For its purpose, I thought that this was well written article. However, I'd have to agree with some other : 1. Testing for an "average user experience" on a custom 64 bit box is unrealistic. I would think the average user has an older, off the shelf Dell or Gateway PC and is not running 64 bit. 2. The requirements do not hold true for Win XP, which makes it unfair to hold Ubuntu to them. I have been using GNU/Linux since 2000 and I am not a super technical person (I just like to read tech news). Sure, I've had problems where I needed to search for a solution, ask a friendly nerd for help, or even read the manual, but those have been few. No matter what OS you use, you will need tech support at some time. How much time do Windows users spend calling tech support? WARNING - Personal Narrative Follows: A few months ago, my mother managed to trash her Win XP installation by messing with some security settings and forgetting the admin password. She called me for help. I explained to her that I didn't know anything about it, but she insisted. I got a password cracker and tried to get her in, but to no avail. So, we went for a fresh install of Win XP. I read everything beforehand and it said that there would be no problem saving her documents and personal files. We install, choose the option to migrate the files. I'll skip the deatils of all the problems encountered, but 6 hours later, we boot into the new Win XP, and her files were gone. Several years worth of data - gone. I consoled her, gave her an Ubuntu Live CD and told her if she wanted more help from me, she needed a better OS. A week later, my mother, the most computer phobic woman in the world, installed in herself. It migrated her files for her without a problem. It worked out of the box. the only thing she needed help with was installing the drivers for her wireless card, which she would have needed on any OS. So, the moral of the story is - if my mother can install Ubuntu, anyone can.
I have also been following a similar plan of action. For me, getting people to use FireFox and OpenOffice.org has been a piece of cake. But as for mail, they all seem attached to Yahoo, AOL, or using Outlook express.
I also pass out Ubuntu CDs to everyone who asks me a computer fixing question. The response hasn't been great, but I did get my parents to switch.
I just wish I could get people to do something about their mail clients...
I agree with this completely, and I've actually been harassing my bank for years about it, but they don't care. They're busy deploying technologies to save people from themselves - like site keys, voice print phone banking, and putting your picture on your debit card.
Just like banks should be doing, I think we need more ISPs that are focused on being secure on their end, rather than trying to tell me how to be secure on my end. I'm comfortable that they information stored on my computer is secure because I know what code is running on my computer and what it's doing.
Solving this problem would only be half of it though, because obviously not every customer wants to/knows how to be in charge of their own security.
We need a new market influx of self-service retro style ISPs that just provide bandwidth, shell access, etc. There are some I've seen, but none in my area. I think Panix in NY is one. Just like full service and self service gas stations.
Self-service ISPs let you be in charge of your security, mail, etc. and just give you Net access. Full service ones should give you net access, handle your mail, provide you with "value added" software such as firewalls and virus scanners (which all the ones here do already). If they wanted to be bitchy about it, they could refuse to connect you until they recognized that their software had been installed (some of them do that already too.)
Although this would be viewed by me as being a "Bad Thing", a lot of people, including many people I know, would view this as a service worth paying for. I think it would cut down on a lot of SPAM, as well as other online security problems.
Unfortunately, it only works when there's enough market choice to allow me and others who aren't interested in handing over our security responsibilities to someone else to choose a company that just offers Net access, which is all I want from my ISP.
Here in the good old United States of America, ISPs (at least in my area) do the same thing, unless you purchase "Business Broadband" which gives you the same crappy service and bandwidth with no guarantee of anything except that they let you use Port 25 all for only $150 per month. Also, all of their "Terms of Service" say that you can't run any type of server anyway.
After getting sick of having to bypass the filtering all the time, we bought a virtual server at Linode for $40 per month, which is cheaper than "upgrading" our DSL.
The funny part is that as far as I know, our ISP - AT&T - still has a huge problem with SPAM. Either way, though, I'd rather be devoured by shrieking eels than trust any of those jerks with my mail.
Quicken and other packages also import this. TurboTax will ask you if you want to import from Quicken. Just say "yes" and then choose.TXF format when it asks you. Smooth sailing from there.
Before I had kids, I could answer this question honestly with a few shots and a pot of espresso. These days, I settle for some coffee and a smoke. My kids like Peanut Butter Puffins.
I've been using OpenOffice internally in my business since it was founded, many years ago. However, externally, we have often resorted to MS office through Wine and other cheap hacks because many of our clients required reports and documents in (.doc format).
We don't use macros, just text and images, so I don't really know about that, but We find that OpenOffice is highly compatible at this point.
We are considering telling our clients that we are only going to support Open Document Format, although I am concerned that it may not be time yet.
If anyone elae has had experience being strictly Open Document on the end user side, yet, I'd like to here about it.
For the past 10 years, I have have been using TurboTax to file my taxes. I've been using TurboTax Online since 2001 (on Linux). I now use GnuCash to keep track of my finances and import the data into TurboTax Online. If you want more info, please see my journal entry on TurboTax Online.
For the record, though, I still mostly use pen and paper for D&D.
Thanks for correcting my *big* mistake. I just read over the stuff quickly and I thought it was saying that Solaris 10 also had an open source license, which it doesn't. I'd agree with sticking with OpenSolaris unless you needed the "official" support. The Wikipedia is much clearer than Sun's site about the licensing differences.
I wonder if anyone else is confused about the Solaris 10 license?
I would agree with most of that, but according to modern political theory, recognition by other Sates is not necessarily a criteria for sovereignty (although I imagine it helps). As for claiming it, 1. It appears the British government abandoned claim to and it was outside their territory limit at the time, 2. Many nations have been founded in places that someone else had already claimed or was already occupying, including both Britain, and later, the U.S.A. - hence, in practicality, if you take it, use it, and defend it, it is yours by right of fact. Regardless of whether the ruler seems like a whack-job. How many recognized political leaders are also thugs?
Note: "Dumb" not directed toward the poster but the We (with a capital 'w').
There have already been many informative comments addressing the security issue, so I'll restrict myself to this: After 15 years of lawsuits in numerous countries to make online banking acessible, why do the banks keep trying to back-track?
I usually bank with a text browser. When I can't, I'll switch banks. I already spent two years complaining to my bank (back in 1999 or so) that I couldn't bank with my browser of choice - any of them - and that I had to have my browser tell the bank site that I was using IE (which then worked fine, even in Lynx). That's enough complaining for me.
That's true. Thank you for correcting me. I should have stated "artificial island i.e. man-made structure. According to Un Convention on the Law of the Sea, artificial islands cannot be nations. However, as Sealand claimed sovereignty prior to 1982, this is not a valid point for disputing its sovereignty.
I, too was wondering how one achieves "scientific certification". Is there, perhaps, a Web site where we can sign up? Or maybe a form to fill out. I want to go get me some certified science credentials, too. Is a trash talking license included, or do you have to apply separately for it?
The fact that Britain abandoned the island now known as Sealand made it, under Internitional Maritime Law. Although Sealand is not officially recognized by any State, there have been many instances of de facto recognition, including in British Court, meaning that technically, it is a legal country, at least until someone successfully challenges it.
Overall, I think that the nature vs. nurture argument on this question is done. Yes, men and women think differently. No, this doesn't predispose us to certain occupations because all problems can be looked at and solved from different perspectives. Yes, there is still some sexism (and racism) in many fields. No, not all men in IT are sexist.
Finally, I think that history has shown that affirmative action programs and quotas do not solve cultural problems. While we shouldn't ignore these problems, education is what fixes them, not laws or mandates. Statistics show us that sexism still exists and that it is less than it was 25 years ago, and then it was less than it was 25 years before that. How many people have you met under 40 years old that were sexist? How many people over 40?
The problem won't fix itself, but people will fix it. We have been fixing it my entire life. It's time to give people credit for shaping culture, as we have been doing for millions of years, and stop trying to foist our responsibilities off on governments and corporations. I imagine that by the time my five year gets a job, discrimination in the IT field will be virtually non-existent, because people will ensure that.
After reading the entire legislation, including section 220, several things become apparent to me:
This does not include people talking to each other, blogger, etc. about politics - "Lobbying activities include paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grassroots lobbying."
This bill does not affect unpaid citizen journalists. - "The term `paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying' means any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public"
This bill does not affect blogs that are directed towards members of an organization - except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.
It seems to me that in the spirit of lobbying transparency, this bill is a step in the right direction. However, due to the vagueness of Section 220, with respect to several terms, and the fact that there does not appear to be an explicit exclusion for paid bloggers who maintain "official" blogs that are open to public viewing for organizations, I would recommend that anyone who is concerned about the freedom to engage in grassroots lobbying, to oppose section 220 until it addresses these concerns.
You can do this by contacting your senators and telling them to support the Bennett amendment to remove section 220 from S. 1..
I would suggest that we start treating these cases the way we treat "kid caught smoking joint", etc. Youthful Offender cases and slap the kid with a temporary, provisional charge that will be wiped clean after he completes a mandatory rehabilitation program. Not for porn, but for online security and responsibility. Perhaps mandate that he and his family attend a class on how to keep your patches up to date, browse "safely", etc. People should learn from mistakes, and we, as a society, should attempt to remedy ignorance rather than punish people for it.
We've already gone down the "slippery slope" of making analogies between Real Life and Digital Life, and trying to make them legal precedent. I think we all know that, although there are parallels, the analogy is not usually that direct.
Example 1: in the case where you've locked your door, someone breaks into your house and injures themselves when leaving by slipping on your icy walk, and then sues you because they injured themselves on your property. Jury finds that you should have shoveled your walk. Yes, some juries have actually awarded money to burglars in personal injury suits.
Example 2: Same scenario, but you left your door unlocked. Jury finds that you should have locked your door.
Example 3: Kids from next door walk into your yard when you're not home, fall into your swimming pool and drown. Jury finds that you should have put up a fence.
Example 4: Neighbor climbs your fence, ignores your no tresspassing sign, and goes ice-skating on your pond, then falls through the ice and dies. The parents sue you. They lose. Jury decides that your fence and sign were enough to tell a reasonable person that they shouldn't have been there.
An analogy in the Digital World that many people have been drawing lately is Open Wi-Fi. (Which I agree with, BTW.) This says that Wi-Fi piggy-backing should be legal because if you don't want people using it, you can secure it, put up a digital "No Tresspassing" sign, etc.
Is there an analogy here? If your computer isn't secured, according to the standards of a "reasonable" person? I think it depends on who these "reasonable" people are. Does the average person know how to secure their computer at a bare minimum? Probably not. But are average people reasonable?
I don't know how to fix my car. But I, and I would presume other reasonable people, as well, know that your car should be checked regularly to make sure that it is in safe driving condition. I also know that I'm supposed to get regular checkups to make sure that I'm healthy.
If I got sick from something at work, didn't go to the doctor for 6 years, found out 6 years later that I was sick and tried to sue my job, the court, at least in my state, I wouldn't get anything. Why? Because the statute of limitations says that I have 2 years from the date that I got sick OR 2 years from the time that a "reasonable person" in the same situation should have known that they were sick. Because reasonable people are supposed to go to the doctor on a regular, I would be unreasonable for waiting 6 years.
Should reasonable people have their computers checked for malware? Yes they should.
I don't agree with "frivolous" lawsuits, but we do have courts for a reason. The test for negligence isn't whether the man on the street would be expected to know something, but whether a "reasonable" person would be. The radio station was obviously negligent, but it would be a matter of interpretation as to just how negligent they were.
This subject has been covered in the popular media, television shows , and numerous cable science shows, as well as being explained in high school biology for at least 15 years (at least in my class). The fact they the radio station did no research, consulted no health care professionals, and did not inform the participants of any health risks, much less death, makes them legally negligent and pretty dumb, in my estimation.
I believe that these patents are saying that they come out with the same results using different methods. I agree that this is unlikely to affect Vista, at least as long as MS sticks to its own patented methodology.
On the other hand, I don't think that that's what Red Hat is planning. My guess is that they:
Want to give their corporate customers the opportunity of DRM, rather than having them switch platforms.
Don't want to be locked out of the "Trusted Computing" fun and games.
If they patent their own DRM, no one's going to leave them behind, are they?
In general, I would agree that in a higher security environment, relying on cheap fingerprint scanners alone would be idiotic. They have many more functional models of scanners available, such as those that can detect whether the print is on a hand, the hand is alive, etc., but of course those are more expensive, and, as you point out, may give more false negatives.
However, I think that most people are not as concerned with people breaking into their house and trying to lift their prints off the desk as they are about other security concerns with online banking, which is why I said that I think it adds an "extra layer of protection", not that it is a complete solution.
Is there something equally cheap that is more secure than biometrics that anyone knows of? I'm implementing this type of system at work, and I'd love to know if there's something that I've overlooked.
is to ensure that terrorists, insurgents, and other undesireables, shall not have access to information that is freely and publicly available through other channels anyway.
Perhaps they should recruit all of the ISPs in the developed world to aid them in carrying out this grave responsibility. If will all just signed affidavits of government loyalty and agreed to undergo extensive background checking prior to using the Internet or any Net enabled tools, the problem would be solved.
In all seriousness, when did Google become charged with being the Internet Police? Isn't combating "terrorism" someone else's job, already?
I know it's usually bad form to reply to yourself, but I wanted to post the message I sent. ------- Although I am not a Canadian citizen, I ask that you consider the global implications of a change that your government is planning to make to Canadian copyright law. I am a professional writer, and citizen of the globe who is concerned about the planned extension of Canadian copyright into what is called "Digital Rights Management." Although I make my living producing work which is protected under copyright law, I am heavily opposed to DRM and the restriction of "Fair Use". DRM has been shown to stifle innovation and promote monopolistic behavior, effectively locking consumers into vendor choices that may not be in their best interests. For more information, please see: http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/ Here in the United States (and elsewhere), many artists, software developers, and other creative rights holders have been fighting our own government's attempts to pass similar legislation. I sincerely believe that no country will make any useful, fair, copyright law reforms until our respective governments understand that we can no longer afford to be myopically nationalistic. We live in a Global, Digital Age, and we need to understand that when we pass legislation that could effectively isolate our citizens from the World Economy. ------- BTW, I also know that "global citizen" sounds silly. If anyone knows of a more elegant term, please let me know.
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For its purpose, I thought that this was well written article. However, I'd have to agree with some other : 1. Testing for an "average user experience" on a custom 64 bit box is unrealistic.
I would think the average user has an older, off the shelf Dell or Gateway PC and is not running 64 bit.
2. The requirements do not hold true for Win XP, which makes it unfair to hold Ubuntu to them.
I have been using GNU/Linux since 2000 and I am not a super technical person (I just like to read tech news). Sure, I've had problems where I needed to search for a solution, ask a friendly nerd for help, or even read the manual, but those have been few. No matter what OS you use, you will need tech support at some time. How much time do Windows users spend calling tech support?
WARNING - Personal Narrative Follows:
A few months ago, my mother managed to trash her Win XP installation by messing with some security settings and forgetting the admin password. She called me for help. I explained to her that I didn't know anything about it, but she insisted. I got a password cracker and tried to get her in, but to no avail. So, we went for a fresh install of Win XP. I read everything beforehand and it said that there would be no problem saving her documents and personal files. We install, choose the option to migrate the files. I'll skip the deatils of all the problems encountered, but 6 hours later, we boot into the new Win XP, and her files were gone. Several years worth of data - gone. I consoled her, gave her an Ubuntu Live CD and told her if she wanted more help from me, she needed a better OS. A week later, my mother, the most computer phobic woman in the world, installed in herself. It migrated her files for her without a problem. It worked out of the box. the only thing she needed help with was installing the drivers for her wireless card, which she would have needed on any OS.
So, the moral of the story is - if my mother can install Ubuntu, anyone can.
I have also been following a similar plan of action. For me, getting people to use FireFox and OpenOffice.org has been a piece of cake. But as for mail, they all seem attached to Yahoo, AOL, or using Outlook express.
I also pass out Ubuntu CDs to everyone who asks me a computer fixing question. The response hasn't been great, but I did get my parents to switch.
I just wish I could get people to do something about their mail clients...
I agree with this completely, and I've actually been harassing my bank for years about it, but they don't care. They're busy deploying technologies to save people from themselves - like site keys, voice print phone banking, and putting your picture on your debit card.
Just like banks should be doing, I think we need more ISPs that are focused on being secure on their end, rather than trying to tell me how to be secure on my end. I'm comfortable that they information stored on my computer is secure because I know what code is running on my computer and what it's doing.
Solving this problem would only be half of it though, because obviously not every customer wants to/knows how to be in charge of their own security.
We need a new market influx of self-service retro style ISPs that just provide bandwidth, shell access, etc. There are some I've seen, but none in my area. I think Panix in NY is one. Just like full service and self service gas stations.
Self-service ISPs let you be in charge of your security, mail, etc. and just give you Net access. Full service ones should give you net access, handle your mail, provide you with "value added" software such as firewalls and virus scanners (which all the ones here do already). If they wanted to be bitchy about it, they could refuse to connect you until they recognized that their software had been installed (some of them do that already too.)
Although this would be viewed by me as being a "Bad Thing", a lot of people, including many people I know, would view this as a service worth paying for. I think it would cut down on a lot of SPAM, as well as other online security problems.
Unfortunately, it only works when there's enough market choice to allow me and others who aren't interested in handing over our security responsibilities to someone else to choose a company that just offers Net access, which is all I want from my ISP.
Here in the good old United States of America, ISPs (at least in my area) do the same thing, unless you purchase "Business Broadband" which gives you the same crappy service and bandwidth with no guarantee of anything except that they let you use Port 25 all for only $150 per month. Also, all of their "Terms of Service" say that you can't run any type of server anyway.
After getting sick of having to bypass the filtering all the time, we bought a virtual server at Linode for $40 per month, which is cheaper than "upgrading" our DSL.
The funny part is that as far as I know, our ISP - AT&T - still has a huge problem with SPAM. Either way, though, I'd rather be devoured by shrieking eels than trust any of those jerks with my mail.
Yes. It used to be not compatible.
Now there is a standard tax file format that a lot of software is implementing.
Quicken and other packages also import this. TurboTax will ask you if you want to import from Quicken. Just say "yes" and then choose .TXF format when it asks you. Smooth sailing from there.
Before I had kids, I could answer this question honestly with a few shots and a pot of espresso. These days, I settle for some coffee and a smoke. My kids like Peanut Butter Puffins.
I've been using OpenOffice internally in my business since it was founded, many years ago. However, externally, we have often resorted to MS office through Wine and other cheap hacks because many of our clients required reports and documents in (.doc format).
We don't use macros, just text and images, so I don't really know about that, but We find that OpenOffice is highly compatible at this point.
We are considering telling our clients that we are only going to support Open Document Format, although I am concerned that it may not be time yet.
If anyone elae has had experience being strictly Open Document on the end user side, yet, I'd like to here about it.
For the past 10 years, I have have been using TurboTax to file my taxes. I've been using TurboTax Online since 2001 (on Linux). I now use GnuCash to keep track of my finances and import the data into TurboTax Online. If you want more info, please see my journal entry on TurboTax Online.
For the record, though, I still mostly use pen and paper for D&D.
Thanks for correcting my *big* mistake. I just read over the stuff quickly and I thought it was saying that Solaris 10 also had an open source license, which it doesn't. I'd agree with sticking with OpenSolaris unless you needed the "official" support. The Wikipedia is much clearer than Sun's site about the licensing differences.
I wonder if anyone else is confused about the Solaris 10 license?
I would agree with most of that, but according to modern political theory, recognition by other Sates is not necessarily a criteria for sovereignty (although I imagine it helps). As for claiming it, 1. It appears the British government abandoned claim to and it was outside their territory limit at the time, 2. Many nations have been founded in places that someone else had already claimed or was already occupying, including both Britain, and later, the U.S.A. - hence, in practicality, if you take it, use it, and defend it, it is yours by right of fact. Regardless of whether the ruler seems like a whack-job. How many recognized political leaders are also thugs?
Note: "Dumb" not directed toward the poster but the We (with a capital 'w').
There have already been many informative comments addressing the security issue, so I'll restrict myself to this: After 15 years of lawsuits in numerous countries to make online banking acessible, why do the banks keep trying to back-track?
I usually bank with a text browser. When I can't, I'll switch banks. I already spent two years complaining to my bank (back in 1999 or so) that I couldn't bank with my browser of choice - any of them - and that I had to have my browser tell the bank site that I was using IE (which then worked fine, even in Lynx). That's enough complaining for me.
That's true. Thank you for correcting me. I should have stated "artificial island i.e. man-made structure. According to Un Convention on the Law of the Sea, artificial islands cannot be nations. However, as Sealand claimed sovereignty prior to 1982, this is not a valid point for disputing its sovereignty.
I, too was wondering how one achieves "scientific certification". Is there, perhaps, a Web site where we can sign up? Or maybe a form to fill out. I want to go get me some certified science credentials, too. Is a trash talking license included, or do you have to apply separately for it?
The fact that Britain abandoned the island now known as Sealand made it, under Internitional Maritime Law. Although Sealand is not officially recognized by any State, there have been many instances of de facto recognition, including in British Court, meaning that technically, it is a legal country, at least until someone successfully challenges it.
Overall, I think that the nature vs. nurture argument on this question is done. Yes, men and women think differently. No, this doesn't predispose us to certain occupations because all problems can be looked at and solved from different perspectives. Yes, there is still some sexism (and racism) in many fields. No, not all men in IT are sexist.
Finally, I think that history has shown that affirmative action programs and quotas do not solve cultural problems. While we shouldn't ignore these problems, education is what fixes them, not laws or mandates. Statistics show us that sexism still exists and that it is less than it was 25 years ago, and then it was less than it was 25 years before that. How many people have you met under 40 years old that were sexist? How many people over 40?
The problem won't fix itself, but people will fix it. We have been fixing it my entire life. It's time to give people credit for shaping culture, as we have been doing for millions of years, and stop trying to foist our responsibilities off on governments and corporations. I imagine that by the time my five year gets a job, discrimination in the IT field will be virtually non-existent, because people will ensure that.
After reading the entire legislation, including section 220, several things become apparent to me:
It seems to me that in the spirit of lobbying transparency, this bill is a step in the right direction. However, due to the vagueness of Section 220, with respect to several terms, and the fact that there does not appear to be an explicit exclusion for paid bloggers who maintain "official" blogs that are open to public viewing for organizations, I would recommend that anyone who is concerned about the freedom to engage in grassroots lobbying, to oppose section 220 until it addresses these concerns.
You can do this by contacting your senators and telling them to support the Bennett amendment to remove section 220 from S. 1..
If I have misread anything, please correct me.
In my experience, PDFs always work better on Linux, but the best thing to do is:
pdftotext 2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf
It makes my laptop happier.
BTW, I would like to point out that I am in no way advocating that the poor kid be labeled "a sex offender for life".
WARNING: Potentially controversial opinion follows.
I would suggest that we start treating these cases the way we treat "kid caught smoking joint", etc. Youthful Offender cases and slap the kid with a temporary, provisional charge that will be wiped clean after he completes a mandatory rehabilitation program. Not for porn, but for online security and responsibility. Perhaps mandate that he and his family attend a class on how to keep your patches up to date, browse "safely", etc. People should learn from mistakes, and we, as a society, should attempt to remedy ignorance rather than punish people for it.
We've already gone down the "slippery slope" of making analogies between Real Life and Digital Life, and trying to make them legal precedent. I think we all know that, although there are parallels, the analogy is not usually that direct.
Example 1: in the case where you've locked your door, someone breaks into your house and injures themselves when leaving by slipping on your icy walk, and then sues you because they injured themselves on your property. Jury finds that you should have shoveled your walk. Yes, some juries have actually awarded money to burglars in personal injury suits.
Example 2: Same scenario, but you left your door unlocked. Jury finds that you should have locked your door.
Example 3: Kids from next door walk into your yard when you're not home, fall into your swimming pool and drown. Jury finds that you should have put up a fence.
Example 4: Neighbor climbs your fence, ignores your no tresspassing sign, and goes ice-skating on your pond, then falls through the ice and dies. The parents sue you. They lose. Jury decides that your fence and sign were enough to tell a reasonable person that they shouldn't have been there.
An analogy in the Digital World that many people have been drawing lately is Open Wi-Fi. (Which I agree with, BTW.) This says that Wi-Fi piggy-backing should be legal because if you don't want people using it, you can secure it, put up a digital "No Tresspassing" sign, etc.
Is there an analogy here? If your computer isn't secured, according to the standards of a "reasonable" person? I think it depends on who these "reasonable" people are. Does the average person know how to secure their computer at a bare minimum? Probably not. But are average people reasonable?
I don't know how to fix my car. But I, and I would presume other reasonable people, as well, know that your car should be checked regularly to make sure that it is in safe driving condition. I also know that I'm supposed to get regular checkups to make sure that I'm healthy.
If I got sick from something at work, didn't go to the doctor for 6 years, found out 6 years later that I was sick and tried to sue my job, the court, at least in my state, I wouldn't get anything. Why? Because the statute of limitations says that I have 2 years from the date that I got sick OR 2 years from the time that a "reasonable person" in the same situation should have known that they were sick. Because reasonable people are supposed to go to the doctor on a regular, I would be unreasonable for waiting 6 years.
Should reasonable people have their computers checked for malware? Yes they should.
I don't agree with "frivolous" lawsuits, but we do have courts for a reason. The test for negligence isn't whether the man on the street would be expected to know something, but whether a "reasonable" person would be. The radio station was obviously negligent, but it would be a matter of interpretation as to just how negligent they were.
This subject has been covered in the popular media, television shows , and numerous cable science shows, as well as being explained in high school biology for at least 15 years (at least in my class). The fact they the radio station did no research, consulted no health care professionals, and did not inform the participants of any health risks, much less death, makes them legally negligent and pretty dumb, in my estimation.
I believe that these patents are saying that they come out with the same results using different methods. I agree that this is unlikely to affect Vista, at least as long as MS sticks to its own patented methodology.
On the other hand, I don't think that that's what Red Hat is planning. My guess is that they:
If they patent their own DRM, no one's going to leave them behind, are they?
In general, I would agree that in a higher security environment, relying on cheap fingerprint scanners alone would be idiotic. They have many more functional models of scanners available, such as those that can detect whether the print is on a hand, the hand is alive, etc., but of course those are more expensive, and, as you point out, may give more false negatives.
However, I think that most people are not as concerned with people breaking into their house and trying to lift their prints off the desk as they are about other security concerns with online banking, which is why I said that I think it adds an "extra layer of protection", not that it is a complete solution.
Is there something equally cheap that is more secure than biometrics that anyone knows of? I'm implementing this type of system at work, and I'd love to know if there's something that I've overlooked.
is actually standard operating procedure in many jobs. Has anyone see the movie Clerks? Case in point.
Does doing it in front of them help develop a professional communication channel? No, probably not.
is to ensure that terrorists, insurgents, and other undesireables, shall not have access to information that is freely and publicly available through other channels anyway.
Perhaps they should recruit all of the ISPs in the developed world to aid them in carrying out this grave responsibility. If will all just signed affidavits of government loyalty and agreed to undergo extensive background checking prior to using the Internet or any Net enabled tools, the problem would be solved.In all seriousness, when did Google become charged with being the Internet Police? Isn't combating "terrorism" someone else's job, already?
I know it's usually bad form to reply to yourself, but I wanted to post the message I sent.
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Although I am not a Canadian citizen, I ask that you consider the global implications of a change that your government is planning to make to Canadian copyright law. I am a professional writer, and citizen of the globe who is concerned about the planned extension of Canadian copyright into what is called "Digital Rights Management." Although I make my living producing work which is protected under copyright law, I am heavily opposed to DRM and the restriction of "Fair Use".
DRM has been shown to stifle innovation and promote monopolistic behavior, effectively locking consumers into vendor choices that may not be in their best interests. For more information, please see:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/
Here in the United States (and elsewhere), many artists, software developers, and other creative rights holders have been fighting our own government's attempts to pass similar legislation. I sincerely believe that no country will make any useful, fair, copyright law reforms until our respective governments understand that we can no longer afford to be myopically nationalistic. We live in a Global, Digital Age, and we need to understand that when we pass legislation that could effectively isolate our citizens from the World Economy.
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BTW, I also know that "global citizen" sounds silly. If anyone knows of a more elegant term, please let me know.