OT.
I don't want my employer to control my investment plans -- I'd take higher pay over an employer-funded plan that prevents me from changing jobs
They don't control my plans - I do. Plenty of choices, including individual stocks if I wish. If I chose to leave, I could roll over the money to IRA's, or leave them in the plan and continue to manage the existing funds.
I don't want my employer to control my health plan...
We've three choices, one fully paid. Continues into retirement. Far better rates than anyone could do on their own. Yeah...that sucks.
I don't want paid vacation time -- I'd take higher pay and unpaided leave instead
I've already addressed the pay issue. Now, how many employers offer over a month of compensated time off, plus sick days to start? Not to mention, we have the choice of getting paid OT, or taking 1.5x comp time instead.
So now that we've established that unions don't do what everyone wants, and in fact can damage the ability of employes to seek out new and better employment because they'd lose employer-controlled deferred compensation, can we stop trying to force people into them?
Nobody forces you to join a union, nor take a union represented job. And while some states allow mandatory union payments for represented positions (something I'm against), many don't - see NRTW.org for more details. And, you can NOT be forced to be a union member - in any state.
Depending on your perspective, union membership is just another perk or deficit of an employment opportunity - nothing else. Nobody forces you to take the job, there are plenty of alternatives.
I'm so incredibly out of touch with 99% of the nerds in the US when it comes to working conditions...but that suits me just fine. It constantly amazes me that IT folks accept treatment that very few other professionals would. Or blue collar workers, for that matter.
What does a union get you today?
Well, since you asked...let's go down the list.
40 hour work week, paid overtime
Paid, rotating on-call shifts
A pension to die for...I'm quitting at 50, picking up 70% of pay at 54, COLA adjusted, with full health benefits
Three pre-tax investment plans
Compressed work week (4x10, three day weekends every week)
Comprehensive health plan
13 holidays/personal days per year
12 days annual sick leave
5 weeks vacation (started at 2.5)
Yeah, unions suck. And you're right about those nasty dues as well - I can't believe the above costs me about the same as basic cable. What a rip-off...
Oh, for mod points and a "retarded" option...I'll have to settle for tossing a virtual poo in your general direction.
Here's a clue, nimrod - the jokes aren't about the Africans. Ther're about the farkin' monkeys.
By your logic, the same jokes would be made if humans were attacking them and taking over their land. Or, perhaps you're suggesting we'd be having a serious conversation if monkeys were attacking white folks.
Did Novell ever get around to porting Novell Storage Services [NSS] to Linux?
Yup...it happened with their initial release of Open Enterprise Server, well over a year ago. OES is built upon SLES9.
That being said, we found the initial releases to be a bit buggy, and performance was way off what we've come to expect with Netware. However, things have improved considerably since the initial release, and we're running four OES 1.0/SP2 Linux servers with NSS now for sites with moderate loads (file/print for up to 100 users.) Benchmarks show things are still a bit slower than Netware, but not enough that the users are complaining.
The other issue with NSS on OES Linux - backup support. Relatively few vendors have supported backup solutions, compared to "standard" Linux filesystems. Standard backup tools handle the file data just fine, but they won't capture the NSS extended attributes - trustees, ownership, etc. There are backup solutions that work well, but they aren't free.
Good news is, it's allowing us ot migrate off of Netware, without giving up the Novell services that work very well for us. It's also transparent to the users - with NSS on OES Linux, the servers look and behave just like a Netware server to client PC's.
Yeah, yeah...off-topic, but there's no relevant place to post this.
Mods - please don't reward the pricks who intentionally bypass Slashdot sigs, choosing instead to put their crap in the body of their posts so everyone has to look at it. It's fucking SPAM, plain and simple.
Second: I never, ever threatened or tried to surprise anybody with cutlery or otherwise. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not *wired* to want to threaten or bully or scare anybody. I'm very sorry if I accidentally scared someone while stripping wires or something...I can recall a couple of times that happening over the years but I always tried to make my lack of threatening intent VERY clear.
You're so full of crap. In addition to hearing others you worked with mention it, I personally saw you pull out and open a monsterous knife, which I believe is pictured right here in your combat knife pages. If that's not the one, it was very similar. Please...do tell us how effective these weapons are for wire stripping. Oh - and then feel free to explain why you would be stripping wires when the job didn't require it - you were hired as a PC tech support person, and all of our datacomm equipment is purchased pre-made.
I didn't even bring up the nice little song you sang around the office - remember the "blow me" lyrics? All the women you worked with do.
But ask Bev, Lowell or a lot of other people whether or not I'm crazy.
Why would I trust the word of strangers when I saw your actions first hand?
Every once in a while, you see a story in a different light than just about everyone else.
Jim March is not the one to be leading something like this. He's a nut case, but those of you applauding his efforts won't realize this until the cameras hit him - should this case go far enough to warrant the attention.
Having worked with him during one of his contracting gigs, it's safe to say just about everyone he came in personal contact with did everything they could to avoid him from then on. He had a nice habit of whipping out his rather large knife, just to enjoy the reaction of folks who became obviously a bit squeamish. After jabbering on and on about the legality of his edged weapon, he'd then segway into a long disertation on the court fights he was waging against a local sherrif for discriminating against people requesting concealed carry permits.
As a pro-gun guy, completely outnumbered at my place of employment and in my community, you might think I approved of him spreading the word. Wrong! Nobody wants their point of view argued and represented by a nut.
Oh - and labeling him a "programmer" is rather ammusing - he was let go early from his contract stint as a Help Desk minion when I had the pleasure of working with him.
For any of you rude, obnoxious business-types thinking I'll sit idly by, listening to your inane jabber on a cross-country flight should this retarded idea ever hit US planes, I have news for you.
I'll do my best to produce a natural counter-strike, but should the airline food not be sufficient, I'll have no qualms with delivering a debilitating direct blow to the noise source with Fart Spray. You have been warned.
Innocent affected bysitters: I know you'll support me in my efforts, keeping in mind the greater good the few minutes of unpleasantness will result in.
"As numerous people have pointed out, RedHat has a lot more cash than SCO does..."
Not being privy to the financial arrangement SCO has with its legal representation, I don't know that this statement is relevant.
Does anyone know whether SCO's high priced, high profile attorneys are working on a contigency basis? If so, they can fight this as long as David Boies thinks he can win. RedHat has no such luxury.
Slashdot Mirror
We do not live in a binary world. Shades of grey exist everywhere, and this is no exception. The debate should be over where to draw the line, and who gets to draw it - not whether it should exist at all.
Let's take the examples you provide. Which of them allows millions of devices, operated by billions of people or with complete autonomy, to access everything associated with your name in seconds? Even this information is not equal to your examples. The source of much of it is near impossible to determine, the accuracy far more suspect and in many cases it's impossible to change that which is in error.
You know what else has existed in nearly the entire history of man? Privacy by obscurity. The fact that information could have been accessed doesn't mean it was. There was never a need to codify such things, as the level of current intrusion couldn't possibly have been predicted by anyone until relatively recent times - after which, it was too late.
The FAA jurisdiction over RC aircraft within 5 miles of an airport only applies during IFR conditions. VFR - they can't do shit.
> You were never allowed to fly your glider within 10 miles of controlled airport, and 2 or 5 miles of an uncontrolled airport. Ever.
The above is demonstrably false.
Our AMA field boundary is less than 500' from the end of the runway of an uncontrolled, International US Airport - not in line with approach/departure obviously, but perpendicular to the runway. It's been there for 20+ years. We see commercial flights daily, and from our flight stations can easily make out the tail numbers on aircraft landing and taking off.
Further, the same government entity that owns the airport leases the land the field is on to us.
There's zero chance the FAA isn't well aware of our site.
Plenty of students go into that much debt, and have ZERO alternative - other than changing their preferred course of study.
One such example...just try and get through medical school for less than $100K. You can't even do it for double that amount.
Surely, you jest. Without Prop 13, CA's numerous runups in property value would have forced countless fixed-income residents from their homes.
My parents bought a home in the Bay Area in the early 60's, and live on a tiny pension and social security. The property taxes in their neighborhood at the height of things, would have been 40% of their gross income. Apparently your solution for them, is "tough shit"...force them to sell the home they raised their kids in, take the proceeds and go live in the slums where they can afford the taxes.
More to the point - feel free to explain why the government deserves a 100% increase in revenues, when our values shoot up that much over a 5-6 year span? That level of appreciation has happened twice where I live in the past 20 years.
Say what? No frosting? Come on...
It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake.
Yet another weasel approach...what if you make your password something incriminating?
If they really wanted the contents of the encrypted drive/partition, they could grant immunity for the contents of the password - in which case, "iCheatedOnMy2002Taxes" might not be such a big deal to them.
But what if it's "iKilledMyThreeExWives" ?
In all seriousness...there are likely many that were bought with XP, to be replaced with Linux.
Reason being - there have been some tremendous sales in the Dell Outlet Store over the last couple of months, but they are usually loaded with XP. The refurb I picked up, was far cheaper than a new Ubuntu Mini 9, with more options - but came loaded with XP.
My robots.txt excludes access to my huge collection of images.
So, either one can prevent discovery by this tool in a very simple way, or it ignores robots.txt. Which is it?
You're assuming your employer doesn't get either a) get driven out of business to maintain these benefits or b) your benefits get negotiated away when hard times arise.
True...but no different than being employed in a typical non-represented IT position elsewhere in the industry. Risk of layoff is always present, in any job.
The pension alone I bet you don't end up getting (depending on how old you are) since that's something in the future the company can agree to now and simply go bankrupt on later.
Pension plans vary significantly, and the good ones don't allow ANY employer access other than agreed upon contribution amounts. Ours is one such plan, is independently audited annually, and the employer can't touch it.
Compared to stock options offered in a tech company, many might suggest such a plan is a far safer bet - albeit with lower risk/lower return potential.
I don't want to count my work hours -- I'll take flexibility over 40-hours max
Show me any well-paying IT job, where you are able to work 40 hours or less per week. If it's your's, congrats - your situation is more rare than mine.
I don't want a pension -- I'd take higher pay over an employer-funded plan that prevents me from changing jobs
My pay doesn't suffer - I make the same as other senior level systems folks in the industry. More, if I choose to work OT.
I don't want my employer to control my investment plans -- I'd take higher pay over an employer-funded plan that prevents me from changing jobs
They don't control my plans - I do. Plenty of choices, including individual stocks if I wish. If I chose to leave, I could roll over the money to IRA's, or leave them in the plan and continue to manage the existing funds.
I don't want my employer to control my health plan...
We've three choices, one fully paid. Continues into retirement. Far better rates than anyone could do on their own. Yeah...that sucks.
I don't want paid vacation time -- I'd take higher pay and unpaided leave instead
I've already addressed the pay issue. Now, how many employers offer over a month of compensated time off, plus sick days to start? Not to mention, we have the choice of getting paid OT, or taking 1.5x comp time instead.
So now that we've established that unions don't do what everyone wants, and in fact can damage the ability of employes to seek out new and better employment because they'd lose employer-controlled deferred compensation, can we stop trying to force people into them?
Nobody forces you to join a union, nor take a union represented job. And while some states allow mandatory union payments for represented positions (something I'm against), many don't - see NRTW.org for more details. And, you can NOT be forced to be a union member - in any state.
Depending on your perspective, union membership is just another perk or deficit of an employment opportunity - nothing else. Nobody forces you to take the job, there are plenty of alternatives.
I'm so incredibly out of touch with 99% of the nerds in the US when it comes to working conditions...but that suits me just fine. It constantly amazes me that IT folks accept treatment that very few other professionals would. Or blue collar workers, for that matter.
What does a union get you today?
Well, since you asked...let's go down the list.
Yeah, unions suck. And you're right about those nasty dues as well - I can't believe the above costs me about the same as basic cable. What a rip-off...
Oh, for mod points and a "retarded" option...I'll have to settle for tossing a virtual poo in your general direction.
Here's a clue, nimrod - the jokes aren't about the Africans. Ther're about the farkin' monkeys.
By your logic, the same jokes would be made if humans were attacking them and taking over their land. Or, perhaps you're suggesting we'd be having a serious conversation if monkeys were attacking white folks.
Perhaps Mr. Jobs would like to expand his "you bought it, use it as you wish" philosophy to the OS he sells.
Did Novell ever get around to porting Novell Storage Services [NSS] to Linux?
Yup...it happened with their initial release of Open Enterprise Server, well over a year ago. OES is built upon SLES9.
That being said, we found the initial releases to be a bit buggy, and performance was way off what we've come to expect with Netware. However, things have improved considerably since the initial release, and we're running four OES 1.0/SP2 Linux servers with NSS now for sites with moderate loads (file/print for up to 100 users.) Benchmarks show things are still a bit slower than Netware, but not enough that the users are complaining.
The other issue with NSS on OES Linux - backup support. Relatively few vendors have supported backup solutions, compared to "standard" Linux filesystems. Standard backup tools handle the file data just fine, but they won't capture the NSS extended attributes - trustees, ownership, etc. There are backup solutions that work well, but they aren't free.
Good news is, it's allowing us ot migrate off of Netware, without giving up the Novell services that work very well for us. It's also transparent to the users - with NSS on OES Linux, the servers look and behave just like a Netware server to client PC's.
Yeah, yeah...off-topic, but there's no relevant place to post this.
Mods - please don't reward the pricks who intentionally bypass Slashdot sigs, choosing instead to put their crap in the body of their posts so everyone has to look at it. It's fucking SPAM, plain and simple.
Thanks for the tip, dude. I've now got a sticky on my monitor.
You're so full of crap. In addition to hearing others you worked with mention it, I personally saw you pull out and open a monsterous knife, which I believe is pictured right here in your combat knife pages. If that's not the one, it was very similar. Please...do tell us how effective these weapons are for wire stripping. Oh - and then feel free to explain why you would be stripping wires when the job didn't require it - you were hired as a PC tech support person, and all of our datacomm equipment is purchased pre-made.
I didn't even bring up the nice little song you sang around the office - remember the "blow me" lyrics? All the women you worked with do.
But ask Bev, Lowell or a lot of other people whether or not I'm crazy.
Why would I trust the word of strangers when I saw your actions first hand?
Every once in a while, you see a story in a different light than just about everyone else.
Jim March is not the one to be leading something like this. He's a nut case, but those of you applauding his efforts won't realize this until the cameras hit him - should this case go far enough to warrant the attention.
Having worked with him during one of his contracting gigs, it's safe to say just about everyone he came in personal contact with did everything they could to avoid him from then on. He had a nice habit of whipping out his rather large knife, just to enjoy the reaction of folks who became obviously a bit squeamish. After jabbering on and on about the legality of his edged weapon, he'd then segway into a long disertation on the court fights he was waging against a local sherrif for discriminating against people requesting concealed carry permits.
As a pro-gun guy, completely outnumbered at my place of employment and in my community, you might think I approved of him spreading the word. Wrong! Nobody wants their point of view argued and represented by a nut.
Oh - and labeling him a "programmer" is rather ammusing - he was let go early from his contract stint as a Help Desk minion when I had the pleasure of working with him.
I'll do my best to produce a natural counter-strike, but should the airline food not be sufficient, I'll have no qualms with delivering a debilitating direct blow to the noise source with Fart Spray. You have been warned.
Innocent affected bysitters: I know you'll support me in my efforts, keeping in mind the greater good the few minutes of unpleasantness will result in.
I think I'll just come back tomorrow.
No, he's saying - as hard as it is to believe - that Bush is smarter than a mail server.
They're not dead...they're resting!
And when she fails to respond yet again, threaten to let the air out of her.
Not being privy to the financial arrangement SCO has with its legal representation, I don't know that this statement is relevant.
Does anyone know whether SCO's high priced, high profile attorneys are working on a contigency basis? If so, they can fight this as long as David Boies thinks he can win. RedHat has no such luxury.