Agreed. The whole "If you have nothing to hide, you don't need to worry" argument forgets one thing, there's a big difference between private and secret.
What you do in the bathroom isn't a secret, but it is private.
What 99% of people do 99.9999% of the time isn't secret. The bulk of it is predictable. As Pinky and the Brain put it, "What are you doing to do tomorrow? The same thing we always do (Take over the World)." But a lot of what we do is private. (Console a loved one. Talk to friends about personal matters. Work out the details of our next business or invention.....)
Nearly everything of value we do starts off as private. You wouldn't even exist if it weren't for a private act between your parents. In a true democracy, the fact that you vote isn't a secret, but what you vote is private (and anonymous).
All computers leak EM radiation and there are devices out there that can turn EM radiation from monitors back into. You have to be right outside the house and use expensive equipment to do it, but it's possible. To a limitted extent, this is possible with the human mind (see Slashdot article a few days ago),
If I sit outside your home (or sit beside you in the future when the tech gets better), and intercept and interprete the EM radiation you throw away, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, right? I hope you don't have any credit cards or passwords you don't want me to use or secrets you don't want anyone else to know.
Mrs Krabappel: "We'll finally be able to buy a real periodic table instead of those promotional ones from Oscar Meyer! Now, on with the Science lesson: who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolonium?"
Martin: Ooh ooh ooh! Delicious?
Mrs Krabappel: Correct. I would also have accepted "snacktacular."
> If you consider the earth a closed system, then it > is a zero sum game.
Err, no. It received daily inputs of solar energy from the sun, cosmic rays from space, and micrometeors from space. It most definitely is not a closed system.
Also, all resources have not been exploited or exploited efficiently, so even if it were a closed system, it doesn't mean that it's a zero sum game. That's precisely why the global poverty has declined dramatically throughout the centuries and why malnutritian is the major problem facing the poor today, not outright starvation.
Zero-sum thinking is precisely why there have been so many wars in the history of mankind.
That being said, just because we haven't maxed out our resources, doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for the day when they are maxed out or make use of our resources more efficiently or find ways of living off the external energy that come to the earth daily....
I found Star Wars, Star Trek, and even War Games to be boring.I liked Babylon 5, but it wasn't because of the science, it was because of the way they showed the evolution of societies and religions....Yep, the liberal arts in it. Pretty much all Sci-Fi is uninteresting to me, yet I have two specialists degrees (Inorganic Chemistry and now Computer Science) and completed the first two years of a math specialist.
So what got me interested? Ironically, it was the rebel angle.In grade school and high school, there was a strong bias among my teachers encouraged us to do reports and other work based on fiction. Teachers couldn't be seen as discouraging interest in the sciences, so I was able to coax more than a few teachers into broadening the scope of many assignments beyond fiction (to include the sciences, sports, history, etc). I loved being able to use the "system" against itself. I also liked being able to "shock" people with seemingly absurd comments that seemed to work. In highschool I was known for my "Theory of Zerotivity" where I asserted that Zero did not exist and used that unproven idea to come up with solutions to alegbra and calculus problems that were far shorter than the ones that teachers taught. Of course, they weren't amused when more than a few classmates tried using those techniques to solve assignments. (Okay, I got a bit too cocky in high school, but it was anything but boring.)
Being popular, a rebel, and interested in the sciences are not mutually exclusive. I think that that's what's missing from many science oriented movies. Please spare us the technobabble. It just looks like boring navel-gazing to anyone who really doesn't give a rat's ass. Data-entry or "magic hacks" are about as impressive as boring paperwork or ABRACADABRA-type magic words to the layperson.
Please show us more well rounded realistic rebels like Feymann and Galileo or political intrigues that abound in the sciences or charasmatic freedom-loving idealists that that abound in the computer field.
There's plenty to be interested in the sciences and there's more than enough passion to inspire even liberal arts majors. All you have to do is look for it.
The key problem is that logic is based on axioms -- things that are true without being proven. Without Peano's axioms, arithmetic would be impossible. You can't prove Peano's axioms. You just have to accept them as faith or come up with more fundamental axioms that are taken as faith.
The problem is, some things can be true but unproveable via Godel's theorem. The axiom of choice is a classic example. It's been proven that the axiom of choice can neither be proved nor disproved. Some mathematicians believe it is true, and use it as a basis for their proofs. Other mathematicians balk at the weird consequences of this axiom and disbelieve the axiom of choice. The axiom of choice is a matter of faith.
Getting back to the God/ID issue, it can never be proven or disproven, but for some people it's an axiom while for others it is not an axiom. Logic won't help you sort out the God/ID issue any more than it can help you sort out the free will issue or that there is a world outside independent of our 5 senses (i.e. solipsism or "The Matrix").
The only thing logic can help you do is say Darwinism is real from all our evidence. This doesn't say anything about the God/ID issue, since Darwinism is a what and the God/ID issue is a why.
As an agnostic, I personally don't mind a healthy debate on the God/ID issue, free will issue, or the solipsism issue. It's a good introduction into philosophy, and understanding that some issues are not completely clear-cut and that the practicalities of life force us to make decisions based on faith and we have to decide what to believe based on the consequences of those beliefs.
For example, suppose we believe solipsism is true and are wrong, then we're left at the mercy of the world and could die prematurely. Suppose we believe solipsism is false and are wrong, then we'll miss out on an adventurous dangerous and egotisitical life simply because we want to play it safe and value other people.
Most of us choose *not* be believe in solipsism, but that says says nothing about where solipsism is true. For all I know, I could be "typing" into a "forum" of "nothing". I don't much care. I've made my choice of faith and I'm sticking by it because I'd rather be wrong than sorry on this one issue.
Understanding how little we can truely know in life is extremely humbling. IMO, if more people were taugh this fact, there would be a lot less polarization and extremism in the world.
If you actually read "The Selfish Gene", you'd see that there are two stability points:
1) The "conspiracy of the doves" (100% doves) -- the ideal case (no-one gets hurt), but rapidly deteriates if you have even one hawk
2) The point "60% dove, 40% hawk"
If the doves are taken as being purely ethical and the hawks as purely unethical, you can see that the ethics and morality are not eraticated, in fact they tend to outnumber the hawks. The exact ratio depends on how "unethical" the hawks are. The more damage they do, the more that being "ethical" pays off.
It's a good thing this is the case, otherwise there wouldn't be a place in the world where you could step outside even one instant without being mugged or turned into a slave.
On the whole, people *are* more ethical and moral than not and it's a way societies work best.
Also, the "conspiracy of the doves" ethical model also does work (see the GPL), but it relies on enforcement to ensure that there are no hawks.
The problem you're having is that the fundies try to move from "60% dove, 40% hawk" to "conspiracy of the doves" through less than "100% dove" means. If you believe the "Selfish Gene", that's doomed to failure since the fundies themselves are the hawks that drive things back to the "60% dove, 40% hawk" level.
The key problem is, Microsoft thinks it competes with *everyone*, so effectively, if this contract is enforced, anyone who works for Microsoft can never work in the computer industry again or ever start a computer related business.
> That's right because, as we all know, the solution > that is technically the best will always win out > in the marketplace...
Actually, that *is* the case most of the time. You just need to increase your time horizon.
Take for instance the microkernel versus macrokernel debate. Linux succeeded because it was a macrokernel but increasingly, it's becoming a microkernel. More and more stuff is being shoved into user space. Xen is only the latested push into achieving this.
The same thing can be said about Microsoft. Increasingly, they're borrowing the Unix ideas. They're calling things different and doing things differently, but the technology is drifting in the direction.
MORTICIAN: Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! [clang] Bring out your dead! SLASHDOT: Here's one -- nine pence. DEBIAN: I'm not dead! MORTICIAN: What? SLASHDOT: Nothing -- here's your nine pence. DEBIAN: I'm not dead! MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead! SLASHDOT: Yes, he is. DEBIAN: I'm not! MORTICIAN: He isn't. SLASHDOT: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. DEBIAN: I'm getting better! SLASHDOT: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment. MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations. DEBIAN: I don't want to go on the cart! SLASHDOT: Oh, don't be such a baby. MORTICIAN: I can't take him... DEBIAN: I feel fine! SLASHDOT: Oh, do us a favor... MORTICIAN: I can't. SLASHDOT: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long. MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to SCO's -- they've lost nine today. SLASHDOT: Well, when is your next round? MORTICIAN: Thursday. DEBIAN: I think I'll go for a walk. SLASHDOT: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do? DEBIAN: I feel happy... I feel happy.
Basically, someone like Gandhi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama would be Left Libertarians.
Libertarians are different from anarchists. Anarchist believe that there should be no government. Libertarians believe that government is a necessary evil, but it should limit itself to "essential services" and should generally try to stay out of people's lives.
Left Libertarians consider some government social welfare, government public education, health care, and some business regulation to be essential, but that the government should try to interfere in how people live their lives (If you want to marry a goat or your sister or download MP3s without the permission of the original artist, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of social freedoms. People should be able to make personal mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
Right Libertarians consider enforcement of Intellectual Property to be important, creating new forms of IP important, enforce IP laws abroad, government regulation of undesirable behaviour to be important, but thinks that government should stay out of people's financial lives (If you want to pull an Enron or operate your business with less red tape, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of financial freedoms. People should be able to make their own financial mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
One key difference, with proprietary software, you have a single source of accountability -- the company that made the software.
With open source software, anyone can be the source of accountability. You can hire inhouse staff to do a code audit or you can hire a consultant or one of several Linux support companies.
If Microsoft tells you that they didn't put any backdoors in their OS, you'll have to trust them. If Red Hat or Novell tells you the same thing, you can just do a web search (some Red Hat or Novell user would have discovered it by reading the source code) to see if it's true and/or hire a consultant to do a code audit.
> Mission: We will serve our customers with (1) > top-quality service, (2) good advice and (3) fair > business practices.
Here's a problem, what does "top quality service" mean? If the customer wants a mouse, does it mean that you will hand-deliver the mouse, go into the customer's home, plug it in, and install drivers (if necessary)? That's top quality service, but it would also cost a fortune....or you'll have to go out of business.
The key problem with your mission statement is that it's one sided. We all want to be saints and serve the customer, but remember that even Mother Teresa had to eat. Deep down we know this, so we tend to be wishy-washy about what "top quality" means, and give lip service to a mission statement that we don't *really* follow.
Here's how I would adjust it.
Mission: "We will serve our customers with (1) high-quality service, (2) good basic advice and (3) fair business practices. If the customer is willing to compensate the effort or if the customer is good enough, we will provide them with (1) top-quality service, (2) high quality advice"
It's more humble and less inspirational, but it's something that you can actually use to make decisions and achieve. As a consequence, it's more believable to you or your customers.
> And even if they were, is it really such a chore > to upgrade every 12 months, when it's Free?
Yes it is. When they have critical systems that work, they don't want to break it under any circumstance. They don't care about what's new and hip (like geeks, consumers, and programmers like you and me). They just want to get work done and they don't want any surprises.
Most enterprises prefer a 3-5 year upgrade cycle.Some don't want to upgrade 20 old COBOL code, because it works and an upgrade would mean that you have to restart your QA from ground zero. All software has bugs and limitations, but with new software, you have a new set of bugs and a new of limitations (like new memory requirements or dropping old hardware devices). The key difference is that with the old OS, the limitations and bugs are known and workarounds are documented, while in the new OS they aren't. That's why the Linux 2.0 kernel is *still* being patched with security fixes, even though it was first released in 1997 and is really stale. That's why Windows *2000* is still quite popular in enterprise even though everyone knows that move to XP/2003/Longhorn is inevitable, and why some enterprise software still requires Windows NT.
If it works and security patches (without new features/bugs) are kept up to date, why should you have to "fix" it? The only thing Debian needs to be enterprise grade is a predictable 3-5 year release cycle (or the willingness to support all versions of Debian for this long.) so that enterprises can plan their upgrades and burn in verification in an orderly fashion. That appears to be what the new Debian president is promising.
The new "United Linux" group just adds a bit more credibility to that promise.
Here's a simple question, how do you define innovation and what do you consider innovation?
If you look at the other threads you see several replies that saids Microsoft copied all it's technologies from other people and that Linux did also. Big deal. As Newton stated, we can see more clearly because we can stand on the shoulders or giants. It's very easy to claim that the other guy is innovative because you can almost always find "something" that it was built upon.
To me, there were a few key innovations in the Linux world that are true giants on which others stand on:
* the GPL (nothing like that existed before, although you might claim that it's just a distillation of Newton's "Giant's Shoulder" idea)
* the Linux development model. For the development of something as complex as Linux with as many competing interests as Linux, a license or employment contract is not enough. You need a good social structure to herd the wild cats of programmers from companies and hobbyist/enthusiasts and still keep things from falling apart in anarchy.
* the Debian Social Contract (and it's offshoots, the Open Source Definition, the Gentoo Social Contract, the Ubuntu Social Contract, and even commercial-leaning distros like Fedora) -- The GPL isn't God, it's one of many licenses that work on Newtonian Giant Shoulder Logic. Debian first defined what sorts of licenses would capture the essense of "free as in freedom" and came up with a social structure that allowed Debian to get all the catherders to work together, whether they be from distro companies that build off Debian or the Linux kernel catherders, or the catherders of each of the thousands of packages of Debian. Their work has been a key force in eliminating the digital divide and preserving the languages of dying cultures.
Debian has several repositories: * SID -- contains the latest and greatest, but it can be unstable and things may be * Testing -- contains those parts of SID that have been around a while don't seem to break anything * Stable -- contains those parts of Testing that have been around for a while and don't break things. Stable isn't updated that often, but receives constant security patches.
Given this, let's describe how the Amish see it: * SID -- Geek enthusists who'll by anything new and shiny * Testing -- the rest of society who'll only use stuff that's actually useful * Stable -- Amish-like communities who'll only use generally available technology that is both useful and has a positive impact on their society.
Now you might claim that the people who rely on Stable are in this privileged position because of all the people who use SID or Testing. You'd be right. But who cares? SID users are happy on the cutting edge, Testing users are happy with the less wild and wooly pace, Stable users are happy with the tried and true. Everyone wins.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. The whole "If you have nothing to hide, you don't need to worry" argument forgets one thing, there's a big difference between private and secret.
What you do in the bathroom isn't a secret, but it is private.
What 99% of people do 99.9999% of the time isn't secret. The bulk of it is predictable. As Pinky and the Brain put it, "What are you doing to do tomorrow? The same thing we always do (Take over the World)." But a lot of what we do is private. (Console a loved one. Talk to friends about personal matters. Work out the details of our next business or invention.....)
Nearly everything of value we do starts off as private. You wouldn't even exist if it weren't for a private act between your parents. In a true democracy, the fact that you vote isn't a secret, but what you vote is private (and anonymous).
It really is none of their business.
> they make the assumption that the criminals that
> will be using VOIP will COMPLY with FCC
I'm confused. Don't all criminals obey the law?
All computers leak EM radiation and there are devices out there that can turn EM radiation from monitors back into. You have to be right outside the house and use expensive equipment to do it, but it's possible. To a limitted extent, this is possible with the human mind (see Slashdot article a few days ago),
If I sit outside your home (or sit beside you in the future when the tech gets better), and intercept and interprete the EM radiation you throw away, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, right? I hope you don't have any credit cards or passwords you don't want me to use or secrets you don't want anyone else to know.
Mrs Krabappel: "We'll finally be able to buy a real periodic table instead of those promotional ones from Oscar Meyer! Now, on with the Science lesson: who can tell me the atomic weight of Bolonium?"
Martin: Ooh ooh ooh! Delicious?
Mrs Krabappel: Correct. I would also have accepted "snacktacular."
> IT IS POSSIBLE TO WRITE COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE FOR LINUX!!!
Oracle, theKompany, IBM, and friends seem to agree with you.
> If you consider the earth a closed system, then it
> is a zero sum game.
Err, no. It received daily inputs of solar energy from the sun, cosmic rays from space, and micrometeors from space. It most definitely is not a closed system.
Also, all resources have not been exploited or exploited efficiently, so even if it were a closed system, it doesn't mean that it's a zero sum game. That's precisely why the global poverty has declined dramatically throughout the centuries and why malnutritian is the major problem facing the poor today, not outright starvation.
Zero-sum thinking is precisely why there have been so many wars in the history of mankind.
That being said, just because we haven't maxed out our resources, doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for the day when they are maxed out or make use of our resources more efficiently or find ways of living off the external energy that come to the earth daily....
For me, it had nothing to do with movies.
I found Star Wars, Star Trek, and even War Games to be boring.I liked Babylon 5, but it wasn't because of the science, it was because of the way they showed the evolution of societies and religions....Yep, the liberal arts in it. Pretty much all Sci-Fi is uninteresting to me, yet I have two specialists degrees (Inorganic Chemistry and now Computer Science) and completed the first two years of a math specialist.
So what got me interested? Ironically, it was the rebel angle.In grade school and high school, there was a strong bias among my teachers encouraged us to do reports and other work based on fiction. Teachers couldn't be seen as discouraging interest in the sciences, so I was able to coax more than a few teachers into broadening the scope of many assignments beyond fiction (to include the sciences, sports, history, etc). I loved being able to use the "system" against itself. I also liked being able to "shock" people with seemingly absurd comments that seemed to work. In highschool I was known for my "Theory of Zerotivity" where I asserted that Zero did not exist and used that unproven idea to come up with solutions to alegbra and calculus problems that were far shorter than the ones that teachers taught. Of course, they weren't amused when more than a few classmates tried using those techniques to solve assignments. (Okay, I got a bit too cocky in high school, but it was anything
but boring.)
Being popular, a rebel, and interested in the sciences are not mutually exclusive. I think that that's what's missing from many science oriented movies. Please spare us the technobabble. It just looks like boring navel-gazing to anyone who really doesn't give a rat's ass. Data-entry or "magic hacks" are about as impressive as boring paperwork or ABRACADABRA-type magic words to the layperson.
Please show us more well rounded realistic rebels like Feymann and Galileo or political intrigues that abound in the sciences or charasmatic freedom-loving idealists that that abound in the computer field.
There's plenty to be interested in the sciences and there's more than enough passion to inspire even liberal arts majors. All you have to do is look for it.
The key problem is that logic is based on axioms -- things that are true without being proven. Without Peano's axioms, arithmetic would be impossible. You can't prove Peano's axioms. You just have to accept them as faith or come up with more fundamental axioms that are taken as faith.
The problem is, some things can be true but unproveable via Godel's theorem. The axiom of choice is a classic example. It's been proven that the axiom of choice can neither be proved nor disproved. Some mathematicians believe it is true, and use it as a basis for their proofs. Other mathematicians balk at the weird consequences of this axiom and disbelieve the axiom of choice. The axiom of choice is a matter of faith.
Getting back to the God/ID issue, it can never be proven or disproven, but for some people it's an axiom while for others it is not an axiom. Logic won't help you sort out the God/ID issue any more than it can help you sort out the free will issue or that there is a world outside independent of our 5 senses (i.e. solipsism or "The Matrix").
The only thing logic can help you do is say Darwinism is real from all our evidence. This doesn't say anything about the God/ID issue, since Darwinism is a what and the God/ID issue is a why.
As an agnostic, I personally don't mind a healthy debate on the God/ID issue, free will issue, or the solipsism issue. It's a good introduction into philosophy, and understanding that some issues are not completely clear-cut and that the practicalities of life force us to make decisions based on faith and we have to decide what to believe based on the consequences of those beliefs.
For example, suppose we believe solipsism is true and are wrong, then we're left at the mercy of the world and could die prematurely. Suppose we believe solipsism is false and are wrong, then we'll miss out on an adventurous dangerous and egotisitical life simply because we want to play it safe and value other people.
Most of us choose *not* be believe in solipsism, but that says says nothing about where solipsism is true. For all I know, I could be "typing" into a "forum" of "nothing". I don't much care. I've made my choice of faith and I'm sticking by it because I'd rather be wrong than sorry on this one issue.
Understanding how little we can truely know in life is extremely humbling. IMO, if more people were taugh this fact, there would be a lot less polarization and extremism in the world.
If you actually read "The Selfish Gene", you'd see that there are two stability points:
1) The "conspiracy of the doves" (100% doves) -- the ideal case (no-one gets hurt), but rapidly deteriates if you have even one hawk
2) The point "60% dove, 40% hawk"
If the doves are taken as being purely ethical and the hawks as purely unethical, you can see that the ethics and morality are not eraticated, in fact they tend to outnumber the hawks. The exact ratio depends on how "unethical" the hawks are. The more damage they do, the more that being "ethical" pays off.
It's a good thing this is the case, otherwise there wouldn't be a place in the world where you could step outside even one instant without being mugged or turned into a slave.
On the whole, people *are* more ethical and moral than not and it's a way societies work best.
Also, the "conspiracy of the doves" ethical model also does work (see the GPL), but it relies on enforcement to ensure that there are no hawks.
The problem you're having is that the fundies try to move from "60% dove, 40% hawk" to "conspiracy of the doves" through less than "100% dove" means. If you believe the "Selfish Gene", that's doomed to failure since the fundies themselves are the hawks that drive things back to the "60% dove, 40% hawk" level.
The key problem is, Microsoft thinks it competes with *everyone*, so effectively, if this contract is enforced, anyone who works for Microsoft can never work in the computer industry again or ever start a computer related business.
> That's right because, as we all know, the solution
> that is technically the best will always win out
> in the marketplace...
Actually, that *is* the case most of the time. You just need to increase your time horizon.
Take for instance the microkernel versus macrokernel debate. Linux succeeded because it was a macrokernel but increasingly, it's becoming a microkernel. More and more stuff is being shoved into user space. Xen is only the latested push into achieving this.
The same thing can be said about Microsoft. Increasingly, they're borrowing the Unix ideas. They're calling things different and doing things differently, but the technology is drifting in the direction.
MORTICIAN: Bring out your dead!
Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
[clang] Bring out your dead!
SLASHDOT: Here's one -- nine pence.
DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: What?
SLASHDOT: Nothing -- here's your nine pence.
DEBIAN: I'm not dead!
MORTICIAN: Here -- he says he's not dead!
SLASHDOT: Yes, he is.
DEBIAN: I'm not!
MORTICIAN: He isn't.
SLASHDOT: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
DEBIAN: I'm getting better!
SLASHDOT: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that -- it's against regulations.
DEBIAN: I don't want to go on the cart!
SLASHDOT: Oh, don't be such a baby.
MORTICIAN: I can't take him...
DEBIAN: I feel fine!
SLASHDOT: Oh, do us a favor...
MORTICIAN: I can't.
SLASHDOT: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
MORTICIAN: Naaah, I got to go on to SCO's -- they've lost nine today.
SLASHDOT: Well, when is your next round?
MORTICIAN: Thursday.
DEBIAN: I think I'll go for a walk.
SLASHDOT: You're not fooling anyone y'know. Look, isn't there something you can do?
DEBIAN: I feel happy... I feel happy.
Oops, I meant:
... but that the government
> Libertarian Left
> should *NOT* try to interfere in how people live their
> social lives
Check out Political Compass. It has a fairly good description of what the Libertarian Left is.a nalysis2.php
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/
Basically, someone like Gandhi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama would be Left Libertarians.
Libertarians are different from anarchists. Anarchist believe that there should be no government. Libertarians believe that government is a necessary evil, but it should limit itself to "essential services" and should generally try to stay out of people's lives.
Left Libertarians consider some government social welfare, government public education, health care, and some business regulation to be essential, but that the government should try to interfere in how people live their lives (If you want to marry a goat or your sister or download MP3s without the permission of the original artist, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of social freedoms. People should be able to make personal mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
Right Libertarians consider enforcement of Intellectual Property to be important, creating new forms of IP important, enforce IP laws abroad, government regulation of undesirable behaviour to be important, but thinks that government should stay out of people's financial lives (If you want to pull an Enron or operate your business with less red tape, go right ahead. The government shouldn't stand in the way of financial freedoms. People should be able to make their own financial mistakes without Big Brother "protecting them".).
And mine was a joke joking about a parent's joke about a parent.;-)
> The latest census reports indicate that there are
.000005 pirates.
> 13.7 trillion software pirates in China
> as compared to 1.2 thousand in the US.
That's quite an accomplishment, seeing that China has a population of 1.3 *billion*.
Obviously, China has made the piracy so automated that each Chinese is as productive as 10,000 pirates.
On the other hand the U.S. has a population of 282,000,000, it means that each yank is only as productive as
The U.S. needs to shape up! No wonder a new high level post was created to increase yankee piracy levels.
> Not until Weapons of Mass Piracy is found first.
> Which should be on CSPAN any minute now...
The weapons have been find, but you won't find it on CSPAN (which doesn't have any software of use).
Check out CPAN
P2P::pDonkey (eDonkey)
Net::FCP (Freenet)
One key difference, with proprietary software, you have a single source of accountability -- the company that made the software. With open source software, anyone can be the source of accountability. You can hire inhouse staff to do a code audit or you can hire a consultant or one of several Linux support companies. If Microsoft tells you that they didn't put any backdoors in their OS, you'll have to trust them. If Red Hat or Novell tells you the same thing, you can just do a web search (some Red Hat or Novell user would have discovered it by reading the source code) to see if it's true and/or hire a consultant to do a code audit.
> Apple's DRM gets out of your way It's in the way of every Linux user....
> Mission: We will serve our customers with (1)
> top-quality service, (2) good advice and (3) fair
> business practices.
Here's a problem, what does "top quality service" mean? If the customer wants a mouse, does it mean that you will hand-deliver the mouse, go into the customer's home, plug it in, and install drivers (if necessary)? That's top quality service, but it would also cost a fortune....or you'll have to go out of business.
The key problem with your mission statement is that it's one sided. We all want to be saints and serve the customer, but remember that even Mother Teresa had to eat. Deep down we know this, so we tend to be wishy-washy about what "top quality" means, and give lip service to a mission statement that we don't *really* follow.
Here's how I would adjust it.
Mission:
"We will serve our customers with (1) high-quality service, (2) good basic advice and (3) fair business practices. If the customer is willing to compensate the effort or if the customer is good enough, we will provide them with (1) top-quality service, (2) high quality advice"
It's more humble and less inspirational, but it's something that you can actually use to make decisions and achieve. As a consequence, it's more believable to you or your customers.
> And even if they were, is it really such a chore
> to upgrade every 12 months, when it's Free?
Yes it is. When they have critical systems that work, they don't want to break it under any circumstance. They don't care about what's new and hip (like geeks, consumers, and programmers like you and me). They just want to get work done and they don't want any surprises.
Most enterprises prefer a 3-5 year upgrade cycle.Some don't want to upgrade 20 old COBOL code, because it works and an upgrade would mean that you have to restart your QA from ground zero. All software has bugs and limitations, but with new software, you have a new set of bugs and a new of limitations (like new memory requirements or dropping old hardware devices). The key difference is that with the old OS, the limitations and bugs are known and workarounds are documented, while in the new OS they aren't. That's why the Linux 2.0 kernel is *still* being patched with security fixes, even though it was first released in 1997 and is really stale. That's why Windows *2000* is still quite popular in enterprise even though everyone knows that move to XP/2003/Longhorn is inevitable, and why some enterprise software still requires Windows NT.
If it works and security patches (without new features/bugs) are kept up to date, why should you have to "fix" it? The only thing Debian needs to be enterprise grade is a predictable 3-5 year release cycle (or the willingness to support all versions of Debian for this long.) so that enterprises can plan their upgrades and burn in verification in an orderly fashion. That appears to be what the new Debian president is promising.
The new "United Linux" group just adds a bit more credibility to that promise.
Here's a simple question, how do you define innovation and what do you consider innovation?
If you look at the other threads you see several replies that saids Microsoft copied all it's technologies from other people and that Linux did also. Big deal. As Newton stated, we can see more clearly because we can stand on the shoulders or giants. It's very easy to claim that the other guy is innovative because you can almost always find "something" that it was built upon.
To me, there were a few key innovations in the Linux world that are true giants on which others stand on:
* the GPL (nothing like that existed before, although you might claim that it's just a distillation of Newton's "Giant's Shoulder" idea)
* the Linux development model. For the development of something as complex as Linux with as many competing interests as Linux, a license or employment contract is not enough. You need a good social structure to herd the wild cats of programmers from companies and hobbyist/enthusiasts and still keep things from falling apart in anarchy.
* the Debian Social Contract (and it's offshoots, the Open Source Definition, the Gentoo Social Contract, the Ubuntu Social Contract, and even commercial-leaning distros like Fedora) -- The GPL isn't God, it's one of many licenses that work on Newtonian Giant Shoulder Logic. Debian first defined what sorts of licenses would capture the essense of "free as in freedom" and came up with a social structure that allowed Debian to get all the catherders to work together, whether they be from distro companies that build off Debian or the Linux kernel catherders, or the catherders of each of the thousands of packages of Debian. Their work has been a key force in eliminating the digital divide and preserving the languages of dying cultures.
I'm a Native American too. I was born in *South* America but I'm not an aboriginal american either.;-)
> why do they depend on us for medical care?
Think of it like a Debian user does.
Debian has several repositories:
* SID -- contains the latest and greatest, but it can be unstable and things may be
* Testing -- contains those parts of SID that have been around a while don't seem to break anything
* Stable -- contains those parts of Testing that have been around for a while and don't break things. Stable isn't updated that often, but receives constant security patches.
Given this, let's describe how the Amish see it:
* SID -- Geek enthusists who'll by anything new and shiny
* Testing -- the rest of society who'll only use stuff that's actually useful
* Stable -- Amish-like communities who'll only use generally available technology that is both useful and has a positive impact on their society.
Now you might claim that the people who rely on Stable are in this privileged position because of all the people who use SID or Testing. You'd be right. But who cares? SID users are happy on the cutting edge, Testing users are happy with the less wild and wooly pace, Stable users are happy with the tried and true. Everyone wins.