The whole CRU fiasco, the "peer review" scam, attacks on other experts in the field who disagree, all for a high sounding political purpose - to save the world from destruction by AGW, reminds me of the Lysenko Affair in the USSR. In that case the entire field of biology was set back in the USSR nearly 30 years because an unproven theory was anointed as truth by selective and staged experiments, cherry picking data, cooking, trimming, etc., because Lysenko had the blessings of the Politicians to control thinking and research on genetics in the USSR.
After campaigning for a year for Universal, Single Payer health care, the voters elected Obama in a landslide.
It took Corporate lobbyists less than a year to buy out ALL of his fellow democrats. They already own the Republicans. Thus, the votes of millions of Americans are nullified by the corruption of a handful of politicians who took bribes (a.k.a. "Campaign Contributions", which they can convert to personal funds when they retire) and made the wants of a few owners outweigh the hopes of MILLIONS of voters. Both the corporate owners and the politicians have excellent health care plans. The people get the toxins the pharmaceuticals manufacture for profit, not for safety or efficacy.
87% of all statistics are made up on the spot 95% of the time. Your "95%" was pulled from a dark, smelly place.
The facts are here, for the Linux kernel as an example, and they show that almost 19% of the Linux kernel is supported by individuals and about 7% have unknown affiliations, leaving only 75% that are known to be employed by corporations. Most other FOSS project have less corporate support than does the Kernel, so the individual support is well above 25%. On many FOSS projects there is NO corporate support.
You also fail to appreciate that corporations get back in return MORE than what they've invested, or they wouldn't assign company programmers to contribute code to the Kernel under the GPL. Using the kernel again, a single corporation may assign 9 coders to work on the Linux kernel, but the kernel they use was developed with the aid of 4901 corporate employees working for 531 OTHER corporations, so that corporation has received the value of 4901 coders that they didn't pay for. Does Ellison think that paying for 9 but getting the work of 4,901 is a good return on an investment?
Personally, from what I've read of Ellison, I believe that simple minded greed will rule his actions and I'll predict that he will eventually see Linux as competition to his new proprietary Solaris+Hardware business and began fighting Linux or even try to hijack it the way SCO's McBride tried to do.
According to my son, the Oracle administrator, Oracle's paid support stinks. While his employer pays thousands for support he gets better help from the free, independent public forums attended by other Oracle users. But, pointy haired CEOs seem to think that they MUST buy commercial support from the vendor, regardless of its value.
Oracle's claims support for the following Open Source Software, but at least one is under a CDDL license, which is not like the GPL.
which is a ploy to avoid hiring American workers in favor of H1B & green card temp workers? It's only "old news" if you have already been replaced by an H-1B.
I read one ad for Qt4 programmers which required 5 years experience, but tool had only been released in the prior year!
The most infamous quote by immigration lawyer Larry Lebowitz during the Cohen & Grigsby seminar on employment visas, May 15th, 2007 in Pittsburgh. Lebowitz coached immigration attorneys and employers how to avoid hiring US workers in order to hire foreign workers on green cards:
"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested US worker."
Under the present scenario, U.S. employers can only file H1B petitions for new bachelor-level or master-level H1B workers on one day each year, or on April 1 of each year.
However, there are some other options available to U.S. employers.
Alternatives To The H1B Visa
o Hire U.S. workers.
o Hire foreign nationals who already have an H1B visa under the H1B "portability" rules.
o Hire recently graduated students on the USCIS' extended "optional practical training" (OPT) program for certain foreign graduates of U.S. universities.
o Hire H1B1 workers from Chile or Singapore.
o Hire E-3 workers from Australia.
o Hire TN workers from Canada or Mexico.
o Hire E-2 foreign nationals who own and operate their own companies within the United States.
o For multinational companies, transfer employees from overseas to the United States under the L-1 visa category.
o Utilize the U.S. State Department's J-1 visa program to hire foreign "trainees" and "interns".
o Utilize the H2B "temporary worker" nonimmigrant visa category.
A TN visa process is an "objective" process in which the USCIS officer determines whether an applicant's credentials meet those listed in NAFTA.
There is no requirement that a sponsoring employer pay at least the prevailing wage (or actual wage, if higher) for the position being sponsored for the geographic location where the foreign national will work.
A year ago it was reported that H-1B workers OUTNUMBERED unemployed techies!
H1B and other quotas are set in the Free Trade Agreements with the various countries. Despite the fact that these job ad s
While teaching 9th grade science in the 1970's I decided to see what would happen if I started paying $5 for the highest grade on weekly tests. Kids who were normally making C's and D's suddenly began getting A's and taking the $5. The kids which normally got A's didn't do as well. I was accused of being a Communist. My response was that they were working for money, why can't their kids.
I was amazed when a CNN reporter asked Al Gore about the CRU emails. Gore said they were "old news" because they are "10 years old". When I checked my copy of the emails I found the most recent was just 5 days before they were released: From: "Thorne, Peter (Climate Research)" To: "Phil Jones"
Subject: Letter draft Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:17:44
So much for Gore's "analysis" of the emails.
I have been struggling to reduce Climategate to something easier for folks to comprehend, and to help them realize the media's duplicity in the whole Climategate affair.
A few weeks ago I was watching a PBS show recounting the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme. The parallels are amazing. Then it hit me...
CRU is to science as Madoff is to investing.
What catalyzed that thought was an interview on CNN where an AGW scientist proffered the reason why, despite the revelations in the FOIA files, the science was still good: "Who could keep a conspiracy like that going for so long among so many scientists?", she replied.
Madoff worked his scheme for over 40 years. That's how long. The CRU scheme has been running for almost 20 years. Madoff's 19th floor office in the Lipstick building, where he conducted his marketing campaign and gave tours for the curious, could be compared to the IPCC. He bogus trading statements were created on the 17th floor, which would be the CRU. We learned in the "HARRY_README.TXT" file that since 1990 the temperature proxies had been "synthetic", "homogenized" so much that they bore little resemblance to the raw data, which the emails say had actually been thrown away so they couldn't be used later to discredit their work, and Harry documented many examples of how that was done. Only a fool or a conspirator would accept the the "trick" and "hide the decline" as anything less than what it was, scientific fraud. Why would so many conspire in the AGW fraud? Madoff PAID influential investment firms to funnel investors into his scheme. The UN and various government agencies around the world PAID scientists to generate what the emails called "deliverables", which were published in climate journals which didn't require data archiving. So, what were other scientists "peer reviewing" when they didn't have access to the data on which the published research was based? To avoid that question peer review committees were stuffed with other scientists also paid to generate "deliverables".
The IPCC wanted these "deliverables" to "prove" that CO2 generated by the First World was THE cause of claimed temperature rises. With that "fact" the UN could then call for justice and demand redistributing the "right to burn Carbon", in the form of "Carbon Credits" to the poorer nations so their standards of living could rise, while the First World's dropped, and everyone would become equal Carbon consumers somewhere in a happy middle. Classic Marxist dialectical materialism, which may explain why the left wing of the media was only too happy to play their part in publishing the "alarming news".
In 2002 a talented statistician reverse engineered the market performance of Madoff's hedge funds. After four hours of analysis he uncovered eight facts which proved that Madoff's hedge fund was a pyramid scheme. He wrote up his finding and sent it to the SEC, which would the equivalent to climate journals. The SEC sat on the information for years and did nothing. Similarly, the climate journals refused to publish McIntyre's and McKitrick's analysis of Briffa's hockey stick report. Then, five years later, another person reverse engineered the Madoff hedge fund performance history and established twenty one points demonstrating that Madoff's market performance was bogus, and sent it to the SEC. It took the SEC a couple years and a visit to the 19th floor for the SEC to issue a report clearing Madoff of any misconduct.
Then the market crashed. In hearings before Congress the SEC refused to comment because "the matter is under investigation". Cong
The 1913 US Tax law was a tax on only the top 1% of the population, the "wealthy". Now, the wealthy have tax dodges that allow them to pay less taxes than their maids, who often work at minimum wages. The resulting enforcement agency, the IRS, has been repeatedly used over the years as a political weapon, even more so than the Census Act. The use of the Census Act as a political weapon is rapidly gaining ground.
The RICO Act was created to fight organized crime, and a "promise" was made that it would "never" be used on ordinary citizens. Now, it is used over 10,000 times a year against ordinary citizens as a way to steal "guilty" property and as a supplemental funding source when law enforcement budgets are frozen or cut. The RICO Act provides that the law enforcement agencies can keep the property they stole even if it turns out that the "target" supplied by a jail house snitch seeking a "deal" was innocent.
The MOST UNPATRIOTIC law ever passed, the PATRIOT ACT, effectively destroys the Bill of Rights. The accused cannot tell anyone, including their spouse, that they've been accused, or of what they have been accused. They cannot face their accuser, nor can they see the "evidence" against them. They are tried in special courts. In fact, the PATRIOT Act RE-ESTABLISHES the conditions that were created in America by King George, prior to the Declaration of Independence. It's a slam-dunk convection when you cancel the Bill of Rights, especially when you add the infamous "perp walk" and the leaked "fact" news, all deliberately used to create an air of guilt for which there is often little or no real evidence. Toss in the self-appointed TV pundits, who act as judge, jury and executioner, and the accused is forever tainted. Fear of terrorist attacks have resulted in a law which cannot guarantee safety and has destroyed the Constitution. Like the Tax law and the RICO act, it is only a matter of time before future politicians use it for political purposes. So now, the US citizen has neither safety nor freedom and bribed Congressmen steadfastly refuse to identify or accept the power base of Jihadist threats in America, and persist in wasting American blood and treasure in Mid-East energy wars while Oil Companies continue to make record profits on oil and lobby to suppress alternate energy development in order to sustain their profit margins.
The FAIRNESS Doctrine was never about fairness. It was created as a political weapon. The political center and Right has always had a larger base in the US and, as Sen Franken found out, the Left cannot sustain a sufficiently large enough audience or advertiser base to support a national radio talk show preaching Socialist/Communist/Marxist values. When businesses failed to purchase sufficient ad time and devoted listeners failed to donate enough money, Air America failed. Not to worry! The Left has been successful in getting its message out by hijacking public radio and TV and subverting tax payer funds to sponsor "independent" films and guests, which focus on Marxist themes. The kinds of themes championed by ACORN or other Left Wing alphabet groups. Combine the always Leftists Indie films with mindless, talentless "Create" themes, and constant public service announcements against "hate speech" (which is any speech against Leftist ideology), and you have the complete brain washing paradigm. The stories about America's National Parks, etc., although inspirational, are mainly fillers, to maintain an air of neutrality.
Now we are going to be "protected" by selectively shutting down the only source of free public discourse remaining in this country, the Internet. The Internet bypassed the magazine and newspaper editors and their management of the "news". What was true in the USSR (there is no news in the Truth and no Truth in the news) had become true in America. The Internet bypassed single points of focus of government control or of editorial agendas. Now, the EXACT same method used in China by the Chinese Communist Party to control thei
Microsoft, the home of the secret OEM agreements, the secret Novell agreements, the DRM, James Plamondon's "Technical Evangelists", James Pendergast's Astroturfing email from cemetery residences, countless cherry pickings of small startups, and who never saw a piece of BSD code they didn't like, nor did they return anything back to the BSD except a EULA, the list goes on and on, must feel right at home in China. It's obvious neither Ballmer nor Gates object see NO moral dilemma in giving up the of identities of freedom loving Chinese in exchange for profits. The Nazi goons used a similar excuse - "just following orders". As long as they can fall back on the US Constitution and continue to bribe US Congressmen (a.k.a. "campaign contributions") for special favors what do they care about human rights? Nothing.
One can easily check the last 10 years of photos of that region and determine that the coastal area less than 3 miles from the island hasn't changed at all. IF the ocean was rising enough to cover the island it should also move the shore back enough to be visible in the photos. It hasn't. I suspect that local subsidence and/or erosion is responsible. But, when you religiously believe in the AGW Hammer everything you see is a nail.
An indirect attack on Google by suggestions that there is no OSS alternative to GoogleEarth, so that a "Bad Thing"(tm).
Yet, most of the first posts appear to be by MS Technical Evangelists whose citations for an alternative lead to an.NET version which has been poorly implemented in Java.
Ya, like I want to trade GoogleEarth for something from the Dark Side?
Unlike Coal, Natural gas does not leave solid wastes and is easy to transport, via pipes, to its destination. Unlike Solar or Wind, it is available 24/7, as long as supplies are abundant, which is a larger issue than many people realize or want to believe.
The reaction of Natural gas with Oxygen produces Carbon Dioxide, Water and energy. The amount of energy per unit mass that Natural gas can deliver is independent of the technology used to exploit it. For processes which use heat as the medium of conversion of energy into work the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the ambient Temperature is the lowest Tl available, and the maximum theoretical efficiency of any engine operating at a Th of 1000c (~1300K) is (Th-Tl)/Th, or roughly 1000/1300 = 77% for a Carnot engine, the most efficient kind. Other engines will ALWAYS be less efficient when operating between those two temperatures. The BloomBox, with a Th of 1,000 C, is LIMITED by the same MAXIMUM % efficiency: 77%. Furthermore, ANY electrical power generating plant has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 50% for the energy it consumes. If the "internal" resistance of the plant increase or decreases away from that ideal resistance which maximizes the power output the efficiency always drops. This can be easily verified with an ordinary Alkaline battery, rheostat and amp meter. The current flow is the greatest when the resistance of the rheostat equals the internal resistance of the battery. This results in MAXIMUM of only (.5 x.77 =) 39% of the energy in Natural gas being delivered as consumable electricity by any power plant where Th = 1000 C. Actual efficiencies will always be less.
Judging from the picture of the inside of a Bloombox, there is a highly insulated chamber, and a highly insulated pipe conduction waste heat outside of the unit. Just like a conventional base plant, the Bloombox has to do something additional with that exhaust heat to maximize its efficiency. Fossil fuel base plants burn fossil fuels, usually in combined cycles (steam and gas turbines), to convert the heat in Natural gas to electric power. The only savings over a base plant that I can see the Bloombox creating is the 4% line losses that occur when energy is transported from a base plant via high tension lines and step down transformers to the consumer. The energy used to pump Natural gas to the consumer has it own frictional losses, which add to the cost and reduce overall efficiency.
Now, if the Bloomberg fuel cells bypassed the generation of heat and converted the energy content of the Natural gas directly into electrical energy the Second Law still applies but the efficiency metric could be more favorable than that for base plants or gas turbines.
I recall reading a story a few years ago about some protesters at Berkely using audio amplifiers to transmit information between their various members and groups. They'd attach the ground lead of the audio output of a 200 watt audio amp to a 10-15' rod pounded into the ground. The positive lead was attached to another, shorter rod, pounded into the ground several feet away. To recieve, they'd switch the wires from the ouput to the input of the audio amp. The claim was that they could send voice as an electrical wave several miles. Don't know how true the story is, but it sounds like it might work.
In central Nebraska, not far from Silver Creek, is a "Survivable Low Frequency Communications System" The wiki writes about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivable_Low_Frequency_Communications_System/> "SLFCS single channel, receive only capability is provided at ICBM launch control centers. The single channel operates between 14 kHz and 60 kHz to receive commands from remotely located Combat Operations Center - Transmit/Receive (T/R) sites; this low frequency range is slightly affected by nuclear blasts.". The signal travels along and underneath the ground, i.e., Ground Wave propagation. Because the frequency was close the the 60 Hz power line frequency the two 1 KHz side tones were used to track power line faults.
When I drove by the Sliver Creek antenna and tuned my radio below 550 Khz I could find a hetrodyne signal and listen to the characters being transmitted in 5X5 blocks of characters.
According to its own testimony at its anti-trust trial last year, Microsoft Corporation, purveyor of the omnipresent Office and Windows product lines, has betrayed the United States of America.
Microsoft has been struggling over the past year to slow the loss of international market share to cheaper, Linux-based alternatives. To that end, it recently began sharing the source code of its Windows operating system with various foreign governments. The problem is that this initiative comes just months after Jim Allchin, Microsoft's head of Windows development, claimed under oath that releasing such code to its competitors would be a major risk to American national security.
The disconnect between the software giant's actions and claims became even more striking last week when Microsoft announced that the second major nation to receive a tour of Windows' plumbing will be the People's Republic of China.
China is not America's ally. China is not our friend. At best, our two nations tolerate each other. At worst, we are on a cultural collision course that could dwarf the Cold War. And now Microsoft is planning to give China information that it has claimed could seriously compromise American security. Thanks a lot, Mr. Gates.
door arrangement with the management of the pharm and food industries, and we are supposed to believe that this study is unbiased?
It reminds me of the FDA approval for Aspartame, when tests for carcinogenic properties was "improved" by removing the rats that had developed brain cancer from the test groups. This "solution" suggested by former Sec of Defense Rumsfield, and for which he received $6M in salary and bonuses. The only difference is that the Aspartame study "proved" NeutraSweet was "safe".
his pants and Mommy DEMANDS that she be allowed to take him to the toilet to clean him up, the next decree from the TSA Czar will be to strap bladder bags on everyone and cuff their hands to the arms rests of the seats before takeoff.
IF that fails then they'll require everyone to be anesthetized before takeoff, and awakened after landing.
"Google has no antipathy for Linux, but unless someone internally steps up and says "I'll make it for Linux!".. well, there is a lack of linux support.
I have yet to meet a windows-using technical person at Google. I'm rather amazed that we tend to pump out windows-only software."
Your "amazed"? You haven't met a "windows-using technical person at Google", so everyone is using either Linux or Mac, yet Windows & Mac are supported but Linux is not.
You have actually proved the contention of posters who say that Google does not look favorably at Linux, except for for use as free servers. IF they did supply CURRENT Linux versions for ALL of the applications (Sketchup 7 for example) they released Windows versions for, then perhaps they could give incentive for Windows users to switch to Linux, and give Microsoft even MORE competition.
The faux person called a corporation has more rights than a real person. Corporate lobbying has DESTROYED the citizen's franchise. A handful of corporate lobbyists, and the cash they use to BRIBE congress, renders USELESS the votes of millions of REAL, LIVING taxpayers. Congress euphemistically calls bribes "campaign contributions", but they passed laws allowing themselves the "right" to convert "unused" campaign funds to personal funds. That's why they campaign all year every year.
In their collective corporate greed they have shipped all of our manufacturing, and its jobs, over seas, imported H1B workers to replace those who still have high paying technical jobs, and converted America to a "service" economy where no wealth is created. Like chairs on the Titanic, money is just moving around and gradually being sucked out of circulation by wealthy hoarders.
The corruption of the USTPO, the Constitution and the laws themselves have gone to the point where ANY and EVERY action a citizen might do can be criminalized and prosecuted, if it is in the corporation's interest to do so.
So, you felt pity for the West Virginia coal miners living in company towns when you read about them in history books. But, look around. The ENTIRE country has now been turned into a corporate town. The corporations control the laws, the law creators, and the law enforcers.
I've been using Linux for 11 years. Before Linux captured 10+% of the desktop market share (according to Ballmer himself!) most of the community was technically oriented and ranting wasn't that common. We understood that those doing the developing were VOLUNTEERS and the best way to help them was to post BUG reports filled with details of the bug that the developer could use to resolve the bug and fix it. IOW, the users were the testers. We understood that and agreed to it. We were patient and our patience was rewarded.
Now, we have a generation of users who don't appreciate or care that most of the developers are still volunteers. These users don't care that they get the OS, the desktop and tens of thousands of high quality apps for free. Even worse, they don't want to take the time to take notes of the problem they think they are having and file factual bug reports at application's bugzilla site. What they will take time to do is write rants in blogs and news groups. Rants that are devoid of facts or knowledge but long on flames and vituperations. Thankfully, most developers know about these kinds of "Penguins" and ignore them. What else can they do? The rants rarely contain useful information and the developer doesn't have the time to search the countless blogs and forums for rants about his software. If he did he wouldn't get any developing done and he'd get discouraged and quit, which would make Microsoft happy,
To make matters worse, many ranters are serial ranters. They aren't satisfied with ranting in a single forum or blog. They visit as many as the can and post essentially the same rant in all of them. This makes the ranter appear to be part of a larger movement when, in fact, he is not. There were several ranters in the KDE4 dustup that were identified as serial ranters, and for a year and a half you could track them through the Linux sites as they dropped one rant after another. If someone called them on the topic of a rant they'd switch topics in their next rant. It didn't matter. The purpose was to destroy KDE4, if possible, and force developers back to KDE 3.5.x. The ranters were totally ignorant of the technical issues and reasons why KDE was redesigned from the bottom up.
The examples of stupid rants are almost endless. One ranter registered on a forum just to make his first post a rant against KDE 4.2.1 because "IT didn't have a way to change the menu structure to KDE 3.5.10's." Read the documentation? NO! It takes too much time and he's much too important to do such trival stuff. Ask a question on the forum instead of ranting for his first post? NO! He's not about to humiliate himself by asking a newbie question.
So, he rants. The first reply states "right click on the K-Gear menu icon and select "Convert to classic menu".
Now, everybody knows that not only is he a mindless ranter, he is also an idiot.
The problem is that his subject line appears in some Google search of "Problems with Ubuntu" and adds at least one count, or more if the rant is picked up by multiple blogs, to the number of users supposedly having trouble with Kubuntu (or Ubuntu). Someone takes the results of that search and extrapolates it into a story about how "Some Early Adopters Stung By Kbuntu's Karmic Koala".
Meanwhile, my Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 instalation on my Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E/H notebook with an Intel GM45 video chip continues to hum like the perfect combination that it is. Did I say that I checked the compatibility of my notebook with Linux before I installed Linux on it?
the ag tractor a friend of mine built and recently patented.
He insisted that it include a joy stick for steering control. I reminded him that a tractor would not respond to a joy stick movement the same way an airplane would, but he wanted one anyway, so I added code for it. Luckily I didn't rip out the steering wheel control code so he easily switched back over it with the push of a single button on the display panel after he discovered that the range of motion of the joystick wasn't great enough to map onto the range of motion of the wheels (four wheel drive, independently controlled). Moving the joystick out of the neutral position took enough effort that when the mechanical centering devices finally let go the joystick moved farther than he wanted it to move and the motion of the tractor became jerky as he tried to correct over-runs. We tried the entire range of sensitivity settings but none proved satisfactory. Now it is set so that when he reaches the end of a row a full left or right on the joystick creates the tightest turn possible so he can get a 180 degree turn on the tractor in order to line up for the next pass down the field, then it is back to the steering wheel. Driving down the road between fields he uses the steering wheel in front wheel steer mode (as apposed to back wheel, crab or circle steer modes).
Being able to extract more cash from the user base without adding anything of value by using artificial scarcity.
They've already stolen $300B in the fiber optic debacle.
Now they need to do bandwidth shaping on an antiquated US Internet trunk so they can charge for fast tracking the fat cats and slow tracking the peasants, but at higher prices, of course, because all that shaping requires new, EXPENSIVE equipment which will require higher access fees to get an ROI on that expensive equipment.
Maybe the Moon is made of green cheese. Your "popular" argument is old and lame.
Steve Ballmer's graphic showed that Linux already holds more than 10% of the desktop market share. By your metric we should already have a Linux bot farm that contains 130,000 Linux zombies. 770 zombies is totally insignificant. However, the Linux desktop market share is higher than 10% in other countries.
Five months ago it was reported that 30% of Chinas desktops ran Linux and 60% ran Windows. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Chinas-Red-Flag-Sees-Desktop-as-Linux-BattlefieldThese governmentscity and provincialcompared the performance, capabilities and price of desktop Linux and Windows and they considered whether they could migrate all their applications from Windows to Linux. So finally about 30 percent of desktops in China now use Linux. Microsoft has about 60 percent. Thats from the agency that make RedFlag Linux, Chinas own version of Linux.
That would mean that if your argument is correct we should already be seeing a Linux bot farm with 390,000 Linux zombies. But we don't. If such a farm existed Microsoft's "Highly Reliable Times" would be crowing over it, just they way they crowed over their.NET solution to the London Stock Exchange... which, by the way, was replaced today by a Linux solution.
Within the next 8 years Asia will adopt 861 million computers, compared with 92 million in the US, 130 million in Europe and 160 million in South America. Linux will be running the desktop on more computers around the world than there are people in the USA. As the netbook sales increase, and older computers are brought back into service because of the economy it will be Linux that will be used to revitalize them. Linux and its applications are free. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VFX-4X01P8S-2&_user=10&_co
This attack was first reported last November, eleven months ago, and again in April of this year, 180 days ago.
IF the bad guys have been able to capture only 770 Linux boxes since April that is only slightly more than 4 boxes per day. At that rate it would take them 833 years to create a Linux bot farm equal in size to the 1.3 Million Windows bot farm recently reported. Out of the millions of Linux boxes in use 770 represents a vanishingly small threat.
Using this "threat" as an excuse NOT to move from Windows to Linux, or to move from Linux back to Windows, would be similar to playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver and hoping to survive.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole CRU fiasco, the "peer review" scam, attacks on other experts in the field who disagree, all for a high sounding political purpose - to save the world from destruction by AGW, reminds me of the Lysenko Affair in the USSR. In that case the entire field of biology was set back in the USSR nearly 30 years because an unproven theory was anointed as truth by selective and staged experiments, cherry picking data, cooking, trimming, etc., because Lysenko had the blessings of the Politicians to control thinking and research on genetics in the USSR.
EXACTLY!
Lawrence Lessig explains it nicely in this video and at this website: Fix Congress First.
After campaigning for a year for Universal, Single Payer health care, the voters elected Obama in a landslide.
It took Corporate lobbyists less than a year to buy out ALL of his fellow democrats. They already own the Republicans. Thus, the votes of millions of Americans are nullified by the corruption of a handful of politicians who took bribes (a.k.a. "Campaign Contributions", which they can convert to personal funds when they retire) and made the wants of a few owners outweigh the hopes of MILLIONS of voters. Both the corporate owners and the politicians have excellent health care plans. The people get the toxins the pharmaceuticals manufacture for profit, not for safety or efficacy.
87% of all statistics are made up on the spot 95% of the time. Your "95%" was pulled from a dark, smelly place.
The facts are here, for the Linux kernel as an example, and they show that almost 19% of the Linux kernel is supported by individuals and about 7% have unknown affiliations, leaving only 75% that are known to be employed by corporations. Most other FOSS project have less corporate support than does the Kernel, so the individual support is well above 25%. On many FOSS projects there is NO corporate support.
You also fail to appreciate that corporations get back in return MORE than what they've invested, or they wouldn't assign company programmers to contribute code to the Kernel under the GPL. Using the kernel again, a single corporation may assign 9 coders to work on the Linux kernel, but the kernel they use was developed with the aid of 4901 corporate employees working for 531 OTHER corporations, so that corporation has received the value of 4901 coders that they didn't pay for. Does Ellison think that paying for 9 but getting the work of 4,901 is a good return on an investment?
Personally, from what I've read of Ellison, I believe that simple minded greed will rule his actions and I'll predict that he will eventually see Linux as competition to his new proprietary Solaris+Hardware business and began fighting Linux or even try to hijack it the way SCO's McBride tried to do.
According to my son, the Oracle administrator, Oracle's paid support stinks. While his employer pays thousands for support he gets better help from the free, independent public forums attended by other Oracle users. But, pointy haired CEOs seem to think that they MUST buy commercial support from the vendor, regardless of its value.
Oracle's claims support for the following Open Source Software, but at least one is under a CDDL license, which is not like the GPL.
which is a ploy to avoid hiring American workers in favor of H1B & green card temp workers? It's only "old news" if you have already been replaced by an H-1B.
I read one ad for Qt4 programmers which required 5 years experience, but tool had only been released in the prior year!
The most infamous quote by immigration lawyer Larry Lebowitz during the Cohen & Grigsby seminar on employment visas, May 15th, 2007 in Pittsburgh. Lebowitz coached immigration attorneys and employers how to avoid hiring US workers in order to hire foreign workers on green cards:
"Our goal is clearly NOT TO FIND a qualified and interested US worker."
http://www.programmersguild.org/rir/
Or, HERE
How U.S. Employers Can Avoid The H1B Cap
Under the present scenario, U.S. employers can only file H1B petitions for new bachelor-level or master-level H1B workers on one day each year, or on April 1 of each year.
However, there are some other options available to U.S. employers.
Alternatives To The H1B Visa
o Hire U.S. workers.
o Hire foreign nationals who already have an H1B visa under the H1B "portability" rules.
o Hire recently graduated students on the USCIS' extended "optional practical training" (OPT) program for certain foreign graduates of U.S. universities.
o Hire H1B1 workers from Chile or Singapore.
o Hire E-3 workers from Australia.
o Hire TN workers from Canada or Mexico.
o Hire E-2 foreign nationals who own and operate their own companies within the United States.
o For multinational companies, transfer employees from overseas to the United States under the L-1 visa category.
o Utilize the U.S. State Department's J-1 visa program to hire foreign "trainees" and "interns".
o Utilize the H2B "temporary worker" nonimmigrant visa category.
A TN visa process is an "objective" process in which the USCIS officer determines whether an applicant's credentials meet those listed in NAFTA.
There is no requirement that a sponsoring employer pay at least the prevailing wage (or actual wage, if higher) for the position being sponsored for the geographic location where the foreign national will work.
A year ago it was reported that H-1B workers OUTNUMBERED unemployed techies!
H1B and other quotas are set in the Free Trade Agreements with the various countries. Despite the fact that these job ad s
While teaching 9th grade science in the 1970's I decided to see what would happen if I started paying $5 for the highest grade on weekly tests.
Kids who were normally making C's and D's suddenly began getting A's and taking the $5. The kids which normally got A's didn't do as well.
I was accused of being a Communist. My response was that they were working for money, why can't their kids.
Normally it takes years for them to see any problems, much less truly understand them.
I wonder which corporation made "campaign contributions" to them in order to speed of their "noticing" an event that took place less than a month ago.
I was amazed when a CNN reporter asked Al Gore about the CRU emails. Gore said they were "old news" because they are "10 years old". When I checked my copy of the emails I found the most recent was just 5 days before they were released:
From: "Thorne, Peter (Climate Research)"
To: "Phil Jones"
Subject: Letter draft
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:17:44
So much for Gore's "analysis" of the emails.
I have been struggling to reduce Climategate to something easier for folks to comprehend, and to help them realize the media's duplicity in the whole Climategate affair.
A few weeks ago I was watching a PBS show recounting the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme. The parallels are amazing. Then it hit me...
CRU is to science as Madoff is to investing.
What catalyzed that thought was an interview on CNN where an AGW scientist proffered the reason why, despite the revelations in the FOIA files, the science was still good: "Who could keep a conspiracy like that going for so long among so many scientists?", she replied.
Madoff worked his scheme for over 40 years. That's how long. The CRU scheme has been running for almost 20 years. Madoff's 19th floor office in the Lipstick building, where he conducted his marketing campaign and gave tours for the curious, could be compared to the IPCC. He bogus trading statements were created on the 17th floor, which would be the CRU. We learned in the "HARRY_README.TXT" file that since 1990 the temperature proxies had been "synthetic", "homogenized" so much that they bore little resemblance to the raw data, which the emails say had actually been thrown away so they couldn't be used later to discredit their work, and Harry documented many examples of how that was done. Only a fool or a conspirator would accept the the "trick" and "hide the decline" as anything less than what it was, scientific fraud. Why would so many conspire in the AGW fraud? Madoff PAID influential investment firms to funnel investors into his scheme. The UN and various government agencies around the world PAID scientists to generate what the emails called "deliverables", which were published in climate journals which didn't require data archiving. So, what were other scientists "peer reviewing" when they didn't have access to the data on which the published research was based? To avoid that question peer review committees were stuffed with other scientists also paid to generate "deliverables".
The IPCC wanted these "deliverables" to "prove" that CO2 generated by the First World was THE cause of claimed temperature rises. With that "fact" the UN could then call for justice and demand redistributing the "right to burn Carbon", in the form of "Carbon Credits" to the poorer nations so their standards of living could rise, while the First World's dropped, and everyone would become equal Carbon consumers somewhere in a happy middle. Classic Marxist dialectical materialism, which may explain why the left wing of the media was only too happy to play their part in publishing the "alarming news".
In 2002 a talented statistician reverse engineered the market performance of Madoff's hedge funds. After four hours of analysis he uncovered eight facts which proved that Madoff's hedge fund was a pyramid scheme. He wrote up his finding and sent it to the SEC, which would the equivalent to climate journals. The SEC sat on the information for years and did nothing. Similarly, the climate journals refused to publish McIntyre's and McKitrick's analysis of Briffa's hockey stick report. Then, five years later, another person reverse engineered the Madoff hedge fund performance history and established twenty one points demonstrating that Madoff's market performance was bogus, and sent it to the SEC. It took the SEC a couple years and a visit to the 19th floor for the SEC to issue a report clearing Madoff of any misconduct.
Then the market crashed. In hearings before Congress the SEC refused to comment because "the matter is under investigation". Cong
The 1913 US Tax law was a tax on only the top 1% of the population, the "wealthy". Now, the wealthy have tax dodges that allow them to pay less taxes than their maids, who often work at minimum wages. The resulting enforcement agency, the IRS, has been repeatedly used over the years as a political weapon, even more so than the Census Act. The use of the Census Act as a political weapon is rapidly gaining ground.
The RICO Act was created to fight organized crime, and a "promise" was made that it would "never" be used on ordinary citizens. Now, it is used over 10,000 times a year against ordinary citizens as a way to steal "guilty" property and as a supplemental funding source when law enforcement budgets are frozen or cut. The RICO Act provides that the law enforcement agencies can keep the property they stole even if it turns out that the "target" supplied by a jail house snitch seeking a "deal" was innocent.
The MOST UNPATRIOTIC law ever passed, the PATRIOT ACT, effectively destroys the Bill of Rights. The accused cannot tell anyone, including their spouse, that they've been accused, or of what they have been accused. They cannot face their accuser, nor can they see the "evidence" against them. They are tried in special courts. In fact, the PATRIOT Act RE-ESTABLISHES the conditions that were created in America by King George, prior to the Declaration of Independence. It's a slam-dunk convection when you cancel the Bill of Rights, especially when you add the infamous "perp walk" and the leaked "fact" news, all deliberately used to create an air of guilt for which there is often little or no real evidence. Toss in the self-appointed TV pundits, who act as judge, jury and executioner, and the accused is forever tainted. Fear of terrorist attacks have resulted in a law which cannot guarantee safety and has destroyed the Constitution. Like the Tax law and the RICO act, it is only a matter of time before future politicians use it for political purposes. So now, the US citizen has neither safety nor freedom and bribed Congressmen steadfastly refuse to identify or accept the power base of Jihadist threats in America, and persist in wasting American blood and treasure in Mid-East energy wars while Oil Companies continue to make record profits on oil and lobby to suppress alternate energy development in order to sustain their profit margins.
The FAIRNESS Doctrine was never about fairness. It was created as a political weapon. The political center and Right has always had a larger base in the US and, as Sen Franken found out, the Left cannot sustain a sufficiently large enough audience or advertiser base to support a national radio talk show preaching Socialist/Communist/Marxist values. When businesses failed to purchase sufficient ad time and devoted listeners failed to donate enough money, Air America failed. Not to worry! The Left has been successful in getting its message out by hijacking public radio and TV and subverting tax payer funds to sponsor "independent" films and guests, which focus on Marxist themes. The kinds of themes championed by ACORN or other Left Wing alphabet groups. Combine the always Leftists Indie films with mindless, talentless "Create" themes, and constant public service announcements against "hate speech" (which is any speech against Leftist ideology), and you have the complete brain washing paradigm. The stories about America's National Parks, etc., although inspirational, are mainly fillers, to maintain an air of neutrality.
Now we are going to be "protected" by selectively shutting down the only source of free public discourse remaining in this country, the Internet. The Internet bypassed the magazine and newspaper editors and their management of the "news". What was true in the USSR (there is no news in the Truth and no Truth in the news) had become true in America. The Internet bypassed single points of focus of government control or of editorial agendas. Now, the EXACT same method used in China by the Chinese Communist Party to control thei
Five months ahead?
How can you maintain and guarantee compatibility? Divination, or do you actually work hand in hand with Microsoft .NET developers?
And, has Microsoft added ASP.NET and its other IP to the EMCA 334 & 335 specifications, so that you can legally add them to MONO?
Birds of a feather flock together?
Microsoft, the home of the secret OEM agreements, the secret Novell agreements, the DRM, James Plamondon's "Technical Evangelists", James Pendergast's Astroturfing email from cemetery residences, countless cherry pickings of small startups, and who never saw a piece of BSD code they didn't like, nor did they return anything back to the BSD except a EULA, the list goes on and on, must feel right at home in China. It's obvious neither Ballmer nor Gates object see NO moral dilemma in giving up the of identities of freedom loving Chinese in exchange for profits. The Nazi goons used a similar excuse - "just following orders". As long as they can fall back on the US Constitution and continue to bribe US Congressmen (a.k.a. "campaign contributions") for special favors what do they care about human rights? Nothing.
One can easily check the last 10 years of photos of that region and determine that the coastal area less than 3 miles from the island hasn't changed at all. IF the ocean was rising enough to cover the island it should also move the shore back enough to be visible in the photos. It hasn't. I suspect that local subsidence and/or erosion is responsible. But, when you religiously believe in the AGW Hammer everything you see is a nail.
An indirect attack on Google by suggestions that there is no OSS alternative to GoogleEarth, so that a "Bad Thing"(tm).
Yet, most of the first posts appear to be by MS Technical Evangelists whose citations for an alternative lead to an .NET version which has been poorly implemented in Java.
Ya, like I want to trade GoogleEarth for something from the Dark Side?
Unlike Coal, Natural gas does not leave solid wastes and is easy to transport, via pipes, to its destination. Unlike Solar or Wind, it is available 24/7, as long as supplies are abundant, which is a larger issue than many people realize or want to believe.
The reaction of Natural gas with Oxygen produces Carbon Dioxide, Water and energy. The amount of energy per unit mass that Natural gas can deliver is independent of the technology used to exploit it. For processes which use heat as the medium of conversion of energy into work the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that the ambient Temperature is the lowest Tl available, and the maximum theoretical efficiency of any engine operating at a Th of 1000c (~1300K) is (Th-Tl)/Th, or roughly 1000/1300 = 77% for a Carnot engine, the most efficient kind. Other engines will ALWAYS be less efficient when operating between those two temperatures. The BloomBox, with a Th of 1,000 C, is LIMITED by the same MAXIMUM % efficiency: 77%. Furthermore, ANY electrical power generating plant has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 50% for the energy it consumes. If the "internal" resistance of the plant increase or decreases away from that ideal resistance which maximizes the power output the efficiency always drops. This can be easily verified with an ordinary Alkaline battery, rheostat and amp meter. The current flow is the greatest when the resistance of the rheostat equals the internal resistance of the battery. This results in MAXIMUM of only (.5 x .77 =) 39% of the energy in Natural gas being delivered as consumable electricity by any power plant where Th = 1000 C. Actual efficiencies will always be less.
Judging from the picture of the inside of a Bloombox, there is a highly insulated chamber, and a highly insulated pipe conduction waste heat outside of the unit. Just like a conventional base plant, the Bloombox has to do something additional with that exhaust heat to maximize its efficiency. Fossil fuel base plants burn fossil fuels, usually in combined cycles (steam and gas turbines), to convert the heat in Natural gas to electric power. The only savings over a base plant that I can see the Bloombox creating is the 4% line losses that occur when energy is transported from a base plant via high tension lines and step down transformers to the consumer. The energy used to pump Natural gas to the consumer has it own frictional losses, which add to the cost and reduce overall efficiency.
Now, if the Bloomberg fuel cells bypassed the generation of heat and converted the energy content of the Natural gas directly into electrical energy the Second Law still applies but the efficiency metric could be more favorable than that for base plants or gas turbines.
I recall reading a story a few years ago about some protesters at Berkely using audio amplifiers to transmit information between their various members and groups. They'd attach the ground lead of the audio output of a 200 watt audio amp to a 10-15' rod pounded into the ground. The positive lead was attached to another, shorter rod, pounded into the ground several feet away. To recieve, they'd switch the wires from the ouput to the input of the audio amp. The claim was that they could send voice as an electrical wave several miles. Don't know how true the story is, but it sounds like it might work.
In central Nebraska, not far from Silver Creek, is a "Survivable Low Frequency Communications System" The wiki writes about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivable_Low_Frequency_Communications_System/>
"SLFCS single channel, receive only capability is provided at ICBM launch control centers. The single channel operates between 14 kHz and 60 kHz to receive commands from remotely located Combat Operations Center - Transmit/Receive (T/R) sites; this low frequency range is slightly affected by nuclear blasts.". The signal travels along and underneath the ground, i.e., Ground Wave propagation. Because the frequency was close the the 60 Hz power line frequency the two 1 KHz side tones were used to track power line faults.
When I drove by the Sliver Creek antenna and tuned my radio below 550 Khz I could find a hetrodyne signal and listen to the characters being transmitted in 5X5 blocks of characters.
This episode reminds me of a Microsoft claim made seven years ago:
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-21643.html/
March 06, 2003
According to its own testimony at its anti-trust trial last year, Microsoft Corporation, purveyor of the omnipresent Office and Windows product lines, has betrayed the United States of America.
Microsoft has been struggling over the past year to slow the loss of international market share to cheaper, Linux-based alternatives. To that end, it recently began sharing the source code of its Windows operating system with various foreign governments. The problem is that this initiative comes just months after Jim Allchin, Microsoft's head of Windows development, claimed under oath that releasing such code to its competitors would be a major risk to American national security.
The disconnect between the software giant's actions and claims became even more striking last week when Microsoft announced that the second major nation to receive a tour of Windows' plumbing will be the People's Republic of China.
China is not America's ally. China is not our friend. At best, our two nations tolerate each other. At worst, we are on a cultural collision course that could dwarf the Cold War. And now Microsoft is planning to give China information that it has claimed could seriously compromise American security. Thanks a lot, Mr. Gates.
door arrangement with the management of the pharm and food industries, and we are supposed to believe that this study is unbiased?
It reminds me of the FDA approval for Aspartame, when tests for carcinogenic properties was "improved" by removing the rats that had developed brain cancer from the test groups. This "solution" suggested by former Sec of Defense Rumsfield, and for which he received $6M in salary and bonuses. The only difference is that the Aspartame study "proved" NeutraSweet was "safe".
his pants and Mommy DEMANDS that she be allowed to take him to the toilet to clean him up, the next decree from the TSA Czar will be to strap bladder bags on everyone and cuff their hands to the arms rests of the seats before takeoff.
IF that fails then they'll require everyone to be anesthetized before takeoff, and awakened after landing.
"Google has no antipathy for Linux, but unless someone internally steps up and says "I'll make it for Linux!".. well, there is a lack of linux support.
I have yet to meet a windows-using technical person at Google. I'm rather amazed that we tend to pump out windows-only software."
Your "amazed"? You haven't met a "windows-using technical person at Google", so everyone is using either Linux or Mac, yet Windows & Mac are supported but Linux is not.
You have actually proved the contention of posters who say that Google does not look favorably at Linux, except for for use as free servers. IF they did supply CURRENT Linux versions for ALL of the applications (Sketchup 7 for example) they released Windows versions for, then perhaps they could give incentive for Windows users to switch to Linux, and give Microsoft even MORE competition.
The faux person called a corporation has more rights than a real person. Corporate lobbying has DESTROYED the citizen's franchise. A handful of corporate lobbyists, and the cash they use to BRIBE congress, renders USELESS the votes of millions of REAL, LIVING taxpayers. Congress euphemistically calls bribes "campaign contributions", but they passed laws allowing themselves the "right" to convert "unused" campaign funds to personal funds. That's why they campaign all year every year.
In their collective corporate greed they have shipped all of our manufacturing, and its jobs, over seas, imported H1B workers to replace those who still have high paying technical jobs, and converted America to a "service" economy where no wealth is created. Like chairs on the Titanic, money is just moving around and gradually being sucked out of circulation by wealthy hoarders.
The corruption of the USTPO, the Constitution and the laws themselves have gone to the point where ANY and EVERY action a citizen might do can be criminalized and prosecuted, if it is in the corporation's interest to do so.
So, you felt pity for the West Virginia coal miners living in company towns when you read about them in history books. But, look around. The ENTIRE country has now been turned into a corporate town. The corporations control the laws, the law creators, and the law enforcers.
I've been using Linux for 11 years. Before Linux captured 10+% of the desktop market share (according to Ballmer himself!) most of the community was technically oriented and ranting wasn't that common. We understood that those doing the developing were VOLUNTEERS and the best way to help them was to post BUG reports filled with details of the bug that the developer could use to resolve the bug and fix it. IOW, the users were the testers. We understood that and agreed to it. We were patient and our patience was rewarded.
Now, we have a generation of users who don't appreciate or care that most of the developers are still volunteers. These users don't care that they get the OS, the desktop and tens of thousands of high quality apps for free. Even worse, they don't want to take the time to take notes of the problem they think they are having and file factual bug reports at application's bugzilla site. What they will take time to do is write rants in blogs and news groups. Rants that are devoid of facts or knowledge but long on flames and vituperations. Thankfully, most developers know about these kinds of "Penguins" and ignore them. What else can they do? The rants rarely contain useful information and the developer doesn't have the time to search the countless blogs and forums for rants about his software. If he did he wouldn't get any developing done and he'd get discouraged and quit, which would make Microsoft happy,
To make matters worse, many ranters are serial ranters. They aren't satisfied with ranting in a single forum or blog. They visit as many as the can and post essentially the same rant in all of them. This makes the ranter appear to be part of a larger movement when, in fact, he is not. There were several ranters in the KDE4 dustup that were identified as serial ranters, and for a year and a half you could track them through the Linux sites as they dropped one rant after another. If someone called them on the topic of a rant they'd switch topics in their next rant. It didn't matter. The purpose was to destroy KDE4, if possible, and force developers back to KDE 3.5.x. The ranters were totally ignorant of the technical issues and reasons why KDE was redesigned from the bottom up.
The examples of stupid rants are almost endless. One ranter registered on a forum just to make his first post a rant against KDE 4.2.1 because "IT didn't have a way to change the menu structure to KDE 3.5.10's." Read the documentation? NO! It takes too much time and he's much too important to do such trival stuff. Ask a question on the forum instead of ranting for his first post? NO! He's not about to humiliate himself by asking a newbie question.
So, he rants. The first reply states "right click on the K-Gear menu icon and select "Convert to classic menu".
Now, everybody knows that not only is he a mindless ranter, he is also an idiot.
The problem is that his subject line appears in some Google search of "Problems with Ubuntu" and adds at least one count, or more if the rant is picked up by multiple blogs, to the number of users supposedly having trouble with Kubuntu (or Ubuntu). Someone takes the results of that search and extrapolates it into a story about how "Some Early Adopters Stung By Kbuntu's Karmic Koala".
Meanwhile, my Kubuntu Karmic 9.10 instalation on my Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E/H notebook with an Intel GM45 video chip continues to hum like the perfect combination that it is. Did I say that I checked the compatibility of my notebook with Linux before I installed Linux on it?
the ag tractor a friend of mine built and recently patented.
He insisted that it include a joy stick for steering control. I reminded him that a tractor would not respond to a joy stick movement the same way an airplane would, but he wanted one anyway, so I added code for it. Luckily I didn't rip out the steering wheel control code so he easily switched back over it with the push of a single button on the display panel after he discovered that the range of motion of the joystick wasn't great enough to map onto the range of motion of the wheels (four wheel drive, independently controlled). Moving the joystick out of the neutral position took enough effort that when the mechanical centering devices finally let go the joystick moved farther than he wanted it to move and the motion of the tractor became jerky as he tried to correct over-runs. We tried the entire range of sensitivity settings but none proved satisfactory. Now it is set so that when he reaches the end of a row a full left or right on the joystick creates the tightest turn possible so he can get a 180 degree turn on the tractor in order to line up for the next pass down the field, then it is back to the steering wheel. Driving down the road between fields he uses the steering wheel in front wheel steer mode (as apposed to back wheel, crab or circle steer modes).
Being able to extract more cash from the user base without adding anything of value by using artificial scarcity.
They've already stolen $300B in the fiber optic debacle.
Now they need to do bandwidth shaping on an antiquated US Internet trunk so they can charge for fast tracking the fat cats and slow tracking the peasants, but at higher prices, of course, because all that shaping requires new, EXPENSIVE equipment which will require higher access fees to get an ROI on that expensive equipment.
Maybe the Moon is made of green cheese. Your "popular" argument is old and lame.
Steve Ballmer's graphic showed that Linux already holds more than 10% of the desktop market share. By your metric we should already have a Linux bot farm that contains 130,000 Linux zombies. 770 zombies is totally insignificant. However, the Linux desktop market share is higher than 10% in other countries.
Five months ago it was reported that 30% of Chinas desktops ran Linux and 60% ran Windows. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Chinas-Red-Flag-Sees-Desktop-as-Linux-Battlefield These governmentscity and provincialcompared the performance, capabilities and price of desktop Linux and Windows and they considered whether they could migrate all their applications from Windows to Linux. So finally about 30 percent of desktops in China now use Linux. Microsoft has about 60 percent.
Thats from the agency that make RedFlag Linux, Chinas own version of Linux.
That would mean that if your argument is correct we should already be seeing a Linux bot farm with 390,000 Linux zombies. But we don't. If such a farm existed Microsoft's "Highly Reliable Times" would be crowing over it, just they way they crowed over their .NET solution to the London Stock Exchange... which, by the way, was replaced today by a Linux solution.
Within the next 8 years Asia will adopt 861 million computers, compared with 92 million in the US, 130 million in Europe and 160 million in South America. Linux will be running the desktop on more computers around the world than there are people in the USA. As the netbook sales increase, and older computers are brought back into service because of the economy it will be Linux that will be used to revitalize them. Linux and its applications are free.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VFX-4X01P8S-2&_user=10&_co
It's up for me.
Must be your Windows box...
This attack was first reported last November, eleven months ago, and again in April of this year, 180 days ago.
IF the bad guys have been able to capture only 770 Linux boxes since April that is only slightly more than 4 boxes per day. At that rate it would take them 833 years to create a Linux bot farm equal in size to the 1.3 Million Windows bot farm recently reported. Out of the millions of Linux boxes in use 770 represents a vanishingly small threat.
Using this "threat" as an excuse NOT to move from Windows to Linux, or to move from Linux back to Windows, would be similar to playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver and hoping to survive.