I'm more interested to know who's got it in for Los Alamos.
Of all the people employed by the government in this line of work, there's got to be many, many more cases just like this out there. How is it possible that this *one* government funded R&D facility has security problems that boil down to human error rather than process?
I have a feeling the others have the same issues, except this one is someone's punching bag. That someone is powerful enough to get the gears of government working against Los Alamos. Maybe there are too many Democrats in New Mexico?
I believe some disambiguation/declarations of rights is okay.
But there is NO moderating force in capitalism, much less in our current political climate.
Monopolies are the "natural" mature state of markets because some asshat sees the opportunity in doing things like, owning the entire supply of some good or coordinating prices and supply with their nearest competitors, or legislating barriers to market.
I could go on, but the point is you mistakenly follow the politically expedient rationale that capitalism/privatization is some kind of silver bullet that solves all problems. It doesn't and it hasn't.
What risk? 1. media conglomerate buys script/concept for pennies. 2. The typical studio gets others to foot the production bill. (financing) 3. The studio outsources the actual movie production. (producer) 4. Go/no-go decision is the media conglomerates alone. 5. Media conglomerate promotes/distributes movie and the charges are paid by the film owners.
And what happens if the studio doesn't like the final package? Financers are SOL.
No one really cares about the monopoly on media distribution though, so whatever.
The last time I used it was to view a quicktime movie.
Cracking Microsoft products should **never** be an exercise in civil disobedience. Microsoft, while an abusive monopoly, certainly isn't a material requirement in most IT shops. If the PHB thinks so, (like the one I work in) so what. They pay me to test/build their applications in Linux while I'm waiting for 2003 to defrag.
When the PHB can't afford Microsoft's vig, then look who looks good bringing in a low-cost, completely viable alternative? BTW, I have an excellent PHB who's only fault is being married to Microsoft.
Now my gadget loving friends, this is the _why_ of PR.
1. Give products to some guy who writes about gadgets. 2. Writer can't live without them. Of course he can't! They have to sell adverts for the gadgets. 3. Profit!
The key here is the content this guy produces is kind of like ringing a bell for one of Pavlov's dogs. And good PR makes that bell ring a little louder.
The way that mobile phone industry works is the network provider is the only innovator. Perhaps the most famous example of this is music download service on mobile phone networks.
Oh wait, what about all the java-enabled phones? Outside of games, there isn't much of an API to do anything else with it. And it's not like mobile java apps actually run everywhere.
Yes, yes Bad Guys doing bad things are arrested, so what could be wrong with that?
The outrage could be inspired by a couple of reasons:
1. the privatization of law enforcement. There is an entire private structure dedicated to law enforcement in the U.S. (private prisons, arbitration, lawyers) This is a case where the line between private and public has blurred.
2. Outrageous excess. A couple of mega-corporations make enough money to hire their own law enforcement. I haven't even discussed their history of anti-trust, suspiciously monopolistic control of the distribution of entertainment, and a variety of other criminal acts already prosecuted.
3. Right of First Sale? Right of non-infringing use? These are very important legal concepts that the media conglomerates want to sweep away. They discourage these uses by prosecuting anyone from a Grandmother to some idiots selling counterfeits.
It's really very easy when you cast every issue in such black-and-white terms. You know exactly who the bad guy is. That must be comforting but it's misguided faith in an organization that history shows harm everyone.
Just because Linus doesn't want to expend any effort whatsoever regarding legal issues doesn't justify his position.
In part, I agree with his decision to ignore legal issues. And I also see how it's possible to say that tivoization hasn't harmed GPL project diversity.
Linus may be okay with Tivo's case because he can undo their GPL evil and he's still a fundamental part of a whole ecosystem. IMHO that's a short-sighted though, because the GPL acts as kind of a legal conservancy, protecting ideas.
Because this story is a good example of why the current administration is under such political heat for the often repeated and horribly mislabled "firing of Attorneys General."
It had only a little to do with the fact that the Administration couldn't come up with a consistent story. It had nothing to do with firings.
The current administration uses the office of the Attorney General as another way to pay back campaign contributors and intentionally alter the course of close district elections where Republicans aren't the clear leader. They also altered the rules such that over 400 people from the administration can communicate with the Justice Department regarding their work. (Versus the four that were allowed to do the same thing in the previous administration)
While there is still good reason to dislike Microsoft, the last appearance of any sense of Rule of Law as gone quietly into history. There is no power balancing provided by the Attorney General. The fox is now guarding the hen house. Microsoft is mere plankton compared to what the big fish have done to this country in about 20 years.
You don't sit over their shoulder _watching_ them.
However, you do have the computer in an area where there's lots of interaction and one of us is there doing something else. It isn't hard given the tiny house we're in, but with a modern mcMansion, it might be more difficult.
Overall, this kind of propaganda coordinates well with the telcos and entertainment conglomerates turning the Internet into another content sh!t pipe into your home.
The publication can't give a bad review. No more free review equipment.
If consumers _really_ wanted unbiased reviews, then publications would do it the right way. Buy the product off the retailer's shelf and test. But that's expensive and no consumer is willing to pay for it. This has led to opportunities that equipment manufacturers exploit.
Yes, the problem exists. IME the article in question is touching an ice cube on the tip of an iceberg, but no one cares enough to pay for the other, more objective, review. Want an honest review? Then pay for it. That's not going to happen though.
Your analysis is wrong is so many ways it displays a shocking amount of political ignorance.
he's independently wealthy and didn't have to sell out to any special interest to raise campaign money.
What you fail to comprehend is that the money for his campaign came from special interests. Moreover, special interests is how a representative democracy works. Ahhnold has as much personal baggage as the next politico, you just haven't heard about it yet.
As another post explained, Ahhnold had a very conservative agenda for a while, blew a boat load of State money on a special election, and lost badly on every conservative issue. He fired almost everyone and hired middle-of-the-road Dems for key posts. That infuriated the State Republican party to the point of they were going to run someone against him in the last election.
Please, learn _how_ the political process works, PAY ATTENTION to the political process, and at the bare minimum vote often. Better still, pay attention to some key issues and bug your Reps about legislation related to those key issues.
The big stink would essentially KILL Linux in many organizations.
This statement is wrong in so many fundamental ways it displays a total lack of knowledge regarding Tivo's hostility to the GPL.
What the Tivo people did was privatize Free (as in speech) software. It is roughly analogous to stealing a painting from a publicly-funded museum and hanging it up in your house. They accomplished this a number of ways including a signature check of some kind during startup. The implications are:
1. Source code is _useless_ now 2. Source code is no longer Free. 3. Source code cannot be modified.
This is a novel approach that disables numerous fundamental intents of the GPL and captures, for Tivo's sole benefit, the countless man hours that have gone into building Linux-based operating sytems.
Furthermore, businesses that will not like Linux under GPL v3 or think the spirit of the GPL doesn't apply to them (Tivo, that's you) should be using BSD.
Attention moderators, this is the most insightful post of the bunch.
How can that be you ask? American mass-media has abandoned whatever pretense of functioning as a check against political activity. So, most stories function as press releases or advertising. Some advertising stories are used to influence public opinion. Parent identifies the story as what it is, filler used to influence public opinion. Sadly, most posts that follow miss this entirely and wander off into the names listed. That is the intent of stories like this. Create controversy about specific individuals while the RIAA in this instance gets back to _actual_ lobbying the rest of Washington D.C.
Furthermore, jumping into a discussions about lobbying is much like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. The current state of affairs is the consequence of simultaneously _not_ participating in government by voting, being informed on issues and organizing a response to your representatives and the privatization of government functions.
"Here Here!" It's refreshing to read someone who actually understands pricing models.
I think the previous limitations on DRM will slowly fade though. Right now it _has_ to carry the private key because most playback devices are off-line.
Once broadband is as common as television, TPM chips will be very cheap. By that time the media conglomerate execs _might_ figure out that PKI is the way to go. This also enables the media conglomerates to fully control the production of playback devices.
As another post so insightfully pointed out, the media conglomerates are using the cracks to justify ridiculous legislation.
1. Does anyone know precisely how apple rips their files? I doubt the itunes encoder is as feature rich as say, ripping from the file manager in kde. In my limited experience ripping, (Which KDE makes child's play) there are numerous options, all of which I'm sure do _something_ to the play back quality, but I don't have a clue what. My point being Apples high bit sample may be extra zeros on a low bid-depth rip.
2. itune player DAC is an unknown.
Do the same test with an open source encoder so a high-bit depth files actually contains more sound bits I can hear. Even then, I doubt if there's a play back device for the above-average computer that could possibly reveal those extra sound bits.
Finally, any joker that thinks the itunes files come off of some gold master is making things up. IME the music industry equates the audio quality as somewhat better than fm radio, so encoding off a CD is all that is necessary. Oh, and it's practically impossible to tell the difference.
Most policy wonks that deal with this sector have already spread the word that computers are dangerous tools in the wrong hands. So, step 1 is to make the tools illegal. For example, "Your honor we found hacking applications wireshark installed on the defendants computer." No questions about approved uses are allowed because that makes things too complicated.
Don't bother with legal challenges, the objective is to make computers a content delivery device. Anything else is too threatening to governments, regardless of their borders.
Best case scenario as other posts have pointed out, the government gives out licenses that allow you to use/own "hacking" software. In the U.S., probably a process similar to getting a clearance would be required. This is happening internationally.
Since this is the/. echo chamber, no one will do anything but whine and go back to their work/entertainment.
"... when Visa and MasterCard were building their dominant credit card networks, they imposed exclusionary rules and restrictions on other parties to credit card transactions. In two cases, whose outcomes are described in this section, merchants and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) successfully challenged some of these practices. The decisions in the two cases29 weakened some barriers to competition and reduced the control exercised by the card associations, thus influencing the future of the credit card industry. In fact, the aftereffects of the decisions have already begun appearing."
Bank of America is not going to fuck over customers
You must be new here.
Please, examine carefully BofA's role in the U.S. financial system before making such a careless statement. Look carefully at who controls Visa and Mastercard.
Among other important things to understand is that BofA profits quite handsomely while consumers bear increased costs for everything purchased at retailers that accepts card payments.
"Despite merchant discontent, card issuers have incentives to maintain or increase interchange fees. Issuers are marketing credit cards with reward or loyalty programs that encourage greater card use and reinforce customer loyalty to the brand. An estimated 12 to 24 percent of cards held by consumers have rewards associated with them,26 and in 2003 an estimated 60 percent of credit card spending was attributed to cards with rewards.27 Card issuers are funding these increasingly popular reward programs through interchange fees."
IMHO the whole point of the effort on Microsoft's part was to thin the money-making distro herd.
1. Create the perception that there is an approved Linux distro. This is a requirement for bureacracy-bound businesses that have to check with Legal/PHB's before "purchasing" a Linux distro.
2. What better way to waste Novell's resources than create documents that protect nothing? It's a poorly run organization and this agreement is an excellent example of _exactly_ how poorly it is run. I'm sure there are great people that work at Novell, they just don't get to make strategic decisions. Novell is slowly circling the drain and Microsoft needs the perception of competition and cooperation to keep legislators pushing their agenda. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=NOVL
3. One of Microsoft's goals is to capture Linux revenue. This, more than anything else will keep OSS at bay.
the russians that attacked estonia can not be found by russia and suppressed easily, because no one knows who they are.
Typically, if someone _needs_ to be prosecuted, "round up the usual suspects" applies. That you think otherwise is folly.
and so it is sort of like terrorism, in that there is no one easy and big to blame. no state or governmental entity. it's vague and undefined.
This is a half-truth used to create a fearful population and justify egregious limitations to your personal freedoms.
today's conflicts are all about shadowy organizations ready to do nefarious things in the name of nebulous agendas and finding and stopping who or what or how is simply a task without any clear goals or clear yardsticks of progress
Exclusively associating this with the "terrists" is sadly inappropriate. The American intel community certainly does the same thing. The terrists didn't just appear out of the clear blue sky. As an example, please review the history of Afghanistan from, say 1970 to present.
the "war on terrorism" isn't real. no, wrong. the threat is still very real. something like 9/11 is not a phantasm of a neocon's imagination
No. It's a direct result of Western foreign policies. Except Americans don't pay attention to what their Government does, much less other super-powers that screw the regions up.
it's just that the enemy is opaque and made of fog. but because the enemy is hard to pin down
Wrong again. "the enemy" is a strategic result of a horrible event in American history that was a direct result of decades of bad foreign policy. The strategy justifies and accelerates sodomizing many of the founding principals of American Government. For example, the balance of powers.
If you didn't read 1984 by George Orwell, go to your local library and check out a copy today.
Still more testing on my kubuntu laptop suggests the following:
1. Dell's linux system chooser doesn't work with konqueror. Not a show-stopper and it may very well be my version of konqueror/kde. 2. In konqueror, the home page www.dell.com has the ubuntu promo. 3. In firefox on the same kubuntu laptop, no mention of ubuntu anywhere.
Very likely then, they are using user-agent to choose the home page and child pages.
The main point being, it's _still_ not easy to buy ubuntu-equipped Dell.
Windows test: 1. Go to www.dell.com 2. View home page... No Linux. Anywhere. 3. Refresh browser, Linux promotion appears. ??? 4. Click on home/home office. No Ubuntu. Anywhere. 5. Click on small business. No Ubuntu. Anywhere.
Linux test: 1. Go to www.dell.com 2. View home page... "By popular demand. Ubuntu has Arrived"
Clearly, they are using some kind of platform detection. Maybe it's just the browser user-agent.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm more interested to know who's got it in for Los Alamos.
Of all the people employed by the government in this line of work, there's got to be many, many more cases just like this out there. How is it possible that this *one* government funded R&D facility has security problems that boil down to human error rather than process?
I have a feeling the others have the same issues, except this one is someone's punching bag. That someone is powerful enough to get the gears of government working against Los Alamos. Maybe there are too many Democrats in New Mexico?
I believe some disambiguation/declarations of rights is okay.
But there is NO moderating force in capitalism, much less in our current political climate.
Monopolies are the "natural" mature state of markets because some asshat sees the opportunity in doing things like, owning the entire supply of some good or coordinating prices and supply with their nearest competitors, or legislating barriers to market.
I could go on, but the point is you mistakenly follow the politically expedient rationale that capitalism/privatization is some kind of silver bullet that solves all problems. It doesn't and it hasn't.
What risk?
1. media conglomerate buys script/concept for pennies.
2. The typical studio gets others to foot the production bill. (financing)
3. The studio outsources the actual movie production. (producer)
4. Go/no-go decision is the media conglomerates alone.
5. Media conglomerate promotes/distributes movie and the charges are paid by the film owners.
And what happens if the studio doesn't like the final package? Financers are SOL.
No one really cares about the monopoly on media distribution though, so whatever.
As someone that has dealt at the periphery of projects where EAL certs are required, he's right on.
The last time I used it was to view a quicktime movie.
Cracking Microsoft products should **never** be an exercise in civil disobedience. Microsoft, while an abusive monopoly, certainly isn't a material requirement in most IT shops. If the PHB thinks so, (like the one I work in) so what. They pay me to test/build their applications in Linux while I'm waiting for 2003 to defrag.
When the PHB can't afford Microsoft's vig, then look who looks good bringing in a low-cost, completely viable alternative? BTW, I have an excellent PHB who's only fault is being married to Microsoft.
Flash back more than a couple of days ago when there was a story about PR hacks and reviews. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/ 05/0128249
Now my gadget loving friends, this is the _why_ of PR.
1. Give products to some guy who writes about gadgets.
2. Writer can't live without them. Of course he can't! They have to sell adverts for the gadgets.
3. Profit!
The key here is the content this guy produces is kind of like ringing a bell for one of Pavlov's dogs. And good PR makes that bell ring a little louder.
Seriously.
The way that mobile phone industry works is the network provider is the only innovator. Perhaps the most famous example of this is music download service on mobile phone networks.
Oh wait, what about all the java-enabled phones? Outside of games, there isn't much of an API to do anything else with it. And it's not like mobile java apps actually run everywhere.
Oh yeah, let's ignore the Average American Citizen's role in bringing this all about.
-Stare at the TV 4 hours a day
-Stop participating in your Government.
-Allow Civics/government programs to be gutted.
-Turn away from reason to embrace The Lord.
It's _soo_ easy to whip off comments like yours. But it's more patriotic to be labled a Democratic (as in democracy) nut job.
Yes, yes Bad Guys doing bad things are arrested, so what could be wrong with that?
The outrage could be inspired by a couple of reasons:
1. the privatization of law enforcement. There is an entire private structure dedicated to law enforcement in the U.S. (private prisons, arbitration, lawyers) This is a case where the line between private and public has blurred.
2. Outrageous excess. A couple of mega-corporations make enough money to hire their own law enforcement. I haven't even discussed their history of anti-trust, suspiciously monopolistic control of the distribution of entertainment, and a variety of other criminal acts already prosecuted.
3. Right of First Sale? Right of non-infringing use? These are very important legal concepts that the media conglomerates want to sweep away. They discourage these uses by prosecuting anyone from a Grandmother to some idiots selling counterfeits.
It's really very easy when you cast every issue in such black-and-white terms. You know exactly who the bad guy is. That must be comforting but it's misguided faith in an organization that history shows harm everyone.
Just because Linus doesn't want to expend any effort whatsoever regarding legal issues doesn't justify his position.
In part, I agree with his decision to ignore legal issues. And I also see how it's possible to say that tivoization hasn't harmed GPL project diversity.
Linus may be okay with Tivo's case because he can undo their GPL evil and he's still a fundamental part of a whole ecosystem. IMHO that's a short-sighted though, because the GPL acts as kind of a legal conservancy, protecting ideas.
Because this story is a good example of why the current administration is under such political heat for the often repeated and horribly mislabled "firing of Attorneys General."
It had only a little to do with the fact that the Administration couldn't come up with a consistent story. It had nothing to do with firings.
The current administration uses the office of the Attorney General as another way to pay back campaign contributors and intentionally alter the course of close district elections where Republicans aren't the clear leader. They also altered the rules such that over 400 people from the administration can communicate with the Justice Department regarding their work. (Versus the four that were allowed to do the same thing in the previous administration)
While there is still good reason to dislike Microsoft, the last appearance of any sense of Rule of Law as gone quietly into history. There is no power balancing provided by the Attorney General. The fox is now guarding the hen house. Microsoft is mere plankton compared to what the big fish have done to this country in about 20 years.
You don't sit over their shoulder _watching_ them.
However, you do have the computer in an area where there's lots of interaction and one of us is there doing something else. It isn't hard given the tiny house we're in, but with a modern mcMansion, it might be more difficult.
Overall, this kind of propaganda coordinates well with the telcos and entertainment conglomerates turning the Internet into another content sh!t pipe into your home.
Not really. It's quite simple actually.
The publication can't give a bad review. No more free review equipment.
If consumers _really_ wanted unbiased reviews, then publications would do it the right way. Buy the product off the retailer's shelf and test. But that's expensive and no consumer is willing to pay for it. This has led to opportunities that equipment manufacturers exploit.
Yes, the problem exists. IME the article in question is touching an ice cube on the tip of an iceberg, but no one cares enough to pay for the other, more objective, review. Want an honest review? Then pay for it. That's not going to happen though.
Your analysis is wrong is so many ways it displays a shocking amount of political ignorance.
he's independently wealthy and didn't have to sell out to any special interest to raise campaign money.
What you fail to comprehend is that the money for his campaign came from special interests. Moreover, special interests is how a representative democracy works. Ahhnold has as much personal baggage as the next politico, you just haven't heard about it yet.
As another post explained, Ahhnold had a very conservative agenda for a while, blew a boat load of State money on a special election, and lost badly on every conservative issue. He fired almost everyone and hired middle-of-the-road Dems for key posts. That infuriated the State Republican party to the point of they were going to run someone against him in the last election.
Please, learn _how_ the political process works, PAY ATTENTION to the political process, and at the bare minimum vote often. Better still, pay attention to some key issues and bug your Reps about legislation related to those key issues.
The big stink would essentially KILL Linux in many organizations.
This statement is wrong in so many fundamental ways it displays a total lack of knowledge regarding Tivo's hostility to the GPL.
What the Tivo people did was privatize Free (as in speech) software. It is roughly analogous to stealing a painting from a publicly-funded museum and hanging it up in your house. They accomplished this a number of ways including a signature check of some kind during startup. The implications are:
1. Source code is _useless_ now
2. Source code is no longer Free.
3. Source code cannot be modified.
This is a novel approach that disables numerous fundamental intents of the GPL and captures, for Tivo's sole benefit, the countless man hours that have gone into building Linux-based operating sytems.
Furthermore, businesses that will not like Linux under GPL v3 or think the spirit of the GPL doesn't apply to them (Tivo, that's you) should be using BSD.
Attention moderators, this is the most insightful post of the bunch.
How can that be you ask? American mass-media has abandoned whatever pretense of functioning as a check against political activity. So, most stories function as press releases or advertising. Some advertising stories are used to influence public opinion. Parent identifies the story as what it is, filler used to influence public opinion. Sadly, most posts that follow miss this entirely and wander off into the names listed. That is the intent of stories like this. Create controversy about specific individuals while the RIAA in this instance gets back to _actual_ lobbying the rest of Washington D.C.
Furthermore, jumping into a discussions about lobbying is much like rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. The current state of affairs is the consequence of simultaneously _not_ participating in government by voting, being informed on issues and organizing a response to your representatives and the privatization of government functions.
"Here Here!" It's refreshing to read someone who actually understands pricing models.
I think the previous limitations on DRM will slowly fade though. Right now it _has_ to carry the private key because most playback devices are off-line.
Once broadband is as common as television, TPM chips will be very cheap. By that time the media conglomerate execs _might_ figure out that PKI is the way to go. This also enables the media conglomerates to fully control the production of playback devices.
As another post so insightfully pointed out, the media conglomerates are using the cracks to justify ridiculous legislation.
There are _lots_ of problems with this test.
1. Does anyone know precisely how apple rips their files?
I doubt the itunes encoder is as feature rich as say, ripping from the file manager in kde. In my limited experience ripping, (Which KDE makes child's play) there are numerous options, all of which I'm sure do _something_ to the play back quality, but I don't have a clue what. My point being Apples high bit sample may be extra zeros on a low bid-depth rip.
2. itune player DAC is an unknown.
Do the same test with an open source encoder so a high-bit depth files actually contains more sound bits I can hear. Even then, I doubt if there's a play back device for the above-average computer that could possibly reveal those extra sound bits.
Finally, any joker that thinks the itunes files come off of some gold master is making things up. IME the music industry equates the audio quality as somewhat better than fm radio, so encoding off a CD is all that is necessary. Oh, and it's practically impossible to tell the difference.
To criminalize so-called hackers.
/. echo chamber, no one will do anything but whine and go back to their work/entertainment.
0 6/murphy200706?printable=true¤tPage=all
Most policy wonks that deal with this sector have already spread the word that computers are dangerous tools in the wrong hands. So, step 1 is to make the tools illegal. For example, "Your honor we found hacking applications wireshark installed on the defendants computer." No questions about approved uses are allowed because that makes things too complicated.
Don't bother with legal challenges, the objective is to make computers a content delivery device. Anything else is too threatening to governments, regardless of their borders.
Best case scenario as other posts have pointed out, the government gives out licenses that allow you to use/own "hacking" software. In the U.S., probably a process similar to getting a clearance would be required. This is happening internationally.
Since this is the
Required reading for Americans unhappy with their political process: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/
This excerpt will probably have more impact.
o v/article2.html
"... when Visa and MasterCard were building their dominant credit card networks, they imposed exclusionary rules and restrictions on other parties to credit card transactions. In two cases, whose outcomes are described in this section, merchants and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) successfully challenged some of these practices. The decisions in the two cases29 weakened some barriers to competition and reduced the control exercised by the card associations, thus influencing the future of the credit card industry. In fact, the aftereffects of the decisions have already begun appearing."
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/banking/2005n
I wish more people understood how badly de-regulation has screwed the average American banking/stock trading customer.
Bank of America is not going to fuck over customers
o v/article2.html
You must be new here.
Please, examine carefully BofA's role in the U.S. financial system before making such a careless statement. Look carefully at who controls Visa and Mastercard.
Among other important things to understand is that BofA profits quite handsomely while consumers bear increased costs for everything purchased at retailers that accepts card payments.
"Despite merchant discontent, card issuers have incentives to maintain or increase interchange fees. Issuers are marketing credit cards with reward or loyalty programs that encourage greater card use and reinforce customer loyalty to the brand. An estimated 12 to 24 percent of cards held by consumers have rewards associated with them,26 and in 2003 an estimated 60 percent of credit card spending was attributed to cards with rewards.27 Card issuers are funding these increasingly popular reward programs through interchange fees."
http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/banking/2005n
I would argue that this one excerpt alone is enough to be concerned about BofA's impact on our economy.
IMHO the whole point of the effort on Microsoft's part was to thin the money-making distro herd.
1. Create the perception that there is an approved Linux distro. This is a requirement for bureacracy-bound businesses that have to check with Legal/PHB's before "purchasing" a Linux distro.
2. What better way to waste Novell's resources than create documents that protect nothing? It's a poorly run organization and this agreement is an excellent example of _exactly_ how poorly it is run. I'm sure there are great people that work at Novell, they just don't get to make strategic decisions. Novell is slowly circling the drain and Microsoft needs the perception of competition and cooperation to keep legislators pushing their agenda. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=NOVL
3. One of Microsoft's goals is to capture Linux revenue. This, more than anything else will keep OSS at bay.
the russians that attacked estonia can not be found by russia and suppressed easily, because no one knows who they are.
Typically, if someone _needs_ to be prosecuted, "round up the usual suspects" applies. That you think otherwise is folly.
and so it is sort of like terrorism, in that there is no one easy and big to blame. no state or governmental entity. it's vague and undefined.
This is a half-truth used to create a fearful population and justify egregious limitations to your personal freedoms.
today's conflicts are all about shadowy organizations ready to do nefarious things in the name of nebulous agendas
and finding and stopping who or what or how is simply a task without any clear goals or clear yardsticks of progress
Exclusively associating this with the "terrists" is sadly inappropriate. The American intel community certainly does the same thing. The terrists didn't just appear out of the clear blue sky. As an example, please review the history of Afghanistan from, say 1970 to present.
the "war on terrorism" isn't real. no, wrong. the threat is still very real. something like 9/11 is not a phantasm of a neocon's imagination
No. It's a direct result of Western foreign policies. Except Americans don't pay attention to what their Government does, much less other super-powers that screw the regions up.
it's just that the enemy is opaque and made of fog. but because the enemy is hard to pin down
Wrong again. "the enemy" is a strategic result of a horrible event in American history that was a direct result of decades of bad foreign policy. The strategy justifies and accelerates sodomizing many of the founding principals of American Government. For example, the balance of powers.
If you didn't read 1984 by George Orwell, go to your local library and check out a copy today.
Still more testing on my kubuntu laptop suggests the following:
1. Dell's linux system chooser doesn't work with konqueror. Not a show-stopper and it may very well be my version of konqueror/kde.
2. In konqueror, the home page www.dell.com has the ubuntu promo.
3. In firefox on the same kubuntu laptop, no mention of ubuntu anywhere.
Very likely then, they are using user-agent to choose the home page and child pages.
The main point being, it's _still_ not easy to buy ubuntu-equipped Dell.
Here's my test, it requires two pc's.
Windows test:
1. Go to www.dell.com
2. View home page... No Linux. Anywhere.
3. Refresh browser, Linux promotion appears. ???
4. Click on home/home office. No Ubuntu. Anywhere.
5. Click on small business. No Ubuntu. Anywhere.
Linux test:
1. Go to www.dell.com
2. View home page... "By popular demand. Ubuntu has Arrived"
Clearly, they are using some kind of platform detection. Maybe it's just the browser user-agent.