The Linux kernel certainly has tighter review, but you can't say the same about the other packages you find rolled into a standard linux install.
I'm not sure anyone here is suggesting that a standard Linux install is what's needed in this situation.
However...
Nor can you say the same about all the packages you find in the third party repositories almost everyone adds so they can get drivers or codecs.
Those drivers and codecs are present on every system, unless you don't install them, so that buys you nothing. Windows is going to come with a large number of them out of the box, thus giving you no choice to not install them.
The hierarchy of review or acceptance is a joke. Nobody checks even one tenth of the packages installed on even a basic redhat install. It just doesn't happen.
Citation needed.
And I was pointing out here that you did not even mention it as a possibility.
With open source, you basically do not have the (reasonable) option of trusting the author(s). Your only option is checking every last bit yourself.
False dichotomy. You could also reasonably trust those responsible for committing changes, or publishing them. You could also hire someone to review every last change yourself. You could also assemble only packages you trust and thus provide a minimal, stripped-down version.
With Windows, those last two options are not realistic, and I see no reason to trust someone at Microsoft more than, say, Linus Torvalds or Andy Tanenbaum -- especially when Microsoft does not necessarily have a secure system as a priority.
And even if you'd want to do that, perhaps there are 2000 people world-wide capable of a thorough code review.
That is quite insanely arrogant. There are only 2000 people competent at code-reviews in the world? Really?
internet, and no, that do *NOT* mean through some crap IE webbrowser crap solution with sub par quality
It also doesn't mean iTunes. Sorry, iTunes may be great software, but it is not the web, and not everyone has or wants iTunes.
DRM is only part of the problem, and getting rid of it is a great step forward. Now let's see this the rest of the way -- just the Internet, or at most email -- better yet, publish that website as a REST API to allow anyone to develop an iTunes-like client.
Well, most such emails either have no body, or a body that's very obviously not from the person who sent it -- for example, "check this out" or "I love you", etc...
Contrast to something informative, actually identifying what the attachment is, and probably discussing it.
If you took any secure linux user and made him use a windows machine he'd never get a virus or hacked.
Probably not. However, if you forbade me from booting Linux to take disk images, I likely would get 0wned eventually.
He'd probably also have less technical problems.
Indeed.
However, for both of these, I do spend far more time dealing with such issues than I do on Linux -- and that is with the help of being able to boot Linux when something goes wrong. I suspect there would be a similar curve as the security requirements increase -- for example, if I had an actual government out to get me, I'd very likely enable some security features that I'm not sure exist on Windows.
For example: On Linux, my video drivers very nearly just worked -- it's possible I had to check a box somewhere to enable them. On XP, I had to download a driver for a different laptop, and from Dell (not nvidia), to make them work. That kind of bullshit is what I'm talking about -- it's hard to blame a Windows user when the OS is fighting them every step of the way.
How much source code have you verified on your linux install ?
Not a lot, but I am only one person. Someone who has an entire religion could probably afford to do their own code review. At least with Linux, that is an option.
Your windows install has at least been verified by a known party.
As dangitman says, a known incompetent party.
Now in theory getting into a linux system would require getting past redhat or canonical. In practice, as several breaches have demonstrated, compromising ANY widely used project (who accept volunteers as full comitting members merely for showing a bit of ability) would be sufficient.
The relevant question is whether all of these -- plus Canonical or Redhat's oversight, plus random community scrutiny of the kind not possible on Windows -- is sufficient.
How many chinese spies are working on the linux kernel. Improving it, yes, but also... Do you dare to bet your life on the answer being zero ?
How many chinese spies are working on the Windows kernel?
Remember, the kernel still has a maintainer, and many eyes, not all of them Chinese sympathizers, scrutinizing every commit.
A full linux install being trustworthy is dependant on tens of thousands of coders all being trustworthy (since in practice, nobody checks one another's work, and no "real" security audits are being conducted.
Frankly, bullshit. Maybe some projects are run that way. The Linux Kernel certainly isn't.
What is the guarantee that Windows has been audited more thoroughly, other than that their marketing department says it has?
You want to be secure against chinese interference ? Go to microsoft or ibm.
IBM, who will give me Linux. Good to know.
Sorry to break the news to you : open source software, in it's current form, cannot defend against a concerted attack by any large groups of individuals.
It can certainly do more than proprietary software, in which a concerted attack by a small group of individuals is more than enough.
A code compromise cannot be avoided if you can't trust the contributors.
You only need to trust the ones providing a particular package. Any random person can send in a random patch -- that doesn't mean it will be accepted. There's no need to trust the weekend warriors, only the hardcore contributors, and these all know each other and will be in each other's code quite a lot.
Sorry but it can't be done.
That seems to be your common line... I used to believe a secure Windows installation couldn't be done either. Whether it's sane to try is another question, but much of what you're describing (and exaggerating) not only can be done, it has been done, and probably often.
I am not sure if "Linux" by itself is the best choice. However, I believe a hardened, custom distro -- possibly a BSD, likely custom-complied and tweaked -- is going to last a lot longer than any Windows.
However, it is a bad font in that it's completely overused. That alone makes it annoying -- kind of like the Wilhelm Scream, or the star trek time travel episodes.
And the other things you've cited aren't all hated because they're popular. Pop stars are generally hated because they're talentless hacks that would be nowhere without the massive industry supporting them -- "singers" who lip-sync, for example. Windows is generally hated for a variety of reasons, including that it's proprietary, and has historically been less secure and less stable than pretty much any of its competition,
Well, can't say much about Kraft Parmesan, but I do prefer the local stuff -- I think it's cheaper, definitely tastes better. But I don't particularly hate Kraft, I just don't care.
If this guy can prioritize between "nobody's databases can talk to eachother" and "we can't get bugfixes for Important Software X because the vendor went bankrupt" and "new employees are stting on their thumbs for 8 weeks while their computer accounts get set up", then as long as he doesn't meddle beyond saying "how much will it cost to fix this" and "fix this next, because it gets us the most bang for our buck" it doesn't really matter if he personally doesn't know anything about how to fix it.
As long as he actually accepts the "how much will it cost" figures -- and also the "how much will it cost us not to fix this" figures. The Daily WTF is rife with stories of management deciding it wasn't worth a few thousand dollars to fix a problem which, in the long run, ended up costing a few million dollars, and a few years of delay, because it wasn't fixed when IT said it should be.
I value guidance between those tickets, when I honestly don't know which I should be focusing on. However, when I say "This one must be fixed today," I like to be heard. And a technical guy is more likely to understand both that I know what I'm talking about, and how severe a given technical problem actually is.
I do IT, and not everyone in the chain of command knows more than I do about IT. They do know more about other things, like management, or sales, or marketing.
However, they have to know at least enough about IT to be able to know what they know, and to know what they don't know. That way, they know when to defer to you.
For example: A marketing guy may know that a 20 ghz (single-core) machine might sell much more than an 8-core 2.5 ghz machine. However, as a tech guy, you know that the 20 ghz machine is likely physically impossible. I'm actually OK, though saddened, when the marketing guy doesn't know that, too. But they have to at least have the humility to believe you when you say it's impossible.
So, the main question here is: Does this guy know enough, and have enough humility, to know when and how to delegate?
Your clients pay you, or your firm, or however you have it set up, and they don't know nearly as much as you do.
There is a difference between clients and management, however.
I've been fortunate, in that for about the past year or two, I've been working under someone who has been a programmer. He didn't always do that, and he may not have been the most skilled among us, but at least he can speak the language.
Well, there's also the whole "iTunes U" thing. How well does that work for those who can't or won't use iTunes? DRM-free is only part of the solution -- basing it on actual standards, so third-party clients can be used, is the other part.
Schools are meant to teach pupils how to function in the real world. Not your little OSS fantasy world.
If a generation of students were trained on OSS, that "fantasy world" could become a reality.
You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that.
OpenOffice looks and feels very much like most versions of Office. I see no reason they wouldn't be able to adapt, especially if they were trained on how to learn and discover different systems.
You'd effectively be crippling them.
More so than current schools, which only teach MS Office?
it'll be in the form of new clever minds in the workspace that have no idea how to use the software actually used there.
...or these clever new minds would be able to clearly evaluate which software is actually best, not merely which "is actually used", or which is already there, or which they are familiar with.
That is more difficult to teach, of course, and switching to open source won't magically cause it. However, saving money on commercial software could mean more of a budget for actually teaching.
If you want to promote OSS, then do just that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.
If you want to promote commercial software, then just do that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.
Except that, the way classrooms are stacked, students are exactly as much "forced into" that, as you are afraid that they'd be "forced into" using open source.
Or maybe the largest projects are paying more.. who knows?
While they may be for EC2, they certainly aren't for S3. In fact, if you go back and read the page I linked to, the bandwidth costs actually drop per-gig when you transfer more.
Back to the original topic.. Amazon still isn't maintaining hundreds or maybe thousands of miles of networking cable across a farely large geographical area.
However, presumably they have an ISP, which would be doing that. If so, they must be paying less to their ISP than they are paid in bandwidth fees, otherwise AWS loses money.
What a stupid statement. Let me flip your logic around for you--PC users are insecure.
How is that "flipping my logic around"? If anything, you are proving my point:
Am I supposed to hide my MacBook when I use a public wireless access point, or should I just continue on like I do--namely, I don't give a rat's ass what you think about my computer.
No, I do not mean "cocky" as in "how dare they flaunt their apple-ness". I mean "cocky" as in "believing Apple's claims about how secure OS X is." OS X is not immune, but Mac people are often led to believe it is.
I fail to see why you think that "people" have any inherent value. As far as I can tell, you believe that humans are biological machines.
Subjectively, we can determine value.
For that matter, don't you value the machine you're posting this on? Nowhere near as much as a human being, certainly, but it's far from worthless.
For that matter what is this term "value"? Is it how much money you are willing to spend to obtain one?
No, not a dollar value.
Consider the statement "I value your insight." It in no way implies that you value that insight by a certain dollar amount, or that you would pay for said insight.
Don't you vote for an ideal? For things you want to happen?
Sometimes, yes.
But ultimately, there's a limit to how much any one individual can be educated about politics, and still have another job. That's why it's a republic, not just a democracy.
So, you vote for a man who you trust to make the right decision, in cases where you wouldn't know enough to form an opinion. And in part, you base that on whether you agree with him. You also base it on whether he seems honest and intelligent.
If you voted for a MAN, you are part of the problem. Vote for the PARTY that represents you.
Republicans seem to want to turn America into a theocracy. Democrats seem to want to turn it into a Nanny-state. Libertarians oppose government intervention, even in sane cases (net neutrality). I don't know enough about the Green Party to make a decision -- I'm all for the environment, but that's not nearly enough. The Pirate Party is for copyright reform, but given their origins and name, they are likely for the abolishment of copyright.
Please, tell me which party represents me? I can't find it.
No, instead, I voted for the man. I stood for Obama in the Iowa primaries. If Hillary had won, I'm honestly not sure if I would have voted for a democrat.
No I believe the real question is if labor still constitutes value.
If that were the question, then you're advocating being paid for your labor.
Guess what? I'm paid for my labor, too. Most often by the hour, not by controlling a particular piece of copyright.
I do however believe to support a world filled with intellectuals we need a method to support their way of life and their contributions to your world and mine.
That may or may not involve a concept of intellectual property, or ownership of said property.
It's worth considering that we could support intellectuals, and intellectual works, without a concept of intellectual property.
Let's say you build a new car. It's unique. You customized it right down to the bumper. Now let's say there is a machine out there that can reproduce your car right down to that bumper. Someone uses this machine to sell dozens of copies of your unique priceless car...what does that do to the value of your car?
Probably nothing, depending how valuable you'd consider those customizations in the first place.
Notice that with a show like "trick my ride", it's the originality of the car, and the sheer cost in raw materials, that provides value. In fact, if they could find a way to duplicate and sell those cars, I suspect it would only drive interest in the show, to see what those crazy mechanics can come up with next.
Are all object of material in this world only worth the value of the materials used to create them? Or are material items in this world attached a value based on labor and the cost of that labor?
Neither, entirely.
For example, take the first paper airplane. However much effort it originally took to create the first dart, frankly, it takes only moments to learn how to make one, and only moments to make one, out of next to no raw materials. No one would try to make a business out of selling them.
For more complex airplanes, you might try to sell them -- but they would generally be intricate enough that each one would take considerable effort to create, if the end result was interesting enough that people would pay for them as a work of art.
Take a diamond for example. If the world was flooded with diamonds would it have any value? Of course not but you can not reproduce a diamond can you? You can create them just as flawless...which is why there are ways to identify non natural diamonds
And this works because some people are foolish enough to be willing to pay extra for a natural diamond. In fact, enough people are this foolish that there is an industry.
But an artificial diamond looks just as good in that engagement ring, and means more money for the newlyweds to spend on things they will actually need, like housing.
The only reason the woman would want a real diamond is to force the man to spend more for it, to prove he values her that much. Of course, it's essentially a modern version of a dowry -- or, really, glorified prostitution.
As much as I don't particularly like the idea of a dowry, I'd much rather it be honest, in the form of cash, than this rock which we've attached value to, only because we agree it has value.
While there are problems with the system...what we are arguing is a huge step for mankind. To find value in ideas instead of material worth signifies a change in everything from culture to the types of jobs we all have.
This is true. But consider:
What will have value in the world when machine create everything for us?
Well, suppose machines could easily and cheaply construct houses. This is partly true already.
What has value, then, is the time of the architect who designed the house. But few people will simply pick a house off an assembly line, so to speak, outside of
I don't think we should use age as a determiner of an idea's merit
Indeed. I think we are unconsciously doing that with certain things -- not just age, but the fact that copyright is so ingrained into our culture.
In fact, to bring up communism would likely get me laughed out of the discussion. There are good reasons for doing so, but that's also a kneejerk reaction. That's what I was pre-empting.
Withholding source code is exactly what the GPL is trying to prevent.
No, disclosing source code is a means to an end: allowing end-users to modify their software.
Granted, the original inspiration for GNU was a printer company who refused to release source code for their drivers. However, this just makes it more difficult to modify the code, not impossible.
Some form of copyright law is necessary
I would say, the answer is not necessarily copyright, but it's probably not a complete free-for-all, either.
but it's been mutilated into a welfare system for corporations.
Agreed.
And, in fact, I believe forcing everything to be public domain would still be an improvement on our current copyright system. I'd gladly give up the GPL to force them to give up the DMCA, among other things.
But I suspect the answer is a balance somewhere between these extremes. We just haven't found it yet.
I suspect it depends very much how clean that other team's perl is. Perl is perhaps the language in which it is easiest for sheer laziness to lead to something unreadable.
However, Perl can be readable, and there are other reasons to like it.
Disclaimer: I haven't touched Perl since I became a Ruby/Javascript convert.
An edge case, and we're talking about Amazon as they sell products, not hosted services.
No, we're not. I was the one who brought up Amazon, and I meant AWS when I brought it up. Sorry if I didn't articulate that clearly.
I am in no way arguing that when purchasing an Amazaon product, I have anything to do with their bandwidth.
I am only claiming that Amazon clearly pays less than AWS fees for bandwidth.
You also don't know if they are underselling AWS by using profits from their product sales to help cover the costs. Don't assume the price you're paying is what they actually pay; it may be a loss leader to get people hooked on AWS.
While that's certainly possible, that's a pretty risky loss leader, considering some of the larger services that have been hosted on AWS. It also seems incredibly unlikely that it'd be a loss leader to other Amazon products, as AWS and (say) DVD sales are such completely different markets that it's really unlikely I'd prefer Amazon for a product simply because I host things on AWS.
It's true, it could be about lockin. But how much datacenter could they afford to give away to establish that lockin, especially as tenuous as it is? Eucalyptis is a FOSS implementation of the AWS API. App Drop is an AWS implementation of Google App Engines. Projects like PoolParty often target AWS first, but add support for other services. And my own apps generally contain less than a hundred lines of AWS-specific code.
I hate it when I read about someone telling me I should be happy that others use my work without my permission.
Then don't read it.
But it is worth considering. If you can make a profit, that argument is moot, but if you can't, wouldn't you rather release something for free, and have an audience of thousands or millions, than cling tightly to your copyright, and have an audience of tens?
If they had any idea how much time of my life I spent writting those things, how much hard work and education it took to even create them...they would not be telling me I have no rights to the work I create.
The question is not whether you have a right to your actual, physical property.
The question is whether you can have the right to control an idea, or a series of words, or bits.
That right has nothing whatsoever to do with how much work you put into it. You can put as much blood, sweat, and tears into a sand castle as you want, the ocean is still going to wash it away. Some serial killers raise their work to an art form, but no one would argue that this gives them the right to kill people.
Similarly, you often find homeless people who will attempt to wash your windshield (for free), then demand payment afterwards. Why should you have any obligation to support their business model? They may have done an incredible job, you might have the shiniest windshield the world has ever seen, but you didn't ask them to do it.
I realize these analogies are flawed, but one more: Certainly, as an author (I assume that's what you meant?), you understand that just because you've written the Great American Novel, doesn't mean anyone is going to publish it.
You have the right to pour your heart and soul into a project. You don't have a right to make money out of it. You only have a right to be paid when people agree to pay for a product or service.
Perhaps the best analogy is the sandcastle. DRM will never work, and piracy is a reality, now and forever. It is up to you to figure out how to make a profit in this world. With all that education and work ethic, I'm sure you'll find a way -- and yes, it is possible to compete with piracy.
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The Linux kernel certainly has tighter review, but you can't say the same about the other packages you find rolled into a standard linux install.
I'm not sure anyone here is suggesting that a standard Linux install is what's needed in this situation.
However...
Nor can you say the same about all the packages you find in the third party repositories almost everyone adds so they can get drivers or codecs.
Those drivers and codecs are present on every system, unless you don't install them, so that buys you nothing. Windows is going to come with a large number of them out of the box, thus giving you no choice to not install them.
Uh huh. And how major is that, currently?
I know admins using Postfix. I know admins using Exim. I even know admins using Qmail.
I don't know anyone still using Sendmail.
The hierarchy of review or acceptance is a joke. Nobody checks even one tenth of the packages installed on even a basic redhat install. It just doesn't happen.
Citation needed.
And I was pointing out here that you did not even mention it as a possibility.
With open source, you basically do not have the (reasonable) option of trusting the author(s). Your only option is checking every last bit yourself.
False dichotomy. You could also reasonably trust those responsible for committing changes, or publishing them. You could also hire someone to review every last change yourself. You could also assemble only packages you trust and thus provide a minimal, stripped-down version.
With Windows, those last two options are not realistic, and I see no reason to trust someone at Microsoft more than, say, Linus Torvalds or Andy Tanenbaum -- especially when Microsoft does not necessarily have a secure system as a priority.
And even if you'd want to do that, perhaps there are 2000 people world-wide capable of a thorough code review.
That is quite insanely arrogant. There are only 2000 people competent at code-reviews in the world? Really?
internet, and no, that do *NOT* mean through some crap IE webbrowser crap solution with sub par quality
It also doesn't mean iTunes. Sorry, iTunes may be great software, but it is not the web, and not everyone has or wants iTunes.
DRM is only part of the problem, and getting rid of it is a great step forward. Now let's see this the rest of the way -- just the Internet, or at most email -- better yet, publish that website as a REST API to allow anyone to develop an iTunes-like client.
HTML and FLAC over HTTP for the win.
Well, most such emails either have no body, or a body that's very obviously not from the person who sent it -- for example, "check this out" or "I love you", etc...
Contrast to something informative, actually identifying what the attachment is, and probably discussing it.
If you took any secure linux user and made him use a windows machine he'd never get a virus or hacked.
Probably not. However, if you forbade me from booting Linux to take disk images, I likely would get 0wned eventually.
He'd probably also have less technical problems.
Indeed.
However, for both of these, I do spend far more time dealing with such issues than I do on Linux -- and that is with the help of being able to boot Linux when something goes wrong. I suspect there would be a similar curve as the security requirements increase -- for example, if I had an actual government out to get me, I'd very likely enable some security features that I'm not sure exist on Windows.
For example: On Linux, my video drivers very nearly just worked -- it's possible I had to check a box somewhere to enable them. On XP, I had to download a driver for a different laptop, and from Dell (not nvidia), to make them work. That kind of bullshit is what I'm talking about -- it's hard to blame a Windows user when the OS is fighting them every step of the way.
That trivially ignores the hierarchy of review and acceptance.
Moreover, you haven't provided a similar list for Windows, or Windows software.
You make some interesting arguments elsewhere, but your bias is showing.
Can you say the same for linux kernel contributors ?
It doesn't matter where an idea came from -- that's why Ad Hominim is a fallacy.
It matters whether it's valid.
So yes, I can say the same for the part that matters:
I'm sure that were one to dig deep enough, you'd find that the xp kernel (like some central parts of the linux kernel) has been vetted by NSA experts.
There you have it -- some central parts of the Linux kernel have been vetted by NSA experts.
How much source code have you verified on your linux install ?
Not a lot, but I am only one person. Someone who has an entire religion could probably afford to do their own code review. At least with Linux, that is an option.
Your windows install has at least been verified by a known party.
As dangitman says, a known incompetent party.
Now in theory getting into a linux system would require getting past redhat or canonical. In practice, as several breaches have demonstrated, compromising ANY widely used project (who accept volunteers as full comitting members merely for showing a bit of ability) would be sufficient.
The relevant question is whether all of these -- plus Canonical or Redhat's oversight, plus random community scrutiny of the kind not possible on Windows -- is sufficient.
How many chinese spies are working on the linux kernel. Improving it, yes, but also ... Do you dare to bet your life on the answer being zero ?
How many chinese spies are working on the Windows kernel?
Remember, the kernel still has a maintainer, and many eyes, not all of them Chinese sympathizers, scrutinizing every commit.
A full linux install being trustworthy is dependant on tens of thousands of coders all being trustworthy (since in practice, nobody checks one another's work, and no "real" security audits are being conducted.
Frankly, bullshit. Maybe some projects are run that way. The Linux Kernel certainly isn't.
What is the guarantee that Windows has been audited more thoroughly, other than that their marketing department says it has?
You want to be secure against chinese interference ? Go to microsoft or ibm.
IBM, who will give me Linux. Good to know.
Sorry to break the news to you : open source software, in it's current form, cannot defend against a concerted attack by any large groups of individuals.
It can certainly do more than proprietary software, in which a concerted attack by a small group of individuals is more than enough.
A code compromise cannot be avoided if you can't trust the contributors.
You only need to trust the ones providing a particular package. Any random person can send in a random patch -- that doesn't mean it will be accepted. There's no need to trust the weekend warriors, only the hardcore contributors, and these all know each other and will be in each other's code quite a lot.
Sorry but it can't be done.
That seems to be your common line... I used to believe a secure Windows installation couldn't be done either. Whether it's sane to try is another question, but much of what you're describing (and exaggerating) not only can be done, it has been done, and probably often.
I am not sure if "Linux" by itself is the best choice. However, I believe a hardened, custom distro -- possibly a BSD, likely custom-complied and tweaked -- is going to last a lot longer than any Windows.
However, it is a bad font in that it's completely overused. That alone makes it annoying -- kind of like the Wilhelm Scream, or the star trek time travel episodes.
And the other things you've cited aren't all hated because they're popular. Pop stars are generally hated because they're talentless hacks that would be nowhere without the massive industry supporting them -- "singers" who lip-sync, for example. Windows is generally hated for a variety of reasons, including that it's proprietary, and has historically been less secure and less stable than pretty much any of its competition,
Well, can't say much about Kraft Parmesan, but I do prefer the local stuff -- I think it's cheaper, definitely tastes better. But I don't particularly hate Kraft, I just don't care.
If this guy can prioritize between "nobody's databases can talk to eachother" and "we can't get bugfixes for Important Software X because the vendor went bankrupt" and "new employees are stting on their thumbs for 8 weeks while their computer accounts get set up", then as long as he doesn't meddle beyond saying "how much will it cost to fix this" and "fix this next, because it gets us the most bang for our buck" it doesn't really matter if he personally doesn't know anything about how to fix it.
As long as he actually accepts the "how much will it cost" figures -- and also the "how much will it cost us not to fix this" figures. The Daily WTF is rife with stories of management deciding it wasn't worth a few thousand dollars to fix a problem which, in the long run, ended up costing a few million dollars, and a few years of delay, because it wasn't fixed when IT said it should be.
I value guidance between those tickets, when I honestly don't know which I should be focusing on. However, when I say "This one must be fixed today," I like to be heard. And a technical guy is more likely to understand both that I know what I'm talking about, and how severe a given technical problem actually is.
I do IT, and not everyone in the chain of command knows more than I do about IT. They do know more about other things, like management, or sales, or marketing.
However, they have to know at least enough about IT to be able to know what they know, and to know what they don't know. That way, they know when to defer to you.
For example: A marketing guy may know that a 20 ghz (single-core) machine might sell much more than an 8-core 2.5 ghz machine. However, as a tech guy, you know that the 20 ghz machine is likely physically impossible. I'm actually OK, though saddened, when the marketing guy doesn't know that, too. But they have to at least have the humility to believe you when you say it's impossible.
So, the main question here is: Does this guy know enough, and have enough humility, to know when and how to delegate?
Your clients pay you, or your firm, or however you have it set up, and they don't know nearly as much as you do.
There is a difference between clients and management, however.
I've been fortunate, in that for about the past year or two, I've been working under someone who has been a programmer. He didn't always do that, and he may not have been the most skilled among us, but at least he can speak the language.
Well, there's also the whole "iTunes U" thing. How well does that work for those who can't or won't use iTunes? DRM-free is only part of the solution -- basing it on actual standards, so third-party clients can be used, is the other part.
Never mind the whole iPhone App thing...
Schools are meant to teach pupils how to function in the real world. Not your little OSS fantasy world.
If a generation of students were trained on OSS, that "fantasy world" could become a reality.
You grew into OS office software and can go back any time, if needed. Those kids won't be able to do that.
OpenOffice looks and feels very much like most versions of Office. I see no reason they wouldn't be able to adapt, especially if they were trained on how to learn and discover different systems.
You'd effectively be crippling them.
More so than current schools, which only teach MS Office?
it'll be in the form of new clever minds in the workspace that have no idea how to use the software actually used there.
...or these clever new minds would be able to clearly evaluate which software is actually best, not merely which "is actually used", or which is already there, or which they are familiar with.
That is more difficult to teach, of course, and switching to open source won't magically cause it. However, saving money on commercial software could mean more of a budget for actually teaching.
If you want to promote OSS, then do just that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.
If you want to promote commercial software, then just do that. Don't try to force people into it. Lead them into it.
Except that, the way classrooms are stacked, students are exactly as much "forced into" that, as you are afraid that they'd be "forced into" using open source.
Or maybe the largest projects are paying more.. who knows?
While they may be for EC2, they certainly aren't for S3. In fact, if you go back and read the page I linked to, the bandwidth costs actually drop per-gig when you transfer more.
Back to the original topic.. Amazon still isn't maintaining hundreds or maybe thousands of miles of networking cable across a farely large geographical area.
However, presumably they have an ISP, which would be doing that. If so, they must be paying less to their ISP than they are paid in bandwidth fees, otherwise AWS loses money.
What a stupid statement. Let me flip your logic around for you--PC users are insecure.
How is that "flipping my logic around"? If anything, you are proving my point:
Am I supposed to hide my MacBook when I use a public wireless access point, or should I just continue on like I do--namely, I don't give a rat's ass what you think about my computer.
No, I do not mean "cocky" as in "how dare they flaunt their apple-ness". I mean "cocky" as in "believing Apple's claims about how secure OS X is." OS X is not immune, but Mac people are often led to believe it is.
Or a stone burner would do the trick. That would kind of violate the Great Convention, though.
I fail to see why you think that "people" have any inherent value. As far as I can tell, you believe that humans are biological machines.
Subjectively, we can determine value.
For that matter, don't you value the machine you're posting this on? Nowhere near as much as a human being, certainly, but it's far from worthless.
For that matter what is this term "value"? Is it how much money you are willing to spend to obtain one?
No, not a dollar value.
Consider the statement "I value your insight." It in no way implies that you value that insight by a certain dollar amount, or that you would pay for said insight.
Don't you vote for an ideal? For things you want to happen?
Sometimes, yes.
But ultimately, there's a limit to how much any one individual can be educated about politics, and still have another job. That's why it's a republic, not just a democracy.
So, you vote for a man who you trust to make the right decision, in cases where you wouldn't know enough to form an opinion. And in part, you base that on whether you agree with him. You also base it on whether he seems honest and intelligent.
If you voted for a MAN, you are part of the problem. Vote for the PARTY that represents you.
Republicans seem to want to turn America into a theocracy. Democrats seem to want to turn it into a Nanny-state. Libertarians oppose government intervention, even in sane cases (net neutrality). I don't know enough about the Green Party to make a decision -- I'm all for the environment, but that's not nearly enough. The Pirate Party is for copyright reform, but given their origins and name, they are likely for the abolishment of copyright.
Please, tell me which party represents me? I can't find it.
No, instead, I voted for the man. I stood for Obama in the Iowa primaries. If Hillary had won, I'm honestly not sure if I would have voted for a democrat.
No I believe the real question is if labor still constitutes value.
If that were the question, then you're advocating being paid for your labor.
Guess what? I'm paid for my labor, too. Most often by the hour, not by controlling a particular piece of copyright.
I do however believe to support a world filled with intellectuals we need a method to support their way of life and their contributions to your world and mine.
That may or may not involve a concept of intellectual property, or ownership of said property.
It's worth considering that we could support intellectuals, and intellectual works, without a concept of intellectual property.
Let's say you build a new car. It's unique. You customized it right down to the bumper. Now let's say there is a machine out there that can reproduce your car right down to that bumper. Someone uses this machine to sell dozens of copies of your unique priceless car...what does that do to the value of your car?
Probably nothing, depending how valuable you'd consider those customizations in the first place.
Notice that with a show like "trick my ride", it's the originality of the car, and the sheer cost in raw materials, that provides value. In fact, if they could find a way to duplicate and sell those cars, I suspect it would only drive interest in the show, to see what those crazy mechanics can come up with next.
Are all object of material in this world only worth the value of the materials used to create them? Or are material items in this world attached a value based on labor and the cost of that labor?
Neither, entirely.
For example, take the first paper airplane. However much effort it originally took to create the first dart, frankly, it takes only moments to learn how to make one, and only moments to make one, out of next to no raw materials. No one would try to make a business out of selling them.
For more complex airplanes, you might try to sell them -- but they would generally be intricate enough that each one would take considerable effort to create, if the end result was interesting enough that people would pay for them as a work of art.
Take a diamond for example. If the world was flooded with diamonds would it have any value? Of course not but you can not reproduce a diamond can you? You can create them just as flawless...which is why there are ways to identify non natural diamonds
And this works because some people are foolish enough to be willing to pay extra for a natural diamond. In fact, enough people are this foolish that there is an industry.
But an artificial diamond looks just as good in that engagement ring, and means more money for the newlyweds to spend on things they will actually need, like housing.
The only reason the woman would want a real diamond is to force the man to spend more for it, to prove he values her that much. Of course, it's essentially a modern version of a dowry -- or, really, glorified prostitution.
As much as I don't particularly like the idea of a dowry, I'd much rather it be honest, in the form of cash, than this rock which we've attached value to, only because we agree it has value.
While there are problems with the system...what we are arguing is a huge step for mankind. To find value in ideas instead of material worth signifies a change in everything from culture to the types of jobs we all have.
This is true. But consider:
What will have value in the world when machine create everything for us?
Well, suppose machines could easily and cheaply construct houses. This is partly true already.
What has value, then, is the time of the architect who designed the house. But few people will simply pick a house off an assembly line, so to speak, outside of
I don't think we should use age as a determiner of an idea's merit
Indeed. I think we are unconsciously doing that with certain things -- not just age, but the fact that copyright is so ingrained into our culture.
In fact, to bring up communism would likely get me laughed out of the discussion. There are good reasons for doing so, but that's also a kneejerk reaction. That's what I was pre-empting.
Withholding source code is exactly what the GPL is trying to prevent.
No, disclosing source code is a means to an end: allowing end-users to modify their software.
Granted, the original inspiration for GNU was a printer company who refused to release source code for their drivers. However, this just makes it more difficult to modify the code, not impossible.
Some form of copyright law is necessary
I would say, the answer is not necessarily copyright, but it's probably not a complete free-for-all, either.
but it's been mutilated into a welfare system for corporations.
Agreed.
And, in fact, I believe forcing everything to be public domain would still be an improvement on our current copyright system. I'd gladly give up the GPL to force them to give up the DMCA, among other things.
But I suspect the answer is a balance somewhere between these extremes. We just haven't found it yet.
I suspect it depends very much how clean that other team's perl is. Perl is perhaps the language in which it is easiest for sheer laziness to lead to something unreadable.
However, Perl can be readable, and there are other reasons to like it.
Disclaimer: I haven't touched Perl since I became a Ruby/Javascript convert.
An edge case, and we're talking about Amazon as they sell products, not hosted services.
No, we're not. I was the one who brought up Amazon, and I meant AWS when I brought it up. Sorry if I didn't articulate that clearly.
I am in no way arguing that when purchasing an Amazaon product, I have anything to do with their bandwidth.
I am only claiming that Amazon clearly pays less than AWS fees for bandwidth.
You also don't know if they are underselling AWS by using profits from their product sales to help cover the costs. Don't assume the price you're paying is what they actually pay; it may be a loss leader to get people hooked on AWS.
While that's certainly possible, that's a pretty risky loss leader, considering some of the larger services that have been hosted on AWS. It also seems incredibly unlikely that it'd be a loss leader to other Amazon products, as AWS and (say) DVD sales are such completely different markets that it's really unlikely I'd prefer Amazon for a product simply because I host things on AWS.
It's true, it could be about lockin. But how much datacenter could they afford to give away to establish that lockin, especially as tenuous as it is? Eucalyptis is a FOSS implementation of the AWS API. App Drop is an AWS implementation of Google App Engines. Projects like PoolParty often target AWS first, but add support for other services. And my own apps generally contain less than a hundred lines of AWS-specific code.
I hate it when I read about someone telling me I should be happy that others use my work without my permission.
Then don't read it.
But it is worth considering. If you can make a profit, that argument is moot, but if you can't, wouldn't you rather release something for free, and have an audience of thousands or millions, than cling tightly to your copyright, and have an audience of tens?
If they had any idea how much time of my life I spent writting those things, how much hard work and education it took to even create them...they would not be telling me I have no rights to the work I create.
The question is not whether you have a right to your actual, physical property.
The question is whether you can have the right to control an idea, or a series of words, or bits.
That right has nothing whatsoever to do with how much work you put into it. You can put as much blood, sweat, and tears into a sand castle as you want, the ocean is still going to wash it away. Some serial killers raise their work to an art form, but no one would argue that this gives them the right to kill people.
Similarly, you often find homeless people who will attempt to wash your windshield (for free), then demand payment afterwards. Why should you have any obligation to support their business model? They may have done an incredible job, you might have the shiniest windshield the world has ever seen, but you didn't ask them to do it.
I realize these analogies are flawed, but one more: Certainly, as an author (I assume that's what you meant?), you understand that just because you've written the Great American Novel, doesn't mean anyone is going to publish it.
You have the right to pour your heart and soul into a project. You don't have a right to make money out of it. You only have a right to be paid when people agree to pay for a product or service.
Perhaps the best analogy is the sandcastle. DRM will never work, and piracy is a reality, now and forever. It is up to you to figure out how to make a profit in this world. With all that education and work ethic, I'm sure you'll find a way -- and yes, it is possible to compete with piracy.