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An Open Letter from Darl McBride

Posted by timothy on from the hi-darl dept.

canfirman writes "Well, it seems Darl is changing tactics as he's now published an open letter proclaiming the benefits of UNIX over any other operating system. However, most of his letter involves comparing SCO Unix to Linux from not only a business acceptance point of view, but from a technical point of view, too. Darl throws in a bunch of stats in there, too: 'In a study conducted only seven months ago they found that overall, the most vulnerable operating system for manual hacker attacks was Linux, accounting for 65.64% of all hacker breaches reported.' I'd love for somebody who has more technical knowledge than me to look at his points and see if what he says is true or not -- assuming anything coming out of Darl's mouth is true."

22 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by daed350 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Until you factor in all the brownies and coffee it takes to feed a Linux admin.

  2. An Open Letter Back to Darl by ChipMonk · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dear Darl:

    Too little, too late. Kiss our asses.

    ChipMonk

  3. An Open Response Back To Darl McBride by Work+Account · · Score: 0, Funny

    STFU already!

    --

    If you "get" pointers add me as a friend (116)!
  4. Hog Wash. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 4, Funny
    Nobody will take this loser seriously again for the rest of his life.

    Nonsense. There are still huge tracts of undeveloped land in the Southeastern states beckoning for retirement developments. Such enterprises will need good multi-level marketing advice.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  5. Manual hacker attacks? by dlefavor · · Score: 4, Funny
    What the hell is a "manual" attack, one carried out with bare hands?

    Or does he mean manual as in "the manual". I'd say my Assembler Language manuals have suffered from more attacks than average. They've all been manual, too, now that I think about it.

    I guess they'd be manual manual attacks.

    I've rarely been more tempted to just respond with "whatever".

  6. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 4, Funny
    Linux is only free if your time has no value.

    As opposed to Windows which plans its own deployment, installs itself, configures itself (all of that while serving you tea and biscuits), updates itself automatically and flawlessly (on production servers) and manages its own licencing schemes so that the corporation does not need 5 dedicated staff just to stay legal, no?

    Sir, your bridge is beckoning you back, its so cool in its shadow, do not leave it lonely.

  7. what's sco running again? by zr-rifle · · Score: 2, Funny

    Looks like *he's* the customer he's trying to convince.

    --
    Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
  8. An open letter from Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    ( | )

    OK, so it's not a letter, it's ASCII art. You get the point.

  9. An open letter by inode_buddha · · Score: 3, Funny

    An open letter deserves an open response. So I unzipped.

    --
    C|N>K
  10. Manual hacker attacks by Tackhead · · Score: 2, Funny
    > One should also note the weasel word being used, "manual hacker attatcks". Apparently for some OS's (which shall remain nameless), hacker attacks are automatic.

    Yeah, don't fuck with the people who wrote nroff source for your manual pages.

    Anyone got a SCO box handy?

    $ man tunefs

    If it doesn't say "You can tune a filesystem but you can't tune a fish", Darl deserves whatever he gets. Don't believe me? Use the nroff source, Luke.

    $ cat /usr/share/man/man8/tunefs.8.gz | gzip -d

    .\" Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until
    .\" the time_t's wrap around.
    .Pp
    You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish.

    2038's still 33 years away, Darl.

  11. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by hazem · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is that what they've put in Windows Vista? Impressive...

  12. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by digidave · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, but they just announced it had to be scrapped in order to make the 2010 release date.

    --
    The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
  13. SCO Has a Customer-Driven Roadmap by ralinx · · Score: 2, Funny

    From TFA: "SCO Has a Customer-Driven Roadmap"

    as in: We drive our customers away, thus no new features on the roadmap!

    1. Re:SCO Has a Customer-Driven Roadmap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      No, no, no... You don't understand. The roadmap is the list of which customers SCO is going to sue next.

  14. Re:I can believe of the stats here... by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'm a developer - and I'm not in the habit of daily (or even weekly) patching of systems.
    Oh, right! Thanks for reminding me.

    apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

    Whew, that was rough... back to work now!

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  15. Re:hehehe by Aeiri · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Well, boss, we're having problems with Linux at our datacenter, but don't worry, I can go on IRC and ask someone to help me."

    Actually I think it goes something like this:

    "Well, boss, we're having problems with Linux at our datacenter, but don't worry, I just saved a ton of money on car insurance by switching to Geico."

  16. Yes, but don't worry. by deathcow · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is similiar to the situation with Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. His failure was to recognize Aragorn as the rightful ruler of Gondor.

    I expect it will end similiarly, with Darl coating himself in some type of oil, igniting himself and then running and jumping from the highest precipice as a plummeting human fireball.

    1. Re:Yes, but don't worry. by KiloByte · · Score: 2, Funny

      Uhm, it's a bad comparison. It doesn't take a lot of reading between the lines to see that Aragorn became the "rightful ruler" by murdering all opposition. I wouldn't trust a pretender who most likely murdered the heir to the throne (Boromir), then cruelly faked a suicide of the ruler itself. The only "witnesses" were his goons, together with an officer of the guard who was reported to be shocked and behaving weirdly -- the officer was also rewarded but sent to the most remote place available just after the deed, too.

      I don't want Linux be regarded to as an "usurper" and a system of dubious legitimacy.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  17. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by andreMA · · Score: 2, Funny
    I'm in my mid-40s and can still work my younger co-workers under the table
    Well, I guess if it's consensual that's OK. But really, the workplace isn't the proper place for such...
  18. Re:Stop the lies, Linux is free. by jZnat · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you saying non-free OSes don't require maintenance? What's your IP address?

    127.0.0.1 :)

    --
    'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
  19. Anyone want some free crack? by emtboy9 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'd love for somebody who has more technical knowledge than me to look at his points and see if what he says is true or not -- assuming anything coming out of Darl's mouth is true."

    Come on now... a statment like that is like showing up at DefCon and handing out cards to with your IP addresses and telling everyone how you dont see the need to secure windows servers....

    thats probably the best line from the whole post!

    --
    "Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
  20. Hilarious Quote Inspiration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Someone over at LWN posted this:

      (Posted Aug 8, 2005 19:32 UTC (Mon) by subscriber hans) (Post reply)

    Just remember the proverb, "Free is the most expensive price."

    Huh. I'd never heard that proverb before, so I did a Google search and got two hits. One appeared to be a reference to what McBride had said. The other is a story under the heading "The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive". So maybe this provides more insight into where McBride gets his inspiration.

    Just a thought...