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What problem do you have with SELinux? Perhaps you don't understand correctly how it works. It has a bad rep for being cumbersome, but it isn't terribly hard to learn if you're willing. There are several examples of it blocking exploits and 0 day attacks, because of the method I describe. You may find this article interesting, with links to some of Dan Walsh's blog posts.

As for VMS, it is widely considered to be one of the most secure systems. Just have a quick look at it's vulnarability history. It puts OpenBSD to shame. More info.

What problem do you have with SELinux? Perhaps you don't understand correctly how it works. It has a bad rep for being cumbersome, but it isn't terribly hard to learn if you're willing. There are several examples of it blocking exploits and 0 day attacks, because of the method I describe. You may find this article interesting, with links to some of Dan Walsh's blog posts.

As for VMS, it is widely considered to be one of the most secure systems. Just have a quick look at it's vulnarability history. It puts OpenBSD to shame. More info.

Mono is a cleanroom implementation of the CLR as specified by EMCA and .Net libraries, right? What exactly do you risk by using it?

From what I've learned (on Groklaw ;-) ), cleanroom implementations help you indemnify your software against copyright violation allegiations.
Stallmann is here saying that there is a possibility that Mono violates Microsoft software patents, and that in that case, software *depending on* mono (i.e. written in C#) is at risk if mono ever has to be de-installed because of patent violation allegiations.
In fact, there's a famous other article by Stallmann about copyright, patents and trademarks, where he claims the use of the word "Intellectual Property" should be stopped, which directly addresses your confusion: I really, heartily, strongly recommend you to read it, it's mindblowingly easy to read and I found it very enlightening:
Did You Say âoeIntellectual Propertyâ? It's a Seductive Mirage
IANA(P)L and I don't actually know much about .NET or Microsoft software but his arguments make sense. Also bear in mind that the Microsoft-Novell software patent deal of 2006 (here, here, here), where Microsoft promises not to sue Novell's customers for a limited period of time, expires in 2011 or so. So maybe then Ballmer will divulge what he meant with his "235 software patents Linux infringes" (maybe it should have been 205 software patents ;-) but it's very possible that Ballmer is completely truthful here). Then again 2011 is years away and maybe software patents won't exist anymore in the U.S.A because they wanted to harmonize with the rest of the world, which doesn't have them.

Honestly, this stuff has been known in the HPC world for decades. What's interesting is that these troublesome bits are going to hit system-level and lower-level language programmers on everyday tasks. It's not clear to me how this stuff will affect higher-level programming, interpreted code, etc. It will almost certainly be a factor but I'm not sure there's much the programmer can do about it.

Some of the fun things we have to look forward to at the commodity level:

• Unsynchronized core interrupts
• Cache bank conflicts among multiple threads
• Various OS interactions / time to service system calls being different on different cores
• Memory controller fairness issues

These (and others) all fall into the general category of "induced load imbalance." They are things the programmer doesn't directly think about; things that happen as a result of system services, CPU architecture and stuff generally out of the control of the application programmer. This is all in addition to the stuff the programmer does have control over such as data layout and the amount of work given to each thread.

Induced load imbalance is the primary reason that scaling to manycore is difficult. It requires a lot of OS work to reduce "OS jitter" to a level that is acceptable when running thousands of threads.

Here's an article on some of the scaling work HPC vendors have done with Linux.

Could you please back up your claims of Red Hat trying to stop CentOS with some facts? And in related news, Red Hat is opening Red Hat Network. :) http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/061808-red-hat-network-to-be.html

Every time I have opened up a computer and started it up, I have been forced to click "Yes, I accept these license terms" when starting Windows the first time.

In fact, I believe that, since there is a phrase to the extent of, "If you don't accept this license, you may return it to the seller for a refund," you actually can get rid of MS junk (see this happy story)! Though, the follow up suggests that it is hard, if not impossible, to do this.

This new book has a pretty solid intro to shell scripting, enough to get you started, along with some other basics such as Apache configuration and something that's vital for new users who actually want to use their Linux box on real projects: ssh. (Here's another review of the same title, which I wrote.)

I have seen and tried a "solve CAPTCHAs for porn" site. It looks broken now (stuck on the first picture), but when I first found it, via blog spam, it was working.

I had fun recording this podcast with Paul Kim and Eugene Chang at Everex. Yes, Paul got a call at 3:00am from his Microsoft contact, asking about what MSFT can do for them.

I had fun recording this podcast with Paul Kim and Eugene Chang at Everex. Yes, Paul got a call at 3:00am from his Microsoft contact, asking about what MSFT can do for them.

You're at stage six, "Explain why a simple collision attack is still useless, it's really the second pre-image attack that counts".

http://www.linuxworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x_linux.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/linuxworld/news/2007/111207-hash.html :)

Perhaps you should read this article with particular reference to the table 'Stages in the life cycle of cryptographic hash functions'. By the way you are one or two stages behind.

Print version of the article on a single page.

There are about six or seven of these multipage articles linked to on Slashdot each day. It took me less than twelve seconds to get the link to this one. Would it not be possible for submitters/editors to do this? Or is it that Slashdot has some kind of agreement not to do this?

http://www.linuxworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x_linux.c gi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/linuxworld/news/2 007/081607-matt-asay-interview.html&pagename=/news /2007/081607-matt-asay-interview.html&pageurl=http ://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/081607-matt-asay-i nterview.html&site=lw_general

Nobody wants to switch to Office 2007 because...

That's funny. In my own anectdotal experience, on the 15 flights i've taken in the last 3 months, every single time i've seen someone open up a (non-mac) laptop, they've had Office 2007 running. Probably 25 different people, randomly encountered. The ribbon bar is very noticable, even if you're just glancing in someones direction.

Now, maybe it's just that people that regularly fly on business trips have extra money lying around to upgrade, but it kind of blows your other theories. Especially since a) it's a free upgrade for anyone on software assurance, and b) it's not more difficult ot use, and c) i don't know of anyone that's needed to be retrained to use it. In fact, in my experience they find it easier to use than Office 2003.

And in regards to HIPPA and S-O, you should really read this article (in particular, page 3): http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/072307-opendoc uments-grounded.html

And, before you jump to the conclusion that it was written by a shill, you should note that the authors are members of OASIS and one of them writes for Groklaw.

I spot-check our site logs for ad blockers, and so far, nothing to worry about. Many easier opportunities to get more traffic with usability tweaks.

There is a simple AJAX technique for detecting ad blockers, of course, and it also spots MSIE users.

BTW: ad blocking for MSIE.

Translation is the problem. Translation doesn't comply with numerous government regulations, because translation does not reproduce documents exactly, as is required by laws like HIPAA, and Sarbanes-Oxley. Too many people don't understand the issues involved with converting billions of legacy documents to another format.

Read this, it adequately describes the issues:

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/072307-opendoc uments-grounded.html

Here's the transcript of the interview with Jeremy Allison.

d00d, trolling is a business model now. It's turned all commercial and stuff just like virus writing. It used to be trolls were just out to show you a gross-out picture or something, just like virus writers were out to trash your hard drive. Now trolling drives the monetizable web 2.0 eyeball traffic, or something like that. And all the gifted amateur trolls have gone pro.

The transcript is already started. Watch the LinuxWorld home page or get the RSS feed to be notified when it's up.

The transcript is already started. Watch the LinuxWorld home page or get the RSS feed to be notified when it's up.

As I understand it, what matters is *published* prior art. You can get a patent invalidated if there was prior art that the patent office missed - but not just because somebody was already using the same invention in secret.

However, you may not want the examiner to be able to see all prior art. As Don Marti pointed out, that would just allow patent troll companies to design more cleverly worded patents that get around the prior art but are still able to cause damage - and indeed are more difficult to invalidate. Better to publish in a way that can be proven in court later, but not in a way that makes it easy for patent trolls and the patent office (who both have a vested interest in granting, not rejecting patents) to use it.

Unfortunately Microsoft killed WebDAV for everybody. They're so good at that it's scary.

Now, according to Jeremy Allison, CIFS seems to be the best way to share stuff. I think he's right. At least, I can't think of any more reliable cross-platform file share technology.

Sigh.

I actually stared a Free/Open Source Social Networking project (FlightFeather) based on similar reasoning, which I also covered in a talk at LinuxWorld San Francisco 2006.

Specifically, when dealing with Web applications, get as much of the stored data as possible in HTML format -- then serve the resulting static pages. Much faster than pulling the data out of a generic SQL database, and rebuilding the page on every request. Even the page generation side can be very efficient. My benchmarking indicates that a single one-CPU machine should be able to handle several hundred comments per second in a discussion forum.

> Yes you most likely paid a modest 30-40 USD for the OEM license as part of your PC cost.

And you can get that money back.

Really, and what address do you send the video to?

Maybe someone has accomplished it, but I highly doubt it's company policy. Especially when all you have to do is use the recovery CD to reinstall it.

1. OEM Windows licenses are nowhere close to "hundreds of dollars". You'll still be able to buy $500 PCs

except you should not have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get the money back for a bundled OEM install you never wanted... that $500 PC should really be $400 without the "Windows tax"...

It is now. Hit reload.

It shouldn't really take three hours, now that there's a known working letter you can borrow from. 1. Get Dave's letter. 2. Put your info in. Print and send. 3. This is Slashdot -- people should know what step 3 is by now.

Not so. Not by any means. There are many, many people who want to make their own music videos (see for example AMV). This is part of the ongoing battle between the read-only internet and the read/write internet, as explained eloquently by Professor Lessig.

You have not heard of Lycoris before because they are indeed not a major Linux player. I used them for a while, but the hardware support was lacking.

I don't know if anyone else here remembers it, but I loved the LinuxWorld "review" of Lycrois. It was two or three paragraphs long and went something like this:

"I installed Lycoris, a Linux billed as an XP clone. My screen tunred a weird shade of green when using the Desktop. That sucked. Fin."

After reading that, I was just standing there with a horrified look on my face, then started muttering "but, but, he didn't even TRY to fix the issue, or even tell us anything ABOUT the OS!"

Ah, here it is. Gotta love journalistic integrity. :-)

Someone makes a veiled on line threat to an editors life and the life of her mother... It really can't be taken any other way, pictures of your mothers house the day before mothers day posted on the internet with the address to said house really can only be taken as an "I know where you live," style threat.

So, said threat is made... People are appalled that such a threat was made, they tell advertisers who said advertisers are associated with... Individuals independantly do this without being members of any sort of "Linux Community." As just normal decent human beings they ask for the editor of sys-con to remove said article and appoligize and fire the person responsible for this lunatic attack.

All PJ ever did was post court documents and point out the connections that people had, the timings of "articles" to the timings of when the companies actually publically stated the news, many times it seems that a few "select" "journalists were able to publish "facts" before those "facts" were known.

This is what O'Gara did wrong.

Yet, somehow this guy seems to think that an attack on an innocent editor and many brave people taking the right, decent and proper response as an attack by the lunatic fringe of the "Linux Community."

Obviously this is another FUD article attempting to paint Linux users as lunatics, when the opposite is quite true. The sad thing is that this conclussion about the linux lunatics doesn't even logically follow from the premises that he makes.

Basically his article is; an editor of a great linux site is threatened by an unethical journalist and a lot of individuals see this act and take independant action through proper channels smack said journalists down... therefore there are a lot of linux lunatics and people need to avoid linux.

WTF? how does this person manage to make this leap from the first part of the article to his conclusion?

And for that matter, aren't there serial killers and mass murders that have ran Windows before? Does that make them part of the "Windows Community?"

Aren't all humans part of a "Human community?" Aren't there a lot of lunatic humans? Like Dvark for instance? Does this mean we should avoid all humans? Kind of hard to do if you yourself are a human.

Aren't all computer users part of a "Computer using community?" Aren't there a lot of lunatic computer users? Does this mean we should avoid all computer users? Kind of hard to do if you yourself are a computer user.

In a decade we will have to read articles this bozo posts saying how he knew linux was going to win the whole time and how it would have never gotten to where it is without his support. Sad really... He'll probably call the people who point out the inconsitencies in his recollection of events lunatics too.

I don't even know who the audience for his article is. Trying to warn CxO's about the dangers of the "Linux Community?" Trying to teach the leaders of the Linux community how to exclude "lunatics?"

Well, good luck on both. CxO's only care about the bottom line and Linux helps with that in droves. The people who are leaders in the linux community lead by example. They don't preach, they code. Call it a technocracy if you will. They are too busy to even comment or read this absurd argument from such a sad sad bitter man.

• "We have no control over the website; even the new one, which went live recently, is completely out of our control. Many people don't understand how this can be the case - even with the recent issues, many assume we have full and absolute control over content on the website. This simply wasn't the case. Instead the LinuxWorld.com website is an automatic amalgam of articles and posts from across Sys-Con that may, or may not, be Linux related. Our only direct way into providing content for our site was through our also recently enabled blogs (http://mc.linuxworld.com./ We have no control over the articles automatically added and syndicated on the site."

Remember, LinuxWorld's "staff" wasn't paid. So with no pay and no control, of course they quit. "Quitting" is barely a meaningful concept in a situation like that.

Dee Ann claims here that they all have, though not all have made public statements.

James,

I agree with you. That piece by O'Gara definitely is outside the norms of good journalism. It's bullying, insulting and harassing, and I, for
one, really don't get the point of it. That's not to say that other journalists are sometimes guilty of those sins, but that still doesn't make it
good journalism.

So I don't think you did the wrong thing in using you First Amendment rights to call for O'Gara's ouster or reprimand or whatever. The SPJ Code of
Ethics says ethical journalists should "expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media" and "abide by the same high standards to which they hold others."

Fred Brown

Co-chair, SPJ Ethics Committee

http://dee.linuxworld.com/read/1278292.htm

James Turner, former senior editor of LinuxWorld wrote Fred Brown of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Commitee. Here is what Fred Brown wrote:

James,

I agree with you. That piece by O'Gara definitely is outside the norms of good journalism. It's bullying, insulting and harassing, and I, for
one, really don't get the point of it. That's not to say that other journalists are sometimes guilty of those sins, but that still doesn't make it
good journalism.

So I don't think you did the wrong thing in using you First Amendment rights to call for O'Gara's ouster or reprimand or whatever. The SPJ Code of
Ethics says ethical journalists should "expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media" and "abide by the same high standards to which they hold others."

Fred Brown

Co-chair, SPJ Ethics Committee

http://turner.linuxworld.com/read/1277987.htm

So Turner notes that there's a Forbes article in the works. And he is inclined to guess that it won't be favorable to the Linux community.

There seems to be an interesting amount of media attention. And an interesting spin. Is this simply dust kicked up from an interesting incident? Or is it being driven by someone's PR firm?

There was a recent Slashdot article noting how the vast majority of news stories (outside of events like disasters, etc) are driven by PR firms. One example given was the "suits are back" stories being ultimately PR fodder for the Men's Warehouse. The author notes that in any story that goes beyond simple facts, the reader should follow the money.

The Other Shoe Drops

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld Magazine Announce Resignations

MONTVALE, New Jersey, May 14th, 2005 --- The entire senior editorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine has today announced that they will be leaving the magazine, effective immediately.

The following statement was released by the group. "We regret that Sys-Con Media has been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

James Turner

turner@blackbear.com

603-552-2020

Dee-Ann LeBlanc

dee@renaissoft.com

(604) 898-8433

posted Saturday, 14 May 2005

Check this out! Apparently the editors got fed up.

LinuxWorld Editor James Turner weighs in late, and thickens the plot.

James Turner
Senior Editor
LinuxWorld Magazine

Looks like a few of the LinuxWorld editors saw the interview, and you can bet that they aren't happy. Here, here, and here.

Looks like a few of the LinuxWorld editors saw the interview, and you can bet that they aren't happy. Here, here, and here.

From James Turner's personal page (http://turner.linuxworld.com/read/1262099.htm):

"Clarification: Someone questioned the term "bylined article". Let me clarify as I have had it clarified by the publisher for me. No material authored by O'Gara will appear, period."

Read here, here, here.

The more informed among you may have known that the editors of the print edition of LinuxWorld Magazine have been having a bit of a running firefight with the management of Sys-Con (who publish the magazine and run a number of other magazines and web presences) in regard to Maureen O'Gara's "coverage" of the industry. Sys-Con pays Ms. O'Gara for her commentary, which to us has frequently resembled repackaged press releases and poorly researched attacks intended to incite rather than inform.

She also evidently has a dislike of Pamela Jones, who has maintained the Groklaw site and in general has done nothing worse than provide insightful discourse in regards to Open Source legal issues. O'Gara has taken every opportunity to cast disrepect on Jones, and has now outdone herself with a hatchet job in which she publishes personal information about Jones, including her religious affiliation (which she insults) and her home address and description of her living arrangements.

This is the worst kind of yellow journalism, a pure ad hominem attack intended to portray Jones as a senile religious kook not to be taken seriously. In fact, O'Gara's track record of biased and incomplete reporting shows that she is the kook, and I for one am no longer willing to affiliate myself with an organization that will pay for this type of character assasination. The editorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine has been calling for Sys-Con to sever their affiliations with O'Gara for at least half a year, with mixed results. This is the final straw, and although I can not speak for the rest of the editorial board, I am not going to further sully my reputation by affiliation with a sleazy sensationalist such as O'Gara. I call on Sys-Con to immediate terminate all business dealings with Ms. O'Gara, or I will find another outlet for my work.

James Turner Senior Editor, LinuxWorld Magazine

SYS-CON, the parent of LinuxWorld Magazine, which unfortunately pays O'Gara for her spewings even though they don't pay the editors and authors for their magazines

there has apparently been a clarification; there will be no more articles by O'Gara, period.

see here.

It looks like the editors were able to get the publishers to listen; she is no longer welcome at LinuxWorld.