It was a long, drawn out, complicated mess, and not well handled by the government authorities.
What David Koresh and his followers didn't do that would almost certainly have saved their lives was come out with their hands up when asked to do so by clearly identifiable authorities. That would have required an amount of common sense greatly absent, however.
Consider the McCarthy witch hunts. If the technology had been in place to precisely know who 'the real Communists' were, innocent non-Communists would not have been persecuted. The information would have been better, hence far fewer innocent lives would have been ruined.
Replace all occurances of the word "criminal" with "big fuzzy kitty cat" and and "terrorist" with "glazed doughnut with purple frosting" and you will see what the US government is really concerned with--tracking big fuzzy kitty cats who keep eating all the glazed doughnuts with purple frosting on them.
Or run ROT-13 on it all, and it delivers a message telling us to wave to Barney up there in the black helicopter.
Just a few weeks ago, I remember reading on The Register that the US government had pumped an infusion of cash into Iridium (buying a thousand or so phones for various government agencies) to keep Iriduim from going under.
So it's clear that Iridium is seen as a friendly resource by the powers that be.
Isn't it true that organisations only render evidence inadmissable as evidence if they don't gather it under a warrant? This means, they can do as much wiretapping as they like when out fishing for criminals, then they can apply for a warrant to get the evidence needed to nail the criminals.
I would strongly suspect that there are military organizations already taking heavy advantage of Linux. For instance, Iraq is embargoed, and any shipment of supercomputers to Iraq would be closely monitored. So it's likely they are instead using something like a Linux clustered architecture for their advanced weapons development. The machines are shipped into the country as innocent Windows 95 boxes for the hospital, then reconfigured, etc.
Beowulf is "supercomputers for the masses" after all.
I have started using NetBSD, and have hopes of migrating all my Unix needs over to it, and away from Linux. The channels for communications about use of the system are just too clogged up in the Linux community.
I've noticed more and more clueless posts appearing in the FreeBSD Usenet discussions, and am glad that I elected for NetBSD instead. It seems to be a more diverse platform (on tons of hardware types,) and a community that concentrates on the core value of a Unix system, which is NOT (IMHO) making it a general purpose platform for the masses.
I am not saying this to pit communities against one another, these are just my observations.
I seriously question wether the 'movement' will scale to such a degree that the proverbial last 10% of the needs will ever be filled. Newbies won't want to be directed to a pile of croft and told to start digging. Programmers don't think like dishwashers, and never will.
It's been said many times that OpenSource projects will always only be 80% completed, because that makes the product "good enough" for the person whose itch needs satisfying. This is a serious problem with the OpenSource development model. It will take organizations committing to the OpenSource paradigm for them to dedicate staff to doing the grunt work.
You aren't going to ever convince prima-donna programmers that it's noble of them to dig and maintain the latrine. And newbies will be driven away if they're handed the shovel.
USB support involves a lot more than just getting the OS to recognize the USB jack, just as PnP support does. Every USB device then has to have drivers written (or adapted) to it.
I have USB speakers and a USB scanner attached to one of my machines, which I don't doubt will take a long time (if ever) to be supported by Linux (the speakers, for one, probably are as OS dependent as a WinModem.) But that in part is why I have a number of different machines on my home network (now up to 100 mb speed).
Microsoft could even (if they perceived Linux as a competitor on the desktop, which they do not) release a version of "Windows on Linux" that would ossify Linux. If it were a shrink-wrapped GUI layer that only worked with certain existing versions of Linux (say, RedHat 6) it would grab the mainstream "Joe Sixpack" market. That would make it far more difficult for people wanting to push kernel development ahead, aside from those who don't mind being marginalized (granted, with an evolving system that would continue to improve.) A shrink-wrapped GUI layer wouldn't have to be GPL'd, either, any more than Star Office or Applixware (or Metro-X) has to. It could really totally replace the X environment.
It's probably not gonna happen, though. Microsoft doesn't view Linux as a threat on the desktop. And does anybody here remember the feeble aborted product "OS/2 for Windows" that was one of the dying tremors of that OS?
Indeed, it makes it much easier for packages to modify the base configuration of the system. Should a package management system really be having that much control of the core system.
Microsoft would never release a version of Linux. If they felt the need for a Unix-style platform, they would almost certainly choose BSD instead, as all the other proprietary OS vendors tend to (i.e. Next/Apple). Microsoft gave proper credit to Mosaic in the early versions of IE that were adapted from that browser, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be willing to credit the BSD developers in the same way.
Linux has virtually nothing to offer that isn't also available in at least as good a form as BSD.
They didn't say better than NT. They left it open for interpretation. I can choose to interpret it as meaning it has a better filesystem than CP/M. Or a better filesystem than that big green Steelcase over in the corner (it's been upgraded to Pendeflex).
Don't be so touchy. Linux is about the freedom to interpret reality however you wish.
It has already changed in many distributions. Red Hat's distributions for some time have obfuscated the/etc/rc.d directory into a big tree of directories, one for each runlevel. This was apparently done to make it safer for graphical tools (Python scripts) to be used in configuring the system.
I went back to Slackare awhile ago in disgust. Not because I want to be reactionary, but because I feel more in control of configuration when there is a clean set of files in one directory I can edit.
The only thing worse than a GUI designer who thinks s/he knows what you want to do is one who knows what s/he wants you to do.
Linux became popular, so we've always supported it.
Journalists aren't supposed to support anything. Journalists are supposed to just report on issues, and new technology, etc. It is when pundits think that they need to support things, issues, and movements, that the hype begins to reek.
Since the whole survey has turned into a vote by a series of Perl scripts hacking the survey site, I think we could say that Larry Wall (or his code, in any case) has done almost all the voting.
It's just another WWW poll, and not much more can be said about it. I don't know why Time dignifies the concept with their name. I'm not trying to slam any of the people who've made it to a high ranking on the list, but this thing is about as stacked as any survey I have ever witnessed.
Awhile back, a publisher tried to engage in a "Greatest Books" survey and it was basically taken over by Ayn Rand fiends. This isn't a lot different.
They should rephrase the question "which perl script can pump through the most votes" and just leave it at that.
Yes, I know I just forked the topic of my message from being about the legitimacy of the survey to a rant about the feasibility of a perl script hack of the poll page. I only mentioned it as one hacking venue. It could be done with Python or suchlike as well.
Possibly SGI has decided that they can write better proprietary Graphics software if they don't have to also maintain the platform it runs on. It would be a strategic move to "give away" the base operating system in order to regroup and focus on what SGI is best at: high end graphics. The OS is just the black tar surface. The applications are the high performance vehicles that roll across it.
I doubt (but then this whole subject is based on rumors yet, is it not?) that SGI is giving away the crown jewels yet.
Why should anybody except ESR's "choir" (a certain zealous sub-section of the Free Software community) care what he says?
It's dangerous for anybody with almost all their eggs invested in a project like Linux to complain about a lack of innovation. Linux is one of the least innovative software projects out there. It's basically a cloneing operation.
Granted, there are tons of innovative projects going on in the Open Source community, just like there are in many areas of computer science, and -um- all of life. Usually, though, the innovation is happening somewhere far away from the blowhards.
Oh, and it's shocking to hear somebody seriously say we shouldn't spend more money on research to cure A.I.D.S. Are you implying that "throwing money at the problem" is all the scientists intend to do with the funding? The AIDS research foundations don't just blow money like the decadent creep profiled in the first half of the article...
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It was a long, drawn out, complicated mess, and not well handled by the government authorities.
What David Koresh and his followers didn't do that would almost certainly have saved their lives was come out with their hands up when asked to do so by clearly identifiable authorities. That would have required an amount of common sense greatly absent, however.
Hindsight is always 20/20 of course.
Consider the McCarthy witch hunts. If the technology had been in place to precisely know who 'the real Communists' were, innocent non-Communists would not have been persecuted. The information would have been better, hence far fewer innocent lives would have been ruined.
Replace all occurances of the word "criminal" with "big fuzzy kitty cat" and and "terrorist" with "glazed doughnut with purple frosting" and you will see what the US government is really concerned with--tracking big fuzzy kitty cats who keep eating all the glazed doughnuts with purple frosting on them.
Or run ROT-13 on it all, and it delivers a message telling us to wave to Barney up there in the black helicopter.
Or whatever.
Just a few weeks ago, I remember reading on The Register that the US government had pumped an infusion of cash into Iridium (buying a thousand or so phones for various government agencies) to keep Iriduim from going under.
So it's clear that Iridium is seen as a friendly resource by the powers that be.
Isn't it true that organisations only render evidence inadmissable as evidence if they don't gather it under a warrant? This means, they can do as much wiretapping as they like when out fishing for criminals, then they can apply for a warrant to get the evidence needed to nail the criminals.
I would strongly suspect that there are military organizations already taking heavy advantage of Linux. For instance, Iraq is embargoed, and any shipment of supercomputers to Iraq would be closely monitored. So it's likely they are instead using something like a Linux clustered architecture for their advanced weapons development. The machines are shipped into the country as innocent Windows 95 boxes for the hospital, then reconfigured, etc.
Beowulf is "supercomputers for the masses" after all.
That sounds like it would only be a problem for people who install binaries.
The only reason it would disturb me would be if I couldn't find the source tarball.
I have started using NetBSD, and have hopes of migrating all my Unix needs over to it, and away from Linux. The channels for communications about use of the system are just too clogged up in the Linux community.
I've noticed more and more clueless posts appearing in the FreeBSD Usenet discussions, and am glad that I elected for NetBSD instead. It seems to be a more diverse platform (on tons of hardware types,) and a community that concentrates on the core value of a Unix system, which is NOT (IMHO) making it a general purpose platform for the masses.
I am not saying this to pit communities against one another, these are just my observations.
I seriously question wether the 'movement' will scale to such a degree that the proverbial last 10% of the needs will ever be filled. Newbies won't want to be directed to a pile of croft and told to start digging. Programmers don't think like dishwashers, and never will.
It's been said many times that OpenSource projects will always only be 80% completed, because that makes the product "good enough" for the person whose itch needs satisfying. This is a serious problem with the OpenSource development model. It will take organizations committing to the OpenSource paradigm for them to dedicate staff to doing the grunt work.
You aren't going to ever convince prima-donna programmers that it's noble of them to dig and maintain the latrine. And newbies will be driven away if they're handed the shovel.
USB support involves a lot more than just getting the OS to recognize the USB jack, just as PnP support does. Every USB device then has to have drivers written (or adapted) to it.
I have USB speakers and a USB scanner attached to one of my machines, which I don't doubt will take a long time (if ever) to be supported by Linux (the speakers, for one, probably are as OS dependent as a WinModem.) But that in part is why I have a number of different machines on my home network (now up to 100 mb speed).
Microsoft could even (if they perceived Linux as a competitor on the desktop, which they do not) release a version of "Windows on Linux" that would ossify Linux. If it were a shrink-wrapped GUI layer that only worked with certain existing versions of Linux (say, RedHat 6) it would grab the mainstream "Joe Sixpack" market. That would make it far more difficult for people wanting to push kernel development ahead, aside from those who don't mind being marginalized (granted, with an evolving system that would continue to improve.) A shrink-wrapped GUI layer wouldn't have to be GPL'd, either, any more than Star Office or Applixware (or Metro-X) has to. It could really totally replace the X environment.
It's probably not gonna happen, though. Microsoft doesn't view Linux as a threat on the desktop. And does anybody here remember the feeble aborted product "OS/2 for Windows" that was one of the dying tremors of that OS?
Indeed, it makes it much easier for packages to modify the base configuration of the system. Should a package management system really be having that much control of the core system.
Some say it should.
Some say it shouldn't.
Microsoft would never release a version of Linux. If they felt the need for a Unix-style platform, they would almost certainly choose BSD instead, as all the other proprietary OS vendors tend to (i.e. Next/Apple). Microsoft gave proper credit to Mosaic in the early versions of IE that were adapted from that browser, and I see no reason why they wouldn't be willing to credit the BSD developers in the same way.
Linux has virtually nothing to offer that isn't also available in at least as good a form as BSD.
They didn't say better than NT. They left it open for interpretation. I can choose to interpret it as meaning it has a better filesystem than CP/M. Or a better filesystem than that big green Steelcase over in the corner (it's been upgraded to Pendeflex).
Don't be so touchy. Linux is about the freedom to interpret reality however you wish.
It has already changed in many distributions. Red Hat's distributions for some time have obfuscated the /etc/rc.d directory into a big tree of directories, one for each runlevel. This was apparently done to make it safer for graphical tools (Python scripts) to be used in configuring the system.
I went back to Slackare awhile ago in disgust. Not because I want to be reactionary, but because I feel more in control of configuration when there is a clean set of files in one directory I can edit.
The only thing worse than a GUI designer who thinks s/he knows what you want to do is one who knows what s/he wants you to do.
No, it's people like ESR who are insisting that we use the term 'cracker.'
They can't fire the guy who wrote Netscape.
Linux became popular, so we've always supported it.
Journalists aren't supposed to support anything. Journalists are supposed to just report on issues, and new technology, etc. It is when pundits think that they need to support things, issues, and movements, that the hype begins to reek.
Since the whole survey has turned into a vote by a series of Perl scripts hacking the survey site, I think we could say that Larry Wall (or his code, in any case) has done almost all the voting.
And what would all the nerds on the planet do with an optic nerve clock?
Be more on time to everything?
sheesh.
It's just another WWW poll, and not much more can be said about it. I don't know why Time dignifies the concept with their name. I'm not trying to slam any of the people who've made it to a high ranking on the list, but this thing is about as stacked as any survey I have ever witnessed.
Awhile back, a publisher tried to engage in a "Greatest Books" survey and it was basically taken over by Ayn Rand fiends. This isn't a lot different.
They should rephrase the question "which perl script can pump through the most votes" and just leave it at that.
Yes, I know I just forked the topic of my message from being about the legitimacy of the survey to a rant about the feasibility of a perl script hack of the poll page. I only mentioned it as one hacking venue. It could be done with Python or suchlike as well.
Possibly SGI has decided that they can write better proprietary Graphics software if they don't have to also maintain the platform it runs on. It would be a strategic move to "give away" the base operating system in order to regroup and focus on what SGI is best at: high end graphics. The OS is just the black tar surface. The applications are the high performance vehicles that roll across it.
I doubt (but then this whole subject is based on rumors yet, is it not?) that SGI is giving away the crown jewels yet.
Well, considering what I have been reading in a few newsgroups recently about how badly some 32-bit Linux apps port to Linux Alpha, yes.
Shouldn't the language be "claims" rather than "proclaims."
An official with the company "proclaims" things. A journalist just "claims" them.
I'm not denying the possibility that the rumor is true, just pointing out that it's, um... a rumor, isn't it?
Why should anybody except ESR's "choir" (a certain zealous sub-section of the Free Software community) care what he says?
It's dangerous for anybody with almost all their eggs invested in a project like Linux to complain about a lack of innovation. Linux is one of the least innovative software projects out there. It's basically a cloneing operation.
Granted, there are tons of innovative projects going on in the Open Source community, just like there are in many areas of computer science, and -um- all of life. Usually, though, the innovation is happening somewhere far away from the blowhards.
Oh, and it's shocking to hear somebody seriously say we shouldn't spend more money on research to cure A.I.D.S. Are you implying that "throwing money at the problem" is all the scientists intend to do with the funding? The AIDS research foundations don't just blow money like the decadent creep profiled in the first half of the article...