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"Enemies of Linux" Trying to Undermine OS?
Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
Jesus fucking christ people, it isn't that hard
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The enemy of my friend is my enemy's friend, or my friend's enemies are my friend's friends... Um, is this gonna be on the test?
1. S*O 2. *$
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Invisible enemies trying to sabotage an OS? This is starting to sound like paranoid fantasies, people.
I hate Halo and GTA. Sue me.
So who are these mysterious enemies of Linux?
Is it Mr. White of 42 Evergreen Terrace?
Perhaps the little old lady who lives across the road?
Or, almost inconceivably, the vicar's wife, Mrs. Candor?
Or, just perhaps, is this a thinly veiled attack against Microsoft?
Could it just be more FUD?
Why is /. not workin well with firefox on windoze? I have to reload it everytime I look at it. Co-workers have reported the same.
"They say that too many patches and we are not secure, or not enough patches and we are not addressing security well enough, but the arguments begin to sound specious."
What OS are they talking about? Sounds like my complaints with MS.
Three men walk into a bar. They all got concussions.
doesn't make them enemies.
Just very very very hostile.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Don't make your enemies happy.
Make up with your lover,
who's greedy to be back
in your good graces.
Daughter,
because you've taken anger to extremes,
you won't amount
to a hill of beans.
-Hla Stavhana
Let us not make a hill of beans for our enemies!
"Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation."
Well that's a new tactic...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Why the BSD people of course. Everyone knows the BSD triangle of NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are out to get Linux. BSD stands for BKill SDamn DPenguin. What other free OS is there that could feel threatened?
Someone you trust is one of us.
...trying to undermine Good Judgement!!
Linux doesn't need defending any more than anything else that is Good For You(tm).
If we still cant have consistant pasting between apps, I'd say we're our own biggest enemy. I've used linux since the 2.0 kernel days and even I still find it impossible to paste between different apps, especially with a different toolkit. Throw in an odd app like Mozilla and forget about it, you'll end up replacing your own clipboard with what you're trying to paste over, or pasting 3 lines into the url bar which happily takes newlines.
Why can't we just unite like all the good apps on windows, mac os, qnx, amiga.. and everything else with a real solid dev team?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Er, so when did Linux stop being an OS and start being a cult-like religion?
It's a f-ing operating system for god(s) sake people. It doesn't have enimies, it has competitors.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildl ife/penguins/index.shtml
Sheesh slashdot editors, at least do a simple google search first!
I know some of them.
They are IT consultans who are afraid of Linux, probably because they are afraid of loosing their job. They never see any potential in other OSes than MS Windows, probably because they don't want to.
They spread FUD all fucking day long, I'm soo fed up with it
These IT consultans are many, and they are everywhere
and rightfully so....i never liked linux as a desktop os, and never intend to use it as a server os.....so why should i like it if i really hate linux!!!!
"Holy rusted metal, Batman!"
Linux used to be like that little kid who mowed peoples lawn for next to nothing.. now the kid decided to start it's own business and has to deal with politics.
It's no real surprize that people want to get rid of it. If not for Linux we'd have a choice of two OS (Windows or OSX) and not many people want to buy a mac just for the OS.. Get rid of Linux and Microsoft's market share once again becomes uncontested, keep it around and it'll slowly dwindle untill Linux and Windows are running evenly.
I like muppets.
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/02/11/13/21272 27.shtml?tid=109&tid=4
fuvoo: watch something
In other news, there has been a report of a "computer virus" attacking various Windows operating systems. Details at 11.
My Master Microsoft, I welcome you, go easy on the slashdot penguin though :)
According to the secret Microsoft document from several years ago:
p hp
Messages that criticize OSS, Linux, & the GPL are NOT effective. Messaging that discusses possible Linux patent violations, pings the OSS development process for lacking accountability, attempts to call out the 'viral' aspect of the GPL, and the like are only marginally effective in driving unfavorable opinions around OSS, Linux, and the GPL, and in some cases BACKFIRE.
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween7.
This is a good point, but asking OSDL members this question is somewhat akin to doing a survey of how many people run IIS among ASP developers.
I've only ever purchased one server with linux preloaded (from Dell). Every other linux system I've ever owned has come blank, except one workstation that had a copy of Windows preloaded.
Officially, I have 1 linux system, but in reality, I have probably 15 active systems.
Speak before you think
Nelson Pratt, marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation, which boasts Linus Torvalds among its top brass, said that unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms with a campaign claiming that Linux is inadequately supported for enterprise use.
Did anyone else picture Nelson Pratt coughing "MICROSOFT!" right after saying "unnamed vendor"?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Do Penguins taste nice?
It may sound like a strange question but people do actually eat penguins. In Antarctica there are research stations where scientists live for months or even years so for them having a penguin for dinner is much like us having a Sunday roast. From their experiences we have been told that they taste like duck and that they also have a high oil content, due to all the fish that they eat. Guano miners also eat penguins whilst they are working near to Humboldt colonies; this however is bad news, as the Humboldt penguin is now a critically endangered species. Guano is old piles of penguin poo and it is mined for as it makes a good fertiliser, this practice is also detrimental to the wild Humboldt penguin population.
Clearly, these people are trying to undermine Linux by spreading the word that penguin meat is tasty and nutritious.
"OMG they're eating Tux. You Bastards!"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
.. if enough research was done by the company/user wishing to implement a new system, instead of managers going "this looks good, we'll have it" or "*os name here*, I hear that there's massive security holes in it", we wouldn't need all this FUD flying around. A symptom of the lack of thought that goes into the buying process nowadays, I think.
this is what happens when linux advocates are forced to move beyond their bubble of fanbois and deal with real-world competition. Sure, comeptitors like Microsoft and Apple are saying things about Linux, some true and some not. But the Linux fanbois have been doing the same things themselves for years now, and it's coming back to bite them. Saying things like Microsoft is trying to "destroy" Linux rallies the faithful, but it does little to work in the wider corporate world, where folks work with differing tecnologies from differing vendors every day.
In the real world, competition is real, and competitors are able to point out the truths that make the fanbois squirm.
Did they really expect for linux to be a viable product and not get criticized by the people whos market they are taking?
... If you insist on multiplying a single security vulnerability by the number of available distros, or tell people that they'll have to recompile their kernel every time they add a patch, or claim that software to do X, Y, or Z isn't available for Linux when in fact it is, or claim that open source development is inherently insecure, or that running proprietary software on a GPL'd OS will get you sued by the FSF, or make any of the other kinds of propganda attacks we've all seen on Linux (and F/OSS generally) from Microsoft and its lackeys ... then you have indeed gone beyond "competitor" to "enemy."
"Criticized" is one thing; "slandered" is another. Linux is far from perfect, and all but the most rabid zealots acknowledge this; there are many valid criticisms to be made, and in some cases the validity of these criticisms is sufficient to point users direction of Windows or one of the proprietary flavors of Unix.
BUT
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They can do/say all they wish about Linux. What they forget is 'Linux' isn't a tangible entity. It's a bit like shadow boxing.
:)
Nobody owns it (apart from !SCO), anybody can release their/a version of it, and more important, all the coders and developers don't really give a shit who uses it.
People that USE it though know the truth, and my Financial Manager likes it too, even though he doesn't really know what it is. He knows what £0:00 is, though.
An OS backed by a quasi-political philosophy that gains popularity would invariably spin off a counter philosophy. (Yin and Yang)
The question is whether or not this is the usual suspects (Microsoft) or some counter grassroots organization (Beos, BSD).
So long as it stays on the up and up, a little competition and criticism is a good thing. (IE The complaints of FireFox not responding quickly to recent security problems. That's a valid concern)
people who have bought the new EU patents laws of course! Say no to EU patens and vote with you wallet, buy Linux today.
I'm getting ready to download a PPC distro to put on a G3 Server I picked up on ebay for 20 bucks, so I'm not anti-linux, (though I have to admit it's mostly becuase OS 9 is such a loser)....I just dont know why one would make that choice, and I am open to hearing from linux folk as to why they would run Linux on Apple's modern hardware instead.
Terrorists.
Or maybe drug dealers. I forget who I'm supposed to hate now.
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I was going to say something like, "They hate us for our freedom," but it's actually not ridiculous here. Instead, I'll go with, "Microsoft will digest you with its system of mighty organs."
these are not the microsoft execs you are looking for.
okokok. it was a joke, you don't have to mod me down..I like windows too.
...that SCO is just Microsoft's anti-linux-dept.
Heck, we're quoting Nelson Pratt -- the "marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation" -- at enormous length. Add a straw man to your press release -- poof! It's a news item!
This sort of thing, from Taco no less, doesn't help Linux's credibility much.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
When I was in Japan, I visited the island of Miyajima. There was an aquarium where I was able to pet a penguin. I considered it one of my most unique experiences.
Thanks to your post, I will now scratch off "Pet a penguin" and add "Eat a penguin."
Just a note for all you who read comments before the article:
The enemies line was brought in by the guy they were interviewing (Nelson Pratt). I wonder if VNUnet may have been a little condescending when they decided on that title.
"The true installed base of Linux is being undercounted if all we do is look at the server shipments alone. We need to look at what companies actually do with the servers after they have purchased them." To support these assertions, Pratt cited a recent poll of OSDL members which asked how many had purchased servers with an OS pre-loaded and then removed and replaced it with Linux. Virtually all of them claimed to have taken this action. "However, going the other way was totally different. We asked how many had swapped out Linux and installed Windows and nobody had," said Pratt.
I am wondering if members of OSDL represent a random sample of server maintainers, or if they have any inherent bias? Anyone know?
There are several companies who make products that Linux threatens directly. Any firm selling, for instance, an operating system, would feel threatened by what is becoming the standard OS much as TCP/IP became the standard networking protocol.
But to call these "competitors" of Linux is to misunderstand the nature of the threat.
Linux is not a business, it is not a strategy, it is not a concept.
Linux represents the brutal and unflinching march of technology towards the zero price point. Linux - and all free & open-source software - exists because all the barriers to its existence have been gradually razed.
The first rule of competition is that all players must be playing the same game. How can anyone seriously still think that Linux and (e.g.) Microsoft are playing the same game?
The game is not over - there is no game, and there never was.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
hey! I was going to say that!
A search for Linux on Google reveals ads from Microsoft. Could this be a sign of what the article talks about?
:)
Disclaimer: The ad is in Danish, and it may thus be only the Danish branch of MS buying these adwords. It's possible that similar ads won't show up if the same search is done from other countries.
P.S.: If the ads show up, feel free to click them. Wouldn't want Google to miss out on a bit of revenue, would you?
I like to watch the videos of brainwashed CEO's talking about how they would never trust their business to "a bunch of freeware".
...just my 2 gil.
Whats happening to /.?? Aside from the paranoid/sensational "enemies of linux" in the title, was there really anything in that article that can be considered NEWS?
The subject of this story sounds more like propaganda than any article I've seen in a long time...
Not saying it isn't true, but the wording is quite funny.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Now that IBM, RHN and Novell are in the ring, Microsoft, Oracle, CA and everyone else are starting to see Linux as a competitor. The problem is that most people in FOSS are not used to competition, they prefer enemies. Enemies are easier to vilify and ridicule. Competitors who are eating your lunch are not. This whole "we are holier than thou and you are so evil" thing is not going to work out there in the real world. Linux needs to compete, not be surrounded by fanboys who can pick their noses and chuckle when they write "Microshaft" and "Windoze".
Slashdot has been the main front in this whining battle for the past few years. It's gone mainstream now, of sorts, and people are starting to notice the ridiculous "OMFG WINDOZE IS TEH SUXX" headlines that adorn the front page day in and day out, complete with borg icon. And don't complain about Microsoft saying this or the other about Linux when most of you spend your waking hours claiming that Windows cannot be secured or otherwise used as a computing platform, using anecdotal data points to build feel-good statistics that only you believe.
Grow up and compete. The "some dude said something bad about Linux"-style whines like this article are starting to sound more and more like Suckdot.
Who told you the name of our club? I want names!
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Enterprise customers have an entirely different set of requirements than home users or even small/medium business users. Enterprise customers want to drop boatloads of money on companies and then expect these companies to do whatever they want, and by whatever, I mean **whatever**.
I worked for an Enterprise software CRM company and we dealt with customers paying tens of millions of dollars. If there was a bug, any bug, even if it wasn't our bug, we were on the daily conference calls. There was one bug that was clearly a Microsoft SQL Server optimization bug, but I had to work with Microsoft over Christmas just because our customer wanted someone from our side there... **just because**. There was no logical reason for me to be there since it was completely out of our domain, but we still had to be there. This is how enterprise customers behave and frankly, since they are paying millions of dollars, I don't blame them to expect this.
However, with Linux, even with Red Hat support, there is no such level of support. We ported our apps to Red Hat Advanced Server 3, and the level of support we got from them was good but not enterprise level.
We ran into an IBM Java Run-Time bug... clearly a bug in the Run-Time, but Red Hat's response was, "Well, IBM has a certain SLA with us when we create a bug for them, and they may or may not get to it." That was it. There was absolutely nothing we could do at that point. They didn't own the IBM Java Run-time, so they passed the buck on responsibility. Which in some respects is understandable, but is completely unacceptable for enterprise customers. Linux is a mix-and-match of a bunch of open-source software and **no one was ultimate accountability** which is something that enterprise customers are paying for and expect.
Not unlike an edit war on wiki. Join it- and edit it from within. If you can sneak this by the editors and get it accepted- then you can have alot of influence. You can sneak in complicated back doors- then expose them. Imagine- a big Linux hole exposed the day before LongHorn is released.
Not to say this sort of effort would succeed- but I am suprised it has not been tried.
C'mon. Say it.
Okay here are my guesses.
C64 (The reason I am saying this, though it may seem an unusual guess is pretty simple. This weekend I bought a joystiq with a plug that goes into the tv. When you wiggle the joystiq back and fourth it boots up into the Commodore 64. Pretty strange behavior FROM A CHILDREN'S TOY! Suspicious what me? Commodore come back is secretly on the way.)
Okay, I am fairly confident in my choice so I will stick with one guess. With the second guess I would like to point out that there are some people who don't enjoy using Linux because it is difficult to manipulate files with it. These people like to use graphical user interfaces and get really angry if they have to do otherwise. They also like only one graphical user interface and so having to choose between gnome and kde is not an option!
These people are very highly organized and sometimes they carry bags around with bricks and brick bats in them. They use these devices to destroy linux servers, if it is convenient. Often these people avoid the light and end up in jail so there has not been much coverage of them.
Could these be the people spreading the information? Or mis information? It is a possibility. They are known liars and hate users of vi so much that they add the letter "deo" to random words to make them more compliant with the graphical user interface. Also, they are not afraid of mice as are some women, effeminate men, and non-effeminate men but instead embrace them like disgusting vampires! I have often seen them biting one button of a two button mouse so that it would be easier to manipulate!
Terrorists?
Spammers?
I know: AOLers!
You can't take the sky from me...
A lot of the linux people are completely out of their tree when the topic of conversation drifts to their OS of choice. That's not something Microsoft did to them, that's who they decided to be.
I'm not even saying they're a majority, but there are a lot of Wahabi Linusists, and if they had the social skills to get along with each other, some of them would be blowing things up.
In other news, an ad campaign was launched to defame free speech. Since free speech is essentially lost revenue for the communications business, so the parties argue, all speech should be taxed or otherwise paid for. One ad talks about that 'you can steal but you can't hide' ; another says 'speech is too valuable to be free'. The involved parties intend to continue until the free market has been restored..
There's a big difference between criticism and disinformation.
The enemies of Linux are those platforms that constantly bombard us with WMDs (weapons of mass distraction).
If it weren't for those damned DirectX games, we'd be so much more productive!
(sleep 10;eval kill \$\(pidof nethack\))&nethack
.pid and kill it that way, but whatever works. the (sleep bit is whats important.
Probably not the best way, but that works. You could dump the pid of the process into a
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
and her "vast, right-wing conspiracy".
For the love of Pete, grow a pair and name names. Otherwise, keep yer yap shut.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
As those "W" bumper stickers morph into swastikas and you pay the day your last respects as your soul drifts into the distance. Say goodbye.
"Criticized" is one thing; "slandered" is another.
Naturally. Criticism is protected speech; slander is not.
Do you believe that the information being distributed about Linux by its competitors rises to the level of slander? If so, when do you think there will be a lawsuit filed regarding it?
That's still competition, just dirty competition. It's actually more common than "clean" competition.
Free Hans!
And you thought it was Microsoft... the REAL enemies are the people that make AmigaOS, who want to supplant Linux as the go-to OS for anti-Microsoft people.
First Brad & Jen, and now this?!
Ahh another slashdot post meant to inflame passions and contribute to a worldwide loss in productity as linux folks stop work to decry the evil empire.
Rob Enderle has called all Linux users "terrorists". He also publically claimed that Linux users were likely to assassinate (yes, that's right, MURDER) SCO executives over to the lawsuit. He is not personally a company, but the company he runs (The Enderle Group) HAS been paid by Microsoft to shill for them in the past.
Welcome to the real world.. Time to grow up and watch your back.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Aw fuck. I went to Miyajima in November, and opted not to go to the aquarium in favor of the shrine instead. Son of a bitch.
You know... the one that turned out to be pointing to the truth about a man who cheated on his wife and 'misled'?
Just because someone says something you don't like or that you don't agree with doesn't make it wrong. One shouldn't be afraid to hear the other side.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Of course! The reason Linux isn't popular is because Evil People are spreading Misinformation and Lies. Because Linux is absolutely perfect! It lacks any flaws at all, and is certainly superior to its pathetic rivals, BSD and Windows! Wake up, people.
People should have figured out by now that stories with inflammatory headlines generate more readership. This was the case in the old newprint era and it's true in the Internet era.
Linux does have enemies. Of course Microsoft is one, but they have also been very much helped by Linux and *BSD because these have weakened or destroyed competitors in the server market who were starting to venture towards the desktop. Digital, Sun, HP, IBM, SCO, etc. all lost to Linux. Some of these companies learned that it was better to embrace the OSS movement sooner rather than later, and are now using Linux against the others. For example, IBM. But Microsoft is a different animal, and can't really use that tactic. So it is natural that Microsoft is the enemy of Linux. I say enemy as opposed to competitor, because the only way for Microsoft to defend itself against Linux is to destroy it. Microsoft can't make a bargain with Linux, or buy it out, etc.
But there are enemies of other OSS products as well. Do you think that MySQL doesn't bother Larry Ellison? Do you think that Symbian isn't concerned about embedded Linux AND embedded MS-Windows?
We're talking about Linux as if it were Troy. Huge walls, impossible door, massive army, hated by the Greeks and the Carthaginians. The main difference that I see is that Linux is simply an OS (with many flavours of course) made by a bunch of underpaid geeks that don't like Windows. Toppling this pillar of Microsoft-threatening OS shouldn't too hard, you just need to pay more green.
Really, it's been Windows & Mac users bashing each other, Sun bashing Microsoft, and so on since the Atari vs. C-64 vs. PC Jr. days. FUD and her wicked stepsister statistics have kept journalists and the likes of Gartner employed for a long time now, and I don't see it changing anytime soon. Welcome to the fray, Linux!
T.J. Schmitz - the man, the myth, the legend - o
Yup a march to 0 Price point for developers. I'm gonna love when Microsoft, Adobe, and every other software vendor goes away because of free software and i'm forced into doing tech support earning peanuts while CTOs of major corperations get multimillion dollar bonuses for cutting their software budget.
You can't slander an inanimate object.
Windows died on his computer, Linux was the only thing that worked as-is and the only person to date who's had a clue how to fix it is the one that was being mercilessly ribbed for geekiness for running linux prior to all this happening. No way he's gonna help reinstall windows.
Moral of the story: be kind to geeks, for they have root access.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Also, it wouldn't be slander, it would be libel ... only it's not libel, either.
The problem with calling them "competitors" is that Linux isn't a product. There's no Linux Inc. It was never meant to compete or take market share away from a specific target. For most of the developers it's a hobby, a past-time. They make and improve the software because they want some free software that does exactly what they want. And for several years now they've had themselves and their work slandered and insulted in the press. Somehow it doesn't seem fair to me.
Well, I'm not sure who would have standing to sue in this case. Linus Torvalds? Red Hat? The FSF?
In any case, I wasn't trying to make a legalistic distinction. I don't know, and don't especially care, if the FUD Microsoft et al. are throwing at Linux rises to the legal definition of slander or not. (I also don't believe that corporations or organizations should be able to sue for slander at all, but that's a whole 'nother argument.) But it is definitely slanderous, rather than critical, in tone and content: that is, it's "words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another" rather than real analysis of the relative merits and flaws of Linux as compared to other OSs.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It is business as usual. Companies who make lots of money like Linux competitors (Windows, etc ...). They will stand at nothing to destroy anything that takes market $hare away from them. Companies are ruthless and will stand at the edge of doing illegal things to destroy others. Linux Distributions out there will have to be just as ruthless (Jugular) if they want to compete with the likes of Microsoft. The Distros out there have to treat the compitetion like an Enemy that will take great pleasure in destroying them.
I think the competition that is out there for Linux stands on shaky ground and hides behind lawyers, money, and marketing hype.
Linux is simply a good OS for anybody who has a need for it.
Linux has more than proven itself in the server market, but to get a bigger audience it needs to establish itself in the desktop market. Application developers need to dumb down apps for Joe average who needs three clicks or less to comprehend what he is doing. But leave the power there for the "Admin types". I have noticed that since the 2.6 kernel and knewer versions of KDE and GNOME the apps seem to be getting better.
Maybe offtopic, but one of the things that piss me off is when people use the word "alternative" to refer to FOSS even the software is better than the its proprietary counterparts. Not just Linux, even in fields where the OSS software was one of the first/the first one to arrive and is clearly superior to the proprietary "alternative"s.
Ummm. Not anymore bucko.
Redhat, Novell, IBM, Mandrake, Linksys, etc all have devoted and paid employees. Linux isn't about computer hobbiests anymore, it's grown beyond that (although they still exist but mainly for linux applications now).
The whole "Enemies of Linux" thing comes across as deeply paranoid. It makes it sound as though these organisations are evil forces that want to destroy the heroic land of Linux.
A better slant would be that software companies who have compete in the same market space as those companies that use linux are using their usual dirty tricks and misinformation to undermine the competition while the competition simultaneously uses similar tricks and lies to undermine them. But it's hardly news is it?
We had run out of money and were desperately trying to find something to do with the extra four hours. The aquarium surprised us because it wasn't in any of the tourist guides we had consulted before going... and it turned out to be a highlight of our trip (we originally went to Hiroshima with a day on Miyajima - to see the shrine).
They also had a seal performance show (a la Sea World), a really neat archerfish demonstration, and fed the pirahnas in front of us. Very fun.
We were standing in front of a huge octopus when an older Japanese couple said, "oishii." For those who don't understand Japanese, oishii means "tasty."
Penguin recipes can be found here!
The Penguin Kabob sounds delicious!
Is there noone in the Antarctic to post some good recipe reviews?
put the what in the where?
Goodbye to your ability to think strait...
Freakin weirdo, what the hell was all that about?
Penguin recipes can be found here!
The Penguin Kabob sounds delicious!
Is there noone in the Antarctic to post some good recipe reviews?
Bah! Preview is your friend, preview is your friend, preview is you friend...
put the what in the where?
I think you have mistaken criticize with flat out FUD campaigns. And to top it off, those campaigns is nothing at all compared to what some resellers of said "unnamed competitors" tend to spew out.
Linux needs feedback, both positive and negative but for feedback to be valid it has to have some grain of truth in it.
This is just Microsoft everyday competitor trashtalk, not critizism.
HTTP/1.1 400
Are people here saying they're not "Enemies of Windows" who generalize about the Windows experience and try to portray it as a BSOD-ridden failure? For god's sake, I still see Clippy and Bob jokes here--five years after they stopped being either funny or applicable.
I find it all disturbing. They're operating systems. They're collections of code that don't give a shit either way who says what about them. People have instilled emotional attachment into these things.
So they slime and slander Linux. No problem. I can be just as vague and condescending, right along with the best of them.
"Linux? Unstable? Oh, that. Yeah, SCO Linux is pretty awful stuff. We're careful not to go near it. We use Arch Linux, instead. It's pretty killer!"
Linux remends me of how the Three Amogos managed to beat the crap out of El Guapo.
Those conservative fuck-in-the-grounds would love to see Linux fail in the enterprise. But they know full well that they are going to be waiting a long time (possibly forever) before they see that happen unless they resort to unfair trickery. Watch them as they move the world closer to corporate fascism. Rules will be imposed globally to only benefit business and screw everyone but the richest people. Fuckers. Hate them all. Idiots.
.. since 'nine eleven' every opposing force is an "enemy". It's that simple, why don't you get ?
*sigh*
Thats because the buisness community has no idea how to succeed using non-competitive methods. Reason: they don't understand the concept of Public libraries or schools either - pure and simple ignorance. "follow the bouncing ball now kids, while Billy the wonderboy teaches us about SOFTware..." Foston
Mods, you know what to do here...
Since when do any tactics used by any public company suprise anyone? It's basically legal to slander it because there is no damage to any identified party, and it gains them good press for the CNN DEBATE:
CNN"Microsoft waded into the debate today about upstart operating system LINUSXS. Windows chairman Bill Gates says that Linux is not as secure" Foston
it's a vast right wing conspiracy!
Follow the money and you'll always end up at Microsoft's door. Microsoft has sponsored several "independent" studies with the goal to undermine and discredit Linux but this has backfired and Microsoft is still trying to contain the damage.
Fortunately Linux use on the desktop is at an all times high and slowly but surely approaching 20% while more and more people are fed up with virus infested Windows computers and are turning to Linux.
My prediction is that Microsoft is going the way of SCO and by end of this year the game will be over for Microsoft in terms of Windows. Microsoft is already moving to different products and strategies while the numbers of people who still use Windows use is rapidly declining. Let there be another large virus outbreak and Windows is dead.
These people?l
http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/preface.htm
As told by Ghandi:
Stage #2: they'll laugh at you (done)
Stage #3: they'll fight you (current stage)
Stage #4: you'll win (next stage)
Also known as Stages of Acceptance (learn more). For me it's very clear what is happening.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Back in 1948, during his first race for the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about ten points behind, with only nine days to go. He was sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.
His campaign manager was shocked. "We can't say that, Lyndon," he supposedly said. "You know it's not true."
"Of course it's not true!" Johnson barked at him. "But let's make the bastard deny it!"
A senior OSDL exec proclaims the existance of FUD.
Sensible people respond "Well, Duh!"
Film at 11.
For hundreds of years, people refused to bathe on the basis of misinformation. Common sense and the common public are often mutually exclusive.
"Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability," he said.
That sounds like pretty dang faint praise coming from a top Linux guy.
The Ferengi.
Duh.
All's true that is mistrusted
Warning! Poster with tinfoil hat too tight.
It would be beneficial to look for the enemies of Free Software, not of one kernel.
Thanks for the link. I actually enjoyed and agreed with most of it. It would make great reading for anyone contemplating the use of an unsupported OS such as Linsux.
well said.
Linux is my religion. I got sucked in, I got the idealism to share. It affected my life, I got more generous. And I am more of KISS guy, which made me more content.
I am maintaining 3 packages, one of which gave Con Kolivas and his ck-patchset users the possibility to play with the CPU scheduler and the audio-guys a convenient method of setting their apps' priorities.
I am proud to be part of it all; I am proud to learn every day. I am proud to be some kind of wizard speaking C and ASM.
Thank you Linux (since 1.2.X).
The biggest criticism and outright hysteria I hear is from non technical people followed by technical people that don't know what is out there, myself included. Another problem is which one and that is a problem.
Users and managers are still frightened. They remember Linux distro's of old. Yesterday a user that does web pages was ready to scrap RedHat and go with SuSE because Veritas has a segmentation violation if she uses xbp. That is the ONLY problem she had with it. It isn't as if you can simply move what she does in 10 minutes or an hour.
What can it do? Can they read, write, view everything they an with M$? Often the answer is yes. Sometimes yes if you install something. Sometimes yes if you spend enough time getting all the stuff you need - like vlc for example and other times the answer is no.
Which one? Here we are in the idiot religon wars again - RedHat, Suse, Knoppix, Mandrake, Bob's distro. The only ones I hear about are RedHat and Suse, the others are never mentioned seriously. I know places where they are putting off going to Linux because they don't know which one to use. Personally I don't care, however I would appreciate it if everyone used one or the other or at least make them so they are very similar between them.
They'll all start posting comments soon. They're regulars here. :)
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Do you expect the critics not to be debunked when they are merely spreading misinformation and FUD?
Well, y'know, Linux is a peculiar phenomenon, which makes choosing terminology a bit tricky.
Linux isn't exactly a product, so some of the baggage carried by the term "competitor" doesn't belong. Nevertheless, there are people who look at Linux's features closely and plan the features (and in some cases pricing) of their products accordingly. So it is accurate, but misleading to refer to Linux's "competition".
On the other hand, Linux isn't exactly a "movement" either -- or at least not for everyone involved. So, speaking of "enemies" seems a bit overheated. But there are folks who would like to put a stake through its heart, for example by promoting software patents.
The problem with the article title is that it is imprecise. It is talking about people who are trying to push their products instead of Linux based products. So in this case it really should be "Competitors try to Undermine Perceptions of Linux Based Products". Which is the standard commercial bullshit, and nothing to get too overwrought about. If all Linux has to worry about is competition then all of us who enjoy and benefit from having access to Linux distros have nothing to worry about.
However, there are clearly enemies of Linux - people who would like to undermine the conditions under which the Linux phenomenon can continue to thrive. This goes beyond honest competition, beyond dishonest competition, and towards tilting the entire playing field toward proprietary solutions using the force of government.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Linux isn't a product, perhaps, but companies like RedHat et al have packaged Linux with support and distribution and are absolutely selling it as a product. Just sayin'.
We were standing in front of a huge octopus when an older Japanese couple said, "oishii."
How odd. That would imply that they had actually tasted the particular octopus in question. Are you sure they didn't use the expected form "oishisou" ("it looks tasty")?
However,
It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
is about as close to Stalinist paranoia that I have ever seen. Perhaps a purge of the officer corps or smashing the bourgeois kulaks will rid Linux of this enemy?
But I just don't get it. The article says that vendors criticize Linux's "stability," "security," and the "ability of some companies to offer service and support." It sounds to me like those vendors are merely competing.
If you go into any GM dealership the salesman will tell you that Ford's aren't as reliable and that their service departments sucks. That's business.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Open Source OS, to ride out the storm of disinformation, and to outlive the menace of monopolism, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of RMS's GNU -- every geek of them. That is the will of Linus and the Movement. The EFF and the OSTG, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the last bit their Open Source products, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of users and many old and famous clients have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Microsoft and all the odious apparatus of Gates' rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight on the Internet, we shall fight in the courts and in the parliaments, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing caffeine in our blood, we shall defend our Linux, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the forums, we shall fight on in conferences, we shall fight in colleges and in IT meetings, we shall fight in sales pitches; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this OS or a large part of it were ignored and disused, then our Lawyers beyond the internet, sponsored and supported by EFF, would carry on the struggle, until in God's good time, the new Software, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the users.
Usually as soon as I see someone saying "All of the enemies! Everywhere! They're out to get us!" I start looking for a tinfoil hat.... Have they gone over the deep end?
Get rid of Linux and Microsoft's market share once again becomes uncontested, keep it around and it'll slowly dwindle untill Linux and Windows are running evenly.
Actually, I doubt that a situation with two operating systems with roughly equal marketshares on the same hardware is sustainable in the long run. One of them will have most of the market. That's what wakes Bill and Steve in the middle of the night with cold sweats. Linux is making headway in pretty much every market it makes an appearance in. Microsoft's primary market (desktop and laptop machines for end users) is not growing much. Linux is gaining market share. Linux got a major foothold in the server market before MS ever got there. This fight is entirely Microsoft's to lose.
In fact, that's what they said (oishisou) but I didn't want to confuse anyone.
Sometimes I forget how many Slashdotters study Japanese.
not many people want to buy a mac just for the OS
Actually, that's exactly why I own a Mac. The OS.
Agreed. Gees, I would expect an 'enemy' to do that. Is this really news, that an 'enemy' of something is using disinformation to herald their opinion? I think not. I would expect it as I clearly see it go on, on both sides of the fence.
.NET being bloated. I like the concepts of the new things that are made available, but I also see those same things as backing one into the platform , with no way out. Very propritary platform.
I also have to agree with
U use those apps on LiGNUx?
merely, "unfriendlys"
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - HHGTTG
makes your process run at ring 0.
Seriously, though, the advantage of continual renewal and open source is that people can check in and out when they have time and/or energy, and yet the system always has sufficient resources to handle the continual attacks.
It's almost as bad as the media recording market share of desktops by sales price or net profit, instead of by boxen or instances of OS. Linux will never win those battles, because it's too darned inexpensive in comparison, yet the magazines and their websites only care about the potential advertising revenue, so they focus on who has the bucks to pay for ads.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
face it, linux zealots are often the worst enemies of linux. check out Usenet for plenty of "RTFM!" posts. newbies don't want to put up with that crap and quickly find a friendlier distro or go back to Windows and Mac. then there are the wonderful threads about "linux is a kernel, not an OS" which just further confuses newbies. this "pass the buck" routine is getting quite old. the icing on the cake was seeing several prominent websites that claim that dissing linux is spitting in the face of the F/OSS developers. sure i'm appreciative of the OSS devel guys (some of whom are paid!), but that doesn't mean i have to suck their weenie. next i'll be "anti-american" for dissing linux.
Let's face it...Microsoft, is rich enough, powerful enough and has enough market share to survive a very long time even with Linux's star ever-rising.
Apple, on the other hand, has always, and will ever be a side-show. With Linux developing so rapidly into a world-class OS with world-class apps to follow, Apple stands to be rudely elbowed aside into irrelevancy. This won't be an overnight process since the Mac-heads are so blindly loyal...but the younger generation could give a shit about Mac loyalty. In fact, my 14 year nephew and all his friends and classmates who are essentially forced to use Apple products in the classroom a.) hate Mac and b.) use or plan to use either Windows (Alienware) or Linux boxes at home.
Apple is only "cool" to the >30 crowd at this point...
How can this drivel still be modded as insightful on slashdot?
Give me a break!
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
In the Linux world, distributors bundle together code from many sources -- meaning there may be a lag between a patch being issued for a specific component and that patch being included in a new distribution. "Distribution days of risk" quantifies the elapsed time between the first fix for the security hole by the maintainer of the flawed component and the first fix for the flawed component issued by the platform maintainer
We calculated separate values for "distribution days of risk" for Debian, MandrakeSoft, Red Hat, and SUSE, and used the "all days of risk" value for Microsoft.
Forrester thanks Noah Meyerhans of Debian, Vincent Danen of MandrakeSoft, Allen Jones of Microsoft, Mark Cox of Red Hat, and Roman Drahtmüller of SUSE for the time that they so generously dedicated to this research.
{
end clip.. and guess what they concluded that you needed to use either Microsoft or Debian to reduce your days of risk.
{
I got this from a pdf from Microsoft so it must be correct. The PDF looks really proffesional so they most likely used an open-source MS Word to pdf, or they just made the PDF with Open Office!
the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
I'm an open source developer who switched to Microsoft development about 6 months ago. I won't get into why I switched (*cough*money*cough*), but I can honestly say this: Microsoft people (developers at least) are not anywhere near as hostile toward Linux and OSS as the Linux community would have you believe.
I don't know why we have this persecuted mindset.
Microsoft developers simply DO NOT CARE about Linux. They're busy trying to understand shit like SharePoint and are not theatened by open source.
"Pratt also insists that the security of Linux is perfectly adequate for enterprise use. "Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability," he said."
A lot of times linux is more secure than the enterprise Unix's that are out there. I have linux on my sunblade 100 admin station is it more secure than our production boxes. Everytime I bring up that our boxes should be running a firewall no matter if they are intranet or extranet I get weird looks - and these are supposedly seasoned admins of major brand named Unixes.
I run tripwire, snort, and have a firewall on my sunblade and I would put it anywhere - extranet, intranet, although I know it won't serve 1000's of people.
These so-called Unix seasoned admins still insist on using nfs to share admin scripts, patches etc.
What a joke - I am trying to get them in the 20th century but it takes a lot of convincing.
And anybody that says linux is not ready for the enterprise, desktop, or anything else has rocks in their heads.
OSS is a more efficient development model. That should scare companies like MSFT more than Linux, which is just a manifestation of the open development model. Ten or a hundred companies could each invest a relatively small amount of money and develop a proprietary replacement product which they all can use. True, there will be other companies that benefit without investing, but that doesn't change the bottom line savings for the companies involved.
The day is slowly dawning that hundreds and thousands of companies all paying full price for software that does the exact same thing is total economic insanity.
Rag on Linux all you want, the real power is open source development. And you can't stop it. Slow it down, maybe, but you'll never stop it because it's more effecient. Efficiency doesn't always win out (think QWERTY v Dvorak keyboard) but it's the smart way to bet. What drives open source development isn't some pie in the sky vision of freedom it's good 'ol brass knuckles capitalism. And the more MSFT treats their customers like a revenue stream, the more they hasten their own demise.
Bean counters will be the death of us all but at least we'll have the satisfaction of watching MSFT go down first.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I dunno, but why don't we start with Richard Nixon's list and work from there.
Your ass is mine, Paul Newman.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
...and I was sure he was a she !!
I have done more than my share converting servers at work from Windows to Linux. Mail servers, web servers, file servers. I run FC3 as a desktop and love it.
:)
However, can anyone tell me the last time a windows virus/expolit was able to actually replace all of the system commands in C: with their OWN custom versions. I'm talking about a r00tkit on Linux. We had one quite a while back and it was nasty! a few dozen system apps replaced with hacked ones.
No real way to ever know if you've cleaned up that mess, just reload the OS.. On winodws, it's somewhat easier to clean up a hacking. Usually you'd still have to reinstall the OS but not always.. We have a policy to burn any box that get's hacked, but realistically most of the time it's easier to not only discover a hacked box but also to clean it up.
I know... Aide, tripwire, et al.. We use em
the thing that frightens the hell out of MS and others who's market share is being eaten by linux, is linux is like quicksand. they fight and struggle as best they know how but they just keep sinking. the frigthening reality for companies like MS is they know they can't stop people developing their own software and giving it away. hence the totally rediculous suggestions that terrorist's can hijack OSS. it's an attempt to outlaw OSS.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"Look at Oracle and IBM. Oracle is using Linux as the OS for its grid. This shows that there is a solution stack on top of Linux that is not just Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl, but a mixture of open source and proprietary software. ISVs such as Oracle, CA, SAP and IBM are fleshing out the Linux stack,"
I agree, it means Linux is becoming a general-purpose tool: home users AND scientists/engineers/hackers (using hackers in the comp-sci sense, not the thug) are now starting to focus on the benefits of an open development model.
That means that no one is really fascinated by Microsoft anymore. Oh sure, Microsoft can still spend bucks on PR and FUD, but there is no amount of that that will make users forget this other more fascinating thing that Linux is.
In the end it's a numbers game: Microsoft may have hired spectacular staff, but they can't compete against collected might of THE WORLD, can they? India and China will lead the way, no doubt.
And besides, Linux (for the most part) exists simply because people enjoy making tools out of computers, it's not about trying to raise revenue for the coming quarter, but (funny enough) it seems to be doing just that!
If Microsoft wants to matter anymore, they'll roll with it, like they did on the Internet; late.
MS should open-source some code and actually let the Wine guys run with it; they're the only ones REALLY trying to preserve Windows, by writing a great application suite, to support the Windows user.
I know MS have been accused of fighting Wine users, but it really is to MS's own detriment; it alienates more users.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
> You can't slander an inanimate object.
What do you call a trademark? You betcha you can slander those.
Well, except MSFTS and SCOXE:
1) Sys-Con Media (Linux Business Week, JDJ, etc.)
2) Enderle Group (Rob Enderle - sole mockup of an analyst, paid for by MSFT, SCOXE)
3) Yankee Group (Lauria DiDio anyone?)
4) Forbes - they can't get their facts straight
5) CRN - Don't know bug is up their bum
6) C|Net - some days
7) ZDNET - most days
8) Lots of small shops that don't understand the change
9) Morons - people who think being taken for a ride without any steering is just peachy
10) And lest I forget... BoB! He wants revenge for your rejection and that of his brother, Clippy, too!
Have a nice day.
If it's slander, then "Linux" can sue, just like any other industry. The problem is who would sue these vendors, but hey, that's one of the big drawbacks to Open Source. The facts are largely irrelevant. This is marketing.
I don't respond to AC's.
The ability to edit posts allows for revisionism. It has no place during a conversation. I am very glad slashdot doesn't follow that stupid idea and do it just because everyone else is. It's a bad misfeature.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Assassination seems much more far-fetched, but you didn't provide a link for that, so there's no context from which to judge it.
Hmm?
Linux is free... How can anyone compete with that? How can a competitor eat it's lunch? There is no lunch!
Linux, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc etc etc don't have to compete with anything, they are going to consume the market landscape because they are free and their "competitors" are not. It's a mathematical certainty, the only thing which can stop it is legislation.
The question asked is "A million bells, whistles and the cost of a dollar or good enough and free".
Good enough and free wins, becomes the defacto standard. I've been in this business for, well, decades now and I've seen this over and over again. The people who think they are competing against Linux and other Free and Open Source software are deluding themselves and their shareholders. They are going to end up selling some expensive, niche products.
Whether you like him or not, Richard Stallman is a very clever man.
Deleted
The linux kernel is just a kernel (much like the solaris kernel is just a kernel), but when most people talk about 'Linux' they're usually talking about far more than just an operating system -- what RMS would rather be referred to GNU/Linux -- This includes the kernel, the OS tools, and the various apps that come with most distros. Whether it's the wide 3rd party support you get for RedHat RPMs, the boot-from-a-CD convenience of knoppix or the built-for-a-purpose utility of smaller versions (like Damn-Small-Linux).
Microsoft, especially likes to include patches for all of the subsystems of Redhat into it's security counts, and then compare that to patches for just windows -- but when it comes to denigrating it as 'just a toy', they'd be more than happy to FUD on the side of 'it's nothing more than the kernel'.
You wouldn't happen to be one of those astro-turfers would you?
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
There are NO enemies of Linux! Yes, what I tell you is the truth, Stallman be praised, all the enemies are dying surrounded by confirmations from Netcraft! Yes, we shall cut them up and hang them by their intestines, the worthless sons of a peebrained 16-bit operating system! All our enemies have already been vanquished and sent into the afterlife to be burned by daemons over the fires of hell and to swim in blue streams of death and to face the ravages of General Protection Fault and Colonel Panic ... yes! They are dead already! Gone! Vanquished! Kill -9ed! I tell you again, THERE ARE NO ENEMIES OF LINUX!
;)
(You know I am telling the truth; our wise leader Linus, may Stallman praise him or atleast let him call his OS Linux, believes in absolute honestly
To regular Slashdot readers the Bill Gates as a Borg logo is just sort of toungue in cheek exageration. But to newcomers this coupled with the "enemies of Linux" articles makes Slashdot sound sort of like a paranoid cult.
Beware! The enemies of Linux are everywhere. They're infecting the fabric of the open source universe and attempting to subvert Open hearts and minds with their evil doctrine. They're hiding behind the trees and in spaces in the walls, and I think I've spotted them coming through my Windows chanting subliminal proprietary propaganda.
Now, what did I do with my aluminum foil hat?
true. the g4 is a slow processor. it's like the celeron of powerpcs. you want a real powerpc, you need a g5.
"So-called "enemies of the people" - bourgeois pseudoscientists hired by imperialistic agents - are conducting a systematic campaign of disinformation which aims to undermine the credibility of the socialist regime."
try http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/uhh-download .html
This is probably going to go way over your head, but for all intents and purposes, your understanding of how a price is determined is severly flawed. The price is determined by one thing only -- the intersection of the supply curve and the demand curve. That's it.
In your simple painting example, the supply curve has one item to sell, so the price will be determined exclusively by demand if the sellers minimum price is met.
What you have with Linux is a complete reversal of the curve. For commodity linux, the supply curve is infinitely long at a zero price. Since the demand cannot possibly be infinite, the demand curve must intersect the supply curve at a price of zero. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the buyer's utility function, the quantity they wish to purchase, or the "perceived value" of the software. In fact, every single buyer could bid a million dollars and the price would still be zero.
If you do not understand that, you missed the fundamental theory behind supply and demand.
-Hope
To copy text from one point to another
Substitute the text with some old text
Total 5+6 == 11 actions needed by the user
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
With X11 standard way moving text
With X11 substituting text the old-fashined way
Total 3+6 = 9 actions needed by the user. Which are less the 11 needed by Cntrl-C/Cntrl-V!
X11 has a better solution - windows are 22 % slower than X11. The most common operation - to move some text from one place to another are 66% slower in Windows than in X11!
Just saying it like it are.
From the article:
/etc hierarchy. Every tool has it's own config schema and syntax. There's no standardization whatsoever. Trying to write a tool to manage this mess is like trying to write an application using 100 diverse and unstable APIs. And forget about more advanced admin tools like automated integration of multiple components. (ex. ldap + postfix + cyrus + amavis + spamassassin + your favorite webmail) A key-value based replacement for /etc is the first step in creating an Open Source "unix that just works." And it wouldn't even be that hard! The beauty of the Elektra concept is that it can be a gradual change and no new tools or security models are required.
"It's not surprising that the revenue is so great. More and more commercial organisations choose to buy Linux rather than download and deploy it independently," he said.
You know what this tells us? The OSS community is not going far enough. We're producing a lot of good raw materials but not enough good solutions. As a result, companies must turn to expensive commercial support options (usually bundled with proprietary administrative interfaces that make our raw materials useful in the real world). It is quite time to abandon the mentality that most users should/will build and configure their systems by hand. This old-school style of Unix admin was right for a time, but that time has passed. And I'm not just talking about the desktop. For example, it is far too difficult and costly to use stock Debian or Fedora to build a full-featured enterprise server using best practices. (ex. Linux 2.6 w/ACL patches, LDAP, Kerberos, Samba, NFSv4, etc.) Yes, it can be done. I've personally pulled it off. But it's extremely ugly and painful. And when it comes time to patch/upgrade, some work must be re-done because there is no way to cleanly and automatically migrate / merge settings. As much as I like Debian, it's not really applicable to many real world tasks where time-costs matter. Or even if the costs even out, it's more hassle than it's worth.
The solution? http://elektra.sourceforge.net/ (or at least the concept presented here..) The reason why we don't have any good Open Source configuration management tools (GUI or otherwise) is that it's too difficult to grok the hideous mess that is today's
No, I am not a member of the Elektra project.. I just happened across their page the other day and was shocked at how obvious their proposal is in a "duh! why didn't I think of that?!" sort of way.
Slashdot:
* 9 times out of 10 Slashdot is showing Microsoft banner ads showing that Windows is more reliable, secure, and has a lower TCO.
* Infected with trolls. The trolls are pushing their own, often personal, agenda. Open source vs. some other open source usually.
* Ingorance. There are no experts on Slashdot. New items are posted by mostly ignorant people, and commented on by mostly ignorant people. In the eyes of Slashdot, the more ignorant, the better! And you can tell, that most posters don't even read the source material! Slashdot proclaims itself, "News for nerds", but it overrun with posers. I love how news items try to use technical abbrievations, so the first 100 posts are from nerd posers, and the next 100 are from wannabe experts.
Effective immediately, the open-source threat level is being raised to penguin-beak yellow as we receive reports that enemies of linux may be planning an attack. Be aware of anything suspicious and report it to the authorities until we determine that the threat has passed.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
That is true. But the majority of Open Source "Linux" software is still produced and maintained by people who aren't employed to do so. The commercial vendors are there to polish it, add the missing pieces that enterprise customers want, provide support, etc.
Probably Linus Torvalds; in addition to being personally associated with the product in the eyes of the public (even if he is only responsible for a small piece of what users see), he holds the trademark for Linux.
The best defence is to let it run it's course (roll with the punches) whilst publically demonstrating that the opposite is true. No customer appreciates being deceived so while some sales in the short term are lost, over the medium to longer term the company that uses this tactic suffers.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I think that Linux vs. the unnamed vendors is a good thing, because Linux and Microsoft are trying to get more secure OSs. And users/customers are the real winners.
All you have to do to kill linux is promote the hell out of Macs. It's a closed-source proprietary Unix which has all the GUI slickness Linux lacks. It's been heavily reported that stealing Linux' marketshare was one of Apple's primary goals in switching to OS X -- you add Linux' 1% to Apple's 1%, and Apple's just doubled its marketshare as well as helping to protect the closed source software industry by slowing the growth of open-source.
Watch it happen. In the end, only RMS and other people who actually put more value on Freedom than cool tech will be left, and they won't be enough to keep it going. Open source is just a speedbump that the big companies are easily ignoring, and for every linux guy who buys a Mac, linux adoption and growth slows.
Figures that /. would make such a big deal out of a what amounts to a press release from the marketing director for the defacto Linux promotion group.
For years the Linux zealots have conducted a compaign against Windows; how it crashes all the time, how buggy it is. But often these opinions are past on old versions and when they are not, the zealots ignore the shortcomings of the various Linux distributions. I love the qualified quote from Pratt:
"Linux is absolutely a secure operating system to the extent that it does not suffer any more or less than any other mature enterprise operating system. The 2.6 kernel is a key step forward in terms of boosting security and reliability,"
Yeah, but companies don't buy kernels, they buy operating systems, platforms and solutions on which to base their information infrastucture on.
Wake up and smell the competition Linux.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state".
Individuals with guns does not make a well regulated militia.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
They're trying to promote thier new java-based platform.
I said "kills the job after a certain time *if* the job hasn't finished by then". So it's certainly possible that the job is done and doesn't need to be killed. It's also possible that "nethack" returns after 1 ms, and that I want to repeatedly call nethack. I understand that dumping the pid will make sure that the wrong job isn't killed, but in my example with 1 ms running time, you'd reach a steady state with 10,000 background sleep tasks, which is unacceptable.
But thanks anyway for your time, irc.goatse.cx troll.