Linus has, thus far, been abso-fucking-loutely scary in choosing what and who is relevant in regards to the Linux kernel. I'm rather frightened by this, but I trust Linus is not a n00b, and realises the implications of his decisions.
There comes a time when the one who wears the crown is forced to realise that the kingdom is better off with a new leader, and ignores this fact to his peril. I pray that Mr. Torvalds has the wisdom and humility to pass on the torch when that time comes.
BIND 9 and the DNS server portion of Microsoft Active Directory(TM) already have this - they're call srv records. Check the RFC or see for yourself here.
I'm giving up mod points to try and dispell what seems to me a sensationalised headline.
Alan Cox is not showing disrespect to Linus here, read the whole quote:
"Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer," said Cox. "I'm sure he would agree with that."
Alan and Linus have been working together for a very long time, so I'm sure Linus wouldn't give this statement a second thought. Each must know they compliment the other and make the whole of the Linux kernel better - even if they have the odd disagreement - or the kernel would have been truly forked (no pun intended) a long time ago. As it is, they work together on patches and ideas. We don't have much to worry about, I think, since Linus' sense of who's a good dev and who fits into his team well is uncanny.
No kidding. Hey, let's put Carnivore to good use for once - let's put this into terms that will send a red flag up over Washington:
Think about the following, in terms of being a terrorist, or just someone who wants to gain illegal entry into a country un-noticed:
With a W-2 (which is a statement of income for last year, I presume, like a T4 in Canada where I live) you now have:
- A valid name of a US Citizen - That citizen's SSN - thier place of employment complete with job title - last years earnings, which should allow you to look the part if you decide to impersonate them - thier home address
All of this put together would allow for the easy forging of identiy papers. Yup, it could allow a terrorist un-fettered entry into the US with a great degree of anonymity and secrecy.
I don't get it. IBM seems to have some massive aversion to Wine.
Stop thinking purely as a techie/develper for a second, will you? THINK for a second about the whole, big picture, not just implications for developers.
IBM is pushing Linux, has it's own line of pretty nice processors and just sold off it's PC division. And now they want native ports of applications to thier chosen OS and platform. Hmmmmm...
I'm no business genius by any stretch, but do you see any place for Wintel in the picture that's being painted?
IF you RTFA, you would see that Judge Kimball is trying to have this case sealed tight at it's end. He doesn't want SCO turning into a legal zombie and winning a chance at appeal, even though it's really dead. He wants them in a hermetically sealed coffin and thrown into the bowels of the earth.
This guys is there to refute the claims. I honestly do not expect him to say anything that we haven't heard before.
I started composing a question, then I came to my senses. Mr. Taylor's job is to spin issues into marketing plusses for Windows, not have a real, frank discussion on what problems we techie types have with Microsoft, Windows or whatever. In fact, some smartass will be able to sum up the reply thread this way:
Mr.Taylor:/*Marketing Spin!!!!/*
and not be innacurate. Microsoft's culture is one of paranoia, where if another vendor gets a single cent from selling a competing product, Microsofties take it as a threat to thier existance. I don't expect him to say anything except "Hey, linux is great, but Windows is better/*Marketing Spin/*, which is what he gets paid to do.
I disagree. Security, in the traditional sense of the word, means that a major portion of e-mail functionality would be lost.
E-mail - for that matter, even the telephone system - is a random, anonymous contact system. What I mean by that is that you don't know where, when or whom is going to contact you via e-mail, and it's supposed to function that way. You can't secure your system against anonymous contacts or one of the design intents of the system fails.
IOW, SMTP, though it could be much better, isn't truly the core of the problem. It's establishing beforehand whom you wish to speak to before they want to speak to you.
Also, Solaris is the Sun Branded Product. OpenSolaris is the Open source Solaris. Further down the track, Solaris (the Sun Branded Product) will be sourced from a snapshot of OpenSolaris.
Fair 'nuf. Thanks for clearing that up.
Please don't fall victim to the conspiacy (sic) theories.
I haven't yet. I know Sun is trying. When they've tried for a while and not attacked anyone in the FOSS community, I'll likley change my tune.
Yeah, OK, RedHat are slime for not directing people directly to the SRPMS. Thing is, they are only required to give those SRPMS to those they distribute RHEL AS 3 to. They are following what the GPL prescribes. BTW:
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/rhel/AS3/i386/
^^^ There you go. 5 minutes on google to find 'em, and not a "Take That Down!!!" letter in sight.
Soko
Re:Well, so much for the warm fuzzies.
on
Solaris 10 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Trust RedHat? More than Sun. All of RedHat's products are published under the GPL. The license is Free, as in speech. I can even download the SRPMS if I wish, without paying them a dime.
Sure, I need to pay for support for each copy I run, but there's other distros out there that will run most anything RHEL does if they piss me off enough. Fedora is also a RedHat sponsored project, and for that they don't really care how many machines I, as an end user or developer, deploy. They appreciate the bug reports I send them though.
If the app I want is only certified on RedHat, it's a commercial app, and I might as well use Solaris if I'm going the proprietary route anyway.
Maybe I am being paranoid, but I can't shake the feeling that Sun is "playing the OSS game" - they don't want to participate in the community, they're playing games to see how much of the OSS community's strength they can steal.
When will I trust them? When they either GPL Open Solaris or make it plain as plain can be that they will not use thier patents against any OSS developer - even RedHat.
Soko
Well, so much for the warm fuzzies.
on
Solaris 10 Released
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
From the download page:
LEGAL NOTICE: To receive your free Solaris 10 license, you must register all machines upon which you are installing Solaris 10 and receive an Entitlement Document. Registration is performed in the download process, and the Entitlement Document is returned to you via email.
This is Free Software? OK, it's thier stuff, they can require me to do this, but I'm even less trusting of them than I was before.
Someone please corect me if it's a diffrence between OpenSolaris and Solaris proper.
No. Anything that is reacheable from our universe is, by definition, part of the universe.
Well, the webserver is, at this exact point in time in this universe, unreachable. If your definition is assumed to be correct, that server is not part of this universe.
That would mean that the Slashdot Effect can blow a server to an alternate universe (or at least give it an alternate quantum state).
Sounds like most people would spend it drinking beer.
Actually, I've seen many technical problems solved by having a Friday afternoon beer with my colleagues and just chatting a bit about the issue. I think it may be that we were more relaxed, or the change of venue or something, but the right synapses finally activated and you just knew you had the answer.
It's not easy explaining to the boss on Monday why you're working on a server referring to notes on a beer-stained napkin, but the results are usually worth it.
"The marketing people are so bad at hyping their products that, with all my experience, I'll have to read and reread and reread just to figure out what this thing does," says Freedman, founder of The Computer Language Company Inc. in Point Pleasant, Pa.
I don't even bother with marketing materials any more. I google for "$PRODUCT problem resolved" or somesuch.
My personal opinion is that marketers should be legally liable for making false or even potetially misleading statements. I implemented a BI/Broker (A Business Intelligence package, if you'll excuse the oxymoron) install, all the while knowing that the thing was essentially worthless without us puting in the intelligence that the thing needed. A simple spreadsheet would have done the same, with less hardware/software/programing. It was OMG Cool to the buzz-word compliant people though, since the marketing weenies did such a good job of hood winking senior management. In the end, the company used 1/4 of the systems functionality, and the rest was done by spreadsheet. Go figure.
Really, I wonder how 'scaleable' the marketers personal wallets are, after I've spent my employers money of a product that only does half the job I thought it would, and I can recover costs because they lied.
Marketing is lies, more lies and damned lies in a pretty package so you'll put your money and reputation on the line. The whole premise is to extract money from your companies shareholders and give it to thier shareholders. Remember that the next time a sales weenie takes you out for lunch.
So you're saying that the firewall should be implemented in the IP stack.
No, he's saying that a proper IP stack will not respond to a request for service from a TCP/UDP port that has no service listening to it on that machine. I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of the statement, but I'm pretty sure XP does this as prescribed.
Whether the firewall is a separate service or whether it is built into the networking stack or whether it is a separate machine sitting at the root of the network, a firewall is needed.
Yes, for any external communications, a firewall (and encrypted links if you want to be picky) is a neccesity, and has been for quite some time. SP2 finally provided a firewall on by default, and gives the average user a fighting chance.
If you are cleaning out "mal|spy|ad-ware SP2 machines every day", you work with idiots. Or perhaps you are the idiot to continue working with them. Either way, I'm glad I don't work where you work.
I'm a BOFH. I work with lusers. Lusers are SpongeBob Squarepants without the personality. They are un-intelligent generally, but more so when it comes to computers. They don't know about computer security, nor do they care, since it's not thier job to administrate thier machine. The luser should be able to log on, go about it's business and not concern itself with what is in my prevue - making sure our comapnies data is safe.
Now, the problem XP, Win2K and NT present is that I, as an intelligent, responsible admin, do all that I can to prevent security issues and they still occur regularily, despite my best efforts. In order to be truly protected, I'd need to remove some of the machines functionality, which kinda removes the point of having the bloody PC there in the first place.
When I need to teach a luser how spyware gets on to thier XP SP2 machine - firewall and all - in order to try and prevent that event from happening is when I begin to question how much value XP really provides.
How dare you try to protect your own secrets??!!?!? Information wants to be free, you...you...capitalist!!!
Once I buy a device, any secrets on it are, or should be, mine too. IOW, I want to know what's inside my new gizmo, or at least have the option of finding out. So I know my secrets are protected too, amongst other things.
I don't think this will go terribly far - most people will find out that they can't do what they want on these types of devices (legal or otherwise) and stay away. I sure won't buy or reccommend any device like this, and my opinion about tech is trusted by many people.
The only hope this has is to be pushed through legislatively, which is a true nightmare scenario. IOW, it's not information wanting to be free, it's people wanting things thier way. IMHO, anyway.
Yeah, the grandparent is a zealot - over-exagerating about "OMG, w1nd0z3 is sooo crashy and insecure". I use XP, and rather like it. Since I'm a geek in the know, I can keep Windows running safely and smoothly, when I need to run it.
The point you didn't address, however, is that "Microsoft is the cause of this problem". He's dead wrong that "Crappy software from Redmond" is the root cause, but he has the right culprit. Over-Hyped, crappy software from Redmond that came pre-installed on every bloody PC is the cause.
The reason marketroids in this industry over hype everything is that a tech companies success is judged againt Microsofts success. Well, you lying, back stabbing^W^W^Wmarketing people, listen up:
Microsoft is, and always will be, a one time thing. There will never be a company that grows as fast as they have in this industry, period. Get over it, and start telling the truth, please - you can't replicate thier level of success by hyping something. "Once bitten, twice shy" and all that.
I certainly don't think we'll see the death of MS for decades, if ever, but we may just see them seriously reduced
This is what I'm hoping to see. I don't want Microsoft dead, I want them deflated. I want them in a position where any closed source, patented extentions to accepted industry standards or trying to lock thier customers in to an Microsoft only world would be to thier detrement. I want Microsoft in a position where have to follow the rest of the industry, to only stand on the technical merits of thier products.
That would be a Microsoft that's beneficial to the industry.
Soko
Re:Neoliberal Tyranny of Enforced Competition
on
Life Interrupted
·
· Score: 1
Stop blaming Wal-Mart, Boeing, McDonalds, etc. for the problems that are actually caused by the government, and we can start finding actual solutions to our problems.
They are not the cause of the problem, but they are a contributing factor. If they paid thier employees more, the govermnent would be more readily able to cut taxes, since there would be more revenue generated. As it is, they provide minimum wage jobs that the Canadian Government doesn't tax, or gets very little from. Actually, there are anectodal stories of WalMart workers requiring assistance from the government to feed thier families, which is a net negative to the economy at large, but is a bonus for WalMart. They get low wage employees that the rest of the economy supports - in essence, a tax break for the Corporation that goes to thier shareholders.
Sure, if we instantly drop taxes, you and I could afford a few new toys, but the cost to our country would be immense in other ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus has, thus far, been abso-fucking-loutely scary in choosing what and who is relevant in regards to the Linux kernel.
I'm rather frightened by this, but I trust Linus is not a n00b, and realises the implications of his decisions.
There comes a time when the one who wears the crown is forced to realise that the kingdom is better off with a new leader, and ignores this fact to his peril. I pray that Mr. Torvalds has the wisdom and humility to pass on the torch when that time comes.
Soko
BIND 9 and the DNS server portion of Microsoft Active Directory(TM) already have this - they're call srv records. Check the RFC or see for yourself here.
Soko
I have been licking the same screenshots on suns site for the last few months. Now I get to play with it! I cant wait to download it tonight!
o_0
Dude, two things:
1 - It's not a Mac, it has no 'lickable' interface on it
2 - Does your screen have a few nasty looking smudges on it or anything? *shiver* Ewww...
Soko
I'm giving up mod points to try and dispell what seems to me a sensationalised headline.
Alan Cox is not showing disrespect to Linus here, read the whole quote:
"Linus is a good developer, but is a terrible engineer," said Cox. "I'm sure he would agree with that."
Alan and Linus have been working together for a very long time, so I'm sure Linus wouldn't give this statement a second thought. Each must know they compliment the other and make the whole of the Linux kernel better - even if they have the odd disagreement - or the kernel would have been truly forked (no pun intended) a long time ago. As it is, they work together on patches and ideas. We don't have much to worry about, I think, since Linus' sense of who's a good dev and who fits into his team well is uncanny.
Soko
No kidding. Hey, let's put Carnivore to good use for once - let's put this into terms that will send a red flag up over Washington:
Think about the following, in terms of being a terrorist, or just someone who wants to gain illegal entry into a country un-noticed:
With a W-2 (which is a statement of income for last year, I presume, like a T4 in Canada where I live) you now have:
- A valid name of a US Citizen
- That citizen's SSN
- thier place of employment complete with job title
- last years earnings, which should allow you to look the part if you decide to impersonate them
- thier home address
All of this put together would allow for the easy forging of identiy papers. Yup, it could allow a terrorist un-fettered entry into the US with a great degree of anonymity and secrecy.
Hi, Mr. Rumsfeld - feeling OK now?
Soko
I don't get it. IBM seems to have some massive aversion to Wine.
Stop thinking purely as a techie/develper for a second, will you? THINK for a second about the whole, big picture, not just implications for developers.
IBM is pushing Linux, has it's own line of pretty nice processors and just sold off it's PC division. And now they want native ports of applications to thier chosen OS and platform. Hmmmmm...
I'm no business genius by any stretch, but do you see any place for Wintel in the picture that's being painted?
Soko
Yeah.
:-P
I read all about that in our GNUspaper. Commrade Stallman would be proud.
Soko.
#include std_IANAL.h
IF you RTFA, you would see that Judge Kimball is trying to have this case sealed tight at it's end. He doesn't want SCO turning into a legal zombie and winning a chance at appeal, even though it's really dead. He wants them in a hermetically sealed coffin and thrown into the bowels of the earth.
Soko
This guys is there to refute the claims. I honestly do not expect him to say anything that we haven't heard before.
/*Marketing Spin!!!!/*
/*Marketing Spin/*, which is what he gets paid to do.
I started composing a question, then I came to my senses. Mr. Taylor's job is to spin issues into marketing plusses for Windows, not have a real, frank discussion on what problems we techie types have with Microsoft, Windows or whatever. In fact, some smartass will be able to sum up the reply thread this way:
Mr.Taylor:
and not be innacurate. Microsoft's culture is one of paranoia, where if another vendor gets a single cent from selling a competing product, Microsofties take it as a threat to thier existance. I don't expect him to say anything except "Hey, linux is great, but Windows is better
I think I'll pass on this one.
Soko
I disagree. Security, in the traditional sense of the word, means that a major portion of e-mail functionality would be lost.
E-mail - for that matter, even the telephone system - is a random, anonymous contact system. What I mean by that is that you don't know where, when or whom is going to contact you via e-mail, and it's supposed to function that way. You can't secure your system against anonymous contacts or one of the design intents of the system fails.
IOW, SMTP, though it could be much better, isn't truly the core of the problem. It's establishing beforehand whom you wish to speak to before they want to speak to you.
Soko
Also, Solaris is the Sun Branded Product. OpenSolaris is the Open source Solaris. Further down the track, Solaris (the Sun Branded Product) will be sourced from a snapshot of OpenSolaris.
Fair 'nuf. Thanks for clearing that up.
Please don't fall victim to the conspiacy (sic) theories.
I haven't yet. I know Sun is trying. When they've tried for a while and not attacked anyone in the FOSS community, I'll likley change my tune.
Soko
Yeah, OK, RedHat are slime for not directing people directly to the SRPMS. Thing is, they are only required to give those SRPMS to those they distribute RHEL AS 3 to. They are following what the GPL prescribes. BTW:
/
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/rhel/AS3/i386
^^^ There you go. 5 minutes on google to find 'em, and not a "Take That Down!!!" letter in sight.
Soko
Trust RedHat? More than Sun. All of RedHat's products are published under the GPL. The license is Free, as in speech. I can even download the SRPMS if I wish, without paying them a dime.
Sure, I need to pay for support for each copy I run, but there's other distros out there that will run most anything RHEL does if they piss me off enough. Fedora is also a RedHat sponsored project, and for that they don't really care how many machines I, as an end user or developer, deploy. They appreciate the bug reports I send them though.
If the app I want is only certified on RedHat, it's a commercial app, and I might as well use Solaris if I'm going the proprietary route anyway.
Maybe I am being paranoid, but I can't shake the feeling that Sun is "playing the OSS game" - they don't want to participate in the community, they're playing games to see how much of the OSS community's strength they can steal.
When will I trust them? When they either GPL Open Solaris or make it plain as plain can be that they will not use thier patents against any OSS developer - even RedHat.
Soko
From the download page:
LEGAL NOTICE: To receive your free Solaris 10 license, you must register all machines upon which you are installing Solaris 10 and receive an Entitlement Document. Registration is performed in the download process, and the Entitlement Document is returned to you via email.
This is Free Software? OK, it's thier stuff, they can require me to do this, but I'm even less trusting of them than I was before.
Someone please corect me if it's a diffrence between OpenSolaris and Solaris proper.
Soko
No. Anything that is reacheable from our universe is, by definition, part of the universe.
Well, the webserver is, at this exact point in time in this universe, unreachable. If your definition is assumed to be correct, that server is not part of this universe.
That would mean that the Slashdot Effect can blow a server to an alternate universe (or at least give it an alternate quantum state).
Soko
Sounds like most people would spend it drinking beer.
Actually, I've seen many technical problems solved by having a Friday afternoon beer with my colleagues and just chatting a bit about the issue. I think it may be that we were more relaxed, or the change of venue or something, but the right synapses finally activated and you just knew you had the answer.
It's not easy explaining to the boss on Monday why you're working on a server referring to notes on a beer-stained napkin, but the results are usually worth it.
Soko
"The marketing people are so bad at hyping their products that, with all my experience, I'll have to read and reread and reread just to figure out what this thing does," says Freedman, founder of The Computer Language Company Inc. in Point Pleasant, Pa.
I don't even bother with marketing materials any more. I google for "$PRODUCT problem resolved" or somesuch.
My personal opinion is that marketers should be legally liable for making false or even potetially misleading statements. I implemented a BI/Broker (A Business Intelligence package, if you'll excuse the oxymoron) install, all the while knowing that the thing was essentially worthless without us puting in the intelligence that the thing needed. A simple spreadsheet would have done the same, with less hardware/software/programing. It was OMG Cool to the buzz-word compliant people though, since the marketing weenies did such a good job of hood winking senior management. In the end, the company used 1/4 of the systems functionality, and the rest was done by spreadsheet. Go figure.
Really, I wonder how 'scaleable' the marketers personal wallets are, after I've spent my employers money of a product that only does half the job I thought it would, and I can recover costs because they lied.
Marketing is lies, more lies and damned lies in a pretty package so you'll put your money and reputation on the line. The whole premise is to extract money from your companies shareholders and give it to thier shareholders. Remember that the next time a sales weenie takes you out for lunch.
Soko
Agreed.
However, let me re-phrase the grandparent:
"For starters, make sure Microsoft can't extend it to lock out compeditors in some way."
Better?
Soko
So you're saying that the firewall should be implemented in the IP stack.
No, he's saying that a proper IP stack will not respond to a request for service from a TCP/UDP port that has no service listening to it on that machine. I'm not 100% sure of the veracity of the statement, but I'm pretty sure XP does this as prescribed.
Whether the firewall is a separate service or whether it is built into the networking stack or whether it is a separate machine sitting at the root of the network, a firewall is needed.
Yes, for any external communications, a firewall (and encrypted links if you want to be picky) is a neccesity, and has been for quite some time. SP2 finally provided a firewall on by default, and gives the average user a fighting chance.
If you are cleaning out "mal|spy|ad-ware SP2 machines every day", you work with idiots. Or perhaps you are the idiot to continue working with them. Either way, I'm glad I don't work where you work.
I'm a BOFH. I work with lusers. Lusers are SpongeBob Squarepants without the personality. They are un-intelligent generally, but more so when it comes to computers. They don't know about computer security, nor do they care, since it's not thier job to administrate thier machine. The luser should be able to log on, go about it's business and not concern itself with what is in my prevue - making sure our comapnies data is safe.
Now, the problem XP, Win2K and NT present is that I, as an intelligent, responsible admin, do all that I can to prevent security issues and they still occur regularily, despite my best efforts. In order to be truly protected, I'd need to remove some of the machines functionality, which kinda removes the point of having the bloody PC there in the first place.
When I need to teach a luser how spyware gets on to thier XP SP2 machine - firewall and all - in order to try and prevent that event from happening is when I begin to question how much value XP really provides.
Soko
"ERP".
Bill, excuse yourself after you eat, please. Gosh. That's not right.
Soko
How dare you try to protect your own secrets??!!?!? Information wants to be free, you...you...capitalist!!!
Once I buy a device, any secrets on it are, or should be, mine too. IOW, I want to know what's inside my new gizmo, or at least have the option of finding out. So I know my secrets are protected too, amongst other things.
I don't think this will go terribly far - most people will find out that they can't do what they want on these types of devices (legal or otherwise) and stay away. I sure won't buy or reccommend any device like this, and my opinion about tech is trusted by many people.
The only hope this has is to be pushed through legislatively, which is a true nightmare scenario.
IOW, it's not information wanting to be free, it's people wanting things thier way. IMHO, anyway.
Soko
Oh, they use a web bug to collect data? Would that explain the stats showing some companies like IBM as 100% IE, maybe? Hmmmmm....
Soko
Yeah, the grandparent is a zealot - over-exagerating about "OMG, w1nd0z3 is sooo crashy and insecure". I use XP, and rather like it. Since I'm a geek in the know, I can keep Windows running safely and smoothly, when I need to run it.
The point you didn't address, however, is that "Microsoft is the cause of this problem". He's dead wrong that "Crappy software from Redmond" is the root cause, but he has the right culprit. Over-Hyped, crappy software from Redmond that came pre-installed on every bloody PC is the cause.
The reason marketroids in this industry over hype everything is that a tech companies success is judged againt Microsofts success. Well, you lying, back stabbing^W^W^Wmarketing people, listen up:
Microsoft is, and always will be, a one time thing. There will never be a company that grows as fast as they have in this industry, period. Get over it, and start telling the truth, please - you can't replicate thier level of success by hyping something. "Once bitten, twice shy" and all that.
*glares directly @ google*
Soko
I certainly don't think we'll see the death of MS for decades, if ever, but we may just see them seriously reduced
This is what I'm hoping to see. I don't want Microsoft dead, I want them deflated. I want them in a position where any closed source, patented extentions to accepted industry standards or trying to lock thier customers in to an Microsoft only world would be to thier detrement. I want Microsoft in a position where have to follow the rest of the industry, to only stand on the technical merits of thier products.
That would be a Microsoft that's beneficial to the industry.
Soko
Stop blaming Wal-Mart, Boeing, McDonalds, etc. for the problems that are actually caused by the government, and we can start finding actual solutions to our problems.
They are not the cause of the problem, but they are a contributing factor. If they paid thier employees more, the govermnent would be more readily able to cut taxes, since there would be more revenue generated. As it is, they provide minimum wage jobs that the Canadian Government doesn't tax, or gets very little from. Actually, there are anectodal stories of WalMart workers requiring assistance from the government to feed thier families, which is a net negative to the economy at large, but is a bonus for WalMart. They get low wage employees that the rest of the economy supports - in essence, a tax break for the Corporation that goes to thier shareholders.
Sure, if we instantly drop taxes, you and I could afford a few new toys, but the cost to our country would be immense in other ways.
Soko