I (using Mozilla on linux) got the following message:
System Check
We have performed a system check and detected that you need to download and install the item highlighted in red below to use CONNECT. Please do this now and then enter the site again.
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.5+
PS: I got similar crap on www.mycokemusic.at a while back. They gave away free music which I wasn't even able to listen to unless I used IE and activated ActiveX. Bummer, dudes! Freaking losers! Hell, did I not care! Never came back...
You are right, MDA certainly appears to encourage this strategy. However, I don't think anyone using a graphical interface to build an application can actually work with this write/draw, compile, verify strategy without risking big time failure.
And that's the point. MDA is perceived as something which makes the task of developing software easier. It doesn't,it just takes away some of the grudge work (i.e. coding standard blocks).
Today, process of application system development starts with business owners zero in on idea followed by marathon meeting with IT specialists end result being business owners/Managers are left grappling with some incomprehensible technical documentation and not with a tangible solution.
Great! Tell managers to buy and use MDA so they don't have to put up with these pathetic "computer experts" any longer! They can just go ahead and "design" their own business software, it has become so easy now!
The required skill set and the depth of technical knowledge is reduced, which lowers labor costs.
The idea is to save an expensive software team and exactly that leads to the failures people experienced with MDA (or any new technology that was supposed to make life so much easier). Those vendors sell their software to PHBs who then let their "business solution" be written by code monkeys who are not only unable to complete the task but don't even realize they never had a chance with their skill set (But they offered it for almost no money, so they got the contract!).
Macrovision only works if your VCR has special AGC settings. Ancient VCRs had different AGC time constants and were therefore able to record anything. Eventually, producers were forced to stop making them, and all legal new VCRs have to use a predefined AGC algorithm/behavior which bails out on Macrovision signals.
Since only these particular AGC settings make Macrovision copy protection work, old players may play and record Macrovision protected stuff just fine...
You correctly point out that poor or inadequate qualification contributed to the downfall of the project. Which leads to the point: What was the purpose of MDA for this project?
IMHO there exists the theory in PHB's minds that if you can do something graphically, it's much easier and you can hire less qualified people to accomplish great feats. The whole description of the project had this written all over and in big letters.
Just think of joice quotes from the GP like "caused a large divide to develop", "system people, generally well qualified programmers, had little or no interest", "application programmers, on the other hand, had absolutely no understanding", "OO modeling concepts seemed to confuse the business domain experts".
I can literally see some PHB there telling his peers: "Great, lets get rid of all this command line stuff and text editing, spend x amount of money on fancy software, get the same result faster and overall save a bundle!" Unfortunately a person who knows how to design a great software architecture is hard to find but still required, whether you use MDA or whether you have cheap code monkeys for the grudge work.
And if you compare the likely output from one genius + MDA versus a similar genius + many code crunchers, chances are the second choice works out better. While the many code crunchers may not be geniuses, they usually do contribute useful thoughts and feedback, something an MDA doesn't! Have you ever seen a GUI design tool which told you straight in your face: "Don't put this menu item here, nobody would find it there!" ?
You may need fewer people but a much greater genius to make a project fly with MDA. Unfortunately it's just those geniuses who are so hard to find in the job market. The reason why PHBs are willing to spend big money on MDA is because they want to save the money spent on the big genius!
If you've seen many projects (as I'm sure you have), you've seen even more people who are in the wrong position but the only people available at the time. And sometimes it still works out, especially if they are able to learn their way into the project internals. This, of course requires hiring smart people. The use of MDA was most likely not the reason for said project to fail (at least not technically), but chances are that the marketing of MDA caused the business guys at the responsible company to make poor hiring decisions.
While the late 90s were the time of the software gods (usually some social misfits with great coding skills and even more attitude, think dotcom), the last few years have tried to completely do without them. Evidently this way doesn't work so well either...
I think you misunderstood me here. What I tried to say was:
1. Changing a department from an MS only infrastructure to something else is not easy.
2. With the move Microsoft just made, there is no need to transition away from MS Office, since MS Office now apparently fulfills the rules created in MA
3. Yet, and that's the big advantage for people outside the administration, people who want to exchange documents with the MA administration do not have to use MS Office but can turn to other office suites as they like (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice,...)
4. Because MA can still use MS Office if they choose to, the directive does not force a complete platform change in MA (for some folks, especially in an administration, changing office suite is just about a complete platform change, since their office suite is all they ever use). This makes it much more likely that other states/countries also mandate open document interchange formats.
5. Hence, we are more likely to see open document formats to become a common criterion for future software acquisitions, which is good for everyone affected. The legislators, who created this directive apparently knew, that MS can not afford to lose sales in MA (just look how they bent over unsuccessfully after losing Munich to linux), and set the MS document format free. Cheers to them!!
But don't forget what it took them to get back in the race! They must now provide a office productivity suite with an open format for document interchange. Isn't this exactly what all of us OpenOffice/KOffice/Whatever-users have been hoping for in our wildest dreams ?
Sure, many offices in MA will use MS Word after that policy change, but you as average citizen communicating with on of these offices will be able to use any word processor.
Also, don't forget, that now, after MA was able to get such a directive through without seriously hurting their own IT infrastructure (changing all departments from MS Word to some other suite is not easy), other states or countries may follow suit....
Heroin is not only taken by addicts. If you take it in certain ways, you can stay away from addiction for quite a while. In this case a doctor shouldn't give you the drug which is exactly not what you are aiming for (The you doesn't mean you personally but "you" as heroin user:-). As a result you would try to get it from somewhere else. Just think of cannabis or cocaine, which are addictive to only few, and yet people pay premium prices on the black market.
You may well argue that the war on drugs has not created the intended results. However, it has been fought in many different ways (thing of extremely liberal politics in the Netherlands and excessively strict ways in some south east asian countries). There appears to be a desire in many humans to drug themselves even if that results in great damage to themselves and others. If you are strict, you may hold off some who may have tried it under more liberal conditions, but you increase related crime because of the high risk associated with trade and consumption. If you are liberal, fewer addicts turn criminal but there are more in the pool. Add to that that the success rate in addiction treatment is very low and you have a problem here as well.
Repeatedly I read the theory that all (or most) drug related crimes and activities would misteriously go away if those drugs would be administered by trained professionals who would only give them to those who really need them.
There exist drugs which are handed out like this (all prescription drugs) and yet there also exists a blooming black market for those. Just read your favourite spam if you don't believe me. So if the concept doesn't work for Cialis, Viagra, Prozac and whatever they are called (I'm just citing from the spam I get), why would this suddenly work with heroin, crack and cannabis ?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most addicts start thinking about ending their addiction for the first time once they are confronted with a criminal court (i.e. get a drastic picture of their situation) ? The vast majority of drug addicts will only go to those doctors voluntarily if no questions are asked but certainly not to break with their habbits or to go through often painful treatment (just read the conspiracy theories about methadone as substitute for heroin out there!).
You seem to derive from an evolutionary stand point, why pedophelia makes sense, yet you have the (quite common and also in my sense normal) feeling, that there is a lot wrong with that.
Let me state here concisely why pedophelia is sick and has nothing to do with the drive for yet younger sex mates and why it receives harsh punishment by society:
Society assumes that a sexual relationship is something consensual, which means both involved parties agree that they want to have sex.
There are some ways of working around this limitation (consensual) and it is those kinds which are illegal (or rather disgusting, as you call it):
1. Threat of violence or other harm. This would constitute rape and while it may increase the chances of spreading your genes yet further, society has decided that the ability to threaten someone should not help you spread your genes. Society generally doesn't accept personal gains due to the threat of harm (see robbery,...). Note , that this is what turned the ancient society of apes into the modern society where brains count.
2. Abusing authority. This would cover cases of sexual harassment but also many instances of pedophelia. I can't imagine a 4 year old child that actual wants sex, so adults abuse their authority over them to get their way. As you can imagine, society has something against such conduct.
You can ask any psycologist and he will confirm that essentially all pedophelia cases fall into one of the two above categories, leaving behind seriously disturbed youngsters.
That explains why society has decided to do something about it and why you and most others (including myself) find pedophelia rather disgusting. You can argue whether people who engage in this conducts need therapy, prison or both, but the justification with evolutionary logic should and does not apply here.
I guess that's the whole idea of this new Intel design. They have finally learned that people don't want to have a powerful room heater under their desk just to type an email to their friend, while watching DVDs on a desktop is lame with all the fan noise necessary to keep the CPU operating.
Intel may have finally learned that this may be the reason why people buy laptops (without EVER taking them outside their home) or that cute little mac mini. Most people consistently don't care about actual performance any more as long as the computer does what they want it to do (insert favourite joke about viruses and spyware here).
By putting mobile pentiums on the desktop they allow PC makers to design something slick (think mac mini) while still selling state of the art silicon (= make more money than they do with low end chips). I hope it works out like that!
Beforehand: My post did not attempt to judge the merits of the new constitution. All I wanted to say was that people voted against something that politicians strongly wanted and that would have been a constitution for a union of mostly small countries then tied closer together.
Europe may not be falling apart because of this, but you can take for certain that politicians have other things on their mind right now than starting a struggle with a software monopolist who would threaten them with higher software prices if they even touch that "evil satan linux"-thing.
Think of it: While the EU is about to bust Microsoft for their monopoly practices, no individual country in Europe (inside or outside the EU!) would ever dare to pursue such a measure. The annual budget of smaller EU countries equals the amount of money Microsoft has sitting in the banks, and don't even start comparing the annual budget of IBM with those numbers...
I seriously doubt that many european politician on a national (much less community) level have enough time, guts and energy at the moment to start FOSS-initiatives at the moment. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Villasante just talks nicely in order to polish the damaged image of the EU in the public or whether actual measures will result from this.
Most of the larger corporations in Europe are ready to switch, having done extensive development work with FOSS tools internally. However, they never exposed their efforts since the vast majority of governments are completely tied with Microsoft and would never consider anything else.
Doesn't it strike anyone as unusual that it actually makes headlines if a town like Munich turns to linux? Shouldn't there be many more initiatives like that in a healthy market place ?
One reason for this complete lockin is that Europe still hasn't grown together (and might actually fall apart yet more after the failed elections about the new EU constitution in France and Netherlands), and individual governments don't seem to have the guts or the power anymore to stand up against an industy giant and monopolist.
If I had to set up a linux computer for someone computer illiterate, I'd just set it up the way he/she likes it and then turn on the firewall.
As a computer illiterate he/she doesn't need to provide services to the internet, so there's no chance of remote exploits. The exact same applies to Windows, so that's a draw.
But you certainly don't need Norton whatever because while linux viruses may exist in theory, I just haven't come around any linux email viruses or spyware (I've used linux almost exclusively for the last 8 years, and yes, this includes my office desk).
With this setup you don't need an internet connection at night (dialup anyone ?), downloading stuff and patching and whatnot (at least under linux, *BSD, MacOS)
This is not correct. Any developer can license his code under pretty much any license (or even not at all). The nice thing about GPL is that this license model appeals to many people, hence it is widely used.
However, nobody forces you to use GPL (unless you pass on GPLed code oder derivatives thereof).
If anyone mended the GPL so that certain countries oder groups of people were not to be able to license GPL code, I suspect most current GPL code providers would stick to the current GPL version or switch to a different model without the new provisions.
You should rephrase you statement as: This is the "great" thing about the OSS-community, that their software is licensed regardless of ideological differences.
First: If you steal a car which has the key left in it and which is running, it's still punishable by the law.
Second (just a detail): If I had P2P running on my home PC, I'd post my doctoral thesis. It is published anyway (just check out your favourite universities' library), I don't earn money from selling it (in fact, you can find it online), so why not use P2P to distribute it. Hey, that's supposedly the official justification for P2P, not illegal MP3s!
I read a story about a similar issue (just several decades ago), where someone used someone elses electric power (i.e. ran two wires from his power line). The argument back then was that nothing was stolen because all the electrons taken away were promptly returned.
As a result the law was updated so that this particular behavior became illegal (something most of us would agree with). In this case the definition of theft had to be updated. The law did not mandate that all power line are to be buried under 10 feet thick concrete (to make them secure).
Now we have many folks hooking up wLAN access points who don't know how to properly configure them, essentally leaving them open. I've read numerous stories about war driving/flying/biking/sailig/whatever here on slashdot.
So most commons (who don't know how to encrypt wLAN but want an access point) will be very happy about this new definition of theft. This may lead to some funny results (as TFA helps to point out) but most of us will understand what the point of this law is and find it agreeable.
Result: expect this law to remain and to be extended to most places. In some cases courts will have to decide whether a particular case is theft or not.
Well aparently there are quite a few out there. A data base of some "pure herbal" penis enlargement selling company was leaked two weeks after a SPAM effort some months ago, showing that in this particular case about 6000 (six thousand !!!) people spent an average of US$ 100 !!!
Whoever that spammer was, he made a load of cash (What would you do with US$ 600000 ?) of these 6000 morons. I don't remember the link anymore, but google might find more info. Think of that and you know why we all get flooded with spam!
Things will get funny when applications hit the market which will require SP2 or higher (remember apps for NT4 ?). At this point we'll end up with a funny mix of XP boxes in every place, some on SP1, others on SP2+.
Don't forget: SP2 doesn't only fix security issues, but most certainly introduces tons of bug fixes, something new apps might well depend on.
Don't forget that a lot of commercial software used by corporations is hideously expensive and/or was developed in house by folks who are lo longer there (think: poorly slapped together VBA crap). In the case of commercial software they may also have cancelled the support contract for cost reasons (I know we have done this for a number of apps: support sucked and new versions sucked even more).
In both cases software upgrades may come with a big price tag which might well discourage affected companies from upgrading to SP2.
Sad part is, that something like this worked for windows users pretty well. I had a few of them almost screaming at me that I should check my (linux) machine for that evil SULFNBK.EXE file which was supposed to be some "internet based virus"
... would be to track the person who leaks the information.
I don't know whether there exist automated tools to introduce spelling errors (notice, that even the grammar errors in the document result from nothing more than simple word substitutions) in CC copies or for receiver side auto copies (often emails to senior execs are auto CCd to their secretaries).
I could certainly envision a market for such a tracking tool... even honest companies don't like it if internal memos are leaked!
Many here think hackers are cool and that FBI deals mostly with script kiddies, i.e. some immature but computer literate goofballs. Point is they deal with hard core criminals and not every computer expert is used to that sort of environment. Do you think those gangsters who sell a million credit card numbers care about a human life or two?
When I read slashdot, I read comments from people bragging in detail how they set up their security, what they do in their business and what their business does wrong. Others complain about big brother when the FBI wire taps mobsters or stores criminal records. While all these folks may be brilliant computers d00dz and maybe very idealistic about what they do, they are useless in law enforcement.
In addition always think about the following: Any law enforcement agency wants criminals to think that law enforcement is utterly incompetent. They don't know how to use computers and if you use Windows NT 4.0 SP 4 norwegian edition, NetBSD or Mac OSX, they have no chance in hell of ever catching you. He ????? Do you really think an FBI guy is going to tell you how to commit computer crimes they can't solve ?????
When it came to surveiling and oppressing their own people, money was never an issue even for the poorest countries in the world. Laws against unreadable license plates exist in at least every country which issues automated speeding tickets through radar boxes.
Integrating RFID in clothes won't work. Cars are strongly regulated - people are used to the fact that they have to ask their government for kind permission to operate a car. If you put restrictions on clothes, even the dumbest soap opera watching pop corn munchers will start an outcry.
AFAIK there exist cameras which automatically pick up license plate information. Here in Austria it's used for section control, where they place two such cameras at a given distance and automatically issue a ticket if you need too little time to cover the distance.
Point is: RFID serves interesting purposes but certainly not that of surveying ordinary citizens. One good purpose might well be intercepting car thieves at the border. Remember. it's simple to swap license plates, whereas it takes time and effort to swap all four tires without getting noticed.
Slashdot Mirror
I (using Mozilla on linux) got the following message:
System Check
We have performed a system check and detected that you need to download and install the item highlighted in red below to use CONNECT. Please do this now and then enter the site again.
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.5+
PS: I got similar crap on www.mycokemusic.at a while back. They gave away free music which I wasn't even able to listen to unless I used IE and activated ActiveX. Bummer, dudes! Freaking losers! Hell, did I not care! Never came back ...
You are right, MDA certainly appears to encourage this strategy. However, I don't think anyone using a graphical interface to build an application can actually work with this write/draw, compile, verify strategy without risking big time failure.
And that's the point. MDA is perceived as something which makes the task of developing software easier. It doesn't,it just takes away some of the grudge work (i.e. coding standard blocks).
I quote from a technical whitepaper found here :
Great! Tell managers to buy and use MDA so they don't have to put up with these pathetic "computer experts" any longer! They can just go ahead and "design" their own business software, it has become so easy now!
Or look at the following quote from this source:
The idea is to save an expensive software team and exactly that leads to the failures people experienced with MDA (or any new technology that was supposed to make life so much easier). Those vendors sell their software to PHBs who then let their "business solution" be written by code monkeys who are not only unable to complete the task but don't even realize they never had a chance with their skill set (But they offered it for almost no money, so they got the contract!).
Macrovision only works if your VCR has special AGC settings. Ancient VCRs had different AGC time constants and were therefore able to record anything. Eventually, producers were forced to stop making them, and all legal new VCRs have to use a predefined AGC algorithm/behavior which bails out on Macrovision signals.
...
Since only these particular AGC settings make Macrovision copy protection work, old players may play and record Macrovision protected stuff just fine
You correctly point out that poor or inadequate qualification contributed to the downfall of the project. Which leads to the point: What was the purpose of MDA for this project?
...
IMHO there exists the theory in PHB's minds that if you can do something graphically, it's much easier and you can hire less qualified people to accomplish great feats. The whole description of the project had this written all over and in big letters.
Just think of joice quotes from the GP like "caused a large divide to develop", "system people, generally well qualified programmers, had little or no interest", "application programmers, on the other hand, had absolutely no understanding", "OO modeling concepts seemed to confuse the business domain experts".
I can literally see some PHB there telling his peers: "Great, lets get rid of all this command line stuff and text editing, spend x amount of money on fancy software, get the same result faster and overall save a bundle!" Unfortunately a person who knows how to design a great software architecture is hard to find but still required, whether you use MDA or whether you have cheap code monkeys for the grudge work.
And if you compare the likely output from one genius + MDA versus a similar genius + many code crunchers, chances are the second choice works out better. While the many code crunchers may not be geniuses, they usually do contribute useful thoughts and feedback, something an MDA doesn't! Have you ever seen a GUI design tool which told you straight in your face: "Don't put this menu item here, nobody would find it there!" ?
You may need fewer people but a much greater genius to make a project fly with MDA. Unfortunately it's just those geniuses who are so hard to find in the job market. The reason why PHBs are willing to spend big money on MDA is because they want to save the money spent on the big genius!
If you've seen many projects (as I'm sure you have), you've seen even more people who are in the wrong position but the only people available at the time. And sometimes it still works out, especially if they are able to learn their way into the project internals. This, of course requires hiring smart people. The use of MDA was most likely not the reason for said project to fail (at least not technically), but chances are that the marketing of MDA caused the business guys at the responsible company to make poor hiring decisions.
While the late 90s were the time of the software gods (usually some social misfits with great coding skills and even more attitude, think dotcom), the last few years have tried to completely do without them. Evidently this way doesn't work so well either
I think you misunderstood me here. What I tried to say was:
...)
1. Changing a department from an MS only infrastructure to something else is not easy.
2. With the move Microsoft just made, there is no need to transition away from MS Office, since MS Office now apparently fulfills the rules created in MA
3. Yet, and that's the big advantage for people outside the administration, people who want to exchange documents with the MA administration do not have to use MS Office but can turn to other office suites as they like (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice,
4. Because MA can still use MS Office if they choose to, the directive does not force a complete platform change in MA (for some folks, especially in an administration, changing office suite is just about a complete platform change, since their office suite is all they ever use). This makes it much more likely that other states/countries also mandate open document interchange formats.
5. Hence, we are more likely to see open document formats to become a common criterion for future software acquisitions, which is good for everyone affected. The legislators, who created this directive apparently knew, that MS can not afford to lose sales in MA (just look how they bent over unsuccessfully after losing Munich to linux), and set the MS document format free. Cheers to them!!
But don't forget what it took them to get back in the race! They must now provide a office productivity suite with an open format for document interchange. Isn't this exactly what all of us OpenOffice/KOffice/Whatever-users have been hoping for in our wildest dreams ?
....
Sure, many offices in MA will use MS Word after that policy change, but you as average citizen communicating with on of these offices will be able to use any word processor.
Also, don't forget, that now, after MA was able to get such a directive through without seriously hurting their own IT infrastructure (changing all departments from MS Word to some other suite is not easy), other states or countries may follow suit
Heroin is not only taken by addicts. If you take it in certain ways, you can stay away from addiction for quite a while. In this case a doctor shouldn't give you the drug which is exactly not what you are aiming for (The you doesn't mean you personally but "you" as heroin user :-). As a result you would try to get it from somewhere else. Just think of cannabis or cocaine, which are addictive to only few, and yet people pay premium prices on the black market.
You may well argue that the war on drugs has not created the intended results. However, it has been fought in many different ways (thing of extremely liberal politics in the Netherlands and excessively strict ways in some south east asian countries). There appears to be a desire in many humans to drug themselves even if that results in great damage to themselves and others. If you are strict, you may hold off some who may have tried it under more liberal conditions, but you increase related crime because of the high risk associated with trade and consumption. If you are liberal, fewer addicts turn criminal but there are more in the pool. Add to that that the success rate in addiction treatment is very low and you have a problem here as well.
Repeatedly I read the theory that all (or most) drug related crimes and activities would misteriously go away if those drugs would be administered by trained professionals who would only give them to those who really need them.
There exist drugs which are handed out like this (all prescription drugs) and yet there also exists a blooming black market for those. Just read your favourite spam if you don't believe me. So if the concept doesn't work for Cialis, Viagra, Prozac and whatever they are called (I'm just citing from the spam I get), why would this suddenly work with heroin, crack and cannabis ?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most addicts start thinking about ending their addiction for the first time once they are confronted with a criminal court (i.e. get a drastic picture of their situation) ? The vast majority of drug addicts will only go to those doctors voluntarily if no questions are asked but certainly not to break with their habbits or to go through often painful treatment (just read the conspiracy theories about methadone as substitute for heroin out there!).
You seem to derive from an evolutionary stand point, why pedophelia makes sense, yet you have the (quite common and also in my sense normal) feeling, that there is a lot wrong with that.
...). Note , that this is what turned the ancient society of apes into the modern society where brains count.
Let me state here concisely why pedophelia is sick and has nothing to do with the drive for yet younger sex mates and why it receives harsh punishment by society:
Society assumes that a sexual relationship is something consensual, which means both involved parties agree that they want to have sex.
There are some ways of working around this limitation (consensual) and it is those kinds which are illegal (or rather disgusting, as you call it):
1. Threat of violence or other harm. This would constitute rape and while it may increase the chances of spreading your genes yet further, society has decided that the ability to threaten someone should not help you spread your genes. Society generally doesn't accept personal gains due to the threat of harm (see robbery,
2. Abusing authority. This would cover cases of sexual harassment but also many instances of pedophelia. I can't imagine a 4 year old child that actual wants sex, so adults abuse their authority over them to get their way. As you can imagine, society has something against such conduct.
You can ask any psycologist and he will confirm that essentially all pedophelia cases fall into one of the two above categories, leaving behind seriously disturbed youngsters.
That explains why society has decided to do something about it and why you and most others (including myself) find pedophelia rather disgusting. You can argue whether people who engage in this conducts need therapy, prison or both, but the justification with evolutionary logic should and does not apply here.
I guess that's the whole idea of this new Intel design. They have finally learned that people don't want to have a powerful room heater under their desk just to type an email to their friend, while watching DVDs on a desktop is lame with all the fan noise necessary to keep the CPU operating.
Intel may have finally learned that this may be the reason why people buy laptops (without EVER taking them outside their home) or that cute little mac mini. Most people consistently don't care about actual performance any more as long as the computer does what they want it to do (insert favourite joke about viruses and spyware here).
By putting mobile pentiums on the desktop they allow PC makers to design something slick (think mac mini) while still selling state of the art silicon (= make more money than they do with low end chips). I hope it works out like that!
Beforehand: My post did not attempt to judge the merits of the new constitution. All I wanted to say was that people voted against something that politicians strongly wanted and that would have been a constitution for a union of mostly small countries then tied closer together.
...
Europe may not be falling apart because of this, but you can take for certain that politicians have other things on their mind right now than starting a struggle with a software monopolist who would threaten them with higher software prices if they even touch that "evil satan linux"-thing.
Think of it: While the EU is about to bust Microsoft for their monopoly practices, no individual country in Europe (inside or outside the EU!) would ever dare to pursue such a measure. The annual budget of smaller EU countries equals the amount of money Microsoft has sitting in the banks, and don't even start comparing the annual budget of IBM with those numbers
I seriously doubt that many european politician on a national (much less community) level have enough time, guts and energy at the moment to start FOSS-initiatives at the moment. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Villasante just talks nicely in order to polish the damaged image of the EU in the public or whether actual measures will result from this.
Most of the larger corporations in Europe are ready to switch, having done extensive development work with FOSS tools internally. However, they never exposed their efforts since the vast majority of governments are completely tied with Microsoft and would never consider anything else.
Doesn't it strike anyone as unusual that it actually makes headlines if a town like Munich turns to linux? Shouldn't there be many more initiatives like that in a healthy market place ?
One reason for this complete lockin is that Europe still hasn't grown together (and might actually fall apart yet more after the failed elections about the new EU constitution in France and Netherlands), and individual governments don't seem to have the guts or the power anymore to stand up against an industy giant and monopolist.
If I had to set up a linux computer for someone computer illiterate, I'd just set it up the way he/she likes it and then turn on the firewall.
As a computer illiterate he/she doesn't need to provide services to the internet, so there's no chance of remote exploits. The exact same applies to Windows, so that's a draw.
But you certainly don't need Norton whatever because while linux viruses may exist in theory, I just haven't come around any linux email viruses or spyware (I've used linux almost exclusively for the last 8 years, and yes, this includes my office desk).
With this setup you don't need an internet connection at night (dialup anyone ?), downloading stuff and patching and whatnot (at least under linux, *BSD, MacOS)
This is not correct. Any developer can license his code under pretty much any license (or even not at all). The nice thing about GPL is that this license model appeals to many people, hence it is widely used.
However, nobody forces you to use GPL (unless you pass on GPLed code oder derivatives thereof).
If anyone mended the GPL so that certain countries oder groups of people were not to be able to license GPL code, I suspect most current GPL code providers would stick to the current GPL version or switch to a different model without the new provisions.
You should rephrase you statement as: This is the "great" thing about the OSS-community, that their software is licensed regardless of ideological differences.
First: If you steal a car which has the key left in it and which is running, it's still punishable by the law.
Second (just a detail): If I had P2P running on my home PC, I'd post my doctoral thesis. It is published anyway (just check out your favourite universities' library), I don't earn money from selling it (in fact, you can find it online), so why not use P2P to distribute it. Hey, that's supposedly the official justification for P2P, not illegal MP3s!
I read a story about a similar issue (just several decades ago), where someone used someone elses electric power (i.e. ran two wires from his power line). The argument back then was that nothing was stolen because all the electrons taken away were promptly returned.
As a result the law was updated so that this particular behavior became illegal (something most of us would agree with). In this case the definition of theft had to be updated. The law did not mandate that all power line are to be buried under 10 feet thick concrete (to make them secure).
Now we have many folks hooking up wLAN access points who don't know how to properly configure them, essentally leaving them open. I've read numerous stories about war driving/flying/biking/sailig/whatever here on slashdot.
So most commons (who don't know how to encrypt wLAN but want an access point) will be very happy about this new definition of theft. This may lead to some funny results (as TFA helps to point out) but most of us will understand what the point of this law is and find it agreeable.
Result: expect this law to remain and to be extended to most places. In some cases courts will have to decide whether a particular case is theft or not.
Well aparently there are quite a few out there. A data base of some "pure herbal" penis enlargement selling company was leaked two weeks after a SPAM effort some months ago, showing that in this particular case about 6000 (six thousand !!!) people spent an average of US$ 100 !!!
Whoever that spammer was, he made a load of cash (What would you do with US$ 600000 ?) of these 6000 morons. I don't remember the link anymore, but google might find more info. Think of that and you know why we all get flooded with spam!
Douglas Adams had this thought and reused city names for common concepts which don't have a name in the english language.
Check out http://folk.uio.no/alied/TMoL.html for more
Things will get funny when applications hit the market which will require SP2 or higher (remember apps for NT4 ?). At this point we'll end up with a funny mix of XP boxes in every place, some on SP1, others on SP2+.
Don't forget: SP2 doesn't only fix security issues, but most certainly introduces tons of bug fixes, something new apps might well depend on.
Don't forget that a lot of commercial software used by corporations is hideously expensive and/or was developed in house by folks who are lo longer there (think: poorly slapped together VBA crap). In the case of commercial software they may also have cancelled the support contract for cost reasons (I know we have done this for a number of apps: support sucked and new versions sucked even more).
In both cases software upgrades may come with a big price tag which might well discourage affected companies from upgrading to SP2.
Sad part is, that something like this worked for windows users pretty well. I had a few of them almost screaming at me that I should check my (linux) machine for that evil SULFNBK.EXE file which was supposed to be some "internet based virus"
... would be to track the person who leaks the information.
... even honest companies don't like it if internal memos are leaked!
I don't know whether there exist automated tools to introduce spelling errors (notice, that even the grammar errors in the document result from nothing more than simple word substitutions) in CC copies or for receiver side auto copies (often emails to senior execs are auto CCd to their secretaries).
I could certainly envision a market for such a tracking tool
Many here think hackers are cool and that FBI deals mostly with script kiddies, i.e. some immature but computer literate goofballs. Point is they deal with hard core criminals and not every computer expert is used to that sort of environment. Do you think those gangsters who sell a million credit card numbers care about a human life or two?
When I read slashdot, I read comments from people bragging in detail how they set up their security, what they do in their business and what their business does wrong. Others complain about big brother when the FBI wire taps mobsters or stores criminal records. While all these folks may be brilliant computers d00dz and maybe very idealistic about what they do, they are useless in law enforcement.
In addition always think about the following:
Any law enforcement agency wants criminals to think that law enforcement is utterly incompetent. They don't know how to use computers and if you use Windows NT 4.0 SP 4 norwegian edition, NetBSD or Mac OSX, they have no chance in hell of ever catching you. He ????? Do you really think an FBI guy is going to tell you how to commit computer crimes they can't solve ?????
When it came to surveiling and oppressing their own people, money was never an issue even for the poorest countries in the world. Laws against unreadable license plates exist in at least every country which issues automated speeding tickets through radar boxes.
Integrating RFID in clothes won't work. Cars are strongly regulated - people are used to the fact
that they have to ask their government for kind permission to operate a car. If you put restrictions on clothes, even the dumbest soap opera watching pop corn munchers will start an outcry.
AFAIK there exist cameras which automatically pick up license plate information. Here in Austria it's used for section control, where they place two such cameras at a given distance and automatically issue a ticket if you need too little time to cover the distance.
Point is: RFID serves interesting purposes but certainly not that of surveying ordinary citizens. One good purpose might well be intercepting car thieves at the border. Remember. it's simple to swap license plates, whereas it takes time and effort to swap all four tires without getting noticed.