That part of the article was purely from me, not LinuxWorld/IDG. I'm not their sysadmin: For questions about their security, you'll have to ask them.
In case you're interested here's what nmap shows for my own main machine:
[root@uncle-enzo/root]# nmap -t uncle-enzo.linuxmafia.com Starting nmap V. 1.51 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.dhp.com/~fyodor/nmap/) Open ports on uncle-enzo (140.174.70.21): Port Number Protocol Service 21 tcp ftp 22 tcp ssh 25 tcp smtp 53 tcp domain 80 tcp www 110 tcp pop-3
(There's also ntp on 123/udp.)
I don't claim that's a high-security site (and it's non-commercial). For one thing, I have non-technical users all over the world, and have had to be careful how I tighten down security. (Thus the USER/PASS-type popd, which I'm still trying to get rid of.)
None of this has a whole lot to do with LinuxOne, of course. But I hope it's entertaining.
It's my opinion that, for any commercial domain, you need to have secondary DNS (and preferably backup MX) at at least one remote site, which ought to be on a different power grid. For that matter, not all NIC contacts should be the same person, and preferably at least one of them should not go through the domain in question (for out-of-band communication). It's not enough to have valid telephone numbers listed: E-mail accounts that become unreachable if the DNS goes down, are close to useless in NIC records.
So, don't do that, then.
Now, those of you who consider such measures excessive for a commercial site that purports to do e-commerce as LinxOne does, hey -- you do it your way, I'll do it mine, and we'll see who gets better results.
I personally (still) don't think rebutting Gartner/whoever's "report" is a particularly good use of valuable time, but -- for those who care about such things -- Paul Ferris has bothered, and did an excellent job: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/10912.html
[Cross-posting from the SVLUG mailing list] Quoting Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com):
> Nice commentary, Rick. Turns out you made Slashdot with this.
I noticed. Wow. (I did not post it there, only here on the SVLUG list.)
It was never intended as a serious-minded analysis: I didn't think the "report" merited one. To the contrary, I was just having fun with some of the delicious absurdities to be found in it, in Gartner Group's hilariously cozy relationship with Microsoft (and perhaps anyone else whose cash is green enough), and in Gartner Australia's "explanation".
I'm sure the latter was truthful, if you squint at it the right way: I'm certain that Microsoft Corporation's ongoing series of cheques for sundry services and accomodations did not specify (outright) that they were to fund a report that just by amazing coicidence parrots Microsoft's exact party line about Linux, in fine detail.
So, I'm sure the apparent incestuousness of all this is mere coincidence, and nothing the least bit improper or damaging to Gartner Group's reputation for independence.
[cough]
Anyhow, the point wasn't to "debunk" Gartner's Linux piece du jour, but rather to mock it. It's not important, just amusing. I'm far more concerned about poor Hemos and his ruined house, poor guy.
Shortly after Gartner Group pulled this so-called report from its Web site, I was able to salvage most of it from my browser cache. It was at http://www.gartner.com/webletter/microsoft/article 1/article1.html and so on. Notice the word "microsoft" in there? That's explained by the following disclaimer in amazingly small type at the bottom of the "report":
But wait! There's more! Microsoft Corporation, having thus planted the piece at the "independent" Gartner Group organisation, now gets to reference it as an independent expert source, at its LinuxMyths site:
Gartner Group Reports
New reports from Gartner raise important questions about the future role of Linux.[...]
And that, friends, is how the propaganda game is played by the pros. Next up: We'll no doubt see Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group weigh in with a concurring independent-expert opinion -- and then, gosh, I guess the "report's" claims will have become unquestionable fact.
I use both potato and slink for server builds, and find them both to be rock-solid (with potato having occasional one-day-long glitches in the apt-get upgrade path, which is the main reason it's still classed as "unstable").
And obviously you put the kernel.deb you want in (or compile one from source) after the initial build: The installer is designed to function on the widest possible range of machines through conservative choices like that one, and it pays off.
Congratulations to VA, O'Reilly, and SGI on a move that's both timely and community-minded.
So, although roughly 100% of the commentary here has been completely irrelevant to the subject at hand (the merit of Bezroukov's critique and of Raymond's reply), and instead indulged in mostly juvenile personal opinions on other matters entirely, that's all Raymond's fault. The posters here bear no responsibility for the content of their remarks.
We have in this thread a huge number of people either failing or refusing to address the point.
Raymond's objection was that Bezroukov's essay went out of its way to caricature and misrepresent his writings. He cited particulars where this was obviously the case. The second-level comments here, ironically, ignore the point even more than Bezroukov's did.
People: The question was whether Bezroukov's comments were relevant and reasonable. Your views on Raymond's politics, his ego, his essays, his pronouncements on the term "GNU/Linux", his skills at diplomacy or lack thereof, his abilities as a "leader", or alleged unwillingness to admit himself wrong, and sundry personal qualities have nothing whatsoever to do with the question at hand.
One or two posters made the almost-relevant remark that Raymond relies on works other than "TCatB" to make most of his points. That might have been a valid objection, except that Bezroukov's essay concerned those other works, too. I quote (emphasis added): "Starting with his famous paper "Cathedral and Bazaar" Eric Raymond published a series of articles (see especially his comments on the so-called Halloween documents) he promoted an overoptimistic and simplistic view of open source, as a variant of socialist (or, to be more exact, vulgar Marxist) interpretation of software development."
Bezroukov addressed this remark explicitly to Raymond's entire body of essays on open source. It is explicitly stated up-top as the thesis of his paper.
Critical commentary should be evaluated for accuracy and relevance on its internal merits. That is the proper standard for everything, there: Bezroukov's piece, Raymond's reply, and you people's alleged commentary on Raymond's reply. The commentary here has been consistently off in Cloud-Cuckooland -- which explains in part how you could possibly fail to notice that Bezroukov wrote nothing better than an extended straw-man argument.
You can do better, people. At least I bloody well hope so.
One assumes the point of this hinges on the upcoming MS Windows version -- i.e., using a graphical partitioner for an initial Linux installation actually makes a great deal of sense.
However, I've always maintained that dual-booting is usually a mistake, and that people seek out "non-destructive" resizers because of an underlying lack of control of their systems that they'd be better off curing, instead. See: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#partiti on
I'm very pleased to see Linux Laptops's debut, especially since it's run by Nathan Myers, a long-time, respected member of the San Francisco Bay Area Linux community. These look like quality offerings from a quality outfit.
I've recently heard a claim that what Penguin Computing is really doing is reselling this. That would partially explain the 450NX puzzle: It's an NEC-designed variant of the 450NX, the "Aqua II", that is said to do some weird bridging of two 450NX sets. (I've been unable to find information on it.)
With all due respect, Penguin Computing's claimed 8-CPU support does not seem possible. ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/24377101.pdf, and every other source I've been able to consult, states that the Intel 450NX chipset supports up to four Xeons. Not eight.
Pournelle indeed does have a point, and that is why, in the Bay Area effort, we will verify in advance that all participants are absolutely legitimate. Other organised refund efforts have been, and are, strongly encouraged to do likewise.
Rick Moen rick@hugin.imat.com
You accept the EULA by doing WHAT?
on
Toshiba and EULA
·
· Score: 1
I'd suggest we have a contest for Most Creative Means of Accepting the EULA. Meanwhile, I predict that Windows Refund Newsletter Issue #4 is going to have fun with this one!
You know, there's an intriguing concept you might want to look up, called "irony". Clearly, you have never encountered it, explaining the apparent obtuseness of your comments.
As to the "big smile" on your face while reading accounts of vandalism and generally shooting one's self in the foot in the eyes of the general public, it might indicate neural damage or some sort of stupor. You might want to seek out a competent neurologist.
If anyone has a copy of the original Web page and related.gifs (e.g., in a cache), please e-mail the set to me (or ftp into my/incoming directory), so I can mirror it on http://linuxmafia.com/. The pictures and description are just too priceless to vanish from public view. Thanks.
I can't help noticing, from the linked account, that David Weekly and Nathan Schmidt (the two Stanford undergrads) defaced Microsoft's banner outside the event and (apparently) did aggressive leafleting right at the Microsoft booth.
Thereby conveying the impression that Linux advocates are just another rude and ill-behaved wing of the Anybody But Microsoft movement.
That is not progress. Next time, guys, please think first.
A new page at http://linuxmafia.com/refund/ has been established to coordinate Refund Day for the San Francisco Bay Area, provide information for the expected press coverage, etc. The goal is to have an organised, efficient, and friendly refund visit to Microsoft's business office in Foster City.
By the way, whoever set up the "thenoodle.com" site is really on the ball. He linked to the linuxmafia.com page even before I asked, or even told him it existed.
The article is, in part, an outgrowth of SVLUG's "Silicon Valley Tea Party" at Microsoft's Palo Alto office, which the reporter attended. She has also interviewed many prominent open source people, and my guess is that she'll be writing more articles on the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
That part of the article was purely from me, not LinuxWorld/IDG. I'm not their sysadmin: For questions about their security, you'll have to ask them.
In case you're interested here's what nmap shows for my own main machine:
[root@uncle-enzo /root]# nmap -t uncle-enzo.linuxmafia.com
Starting nmap V. 1.51 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, www.dhp.com/~fyodor/nmap/)
Open ports on uncle-enzo (140.174.70.21):
Port Number Protocol Service
21 tcp ftp
22 tcp ssh
25 tcp smtp
53 tcp domain
80 tcp www
110 tcp pop-3
(There's also ntp on 123/udp.)
I don't claim that's a high-security site (and it's non-commercial). For one thing, I have non-technical users all over the world, and have had to be careful how I tighten down security. (Thus the USER/PASS-type popd, which I'm still trying to get rid of.)
None of this has a whole lot to do with LinuxOne, of course. But I hope it's entertaining.
talk about coming off looking like an arrogant jackass.
See: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#opini onated.
It's my opinion that, for any commercial domain, you need to have secondary DNS (and preferably backup MX) at at least one remote site, which ought to be on a different power grid. For that matter, not all NIC contacts should be the same person, and preferably at least one of them should not go through the domain in question (for out-of-band communication). It's not enough to have valid telephone numbers listed: E-mail accounts that become unreachable if the DNS goes down, are close to useless in NIC records.
So, don't do that, then.
Now, those of you who consider such measures excessive for a commercial site that purports to do e-commerce as LinxOne does, hey -- you do it your way, I'll do it mine, and we'll see who gets better results.
I personally (still) don't think rebutting Gartner/whoever's "report" is a particularly good use of valuable time, but -- for those who care about such things -- Paul Ferris has bothered, and did an excellent job: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/10912.html
[Cross-posting from the SVLUG mailing list]
Quoting Aaron Lehmann (aaronl@vitelus.com):
> Nice commentary, Rick. Turns out you made Slashdot with this.
I noticed. Wow. (I did not post it there, only here on the SVLUG list.)
It was never intended as a serious-minded analysis: I didn't think the "report" merited one. To the contrary, I was just having fun with some of the delicious absurdities to be found in it, in Gartner Group's hilariously cozy relationship with Microsoft (and perhaps anyone else whose cash is green enough), and in Gartner Australia's "explanation".
I'm sure the latter was truthful, if you squint at it the right way: I'm certain that Microsoft Corporation's ongoing series of cheques for sundry services and accomodations did not specify (outright) that they were to fund a report that just by amazing coicidence parrots Microsoft's exact party line about Linux, in fine detail.
So, I'm sure the apparent incestuousness of all this is mere coincidence, and nothing the least bit improper or damaging to Gartner Group's reputation for independence.
[cough]
Anyhow, the point wasn't to "debunk" Gartner's Linux piece du jour, but rather to mock it. It's not important, just amusing. I'm far more concerned about poor Hemos and his ruined house, poor guy.
Shortly after Gartner Group pulled this so-called report from its Web site, I was able to salvage most of it from my browser cache. It was at http://www.gartner.com/webletter/microsoft/article 1/article1.html and so on. Notice the word "microsoft" in there? That's explained by the following disclaimer in amazingly small type at the bottom of the "report":
Microsoft Web Letter is published by Microsoft. Additional editorial material supplied by Gartner Group, Inc. © 1999. Editorial supplied by Microsoft is independent of GartnerGroup analysis and in no way should this information be construed as a GartnerGroup endorsement of Microsoft's products and services. Entire contents © 1999 by Gartner Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. GartnerGroup disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. GartnerGroup shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
But wait! There's more! Microsoft Corporation, having thus planted the piece at the "independent" Gartner Group organisation, now gets to reference it as an independent expert source, at its LinuxMyths site:
Gartner Group Reports
New reports from Gartner raise important questions about the future role of Linux.[...]
And that, friends, is how the propaganda game is played by the pros. Next up: We'll no doubt see Rob Enderle of Giga Information Group weigh in with a concurring independent-expert opinion -- and then, gosh, I guess the "report's" claims will have become unquestionable fact.
-- Rick Moen
(speaking for himself)
I use both potato and slink for server builds, and find them both to be rock-solid (with potato having occasional one-day-long glitches in the apt-get upgrade path, which is the main reason it's still classed as "unstable").
And obviously you put the kernel .deb you want in (or compile one from source) after the initial build: The installer is designed to function on the widest possible range of machines through conservative choices like that one, and it pays off.
Congratulations to VA, O'Reilly, and SGI on a move that's both timely and community-minded.
So, although roughly 100% of the commentary here has been completely irrelevant to the subject at hand (the merit of Bezroukov's critique and of Raymond's reply), and instead indulged in mostly juvenile personal opinions on other matters entirely, that's all Raymond's fault. The posters here bear no responsibility for the content of their remarks.
I see.
We have in this thread a huge number of people either failing or refusing to address the point.
Raymond's objection was that Bezroukov's essay went out of its way to caricature and misrepresent his writings. He cited particulars where this was obviously the case. The second-level comments here, ironically, ignore the point even more than Bezroukov's did.
People: The question was whether Bezroukov's comments were relevant and reasonable. Your views on Raymond's politics, his ego, his essays, his pronouncements on the term "GNU/Linux", his skills at diplomacy or lack thereof, his abilities as a "leader", or alleged unwillingness to admit himself wrong, and sundry personal qualities have nothing whatsoever to do with the question at hand.
One or two posters made the almost-relevant remark that Raymond relies on works other than "TCatB" to make most of his points. That might have been a valid objection, except that Bezroukov's essay concerned those other works, too. I quote (emphasis added): "Starting with his famous paper "Cathedral and Bazaar" Eric Raymond published a series of articles (see especially his comments on the so-called Halloween documents) he promoted an overoptimistic and simplistic view of open source, as a variant of socialist (or, to be more exact, vulgar Marxist) interpretation of software development."
Bezroukov addressed this remark explicitly to Raymond's entire body of essays on open source. It is explicitly stated up-top as the thesis of his paper.
Critical commentary should be evaluated for accuracy and relevance on its internal merits. That is the proper standard for everything, there: Bezroukov's piece, Raymond's reply, and you people's alleged commentary on Raymond's reply. The commentary here has been consistently off in Cloud-Cuckooland -- which explains in part how you could possibly fail to notice that Bezroukov wrote nothing better than an extended straw-man argument.
You can do better, people. At least I bloody well hope so.
Of course, QueSO and LWP reveal that the "Independent Institute's" Web site runs on Solaris and Apache. Just an interesting aside.
One assumes the point of this hinges on the upcoming MS Windows version -- i.e., using a graphical partitioner for an initial Linux installation actually makes a great deal of sense.
However, I've always maintained that dual-booting is usually a mistake, and that people seek out "non-destructive" resizers because of an underlying lack of control of their systems that they'd be better off curing, instead. See: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#partiti on
I'm very pleased to see Linux Laptops's debut, especially since it's run by Nathan Myers, a long-time, respected member of the San Francisco Bay Area Linux community. These look like quality offerings from a quality outfit.
I've recently heard a claim that what Penguin Computing is really doing is reselling this. That would partially explain the 450NX puzzle: It's an NEC-designed variant of the 450NX, the "Aqua II", that is said to do some weird bridging of two 450NX sets. (I've been unable to find information on it.)
What that does to SMP is an interesting question.
With all due respect, Penguin Computing's claimed 8-CPU support does not seem possible. ftp://download.intel .com/design/chipsets/datashts/24377101.pdf, and every other source I've been able to consult, states that the Intel 450NX chipset supports up to four Xeons. Not eight.
Pournelle indeed does have a point, and that is why, in the Bay Area effort, we will verify in advance that all participants are absolutely legitimate. Other organised refund efforts have been, and are, strongly encouraged to do likewise.
Rick Moenrick@hugin.imat.com
Oh, I see.
I'd suggest we have a contest for Most Creative Means of Accepting the EULA. Meanwhile, I predict that Windows Refund Newsletter Issue #4 is going to have fun with this one!
Rick Moenrick@linuxmafia.com
Anonymous Coward "AndyM" wrote:
linuxmafia? whoa, sounds really seedy
You know, there's an intriguing concept you might want to look up, called "irony". Clearly, you have never encountered it, explaining the apparent obtuseness of your comments.
As to the "big smile" on your face while reading accounts of vandalism and generally shooting one's self in the foot in the eyes of the general public, it might indicate neural damage or some sort of stupor. You might want to seek out a competent neurologist.
Concernedly yours,Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
If anyone has a copy of the original Web page and related .gifs (e.g., in a cache), please e-mail the set to me (or ftp into my /incoming directory), so I can mirror it on http://linuxmafia.com/. The pictures and description are just too priceless to vanish from public view. Thanks.
Rick Moenrick@hugin.imat.com
I can't help noticing, from the linked account, that David Weekly and Nathan Schmidt (the two Stanford undergrads) defaced Microsoft's banner outside the event and (apparently) did aggressive leafleting right at the Microsoft booth.
Thereby conveying the impression that Linux advocates are just another rude and ill-behaved wing of the Anybody But Microsoft movement.
That is not progress. Next time, guys, please think first.
Rick Moenrick@linuxmafia.com
A new page at http://linuxmafia.com/refund/ has been established to coordinate Refund Day for the San Francisco Bay Area, provide information for the expected press coverage, etc. The goal is to have an organised, efficient, and friendly refund visit to Microsoft's business office in Foster City.
By the way, whoever set up the "thenoodle.com" site is really on the ball. He linked to the linuxmafia.com page even before I asked, or even told him it existed.
Rick Moen rick@linuxmafia.comFreeBSD is dying. According to some folks in the know, the last FreeBSD has already been made.
An unknown anonymous source quoting an unknown anonymous source. Right. I think you're so full of crap, your irises are turning brown.
Rick Moenrick@hugin.imat.com
The article is, in part, an outgrowth of SVLUG's "Silicon Valley Tea Party" at Microsoft's Palo Alto office, which the reporter attended. She has also interviewed many prominent open source people, and my guess is that she'll be writing more articles on the subject.
Rick Moenrick@hugin.imat.com