The point is that having the source code open would reduce the time it takes hackers (in the good sense of that word) to close the latest gap in the DRM arms race to almost zero, a few days at most. By necessity they're implemented in a very different and very technically flawed way, unlike proper encryption schemes, whichmeans that source-code scrutiny would immediately give the obfuscation game they play away.

With a closed off ecosystem, obfuscation and contiual software updates you can keep ahead and build a DRM system that's crack-resistant enough to at least be functional, see Apple's iTunes DRM or the Blue-Ray DRM schemes for example. Neither of these systems would be possible if they were open sourced.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but DRM schemes, even if they use proper encryption, are basically obfuscation schemes because at some point the user (or more accurately the program that they run) has to have the key(s) to decrypt the content. So seeing the source code for implementation of a DRM scheme would probably be enough to crack it.

"Words have context.

Every business is a vendor. Your interpretation of "vendor" gives it no substantive meaning within the sentence. Therefore your interpretation must be wrong and you need to look for another one.

This is the sort of thought process you should go through during primary school reading comprehension exercises. I don't know what country you're from, but your tenuous grasp of language wouldn't get you through high school here."

The word 'vendor' has a perfectly substantive meaning in that sentence, a software tool that's supported by an actual vendor - someone you can buy support and services off. Very different to some random tool you can download off the internet that's effectively supported by no one (or yourself/own IT staff with access to the source code). I.e. Puppet is vendor supported but your self-written sysadmin scripts are not, even if they use software from the OS distributor.

I could point out again how ambiguous and broad your original phrasing was, but it's pointless as your comprehension level of language is obviously too far behind to see your mistake.

"Yes, you dolt. The example given was one more flexible alternative to an application of puppet. That's the Unix philosophy: lots of little tools doing one or two things well, working together."

And here's where your reading comprehension fails again. I was pointing out that puppet is much *more flexible than debian config packages* as you can do everything you can do in a deb package (or directly on the command line) plus lots more with Puppet. For god sakes why don't you actually try it - you obviously have no clue as your only argument so far against it is that it's for 'lazy admins'.

"No, they weren't. Perhaps you recall a specific example of inefficiency and are assuming something about it, or maybe you just read a passing remark on some sophomoric political web site and are regurgitating it."

No I'm actually recalling the real world example of what happened in East Germany in particular, and the USSR in general, after the Iron Curtain came down. Most industries, particularly those in East Germany which were directly exposed to the West, failed because they were desperately inefficient and out-of-date.

"Where the context here for "vendor" is the guy selling the platform, not "anyone who sells stuff". Do admins still have that BOFH "Human language is beneath me!" mentality?"

You said "a vendor/distributor-provided toolkit". How is puppet not 'a vendor-provided toolkit'? If you meant only using tools provided by the *OS distributor* then actually write that, but don't write something ambiguous and then jump on people when they didn't get the exact same meaning as you. In short try expressing yourself properly next time.

"Your reading comprehension is atrocious. The point is that automation packages designed for individual systems are almost invariably more efficient and complete than generic systems designed for lazy sysadmins."

Leaving aside that nowhere in your previous posts did you say that you obviously know nothing about puppet. It can do far more things far more flexibly than building debian config packages. And when the built-in types don't meet your needs you can use it to make your own out of commands and the "OS distributor-provided toolkit" directly.

As for the Soviets I was referring to sticking to older, less efficient, ways of doing things just so everyone has a job, something which they were well known for and which arguably brought their economy down in the end. Nothing to do with centralisation, but again your poor reading comprehensive comes through.

So automating the stuff that can be automated with Puppet and devoting my time to the difficult stuff that really does need my attention somehow shows I can't cope? BTW Puppet *is* a 'vendor-provided toolkit', Puppetlabs is a software vendor selling support and services just like Red Hat and others.

I could do with a laugh this morning so perhaps you can share some more insights from the quasi-Soviet time warp you live in where everything has to be done in as manual and inefficient way as possible to justify your job.

Exactly, I'm so sick of the condescending bullshit posted on sites like slashdot from sysadmins who think that because they do everything manually or with custom scripts they are somehow better. As a sysadmin you're hired by a business to administer the systems efficiently and in a way that someone else could take over without too much trouble if you got hit by a bus or decided to leave.

Systems like puppet can usually cover 90%+ of the configurations in an organisation, leaving you the time to properly focus on the inevitable corner-cases and learn to use their 'toolsets' or whatever else properly.

Let's go through your examples:
"NASA went to space, so Europe made the ESA .. a weak form of NASA"
Ok, the ESA has got nothing on NASA (no surprise since its total funding it sadly only about 1/5th what NASA gets). But the only reason NASA was able to get to the moon so quickly back in the day was that it 'stole' German rocket technology and scientists after the war. Everything NASA's done since then has been based on developments on the rocket technology it got from Germany after the war.

"The US starting building the supercollider (which Reagan cancelled) so they built the LHC -- a weaker supercollider ... they only win cause supercollider funding got cut"
Nonsense, the LHC is a machine that is literally *the edge* of what current science and technology can do, which is why it's taken so long to get it working. You can't compare that to a collider that was cancelled 20 years ago due to being unrealisticly expensive to build.

"The US has Boeing so Europee made Airbus -- most of their planes are uninspired boeing clones"
Airbus pioneered the use technologies like fly-by-wire and composite fuselages long before Boeing dared. They've also introduced new aircraft that change the economics on certain routes such as the A380. Not to mention that the first commercial jetliner in production was the deHavilland Comet from the UK, although it proved unsafe and was eventually overtaken by the American 707.

"The US built the National Ignition Facility to study nuclear fusion, so Europe is building Laser Megajoule"
The NIF and ITER are two different approaches to achieving viable nuclear fusion, Europe has commited the majority of its funding to the ITER approach but it'd be stupid not to have some smaller scale experiments which use the approach that NIF uses. Just as I'm sure the US has some experiments that try the ITER torus approach.

Oh and BTW the National Ignition Facility was 5 years behind schedule and almost 4 times more expensive than originally budgeted when completed.

There are areas of scient and technology where the US is ahead and some where Europe is, but it's always annoying in those discussions to have some jingoistic American spread around the myth that all technological development comes from the US and Europe (and everyone else) are just copiers. It's a myth not supported by history, including not by recent history.

I meant the ones that haven't gone independent, i.e. the status of these regions within France is very different to, say, the status of the British Overseas Territories in the UK's political structure

It's not South America's because French Guiana is part of France (and thus the EU), in the same way that Hawaii is part of the US despite being gegraphically separate. I.e. unlike with the UK and a lot of other European countries France has made their former colonies 'regions' with the same status as the regions in European France.

Same here, my last two computers (an 11 inch laptop and a self-assembled desktop) were deliberately bought with AMD graphics cards because the radeon (Open Source AMD card driver) works so well out of the box. HDMI out, multiple monitors all just works.

If I plug in HDMI to my laptop it pops up a dialog asking me to configure the 2nd monitor, which takes me to KDE's standard Display thing in its control panel. This works the same across distros (Opensuse and Kubuntu) and that's the way it should be.

All that said, I leave my gaming for my Windows 7 dual-boot. IMHO configuring WINE isn't worth the effort, you spend more time configuring it than playing games whereas Windows is just a minute or two of reboot time away.

"I honestly thought that was the start of a list of things you could say in favor of a linux desktop, but, by the end of your paragraph, I'm starting to think you actually meant Windows just works right out of the box. Is that what you meant? And, if so, have you setup either Ubuntu or Windows from near scratch recently (near scratch, as in, bought a new pc even)?"

I have, just last week on a PC I assembled myself from decent quality brand-name (D-Link, Asrock, Saphire, AMD) parts. And yes the difference was amazing comparing Windows 7 to Ubuntu - all hardware, including the graphics card, worked out of the box perfectly in 64-bit Ubuntu.

With Windows 7 I had to go through inserting CDs for each bit of hardware to get it working - the motherboard driver CD even went ahead and installed a whole load of crapware that I didn't ask for! Worst of all though the nice D-Link Atheros WLAN card that worked perfectly in Ubuntu failed to work in Win 7 at all, with neither the drivers from the included driver CD nor the latest from D-Link's website. I had to send it back.

Because they don't know that there's free antivirus software out there that does the job just as well, and even if they did they wouldn't trust it - and rightfully so given the amount of malware out there posing as 'anti-virus' and 'anti-spyware' software.

My parents went throuh this painful cycle. First they got duped by some flashing ad on the internet into downloading one of the malware 'anti-virus' programs, then they went to a local big-name store (Australia's infamous Harvey Norman) who were more than happy to sell them an expensive yearly subscription to Symantec's bloated anti-virus to try and fix it up. When I visited them after that I put MS Security Essentials on and everything's fine since.

I wish MS would just have Security Essentials installed and on by default and end this game where both malware authors and big-name 'respectable' firms rip off non-technical computer users?

Australian law says nothing of the sort. Have a look at the full act, it clearly defines the word "harm" as:
""harm" means physical harm or harm to a person's mental health, whether temporary or permanent. However, it does not include being subjected to any force or impact that is within the limits of what is acceptable as incidental to social interaction or to life in the community. "
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cca1995115/sch1.html

So yes you're perfectly able to insult the Queen, the GG, the PM in Australia with no fear of either civil or criminal penalties.

That may not be exactly true in the UK since by the sound of it you're still lumbered with un-repealed laws dating back to 1351: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7288516.stm

It definitely doesn't mean harm to their reputation or phsychological harm. otherwise all the tv shows, newspapers and webites run by Aussies which criticise and make fun of politicians, and yes, even queen Liz, would be being chased with sedition and treason laws. it just doesnt happen in Australia.

At the point that you kill Queen, the PM or the Governer General:
"Section 80.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) makes it an an offence to cause the death of, or harm to, the Sovereign, the heir apparent, the Governor-General or the Prime Minister."
http://www.caslon.com.au/seditionnote2.htm