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02/07/2004 Archived Entry: "A few random updates"
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The American Bar Association has named, to chair its antitrust section -- no kidding -- a lawyer from Microsoft. Analogies of foxes and henhouses spring to mind. I'm no fan of antitrust law, or the ABA, or Microsoft, but I have to wonder what happened behind the scenes in order to cook this deal up.
A few random updates...
Here's a sign that copyright law has been extended too far. Diebold, of the multifariously vulnerable e-voting machines, is now trying to use it to squelch open discussion of their internal (and incriminating) emails. Or even hyperlinks to those emails. These days, when it appears the "mainstream" media have given up investigative journalism, the Internet is the only source we have left. No wonder the Exalted Rulers want to clamp down.
Not just the US and Canada, it seems...the Australian version of the RIAA has now raided the offices of KaZaa. First street raids in L.A., now raids in Australia. What next? Burn an independent recording studio to the ground?
On that subject, Scott M. brings up a point I glossed over in my criticism of the "download tax": 'Arguably, the greatest flaw is the analysis going in. You don't mention, and the Register barely alludes to, the fact that such "loss" estimates are based on the vendors' assumptions about what their revenues should have been, a process that lacks even the weak checks and balances of traditional financial audit. Then, the difference between "projected" ("fantasized" might be more accurate) and actual revenues is attributed entirely to piracy. Not one penny of the "shortfall" is attributable to vendor incompetence, of course. Microsoft and their gangs of attack lawyers, the BSA and SPA, use the same smoke-and-mirror technique to claim software piracy losses.'
Applause, though, for the German band Eisbrecher who are distributing blank CD-Rs with their new album, and encouraging buyers to make copies for "private use." Ah, yes. It reminds me of the days when I'd buy an LP, and then dub it to cassette to play in the car. Remember when that was legal? (Eisbrecher is also "safe" on the RIAA Radar.)
Here's another sign that you're going to have to solve your spam and virus problems yourself: a UK survey of office computer users found that
On the home front, now that we're an all-Linux house, our security against virus attack is tremendously improved. We still suffer from the byproducts of viruses like MyDoom (which produced enough spam to choke a modem), but we don't get infected, and we don't pass it on.
This week I switched over from Red Hat 8 to Xandros 2. Wendy's been using Xandros 2 for a month now, and I wanted to (a) reduce the number of different Linux distros I'm supporting, (b) get access to a current update service, and (c) enjoy the truly user-friendly features of Xandros, like their file manager and package manager. When I switched over, I made a list of my "accustomed applications" that weren't part of the Xandros distribution, and that I'd have to download and install anew. It turns out that eight of the ten were available for a single-click install through Xandros Networks. (Of the remaining two, one -- Win4Lin -- is a commercial package. The other -- AbiWord -- I had installed for evaluation only, since I use OpenOffice.)
I do have one criticism of Xandros, though: for a Linux, it's slow. Very slow. On Wendy's old 300 MHz Celeron it was unusable, so we took the occasion to upgrade her computer to a 1.6 GHz Athlon. I'm still using a 400 MHz Pentium II with 192 MB RAM, and it's usable but sometimes annoying. Mostly this is during program startup (50 seconds to launch Solitare?). Once the program is up and running, the speed seems normal. (Mozilla seems slow, but then Mozilla always seems slow on a dial-up connection.) I'd rate my hardware (400 MHz/192 MB) as an absolute minimum, and I'd suggest a faster CPU.
This review, while generally positive, also alludes to the speed problem, and suggests this problem is typical for Debian-based Linux systems. For balance, here's a more skeptical review from OS News. (I am doubly intrigued that the OSNews reviewer chose Lindows and Libranet over Xandros. First, because I think Xandros beats Lindows hands down -- clearly his priorities, and his experiences, differ from mine. Second, because I'm currently evaluating the free version of Libranet -- a Canadian distro -- for my impoverished friends, and this is the first time I've seen it reviewed.)
Some good news for Red Hat users: support for "end of life" versions of Red Hat Linux (7, 8, and soon 9) is now available from the Fedora Legacy Project, a community effort. This won't work with the automatic Red Hat Network update service -- you'll have to download and install updated RPMs manually -- but at least you'll be able to get security updates, and more importantly, you'll have a single place to look for update advisories.
brad