how many times are we going to post the same 10 stories: microsoft is bad, linux is good, spam is bad, old cheap hardware is better than intel although worse than the more expensive and proprietary apple, intel is bad, amd is growing, commercial unix is having a hard time, dell is expanding, someone spent too much time modifying cheap hardware, someone needs to know something and is too lazy to look it up themselves.
Ironically, the thing that slashdot hates most, DRM, would have prevented it from occuring. The trojaned copy would have to be signed, and the signature would have to be compromised. It's typically far more difficult to compromise a cryptographic signature than it is a webserver. Once the signature showed up with a mismatch, DRM would stop execution, and the trojan would be useless.
I'm not an expert on the US constitution - anyone know what it has to say about this scam?
One of the main reasons for moving to the Constitution from the original Articles of Confederation was to give the national government the ability to regulate interstate commerce.
Initially, there was widespread, state sponsored price gouging. Items passing through one state on their way to another were taxed heavily upon entering and upon leaving. Many people saw this as ridiculous.
The Constitution gives the federal government the sole ability to tax interstate commerce. It's one of the few regulations specifically entitled to the national government: it is not now, and should not ever, be enforced by the states. It is likely that a clever lawyer could argue this either way: on one hand it's a set of states banding together to control commerce between states, on the other hand it's states enforcing commerce that either begins or ends in their jurisdiction.
If someone managed to challenge this, it's likely that a national system would be implemented. It's easier to justify a national tax than state-by-state, optional taxation.
Keep in mind that Warner Bros. has an ongoing campaign against p2p USERS.
There have been a number of people who's ISPs were contacted after Warner Bros. planted false video files (I've heard they were avi-like files claiming to be Lord of the Rings, supposedly capable of connecting to some WB site and sending system information - probably by manipulating the 'codec needed' tokens). Anyone who really wants to watch this in theaters should stay far, far away from this file on p2p networks.
There is a market for protection of intellectual property. Just because you feel it can be used to keep you from pirating MP3s does not make it a bad thing.
and AutoCorrect
AutoCorrect is a great tool for people who write heavily and spell poorly. It can be turned off if you dislike it.
and menus that hide themselves
Again, this helps people with cluttered desktops. It's not the default, and it can be turned off if you dislike it.
and shuffling the start menu every other year
The start menu changed in XP. Before that, it was nearly constant since win95. Even with the change, it's still backwards compatible by changing into classic mode.
and poor default security
If by poor default security you mean installing IIS on win2k systems, you're wrong: that's not the default.
If by poor default security you mean shipping a system designed for a single user: yes, most of the past systems were designed for one user, and one user only, as that was the market they were aiming for.
If, instead, you're talking about some application level security, such as outlook express using the preview, I remind you that a patched system is as important in windows as it is in unix: all major unix distributions ship with SSH enabled and unfirewalled, yet holes appear and must be fixed; windows is no different.
and on and on and on and...
Keep posting your complaints, I'm sure someone besides me will show you where your thinking is flawed...
what kind of focus group are they running anyway?
The kind that emphasizes simple interfaces for novice users, with the ability to tailor the operating system for advanced users, and advanced intellectual propterty tools for corporate environments. What kind of groups would you prefer, knowing that the product was going to be used by a huge, mainly unskilled market?
The increasing number of articles devoted to Microsoft is somewhat disturbing. It is evident to me that there are only two plausible explanations for this:
Microsoft has purchased VA Software and is using Slashdot for free advertising
Those running slashdot are more devoted to trying to find flaws in their 'enemy' than promoting the virtues of their cause.
It's clear to me that, much like most modern elections, the second is indeed the case. Rather than attempting to promote Linux and Open Source as worthwhile competitors, Slashdot and its parent company insist on attacking Microsoft. This attack has multiple fronts: Apple, Linux, and BSD are all praised.
The clear bias is seen in the promotion of Apple: Apple is every bit as proprietary as Microsoft, even going so far as to monopolize their hardware market and filing numerous lawsuits to combat those attempting to mimic their 'look and feel', something that even Microsoft does not attempt to do.
I propose that this site state its purpose: does it exist to provide news, or is it merely attempting to blast Microsoft in a selfish, childish, jealous manner?
As a content provider, I have the right to say how my information is provided. Furthermore, tools exist to allow me to exercise such a right. mod_rewrite is a powerful thing.
But of course your point still stands, this guy from Yale is a jackass.
He's actually come up with some brilliant ideas in the past. Nearly everyone in the theoretical side of computer science respects and admires his ideas. He's written some other material, I'd suggest looking into it. You can start with his chapter in Beyond Calculation. The description above is really a poor example of what he tries to do:
Through his pioneering work in distributed and parallel computing systems, Gelernter and his colleagues are laying the theoretical foundation for a third generation of personal computing. In this next generation, the Web will go beyond mere "fun and games" to become a ubiquitous, almost transparent presence in our everyday affairs, and the PC will change from an expensive box of wires into a collection of smaller digital tools designed to be electronic extensions of the human mind.
He's also done some "jackass" things like writing a language (Linda) for parallel programming.
Linux powering cash registers isn't much of a victory. This isn't an area where anyone notices, nor anyone cares, about things like usability: as long as it's stable and can do basic math, it works; things like fast VMs, threading, and all of the other things that make linux work well for servers are relatively useless in a cash register.
Those bastards! Not supporting Windows 95! How dare them end-of-life a 9 year old piece of software!
Nevermind the fact that Apple no longer supports anything other than OS X, and is planning on making most systems not boot into OS 9 after a date in the very near future.
Second, FreeBSD over linux, although I realize chances are that if someone actually tried it, it'd be done for linux first. A smaller, less bloated system for desktops rather than something to serve a hundred terminals would be nice.
Having separate userlands and kernels is a mess, and only linux is willing to deal with it. The rest of the unix world seems to realize that the kernel maintainers should also handle the basic userland applications.
That said, it's still time for someone to build a new UI server that isn't X. X is big, and X is nice for serving to a bunch of terminals, but it's a mess for desktop machines.
It isn't meant to prove anything. I actually LIKE microsoft, I just find it funny that the mass of readership here pretends to hate them for some undefined reason, as do the editors, yet the editors still run their ads in prominent locations.
If the editors/owners of this site had any moral fiber, they'd stand by their comments and not run Microsoft ads at all. It'd be a completely stupid business decision, but that would be the way true "Open source advocates" would handle the situation.
Microsoft employs hundreds of thousands of people. They pay these people a salary. A portion of each of these salaries goes directly to the government. Additionally, the corporation itself is responsible for a certain sum of money. The corporation chooses to pay a much larger sum to charities rather than paying it to the government. The money still ends up in the community, typically in a more targetted manner. I see no problem with this, especially when you realize that the sum of donations needed to offset their taxes is substantially more than the value of the taxes they'd be paying.
While I agree with most of what you said, I dislike tracking -stable.
It's far better to track the latest release. Setting the tag to "RELENG_4_7_0" would allow you to grab the exact sources used to build the 4.7 cd, AND any security updates as they come out.
Stable is fine, for home users, but some of the patches MFC'd aren't quite as stable as they should be for production equipment.
Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today?
on
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Many will argue that FreeBSD is still more stable than linux. That is debateable, but I think a case could be made either way. Much of the difference is due to preference (some of it is due to the dislike of the GPL by many, many people).
The advantages of FreeBSD over Linux is:
Complete control of ENTIRE operating system. With a few exceptions, tools in the base systems are BSD derived rather than GNU tools. This prevents the FSF people from calling it "GNU/FreeBSD", and allows the contributors to the operating system the ability to modify userland tools to better integrate with the kernel.
Incredibly well developed updating system. The CVSup setup employed by FreeBSD is simply unmatched by anything linux has. Yes, Redhat allows you to grab new kernel RPMs, and debian allows you to apt-get kernels, but FreeBSD is designed to be updated often ('updated' means the entire source heirarchy, if need by), and the system in place makes this possible. When you also consider that a single 'make buildworld' followed by an NFS mount, and multiple 'make installworld's on other machines can update an entire server farm to a custom built OS, you'll realize that linux can not compete with the level of customization that to which FreeBSD administrators have become acustomed.
Make tools that make developing nice. Things like <bsd.port.mk> et. al. have no rivals in the linux world. Creating kernel makefiles becomes trivial; a simple include statement handles 90% of the grunt work involved in writing makefiles.
Freedom from the GPL. Like it or not, most corporations do not want to give away all of their work to their competitors if they ever decide to release a product that required modification to the OS.
Yes, linux is nice... for the desktop. But I'd still prefer FreeBSD in the rack, or in any corporate situation.
Slashdot Mirror
how many times are we going to post the same 10 stories: microsoft is bad, linux is good, spam is bad, old cheap hardware is better than intel although worse than the more expensive and proprietary apple, intel is bad, amd is growing, commercial unix is having a hard time, dell is expanding, someone spent too much time modifying cheap hardware, someone needs to know something and is too lazy to look it up themselves.
Ironically, the thing that slashdot hates most, DRM, would have prevented it from occuring. The trojaned copy would have to be signed, and the signature would have to be compromised. It's typically far more difficult to compromise a cryptographic signature than it is a webserver. Once the signature showed up with a mismatch, DRM would stop execution, and the trojan would be useless.
I'm not an expert on the US constitution - anyone know what it has to say about this scam?
One of the main reasons for moving to the Constitution from the original Articles of Confederation was to give the national government the ability to regulate interstate commerce.
Initially, there was widespread, state sponsored price gouging. Items passing through one state on their way to another were taxed heavily upon entering and upon leaving. Many people saw this as ridiculous.
The Constitution gives the federal government the sole ability to tax interstate commerce. It's one of the few regulations specifically entitled to the national government: it is not now, and should not ever, be enforced by the states. It is likely that a clever lawyer could argue this either way: on one hand it's a set of states banding together to control commerce between states, on the other hand it's states enforcing commerce that either begins or ends in their jurisdiction.
If someone managed to challenge this, it's likely that a national system would be implemented. It's easier to justify a national tax than state-by-state, optional taxation.
Keep in mind that Warner Bros. has an ongoing campaign against p2p USERS.
There have been a number of people who's ISPs were contacted after Warner Bros. planted false video files (I've heard they were avi-like files claiming to be Lord of the Rings, supposedly capable of connecting to some WB site and sending system information - probably by manipulating the 'codec needed' tokens). Anyone who really wants to watch this in theaters should stay far, far away from this file on p2p networks.
Like Clippy and Bob
Novice users use Clippy.
and DRM
There is a market for protection of intellectual property. Just because you feel it can be used to keep you from pirating MP3s does not make it a bad thing.
and AutoCorrect
AutoCorrect is a great tool for people who write heavily and spell poorly. It can be turned off if you dislike it.
and menus that hide themselves
Again, this helps people with cluttered desktops. It's not the default, and it can be turned off if you dislike it.
and shuffling the start menu every other year
The start menu changed in XP. Before that, it was nearly constant since win95. Even with the change, it's still backwards compatible by changing into classic mode.
and poor default security
If by poor default security you mean installing IIS on win2k systems, you're wrong: that's not the default.
If by poor default security you mean shipping a system designed for a single user: yes, most of the past systems were designed for one user, and one user only, as that was the market they were aiming for.
If, instead, you're talking about some application level security, such as outlook express using the preview, I remind you that a patched system is as important in windows as it is in unix: all major unix distributions ship with SSH enabled and unfirewalled, yet holes appear and must be fixed; windows is no different.
and on and on and on and...
Keep posting your complaints, I'm sure someone besides me will show you where your thinking is flawed...
what kind of focus group are they running anyway?
The kind that emphasizes simple interfaces for novice users, with the ability to tailor the operating system for advanced users, and advanced intellectual propterty tools for corporate environments. What kind of groups would you prefer, knowing that the product was going to be used by a huge, mainly unskilled market?
It's clear to me that, much like most modern elections, the second is indeed the case. Rather than attempting to promote Linux and Open Source as worthwhile competitors, Slashdot and its parent company insist on attacking Microsoft. This attack has multiple fronts: Apple, Linux, and BSD are all praised.
The clear bias is seen in the promotion of Apple: Apple is every bit as proprietary as Microsoft, even going so far as to monopolize their hardware market and filing numerous lawsuits to combat those attempting to mimic their 'look and feel', something that even Microsoft does not attempt to do.
I propose that this site state its purpose: does it exist to provide news, or is it merely attempting to blast Microsoft in a selfish, childish, jealous manner?
I disagree.
As a content provider, I have the right to say how my information is provided. Furthermore, tools exist to allow me to exercise such a right. mod_rewrite is a powerful thing.
Since the editors are useless, I'll point out that it's the BMG (Bertelsmann music group), or EMI (a German recording company, NOT BMG).
There are in fact two different companies involved here: one who pioneered the protection, and one who has implemented it in their own CDs in Germany.
this guy from Yale is a jackass.
He's actually come up with some brilliant ideas in the past. Nearly everyone in the theoretical side of computer science respects and admires his ideas. He's written some other material, I'd suggest looking into it. You can start with his chapter in Beyond Calculation. The description above is really a poor example of what he tries to do:
He's also done some "jackass" things like writing a language (Linda) for parallel programming.
Additionally,
Linux powering cash registers isn't much of a victory. This isn't an area where anyone notices, nor anyone cares, about things like usability: as long as it's stable and can do basic math, it works; things like fast VMs, threading, and all of the other things that make linux work well for servers are relatively useless in a cash register.
Those bastards! Not supporting Windows 95! How dare them end-of-life a 9 year old piece of software!
Nevermind the fact that Apple no longer supports anything other than OS X, and is planning on making most systems not boot into OS 9 after a date in the very near future.
First, I said on top of, not in.
Second, FreeBSD over linux, although I realize chances are that if someone actually tried it, it'd be done for linux first. A smaller, less bloated system for desktops rather than something to serve a hundred terminals would be nice.
Well, welcome to the world of *bsd.
Having separate userlands and kernels is a mess, and only linux is willing to deal with it. The rest of the unix world seems to realize that the kernel maintainers should also handle the basic userland applications.
That said, it's still time for someone to build a new UI server that isn't X. X is big, and X is nice for serving to a bunch of terminals, but it's a mess for desktop machines.
That's a good point, and it's well known.
It's damn near time someone decided to scrap X and write KDE directly on top of the kernel.
Out of curiosity, what can't you change?
Things like tweakui change things most people never imagined.
You know how much it weighed on earth, as they loaded the vehicles that carried each piece to its current location.
Ldap over ssl can do passwords and authentication ... check out pam_ldap.
NIS is an ugly, ugly piece of software that needs to die, quickly. Spreading that mess on an otherwise secure system should be illegal.
You might consider rewording your argument to get rid of "posix systems". Windows 2000 is compliant with the POSIX 1003.1 standard.
.
source
The 'default functionality' of linux is a black and white, 80 character console.
That's fine for fixing things that are broken, but it's not fine for normal use.
Now compare 'turning off preview' with 'installing and configuring X, and window manager', and see where you come out.
It isn't meant to prove anything. I actually LIKE microsoft, I just find it funny that the mass of readership here pretends to hate them for some undefined reason, as do the editors, yet the editors still run their ads in prominent locations.
If the editors/owners of this site had any moral fiber, they'd stand by their comments and not run Microsoft ads at all. It'd be a completely stupid business decision, but that would be the way true "Open source advocates" would handle the situation.
I offer you the following picture.
Here.
Microsoft employs hundreds of thousands of people. They pay these people a salary. A portion of each of these salaries goes directly to the government. Additionally, the corporation itself is responsible for a certain sum of money. The corporation chooses to pay a much larger sum to charities rather than paying it to the government. The money still ends up in the community, typically in a more targetted manner. I see no problem with this, especially when you realize that the sum of donations needed to offset their taxes is substantially more than the value of the taxes they'd be paying.
While I agree with most of what you said, I dislike tracking -stable.
It's far better to track the latest release. Setting the tag to "RELENG_4_7_0" would allow you to grab the exact sources used to build the 4.7 cd, AND any security updates as they come out.
Stable is fine, for home users, but some of the patches MFC'd aren't quite as stable as they should be for production equipment.
The advantages of FreeBSD over Linux is:
Yes, linux is nice