True story: I took over a 10,000 node network for an admin that had just killed himself, leaving no server or network documentation whatsoever. It took time to reflash all of the switches and find tricks to replace passwords on servers and figure out how everything was more or less organized. Leaving a few passwords for the next guy and a rough, top-down analysis of how things interact on paper will work wonders for the next guy. That being said, it's possible (not pleasant) to move forward with no prior knowledge; any explanation you can provide will go a long way. Doubly-so if you put it on paper.
You have to realize that gaps will be filled with his way of doing things, not yours. In a few years the network as you knew it could be almost unrecognizable, but it's for the best, and the new guy will have complete control of what's there and how it interacts.
Even before Mark Cuban stated that whomever bought YouTube would become a "marked" company, how many of us genuinely thought that YouTube could succeed with millions of leechers benefiting from loose standards under the guise of "Fair Use" and no income?
Google _had_ to expect this. They probably consulted Lessig _prior_ to purchasing the startup. The thing is, this is the showdown that we all expected. Does 'Fair Use' exist? Are content providers liable for member uploads? How is YouTube above the laws that Napster collapsed under? According to the "big, bad DMCA" the _victim_ has to prosecute, which in this case is Viacom, and by the same standards, they should be forced to go after individual users (uploaders) that are at fault, like the RIAA.
The real issue at hand is that copyright law is in complete disarray today. It has an identity crisis that makes such a risky purchase on Google's part worth pursuing on the off-chance that they can score several million more users and page impressions, while still weathering a lawsuit of this magnitude.
The justices will ultimately determine who the winner/loser is, not Congress. This is a rare stage in history where the "intent" of the law will determine its true meaning and either empower or enslave the people going down one path or the other.
I'm not going to criticize what it COULD have done. Obviously, there are some machines on that portion of the network that are not sufficiently hardened and that will be dealt with. The delivery mechanism of the malware had to be an internal user with overblown desktop privs, but having inhereted this 5,000 node network 4 months ago that's an issue we're addressing with the AD and antivirus rollout.
As to what would make sense for them to hack, I think it would make MORE sense for them to try to capture web-based logins such as gmail, et al, since those would be easier for them to access then actually cracking through a Cisco ASA or a pix and getting access to a machine with nothing more then MS Office and a desktop. At least those are tangible hacks that can be compromised instantly regardless of where in the world the attack originated.
It was a very weird attack. My nUbuntu laptop was affected by the iframe which was one of the instant alerts that this had to do with MAC or IP hijacking rather then just a simple virus like a worm. The network logs were immediately noticed, but how many small networks without sysops do you think will be able so sufficiently notice and protect against this. This is going to be a very successful attack, and it's the first Chinese attack I have ever seen to this measure.
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, the local machine was acting as a proxy via the ARP flood of the router's MAC address.
Example Such as: who has 10.0.0.1 (router IP), tell 10.0.0.x Response: XX:XX:XX:XX has 10.0.0.1 (local machine pretending to be router announcing every 2 seconds)
This article is interesting because a) I've seen it firsthand this past week, and b) Some of these are actually very sophisticated attacks.
One of our buildings was going through an antivirus upgrade over AD when it got hit. Every machine in the building was getting an iframe in the web browser from some Chinese ISP (usa.d3a.us) that would bracket the computers web browsing session throughout its duration. The iframe contained javascript designed to capture passwords from gmail and other public websites, in essence a browser-based keylogger. Of course, blocking the offending domains through our filter got rid of the iframe, but it still affected websites because now they all had broken source code (wonderful XML render errors on just about every website, including google).
Then the hunt was on.
The 'sophistication' I witnessed comes from the fact that no matter how many of these boxes we cleaned and patched, the iframe source code kept popping up everywhere. I ran a Wireshark on it and discovered something rather interesting (to me anyways). The software was attacking the router's ARP table, by feeding it a bogus mac address (one of the infected machines) in essence redirecting all network traffic to a software-based proxy. Tracking down machines via MAC address and patching them eventually resolved the issue long enough to update the antivirus on the network, but I left the place somewhat in awe of what I had just seen, having most of my network antivirus experience involve easily blockable/patchable worms and viruses.
While an ARP attack isn't all that uncommon, the presence of Chinese characters on every infected machine was a dead giveaway. Not exactly something I'd ever seen from a country more historically known for installing local keyloggers to steal WoW accounts.
But or a good hour or two, I was getting my ass handed to me, and I had to completely disconnect the building from the WAN. In addition, our AV (very big-name corporate AV firm), didn't do shit on it. After the update I had to submit samples to the AV company to get a permanent patch upstream.
It's nice to see some recognition for an open solution, but the survey results were based on reader reviews and pollsters. I would assume the more assertive network administrators (those of us on a budget), have tried and are satisfied with many of the open souce alternatives to the proprietary and often expensive counterparts.
I personally have use(d) OpenNMS, Nagios(netsaint), Zabbix, ZenOSS, etc...
Compared to the cost of the competition it's pretty clear why an Open product comes out on top in reader polls.
Chinese river dolphins (of both the pink and white variety) are covered in a lesser-known but extremely good book by Douglas Adams called "Last Chance to See", which covers a variety of endangered species.
I love how the publicity for the dolphins led to a media circus that resulted in them actually being considered a delicacy in the area.
A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
For a desktop system, I would agree, seeing as how I myself and my family all run linux on our 4 home systems. When you're as integrated as a network with Active Directory, School Interoperability Framework, and some other odd 100 servers, I wholeheartedly disagree. Training in a district of this size is something we can handle much more readily then we can rebuild our entire infrastructure. We actually have our own training facilities complete with hundreds of lab computers solely for the purpose of adult technology education.
Integration is a huge thing in education (in all technology for that matter). Add to that a district that is completely centralized in delivery of software, data, updates, and remote desktop repairs with everything relying most critically on Active Directory and you will see how entrenched you can become in Microsoft Products. Break any rung on the ladder in the network core and you're in for some serious "lump sum" rebuilding.
For now we 'observe' Linux migrations. It's not feasible for us at this point in time and we enjoy a great deal of stability, reliability and comfort in our Microsoft environment. We are guaranteed almost every software title we want will work, every piece of hardware, all teleconference client applications, etc...
If the students want it on the side, I'm all for it. Hell, that's how I got into RedHat in the mid 90's.
But for our network, it's just the right answer to the wrong question.
My point is the boy (or girl?) didn't know enough about the machine yet to make a valid assertion to a preference. I'm probably one of the biggest open-source zealots I know, but that doesn't mean I think we should cram adoption down people's throats. My 3 children each run Kubuntu and love it for flash games and tux-related desktop games (we leave most gaming to the consoles at home).
We did investigate a Linux migration in our district, but the cost of a rebuild up front is too much to handle (a very large initial investment) and the discounts we get for being an education institution make maintaining our present course the most cost-effective and compatible to our existing user-base.
You have to make decisions based on your budget and user-base, and as a Linux/BSD user, the unfortunate reality is that the proper course for us is still Microsoft Windows.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing.
I fail to see how this article has anything to do with the pro's and cons of a Linux desktop, since you can do any of those same things on any platform with a web connection and browser with a flash plugin (for pandora).
Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running.
I'm sorry, I AM a K-12 admin for a fairly large school system (10,000 desktops) and we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts, and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything.
My sysadmin desktop of choice? I use FreeBSD and Ubuntu with remote desktop. Just because I can handle it, doesn't mean everyone here can, especially when they use Windows at home. One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well.
The consumer electronics association has everything to gain from legal, clearly defined fair use; more goods sold to the user to duplicate, backup and store copies of perishable media such as those that the RIAA peddles.
The RIAA loses ground because they can no longer force you to buy a new copy of your product if the one you purchased is no longer usable.
My point is, of course the CEA has a lot to gain from it, but that only demonstrates that consumers aren't the only ones that want legal clarification of fair use statues, or stand to gain from it.
This seems more to me like the RIAA standing up saying "Not Fair! He wins if the consumer does and we don't!"
Go cry in another corner, emo boy...
Plenty of uninformed poeple vote, and plenty of informed people don't. Voting is a choice that no one can accurately call for you and your circumstance.
My personal advice would be to "get a pair" and decide for yourself.
Just don't be intimidated by any percieved (real or otherwise) difficulties in the voting process. You show up, wave a card, read the directions and follow them....or not.
Whether this is a show-stopper or not, it's a great example of what can happen with tons of eyeballs on a project. This is the type of bug that proprietary vendors would suffer to discover with such limited resources on a single project. It makes me wonder how often proprietary kernels are retooled *after* a flaw has been found in a similar OSS product.
Open source does not explicitly imply anyone can repackage a hacked version and sell it to a government entity. Governments currently use "certified" companies to purchase goods from (GS/GP Approved Vendors List). You can still maintain a single government supplier with the source code exposed to the world. The current electronic voting process lacks transparency, and open source would help address that issue.
Rigging can be controlled a lot more easily if the system is open source then it can be in it's current, closed state.
Certainly this company still made money off of the elections, but am I wrong to conclude that there was a lot more to this then meets the eye?
Having ordered more software titles then I can count (with accompanying hardware) for student information tracking, transcripts, test-scoring, etc, it's an all too common occurance for a company to deliver and install the software and leave the ultimate setup and performance up to in-house staff.
It would seem that this system was 1) rushed into production, 2) the victim of mainstaying (the state won't change their process to accomodate the software, they want the software to accommodate the state's past methods), and 3) the company was completely ill-equipped to handle support in cruch-time.
If you ask me the only, solution is open-source voting machines so any company can provide support, documentation is available nationally, and voters can have confidence not only in the process, but also in what's happening "under the hood" as well.
The whole point of the RIAA's lawsuits is to instill fear, so the likelihood of actually going to court to defend yourself is practically nil.
The first thing they do is offer to settle for some "low, low" rediculously inflated fee. If you actually _do_ pony up the legal fees to defend yourself, chances are they will drop the case and concentrate on their less financially motivated defendants.
You will never have to prove you bought music, simply because they will only call your bluff and take you to court if they can thoroughly ruin you financially and make an example out of you.
Whether you actually _bought_ the music is of absolutely no consequence to them (ask any 9 year old girl, grandmother or dead man ever sued by the RIAA).
You leave a lot to the imagination, given that you don't really explain your experience very well. With such a small network, I would start by learning some basics that will pay off as you grow:
1. Directory Structures: LDAP it in such a mixed environment. With the prevalence of Windows on your network you might consider Active Directory, but in the mixed mode, you'll be better off with Open Directory or NDS.
2. Virtualization: VMWare puts on one hell of a show. And in your environment, I would highly recommend consolidating servers to commodity hardware. VMWare ESX with VMotion will save you tons of money and headache down the road.
3. Storage: SAS? iSCSI? Fiber-channel SAN? Storage capacity and proper storage replication/backups are key to an adaptable and reliable network. Get something you can build on.
4. Cisco: You may be in a small network environment now, but the more you know about your Cisco equipment the more performance you can eek out of your topology and provide better overall network security.
I'm assuming you're more then capable in the desktop support arena. The above recommendations are things I've had to relearn over the past 10 years in managing a system that started with 50 and has since grown to 5500 nodes. The more adaptable you build your fledgling network today, the more you'll thank me down the line.
So long as mainstream media still publishes flashy ads with peppy backbeats business will still be a primarily hit-driven model. What I understand about the "Long Tail" effect is that niches that are out of the current meme can last forever and pick up sales as trends shift and individual taste develops. A failure is no longer an "indefinite" failure, but can be recalled if and when the consumer chooses to do so, leaving an awfully large window by which one can measure 'success' especially if and when an item becomes "en vogue."
Where it fails is that it assumes this will be the bulk of stores. The bulk of purchases will not be niche-driven, nor nostalgia items (while they will still exist), but rather it will be (drumroll please) mainstream as it always has. When something becomes popular, mainstream gets in on the business and controls it until demand fades.
Also, people with no preference are forced to choose from what they think they know. What they know is what they see and hear on a daily basis, and big money puts out more advertising. Niche models will still have a place, but will not prevail in the forseeable future. It will still be all the rage in basions like San Franciso, but hell, hasn't it always been cool to consider yourself 'underground' and 'elite.' Don't think it's above mainstream to stoop there too.
I'm not arguing the legitimacy of them collecting the data, that point is always reprehensible. What I argue is *with* all of this data, why not create a scoring-based system that adds points for suspicion (say, frequent overseas travel +1, large purchase of chemicals +2, name listed in terror database +3, etc...) and once the score breaks the "terror threshold" mark that individual as a person of interest.
Biology may not even need to come into the picture with perhaps the exception of highly-elusive felons or Osama-caliber criminals.
It's all very theoretical, but don't you hope their using your data to *avoid* the innocent, rather then arrest people for petty crimes with so much else going on?
The problem is they're trying to block terrorists like amateur sysadmins try to block spam.
"If the message contains "Viagra" or "V1agra" or "V I A G R A" then block it."
"If name contains "*/? Muhammad" then block it."
Heuristics work much better. How soon before we create a "Terror Score" system akin to bayesian filter's "Spam Score"? It seems like similar mechanism at work here....but how exactly does one heuristically determine a persons 'terror score' without bio data?
I "accidentally" stumbled onto the iDon't website the other day when I was researching Ogg alternatives to iPod.
It's not so much that the iPod is without it's flaws, but for them to masquerade as a "revolution" counter-culture and have me find out that it's a sponsored astroturf really pissed me off. Not only that but the link to the SanDisk player on the site, also went to a SanDisk-sponsored page Anything But iPod.
I can judge for myself based on the qualities and features of a player for myself, but blogs are getting more and more worthless every day since big media will simply continue to masquerade with a false list of "satisfied customers" for everyone to see. A previous employer of mine has actually added astroturfers to their PR team that do nothing but spam forums with their excellent experience with the product they secretly happen to sell.
I understand that TFA is about learning Linux, but I would hesitate to encourage people to join up as a simple hobbyist without doing some homework about the free movement as well.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
In the Beginning, There Was the Command Line
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
Once you understand what you've become a part of, you're more likely to contribute in some way.
While not every user has to be a zealot, and not everyone is willing or capable to participate, the opportunity to become a part of something that will last longer then yourself is something people should be aware of in using GNU/Linux and GPL'd software.
I don't think it's enough to just use it because it's free. You need to have some sort of understanding as to why it's important, how standards empower the consumer, and that free information is the only way to go to keep our technological advances moving forward instead of getting stuck in a freeze-frame induced by patent lawyers and litigation that explicitly deters education (DMCA).
Knowing the goals of Open Source has often made members more forgiving of its present-day shortcomings, because the notions of freedom to use, freedom to change, freedom to learn and freedom to share outweigh some little compatibility nuances that exist today, but continue to improve through the contribution of the community at large.
I should have clarified the majority of my RAID usage on FreeBSD is SCSI-based hardware RAID systems. It has, however, been working since prior to W2K3's release and yet no server offering from Microsoft has successfully detected my Intel hardware RAID cards during installation (gotta use ye olde floppy disk drivers), while BSD has. I've had better luck then that with Adaptec stuff with MS though. And don't get me wrong, Microsoft has it's place and we're an Active Directory environment. I use FreeBSD to compliment network management, run my desktop, and sustain a wholly-independent web presence outside of our directory services more then anything else.
The fact that they've improved SATA-RAID support in this release is good news to many I'm sure.
FreeBSD has always been great with RAID in my experience. I frequently load it up on servers and don't need additional drivers for my RAID cards (which is more then I can say for W2K3 on the same boxes).
Since switching to FreeBSD on my desktop I haven't swapped OS's out (something I tend to do at least once every couple of months). It's been roughly a year now, so I think it's safe to call it "home." If you're into linux and want to try a BSD, now's the time. At least now that VMWare Server Beta is free you can install an instance of this and dust the file with no harm if you don't like it.
Although a lot of my linux peeps are quick to criticize, not one of them has complained after actually trying BSD of some sort, and while they're not all converts they grow to understand why someone would choose BSD over linux. Yes there are differences, and no you probably won't notice them in a desktop environment.
Slashdot Mirror
True story: I took over a 10,000 node network for an admin that had just killed himself, leaving no server or network documentation whatsoever. It took time to reflash all of the switches and find tricks to replace passwords on servers and figure out how everything was more or less organized. Leaving a few passwords for the next guy and a rough, top-down analysis of how things interact on paper will work wonders for the next guy. That being said, it's possible (not pleasant) to move forward with no prior knowledge; any explanation you can provide will go a long way. Doubly-so if you put it on paper. You have to realize that gaps will be filled with his way of doing things, not yours. In a few years the network as you knew it could be almost unrecognizable, but it's for the best, and the new guy will have complete control of what's there and how it interacts.
Not an identical argument, but good and relevant nonetheless is Lessig's TED Talk on creativity versus law http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187
Even before Mark Cuban stated that whomever bought YouTube would become a "marked" company, how many of us genuinely thought that YouTube could succeed with millions of leechers benefiting from loose standards under the guise of "Fair Use" and no income?
Google _had_ to expect this. They probably consulted Lessig _prior_ to purchasing the startup. The thing is, this is the showdown that we all expected. Does 'Fair Use' exist? Are content providers liable for member uploads? How is YouTube above the laws that Napster collapsed under? According to the "big, bad DMCA" the _victim_ has to prosecute, which in this case is Viacom, and by the same standards, they should be forced to go after individual users (uploaders) that are at fault, like the RIAA.
The real issue at hand is that copyright law is in complete disarray today. It has an identity crisis that makes such a risky purchase on Google's part worth pursuing on the off-chance that they can score several million more users and page impressions, while still weathering a lawsuit of this magnitude.
The justices will ultimately determine who the winner/loser is, not Congress. This is a rare stage in history where the "intent" of the law will determine its true meaning and either empower or enslave the people going down one path or the other.
I'm not going to criticize what it COULD have done. Obviously, there are some machines on that portion of the network that are not sufficiently hardened and that will be dealt with. The delivery mechanism of the malware had to be an internal user with overblown desktop privs, but having inhereted this 5,000 node network 4 months ago that's an issue we're addressing with the AD and antivirus rollout.
As to what would make sense for them to hack, I think it would make MORE sense for them to try to capture web-based logins such as gmail, et al, since those would be easier for them to access then actually cracking through a Cisco ASA or a pix and getting access to a machine with nothing more then MS Office and a desktop. At least those are tangible hacks that can be compromised instantly regardless of where in the world the attack originated.
It was a very weird attack. My nUbuntu laptop was affected by the iframe which was one of the instant alerts that this had to do with MAC or IP hijacking rather then just a simple virus like a worm. The network logs were immediately noticed, but how many small networks without sysops do you think will be able so sufficiently notice and protect against this. This is going to be a very successful attack, and it's the first Chinese attack I have ever seen to this measure.
Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, the local machine was acting as a proxy via the ARP flood of the router's MAC address.
Example
Such as: who has 10.0.0.1 (router IP), tell 10.0.0.x
Response: XX:XX:XX:XX has 10.0.0.1 (local machine pretending to be router announcing every 2 seconds)
This article is interesting because a) I've seen it firsthand this past week, and b) Some of these are actually very sophisticated attacks.
One of our buildings was going through an antivirus upgrade over AD when it got hit. Every machine in the building was getting an iframe in the web browser from some Chinese ISP (usa.d3a.us) that would bracket the computers web browsing session throughout its duration. The iframe contained javascript designed to capture passwords from gmail and other public websites, in essence a browser-based keylogger. Of course, blocking the offending domains through our filter got rid of the iframe, but it still affected websites because now they all had broken source code (wonderful XML render errors on just about every website, including google).
Then the hunt was on.
The 'sophistication' I witnessed comes from the fact that no matter how many of these boxes we cleaned and patched, the iframe source code kept popping up everywhere. I ran a Wireshark on it and discovered something rather interesting (to me anyways). The software was attacking the router's ARP table, by feeding it a bogus mac address (one of the infected machines) in essence redirecting all network traffic to a software-based proxy. Tracking down machines via MAC address and patching them eventually resolved the issue long enough to update the antivirus on the network, but I left the place somewhat in awe of what I had just seen, having most of my network antivirus experience involve easily blockable/patchable worms and viruses.
While an ARP attack isn't all that uncommon, the presence of Chinese characters on every infected machine was a dead giveaway. Not exactly something I'd ever seen from a country more historically known for installing local keyloggers to steal WoW accounts.
But or a good hour or two, I was getting my ass handed to me, and I had to completely disconnect the building from the WAN. In addition, our AV (very big-name corporate AV firm), didn't do shit on it. After the update I had to submit samples to the AV company to get a permanent patch upstream.
It's nice to see some recognition for an open solution, but the survey results were based on reader reviews and pollsters. I would assume the more assertive network administrators (those of us on a budget), have tried and are satisfied with many of the open souce alternatives to the proprietary and often expensive counterparts. I personally have use(d) OpenNMS, Nagios(netsaint), Zabbix, ZenOSS, etc... Compared to the cost of the competition it's pretty clear why an Open product comes out on top in reader polls.
Chinese river dolphins (of both the pink and white variety) are covered in a lesser-known but extremely good book by Douglas Adams called "Last Chance to See", which covers a variety of endangered species.
I love how the publicity for the dolphins led to a media circus that resulted in them actually being considered a delicacy in the area.
Choice quotes from the book here: Douglas Adams: Last Chance to See Quotes
A careful linux/web roll out won't rock their boat any more that following the Windows upgrade path that is in front of us.
For a desktop system, I would agree, seeing as how I myself and my family all run linux on our 4 home systems. When you're as integrated as a network with Active Directory, School Interoperability Framework, and some other odd 100 servers, I wholeheartedly disagree. Training in a district of this size is something we can handle much more readily then we can rebuild our entire infrastructure. We actually have our own training facilities complete with hundreds of lab computers solely for the purpose of adult technology education.
Integration is a huge thing in education (in all technology for that matter). Add to that a district that is completely centralized in delivery of software, data, updates, and remote desktop repairs with everything relying most critically on Active Directory and you will see how entrenched you can become in Microsoft Products. Break any rung on the ladder in the network core and you're in for some serious "lump sum" rebuilding.
For now we 'observe' Linux migrations. It's not feasible for us at this point in time and we enjoy a great deal of stability, reliability and comfort in our Microsoft environment. We are guaranteed almost every software title we want will work, every piece of hardware, all teleconference client applications, etc...
If the students want it on the side, I'm all for it. Hell, that's how I got into RedHat in the mid 90's.
But for our network, it's just the right answer to the wrong question.
My point is the boy (or girl?) didn't know enough about the machine yet to make a valid assertion to a preference. I'm probably one of the biggest open-source zealots I know, but that doesn't mean I think we should cram adoption down people's throats. My 3 children each run Kubuntu and love it for flash games and tux-related desktop games (we leave most gaming to the consoles at home).
We did investigate a Linux migration in our district, but the cost of a rebuild up front is too much to handle (a very large initial investment) and the discounts we get for being an education institution make maintaining our present course the most cost-effective and compatible to our existing user-base.
You have to make decisions based on your budget and user-base, and as a Linux/BSD user, the unfortunate reality is that the proper course for us is still Microsoft Windows.
YMMV.
Let me get this straight: He claims Linux is equal to Windows by using web-based email, web-based chat clients, web-based music stations, and web-based text processing.
I fail to see how this article has anything to do with the pro's and cons of a Linux desktop, since you can do any of those same things on any platform with a web connection and browser with a flash plugin (for pandora).
Let's see what his 10 year old has to say about it when he wants to play the latest PC games, copy music to his iPod using iTMS, and/or run software his friends are running.
I'm sorry, I AM a K-12 admin for a fairly large school system (10,000 desktops) and we use Windows for several non-linux bashing reasons: Exchange, AD, compatibility with other districts, and price/support to staying the course as opposed to rebuilding everything.
My sysadmin desktop of choice? I use FreeBSD and Ubuntu with remote desktop. Just because I can handle it, doesn't mean everyone here can, especially when they use Windows at home. One thing about teachers, you don't rock their boat. Let their classroom be about them and their students and all is well.
The consumer electronics association has everything to gain from legal, clearly defined fair use; more goods sold to the user to duplicate, backup and store copies of perishable media such as those that the RIAA peddles. The RIAA loses ground because they can no longer force you to buy a new copy of your product if the one you purchased is no longer usable. My point is, of course the CEA has a lot to gain from it, but that only demonstrates that consumers aren't the only ones that want legal clarification of fair use statues, or stand to gain from it. This seems more to me like the RIAA standing up saying "Not Fair! He wins if the consumer does and we don't!" Go cry in another corner, emo boy...
Plenty of uninformed poeple vote, and plenty of informed people don't. Voting is a choice that no one can accurately call for you and your circumstance. My personal advice would be to "get a pair" and decide for yourself. Just don't be intimidated by any percieved (real or otherwise) difficulties in the voting process. You show up, wave a card, read the directions and follow them....or not.
Whether this is a show-stopper or not, it's a great example of what can happen with tons of eyeballs on a project. This is the type of bug that proprietary vendors would suffer to discover with such limited resources on a single project. It makes me wonder how often proprietary kernels are retooled *after* a flaw has been found in a similar OSS product.
Open source does not explicitly imply anyone can repackage a hacked version and sell it to a government entity. Governments currently use "certified" companies to purchase goods from (GS/GP Approved Vendors List). You can still maintain a single government supplier with the source code exposed to the world. The current electronic voting process lacks transparency, and open source would help address that issue.
Rigging can be controlled a lot more easily if the system is open source then it can be in it's current, closed state.
Certainly this company still made money off of the elections, but am I wrong to conclude that there was a lot more to this then meets the eye?
Having ordered more software titles then I can count (with accompanying hardware) for student information tracking, transcripts, test-scoring, etc, it's an all too common occurance for a company to deliver and install the software and leave the ultimate setup and performance up to in-house staff.
It would seem that this system was 1) rushed into production, 2) the victim of mainstaying (the state won't change their process to accomodate the software, they want the software to accommodate the state's past methods), and 3) the company was completely ill-equipped to handle support in cruch-time.
If you ask me the only, solution is open-source voting machines so any company can provide support, documentation is available nationally, and voters can have confidence not only in the process, but also in what's happening "under the hood" as well.
The whole point of the RIAA's lawsuits is to instill fear, so the likelihood of actually going to court to defend yourself is practically nil.
The first thing they do is offer to settle for some "low, low" rediculously inflated fee. If you actually _do_ pony up the legal fees to defend yourself, chances are they will drop the case and concentrate on their less financially motivated defendants.
You will never have to prove you bought music, simply because they will only call your bluff and take you to court if they can thoroughly ruin you financially and make an example out of you.
Whether you actually _bought_ the music is of absolutely no consequence to them (ask any 9 year old girl, grandmother or dead man ever sued by the RIAA).
I'm assuming you're more then capable in the desktop support arena. The above recommendations are things I've had to relearn over the past 10 years in managing a system that started with 50 and has since grown to 5500 nodes. The more adaptable you build your fledgling network today, the more you'll thank me down the line.
So long as mainstream media still publishes flashy ads with peppy backbeats business will still be a primarily hit-driven model. What I understand about the "Long Tail" effect is that niches that are out of the current meme can last forever and pick up sales as trends shift and individual taste develops. A failure is no longer an "indefinite" failure, but can be recalled if and when the consumer chooses to do so, leaving an awfully large window by which one can measure 'success' especially if and when an item becomes "en vogue."
Where it fails is that it assumes this will be the bulk of stores. The bulk of purchases will not be niche-driven, nor nostalgia items (while they will still exist), but rather it will be (drumroll please) mainstream as it always has. When something becomes popular, mainstream gets in on the business and controls it until demand fades.
Also, people with no preference are forced to choose from what they think they know. What they know is what they see and hear on a daily basis, and big money puts out more advertising. Niche models will still have a place, but will not prevail in the forseeable future. It will still be all the rage in basions like San Franciso, but hell, hasn't it always been cool to consider yourself 'underground' and 'elite.' Don't think it's above mainstream to stoop there too.
I'm not arguing the legitimacy of them collecting the data, that point is always reprehensible. What I argue is *with* all of this data, why not create a scoring-based system that adds points for suspicion (say, frequent overseas travel +1, large purchase of chemicals +2, name listed in terror database +3, etc...) and once the score breaks the "terror threshold" mark that individual as a person of interest.
Biology may not even need to come into the picture with perhaps the exception of highly-elusive felons or Osama-caliber criminals.
It's all very theoretical, but don't you hope their using your data to *avoid* the innocent, rather then arrest people for petty crimes with so much else going on?
The problem is they're trying to block terrorists like amateur sysadmins try to block spam.
...but how exactly does one heuristically determine a persons 'terror score' without bio data?
"If the message contains "Viagra" or "V1agra" or "V I A G R A" then block it."
"If name contains "*/? Muhammad" then block it."
Heuristics work much better. How soon before we create a "Terror Score" system akin to bayesian filter's "Spam Score"? It seems like similar mechanism at work here.
I "accidentally" stumbled onto the iDon't website the other day when I was researching Ogg alternatives to iPod.
It's not so much that the iPod is without it's flaws, but for them to masquerade as a "revolution" counter-culture and have me find out that it's a sponsored astroturf really pissed me off. Not only that but the link to the SanDisk player on the site, also went to a SanDisk-sponsored page Anything But iPod.
I can judge for myself based on the qualities and features of a player for myself, but blogs are getting more and more worthless every day since big media will simply continue to masquerade with a false list of "satisfied customers" for everyone to see. A previous employer of mine has actually added astroturfers to their PR team that do nothing but spam forums with their excellent experience with the product they secretly happen to sell.
sigh...
Once you understand what you've become a part of, you're more likely to contribute in some way.
While not every user has to be a zealot, and not everyone is willing or capable to participate, the opportunity to become a part of something that will last longer then yourself is something people should be aware of in using GNU/Linux and GPL'd software.
I don't think it's enough to just use it because it's free. You need to have some sort of understanding as to why it's important, how standards empower the consumer, and that free information is the only way to go to keep our technological advances moving forward instead of getting stuck in a freeze-frame induced by patent lawyers and litigation that explicitly deters education (DMCA).
Knowing the goals of Open Source has often made members more forgiving of its present-day shortcomings, because the notions of freedom to use, freedom to change, freedom to learn and freedom to share outweigh some little compatibility nuances that exist today, but continue to improve through the contribution of the community at large.
I should have clarified the majority of my RAID usage on FreeBSD is SCSI-based hardware RAID systems. It has, however, been working since prior to W2K3's release and yet no server offering from Microsoft has successfully detected my Intel hardware RAID cards during installation (gotta use ye olde floppy disk drivers), while BSD has. I've had better luck then that with Adaptec stuff with MS though. And don't get me wrong, Microsoft has it's place and we're an Active Directory environment. I use FreeBSD to compliment network management, run my desktop, and sustain a wholly-independent web presence outside of our directory services more then anything else.
The fact that they've improved SATA-RAID support in this release is good news to many I'm sure.
FreeBSD has always been great with RAID in my experience. I frequently load it up on servers and don't need additional drivers for my RAID cards (which is more then I can say for W2K3 on the same boxes). Since switching to FreeBSD on my desktop I haven't swapped OS's out (something I tend to do at least once every couple of months). It's been roughly a year now, so I think it's safe to call it "home." If you're into linux and want to try a BSD, now's the time. At least now that VMWare Server Beta is free you can install an instance of this and dust the file with no harm if you don't like it. Although a lot of my linux peeps are quick to criticize, not one of them has complained after actually trying BSD of some sort, and while they're not all converts they grow to understand why someone would choose BSD over linux. Yes there are differences, and no you probably won't notice them in a desktop environment.