We (as in the founding fathers, representing Us The People) tried to strike a compromise, but what we got instead was a slow-but-steady power grab, to the current point where a) copyrights are more or less eternal (in the sense that no works that aren't already in the public domain right now will lapse into the public domain ever) and b) copyright holders have been granted far-reaching new rights that were never part of the idea of copyright to begin with.
The solution, as much as it makes me grit my teeth, probably involves some kind of amendment that defines some kind of reasonable max on "limited time". At least that would prevent it from happening again (until the amendment was repealed, anyway!)
but abolishing copyright entirely might well be argued to be the better solution in the long run. Sure, it'll hurt; sure, it'll have downsides.
And I'd argue that the downsides of total abolition would outweigh the good. I, as a creator of copyrighted works, really like the system as a concept, but feel some bad decisions have been made with it in the last 30 years that need to be largely undone.
So instead of stabbing each other in the back, maybe a gentlemen's agreement would be reached, where they agree to respect each others work without needing the blunt instrument of law to force it.
These are profit-oriented businesses we're talking about here. They are not going to care about "gentlemen's agreements".
And copyright WAS NOT written into the constitution.
What was written into the constitution was a (contested) note that congress ***MAY*** implement copyright if it enhances the public domain and the useful arts.
That sounds like it's written-in to me!
Now, tell me how copyright on a binary blob helps the public domain or the useful arts?
My works are all binary blobs. Every book, movie, and photo.
Copyright was only introduced to allow authors to profit from their work for a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME
Sadly, this seems to currently be interpreted by the court as "Not Unlimited". Every time Steamboat Willy comes up against the deadline, they push it out a bit farther.
You know what pisses me off more than anything is the huge number of books that would have gone into Project Gutenberg if it weren't for this lobbying to get copyright extended.
Lord help me when Tron II comes out, though. That one's even a Disney film. I guess I'm going to have to go ahead and... buy the DVD used!! Ha! Up yours, Disney! I'll send you money when you put all those books in Gutenberg!
So the biggest publisher can take your book and sell it, keeping all the profit? So anyone online can steal what you write on your blog and call it their own without giving you credit? I don't find that "fair". Simple, definitely... but I won't go so far as "elegant".
Copyright is a good idea; it's good enough to be written into the US Constitution. It just needs a lot of TLC right now. The current duration is out of control, at the very least.
Use Vimperator for Firefox. If you like vi, you'll love it anyway. And even if you don't like vi, you'll love the fact that it doesn't need to have all that screen space used up by pulldown menus, status bars, and tool bars.
The problem for me is performance. XP runs significantly faster and has significantly better battery life than Ubuntu.
I have no reason to disbelieve you (since I've never run Ubuntu), but...
When I first got my netbook, I booted into XP to make sure all the hardware worked, and it was quite doggish for my tastes. It was just a little much for the little Atom to handle, I think. Reaction was sluggish, and repaints were slow. I was frustrated.
I wouldn't claim, though, that GNOME or KDE would have been much better. I didn't try them.
Instead I installed my usual, namely fvwm with a tiny bit of XFCE running underneath, and the machine is now completely usable.
Now, I'm not saying people should run fvwm, but I am saying that there is a Linux setup that is supported out of the box on virtually every distro that runs at a nice speed. It is possible. I'm not sure it's possible with XP.
One mistake was that netbook manufacturers figured people would use these things like glorified cellphones (no one even knows when their cellphone runs Linux) and they built interfaces that reflected this. Instead, people (like me) wanted to use the netbooks like miniature full-blown computers.
Then, once that happened, we were back to the old "XP on the desktop vs. Linux on the desktop" situation.
Updating a running program without interruption is everything but trivial.
While this is true, the patent talks about not interrupting the program's "primary function", not not interrupting the program run.
And the sequence of steps outlined in Claim 2 is not exactly rocket science.
Plus, it's obvious without the benefit of hindsight. If I tell any programmer there's a business need to have the latest version every time the user runs a program, this is exactly what they'll come up with in 5 minutes.
But, hey, that happens practically every time a programmer thinks up any solution to any problem, because patents have been granted all over the place covering problems, just like this one, with simple solutions. Software patents are more trouble than they're worth, I say.
"Assembler" is not a language, but a software tool
If you follow that link, you'll see the following:
Note that, in normal professional usage, the term assembler is often used ambiguously: It is frequently used to refer to an assembly language itself, rather than to the assembler utility.
This is absolutely my experience. From what I've seen, it tends to be the older generations who tend to say "assembler". It's not even that wacky when you think of it as "the language for the assembler", or "assembler language". Nothing else consumes the source except the assembler, after all.
The same wikipedia article goes on to note:
Calling the language assembler is of course potentially confusing and ambiguous, since this is also the name of the utility program that translates assembly language statements into machine code. Some may regard this as imprecision or error. However, this usage has been common among professionals and in the literature for decades.
There's something to be said for being a pedant since computers work best in exacting conditions, but often times it gets in the way of normal conversation. (Try having a discussion about the call stack with a C Language Lawyer sometime. Then top it off by discussing Linux with Richard Stallman.)
Its a good time to start distancing yourself from Stallman
Like what? Uninstall all our GNU software? Most people already have their own well-formed opinions.
He's lost grasp of the point of software. The point of software is not 'to run free software', its to get something done.
I don't know that RMS ever agreed with that sentiment, unless it was coincidental. I simply can't imagine him saying, "Ok, well, go ahead and use Final Cut Pro because the point is to get something done."
He goes so far in the article to try to confuse the meaning of 'free' versus 'open'
I didn't find his usage confusing. He's obviously talking about things like XHTML and Javascript, and certainly not things like MP3.
I think you're going a little bit overboard here. RMS doesn't want to run non-free software, and yet this free platform (Firefox) with free protocols and specifications (HTML/Javascript) doesn't allow him to differentiate free vs. non-free Javascript programs. So he proposes a way to differentiate the two. It's not like a big Manifesto or something.
Finally, I didn't see anything in here that was out of character or any more extreme than anything else he's said, so the call to distance ones self from him might be a little premature.
The world needs RMS to be himself. He plays a role and it's an important one, evidenced by the number of people who use his software every single day, the number of projects that might not otherwise exist if it hadn't been for the GNU toolset and free software movement, and the unknowably massive impact those projects have had on the world.
I'm not saying you have to like him or agree with his methods, but you have to admit his plan has worked fantastically so far (even the "failures" like GCC/EGCS have worked!), so he should keep it up as far as I'm concerned.
It certainly appears that Jobs has no desire to sell the $10 hammer, which has kept a lot of people away from the Apple OS to begin with. I would include myself in that category.
Me, too. Well, that and the unconfigurable UI.:)
IMHO, and it's only an opinion, I think the recession is going to drive people away from more expensive devices toward those that are a perceived bargain.
That's what I'd expect, too, but from what I've read, the high-end has been holding up pretty well. I look forward to their next quarter earnings report.
but will it sustain itself during "Recession 2009"? That remains to be seen.
That's an excellent question, I think. One thing is certain: the netbook makers are having a field day.
Because the whole intent of a netbook is to give people a device that does less than a typical laptop
I agree that this is the intent of a netbook (I own one myself), but I am not convinced this is Apple's intent.
There's demand for small and portable. I think they can charge $1000 for some kind of "small notebook" and still get their usual customers.
Jobs said he wasn't going under $500, which pretty much prices him out of the regular netbook market.
The saying is, "You get what you pay for", but this doesn't factor in whether or not it was worth what you paid. Would you buy a $20 hammer when you could use a $10 hammer just as well? Is it worth the extra $10?
Apple has found a giant market segment of people for whom it is worth it to buy the $20 hammer. They're not in the $10 hammer market and it would probably be bad for their shareholder value if they tried to compete there.
I have an Acer Aspire One D150-1165 (10.1" 1024x600, 1GB RAM, Atom single core 1.6 GHz hyperthreaded, 160GB HD, 6.5 hour, $350).
Quick review: I found it to be sluggish with XP (when that was still installed), and less sluggish with KDE 4.2. But I use fvwm and it's excellent. Apparently I need to rebuild the kernel with custom config to get the internal mic to work--maybe that can fix the lid switch, too. (It's manual suspend in the meantime.)
It is light and small, works well on the plane, train, and backpack. I could pony up a few more dollars to get heavier and larger, but I don't want any of those three things, especially not for the backpack. The power "brick" is amusingly tiny.
I use it for reading mail, news, skype (I stroll around the house during video chat), presentations, coding, and writing. (I could never use an iphone in place of it unless it had an external keyboard.)
The keyboard is the minimum size I'd find useful. I really *really* recommend trying the keyboard on the netbook you're eyeing, because your typing style might not be compatible with it. (For instance, tdisI can't cope with the keyboard on the Dell Mini 9s.)
Some for-fun kernel build benchmarks, with make allyesconfig:
-j2 Athlon 64 1core 2GHz (32-bit mode): 90m
-j2 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 156.2m -j3 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 145.5m -j4 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 150.8m
I love the low power consumption. The clock throttles back to 800MHz when you're not needing more. It runs cool and quiet.
The lack of screen real-estate can be countered by turning off all unnecessary menus, and running things like vimperator.
As a powergeek, I dig it, but I realize it's definitely not for everyone.
Sorry, but since it cost less than $500, it's a piece of junk. Hey--it was Steve Jobs who said it, not me!
I always thought if there was a nice external folding keyboard and an SD slot, it would be 95% of the way there. My hacker buddy got an old folding Palm keyboard working with his iPhone and uses it on trips in lieu of a "real" notebook.
Or more likely, been around long enough to get tired of all the childish crap and instead want sane discussions about what happened and sane arguments over what to do about it.
On some level, I agree with you.
However, there is a time and a place for a good anti-Microsoft rant, and if what I've been reading in the news is even half true, now is the time, and Iceland is the place.
I often wonder where "geeks like you" actually work, and if you actually make decent money (six figures).
Can't speak for him, but I make "decent money".
I've been in the industry 10+ years and maintained basically the same position at two different large corporations (5000 plus workstations and 500 plus servers)
My friend works as a sysadmin for a large company you've heard of with thousands of servers, and they're nearly all Linux-based.
Another friend works for a national lab (which, as you can imagine, is fairly security-aware) and he runs literally 10-times as many servers as you, and they're all Linux-based. He makes plenty decent money.
I'm fairly certain to Joe Schmoe business owner, being MS certified means a lot more than being Red Hat or Canonical certified. I also think the other real issue is that no corporation worth a shit (read: privately owned, multi-billion dollar) will ever be willing to run their business on a system that any hacker in the world can download the source code for, and thus, write customized attacks for.
I think you're actually right about these scenarios, but I think it's because your Joe Schmoe is wrong. (With the exception that no multibillion-dollar company "runs their business" on a single type of system. And what's with public corporations not being worth a shit?)
This is not meant as a troll, though I'm sure it will be taken as one...
If it walks like a troll, and talks like a troll... but I think you actually had a valid point a couple paragraphs in.
I think the facts speak for themselves looking at the sheer number of attack vectors for an up to date Linux system over an up to date Windows system.
Yes, but in terms of patches, way more vulnerabilities are fixed on Linux-based systems than on Windows systems. So there!;-)
Neither position is really relevant; the proof is in the pudding.
In cryptography, it's well-known that an open design is the only way to even hope to build a secure cryptosystem. Some of that carries over to system design, as well.
There are more good guys than bad guys out there. If a good guy finds a vulnerability, s/he will contact the authors to make a fix, the author will make a release, the release will be announced, and all sysadmins who are making an effort will patch before the bad guys write an exploit and attack.
That's not always how it works, but with a lot of good guys looking at your open code, that's often how it works.
It's a fact that your systems have security vulnerabilities. The question is, do you want to know what they are? The catch is that not just you will know; everyone will know! The concern is that everyone will know, and somehow you'll not get the memo. However, you're the sysadmin, so if you do your six-figure job, you'll be one of the first to get the memo and patch your systems.
I proudly place my trust in a patched proprietary system over a patched open system, mainly because of the ease of creating a new hack for the patched open system.
But in practice they're both secure, so you can proudly place your trust (blind or not, whichever you choose) in either one.
1) With the school. 2) With the local police. 3) Contact a major news outlet. 4) Refuse going to that class until settled. 5) Contact local ACLU type outfit.
Write down the event now, while it's still fresh.
You might want to get your final grade for the semester recorded first.
Technically speaking, no Federal agency is using persistent tracking cookies. However, the rule can be broadly interpreted that "no Federal agency's web site may SET such a cookie,"
Now we get more to the guts of it. Which federal agency's web site is setting such a cookie?
We have to get into some subtle definitions of "web site" and "setting" and "is".
It probably works something like this:
1) Your browser gets the html from wh.g
2) Your browser downloads the flash video player from youtube
3) Your flash player does cookie stuff with youtube
So really it's only a suggestion from wh.g that you even download the player.
We need to keep the People empowered to use or not use their software.
you browse to a Federal Government website and you get a persistent tracking cookie, which can certainly look like a violation.
I agree it can look like it (dangerously), but I still don't think it is.
I think it's really important to distinguish between wh.g setting a cookie for tracking purposes, and wh.g embedding on their web page a 3rd party video player that communicates video and tracking cookies with a 3rd party site. One is wh.g, and the other is a 3rd party which is only involved because wh.g mentioned their url.
At no point is the tracking cookie available to wh.g. Wh.g doesn't even know if the user downloaded the video player or not.
Should wh.g be allowed to link to other sites that use cookies? Of course, we say! What good is the Web without linking? But what if the next version of firefox has a feature that loads little thumbnail iframes of links before they've been clicked on and the browser sets those cookies? Now suddenly wh.g shouldn't be able to link to other sites because cookies will be automatically set... just because the browser changed?
It's a mistake to regulate at this layer. wh.g can't use cookies for tracking: good. wh.g can't embed youtube videos because youtube uses tracking: bad!
That site set a session cookie on my browser as soon as I showed up. How do you know they don't use it for tracking?
Why can't whitehouse.gov?
Youtube is the cookiemonger here, not wh.g.
When people start trying to regulate the presentation layer of all this data, they're asking for way more trouble than they know. Please stop it before greasemonkey gets turned into a munition or something insane like that.
The only reasonable way to look at this issue is that YOU are the client and YOU are running software that went to wh.g, and then YOUR software went to youtube and youtube asked it to save a cookie which it did because YOU allow it to.
Slashdot Mirror
We (as in the founding fathers, representing Us The People) tried to strike a compromise, but what we got instead was a slow-but-steady power grab, to the current point where a) copyrights are more or less eternal (in the sense that no works that aren't already in the public domain right now will lapse into the public domain ever) and b) copyright holders have been granted far-reaching new rights that were never part of the idea of copyright to begin with.
The solution, as much as it makes me grit my teeth, probably involves some kind of amendment that defines some kind of reasonable max on "limited time". At least that would prevent it from happening again (until the amendment was repealed, anyway!)
but abolishing copyright entirely might well be argued to be the better solution in the long run. Sure, it'll hurt; sure, it'll have downsides.
And I'd argue that the downsides of total abolition would outweigh the good. I, as a creator of copyrighted works, really like the system as a concept, but feel some bad decisions have been made with it in the last 30 years that need to be largely undone.
So instead of stabbing each other in the back, maybe a gentlemen's agreement would be reached, where they agree to respect each others work without needing the blunt instrument of law to force it.
These are profit-oriented businesses we're talking about here. They are not going to care about "gentlemen's agreements".
And copyright WAS NOT written into the constitution.
What was written into the constitution was a (contested) note that congress ***MAY*** implement copyright if it enhances the public domain and the useful arts.
That sounds like it's written-in to me!
Now, tell me how copyright on a binary blob helps the public domain or the useful arts?
My works are all binary blobs. Every book, movie, and photo.
Copyright was only introduced to allow authors to profit from their work for a LIMITED AMOUNT OF TIME
Sadly, this seems to currently be interpreted by the court as "Not Unlimited". Every time Steamboat Willy comes up against the deadline, they push it out a bit farther.
You know what pisses me off more than anything is the huge number of books that would have gone into Project Gutenberg if it weren't for this lobbying to get copyright extended.
Lord help me when Tron II comes out, though. That one's even a Disney film. I guess I'm going to have to go ahead and... buy the DVD used!! Ha! Up yours, Disney! I'll send you money when you put all those books in Gutenberg!
So the biggest publisher can take your book and sell it, keeping all the profit? So anyone online can steal what you write on your blog and call it their own without giving you credit? I don't find that "fair". Simple, definitely... but I won't go so far as "elegant".
Copyright is a good idea; it's good enough to be written into the US Constitution. It just needs a lot of TLC right now. The current duration is out of control, at the very least.
Agree on optimizing for screen size. Also:
Use Vimperator for Firefox. If you like vi, you'll love it anyway. And even if you don't like vi, you'll love the fact that it doesn't need to have all that screen space used up by pulldown menus, status bars, and tool bars.
The problem for me is performance. XP runs significantly faster and has significantly better battery life than Ubuntu.
I have no reason to disbelieve you (since I've never run Ubuntu), but...
When I first got my netbook, I booted into XP to make sure all the hardware worked, and it was quite doggish for my tastes. It was just a little much for the little Atom to handle, I think. Reaction was sluggish, and repaints were slow. I was frustrated.
I wouldn't claim, though, that GNOME or KDE would have been much better. I didn't try them.
Instead I installed my usual, namely fvwm with a tiny bit of XFCE running underneath, and the machine is now completely usable.
Now, I'm not saying people should run fvwm, but I am saying that there is a Linux setup that is supported out of the box on virtually every distro that runs at a nice speed. It is possible. I'm not sure it's possible with XP.
One mistake was that netbook manufacturers figured people would use these things like glorified cellphones (no one even knows when their cellphone runs Linux) and they built interfaces that reflected this. Instead, people (like me) wanted to use the netbooks like miniature full-blown computers.
Then, once that happened, we were back to the old "XP on the desktop vs. Linux on the desktop" situation.
- There is no stable base to write drivers (thus no hardware support)
Man... Linux doesn't even support hardware? It has a long way to go!
Updating a running program without interruption is everything but trivial.
While this is true, the patent talks about not interrupting the program's "primary function", not not interrupting the program run.
And the sequence of steps outlined in Claim 2 is not exactly rocket science.
Plus, it's obvious without the benefit of hindsight. If I tell any programmer there's a business need to have the latest version every time the user runs a program, this is exactly what they'll come up with in 5 minutes.
But, hey, that happens practically every time a programmer thinks up any solution to any problem, because patents have been granted all over the place covering problems, just like this one, with simple solutions. Software patents are more trouble than they're worth, I say.
"Assembler" is not a language, but a software tool
If you follow that link, you'll see the following:
Note that, in normal professional usage, the term assembler is often used ambiguously: It is frequently used to refer to an assembly language itself, rather than to the assembler utility.
This is absolutely my experience. From what I've seen, it tends to be the older generations who tend to say "assembler". It's not even that wacky when you think of it as "the language for the assembler", or "assembler language". Nothing else consumes the source except the assembler, after all.
The same wikipedia article goes on to note:
Calling the language assembler is of course potentially confusing and ambiguous, since this is also the name of the utility program that translates assembly language statements into machine code. Some may regard this as imprecision or error. However, this usage has been common among professionals and in the literature for decades.
There's something to be said for being a pedant since computers work best in exacting conditions, but often times it gets in the way of normal conversation. (Try having a discussion about the call stack with a C Language Lawyer sometime. Then top it off by discussing Linux with Richard Stallman.)
Example: find a 2,000,000,000 year old fossil of a modern housecat that clearly demonstrates that it came before less-evolved forms.
I don't think you've fully considered the possibility that a time machine could have somehow been involved.
Its a good time to start distancing yourself from Stallman
Like what? Uninstall all our GNU software? Most people already have their own well-formed opinions.
He's lost grasp of the point of software. The point of software is not 'to run free software', its to get something done.
I don't know that RMS ever agreed with that sentiment, unless it was coincidental. I simply can't imagine him saying, "Ok, well, go ahead and use Final Cut Pro because the point is to get something done."
He goes so far in the article to try to confuse the meaning of 'free' versus 'open'
I didn't find his usage confusing. He's obviously talking about things like XHTML and Javascript, and certainly not things like MP3.
I think you're going a little bit overboard here. RMS doesn't want to run non-free software, and yet this free platform (Firefox) with free protocols and specifications (HTML/Javascript) doesn't allow him to differentiate free vs. non-free Javascript programs. So he proposes a way to differentiate the two. It's not like a big Manifesto or something.
Finally, I didn't see anything in here that was out of character or any more extreme than anything else he's said, so the call to distance ones self from him might be a little premature.
The world needs RMS to be himself. He plays a role and it's an important one, evidenced by the number of people who use his software every single day, the number of projects that might not otherwise exist if it hadn't been for the GNU toolset and free software movement, and the unknowably massive impact those projects have had on the world.
I'm not saying you have to like him or agree with his methods, but you have to admit his plan has worked fantastically so far (even the "failures" like GCC/EGCS have worked!), so he should keep it up as far as I'm concerned.
Please don't shoot him.
It certainly appears that Jobs has no desire to sell the $10 hammer, which has kept a lot of people away from the Apple OS to begin with. I would include myself in that category.
Me, too. Well, that and the unconfigurable UI. :)
IMHO, and it's only an opinion, I think the recession is going to drive people away from more expensive devices toward those that are a perceived bargain.
That's what I'd expect, too, but from what I've read, the high-end has been holding up pretty well. I look forward to their next quarter earnings report.
but will it sustain itself during "Recession 2009"? That remains to be seen.
That's an excellent question, I think. One thing is certain: the netbook makers are having a field day.
Because the whole intent of a netbook is to give people a device that does less than a typical laptop
I agree that this is the intent of a netbook (I own one myself), but I am not convinced this is Apple's intent.
There's demand for small and portable. I think they can charge $1000 for some kind of "small notebook" and still get their usual customers.
Jobs said he wasn't going under $500, which pretty much prices him out of the regular netbook market.
The saying is, "You get what you pay for", but this doesn't factor in whether or not it was worth what you paid. Would you buy a $20 hammer when you could use a $10 hammer just as well? Is it worth the extra $10?
Apple has found a giant market segment of people for whom it is worth it to buy the $20 hammer. They're not in the $10 hammer market and it would probably be bad for their shareholder value if they tried to compete there.
What will the price point be on this device? If it's in the $499 range
Why would Apple price it that low when people are willing to pay double that? I doubt they could half the price and double the volume.
I have an Acer Aspire One D150-1165 (10.1" 1024x600, 1GB RAM, Atom single core 1.6 GHz hyperthreaded, 160GB HD, 6.5 hour, $350).
Quick review: I found it to be sluggish with XP (when that was still installed), and less sluggish with KDE 4.2. But I use fvwm and it's excellent. Apparently I need to rebuild the kernel with custom config to get the internal mic to work--maybe that can fix the lid switch, too. (It's manual suspend in the meantime.)
It is light and small, works well on the plane, train, and backpack. I could pony up a few more dollars to get heavier and larger, but I don't want any of those three things, especially not for the backpack. The power "brick" is amusingly tiny.
I use it for reading mail, news, skype (I stroll around the house during video chat), presentations, coding, and writing. (I could never use an iphone in place of it unless it had an external keyboard.)
The keyboard is the minimum size I'd find useful. I really *really* recommend trying the keyboard on the netbook you're eyeing, because your typing style might not be compatible with it. (For instance, tdisI can't cope with the keyboard on the Dell Mini 9s.)
Some for-fun kernel build benchmarks, with make allyesconfig:
-j2 Athlon 64 1core 2GHz (32-bit mode): 90m
-j2 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 156.2m
-j3 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 145.5m
-j4 Atom 1core HT 1.3GHz: 150.8m
I love the low power consumption. The clock throttles back to 800MHz when you're not needing more. It runs cool and quiet.
The lack of screen real-estate can be countered by turning off all unnecessary menus, and running things like vimperator.
As a powergeek, I dig it, but I realize it's definitely not for everyone.
My iPhone is my netbook.
Sorry, but since it cost less than $500, it's a piece of junk. Hey--it was Steve Jobs who said it, not me!
I always thought if there was a nice external folding keyboard and an SD slot, it would be 95% of the way there. My hacker buddy got an old folding Palm keyboard working with his iPhone and uses it on trips in lieu of a "real" notebook.
Or more likely, been around long enough to get tired of all the childish crap and instead want sane discussions about what happened and sane arguments over what to do about it.
On some level, I agree with you.
However, there is a time and a place for a good anti-Microsoft rant, and if what I've been reading in the news is even half true, now is the time, and Iceland is the place.
"Today they seized a fileserver containing about 65 terabytes of files, corresponding to around 14 million full-length Bibles."
Way to go, zealots!
I often wonder where "geeks like you" actually work, and if you actually make decent money (six figures).
Can't speak for him, but I make "decent money".
I've been in the industry 10+ years and maintained basically the same position at two different large corporations (5000 plus workstations and 500 plus servers)
My friend works as a sysadmin for a large company you've heard of with thousands of servers, and they're nearly all Linux-based.
Another friend works for a national lab (which, as you can imagine, is fairly security-aware) and he runs literally 10-times as many servers as you, and they're all Linux-based. He makes plenty decent money.
I'm fairly certain to Joe Schmoe business owner, being MS certified means a lot more than being Red Hat or Canonical certified. I also think the other real issue is that no corporation worth a shit (read: privately owned, multi-billion dollar) will ever be willing to run their business on a system that any hacker in the world can download the source code for, and thus, write customized attacks for.
I think you're actually right about these scenarios, but I think it's because your Joe Schmoe is wrong. (With the exception that no multibillion-dollar company "runs their business" on a single type of system. And what's with public corporations not being worth a shit?)
This is not meant as a troll, though I'm sure it will be taken as one...
If it walks like a troll, and talks like a troll... but I think you actually had a valid point a couple paragraphs in.
I think the facts speak for themselves looking at the sheer number of attack vectors for an up to date Linux system over an up to date Windows system.
Yes, but in terms of patches, way more vulnerabilities are fixed on Linux-based systems than on Windows systems. So there! ;-)
Neither position is really relevant; the proof is in the pudding.
In cryptography, it's well-known that an open design is the only way to even hope to build a secure cryptosystem. Some of that carries over to system design, as well.
There are more good guys than bad guys out there. If a good guy finds a vulnerability, s/he will contact the authors to make a fix, the author will make a release, the release will be announced, and all sysadmins who are making an effort will patch before the bad guys write an exploit and attack.
That's not always how it works, but with a lot of good guys looking at your open code, that's often how it works.
It's a fact that your systems have security vulnerabilities. The question is, do you want to know what they are? The catch is that not just you will know; everyone will know! The concern is that everyone will know, and somehow you'll not get the memo. However, you're the sysadmin, so if you do your six-figure job, you'll be one of the first to get the memo and patch your systems.
I proudly place my trust in a patched proprietary system over a patched open system, mainly because of the ease of creating a new hack for the patched open system.
But in practice they're both secure, so you can proudly place your trust (blind or not, whichever you choose) in either one.
You can vote on the abc website for a short period right after each show. Cast all your votes for Woz. Slashdot could provide a friendly reminder... ;)
If we can consistently get him 70% of the total vote, he'll be in good shape. :) GEEK-POWER!
"Tonight on Dancing with the Stars... Wtfpwned--Woz wins 84% of the popular vote!"
1) With the school.
2) With the local police.
3) Contact a major news outlet.
4) Refuse going to that class until settled.
5) Contact local ACLU type outfit.
Write down the event now, while it's still fresh.
You might want to get your final grade for the semester recorded first.
void doit(char *subject, char *verb, char *object)
{
printk("In Russia, the %s %s %s!\n", object, verb, subject);
}
Because your browser destroys it when you close your browser. Duh.
Ok, my mistake--you're right about this. (Unless it's a flash cookie--I didn't look.)
Youtube is the cookiemonger here, not wh.g.
ATT is spying here, not the NSA. That guy screening me at the airport is a contractor, so I don't have to listen to him.
Yeah right, it's still the government.
The only entity here monitoring which youtube videos you watch is youtube. They are not the government.
...or are they?
Technically speaking, no Federal agency is using persistent tracking cookies. However, the rule can be broadly interpreted that "no Federal agency's web site may SET such a cookie,"
Now we get more to the guts of it. Which federal agency's web site is setting such a cookie?
We have to get into some subtle definitions of "web site" and "setting" and "is".
It probably works something like this:
1) Your browser gets the html from wh.g
2) Your browser downloads the flash video player from youtube
3) Your flash player does cookie stuff with youtube
So really it's only a suggestion from wh.g that you even download the player.
We need to keep the People empowered to use or not use their software.
you browse to a Federal Government website and you get a persistent tracking cookie, which can certainly look like a violation.
I agree it can look like it (dangerously), but I still don't think it is.
I think it's really important to distinguish between wh.g setting a cookie for tracking purposes, and wh.g embedding on their web page a 3rd party video player that communicates video and tracking cookies with a 3rd party site. One is wh.g, and the other is a 3rd party which is only involved because wh.g mentioned their url.
At no point is the tracking cookie available to wh.g. Wh.g doesn't even know if the user downloaded the video player or not.
Should wh.g be allowed to link to other sites that use cookies? Of course, we say! What good is the Web without linking? But what if the next version of firefox has a feature that loads little thumbnail iframes of links before they've been clicked on and the browser sets those cookies? Now suddenly wh.g shouldn't be able to link to other sites because cookies will be automatically set... just because the browser changed?
It's a mistake to regulate at this layer. wh.g can't use cookies for tracking: good. wh.g can't embed youtube videos because youtube uses tracking: bad!
Other gov sites broadcast video just fine without using cookies: http://www.america.gov/multimedia/video.html?videoId=8789243001
That site set a session cookie on my browser as soon as I showed up. How do you know they don't use it for tracking?
Why can't whitehouse.gov?
Youtube is the cookiemonger here, not wh.g.
When people start trying to regulate the presentation layer of all this data, they're asking for way more trouble than they know. Please stop it before greasemonkey gets turned into a munition or something insane like that.
The only reasonable way to look at this issue is that YOU are the client and YOU are running software that went to wh.g, and then YOUR software went to youtube and youtube asked it to save a cookie which it did because YOU allow it to.