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Maybe he meant something like the LGPL?

On the other hand, maybe this is what was meant.

If you don't mind the HUGE latency, I'm sure one of the many Linux fanatic can conjure up a neat vanilla box outfitted with six PCI-based audio cards and carry up to six conversation at once.

Free phone calls may be well-received by most soilders who are desperate to hear the voice of their love ones (delayed or not).

The core technology, that being said, is the Internet connection. You say you have it already.

Just ask one of the many USA-based>/A> LUG groups for a donation of a box complete with six headsets.

Just ask! Many of them are patriotic.

Actually, Ubuntu does have X.org packaged and it works very well. Check http://www.linux.org/news/2004/11/10/0001.htmlhere for details...

I don't think spammers usually manually go through their lists and disqualify messages based on the domain

No, because most address CDs sent to spammers are divided out by domain already. See this.

I have heard about a list of known anti-spammers which is used to clean spam lists (since those people will certainly react harshly to any spam they get). Sort of a private "do not spam" thing, but maintained by the spammers themselves.

That's why I usually request that the ISP tell the spammer that I'm the one who complained.

I'll do it for $99 for even better one-time fix!

As someone who have been suggesting it for years, I am really glad that they have finally made the store. This is a much better way to support a project like this, because people are generally more likely to buy cool merchandise (like on Amazon) than to send money not getting anything in return (like lobbying). I hope a portion of the revenus stream will go towards the development of Debian GNU/NetBSD because there is a lot of platforms I want to have Debian on, and it doesn't seem that Linux--or even HURD--will be nearly as portable as NetBSD any time soon, and as a long-time GNU supporter I must admit that I say it with a great deal of jealousy and at least an equal amount of admiration. For those who are not familiar with NetBSD's exceptional portability, or those who think that their pathetic operating system (Micro$oft) is portable because it supports Intel and AMD, here is a list of platforms that a really portable operating system should support: acorn26, acorn32, algor, alpha, amd64, amiga, amigappc, arc, atari, bebox, cats, cesfic, cobalt, dreamcast, evbarm, evbmips, evbppc, walnut, evbsh3, evbsh5, hp300, hp700, hpcarm, hpcmips, hpcsh, i386, iyonix, luna68k, mac68k, macppc, mipsco, mmeye, mvme68k, mvmeppc, netwinder, news68k, newsmips, next68k, ofppc, pc532, playstation2, pmax, pmppc, prep, sandpoint, sbmips, sgimips, sh3, sh3eb,

After adding the "yq" bookmark/keyword search to Firefox I decided to give it a real challenge with the question: What is the best operating system? First entry: Linux Online :-)

The google theory about Joe sixpack being overloaded is valid. Having heard how great linux from the tech-friend who said we could just download and install it, we google for "download linux". The first link http://www.linuxiso.org/ smacks us with 15 different distros upfront, although it does offer an Introduction to Linux, which plays agnostic when the noob question "Which Distribution Is The Best?" is asked. The second link http://www.linux.org/dist/download_info.html gets us to a page that has an over of how to download a linux distro, and a link to a distributions page that even after we fill in English / Live CD / Intel Based Architecture, we get 59 distributions.

Assuming Joe downloads a good distribution (most of them are good for his purposes but HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT) he decides to google for "install linux" and gets back to http://www.linux.org/docs/beginner/install.html which mentions a few distros (is SuSE a 12 year old girl with bad spelling?) and refers to distro specific instructions via an Install Guide circa 1998 before going straight into red-hat specific instructions. The second google link is Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, which Joe decides would be easier to do than install it on his "dude you got a dell".

Bottom line, unless you hand Mr. 6-pack a Live-CD with a simple hard-drive install option (auto-repartition, auto-detect network and video), he is most likely not going to be able to download, burn, boot and install "linux".

The google theory about Joe sixpack being overloaded is valid. Having heard how great linux from the tech-friend who said we could just download and install it, we google for "download linux". The first link http://www.linuxiso.org/ smacks us with 15 different distros upfront, although it does offer an Introduction to Linux, which plays agnostic when the noob question "Which Distribution Is The Best?" is asked. The second link http://www.linux.org/dist/download_info.html gets us to a page that has an over of how to download a linux distro, and a link to a distributions page that even after we fill in English / Live CD / Intel Based Architecture, we get 59 distributions.

Assuming Joe downloads a good distribution (most of them are good for his purposes but HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT) he decides to google for "install linux" and gets back to http://www.linux.org/docs/beginner/install.html which mentions a few distros (is SuSE a 12 year old girl with bad spelling?) and refers to distro specific instructions via an Install Guide circa 1998 before going straight into red-hat specific instructions. The second google link is Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, which Joe decides would be easier to do than install it on his "dude you got a dell".

Bottom line, unless you hand Mr. 6-pack a Live-CD with a simple hard-drive install option (auto-repartition, auto-detect network and video), he is most likely not going to be able to download, burn, boot and install "linux".

The google theory about Joe sixpack being overloaded is valid. Having heard how great linux from the tech-friend who said we could just download and install it, we google for "download linux". The first link http://www.linuxiso.org/ smacks us with 15 different distros upfront, although it does offer an Introduction to Linux, which plays agnostic when the noob question "Which Distribution Is The Best?" is asked. The second link http://www.linux.org/dist/download_info.html gets us to a page that has an over of how to download a linux distro, and a link to a distributions page that even after we fill in English / Live CD / Intel Based Architecture, we get 59 distributions.

Assuming Joe downloads a good distribution (most of them are good for his purposes but HE DOESN'T KNOW THAT) he decides to google for "install linux" and gets back to http://www.linux.org/docs/beginner/install.html which mentions a few distros (is SuSE a 12 year old girl with bad spelling?) and refers to distro specific instructions via an Install Guide circa 1998 before going straight into red-hat specific instructions. The second google link is Installing Linux on a Dead Badger, which Joe decides would be easier to do than install it on his "dude you got a dell".

Bottom line, unless you hand Mr. 6-pack a Live-CD with a simple hard-drive install option (auto-repartition, auto-detect network and video), he is most likely not going to be able to download, burn, boot and install "linux".

with 2 things: Disreputable ISPs who are willing to sell bandwidth for 'evil' purposes at a premium (e.g. spam) Everyone's favourite Zombie botnets, which cannot easily be stopped at the ISP level (lots of low level activity). To fix that problem, get people to patch their Windows systems with the latest 'hotfix' for all their software problems!

I can think of one example...

January 7th. Ok, maybe not extremely critical, but there are vulnerabilities....

Cough bloody cough. What's your point? Linux exists on the Mac.

Hell: Linux.org is where you want to go if you're going to be pedantic.

Good for SkyOS, possibly, rather a non-event from a Firefox perspective, at least numbers-wise.

That's right. SkyOS is too small of a project to be any of significance. And everybody knows no small projects ever become big ones, right?

There are several - I usually go to http://www.linux.org/dist/index.html and select the "LiveCD" Category. This suggests a range of options, each with different advantages. I try out a new one every few months, just to get some variety.

One I tried recently, which is close to your needs is FeatherLinux (http://featherlinux.berlios.de/). I'm not sure about XL/Powerpoint in the default install, but it can install OpenOffice if you wish.

There many Open Source OSs that dont gain widespread acceptance.
Linux, is still one of them. Although is is more widely accepted than OpenBSD

;-)

Something around 280ish currently in English.

The question is this: how many of these are viable contenders in the market[s] shared by Solaris and Windows?

SuSe, backed by Novel, is a viable contender. Mandrake and Debian are not utterly out of the running. And the multitude of contenders in the wings will leave anyone trying to wipe Linux off the map in a protracted whack-a-mole (or penguin) game. For that matter, the BSD *nix flavors ought not be ruled out ofthe running, although they're more of a long shot and largely non-commercial.

On the other hand, if a time traveller were to call me and tell me that in five years a Linux distribution would wipe out either Windows or Solaris and asked me to guess which distro did it... I'd guess Red Hat. (I'd also guess Solaris.)

Spybot
Adaware

Oh, and Linux.

Better yet, you can also install this patch to alleviate the problem alltogether... It may require one of these other patches though (there are even more options, I had to pick three). But they aren't very hard to install :)

There's also MrProject for Linux, I don't know if there's a binary for Windows. I compiled this on Linux once and it was nice but it broke pgAdmin, I think it was some version incompatibility with GTK or something.

There are some other similar tools here. Open Workbench Is supposed to be really good, although I haven't tried it. iTeamWork is another free tool.

And finally, this is a list of some more tools.

There's also MrProject for Linux, I don't know if there's a binary for Windows. I compiled this on Linux once and it was nice but it broke pgAdmin, I think it was some version incompatibility with GTK or something.

There are some other similar tools here. Open Workbench Is supposed to be really good, although I haven't tried it. iTeamWork is another free tool.

And finally, this is a list of some more tools.

you try finding every hole in millions of lines of code

That would be a hell of a lot easier to do if I had access to the code.
Lots of people do it constantly!

It's also interesting to see the lawsuits that Microsoft has filed:

Microsoft sues controversial system assembler

Microsoft Sues Lindows.com Over Name

Microsoft takes on teen's site MikeRoweSoft.com

Microsoft sues Lucent in old dispute

Microsoft sues Brazilian magazine, IT official for defamation

Microsoft files lawsuit against five Md. firms

Of course, since they usually either buy out the company, develop and market a competing product, they don't need to resort to lawsuits for those type of situations.

I hope that means Spamikaze is going in the right direction... ;)

An relevant note here would be to mention Spamikaze system (intro here).

In a nutshell, it sets up spamtrap e-mail addresses, and any IP that sends mail to that address is automatically added to the blacklist, and further mails from it are rejected at SMTP level. A false positive can be easily removed from the blacklist manually (example, PSBL).

An relevant note here would be to mention Spamikaze system (intro here).

In a nutshell, it sets up spamtrap e-mail addresses, and any IP that sends mail to that address is automatically added to the blacklist, and further mails from it are rejected at SMTP level. A false positive can be easily removed from the blacklist manually (example, PSBL).

• Follow this link for a security report entitled: Security Report: Windows vs. Linux
• Here is a nice little report about Viruses: Linux vs. Windows
• And here is The U.S. government's warning to Web surfers to stop using Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

How about something that prevents it?

you must be new here. Linus has done some amazing things

Several supported Linuxes run on Macs. Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 just shipped.

Ubuntu is shipping PPC in its upcoming 4.1 release, and has PPC ISOs as recent as last month.

Mandrake and Suse have downlevel versions for PPC.

For a more complete, albeit sometimes inaccurate, list of what Linuxes run on what hardware, visit Linux.org's distribution page.

I think what you're referring to is the return of the ANSI bomb -- there have been several patches to programs such as less and vim to prevent this from occurring, but your recollection is correct; you can place certain control sequences in output messages (I'd imagine a wide-open syslog would be relatively simple) that, when displayed via certain terminals and/or certain programs, could cause command execution with the privileges of the user.

Here is the result of some quick googling on the subject.

"Linux wil run on most, if not all desktop computers currently running Windows."

In fact, Linux runs on about 23 additional architectures that Microsoft can't even remotely support with their most-flexible embedded target.

• Diverse PDA / embedded / microcontroller / router devices:
  • Advanced RISC Machines, Ltd. ARM family (StrongARM SA-1110, XScale, ARM6, ARM7, ARM2, ARM250, ARM3i, ARM610, ARM710, ARM720T, and ARM920T)
  • Analog Devices, Inc.'s Blackfin DSP
  • Axis Communications ETRAX series ("CRIS" = Code Reduced Instruction Set RISC architecture)
  • Elan SC520 and SC300
  • Fujitsu FR-V
  • Hitachi H8 series
  • Intel i960
  • Intel IA32-compatibles (Cyrix MediaGX, STMicroelectronics STPC, ZF Micro ZFx86)
  • Matsushita AM3x
  • MIPS-compatibles (Toshiba TMPRxxxx / TXnnnn, NEC VR series, Realtek 8181)
  • Motorola 680x0-based machines (Motorola VMEbus boards, ISICAD Prisma machines, and Motorola Dragonball & ColdFire CPUs, and Cisco 2500/3000/4000 series routers)
  • Motorola embedded PowerPC (including MPC / PowerQUICC I, II, III families)
  • NEC V850E
  • Renesas Technology (formerly Hitachi) SH3/SH4 (SuperH: link1 link2)
  • Samsung CalmRISC
  • Texas Instruments's DM64x and C54x DSP families
• Intel 8086 / 80286 .
• Intel IA32 family: i386, i486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Xeon, and Pentium IV processors, as well as IA32 clones from AMD, Cyrix, VIA, IDT, Winchip, NexGen, Transmeta, VIA C3 Ezra "CentaurHauls", and others.
• Intel/HP IA64: Trillian/Itanium/Itanium2
• AMD x86-64 Hammer family (including AMD Opteron)
• Motorola 68020-68040 series (with MMU): m68k Mac, Amiga, Atari ST/TT/Medusa/Falcon, HP/Apollo Domain, HP9000/300, sun3, and Sinclair Q40.
• Motorola/IBM PowerPC family: Most PowerMac (including G3/G4/G5) / CHRP / PReP / POP, Amiga PowerUP System, and IBM PPC64 (AS/400, RS/6000).
• MIPS

The UK.gov does the same, its disgracefull. The Congeston Charge was outsourced to India, and to make matters worse, they used an amircan product when a prefectly good European one would of done.

Silly IT departments.

If you "upgrade" a piece of software, then discover it requires a complete manual system restart to remain stable, the prudent thing to do in any other circumstance would be a rollback.

Unfortunately, since this is an IT department, it must run Windows; after all, where could you ever find support for Linux?

Things licensed as Open Source do better on "just the facts" vs hype. Maybe it's because their audiences would take them to task if they did otherwise, but description of things such as GCC, Wikipedia , the Linux kernel, the GIMP, to name just a few, are completely factual. Not entirely free of marketing but tolerable are the Linux site's description of Linux, OpenSSH, bzip2, Project Gutenberg, and an XWindows organization X.org.

Particularly note Wikipedia and Google. The description of Wikipedia was made and chosen by the users. I can't think of a better testament that what users really want is just the facts. And Google understood that the last thing a person wants to do when anxious to find something quick is be forced to wait for a bunch of pointless graphics and generic ads to load. Really aggravating when on dial-up. Before Google, I got to where I knew just when to hit the stop button when loading Yahoo's main search page so I'd get the text input line and search button and miss all the extra crap they used to put on their main page.

Of course open source isn't totally above marketing. FreeBSD, Mozilla Firefox, KDE, Apache, OpenOffice all lay it on. They can point to all kinds of statistics to justify their hype, but the hype is still irritating when it catches my attention. These are easy to accept in spite of the marketspeak because I've heard from elsewhere that they're good.

Bad though some of those are, Microsoft is worse. Maybe what MS does should be called extreme marketing? In a few moments of searching, I was unable to find even a badly overblown description of just what Windows XP or MS Office is and during the search was wading through hype about MS's latest whatever: "Try the new digital music experience from Microsoft. You'll love it!"

As for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I will spend a little time trying not to do that, but when it does happen I hope it clues the promoters in to realizing they made the waters too murky. Accepting something in spite of murk is not the way to persuade them to clean up. I like to tell them about it too. You never know when commentary might actually be heeded. I'm sorry if a good thing gets short shrift, but when time is limited, books will be judged by covers. People are often asked to try to word emails so spam filters will pass them. I feel I'm not asking too much of marketing to do the analogous.

I dont know that its just that their repeating, look at the time line on the bottom of the article. Seems a little thin to me.

shsecret takes a file and splits it into N parts of equal size such that any M parts can be used to reconstruct the secret, but fewer than M will give absolutely no information about the secret. This program is written in strict ANSI C, so it should be completely portable. It is also hopefully simpler and more efficient than other implementations of the same algorithm.

Join LUG - a local linux user group.
http://www.linux.org/groups/

Online references and Forums are great
but having humans to interact with
and talk linux over a bottle of beer is good too:)

Most LUG conducts FREE seminars too.

I dunno.. Why do people keep writing software and giving it away for free? Where's the incentive?

The truth is, there are enough people that create for the love of the craft to make it all worthwhile. People who are in it purely for the money tend to be inferior at their craft anyways.

Try this.

This comment is completely off topic. I suggest it be modded down. Fucking Lunix hippys.

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, performed a stint in the Finnish army. Why don't these geeks understand?

With the cost of upgrades, the continued security holes, the perceived instability, the required activation, and the neutering of XP Home... I really don't see myself or others upgrading from Win98 or Win2K without being forced to.

How's that going to happen? Microsoft is going to have to discontinue support for those operating systems.

And, I suspect that's their longer term plan. By cutting support, when the next window of bit-rot or software bloat forces a user to consider their options, I think Microsoft is banking on intimidating them into a newer version of the OS, no matter the cost.

It was precisely the anticipation of this world wide event that made me switch to using Apple's OS X (based on FreeBSD!) and start finding non-Microsoft solutions via Linux.

I've found a new mouth piece as well. When I went to evangelize alternate solutions to friends and family, I got the standard "but you're a geek" roll of the eyes. I was, however, able to convert my wife of alternatives to Microsoft with the use of applications such as Mozilla's Firefox as a browser replacement to get rid of pop-ups/adware and Thunderbird to stop her from getting infected with viruses.

Upon learning that there are alternative solutions with better features that let her not have to deal with everyday annoyances, she was an easy sell on Linux, and now uses Putty and SSHing -- something I never thought I'd see!

She's the one who gets creditability marks with her friends. They know she's an artist and not a computer geek. If she's raving about it, they want to try it, because obviously it's not above their level.

Linux, however, is going to have to compete hard with Microsoft. It isn't Linux's free price tag or outstanding stabilily that's holding it back. It's complexity.

The learning curve is too great for the non-technical user to setup and immediately start using it. Microsoft scores big when it comes to easy install for a basic system, and they actually do automatic updates quite well from a simplicity standpoint.

What many geeks don't get is simple computer users are willing to give up power and features for ease of use. If someone put out a basic distribution that auto-detected hardware, did an easy install, and set up the basic environment with nothing but the standard Office tools -- much like a dumbed down version of Mandrake or BeOS or the free OpenBeOS version.

Microsoft sees that "we don't get it" and aren't catering a special distribution to "grandma", and with that fact they leverage Windows into homes, knowing that once someone invests in learning something, they usually don't switch without good cause (frustration, cost, or inapplicability to task).

Go to a meeting of your local Linux User Group Someone will burn you a distro (or at least a copy of Knoppix, which is enough to get you downloading) for free.

What kind of (part-time) work can you get as a college student to gain experience

Aside from simply applying for such positions, I would suggest you attend a Linux User's Group in your area. Along with expanding your knowlege and skills, a LUG connects you with relationships that might be helpful in finding part-time work. You'll also get a better feel for the local job market.

there was once a long list comedically stepping through the progression of a linux user from newbie to guru.

I mean, have you seen some of the gurus of "open source" lately?

Whatever can you mean?

I'm applying those to friends'/neighbors'/relatives'/clients' computers (servers and desktops alike) for last 3 years. Everybody is happy so far.

Dear User,
It means you can only run Linux. Go to Here for further instructions.
Thank you for your time,
Gill Bates, VP, Marketing, Microsoft. All of your inodes are belong to us