Sorry, but the link was not relevant to my situation. Be themselves says that you should not run BeOS on 486 machines, and I'm sure that performance would not be acceptable. Yes, it would be great if the government decided to drop a bunch of Be appliances in our laps, but they didn't. We had to make due with what we had.
Many times, the author wants to follow the philosophy of "Release early, release often". However, they're releasing first-gen software, something that probably works most of the time on THEIR machine. The sparse documentation is there to sort of act as a "you must be at least this tall to go on this ride" meter...they don't want newbies trying to use the package yet, because it's not ready, but they do want experienced coders to be able to look at it, and hopefully help with it.
One example is ext3. It actually comes with very good instructions for using it. However, the instructions tell you simply "patch the kernel", and that if you don't know how to do this, you should stop reading. This is appropriate...you're trusting your filesystem to 0.0.3 software!!
In short, sometimes it's good to discourage less experienced users from using something, because it will probably do more harm to them than good for them.
The problem is that you have lots of distributions, each of which do things a bit differently. Such as having files in different places, etc. So someone would have to write a different script for each one, and many of them would probably get left out.
I personally encourage people to get in there and hand-edit text files. This method works for every distribution, and many times can be applied even to proprietary *nixes (if you know how to edit/etc/resolve.conf, or runlevels, you know it). This also encourages people to learn, because they have to gain knowledge in order to achieve some desired functionality from their system. I view this as a Good Thing--knowledge being power, and whatnot. Plus, it will help you if you want to get a job later, and need to do something on a Sun box that doesn't have nifty scripts.
Distros like RedHat provide GUI tools for such purposes, and they should also provide the documentation for using those tools (they do). I would rather see the general documentation remain...well, general:)
Designing a mobo chipset takes lots of work, in order to ensure stability. Designing a stable SMP chipset is a LOT more difficult; even then, you must design the board around it to be stable. Even a tiny bit of instability is unacceptable in the target market for SMP systems, so AMD has to take their time or they'll get their bad old reputation of incompatibility/instability back--and the corporations are very slow to forgive/forget.
Some mobo manufacturer had vowed to produce a dual Athlon board, but I don't remember which one it was (Tyan?) I'm not sure who will design the chipset, though...I would bet more on AMD than VIA.
Where can I possibly begin? So few sentences, and yet all of them completely false! That's quite an accomplishment.
First, Linux is not bulky, nor is it an app (THAT was funny...) It's very modular, so that you can include what you want, and leave out what you don't...this saves on HDD space and system resources, and also cuts down on complexity (the more things you have, the more likely it is that one of them will break).
I suppose you got that "legacy code" bit from the fine marketing folks at Be. That's just great. However, a bunch of people recently set up a computer lab in the inner city for free, using mostly donated 486s. Linux made this possible, Be could not have. There is a very large group of kids that would take exception to your calling their computer lab impossible.
I've been using Linux as a desktop for quite some time now. I certainly don't consider it a "total joke"...since you, by your own admission, cannot fathom "it", please refrain from criticising it.
If you can't image Linux running on sub-notebook devices, Transmeta has some solid machinery to alleviate the need for you to do so.
I suppose that is the difference between geeks and ordinary users. Many people would rather learn a given interface in order to use something; that's the way they work. I, OTOH, would rather mess about with the interface until it works the way I think it ought to work, to best suit ME. I view that as the device conforming to the user rather than vice-versa.
They've been saying since the G3 came out that they would probably never support it. Now the story is the same with the G4. They basically have a story about how Apple refuses to provide them with specs, etc (maybe bad blood between Gasse and Apple?). I wonder why they can't simply take a look at the PPC Linux stuff...I mean, they (Be) don't want to open their core OS, but they could certainly find legal ways of getting the ideas and implementing them themselves...
Though I wonder why I bother to remember all this, since I use Linux on x86?::shrug::
Sorry, I HAVE paid money for their products, which are NOT good. I paid a very nice chunk of money for a 60-stream Real5.0 server a little over a year ago, and now what do I have? Useless plastic, because the 5.0 encoder doesn't work with the 2.2 kernel series. Why should they bother to update it when they can make more money from me?
Now, let's take a look at icecast as a server (free, actively maintained, can be compiled for my platform) and mp3 clients (free, better sound quality (IMO) than Real). For my radio station, I much prefer the sounds of streaming MP3 to RealAudio, and our budget certainly does, too.
Actually, that's not entirely correct. Windows NT already runs on alphas (no comment on "runs"), albeit not as well as on comparable X86 hardware, since it has to go through a translator first. Compaq decided a while ago that since MS was not really helping it with AlphaNT, they were going to stop working on it. So, it is already "ported", but there were going to be no more updates. However, I believe Compaq may have done an about-face on this after much howling from their customers (not sure about this one). Also, for a very long time (maybe still?) Win2K would not boot on IA-64 CPUs, so the 64-bit development was being done on Alphas. This means that it's certainly possible to see Win2k on the alpha CPU, but we shall see.
Personally, I have a Multia running linux, and it's a decent X-terminal. All this Windows-whatever doesn't really affect me, I'm waiting for someone to compile Linux with DECs compilers (shown to produce plenty of speed improvement over compiling with gcc for Alpha).
I build my own machines, because if anyone else did it for me, then they'd invariably do something wrong:) So, mine are probably a bit more expensive than your super-cheap PCs.
However, I'm certain that you can get more computing power from $800 worth of PC parts than an $800 iMac will provide. Also, I discredit the iMac, because it retains the thing I used to hate most about Mac hardware (the G4s are much better about this): non-modularity. As I said, I don't "buy computers". I buy a new video card if I want one, then shuffle my old one over here, the one it replaced over there, etc. My modem and floppy drive have lasted me through 4 generations of CPU and RAM upgrades, because they are still perfectly good. My sound card has lasted 3 generations, etc. The video card is less than 6 months old, and the CPU even newer. You still really don't have that flexibility with Mac hardware, and I would miss that too much.
Also, you pretty much buy Macs from Apple. Apple decides that you can't get floppy drives any more, and that you must get DVD-ROM or RAM (no option of CD-ROM), and that your smallest hard disk option is 10GB. What if I want to buy a bunch of cluster nodes? I DON'T want to spend money on:
1. Zip drives 2. More than 1-2 GB hard disk (fs will likely be distributed) 3. CD-ROM/DVD/whatever drives (I would do one unit, then make copies of the hard disk) 4. Big pile of keyboards and mice 5. Fancy video cards which will be displaying text for setup, then NOTHING unless they need maintenence.
With PCs, I can save that money by not buying those parts (buying super-cheap video cards in the case of #5), and put that money into faster CPUs, more RAM, etc. Or maybe I want to use that money to go see Depeche Mode!!:) Whatever.
There are projects starting with non-Apple PPC stuff, and I'm paying close attention to them; PPC chips are cool and efficient, and I'd love to have them in something I consider useful.
I certainly have nothing against Mac hardware. The PPC processor is cooler and more elegant than what AMD is forced to use because of silly x86 compatibility. Yes, it sucked for people when Apple said "we're cutting everyone who ever bought computers from us off", but people got over it, and the PPC is much better for it.
However, those sorts of machines haven't really been practical for me to use. I'm still in college, and so I don't have lots of money around. Plus, I enjoy building my own systems, which is something I really can't do with PPC. Thanks to the modularity of PCs, I can upgrade my computer one bit at a time, cycling the parts down through various levels (I've got lots of little side projects, plus machines for my parents and brother, and juggling parts is fun:)
x86 has been the answer for me; with a decent hs/fan, my K6-3 runs plenty fast and cool for all my needs. Would a PPC system be nice? Surely. Do I really want to spend more money on a system that pretty much has to stay in one piece? Not really.
Do you think that most of the work done on Linux is done by people who earn their living doing it? Consider an oh-so-TINY example of Linus Torvalds. Does he make his living from coding Linux? NO. And really, that's the way most of it works. People come home from their sysadmin/commercial software programming/tech support jobs, and this is something they do in their spare time BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. This is Debian, and this is the #2 reason that it's my favorite distro. The #1 reason, of course, is that apt-get is the best thing in the universe:)
You have this silly vision that a small programmer could release a commercial app and become wildly successful? Don't bet on it. The world has now become "spoiled" by the GPL--others would quickly write an open-source alternative, which would most likely surpass the original in a short amount of time.
There is also plenty of software (MySQL being a very notable example) which is open-source, yet commercial (check out their licensing fees).
Sorry, but the only tragedy brought on by the spread of the GPL will be to closed-source commercial software, which is destined to eventually suck. Yes, it will--if someone were to attempt to take Perl and make a commercial, closed-source product of it, how long do you think they'd be able to maintain it, and keep it in sync (or even as good) as the real Perl? One of 2 things will happen to closed-source software:
1. The product isn't that complex, and so someone will easily code an open-source replacement.
2. The product is VERY complex, and so eventually a finite number of programmers will be unable to maintain it adequately. When it starts to suck and people get tired of it, someone will start an open-source project to replace it. This project won't be as good as the original at first, but in a short time will be perfectly useable to many, and given enough time may even surpass the orignal.
On the browser end? Yes, there have been ActiveX exploits that are quite bad, including one which allowed--you guessed it--formatting of your hard drive. ActiveX was going at a rate of 1 exploit per week for a while, though it does seem to have quieted down a bit.
On the server end, it can be far more serious. If you're using perl scripts, and your scripts accept input with any characters (ie, pathnames, executable code), you may quite easily be hacked. Ditto if you're using something like PHP and MySQL; if you accept SQL commands as valid input, you're krunked.
I can't give concrete examples, because I don't feel skilled enough; however, one only needs to peruse the BUGTRAQ archives at securityfocus.com to see plenty of them.
No, this isn't new. My belief is that clued admins will continue to thoroughly test things, while the clueless will not change either. See, if everyone actually did what they really should Re: security, then there would be no need for this advisory...but they don't. I suppose it's sort of like Public Service Announcements; most of the time, it's the same message over and over, because:
a) There is fresh blood, who may not know where to look. b) There are lots of morons who never bothered to fix it the last time something like this went out.
Also, some people believe that they are being security-conscious, but they are _still_ following the model of "make sure no invalid data is accepted", instead of "make sure all accepted data is valid". If you say "I want to block this list of stuff", then you will probably miss something. If, however, you instead say "I will only allow this list of stuff", it's far easier to get it right.
Suppose that they do something like this. OK, not completely out of the question. So, lots of people start using WMP instead of Real on the servers. 2 things could happen:
1. Real actually comes up with some real prices (sorry, couldn't resist--I've bought their stuff before)
2. Real dies, or all but dies.
#2 is quite scary, because if this happens, then MS could at any time pull the rug out from under the Linux server/client software, if it's closed-source. Therefore, I would be very careful in this matter. As someone who already has 2 flavors of RealAudio, one MP3 stream, and is considering Darwin, I will certainly look at this if it comes to pass--but I will be careful not to help MS if things seem shady.
Who cares if it's not officially "done"? It works! Use it! Did everyone wait until 1.0 to use mutt? Is no one downloading Mozilla Milestones? Really, this IS a desktop environment we're talking about here.
The online radio stations at both UMBC and College park have different flavors of bandwidth to suit your high-speed desires. Really, you only need a P-90 to serve 25 streams of 16k audio, so if you're using a decent machine for email, you can be nice to the high-end users and stream something good from that one. WMBC (UMBC) broadcasts at 80k stereo, which sounds about FM quality (and also at 24k MP3). WMUC (College Park) broadcasts at 40k, IIRC.
Check out WMBC via my "URL" link; we resume broadcasting on Feb. 14th (when everyone is back in school). I'm not sure of the College Park link, but do try to find them; they have great shows, too:) Freeform College Radio!!
Sun IS evil, at least as evil as MS. I don't doubt for a second that the picture would be much the same if Sun had taken over the desktop market (I have no idea _how_ that could have happened...this is purely hypothetical). I think that MS has better business sense, but I don't like to use either one.
I don't use MS products any more, but I did before I discovered Linux. I build my own computers with the components I want, so they tend to be stable; Windows did not crash _that_ much, and MSOffice was OK to use. I tried IE4 a few times, but I didn't like the look/feel as much as NS. Generally, these products on Win98 are acceptable.
However, the equivalents on MacOS are rot. I have not tried IE on Solaris, so I will not judge that. Truthfully, I don't really want MS to write apps for Linux, because they will have all of the same things wrong with them as these apps under Windows. Most notably, the heavy useage of proprietary formats which are almost always changed with the next version, (Win2K is supposedly different). Plus, they are closed source, and therefore something I really don't want on my system, as I strongly believe in the security and functionality benefits of Open Source. And their apps on Linux will almost certainly not perform as well as those on Windows (not an MS-only thing--is OpenSSH as good on other platforms as it is on OpenBSD?)
It would be all well and good for them to release Office or whatever for Linux, but I probably would continue to use AbiWord: a light, fast, open-source app that suits my needs.
for use in non-commercial stuff. For more than 25 streams, they have a few options; you can buy a 40-stream server for $600, or a 100-stream server for several thousand dollars.
As I'm sure people will rush to point out, these things are available, and for free, on the Windows platform.
1. Open source Windows http/cgi server: www.mobydisk.com (lots of great OSS Windows stuff there, my friends' site) 2. Open source decent telnet/ssh client: TeraTerm (with SSH plugin) 3. The rest (lazy me:)
However, there is a difference between "I can go out and find it on the web, and install it" and "apt-get install xchat". If MS included all of these things (the day they release any OSS anything, let alone a web server with a consumer OS, is the day Beezlebub visits the Burlington Coat Factory), then stability would be the only issue:) If MS gave you the choice between "explorer.exe" and litestep right out of the box, then things could get interesting.
But they don't, and I doubt they ever will. As others have said, it's just not their style, really.
OK, I really have to put a few slugs into this one right now. I've successfully set up Linux boxes for people who were clueless about computers, and they're _easier_ to use. Take a WM like XFCE, which I recently set up on a 486 laptop. You have a nice button bar at the bottom, which can launch Netscape, Abiword, etc...far easier than some lame "Start Menu". Really. It's even easier when people have never used computers before, because then they don't have to unlearn the "One Microsoft Way".
I have not set up Linux specifically for my mom yet, because she uses tax software, which is one of the few useful things not available under Linux (CAD is another, true). As for video games, I much prefer my Playstation--and, if you want lots of games on your PC, you can buy a $10 gamepad and download an emulator! I did.
I am glad to see you paying lots of money to support nice things like RedHat and VM. I, however, support computers for a college newspaper, and I don't have piles of money. So, I installed Linux via FTP instead of buying it, and I use StarOffice and Abiword for MS compatibility. Abiword can't write MSWord, but it can read it, and write RTF (and is much smaller/more free than StarOffice). StarOffice can read and write MSWord, Excel, and PowerPoint.
I'm only using it to back up 2 servers right now, but others will soon be added. It's very nice for a few reasons:
1. It uses your own systems dump program, or gnutar and gzip, instead of proprietary stuff. 2. It uses a "holding disk", so that network bandwidth isn't the bottleneck, tape speed is. 3. It has indexing features, so that it won't overwrite the wrong tape, and knows what files are on which tape 4. Nice CLI interface and hand-edited text configuration files.
If you need to back up multiple machines to one tape drive, it's great!
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but the link was not relevant to my situation. Be themselves says that you should not run BeOS on 486 machines, and I'm sure that performance would not be acceptable. Yes, it would be great if the government decided to drop a bunch of Be appliances in our laps, but they didn't. We had to make due with what we had.
Check out this link for the complete story:
http://linux.umbc.edu/gits
and read about the Agape house.
Many times, the author wants to follow the philosophy of "Release early, release often". However, they're releasing first-gen software, something that probably works most of the time on THEIR machine. The sparse documentation is there to sort of act as a "you must be at least this tall to go on this ride" meter...they don't want newbies trying to use the package yet, because it's not ready, but they do want experienced coders to be able to look at it, and hopefully help with it.
One example is ext3. It actually comes with very good instructions for using it. However, the instructions tell you simply "patch the kernel", and that if you don't know how to do this, you should stop reading. This is appropriate...you're trusting your filesystem to 0.0.3 software!!
In short, sometimes it's good to discourage less experienced users from using something, because it will probably do more harm to them than good for them.
The problem is that you have lots of distributions, each of which do things a bit differently. Such as having files in different places, etc. So someone would have to write a different script for each one, and many of them would probably get left out.
/etc/resolve.conf, or runlevels, you know it). This also encourages people to learn, because they have to gain knowledge in order to achieve some desired functionality from their system. I view this as a Good Thing--knowledge being power, and whatnot. Plus, it will help you if you want to get a job later, and need to do something on a Sun box that doesn't have nifty scripts.
:)
I personally encourage people to get in there and hand-edit text files. This method works for every distribution, and many times can be applied even to proprietary *nixes (if you know how to edit
Distros like RedHat provide GUI tools for such purposes, and they should also provide the documentation for using those tools (they do). I would rather see the general documentation remain...well, general
Designing a mobo chipset takes lots of work, in order to ensure stability. Designing a stable SMP chipset is a LOT more difficult; even then, you must design the board around it to be stable. Even a tiny bit of instability is unacceptable in the target market for SMP systems, so AMD has to take their time or they'll get their bad old reputation of incompatibility/instability back--and the corporations are very slow to forgive/forget.
Some mobo manufacturer had vowed to produce a dual Athlon board, but I don't remember which one it was (Tyan?) I'm not sure who will design the chipset, though...I would bet more on AMD than VIA.
The ties betwixt the big Q, AMD, and Alpha are pretty close, and the K7 does use the same EV6 bus as the Alpha CPU.
Where can I possibly begin? So few sentences, and yet all of them completely false! That's quite an accomplishment.
First, Linux is not bulky, nor is it an app (THAT was funny...) It's very modular, so that you can include what you want, and leave out what you don't...this saves on HDD space and system resources, and also cuts down on complexity (the more things you have, the more likely it is that one of them will break).
I suppose you got that "legacy code" bit from the fine marketing folks at Be. That's just great. However, a bunch of people recently set up a computer lab in the inner city for free, using mostly donated 486s. Linux made this possible, Be could not have. There is a very large group of kids that would take exception to your calling their computer lab impossible.
I've been using Linux as a desktop for quite some time now. I certainly don't consider it a "total joke"...since you, by your own admission, cannot fathom "it", please refrain from criticising it.
If you can't image Linux running on sub-notebook devices, Transmeta has some solid machinery to alleviate the need for you to do so.
I suppose that is the difference between geeks and ordinary users. Many people would rather learn a given interface in order to use something; that's the way they work. I, OTOH, would rather mess about with the interface until it works the way I think it ought to work, to best suit ME. I view that as the device conforming to the user rather than vice-versa.
They've been saying since the G3 came out that they would probably never support it. Now the story is the same with the G4. They basically have a story about how Apple refuses to provide them with specs, etc (maybe bad blood between Gasse and Apple?). I wonder why they can't simply take a look at the PPC Linux stuff...I mean, they (Be) don't want to open their core OS, but they could certainly find legal ways of getting the ideas and implementing them themselves...
::shrug::
Though I wonder why I bother to remember all this, since I use Linux on x86?
Sorry, I HAVE paid money for their products, which are NOT good. I paid a very nice chunk of money for a 60-stream Real5.0 server a little over a year ago, and now what do I have? Useless plastic, because the 5.0 encoder doesn't work with the 2.2 kernel series. Why should they bother to update it when they can make more money from me?
Now, let's take a look at icecast as a server (free, actively maintained, can be compiled for my platform) and mp3 clients (free, better sound quality (IMO) than Real). For my radio station, I much prefer the sounds of streaming MP3 to RealAudio, and our budget certainly does, too.
Actually, that's not entirely correct. Windows NT already runs on alphas (no comment on "runs"), albeit not as well as on comparable X86 hardware, since it has to go through a translator first. Compaq decided a while ago that since MS was not really helping it with AlphaNT, they were going to stop working on it. So, it is already "ported", but there were going to be no more updates. However, I believe Compaq may have done an about-face on this after much howling from their customers (not sure about this one). Also, for a very long time (maybe still?) Win2K would not boot on IA-64 CPUs, so the 64-bit development was being done on Alphas. This means that it's certainly possible to see Win2k on the alpha CPU, but we shall see.
Personally, I have a Multia running linux, and it's a decent X-terminal. All this Windows-whatever doesn't really affect me, I'm waiting for someone to compile Linux with DECs compilers (shown to produce plenty of speed improvement over compiling with gcc for Alpha).
I build my own machines, because if anyone else did it for me, then they'd invariably do something wrong :) So, mine are probably a bit more expensive than your super-cheap PCs.
:) Whatever.
However, I'm certain that you can get more computing power from $800 worth of PC parts than an $800 iMac will provide. Also, I discredit the iMac, because it retains the thing I used to hate most about Mac hardware (the G4s are much better about this): non-modularity. As I said, I don't "buy computers". I buy a new video card if I want one, then shuffle my old one over here, the one it replaced over there, etc. My modem and floppy drive have lasted me through 4 generations of CPU and RAM upgrades, because they are still perfectly good. My sound card has lasted 3 generations, etc. The video card is less than 6 months old, and the CPU even newer. You still really don't have that flexibility with Mac hardware, and I would miss that too much.
Also, you pretty much buy Macs from Apple. Apple decides that you can't get floppy drives any more, and that you must get DVD-ROM or RAM (no option of CD-ROM), and that your smallest hard disk option is 10GB. What if I want to buy a bunch of cluster nodes? I DON'T want to spend money on:
1. Zip drives
2. More than 1-2 GB hard disk (fs will likely be distributed)
3. CD-ROM/DVD/whatever drives (I would do one unit, then make copies of the hard disk)
4. Big pile of keyboards and mice
5. Fancy video cards which will be displaying text for setup, then NOTHING unless they need maintenence.
With PCs, I can save that money by not buying those parts (buying super-cheap video cards in the case of #5), and put that money into faster CPUs, more RAM, etc. Or maybe I want to use that money to go see Depeche Mode!!
There are projects starting with non-Apple PPC stuff, and I'm paying close attention to them; PPC chips are cool and efficient, and I'd love to have them in something I consider useful.
No offense, but...duh.
:)
I certainly have nothing against Mac hardware. The PPC processor is cooler and more elegant than what AMD is forced to use because of silly x86 compatibility. Yes, it sucked for people when Apple said "we're cutting everyone who ever bought computers from us off", but people got over it, and the PPC is much better for it.
However, those sorts of machines haven't really been practical for me to use. I'm still in college, and so I don't have lots of money around. Plus, I enjoy building my own systems, which is something I really can't do with PPC. Thanks to the modularity of PCs, I can upgrade my computer one bit at a time, cycling the parts down through various levels (I've got lots of little side projects, plus machines for my parents and brother, and juggling parts is fun
x86 has been the answer for me; with a decent hs/fan, my K6-3 runs plenty fast and cool for all my needs. Would a PPC system be nice? Surely. Do I really want to spend more money on a system that pretty much has to stay in one piece? Not really.
Do you think that most of the work done on Linux is done by people who earn their living doing it? Consider an oh-so-TINY example of Linus Torvalds. Does he make his living from coding Linux? NO. And really, that's the way most of it works. People come home from their sysadmin/commercial software programming/tech support jobs, and this is something they do in their spare time BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. This is Debian, and this is the #2 reason that it's my favorite distro. The #1 reason, of course, is that apt-get is the best thing in the universe :)
You have this silly vision that a small programmer could release a commercial app and become wildly successful? Don't bet on it. The world has now become "spoiled" by the GPL--others would quickly write an open-source alternative, which would most likely surpass the original in a short amount of time.
There is also plenty of software (MySQL being a very notable example) which is open-source, yet commercial (check out their licensing fees).
Sorry, but the only tragedy brought on by the spread of the GPL will be to closed-source commercial software, which is destined to eventually suck. Yes, it will--if someone were to attempt to take Perl and make a commercial, closed-source product of it, how long do you think they'd be able to maintain it, and keep it in sync (or even as good) as the real Perl? One of 2 things will happen to closed-source software:
1. The product isn't that complex, and so someone will easily code an open-source replacement.
2. The product is VERY complex, and so eventually a finite number of programmers will be unable to maintain it adequately. When it starts to suck and people get tired of it, someone will start an open-source project to replace it. This project won't be as good as the original at first, but in a short time will be perfectly useable to many, and given enough time may even surpass the orignal.
On the browser end? Yes, there have been ActiveX exploits that are quite bad,
including one which allowed--you guessed it--formatting of your hard drive.
ActiveX was going at a rate of 1 exploit per week for a while, though it
does seem to have quieted down a bit.
On the server end, it can be far more serious. If you're using perl scripts,
and your scripts accept input with any characters (ie, pathnames, executable
code), you may quite easily be hacked. Ditto if you're using something like
PHP and MySQL; if you accept SQL commands as valid input, you're krunked.
I can't give concrete examples, because I don't feel skilled enough; however,
one only needs to peruse the BUGTRAQ archives at securityfocus.com to see
plenty of them.
No, this isn't new. My belief is that clued admins will continue to thoroughly test things, while the clueless will not change either. See, if everyone
actually did what they really should Re: security, then there would be no
need for this advisory...but they don't. I suppose it's sort of like Public
Service Announcements; most of the time, it's the same message over and over,
because:
a) There is fresh blood, who may not know where to look.
b) There are lots of morons who never bothered to fix it the last time
something like this went out.
Also, some people believe that they are being security-conscious, but they are
_still_ following the model of "make sure no invalid data is accepted", instead
of "make sure all accepted data is valid". If you say "I want to block this
list of stuff", then you will probably miss something. If, however, you
instead say "I will only allow this list of stuff", it's far easier to get
it right.
Suppose that they do something like this. OK, not completely out of the question. So, lots of people start using WMP instead of Real on the servers. 2 things could happen:
1. Real actually comes up with some real prices (sorry, couldn't resist--I've bought their stuff before)
2. Real dies, or all but dies.
#2 is quite scary, because if this happens, then MS could at any time pull the rug out from under the Linux server/client software, if it's closed-source. Therefore, I would be very careful in this matter. As someone who already has 2 flavors of RealAudio, one MP3 stream, and is considering Darwin, I will certainly look at this if it comes to pass--but I will be careful not to help MS if things seem shady.
Who cares if it's not officially "done"? It works! Use it! Did everyone wait until 1.0 to use mutt? Is no one downloading Mozilla Milestones? Really, this IS a desktop environment we're talking about here.
WARNING: SEMI-SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
:) Freeform College Radio!!
The online radio stations at both UMBC and College park have different flavors of bandwidth to suit your high-speed desires. Really, you only need a P-90 to serve 25 streams of 16k audio, so if you're using a decent machine for email, you can be nice to the high-end users and stream something good from that one. WMBC (UMBC) broadcasts at 80k stereo, which sounds about FM quality (and also at 24k MP3). WMUC (College Park) broadcasts at 40k, IIRC.
Check out WMBC via my "URL" link; we resume broadcasting on Feb. 14th (when everyone is back in school). I'm not sure of the College Park link, but do try to find them; they have great shows, too
Sun IS evil, at least as evil as MS. I don't doubt for a second that the picture would be much the same if Sun had taken over the desktop market (I have no idea _how_ that could have happened...this is purely hypothetical). I think that MS has better business sense, but I don't like to use either one.
I don't use MS products any more, but I did before I discovered Linux. I build my own computers with the components I want, so they tend to be stable; Windows did not crash _that_ much, and MSOffice was OK to use. I tried IE4 a few times, but I didn't like the look/feel as much as NS. Generally, these products on Win98 are acceptable.
However, the equivalents on MacOS are rot. I have not tried IE on Solaris, so I will not judge that. Truthfully, I don't really want MS to write apps for Linux, because they will have all of the same things wrong with them as these apps under Windows. Most notably, the heavy useage of proprietary formats which are almost always changed with the next version, (Win2K is supposedly different). Plus, they are closed source, and therefore something I really don't want on my system, as I strongly believe in the security and functionality benefits of Open Source. And their apps on Linux will almost certainly not perform as well as those on Windows (not an MS-only thing--is OpenSSH as good on other platforms as it is on OpenBSD?)
It would be all well and good for them to release Office or whatever for Linux, but I probably would continue to use AbiWord: a light, fast, open-source app that suits my needs.
for use in non-commercial stuff. For more than 25 streams, they have a few options; you can buy a 40-stream server for $600, or a 100-stream server for several thousand dollars.
As I'm sure people will rush to point out, these things are available, and for free, on the Windows platform.
:)
:) If MS gave you the choice between "explorer.exe" and litestep right out of the box, then things could get interesting.
1. Open source Windows http/cgi server: www.mobydisk.com (lots of great OSS Windows stuff there, my friends' site)
2. Open source decent telnet/ssh client: TeraTerm (with SSH plugin)
3. The rest (lazy me
However, there is a difference between "I can go out and find it on the web, and install it" and "apt-get install xchat". If MS included all of these things (the day they release any OSS anything, let alone a web server with a consumer OS, is the day Beezlebub visits the Burlington Coat Factory), then stability would be the only issue
But they don't, and I doubt they ever will. As others have said, it's just not their style, really.
OK, I really have to put a few slugs into this one right now. I've successfully set up Linux boxes for people who were clueless about computers, and they're _easier_ to use. Take a WM like XFCE, which I recently set up on a 486 laptop. You have a nice button bar at the bottom, which can launch Netscape, Abiword, etc...far easier than some lame "Start Menu". Really. It's even easier when people have never used computers before, because then they don't have to unlearn the "One Microsoft Way".
I have not set up Linux specifically for my mom yet, because she uses tax software, which is one of the few useful things not available under Linux (CAD is another, true). As for video games, I much prefer my Playstation--and, if you want lots of games on your PC, you can buy a $10 gamepad and download an emulator! I did.
I am glad to see you paying lots of money to support nice things like RedHat and VM. I, however, support computers for a college newspaper, and I don't have piles of money. So, I installed Linux via FTP instead of buying it, and I use StarOffice and Abiword for MS compatibility. Abiword can't write MSWord, but it can read it, and write RTF (and is much smaller/more free than StarOffice). StarOffice can read and write MSWord, Excel, and PowerPoint.
I'm only using it to back up 2 servers right now, but others will soon be added. It's very nice for a few reasons:
1. It uses your own systems dump program, or gnutar and gzip, instead of proprietary stuff.
2. It uses a "holding disk", so that network bandwidth isn't the bottleneck, tape speed is.
3. It has indexing features, so that it won't overwrite the wrong tape, and knows what files are on which tape
4. Nice CLI interface and hand-edited text configuration files.
If you need to back up multiple machines to one tape drive, it's great!