Personally,I bought the Jump Drive because it was the cheap and durable. I have carried it around in my pocket for close to a year now, and it just keeps on going.
I do not use the encrytption because:
It is inconvenient
I don't perceive a need for encryption
Even if I did, if it is stolen. the the thief has all the time in the world tobreak the encryption.
These devices are great for backing up important files, taking work from home to office, and for carrying presentations to meetings.
They are not data vaults, and I don't expect them to be.
The same policy exists at the University of Missouri. The residential halls here are fully wired, and most of the classroom buildings, Student Union, Library, and many other buildings are served by WAPs.
It is the University's infrastructure, and with all the other problems brought on by unsafe computing practices (mostly caused by ignorance) it does not seem to me to be a burdonsome restriction, especially when access is so easy.
All students need to do to get access to the network is to (1) install anti-virus software, (2) enable automatic updates, and (3) enable the personal firewall on their personal computers.
Yes, there are some hoops to jump through, but it is nothing compared to having no access becase to manny computers are infected, and dragging down the network for all users.
Oracle and Sybase (and SQL Server and some of the open source databases) have their idiosyncratic way of doing joins but can handle ANSI joins as well. Supposedly if they do business with the Federal Government, they need to be ANSI92-compliant. I have take Sybase and Oracle DBA training (by the respective vendors) and they both concede that neither is fully compliant. (but they are "working on it")
At my last DBA class I was asked why I would do ANSI joins when I could use the method supplied by the vendor. My answer was "code portability". The instructor sniffed and moved on. I won't tell which RDBMS vendor that was, but I doubt either Oracle or Sybase have much interest in encouraging portability.
The last time I checked, Sybase's isql client could connect to a SQL Server backend and do transact-sql. The API is still pretty similar.
Several years ago, Sybase made their ASE 11.0.3.3 server available for free and unrestricted use to users. No support, but you could run it in production mode with no licensing fees. Now it seems they are doing this again. with 12.5.2. Personally, I am thrilled, and wish Oracle and the others would follow suit.
To reminisce a bit, I first started using Sybase when they were at version 4.8 and I was starting work with one of the fledgling genome database projects. They practically gave away licenses to such groups (80%) discount. They were known then, as now as a business-oriented RDBMS. They failed to continue in this vein, and the support costs started rising faster than our budgets. The Linux version cost less, and the annual maintenance was far less.
In the meantime Oracle was very agressive in the higher education market, and still is. These two companies have a lot to offer, even if they aren't Open Source.
A reason why a small company might want to go with a free version of a commercial enterprise level RDBMS might be found in the disaster recover features that each has. I am far more familiar with Sybase internals, having taken a course that told me more than I every wanted to know about how it keeps track of data. And I have also recovered data that otherwise might have been lost forever. Oracle's features are just as good, but I have not had the "pleasure" of testing them when the pucker factor is maxed out.
What is it most people use on their personal computers?
Word Processor
Spreadsheet
Presentation Software
Web Browser
CD Player
The first three are nicely handled by Open Office.
The fourth is handled by Netscape, Mozilla, Konquerer, and perhaps others.
The fifth has several nice apps that work just fine.
OK -- playing DVDs is not easy. But you do get a well-functioning X-Windows system which is an add-on for windows.
Yes, the Open Office does not have 100% of the features of Microsoft Office, but I can say that it has 100% of the features that I use on a regular basis.
Unfortunately there are few administration tools for software packages that run only on Windows, although these are getting upgraded to platform-independent versions as time goes on.
Bottom line: I still have a windows machine along with my linux machines, but guess where I do most of my work?
I have used these for a few years with very few problems. A couple caveats:
They are a single drive. If your are storing really important data, spend twice as much and get a 4 drive system configured as RAID 5.
You are paying extra for ftp, httpd, netbios, etcetera. If you are just mounting it on a local computer, then get yourself and external drive such as a 160 GB Western Digital and save about 66%.
I agree -- as a person who prefers to citique Microsoft on more substantive grounds than their philanthropy, I must say that they are doing some good here.
If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, aren't you still doing the right thing?
As a sysadmin and database administrator, I alway tell my users that there is NO expectation of privacy, and one of the reasons is that there are no effective laws or body of judicial opinions to say so. Or to use a phrase made popular in congressional hearings "no controlling legal authority"
Having said that, what we need is a law that forces companies to honor privacy agreements even through mergers, bankruptcies, and changes in corporate philosophy.
-----------------------------------------
My service is 768/128, and I have gotten consistently satisfactory results over the past 9 months.
The DSL Reports test page shows my throughput to be between 650 and 740 on downloads, and 125 or greater for the outbound traffic.
I think that people need to understand that the figures given for Bronze Plus (my package) are only a theoretical maximum and your actual results depend not only on the number of users on the DSLAM, but also on the traffic on the various backbones around the country.
Once you go out on the net, things are pretty much out of your ISP's hands, and you need to consider that before you assign all the blame to your provider. --------------------------------------- --
What I see in this interesting article is a description of societal development -- not much different than any other society that has developed since the dawn of civilization.
People with similar goals have always come together and formed partnerships -- hunter-gatherer bands, villages, cities, countries, treaty organizations, corporations.
One of the many things that characterizes such associations is the giving up of some individual liberties in the interests of group survival and welfare.
Even in a free-wheeling forum such as Slashdot, there are limits to freedom of thought that are enforced by the moderatorial system.
Are we different in kind, or just in degree? -----------------------------------------
It seems to me that there are three niches to fill in the battle for the personal mobile computer:
The full-featured personal computer
The laptop would be the main example
Advantage is that it IS full-featured
Disadvantage is that it is the bulkiest option short of wheeling your desktop around
The sub-laptop
The notebook
The PocketPC
Other similar-sized devices
Advantage is that they are smaller than a laptop
The palm-top -- filled by the Palm, Windows CE, and other devices.
Palm family
Windows CE family (other than the Pocket PC)
Other palm-sized devices
Advantage is that they fit in a shirt pocket
Disadvantage is that they are simple devices
Advantage is that they are simple devices
The factors I considered before going with either of the above three choices were
What features I used the most
Convenience in carrying whatever device I chose
Connectivity in linking back to my desktop
The bottom line, having carried laptops, notebooks, and Palm V's around is that the tradeoff between features and portability came down for me clearly on the Palm V's side.
Why carry a full-featured device around, with its added weight, if all I am going to do is jot notes, enter dates on a calendar, take down contact information?
Will the new PocketPC's be enough of an improvement over the notebook computer that I want to have one? We'll see, but that is what the evaluation process is all about. Look at the otions, convenience, portability, and then decide what will meet your needs. -----------------------------------------
As a newbie to linux, this sort of information is important to me, and it's good to see that a topic like this gets the attention it deserves, rather than a chapter in a book about linux in general.
Unfortunately, too many treatments of backup and restore are presented as an afterthought in manuals. Everyone seems to think backing up is important, and O'Reilly has had a history of taking such topics and expanding on them in such a way that sysadmins can easily find the information they need.
I'd rather wade through a comprehensive treatment of the subject than not have the information at hand when I need it.
For the most part, the O'Reilly books read well, and are indexed well enough that I can locate information fairly quickly. I think I'll get this book and make some use of it. -----------------------------------------
A quick visit to www.perl.com reveals that what has just been released is Release Candidate 3, which is still beta. Close, but still beta.
Hmmmm. The site in question is a little unclear, and I hope they will clarify things soon. I thought the release candidates were patches on 5.005_670, and that the actual release would be called 5.6.0. What is on the CPAN sites is "perl-5.6.0.tar.gz" and it has no qualification.
I plan to wait for a clearer message from the developers, but what I see on the perl.com sites seems to point to this being the actual release. -----------------------------------------
What was once a counter culture has become too large and too widespread to be considered as a counter culture. It is rapidly approaching "establishment" proportions.
For better or for worse, the fact that so many people have access to computers, and that the computers are practically turn-key operations, has turned the personal computer from a novelty for the brave into a household appliance for the masses.
Whether or not rules and regulations are going to be needed is not the issue here; rather it is what form those rules and regulations will take.
The patent issue is a prime example:
The technology has moved so quickly that most people are still in the awestruck stage, and some of these people work in the patent office. If I understand the Amazon patent correctly (and I am not a lawyer), all they did was leverage existing technology to solve a problem. Ordinarily this would get a programmer a pat on the back, but somehow a patent examiner saw this and thought it was a major breakthrough, and awarded a patent. This might not have occured had another, more savvy examiner evaluated the patent application.
The user community needs to be involved in the regulation process as the body of law relating to computing and the internet evolves. How that can occur is another topic, but some members of the Open Source community have gotten their message out. -----------------------------------------
Old news again (Score:2) by N8F8 on Saturday March 11, @04:18PM EDT (#8) (User Info) This has been on the Drudge Report for days. I'm still having a hard time deciphering what the point is. I have yet to see a calculation of the number of E-Mails discovered vs the number turned over to the special prosecutor. Not to mention the number with relevent content.
Without knowing if any of the e-mails had relevent content I'd say this is just a case of drudging up more dirt to use against Gore. If I read the AP story correctly, the issues are:
A number of messages were kept on a system that was not part of the global backup/indexing system, and thus not subject to a full-text search.
The contract employee was allegedly notified that the existence of these files was NOT to be divulged, and some specific threats of dismissal, arrext, and prosecution were made.
Some of the messages in question are said to relate to Gore's fundraising, Lewinsky, and other sensitive topics.
Is any of this true? Who knows?
Is it worthy of discussion? Ask your self what the answer would be if the players were different.
Consider the ramifications if Alexander Butterfield had been told by Haldeman and Ehrlichman to keep his bloody mouth shut about the existence of a White House taping system back in 1973. -----------------------------------------
DNA as a programming language
on
Genome
·
· Score: 3
> IANAG, but it seems to me that if we are > made up of a "billion three letter words" > (codons?), that means that there are (only) a > billion factorial different genetic ids for > humans to take? So what is the proabability of > there being someone else on Earth having the > same genetic makeup as me?
"Codons" is correct, and when you consider that there is a lot of genetic diversity that is NOT expressed in a given environment, and further consider the fact that the 'genetic deck' is shuffled each generation, the chances of finding an unrelated person of exactly the same genetic makeup are astronomical. Among those to whom you are related, the odds go down, but are still very high with one notable exception: Identical twins. And even identical twins show differences in development due to slight environmental differences as they develop in and out of the womb.
I have been involved with a major crop genome database since the late 1980's, and I have had the following quote on my office door since I first saw it in 1992:
". ..Wouldn't it be great if a programming language existed that was so powerful it required just four commands? Imagine if this language were modular and offered all the advantages of object orientation -- small units of code that could handle tiny chores brilliantly and then be inherited by innumerable complex processes, bringing their benefits to wildly diverse situations. Consider the impact if the language were so flexible that altering a mere 10 oercent of the code could produce a change equivalent to tramsforming a frog into a prince.
Well this language does exist. It's called the genetic code, and it's hard-wired into the cells of all living things. No computer programming language comes close to achieving the power, portability, and extensibility of DNA. . .."
-- Mike Edelhart, PC Computing, April 1992
There is little else I can say in response to Mr. Edelhart's comments. --------------------------------------- --
Regarding the ssh/srp comparison, I cannot evaluate whether I am dealing with a ticking bomb (by using ssh) or not.
What I CAN do is point out that the most dangerous security attitude is "It can't happen to me!" There is no substitute for watching the security web sites, making sure you have applied the latest security patches, and simply being aware of what is happening on your system.
ssh is a definite plus over telnet, and I use it routinely. It is now just as natural to me as using the telnet command was 10 years ago. I'll certainly keep an eye on any new ways of doing things, but it would take a little more than what I have seen so far to make a switch at this time -----------------------------------------
> And what of the IV, the VI and the II. I don't recall a palm pilot 2.
According to Palm Pilot -- the Ultimate Guide, published by O'Reilly, the designation IV was skipped because
". ..in Japan, 4 is an ominous number foretelling bad luck".
As for skipping the VI, it was a marketing ploy to underscore the idea that the Palm VII was a revolutionary development in hand-held computers. Was it? I suppose so.
What I find interesting is that the line between cell phones and PDA's seems to be rapidly blurring. Will we be able to carry just one compact device to handle all out mobile telecommunicating needs? -----------------------------------------
I wonder what the Linux Killer will be? Any suggestions?
At the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, the Keynote Speaker, Guy Kawasaki, described "killer apps", and told of a woman who finally decided to get a computer so she could use the Amazon.com website. For her, the killer app wasn't a program, or even the Internet, but a single web site.
I use a unix box for about 95% of my daily work, and Star Office is perfectly satisfactory for what I do. It has most, if not all the MS Office features I use. I have a full-featured web browser, I have a fairly complete suite of gnu utilities, what more do I need?
I went through several operating systems before I got to where I am, and each one of them had their zealots and evangelists. I can't remember the name of the Byte(?) columnist in the early 1980's who refered to "MacTribesmen" and their penchant for reacting to any slight, real or imagined. When the IBM-PC came out, their partisans were just as obnoxious. And there I was, trying to make the best of CP/M while all those mean people were saying bad things about my measly 8-bit Z-80 processor. Sure, I dug in my heels, but eventually I had to grit my teeth and move on.
Another thing Guy Kawasaki said was to make evangelists, not sales. Connell is right; you don't succeed by irritating the very people you are trying to convert. -----------------------------------------
This seems to be a request for proposals, if I read the article correctly. In other words, NASA is providing potential suppliers with a general list of requirements, OS being among them.
Since Linux is one of several acceptible operating systems, they may or may not make the cut. A lot will depend on how well the OS meets the other expectations.
This seems the proper way of going about it -- define the problems to be solved, and see what is out there that can solve those problems. -----------------------------------------
"The high-tech industry has known since August 1998, he said, that Solaris and Linux systems were vulnerable to having foreign, unwanted code placed on them by outsiders."
"I just love the fact that this guys blatantly says that Unix/Solaris/Linux systems are vulnerable to having unwanted code placed on them. I really doubt there's much truth to this."
Unfortunately, there is a grain of truth to what the article said -- albeit a small grain. A solaris installation right off the CD-ROM is only half done; one still needs to apply the current recommended patch clusters, disable protocols that are not needed, and install third party tools like tcp-wrappers and tripwire. And most importantly, pay attention to CERT, SANS, and the OS vendor.
There is no substitute for proactive system administration, and even those of us who are aware of the problem and take pride in trying to do our jobs right can sometimes get burned. -----------------------------------------
I have been using find_ddos since Jan 3, 2000, and have upgraded it when the new releases have been announced. The initial run turned up one older Solaris 2.6 box that had been compromised with stacheldraht. This was a sudden wake-up call, and I have modified my security practices considerably as a result.
Unfortunately the more I learn about root compromises and vulnerabilities, the more I wonder if negative results can be trusted.
I use tcp wrappers and tripwire, I comment out irrelevant services in inetd.conf, I peruse system logs and look for unusual login patterns by users (like logging in locally at 11 pm and logging in from Europe at midnight).
As these attacks become more sophisticated will we be able to trust our own senses and software tools to determine whether we have been compromised? -----------------------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
Running yast or upd2date is never optional.
I do not use the encrytption because:
These devices are great for backing up important files, taking work from home to office, and for carrying presentations to meetings.
They are not data vaults, and I don't expect them to be.
It is the University's infrastructure, and with all the other problems brought on by unsafe computing practices (mostly caused by ignorance) it does not seem to me to be a burdonsome restriction, especially when access is so easy.
All students need to do to get access to the network is to (1) install anti-virus software, (2) enable automatic updates, and (3) enable the personal firewall on their personal computers.
Yes, there are some hoops to jump through, but it is nothing compared to having no access becase to manny computers are infected, and dragging down the network for all users.
To reminisce a bit, I first started using Sybase when they were at version 4.8 and I was starting work with one of the fledgling genome database projects. They practically gave away licenses to such groups (80%) discount. They were known then, as now as a business-oriented RDBMS. They failed to continue in this vein, and the support costs started rising faster than our budgets. The Linux version cost less, and the annual maintenance was far less.
In the meantime Oracle was very agressive in the higher education market, and still is. These two companies have a lot to offer, even if they aren't Open Source.
A reason why a small company might want to go with a free version of a commercial enterprise level RDBMS might be found in the disaster recover features that each has. I am far more familiar with Sybase internals, having taken a course that told me more than I every wanted to know about how it keeps track of data. And I have also recovered data that otherwise might have been lost forever. Oracle's features are just as good, but I have not had the "pleasure" of testing them when the pucker factor is maxed out.
Principles?
Remember who we're dealing with.....
The only question is whether this becomes a SCO joke or a lawyer joke.
Now I wonder if they'll simply go on until the magic number of $31 million approaches, and then go to trial and take their chances?
- Word Processor
- Spreadsheet
- Presentation Software
- Web Browser
- CD Player
The first three are nicely handled by Open Office.The fourth is handled by Netscape, Mozilla, Konquerer, and perhaps others.
The fifth has several nice apps that work just fine.
OK -- playing DVDs is not easy. But you do get a well-functioning X-Windows system which is an add-on for windows.
Yes, the Open Office does not have 100% of the features of Microsoft Office, but I can say that it has 100% of the features that I use on a regular basis.
Unfortunately there are few administration tools for software packages that run only on Windows, although these are getting upgraded to platform-independent versions as time goes on.
Bottom line: I still have a windows machine along with my linux machines, but guess where I do most of my work?
I agree -- as a person who prefers to citique Microsoft on more substantive grounds than their philanthropy, I must say that they are doing some good here.
If you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, aren't you still doing the right thing?
Having said that, what we need is a law that forces companies to honor privacy agreements even through mergers, bankruptcies, and changes in corporate philosophy.
-----------------------------------------
The DSL Reports test page shows my throughput to be between 650 and 740 on downloads, and 125 or greater for the outbound traffic.
I think that people need to understand that the figures given for Bronze Plus (my package) are only a theoretical maximum and your actual results depend not only on the number of users on the DSLAM, but also on the traffic on the various backbones around the country.
Once you go out on the net, things are pretty much out of your ISP's hands, and you need to consider that before you assign all the blame to your provider.- --
--------------------------------------
People with similar goals have always come together and formed partnerships -- hunter-gatherer bands, villages, cities, countries, treaty organizations, corporations.
One of the many things that characterizes such associations is the giving up of some individual liberties in the interests of group survival and welfare.
Even in a free-wheeling forum such as Slashdot, there are limits to freedom of thought that are enforced by the moderatorial system.
Are we different in kind, or just in degree?
-----------------------------------------
- The full-featured personal computer
- The laptop would be the main example
- Advantage is that it IS full-featured
- Disadvantage is that it is the bulkiest option short of wheeling your desktop around
- The sub-laptop
- The notebook
- The PocketPC
- Other similar-sized devices
- Advantage is that they are smaller than a laptop
- The palm-top -- filled by the Palm, Windows CE, and other devices.
- Palm family
- Windows CE family (other than the Pocket PC)
- Other palm-sized devices
- Advantage is that they fit in a shirt pocket
- Disadvantage is that they are simple devices
- Advantage is that they are simple devices
The factors I considered before going with either of the above three choices were- What features I used the most
- Convenience in carrying whatever device I chose
- Connectivity in linking back to my desktop
The bottom line, having carried laptops, notebooks, and Palm V's around is that the tradeoff between features and portability came down for me clearly on the Palm V's side.Why carry a full-featured device around, with its added weight, if all I am going to do is jot notes, enter dates on a calendar, take down contact information?
Will the new PocketPC's be enough of an improvement over the notebook computer that I want to have one? We'll see, but that is what the evaluation process is all about. Look at the otions, convenience, portability, and then decide what will meet your needs.
-----------------------------------------
He must have not gotten pgp to work.
-----------------------------------------
Unfortunately, too many treatments of backup and restore are presented as an afterthought in manuals. Everyone seems to think backing up is important, and O'Reilly has had a history of taking such topics and expanding on them in such a way that sysadmins can easily find the information they need.
I'd rather wade through a comprehensive treatment of the subject than not have the information at hand when I need it.
For the most part, the O'Reilly books read well, and are indexed well enough that I can locate information fairly quickly. I think I'll get this book and make some use of it.
-----------------------------------------
Hmmmm. The site in question is a little unclear, and I hope they will clarify things soon. I thought the release candidates were patches on 5.005_670, and that the actual release would be called 5.6.0. What is on the CPAN sites is "perl-5.6.0.tar.gz" and it has no qualification.
I plan to wait for a clearer message from the developers, but what I see on the perl.com sites seems to point to this being the actual release.
-----------------------------------------
For better or for worse, the fact that so many people have access to computers, and that the computers are practically turn-key operations, has turned the personal computer from a novelty for the brave into a household appliance for the masses.
Whether or not rules and regulations are going to be needed is not the issue here; rather it is what form those rules and regulations will take.
The patent issue is a prime example:
The technology has moved so quickly that most people are still in the awestruck stage, and some of these people work in the patent office. If I understand the Amazon patent correctly (and I am not a lawyer), all they did was leverage existing technology to solve a problem. Ordinarily this would get a programmer a pat on the back, but somehow a patent examiner saw this and thought it was a major breakthrough, and awarded a patent. This might not have occured had another, more savvy examiner evaluated the patent application.
The user community needs to be involved in the regulation process as the body of law relating to computing and the internet evolves. How that can occur is another topic, but some members of the Open Source community have gotten their message out.
-----------------------------------------
Without knowing if any of the e-mails had relevent content I'd say this is just a case of drudging up more dirt to use against Gore. If I read the AP story correctly, the issues are:
- A number of messages were kept on a system that was not part of the global backup/indexing system, and thus not subject to a full-text search.
- The contract employee was allegedly notified that the existence of these files was NOT to be divulged, and some specific threats of dismissal, arrext, and prosecution were made.
- Some of the messages in question are said to relate to Gore's fundraising, Lewinsky, and other sensitive topics.
Is any of this true? Who knows?Is it worthy of discussion? Ask your self what the answer would be if the players were different.
Consider the ramifications if Alexander Butterfield had been told by Haldeman and Ehrlichman to keep his bloody mouth shut about the existence of a White House taping system back in 1973.
-----------------------------------------
> made up of a "billion three letter words"
> (codons?), that means that there are (only) a
> billion factorial different genetic ids for
> humans to take? So what is the proabability of
> there being someone else on Earth having the
> same genetic makeup as me?
"Codons" is correct, and when you consider that there is a lot of genetic diversity that is NOT expressed in a given environment, and further consider the fact that the 'genetic deck' is shuffled each generation, the chances of finding an unrelated person of exactly the same genetic makeup are astronomical. Among those to whom you are related, the odds go down, but are still very high with one notable exception: Identical twins. And even identical twins show differences in development due to slight environmental differences as they develop in and out of the womb.
I have been involved with a major crop genome database since the late 1980's, and I have had the following quote on my office door since I first saw it in 1992:
There is little else I can say in response to Mr. Edelhart's comments.- --
--------------------------------------
What I CAN do is point out that the most dangerous security attitude is "It can't happen to me!" There is no substitute for watching the security web sites, making sure you have applied the latest security patches, and simply being aware of what is happening on your system.
ssh is a definite plus over telnet, and I use it routinely. It is now just as natural to me as using the telnet command was 10 years ago. I'll certainly keep an eye on any new ways of doing things, but it would take a little more than what I have seen so far to make a switch at this time
-----------------------------------------
According to Palm Pilot -- the Ultimate Guide, published by O'Reilly, the designation IV was skipped because
As for skipping the VI, it was a marketing ploy to underscore the idea that the Palm VII was a revolutionary development in hand-held computers. Was it? I suppose so.
What I find interesting is that the line between cell phones and PDA's seems to be rapidly blurring. Will we be able to carry just one compact device to handle all out mobile telecommunicating needs?
-----------------------------------------
At the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, the Keynote Speaker, Guy Kawasaki, described "killer apps", and told of a woman who finally decided to get a computer so she could use the Amazon.com website. For her, the killer app wasn't a program, or even the Internet, but a single web site.
I use a unix box for about 95% of my daily work, and Star Office is perfectly satisfactory for what I do. It has most, if not all the MS Office features I use. I have a full-featured web browser, I have a fairly complete suite of gnu utilities, what more do I need?
I went through several operating systems before I got to where I am, and each one of them had their zealots and evangelists. I can't remember the name of the Byte(?) columnist in the early 1980's who refered to "MacTribesmen" and their penchant for reacting to any slight, real or imagined. When the IBM-PC came out, their partisans were just as obnoxious. And there I was, trying to make the best of CP/M while all those mean people were saying bad things about my measly 8-bit Z-80 processor. Sure, I dug in my heels, but eventually I had to grit my teeth and move on.
Another thing Guy Kawasaki said was to make evangelists, not sales. Connell is right; you don't succeed by irritating the very people you are trying to convert.
-----------------------------------------
Since Linux is one of several acceptible operating systems, they may or may not make the cut. A lot will depend on how well the OS meets the other expectations.
This seems the proper way of going about it -- define the problems to be solved, and see what is out there that can solve those problems.
-----------------------------------------
There is no substitute for proactive system administration, and even those of us who are aware of the problem and take pride in trying to do our jobs right can sometimes get burned.-
----------------------------------------
Unfortunately the more I learn about root compromises and vulnerabilities, the more I wonder if negative results can be trusted.
I use tcp wrappers and tripwire, I comment out irrelevant services in inetd.conf, I peruse system logs and look for unusual login patterns by users (like logging in locally at 11 pm and logging in from Europe at midnight).
As these attacks become more sophisticated will we be able to trust our own senses and software tools to determine whether we have been compromised?
-----------------------------------------