Given that you support libertarianism, and yet also have stated a desire to see the various Unixen coalesce around Linux, how relevant is the BSDs' survival to you and why?
I just recently returned to Canada after working in the UK for five years, and I found my experiences at two separate companies to be instructive. The first job was at a temp agency's head office, where they expressly forbade people from using the e-mail system. I found a way around it, and friends used to send me porn and jokes quite liberally for about a month. After that I called in sick and of course management decided to go through my files. They actually were far more concerned that I had found the place a hellhole, and they expected me to apologise. They didn't receive it, and I was fired the same day. OK, so I was stupid. I learned.
The second place I worked at was far more liberal, at least at first. It was a large media concern, and some of the things people got up to were quite worrying to watch, especially given my previous experience. I kept my nose clean for the most part but felt very much more relaxed.
All this changed when the IT manager, who was/isn't terribly good at her job, decided she needed to justify her existence to the powers that be. Suddenly all sorts of 'company memoranda' started to fly down the pipe about 'our new company policy', and people became very worried indeed. When that national ruling came out, management's reaction was one of 'We don't care, we need to limit our liability.'
The following week, ironically enough, one of the IT guys was asked to cc himself all e-mails coming into the system. The Monday after this was implemented, our entire e-mail system broke down (using NT, of course) as a result of this one guy spamming himself to death.
Management then decided to monitor web access. By this time I had decided to leave for other reasons, but I did notice that the firewall system suddenly had gained the ability to restrict all sorts of nonpornographic sites for the flimsiest of reasons. For example, my director had to go to the Sunny Delight website, and was blocked from getting to it. Why? Because it had the word 'Delight' in it.
My feeling is that implications of privacy vis-a-vis the Internet will probably carry no weight; it will take a dismissal and resulting court case before the UK will have anything resembling clarification on the issue.
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Given that you support libertarianism, and yet also have stated a desire to see the various Unixen coalesce around Linux, how relevant is the BSDs' survival to you and why?
I just recently returned to Canada after working in the UK for five years, and I found my experiences at two separate companies to be instructive. The first job was at a temp agency's head office, where they expressly forbade people from using the e-mail system. I found a way around it, and friends used to send me porn and jokes quite liberally for about a month. After that I called in sick and of course management decided to go through my files. They actually were far more concerned that I had found the place a hellhole, and they expected me to apologise. They didn't receive it, and I was fired the same day. OK, so I was stupid. I learned.
The second place I worked at was far more liberal, at least at first. It was a large media concern, and some of the things people got up to were quite worrying to watch, especially given my previous experience. I kept my nose clean for the most part but felt very much more relaxed.
All this changed when the IT manager, who was/isn't terribly good at her job, decided she needed to justify her existence to the powers that be. Suddenly all sorts of 'company memoranda' started to fly down the pipe about 'our new company policy', and people became very worried indeed. When that national ruling came out, management's reaction was one of 'We don't care, we need to limit our liability.'
The following week, ironically enough, one of the IT guys was asked to cc himself all e-mails coming into the system. The Monday after this was implemented, our entire e-mail system broke down (using NT, of course) as a result of this one guy spamming himself to death.
Management then decided to monitor web access. By this time I had decided to leave for other reasons, but I did notice that the firewall system suddenly had gained the ability to restrict all sorts of nonpornographic sites for the flimsiest of reasons. For example, my director had to go to the Sunny Delight website, and was blocked from getting to it. Why? Because it had the word 'Delight' in it.
My feeling is that implications of privacy vis-a-vis the Internet will probably carry no weight; it will take a dismissal and resulting court case before the UK will have anything resembling clarification on the issue.