"Consultant (medical doctor) says "I need to access the net to be able to read research papers, proposals, and various ad hoc sites that contain research on the subjects that I deal with"
Of course you do. And so you will do on the personnel library which has a tone of Internet-connected PCs.
"Consultant goes to see hospital directors, stamps feet, and IT get overridden."
Something nasty happens, medical data gets disclosed, the hospital gets a billionare fine and the directors get fired on the most publized way. As easy as that.
On the other hand there's aplenty of technical solutions that would cope with the situation on a comfortable manner like terminals on different networks all showing on your very same screen and table. I happen to have opened a browser exported from a protected network through an VPN while I write this on a different browser on my home PC. They both look like two plain usual windows, only on this one I can reach slashdot and on the other one I can access some internal resources but not the Internet. Do you think there's a chance one window can "poison" the other one? Sorry but no.
Involved software and labour costs for TCO? Way less than a retail Windows Vista Prof. license. Only proper knowledge and technical ability at work.
"I actually am a physician [...] The work-flow is just not feasible with such a system"
Do I tell you what's the best cure for illness X or that some given diagnostic machine is too expensive and that I'd manage to do it cheaper? Not.
Do you know why? Because I'm not a physician; you are the physician.
Then, please, disallow yourself to tell me how should I do my job because you know as much about it as I know about yours.
"Locking down sounds good to some of you, but it would break the workflow in a medical system"
Thinking you know what you are talking about sounds good to you, but it only shows you take yourself too high for your own safety.
On a side note, no, I'm not telling what your workflow should be nor I'm implying the proper technical solution to provide both effiency to your job and enough security for the nature of your job is the one you think it is and therefor unsuitable.
What's a "computer" anyway? You seem to be one of those that really think that "the computer" is the keyboard and the screen taking real state from their table. It is not.
"One for general internet use - getting insurance information from Insurance companies, sending mandatory reports to the CDC, NIH, CMS, FDA and so on, and another computer sitting right next to it on a different VLAN for accessing clinical information?"
1) The ones working on clinical information are not the ones working on administrative tasks. 2) The screen and keyboard is *not* the computer; there's no problem working on a terminal session from a protected network to access data and working on a different one as needed to relay trimmed down postprocessed info as needed. It can be made so transparent for the end user she never would know what's happening. 3) Anyway there's *zero* chances that any of the work requirements you talk about requires access but to known in advance end points, so open Internet access is way beyond needed in any case.
"Medical software developers, as a whole, do not security [...] It takes more time and resources"
Developers, as any provider just go wherever the market wants them so the true point is that Hospitals don't want security. As harsh as it sounds.
Which in turn begs the question: OK, probably that guy is guilty and he deserves his sentence. But now, what about the hospital and its policies obviously waaaaaay down due diligence? What the guy did was wrong; what the hospital allowed to happen is much, much worse; by orders of magnitude. Pitifully I won't hold my breath waiting for a multimillion exemplary fine against the hospital so others will take the issue more seriously.
"Get real. Half the world has these or a yahoo address. Telling people they can't access those would be like saying they can't use email at all."
Well, it would be more or less like telling people they shouldn't use company assets for personal issues. Doesn't seem too unfair to me.
"Unless the hospital is prepared to provide its own email servers and address and spam filtering and etc, etc,"
How much do you think it takes running your own mail servers? You say it as if you think is something abusive. HINT: running your own corporate mailservers/antivirus/antispam takes real neglegible costs, specially if due to your needs you already have IT personnel and moreso on a hospital where operational costs tend to be hugh.
"webmail IS a valid substitute for employee email."
Even if we accept this, what's the relationship between "this company's corporate webmail service" and "webmail access to your personal account on god knows which crappy provider"?
"Uh, what? How do you know? No life as we know it."
And that's the whole point of it -if we are trying to detect it from afar!
Sure, life *might* appear in a form so extrange to us that we wouldn't be able to recognize as life unless it spitting on our face but then, how do you propose we will distinguish it as life from, say, half a dozen parsecs away?
Since the quest is finding life, *any* life, but we don't need to find *all* life just now, starting from the conditions we know most probably would match as life is the proper thing. We may not know so well how life can manage to look like but we are quite good at physics and inorganic chemistry already now to know how non-life *cannot* look like, so we look for that.
"Life as we don't know it still might form an industrial civilization and make radios &c."
Yes. And that's why SETI looks for radio patterns instead of some "non-electromagnetic radiation" out of a 50's pulp magazine. It might happen that an alien civilization comunicates using magics, we don't know, but we do know that if we find a radioelectric emmission we can decypher as guy with a funny moustache speeching in a way almost undistinguishable to a duck, heck, that's life in action.
"Support SETI@home [berkeley.edu] So you believe there are only unicellular beings, but sufficiently evolved to emit radio signals ?"
No. He is trading on effort versus expectancies just like game theory supports playing lotto from time to time on affordable money even while I'm quite sure I'll never get the prize.
"I like the principle of this idea, but it would be unacceptable to burden developers with the requirement that they hang on to the dev materials for anything that they make indefinitely."
Please pay attention that reverse-engineering is meant for compatibility reasons (and academic and some similar cases) so "all" it's not needed, only such information as to be reasonabily able to interact with the product. A document format? It should be documented to be able to open the deriverables of the original program. A public API? ditto. Your uber-successful algorithm to resolve the salesman problem? Not needed: you could cover this as an industrial secret.
"How about that?" In Europe is perfectly legal to reverse engineer a program for compatibility or maintenance purpouses so at least you can try. Of course if should be mandatory to have access to developer's data so this becomes a real right instead of a cat against mouse game.
"The definition of life is somewhat squishy, even in Biological fields"
The definition of life is somewhat squishy *mainly* in Biological fields. They are the ones that deal with the corner cases (well, Biology, Vram Stoker and Mary Shelley, that is).
"I'd say alive means something that has all the machinery to eat and reproduce."
So a fetus or a pork tapeworm (can't sustain themselvers) are not alive? So an ant (sterile) is not alive?
"Viruses are basically a protein package containing some DNA or RNA. That packet was made by a cell"
Not. That "package" was not made by a cell. The "package" managed for the cell to do the job for it. Are you not flying when the one that really flies is the plane? Making use of the environment in order to self-replicate is the very definition of life.
"Cells are alive, viruses are just information."
Ask that to the virus. Maybe they'll answer "Virus are alive, cells are just tools we use in our quest for replication".
"If we are to say viruses are living things, it would imply that that DNA fragment is a living thing."
If we are to say men are living things, it would imply that if we take a man heart's out of his body we must admit that either the heart or the other part is still a living thing? WTF!!!???
The fact is our perception of life (as it is our perception of causality) is modelled after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in which we never consciouslly affronted the virus concept. No wonder our definitions and "common sense" perceptions become a bit blurred (even quite blurred) when tested against them. What's a species? Where's the frontier between life and non-life? How can it possibly be that a thing (light) is two things at a time (wave and particle)? As Nietzsche would have said, it's language mummifying reality.
"A severed or left-over part of a living being is not, in an of itself, a living being, no matter how it behaves when you reattach or reinsert it into one."
Are you aware that which part is the "severed" and which one is the "remaining" is quite a question of point of view? (is it really a decapitation or is it more a debodyzation?)
"maybe you have fancy servers, but I have an old "home made" box that got stuck on a shelf in a server room."
I do have fancy servers, yes. But I do have old (as from 2006) "home made" servers and still they support IPMI (supermicro boards). Anyway, you can't call them "departamental servers" if they are no more than glorified desktops.
"I don't have a fancy rack mount system with "full blown remote control cards."
You can get "fancy rack mount system with full blown remote control cards" below the 1000 US$ is that really too "fancy" for your "departamental services"? If you answer yes, think about it again next time they are down if even one hour because that was the time they took to find you and then you going to the server room some miles afar.
"I was mistaken that ILO1 was not IPMI. However the rest of my comment applies."
They apply; it's only they are non-relevant. You stated that "IBM / HP / etc also have some sort of functionality like this [IPMI] but will charge you licensing for the same feature set".
The fact is that they offer IPMI for free. They only charge for extra functionallity (that I for one don't need, so I don't pay them and I still have remote control through IPMI for free).
"While your idea's are interesting and I dont nesecarily disagree you've made some assumptions."
Yes: there's a main assumption on my message which is that "patents are bad" (yes, they are: they're against free market and natural obvious facts like "when you own something, you own it" or "when you know something, you know it"); they might be a "needed bad" or a "lessen evil" but they are still bad. So the burden of the proof is on the patents side, not in not having them. In order to make tolerable the patent system it should bring obvious great advantages over the alternative (which is "not having patents"). Exactly the same is aplicable in general to all the "intellectual property" issue.
Being patents naturally bad, we are entitled and justified to constantly challenge them. Let's admit if only for the sake of the argumentation, that patents were a great idea in the XVII-XVIII centuries; that would only mean they were a necessary evil *then* but now we still should question "well, are patents still a necessary evil now". And now? And now? For patents is not enough to answer "well, they are still tolerable": the day they are "a really good idea" no more is the day we must abolish them.
Based on this, I think the rest of my post is quite understandable. Basically it's not on me the burden to offer an alternative (which I still thought it was obvious: ban patents and let market forces do its work); it's just enough for me to show that they are buttered bread no more.
"What if the invetion was easily reproducible"
The better for the market that will have more competing producers.
"what if the company that created it was reasonably large but specialised in only one thing and then Sony come along with all their market connections etc and steal it."
Then no amount of patents will save that company if Sony takes its war axe: Sony will eat it for breakfast anyway.
Both because Sony will counterattack with its own patent portfolio (the newcomer won't be able to offer patent exchanges because it won't have patents on this market: remember its a newcomer) and because patents protect devices not ideas and if the patent is based on the "very clever but easy once you get it" trick Sony will easily find a way to overcome the patent which will be based on the "device" part, not the "clever" one: ABS (the car brake system) is/was patented and that only meant that all big car companies got to develop their own ABS-like thing instead of using "the real thing" (so a net loss -again, for society while a partial failure for the patent holder -was it Mercedes? which didn't manage despite its patent to lock out the market from the idea).
"Surely such a system would favour the largest companys saving money by exploiting their existing advantages over anyone else who tries to inovate (even more so than is allready the case)"
Maybe. But would it be significantly worse than now? Remember that if patents are not "buttered bread" there's no point in them. On the other hand, it all seems as if it were a "the winner takes it all" game, which is not.
Maybe the Big Corp finds cheaper/more convenient to buy the newcomer -or its idea, than fight it out of market: big companies buy little ones everyday simply because of their know-how. Maybe the little company will use its cleverness to find the cracks the bigger player is not interested in instead of trying to fight it frontally. Maybe the bigger player wants to fight the newcomer out the playground but there's still place for more than one player. I already made the point that in the early days of "modern era computing" (let's say late seventies but mainly the eighties from last century), both hardware and software, a majority of the now big players where born by then on a playground where patents were basically still a non-issue. And it is not because there were no big corps wanting to dominate the field: the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, DEC, Acer, Dell, Western Digital... were all against the IBM behemoth no less
"other brands like IBM / HP / etc also have some sort of functionality like this [IPMI] but will charge you licensing for the same feature set."
IBM, HP and DELL do offer out of the box a thing such sort of functionality like IPMI that it's indeed IPMI. With no licensing costs, and they have been there for ages (the three brands are among the founders of the IPMI standards).
"I concur that IPMI is your friend, but IPMI does not include 'remote media' (or remote video). Those are implemented as proprietary extensions by the like of IBM and such."
For short number of boxes, you are probably better up with each builder remote management cards which in fact do remote media and video (but specially remote media, at least the version they sell is quite overhyped: try loading a whole setup CD and wait). For numbers over the dozen more or less, I find you are best served and get best bang for your bucks with IPMI, KVM over IP (serial console can be good enough) and electric fencing as needed with the added value that you have standard look and feel for all your servers.
"I remote into my servers too, but do you really want to drive eight miles away to diagnose a potential hardware issue, or relinquish physical control to a dedicated hardware monkey?"
How can be this "insightful"? 1) Eight miles makes an about ten minutes car trip. I bet the vast majority of people will take considerably more than that daily for their working place. 2) What's the problem with a "hardware monkey"? By the diminishing expression you use I'll take they make considerably less than you or, in other words, your time costs considerably more to the company. If they can do the job, then better they do it. If they can't they still can take the server and be they the ones that expend the time in a car instead of you. 3) Yes, we use IPMI, KVM over IP and, in selected cases, electric fencing, so all the "hardware monkey" will need to know is how to de-rack the server at rack12U27; the one with the blinking ligths both on the front and the back (and on DELLs, as long as at last one PSU is working properly, we can even make their front display say "YES: I'M THE BROKEN ONE"). 4) Critical services are on a high-avaliability disposition so, yes, we have the time window for the "hardware monkey" to take the failing server to me on working hours for diagnose. 5) On heavily critical services we have at least a unit on stand-by so it's only a matter to take it there, rack it, boot up trough PXE -all things even "hardware monkeys" can do, and reimagine while we find what to do with the failing one.
"but I have a couple of departmental web servers I need to run... and damnit, sometimes I gotta hit the button."
Departamental servers on 2009 without at the very least IPMI access if not full blown remote control cards? Or it migth be a "not really an administrator" that doesn't even read the manuals?
"Your argument is dangerous. "Hide the information from the user" is not a good solution."
Hide the *unneeded* information to the user is *always* the proper solution. Not only on IT but on every engineering realm.
"An executable can have whatever icon you give it. If someone creates a malicious executable with a standard Word document icon, at least the extension will tip off the user"
Why in hell should the user need to be aware that a file is executable? It is the computer the one that decides what to do with the file when the user double-clicks on its visual representation, so it is the computer the one that needs to know about that, not the user.
"If the extension is hidden, or if the OS determines file-type "magically" and doesn't use extensions, how can you tell at-a-glance?"
Why should I need to tell at-a-glance? I don't mean to be unpolite, but you are so deep on Windows prejudices that you take "the usual Windows behaviour" as a must instead of what it is, a made up convention (and by the obvious results, a bad, easily exploitable one).
"Yeah, hiding extensions is a bad move on Windows, but anything that obscures the file type is a bad move on any OS."
Why is it then that I haven't had a problem in years (decades) on Unix-like systems where there's no way to say what a file content and intention is at-a-glance?
"Shouldn't patents also protect tycoons from other tycoons."
No, that's not a point. A tycoon has the production capacity to fight other tycoons on their own field. Patents came into existance to protect the one with the idea but without the capital so the little one didn't lose his advantage as soon as it starts producing because the big one can copycat it and is faster to come to speed. If you are already big you already are the author of the idea, the one that best know it and the first to get into the market with it. No need of further aid.
You need to never forget that patents are *not* to make reach any man or company. They are there to bring greater benefit for *society*. The day that's not true is the day we can and should break the implicit "social contract" and abandon patents.
"the only way these advances can be made is if large companys spend money on them."
Let's admit that to be true (while it's only partially true).
"This requires a finiancial incentive, it needs to be profitable."
Let's admit the idea to be intrinsically profitable (otherwise, what's the point?). If you need to be big to be able to afford the R&D phase, then you are big enough to control it on an advantage too: by means of start up first on the market, by means of your superior knowledge on the invention and its environment (remember: it took lengthy and expensive R that means that your competitors are not going to grasp it overnight), and even by means of trade secret. You don't need patents. Of course patents making an artificial scarcity can guarantee you *more* benefits, but that's besides the point, since patents are not for that but to compensate your unability to make bussiness "pronto" and still give you the incentive to try if you think your idea is good enough (that's another important point to remember: patents are an incentive to try, not to collect them on a vault).
"If after spening huge amounts of money your rival companies can just copy your idea"
AHA!!! That's the big lie patent trolls want us to eat (on of them). Remember: IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE (well, they shouldn't be patentable). Objects of patents are novel, non-trivial DEVICES. As such, they are self-defensible since they take time to get it right and your competitors already start behind you (imagine you were to patent the Saturn V as whole, you know, "a complex vertical device to send people to the Moon over the push to chemical combustion, jadda, jadda, jadda". Do you think you need a patent to protect the obviously enormous R&D effort you put at it?); the most it takes on technical grounds the more difficult is to copycat and that's a natural way in that the patent strenghes its author and itself (since this is a clear sign of the device to be worth of a patent to start with).
Of course you would be thinking on the pharma example: years over years of R&D and at the end all you have is an easily clonable mollecule. Well, that shouldn't be the realm of patents but the one of copyright and trade secrets if any. And even then, you see the world from the perspective of how the world already looks like. It's true that given the current patent system and the current bussiness model of big pharmas if one single company were to unilaterally abandon patents would be on bankrupcy within minutes, but remember that current world is not the only possible one.
Just as a made up example, even if it's relatively easy to copy a molleculle, it still is not trivially easy. It might be easy for, say, Bayer, to copy the latest product from 3M but do you have the needed industrial-grade chem labs? the ability and know-how to produce great quantities of high pureness organic components? the powerful distribution channels? No, no and no. So, maybe, in a different world, instead of every company doing their own R&D, overlapping their product lines, getting third world out of their market without alternative "because they have to recover their enormous R&D expenses", a different system
Slashdot Mirror
"Consultant (medical doctor) says "I need to access the net to be able to read research papers, proposals, and various ad hoc sites that contain research on the subjects that I deal with"
Of course you do. And so you will do on the personnel library which has a tone of Internet-connected PCs.
"Consultant goes to see hospital directors, stamps feet, and IT get overridden."
Something nasty happens, medical data gets disclosed, the hospital gets a billionare fine and the directors get fired on the most publized way. As easy as that.
On the other hand there's aplenty of technical solutions that would cope with the situation on a comfortable manner like terminals on different networks all showing on your very same screen and table. I happen to have opened a browser exported from a protected network through an VPN while I write this on a different browser on my home PC. They both look like two plain usual windows, only on this one I can reach slashdot and on the other one I can access some internal resources but not the Internet. Do you think there's a chance one window can "poison" the other one? Sorry but no.
Involved software and labour costs for TCO? Way less than a retail Windows Vista Prof. license. Only proper knowledge and technical ability at work.
"I actually am a physician [...] The work-flow is just not feasible with such a system"
Do I tell you what's the best cure for illness X or that some given diagnostic machine is too expensive and that I'd manage to do it cheaper? Not.
Do you know why? Because I'm not a physician; you are the physician.
Then, please, disallow yourself to tell me how should I do my job because you know as much about it as I know about yours.
"Locking down sounds good to some of you, but it would break the workflow in a medical system"
Thinking you know what you are talking about sounds good to you, but it only shows you take yourself too high for your own safety.
On a side note, no, I'm not telling what your workflow should be nor I'm implying the proper technical solution to provide both effiency to your job and enough security for the nature of your job is the one you think it is and therefor unsuitable.
"So, we have two computers at everyone's desk?"
What's a "computer" anyway? You seem to be one of those that really think that "the computer" is the keyboard and the screen taking real state from their table. It is not.
"One for general internet use - getting insurance information from Insurance companies, sending mandatory reports to the CDC, NIH, CMS, FDA and so on, and another computer sitting right next to it on a different VLAN for accessing clinical information?"
1) The ones working on clinical information are not the ones working on administrative tasks.
2) The screen and keyboard is *not* the computer; there's no problem working on a terminal session from a protected network to access data and working on a different one as needed to relay trimmed down postprocessed info as needed. It can be made so transparent for the end user she never would know what's happening.
3) Anyway there's *zero* chances that any of the work requirements you talk about requires access but to known in advance end points, so open Internet access is way beyond needed in any case.
"Medical software developers, as a whole, do not security [...] It takes more time and resources"
Developers, as any provider just go wherever the market wants them so the true point is that Hospitals don't want security. As harsh as it sounds.
Which in turn begs the question: OK, probably that guy is guilty and he deserves his sentence. But now, what about the hospital and its policies obviously waaaaaay down due diligence? What the guy did was wrong; what the hospital allowed to happen is much, much worse; by orders of magnitude. Pitifully I won't hold my breath waiting for a multimillion exemplary fine against the hospital so others will take the issue more seriously.
Are you trying to be serious or just trolling?
"Get real. Half the world has these or a yahoo address. Telling people they can't access those would be like saying they can't use email at all."
Well, it would be more or less like telling people they shouldn't use company assets for personal issues. Doesn't seem too unfair to me.
"Unless the hospital is prepared to provide its own email servers and address and spam filtering and etc, etc,"
How much do you think it takes running your own mail servers? You say it as if you think is something abusive. HINT: running your own corporate mailservers/antivirus/antispam takes real neglegible costs, specially if due to your needs you already have IT personnel and moreso on a hospital where operational costs tend to be hugh.
"webmail IS a valid substitute for employee email."
Even if we accept this, what's the relationship between "this company's corporate webmail service" and "webmail access to your personal account on god knows which crappy provider"?
"Life began in the most benign habitat that existed on Earth at the time and extremophiles evolved gradually to life in their current niches."
In fact, as per the most backed up theory, we *all* are extremophyles. Living on an oxygen-rich soup? My god, such a poison!?
"Uh, what? How do you know? No life as we know it."
And that's the whole point of it -if we are trying to detect it from afar!
Sure, life *might* appear in a form so extrange to us that we wouldn't be able to recognize as life unless it spitting on our face but then, how do you propose we will distinguish it as life from, say, half a dozen parsecs away?
Since the quest is finding life, *any* life, but we don't need to find *all* life just now, starting from the conditions we know most probably would match as life is the proper thing. We may not know so well how life can manage to look like but we are quite good at physics and inorganic chemistry already now to know how non-life *cannot* look like, so we look for that.
"Life as we don't know it still might form an industrial civilization and make radios &c."
Yes. And that's why SETI looks for radio patterns instead of some "non-electromagnetic radiation" out of a 50's pulp magazine. It might happen that an alien civilization comunicates using magics, we don't know, but we do know that if we find a radioelectric emmission we can decypher as guy with a funny moustache speeching in a way almost undistinguishable to a duck, heck, that's life in action.
"Support SETI@home [berkeley.edu]
So you believe there are only unicellular beings, but sufficiently evolved to emit radio signals ?"
No. He is trading on effort versus expectancies just like game theory supports playing lotto from time to time on affordable money even while I'm quite sure I'll never get the prize.
"I like the principle of this idea, but it would be unacceptable to burden developers with the requirement that they hang on to the dev materials for anything that they make indefinitely."
Please pay attention that reverse-engineering is meant for compatibility reasons (and academic and some similar cases) so "all" it's not needed, only such information as to be reasonabily able to interact with the product. A document format? It should be documented to be able to open the deriverables of the original program. A public API? ditto. Your uber-successful algorithm to resolve the salesman problem? Not needed: you could cover this as an industrial secret.
"How about that?"
In Europe is perfectly legal to reverse engineer a program for compatibility or maintenance purpouses so at least you can try. Of course if should be mandatory to have access to developer's data so this becomes a real right instead of a cat against mouse game.
"If you don't believe that 49bit pattern is alive then you shouldn't believe viruses are alive."
Because?
Nice an exposition, but where's an explanation?
"Biological viruses REALLY are like computer viruses. Computer ones also cannot execute on their own. They need computers and operating systems."
You do say it as if there were *any* computer program that wouldn't need operating systems and computers to run.
"It is less alive than a single-celled organism, since it outsources all the metabolic processes even a single-celled organism does in house."
Then it's as much alive as some CEOs I know of.
"The definition of life is somewhat squishy, even in Biological fields"
The definition of life is somewhat squishy *mainly* in Biological fields. They are the ones that deal with the corner cases (well, Biology, Vram Stoker and Mary Shelley, that is).
"I'd say alive means something that has all the machinery to eat and reproduce."
So a fetus or a pork tapeworm (can't sustain themselvers) are not alive? So an ant (sterile) is not alive?
"Viruses are basically a protein package containing some DNA or RNA. That packet was made by a cell"
Not. That "package" was not made by a cell. The "package" managed for the cell to do the job for it. Are you not flying when the one that really flies is the plane? Making use of the environment in order to self-replicate is the very definition of life.
"Cells are alive, viruses are just information."
Ask that to the virus. Maybe they'll answer "Virus are alive, cells are just tools we use in our quest for replication".
"If we are to say viruses are living things, it would imply that that DNA fragment is a living thing."
If we are to say men are living things, it would imply that if we take a man heart's out of his body we must admit that either the heart or the other part is still a living thing? WTF!!!???
The fact is our perception of life (as it is our perception of causality) is modelled after hundreds of thousands of years of evolution in which we never consciouslly affronted the virus concept. No wonder our definitions and "common sense" perceptions become a bit blurred (even quite blurred) when tested against them. What's a species? Where's the frontier between life and non-life? How can it possibly be that a thing (light) is two things at a time (wave and particle)? As Nietzsche would have said, it's language mummifying reality.
"A severed or left-over part of a living being is not, in an of itself, a living being, no matter how it behaves when you reattach or reinsert it into one."
Are you aware that which part is the "severed" and which one is the "remaining" is quite a question of point of view? (is it really a decapitation or is it more a debodyzation?)
"maybe you have fancy servers, but I have an old "home made" box that got stuck on a shelf in a server room."
I do have fancy servers, yes. But I do have old (as from 2006) "home made" servers and still they support IPMI (supermicro boards). Anyway, you can't call them "departamental servers" if they are no more than glorified desktops.
"I don't have a fancy rack mount system with "full blown remote control cards."
You can get "fancy rack mount system with full blown remote control cards" below the 1000 US$ is that really too "fancy" for your "departamental services"? If you answer yes, think about it again next time they are down if even one hour because that was the time they took to find you and then you going to the server room some miles afar.
"I was mistaken that ILO1 was not IPMI. However the rest of my comment applies."
They apply; it's only they are non-relevant. You stated that "IBM / HP / etc also have some sort of functionality like this [IPMI] but will charge you licensing for the same feature set".
The fact is that they offer IPMI for free. They only charge for extra functionallity (that I for one don't need, so I don't pay them and I still have remote control through IPMI for free).
"While your idea's are interesting and I dont nesecarily disagree you've made some assumptions."
Yes: there's a main assumption on my message which is that "patents are bad" (yes, they are: they're against free market and natural obvious facts like "when you own something, you own it" or "when you know something, you know it"); they might be a "needed bad" or a "lessen evil" but they are still bad. So the burden of the proof is on the patents side, not in not having them. In order to make tolerable the patent system it should bring obvious great advantages over the alternative (which is "not having patents"). Exactly the same is aplicable in general to all the "intellectual property" issue.
Being patents naturally bad, we are entitled and justified to constantly challenge them. Let's admit if only for the sake of the argumentation, that patents were a great idea in the XVII-XVIII centuries; that would only mean they were a necessary evil *then* but now we still should question "well, are patents still a necessary evil now". And now? And now? For patents is not enough to answer "well, they are still tolerable": the day they are "a really good idea" no more is the day we must abolish them.
Based on this, I think the rest of my post is quite understandable. Basically it's not on me the burden to offer an alternative (which I still thought it was obvious: ban patents and let market forces do its work); it's just enough for me to show that they are buttered bread no more.
"What if the invetion was easily reproducible"
The better for the market that will have more competing producers.
"what if the company that created it was reasonably large but specialised in only one thing and then Sony come along with all their market connections etc and steal it."
Then no amount of patents will save that company if Sony takes its war axe: Sony will eat it for breakfast anyway.
Both because Sony will counterattack with its own patent portfolio (the newcomer won't be able to offer patent exchanges because it won't have patents on this market: remember its a newcomer) and because patents protect devices not ideas and if the patent is based on the "very clever but easy once you get it" trick Sony will easily find a way to overcome the patent which will be based on the "device" part, not the "clever" one: ABS (the car brake system) is/was patented and that only meant that all big car companies got to develop their own ABS-like thing instead of using "the real thing" (so a net loss -again, for society while a partial failure for the patent holder -was it Mercedes? which didn't manage despite its patent to lock out the market from the idea).
"Surely such a system would favour the largest companys saving money by exploiting their existing advantages over anyone else who tries to inovate (even more so than is allready the case)"
Maybe. But would it be significantly worse than now? Remember that if patents are not "buttered bread" there's no point in them. On the other hand, it all seems as if it were a "the winner takes it all" game, which is not.
Maybe the Big Corp finds cheaper/more convenient to buy the newcomer -or its idea, than fight it out of market: big companies buy little ones everyday simply because of their know-how. Maybe the little company will use its cleverness to find the cracks the bigger player is not interested in instead of trying to fight it frontally. Maybe the bigger player wants to fight the newcomer out the playground but there's still place for more than one player. I already made the point that in the early days of "modern era computing" (let's say late seventies but mainly the eighties from last century), both hardware and software, a majority of the now big players where born by then on a playground where patents were basically still a non-issue. And it is not because there were no big corps wanting to dominate the field: the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, DEC, Acer, Dell, Western Digital... were all against the IBM behemoth no less
"other brands like IBM / HP / etc also have some sort of functionality like this [IPMI] but will charge you licensing for the same feature set."
IBM, HP and DELL do offer out of the box a thing such sort of functionality like IPMI that it's indeed IPMI. With no licensing costs, and they have been there for ages (the three brands are among the founders of the IPMI standards).
Blatantly ignorant or plain troll?
"I concur that IPMI is your friend, but IPMI does not include 'remote media' (or remote video). Those are implemented as proprietary extensions by the like of IBM and such."
For short number of boxes, you are probably better up with each builder remote management cards which in fact do remote media and video (but specially remote media, at least the version they sell is quite overhyped: try loading a whole setup CD and wait). For numbers over the dozen more or less, I find you are best served and get best bang for your bucks with IPMI, KVM over IP (serial console can be good enough) and electric fencing as needed with the added value that you have standard look and feel for all your servers.
"I remote into my servers too, but do you really want to drive eight miles away to diagnose a potential hardware issue, or relinquish physical control to a dedicated hardware monkey?"
How can be this "insightful"?
1) Eight miles makes an about ten minutes car trip. I bet the vast majority of people will take considerably more than that daily for their working place.
2) What's the problem with a "hardware monkey"? By the diminishing expression you use I'll take they make considerably less than you or, in other words, your time costs considerably more to the company. If they can do the job, then better they do it. If they can't they still can take the server and be they the ones that expend the time in a car instead of you.
3) Yes, we use IPMI, KVM over IP and, in selected cases, electric fencing, so all the "hardware monkey" will need to know is how to de-rack the server at rack12U27; the one with the blinking ligths both on the front and the back (and on DELLs, as long as at last one PSU is working properly, we can even make their front display say "YES: I'M THE BROKEN ONE").
4) Critical services are on a high-avaliability disposition so, yes, we have the time window for the "hardware monkey" to take the failing server to me on working hours for diagnose.
5) On heavily critical services we have at least a unit on stand-by so it's only a matter to take it there, rack it, boot up trough PXE -all things even "hardware monkeys" can do, and reimagine while we find what to do with the failing one.
"but I have a couple of departmental web servers I need to run... and damnit, sometimes I gotta hit the button."
Departamental servers on 2009 without at the very least IPMI access if not full blown remote control cards? Or it migth be a "not really an administrator" that doesn't even read the manuals?
"GPS should never replace maps and mapreading skills"
Why not?
In other news:
Calculators should never replace sliding rules and sliding rule reading abilities.
"Your argument is dangerous. "Hide the information from the user" is not a good solution."
Hide the *unneeded* information to the user is *always* the proper solution. Not only on IT but on every engineering realm.
"An executable can have whatever icon you give it. If someone creates a malicious executable with a standard Word document icon, at least the extension will tip off the user"
Why in hell should the user need to be aware that a file is executable? It is the computer the one that decides what to do with the file when the user double-clicks on its visual representation, so it is the computer the one that needs to know about that, not the user.
"If the extension is hidden, or if the OS determines file-type "magically" and doesn't use extensions, how can you tell at-a-glance?"
Why should I need to tell at-a-glance? I don't mean to be unpolite, but you are so deep on Windows prejudices that you take "the usual Windows behaviour" as a must instead of what it is, a made up convention (and by the obvious results, a bad, easily exploitable one).
"Yeah, hiding extensions is a bad move on Windows, but anything that obscures the file type is a bad move on any OS."
Why is it then that I haven't had a problem in years (decades) on Unix-like systems where there's no way to say what a file content and intention is at-a-glance?
"Shouldn't patents also protect tycoons from other tycoons."
No, that's not a point. A tycoon has the production capacity to fight other tycoons on their own field. Patents came into existance to protect the one with the idea but without the capital so the little one didn't lose his advantage as soon as it starts producing because the big one can copycat it and is faster to come to speed. If you are already big you already are the author of the idea, the one that best know it and the first to get into the market with it. No need of further aid.
You need to never forget that patents are *not* to make reach any man or company. They are there to bring greater benefit for *society*. The day that's not true is the day we can and should break the implicit "social contract" and abandon patents.
"the only way these advances can be made is if large companys spend money on them."
Let's admit that to be true (while it's only partially true).
"This requires a finiancial incentive, it needs to be profitable."
Let's admit the idea to be intrinsically profitable (otherwise, what's the point?). If you need to be big to be able to afford the R&D phase, then you are big enough to control it on an advantage too: by means of start up first on the market, by means of your superior knowledge on the invention and its environment (remember: it took lengthy and expensive R that means that your competitors are not going to grasp it overnight), and even by means of trade secret. You don't need patents. Of course patents making an artificial scarcity can guarantee you *more* benefits, but that's besides the point, since patents are not for that but to compensate your unability to make bussiness "pronto" and still give you the incentive to try if you think your idea is good enough (that's another important point to remember: patents are an incentive to try, not to collect them on a vault).
"If after spening huge amounts of money your rival companies can just copy your idea"
AHA!!! That's the big lie patent trolls want us to eat (on of them). Remember: IDEAS ARE NOT PATENTABLE (well, they shouldn't be patentable). Objects of patents are novel, non-trivial DEVICES. As such, they are self-defensible since they take time to get it right and your competitors already start behind you (imagine you were to patent the Saturn V as whole, you know, "a complex vertical device to send people to the Moon over the push to chemical combustion, jadda, jadda, jadda". Do you think you need a patent to protect the obviously enormous R&D effort you put at it?); the most it takes on technical grounds the more difficult is to copycat and that's a natural way in that the patent strenghes its author and itself (since this is a clear sign of the device to be worth of a patent to start with).
Of course you would be thinking on the pharma example: years over years of R&D and at the end all you have is an easily clonable mollecule. Well, that shouldn't be the realm of patents but the one of copyright and trade secrets if any. And even then, you see the world from the perspective of how the world already looks like. It's true that given the current patent system and the current bussiness model of big pharmas if one single company were to unilaterally abandon patents would be on bankrupcy within minutes, but remember that current world is not the only possible one.
Just as a made up example, even if it's relatively easy to copy a molleculle, it still is not trivially easy. It might be easy for, say, Bayer, to copy the latest product from 3M but do you have the needed industrial-grade chem labs? the ability and know-how to produce great quantities of high pureness organic components? the powerful distribution channels? No, no and no. So, maybe, in a different world, instead of every company doing their own R&D, overlapping their product lines, getting third world out of their market without alternative "because they have to recover their enormous R&D expenses", a different system