FOSS software increases productivity. It reduces overhead and costs. The evolution of free software reduces the demand for programming and support labor in the long term.
This is not good for the economy. Our economy is hopelessly reliant on unskilled twits who can barely keep our infrastructure running; who spend many hours increasing the problem rather than diminishing it, and who get paid a good wage doing that so they can buy the latest Plasma TV and show off to their friends their XBox skillz in HiDef. If everybody converted to Linux and BSD in the server room, there's another quarter million MCSEs out of work. Imagine all the servers that won't need to be updated on Patch Tuesday and Surprise Thursday! It'll be utter anarchy! Some servers won't be rebooted for months.
About this you're wrong. My kids get online at 2. They'll be online as kids for 16 years. The odds that some random person won't be solicited in 16 years on the Internet is, well, so close to zero that it merits no consideration.
Further, the most at-risk kids are those whose parents dismiss the risks. Those are the kids that meet their online buddies IRL. Kids need to be taught that some aspects of this virtual world are quite real. They need to learn this before they discover that Tiffany14GA is in fact some guy with a minivan, a tarp, a shovel and some duct tape. Later they need to be taught that teasing perverts is cruel.
Do I think that means we need Internet regulation? Hell NO! But parents do need to realise the environment they're in and parent for that environment.
My son has just turned 14 last december, and he is not only free to surf on the internet but I personally encourage him to do it as a way of finding knowledge.
Wow. 14. Already? Are you sure he's ready?
Just kidding. My five year old son types faster than I do.
I doubt my kids (if there ever are any) will ever have a similar experience. There's just no place online where you can meet random people and assume they'll be mostly good anymore.
They will have their own equivalent experiences, in environments you set up or ones they do. It's part of growing up. Part of the mystery of growing old is accepting that the kids will reinvent all the stuff we thought was cool, and make it their own. Whatever way they find for their own socialisation, you can count on one thing: they won't tell you about it. Nor should they.
The sad fact is that to ruin our progeny in our own way may be our most persistent civil right.
And if you have a problem with that step back for a moment and think about how the State might ruin your progeny in their own best interest, and the society that might bring about.
WWII era high school and college chemistry textbooks have good information about how to extract and purify reactants from common materials like seaweed, and the proportions that give good reactions. They're available at Goodwill for $2.00 a text.
Current texts describe how to make silly putty and playdough. You can get them on Ebay for about $25, or from the publisher for $70.
Next thing you know they'll find out it's actually pretty hard to come by child porn, that it's not that easy to build a bomb off Internet instructions or that a "skilled hacker" cannot just infiltrate anything and do anything by typing onto his keyboard for 20 seconds.
Actually, all the things you referenced are as trivial to find on the Internet as they are in your local library. More so.
What's missing is "why not do these things?" Unfortunately with the current environment of delayed pain, parents are called to give their children some guidance on ethical behavior. That doesn't always end well.
For adults, the plethora of popup ads for desirable services like adult chat and aphrodisiac medicines is a useful thing. Kids are more interested in products like Thomas the Tank Engine and Diego the Animal Rescuer accessories. Fortunately, kids don't get your ads if they have their own PC or at least a separate account on the family PC. They can get the latest updates on what's cool in Pokemon land without disturbing your porn surfing.
The vast majority of software shipped with modern Unixes on the desktop is licensed under the GPL. Even where they're not, their licenses are almost universally formed after the format of the GPL.
Freedom is viral. Get over it. Stallman won. He always knew he would. Now somebody should adopt him at a mascot or something. Maybe give him a grant.
You don't "fix" a computer. You reinstall, it should only take 20 minutes tops. Of course, you should not be an idiot and not let it get that way to begin with. Regardless of your overinflated salary you are throwing away money. Dumbass.
Look, I'm not a stranger to making an ass of myself on slashdot, but I still get to point out when other people do it. Sure, from a good image I can flash a 40GB SATA 3.0 drive in 3 minutes flat and the user is up and running. Add five minutes and I can restore today's user data from their good backup. That's not the common experience in the field because they have no good image and seldom have backups. In 20 minutes on the same drive you can install Windows if you have SP3 media. You still can't get all the updates, install the system drivers, install the accessory drivers, do a reasonable security software install and user configuration in 20 minutes. You definitely can't restore their user data, nor their critical apps. It just can't be done.
If the typical consumer were willing to pay his tech to come out and set him up properly, and visit him and make a good image semiannually, maybe. If they bought spares, better still. But they usually won't. Usually they won't call for help until they've borked it good and don't have backups. Most people if you gave them a button that booted their computer from an "emergency backup" spare drive, would crash their main system, then the emergency backup, and then call for help.
And some of them, oh, God I wish it were not so, utterly rely on some system running Windows 95 that hasn't been updated since because it was set up for them a decade ago and it still works and they bought into a system with no migration path.
The difference between theory in practice is that practice always works in theory, but theory sometimes does not work in practice.
Theoretically, I'm not opposed to ad-supported programs.
I'm not morally opposed to adware. However in practice I find that vendors who rely on adware slide down the slippery slope of defining an ad from "impression" to "installing rootkit" so quickly as to make their wares uninteresting.
That's because when Linux deprecates an interface, it doesn't put anyone out of a job.
What about Ralph Yarro? Sure, he's not fired but he's working for worthless stock options that are never going to be "in the money" now, like the other directors of SCO. Won't anybody think about our friends at SCO?
Apple doesn't have this baggage. Maybe that's why they're growing share and Microsoft is not. Trust me, the non-IT consumers that have Macs aren't at all interested in trying out some app that requires this legacy infrastructure and the commitment to Windows it represents. They'd rather find a better way to do what they need to do. More of them every day. They're laughing, not at new versions of Windows, but at the poor fools who try to use them.
Slashdot Mirror
FOSS software increases productivity. It reduces overhead and costs. The evolution of free software reduces the demand for programming and support labor in the long term.
This is not good for the economy. Our economy is hopelessly reliant on unskilled twits who can barely keep our infrastructure running; who spend many hours increasing the problem rather than diminishing it, and who get paid a good wage doing that so they can buy the latest Plasma TV and show off to their friends their XBox skillz in HiDef. If everybody converted to Linux and BSD in the server room, there's another quarter million MCSEs out of work. Imagine all the servers that won't need to be updated on Patch Tuesday and Surprise Thursday! It'll be utter anarchy! Some servers won't be rebooted for months.
This is bad... for Obama.
Will most kids be solicited? No.
About this you're wrong. My kids get online at 2. They'll be online as kids for 16 years. The odds that some random person won't be solicited in 16 years on the Internet is, well, so close to zero that it merits no consideration.
Further, the most at-risk kids are those whose parents dismiss the risks. Those are the kids that meet their online buddies IRL. Kids need to be taught that some aspects of this virtual world are quite real. They need to learn this before they discover that Tiffany14GA is in fact some guy with a minivan, a tarp, a shovel and some duct tape. Later they need to be taught that teasing perverts is cruel.
Do I think that means we need Internet regulation? Hell NO! But parents do need to realise the environment they're in and parent for that environment.
It's not staged. Baiting perverts is so easy my teens do it for fun.
But they know it's a dangerous game and take the necessary precautions. Because they get it. Perhaps that's a good strategy.
The surest way to ensure your kids aren't killed by an Internet predator is to wrap them in plastic and suck the air out.
But maybe teaching them to reason is a better course if you hope for grandchildren.
My son has just turned 14 last december, and he is not only free to surf on the internet but I personally encourage him to do it as a way of finding knowledge.
Wow. 14. Already? Are you sure he's ready?
Just kidding. My five year old son types faster than I do.
I doubt my kids (if there ever are any) will ever have a similar experience. There's just no place online where you can meet random people and assume they'll be mostly good anymore.
They will have their own equivalent experiences, in environments you set up or ones they do. It's part of growing up. Part of the mystery of growing old is accepting that the kids will reinvent all the stuff we thought was cool, and make it their own. Whatever way they find for their own socialisation, you can count on one thing: they won't tell you about it. Nor should they.
even at that time some kids knew all.
Ah, the miracle of foster care.
My kids have been on the internet since a age of 2 (each).
Mine too. You can't understand what you don't know.
We have to train them as teens not to tease the perverts. They know they're sick, but they do enjoy taunting them.
The sad fact is that to ruin our progeny in our own way may be our most persistent civil right.
And if you have a problem with that step back for a moment and think about how the State might ruin your progeny in their own best interest, and the society that might bring about.
When I was a kid the van was black.
And the candy was stale, like it was from the dollar store. But you had to take it or he wouldn't let you in the van.
WWII era high school and college chemistry textbooks have good information about how to extract and purify reactants from common materials like seaweed, and the proportions that give good reactions. They're available at Goodwill for $2.00 a text.
Current texts describe how to make silly putty and playdough. You can get them on Ebay for about $25, or from the publisher for $70.
Next thing you know they'll find out it's actually pretty hard to come by child porn, that it's not that easy to build a bomb off Internet instructions or that a "skilled hacker" cannot just infiltrate anything and do anything by typing onto his keyboard for 20 seconds.
It's not?
Actually, all the things you referenced are as trivial to find on the Internet as they are in your local library. More so.
What's missing is "why not do these things?" Unfortunately with the current environment of delayed pain, parents are called to give their children some guidance on ethical behavior. That doesn't always end well.
But... But... I thought that WAS Windows?! ;)
For adults, the plethora of popup ads for desirable services like adult chat and aphrodisiac medicines is a useful thing. Kids are more interested in products like Thomas the Tank Engine and Diego the Animal Rescuer accessories. Fortunately, kids don't get your ads if they have their own PC or at least a separate account on the family PC. They can get the latest updates on what's cool in Pokemon land without disturbing your porn surfing.
Mine will. They get online at 2, when they get their first personal computer. It's part of how I teach them to read.
The vast majority of software shipped with modern Unixes on the desktop is licensed under the GPL. Even where they're not, their licenses are almost universally formed after the format of the GPL.
Freedom is viral. Get over it. Stallman won. He always knew he would. Now somebody should adopt him at a mascot or something. Maybe give him a grant.
I would recommend we think of the children.
You don't "fix" a computer. You reinstall, it should only take 20 minutes tops. Of course, you should not be an idiot and not let it get that way to begin with. Regardless of your overinflated salary you are throwing away money. Dumbass.
Look, I'm not a stranger to making an ass of myself on slashdot, but I still get to point out when other people do it. Sure, from a good image I can flash a 40GB SATA 3.0 drive in 3 minutes flat and the user is up and running. Add five minutes and I can restore today's user data from their good backup. That's not the common experience in the field because they have no good image and seldom have backups. In 20 minutes on the same drive you can install Windows if you have SP3 media. You still can't get all the updates, install the system drivers, install the accessory drivers, do a reasonable security software install and user configuration in 20 minutes. You definitely can't restore their user data, nor their critical apps. It just can't be done.
If the typical consumer were willing to pay his tech to come out and set him up properly, and visit him and make a good image semiannually, maybe. If they bought spares, better still. But they usually won't. Usually they won't call for help until they've borked it good and don't have backups. Most people if you gave them a button that booted their computer from an "emergency backup" spare drive, would crash their main system, then the emergency backup, and then call for help.
And some of them, oh, God I wish it were not so, utterly rely on some system running Windows 95 that hasn't been updated since because it was set up for them a decade ago and it still works and they bought into a system with no migration path.
Can we throw away the idea of a "throw away society"?
Yes. Unfortunately the baby that goes out with that bathwater is "growth economy".
I'm for it still, but it would suck for most of you.
Behold, the wonder of streams.
A nice place to hide a few gigabytes of code without anybody being the wiser.
It's like they built it to support the AV industry.
The difference between theory in practice is that practice always works in theory, but theory sometimes does not work in practice.
Theoretically, I'm not opposed to ad-supported programs.
I'm not morally opposed to adware. However in practice I find that vendors who rely on adware slide down the slippery slope of defining an ad from "impression" to "installing rootkit" so quickly as to make their wares uninteresting.
Virtualization. Microsoft should put out a proper version of windows with a sandbox area for old software.
And this sandbox would have waterproof iron clad walls that nothing would leak through. Because Microsoft is known for that.
That's because when Linux deprecates an interface, it doesn't put anyone out of a job.
What about Ralph Yarro? Sure, he's not fired but he's working for worthless stock options that are never going to be "in the money" now, like the other directors of SCO. Won't anybody think about our friends at SCO?
Apple doesn't have this baggage. Maybe that's why they're growing share and Microsoft is not. Trust me, the non-IT consumers that have Macs aren't at all interested in trying out some app that requires this legacy infrastructure and the commitment to Windows it represents. They'd rather find a better way to do what they need to do. More of them every day. They're laughing, not at new versions of Windows, but at the poor fools who try to use them.
Maybe the answer is to do a careful rewrite as you suggest,
.. followed by a lot of useless drivel.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Seriously. Burn it down and start over. Let it go, man, 'cuz it's gone.
Or don't. And Apple drinks your milkshake. They drink it all up. Whatever.
Have you driven a Ford lately?