Red hat used to provide a vibrant linux distro that was good for use on servers - enterprise level servers used to use RedHat 7.3 and the like. It was a good distro; anything you needed you could find on redhat's site or on rpmfind.net, and it was ubiquitious as "the" linux distro. If there was a binary package release for a linux version of some software, it was released for redhat, as an RPM. And it was free, or at least not expensive, as a boxed set. The life cycle was usually 12-15 months between versions (in 2 years, we went from 7.0 - 7.3).
Now, they've ditched that. Fedora is a piece of crap, and gets upgraded every 2 months. Patches aren't released with any regularity or any expected quickness. Incompatabilities between software packages on the same release are never addressed. If you want help, go screw yourself. But Fedora is their beta testing for their enterprise linux. So they give out a piece of crap distro that is never really supported in order that all the suckers do their beta testing for them.
THEN they turn around and sully the name of linux with their enterprise linux product. It's not any better than the old linux distros used to be, but it's ABSURDLY expensive. TWICE as expensive as windows for the same application. The WORKSTATION version costs $180, and that's with no support - just download, install, and good luck, buddy!. The CHEAPEST server version is $379, and that comes with no support, and only supports a limited number of users. If you want phone tech support, guess what... You're paying thousands and thousands of dollars.
Now, couple that with the fact that RED HAT DIDN'T WRITE 95% OF THEIR DISTRO. They're selling software that someone else wrote, and they've put together a desktop and a couple of apps for server administration and updating packages. That's it. For all they're worth, at least Microsoft wrote almost all of windows.
This is the crap that lets Microsoft say that their TCO is lower - RedHat's obsession with charging as much as possible for software that they didn't write and screwing the good name of linux.
Dude, I know that the statistical likelyhood of Slashdotters having the same birthday is pretty high, given the number of us, but I just had to tell you: April 19th is my birthday, too! I'll be 24, and I'll be going to see h2g2, towel in hand.
The "yummy fish" reminded me of the part at the beginning of the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy III (Jap VI), where Celes washes up on the shore of the lonely island, and you have to catch fish to feed Cid, and your fish options are rotten fish, just a fish, fish, and yummy fish. And if he eats enough yummy fish, he lives.
Except in the rom. For whatever reason, you can't get enough yummy fish to keep him alive.
Think kind of like Final Fantasy III (Jap VI). Sabin's blitz attacks had to be input on the controller. So, while you were playing Terra, you knew that, in order to learn Ultima, you had to get the Paladin shield and learn the spell, then you were bad ass.
But in order to do bum rush, you had to do a full circle forward on the d-pad, and press x at the right moment.
One didn't equate to the other. You could cast ultima without skill, but you had to practice your bum rush.
Of course, this could easily be circumvented with hacks etc.
My often-spoken number 1 rule of security: If they get to your hardware, you're screwed.
Corollary: If you depend on biometrics for security, you are effectively bringing your hardware to "them", and leaving copies of it everywhere, in the case of fingerprints.
Which is more insecure: Writing your password on a stickie note and leaving it on your monitor; locking your house, or, leaving your fingerprints everywhere, and yet depending on them for security.
C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.
I've always felt that learning new syntax is relatively easy. By that, I mean, once you "learn how to program", as in figure out how to be in that zen position where you understand the flow of information and lines of code start leaking out of your fingers, applying a new syntax isn't too hard. It may take you a few days or weeks, and you may need to keep google / quick reference guide handy, but mostly, learning the first one correctly propels you into a scenario where you can learn other languages quickly.
Waka waka bang star tick tick hash, Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash, Bang star equal at dollar under-score, Percent star waka waka tilde number four, Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash, Pipes curly-bracket bang comma comma CRASH.
Also: Isn't it odd that perl is the one language that hardly ever makes it past the slashdot lameness filter?
What about that thing where IE would send a signal to the webserver it requested files from, and if the webserver answered that it was running IIS, it would handshake faster and start loading data?
Ah well, I don't care. My Moox optimized firefox built for socket-T P-4's opens everything faster than IE.
Yeah, but that still allows for [a-z], [A-Z], [0-9], and [!-)] (i.e. the top row on the keyboard, with the shift key). Plus the space character. I mean, even in a web form or SQL entry, I can't see how
See the $4 doodads @ the store (on 6th & D streets)
It becomes a question of cost (in time) versus benefits.
The people that are clammoring for this kind of extreme security are fringe factions. They know that if they want a posix environment with 007 grade military security, fedora core isn't what they should run. They're just raising a stink.
Not to mention that, as mentioned elsewhere, I think one of the "holes" mentioned is something that is able to be attacked by DDoS. Newsflash: there are a lot of things that are attackable by DDoS, and it isn't as critical to fix as, oh, I dunno, root-level exploits, or instability.
I am sorry that I cannot reccomend any free virus scanners. The *only* virus scanner that I ever reccomend to anyone now is TrendMicro. After working with it for a while now, I almost refuse to fix problems with McAfee and Norton. Both of them drastically slow down a computer, and both of them miss viruses that TM finds regularly.
If you'd like to see it in action, go to Trendmicro.com/download and click on "Damage Cleanup Engine", download "sysclean", then go back and click on "Virus Pattern File" and download the latest (currently lpt335.zip). Unzip this into the same directory as sysclean and run it.
This solution won't stay in memory and scan everything that accesses your computer or HDD, but it will find viruses if you have any.
If there's a potential safety issue (beyond just using electricity), I definitely read the instructions.
Heh.
A week or so ago I was installing some ethernet runs in a steel factory. The guy who was instructing me where to put things said "Mount it inside the PLC, right here. Be careful not to touch that stuff, though... that's live 480 volt, it'll make you dance."
We also couldn't use zip ties - after a couple of months appearantly the corrosive environment eats through them and they break.
Friends don't let friends "make menuconfig" drunk.
Off topic, but I've started copying.config to/boot/config-2.6.8-200412251, and I do that everytime I recompile now. It saves a LOT of headaches when you're overly zealous and you end up changing 12 things in the config, trying to fix your problem, and you don't know which one fixed it, plus you want to know what you did to screw something else up.
To be honest, I think a lot of the open-source faithful have gotten so caught up in the philosophy that they've forgotten the pragmatism. Open source isn't important, open formats are.
I think rather that you may not understand how some of us feel about open source. It's not the pragmatism of the always availability of my data that makes me use open source. Not by a long shot. It's simply that the software is better.
And after a while, you start to think that so much closed source software has a better, free, open source counterpart. And this evolves into the belief that all code should be open. Many sets of eyes and many people collaberating can make software better.
The one trap of open source is the deisre to be too many things to too many people. There are a handfull of opensource projects out there that have pretty much peaked with a perfect or near-perfect product, and then gone back and started adding everything that anyone and everyone suggests. This leads to bloated software.
But, hey, Opera is already there, and it costs $39 and isn't free. Plus not enough people are using it to justify serious security audits, and since it's closed, who knows what's wrong with it. Firefox is open and has millions of users, so people are constantly looking at it's code and finding / fixing problems. IE at least has 86% of the internet's users using it, so the holes in it eventually come out by sheer dumb luck. But, I wonder how many holes go unpatched in Opera?
Also, aside from the philosophy of open-ness, there is my version of pragmatism. The time for paying for browsers has come and past. Oh, wait. That time was never. From gopher to lynx to mosaic to netscape to IE to mozilla to firefox, web browsers have always been free.
And the ad-supported version that you can get... does not have "text based, unobtrusive ads". Here's a screenshot from a fellow slashdotter. Here are the facts about the ads:
1.) not text based. That's an image up there. Text based would be like google i-frame ads. 2.) the full size of that browser window is 800x535 pixles. The ad is 312x60 pixels. Thus - full browser = 428000 pixles ad in browser = 18720 pixles
Percentage of ad as part of browser window = 4.37%. BUT WAIT, when you add in the portion of the browser window that is now unusable because of the ad's existance (the blank spot to the left)... Unusable space: 488x29 = 14152 pixles.
So. Unusable space + ad space = 32872 pixles Percentage of opera wasted with ad? 7.68%
I'm not going to give up 7.68% of my browser to an ad! And I'm damn sure not going to pay $40 for a browser.
Not to mention the fact that they all KNOW about Microsoft. They know the name. They know it's been around for quite a while. Therefore it must be good, right? (not my opinion, but it is the view of people that I have known)
You know what I tell people in this situation?
"Hey - tired of spyware? Well, remember Netscape, from back-in-the-day? This is what it evolved into. It's not closely tied to windows, so there's less chance that hackers can get their software on your computer. Try it out."
People that don't know "mozilla" or "firefox" know "Netscape". Plus, it uses some simple buzzwords, like "hacker" and "software" and "computer", so that you can get your point across to your audience without insulting their intelligence, and yet still let it be known that you know what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the problem:
Red hat used to provide a vibrant linux distro that was good for use on servers - enterprise level servers used to use RedHat 7.3 and the like. It was a good distro; anything you needed you could find on redhat's site or on rpmfind.net, and it was ubiquitious as "the" linux distro. If there was a binary package release for a linux version of some software, it was released for redhat, as an RPM. And it was free, or at least not expensive, as a boxed set. The life cycle was usually 12-15 months between versions (in 2 years, we went from 7.0 - 7.3).
Now, they've ditched that. Fedora is a piece of crap, and gets upgraded every 2 months. Patches aren't released with any regularity or any expected quickness. Incompatabilities between software packages on the same release are never addressed. If you want help, go screw yourself. But Fedora is their beta testing for their enterprise linux. So they give out a piece of crap distro that is never really supported in order that all the suckers do their beta testing for them.
THEN they turn around and sully the name of linux with their enterprise linux product. It's not any better than the old linux distros used to be, but it's ABSURDLY expensive. TWICE as expensive as windows for the same application. The WORKSTATION version costs $180, and that's with no support - just download, install, and good luck, buddy!. The CHEAPEST server version is $379, and that comes with no support, and only supports a limited number of users. If you want phone tech support, guess what... You're paying thousands and thousands of dollars.
Now, couple that with the fact that RED HAT DIDN'T WRITE 95% OF THEIR DISTRO. They're selling software that someone else wrote, and they've put together a desktop and a couple of apps for server administration and updating packages. That's it. For all they're worth, at least Microsoft wrote almost all of windows.
This is the crap that lets Microsoft say that their TCO is lower - RedHat's obsession with charging as much as possible for software that they didn't write and screwing the good name of linux.
Fuck redhat.
firefox: tools -- options -- web features -- enable java script [advanced] button -- uncheck move or resize existing windows.
I uncheck them all except "switch images"
what on earth does that page do??!? You type in things, and then it spits out other things. Is it a game? Is there an objective?
I'd dig through the code, but you know.....
Dude, I know that the statistical likelyhood of Slashdotters having the same birthday is pretty high, given the number of us, but I just had to tell you: April 19th is my birthday, too! I'll be 24, and I'll be going to see h2g2, towel in hand.
~Will
Thank You.
Thank you so very, very much.
I heart you.
The "yummy fish" reminded me of the part at the beginning of the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy III (Jap VI), where Celes washes up on the shore of the lonely island, and you have to catch fish to feed Cid, and your fish options are rotten fish, just a fish, fish, and yummy fish. And if he eats enough yummy fish, he lives.
Except in the rom. For whatever reason, you can't get enough yummy fish to keep him alive.
~Will
Think kind of like Final Fantasy III (Jap VI). Sabin's blitz attacks had to be input on the controller. So, while you were playing Terra, you knew that, in order to learn Ultima, you had to get the Paladin shield and learn the spell, then you were bad ass.
But in order to do bum rush, you had to do a full circle forward on the d-pad, and press x at the right moment.
One didn't equate to the other. You could cast ultima without skill, but you had to practice your bum rush.
Of course, this could easily be circumvented with hacks etc.
~Will
My often-spoken number 1 rule of security: If they get to your hardware, you're screwed.
Corollary: If you depend on biometrics for security, you are effectively bringing your hardware to "them", and leaving copies of it everywhere, in the case of fingerprints.
Which is more insecure: Writing your password on a stickie note and leaving it on your monitor; locking your house,
or,
leaving your fingerprints everywhere, and yet depending on them for security.
~Will
Something's missing... Ah, Yes...
Bring me the little machine that goes "Ping!".
I knew you were gonna say that.
nope, nope, it's been floating around the intarweb for a few years now. I googled it and found it on google groups, i think.
C# and Java are great example of languages that took on that syntax and many of the constructs as its easier to get a language accepted when it looks like C than when a developer has to learn a new syntax that will in the long run be better.
I've always felt that learning new syntax is relatively easy. By that, I mean, once you "learn how to program", as in figure out how to be in that zen position where you understand the flow of information and lines of code start leaking out of your fingers, applying a new syntax isn't too hard. It may take you a few days or weeks, and you may need to keep google / quick reference guide handy, but mostly, learning the first one correctly propels you into a scenario where you can learn other languages quickly.
~Wx
Waka waka bang star tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang star equal at dollar under-score,
Percent star waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Pipes curly-bracket bang comma comma CRASH.
Also: Isn't it odd that perl is the one language that hardly ever makes it past the slashdot lameness filter?
~Wx
What about that thing where IE would send a signal to the webserver it requested files from, and if the webserver answered that it was running IIS, it would handshake faster and start loading data?
Ah well, I don't care. My Moox optimized firefox built for socket-T P-4's opens everything faster than IE.
Yeah, but that still allows for [a-z], [A-Z], [0-9], and [!-)] (i.e. the top row on the keyboard, with the shift key). Plus the space character. I mean, even in a web form or SQL entry, I can't see howwould mess anything up.
~Wx
iAmSick of apple's iMarketing iScheme.
It becomes a question of cost (in time) versus benefits.
The people that are clammoring for this kind of extreme security are fringe factions. They know that if they want a posix environment with 007 grade military security, fedora core isn't what they should run. They're just raising a stink.
Not to mention that, as mentioned elsewhere, I think one of the "holes" mentioned is something that is able to be attacked by DDoS. Newsflash: there are a lot of things that are attackable by DDoS, and it isn't as critical to fix as, oh, I dunno, root-level exploits, or instability.
FUD.
~Wx
I am sorry that I cannot reccomend any free virus scanners. The *only* virus scanner that I ever reccomend to anyone now is TrendMicro. After working with it for a while now, I almost refuse to fix problems with McAfee and Norton. Both of them drastically slow down a computer, and both of them miss viruses that TM finds regularly.
If you'd like to see it in action, go to Trendmicro.com/download and click on "Damage Cleanup Engine", download "sysclean", then go back and click on "Virus Pattern File" and download the latest (currently lpt335.zip). Unzip this into the same directory as sysclean and run it.
This solution won't stay in memory and scan everything that accesses your computer or HDD, but it will find viruses if you have any.
~Will
If there's a potential safety issue (beyond just using electricity), I definitely read the instructions.
Heh.
A week or so ago I was installing some ethernet runs in a steel factory. The guy who was instructing me where to put things said "Mount it inside the PLC, right here. Be careful not to touch that stuff, though... that's live 480 volt, it'll make you dance."
We also couldn't use zip ties - after a couple of months appearantly the corrosive environment eats through them and they break.
~Will
The answer to your problems can be found in two places:
www.lartc.org
www.openwrt.org
Resource prioritization and bandwidth shaping aren't as hard as they sound.
Friends don't let friends "make menuconfig" drunk.
Off topic, but I've started copying
It's a good thing I wasn't busy. The turkey can marinate for another 24 hours, should do it good.
~Wx
(merry fucking whatever, everyone!)
To be honest, I think a lot of the open-source faithful have gotten so caught up in the philosophy that they've forgotten the pragmatism. Open source isn't important, open formats are.
I think rather that you may not understand how some of us feel about open source. It's not the pragmatism of the always availability of my data that makes me use open source. Not by a long shot. It's simply that the software is better.
And after a while, you start to think that so much closed source software has a better, free, open source counterpart. And this evolves into the belief that all code should be open. Many sets of eyes and many people collaberating can make software better.
The one trap of open source is the deisre to be too many things to too many people. There are a handfull of opensource projects out there that have pretty much peaked with a perfect or near-perfect product, and then gone back and started adding everything that anyone and everyone suggests. This leads to bloated software.
But, hey, Opera is already there, and it costs $39 and isn't free. Plus not enough people are using it to justify serious security audits, and since it's closed, who knows what's wrong with it. Firefox is open and has millions of users, so people are constantly looking at it's code and finding / fixing problems. IE at least has 86% of the internet's users using it, so the holes in it eventually come out by sheer dumb luck. But, I wonder how many holes go unpatched in Opera?
Also, aside from the philosophy of open-ness, there is my version of pragmatism. The time for paying for browsers has come and past. Oh, wait. That time was never. From gopher to lynx to mosaic to netscape to IE to mozilla to firefox, web browsers have always been free.
And the ad-supported version that you can get... does not have "text based, unobtrusive ads". Here's a screenshot from a fellow slashdotter. Here are the facts about the ads:
1.) not text based. That's an image up there.
Text based would be like google i-frame ads.
2.) the full size of that browser window is 800x535 pixles. The ad is 312x60 pixels. Thus -
full browser = 428000 pixles
ad in browser = 18720 pixles
Percentage of ad as part of browser window = 4.37%.
BUT WAIT, when you add in the portion of the browser window that is now unusable because of the ad's existance (the blank spot to the left)...
Unusable space: 488x29 = 14152 pixles.
So. Unusable space + ad space = 32872 pixles
Percentage of opera wasted with ad? 7.68%
I'm not going to give up 7.68% of my browser to an ad! And I'm damn sure not going to pay $40 for a browser.
There's your answer on Opera.
~Will
Not to mention the fact that they all KNOW about Microsoft. They know the name. They know it's been around for quite a while. Therefore it must be good, right? (not my opinion, but it is the view of people that I have known)
You know what I tell people in this situation?
"Hey - tired of spyware? Well, remember Netscape, from back-in-the-day? This is what it evolved into. It's not closely tied to windows, so there's less chance that hackers can get their software on your computer. Try it out."
People that don't know "mozilla" or "firefox" know "Netscape". Plus, it uses some simple buzzwords, like "hacker" and "software" and "computer", so that you can get your point across to your audience without insulting their intelligence, and yet still let it be known that you know what you're talking about.
~Wx
Newsflash.
If you install Service Pack 2, Outlook Express does too.