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PC software so bad, BugNet refuses to post award
For the
first time since 1994, BugNet will not be issuing an award this
year. BugNet's awards go to those Windows-software
companies that have debugged their software the best during
the year. Apparently bug fix rates have declined with
every new mass market version of Windows. The article also
mentions that BugNet discovered a bug in FrontPage which
allows users to delete their entire hard drives -- including
Windows itself -- without a clear warning. Apparently they
were told this was a feature, not a bug. In related news,
NT 4.0 has failed FIPS 140-1 testing, meaning it cannot
be sold to the US or Canadian governments.
is that i have actually been seeing alot of buggy poorly suported software showing up for linux. especially in the last year. with the growth that linux has had though i suppose it shouldnt be that supprising.
A quick peek at any of the linuxkernel change logs, for example, refutes the moronic assertion that less bugs were fixed in 1998 than in 1997.
Is Microsoft lax about bug fixing? Um. Duh. My pirate cable box has come out with more firmware bugfixes than MS has.
Do they ONLY give awards to MS/Wintel products?
If thats the case why bother at all? Give awards for giving everybody the finger instead.
That site seems to confuse PC software with Windows crap.. I hear stories like that every month. In the 5 years I've been running Linux both on desktop and on servers, I've never had a program delete dir trees unexpectedly, never had a kernel panic, never had to pay for anything except OSS because of some crapy hardware, and the only software crashes I had was with dosemu and Netscape, and even that didn't crash the system, just the app. Guess it goes to show just how profound the diff between Windows and Unix is. Not just the "look" of it, but the actual performance.
PCs allow the user to surf the web, write letters
to grandma with msword, and print out checks with
quicken. start to ask them to do more and your
marginalized as someone with a 'specific' problem.
the issue raised really has more to do with what most people will be satisfied with for the $3500 they shelled out (a nifty word processor and an AOL client) and less to with the myriad of other unstable applications doing there best to run on a crappy OS.
the -real- mistake was trying to use FrontPage98
for a threaded message system in the first place.
if you want a reliable computing system, stay away
from PCs. and if you want the real reason why
bug fixes are more and more a thing of the past,
look at the OS most people buy and subsequently
agree to live with. these companies not only
value their customers' loyalty, they value their
masochism.
coward/coward
Does anyone know of any other sites that have information about 4.0 failing FIPS? Seems as if every news organization in the world would be all over this if it really happened.
For a class-action law suit against Microsoft? Do _any_ of their products perform as advertised?
Basically if you tell FP (F*ckPage) to publish
your web site locally as C:\ (choose C: in the
Save As...) dialog, goodbye hard drive. I think
Microsoft "fixed" this by popping up a warning
message when user attempts to do this.
Gee, I wonder why it's better to have user-level
priviliges built-into the OS??? Maybe so I
can't blast my hard drive by accident??? Hmmm...
Is this a joke? I sure hope not.
If anyone could give a link to these findings, I'd love it. I work for the government, and I'm sick and tired of all the damn NT point-and-click admin people proclaiming how 'stable' NT is and their refusal to use any UNIX platforms for anything.
Damn I hate Microsoft.
Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSDI, SCO, OS/2, MacOS, Digital Unix, etc.
Well, it might be hard to crow about NT's security shortcomings if Linux is no better. What's the straight dope?
You hate Microsoft?
Because of their success? Because they have
focus and a commitment to a great OS?
Linux won't overtake Microsoft. Unless.. Linux
gets a single company to take control, and focus
the development of the OS. Otherwise, the narrow
focus of only directing the kernel development,
Linus isn't helping matters much.
Chris
Gosh, this makes me wonder why Sun sysadmins ... ;-)
get so much pay
Products must pass the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1 certification test before they can be sold to the U.S. and Canadian governments.
Government users, especially the Department of Defense, which bought tens of thousands of NT 4.0 servers, are bracing for impact.
Is it because DOD doesn't have to comply with what everybody else has to? I don't live there so I don't know, but I do find it odd.
Suns were nice to set up back then. Unfortunately, I don't use Suns too much anymore. We used to kid around and say that that there was only one problem with the Sun setup installation. If you had really stupid ppl, then you would end up with a whole bunch of computers called noname. We could never figure out what noname meant in Japanese. :-)
what choice do they have?
or more specifically, "they didn't see anything else advertised during my mork and mindy reruns this week", or "we have to use it because the people who sell it are really rich".
this is IMHO obscene. it's "official reality" at its worst: "yeah, we know we're doing the wrong thing, and we know there are better options, but we're just to paralyzed even to consider anything else". the herd mentality. that, and an almost surreal failure to comprehend the fact that there is actually something at stake here, and that there are such things as consequences.
it's pretty amazing to think that a company the size of microsoft could get where it is by having no perceptible merits other than the fact that their users are demoralized, apathetic, and out of touch with reality.
Imagine a software market where all support costs are rolled into the price of the product. Net effect : people with computer skills (who rarely need tech support) would be subsidising the clueless.
I think that the current situation is much better: if you need support, you pay for it. You don't feel comfortable installing a package on your computer? Hire an expert and let him do the hard work.
Philippe
What about the lawsuit against M$ regarding Visual FoxPro and Y2K.
I believe the main reason they're going to use NT anyways is because they've already dropped the money on it, and with the drive to make government more fiscally responsible, some people would view it as waste for them to throw away the invested money.
i would think openBSD would comply, or certainly be much closer than anything else out there...
the US Navy has made a commitment to go NT even for some Mission critical tasks.
given the known unreliability of NT (the smart-ship thing and all that), it's hard to see this as anything but an proactive decision to kill american servicemen. perhaps there are too many, and they want to save money on pensions and the GI bill?
what's the penalty for treason nowadays? i mean, really. what has been done in the past with vendors who knowingly provided the armed forces with equiment known to be of unacceptably poor quality? did these navy people read MS's warranty agreement, where it says basically, "we're not responsible for anything at all"? in a product that costs money, that hardly inspires confidence.
What about the Navy Smart Ship program, based on NT 4.0 ? Does that mean they'll be put into mothballs ?
Going with NT was a pretty dumb idea to start with anyway !
Remember, they'll get it right next time !
HAH !!!
. . . and a pompous twit, and probably a lot of other things that i don't have the stomach to contemplate right now.
crawl back into your hole and don't bother real people until you learn to walk upright and behave like a civilized human being.
jesus, who lets these apes run around loose . . . ?
moderators - this is experiment - first troll then a real comment.h itetc...anything and everything offensive.
fuckcrapdamnhellniggercuntwhorewhitetrashbitchs
I got first post
I got last post
fuck microsoft
fuck you all fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck shit damn
microsoft is alot fucking better than linux
linux is a piece of shit
The point of this message is to see how long it takes for it to get removed/moderated down
OK, now for the real comment.
Now it seems to me that places like bugnet would be really susceptible to supporting Linux because they complain about how buggy windows software and how the software industry is headed in the wrong direction. Why not take advantage of this and convince them to do a feature on the bug response time of linux developers. I am sure that this would be great publicity and would reach the susceptible audience of windows users who are fed up with Window's poor performance.
BTW. when sending e-mail to these people do not use the style of the first section of my comment.
--an Anonymous Coward who is a regular poster who wanted to try an experiment.
the difference with open source software is that it doesn't *stay* buggy (provided it's good enough and useful enough for people to want to use in the first place).
all the ultra-reliable open source programs we use and enjoy now (GNU/Linux, sendmail, apache, BIND) were a lot less solid and secure when they were first introduced.
Here's the way they work:
(1) some ambulance-chasin' lawyer detects that a lot of people are pissed off at a company. he proposes a class-action lawsuit. he gets enough people together to make it worthwhile (but for whom?)
(2) he sues the company.
(3) the company settles for several million dollars. under the terms of the settlement, the lawyer gets 90% and the plaintiffs get the rest. yep, that's right - the lawyer gets a big-ass kickback.
(4) the plaintiffs get 37 cents each.
did you get a sense of what the navy attitude was about this? did they see it as an inconvenience, a fatal problem, something they'd "just have to live with"? does the average officer think they're being screwed by having NT foisted on them?
christ, i just spent most of today waiting for the sysape at work to fix NT so i could check my mail (just like twice last week, and so on ad infinitum), i can't believe they'd put that dog on a warship . . . unless greenpeace infiltrated the pentagon and made it happen, in order to stop war
i'd known that stallman and linus weren't exactly cozy, but this is, by far, the most acrimonious thing i've read.
i hope nobody's ego gets too big...
for a good article on NT stability vs UNIX, see:
http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/
"The Microsoft code fix, however, will prevent users who apply it from using Internet Explorer 4.0, Outlook 98 and perhaps other applications, such as the Microsoft Internet Information Server."
This is a bigger problem then most people realize, sure the house and social security won't care but for the DOD this is very serious. Your talking about a fundemental flaw in all of Microsoft's software that must be now fixed for free. I used to work with and sell tons of MS products to the government. I cannot even visualize the nightmare of rolling out a patch to fix this to all of the DOD's computers. remember this also effects clients as well. oh well screw em they should not have bought so much microcrap in the first place.
i agree - spending $$$ on getting linux certified when NT isn't would be money and effort well spent. government only buys uncertified NT stuff because it doesn't have an alternative. do you realise what kind of endorsment it would be if government would be outlawed from buying NT because NT didn't comply, and linux did comply!? this is big - i really think it should be seriously considered and taken up by the linux community. it would give linux one of the biggest boosts for the effort expended.
are the things you read while watching win9x install itself. "It will be more fun, more productive, better... Windows has caused a fatal exception in VxdHAPPINESS_MODULE at 0xF00FC7C8"
it's just so damned easy to start feeling superior when I'm in the virtual company of people like you.
oh, please. gratuitous flamers and blustering loudmouths have inferiority complexes. it's a fact. nothing else motivates that kind of lashing out. i sometimes wonder if people like you have any idea how transparent the machismo thing is, when seen from outside. it's interesting how you're trying to "bait" me. this seems to be a competitive-manhood thing with you. in fact, from your original flame, that's glaringly obvious. what, is it too small or something? jeez, who cares. it's really not that important.
Lemme guess, a guy like me stole your girlfriend a while back, and you're feeling some pent-up hostility?
heh. speaking of pent-up hostility, you just freaked out on somebody for no reason . . . and now you're throwing a fit because i called you on it. why not just admit your mistake? it's not the end of the world; people make mistakes. it's part of life.
I'll be happy to tear you a new one in private email if that's what you're really looking for.
you are congenitally incapable of tearing anybody a new anything, and you know it as well as i do.
I think you have your facts confused... i'd suggest you restate that as "given the known unreliability of the software the navy has chosen to run on NT..."
i think you are confused. NT is legendarily unreliable. i have been subjected to NT4 on servers since it was released, and my experience has led me to believe that the common perception is very accurate. if the smart ship curled up and died because of the crap software rather than the crap operating system, that was pure chance. in a race between two cripples, one of them will always win. it also casts even more doubt on the competence of the navy people who make decisions about these things. what you're saying is that it's two strikes instead of one.
So according to your logic, it's ok for serviceman to die for free software, but not for software that costs money?
a) FREE SPEECH, NOT FREE BEER.
b) it's not real okay for the navy to kill their people at all, regardless of methodology. when you pay money for a product, you should reasonably expect that the vendor will stand behind it. again, though, you're missing the point. the point, for the third time, is the fact that the navy has chosen to put a grossly defective and unreliable operating system in a mission-critical role, where people's lives will depend on it. this is a seriously irresponsible thing to do. there are other operating systems out that which are far more reliable, and also far more secure. many of them are also far more cost-effective, though i really don't care to put a dollar value on the lives of servicemen.
(My father was a professor of Computer Science at that august institution, so I got to wander in and play with some of the toys).
:), i quietly and politely disagree. (uh, well, actually i get the impression that both of 'em draw a line, and stallman just draws a stricter one, so it's not really that much of a fundamental clash). i think that right now we're in a great position, because we've got the kernel and the compiler and this and that, and they're all entirely _FREE_ /* told ya! */, and we've got a lot of momentum. but a lot of the momentum comes from the indescribably wretched state of proprietary software right now, which has more in common with the late roman empire than anything else (i.e. rotten to the core, not just a good system in bad hands). _FREE_ software can do a lot to improve things, but after we start keeping the proprietary crowd honest, then they won't seem so bad and we'll start drifting back. ultimately, we'll have to start all over again.
heh heh. cool. me dad taught at an institution far, far less august, but i did get to play lunar lander and advent on the PDP11 . . . advent was fun but lunar lander was hard. i always crashed from really far up. when i was really small, i got to see the dinosaur pen and the punch-card machines. nobody like stallman there, though.
frankly I think Linus Torvalds' tolerence of the commercial world produces a healthier environment.
// i'm really gonna use this!
#define _FREE_ "free (as in speech)"
umm . . . with all due respect, and in great humility, and without any desire at all to start a flamewar over this
heh. i just realized what i'm saying. it's inevitable, isn't it? no silver bullets . . . the wheel of history and all that . . . oh, well. if that's the case, then the ride up to the top is probably just as inevitable as the subsequent fall -- and no less exhilarating for the inevitability. in that case, i think i'll just put on my pointy pilgrim hat and root for stallman anyway, just 'cause i like his attitude. and i'll wish everybody else the best too, 'cause they deserve the best.
hear me out, here. flame me after reading! :)
:)
It's not the OS's job to detect/prevent stupidity
true . . . but if the OS signs up for that job anyway, and does it consistently, then it ought to abide by that implied contract.
After all, The Computer Knows What You Want Better Than You Do.
well, windows consistently builds up the expectation that the system won't let you screw yourself. in un*x, you expect that the system trusts you; that expectation is part of the un*x environment. the opposite expectation is part of the windows environment, just like you also have an expectation that the little 'x' button in the corner of the window will close the window, and you expect the "save" command to be on the file menu. many un*x expectations are profoundly consistent -- stdin/stdout and a lot of other things like that. the whole un*x CLI mentality, where you've got a huge number of programs that are just interoperable building blocks. just not GUI's, heh heh.
i think you could make a case that you shouldn't break the user's expectations, as far as those expectations are derived from long experience of a reasonably consistent interface. the user can't reasonably be expected to memorize every special case in every program in the entire environment. imagine having to use a different redirect character for awk than for sed. furthermore, allowing the user to have consistent expectations allows the user to learn many things only once, in only one way. this way they can concentrate on the parts that must be different.
i'm not suggesting that i've ended the discussion here. honestly, my gut feeling is that the user should read what's on the damn dialog before clicking. then again, i'm paranoid, and i also use un*x
YMMV etc.
The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said.
oh, jeez. i've written quite a few divide-by-zero's in my time, but i've also tested things and caught 'em before they went out the door. (heh -- i'm not counting the ones i missed that haven't reared their ugly heads yet). of course, this happened in september 1997, with a program that was frozen may 2, 1997. i'd imagine that they were still testing it, though that's not clear to me from the article.
anyhow, after a while, you sort of get to the point where you've got brains enough to check numbers to make sure they're not damned zero before you divide by them, is that so damn difficult? good god.
here's a nice quote from the article, just for perspective: "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions."
thank you for this link.
OpenBSD.
Maybe you are just being subtle, but I truly think you are kidding.
many an EXPERIENCED root user has accidently slipped up and typed rm -rf /* instead of rm -rf ./* or got clobbered by a history mistake.
/bin/rm -rf *.
Not to mention the NON-experienced people who are starting to touch linux.
There's too much documented lossage to NOT alias rm -i as the default.
if you want a "real" rm, to use in shell scripts or deleting large directories, do
It's RATHER hard to do that accidentally and it works just as well as unaliasing rm.
jce2@po.cwru.edu
...especially considering the number of idiots on PC's.
:^)
You're right, it does seem a little strange that an app such as FrontPage has more power over such things than Explorer. This is one thing I love about my Linux box: I can protect me from myself, as well as from others
i agree with cary (above), the important part is that the source must not be installed, it says nothing about being available. the concern is that a user might be able to modify the sources with a trojan horse, thus circumventing the crypto. i'd like to see them try that w/ some kernel code. the cert requires code inspection, OSS (OpenBSD, Linux) would prob. pass faster and easier b/c of the much larger peer review. Getting Linux to pass some of the many certs out there-- POSIX/UNIX98, FIPS, Yellow Book security rating would be a tremendous boost to OSS and public perception of OSS.
bummer
4qk9ormsethr at marquette.edu
hmm.. yeh ok there's plenty of free/open src stuff out there that's buggy, but have you tried emailing the author? have you had bad experiences emailing the author? Whenever I've emailed linux hackers whinging "I can't install your program" or "It's doing _this_ which is really annoying" they've ALWAYS responded in a really positive way.
But of course I may have just been lucky.
This is not just about buggy software, it's about squashing the bugs, and how helpful the "authors" are when you contact them to report a bug.
AndyM
Marketing
Marketing
Marketing
You don't need computer skills to succeed in this industry as long as you can CONVINCE people that you have computer skills. Is it any wonder that MS has an impressive GUI on their OS? They are catering to low-tech knowledge users, just as AOL does. There are hordes and hordes of these people.
With the government, unfortunately, these people dominate the higher level positions. The guy who has the technical knowledge rarely gets a say in how the money is spent.
- Speed
Have you *ever* tried to install solaris-x86 ?
"ease of use" my ass!
wayout
wayout@wayout.iae.nl
Have you *ever* tried to install solaris-x86 ?
"ease of use" my ass!
wayout
me
PS I welcome any tips on that subject
Maybe it's because no one has ever succeeded...
Well. That seems right....
What *IS* a seriuos bug though is that IE4 stores
used passwords in the registry, ONLY BASE 64
ENCODED!
Now that is a stupid lame design flaw by lazy
programmers
So let him complain. If his code is that bad, and he refuses to fix it, and if you put out a better version, (smart) people will switch to yours. Let him whine.
For all the cries of "OSS == Socialism!!!" around here, this aspect of OSS is deeply competitive. The only barrier to competition in this market is programming skill and free time.
(Well, with the patent thing, another barrier might be the lawyer payoff... but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.)
Well, Win95 is in fact designed to know more than you do, assuming "you" means "the average clueless computer newbie/phobe."
Under those constraints, anything that allows not-too-bright people to completely hose their system, without being warned clearly that they were about to do so, is a bug.
Once Red Hat (or some other Linux group) comes out with a distro that claims to be for newbies and their grandmas, you can start flaming that particular distro for containing something like this.
As it exists right now, UNIX offers almost no guarantees against the stupidity of the user. (I think that is how it should be, but that's an argument for another day.)
Because they wanna play Starcraft III, or whatever the new proprietary-video-game-on-a-proprietary-OS is.
Sigh.
In my opinion,as a programmer,one of the disadvantages windows has is that many programming interfaces change with each version of the development tools for Windows,because Windows,in every release and/or version, changes the way to do things.Can you recompile something wrote in 1990 for Windows??Unix can.Now,the question for the companies is:should i fix a problem for a program done in an old version of my programming language for an old version of Windows?What money does it give?
:PPPP
Hell,looks like every day appear "enhanced" versions of Visual Basic and Visual C++,and even Windows!(Win98 has just been released when they talk about Win2000).
So,people in Microsoft!Leave it unchanged for some time!!!Uh..well..they'll not earn money that way..Well,i said nothing then..
Since when is the only PC software windoze? The only products even mentioned in that article are windoze programs. Linux isn't commercial, but I'd say that it gets fixed quite rapidly. And what about OS/2? Last I knew, OS/2's latest service level is only a month or so old. Micro$oft would have sold it as 'OS/2 6.0' by now!
Oh? Try "rm" sometime.
With "rm", the purpose IS ACTUALLY TO DELETE STUFF! The point that they were making was that the software (intended for other uses) was allowed to delete the root directory. What would people think if GIMP allowed people to delete the directory that all their images were stored in? No one would care about this feature. That's what "rm" is for, or a file manager. It's not the program's job to control your files like that.
: ..... I should expect Windows Explorer
: to write my Web site for me.
Don't worry, I'm sure that if M$ have their way, in a few years time, it will!
no, it'll write their web site for you.
:)
it's not at all hard to trigger a bomb that would blow out all electronics in its vicinity.
heh. tactical nuclear weapons don't qualify as "not hard", but they do qualify as something that our military would do well to be prepared for.
bear in mind that NT is no more susceptible to EMP's than unix. ha ha! "use linux, the operating system that can withstand total destruction of the hardware!" hmmm. being entirely dependent on *any* computer in combat is foolish. it works fine in SF novels, but that's because the author is in charge there.
all of this stuff would be just fine for a cruise ship or a tugboat, of course; even NT.
The correct way to do it is:
..
./* - which can be very annoying, e.g. in a kernel source tree. And of course, there's no / involved, so no easy way to rm -rf /...
/bin/rm, so that it will catch and block all signals then immediately exec `/sbin/shutdown -h now' if run on /. :)
cd
rm -rf dirname
Then you don't miss annoying dotfiles and dirs by relying on the shell to expand
Of course, the real solution for a system intended to be secure is to `trojan' your own
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
...all I can say is, in the words of Arnold Shwarzeneger,
"Fuck you asshole!"
You are obviously the "secret source" that cretin "Fred Moody" calls his "secret Linux inside man". You can bitch all you like about Linux, but the bottom line is - no matter how bad some Linux software might be, at least you have the souce code.
If you don't like it - then re-write it! If it doesn't work, then make it work! If it's got bugs in it, then fix them!
The youth of today has no idea what it's talking about. When I was a lad, if the code didn't work, you had to get down on your knees and grovel to the supplier ( kind of like useing Microsoft today ). At least if your useing Linux, you can fix it yourself!
If I ( and a lot of old timers like me ) had spent the time working on Linux that we have had to spend trying to work our way around Microsoft bugs, then by now, Linux would be the bees knees! We didn't have the luxury of source code - that's something that people have had to fight tooth and nail to get! So say whatever you like, it doesn't matter! "We shall overcome!"
As to all of this BS about "...if you paid for it...".
Yes, well I *paid* for my copy of Microsoft C++. And I'm still paying for it every time I have to phone those cretinous morons that call them selves *Microsoft* *Support*.
When a Scotsman pays good money, he expects to get value for money. You, your obviously a *stupid* *sasenach* who wouldn't know what quality was if you fell over and landed face first it it! You Americans might think that the sun shines out of Bill Gates arsehole, but here in Scotland, we know he isn't worth spitting on!
An ex-cobol programmer, currently still programming in (puke!) Windows.
I'm sorry if this offends you Zico, but this is *exactly* the sort of thing that moronic lusers do actually do.
Point in case - I am currently dealing with a company that I wrote some software for five years ago. Currently, the only person there who knows how to do backups is on holidays, and their hard disk is developing bad sectors ( as a result of a power surge two weeks ago ).
So they have a disintergrating hard disk, and the only one who knows how to run the save/restore backup functions is a thosand miles away. So it goes. I keep telling them, "...get your hardware support people to change your hard disk...".
Do they listen to me? No. They just keep ringing me up on the phone and bitching about the progressive corruption of their data-base. As if hasseling me enough will mean that sudenly everything will work ( just like Magick! ).
Uh oh. No way. These cretins won't pay any attention ( at least until we send them an invoice for all the time that I have spent patching their system together ). It's only then, when they realise that it would have been cheaper to buy a new hard disk, that they will realise that hasseling a programmer won't make it work.
"The only result that has come from protecting people from their own stupidity is that the world is now full of fools"
---"Anton Slanzor LeVay, high Pope of the Chuch of Satan"
I am not going to indulge in profanity, since that would give the moderators the excuse to drop this to a minus score.
I have seen AC's like you before - that's why I don't use my nick anymore. You just *love* to wind people up untill steam starts to come out of their ears.
If you want to direct personel insults to Zico, then have the decency to log in under your own nick. Until then, lay off. If you don't have the conviction to put your words to your name, then your words arn't worth anthing.
Title says it all. If you want to prove something, then have the decency to put your name on your comments. I got tired of idiots like you a long time ago, that's why I don't use a nick anymore.
Of yeah, it's pretty obvious to me that Zipo *did* steal your girl-friend ( assuming that you arn't gay - a definate possibility from what I have seen of your postings so far...).
Face it dude, you are so *pathetic* that you arn't worth the effort of lauging at. I've met your type before - your just so brave, as long as you can hide behind the mask of annonanimity. I'll give you a hint dude - don't cross my path in real life unless you have decided you can live without your teeth. I've dealt with smart mouth punks like you before.
...except that your words would have had more force if they wern't posted as "anonymouse Coward".
I don't expect people to take me seriously when I post as an AC. You should expect the same. But then, I'm just assuming that your the estranged gay would-be-lover of the AC who started this thread.
Come on...half a million dollars? If the company is foolish enough not to back up their systems nightly, and it is worth half a million dollars to them, then they get what they deserve.
Bug or no bug, if they have no backup, they have no excuse.
No you pathetic idiot, that's the Microsoft philosphy. Unix assumes that you are smart enough to know what you are doing ( or at least smart enough to set the access permissions for those who arn't, something that you are obviously too stupid to do...).
I dont want the Govt to use linux.
In fact let's ask Linux to write in that the US and other world governments cant use Linux except in science and research for science. Make the idiots at capitol hill suffer with the NT crap and make the military have to reboot the helicopter every 5 minutes because Windows2000 cant lock onto the target. with Linux we have more power than the Govt. I dont want to give that power up!
they have silly cert programs.. let them choke on it.
(AP) Redmond, washington -- Microsoft announced today that windows 2000, the latest update to their widely used operating system, would be delayed until the second quarter of 1901.
AC sez: If you want to prove something, then have the decency to put your name on your comments
i'll leave that one as an excercise for the student. personally, i think that facts and logic have more to do with validity than the name at the top.
I've dealt with smart mouth punks like you before.
heh. i've often dealt with scared little boys who make physical threats on the net. it's easy:
step 1: chuckle.
step 2: there is no step 2.
by the way, don't you think it's kinda childish, posting as an AC to simulate support your own losing position in a dumb flamewar? especially if you leave it so obvious that it's the same bonehead writing all the posts.
i sometimes respond as an AC to things that i post while using my nick, but when i do that i always flame myself. heh. if you had a sense of humor you'd understand.
don't blame me for your problems.
PC == Personal Computers, which is generally assumed to be x86 but may also stand for Mac's and even Alpha's (if you get one in your personal possession). Point is that Linux runs on them as well.
Well, I'd have to check; what was his name? Just to be thorough, what was yours (don't want to go around offending any potential former gay lovers, you know).
As to me, I sign my posts here the same way I do on Usenet; if you care, you can use Dejanews to find out who I am (and that's *why* I do that). Just why you should feel an email address is necessary to support what was advanced as a personal opinion I'm not sure, but that's you problem.
John P.
What part of "The files and folders in this directory will be deleted" do you not understand?
/* being a bug.. umm do you not
LOLOLOL. I would love for you to use that on
a tech support line. You really make me laugh.
You have NO CLUE who uses this stuff do you.
We literally have to tell people not to
delete files from the WINDOWS folder. The most
common responses "Well I didnt put those files
there, so I thought I'd save some space."
Another infamous one... "Oops.. I clicked OK
by accident, can I get back all my files?"
Telling people are you sure you want to delete
all files in this folder... umm doesnt say, "Hey
Doufus, Windows is in this folder, I can't
delete that."
As for \rm -R
have to be ROOT to do this. And ANY good
corporation who has been audited knows that
running ROOT 100% of the time is a no no. When
an auditor reports you to the District Head for
security violations.. guess who gets a call and
an upcoming visit to see if you cleaned up
your act. ROOT should only be used when needed.
otherwise, on the next visit to the lav, someone
who may be pissed at you can really do some nasty
damage.
If Windows had ANY type of security it would know
not to delete itself!!!!! Sheesh! Its a bug or
in Microsoft's terminology "An Oversight".
Budman
What's amazing is how in the hell can an APPLICATION wipe out the OS it's running
/Y
under
$ su
Password:
# rm -rf /
# ls
bash: ls: No such file or directory
#
ummmmmmmmmm...ok.. at least you need to know the password to do so.
Windows/DOS/NT
> DELTREE C:\
I think Microsoft made it even easier! Duh...
Another great one is that you can disable the FORMAT command by removing it from the system. But you can't remove the FORMAT command from Explorer. You need a Policy on the machine.. and if the user knows how.. he can override a policy since they are in the local registry.
If a file in Windows is in use, Windows won't let you do anything with the file.
Hmm.. ever try that DELTREE command... it gets any file that Windows isnt using at the time, including win.com and quite a few other important VXD's and DLL's. Depending on what you are running, a simple shutdown to MSDOS mode will do the trick.
Nothing beats the Black Screen of Death called "Windows Protection Error. Please restart your computer to resolve problem."
Hehehehe after 5 reboots you realize your system is toast. There is no recovery. Plug n Pray at its best.
Budman
That, and, um ....
Deleting everything is the EXPECTED RESULT of typing rm -rf /
Duh.
WoooHooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm American and , YOU TELL 'EM.
I went to a computer show once and got into an argument with an old biker/programmer? who said the beauty of today is that the CPUs are so fast you can just throw your code together and if it isn't optimized, who cares !? Who cares ?! I CARE! This guy either was F#@king clueless or a total asshole bent on destroying the world. Whatever happened to "Quality/Performance"? People seem to forget that if you write you program Shitty, then that's just that much more CPU it's using, hence that many fewer programs can run simultaneously. Computers are SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY!!! You don't stop research ehwn you reach a certain point! You don't just say "Good enough"! If you did, we'd still be driving cars that go 10mph and use 3 gal/mile. Ohh! We wouldn't have cars would we?! I think I made my point. Windoze programmers, whether it is their fault or Windoze itself, write programs that are just not writen with performance in mind. The funny thing is, people don't realize that programmers used to write programmers that did the same thing they do now back in the 60's, when the fastest computer was a 5Mhz with 256k ram. Don't you think we should have "BETTER" programs running on our PentiumII 450s with 128M ram? I do.
RMS seemed remarkably unruffled considering the antagonistic nature of the questions, IMHO.
Who said anything about giving (l)users rights to compile/install software?
Anyone got any information on Linux's compliance?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Besides, back in 1989, I don't believe that Office had nearly the popularity (stranglehold?) that it does today.
Posted by antivert:
is failing. They're getting tired of fixing bugs on the new systems. As long as one programmer doesn't like a bug in open source software, it will be fixed. Of course.. this went without saying.
And the PC bug problem is getting worse. BugNet's data indicates that bug fix
rates have declined with every new mass market version of Windows. The bug fix
rate for Windows 3.x (OS and apps) was/is higher than for Windows 95, and
Windows 95's bug/fix rate was/is higher than Windows 98.
Posted by wraith-q:
Wasn't it just a short while ago we heard that the stock exchange or some other big national financial institution wanted to run on NT? This should hopefully make them reconsider...
Posted by antivert:
First of all, it's "whore". Secondly, what on earth are you talking about?
I was going to do the decent thing and register but the idiots who designed the registration form are apparently unaware that there are countries in the world that have different address formats than the US...
Posted by Mephie:
I can see it now:
US Bombers plunged into the sea today when Iraqi hacker 2l337.4U mounted a huge teardrop attack. The bombers, running NT4, had incompatable hardware and were forced to run Service Pack 2.
--Mephie
Really, it isn't a bug in Frontpage. I'm serious. Would this sort of bug ever appear in Linux? No, because it has a logical file system organization and a protected file system. You wouldn't give Frontpage root permissions, so even if it tried to delete everything, it couldn't. Fundamentally, it's a design flaw in Windows.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>many an EXPERIENCED root user has accidently slipped up and typed rm -rf /* instead of rm -rf ./* or got clobbered by a history mistake.
It makes me wonder if there shouldn't be consideration given to having more than just a root/regular user distinction. The ultimate permission level would be the ability to delete or change OS files, while the most restrictive permission level would be only to change files in one's own directory, or maybe not even that directly. However, without thinking about it for a while, I'm not sure how easy it is to classify things like access to the serial ports, etc.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Well, gosh, the State Library system in my state (Alaska) hates MicroSoft products so they use OS/2 and WordPErfect office suites for OS/2. Send them word files? Tough luck, pal.
:(
There are choices. Too bad the Pointy-Haired idiots who makes these purchasing choices can't be held responcible for the lost productivity their lack of integrety causes.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Well, then, you should write a letter to the publisher of the software and cancel the terms of your licensing agreement and request a full refund of the purchase price.
This little bug cost one unnamed company that is Not siemens, (wink) half a million. Thats not good.
//]..!
$ su /
Password:
# rm -rf
# ls
bash: ls: No such file or directory
#
Linux (and Unices in general, AFAIK) is probably better than Windows at letting you delete the OS out from under you, due to its filesystem design. I have actually done the above (on a box that was going to be wiped out anyway) and it works. Everything that was running stays running (until they go looking for more files, that is). If a file in Windows is in use, Windows won't let you do anything with the file. (In some cases, you can't even read it. I've never seen the backup utility that comes with NT do a sucessful system restore, because it never manages to back up files in use.)
--Phil (In the Unix world, "the user is always right". In Windows, "Microsoft is always right". I know which one I like.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Despite my efforts to drag this subthread off topic, you insist on trying to make it relevant. :) (I wasn't really trying to defend anything. I just wanted to point out that Linux can do a pretty good job of letting you delete the OS out from under yourself.)
As far as the FrontPage "bug", I don't consider it to be a bug. That's probably because I'm used to my computer doing exactly what I tell it to (and not always what I want it to do). If you tell it, "this is my web directory," and then, "delete everything in my web directory," guess what it does? The problem's really more with the OS that doesn't implement multiple users and file restrictions.
--Phil (As usual, this is my point of view. Yours probably differs.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
from http://www.corsec.com/FIPS140-1FAQ.html:
~ ^~~^~
What documentation is required for certification?
Documentation can be in many formats, but must include the following:
Non-Proprietary Security Policy
Finite State Machine
Master Components List
Software/Firmware Module Descriptions
Source code listing for all software & firmware within cryptographic boundary
Description of module roles and services
Description of lifecycle key management
Algorithm Conformance Certificates
FCC certificates for EMI/EMC compliance
___________________________________________
This alone puts Linux in a good head start to FIPS compliance. I liked the words "Non-Proprietary" and "Source Code listing" best.
They look to be more general specifications for good security. The NSA did a lot of work in coming up with them and they really would be a good idea for just about everyone who is doing anything half way sensitive.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~
ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
Actually, on my system, even as root, I cannot destroy my system with rm -rf / though that would damage it. Reason? critical filesystems are mounted ro. I would at least have enough system left to boot, and restore from tape.
Remember, Windows is supposed to be friendly and easy to use. Thus, things like that are to be considered bugs.
It's not a bug in Unix because Unix has allways been: run as root and you're on your own.
I'm not so sure there will be a lot of drifting back.
So far, the proprietary crowd is mostly ignoring their problem. I think that once businesses (especially busineses) try free (as in speach) software, they will find many reasons not to go back.
One big issue that is often ignored is the actual cost of licensing. The license itself is just the start, add to that lost productivity when dongles malfunction (or cause other hardware to malfunction), or keys are lost, or the hardware gets upgraded, and the license management refuses to recognise it as the same machine. Now, add the cost of software tracking and auditing to assure compliance with licensing (a huge issue for a large corperation).
In addition, the y2k debacle is now teaching the value of having the source. Part of the problems being faced now is legacy programs with no source code, and the vendor is long gone or has decided that this is a great way to force upgrades and gouge.
In spite of that, there will be some drifting back, because bad management decisions are everywhere, but I don't think this djin can be shoved back into the bottle.
Notice that the major problem isn't so much that the software is incredibly buggy, but the fact that the _developers don't seem to care_. This is EXACTLY the greatest advantage of open source software -- if the original developer doesn't care about your bug, you can fix it yourself, or hire somebody to fix it. With cathedral software, if M$ doesn't have time to fix your bugs while they're adding twenty-seven thousand new Wizards to Word 2000, you're screwed.
Somebody oughta point this out to BugNet.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
I hate Microsoft Operating Systems for two primary reasons, which are based on the same thing:
1. Instability.
2. Refusal to address the problem properly (fix the damned crashing/security holes BEFORE adding features that YOU think we need, BEFORE adding on/developing your own proprietary 'protocols', and BEFORE you fsck over the little companies that have a great idea that you think would be nice in the next version of windows)
Note I said MS.OS's, and not MS themselves. I think BG is the greatest marketer of all time, and there are actually some MS products I like, and wish I could use in linux. I wish a product similar to Outlook could be developed, where the same database is used for all actions (ContactsEmail clientCalander). There are definately shortcomings to Outlook, but the whole idea is quite nice.
I think that Linux has the potential to overtake Microsoft on the desktop. I am almost certain that Linux will overtake MS on the server front. Period. I think you are talking about an entire distribution of Linux, not the kernel (this loose collaboration of developers just hasnt worked for the stability of the Linux kernel. A MS kernel with "a single company to take control, and focus the development of the OS" has been proven it works.).
I agree that any look (I personally dont like the windows look, not to say everyone has to) that is constant, is better than the mix of GTK/QT/Motif/et al. I wish we did have a single look, but on the other hand, thats the fun of Linux: CUSTOMIZATION. My box looks NOTHING like those of my friends', and its good that way: much more productive.
Linux has a LONG way to go to overtake the desktop monopoly MS has created. THIS, I believe is in the hands of BOTH the companies that distribute (Redhat's installs of hardware components is quite nice...sndconfig helps. we need something like that for PnP stuff), and for the developers of their programs (make things as easy as possible - thats why I like RPM [havent tried other packages/managers] - its the way a binary was *supposed* to be distributed).
anyways...just my $0.02
If you hadn't actually had some real, on-topic and/or relevant content in your post, it would have disappeared already.
I see no huge reason why your post should be moderated down, even though half of it is junk.
If the original author put out the work under the Gnu GPL, then they've explicitly granted any and all permission to fork development if they so wish.
The truth of the matter is that there are many, many classes of free software, from the mature and well supported (Linux, Apache etc) through to early alpha code (cicq, anyone?).
It would be *really* interesting to see statistics on the ratio of bug reports to fixes, mean time between report and fix, etc etc
I bet the "non-beta" free products will look better than proprietary software in these tables.
Here are some examples:
These problems are caused by poor design. And the fixes/patches to the programs and the new releases don't fix this basic problem.
Let's take Outlook as an example. In the movie Hotshots part Deux, Charlie Sheen is a member of a commando team going into to: "get the boys who went in to get the boys". Outlook 98 is a program designed to fix the faults in a program designed to fix the faults in Inbox/Schedule+.
It has a Web-based UI on top of a buggy amalgam of components that would make more sense to be used as separate applets.
Tog suggests a document-centric approach with software applets as the tools that people use to create these documents. At the moment this kind of technology is in it's infancy - hands up who use OLE objects in the documents often?
The small applet approach is already used in the UNIX world every day. But tools such as grep, find, ispell, awk and sed are for geeks and the odd curious user. Not the likes of my mother, or even the Excel jockey in accounting. Once again, design is the key.
Tog is a proponent of assuring quality by involving all parties at all stages of the software development process. He makes several comparisons to the automobile industry, particularly the influence Japanese attention to quality had on American car manufacturers. He points out several lessons that can be learned from this industry.
IMHO, it will take a revolution in thinking to prevent PC software from becoming more and more buggy.
my blog: good times, man, good times
...the link to the interview with RMS?
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/0111stallman.html
It's dated 1/11/99 and I know that I have not seen it before. It's a pretty good q&a session.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You know, I had these files I was trying to delete. So I go and "rm -rf" the directory, and all of a sudden, all these .html and .gif files appear. Out of curiosity, I checked it out with a browser. Gosh! My files had all been automatically converted into a DHTML-enabled Web site, complete with ActiveX(tm)(r)(etc) applets! Gee, I thought rm was for deleting files! Well, duh!
:-) :-)
:-)
Here's a hint, oh clueless one: If I want to delete files, I'll use Windows Explorer. If I want to write Web pages, I'll use FrontPage (err... maybe not). I (should) no more expect FrontPage to delete my hard disk than I should expect Windows Explorer to write my Web site for me.
Who needs software with "features" like that? Is this an example of Microsoft "innovation"? "FrontPage 2000, now with disk partitioning software and the revolutionary ActiveFormat(tm)(r)(etc) control built in!"
Oh, and before you reply, mentally count out a list of popular development tools that give you the "convenience" of project deletion from the hard disk besides FrontPage. I'm sure even you can count that high.
The ideal computer just didn't fly. It had apps, support, ease-of-use, and a great and stable multi-tasking OS, in 1989.
It was the NeXT.
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/pubs/fip140-1.htm
:-)
Neat, Linux also fails FIPS 140-1 since it does not meet a requirement of Security Level 1 for OS design:
"- All cryptographic software shall be installed only as executable code in order to discourage scrutiny and modification by users. "
Heh
Steve
The URL I posted is correct.
I think you misunderstand the source code requirement. I suspect having the source code easily available to the end-user, i.e. Opensource, would tend to violate the intent of the requirement, even if it is not installed.
*sigh*...Fact is, I don't think that anyone has made anything near "the ideal computer" yet. Everything should just work, like a good toaster. Sun probably came the closest of anyone: I remember in 1991 seeing a sysadmin unpack a new Sparc, plug it into the network & power and turn it on. It found a server with its operating system on the LAN, loaded it, discovered its identity, started all of its network services, configured itself, and was ready to be logged into. Just like that, no questions asked.
David E. Weekly (dew)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
Not so bad anymore, but x86 2.5.1 was a nightmare and their hardware lists were horribly tight.
It was nice, but a-la the Mac was a niche product. It really didn't have a chance to evolve into a great machine that everybody could use.
I would have thought that the FIPS thing would have made a separate story from the entirely different bugnet story.
The fact is that unless you have a specific need for a trusted computer base (TCB) OS, you don't need to comply with the FIPS standard. The vendors who will sell you these emasculated products do so because they will only guarantee them as FIPS compliant on:
It's not surprising that NT (or any PC based OS) has failed the initial testing round of this tough standard. But unlike the way it's been mentioned in the original post or the many many replies so far, NT can still be purchased by the US/Can government, just not for FIPS/TCB certified work.
Part of the problem is the US government and the No Such Agency are busy foisting crippled crypto on consumers. Microsoft always target 95% of the market when making new products. They do this to make money. They're not truly interested in directly marketing towards that last 5%, such as supercomputers, TCB, or PGP users. The crippled crypto brought about by the same agencies that require TCB platforms for their work have directly influenced MS in making comprimised choices about CryptoAPI that satisfy their paranoid world view. I'm glad that they've managed to screw themselves in this way.
TCB installations are big dollar items, and good for the ole rod length check (yep, mine's just as big^Wsecure), but the reality is that it will probably make MS less than 1% of their total net revenues for NT Server sales if they make FIPS certification. That is terrible ROI for the shareholders. And expensive every time new hardware is released. I doubt that Digital, Sun or HP make much from their TCB products, but they do target that last 5% of the market.
So, Linux (and all PC based general purpose OS's) will have a tough time being certified without completely specifying the hardware and installation combo. Redhat might be able to make a combo that works and passes on certain specified hardware, but you'd be surprised at the sheer lack of anything usuable left on the installation and the pain of actually using and modifying that setup.
Digital's TCB support, which I looked at implementing, to get shadow password support, made Digital Unix 4.0D so paranoid that it made life very difficult to actually do anything once it was implemented. It made su practically useless (well, okay, so it has some benefits ;-) Just remember these things when you say you want Linux certified. You'd have to be certifiably insane to actually use it.
Andrew van der Stock
If you're stashing unclassified files on a file server, but do not need to encrypt them, why buy a FIPS level 1 or 2 compliant system?
If you're setting up a print server to print social security checks, I fail to see how FIPS is useful there, especially as none of the known print server protocols (lpd, etc) have in built encryption.
There are so many different, non encrypting services that I can't see the point unless you have a specific requirement to do it. Don't get me wrong, I think that some form of achievable and modern practice security is necessary (coupled with high level crypto), but it's going to be so long before people realise that just because a software package has a FIPS-140.1-Level 1 or 2 sticker that their environment is not necessarily secure. It's not a panacea.
To give an example, you have a Digital 8200 loaded with DU 4.0D and TCB extensions turned on. You have your program written to use 128 bit encryption when it stores data. But you let your users use X-terms and telnet sessions to access the data, which travels in clear text. Few people take the time to learn the proper strategies, and treat security seriously as a wholistic exercise.
There's no point if you have a water tight server if you're clients are telnetting in using PPP over a POTS line to that secure box. You may as well use Windows 95 for the server and saved the money.
Don't get me wrong, I use PGP and ssh, but as a security consultant, I try not to waste my client's money if they're not prepared to spend time securing their entire system.
Andrew van der Stock
If this is all for real, I wanna know... be really interesting conversation.
Earn cash in your spare time! Blackmail your friends!
why MS says their products are "feature-rich."
Customer: "I was just working, and it wiped my whole hard drive."
MS: "That's not a bug, sir, it's a feature!"
Customer: "I can't get anything done, though... maybe I'll try another OS."
MS: "But sir, our OS has a LOT more features, doubling every release! Wait until you see the features in our NEW version."
Hehe.
If this gets confirmed, I wonder if it'll affect the trial. The quote at the bottom by the government guy seems a pretty damning statement. Soemthing about the government not doing anything about it because there are so few choices in the marketplace. A monopoly so deep, it's got the US government strapped.
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Anyone can put money into Linux. Redhat does. Corel does. All of that money gets used to develop the operating system even further.
Direction? You know where Linux should go? Make it go there yourself and reap the profits. Or let RedHat do it, with all that money from Intel and Netscape coming in, and every other company that would like to see Microsoft's power be dropped a notch or two.
Microsoft has nothing on Linux.
Does failing the FIPS 140-1 test mean that the US Navy can't use NT on its ships? That would *rule*.
There's no law that says any part of the login procedure on a Linux machine has to be open-source.. somebody could easily write a closed-source system with crypto code in it that'd get around this particular element of FIPS.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Good grief you're a bitter little turd, ain'tcha?
... look who's ranting, monkey :) This post of yours is *NOT* on-topic. You seem to be the one experiencing some post-relationship anxiety (try dating outside the family ... works wonders :P (since you love tossing stupid insults around :)). Mebbe you should see a good therapist about that.
Now, do *you* have anything important to contribute to this thread, or are you going to generate some more irrelevant insults? Who, for example, gives a flying rat's ass about whether you stole someone's girlfriend? I certainly don't.
The fox smells his own hole
Note, folks, that Zico here is using a hotmail.com account -- owned by Micro$oft of course.
And to answer the question posed in the subject: Yes, Anonymous Cowards are much more human than you are acting.
Read my stuff.
I'd rather shell out some cash for software that does work than have to deal with free software that doesn't. I'm not referring to any real-life examples, and I'm not trying to say that anything Microsoft makes is good (hell no!) I'm just pointing out that the at-least-you-didn't-have-to-pay-for-it excuse doesn't work in RL. Especially in large corporations. And large corporations is who you have to aim at if you want Linux to become popular, because it will cause them to bitch at the hardware manufacturers to write drivers, etc etc. Am I right?
---
I sense a very mature and intelligent person. He must be very elite.
This reminds me of this one time some kid wondered why noone just "writes a proggie that will winnuke every ip from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255." I don't know why, it just does.
---
I sense a very mature and intelligent person. He must be very elite.
This reminds me of this one time some kid wondered why noone just "writes a proggie that will winnuke every ip from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 and bring down the whole internet" I don't know why, it just does.
---
topic
---
Seriously, what would it take?
If Linux was certified to be sold to the government, and NT was not, we would be in an interesting situation (to say the least).
Regards,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
"Why bother producing fault-tolerant software when you have managed to create fault-tolerant users?"
Cheers,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
NeXT did have a limited range of apps, but the apps it had were works of art. SuperDraw was a real pleasure to use.
The version of NeXT (v3) I used was running on a P90 using a normal HD (Perhaps Magneto Optical was only compulsory on NeXT hardware?).
the only glitch is, that it doesn't ask
which distribution you would like to install...
hehe
Product vendors must sell features in order to avoid a major legal issue of making people pay again for a working version of what they already bought.
There is also the cost of issuing parallel maintenance releases for old code (of course, this is the right thing to do, I hate upgrading for bug fixes!).
Also, over-leveraged products end up only working for the least common denominator of customer, the sweet-spot in the marketing dept's product matrix.
The customer only realizes that the product won't meet their needs when they try to deal with their non-common requirements, which they assume the vendor though of.
The mass market product paradigm is totally broken for custom solution providers, because there are very few customers who don't have needs outside the product matrix sweet-spot. Only open source code can allow custom solution providers to add and improve features where they are needed for customers.
The software isn't buggy, but the process and business model around the development of software is. Customers are getting shafted while vendors make billions. This is only tolerated because customers have not seen better quality. Customers have not seen better quality because good software companies get bought or predated before they can upset the status quo.
Upsetting the status quo will take many good open source developers building quality software and providing quality services that allow their informed customers to out-compete their rivals in both technology and non-technology markets. Those who succeed at this task must then make the very hard sacrifice of not accepting a wad of cash to stop the good work they're doing, once they realize the truth behind a buyout offer from a large software company. After that, they must be prepared to show off their successful projects in the face of massive negative P.R. Their customers must so satisfied that they reject the anticompetitive free services offer from the large software company.
I for one would rather go through the fight than get paid off. Hopefully there are others who feel the same way. It is up to us to make this a better place to work and live.
Mike
No lawyer can take 90% of of a class action. I've heard of 50%, but that is rare, more like 33% max. There are laws that limit a lawyer's share of class actions. The lawyer bashing on this site is ridiculous for a readership that is largely educated. Act like it.
Unix experts claim that the chances of accidentally issuing this catastrophic command by mashing your fist against the keyboard is quite low. One expert was heard to mutter that "if you're that much of an idiot you deserve what you get", but refused to be named.
Work on solving the "rm *" problem is proceeding. One group, the GNOME project, is developing a Unix GUI that they expect will block access to the CLI's more destructive features. Meanwhile, paranoid sysadmins are implementing safety precautions, such as not allowing all users to su to root, and global aliasing of the rm command to rm -i. Only time will tell if these measures are successful, or if they're too little, too late.
K. -
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I don't know about air, but water's definitely
a viable alternative.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
" ... the company contracted to design the system for the navy has accepted full responsibility ..."
Reference, please?
D
--what a nitwit answer. Other than disk-formating/partitioning--obviously--apps, I have never heard of any app on any damned platform that allowed the user/admin to DELETE the entire root directory of a hard-disk/disk-partition! You would think that Microsoft's engineers would have had the brains to have FrontPage automatically detect when a directory is the FUCKING ROOT DIRECTORY!
You'd also think that the damned OS would somehow provide some protection from this kind of thing. What's amazing is how in the hell can an APPLICATION wipe out the OS it's running under--Windoze won't let me drag its folder to the
Recycle Bin or simply right-click>"Delete"--I just tried and still no luck damnit!--bit it WILL let FrontPage? Such brilliance and innovation comes only from Microsoft!
Seven some responses to this post, and not one person can get around to mentioning that FIPS (if you'd bother to look at the link) is a cryptographic standard, and that '"FIPS 140-1 is very important, but there aren't enough products to buy," says the Defense Department's Schaeffer'.
Instead we get a bunch of moronic posts discussing how Linux is a better web server and how NT Admins are point-and-click. And one guy who's so mad at Microsoft, that he sounds like he's about to cry.
My guess is that FIPS is some sort of artificial standard that will only be in certain very specialized applications. No, the federal government is not going to dump NT and install Linux on all of the Bureau of Agriculture's 486-50s! In fact, odds are that Linux will never be FIPS-certified, nor will anyone really even care.
Why is this place reminding me of an Amiga BBS?
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I don't know what the Navy's attitude was towards it. The guy I talked to was more a mac and unix person so he thought it was as stupid as I did (though a mac on a navy ship would probably be just as bad) Anyways according to him they basically scrapped the idea till microsoft can fix it
It's a bug.
It's perfectly reasonable to want to put a web
in an existing directory that may have other things in it. There's no explanation at the
time of creation or deletion of a web that
the web consists of all files in this directory.
It's also something that could happen very easily
by accident.
Their admins are only idiots for using a
POS like FrontPage.
We all know about the rampant bugs in the M$ world already. Personally, I think the FIPS article is more interesting (even if they do make you tell them stuff before letting you see it... grr... ) In any case, if nobody is supposed to be using uncertified software, maybe someone (RedHat? Caldera? Or even Debian!) should submit Linux for testing. If Linux or one of the other OSS OSes were certified and WinNT wasn't... well, that might prove interesting, don't you think?
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
"Microsoft has raised issues with our original story. Pending an investigation into its claims, we have pulled the original story offline."
... ...
of course microsoft raised issues
... who would like a story like that about one of your of apps/os:es to be out in the free
// Cthu
I never used Word6 for Mac, but I heard it was like waiting for paint to dry. I heard stories like 3 to 6 minutes just to start up. Word 97 in VirtualPC ran as fast as Word 6 native. Word 98 is much faster than that, although still not as fast as Word 97 on Pentium or Word 5.1a running emulated. :-P
Anyone notice that the netscape security module is
;-)
rated as FIPS-140 Level 2 with Level 2 with Sun Sparc 5 w/ Sun Solaris version 2.4SE
and only level 1 with NT workstation in single user mode?
Maybe there is an alternative.
p.s. isn't fips the tool we use to shrink our windoze partition down to 50 MB before we install linux.
Chuck
Overall Level: 2
They have a list of certification products and levels at
http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/140-1/1401val.htm
We'd love to. We've been pressing our management for the past 6 months to allow us to try and evaluate Linux to C2. They dont think there would be enough interest in the results. I'm sorely tempted to insert their email addresses here, but I'm not _that_ cruel.
So far as FIPS 140 is concerned, the UK government (and I assume the US is the same) would require their own algorithms to be ported to Linux (and no, they will not release the source to them). What would be evaluated would be the interface to them. There would need to be some level of assurance that the algorithms were actually used and could not be bypassed, disabled etc.
Personally I think certifying Linux would be a very good thing. It might actually turn in the first really useful certified platform, one which would actually allow applications to be resident and not invalidate the certificate. But what do I know, I don't count beans for a living.
This is probably apocryphal, but someone told me about a Solaris patch that accidentally caused "rm -rf /" to be run as root. If this is true, though, it looks like Microsoft was just emulating the Unix community. :-)
If you paid money for something, it creates a reasonable expectation that it will perform as promised, without paying additional money in the HOPE that the next release will fix the problem. If vendors are charging money for buggy Linux software, or not releasing the source to you so that you can fix your own problems, then yes, that is very sad...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Is anyone working on getting Linux to pass FIPS 1-140 certification? Is this something else we all need to chip in for? It seems to me that RedHat is fairly cash-rich right now, and could afford to carry the ball on this one for us... How 'bout it guys, at least get one of your own distributions certified (Red Hat 6.0 would be an ideal one to start with)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I'm responding to an obvious troll, but here goes: Microsoft is to be admired for their success. They do not, however, in the eyes of myself and most others on here, have "focus and a commitment to a great OS." Their focus and commmitment to maximizing shareholder ROI seems to invariably take precedence over any commitment provide value to their customers. Ultimately this short-sighted corporate mindset will backfire, as it has already alienated much of their customer base, who are ready to jump ship as soon as they perceive a viable alternative.
Linux has already overtaken Microsoft as a web server platform. It will soon overtake Microsoft as a general server. It will probably never overtake Microsoft in the shrink-wrapped software or desktop client markets -- but these markets will soon be as obsolete as the mainframe market -- e.g. people will still be using them, but all the exciting new development and profit will be on a different architecture.
Contrary to popular opinion, the vast majority of computers are not running any M$ software. They're called "embedded processors", and are usually invisible to their owners. But there are 10 times as many of them as there are desktops! 90% of the computers out there have NO M$ software running on them!
Oh sure, having a single entity control all production of a comodity works just great -- just look at what it did for the Soviet Union!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
My point was, that if you pay alot of money for a product whose producers have spent billions of dollars in advertising to tell you it IS suitable for a specific purpose, there SHOULD be an implied waranty. Software seems a consicous exception to the rule of implied waranty; would you by a car with a sticker over the ignition that said "We don't waranty this product to be good for anything, in fact it may (literally) crash and burn the first time you use it. By inserting the key in the ignition, you accept the terms of this agreement."
My experience has been that the people who charge the big bucks for their software HAVE to make big claims for it; otherwise no one will buy it! The people who do open source have more of a "this may be helpful to you, or it may not" attitude. Sure, if someone is making big claims for their free software, and the claims turn out to be false, go ahead and bitch. Again, can you cite ANY specific examples of open source software that do this.
Also, complaining about a bug when you have the source is like standing outside in a blizzard complaining about the cold -- you ain't gonna get any sympathy from me -- come inside, you idiot! What, you don't know HOW to build a fire? Ask a friend for help... What, you don't have any friends? Well, that's what happens when you work for Micro$oft...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The U.S. government has also issued guidelines mandating the use of Ada as a computer language and GOSIP compliance (does this imply POSIX?)... both of which were promptly ignored. Simply put, the government usually buys it's software from whomever is offering the biggest kickbacks...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
NeXT had a gosh-awful slow optical disk! But is was a good machine for geeks, good development environment, it WASN'T beige... yes, I'm sad it didn't take off too...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
anything that cleans a windows partition without warning sounds like a pretty nice feature to me.