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Here's a SMALL partial only sample of OpenBid/realtime bidding & other ad networks malware makers have taken advantage of to infect you with:

http://www.itworld.com/securit...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...

http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.securityweek.com/ea...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

APK

P.S.=> See subject & those links (AND we're free of ads that not only INFECT US, but also STEAL BANDWIDTH & SPEED WE PAY FOR MONTHLY too)

... apk

Here's a SMALL partial only sample of OpenBid & other ad networks malware makers have taken advantage of to infect you with:

http://www.itworld.com/securit...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...

http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.securityweek.com/ea...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

APK

P.S.=> See subject & those links (AND we're free of ads that not only INFECT US, but also STEAL BANDWIDTH & SPEED WE PAY FOR MONTHLY too) - to be continued in my next subsequent post with MORE of the same information for you vs. your b.s. advertiser

... apk

Here's a SMALL partial only sample of OpenBid ad networks malware makers have taken advantage of to infect you with:

http://www.itworld.com/securit...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...

http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023...

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

http://www.securityweek.com/ea...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

APK

P.S.=> See subject & those links...

... apk

They are using their installed base of Windows computers as an advertising base now. Free always means the ad-filled version, and the version that tracks you and sells information about your surfing habits and preferences. I really hope that this is not the end of Windows as a basic, functional, user friendly operating system. It was never a perfect OS, but Windows 7 got many things right. Windows 10 got many, many things wrong.

An interesting take on the UI of Windows from Josh Fruhlinger at IT World, with many of today's must have's in an OS came from Windows 95, including aspects of OS X.

Link: http://www.itworld.com/article...

Supposedly Chromebooks are starting to win over Windows on laptop-like devices:

"Yes, you read it right, Chromebooks have overtaken sales of Windows notebooks. "

http://www.itworld.com/article...

http://www.itworld.com/article...

and

http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...

There's 100's more out there I could put up from my bookmarks/favs, but an example of each respectively for Linux &/or Mac does the job.

* The ONLY real reason neither was attacked for so long was that there weren't enough users to justify doing so (not enough "ROI" for the efforts expended due to low usership/usershare/mindshare vs. Windows @ roughly 95% of the PC market & 50% of the server market).

Hacker/cracker types (malware makers/botnet herders, whatever) are like pickpockets - they don't operate in rooms by themselves & go to crowded throughfares where there are "many pickings".

APK

P.S.=> You've got to be kidding, right? apk

At this time, we present third party offers only with a few projects where it is explicitly approved by the project developer, or if the project is already bundling third party offers.

2. The reference by Fyodor that even if Sourceforge still isn't bundling anything on nmap, the page is designed to mislead the users with fake download buttons:

"So far they seem to be providing just the official Nmap files (as long as you don't click on the fake download buttons) (...)

Below I repost the original submission so you can compare:

Sourceforge Hijacks the Nmap Sourceforge Account

Gordon Lyon (better known as Fyodor, author of nmap and maintainer of the internet security resource sites insecure.org, nmap.org, seclists.org, and sectools.org) warns on the nmap development mailing list that the Sourceforge Nmap account was hijacked from him.

According to him the old Nmap project page (located at http://sourceforge.net/project..., screenshot) was changed to a blank page and its contents were moved to a new page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmap.mirror/, screenshot) which controlled by sf-editor1 and sf-editor3, in pattern mirroring the much discussed the takeover of GIMP-Win page discussed last week on Ars Technica, IT World and eventually this week Slashdot.

That happens after Sourceforge promises to stop "presenting third party offers for unmaintained SourceForge projects. At this time, we present third party offers only with a few projects where it is explicitly approved by the project developer, or if the project is already bundling third party offers."

To their credit Fyodor states that "So far they seem to be providing just the official Nmap files (as long as you don't click on the fake download buttons) and we haven't caught them trojaning Nmap the way they did with GIMP" but reiterates "that you should only download Nmap from our official SSL Nmap site: https://nmap.org/download.html"

It seems to reflect Gnomes efforts to be very selective about their users.

Wow, condescend much?

Two words for you: Audrey Tang.

I guess you also think the college dropouts Jobs, Woz and Gates are not as stellar as you.

At the end of the day only the results matter.

Understood. My point was that these distros do not have a clear focus, purpose, or identity.

From http://www.itworld.com/article/2856604/with-unity-8-ubuntu-will-bring-pure-linux-experience-to-mobile-devices.html

It is evolving from a server/desktop OS to one that will run the same codebase across devices such as TVs, desktops, tablets and smartphones.

I think part of the problem we are seeing is that distros are trying to handle the server, desktop, and mobile markets with one codebase, and, as a result, they are not great at any one them.

> Like KDE's user-unfriendliness.

KDE is not unfriendly. It does the basics and comes with a bland configuration out-of-box. Actually, it gives us expert users a lot of trouble to undo "easy" defaults like click-to-focus -- because most people come from Windows.

> Seriously, teach the average joe how to configure KDE to emulate Windows 10. I fucking dare you.

I actually do that -- more or less -- I just had to turn some things off for my kid, because he's too young and got confused with things I configured for me (like "window shade" with the mousewheel).

Regarding the other things, multiple desktops are not exclusive to KDE, regardless of my suggestion, Gnome does it, too.

Not to mention more general Linux traits like easier updates.

And lastly, the average Joe would use KDE and think it is Windows! I'd do a movie about it, but someone already did with 7:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

About W8, there's this:

http://www.itworld.com/article...

Windows 10 is just getting some square widgets with a tiling wm, I guess. Or something like that...

https://kver.wordpress.com/201...

Well, blackomegax, you can dare me whenever you want, since I'm no developer. Let's just wait for W10 and KDE5 and see how they fare...

Here's how to enable automatic security updates for your http://www.itworld.com/article...

Here's how you can enable automatic app updates in OS X Mavericks. This will save you the time and trouble of updating apps on OS X Mavericks manually.

1. Go to Settings.

2. Go to the App Store.

3. Click the Automatically Check for Updates check box.

4. Click the Install App Updates check box.

Here's MORE in that regard (dozens of times, millions of users infected by ads):

http://it.slashdot.org/story/0...
http://www.securityweek.com/lo...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/m...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023...
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...
http://www.securityweek.com/ea...
http://www.itworld.com/securit...
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...
http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...
http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

APK

P.S.=>

"And they dont hurt that much..." - by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 16, 2014 @08:00PM (#48613667)

Oh, really? See above, & "tell us another one"... apk

"New security updates released for the WordPress .. fix cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take control of websites ."

Embedded javascript in a comment box could trigger exploits on Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Microsoft Windows desktops.

Source? Or just trolling?

"New security updates released for the WordPress .. fix cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take control of websites ."

Embedded javascript in a comment box could trigger exploits on Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Microsoft Windows desktops.

From one of the referenced articles:

Tnftp is a cross-platform port of the original BSD FTP client. It is the default FTP client in NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD and Mac OS X, but it is also available in many Linux distributions.

The tnftp package shipped with OpenBSD is not vulnerable due to some changes made to the code some time ago

It's almost like the OpenBSD team knows what they're doing when it comes to security.

See subject-line, & even more examples (more than ever before & FAR from a complete total) - & adbanners ROB THE SPEED/BANDWIDTH WE PAY TO BE ONLINE as well:

Black Hat: Ad networks lay path to million-strong browser botnet

http://www.itworld.com/securit...

OpenX ad servers "pre-compromised" - official distro contained remote code backdoor:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.co...

Ad exec: Online ad industry complicit in NSA PRISM datamining:

http://www.zdnet.com/ad-exec-o...

Bing serving malware ridden ads:

http://search.slashdot.org/sto...

APK

P.S.=> Had enough yet, raymorris? I've got even MORE coming (as to what folks think of adbanners slowing them down, stealing their speed/bandwidth they PAID FOR to be online no less, folks NOT liking being tracked by adbanners, & advertisers STEALING FOLKS' BROWSING HISTORIES even)... apk

Volkswagen hooks up their audio systems to the CANBUS on cars. Those audio systems may have bluetooth enabled. This may allow a hacker to get onto the CANBUS via BT. I haven't tried, but it's definitely something that one could attempt. Other manufacturers do this also, such as GM and Chevy.

A 2009 study claim to have managed it. Given the range & pairing requirements of BT though, it does mean crashing a car that you're currently in. Giving the victim a specially prepared CD that will hack the CANBUS half way through their road trip seems a much more sensible idea to me.

According to this article:

On Twitter, however, SOE President John Smedley suggested that the company had failed to pay its website bills.

"The payment notifications went to a junk email box," Smedley tweeted, adding, "Someone left and it got caught in the replacements junk filter. Simple as that. Embarrassing as that. No point dodging."

"DNS problems could take up to 48 hours to resolve," he wrote, adding, "We are really really sorry on this one folks. Embarrassing and preventable. We screwed up."

The Linux users are acremely fanatic in their believe. At least they do not spy on linux users because that would be wrong. Right?
And if it goes wrong, the USofA can just not elect those who do wrong. Right?
I also hear people quoting some papers written several decades ago, so that is worth something as well. Right?

(Not sure if people can detect sarcasm. Not even sure if this IS sarcasm or just really, really sad.)

It isn't as if another version was already submitted earlier, perhaps with a better summary for the editors to use:

http://slashdot.org/submission...

The accepted story was submitted by itwbennett, and links to a story on itworld.com. I think it's a fair assumption that it was submitted by Amy Bennett, ITworld's Managing Editor. According to her achievements, she's had 2^9 submissions accepted, from which we can conclude that Slashdot editors probably prioritize her submissions. I imagine her submissions are fairly well written, link to a somewhat reputable source, and have already been deemed interesting enough to the IT crowd for a story on ITworld. So they get fast-tracked, and other worthy submissions are reviewed later, deemed to be duplicates, and discarded.

Would be nice if her submissions lead off with the fact that she was the managing editor for ITworld though, just to make it clear that she's just trying to feed traffic to her own site. (Which is a valid action if the story is original and interesting, but should require a disclaimer.)

"Talking on a cellphone while driving is legal in Florida, even without a hands-free kit, though texting while driving is banned."

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-...

Do you suppose that the NSA's injection system is a derivative of Microsoft's or vice-versa?

Microsoft can remotely remove programs from people's computers.

I suppose if I were interested enough, I'd be able to "inject" code too. I always thought of security as a waste of time, since there are so many much more productive things to be done with software. It is hard to build something, easy to tear it down.

But it seems that the IT world now views "injecting code" as a primary mission. It's a sad, sad world we live in.

"In mid-November, Microsoft unveiled a facility on its Redmond, Wash., campus that had become the new home for its Digital Crimes Unit. It took the opportunity to offer up new details about the multi-agency initiative that disrupted the huge Citadel botnet earlier this year" - from article source -> http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/394553/how-azure-helps-microsoft-take-down-cyber-criminals

Citadel's STILL alive though -> https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=lastupdated

(Sinkholing, while effective, doesn't ALWAYS work... that's proof...)

It's also WHY I almost never remove validly known botnet C&C Servers (malware-in-general etc.) in my custom hosts file @ 2,199,119++ entries strong & growing daily.

Why? Fastflux & Dynamic DNS utilizing botnets is why. They recycle/reuse them. Even if only "eventually" after long periods. So not responding to pings (easily faked in TCP parameters), or just not being up currently? Doesn't prove a valid testbed for removal either since that occurs.

I.E.-> Want to *try* to recycle them to use vs. me? Good luck - I'm "pre-covered" with data since 1997...

APK

P.S.=> I get the data & merge it with my existing hosts file (built since 1997) via this app I created in 32/64-bit code http://start64.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5851:apk-hosts-file-engine-64bit-version&catid=26:64bit-security-software&Itemid=74 to make the impossible for 1 person alone to do import-> deduplication & normalization filtering stages with that many entries vs. a 24-hour period - especially to combat this threat but it's only a partial reason why I use hosts. They give added speed, security, reliability vs. DNS hijack or failure, & even added "anonymity" to an extent if you wish as a "side-effect" of speedup & reliability features they yield...

... apk

I'm so sick of "the cloud the cloud the cloud." Everything is a freaking cloud now. It's stupid marketing horseshit and that's all there is to it. When I'm doing a consultation for a business and they ask me about "storing things in the cloud," the first thing I do is tell them what that word really means.

"The cloud" just means you're putting all of that data on hard drives owned someone else you don't know.

When I change the context this way, businesses suddenly start to think twice. I also like to point out that Dropbox has been found to open your documents for some unknown reason as a recent example to show that you don't know who is going through your stuff when you push it off onto another person's computer. Then I bring up the point that if law enforcement decides it wants to look at your data for whatever reason, you have less control over that because it's stored on someone else's systems and the warrant or subpoena could potentially go to that provider instead of you. Then there's the fun part when a cloud provider makes a mistake and accidentally gives your account to someone else you collaborated with, or deletes your account without a trace or any notice. Don't even start on the NSA end of this mess. Trusting "the cloud" is a stupid idea.

Most companies don't like the idea that when they move their data into "the cloud" when the possible repercussions are put into perspective and the marketing gimmick is stripped away.

I'd say waaaaaay beyond a slight edge thanks to the memshrink project.
https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/category/memshrink/

Old measurements. Situation keeps improving. Latest 2 or 3 firefox versions use smart loading/unloading of large images on image heavy web pages, for example.
http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/figure3_browserfootprint.jpg

Personally, on my chromebook, Chrome used 615MiB w/ 2 tabs open (crosh and a blank tab) while Firefox in Crouton used 385MiB with 18 tabs open, and that was after I had cycled through all the tabs to make sure they hadn't been unloaded.

And in the article linked from the summary

"The European Commission has been investigating Google for three years over allegations that it has abused its dominant market position. The company is accused of prioritizing its services in search results, scraping content from rival websites, tying advertisers in with exclusivity clauses in contracts and making it difficult to move advertising campaigns away from its sites."

Google's secret proposals leaked as dismay over EU antitrust inquiry grows

Has China banned Android phones, or are you simply making up hypothetical situations that are absurd in practice?

Ya, its not like China has ever blocked iTunes over providing access to undesirable content..
But really, doing something to hurt Apple's business in China? Like, building a replacement? No, they would never do that.

And like you, I recall China's response to Google no longer censoring search results to be entirely positive. They don't disconnect you if you try to search for a blocked term, right?

The Chinese government has absolutely no problem taking very drastic steps that can be financially devastating to a company. You play ball, or you have problems doing business in China.

There's obviously something wrong with this metric since Python has twice the whatTheFuckability as Perl: http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/WTF_programming_languages-600x450.jpg

They kind of did. http://www.itworld.com/software/358908/install-netflix-ubuntu-1304 At least it works pretty well for me over here on mint.

For what? You can freely skip the part where it asks for one, and ignore or hide any Google services. Always been possible.

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

Thousands is a drop in the pond.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/foxconn_tenth_biggest_employer/

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

Thousands is a drop in the pond.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/foxconn_tenth_biggest_employer/

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

How nice that, after these revelations, suddenly all of these companies are coming forward with data and vows to fight or announcing requests to reveal information, etc. Where were these Brave Defenders of Consumers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCitizens before Snowden?

In the case of Amazon, it cut off its services to Wikileaks at the request of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee). That's what Amazon was doing before Snowden. They didn't wait for an injunction, they didn't wait for Wikileaks or Assange to be brought upon charges (they've helped the US government deal with Wikileaks, without having to enter the messy US court system and all the rights that could possibly imply for the defendant).

And now suddenly, Amazon is getting this big fat 10-year contract from the CIA for a private cloud (that IBM is challenging every which way). Oh thanks Senator Lieberman!! And thank you US taxpayers!!! Amazon may not like to pay taxes, but it sure likes benefiting from them!

Actually, they started the memshrink project two years ago, and the result has been dramatic improvements in memory usage.
http://www.itworld.com/sites/default/files/figure3_browserfootprint.jpg

That's from a while ago.

They also aggressively handled memory leakage in addons recently.

Their JS performance has dramatically increased recently w/ IonMonkey and the baseline compiler. They also introduced asm.js.
http://jlongster.com/s/lljs-cloth/ http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/

They also switched to multi-process and sandboxing in FirefoxOS, although apparently addon support makes that problematic on the desktop, although they do use multiple threads for various operations on the desktop. (You can of course sandbox firefox itself on most operating systems if you so desire, just like any other process)

Chief Privacy Officer at Zero-Knowledge Systems...

Uh??? Somehow, it makes better sense than "director of advertising privacy"

Only to discover that Amazon has taken away my ability to watch entirely in the name of Digital Restrictions Management.

You're lucky, they saved you from watching the horrible things. It was an act of mercy.

Exactly. It's horrible crap. As bad or worse than anything the TV networks are producing.

http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/353540/amazon-debuted-eight-original-comedy-pilots-and-i-sat-through-almost-half-them

You can start with a hosting provider like Rackspace that has as a faithful implementation of it.

OpenStack to start cracking down on incompatible clouds

often deciding that they want to load into memory and stay there before you even use them

This is a GOOD thing. That is what memory is for: to be used as memory. Of my 16GB of memory, 13GB is used and my system is almost idle.
If I would add another 16GB, the system would use that as well.

If my memory usage was NOT around 80-90% I would be feeling ripped off.

I am happy that my OS uses it, because I payed money for it. Why NOT use it?

So no, it should not figure out if it has been idle for 2 days. If something else needs it, my OS will decide what it will drop.
Read this this and http://www.linuxatemyram.com/
Yes, directed at Linux, but I am sure that Apple uses the same things. No idea about Windows. I believe (as in not sure) that they now do this as well.

I have constantly 12 workspaces open with a multitude of programs and several panels with applets on them and I can easily add a LOT more if I so desire. Still a dream to work.

Add memory is you use swap a lot (because that slows things down)
For your disk, go SSD. That will give you a great increase of speed.
For startup use suspend or hibernate, which will give you a perceived increase of speed.

I use suspend and my PC is on before my monitor when I start them at the same time. 4 seconds from button press on the computer that is 'off' to working mode.

I'm not sure what HP's excuse is, though.

HP doesn't need an excuse because they're already compliant with the current definition of "interoperable".

The original story was misleading: OpenStack want to extend the definition to things that would mean HP would not be in compliance, but HP have already said they'd be happy to come into compliance once that definition has been set. Don't forget HP have people on staff who are heavily involved in OpenStack for precisely these kinds of reasons.

When I first saw the headlines for this story I immediately went to a much darker place. I envisioned doctors going into the morgue and borrowing a few digits for use in fooling the machines. I mean, it's not like those guys needed them any more. Things like this have happened before.

Then I realized this wouldn't work. For one thing, they'd have the wrong prints. For another, they'd be, well, a bit chilly.

Most current fingerprint scanners have technology that can detect whether the finger has a pulse, and some read fingerprints at a depth below skin level, which would render the silicon fingers useless. Apparently, that hospital is using an older type of scanner.

Giving biometric scanners the (fake) finger

Inside job.

The perfect example of corruption and conspiracy that begins --- and must begin --- at the top.

Another television network said it was the head of the emergency room that ran the scam and that his daughter had not worked a day in three years but got paid all the time.

Fake fingers to fool the boss at Brazil hospital

Ferreira confessed to using different fake fingers bearing the prints of 11 fellow doctors and 20 nurses in order to pretend they were showing up to work five overnight shifts each month, instead of just one, police said.

Ferreira also said the staff at the Ferraz Vasconcelos Hospital paid $2,400 per month to participate.

The doctor will face charges of falsifying a public document and could get two to six years in prison.

Brazilian doctor caught using fake fingers in biometrics scam

GP was correct. Sony did indeed patent technology intended to cripple the used game market.

For me it's bloody great. I game mostly on the PC (with a bit of Nintendo) but I can sit back and munch cheetos while Sony and Microsoft tear each other a new one with legal manoeuvring. In the meantime console babbies will be weeping salt tears over the used game market we've never seen on the PC. While still telling me it's the death of the PC as a games platform.

And Valve's Steambox gets ever closer. Can you hear it clanking? Can you?

Recommended reading: Copyfree is not quite the Public Domain .

In the ideal world there would be no problems with releasing software without any legal notice, or explicitly as "public domain". The present-day legal systems, however, are very far from ideal. Some governments don't recognize the concept of "public domain", and the developers / users of such software can run into all sorts of difficulties with the way their businesses are regulated. Some governments also have certain silly "implicit warranty" laws: if you give away software and that software eats someone's data (or has security holes, or any other issue), they may be able to sue you!

Many businesses (especially small businesses / independent developers) cannot understand all the details of how this would affect them without paying for a legal consultation ahead of time, which results in a significant "chilling effect". People avoid software that presents legal ambiguities, which applies not just to "public domain" software but to GPL and other long-winded restrictive licenses.

A clear solution to this is to only use copyfree licenses, like the new BSD license, MIT/X, ISC, CC0, OWL, etc. These licenses essentially say: "do what you want, just don't sue me, and don't pretend you wrote it". That's the very essence of free software! Attaching further restrictions, even when well-intentioned, always does more harm than good. The gradual success of copyfree software is powerful evidence that copyleft restrictions are not necessary, and there is much evidence of them causing a great deal of harm.

I highly recommend for everyone to listen to this interview with D Richard Hipp (bsd-talk podcast #194). He is the author of SQLite, which is one of the most widely-used pieces of software ever developed! In that interview he talks about why he chose to release his latest project under the BSD license. Hipp tells of his attempt to give away SQLite as "public domain", and how some governments make even that seemingly simple prospect very inconvenient. He also mentions how SQLite was originally forced into GPL for dependency issues, and how inconvenient that was - he had to rewrite those components from scratch in order to make his software useful...

--libman

No I meant exactly what I said. Microsoft is no stranger to doing this sort of thing. They also did a nice little FUD campaign to camouflage their actions. Not that the FUD went 100% like MS wanted but MS still managed to kill Linux on netbooks. And netbooks.

Wow... Here it's claimed that... RMS's worst flaw... Is his software design preferences?! And that is why copyFREE software is gradually leapfrogging copyLEFT?! Nonsense! That's like saying Hitler's worst flaw was his vegetarianism!

I hate to see bad people attacked for wrong reasons, because it distracts the eye of history from their actual faults. In reality RMS is intelligent, charismatic, and does not have an oft-alleged hygiene problem. He might not be an accomplished programmer, but some of his lispy software design ideas did at one time have merit, though history has shown them to be less than ideal. C++ does contradict the UNIX philosophy of developing myriads of small tools, although it might be a valid option for huge projects like compilers and Web browsers (until a better C-killer language, like D or Go, is fully baked). Free software should handle such aesthetic disagreements amicably, through forking and choice. Vi / Emacs / Eclipse users can be friends, yadda yadda yadda...

RMS's real flaw is his fanatical socialist / anti-capitalist politics, and that is precisely the philosophy from which radical copyLEFT has emerged!

RMS's vision stands against the software philosophy of the free market, where copyfree and proprietary software exist in a symbiotic relationship, resulting in a more financially-solvent, more competitive, more innovative, and more advanced software industry world-wide. He thinks all businesses are evil, and that everything, starting with software development, should be funded by the state - presumably with him in charge.

RMS and his supporters are horrendously hypocritical in their stance on "intellectual property rights". GPL relies on illegitimate government force far more than major software corporations do, because the latter mostly function through explicit contracts (SaaS, hardware bundling, support contracts, education / certification contracts, etc). GPL, on the other hand, is purely an "implicit contract", which, in a rational world, would have no more validity than sticking a post-it note on your forehead that says "by seeing me you are legally bound to kiss me"!

The practical consequences of copyLEFT have been horrendous, not just for the software industry at large but for the growth of free software as well. CopyLEFT is inherently antagonistic and legally unpredictable, which gives the business world good reasons to avoid it. Billions have been wasted rewriting the same code (at times in roundabout ways) just to avoid copyLEFT restrictions! Since copyFREE code equalizes the playing field, the fact that so much open source software was poisoned by copyLEFT has benefited the strongest player in the market, which is Microsoft - whose dominance would have been greater still without the copyFREE software that has been utilized by its competitors like Apple, thus restoring a more competitive environment.

--libman

With all due respect to your unixbeardedness, your statement has very little to do with the point I was making. We are comparing open source UNIX to open source UNIX, and what factors influenced the relative success of one OS over an other. The roots of the early success of Linux were the i386 "home users" with some blank floppies, who were far more numerous than people with access to corporate mainframes or university labs. I am explaining why those early adopters of Linux didn't go for BSD instead - BSD simply wasn't on their radar. Linux got there first, and when you've got one kernel you don't need another. (GNU's favoritism of Linux over BSD due to licensing bias is a separate issue.)

GNU was open-source (though restrictively-licensed) since its inception in 1983/4, and Linux from 1991. BSD was entangled in legal FUD until January 1994 , by which time we had not only Linux but also Slackware, Debian, etc. (To some people BSD's "obnoxious advertising clause" was even more of a turn-off than Linux's copyLEFT, and BSD didn't become fully compliant with copyFREE standards until 1999, but that's a side-issue.) So it was in January of 1994 when BSD became a contender, while Linux "went viral" among the home geek crowd in 1993.

Linus himself had said that if 386BSD had been available (i.e. free of AT&T legal uncertainty) at the time, he probably would not have created Linux. (And it didn't become fully free of legal FUD until a few months after that interview was published.) In that same interview, Linus also mentions other reasons that worked against BSD: higher hardware requirements, "lack of co-ordination", bad approach to release engineering, etc.

Switching kernels (which also meant switching file-systems, kernel-dependent system components, etc) has always been very difficult. Switching Web browsers is much easier, and its (mostly) BSD license didn't keep Chromium from leapfrogging over Firefox. Apache httpd wasn't the least bit handicapped by its non-copyLEFT (though not entirely copyFREE) license (in fact the "got there first" advantage of Apache has kept out decent GPL'ed Web servers like Cherokee), and it's now gradually yielding ground to the fully-copyFREE nginx. Among scripting languages, lisp (the most popular scripting language of the 80s, also Stallman's favorite) was overshadowed by weaker-copyLEFT perl, which in turn was leapfrogged by even-less-uncopyFREE python / php, and which are now being leapfrogged by fully-copyFREE node.js / ruby / etc. Apple's recent choices leave no doubt that GPL has handicapped the popularity of mysql and gcc.

Conclusion: The conjecture that FreeBSD was hurt by its license is baseless, buried under a mountain of more plausible handicaps in the history of FreeBSD's development, and is utterly contradicted in most other software categories!

--libman

Not true since Vista. Slashdot is full of folks who've last used Windows more than 10 years ago and thus complain of things like bluescreens, bloat etc. which makes them look like idiots.

Get with the times and at least update your hate machine.

Fair enough. How's this? I installed a release copy of Windows 8 straight from MSDN into a VM a few weeks back while at work. Within 30 minutes and while only doing some casual activities just to get a feel for the OS, I had managed to send it to some sort of a black screen that was unresponsive twice while installing applications I've been using for years, forcing me to reboot it both times since I hadn't yet set up any snapshots.

And you talk about a lack of bloat, but Windows 8 comes with so much crapware that Microsoft offers a "Signature" line of PCs at a $100 premium, with their signature feature being that all of the crapware is removed. I cannot make this stuff up.

Are you suggesting there's a more recent version of Windows I'm unaware of that isn't suffering from these problems?

...You might wonder why:

That's because an IP address is not a human being when it comes to matters of law.

This is what our friendly folks in Germany will find out sooner or later. The trouble is that they'll have wasted so much time. Sad indeed.

Germany is distracted with building their forces up for another go at taking over the world. please forgive them.