Slashback: KDE, Tsunami Hacker, and Image Bugs

We Slashback, to provide updates to three recent stories. All happy news, for once. JoaoPinheiro writes "After last week's reports that Novell plans not to ship the KDE desktop on Novell and SUSE Enterprise products, the company got lots of feedback from its customers. Novell has listened to them and reconsidered its desktop strategy." Meanwhile, in the employment sector, sebFlyte writes "Daniel Cuthbert, recently a high-profile victim of the UK's outdated cybercrime laws, has found a job in the security industry." Finally, one less thing to worry about, as gUnit writes "eWeek is reporting that virus researchers at Trend Micro jumped the gun with a warning that a Trojan in the wild was capable of exploiting newly patched Windows security flaws. Just 24 hours after announcing the discovery of a proof-of-concept Trojan that supposedly exploits a trio of image-rendering vulnerabilities patched by Microsoft, Trend Micro is retreating from that claim and offering up a batch of excuses."

Comments

more details: official Novell PR on KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly KDE will be the primary and default desktop on OpenSUSE and any future SUSE Linux releases. Secondly they will now ship the full KDE as a fully supported (and developed, whatever that means) desktop on all enterprise products. Some more details here.

KDE "Supported"

[Jason Earl]

The real question isn't whether KDE will be included on SuSE Linux, or supported by Novell. The real question is how much money is Novell willing to spend *developing* KDE.

Re:KDE "Supported"

[grazzy]

Did it ever occur to you that it perhaps was $sys$company and thus never noticed?

KDE will not be the default

[vivek7006]

Novell will continue to ship KDE also in the enterprise products as supported option and it's said that it will be easy to choose KDE as your desktop

I hate excuses

[Serveert]

"Given the time we needed to react to this, we didn't analyze it thoroughly. We wanted to do something fast and perhaps we didn't spend sufficient time on it," Genes said in an interview."

EXCUSE

He said the company received the Trojan sample from a customer in Japan and, during the initial research, the code definitely crashed the "explorer.exe" and EMF File Viewer in unpatched Windows systems.

EXCUSE

"We're still working with Microsoft to clarify what it is exactly and how it will be categorized in relation to MS05-053. But it's not exactly as we originally described it," he added.

Ahh hah.

* WRONG * (read it yourself)

[Monkius]

That is not what the cited source says, at all, read it for yourself!

"All future enterprise-class Linux product releases, including Novell Linux Desktop, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Novell Open Enterprise Server, will continue to ship with both the GNOME and KDE desktop environments. In upcoming versions of Novell enterprise applications, the default desktop environment will be GNOME. When customers install Novell Linux products, they will be given the option to choose either the GNOME or KDE environment during the installation process. If the user makes no explicit choice, GNOME will be installed."

Bad law vs. stupidly pissing off the judge

[nick_davison]

Daniel Cuthbert, recently a high-profile victim of the UK's outdated cybercrime laws

To be fair, if you look at what happened:

The judge indicated that he would normally have let Cuthbert go for the core act.

However, Cuthbert didn't just commit the core act, acknowledge what he'd done and then say sorry. Instead, when the police investigated, he concocted a lie about what he'd been doing, causing them to spend a lot more time and money investigating, and only told the truth when caught.

The judge outright stated that, whilst he would be inclined to simply give a slap on the wrists, the fact Cuthbert deliberately lied to the police led him to impose a harsher sentence.

The same holds true of pretty much any law. If the judge feels the law is dubious, unmerrited or whatever, he has freedom for leniency. If you piss them off by deliberately lying to the police though, don't expect them to go easy on you.

Re:Bad law vs. stupidly pissing off the judge

[nick_davison]

A judge should not react like an uneducated person. The act and circumstances are what count, not the feelings of a judge.

The judge said he would normally be inclined to leniency but that lying to the police meant that, when considering degree of intent, thus severity of the act, thus appropriate severity of the punishment, it implied Cuthbert knew what he was doing was wrong (as, if he felt he was in the right, why would he feel the need to lie?) and did it anyway.

The judge didn't act because he was in a bad mood. He weighed the factors he had available to consider Cuthbert's degree of guilt and found his lying to imply more guilt.

Plus, whether we like it or not, judges do go a lot harder on people who are proved to lie to the police, resist arrest, lie in court, etc., making examples of them to attempt to discourage such acts by others.

I've been, arguably, in that sort of a position. Upon getting a speeding ticket, I didn't bitch about how unfair it was, how the cop came up behind me in the dark, rode my ass until I accelerated to get out of his way, etc. I didn't try lying about what speed I was doing, I didn't try claiming his detection gear was faulty and demand a copy of the source code. I knew I was in the wrong, I admitted it, he wrote my speed down as lower than I admitted to to cut me a break, I got the negligible fine, I got on with my life.

Now, yes, I could have raced for my freedom until he managed to force me to stop. I could have lied about the speed I was doing. I could have been rude and surly. But, had I pulled all of that, I would have likely had him decide to cite me for my missing front plate, my empty wiper bottles, give me a breath test for good measure, take me in until he could verify the provisional license the DMV has issued for stupid reasons, etc. I'd have likely ended up with several hundred dollars of fines and rubber gloves in uncomfortable places.

Now, yes, we could all end up in his position tomorrow. And yes, they may be stupid laws. Yes, they may have more powers than they should. But it doesn't change the fact that most people, and this judge was one - just like the cop was in my case, are basically decent enough people who just want to do their jobs and give the honestly contrite as minor a slap on the wrist as possible whether the system is abusable or not. But, if you act like a jerk, try lying to them, treat them like idiots, then, yeah, they're likely to look for ways to screw you back.

The system's not perfect. But you can make it better or worse through your actions. Through his deliberate lying, Cuthbert made his situation much worse when coming in front of an otherwise apparently reasonable judge who would have let him off.

Re:Bad law vs. stupidly pissing off the judge

[Antaeus Feldspar]

I knew I was in the wrong, I admitted it, he wrote my speed down as lower than I admitted to to cut me a break

So, to reward you for not lying to him, he lied for you? I'm not sure what the moral of that story is...

Hacker?

[mustafap]

I still dont get this.

>To check, he added ../../../ to the URL in an attempt to access the site's higher directories -- an action that triggered an alarm.

So are we to believe that simple act resulted in a criminal conviction? Really?
Surely there is more to it than that.

Re:KDE is very polished on SuSE

[craXORjack]

That is generally my take on it too. That KDE is more polished and more eye-candyish but I think the Gnome crew excels at user-friendliness. Time and again, I have tried to find how to do something in KDE and had trouble, but in Gnome it just seems more like Windows. Not necessarily better but at least more familiar.

The fact that they have Gnome developers in house would certainly help in integrating their apps and utils with Gnome but another good reason for doing so is that other enterprise players are already there. (Redhat/Solaris) So it's actually more of a convergence, and the standardization should result in less uncertainty in the minds of potential adopters.

By standardizing on a default management interface and adhering to LSB 3.0, the enterprise developers are cooperating in a way that should benefit all of them by capturing mindshare and marketshare.

Re:What a flip-flop!

[ZenShadow]

OSS: The only community in which you can get roasted for trying to play nice when people ask you to.

Re:What a flip-flop!

[CyricZ]

"Flip-flopping" is a very stupid term, and even stupider when used as an insult.

Novell made what amounted to a mistake in the eyes of many of their users, and such users let Novell know that. So Novell did the responsible thing, listened to their users, and cleared up the problem. That's not a bad thing. They were being responsive to their customers needs.

Indeed, it's very good when people go back and fix a mistake that they made. It's called being responsible.

However, I do agree with you about the GNOME file selector being quite unusable. It is what keeps me from using Firefox.

Re:What a flip-flop!

[bogaboga]

> Novell made what amounted to a mistake in the eyes of many of their users, and such users let Novell know that. So Novell did the responsible thing, listened to their users, and cleared up the problem. That's not a bad thing. They were being responsive to their customers needs.

If that were the case, then Novell should have adopted KDE ad the default desktop long ago. Some on-line survey indicated that SuSE had the best presentation of KDE and that it was why 76% of SuSE users were using KDE. In comments, an over whelming number suggested to Novell to adopt KDE as the default. Obviously, it never happened...! Now talk of Novell listening to its products' users and doing the right thing.

* RIGHT * (read it again)

[JabberWokky]

Please read what you just cited and what he wrote. You're not contradicting him... the text you cited refers to completely different products. From what I've seen on German sites (which I can't read and thus have to trust others for translation), KDE is still the primary choice for SUSE desktops other than NLD (i.e., the remaining products that he listed in his post). Servers and NLD will use Gnome as a default (as your cite says).

--
Evan

Slashback RFC

[Doc Ruby]

Internet reporting should have a way that retractions can't be buried. The technique of frontpaging war justifications, for example, then burying corrections, is an artifact of "front" pages and thick pads of printed paper. The new medium doesn't necessarily need to be limited that way. What can we invent to ensure that stories followed up by corrections are sure to feature the corrections in at least the same prominence? Maybe some kind of enhancement to RSS? Like requiring corrections to include a machine-readable reference to the original story, as part of the RDF? Then at least publishers have to relate the stories, in order to call them "corrections". Some publishers will probably just not follow that part of the spec, including "correction" labels in the freeform text without the required reference to the previous story. But those publishers that do implement the spec will be more reliable, and the ideas marketplace can choose among them.

Re:Must-have KDE apps

[molnarcs]

How many times are you going to post that list?

Besides, half the apps on your list are toys ... nice toys for a home desktop (yes, amarok and k3b is lovely) but where are the more "serious" apps like scribus? Is there an gtk equivalent? Edutainment? I mention this last because linux might become more and more important in education, and only KDE offers a nice, integrated solution. In fact, I just read about a specific case where schools (in Germany) used KDE because of the edutainment package (was in one of the blogs on kdeplanet).

Which leads me to what I wanted to say originally: marketing. KDE did no or very little marketing, and almost no research of KDE deployment. That's where the "other" project excelled: marketing, case studies, success stories, etc... This way, it was relatively easy for ximian's people to convince Novell's management that they should standardize on GNOME. It was at this year's academy that they decided to form the KDE Marketing Working Group. And in just a few days, oh look: Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrates 1000 PCs to KDE on Novell Linux Desktop that's bye bye for 1000 customers when the next upgrade cycle comes, if Novell standardized on GNOME. They use kiosk mode and the associated admin tools to lock the features - which seems to be a mature feature. In fact, here is an "enterprise ready" praise if there is any:"

At the moment, almost all shops in The Netherlands and Belgium already use the KDE Desktop. After that phase is complete, the migration team will go to Norway and Finland to migrate the PCs used by the Free Record Shop and Bravo chains. "It's a fun project" says Arrachart, "We can show that you can save costs with ICT, while at the same time allowing greater possibilities in the way the shops are organised."

And oh look, another two more cases (you have to scroll down). Quote:

on my right was a fellow who works for a company that makes linux based satelite t.v. transmission software (sky t.v. is amongst their clientelle) and they use qt for their in-house engineering tools. on my left were three men from a vienese company that writes kde software for a group of five private hospitals. these hospitals all run kde on the desktop and everything from patient records to x-rays is handled on them.

So someone (quess who) misrepresented KDE's readiness or usefulness - and the demand for it - in corporate environments. But the damage is already done. Who would trust novell on this now? I think most of the users in the past days were looking at distrowatch (or at the Kubuntu site) ... some of them would stay to watch and see. Others will make the switch - why stay indeed?

Re:haxx0red

[Scarletdown]

i kan haxx0r teh stopid windoze anywey you watch me. if u thnik taht u-r windoze is secur ill com se u.

Feel free to try. My I.P. Address is 127.0.0.1

Knock yerself out. :D

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[abigor]

Well, I guess the proof is in the pudding, as they say. TrollTech survive by selling licenses for their toolkit, obviously. There are literally hundreds of apps out there written using it (Photoshop CS, for example). Contrary to your opinion, commercial developers love Qt. No offense, but small developers like you just don't write the big apps that sell. If you made money from your apps, a Qt license would be no big deal. Sorry. (Yes, I'm a C++ developer of many years, and I've worked for big companies and small - right now, I'm in a 16 person startup. I know the value of time to market and working with the best tools.)

I'd like to hear about commercial apps written with gtk. Can you name any? I can't.

KDE should be default. GTK file selector bkoken.

[Air-conditioned cowh]

OK, this is a shameless troll but I'm really peeved by the GTK file selector and the way it hides what directory you're in unless you press this tiny little arrow. Is that going to confuse people or what?

It's bad enough having Firefox and Gimp rendered unusable (shameless exageration) in this way let alone a whole suit of applications.

KDE makes much more sense to me (shameless flamebait) and I hope there is another German distro that can become what Suse was once to fill the void that has been left by the "restructuring". All the times I've seen a US corporation take over a European company (shameless generalisation) they have just sabotaged it. I used to work for a European Harmen pro-audio company before the writing was on the wall what they wanted to do with it.

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[infiniti99]

KDE == Proprietary and expensive

Your subject is misleading. KDE is not proprietary. It can be expensive though, if you wish to develop proprietary software.

One important thing to consider is that Qt is so darn good. People complain about programming in Gtk. No one complains about programming in Qt. If your employer buys you Qt to develop with, then you're a lucky bastard. The only thing people complain about with Qt is the commercial license cost. In some ways, this reminds me of Apple: pricey, but there are people out there that will pay that price. This is why a lot more "high end" apps are written in Qt (like Pixar's tools, for example).

That said, this is further complicated by the fact that Qt is also free as in GPL. For open source developers, the choice between Gtk and Qt is simple, and this is why KDE thrives. Granted, Gtk is used by a lot of open source developers, but I'd say this is mostly due to preference of the C progamming language. It is the KDE crew that loves what they are doing, and they make faster progress.

You wrote: If you're a "Linux enthusiast", you're using a "free" desktop to prevent paying fees to the likes of Microsoft. But with Qt, you are encouraging people to pay Trolltech.

Maybe so, but you have to admit it is a very different situation. I like that Trolltech gets paid. They give us free stuff. Free as in GPL. That's like corporate suicide. Nobody gives their stuff away like that. Fortunately, here we have a business model that allows it to happen. In fact, it turns the whole system upside down. When you pay Microsoft, you encourage further closed source development. When you pay Trolltech, you are sponsoring open source development. Qt would not be as good as it is today without this funding.

It might be that Qt is "hurting Linux" in some way, as you say. But in my opinion I don't think we'd even be talking about Linux if it weren't for Qt (and you can take that any way you like... simply technical merit, or the fact that without Qt, Gtk wouldn't have been started).

I hear you though. On some days I wish Qt were LGPL/BSD. Simple licenses make life so much easier... But it would be a tradeoff.

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[arendjr]

So Linux development has been hijacked by people that can afford $6600 toolkits?

You keep repeating that $6600 number, but not even the most expensive option for Qt is that high. If you take a look at their pricing, you have a full desktop edition for 2630. Nor is anything being hijacked, cheaper options are available. And if you're really that anti-Qt, noone is saying you can't write a GTK application with KDE integration.

What's the point crippling KDE (and hence Linux) with Qt - IF NOBODY USES IT FOR COMMERCIAL APPS ON LINUX?

That point can easily be proven wrong. HP uses Qt for their printer utilities on Linux. Google Earth is being ported to Linux, and yes, it uses Qt. Another example is Skype, which works on Linux as well as it does on Windows, thanks to Qt.

And if time to market and quality of tools are the most important aspects, why are you not using either Microsoft Visual C# or Borland Delphi / C++ Builder?

Maybe because Qt can be considered on par with these solutions? Or because being cross-platform is important?

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[Trejkaz]

If you care so much about Qt being proprietary (which it isn't, actually... it's free software), then I'm afraid you'll have to stop making proprietary software yourself, if you expect your arguments to hold any weight. But then again if you weren't making your own software proprietary, you wouldn't have to pay for Qt, would you?

Re:KDE == Proprietary and expensive.

[Trejkaz]

That's pretty funny, you just used Microsoft Visual C++ and "quality of tools" in the same sentence. Now everyone knows you're just trolling though.

GTK selector not broken, just simplified

[ThreeDayMonk]

OK, this is a shameless troll but I'm really peeved by the GTK file selector and the way it hides what directory you're in unless you press this tiny little arrow. Is that going to confuse people or what?

That's not a troll at all - it's a reasonable opinion backed with a coherent justification. That said, I've got my own reasons for disliking the GTK+ file selector, but this isn't one of them. In fact, it's the way that applications work on the Mac, which has influenced many Gnome design decisions.

Having fielded enough anguished calls from relatives and acquaintances who have 'lost' their files by accidentally saving them in another directory, I don't think it's a bad idea. I'm talking about people whose clicking speed is far faster than their speed of reading comprehension, especially of computer jargon. The fewer opportunities they are given to click the wrong thing, the better, I think. Hiding extra details is just simpler for the large numbers of people for whom directory hierarchies are an esoteric mystery, and it still works for those who understand it. And, in fact, if you tend to save all the files from a given application in a specific location, it will work well.

If you want complexity and myriad configuration options, KDE is for you. But the simplicity of Gnome is entirely appropriate for non-specialist users, in my opinion - in fact, it's probably a better fit for those people.