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User: HangingChad

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  1. That might be true in government on Is Fear Reducing the Publicity for Open Source? · · Score: 4, Interesting
    In government, at almost any level, if you try an open source implementation it's very wise just to keep quiet about it. Then when the reaction comes you can inform them their system has been running on an OSS platform for the last six months without a hitch. If MSFT gets wind of it they'll be calling legislators up and down the chain reminding them how much money proprietary software brings them. And if there's the slightest little problem the NBMers will seize on that to discredit the entire project.

    My business customers don't seem to give a crap. If it works, they'll use it. MSFT can whine all they want and it'll get them nowhere. On the other hand if MSFT offers them a compelling deal they're not going to have any more loyalty to OSS.

    Ballmer is engaged in an endless game of whack-a-mole. And the moles are popping up faster than even the mighty MSFT can keep pace with. The fact that Ballmer has to waste his time to personally strong-arm organizations is the highest compliment he can pay to those of you involved in OSS projects. Not only can you change the world for the better, you can get under Ballmer's skin and make him burn some avgas in that expensive plane he flies around in. Hehe. Bonus.

  2. Re:Xandros on Ubuntu: Best Linux Desktop for Business? · · Score: 1
    Why did the parent get moded Redundant for that? I like Xandros a lot. It's a great business distro for people coming out of Windoze World.

    I'd like to try comparing Xandros to Ubuntu. Haven't tried either of them on a laptop. That would be an interesting comparison.

  3. Trusting MSFT is like trusting Bush on Microsoft to Open up Office Formats · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    You know they're lying but you're not going to find out about it until later. It's going to be structured to be a good deal for them and their buddies and a bad deal for anyone else. And we're all going to end up taking it up the butt at some point.

    I don't trust MSFT and never will and don't believe anything Bush says anymore. Bully and lie to people long enough and your credibility is hosed permanently.

  4. Sony - The hits just keep on coming! on Sony Completes First Full-Length Blu-ray Disc · · Score: 3, Interesting
    First the rootkit debacle, now first Blu-ray Disc (BD) to contain a full-length, high-definition feature film. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

    Sony Entertainment needs to clean house. Sell off the movie studios and record company. Fire the bean counter CEO and replace him with an engineer and go back to making the very best electronic devices in the world.

    Follow up the rootkit with Charlie's Angels. F'ing brilliant.

  5. What do you mean "in the future"? on Cell Phones to Monitor Traffic Flow · · Score: 2, Insightful
    However, a staff attorney for the EFF says that tracking might violate federal law and 'increases the chances that information will be used for more invasive purposes in the future.

    With National Security letters blowing like leaves in the wind, that will be about 15 minutes after it's activated.

  6. Amazon and Sony on Sony, Amazon Detail Rootkit CD Buybacks · · Score: 1, Interesting
    It sure would've been interesting to sit in on those discussions. I wonder if they were cordial or Amazon dropped hints about chunking their product line?

    As bad as this incident has been the response and comments of the Sony-BMG execs just added fuel to the fire. Their response was arrogant and clueless, rivaled only by the Bush administration for sheer gall and contempt of the average person.

    If Sony is reflective of the attitude of big business toward their customers, then this rootkit business is only the warm up act. The captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign, please return to your seats and hang on.

  7. Not happening on Lie Detectors to be Used for Airline Security · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I'm willing to trade 10-15 minutes of my time every time I fly (and that's pretty damn often) if it means that thousands of people might not die needlessly.

    It's not ever going to happen again in any of our lifetimes. The terrorists burned that plan from ever working again because the pilots and people on the plane know that they're dead either way, so there's no reason not to resist. If they have a bomb, no difference. Dead when the bomb goes off or when the airliner hits whatever they're aiming at. No one on the plane has anything to lose. You can't control people with nothing to lose.

    The 10-15 minutes multiplied by the millions of people who fly each day, the money for all the extra security...it's all meaningless. We're wasting millions of man-hours and millions of dollars to try and stop something that's not ever going to happen until a new generation comes along with "don't resist" drilled into their heads so a hundred of them just sit there like sheep and let five guys drive them into a wall.

    But you can bet the terrorists know the things we're missing. That's where the next one will come from. Somewhere we're not expecting. And Condi Rice will be on TV going, "Who could have guessed they would use..." whatever it was. A little success for them goes a long way. We'll tie ourselves in knots and exhaust our treasury fighting phantoms. We'll over-react, like usual, and end up making more enemies than we started with while expending billions to little or no effect in the process.

    All because of people like you.

  8. Question on Ubuntu On The Business Desktop · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'm wondering how many of you using a Windoze environment at work are running Linux at home? I am, just wondering how many other people do. I've got one token Winders box at home but the majority of the network is Linux.

    Makes you wonder how long it's going to stay that way?

  9. Activate the HAARP array, Lord Vader! on HAARP Amping It Up · · Score: 1

    You and your pathetic band are no match for my fully operational HAARP array!!

  10. 98% of MSFT Funded Studies Favor MSFT! on Microsoft Claims Firms 'Hitting a Wall' With Linux · · Score: 5, Funny
    This headline just in from the really, really obvious department.

    How pathetic is it when the only people who say nice things about you are the people you PAY to say nice things about you? That's like paying people to be your friend.

    MSFT has the best friends money can buy.

  11. History check on Stiffer Penalties for Copyright Violations · · Score: 1
    The DMCA was signed by Clinton, but the passage was by a Republican controlled House and Senate. Republicans gained control in both houses in 1994. I believe the DMCA was passed in 1998, which made it one of their top legislative priorities. Don't know how the voting went, but it certainly wasn't unanimous and if memory serves it was attached to something else...it was a long time ago.

    I agree the whole nest is corrupt to a greater or lesser degree. Hillary Clinton rides on the same corporate jets to corporate fund raising events. I'll bet you can count the number of her constituents who get to meet her directly on one hand unless they've donated more than $20,000.00.

    I'd still maintain the current Republican administration and Congress have taken corruption and selling out the American people to a whole new level. If Clinton would have been giving out no bid government contracts to a company he used to run, the extreme right would have been calling for an armed revolution. When their guys do it, not a word. We had a budget surplus when Clinton was in office, we are trillions in debt today. Token efforts to cut spending by looting food programs. Clinton lies about getting head and there are calls for impeachment. This administration lies about the reasons for starting a WAR and not a peep out of the right.

    I'll stand by my position that the Republicans are far more corrupt on the whole than Democrats. Both are corrupt to some extent, both are capable of massive evil, but nothing you said changed my mind on that. It may be the lesser of two evils, but it's obviously lesser.

    For the record I'm a Republican and an old style conservative. Or was until the 2000 election. Since then most of my money has gone to Democratic candidates, though not exclusively. I would have backed McCain in 1999 but not now. He's stood shoulder to shoulder with Bush, supported his failed policies, voted for the Patriot Act and Iraq war. He's not going to wash that stink off over a tiff about prisoner torture. I have a lot of respect for what he did in Viet Nam, just disappointed he didn't carry that same courage into the political arena.

    Give me a third party option that has a chance and I'll get behind them instead. I'm ready for it, sounds like you are, too. Let's do it.

  12. Getting tough doesn't work on Stiffer Penalties for Copyright Violations · · Score: 3, Insightful
    So get tougher! Typical Republican mentality: If beating on it doesn't work, try beating it harder.

    Never mind terrorism, the war on drugs, and corporate theft. Let's divert federal resources to go after those pornographers and college kids trading music! They've either got their priorities totally hosed up or they have WAY more people than they need and this is Justice Department busy work.

    Ignorance and incompetence rivaled only by those who continue to support a corrupt, ineffective and incompetent administration. Usually justifying their misplaced and hypocritical loyalty by whining that the Democrats aren't any better. Well, it's time to face the facts: The Democrats ARE better. They may not be the ideal but the worst of them could do better than this bunch of corrupt losers.

  13. Darknets have been around a long time on Darknets Coming Soon? · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I won't say who around here has been using one for years (insert innocent look here) but it's not a new concept. It's only people they know and those with technical skill higher than the average bear. High enough to figure out how to encrypt files with PGP. Not bullet proof, but it sure makes it more difficult for ISP's to figure out what you have in your password protected ftp folder. Especially mixed in with a lot of family pictures, videos and routine stuff similarly secured.

    That group has lists of what they have rather than the items themselves, so it's fairly easy to check for particular files. Sometimes they'll collaborate on new movies coming out. You bought Batman last month, we'll buy Mr. & Mrs. Smith next month. Maybe one of them has a coupon or gets a copy from a neighbor. And so on. They IM back and forth, but never the FTP address which everyone already knows.

    It's not exactly a darknet but the principle is similar. Trusted users, encrypted files. If corporate snoops were going to try and catch that group they'd have to hack their way on to an FTP server, pull files pretty much at random then spend days trying to crack the PGP wrapper. Good luck with that. You might be surprised at how much material five or six different families actually have. Movies, music the differing tastes produce quite a wide selection. They save hundreds, maybe thousands a year and the risk is pretty minimal. And there's no special clients required, just a copy of PGP tools. If that group were 10 people or families instead of five, imagine how much more material would be available?

  14. Getting away from making things on Sony's EULA Worse Than Its Rootkit? · · Score: 5, Insightful
    When our society started getting away from making things with intrinsic value and started depending on brain share products for revenue growth this was bound to happen. Since the cost of making copies of a digital work is, essentially, zero, companies trying to squeeze more revenue out of the same entertainment products had only one place to try and mine for extra income. I don't blame them for trying to go after that pool, but do blame them for the tactics they employed.

    I think the shocker for most people is waking up to find how much the playing field has been tilted in favor of the corporation against the individual. All the laws are on their side, Congress has played along with whatever draconian measures they want to dump on common people including pulling the FBI away from terror investigations to go after copyright violators, and instead of throwing out click-through EULA's the courts have tended to back them up. There is no inherent fairness in your relationship with service providers anymore, it's an uphill battle for equity. That's not limited to the entertainment industry, it's an issue here because Sony went far enough over the line. But this same unfairness is woven through all our service provider relationships.

    I am doing something besides complaining. I'm working with the leader or our state house of representatives on a couple initiatives to even out the playing field a little. One is setting a higher standard for binding arbitration. The poster child I'm using for that one is car dealers trying to skirt consumer protection laws by legislating via contract, but that would also impact click-through EULA's. The other is making it more difficult to change the state venue of laws for products and services sold and delivered in this state. That got a surprisingly warm, almost enthusiastic, reception. My presentation line was asking why we were letting North Dakota dictate how we were going to do business. That provoked the legislative equivalent of a "Hell, yeah!" But there are legal issues associated with that one I didn't know about. It's not going to be as easy to change. The good news is I didn't get laughed at.

    What surprises me is companies taking a hard line with their customers. That just seems like such a no-win proposition, even for a large, diverse company like Sony. You're looking at DVD players and like the Panasonic and Sony. What's going to make the difference? You think back on this incident and buy the Panasonic. You're making a choice between a Sony and Canon video camera, even though Sony makes the CCD's for many of the Canon models, you might go with the other brand. This small segment of that giant company taints everything they do. It can't be worth it.

  15. Small correction on Dell's Open Source Desktop Systems · · Score: 1
    Since M$ can apply large amounts of financial pressure against vendors by saying, "if you pre-install Linux at any large scale, we'll pull our preferred customer discount for your OEM Windows prices",

    That's not exactly how they phrase it. What they do say is if you buy x number less than you're buying now, and x is a very small number, we're cutting your discount to Y, much smaller discount. It's a subtle but significant difference as saying it your way might land them in hot water for price fixing. One of the few things our toothless corporate oversight authorities seem to take seriously.

    Overall I think it's a good thing because it gives other OEM manufacturers a chance at a hardware market they wouldn't have had before. If Dell doesn't want to deliver Linux boxes, someone else will. And since I don't think much of Dell to begin with, that's fine with me. We don't need Dell to make Linux a success. That's going to happen with or without them.

  16. Good luck with that on Quantum Computing Regulation Already? · · Score: 3, Insightful
    With much of our engineering outsourced to China and India and most of the companies producing the chips and components also located overseas, just how does the US government plan on keeping any technology bottled up over here? If we don't sell it to them someone else will. Just like the Japanese sold the Russians precision computer controlled mills that allowed the Russians to make their submarines quieter by orders of magnitude. The Japanese apologized for that, which made it all better.

    It's the PGP Retardo Fed Fest all over again. Technology advances, you can only keep a secret for so long, especially depending on potentially hostile foreign governments making the devices or support devices. Particularly when those same potentially hostile governments have massive databases of information on US citizens conveniently supplied by US businesses outsourcing their data management.

    Straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel. Deal with it and move along.

  17. As we say out in the country on SAP Exec Disparages Open Source As IP Socialism · · Score: 1

    Kick the trough and the pigs start squealing.

  18. Re:OpenDocument Vs. "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winne on OpenDocument Gains New Fans · · Score: 1
    But with Microsoft there is a strange group of people who can only be described as "Microsoft Is Always Teh Winner" believers.

    To their credit it's been true up to this point. What's different now is that the rest of the IT world seems to be diverging away from MSFT and in some cases collaborating against them.

    MSFT has a choice of stubbornly staying the course and continue trying to hang on to their monopoly, which they'll eventually lose but will make more money until they collapse into a nitch market player. The other option is to support open standards where their products aren't the only choice available to users. In which case their business will decline gradually to a nitch market player.

    Same result, but they have a choice how to get there.

  19. Re:A matter of trust... on IBM And Sony Form Linux Alliance · · Score: 1
    Maybe I should think of it as having "multiple personality disorder."

    Or, in the case of a company like EDS, a seven headed dragon. ;) Tough to kill once it gets in the door of your IT operation.

    Think of this patent pool as the Microsoft Protection Program. The nuclear option if MSFT tries swinging the patent ax at Linux. If MSFT was smart they'd start planning a new competitive strategy. Fortunately, there's no fear of a ray of intelligence penetrating executive row at the Redmond campus.

    It's still an interesting question you raise. What happens when one element under a company umbrella goes bad? In this case Sony Entertainment. It does reflect on the rest of the company. SE had two strikes in the latest DRM debacle: One was doing it, the other was their arrogant response once it came out.

  20. Scares me too on State Department Developing Cyber Toolkit · · Score: 1
    With the internet being the defacto standard for terrorist communication, both to one another and to the world via terrorist sponsored websites, its a good thing that the US is finally doing something to be proactive in this area.

    And if that's all they were using it for, I'd be all about it. But just like the national security letters. The FBI started papering the landscape with those, many times for investigations not related to terrorism. And what happens when we finally track down the few thousand odd really dangerous terrorists out there? Say five years from now. Of course they'll just pull this technology offline, right?

    It's not how the technology might be routinely used that's the issue, it's how it could be abused. Especially in the hands of incompetent, corrupt government officials using it for political ends. Particularly if those incompetent, corrupt officials are in real danger of having their collective ass handed to them in the next mid-term election. So far this bunch hasn't shown any restraint using government resources for their own corrupt ends.

    That doesn't mean the technology shouldn't be developed but it does mean that before it's deployed there should be a process in place, that includes judicial oversight, for its use.

  21. Would be an issue if... on How Microsoft Takes a Name · · Score: 1
    So apparantly Microsoft was able to convince the guy that his case for using "Windows Defender" was weak, and they got him to sign it over.

    If MSFT approached him with the intent to bully him into releasing a name they wanted for their own uses it might be argued they obtained his consent by fraud and the contract could be voidable. MSFT allowed that product to be distributed until they found it to be inconvenient. Their actions in reference to the individual in question were, at a minimum, self-serving. It really depends on how it went down. Had he the means to defend himself, there's a good chance he could have prevailed on the name issue. Provided he didn't put "Microsoft" anywhere in the name you could argue brand confusion but few of those stand up in court. Just ask Victor's Secret.

    Even if they get away with it, and they probably will, it was both heavy-handed and ethically dubious. In other words, MSFT's true character.

  22. Burning witches will be next on Kansas Board of Ed. Adopts Intelligent Design · · Score: 1
    the Board of Education also went so far as to redefine science itself, saying that it is 'no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

    But if they burn, then they were innocent. Nobody expects the Kansas Inquisition!

  23. Re:You're all thinking it... on Build Your Own Linux-Based Satellite · · Score: 1
    Do not mock the power of my fully operational P0rN Star!!

    I find your lack of faith disturbing, Commander.

  24. What is a leftist? on Chinese Eco-Cities · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Or is that just a label you toss around without really thinking about what it means?

    The inhabitants of this marvelous new city will sure be happy to be relieved of the burden of making their own choices, not to mention the constant disappointment of finding out they made the "unenlightened" choice again.

    So we have this right wing utopia where the government lies to us to scare people into going along with whatever retarded scheme they've come up with this week. That keep photographers away from military caskets coming back to the states so people remain "unenlightened" of the true cost of war. That sets up prisons in foreign countries so they can torture people without being bothered by that pesky Bill of Rights, and expounds that the best way to balance the budget and help the poor is to grant massive tax cuts to the wealthy.

    After the last 5 years of failed, miserable, lying, incompetent Republican rule you have no right to criticize anyone else's government.

    At least they're doing something.

  25. You illustrate an interesting point on FBI Widens Use of National Security Letters · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Now I will be labeled as a USA hater, when it is the opposite.

    You can love your country and hate the current administration. There is no conflict between those positions.