Umm, he allready does exactly that. And he allready indicated that he makes less than $5/mo/machine to do so. So it seems to me that the issue of if it can be done cheaper is moot.
I handle this task for my own machines, it isn't hard, or time consuming, if you think a little bit first, and write decent scripts. Hell I routinely have updated code running on my lab machines for days before the IT dept gets the same code via up2date. Not only is it easy, it is faster. Lastly, it is a better option, I end up working with the source code directly, and can optimize or tinker if I need/want. I am not locked into some package builders idea of how things should be done.
Anytime you think one of these things is a good idea, you should repeat the following mantra to yourself until the urge passes:
I am ROOT, I alone am the final arbiter of all code to be run on this system. I am ROOT, because the alternative is unacceptable. I am ROOT, and if f I will not meet my responsiblities while enjoying my rights, I will put the XP disk that came with my machine in the CD drive and reboot. Amen
You don't want to eat me, my brother, who is right behind me is much bigger and better-teasting.
Isn't that the correct phrase for Trolls?
Allow me to smash the fallacy of this argument one last time. All you self-correcting market folk, the market is not sentient, it doesn't think, display cognitive abilities, or even self-awareness. It is completely at the mercy of the thinking, scheming, self-aware and cognitively gifted operators who routinely abuse those who naively assign these qualitites to the market. The market has not been unfettered since the last crop of deceitful, thinking operators made a complete hash of the market. That problem was solved by the government regulating aspects of the market.
The utopian ideal of a self-correcting market is unattainable, because to attain it, you need to depend on another utopian ideal, rational consumers. Well we haven;t got rational consumers, and it is unlikely that we ever will have a homogenous group of rational consumers. This always opens the market to abuse by unethical vendors, consumers, and middlemen. Of these the biggest criminals are those who continue to ascribe traits to the market which itr patently cannot have, particularly in the face of overwhelming evidence that their assertions have never historically worked out, and (for good reason) have not been tried again.
Like any other ideal, or postulate, Adam Smith's ideas don;t work verbatim in the real world. Adam Smith's version of capitalism is no more viable than Marx's vision of communism. Adam Smith's idea has, as it's sole feature, the fact that the real world implementation of his ideals end up working out better than the real world implementations of Marx, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. But this is not prima facie evidence that Adam Smith's unabridged ideas are some type of gospel fact. Particularly in view of the fact that we have had far closer implementations of Adam Smith's ideas, and they have led directly to Railroad Barons and their abuses, and the Great Depression.
Even the political right, which often is the source of this mantra, does not naively leave the market to self-correct. When Ronald Reagan's administration was faced with a floundering economy, they didn't utter incantations over Adam Smith's grave, or invite Ayn Rand to minister in the National Cathedral. Nope, they helped the market along, they artificially created a demand for the market to fulfill. As the market returned to health, the need for that artifice was reduced. That this was necessary is manifest. Consider inflation, costs of oil, GNP, at the beginning and end of the Reagan years. Can anyone say that the governments actions in pushing the market did not have a beneficial effect? You can argue that you would rather have seen the money go elsewhere than holes in N. Dakota, but the need was real, and the effect of the governments 'meddling' in the market was equally real.
This is a real world we live in, ideals have their place, but they cannot usurp reality. Idealists have allways tried to make reality fit their nice little theories. At the small end of the scale, the idealist gets a rude awakeing. At the largest end of the scale, millions of kulaks in the Ukraine starve, or millions of innocents are shepherded into box cars and slaughtered like buffalo.
BTW, I did not mean to implicate that you were making the erroneous link between user and supporter. However, as I bet you can appreciate, given the variety of folk who read the posts on/., I often feel constrained to teach everyone's grandmother to suck eggs.
But using FOSS is not equivalent to supporting FOSS. The script kiddies taking advantage of M$ vulnerabilities are probably M$ users themselves.
In the majority of these cases trying to attach it to some group or another's agenda is pointless. SCO tried that stunt when they were getting harassed. The FOSS folk indicated that they had no knowledge, gave no support for, and even went so far as to condemn whoever was doing so. No, most adults I think understand that you cannot forward a legitimate agenda in this fashion.
If they do catch whomsoever, I'm gonna guess they are young, probably under 18, almost certainly under 21. Failing that, I would expect the individual to function under that age level, there certainly is no shortage of thirty-somethings who are incapable of co-relating cause and effect. For proof, I suggest a day spent reading the AC posts on/.
In general I think trying to find a political motive for these things is fruitless. Most often there probably isn;t one (in the case of true youth) or if there is, it is clearly sociopathic (the suspected use of trojans by spammers, for example.)
Lastly though, check those edge kernel versions people!
You say that it doesn't matter what good or evil an unjust government does, the fact that it is an unjust government is sufficient to condemn it.
That implies that is doesn't matter what good or evil a just government does, the fact that it is a just government absolves it.
But, that's a big lie, isn't it? You do care about the evil and good done. In fact it is your interpretation of these which has caused you to arrive at the conclusion the government is unjust.
Kind of hammers the utility of your argument. What came first? Was the government unjust, therefore you spurn both the good and evil it does, or did the evils done convince you that the government is unjust. We all know it was the latter. Governments. people. things. are not just or unjust on the basis of molecular chemistry or something equally immutable. No, just and unjust are value judgements made on the basis of a host of factors, including the evil and good done, and the evil and good intended.
In point of fact, the false logic you are using has most often, and most recently been used, in the service of dictators of all stripes. I've seen the Anonymous Coward's sentiments in the writings of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.
Because what you are doing is putting ideals in front of reality, just like the above named personalities. Collective farming was bad, it didn't grow enough food to feed the Soviet Union. But it was a communist idea, so whether it was good or not was secondary. Rounding up people of a different religion and slaughtering them like animals was evil, but it was for the greater glory of the reich, so wether it was good or evil was secondary. Closer to home, persecuting people for communist party membership, or being friends of a Communist party memeber was evil, but it was to protect democracy, so wether it was good or evil was secondary. Rape and murder of innocents was common during the crusades, but the bishops and cardinals cheered them on because it was for the greater glory of God, and the fact that these acts were evil, was secondary.
So, if anyone is liable to put us in the hands of a dictator, it will be people like you my friend, who can;t see the forest despite all the trees. It will be you and other's like you, who can;t see the reality for the hype. It will be folks like yourself, more wedded to ideas than deeds.
Why are we hanging the security folk?
on
Real Security?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Hey I was one, and Tog needs a firm slap across the face. In my experience, more often than not "good" security ideas are stiffled not by the security people, but by the starched colors and ironed ties they have to wheedle the cash out of. Sure, not every security pro is a good one, but for evey poor security pro I've met there are nine good ones working for shitty managers.
Beyond that, no matter how good the solution, there are allways those people who will try to end run it. Worse still, there are those who encourage others to also end run the system. At the top of the worse still pile, is the manager who somehow or another thinks this person would be a good security pro...
Also blaming the Universities is trite and unsopisticated. Please, folks don't go to University to learn about the real world, they go to learn theorey, and play intellectual games, etc. etc. Where is the problem? Is it the people turned about by the Universities, or is it the people who hire University grads to do work which demands real-world utility? So, there weren't a dozen or so graduates of technical schools, whose training would be centered in the real world, not the theory, available to do the same job, right, at a lower cost?
I find it somewhat in poor taste to hang an entire industry for what more likely is the fault of their managers... I find it more unseemly to attack Universities for what they have allways done, and what we expect them to do, allthough in all fairness, they do turn out the MBAs whose intellectual chauvinism probably has more to do with hiring the wrong qualifications for the job.
Actually, that is the exact function of government, to tell businesses and individuals what they can or cannot do.
Your position, which I will refer to as the XAS (eXtreme Adam Smith) has NEVER worked in the real world. If you don't remember, ask your folks or grand folks about the Great Depression, that chapter killed XAS once and for all in the real world. The closest thing we have now is FOSS, which believe or not, does stay in-line with the law, and seeks to honor and uphold those laws without which it is no more than a pipe dream.
Without regulation their would be no FOSS. FOSS relies on the copyright mechanism to enforce the rights of code authors to dispose of their code as they see fit. The protections built into copyright law are a keystone in the FOSS movement. This is why enlightened FOSS folk bemoan the abuses of copyright law, not the fact of copyright law.
In any case, the job of government is to tell business and individuals what they can and cannot do, and to outline and enforce penalties for violating these laws. These powers of government are (at least in most Western Democracies) derived from the ruled, with their consent. The beauty of this process is that should you have serious problems with this fact, you can exercise your freedom to live under another set laws by moving, and you have the freedom to change the law by particpation.
In view of your options to change things for yourself, by moving somewhere with a better regulatory framework for you, or by particpating and convincing enough of your fellow citizens that your position has merit, I find it puzzling that you would choose the method guaranteed not to make a single differemce. That being to mouth useless reactionary slogans on/.. How exactly did your post make your life better? How exactly did it make my life, or any/.ers life better?
Come off it, you even have to snipe as an AC. Really standing up for what you believe in, aren't you? Well, here I am, ready to withstand the best muck you can anonymously and cowardly sling at me. At the end of the day, are you any closer to realizing your (poorly considered) goals, or am I? (Hint: the more muck you throw at me, the less you do in terms of making changes, and I'm not the one with a adolescent reaction to authority,,,)
I may have to quit/. if the quality of faceless craven comments doesn't improve real soon...
Yes, mod me down for trolling, I deserve it, after all, it is still trolling, no matter how poorly the fish fights.
Folks keep hammering on the evils of regulation, this is an absolute fallacy and needs to squashed now.
First of all, what about the regulations which mandated performance expectatiuons. Phone service has traditionally been viewed as an essential service, some of these regulations stipulate uptimes for phone networks, etc. etc. The net effect of these has been that the consumer expects the phone to work, reliably, every time. VoIP providers (other than the big telecomms players) by and large will not be able to meet this expectation, or rather will be at the mercy of infrastructure they don't control, and organizations they have no binding agreements with.
Some of these regulations have also made it unlawful for private individuals to tap each others phones. (This being a right reserved to the government, who supposes they own the electrons involved anyways...) Without the private networks owned by the telcos, and the regulatory controls placed on those networks, wiretapping becomes a skill that the current generation of script kiddies can master in three hours. It's all data folks, it can be diverted, copied, folded, mutilated, spindled just like form data. Sure it can be encrypted, but there is some fairly significant overhead involved, without crypto hardware, I think you would notice degraded conversation quality.
Besides, do we really want to offer the marketing organizations a way to converge SPAM and telemarketing?
Zealots exist in both camps.
The differences between the camps have more in common with religious debate than any debate based in cold fact. The level of vitriol and passion that the subject tends to embroil is consistent with people attaching a religious significance to their software choices. Even within the camps, various sect-like structures exist, and while these bicker continually, they are united in faith (read source-type) and will readily admit that they have much in common with the members of other sects, especially in view of the hordes of apostates in the other camp.
Apparently in the 21st century there are three things you don't discuss in polite company: polititcs, religion, and source-type.
Find another way to send your message. Buy from non-RIAA member labels, or from the artist directly.
Far more effective to lawfully deprive them of income.
Incindentally, the bigger crime is how much the artist makes out of that inflated price. Buying indie and direct is not only a lawful reaction, it saves you money, and more of your money goes to the artists who actually create the music.
So, because you wouldn't have bought it, it's okay to make unlawful copies of it? There is something wrong with that logic, isn't there?
I can see the rationale behind not wanting an entire CD, or wanting to preview something first, but, that doesn't mean that doing either without permission is right.
It is only one wrong, the wrong is theft. RIAA is reacting to that theft, period.
I'm not a RIAA supporter, as a musician I'm pretty much more anti-RIAA than most folk, albeit for different reasons.
But, just because I don't like RIAA, and take an antithetical view to their activites does not mean that I think that gives me license to steal the property of their member labels.
Myself, I stopped supporting RIAA by not buying music which would cause RIAA to profit. In the last seven or so years, I've only bought directly from the artist. And I've stopped buying from those artists when they sign with a RIAA member label. I haven't missed a damn thing. I still get music I like, I don't contribute to RIAA coffers, and I don't make the problem worse by obviating RIAA legal rights.
If you're bypassing the legitimate rights of RIAA members you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Until folks start to respect the copyright, while villifying the holder, there is no reason to predict that this situation is going to improve.
I think you'd find is that all you would have to do is create a role with equivalent access, providing the default role schema doesn't satisfy this (which it likely will.)
The bigger issue to me is that a user put in the admin role may inadvertently do bad things. I'd want a su or sudo type of speedbump to make sure users (especially expert ones) don't inadvertently do something silly while they get used to the role based setup.
Do you then pretend that anything about SCO's moves is logical?
Hoenstly, if SCO is not going to be swayed by the logical, and to date they have not, then perhaps the illogical is worth a shot.
Besides, I'm not sure SCO's customers are enthusiastic. In many cases these folks continue to be SCO customers from inertia, or from the misbegotten perception that the porting process to another platform is prohibitive. While this may have been the case, and certainly kept my employer using their product for far longer than we should, it certainly is not any longer.
In the petition I set up here
I do specifically indicate that there are other solutions. I would agree that I should probably have amplified this point, but that can also be handled as a codicil to the petition.
In any case, as I first indicated, I personally have had enough. I also decided that if I felt this strongly about it, I should do more than gripe on/., or poke holes in other peoples ideas. Rather, I decided to do SOMETHING which might or might not have a snowballs chance in hell of working. But, fruitful or not, I could no longer do NOTHING and expect anything to change. So you may question the efficacy of what I suggest, but I am following through on it, which is a damn sight more than my numerous detractors are doing.
Re:Tell Mcdonalds CEO's that Linux is better.
on
SCO News Roundup
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· Score: 1
Basically I'm saying a similar thing (just in petition-speak.)
I tried getting the editors to post it as a new story, no luck, so I figure I'll make a few pointed replies, and hope folks have configured themselves to be notified (yeah right!)
Re:Boycott SCO customers! Here are some tools!
on
SCO News Roundup
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well,
I guess since I threw the idea out there, I needed to take the next step.
As an aside, searching SCO for customers does a pretty good job of listing some of the higher profile case studies, which are of course the best targets.
This crap has continued long enough. It's high time that we the people start punishing the people who use SCO software. Perhaps a nice on-line petition to send to SCO customers indicating that the undersigned will boycott their businesses until such a time as SCO desists in their nuisance behaviour, or that the business in question terminates all their relationships with SCO.
The operative principle is a well understood one, that once you lose a customer (for any reason) it is very difficult to get them back. I don't think the folks over at SCO will change their tune, since it is apparent that they've put all their eggs in the legal basket. But, I really don't think I want to support SCO's customers with my money either.
Incidentally, I'm also pushing at my work to discontinue supporting older versions of our application which run on SCO, and provide those customers a free upgrade path to the Linux based versions. This may be successful, for more than purely ideological reasons as well. I don't think it is a coincidence that when we ported the original SCO version to Linux over 80% of our support issues disappeared overnight on those deployments. This certainly helps my case, and is a non-scientific indicator of what garbage their product actually is, source owner or not,
Slashdot Mirror
I handle this task for my own machines, it isn't hard, or time consuming, if you think a little bit first, and write decent scripts. Hell I routinely have updated code running on my lab machines for days before the IT dept gets the same code via up2date. Not only is it easy, it is faster. Lastly, it is a better option, I end up working with the source code directly, and can optimize or tinker if I need/want. I am not locked into some package builders idea of how things should be done.
Anytime you think one of these things is a good idea, you should repeat the following mantra to yourself until the urge passes:
I am ROOT, I alone am the final arbiter of all code to be run on this system. I am ROOT, because the alternative is unacceptable. I am ROOT, and if f I will not meet my responsiblities while enjoying my rights, I will put the XP disk that came with my machine in the CD drive and reboot. Amen
+1 Truthful
At least SCO can;t claim Adam Smith illegally copied their code into Capitalism. Okay, I wouldn;t put money behind that assertion...
Isn't that the correct phrase for Trolls?
Allow me to smash the fallacy of this argument one last time. All you self-correcting market folk, the market is not sentient, it doesn't think, display cognitive abilities, or even self-awareness. It is completely at the mercy of the thinking, scheming, self-aware and cognitively gifted operators who routinely abuse those who naively assign these qualitites to the market. The market has not been unfettered since the last crop of deceitful, thinking operators made a complete hash of the market. That problem was solved by the government regulating aspects of the market.
The utopian ideal of a self-correcting market is unattainable, because to attain it, you need to depend on another utopian ideal, rational consumers. Well we haven;t got rational consumers, and it is unlikely that we ever will have a homogenous group of rational consumers. This always opens the market to abuse by unethical vendors, consumers, and middlemen. Of these the biggest criminals are those who continue to ascribe traits to the market which itr patently cannot have, particularly in the face of overwhelming evidence that their assertions have never historically worked out, and (for good reason) have not been tried again.
Like any other ideal, or postulate, Adam Smith's ideas don;t work verbatim in the real world. Adam Smith's version of capitalism is no more viable than Marx's vision of communism. Adam Smith's idea has, as it's sole feature, the fact that the real world implementation of his ideals end up working out better than the real world implementations of Marx, Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. But this is not prima facie evidence that Adam Smith's unabridged ideas are some type of gospel fact. Particularly in view of the fact that we have had far closer implementations of Adam Smith's ideas, and they have led directly to Railroad Barons and their abuses, and the Great Depression.
Even the political right, which often is the source of this mantra, does not naively leave the market to self-correct. When Ronald Reagan's administration was faced with a floundering economy, they didn't utter incantations over Adam Smith's grave, or invite Ayn Rand to minister in the National Cathedral. Nope, they helped the market along, they artificially created a demand for the market to fulfill. As the market returned to health, the need for that artifice was reduced. That this was necessary is manifest. Consider inflation, costs of oil, GNP, at the beginning and end of the Reagan years. Can anyone say that the governments actions in pushing the market did not have a beneficial effect? You can argue that you would rather have seen the money go elsewhere than holes in N. Dakota, but the need was real, and the effect of the governments 'meddling' in the market was equally real.
This is a real world we live in, ideals have their place, but they cannot usurp reality. Idealists have allways tried to make reality fit their nice little theories. At the small end of the scale, the idealist gets a rude awakeing. At the largest end of the scale, millions of kulaks in the Ukraine starve, or millions of innocents are shepherded into box cars and slaughtered like buffalo.
Nothing like having your SPAM and eating it too!
BTW, I did not mean to implicate that you were making the erroneous link between user and supporter. However, as I bet you can appreciate, given the variety of folk who read the posts on /., I often feel constrained to teach everyone's grandmother to suck eggs.
that was stolen from SCO....
Further, have they ever timed anything, let alone well timed?
But using FOSS is not equivalent to supporting FOSS. The script kiddies taking advantage of M$ vulnerabilities are probably M$ users themselves.
In the majority of these cases trying to attach it to some group or another's agenda is pointless. SCO tried that stunt when they were getting harassed. The FOSS folk indicated that they had no knowledge, gave no support for, and even went so far as to condemn whoever was doing so. No, most adults I think understand that you cannot forward a legitimate agenda in this fashion.
If they do catch whomsoever, I'm gonna guess they are young, probably under 18, almost certainly under 21. Failing that, I would expect the individual to function under that age level, there certainly is no shortage of thirty-somethings who are incapable of co-relating cause and effect. For proof, I suggest a day spent reading the AC posts on /.
In general I think trying to find a political motive for these things is fruitless. Most often there probably isn;t one (in the case of true youth) or if there is, it is clearly sociopathic (the suspected use of trojans by spammers, for example.)
Lastly though, check those edge kernel versions people!
It's Pi isn't it?
You say that it doesn't matter what good or evil an unjust government does, the fact that it is an unjust government is sufficient to condemn it.
That implies that is doesn't matter what good or evil a just government does, the fact that it is a just government absolves it.
But, that's a big lie, isn't it? You do care about the evil and good done. In fact it is your interpretation of these which has caused you to arrive at the conclusion the government is unjust.
Kind of hammers the utility of your argument. What came first? Was the government unjust, therefore you spurn both the good and evil it does, or did the evils done convince you that the government is unjust. We all know it was the latter. Governments. people. things. are not just or unjust on the basis of molecular chemistry or something equally immutable. No, just and unjust are value judgements made on the basis of a host of factors, including the evil and good done, and the evil and good intended.
In point of fact, the false logic you are using has most often, and most recently been used, in the service of dictators of all stripes. I've seen the Anonymous Coward's sentiments in the writings of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.
Because what you are doing is putting ideals in front of reality, just like the above named personalities. Collective farming was bad, it didn't grow enough food to feed the Soviet Union. But it was a communist idea, so whether it was good or not was secondary. Rounding up people of a different religion and slaughtering them like animals was evil, but it was for the greater glory of the reich, so wether it was good or evil was secondary. Closer to home, persecuting people for communist party membership, or being friends of a Communist party memeber was evil, but it was to protect democracy, so wether it was good or evil was secondary. Rape and murder of innocents was common during the crusades, but the bishops and cardinals cheered them on because it was for the greater glory of God, and the fact that these acts were evil, was secondary.
So, if anyone is liable to put us in the hands of a dictator, it will be people like you my friend, who can;t see the forest despite all the trees. It will be you and other's like you, who can;t see the reality for the hype. It will be folks like yourself, more wedded to ideas than deeds.
Beyond that, no matter how good the solution, there are allways those people who will try to end run it. Worse still, there are those who encourage others to also end run the system. At the top of the worse still pile, is the manager who somehow or another thinks this person would be a good security pro...
Also blaming the Universities is trite and unsopisticated. Please, folks don't go to University to learn about the real world, they go to learn theorey, and play intellectual games, etc. etc. Where is the problem? Is it the people turned about by the Universities, or is it the people who hire University grads to do work which demands real-world utility? So, there weren't a dozen or so graduates of technical schools, whose training would be centered in the real world, not the theory, available to do the same job, right, at a lower cost?
I find it somewhat in poor taste to hang an entire industry for what more likely is the fault of their managers... I find it more unseemly to attack Universities for what they have allways done, and what we expect them to do, allthough in all fairness, they do turn out the MBAs whose intellectual chauvinism probably has more to do with hiring the wrong qualifications for the job.
Your position, which I will refer to as the XAS (eXtreme Adam Smith) has NEVER worked in the real world. If you don't remember, ask your folks or grand folks about the Great Depression, that chapter killed XAS once and for all in the real world. The closest thing we have now is FOSS, which believe or not, does stay in-line with the law, and seeks to honor and uphold those laws without which it is no more than a pipe dream.
Without regulation their would be no FOSS. FOSS relies on the copyright mechanism to enforce the rights of code authors to dispose of their code as they see fit. The protections built into copyright law are a keystone in the FOSS movement. This is why enlightened FOSS folk bemoan the abuses of copyright law, not the fact of copyright law.
In any case, the job of government is to tell business and individuals what they can and cannot do, and to outline and enforce penalties for violating these laws. These powers of government are (at least in most Western Democracies) derived from the ruled, with their consent. The beauty of this process is that should you have serious problems with this fact, you can exercise your freedom to live under another set laws by moving, and you have the freedom to change the law by particpation.
In view of your options to change things for yourself, by moving somewhere with a better regulatory framework for you, or by particpating and convincing enough of your fellow citizens that your position has merit, I find it puzzling that you would choose the method guaranteed not to make a single differemce. That being to mouth useless reactionary slogans on /.. How exactly did your post make your life better? How exactly did it make my life, or any /.ers life better?
Come off it, you even have to snipe as an AC. Really standing up for what you believe in, aren't you? Well, here I am, ready to withstand the best muck you can anonymously and cowardly sling at me. At the end of the day, are you any closer to realizing your (poorly considered) goals, or am I? (Hint: the more muck you throw at me, the less you do in terms of making changes, and I'm not the one with a adolescent reaction to authority,,,)
I may have to quit /. if the quality of faceless craven comments doesn't improve real soon...
Yes, mod me down for trolling, I deserve it, after all, it is still trolling, no matter how poorly the fish fights.
First of all, what about the regulations which mandated performance expectatiuons. Phone service has traditionally been viewed as an essential service, some of these regulations stipulate uptimes for phone networks, etc. etc. The net effect of these has been that the consumer expects the phone to work, reliably, every time. VoIP providers (other than the big telecomms players) by and large will not be able to meet this expectation, or rather will be at the mercy of infrastructure they don't control, and organizations they have no binding agreements with.
Some of these regulations have also made it unlawful for private individuals to tap each others phones. (This being a right reserved to the government, who supposes they own the electrons involved anyways...) Without the private networks owned by the telcos, and the regulatory controls placed on those networks, wiretapping becomes a skill that the current generation of script kiddies can master in three hours. It's all data folks, it can be diverted, copied, folded, mutilated, spindled just like form data. Sure it can be encrypted, but there is some fairly significant overhead involved, without crypto hardware, I think you would notice degraded conversation quality.
Besides, do we really want to offer the marketing organizations a way to converge SPAM and telemarketing?
Zealots exist in both camps. The differences between the camps have more in common with religious debate than any debate based in cold fact. The level of vitriol and passion that the subject tends to embroil is consistent with people attaching a religious significance to their software choices. Even within the camps, various sect-like structures exist, and while these bicker continually, they are united in faith (read source-type) and will readily admit that they have much in common with the members of other sects, especially in view of the hordes of apostates in the other camp.
Apparently in the 21st century there are three things you don't discuss in polite company: polititcs, religion, and source-type.
Find another way to send your message. Buy from non-RIAA member labels, or from the artist directly.
Far more effective to lawfully deprive them of income.
Incindentally, the bigger crime is how much the artist makes out of that inflated price. Buying indie and direct is not only a lawful reaction, it saves you money, and more of your money goes to the artists who actually create the music.
I can see the rationale behind not wanting an entire CD, or wanting to preview something first, but, that doesn't mean that doing either without permission is right.
I'm not a RIAA supporter, as a musician I'm pretty much more anti-RIAA than most folk, albeit for different reasons.
But, just because I don't like RIAA, and take an antithetical view to their activites does not mean that I think that gives me license to steal the property of their member labels.
Myself, I stopped supporting RIAA by not buying music which would cause RIAA to profit. In the last seven or so years, I've only bought directly from the artist. And I've stopped buying from those artists when they sign with a RIAA member label. I haven't missed a damn thing. I still get music I like, I don't contribute to RIAA coffers, and I don't make the problem worse by obviating RIAA legal rights.
If you're bypassing the legitimate rights of RIAA members you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Until folks start to respect the copyright, while villifying the holder, there is no reason to predict that this situation is going to improve.
The bigger issue to me is that a user put in the admin role may inadvertently do bad things. I'd want a su or sudo type of speedbump to make sure users (especially expert ones) don't inadvertently do something silly while they get used to the role based setup.
Hoenstly, if SCO is not going to be swayed by the logical, and to date they have not, then perhaps the illogical is worth a shot.
Besides, I'm not sure SCO's customers are enthusiastic. In many cases these folks continue to be SCO customers from inertia, or from the misbegotten perception that the porting process to another platform is prohibitive. While this may have been the case, and certainly kept my employer using their product for far longer than we should, it certainly is not any longer.
In the petition I set up here I do specifically indicate that there are other solutions. I would agree that I should probably have amplified this point, but that can also be handled as a codicil to the petition.
In any case, as I first indicated, I personally have had enough. I also decided that if I felt this strongly about it, I should do more than gripe on /., or poke holes in other peoples ideas. Rather, I decided to do SOMETHING which might or might not have a snowballs chance in hell of working. But, fruitful or not, I could no longer do NOTHING and expect anything to change. So you may question the efficacy of what I suggest, but I am following through on it, which is a damn sight more than my numerous detractors are doing.
Basically I'm saying a similar thing (just in petition-speak.)
I tried getting the editors to post it as a new story, no luck, so I figure I'll make a few pointed replies, and hope folks have configured themselves to be notified (yeah right!)I guess since I threw the idea out there, I needed to take the next step.
As an aside, searching SCO for customers does a pretty good job of listing some of the higher profile case studies, which are of course the best targets.
Targets for what you may ask? try: Current SCO Customers Petition
I'll also submit this as a new story, but just in case...The operative principle is a well understood one, that once you lose a customer (for any reason) it is very difficult to get them back. I don't think the folks over at SCO will change their tune, since it is apparent that they've put all their eggs in the legal basket. But, I really don't think I want to support SCO's customers with my money either.
Incidentally, I'm also pushing at my work to discontinue supporting older versions of our application which run on SCO, and provide those customers a free upgrade path to the Linux based versions. This may be successful, for more than purely ideological reasons as well. I don't think it is a coincidence that when we ported the original SCO version to Linux over 80% of our support issues disappeared overnight on those deployments. This certainly helps my case, and is a non-scientific indicator of what garbage their product actually is, source owner or not,
We'll cast Bill gates as Marie Antoinette ("Let them eat WORMS!") and Linus Torvaalds at the head of the unruly mob.
At least that would be a case of art imitating life...and more circuses.