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Stories and comments across the archive that link to lwn.net.

Comments · 2,068

  1. Emperor Has No Clothes by 1010011010 · · Score: 5 · on Linus Speaks With c't On Clean Design And ReiserFS
    I'd like to know why people aren't interested in 2.4. Is it that it's been delayed so long it's like vaporware?

    I'd say that the reason that people aren't interested in the 2.4 kernel is they they have lost faith in the development process.

    Over the last two years, people have repeatedly posted on the LKML in one way or another that the emperor has no clothes. They've been nice, they've been rude, they've even posted good ideas and patches to provide some clothes. But, universally, the response from the LKML acolytes has been a variant of "the emperor isn't naked; he is in fact wearing a 3-piece suit, and if you don't like it, you can get your own emperor, you idiot."

    It's very sad. Criticism is what keeps any public enterprise honest and productive, and the denizens of the LKML don't have any tolerance for it.

    The linux development process has little direction, no planning, little to no leadership, meaningless feature freezes, and little to no documentation and guidelines. The kernel itself *is* spaghetti code inside, no matter what people say. They try to maintain control over what people use by not exporting some functions from the kernel .o files, but that's a bandaid, and a way to control who gets to work with the kernel more than what can be done with it. That the kernel is spaghetti code is one of the major reasons that 2.4 is so late, and so buggy. Just try to do some kernel programming, and you'll see, if you don't believe me. Take a look at the big, ugly union in the VFS. Figure out all the places that bdflush gets invoked, and the number of different ways to have a pinned buffer flushed by other parts of the kernel anyway. Look at the brokenness in the spinlocks and semaphores. Look at all the VM rewrites and the warring but both broken USB stacks. Check out the tendency of the VM OOM "feature" to kill random programs like X and kswapd. And don't forget all the race conditions.

    It is very difficult to alter some part of Linux because of all the unintended consequences. It's difficult to get needed features and clean-ups into the kernel because of cronyism and a narrow-minded religious devotion to Posix. Go back and read up on the NTFS-streams thread for a good example of that (Alan and Viro actually invited everyone talking about streams to an off-list discussion, and then notified them that they had been added to their killfiles).

    Clean code? Just look at the 2.4.0-test-pre-pooch-screw series of debacles, where the VM is rewritten every few weeks, and new features are tossed in while there's still massive bugs to fix in the code that's already there, and in spite of repeated "feature freezes". That would all be fine in a 2.3.x series kernel, but judging from the version number, "2.4.0-test" is supposed to be pretty stable except for bug fixes -- not have major features added and subsystems being rewritten.

    Linux has terminal featureitis. No one wants to work on the hard things; they just want to add features. Quickly.

    And Linus, to make things worse, claims that a kernel debugger is counter-productive; that debugging with printk puts hair on your chest. Never mind that you can't debug race conditions well, if at all, by adding printk statements everywhere, because they change the timing of the code when it runs. Never mind that essentially every other 'modern' OS includes a kernel debugger, and that many of those OSes are better designed, better implemented, and perform better and run more reliably than Linux (FreeBSD, HPUX, Solaris, and even NT come to mind).

    Linus must be right. In fact, he's declared himself to be infallible -- he will not allow a kernel debugger to be added, and has publicly stated that he thinks people who use debuggers are dummies and that he won't work with them. But never mind that; he's the leader of the mo vmentarians , Linux is our official OS, and we'll just get back to work on his lima bean farm and wait for him to wave out the window of his car at us, or splash us with mud as he drives by. And that would actually be fine, if he was actually a leader; that is, if he made decisions and stuck with them. But he doesn't do that. Refer to his "I'm a wimp" email. He'll occasionally toss in a new filesystem ("accidentally,"Alan Cox recently suggested merely covering them up with his skip-a-number, backport and turn yourself around hokey-pokey versioning scheme. The real solution would be the one that software developers everywhere have always used, which is to:
    • set realistic goals for a release
    • defer any further feature creep until the next release
    • concentrate on fixing bugs in the pre-release cycle
    • aim for modularity, stable interfaces and good documentation to make upgrades and new feature addition easier and the learning curve less steep
    • provide robust methods for troubleshooting the system to make development and debugging easier.
    Linux does none of these things. By design. So continue to kvetch about idiots like me (and IBM, and SGI, and HP, and Reiser, and about 1000 other people and companies) pointing out that Linux is fundamentally screwed.

    The most common response to criticism is a variant of "love it or leave it." Keep suggesting that we go write our own damn OS if we don't like it; your love it or leave it response will be accepted one day, and we will leave Linux. I actually think it would be a good idea for the major external linux players to fork the kernel, clean it up, and maintain their own version. I don't doubt that it would shortly become the defacto standard kernel, because it will be cleaner, more stable, more scalable, more extendible, and will probably be released on time and respect feature freezes. SGI, IBM, Reiser and a lot of other people and companies have a lot of good code and ideas to contribute, not to mention full-time developers, years of experience making scalable and robust systems, and a willingness to release all that work under the GPL. And if they fork the kernel, they can do it without having to be named "Ted", "Ingo", "Alan", "Linus" or "Rik".

    One day the question will be, are *you* relevant? Why should we accept *your* code? Is it clean? Is it modular? Is it safe (see LWN article about C code with undefined behavior being included in the kernel). Of course, a fork can always be re-merged with the holy penguin pee version. In the meantime, all the people who want to run Linux on enterprise systems rather than PDAs and webpads can have a stable, working kernel with adequate features.

    It would be useful if people would make substantive replies to this message, rather than engage in the usual comments about rioting, sending spam reports, saying "love it or leave it," moderating it as a troll, port-scanning my mail server, attempted hacks and other juvenile/illegal acts, sending spam reports, threatening violence, etc. Of course, substantive debate is really hard to come by on either the LKML or Slashdot, so I don't expect it. So, go ahead, get started telling me to sod off. I'll get back to switching over to FreeBSD, although I would prefer if someone would take up a rational refutation of this message instead. Show me the Emperor's Clothes.

    ________________________________________
  2. Emperor Has No Clothes by 1010011010 · · Score: 5 · on Linus Speaks With c't On Clean Design And ReiserFS
    I'd like to know why people aren't interested in 2.4. Is it that it's been delayed so long it's like vaporware?

    I'd say that the reason that people aren't interested in the 2.4 kernel is they they have lost faith in the development process.

    Over the last two years, people have repeatedly posted on the LKML in one way or another that the emperor has no clothes. They've been nice, they've been rude, they've even posted good ideas and patches to provide some clothes. But, universally, the response from the LKML acolytes has been a variant of "the emperor isn't naked; he is in fact wearing a 3-piece suit, and if you don't like it, you can get your own emperor, you idiot."

    It's very sad. Criticism is what keeps any public enterprise honest and productive, and the denizens of the LKML don't have any tolerance for it.

    The linux development process has little direction, no planning, little to no leadership, meaningless feature freezes, and little to no documentation and guidelines. The kernel itself *is* spaghetti code inside, no matter what people say. They try to maintain control over what people use by not exporting some functions from the kernel .o files, but that's a bandaid, and a way to control who gets to work with the kernel more than what can be done with it. That the kernel is spaghetti code is one of the major reasons that 2.4 is so late, and so buggy. Just try to do some kernel programming, and you'll see, if you don't believe me. Take a look at the big, ugly union in the VFS. Figure out all the places that bdflush gets invoked, and the number of different ways to have a pinned buffer flushed by other parts of the kernel anyway. Look at the brokenness in the spinlocks and semaphores. Look at all the VM rewrites and the warring but both broken USB stacks. Check out the tendency of the VM OOM "feature" to kill random programs like X and kswapd. And don't forget all the race conditions.

    It is very difficult to alter some part of Linux because of all the unintended consequences. It's difficult to get needed features and clean-ups into the kernel because of cronyism and a narrow-minded religious devotion to Posix. Go back and read up on the NTFS-streams thread for a good example of that (Alan and Viro actually invited everyone talking about streams to an off-list discussion, and then notified them that they had been added to their killfiles).

    Clean code? Just look at the 2.4.0-test-pre-pooch-screw series of debacles, where the VM is rewritten every few weeks, and new features are tossed in while there's still massive bugs to fix in the code that's already there, and in spite of repeated "feature freezes". That would all be fine in a 2.3.x series kernel, but judging from the version number, "2.4.0-test" is supposed to be pretty stable except for bug fixes -- not have major features added and subsystems being rewritten.

    Linux has terminal featureitis. No one wants to work on the hard things; they just want to add features. Quickly.

    And Linus, to make things worse, claims that a kernel debugger is counter-productive; that debugging with printk puts hair on your chest. Never mind that you can't debug race conditions well, if at all, by adding printk statements everywhere, because they change the timing of the code when it runs. Never mind that essentially every other 'modern' OS includes a kernel debugger, and that many of those OSes are better designed, better implemented, and perform better and run more reliably than Linux (FreeBSD, HPUX, Solaris, and even NT come to mind).

    Linus must be right. In fact, he's declared himself to be infallible -- he will not allow a kernel debugger to be added, and has publicly stated that he thinks people who use debuggers are dummies and that he won't work with them. But never mind that; he's the leader of the mo vmentarians , Linux is our official OS, and we'll just get back to work on his lima bean farm and wait for him to wave out the window of his car at us, or splash us with mud as he drives by. And that would actually be fine, if he was actually a leader; that is, if he made decisions and stuck with them. But he doesn't do that. Refer to his "I'm a wimp" email. He'll occasionally toss in a new filesystem ("accidentally,"Alan Cox recently suggested merely covering them up with his skip-a-number, backport and turn yourself around hokey-pokey versioning scheme. The real solution would be the one that software developers everywhere have always used, which is to:
    • set realistic goals for a release
    • defer any further feature creep until the next release
    • concentrate on fixing bugs in the pre-release cycle
    • aim for modularity, stable interfaces and good documentation to make upgrades and new feature addition easier and the learning curve less steep
    • provide robust methods for troubleshooting the system to make development and debugging easier.
    Linux does none of these things. By design. So continue to kvetch about idiots like me (and IBM, and SGI, and HP, and Reiser, and about 1000 other people and companies) pointing out that Linux is fundamentally screwed.

    The most common response to criticism is a variant of "love it or leave it." Keep suggesting that we go write our own damn OS if we don't like it; your love it or leave it response will be accepted one day, and we will leave Linux. I actually think it would be a good idea for the major external linux players to fork the kernel, clean it up, and maintain their own version. I don't doubt that it would shortly become the defacto standard kernel, because it will be cleaner, more stable, more scalable, more extendible, and will probably be released on time and respect feature freezes. SGI, IBM, Reiser and a lot of other people and companies have a lot of good code and ideas to contribute, not to mention full-time developers, years of experience making scalable and robust systems, and a willingness to release all that work under the GPL. And if they fork the kernel, they can do it without having to be named "Ted", "Ingo", "Alan", "Linus" or "Rik".

    One day the question will be, are *you* relevant? Why should we accept *your* code? Is it clean? Is it modular? Is it safe (see LWN article about C code with undefined behavior being included in the kernel). Of course, a fork can always be re-merged with the holy penguin pee version. In the meantime, all the people who want to run Linux on enterprise systems rather than PDAs and webpads can have a stable, working kernel with adequate features.

    It would be useful if people would make substantive replies to this message, rather than engage in the usual comments about rioting, sending spam reports, saying "love it or leave it," moderating it as a troll, port-scanning my mail server, attempted hacks and other juvenile/illegal acts, sending spam reports, threatening violence, etc. Of course, substantive debate is really hard to come by on either the LKML or Slashdot, so I don't expect it. So, go ahead, get started telling me to sod off. I'll get back to switching over to FreeBSD, although I would prefer if someone would take up a rational refutation of this message instead. Show me the Emperor's Clothes.

    ________________________________________
  3. Re:Tougher than it seems... by teg · · Score: 2 · on GCC's Response To Red Hat

    Non-biased does not mean "prefer Red Hat", but it would mean not making comments like "recovering from Red Hat Linux 7" on many stories, and if someone submits story which seems negative, actually do some checking (of course, this should be done nonetheless, but it doesn't seem to)

    The sites I feel most interesting these days are LWN and Linux Today

  4. Re:2.95.2 is not "the buggiest release of GCC sinc by ChrisWong · · Score: 1 · on GCC's Response To Red Hat

    The idea comes from one of the gcc developers. See the posting on LWN.net.

  5. Deary me. by Panelvan · · Score: 2 · on GCC's Response To Red Hat

    I wonder if anybody has read the following, yet?

    http://lwn.net/2000/1005/a/rh-tools.php 3

    This explains the whole story - looks like the left hand of the GCC crew doesn't always know what the right hand is doing.

    Anybody who's been following LWN will have been aware of this for several days now.

    It seems to me that RH had to make an ugly compromise, and just bit the bullet.

  6. RedHat's defense by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 5 · on GCC's Response To Red Hat

    It's not really fair to leave out Richard Henderson's explaination on linux-kernel...

    Basically he says 2.95 isn't that great on non-x86 platforms and their version is much better, and that 2.95 already has incompatibilities between egcs 1.1 and the future gcc 3.0 so it doesn't make a big difference.

  7. Re:How the hell did this get moderated up to 3? by Hanno · · Score: 3 · on Red Hat Claims They Started The Open Source Revolution
    "ESR is a proud supporter of the USCP" - Um, that's blatantly false.

    That's true.

    ESR has (intelligently) kept his personal politics completely seperate from his business life/advocacy.

    That's not true. Definitely not.

    See this discussion for an example of ESR keeping his personal politics closely tied to his advocacy:

    • ESR posts a message with a rather, uhm, insulting signature* about people who oppose gun control: LWN Backpage
    • A reader complains: LWN, next week
    • ESR responds: "FYI, I fully intend to `abuse' my position in this manner as often as the
      demands of effective publicity will allow." LWN, yet another next week


    (* What I find funny about ESR's signature: He claims that pro-gun people are convinced that they sexually more mature than anti-gun folks. Somehow I think this argument can shoot backwards...)

    ------------------
  8. Re:How the hell did this get moderated up to 3? by Hanno · · Score: 3 · on Red Hat Claims They Started The Open Source Revolution
    "ESR is a proud supporter of the USCP" - Um, that's blatantly false.

    That's true.

    ESR has (intelligently) kept his personal politics completely seperate from his business life/advocacy.

    That's not true. Definitely not.

    See this discussion for an example of ESR keeping his personal politics closely tied to his advocacy:

    • ESR posts a message with a rather, uhm, insulting signature* about people who oppose gun control: LWN Backpage
    • A reader complains: LWN, next week
    • ESR responds: "FYI, I fully intend to `abuse' my position in this manner as often as the
      demands of effective publicity will allow." LWN, yet another next week


    (* What I find funny about ESR's signature: He claims that pro-gun people are convinced that they sexually more mature than anti-gun folks. Somehow I think this argument can shoot backwards...)

    ------------------
  9. Re:How the hell did this get moderated up to 3? by Hanno · · Score: 3 · on Red Hat Claims They Started The Open Source Revolution
    "ESR is a proud supporter of the USCP" - Um, that's blatantly false.

    That's true.

    ESR has (intelligently) kept his personal politics completely seperate from his business life/advocacy.

    That's not true. Definitely not.

    See this discussion for an example of ESR keeping his personal politics closely tied to his advocacy:

    • ESR posts a message with a rather, uhm, insulting signature* about people who oppose gun control: LWN Backpage
    • A reader complains: LWN, next week
    • ESR responds: "FYI, I fully intend to `abuse' my position in this manner as often as the
      demands of effective publicity will allow." LWN, yet another next week


    (* What I find funny about ESR's signature: He claims that pro-gun people are convinced that they sexually more mature than anti-gun folks. Somehow I think this argument can shoot backwards...)

    ------------------
  10. Previous Stock Data Vulnerabilities by Nonesuch · · Score: 4 · on White Hats Take NASDAQ Through MS IIS Hole
    An article in Linux Weekly News has details on Standard & Poors security breach from this spring.

    A followup article on Technology Evaluation at (Slash may mangle this URL) http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/resea rch highlights/security/2000/06/news_analysis/na_st_lp t_06_21_00_1.asp explains some of the implications of weaknesses in stock data services.

    What is ignored are the secondary effects- when these weaknessses are exploited to manipulate the market, the long term result will be loss of trust in news feeds and stock information services.

    It seems that all of the major financial news services have had serious security problems this year- Comstock, Bloomberg, etc.

    Who can you trust to supply good data?

  11. Nuke the Digital Convergence IPO! by e_lehman · · Score: 5 · on Slashback: Quakery, Lifespans, Barcodes

    Hey, I've been doing my part all evening to spam investment boards about the upcoming Digital Convergence IPO. The more the merrier, though! Bust in! Here's a sample:

    Digital Convergence (DGTL) recently filed plans for an IPO. This company gives out free barcode scanners (called "CutCat") and accompanying software. The idea is that you can scan things and their software will pull up an appropriate web page in your browser. On the side, they can collect demographic data. For example, they could determine which gender and age group most often scans a certain type of product.

    I think this is a horrible company, a must avoid stock for the following reasons:

    • DGTL gives away CueCat barcode scanners and software, hoping to get money from advertisers and publications. The problem is that their software is inessential: it took folks a matter of hours to write substitute software that reads a barcode without contacting DGTL. So at the key step where they're supposed to cash in, they're completely cut out of the loop! Whoops!
    • Apparently realizing the enormity of their error, DC has been sending vague, threatening letters to people already distributing alternate software. Unfortunately, these letters appear to be legal bluffs. Decoding software is available on dozens of sites and appears to have no real legal strings attached.
    • A clearly disconcerted president of the technology group at DGTL fired off a letter showing gross misunderstanding of intellectual property law-- upon which the health of the company critically depends. (Or would depend, were the IP law favorable to their cause-- which it isn't.)
    • These threatening letters have incensed the open source community-- a group well-qualified to undermine DC's business model by providing alternate software to drive the CueCat, shutting of DC's revenue.
    • The product raises privacy concerns. You register with DGTL and then every time you scan something, they know it. Apparently DGTL has given assurances about privacy. Then again, they left their entire customer database unguarded for hackers to take. Read their own toned down account. (DGTL has also touted the scanner's "built in encryption", which turned out to consist of XORing each byte with the letter 'C'. I fear these some of the stupidest people ever put on God's Good Earth.)
    • A key asset that DGTL hopes to develop through the barcode scans is a database of demographic data. There's a problem, however: Digital Convergence has a lot of enemies now. It would be a simple matter for ONE PERSON write a little program that sends fake scans with fake user IDs to DGTLs servers. This could permanently corrupt the demographic database, making it worthless, because-- quite possibly-- there could be no way to distinguish real scans from fakes after the fact.
    • Just as the company's fundamental business model has fallen under shadow, they file for an IPO. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

    These are just my opinions, of course. I did my best to get the facts straight, but I'm not perfect. Additional comments on this corporate disaster slouching toward NASDAQ are available at:

    • Salon : ...there are a million problems with this concept.
    • Linux World: In the end, the :CueCat is a classic example of a broken business model.
    • Dr. Dobbs Journal: What ought to scare Digital Convergence more [...] is a database of all CueCat barcodes/URLs, whereby users could go to a specific web page without being tracked.
    • Dallas Observer: ...you can simply drag the scanner 600 or 700 times over bar codes printed next to stories and ads, and presto, you get an error message.
    • Internet News Radio:The CueCat is starting to look like a mangy stray.
  12. Re:It's just a payoff for Corel to port apps to .N by frank249 · · Score: 1 · on Microsoft Buys into Corel
    So what if Corel sold their soul to the devil? They were not getting anywhere fighting against them. Burney mentioned on the conference call that they are looking to recreate the relationship they had with MS when windows 3.1 was coming out. Corel made a ton of money selling Corel Draw and MS sold lots of Win 3.1.

    BTW I disagree that Corel will be rethinking their Linux strategy. They made all their money back in the first week of sales. PCData said Corel had 23% of Linux retail sales in Jul. Corel has also been a very popular download at CNet and TUCOWS. True that last quarter's earnings showed only $1.2 million in Linux sales but this was due to the rebates used to clear the channel of the older version to make way for ver 1.2. Originally they were only going to put it out as a free download but as a retail product only released last Nov they have made $12 mil in sales which is not too bad considering it is only a sideline product.

    Corel is planning an enterprise version along with Rebel and Graph on which will have higher margins. WP 10-Linux will be native to Linux which should make the critics happy. I think Corel can make money with Linux but it will take time. At least now they have the resources to make it work.

  13. According to what? by roystgnr · · Score: 2 · on Red Hat's Linux Market Share Eroding?

    "According to recent figures from IDC"

    Oh, yeah, there's an ultra-clued in group if I've ever heard one.

    For comparison, check out this spring's Tucows downloads for some alternative statistics. Can anyone find any more recent stats?

    Anyway, this spring, Red Hat's share of new downloaded ISOs ranged from 14-31%. Great. But were it's biggest competitors SuSE, Caldera, and TurboLinux? Hardly. Ahead of Red Hat was Mandrake, which "TechnologyEvaluation.com" does not "believe will make significant inroads in the US". Funny, our local LUG has chosen Mandrake for two or three installfests running now. Oh, yeah, and thanks to Macmillan, Mandrake's leading in retail sales, too...

    And maybe Corel is teetering on the edge of death financially, but it's distribution was doing pretty good with 15-29% new market share. Maybe "Corel Linux" will go down with the company, but even then all the good changes would likely be folded into Debian eventually.

  14. Re:Technology versus politics by Skeezix · · Score: 2 · on KDE's Official Position on the GNOME Foundation
    KDE tried CORBA. It was bloated and slow. Kind of like GNOME itself. You really should work in marketing though: "Everyone else (for whom I can name absolutely zero examples) is invested in CORBA, so KDE needs to be using that just for the buzzword too!"

    I'll agree that we don't need to add more buzzword-technology to our environment for the sake of having our press releases be full of buzzwords. However, your statement about CORBA being bloated and slow is misinformed. ORBit is an extraordinarily lightweight, speedy implementation. Bud Tribble addressed this in his recent interview at lwn.net.

    For more information about ORBit, you can also visit the ORBit page at RHAD.

    In addition, check out the CORBA for Beginners page at OMG.
    ----

  15. Re:Technology versus politics by Skeezix · · Score: 2 · on KDE's Official Position on the GNOME Foundation
    KDE tried CORBA. It was bloated and slow. Kind of like GNOME itself. You really should work in marketing though: "Everyone else (for whom I can name absolutely zero examples) is invested in CORBA, so KDE needs to be using that just for the buzzword too!"

    I'll agree that we don't need to add more buzzword-technology to our environment for the sake of having our press releases be full of buzzwords. However, your statement about CORBA being bloated and slow is misinformed. ORBit is an extraordinarily lightweight, speedy implementation. Bud Tribble addressed this in his recent interview at lwn.net.

    For more information about ORBit, you can also visit the ORBit page at RHAD.

    In addition, check out the CORBA for Beginners page at OMG.
    ----

  16. Hmm, not all the core people kept a level head by LizardKing · · Score: 2 · on KDE's Official Position on the GNOME Foundation

    As usual, the opinions of the folks most directly involved are much more rational and realistic then the crazed fan hoardes

    In an article from a Brazilian netmag, Mathias Ettrich had a pretty unrealistic and irrational rant about GNOME (as well as Mozilla). Seems more like the core KDFE guys are trying a little face saving maneouvre after the initial misinterpretation of the GNOME foundation's purpose. For a good indication of waht the GNOME foundation will do and how, see this interview with Eazel's Bud Tribble.
    Chris

  17. This is related to the 2600 article by Dr.+Dew · · Score: 1 · on Default Behavior: Piranha vs. Microsoft SQL Server

    It strikes me that there's a link between the response of the judge in the 2600 decision and the reponse of the different press sources cited in this article.

    What they have in common is a mistrust and fear of those who make, support, and use <free, open-source, ... your favorite term here> tools. This mistrust produces a hostility toward the people involved as well as toward the tools themselves.

    You didn't ask me, but that looks to me like the reactionary response by those who are frustrated by the reported technical successes of free software. DeCSS seems like deeper, more offensive magic if you assume that CSS started off being very secure. Linux and Apache seem like upstarts if Microsoft has been your sole introduction and guide through the world of personal computing.

    It's also related to how religiously and self-righteously we tend to hop on those successes. Some people are used to hearing paid PR and marketing folks doing that, and it sounds like the pretty background noise of commerce to them.

    Community-produced software, on the other hand, makes noise that sounds more like revolution to some ears, in part because it's not looking lucrative in the traditional sense.

    There's nothing wrong with wanting judges to make rational decisions, or media sources to make reasonable reports. It's foolish, on the other hand, to believe that either is likely, let alone assured.

    The real answers come as we address technical issues, even while we're indignant about and frustrated by the falsehoods and prejudice.

    While I don't want to live in a technocracy, I prefer my software built there, y'know?

  18. Re:It is too. (Re:, except that KDE ain't superior by Forge · · Score: 1 · on KDE Developer on the GNOME Foundation

    Sory. Here is the link http://lwn.net/2000/features/Linux World/KDE.php3

  19. Re:So how do I use it? by _xeno_ · · Score: 3 · on More On The Linux Wrist Watch
    This was mentioned in the previous article, but at All Linux Devices, they have a story that amoung other things explains how to use the watch. It's a combination of the touch-sensitive screen, and a little dial next to it. It also has an X server built in to the default install. The picture of the watch shows it running some shell (prob. just sh, but I can't tell - not enough shown), so it IS possible to enter data. It sounds like they really expect it to be used by typing data at your desktop and downloading it to the watch. Actually, the real use of this was just to show that you could run Linux on a watch, they aren't planning on anything else with it.

    They may also have thought that the watch could have an overly simplified menu system, and display data as requested. Since it is just a prototype demonstrating that it's possible to run Linux on a wrist-watch, it makes sense that the user interface isn't well thought out yet. If they ever planned on marketting it, they'd probably need to add some more buttons. Plus the battery only lasts two to three days, making it not the most useful of watches.

  20. Reaction to picture... by ackthpt · · Score: 1 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?

    Here is the picture of the watch, and it's DAMN CUTE! Linux Weekly News

    Go away, nothing to see here, move along.

    *looks both ways*

    MINE!!! MINE DAMMIT!! ME FIRST!!! GIMME!!!!

  21. Am I the only one who noticed this? by Quietust · · Score: 1 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?

    Take a look at the (recently added) picture of the watch. Look closely at the screen...
    # cat hw
    Hello Watch
    Nice alternate "first program" :)

    -- Sig (120 chars) --
    Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.

  22. Re:Picture at Linux Weekly News (obligatory mirror by po_boy · · Score: 1 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?
    that link at lwn is nearly slashdotted. If you can't get it to work, there's a copy of just the image at:

    http://dotslash.dynodns.net/00/08/07/147245/linuxw atch_pen.jpg

    please only use it if you can't get lwn to load.

    As always, if anyone with any kind of authority wants my mirror down, please mail me and let me know.

  23. Look at it... by svl · · Score: 1 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?

    http://lwn.net/daily/linuxwatch_pen.php3

  24. Is it just me... by Carnage4Life · · Score: 2 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?

    ..or is there's no time displayed on the watch?

    So instead of glancing at my watch to tell the time do I have to somehow call date on the command line?
    FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  25. Re:Picture at Linux Weekly News by _xeno_ · · Score: 1 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?
    That picture begs the question of how the user interacts with the watch. It looks like there's a microphone there (or maybe it's a speaker so that ^G's work) - maybe it uses voice-recognition? That'd be kinda cool (maybe a Linux port of ViaVoice?). Or do you need to telnet/ssh/rlogin/whatever into it from a computer over the wireless connection to actually interact? And it doesn't look terribly useful, considering it seems to be missing a time-display.

    There's only so small you can make these devices until the lack of a useable user-interface makes them rather useless. There's only so small a keyboard can get until it is no longer really useable by human hands - and laptops have already pushed that as far as it can reasonably go. Plus the interface area looks a hair too small to be very useful - I can't imaging trying to go through man pages or reading READMEs on that thing. This seems to be of limited usefulness - although it's nice to know that IBM considers embedded Linux to be the way of the future.

  26. Picture at Linux Weekly News by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 5 · on Linux on a Wrist Watch?

    http://lwn.net/daily/linuxwatch_pen.php3

    --

  27. If you want to work there, then go work there... by willdye · · Score: 1 · on Alias/Wavefront Announces Port Of Maya To Red Hat
    Man, my kids would kill for me to work there.

    Well, if you want to work there, then go hit the careers area of their web site. They're hiring -- if you don't mind moving to Chicago.

    --willdye

    P. S. It just occurred to me that there's something really appropriate about using Linux boxes to do an animated series about space-faring penguins . I guess it's only a matter of time before Tux the penguin makes a cameo appearance. Maybe even a Tux-like regular character? Hmm. They should at least give him the appropriate accent. Remember, Big Idea, it's "Leenus", not "Liinus". Think pickled herring, not Peanuts. :-)

  28. +4 Insightful? How about another point of view.... by Carnage4Life · · Score: 2 · on Unhappiness Surrounding Perl 6 Announcements

    Maybe if you and the others who posted to that story didn't bother to read Cmdr Taco's intro to the story:

    Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday July 20, @08:15AM
    from the but-think-of-the-alternatives dept.
    alessio writes: "On the front page of Linux Weekly News there is a report from the Ottawa Linux Symposium where the adorable Miguel de Icaza supposedly states that Unix has been built wrong from the ground up." It's actually a pretty cool interview, and as always, Miguel makes his point without any candy coating! The major point is the lack of reusable code between major applications (a major problem that both KDE and GNOME have been striving to fix for some time now).

    Seems to me like he explained pretty well what it was about plus "Unix Sucks" was what Miguel's seminar was entitled. So what is your problem?


    PS: About the the fact that slashdot publishes links to opinions on webboards...isn't that what people read slashdot for? Major Linux and Perl were made and are made not with press releases but via discussions on USENET and webboards.

    PPS: Slashdot posts stories submitted by readers. The headlines are not picked by slashdot authors but instead are the ones that the readers submitted the stories with (I know because 5 or 6 of my submissions have been posted). If you want to blame someone for the sensationalistic headlines, blame the readers who spice up the headlines so that there is a greater chance their stories are read by the editors and submitted.

  29. Re:Journalistic Integrity ('99 jesse bersts) by Signal+11 · · Score: 3 · on Are Linux Reviews Fixed?

    Again, courtesy of LWN - the 1999 linux timeline.. quotes:

    "Betting $5 on a 100-to-1 underdog can be fun. Betting $50,000 would be foolish. Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars." - Jesse Berst, March 02, 1999

    That is the last Berst article. There is no need to moderate this post up, unless you happen to *really* dislike Jesse. Then, by all means. :)

  30. Journalistic Integrity by Signal+11 · · Score: 5 · on Are Linux Reviews Fixed?
    Jesse Burst's opinion is anything but fixed. Infact, it fluxuates rapidly. I quote from this timeline:

    "I think it's great if you are willing to promote Linux to your boss. As long as you are aware of the risk you are taking. The risk of getting fired." - Feb 16, 1998

    "Is a Linux takeover likely? Give me a break. Of course not." - June 23, 1998

    "I personally think Windows NT will be the mainstream operating system within a few years." [...] "My belief: Linux will never go mainstream" - September 9, 1998

    "I've always said that Linux could become a serious challenger to Microsoft's Windows NT." - September 28, 1998

    So no, of COURSE linux reviews aren't fixed, and how dare you accuse ZDNet of fixing reviews!

  31. Re:Embedded linux by HeUnique · · Score: 3 · on Linux Announcement from Sony, Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu

    Well, if you take a look here - you'll see some patches which are planned to be merged into the kernel. The latest version of the patch is up to nine rescheduling points, and provides latencies of less than 1ms 99.999% of the time. So the latencies problems in the mainstream kernel should be history soon. Also, I don't know how many people actually do know this, but the PlayStation 3 (not just the development machine) will be Linux based.

  32. Can't imagine by rjamestaylor · · Score: 2 · on LinuxFest 2000 : More Penguins Than People
    I can't imagine a trade show featuring Windows, Java, Solaris, SCO -- well...., or even Amiga that would be so sparsely attended as this one was reported to be.

    What's going on? Where's the thrill? I know: the so-called Linux stocks have tanked. So -- some would-be profiteers take a dive in stock price and the "buzz is gone?"

    People: quit looking at the stock pages! Linux isn't about IPOs and stocks -- it's a technology. Use it, promote it, develop it.

    Oh, and a little organization never hurt a conference. I remember BITNet conferences in the 1980s that were better attended than this.

  33. Re:So, when VA goes bankrupt, what happens to MySQ by Torin · · Score: 1 · on MySQL Released Under The GPL
    In fact, Linux Weekly News (as independent a source as you can get nowadays..they aren't owned.)

    You forgot a relevant link: LWN acquired by Tucows.com.

  34. So, when VA goes bankrupt, what happens to MySQL? by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 1 · on MySQL Released Under The GPL



    Ok, time for a reality check:

    1) VA has yet to turn a profit. Infact, they're still seriously in debt. This "partnership" creates a dependence on VA financial situation. If VA goes down the tubes (as nearly 80% of .com companies are expected to do within the next 1-2 years) after burning through their cash reserves, what happens to MySQL?

    2) VA has absolutely no policy in place to protect the work of users who house their projects on SourceForge. Infact, Linux Weekly News (as independent a source as you can get nowadays..they arent owned.) ran an article nearly 5 months ago pointing this out. SourceForge's privacy policy amounted to a one-line "We'ere working on it" statement. 5 months later, it still hasn't changed. Right now, from a legal standpoint, nothing prevents VA's management from picking and choosing from the collective ideas of 37,000 people, and nearly 6,000 projects in development, putting full-time employees on the task of replicating the work of the volunteers, and consequently leaving them in the dust without a legal leg to stand on.

    This includes MySQL.

    You can read LWN's two articles on SourceForge's lack of a security policy here and here

    Relevant links:

    Press Release, "VA Linux Forms Strategic Alliance With MySQL; MySQL Becomes Completely Open Source And Hosts Project On SourceForge

    VA Linux Shareholder To Sell 1.55M Shares

    Jon Richards files SEC 114 to dump restricted shares

    IDC Report on VA's 5% Marketshare

    And for fun, a story on VA's stock performance..or lack thereof..

    Those are the facts. Educate yourself, folks.

    Bowie J. Poag

  35. So, when VA goes bankrupt, what happens to MySQL? by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 1 · on MySQL Released Under The GPL



    Ok, time for a reality check:

    1) VA has yet to turn a profit. Infact, they're still seriously in debt. This "partnership" creates a dependence on VA financial situation. If VA goes down the tubes (as nearly 80% of .com companies are expected to do within the next 1-2 years) after burning through their cash reserves, what happens to MySQL?

    2) VA has absolutely no policy in place to protect the work of users who house their projects on SourceForge. Infact, Linux Weekly News (as independent a source as you can get nowadays..they arent owned.) ran an article nearly 5 months ago pointing this out. SourceForge's privacy policy amounted to a one-line "We'ere working on it" statement. 5 months later, it still hasn't changed. Right now, from a legal standpoint, nothing prevents VA's management from picking and choosing from the collective ideas of 37,000 people, and nearly 6,000 projects in development, putting full-time employees on the task of replicating the work of the volunteers, and consequently leaving them in the dust without a legal leg to stand on.

    This includes MySQL.

    You can read LWN's two articles on SourceForge's lack of a security policy here and here

    Relevant links:

    Press Release, "VA Linux Forms Strategic Alliance With MySQL; MySQL Becomes Completely Open Source And Hosts Project On SourceForge

    VA Linux Shareholder To Sell 1.55M Shares

    Jon Richards files SEC 114 to dump restricted shares

    IDC Report on VA's 5% Marketshare

    And for fun, a story on VA's stock performance..or lack thereof..

    Those are the facts. Educate yourself, folks.

    Bowie J. Poag

  36. So, when VA goes bankrupt, what happens to MySQL? by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 1 · on MySQL Released Under The GPL



    Ok, time for a reality check:

    1) VA has yet to turn a profit. Infact, they're still seriously in debt. This "partnership" creates a dependence on VA financial situation. If VA goes down the tubes (as nearly 80% of .com companies are expected to do within the next 1-2 years) after burning through their cash reserves, what happens to MySQL?

    2) VA has absolutely no policy in place to protect the work of users who house their projects on SourceForge. Infact, Linux Weekly News (as independent a source as you can get nowadays..they arent owned.) ran an article nearly 5 months ago pointing this out. SourceForge's privacy policy amounted to a one-line "We'ere working on it" statement. 5 months later, it still hasn't changed. Right now, from a legal standpoint, nothing prevents VA's management from picking and choosing from the collective ideas of 37,000 people, and nearly 6,000 projects in development, putting full-time employees on the task of replicating the work of the volunteers, and consequently leaving them in the dust without a legal leg to stand on.

    This includes MySQL.

    You can read LWN's two articles on SourceForge's lack of a security policy here and here

    Relevant links:

    Press Release, "VA Linux Forms Strategic Alliance With MySQL; MySQL Becomes Completely Open Source And Hosts Project On SourceForge

    VA Linux Shareholder To Sell 1.55M Shares

    Jon Richards files SEC 114 to dump restricted shares

    IDC Report on VA's 5% Marketshare

    And for fun, a story on VA's stock performance..or lack thereof..

    Those are the facts. Educate yourself, folks.

    Bowie J. Poag

  37. Before you kill patents, know what you're doing! by dublin · · Score: 5 · on ESR Invited To 'Advise' USPTO

    I'm posting this here because I think there are many on the open source community that don't realize the immense harm that would come to distributed control of IP if patents are abolished or weakened. If that happens, the guys with the most money win by default, since the smaller guys will have no protections whatever.

    The following is a letter I wrote to LWN a few weeks ago outlining part of my argument. It will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but we can't afford to destroy the patent system unless we really want Microsoft and other huge companies to call all the shots. I don't think a lot of people here have thought these issues through.

    Letter to LWN (at http://www.lwn.net/2000/0420/backpage.pht ml)

    I've gotten several challenges to my assertion about patents as a desirable thing
    (mostly asking for examples of small inventors that actually did profit from
    patents) so here's my quick response, FWIW:

    Anyone saying patents don't do immense public good, and provide worthwhile,
    needed, and *effective* protection of small inventors against large corporations
    is simply ignorant of the history of even quite recent technology. Many
    inventors started small, but because of patent protection were indeed able to
    profit greatly from their inventions.

    From the "gararge-shop" POV, well, just off the top of my head, there are the
    examples everyone is familiar with: Bill Hewlett and David Packard (HP,
    instruments), Steves Jobs and Wozniak (Apple, home computer), and outside the
    computer industry, folks like Edwin Land (Polaroid, polarized materials and
    instant camera), Chester Carlson (Xerox, xerography), Henry Ford (Ford,
    affordable automobiles), Thomas Edison (GE, light bulb, motion pictures,
    phonograph...), and Alexander Graham Bell (AT&T, telephone), all of whom
    profited greatly from their patented works. (One could argue for the inclusion
    of Jeff Bezos in that list, although around here, that's a bit like whacking a
    hornet's nest with a stick...)

    But the classic twentieth century example of patents providing exactly the kind
    of protection I'm talking about is probably that of Philo T. Farnsworth, whom
    you may never have heard of, although you likely use his invention (electronic
    television) every day. Farnsworth was the prototypical individualist inventor
    who persevered against all odds and eventually defeated David Sarnoff and
    Vladimir Zworykin of the immensly powerful RCA. RCA was truly the Microsoft of
    its day in terms of control of the market and underlying technologies through
    acquisition - often under severe economic and other pressure. RCA had a policy
    of never paying royalties for any technology - a policy they managed to uphold
    until they met Philo Farnsworth, who just wouldn't give up.

    Farnsworth fought virtually alone against all of RCA's power for seven years
    before the final court rulings that his patents had clear validity and
    precedence over Zworykin's, forcing a tearful RCA lawyer to sign a royalty
    payment agreement to Farnsworth. (Farnsworth publicly displayed television
    *five years* before Sarnoff unveiled RCA's infringing version to the world
    amidst great fanfare at the 1939 World's Fair, leading many to believe Sarnoff
    and RCA were the inventors of television - sound like anyone today?)

    Farnsworth's experience is, if anything, a case study for the need to
    *strengthen* patents and either streamline patent appeals or extend the length
    of patents when thier commercial utility is impacted by unsuccessful challenges.
    (World War II intervened, and the government outlawed television for the
    duration of the war (the technology was needed for radar, night vision and other
    inventions Farnsworth then worked on), and so Farnsworth's patents expired
    before he could profit from them.

    Do you still think patents are a bad idea? I'd argue experience shows that
    patents should be strengthened and perhaps that the duration of Farnsworth's
    patent should have been extended, due to RCA's clear abuse of the patent system
    and the courts. (I also think the government should have been upright enough to
    grant extensions in the name of fair play to all inventors whose inventions were
    commandeered for the war effort, but that's another issue entirely.)

    History clearly shows that often patents are all that stands between real
    progress and innovation and the acquisition by force so typical of a Sarnoff or
    Gates. Strong patent law is the *only* effective defense against large
    companies stealing technology from small inventors. (What RCA tried to do could
    be accurately portrayed as theft.) I'm amazed more people don't get this, but
    they tend to avoid history, and fail to recognize that our American forefathers
    were wiser than we are in pretty much every way.

    Although it's not perfect, there are very good reasons the patent system is the
    way it is, and we meddle with it at our peril. It would be nice to see a
    balanced discussion of this issue rather than the knee-jerk reactions that are
    more common in the open source/free software community.

    Dub

    P.S.: I recommend spending some time browsing through some of the links below
    to see how many of the great inventors of recent history were independent - the
    protection provided by the patent system allowed them to develop and in many
    cases profit handsomely from their inventions. You might be surprised at the
    diversity and "ordinariness" of many of these inventors of important
    breakthroughs - they're not such an elite group as you might imagine (the list
    is somewhat US-centric - our culture celebrates invention, and so links for US
    inventors are much easier to find):

    National Inventor's Hall of Fame
    MIT's Invention Dimension Archive
    Good Internet Public Library list of links to Inventor information

  38. Greased Weasel by artdodge · · Score: 2 · on Linux 2.4.0 Test2 Almost Ready for Prime Time
    This reminds me of the the now famous 1.3.51 and 2.1.129 kernel announcements, aka the "Greased Weasel" releases.

    Not to be confused with 2.2.2pre4, the "Almost-valentines day", aka "horny greased weasel", aka "Presidents Day" release.

  39. Note and a question by tilly · · Score: 2 · on Debian Developer And QT License Contributer Speaks

    First the note. There seems to be some confusion about what the problem is. Here is a description of exactly how the conflict arises.

    Which leads to the question. Is there anything in principle to stop Debian from shipping Qt along with a separate installer and KDE source-code that will allow the target machine to compile a clean copy locally? Then no distribution of tainted binaries has taken place but KDE has been successfully shipped...

    Cheers,
    Ben

  40. Their permission is meaningless by tilly · · Score: 2 · on Debian Developer And QT License Contributer Speaks

    Troll Tech can say anything that they like. But their permission to let you write GPLed software doesn't make it legal to distribute said software along with QT.

    Go read the description of the conflict for yourself.

    Regards,
    Ben

  41. Freesco by homer_ca · · Score: 2 · on Floppy Based Linux Distributions For Routers?
    Try freesco. It's simpler and easier to set up than LRP, although it doesn't have the more advanced features.

    For more here's a few good sites that list distros. That's how I usually find new ones.

    linuxlinks.com

    Linux Weekly News

    linux.com

  42. Slashdot should have a rule by luge · · Score: 1 · on Linux Mergers?

    Before you post something, go and search linuxtoday and lwn.net/daily for it. And if it was at either one two weeks ago maybe you shouldn't post it...
    ~luge(I come to /. for fresh news... this is about as stale as I've ever seen...)

  43. The link and comments by ajs · · Score: 2 · on JavaOne report

    First off, the actual article is here. The Slashdot link just takes you to their front page (which seems to be happening more and more on Slashdot.

    I really hope that the tighter Linux support for Java means that someone sits down and comes up with the right way to install a JRE under Linux. I'm tired of having to untar a binary tree and then screw around with web server configs forever to get it to work.

    It really is time for Sun to start releasing RPMs with good post-install scripts (or Debian packages for that matter).

  44. Direct link by ChrisRijk · · Score: 2 · on JavaOne report

    direct article link. Since it doesn't seem to be there in the blurb at the top...

  45. LessTif Needs More than "Finishing Work" by jdavison · · Score: 1 · on RMS On 'Open' Motif

    I agree with almost everything Richard Stallman has to say on this one. The only major beef I have with Stallman's open letter is with the following sentences: "Most programs that were written for Motif can use LessTif with no changes. Please support the free software community by using LessTif rather than Motif. Some finishing work still needs to be done on LessTif; to volunteer, contact lesstif@hungry.com."

    Stallman's use of the term "finishing work" is misleading. Stallman fails to point out that LessTif presently implements the base, CDE-unaware Motif 1.2 widget library and little else. mwm, UIL, and libMrm are a long way from merely requiring "finishing work." The Hungry Programmers plan to support Motif 2.1 but freely admit in the LessTif FAQ that compatibility with Motif 2.0 will "take a long time."

    Beyond having "made room for CDE compatible widgets and applications," the prospects for CDE implementation are murkier. The LessTif FAQ says that "the people in the eXode project...are working on" CDE, but the Enhanced X Open Desktop (eXode) Project Goals page flatly states that "eXode won't be the free CDE."

    Thus, it's a stretch to say that the current LessTif requires only "finishing work" to be fully compatible with Motif 1.2, and it's even more questionable if the aim is parity with OpenMotif 2.1.30, let alone CDE.

    By the way, the above is not meant to put down the LessTif project or the A HREF="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmers -- they've done excellent work thus far.

    If everyone were to switch to LessTif in its current form, there'd be little, if any, incentive for anyone to move forward from Motif 1.2 to Motif 2.1 -- Motif would either ossify or fork at 1.2, and either way, Motif 2.1 (even as an API) would more or less cease to exist. Those who wrote their programs to the Motif 2.1 API would have to back-port their code to work with the Motif 1.2-based LessTif API (or switch GUI toolkits altogether). I won't offer my position on that issue at the moment, but when advocating LessTif as an alternative to OpenMotif, Stallman should have at least acknowledged it.

    Stallman may or may not merely be assuming that any release of Motif beyond 1.2 is irrelevant (since, like it or not, Motif 1.2 is still the predominant version in use), but it is careless of him, and a little troubling, that he doesn't mention it at all.

    However, this quibble aside, I agree with the thrust of what Stallman wrote.

  46. Re:This will probably get modded down by Some+Dumbass... · · Score: 1 · on 2.2.16 Kernel Released - Fixes Security Hole

    Don't underestimate the power of understanding exactly what's going on. The problem has just been announced. The fix is here now. What the fix involves is well documented. Sound anything like the release of an MS patch to NT?

  47. Re:takes one to know one by Felinoid · · Score: 2 · on 2.2.16 Kernel Released - Fixes Security Hole

    This is incase anyone reading at mod -1 accually takes you sereously instead of seeing you for the outragous lier that you are.

    Hello legal type person allow me to give you my own history....
    Age 15 started busness ran same until age 23. Sence then I ran for office (and lost)...
    In short I have a lot of experence in BS.

    Everyone lives within a community...
    It's just a part of being a part of socity.

    Linux Weekly News - "For a lot of people who watch the Linux business community Bluepoint came, well, out of the blue. What is this company, and how did it manage to go public so quietly?"
    First note... even Bluepoint is part of a community. They are a new company. Moreover they are not a US firm but in fact in China. The objective of the company seems to be to introduce it's version of Linux to Chiniese busnesses. Thats just my point of view. This company could also be just annother "Linux One".
    Bluepoint isn't the first company to have the name Linux. For example VA Linux Systems. Who own Andover.. who own Slashdot... And do not own Linux.
    At least your living up to the lawyer stereotype. Thats kinda sad too becouse most lawyers are honnest people. You however seem to sling the BS better than any politician....

    Being a part of a community is no more illegal than breathing air.
    Your not stupid... your simply full of it.
    In fact I am not telling you ANYTHING you don't allready know...
    Excluding the fact that I also know...

  48. Re:Quickcams and Axis stuff + BIG disks = neato! by b_pretender · · Score: 2 · on Video/Audio Security Solution?

    Check out a review of the Axis cam at Linux weekly news. They liked it alot!!

  49. How to secure your Linux system by Kiwi · · Score: 5 · on SANS Releases Top Ten Exploits
    Since we are talking about security here, here are some things Linux (and other UNIX) admins should keep in mind to keep their systems secure:
    • Use qmail or postfix instead of Sendamil.
    • Make sure you have all security patches for your system installed. Redhat users, for example, can find those patches here.
    • Linux users can read Linux weekly news for security updates.
    • Manage your SUIDs. Make sure you keep a close eye on all your suids. For example, I use this script to put all my suid in the directory /suid/bin:

      #!/bin/sh

      find / -type f -perm +6000 > /root/suids

      for a in `cat /root/suids` ; do

      mv $a /suid/bin
      ln -s /suid/bin/`echo $a | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'` $a

      done
    • Obviously, turn off all unneeded network services in /etc/inetd.conf and (usually) /etc/rc.d/rc3.d. You can see what services are running on your machine with netstat -na.
    • For a UNIX that is free and (hopefully) secure out of the box, check out OpenBSD or Trustix.
    The advantage of an open-source solution is that we have greater control over our systems, and can better optimize our systems for security.

    - Sam

  50. Slashdot Security Hole8173618965 by palp · · Score: 1 · on 3-D Monitor From Deep Video Imaging

    8173618965
    Here is your navigator : Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows 98)
    Just a security hole of Slashdot. You can find this kind of hole in all sites which has a forum. I think that in site like e-trade you can make some people asks for stocks.
    You can contact me there : Krakus.Irus@voila.fr
    If you want to retry.
    If you want to know more.