I work at an international investment bank. Our rules are basically that we obey they laws of the country we're operating in *as a base requirement*. Beyond that, we're expected to pretty much follow US law as well, wherever possible. In other words, even if bribing a government official is legal in that country , we're not allowed to do it. It's a matter of reputation and trust. Microsoft already has a reputation, and their customers don't seem to understand the concept of trust as it applies to software, so neither of these are really factors.
Following the rules of a developing country is setting a pretty low bar. The idea is to set the bar higher and act as an example, not to mention to avoid the ire of people in first-world countries who tend to key in on legal-yet-unethical practices and put them on the 6 o'clock news.
It's also a matter of risk management. When you start playing dangerous games, the risks increase significantly. By turning down business that would have incurred abnormally high risk in order to obtain, we shield ourselves from the consequences should that risk become reality.
No, blogs are a communication medium. As was clarified in this ruling and subsequent statements, it's the intent and method that make journalism.
Consider this: If a journalist from a "real" newspaper decided to do reporting for a "blog", would that somehow lower the quality of the work he's doing -- even if he writes in the same manner as he did for the "real" publication?
That's the situation I'm in right now. IT Security where I work is very good at what they do, to the point of approaching "unplugged, in a box, encased in concrete, and in a locked vault" secure. Unfortunately, the machines are also about that useful.
The fact is that very little hardening is typically done on the inside of the organization. A lot of organizations have the hard crunchy outside with a soft chewey center. (Don't remember who I heard make that analogy, but it's apt.) Most IT departments seem to have hardened servers at the border, but the inside is run-of-the-mill software and hardware. What this means is that maybe virtualization isn't great for the border proxies and firewalls, but it probably fits right into the controlled chaos on the inside, where nothing is especially secure anyway.
Have you ever met anyone with clinical depression? They have a hard time getting motivated, they always feel down, and can't focus -- among a ton of other issues. This sounds like it might be a big help.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a cure, but look: 1) Optimism can be a great motivator and 2) It might get people with depression to look at the world in a better light 3) it's easier to focus on something you care about or think will improve your lot in life.
So yes, I'd say there's a good chance that it would do all three, if not by curing the disease, then by helping to cover the symptoms.
I'm not qualified in any way to say this stuff, but it is what it is, for what it's worth, from an armchair psychologist.
Absolutely. I credit/. with much of my success today. The conversations are thought provoking (maybe not ALL of them...), and many posters are genuinely "insightful" and "informative".
It's not just the tech conversations either. Even the political and religious flamefests on the site are valuable. Sometimes it's hard to hear opposing viewpoints, but it's somehow easier to read them. It's taught me that it won't kill me to listen to someone who doesn't agree with me, debate can be fun and rewarding, and on a rare occasion I find that maybe I don't have it all figured out.
So in my professional and personal lives, Slashdot has made a big difference. I'll definitely hop on the bandwagon to say: Thanks Rob, and everyone else on the/. crew. You really do make a difference.
Heh - I think you're missing the implication of his statement.
Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.
If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem.
So it's not an issue of what's *wrong* with Linux, it's what's *right* with it. The problem is that this presents circumstances the hardware world isn't used to dealing with.
I'm blind in one eye and am also a very fast reader. I know I personally tend to see sections of the page, focussing on whole words and a word or two before and after. I certainly don't read the whole words, I more "predict" them from the first couple letters and the general shape.
I have no trouble with the scrambled-up examples higher up, except for a couple words where they got overzealous.
It's also worth noting that I'm a computer programmer and avid reader, so I read all day, every day. I might not be the ideal person to study, since I'm very practiced and have learned to work around my disability very effectively.
Oddly (or maybe not), I tend to have a hard time reading aloud. I probably sound barely literate because my reading gets so far ahead of my mouth that I wind up skipping words or slurring them in an effort to keep up.
If I make a conscious effort to slow down, I do alright, but I tend to speed up subconsciously until I notice that I'm mumbling again and slow back down. If I read too slowly, I start making mistakes I wouldn't normally have made.
Heh -- I was just talking to my dad, who bought a Vista laptop recently. I asked him his thoughts, and they went something like this:
"Well, I can't log into work because the VPN software isn't compatible with Vista. I can't do anything with it because it tells me I'm not the administrator. But I AM the administrator! It's MY COMPUTER! And it keeps telling me I'm not authorized to do things. It's also taking some time to get used to because they changed where things are and I have to go hunting around for things I used to be able to do."
"Dad, why don't you try out Ubuntu?"
"Nah - I don't want to spend all that time trying to figure out something new."
"Dad - you're already spending time trying to figure out something new, and it's broken to boot."
"Linux is too confusing. I'll just wait til they fix Vista."
Damn. I think people don't listen to themselves sometimes. They get it into their heads that something is going to be hard, and so they won't ever try it out, even when it wouldn't be any harder than what they're doing now. Maybe it's the "Devil You Know" aspect, but I somehow doubt it.
This is what I've been wondering about. Why don't we send up some sort of habitat that can be assembled by robotics? The robots can check the habitat and make sure that it's airtight, make sure everything is functioning correctly, all that. Once they're done, we can start planning sustained colonies there. Who knows? We might even be good at it and decided to build a small town where we can bring an entire colony. I don't know, but robotic construction really does seem to be the way to go here.
Sure, initially. Then they started going off on their own and making it better. I work with Solaris boxes every day, and I always wind up trying to make them work as closely as possible to Linux. There are still a lot of things that frustrate the hell out of me on Solaris that I simply take for granted on Linux. Maybe that's just because I'm used to Linux and how it operates, but Solaris just seems so arcane it's ridiculous.
Why doesn't this work yet: 'tar jxvf meh.tar.bz2' ? That's just one silly example, but it requires me to stop and remember how Solaris does it, which interrupts my train of thought. It's not even like the Solaris way has some great advantage that's gained at the expense of that feature. It simply doesn't have a feature that would take less than ten minutes to write in, including compile time. Take that idea, and apply it to almost every userland tool they have.
I understand that Solaris isn't Linux, but geeze, I wish they'd at least steal the good ideas. GNU and Linux have come a long way in the direction of user and developer friendliness, even at the CLI level. Solaris and other proprietary Unixes (HP/UX, AIX in particular) just feel like I'm constantly pounding my head against a wall.
Oddly enough, when dealing with Solaris, it's the CLI user friendliness that I'm worried about, because I'm always accessing it via SSH. I wouldn't give a rats ass about about Sun's GUI because I'd never use it. At my last job, I got around that by having an Ubuntu desktop where I did most of my work and just NFS mounted key filesystems to copy stuff to Solaris, but now I have to use Windows, which kills even that advantage.
A slightly off-topic plea to IT managers out there: PLEASE consider giving developers Linux desktops. They make life so much easier for Unix developers. It used to be standard to have a Sun workstation at least, but they've taken those away in preference to Windows with 3rd-party X servers, SSH clients, and other unixy stuff bolted on that doesn't integrate well, and certainly could never replace a real unix workstation. It's like trying to hammer a nail with a badger.
Look, you can't just go around telling everyone that the world is unfair. It is. 'Nuff said. No one needs convincing. That said, it sounds to me like you have a losing business model, considering the realities of the global economy.
You complain that foreign companies are getting software for free, but, as a reader of./, you should understand that getting free software is easy, legitimate, and encouraged, if you're not particular about which free software. Certainly, foreign companies aren't getting free hardware, so I don't think this is an issue. In fact, hardware is frequently more expensive in many third-world countries, since it needs to be imported.
My advice to you, though I guess you didn't really ask for it, is to change your strategy. Start stressing the importance of F/OSS to your clients, leading with the lower cost aspect and finishing up with higher reliability and ROI. When you look for new clients, look for ones that will let you have freer reign to use the software of your choice. If they ask, tell them that you typically use F/OSS infrastructure for your projects, due to concerns about the availability of source code, ongoing support, future upgradability, more regular release cycles and development transparency, etc.
If they're concerned about administration of F/OSS, you might consider the feasibility of giving them appliances with a nice web interface and automated maintenance cycles, a la the Google appliance.
The point is that you know that F/OSS is superior quality - especially on the server side, and I'm sure you know all the reasons for it. Use them as selling points. Don't apologize or even hint that you're apologizing. This isn't 1997. Linux is a big name, and most businesses have heard it or read about it in their trade magazines as the "hot new tech from a bunch of hippies in their mom's basement (a.k.a. IBM, RedHat, Novell, etc.)"
There isn't a single thing that a proponent of expensive software can say about closed-source platforms that you can't counter or diffuse. At that point, you'll have levelled the playing field. They get free software, you get free software. The difference is that one day, Microsoft is going to go after them, but you're legit with your freebies. Don't forget that that's a selling point too.
I know very little about your business, but I'll be surprised if you can't apply this tactic at least a little. If you are a software shop producing Windows software, consider a web-based version. If you're a service provider who uses Windows software internally, consider using and adapting F/OSS alternatives or writing your own. Everything you manage to move to F/OSS will increase your bottom line, even if you don't manage to convert everything. It will also make you much more competitive, and that's really what you're looking for, right?
You're right about the time issue. It's almost like it needs to be a federation of groups in different countries, who have official authority to act as required within the bounds of that country. The advantage is that the US can set one up independently from the UK, France, whatever. As each organization comes online, they can work together and share information in much the same way international law enforcement does. Sure there will be disputes here and there, but honestly, we're not talking about executions here. We're just talking about taking away someone's computer rights and shutting down a common nuisance that costs everyone, government included, a lot of time, money, and aggravation.
If these entities were independent but coordinated, I'd think this could happen fairly quickly, or at least a lot faster than attempting to set up a monolithic global task force. The key is not to cripple them from the get-go. They need to be able to put these guys out of business decisively.
I think this action is right-on. The parts of the equation missing are trust and accountability.
We don't trust vigilantes, not because we don't agree with them, but because we don't trust them to always act in the greater good. Their future actions and motivations are unknowns. Since their identities may even be secret, there's no way to hold them accountable.
Why are we ok with the police taking the same actions as a vigilante would take? Because of trust earned through accountability. To retask a familiar saying: "Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket". That basket is the police, and we've put all our eggs in it. That means the public at large can watch the police, who are well-known and generally easy to spot. It means that internal controls can be set up, and rules of engagement can be put in place. We trust the police as much as we do because we know that, ultimately, they're under the control of the general public, who can exert pressure on them when they act badly. This is why we tend to put more trust in organizations, rather than individuals. Organizations are easier to censure.
Understanding that, it's easy to see what the course of action needs to be. As much as we here at/. tend to have a love/hate relationship with authorities, I think one needs to be set up specifically to deal with these problems. They need to be given what power is necessary to deal with the problems like spam, trojans, botnets, whatever, but at the same time, they need to be directly accountable to the public in a similar manner to police forces. Legitimize the vigilante action by coupling it with accountability.
I don't really know the specifics of setting up something like this, but I think using the police as a model would be the way to go. Rules and procedures, all the requisite bureaucracy, but also the ability to launch tactical "busts", "cyber" or otherwise. They'd need all the same approvals, warrants, etc. They'd have branches in all concerned countries, and would work through the legal systems in their home countries. In some countries, they might be a part of the police force, since much of the administrivia would be similar. Ultimately, I'd think CERT or something like it would be a good headquarters or parent organization for such a group.
The point is that we've already worked this out in the "Real World". Applying it to The Internet shouldn't be a patent-worthy exercise. While I wish we didn't need government involvement, much of the authority required is the type of authority that only government can legitimately grant, such as the ability to seize equipment.
I aplogize that this isn't as eloquently described as I'd have liked, but I think the general idea is there. You may now procede to flame me for advocating the Policing of the Intertubes but ultimately, I think that's where we're headed.
No. BOON rhymes with "soon". "buhn" should be read sa rhyming with "fun" or "sun".
The first is the correct one. The 'oo' in the pronunciation guide is pronounced consistently throughout, as in "soon-soon-soon". The stress is on the middle syllable. oo-BOON-too.
I keep hearing this replication issue being a show stopper. Are people getting unnecessarily hung up on it?
I work in some massive Sybase shops. Sybase does replication, but it doesn't get used very often. Usually this stuff is just replicated at the storage level on the SAN. Database goes down, bring up the backup using the same SAN storage. No big deal.
Obviously SAN for small shops is out of the question, but we're talking about enterprise usage, where SANs or some sort of online disk replication are SOP.
I'm hurt. An anomymous troll. Forget to take your medication today? Don't worry - just call upstairs for mommy and she'll bring it for you.
Actually, I enjoyed Snow Crash. I found Stephenson through Cryptonomicon, read the Baroque Cycle, and then went on to his smaller books because I enjoyed his writing so much.
Anyway, it wasn't Snow Crash I was thinking of, but I guess that's apt. As much as I enjoyed Stephenson, I was a trekkie for far longer, and the Borg are a much better-known analog.
We truly are becoming The Borg. Just add in RFID implants, cell phones in our teeth, a laser range-finder/scanner, and an exoskeleton, and the transformation will be complete. It's all current or near-future tech.
Yup - that's why I just bought one. I'm so sick of buying a phone that I think will do what I want, only to find out there's some gotcha. I don't mind programming or debugging to get what I want, and I hate not having that option. I have a Blackberry because that covers most of my needs, but it still isn't perfect and I can't customize it that last 10%.
Also, like you said, I bought one because I want to support this. I'd hate to have wasted the money if this turns out to be a dud, but I want to show these companies that demand is out there. This is the kind of thing where you really do need to vote with your wallet. This phone is, in principle, a dream come true.
"Damn! That God guy is hella fricking smart! Look at this crap! It's a system for self-improvement built into self-replicating creatures! It's awesome!"
That's exactly how I think about it. I don't get all excited about evolution, because, to me, it's proof that the system works. Science studies the effects and methods of God, but you can't scientifically prove that God exists or doesn't from there. It's an intuitive leap that some people choose to make and others choose not to make, considering it non-intuitive.
People who think God is non-intuitive tend to argue that, because they understand much of the "how", that God can't possibly exist. Yet, I can look at any invention and see how it works, but would never assume no one invented it. That logic seems odd to me.
Either way, the UK board is right -- at least for now. ID isn't science because there's no way of proving or disproving that "intuitive leap". That doesn't mean that interested scientists shouldn't continue to look for a falsifiable test, but SatanicPuppy is probably right -- "faith" requires a certain type of intuition and... faith.
By the way, and I think this is something that a lot of people are missing here: The "falsifiable" requirement is a limit on science, or how we can study things scientifically. It's not a limit on reality. In other words, just because science can't study it doesn't automatically mean it isn't true. It just means we need a different way to study it, and religion is what we've come up with. It's far from perfect, but it's all we've got so far. It's hard to study something that might or might not exist, but that either way, you can't touch. All you have is looking at signs and effects without apparent causes. (They may have natural causes, but religions look for a driving force behind nature.)
In other words: religion is what happens when you use the scientific method without the "falsifiable" requirement. You get lots of different answers you can't prove, but that doesn't mean they're not correct in some aspects, and it most certainly doesn't mean that they're worthless.
... is one with each other. Some sort of mutual defense agreement. If MS does decide to sue, they should all come to each other's aid. Maybe one company is too small, but the combination of those in the 'against' column might stand a fighting chance.
They should also highly publicize this agreement. It will go a long way against the MS patent FUD. Actively recruiting players who were not approached, like IBM and Oracle, would go even further.
In the end, a couple things might happen:
MS doesn't sue, and good PR was had by all (except MS).
MS sues and gets a run for its money. They might even lose, all dollars being equal. Either way, they need to disclose their patents at that point, which ends this particular FUD campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
I work at an international investment bank. Our rules are basically that we obey they laws of the country we're operating in *as a base requirement*. Beyond that, we're expected to pretty much follow US law as well, wherever possible. In other words, even if bribing a government official is legal in that country , we're not allowed to do it. It's a matter of reputation and trust. Microsoft already has a reputation, and their customers don't seem to understand the concept of trust as it applies to software, so neither of these are really factors.
Following the rules of a developing country is setting a pretty low bar. The idea is to set the bar higher and act as an example, not to mention to avoid the ire of people in first-world countries who tend to key in on legal-yet-unethical practices and put them on the 6 o'clock news.
It's also a matter of risk management. When you start playing dangerous games, the risks increase significantly. By turning down business that would have incurred abnormally high risk in order to obtain, we shield ourselves from the consequences should that risk become reality.
No, blogs are a communication medium. As was clarified in this ruling and subsequent statements, it's the intent and method that make journalism.
Consider this: If a journalist from a "real" newspaper decided to do reporting for a "blog", would that somehow lower the quality of the work he's doing -- even if he writes in the same manner as he did for the "real" publication?
Dead trees do not a worthy statement make.
That's the situation I'm in right now. IT Security where I work is very good at what they do, to the point of approaching "unplugged, in a box, encased in concrete, and in a locked vault" secure. Unfortunately, the machines are also about that useful.
The real joke would be if that option was included and everyone still went with the CowboyNeil option.
The fact is that very little hardening is typically done on the inside of the organization. A lot of organizations have the hard crunchy outside with a soft chewey center. (Don't remember who I heard make that analogy, but it's apt.) Most IT departments seem to have hardened servers at the border, but the inside is run-of-the-mill software and hardware. What this means is that maybe virtualization isn't great for the border proxies and firewalls, but it probably fits right into the controlled chaos on the inside, where nothing is especially secure anyway.
Have you ever met anyone with clinical depression? They have a hard time getting motivated, they always feel down, and can't focus -- among a ton of other issues. This sounds like it might be a big help.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a cure, but look: 1) Optimism can be a great motivator and 2) It might get people with depression to look at the world in a better light 3) it's easier to focus on something you care about or think will improve your lot in life.
So yes, I'd say there's a good chance that it would do all three, if not by curing the disease, then by helping to cover the symptoms.
I'm not qualified in any way to say this stuff, but it is what it is, for what it's worth, from an armchair psychologist.
Absolutely. I credit /. with much of my success today. The conversations are thought provoking (maybe not ALL of them...), and many posters are genuinely "insightful" and "informative".
/. crew. You really do make a difference.
It's not just the tech conversations either. Even the political and religious flamefests on the site are valuable. Sometimes it's hard to hear opposing viewpoints, but it's somehow easier to read them. It's taught me that it won't kill me to listen to someone who doesn't agree with me, debate can be fun and rewarding, and on a rare occasion I find that maybe I don't have it all figured out.
So in my professional and personal lives, Slashdot has made a big difference. I'll definitely hop on the bandwagon to say: Thanks Rob, and everyone else on the
Heh - I think you're missing the implication of his statement.
Because Linux is less resource intensive, he's able to upgrade his distro several times on the same hardware, putting himself in the situation of having a new kernel with old hardware and old drivers that don't load in the new kernel.
If you want to upgrade Windows, you usually wind up needing a new machine, so: new machine, new video card, new drivers, new Windows -- not a problem. Well, at least not the same problem.
So it's not an issue of what's *wrong* with Linux, it's what's *right* with it. The problem is that this presents circumstances the hardware world isn't used to dealing with.
I'm blind in one eye and am also a very fast reader. I know I personally tend to see sections of the page, focussing on whole words and a word or two before and after. I certainly don't read the whole words, I more "predict" them from the first couple letters and the general shape.
I have no trouble with the scrambled-up examples higher up, except for a couple words where they got overzealous.
It's also worth noting that I'm a computer programmer and avid reader, so I read all day, every day. I might not be the ideal person to study, since I'm very practiced and have learned to work around my disability very effectively.
Oddly (or maybe not), I tend to have a hard time reading aloud. I probably sound barely literate because my reading gets so far ahead of my mouth that I wind up skipping words or slurring them in an effort to keep up.
If I make a conscious effort to slow down, I do alright, but I tend to speed up subconsciously until I notice that I'm mumbling again and slow back down. If I read too slowly, I start making mistakes I wouldn't normally have made.
Hah! Genius!
3.) Letting Bruce Wayne know that his parents are going to be gunned down in front of his very eyes in a filthy alley, you dick!
(http://www.superdickery.com/dick/6.html)
Heh -- I was just talking to my dad, who bought a Vista laptop recently. I asked him his thoughts, and they went something like this:
"Well, I can't log into work because the VPN software isn't compatible with Vista. I can't do anything with it because it tells me I'm not the administrator. But I AM the administrator! It's MY COMPUTER! And it keeps telling me I'm not authorized to do things. It's also taking some time to get used to because they changed where things are and I have to go hunting around for things I used to be able to do."
"Dad, why don't you try out Ubuntu?"
"Nah - I don't want to spend all that time trying to figure out something new."
"Dad - you're already spending time trying to figure out something new, and it's broken to boot."
"Linux is too confusing. I'll just wait til they fix Vista."
Damn. I think people don't listen to themselves sometimes. They get it into their heads that something is going to be hard, and so they won't ever try it out, even when it wouldn't be any harder than what they're doing now. Maybe it's the "Devil You Know" aspect, but I somehow doubt it.
This is what I've been wondering about. Why don't we send up some sort of habitat that can be assembled by robotics? The robots can check the habitat and make sure that it's airtight, make sure everything is functioning correctly, all that. Once they're done, we can start planning sustained colonies there. Who knows? We might even be good at it and decided to build a small town where we can bring an entire colony. I don't know, but robotic construction really does seem to be the way to go here.
Perhaps, but to pull it off, he'd have to change his name to Bruce Wiggins.
Just sayin'.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
-Frenchie.
Sure, initially. Then they started going off on their own and making it better. I work with Solaris boxes every day, and I always wind up trying to make them work as closely as possible to Linux. There are still a lot of things that frustrate the hell out of me on Solaris that I simply take for granted on Linux. Maybe that's just because I'm used to Linux and how it operates, but Solaris just seems so arcane it's ridiculous.
Why doesn't this work yet: 'tar jxvf meh.tar.bz2' ? That's just one silly example, but it requires me to stop and remember how Solaris does it, which interrupts my train of thought. It's not even like the Solaris way has some great advantage that's gained at the expense of that feature. It simply doesn't have a feature that would take less than ten minutes to write in, including compile time. Take that idea, and apply it to almost every userland tool they have.
I understand that Solaris isn't Linux, but geeze, I wish they'd at least steal the good ideas. GNU and Linux have come a long way in the direction of user and developer friendliness, even at the CLI level. Solaris and other proprietary Unixes (HP/UX, AIX in particular) just feel like I'm constantly pounding my head against a wall.
Oddly enough, when dealing with Solaris, it's the CLI user friendliness that I'm worried about, because I'm always accessing it via SSH. I wouldn't give a rats ass about about Sun's GUI because I'd never use it. At my last job, I got around that by having an Ubuntu desktop where I did most of my work and just NFS mounted key filesystems to copy stuff to Solaris, but now I have to use Windows, which kills even that advantage.
A slightly off-topic plea to IT managers out there: PLEASE consider giving developers Linux desktops. They make life so much easier for Unix developers. It used to be standard to have a Sun workstation at least, but they've taken those away in preference to Windows with 3rd-party X servers, SSH clients, and other unixy stuff bolted on that doesn't integrate well, and certainly could never replace a real unix workstation. It's like trying to hammer a nail with a badger.
Look, you can't just go around telling everyone that the world is unfair. It is. 'Nuff said. No one needs convincing. That said, it sounds to me like you have a losing business model, considering the realities of the global economy.
./, you should understand that getting free software is easy, legitimate, and encouraged, if you're not particular about which free software. Certainly, foreign companies aren't getting free hardware, so I don't think this is an issue. In fact, hardware is frequently more expensive in many third-world countries, since it needs to be imported.
You complain that foreign companies are getting software for free, but, as a reader of
My advice to you, though I guess you didn't really ask for it, is to change your strategy. Start stressing the importance of F/OSS to your clients, leading with the lower cost aspect and finishing up with higher reliability and ROI. When you look for new clients, look for ones that will let you have freer reign to use the software of your choice. If they ask, tell them that you typically use F/OSS infrastructure for your projects, due to concerns about the availability of source code, ongoing support, future upgradability, more regular release cycles and development transparency, etc.
If they're concerned about administration of F/OSS, you might consider the feasibility of giving them appliances with a nice web interface and automated maintenance cycles, a la the Google appliance.
The point is that you know that F/OSS is superior quality - especially on the server side, and I'm sure you know all the reasons for it. Use them as selling points. Don't apologize or even hint that you're apologizing. This isn't 1997. Linux is a big name, and most businesses have heard it or read about it in their trade magazines as the "hot new tech from a bunch of hippies in their mom's basement (a.k.a. IBM, RedHat, Novell, etc.)"
There isn't a single thing that a proponent of expensive software can say about closed-source platforms that you can't counter or diffuse. At that point, you'll have levelled the playing field. They get free software, you get free software. The difference is that one day, Microsoft is going to go after them, but you're legit with your freebies. Don't forget that that's a selling point too.
I know very little about your business, but I'll be surprised if you can't apply this tactic at least a little. If you are a software shop producing Windows software, consider a web-based version. If you're a service provider who uses Windows software internally, consider using and adapting F/OSS alternatives or writing your own. Everything you manage to move to F/OSS will increase your bottom line, even if you don't manage to convert everything. It will also make you much more competitive, and that's really what you're looking for, right?
You're right about the time issue. It's almost like it needs to be a federation of groups in different countries, who have official authority to act as required within the bounds of that country. The advantage is that the US can set one up independently from the UK, France, whatever. As each organization comes online, they can work together and share information in much the same way international law enforcement does. Sure there will be disputes here and there, but honestly, we're not talking about executions here. We're just talking about taking away someone's computer rights and shutting down a common nuisance that costs everyone, government included, a lot of time, money, and aggravation.
If these entities were independent but coordinated, I'd think this could happen fairly quickly, or at least a lot faster than attempting to set up a monolithic global task force. The key is not to cripple them from the get-go. They need to be able to put these guys out of business decisively.
I think this action is right-on. The parts of the equation missing are trust and accountability.
We don't trust vigilantes, not because we don't agree with them, but because we don't trust them to always act in the greater good. Their future actions and motivations are unknowns. Since their identities may even be secret, there's no way to hold them accountable.
Why are we ok with the police taking the same actions as a vigilante would take? Because of trust earned through accountability. To retask a familiar saying: "Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket". That basket is the police, and we've put all our eggs in it. That means the public at large can watch the police, who are well-known and generally easy to spot. It means that internal controls can be set up, and rules of engagement can be put in place. We trust the police as much as we do because we know that, ultimately, they're under the control of the general public, who can exert pressure on them when they act badly. This is why we tend to put more trust in organizations, rather than individuals. Organizations are easier to censure.
Understanding that, it's easy to see what the course of action needs to be. As much as we here at /. tend to have a love/hate relationship with authorities, I think one needs to be set up specifically to deal with these problems. They need to be given what power is necessary to deal with the problems like spam, trojans, botnets, whatever, but at the same time, they need to be directly accountable to the public in a similar manner to police forces. Legitimize the vigilante action by coupling it with accountability.
I don't really know the specifics of setting up something like this, but I think using the police as a model would be the way to go. Rules and procedures, all the requisite bureaucracy, but also the ability to launch tactical "busts", "cyber" or otherwise. They'd need all the same approvals, warrants, etc. They'd have branches in all concerned countries, and would work through the legal systems in their home countries. In some countries, they might be a part of the police force, since much of the administrivia would be similar. Ultimately, I'd think CERT or something like it would be a good headquarters or parent organization for such a group.
The point is that we've already worked this out in the "Real World". Applying it to The Internet shouldn't be a patent-worthy exercise. While I wish we didn't need government involvement, much of the authority required is the type of authority that only government can legitimately grant, such as the ability to seize equipment.
I aplogize that this isn't as eloquently described as I'd have liked, but I think the general idea is there. You may now procede to flame me for advocating the Policing of the Intertubes but ultimately, I think that's where we're headed.
No. BOON rhymes with "soon". "buhn" should be read sa rhyming with "fun" or "sun".
The first is the correct one. The 'oo' in the pronunciation guide is pronounced consistently throughout, as in "soon-soon-soon". The stress is on the middle syllable. oo-BOON-too.
I keep hearing this replication issue being a show stopper. Are people getting unnecessarily hung up on it?
I work in some massive Sybase shops. Sybase does replication, but it doesn't get used very often. Usually this stuff is just replicated at the storage level on the SAN. Database goes down, bring up the backup using the same SAN storage. No big deal.
Obviously SAN for small shops is out of the question, but we're talking about enterprise usage, where SANs or some sort of online disk replication are SOP.
I'm hurt. An anomymous troll. Forget to take your medication today? Don't worry - just call upstairs for mommy and she'll bring it for you.
Actually, I enjoyed Snow Crash. I found Stephenson through Cryptonomicon, read the Baroque Cycle, and then went on to his smaller books because I enjoyed his writing so much.
Anyway, it wasn't Snow Crash I was thinking of, but I guess that's apt. As much as I enjoyed Stephenson, I was a trekkie for far longer, and the Borg are a much better-known analog.
Damn. I fed the troll.
We truly are becoming The Borg. Just add in RFID implants, cell phones in our teeth, a laser range-finder/scanner, and an exoskeleton, and the transformation will be complete. It's all current or near-future tech.
By the way, I think this is called augmented reality .
Yup - that's why I just bought one. I'm so sick of buying a phone that I think will do what I want, only to find out there's some gotcha. I don't mind programming or debugging to get what I want, and I hate not having that option. I have a Blackberry because that covers most of my needs, but it still isn't perfect and I can't customize it that last 10%.
Also, like you said, I bought one because I want to support this. I'd hate to have wasted the money if this turns out to be a dud, but I want to show these companies that demand is out there. This is the kind of thing where you really do need to vote with your wallet. This phone is, in principle, a dream come true.
That's exactly how I think about it. I don't get all excited about evolution, because, to me, it's proof that the system works. Science studies the effects and methods of God, but you can't scientifically prove that God exists or doesn't from there. It's an intuitive leap that some people choose to make and others choose not to make, considering it non-intuitive.
People who think God is non-intuitive tend to argue that, because they understand much of the "how", that God can't possibly exist. Yet, I can look at any invention and see how it works, but would never assume no one invented it. That logic seems odd to me.
Either way, the UK board is right -- at least for now. ID isn't science because there's no way of proving or disproving that "intuitive leap". That doesn't mean that interested scientists shouldn't continue to look for a falsifiable test, but SatanicPuppy is probably right -- "faith" requires a certain type of intuition and... faith.
By the way, and I think this is something that a lot of people are missing here: The "falsifiable" requirement is a limit on science, or how we can study things scientifically. It's not a limit on reality. In other words, just because science can't study it doesn't automatically mean it isn't true. It just means we need a different way to study it, and religion is what we've come up with. It's far from perfect, but it's all we've got so far. It's hard to study something that might or might not exist, but that either way, you can't touch. All you have is looking at signs and effects without apparent causes. (They may have natural causes, but religions look for a driving force behind nature.)
In other words: religion is what happens when you use the scientific method without the "falsifiable" requirement. You get lots of different answers you can't prove, but that doesn't mean they're not correct in some aspects, and it most certainly doesn't mean that they're worthless.
They should also highly publicize this agreement. It will go a long way against the MS patent FUD. Actively recruiting players who were not approached, like IBM and Oracle, would go even further.
In the end, a couple things might happen:
In any case, mutualy defense is a win for F/OSS.