Slashback: Documentary, Directory, FUD

Slashback tonight brings some updates and clarifications to previous stories, including news of the successful production of both a BBS documentary and an open-source directory. Read on for more!

I goof, therefore I am sorry. Many readers submitted rebuttals to the claim I repeated that an Israeli web portal was the first to give users 1GB email accounts; Protein Shake, for one, writes that Spymac has them beat. "Forget Google, forget Israel's web portal... 1 GB e-mail is already out there. At least a few weeks ago. From their site '1 GB e-mail account, 350 MB combined storage, personal blog, forum, gallery, auctions and more...'"

"And this was back when phone lines were just strings painted to resemble copper ..." Jason Scott writes "The BBS Documentary, announced on Slashdot nearly three years ago, has wrapped up filming. With over TWO HUNDRED interviews in the can, I've been spending a lot of my spare time (and not-so-spare time) editing, but I decided to put out the first of what will likely be a few trailers for it. Stop by and check out how I've spent the last few years. The Documentary will be released as a 3-DVD set later this year."

It's like Who's Who, only different. Another gargantuan effort completed on a different front: Tony Stanco writes with word that "The 910-page Open Source Reference Book is available for download."

The project was announced just over a year ago; considering the contents that's not a bad turnaround.

It's nearly enough to make one cynical. Alex Wolfe writes "In a move worthy of the Luddites, the New York City Council is quietly trying to ban the Segway . The Council has proposed a law that's technically a ban on motorized scooters, but Harris Siliver, founder of Citystreets, an urban improvement organization, says the NYC Department of Transportation is specifically targeting the electric, non-polluting Segway. Silver is joined in his opposition to the bill by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak."

Get out much? If you just can't get enough random flamebait, here's a small fix to follow the anti-Linux FUD spread earlier this month by Green Hills CEO Dan O'Dowd. InfoSec writes "This morning's Security Focus page had an article about Consumer Grade *nix. The writer of the article slams Linux for not having free automated updates, enabling services in default installations, and not warning users when they are using 'root'. Uhmm, I could be wrong, but hasn't Mandrake been doing that for quite some time?"

apt-get update seems to count as free updates to me (though those folks do take donations), and root-use warnings may not be perfectly applied, but they are found in various forms (depending on distro) at OS, WM, and application levels, including notices that certain tasks can only be run as root or other superuser. (I think it's Xchat that calls me "an idiot" when I've tried to run it as root.)

Comments

"non-poluting segway"

[Anonymous Coward]

non-poluting segway

Generating electricity still causes pollution, it just causes a lot less polution than a car.

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[kiltedtaco]

Have you ever been to any town in Europe? They've all had the same narrow streets for centuries, literaly.

I'm not rebuilding my city just to accomedate a segway.

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[blamanj]

Note that NYC is behind San Francisco, which has banned them already.

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[bottlebrushtree]

The ban was thanks to the work of Walk San Francisco, San Francisco's Pedestrian Advocacy Group.

WalkSF.org

The sidewalks are no place for a vehicle that goes as fast as a Segway. This means Bikes also.

For more information on why WalkSF helped get this law enacted check out

Walk SF's Segway Page

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[lawpoop]

How many European towns have you been to? A lot of them have been retrofitted to accomodate cars, bikes, trains, buses, trams, trollies, etc.

I think existing bike pathways, which you will find in a lot of European cities, will easily handle segway traffic.

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say the same thing about a bicycle. The way people think is essentially what it comes down to. Which means people who feel safer in their mobile forts (when they're not) and paranoid fools who think someone is going to intentionally run over their toes (when they won't) just need some reprogramming ;)

Re:"non-poluting segway"

[LauraScudder]

Most of the narrow streets are now pedestrian zones, and as the sibling post pointed out, the streets outside the old town all have bikelanes, sidewalks, and even clicking cross-walk buttons for the blind. I never saw so many blind people in my life as when I was in Germany, and I think its entirely because its so much easier for them to get out alone there.

SUSE

[Anthony Boyd]

The writer of the article slams Linux for not having free automated updates, enabling services in default installations, and not warning users when they are using 'root'.

SUSE gives me free updates via YAST, comes with all services disabled in the "minimal graphical install" default that I use (well, networkable services are not enabled, but things like cron are), and when I log in via root, the desktop is a red graphic with a pattern of large bombs all over it. Sound fairly perfect to me. The only other thing would be a warning at the command line for a non-GUI root login, and in fact I sorta get that, because the default for the root shell prompt is different.

1 Gb is possible right now

[Carlos Silva]

I don't know if everyone around here knows.. but if you create a Blogger account you can be one of the lucky ones to try out Gmail beta, even if you have some kind of problem in using it (tinfoil hat crowd :) it's always a Good Thing to try it out...
Until now.. it has been pretty good.. at least for me..

Re:1 Gb is possible right now

[Anonymous Coward]

i know this is off topic, but is it random? i registered an account, and I wasn't given the option or anything. Is there something you have to do to enable the beta trial? If it's random, do you know about how often it happens?

Re:1 Gb is possible right now

[Carlos Silva]

I think the more active your account is (number of posts?) the more chances you have.
When you're selected they show a pretty invitation when you login :)

If you speak Russian

[prostoalex]

Doesn't matter much for most of the Slashdotters, but if you happen to read Russian (or always wanted to learn that language), Yandex Mail, which is part of Yandex, Russia's largest Web portal and search engine, announced unlimited mail storage space with maximum letter size of 10 MB and unlimited attachments (as long as the message with all the attaches stays below 10 MB).

Basically, they will just keep buying more hard drives as you grow your message store.

OSS Reference: add your gov-relevant project

[persaud]

For submitting a new listing (free) for the next edition of the book, go here.

Re:Trailers in wma and quicktime??

[Fancia]

I think you've confused yourself a bit. The documentary is about BBSs, not open-source. The open-source thing was the directory.

Re:Shells would be so much better

[persaud]

Color coded prompt:

/etc/bashrc:

C_RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
C_GREEN="\ [\033[0;32m\]"
C_LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
C_R ESET="\[\033[0m\]"
PS1="\n$C_GREEN//\h$C_LIGHT_GR AY.\u $C_RESET\w> "

/root/.bashrc:

PS1="\n$C_GREEN//\h$C_RED.\ u $C_RESET\w> "

Re:Free, but not automatic

[runderwo]

Assign it to run at a random time, then repeat it weekly as a cron job called something obvious like weeklyupdate.

How about something obvious like cron-apt?

Another anti-fud website

[whoever57]

Grokshill is aimed at false claims made by reporters and analysts

warning: /. post is inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

"The writer of the article slams Linux for not having free automated updates"

The article specifically talks about Lindows (Linspire), not Linux distros in general.

Re:Shells would be so much better

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL twice from the log-on screen to get the traditional User/Pass prompt.

Re:Shells would be so much better

[persaud]

Color is good :-) Here are the others (cut spaces):

C_BROWN="\[\033[0;33m\]"
C_BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
C_PURPLE="\[\033[0;35m\]"
C_CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\] "
C_GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
C_WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\ ]"
C_YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"

C_LIGHT_BLUE="\[\ 033[1;34m\]"
C_LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"
C_LIG HT_PURPLE="\[\033[1;35m\]"
C_LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1; 31m\]"
C_LIGHT_GREEN="\[\033[1;32m\]"

My Entry in the Reference book... BAD FORMATING

[students]

My entry for the F4L Documentation Project got cut off! It looks like I don't know how to write complete sentances. It looks like the egovos.org web designer forgot to tell submitters what the character limit is for each field. New submitters, be warned!

Re:Why not use GNU/webmail?

[sumbry]

BSD has a lot to learn from GNU/Linux regarding security. There have been less exploits found in the BSDs, but we all know that more eyes leads to a more secure product. And I really refuse to believe that most people do not hack the source code. Every mum and dad has dreams every night of helping to further the GNU/Linux cause. If they dont, then they are teh sux0r and are lusers.

I honestly can't figure out if you're a troll, illinformated, or what... but nonetheless you really need to check out OpenBSD.

Know why the BSD's have a pretty good track record? It's not because people aren't hacking it (BSDs use alot of the same software and thus have the same exploits that Linux does), but rather it's due in large part to OpenBSD and their line by line code security audit.

Yup that's right, the OpenBSD guys audit all code before it's released, specifically looking for things like buffer exploits and the likes. When they're found, the results are shared w/the other BSDs and fixed.

Re:Free, but not automatic

[Nailer]

Within the first two hours of a Fedora or RHEL install, the Red Hat Netowrk services daemon will contact a server and begin flashing a red exclamation mark in the notification area of the desktop if there are updates available. If a user clicks it, they'll get updates - either free ones from a Fedora mirror if they're using Fedora or paid ones from Red Hat Network if they've brought EL.

This is default behavior.

Re:nuts, auto is a bad idea.

[peacefinder]

The whole point of free software is user control. Free software is big enough for you and I to agree to dissagree about it, you do things your way and I'll do them mine.

Fair enough, but I'm talking about default behavior, not required behavior.

Anyone running a development branch of anything can be assumed to know enough to disable the automatic updater. So can administrators of qualified systems. A new user of a free *nix cannot be assumed to know enough to get updates at all, so it seems to me it'd be right neighborly to help 'em out.

The dialup problem is a good point, but easily addressed. Have the auto update tool check to see what sort of connection the machine has to the internet, and give the user a range of appropriate options for dealing with a slow connection. (Or, just mimic the Fedora method described here.)

It'd be a relatively easy feature for many distros to add, it'd positively impact usability, and it'd demolish this particular FUD.