I'm not confusing the two (information vs discovery) rather I'm saying that information can have value because of the discovery. Yes, the discovery process is what incurs the cost, but the sale of the information recoups the cost. In an theoretical environment your solution of patronage makes sense, but in a practical sense the consumer of information expects to pay for that information and therefor places value on the information.
Really though, isn't "value" an arbitrary placement of price based on what one believes another is willing to pay for something? Even though the price paid for the information will ultimately cover the cost of discovery, the value to the end consumer is on the information and therefor I argue that information can have value through the perception of the people marketing the information and the consumers purchasing the information.
If information can not have a price as you say, what about the research or creation of that information? Information can be gained by some sort of investment (time/money) and the information then becomes valuable to those who have it. Information, while not having a physical sense, can still have value by those who place value on it and those who purchase that information.
With an FOSS solution, the situation will likely be the same if the company lacks the technical skills to perform the update. I wasn't trying to state that FOSS solutions somehow resolved the problem. I guess I should have read a little more carefully up the post tree.
The FOSS solution does allow one benefit over a closed source solution (not necessarily applicable in this case as the ASP file will be a text file, if I'm not mistaken) is that the recipient of the solution should receive a copy of the source based on the open source license. They could change the code, but even doing this could still violate any agreements for support from the developer as I noted in my original post.
In the end, I'll take patching the software over coding changes though just for the sake of minimizing user error if I had to send a code change to customers. Likely the patch will be simpler to install.
You are assuming that the company/organization running the ASP.NET solution actually developed and maintains the code. If I am a small company that hired company ABC to develop a website for me because I have no web developers, I'm not going to chance updating the application. I'll have to pay ABC to come out and update the application. This may involve creating a contract or burning up support hours. Most likely though, the companies IT staff would be more willing to apply a patch versus a solution modification. In addition to not being able to update code, you could always find that by making an update without the developers approval, you could invalidate a support agreement for making modifications.
You update your own code which uses the MS application.
Yes, you can update your own code pretty easily, but if the code exist at deployed sites, you may have a problem. For simple sites, your right though that an update like this isn't a big deal. To be fair though, even the the eventual MS patch will require effort for install and testing, but most users are more comfortable applying a patch than updating code.
Not being in the legal department (sorry, starting to sound like a mantra on my part), I can't really provide more argument against using Linux beyond what I've already said (and that's just my interpetation of the email sent around). A few points though that I can respond on I will.
More to the point, do they tell you to stop using MS Windows everytime someone sues Microsoft?
We haven't avoided commercial vendors, including Microsoft.
First of all, there's no "we" here--unless you happen to be an editor or a king of something.
Definitely wasn't the intention to sound like a "king" or any position similar to that. All I was trying to say was that just because a large number of people want something to be true/false, doesn't make it so. By "we", I was lumping myself in with the bunch that wants the SCO IP claims to not be true. Like a lot of people here, I follow the case as my interest is for Linux to succeed.
If you are really getting on the order of $200,000 per PC, even with custom software (sorry "wrapper code"), your margins are quite a bit better than the industry average.
I'm not sure what the actual cost per system is, but the expensive portion is definitely not on the PC side. The PC portion of a solution is as commodity hardware/software as possible, although it does run a bit more than a typical home user's PC (primarily due to high end components like video cards, SCSI/Serial ATA, memory, displays, etc...). The expense is really on the server side (typically Solaris with the occasional MS Win32 system for COTS products that only support MS Win32 OS's) where we use enterprise applications and provide the ability to interface with legacy applications and external customers. The cost of hardware and operating systems is such a small part of the overall solution cost.
if you are going to worry about nebulous hypothetical infringements of IP in using linux, why aren't you worried about the same in MS Windows? Espeially since Microsoft has a track record (again, publicly available information) of misappropriating other people's IP?
The IP concern (as well as security, performance, cost, etc...) does exist with other products and they are considered by the IT department before being permitted on the network. The products considered for internal use often reflect the policies of our customers.
I'm thinking that we'll continue to disagree on some of these issues, but in the end, I have to follow my companies guidelines anyways.
I'm not in the legal department so all I can go off of is that the email the company sent out mentioned the SCO/IBM case. I'd guess the legal risk (at least one example) is that SCO does prove that their IP is in Linux. As I mentioned before, no matter how much we want it not to be true, the issue is a risk until it is resolved.
What legal risks are you claiming linux raises that (for example) MS Windows does not?
Even if the legal risk are raised by MS, that doesn't mean that the risk aren't real.
Let's put it another way... The company I work for develops custom solutions (mostly wrapper code to integrate commercial applications for very specific task). The solution we develop could be deployed to say 50 sites with hundreds of systems per site. The project cost can be very high (some of the larger ones in the billions range and the smaller ones several hundred thousand), but the cost of commercial applications is generally a small portion of the project. With the legal case still unresolved, would you base your business on saving a couple hundred dollars per system? Maybe going with a vendor that offers indemnification would be acceptable, but for now (and presumably until the SCO IP cases are resolved), our legal department has decided the risk is not worth it.
Myself and many of my coworkers agree with your philosophy on this, but from the corporate lawyer level, the use of Linux presents a risk they are unwilling to accept at this time. In our case, the operating system cost is such a small portion of the cost of any project so basing million/billion dollar projects on an operating system that (still) has the potential of legal issues is not worth the risk. We do have exceptions that allow us to use it, but avoidance at this time is preferred. Some exceptions:
Client demands Linux
No commercial OS alternative
Even if we have the chance to use it, the requirement is that we do not actually deliver Linux with our code (the customer must obtain the Linux OS themselves and provide a clause to protect the project should actual IP issues arise). Again, this is a legal department requirement. Guess this will provide some additional level of protection.
No one seriously belives that there are "legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux"
As much as users would like to believe no IP issues exist, in the legal world this issue hasn't been completely resolved. We all await a final decision on this.
Just an FYI, the company I work for does not have a problem with Open Source or Open Standards. In fact we support both (my group has some level of involvement in the Open Geospatial Consortium actually).
One must still consider the source of information. Taking what is written on the Internet as being accurate is naive. Some sources will be more trustworthy, but anyone can put up a web page with misleading information.
As for the document, this will be handy for those companies where management does prefer the hard copy. For those a bit more comfortable with technology, the online review will work.
That said, my company recently sent a message out indicating that the use of Linux is generally prohibited with only a few exceptions. This is primarily due to the legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux. In my case, I doubt a hard/soft copy of this document will convince management to change until the legal issues are resolved.
If they knew from the start that they were going to produce the "limited" version of XP, they could have easily setup some flags in their build process to create the limited version. Maintenance wouldn't be that much higher then. Maybe they have some additional testing for patches, but the code base is probably not much different between XP and XP Starter.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't pay some of their tax money toward things like parks, just that having people who actively use the parks pay a little more does make some sense. Same can be said for GIS data. Those who use the data can offset the cost of collection and save the tax payer a little money. I'm not saying that the fee should be anything outrageous though.
The state parks in Maryland receive funding to operate. Most of these parks (maybe all, but I haven't been to all of them) also charge a small fee to offset the operational cost of using them. The park can be used by everyone, and everyone's taxes do help support the parks, but those who actually use the park pay more than just the taxes to help it run. Why should someone who doesn't use the park at all pay all the cost?
The same applies for the data collected. Everyone does get the advantages of the data (911 systems, planning, tax collection, street maintenance, etc...) and often online interactive mapping programs allow access to data. If someone wants to use the data for profit though, can't they help offset the cost of the data and save the tax payers some money?
I guess I'm not making the point as I see it. What I'm trying to say is that the tax payers are covering the cost of the aerial photography (and the derived vector data) but very few individual/corporations would take advantage of the release of the data. Wouldn't offseting the cost of collection (saving tax payers money) by charging the few that use the data make sense? I'm not saying that the government agencies are going to make a profit (I don't believe they could, even if they wanted to), but that they will reduce tax payer burden.
I used to work for Prince George's County Maryland (as an onsite sub contractor) as both their GIS programmer and the UNIX/Win32 system administrator. The question of who has access to the data was a common question, not only concerning private citizens/corporations but even between county/state agencies.
Aerial photography purchases were done from the budget of a couple of the agencies in the county (Maryland National Capital Parks & Planning, Dept. of Public Works, Health and Human Services, Emergency Services, Dept. of Environmental Resources, and maybe one or two more agencies). Each agency would commit a portion of the money to the collection/maintenance cost (for both aerial data and the generated vector files). Other agencies in the county who chose not to help pay for the cost of the data were often not given access to the data without some payment (not done at my level). I don't know the exact details on the public getting data, but they wouldn't have had direct access to our department anyways so I can only guess they wouldn't have any access as well.
Now to further elaborate on the inter-county agencies, the education board wanted to do a bus routing project using the road centerline file (for E911 and Dept. of Public Works primarily). The school board didn't contribute to the aerial photograph collection and county directors would refuse to allow them access. I'm sure PG County Schools are similar to other school systems in having a limited budget so refusing access seems unreasonable to me, but you have to follow the county policy.
Now for public access, a few problems exist with this. In general, a private citizen wouldn't have much need for the information so releasing to the public would essentially benefit a very small set of people/companies. The benefit for this small group would essentially be paid for by all tax payers. Another problem is at what point do you release the data in the collection/maintenance process? While aerial photos are essentially a "complete" product, the derived GIS data is a "living" dataset that is constantly being updated for changes since the photography. New attributes can be added to the datasets as well so the product can rarely be seen as complete. Analysis done on data must always be made with understandings of the condition of the dataset.
OK, gotta cut this short here...
Some counties are now looking at leasing the data from the aerial photography companies now. By leasing the data, various agreements on who has access to the data are put in place. The benefit to the county is that the data is generally provided cheaper and more frequently. The aerial photography companies benefit is that they know they'll have a regular data customer but they may also sell to private companies/citizens as well.
As for the data being available to myself as a citizen (btw, I live in one of the counties adjacent to PG County so I have to get data for my area just like everyone else if I want it), I'm not sure that I have a need to see it. Sure, it would be neat to have the aerial photo over my house, but I can get that through an online interactive mapping site (http://terraserver.microsoft.com or the other one listed in a previous posters comment). I'm not sure that I'd need it in raw format.
Some data is available for download. Check out agencies like USGS, Census Agency, NGA, etc....
To be fair, what is Sun's incentive to help a product that can eliminate it's own operating system? As for Sun's other open source efforts, consider that the projects Sun does support enhance the open source community as a whole. Donated code to these projects and others have helped open source become a viable solution to many organizations. An organization that uses one open source product is likely to explore using other open source products.
You may also want to look at the applications that run on Linux as supporting Linux too. Wouldn't do much good to have an operating system without applications available for it.
I'm in the opposite situation in Maryland where Democrats tend to hold the state. My vote for Bush wouldn't likely help much, so maybe assisting the Green candidate would at least help the party for future elections.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kronos. - Homer Simpson
Don't forget to consider what happens when you have a dual processor system. What will be the relative rating of a dual level 3 processor system to a single level 5 processor system?
A user who doesn't care about understanding the component levels will likely buy from a vendor like Dell. Some of these vendors already have a walk through system to help the buyer decide on the system level based on a series of questions to figure out what exactly the end user wants to use the system for.
The "level" system would likely only work for a particular vendor (and not really all that well) and comparison between vendors will still be confusing (namely to the reasons others have already mentioned).
I've blocked email files with those viruses (yep, I block all executable files coming in).
My company does the same thing. Another policy of my company is to block web based email through a proxy configuration. Statistically, the infections that have affected the company had been delivered via personal web based mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, etc... and even the commercial ISP's). Access to these sites was deemed an unacceptable risk due to the services being outside our control for proper virus scanning.
TWICE so far, McAfee has NOT had an update available
I've not run into that problem but I can easily believe it would happen. As you've said, AntiVirus is a reactive solution. The companies designing the software must react to a threat and go through a proper review process before providing updates to their customers. Anything less would surely doom them if an update disabled a customers systems.
Virus infections are a failure of the security model of the operating system.
For the most part I agree with you. Some exploits rely on "stupid" users (OK, so not exactly politically correct, but that's what they are) to deploy. Even if a user isn't running as a priviledged account, an exploit that is run as a regular user can still take advantages to the "bugs" in an operating system.
Probably depends on the arrangements for taking the photos. I'm sure the photographer did the work at no charge (or minimal) to the church in hopes of making up the cost by sales directly to the church members.
Yup. But infected is infected.
I guess we have a different definition of infected. If I'm understanding you correctly, the file in question only affects MS Win32 clients and is really just another file to the *nix server. Maybe the term carrier would be more appropriate here as the UNIX system itself isn't compromised.
It's easy to put anti-virus on the file server and just kill the infections there.
I totally agree that running AntiVirus software on all file servers (especially those who serve to MS Win32 clients) is a good idea. Securing multiple points in your environment is a good practice. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your environment and that's leading to this discussion here. If your environment is primarily MS Win32 clients and UNIX servers running CIFS shares for your file server, then your admins definitely need to secure those servers. The main point I try to make though concerning the AntiVirus on the UNIX CIFS servers is that if your getting a virus saved to a file, your really defending too late in the infection process. You should prevent the infected file from ever being accessed or saved by a system through properly configured AntiVirus software at your access points. The file server is really a secondary point of infection if you look at the path of infection.
13.- 7. Requisites after the grant. No person shall be entitled to the benefitof this act, unless he shall give information of copyright being secured,by-causing to be inserted, in the several copies of each and every editionpublished during the term secured, on the title page, or the page immediatelyfollowing, if it be a book, or, if a map, chart, musical composition, print,cut, or engraving, by causing to be impressed on the face thereof, or ifa volume of maps, charts, music or engravings, upon the title or frontispicethereof, the following words, viz: " Entered according to act of congress,in the year by A. B., in the clerk"s office of the district court of ___________________"(as the case may be.)
The owner of the media likely did not insert any copyright notice into the media (either by labeling the media or posting in the media contents). I'm not sure that copyright applies here. Now going to a personal example, my church has Ollan Mills (photo company) take family photos for the church directory. The company also offers the photos for sale to the family. When looking at past photos before deciding to make a purchase, I asked if I could get the photo without a little overlay of the Ollan Mills logo. The photographer said that I couldn't have the photo without that mark as they copyright all their photos by including the logo (which does include a (C)).
I guess I'm not convinced that the media owner really has a copyright on the material if they never showed intention to copyright.
Not trying to flame here but some of the worst havens I have seen are samba shares because people don't put antivirus on *nix servers. It is like pulling teeth trying to tell those admins that it DOES affect them. If their users are running windows, get a virus that does keylogging, and they log in again...guess what...it did affect the *nix server.
I'll agree that running AntiVirus on all systems is a good practice, but the Samba share and the UNIX system aren't really to blame for obtaining the virus in the first place. The situation your describing looks like
MS Win32 system gets virus
MS Win32 system saves virus to network share
Other MS Win32 systems access saved virus file
MS Win32 systems compromised
Your right that a file server should run AntiVirus, but the real problem is allowing the virus onto your network in the first place.
get a virus that does keylogging, and they log in again...guess what...it did affect the *nix server.
True that the *nix server could be affected, but it's really due to a compromise on the MS Win32 system.
Can a person claim copyright on all generated work if they don't actively claim copyright? I'm not saying that a person needs to file for copyright, but don't they at least need to label the media (C) #owner#? If all generated work is truly copyrighted, can I go after anyone who makes drawings like I did in grade school? I'm sure someone copied my stick figures by now.
As for the libel/slander due to the fake events, I didn't read through most of the "stories" to see if anything was that bad. Besides, the blog owner does state that he is making fictional events as he doesn't actually know the people.
The quality of the pictures is not the point, the theft and misuse of the pictures is.
Can this really be considered theft? This guy didn't aquire the media by depriving the owner of the object. The blog owner even provides an email address (don't know if it's valid or not) for the media owner to contact in order to return the media. Could this be the digital equivilent of the "Found Lost Dog" sign?
For the typical user, this amount of storage space is beyond what they would likely ever need. Some corporations/agencies though do need this level of capacity. Picture a company like Space Imaging (provides commercial satellite imagery through IKONOS) who is regularly receiving imagery for the world. Over time, they'll consume all their disk space if they keep information online. Now you might ask why they need to retain imagery, but if analyzing imagery data, you would likely want to monitor change of that imagery over a long period of time (example a land use analysis monitoring deforestation over 50 years of historical data).
While the typical user wouldn't need this, you'll always find somebody who can.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not confusing the two (information vs discovery) rather I'm saying that information can have value because of the discovery. Yes, the discovery process is what incurs the cost, but the sale of the information recoups the cost. In an theoretical environment your solution of patronage makes sense, but in a practical sense the consumer of information expects to pay for that information and therefor places value on the information.
Really though, isn't "value" an arbitrary placement of price based on what one believes another is willing to pay for something? Even though the price paid for the information will ultimately cover the cost of discovery, the value to the end consumer is on the information and therefor I argue that information can have value through the perception of the people marketing the information and the consumers purchasing the information.
If information can not have a price as you say, what about the research or creation of that information? Information can be gained by some sort of investment (time/money) and the information then becomes valuable to those who have it. Information, while not having a physical sense, can still have value by those who place value on it and those who purchase that information.
With an FOSS solution, the situation will likely be the same if the company lacks the technical skills to perform the update. I wasn't trying to state that FOSS solutions somehow resolved the problem. I guess I should have read a little more carefully up the post tree.
The FOSS solution does allow one benefit over a closed source solution (not necessarily applicable in this case as the ASP file will be a text file, if I'm not mistaken) is that the recipient of the solution should receive a copy of the source based on the open source license. They could change the code, but even doing this could still violate any agreements for support from the developer as I noted in my original post.
In the end, I'll take patching the software over coding changes though just for the sake of minimizing user error if I had to send a code change to customers. Likely the patch will be simpler to install.
You are assuming that the company/organization running the ASP.NET solution actually developed and maintains the code. If I am a small company that hired company ABC to develop a website for me because I have no web developers, I'm not going to chance updating the application. I'll have to pay ABC to come out and update the application. This may involve creating a contract or burning up support hours. Most likely though, the companies IT staff would be more willing to apply a patch versus a solution modification. In addition to not being able to update code, you could always find that by making an update without the developers approval, you could invalidate a support agreement for making modifications.
You update your own code which uses the MS application.
Yes, you can update your own code pretty easily, but if the code exist at deployed sites, you may have a problem. For simple sites, your right though that an update like this isn't a big deal. To be fair though, even the the eventual MS patch will require effort for install and testing, but most users are more comfortable applying a patch than updating code.
Not being in the legal department (sorry, starting to sound like a mantra on my part), I can't really provide more argument against using Linux beyond what I've already said (and that's just my interpetation of the email sent around). A few points though that I can respond on I will.
More to the point, do they tell you to stop using MS Windows everytime someone sues Microsoft?
We haven't avoided commercial vendors, including Microsoft.
First of all, there's no "we" here--unless you happen to be an editor or a king of something.
Definitely wasn't the intention to sound like a "king" or any position similar to that. All I was trying to say was that just because a large number of people want something to be true/false, doesn't make it so. By "we", I was lumping myself in with the bunch that wants the SCO IP claims to not be true. Like a lot of people here, I follow the case as my interest is for Linux to succeed.
If you are really getting on the order of $200,000 per PC, even with custom software (sorry "wrapper code"), your margins are quite a bit better than the industry average.
I'm not sure what the actual cost per system is, but the expensive portion is definitely not on the PC side. The PC portion of a solution is as commodity hardware/software as possible, although it does run a bit more than a typical home user's PC (primarily due to high end components like video cards, SCSI/Serial ATA, memory, displays, etc...). The expense is really on the server side (typically Solaris with the occasional MS Win32 system for COTS products that only support MS Win32 OS's) where we use enterprise applications and provide the ability to interface with legacy applications and external customers. The cost of hardware and operating systems is such a small part of the overall solution cost.
if you are going to worry about nebulous hypothetical infringements of IP in using linux, why aren't you worried about the same in MS Windows? Espeially since Microsoft has a track record (again, publicly available information) of misappropriating other people's IP?
The IP concern (as well as security, performance, cost, etc...) does exist with other products and they are considered by the IT department before being permitted on the network. The products considered for internal use often reflect the policies of our customers.
I'm thinking that we'll continue to disagree on some of these issues, but in the end, I have to follow my companies guidelines anyways.
I'm not in the legal department so all I can go off of is that the email the company sent out mentioned the SCO/IBM case. I'd guess the legal risk (at least one example) is that SCO does prove that their IP is in Linux. As I mentioned before, no matter how much we want it not to be true, the issue is a risk until it is resolved.
What legal risks are you claiming linux raises that (for example) MS Windows does not?
Even if the legal risk are raised by MS, that doesn't mean that the risk aren't real.
Let's put it another way... The company I work for develops custom solutions (mostly wrapper code to integrate commercial applications for very specific task). The solution we develop could be deployed to say 50 sites with hundreds of systems per site. The project cost can be very high (some of the larger ones in the billions range and the smaller ones several hundred thousand), but the cost of commercial applications is generally a small portion of the project. With the legal case still unresolved, would you base your business on saving a couple hundred dollars per system? Maybe going with a vendor that offers indemnification would be acceptable, but for now (and presumably until the SCO IP cases are resolved), our legal department has decided the risk is not worth it.
So, does that handle your question?
Client demands Linux
No commercial OS alternative
Even if we have the chance to use it, the requirement is that we do not actually deliver Linux with our code (the customer must obtain the Linux OS themselves and provide a clause to protect the project should actual IP issues arise). Again, this is a legal department requirement. Guess this will provide some additional level of protection.
No one seriously belives that there are "legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux"
As much as users would like to believe no IP issues exist, in the legal world this issue hasn't been completely resolved. We all await a final decision on this.
Just an FYI, the company I work for does not have a problem with Open Source or Open Standards. In fact we support both (my group has some level of involvement in the Open Geospatial Consortium actually).
One must still consider the source of information. Taking what is written on the Internet as being accurate is naive. Some sources will be more trustworthy, but anyone can put up a web page with misleading information.
As for the document, this will be handy for those companies where management does prefer the hard copy. For those a bit more comfortable with technology, the online review will work.
That said, my company recently sent a message out indicating that the use of Linux is generally prohibited with only a few exceptions. This is primarily due to the legal issues surrounding IP claims in Linux. In my case, I doubt a hard/soft copy of this document will convince management to change until the legal issues are resolved.
If they knew from the start that they were going to produce the "limited" version of XP, they could have easily setup some flags in their build process to create the limited version. Maintenance wouldn't be that much higher then. Maybe they have some additional testing for patches, but the code base is probably not much different between XP and XP Starter.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't pay some of their tax money toward things like parks, just that having people who actively use the parks pay a little more does make some sense. Same can be said for GIS data. Those who use the data can offset the cost of collection and save the tax payer a little money. I'm not saying that the fee should be anything outrageous though.
A related example...
The state parks in Maryland receive funding to operate. Most of these parks (maybe all, but I haven't been to all of them) also charge a small fee to offset the operational cost of using them. The park can be used by everyone, and everyone's taxes do help support the parks, but those who actually use the park pay more than just the taxes to help it run. Why should someone who doesn't use the park at all pay all the cost?
The same applies for the data collected. Everyone does get the advantages of the data (911 systems, planning, tax collection, street maintenance, etc...) and often online interactive mapping programs allow access to data. If someone wants to use the data for profit though, can't they help offset the cost of the data and save the tax payers some money?
I guess I'm not making the point as I see it. What I'm trying to say is that the tax payers are covering the cost of the aerial photography (and the derived vector data) but very few individual/corporations would take advantage of the release of the data. Wouldn't offseting the cost of collection (saving tax payers money) by charging the few that use the data make sense? I'm not saying that the government agencies are going to make a profit (I don't believe they could, even if they wanted to), but that they will reduce tax payer burden.
I used to work for Prince George's County Maryland (as an onsite sub contractor) as both their GIS programmer and the UNIX/Win32 system administrator. The question of who has access to the data was a common question, not only concerning private citizens/corporations but even between county/state agencies.
Aerial photography purchases were done from the budget of a couple of the agencies in the county (Maryland National Capital Parks & Planning, Dept. of Public Works, Health and Human Services, Emergency Services, Dept. of Environmental Resources, and maybe one or two more agencies). Each agency would commit a portion of the money to the collection/maintenance cost (for both aerial data and the generated vector files). Other agencies in the county who chose not to help pay for the cost of the data were often not given access to the data without some payment (not done at my level). I don't know the exact details on the public getting data, but they wouldn't have had direct access to our department anyways so I can only guess they wouldn't have any access as well.
Now to further elaborate on the inter-county agencies, the education board wanted to do a bus routing project using the road centerline file (for E911 and Dept. of Public Works primarily). The school board didn't contribute to the aerial photograph collection and county directors would refuse to allow them access. I'm sure PG County Schools are similar to other school systems in having a limited budget so refusing access seems unreasonable to me, but you have to follow the county policy.
Now for public access, a few problems exist with this. In general, a private citizen wouldn't have much need for the information so releasing to the public would essentially benefit a very small set of people/companies. The benefit for this small group would essentially be paid for by all tax payers. Another problem is at what point do you release the data in the collection/maintenance process? While aerial photos are essentially a "complete" product, the derived GIS data is a "living" dataset that is constantly being updated for changes since the photography. New attributes can be added to the datasets as well so the product can rarely be seen as complete. Analysis done on data must always be made with understandings of the condition of the dataset.
OK, gotta cut this short here...
Some counties are now looking at leasing the data from the aerial photography companies now. By leasing the data, various agreements on who has access to the data are put in place. The benefit to the county is that the data is generally provided cheaper and more frequently. The aerial photography companies benefit is that they know they'll have a regular data customer but they may also sell to private companies/citizens as well.
As for the data being available to myself as a citizen (btw, I live in one of the counties adjacent to PG County so I have to get data for my area just like everyone else if I want it), I'm not sure that I have a need to see it. Sure, it would be neat to have the aerial photo over my house, but I can get that through an online interactive mapping site (http://terraserver.microsoft.com or the other one listed in a previous posters comment). I'm not sure that I'd need it in raw format.
Some data is available for download. Check out agencies like USGS, Census Agency, NGA, etc....
Or you can see the Verisign (Feb 2004) release of this.
To be fair, what is Sun's incentive to help a product that can eliminate it's own operating system? As for Sun's other open source efforts, consider that the projects Sun does support enhance the open source community as a whole. Donated code to these projects and others have helped open source become a viable solution to many organizations. An organization that uses one open source product is likely to explore using other open source products.
You may also want to look at the applications that run on Linux as supporting Linux too. Wouldn't do much good to have an operating system without applications available for it.
I'm in the opposite situation in Maryland where Democrats tend to hold the state. My vote for Bush wouldn't likely help much, so maybe assisting the Green candidate would at least help the party for future elections.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kronos. - Homer Simpson
Don't forget to consider what happens when you have a dual processor system. What will be the relative rating of a dual level 3 processor system to a single level 5 processor system?
A user who doesn't care about understanding the component levels will likely buy from a vendor like Dell. Some of these vendors already have a walk through system to help the buyer decide on the system level based on a series of questions to figure out what exactly the end user wants to use the system for.
The "level" system would likely only work for a particular vendor (and not really all that well) and comparison between vendors will still be confusing (namely to the reasons others have already mentioned).
I've blocked email files with those viruses (yep, I block all executable files coming in).
My company does the same thing. Another policy of my company is to block web based email through a proxy configuration. Statistically, the infections that have affected the company had been delivered via personal web based mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, etc... and even the commercial ISP's). Access to these sites was deemed an unacceptable risk due to the services being outside our control for proper virus scanning.
TWICE so far, McAfee has NOT had an update available
I've not run into that problem but I can easily believe it would happen. As you've said, AntiVirus is a reactive solution. The companies designing the software must react to a threat and go through a proper review process before providing updates to their customers. Anything less would surely doom them if an update disabled a customers systems.
Virus infections are a failure of the security model of the operating system.
For the most part I agree with you. Some exploits rely on "stupid" users (OK, so not exactly politically correct, but that's what they are) to deploy. Even if a user isn't running as a priviledged account, an exploit that is run as a regular user can still take advantages to the "bugs" in an operating system.
Probably depends on the arrangements for taking the photos. I'm sure the photographer did the work at no charge (or minimal) to the church in hopes of making up the cost by sales directly to the church members.
Oops. I didn't read through to the bottom of the page I included. Went back and sure enough, your right that the link I posted covers info for 1856.
Thanks for pointing that out. I'll check more carefully in the future.
Yup. But infected is infected. I guess we have a different definition of infected. If I'm understanding you correctly, the file in question only affects MS Win32 clients and is really just another file to the *nix server. Maybe the term carrier would be more appropriate here as the UNIX system itself isn't compromised.
It's easy to put anti-virus on the file server and just kill the infections there.
I totally agree that running AntiVirus software on all file servers (especially those who serve to MS Win32 clients) is a good idea. Securing multiple points in your environment is a good practice. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your environment and that's leading to this discussion here. If your environment is primarily MS Win32 clients and UNIX servers running CIFS shares for your file server, then your admins definitely need to secure those servers. The main point I try to make though concerning the AntiVirus on the UNIX CIFS servers is that if your getting a virus saved to a file, your really defending too late in the infection process. You should prevent the infected file from ever being accessed or saved by a system through properly configured AntiVirus software at your access points. The file server is really a secondary point of infection if you look at the path of infection.
IANAL
Found this site LawGuru Copyright defined.
Excerpt:
13.- 7. Requisites after the grant. No person shall be entitled to the benefitof this act, unless he shall give information of copyright being secured,by-causing to be inserted, in the several copies of each and every editionpublished during the term secured, on the title page, or the page immediatelyfollowing, if it be a book, or, if a map, chart, musical composition, print,cut, or engraving, by causing to be impressed on the face thereof, or ifa volume of maps, charts, music or engravings, upon the title or frontispicethereof, the following words, viz: " Entered according to act of congress,in the year by A. B., in the clerk"s office of the district court of ___________________"(as the case may be.)
The owner of the media likely did not insert any copyright notice into the media (either by labeling the media or posting in the media contents). I'm not sure that copyright applies here. Now going to a personal example, my church has Ollan Mills (photo company) take family photos for the church directory. The company also offers the photos for sale to the family. When looking at past photos before deciding to make a purchase, I asked if I could get the photo without a little overlay of the Ollan Mills logo. The photographer said that I couldn't have the photo without that mark as they copyright all their photos by including the logo (which does include a (C)).
I guess I'm not convinced that the media owner really has a copyright on the material if they never showed intention to copyright.
I'll agree that running AntiVirus on all systems is a good practice, but the Samba share and the UNIX system aren't really to blame for obtaining the virus in the first place. The situation your describing looks like
MS Win32 system gets virus
MS Win32 system saves virus to network share
Other MS Win32 systems access saved virus file
MS Win32 systems compromised
Your right that a file server should run AntiVirus, but the real problem is allowing the virus onto your network in the first place.
get a virus that does keylogging, and they log in again...guess what...it did affect the *nix server.
True that the *nix server could be affected, but it's really due to a compromise on the MS Win32 system.
Can a person claim copyright on all generated work if they don't actively claim copyright? I'm not saying that a person needs to file for copyright, but don't they at least need to label the media (C) #owner#? If all generated work is truly copyrighted, can I go after anyone who makes drawings like I did in grade school? I'm sure someone copied my stick figures by now.
As for the libel/slander due to the fake events, I didn't read through most of the "stories" to see if anything was that bad. Besides, the blog owner does state that he is making fictional events as he doesn't actually know the people.
The quality of the pictures is not the point, the theft and misuse of the pictures is.
Can this really be considered theft? This guy didn't aquire the media by depriving the owner of the object. The blog owner even provides an email address (don't know if it's valid or not) for the media owner to contact in order to return the media. Could this be the digital equivilent of the "Found Lost Dog" sign?
For the typical user, this amount of storage space is beyond what they would likely ever need. Some corporations/agencies though do need this level of capacity. Picture a company like Space Imaging (provides commercial satellite imagery through IKONOS) who is regularly receiving imagery for the world. Over time, they'll consume all their disk space if they keep information online. Now you might ask why they need to retain imagery, but if analyzing imagery data, you would likely want to monitor change of that imagery over a long period of time (example a land use analysis monitoring deforestation over 50 years of historical data).
While the typical user wouldn't need this, you'll always find somebody who can.