My, that is an amazing prognostication. How is it that you feel your prediction holds any water whatsoever, given that:
ODF is an open standard; either Microsoft conforms to the standard, or they do not. If the standard says, "It should do X, Y, and Z", and Word does that, then good for them. If it doesn't, Microsoft cannot claim to have an ODF-compliant implementation.
The ODF Plugin is hosted on sourceforge, and is being released as an open source project. How are they going to keep their implementation of ODF "undocumented"?
If Microsoft chooses to extend the ODF specification in areas where it does not currently specify behavior (e.g., Spreadsheet Formulas), that's perfectly legal, and you'll still be able to see how they've implemented it (open source, remember). BUT...
If the standard changes, and defines new areas such as the handling of spreadsheet formulas, the plugin would then need to change their implementation to conform with the standard, or they would lose the right to call themselves "ODF compliant".
With all due respect, there are some significant shortcomings to your financial management strategy:
You leave a significant amount of money on the table for someone else to pick up, in the form of:
no contributions to 401(k) (with employer matching)
keeping a significant amount of money in an account which earns no interest, or less-than-inflation rates of interest, when you could just as easily be earning 4.5 - 5% interest on that money, with virtually no added risk or loss of liquidity. (More on this later)
Not using a credit card to earn a few days extra interest every month, plus the loss of potential cash-back.
Your fear of banking online is irrational, and largely unfounded. What's easier? Hacking WEP (yes, I know this is reasonably simple these days) and then breaking the 128-bit SSL encryption between your browser & the banks, or simple social engineering to get your PIN, or other information through a clueless bank teller, your trash, etc?
No credit cards & no other accounts means you're not building a credit history. For the purposes of home loans, car loans, etc., this means you will pay a significantly HIGHER interest rate (you will be considered at higher risk for defaulting on the loan), and this means you pay more money in the long run, which means it's wasted.
You rely on memory & estimates. Great for ballpark figuring, really terrible for making sure you're not getting ripped off. ("Hmm... I thought I had $9876 in my account... I only have $9786... guess I must've transposed a digit!"
Adjustments I would make (bearing in mind that I am NOT a financial advisor):
First, ditch the checking account. Open a brokerage account with a major brokerage that will allow you to write checks against your account's value. Works like a checking account, but you can earn way better interest. Shop around, they have different check-writing & redemption policies, as well as minimums & fees.
Second, in that brokerage account, your paycheck should go directly into a Money Market Mutual Fund (MMMF) as your "core" holding in the brokerage account. MMMF's are NOT FDIC-insured, but they are very liquid, and very safe. Historically, only a handful of funds have ever "broken the buck", and in all cases, the loss was eaten by the holding company, not by the investor. By all means, if that is still too risky, then go to a bank, and open an FDIC-insured Money Market account, or search around for a savings account with better returns online.
Third, no money should go into that account via direct deposit until you've signed up for a 401(k) or other retirement plan contribution. Your MINIMUM contribution to your retirement plan should be enough to max out whatever matching your employer gives. The *goal* is to eventually be maxing out your yearly pre-tax contribution to that retirement plan -- currently for 401(k)s, that's around $14,500 per year, but I believe they're raising the ceiling. A LOFTY GOAL, to be sure, but even if you only get halfway there, you're probably doing pretty well.
Fourth, save up & put at LEAST 3x (preferably, 6x - 12x) of your monthly "necessities" expenditures aside, and NEVER, EVER touch this money, unless you lose your job, or need to take an extended (unpaid) leave of absence due to health problems or something like that. Make sure it's earning at least enough interest to keep up with inflation. If it earns more, then great... when (not if, always assume worst-case for your disaster fund) you lose your job due to disability or your employer folding, and can't find another one for a few months, you can afford to see a movie now and then on the interest gains.
Fifth, Get insurance, and review your coverage every year or two to make sure you have enough, and aren't paying for too much:
Auto -- at a bare minimum, whatever you're required to get by law in your state, with a high dedu
Great point. We like to pitch this sort of debate in tersm of this vast, sweeping, epic battle, as if we're Hector battling Achilles at the gates of Troy. And while the grandiose imagery makes for a great soundbite, and you can feel *really* cool, it makes you (and your issue) a lot easier to dismiss as "some whacko commie with an agenda you want to force on other people." The most effective evangelism and activism is local -- work on convincing people you know, and who know you as a friendly, smiling face from the family gatherings who happens to know a lot about computers.
To give an example, not specific to DRM, but still in the vein of educating a group of people who are largely unaware of the fine details of how computers work...
About 2 weeks ago, my parents forwarded along one of those emails that reads like: "Caution your hard drive will be absolutely destroyed by a monster virus if you try to power it on on July 4. Stay off the internet, and don't type ANYTHING on your keyboard for three days preceding July 4th, and 2 days after! It's so dangerous that the virus will actually infect YOU, too!" This went out to a slew of their friends and family, because they didn't know better... they thought they were being helpful.
I sent an email in reply, explaining that this particular threat was a hoax, and then went on to say that, "Even if this is a fake, there are a lot of other nasties out there, and here's some stuff you can do about those threats..." with standard antivirus / antispyware advice -- get a firewall; secure your wireless network; turn on automatic updates; use firefox instead of ie; make sure your windows system has antivirus running; make sure you've downloaded & applied critical updates from Microsoft; investigate alternative operating systems if you're in the market for a new computer. Stuff like that -- not preaching, not screaming, just giving helpful advice about an issue that actually impacts my parents and their friends.
The net result is that, since I sent that email, I've received three responses from friends of my parents; two of them asked for more information about Firefox, and told me they were interested in trying it out; The other response asked if I'd be willing to demo my Mac system to them sometime, and talk about what they might need to do to convert. So by simply sending that one email at a time when people were *ready* to hear the message, I've helped to change the computer usage habits of at least three people. Even if they don't become die-hard Firefox evangelists, you can be sure that the next time they're talking to a friend over a round of golf, and that friend complains about how their computer got pwned by the latest IE exploit, they'll say, "Gee, you should use this um... um... BurningDog? AshyMutt? Firefox! That's the name... browser my friend's kid told me about. It works pretty well, and I haven't had any problems."
Yes, sometimes it really *is* that simple. People are reasonable... if you can explain things to them in clear terms, and make it clear to them *why* they should be concerned or take action, then most of the time, they will. To the grandparent poster who said the only alternative is to support illegal hackers, because we have no voice... try opening your mouth. You might be surprised at how effective it can be.
I simply cannot understand why Apple would do this to itself. The iPod was a grand slam, and I was expecting these Mactels to DOUBLE Apple's market share in time for Vista. I had nothing but high hopes, which is probably why I am so disappointed now.
That's right... Apple was going to go from 2.5% marketshare, and roar all the way up to a stratospheric 5%. Look out Dell, IBM, and HP...:)
Just a link to some of the drama, in case a Google search be beyond ye... I would consider this a problem, judging by the amount of posts there.
In any manufacturing operation, some bad units will be turned out. Sometimes people get unlucky and get the bad unit. I took a look at the link you posted... and I'm wondering how 31 unique posters -- some of whom are simply providing advice, not reporting a swollen battery -- is indicative of some sort of wide-spread quality issue?
Do you *really* have any notion of how paranoid you sound? Let's look at the simple facts:
Microsoft does NOT force you to write your documents in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. There are other non-MSFT alternatives you can choose.
Microsoft does NOT control the terms of the license. The Creative Commons licenses are NOT Microsoft creations.
You are free to NOT INSTALL the Office add-in, if you don't wish to use it.
Given that Office (PPT, XLS, DOC) formats are used *primarily* in business settings, and distributed to a typically very limited audience of interested people, I don't think we'll see many people releasing DOC-formatted CC works to wide-spread fanfare and adulation.
But with all that said, I intend to apply a Creative Commons license to ALL of *my* TPS reports, spreadsheets, and customer presentations that, on a good day, 6 people in the world actually care about.
Mash that up, bitches!
Re:Remember when Firefox was a web browser?
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Firefox VoIP Client
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Well, technically, they are right -- Firefox "just works" on my mini... as long as you define "just working" as "just [barely] working"... It's actually not so bad unless I try opening multiple tabs... then the memory usage spikes big time.
I really do like Firefox most of the time, but a VoIP extension? Yawn. I have skype already if I need it. I have a cell phone already if I need it. I'd rather see all that effort go into making Firefox as responsive and speedy as Opera.
Charles Wolf of Needham and Co. says Apple could end up with a global PC market share north of 5% by 2011, compared with a 1.9% sliver in 2005 [ . . . ]
Given that the global market share for Apple's systems is ~2% (maybe 2 - 3% today?), I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that a very small percentage of users out there are using Safari. Why?
I have a Mac Mini at home. One of the first things I did when I brought it home was to install Firefox & Opera on it, and make FF my default browser. I use Firefox on Windows at work, and simply like having a consistent application functionality to use across computers -- plus I have a set of FF extensions that I use constantly. I'm sure I'm not the ONLY person who has a Mac and who also doesn't use Safari.
While it may not be the "less than 1%" figure you're incensed about, it *is* a pretty small number, compared to IE & Firefox. If I had to estimate, I'd guess somewhere around 2-3% of the general population, at maximum, are Safari users.
"RMS is from America" - The people of France can choose who they darn well like to represent them when it comes to demanding government protect their rights.
Yes, the people of France *have* chosen someone to represent them: His title is, roughly translated, the Prime Minister of France. I think what you really meant to say was, "Since DRM is an issue that I, professionalfurryele, think is important, anybody who tries any publicity stunt to bring it to the attention of government officials should be heard." Congratulations, you're the audience for whom RMS' publicity whoring paid off: the segment of the people who know a bit about the DRM issue, and who think cheap publicity is better than substantive discussion.
And if you go back and, you know, READ what I wrote, you'll see that what I said about RMS being from America has nothing to do with the fact that some people in France have asked him to represent them. What I said, in context, was that RMS was from America, where the "culture of the suit" is definitely the "expected" formal business attire, and the PM of France is from France, where the culture of the suit is, again, the "expected" formal business attire. Given that, it is reasonable to expect that somebody conducting formal business with the head of state would dress in whatever their cultures dictate is formal business attire -- and in this specific case, the French PM and RMS should both show a little respect for one another and dress accordingly. And I'll make a bet that the French PM didn't wear shorts and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt to work that day.
Both. Thats a ridiculous false dichotomy. Sure most the Prime Minister of Frances current time should be spent solving their labour crisis. But not to the exclusion of protecting the rights of the citizens of France.
So the French PM has more hours in the day than anybody else? When you are doing ANY job, no matter how important or how trivial, you have to prioritize your work. And how do you prioritize your tasks if you are the elected representative of some large portion of your population? RIGHT... by spending your time focusing on the issues that are important to large segments of your population... if RMS & the FSF in France couldn't come up with enough signatures to even equal 1% of the population, then the PM was perfectly justified in assuming that it wasn't a topic that MOST people in France would really care about, or care to have him spend his time on. Call it a false dichotomy if you wish, but you're wrong to. When you're serving a large constituency, you cannot physically cater to the whims and desires of every group of people. There aren't enough hours in the day.
Now this is the icing on the cake. A true piece of logical lunacy. How about I construct a comparable situation. Someone organises a petition to complain about the lack of seperation of church and state in this country (the UK), and get 100,000 signatures calling for a reform of the Lords Spiritual in the second chamber. They elect that an American constitutional scholar speak on their behalf because they feel he is most qualified to present their case. The prime minister refuses to recieve the petition in person, or even speak with their representative. Do you see the difference?
Well, it's actually called exaggeration for effect... but to make it more real, let's flip that scenario of yours around: 300,000 people in America who belong to a group called the Southern Baptist Coalition decide that their pet peeve is that the President of the USA hasn't publicly endorsed "Intelligent Design" as a viable alternate to evolutionary theory; The Rev. Pat Robertson visits the white house with a petition, and demands an audience with the president to discuss this issue. The president grants the audience, sits down and takes some photos with the reverend, and then makes remarks to the press about how ID is a valid theory, just like evolution
"You are incapable of judging me on merit, but can be swayed by a mere piece of fabric, therefore I have no alternative but to do so."
No, it's more like: "Since we've only got 30 minutes together, and my message is important, I care enough about that message to make sure that I don't distract you with my shabby clothing and unkempt appearance."
When I stop dressing up, it means I am finally back among people I respect and take seriously.
Ah, so you're the sort of person who would show up to your sister's wedding in shorts and a stained t-shirt? Or meet your girlfriend's/boyfriend's family in your underwear? Or go to your grandmother's funeral in a track suit? After all, these people should judge you on your merits as a person, not by the fact that you look like a homeless derelict with no concept of what constitutes appropriate attire for an occasion, right?
I didn't disagree with any of what you said. I pointed out that societies rules are usually defined by the group with authority. All those cases you list merely reinforce what I was saying, that there is more than one culture, the culture of the suit. I then demonstrated that when there is a clash of cultures often those who wear suits think thier culture takes precedent when it does not.
Well, let me make myself crystal clear, then: IN THIS CASE, given that RMS is from America, where a suit is most definitely appropriate attire for a formal business meeting, and that the French PM is also from a country where a suit is most definitely appropriate attire for a formal business meeting, the culture of the suit absolutely takes precedence. If you want to be taken seriously, and have someone listen to your case, you do not dress or behave in such a manner that it distracts from the gravity of your statement.
Here is the cause of your misunderstanding. When meeting a servant of the public on a rights issue, you should be able to wear what you damn well please. THEY are the servant, you are the one in authority.
And here is the root of your pseudo-egalitarian snobbery: You feel that it's not necessary to show respect for someone who's "the servant". Interesting.
I'd also like to point out that they are not "your" servant, they are the servant of "the public". The public is the 60-some-odd million people of France, of which the 165,000 people who signed RMS' petition is a fraction of a percent... when you serve 60 million people, do you pay attention to the 59.8 million people who didn't sign the petition, or the 165,000 who signed it? This does not mean that RMS is wrong... but it's kind of like me going to the Super Bowl, and demanding to see the Yankees & Red Sox play a game -- "sure, all those other people bought a ticket to see football, but I HAVE A TICKET TOO, so I'll watch whatever goddamn sporting event I please!"
This is not an important political figure, this is a political figure NOT doing his job who is due for a darn good telling off by the people with give the money and authority, and when the boss comes round to tell me I need to pull my finger out I don't dictate to him what he can and cant wear.
See above. This is a political figure who represents (for good or ill) the 60+ million citizens of France. He cannot reasonably be expected to make time for a meeting with every crusader or crackpot who wants to have one. Like it or not, he *is* an important political figure -- he may still be "servant of the public" in that role, but he represents 60 million citizens, of which less than 1% signed that petition RMS showed up with. So who gets priority? The millions of people in France who are calling out for some way of putting all the disaffected youth to work so they'll stop rioting and burning shit, or the 165,000 people who were comfortable enough and secure enough to be worried about DRM, led by a shabby-looking American known for his dogmatic ideas and eccentric nature?
He may be a servant of the public, but: 1) RMS is NOT a French citizen, at least insofar as I'm aware; 2) The people that RMS & his 2 colleagues showed up to represent are a fraction of 1 percent of the population of France. As somebody pointed out in another post, people who declare themselves of the "Jedi Knight" religion in England represent 0.7% of the population there... does that mean that a bunch of people dressed up in cloaks with light sabers (after all, that is *their* formal attire) can walk up to 10 Downing Street and demand an audience with Tony Blair so that they can discuss a great disturbance in The Force? And more to the point, do you think they would be taken seriously by the "mainstream" (i.e., the majority of the remaining 99.3% of the population) if they did so?
Thats a blanket statement which is not true. You turn up at physics conference in a suit and tie and don't have the publications to back up your willingness to buck the accepted social norm you will be less well recieved than someone in shirt sleaves. Same goes for other cultures where the suit is not King, but seen as overly formal, uncomfortable or impractical.
Actually, *what he said* was an entirely accurate statement: "People are taken MORE SERIOUSLY in a suit" -- he didn't say that they are "taken seriously when wearing a suit" -- they are taken "more seriously" than they would otherwise be taken. He also didn't claim that a suit lends someone the weight of credibility that is not warranted by their character, achievements, and intellect. What it boils down to is that the simple act of dressing up in a formal manner indicates to your audience that you care about the impression you're making on them. This will, quite rightly so, make them take you MORE seriously than if you showed up looking like you just rolled out of bed. In much the same way, would you take somebody seriously if they wrote you an email like this:
D00D, u r such a n00b LOL! RMS is teh R0x0Rz, DRM is teh suk! OMFG! WTF!!? ROTFL!?!?!
What a suit is not is the defacto respected attire for all of the groups in society. Academics retain their own respected attire. Socialites have an even more formal attire than business people. Blue collar workers have thier own respected attire. None of the above would consider a suit adequate.
This pseudo-egalitarian relativism is ridiculous. Go ask one of your mythical blue collar mechanics if they'd get dressed in their grease-stained coveralls & shit-kickers to attend their daughter's wedding. Or, go ask one of your socialites if they'd get dressed in tophat & tails to spend the day on the beach. You dress appropriate to the event. And when meeting with a head of state, the appropriate dress for the event is MOST CERTAINLY NOT whatever your culture defines as "sloppy business casual." Just as a $5000 Armani suit is not suitable for operating a lathe in a machine shop, a $50 outfit that is approaching a state of threadbare shabbiness is not the appropriate attire for meeting an important political figure.
No, they want people who can make managers feel good.
And does it have to be one or the other? The most successful developers I work with are those people who can both: 1) turn in a solid technical performance; and 2) interact with management in a constructive, and collaborative way.
Doing a good, professional job is well down the list of things that companies want. Far more important are things like: does not make their manager feel stupid,
If you make the guy or gal who has hiring / firing power over you feel stupid, then that's your risk. There are constructive & effective ways to approach a manager to tell them their decision is stupid without coming out and saying, "You're a goddamned idiot."
does good work in such a way that their manager can take credit for it; does not point out stupid management decisions to management's face; does not point out how poor policy decisions have created a situation that is now being solved by implementing even worse policy decisions because they waste resources on short-term band-aid solutions rather than invest resources in longer-term corrective action; and so on.
I know this is Slashdot, and as such, it's a place where bitter tech geeks will congregate to commiserate, but what you've just stated above is an admission that you have no ability to relate to someone in a position of authority, and explain things without being a confrontational boor. If you want to get things done, you need to learn to speak the language of management, and demonstrate for them that a decision is going to cost more in the long run, despite the seemingly "cheap & dirty" nature of what they want. Management may not care about the "technically superior" or "technically elegant" solution you want to implement... but if you can demonstrate that there's a real bottom-line benefit to doing things that way, 90% of the time, they will sit up and listen.
And if they say, "Absolutely not, we can't do it that way due to legal / time / money constraints," then you have a choice: 1) suck it up and do the job as best you can with the time & materials provided; or 2) Resign and take your chances somewhere else.
Personally, I'm okay with providing an 80% solution if I've made it clear to my leadership that it *is* an 80% solution, and there are risks & downsides associated with it. As a developer, it's not my job to set policy, it's my job to advise & provide input.
If 1 organization within a society != 1 wheat plant in a field, then what does it equal? If you insist it is not a monoculture model, then what it is it? Software engineer with biotechnologist training, you must have a label and a criteria to match that distinguishes the two.
Yeah, and that label would be "a group of individual wheat plants." Computers run operating systems. Your server closet is simply a handy collection of computers running operating systems. Your engineering organization is -- from a computing perspective -- a collection of individual computers running an operating system, or several operating systems. A collection of objects should not be confused with the objects themselves. And in the computer monoculture model, lumping together a bunch of computers under the term "organization" does nothing to change the fundamental principles.
I'd also like to point out that what I have, in fact, stated is simply that the monoculture model, and the underlying presumption that diversity of operating systems is a valid way to make a network of computers more secure & robust is horrendously insufficient. Comparing computer networks to the agricultural practice of monoculture fails for reasons I've already noted, and which you've not addressed. Asserting that diversity in operating systems will make for a more robust network also fails, for reasons I've noted, most notably, the simple fact of the interdependence of networked machines.
You seem to be stating that, as long as various organizations standardize on various operating systems, then you've eliminated most of the risk, and that fails as well, for the simple reason of interdependence. For sake of argument, let's say that:
UPS standardizes on a Windows platform;
Amazon standardizes on Linux
and then you attempt to order some stuff using a Mac system;
Verizon services both of their data centers, and your DSL line, and uses Solaris;
Eliminate any one of those operating systems & shut down the company running that OS for a few days. How do you propose to order something, and expect timely delivery? Answer: You don't.
Organizations are interdependent, networked computers are interdependent, and the monoculture model's solution of diversification does nothing to address that fact. Thank you for playing.
In computer science, a monoculture is any computer system which is nearly universally used. This concept is significant when discussing computer security and viruses. In particular, Dan Geer has argued that Microsoft is a monoculture, since a striking majority of the overall number of computers connected to the Internet are workstations and servers running versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, many of which are vulnerable to same attacks.
My analogy of 1 computer == 1 wheat plant in a field is exactly correct. A monoculture of computers is a collection of computers that all (or almost all) run the same operating system, in much the same way that a monoculture in a field consists of millions of individual genetically identical plants.
I actually did RTFA, and as a software engineer who was trained as a biotechnologist, I actually know at least a little bit about computers, genetics, and disease. But you feel free to try again if you have something valuable to add, instead of trying to ignore my point by redefining the terms being used.
My point remains unaddressed, at least by you. In an interdependent network, increasing diversity does little to mitigate the extent of damage, because even systems that aren't affected directly by the virus / worm will operate with reduced capacity because services provided by affected systems are unavailable. Yes, diversity can help mitigate the extent of the damage, but that increased diversity comes with an increased cost in terms of administrative hassle & overhead. While it may be a nice buzz phrase, simply parroting "monoculture bad, diversity good!" does nothing to address these trade-offs.
Wal-Mart is hardly an example to hold up in admiration.
I'd actually beg to differ with that statement in a lot of cases. But anyway, Wal Mart was chosen as an example simply because their scale, and their supply chain management practices, are excellent examples of how the economies of scale can reduce costs to consumer. When you buy by the case, you pay more per unit than when you buy by the truckload. It's the same principle that drives "bulk" stores such as BJs, Costco, and Sam's Club. Wal Mart didn't "invent" economies of scale, but they are a great example of how applying them can reduce costs.
Economies of scale are not infinite,
Nobody claimed they were. If they were, Wal Mart would be the only supplier of all consumer goods, and they would give everything away free. Yes, they use their size to pressure suppliers into reducing prices... but Wal Mart is also not stupid enough that they're going to put all of their suppliers out of business. And Wal-Mart politics aside, economies of scale derived from monoculture practices are one of the few reasons modern agriculture survives as a break-even proposition. The difference between Wal-Mart's $5.89 bottle of detergent, and Mom&Pop's grocery's $6.19 bottle of detergent really *is* that crucial when you get into the agricultural model -- it's the difference between breaking even (or maybe making a small profit), and going bankrupt and having condos built where your farm used to be.
you use a very basic biologic organism to shoot holes in Dan's monoculture theory.
He's the one who chose an agricultural term to expound on his theory, not me. I'm pointing out the dissimilarity between a true biological monoculture (in which each individual in the population is independent, and does not depend upon or rely upon the other individuals in any appreciable way for survival), and his concept of a computing monoculture. Yes, lots of people run Windows. No argument there. Yes, that makes most of those systems vulnerable to the same exploits. No argument there. At this point, the monoculture analogy still works.
But it lacks in huge ways when you take into account the interconnected nature of computers today. If a server hosting a mission critical service goes down, then all of the clients of that service WILL be affected, regardless of their particular platform. If (for example) your Windows DNS servers & desktops go down, you might be able to still use your Linux or Mac desktops, but they will do so at a degraded efficiency, and it's possible that they will still be essentially unusable for a large majority of your population. This is something that "diversity" in any form cannot prevent.
In some ways the multiple stalks of wheat are dependent upon one another for reproduction.
Actually no, they aren't. The stalks of wheat are harvested, they are not allowed to reproduce in the farmer's field. The big agricultural concerns have a diverse culture of wheat strains which they raise to produce the seed to sell to farmers. If I walk into a wheat field, and rip out three or four stalks of wheat, the rest of that field continues growing, and being wheaty, without so much as a blip. If I go into your server closet, and rip out a few power cords to take a few of your systems down, you'd notice that little event really quickly.
Also, if you expand your analysis to more complex organisms the interdependence of organisms upon one another continues to hold up.
Yes... and we're all pretty roundly F'ed if a disease comes along that wipes out, for example, all the doctors in the world, or all the engineers, or all the farmers, or all the mechanics. That interdependence of complex organisms is exactly why I'm saying the monoculture theory doesn't really hold up that well. Having a diverse ecology does NOT prevent problems, the only thing it can do is help to mitigate the impact in a group of independent individuals. I don't care how diverse New York City is, if every doctor in the city dropped dead tomorrow, then the rest of the city would goddamn well notice it.
The monoculture theory works if your population is not interdependent... if it is interdependent, then diversity versus monoculture is not a simple "4 legs good, 2 legs bad" proposition.
You are presuming that each "stalk" is a computer within an organization. The analogy works just fine where each "stalk" is a seperate grouping of computers - be it an entire corporatation, a division within the corp or just the server room versus the office area.
Ah, so we're redefining the term "monoculture" to mean something else now? In the analogy to a wheat field, 1 plant == 1 computer. And while your Mac computer may continue to work if all the Windows systems in the world go down, you STILL lose a great deal of the usefulness of that computer, simply because it relies on (or you rely on) stuff that is housed on those computers that are affected. The interconnected nature of computing today makes it very difficult for diversity to provide you with any sort of "herd immunity."
Nobody is arguing that there are not tradeoffs between standardizing and being diverse. Diverse platforms can mean that your organization MAY limp along, at a reduced capacity, if 30% of the computers in the world go down. But diversity comes with an administrative cost to that organization, and in a lot of organizations, a lot of very smart people have come to the conclusion that it's cheaper to simply secure your systems and do contingency planning than to try and support, day in and day out, a broad range of diverse operating systems that will each come with their own administrative hassles & issues.
You seem to be assuming that even with diverse OSes, some or all mission-critical services would still be limited to one OS platform.
And do you think it's even remotely likely that -- for example -- a company would choose to implement DNS using multiple platforms? Half your DNS servers Windows, half Linux? You've never worked for a corporate IT department, have you? This suggestion, even taken at its ludicrous face value, fails to address economies of scale that would be lost to the organization by having to support mission-critical servers running multiple OS'es that don't always play well together.
Too, just because "the" mailserver was down, say, doesn't mean that people on the OSes couldn't be creating documents, crunching numbers, doing database queries, playing Solitaire.
And again -- have you ever worked in a corporate environment? Creating documents often is not done out of whole cloth, and requires documents on networked drives, access to web sites, email communication with peers, customers, vendors, etc. Yes, it's possible that people could create documents, or crunch numbers, or do database queries, but the point is, when part of a networked environment goes down, especially in a highly interconnected office setting, all of the nodes on that network suffer a reduction in performance.
I also think that the OP is very mistaken concerning "the cost to society". One company might find a monoculture cheaper, but different companies implementing different OSes wouldn't cost society one bit more, and in terms of avoided loss of productivity due to the diversity, societ would thus save money via OS diversity.
But seriously -- "not cost society one bit more?" You don't think that operating costs for a company contribute directly to the bottom line prices it's able to offer to consumers? Read about WalMart sometime, and tell me that their low prices are *anything* but a function of lower operating costs achieved by economies of scale. Your claim that "society would THUS SAVE MONEY" via OS diversity doesn't hold water -- if it did, companies would be moving to diverse platforms in order to reduce their operating costs. Instead, in companies such as the one I work for, they've embarked on a multi-year program of standardizing OS and hardware combinations across tens of thousands of desktops, laptops, and servers.
Just because you say that biological organisms and "viruses" don't work the same way, doesn't make it a valid thesis. If you can't explain how, for the purposes of the discussion, the two differ, then you are really just exposing your inate idiocy.
I'll help him out here. In epidemiological terms, a monoculture is susceptible to widespread, possibly devastating infection because the members of that population all share similar genetic makeup and background. A single variant of a particular grain crop, which is planted over thousands of acres, with an identical genetic makeup would be an example of a biological monoculture. Now, if a disease comes along that affects ONE of those plants, *every* plant in the thousands of acres you've planted is susceptible, and probably will be affected. In short, monoculture is the practice of putting all your eggs in one basket.
Now with that in mind, diversity does not prevent the disease from affecting some of your crop, it simply mitigates the impact of the disease to your overall crop -- instead of losing 100% of your crop to some sort of wheat blight, you lose 20%, instead... only the susceptible plants die. The problem with this is, in order to increase the diversity of your crop, you have to spend the time, effort, and money sacrificing the economy of scale that you can achieve by planting thousands of acres with the same genetic variant. 1 strain == same fertilizers, same maintenance & upkeep, same planting & tilling requirements; More strains require variations of the fertilizer mix, upkeep, planting & tilling, and so you can't fertilizer in bulk... you can't apply fertilizer using a big sprayer that covers your whole field... you can't plant all your seeds at once, since some strains require different planting depths & intervals... so the farmers decide that the tradeoff between the risk of complete crop destruction, versus the costs of diversity, are worth the risk, and create monocultures in their fields.
So far, we're on a close parallel. But as you look deeper, the analogy fails, and in spectacular fashion, because of this simple reason: In a field of wheat, wheat stalk #1 does not depend, in any appreciable way, on stalks #2, 3, 4, 5,... , n -- each plant is a self-contained entity... if one stalk of wheat dies over here, the other stalks continue growing, completely oblivious to the death of the first.
Now, let's look at an IT example... let's say you have a 4-way even split (25% apiece) between Mac OS, Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and Windows in your enterprise. Now, I knock 25% of your systems offline via an exploit in one of those operating systems. How has diversity helped you? Sure, the other 75% of your systems are up, but you're probably missing critical services (DNS? LDAP? Web Services? Web SERVERS? Network drives? Domain Controllers? NIS masters?) that are hurting even the "unaffected" 75% of your systems.
So what does that diversity get you, in business terms? Very few reduced risks (sure, 75% of your systems may not be directly affected by the worm, but if 100% of your systems are unable to be used effectively to get work done, that diversity has gotten you absolutely nowhere.), and quite a lot of extra cost: the sacrificed economies of scale you can achieve by standardizing on a particular technology "stack", and the overhead of managing all the varieties of O/S and making them play nice together. And please, don't even try to claim that managing 100 Linux, 100 Windows, 100 Unix, and 100 Mac OS systems under one roof would be equivalent or less work than managing 400 of *one* variety.
I absolutely agree. And this is exactly the problem with a lot of the protests that happen today -- they turn into shrill, partisan name-calling conventions, and the only thing they're remembered for is that "Damn, those kooks really effed up traffic today, didn't they?"
I think they're seriously underestimating the capability of people to understand, and care about, issues that affect them. What hasn't been made clear is HOW, exactly, DRM affects them. And you won't get that out on a placard. "DRM is bad because you won't be able to listen to your music!" makes for a shitty slogan -- the response of the average consumer is, "But my iPod (or whatever) works just fine, and I can burn CDs, and listen to my ipod anywhere I want."
This really is a "long-term" type of issue, and as such, it's not really effective to go out there with a placard and wear a cute costume. If you want to educate people, start finding ways to drive people to your web site, where you have a 2-page explanation in clear terms of how DRM can (and will) harm consumers. Remember, for the average user:
DRM is a meaningless acronym.
DMCA is a meaningless acronym.
A Hazmat suit is likely to bring thoughts to mind like, "Holy shit, did somebody blow up a dirty bomb or release a bioweapon?" NOT... "WOW, my iTunes songs may not work properly in the future because of copy protection technologies."
There's lots of smart marketing and advertising people out there... I'm sure somebody could put together a 30-second commercial that would be dramatic & effective. I'd imagine ending a commercial fading out to a black screen which simply says: "Digital Rights Management: Bad for consumers. Bad for music. Visit EFF.org today to find out how you can make your voice heard.", while the end of Don McLean's "American Pie" plays: "The day... the music... died..." If you make it topical & relevant, people will notice, and once you start defining the issue as more than "a sound bite by some long-haired hippy in a hazmat suit," it's a lot harder to dismiss.
And if the company is "underpaying" taxes -- illegally -- then by all means, the company should be taken to task by the state. If the company is "underpaying" taxes, as defined by "paying less in taxes than they consume in services," then the government of New York should man up and go ahead and raise taxes & revoke the tax breaks it's given to companies. If NYS / NYC is actually providing valuable services, the company will continue to locate there, and pay the taxes... if the perceived value of the services isn't worth it, then perhaps NYC will end up losing a lot of businesses. Either way, I fail to see how it's the *telecommuters* job to put to rights the disparity you see between production and consumption.
So should New York also be able to tax out-of-state residents for making phone calls to NYC residents?
I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm really trying to understand your point. But I don't see how telecommuting is "using NYC's resources" any more so than any other phone call... and the receiving lines are paid for New York companies, and taxed by New York... what service am I using that isn't being paid for by the people on the receiving end?
I'm desperately trying to understand your point, and you seem to be claiming that the government granting tax breaks will somehow lead us to some sort of anarchic dark age. And if that's the case, then why don't the residents of NYC simply demand that New York NOT give tax breaks to companies?
I guess my intent was to suggest that since for-profit interests are now employing key developers of some open source projects, they might steer their efforts to those areas that have the greatest dollar benefit to the company.
Perhaps... but I don't see that as a necessarily bad or detrimental thing to open source -- if you don't like the direction a project is going, you have the source... you're free to fork the project and go in a direction you are more comfortable with. Might that slow down innovation? Perhaps... but I think having corporate R&D money being spent supporting developers who were previously developing software "for fun" can only be a net win for the FOSS community. Look at it this way -- is it bad that RedHat, Novell, IBM, and other companies are spending money on supporting Linux? If your concern is "corporate money" in the general sense, then they all belong out of the picture... and I don't think that would be a "good thing". If your concern is "Microsoft's money", then I fail to see how Microsoft motivated any more by self-interest & profit margins than IBM, RedHat, Novell, and so on, to the extent that that money is put into helping open source projects use Windows, and not generating "Linux will kill your grandmother" FUD...
Dollars are a new (or perhaps alternate) incentive in the development of open source software than maybe the reliably altruistic motivations of many open source developers in years past.
An alternate source, yes... but the notion of generosity & the notions of self-interest aren't necessarily incompatible. Granted, no company is going to throw money at a proposition it doesn't think it can profit from... but let's say that IBM decides to put a few Eclipse developers on their payroll, and pay them to continue working on their RAD/WSAD product, and contribute back to Eclipse. Those developers will still have the "free time" they used to donate to working on Eclipse, plus they're being paid to continue developing it... I don't see how anybody loses in this scenario:
Several developers get to make a living doing something they enjoy, working on a project they want to support
IBM gets new features it wants added, and maybe gets some say in the general architectural direction of the Eclipse IDE, and makes cash selling that product (in the form of their RAD/WSAD studio) to corporate customers
Anybody who doesn't like the way IBM is steering the project is welcome to grab the code, and start developing it in a way that they like.
open source eliminates the barriers to entry -- you don't need to be IBM to build off of the Eclipse framework. And you're free to take it in any direction you want, and if your ideas are good, they will win support in the user world.
Since dollars and altruism rarely lead to any special alignment of purpose, isn't it reasonable to deduce that monetary incentives may lead to changes in the direction of open source projects, indeed in the innovations realized at the hands of open source developers who, in years past, were motivated only by their desire to contribute to a project they believed in?
Again, I don't see that corporate self-interest & open source are necessarily mutually exclusive. We all need to make a living... and if somebody's going to pay you well to work on a project you enjoy & believe in, well... that's a pretty good deal. I'd take it in a second. You may lose some autonomy to take the project wherever you want to take it, but you're welcome to work on those features in your "spare time", just like you used to before you got hired...
I suspect that if a yardstick could reliable measure the amount and direction of innovation in an open source project, the injection of corporate oversight could not be without measurable impact.
I can't disagree with you on that point -- I just don't think it necessarily translates to a negative impact.
How, given the nature of Open Source & the GPL, do you envision the "strangling of innovation" happening?
Will people stop having free time to work on Open Source projects? Probably not.
Can Company X stop other people from taking the code and forking it if they don't want to use Company X's version of the open-sourced code? Um... no, not so much...
The only way innovation can be stifled in the Open Source area is if people lose interest in innovating. If my company paid me a salary to develop software, and then they told me, "Hey, we think we can get some additional leverage out of this code by releasing it to open source and getting community contributions... what do you think," I'd be pleased as punch.
I don't see how Microsoft, or any other company, is going to "stifle innovation", since the source code is there, the problems are there to be solved, and anybody who wants to can grab a copy of the source code, solve the problem, and innovate the shit out things... if it were a closed-source proprietary program, then yes... they could do that -- buy the company, and then fire all the developers. But once that source code is free, how can they stop people?
This is a fundamental aspect of FOSS that will force Microsoft to compete on the merits of their software, rather than on the size of their bank account. And that's good for all of us -- Microsoft writes better software as a result, and perhaps even gets to second base with Open Source, rather than just flirting.
Slashdot Mirror
Adjustments I would make (bearing in mind that I am NOT a financial advisor):
Great point. We like to pitch this sort of debate in tersm of this vast, sweeping, epic battle, as if we're Hector battling Achilles at the gates of Troy. And while the grandiose imagery makes for a great soundbite, and you can feel *really* cool, it makes you (and your issue) a lot easier to dismiss as "some whacko commie with an agenda you want to force on other people." The most effective evangelism and activism is local -- work on convincing people you know, and who know you as a friendly, smiling face from the family gatherings who happens to know a lot about computers.
To give an example, not specific to DRM, but still in the vein of educating a group of people who are largely unaware of the fine details of how computers work...
About 2 weeks ago, my parents forwarded along one of those emails that reads like: "Caution your hard drive will be absolutely destroyed by a monster virus if you try to power it on on July 4. Stay off the internet, and don't type ANYTHING on your keyboard for three days preceding July 4th, and 2 days after! It's so dangerous that the virus will actually infect YOU, too!" This went out to a slew of their friends and family, because they didn't know better... they thought they were being helpful.
I sent an email in reply, explaining that this particular threat was a hoax, and then went on to say that, "Even if this is a fake, there are a lot of other nasties out there, and here's some stuff you can do about those threats..." with standard antivirus / antispyware advice -- get a firewall; secure your wireless network; turn on automatic updates; use firefox instead of ie; make sure your windows system has antivirus running; make sure you've downloaded & applied critical updates from Microsoft; investigate alternative operating systems if you're in the market for a new computer. Stuff like that -- not preaching, not screaming, just giving helpful advice about an issue that actually impacts my parents and their friends.
The net result is that, since I sent that email, I've received three responses from friends of my parents; two of them asked for more information about Firefox, and told me they were interested in trying it out; The other response asked if I'd be willing to demo my Mac system to them sometime, and talk about what they might need to do to convert. So by simply sending that one email at a time when people were *ready* to hear the message, I've helped to change the computer usage habits of at least three people. Even if they don't become die-hard Firefox evangelists, you can be sure that the next time they're talking to a friend over a round of golf, and that friend complains about how their computer got pwned by the latest IE exploit, they'll say, "Gee, you should use this um... um... BurningDog? AshyMutt? Firefox! That's the name... browser my friend's kid told me about. It works pretty well, and I haven't had any problems."
Yes, sometimes it really *is* that simple. People are reasonable... if you can explain things to them in clear terms, and make it clear to them *why* they should be concerned or take action, then most of the time, they will. To the grandparent poster who said the only alternative is to support illegal hackers, because we have no voice... try opening your mouth. You might be surprised at how effective it can be.
That's right... Apple was going to go from 2.5% marketshare, and roar all the way up to a stratospheric 5%. Look out Dell, IBM, and HP...
In any manufacturing operation, some bad units will be turned out. Sometimes people get unlucky and get the bad unit. I took a look at the link you posted... and I'm wondering how 31 unique posters -- some of whom are simply providing advice, not reporting a swollen battery -- is indicative of some sort of wide-spread quality issue?
But with all that said, I intend to apply a Creative Commons license to ALL of *my* TPS reports, spreadsheets, and customer presentations that, on a good day, 6 people in the world actually care about.
Mash that up, bitches!
Well, technically, they are right -- Firefox "just works" on my mini... as long as you define "just working" as "just [barely] working"... It's actually not so bad unless I try opening multiple tabs... then the memory usage spikes big time.
I really do like Firefox most of the time, but a VoIP extension? Yawn. I have skype already if I need it. I have a cell phone already if I need it. I'd rather see all that effort go into making Firefox as responsive and speedy as Opera.
Given that the global market share for Apple's systems is ~2% (maybe 2 - 3% today?), I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that a very small percentage of users out there are using Safari. Why?
I have a Mac Mini at home. One of the first things I did when I brought it home was to install Firefox & Opera on it, and make FF my default browser. I use Firefox on Windows at work, and simply like having a consistent application functionality to use across computers -- plus I have a set of FF extensions that I use constantly. I'm sure I'm not the ONLY person who has a Mac and who also doesn't use Safari.
While it may not be the "less than 1%" figure you're incensed about, it *is* a pretty small number, compared to IE & Firefox. If I had to estimate, I'd guess somewhere around 2-3% of the general population, at maximum, are Safari users.
Yes, the people of France *have* chosen someone to represent them: His title is, roughly translated, the Prime Minister of France. I think what you really meant to say was, "Since DRM is an issue that I, professionalfurryele, think is important, anybody who tries any publicity stunt to bring it to the attention of government officials should be heard." Congratulations, you're the audience for whom RMS' publicity whoring paid off: the segment of the people who know a bit about the DRM issue, and who think cheap publicity is better than substantive discussion.
And if you go back and, you know, READ what I wrote, you'll see that what I said about RMS being from America has nothing to do with the fact that some people in France have asked him to represent them. What I said, in context, was that RMS was from America, where the "culture of the suit" is definitely the "expected" formal business attire, and the PM of France is from France, where the culture of the suit is, again, the "expected" formal business attire. Given that, it is reasonable to expect that somebody conducting formal business with the head of state would dress in whatever their cultures dictate is formal business attire -- and in this specific case, the French PM and RMS should both show a little respect for one another and dress accordingly. And I'll make a bet that the French PM didn't wear shorts and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt to work that day.
So the French PM has more hours in the day than anybody else? When you are doing ANY job, no matter how important or how trivial, you have to prioritize your work. And how do you prioritize your tasks if you are the elected representative of some large portion of your population? RIGHT... by spending your time focusing on the issues that are important to large segments of your population... if RMS & the FSF in France couldn't come up with enough signatures to even equal 1% of the population, then the PM was perfectly justified in assuming that it wasn't a topic that MOST people in France would really care about, or care to have him spend his time on. Call it a false dichotomy if you wish, but you're wrong to. When you're serving a large constituency, you cannot physically cater to the whims and desires of every group of people. There aren't enough hours in the day.
Well, it's actually called exaggeration for effect... but to make it more real, let's flip that scenario of yours around: 300,000 people in America who belong to a group called the Southern Baptist Coalition decide that their pet peeve is that the President of the USA hasn't publicly endorsed "Intelligent Design" as a viable alternate to evolutionary theory; The Rev. Pat Robertson visits the white house with a petition, and demands an audience with the president to discuss this issue. The president grants the audience, sits down and takes some photos with the reverend, and then makes remarks to the press about how ID is a valid theory, just like evolution
Ah, so you're the sort of person who would show up to your sister's wedding in shorts and a stained t-shirt? Or meet your girlfriend's/boyfriend's family in your underwear? Or go to your grandmother's funeral in a track suit? After all, these people should judge you on your merits as a person, not by the fact that you look like a homeless derelict with no concept of what constitutes appropriate attire for an occasion, right?
And here is the root of your pseudo-egalitarian snobbery: You feel that it's not necessary to show respect for someone who's "the servant". Interesting.
I'd also like to point out that they are not "your" servant, they are the servant of "the public". The public is the 60-some-odd million people of France, of which the 165,000 people who signed RMS' petition is a fraction of a percent... when you serve 60 million people, do you pay attention to the 59.8 million people who didn't sign the petition, or the 165,000 who signed it? This does not mean that RMS is wrong... but it's kind of like me going to the Super Bowl, and demanding to see the Yankees & Red Sox play a game -- "sure, all those other people bought a ticket to see football, but I HAVE A TICKET TOO, so I'll watch whatever goddamn sporting event I please!"
See above. This is a political figure who represents (for good or ill) the 60+ million citizens of France. He cannot reasonably be expected to make time for a meeting with every crusader or crackpot who wants to have one. Like it or not, he *is* an important political figure -- he may still be "servant of the public" in that role, but he represents 60 million citizens, of which less than 1% signed that petition RMS showed up with. So who gets priority? The millions of people in France who are calling out for some way of putting all the disaffected youth to work so they'll stop rioting and burning shit, or the 165,000 people who were comfortable enough and secure enough to be worried about DRM, led by a shabby-looking American known for his dogmatic ideas and eccentric nature?
He may be a servant of the public, but: 1) RMS is NOT a French citizen, at least insofar as I'm aware; 2) The people that RMS & his 2 colleagues showed up to represent are a fraction of 1 percent of the population of France. As somebody pointed out in another post, people who declare themselves of the "Jedi Knight" religion in England represent 0.7% of the population there... does that mean that a bunch of people dressed up in cloaks with light sabers (after all, that is *their* formal attire) can walk up to 10 Downing Street and demand an audience with Tony Blair so that they can discuss a great disturbance in The Force? And more to the point, do you think they would be taken seriously by the "mainstream" (i.e., the majority of the remaining 99.3% of the population) if they did so?
D00D, u r such a n00b LOL! RMS is teh R0x0Rz, DRM is teh suk! OMFG! WTF!!? ROTFL!?!?!
This pseudo-egalitarian relativism is ridiculous. Go ask one of your mythical blue collar mechanics if they'd get dressed in their grease-stained coveralls & shit-kickers to attend their daughter's wedding. Or, go ask one of your socialites if they'd get dressed in tophat & tails to spend the day on the beach. You dress appropriate to the event. And when meeting with a head of state, the appropriate dress for the event is MOST CERTAINLY NOT whatever your culture defines as "sloppy business casual." Just as a $5000 Armani suit is not suitable for operating a lathe in a machine shop, a $50 outfit that is approaching a state of threadbare shabbiness is not the appropriate attire for meeting an important political figure.
No, they want people who can make managers feel good.
And does it have to be one or the other? The most successful developers I work with are those people who can both: 1) turn in a solid technical performance; and 2) interact with management in a constructive, and collaborative way.
Doing a good, professional job is well down the list of things that companies want. Far more important are things like: does not make their manager feel stupid,
If you make the guy or gal who has hiring / firing power over you feel stupid, then that's your risk. There are constructive & effective ways to approach a manager to tell them their decision is stupid without coming out and saying, "You're a goddamned idiot."
does good work in such a way that their manager can take credit for it; does not point out stupid management decisions to management's face; does not point out how poor policy decisions have created a situation that is now being solved by implementing even worse policy decisions because they waste resources on short-term band-aid solutions rather than invest resources in longer-term corrective action; and so on.
I know this is Slashdot, and as such, it's a place where bitter tech geeks will congregate to commiserate, but what you've just stated above is an admission that you have no ability to relate to someone in a position of authority, and explain things without being a confrontational boor. If you want to get things done, you need to learn to speak the language of management, and demonstrate for them that a decision is going to cost more in the long run, despite the seemingly "cheap & dirty" nature of what they want. Management may not care about the "technically superior" or "technically elegant" solution you want to implement... but if you can demonstrate that there's a real bottom-line benefit to doing things that way, 90% of the time, they will sit up and listen.
And if they say, "Absolutely not, we can't do it that way due to legal / time / money constraints," then you have a choice: 1) suck it up and do the job as best you can with the time & materials provided; or 2) Resign and take your chances somewhere else.
Personally, I'm okay with providing an 80% solution if I've made it clear to my leadership that it *is* an 80% solution, and there are risks & downsides associated with it. As a developer, it's not my job to set policy, it's my job to advise & provide input.
Yeah, and that label would be "a group of individual wheat plants." Computers run operating systems. Your server closet is simply a handy collection of computers running operating systems. Your engineering organization is -- from a computing perspective -- a collection of individual computers running an operating system, or several operating systems. A collection of objects should not be confused with the objects themselves. And in the computer monoculture model, lumping together a bunch of computers under the term "organization" does nothing to change the fundamental principles.
I'd also like to point out that what I have, in fact, stated is simply that the monoculture model, and the underlying presumption that diversity of operating systems is a valid way to make a network of computers more secure & robust is horrendously insufficient. Comparing computer networks to the agricultural practice of monoculture fails for reasons I've already noted, and which you've not addressed. Asserting that diversity in operating systems will make for a more robust network also fails, for reasons I've noted, most notably, the simple fact of the interdependence of networked machines.
You seem to be stating that, as long as various organizations standardize on various operating systems, then you've eliminated most of the risk, and that fails as well, for the simple reason of interdependence. For sake of argument, let's say that:
- UPS standardizes on a Windows platform;
- Amazon standardizes on Linux
- and then you attempt to order some stuff using a Mac system;
- Verizon services both of their data centers, and your DSL line, and uses Solaris;
Eliminate any one of those operating systems & shut down the company running that OS for a few days. How do you propose to order something, and expect timely delivery? Answer: You don't.Organizations are interdependent, networked computers are interdependent, and the monoculture model's solution of diversification does nothing to address that fact. Thank you for playing.
My analogy of 1 computer == 1 wheat plant in a field is exactly correct. A monoculture of computers is a collection of computers that all (or almost all) run the same operating system, in much the same way that a monoculture in a field consists of millions of individual genetically identical plants.
I actually did RTFA, and as a software engineer who was trained as a biotechnologist, I actually know at least a little bit about computers, genetics, and disease. But you feel free to try again if you have something valuable to add, instead of trying to ignore my point by redefining the terms being used.
My point remains unaddressed, at least by you. In an interdependent network, increasing diversity does little to mitigate the extent of damage, because even systems that aren't affected directly by the virus / worm will operate with reduced capacity because services provided by affected systems are unavailable. Yes, diversity can help mitigate the extent of the damage, but that increased diversity comes with an increased cost in terms of administrative hassle & overhead. While it may be a nice buzz phrase, simply parroting "monoculture bad, diversity good!" does nothing to address these trade-offs.
Wal-Mart is hardly an example to hold up in admiration.
I'd actually beg to differ with that statement in a lot of cases. But anyway, Wal Mart was chosen as an example simply because their scale, and their supply chain management practices, are excellent examples of how the economies of scale can reduce costs to consumer. When you buy by the case, you pay more per unit than when you buy by the truckload. It's the same principle that drives "bulk" stores such as BJs, Costco, and Sam's Club. Wal Mart didn't "invent" economies of scale, but they are a great example of how applying them can reduce costs.
Economies of scale are not infinite,
Nobody claimed they were. If they were, Wal Mart would be the only supplier of all consumer goods, and they would give everything away free. Yes, they use their size to pressure suppliers into reducing prices... but Wal Mart is also not stupid enough that they're going to put all of their suppliers out of business. And Wal-Mart politics aside, economies of scale derived from monoculture practices are one of the few reasons modern agriculture survives as a break-even proposition. The difference between Wal-Mart's $5.89 bottle of detergent, and Mom&Pop's grocery's $6.19 bottle of detergent really *is* that crucial when you get into the agricultural model -- it's the difference between breaking even (or maybe making a small profit), and going bankrupt and having condos built where your farm used to be.
you use a very basic biologic organism to shoot holes in Dan's monoculture theory.
He's the one who chose an agricultural term to expound on his theory, not me. I'm pointing out the dissimilarity between a true biological monoculture (in which each individual in the population is independent, and does not depend upon or rely upon the other individuals in any appreciable way for survival), and his concept of a computing monoculture. Yes, lots of people run Windows. No argument there. Yes, that makes most of those systems vulnerable to the same exploits. No argument there. At this point, the monoculture analogy still works.
But it lacks in huge ways when you take into account the interconnected nature of computers today. If a server hosting a mission critical service goes down, then all of the clients of that service WILL be affected, regardless of their particular platform. If (for example) your Windows DNS servers & desktops go down, you might be able to still use your Linux or Mac desktops, but they will do so at a degraded efficiency, and it's possible that they will still be essentially unusable for a large majority of your population. This is something that "diversity" in any form cannot prevent.
In some ways the multiple stalks of wheat are dependent upon one another for reproduction.
Actually no, they aren't. The stalks of wheat are harvested, they are not allowed to reproduce in the farmer's field. The big agricultural concerns have a diverse culture of wheat strains which they raise to produce the seed to sell to farmers. If I walk into a wheat field, and rip out three or four stalks of wheat, the rest of that field continues growing, and being wheaty, without so much as a blip. If I go into your server closet, and rip out a few power cords to take a few of your systems down, you'd notice that little event really quickly.
Also, if you expand your analysis to more complex organisms the interdependence of organisms upon one another continues to hold up.
Yes... and we're all pretty roundly F'ed if a disease comes along that wipes out, for example, all the doctors in the world, or all the engineers, or all the farmers, or all the mechanics. That interdependence of complex organisms is exactly why I'm saying the monoculture theory doesn't really hold up that well. Having a diverse ecology does NOT prevent problems, the only thing it can do is help to mitigate the impact in a group of independent individuals. I don't care how diverse New York City is, if every doctor in the city dropped dead tomorrow, then the rest of the city would goddamn well notice it.
The monoculture theory works if your population is not interdependent... if it is interdependent, then diversity versus monoculture is not a simple "4 legs good, 2 legs bad" proposition.
You are presuming that each "stalk" is a computer within an organization. The analogy works just fine where each "stalk" is a seperate grouping of computers - be it an entire corporatation, a division within the corp or just the server room versus the office area.
Ah, so we're redefining the term "monoculture" to mean something else now? In the analogy to a wheat field, 1 plant == 1 computer. And while your Mac computer may continue to work if all the Windows systems in the world go down, you STILL lose a great deal of the usefulness of that computer, simply because it relies on (or you rely on) stuff that is housed on those computers that are affected. The interconnected nature of computing today makes it very difficult for diversity to provide you with any sort of "herd immunity."
Nobody is arguing that there are not tradeoffs between standardizing and being diverse. Diverse platforms can mean that your organization MAY limp along, at a reduced capacity, if 30% of the computers in the world go down. But diversity comes with an administrative cost to that organization, and in a lot of organizations, a lot of very smart people have come to the conclusion that it's cheaper to simply secure your systems and do contingency planning than to try and support, day in and day out, a broad range of diverse operating systems that will each come with their own administrative hassles & issues.
You seem to be assuming that even with diverse OSes, some or all mission-critical services would still be limited to one OS platform.
And do you think it's even remotely likely that -- for example -- a company would choose to implement DNS using multiple platforms? Half your DNS servers Windows, half Linux? You've never worked for a corporate IT department, have you? This suggestion, even taken at its ludicrous face value, fails to address economies of scale that would be lost to the organization by having to support mission-critical servers running multiple OS'es that don't always play well together.
Too, just because "the" mailserver was down, say, doesn't mean that people on the OSes couldn't be creating documents, crunching numbers, doing database queries, playing Solitaire.
And again -- have you ever worked in a corporate environment? Creating documents often is not done out of whole cloth, and requires documents on networked drives, access to web sites, email communication with peers, customers, vendors, etc. Yes, it's possible that people could create documents, or crunch numbers, or do database queries, but the point is, when part of a networked environment goes down, especially in a highly interconnected office setting, all of the nodes on that network suffer a reduction in performance.
I also think that the OP is very mistaken concerning "the cost to society". One company might find a monoculture cheaper, but different companies implementing different OSes wouldn't cost society one bit more, and in terms of avoided loss of productivity due to the diversity, societ would thus save money via OS diversity.
But seriously -- "not cost society one bit more?" You don't think that operating costs for a company contribute directly to the bottom line prices it's able to offer to consumers? Read about WalMart sometime, and tell me that their low prices are *anything* but a function of lower operating costs achieved by economies of scale. Your claim that "society would THUS SAVE MONEY" via OS diversity doesn't hold water -- if it did, companies would be moving to diverse platforms in order to reduce their operating costs. Instead, in companies such as the one I work for, they've embarked on a multi-year program of standardizing OS and hardware combinations across tens of thousands of desktops, laptops, and servers.
I fart in your general direction, sir.
And I saw your post on Slashdot. It sucked.
Just because you say that biological organisms and "viruses" don't work the same way, doesn't make it a valid thesis. If you can't explain how, for the purposes of the discussion, the two differ, then you are really just exposing your inate idiocy.
... , n -- each plant is a self-contained entity... if one stalk of wheat dies over here, the other stalks continue growing, completely oblivious to the death of the first.
I'll help him out here. In epidemiological terms, a monoculture is susceptible to widespread, possibly devastating infection because the members of that population all share similar genetic makeup and background. A single variant of a particular grain crop, which is planted over thousands of acres, with an identical genetic makeup would be an example of a biological monoculture. Now, if a disease comes along that affects ONE of those plants, *every* plant in the thousands of acres you've planted is susceptible, and probably will be affected. In short, monoculture is the practice of putting all your eggs in one basket.
Now with that in mind, diversity does not prevent the disease from affecting some of your crop, it simply mitigates the impact of the disease to your overall crop -- instead of losing 100% of your crop to some sort of wheat blight, you lose 20%, instead... only the susceptible plants die. The problem with this is, in order to increase the diversity of your crop, you have to spend the time, effort, and money sacrificing the economy of scale that you can achieve by planting thousands of acres with the same genetic variant. 1 strain == same fertilizers, same maintenance & upkeep, same planting & tilling requirements; More strains require variations of the fertilizer mix, upkeep, planting & tilling, and so you can't fertilizer in bulk... you can't apply fertilizer using a big sprayer that covers your whole field... you can't plant all your seeds at once, since some strains require different planting depths & intervals... so the farmers decide that the tradeoff between the risk of complete crop destruction, versus the costs of diversity, are worth the risk, and create monocultures in their fields.
So far, we're on a close parallel. But as you look deeper, the analogy fails, and in spectacular fashion, because of this simple reason:
In a field of wheat, wheat stalk #1 does not depend, in any appreciable way, on stalks #2, 3, 4, 5,
Now, let's look at an IT example... let's say you have a 4-way even split (25% apiece) between Mac OS, Solaris, Red Hat Linux, and Windows in your enterprise. Now, I knock 25% of your systems offline via an exploit in one of those operating systems. How has diversity helped you? Sure, the other 75% of your systems are up, but you're probably missing critical services (DNS? LDAP? Web Services? Web SERVERS? Network drives? Domain Controllers? NIS masters?) that are hurting even the "unaffected" 75% of your systems.
So what does that diversity get you, in business terms? Very few reduced risks (sure, 75% of your systems may not be directly affected by the worm, but if 100% of your systems are unable to be used effectively to get work done, that diversity has gotten you absolutely nowhere.), and quite a lot of extra cost: the sacrificed economies of scale you can achieve by standardizing on a particular technology "stack", and the overhead of managing all the varieties of O/S and making them play nice together. And please, don't even try to claim that managing 100 Linux, 100 Windows, 100 Unix, and 100 Mac OS systems under one roof would be equivalent or less work than managing 400 of *one* variety.
I think they're seriously underestimating the capability of people to understand, and care about, issues that affect them. What hasn't been made clear is HOW, exactly, DRM affects them. And you won't get that out on a placard. "DRM is bad because you won't be able to listen to your music!" makes for a shitty slogan -- the response of the average consumer is, "But my iPod (or whatever) works just fine, and I can burn CDs, and listen to my ipod anywhere I want."
This really is a "long-term" type of issue, and as such, it's not really effective to go out there with a placard and wear a cute costume. If you want to educate people, start finding ways to drive people to your web site, where you have a 2-page explanation in clear terms of how DRM can (and will) harm consumers. Remember, for the average user:
There's lots of smart marketing and advertising people out there... I'm sure somebody could put together a 30-second commercial that would be dramatic & effective. I'd imagine ending a commercial fading out to a black screen which simply says: "Digital Rights Management: Bad for consumers. Bad for music. Visit EFF.org today to find out how you can make your voice heard.", while the end of Don McLean's "American Pie" plays: "The day... the music... died..." If you make it topical & relevant, people will notice, and once you start defining the issue as more than "a sound bite by some long-haired hippy in a hazmat suit," it's a lot harder to dismiss.
And if the company is "underpaying" taxes -- illegally -- then by all means, the company should be taken to task by the state. If the company is "underpaying" taxes, as defined by "paying less in taxes than they consume in services," then the government of New York should man up and go ahead and raise taxes & revoke the tax breaks it's given to companies. If NYS / NYC is actually providing valuable services, the company will continue to locate there, and pay the taxes... if the perceived value of the services isn't worth it, then perhaps NYC will end up losing a lot of businesses. Either way, I fail to see how it's the *telecommuters* job to put to rights the disparity you see between production and consumption.
So should New York also be able to tax out-of-state residents for making phone calls to NYC residents?
I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm really trying to understand your point. But I don't see how telecommuting is "using NYC's resources" any more so than any other phone call... and the receiving lines are paid for New York companies, and taxed by New York... what service am I using that isn't being paid for by the people on the receiving end?
I'm desperately trying to understand your point, and you seem to be claiming that the government granting tax breaks will somehow lead us to some sort of anarchic dark age. And if that's the case, then why don't the residents of NYC simply demand that New York NOT give tax breaks to companies?
Perhaps... but I don't see that as a necessarily bad or detrimental thing to open source -- if you don't like the direction a project is going, you have the source... you're free to fork the project and go in a direction you are more comfortable with. Might that slow down innovation? Perhaps... but I think having corporate R&D money being spent supporting developers who were previously developing software "for fun" can only be a net win for the FOSS community. Look at it this way -- is it bad that RedHat, Novell, IBM, and other companies are spending money on supporting Linux? If your concern is "corporate money" in the general sense, then they all belong out of the picture... and I don't think that would be a "good thing". If your concern is "Microsoft's money", then I fail to see how Microsoft motivated any more by self-interest & profit margins than IBM, RedHat, Novell, and so on, to the extent that that money is put into helping open source projects use Windows, and not generating "Linux will kill your grandmother" FUD...
Dollars are a new (or perhaps alternate) incentive in the development of open source software than maybe the reliably altruistic motivations of many open source developers in years past.
An alternate source, yes... but the notion of generosity & the notions of self-interest aren't necessarily incompatible. Granted, no company is going to throw money at a proposition it doesn't think it can profit from... but let's say that IBM decides to put a few Eclipse developers on their payroll, and pay them to continue working on their RAD/WSAD product, and contribute back to Eclipse. Those developers will still have the "free time" they used to donate to working on Eclipse, plus they're being paid to continue developing it... I don't see how anybody loses in this scenario:
open source eliminates the barriers to entry -- you don't need to be IBM to build off of the Eclipse framework. And you're free to take it in any direction you want, and if your ideas are good, they will win support in the user world.
Since dollars and altruism rarely lead to any special alignment of purpose, isn't it reasonable to deduce that monetary incentives may lead to changes in the direction of open source projects, indeed in the innovations realized at the hands of open source developers who, in years past, were motivated only by their desire to contribute to a project they believed in?
Again, I don't see that corporate self-interest & open source are necessarily mutually exclusive. We all need to make a living... and if somebody's going to pay you well to work on a project you enjoy & believe in, well... that's a pretty good deal. I'd take it in a second. You may lose some autonomy to take the project wherever you want to take it, but you're welcome to work on those features in your "spare time", just like you used to before you got hired...
I suspect that if a yardstick could reliable measure the amount and direction of innovation in an open source project, the injection of corporate oversight could not be without measurable impact.
I can't disagree with you on that point -- I just don't think it necessarily translates to a negative impact.
How, given the nature of Open Source & the GPL, do you envision the "strangling of innovation" happening?
Will people stop having free time to work on Open Source projects? Probably not.
Can Company X stop other people from taking the code and forking it if they don't want to use Company X's version of the open-sourced code? Um... no, not so much...
The only way innovation can be stifled in the Open Source area is if people lose interest in innovating. If my company paid me a salary to develop software, and then they told me, "Hey, we think we can get some additional leverage out of this code by releasing it to open source and getting community contributions... what do you think," I'd be pleased as punch.
I don't see how Microsoft, or any other company, is going to "stifle innovation", since the source code is there, the problems are there to be solved, and anybody who wants to can grab a copy of the source code, solve the problem, and innovate the shit out things... if it were a closed-source proprietary program, then yes... they could do that -- buy the company, and then fire all the developers. But once that source code is free, how can they stop people?
This is a fundamental aspect of FOSS that will force Microsoft to compete on the merits of their software, rather than on the size of their bank account. And that's good for all of us -- Microsoft writes better software as a result, and perhaps even gets to second base with Open Source, rather than just flirting.