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Enhanced WiFi Security Patch For FreeBSD

Dan writes "Roland van Laar has a new, significant wi-fi patch for FreeBSD 5.1 and higher. The patch, available for download and testing, blocks clients with an empty or 'ANY' ssid and disables ssid broadcasting using the underlying firmware feature. SSID (Service Set ID) is used to identify wireless clients to a wireless / wired gateway. Wireless devices from the same manufacturer generally ship with the same default SSID. A beacon is a type of packet/frame that contains the SSID of a network. It is used to sync clocks on client devices and to make it easy for new network clients to see what networks are available. Preventing others from using your ssid is a means (although not foolproof!) of securing your wireless network."

59 comments

  1. Trollkore is fucking DYING!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    SHIT ON ME! It's official - Slashdot has fucking confirmed: Trollkore is dying

    Yet another cunting bombshell hit the community of Trollkore asswipes when Slashdot recently confirmed that Trollkore accounts for less than a fraction of one single puny fucking percent of all trolls. Coming hot on the heels of the latest Slashdot survey which plainly states that Trollkore has lost more fucking fp's to the GNAA, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Trollkore is ingesting itself backwards, disappearing up its very own shitter, as fittingly exemplified by beeing fucking owned in this recent Slashdot story.

    You don't need to be a cock-sucking Kreskin to predict Trollkore's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Trollkore faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any fucking future at all for Trollkore because that sorded, shit-filled, mutated testicle of a troll group is dying. Things are looking very bad for Trollkore. As many of us are already aware, Trollkore continues to lose first posts. Red ink splashes across the accounting documents like a series of exploding bloodfarts. Trollkore munches the most ass of them all, having lost 93% of its core trollers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Trollkore cuntwipes Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Trollkore is dying and its rotting corpse smells worse than a maggot, vomit, shit and piss cocktail.

    Due to the troubles of those arseholes at Slashdot, abysmal trolls and so on, Trollkore showed themselves to be a bunch of retarded tossers, went out of business and were taken over by GNAA who troll another type of trolls. Now Trollkore is also a miserable failure, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house... pathetic.

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    Fact: Trollkore WILL FUCKING LOOSE THE UPCOMING FP-BATTLE!!.

    1. Re:Trollkore is fucking DYING!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      LOL

      Excellent work!

    2. Re:Trollkore is fucking DYING!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Trollkore is mopping the floor with the GNAA. How embarrassing for you.

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  3. Dem Bones Dem Bones Dem Bones by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    TEHRAN, Dec. 27 -- The death toll from the devastating earthquake that shook the southern Iranian city of Bam for 12 seconds on Friday morning rose to 25,001, city officials said Saturday, and confirmed that BSD was among the dead.

    The interior minister, Abdolvahed Moussavi Lari, said on state television from Bam: "The city is ruined. More than 70 percent of it is destroyed. And BSD was crushed, there is no hope of survival"

    On Saturday, the tens of thousands of injured people crowded field hospitals or lay helplessly in the streets, while survivors and rescuers dug frantically trying in vain to save the crushed form of *BSD. Aftershocks jolted the area, shaking down the crumbled remains of the city's low-rise clay-tile, brick and concrete-block dwellings, which was now BSD's tomb.

  4. Lamenting the dead - What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    The End of FreeBSD

    [ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

    When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

    Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

    FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

    It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

    So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

    Discussion

    I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

    From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

    There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

    Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

    Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

    Shouts

    To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

    To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It

  5. Born to Lose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    What We Can Learn From BSD
    By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

    Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

    Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

    These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

    As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

    Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

    The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

  6. 6 posts and none are about BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Now what does that tell you bitch?
    BSD IS FUCKING DEAD, NOBODY FUCKING CARES ABOUT THIS ROTTING CORPSE

    Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
    Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
    Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

  7. SSIDs? by Trbmxfz · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I suppose it's good news that there are people who do care about Wifi security.

    However, I'm wondering: how much security does SSID-based blocking add (could individuals forge SSIDs, or would they have to be organizations with cash and determination?)? Shouldn't all connections on a wireless network use a strong encoding (SSH or such)?

    How do real people provide and use services that are normally insecure (NFS comes to mind) over Wifi?

    1. Re:SSIDs? by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative
      How do you mean "forge" SSIDs?

      An SSID is just a small text string, typically a short word, used to identify networks. Typically you can ask your PC to list available networks and it'll provide you with a list of SSIDs, the joke being that most of them will have the names "DEFAULT", "BELKIN", etc. You configure your wireless hub to have a particular name, and then you'll be able to easily select yours. If you hide it, as the article suggests (not a particularly original feature, I'd guess most wireless hubs allow you to hide SSIDs, mine does), then it's still useful as you manually can tell your PC which network to connect to (eg enter the name) and it'll still find it despite the fact you've hidden the SSID.

      If someone was to try to masquerade their network as yours - say, give their network the same name as yours so that you might connect to it by accident - then they could do so, but any other wireless security you'd have switched on would automatically defeat it (within reason - WEP, for example, is probably the most popular 802.11 security technology, but it's infamously insecure.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:SSIDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant
      Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

      Fact: *BSD is dead

    3. Re:SSIDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      _d8b____________________d8b_______d8,
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      `?88P'`88b`?888P'`?88P'`88b`?88P'`88b

    4. Re:SSIDs? by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 2, Informative

      Basically the way real people who care about security use Wifi securely is that they don't treat is like it's secure.

      The simplest implementation of that is to design your network under the assumption that any Wifi portions are about as secure as the general Internet.

      In other words, stick the Wifi network on it's own outside your firewalled "internal" network and use a VPN client to connect your laptop or whatever to the real network. The gateway for the Wifi network would in this case usually be a firewall/VPN server.

      If someone gets on the Wifi network, they can't do anything with your encrypted packets and they can't get anywhere past the firewalled connection to anything else.

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    5. Re:SSIDs? by jbplou · · Score: 1

      For business this solution is good. For home use wep is good enough. if you rotate your ssid and wep keys you will be fine, most of your neighors probably aren't nerds enough to hack past wep. Plus wardrivers will move on to the next access point which most likely has the ssid broadcasting to linksys or belkin or something like that. but if I were really concerns about security I would probably setup 3 or 4 fake access points to confuse would be intruders.

    6. Re:SSIDs? by MrChuck · · Score: 1
      For home use wep is good enough.

      Then "for home use, no encryption is good enough".

      There IS no security in WEP.

      Presume it.

      It's as secure as leaving your key under the mat and hoping your neighbor doesn't notice (ok break onto my LAN and you don't get much (vs. the house)). But telling people that WEP is "ok" is just irresponsible.

      That said, I generally use SSH and the only cleartext on my wireless net is webbrowsing.

      OS X, Unix and even that other OS all support IPSec. PPTP is even better.

      Bad dot'er. No food pellets.

    7. Re:SSIDs? by jbplou · · Score: 1

      Like I said for home use WEP is good enough, most of my neighbors would not even know how to connect to my router if I gave them the web key.

    8. Re:SSIDs? by MrChuck · · Score: 1
      Here's to hoping you block outbound port 25, don't use common (1819) addresses and don't use DHCP.

      It just sucks when someone with not tons of effort can send a billion spams out your box one afternoon.

    9. Re:SSIDs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      In a startling turn of events today, a previously little-known fact came into the public eye: "*BSD Sux0rs". This came as a complete surprise to the BUWLA, or BSD Users With Large Assholes, as they previously thought that *BSD 0wned. "You see, even though I have never contributed code to any BSD project, I thought it was my duty to be a big asshole to others which don't use the OS I do, because it just 0wnz.", said one FreeBSD user. "Now that I know it sux0rs, though, I have to go find something else to be an asshole about." One notorious OpenBSD fanatic known as WideOpen, told reporters, "I have to kill myself. This isn't how it was supposed to happen. My BSD has always been the best, and shouting that opinion in other people's faces at every chance I got has been my only hobby. It was all I ever did. It was what got me out of bed in the morning. Now I have to die. I will jam my bedpost up my ass until I hit my brain. It is the only way to go: BSD style." In the volatile world of operating systems anything can happen. "At least we don't sux0r as much as Windows users", BigAzz, a relatively well-known NetBSD user said. "Screaming things in people's faces is my calling. Now I need to scream that BSD sux0rs. What a sad world. At least I won't kill myself like those uber-asshole OpenBSD guys. They are just way over the top. Or were, at least." Nobody knows for sure what the future holds for the state of operating systems, but with Netcraft confirming the sux0r status, *BSD users all over the world will have to stick something else up their asses from now on or risk looking even more gay than they used to.

  8. FreeBSD's final Christmas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Outside this frigid tumble-down shack, dry leaves before the wild winter hurricane fly. Here within, at the corner by the cold hearth rests an empty stool. A crutch without a master stands perched against the wall. These forlorn and lonely objects serve as mute reminders of their departed owner, FreeBSD.

    This crutch and vacant stool have become orphans, not unlike the now dead FreeBSD. No longer will FreeBSD hobble about on its cripple's crutch. Like the empty hearth, and the vacant stool, FreeBSD lies cold and still. FreeBSD's corpse, lifeless beneath frozen earth and December snows, will see no more Christmas cheer. No, there will be no Christmas ever again for FreeBSD, for FreeBSD is dead.

    Goodbye, FreeBSD. The pain of life forever stilled, sleep for all eternity in that long winter's nap. Fade gently into Earth's frozen bosom where in dreams even cripples walk and blind men see.

  9. Card support? by utlemming · · Score: 1

    This is a great addition nontheless. If you can hide your SID then some warfaring punk can't find you easy. But then again you probably are using WEP or WPA or whatever the encyrption of the week is, so that is a nonissue. Now, I would be impressed if more wireless cards were supported. I am getting sick and tired of using my windows machine to down load my FreeBSD software toys.

    --
    The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
    1. Re:Card support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole.

    2. Re:Card support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bend over, bitch.

      my manfat's heading your way!

    3. Re:Card support? by stox · · Score: 2, Informative

      You might want to take a look at FreeBSD 5-Current. The framework for loading NDIS drivers has recently been added. That may be the solution to your problem. I have not used it yet, myself, so I can't comment on how well it does the job.

      --
      "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  10. A step in the right direction by RubberDuckie · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'll have to give this a try. While it does not make WiFi secure, it is a small step to making it a bit more secure. At least this way, if I'm not using my wireless network (which is most of the time), it's not broadcasting SSID's for people to sniff.

    On a side note, it's a real shame that a useful article has garnered mostly trolls and flamebait as responses. Sigh...

    1. Re:A step in the right direction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Fact: *BSD is dying
  11. *sniff* That was beautiful! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
  12. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    20528
  13. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    18510
  14. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    6000
  15. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    23055
  16. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    19327
  17. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    11917
  18. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    9313
  19. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    9883
  20. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    1210
  21. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    27127
  22. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    17285
  23. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    9445
  24. FreeBSD 5.2 is doomed to fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in the day, around FreeBSD 2.2.8, it was a very nice operating system. However, when RELENG_5 was branched, a lot of wrong decisions were made, most of them by people with zero clue about how to implement proper SMP (e.g. John Baldwin). Matt Dillon tried to fix the situation, but all he got in response was a commit bit suspension, which later lead to his expulsion.

    You can thank assholes like: Poul-Henning Kamp (POT, KETTLE, BLACK), Greg Lehey, Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mark Murray and Bill Fumerola for kicking him out and making sure that, thanks to overengineering, RELENG_5 will never work.

    Further proof, FreeBSD recently went 100% dynamic to allow the use of NSS switch system. John Dyson, who did most of the VM work back in the day, pointed out how wrong this decision was. Dillon also jumped in and offered a better solution. What he got as reward was Scott Long telling him to go away. Listen Scott, YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT. Not only you don't even know how to quote, but you also managed to fuck the 5.1-R isos twice. I wonder how can you be in re@, that sure has lead to the piss-poor quality of the last 2 or 3 releases.

    FreeBSD 5.2 is currently in the RC phase, but it has a very important showstopper that needs to be ironed out before it's released. Activating softupdates during install is a sure way to kernel panic. RELENG_5 is doomed, and will never work. Install DragonFlyBSD while you can.

    Joseph Mallett, an ex-committer.

    7913
  25. At least the BSD community doesn't sue its own. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    At least the BSD community doesn't have a BSD company suing BSD providers.

    Unlike GNU/Linux, where a company called Caldera IPOed based on 'selling a GNU/Linux fork', took the IPO money, bought up the SYS V UNIX IP rights, then started suing other members of the GNU/Linux 'community' once they figured out the business model for selling yet another GNU/Linux fork was not going to get them any $$$. With 'leading community members' like that, how can GNU/Linux be expected to beat Microsoft if they spend all their time beating up on each other?

    1. Re:At least the BSD community doesn't sue its own. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      What We Can Learn From BSD
      By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

      Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

      Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

      These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

      As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

      Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

      The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

  26. My personal experience in the FreeBSD world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.

    The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.

    Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).

    If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).

    You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few o

  27. My personal experience in the FreeBSD world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.

    The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.

    Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).

    If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).

    You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few o

  28. My personal experience in the FreeBSD world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.

    The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.

    Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).

    If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).

    You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few o

  29. My personal experience in the FreeBSD world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    I've been an avid follower of the developments in FreeBSD for around 5 years now, so my overview of the entire history of "glue that binds" FreeBSD together isn't complete. That said, I've come to be a bit disappointed at how events in the last 18 months or so seem to be pushing the project in a direction that has made things more difficult, instead of more successful, that has shown distain for experience and quality and made FreeBSD a platform for large ego's to push their personal projects down everyone's throat.

    The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.

    Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).

    If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).

    You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few o

  30. Patches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    No matter how much you try to patch it, there is a gaping hole left where FreeBSD's heart used to be. Now crows peck out its eyes, and the stench of death lays upon the land.

    You fanatics, let BSD be. You come with your rakes and shovels to uncover that which has died long, long ago.

    1. Re:Patches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      So, why do you hang around the cemetary with us? Do you secretly hope that we can resurrect BSD, just like Willow did with Buffy? You yourself must be either a secret lover of BSD, or just a fuckwit for standing around the grave site long after the funeral has past. Get with BSD or get a life.

    2. Re:Patches by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Fact: *BSD is dead

  31. Security is missing the point. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Robust anonymous P2P across a mobile/fixed wireless mesh networks are the future of the net and the old net can connect or die. Intel has hyped this new trend as bigger than the net, they also claim the can put they will put an xbox in a PDA. Given a little bit of time the telcos and the RIAA will die the same obsolete death. At the end of Q2 next year every new PC will ship with WiMax on board and this will do it.
    I remember reading the remarks of someone is dismay over discovering that search engines were being used for info searches and not to locate websites. Of course, the Internet was alive and well before all this extraneous marketing fluff. Its number one application is not business or how much money can be made, in fact a key application may be ridding the public of may organizations that were not in its interest. The next net is bigger and it will not involve telco sponsored back bones and all that stuff. The net belongs to the public- sort of an immenient domain arguement but it is defacto.
    The day will come when people buy that mainframe node in a pda, and there won't be room along the way for greedy snooping relics.

  32. Wireless Leiden - the Why :-) by dirkx · · Score: 1
    Some people question the need for this; just some background as to why we in Wireless Leiden need this patch :-)

    The issue is that througout the city we have omni antenna's - where -anyone- can associate with - and directional antennas which provide the interlinks between nodes (although the network covers a medium sized city - we use no copper; all interlinks are wireless).

    On these interlinks we only want node-to-node traffic.

    As the network is totally open (no username, password or any thing) - we have no easy way to educate our users to use the right 'omni' antenna's, other than descriptive names. I.e. we do not catch them early enough.

    So often people associate with the interlinks rather than the omni (if a beam passes over their house) - and then complain, or are surprized, that DHCP does not give them an address.

    This problem is made worse by some windows userinterface tools which will automatically re-select networks based on some internal metric.

    So what we wanted was to 'hide' the interlinks. So that clueless users are not accidentally ensnared. Rolands patch does exactly this.

    Dw

  33. I love FreeBSD. by readpunk · · Score: 1

    I love FreeBSD, but I have a question. When on earth is anyone going to recognize the fact that there is a serious problem with the wi driver for dwl650 pcmcia cards? So many of us have them and yet the current driver for it, after a small amount of usage causes a full system lock up. Anyone have any info on that? I'd like to see the drivers for widely used software perfected before setting up default security for those who don't know how to on their access points.

    The question beg's to be asked, shouldn't someone capable of installing and using FreeBSD be knowledgeable enough to secure their wifi ap?

    --

    ./revolution
  34. Elegy for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Elegy For *BSD


    I am a *BSD user
    and I try hard to be brave
    That is a tall order
    *BSD's foot is in the grave.

    I tap at my toy keyboard
    and whistle a happy tune
    but keeping happy's so hard,
    *BSD died so soon.

    Each day I wake and softly sob
    Nightfall finds me crying
    Not only am I a zit faced slob
    but *BSD is dying.

  35. I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

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    # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) # If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

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    # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) # If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) # If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

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    # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) # If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole
    # Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. # Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. # Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. # Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. # Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, b

  36. I WANT TO STICK MY PEE PEE IN YOUR POO POO HOLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll



    I want to stick my pee pee in your poo poo hole

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  37. 10 points about BSD that remain unchallenged... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    1. You can not play games on it.
    2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
    3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
    4. There is no support available for it.
    5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
    6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
    7. You have to compile everything and know C.
    8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
    9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
    10. It is dying.

  38. Excellent Troll Dude! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    We need to see more of this good shit in the BSD section.

  39. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dead

  40. We Remember Anno Domini 2003 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    We must report with a heavy heart that Bob "I'm still dead" Hope has gone on to join the "B" team. As you all may know, BSD has been part of the "B" team for quite some time.

    The Year of Our Lord 2003 has been a particularly bad year for the "B"s,

    • Bob Hope
    • Buddy Ebsen
    • Buddy Hackett
    • Barry White
    • BSD
    This honored list of dead is but a small token of adieu from the many fans of the deceased.
    These dead were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.
  41. How SSIDs work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Access points broadcast beacon frames, which contain some information about the AP, including the name (SSID). If there are multiple APs in range, the SSID helps you identify and select the right one.

    Now, what the patch does is hide the SSID in the beacon frames, and blocks clients with SSID "ANY". This prevents clients from automatically associating with the AP with best signal quality.

    Hiding the SSID doesn't help a lot, because advanced wardriving tools like Kismet will still pick up the network. It keeps script kiddies out though, Netstumbler (Windows wardriver) won't see the AP.