While Miss Russell raises interesting points (especially about technology, and about voting systems that eliminate spoiler effects), I think her economic policies are clearly a step in the wrong direction.
First, consider the approach of one of her competitors, Mr. Schwarzenegger (who it should be pointed out, has an economics degree):
"...bring businesses back to California. We have the most unfriendly business environment right now in California of any state. Businesses are leaving every day. They're expanding outside of the state. That means that people are getting laid off. Jobs are lost."
Now look at Miss Russell's platform. It is filled with anti-corporate rhetoric like "We deserve better than rich businessmen and career politicians trading money for power and power for money", "end corporate welfare to Bush's energy buddies", and so on. Rather than even trying to get business back to the state, she proposes tax hikes that will further slow an already dismal state economy.
It's easy to blame all of society's problems on corporations and on the wealthy. I'm not rich either, and it's a natural reaction to be jealous of those better off than oneself. But, in the long run, it's counterproductive. After all, who hires people, makes investments, and gets the economy moving again?
In a sense, California's economic problems are a foreshadowing or microcosm of what is happening at the national level: because of high costs of living and more business-friendly atmosphere elsewhere, companies are leaving. Whether the jobs are going from California to Iowa or from the U.S. to India, the inability to retain or lure back business causes lost jobs and a weakened economy. Is someone whose economic policies revolve around anti-corporate rhetoric and tax hikes really in a good position to reverse this trend?
Microsoft's automatic update mechanism can provide a false sense of security. Case in point, my mother is your typical home user who uses her Vaio to send email and access the Web, but doesn't know much about patches or security or any of that, so I turned on XP's "download updates automatically" option for her computer.
Last week, I get a call that her computer had been infected by the virus. I removed it, set up XP's firewall feature, and all that, but one interesting thing I saw is that the logs showed that no new patches had downloaded in a couple months.
I went to Windows Update to get the patches manually, and see that something has gone awry and things are broken. You can pick your patches, agree to the EULA, start the download, but then the download abruptly cuts off and patches are all flagged as "failed". No, the computer isn't out of disk space or anything... I actually couldn't figure out what was wrong. If anyone has any ideas please post a reply.
But, back to my main point. When you apply patches manually, you can immediately see that for this particular PC, something in the update process is broken, but leaving things to automatic update, the only cue is that it's been a couple months since the "new updates are ready to install" dialog popped up.
For an even more automated update system to be at all a good thing, it would definitely have to be not only nice and easy when things go right (which Windows Update is) but able to handle it when a PC is at all screwy... as another example, I had temporarily bumped the PC's clock back a year to keep the virus dormant while getting rid of it, and noticed that if your PC's clock is off by more than 100 days, Windows Update breaks and displays cryptic hexadecimal errors. Not even a message remotely useful for identifying the problem.
In short, I think with something that can mysteriously stop working as easily as Windows Update, removing human verification from the loop is just asking for trouble.
I like the idea, but I'm not sure it would do any good. The current incarnation of SCO doesn't seen to care very much about selling any products. Their present business model revolves entirely around litigation, extorting money from Linux users, and spreading FUD to artificially inflate their stock price. While you might boycott them by not buying into their protection racket license, and removing any legacy SCO Unix you might be running, I'm afraid it wouldn't affect their bottom line nearly as much as with a traditional sales-driven corporation.
Linux is a copyrighted work. Copyright law allows you to make a single copy of something for backup purposes, unless you have the permission of the copyright holder, in which case you can make all the copies you want.
The GPL just spells out under what circumstances the copyright holder is willing to give you that permission.
SCO's argument rests on the fact that since one of these cases outlines how to lawfully make one copy of something, and the other deals with how to make unlimited copies of it, they must somehow be mutually exclusive. This is completely illogical. It is like saying that because it is possible to get a one ride ticket for the bus, it must therefore be illegal to buy an all day pass. Sorry SCO, your reasoning seems just a little bit flawed...
The ACLU are pretty aggressive organization about pursuing various causes, but they have a very obvious idealogical axe to grind that prevents me from personally supporting them. If you happen to like civil liberties with a severe leftward slant (and many Slashbots do) then by all means go for it.
Some examples of my problems with them...
On the First Amendment, they will argue the "separation" part of freedom of religion till they are blue in the face, but completely ignore the "free exercise" part. I think the framers of the Constitution did a brilliant job of balancing these two concepts and to wildly expand on one by gutting the other detracts from what makes this amendment so great.
For a so-called civil liberties organization to actively pursue the anti-civil liberties side of the debate over the Second Amendment seriously undermines their credibility.
In too many stories I read in the news, they just seem to "get it wrong". For instance in the current debate over the California Recall, the ACLU wants a postponement until electronic voting machines are ready in all districts. Given that electronic voting really doesn't enhance the democratic process or voting security, this strikes me as an overly partisan move to buy embattled Mr. Davis more time. I would prefer an organization that raises issues for their own merit, not as some sort of political tactic.
In short, I would much rather there be a non-tech counterpart to the EFF... someone who doesn't just champion liberal civil liberties causes, or conservative civil liberties causes, or what have you, but consistently argues for freedom and liberty itself. While individual members no doublt have partisan leanings, keeping a pure message of "we support civil liberties, period" would better serve an organization than confounding the message with unrelated or contradictory positions for political sake.
Actually, I've wondered about this a lot. All the viruses you hear about tend to do really lame and boring things like reboot your computer or print out "$USERNAME is a doofus". Ooh, terrifying.
There is so much potential for greater evil and mayhem...
The data destroyer: Erase a bunch of files, wipe out the boot record, or just format the whole hard drive. People who keep their system unpatched also tend not to worry about backups.
The hardware destroyer: Run CPUburn. Set the monitor to way-out-of-spec refresh rates and change around them faster than the monitor can handle. Flash update the periphrials with corrupted data.
The insidious manipulator: Make small, subtle changes to numeric data in Excel and Access files. The kind that nobody is likely to notice for weeks.
The mischevious troll: Much like the article mirror trolls with a couple words changed to something rude and uncouth, but on the infected computer's Word and text files. Imagine trying to explain to your client that you didn't _really_ type that epitath in your letter to them. Also, download some random porn and sprinkle it on the user's hard drive.
But nooooo... the best these guys can come up with is "reboot the computer"? Blah!
Challenging the GPL is a stupid move, even for SCO. Consider an analogy:
Suppose I make a deal with Microsoft to sell copies of Windows XP. After distributing a few thousand copies, I call up Microsoft to taunt them. "When I signed that contract with you guys, I had my fingers crossed. I never had a valid agreement to copy your software at all. I totally pirated it! Muahahahaha!"
Now, would this really be an intelligent move, or just a way to beg for lawsuits and/or jail time?
Remember, GPL software is still copyrighted, which means distributing it is illegal without permission of the copyright holder(s). All the GPL does is spell out under which circumstances the author is willing to grant you that permission. Take away the GPL and this becomes a plain vanilla case of copyright infringement. By refuting the GPL, SCO essentially admits to being nothing more than an illegal warez operation.
Slashdot Mirror
First, consider the approach of one of her competitors, Mr. Schwarzenegger (who it should be pointed out, has an economics degree):
"...bring businesses back to California. We have the most unfriendly business environment right now in California of any state. Businesses are leaving every day. They're expanding outside of the state. That means that people are getting laid off. Jobs are lost."
Now look at Miss Russell's platform. It is filled with anti-corporate rhetoric like "We deserve better than rich businessmen and career politicians trading money for power and power for money", "end corporate welfare to Bush's energy buddies", and so on. Rather than even trying to get business back to the state, she proposes tax hikes that will further slow an already dismal state economy.
It's easy to blame all of society's problems on corporations and on the wealthy. I'm not rich either, and it's a natural reaction to be jealous of those better off than oneself. But, in the long run, it's counterproductive. After all, who hires people, makes investments, and gets the economy moving again?
In a sense, California's economic problems are a foreshadowing or microcosm of what is happening at the national level: because of high costs of living and more business-friendly atmosphere elsewhere, companies are leaving. Whether the jobs are going from California to Iowa or from the U.S. to India, the inability to retain or lure back business causes lost jobs and a weakened economy. Is someone whose economic policies revolve around anti-corporate rhetoric and tax hikes really in a good position to reverse this trend?
Last week, I get a call that her computer had been infected by the virus. I removed it, set up XP's firewall feature, and all that, but one interesting thing I saw is that the logs showed that no new patches had downloaded in a couple months.
I went to Windows Update to get the patches manually, and see that something has gone awry and things are broken. You can pick your patches, agree to the EULA, start the download, but then the download abruptly cuts off and patches are all flagged as "failed". No, the computer isn't out of disk space or anything... I actually couldn't figure out what was wrong. If anyone has any ideas please post a reply.
But, back to my main point. When you apply patches manually, you can immediately see that for this particular PC, something in the update process is broken, but leaving things to automatic update, the only cue is that it's been a couple months since the "new updates are ready to install" dialog popped up.
For an even more automated update system to be at all a good thing, it would definitely have to be not only nice and easy when things go right (which Windows Update is) but able to handle it when a PC is at all screwy... as another example, I had temporarily bumped the PC's clock back a year to keep the virus dormant while getting rid of it, and noticed that if your PC's clock is off by more than 100 days, Windows Update breaks and displays cryptic hexadecimal errors. Not even a message remotely useful for identifying the problem.
In short, I think with something that can mysteriously stop working as easily as Windows Update, removing human verification from the loop is just asking for trouble.
I like the idea, but I'm not sure it would do any good. The current incarnation of SCO doesn't seen to care very much about selling any products. Their present business model revolves entirely around litigation, extorting money from Linux users, and spreading FUD to artificially inflate their stock price. While you might boycott them by not buying into their protection racket license, and removing any legacy SCO Unix you might be running, I'm afraid it wouldn't affect their bottom line nearly as much as with a traditional sales-driven corporation.
The GPL just spells out under what circumstances the copyright holder is willing to give you that permission.
SCO's argument rests on the fact that since one of these cases outlines how to lawfully make one copy of something, and the other deals with how to make unlimited copies of it, they must somehow be mutually exclusive. This is completely illogical. It is like saying that because it is possible to get a one ride ticket for the bus, it must therefore be illegal to buy an all day pass. Sorry SCO, your reasoning seems just a little bit flawed...
Some examples of my problems with them...
On the First Amendment, they will argue the "separation" part of freedom of religion till they are blue in the face, but completely ignore the "free exercise" part. I think the framers of the Constitution did a brilliant job of balancing these two concepts and to wildly expand on one by gutting the other detracts from what makes this amendment so great.
For a so-called civil liberties organization to actively pursue the anti-civil liberties side of the debate over the Second Amendment seriously undermines their credibility.
In too many stories I read in the news, they just seem to "get it wrong". For instance in the current debate over the California Recall, the ACLU wants a postponement until electronic voting machines are ready in all districts. Given that electronic voting really doesn't enhance the democratic process or voting security, this strikes me as an overly partisan move to buy embattled Mr. Davis more time. I would prefer an organization that raises issues for their own merit, not as some sort of political tactic.
In short, I would much rather there be a non-tech counterpart to the EFF... someone who doesn't just champion liberal civil liberties causes, or conservative civil liberties causes, or what have you, but consistently argues for freedom and liberty itself. While individual members no doublt have partisan leanings, keeping a pure message of "we support civil liberties, period" would better serve an organization than confounding the message with unrelated or contradictory positions for political sake.
There is so much potential for greater evil and mayhem...
The data destroyer: Erase a bunch of files, wipe out the boot record, or just format the whole hard drive. People who keep their system unpatched also tend not to worry about backups.
The hardware destroyer: Run CPUburn. Set the monitor to way-out-of-spec refresh rates and change around them faster than the monitor can handle. Flash update the periphrials with corrupted data.
The insidious manipulator: Make small, subtle changes to numeric data in Excel and Access files. The kind that nobody is likely to notice for weeks.
The mischevious troll: Much like the article mirror trolls with a couple words changed to something rude and uncouth, but on the infected computer's Word and text files. Imagine trying to explain to your client that you didn't _really_ type that epitath in your letter to them. Also, download some random porn and sprinkle it on the user's hard drive.
But nooooo... the best these guys can come up with is "reboot the computer"? Blah!
Challenging the GPL is a stupid move, even for SCO. Consider an analogy: Suppose I make a deal with Microsoft to sell copies of Windows XP. After distributing a few thousand copies, I call up Microsoft to taunt them. "When I signed that contract with you guys, I had my fingers crossed. I never had a valid agreement to copy your software at all. I totally pirated it! Muahahahaha!" Now, would this really be an intelligent move, or just a way to beg for lawsuits and/or jail time? Remember, GPL software is still copyrighted, which means distributing it is illegal without permission of the copyright holder(s). All the GPL does is spell out under which circumstances the author is willing to grant you that permission. Take away the GPL and this becomes a plain vanilla case of copyright infringement. By refuting the GPL, SCO essentially admits to being nothing more than an illegal warez operation.