McAfee, Macromedia Flirting With F/OSS Community

xbsd writes "Those computer industry specialists claiming that the end of Linux is fast approaching may be interested in two recent movements inside the industry. Two weeks ago, McAfee, one of the world leaders in computer security products, launched its first commercial antivirus solution for Linux, and just yesterday, Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE."

Comments

Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean McAfee is going to start releasing virii for linux too?

Re:Oh crap.

[webweave]

Hey, I got email from McAfee sent to root, should I open it?

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, virii isn't, never has been, and never will be the correct plural form of virus.

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

So??

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it makes them look like dumbassi when they use it.

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

> You know, virii isn't, never has been, and never will be the correct plural form of virus.

I'll be sure to post that on all my boxen.

Re:Oh crap.

[FLAGGR]

It's spelt dumbassii, duh.

Re:Oh crap.

[pohl]

You know, virii isn't, never has been, and never will be the correct plural form of virus.

It would be foolish to assume that the poster didn't know that s/he was violating the official rules. Say what you will about ESR and/or the jargon file, but this particular page could help you understand why you're wasting your efforts.

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

My boxen been r00ted by virii!

Re:Oh crap.

[geminidomino]

None of the Real Hackers(tm) I know use "virii." It's pretty much the baliwick of 1337-d00dz and HCAVP (or whatever order those letters are...) these days

Re:Oh crap.

[Mehtuus]

That is too funnii...

Re:Oh crap.

[rpdillon]

The fact that I didn't *know* that virii wasn't the correct plural form aside, I found this article very informative. It seems virii (or even viri) may at some point become accepted, GP's post notwithstanding.

When I'm on the other side of the argument (like when it comes to the pronunciation of words like "forte") I get very annoyed, so I understand where you're coming from. (BTW, it should be simply pronounced "fort" when referring to a person's area of expertise or strength, though so many people have screwed it up over the past 50 years, the dictionaries are actually recognizing "fort-ay" as a secondary pronunciation, as it is used in music, for example.)

Re:Oh crap.

[ady1]

the best virus scanner is user itself. Virus scanners can only stop already known viruses. I find virus scanner realtime protection really annoying since it further slows down IO processing (which is bottleneck in most desktops). instead I just take precautionary measure while downloading file like run on demand virus scan after downloading, check signature/ file version and don't execute if it look suspecious. I also check the process list in task manager every time I open it especially programs running in USER context. look out for suspecious processes like system.exe or xpsp2.exe or any other process pretending to be system service but running in user context. another well known worm executer process is rundll32.exe. Although itself its a legitimate process but since it can execute other worm like dlls (some variants of msblast and other) so I make sure that no instance of it is running which I don't know about.

Re:Oh crap.

[Metteyya]

McAfee may have thought about this for some time, but check out the Macromedia - announcing getting in Linux business day after the news about advancing works over GPLFlash v2. Coincidence? Yeah right.

Re:Oh crap.

[geminidomino]

Eh, it wasn't meant to be a flame, just that the jargon file is generally centered around the "hacker" culture, that specific term is more script kiddie-centric.

Don't get me started on pronunciations, though. I'm still stewing over the illiterates who say "nuke-you-ler"

Re:Oh crap.

[drx]

Having seen thesophisticated anti-virus program Norton Anti-Virus 2004 in action on WinXP i cannot think that any worm you might catch could be worse than this.

For people who don't use Outlook but Thunderbird (which is a better approach to stop viruses i think) it scans all the mail files all the time, blocking even Thunderbird's access to them. And these mail files can be huge, as they are just plain text of all the messages. It makes everything so slow it is unbelievable.

If this Anti-Virus would now start to send email around automatically it would really be worse than a worm.

Re:Oh crap.

[ynohoo]

You gotta love the way ESR goes out of his way to use HTML that won't render properly in IE. Such an amusing trait is bound to endear him and his message to the uncoverted.

Re:Oh crap.

[inquisitor]

NAV is by far the worst anti-virus program out there; as you've seen, it's horrendously slow and buggy. Some of the corporate versions are apparently OK but the consumer ones all suck. Even McAfee is better than NAV, and that's not saying much.

The free-for-home-use AVG is actually surprisingly fast and the similarly free-for-home-use Avast!, while slightly slower isn't nearly as slow as Norton, has a wide feature set, doesn't get in the way too often, has a smart background auto-update feature for dialup users and works on AMD64 Windows. I use the latter.

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

You gotta love the way ESR goes out of his way to use HTML that won't render properly in IE.

Have you ever tried to come up with any remotely complex HTML that does render properly in IE? It's pretty freaking hard. No one went "out of his way" to skip that step; he just didn't care enough to waste the time doing it.

Re:Oh crap.

[pohl]

Eh, it wasn't meant to be a flame, just that the jargon file is generally centered around the "hacker" culture, that specific term is more script kiddie-centric.

I do not believe that your sample size is large enough (or random enough) to support that distinction.

Re:Oh crap.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have IE at hand, what do you mean it renders wrong in IE? Two pixels different from Firefox's rendering? Waaaaaaa! Waaaaaaaaaaa!

Anyhow, thus spake the great W3C Validator:

This Page Tentatively Validates As XHTML 1.0 Transitional (Tentatively Valid)!

If he'd add XHTML 1.0 Transitional doctype, it'd be valid HTML.

Plus, ESR's code is such plain and non-complex shit, if IE renders it wrong even in tagsoup mode, then it's fucked up beyond all repair anyway. I don't care.

Re:Oh crap.

[ynohoo]

A glorious sample from the parents link:

dubious â' dubiosity Another class of common construction uses the suffix â-itudeâ(TM) to abstract a quality from just about any adjective or noun. This usage arises especially in cases where mainstream English would perform the same abstraction through â-inessâ(TM) or â-ingnessâ(TM).

Examining the source, it is evident that this curious rendering is caused by his global substitution of non-standard (i.e. not normal US/UK keyboard mapping) paired single-quotes for apostrophes, and a stumpy plus sign (again non-keyboard). This problem does not appear in earlier versions of the jargon file, so you know that he did it on purpose to bork IE.

Re:Oh crap.

[hawk]

What did he domake it standards compliant or some such evil thing?

:)
hawk

Re:Oh crap.

[MegaFur]

I would agree with you about the pronunciation of "forte", but then an old, obscure Tom Baker Doctor Who joke would be broken and have to get removed. So, nope, sorry, we gotta stick with "fort-ay". :-)

Except now that I think about it, what he actually said was the number "forty" because it was a word pun involving the designation of his TARDIS... so maybe the line writer was aware of this frequent mispronunciation?

But if the other pronunciation's gotten into the dicitonaries then I'm afraid you've already lost. As I'm sure you're well aware, spoken language cah, and does change with time, and attempting to prevent it from doing so is futile.

Re:Oh crap.

[snorklewacker]

Give it up, I'd argue with you some more, but I'm late and I have to catch my bus and transfer to another, and it takes a while to take two bii to work.

Re:Oh crap.

[John Bokma]

the plural for virus is viruses.

Re:Oh crap.

[geminidomino]

What distinction, between a hacker and a script-kiddie?

Re:Oh crap.

[r_jensen11]

I get pissed off whenever I hear "pleaded," rathern than "pled." Honestly, I didn't "runned," I "ran...." Please also note the location of the quotation marks in respect to the commas.

Take...

[Anonymous Coward]

THAT naysayers

Virus

[joey.dale]

Why does linux need a virus scanner? There are about 6 linux viruses. Wow. 6, thats a huge threat.

-Joey

Re:Virus

[Mikey Rowan]

Only takes two to tango

Re:Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

To scan for Windows viruses. You can use it on
samba file servers in a windows network, for example.

Re:Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

not just 6 viruses, but 6 viruses that all are patched in the latest kernel. Though i guess it doesnt hurt to be prepared. So check out clamav and Klamav

Re:Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL @ the screenshot, look at the status bar and then see how they spell "viruses"

its pretty pathetic that such clever coders have such poor spelling abilities especially when they cant even spell the problem they are trying to solve, embarrasing

then again people wonder why there are bugs in software.

Re:Virus

[w98]

you spelled embarrassing incorrectly ;o)

Re:Virus

[hungrygrue]

In another venue, that would be much funnier. This, however, is Slashdot. Most of the posts that I see here would make a second grade English teacher cringe, especially the idiots that think that 'you' is spelled 'u' and that 'your' is spelled 'ur'.

Re:Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

lawl lawl rawfle lawl u n r like a nub n stuf rite? roflmfao hahahahahahah f4g lmao

Re:Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

gtfo

Anti-Virus

[ThisIsFred]

By the way, the most effective and affordable AV program of the Windows world, namely Grisoft's AVG, already runs on Linux. Prepare for competition, McAfee!

Re:Anti-Virus

[bersl2]

There's also ClamAV, which is a GPLed virus scanner (mainly for mailservers, but it does have a daemonized scanner and a CLI-based frontend).

Re:Anti-Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, the most effective and affordable AV program of the Linux world, namely ClamAV, already runs on Windows. Prepare to be flattened, proprietary vendors.

Re:Anti-Virus

[mattyrobinson69]

its also better than any scanner ive seen for windows in memory footprint and not hogging the screen during updates (usde freshclamd to update for you).

Plus there's klamav (kde frontend) which is quite good.

Re:Anti-Virus

[TykeClone]

Last I checked, ClamAV doesn't do real time scans on files (which is nice on a windows station!)

Have they got that working now?

Re:Anti-Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

AVG sucks for numerous reasons, the main one being that plenty of times I've had a low level non threatening virus on the system and AVG only reports it after I try to execute it....grat program...uhh in MY world AV programs stop them before they get ON your machine...

Re:Anti-Virus

[ThisIsFred]

I use ClamAV on the server-side, but only as a proactive tool; It halts the spread of viruses when used in conjunction with dazuko, because it blocks access to the infected files. ClamAV's drawbacks are that it can't repair files, and its quarantine feature isn't sophisticated enough to properly file away infected files. It can only dump them in one location, which is obviously bad when two files with otherwise important data happen to have the same name.

I note that ClamAV might have had a memory leak up until 0.80, but it appears to be fixed now. Also, it's totally sweet how easily it can be configured to target certain areas, certain files, or even certain sizes of files. As you can see, I have not forgotten about ClamAV. :o)

Plus there's klamav (kde frontend) which is quite good.

Don't forget the Windows port!

Re:Anti-Virus

[stevey]

I don't think they've even cared to try.

But it's no great loss, there is a kernel module available to allow on-access scanning for arbitary purposes : Dazuko.

I used that to hookup real-time virus scanning with a couple of different engines - there's a userspace deamon which you can use to block, or allow, any file operations with.

Re:Anti-Virus

[datadriven]

My friends that still use windows swear by avast, and say it catches a lot of things that AVG misses.

Re:Anti-Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if you stopped downloading and using programs from those Chinese "shareware" sites then you wouldn't have viruses "plenty of times."

Re:Anti-Virus

[niiler]

This is honestly one of the most annoying features of Windows AV programs. If you aren't click-happy, you don't need such features, especially on a linux box. When you turn it off on Windows, your machine speeds up by a factor of two.

Re:Anti-Virus

[mboverload]

I have my server run it every 3 hours.

Re:Anti-Virus

[mboverload]

It's also has alot more bloat and has a bad interface. If you are a windows tech, you know that McAfee are the fking antichrist. I've seen so many computers fked up by McAfee I don't even point and laugh at the boxes in the store anymore.

Re:Anti-Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah blah.... the most effective ...blah blah blah

Really? I have often had to manually remove viruses that were not dealt with effectively by AVG (with uptodate definitions) from various pcs.

Re:Anti-Virus

[datadriven]

I haven't used windows for several years

Re:Anti-Virus

[Anonymous Coward]

The other interesting thing about Clam is that Sensory Networks (sensorynetworks.com) has an accelerator card for it...........

Re:Anti-Virus

[X0563511]

Problem with your statement. Simply opening the window that contains the infected file can cause it to be executed. Windows reads the EXE file for file attributes, icon, etc.

I've had many viruses attempt to spread simply by browsing their parent folder. Usually required me to scroll over them first, but not always. Depends on the virus, and on your windows version/settings.

Re:Anti-Virus

[Afrosheen]

I've had great success with Symantec Corporate Antivirus in the workplace and on some home machines. In managed mode, there's really nothing better. It catches everything that my users have thrown its way. Keep in mind this is the older version of corporate; I hear the latest versions are bloated and slow.

Re:Anti-Virus

[jesser]

Can you give me more information about these security holes in Windows Explorer?

Re:Anti-Virus

[Khuffie]

No no, trust me. The anti-christ is Norton/Symantec. Trust me. Norton AV slows my system down to a crawl. When I installed their firewall, it broke half my applications (and yes, they were approved to access the net. They'd just crash with it running). The latest version of McAfee programs (2005) is actually pretty darn good. I don't like their "Security Center". It's a good start, but could use a more builtin interface (ie, no different windows for firewall/av), but the actual programs are pretty damned good. Combined with MS/Giant's Anti-Spyware, and you got a pretty secure and stable Windows box.

Re:Anti-Virus

[martin-boundary]

Don't forget the Windows port!

wklamav??? No wonder people think us geeks are either crazy, or from some small Eastern European country named Zktlfghy!

Re:Anti-Virus

[ctr2sprt]

There is also Sophos AV, which supports Windows, MacOS X, NetApps, Linux on Intel and Alpha, FreeBSD, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX, SCO, OS/2, OpenVMS, and NetWare. I had never heard of them until going to college, where Sophos was their "mandatory AV product" for all students, and haven't heard of them since. But I was pretty impressed by their product. Of course, I've gotten exactly one virus in my entire life, and it was a harmless DOS-era boot-sector virus acquired from a friend, so I was impressed mainly by how lightweight Sophos is. And obviously its supported-OS list is pretty remarkable.

Re:Anti-Virus

[cowbutt]

Google can give you a start. I'm pretty sure there have been image- or avi/wmv-borne exploits too.

Re:Anti-Virus

[POPE Mad Mitch]

Sophos http://www.sophos.com/ have been doing a linux version of their commercial AV software for years. Weve used it to impliment virus scanning of emails and network file stores.

Re:Anti-Virus

[xtracto]

No, it is called ClamWin

Re:Anti-Virus

[xtracto]

Maybe, but one thing that is true is that it is the only way to have a "preventing" antivirus instead of a "corrective" one.

In my Uniersity they use the Sophos antivirus, which monitors when files are Open, Read, Write. If it finds a virus it will deny you the access to the file. That way your computer wont be able to get infected.

I think that is a 10000000 times better approach for the end user, instead of having to disinfect your files / computer after it have been infected imagine, when John Sixpack downloads an attachment on his Outlook mail, if he does not have this kind of protection he will get infected and then it is more difficult to disinffect; instead, with the proactive approach he wont be able to open/read the file unless he disable the antivirus...

Re:Anti-Virus

[niiler]

Exactly...it depends on your Windows version/settings. I used to use FPROT for DOS on WinME (after setting up WinME to load after booting a real DOS - a painful registry hack, but it worked). I would run a daemon to autoscan every 3am or so and that was it. I scanned unknown floppies before putting them into my machine and didn't click on emails unless I knew what was in them. I also had dial-up and Tiny Personal Firewall. So there was no way for something to get onto my machine without me knowing about it. Pretty simple, actually. So, no. I never had the condition you described so it wasn't a problem. Nothing ever got into a folder for me to browse without it being checked already. Different system, same results, and less intrusive for me.

A little user intervention can save $$ in software costs.

Re:Anti-Virus

[Threni]

> Usually required me to scroll over them first, but not always. Depends on the
> virus, and on your windows version/settings.

I never heard this. A windows virus exists which runs when you `scroll over` the file? You mean select it? Are you sure you're not talking about the preview pane in MS Outlook?

Re:Anti-Virus

[ThisIsFred]

Can't say I've ever run into this. How fast is your machine? No program is able to scan every file of every size instantaneously. At least AVG detects all those "trojan" programs that come along with other spyware, which many other scanners miss. My advice for you is to scan before you open any foreign file.

Re:Anti-Virus

[dragonman97]

Agreed. For my end users, this is a *must*. But man...I've come to really hate the stuff myself - it slows me down quite a bit...and really sucks when I'm doing analyses of virus-containing e-mail or the like. I mean, can't McAfee /tell/ that I'm a white-hat carefully examining stuff, and give me my room? [smirk]

I've also set up a white-listed directory to do my heavy work from, as a Perl app of mine gets slowed down tremendously while working on a few gig worth of large log files. It seems that on-access scans slow down the execution of `stat` a whole lot (or something closely related), and this bogs down cygwin's `ls` as well as doing "my @foo=;"

It pains me to hear that this disease of a product is now on Linux - I can possibly understand a need for it, but I simply hate the performance lag, particularly when it's unnecessary. (I've never gotten a virus on my Windows box at work, and definitely never gotten such a thing on my Linux boxen or Mac at home - it's a matter of caution.)

Re:Anti-Virus

[Elwood P Dowd]

I don't understand why it's unfeasible to do a scan-on-write. Just like all these new desktop search applications. After a file is created or modified, it gets added to a threaded queue of shit to scan for viruses. In the event that you run it faster than the scan is complete, THEN scan on read.

I imagine that AV software doesn't trust that it can be engineered to scan every single file reliably on creation. Still seems like it could work.

Re:Anti-Virus

[jc2it]

Try http://secunia.com/product// and look for MS Internet Explorer. Actually, here is the direct link to IE 6.x exploits. http://secunia.com/product/11//IE Exploits

Eclipse Faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Eclipse, but can it be sped up? It is sluggish sometimes on my Powerbook 1.5 GHz, with 1 Gb of RAM. Maybe convert it to C++?

Re:Eclipse Faster

[QuantumG]

I love the fact that people went to all the trouble of getting Eclipse to compile with gcj and then didn't supply any binaries for use by the general public.

Re:Eclipse Faster

[Anonymous Coward]

That is because eclipse built with gcj is not noticably faster than a "normal" build. It is just totally free (as in speech) because it doesnt depend on any Sun stuff.

Re:Eclipse Faster

[Anonymous Coward]

" I love Eclipse, but can it be sped up? It is sluggish sometimes on my Powerbook 1.5 GHz, with 1 Gb of RAM. Maybe convert it to C++?"

Try NetBeans the new versions run nicely with the performance enhancements Sun has made to Swing.

Re:Eclipse Faster

[Black Art]

Fedora Core 4 has binaries for Eclipse in the "core" repository, as well as SRPMS.

http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/core/development/ SRPMS/

Re:Eclipse Faster

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Eclipse, but can it be sped up? It is sluggish sometimes on my Powerbook 1.5 GHz, with 1 Gb of RAM. Maybe convert it to C++?

Of course its sluggish on a fucking Powerbook. It's a heavyweight app, a piddly little Powerbook isn't going to be able to handle it. Wait until Apple starts using Intel chips and maybe you can use a real development tool on your toy OS.

Re:Eclipse Faster

[dnoyeb]

Oh please. Like im gonna bite on that. Do some research...

Eclipse and more specifically what is being suggested in this post is not the IDE at all. The IDE is just one part of eclipse and it is unrelated to the Eclipse "RCP."

End of OSS?

[XFilesFMDS1013]

Who actually believed the people who were saying that Linux et. al. were going to fail? I mean, there's millions of people who want to use a better OS, and more importantly, many of those people also want to help to make their OS better.

Re:End of OSS?

[N3Roaster]

Plenty of people believed Linux would fail. Many still do. There are a lot of people who simply don't get the notion that mortals can build something as complicated as an operating system. It's assumed that the people who know how and would be working on that sort of thing would be doing it in a corporate setting, completely ignoring the fact that lots of people developing Linux do so in a corporate setting. Take a random computer using non-geek who has never knowingly encountered Linux (or had a bad introduction to it), present a superficial overview of open development and Free software (on the level that they might encounter in a newspaper) to that person, and you've probably got someone right there who thinks it would never work. To be fair, it's pretty amazing that it does.

Re:End of OSS?

[RenoRelife]

No kidding. The article by John Dvorak was way off. People like him are writing influential articles based on opinions without any knowledge.

The Mac OS was built around a Unix kernel not unlike Linux, but with a very advanced and slick user interface. The normal Apple menu structures and way of doing things are what the majority of both Mac and Windows users expect to see. The operative word is "intuitive." The Linux world suffers from a lack of modern intuitive menus and commands.

Shows his lack of background knowledge. He brings up the fact that Mac OS X uses a BSD kernel (which, if you've ever written assembly code on both platforms you know it's very unlike Linux), and then somehow tries to relate that to Linux's lack of easy-to-use menus?

Newsflash. The kernel doesn't make the menu look slick.

Re:End of OSS?

[smittyoneeach]

For a propellerhead treatment of the question, there is this Hah-vahd link: http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4 834&t=technology

Re:End of OSS?

[EvanED]

Shows his lack of background knowledge. He brings up the fact that Mac OS X uses a BSD kernel (which, if you've ever written assembly code on both platforms you know it's very unlike Linux), and then somehow tries to relate that to Linux's lack of easy-to-use menus?

His point -- or at least what I infer his point to be -- is that with MacOS you get the benefits that come with *nix (multiuser, security, yadda) with the ease of use of, uh, MacOS.

(And from almost all levels, yes, Linux and BSD are not unlike each other. The same commands run on each, the same calls are available on each. Even most programmers don't touch assembly, and that's a lower level than most people will touch. From your C code up there are relatively few, relatively minor differences.)

Re:End of OSS?

[Trollstoi]

Linux started as hobby, and if needed, I believe it can go on indefinitely as such. There's no way to kill it via commercial competition, while it remains free. However, it's always nice to hear about companies getting interested in Linux, so we can expect to have things working more easily.

Re:End of OSS?

[ErikTheRed]

Who actually believed the people who were saying that Linux et. al. were going to fail? I mean, there's millions of people who want to use a better OS, and more importantly, many of those people also want to help to make their OS better.

It's the same group that thought the Internet was 'just a fad.' And remember how that group included Microsoft?

Re:End of OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article: The basic trade-off is the following: With a duopoly, more individuals and organizations use PCs because prices are lower, and this raises welfare. However, with a duopoly, no operating system ends up exploiting fully its potential because developers' efforts wind up divided between the two systems. However, with a monopoly, the efforts to develop new software and improve the platform are directed towards one system only and this may turn out to be better from a social welfare perspective.

Well, from a social welfare perspective, this will work if the development tools and information (aka "SDK") for the monopoly platform do not follow typical monopoly pricing environment models. As the one product becomes monopolized, growth stops being the major creator of profit potential, so prices start increasing. And products made by the OS maker will gradually increase in price as well (already happens).

Sure, some players will hang around, being virtually profitable, but that's it for Borland, Corel, et al.

Re:End of OSS?

[Pollardito]

evidently it was believed by the same people that like to click on banner ads, so websites said it again and again

Re:End of OSS?

[zerus]

Seems to me like the major software companies have been harping for about 8 years on the 'fact' that linux is nothing but a minor nuisance and is going to disappear within the next year or so. I suppose this just shows a corporate strategic response to the trend in people going to lengths to get something different on their desktops than Windows or MacOS. First there were a few companies making their software available to linux, but not much that would be useable to most people (I use matlab, maple and industry codes on linux, so I don't do the web development stuff so this is only accurate to myself), but now common desktop software makers are porting to linux; nero, mcafee, large release games, etc. Looks like the doom and gloom prediction from the major software companies is turning out to be quite the opposite. Hopefully this trend will continue :-)

Re:End of OSS?

[suitepotato]

The odds of people believing Linux will somehow overtake, replace, otherwise compete with Windows on the consumer and workplace desktop are inversely proportional to the odds of those people ever spending any time in programming and end-user customer support.

Linux is the fitting shoe being worn by an army of geeks who believe that difficult and esoteric is better than easy and obvious. Some of them are merely children who aren't old enough to have fought with DOS to get things like Doom and Syndicate to run properly. Most aren't old enough to have ever had to twiddle bits day in and day out and grow tired of it before the age of modern professionally supported GUIs. There are however a huge number who should definitely know better, especially those who did years in the Unix early days.

Do time in the end-user support trenches and you should quickly realize that they aren't ready for Linux and never will be as it currently exists. Of course, those who do realize this, instead of re-examining their position, will quickly conclude that the end-users are mentally retarded and they the Linux users are demigods of intellect who know better.

It's that arrogance in the Linux community regarding Windows and its users that is consistantly going to be its undoing. That inability to recognize that Linux was dumped out of the bowels of one of the most horrendous OS species ever to slouch across a computer, is a server OS and not an end-user desktop OS, and is at roughly the same stage of useability as DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 but instead is celebrated for precisely those reasons is mind boggling and rightfully so to the outside Windows workaday world.

It's like trying to make your people do a production run of seven thousand parts on a two-axis CNC retrofit Bridgeport with manual Z quill running on hand input codes and looking down on a five-axis center running from point and click cad/cam just because someone was throwing out the Bridgeports and you got them for free while the center would cost money being paid to, gasp, a corporation.

How dare anyone be expected to pay for something that works? That's awful. Better they should get their tools for free, even if they don't work right and have to in fact be made by scratch from blueprints noted in a language you don't read. Any manufacturing plant that tried to work their shop the way Linux works, would be put out of business by their local tech high school's junior class, never mind a competitor who had half a brain. "So we have to make all the shell mills, flute mills, lathe bits, and pretty much everything else from scratch before we start this work? And we have to finish in the same amount of time as if we had the centers you should have bought? Uh boss, come over here to the bandsaw and put your head down there under the blade for a minute. I want to show you something."

This statement comes from a programmer, software/hardware and network support tech, Linux and Windows user/dual-booter, former OS/2 user/supporter (I'm free, I'm free!). Not some Windows luser, no matter how much you want to think otherwise. Difficult is not beautiful, hand written configuration files for everything is moronic and asking for a cut from Occam's Razor, and free does not beat paid support. I'd rather keep chasing AV and AS definitions on Windows than trying to step the same people who can't execute "ipconfig /all" at a prompt on XP through the nail removal with pliers like torture of dependency resolution.

Re:End of OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

He brings up the fact that Mac OS X uses a BSD kernel

OSX uses the Darwin kernel. Which is essentially Mach with some BSD thrown in for good measure. But it certainly isn't the BSD kernel.

Re:End of OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd die if my computer were as difficult to use as macos. Good thing I run a real desktop.

Re:End of OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do time in the end-user support trenches and you should quickly realize that they aren't ready for Linux and never will be as it currently exists. Of course, those who do realize this, instead of re-examining their position, will quickly conclude that the end-users are mentally retarded and they the Linux users are demigods of intellect who know better.

But of course you're not arrogent for thinking you know what people should be using better than they. You seem just as stuck in the whole geek group-think as the people you're chiding. Start treating people as individuals who can make up their own mind once fairly presented with data and they might surprise you. Hell, I know more "average users" with linux desktops than I know computer geeks using them.

Re:End of OSS?

[Mo6eB]

Well, GNU/Linux is, has been and (hopefully) always will be a hacker's OS. And I don't want it any other way. At the same time, ther is a secure, Unix-like, user-friendly alternative and it's called MacOS. I really have no idea why people are trying to push GNU/Linux on the users' desktops. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Re:End of OSS?

[Taevin]

Well, GNU/Linux is, has been and (hopefully) always will be a hacker's OS. And I don't want it any other way.

Why? Sounds like you're an immature 14 year old who doesn't want to lose his status as a "l33t linux d00d."

And I don't want it any other way. At the same time, ther is a secure, Unix-like, user-friendly alternative and it's called MacOS. I really have no idea why people are trying to push GNU/Linux on the users' desktops. It just doesn't make sense to me.

That whooshing sound was a major point of F/OSS going right over your head. You're right people could use MacOS instead, but the point is that people should be able to choose whatever OS they want without worrying about being locked in by their current OS.

You're the kind of person that gives the F/OSS movement a bad name. You put out the notion that Linux is the "hacker's OS" in hopes of scaring away the ignorant masses. As it has been mentioned previously in this topic, give people some credit and they may surprise you.

Take my situation as an example. I'm the only person in my family, extended or otherwise, that is knowledgeable about computers. And yet, my great-grandparents, ages 89 and 93, were able to purchase a computer, configure it, and send email to me WITHOUT consulting me at all - they only received minor help from my grandmother who did the same. Sure it wasn't easy but they put some effort into it and learned what they needed to know. If they can do that at their age, there's no reason the average person can't do the same to learn the "hacker's OS." And really, Linux isn't that much harder than Windows, it's just different so you have to learn something new. The difference is even smaller if you go with a distribution like Red Hat that operates similarly to Windows.

To be sure, there will always be the more "hardcore" distributions of Linux like Gentoo (my personal favorite) that you can use to keep your "l33t" status. There's simply no reason that everyone can't enjoy the benefits of using F/OSS software.

Re:End of OSS?

[davidfree]

Indeed, Linux can never fail because it was built up by people, not for money, but because they wanted to. So even if it was a commercial flop, it would still continue to grow. Even if the big money walked away, its still a peoples OS. The internet, Linux and OSS is too good a combination for it to ever die!

Re:End of OSS?

[1veedo]

It was a 'fad' until Microsoft realized other people were making money off it.

Macromedia?

[Conception]

By Macromedia, you mean Adobe right? Super F/OSS friendly Adobe.

Re:Macromedia?

[Mikey Rowan]

It's a step in the right direction. Perhaps, if we ask very very nicely, they'll make Flash open source... ... In exchange for our immortal souls

Re:Macromedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

" It's a step in the right direction. Perhaps, if we ask very very nicely, they'll make Flash open source... ... In exchange for our immortal souls"

What else ya got?

Re:Macromedia?

[Mikey Rowan]

I guess I could throw in my rotting corpse and forged recipts showing I paid for Flash MX *shudder*

Re:Macromedia?

[Stanistani]

Macromedia releasing...
a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn

Hmm... "Zorn." Where have I heard that before?

Didn't "Zorn" mean "utter destruction" in the rabbit-language from Watership Down by Richard Adams?

'Zorn! Zorn!' cried the dreadful squealing voice. 'All dead! O Zorn!'

Re:Macromedia?

[Lisandro]

No need for your soul... with the weird shit going arround lately (Debian releasing new stable, Apple going x86, etc.), it wouldn't surprise me if that happens. We're living in interesting times, indeed.

Anyway, it's all good until Duke Nukem Forever goes gold. Then the world as we know it dissapears.

Re:Macromedia?

[circusboy]

but oh PLEASE do not let them near the debugger. there is not a bigger disaster than the flash debugger.

If that is the cost, it's too high.

Re:Macromedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

rich internet applications, my ass....

Maybe if they would learn how to design a class hierarchy right, provide controls that actually function (tab/highlight anyone?), didn't have a documentation that was an utter failure, provided an editor that had less functionality than notepad, ignored out of scope or misspelled variables/properties, didn't work differently in preview and in browsers, if the player didn't come with strings attached...

Bah, what a waste. I'm done with it.

Re:Macromedia?

[JVert]

From what I can renember eclipse was crap for using standard windows shortcut keys. So yea, maybe adobe took one look at the macromedia team and told them to F/OSS off. Keep them from getting fired and grouping together to make a competing svg product. I was thinking I should get farther away from flash now that adobe owns the realm. But thinking back about all the little bugs in flash dreamweaver and fireworks that were never fix in 6 years. Maybe I'd actually be interested in their next version.

Re:Macromedia?

[ozmanjusri]

I guess I could throw in my rotting corpse and forged recipts showing I paid for Flash MX *shudder*

You think you've been done. I paid for Studio MX2004 AND a Devnet subscription. Now I have to deactiveate/reactivate every app each time I change my hardware.

Re:Macromedia?

[mikael_j]

Hmm... "Zorn." Where have I heard that before?

Anders Zorn was a swedish painter, probably not where you heard it but it's the only Zorn I've heard of..

/Mikael

Re:Macromedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, not that! SWF has it's uses, but the Flash creation tool is horrible. Though maybe if it were open source it'd get forked into a streamlined web-only version and a proper animation for video package. As it is I'd rather just use something else.

Re:Macromedia?

[lowar]

Hmm... "Zorn." Where have I heard that before?

It means "rage" in german.

CU Micha

Re:Macromedia?

[jrumney]

John Zorn. If you've listened to any of his music (discordant guitar based Jazz), you'd probably agree with the German meaning.

Re:Macromedia?

[asaone]

I am still waiting for a x86_64 flash player.

Re:Macromedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite. Naked City yes, Masada not really, Bar Kokhba no. That's one of the reasons I'll actually tolerate him, unlike most avant-wank musicians he is actually capable of writing and arranging interesting, well-structured music in a variety of styles. So if he decides to spend some of his time playing violent, horrible noise I'll give him the benefit of the doubt - it might just have some musical validity. 99% of the rest of the avant-jazz world, however....

Re:Macromedia?

[jrumney]

Naked City was my first exposure to John Zorn. I didn't go back for more, maybe I should.

Re:Macromedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out some of his 80s stuff and Bar Kokhba. Some Masada is good too, but if you're after a nice intro it won't get much better than BK. Background:

Masada was Zorn's project based on the jazz approach of head melodies. He realised he'd never written a proper book of head melodies, so he sat down and wrote 100 of them based on traditional Jewish scales. There's about a million Masada albums on which these are all performed, with various added bits of honking and squealing on horns. The melodies are great, but the solos are often like John Coltrane minus all the musicality.

Bar Kohbha is a bunch of Masada material played by various configurations of small chamber orchestras/jazz bands. Lots of it is string based, which is nice, there's one fairly straight-ahead piano-lead jazz track with drums, solo tracks for guitar and piano and so forth. Very nice, very easy to listen to and really a very accomplished bit of composition.

from McAfee's datasheet...

[brer_rabbit]

from the first line of McAfee's datasheet...

The world reverberated from the effects of viruses such as Nimda, CodeRed, and more recently, Slammer, Mydoom, Netsky, and Bagle.

well, the Windows world reverberated....

Re:from McAfee's datasheet...

[Mikey Rowan]

My entire system reverberated when it got toepunted after slammer killed my game of solitare... and that was the day I installed slackware - The Opus Dei of Linux

Re:from McAfee's datasheet...

[Slime-dogg]

All the world. Though non-windows systems were not affected, the bandwidth sure was.

Re:from McAfee's datasheet...

[insidious777]

I don't think you understand. The main payload of those viruses was not the one listed on the McAfee's site under "payload". The huge problem was that it brought coorperations and isp's computers to a screeching halt because of the sheer volume of traffic they generated. The members of the linux world using those servers suffered as well.

A solution that monitors traffic through linux servers for Windows viruses warrents an opening like that, since 99.9% of the viruses it catches will be windows viruses. If they were mainly targeting the product at linux desktops, I don't think there would be many sales. Well, except to coorperations whose IT departments need antivirus software to make managers comfortable, which I guess could be a healthy number.

Re:from McAfee's datasheet...

[m50d]

Not just the windows world. At the height of some of those outbreaks I was getting connections to my smbd faster than tail could scroll up on the terminal. Killed my performance, I had to disable SMB for a while.

Re:from McAfee's datasheet...

[xenotrout]

I didn't notice it. When did these happen?

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering there really isn't a virus problem for Linux either, this makes perfect sense.

Viruses

[Black Art]

I am glad that they are releasing an anti-virus solution for Linux.

Yes, there are almost no viruses that *run* on Linux, but there are viruses that arrive in my mail and on disks that I am handed by clients. I at least want to identify which viruses I am dealing with so I can inform my clients. ClamAV does not recognise all of the new ones. (Have to collect them all!)

Unfortunatly the "buy on line" link starts at 11 licenses, not one.

As for Macromedia, I would be happier if they would provide a Flash client that would work on my AMD64 in 64 bit Linux.

Re:Viruses

[Anonymous Coward]

They do, it's called Virex and it's a piece of shit. Runaway processes that eat CPU time, system instability, file corruption, incorrectly flagged files... I'm just glad there are no viruses to make me have to use it.

Re:Viruses

[sik0fewl]

When you start getting as many viruses as we Linux users do.

Re:Viruses

[gnarlin]

Have you tried GPLFlash? I think there was a recent article here on slashdot about it rising from the ashes once more.

Re:Viruses

[BiggerIsBetter]

Just so you know, there's about a zillion free-for-home-use Linux antivirus applications. F-prot and Panda are just two of them. Personally, I run NOD32 on both Windows and Linux, but it aint free. It's good to see McAfee with a no-setup-drama on-access scanner though.

Re:Viruses

[TheRaven64]

Norton AV runs on Macs. As far as I can tell, the only point of it is to detect when a Windows user has sent you a virus (although MS VirtualPC is also good for that - it associates a nice little Windows icon with any virus yo receive...)

Turnabout

[overshoot]

Well, fair's fair.

Microsoft bought a Rumanian company that produced border protection (protect MS clients by filtering on Linux hosts) and turned around to "cut off [McAfee's] air supply" with an MS client antivirus offering. Of course they shut down the Linux border filters.

In return, McAfee fills the vacuum by offering a Linux-hosted border filter.

Works for me.

Re:Turnabout

[flibble-san]

Rumania? Is that where the Rumans come from?

Re:Turnabout

[joeybagadonuts]

Donald Rumsfeld owned a border protection company? The jokes almost write themselves, people...

Re:Turnabout

[Ecko7889]

Isn't the reason for Anti-virus is becuase the OS has security holes in it? Windows is an OS. It has holes. You pay $180 for a OS then on top of that $40 for a AV. Have the general public accepted this consumer BS that you MUST have a OS, AV, FW all to protect the original OS. When you pay $180, you'd expect your getting what you paid for,

The reason Linux doesn't have viruses is becuase when one comes out, so does a patch. A "anti-virus" But instead of a scanner or such, it's built into the OS, and prevents the problem at the source, not at a "security" layer.

Microsoft needs to not worry about a AV Program, and start worrying about their OS holes. Would you pay a monthly suscription so that instead of another program to suck up CPU, Microsoft gets off their lazy asses and fixes the damn security holes. Why do we say "McAfee and Norton have updated their defintion", when it should be Microsoft saying "We have released a patch stopping this viruses actions"?

Re:Turnabout

[kv9]

it was prolly a typo. what he means is ms bought this back in 2003. also covered here.

Antivirus for Linux?

[initialE]

Looks like they will be hard at work making viruses for Linux... I don't want to buy a product that doesn't get updated at least once every week...

Viruses

[m85476585]

When will they release anti-virus software for macs?

we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[Anonymous Coward]

we had a virus that corrupted MSIE (mshtml.dll) Mcafee was instantly disabled, that 100mb install became useless all because Mcafee based their application dialogs on the MSIE component

we cancelled our contract with them soon after as we realised that if Mcafee dont understand security (they understand marketing though) so we will have to find someone who does understand security, and knows not to base the last line of defence on the biggest exploitable product on a windows system

ClamAV is looking good because of the costing though reliabilty and accurate is still a concern

-SJ

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[Anonymous Coward]

ClamAV is looking good because of the costing though reliabilty and accurate is still a concern

THe last time I saw a virus get past ClamAV, I noticed a bout a 6 hour lag between the commerical providers recognizing it and clamav. 6 hours is pretty good for a free product.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[Anonymous Coward]

Most big AVs to have flaws like that... Norton can be disabled by a simple WMI script. Funnily, you can run that script with the "script scanning" enabled, and it won't do a thing about it. Plus, norton isn't exactly fast for updates either...

We're using McAfee at work, and we never had any problems with it so far (not that I'm saying it's a good product or anything, just that a disaster didn't happen). Could be worse... The most important with any AV is ensuring updates are applied (via scripting or what not), if that's done, thing will be fine in most cases.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[zxcvbpoiu]

Did you happen to check to see if the scanning was actually disabled just because the UI was zapped? Just because it doesn't tell you that it detected something does not mean that it is still not working in the background.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[zerocool^]

Might I suggest Trend Micro.

Seriously, it's the only one i ever recomend to corporate customers. You can test their scanner by going to housecall.trendmicro.com. They release new pattern files as soon as they have them (none of the "wait till official release tuesday" shit like symantec) - and they release more than one a day if need be.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

If this virus was running with enough priveledges to modify system DLLs like that one, then there's not much any virus scanner can do about it. If it had the ability to modify that DLL, it could have just as easily modified any other DLLs that any other virus scanner depends upon.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it be disabled by a script run by a non-admin? If not, who cares.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[zxcvbpoiu]

All the major AV vendors release signatures multiple times a day if the new threat is severe enough. Pay attention during any major outbreak and you will see McAfee, Symantec, Trend and others all releasing. It does not matter the day of the week nor the time of day. I would not consider the housecall product appropriate for your "corporate" customers. That's a consumer product. If you are truly advising corporate customers, you should really be doing real evaluation of products designed for businesses.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[zerocool^]

dude, chill. The housecall was just to test the capabilities of the virus pattern file (i regularly see trend micro catch things that norton doesn't even detect).

TM's corporate product is excellent.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[dodobh]

Clamav is reliable. Very reliable. I haven't had false positives, or infections from a clam failure for three years in half a dozen corporates I support.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[shokk]

The most important thing in a corporate environment is going to be centralized administration. Norton has a console that shows that status of all clients in the Corporate Edition AntiVirus product. McAfee has a web-managed interface similar to Red Hat's RHN. Does ClamAV have a similar interface for administration and summarizing the current corporate status? If so, that's a definite win right there.

Re:we cancelled the Mcafee contract at our company

[jayloden]

Totally have to agree here. Older versions of McAfee and Norton/Symantec Antivirus weren't bad, and I used to recommend them. Current versions of both now depend on the MSIE engine, and as you pointed out, can be instantly disabled by a corrupt IE engine, or even just changed security settings.

I am the author of a small antivirus tool for Windows, and I saw first-hand how one of the viruses/worms I deal with turned up the security level on IE in all zones - making the user unable to run McAfee or Norton because they didn't have permission to use ActiveX on their own local machine.

These two programs have a reputation that was once deserved, but now is based purely on the past. I recommend AntiVir antivirus - http://free-av.com/ - now, because it's fast, free for personal use, updated at least once every 48 hours, and has a small footprint on the system - all things that McAfee and Norton fail at.

-Jay

Not the first McAfee Linux product

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

McAfee have had scanners for Linux for a while. They claim this is the first on-access scanner, though.

McAfee is not big deal, but Macromedia is

[WindBourne]

WHile I would rather see a real FOSS version of flash, shockwave, etc. I am happy to see Macromedia starting to take interest in OSS platforms. But sad that it takes the OSS world developing competition to get them to notice it.

As to McAfee moving to Linux, well, that is not a big deal. It will make many of the PHB's and MS techs feel better about it, but it is like hanging a lock on the handle of a safe. It is the safe that is doing the real work, not a simple lock that attaches to the handle. McAfee will be a waste of money.

Re:McAfee is not big deal, but Macromedia is

[nacturation]

Heh, nice to know that Macromedia is being generous by providing some open source tools for its $20K Flex server.

Re:McAfee is not big deal, but Macromedia is

[SimHacker]

Macromedia's Flex is a knock-off of Laszlo, which was developed earlier and is more mature, and open source. So now Macromedia's doing a knock-off of IBM's Eclipse plug-in for Laszlo.

IBM already released an open source Eclipse plugin for developing Laszlo applications, on November 18, 2004. Laszlo is open source, and so is the Eclipse tool for developing Laszlo applications.

Does Macromedia actually think they're going to convince open source developers to use Flex, by throwing out an Eclipse plug-in, while still charging $20,000 per cpu for the Flex server software?

IBM and Laszlo are a lot more serious about Open Source and Eclipse than Macromedia/Adobe.

-Don

Re:McAfee is not big deal, but Macromedia is

[zxcvbpoiu]

Linux might be safe from almost all the malware, but if you are using Linux as your file server for Windows clients, it is a big deal. It's those Windows clients you're buying the protection for. Just think about the value of a file server that is immune from most malware and has the reliability of Linux plus offers protection for your Windows desktops. To me, that's a winning combination.

Re:McAfee is not big deal, but Macromedia is

[markhb]

I don't think they're chasing open source developers; their target market for the servers (and hence, indirectly, the target for the dev tools as well) has always been hosting companies and large corporations. I think they're finally realizing two things: programmers have no desire to try to write code in Dreamweaver (they've been pushing DW as the replacement for ColdFusion Studio since the MX launch), and that their skill is in design tools, not coding tools. So, they're opening this up (and I would hope they'd put some cash into the CFEclipse project as well) so they can point to it as the preferred programming tool for the Flex platform.

To date, I will say that I have seen exactly one knock-your-socks-off "Rich Internet Application": the GameDay near-real-time app at mlb.com. I have no reason to mention this, other than that I am a baseball fan and I think it's cool.

Hope they go all the way

[DegeneratePR]

If these companies decide to take the plunge, I really hope they don't do anything half-assed. I really don't expect for them to make a full-fledged version of, say, Dreamweaver for Linux. Still, anything is way better than nothing, and I bet I won't (and any other Open-Source followers) will be disappointed.

In any case, it should be very interesting to see what they come up with, and it's a nice way of showing others that OSS is certainly becoming a player in the industry.

Re:Hope they go all the way

[datadriven]

I hope they don't open dreamweaver, I hate that POS. Wouldn't mind seeing homesite though.

McAfee

[lheal]

McAfee started out as a shareware company, selling an antivirus program for MS-DOS and Macintosh.

They acquired a bunch of smaller companies, then started calling themselves "Network Associates" soon after they acquired that company.

While they haven't ever been open source, they've usually (always?) had a product you could download and use without first paying them for it. And I think they have always given out free updates.

I wonder how much of their corporate culture has survived from the old days? To what degree is "McAfee" just a brand name?

Re:McAfee

[Professor_UNIX]

I wonder how much of their corporate culture has survived from the old days? To what degree is "McAfee" just a brand name?

Absolutely none. Network Associates decimated many good products until they could do nothing but sell them off or spin them off into other companies at a substantial loss. TIS was absorbed into the NAI collective and they promptly ran Gauntlet into the ground as a firewall and then sold off the pieces to Secure Computing. They bought PGP, made a bunch of crappy releases and then spun it off into a separate company after they proved incompetent at marketing it. They bought Network General's Sniffer product line, ran that into the ground and promptly sold it off to a company who I believe now is named Network General. The McAfee virus scanning crap is the only original thing NAI has left I believe. To top it all off, McAfee is the absolute worst piece of shit out there. If you want a virus scanner run far away from McAfee and Symantec and just pick up AVG. It is by far the best antivirus solution out there.. and free for personal use on top of it!

Re:McAfee

[Anonymous Coward]

While they haven't ever been open source, they've usually (always?) had a product you could download and use without first paying them for it.

Yup. Anyone else remember ftp://licensed:321 @ftp.mcafee.com?

There are lots of virus scanners for linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

and BSD. Command, vexira, f-prot, AVG, clamAV, RAV, Spohie, etc.

This isn't news at all. And uvscan from NAI has been available for linux and freebsd for years.

Re:Macromedia? MOD PARENT UP

[saskboy]

Why is the parent post modded as a troll?

Macromedia is being eaten by Adobe, and to my knowledge too, Adobe isn't friendly with FOSS types.

http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&ned=ca&q=macromed ia+adobe&btnG=Search+News

So is this the DreamWeaver Answer?

[syntap]

Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE.

Perhaps this is Macromedia's way of bringing something like the equivilent of what MacroMedia UltraDev set out to accomplish (basically Dreamweaver used as a dev tool). Is it possible Macromedia's involvement will be basically to skin Eclipse to make it more familiar to current Dreamweaver users?

Fear the virus

[Colonel Panic]

Yes you really need virus protection on Linux. The situation is dire. There are thousands of viruses being brewed up around the world to infect Linux boxen. Be afraid, be very afraid!!

But now McAfee has come to your rescue. Only $49.95 for complete peace of mind.

I feel so much better already.

Re:Fear the virus

[yomahz]

Yes you really need virus protection on Linux. The situation is dire. There are thousands of viruses being brewed up around the world to infect Linux boxen. Be afraid, be very afraid!!

But now McAfee has come to your rescue. Only $49.95 for complete peace of mind.

I feel so much better already.


Did you stop to think that there is added value in a linux application server scanning for windows virii from uploaded files? What about being able to scan your samba shares on your file servers. Wouldn't it be lovely if your company got sued because your client downloaded an infected file from your linux FTP server?

Re:Fear the virus

[hism]

Oh man, this new Bear Patrol is really working!

Re:Fear the virus

[Anonymous Coward]

You are totally right. Every night, I wake up sweating, wondering if my download of chicks_with_dicks.avi contained a virus or whether there is something far more sinister lurking between those bits.

Re:Fear the virus

[TheLinuxWarrior]

If only it were $49.95.

If you attempt to purchase LinuxShield, it will only let you buy an 11 user license, which cost $242.00.

Not very thrifty for a laptop user, or someone with a single desktop or home lan server to protect.

Re:Fear the virus

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time lover of Belgian music, I'd buy that.

Re:Fear the virus

[MoogMan]

Ok, so this is scored as +Funny, but it raises a serious point. Many people are quite elitist about their Linux/BSD operating systems and how they're so secure. The point is, people *will* eventually target these systems. At the moment, Linux is an easy target, with the lacking of proactive virus protection. Anyone with half an ounce of C skillz could make one, just think about that...

And don't give me that bull about permissions either, a virus will quite happily run under your current user and corrupt your home directory. You wont be so elitist then, will ya?

So yeah, be afraid, be very afraid!!

Re:Fear the virus

[MegaFur]

I guess I am really grown up now. I am now capable of occasionally suffering from "sticker shock" just like parents of yore when they would go car shopping.

Re:Macromedia? MOD PARENT UP

[sankyuu]

The parent is first to mention that Adobe DID buy Macromedia (for $3.4B). Adobe isn't exactly nice with its patent arsenal (which it used to sue Macromedia), and hasn't made known any intention to support F/OSS.

In case anyone else was confused by the OP

[tool462]

flirt (flûrt)
v. flirted, flirting, flirts
v. intr.

1. To make playfully romantic or sexual overtures.
2. To deal playfully, triflingly, or superficially with: flirt with danger.
3. To move abruptly or jerkily.

v. tr.

1. To toss or flip suddenly.
2. To move quickly.

n.

1. One given to flirting.
2. An abrupt jerking movement.

Oh please..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been a Linux sysadmin for many years and have never, and I repeat never, needed an anti-virus app. Anti-virus apps are not necessary to a sysadmin who knows what they're doing.

Re:Oh please..

[sik0fewl]

I take it you've never been a sysadmin for a mail server then?

Re:Oh please..

[freeze128]

Well, you can't have it both ways. For greater adoption of linux, it's going to have to be in the hands of a lot of people who really DON'T know what they're doing. You're average Joe doesn't just start out automatically knowing how to secure a linux system. Having a widely known antivirus available for linux will certainly make Joe feel better about his linux system. Maybe it will let him relax a little, so he CAN learn the important stuff.

Re:Oh please..

[dAzED1]

maybe he just didn't allow attachments ;)

that, or maybe all his users had unix workstations?

Re:Oh please..

[sik0fewl]

Well, I thought of that, but I didn't want to go on listing all the exceptions to my trollish comment :)

Re:Oh please..

[Hosiah]

For greater adoption of linux

And that's just it. I love Linux. I use Linux. I'm absolutely ecstatic about my unpopular little operating system just the way it is. If I want anything new added to it, I'll snarf tarballs online or write the code myself. If Linux never gained another user for the rest of my life, that'd be OK with me.

What wouldn't be OK is if every idiot in the world started using Linux. It would go downhill, sort of like what happened to the internet when the rest of these people showed up. I'm praying that MS and all the AOLers switch to cell-phones (they're getting to where they can play games and IM, and they'd be impossible to hack on, which would make them ideal, and that's all most meatloafers want to do on the internet, anyway) and computers go back to being the toys of geeks, exclusively. The Linux of today with the internet of 1992 would be heaven, and they could just keep it that way!

Well, not among the /. crowd but elsewhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

Among the target audience for Linux's supposed desktop domination, mom and pop user. Linux is dead. I still like it on the server.

ClamAV != McAfee

[WindBourne]

Correct if I am wrong, but ClamAV is a virus scanner for the mail stream, and not for the system. McAfeee is for the linux system as a whole and not for filtering a stream. No Comparision can be done.

Yeah, it would be nice to see Macromedia move all their items to Linux. If they did, they are more likely to be the standard than will be whatever MS comes up with.

Re:ClamAV != McAfee

[Nasarius]

You're wrong. ClamAV can scan pretty much anything, including Samba shares, which is extremely useful.

Re:ClamAV != McAfee

[Black Art]

The "clamscan" command is a command line virus scanner. The problem is not usage, the problem is up to date virus signatures.

ClamAV also tend to have a problem with false detection of viruses in multi-part zip and rar files.

I prefer to use a number of scanners. It helps find the unusual viruses and trojans.

One is meaningless, the other is potentially great

[Anonymous Coward]

Two weeks ago, McAfee, one of the world leaders in computer security products, launched its first commercial antivirus solution for Linux

-1 Redundant.

Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE.

This is potentially quite exiciting and long long overdue. I would love to see a full open source internet style plug in that could deliver Flash like content especially games but with way more powerful bitmap handling that Flash does (which is basically a vector graphics engine with bitmap and sound support stuck on afterwards)

Would be awesome and really really popular, always wondered why the FOSS community haven't done it yet.

Zorn

[fforw]

Zorn is german for "anger, rage"

Re:Zorn

[Stanistani]

Either way... odd choice of a name... kinda desolate and hostile.

Hmmm. Googling. Zorn is a jazz musician, an artist, and apparently a mathematician:

Zorn's Lemma

If S is any nonempty partially ordered set in which every chain has an upper bound, then S has a maximal element. This statement is equivalent to the axiom of choice.

Or in layman's terms - "I meant to do that!"

Re:Zorn

[zerocool^]

Zorn was also half of the duo "Zorn and Thorn" in Final Fantasy 9. They were the ones that dressed like jesters and one was always like "We will get Zidane" and the other was all "Get Zidane we will".

They eventually joined to make one monster that you beat with the help of Mog, and you got the ribbon.

Interestingly enough, did anyone else know that, in final fantasy III, at the part where Locke rescues Celes, and you're underneath South Figaro, there's a Ribbon in the 2nd basement, right underneath the 2nd treasure chest?!? I've been playing that game for 8 or so years, and I just found that out like 2 hours ago, by turning off the BGLAYER2 with the emulator (oh, shut up, I've purchased the game legally twice, once new and once from funland).

~Will

Re:Zorn

[whimdot]

I thought Zorn was what the fridge said in "Ghost Busters", also the name of a discontinued range of Mephisto sandals.

Re:Zorn

[whimdot]

Oops, my bad. The fridge said Zool.

Linux Antivirus...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great!!! my Manager is happy.

Manager: What is the problem?
Me: We have viruses in our network.
Manager: Install Antivirus everywhere, including the servers.
Me: uh... The servers are Linux based. They do not need antivirus.
Manager: What? The servers are not protected by antivirus? There are millions of viruses moving around
Me: Well, Linux does not need antivirus.
Manager: What is Linux?
Me: .....

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

[nickgrieve]

MS are getting into AV, MS is getting into lots of things that they used to leave to ISVs... bring down MS, and the computer world is full of opertunity again.

Re:14 years

[Anonymous Coward]

OP is 100% correct. XWindows is an utter failure. The problem is it was free and like herpes. You can't kill it, you can't get rid of it.

is it for Linux mail servers

[SQLz]

Who is going to run the software.I think most Linux guys know not to open those emails that say:

"Hello friend! I found this fantasic update for you! I hope you like it!"

Flirting?

[ErikTheRed]

Gee... I hope we get dinner, a good bottle of wine, and a movie before we get screwed.

Re:Flirting?

[Metteyya]

You are definitely European, not American, aren't you?

Re:Flirting?

[ErikTheRed]

I'm American, but my Fiancee is from Europe... her website is in my signature :)

Obligatory comment

[rfunches]

I for one welcome our new, confused corporate overlords. McAfee, meet Apple.

Flirting?!

[Anonymous Coward]

McAfee, Macromedia Flirting With F/OSS Community

Well I wish they'd stop dancing with their hand on my ass and make a move already.

R.I.P. Dreamweaver/GoLive

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, perhaps adobe is trying to do something with it before it dies... Not only now they have 2 apps to make web pages (dreamweaver/golive - not counting homesite), but both have a uncertain future.

People into php seem to be using a LOT of different editors (zend studio, various text editors, too many to list) - no real need (or preferences?) for dreamweaver here really.

People into CGI/Java don't really use dreamweaver...

ASP/ASP.Net wise, with the new VS 2005 express coming out (also VS.Net 2003, WebMatrix, and various great editors that work fine if you want to type code), dreamweaver is looking pretty silly (plus, who wants to deal with pages of unefficient fugly MM_whatever clutter?) Especially with ASP.Net 2.0 coming out (I've NEVER seen anything like it, it's WICKED!)

And for people into static HTML, anything will do (like frontpage and what not).

I really have no interest left in dreamweaver - much less as a coding tool (VS.Net it'll be). If it was anything, then I probably would consider something like Eclipse instead or specialized editors (like zend studio)... Right now I'm mostly using ultra edit 11, and it's a far better tool than dreamweaver IMHO.

I just can't even come up with a reason to use DW/GL. Even as a CSS editor they suck... The only people I can see using them now is point and click n00bs, which just may go for frontpage or whatever instead...

Re:R.I.P. Dreamweaver/GoLive

[alex_podam]

To be fair, DreamWeaver produces much cleaner and more standards compliant HTML than other visual web-editors (like FrontPage).


I'm inclined to agree with grandparent that this could be a move from Macromedia to make sure they stay in the 'application client development' game...

Jesus Christ!

[Hosiah]

What next, assessments on the fashion-conscious KDE wallpaper choices in Vogue?

QUIT submitting content-free fluff PHB-fodder to Slashdot, already! This is NOT Wired!

Back on the subject, such as it is...

[Hosiah]

Thanks, McAfee, but I was removing my own virii back when I was stuck with a 'Dose box. McAfee for Linux strikes me as about as good a protection as putting the colored rocks on my chakras to balance them.

Re:Back on the subject, such as it is...

[pyros]

McAfee for Linux strikes me as about as good a protection as putting the colored rocks on my chakras to balance them.

Do these colored rocks keep tigers away? If so, I would like to buy one.

Instead of Bashing Linux Critics...fix its problem

[marcybots]

"The Linux world suffers from a lack of modern intuitive menus and commands"

"Let's face it, Linux is free, useful and powerful. That alone says that it should have made a bigger impact on the desktop market than it has. There are obviously some problems."
From the Dvorak article.

Instead of saying why he is wrong why dont you correct those problems that everybody has been pointing out for years...namely that linux is not even close to being as user friendly as mac or windows. I used Linux but found it very difficult to do simple things like printing or changing settings. I may be more stable or secure, but on a everyday basis it is a pain in the neck to use for a nerd like me and everybody else who uses my system asks me where my real computer is (the windows one). Nobody says that about the mac operating system computers at work, since people can use them with out reading line one of any manual. Having to read a manual to figure out how to do basic functions should be a sign of failure for a developer of an operating system. Apple is still in business because they create elegant solutions where people spend more time doing work using a computer than figuring out how to get the computer to work.

Off the rebound for two points!

[Doomstalk]

Unfortunately for OSS, McAfee isn't looking for a serious relationship right now. She's been dumped by her long-term boyfriend, and really just wants a fling. They might have some fun for a night, but she's not going to return OSS' calls.

Re:Off the rebound for two points!

[katz]

All this make a lot of money for the GNU/Linux vendors, who sell their blessing to commercial companies (e.g. "Works With Red Hat 9").

I'd like to see someone support GNU/Linux as a target instead of specific distributions. Blah blah LSB blah blah United Linux blah blah blah whatever (ok, at the very least, Debian's releases are my "gold standard", which I feel are free of commercial "steering").

Another point: On McAfee's site, their advertisement for their GNU/Linux product is peppered with references to "linux". In light of the open-source community's vociferous bounds-checking on Industry threats (GPL violations, shady has-been UNIX businesses, fake OS "shootout" comparisons), I bet the Free Software community could drum up a terrific influence to get the Industry to use the correct its terminology.

- Roey

Hey OSS...

[Anonymous Coward]

a/s/l?

Eclipse and Macromedia

[Timbotronic]

This is actually the second Eclipse initiative related to Macromedia products. It's just the first one to be officially developed by the company. For a while now, ColdFusion developers have been able to use the open source CFEclipse plugin for development on Eclipse.

From what I understand about Zorn, it will allow you to create Flash applications via the Flex framework in Eclipse. Flex is essentially an XML syntax for building Flash applications. It's much more geared to the developer market than the designer oriented Flash IDE. So IMHO, this is a great fit, and good news for Linux developers. Now we just need a 64 bit Flash player for Linux...

Eclipse built by gcj - how?

[toby]

Yeah, I would love to know how it's done, and try a gcj Eclipse on OS X. Is there a HOWTO somewhere?

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

McAfee was never known for its tight security...

For several years, their corporate ftp account (which held copies of every piece of software the company produced) was protected by the password "321", which was fairly well known in the warez scene at the time.

Macromedia sucks

[pyite69]

Why are they wasting their time with a new initiative when most of their existing products are not usable on Linux?

I still can't create flash content on Linux; and I can't even use shockwave applets.

MS enters Antivirus market..

[Slackus]

one week later .. McAfee embrases the F/OSS community. Something smells fishy

use my free, gpl'd virus scanner instead

[Trailer Trash]

Put this in your root crontab:

0 0 * * * echo "You're runnng Linux, you don't have a virus."

Re:use my free, gpl'd virus scanner instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Once a minute? You really want a lot of mail.

Re:use my free, gpl'd virus scanner instead

[cheaphomemadeacid]

And you honestly believe that the good trend of no virus on linux will continue? The next big remote exploit will certinaly see to it that a whole new community of viruses for linux enter the realm :)

Yup.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all a protection racket.

Do you think we can get some Linux superfund to pay them off just once to leave us alone...

Or, maybe we can get a crate load of Linus's attack penguins and unleash them at McAfee's headquarters.

Re:Yup.

[aichpvee]

Maybe it's a clever tactic to get people to switch to Linux as a desktop? The thinking might be that if Linux needs virus protection it must be a major enough platform to be targeted since "popularity" is *obviously* the only reason windows gets exploited so often.

Linux + Virus = WTF?

[Spy der Mann]

Please enlighten me guys. Are there linux viruses or what? Or maybe McAfee will scan windows (WINE) binaries or something?

To sum up...

[smartsaga]

Avast, ClamAV, McAfee, AVG, BitDefender...

Wait a minute... so McAfee is FINALLY coming to play with all the other kids??

HA!!!

Your linux-antivirus-competition are belong to us... get it?

Have a good one.

Any protection against Linux viruses?

[timbo234]

Isn't this MacAfee thing just like all the other 'linux desktop' virus scanners from companies like Fprot - ie. just designed to scan for Windows viruses to stop you passing viruses to users of that OS.

Are there any tests or proof done against any Linux viruses that show that these scanners actually pick them up and stop the infection? Have there ever been any Linux viruses that have actually spread in a virulent way? Have there been any cases of Linux virus infection anywhere in the last 5 years?

I'm asking this because although I think that Linux is protected enough from viruses without needing windows-style desktop scanning software, but I want a good answer for the people who will start saying "OMFG now I need to get MacAfee for my Linux box too, its no better than Windows".

Dear Macromedia:

[Heretik]

Make it truly open, or piss off.

We've had plenty enough of your proprietization of the Internet, thanks.

Nonsense!

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, we don't need an antivirus solution for Linux! Without the brain-dead design bullshit that is included in Windows, there will never be the problems with viruses (leave me alone, Latin nazis!) that there is with Windows. Now, McAffee probably wishes there would be and will try to convince people there is!

Secondly, Macromedia would like to make inroads to ANY market! Flash is a non-essential part of any web-site! I don't like flash, most flash is not needed and GODDAMN any site that doesn't iclude a "skip the flash intro" button on their page! Now they wanna move to Linux? Well, sure, having corrupted most of the Web-space that belongs to Windows, they hope to corrupt the rest of it with their useless, bandwidth-hogging flash animations! I say no! but who am I? Just somebody who wants to use the Web for useful info, NOT stupid flash animations.

Is it just me

[jesser]

or does "proactive anti-virus" sound like an oxymoron?

Flex free or still tens of thousands of dollars?

[SimHacker]

Is Macromedia making Flex open source, or are they just making a tool for creating Flex applications open source? What good is a free tool, if the server software it requires costs tens of thousands of dollars per cpu?

-Don

Story wrong

[dhammabum]

McAfee has had VirusScan for Unix available for years. This is not its first "solution", nor does it say so in the press relase....

Linux/Mac Virus Free

[NitsujTPU]

Wait, virus protection for Linux? Aren't Linux and Macs virus-free?

That's one thing that I've always hated. People decide that because it's Linux/Mac, it's vulnerability free, and justify that as a reason not to secure it.

Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[crazyphilman]

So I guess their product logo will be a huge, flaming ball flying through space on its way to destroy all life in the universe?

Or will it be the weird little squishy piggy thing Zorn kept as a pet in his desk?

Maybe... Just a coughed up cherry. :)

Re:Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[renehollan]

I rather liked that wierd littly squishy piggy thing.

('course I rather liked the Supreme Being somewhat more..., well quite a bit more..., alright a lot more!)

Re:Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[crazyphilman]

Yeah, man, she was a hottie. Especially in those "thermal bandages"... Yum!

The punk chick the big lizard was camoflaged as was kinda hot too.

And, man... All them stewardesses! With FRECKLES!!!

FRECKLES!!!! I thank God every day for freckled chicks... They're proof he likes us.

Re:Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[bloodstar]

it's Zorg
Zorg Zorg Zorg Zorg. (Gary Oldman Rocks)

But you are correct, Milla is amazing, and incidently, is a pretty damn good singer too. www.millaj.com and if you haven't taken the time to hear anything from 'The Divine Comedy'... shame shame shame....

Re:Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[Anonymous Coward]

No, John Zorn. The metal-loving avant-garde klezmer-playing saxophonist of Naked City and Masada fame. Obviously.

The new IDE will assist you by randomly assaulting you with ten second long bursts of gibberish in the middle of anything you type. Possibly inspired by ancient Japanese forms of execution.

You have been warned...

Re:Zorn? The weird guy from The Fifth Element???

[Anonymous Coward]

His name was Jean Emmanuel Baptist Zorg. Gaw... get it right.

What's the stink?

[rinkjustice]

So because McAfee and Macromedia introduced linux products, all doomsayers have been proven wrong once and for all? It's only a big toe either company has trepidly dipped into the Free/Open Source Swimming pool. For all we know they could be pet projects just to keep their developers happy.

I'm a linux user, but I will neither use nor need either product.

a portentous name...

[Anonymous Coward]

given that in German, "Zorn" means:

anger

wrath

rage

I don't think this is a good sign...

You're wrong about Flash.

[SimHacker]

Stop repeating the same old knee-jerk diatribes you've heard the other kids yelling, without checking your facts first. Complaining about Flash because ads annoy you is like complaining about water because squirt guns annoy you. Flash and water have a lot more uses than simply annoying you.

Flash is excellent for developing rich web applications, which are entirely different than home page "flash intros" that you want a button to skip, or flying hamburgers that pop up on top of yahoo's home page.

By "rich web application", I mean the entire interactive client side of the application runs in the Flash player. Well written Flash based applications are high quality, responsive, uniform across platforms, and much better than anything that is possible with html/ajax.

There are several different approaches to writing Flash based rich web applications. The worst proprietary way is using Macromedia's Flash tool. The most expensive and legally restricted way is using Macromedia's Flex server. The best and free way is using OpenLaszlo, which is open source, and IBM's Laszlo IDE for Eclipse, which is also open source.

It would be interesting to compare Macromedia/Adobe's Zorn Eclipse plug-in, with IBM's Laszlo Eclipse plug-in. I wonder who better understands how to write plug-in IDE's for Eclipse: IBM or Macromedia/Adobe? And who better understands Open Source software?

-Don

Reaction to that big MS Cannon?

[Anonymous Coward]

If find it interesting that no one has made the possible connection between this move and the launching of Avalon.

Avalon is a blatant pot shot at Flash, and it's not surprising that Macromedia has decided to diversify.

anti linux trolls last used red had version 7

[Trendkill]

some of the people that bag linux on here, its pretty obvious you havent looked at, let alone used a linux o/s in the last year. theyve gone from baby steps to sprinting in a year, i found using fedora core 3 easier than windows. what does that mean, if my job is a teceh support person for a company that is mostly windows orientated? go try the latest versions of linux desktop o/s before relying on your "Experiences" using red had 5 .

Not the first Linux AV even for McAfee

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in '99 McAfee had Linux AV support so... this does not seem to support the conclusions made in the starting post. (ie, new folks are jumping on board the Linux bandwagon, so that must mean _something_)

Re:Not the first Linux AV even for McAfee

[myBotPiko]

Me and a friend of mine set up a email virus filter with using MacAfee's AV during that time.

The support for it was horrible and I ended up hacking up my own script to pull the virus definition files from their ftp sites every night, because their script just wouldn't work.

Macromedia is lame

[Zebra_X]

Let's really be honest about what Macromedia is doing. They are going to leverage the Eclipse IDE for building a their new development platform and they will get the platform for Free. However their server side technology is not free and is not going to be OSS. It is in fact, rather expensive for what it is.

This is all very lame. They are effectively riding on the coat tails of everyone else's hard work to sell their server products. This kind of corporate free loading shouldn't be tolerated.

Also, do we *really* want Macromedia participating in the development of eclipse, a well designed ide and software platform? Flash has been an ever evolving mess of crap since it's inception. In fact, it's still crap or they would have decided that the current Flash IDE was still useful, and they would have not decided to camp others work and get a free IDE.

Note that Coldfusion was an allaire product and was not orginally developed by Macromedia.

Re:Macromedia is lame

[pjmidnight]

It is hilarious to me that some proponents of the OSS revolution can be so bull headed. The second we get a little bit of wind under the sails we want to horde our code from some other entity using it simply because other parts of their products are proprietary!

I'm sure you have written code for some company that is proprietary. I know I have.

It seems to me that this comment smacks of proprietary attitudes. Information wants to be free and if it's used by Macromedia or in my back yard that's the nature of OSS!

Re:Macromedia is lame

[Zebra_X]

LOL - I'm hardly a "proponent of the OSS revolution". I am however a propenent of no-free-lunch. I've been seeing a trend lately, where very large companies go out and base a significant portion of their products or services on free software. IBM has given a lot back - and they continue to innovate and release software for us to use. However, companies like Macromedia - don't innovate, and don't give a lot back. They loot IP from others and call it their own.

Flash is also as proprietary as it gets - more so than any other web development platform. And while I'm not a freak about standards, it's nice to have a common lingua franca that multiple products understand and not be tied into a vendor that writes software but feels that it's O.K. to have "known bugs".

Re:Macromedia is lame

[pjmidnight]

I agree that Macromedia is a proprietary type of company. No-free-lunch is a great ideal, but practically impossible to enforce with philosophies such as the F/OSS movement. I mean I think it comes with the territory. I guess my point is that we can't really have our cake and eat it too. Either we open-source our code and allow the consequences to play themselves out or you remain proprietary.

WWGS (What Would Google Say)? TZADIK!

[SuperKendall]

Well, from the google search it would appear Zorn is really Tzadik. So I guess that clears things right up.

Proprietary software snake oil.

[jbn-o]

It's ironic that you should quote RMS in your signature, because he would be the first to point out that McAfee and Grisoft's programs are both proprietary software -- the opposite of free software. Thus, these proprietary programs have nothing to offer users in the free world and these organizations are merely treating the free software community as a market.

Doubly ironic that so many people consider anti-virus programs to be a part of good security because using a proprietary virus scanner is like asking a fox to guard the henhouse; you have no chance to learn what that virus scanner is doing nor do you know if you can trust it to only do what you want it to do. If, somehow, you learned that the program did something you didn't want it to do, you have no way to improve it and no legal means to distribute the improved version to help others. You are at the mercy of organizations that started this relationship by treating you badly.

When one considers that viruses are often brought in through the weaknesses of proprietary software, one sees fodder for a good joke (sadly, a joke at the user's expense) and affirmation of the importance of software freedom.

Re:Proprietary software snake oil.

[ajs318]

EXACTLY!

If you use any software where you have not had the opportunity to get the Source Code independently audited, then you cannot trust that software. The only way to be truly sure what a piece of software does is to read the source code. There are no exceptions.

Even if anti-virus software were to be distributed under a PGP-like licence -- where you are allowed to audit the source code but not distribute modified versions -- this would be better than the current situation. {Who would dare use a modified version of something security-critical like encryption software anyway, if they really didn't trust the person who modified it?}

Frankly, I think it ought to be enshrined in law that the administrator of a computer has the right to view the Source Code of every piece of software that runs on their computer. If I buy an item of food, it has to have an ingredients list on the packaging. If I buy a bottle of booze, it has to be labelled with its percentage of alcohol. If I buy a packet of fags, it has to say how much tar and nicotine they contain. Why should computer software be any different? If the proprietary software peddlers don't like it, they can always stop peddling proprietary software.

Nobody needs to use non-Free software: everything that there isn't currently a piece of Free software to do either can be done by hand, or omitted altogether without ill effect. Just like it was before computerisation ..... sorry, get it right, before Microsoftisation. It might even get a few people off the dole and back to work. Back in the days before Windows, people actually programmed their computers -- nowadays, businesses quietly rearrange their working practices around how Microsoft Office behaves; and the only programs anybody really bothers to write for Windows are viruses, trojans, browser hijackers, adware and spyware.

Re:Proprietary software snake oil.

[ThisIsFred]

AVG isn't free as-in-beer or free as-in-speech. I never said otherwise. I'm assuming that McAfee is also in it for the money, and I was pointing out that the most effective commercial virus scanner (that I've seen) already has a GNU/Linux port, albiet a binary-only one. If you follow my thinking here: Guess who will be to blame when McAfee doesn't get rich quick in the GNU world? That's right, those damn GNU hippies!

Also, I use the free alternative, and it is good, but not the equivalent in terms of features. Otherwise, I'm not in disagreement with you.

Re:Proprietary software snake oil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trolling!

It's totally obvious that you are trying to sound like a FOSS super-zealot in order to denigrate the movement and its supporters.

Re:Proprietary software snake oil.

[ajs318]

Please actually respond to at least one of my points, in which I do actually believe sincerely enough to put my name to. It would be nicer if you could log in as well. Otherwise, I fear it will look rather as though it is you who is doing the trolling around here.

Are you saying there is a way to trust software without having the Source Code independently audited? What other way? Do you not believe that I have the right to view the Source Code of every piece of software that runs on my computer? Why not? Do you believe that anyone genuinely needs to use non-Free software? What software? Why?

Adobe helped put Sklyarov in jail.

[jbn-o]

Adobe also helped put Dmitry Sklyarov in jail. Adobe is not an organization we ought to do business with because they treat people so badly. Bad laws don't deserve respect either, and I realize that Adobe is not a legislative body. However, the damage Adobe helped bring on is real, and their actions against Sklyarov show us that they're willing and able to wield that power against others. We should hold in contempt those that would stump for and use the power bad laws give them to stifle our freedoms.

macromedia

[__aahlyu4518]

How about a 64-bit flash and shockwave plugin for browsers like firefox compiled on a 64-bit system?

Wasn't it the other way around ??

[rkoot]

"Many Linux viruses don't require user interaction, unlike most Windows attacks that depend on the user to run an attached file in order to infect the computer making it of paramount importance to ensure that servers are up to date with the latest anti-virus protection," said Raj Dhingra, vice president of corporate and product marketing at Network Associates, Inc."

yeah right... many Linux viruses ? How many linux viruses do exist anyway ?
My friend's w2k box got infected within 15 minutes after connecting to the internet, and NO USER INTERACTION was required.
As with linux, most stuff I'm aware of doesn't start without me firing it up.
so where does McAfee's argument come from?

r.

um...

[oinoplex]

Yeah, it'd be real nice if Macromedia would get around to releasing 64-bit a compatible flash player for linux. *flashes a bit of RAM* "Yoohoo, over here!"

A year and two weeks ago!

[Espen]

I would have thought the URL was a clue:

http://www.mcafeesecurity.com/us/about/press/mcafe e_enterprise/2004/20040524_104736.htm

It's in there twice: 2004.

The press release just says May 24, perhaps they are counting on Slashdot to rehash it for them every year.

McAffee & Et Al

[bwanagary]

These butt-sucking companies have snubbed their nose at the LINUX community for years. Now they've got their come-uppance because microshaft is releasing products that compete directly with them and eating their lunch. NOW they want to cosy up to the LINUX community!??! I think we should boycott them. How do you think we got Adobe Acrobat version 7 for LINUX? Microshaft announced "Metro", its Acrobat-killer, so Adobe suddely got religion. All the companies deserve to have the eveil empire eat their lunch.

Creating Flash Content on Linux

[mjbkinx]

I still can't create flash content on Linux; and I can't even use shockwave applets.

Maybe you can't create Flash content on Linux, but that's what I do. And I'm not talking about Laszlo.
My current workflow is this: I describe my SWF in XML and include all assets I'm going to use. An Open Source compiler adds the code I've written in Eclipse after the SWF has been assembled and the Ant build then launches Firefox with it. The next version of an Eclipse plugin that allows for viewing the SWF inside Eclipse has been announced, and it will support Linux, too (sorry, the latter is only free-as-in-beer).
Have a look here.

So far, Macromedia has been quite supportive of the community, they seem to understand it's for the benefit of all.

As far as the Shockwave plugin is concerned... personally, I don't miss it.

Re:Creating Flash Content on Linux

[hritcu]

So far, Macromedia has been quite supportive of the community, they seem to understand it's for the benefit of all.

What community support are you talking about? They are offering the Flash Player for free and charging $1000 for Flash MX 2004? That is not community support! That is marketing. Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer all free of cost. Does that mean that Microsoft is being supportive of the community? No, that is once again marketing.

Re:Creating Flash Content on Linux

[mjbkinx]

What community support are you talking about? They are offering the Flash Player for free and charging $1000 for Flash MX 2004? That is not community support! That is marketing. Windows Media Player, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer all free of cost. Does that mean that Microsoft is being supportive of the community? No, that is once again marketing.

I said they were supportive. Discussions on mailing lists, blog entries, that sort of thing. Encouraging.
For example, a friend of mine published a little tool to create SWFs under the GPL. It was on a Macromedia blog with some positive remarks within an hour after it had been announced, and we could see from the server logs that that was where most of the traffic was coming from. They're obviously not making any money from it directly, on first sight it even means they will sell less copies of Flash (which, btw, costs half of what you said), because people like me can now do without -- I have it, but I don't need it any more, and I most likely won't need the next version. What I meant by saying they would understand it's for the benefit of all is that by reaching out to the OS developers their platform (as they like to call it now) gains acceptance, and in the end they will sell more copies to designers, and most of all, FlashPlayer licenses to e.g. the mobile phone manufacturers.

Macromedia is a company. They want to make money, and so far it looks like they understood they can make more by embracing the SWF related Open Source community instead of fighting it (GPLFlash is a different story, of course).
You can't hold it against them that they charge money for their products. If you don't like it -- don't buy it.

Re:Creating Flash Content on Linux

[lachlan76]

Half that? Over here in Australia Flash costs about $1000.

Re:Creating Flash Content on Linux

[hritcu]

I said they were supportive. Discussions on mailing lists, blog entries, that sort of thing. Encouraging.

Please note that Macromedia is being supportive to their own developer community. Also every tool (open source or not) that has a chance to provide added value to their own platform while not being a competitive threat to their own product line is likely to get some (little) support as well. That does not even compare to what other companies do, by really embracing the free software / open source movement. IBM offered a couple of dozzens of programs to the open source community (list) one of them being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Laszlo. Sun open sourced Star Office, Netbeans and will soon open source Solaris. Laszlo Systems open sourced their RIA Platform (OpenLaszlo). These and others are companies being supportive to the open source community. Macromedia however is not one of these companies. On a greed scale they would be somewhere very close to Microsoft.

Flash (which, btw, costs half of what you said)

I don't know where you live but in Germany the half cripple Macromedia Flash MX 2004 costs 694.84 euro (=855.926701 US$) and the full Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 costs 973.24 euro (=1,198.868952 US$).

If you don't like it -- don't buy it.

You can bet I won't. I already told about OpenLaszlo. That is what I would use, should I ever consider writing Flash applications again. For now I am a lot better off using SVG and JavaScript for the open source projects to which I contribute. SVG and JavaScript are both open standards while Macromedia's technologies are proprietary. Supporting Macromedia's technologies would help Macromedia more than anybody else, and would surely hurt web standards and interoperability.

Re:Creating Flash Content on Linux

[mjbkinx]

Half that? Over here in Australia Flash costs about $1000.

Yes, US$500. I had actually checked their online store before I posted.
If you're talking about the "Pro" version and those are Australian Dollars, it should be about right if one considers the usual we-like-to-charge-people-from-other-countries-more fee that vendors like to add for some odd reason.

Dvorak

[SlashDread]

really. Why TF link to these people? Dont give him that!

Zorn

[Anonymous Coward]

Zorn is also a bad guy in Final Fantasy IX. With Thorn.

Re:Instead of Bashing Linux Critics...fix its prob

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using linux for a while and have not encountered any of the problems you just mentioned. It's also wise to see if the hardware you have or are about to buy has drivers for your linux distribution.Finally , there's no such thing as , just sitting down in front of a computer for the first time and just Using it.Somebody will need to teach you how to use it or you will need to read up on how to use the OS. Linux is not a pain in the neck to use, you just need RTFM or get training inorder to figure out how to use the OS properly. The bottom line is that every body needs to learn how to use an OS properly regardless of what that OS is.If you are not capable of Reading the Manual, getting training or asking questions on On Various Linux User groups forums then you will encounter the problems you mentioned above.I would have thought A " Nerd " Like you would have understood that. How on earth is it possible to ,Just start Using an OS before Learning how it works ? The people at work , you mention learned how to use windows / mac os or recieved training at some point.

McAfee source code

[coma_bug]

> Does this mean McAfee is going to start
> releasing virii for linux too?

No, that's Richard Stallman's job. This is the source code for the antivirus solution:

#!/bin/sh

rm /usr/share/common-licenses/*GPL*

Re:Instead of Bashing Linux Critics...fix its prob

[Anonymous Coward]

I find Windows aggressively unfriendly. It gives me the impression "you're too dumb to understand this. Go away".

Nothing is shown apart from error codes obviously only of use to the internal MS developers. If something doesn't work, it just says "failure to run" or similar.

E.g. the via 4-in-1 drivers. An exe package that NEVER installed. Always "your registry has a corruption. Reboot and try again". No reason, nothing about where the corruption was. Eventually found out that this happens if you install the drivers and don't have the IDE chipset turned on. Well, having SCSI, I don't need them, so I turned them off and freed up some IRQ's.

So was "registry corrupt" friendly or bloody hindering awkward?

McAfee on Linux new?

[9mind]

This is news to me... Considering I've been running McAfee on my Linux Servers that have Samba running for of about 4 years now.

Re:Instead of Bashing Linux Critics...fix its prob

[iccaros]

did you try file --> print??just like windows..maybe I'm dumb.. but printing is just as easy... setting up a printer is for the admin to do ..not the users.. if you set up cup correctly there would be zero setup needed on a workstation. as CUPS is a real network based printing system as soon as you edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf on the print server all your clients will have a new printer attached to their system . people who say Linux is too hard, A. never use it.. or B. if they have used it, they don't truly understand computers, they understand platforms. And no if you go from Windows to a Mac its not easy, we hade to give back windows laptops to users because they could not get used to finder on a Mac, they did not understand the desktop with no start button. so to say its easy for people to go from windows to anything is a lie.. Microsoft does not give you a choice be defalt. so when offered a choice people get confused.

last point..
most people have a problem with Linux because they do not know what the names of programs are and are afrade to just click things to find what they are. at least the KDE desktop allows descriptions on the "start" wheel.

but next time your users ask for the "real" computers.. look at them an say, there for the real users only.

I think hey are confused??

[iccaros]

"Many Linux viruses don't require user interaction, unlike most Windows attacks that depend on the user to run an attached file in order to infect the computer making it of paramount importance to ensure that servers are up to date with the latest anti-virus protection," I thought its was windows that you did not need "user" interaction to get a virus.. I have a few linux servers I never need to interact with (ie never reboot, never start and stop services) should I worry?

Re:Instead of Bashing Linux Critics...fix its prob

[ssj_195]

My apologies for continuing the off-topicness, but I'd like to address this:

While I agree that these problems need to be tackled, you are flat-out wrong if you think that people aren't already working very hard on the problem. The fact is that (in my humble opinion), in spite of the fact that GNOME and KDE started up way back in '98 and '99, Desktop Linux has been almost entirely ignored prior to, say, a year and a half ago. Back then, if you asked on a forum about how to get your USB pen to automount when you plug it in, you would be told to write your own script for monitoring the tail of dmesg and respond to USB events my parsing the output, as if this were a completely acceptable solution.

Nowadays, though, with iniatives such as Ubuntu, this kind of attitude doesn't fly: sure, if the problem you have can't currently be solved in a neat, elegant way then they'll give you a Grandma-unfriendly piece of advice, but you can bet that someone will begin looking at a way to fix this specific problem elegantly for the next release. In short, there has been either a shift in attitude (or perhaps just an infusion of new blood) whose mantra is "If it doesn't work out of the box, it is a bug; report it to us, and we will fix it if we can" rather than the "If it doesn't work out of the box, fix it yourself" of yesteryear.

This development is a recent phenomenon, however, and Desktop Linux has a *huge* amount of catching up to do (both MS and Apple have a very big headstart in terms of time and resources that they have already thrown into the problem). Adding the polish and design cohesiveness required for "usability" is a very, very hard problem that takes a big investment of time and resources to address, but these resources are being levelled at the problem right now, and I tire of the constant barrage of posts who seem to think that the Linux community consists entirely of developers who know and care nothing for end-user usability and who seem to think that sitting back and saying "why don't you just make it usable?" is some kind of fantastic idea that had simply never occurred to the myopic developers, rather like someone watching a medical programme and shouting out "Hey, why don't you Doctors and Scientists try and cure cancer!"

Sorry, just venting :)

We don't need AV, we need a B2-rated browser.

[argent]

The last RH version I used was RHEL v3 and, well, it's easier than Windows (that's not frigging hard) but... damn... I'm sticking to BSD.

Oh, sorry, wrong kind of troll.

As far as antivirus is concerned, that whole product category is the result of deep incompetence and corruption in the software industry. The design criteria you need to follow to handle untrusted content safely have only been around for 20 years: just follow orange-book mandatory access control standards. Don't grant an object any rights to modify non-volatile state visible from outside its classification, and don't let it request that access... only accept requests for addition privileges from an object with a more trusted classification.

That means: no ActiveX, no "open safe files", no "helper applications" that don't explicitly guarantee that they follow at least as tight a policy as the browser or mail program, no "install" buttons or links, no "print", and I'm not sure about Java or half the Javascript extensions in most browsers...

I don't know a single browser or HTML-aware mail program that actually follows this policy.

Laszlo getting to Macromedia??

[ashwinds]

http://openlaszlo.org/ Must be difficult with Laszlo jumping them on flex

Macromedia, Eclipse, Zorn

[springMute]

I think Macromedia has taken a cue from the OSFlash guys who have been using Eclipse and a bunch of other open-source tools to create Flash content for a while.

This 'Zorn' solution seem to be specific to Flex, which is a corporate, expensive, high-end server-side solution. For general Flash development - one without a large budget - the FAME/FAMES/FLAMES solution on the OSFlash site seem to be working really well for some people.

Welcome to the club, Macromedia

[jalefkowit]

Macromedia announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation and plans to deliver a next-generation rich Internet application (RIA) development tool code-named Zorn based on the popular open-source IDE."

I suppose you could wait for that. Or you could be using Eclipse today to build rich Internet apps to be delivered via Flash by getting into OpenLaszlo.

OpenLaszlo is here today, it's free, it's open source (CPL), and there's a free IDE on the Eclipse platform courtesy of IBM.

But, you know, if you'd rather wait an indefinite amount of time and pay Adobe/Macromedia an unspecified amount of money to get essentially the same stuff, "Zorn" is probably just what you've been waiting for...

Mac OS X is Good, but not a Permanent Solution

[FreeUser]

His point -- or at least what I infer his point to be -- is that with MacOS you get the benefits that come with *nix (multiuser, security, yadda) with the ease of use of, uh, MacOS.

Except you lose the most important feature of Linux: freedom. I like Mac OS X--my wife uses it every day--but we shouldn't kid ourselves. Jobs wants to be where Gates is, and that doesn't include a userbase that is free to switch to a different platform when it pleases. Remember years ago when Jobs and Apple routinely shot itself in its proprietary foot, to the point where Microsoft (Microsoft!) was viewed as more open, and therefor the PC market a freeer market, than proprietary Apple?

Right now Apple is kind and well behaved, because it has a tiny (but growing) marketshare. One can hope this behavior would continue should Apple come to dominate the home computing market, or even split it down the middle with technology's nemesis in Redmond, but if past behavior is any indicator, we certainly can't expect that.

Four scenerios paint a bleak picture for those beholden to any proprietary product, including one as fine as Apple.

1) The company is wildly successful, takes over the market, and then behaves as all monopolists (or near monopolists) do: their products lose quality, their prices rise, they employ various technological tricks (or patents) to lock in their customers and they trample their customers' freedoms to eke out a little extra quarterly profit.

2) The company grows to become a large player, but is not dominant. We avoid most of the ugliness of an outright monopoly, but as Sun Microsystems and others have shown, we still get the "lock in the customer via their data" strategy, making migration to other platforms difficult or impossible.

3) The company remains a small, competative player. This is the only good scenerio, as it means they will . A change in management, or frustration with lack of progress, and things like customer lockin as a strategy can be back on the table again, but still, this is the scenerio likliest to have a postive outcome for the customer.

4) The company fails, goes out of business, and orphans all of its products.

FreeBSD and GNU/Linux will never be orphaned, can never be a monopoly in the sense that one powerful CEO controls it all, and will be freely available to all as long as there is a single thinking entity interested in using it.

One can escape the clutches of Microsoft and its never ending stream of viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, malware, bots, etc. etc. ad nauseum and get a much nicer user experience switching to Apple, and indeed, that is why I switched a couple of people (including my wife) to Apple. But for true freedom, and true long-term security in both the traditional "my data is my own and I'll be able to use it forever" sense, and in the more modern "my system will never be orphaned and will always be updatable to address the latest digital threats" sense, one needs to run on a Free as in Freedom platform.

So, I would argue that you do get ease of use with Mac OS, and I would encourage anyone wanting to get free of the Redmond Monopolists but unable or unwilling to learn Linux/FreeBSD to switch, but you do not get all of the benefits of running a Free OS--not by a long shot, and chance are, someday, you're going to have to migrate again.

In Sovjet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the antivirus software was a part of the OS ?
...the worm was a part of the OS ?
...the virus was 60 cm in front of the screen ?

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a popular theory that it is the antivirus vendors who create the viruses in order to create hype and paranoia so people get really concerned with viruses and go buy their antivirus products.

I dont know if that is the case, but I hope people dont start release viruses to Linux.

Also, I have a feeling that McAfee and Macromedia wont release this open-source or free.

x86_64?

[caudron]

Macromedia wants to help the open source community? Great. I'll settle for them going through the bother of compiling a 64 bit version of the flash plug in.

Right now, I can't view any flash content on my 64 bit machines. wtf?!? 64 bit is not a fad, Macromedia, It's OK to consider supporting it. Of course, they won't bother until Microsoft gives them a reason.

Really that's for Windows and Linux, but I couldn't muster less concern for Windows.

Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

virii where used back in the good old days we had no internet and everything was distributed in 5.1/4 diskettes. Then the virus writer didn't have a way to tell the virus to contact him back and so the only thing he could do was pranks and practical jokes.

After the internet, any intelligent person, will write a virus that sits quietly on the PC and opens a backdoor. Only an idiot would make an obvious virus that does silly things.

So real virus writers do not write virii. Only trojans. The only one who would be stupid enough to write virii would be McaFee in order to get their Fee. Virii are so 80s.

All platforms except windows have no need for mcafee products.

To work, everyone!

[hawk]

At last, Linux support from a major vender.

Of course, though, they'll only stick around if they make money.

So put the browser way, and get to work writing open source viruses to keep them in business!

:)

hawk

Macromedia

[Anonymous Coward]

I have it on good authority from a source inside Adobe/Macromedia that they have been working on porting both Dreamweaver and Flash to Linux for over a year through the use of WINE, initially, and native versions later. Eventually, they want the whole suite to be linux capable, but there have been issues with porting Fireworks and Freehand that they did not anticipate. The first release is scheduled to happen during the next major product release cycle. Enjoy.

Definately not with the F part of F/OSS acronym

[latroM]

The people who care about the freedom of software see this only as another tempting proprietary software trap. Use the term Open Source when you refer to people who don't care about freedom in computing.

F/OSS outside of the box

[sgt scrub]

On access virus scanning is better achieved with something like the AV file system.
http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/project-antivirusfs.h tml
I think it's just a matter of time before someone developes a way to add your own signatures to a AV signature database much like adding known spammers to an access.db file. McAfee, and others, would no longer be needed.

I'm surprised I haven't seen the words "embrace and extend" regarding Macromedia's interest in Eclipse. Anyone proficient with Eclipse doesn't need flash. The difference between content provided by Jakarta, Jboss, et el and flash is as different as using a computer vs. watching TV

Eclipse vc Linux

[namekuseijin]

what exactly has Eclipse to do with Linux?

i'd they say Java and Linux are competing platforms. if you write your app in java, it's platform neutral: runs on Linux, Windows, MacIntosh etc...

Re:Flex free or still tens of thousands of dollars

[hritcu]

Is Macromedia making Flex open source, or are they just making a tool for creating Flex applications open source?

Dream on baby, dream on ... Macromedia is not open sourcing anything, not now, not in the forseenable future. They are making plugins for Eclipse, which (Eclipse) happens to be open source. That is the only connection between Macromedia and open source. You should go to bed now.

Mod up

[EvanED]

I'm not trying to argue for his point (I'll leave the decision as an exercise for the reader; I will agree with you though), just trying to say what it is.

So mod this guy up a couple points

McAfee has to catch-up with other AV players

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of other AV companies are releasing even open-source solutions for Linux. BitDefender offers a GPL vfs for Samba servers. Not to mention their support for allmost all Linux mail servers, i.e. Sendmail, Postfix, qmail, CommuniGate Pro, Courier.