Slashdot Mirror

Here's another very important liveblog of the big event.

</shameless plug>

FreeBSD has journaling ufs2 in the works:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current /2005-December/059079.html

Scott Long also touches on the subject in a interview he did for the bsdtalk podcast show:
http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2006/02/bsdtalk017-int erview-with-freebsd.html

I have heard a podcast from www.freebsd.org from one of the developers mentioning the problems with gnome becoming too Linux centric.

BSDTalk #32 - Interview with FreeBSD Developer Joe Marcus Clarke there is a transcription here.

That BSDTalk guy does some awesome interviews.

http://jaganath.blogspot.com/2006/05/windows-vista -source-code-leaked.html

Here is a good review of PC-BSD written by a linux enthusiast which I believe to be an un-biased look at PC-BSD.

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/02/pc-bsd-user- friendly-bsd-flavour.html

Trusted computing isn't without benefits. For my grandmother (who wants her computer to work like an appliance) trusted computing is probably the way to go. For me, it isn't. From my blog

Computers are all about the users. They were invented to help users simplify tasks (whether it is a scientist on a cray or your grandmother on her eMachine). That said, users have always been the problem with computers. We say we want stability, well why don't we run Solaris or FreeBSD? These are among the most stable complex systems out there; they'll do most everything we want and never crash (as opposed to DOS which won't crash but it won't do what we want). The answer is users, we are the weak link, not Solaris, us.

If you need to get something done, tools help. But the best tools won't get anything done if you don't know how to use them. I have a friend who uses a pen and pad of paper to do his budgeting. He has excel, he just doesn't know how to use it.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just cut the user out of the equation? This is the whole idea behind mechanization, users make mistakes, we'll get a machine to do it. This has provided spectacular leaps in production. This mentality has long been in the computing world. Windows and OSX do this very well and it is a great boon to usability.

Computer security is starting to improve significantly by cutting the user out. All these computer security measures do this:
automatic updates
firewalls without user interaction
anti-virus programs automatically cleaning/deleting files

This makes user security better, it saves time, & does a better job than many users could do on their own.

But cutting the user out (like anything else) when taken too far has scary results. What if someone decided you couldn't be trusted to decide what to put on your computer, and that someone else should decide? This is essentially what "trusted computing" is all about.
There have been great discussions on Slashdot about trusted/treacherous computing. In one, a particularly insightful poster wrote "Trust the computer but don't trust me? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen." That is the issue at heart here. Firms will decide what you can and can't do on your computer, because you cannot be trusted. One wonders, if they won't trust us, why should we trust them?

Trusted computing has lots of benefits. By only allowing tested code to run there are a lot of potential benefits:
stability could increase
viruses could be prevented from running
malware could be stomped out
piracy on trusted platforms would end
users would know when their system changed
phishing could be stomped out - no more passwords

These benefits are nothing to snub your nose at. A version of this model is what we have for online security. You can get a "trusted" SSL certificate for your business, signaling that it is OK to put in your SSN or credit card number. This has been a boon to online retailers, it provides a fast way to gain trust with a user. No more lock-ins to companies you have experience with.

There are potentially harmful effects to 'trusted computing' too. What if you were a virus writer and found out how to get your code to be 'trusted.' I don't pretend to understand how this could be done, but if it was it would be far more devastating than current viruses (and the incentive seems high enough for someone to figure this out). By cutting the user out of the equation, you may actually make systems LESS secure. Other potentially harmful effects:

vendor lock-in. Perpetually enforced monopoly power. Do you trust Microsoft to decide for you what applications you can use? Will Firefox be trusted? FF extensions? What about programs that cut into their revenue - OpenOffice? Not to pick on Microsoft, there are hundreds of tech/content firms that would love to eliminate competitors.

Not quite, its more of a sidegrade. DisplayPort is a direct competitor to UDI which is an Intel scheme to do the same thing.

Both have 'content protection'. I don't know why folk get so up tight about it. There is no way it can possibly work. Copy protection is break once run anywhere. The copyright pirates are going to quickly take apart a display and extract the keys, once they do thay they can do anything they like.

What I am more anoyed about is that this standard does not solve my real problem, cable clutter (extended rant on blog).

The DisplayPort people have half a clue, they have included an audio channel so I don't have to run two sets of cables between my computer and my monitor. But where is the USB? they keyboard/mouse connector? Power to drive an attached laptop?.

There is a pretty small chance that I will be buying a screen so large that DVI is inadequate in the next year or two. I now have cable clutter in three different rooms. Cable clutter is pretty much a universal pain point for every computer user. And don't get me started on those shitty brick adaptors that they now use instead of building power supplies into printers, monitors or the like. At the back of my desk I have a ten way power strip and six adapter bricks. There is another ten way power strip under the printer table.

I currently have two laptops by the same manufacturer that both require a different docking station. Its completely unnecessary, there should have been a standard ten years ago, but that would end the racket of selling $350 docking stations and $100 travel adaptors.

The other way this is a huge lose is that it is still electrical. I have a $90 DVI cable. My son's complete PC cost less than $500. If they made the move to an optical interconnect one cable would meet every need - today or in the future. There would be no problem running cables 100ft or longer. Fibre is now standard for audio interconnect, why not use it for video???

The problem is that the driving force behind the initiative is the percieved need to support bigger displays rather looking at what the majority of customers actually want.

Probably because the article is pretty much Linux boosterism. They start with the untrue claim that this has beaten the windows devices to market. Some Windows devices have already shipped.

I get a bit tired of apple/linux advocacy of the 'lets ignore every defect of our system' variety. Its like watching the idiot talking heads on the Sunday chat shows. Today the left will be trying to explain why driving on prescription drugs is no big deal whil the right try to claim that the resignation of the CIA Director had nothing to do with the gay hookers being ferried to the Watergate building to spice up the poker parties attended by GOP congressmen and the guy he appointed number 3 in the agency.

If only the partisans on either side would just once admit 'hey one of our guys screwed up'.

I blogged on Pepper earlier. I won't go into the full details but I think that the PC makers have so far botched the midi format. The original premise was that the format would be cheap, so the makers don't want to make the devices too good in case they poach customers from the existing laptop market. So they make sure that a couple of features they identify as essential for 'power users' are stripped out.

The feature that has been stripped out of all the devices to date is video out. The Pepper device has composite out for a TV but you can't hook it up to a projector to do PowerPoint (or open office equivalent). Without that capability the device is no use to me personally and I suspect no use to most of the intended early adopters. Adapters, add on cards don't cut it, the capability has to be native to the machine.

The main early adopters of a device like this are likely to be salesmen. They have the budget to buy toys, they do a lot of travel. Without the ability to present its useless.

The other killer app I suspect would be photographers who want a super-duper media vault. But anyone doing that is almost certain to want to have photoshop on the device as well and the ability to hook up to a full size display when available.

The thumb board is a welcome development, although it is forced on this device due to lack of good open source handwriting recognition (too many patents for that to be viable) I think it will quickly appear on the windows ones as well.

Hey, looks like they are:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-tes t-this-is-only-test.html The Googleblog shows that they have a cookie-based "block this site from results" feature in general beta test to random people on the site.

Simply put, spam blockers are not too strict.

It is unfortunate that people freak out because even the most efficient spam blocking system will occasionally have a false positive. A lot of this is also the result of spammers themselves, who forge legitimate from addresses on spam sent to other sites, some of which bounces back to the original mailbox from legitimate mail relays who are trying to inform users of an invalid recipient. For this reason, services like Spamcop's SCBL are problemmatic. Manual RBLs are more effective.

However, the real source of the spam problem right now are ISPs who refuse to monitor the illegal activity of their customers. Whether knowingly or unknowningly (and 99.9% of the time it's unknowingly) DUL/Broadband IP space is the source of the vast majority of spam/worm/trojan/phishing e-mails going out.

Every ISP knows this.

Every ISP also can stop it. Every ISP can easily and almost immediately identify zombie PCs.

Why aren't they doing anything about this? This is the $64M question.

My guess is because there are some legitimate companies also engaging in spamming and the ISPs want to protect them; probably the ISPs themselves are involved. For whatever reason, wholesale RBL blacklisting has proven to be the **ONLY** way to force ISPs to start policing and stopping the zombie activity of their customers. When their IP space becomes tainted and unusable for port 25 traffic, they can't resell the space for commercial purposes. I strongly urge all ISPs to adopt a hard line on this issue until all the major broadband providers (Verizon, AT&T, Earthlink, Comcast, etc.) start SHUTTING DOWN THEIR CUSTOMERS' SPAM ZOMBIES!

The next time you're watching TV and you see that boneheaded Earthlink commercial where they talk abot how they stop spam, pick up your phone and call their 800 number and ask them why they don't stop their spam from polluting the rest of the Internet?

All Broadband DUL space should now have port 25 filtered. AOL and Bellsouth and Cox Cable are starting to do this and it not only reduces spam for everyone else, but protects their own customers from being further exploited and compromised.

The iPod page is back to normal now. I wasn't the only one who saw it though. Everything Apple caught it first. You can still catch the screenshot from my site as well.

Well a site I ran to host a guild forum got it canceled just as I was reaching my first $100 and the same happened to the guy who writes this funny blog I read (just as he was reaching his first $100 as well): http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/ (post about it: http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2006/04/seri ous-note.html)

Well a site I ran to host a guild forum got it canceled just as I was reaching my first $100 and the same happened to the guy who writes this funny blog I read (just as he was reaching his first $100 as well): http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/ (post about it: http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2006/04/seri ous-note.html)

They are either innocent, POWs, or criminals.

If they are innocent, we violate basic morality by torturing them.
If they are POWs, we violate treaties by torturing them.
If they are criminals (even noncitizens), it is unconstitutional to torture them.

As for the whole "nuke about to go off" torture scenario: That's what a presidential pardon is for, so you let's not pretend it justifies systematic government-sponsored torture.

--Guy without a slashdot account
Defunct blog: http://deltanin.blogspot.com/

I mean for the love of Ghu, does everyone working in United States politics have Mental Dysponexia? Everything in the news these days in about the '3\/1|_ Internet Pedofiles' does nothing else go in in this country? Are there no other big issues?

This type of thing is little more than a distraction, a ruse to make people willingly abandon their rights one by one in order to fight a menace that doesn't even exist. Not to say that there aren't people meeting each other through myspace and things happen--but certainly there aren't enough people out there using myspace and internet chat rooms to seek out children to justify this kind of response. I believe in psychology they call this 'denial' and 'avoidance' so what exactly is it we so desperately wish to deny or ignore?

We're trying to ignore that the problem isn't some stranger over the internet--it's Daddy!

The numbers are clear: well over 50% of child abusecases are are ones where the perpetrator was a parent and of the percentage remaining, overwhelmingly the perpetrator was a person in authority or well known to the child and the family. This isn't about strangers over the internet, its about pretending that everything is alright at home--well its not!

Where is this MAA (..a little inside humor there..Heh..) on the incest exemption laws is what I want to know! Why is it that legally a man who rapes his daughter can have state financed retrieval services, get less time in prison if caught, #### he can even get conjugal visits with the child if his wife is made the guardian...and yet if a guy and a girl meet online and eventually start a relationship and all that entails the law punishes him ten times the degree that it does Daddy? Oh wait, I forgot--Pay No Attention To Daddy! Silly me! I know, let's all forget about Daddy and watch Dateline pick up another group of gullible idiots! That'll take our mind off things!

--I*Love*Green*Olives (sitting in a golf car with OJ looking for the 'real' killers...)

PS: I type this using the wrong account name the first time! :blushes: But it was really me both times!

I mean for the love of Ghu, does everyone working in United States politics in the have Mental Dysponexia? Everything in the news these days in about the '3\/1|_ Internet Pedofiles' does nothing else go in in this country? Are there no other big issues?

This type of thing is little more than a distraction, a ruse to make people willingly abandon their rights one by one in order to fight a menace that doesn't even exist. Not to say that there aren't people meeting each other through myspace and things happen--but certainly there aren't enough people out there using myspace and internet chat rooms to seek out children to justify this kind of response. I believe in psychology they call this 'denial' and 'avoidance' so what exactly isit we so desperately wish to deny or ignore?

We're trying to ignore that the problem isn't some stranger over the internet--it's Daddy!

The numbers are clear: well over 50% of child abuse cases are are ones where the perpetrator was a parent and of the percentage remaining, overwealmingly the perpetrator was a person in authority or well known to the child and the family. This isn't about strangers over the internet, its about pretending that everything is alright at home--well its not!

Where is this MAA (..a little inside humor there..Heh..) on the incest exemption laws is what I want to know! Why is it that legally a man who rapes his daughter can have state financed retrieval services, get less time in prision if caught, #### he can even get conjungal visits with the child if his wife is made the guardian...and yet if a guy and a girl meet nline and eventually start a relationship and all that entials the law punishes him ten times the degree that it does Daddy? Oh wait, I forgot--Pay No Attention To Daddy! Silly me! I know, let's all forget about Daddy and watch Dateline pick up another group of gullible idiots! That'll take our mind off things!

--I*Love*Green*Olives (sittiing in a golf car with OJ looking for the 'real' killers...)

How surprising, a pro-war conservative blogger jumps all over a "sketchy" report that perhaps one of the DDoS attacks originated in an Islamic country. Could it perhaps be that some zombied computers were there? Or is this the towelheads "hating our Freedom" again? You be the judge!

Golly, colour me shocked that such a thing would happen.

"Instapundit" Glenn Reynolds had a sketchy report that one of those attacks originated in Saudi Arabia - http://instabackup.blogspot.com/. That of course doesn't necessarily mean anything, but the nature of the defacements involved are consistent with the theory: http://www.google.com/search?q=neEeO_hack

Related or not, it'll be interesting to see if & who Blue Security names.

Blue Security Blog

Netcraft Article on DDoS

My original article on the attack 4/1/06

The DDoS started with invalid PHP requests. I think the spammer is using a combination of methods to disable Blue Security now, but that's just an assumption. The question is, how long are spammers going to focus their efforts on the counter attack? Using their resources to attack Blue Security means less resources to send profitable spam. The spammer wants me to unregister from Blue Security's site, but at the same time, disabled it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to cave in to extortion. Right now I'm happy to have Gmail intercepting spam so others don't have to deal with it. I guess you can say I and the rest of the Blue Security community are drawing fire for the rest of ya'll.

Ah, it's so nice to be self-hosted. Back when I was on Blogger.com, myself and many other users who received links from Slashdot stories or news sites became the target of a spammer who's sole purpose was to screw up the service for everyone.

I disagree on this point... I got Drudged when I was hosting tsunami videos and got something in the realm of 7 million hits in the span of a week. Were I on my own server I would have gotten slammed with nasty overage charges if my server were to stay up. Blogger took the traffic and didn't even blink.

There are times when it's nice to be on someone else's system...

True, but I have found myself reading Mini-Microsoft more and more lately. There is a morbid fascination in reading the scathing msft employee comments.

When a company has this type of pent-up frustration it's time the shareholders lock and load. For once Dvorak's right - hell, from TFA it looks like he's been perusing mini-microsoft as well...

gamigad

I blogged about this nut job: http://catholicgauze.blogspot.com/2006/04/pyramids -of-eastern-europe-update.html Research, slashdot, research!

(sarcasm alert)

RE your sig: http://jack-dalton.blogspot.com/2005/08/its-about- time-we-got-you-guys-off.html

-- don't you know, the brain and nervous system aren't part of the body? they are just made up! if the functionality of your nervous system is impaired, you don't deserve any disability, because they're not part of your body!! ;)

Of course, Napster tracks don't work on 80% of the portables out there, which *has to be* working against them. I personally went with the iPod for ease of use, not iTunes or iTMS, and I'm fairly confident it's that or style that sells it to most people, since not a whole lot of people are going to be looking for an MP3 player if they don't have any music to put on it.

Not a lot of time for a full response so I'm just poting the first couple of links I found when searching for LOGCAP.

The LOGCAP site (warning, government website designed by 15 year old in 1992)

A bit on Cheney/Halliburton relationship (a ver detailed breakdown with lots of stuff I hadn't seen before).

A bit more on the Haliburton government contracts.

I think I've already said that I'm pretty sure that Haliburton abuses it's near monopoly in the industry for their own benefit, and I'm not debating that. All I'm saying is that the fact they happen to get all these contracts has more to do with the fact they are the only group in town than the fact they are connected to the VP, as displayed by the same 'favoritism' they received under the Clinton admin.

I am a victim of the blackmail letter as well. It's easy to figure out how the spammers got my email address, they already had it. They simply backed up their address book, cleaned their list with Blue Security's tool, then "diffed" the database to figure out who was BlueSecurity member.

Another note, BlueSecurity is not Slashdotted. It is unavailable because of a DDoS attack started sometime earlier this week. The attack started submitting invalid PHP requests, making the site slow to a crawl and at times be completely unavailable.

I write about it on my blog. More on the attack here. The threating letter I received is also on my Slashdot journal.

http://aliberaldose.blogspot.com/

Well, I found out where mine was from the return envelope that most of my dvds come in.

There is a list a few years old here:
http://netflixfan.blogspot.com/2004/01/known-netfl ix-distribution-centers.html

Not sure how out of date that was. There was a list included on Wikipedia at one time, but it was removed (due to the "wikipedia is not a directory" rule). I don't remember quite when it was removed (ie: if it's any more up to date than the list linked above) but it should be in Wiki's history archives somewhere.

Sooner or later, it will happen to them too because the TIA principle will be established. The novelty here is that this shit was not pushed through public universities first. Freedoms are usually taken from children first to condition them before they know better.

It's too bad the university administrations are not putting their weight behind CELA being a bad idea for anyone instead of worrying about their own costs. After all, the current expansion of CELA to AOL and M$N is a perfect example of how these kinds of laws grow.

The Federal government is getting way out of step with what people want. TIA and Carnivore were explicitly voted down by Congress, but continued as dark projects. Domestic spying was outlawed in the late 70's. The man who signed those laws thinks they have been broken. No one, outside of law enforcement, wants more domestic spying. I imagine there are plenty of people in law enforcement who also don't want their email and browsing watched and who think this is a perfect waste of time and money.

Just download it... http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/04/download- google-videos-as-avi-files.html

You're obviously not not paying attention. Even the administration has admitted that Bush violated federal law in the warantless NSA wiretapping. Whether or not he violated the Constitution...well, there are a couple of cases in progress that will hopefully make their way to SCOTUS soon enough.

That question is addressed here. The answer seems to be little to no relationship. As for the Congressional Democrats in office, their ratings are worse.

Do you know what this suggest? Let me spell it out for ya. Americans are pissed at the Republican party, but even more so of the Democrats. Given the immigration issue (whome both parties are pandering too), the political enviroment is ripe for a third party to garner support. A wildcard indeed...

That question is addressed here. The answer seems to be little to no relationship. As for the Congressional Democrats in office, their ratings are worse.

Do you know what this suggest? Let me spell it out for ya. Americans are pissed at the Republican party, but even more so of the Democrats. Given the immigration issue (whome both parties are pandering too), the political enviroment is ripe for a third party to garner support. A wildcard indeed...

Bush's rating is utterly f***ed, but not for the reasons you think. Here's a shocker, it's directly proportional to the rise in gas prices. Here's a graph that proves it.

So, you guys going to mod me down on this too? It's the "truth". Show me your double standards

This guy wrote a detailed blog on the miseries of tech support at a major cable ISP: http://ooltech.blogspot.com. I worked there too and what this guy wrote is 100% accurate. It sucked, you have customers squeezing you on one side and management on the other.

It looks like it's time to migrate to utorrent if you haven't already. There no commercialization associated with it

Unless you count the fact that the sole developer works for one of the anti-p2p companies that helped take down Suprnova, and he refuses to open the source of his client. Don't you find the desperate pleas on www.utorrent.com very suspicious? utorrent is a brilliant lightweight client but I wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot pole.

http://demodulated.blogspot.com/2006/03/we-are-not -ased.html - my blog entry on the subject

A friend of mine, who is 15, is really into Java, he is self taught and is really good at it. He created his own blog and has even got recognition from Roumen Strobl. His address is http://rekahsoft.blogspot.com/

As of a few minutes ago searching blogger for the term "two point oh" yielded this here which agrees with your statements or disagrees with them depending on how you look at it.

You're reading the WRONG economists... http://www.rense.com/general26/ftw.htm http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=99 95 http://economicapocalypse.blogspot.com/ http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/20asoc.htm http://www.michaelmandeville.com/collapse2006/inde x.htm

The idea that an article about Wal*Mart must contain the frothy-mouthed babblings of the Far Left to be "neutral" shows a real bias on the part of the author.

This isn't journalism, it's propaganda. I, for one, support Wal*Mart's right to defend itself against these senseless attacks.

This kind of stuff is the reason why I seldom bother to read /. any more. Another good example is /.'s absolute refusal to deal with any science news about the global warming issue that doesn't agree with its editors' preconceived views on the subject.

See my blog, WWJD (What Would John [Galt] Do?) for a discussion on what is REALLY behind the criticism of Wal*Mart.

For the stupid:

The fact that no two people are identical doesn't mean there are not broader categories of identity.

See "Removing Lewontin's Fallacy from Hamilton's Rule".

For the dim:

Of course this doesn't work for all national identities but it does for people who believe that nations are extended families.

Here's the part YOU ARE INTENTIONALLY LEAVING OUT.

The prosecution (or plaintiff) must MAKE THEIR CASE. Without doing so, the defendant wins.

"What do you think a plead is?"

Apparently you don't know, because it's a "plea" and you're wrong about

"In civil cases if you leave any line of the complaint unanswered it is held as admitted."

You must still justify your complaint. Usually an unanswered complaint is admitted, but IT IS NOT an automatic admission as you claim. YOU ARE WRONG.

You give ONE very specific example and extrapolate that to mean that accusations are "taken as fact". That is completely wrong, and you know it.

More importantly, you completely failed to address my example, because it destroys your point.

The plaintiff (or prosecution) must ALWAYS justify their accusation, even if unanswered. If it is unanswered that is USUALLY a rubber stamp process, but that is not always the case, as you imply.

You need to improve your knowledge of the legal system before you toss about incorrect, inflammatory statements. Especially when you are obviously, demonstrably wrong.

http://www.illinoislegalaid.com/index.cfm/staticgu ideme/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.dsp_content&conten tid=712
http://www.lewis-attorneys.com/faq.html
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2006 /04/how-riaa-litigation-process-works.html

That was three examples out of dozens. Stop spreading wrong information.

The premisse is that you can reduce all the richness of human beings to an unidimensional measure. The best teams I worked with have a diversity of talents, each one contributing for the success.

>Most of the team was not fired, they simply found new positions in Apple once 1.0 was completed because the project management was too shoddy. For instance I am now back working on Mac OS X. Most of the management however has been fired.

Hear hear! Sounds like Apple knows how to run a ship, getting rid of shoddy mgmt. I bet Mini-msft" is jealous!

In related news Microsoft has fired 60,994 employees leaving 6 people working at the company...

Which are Bill Gate, Steve Ballmer, Jim Allchin, Brian Valentine, Will Poole and Chris Jones

(sources : minimsft, microsoft)

I can't wait for the MS Vista relase ! How impressive it will be !

I made the same argument about utility companies. My basic argument is that, since profit margins are regulated, reduced costs mean reduced power prices.

I am so tired of repeating my self I blogged the answer Ultimate Virus/Spyware Blocker.

I updated the site with a quote from the article because it only stresses the need for this solution even if you are a "Net Savvy Geek"!

Come on, this is a blatant ad. How can you miss it? Here, if you're going to make a habit of it, plug my stuff. It's a lot more interesting.

[12] Governments, organizations and individuals are becoming increasingly concerned about software compatibility, conflicts and the possible existence of spyware in the software applications they use. If you have access to the source code, then you can check it and compile it for yourself. This is not an option for closed source proprietary applications, and not everyone has the resources to check each line of source code. One solution for these issues is to employ a trusted third party, separate from the application developer, who is tasked with maintaining a trusted build environment, to build the binaries from source code. The Trusted Build Agent (TBA) would hold the source to each build in escrow, releasing the source code for only open source licensed code. Competing businesses providing a TBA service in a free market would compete with each other in not only price and level of certification, but also on the ability to detect hostile, vulnerable, incompatible or just plain buggy source code. You could request a trusted build from multiple TBAs test the ability to detect defects. Defects would be reported back to the application developers, along with any patches and suggestions that provide a fix. To a lesser extent, most Linux distributions and other operating system vendors that build and redistribute open source licensed code already provide this role.

A desktop, you say?
Take a look at some of my screenshots, in the signature below:
This linux does not need to be installed!
Runs from the cd, and mine boots up about as fast as XP, even on this dual-200 MMX box!
I use it every day, and my favorite feature is using Opera 8.54 with 12 built-in RSS news feeds, that load up with stories in seconds, nearly 200 of them, ready to review. New stories arrive often, with that many feeds active.
The Getting Started Guide is here. The blog is here.
Enjoy!