Stamped email are so ridiculous, what the hell is to stop a virus from sending an email saying OMG SCANNED BY AVG [...]
Hopefully AVG itself prevents such emails from passing. After all, it sees all emails, and can modify all emails. Nothing prevents it from removing any "CLEAN"-stamp on incoming email and replacing it with its own CLEAN/DIRTY stamp. In other words, your objection is IMO a non-issue. Nothing ridiculous about it.
However, changing message headers is a problem, when the message has been signed. I therefore agree that changing existing headers is not as good a solution as adding a clean/dirty-header is. But it is in no way less safe because of your above idea.
Not sure why this was posted to slashdot... it's just another phone.
I agree, but then again every beta of every minor revision of the Linux kernel seems to get posted to slashdot, so why not a post for every phone model?:-)
Yeah, that could be considered flaimbait. Please don't bite it.
And I know this is a personal preference and all, but... Python's significant whitespace? [...] Why would anyone consider such a thing worthwhile?
(Sorry to make an example of you, it's not personal.)
Haven't I seen your post before? In, like, just about every thread ever published on Slashdot?
"Hey, someone said something about programming, and a previous poster mentioned the Blahblah language. Now I must immediately mention that I hate Blahblah.
I have not used it nor do I know anything about it, but it feels like something I would hate should I actually learn some facts, talk to someone that uses it, or even look at it.
I must ridicule those who use Blahblah and question their sanity.
And... if I put some actual information in there as well, both the moderators that are Blahblah-haters and the ones that moderate on the actual contents of the thread will mod me "Insightful", and I will have won!"
The mentioning of MVC was very nice, and the article would have been a very good one had it not been for the Blahblah-haters paragraph. Why question peoples choice of language? Why not just accept that different people have different tastes, and live with it? What does the article accomplish by questioning Blahblah-user's choice of Blahblah over any other language?
Personally, I think: nothing. Just mention MVC, and be done there.
That's very kind of you, but I hope it is not necessary.:-)
Our server (I admin the server hosting the MPEG) has pushed 604021064753 bytes (562 GB) of data owing to this MPEG since about 20:00 last night, and we're continuing to push an average of 164 Mbit/sec of it right now (it's 13:05 when I write this).
The server's a bit sluggish, I admit, but I hope and think it's acceptable performance at least.;-)
An OS that's not encumbered by the baggage of Unix or Windows is an OS that[...]
So basically what you're saying is that Linux and Windows are the only operating systems we'll ever need, and that every operating system to come should be built as extensions to one of them?
It's very...slashdottish ("insightful", as the local lingua goes), but not very well thought through, is it?
Exactly how do you mean that implementing an entire OS is like reinventing the wheel? An OS is a car, or a bicycle, or something else that uses a wheel. A wheel is a simple component. An OS is nothing of the sort, and I hope you agree with me on that after thinking some more about it.
What you're saying is that we have both bicycles and cars that use wheels, and therefore everything that needs a wheel should be based either on a car or a bicycle.
Inventing something new, like an airplane, is a waste of time since car manufacturers will not be able to build them, car drivers will not be able to drive them, and we risk making mistakes made when building cars.
Just slap some wings on a car, that should do it! After all, bicycles and cars cover every possible future use of wheels, so everything that needs a wheel can be based on one of them.
I do not share your simplistic idea that UNIX and Windows fulfil every operating system need to come and that they should be the base of everything. Contrary, I think that competition is good, and that implementing an entirely different OS is a good idea as both worlds will benefit from each other's ideas.
As an anti-spammer, I really hope that Hotmail has the cojones to follow through with this. It would be a huge wake-up call to lots of ISPs if millions of emails suddenly get rejected.
As postmaster of a 20.000-user email server, I sincerely hope they do not.
As you are no doubt aware, SPF makes forwarding impossible. To me, forwarding is an essential part of the entire email infrastructure.
Solving one problem by creating another is not a solution.
We have lots of users that forward emails here and there, and these forwards will not work if the original sender publishes an SPF-record and the final recipient respects it. But it is the forward at our machine that stops working - even though we do not care anything about SPF - and it is we that will have to explain to each and every of our 20.000 users what has happened and why some of their email was not forwarded.
By publishing an SPF record, you break other people's systems. By respecting SPF you do the same. I think it is downright rude, and on the virge of unprofessional, to implement functionality that causes other people's systems to break on a large scale, but unfortunately SPF-proponents do not see things this way.
Of course, Microsoft do not care. Hotmail does not offer forwarding - why should they care that forwarding breaks. They do not get the workload. We, who DO offer forwarding, do.
I see: people who merely ramble out Apple's marketing blurbs now get modded "interesting".
Yes, I agree that it was pleasantly out of the ordinary that an article like that got modded up. He did in fact say something else than "linux rulez", and still got modded up rather than down as a troll.
I am, however, unfortunately not the least bit suprised that an article which basically says "Linux is better because I think so" gets modded 5 Insightful. This is, after all, Slashdot, where for some reason no opinions other than the wholy mantra "Linux is better" is ever fully accepted.
Had this not been the case, I would certainly have posted more frequently here. But a discussion in which just one opinion is ever modded up, and in which the "opposition" is never fully heard, is not productive enough.
It is sad that Slashdot as a whole sees Linux like a religion which cannot under any circumstances be questioned, rather than like a technology which gains from external input and ideas. Embracing other peoples opinions is a way of making Linux stronger, not weaker!
A smarter way to do such a thing would be to "crawl" the whole site on localhost:80 instead of just indexing files, that way.htaccess and the such would be preserved throughout.
That would not help much. Most sites have different content depending on the IP address accessing the content, i.e. internal IP:s get content that external IP:s cannot access. Crawling on localhost:80 would remove the non-linked files, but still gives the search engine access to a lot of content that should not be indexed.
The only safe crawler is one that is located outside your network.
What really scares me, though, is that this idea is somehow seen as new. It is blatantly obvious that one does not get good or proper results by indexing files locally. For example, you get an index of your PHP script's source code (including the database passwords they likely contain) instead of the output from them. And it doesn't follow any.shtml includes etc. either.
Even the fact that a search engine crawler running from an internal IP will be able to access and index content that shouldn't be externally available is very obvious.
What the article possibly adds, is a list of ideas about what to search for in the affected organization's index. But I wouldn't consider the idea new in any way.
This, or rather its sibling with internal IP:s, was something that we designed the robots.txt file for back in '97 when our university bought it's first search engine. I refuse to believe that nobody has written an article about this idea until now.
But if this is the first article about this, and if people actually find it interesting and revealing, then it was really fortunate that it got written now rather than in ten more years.
So why should the US participate when llarger poluters than ourselves aren't?
Let me make a very slight suggestion to an answer: "because the US produces 25% of all green-house gases today".
The fact that others also do something does not mean that it is smart, or good, or correct, or a good idea. Ten thousand flies can be wrong!
Ok, so India and China continue. But if the country that produces 25% of the gases start doing something about it, it makes a difference. A difference for the entire world.
When it's about lowering green-house gases, everybody else in the entire world have to be in on it before US politicians do something. But when it's about attacking Iraq the US can do everything by themselves. I'm not condemning, I'm not saying whether it was a bad idea to attack Iraq, I just think it's a very interesting difference in argumentation.
Does american banks charge to give you the option of paying bills online? Here in Sweden, most banks do not charge anything extra to give you their online service, which includes the ability to pay bills, transfer money between your accounts (as well as to other swedish banks), buy and sell stock, etc.
How about folks who LIKE using Win2k but have lost their original disk and reinstalled using a friend's key instead of being forced to pay $150-300 for a new copy of software they already owned?
That does not make sense to me. If I buy a mobile phone, and somehow lose it, I cannot go to the reseller and claim a new phone simply because I "already own it". If I lose it, then it's lost and I will have to buy a new one.
Similarly, if I've lost my software key, then I've lost my proof of ownership, and I'm just as much a pirate as anybody else if I use a friend's key when installing.
No one can expect Microsoft to cover for one's own sloppiness - if you lose your key then you'll have to buy a new one. There's no "I already own this" argument to be made when you've lost it yourself.
I see a bit of a chicken or an egg thing here.
There will always have to be either the concept of a superuser, or there must be a way to create an account with any rights possible, otherwise it would be a very easy system to lose data to.
Somewhere on the system, individuals or people working together must somehow be able to create users with all possible privileges, that is correct. So individually or collectively they can do anything. That is not the difference.
The difference is that just because a program e.g. needs access to a raw network interface, it does not gain those complete privileges. Such a program will only get the privilege to access the raw network interface, but not to e.g. create new users or open arbitrary files.
With most UNIX'es all-or-nothing superuser (Solaris 10, among other, implement privileges instead), any program needing a raw network interface automatically gains the right to create users, shutdown the machine, alter any file, and anything else as well.
So the main difference isn't that there is no superuser, it's that there are many superusers, each of which can only perform a subset of all possible tasks requiring extra privileges. And that means that the Helpdesk staff could for example be allowed to create new accounts, without thereby automatically gaining the right to look in any file belonging to existing users. And processes can be granted any subset of what root can do without automatically gaining all the other privileges at the same time.
Linux runs on a 'toy' platform (x86)... Linux does nothing significant that AT&T wasn't doing 10 years ago... Generally speaking, Linux sucks.
As usual, what your eyes see depends on which glasses you have on when the text is in front of them. If you are expecting to find critique, you can always find it.
Personally, I did not see any form of "Linux sucks" message in the article. He does not write "Linux, Linux, Hallelujah", but lack of worship does not mean that he condemns. The article is, from beginning to end, explicitly about a work-in-progress. He writes that he does not know yet, that more needs to be said, that he wants help, that he needs more information.
IMHO I expect to see this sort of thing about half-way down in a thread of/. comments, not on an actual computing news site.
I sincerely apologize for making you a target here, but your comment is the kind of comment I expect to see not half-way down but even at the top of a/. thread.
If anyone, anywhere so much as whispers anything about Linux maybe not being absolutely perfect in every single regard, there will always be a lot of people calling that author a Linux-basher or anti-Linux.
And every email sent to such an author (note that I'm not trying to in any way imply that you sent such a message!), telling her/him how stupid he is will inevitably make Linux continue to look more and more as a religion rather than a project to make the best OS in the world.
Imagine where Linux could be in five years if people were actually free to express critique against current implementations and ideas without being flamed to pieces once their article/blog/message/scanned-lipstick-on-a-napkin finds it's way to Slashdot.
Or, as in this case, if people are even free to ask wether there might be anything worth commenting on in the future.
Oh, stop overreacting. I was simply making a lame joke on my lunch break [...]
I apologize. My only intent was to, well, make a lame joke on my lunch break... (Because if it's something you learn reading comments on Slashdot, it is how Linux will not only solve everybody's every computing problem, but also solve overpopulation, psychological problems and remove AIDS. And don't forget that Linux' source code contains a hidden message about who killed Kennedy!;-)
It was not my intention for you (or anybody else) to take it seriously, so there I've learned that smileys have a role to fulfil. I'll try to be clearer next time.
"Hmmm . . . new article on Slashdot, think I'll check the comments . . . Argggh! My eyes! I can't see anything!!"
Oh, stop whining... Nobody has even mentioned how the pilots wouldn't have been blinded, the laser owner not found, and, if he was, not arrested, had only everybody been running Linux.
That's the whole idea behind the First Amendment isn't it?
But what happens when media becomes political? From an external viewpoint, some of the american TV-channels are clearly biased in favor of the current government no matter what they do, probably also owned by people that also "sponsors" the election campaigns.
Having the right to be free does not help, when there's no requirement to be objective, or to at least clearly state that you are subjective to a particular viewpoint and which that viewpoint is.
Freedom of the press is imperative, but I believe there should be greater demands made as well. Look at Italy, where the current government is run by Mr. Berlusconi, the very same man that personally owns 80% of all national media. Sure, they're free to say what they want, but they only say what Mr. Berlusconie wants them to. They are constitutionally free, but not free anyways.
From this side of the pond, the USA looks like it has a little of the same problem. But instead of Bush owning 80% of media himself, it's the companies that owns the media that also pays for his campaign. So unlike Italy, you do not even know that it's happening...
Sun talked about ZFS on USENIX Technical this summer in Boston, and if memory serves, ZFS gives you some actually rather impressive features.
Partitions are a thing of the past. You add disks in one end, and create filesystems in the other. You do not need to do anything inbetween, it is done automatically.
In fact, a lot of things are automatic. When betatesting ZFS, a customer found a bug: half of his identical disks were used twice as much as the other half - a clear bug. After looking into it, Sun's engineers determined that the problem was not with ZFS, but with the fact that half of the cheap disks were mislabled and actually just had half the write cache that their labels said. ZFS detected this and used the ones with bigger caches more.
The design goal, which the ZFS team were close to this summer, is to give you filesystem access at raw I/O speed. One of ZFS' design goals is that it should not incur any overhead. Sounds impossible, but they were close already.
Now, I know that the Slashdot crowd really only trusts software which is Open Source, needs you to fix ten lines of code before it compiles and which lacks any form of documentation apart from the source code, but ZFS is actually very, very cool even though it lacks all those trust-inducing features.
Just imagine that it was a conceptual idea done by some Open Source-guy, and you'll see that it is indeed impressive. Then start implementing all ZFS' algorithms and ideas in a Open Source Linux variant, and we'll all be singing and dancing together.;-)
You have an interesting definition of FUD, it would seem.
He bought a Linux distribution for as much money as Windows would have cost. He installed it on his PC. It didn't work as advertised.
He then wrote an article about this, in which he explained what didn't work. Linux activists told him he was lying, hiding facts, actively working against Linux, that he was an idiot, a technical moron, that it was his fault, and that the part that didn't work wasn't actually needed.
Those responses were written by people with very strange ideas of how to build a wide acceptance and support for Linux. They seem to have the idea that any and all forms of criticism is written by people actively against Linux, people who should be taunted, haunted and ridiculed, and their articles hidden, removed or just written of as FUD.
This is inexplicably stupid, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance. Nobody in their right mind switch to a product that is promoted by people who cannot take criticism, people who do not listen to facts, who cannot accept an opinion contrary to their own without ridiculing the other person, people who, for whatever reason, are so paranoid that they think that there could "Never, Ever, Be Anything Wrong With Linux, and therefore anybody who says so is after us".
He bought a product. It didn't work as advertised. It could not be fixed by the support. He has every right to complain, tell everyone what happened, and not be ridiculed, called an idiot, or accused of spreading FUD for doing so.
Calling his article FUD is clueless, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance.
But I guess I am now the person, most likely paid by Microsoft, who should be haunted and taunted for pointing out something as ridiculous (sp?) as that Linux could, in fact, have areas where work needs to be done, and that anybody who has paid for a distribution has every right to write an article about it. Without clueless activists calling him an idiot.
I want to be a part of the Free Software world. I do not, however, want to be a part of a narrowminded world where you cannot under any circumstance listen to criticism, where customers must be experts and are otherwise called "idiots", and where anything negative written or said is a sure sign of mental disabilities or a covert Microsoft operation.
If that is the world of Linux, then I will never tell anyone I love it.
If the information is so sensitive, then it shouldn't be open, and shouldn't be available by request. Requests for it should be met with an immediate "No", and then there's nothing more to it.
If information is open, or available on request, then requesting it should not be the basis of any kind of criminal or other investigation. Not in a free country anyways.
When individuals get accused or investigated based solely on requesting open information, or having an arabic-sounding last name, then the country is no longer an open and free country.
When I visit the USA later this summer, I will be very careful what I say. From across the Atlantic, it seems apparent that saying the wrong things can get you in jail, without even being charged (hundreds of prisoners are still (for two years and counting) being held in Cuba without being charged or having had the possibility to defend themselves).
I do not feel freedom of speech exists in the USA today - anything can be (and is) motivated by the fear of terrorists. I even feel hesitant to write this, as it could probably be considered anti-american (which it isn't meant to be, it hurts me that an otherwise great country seems to be breaking down as a democracy). It is maybe even enough for me to be investigated. Thank god my last name isn't arabic.
My knowledge of american history is bad at best, but I seem to recall an era where the fear of communists motivated just about anything. Is there some similarity here?
To be blunt... The single biggest difference between all distros is whos ego each install of the distro satisfies.
Of course you can look at any two distros and say "look, A-Distro uses RPM but AD-istro uses DEB", or "A-witty-Linux-acronym" uses Kernel 2.4 while "A-wittier-Linux-acronym" uses 2.6. But the sum of all distros all differ in the egos.
In all, most FLOSS development is driven by the wish to become famous (or infamous) within the community. That is maybe also why there are an infinite number of softwares at versions 0.x - it is sexy as hell (and gives a lot of cred) to implement a cool thing, but it is incredibly un-sexy to make it work for everybody and have an intuitive user interface...
Now, don't get me wrong here. Many different and differing distros is a good thing. Not as good as one distro flexible enough to work for everybody, but good none the less. And I am personally very grateful for the variations, as I found a very narrow "distro" called Paul's Boot CD that did exactly what I needed a few weeks back.
But I long for the day when I hear of the Linux distro that promotes itself as "nothing special, nothing fancy, just simple, flexible and intuitive"...
To sum up what you're very eloquently describing: GNU/Linux isn't an operating system like Windows or Mac OS X. GNU/Linux is just the basis upon which operating systems can be built. Like Mandrake or Red Hat. They are operating systems.
And in there lies not only a value but also a big problem for any wider acceptance of GNU/Linux-based OS:es. As an application developer, you must not support one, but more like ten different operating systems in order to "run on Linux". At a minimum, you must create one KDE and one GNOME frontend, lest your application "looks wrong" for the end user that has a Linux OS installed which uses the other.
Let us not even begin to ponder that each Linux OS seems to invent its own slightly different file system layout. Because they all need to be different from all the others. KDE/GNOME, Xfree86/Xorg,/etc/foo.bar or/usr/etc/foo.bar...
Nice as it is to have many different Linux OS:es, the diversity between them is a major deterrent to many software development companies.
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully AVG itself prevents such emails from passing. After all, it sees all emails, and can modify all emails. Nothing prevents it from removing any "CLEAN"-stamp on incoming email and replacing it with its own CLEAN/DIRTY stamp. In other words, your objection is IMO a non-issue. Nothing ridiculous about it.
However, changing message headers is a problem, when the message has been signed. I therefore agree that changing existing headers is not as good a solution as adding a clean/dirty-header is. But it is in no way less safe because of your above idea.
Not sure why this was posted to slashdot... it's just another phone.
I agree, but then again every beta of every minor revision of the Linux kernel seems to get posted to slashdot, so why not a post for every phone model? :-)
Yeah, that could be considered flaimbait. Please don't bite it.
And I know this is a personal preference and all, but... Python's significant whitespace? [...] Why would anyone consider such a thing worthwhile?
(Sorry to make an example of you, it's not personal.)
Haven't I seen your post before? In, like, just about every thread ever published on Slashdot?
"Hey, someone said something about programming, and a previous poster mentioned the Blahblah language. Now I must immediately mention that I hate Blahblah.
I have not used it nor do I know anything about it, but it feels like something I would hate should I actually learn some facts, talk to someone that uses it, or even look at it.
I must ridicule those who use Blahblah and question their sanity.
And... if I put some actual information in there as well, both the moderators that are Blahblah-haters and the ones that moderate on the actual contents of the thread will mod me "Insightful", and I will have won!"
The mentioning of MVC was very nice, and the article would have been a very good one had it not been for the Blahblah-haters paragraph. Why question peoples choice of language? Why not just accept that different people have different tastes, and live with it? What does the article accomplish by questioning Blahblah-user's choice of Blahblah over any other language?
Personally, I think: nothing. Just mention MVC, and be done there.
That's very kind of you, but I hope it is not necessary. :-)
Our server (I admin the server hosting the MPEG) has pushed 604021064753 bytes (562 GB) of data owing to this MPEG since about 20:00 last night, and we're continuing to push an average of 164 Mbit/sec of it right now (it's 13:05 when I write this).
The server's a bit sluggish, I admit, but I hope and think it's acceptable performance at least. ;-)
An OS that's not encumbered by the baggage of Unix or Windows is an OS that[...]
So basically what you're saying is that Linux and Windows are the only operating systems we'll ever need, and that every operating system to come should be built as extensions to one of them?
It's very ...slashdottish ("insightful", as the local lingua goes), but not very well thought through, is it?
Exactly how do you mean that implementing an entire OS is like reinventing the wheel? An OS is a car, or a bicycle, or something else that uses a wheel. A wheel is a simple component. An OS is nothing of the sort, and I hope you agree with me on that after thinking some more about it.
What you're saying is that we have both bicycles and cars that use wheels, and therefore everything that needs a wheel should be based either on a car or a bicycle.
Inventing something new, like an airplane, is a waste of time since car manufacturers will not be able to build them, car drivers will not be able to drive them, and we risk making mistakes made when building cars.
Just slap some wings on a car, that should do it! After all, bicycles and cars cover every possible future use of wheels, so everything that needs a wheel can be based on one of them.
I do not share your simplistic idea that UNIX and Windows fulfil every operating system need to come and that they should be the base of everything. Contrary, I think that competition is good, and that implementing an entirely different OS is a good idea as both worlds will benefit from each other's ideas.
As an anti-spammer, I really hope that Hotmail has the cojones to follow through with this. It would be a huge wake-up call to lots of ISPs if millions of emails suddenly get rejected.
As postmaster of a 20.000-user email server, I sincerely hope they do not.
As you are no doubt aware, SPF makes forwarding impossible. To me, forwarding is an essential part of the entire email infrastructure.
Solving one problem by creating another is not a solution.
We have lots of users that forward emails here and there, and these forwards will not work if the original sender publishes an SPF-record and the final recipient respects it. But it is the forward at our machine that stops working - even though we do not care anything about SPF - and it is we that will have to explain to each and every of our 20.000 users what has happened and why some of their email was not forwarded.
By publishing an SPF record, you break other people's systems. By respecting SPF you do the same. I think it is downright rude, and on the virge of unprofessional, to implement functionality that causes other people's systems to break on a large scale, but unfortunately SPF-proponents do not see things this way.
Of course, Microsoft do not care. Hotmail does not offer forwarding - why should they care that forwarding breaks. They do not get the workload. We, who DO offer forwarding, do.
I see: people who merely ramble out Apple's marketing blurbs now get modded "interesting".
Yes, I agree that it was pleasantly out of the ordinary that an article like that got modded up. He did in fact say something else than "linux rulez", and still got modded up rather than down as a troll.
I am, however, unfortunately not the least bit suprised that an article which basically says "Linux is better because I think so" gets modded 5 Insightful. This is, after all, Slashdot, where for some reason no opinions other than the wholy mantra "Linux is better" is ever fully accepted.
Had this not been the case, I would certainly have posted more frequently here. But a discussion in which just one opinion is ever modded up, and in which the "opposition" is never fully heard, is not productive enough.
It is sad that Slashdot as a whole sees Linux like a religion which cannot under any circumstances be questioned, rather than like a technology which gains from external input and ideas. Embracing other peoples opinions is a way of making Linux stronger, not weaker!
Enough blurbled from me now, I think...
A smarter way to do such a thing would be to "crawl" the whole site on localhost:80 instead of just indexing files, that way .htaccess and the such would be preserved throughout.
That would not help much. Most sites have different content depending on the IP address accessing the content, i.e. internal IP:s get content that external IP:s cannot access. Crawling on localhost:80 would remove the non-linked files, but still gives the search engine access to a lot of content that should not be indexed.
The only safe crawler is one that is located outside your network.
What really scares me, though, is that this idea is somehow seen as new. It is blatantly obvious that one does not get good or proper results by indexing files locally. For example, you get an index of your PHP script's source code (including the database passwords they likely contain) instead of the output from them. And it doesn't follow any .shtml includes etc. either.
Even the fact that a search engine crawler running from an internal IP will be able to access and index content that shouldn't be externally available is very obvious.
What the article possibly adds, is a list of ideas about what to search for in the affected organization's index. But I wouldn't consider the idea new in any way.
This, or rather its sibling with internal IP:s, was something that we designed the robots.txt file for back in '97 when our university bought it's first search engine. I refuse to believe that nobody has written an article about this idea until now.
But if this is the first article about this, and if people actually find it interesting and revealing, then it was really fortunate that it got written now rather than in ten more years.
So why should the US participate when llarger poluters than ourselves aren't?
Let me make a very slight suggestion to an answer: "because the US produces 25% of all green-house gases today".
The fact that others also do something does not mean that it is smart, or good, or correct, or a good idea. Ten thousand flies can be wrong!
Ok, so India and China continue. But if the country that produces 25% of the gases start doing something about it, it makes a difference. A difference for the entire world.
When it's about lowering green-house gases, everybody else in the entire world have to be in on it before US politicians do something. But when it's about attacking Iraq the US can do everything by themselves. I'm not condemning, I'm not saying whether it was a bad idea to attack Iraq, I just think it's a very interesting difference in argumentation.
Cost: About $6 a month
Does american banks charge to give you the option of paying bills online? Here in Sweden, most banks do not charge anything extra to give you their online service, which includes the ability to pay bills, transfer money between your accounts (as well as to other swedish banks), buy and sell stock, etc.
Man, they love to be apple users, and 2 buttons... "thats a windows crazy thing. we know better!"
And I've heard that Linux users get sexually satisfied by recompiling the kernel!
Frankly, haven't we come further than to have a comment presenting nothing but prejudice moderated "insightful"?!
How about folks who LIKE using Win2k but have lost their original disk and reinstalled using a friend's key instead of being forced to pay $150-300 for a new copy of software they already owned?
That does not make sense to me. If I buy a mobile phone, and somehow lose it, I cannot go to the reseller and claim a new phone simply because I "already own it". If I lose it, then it's lost and I will have to buy a new one.
Similarly, if I've lost my software key, then I've lost my proof of ownership, and I'm just as much a pirate as anybody else if I use a friend's key when installing.
No one can expect Microsoft to cover for one's own sloppiness - if you lose your key then you'll have to buy a new one. There's no "I already own this" argument to be made when you've lost it yourself.
I see a bit of a chicken or an egg thing here. There will always have to be either the concept of a superuser, or there must be a way to create an account with any rights possible, otherwise it would be a very easy system to lose data to.
Somewhere on the system, individuals or people working together must somehow be able to create users with all possible privileges, that is correct. So individually or collectively they can do anything. That is not the difference.
The difference is that just because a program e.g. needs access to a raw network interface, it does not gain those complete privileges. Such a program will only get the privilege to access the raw network interface, but not to e.g. create new users or open arbitrary files.
With most UNIX'es all-or-nothing superuser (Solaris 10, among other, implement privileges instead), any program needing a raw network interface automatically gains the right to create users, shutdown the machine, alter any file, and anything else as well.
So the main difference isn't that there is no superuser, it's that there are many superusers, each of which can only perform a subset of all possible tasks requiring extra privileges. And that means that the Helpdesk staff could for example be allowed to create new accounts, without thereby automatically gaining the right to look in any file belonging to existing users. And processes can be granted any subset of what root can do without automatically gaining all the other privileges at the same time.
Linux runs on a 'toy' platform (x86)... Linux does nothing significant that AT&T wasn't doing 10 years ago... Generally speaking, Linux sucks.
As usual, what your eyes see depends on which glasses you have on when the text is in front of them. If you are expecting to find critique, you can always find it.
Personally, I did not see any form of "Linux sucks" message in the article. He does not write "Linux, Linux, Hallelujah", but lack of worship does not mean that he condemns. The article is, from beginning to end, explicitly about a work-in-progress. He writes that he does not know yet, that more needs to be said, that he wants help, that he needs more information.
IMHO I expect to see this sort of thing about half-way down in a thread of /. comments, not on an actual computing news site.
I sincerely apologize for making you a target here, but your comment is the kind of comment I expect to see not half-way down but even at the top of a /. thread.
If anyone, anywhere so much as whispers anything about Linux maybe not being absolutely perfect in every single regard, there will always be a lot of people calling that author a Linux-basher or anti-Linux.
And every email sent to such an author (note that I'm not trying to in any way imply that you sent such a message!), telling her/him how stupid he is will inevitably make Linux continue to look more and more as a religion rather than a project to make the best OS in the world.
Imagine where Linux could be in five years if people were actually free to express critique against current implementations and ideas without being flamed to pieces once their article/blog/message/scanned-lipstick-on-a-napkin finds it's way to Slashdot.
Or, as in this case, if people are even free to ask wether there might be anything worth commenting on in the future.
I apologize. My only intent was to, well, make a lame joke on my lunch break... (Because if it's something you learn reading comments on Slashdot, it is how Linux will not only solve everybody's every computing problem, but also solve overpopulation, psychological problems and remove AIDS. And don't forget that Linux' source code contains a hidden message about who killed Kennedy! ;-)
It was not my intention for you (or anybody else) to take it seriously, so there I've learned that smileys have a role to fulfil. I'll try to be clearer next time.
No hard feelings?
Oh, stop whining... Nobody has even mentioned how the pilots wouldn't have been blinded, the laser owner not found, and, if he was, not arrested, had only everybody been running Linux.
Yet.
According to the screenshots on the site, e.g. , it's called "Enliahtenment".
At least it says so all over the "settinas" windows, above the "Aoolv"-buttons.
[...]unless you start wrapping foil around your wallet. But that would beat the purpose of the RF in RFID
And here I was, thinking that "RF" meant "wRapped in Foil"...
That's the whole idea behind the First Amendment isn't it?
But what happens when media becomes political? From an external viewpoint, some of the american TV-channels are clearly biased in favor of the current government no matter what they do, probably also owned by people that also "sponsors" the election campaigns.
Having the right to be free does not help, when there's no requirement to be objective, or to at least clearly state that you are subjective to a particular viewpoint and which that viewpoint is.
Freedom of the press is imperative, but I believe there should be greater demands made as well. Look at Italy, where the current government is run by Mr. Berlusconi, the very same man that personally owns 80% of all national media. Sure, they're free to say what they want, but they only say what Mr. Berlusconie wants them to. They are constitutionally free, but not free anyways.
From this side of the pond, the USA looks like it has a little of the same problem. But instead of Bush owning 80% of media himself, it's the companies that owns the media that also pays for his campaign. So unlike Italy, you do not even know that it's happening...
Sun talked about ZFS on USENIX Technical this summer in Boston, and if memory serves, ZFS gives you some actually rather impressive features.
Partitions are a thing of the past. You add disks in one end, and create filesystems in the other. You do not need to do anything inbetween, it is done automatically.
In fact, a lot of things are automatic. When betatesting ZFS, a customer found a bug: half of his identical disks were used twice as much as the other half - a clear bug. After looking into it, Sun's engineers determined that the problem was not with ZFS, but with the fact that half of the cheap disks were mislabled and actually just had half the write cache that their labels said. ZFS detected this and used the ones with bigger caches more.
The design goal, which the ZFS team were close to this summer, is to give you filesystem access at raw I/O speed. One of ZFS' design goals is that it should not incur any overhead. Sounds impossible, but they were close already.
Now, I know that the Slashdot crowd really only trusts software which is Open Source, needs you to fix ten lines of code before it compiles and which lacks any form of documentation apart from the source code, but ZFS is actually very, very cool even though it lacks all those trust-inducing features.
Just imagine that it was a conceptual idea done by some Open Source-guy, and you'll see that it is indeed impressive. Then start implementing all ZFS' algorithms and ideas in a Open Source Linux variant, and we'll all be singing and dancing together. ;-)
You have an interesting definition of FUD, it would seem.
He bought a Linux distribution for as much money as Windows would have cost. He installed it on his PC. It didn't work as advertised.
He then wrote an article about this, in which he explained what didn't work. Linux activists told him he was lying, hiding facts, actively working against Linux, that he was an idiot, a technical moron, that it was his fault, and that the part that didn't work wasn't actually needed.
Those responses were written by people with very strange ideas of how to build a wide acceptance and support for Linux. They seem to have the idea that any and all forms of criticism is written by people actively against Linux, people who should be taunted, haunted and ridiculed, and their articles hidden, removed or just written of as FUD.
This is inexplicably stupid, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance. Nobody in their right mind switch to a product that is promoted by people who cannot take criticism, people who do not listen to facts, who cannot accept an opinion contrary to their own without ridiculing the other person, people who, for whatever reason, are so paranoid that they think that there could "Never, Ever, Be Anything Wrong With Linux, and therefore anybody who says so is after us".
He bought a product. It didn't work as advertised. It could not be fixed by the support. He has every right to complain, tell everyone what happened, and not be ridiculed, called an idiot, or accused of spreading FUD for doing so.
Calling his article FUD is clueless, and actively working against wide Linux acceptance.
But I guess I am now the person, most likely paid by Microsoft, who should be haunted and taunted for pointing out something as ridiculous (sp?) as that Linux could, in fact, have areas where work needs to be done, and that anybody who has paid for a distribution has every right to write an article about it. Without clueless activists calling him an idiot.
I want to be a part of the Free Software world. I do not, however, want to be a part of a narrowminded world where you cannot under any circumstance listen to criticism, where customers must be experts and are otherwise called "idiots", and where anything negative written or said is a sure sign of mental disabilities or a covert Microsoft operation.
If that is the world of Linux, then I will never tell anyone I love it.
If the information is so sensitive, then it shouldn't be open, and shouldn't be available by request. Requests for it should be met with an immediate "No", and then there's nothing more to it.
If information is open, or available on request, then requesting it should not be the basis of any kind of criminal or other investigation. Not in a free country anyways.
When individuals get accused or investigated based solely on requesting open information, or having an arabic-sounding last name, then the country is no longer an open and free country.
When I visit the USA later this summer, I will be very careful what I say. From across the Atlantic, it seems apparent that saying the wrong things can get you in jail, without even being charged (hundreds of prisoners are still (for two years and counting) being held in Cuba without being charged or having had the possibility to defend themselves).
I do not feel freedom of speech exists in the USA today - anything can be (and is) motivated by the fear of terrorists. I even feel hesitant to write this, as it could probably be considered anti-american (which it isn't meant to be, it hurts me that an otherwise great country seems to be breaking down as a democracy). It is maybe even enough for me to be investigated. Thank god my last name isn't arabic.
My knowledge of american history is bad at best, but I seem to recall an era where the fear of communists motivated just about anything. Is there some similarity here?
Specs from the press release (which is only available in nordic languages it seems):
The recommended prices are SEK 1795/2495/3295, which translates to very roughly $240/$330/$430.
To be blunt... The single biggest difference between all distros is whos ego each install of the distro satisfies.
Of course you can look at any two distros and say "look, A-Distro uses RPM but AD-istro uses DEB", or "A-witty-Linux-acronym" uses Kernel 2.4 while "A-wittier-Linux-acronym" uses 2.6. But the sum of all distros all differ in the egos.
In all, most FLOSS development is driven by the wish to become famous (or infamous) within the community. That is maybe also why there are an infinite number of softwares at versions 0.x - it is sexy as hell (and gives a lot of cred) to implement a cool thing, but it is incredibly un-sexy to make it work for everybody and have an intuitive user interface...
Now, don't get me wrong here. Many different and differing distros is a good thing. Not as good as one distro flexible enough to work for everybody, but good none the less. And I am personally very grateful for the variations, as I found a very narrow "distro" called Paul's Boot CD that did exactly what I needed a few weeks back.
But I long for the day when I hear of the Linux distro that promotes itself as "nothing special, nothing fancy, just simple, flexible and intuitive"...
To sum up what you're very eloquently describing: GNU/Linux isn't an operating system like Windows or Mac OS X. GNU/Linux is just the basis upon which operating systems can be built. Like Mandrake or Red Hat. They are operating systems.
And in there lies not only a value but also a big problem for any wider acceptance of GNU/Linux-based OS:es. As an application developer, you must not support one, but more like ten different operating systems in order to "run on Linux". At a minimum, you must create one KDE and one GNOME frontend, lest your application "looks wrong" for the end user that has a Linux OS installed which uses the other.
Let us not even begin to ponder that each Linux OS seems to invent its own slightly different file system layout. Because they all need to be different from all the others. KDE/GNOME, Xfree86/Xorg, /etc/foo.bar or /usr/etc/foo.bar...
Nice as it is to have many different Linux OS:es, the diversity between them is a major deterrent to many software development companies.