I appreciate the thoughful responses, because I really am curious what's up with the ubiquitous draw of money. It seems that a lot of things in modern society, including the obsession with job security which leads people to take TFA half-seriously, stem from the relatively recent idea that although money may not quite equal happiness, it's more or less an essential ingredient.
If being in a certain place, like Los Angeles, improves my happiness, then I'd better be rich
This is the most popular explaination for why being rich is a requirement for being happy. Again, the statement seems reasonable by itself, but the unspoken implication seems flawed. There are lots of things which would improve my happiness that cost lots of money, but just because they could make me happy doesn't mean I have to be unhappy without them. Happiness isn't like Pokemon where you have to "collect them all"! I think the bigger problem is that consumerism, or to be more specific the idea that the cost of something is correlated to how happy it can make you, is widely accepted as truth today. I'd like to live in Los Angeles, but I can't afford it, and somehow I'm very happy anyway. I currently have an expensive computer as a "hobby toy" which makes me happy, but if I lost it (I can't afford to replace it), I'd just find something else to make me equally happy, like reading novels or fixing bicycles.
Now that I think about it, I guess the main problem is that most people don't realize the vast, practically infinite amount of things there are to do that can make us as human beings happy - for free. And if you can't figure out what will make you happy, there are plenty of advertisers, marketing execs, and lifestyle-pushers who will be happy to decide for you. (hint: money is involved)
I hear this a lot. While the statement itself is true, the implication seems weird to me. When people say this, they're basically saying "Yes, money isn't everything, in fact it's much more important to be happy. But being rich can be nice some times, so hell, why not be rich?"
This is an excellent point - if a fairy popped up and said "I can either give you 5 million dollars or steal your wallet...what'll it be?" I don't think there's any question what I'd pick. I think the weird part is that people either believe or try to believe that the world really works that way.
True, there are some people who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and from day one can decide "Should I be rich, or not?". Most people who decide they want to be rich, however, have to organize a huge part of their lives around the goal. They have to do lots of things they don't want to do, and what's more they have to convince themselves that they actually do want to do them.
I'm not saying it's bad to try to be rich, just that it require a huge amount of work and sacrifice for most people, which suggests to me that they associate it with some really great goal - for example "happiness". I mean really, if money isn't the ultimate key to happiness, as we all seem to agree, why do folks spend such a disproportionately huge part of their time, mindshare, and life trying to get rich?
True, a "userland" rootkit - which I guess can't really be called a root-kit, is nowhere as effective as the real deal, but it's still insidious enough to be a security concern. The problem is contained to a more manageable area - when a server has been rooted, you have to re-build the whole box. When an account has been compromised, just delete and re-build the account.
The main problem with rootkits/keyloggers is not that they're a pain to remove, it's that they do bad things without the user even know they exist. Once a userland keylogger has logged all the user's passwords and secret credentials and FTPed them to the attacker, who cares how easy the logger is to remove?
Ultimately, I think the problem is that unlike most black hat-type activities, in order to steal a user's passwords, an attacker doesn't need anymore access than that user has.
a non-admin user will be asked for a password
No, no - that's exactly why I said bash config file, because that's a file that almost every user has full control over. That's the vulnerability that people overlook when discussing privileges-based security. Yes, denying the user root privileges keeps them from screwing up the system and other user accounts, but the whole point of a multi-user privileged system is to give a user zero control over the system itself while giving them broad control over their own account. This means that a user has all the permissions they need to screw themselves up really bad. It's probably harder to do, and certainly harder to hide since modifying system-related binaries is off limits, but it can definitely be done.
Because of this problem, pretty much any configurable or scriptable application (such as the Mac OSX GUI) is vulnerable to similar attacks, and if one avoids the command line the deception can be even more difficult to detect, making such users doubly vulnerable.
Ok, I've gotta know...am I the only one who thinks it's really funny that the geek community has totally obliviously adopted a racial slur to describe computer criminals? I mean, I'm not offended or anything, I just think it's really telling about the uniform cultural background of hackers when we can all go around debating about "hackers vs. crackers" with a straight face. Try to go down to the bar and tell everyone about the difference between hackers and crackers, and I'm pretty sure all the non-white people will bust out laughing at you.;-)
Of course, if you're using a wireless keyboard, you'll never know you're being hardware logged, 'cause all the attacker needs is a receiver with a big directional antenna attached. They've released a few wireless keyboards that use encryption between the keyboard and "base station", but for the sake of speed, it's generally pretty simplistic stuff that could either be cracked or defeated simply by using the same brand of proprietary receiver.
It's also theoretically possible to make equipment sensitive enough that it could detect the electromagnetic interference generated by your keyboard/monitor cables, allowing a remote attacker to record your keyboard input or screen output. This, I've heard, is why the military requires shielded cables on their computers.
First, make sure that you do your day to day computing on OSX on a standard, non-admin account. That means that if anything wants to install in the system or in the applications folder, you will be asked for a password for an admin.
Ok, here's an attack: I make a binary which, when run, adds a line into your users bash (or whatever shell) config file instructing it to run a phoney bash binary. So, every time you bring up a command prompt, the phoney bash runs instead, which is patched to "overlook" files with certain names. This phoney bash is also patched to record your keystrokes to a file which is named so as to be invisible. If that doesn't work, I'm sure it could be made to if a real programmer ran with it. And hey, I just came up with it off the top of my head - imagine what someone with real skills and time on their hands could do!
While your advice is certainly worth following, the factually correct and responsible answer to the question "How can I be sure I am safe from keyloggers?" is "You can't. Not ever."
Since more and more internet connections come over an RJ45 straight from the modem, or a wireless network, could the motherboard
Connecting to the internet requires a lot more than an RJ45 connection. I'm not saying it's impossible, since as you say the physical connectivity is there, but all your motherboard (or NIC) knows how to do is send and receive "layer 2" datagrams to and from MAC addresses. All the data abstraction and interpretation that follows is done by software, usually one's operating system. At the very least, the motherboard manufacturer would need to write an entire TCP/IP stack implementation and somehow squeeze it into the BIOS. I guess if the need is great enough, some manufacturer would go ahead and include something like this in a flash chip. Then again, the more complex a BIOS gets, the security flaws it's likely to have, which weakens it's status as the one stage of the computer whose integrity you can trust.
After all, if someone uses BIOS-based antivirus protection, why not just have your virus re-flash the CMOS?
I dunno - I get the cliche about the UN being ineffectual and powerless, but I'm not sure it's applicable in this domain. The main reason nations ignore UN resolutions is that the UN has no military, so while it can say, for example "You may not invade Iraq, we're still pursuing diplomatic channels!" it can't really force anybody to halt an invasion.
This is sort of the arrangement we have with the internet now. The UN can make strongly worded resolutions about how the DNS should be run, but when you get down to it, the US is the one with the power, and there no way for the UN to force the issue.
Giving the UN direct control over DNS management would give them the power to back up their resolutions. They wouldn't have to send angry letters to anyone insisting that the DNS should be run a certain way, they'd just start running it that way. This would render them a lot more effective and powerful in the internet sphere than in the military-conflict sphere.
In theory, I think moving the "internet army" into international control is a good idea, however in order for the international body to have any legitimacy, it would have to have a democratic mandate from actual people as opposed to governments, which the UN is badly lacking. So I guess if forced to make a call, I'd say that having the DNS under the control of a single marginally democratic nation is better than putting it under the non-democratic control of world leaders. That doesn't make the idea of institutions of international cooperation and coordination a bad one, though.
with members from all governments that use the internet
I dunno, that sounds an awful lot like the UN, which we all know is a monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot to pollute our precious bodily fluids...
Seriously though - the internet is one of the most important truly international undertakings that have developed in recent history. Doesn't it seem like a governing, policy-making body with representatives from all nations who influence and are influenced by the internet would be a good, fair way to manage a global resource? I mean, imagine if the Environmental Standards and Management council was a Japanese-operated non-profit corporation? You can be sure that environmental guidelines for agriculture, textile manufacturing, and construction would be strict, but when it comes to automobile or electronics fabrication, I don't think anybody in Japan would complain if the standards were softened a little in these areas.
Government is corrupt. The more power you concentrate in the hands of one person, corporation, or nation, the more corrupt they will become. The only way to offset this problem is to distribute the power among as many equal parties as possible, and have them all oversee each other and keep one another in check. To claim that the US should maintain control over the internet rather than share that control because they currently have good policy is to place one's faith in a benevolent dictator rather than the democratic process.
It seems also to be popular to argue that giving control of the internet to the UN is equivalent to giving control to China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. It would definitely be a bad idea to allow China to control the internet, but if you look at the UN's track record, specifically the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you may notice that the UN's standards on free speech and human rights doesn't seem to be influenced much by China. In fact, I daresay that the internet policies of pretty much any single country, even the US, are probably more oppressive than those listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Granted, the UN in practice doesn't quite live up to the UN in theory, but ain't that the way with every government?
The big problem with this type of argument is that the cost of the technology gets cheaper every year.
The cost of hardware tends to get cheaper, yes, but most of the cost involved in an operation like this is labor - reconfiguring routers, servers, and probably writing and testing a lot of custom code to allow the feds the access they require.
I agree that it'd be better ideally to get a court precedent which says "No, you can't tap colleges, 'cause it's a violation of the Bill of Rights", but since that'll never happen, it might be better than it seems to set a precedent that the feds have to foot the bill anytime they want to electronically eavesdrop on someone else's network. If any institution who wants to be uncooperative can just say "Sure, we'll give you access to our network, but our estimates say it'll cost $157 million..." that's a lot better position then they're in now.
I wonder how long before someone "discovers" a Da Vinci-code-syle pattern in the Star Wars movies fortelling the future of civilization? After all, Star Wars is this generation's Bible - complete with people who only acknowlegde the divinity of the "Old Testament" (original trilogy);)
First, socialism itself doesn't have to be government-mandated. Most of the high profile instances of socialism we've seen in international politics have been, so it's understandable that people believe that.
Second, the development of open source may be driven by a market, as in a market of ideas, respect, and popularity, but it's definitely not driven by "the market" of capitalist supply and demand. Open source code is free, and is created by volunteers. It is not created in response to an economic demand, because it's given away for free and none of the contributors make any money from it.
In fact, part of the reason so many innovative, foward thinking, and high-quality products have originated in the open source community is precisely because we're not motivated by the market. If I just wanted to cash in on a market demand, I would develop my code to the minimum standard required to get a lot of people to shell out $100 for it, (even if it's a carbon copy of an earlier project with some superficial changes) and then forget about it. Open source developers work on projects not for profit, but because we genuinely want to make really good, secure, innovative software.
It's true. Private corporations, by their very nature, will not direct their resources towards making life saving drugs unless it makes them a profit. In fact, even if it does make some profit, they won't direct their resources towards it unless it can make them the most profit compared to other possible ventures like behavior-control medication for children or baldness prevention drugs.
It's generally agreed than people's lives are more important than absolute loyalty to free market theory, which leads many to believe that perhaps we shouldn't trust private corporations to be responsible for developing drugs and running the healthcare system, since their natural tendency to maximize profit above all often runs counter to people's need to be alive and healthy.
This is an interesting misconception about socialism, and it's probably the reason why it seems so weird and horrible to call the open source movement socialist. "Socialism" conjures up images of the overbearing dictatorships of Cuba and the creepy thought-control of China, but socialism itself doesn't have anything to do with force, or government at all for that matter.
What if I told you that there was a political system in which people collaborated voluntarily in order to create great, useful things which would not bring profit to any single individual or group, but instead improve the quality of the community overall? However, in this political system, there is no boss, no dictator of the project, and anyone who claims to represent or govern the community is generally met with healthy criticism and disregard. There is healthy internal debate about the merits and failings of the system and the projects people are engaged in, and all contributions to the collective projects are made voluntarily, but when the group is threatened as a whole by external enemies, everyone works together to preserve the community.
Sounds a lot like the open source movement, or hacker culture in general, doesn't it? Well, there's a name for this type of system and it's called anarchism. Yes, I said it - Open Source is anarchy, more specifically anarcho-socialism. Again, though, one is forced to ask...is this a bad thing?
I've travelled to several socialist paradises in Europe. The infrastructure and "standard of living" reminded me of third world countries.
Funny you should mention that - I've traveled to capitalist paradises in Africa (where there's no pesky "nanny state" to tax everyone's income), and they are third world countries.
I'm not trying to start a pissing match about what countries are better, and which political systems they use, I'm just trying to point out that anecdotal evidence about the failure of a particular system doesn't mean that it's a worthless method of socio-political organization.
Yes, there are examples of failed socialism. There are examples of failed elections, too, but few people would look at those cases and conclude that we should abandon the electoral system.
To use an example more relevant to TFA, there are plenty of examples of the utter failure of open source organization to produce a reliable, high quality piece of software. These are exactly the examples that microsoft siezes upon to spread FUD about F/OSS. "See?" they say. "Look at this one project on SourceForge! It totally sucks, and nobody's working on it - and this is what you get under open source - everyone's lazy and nothing gets done!"
Well, not really. That's what you get under that project, but it's just a lousy implementation of an otherwise positive system.
There's a command for the "admin" console called (i think) AddTopic. I've used it a couple times to resolve quest-related problems where the topic you need to talk to someone about isn't available. Just open the dialog screen on them, hit ~ to bring up the console, and do AddTopic [topic you're missing].
And how do you think the code base mutates? Hint: it's not random power glitches flipping bits on the disk...
Damn, you're right, open source software is way to complex and perfect to have simply evolved out of development chaos. I'd never considered it that way before! All this time...
I wonder if Microsoft would change their attitude if they realized that God created Linux in his own image.
Your argument reminds me of an ongoing controversy between the volunteer and paid firefighters in my town. The paid firefighters make their living from fighting fires, and they're more than a little pissy towards the the volunteers, because they see them as a potential threat to their jobs. Indeed, there are municipalities which have gone "all volunteer" due to budget cuts.
The problem that firefighters run into, just like software engineers, is that although the work they do is difficult and requires advanced qualifications and knowledge, there are lots of people out there who are willing to do it for free.
How do you resolve this problem? I dunno, because I sort of sympathize with both sides. Many paid firefighters would be happy to have the county refuse all volunteers, since that would make their jobs more in demand and therefore higher paid, but this seems selfish to me. In the same way, I don't think developers should try to eliminate or de-value open source models, they should just figure out how they can make the best of the new part-volunteer landscape of software development. There may not be as many riches involved, but to pursue personal wealth at the expense of the advancement of knowledge, technology, and quite possibly society at large seems wrong to me.
You'll be relieved to know I'm nobody's financial advisor, and while I won't pretend to be an expert in finance or economics, I think your analysis is a little simplistic.
The reason that the housing market looks like a bubble is that houses are a stable commodity which has an established market presence and very reliable ways of determining value. Suddenly, houses which were appraised at $200,000 are being valued at $2,000,000. Now, at the moment, for some reason people are willing to pay 2mil for a house. This makes it seem like maybe houses are just becoming a permanently more valuable commodity, however those who believe there is a housing bubble claim that at some point in the near future, people will suddenly start saying "wait a minute, this house ain't worth anywhere NEAR 2mil!". The re-realization of actual market value as opposed to the hype-driven bubble-market value is what makes a bubble "pop".
The reason that I don't think open source businesses are forming a bubble is that there will never be a re-realization of actual value, there will never be a "pop". Currently, or at least in the past 5-10 years, open source has been relatively unknown to VCs, and so it's market value has been at basically 0. Unlike the housing market, this value was not due to an established market presence or reliable standards for determining value, it was because no investors paid attention to a bunch of F/OSS hackers.
Now that F/OSS is becoming more famous, it's actual market value is becoming more apparent, leading investors to pump more money into it. Clearly there will be open source flops, just as in any industry, but for the most part, I don't think we'll see people in 10 years saying "wait a minute, this open source company really is worth $0, just as it was valued before the bubble!". In fact, with the help of VC funds, I bet open source will actually develop into a stronger, more stable market presence.
Hell, if I had any money, I'd invest in some F/OSS startup myself.
The main question that you have to ask when determining whether a particular market is a bubble is "Are investors over-valuing it?"
I would argue that open-source, as it is today, is actually undervalued, and had a huge amount of economic potential that hasn't even begun to be tapped. This is not true of, say, the housing market, which many say is a bubble.
I think rather than an insubstantial bubble, what we're seeing is a whole bunch of investors realizing the very real value of open source business models all at once.
People have hostile reactions when you say you don't watch TV because they assume that you're trying to prove something, or show how cool you are, or convince them of some political analysis. When the subject comes up and I say "No, I haven't seen that commercial - I don't watch TV," many people respond as though I had said "TV is for the weak-minded. You watch it too much."
Why do people interpret a simple statement about personal behavior as a loaded criticism? I suspect it's because on some level, they feel sort of guilty and/or criticize their own TV-watching habits, and are therefore quick to interpret discussion on the subject to be directed towards them.
I get the same thing when I say "Oh, the soup has bacon in it? No thanks, I don't eat meat." Suddenly I'm subjected to an extended monologue on why they eat meat and how they don't really eat as much as most people...
dude, eat what you want, watch what you want - I don't care, I just don't want to adopt all your habits so that you can feel comfortable.
It's true that the source of information doesn't affect whether or not the information is true, however it does affect how trustworthy the information is.
In this case, since the author obviously has a history of spreading an anti-open source message, the trustworthiness of his information is pretty low. Now, if you're presented with a factual argument by someone you distrust, the appropriate thing to do is to test their claims yourself. In many cases, further testing or investigation reveals the claims of untrustworthy people to be inaccurate, however this is not a given.
In this case, although I haven't repeated his exact experiment, I strongly suspect that his claims are accurate despite his obviously slanted reason for presenting them. I also suspect that the reason many people are so eager to assume that his untrustworthiness makes him wrong is the realization that performing an objective inquiry will probably confirm his argument.
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I appreciate the thoughful responses, because I really am curious what's up with the ubiquitous draw of money. It seems that a lot of things in modern society, including the obsession with job security which leads people to take TFA half-seriously, stem from the relatively recent idea that although money may not quite equal happiness, it's more or less an essential ingredient.
If being in a certain place, like Los Angeles, improves my happiness, then I'd better be rich
This is the most popular explaination for why being rich is a requirement for being happy. Again, the statement seems reasonable by itself, but the unspoken implication seems flawed. There are lots of things which would improve my happiness that cost lots of money, but just because they could make me happy doesn't mean I have to be unhappy without them. Happiness isn't like Pokemon where you have to "collect them all"! I think the bigger problem is that consumerism, or to be more specific the idea that the cost of something is correlated to how happy it can make you, is widely accepted as truth today. I'd like to live in Los Angeles, but I can't afford it, and somehow I'm very happy anyway. I currently have an expensive computer as a "hobby toy" which makes me happy, but if I lost it (I can't afford to replace it), I'd just find something else to make me equally happy, like reading novels or fixing bicycles.
Now that I think about it, I guess the main problem is that most people don't realize the vast, practically infinite amount of things there are to do that can make us as human beings happy - for free. And if you can't figure out what will make you happy, there are plenty of advertisers, marketing execs, and lifestyle-pushers who will be happy to decide for you. (hint: money is involved)
It's much nicer to have money than not to.
I hear this a lot. While the statement itself is true, the implication seems weird to me. When people say this, they're basically saying "Yes, money isn't everything, in fact it's much more important to be happy. But being rich can be nice some times, so hell, why not be rich?"
This is an excellent point - if a fairy popped up and said "I can either give you 5 million dollars or steal your wallet...what'll it be?" I don't think there's any question what I'd pick. I think the weird part is that people either believe or try to believe that the world really works that way.
True, there are some people who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and from day one can decide "Should I be rich, or not?". Most people who decide they want to be rich, however, have to organize a huge part of their lives around the goal. They have to do lots of things they don't want to do, and what's more they have to convince themselves that they actually do want to do them.
I'm not saying it's bad to try to be rich, just that it require a huge amount of work and sacrifice for most people, which suggests to me that they associate it with some really great goal - for example "happiness". I mean really, if money isn't the ultimate key to happiness, as we all seem to agree, why do folks spend such a disproportionately huge part of their time, mindshare, and life trying to get rich?
True, a "userland" rootkit - which I guess can't really be called a root-kit, is nowhere as effective as the real deal, but it's still insidious enough to be a security concern. The problem is contained to a more manageable area - when a server has been rooted, you have to re-build the whole box. When an account has been compromised, just delete and re-build the account.
The main problem with rootkits/keyloggers is not that they're a pain to remove, it's that they do bad things without the user even know they exist. Once a userland keylogger has logged all the user's passwords and secret credentials and FTPed them to the attacker, who cares how easy the logger is to remove?
Ultimately, I think the problem is that unlike most black hat-type activities, in order to steal a user's passwords, an attacker doesn't need anymore access than that user has.
a non-admin user will be asked for a password
No, no - that's exactly why I said bash config file, because that's a file that almost every user has full control over. That's the vulnerability that people overlook when discussing privileges-based security. Yes, denying the user root privileges keeps them from screwing up the system and other user accounts, but the whole point of a multi-user privileged system is to give a user zero control over the system itself while giving them broad control over their own account. This means that a user has all the permissions they need to screw themselves up really bad. It's probably harder to do, and certainly harder to hide since modifying system-related binaries is off limits, but it can definitely be done.
Because of this problem, pretty much any configurable or scriptable application (such as the Mac OSX GUI) is vulnerable to similar attacks, and if one avoids the command line the deception can be even more difficult to detect, making such users doubly vulnerable.
Ok, I've gotta know...am I the only one who thinks it's really funny that the geek community has totally obliviously adopted a racial slur to describe computer criminals? I mean, I'm not offended or anything, I just think it's really telling about the uniform cultural background of hackers when we can all go around debating about "hackers vs. crackers" with a straight face. Try to go down to the bar and tell everyone about the difference between hackers and crackers, and I'm pretty sure all the non-white people will bust out laughing at you. ;-)
Of course, if you're using a wireless keyboard, you'll never know you're being hardware logged, 'cause all the attacker needs is a receiver with a big directional antenna attached. They've released a few wireless keyboards that use encryption between the keyboard and "base station", but for the sake of speed, it's generally pretty simplistic stuff that could either be cracked or defeated simply by using the same brand of proprietary receiver.
It's also theoretically possible to make equipment sensitive enough that it could detect the electromagnetic interference generated by your keyboard/monitor cables, allowing a remote attacker to record your keyboard input or screen output. This, I've heard, is why the military requires shielded cables on their computers.
First, make sure that you do your day to day computing on OSX on a standard, non-admin account. That means that if anything wants to install in the system or in the applications folder, you will be asked for a password for an admin.
Ok, here's an attack: I make a binary which, when run, adds a line into your users bash (or whatever shell) config file instructing it to run a phoney bash binary. So, every time you bring up a command prompt, the phoney bash runs instead, which is patched to "overlook" files with certain names. This phoney bash is also patched to record your keystrokes to a file which is named so as to be invisible. If that doesn't work, I'm sure it could be made to if a real programmer ran with it. And hey, I just came up with it off the top of my head - imagine what someone with real skills and time on their hands could do!
While your advice is certainly worth following, the factually correct and responsible answer to the question "How can I be sure I am safe from keyloggers?" is
"You can't. Not ever."
Since more and more internet connections come over an RJ45 straight from the modem, or a wireless network, could the motherboard
Connecting to the internet requires a lot more than an RJ45 connection. I'm not saying it's impossible, since as you say the physical connectivity is there, but all your motherboard (or NIC) knows how to do is send and receive "layer 2" datagrams to and from MAC addresses. All the data abstraction and interpretation that follows is done by software, usually one's operating system. At the very least, the motherboard manufacturer would need to write an entire TCP/IP stack implementation and somehow squeeze it into the BIOS. I guess if the need is great enough, some manufacturer would go ahead and include something like this in a flash chip. Then again, the more complex a BIOS gets, the security flaws it's likely to have, which weakens it's status as the one stage of the computer whose integrity you can trust.
After all, if someone uses BIOS-based antivirus protection, why not just have your virus re-flash the CMOS?
Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other mammals, ninjas can drive SUVs OR be totally awesome.
I dunno - I get the cliche about the UN being ineffectual and powerless, but I'm not sure it's applicable in this domain. The main reason nations ignore UN resolutions is that the UN has no military, so while it can say, for example "You may not invade Iraq, we're still pursuing diplomatic channels!" it can't really force anybody to halt an invasion.
This is sort of the arrangement we have with the internet now. The UN can make strongly worded resolutions about how the DNS should be run, but when you get down to it, the US is the one with the power, and there no way for the UN to force the issue.
Giving the UN direct control over DNS management would give them the power to back up their resolutions. They wouldn't have to send angry letters to anyone insisting that the DNS should be run a certain way, they'd just start running it that way. This would render them a lot more effective and powerful in the internet sphere than in the military-conflict sphere.
In theory, I think moving the "internet army" into international control is a good idea, however in order for the international body to have any legitimacy, it would have to have a democratic mandate from actual people as opposed to governments, which the UN is badly lacking. So I guess if forced to make a call, I'd say that having the DNS under the control of a single marginally democratic nation is better than putting it under the non-democratic control of world leaders. That doesn't make the idea of institutions of international cooperation and coordination a bad one, though.
with members from all governments that use the internet
I dunno, that sounds an awful lot like the UN, which we all know is a monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot to pollute our precious bodily fluids...
Seriously though - the internet is one of the most important truly international undertakings that have developed in recent history. Doesn't it seem like a governing, policy-making body with representatives from all nations who influence and are influenced by the internet would be a good, fair way to manage a global resource? I mean, imagine if the Environmental Standards and Management council was a Japanese-operated non-profit corporation? You can be sure that environmental guidelines for agriculture, textile manufacturing, and construction would be strict, but when it comes to automobile or electronics fabrication, I don't think anybody in Japan would complain if the standards were softened a little in these areas.
Government is corrupt. The more power you concentrate in the hands of one person, corporation, or nation, the more corrupt they will become. The only way to offset this problem is to distribute the power among as many equal parties as possible, and have them all oversee each other and keep one another in check. To claim that the US should maintain control over the internet rather than share that control because they currently have good policy is to place one's faith in a benevolent dictator rather than the democratic process.
It seems also to be popular to argue that giving control of the internet to the UN is equivalent to giving control to China, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. It would definitely be a bad idea to allow China to control the internet, but if you look at the UN's track record, specifically the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you may notice that the UN's standards on free speech and human rights doesn't seem to be influenced much by China. In fact, I daresay that the internet policies of pretty much any single country, even the US, are probably more oppressive than those listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Granted, the UN in practice doesn't quite live up to the UN in theory, but ain't that the way with every government?
The big problem with this type of argument is that the cost of the technology gets cheaper every year.
The cost of hardware tends to get cheaper, yes, but most of the cost involved in an operation like this is labor - reconfiguring routers, servers, and probably writing and testing a lot of custom code to allow the feds the access they require.
I agree that it'd be better ideally to get a court precedent which says "No, you can't tap colleges, 'cause it's a violation of the Bill of Rights", but since that'll never happen, it might be better than it seems to set a precedent that the feds have to foot the bill anytime they want to electronically eavesdrop on someone else's network. If any institution who wants to be uncooperative can just say "Sure, we'll give you access to our network, but our estimates say it'll cost $157 million..." that's a lot better position then they're in now.
I wonder how long before someone "discovers" a Da Vinci-code-syle pattern in the Star Wars movies fortelling the future of civilization? After all, Star Wars is this generation's Bible - complete with people who only acknowlegde the divinity of the "Old Testament" (original trilogy) ;)
Both of those statements seem false to me.
First, socialism itself doesn't have to be government-mandated. Most of the high profile instances of socialism we've seen in international politics have been, so it's understandable that people believe that.
Second, the development of open source may be driven by a market, as in a market of ideas, respect, and popularity, but it's definitely not driven by "the market" of capitalist supply and demand. Open source code is free, and is created by volunteers. It is not created in response to an economic demand, because it's given away for free and none of the contributors make any money from it.
In fact, part of the reason so many innovative, foward thinking, and high-quality products have originated in the open source community is precisely because we're not motivated by the market. If I just wanted to cash in on a market demand, I would develop my code to the minimum standard required to get a lot of people to shell out $100 for it, (even if it's a carbon copy of an earlier project with some superficial changes) and then forget about it. Open source developers work on projects not for profit, but because we genuinely want to make really good, secure, innovative software.
It's true. Private corporations, by their very nature, will not direct their resources towards making life saving drugs unless it makes them a profit. In fact, even if it does make some profit, they won't direct their resources towards it unless it can make them the most profit compared to other possible ventures like behavior-control medication for children or baldness prevention drugs.
It's generally agreed than people's lives are more important than absolute loyalty to free market theory, which leads many to believe that perhaps we shouldn't trust private corporations to be responsible for developing drugs and running the healthcare system, since their natural tendency to maximize profit above all often runs counter to people's need to be alive and healthy.
This is an interesting misconception about socialism, and it's probably the reason why it seems so weird and horrible to call the open source movement socialist. "Socialism" conjures up images of the overbearing dictatorships of Cuba and the creepy thought-control of China, but socialism itself doesn't have anything to do with force, or government at all for that matter.
What if I told you that there was a political system in which people collaborated voluntarily in order to create great, useful things which would not bring profit to any single individual or group, but instead improve the quality of the community overall? However, in this political system, there is no boss, no dictator of the project, and anyone who claims to represent or govern the community is generally met with healthy criticism and disregard. There is healthy internal debate about the merits and failings of the system and the projects people are engaged in, and all contributions to the collective projects are made voluntarily, but when the group is threatened as a whole by external enemies, everyone works together to preserve the community.
Sounds a lot like the open source movement, or hacker culture in general, doesn't it? Well, there's a name for this type of system and it's called anarchism. Yes, I said it - Open Source is anarchy, more specifically anarcho-socialism. Again, though, one is forced to ask...is this a bad thing?
I've travelled to several socialist paradises in Europe. The infrastructure and "standard of living" reminded me of third world countries.
Funny you should mention that - I've traveled to capitalist paradises in Africa (where there's no pesky "nanny state" to tax everyone's income), and they are third world countries.
I'm not trying to start a pissing match about what countries are better, and which political systems they use, I'm just trying to point out that anecdotal evidence about the failure of a particular system doesn't mean that it's a worthless method of socio-political organization.
Yes, there are examples of failed socialism. There are examples of failed elections, too, but few people would look at those cases and conclude that we should abandon the electoral system.
To use an example more relevant to TFA, there are plenty of examples of the utter failure of open source organization to produce a reliable, high quality piece of software. These are exactly the examples that microsoft siezes upon to spread FUD about F/OSS.
"See?" they say. "Look at this one project on SourceForge! It totally sucks, and nobody's working on it - and this is what you get under open source - everyone's lazy and nothing gets done!"
Well, not really. That's what you get under that project, but it's just a lousy implementation of an otherwise positive system.
There's a command for the "admin" console called (i think) AddTopic. I've used it a couple times to resolve quest-related problems where the topic you need to talk to someone about isn't available. Just open the dialog screen on them, hit ~ to bring up the console, and do AddTopic [topic you're missing].
And how do you think the code base mutates? Hint: it's not random power glitches flipping bits on the disk...
Damn, you're right, open source software is way to complex and perfect to have simply evolved out of development chaos. I'd never considered it that way before! All this time...
I wonder if Microsoft would change their attitude if they realized that God created Linux in his own image.
;-)
Your argument reminds me of an ongoing controversy between the volunteer and paid firefighters in my town. The paid firefighters make their living from fighting fires, and they're more than a little pissy towards the the volunteers, because they see them as a potential threat to their jobs. Indeed, there are municipalities which have gone "all volunteer" due to budget cuts.
The problem that firefighters run into, just like software engineers, is that although the work they do is difficult and requires advanced qualifications and knowledge, there are lots of people out there who are willing to do it for free.
How do you resolve this problem? I dunno, because I sort of sympathize with both sides. Many paid firefighters would be happy to have the county refuse all volunteers, since that would make their jobs more in demand and therefore higher paid, but this seems selfish to me. In the same way, I don't think developers should try to eliminate or de-value open source models, they should just figure out how they can make the best of the new part-volunteer landscape of software development. There may not be as many riches involved, but to pursue personal wealth at the expense of the advancement of knowledge, technology, and quite possibly society at large seems wrong to me.
You'll be relieved to know I'm nobody's financial advisor, and while I won't pretend to be an expert in finance or economics, I think your analysis is a little simplistic.
The reason that the housing market looks like a bubble is that houses are a stable commodity which has an established market presence and very reliable ways of determining value. Suddenly, houses which were appraised at $200,000 are being valued at $2,000,000. Now, at the moment, for some reason people are willing to pay 2mil for a house. This makes it seem like maybe houses are just becoming a permanently more valuable commodity, however those who believe there is a housing bubble claim that at some point in the near future, people will suddenly start saying "wait a minute, this house ain't worth anywhere NEAR 2mil!". The re-realization of actual market value as opposed to the hype-driven bubble-market value is what makes a bubble "pop".
The reason that I don't think open source businesses are forming a bubble is that there will never be a re-realization of actual value, there will never be a "pop". Currently, or at least in the past 5-10 years, open source has been relatively unknown to VCs, and so it's market value has been at basically 0. Unlike the housing market, this value was not due to an established market presence or reliable standards for determining value, it was because no investors paid attention to a bunch of F/OSS hackers.
Now that F/OSS is becoming more famous, it's actual market value is becoming more apparent, leading investors to pump more money into it. Clearly there will be open source flops, just as in any industry, but for the most part, I don't think we'll see people in 10 years saying "wait a minute, this open source company really is worth $0, just as it was valued before the bubble!". In fact, with the help of VC funds, I bet open source will actually develop into a stronger, more stable market presence.
Hell, if I had any money, I'd invest in some F/OSS startup myself.
The main question that you have to ask when determining whether a particular market is a bubble is "Are investors over-valuing it?"
I would argue that open-source, as it is today, is actually undervalued, and had a huge amount of economic potential that hasn't even begun to be tapped. This is not true of, say, the housing market, which many say is a bubble.
I think rather than an insubstantial bubble, what we're seeing is a whole bunch of investors realizing the very real value of open source business models all at once.
People have hostile reactions when you say you don't watch TV because they assume that you're trying to prove something, or show how cool you are, or convince them of some political analysis. When the subject comes up and I say "No, I haven't seen that commercial - I don't watch TV," many people respond as though I had said "TV is for the weak-minded. You watch it too much."
Why do people interpret a simple statement about personal behavior as a loaded criticism? I suspect it's because on some level, they feel sort of guilty and/or criticize their own TV-watching habits, and are therefore quick to interpret discussion on the subject to be directed towards them.
I get the same thing when I say "Oh, the soup has bacon in it? No thanks, I don't eat meat." Suddenly I'm subjected to an extended monologue on why they eat meat and how they don't really eat as much as most people...
dude, eat what you want, watch what you want - I don't care, I just don't want to adopt all your habits so that you can feel comfortable.
It's true that the source of information doesn't affect whether or not the information is true, however it does affect how trustworthy the information is.
In this case, since the author obviously has a history of spreading an anti-open source message, the trustworthiness of his information is pretty low. Now, if you're presented with a factual argument by someone you distrust, the appropriate thing to do is to test their claims yourself. In many cases, further testing or investigation reveals the claims of untrustworthy people to be inaccurate, however this is not a given.
In this case, although I haven't repeated his exact experiment, I strongly suspect that his claims are accurate despite his obviously slanted reason for presenting them. I also suspect that the reason many people are so eager to assume that his untrustworthiness makes him wrong is the realization that performing an objective inquiry will probably confirm his argument.
Is it hyperbole day on Slashdot and no one told me?
Hyperbole day? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my entire life!