Slashdot Mirror

you are obviously a fucking moron. YOU said you were doing custom COM objects to get your shitty calendar crap to work. Thus making you a fucking liar, and a bullshitter. Grow up and take responsibility for your actions; although you arent even doing this stuff, you are probably some slug intern in the accounting department who tries to be all cool and talk computers with the real tech guys. Here's a tip- YOU ARE BORING. Go away. We dont want to talk to you, and hobbyists arent interesting. You arent impressing anybody.

You have no proof that MS is going to charge you 500 times as much for the licenses in a year if you dont upgrade. A year from now they will want to sell you the stuff just as much as they do today. Heck, maybe even more so. So again, grow up and be a man. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.

No, I dont waste my time working with things I dont care about. I focus on being an expert on Windows, not a hobbyist playing with two or more operating systems.

So name one, moron. Thats what I asked, because you were trying to be clever and name companies which converted all their SERVERS to desktops. Sorry, it takes more intelligence than you possess to bullshit me. You are just angry you got caught.

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

The "fad will wear off, and big business will come back to solaris".

Schwartz, however, sees the fad of Linux wearing off in big businesses.

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

Schwartz, however, sees the fad of Linux wearing off in big businesses.

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

I work for a non-profit org called The STAR Center. We made the switch to Linux nearly 5 years ago. Here's a NewsForge article that Jacqueline Emigh wrote about us a little over two years ago. We've since switched most of our servers to FreeBSD, but OSS is still the way to go.

TCO issues can be addressed in this manner. You have to have hardware either way. You have to have staff either way. The difference is that you can have as many servers and workstations as you need to support your user base, but there are no licensing fees or upgrade fees. True enough, you will probably expend a nontrivial amount of staff resources in migrating from Windows to Linux, but no more than you'd expend in migrating from Linux to Windows.

The other thing you need to keep in mind is that you don't have to be in any rush to do your migration. It's been five years since we migrated our server functions to Linux, but our workstations are still running Win98. Our ultimate goal is to have end users running Linux or FreeBSD, and every project we've undertaken since the initial migration has brought us a little closer to that goal. Slowly but surely, we're making our way there.

Joe Barr, already has an article responding to this FUD. I personally feel these sorta FUD articles are outdated. With IBM, HP, and others already showing large profits from taking advantage of opensource, you would think they would come up with something that isn't drudging up arguments from 1998.

You are sure everyone needs the Enterprise edition? By taking the most expensive product and obmitting the Professional version you're lying. Also the $1550 (or $2500 for Enterprise edition) includes one year of support and maintainance. So it's $2000 for two years support and maintainance for Professional Edition (or $3270 Enterprise) and not $3000 per annum as you say!

> Random? I think not... now who is telling lies.

I can expose more of your points if it interests anyone. Such as the stupid stuff that China has committed to deploy nearly 200 million GNOME desktops.

> Largo has already dumped KDE. It never made a big effort except to run some trials... no links yet.

So it's an unproven claim with the project manager telling the opposite on Newsforge.

> Nat Friedman is still in charge of desktop development.

Reference? Something better than an old Slashdot comment of him before SUSE aquisition?

> All desktop development is under the control of Ximian.

Someone then must have forgotten to tell the SUSE employees who're are still working on KDE. ;-)

A new email virus called MyDoom is spreading rapidly across the Internet through UNIX mail servers, bringing with it a dangerous attachment that, when opened, can give attackers access to users' computers through an electronic backdoor.

Apparently in their zeal to deflect criticism, they are ignoring, or don't read /. where a more plausible explanation as to the origin of the virus has been posted, and as to the motives behind it.

Too bad (for the site) their own readers don't fall for it

The above links are relevent to the BBC post as well.

Wrath of the geeks

If anyones anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source).
So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge.
SCO is the big, bad company that violates one of their sacred principles, as they would see it.
There's no proof, of course, but it must be one of the theories at the top of any investigator's list.

Interesting to see the BBC publishing this "reporting" on the heels of this

They argued that Mr Dyke, the BBC's editor-in-chief, was blameless for the "defective" system of checks which failed to expose the mistakes made by reporter Andrew Gilligan.

Mr Dyke, they argued, had a long list of extra responsibilities, from " motivating staff " to handling budgets and could not have been expected to check Mr Gilligan's story which alleged that the Government inserted bogus material into the Iraq dossier.

Although editors traditionally accepted responsibility for their journalists' shortcomings, that did not mean Mr Dyke "could or should" have had any clue about the inaccuracies in the story.

The BBC submission said its governors did not have "direct management responsibility" although they did take "ultimate responsibility for the BBC in everything it does".

And it argued, astonishingly, that the governors were never asked to treat the deluge of demands for an apology made by Alastair Campbell or the Government as "a formal complaint".

Meanwhile, in a separate legal submission, Gilligan attempted to claim that reporters should be allowed "a margin of error" to make mistakes.

And more:

On the BBC

BBC editorial system was 'defective'

BBC management failed to appreciate that Gilligan's notes did not support the most serious of his allegations

The BBC governors should have recognised the desire to protect its independence was not incompatible with investigating Mr Campbell's complaints, no matter what their tone

The BBC governors should have investigated further the differences between Gilligan's notes and his report, and that should have led them to question w

Their insistence on control has left them in an increasingly isolated position." "Without IBM, Sun could never have built the success Java has enjoyed. Without Sun, however, the IBM-led Eclipse group has been making great strides.

The new Sun is smarter than that. You can trust them

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

The "fad will wear off, and big business will come back to solaris".

Their insistence on control has left them in an increasingly isolated position." "Without IBM, Sun could never have built the success Java has enjoyed. Without Sun, however, the IBM-led Eclipse group has been making great strides.

The new Sun is smarter than that. You can trust them

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

The "fad will wear off, and big business will come back to solaris".

Newsforge is still stridently anti-Microsoft.

A new email virus called MyDoom is spreading rapidly across the Internet through UNIX mail servers, bringing with it a dangerous attachment that, when opened, can give attackers access to users' computers through an electronic backdoor.

(This is where someone calls me a Bozo and tells me it already exists...)

Hi, Bozo!

Microsoft's HTML help files already do this. And StarOffice/OpenOffice document formats have a similar implementation, but with XML.

Schwartz, however, sees the fad of Linux wearing off in big businesses.

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

Schwartz, however, sees the fad of Linux wearing off in big businesses.

"There will be a transition back to Solaris," he said

Phantom Game Console isn't exactly vaporware. Photos of it are here. Not sure if this is a working model though.

You are not the only one to think this. An astonishing lapse of judgement, but then, curiosity is a very strong inpulse, and it was probably worth it, just for the debate.

Anyway, are you saying that old Rob isnt a journalist?!!

To be honest, I found the article on the takeup of Linux more interesting than whether or not geeks in another country are just like us. The fact that Linux is being used in the space infrastructure of Saudi Arabia will no doubt help to accelerate its adoption in poorer countries such as the Indian south subcontinent and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was also impressed by the sheer standard of Linux knowledge displayed by the Saudi computer expert considering that over there in the country they estimate its market share to be only 4%. (Note that that's greater than in the UK or the US, though.)

To be honest, I found the article on the takeup of Linux more interesting than whether or not geeks in another country are just like us. The fact that Linux is being used in the space infrastructure of Saudi Arabia will no doubt help to accelerate its adoption in poorer countries such as the Indian south subcontinent and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was also impressed by the sheer standard of Linux knowledge displayed by the Saudi computer expert considering that over there in the country they estimate its market share to be only 4%. (Note that that's greater than in the UK or the US, though.)

The first real life model of the phantom game console was also show at CES. There are pictures of it at gamespot . Not sure if this is a working model or not.

The G5 spanks the Opteron in many of the non-gaming tests, except for the Photoshop tests.

Isn't photoshop the reason for buying a mac?

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Red Hat, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said.

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day. .

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system & G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply a

It's a lot cheaper for a bar or restaurant to provide free WiFi than to subscribe to a commercial cable TV or satellite sports provider, but I've never had the owner of a sports bar try to charge me to watch a Bucs game.

Sometimes I like to go to a bar to watch games that aren't being shown where I live; I'm not such a big fan that I want to watch out-of-area teams often enough to pay for one of those expensive "sports pass" satellite deals, and besides, it's often nice to sit with other people who enjoy the game instead of with my wife, who leaves the room when I put on a football game and barely tolerates baseball.

Obvously bar owners figure sports TV is worth the cost. There's no question that it brings in business -- including mine now and then. I'm not sure enough people have wireless-equipped laptops or PDAs for free wireless to pay off quite yet in most parts of the world for establishments that put it in, but that day will come.

I said all of this in a NewsForge article last May, BTW.

- Robin

Located here

(I'm sure no one will read this comment because I'm about 3 hours too late, but whatever...)

First, IAAMR (I am a market researcher.) I wasn't able to get into the survey, but a Newsforge reader posted the questions here.

I've seen a lot of consumer surveys over the years, and this looks fairly typical. Most surveys of this nature are proprietary -- the research results will be for internal use only and will not be released to the public, mainly because most companies don't want their competitors or detractors to find out about their product development or marketing plans in advance. Whenever possible, companies will try to prevent anyone from even knowing that they're conducting a survey. [1] Obviously, in this case, there's no way that Microsoft can prevent the (Linux-using) world at large from finding out that they're doing a survey, but I guarantee you that they do not plan to release the results to anyone outside Microsoft.

This sort of questionnaire is designed to find out:

• (a) What do people like about our products/our brand/our image?
• (b) What do people dislike about our products/our brand/our image?
• (c) How can we make people in our target market associate us with the things mentioned in section (a) rather than (b)?

The questions that are of the most interest to Microsoft will be those asking for the respondent's opinions:

• 10. Who would you recommend use Linux at home?
• 11. Rank the reasons you like Linux for the home.
• 12. Rank the importance of various tasks you use your home Linux system for.
• 15. List the top one or two possible improvements that you would like to see made to Windows.
• 16. List the top one or two improvements that you would like to see made to Linux.

The rest of the questions require factual responses, and the responses gathered from them will be used to see if there are any patterns in the opinion data. In market research data analysis, we're not looking at the opinions of any specific individual; only those of various groups (Linux novices vs. experts, dual-booters vs. non, etc.), so you needn't worry about any personal retribution from Microsoft. They won't care that John Doe in Nebraska likes Linux for the home because it's "More secure than Windows", but they will be interested to learn that in general, the people who dual boot (Question 14) are more likely than those who don't to say that they like Linux for the home because it has "Better command line" (Question 11).

You may have noticed the italicized phrase "in our target market" in point (c) above. Microsoft isn't going to try to convince the hardcore Linux zealots(TM) to switch to Windows. They're going after people who aren't totally committed to either Linux or Windows yet. People who have a strong preference for Windows are already in the bag; and it would be a waste of time and money to try to convert the diehard Linux advocates. Any product development or advertising based on the results of this survey will have only 2 aims: to make the lukewarm Windows users feel that they've made the right decision, and to make the lukewarm Linux users feel that they're missing out on something better.

[1] Case in point: While I was typing this, my phone rang. It was a market research company (one of my company's competitors) conducting a survey. I agreed to participate, and lied when they asked, "Do you work for a market research company?" (People in my field do this all the time to find out what contracts our competitors have been awarded. We like to call it "gathering competitive intelligence".) Unfortunately, one of my responses to another question disqualified me from the survey. But now I know that our competitor has a contract to conduct research about tooth whitening for a manufacturer of dental care products. I'll be checking with our sales department on Monday to see if we recently lost out on a bid for this contract.

That has nothing to do with bad luck. It just means that Ximian and people such as Jeff Waugh do a good job in painting a picture.

E.g. Nat Friedman of Ximian told the public at the recent Linux Desktop Conference that the City of Largo had switched to Ximian, somewhat to the surprise of the people at Largo With little tricks like that they try to pretend that GNOME is much more popular than it in fact is.

Nat has a link to a book on his blog that explains such marketing tactics.

I just want to point out a few quotes from the Perens article (available at Newsforge):

According to it, it was Perens' decision:

Bruce says:

As you can see on our mailing list, most of the software consolidation in UserLinux is going on by consensus. I saw that no consensus would be possible regarding the GUI. So, I made a decision by fiat to get the project moving past the GUI issue.

I agree you can argue about it a lot, but read on.

Bruce says:

In February, my book series will publish C++ GUI Programming with Qt, the official Trolltech guide to Qt 3.2, by Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield. I have a minor financial interest in promoting Qt (I don't make much money from my books), but no such interest in the case of GTK/GNOME at this time. Because of a miscommunication with my publisher, there is some non-free software on the CD attached to that book - Windows Qt and some compilers from Borland. Although that is against my policy for the books, and I told my publisher not to allow it to happen again, I chose to allow it to continue this time rather than create hardship for Trolltech at a late stage in their book production. I also recently recommended Qtopia to a consulting customer, for what could be a billion-dollar project. I point this out so that you might have some clue that I not an anti-Qt ogre.

Again, it is important that we 'get in the door' (as he puts it) before something like DMCA, patent, and even totally unrelated matters such as piracy are used by the likes of Microsoft to destroy the free (as in freedom) and open source movements.

Newsforge still has a copy of the response that Bruce Perens posted before replacing it with is on www.userlinux.com/GUI.html now..

Get it here

Linux DOES probably have more machines on its side. However, that's not necessarily relevant. Linux's overwhelming number of machines is not because they have a gadzillion desktop users. They run a lot of servers. When it comes to Linux desktop usage, I've yet to see a figure that puts it significantly ahead of Apple in desktop use. Feel free to show me some reliable figures to prove me wrong on this.

OK. Linux at 1.7% versus Mac at 3.1%.

Keep in mind that unlike OS X, Linux can be run on old machines, new machines and everything in between (including old Macs). In addition, every Mac and Windows machine out there is a potential Linux machine. With the easy availability of low-to-no cost Linux distributions, it is nearly impossible to actually estimate the real number of desktops out there. Every estimate I have ever seen has always had the caveat that the real number is going to be a lot higher.

People running servers don't need fancy MP3 playing software. The majority of deployed linux boxes are servers. So long as tenant 2 holds, the majority of linux boxes wouldn't run iTunes.

Umm, we don't need QT for playing MP3's, we need it to play those trailers and movies that so many people thoughtlessly throw up on the web in that closed format. Luckily as with most things we have circumvented vendor idiocy using other means, but Apple's refusal still grates.

Apple supports iTunes with Windows for some good reasons. Firstly, it's the same reason that BeOS started supporting x86 machines. They like money, money is good, and therefore they try and get more of it. The huge spike in iTMS sales suggests this was a good move. Secondly, Quicktime was already out for Windows. Since iTunes relies on Quicktime, their sound code should be trivially portable.

And how much money does Apple make with their free Windows Quicktime viewer again? You do recall that is what we are talking about here?

Apple has kicked back a lot of stuff to the open source community. Apple really doesn't owe Linux in particular anything. Apple owes most of itself to BSDs.

Ok, then, why isn't there a QT player for FreeBSD?

If you don't want an Apple computer, that's your call. Many people would argue it's your loss though.

And many people wouldn't. Me, for example.

What gets me about this whole debate is the hypocrisy from the Mac community. Whenever there is a Windows only app that comes out, there is a cry in the community about being unfairly locked out, but when Apple does the same thing to other platforms, they are defended tooth and nail by those same people.

The City of Largo Florida has been running Linux for quite some time. Also, take a look at the City of Munich

o, assuming I get hold of one of these AMD 64-bit boxes, how hard/easy is it to get Linux compiled for 64-bit. What are the pitfalls with gcc (is an int 64 bit in 64-bit mode ?)

Here is a list of supported distros. And yes, I believe an int is 64 bits in 64 bit mode

From the ChoicePC article at NewsForge:

> For their $100, all of which is slated to go directly to the support of the resellers, contributors also receive ... Download of every desktop version of LindowsOS released during your lifetime

Yeah, until Microsoft wins the lawsuit in a significant number of countries and they have to change the product name to something else. Nice try, though! They must be hanging around Microsoft lawyers too much.

Here's another article at the Reg about this, and one at Newsforge about Lindows new website, ChoicePC for taking donations to help Lindows European resellers fight this.

There's a poll here.

Interesting, according to this

Linux first appeared on the NWS scene in 1995 in the form of Slackware

And in comparison to their previous HP-UX systems:-

. . .the switch has helped increase data processing speed.

"The performance that we measure with our benchmark has increased by over 100% since we completed phase one of our Linux migration," happily boasts Piercy.

So you take Newsforge as the true text of the letter, while Darl has his own version of his own letter. Who do we believe? Is it Darl's propaganda...or (gasp!) Newsforge's? And how can we prove it? This is why I hate the Internet sometimes; an astronomical amount of storage space, yet a very weak memory.

But you are right, on SCO's site the "open source advocates" do not apear.

Larry Lessig, Eldred counsel and all-around bad-ass, put aside his obligations for the morning on his visit to Japan to pen this response (typos retained for the grammar nerds):

More SCO fud, this time insulting the constitution

I apologize for the silence, but weve been in Japan this week announcing iCommons in Japan. (More on that soon). But after reading this extraordinary document by Darl McBride of SCO infamy, I could resist canceling this morning meetings to respond.

From the start of this pathetic lawsuit, Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation has argued that there was nothing behind the SCO claims. His arguments are persuasive. But if you want a clue of just how clueless this case is, consider the constitutional arguments made by SCO.

McBride's argument is grounded in the Constitution. (Well, close to the constitution. He quotes the text of the constitution to be:

Congress shall have Power [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, open-source advocates argue against copyright and patent laws, and whatever measures they take to by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Actually, the framers didn't say anything about "open source advocates.")

As he rightly is argues, the Constitution requires that Congress only grant copyrights where those copyrights "promote the Progress of Science." Thus, if Congress granted copyrights in a context where they didn't "promote progress" one might well ask whether such a law was constitutional (e.g., a law that extended the terms of existing copyrights, but let's leave that aside for the moment).

But the key move in the McBride-FUD is his claim that proponents of free software and open source software are somehow against copyright.

He claims that "GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the 'copyright' laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union"; that "Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights"; that "the issue is clear: do you support copyrights and ownership of intellectual property as envisioned by our elected officials in Congress and the European Union, or do you support "free" - as in free from ownership - intellectual property envisioned by the Free Software Foundation, Red Hat and others?"; that "SCO argues that the authority of Congress under the U.S. Constitution to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts" inherently includes a profit motive, and that protection for this profit motive includes a Constitutional dimension"; and that "We believe that the "progress of science" is best advanced by vigorously protecting the right of authors and inventors to earn a profit from their work."

Let's take each of these claims in turn:

"GPL is exactly opposite in its effect from the 'copyright' laws adopted by the US Congress and the European Union"

Despite RMS's aversion to the term, the GPL trades on a property right that the laws of the US and EU grant "authors" for their creative work. A property right means that the owner of the right has the right to do with his property whatever he wishes, consistent with the laws of the land. If he chooses to give his property away, that does not make it any less a property right. If he chooses to sell it for $1,000,000, that doesn't make it any less a property right. And if he chooses to license it on the condition that source code be made free, that doesn't make it

This is good too. The last paragraph reads:

"We're rapidly heading for a world where computers are as common as pens or soccer balls -- and computer skills are as common as basic literacy or ball-kicking ability. And in that world, with or without an organized free software movement, I doubt that even 1/10 of 1% of all the people who "know how to program" will be able to get full-time jobs creating computer software."

(I bet you thought that link would be to something else. ;-)

Hey, I'm a fan of the capitalist ethos as much as the next guy, but when it comes to the interests of the populous it's clearly more responsible to choose open source and open standards. Should we really trust Our Data to invisible source code written by anonymous programmers ensconced in a proprietary bubble?

I guess we shouldn't be so surprised that the elite don't have the interests of the populous at heart. Hmm, maybe there's a worm in the Capitalist apple.... It's time the Open Source Community made it clear that we are an essential element of the free market ecosystem and not some fringe element to be vilified and marginalized.

I certainly hope that RedHat has time to enter this letter as evidence in their lawsuit against SCO for Lanham Act violations.

This article on Newsforge says Eclipse recently passed the 12 million download mark - on of them must be wrong.

Sure they do, it's called NewsForge.

Yes, I am kidding. Also, here is the email i sent our buddy:
-------------
In regards to your "bottom line" at the end of the article entitled:
Commercial solutions win, spam loses, Nov 14th, you stated it was much
harder to install, configure, and keep running.

Although it isn't point and click like with windows, you said it was
installed WITH red hat 9. All you had to do was add: :0fw
| spamc
to your /etc/procmailrc files to make it an enterprise wide spam filter.

You also said it has scanty documentation, but it has full documentation for
every configurable option available on their site, spamassassin.org.

You said 63% spam identification??? What did you have your threshold set to?
9? or some other high integer? I have mine set to 5 and I have a spam
catching percent greater than 99%.

"But just because the software is installed does not mean it will work --
filtering criteria must be added manually, and until that's done nothing is
filtered out." -- What is that??? You can edit the scores but all the scores
have default values that are very good and require NO editing. I can
understand if you are a linux/*nix newbie, but you should have a disclaimer
in your article instead of bashing an open source project that works quite
well with no configuration other than procmail.

As far as the whitelisting you said that could not be done by normal users:
first: there are many web(php and perl) applications that let you do this
over the web and also will let you view quarantined mail over the web.
Second: from the spamassassin man page: -W, --add-to-whitelist
Add addresses in mail to whitelist (AWL)

>From your article again: "There are blacklists available that you can
subscribe to, and some are updated regularly, but these are noncommercial
lists with no guarantees." Those "non-commercial" lists are used by ALL the
commercial products. In fact, one of the major commercial antispam product
companies just bought spamcop to ensure its success in the future. Those
blacklists are not ones you have to "subscribe to" as your purport, but are
already used. Vipul's razor which IS a signature product used by
CloudMark's commercials software is automatically used if found. You can
install that from an rpm. In your chart, you said that SA cannot use
signature based scans.

To keep SA up to date, guess what you type. up2date spamassassin. OH MY
GOODNESS!!! That was very difficult. Or if you want, since you're using red
hat 9, you can type yum upgrade spamassassin.

"Filtering rules are relatively basic, and although there is a Bayesian
filter available, it is not part of the distribution -- and I wasn't able to
get it working for this review." Filtering rules are not basic in any form
and Bayesian filter is included. Another lie(a disturbing trend for a
"journalist"). Simply add use_bayes 1 to the local.cf configuration file.

Where to begin? "It looks for keywords in the subject or body of e-mails,
but is frustrated by words not in the dictionary, such as "V!agra," or words
that contain invisible HTML characters." I get TONS of spam both in the
enterprise and at home and spamassassin gets more than 99% of it with 0
false positives. Believe me, it gets the "vee ag ra" and the "v!agra" and
variants. 100% of the time, in fact.

Your chart said no end user access to quarantined mail, but you can easily
put it into any folder you want because spamassassin writes a header:
X-Spam-Status: Yes. That means you can also put into /etc/procmailrc the
following: :0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
$HOME/mail/Spam

And like Emeril, BAM! Enterprise wide filtering and quarantining of mail
into a Spam folder.

I really wish before you create another article f

In mid-September, a rumor was reported that Ford was "considering" a switch for servers. Somehow that turned into a rumor of a massive desktop migration.

A few weeks later, Ford announced they were NOT going to switch desktops to linux (google cache, original article off-line now). Ford specifically mentioned just signing a 3 year contract with Microsoft. Perhaps the rumor was used as legerage to get a better deal from MS, or perhaps it was just the case of wishful thinking and sloppy reporting.

Here's slashdot's coverage with more links. Notice the update, posted several hours later (probably long after most slashdot readers had long since stopped seeing it)... with the link to a newsforge story, aptly titled Ford move to Linux not true (yet). It was all a rumor that got blown out of proportion.

Spectecjr:

And the reference to this in the paper itself is... where precisely?

Your conclusion is completely unsupported by the data in the paper. The paper's only reference to the operating system used in the SCADA system at that plant is to a GE XA/21 system running... UNIX.

Answer:

We have several clues. For example, on page 94 of the DOE report it states: "Many malicious code attacks, by their very nature, are unbiased and tend to interfere with operations supported by vulnerable applications. One such incident occurred on January 2003, when the "Slammer" Internet worm took down monitoring computers at FirstEnergy Corporation's idled Davis-Besse nuclear plant. A subsequent report by the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) concluded that, although it caused no outages, the infection blocked command that operated other powerutilities."

Now why would they make reference to the "Slammer" worm if we're talking about Unix?

See this link for more clues.

Spectecjr:

Presumably you got all of his information re: the operating systems in use from the Computerworld article. Unfortunately, they make the assumption that the SCADA system is Windows based. In this case, it wasn't. It was entirely UNIX based.

Answer: How can you say that? Consider from the ComputerWeek article:

"Carol Murphy, vice president of government affairs at the New York Independent System Operator, acknowledged that Blaster affected the utility but said the problem was handled quickly, with no impact on power restoration operations. Joe Petta, a spokesman for Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc., said there were "absolutely no computer-related problems of any sort that delayed our restoration effort."

I am sure the Slashdot community welcomes your references concerning your assersion that the SADA software running the alarm control system was Unix based.

Check this out:

"Next up: Former SCO employee Jack Craig, now an SDK support engineer at another software company.

[...] While it was later excised and replaced with UDI code, I wonder how the world would take the news that SCO/Caldera paid a contract house in San Jose over $150,000 to port the NetBSD USB stack to osr5! They sure don't mind stealing open source when it suites them!" -- article here

This should be researched. McBride has been very admant that it doesn't matter if his imagined IP is removed from GNU/Linux, there price must be paid. Surely then his amazing legal understanding must be extended to his own company, in which case SCO could be a veritable GOLDMINE for the BSD Developers.

Read the entire report and a more in-depth analysis here.

Nahhh

NewsForge picked up on the BSDi comment.

I am not sure I agree that just because KDE looks more like MS Windows it means the users will find it easier to work with. Siemens Business Services did a study on this a while back (story was posted on slashdot too) Part of it reads:

"Before settling on Ximian, Siemens evaluated plain vanilla Gnome and KDE as well. Siemens found KDE to be more "Windows-like" than Gnome, but that led to problems when non-technical users expected a more Windows-like experience. Gnome, particularly Ximian's version, was "different enough" to set user expectations that the experience would be less like Windows, which led to fewer adoption problems"