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Fred Moody Says Linux Worst Operating System Ever
I avoided posting this because it really is pretty lame, but its getting submitted a lot. Basically
Fred Moody says Linux Sucks on ABC. He calls it the worst operating system ever based on the fact that bug traq lists more bugs for it then any other operating system. Stories like this just make me roll my eyes: the thing will get tons of traffic from you guys and his editor will say "Good Job Fred" because they got to sell lots of banner ads on it. *sigh*
Its great, they listed under 100 bugs for every OS. I'm work with finding bugs every day and those stats seem riduculous. I can find 10-15 bugs a day in much simpler programs. Less than 100 bugs in an OS, ridiculous. From experience, I know LINUX crashes less than my Windows 95 or 98 box. How can LINUX have less bugs? There's probably just more people that care about LINUX and thats why the bugs get reported. (In fact my box hasn't crashed yet, but I just use it as a server, not a development machine.) He should look at Microsofts own list of bugs for windows. LINUX isn't perfect (no OS is, yet) but that reasoning as to why its the worst OS in history is ridiculous.
So what? I hate domestic vehicles, maybe you don't, yet somehow we manage to co-habitate the same planet. For every article like this, there's ten that are written by people with equal or greater status in which Linux is hailed as the second coming of Christ. Either way, does it really matter? By responding en masse to this article, Uncle Moody is getting exactly what he wants - attention. He may not even believe in half of the FUD being spewed forth, but knows very well that this type of article is a cash cow in terms of publicity.
Who actually admires ABCNews for its technical value? Anyone who reads this article, nodding slowly as they mouth the words, and decides that Moody is clearly right on the money deserves every BSOD they recieve as a result. Those who are intelligent will examine all options and go with the solution that best suits their needs, regardless of what it is.
The only reason that obviously slanted articles like this exist is because the authors know damn well that every Linux zealot from here to Tokyo will burst into flames as a result. In case you haven't noticed, countless pro-OSS articles pull the same tricks.
NerdPerfect.com : breakfast of champions.
seattleweekly? Where the hell do you think that is? ... (poster rants) ... No shit he doesn't like Linux.. It threatens his community!
... no, MSFT is not a major contributor to the taxbase of Seattle (the dotcoms in Fremont and Belltown are, as is Starbucks). It was the origin of a lot of local fortunes, but most of us don't work for MSFT or want to.
Um, actually, Seattle Weekly is from Seattle. Bill G lives in Medina, works in Redmond, and probably reads the Eastside Business Journal.
There's this giant thing called a lake in between, so big that a massive barge just bashed out a column holding up one of the two floating bridges and they only shut down one of the lanes.
We have hydrofoil races on it, and you can float large naval vessels on it.
So
That's like me saying that New Jersey makes New York City do its bidding.
Will in Seattle
_Nobody_ puts that much effort into pre-emptively defending their integrity unless they're a con :)
Were it not for that comment I might think he was simply a fool- but fools are less self-aware. Moody's a _con_. He's like a 'mole', can't possibly be saying these things out of genuine sincerity. There's got to be some heavy secrets in there somewhere- though I doubt many people would care. "Fred Moody turned out to be a paid Microsoft employee working undercover!" "Fred who?"
The most touchingly pathetic bit is this- both Moody, and many Slashdotters being alarmed by him, seem to believe that non computer geeks, the un-tech-savvy, have NEVER EXPERIENCED a con before. Um, used car dealers have been around for many years guys- before then you had real estate cons selling you beachfront properties in Florida. Cons are NOT NEW.
A surprisingly large percentage of nongeeks of all ages and walks of life will look at this guy, this 'one journalist, at least, in whom readers could trust absolutely', and _automatically_ go 'shyeeeah right'... correctly spotting the CON of him without even having a technical background to rebut his claims.
Of course, I'm reminded of another phrase by all this: "Then they fight you,"
You know what comes next ;)
Thats interesting you say Hiawatha Bray. I had no idea she was a known troll. I wrote her an email about 3 months ago that was one of my most trying. I kept having to edit out the "fucking idiot"'s, and other explitives that I was wanting to put in the letter. I didn't want it to be a flame, and the email actually turned out pretty friendly and teacherly. Now I feel like an idiot for falling for a troll.
- I like pudding.
Go get if from here.
If you looked at their archive of his previous "stories" (most look like fiction to me, but), you'll see he's got a real Microsoft fetish. He bashes Linux whenever he can, and of course, has articles saying how bad ol' Judge Jackson was out to get Microsoft during the big trial. (Keep in mind, Jackson was initially saying that he intended to give them a slap on the wrist at best - until they showed him zero respect in court. That kind of behavior makes the judge less interested in what you have to say.)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Is Fred Moody that fat comic book guy from the Simpsons?
Love,
Bongo
Opaque from the lack of sunlight? So, if that's ture, then people who spend all their time in the sun become transparent?
Hot damn! Invisibility, here I come!
"The dead do not shoo-bop-aloo-bah." -- Kai, 'Lexx'
First comment is that BugTraq forgets to mention that those BUGS were found in indivdual software pieces, rather than in the OS itself. Fact realized thanks to trippechiq on my ICQ list.
Second is that the quality of the bug really does make a difference, if a bug is found that causes the kernel to spit out the message "hello world" onto the screen, it is a small bug, but a bug none the less.
Third comment is that I know you all are filled with anger, and so am I, but we do have to remember that Fred forgot to take his medicine the day he wrote that article.
Fourth is why are we all arguing over something we agree on?
C'ya
James >jharr@mad.scientist.NOSPAM.com<
---->>>---- If Bill Gates had a nickle for every time windows crashed, Oh wait, he does.
This is funny.
MCL does not exist. But behind the older copies of Linux Journal (tm) (I don't have the new ones but I believe they still have the back page), is the add for Metro's Metro-X with the big words "Mission Critical Linux application" or something.
Mr Moody must have glanced at that and mistook the ad for a propriety X for a distro!
What the hell am I doing here getting a higher degree when I can get a nice paying job with ABC with zero knowledge!DIMWIT!
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Someone should make an anonymizer that strips out banner ads ala Junkbuster. That would be cool, since Slashdot could link to any article it wanted through the anonymizer. Better yet, maybe Slashdot could implement it... (get out that Perl)
My first observation is that this is at least partially true, just because of the makeup of the slashdot community. Face it, we do have quite a few linux zealots and quite a few micros~1 haters.
However, I also believe that this has a great deal to do with some flaws in the moderation system.
The first problem I see is that the first posts to an article are the most likely to be modded up. Moderators tend to hang around the couple most recently posted stories.
Not everybody refreshes Slashdot every two hours. The people that do, are the ones that agree most with the stereotypical slashdot agenda.
Insightful posts take time. It could easily take an hour to *read the article*, do some other research, and post some meaningful commentary. Those who post fast seem more likely to spout out their gut feelings.
To sum up: The people who post first are likely to be avid slashdot readers and more zealotous. Posts that are made soon after the article goes up are not as likely to be based on facts.
On hot trigger issues such as this one, I have read comments soon, then comments later and been pleasantly suprised by a couple better posts that get moderated later. Often on looking further, I notice that there are several more that I would have modded higher than the ones that are modded higher.
Let me try to illustrate this with a graph:
Post Quality vs Time: ;+---+ ;+---------------
|high
|
|+---+
|+++--+
|+-+&nbs p;+---+
|++ 
|++ 
|++
|+-+
|++
++
|
|low
+-----------------------------------------
time--->
Sum of moderation done
|more+-------------- -----------
|+-----+
|+--+
|++
|+
|++
|+
|+
|+
|+
||
|
|less
+-----------------------------------------
time---> As you can see from the graphs, I think there are a lot of good comments posted later that don't get moderated, while a lot of earlier comments that might not be quite so good, do.
I suggest the golden moderation system.
You get 5 moderator points.
2 of the are gold.
2 of them are silver.
1 of them is bronze.
gold points can be used on any post at any time. Silver points can be used on posts attached to articles that are more than 2 hours old. Bronze points can be used on posts attached to stories that are more than 1 day old.
I think this would really do wonders for Slashdot.
True bollocks. When there are 2 Windows 2000's, one by Microsoft and one by Office Corps., can we count bugs that occur on both twice too?
Looking at that list how many times do you see the same wu-ftp problems come up? Do they teach journalists to count these days?
/.
cpeterso
For building a web server, for example, it's easy to strip down a Linux system to just a web server and ssh for remote administration, with no other exposures.. Then, the only vulnerabilities you are concerned with are those in the packet filtering code, the web server, and sshd. It's considerably harder to strip down NT to that degree, in particular if you want to keep some kind remote administrability.
Moody is either simply clueless, or he writes deliberately biased pieces. Which leaves me wondering: can't ABC get people with a sense of ethics and some competence anymore?
Honestly, to determine how severe a bug is it should be measured in terms of the number of people it affects.
Therefore, it could make more sense to Multiply the number of available bugs by the number of users of the particular OS to get a sense of how damaging the bug could be.
Under this light, Microsoft looks very bad.
Because killing him would be illegal.
I couldn't resist both reading the article and posting a comment to abcnews.com - at least I referenced back to /., so hopefully some hits will bounce back this way. Here is the comment (Warning, rant mode on):
/. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/02/212244 &mode=thread
Linux Sux Redux?! How about "Moody Sux Booty"?
This guy has a history of clueless pro-Microsoft ranting. Don't know what axe he has to grind, but a little future objectiveness on his part would be nice. This is one reason why I spend little time at abcnews.com - I came (as have likely numerous clueful people) by way a link from
Read my sig if you like, but I'll never see yours, thanks to Discussions, Viewing, Disable sigs...
Of course! 44% of the American population knows that.
- It was the good old days - when men were men, women were women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centari were small furry creatures from Alpha Centari.
Dear AC,
... available whereever the LDP is sold!
I am his linux friend and I'm not so biased that I can't "see the forest for the trees," so to speak. I have windows computers, linux computers, macintosh computers, and various other unixen from time to time.
I can do of that stuff you say I can't do on Windows while drinking root bear through my nose and whistling dixie. All of it. Installable filesystems, multiple sessions, multiuser environments, multiple users simeotaneously, multiple versions of IE, even shell replacements - basally the equivalent of WM's on Win32 simply because it's structured differently than X. If you want to know how do do any of it (which is all really quite irrelevant in the real world anyway) then just e-mail me and I'll tell you how.
Why do I know this stuff? Know thy competition. My suggestion to you is to go out and read the Linux-Advocacy-HOWTO
~GoRK
> He may be in need of a clue, but isn't this the sort of thing that the common folk look at to make their decisions.
Mayhap, but in this case he actually did us a favor. He misrepresents the numbers so badly that even a PHB can understand it (well, at least after you point it out). Once your PHB understands that high profile pundits can so gratuitously misrepresent the facts, the seeds of doubt will be sown.
But it won't be the seeds of doubt Mr. Moody intended to sow. It will be seeds of doubt about all the Old Guard's desperate attempts to discredit the newcomer.
Thank you, Mr. Moody.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I only point at it as a "for instance" as I looked at one page of it (and still shake my head at it) a few days ago. I use NT(4.0), Linux, Solaris, *cough*SCO*cough*... have you ever searched the "customer only" Solaris bug database? Holy mother...
I stopped caring about "OS Wars" years ago. Newsflash: "They all suck." Just find one and live with it. (I've been staring at NT all month.)
Thats nothing. Windows went from v3.1 to 95, then from 98 to 2000. Jesus, next it's Windows 1,000,000. With a name like that, that's GOT to be a good product.
- I like pudding.
Actually, the bug was DOS-related, and on Bugtraq. But yes, DOS==secure.
When I was growing up, a term used quite frequently to describe something amateurish and substandard was 'Mickey Mouse'. ABC is truly the Mickey Mouse network, on TV and on the internet.
Umm... you've seen the kernel notes... right? oh? you haven't? I'm sorry...
My response to ABC: I found Mr. Moody's article on the referenced page to be not merely misleading, but actually offensive to many if not most of the persons who are well acquainted with the underlying facts of the issues it addresses. I am unsure whether Mr. Moody is deliberately trying to mislead his readers or whether he himself is misled. To use these raw "bug counts" to make his point ignores the central fact that Linux is created and maintained by a community of volunteer nit-picking perfectionists who revel in the temporary glory of having found an error in someone else's code. In contrast, Microsoft is a secretive profit-centered business with corporate policies that, apparently, regulate the publication of known vulnerabilities by its employees. In addition, Mr. Moody's summary of the data was misleading about exactly what software was affected by the reported bugs, as I am certain other readers have pointed out.
I am very much afraid that we live in interesting times.
I found a feedback page here, Just select category 'Opinions' (or perhaps 'Factual errors' in this case) in the combo box. Try to be polite. :) //jörgen
Now you don't have to go through there site, giving you more ads, do you want that?
A few thoughts about a recent article of yours.
"Linux Sux Redux"
First off, that title is purely flaimbait, surely not something a writer of your skill level would sink to.
Second, you have no clue what you're talking about, Linux didn't do too bad on bugtraq, much better than windows. You must have been referring to the aggregate results, which obviously consisted of a total of bugs from several distributions, as Redhat's, and Suse's numbers were much lower. Obviously, the aggregate results don't mean much, as you won't be running every distribution on the same machine at the same time. Surely someone as smart as you would realize this.
Third, someone who writes about technical issues would surely understand what these numbers mean. If not, let me tell you. Virtually NOTHING! Yes, that's correct, they mean next to nothing. These are reported bugs, so they are most likely fixed almost right away. They may also be insignificant bugs that don't really matter in most situations, as they don't distinguish between the severity of bugs. Also, since they are only reported bugs, there's probably plenty that are not known. For example, MacOS X has 1 reported bug! Surely MacOS X has WAY more than that, as it's still in development, and everyone who has a clue knows that it's just not possible for there to be ONLY 1 BUG in an OS in development!
So I think I understand. There are only three possibilities.
1. This article is pure flaimbait meant to create traffic, hence, more banner revenue! This is the most likely scenario. Job well done, you made an ass of yourself and it paid off.
2. This is a joke! Haha, pretty funny, I'm dyin! But seriously, that's really not a very good joke, I don't think many people will get it.
3. You are a complete moron and should be fired from your job immediately!
If 1 or 2 is correct, then I hope you are happy being a completely worthless human being! That must bring you great joy!
If 2 is correct... oh wait, same thing.
Thanks for you time,
Ryan
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Use Lynx like I do and nobody gets ad sales.
And this is why Moody's intentions are transparent. :)
There's too much "sun" shining re: the reality of Linux to let this moron get away with this article.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
No, no, NO! Attacking his integrity is simply ad hominem attacking and I doubt any editor will read past the first sentence. This kind of attack is easy.
You need to argue the facts. They aren't on Moody's side. Simply point out that a mindless bug count is a meaningless way to compare OS's. Stick to the facts, and you can't be easily dismissed. Rants about the guy's "integrity" will simply make you sound like a sour grapes-wielding zealot, the very sort they expected to enrage.
Please, stay with the facts, and you'll be much more likely to be heard.
ChuckleBug
And, all bugs are not exploits, so the 100's of daily windows bugs are not nessessarly "security risks" which may reduce the MS numbers even lower. But, when they do have a security hole, I never hear about it until they submit a patch and wonder "how long as my system been open to attack?"
In the end, if your a system admin, and you actually show up to work when your suppose to, isn't How Long Your Open To Attack before you have a patch/fix what really matters anyway?
If bad press appears about Micro$oft, an M$ marketroid will respond to it, and generally speaking, the trade press will cover it. If bad press appears about Linux, we all sit around and gripe on Slashdot, and the press couldn't care less because, no matter how numerous we may be, we're not individually big corporations.
So where are our big commercial allies now? IBM purports to be basing a big chunk of its strategy on Linux, so why isn't an IBM marketroid out there in front to deflate MS (and MS-shill) FUD? I'm sure we'll hear from the various distros on this point, but what about the big guns?
It would be one thing if a major like Big Blue just talked and spent no money, but they're spending millions yet remaining strangely silent. What gives?
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Unfortunately everyone else in the software industry seems to have gone along with Microsoft's crazy versioning scheme, but it's all just marketing. I have to admit that any product with a 2000 after its name does sound kinda cool. It's like when you get a quarter with a 2000 date on it - it's like, ooh, I got a new one, yay! - or, that could just be me... if anyone needs me, I'll be hiding around the corner.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
First, you did start out with such a statement. My point is that even if you go on to argue facts, editors, who get great, huge, steaming piles of cranky feedback, won't even read the rest of it!
I also take issue with equating bad reasoning with a lack of ethics. He is in error, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has no integrity. He could, for example, simply be stupid. You need more evidence when you make a charge like this.
Seriously, nothing personal, but I think your letter takes the absolute wrong approach, and I highly doubt it will be read. Most feedback on this sort of thing is too long, and tries to bring up too many issues. Short and sweet does the trick. The sentence
I would also appreciate it if one of your editors would have a chat with him about journalistic integrity and how even a columnist shouldn't misrepresent statistics to further an agenda.
is just plain bad. Can you imagine an editor saying, "Gee, this guy's right. Let's sit Fred down and talk about his journalistic integrity." I guarantee you the editor will have no more interest in the rest of your comments if you make officious and condescending remarks like this.
ChuckleBug
I think you shouldn't use a product with known vulnerabilities in a production environment.
But maybe if you add a '#' to every line in /etc/inetd.conf you're pretty safe with linux too. I couldn't sleep well if I had to hope that nobody would try this or that exploit on my server.
You said:
For instance, the apache server is included in the Linux numbers, but the IIS web servers numbers are split apart from the NT numbers and Mr. Moody didn't trouble himself to add them into the list of NT vulnerabilities.
WRONG. Here is a quote from the SecurityFocus.com article:
We consider a vulnerability to affect an application or operating system if the vulnerability affects a component that is part of the application or operating system when brought or downloaded. For example, this means that a vulnerability in IIS will also be considered a vulnerability in Windows NT at the later ships with the former.
cpeterso
I tried to write him, the e-mail doesn't work...
Beep!
why post the link and give the moron extra hits?
Here is a search of slashdot showing the most recent doubleclick articles:
2 DoubleClick 'Web Bugs' On Porn, Medical Sites by jamie on Saturday July 01, @11:30AM EDT 255
2 FTC Asks To Regulate Privacy; Doubleclick Hires PR Team by michael on Sunday May 21, @10:16AM EDT 238
2 24/7 Sues DoubleClick Over Patent by Hemos on Saturday May 06, @04:58PM EDT 128
2 DoubleClick CEO on DMA Board by jamie on Monday April 10, @06:25PM EDT 3
2 DoubleClick DoublesBack by Hemos on Friday March 03, @08:55AM EDT 97
2 DoubleClick Goes On Offensive by jamie on Tuesday February 15, @09:25AM EDT 6
2 DoubleClick Taken to Court by Hemos on Friday January 28, @10:25AM EDT 323
2 DoubleClick DoubleCross by michael on Wednesday January 26, @01:10AM EDT 516
2 Doubleclick's Banner Ad Patent by CmdrTaco on Monday September 13, @07:51PM EDT 224
1 DoubleClick Workaround: IDcide by jamie on Wednesday March 22, @01:05PM EDT 246
I think this fairly solidly establishes the public image of slashdot, but what about underneath the covers?
From inside an iframe quite a while ago, and pretty much speaks for itself:
http://ad.doubleclick. net/adi/N815.slashdot/B18726;sz=468x60
And then this is what I saw today, and what caused this little outburst:/ index.shtml,965143990" WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1>d ex.shtml,965143990" WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1><BR>
<NOSCRIPT>
<IMG SRC="http://images2.slashdot.org/Slashdot/pc.gif?
<IMG SRC="http://images.slashdot.org/pagecount.gif?/in
</NOSCRIPT><BR>
A webbug! Oooohhh, they are so bad. They are evil. But we have nothing against using them ourselves!
Further down the same page, conveniently bypassing my ad-filter:? index,line0001en"><IMG SRC="http://images.slashdot.org/banner/line0001en. gif?965143990" WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60 ALT="Click here."></A><BR>
<NOSCRIPT>
<A HREF="http://images.slashdot.org/cgi-bin/adlog.pl
</NOSCRIPT> This one is probably justified, depending on your opinion on adverts.
There is however more rubbish in the source, but since I normally have javascript poop switched off I don't have to suffer it. Here is a quick sample, but don't hesitate to view the source yourself:/ index.shtml,");d ex.shtml,");
document.write("<IMG SRC='http://images2.slashdot.org/Slashdot/pc.gif?
document.write(tail);
document.write("' WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1>");
document.write("<IMG SRC='http://images.slashdot.org/pagecount.gif?/in
document.write(tail);
document.write("' WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1><BR>");
So the conclusion that Slashdot is hypocritical looks pretty justified. Opinions and comments anyone?
It's about time the truth came out!
I've never seen a post about DOS on Bugtraq. So, but this logic, DOS is the best OS ever. :P
He's just a very moody guy... must have had :)
a bad day today
Given that Microsoft's product is the runaway market leader, it is not surprising that it leads in vulnerabilities....
This is analagous to saying that because the Ford F-series Pickup is the best selling pickup in the United States that each one sold should have more oil leaks, transmission failures, and spontaneous gas tank explosions than any other vehicle!
Oh, and while i'm on the subject of this sentence, might I add that the term "runaway market leader" implies that the product is gaining ground in the market... but in reality its been stationary at 35% for the past two years.
Move from one slashdot page to another and then go back. Notice the ad changed? The javascript loads a new ad on each page viewing. The server did not serve the page up a second time - but your client did request a new ad banner. The only way to track this behavior is to act like the ads. Making sure you count each time the client displays the page - not each time the server serves up a page. Okay? Chet
Your columnist, Fred Moody, seems to have messed up a bit on his calculations. Now, I could state that famous quote about "lies, damn lies and statistics", but I will Mr. Moody the benefit of the doubt. If you take a look at the following http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats.html You will see Security Focus's statistics page for the BugTraq mailing list. According to this page, the total number of Linux vulnerablities reported is 1999 is 84. The total number of Windows NT vulnerablities is 99. Now I don't know about you, but to me 99 is a larger number than 84. Based upon Mr. Moody's reasoning, he should have picked Linux as a better operating system than Windows NT. But according to his article, there are 122 Linux vulnerablities.
How can the source of his figures state that the number of Linux vulnerablities is 84, but he says it is 122? Well, with a bit of fiddling with math, it looks like Mr Moody added the total count of Red Hat Linux vulnerablities to the aggregate number of Linux vulnerablities. This means that he has counted the Red Hat vulnerablities twice. I am going to assume that this is a mistake on his part. I mean, if he purposely did that, it would be lying. And doing that in a forum as respectable as ABC News will damage your crediblity as an honest news reporting source. I further believe that Mr. Moody should come forward and admit is mistake and appologize. If he doesn't do that, I can then only assume that he purposly "cooked" his numbers to make Microsoft look good. And that is dishonest reporting. And that should be reported to a number of professional associations in the news business, as well as possibly having some bearing on the Department of Justice's case against Microsoft for abusing it's monopoly in the marketplace to decrease innovation in the computer field to reduce competition. I would consider it very damaging to Microsoft's case if it was using people like Mr. Moody to propagate lies to help make them look good against the competition. It has been further suggested that Mr. Moody should appologize to Security Focus for misrepresenting their Data.
I look forward to reading your correction and Mr. Moody's apology in the near future.
ttyl
Farrell J. McGovern
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
That's really funny. If I had the bandwidth, I'd script the page to re-load 100 times. I wonder if they would even notice the page hits dont match up with the ad impressions...
Adzap for Squid:
http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/adzap/index.html
The script also blocks Slashdot ads, but Rob's probably got all of The Who's CD's by now...
I think you haven't read history. The Nazi party got a majority in the elections that brought Hitler.
Now extreme stupidity in this case is believing in magical solutions to real problems. That was where Germans were stupid.
If you need some historical reference, feel free to contact me.
Kill Microsoft? No! Just hire their GUI guys!
Don't be shy! Write ABC News.com at:
http://abcnews.go.com/service/Help/abc_contactus.
Here is my letter to ABC News.com:
Category: Factual Error
Regarding the article: Linux Sux Redux
Mr. Moody shows no understanding of operating systems.
An article like this does huge damage to your entire company and the ABC trademark. When an article that discusses things that I understand is completely uninformed, it makes me wonder if the other articles, that I can't check independently, are also completely uninformed.
In my opinion, the Microsoft Windows operating systems are buggy and quirky. They show a lack of caring for the users. More accurately, they show abusiveness toward the users.
I have found many, many bugs in Windows OSs. I don't report them because I would have to pay Microsoft to do so.
If I am already talking to a Microsoft tech. support person (and therefore would not have to pay extra to report a bug), I have found that many times MS tech. support will not accept a report! Apparently this has something to do with creating a hassle for the tech. support department.
Regards,
Michael Jennings
Jennings _ Michael @ hotmail . com
(Futurepower is a trademark.)
Well yeah, I guess you're right, Linux hasn't moved forward thanks to journalists :-)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Hehe. The front cover of his 'Year with Micro$oft' shows an Apple Mac mouse (the one button,y'know!) How ironic ....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
- Moody on MS employees newly hosed due to stock corrections: "The best you can say for them is that they made a deal with the Devil, and the Devil reneged".
- Moody wrote about how status for management at Microsoft had become a matter of _not_ answering your email, to appear more busy. This is a screaming red flashing warning sign of complacency and corporate rot, and Moody blithely did a column exposing it.
- Moody raked IE 4.0 over the coals, pointing out things such as the bug with Compaq Presarios that caused the installation to make the windows desktop a blank. He painted IE4 as an absolute betrayal.
The bottom line isn't simple, but people seldom are when they're as strange as Moody. This is a man who can go to great lengths to persuade the reader that (for instance) Linux needs to put a LOT OF WORK in before it can run for 24 hours at a time without crashing- a concept that is strikingly at variance with reality (as boring as the reality of a Xless webserver might unfortunately be...) And yet he's also capable of exposing some very damaging realities about Microsoft- I'd entirely forgetten that the "MS management intentionally not answering internal emails" story was his. The one consistent line to take through it all is this- Moody is a fanatic, a fanatic Microsoft supporter, but NOT necessarily of the real Microsoft company. He is a fanatic for the ideal Microsoft which he believes once existed, which he feels Bill Gates still personally represents, MS coders still represent. This is his fanaticism.As such, it's impossible to persuade him otherwise- if you show him that MS management are far gone in corporate rot, he writes a column about that and laments how MS 'lost its way' from the REAL Microsoft which he strongly suggests is still in there plugging away but unaware of all the nastiness. If you show him that IE 4 shipped buggy as hell and caused major problems with top-selling Compaqs, he laments this, wonders what happened to what he describes as the best, most rigorous testing operation anybody's ever had, and in the end blames Netscape for enticing MS marketers to release IE4 too soon- and again, the _ideal_ of Microsoft stays intact, and it's the suits' fault- his hero Microsoft coders and testers can do no wrong.
This is dangerous and quite frustrating, because it's impossible to contend with. You are never going up against Microsoft, in Moody's eyes- instead you are going up against the Ideal Microsoft, the one that delivers on all its promises and works really hard and benefits the consumer and is as tireless as an old-school Ma Bell employee. The one that doesn't exist, and never did...
So it's impossible for anyone to live up to that standard- it's an imaginary standard, and that is why nothing will ever sway Moody from his MS loyalty and determination to spin everything MSwards. Yet MS itself cannot live up to that standard, never could- it was a hype, a fake. So Moody periodically flames Microsoft itself- and proceeds to spin the flame MSwards, too, and this is why on the one hand he can expose shocking cynicism, contempt for consumers, and rot at the core of Microsoft, and on the other hand keep an unshakable faith that nevertheless, Microsoft is The One Answer. He's not actually hired- if he was he would certainly not expose some of the very embarrassing realities he's exposed. He's a fanatic- he fights for the _ideal_ Microsoft, so his fury is all the more obvious when he sees Microsoft failing to live up to what he sees as their true heart and soul. He blames marketing, Netscape, anyone other than the real coders at MS, the real brain trust, Gates- those he sees as keepers of the faith.
Unfortunately, those are exactly the people who have intentionally done all the things that break his heart. Moody cannot handle the truth- the heart of Microsoft is, and always was, mean, treacherous, and fraudulent. It's always been about the money and never about delivering a quality product. It's always been conflict with the rest of the industry (all the way back to Altair Basic) and dirty tricks and strongarm tactics worthy of Mafiosi. That is how they won. Cheaters do sometimes win, when they aren't punished. Otherwise, why cheat?
In the end, Moody is more to be pitied than censured. A thousand slashdot readers madly rebutting him will not shake his illusions. Not even the failure of his seeming idol will shake his illusions, because they are built on mirages, and you can't tear down a fantasy with real-world arguments.
The reason to pity him is this- the fantasy is all he has.
Here's a not so new idea, why do we keep feeding these corporate trolls? Someone with lots of bandwidth could put an ad free version of the story up and the story submitters could update the story with 'mirror sites.' We could have competitions for first mirror instead of lame first posters. Could happen.
Or just post the thing on deja and post the link, I'd much rather load deja ads.
Not that most slashdotters load ads in the first place, ad blocking files (mail me if you want mine) and junkbuster help.
Notice how he leaves out OS/2. That's 'cause it has no bugs! It is wonderfull and marvelous. He also leaves out BeOS, and DOS! How can anyone leave out DOS! It was the best thing Digital Research got stollen from them. Seriously this is a piece of trash. I may not like Linux the best myself, but it is definately not the worst OS of all time. Windows 3.x with MS Bob as the shell is. Maybe all the bugs he counted were in the S3 Savage 4 X-Server. I couldn't even exit X-Windows without that thing locking up.
But this artical in the hands of a Micr$oft zealots can be very painful in a shop that is just starting to look at Linux. The server ops that are trying to rule linux into production will know better, but you hand this artical with ABC's name on it to a Managing Director that is not a techie he may see Linux as more of a risk then Micro$oft. With that is is going to make it even harder to convince them that having al of those posts on bugTrap is a good thing so that you know to fix then and what needs to be fixed.
I can see why CmdrTaco did not see the artical as worth posting, bt on the other hand I am glad he did so that now I am ready if anyone tries to bring this up as another reason why Micro$oft is better using this artical I am a little more prepared and can make it look like I know what I am talking about when I explane what this artical was talking about and why it should be taken with a grain on salt.
If I am tech support, Who the fuck is going to help me... http://www.ibtechsolutions.com
This man obviously doesn't realize that the only reason there are more "bugs" within most nix systems is because there is more run, and/or to run on them. Not only this but they are meant for people who know what they are doing with them. Not those that are too lazy to read documentation and are used to just "running the install and firing it up". Every once in a while, don't you just want to speed up evolution and kill the morons? I think Darwin would be proud.
Well, I recall two MAJOR remote root exploits in RedHat within the last year: bind and wu_ftpd.
I agree with you in principle... but I don't think RedHat is much better off than Windows is.
If I wanted a moron's opinion on computing, I'd read slashdot, thank you very much.
It looks like he added the numbers of Linux (aggr) and RedHat.
-- Abigail
Well, what about the legalality of that? If slashdot implented what you proposed, they would be taking copyrighted material and reworking it so it doesn't have ads. That's just asking for a cease and desist order.
I think in this case, if you point out how he's twisting facts, you're making a point about his journalistic integrity. Pointing out that a bug count is a pretty bad measure of the worth of an OS is good enough - pointing out how he's fudging the numbers to support his agenda is even better.
I didn't mean to say that people should sends posts starting with "Moody has no integrity, he's a bad journalist" and going on to say nothing of value. I meant for people to point out how he used stats that even the provider said shouldn't be used to judge an OS, and then went and combined and ignored stats at will. That is clearly unethical, and pointing that out speaks volumes about his integrity.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Just look at what he's published. "Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality." Sounds like he likes being a pimple on Gill Bates butt. Loser!
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
To incite the linux zealots and generate more banner hits here.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Funny, when I add up the numbers I get the following:
/ middle.html%3Fvendor%3DMicrosoft%26title %3D%26version%3Dany
NT : 22
SQL Serv: 6
IIS : 12
IE : 6
Outlook : 5
------------
total : 51
And this is only for Microsoft software. You add in all the third party bugs and the total number of NT bugs quadruples.
The 51 number seems a little higher than the 34 that the site claims for the total number of NT bugs, or does NT not come with Outlook, IE, IIS and SQL server?
And W2K adds in 10 brand new bugs. And Office adds a couple more yet.
The grand total is around 218 with all NT bugs (excluding 98 and 2000 entries.) The total number of all Redhat bugs is only 71.
I got this information from this page: http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/vdb
Maybe you need to look closer next time and not take someone elses word for things? Don't take my work for it, look for yourself.
-- Never make a general statement.
There are about 6 billion people on the planet, and for most of them, NullOS(tm) is their only OS.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
The banner ad revenue scenario suggested in the articles is only partly true. While it is true that lots of banner ads will be loaded, and ABC will be paid for them, over the long term articles like this are counterproductive. When people are angry at an article, I think they're in no mood to even look at a banner ad, let alone click on it. This means ABC's click-through rates (which are what advertisers really want to pay for) will plummet, so advertisers will be convinced banner ads are ineffective and pay less in the future. This may be something ABC actually wants, since they're a television network, but I don't think the scenario is as simple as it is portrayed in the article.
Try this:
Complaints about ABCNews.com
Beep!
Um, actually, Seattle Weekly is from Seattle. Bill G lives in Medina, works in Redmond, and probably reads the Eastside Business Journal.
Close enough. I wonder how much corporate tax the state of WA gets from Herr Gates? Remember, state taxes are spent throughout the state, not just in the locality in which they're received... Or am I writing to another tool?
Shit, maybe WA doesn't collect corporate taxes! If that were the case tho, every corporation on this planet would HQ there...
That's like me saying that New Jersey makes New York City do its bidding.
Heh heh, in some ways it does.. Can you say Port Authority? Can you say 'giving tax breaks to prevent luring'? Can you say 'Ellis Island bridge'? Where do you think the folks who work in NYC live? Why do you think there's an hour of traffic to drive ~1 mile across the Hudson River at 3 separate points in the morning? And that's _with_ one of the largest public transportation networks on the PLANET?
And we haven't even mentioned the northern and eastern suburbs, which are actually more apropos as they're in the same state...
But I digress. Moody is still a twit, and a partial one at that. Find me evidence otherwise.
Or not.
Your Working Boy,
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.andover.ne t
Apache on Solaris. So what??
As much as most of us love Linux, there are those who do not. There are those who hate linux. Their reasons are as mysterious as they are irrational, but they do exist. I know several people who think they are guru's and hate linux. The fact that their knowledge level varies from "nearly clueless" to "just enough to be dangerous," does nothing to keep them from telling even more clueless people how much they think linux sucks.
Just imagine a mac freak with an anti-linux attitude and you'll get a good mental image of what these guys are like.
Moody is trying to mislead people who simply don't know any better. Moody's lying, and anyone with half a clue knows it. Sadly most people don't have a clue at all, so BS like this gets repeated as truth, especially by suits and suit-like individuals.
But in the end you've got to see it as a good sign. If M$ biased stooges have to stoop to lying and misleading, well we've already won.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I submitted a complaint about this Moody guy. We all should do it.
"I keep hearing Microsoft-employee-misfortune stories so powerful that they tug not only at the human heart, but at the journalist's, too."
Wait, Jornalist's aren't human?
So John Katz is a perl script after all!
/nutt
Of course he said Red Hat, RH is one of the weaker distros as far as security. If he was so sure of NT's security, he'd mention other distros security. He also mentioned just NT 4.0. What about Win 2K, with it's 65,000 bugs? Last I heard the service pack for Win2k was 83.9 Megabytes, my bet is that's not just to make it look prettier and fluffier. I bet he also mentioned stuff for all apps installed in even a full install. If you install so many additional progs, of course you're gonna have more exploits. NT doesn't have as many apps by default. He also forgets to mention the great strides NT takes to keep bugs quiet. I bet that all of this has been mentioned, but I figured it would be good to wrap it into a neat little backage.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
Moderated down? Check that score again B1 :)
-- iCEBaLM
Yay! If you're not causeing problems on Kali you're getting moderated down here! Nice to see you Ice.
Excellent analogy. I think we all agree that serious security is only possible with some form of full disclosure. Here's my question: how do we eliminate that two day period when every script kiddie can start taking down machines at random before a patch comes out. Wait... here's an idea (I'm only half kidding about this one). No disclosures after 12:00 noon (pacific), 3:00pm eastern (screw the rest of the world ). Also, no disclosures except from Monday - Wednesday! Yes! I can finally enjoy my vacation without having to call in and check to make sure no new vulnerabilities came out... oh... wait. That's not a plan... I have no life to enjoy :). Oh well.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Well if you look at polls on major news sites the majority of the public feel the government is wrong for taking on microsoft. We all know what the general opinion is here at slashdot. Anyone who has an opinion different from the mainstream here is modded down. I'm starting to read k5hin more and more.
Oh by the way he was talking about security bugs and exploits, not the infamous "65,000" number that people spout off about. How many security updates does each version of redhat have? Around a dozen or so. Still no one has hacked the win2k test site.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well, I'll go with the circumstantial evidence I have:
To me, that's extremely fishy, and goes way beyond bad reasoning. If he'd simply said "Linux has many bugs, thus it isn't the panacea its supporters claim it is." it could have at least been argued his reasoning was well-intentioned if flawed by being based on one stat. However, the sum of what I see from that article goes far beyond "bad reasoning".
Can you imagine an editor saying, "Gee, this guy's right. Let's sit Fred down and talk about his journalistic integrity." I guarantee you the editor will have no more interest in the rest of your comments if you make officious and condescending remarks like this.
I would hope an editor would at least try to read the next paragraph before moving on. I wouldn't expect them to decide that based on the opening paragraph, but after reading the points I (and several others, from what I can tell here) made, the editor would at least wonder what the heck is going on. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but I thought I made a well-reasoned, level (if rather stiff and, as you say, condescending) reply to an inflammatory article, and I would hope the editor would take the time to parse it.
In any event, I also took the opportunity to e-mail Moody and ask why he counted the Red Hat numbers twice, didn't mention the Windows numbers, and completely glossed over the packages section. I don't expect a reply, but I've said my piece to the people who matter here.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
So what do you call a website that puts up a huge, fuck-off headline saying that a major web-based email provider is about to collapse, then takes it back in a tiny print comment saying "from-the-well-it-could-happen dept"?
Slashdot wants to move out of that glass house before it starts throwing stones.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
-------
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
-- the most controversial site on the Web
And may I ask:
What was this ruling based on?
If you give me a GOOD enough reason, I'll believe you, but not untill you give me that reason.
---->>>---- If Bill Gates had a nickle for every time windows crashed, Oh wait, he does.
See how many hits bugtraq gives you for windows 2000 and then search for redhat 6.2 or 6.1 or any version of linux. Seems clear to me.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Just something I figured you folks might want, even though it's probably more redundant than the term "backup tape drive". fmoody@seattleweekly.com Happy flaming. codespace
Man I hope I never piss you off WOW. But hey it's his rules of logic right..
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Howdy
and perhaps enough controversy to make a follow-up mea-culpa article a winner also.
True.... mores the pity that "mea culpa" has lost it's meaning in this case....
At least Catullus (the originator of the phrase) was in love and called the failure of that love "his blame".
I don't think Mr. Moody is in love with Linux at all :)
"mea culpa" links:
mea culpa explained
and search for "culpa" down this online Catullus selection... the poet was suffering:
Catullus
cheers
front
CP/M is an extremely secure system. It relies on the physical security methodology. You store the operating systems, programs, and private date on 5-1/4" floppies. You want to use them, put them in the machine. No one can get to your data from the outside through a network because CP/M has no network. You want to secure your data, take the floppies out and lock them up. Want to share data, hand the floppies to another person. Note: This security method allows the user a wide variety of personal authentication schemes such as drivers license, passport, or personal friend know to you.
What's even better since we are running on a two floppy system, we can put our software on one floppy and the data on the other. The software floppy can be write protected, and nothing we do can change any of those files.
Windows-NT relies on file system security and passwords. There have been lots of studies about the weaknesses of passwords. Any system that relies passwords in insecure. In addition Windows-NT contains a tremendous security hole called the Administrator account. Anyone logged in to this account can easily read and write all your files.
Add to that that Windows-NT connects to a network and allows remote access and you have big security problems. There have been hundreds of reported security problems reported for Windows-NT such as viruses, E-Mail viruses, break ins, denial of service attacks, and many others. None of these problems have affected CP/M.
Plus Microsoft relies on operating system file protection to keep you from modifying system files. This means that you must know what files to protect and rely on software to provide your protection. Hardware protection is much easier to configure and provides much more reliable protection. Windows-NT makes no use of hardware protection for system files.
Microsoft likes to trumpet the fact that Windows-NT is certified by the government for C3 security. What they leave out is that that was only for a certain version of Windows-NT (which they no longer support) and a certain hardware configuration (which had no network card.) In the real world, a typical Windows-NT installation would never come close to getting C3 certification.
CP/M however could easily be certified. It has a very secure network because it has no network capability. It also has set of keys that you can press that return you to the "secure command server". (It's called the reset button.) These are the big features of C3 security and CP/M has them. The reason that it does not have C3 certification is that no one wants to pay the big bucks to get it certified.
Conclusion: The security of CP/M is vastly superior to Windows-NT.
Security is only one aspect, for other significant advantages of CP/M over NT, see here.
You can't flame Moody because the ABC site has absolutely no way to e-mail them!! I know because I've been reading that Bozo for a while now and he's notoriously pro-MS and anti-Free/OS. Once, a long while ago he followed up a super-flamed article with a piece grumbling about how much flame he received--but that was back when the ABC site had at least a "webmaster" email address. Now there's no way possible to flame our fellow "cyberteer".
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
Go Apple!!! No vulnerabilities! It's the most secure of them all!
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Informative? Now its insightful!! +5 Insightful.
ROTFLMAO
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
One thing that is needed for this is that the users actually look for security holes. Open source alone is no garantiie for anything. Most applications for Linux does not get any security revue.
> It appears that he got it by adding the Linux(aggregate) figure to that of Red Hat
Maybe his in-depth knowledge of the field led him to the conclusion that "Aggregate" is the name of another distro?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Even using Moody's own reasoning and the data he refers to, Linux beats NT by a wide margin. But he misquotes the numbers. How do you suggest one can compete with deliberately erroneous reporting? Perhaps pay Moody more money than Microsoft did?
Yeah I saw it... Lucky bastard. BTW: Where you out in Las Vegas for Defcon? If so... Damnit I should have kicked your butt IRL when I had the chance ;-)
I guess I need to watch more TV. I had no idea who this Fred guy was until he was listed here. *shrug* Another nobody says nothing, and people listen.
Bill Gates in disguise;
The Devil's Advocate;
etc..
---->>>---- If Bill Gates had a nickle for every time windows crashed, Oh wait, he does.
Your message
To: fmoody@seattleweekly.com
Subject: Fred Moody (mail)
Sent: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 18:25:10 -0700
did not reach the following recipient(s):
fmoody@seattleweekly.com on Wed, 2 Aug 2000 18:26:46 -0700 ;p=LA Weekly;l=LAWNTMAIL0008030126QC21QNV1 MSEXCH:IMS:SternPublishing:Pacific:LAWNTMAIL 0 (000C05A6)
The recipient name is not recognized
The MTS-ID of the original message is:
c=US;a=
Unknown Recipient
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Besides, I think we have had lots of articles saying that Linux/UNIX sucks as well--but there seems to be some agreement that it sucks less.
My software isn't listed in BugTraq. So it's bug-free! Send $19.99 for your bug-free software, today!
What a ppcf (pasturized processed cheeze food) article.
he could have used bug/number of people with
access to the whole of the operating system source code
or 37/few@m$ 47/the whole world.
now which is the best os?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It would be nice if ABC had placed a comment/feedback button after Moody's disinformation campaign, like /. and ZDNET. But they probably wouldn't know what to do with the truth...
Long Live GNU/Linux!
> it just seems rather immature to me at times that opposition is instantly shot down like that.
... maybe then you'll see a change in the way we react to those opinions.
Is it perchance because the article had absolutely nothing to recommend it?
Yes, there's a big difference between the way we (most of us) respond to an article critical of Linux and an article critical of Windows. But there's also a big difference in what we have seen while using the two systems over the years. For the most part that experience has been that Linux has been functional and reliable while Windows has been marketable and crash-prone. But the media tend to publish the opposite: Windows is Wonderful, Linux {is a toy, is insecure, sux, etc.}.
Maybe when the media start publishing opinions that more or less jibe with what we've seen with our own eyes, rather than with what the highest bidding advertiser wants consumers to see,
Of course, if you think the article was a reasonable analysis of credible data, you should jump in and defend the unfair bashing we've been giving it. Meanwhile, pointing out the statistical patterns of our responses, without looking at the veracity patterns of the material we are responding to, is useless.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
why does the US Media insist on being stupid? you'd think we'd have enough stupidity to go around from the politicians :(
As it were, neither of us are lying, although I admit that I may have been a bit vague:
The default install does not have the FTP daemon enabled, so the FTP root-bug doesn't apply for a default install. I believe the same goes for even an OpenSSH bug they fixed a while ago. The default install is sufficiently minimalist that it is indeed very difficult to attack successfully.
And when it comes to counting holes, I think they're just tallying up what Redhat publishes as 'security problems.' I mean, Redhat does contribute to the Open Source community, but by and large probably over 95% of RH Linux wasn't written by them; and yet I bet the holes they post about are in software they didn't write anyhow.
Microsoft doesn't have as many bug because they don't have as many deticated users looking for them and when one is found Microsoft tech support is like that is a feature.
yup, he got slashdoted, yup he'll get lots of banner ad revenue. It won't keep happening if these stories keep getting posted and people keep following the links. (I have not read the story and don't plan to, I know that is a major no-no, but he doesn't deserve another hit)
"huhuhuhh, go away. we're like closed or something"
But they would get just as many hits with an article entitled, "Linux [or OpenBSD, or BeOS, or whatever] Is So Great That This Time Next Year We'll All Be Using Windows CDs to Clean Toilets"
I'm sure its been mentioned somewhere in these reply's but in referrance to how laymen decide: It doesn't seem to matter what it uses NT or Linux as long as it works, heck at work they'd just as soon have have me fetch them information out of the database, copy it down by hand, and bring it back up to them, if that were as fast as plunking down at the computer.
The point I was trying to make was, anyone who actually gets their information from that article doesn't amount to a hill of beans. They don't care how or why it works, just so long as it does.
thats our jobs to get it humming smoothly, be it NT Linux *BSD
just my humble opinion
robin
Click here to avoid abc ads:
/qA-hMD4JshJAC-y_G
http://www.remarq.com/read/34668
Isn't it remarkable that you can't reply to his editorial from the page? I guess they don't want anyone soiling a staffer's opinion.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
That aside, I'll agree the vulnerabilities in Linux are more visible than in the past due to deployments, but, most of us who've been doing it for several years, have enjoyed some key features that have helped us make this Operating System and it's applications the treasure to administer that it is today and has been for quite some time:
The list goes on. This is why I have 40 different servers out there in the wild supporting several thousand end-users in education, business, and, of course, entertainment.
I'm chalking this one up to a victory. I suggest all others do the same and keep at it. I still believe this is the greatest Operating System that ever existed. And, I do love my AIX and other UNIXes. But, there's really one word that makes the difference: free >:).
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Ya ok, you're right.
;-)
So imagine that there is 100 millions computers running Win 2000.
By your calculations, Windows 2000 by example, has
2000 * 100000000 bugs.
hmmm.... maybe you're right after all
I can't believe anyone with any credibility in the industry would use the total number of bugs in the list as an indicator to the quality of an OS.
Every OS has bugs. I'm really not going into the explanation of why this number is not indicative of OS performance, security, reliablity, or scalability, which are quantifiers for OS quality.
Why don't you divide the cost of the OS by the number of bugs and see what the cost per bug comes out to. That would be just about as relevant.
What a lame article.
âoeIn theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." â Albert Einstein
Quick summary: Red Hat 348 Microsoft 982 Sun 716 It's amazing how easily data can be twisted to support any argument. Moody is either just ignorant and lazy in his research or a blatent liar.
WURD!!
Well, that ONLY works for modems with ludicrously short guard times. Most modems, when they get the +++, will wait a bit and discard any incoming data BEFORE accepting stuff like ATH0.I had an old hayes modem that didn't do that. You could type +++ATH0 in one of the old BBS chatrooms and it would hang up. My friends used to do it to me mercilessly. :(
:)
Ping of Death was just sending a frickin huge IP packet to a listening computer and watching it try and deal with it. It's basically a buffer overflow, and I suppose if you were really, really good you could get arbitrary code to execute by doing it, back when it was effective.
These days most OS's are smart enough to realize what's going on and not overwrite the buffer which is sitting in the kernel.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Ever heard of paragraphs?
They break up sentences into logical groupings, to help the reader make sense of what was written.
Try them out sometime.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
If you want to see more accurate stats check out My Comparison
Already sent one in.
"
I am deeply concerned about the lack of fact checking that Mr. Moody's article shows.
First he lists Mission Critical Linux as a comptetitor to Red Hat Linux. They are not. They do not even destribute a Linux distribution but rather, they offer services and products that work with other distributions. Second, If he had bothered to actually read his source material ( http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats.html ), the BugTraq Statistics page he mentions ("BugTraq is careful to preface its list with a long list of qualifiers, noting that systems that enjoy less widespread deployment may have many discovered vulnerabilities, or that many of the vulnerabilities listed may have subsequently been repaired. It also does not distinguish between minor and major vulnerabilities. ") says
"Were we display aggregate number of vulnerabilities (Linux and BSD) the number is the size of the set that results
from the union of all vulnerabilities for the components without duplication. Vulnerabilities are not counted twice. "
He must have bored by words and decided to skip that bit at the end as he then goes on to say that "In 1999, the year it took over the server market in earnest, Windows NT totaled 99 new vulnerabilities on the BugTraq list. (So far in 2000, the count stands at 37.) This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122 racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes (their 2000 count stands at 47)."
According to the statistics page the aggregate for all LINUXes was 84. The total for JUST Red Hat was 38. In order for his 122 number to make sense he would have had to deliberately add the two together thereby double count 38 vulnerabilities.
If this is a typical example of the stories your site chooses to run, and the fact checking involved, where your reporters blatantly manipulate facts to further their own agenda, then I am going to have to get my news from somewhere else, both on-line and off.
"
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
There's not really a lot that needs to be said about this article - it's just plain ill-informed.
/precious/ about their OS that there's no doubt some kind of fatwa out on the guy who wrote this article.
About 10,000 other people have no doubt already pointed out that Linux holes are plugged more quickly; that MS don't publish vulnerabilities until a) someone else has made them public and b) they have a fix; that modern Unix security holes are usually obscure buffer overflow exploits; that sys-admins tend to pare-down Unix boxes so that it's unlikely they will even be running the programs with the vulnerabilities etc. etc.
But of course Linux people are so
Come on people: he's got the wrong end of the stick. Politely correct him and forget about it.
Very true! Why should one divide the vulnerabilities over the # of users? It's more the opposite. The more installed systems, the less vulnerabilities there should be... due to economical scale effects of cheaper safety per computer.
I'm gonna do the world's most secure OS. It will be called 'HelloWorldix'. It's entire functionality will be that it will be able to put 'hello world' on the screen. As this will be all it does, it will have at most 1 bug, making it a very secure OS.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
> so he wrote an idiotic little scare column about 'evil scientists'.
Many people propagate a claim that the media is "liberal". The simple truth is, what the media actually is is pro-controversy. Even before the days of flame baiting e-pundits and banner ad click counts, the media's prime interest was in generating controversy (followed closely by purient interest).
Sadly, there's nothing they love more than an airplane crash or a school shooting (particularly if they can start arguments about whose fault it was), a political scandal, a conspiracy theory, or a "revelation" that the OS that is taking the world by storm on its own merits is actually a piece of junk whose inferior qualities have somehow escaped the notice of the millions of techies who use it by choice.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
lynx? kids these days...
i just dial my isp and make the squealing sounds and static myself. i can static so good that the webserver on the other end won't send me the sounds of the banner ads.
come on. beating your head against the wall because other people think you're cool isn't a very good reason.
go to the site, click on the ad, and write an email to the sponsor telling them you don't like to see their name associated with such stupidity.
There is only one way - the courts. I sincerely hope RedHat make this into a very public libel action. Having said that, there is always the risk that the MS PR machine will twist the truth sufficiently that all the facts get lost in a sea of statistics.
--
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
oups...
;-)
I mean 65000 * 1000000
I wonder how much corporate tax the state of WA gets from Herr Gates?
Sure, but you were saying Seattle Weekly was his tool. The state may be, but we don't even have an income tax here, so all we get is B&O tax, and little of that, since high tech gets a cheap rate.
But I digress. Moody is still a twit, and a partial one at that. Find me evidence otherwise.
Of course he's a twit. What makes you think I don't agree? I'm just saying that the fact he's a twit and a MSFT shill doesn't mean that Seattle Weekly is bought and paid for by MSFT. Many people in Seattle can say lots of negative things about MSFT, and some of us have worked there, so we tend to know the real dirt. So don't jump from Moody's twitness to dissing Seattle Weekly or Seattle. It's not like he's one of the most read columnists, either.
Will in Seattle
"I keep hearing Microsoft-employee-misfortune stories so powerful that they tug not only at the human heart, but at the journalist's, too."
Does this mean journalists aren't human? Things are much clearer for me now.
:wq
Tall order people...
People who bash Windows generally don't call it the worst "EVER!"...
I occasionally brag that "I" wrote the wrost operating system ever. I know it's not true. I wrote a horrific OS and anything that ever made it to market could beat it bloody. But theres the software that NEVER made it to market to account for.
My system would fuction for about 30 min to an hour... scramble it's command structure and ignore all input. Thats pritty nasty. But then in prototypes there were operating systems that would scramble data on the disk. Reboot mine and your ok. Reboot a system with a scrambled disk and your dead forever.
It is posable for an operating system to distory hardware in some cases (this allows for both bad software and hardware defects.. this isn't hard to imagin).
Now those are the operating systems that never made it to market. The worst "EVER".
Let's move on to operating systems that did make it to market. I remember using a mainframe with the wonderful defect of occasionally sending data to THE WRONG USER. Ohhh great security guys MY PASSWORD ON SOMEONE ELSES SCREEN. This was a combonation of hacked hardware and an operating system that wasn't designed for it.
Then we have that wonderful security defect where valuable information is stored in memory can be grabbed up by clever crackers. This small problem (a way crackers went for low security accounts to high security accounts) has sence been fixed by.. get ready.... Amiga, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Linux, IBM, etc etc etc etc etc Hover, Black and Decker, Toys R Us, Little Timmy, the guy working the fast food drive by window.... you get the idea...
[Disclamer.. Accually some of the above listed didn't.. I'm sure Little Timmy had no hand in fixing any such defect]
This defect is pritty well gone today but back 20 years ago big big security defect.
We have had many problems over the years making computers do what we want them to do and found many soltions to those problems. We use the cheapest most effective solutions and now they are history.
Nothing on the market today is anywhere near as bad as operating systems once were...
For the worst ever you need to look in trash bins of psycopath programmers still trying to fit Unix on Commodore 64s....
Or you can use this guys standard for best/worst... I sereously doupt the worlds worst would EVER get a bugtrap report... I mean I wrote the most second most secure operating system ever... 30 min to an hour and NO ONE has access.. yeah but the most secure is the one that makes the mother board explode....
I don't actually exist.
According to http://www.securityfocus.com/frames/?content=/vdb/ stats.html (from Mr. Moody's article) it clearly shows that Windows 95 is much more secure than Windows NT. What the heck did Microsoft release NT then?
As it says on the Security Focus: "We leave the interpretation of these numbers to you."
I wonder if Mr. Moody shouldn't consider going back to school to get a propper education in Statistics.
In other words, you don't think it's funny. That doesn't change the fact that at least one other person *did* find it funny.
What I find interesting is that someone moderated you "insightful" for saying what amounts to "I disagree."
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The contact page probably got /.ed. Probably the reason Moody didn't include his email address :-)
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
Moody's analysis, like yours, is more than a little flawed. Calling any product "the worst (product type) in the world" based solely on a pathetic analysis of one aspect of that product borders on the irrational.
Yes, Moody (and you too) make a few true statements. Yes, Linux, like any operating system must be judged on all aspects - cost, security, support, flexibility, power, etc. Moody did not even attempt to do this before drawing his conclusion. You are guilty of the same. Where is the evidence of vendors being frightened off by the different distros? Lokigames doesn't seem to have too many problems. Neither are WordPerfect or Applix. No problems that I've heard of at any rate. Please provide some evidence for your conclusion.
What non-existent standards are you refering to? The ones M$ is continually embracing and extending?
Yes, Linux has security vulnerabilities and even *gasp* bugs. It is pathetic that ABC found that newsworthy. Nothing is perfect, not Linux, not BeOS, and certainly not Microsoft. So why are you cheering on non-news, poorly done? More interesting, why are you adding your own FUD?
China only recently has begun encouraging the use of Linux - for good reasons if you ask me. MS has been in China for years. IF MS takes years to get hotmail unto its own os, how do you expect China to switch from MS products (mostly dirt cheap because of massive pirating) to linux in a few months just on the strength of government encouragement?
Stay anonymous, coward.
Please post any response you get from the wanker.
Cheers
Eric
Albin:
Great post. Let's get back to work.
Unfortunately, mine is in SQL7.0 Server crap, tonight.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
So, basically, he's saying (analogy) that a city that has 10.000 criminals arrested yearly, is a much UNsafer place than one where only 100 arrests are made per year.
The question is, who is to say that the police in the second city is trying hard enough to find criminals ?
Maybe they're all still on the streets, not hampered by any law enforcement agency whatsoever.
Or maybe the city-plan is SO complex and illogic that the police get lost all the time trying to find their way.
It's all FUD...
I mean what I said. From what I know bugtraq keeps tracks of bugs found in a distributions and not the Linux Kernel. That is to say that with the increasing number of programs included in newer releases, more and more bugs will be found. And some of the bugs found are nonsensical to me because I never use those program. But I like advisories because they tell me what is available and installed in the distributions that I am using so that I can removed them saving harddisk space. So moody (of course that because he is using MS windows too much) conveniently ignore that. No sane linux users run all the services in a distribution and users are free to remove the software unless it is a kernel problem which I am sure will most likely be fixed before I even heard of it. If I used a floppy distribution, I wonder how many security bugs are there. On the other hand, CAN we remove those security holes in windows by removing certain software? Can't anyone sees that most of the security holes are from softwares that are optional and are installed because the distributors got nothing better to do (either that or in microsoft paychecks). If I installed a windows machine with software abc from DEF company tat have 123 buffer overflow exploits availabe, would they say that windows has so and so + 123 exploits?
The SecurityFocus stats page clearly shows RedHat's '99 vulnerabilities as 38 - less than 40% of WinNT's.
So where did the 122 come from? Moody added RedHat's 38 to the Linux Aggregate of 84. He's done the same for this year's numbers (RedHat's count for this year is 17, and the total for Linux is 30 not 47). But the Linux Aggregate already includes the 38 RedHat vulnerabilities and it clearly states that in the preface on the page - Moody is either an incompetent researcher or he is deliberately counting vulnerabilities twice in order to discredit RedHat. I'd be consulting a lawyer about the possibility of a libel suit if I were them.
And best of all, it's free (speech and beer!)!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
You apparently also had no idea that Hiawatha Bray was a "he".
pooptruck
Somebody's gotta go first. With a lead in installations and a tendency to be an early adopter, bugs in a component that's used in all three will tend to be reported against RH. If you break down the bugs against the actual programs and match that to the distros that use them, it looks different.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Actually, Hiawatha Bray is a male.
Then again, I've only seen his picture in the Boston Globe once, so maybe they were trolling.
He wasn't that bad as Simpson Garfinkle's faithful black sidekick. The Globe needs some comic relief.
Kong
--
Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
"I like using the year as the version number.
"I think it makes sense to have product version YYYY.MM.DD"
Unfortunately, that method of version numbering tends to be used for snapshots and unstable code in development.
Might I suggest a few things?
- Someone anonymously mirror the page somewhere (like GeoCities) and link to _that_... Ok, nevermind... Slashdot'd get sued for illegally using an <a href> tag.
:) - When you go to the URL, don't click the link, but copy and paste it into an "OpenLocation" field. THEN, append something like "?witty_comment_about_moody_here" to the end of the URL.
- Turn off automatic image loading! (No banner revenue!)
Of course... it's obviously all too late for this article... but next time, Moody... next time... (reaooowww!)You'll see the document... and if anyone's watching the server logs, they'll see all these fun comments attached to the article. >:^)
Now did I say that I was unable to formulate my own opinion? Actually no.. i did not.
I think the point I was trying to make.. was that.. if he wants to make comments then why not put them in the comments section like everyone else.
It seems as though the posters are of the opinion that they have the greatest opinions of them all. Hey.. if I wanted to read his opinion.. I probably would have read the comments section.
I was under the impression that slashdot was "news for nerds." So.. I would guess that they are trying to post news (and I doubt they check each for how accurate.. but that really is not their job). So is it really that hard to just post an article and leave your comments for the comment section?
Not really.. and you seem a bit annoyed.. maybe you should relax next time you reply.
Yes its true
If someone is practicing sensationalistic journalism in order to increase click throughs I don't see why complaining to ABC would do anything. The more effective route would be to attack ABCs ad revenue. Don't buy companies that advertise on ABC. Write an e-mail telling those companies what you're doing and why.
Some of the ad banners listed on that ABC site were;
jeep
fidelity investments
mastercard
family wonder
and (ironicaly enough)
IBM
If anyone else knows of common sponsors of ABC, let me know. I'm going to rip off a quick e-mail to any of the companies I might have purchased from and tell them why I won't.
wiserd@angelfire.com
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Mr. Moody makes a breif and yet interesting point about the bug-track database. It seems as he does one thing well and that is to quote statistics and then not normalize the statistics he is quoting. As typical of most news reports, there is no background material, no rational analysis, and the quoted data is not put into perspective. I have no idea who he is or what his credentials are. Wow, he did some research and wrote a couple of books. In conclusion, my 8th grade daughter could of came up with this story, and her english teacher would of gave her a 'C' grade.
All comments are my own (Unless I am having a out-of-body experience).
Did anyone else read the "Related Articles" posted to the side of the page? He includes a "Linux FAQ" among other insightful information. Good thing he is here to explain everything to those people out there who just don't get "what all the fuss is about".
I stole this sig from a more creative user.
Im affraid that simply stating: "Windows/NT has less bugs that linux." would be enough,
the public right now, views linux as a whole. There's no "caladera' no "turbo" no "RedHat (boo hiss)" no "slackware" no "suze" ect. There is only this seemingly aimless rebelion comming from some stutering guys waving penguin flags around.
There simply has not been enough press about what linux really is all about to prevent a add like the above, from being cripling to linux development.
The reason i say it would be cripilying, is not that it would drive away new users, because Linux IS NOT ready for truly "new" or even "mature" users, the statement would be cripiling because it would drive the investment savvy hoards away from Linux company's and back into Microshi..ft's wallet.
Linux needs to be pushed in the media by us, linux users, and needs to be portrayed truthfully, that its not for everybody, and why (in whatever terms will relate it) linux is a good choice for some.
you'll never achieve your dreams, if you don't get out of bed
Taken from the OpenBSD homepage:
Three years without a remote hole in the default install!
Two years without a localhost hole in the default install!
and if you look at the Bugtraq stats:
Linux (aggr.): 10 23 84 30
OpenBSD: 1 2 4 2
Windows NT: 4 6 99 37
It may not be faithful to history (and etymology only occasionally is), but I still fail to see how the instant use of the phrase "mea culpa" which literally means "through my fault" is unfaithful to that meaning.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Even funnier is that I got modded up as funny, when I was really just laughing my ass off at the crazy moderation on the original post. It's like metahumor, sorta... anyway it's nice to see that the moderators have a sense of humor!
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
oh no. no, no. you, sir, are the asshole....
dammit. why can.t we all just get along
Stories like this just make me roll my eyes: the thing will get tons of traffic from you guys and his editor will say "Good Job Fred" because they got to sell lots of banner ads on it
...but that won't stop you posting it.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
Let's not all forget Fred Moody's column from '98, "The (Anti-) Linux Crusade: Charge of the Linux Brigade". In this, Mr. Moody interviews an anonymous informant who is willing to say bad things about Linux, but only through extremely poor grammar and inaccuracies. Moody quotes this informant as saying:
"linux isnt secure and it isnt stable, its a moving target that never really gets out of beta. sure people run production sites on linux. i know alot of these people. they dont get much sleep and have grown opaque from the lack of sunlight. i have admin'd large linux shops. they require huge amounts of admin overhead, and if you want shit to really work you are going to spend alot of time manually fixing things. the number of outstanding security holes and lack of stable functionality is monumental."
Yup, that's the source of his article. He couldn't get anybody to go on the record saying these things, because they're grossly inaccurate. Moody concludes by saying:
"It will be a cold day at the equator before L. Torvalds sets aside his ego for the sake of someone else's better ideas."
What a foolish, inflammatory asshole. There are few reporters that disgust me as much as this man.
-Waldo
-------------------
Put up a frameset with a slashdot banner and load the article underneath it, that way for each hit ABCnews gets, so will Slashdot.. double income =)
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I'm sorry, I failed to provide a link. You can find this article at http://www.abcne ws.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/moody981120.html .
-Waldo
-------------------
- "Gates is fighting for the consumer and against the businessman, while most of his competitors, from Apple to Sun to Netscape, are fighting for the businessman at the expense of the consumer."
- "[Microsoft] is the most misunderstood company in the history of American commerce"
- "Microsoft...is driven by the need to make computers...cheaper and easier to use for consumers, rather than as profitable as possible for as many software and hardware companies as possible"
He's such a sycophant.-Waldo
-------------------
This appears to be displayed on the page now, let's make him wish he never wrote this crap.
melmoth73@hotmail.com
Well, since I work at Mission Critical Linux, I've heard of it. We're a professional services company specializing in installation and support of Linux in the enterprise environment. We have released to the open source community some great clustering software (Kimberlite). However, we don't do a distribution, we work with all of them. His thinking that somehow we do is just one more indication of his cluelessness.
jeff
What is compared is also interesting. Moody's data about Linux vulnerabilities is not about the kernel or the core system. It is not even about a single Linux distribution. It is not even computed correctly. The numbers given by Moody are for the union of all vulnerabilities in all Linux distributions covered by the statistics, and to make it look worse he adds vulnerabilities of Red Hat in once more for good measure.
Moreover, if you consider that Linux covers allpackages in all distributions and hence contains a lot more software than the standard Windows (NT or 98) distribution, the number become even more meaningless.
Basically, the article is a bad example of how to lie with statistics.
Stephan
Why you guys that are so happy having your mouth full of shit about linux, give us windows 2000 source code, and then we will tell ya how many bugs we can find on it. Replugge
Now did I say that I was unable to formulate my own opinion? Actually no.. i did not.
Of course you didn't say it, fool, it was implied by your whining about the editoralization. May I remind you of this statement?:
Why not let the readers decide that a story is "lame."
The readers are free to decided if it is lame or not NO MATTER WHAT TACO SAYS. So what if he puts his two cents in, you have a brain and should be able to reach your own conclusions. The author has every right to add their comments...they already have shown bias by choosing that story over other ones, a little comment on it doesnt hurt me any.
And I will not "relax", thank you very much, because I HAVE HAD IT with people whining about Slashdot "reporting bias" That's the format, you should be used it by now. *sigh*, I already explained this in the first post, can't you see it?
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
if you don't want his article gettign hits then jsut don't go to the page - we all know the jist of what's on it. look for it on some other place or just say fuk it, you know it's dumb
I think we need a translation of what you're really trying to say:
Windows and Linux both 'target' the same market, insofar as Linux can target anything, considering it's give-away-ware. Anything that you do in Windows with your chicken-peck typing can be done better in Linux.
Sarge
>>OpenBSD isnt vulnerable, and even if it is, it won't be in a few hours :) (blatant, I know:)
It takes an attitude like that to even stand a reasonable chance of being reasonably secure.
Good point and counter-point.
Anonymity does not suit you, IMHO.
When /. editors post something like this, it should be preceded with a warning: "get some ad-blocking software first not to generate eyeballs for the troll".
It shouldn't be too hard to hack together a link via a junkbuster proxy, such that anyone, with or without ad-busting software, could click on the link and read the story, sans advertising.
That would be the responsible thing for slashdot to do, but I doubt their employers would hear of it (legal liability fears would rule the nest, most likely).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
don't waste flames on this guy
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'd rather be pepper-sprayed by a mountie,
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
B.) How anyone can actually suggest it might be possible that the Holocaust didn't happen is beyond me.
I don't know if you're just looking for a response (if so, you're welcome), or if you actually believe it.
I think you're a moron either way.
mir s tobom....................
buy, now...
And I hate you all, and I hope you die.
Thank you, have a nice day.
Fred Moody has missed the point entirely! I can't beleive you use him to voice ABCNews' opinion on Linux. Does he run Linux? Has he ever installed Linux? Linux is open source, I can look through the code and find bugs. This is why there are more bugs than Microsoft; and why they are fixed faster and more often than Microsoft. Joe Sixpack cannot look through the code of Windows, any Windows product. You have to wait for Microsoft to fix there product, whereas I can fix my own beacuse I have the source code! Security through obscurity does not work, we all know that what you do not know CAN hurt you. I can only hope in the future if you are going to write about Linux that you recruit someone who is knowledgable on the subject and not someone who is bias towards Microsoft (easily seen through past articles from Mr. Moody, he has done nothing but put a positive spin on past MS events).
The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana
Really late for me to be posting this, but...
I wonder how many other people got sick and tired of having to logoff/logon under Windows NT to install new patches/new software? Where I work, most of the new software is installed over the network, although the local Admin. account generally speaking cannot access the network. (Mainly because the network admin. account password isn't given out much. In other words, the admin account for your machine cannot access the main network domain because it isn't a domain member and doesn't have permissions.)
Solution? Give your user account admin priviledges, then you don't need to keep logging off/logging on to install new software.
You can't even change most of the settings in Windows2000 without logging off and then back in as Admin. That "Run As..." thing they were talking about doesn't apply to the control panel! Most of the time I su under Linux it's to change some minor setting. Logging off and logging back in (involving closing all open apps) gets really annoying, really fast. If I weren't required to use NT, I wouldn't.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
More likely:
You're a home NT user. Same scenario, only the bug wasn't reported. One fourteen year old who's spent half his life in a debugger has it. The entire internet is now screwed, because the kid released a worm that spread through those legions of "mainstream" MS boxen like wildfire. A bunch of Unix geeks spend a few hours developing filters to protect the world's MS boxen and post the filters to Bugtraq, reducing the load on the network enough that everyone can get back to their pr0n. A few days later MS releases a hotfix that does who-knows-what and may or may not work right on your machine. A few days after that it's discovered that the hotfix re-enables a vulnerable activex control, and another worm is released, but doesn't go anywhere because not many people installed the hotfix anyway...
http://abcnews.go.com/service/Help/abc_contactus.h tml Fred Moody, needs to consider a few FACTS that he obviously has no idea about: Linux is an open source Kernel. Because it is open source, bugs are found and fixed much easier and quicker. The open source community has nothing to hide. They don't covertly repair bugs THAT NEVER make it onto the Bug Traq list via binary only "service packs". With open source comes open and honest announcements of possible security risks. No hiding behind unreliable i386 binaries hoping security by obscurity gets them through to the next service pack with it's new bugs. Many "vulnerabilities" in Linux are so vaguely considered "dangerous" that it often turns out to be a bit over-hyped and is fixed well before anyone thinks of a good way to exploit it, much less find a system that can be exploited and then carry the exploit out before that bug is fixed within days or hours. But THESE make it onto those lists making Linux look so God awfull in the eyes of the blind. MS runnaway market leader, therefore most bugs is OK? They are the RUNAWAY MARKETING LEADER, that is why they have so many bugs. "Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history" Then why the fuck is Hotmail STILL not M$ powered FUCK WIT? This kinda shit makes me see red. I could punch this fuck in the face for being such a stupid arsehole. Here's the tally so far for Microsofts SHIT... I know the following appears to not all be "Microsoft Products", but bear in mind that practically ALL OF IT is built on M$ libraries, being a big contributor to the vulnerabilities... Just for this year Fred... 2000-07-12: Sun Java Web Server Vulnerability 2000-07-11: BB4 Technologies Big Brother Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-07-11: NAI VirusScan/NetShield AutoUpgrade Executable Verification Vulnerability 2000-07-11: Microsoft Excel 97 / 2000 Register.ID Vulnerability 2000-07-11: WFTPD Denial of Service Vulnerability 2000-07-11: Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Manager Password Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-07-10: Blackboard CourseInfo 4.0 Plaintext Administrator Password Vulnerability 2000-07-08: Guild FTPD File Existence Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-07-07: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Stored Procedure Vulnerability 2000-07-05: LocalWEB HTTP Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-07-04: Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions Path Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-07-04: Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-30: Microsoft Windows 2000 Telnet Server DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-30: Microsoft Windows 2000 Remote CPU-overload Vulnerability 2000-06-30: Sybergen Secure Desktop 2.1 Multiple Vulnerabilities 2000-06-30: Sybergen Sygate Denial of Service Vulnerability 2000-06-29: iMesh.Com iMesh 1.02 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-29: Microsoft Windows 9x ARP Spoofing Vulnerability 2000-06-27: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 and Access 2000 / 97 VBA Code Execution Vulnerability 2000-06-27: Floosietek FTGate Mail Server Vulnerability 2000-06-27: Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 and Excel/Powerpoint 2000 ActiveX Object Execution Vulnerability 2000-06-27: SapporoWorks WinProxy Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-26: Fortech Proxy+ Telnet Gateway Vulnerability 2000-06-25: LeafDigital LeafChat 1.7 DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-24: Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook Express Remote File Write Vulnerability 2000-06-22: Allaire JRun 2.3.x Sample Files Vulnerability 2000-06-22: NetworkICE BlackICE High UDP Port Block Delay Vulnerability 2000-06-21: BEA Systems WebLogic Server and Express Source Code Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-06-19: Network Associates Net Tools PKI Server 1.0 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-19: Network Associates Net Tools PKI Server 1.0 Unauthenticated Access Vulnerability 2000-06-19: WebBBS Web Server Multiple Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-16: Alt-N MDaemon 2.8.5.0 UIDL DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-16: Small HTTP Server Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-15: HM Software S to Infinity Multiple Vulnerabilities 2000-06-15: AnalogX SimpleServer WWW 1.05 DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-15: Microsoft Windows 2000 Windows Station Access Vulnerability 2000-06-14: Norton Antivirus for MS Exchange 'Fail-Open' State Vulnerability 2000-06-14: Network Associates PGP Certificate Server Unresolveable IP Address DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-14: Norton Antivirus for MS Exchange Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-13: Mindstorm Networks SmartFTP Daemon 0.2 Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-06-10: Multiple Vendors HTTP Redirect Java Applet Vulnerability 2000-06-10: Multiple Vendors java.net.URLConnection Applet Direct Connection Vulnerability 2000-06-08: Lilikoi Ceilidh 2.60 Multiple Vulnerabilities 2000-06-08: Multiple Vendor JSP Source Code Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-06-08: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Remote Registry Request Dos Vulnerability 2000-06-08: McAfee VirusScan 4.03 Alert File Vulnerability 2000-06-07: Computer Associates eTrust Intrusion Detection System DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-07: i-drive Filo 1.0.0.1 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-07: Computer Associates eTrust Intrusion Detection System Weak Encryption Vulnerability 2000-06-06: Microsoft IE NavigateComplete2 Cross Frame Access Vulnerability 2000-06-06: EType EServ Logging Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 PDC/BDC Synchonization Reused Keystream Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 SMB Write Request DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 Ignored SMB Response DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft Outlook / Exchange Blank Headers DoS Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft IE SSL Certificates Vulnerability 2000-06-05: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Machine Account Creation Vulnerability 2000-06-04: PassWD 1.2 Weak Encryption Vulnerability 2000-06-01: Multiple Vendor xterm (and derivatives) Denial of Service Vulnerability 2000-06-01: Microsoft Windows 2000 Default 40-bit Encrypted Protected Store Vulnerability 2000-06-01: Sambar Server 4.3 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-06-01: Concatus IMate Web Mail Server 2.5 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-30: ITHouse Mail Server 1.04 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-30: Microsoft SQL Server DTS Password Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-30: Microsoft Media Service DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-30: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 System Administrator Password Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-29: ICQ Web Front Remote DoS Attack Vulnerability 2000-05-25: Omnis Studio 2.4 Weak Database Field Encryption Vulnerability 2000-05-25: Network Associates WebShield SMTP Configuration Modification Vulnerability 2000-05-25: Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 HostAnnouncement DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-25: Network Associates WebShield SMTP 4.5.44 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-25: Microsoft Windows Computer Browser Reset Vulnerability 2000-05-24: Alt-N MDaemon Mail Server DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-24: Pacific Software Carello File Duplication and Source Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-24: HP Web JetAdmin Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-05-24: HP Web JetAdmin 6.0 Printing DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-24: Rockliffe MailSite 4.2.1.0 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-23: Danware NetOp Remote Control Unauthenticated File Transfer Vulnerability 2000-05-19: Multiple Vendor Fragmented IP Packets DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-19: Nite Server FTPd Multiple DoS Vulnerabilities 2000-05-18: Axent NetProwler Malformed IP Packets DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-18: Lotus Domino Server ESMTP Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-17: MS IE ActiveX Combined Component Attributes Vulnerability 2000-05-17: NetworkICE ICECap Manager Default Username and Password Vulnerability 2000-05-17: Microsoft IE DocumentComplete() Cross Frame Access Vulnerability 2000-05-15: Qualcomm Eudora Pro Long Filename Attachment Vulnerability 2000-05-15: Seattle Lab Emurl 2.0 Email Account Access Vulnerability 2000-05-13: Microsoft Active Movie Control Filetype Vulnerability 2000-05-12: Microsoft Outlook 98 / Outlook Express 4.x Long Filename Vulnerability 2000-05-11: NTMail Server 5.x Proxy Access Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Microsoft IIS 4.0/5.0 Malformed Filename Request Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Microsoft IIS 4.0/5.0 Malformed File Extension DoS Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Bugzilla 2.8 Unchecked Existing Bug Report Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Microsoft IE Cookie Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Microsoft Office 2000 UA Control Vulnerability 2000-05-11: Microsoft Windows 2000 Default SYSKEY Configuration Vulnerability 2000-05-10: Microsoft IIS 4.0/5.0 Malformed .htr Request Vulnerability 2000-05-09: Microsoft SQL Server Xp_sprintf buffer overflow 2000-05-08: AOL Instant Messenger Path Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-06: Microsoft IIS shtml.exe Path Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-05-05: Gossamer Threads DBMan Information Leakage Vulnerability 2000-05-05: Netwin DNews News Server Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-04: Netwin Dmailweb Server utoken Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-04: InterScan VirusWall uuencoded Filename Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-03: id Software Quake3Arena Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-05-03: L-Soft Listserv 1.8 Web Archives Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-05-02: FileMaker Pro 5.0 Web Companion Software Multiple Vulnerabilities 2000-05-02: Microsoft Windows 9x NetBIOS NULL Name Vulnerability 2000-05-01: Cassandra NNTPServer v1.10 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-04-28: Eudora 4.2/4.3 Warning Message Circumvention Vulnerability 2000-04-25: Symantec pcAnywhere Port Scan DoS Vulnerability 2000-04-24: Spectra Container Editor Preview Object Security Vulnerability 2000-04-21: Atrium Software Mercur Mail Server 3.2 Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-04-21: Microsoft Windows Long Filename Extension Vulnerability 2000-04-20: Windows NT 4.0 / 2000 cmd.exe Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-04-20: Windows 2000 Active Directory Object Attribute Vulnerability 2000-04-19: MS Frontpage Image Mapper Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-04-19: MS Frontpage htimage.exe File Existence Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-04-19: MS IE 5.01 JSObject Cross-Frame Vulnerability 2000-04-17: Panda Security 3.0 Multiple Vulnerabilities 2000-04-16: Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh getImage and classloader Vulnerabilities 2000-04-16: Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh java.net.URLConnection Vulnerability 2000-04-14: MS IIS FrontPage 98 Extensions Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-04-14: MS IIS FrontPage 98 Extensions Filename Obfuscation Vulnerability 2000-04-12: Microsoft NT 4.0 OffloadModExpo Registry Permissions Vulnerability 2000-04-12: AVM KEN! 1.3.10 Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-04-12: Microsoft IIS 4.0/5.0 Escaped Characters Vulnerability 2000-04-10: PCAnywhere Denial of Service Vulnerability 2000-04-06: Symantec pcAnywhere Weak Encryption Vulnerability 2000-04-06: Ipswitch IMail Server 5.x/6.x DoS Vulnerability 2000-04-03: Microsoft Excel XML Vulnerability 2000-04-03: Allaire Forums "rightAccessAllForums" Vulnerability 2000-04-03: Real Networks RealPlayer 6/7 Location Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-03-31: SalesLogix eViewer DoS Vulnerability 2000-03-31: MS Index Server '%20' ASP Source Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-03-30: Microsoft IIS UNC Mapped Virtual Host Vulnerability 2000-03-30: NT / Windows 2000 TCP/IP Printing Service DoS Vulnerability 2000-03-29: ICA Weak Encryption Vulnerability 2000-03-27: GeoCel WindMail Remote File Read Vulnerability 2000-03-25: AnalogX SimpleServer:WWW 1.03 DoS Vulnerability 2000-03-22: Fastraq Mailtraq 1.1.4 Multiple Path Vulnerabilities 2000-03-21: vqSoft vqServer 1.9.9 Plaintext Password Vulnerability 2000-03-21: vqSoft vqServer 1.9.9 Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-03-20: Microsoft IIS 4.0 Chunked Transfer Encoding Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-03-17: Norton AntiVirus for Internet Email Gateways Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-03-17: Netscape Enterprise Server Directory Indexing Vulnerability 2000-03-17: Microsoft Windows Media License Manager DoS Vulnerability 2000-03-16: Atrium Software Mercur WebView WebMail-Client Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-03-16: Trend Micro OfficeScan Unauthenticated CGI Usage Vulnerability 2000-03-15: Oracle Web Listener Batch File Vulnerability 2000-03-14: Atrium Software Mercur Mail Server 3.2 Multiple Buffer Overflows Vulnerability 2000-03-14: NT Automated Tasks / Drive Mappings Vulnerability 2000-03-14: Microsoft SQL Weak Password Encryption Vulnerability 2000-03-09: NT User Shell Folders Vulnerability 2000-03-08: Microsoft SQL Server Non-Validated Query Vulnerability 2000-03-08: Microsoft IIS UNC Path Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-03-06: Microsoft Clip Art Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-03-05: Rit Research Labs "The Bat!" X-BAT-FILES Vulnerabilities 2000-03-04: Microsoft Windows 95/98 MS-DOS Device Name DoS Vulnerability 2000-03-01: Realsecure DoS Attack Subversion Vulnerability 2000-03-01: MS IE HTML Help Shortcut Vulnerability 2000-03-01: Realsecure CGI Attack Subversion Vulnerability 2000-02-29: Serv-U FTP Server Path Disclosure Vulnerability 2000-02-28: HP OpenView OmniBack DoS Vulnerability 2000-02-26: Trend Micro OfficeScan DoS Vulnerabilities 2000-02-24: InterAccess TelnetD Server 4.0 Terminal Configuration Vulnerability 2000-02-24: Sambar Server Batch CGI Vulnerability 2000-02-23: Microsoft Windows Media Services Handshake Sequence DoS Vulnerability 2000-02-21: InterAccess TelnetD Server 4.0 Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-02-21: MS Site Server Commerce Edition Input Validation Vulnerability 2000-02-19: Microsoft Signed ActiveX Active Setup Vulnerability 2000-02-18: Microsoft Windows autorun.inf Vulnerability 2000-02-15: Microsoft Windows 2000 Install Unprotected ADMIN$ Share Vulnerability 2000-02-15: Multiple Vendor SNMP World Writeable Community Vulnerability 2000-02-14: ArGoSoft FTP Server 1.0 Multiple Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities 2000-02-11: Netopia Timbuktu Pro 2.0 DoS Vulnerability 2000-02-10: Internet Anywhere Mail Server Connection Overload Vulnerability 2000-02-10: SNMP Trap Watcher 1.16 DoS Vulnerability 2000-02-10: Internet Anywhere Mail Server RETR DoS Vulnerability 2000-02-09: NT IIS ASP VBScript Runtime Error Viewable Source Vulnerability 2000-02-04: Microsoft Windows Shortcut Vulnerability 2000-02-03: surfCONTROL SuperScout Content Filtering Bypass Vulnerability 2000-02-03: MS Frontpage htimage.exe Path Leak Vulnerability 2000-02-02: NT IIS idq.dll Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-02-01: NT LsaQueryInformationPolicy() Domain SID Leak Vulnerability 2000-02-01: Rightfax Webclient Predictable Session Number Vulnerability 2000-02-01: NT Recycle Bin Pre-created Folder Vulnerability 2000-02-01: MS Outlook Express 5 Javascript Email Access Vulnerability 2000-01-31: Allaire Spectra 1.0 invoke.cfm Unauthenticated RAS Access Vulnerability 2000-01-31: Microsoft Java Virtual Machine getSystemResource Vulnerability 2000-01-27: SyGate Non-Authenticated Remote Administration Vulnerability 2000-01-26: NT Index Server Directory Traversal Vulnerability 2000-01-21: NT RDISK Registry Enumeration File Vulnerability 2000-01-20: Microsoft East Asian Word Conversion Vulnerability 2000-01-13: NT LPC Privilege Escalation Vulnerability 2000-01-07: Microsoft Internet Explorer Security Zone Settings Lag Vulnerability 2000-01-05: IMail IMonitor status.cgi DoS Vulnerability 2000-01-04: Microsoft CIS IMAP Buffer Overflow Vulnerability 2000-01-04: Allaire Spectra 1.0 Webtop Vulnerability 2000-01-04: Allaire Spectra Data Indexing DoS Vulnerability MORON
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Nope, I don't go to defcon's.
... I also would win
-- iCEBaLM
<form action="http://jmailer.starwave.com/cgi/mailform.d ll" method="post">o dy/mail_moody_thanks.html">
<input type="hidden" name="mailto" value="fmoody@seattleweekly.com"> <------
<input type="hidden" name="subj" value="Fred Moody (mail)">
<input type="hidden" name="goto" value="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMo
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I didn't see this in the comments (but given the laws of probability, with 800 and 135 above 2 comments it probably is)
You cannot add up the total number of Linux bugs by summing the individual ones form each distribution. Each distribution has a lot of the same programs. For example, when the wu-ftpd exploit was found, that is a common package. Almost every distribution has that, and thus that package was probably counted in Moody's "bug list" 5 or 6 times! I can't imagine how many times he must have covered the suid exploit in kernels < 2.2.16.
Besides a lot of the packages have version numbers < 1!! If you don't want to risk buggy software, don't install those! Most packages I've seen with version numbers > 1 are quite stable and effective, it's just the 0.x packages that are somewhat dangerous, and in some distributions this isn't true because they fix bugs independently but keep the version number the same! For example nano 0.8.6 (free pico clone) in Debian is as stable as the latest devel. releases, now a 0.9.14, but just without the other features. If you go download nano 0.8.6 from the developer, it will be full of bugs and probably will crash if you try to mark text.
If you want to find out how many Linux bugs there are in all the packages (which isn't fair anyway since MS has lots of bugs in the products that don't ship with windows) you have to keep a count of what packages are common to multiple distributions, and also unique bugs (which should probably be thrown out since they're insignificant to the OS as a whole, like a typo in the intaller). If you did this you would find surprisingly fewer bugs in Linux.
Also NT doesn't come with three mainstream text editors (vi, emacs, pico, maybe also joe, ae, etc.), two or three desktop environments still somewhat in development (GNOEM, KDE, xfce), three or four graphical shells/file managers (GNOME's, KDE's, Midnight Commander). The point is that when you give people this much choice and flexibility you increase the chance of bugs, okay. If NT gives you one of each of those and that one is buggy, there is reason to complain. In Linux, if GNOME crashes too much for you (I don't think so for the record) or is too slow, you can always switch to KDE. If vi is too cryptic, use emacs. If pine can't refresh that top blank row on the screen, use mutt.
# debian/rules
I'm glad that someone figured that out.
Redhat ships with some ludicrous number of packages that do everything from running the OS (kernel packages) to OMFG playing games! and SOFTWARE THAT IS STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
71 bugtraq announcements in all that hubub? I think that's a testament to greatness there. I would also imagine that a number of the bugs counted as "linux" (and probably added to the redhat total #) were for development kernels and stuff that doesn't even affect "stable" code.
Just because RedHat issues a security alert doesnt mean that it's redhat's fault for distributing an (optional) aplication with it's OS!
If so then everytime I find a bug in a microsoft or third party software program that microsoft endorses for its OS then i should count it as a microsoft windows bug and put it on MS's damn total.
How many core OS security problems in windows vs in the linux kernel? Way way more!
Still taking some kind of statistic from bugtraq is really pointless. Why dont i just go post all the shitty vulnerabilities in that really crappy release of apple system 7.something that totally sucked and call it the worst os ever?
Maybe i should add to the total by posting random windows bugs to bugtraq... like
"Tampered registry settings allow users to cheat in Microsoft Hearts! Your network play may be compromised!"
~GoRK
Hm. You know, you're right, it is in fact Netscape 6... my bad. Now that I think of it though, I'm curious... what happened to Microsoft Word for Windows 3 through 5? I used to have Word for Windows 2.0... then the next version I heard of was Word 6.0 for Windows 95. Were there any releases in between but they just weren't publicized as well?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Why is it lame? Because it makes Linux look bad and Microsoft look better than they have? Too bad. But kudos on having the guts to post it.
All you will get is a bounce - thats no longer a valid address. I sent mail through ABC's web form and it bounced immediately from that address.
Actually, there were a decent amount of people besides jews that were sent to concentration camps- homosexuals, gypsies, and people who tried to help the jews escape from the country. Disturbing shit.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
This guy is positively on an anti linux mission.
d y/moody981120.html
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoo
The most hilarious qouote from his article: "because linux makes it easy ( due to its unix like nature ) to mess under the hood, people actually feel like they 'control' or know whats up with their boxes...it doesnt come from any rational thoughts...".
:-)
Netscape is jumping to 6 because the code that was delivered to the Mozilla team was Netscape 5 - they promptly trashed that and started work on "Netscape 6".
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
After RedHat what kind of comparison is TurboLinux and Mission Critical Linux? What ever happened to Slackware and Debian? This guy should grow up. I do have one good thing to say about Windows 2000 though, Diablo II is a great game. That's about the high point of the OS. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
Dear Sir,
I recently read your article titled "The Open-Source Platform Is Open to a Slew of Vulnerabilities"
In this article you very memorably claim that "Linux is the worst operating system ever." My aim is not to argue with your conclusion, (which I do not happen to share) but rather to challenge your methodology.
You based your conclusion on the number of bugtraq vulnerability postings. Do you really think this is a valid measure in and of itself. The very extensive disclaimer on the page that you quote( http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats. html) should be enough to show that this methodology is severely limited. I do not think it is worth while to repeat all the information contained in the disclaimer.
Furthermore your numbers do not seem to add up. It appears you considered the aggregate of the Linux bugs while considering only Windows NT for the microsoft side. In order to be fair you should consider the total of 3.1/95/98/NT/2000 + all their default installed software components. And there is really no guarantee that such a comparison would be sensible at all, considering the different packages that come with each system.
On the other hand to compare only with NT you should take ONE linux distribution and contrast it with NT. this is somewhat more meaningful as it MAY point out which distribution is more tightly controlled.
In summary I believe that your analysis was not really very helpful in shedding light on the subject matter and I respectfully hope that you will reconsider your opinion.
PS: I further urge you to visit http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/02/212244 &mode=thread&threshold=1
where you can find a lot of insightful opinions to your article.
yours,
Robert Rwebangira
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
As soon as you explain to me how to prove a negative, I'd love to...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I think someone needs to post his e-mail address so we can each individually explain to him that a distro is not a seperate OS; just a bundle of packages. I run Slack by the way. 0 vulnerablilities I think it said for 2000? This guy has learned some MS tactics while he was there. The data was not controlled in where the data is not all the same. Plus, his mother e-mailed me and said that he's still living at home and wets the bed (quiet frequently I might ad).
I think you'll find that in fact it is nearly the exact opposite! The only people who have a serious predication for NT/IIS as a web server are the SMEs who have their own box. The larger companies run all sorts of boxes, from IIS to apache via netscape etc. etc. and the smaller companies run on their ISP/hosts server, and what do they run........oh yeah they mainly go for *nix (except the few poor b*stards who have had enough people looking for FsckdPage extensions and the like that they have been forced to add some NT boxes for them).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Jesus just wrote me. He parted the firment. He created DOS and Unix. He said woe unto you DOS believers, for your planning and misguided ways are evil. 26 drive letters have no place in the perfection of heaven. Behold, Unix will have a place in heaven, and the source will be open. It shall be called Linux, it shall be good.
And people who were against German rule (like the French "Resistance"). And yes... It's all very FU.
Before something can be over rated it must be rated first...
Gezz... Think before moderating... thats a really dumb mod...
I don't actually exist.
With still enough power to run Wordperfect at a reasonable speed.
It's a shame that as computers get more powerful, the software gets more bloated. My dad bought an eMachine recently, and the amount of crap on it slowing it down is boggling. You'd think people would want to optimize every last cycle in that new machine to make it go as fast as possible.
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
I sent a letter to the editor of ABC.COM stating what Moody posted is Libel and I posted sites that prove he is wrong. Including netcraft. perhaps we should start a boycott of anything to do with ABC. First we should start with an email blitz!
We'd need to see about that sometime :->
Anyway, it's good seeing you.
Because now I do not have to develop for or support any of the laamers that listen to TV journalism as gospel.
Linux isn't for lemmings anyway >8] - wouldn't you agree?
m0ngoose
Is madness a syptom of genius or vice-versa?
I beg your pardon, I am not too busy drooling over that luscious little cube to install Linux on my Mac and enjoy the best of both worlds. And I hate Aqua, so there.
However, Moody inflated the numbers to make Linux look bad. He added the Red Hat 1999 total of 38 to the aggregate total of 84 (which I assume would include Red Hat) to get 122 vulnerabilities. In short, he counted Red Hat twice. After doing that, he didn't mention a word about Windows' own stats - 99 for NT, 47 for 95/98. The Linux aggregate is less than NT alone.
...the NT number is inflated by BugTraq's inclusion of IE vulnerabilities, since it considers IE part of the operating system.
Hell, he even goes so far as to complain that
Didn't MS go to court over integrating IE as part of the OS?
Ed Chauvin IV
I've been using and deploying Linux since '94. I know this is bullshit and the so called benchmarks from Warcraft were bogus because my results are different. I KNOW firsthand that my Web server's on Linux can withstand more hits than if I replaced the OS with NT. I know this firsthand. ALSO my IMAP email server based on Cyrus can withstand far more hits than if the OS was changed... then again. damn what IMAP server would I use. Linux is surging in poularity... this is just microsoft's way of trying to squelch it. This won't happen, and the European Economic Community is now slamming Microsoft in a Anti-Trust Case . YEAH! All I know is Microsoft Screwed me out of a royalty deal when I was 26 (11 years ago). I didn't sue then.. I believe what goes around, comes around. And they are gonna get bit. Microsoft hasn't seen anything yet! I believe the caldera buyout of SCO is going to propell Linux into more US Government markets. we are in the US postoffice now, Linux boxes are reading zipcodes and routing mail! Linux is also used in some US gov webservers, as well as database development stations. I am very happy with my Linux servers. VERY HAPPY. So stop your whining you little microsoftie
Word 6.0 was for Win 3.1. Word for Windows 95 was Word 7.0... anyway, Microsoft merged their DOS and Windows Word trees at that point, and adopted the Word for DOS version number (6.0) instead of the next Word for Windows version number. Microsoft doesn't skip version numbers just to look good (*cough* *cough*).
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
I'm starting to read k5hin more and more.
What it the URL?
That makes it clear Moody didn't read the stats page clauses very carefully. They clearly state that a vulnerability in a package distributed with the OS is counted as an OS vulnerability. Which would explain NT's ugly numbers - thanks IIS!
And even considering all the software packed into Linux distros...they still have fewer gaping holes than Windows9x/NT and the payloads it carries. Nice misuse of the "it' pronoun, keeping things nice and ambiguous.
Fred Moody, lord of the double standard.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I love how this is posted like it's some sort of rebutal, instead of just facts the first poster left out.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
If you can't prove that he's wrong, how can you claim it?
OK, well if we could rate an OS solely on bugs why don't we count up the bugs that windows has had since it's inception (windows evolves after every other version not linux an ever evolving OS) and you have to count how many times windows boxes crash on a daily basis everwhere in the world to truly show the "bugs" in the OS. Obviously this guy doesn't have a linux box at home and has never seen the printout of uptime from various linux boxes throughout the world to show that you NEVER have to reboot a linux or unix box !!!!
True. Linking to Microsoft mouthpieces really do us no good. Let's refrain from submitting links from these sites.
When one brings up the black hole bit with the people that work at BNL it is ussually greeted with laughter.
Hmm.. how long ago was it that people were saying that Windows 2000 had "64,000 known bugs"? I seem to remember a lot of fun-poking from anti-MS zealots at that time.
I explained the logical fallacies and mentioned that both SecurityFocus.com and RedHat now had potential for a libel suit.
:)
Hopefully we'll see a retraction pretty quick. If not, I guess we should notify securityfocus.com and redhat that their names are being taken in vain
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
Try fred.moody@abc.com or fred.(middle initial).moody@abc.com -- other people with ABC's email addresses follow that naming convention, maybe his does to.
Anyone else notice the fact that this was on ABC? ABC is owned by Disney, which is one of the big boys in the MPAA. The MPAA has a vested interest in making the mainstream think of Linux as bad -- I'm not sure if I'm paranoid, or just reaching.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
So Taco posting his opinion renders you unable to formulate your own opinion?? Give me a break. Judging by your User #, you've been here a while and I would have thought you'd have figured it out. Slashdot, BY DEFINITION, is editoral. Authors post stories and sometime add their two cents to it. SO WHAT?? It's his web page and he's free to add whatever. But here's the beauty of it -- you are free to think for yourself and post your own comments. Nice, huh? This is not the NYT where "unbiased" reporting is the first commandment. This is Slashdot where there are no breaking stories being reported. It's 100% pure opinions on other places doing the reporting.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Its called being: "dragged around by the short-hairs".
This is an excellent idea (I wish I had some mod points :) Have you sent it to Taco to let him consider it? He does seem rather stubborn about changing the mod system, but maybe he's see the value in it...
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Actually, he's at least right when he says "Linux Sucks". But not because it has more bugs than anyone else.
The whole problem is, all Operating Systems suck. Linux may suck less than some, and it may suck more than some. But, it does suck.
Is Linux a good server OS? Yes. But so is Solaris, *BSD etc. Is Linux a good desktop OS? For geeks maybe, not for Joe A. User.
This isn't a flame, just my honest opinion. I run a Redhat spinoff distro myself and use it exclusivly at home, so at least i know why it sucks....
Syllable : It's an Operating System
If you want to hear another view on linux, why don't you hop on over to Fox News which has some superior tech reporting. (Warning: site is java intensive)
This is another view of the world.
Obviously, no one has sent him the links (yes link_s_) to the "What's fixed in Win2k SP1" pages. I swear there are more bugs listed there than there are lines of source to Mozilla.
He must be too insecure to give his e-mail address. Looking at his past colums they're all the same kind of drivel as well.
;-)
He must not have the guts to get feed back from people who don't agree with him. Even ZDnet lets you provide feedback to their poorly researched Linux stories
"If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best."
True. IF. Obviously, if you accept that criteria, he's right. He correctly notes earlier that NetBSD has just over one tenth the number of bugs as Windows. But, for whatever reason, it has a much smaller market share.
If you are a home user-- he may be right. Let's analyze a case: You are a home linux user. A vulnerability is reported Friday afternoon. Being a non-nerd computer geek, you spend your friday night at a bar. Saturday morning, you have a hangover. Saturday afternoon, you log on, and voila, a patch has been released! (Wow: an fast vendor response). But something else has happened. A lamer with no life rooted your box while you were out partying. Compare that to the following: You're a home NT user. Same scenario, only the bug wasn't reported. One super criminal has it... and maybe the Fortune 500 company is now screwed (which is why they need 24/7 sysadmins on a patchable OS), but there are no script kiddies around to attack you.
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops. Obviously, in a high security case, this is absurd, and therefore for any serious target, they need an OS like *BSD (or Linux). But for the home user-- is full disclosure really the best choice?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
I think that says it all, dunnit?
--
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
I would have to agree that on the surface, it would appear that with so many more bugs, that Linux was inferior. However, I am not familiar with bugtraq -- does it measure elapsed time between a bug posting and its subsequent fix? I would say if he could investigate that, he would be shocked at how much more efficient any of the Linuxes are compared to M$. But then again, this guy is probably getting a free copy of Win2K to go along with blasting Linux :)
Does anyone actually know the stats on bug turnaround time?
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I suspect what Fred Moody is doing is trying to turn some of the Linux rhetoric back on the Linux community. Linux zealots are well noted for making statments like "Windows is the most bloated piece of garbage ever made into 1's and 0's." He is just taking what many would point to as evidence of this (vulnerabilities), and making a semi-rational statment about it.
-------------
The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
Somebody needs to clue this guy in. The distributions of linux use most of the same software so when Redhat, Caldera, SuSE, and TurboLinux report a vulnerability it is ONE vulnerability not 4. Divide 122 by 4 and you get 30.5 . That is a low estimate b/c of the less frequent 1 system vulnerabilities (Corel had a bunch and Redhat had a few with piranha).
Another thing that SHOULD be factored in is vendor response time(to fix). A factor like number of vulnerable days would be a beautiful statistic.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell the dancer from the dance." --Corwin Of Amber in CoC
Linux is under continual development.
Distributions ship 100's of applications over which they have no control, unless they want to code everything themselves.
You can download a profession quality distro, complete with installer, for free.
You can buy it for $4.
It is open source, so people can look for errors. QED: More errors will be found, and fixed in Linux than closed-source, expensive OSs.
This man is a fool. How many web sites got destroyed by the "enhancements" and "features" of FrontPage? Can you say "bonk" attack? "F00F bug"? With Linux, updates come out periodically, with full candor of their necessity. And heck, you don't have to reapply them every time you make some unrelated change (Service Pack 666). A much better metric is the time-to-fix a bug once its reported.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is a strength of a large, open community, not a weakness. If Windows source was open, the list would likely go well into the thousands.
Exactly who is Moody and what makes him so authoritative? Besides, his article doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It's like saying, "The Encyclopedia Britannica says that both cheese and penicillin are molds. However, penicillin cures more sicknesses, so it's better on burgers".
Hi, I'm Fred Moody. I am a tool.
--
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Then in the next claims that Linux has the most bugtraqs. Is he counting double and triple bug reports; counting a Debian Advisory about a problem with a common package, and then counting the Red Hat and Slackware advisories as well?
Sounds like he had issues installing Caldera.
--- http://foo.ca
I didn't quite get what he meant by justifying the large number of Windows bugs by saying that Windows is a runaway market leader. Anyone?
Then it wouldn't be harder to hack... than nt.
See attrition.org statistics
...The article doesn't state that "Linux is the worst operating system ever", just the worst of the ones that he compared (NT and unices). If he had compared Win9x systems even more bugs would've been found. The "ever" portion would have hard competition with all the OS'es created in the '80s. I believe the point of the article is "linux isn't perfect".
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
who cares? WHO CARES?! This kind of crap shouldn't even be given the time of day - but here it is on slashdot anyway. Does it really matter what ABC thinks? Honestly - some sell-out author's rantings on some meglomanical multinational media corporation's website...AUUGGH!
...That with Linux, the source code is there for anybody to look through and find bugs in, meaning all of the little things can be found, documented, and fixed. On the other hand, with Windows, all of the little things just act as annoyances because you can't see where they are coming from. If I reported every BSOD I got using Windows, I am sure the number of bugs would be much higher...
Keep in mind too that Linux distributions tend to have lots of software written by lots of people, not one complany (like Micros~1). So, that is actually 100+ bugs for 100+ pieces of software, not necessarily for just the Linux kernel. On the otherhand, everything in Windows is written (in general) by one company to interact at the same time (Stick a web browser in the OS?), so one bug in an application is one bug in the whole system.
Posted from the wireless couch.
number of bugs / number of users = a numeric value that tells us how good an operating system is. Lower numbers are better.
He neglects to mention that "number of bugs" is really "number of publicly reported bugs."
So, if this is the equation he is using, where are the numbers to back up his argument? He must have done some calculations to come up with this statement.
Show me the numbers, Mr. Moody! Not that it will help your flawed argument, but at least try.
No there are not more bugs. There are LESS bugs.
Look at the chart for your self. I have no idea where Moody is drawing his figures from but it certainly is not the chart which shows Windows to be head and shoulders above everyone else's bug count. I would have expected it to do a lot better given the inavailability of their source code.
Follow the logic of his math: If A and B
have the same quality, but B has more users,
then B must be better!
If A has half the bugs of B, but B has 10 times
the users, then B must be better since it has
a lower bug/user metric!
Proving once again that figures don't lie,
but liers figure. All he is claiming
is that Microsoft is better because there
are more Microsoft users. What insight!
I love his logic:
If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best.
Shouldn't the math go more like:
#Vulnerabilities x #Users = Severity
in order to define how widespread the problem is?
I love numbers too!
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
Is it just me or is the line between journalist and troll getting a little more blurry everyday? I know if someone posted a comment on slashdot that read like his "report", they'd be marked down as a troll pretty fast.
Am I missing something? Since when is market share directly proportional to vulnerabilities? Sheesh. What a maroon...
The random number is a cache-killer so your browser properly counts pages.
The cookies are part of the anti-spam system, as you would see if you read the now GPL'd Slashcode.
God Fucking Damnit
It will be a cold day at the equator before L. Torvalds sets aside his ego for the sake of someone else's better ideas.
I'd flame, but it's pointless, and thousands of others are almost certainly fired up already. It's too bad there'll be immature hot-heads who'll discredit anyone rational and sensible, who could have convinced some editors at ABCnews that Fred's full of sh*t.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The numbers he's using as the foundation for his story are not correct. He stupidly added the aggregated Linux score with the RedHat score, effectively counting RedHat vulnerabilities twice (no idea why he though he should add RedHat but not SuSE, debian, and Slackware...). Even so, the aggregated Linux score would not represent the total vulnerabilities on any single Linux system.
Of course, he didn't combine Win9X and WinNT scores. In fact, he skillfully ignored Win9X completely. Last time I checked, WinNT had like 150% the market share of Linux, while Win9X had some overwhelmingly huge market share.
Based on his assumption (and it's a gross assumption for sure) that detected-vulnerabilities-per-user is a measure of security, well then WinNT is at best a little more secure than the worst possible combination of Linux systems, while Win9X is overwhelmingly more secure than either. Of course, he couldn't mention this, because while he could pretend to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with some numbers that show WinNT is more secure than Linux, he couldn't possibly convince people that Win9X was more secure than WinNT. I guess he was afraid to demonstrate how insanse his assumptions were.
sigs are a waste of space
There's a major learning curve involved in using Linux, and until the public at large is ready and willing to take that step, no amount of GUifying or desktop building will remove the underlying need for Linux users to understand how Linux works. Additionally, Linux in the mainstream won't benefit the average user until it has something to offer that they don't already have. Normal people don't care if their programs are open source, they just want to browse the web, write their docs, and play their games.
Gnome and KDE are great, and I'm sure StarOffice and KOffice will be great too. But they don't take away from the need to understand that there are fundamental differences between Unix and Windows. Linux will not be ready for the mainstream until you can hand it to a neophyte and they can succeed without having a friend or relative that is a guru that can field hundreds of questions.
How many remote root holes ahve there been in Linux as compared to OpenBSD in the last 3 years? According to the OpenBSD folks I hang out with, there have been NO remote root holes in OpenBSD in the past 3 years. Linux has had literally hundreds.
Try writing (politely) to the editor.
Although a bit offtopic.. this posting is a primary example of how biased Slashdot is.
Slashdot might be more respectful if they simply posted a story without the posters editorial comments. Why not let the readers decide that a story is "lame." And in turn, the comments that you add to each story always spin off remarks on how hypocritical slashdot is.
Why not just post a story.. and leave your comments for the COMMENTS SECTION?!?
Anyone notice this at the bottom of his columns?
"Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays."
Hmmm...
- learn mathematics - shoot dope -
Excellent point my friend. I don't think he realizing when he calls it "Redhat Linux" that it is a whole software collection distribution. Does Windows 2000 come with 2 differnet Desktop Enviorments? A horde of C/C++, Perl, TCL and many other various development tools and libraries? Does it come with a *GOOD* graphical imaging manipulation program? Does it even come with a good working ftp, web, and telnet server?
I very much doubt he's thinkign there's 40 some bugs in the kernel itself... Sheesh.
Good point.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
The quantity of bugs an OS has is a completely meaningless statistic. What do you think would be a bigger security problem: 60 bullet holes in my front door, or one cannonball hole?
That's where the difference lies. Microsoft security holes on bugtraq are almost guaranteed to be worse than Linux holes. Why? Because, without the source, someone has already encountered the bug in day-to-day use. A lot of these Linux bugs are things like, "Wow, this wasn't coded exactly right; in theory, although I don't know how it could be done, this could be exploited.". Microsoft bugs are likely to be along the lines of, "Ha, ha, I just exploited your OS again!"
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
I didn't recall mention of Macs in his article. Don't tell me he could have made a mistake!
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Fred Moody is the worst journalist ever.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I guess those are obvious points to most of us.. But the point has to be made, open source is open dirty laundry. But perhaps after all you got to be a rocketscientist to understand that. Abc news bad bad research! bad bad generalization!
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
In fact, it was one of the main factors in making me decide to become a programmer.
Shame he's reduced to trolling for attention.
This guy is a well known Microsoft fan. He wrote a book about a year inside MS with the incredible and unironic title
I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier . His partisan pro-MS credentials are impeccable.
This would be a good time to check out the Linux Advocacy HOWTO, before lighting up those flamethrowers.
(Score -5, Flamebait)
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
If an OS is available as source code it stands to reason (no Spider Robinson jokes here, please) that it will have more reported bugs. If the code is closed, as it is in Micro$oft products, not all the bugs will be findable. Open source code allows people to find and FIX bugs - closed code just allows them to FIND them, normally when your vitally important document/server/application crashes....
And from this point forward I shall have to refer to all ignorant mis-interpretations of reality as "Moody-isms". any furthur discussion of this would be pointless. EoV.
The best-known competitor is Red Hat, but others - notably TurboLinux and Mission Critical Linux - are in the market as well.
Notably? Am I the only one who has NEVER heard of "Mission Critical Linux"? (I'm NOT saying it's bad, but it's pretty much an unknown, and he ranks it up there as "notable." How about Slackware? Debian? Those aren't notable, but "Mission Critical Linux" is. He hasn't done his research.
Linux zealots for years have insisted that the operating system is an invulnerable perpetual motion machine, incapable of crashing or being infested by the kinds of worms and viruses that hackers are constantly sending Microsoft-powered servers.
Can I ask who has ever said that Linux is "Invulnerable", or "incapable of crashing"? I've *NEVER* heard those claims. This guy is an Asshole! Seems to me, he's overexaggerating this crap just to start up the FUD machine.
This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122 racked up by Red Hat...
For the 800 BILLIONTH TIME: Red Hat is NOT Linux! This idiot is taking a select few distros, and catagorizing them all as "Linux." Someone smack this moron.
If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best. As Linux zealots are beginning to find out, it's a lot easier to
masquerade as a better product than it is to go out and be one.
I could tear this entire paragraph up, but we all know it to simply be FUD. This jackass is trying to generate hits, and he's probably doing a good job.
Oh, did you happen to notice the bottom of the article? Look:
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier
-- THIS ARTICLE IS A PAID ADVERTISEMENT FOR MICROSOFT CORPORATION. --
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Everytime I see an article like this, I, as well as many others, have to just sit back and laugh at it. The main thing that never seems to be taken into account is how many of said bugs are still there? What was the fix for them? Was it a matter of saying "I just can't use this service/software anymore"? Or perhaps a patch was released, and if so, how soon after the bug was found? Linux is a VERY dynamic OS, with changes being made on a much more frequent scale than just about any other OS currently. This inherently is going to cause more problems. However, it also allows for the fixes to be implemented immediately as well. People also love to tear Linux apart, and unlike Windows as an example, publish the results in a widespread manner instead of simply exploiting them. Simply saying that OS A had only 20 bugs vs. OS B which had 50 bugs makes OS A a better OS is simply showing how small a persons brain can really be. Give me the 50 small bugs from an OS vs. the couple massive, instant root-shell level bugs in the competition any day.
If he's just going by BugTraq why isn't OpenBSD the greatest OS out there? Or, if you want some sarcastic alternatives; what about BeOS, VMS, Minix, or GNU Hurd? Nevermind of course what he says later in the article (47 'sploits so far this year for Windows *AND* Linux) kind of contradicts his earlier statements that Linux is incredibly insecure. Also ignoring the multitudes of distributions, which increases the count...
Of course, I'm justing preaching to the choir here...
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
You are more than the sum of what you consume.
Desire is not an occupation.
Look at how extreme stupidity drove Germans to elect Hitler.
:)
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law, or whatever permutation of it exists on Slashdot. This discussion is closed.
I mean, we all know what Linux is good at and where it falls short.
The people who matter (IT managers, sysadmins, programmers) already know the truth. These people are paid to know what's going on. Their jobs depend on it. I doubt that some talking head on ABC is going to make them change their minds.
I submit that anyone who gets scared off by this probably shouldn't be using Linux anyway. They'll give up the first time they have to set up X anyway.
-- In the future, everyone will code Perl for 15 minutes. --
I disagree that the only factor in whether an operating system is provably stable is how many bugtraq reports are done on it. But I do believe from experience that UNIX-based operating systems have more security flaws than Windows NT.
But let's take a look at the bigger picture: he never ACTUALLY mentions stability. He is basing his entire opinion of an OS off of network security. He also never mentions the obviously greater functionality of UNIX over NT, I guess that doesn't matter either. He also never mentions the much larger choice of networking software on UNIX platforms (which may be a significant part of the reason why there are more security vulnerabilities in UNIX).
He also never mentions the fact that most network vulnerabilities on UNIX can be worked around by smart system administrators, while most NT problems must be fixed *eventually* by Microsoft.
This proves, once again, the fallacy of evaluating any system or product based on a single criterion. From reading the article, his point seems to be: "Linux has the most bugs, therefore it's the worst operating system in existence." Forget any other factors like how quickly bugs are fixed, or how reliable the system is otherwise, or even how severe the bugs are... "Well, NT only has one bug, that it doesn't work, so it must be the best system!" Right. He almost considers those factors, but then brushes them aside because they interfere with his conclusion. From the article:
All that aside, though, one conclusion is inescapable: If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best.
Also, I could be wrong about this, but it seemed that he referred to the number of bugs discovered in Linux software in general. Isn't his condemnation of Linux based on that a bit like saying that since Netscape for Windows has tons of bugs, that Windows is a bad operating system?
Well, I guess everyone's entitled to their (wrong) opinion. :)
-Andrew
What about the supposed 65k bugs found in Windows 2000 when it was released? I'm not completely sure what bugtraq is exactly, but I guess you can get my drift.
Hey Slashdot interviewers, how about contacitng Mr. Moody for an interview so he can put some facts where is piehol^H^H^H^H^H^Hmouth is?
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
Not only is his claim that Linux has the most bugs disengenuous because he admits that no attempt is made to grade the bugs on severity or whether or not their fixed, but he's patently dishonest. An important part of his claim is that:
This is a bogus claim, though, because he's getting that number by adding up the count for each different version of Linux. That means that, for example, a kernel exploit being discovered will result in not just one but several vulnerabilities on his list- one for each version of Linux that uses that kernel.
To account for this, in fact, Bugtrax has its own Linux aggregate that avoids such double counting and has 84 total Linux bugs last year and 30 this year. (Actually, even that 122 figure seems a bit odd, since if you add up the figures separately you still only reach 98 for all of the distributions listed. It appears that he got it by adding the Linux(aggregate) figure to that of Red Hat, which is totally ridiculous.) Of course someone who uses only one version of Linux would experience only a fraction of these, but an honest count shows that even if you used Debian, Red Hat, Slackware, and SuSe in a heterogeneous network you'd still have fewer vulnerabilities than NT.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
This is probably the worst idea of a ratio comparision I have ever seen. You can't compare the quality of Linux users against Windows users just by the number, and you can't compare the number of vulnerabilities against an a closed source operation system, it could be that Windows itself and all the software that goes around it have tons vulnerabilities - if you don't know about them, it doesn't mean they don't exist. It is better to know about the vulnerability than to hide it.
Also, Fred Moody doesn't take into account that any vulnerability discovered in Linux (or one of the software that runs on Linux, for example, the well known vulnerable QPOP), can be fixed immediately by replacing the potentially riskful software by another - something that cannot be done in Windows since almost every Windows software costs money, the amount of good freeware is neglectable, and businesses sometimes cannot afford running to buy software everytime a vulnerability is discovered.
Microsoft, and all other closed-source companies redefine the word "vulnerability", by closing the source code - which is the vulnerability - because this way you have no idea what the software is doing and it might as well send your private data to a dark server somewhere on the Internet.
Come on, Fred Moody wrote a book titled "I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier" which suggest he is surely a Microsoft-assimiliated drone.
... For Fred Moody's article:
Score: -1 (Troll)
-- iCEBaLM
Bugtraq guys seemed to think NT was vulnerable enough to spin off a seperate list. I subscribe to both (as I maintain a diverse network).
;-) But seriously, I'm a sysadmin for many NT and *NIX systems and can say that I sleep much better at night every time I replace an NT server with a *NIX server. This guy gives journalists a bad name. Shame on you!
If memory serves, there have been a half dozen alerts for NT and 2000 just in the last week alone on that mailing list.
Many of the so-called "Linux" exploits are really weaknesses in the add-on tools, not the kernel itself, which could cause vulnerability in any *NIX system.
Most of the *NIX vulnerabilities are caught at the source code level, before there is an exploit out there, and patched before the script kiddies even know about it. Can you say the same for NT vulnerabilities?
Linux has its place, and so does NT. I prefer each of them for different applications. And there are some things I'd only trust to FreeBSD or NetBSD. Just don't give me any more Solaris systems, please.
Screw Micro$oft.
One of the difference between Linux and Windows, is there is no security by obscurity. That is a good thing, because a bug in the Windows OS can be quietly exploited and unreported for an extended period of time. Bugs in the Linux and other FreeOS's are easier to find because hordes of people pour over the source code.
A better measure of reliability and quality of the OS is how potentially damaging the bugs are, and how fast they are squashed.
The posting of this article on slashdot will help Moody reach his goal of a large number of hits, and increase his ad revenue and potential to generate ad revenue.
During the first week of August, Moody's column generated 1.2 million hits, making him one of the most read and respected columnists on the internet. Sign up today for this exciting advertising oppurtunity.
Of Course that logic is just as flawed, we are helping it.
So... by his logic, if you don't document the bugs, and just sit there clueless, you have the best operating system.
GO WINDOWS!!!
sigh....
He seems to be adding the Redhat number to the LINUX (all) number to get his "122" figure. That means the Redhat bugs are being counted twice.
All this is well-covered over on LinuxToday, btw.
You know, reading about morons like this raises my self esteem. Thank you, Fred Moody!
P.S. Keep this shit flowing. Your stupidity and laziness make even me look good by comparison!
Mac OS and Mac OS-X Server Win by a BIG margin. 8 bugs COMBINED for 4 years!
heeheehee.
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops.
Yes, but is it really bug if it can't actually be hit with a program? I'm sure there are latent bugs in (say) Windows NT 4.0 which nobody has ever hit, so should those count towards the bug list? They certainly are not very severe.
Fred Moody sucks.
Smells like shock journalism.
Duh. Linux has holes, but you have to guess what I put into my build.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You need to laugh.
What was great was the tecnical explanation. It shows how much knowledge this guy has.
I'm wondering how much money he got from Microsoft.
Why this guy doesn't have an email address?
I don't see it mentioned that he looked at all at the nt-bugtraq. Isn't that the NT equivalant of Bugtraq? It appears to me that he only studied the de facto standard distribution medium for one of the OSes he was researching. Seems kinda careless to me.
What can anyone say in response to such a riveting attack on Linux. The guy is a troll. Most likely being paid by Microsoft too. Hey moody, get a fucking life ya lackwit.
:wq
Winston Churchhill once said "Democracy would be the worst form of government, if it wasn't for all the others."
Seems to me that Mr. Moody's statement is incomplete-- Linux would be the worst OS, if it wasn't for all the others.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
It is lame. Bugtraq lists a few more vulnerabilities, for all Linuces combined, than for NT. Big whoop, that's just another way of saying "many eyes."
Fred Moody writes flamebait.
(MS) Windows has SOOOOOO many more bugs per version than Linux anyway, I wouldn't even feel a thing about this bugtraq,,, they take all the Linux versions of a year and pluses their bugs,,, unfair because Linux updates anyway its version some times a year, while win seems to change every 1-3 year. But anyway good job FreeBSD does, respect to that....
There's more sucking here than a white house pizza party.
Were we display aggregate number of vulnerabilities (Linux and BSD) the number is
the size of the set that results from the union of all vulnerabilities for the components
without duplication. Vulnerabilities are not counted twice.
(quoted from the introduction at the top of the stats page he used http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats. html)
Okay, lets for a moment assume that we want to go distro for distro... and most people believe that RedHat is one of the more insecure of them...
Vendor, Bugs in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 (so far)
LINUX (all), 10, 23, 84, 30
RedHat, 5, 10, 38, 17
WinNT, 4, 6, 99, 37
Geee... despite a minor problem at the beginning the numbers look a little different... don't they? In fact evem the agregate Linux numbers come up better then NT (while not a benchmark I would like to use, its the one he seems to be using). To compare the Unix agregate number properly to Windows, we would have to include the Win9x statistics also... right? Somehow I doubt he'd want to do that.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I seem to recall MS stating that the Win95 -> Win98 upgrade fixed 3,000 or so bugs...
What Moody also does not note is that BugTraq focuses almost entirely on security-related issues, usually involving multi-user issues like bad SUID stuff or network services. Something like 9X is going to be minimally represented here, and NT still normally doesn't provide quite that many services, nor of *different* implementations for each service.
MS, for instance, admits that Win95 -> Win98 fixes something like 3000 bugs IIRC. Most aren't going to be counted by BugTraq because they're irrelevant to security in a single-user system... but they're relevant to users.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Disney - part of MPAA
MPAA - suing 2600.com ad other for the right to be able to write a DVD player for "the worst OS in history".
It's all pretty clear now, isn't it?
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
That's why you have to run the junkbuster proxy. Surf their shitty site and never request a single ad image. Fuck Fred Moody.. :)
(Wasn't he the kid on Lost In Space?)
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
What the heck is this guy on?
Given that Microsoft's product is the runaway market leader, it is not surprising that it leads in vulnerabilities: In 1999, the year it took over the server market in earnest, Windows NT totaled 99 new vulnerabilities on the BugTraq list.
Only a person so used to the Microsoft way could make a statement like this and be serious. It's obviously not Microsoft's fault their code has vulnerabilities: it's all those hacker's, who are just jealous.
This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122 racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes
So, Microsoft has a bunch of vulnerabilities because it's so damn popular, but Linux has even more because it's un-popular and inherently unsecure?
Right...
Damn straight.
What do you do about this sort of crap though ?
If you totally ignore it then it gradually passes into common knowledge.
Yeah, but it's not as popular as Microsoft Windows, therefore it's not as good as it, according to Moody's logic.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
I tried this with some California poppies growing on the on-ramp next to the Interstate where I live. Everything tasted orange for about an hour.
[responding to article #90]
They know how often they've served up a page, so why would they need pixels to help them count pages visits. That leaves web-bugs as the only other possibility.
That said, I'm not sure what sort of tracking this would do... I mean they served you they page, so they know you're viewing it.
I thought web-bugs were typically used to check for email views? Anyone want to give me the 5 second lecture of how webbugs provide the site with information it normally wouldn't have?
Ta.
Also another big factor would be the time the none exploit is out to the time the bugfix is released. Microsoft is improving in this department, so lets give credit where credit is due... but I would never ever ever ever trust a SMB NT machine out on the open internet.
In conclusion.. scared of your linux / windows nt machine? (shameless plug), try OpenBSD!
says it all. i don't know where he got his misguided statistics... according to this, windows NT has the most bugs out of any operating system in both 1999 and 2000. Did he add all distro's on there AND the Aggregate Linux statistics to get his numbers? guess he didn't understand what "Linux(aggr.)" meant...
As Linux entered the eye of the mass media, misinformation rapidly became one of its worst enemies. If you gathered 100 random computer using people, I promise you'll here 100 different descriptions of what Linux is, what Open Source is, and so forth. This is because they were told what Linux and Open Source were by 100 different ignorant mass media outlets like our pal at ABCNews.com.
:) It means any person who wants to introduce Linux into their company will have to start out by undoing all that misinformation before they can even begin to be taken seriously. It means schools that don't have any better source of information will take the mass media at its word and just ignore Linux. Misinformation needs to be countered, very carefully.
They don't get it, and they're spreading that ignorance to all their readers. This is bad.
Just to state what most people consider obvious but might not be to the newbies, and to go on record:
the reason bugtrap or whoever might list much more bugs and vulnerabilities for linux than for Windows is that linux is open source, meaning there are thousands of people developing for it that are able to find bugs and post them. most likely they'll be resolved in the next release of whatever had the bug.
now if windows was open source (meaning we could have the sourcecode to all those dll's and other binary files) we would see more bugs listed than in starship troopers. it's just HARD to spot a bug when you use microsoft platforms (which i'm foreced to do too often) because you never know what locked your computer up, or what's broken or what's too old or too new. you basically have to wait for ms to officially declare something "a bug" to be completely sure.
or at least this is what i think...
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
OK, he's saying Linux is the worst OS, because it has the most security holes listed on BugTraq. But he also noted "Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10", less than Windows' 37. How can that make Windows the best OS?
Also, how many of those 122 security holes apply to non-RedHat distributions?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I think that you misunderstood what he was saying. The bug can be exploited. However, since Windows is closed source it is not as easy to find the bug in the code. In some ways this "hidden" bug scares me more then any of the reported bugs. Someone may discover a serious bug in NT and decided not to tell anybody. Since the source is closed it may be a while before someone stumbles upon the same bug. During which time the person could have used the bug and exploited unsuspecting victims. -Jombi Meccha Leccha Hi Meccha Hinee Ho
I've been around Slashdot for a while now, and I've noticed something. First off, I'll agree with most everyone in saying this guy's article has little merit, but in my experience here's what I've seen with this community: Linux articles (esp. ones like this) are almost *instantly* trashed right off the bat, while any troll who has an article saying basically nothing more than "Micro$oft sux" is almost always praised. I don't mean to pick out MS in that example (and for the last time people, it is an S not a $) it just seems rather immature to me at times that opposition is instantly shot down like that. My 2 cents...
For the last time, PIN Number and ATM Machine are redundancies!
Indeed. Getting slashdotted is exactly what he wants. abcnews.com is not measuring the negative feedback on /., just pageviews. Next!
sulli
RTFJ.
If you're counting total bugs, maybe, but only if you ignore certain facts. Looks like to me, the RedHat bug list includes some non-server vulnerabilities -- XFree86 4.01 /tmp vulnerability? I don't run XFree86 on my webserver, much less version 4.01.
Okay, let's look at RedHat v 6.2, i386 -- not RedHat as a whole, which would includ Sparc, Alpha, etc. By my count, there are 59 vulnerabilities, not 122. Of those vulnerabilities, I'd say maybe half are of concern to a server (which would be the target of a scheming cracker). Gnapster/Knapster? On a server?
This is a poorly written and baseless article. Besides, the logic is flawed -- basing an opinion on one set of data is stupid. It's like saying a Yugo is better than a BMW based on a gas-efficency metric.
You can safely ignore the article.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Maybe this will scare away all the people who think that pico is the beat editor under linux.
>Damn right. I propose that the link to
/. editors post something like this, it should be preceded with a warning: "get some ad-blocking software first not to generate eyeballs for the troll".
>Moody's "editorial" be removed from the story...
>why should we do this bastard the favor of
>slashdotting his pile of BS?
Because then everybody will go to the ABC site anyway, only to get at the story they will have to sift through many more ad-infested sites.
When
Moody actively misrepresents the data.
Check that chart and you will see Slack, Debian, Suse and Redhat plus a 'total number'. This is what moody uses. Look at the breakdown and it becomes clear what we all know: avoid Bughat.
However, even Bughat by itself only has about half as many issues as NT5.
Whereas all the other distros are in the low single digits and compare well with the commercial unixen and BSDs.
The author seems to confuse bugs in Linux (which is a kernel) with bugs in applications that run under Linux. Microsoft is never blamed for bugs in Windows program that they don't create (say ICQ for example), so why should Linux be blamed for bugs in applications that run under it (like sendmail)? I can think of 1 bug that ever crashed Linux from remote (which was fixed in no time), yet I can remember 3 that affected Windows 95/NT (remember OOB?!).
If an article were ever posted that said Windows is insecure because a lot of applications that run under Windows are buggy, Microsoft's army of lawyers would cause the page to be taken down in an instant. It's too bad there's no one to look out for Linux and other "free" OSes. Besides, to anyone with a clue, bugtraq specializes in bugs relating to UNIX type environments. There's a mailing list called "NTBugtraq" (www.ntbugtraq.com) which deals with all the bugs in Windows.
I'm sure I could ramble on longer if I actually read the article past the initial sentence..
Where are these bugs coming from? When you say there are 37 bugs in Win2000, it means that there are 37 bugs in the OS. They are usually security bugs. Did Moody both to find out what kind of bugs were seen in the 47 Linux bugs. Were they 47 security bugs or bugs that did other things? Everytime I get the stupid critical update message for Win98, it is a security bug. And, it is in IE which is not an optional install. Most of the security bugs that I have seen with Red Hat Linux deal with something like wu-ftpd or some weird apache module which I don't install anyway so my system doesn't have the bug.
And what the hell does the number of users compared to the number of bugs tell you anyway?
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
_________________________
Words of Wisdom:
Never pet a burning dog.
How much did MS pay him for that article?
Now they have an article about that, how the linux community responded, and how important ABCNews is to get so much attention, they'll link to the previous article so everyone can read it, and rake up the ad revenue.
At least, that's what I'd do if I were them.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Moody may have pointed out that on BugTraq linux has the most vulnerabilities posted, but did he take into account that NT has its own bugtraq mailing list (NTBugTraq). Or has he looked at the number of bugs fixed in each service pack of NT. That is a much more realistic number. A mailing list? I could spam the mailing list with a load of hypothetical bugs and get the stats all screwed up (As well as myself banned...) His litmus test fails miserably......
Anyone else catch the double meaning of that statement? I'm sure he didn't intend it, but I am for sure going to take it that way!
"Though it may take a thousand years, we shall be FREE."
A better comparison is farther down: Top Vulnerable Packages 2000 Packages. It at least compares just one distribution of Linux against NT.
Is there a web site? Ugh?
From the footer on the ABC story:Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier
What I find amazing is that he spent a *year* with Microsoft and still supports them!
I won't go into the reasons why I think this article is simply a troll. We all are aware of the logic of the so-called conslusion.
-k
Oh. Wait. No it didn't.
Slashdot has always reflected the views of those who run it. Corporate ownership hasn't changed that.
What has changed is the readership of Slashdot. More and more, we see uninformed opinions being tossed around the comments to articles. When such an opinion is supposedly against Slashdot, its immediately self-promoted as martyrdom in action. Don't break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back.
The only sad aside to this whole rant is the fact that the same misguided viewpoints that lead to uninformed posts also drive the moderation process. Moderation occasionally gets used to bury misguided or uninformed posts when discussion would handle the situation so much better. Heck... some of the discussions spawned by an ignorant post are worth the moderation points themselves!
Sure, there's always the troll or other noise to clean up with a negative moderation. But still, discussion would be so much better if moderators did actually concentrate on using points positively and allow opinion to be worked out by posting. We'd have less martyrs and more good information; VA Linux or not.
He's trolling for ad revenue, although doubtlessly he's also a true idiot anyhow.
What these sites don't realize is that having their writers talk out of their asses for prolonged periods lowers the quality of the site, and then noone will want to go there, and noone will click on their ads.
This guy's argument is based on a fallacy: that the bugs in one distribution, or in a collection of distributions, imply that ALL distributions are insecure.
You can't look at a single Linux distribution with exploits and say "See, Linux is insecure!" You have to look at ALL of them. Furthermore, you can't simply add up the number of bugs in all Linux distros. There are shared bugs there, because there are shared software components.
What this guy is doing is sort of like comparing a single bad apple to a whole box of good oranges. It's just plain wrong.
This is no surprise at all. Fred Moody is basically just a trained parrot for Microsoft. Check out this piece from last year where he attempts to trash Linux with such gems as
But my informant didn't just rant: he probed the psychology of the Grail-seekers: "because linux makes it easy ( due to its unix like nature ) to mess under the hood, people actually feel like they `control' or know whats up with their boxes...it doesnt come from any rational thoughts..."
"linux," he concluded, "sux."
For all we know, Moody just invented this person who allegedly works in a "non-Microsoft shop" and makes sweeping claims about Linux's instability and insecurity. Same with his invented numbers here.
I guess what I find odd is just how vitriolic and hateful Moody becomes in writing about Linux. He paints Linux users as zealots and freaks and just basically makes stuff up off the top of his head. Maybe he just needs therapy.
Or maybe he's just pissed cause his MSWord box keeps crashing as he tries to write.
Sorry, I don't seem to be as convinced as you of this well-known problem that open source has failed to innovate. You seem to be stating as given that there is no innovation in open source, and then springboarding from there into a slippery slope about how open source developers will end up doing nothing more than half-assed knockoffs of existing (and implied better) programs. Not to mention that you also imply that only closed-source programs see multiple versions.
Whatever.
These arguments, apart from the fact that they're fallacious, don't even address the fundamental problem with what Moody is claiming, which is that a higher tally of posts on Bugtraq makes one operating system worse than another.
Does he even read Bugtraq? Probably only the statistics report. Anyway, Moody's half-assed article, spawned no doubt by a fortuitous and recent discovery of Bugtraq, doesn't even try to make comparisons among the severity of the reported bugs, or the speed with which each bug is addressed (I don't often see MS developers posting hurried fixes to Bugtraq). This is the kind of article that gets everyone all whipped up into a frenzy over no real content.
Can we get back to talking about DeCSS now?
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. -- Samuel Butler
Stupidity is a very dangerous thing. Stupidity disguised as intelligence is public enemy no 1 of humanity. You don't believe me? Look at how extreme stupidity drove Germans to elect Hitler.
Ummm.. Hitler was never elected to anything. Paul von Hindenburg was elected President in 1932, and appointed Hitler as chancellor shortly thereafter. Also, how was voting for Hitler in 1932 "extreme stupidity?" You've never dealt with massive hyperinflation like the Germans under the Weimar government, and other parties had failed to provide any results.
Try actually doing some research next time, and your point might appear better-made by virtue of actually being based on facts instead of popular myths.
In part, probably because he is published.
One can always peruse the reviews posted for and against his book, I Sing the Body Electronic , or The Visionary Position .
Of course, I should warn that these link to amazon.com -- but the reviews seem pretty split on the merits of his book-length work, too -- some are even a bit witty.
Or, I guess one could simply write him and ask.
AtheOS I don't know, but BeOS has 4 known vulnerabilities so far in 2000 (0 in '99, '98, and '97). Still kicks NT ass by the faulty logic in the article... and by personal experience :)
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Fred is a MS apologist. In a column entitled, "Microsoft greed is good", he wrote,
"Gates is fighting for the consumer and against the businessman, while most of his competitors, from Apple to Sun to Netscape, are fighting for the businessman at the expense of the consumer."
It's this reporter's opinion that Bill Clinton is one of the worst presidents in America's history. Archival records clearly show that Bill Clinton has been shown coughing on video or television more than any other American president.
Here is what I sent to http://www.abcnews.go.com/service/Help/abc_contacu s.html
Dear Sir,
I was suprised to read a news article on your site that was so clearly biased against Linux and so clearly biased in favor of Microsoft.
In the above article, Mr. Moody's conclusions are suspect and his methods are questionable.
Some of the mistakes that he makes are the following:
The totals for Linux includes many more software packages than does NT. For instance, the apache server is included in the Linux numbers, but the IIS web servers numbers are split apart from the NT numbers and Mr. Moody didn't trouble himself to add them into the list of NT vulnerabilities.
Since Linux distributions include several times the number of servers, clients and other software than an NT distribution, it hardly seems fair to directly compare the two OS'es in this manner. For a valid comparision Mr Moody should probably add in the mail, web browser, and other commonly installed server and client software vulnerablities for say the top three Windows packages in several different catagories to the number of vulnerabilites found in NT.
Since Linux is used as a desktop machine by 4% of the worlds computer users it has a lot of non-server software installed. It is possible to install only server software, turn off the services that you don't actually need and only have to update packages for security reasons 1-2 times a year. It is also possible to run Bastile software against a Redhat box and close numeous security holes before they are even a problem.
Because Bug Track is the primary method of tracking bugs in open source distributions nearly all the bugs will be reported here. Microsoft often hides its bugs in a security through obscurity method that rarely works.
It appears that if a single package has a vulnerablity in Linux then the Bug track list includes the vulnerablity for each affected distribution. Thus, a sendmail report will be counted once for each distribution that uses that version of sendmail. This will tend to artificially inflate the Linux numbers.
Mr. Moody also doesn't take into account how long it takes any given OS to fix each know vulnerablity. Linux will often post the fix with the bug report, or within a couple of hours, while NT products will often go many days or even weeks until a hot patch is released. An example of this is the current vbs vulnerablity that exists in the MS mail client. This is clearly a well known problem, but windows clients are hit again and again by the exact same mail worm.
A final point to make is the fact that even though NT is only used on a third of the web servers on the internet, nearly half the page defacements are against NT boxes.
I am not saying that any OS is more or less vulnerable than any other OS. All OS'es have vulnerabilities and need constant monitoring by well trained security personnel. But some OS'es are much more open and honest about their problems than others.
Thank You!
-- Never make a general statement.
If you check bugtraq, you will see that Linux does have far more vulnerabilities than NT if you do what Fred Moody did, which is add up all the bugs for every distribution. Redhat alone, which is one of the least secure distro's, had far fewer bugs than NT. Also, he seems to completely lack the understanding that linux is a kernel and that the kernel developers are not responsible for the code written by other people.
Fred Moody was the same guy who wrote a column last year saying that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider project should be stopped because it might create a black hole and destroy the earth. A big deal was made of it by the RHIC people at the time (understandably), and dozens of physicists wrote letters to him explaining at great length why he was undeniably and totally wrong. Yet he refused to retract any of his statements, and remained convinced that the earth was in great danger. RHIC measured its first gold-on-gold collision a few weeks ago, and for better or for worse Long Island is still with us. The moral of the story is that Fred Moody can and should be ignored, and that nothing we say to him will serve any purpose whatsoever.
I wonder if Fred Moody read that article.
I can't remember exaclty what magazine this article was in, but I beleive it was Linux Journal. I can't find a URL now, and I believe I read it on paper anyway.
Does this ring a bell to anyone else? How about a URL?
The theory is that a market leader gets used more, so bugs will be more quickly found. He uses that to excuse Windows NT bugs. However, he fails to mention that Windows 95/98 had fewer bugs than NT, which kills his "more use = more bugs found" theory.
But what really makes the theory stupid is that most security problems are going to be centered around servers, not desktop boxes. And NT is certainly not the most popular server OS.
The cake is a pie
Let the flaming begin.
Wipe bug traq clean, and accept no future submissions.
Then wait for Moody to proclaim that Linux is the "best OS ever", based on the fact that it has no listed bugs.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Look, we dont need for you to trot out the tired, untrue cliches. All we need is for people to actually look at the chart and to draw their own conclusions.
It doesnt matter that Linux isnt COMMERCIAL. FreeBSD isnt commercial either and it's count is even lower than every COMMERCIAL unix on that chart.
MS has the highest bug count on that chart bar none.
End of fucking story. Argue FUD with facts, not mythology.
This is just another example of that trite but true observation that whenever you read a news article about anything you know about, it's wrong. At least they give his credentials at the end of the article--he's Bill Gates' hairdresser or something like that....
I did a search on "Moody" at Linux Today and found several more articles in which they take him to task for his "simplistic" and "poorly-researched" articles. Even though it's irresponsible journalism, he's definately consistent mark --- Nothing sig-nificant to say...
-------
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
After reading it, though, it is much less acurate than I initially thought. The statistics he uses compare the aggregate Linux data to to the Windows NT4.0 OS data. This means that if an error is found in Apache there are reports for RedHat 6.2 i386, 6.1 i386, 6.0 i386, 6.1 sparc, 6.2 sparc, 6.1 alpha, 6.2 alpha, TurboLinux 6.0.2, TurboLinux 4.4, and possibly Mandrake, yielding as many as 9 reports for one bug. If, however, a bug is found in IIS, it doesn't even really apply to the NT data at all, because those numbers only include what was packed with the OS (not II/S, Internet Explorer 5, or BackOffice or any of the Service Packs).
If we compare RedHat 6.0 i386 to MS Windows NT4.0 with IE5, BackOffice 4.5, and IIS5 we have 177 bugs for Windows and 21 for RedHat. I would say Linux isn't standing to bad by those numbers (which are still a horrible metric of security performance)
Don't worry Mr. Moody, all those security holes are going to be fixed in the Linux Service Pack 1! Don't you worry! It'll be out Real Soon Right Now, just like MS's!
-Antipop
True, but one would hope that said cube dwellers have no actual decision making powers.
Intolerant people should be shot.
If you want to e-mail Fred Moody, go to http://abcnews.go.com /sections/tech/FredMoody/mail_moody.html ...
Alien88
For those who want to see the statistics Moody is using, look here. It's interesting to note that Slackware has zero bugs listed for 2000. Guess that makes them the best OS.
Granted Linux does have a big bug list, but so does every other operating systems.
OFFTOPIC:
Debian has had 41 'security alerts' in the past 19 months, from 2.1 to 2.1r5. The thing to consider here is this applies to the distribution of Debian which contains over 2250 packages (from the web page, last dselect update I did reported 4000). When reporting Windows bugs, you don't get Explorer, Outlook, Access, Excel, Frontpage, PowerPoint, Exchange, SQL, Site, SBS, BackOffice, SNA, Proxy, SMS, BizTalk, Application Center, Commerce Server, Host Integration Server, Internet Security & Acceleration Server (That one is named funny). Those 19 packages which are not required to run WinNT (Although ntreskit is) should be included if considering the whole of Debian. Granted that nowhere achieves the 4000+ packages, but I'm pretty sure the bugs in those 19 apps would easily stack up to 41.
Basically, I think the issue is one cramming too much stuff in the distro
That wouldn't make sense either: SuSE and Debian are both huge (though I agree that RH ships with way too much stuff, way too much of which is installed by default).
I think it's a warning sign when a system goes from version 2.x to 7.x in a year. It means that marketing is in control and that's never a goodness.
What are you refering to? Solaris is the only thing I can think of, and that doesn't really make sense either.
SHOVEL THIS GUY IN THE FACE!
PANG!
The massive amount of ignorance permeating from the media lately is insulting to my intelligence and insulting to the form of government we partake in. Burn the networks, save the books.
-=Gargoyle_sNake
-=Gargoyle_sNake
-=-=-=-
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I love Fred. If I didn't have so much faith in human stupidity, I've suspect that his articles were actually some sort of satire on FUD.
Since ABCNews, it in interested of giving people the direct facts, have neglected to provide a link to the actual BugTraq statistics. Here's one. Check it out, lots of fascinating disclaimers and real numbers. Fred cheerfully brushes off such fun disclaimers as "The statistics should not be taken to imply that some particular operating system or application is more or less secure than another one." He ignores " We consider a vulnerability to affect an application or operating system if the vulnerability affects a component that is part of the application or operating system when brought or downloaded." So, if sendmail has a vulnerability, it's likely to count against Linux, since most Linux distributions ship a sendmail. If a mail transport agent for NT has a vulnerability, well, it didn't ship with NT, so it's okay.
Let's check Fred's numbers. A quick check for 1999 for Windows NT reveals 99 incidents, sure enough. A check for "Linux (aggr.)" reveals... 84? Something smells fishy.
Well, the disclaimers at the top note " Were we display aggregate number of vulnerabilities (Linux and BSD) the number is the size of the set that results from the union of all vulnerabilities for the components without duplication. Vulnerabilities are not counted twice." Perhaps this means that the "aggr" entry doesn't include the Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, or Slackware entries. Not how I would have interpreted it (I would have read it as "If a single bug was found in Red Hat, SuSE, and Debian, we only counted it in the aggregation once, not three times.) But adding them together gets me... 182. Erm, so where did Fred pull 122 from?
Fred, after blowing off BugTraq's very long disclaimer, summarises with:
This is just stupid. If you remove his little "against the number of its customers", his analysis has no meaning. I can find a strong case for many of the system with a little justification like Fred's. Security vulnerabilities are more important for servers on the internet where random people can attack them. Given the number of Linux boxes to Windows boxes serving web pages on the internet, it's looks that Linux and Windows NT are closely matched. Taking into account severity of the vulnerability (Are there real exploits, or is it a suspected vulnerability? Can it be exploited externally, or only if you already have local user permissions? Does it effect all computers, or only ones in particular configuration?) I suspect you'd find different answers, but the information isn't there (and BugTraq admits as much).
The amazingly low quality of this article makes me suspect that Fred is either so strongly biased against Linux that he is conciously or subconciously viewing the world through blue (screen) colored glasses. Of course, ABC doesn't have any reason to stop him, since clearly he's drawing huge hits.
Oh well.
Ultimately, we should just ignore the silly little man and go on enjoying our better product.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
wow this makes fred moody one of thw Worst People Ever, by my logic.
Reading this article is like putting a mirror to the worst aspects of the Linux community. Think about all the times Linux is blindly praised just for its flawless reliability without taking into consideration spectrum of other issues. There is a disturbuting amount of people who appear to take pride in pointing out a single detail about Linux and then claim that it is that detail that makes it the best OS ever. Next time before YOU say something in defense of Linux remember: "DON"T BE FRED MOODY"!!! I believe that being objective is the best response to these myopic statements.
I think everyone is missing his point when he calls Linux the worst operating system ever. He does have a Microsoft bias slant and his promoting NT over Unix, but that is not the point of his last statement. He is making a obviously ludicrus statement and leap of logic to make a point. The point is that Linux people point to NT vulerablilites and say "look we are better", but as it turns out that is not always the case. And I would argue that the statement is correct with the interpretation of "ha, may those without sin cast the first stone".
This is pure crap. It's just a brief summary, without enough content to back up Moody's assertions.
If this was a college WR121 paper he'd get an "F".
An operating system is better if it has more bugs and more users??? Vulnerability = bugs * users!!!
Last time he got a story on Slashdot, his email was posted as fmoody@seattleweekly.com. Dont know if this is still valid.
Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is
AND
This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122 racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes.
Hmmm. So a single vendor's implementation of Windows NT has 99 vulnerabilities in 1999. And all vendors' implementations of Linux combined totals 122. Either separate out the bugs by distro, or divide the total bugs by total distros. Apples and oranges, Fred. Do you know the difference between apples and oranges?
- I say Fred Moody sucks
M$: "We're #2!"
More importantly, how do we convince companies like ABCNews not to hire these fools?
--
I've used various distros down through the years. Most recently, I've purchased SuSE 6.4, and downloaded the latest release of Corel Linux. I brag about how easy they are to install. I love that they see my sound card, video card, and network card right out of the box. But they're still buggy, and slow. They don't run as fast as Windows 98 or even Windows ME on the same box. They aren't as flexible. And both KDE and Gnome crash on me all the time.
I'm sure the geek elite would be quick to point out that I'm not a programmer, that I'm not in the trenches with them. And they're right. I'm just a user, and I'm an IT professional in an environment with AIX, AS/400, and NT boxes, and 99% of my clients are on a Win9x/WinNT platform. And they work. Linux gurus are fighting to make their OS do all the pretty and cool things that Microsoft's already do. And the closer they come, the more crash-prone they become as well.
Performance suddenly becomes an issue too. I don't care if Linux will run on a 386, because so will DOS 5.0. I don't want to run DOS 5.0, and I don't want to stifle my usability by touting the fact that my OS runs on a machine that yours would choke on. I've got Pentium III and Athlon systems that scream under Windows 2000, but with Linux, even scrolling through menus is choppy.
The more popular Linux becomes, the more I appreciate the Hell that Microsoft has gone through in the past 10-15 years to make their operating systems work as smoothly as they do on so many different systems. Kudos to them. Linux will probably do the same thing--but it hasn't yet.
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
As Linux zealots are beginning to find out, it's a lot easier to masquerade as a better product than it is to go out and be one.
Maybe somebody is scared by Linux taking away marketshare?
(Microsoft is successfully managing Linux boxes in their IT environment.)
no-one else publishes bug lists.
- red red's quadmonkey quake news
This guy is totally wacked. Using statistics from BugTraq to say which OS is better is ludicrous(sp?). Those stats bear no weight. By design Linux was meant to be poked at, tested, broke, have the broken part reported, and then have it fixed. By design Windows was meant to be used, broken, and reset. Can we say "It's not a bug it's a feature?"(tm)
The very fact that there are a lot of reported bugs in Red Hat only means that people are trying to fix them. The fact that there are reported bugs in Windows only means that the Microsoft marketing department couldn't put a positive spin on those "features"
This guy wasted electrons!
This is supposed to be great art. So why does it look like a bunch of decapitated naked people? -- Calvin
Please post the names of those who have been submitting this story so that they can be properly 'thanked' by the rest of us ...
I was thinking about how bugtraq might have more reports related to Linux than other operating systems. I suspect that the reason is that there are multiple distributions containing a utility that contains a bug, say sendmail. (I don't want to pick on sendmail, really, I've used it -- but I have kept patches up to date. :-) It just has a reputation.) Now suppose that 10, 20, 30, or more distributions include the buggy version of sendmail. Does this count as one submission on bugtraq? Or does each distribution that includes that buggy version bump up the bug count?
Please excuse me if I'm way off base here; I typically look at CERT or CIAC for security matters. BTW, the latest bulletin on CIAC lists 12 issues. Only two of these is an obvious Linux problem. Four were Microsoft related. For the year I see 61 bulletins; I counted 19 regarding Microsoft and only the 2 I mentioned earlier that were specific to Linux. (Of course, some of the utilities that had bulletins issued might run on Linux but I didn't look quite that deep.)
One's gotta ask: ``What's Fred smoking?''
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Yes and No. "Release early, release often." The very nature of how things get done encourages bugs to get out. That's how they get found. It's also the reason that it won't ever improve -- current versions of Linux will always be a bit buggy.
You can have stability, but you have to go back a few versions and you lose a lot of flash that way.
I'm messing with Mandrake 7.1 at home, and this Fred Moody guy is actually right about it. It really does suck. I hate it. But it's also has all the [buggy] stuff that I want included. It's flashy and flakey and adminned by a rather poor-quality sysadmin (me) and I can play games on it. That sounds pretty mainstream to me. ;-)
If someone's idea of mainstream is reliability (?!), then here's how to get a pretty bug-free Linux, like the Caldera box I have hidden away under a desk at the office: Get an old outdated distro from a year or so ago, and then apply all the updates. You can build a damn solid box that way, just don't expect Heavy Gear 2 to run on it.
Less bugs than what? As soon as the specify a specific distro release, they set themselves up for a counter-punch.
But there are so many ways of measuring bugginess and vulnerability, Bugtraq items is just one. Mention ILOVEYOU infection rates to the sheep, and the herd may run the other way. It's all just a game of words, and if the Dozers decide to play dirty by quoting meaningless numbers, the zealots in the penguin suits can do it too. BFD.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I posted it earlier but with the amount of posts you probably missed it .. go to http://abcnews.go.com /sections/tech/FredMoody/mail_moody.html to e-mail him
Alien88
From a purely philosophical view, this post of Mr Moodys is a subjective measure ('It sucks') of a supposedly objective scientific analysis. I think most people by now have cottoned on to the fact that there are lies, damn lies and statistics which can be used to prove your 'scientific' point. Just ignore it, guys and gals. The majority of the net community I think have more intelligence than this. The sad thing is this guy has the headlines on abcnews. Now, I remember the Betamax versus VHS debate..........
Once you have no bugs, voila, you have the best operating system ever.
Better yet, look at all the potential enhancements compared to other operating systems!
Like a 1998 article for example. He has been a linux basher for a long time.
Yes, there are more bugs. Everything has bugs. But those 'mor ebugs' get fixed 10 times faster! If you cannot fix them, then you post a message to a Linux mailing list, and someone else does fix them!
I suggest 'LAME' or perhaps 'TROLL'
More importantly, how do we convince companies like ABCNews not to hire these fools?
By not paying attention to them. Moody's column was very successful. It drew a hoard of ./ readers in to their web site. Moody's editors and bosses will give him a pat on the back.
Now, if no one ever went to Moody's columns, and if no one ever sent feedback indicating that they'd read them, then Moody would be tossed out.
See, the thing is, being right is irrelevant for pundits of any stripe. As long as you're pulling in the (ratings/web site hits/newspapers or magazines sold) your publishers will be happy with you, and you'll keep your job. It's only if you go way over the line and get sued or caught doing something really dumb (plagerism comes to mind) that you'll get canned, if you're pulling your weight.
So, just like with any troll, the best way to get rid of people like Moody is to simply not pay attention. Unfortunately, by looking at the reaction here, it looks like that's not in the cards. I'm sure that Moody and others of his ilk have learned by now that an inflammatory article about Linux will make a nice bump in their number of hits on the web site. That it also currys favor with certain industry leaders only helps them in the long run.
I use punchcards, but they are so old half of them have been eaten by bugs. But the bugtraq moderators never forward my posts! I'm sure i tracked them to the kitchen tho...
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Perhaps you've all forgotten his original column from 1998? Try this article. To quote directly,
Don't think that you can change his mind; email campaigns and sites such as this one have failed to draw a response. He's probably paid to spout FUD so just ignore him.With quotes like "[a]ll that aside, though, one conclusion is inescapable", it's clear he understands the flaws in his argument but is willing to propound it anyway. He's clearly trolling for ad revenue and perhaps enough controversy to make a follow-up mea-culpa article a winner also.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
_If_ his numbers were correct, he would still be jumping to conclusions (ot -- Office Space :)).
But it indeed does looke like he arrived at the Redhat number by adding the 'Redhat' figure to the 'aggregate linux' figure (which includes redhat allready).
So with the corrected numbers, would Moody feel that NT is the worst OS? Or were the manufactured bugtraq numbers a convenient way to kick Linux sqaure in the jimmy?
Actually that Linux bugs are publically acknowledged should be looked upon as an asset not a liability. In fact, openess and honesty are the very core of the Open Source philosophy. With Linux there are no incentives to hide bugs from developers or from users.
I have lost count on how many unacknowledged (by Microsoft) bugs I have found in MS products. But if a bug shows up in an Open Source product it is reported and dealt with swiftly.
It does suck... but it has nothing to do with bill gates... ooopss i am using windows now! ack. but hey www.goofybastards.com is linux running on a 166 p with 32 megs of ram for that i love it... g
Here's an article at SecruityPortal that looked at the same bugtraq data and came to the conclusion that Linux had superior security to NT and showed fewer total advisories and a fewer hacker recess days per advisory.
It seems obvious that ABC is full of crap and has fabricated their results by deliberately misrepresenting factual data.
Now why would ABC (A Bunch of Crap) News do such a thing?
As Linux zealots are beginning to find out, it's a lot easier to masquerade as a better product than it is to go out and be one.
Wanna bet that Mr. Moody has never used Linux?
he better be able to DUCK! He has surely got a lot of flak coming his way now, hehe.
---
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"Worst episode (OS) ever."
:P
The pic on the article kind of looks like the comic store owner, too.
Fred Moody's data comes from Security Focus, but he obviously spend much time at their site. Look at the BUGTRAQ Vulnerability Database Statistics, and you'll see that
"Where we display aggregate number of vulnerabilities (Linux and BSD) the number is the size of the set that results from the union of all vulnerabilities for the components without duplication. Vulnerabilities are not counted twice."
In the charts towards the bottom of the page, Windows NT 4.0 was listed as the most vulnerable distribution in 2000 and 1999. The most vulnerable Linux distributions were all from RedHat, but even then, there were 13 vulnerabilities in RedHat Linux 6.2 i386, compared to the 21 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows NT 2000, and the 34 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows NT 4.0.
This is one of the strongest reasons for not wanting to spread linux and unix across the globe. Let people use Windows. Who gives a damn. I use what I like and could care less if the guy down the street uses Windows or Linux. At least I know that when it comes down to it, I'll be enjoying my six month uptime while he's still rebooting his PC for the tenth time that day.
---
seumas.com
It says this guy wrote, The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. I hate rah-rah books in general, but this title reeks of brown-nosing, gee-whiz, and a total lack of irony. It also doesn't say much for his intelligence that he still uses this blurb long after VR played out.
Face it, TV networks (and their web sites) don't supply real news or serious opinion. They provide low-content, high-volume infobytes, the mental equivalent of pork rinds. If some brainless TV pundit announces that everybody will have a DAT drive embedded in their navel by 2005, you'll probably get a lot of submissions. Doesn't mean you should pay any attention.
Well, go to his another article: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/ moody981120.html ,this is SO "Neanderthal"-like article that I am afraid can turn you into one! This guy is 1) either have no *nix knowledge & have never seen one, 2) must have come from moon or smth.? Check your article dude, and don't kiss Bill's ass, write some objective articles that makes sense.
If you look at the stats, MacOS, MacOSX and BeOS are all far beneath Windows, and therefore should be classified as the best OS of all time..(if his logic was not the pile of mokey-droppings that it is)
-Johan
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
isn't this the sort of thing that the common folk look at to make their decisions?
well, remember, companies are probably going to choose linux because they have an smart employed geek suggesting it to them.
I have found that many employers (the people) are not technical, and rely on more that what they read to make decisions. I introduced Linux to many employers, but I'm sure I was because I was there convincing them, and agreeing to support it.
--- I hate my sig
...than NT 4 :-) the BugTraq list is on: ;) Linux is still the most bugfree compared to M$
http://www.securityfocu s.com/vdb/stats.html?&_ref=969560743
says it all, ok all the Linux distr. together are as high as NT4 but when you do it that way the same bug might be couted alot of times (Linux are not one distr. you know
PhoX
--------
most cats is green?
Succinctly, Fred Moody suffers from "Wet brain". An alcoholic complication.
Who the fuck is fred moody? -Voudras
Prolly sumn like fmoody@abc.com. I could tear apart this guy's entire article, and dissect the entire mess as so many of you before me have, but rather than point out the glaring absurdities in that text, I'll just say that he should be spammed massively. We should all individually tear apart and mail back to him the guys entire argument and point out things like there's more open work being done on more versions of more programs on more versions of linux with bugs being reported between various developers for the sake of stability and advancement than has EVER been done on Winblows. Most Linux programs are works in constant progress, and I'm sure that if we could see Micro$haft's internal bug lists, not only on programs still in or recently out of beta, their known bug and exploit lists in 98 and 2000 and NT would probably be the size of War and Peace, or at least Atlas Shrugged. Anyway, besides, how many of those bugs listed on BugTraq are exploits that expose a vulnerability to the stability of the OS and the security of a Network? Most likely I think they are simple bugs where a button doesn't work or a function doesn't seem to perform correctly within a given app or daemon, rather than serious issues within the kernel core or network. Anyway, just my 5 cents... Spam Him!
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Why are people like Mr. Moody automatically the authoritative source of information on whatever subject they feel like at that moment? Anyone with at least a partial clue knows that posts on bugtraq means fixes are soon to come, which is good for everybody. But how do we get people like Mr. Moody to only comment on subjects he knows and understands?
--
If you're a diehard Open Source advocate, when was the last time you purchased an operating system, specifically a Microsoft one? If you really are for "the movement", chances are not lately. So how can you argue that OS's like Windows 2000 are highly crashable when YOU HAVEN'T USED THEM?
Granted, I was way skeptical about Windows 2000 Professional -- hearing all the mularchy about 60,000-some odd bugs and other mass media nonsense, but once I tried it (and bought it) I was pretty damn impressed. It crashes very infrequently -- about as often as my Linux box (once every 4 weeks), and only when I'm deliberately trying to crash it, like running Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena and an OpenGL screensaver at the same time. At the highest resolutions. :)
My point is, don't knock what you haven't tried. One of the major reasons why Linux isn't garnering the attention it deserves is because of the zealots who argue without thinking. Put a robe and a pointed hat on them, and you may as well call them Ku Klux Klan members.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
More people can find more bugs when you have the source code to look at.. With Microsoft its a little hard to tell whats going on with no source code.. i for one feel more safe with open source just because i know whats happening when i run my Operating System...When something goes wrong with linux at least i can backtrack and find out what/why it happend.. With a closed src solution I am like DUH!! Why the F#CK did that happen... If i can't fix it I can't trust it!
Not the type of journalism I would expect from abc news.
If this sort of news angers you enough that you feel compelled to perform violent acts towards Mr. Moody in the name of Linux, please just remember one thing: Don't mention Linux in the note. That's not good for the Open Source movement.
sig:
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Now, he is comparing all the linux distro's with
just NT or just win2k. That's not fair.
How about compare Windows 98 and NT and win2k and
see how they come out. Bet he could not say
the same thing that time.
His argument contains no facts. it is like saying
"Mikey does not like it, so I don't either"
get a job moron.
Later, Doug
It indicates plenty. Unfortunately, if you actually take a look at the chart, it doesnt look anything like the chart the well known alcoholic and cocaine binger Moody was looking at.
I'll see your FUD and raise you 2 FUDs. Read 'em and weep, Moody, you ignorant shill.
From the article:
;)
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier.
Of course, Slashdot has no bias whatsoever either...
=-=-=
And every other idiot IT manager in the world. It's shit like this article that I have to deal with every time I try to convert the back end over to linux or *BSD... same damn shit.
This article is great for windows, and as long as the IT department keeps getting kickbacks from microsoft, windows is here to stay. I'd say fight fire with fire, but the enormous amount of anti-microsoft FUD doesn't seem to hurt them any.
I'd prefer a stuffed TUX doll to a stupid Windows 98(R) mug.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Part of it is that newbies think Redhat = Linux and that SuSE = Linux, etc, etc... because everyone keeps telling them that. So when they see Redhat 2.x and Suse 6.x, they automatically assume that SuSE is newer. In this case, you really can't blame marketing, IMO. I mean, even fairly noncommercial(?) Slackware is jumping version numbers to 'keep up'.
...
And when it comes to serious bugs: just an unfortunate fact of life. Heck, even OpenBSD 2.7 (which is excellent overall), had a few remote-root exploits in things like DNS and FTP when it was first released in June, I believe. These guys release a new version every half year, which isn't significantly slower than some Linux distros
And as for Redhat bugs being more documented, that's likely just because, like it or not, a significant percentage of the Linux population uses Redhat these days. If you don't use it that much, you're not going to find out about the exploits for it. Security by obscurity in a sense, I guess.
Just another instance of a site posting something making linux look bad to increase traffic to the site to serve more ads. And by getting it posted on /., it looks like it worked.
Isn't this what Microsoft is trying to do? Linux vulnerabilities are open, hence the large number of reports on BugTraq.
Apart from the well-known problem that open source has failed to innovate
Apache, GIMP, etc. are pieces of garbage of course. Are you trying to make a point by doing the same as Moody here?
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Moody notes that Red Hat Linux leads the way with 122 noted vulnerabilities. Given the shockingly high number of holes open in a RH install, not to mention the overall lack of security (Red Hat 5.1 didn't even enable shadow passwords, and this was preserved in updates all the way up to 6.1, when I reformatted and went to Mandrake) this shouldn't surprise anyone.
"Other Linuxes" (sic) total 47 bugs, which means that any one distribution has fewer reported vulnerabilities than the 99 in Windows NT. Aren't numbers fun?
For more information, click here.
If you want unbiased reporting, go elsewhere because Slashdot continues to repeat the tired old "Linux rules, Microsoft sucks" mantra ad infinitum.
perhaps if you wanted to say "Linux sux" on a tech-forum (a place for critical thinkers), then you better list some reasoning for your claim. Make some arguments, make an attempt at deconstructing the counter arguments, - I mean the real ones.
That's how you'll get your posting moderated up - the partyline isn't always "Linux rul3z!", but what works, and an article whose main thrust is using a misinterpreted Bugtraq listing needs to be shot down in flames no matter what OS they're using.
- passion
Well, linux does have it's share of bugs. Nobody ever said that it is unhackable but compared to NT, I would have to say that it is much more stable and reliable. One of the reasons why Linux has an increased number of bugs is because a lot of the software is opensource - meaning people can just go through the code and find a vulnerability in it. Opensourced code is also beneficial because any developer around the world can submit a patch or enhancement to the code. So what ever Fred Moody is talking about is true, but he has to look at the situation also of Linux!
From a previous article, "I won't sell out", available on the "previous articles" link: "I like to think of myself as one writer, at least, able to offer reassurance, in a world or medium where everyone is for sale and where cynicism is practically immeasurable, that there is an island of integrity in this cybersea of greed. Let history record that even as the Web surrendered to commercial legions bearing filthy lucre, there still stood one journalist, at least, in whom readers could trust absolutely." Yeah...I think this comment speaks for itself.
Captain Statistics here says that we should "measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers" - WHAT?!
Even my dog would be bright enough to equilibrate the major disparity between user bases (Linux vs. MS) before attempting to measure anything in such a manner.
Oh, and i absolutely loved the idea that an OS written by 40,000 Microsoft employees only has a few less bugs than various distros of Linux coded by about 1/100 of that size workforce.
Hmmm... so if i took 100 below-par programmers and hobbled some crappy software together, and it had a few less bugs than an app by ONE SINGLE programmer (Larry Wall per se), that would mean Larry SUCKS?
Dont think so pal.
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
Perhaps a better question is "Would you want to do tech support for your mother running Linux?"
Not everyone deserves a 320i
I'm glad someone mentioned this. Remember when Slashdot reported that Windows 2000 had 63,000 bugs in it? Of course, everyone here jumped at it and said, "See, that's why Open Source reigns supreme!" However, a bunch of people replied to that story, saying that Debian and Red Hat were comparatively just as bad.
So what's the point with this?
A bug isn't necessarily a design flaw that's going to take down your program (that bug could just be some complaint of a nitpicky programmer)
Quoting raw statistics without further elaboration is misleading
Just my two cents.
--
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
I should have capitalized the "t" in "IT people"
Nick
Why is it that Fred Moody is looking at RH in particular? I mean there are other linux dists that are available that dont have that many patches/fixes to date (ie. Slackware). -- M
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
It's amazing that anyone would lend credence to a criticism of Linux based on some (admittedly) general statistics from one source (bugtraq), which as we all know is the leading source for UNIX vulnerabilities (yeah right). And this article made it to ABC. Appalling!
Let's jump in to an analogy...
You have a black box. Several times during the previous year, people have walked up to other black boxes with a remote control and managed to detonate a bomb inside the box. Are you safe sitting on your box?
You can't open your black box to see if there's a bomb in it. In fact, people finding bombs before were forced to have their remote control scan frequencies until they found the right combination to set it off. Not all black boxes explode so its unknown if they all have bombs. Yours might not. Or it might. Are you safe?
There's another vendor out there who makes red boxes. You can open those, but searching them for bombs is a complex process. But there are those who, for various acedemic and personal reasons, search red boxes and then publish their findings (often including instructions on how to immediately remove the bomb). More bombs are being found in the red boxes. Does that mean the red boxes are more dangerous than the black ones?
Sure... we'd all like boxes without bombs. But either way, red or black, you're liable to end up sitting on a bomb. The question you have to ask is do you feel safer having people opening boxes and publishing information on the bombs they find (and having to quickly remove it before some idiot runs up with a new remote) or are you happier sitting on a sealed box with the knowledge that there MAY be a bomb in there, but nobody's been able to set it off yet if there is one.
After reading this article and shaking my head, I saw the "about the author" blurb at the bottom: "Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier" now, with writing credits such as that, its obvious where this person's bias lies, and that his conclusions existed before his research was done. It should also be noted that while he makes reference to Linux being packaged by several different companies in the beginning, he lumps all the reports against Linux into one ball. While I don't have the time or desire to go over every report (and I doubt Mr. Moody did either), I have a strong feeling that a number of the reports overlap, or are very specific to a vendor that may have made a mistake in default configuration or compilation.
Anyway, I stopped reading Moody's articles. He has gone from being the abcnews.com featured computer columnist down to a second-rate status. Hopefully, in a few more months, he will be gone.
I'd have to say that, like all good trolls, Moody's little article there is too ridiculous to do more than ellicit a small grin, raised eyebrow, and small chuckle at the thought processes of some people. I mean, there's not really anything here to make an intelligent person alter their opinion, and one would hope that most server ops fall into that category (since he's talking about use as a server OS, that's who I assume he's writing to) I can see why CmdrTaco didn't think this was worth posting...
Intolerant people should be shot.
I noticed that the search thing at the bottom of the page is pre-filled in with "Microsoft". Conspiracy maybe? Being payed off? Maybe this is like those 6 page ad things MS takes out that look like a real article? Who knows but it's not very objective whatever it is.
What is that ? This article is a joke or ABC is publishing every crap story just because it's written by some Real Famous Moody ?
The article does not have arguments, it's entirely based on some bug track from a company working for we don't know who. What about everything else that makes an OS ? Linux might not be the best just because there is no best one but, for servers, it is certainly better than Windows...
the scientific community too; when he ran an article: http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/ moody990914.html about how the new relativisiic heavy ion collider expirements at brookhaven. apparently he thought they were going to accidentally create a black hole that would destroy the world(completely unaware of the fact that collisions of comparable energy occur in the upper atmosphere every day, and we still exist). so he wrote an idiotic little scare column about 'evil scientists'. after recieving a huge amount of email from scientists who work in the field, informing him of how much of a moron he is, he wrote another 'oh poor me' column a few weeks later. now he's doing it again with linux! good job fred, you did it again! and now your burning at the stake will come from the tech. community. :] enjoy!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Here's the letter I just sent to ABC News.. This is just horrible journalism...
- - e dMoody/moody.html
- -
The letter....
-----------------------------------------------
This is a comment regarding Fred Moody's recent commentary:http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/Fr
I have say that this is one of the most poorly written pieces of journalism that I have read.
I am NOT a Linux zealot. That established, let me say that by taking (1) source for his information (BugTraq's "Vulnerability Database Statistics" ) and then (2) doing a calculation based "... and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers.." to arrive at his conclusion would be laughable if were not
coming from a respected and widely read source as ABC News. It would appear that
Mr. Moody and many of you readers may not realize some of the subtleties of creating software. One of these subtleties is the public # of defects or bugs in a piece of software and then the "internal" or private list. In most software companies there is always a private list which contains every known bug from the mundane to the catastrophic. Some of these the public finds out about, many they do not. This can be for various reasons, mainly because that most bugs don't affect a large number of people and therefore is given a lower priority of being addressed. The list of bugs for Linux on the other hand is by definition public; every last one of them. From the bug that affects a certain mouse that was built 12 years ago and only happens once every blue moon to the one that may affect a wider audience. In short we are dealing with apples and oranges. On one hand a very LARGE and VERY public list and on the other hand, a small subset of a potentially much larger list.
This article was simply horrible and detrimental to the image of ABC News.
Sincerely,
John Knight
-----------------------------------------------
...I'm running CP/M. No bugs listed on BugTraq, no vulnerabilities. I'm totally secured.
And to think they laughed at me!
Oh, and check out the bottom of the column:
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier
Yeah, real journalism going on here.
--
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Does anyone know what bug's are included in the list? Because a lot of the errata's on redhat's site half to deal with other programs that ship with Redhat and is it right to blame linux for these programs failures?
I guess he hasn't heard about Microsoft's internal count of 63000 bugs for Win 2k.
After reading some of the blatant falsifications and b.s. in his article, I posted a comment through abcnews.com's contact page.
I would appreciate if, for the benefit of your readers, you would note that Fred Moody is a former Microsoft employee. I would also appreciate it if one of your editors would have a chat with him about journalistic integrity and how even a columnist shouldn't misrepresent statistics to further an agenda.
I refer to his column on Linux vulnerabilities, where he "uses" statistics from SecurityFocus to claim Linux is the "worst" OS of all time and Microsoft is the "best". SF states in the first paragraph of their vulnerability statistics page that the stats shouldn't be used to judge how secure an OS is, yet that's exactly what Moody proceeds to do. He then flagrantly fakes a total of "122" vulnerabilities for Linux in 1999, taking Red Hat's 38 and adding that to the aggregate (meaning all distributions, including Red Hat) total of 84. In effect, he counts Red Hat vulnerabilities twice to inflate Linux vulnerability numbers. He also fails to note that each individual distribution has fewer vulnerabilities than either Windows NT or 95/98. Were one to aggregate the Windows numbers, the total would come to 146. Windows NT alone racked up 99 vulnerabilities - higher than the Linux aggregate total.
He also glosses over the "package vulnerabilities" statistics near the bottom of the page. Microsoft products claim the first 12 spots. In 2000, MS products claim 7 of the first 12 - the various Red Hat products (which are known among Linux users as not focused on closing obvious holes) take the other 5. Only TurboLinux gets mentioned in the 2000 list, with 6 vulnerabilities in each of hte two packages mentioned at the bottom of the list.
It is clear that Moody is abusing available statistics, ignoring others, and using his pulpit to push a pro-Microsoft agenda. It is disheartening that ABC would give Moody credibility by posting his columns while they contain such falsifications and omissions. At the very least, a disclaimer noting Moody's past employment would help readers put his writing in perspective. At the most, I would like to see someone technically knowledgable review his columns before publication to ensure he can't twist facts and numbers like he did in this one.
Regards,
Mark Bialkowski
If you decide to feed the troll and read the article, send a comment to ABCnews.com through the aforementioned contact page. A flood of comments questioning Moody's "integrity" might prompt action on ABC's part. Or not. Either way, take the opportunity to call out Moody on this one.
Oh, and make your comment civil. Don't flame, swear, or threaten to "fucking kill" someone. Just explain your reaction to the column and what you feel should be done.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Alright, I'm curious. Who went from 2.x to 7.x in a year??? Or did you just make that up?
what a waste of electrons & pixels ... and statistically speaking, a risky assertion.
What bugs me is whether he is talking about the kernel itself or the software it runs.
/dev/mem instead of /dev/ram (my mistake, I won't hold it against Linux)).
If Netscape crashes under Windows, I can't call that a Windows bug, even though I may want to. That's a bug in netscape. If KERNEL32.DLL crashes, then you can call that a Windows bug, and I've had it crash plenty. If EXPLORER under Windows crashes, can you call that a bug in Windows or a bug in the software it ships with? I find this the source of many Windows bugs: too much integration. Internet exploder, DirectX (which isn't too bad), and an Active Desktop is too much space to go wrong in. If IE crashes, being so closely integrated into the system, it may take all of Windows with it.
Now if there's a bug in BIND under Linux (and there have been), you can't say that it's a fault in Linux. If netscape/mozilla crashes in Linux, it's not Linux's fault. If the kernel panics, then you can call it a Linux bug (unless you happen to ungzip a file to
So, is Fred referring to bugs in the software that Linux ships with, or the kernel itself as being full of bugs? He just doesn't say enough in the article.
It's bad software design, folks.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Complain to ABCNews.com - I did. Be clear, polite, and be sure to indicate that not only was Mr. Moody obviously trolling, he deliberately lied about the data - see this link that another poster mentioned.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
"Given that Microsoft's product is the runaway market leader,it is not surprising that it leads in vulnerabilities:"
Ok, so let's say that the Chevy Impala has the most NTSB generated safety recalls, does that mean that I should run right out and buy the car? It sells quite well. If it's not suprising that Microsofts product is both the best selling and most vulnerable then it would also not be suprising for the best selling car to be the most unsafe.
Since I don't understand why I would choose a software product any differently than any other product, I could apply this idiots logic to many other products such as:
A childs crib
smoke alarms
cellular phones
nuclear missiles
Obviously the author is very in tune with the American public. He knows that the public won't bother to research the details and learn the whole story so he didn't bother to print it for them (if he even took the time to research it). No, things are sold in the U.S.A. by sex and emotion only. With the economy in the state it's in now, people aren't interested in bang for the buck. People buy Windows because "everyone else has it" and because "look, this guy says that Linux is more vulnerable".
Do you think that maybe these problems that are identified with Linux are identified because those who use Linux are:
1) More educated about computers
2) More willing to learn about computers
3) More interested in the security of their systems/data?
No, couldn't be. It's gotta be because Linux sux.
And how quickly are these problems resolved compared to other leading OS? And when they are resolved, what is the cost of resolution both in immediate capital expense and down time/data loss? Well, never mind answering that one because the author, and the average Windows user, doesn't give a crap.
Go ahead Windows users, spend yer dollars....we'll print more.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
user - windows
wana be geek - linux user
stone age geek - all those who think linux is just too easy
42 cows on a 42km road on their way to 42.org
Previously, articles like this had a tendency to really make me mad, primarily because I felt like the people doing the reporting didn't get their facts straight, made poor judgments, or just flat out lied in such a way that damaged the reputation of an my beloved Linux. Something very similar happened recently when the company I work for received some bad press in a local newspaper. The article contained misinformation and outright lies, and was apparently printed in order to put out some kind of sensational story to sell more newspapers. I was worried that this article could really damage us as a company. We have been receiving a rather large amount of mail from "concerned citizens" who are outraged and felt like sending us some hate mail would somehow make us change our evil ways.
What I now realize is that stories like this are written to draw attention and, ultimately, increase revenues for the organization that prints the articles. Sure, a lot of people will read this article, and some of those people may actually believe what they read without doing any more digging. But I can almost gaurantee that no individual or organization of any importance is going to base any of their decisions on this article. The only people who are really going to be swayed by an article like this are the same people that believe everything else that popular media tells them, without checking up on the facts for themselves. The people that will allow their minds to be made up about Linux by an article like this are the same people that read a single article about a company in a local newspaper and decide that that company is evil incarnate.
Ironically, I would wager that the majority of revenue generated by this article will be generated by Linux advocates themselves, as ABCnews uses the ol' Slashdot effect to their advantage and to increase profits. Sounds to me like those guys are pretty smart.
darrell
Wow! MacOS X rules. Out of all these, it's probably easiest to set up too. That's not based on experience, since I've never set one up. Although, if it's anything like running the webserver on the iMac, I'm sold. All I had to do was enable it, and drag files there.
Was OS X always based on BSD? That would explain the tight correlation.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Linux has a huge number of ignorant followers just like any other entity that has "followers". There is no point in bashing the opinions of ignorants.
Fred is right. Linux is not impenetrable, uncrashable, it is not the fastest and best OS in the world. Sure, it has a lot of ignorant fans who will say so, but that doesn't make it true. Just look at sports teams. They have their loyal fans. People who feel they belong to a clan of sorts. They'll even get into real fights with each other over which team is better. This is just the way primitive people behave. It's not new. We should know this by now, and we should certainly be able to identify it.
Fred Moody is either just trying to get some attention by attacking claims which are known to be exaggerated (or even untrue), or he actually believes that just because a bunch of "fans" think so, everyone must think it is so.
If the former is true, then Fred Moody is a sad troll in dire need of inspiration. If the latter is the case, well, then we don't have to pay attention to Fred Moody when he is metcalfing.
As for CmdrTaco: it wouldn't hurt to exercise some judgement. This is just another one of those Slashdot entries that are guaranteed to end up as a flamewar. You should know better than to devote any attention to something as unimportant as what Moody thinks just because a bunch of morons feel they have been attacked by someone badmouthing their OS.
I read it because I expected to find valid criticism, and all I found was pretty un-interesting flamebait. Not one bit of insight.
Pretty please with sugar on top: try to make an effort.
In other news:
A recent study announced that American president Bill Clinton coughs more than any other American citizen. Clinton has been seen coughing in public and on television over ten times this year, compared to three for actress Julia Roberts, one for celebrity Regis Philbin, and an average of 0.0000001 for every other citizen.
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
You always sacrifice useability for security.
If people want to want a secure computer then it's possible with linux or they could run BSD. OpenBSD has not had any remote holes in 3 years using the default instalation.
But with Linux people just care about getting the newest, coolest software as fast as possible. Linux people seem to have the attitude that being more secure than MicroSoft is important but after that they don't care much.
This is how it should be I think. For me personally security is not too important. I am only connected to the internet for a couple hours a day. If someone trashed my system I would cuss but it wouldn't be hard to rebuild.
He says that BugTraq doesn't indicate which bugs might have been fixed, or which bugs might be tiny or huge in proportion. That means it's useless as a bean-counter. And I'd take into account the amount of bugs fixed each year as well. Who leads the ranking then? If I was using the system that has the "most bugs" but at the same time fixed the most bugs by just as large, or an even larger factor, I'd be quite happy. And as a counterpoint to BugTraq's warning of lesser-used operating systems might not have all cracks discovered, some operating systems have been proven insecure enough over time that some crackers have stopped inventing new attacks, and moved on to more challenging targets.
Lets face it. Moody's a troll. Streetlawyer, osm and Shoeboy would do well to learn off this guy.
Curiously, he didn't seem to link to bugtraq anywhere for us to check his assertions. (Actually, unless I missed it, neither did slashdot)
Anyway, I reckon his next articles going to be about the christian immorality of Linux.
Perhaps, if we bother the people at ABC, we can get them to announce this:
Linux Community Says Fred Moody Sucks On Slashdot.
C'mon, it's worth a try....
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
This article is without merit and he clearly is posting this nonsense purely to generate hits to justify his salary. My advise would be ignore this. In some ways to even response gives credence to his bizarre logical contortions.
I avoided posting this because it really is pretty lame, but its getting submitted a lot. Basically Fred Moody says Linux Sucks on ABC. He calls it the worst operating system ever based on the fact that bug traq lists more bugs for it then any other operating system. Stories like this just make me roll my eyes.
Let's see...Taco call it 'lame', and it makes him 'roll his eyes', and that's pretty much it. Well, the second one is obviously his opinion of this article, but, as for calling it 'lame'...
As it has been pointed out before, this article double counts Red Hat bugs when adding up Linux bugs, and it bases its conclusions on the very dubious idea that 'the less reported bugs==the best operating system'. Now, I'm not a security expert, but even I know that makes no sense at all, not to mention the fact the charts clearly show the Windows NT has the more reported bugs, which Moody dismisses with a handwave.
In short, I think it is perfectly valid to call this article 'lame', even pretending 'lame' has any legal meaning. I think you could definately call it 'shoddy', 'poorly-done', and 'propaganda' and many other things. I, and almost anyone, will agree this article is, in fact, 'lame', and it makes them roll their eyes.
Now, the only other way this article could show bias is the fact it was posted at all. Well, apparently, many many people submitted it, for one thing, which means it is a topic that the readerships wants to heard about. For another thing, while many people here do not use Linux, many people do. This article is apparently attempting to sway people away from Linux by presenting untrue 'facts' and unjustifiable 'conclusions', while many people on this site are attempting to convert people to Linux. The lies in this article, if accepted, could affect many people on this site's mission in life. You, and many other people here, think said mission is stupid, but, like it or not, that is the mission of many people here. And we get articles helping people to do that.
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
this guy is an @$$hole ... what he forgets is that Linux isn't COMMERCIAL ... sure we have RedHat and others trying to "commercialize" Linux ... but guess what folks?? ... Linux was made by the people ... for the people ... (something the US gov isn't) What most forget is that because of the nature of development of Linux .. IT WILL NEVER BE BUG FREE ... but oh wait ... NO OS WILL EVER BE BUG FREE ... not even W2k =) Linux may have more buys simply because there really isn't a MAJOR commercial company paying people tons of $$ to constantly work on .. in fact ... most major companies will reap the rewards from Linux ... and never give it back ... Linux may also have more buys and what-not simply for one reason ... hackers ... the most mis-understood group on the Internet ... hackers love Linux ... haha One last thing ... wouldn't you expect NT and 2000 to have a billion more bugs ... or did Micor$oft sponcer this report too ... Power to the bird that can't fly ... phoxix at techie dot com
Sir PLEASE lean back from the monitor...
When one draws such grand conclusions based on such limited data one only proves is that one's own logic such be reported as a flaw to Bug Traq!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I remember when Windows 2000 came out ZDnet had a story about Windows 2000 having 64,000 bugs. (Windows 2000 service patch gave my computer 1000 more yesterday)
microsoft is a corportation. BILLIONS (trillions?) of dollars backing its products. year(s) of development before major releases, and a cost base that is 100x that of linux dists.
linux is developed by normal people, who do extra-ordinary things. when a new fix comes out, it is made available. it might not work, but thats the risk you take if you want to use it. microsoft has enough money and power to hold onto its fixes until they decide that they feel it is ok to release. take the recent Win2k fix.
linux, releases fixes, for people to test, and then report back.
M$ is a finished product that is just getting fixed. I feel that linux is a development that is still underway. and thats what i really like. you know that if you don't have a driver, you just have to ask around. find a few people that need it too, and find someone that knows enough to write it. M$ won't do that. they decide when something is obsolete. such as a $400 scanner i bought later last year, before W2k was released. They decided that they didn't want to roll a driver into the release. the manufature decided to go EOL (end of life) just before. They decided also to cease support options on win2k, since microsoft wouldn't help them with the driver models.
linux? it works dandy. and it always will (probably) because we don't loose drivers in linux. we just get updates and new ones.
This dude, is comparing apples and oranges. hit an M$ server with 500,000 hits in an hour and see how it cry's.
He obviously looked at the criteria, because he did quote from them. However, he did not seem to understand them very well.
Take the following snippet:
"Were we display aggregate number ovulnerabilities (Linux and BSD) the number is the size of the set that results from the union of all vulnerabilities for the components without duplication. Vulnerabilities are not counted twice."
This union includes all packages that ship with any version of Linux; e.g. it likely includes both xinetd and inetd, both proftp and wu-ftp, both pump and dhcpcd, both lpr and lprng, etc, etc.
So adding the Redhat and aggregate numbers does not indicate the number of bugs in Redhat. The Redhat number does, since that counts the bugs found in the packages Redhat ships.
The next issue is how many applications a Linux distribution includes, note:
"Similarly, a vulnerability in one of the RPMs distributed with RedHat Linux 6.2 is considered a vulnerability in that distribution. On the flip side, just because a random piece of software has a vulnerability it does not mean that the operating systems or applications it can run under are considered vulnerable."
So, we're counting bugs in literally thousands of applications in addition to the operating systems, most of which won't be in use. Some of the included packages were gnumeric, kde, enlightenment, etc.
And there is also the factor that some of the bugs were platform specific (e.g. ping and traceroute issues on alphas).
And finally he also didn't mention that this did not refer to any specific version of the operating system. At least seven of those updates were for version previous to 6.1.
Correcting for his inability to read and ignoring bugs for previous versions of the operating system, Redhat had 30 bugs. Nearly one-quarter that of WinNT. Remove the packages not typically run on a server, and you're down to 20, nearly one-fifth.
Just read the bottom of the article :
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic:
A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the DigitalDreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.
If they let him hang around MS headquaters and wrote a book about it, what else can you expect but just corporate butt licking ?
Just ignore him, and he'll go away.
- sigs are for wimps.
Here's the URL for ABCNews.com's feedback page. They even provide a handy "Factual Error" category for his repetition of the "Red Hat == Linux" fallacy and his subsequent bad math.
What's the over/under on how many days before the boot-licking mea culpa column appears?
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
I'm wondering if the drive by the major distributors to release a new version every 6 days or so is to blame for the problem. Most of the bugtraq exploits seem to involve redhat based distro's. I don't see very many for debian or slackware.
Basically, I think the issue is one cramming too much stuff in the distro and rushing things out the door.
Am I wrong here? I'm not a security expert, but these bugs seem to be due to overly fast releases.
I think it's a warning sign when a system goes from version 2.x to 7.x in a year. It means that marketing is in control and that's never a goodness.
--Shoeboy
Ok, This is obivously a poorly researched article written by someone who had a deadline to meet and just wanted to be a little controversial to gain some extra hits to his page.
Now, we can do one of two things--
1) Click the link, goto his page, and generate an extra hit for his column. That of course deprives us of a good joke and lets him go "look bos, i got lots of hits"."
2) We can sit and bitch about it.
However, perhaps --- just maybe --- there is another option. Why not contact the advertisers and let them know that we are not goign to support them if they support him. Its as simple as going to the page, seeing whos ad banner is up there, and then writing them a FRIENDLY letter. Of course, copy that letter to Mr. Moody and to CBS.Com.
Now, I've been to the page three times now and have seen an ad for the weather chanel, one for Ditech.com ( a lending company), and one for a cbs show about hookers (wish i was making that up). Find out who else is posting ads there. If its an ad for an ABC tv show, then email them and say you will not being watching that show because of his post.
Above, i made sure to put the word FRIENDLY in all caps because that is just how the letter should be written. Be professional, be brief, but make sure to let them know WHY you dont support him or his rantings.
Trust me, if slashdot can bring down websites and ftp sites with a simple post, then surely we can make have an effect here.
On a side note, you could also nmap the web page of an ad sponser and find out if they are running Linux. If they are, then have them ask their IT team what they think of linux.
"I mean, All you can definately say about a fellow who thinks he's a poached egg, is; He's in the minority." James Burke
We all know how many bugs that Linux products have. But what I noticed was did Freddy Boy even bother to mention where Linux gets it's software, or who makes it? Or even how the GPL works? NOOOOoooooo!
Also of note would be to compare the time it takes for a Linux related bug to get fixed and the time it takes for Microsoft to come out with a new service pack.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
Frankly I'm amused and a little shocked that an organization of your caliber would be so irresponsible as to allow someone to write about something to which they are clearly not qualified.
y /moody.html)
In an article on August 2, 2000 (http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMood
Mr. Moody, (who obviously has a great many ties to Microsoft as he is the author of
"A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier",)
makes unsubstantiated assertions in his column about Linux having the most bugs.
If Mr. Moody had actually learned about the open source methodology, rapid, iterative development methods, he would learn that at any given time there are several bugs in ANY operating system. In the Linux development process we develop quickly then submit to our peers for correction, testing and more testing. Only the best of the best code makes it through to the next version level.
Linux developers (Yes I said developers you know professional, educated people that actually do this for a living, or for the sheer joy of programming, are people who pay taxes and actually use the operating system we speak about), are honest about what is going on with their OS and this honesty makes it a more stable environment. The more honest we are, the sooner we can correct the issues.
(i.e. No waiting 6 months for "Service Packs" which are nothing but BUG FIXES!)
Running a company that has actually deploys mission critical Linux servers and workstations, many of our servers have uptimes measured in years. I stress mission critical operations such as data-mining, secured financial transaction processing, medical research etc.
Linux is used by every branch of the military and by NASA. In fact scientists at NASA play a very large role in our development cycle, especially the networking code.
Please show me the Microsoft solution that can match that because in over 15 years in this industry I have yet to see it.
Now on to non-technology related things:
As a CEO of a technology company, with a wife, four kids living in the suburbs, I doubt people would look at me and call me a "zealot". I challenge Mr. Moody to educate himself, quit the childish name calling, and actually use the operating system he speaks of. Yes there are people in the Linux community, the Windows community whom are very proud of what they do for a living and some of the younger folks may at times take it to extremes. This applies universally kids. Should I call my brother in Wisconsin a "Zealot" because he is a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team? How many fisticuffs have happened because of sports? How many because of operating systems?
I rest my case.
I've also made the observation as well that in a heavily liberal media, it seems to be "OK" to say disparaging remarks about "geeks" and "It people" because hey. after all, they not like the rest of us right?
As contributing members to society, I find it interesting that if this were some other group of people, be it a religious or ethnic minority no news agency would dream to call them "Zealots". I sense much hypocrisy here and ABC news, and Mr. Moody have much to answer to.
It's always easier to call names. It takes real initiative and intelligence to educate one's self.
Sincerely,
Nicholas M.M. Donovan
CEO -
Versinet Corporation
- In 1999, the year it took over the server market in earnest, Windows NT totaled 99 new
- vulnerabilities on the BugTraq list. (So far in 2000, the count stands
- at 37.) This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with
- Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122
- racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes (their 2000 count stands
- at 47).
and by simple math, he concludes- If you look this list over, and measure each system's number of vulnerabilities against the number of its customers, Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best.
Wouldn't that make netBSD the best?-Uto
At least Microsoft has fixed these problems. Where is your linux list of fixes? Don't have one? Gee isn't anyone fixing these things? Apparently Linux IS buggier than anything! Except BSD! Give me a red devil anytime!
Moody was brainwashed when he was writing "A Year with Microsoft On the Multimedia Frontier". He obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. The article doesn't even list his credentials, only books he has written. That doesn't make him an expert on Linux or any operating system for that matter. Moody needs to do more research before he can realy say that Linux is the worst operating system ever. Simply judging linux by the number of bugs it hasis like saying that a business sucks because the doors to the building don't work properly.
Worse than Jon Katz?
--
I have a problem with comparing the number of bugs in a Linux distribution and MS WinWhatever. The two things are not the same beast. A Linux distribution typically includes a huge mass of various programs like TeX, AbiWord, gnumeric, all of KDE, Netscape, Apache, INN, a ftp server, proxy software, games, etc. Large numbers of smaller programs fill distributions as well. Windows though, includes IE, a media player, and that "Personal Webserver" thingy. NT's IIS adds in a ftp server. It seems to me that to sompare the two fairly, you must necessarily add a large chunk of MS Office and other programs to Windows. Somehow I doubt that MS's bug numbers would compare favoribly after those additions. Anyway, most of the stuff on BugTraq is fixed bugs, a signal that more work is getting done on linux than other platforms.
I really think we should avoid those people altogether. On the other hand, I think someone should refute what he says publicly.
What I am really suggesting is a public destruction of his reputation as a knowledgeable person, because he definitly isn't. Gosh, he even claims we discovered how bad our OS is.
These people shouldn't write or even talk on any media of any type. So what's the solution? Publish logical deconstruction of anything he writes anywhere, until someone at ABC or wherever else those people work, gets the hint and fires them. Pure and simple.
Stupidity is a very dangerous thing. Stupidity disguised as intelligence is public enemy no 1 of humanity. You don't believe me? Look at how extreme stupidity drove Germans to elect Hitler.
So let's get working on eradicating it peacefully. Public destruction of such people should be encouraged.
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
I seem to recall reading something like this a while ago. Almost exactly the same argment and aparantly the same mistakes (adding aggregate linux numbers to the seperate redhat). I'm thinking 6-9mo ago?
Is this a Deja Vu moment or does anybody else remember this?
g
Now lets hope someone without this clue reads this... hmmm what to do to make it stand out...
Silly <BLINK> tag! wooo! Okay; future ref: it doesn't work here.
Silly RED color! woo! Okay. that doesn't work either. Well thats something for those who don't know. I'll be quiet now.
But seriously, bug tracks are good.
enough of that;
Daniel
Bugtraq does not always get NT bugs. NT-Bugtraq gets the majority of them. NT-Bugtraq was founded when the users of Bugtraq became irate at the volume of NT related traffic. Generally unless it's a fairly major bug it won't appear on the generic Bugtraq.
P.S. Any misspellings or faults of grammar you think you detect are mearly transmition errors, and probably your fault a
We've already had Miguel say Unix Sucks. I guess he started a trend which Fred is now continuing. Since trends are such a socializing and destigmatizing thing, I'll join in. Unix sucks and Linux is obsolete. There.
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Check this article out. Mr Moody states:
"linux isnt secure and it isnt stable," my informant writes, with
his usual bracing disdain for grammar and punctuation. "its a
moving target that never really gets out of beta. sure people run
production sites on linux. i know alot of these people. they dont
get much sleep and have grown opaque from the lack of sunlight.
i have admin'd large linux shops. they require huge amounts of
admin overhead, and if you want shit to really work you are going
to spend alot of time manually fixing things. the number of
outstanding security holes and lack of stable functionality is
monumental."
At my last job, there were always 3 NT admins on duty for every 1 Linux admin. Why? New service packs, conflicts with old service packs, and constant rebooting (which couldn't be done remotely). It sounds to me like this paragraph should be run through "$paragraph=~s/linux/NT/g".
Oh, and btw, this is the original "Linux Sux" article that the current article refers to.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
At least with Linux you know what the known bugs are, what they do, and how to fix them and how to help fix them. With Microsoft, you don't know anything till its too late.
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Another reporter who will sing Microsofts praises
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A
Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of
The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital
Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. His column
appears on alternate Wednesdays.
http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats.html
Here is the statistics page from security focus.
From that very page:
Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier
Nuff sed?
-
Starsucks
Here are the actual stats
They pretty much speak for themselves as to how lame his argument is. Going by his argment, windows 95/98 are more secure than NT as they had few vulnerability reports!
But all you really have to look at the two charts: "Top vulnerable applications of 2000" and "Top vulnerable applications of 1999" to get a clue.
Also, I suspect that his 124 figure (which does not appear on the graph) includes some double counting, because it is what you get when you add the "Linux (aggr)" and "Redhat" figures. (Apparently, he doesn't realize that Slackware, Debian and Suse are Linux.)
The cake is a pie
Actually, M$'s marketing people are smarter than that...they'd say "Wev got fewer bugs than..."
They're usually pretty good with that grammar stuff. :-)
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
I think that malda plants these people and their articles so that we'll all comment, and increase page hits on /., driving up his revenue from banner ads!
Yea, that's it... gotta be.....
use the source....
d dll" method="post">
<i>
<form action="http://jmailer.starwave.com/cgi/mailform.
<input type="hiden" name="mailto" value="fmoody@seattleweekly.com">
etc. etc.
We have less bugs than what? The Biospheere? Seen any of those stories about ~65,000 bugs in Windows? Mind you, those aren't all detailed on bugtraq..
---
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
I was smart, I un-checked "Automatically load images" before visiting the site. Makes the page load a lot faster, too.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
After reading the article, I must concur---it was and is a very lame article. You shouldn't have posted it as the conclusions that mr moody draws are not at all factual, but merely speculative.
After waiting all day hoping this story would go away, CmdrTaco was forced to link to it by the outpouring of denial and outrage among Linux true believers. Since the story was getting plenty of air without Slashdot anyway, might as well cash in on it like everybody else!
Moody may be right. It seems that the outrage and denial is all too revealing. Now that Linux is playing in the big leagues, statistics are mounting up, providing a basis for a fair comparison of the TOTAL cost of Linux vs. other systems, which includes security risks. Moody's analysis might be a little flawed, but the concern about security of networks and systems running Linux is real. It needs to be taken seriously by those making corporate purchases. It does not appear to be taken so seriously by companies repackaging and selling Linux like RedHat, which leads the list in Bugtraq incidents. Maybe articles like this will draw attention to the less than stellar security performance of Linux in comparison with other systems, and force industry-standard quality assurance testing that customers have come to expect from the big players.
If Linux wants to play in the big leagues, it has to endure the same intense scrutiny other systems have been subjected to. This applies to all areas, including security and the viability of the linux desktop. It also incudes fragmentation and nonexistent standards, which makes it difficult or impossible for many companies to write applications for "Linux". They must develop for RedHat, Debian, Suse, etc. Which desktop system to develop for, Gnome, Kde or other? Hard choices which cause many potential customers to reconsider. Further they must consider the bugs in each flavor or "distribution" of Linux, as well as the bugs and pitfalls common to them all.
Whenever Microsoft vulnerabilities are discovered Linuxers gloat in smug satisfaction and pray for some script kiddie to take advantage of an exploit before a fix is applied. Now that the public is wise to the fact that Linux also is vulnerable, the playing field is being levelled. Inside the cute, pudgy penguin danger lurks for those who are too trusting and who do not check the facts out for themselves. Fred Moody has alerted the public to the need to do just that before making a huge investment of time and resources in the Linux experiment. The hypothesis, that open source can compete on a level playing field without government intervention, has yet to be proved. Even in China where the government says "use Linux" most people still use Windows.
If you want to refute -- especially commonly accepted info previously documented on Slashdot -- provide documentation.
Windows 2000 Has 65,000+ Bugs
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
No CNet style talkback , no threaded conversations aka Slashdot.
Moody's column, as many have pointed out, has little journalistic integrity. Rather, he has taken what he sees as tasty bits of statistics, manipulated them in qualitative, rather than an accurate quantitative fashion.
The column reflects the author's opinion, then shuts the door to any valid discussion or argument.
Many columnists will at the very least encourage readers to respond. Moody does none of that, in fact, he doesn't even mention it.
Let's put aside the preferences we many have and look at the column for what it is.
Poorly Written.
The funniest thing about this post is that it was moderated up as Informative! ROFL... at least now we understand.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
That MS may know about more bugs than Bugtraq does(which makes sense) and is not telling about them. The 65,000 number comes from a leaked memo or something like that. Not that Win2k is a bad piece of software, just something to be aware of. It is in MS's best interests to know about more bugs than the public does and not necessarily in their best interests to release that information.
While I'm not saying that its true that there are 65,000 known bugs in Win2k that MS is not telling people about, it is certainly possible.
I've also been saying for years now that Linux's much vaunted reliability is an illusion. The fact is that until very recently, Linux has been living a sheltered life in the hands of caring hackers. The minute it gets out into the real world and starts getting hammered to even a fraction of the extent to which Windows gets hammered, you'll see its reliability drop like a rock.
I'm glad to see that everything I predicted is gradually coming true. People are starting to bitch left and right about poor device support, GUI apps and frameworks that crash all the time, commercial applications that work only with certain distributions, poor performance, security vulnerabilities, etc.
The Linux folks are slowly learning that it takes much more than a robust kernel and a great set of command-line utilities to make a successful desktop application platform.
I distinctly remember, it blew the bottom out of the 9x TCP stack, and forced BSOD and instant reboot on NT4
He looks like a bloody idiot. And he's a well-known Microsoft supporter. And he quotes some pretty sad little distributions as the 'main players'. He's a dork. Nothin' to worry about...
No e-mail address, but you do have a vehicle to express your concerns. Take advantage of the ABCNews.com contact page, and let them know what you think about this.
As for the article, yes, people will be concerned with how buggy Linux is. However, Moody inflated the numbers to make Linux look bad. He added the Red Hat 1999 total of 38 to the aggregate total of 84 (which I assume would include Red Hat) to get 122 vulnerabilities. In short, he counted Red Hat twice. After doing that, he didn't mention a word about Windows' own stats - 99 for NT, 47 for 95/98. The Linux aggregate is less than NT alone.
Also, if you add the separate distro numbers, you come up with 98. I think this means vulnerabilities present across distributions were only counted once, though the page isn't too clear on that. The individual distro numbers are interesting - Red Hat is the worst at 38, Debian next at 29, yet both are lower than Win9x's total of 47.
Any way you slice it, Moody's screwing with the stats to promote his agenda.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
...ok not quite, but I knew this sounded familiar. We've heard from this guy before!
M$: "We're #2!"
I'm not an expert on how BugTraq works - in fact, I know nothing about it. But his article sure seems to imply that he is comparing the number of vulnerabilities in _all_ Linux distros to the number of vulnerabilities in one Windows distro.
For that matter, he doesn't mention whether any of those vulnerabilities have been resolved. He also doesn't mention the fact that NT 4.0 is, what - 4 years old? How many new vulnerabilities were discovered in RH1.0 last year?
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
There's a major learning curve involved in using Linux, and until the public at large is ready and willing to take that step, no amount of GUifying or desktop building will remove the underlying need for Linux users to understand how Linux works.
Nonsense! Linux could very easily be converted into very simple system.
A distro designed to come pre-installed and configured (or be installed and configured by a technician), go directly from the logon screen into a non-user-configurable GUI, install only new software packaged in a certain way from a central server, and never let the user see a shell, would be perhaps even simpler and easier to use than a Mac.
Why doesn't one exist already? Two reasons: you can't sell support for a system that just works (no commercial motive), and nobody who programs computers cares about a system like that (no "I'll write it to use it myself" motive). Currently, free software development optimizes for: minimal effort of development, stability, power, and "coolness". Ease of use for the new user is barely a consideration, except in distro installation programs.
Can you really see a bunch of Linux hackers sitting around trying to write a "toaster" distro in their spare time?
Mass market busking might provide the solution to this kind of problem, but it'll be tough to make people understand why giving their money away is in their best interests.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Sorry, I have bad memory... when was M$ found that Outlook bug about the e-mail header too big? Feb 2000? And still not fixed until now... Aug 2000?
I wonder will Windows suxs too?
First of all its Red Hats prob not "linux" security problem. Different distros have thier security fixes. Debian and Slack being the most secure. Red Hat is known for its security holes and its the damn red hat = linux thing that bothers the hell out of me. Have the SOB review different distros and take the wad of cash from Microsoft out of his pocket and then review the bugtrack thingy again.
The Beaver The Best Things In Life Are Free And So Is Linux!
The best-known competitor is Red Hat, but others - notably TurboLinux and Mission Critical Linux
Hands up - how many of you never heard of Mission Critical Linux until this? How many of you have never heard of Debian, Caldera or SuSE? And TurboLinux is major?
Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best
I don't think that there's one vulnerability in there for BeOS. I doubt there are any for AtheOS. Therefore, they're even better than Microsoft's platforms.
This boast[linux isn't vulnerable to worms/viruses] has been easy to make, since until 1999 Linux was too much of a fringe product to stand up to the kind of abuse more widely used systems endure.
Actually, it's because Linux is a true multi-user operating system, something not even NT can claim. Solaris is also immune to those kinds of things. If I try to delete every file on my system right now (I'm on Solaris) I will fail, except for wiping out some of my own data. The backups will remain. The system will still boot. Other users will be unaffected.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
He may be in need of a clue, but isn't this the sort of thing that the common folk look at to make their decisions.
." and the general public won't think any more about it. They will accept is as given that Windows is better because of it.
If Linux is ever going to make it into mainstream, the mainstream will be looking at things just like that. Microsoft will come out with an ad campaign: "We've got less bugs than
So again it raises the question. Should Linux be mainstream? Is it even close to being ready for mainstream? I know a lot of zealots will start flaming away on this one, but when it comes to the general public, they are like sheep. Large numbers (unless it's their salery) frighten the sheep...
Does anyone out there have Moody's email address? Maybe someone could explain NICELY how he completely missed the boat on the bugs.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
This is amusing.
Just below the note that Mr. Fred "Hi, I'm a Microsoft Tool!" Moody wrote a book about Microsoft on the multimedia frontier (*cough*), the ABC site has a search button... which is pre-filled in with...
Search for more on... Microsoft .
So, ABC has classified this as "Microsoft" news, despite the headline being "Linux". Things that make you go "hmmm".
I hope Slashdot gets around to a follow up on this one. I really, really want to see if Moody does a correction article. If he has a trace of honesty, he will do another article which admits:
1. He is wrong, because he added Red Hat's numbers to the numbers for all of Linux. If he had done it correctly, he would have reached the opposite conclusion.
2. His so-called methodology for determining the "Suckiness" of an OS is ridiculous anyway, so even ignoring pt. 1, his article is balony.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
that there is no where to reply to him or an opinion page. also, a quick look at the archive, and it appears that this guy is bill gates biggest admirer.
Spazdot-1 in 10 insightfull articles, and 1 in 10,000 insightfull comments ain't bad.
Shouldn't this on msnbc.com? *grin*
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Maybe ABC should be more ashamed for running his story?
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Not only is this guy an idiot, he's a crappy writer, too. I actually stumbled through "I sing thge Body Electronic" a few months back - it's one of the worst books I've ever read.
It's the ONLY book related to the history of computers that I've ever judged so worthless that I threw it away.
Usually I'm reluctant to throw books about events in the computer industry away because there's always interesting perspectives in them - but this book was just plain BORING and POINTLESS.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/service/Help/abc_contact us.html I just got done writing a three page essay pointing out that Mr. Moody's column has erroneous statistics contained within it (counting red hat twice) and also smacking it around for the various other flaws in his analysis. Use the above link! write your own mail that calmly and intelligently (withouth every other word being profanity) rips Moody to shreds. Demand that the column to be retracted or at the very least that they should post a correction of the statistics that he botched.
I sent this to editor@abcnews.com, couldn't find any email addresses on their site. If anyone has it, please post the e-mail address of people at ABCNEWS.com to send it to. (BTW, also sent it to legal@redhat.com :))
o ody.html
==============================
I'd like to inform you of a gross error in an article posted today on ABCNews.com:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/m
Quote:
"This looks like an alarmingly high number in comparison with Solaris' 34 or NetBSD's 10, but it is significantly less than the 122 racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes (their 2000 count stands at 47)"
Truth:
As Mr. Moody explained earlier, there exist different vendors who distribute Linux. Examples include Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, and Slackware. BugTraq counts security holes in each Linux distribution independently. In 1999 they counted 38 holes in Red Hat, 10 in Slackware, 21 in SuSE, and 29 in the Debian distribution [1].
Some security holes only affect a specific Linux distibution, and some security holes affect many distributions. For example, Red Hat might suffer from hole "A", but SuSE users might not be effected. SuSE might suffer from security hole "B" while Red Hat does not. Both SuSE and Red Hat distributions might suffer from security hole "C". This is very similar to the way sometimes Windows 2000, NT, 98, and 95 suffer from the same security holes, while other times the holes are dependent to a particular version
BugTraq also counts the total number of security holes in all Linux distributions. This means that in the previous case, we would have holes "A", "B", and "C" for a total of three security holes. Hole "C" would not be counted twice even though it is found in two distributions. This is where Mr. Moody did not bother to get his facts straight. He takes the total number of security holes found in all Linux distributions (84), adds them to the total number of security holes found in Red Hat (38, which were already counted in the previous number, 84), and comes up with the figure 122.
Therefore, the statement that there are "122 [security holes] racked up by Red Hat and the other Linuxes" is completely inaccurate. Minimally, the number 122 should be corrected to the real value, 84. I understand that this will completely undermine Mr. Moody's thesis that "Linux is... the worst operating system", since it clearly shows that all Linux distributions -- taken collectively -- have fewer security holes than Windows NT (99).
However, it is misleading to use the collective statistic of 84 security bugs for all Linux distributions. A user installs a single Linux distribution at a time. Thus, even if a user chose install the Linux distribution with the most security holes (RedHat, with 38), that user would be susceptable to less than 40% of the security vulnerabilities to which a user with Windows NT would be susceptable, speaking quantitatively.
Ironically, the very report to which Mr. Moody refers [1] clearly identifies Windows NT as the most vulernable operating system for both 2000 and 1999. In 2000, it has nearly three times the number of secutiry vulnerabilities as the nearest non-Microsoft operating system.
I believe that the article's gross inaccuracies and Mr. Moody's flagerantly misleading statements warrant a full retraction of the article.
References:
[1] "BUGTRAQ Vulnerability Database Statistics"
http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats.html
Took our sysadmin a while(1-2months) to figure out the cause. And even if a fix was issued by microsoft fairly quickly there were many variants of this(opening port 139) which all needed a separate fix. And of course you'd actually have to install the fixes for them to be effective. I think you'd have to go to sp5 to have all the problems fixed..
I remember that if our schools computer lab was full we'd telnet to a server with oob-program installed and crash few computers at random(sysadmin only bothered to install the fixes on the server). After this happened few times those people would usually leave and we could claim the computers(this was a highschool so nothing too important going on).
...MSFT shareholder? :)
Should not "Bad" be his middle name? :^P
If you liked this Moody (heh) article, check this one out.
Apparently Fred Moody has pissed off more than just the Linux crowd.
This quote is particularly interesting:
Since when did America's scientists lose their senses of humor? I have long experience in readers misinterpreting my prose, motives and morals, but I'm consistently surprised at being taken far more seriously than I take myself. Thus, "Shame on you for fearmongering! You have needlessly frightened many thousands of people with your writing," has me succumbing to grandiose fantasies about the size of my audience.
What planet is this guy FROM? He's writing on the web site of one of the "big three" major US TV networks! This guy needs to get his head examined.
rLowe
----- rL
methinks taco needs to get some nads and just not post shit he knows is BS.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Actually, the OOB attack (aka WinNuke) didn't have anything to do with icmp, but sending a mal-conformed packet to the NT-DNS service (to crash it), or to the Windows Network Service, to tank the entire machine..
I don't have the spec in front of me, but it involved informing the machine that the next bit was priority.. which never came.. machine chases tail and falls on its ass.
If you base your assessment on the number of factual inaccuracies and misleading biased claims in the authors articles and divide by the number of readers you arrive at the inescapable conclusion that Fred Moody is the worst journalist since records began.
I'm not sure who should be more ashamed, Moody because he used to work for Microsoft or Microsoft because they once employed this idiot.
People express random and silly opinions. That's fine (it's always been like that). But those people who work for the biggest companies get their random, silly, uninformed opinions heard.
The only times I'm aware of ABC.com news.com msnbc.com suck.com slate.com salon.com etc are when Slashdot talks about them. Why should we pay them ANY mind at all? Why not have an article that says "Michael Low thinks that Windows 98 should have a different backgoround color"?
CT: your first instinct was right: don't bother with this crap. Don't bother ME witht his crap.
Send a complaint to ABC and let them know how incompetent this guy is!
http://abcnews.go.com/service/H elp/abc_contactus.html.
That's the DOD, and they don't qualify any OS as 'secure', they qualify a certain system configuration as secure. Good thing you didn't post that. In that case 'secure' meant: 1) No network, 2) No floppy, and 3) Locked box (duh on that last one.)
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Linux bugs are found fast and fixed fast. If you're sys admin on a box that matters then you're going to have to pay attention to stay ahead of the script kiddies but that's the case whatever you run.
Linux gets a lot of bugs reported because it evolves very quickly and stuff gets released (and used) when it isn't out of beta.
Using Linux isn't an alternative to working hard at sys admin and using your brain.
In truth, neither is using NT, though MS would like you to believe that it is.
There was a reference to this anti-Moody rant; it seems that ol' Fred has had a reputation as a Microsoft shill for some time now.
It was also pointed out that Moody seems to have arrived at his Linux bug-counts by adding together the Red Hat and Linux Aggregate counts -- meaning that Red Hat bugs were counted twice. Counted correctly, NT has more Bugtraq entries than Linux.
Does that make NT the worst OS of all time?
At last count, 86 pages and growing.
So what if there are a large number of bugs reported? Sounds like they have an agenda AGAINST getting bugs found and fixed. Currently, it is used as a bad mark against any OS to have a bug reported. I would rather have the bugs reported so that they can be fixed, than to have them go unreported and unaddressed.
... sk8hard posted his addy as 'fmoody@seattleweekly.com'..
seattleweekly? Where the hell do you think that is?
Who butters his bread? Who subscribes to his publication? Who contributes to the taxbase in his community and provides dollars for city services, education, etc? Who patronizes his publication's sponsors and provides for a pleasant civic environment (in theory: haven't been there in 15 years)?
No shit he doesn't like Linux.. It threatens his community!
If he had balls (or a clue: he may not know he's compromised!) he'd admit it.. If he's lucky, he's an acolyte of the Redmondian Illuminati.. I bet he's just a stooge, a patsy, a clueless tool..
<quote src='gandhi_struggle.txt'>
Your Working Boy,
After a bit of searching I found his e-mail address fmoody@seattleweekly.com, or you can go the the ABC mailer page at http://abcnews.go.com /sections/tech/FredMoody/mail_moody.html.
So the problem is that you ran a default OS installation on a public address space. Sounds like you don't know how to admin boxes on the 'net. You never run any OS with all the default services turned on... not only is that asking for trouble but shows how little real world experience you have in admining servers.
F /...
Locking down a typical unix install takes about 10 minutes... including the compilation of ssh. Learn how to do it, its fricken easy.
---
Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
Anyone even thinking of sending mail should read the Advocacy HOWTO, particularly the part about canons of conduct, before doing it. Moody made a lot of hay in a previous column about how rude and abusive the Linux crowd can be when he defends Microsoft.
Don't make the bad press even worse by giving him a mailbox full of fresh bile, which he can then turn into next week's column.
A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities. - Linux Advocacy HOWTO
Actually ping of death and OOB to port 139, more commonly known as WinNuke, are differnt things.
OOB data is supposedly "urgent" data that should be looked at first, IIRC. Send some of that to port 139 on a Win9X (don't remember if it affected NT) box and it BSOD's and you need to reboot to get network connectivity back. That they did not fix quickly, I remember using that on IRC users for months.
Also IIRC ping of death affected Linux too, but was fixed very quickly.
--
90% OF DESKTOP USERS ARE NOT GOING TO USE LINUX. This article plays upon one of the dumber arguments for Windows VS. Linux, as opposed to what the user may want. If you dislike microsoft, like commands lines and lots of typing, and major stability, use Linux. If you like being able to use most commercial software when it is released, do not care about crashes, and like to keep up to date on computing hardware, use Windows. Granted, these are not full arguments, but this guy just penned the article as if he was 30 minutes away from the deadline. All the wrong reasons. Nothing but tripe.
Actually, M$'s marketing people are smarter than that...they'd say "Wev got fewer bugs than..."
:-)
They're usually pretty good with that grammar stuff.
They would probably say "We've got fewer bugs than..."
Indeed, they are good with the grammar stuff.
: )
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
It's pretty much granted that any operating system that is used will have bugs. It's just one of those things that people deal with. How someone goes about dealing with those issues is where Linux and Windows differ. On the windows side, there is no way to fix these issues on your own except for waiting for Microsoft to post a service pack to fix all those badies that are messing with your computer. With Linux I have the option to go into the source fix them myself in the amount of time I am willing to invest in the matter. In the end I would much rather have an operating system where their might be more bugs but they are fixed in a shorter amount of time than one with a supposedly fewer bugs that are never fixed.
I think Fred forgot to look at the other side of the coin.
1. Any OPEN SOURCE software will have MORE bugs discovered.
2. Which means lesser bugs to fight with when lives depend on it.
3. How are NT bugs discovered ? Only when something breaks or only when people try brute forcing a DLL to crash. Linux is like a DES code which need not be cracked... the Key is widely available. Any OS which is closed is like a locked pandora's box almost ready to explode.
4. NT is tightly coupled OS, if something breaks then it effects almost every aspect of the server (usually) which is unlike Linux in which most of the bugs going to bugtraq are specific application specific bugs, most of which isn't even installed and arn't related to anything else on the server.
my 2 cents...
rkt
that bugtraq lists more bugs for linux... is the fact that we like to keep NT bugs to ourselves.
Bob: "Dang, the NT server crashed again!"
You: "Wow, that thing is unstable, we should replace it with linux"
A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat...
Yea, Linux sucks, Windows Sucks, all OSs suck, who cares. The article sent many Slashdotters in a mad frenzy to their web site. Just like when someone says that Windows sucks, all the windows people run to that site. Slashdot gains too, all of us weenies rushing in here to make a comment that really doesn't matter get more banners flashed in front of us....
It's a game of mind control and you lost.
We all know that there are idots out there but posting this artical on /. is just very high level flamebait.
Well, at least with Linux, with those bugs listed, I can fix it myself because the source code is available. But Microsoft's OS, man the bugs are listed and you have to wait for a long time for the bugs to be fixed. Heck, Microsoft might not even fix those bugs. Just look at how Back Orifice and tools like that. The issue is still not yet addressed. I won't be surprised if CODC releases a version for Win2000 and Microsoft ignores it
Take-off every
As Linux receives more press, more users try it out and experiment with it. Unfortunately, this creates a culture clash in the Linux community. Windows users (as most of these new converts are) pay for software and expect tech support; there is no other interaction with the developer. You give them money, they give you help. The protocol is part of the DOS/Windows culture. Even in shareware, most authors will only provide tech support to registered, paying users. The Linux community does not work that way.
Linux (and all associated software) originally was written by programmers for other programmers. Since nearly all of the users were also developers in some way or another, the community was ideal for the free (think beer and speech) exchange of ideas. Programmers are used to digging through sparse documentation and cryptic source code files to find the answers to their questions. When completely stumped, they can at least phrase their question precisely in terms meaningful to other programmers, making it much easier to answer. Thus, everyone was able to use each other's tools with little or no burden on the developer, and in turn, made their own programs available.
The shifting profile of the Linux user now upsets the balance. No longer a Unix programmer, the new Linux user has a pretty good sense of how computers work, learned about computers on a Windows machine, and does not know how to program fluently. Such a user is probably baffled by the confusion and chaos that surrounds Linux development.
--
You are a fucking moron.
Obviously, most people here would regard this as a troll. If someone posted this under a discussion, it would be mod'ed down and ignored (rightly).
The only possible use of this information is knowing the right responses to these statements when your PHB, who is victimized by this FUD, tells you that your *nix of choice isn't acceptable.
Tracking an OS by the number of bugs sounds nice to some people; It's an easy way to quantify how problematic an OS is. However, the real issue here is turnaround time. When a new exploit is discovered, how long does it take for a fix to come out. (I.E. how long are we vulnerable to the script kiddies)
Personally, I would rather download the 'patch of the day', and be as secure as possible, rather that a service pack every 6 months+ and be secure for aprox 2 days a year.
Doesn't it strike this guy that for each of those 99 NT bugs documented, there are 999 more that will never be found before they bite some sysadmin because NT is closed-source ? Doesn't it also strikes him that NT users have to wait, and sometimes pay, for Microsofts service packs to get the problem fixed, where Linux users enjoy (or create themselves) the fix straightaway ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
... We'd still have OS/2! IBM's marketing droids need to be SHOT DEAD, and burned in effigy.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Many technical journalists have been writing books on technical subjects. Wearing these titles as a badge of honor, they get increased prestige within the mainstream technical media-a-go-go. Are these technical gurus really technical, or are they blowing smoke?
Different Shades of Blue
"Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality." is the tagline that follows Fred Moody's well throught out and researched works of literature--a sort of "in your face" style bio. Just so he knows that you know that he knows what he's talking about.
After all, if he wasn't in the digital know, he wouldn't be published, or would he? News from Amazon's sales rank, a service of Online Book Giant Amazon.com tells a completely different story.
Amazon Sales Stats
Amazon.com keeps a running tally of their most popular books, from the worst in trash romance, to the best in literature, Amazon serves as the ultimate resource in determining how your favorite author rates among his peers.
Take, for instance, "The Official Three Stooges Encyclopedia : The Ultimate Knuckleheads Guide to
Stoogedom", it sold 3.75 as many copies as Moody's "I Sing the Body Electronic". That means it's 3.75 times better.
Techical books can't compare with madcap hijinx? "Using MS-DOS 6.22" has is supporting 4.67 more wobbly desks than Moody's "The Visionary Position", and DOS is better than "I Sing the Body Electronic" by a whopping multiple of 17.5.
Somone thought there wasn't enough idiots freefalling to their death or being rescued by National Guardsmen, and "The Complete Idiot's Gude to Rock Climbing" was born. Guess what Moody? That author is almost 10 times as talented as you.
All that aside, though, one conclusion is inescapable: A book which prompted my English Lit professor to laugh a girl out of class, "Jonathan Livingston Seagull : A Story", is 258 times as good as the year Moody spent with Microsoft. Drag Harry Potter into this and his ranking quickly approaches infinity.
As Fred Moody is finding out, it's a lot easier to masquerade as a great writer than it is to go out there and be one.
Microsoft's Windows NT is the runaway market leader
The runaway market leader huh? Ever seen the Netcraft surveys? Which server has over 60% of of the pie? Which OS(es) does this server happen to run on? Which OS is the internet based on? Which has been around longer? Which one is actually a multiuser system?
Even if there are more Linux bugs, one must look at this: There are about 5 distributions of Windows (3.x, 95, 98, NT, 2000). Yet in Linux, there are more distributions (SuSE, Red Hat, Debian, etc, etc). Now, of course, they're all based on the same kernel, but that's not the only factor. The GUIs are different. In SuSE 6.4, there are over 10 GUIs, like KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, etc. Just something to think about.
"For success, it is essential you have Thunderball Fists." "I can have such a thing?" "That's right. Thunderball Fists."
As Linux zealots are beginning to find out, it's a lot easier to masquerade as a better product than it is to go out and be one.
Penguinistas have known this for years. But enough about Windows...
--
Someone you trust is one of us.
It would run like Hotmail on Win servers.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
I wrote out a long letter explaining what he got wrong, and got a "message returned, undeliverable" reply.
---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
who are the worst authors on the Internet? ;-)
- Bill -
I think it makes sense to have product version YYYY.MM.DD, that way there's no fudging, you know exactly when it was released, and when comparing it to another product you can tell which is the latest.
Of course, the latest from one company might use a year old kernel or something, so it's not really that great of a measure, but it's better than the current system where the numbers are absolutely meaningless instead of quasi-meaningless.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
First off, thats the title of this blatantly truth-twisting article. Is this a grown man or a teenager? Then at the very bottom of the page, it discloses: Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. A year with Microsoft? So he's either being paid off or was brainwashed, take your pick.
Now let's consider Mr. Moody's motivations in light of this information. To whom is he preaching? He's unlikely to persuade any Linux devotees to abandon their platform of choice. The number of Windows adherants actively considering defection to Linux is arguably so small that there's little poyback in preaching to them. Finally, the corporate geeks evaluating Linux as a server OS are vastly more knowledgeable than Mr. Moody on such topics and would see through his statistical subterfuge in a New York minute. So what's left in terms of motivation? It seems quite feasible that Mr. Moody's primary purpose was to raise a polemic so ludicrous that Slashdot couldn't help but take note of it, thereby generating a day's worth of "Slashdot effect" to bolster abc.com's hit rate. (I mean, after all, how many people do you know who turn to ABC first when they're looking for news online? I certainly don't.)
Until someone is able to propose an alternative motivation (other than the distinct possiblilty that Mr. Moody is, simply put, an ignorant putz), I will continue to believe that CmdrTaco's theory hits the nail right on the head. As Oscar Wilde put it, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Linux is experiencing a massive surge again in popularity. Now more than ever we are going to see anti-Linux propaganda! For one.. Microsoft has an internal bug list that does not get published. This is Microsoft doing this. Maybe we should target Microsoft driven web sites and demonstrate how unsecure thier OS is. Remember... SPOOF! OK Also now how about those of us who have multiple operating systems, I am getting a copy of 2000 just for hacking on my LAN. And then I will publish my LEGAL exploits on my web site. This article pisses me off, I know how far off base this is. Also a bogus writeup was in the Providence Journal. They have NO CLUE. later!
Out of Band. Ping of death in common parlance.
:)
Something along these lines: Take one one vanilla NT4 box (ie. without service packs), send a 65535 byte ping, gasp in wonderment as your 64K packet *plus*its'*header* overflows a 64K buffer in the kernel and bangs it over in one fell swoop.
They fixed that pretty quick.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Slashdot is mailbox! fmoody@seattleweekly.com
Nick
http://www.sk8hard.com
Nick http://Sk8hard.com - Open Source? Bah - Rollerblade.
Look at his past columns: WebTV: What's the Big Deal Apple's Slide Started with Jobs Microsoft's Greed is Good Place Your Bets on Microsoft More than that, look at the way he flip-flops on Apple. In this column he says Jobs will kill Apple. "History will not be kind to Apple, which is destined to be remembered as successor to Xerox in more ways than one. [...] [they brought] Jobs back to finish off the suicide he had commenced some 15 years before." Then later on in this column: "Movie mogul, high-tech innovator -- can Steve Jobs screw up anything?" Frankly I don't see why he has a job as a technology columnist at all.
Sue me for calling you an asshole. How accurate is the reporting here at slashdot? Not very accurate.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If they have linux(aggr), why not windows(aggr)?
For 1999, windows(aggr)= sumation_of_bugs(win3.1+win95+win98+winNT)=237
And that's without aggregating the different service patches for NT and versions of win9x (95A,B,C etc.), So the true figure is probably even higher.
The title is "Oh, hah hah", and that couldn't be meant as a sarcastic, humorless laugh preceding a sarcastic, humorless, informative comment.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
-Elendale (what's the use of posting when there are already 700 comments??? The world will never know...)
Karma burn coming
As i meta-troll again
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
His story on the trial is almost comical in and of itself. Its surreal to read something like that in a big news place like ABC. Essentially he accuses the judge of being in league with the government. Such an accusation is hardly a light one, but he just sort of tosses it out there. His article is amazing, surpassing even Gates himself in its audacity.