Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Vista Rewrite, Tuttle Travesty, Mac Botnets
Microsoft denies Vista rewrite. moochfish writes "Contrary to a heavily doubted feature earlier this week, Business 2.0 magazine reports that Microsoft will not be rewriting large portions of its operating system. From the article, 'Microsoft's own blogger Robert Scoble checked into the story and got a denial from an executive at Microsoft's PR firm, who says he's not aware of any Xbox programmers working on Windows.'"
Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it. gEvil (beta) writes "The Register has posted a followup to this past week's wonderfully humorous story about Tuttle, Oklahoma's technically inept city manager, Jerry Taylor. It appears that Mr. Taylor is not pleased with the publicity he has received due to the incident, despite his prior statement of, 'I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.' He sent an email to the Register's marketing team asking that people stop emailing him and making fun of him."
MS Virtual Server Slips and VMWare fills in the gap. nizo writes "On the heels of the announcement that Microsoft Virtual Server is slipping to 2007, VMware has announced the beta release of the VMware Virtual Machine Importer, which has the capability to convert system images stored in 3rd party formats (including Microsoft Virtual Server images) to VMware virtual machines. The good news is VMware released the importer as a free download."
Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges. bdotcdot writes "Electronics News is running a story on Samsung executives who have plead guilty to the price fixing of DRAM. From the story 'According to the one-count felony charge filed in federal court in San Francisco, at various times during the period from April 1, 1999, to June 15, 2002, these three Samsung employees conspired with unnamed employees from other memory makers to fix the prices of DRAM sold to certain computer and server manufacturers in the U.S., in violation of the Sherman Act. The conspiracy directly affected sales to U.S. computer makers Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Compaq Computer Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Gateway Inc., the charge said.'"
Tux in retail part 2. silentbob4 writes "Mad Penguin brings us the second and final installment in their 'Tux in Retail' series, in which they interview Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony; Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos; Mepis Linux founder Warren Woodford; and Kevin Jones, Micro Center Vice President of Merchandising, to get their take Tux's jump into big box retail. The first installment was run as an earlier Slashdot article."
Renewed bid to register Linux trademark in Australia? daria42 writes "A renewed bid to register the word 'Linux' as an Australian trademark must meet an early April deadline or face defeat." From the article: "'The deadline to file a response to the Examiner's rejection has not yet passed, and LMI and its attorneys are still determining if they will respond,' a spokesperson for the body told ZDNet Australia in an emailed statement."
OpenSPARC.net, shades of the past. Andy Updegrove writes "In what must have seemed to many as a bold move, Sun Microsystems recently announced that it would release the source code for its UltraSparc T1 processor under the GPL, supported by a new organization that it calls OpenSPARC.net. But to those that have been around for a while, the announcement had an eerily familiar sound to it, and that sound was the echo of an organization called SPARC International. Formed 18 years ago to license the SPARC chip design to multiple vendors to ensure second sourcing for the hardware vendors that Sun hoped would adopt it, SPARC International seemed to be every bit as revolutionary for its time as Sun's new initiative does today. Motorola launched a somewhat similar group called 88open to support its own RISC chip design, and later IBM, Motorola and Apple launched the PowerOpen Association to promote the PowerPC. The Websites of the PowerOpen Association and 88open are long gone, and seem to have escaped even the WayBack Machine's reach. But SPARC International's site, looking very retro and neglected, can still be seen - at least for now."
Follow up on Mac botnets. An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com has an interesting follow up to skeptical claims as a result of a previous Slashdot story. Mac OS X systems have indeed been spotted in botnets, thanks largely to several worms going around that take advantage of Web-based applications running vulnerable PHP software. From the article: 'By leveraging this PHP flaw, the attackers were able to seed the Mac systems with several tools designed to turn them into drones for use in waging destructive distributed denial of service attacks.'
More like VMWare rocks and MS Virtual Server remains irrelevant
I'm not saying there is any truth to the 60% rewrite figure, but if I wanted to verify it I woundn't ask an on-the-record PR guy. Blogger: So is Vista in the shitter? PR guy: Sure is Ken. (seemingly from nowhere a chair hits the PR guy)
by the way, php also runs on non-unix machines too... I think even windows is included in the supported platforms list.
Is that this guy just still hasn't got a clue..
Now I am being flooded with emails from CentOS users that after knowing the answer say the problem was simple.
What I can't stand more than anything is someone that can't admit that they were wrong, even at this stage of the game.
Don't Tread on Me
Lets assume that Vista is as few as a 1000KLoc - (I'd bet another order of magnatude personally) That implies 600KLoc of new code written, tested debugged, etc. in 6 months. Uh - NO operating system development isn't that fast. I am not even sure I would buy the line that the current Vista codebase is 60% new/changed from XP (RTM - not SP2, patched to heck)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Sorry, but I don't agree on harassing someone over e-mail. His public shame is enough, don't you think? PLUS, by posting his e-mail on the web, you just made his e-mail vulnerable to spammers.
Worse, the e-mail address will be still available AFTER he resigns or his government period finishes. Will the next mayor have to cope with this?
I mean, like somebody's gonna randomly tell this PR Geek about technical matters? The obvious person to (not) ask (depending on whether or not you want a meaningfull answer) would be an executive in Microsoft's OS development group.
eg: The fact that I've never personally seen George Bush snorting coke or had him tell me about it doesn't tell you much about whether he has or not (given that I've never met the man). Getting that denial from his best friend would mean a little bit more.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Oh, this is just getting sad! Leave the poor (stupid idiot) alone already. This is like the entire school ganging up on the kid who's mentally challenged. It's just pathetic and far too easy.
To me, this is a classic example of how ignoring can be much more powerful than not. If the CentOS people had just ignored this guy after trying to help at first, he would have called the FBI and received his due justice from them for wasting their time. Instead, CentOS wasted time, slashdot readers wasted time, taxpayer money was wasted, etc... but it was all nevertheless good for a laugh.
Just ignore this guy and move on with your lives.
Well, it appears the video only works in IE, that will save bandwidth. I don't think I've ever seen a local news station have their whole news cast streamable online though. Most just have clips. And if this was available as a clip, it would've used less bandwidth than having people seek through the newscast. A little bit, at least.
Sun was always hoping, and still is, that others will take the SPARC design and implement their own chips. They want economies of scale to start playing into SPARC like it has into the x86 and ARM market. Obviously, joe hacker is not going to be doing this, but there are some companies that can and very well might.
Here's why other people would want to make SPARC chips: Linux. Oh no, here comes the zealot talk. Actually, not quite. Linux runs on the three leading server architectures, x86 (+AMD64), POWER, and SPARC. From a deployment and administration standpoint, you don't really care what CPU you're running on. With the T1, Sun released the CPU with the highest performance per Watt on the market (for some tasks). This is an attractive chip, but buying from Sun is not always appealing. Sun gear is pretty expensive.
Today, there are many Taiwanese and Chinese motherboard makers, and they sell lots and lots of hardware. But their chips must always come from Intel or AMD (or Via, who's never been competitive). They would love nothing more than to have a standard CPU architecture that they can manufacture (TSMC or PMC can fab these for them) and take the profit cut from instead of handing that business to Intel. With Sun's release, they now have the tools to make a chip that is not only competitive with x86 and Power, but is actually top of the line, and at no additional cost to them. It already runs Linux, it's ready for blades, they know it will sell.
Sun benefits by having cheaper SPARC CPUs on the market, driving down their costs and increasing their architecture share. The manufacturers benefit by being able to sell at the high end, and sell cheaper. Server buyers benefit, because there is now a cheap source for high end machines. Now, if these chips really move, don't be surprised to see Texas Instruments (who doesn't have a server chip, but does have the fabs and experience with SPARC) and even IBM (who will make whatever sells) start to make these.
Here's the email I just sent:
To: citymgr@cityoftuttle.org
CC: mayor@cityoftuttle.org
Subject: Apologize to CentOS
Mr. Taylor,
I'm writing in response to your recent letter to The Register [1]. I am appalled to learn of your continued hostility to the Johnny Hughes, the CentOS Team, and the open source community as a whole. I am a member of this community.
You wrote that you "only got help after threatening to contact the FBI" [2]. That's a misleading statement without also mentioning that you threatened to contact the FBI prior to describing the problem or asking for help. I quote from your initial email: "Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!!"
Most organizations would have immediately directed you to their legal department and cut off all other contact. CentOS stuck with you through your lengthy email exchange and resolved your problem despite your threats and ingratitude. That shows a level of dedication and professionalism that you could never achieve. Even more so when you consider that they are volunteers and that you are not a paying customer. They are not obligated to help under even the best of circumstances.
After CentOS provided you with the publicity you welcomed, you apparently discovered that the open source community has no respect for those who abuse our movers and shakers. Realize that an apology is a necessary first step to repair the damage you have done to your city's reputation.
Sincerely,
Scott Lamb
[1] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/27/tuttle_ema il/ o ryid=127
[2] - http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?st
doesn't really have anything to do with "Macs".
Don't be stupid. It has everything to do with "Macs" and any other unix-like operating system that runs perl & php.
Its worth knowing that that there is people attacking OS X in the wild and the vectors they are using.
Too many Mac users believe they're invlunerable & start to play around with internet facing services without adequately firewalling themselves.
Articles like this are a good reminder that any unix-like system can be made vulnerable, even if its its pretty well hardened by default.
My pics.
An open letter to City Manager Jerry A. Taylor, City of Tuttle, OK:
n tos/
Sir,
As a former Oklahoman, a news item, which I am sure you are quite familiar with, caught my eye recently. For the record, it was in a British e-publication, 'The Register' at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_ce
I read the article somewhat skeptically. After all, Brits having a bit of fun at the Yanks' expense, I figured, until I found the link to the actual email history. Sadly, the Brits, bless them, actually understated things.
Sir, from the very first sentence of your very first contact with the victims of your harassment you managed at once to be arrogant, ignorant and demanding. You are to be congratulated. Very few people can pull that off in just three sentences. I finished reading the email transcript, shook my head sadly and filed it away.
Until yesterday, when I read at the same publication that you literally expect 'The Register' to turn off the Internet. Because that is exactly and precisely what you request - "I think this is unjustified, and would like for it to stop". Sir, this is your genie that you let out of the bottle by stomping around like the 800 Lb. gorilla that you are NOT. Yet once again, you want everyone else to fix your problems. Sorry. Not happening this time.
I am frankly apalled that anyone who has achieved the lofty status of City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma could behave this way. I firmly expected that you were 1) a professional and 2) a man. Either or both should have led you to step up to the plate and admit that you were just plain wrong. It seems that you are neither.
Thanks to the Internet, you'll never be able to bury this in your litterbox.But there are a few things that really should be done, and might actually salvage the global perception that you have given the City of Tuttle, and by extension, Oklahomans in general.
1) CentOS, particularly Johnny Hughes are owed a very public apology from you personally, and from the City of Tuttle. They did absolutely nothing to cause any of your problems. Their only crime was working, mostly without compensation, to provide the operating system version that the City of Tuttle chose to use. Yes, you did choose it. You can't claim over two decades of computer experience and tell me you did no due diligence into the operating system being used to host the City website. To claim that is to claim even more gross incompetence and negligence than you have already exhibited.
2) CentOS is owed a generous consulting fee. They went above and beyond to research your problem, not because of, but in spite of your threats, your ignorance (something I find utterly inexcusable in anyone claiming "22 years in computer systems engineering and operation"), and your total refusal to provide any real information to CentOS to assist them in resolving your problem, which they did not create. In addition they are owed a percentage over and above the consulting fee just for putting up with you instead of very justifiably letting you hang yourself, and putting the City of Tuttle at risk legally and financially.
3) The good citizens of Tuttle are owed an apology from the Mayor, for hiring you, and from you - just for being you. They deserve better.
Please see a doctor. Immediately. If you can claim that your medications were out of adjustment, you may be able to scrape some of the richly deserved egg off of your face. At the very least, he may be able to help you with your other problem. Having both feet inserted in your mouth while having your head firmly lodged where it clearly is has to be causing all kinds of physical problems.
I doubt any Oklahoma publication will publish this particular bit of idiocy. So I'm publishing it in my own modest way, and urging my Oklahoma friends and acquaintances to do the same. Hopefully it will reach enough of the good folks it Tuttle for it to make what is clearly a much-needed change in the affairs and management of that city.
Regards,
A former Oklahoman
Well, I can kind of see your point. I have to squint and hold my head funny, but I can kind of see it.
However...
Sorry, but Mr. Taylor was obnoxious from jump. That has nothing to do with the uber geek elite, and everything to do with being a general asshat. He undoubtedly deals with the poor schmucks that mow the grass at the world-famous six-hole Tuttle country club the same way.
Secondly, Mr. Taylor IS a member of the geek elite. Just ask him. he has "22 years" of computer and administration experience. Sorry, no cookie there either. Read the email transcription for yourself.
So he's either a lying asshat, or an incompetent asshat. Take your choice, but I have bloody little sympathy for either.
While PHP does do an awful lot of making strings easy to mung, fold, spindle, and mutilate, I have to say that I personally think that adding a convenience to the language does not a security hole make.
I think that the real problem here lies in the fact that many PHP apps are coded incredibly sloppily... like most web content... ignoring even basic coding common sense.
How often would injection attacks take place if every coder obeyed one of the most basic tenants of web application development?
"THOU SHALT NOT EXECUTE USER INPUT"
How hard is that?
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