I'm sorry but this situation must be corrected. So far, no one has enlightened this poor troll. I know for nearly everyone else this is review, but it appears that it is indeed necessary.
Red Hat did not invent Linux, Linus Torvalds (sp?) and a whole bunch of developers from all over the world did, and they did it mostly in their free time. They are not 'hackers' in the sense that that they are not some evil hoard conspiring to steal your credit card number and publish which porn sites you visit.
Red Hat sells a prepackaged version of linux which they have worked hard to form into a viable and competative consumer product complete with support and continued development. Debian, is a completely free, open source project. It includes nothing that you would have to pay money for. Debian, by definition makes no money. Read their social contract for a little more insight.
Now, just because it is free does not mean it is unsafe. No safe is uncrackable and no network is perfectly secure. As such, criminals often have a better knowledge of proprietary software such as windows NT, etc. than the network administrator running the system simply because the knowledge base is not public and the net admin can only learn what information is provided him. At best, the network admin and the criminal or on level ground. Open source makes that knowledge base public and you don't have to trust someone with your security you can secure things yourself. The burden is not on Microsoft to protect your credit card or porn habits, it's on you.
Hopefully, armed with this new knowledge, an enlightened debate can ensue.
I am willing to pay for quality products and to support musicians, but I am not willing to let my choices be made for me simply under the guise that some mega corporation has my best interests in mind. People will use microsofts preinstalled software because by and large, the computer consumer is a sheep and if it's at all difficult, they curl up into a fetal position and cry for bill gates to powder their ass and make everything smell better. Napster did not create MP3's but it made it simple for even the most ignorant user to download anything he or she wanted. It just happened to be free.
apt-get slashdot_passwords
dpkg -i hack_slashdot_6_34.deb
. . . setting up God
.
.
install shadow passwords (y/N)? N
Creating user GOD
Enter password: ****
Re-enter password: ****
...
the password you entered was pete. Is this correct (Y/n)? Y
Let me first admit that I haven't read the majority of the threads here so if I repeat or regurgitate, forgive me. This Pinkerton idea is a band-aid cobbled together because parents and teachers are afraid, but they aren't willing to take responsibility for their kids. Ultimately, the behaviour of these kids falls on the parents. I don't care how many counselors you throw at a kid, only parents raise children. I understand that our society created latch key kids and parents who work until most kids bed times but we must suck it up and take responsibility. I was raised by a single mom who was putting herself through college and supporting me and my sister. Somehow she managed to do it. I was a shy, intraverted, computer nerd more comfortable with my Comodore 64 than most of my classmates but I was raised with a good sense of morality and responsibility and as I gained enough knowledge to act on that knowledge, I chose not to be malicious. I honestly feel for the parents of these kids who do these horrible things and it sounds like I'm being insensitive when I say that they had everything to do with their kids actions. The fact of the matter is that those kids had parents. Whatever those parents did, or didn't do, whatever they said or didn't say, whatever they heard or didn't hear, they raised those boys. They made them, in part, what they are. Of course there are all sorts of environmental factors, or whatever the PC fashionable term is nowadays, but those kids bring those factors home and it is the responsibility of the parents to help their children through whatever life throws upon them.
In regards to this idea of having kids rat on other kids, it's a poor excuse for irresponsible parenting. Teenagers and adolescents are in no way ready to make every decision in their own confusing lives much less the lives of their friends and class mates. I know my fellow/. 'ers have already brought up the question of who decides what constitutes depressed or dangerous, and Pinkerton's concession to consult phycologists is a step in the right direction but to still levy the initial judgement on young kids is unacceptable. If they want to help, perhaps they could set up a system to help parents and teachers out. Educate them in ways that they can see the problems that kids are facing and unobtrusively confront these kids. I really want to stress unobtrusively because most kids have authority problems and if they don't they will if they think that someone is trying to invade their privacy. I applaud Pinkerton for taking the initiative and expanding the effort to do something but that does not mean that something is better than nothing. I also am very proud of/. and all those who wrote in on this topic. I'll probably get flamed for sounding like a melodramatic hippie tree hugger, but this is important.
Do you remember the good old days when the Military wanted something and then just took it. When the hell did Big Brother decide that it could no longer think for itself and started shopping out security to the likes of Bill Gates and his cronies. Someone up in Redmond must have done one hell of a job on some poor DOD rep to convince them to borrow, because that's all you ever really get to do with Windows, an operating system to go into such sensitive areas.
There's a serious question here, though. I am a bit concerned that the military is either unwilling or unable to produce their own operating system to their own standards. No matter what certification they come up with, using and outside supplier still allows that supplier to dictate how that operating system functions on basic levels. While this may seem trivial, these basic levels force the networks to be setup a certain way to some extent and if I have to pay the military to protect my worthless ass the least they could do is get off their asses and write their own operating system. When did this change happen, from the government inhousing security matters such as this to outsourcing them to private companies? Maybe I'm ignorant, naive, or hopped up on elmers glue, but I want Big Brother back. Sure he used to beat the pulp out of me, but Bill Gates yanks my pants down in front of the neighbors, runs away laughing and when I pull them up I find my wallet is gone. Bruises heal, and no matter how many web certifications of NT I see, I won't feel safe until I see men with ear pieces outside my windows and silent black helicopters hovering over my house.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry but this situation must be corrected. So far, no one has enlightened this poor troll. I know for nearly everyone else this is review, but it appears that it is indeed necessary.
Red Hat did not invent Linux, Linus Torvalds (sp?) and a whole bunch of developers from all over the world did, and they did it mostly in their free time. They are not 'hackers' in the sense that that they are not some evil hoard conspiring to steal your credit card number and publish which porn sites you visit.
Red Hat sells a prepackaged version of linux which they have worked hard to form into a viable and competative consumer product complete with support and continued development. Debian, is a completely free, open source project. It includes nothing that you would have to pay money for. Debian, by definition makes no money. Read their social contract for a little more insight.
Now, just because it is free does not mean it is unsafe. No safe is uncrackable and no network is perfectly secure. As such, criminals often have a better knowledge of proprietary software such as windows NT, etc. than the network administrator running the system simply because the knowledge base is not public and the net admin can only learn what information is provided him. At best, the network admin and the criminal or on level ground. Open source makes that knowledge base public and you don't have to trust someone with your security you can secure things yourself. The burden is not on Microsoft to protect your credit card or porn habits, it's on you.
Hopefully, armed with this new knowledge, an enlightened debate can ensue.
I am willing to pay for quality products and to support musicians, but I am not willing to let my choices be made for me simply under the guise that some mega corporation has my best interests in mind. People will use microsofts preinstalled software because by and large, the computer consumer is a sheep and if it's at all difficult, they curl up into a fetal position and cry for bill gates to powder their ass and make everything smell better. Napster did not create MP3's but it made it simple for even the most ignorant user to download anything he or she wanted. It just happened to be free.
apt-get slashdot_passwords
dpkg -i hack_slashdot_6_34.deb
. . . setting up God
.
.
install shadow passwords (y/N)? N
Creating user GOD
Enter password: ****
Re-enter password: ****
...
the password you entered was pete. Is this correct (Y/n)? Y
God is now setup. Have fun!
Let me first admit that I haven't read the majority of the threads here so if I repeat or regurgitate, forgive me. This Pinkerton idea is a band-aid cobbled together because parents and teachers are afraid, but they aren't willing to take responsibility for their kids. Ultimately, the behaviour of these kids falls on the parents. I don't care how many counselors you throw at a kid, only parents raise children. I understand that our society created latch key kids and parents who work until most kids bed times but we must suck it up and take responsibility. I was raised by a single mom who was putting herself through college and supporting me and my sister. Somehow she managed to do it. I was a shy, intraverted, computer nerd more comfortable with my Comodore 64 than most of my classmates but I was raised with a good sense of morality and responsibility and as I gained enough knowledge to act on that knowledge, I chose not to be malicious. I honestly feel for the parents of these kids who do these horrible things and it sounds like I'm being insensitive when I say that they had everything to do with their kids actions. The fact of the matter is that those kids had parents. Whatever those parents did, or didn't do, whatever they said or didn't say, whatever they heard or didn't hear, they raised those boys. They made them, in part, what they are. Of course there are all sorts of environmental factors, or whatever the PC fashionable term is nowadays, but those kids bring those factors home and it is the responsibility of the parents to help their children through whatever life throws upon them.
In regards to this idea of having kids rat on other kids, it's a poor excuse for irresponsible parenting. Teenagers and adolescents are in no way ready to make every decision in their own confusing lives much less the lives of their friends and class mates. I know my fellow /. 'ers have already brought up the question of who decides what constitutes depressed or dangerous, and Pinkerton's concession to consult phycologists is a step in the right direction but to still levy the initial judgement on young kids is unacceptable. If they want to help, perhaps they could set up a system to help parents and teachers out. Educate them in ways that they can see the problems that kids are facing and unobtrusively confront these kids. I really want to stress unobtrusively because most kids have authority problems and if they don't they will if they think that someone is trying to invade their privacy. I applaud Pinkerton for taking the initiative and expanding the effort to do something but that does not mean that something is better than nothing. I also am very proud of /. and all those who wrote in on this topic. I'll probably get flamed for sounding like a melodramatic hippie tree hugger, but this is important.
Do you remember the good old days when the Military wanted something and then just took it. When the hell did Big Brother decide that it could no longer think for itself and started shopping out security to the likes of Bill Gates and his cronies. Someone up in Redmond must have done one hell of a job on some poor DOD rep to convince them to borrow, because that's all you ever really get to do with Windows, an operating system to go into such sensitive areas.
There's a serious question here, though. I am a bit concerned that the military is either unwilling or unable to produce their own operating system to their own standards. No matter what certification they come up with, using and outside supplier still allows that supplier to dictate how that operating system functions on basic levels. While this may seem trivial, these basic levels force the networks to be setup a certain way to some extent and if I have to pay the military to protect my worthless ass the least they could do is get off their asses and write their own operating system. When did this change happen, from the government inhousing security matters such as this to outsourcing them to private companies? Maybe I'm ignorant, naive, or hopped up on elmers glue, but I want Big Brother back. Sure he used to beat the pulp out of me, but Bill Gates yanks my pants down in front of the neighbors, runs away laughing and when I pull them up I find my wallet is gone. Bruises heal, and no matter how many web certifications of NT I see, I won't feel safe until I see men with ear pieces outside my windows and silent black helicopters hovering over my house.