Just try and buy Mac software at Fry's Electronics. It can't be done. Try finding good help for Macs at CompUSA. Can't be done. That's a monopoly thing.
Incidentally the unavailability of Mac software and hardware at many retail outlets has less to do with Microsoft than with the demented control-freak way that Apple handles their distribution network.
I worked for a retail outlet which was an authorized Apple dealer, but this required a certain minimum amount of sales (reasonable enough in and of itself). Apple gave a massive discount to the local university, thus allowing the university to undercut all their dealers. Then, right when they were gearing up to sell the iMac, they suddenly jerked the rug out from under us, leaving no other Apple distributor but the university in the area, and that distributor only dealt to people associated with the university, which was the primary market for Macs.
Thus, NOBODY within a fifty mile radius could get one of the damn things without the nightmare of dealing directly with Apple. Further, if they got them, nobody within a hundred miles could do the SERVICE for them. Scenarios like this played out all over the country. Hence, a fantastic product which should have seized a significant chunk of market share back from the PC manufacturers is now, like the rest of Apple's products, just another niche market for Mac bigots.
This isn't the only insanely stupid thing Apple has done. Any other company that acted like this would be long out of business, and only because their products are so great have they been able to continue to exist even in a niche market.
Alright. Before this post gets hit as flamebait, let me make my point. A corporation, even if it has 100% of the target audiance buying from it, is not a monopoly until there aren't competitors.
Not true.
monopoly n. a business or inter-related group of businesses which controls so much of the production or sale of a product or kind of product as to control the market, including prices and distribution. Rest of definition here at law.com.
This does not preclude there being competitors, just involves control of the market. In any case, Microsoft isn't being broken up for "being a monopoly." Being a monopoly does not violate the law in and of itself. Microsoft is being broken up for violating the Sherman Act as well as other similar state laws governing the conduct of corporations.
Will this benefit the Linux community? Probably not as much as all the diode-heads on here think. Linux and open source is still run by a bunch of techies. There is too much for your average MBA/CEO/CFO to grok now that they are used to doing it the MS way.
I remember first using the Internet in 1989. I had been vaguely aware it existed before then, but didn't have access. People on Usenet were still arguing about the "Great Renaming." There was a huge prono ftp site at ftp.funet.fi. (The site still exists at ftp.funet.fi but I think without prono.) talk.bizarre was raiding rec.arts.startrek. You get the idea. (Interestingly I didn't even notice the WWW until 1995 and even then continued to ignore it for another couple years because I thought it was just a huge waste of bandwidth and it pissed me off and gopher was faster anyway.)
I'd tell non-geeks about this Internet thing and as soon as I'd mention downloading things from Finland and Japan and other countries the immediate assumption was that I had to be doing something illegal or that I was just making the whole thing up. Nobody would buy the idea, or see that it was useful, and some would even outright deny that it was possible. I'd tell them in twenty years they'd have it in their house and they'd look at me like I was a nut.
Now my mom sends me email.
I think Linux and other such software is going this way, too. Mandrake and other simplified installations are a step in this direction. Right now the cluebies and other pointy-hairs can't even imagine using such a thing, but in ten years they won't be able to imagine not having it.
Proprietary software will also continue to exist where it is advantageous to have it, but like BBSes and other top-down hierarchical distribution networks, will have its dominance destroyed.
"If you open up a McDonald's franchise, you can't go on national TV and say McDonald's food sucks, and expect to still be running a McDonald's the next day." Same thing.
There is an increasingly distressing tendency of people these days to make a flawed analogy and then announce "same thing" as if the two things are identical. This is what the license says:
Please review the following terms and conditions carefully. This Agreement is a legally binding contract between you ("You") and Apogee Software Ltd., a/k/a 3D Realms, ("Apogee") regarding your access to and use of its web site (the "Site"), as well as your use of Apogee's various games (collectively, the "Property"), the information contained therein and its copyright and trademark policies.
In other words, you are agreeing to this "contract" by looking at their web site. It is not at all like agreeing not to badmouth McDonalds if you become a franchisee.
It is more like agreeing that you won't badmouth McDonalds by the very act of buying one of their burgers, or even walking past a McDonalds and looking up at their signs.
I also totally don't buy their claim of not planning on enforcing such a contract term if it so suits them. Even if the people in charge now wouldn't do such a thing, it's entirely possible it will be bought out by people who would have no compunction of doing it.
You'd have to be insane to attempt to enforce such a clause, as the resultant bad publicity would make you entirely despised, but there are lots of insane and stupid people out there and a disturbing number of them are in charge of corporations.
I'm sure some lawyer somewhere would be thrilled to do any stupid-ass crazy corporate thug-stomping heavy routine that paid in money. In any case, it won't be companies that produce good products that will attempt to use such terms. It will be thuggish crook operations that sell toxic or dangerous garbage and don't want it exposed. Scientology interestingly enough has such a gag contract on anyone receiving their "services" but even they have never been crazy enough to try to enforce it with a lawsuit.
In conclusion, I am aware of that terms of use document, I used the page it's on, thus by their reasoning "agreeing" to it, and Apogee sucks dick. Duke Nukem is a child molestor. Apogee can lick my Balls of Steel.
I don't consider such a contract binding even by current law, as unlike a "click-through" you can access it without even seeing it, as it's hidden in a little link on the bottom. Imagine a company distributing "reviewer copies" of a book and saying you couldn't give the book a bum rap!
I think that the Appellate judges (or the Supremes, if the 3 judge ct is skipped) will send it back down. Hopefully Jackson will keel over with heart failure in the meantime.
IANAD. I think Judge Jackson will disappoint you in his continuing robust health.
IANAL, either, but I agree that the appeals court will probably send it back. My bet is "affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded."
I'm almost certain those evidentiary hearings Jackson denied will be required. I think the Judge was pissed enough. I don't think the breakup plan is fatally defective, though, but four months is too short a time to split it up.
Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces
Note the squirrelly use of "Timely Manner." In a normal legal document this might mean something. I think Microsoft will likely interpret "Timely Manner" as meaning oh, some time after the product isn't even sold any more. Perhaps they will start by providing DOS 1.0.
I say nothing but good can come of breaking up Microsoft.
I'd disagree somewhat with this. I think in the long run the result of breaking up Microsoft will be good, but in the short run it is bound to be a pain in the ass, much as was the breakup of AT & T.
Microsoft has made clear that they are going to fight this tooth-and-nail and keep fighting. Even after a breakup is ordered they will no doubt keep trying to find sneaky ways to slow down the breakup, sneakily make IP licensing deals between companies, and probably even outright break the law and ignore the order whenever they feel like it.
Microsoft previously signed a consent decree agreeing not to do precisely what they went and did. Their contempt for the law and their arrogance is unbridled, and we can expect more of the same.
What's silly is that it isn't even money that's being fought over at this point, because the two companies will still have staggering revenues once everything stabilizes. What they are fighting for is POWER. They want to be the sole arbiter of what occurs on a computer desktop, and this is a reflection of Bill Gates' megalomania.
Where to get the hydrogen from? Either bring it along, or collect it along the way.
You could use a modified Bussard ramjet to collect hydrogen along the way. I'm not sure how much you'd get within the solar system, but probably more than in interstellar space.
Some sort of genetically engineered plant or algae would be more realistic for planetary alterations, although mass water supplies would be likely required for this type of operation.
For the water, you can always whack Mars with a decent-sized icy comet, perhaps at the poles where it might release some of the frozen ice caps as well.
Also, if you manage to give it enough CO2, you can always use a population of anaerobic bacteria to turn that into oxygen, which will then poison the anaerobes and leave you with oxygen. (Of course that will leave you with some nasty anaerobes living in odd places and infesting your canned goods with things like botulism, but with care this could perhaps be avoided.)
Lynch has disavowed the TV extended version to the point that it says "an Alan Smithee film" in reference to the Director's Guild pseudonym that is used when a film is abused by the studio w/o the director's consent.
Furthermore, every executive at Apogee participates in nightly Satanic rituals involving sucking Satan's cock.
Apogee JDETM blows chunks, and for that matter blows me.
Their Windows CE Toolkits are complete garbage, as are the human garbage that owns the trademark.
It has been alleged that the Apogee trademark itself has been seen in disreputable bars at night, partaking in lines of cocaine and ketamine before attending all-night raves where children are molested and Microsoft products installed.
How is it that third-party candidates are viewed by the public as "throwing away your vote"[...]?
Because the public is a bunch of fscking idiots! That is why any pure form of democracy is a pure form of insanity.
The public thinks that way because they are easily-brainwashed, easily-led, and have been told that by the two major parties so long they can't think for themselves.
How would an organization keep their die-hard supporters from moderating contrary positions into oblivion [...]?
It wouldn't. You would as a result have gangs on opposing web forums organizing late-night invasions onto each other's forums to post insulting comments, spam, trolls and gibberish. They might even have a few moles be karma whores for a while so that they could moderate their posts up when the invasion hit.
Then the web forums would massively censor the invaders, who would retreat back to their own website to denounce the 'fascists' who kicked them off.
Slashdot would have an article on it, thus slashdotting the server. More invasions would occur. A month later there would be a CNN story.
Then there would be complete anarchy. Ain't it cool?
I have to say that I view it as entirely unlikely that either of the two major parties will ever adopt such a system. The only thing that would encourage them to do so would be a third party actually making significant inroads into their voter base, or significantly altering the outcome of a close election.
What do you think of the ability of an "Internet candidate" to get enough of the sit-on-your-ass-bitching population of the Internet mobilized to do anything useful? And how will such a candidate get enough "real world" support to create a significant (think Perot-sized) influence on the electoral process?
The two major parties have been known to adopt rhetoric and positions from prominent independents, but how will a web site achieve this, no matter how well it is designed?
(I'd think a good small move in this direction would be for ANY candidate to run a slashdot-style forum and answer questions on it; but then I'd also like to make a fortune selling the monkeys flying out of my ass.)
I have this mental image of little bits travelling to the outer reaches of India, saying "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."
There are probably places in India where they don't even have railroad tracks. I recommend they implement RFC-1149 technology there. [That's A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.]
A "virtual conflict" or a "virtual war" simply does not exist: it's a contradiction in terms.
If it were only virtual, it would not be a war. However, every war, from primitive times onward, has had an informational component.
Book 13 of Sun-Tzu is all about information. Wars are won not by defeating opponents but by defeating their will to fight, or their belief that victory is possible.
It is also won by degrading the enemy's public image to the point that other nations fear being seen as supporting them, thus depriving them of the matériel needed to continue a war.
America currently bases its military strategy almost entirely on the PR value of doing so. If America successfully creates an image of having won a war, then they have, for all they care, won the war.
I tend to think this will backfire on the US, especially when dealing with fanatics who have memories that last centuries, whereas the American public seems to have a memory that lasts until the next commercial.
Incidentally the US is not alone in this dangerous habit. Here's an interesting story about the propaganda efforts by NATO in the Serbian war, and how readily the mass media swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
"The honest truth is that having a lot of people staring at the code does not find the really nasty bugs. The really nasty bugs are found by a couple of really smart people who just kill themselves."
This is true. And anyone who thinks Open Source is some kind of mystical thing that will magically create some kind of mythical "perfect software" is deluded.
But the number of those really smart people is limited. The more eyes look at it, the higher the chance that one of these rare geniuses will be one of them. If there are, say, 0.1% of programmers (to be generous) who can find a subtle bug, then obviously there will be more of these in a sample of a few million than in the population of a small or even large corporation.
So I look at it this way. Is there any chance in hell that I could find a really hairy bug? No way. Am I glad that the ones who can do so have the source code? Definitely.
I can't believe the idiots who are commenting that these two cases somehow "prove" that Open Source is unworkable. In one of these cases, the original author found bugs, then admitted to them and fixed the product.
In the other, PGP key-generation in ONE version was not very random if you used/dev/random by invoking PGP key-generation non-interactively. Who the hell does that anyway?
One bug, in one version of one software package, that only affects one family of OSes in one specific circumstance, isn't proof of jack. And in BOTH these cases, the bugs are now fixed. Can you imagine Microsoft discovering a bug on their own initiative and then fixing it without customer complaints?
If anything, the fact that there have been only a few minor bugs discovered in PGP is testament to its robustness. DES was insecure for YEARS and the government knew it and deliberately did nothing. That was done by the "professionals" these anti-Open Source fanatics are gibbering about.
Fuck these fools. Let them go guy Enigma-based encryption systems from the government, use DES and load Windows 2000 on all their machines, they'll be getting what they deserve.
Slashdot Mirror
Just try and buy Mac software at Fry's Electronics. It can't be done. Try finding good help for Macs at CompUSA. Can't be done. That's a monopoly thing.
Incidentally the unavailability of Mac software and hardware at many retail outlets has less to do with Microsoft than with the demented control-freak way that Apple handles their distribution network.
I worked for a retail outlet which was an authorized Apple dealer, but this required a certain minimum amount of sales (reasonable enough in and of itself). Apple gave a massive discount to the local university, thus allowing the university to undercut all their dealers. Then, right when they were gearing up to sell the iMac, they suddenly jerked the rug out from under us, leaving no other Apple distributor but the university in the area, and that distributor only dealt to people associated with the university, which was the primary market for Macs.
Thus, NOBODY within a fifty mile radius could get one of the damn things without the nightmare of dealing directly with Apple. Further, if they got them, nobody within a hundred miles could do the SERVICE for them. Scenarios like this played out all over the country. Hence, a fantastic product which should have seized a significant chunk of market share back from the PC manufacturers is now, like the rest of Apple's products, just another niche market for Mac bigots.
This isn't the only insanely stupid thing Apple has done. Any other company that acted like this would be long out of business, and only because their products are so great have they been able to continue to exist even in a niche market.
Not true.
monopoly n. a business or inter-related group of businesses which controls so much of the production or sale of a product or kind of product as to control the market, including prices and distribution.
Rest of definition here at law.com.
This does not preclude there being competitors, just involves control of the market. In any case, Microsoft isn't being broken up for "being a monopoly." Being a monopoly does not violate the law in and of itself. Microsoft is being broken up for violating the Sherman Act as well as other similar state laws governing the conduct of corporations.
Will this benefit the Linux community? Probably not as much as all the diode-heads on here think. Linux and open source is still run by a bunch of techies. There is too much for your average MBA/CEO/CFO to grok now that they are used to doing it the MS way.
I remember first using the Internet in 1989. I had been vaguely aware it existed before then, but didn't have access. People on Usenet were still arguing about the "Great Renaming." There was a huge prono ftp site at ftp.funet.fi. (The site still exists at ftp.funet.fi but I think without prono.) talk.bizarre was raiding rec.arts.startrek. You get the idea. (Interestingly I didn't even notice the WWW until 1995 and even then continued to ignore it for another couple years because I thought it was just a huge waste of bandwidth and it pissed me off and gopher was faster anyway.)
I'd tell non-geeks about this Internet thing and as soon as I'd mention downloading things from Finland and Japan and other countries the immediate assumption was that I had to be doing something illegal or that I was just making the whole thing up. Nobody would buy the idea, or see that it was useful, and some would even outright deny that it was possible. I'd tell them in twenty years they'd have it in their house and they'd look at me like I was a nut.
Now my mom sends me email.
I think Linux and other such software is going this way, too. Mandrake and other simplified installations are a step in this direction. Right now the cluebies and other pointy-hairs can't even imagine using such a thing, but in ten years they won't be able to imagine not having it.
Proprietary software will also continue to exist where it is advantageous to have it, but like BBSes and other top-down hierarchical distribution networks, will have its dominance destroyed.
"If you open up a McDonald's franchise, you can't go on national TV and say McDonald's food sucks, and expect to still be running a McDonald's the next day." Same thing.
There is an increasingly distressing tendency of people these days to make a flawed analogy and then announce "same thing" as if the two things are identical. This is what the license says:
Please review the following terms and conditions carefully. This Agreement is a legally binding contract between you ("You") and Apogee Software Ltd., a/k/a 3D Realms, ("Apogee") regarding your access to and use of its web site (the "Site"), as well as your use of Apogee's various games (collectively, the "Property"), the information contained therein and its copyright and trademark policies.
In other words, you are agreeing to this "contract" by looking at their web site. It is not at all like agreeing not to badmouth McDonalds if you become a franchisee.
It is more like agreeing that you won't badmouth McDonalds by the very act of buying one of their burgers, or even walking past a McDonalds and looking up at their signs.
I also totally don't buy their claim of not planning on enforcing such a contract term if it so suits them. Even if the people in charge now wouldn't do such a thing, it's entirely possible it will be bought out by people who would have no compunction of doing it.
You'd have to be insane to attempt to enforce such a clause, as the resultant bad publicity would make you entirely despised, but there are lots of insane and stupid people out there and a disturbing number of them are in charge of corporations.
I'm sure some lawyer somewhere would be thrilled to do any stupid-ass crazy corporate thug-stomping heavy routine that paid in money. In any case, it won't be companies that produce good products that will attempt to use such terms. It will be thuggish crook operations that sell toxic or dangerous garbage and don't want it exposed. Scientology interestingly enough has such a gag contract on anyone receiving their "services" but even they have never been crazy enough to try to enforce it with a lawsuit.
In conclusion, I am aware of that terms of use document, I used the page it's on, thus by their reasoning "agreeing" to it, and Apogee sucks dick. Duke Nukem is a child molestor. Apogee can lick my Balls of Steel.
I don't consider such a contract binding even by current law, as unlike a "click-through" you can access it without even seeing it, as it's hidden in a little link on the bottom. Imagine a company distributing "reviewer copies" of a book and saying you couldn't give the book a bum rap!
That's BS. If you are running Windows you are already running core components of IE.
I think that the Appellate judges (or the Supremes, if the 3 judge ct is skipped) will send it back down. Hopefully Jackson will keel over with heart failure in the meantime.
IANAD. I think Judge Jackson will disappoint you in his continuing robust health.
IANAL, either, but I agree that the appeals court will probably send it back. My bet is "affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded."
I'm almost certain those evidentiary hearings Jackson denied will be required. I think the Judge was pissed enough. I don't think the breakup plan is fatally defective, though, but four months is too short a time to split it up.
Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces
Note the squirrelly use of "Timely Manner." In a normal legal document this might mean something. I think Microsoft will likely interpret "Timely Manner" as meaning oh, some time after the product isn't even sold any more. Perhaps they will start by providing DOS 1.0.
I say nothing but good can come of breaking up Microsoft.
I'd disagree somewhat with this. I think in the long run the result of breaking up Microsoft will be good, but in the short run it is bound to be a pain in the ass, much as was the breakup of AT & T.
Microsoft has made clear that they are going to fight this tooth-and-nail and keep fighting. Even after a breakup is ordered they will no doubt keep trying to find sneaky ways to slow down the breakup, sneakily make IP licensing deals between companies, and probably even outright break the law and ignore the order whenever they feel like it.
Microsoft previously signed a consent decree agreeing not to do precisely what they went and did. Their contempt for the law and their arrogance is unbridled, and we can expect more of the same.
What's silly is that it isn't even money that's being fought over at this point, because the two companies will still have staggering revenues once everything stabilizes. What they are fighting for is POWER. They want to be the sole arbiter of what occurs on a computer desktop, and this is a reflection of Bill Gates' megalomania.
Where to get the hydrogen from? Either bring it along, or collect it along the way.
You could use a modified Bussard ramjet to collect hydrogen along the way. I'm not sure how much you'd get within the solar system, but probably more than in interstellar space.
Some sort of genetically engineered plant or algae would be more realistic for planetary alterations, although mass water supplies would be likely required for this type of operation.
For the water, you can always whack Mars with a decent-sized icy comet, perhaps at the poles where it might release some of the frozen ice caps as well.
Also, if you manage to give it enough CO2, you can always use a population of anaerobic bacteria to turn that into oxygen, which will then poison the anaerobes and leave you with oxygen. (Of course that will leave you with some nasty anaerobes living in odd places and infesting your canned goods with things like botulism, but with care this could perhaps be avoided.)
Lynch has disavowed the TV extended version to the point that it says "an Alan Smithee film" in reference to the Director's Guild pseudonym that is used when a film is abused by the studio w/o the director's consent.
That's interesting. Harlan Ellison uses the pseudonym "Cordwainer Bird" for the same purpose.
They might have to search his car, too, and all his clothes
Don't forget the full-body cavity search! He might just have a beowulf cluster of wearables rammed up his ass.
I'll be happy to see you in jail
Why, has it been lonely for you in jail since your last lover was released?
I don't know which trademark was the one I saw exiting a bar, obviously drunk.
Furthermore, every executive at Apogee participates in nightly Satanic rituals involving sucking Satan's cock.
Apogee JDETM blows chunks, and for that matter blows me.
Their Windows CE Toolkits are complete garbage, as are the human garbage that owns the trademark.
It has been alleged that the Apogee trademark itself has been seen in disreputable bars at night, partaking in lines of cocaine and ketamine before attending all-night raves where children are molested and Microsoft products installed.
Apogee Apogee Apogee Apogee. IHNJ, IJLS Apogee.
Sue me or shut the fuck up, Apogee.
How is it that third-party candidates are viewed by the public as "throwing away your vote"[...]?
Because the public is a bunch of fscking idiots! That is why any pure form of democracy is a pure form of insanity.
The public thinks that way because they are easily-brainwashed, easily-led, and have been told that by the two major parties so long they can't think for themselves.
How would an organization keep their die-hard supporters from moderating contrary positions into oblivion [...]?
It wouldn't. You would as a result have gangs on opposing web forums organizing late-night invasions onto each other's forums to post insulting comments, spam, trolls and gibberish. They might even have a few moles be karma whores for a while so that they could moderate their posts up when the invasion hit.
Then the web forums would massively censor the invaders, who would retreat back to their own website to denounce the 'fascists' who kicked them off.
Slashdot would have an article on it, thus slashdotting the server. More invasions would occur. A month later there would be a CNN story.
Then there would be complete anarchy. Ain't it cool?
I have to say that I view it as entirely unlikely that either of the two major parties will ever adopt such a system. The only thing that would encourage them to do so would be a third party actually making significant inroads into their voter base, or significantly altering the outcome of a close election.
What do you think of the ability of an "Internet candidate" to get enough of the sit-on-your-ass-bitching population of the Internet mobilized to do anything useful? And how will such a candidate get enough "real world" support to create a significant (think Perot-sized) influence on the electoral process?
The two major parties have been known to adopt rhetoric and positions from prominent independents, but how will a web site achieve this, no matter how well it is designed?
(I'd think a good small move in this direction would be for ANY candidate to run a slashdot-style forum and answer questions on it; but then I'd also like to make a fortune selling the monkeys flying out of my ass.)
the dam thing get slashdotted enough, thanks CmdrTaco. (joking).
wearables% uptime
6:56pm up 73 days, 20:43, 4 users, load average: 1.08, 1.16, 1.17
Not bad. (I had thought it was crashed earlier.)
"Hey you got the check out slash dot, they have a web server running from inside some dead guy"
Gives a new meaning to the term "dead connection." I know you'd freak out some poor field service guy sent to a cemetery ;-)
I have this mental image of little bits travelling to the outer reaches of India, saying "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."
There are probably places in India where they don't even have railroad tracks. I recommend they implement RFC-1149 technology there. [That's A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers.]
A "virtual conflict" or a "virtual war" simply does not exist: it's a contradiction in terms.
If it were only virtual, it would not be a war. However, every war, from primitive times onward, has had an informational component.
Book 13 of Sun-Tzu is all about information. Wars are won not by defeating opponents but by defeating their will to fight, or their belief that victory is possible.
It is also won by degrading the enemy's public image to the point that other nations fear being seen as supporting them, thus depriving them of the matériel needed to continue a war.
America currently bases its military strategy almost entirely on the PR value of doing so. If America successfully creates an image of having won a war, then they have, for all they care, won the war.
I tend to think this will backfire on the US, especially when dealing with fanatics who have memories that last centuries, whereas the American public seems to have a memory that lasts until the next commercial.
Incidentally the US is not alone in this dangerous habit. Here's an interesting story about the propaganda efforts by NATO in the Serbian war, and how readily the mass media swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Bill Joy said:
"The honest truth is that having a lot of people staring at the code does not find the really nasty bugs. The really nasty bugs are found by a couple of really smart people who just kill themselves."
This is true. And anyone who thinks Open Source is some kind of mystical thing that will magically create some kind of mythical "perfect software" is deluded.
But the number of those really smart people is limited. The more eyes look at it, the higher the chance that one of these rare geniuses will be one of them. If there are, say, 0.1% of programmers (to be generous) who can find a subtle bug, then obviously there will be more of these in a sample of a few million than in the population of a small or even large corporation.
So I look at it this way. Is there any chance in hell that I could find a really hairy bug? No way. Am I glad that the ones who can do so have the source code? Definitely.
I challenge you to find a security bug in any version of VMS past 4. Here's one in 7.1.
You can't post to Slashdot about the security hole you found in VMS because there _are_ no security holes in VMS.
You are a trolling MORON.
How about this hole?
That's a 1998 one, after years of OpenVMS, in one of the most basic parts of the security structure. You don't think there are others out there?
I can't believe the idiots who are commenting that these two cases somehow "prove" that Open Source is unworkable. In one of these cases, the original author found bugs, then admitted to them and fixed the product.
In the other, PGP key-generation in ONE version was not very random if you used /dev/random by invoking PGP key-generation non-interactively. Who the hell does that anyway?
One bug, in one version of one software package, that only affects one family of OSes in one specific circumstance, isn't proof of jack. And in BOTH these cases, the bugs are now fixed. Can you imagine Microsoft discovering a bug on their own initiative and then fixing it without customer complaints?
If anything, the fact that there have been only a few minor bugs discovered in PGP is testament to its robustness. DES was insecure for YEARS and the government knew it and deliberately did nothing. That was done by the "professionals" these anti-Open Source fanatics are gibbering about.
Fuck these fools. Let them go guy Enigma-based encryption systems from the government, use DES and load Windows 2000 on all their machines, they'll be getting what they deserve.