How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?
That's not a fact, it's a characterization. It's not a particularly good one, either. Stability is, in fact, important to the Fedora developers, because they're users too. Slashdot did an interview with Max Spevack, the Fedora Project leader a while back. His answers, particularly to question #8, are relevant to your assertion.
Quoted: Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years.
Fedora isn't going to be the latest beta of stuff that doesn't work. The people who tell you that are advancing a political agenda.
Has yum improved that much to match apt?
It's likely that you know a great deal more than I do about apt, so you should correct me if I'm wrong about this:
While yum is slower than apt to resolve dependencies, I think it's a much more useful tool. apt can install a package if you know its name. Yum can install a local package, and get its dependencies. It can also install a package based on its name, a virtual capability, an actual capability (library name or executable), or a file provided by the package (by path).
Yes, yum is a little slow, but in exchange it is capable of better doing what I want it to, as a user. I think it's better than apt. As a Fedora user, I have the option to use either one, and I stick with yum.
Holy cow... Just yesterday I read a post by some guy ranting about how everyone keeps yelling "straw man" at every damn argument, and I ignored it because that argument was legitimately about whether or not the post was a straw man. This, however, has nothing to do with straw men... it's not about any of MS's claims. That guy was right!
The idea that MS is about "choice, Freedom, and choice" is just ridiculous. (I do not mean to defend Apple by that statement.) Freedom? They created an interoperable DRM system so that you could choose which vendor you could pay to defeat your fair use rights. Selecting your slavery is not "Freedom". Strike one. Furthermore, when MS introduced their own player, they brought with it an incompatible DRM system so that Zune customers could no longer choose to play songs from other vendors. MS customers are not free to buy songs from other vendors. Strike two against "Freedom" and choice.
Does it default to deleting the oldest files first? If so, then that's probably not what you would have liked in many cases, because you probably care more about preserving the 500 kb manuscript of your novel than about preserving the 70 Gb video of your kids' soccer games.
Actually, it deletes entire snapshots when it needs the room, so you'll still have your 500kb novel as well as the video.
Time Machine is very similar to rsnapshot, except that it can use spotlight to determine which files have changed, and can therefore update the current snapshot much more quickly than rsync.
Then someone goes and runs time machine on the public directory and picks up the file that you deleted.
Time machine isn't a feature that "someone" can run against your network drives. Time machine allows you, the operator, to use a second hard drive to maintain snapshots of the drives that you're using. Since the snapshots are on a separate drive, there's no risk that someone accessing your system remotely will have access to files that you've removed, or whose permissions you've changed.
Uhhh, why is a regular user allowed to create a file owned by root?
They're not. They are, however, allowed to create a name in a directory (a link) that points to an existing inode. Since the inode has all of the owner and permission data, and the user is not allowed to modify the inode, allowing them to create a link to it is not an inherent risk.
Awesome, the semantics of directory permissions are not even honored anymore.. anyone else smell a kludge here?
Yes, they are./tmp has the "sticky bit" set in its permissions. That means that users aren't allowed to remove or rename a file (link) unless they are the owner. Arguably, that is an odd semantic; since links don't have owners -- only files do -- it's not possible to allow users to remove or rename links that they created. However, claiming that the semantics of directory permissions aren't honored simply shows that you're ignorant of what the semantics are.
What the hell are you talking about? "lists of references"?
The relatime proposal checks atime/mtime/ctime when files are read, and only updates atime if 1) atime MAX(mtime,ctime), or 2) atime is more than one day old (or some other interval). No lists of references are required.
No, you can't. GPL and LGPL applications can't depend on proprietary libraries, unless those libraries are a standard part of the platform on which the application runs.
how hard is it to sign up for a facebook account now.
Why should you have to? There's no good reason to require that I have an account on every damned social web site, for the privilege of seeing what my own friends want to share with me.
I'll say that again: the customers of the web site want to share things with their friends, and the current structure makes that hard. Social networks aren't providing their users with what they want.
I'm all in favor of using a distributed identity system like OpenID so that a facebook user (for instance) can name their friends regardless of whether those friends are also facebook users, and allow those friends to see their profile/blog/videos/whatever.
I presume you mean "Atheros". I recommend not using those cards. Atheros cards do not have Free Software drivers; they're binary-only. They don't handle suspend well, which is kind of a big issue when you're dealing with a laptop. Ralink or Intel cards are a much better bet.
...the concepts of webs of trust, fingerprints, signatures, and security are alien to most people.
Well, the trust relationships are the entire foundation of a reputation system, so we're going to have to engage in education on that front. However, just because it's complicated to use PGP (or S/MIME, more likely) directly doesn't mean that software can't use it as the underlying mechanism for a reputation system.
I implemented something web of trust-like in Second Life, but without signatures,
Second Life validates users' identities, right? In that case you wouldn't need signatures. I envision a decentralized system, though, and that's going to need cryptography.
I've been of the opinion for a while that a similar system could be devised using PGP or S/MIME certificates to combine identity verification with "web of trust" reputation evaluation. Under such a model, every user would import the public certificate of authorities that they trust. For example, consider a consumer review web site, where I decide to trust the site's admin. The admin trusts its editorial staff, and their certificates are signed by the admin. Any of the editorial staff may trust one of the site's frequent contributors, based on the quality of their work. That editor may sign the contributor's certificate. Now, my level of trust for that contributor can be established as a function of the proximity of that user to the admin in whom I placed trust. This differs from Advogato's system in that the "Master" certificates are simply those whom I've decided to trust.
The same thing can be applied to social networking sites, as well. I can trust my friends by accepting their certificates, and gain insight into social relationships by examining the signatures in their keys.
That link does not indicate that 3rd party apps will run in the iPhone. It only indicates that an application is available which will run at a resolution appropriate for the phone. As stated, if you read it, this may simply be an indication of optimism on the part of the developer. So far, all indications are that the iPhone will not allow 3rd party apps, which is by far the biggest reason that I have no interest in it.
according to the terms of the GPL 2 they will have to take a snapshot of the code right before the upgrade
No fork would be required by the GPL. Several clarifications:
Any reasonable group of developers would be able to check out the required code using CVS (or any other RCS system they might use).
Even that isn't really necessary. The GPL requires that a publisher grant the source code of a covered work to users who request it. A user who received version 2.0.1 of a program is entitled to the source code for that release, but not necessarily any code that was written after the release.
Last, the source will continue to be available via all of the same channels when the license is updated. GNU will continue to make their code repositories available, and publish tarballs of their releases. Transition to the third revision of the GPL isn't the herald of a move toward a proprietary state.
(And of course, some companies try to get away with using the software withouth regard for the terms of the GPL, but that's another matter.)
You mean distributing the software. The GPL's terms don't govern use.
It is explicitly and methodically being written to be as anti-business as possible.
Multiple assertions without any supporting evidence... Can you provide any foundation for your argument, at all? It seems to me that Linus one of the few voices really opposed to the changes in the third revision of the GPL, and most other currently GPLed software is likely to adopt the new license.
It's easy to understand why they would, too. It is precisely because some companies are trying to find loopholes in GPL2 such that they need not abide by its terms, which you pointed out in your opening paragraph.
The only people who give a crap about OneCare coming in "last" are idiots who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan and laugh at Microsoft.
I disagree. Certainly, it is important to note which package came in at the top, as advice on what users should use. However, since OneCare is Microsoft's own service, and may be more accessible and better marketed to PC users, I would argue that it is in fact more important to note how badly it scored so that users know what not to use.
If all of the products being evaluated were equally marketed and accessible, then I would back your argument. However, because I don't believe that to be the situation, I disagree.
it's pretty clear that law enforcement agencies don't give a damn.
It does seem that way, doesn't it. I'd like to see three things happen, in this order:
1) Restore a copyright system that respects the public domain as much as it encourages the creation of new works. i.e., restore reasonable copyright terms (20 years, I think), repeal the DMCA, and either ban DRM, or require that DRMed material lose its protection when copyright on the work runs out. 2) Engage in public education (propaganda, to some, I'm sure) extolling the benefits to the public, and to authors/artists/etc, of the copyright system for at least some short number of years. 3) Engage in honest investigation and enforcement of copyright violations.
If those things are done, in that order, then I think public opinion could turn toward supporting copyright. As it is, copyright is so heavily weighted toward copyright holders that most people don't respect it. It's little wonder, then, that it's not enforced.
It's not entrapment. Law enforcement officers engage in sting operations to catch many kinds of criminals. Investigating copyright infringement is no different.
While I think that current copyright terms are too long, and the DMCA and DRM completely negate the public interest part of the copyright bargain and need to be repealed, I also believe in copyright and think that it should be enforced. From that stance, I really think that law enforcement agencies, not the MPAA, should be the ones prosecuting copyright infringement by offering copyrighted works in places where infringement is known or suspected, and pursuing investigation and prosecution. Such a practice would be a legitimate sting operation, I think.
It's supposed to prove that the police committed a gross abuse of their power. Tasers aren't equipment for "correcting" the uncoperative, they're intended to incapacitate dangerous persons without the use of deadly force. There was no reason to use a taser on that student.
It's really fast... though it can still take a while
You contradict yourself. It's really slow, and can take a while. The default block size is very small, which is very bad when you're writing blocks of data to a hard disk, synchronously. Use a larger block size, like 4MiB, for much faster completion:
Slashdot Mirror
How can Fedora be a "serious threat" to Ubuntu when according to well known facts, the Fedora platform is a testing ground for RedHat and will always be?
That's not a fact, it's a characterization. It's not a particularly good one, either. Stability is, in fact, important to the Fedora developers, because they're users too. Slashdot did an interview with Max Spevack, the Fedora Project leader a while back. His answers, particularly to question #8, are relevant to your assertion.
Quoted: Fedora is the best of what works today. RHEL is the best of what will work for the next seven years.
Fedora isn't going to be the latest beta of stuff that doesn't work. The people who tell you that are advancing a political agenda.
Has yum improved that much to match apt?
It's likely that you know a great deal more than I do about apt, so you should correct me if I'm wrong about this:
While yum is slower than apt to resolve dependencies, I think it's a much more useful tool. apt can install a package if you know its name. Yum can install a local package, and get its dependencies. It can also install a package based on its name, a virtual capability, an actual capability (library name or executable), or a file provided by the package (by path).
Yes, yum is a little slow, but in exchange it is capable of better doing what I want it to, as a user. I think it's better than apt. As a Fedora user, I have the option to use either one, and I stick with yum.
Holy cow... Just yesterday I read a post by some guy ranting about how everyone keeps yelling "straw man" at every damn argument, and I ignored it because that argument was legitimately about whether or not the post was a straw man. This, however, has nothing to do with straw men... it's not about any of MS's claims. That guy was right!
The idea that MS is about "choice, Freedom, and choice" is just ridiculous. (I do not mean to defend Apple by that statement.) Freedom? They created an interoperable DRM system so that you could choose which vendor you could pay to defeat your fair use rights. Selecting your slavery is not "Freedom". Strike one. Furthermore, when MS introduced their own player, they brought with it an incompatible DRM system so that Zune customers could no longer choose to play songs from other vendors. MS customers are not free to buy songs from other vendors. Strike two against "Freedom" and choice.
As I understand it, pretty much all flash drives do block rotation on their own, so filesystems like jffs2 aren't necessary to get wear leveling.
Does it default to deleting the oldest files first? If so, then that's probably not what you would have liked in many cases, because you probably care more about preserving the 500 kb manuscript of your novel than about preserving the 70 Gb video of your kids' soccer games.
Actually, it deletes entire snapshots when it needs the room, so you'll still have your 500kb novel as well as the video.
Time Machine is very similar to rsnapshot, except that it can use spotlight to determine which files have changed, and can therefore update the current snapshot much more quickly than rsync.
Then someone goes and runs time machine on the public directory and picks up the file that you deleted.
Time machine isn't a feature that "someone" can run against your network drives. Time machine allows you, the operator, to use a second hard drive to maintain snapshots of the drives that you're using. Since the snapshots are on a separate drive, there's no risk that someone accessing your system remotely will have access to files that you've removed, or whose permissions you've changed.
Uhhh, why is a regular user allowed to create a file owned by root?
/tmp has the "sticky bit" set in its permissions. That means that users aren't allowed to remove or rename a file (link) unless they are the owner. Arguably, that is an odd semantic; since links don't have owners -- only files do -- it's not possible to allow users to remove or rename links that they created. However, claiming that the semantics of directory permissions aren't honored simply shows that you're ignorant of what the semantics are.
They're not. They are, however, allowed to create a name in a directory (a link) that points to an existing inode. Since the inode has all of the owner and permission data, and the user is not allowed to modify the inode, allowing them to create a link to it is not an inherent risk.
Awesome, the semantics of directory permissions are not even honored anymore.. anyone else smell a kludge here?
Yes, they are.
What the hell are you talking about? "lists of references"?
The relatime proposal checks atime/mtime/ctime when files are read, and only updates atime if 1) atime MAX(mtime,ctime), or 2) atime is more than one day old (or some other interval). No lists of references are required.
No, you can't. GPL and LGPL applications can't depend on proprietary libraries, unless those libraries are a standard part of the platform on which the application runs.
how hard is it to sign up for a facebook account now.
Why should you have to? There's no good reason to require that I have an account on every damned social web site, for the privilege of seeing what my own friends want to share with me.
I'll say that again: the customers of the web site want to share things with their friends, and the current structure makes that hard. Social networks aren't providing their users with what they want.
I'm all in favor of using a distributed identity system like OpenID so that a facebook user (for instance) can name their friends regardless of whether those friends are also facebook users, and allow those friends to see their profile/blog/videos/whatever.
because SAMBA is limited by the same 2GB limit
No, it isn't. The samba server, smbfs, cifs, and smbclient all support files larger than 2GB.
I presume you mean "Atheros". I recommend not using those cards. Atheros cards do not have Free Software drivers; they're binary-only. They don't handle suspend well, which is kind of a big issue when you're dealing with a laptop. Ralink or Intel cards are a much better bet.
Lard, sugar, and titanium oxide.
...the concepts of webs of trust, fingerprints, signatures, and security are alien to most people.
:)
Well, the trust relationships are the entire foundation of a reputation system, so we're going to have to engage in education on that front. However, just because it's complicated to use PGP (or S/MIME, more likely) directly doesn't mean that software can't use it as the underlying mechanism for a reputation system.
I implemented something web of trust-like in Second Life, but without signatures,
Second Life validates users' identities, right? In that case you wouldn't need signatures. I envision a decentralized system, though, and that's going to need cryptography.
and without a root.
Does a "web of trust" ever have a fixed root?
Well, there's Advogato's Trust Metric system.
I've been of the opinion for a while that a similar system could be devised using PGP or S/MIME certificates to combine identity verification with "web of trust" reputation evaluation. Under such a model, every user would import the public certificate of authorities that they trust. For example, consider a consumer review web site, where I decide to trust the site's admin. The admin trusts its editorial staff, and their certificates are signed by the admin. Any of the editorial staff may trust one of the site's frequent contributors, based on the quality of their work. That editor may sign the contributor's certificate. Now, my level of trust for that contributor can be established as a function of the proximity of that user to the admin in whom I placed trust. This differs from Advogato's system in that the "Master" certificates are simply those whom I've decided to trust.
The same thing can be applied to social networking sites, as well. I can trust my friends by accepting their certificates, and gain insight into social relationships by examining the signatures in their keys.
That link does not indicate that 3rd party apps will run in the iPhone. It only indicates that an application is available which will run at a resolution appropriate for the phone. As stated, if you read it, this may simply be an indication of optimism on the part of the developer. So far, all indications are that the iPhone will not allow 3rd party apps, which is by far the biggest reason that I have no interest in it.
according to the terms of the GPL 2 they will have to take a snapshot of the code right before the upgrade
No fork would be required by the GPL. Several clarifications:
Any reasonable group of developers would be able to check out the required code using CVS (or any other RCS system they might use).
Even that isn't really necessary. The GPL requires that a publisher grant the source code of a covered work to users who request it. A user who received version 2.0.1 of a program is entitled to the source code for that release, but not necessarily any code that was written after the release.
Last, the source will continue to be available via all of the same channels when the license is updated. GNU will continue to make their code repositories available, and publish tarballs of their releases. Transition to the third revision of the GPL isn't the herald of a move toward a proprietary state.
(And of course, some companies try to get away with using the software withouth regard for the terms of the GPL, but that's another matter.)
You mean distributing the software. The GPL's terms don't govern use.
It is explicitly and methodically being written to be as anti-business as possible.
Multiple assertions without any supporting evidence... Can you provide any foundation for your argument, at all? It seems to me that Linus one of the few voices really opposed to the changes in the third revision of the GPL, and most other currently GPLed software is likely to adopt the new license.
It's easy to understand why they would, too. It is precisely because some companies are trying to find loopholes in GPL2 such that they need not abide by its terms, which you pointed out in your opening paragraph.
The quote you included specifically states that his machines are not accounted for.
The only people who give a crap about OneCare coming in "last" are idiots who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan and laugh at Microsoft.
I disagree. Certainly, it is important to note which package came in at the top, as advice on what users should use. However, since OneCare is Microsoft's own service, and may be more accessible and better marketed to PC users, I would argue that it is in fact more important to note how badly it scored so that users know what not to use.
If all of the products being evaluated were equally marketed and accessible, then I would back your argument. However, because I don't believe that to be the situation, I disagree.
it's pretty clear that law enforcement agencies don't give a damn.
It does seem that way, doesn't it. I'd like to see three things happen, in this order:
1) Restore a copyright system that respects the public domain as much as it encourages the creation of new works. i.e., restore reasonable copyright terms (20 years, I think), repeal the DMCA, and either ban DRM, or require that DRMed material lose its protection when copyright on the work runs out.
2) Engage in public education (propaganda, to some, I'm sure) extolling the benefits to the public, and to authors/artists/etc, of the copyright system for at least some short number of years.
3) Engage in honest investigation and enforcement of copyright violations.
If those things are done, in that order, then I think public opinion could turn toward supporting copyright. As it is, copyright is so heavily weighted toward copyright holders that most people don't respect it. It's little wonder, then, that it's not enforced.
It's not entrapment. Law enforcement officers engage in sting operations to catch many kinds of criminals. Investigating copyright infringement is no different.
While I think that current copyright terms are too long, and the DMCA and DRM completely negate the public interest part of the copyright bargain and need to be repealed, I also believe in copyright and think that it should be enforced. From that stance, I really think that law enforcement agencies, not the MPAA, should be the ones prosecuting copyright infringement by offering copyrighted works in places where infringement is known or suspected, and pursuing investigation and prosecution. Such a practice would be a legitimate sting operation, I think.
That is bullshit, and I'll tell you why. The courts have established that "Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals".
Just reading about the case history behind this makes me spitting mad. It takes a stong constitution to even read that entire compilation.
Everyone has the right to defend their safety. In my eyes, everyone has the responsibility to defend their safety.
It's supposed to prove that the police committed a gross abuse of their power. Tasers aren't equipment for "correcting" the uncoperative, they're intended to incapacitate dangerous persons without the use of deadly force. There was no reason to use a taser on that student.
It's really fast ... though it can still take a while
You contradict yourself. It's really slow, and can take a while. The default block size is very small, which is very bad when you're writing blocks of data to a hard disk, synchronously. Use a larger block size, like 4MiB, for much faster completion:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=4194304