Um, if you care to read the notice at the bottom of the page, the POSTERS are responsible (hence the owners) of the material posted. In that sense, SlashDot is a "public" forum with "public" access for people to post their own individual comments. Slashdot is not in the wrong. People who posted the material in the first place may be wrong.
As with any application, some languages suit some requirements better than others. CGI is no different, it chews on data and returns some result. The notion that just because the application happens to use the Common Gateway Interface between a user agent, http server and the server host, it is somehow a special case is incorrect.
Choose a language that best suits the situation. For prototyping or rapid development, use a scripted language. For speed, use something that compiles to native system code (e.g. C).
If re-use, strong engineering and lower development/maintenance costs are important then use languages like Java or Python . If re-use, strong engineering and speed are all important, use C++.
It depends first on the problem that is being addressed with the CGI application and who is trying to solve the problem.
Postgres is, IMO, a superior database. I've been using it for many years now --in one application it was a fallback database for a bank (when DB/2 on our ES/9000 failed).
It is included with many Linux distributions, including RedHat 6.x.
Sourceforge has recently added support for PostgreSQL in their project/source control system.
Is anyone willing to post some benchmarks matching performance and features of MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB/2, Oracle, SQL Server/Sybase?
Maybe I'm on drugs here, but this sounds like a pretty serious problem to me, when an ISP cannot figure out who is using their own service! Based on the facts as I know them, I think Prodigy should have been held liable for this, since they obviously didn't have some way to verify the identities of their users.
Whether Prodigy could or could not identify the user is irrelevant. Prodigy did NOT author those messages. How is it that Prodigy (or anyone) could be held responsible for someone else's crimes?
It could be argued that listening to a song which you have already purchased is fair use --e.g. whether I make an MP3 at home or download one from someone else, the fact remains that I have paid the label and the artist for the right to listen to that song.
This is far from over, and it should be clear that the RIAA is in the wrong.
Ass-fucking a 10 year old boy is not "expression". It's ass-fucking a 10 year old boy -- a minor, and protected (rightly) by law?
And watching some creep assfucking a 10 isn't assfucking a 10 year old boy, it's watching it.
Now, a dumbass cracker that says "I hate black people" is not committing a crime, he is making a (albeit ignorant) statement.
A dumbass cracker that listens to other dumbass crackers make these statements is not committing a crime, he is just being a dumbass cracker. It is often argued that simply listening promotes action. Fine, as long as this particular dumbass cracker doesn't act on what he hears, he has not committed a real crime.
A dumbass cracker that kills a black person DOES commit a crime and deserves to fry or rot for it.
See the distinction? Talking and listening != doing.
As far as copyright and economic censorship, I agree with you 100%. A person's ideas, and more importantly the fruits of their intellectual effort, are rightfully THEIRS and it's wrong for you or I or anyone to rob them of their freedom to think, produce and reap the rewards (or consequences) of their actions.
Sun IPX's, IPC's 2's, 10's, etc.. are all desktop systems. Can only run SunOS and Linux. As I mentioned, up to the mid 90's Sun had a wider deployed base than the PC market. My 10 runs Linux, much like most of my PC's.
My AIX box is a desktop system. This old RS/6000 can ONLY run AIX. No mkLinux distro's available there yet.
You see, these *are* desktop systems. Their respective manufacturers have an OS monopoly for those processors (same accusation against MS for monopolizing the PC OS market).
Comparing AT&T to Microsoft is not quite accurate. Microsoft has a *market* monopoly --acquired through trade. AT&T had a monopoly by legislative fiat. Whereas anyone is free to compete with Microsoft today, it was illegal to start your own phone company even as recently as 1997.
The Sherman Act of 1870 was in response to railroads charging WAY too much for freight (and ruining farmers). Those railroads in question (Souther Pacific, e.g.) were more examples of legislative fiat --they were given land grants and even permits for EXCLUSIVE operation. Another coercive monopoly, not a market monopoly.
Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems for Intel and Intel-like processors. Well, not a 100% monopoly, but enough that they can mercilessly pound commercial competitors in that market.
How many operating systems run on Sparc hardware? Before 1997, Sparcs had a larger deployed base than PC's (believe it or not, just a matter of corporate fact). Yet Sun was on the "beat MS down bandwagon".
What about C10's? They only run AIX (and Linux).
HP K-series boxes? HP-UX.
ES/9000's? MVS.
Ummm... does anyone else see a problem with this logic?
So, Microsoft provided a free web browser and integrated it with the operating system. Netscape, AFAIK, was the only *commercial* web browser on the market. EVERY other browser was FREE, just like IE.
So, Microsoft said "if you are going to support our competition, we won't give you a price break on pre-installed Windows". Duh! Common sense dictates that you help those who help you, otherwise you treat them fairly (SRP on Windows in this case).
What we see here, is the application of ambiguous laws designed to punish a business for acting in it's best interest (e.g. for doing a good job of being a busines).
It wasn't so long ago that the thought of a government punishing a software company for doing a good job (gaining a MARKET monopoly) would be revolting to the libertarian-minded folks on the net.
If government control of software (commercial or otherwise) seems appealing, someone please clue me in. The thought of a bureaucrat telling me how to write software, or how to conduct BUSINESS shakes me up a bit.
The Sherman Act of 1870 is a bad law, targeted at the wrong kind of business practice and only punishes the good for being good.
If you'd care to check your dates, you'd notice that Linux wasn't around for the best of the Ultima series. I was playing Ultima IV on an Apple// back in the early/mid 80's.
Appearantly there IS an Ultima Online client port for Linux. And I don't suppose I will get into too much trouble for mentioning that server developers at Origin use Linux religiously.
What was this guy talking about? (paraphrasing)"if you don't have an x86 PC you can't open an excel document"?!?! -- or "without x86 you can't run a Macromedia Flash plugin"?!?!!
Chip architecture has *nothing* to do with ability to decode data. It may change the rules (endianness, alignment, etc..) but it has zero relevance to a processor family's ability to decode data. Mac's read PC format data. PC's decode EBCDIC data from ES/9000's. My Sparc 10 has zero problems sharing data with my PIII.
I hope, beyond hope, that this is just another example of a clueless marketing delbert yammering moronically about technology he doesn't understand.
I was so embarrassed for Transmeta I had to stop viewing the broadcast.
Targeting "Big Business" as such is dangerous. Free people, freely producing and trading unfettered is, IMHO perfectly moral and should be legally protected.
Perhaps it is better to target governments and laws which put bureaucrats in a position of arbitrary power to permit patently criminal activity, and to promote *market* awareness of companies who behave in a socially unpalateable manner.
There's a world of difference between a contract, market appeal, and the actual use of force.
As stated above, "In the case of Netscape they virtually crushed their business model by coming up with a competing product and releasing it at no cost" Sound familiar? If that's a crime, we're all in big trouble.
"the same time they offered rather lucrative insentives to ISPs and web services to provide links to Internet Explorer rather than Netscape"
A company is misbehaving if they try to market their product? (e.g. offer someone a deal to promote their own software rather than a competitor?) This is ludicrous. There's no case to be made that there is any criminal force involved there.
"Suppose that the DOJ imposes restrictions on Microsoft such that Linux does become dominant. Linux can't exert the same coersion on the market because by design Linux and most of the software it runs is free. Be is free to take the hypothetical butt-kicking office application and port it to their operating system, so is Apple, so is Sun and so is any other company."
And Sun is in the business to make operating systems. If they loose core business to another product (e.g. Linux, or MS Windows) they are going to fight. This is *exactly* what lead Sun to side with the DOJ, they were loosing their OS market. Netscape did the same because it was loosing *ITS* marke to MS. It seems that these free market loosers would rather litigate and whine rather than beat their competitors at their own game.
Just like no one can pursue LVD authors... or a plethora of other legally "gray" open source technologies (crypto comes to mind, can we say PGP?).
My point is, if litigators want a scapegoat for a witch-hunt, they will turn up Linus Torvolds, or perhaps Larry Wall, just like they did with Phil Zimmerman.
So what do we do when Linux dominates or has a "monopoly" on the desktop? Who does the DOJ go after? Do we outlaw OSS? Incarcerate Linus (ala ALCOA executives circa 1947)? The notion that a bureaucrat is going to tell us how we develop, package or market software scares me.
Here we see Microsoft, arguably rutheless when it comes to licensing, inept when it comes to implementation, yet still dominating the PC market for a desktop OS? Did Microsoft steal, break contracts, defraud or otherwise force itself into this dominating position? No, it did not. It may have used aggressive licensing (OEM), it may have beat down competitors by releasing free software (Netscape), it may have actually gotten it's act together for DTP (MS Office, MSVC). It did NOT, however, actually hold a gun to someone's head and say "run our software".
I am a Linux advocate, been running it since SLS and pl89. I prefer a free and open environment to work. A government that dictates how successful I (or any of us) may be before we are punished with antitrust regulation is antithetical to how we as developers operate, and I would have hoped to see more DOJ bashing rather than MS bashing happening in forums such as SlashDot.
We are libertarian-minded people by nature: leave us free to scratch whatever itches we have, and we will leave others alone to pursue their own goals. Lets leave Microsoft alone to build the kind of garbage they want to build. Leave Joe-Sixpack alone to buy that garbage until we develop more interesting trash for him to play with.
Lets not confuse COERCIVE monopolies with MARKET monopolies. When we gain our market share of %90+, we should not be punished for doing a good job (which is what antitrust is all about, really).
Who here really believes that Sun, IBM and Microsoft won't be litigating against OSS projects if we start taking THEIR market share?!
Aside from the, ahem, legality vs. morality of Antitrust, I really don't want to see government stepping into technology (again).
The last thing any of us need are bureaucrats telling us how to run our businesses, what components we may put in our own software, etc. I don't want to grovel to a congresman because I want to include a 3d shooter client in my Linux distribution, or label a window with a dirty word.
Using the government to dictate how software is engineered (Internet Explorer with Windows OS's), how it is marketed (discounts for vendors installing Windows OS's, exclusive OS contracts with hardware vendors), is a DANGEROUS precedent to set.
The clamor for government control of Microsoft is like begging bureaucrats to put leashes on all of us. I don't like that at all.
Pulsed Neural Networks. It's really not such a new technology. There's a good book on different topologies and algorithms titled, "Pulsed Neural Networks". I know Amazon has a copy (that's where I got mine a few months back).
I don't find it impossible at all for systems to surpass human intelligence. In the past 5 years alone have seen immense advances in representing biological systems in software (neural networks, self organizing feature maps ala Kohonen, etc...).
And what if we build a box with more smarts? A requisite of volition is a value system (what should I do and why?). Do you suppose that a system which surpasses human cognitive abilities would develop an inferior value system? Or would it see value in productive effort (good). Would determine that nihilistic, destructive behavior is evil? Perhaps we might learn something about love and kindness from a digital uber-brain.
Morality, IMHO, doesn't come from on-high, or by vote, but like any other human advance must be discovered.
Of all the rants about how we will spend our time in the next century, there is very little mention of what PRODUCTIVE things we will be doing. I still have to go to work, I still have to eat, I still have to pay for a home, car, child, etc... In addition to the new choices in how I spend my leisure time, technology has also made me incalculably more productive so I *have* more leisure time to inundate myself with new information (making myself even more productive and having fun while I am at it).
The cry of the luddite never changes: "free time is the downfall of civilization! We must discard technology and return to digging in the dirt with our bare hands, watch our children die at birth or before they reach age 5, shorten our life expectencty to 35 years, and work from sun-up to sun-down!" They cry that it is humanity or ecology that we are betraying with technology, but in the end the luddite's fears equate to destruction, as only fear can do.
They are wrong, in fact, in principle and in practice.
I run the exact same configuration. I simply run audio cables from each system's line out into the next system's line in. THey are all wired in series. Each has it's own mixer controls in their respective OS's, and my primary workstation is the final output for the whole chain (like a master control for everyone). I can listen to X11Amp on my Linux workstation, get my ICQ and Outlook email on the Micro$oft workstation, etc..
More like an act of vandalism. Lets not play into government paranoia about computer crimes. When we start equating digital vandalism with actual acts of violence, we are just begging for legislators to start goose-stepping all over our network and our liberties.
I haven't seen a modern router that wouldn't use BOOTP. You get your new configs ready offline, bounce the routers with the new config to ensure connectivity throughout the network. If there's a problem, you can back right out quickly instead of throwing a TTY on every router, reconfiguring, rebooting.
Secondly: as far as "internal" vs. "external" rights, there is no such distinction. Rights are what they are, by our nature as living, breathing human beings, not a politician's fiat. A government that fails to recognize those rights is simply wrong (e.g. our policy concerning human rights in China, our involvment in the Balkans, etc...)
The ASC's arguments that "experts" in intelligence should dictate crypto policy is ludicrous. The military is NOT a legislative body. It should have NO domain over US citizens and their liberties!
And, of course, that the very crypto technology these "experts" are railing against is freely available OUTSIDE the US makes the whole point moot. I simply can't believe that people THIS STUPID are making decisions more important than what they will have for lunch today.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, if you care to read the notice at the bottom of the page, the POSTERS are responsible (hence the owners) of the material posted. In that sense, SlashDot is a "public" forum with "public" access for people to post their own individual comments. Slashdot is not in the wrong. People who posted the material in the first place may be wrong.
As with any application, some languages suit some requirements better than others. CGI is no different, it chews on data and returns some result. The notion that just because the application happens to use the Common Gateway Interface between a user agent, http server and the server host, it is somehow a special case is incorrect.
Choose a language that best suits the situation. For prototyping or rapid development, use a scripted language. For speed, use something that compiles to native system code (e.g. C).
If re-use, strong engineering and lower development/maintenance costs are important then use languages like Java or Python . If re-use, strong engineering and speed are all important, use C++.
It depends first on the problem that is being addressed with the CGI application and who is trying to solve the problem.
Postgres is, IMO, a superior database. I've been using it for many years now --in one application it was a fallback database for a bank (when DB/2 on our ES/9000 failed).
It is included with many Linux distributions, including RedHat 6.x.
Sourceforge has recently added support for PostgreSQL in their project/source control system.
Is anyone willing to post some benchmarks matching performance and features of MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB/2, Oracle, SQL Server/Sybase?
RMS: I made free software a movement.
That's right. None of us have had anything to contribute whatsoever. It's all about Richard Stallman. He is the shit. Just ask him, he will tell you.
It is disturbing when an irrational egomaniac becomes an icon, voice or leader of a movement.
Maybe I'm on drugs here, but this sounds like a pretty serious problem to me, when an ISP cannot figure out who is using their own service! Based on the facts as I know them, I think Prodigy should have been held liable for this, since they obviously didn't have some way to verify the identities of their users.
Whether Prodigy could or could not identify the user is irrelevant. Prodigy did NOT author those messages. How is it that Prodigy (or anyone) could be held responsible for someone else's crimes?
It could be argued that listening to a song which you have already purchased is fair use --e.g. whether I make an MP3 at home or download one from someone else, the fact remains that I have paid the label and the artist for the right to listen to that song.
This is far from over, and it should be clear that the RIAA is in the wrong.
Ass-fucking a 10 year old boy is not "expression". It's ass-fucking a 10 year old boy -- a minor, and protected (rightly) by law?
And watching some creep assfucking a 10 isn't assfucking a 10 year old boy, it's watching it.
Now, a dumbass cracker that says "I hate black people" is not committing a crime, he is making a (albeit ignorant) statement.
A dumbass cracker that listens to other dumbass crackers make these statements is not committing a crime, he is just being a dumbass cracker. It is often argued that simply listening promotes action. Fine, as long as this particular dumbass cracker doesn't act on what he hears, he has not committed a real crime.
A dumbass cracker that kills a black person DOES commit a crime and deserves to fry or rot for it.
See the distinction? Talking and listening != doing.
As far as copyright and economic censorship, I agree with you 100%. A person's ideas, and more importantly the fruits of their intellectual effort, are rightfully THEIRS and it's wrong for you or I or anyone to rob them of their freedom to think, produce and reap the rewards (or consequences) of their actions.
Sun IPX's, IPC's 2's, 10's, etc.. are all desktop systems. Can only run SunOS and Linux. As I mentioned, up to the mid 90's Sun had a wider deployed base than the PC market. My 10 runs Linux, much like most of my PC's.
My AIX box is a desktop system. This old RS/6000 can ONLY run AIX. No mkLinux distro's available there yet.
You see, these *are* desktop systems. Their respective manufacturers have an OS monopoly for those processors (same accusation against MS for monopolizing the PC OS market).
Comparing AT&T to Microsoft is not quite accurate. Microsoft has a *market* monopoly --acquired through trade. AT&T had a monopoly by legislative fiat. Whereas anyone is free to compete with Microsoft today, it was illegal to start your own phone company even as recently as 1997.
The Sherman Act of 1870 was in response to railroads charging WAY too much for freight (and ruining farmers). Those railroads in question (Souther Pacific, e.g.) were more examples of legislative fiat --they were given land grants and even permits for EXCLUSIVE operation. Another coercive monopoly, not a market monopoly.
Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems for Intel and Intel-like processors. Well, not a 100% monopoly, but enough that they can mercilessly pound commercial competitors in that market.
How many operating systems run on Sparc hardware? Before 1997, Sparcs had a larger deployed base than PC's (believe it or not, just a matter of corporate fact). Yet Sun was on the "beat MS down bandwagon".
What about C10's? They only run AIX (and Linux).
HP K-series boxes? HP-UX.
ES/9000's? MVS.
Ummm... does anyone else see a problem with this logic?
So, Microsoft provided a free web browser and integrated it with the operating system. Netscape, AFAIK, was the only *commercial* web browser on the market. EVERY other browser was FREE, just like IE.
So, Microsoft said "if you are going to support our competition, we won't give you a price break on pre-installed Windows". Duh! Common sense dictates that you help those who help you, otherwise you treat them fairly (SRP on Windows in this case).
What we see here, is the application of ambiguous laws designed to punish a business for acting in it's best interest (e.g. for doing a good job of being a busines).
It wasn't so long ago that the thought of a government punishing a software company for doing a good job (gaining a MARKET monopoly) would be revolting to the libertarian-minded folks on the net.
If government control of software (commercial or otherwise) seems appealing, someone please clue me in. The thought of a bureaucrat telling me how to write software, or how to conduct BUSINESS shakes me up a bit.
The Sherman Act of 1870 is a bad law, targeted at the wrong kind of business practice and only punishes the good for being good.
If you'd care to check your dates, you'd notice that Linux wasn't around for the best of the Ultima series. I was playing Ultima IV on an Apple // back in the early/mid 80's.
Appearantly there IS an Ultima Online client port for Linux. And I don't suppose I will get into too much trouble for mentioning that server developers at Origin use Linux religiously.
What was this guy talking about?
(paraphrasing)"if you don't have an x86 PC you can't open an excel document"?!?! -- or "without x86 you can't run a Macromedia Flash plugin"?!?!!
Chip architecture has *nothing* to do with ability to decode data. It may change the rules (endianness, alignment, etc..) but it has zero relevance to a processor family's ability to decode data. Mac's read PC format data. PC's decode EBCDIC data from ES/9000's. My Sparc 10 has zero problems sharing data with my PIII.
I hope, beyond hope, that this is just another example of a clueless marketing delbert yammering moronically about technology he doesn't understand.
I was so embarrassed for Transmeta I had to stop viewing the broadcast.
"Internet Compatability", indeed.
Targeting "Big Business" as such is dangerous. Free people, freely producing and trading unfettered is, IMHO perfectly moral and should be legally protected.
Perhaps it is better to target governments and laws which put bureaucrats in a position of arbitrary power to permit patently criminal activity, and to promote *market* awareness of companies who behave in a socially unpalateable manner.
There's a world of difference between a contract, market appeal, and the actual use of force.
As stated above,
"In the case of Netscape they virtually crushed their business model by coming up with a competing product and releasing it at no cost"
Sound familiar? If that's a crime, we're all in big trouble.
"the same time they offered rather lucrative insentives to ISPs and web services to provide links to Internet Explorer rather than Netscape"
A company is misbehaving if they try to market their product? (e.g. offer someone a deal to promote their own software rather than a competitor?) This is ludicrous. There's no case to be made that there is any criminal force involved there.
"Suppose that the DOJ imposes restrictions on Microsoft such that Linux does become dominant. Linux can't exert the same coersion on the market because by design Linux and most of the software it runs is free. Be is free to take the hypothetical butt-kicking office application and port it to their operating system, so is Apple, so is Sun and so is any other company."
And Sun is in the business to make operating systems. If they loose core business to another product (e.g. Linux, or MS Windows) they are going to fight. This is *exactly* what lead Sun to side with the DOJ, they were loosing their OS market. Netscape did the same because it was loosing *ITS* marke to MS. It seems that these free market loosers would rather litigate and whine rather than beat their competitors at their own game.
Just like no one can pursue LVD authors ... or a plethora of other legally "gray" open source technologies (crypto comes to mind, can we say PGP?).
My point is, if litigators want a scapegoat for a witch-hunt, they will turn up Linus Torvolds, or perhaps Larry Wall, just like they did with Phil Zimmerman.
So what do we do when Linux dominates or has a "monopoly" on the desktop? Who does the DOJ go after? Do we outlaw OSS? Incarcerate Linus (ala ALCOA executives circa 1947)? The notion that a bureaucrat is going to tell us how we develop, package or market software scares me.
Here we see Microsoft, arguably rutheless when it comes to licensing, inept when it comes to implementation, yet still dominating the PC market for a desktop OS? Did Microsoft steal, break contracts, defraud or otherwise force itself into this dominating position? No, it did not. It may have used aggressive licensing (OEM), it may have beat down competitors by releasing free software (Netscape), it may have actually gotten it's act together for DTP (MS Office, MSVC). It did NOT, however, actually hold a gun to someone's head and say "run our software".
I am a Linux advocate, been running it since SLS and pl89. I prefer a free and open environment to work. A government that dictates how successful I (or any of us) may be before we are punished with antitrust regulation is antithetical to how we as developers operate, and I would have hoped to see more DOJ bashing rather than MS bashing happening in forums such as SlashDot.
We are libertarian-minded people by nature: leave us free to scratch whatever itches we have, and we will leave others alone to pursue their own goals. Lets leave Microsoft alone to build the kind of garbage they want to build. Leave Joe-Sixpack alone to buy that garbage until we develop more interesting trash for him to play with.
Lets not confuse COERCIVE monopolies with MARKET monopolies. When we gain our market share of %90+, we should not be punished for doing a good job (which is what antitrust is all about, really).
Who here really believes that Sun, IBM and Microsoft won't be litigating against OSS projects if we start taking THEIR market share?!
Aside from the, ahem, legality vs. morality of Antitrust, I really don't want to see government stepping into technology (again).
The last thing any of us need are bureaucrats telling us how to run our businesses, what components we may put in our own software, etc. I don't want to grovel to a congresman because I want to include a 3d shooter client in my Linux distribution, or label a window with a dirty word.
Using the government to dictate how software is engineered (Internet Explorer with Windows OS's), how it is marketed (discounts for vendors installing Windows OS's, exclusive OS contracts with hardware vendors), is a DANGEROUS precedent to set.
The clamor for government control of Microsoft is like begging bureaucrats to put leashes on all of us. I don't like that at all.
Pulsed Neural Networks. It's really not such a new technology. There's a good book on different topologies and algorithms titled,
"Pulsed Neural Networks". I know Amazon has a copy (that's where I got mine a few months back).
I don't find it impossible at all for systems to surpass human intelligence. In the past 5 years alone have seen immense advances in representing biological systems in software (neural networks, self organizing feature maps ala Kohonen, etc...).
And what if we build a box with more smarts? A requisite of volition is a value system (what should I do and why?). Do you suppose that a system which surpasses human cognitive abilities would develop an inferior value system? Or would it see value in productive effort (good). Would determine that nihilistic, destructive behavior is evil? Perhaps we might learn something about love and kindness from a digital uber-brain.
Morality, IMHO, doesn't come from on-high, or by vote, but like any other human advance must be discovered.
Of all the rants about how we will spend our time in the next century, there is very little mention of what PRODUCTIVE things we will be doing. I still have to go to work, I still have to eat, I still have to pay for a home, car, child, etc... In addition to the new choices in how I spend my leisure time, technology has also made me incalculably more productive so I *have* more leisure time to inundate myself with new information (making myself even more productive and having fun while I am at it).
The cry of the luddite never changes: "free time is the downfall of civilization! We must discard technology and return to digging in the dirt with our bare hands, watch our children die at birth or before they reach age 5, shorten our life expectencty to 35 years, and work from sun-up to sun-down!" They cry that it is humanity or ecology that we are betraying with technology, but in the end the luddite's fears equate to destruction, as only fear can do.
They are wrong, in fact, in principle and in practice.
I run the exact same configuration. I simply run audio cables from each system's line out into the next system's line in. THey are all wired in series. Each has it's own mixer controls in their respective OS's, and my primary workstation is the final output for the whole chain (like a master control for everyone). I can listen to X11Amp on my Linux workstation, get my ICQ and Outlook email on the Micro$oft workstation, etc..
More like an act of vandalism. Lets not play into government paranoia about computer crimes. When we start equating digital vandalism with actual acts of violence, we are just begging for legislators to start goose-stepping all over our network and our liberties.
I haven't seen a modern router that wouldn't use BOOTP. You get your new configs ready offline, bounce the routers with the new config to ensure connectivity throughout the network. If there's a problem, you can back right out quickly instead of throwing a TTY on every router, reconfiguring, rebooting.
First:r essreleases/106thcongress/990721spence.pdf
http://www.house.gov/hasc/openingstatementsandp
Secondly: as far as "internal" vs. "external" rights, there is no such distinction. Rights are what they are, by our nature as living, breathing human beings, not a politician's fiat. A government that fails to recognize those rights is simply wrong (e.g. our policy concerning human rights in China, our involvment in the Balkans, etc...)
The ASC's arguments that "experts" in intelligence should dictate crypto policy is ludicrous. The military is NOT a legislative body. It should have NO domain over US citizens and their liberties!
And, of course, that the very crypto technology these "experts" are railing against is freely available OUTSIDE the US makes the whole point moot. I simply can't believe that people THIS STUPID are making decisions more important than what they will have for lunch today.