It's good to see Microsoft are worried on all fronts at the moment, they must be spending more than they ever have on improving products and advertising.
You had a few too many words in there. It should read like this:
It's good to see Microsoft are worried on all fronts at the moment, they must be spending more than they ever have on improving advertising.
User: "I can't get my email and I need you to unlock port 25".
Tech: "You don't need port 25 to download your email. You have . Please go to this website to disinfect your system."
No one needs port 25 to GET mail unless they are running their own mail-server, in which case they are probably smart enough to either not get infected by a spam-bot, or smart enough not to use Outlook/Express in the first place.
The article is sorely lacking. Did the kids 'fess up, or did someone find out? Were they really "hacking", or was there a case of some dumba$$ IT staff leaving an MS Access file sitting in a directory on the webserver? If these HS students "hacked" the SSNs a few months ago, how many other people have had access to them as well in those last few months? Did the students go to the administration first & get the "there's no problem here, leave us alone" PHB brush-off response?
You mean like the TSA "terrorist watch list" for airlines?
<sarcasm>Oh yeah, that's *real* effective - I feel much safer flying now!</sarcasm>
Repeat after Ben: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security". And, I would add, will get neither liberty nor security.
Spyware, like viruses, are not solved by simply moving to a different platform. Once enough people migrate then malware writers will start to include that platform.
Will other platforms have a better security model then Windows? Sure.
Will other platforms still have security vulnerabilities? Yes.
Will malware writers do everything they can think of to get a user to install their software (so-called "social engineering")? You bet.
The user is the weak link in the chain, and I think user education is the only real way to solve that problem in the long run. IE/ActiveX have really brought the problem to the public consciousness and made it easier for malware to get installed & propagate much faster than ever before. But fixing Windows (or moving away from it) won't eliminate malware.
1. Broadcasters put the commercials in, producers own the rights to the show. So who, exactly, are you proposing should offer the show for download - broadcasters or producers?
Assuming you mean broadcasters: a. If you offer up the show for download and you don't include ads, then eventually your viewership (aka Nielsen ratings) will decline because people will find its more convenient to download the show. Therefore your airtime commercial rates drop.
b. If you offer the show for download with commercials intact, you'll likely have local advertisements which will be completely useless to most internet viewers. Brits & Aussies couldn't care less if Billy Bob's Auto is having a weekend sale in Hicktown, USA. If the adverts are really annoying / huge, people will strip out the ads & seed the ad-less videos on BT, so you're right back to where you started (or worse, per (a)).
c. If you don't put the ads in the download, then that will most likely accelerate the effect of (a). What would you rather do - watch a 30 minute show at 6:30pm every Friday night (or whenever) and suffer through 5-8 minutes of ads, or download it before you go to bed Friday night and watch it Saturday, ad-free?
d. Finally, broadcasters would need new permission from the producers to re-distribute via the internet. That won't come free - it won't even be cheap. So they're paying extra for licensing, hosting, and depressing their primary business (selling advert air-time) - not a good model.
As for producers, well, that's what TFA is about - producers skipping the broadcaster middle-man and going right to the audience directly.
This rasies an interesting question though: is it illegal to record FM radio? Is it illegal to record FM radio and convert everything to MP3 at 96kbps/22khz/etc? If I put these songs on the internet, at that point, is that illegal?
Of course. The radio station has permission from the copyright holder(s) to broadcast that music. You do not. The fact that your copy is lower quality is irrelevant.
Now, fair use doctrine would (probably - IANAL) say its okay for you to record FM radio & convert to MP3 on your computer. But it's still not legal, under fair use or any other reason, for you to put it on the internet.
It's the same situation as GPL - you write class foo() & release it under the GPL. I take your function & use it in my project, and release my project under the GPL (thereby complying with your license requirements). Now Joe Coder cannot (legally) take my project, save off your class foo(), strip all the comments & some misc methods out, remove the GPL license files & your name, then put it up for download. Same concept.
Well, technically, that wasn't legal either. But the **AA didn't care (much) because: 1) You still had a physical medium, so if you give your copy to your friend, you don' have it. Unles...
2) You made copies, which wasn't as common as it is now. And then, everything was analog and still required a physical media, so making copies wasn't as easy as click & save.
It's sort of a slippery slope argument, I guess. Making those early copies wasn't a huge deal (although the **AA companies fought against them back in the day, I believe), but now with the technology we have those same old practices are really causing problems for content producers & broadcasters that expect the old business models to continue to function.
Amazing the things you can come up with when you should really be working, eh?
Of course, maintaining such a site could become quite a nightmare - that'd almost have to be a commercial venture, with subscription-based model. Even so, if I knew there was a service out there that I could rely on, I wouldn't hestitate for a moment to suggest it to friends & family.
Of course, at this point the only company I'd trust enough would be Google - gWall, anyone?:-)
Welcome to the new United Corporations of America!
Our elected representatives can't be bothered with the details of reading & writing the legislation their party has decided to pass - they've got to focus on campaign funding for the next election and slamming the other, evil party!
I have to (sort of) disagree. The user gets a pop-up box saying "alsjka32.exe is trying to connect to 10.23.51.51 port 25" (Zone Alarm's message boxes may be different - I haven't used it in a long time). How is a message like that at all useful to Joe or Jane User? There's so many unknown things in their computer - how is a user supposed to know that svchost.exe, csrss.exe, nvsvc32.exe are good, but alsk32.exe is bad? Sometimes *I* don't even know the difference without going to Google, and even then, once I know what the file is from (or appears to be from), I have to stop & think about whether or not this program should have net access. Things like Zone Alarm do try to help the user, but that's not enough yet.
Ideally, Zone Alarm (& other firewall packages), would be able to automatically query a program repository (maybe some do this? I use an old version of TPF so I don't know) to know whether or not a program is "safe" for internet access. The user needs sufficient to make an informed decision. Until computers readily provide that information, I don't agree with the premise that "it's the user's fault because they clicked the button".
If a similar principle applied to the Internet, with minor offences attracting a polite warning up to running a grossly insecure system that causes widespread inconvenience to other netizens getting you completely blocked, people would soon learn to respect the technology and others using it.
While that's a nice idea in concept, I don't think it would work in The Real World, for a couple of reasons:
1. A license is only required for driving on public property (ie roads). Most of (US) internet access traverses private utility lines (phone/cable), so there's a question of jurisdiction.
2. Risk to free speech - who defines what constitutes an "offense"? Ok, a zombie/spam-relay is against the rules, right? What about a mass-distributed opt-in mail list? What about a targeted marketing email sent to people a user has a "previous business relationship" with? What about P2P? Some P2P use is legal, some is not. Does Big Brother have to watch we're downloading? Or what about political activity? How do you prevent Big Brother from deciding that "questioning the President's decisions constitutes terrorism, hereby revoking your Internet License"?
3. The internet is a global network, so you have the same old issue of making a such in institution as "internet licensing" work across a multitude of laws & cultures. How do ensure that the Russians, British, or Italians enforce the same sort of internet-license policy that we'd create here in the states?
4. Finally, there's the question of efficiency. Plenty of things are already illegal (spam, hacking computers, etc.). That doesn't stop people from doing it, just like people don't stop speeding or driving drunk just because its illegal. It's a question of making policies, and having the resources to enforce them. Since we're talking about computers, there's a lot that can be automated which reduces the manual resource need, but it doesn't eliminate it. There's already a lot of issues regarding RBL's and trying to get legit mail lists off an RBL - scaling that up to accidently (aka based on a false positive) denying internet access to people randomly doesn't seem like a great idea, unless you have the resources in place to resolve those, and that costs $$.
It's not like I'm expecting an ISP to watch the user, and make sure someone doesn't deface my site... but if it happens, and I report it (with logs, and all the information I have), then it's the ISPs job to follow up on it and keep me updated.
So how is this different than the {RI|MP}AA sending a list of logs to your ISP and demanding to know what users were transmitting those P2P packets?
You provided the ISP with factual information regarding an attack on your system. IMHO - what the ISP chooses to do about it is completely up to them. Unless you get the police involved & file get a criminal investigation going, I don't think the ISP should *have* to do anything. (Note, however, that I think a good ISP *should* get involved, in the interest of saving bandwidth & protecting the security of their paying customers.)
You, of course, are free to ban the users of that ISP from using/browsing your internet services. Why not do that instead?
I signed up for one of those gratis-network's promos (free mac mini) off a slashdot sig once. I had such high hopes! I signed up using a distinct email in my domain. I wanted to make sure things were on the up & up before I spammed all my friends & family. I waited a few weeks and you know what happened? 1. The "offers" I signed up for never got credited to me (thankfully I didn't have any trouble canceling after the trial periods). 2. That account gets an incredible amount of spam. I'd say my spam increased over 300%, all due to that one email address.
Needless to say, I didn't go preaching the benefits of gratis to my friends & family. I'll get a mac mini the old-fashioned way - by saving my pennies. Lots and lots of pennies:-) </OFFTOPIC>
The thing many slashbots forget is that Linux is not the perfect solution for everyone, all the time. It sounds like you've got a pre-existing network with hardware & software that needs to work. You have the experience & knowledge to make it work quickly & correctly under Windows 2000. Therefore, trying to shoe-horn Linux into your environment is probably not a smart move.
However, it is important to also realize the costs of using Windows. If this system is in any way connected to the Internet there is an associated maintenance cost (have to keep checking for security updates) and risks (what if the newest update breaks your system, or your server gets hacked before you get the next update)? Both of these concerns apply to Linux as well, but many would argue (I think fairly) that the risks are much lower due to a better security architecture.
The other concern with Windows is on-going licensing & support costs. Your system may work today, but in 5 years you may not be able to get support for your software (eventually Microsoft will end-of-life W2k, and your POS & financial software will have updated versions as well). This is a concern with Linux as well, however some argue (and I think this is pushing it) that you could hire a consultant to do support for your old system because you have the source code. While that is true, I expect that to be the very rare case.
I don't know anything about the financial software & POS systems available to Linux, but if/when those components become commercially available & viable it might be worth it to investigate Linux - it may save you money on licensing & support costs, it may make your system more secure against hackers / viruses, and/or it may provide you with improved functionality that was not possible/practical with Windows. But Linux is not the miracle cure that will make all of your problems go away, and it's not the right solution for every situation, despite what some may claim here.
Wow... and you got modded informative for that? Kudos:-)
Now I have to wonder - was the moderator trying to be nice & bump up your karma my moderating you "informative", or was the moderator totally clueless and thought "hey, this person sounds intelligent - I better mod it informative"
Same here - haven't had a TV in a couple of years. I did have VCR connected to A/V in on my PC for awhile, until the PC died. Haven't missed the TV at all - now, instead of watching brain-rot I go online & read headlines, news articles, blogs, etc. I feel much more informed now than I ever did watching TV. And with no TV and FF/Adblock, the only ads I get are the dead-tree spam (which goes right into my recycling bin).
Life's so much better this way. And the only show that I can't live without (The Daily Show), I can find torrents of online (usually within a day). I bought a couple of copies of America: The Book as my show of support for Jon Stewart & TDS.
Really, why, in North America, are we so fixated on the automobile for personal transport?
Because some big corporations (General Motors & some others in the auto industry) decided they'd make more money that way. Here's one blurb that starts discussing it (scroll down a few paragraphs):
One dramatic example is the "Los Angelizing" of the US economy, a huge state-corporate campaign to direct consumer preferences to "suburban sprawl and individualized transport -- as opposed to clustered suburbanization compatible with a mix of rail, bus, and motor car transport," Richard Du Boff observes in his economic history of the United States, a policy that involved "massive destruction of central city capital stock" and "relocating rather than augmenting the supply of housing, commercial structures, and public infrastructure." The role of the federal government was to provide funds for "complete motorization and the crippling of surface mass transit";
Another choice quote:
The private sector operated in parallel: "Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses... In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S.district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000."
General Motors, and some other companies in the automobile industry, acquired 64% of the stock of the Key System (officially the Railway Equipment and Realty Company) through a "front" company, National City Lines, in 1946. They replaced the board of directors with their own stooges, who then approved a motion to scrap company plans to purchase PCC type streetcars and electric trolleybuses. Today it would be called a "hostile take-over." Orders for more trains were cancelled. Soon they started to decimate the system, first destroying the electric trolleybus line (that, while still under construction, was almost completed) followed by streetcars and electric trains.
It's a small comfort to know that the US government whoring itself to corporate America's interests is not a recent phenomenon.
If we begin drilling in ANWR and restart the pumps throughout Texas, California, and other states, we can do a lot to lower the price of crude.
And if we don't, as the price of crude continues to rise alternative energy sources will become more economically feasible and attract greater investment.
You'll notice a common thread: It is environmental activism that is really causing the most significant increase in your gas prices. Get rid of that and you can enjoy your sweet nectar for a more reasonable price. And remember: The purpose of the environmentalists wackos is not to fix the environment, but to shut down our economy and destroy our capitalism.
Wow - way to go FUD-Master! You should see if Microsoft or the RIAA is hiring....
No, environmentalists are not out to "destroy our capitalism." At its economic heart, environmental regulations seek to minimize externalities You can build a refinery, but that refinery is going to cause air pollution, water/ground-water contamination, and environmental degradation. It's going to affect the plants and the animals in the immediate area as well as downwind or downstream. It's going to cause health problems for people.
TANSTAAFL - if you're going to build a refinery, you've got to pay for all of these damages you are going to cause, or pay to prevent them. Gov't regulations are one mechanism to force you to do that, because you're not going to do it out of the "goodness" of your profit-seeking capitalistic heart.
I hope gas prices keep going up, and that creative entrepreneurs in this country find new ways to generate and conserve energy in a profitable way. These are your true capitalists - not Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP.
Of course, I don't advocate putting everyone in Texas - I much prefer Wisconsin;-) And I agree - it's a fairly useless (albeit interesting) statistic, like your Rhode Island number. I did the math simply to prove to myself (and other/.'ers) that gp wasn't just making things up.
As others have noted, living space is a very small portion of the space required to actually sustain life, especially given the US's average quality of life. A lot of land & resources goes into producing food, housing, tools, transportation, plumbing, etc.
But the gp's main point, which I agree with, is that world hunger is not a problem of lack of supply. We can produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The problem is distribution - getting the food distributed fairly among people. Food is power - control the food supply, and you can control the people.
Interesting tangent - The Story of B is a fictional story where the protagonist has a theory that (to put it simply) totalitarian agriculture has lead us to this situation where we are today, precisely because of this issue of linking food & power. A very interesting read - I highly recommend checking it out!
That's a very insightful comment - I never thought about (or recognized) that before. I suppose it works because in one case (distance), you're taking all of those "units" (people, dollar bills, whatever), and putting them in one dimension. With volum, you've got 3 dimensions to work with. Very interesting!
I agree with parent poster - the problem is one of distribution, not supply. And for those who don't believe the claim the entire world population would fit in Texas:
Slashdot Mirror
It's good to see Microsoft are worried on all fronts at the moment, they must be spending more than they ever have on improving products and advertising.
You had a few too many words in there. It should read like this:
It's good to see Microsoft are worried on all fronts at the moment, they must be spending more than they ever have on improving advertising.
^_^
So much for preview - that should have read:
Tech: "You don't need port 25 to download your email. You have [spam-bot du'jour]. Please go to this website to disinfect your system."
Uh, wrong.
User: "I can't get my email and I need you to unlock port 25".
Tech: "You don't need port 25 to download your email. You have . Please go to this website to disinfect your system."
No one needs port 25 to GET mail unless they are running their own mail-server, in which case they are probably smart enough to either not get infected by a spam-bot, or smart enough not to use Outlook/Express in the first place.
Doom3?! By the time Longhorn comes out I expect to be running DNF on my 4,000 cpu workstation & 150TB disk!!
The article is sorely lacking. Did the kids 'fess up, or did someone find out? Were they really "hacking", or was there a case of some dumba$$ IT staff leaving an MS Access file sitting in a directory on the webserver? If these HS students "hacked" the SSNs a few months ago, how many other people have had access to them as well in those last few months? Did the students go to the administration first & get the "there's no problem here, leave us alone" PHB brush-off response?
Details, man - we need details!
You mean like the TSA "terrorist watch list" for airlines?
<sarcasm>Oh yeah, that's *real* effective - I feel much safer flying now!</sarcasm>
Repeat after Ben: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security". And, I would add, will get neither liberty nor security.
Spyware, like viruses, are not solved by simply moving to a different platform. Once enough people migrate then malware writers will start to include that platform.
Will other platforms have a better security model then Windows? Sure.
Will other platforms still have security vulnerabilities? Yes.
Will malware writers do everything they can think of to get a user to install their software (so-called "social engineering")? You bet.
The user is the weak link in the chain, and I think user education is the only real way to solve that problem in the long run. IE/ActiveX have really brought the problem to the public consciousness and made it easier for malware to get installed & propagate much faster than ever before. But fixing Windows (or moving away from it) won't eliminate malware.
There's a couple of problems with that model:
1. Broadcasters put the commercials in, producers own the rights to the show. So who, exactly, are you proposing should offer the show for download - broadcasters or producers?
Assuming you mean broadcasters:
a. If you offer up the show for download and you don't include ads, then eventually your viewership (aka Nielsen ratings) will decline because people will find its more convenient to download the show. Therefore your airtime commercial rates drop.
b. If you offer the show for download with commercials intact, you'll likely have local advertisements which will be completely useless to most internet viewers. Brits & Aussies couldn't care less if Billy Bob's Auto is having a weekend sale in Hicktown, USA. If the adverts are really annoying / huge, people will strip out the ads & seed the ad-less videos on BT, so you're right back to where you started (or worse, per (a)).
c. If you don't put the ads in the download, then that will most likely accelerate the effect of (a). What would you rather do - watch a 30 minute show at 6:30pm every Friday night (or whenever) and suffer through 5-8 minutes of ads, or download it before you go to bed Friday night and watch it Saturday, ad-free?
d. Finally, broadcasters would need new permission from the producers to re-distribute via the internet. That won't come free - it won't even be cheap. So they're paying extra for licensing, hosting, and depressing their primary business (selling advert air-time) - not a good model.
As for producers, well, that's what TFA is about - producers skipping the broadcaster middle-man and going right to the audience directly.
This rasies an interesting question though: is it illegal to record FM radio? Is it illegal to record FM radio and convert everything to MP3 at 96kbps/22khz/etc? If I put these songs on the internet, at that point, is that illegal?
Of course. The radio station has permission from the copyright holder(s) to broadcast that music. You do not. The fact that your copy is lower quality is irrelevant.
Now, fair use doctrine would (probably - IANAL) say its okay for you to record FM radio & convert to MP3 on your computer. But it's still not legal, under fair use or any other reason, for you to put it on the internet.
It's the same situation as GPL - you write class foo() & release it under the GPL. I take your function & use it in my project, and release my project under the GPL (thereby complying with your license requirements). Now Joe Coder cannot (legally) take my project, save off your class foo(), strip all the comments & some misc methods out, remove the GPL license files & your name, then put it up for download. Same concept.
Well, technically, that wasn't legal either. But the **AA didn't care (much) because:
1) You still had a physical medium, so if you give your copy to your friend, you don' have it. Unles...
2) You made copies, which wasn't as common as it is now. And then, everything was analog and still required a physical media, so making copies wasn't as easy as click & save.
It's sort of a slippery slope argument, I guess. Making those early copies wasn't a huge deal (although the **AA companies fought against them back in the day, I believe), but now with the technology we have those same old practices are really causing problems for content producers & broadcasters that expect the old business models to continue to function.
Amazing the things you can come up with when you should really be working, eh?
:-)
Of course, maintaining such a site could become quite a nightmare - that'd almost have to be a commercial venture, with subscription-based model. Even so, if I knew there was a service out there that I could rely on, I wouldn't hestitate for a moment to suggest it to friends & family.
Of course, at this point the only company I'd trust enough would be Google - gWall, anyone?
Welcome to the new United Corporations of America!
Our elected representatives can't be bothered with the details of reading & writing the legislation their party has decided to pass - they've got to focus on campaign funding for the next election and slamming the other, evil party!
I have to (sort of) disagree. The user gets a pop-up box saying "alsjka32.exe is trying to connect to 10.23.51.51 port 25" (Zone Alarm's message boxes may be different - I haven't used it in a long time). How is a message like that at all useful to Joe or Jane User? There's so many unknown things in their computer - how is a user supposed to know that svchost.exe, csrss.exe, nvsvc32.exe are good, but alsk32.exe is bad? Sometimes *I* don't even know the difference without going to Google, and even then, once I know what the file is from (or appears to be from), I have to stop & think about whether or not this program should have net access. Things like Zone Alarm do try to help the user, but that's not enough yet.
Ideally, Zone Alarm (& other firewall packages), would be able to automatically query a program repository (maybe some do this? I use an old version of TPF so I don't know) to know whether or not a program is "safe" for internet access. The user needs sufficient to make an informed decision. Until computers readily provide that information, I don't agree with the premise that "it's the user's fault because they clicked the button".
If a similar principle applied to the Internet, with minor offences attracting a polite warning up to running a grossly insecure system that causes widespread inconvenience to other netizens getting you completely blocked, people would soon learn to respect the technology and others using it.
While that's a nice idea in concept, I don't think it would work in The Real World, for a couple of reasons:
1. A license is only required for driving on public property (ie roads). Most of (US) internet access traverses private utility lines (phone/cable), so there's a question of jurisdiction.
2. Risk to free speech - who defines what constitutes an "offense"? Ok, a zombie/spam-relay is against the rules, right? What about a mass-distributed opt-in mail list? What about a targeted marketing email sent to people a user has a "previous business relationship" with? What about P2P? Some P2P use is legal, some is not. Does Big Brother have to watch we're downloading? Or what about political activity? How do you prevent Big Brother from deciding that "questioning the President's decisions constitutes terrorism, hereby revoking your Internet License"?
3. The internet is a global network, so you have the same old issue of making a such in institution as "internet licensing" work across a multitude of laws & cultures. How do ensure that the Russians, British, or Italians enforce the same sort of internet-license policy that we'd create here in the states?
4. Finally, there's the question of efficiency. Plenty of things are already illegal (spam, hacking computers, etc.). That doesn't stop people from doing it, just like people don't stop speeding or driving drunk just because its illegal. It's a question of making policies, and having the resources to enforce them. Since we're talking about computers, there's a lot that can be automated which reduces the manual resource need, but it doesn't eliminate it. There's already a lot of issues regarding RBL's and trying to get legit mail lists off an RBL - scaling that up to accidently (aka based on a false positive) denying internet access to people randomly doesn't seem like a great idea, unless you have the resources in place to resolve those, and that costs $$.
Oh well, at least the thought police ARE not after the guy.
:-)
No, but the grammar police are after you!
It's not like I'm expecting an ISP to watch the user, and make sure someone doesn't deface my site... but if it happens, and I report it (with logs, and all the information I have), then it's the ISPs job to follow up on it and keep me updated.
So how is this different than the {RI|MP}AA sending a list of logs to your ISP and demanding to know what users were transmitting those P2P packets?
You provided the ISP with factual information regarding an attack on your system. IMHO - what the ISP chooses to do about it is completely up to them. Unless you get the police involved & file get a criminal investigation going, I don't think the ISP should *have* to do anything. (Note, however, that I think a good ISP *should* get involved, in the interest of saving bandwidth & protecting the security of their paying customers.)
You, of course, are free to ban the users of that ISP from using/browsing your internet services. Why not do that instead?
I signed up for one of those gratis-network's promos (free mac mini) off a slashdot sig once. I had such high hopes! I signed up using a distinct email in my domain. I wanted to make sure things were on the up & up before I spammed all my friends & family. I waited a few weeks and you know what happened?
1. The "offers" I signed up for never got credited to me (thankfully I didn't have any trouble canceling after the trial periods).
2. That account gets an incredible amount of spam. I'd say my spam increased over 300%, all due to that one email address.
Needless to say, I didn't go preaching the benefits of gratis to my friends & family. I'll get a mac mini the old-fashioned way - by saving my pennies. Lots and lots of pennies
</OFFTOPIC>
The thing many slashbots forget is that Linux is not the perfect solution for everyone, all the time. It sounds like you've got a pre-existing network with hardware & software that needs to work. You have the experience & knowledge to make it work quickly & correctly under Windows 2000. Therefore, trying to shoe-horn Linux into your environment is probably not a smart move.
However, it is important to also realize the costs of using Windows. If this system is in any way connected to the Internet there is an associated maintenance cost (have to keep checking for security updates) and risks (what if the newest update breaks your system, or your server gets hacked before you get the next update)? Both of these concerns apply to Linux as well, but many would argue (I think fairly) that the risks are much lower due to a better security architecture.
The other concern with Windows is on-going licensing & support costs. Your system may work today, but in 5 years you may not be able to get support for your software (eventually Microsoft will end-of-life W2k, and your POS & financial software will have updated versions as well). This is a concern with Linux as well, however some argue (and I think this is pushing it) that you could hire a consultant to do support for your old system because you have the source code. While that is true, I expect that to be the very rare case.
I don't know anything about the financial software & POS systems available to Linux, but if/when those components become commercially available & viable it might be worth it to investigate Linux - it may save you money on licensing & support costs, it may make your system more secure against hackers / viruses, and/or it may provide you with improved functionality that was not possible/practical with Windows. But Linux is not the miracle cure that will make all of your problems go away, and it's not the right solution for every situation, despite what some may claim here.
Wow... and you got modded informative for that? Kudos :-)
Now I have to wonder - was the moderator trying to be nice & bump up your karma my moderating you "informative", or was the moderator totally clueless and thought "hey, this person sounds intelligent - I better mod it informative"
Same here - haven't had a TV in a couple of years. I did have VCR connected to A/V in on my PC for awhile, until the PC died. Haven't missed the TV at all - now, instead of watching brain-rot I go online & read headlines, news articles, blogs, etc. I feel much more informed now than I ever did watching TV. And with no TV and FF/Adblock, the only ads I get are the dead-tree spam (which goes right into my recycling bin).
Life's so much better this way. And the only show that I can't live without (The Daily Show), I can find torrents of online (usually within a day). I bought a couple of copies of America: The Book as my show of support for Jon Stewart & TDS.
Really, why, in North America, are we so fixated on the automobile for personal transport?
Because some big corporations (General Motors & some others in the auto industry) decided they'd make more money that way. Here's one blurb that starts discussing it (scroll down a few paragraphs):
One dramatic example is the "Los Angelizing" of the US economy, a huge state-corporate campaign to direct consumer preferences to "suburban sprawl and individualized transport -- as opposed to clustered suburbanization compatible with a mix of rail, bus, and motor car transport," Richard Du Boff observes in his economic history of the United States, a policy that involved "massive destruction of central city capital stock" and "relocating rather than augmenting the supply of housing, commercial structures, and public infrastructure." The role of the federal government was to provide funds for "complete motorization and the crippling of surface mass transit";
Another choice quote:
The private sector operated in parallel: "Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses... In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S.district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000."
Here's a more detailed history of the controlled demolition of the Bay Area "Key System":
General Motors, and some other companies in the automobile industry, acquired 64% of the stock of the Key System (officially the Railway Equipment and Realty Company) through a "front" company, National City Lines, in 1946. They replaced the board of directors with their own stooges, who then approved a motion to scrap company plans to purchase PCC type streetcars and electric trolleybuses. Today it would be called a "hostile take-over." Orders for more trains were cancelled. Soon they started to decimate the system, first destroying the electric trolleybus line (that, while still under construction, was almost completed) followed by streetcars and electric trains.
It's a small comfort to know that the US government whoring itself to corporate America's interests is not a recent phenomenon.
If we begin drilling in ANWR and restart the pumps throughout Texas, California, and other states, we can do a lot to lower the price of crude.
And if we don't, as the price of crude continues to rise alternative energy sources will become more economically feasible and attract greater investment.
You'll notice a common thread: It is environmental activism that is really causing the most significant increase in your gas prices. Get rid of that and you can enjoy your sweet nectar for a more reasonable price. And remember: The purpose of the environmentalists wackos is not to fix the environment, but to shut down our economy and destroy our capitalism.
Wow - way to go FUD-Master! You should see if Microsoft or the RIAA is hiring....
No, environmentalists are not out to "destroy our capitalism." At its economic heart, environmental regulations seek to minimize externalities You can build a refinery, but that refinery is going to cause air pollution, water/ground-water contamination, and environmental degradation. It's going to affect the plants and the animals in the immediate area as well as downwind or downstream. It's going to cause health problems for people.
TANSTAAFL - if you're going to build a refinery, you've got to pay for all of these damages you are going to cause, or pay to prevent them. Gov't regulations are one mechanism to force you to do that, because you're not going to do it out of the "goodness" of your profit-seeking capitalistic heart.
I hope gas prices keep going up, and that creative entrepreneurs in this country find new ways to generate and conserve energy in a profitable way. These are your true capitalists - not Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP.
Of course, I don't advocate putting everyone in Texas - I much prefer Wisconsin ;-) And I agree - it's a fairly useless (albeit interesting) statistic, like your Rhode Island number. I did the math simply to prove to myself (and other /.'ers) that gp wasn't just making things up.
As others have noted, living space is a very small portion of the space required to actually sustain life, especially given the US's average quality of life. A lot of land & resources goes into producing food, housing, tools, transportation, plumbing, etc.
But the gp's main point, which I agree with, is that world hunger is not a problem of lack of supply. We can produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet. The problem is distribution - getting the food distributed fairly among people. Food is power - control the food supply, and you can control the people.
Interesting tangent - The Story of B is a fictional story where the protagonist has a theory that (to put it simply) totalitarian agriculture has lead us to this situation where we are today, precisely because of this issue of linking food & power. A very interesting read - I highly recommend checking it out!
That's a very insightful comment - I never thought about (or recognized) that before. I suppose it works because in one case (distance), you're taking all of those "units" (people, dollar bills, whatever), and putting them in one dimension. With volum, you've got 3 dimensions to work with. Very interesting!
I agree with parent poster - the problem is one of distribution, not supply. And for those who don't believe the claim the entire world population would fit in Texas:
Size of Texas: 261,914 sq miles (land) = 7.30174326 × 10^12 square feet
Population of the world: 6,515,511,450 people
Area / people = 1120.67077 sq ft/person
Family/group of 4 = 4482.7 sq ft
Incredible, isn't it?