"In the case of physical crime, the gov't does have a somewhat effective response, put more police on the streets. It usually has a very clear impact on crime. They don't have an effective response to increased hacking. Perhaps *you* have an answer?"
How about better security? Even just for my little home network here I use a firewall/gateway system with packet filtering and network rules setup, just so that I can dial into the internet (and share the dial up with a few other computers).
All internal ip addresses are on a private ip range, I use a 5port switch instead of a hub, all incoming ports are blocked etc etc.
It may not be impossible for someone to break into my network or one of my workstations, but it'd be a hell of alot harder than the public sites that are getting cracked all the time.
Simple things like using switches on your network, portforwarding access to public services instead of just sticking a box right on the unsecured connection to the internet, using secure operating systems and services (i.e. not using IIS with frontpage extensions), monitoring sites like Security Focus to keep up on the latest exploits and patches etc.
If I can invest a little time and energy into securing my home dialup connection, there's no excuse for public businesses, and govt. agencys with public servers on the internet to not do the same.
http://www.jetico.sci.fi/ Bestcrypt on the fly transparent harddrive encryption. Currently availible for Dos/WinX but a public beta version for Linux will be availible in Sept. (As far as I've been told so for).
I dont doubt the date so much as I'm currently testing/using the beta software right now and it works pretty awesome. (couple of minor bugs so far but I've reported them back so hopefully those will be gone soon).
At the moment I'm pre-beta testing a linux version of Bestcrypt. Full on the fly virtual harddrive encryption using Blowfish, Gost, DES, & Twofish.
Currently I've moved my.pgp Mail and a few other directorys to live on the encrypted drive, so my pgp keys aren't even accessible.
Overall looks like an awesome product, with full source code so Scramdisk users on the Winx platforms have nothing to complain about in the Linux version. The beta should be released to the general public somtime in early Sept.
"Now.....if they were to put ads trailing everytime I ran a whois command, I'd blow a fit."
Nah just whip out a perl script to do the whois query's for you and have it remove the ads before showing the information to you. Similiar to junkbuster for webpages:)
"No. That would mean I would be recieving for free, what everyone else has to pay for. As soon as AIM, and GAIM, and TiK (if it still works) cost me a monthly fee, then a company who was allowing me access to that for free (while everyone else paid) would be in the wrong.
I didn't say Microsoft. This *isn't* about Microsoft (and I'm curious why everyone thinks it is.. who of you bashed Gaim?)"
Actually this IS about Microsoft. The difference is that GAIM, TiK etc are all based on an open protoc released by AOL for public use called TOC, along with special TOC servers that make the connection to the actuall AIM servers. Think of the TOC servers as a firewall router setup to protect the AIM servers by allowing only limited but functional access.
Microsoft isn't using the TOC protocol or servers in their client. Instead they reversed engineered the OSCAR protocol which was never published and reserved strictly for AOL Instant Messenger. By doing this MS is bypassing the TOC server/firewall setup and accessing the AIM servers directly as if they are AIM clients.
In this regard MS is illegally cracking into the AIM servers against AOL's wishes and bypassing their security. btw the TOC servers and protocols do not require you to have an AOL account as they are open to anyone.
Linux-Mandrake has this also, click the Update icon and it checks a list of mirrors for Mandrake updates that you dont have. Downloads the rpm files and then auto installs them in the background for you.
No hassle, no mess, no having to remember cli commands for the newbies:)
>I imagine your point was to try and show that >just because Linux and other Unix-based OS's are >based on legacy code, does not mean they need to >be scrapped for something new. These analogies >you've offered just don't do much for your point.
Linux doesn't use any legacy code either. Unlike commerical Unices and BSD's Linux is and allways has been written entirely from scratch. What the kernel and application developers have done is 1. borrow solid ideas from supposedly legacy Unices and 2. develop full POSIX compliency.
All while writing everything from scratch.
BeOS even has extereme if not full POSIX compliency, that's why it's so easy to port apps between the two OS's. So obviously BeOS is also based on outdated 30year technologies.
>It's also possible that individual artists aren't >fighting MP3s because the RIAA is doing it for >them - besides...why should they? In many cases, >they don't even own the music they produce.
Because until now it wasn't technically feasible to produce and distribute your own music. If you wanted to make it big as an artist you "had" to sign up with a major record label and in doing so sign away most of your rights to your own current and future music for the term of the contract.
Considering the $12 - $20 cost for a CD the artist usually makes as little as 1 to 10% of that, so unless you release more than a couple gold album's you can still easily starve as a music artist.
So an artist faced with the prospect of supporting a medium which could be they not only get paid very little for what they do, but also lose all control of their final artwork, also lock them into artistic slavery for the next 3,5,7 years compared to a medium that might mean they get paid very little for what they do but they have total and complete control of their product "do I release my first album for free, do I charge.01 cent per download or even $1 per download, do I release some sample tracks and charge for the rest? etc"
Finally the artist has a choice in how, what or who they want to distribute their music.
If RIAA was only fighting piracy that's one thing, but they are trying to fight any technoligy that would release control to the artists (who needs Sony when I can record my own album stick it on a web site and charge 40 cents per song, if 1 song becomes a major hits and gets 2million downloads I just made buku bucks), and also independent distributors. Right now it would be nothing for someone to desinge a really high quality web site that would allow artists to distribute their music thru your system for a very nominal % based on downloads and no "you'll distribute all your music threw me and I own all rights to it contracts" yet watch how fast RIAAA or similiar agencys and labels try to shut you down.
There is a major difference here though. AIX, BSD's, Solaris, HP-UX etc all use their own proprietory kernels, file systems, and programs. The very core of these OS's are different and in alot of cases closed off so that competitors cannot duplicate them.
On the other hand the "difference" between Debbian, RedHat, Suse, Caldera etc generally relate to approx 3 minor things.
1. Install routine - and thats basically just what type of menu or graphical interface they present with the user and to check of their files in either/mnt/cdrom/COL or/mnt/cdrom/Redhat etc.
2. File locations - some distro's put config files in/etc and others/usr/etc or/bin vs/usr/local/bin
3. System configuration - does the distro use Lisa, COAS, LinuxConf being user level programs this simply means what does the distro install as it's default. I've used Linuxconf with Caldera and COAS with Mandrake without any problems.
4. Package managment do they use RPM or Debian Package tool again user level and the inclusion of alien with most distro's lets you use files packaged with the non compatible package tool. Also note that all distro's are capable of compiling the original source code
Other than that the core of the system is the same kernel, filesystem, etc and the differences only show the versatility of Linux to manipulated the way the user wants it. You can take a Debian distro and make it look, act, and feel exactly like RedHat if you chose too. Doing so doesn't make a different Linux, it just makes Linux work the way you want it to. On the other hand you will never install IBM AIX's journaling filesystem onto Solaris as the two are completely different systems.
When you "sign" a message with PGP, it uses your personal "Private" key to build the signature from. This signature is actually a checksum. Anyone that Ken has given his public key to can ask pgp to verify his signature, in the case above where you just added it to your message it will definetly fail. Also because it's a checksum of all the data between the --Begin PGP and --End PGP lines, if you were to download a copy of Ken's message and change the message in anyway and re-upload it, it would again fail.
Of course PGP relies on the ability for the user doing the verification that the "public" key they have actually came from the party in question. Look up PGP and web of trust for more information.
Setup one Linux box as an NIS server and the others as NIS clients or backup servers. All user managment etc is handled from the main server machine.
If you use NFS with it to share the/home directory etc to the client machines then the user will have the exact same config and access to files on any Linux box they log onto.
I'd say there's one important difference between the Australian govt. and the ISP's in question.
Australia is trying to dictate what every australian ISP, and user is allowed to download, view, read, carry on their computer systems or internet access. Here the people have no choice in the matter neither do the ISP's who to comply with the new laws will have to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece so that they can filter out and block "unreasonable" content and possibly monitor the activity's of their users.
This on the other hand is nothing more than a specific group of ISP's choosing not to carry certain content. As they own the services they provide they also have the right and the freedom to choose what services they do provide and what content they allow to be stored on their servers and harddrives. No different than me placing a filter in my news group reader to filter out and delete any posts from @aol.com, as I have the right and freedom to view and download what I choose.
Because an ISP chooses not to carry certain content, that does effect their users but those users still have a choice, if they feel the ISP doesn't provide enough services they want or need that have full ability to switch to a new one, subscribe to an online news service where they will probably get access to far more groups than their ISP has ever carried, etc.
So the difference is that in the German ISP situation every person involved has a choice, the ISP's have a choice on what they want to carry and pass thru their equiptment, and their users have a choice of sticking with the ISP's new policy's, switching ISP's, or finding their news posts somewhere else.
Australia no one has a choice, the govt. says this is how it will be and short of moving out of the country you will obey the rules and only see what we want you to see.
Personally I think if the Clinton / Monica affair wasn't staged from the very begining they sure used it to their advantage to take the country's eyes off what Clinton was doing behind the scenes.
While America was busy deciding the morality of a married president getting a bj by an intern they failed to notice Clinton making deals with communist china to launch U.S. satellites satellitesthat contain the same encryption technology that our long range guided missiles do so their flight path's can't be tampered with by a victim country. (funny how one of those satellites crashed during initial launch and those same circuites ended up missing from the recoverd pieces).
Nor did anyone pay attention when Clinton was passing laws that give him absolute power to stop all government elections and usurp judicial and congressional power by calling a military state during times of a national emergency. Since he's allready stated he considers Y2K to be a national emergency I think next year is going to be a very interesting one.
Actually Caldera has allways made their distro's available for download.
With ver 1.1 & 1.2 they made a lite version that didn't include any commercial software that was restricted by liscence. That included their nwclient software, metro-x etc.
With 1.3 they got rid of the lite and standard version all together, instead making a single version off the base. getting rid of any commercial software that they can't distribute over download and moving apps like nwclient to a new license free to use with the system, so the 1.3 download area is exactly the same files you get on the cd.
Currently I'm in the process of downloading 2.2 at this very moment and it looks similiar to the 1.3 setup so I expect most if not all files to be there.
MP3 and similiar technoligies can do more to support the "artist" than any other distribution medium before.
I believe it's that more than anything that has RIAA freaking out. For the first time ever an artist or group has a medium to distribute their music themselves and make it instantly availible to a world wide audience, cutting RIAA completely out of the picture.
Your argument that I dont use MP3's because music is protected by copyright would be akin to saying I dont listen to music on CD's because alot of people have CD Burners at home now and can make their own copies, or tapes etc.
It's not the medium that's at fault for the actions of a few pirate sites on the web and college kids trading music across their lan network. The truth is MP3 music "pirating" isn't any worse than "pirating" that has allways existed with other distribution formats of music.
RIAA doesn't really care about pirating itself, in fact alot of times it helps them as someone downloads a new single on mp3 and says thats cool now I want the whole album on CD. You can see this in it's attempt to attack MP3 as a technoligy so hard.
The true fear hear is that if MP3 becomes too popular, and widely accepted as a standard then music artists will no longer need the big label record company's at all. Groups like public enemy are showing others that there are alternatives to being locked into a 5 year contract with a label company that jacks up album and concert prices sky high and then takes the majority of the profit. RIAA see's this and thinks what happens when all those 5 - 7yr contracts we currently control our big money making artists with come to term? If MP3 is acceptible then those artists have a chance to finally leave and distribute their next album themselves via mp3 downloads and direct cd sales off their web site.
MP3 doesn't take rights away from the artist it gives them way too many as far as RIAA is concerned.
I'm wondering what the whole point of this entire argument is.
It's true Linux was formed by a community but not everyone in that community thinks alike. Instead it's formed by various groups that have a common demoninator (Linux) but somtimes very different agenda's.
This is seen very easily in the different distributions, ranging from Debian or SUSE (I forget which one but they only want GNU compatible free software in it without any commercial code at all), to RedHat trying to make screaming easy to install leading edge distributions, to Caldera concentrating on ease of use, more applications to bring Linux into corporation use and dont care if its open source or closed binarys as long as it works to many other distro's.
While one or two groups and/or distributions might try to make Linux easier to use for the newbie, others concentrate on being super configurable and making the user learn every little niche of the OS like Slackware does.
My point here is that this argument along with most big arguments that happen in the Linux community like KDE vs Gnome etc, are pointless.
While there will allways be people and groups who think differently, there will also be a version of Linux or a distribution that matches our agenda or needs.
Making a "version" of Linux more user or newbie friendly doesn't change or hurt Linux itself in the overall sense, and for those newbies who do start out on an easy distribution allways have the choice to move to a different one later on if they decide they want to learn more about the system and have more control over than the current distro gives them.
I seem to have no trouble at all recompiling my kernel, upgrading programs, libraries, the kernel, etc and performance tweaking all versions of OpenLinux I've ran over the last 3 years.
As far as OL 2.2's install I believe the expert mode is still CLI based, if not it should give you manual control over the setup and hardware if you dont want to use the autoconfiguration wizards.
Plus just changing the runlevel should give you back your CLI on bootup instead of loading KDM.
2.2 might be desinged to be easier for newbies but it will still be fully functional and powerful for the rest of us.
RedHat also charges around $40-50 for cdrom version with manual, and you will also be able to download OpenLinux 2.2 for free just as you can currently download all previous versions of OpenLinux from their ftp site.
What the $50 version (of any distrobution) gives you is a cdrom set which alot of people who's only access to the internet currently is a modem (downloading a 500 meg distro at those speeds is almost unfeasible), manual and usually some email or phone based installation tech support.
Highly worth it for a new user or company just starting to check out Linux and doesn't know much more than what they've read about it in P.C. Magazine
Not only do I have a job, I'm currently testing VMWare at work to run Win98 under Linux.
I've been trying very hard to get bring Linux into the company as a viable solution for many applications over the past year, and while I've managed to get it setup as a couple DNS servers, print servers and my desktop OS, it's still pretty slow going.
For them to accept Linux I have to "prove" its a viable OS on all counts. Stability, speed, inter-communications with other OS's and networks etc.
One problem I've been facing is that against my better advice they've decided to implement Micrsoft Exchange as their internal and internet mail system with Outlook on all the clients.
While this works great for the Windows NT networked workstations, it's practically left out our dos-Novell clients, X-stations running off Unix servers etc and my Linux workstation.
Luckily basic email is covered by standard POP3 and SMTP (though trying to log into exchange with a pop3 client is just plain weird, whoever heard of Domain name/Domain User name/Mailbox Name as a login name to a pop3 host, glad we dont expect users to setup their own email software), but now they've decided to move all calendaring and scheduling functions to Outlook and Exchange as well.
This wouldn't be a problem either except that they are also currently afraid to setup the web interface to the exchange server (I guess showing them how instable NT is compared to other NOS's backfired on me in this case)
For me to continue to be allowed to run Linux as my desktop in a Windows based company I have to show that I can be compatible with everyone else. They aren't going to issue me another computer and I dont have the desk space for one anyways. That either leaves me with the choice of moving back to Windows alltogether which for me is out of the question if at all possible, dual booting between Linux and Winx duable but a pain the butt just to check email and my calendar, or running an app like VMWare with a virtual 95 machine, which so far has worked with flying colors.
Granted on my AMD K6 -200 the 95 machine is a bit slow itself but it's still workable, and after installing 128MB ram on the system by keeping VMWare running in the background it doesn't effect my Linux applications hardly at all.
Now I just have to bring up the virtual machine to check and adjust the calendar and then minimize it to get back to my real work, and since I like windows based Pegasus email software better than another other email client around it still lets me run that as my client of choice.
Also it allows me to quickly manage the NT servers and users from the Win95 session, somthing thats kind of hard to do with the smb software currently available for Linux.
So software like this most definetly has it's uses, and can also be a great tool to bring Linux into areas that are reluctant to even try it out, even more so when they come out with an NT version that you can run virtual Linux machines on. In this case you can safly show off the benefits of Linux safely in NT only company's allowing them to test it out first hand without having to dedicate a computer to it. That might not be an issue for users who find 3-500 dollar computers, but I've yet to work for a big company that will even consider such a thing. Instead they've all "standardized" on the latest models of Compaq, Dell and Gateway who can easily run into the $1500 to $5000 dollar range. In these cases purchasing an extra computer for what is to them an untested OS would be out of the question.
If Illiad had metioned a name like M$, then the backlash from the/., UFIE, Segfault, and Be community's would have been overwhelming.
Look what happens when someone posts an article about a big corporation picking on a lone user who happens to have a domain name they want. Compound that in with big corporation picking on our favorite humor sites, I think the slashdot effect would be worse than ever before.
That said if this is an April Fools joke then the sites could be held responsible for damages against the "offending" company if they were to give out their names.
If it's not then I definetly hope they get the name of the company out to the public so that we can show them how well we protect our own.
The same way Accelerated X and Metro-X can. One problem with hardware like video cards is that the manufacturers don't allways release their full specs and api's for the cards at least without signing an NDA first. This leaves the XFree86 Project at a major disadvantage for alot of the newer video cards, 3D API's etc, who have to resort to reverse engineering etc just to create a drive that will run at all.
On the other hand commercial based company's like Accel X, Metro, Sci-Tech who keep there code closed are able and I'd believe more than willing to sign NDA's with the hardware manufactures. With full access to the spec's etc for the hardware they are then able to create drivers and servers that take full advantage of the cards.
Granted this sucks but until hardware manufactures start releasing their code, specs etc to the general public without NDA requirments, then at least in this case the open source alternatives will allways be at a major disadvantage. And until that does change I'll continue to use my accelerated-X server because I havn't personally found anything that supports my hardware better or faster.
Slashdot Mirror
"In the case of physical crime, the gov't does have a somewhat effective response, put more police on the streets. It usually has a very clear impact on crime. They don't have an effective response to increased hacking. Perhaps *you* have an answer?"
How about better security? Even just for my little home network here I use a firewall/gateway system with packet filtering and network rules setup, just so that I can dial into the internet (and share the dial up with a few other computers).
All internal ip addresses are on a private ip range, I use a 5port switch instead of a hub, all incoming ports are blocked etc etc.
It may not be impossible for someone to break into my network or one of my workstations, but it'd be a hell of alot harder than the public sites that are getting cracked all the time.
Simple things like using switches on your network, portforwarding access to public services instead of just sticking a box right on the unsecured connection to the internet, using secure operating systems and services (i.e. not using IIS with frontpage extensions), monitoring sites like Security Focus to keep up on the latest exploits and patches etc.
If I can invest a little time and energy into securing my home dialup connection, there's no excuse for public businesses, and govt. agencys with public servers on the internet to not do the same.
http://www.jetico.sci.fi/
Bestcrypt on the fly transparent harddrive encryption. Currently availible for Dos/WinX but a public beta version for Linux will be availible in Sept. (As far as I've been told so for).
I dont doubt the date so much as I'm currently testing/using the beta software right now and it works pretty awesome. (couple of minor bugs so far but I've reported them back so hopefully those will be gone soon).
At the moment I'm pre-beta testing a linux version
.pgp Mail and a few other directorys to live on the encrypted drive, so my pgp keys aren't even accessible.
of Bestcrypt. Full on the fly virtual harddrive encryption using Blowfish, Gost, DES, & Twofish.
Currently I've moved my
Overall looks like an awesome product, with full source code so Scramdisk users on the Winx platforms have nothing to complain about in the Linux version. The beta should be released to the general public somtime in early Sept.
"Now.....if they were to put ads trailing everytime I ran a whois command, I'd blow a fit."
:)
Nah just whip out a perl script to do the whois query's for you and have it remove the ads before showing the information to you. Similiar to junkbuster for webpages
"No. That would mean I would be recieving for free, what everyone else has to pay for. As soon as AIM, and GAIM, and TiK (if it still works) cost me
a monthly fee, then a company who was allowing me access to that for free (while everyone else paid) would be in the wrong.
I didn't say Microsoft. This *isn't* about Microsoft (and I'm curious why everyone thinks it is.. who of you bashed Gaim?)"
Actually this IS about Microsoft. The difference is that GAIM, TiK etc are all based on an open protoc released by AOL for public use called TOC, along with special TOC servers that make the connection to the actuall AIM servers. Think of the TOC servers as a firewall router setup to protect the AIM servers by allowing only limited but functional access.
Microsoft isn't using the TOC protocol or servers in their client. Instead they reversed engineered the OSCAR protocol which was never published and reserved strictly for AOL Instant Messenger. By doing this MS is bypassing the TOC server/firewall setup and accessing the AIM servers directly as if they are AIM clients.
In this regard MS is illegally cracking into the AIM servers against AOL's wishes and bypassing their security. btw the TOC servers and protocols do not require you to have an AOL account as they are open to anyone.
Linux-Mandrake has this also, click the Update icon and it checks a list of mirrors for Mandrake updates that you dont have. Downloads the rpm files and then auto installs them in the background for you.
:)
No hassle, no mess, no having to remember cli commands for the newbies
Check out Encrypted Home Directory from either freshmeat or linuxberg, I forgot where I got it.
>I imagine your point was to try and show that >just because Linux and other Unix-based OS's are
>based on legacy code, does not mean they need to
>be scrapped for something new. These analogies
>you've offered just don't do much for your point.
Linux doesn't use any legacy code either. Unlike commerical Unices and BSD's Linux is and allways has been written entirely from scratch. What the kernel and application developers have done is
1. borrow solid ideas from supposedly legacy Unices and
2. develop full POSIX compliency.
All while writing everything from scratch.
BeOS even has extereme if not full POSIX compliency, that's why it's so easy to port apps between the two OS's. So obviously BeOS is also based on outdated 30year technologies.
>It's also possible that individual artists aren't >fighting MP3s because the RIAA is doing it for >them - besides...why should they? In many cases, >they don't even own the music they produce.
.01 cent per download or even $1 per download, do I release some sample tracks and charge for the rest? etc"
Because until now it wasn't technically feasible to produce and distribute your own music. If you wanted to make it big as an artist you "had" to sign up with a major record label and in doing so sign away most of your rights to your own current and future music for the term of the contract.
Considering the $12 - $20 cost for a CD the artist usually makes as little as 1 to 10% of that, so unless you release more than a couple gold album's you can still easily starve as a music artist.
So an artist faced with the prospect of supporting a medium which could be they not only get paid very little for what they do, but also lose all control of their final artwork, also lock them into artistic slavery for the next 3,5,7 years compared to a medium that might mean they get paid very little for what they do but they have total and complete control of their product "do I release my first album for free, do I charge
Finally the artist has a choice in how, what or who they want to distribute their music.
If RIAA was only fighting piracy that's one thing, but they are trying to fight any technoligy that would release control to the artists (who needs Sony when I can record my own album stick it on a web site and charge 40 cents per song, if 1 song becomes a major hits and gets 2million downloads I just made buku bucks), and also independent distributors. Right now it would be nothing for someone to desinge a really high quality web site that would allow artists to distribute their music thru your system for a very nominal % based on downloads and no "you'll distribute all your music threw me and I own all rights to it contracts" yet watch how fast RIAAA or similiar agencys and labels try to shut you down.
There is a major difference here though. AIX, BSD's, Solaris, HP-UX etc all use their own proprietory kernels, file systems, and programs. The very core of these OS's are different and in alot of cases closed off so that competitors cannot duplicate them.
/mnt/cdrom/COL or /mnt/cdrom/Redhat etc.
/etc and others /usr/etc or /bin vs /usr/local/bin
On the other hand the "difference" between Debbian, RedHat, Suse, Caldera etc generally relate to approx 3 minor things.
1. Install routine - and thats basically just what type of menu or graphical interface they present with the user and to check of their files in either
2. File locations - some distro's put config files in
3. System configuration - does the distro use Lisa, COAS, LinuxConf being user level programs this simply means what does the distro install as it's default. I've used Linuxconf with Caldera and COAS with Mandrake without any problems.
4. Package managment do they use RPM or Debian Package tool again user level and the inclusion of alien with most distro's lets you use files packaged with the non compatible package tool. Also note that all distro's are capable of compiling the original source code
Other than that the core of the system is the same kernel, filesystem, etc and the differences only show the versatility of Linux to manipulated the way the user wants it. You can take a Debian distro and make it look, act, and feel exactly like RedHat if you chose too. Doing so doesn't make a different Linux, it just makes Linux work the way you want it to. On the other hand you will never install IBM AIX's journaling filesystem onto Solaris as the two are completely different systems.
When you "sign" a message with PGP, it uses your personal "Private" key to build the signature from. This signature is actually a checksum. Anyone that Ken has given his public key to can ask pgp to verify his signature, in the case above where you just added it to your message it will definetly fail. Also because it's a checksum of all the data between the --Begin PGP and --End PGP lines, if you were to download a copy of Ken's message and change the message in anyway and re-upload it, it would again fail.
Of course PGP relies on the ability for the user doing the verification that the "public" key they have actually came from the party in question. Look up PGP and web of trust for more information.
Setup one Linux box as an NIS server and the others as NIS clients or backup servers. All user managment etc is handled from the main server machine.
/home directory etc to the client machines then the user will have the exact same config and access to files on any Linux box they log onto.
If you use NFS with it to share the
Also check out Coda and OpenLDAP
I'd say there's one important difference between the Australian govt. and the ISP's in question.
Australia is trying to dictate what every australian ISP, and user is allowed to download, view, read, carry on their computer systems or internet access. Here the people have no choice in the matter neither do the ISP's who to comply with the new laws will have to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece so that they can filter out and block "unreasonable" content and possibly monitor the activity's of their users.
This on the other hand is nothing more than a specific group of ISP's choosing not to carry certain content. As they own the services they provide they also have the right and the freedom to choose what services they do provide and what content they allow to be stored on their servers and harddrives. No different than me placing a filter in my news group reader to filter out and delete any posts from @aol.com, as I have the right and freedom to view and download what I choose.
Because an ISP chooses not to carry certain content, that does effect their users but those users still have a choice, if they feel the ISP doesn't provide enough services they want or need that have full ability to switch to a new one, subscribe to an online news service where they will probably get access to far more groups than their ISP has ever carried, etc.
So the difference is that in the German ISP situation every person involved has a choice, the ISP's have a choice on what they want to carry and pass thru their equiptment, and their users have a choice of sticking with the ISP's new policy's, switching ISP's, or finding their news posts somewhere else.
Australia no one has a choice, the govt. says this is how it will be and short of moving out of the country you will obey the rules and only see what we want you to see.
Personally I think if the Clinton / Monica affair wasn't staged from the very begining they sure used it to their advantage to take the country's eyes off what Clinton was doing behind the scenes.
While America was busy deciding the morality of a married president getting a bj by an intern they failed to notice Clinton making deals with communist china to launch U.S. satellites satellitesthat contain the same encryption technology that our long range guided missiles do so their flight path's can't be tampered with by a victim country. (funny how one of those satellites crashed during initial launch and those same circuites ended up missing from the recoverd pieces).
Nor did anyone pay attention when Clinton was passing laws that give him absolute power to stop all government elections and usurp judicial and congressional power by calling a military state during times of a national emergency. Since he's allready stated he considers Y2K to be a national emergency I think next year is going to be a very interesting one.
Goto the "tryout" section and fill in the form and it will give you a link to the ftp directory area.
Or even better just ncftp to ftp.calderasystems.com/pub/OpenLinux/2.2
Actually Caldera has allways made their distro's available for download.
With ver 1.1 & 1.2 they made a lite version that didn't include any commercial software that was restricted by liscence. That included their nwclient software, metro-x etc.
With 1.3 they got rid of the lite and standard version all together, instead making a single version off the base. getting rid of any commercial software that they can't distribute over download and moving apps like nwclient to a new license free to use with the system, so the 1.3 download area is exactly the same files you get on the cd.
Currently I'm in the process of downloading 2.2 at this very moment and it looks similiar to the 1.3 setup so I expect most if not all files to be there.
MP3 and similiar technoligies can do more to support the "artist" than any other distribution medium before.
I believe it's that more than anything that has RIAA freaking out. For the first time ever an artist or group has a medium to distribute their music themselves and make it instantly availible to a world wide audience, cutting RIAA completely out of the picture.
Your argument that I dont use MP3's because music is protected by copyright would be akin to saying I dont listen to music on CD's because alot of people have CD Burners at home now and can make their own copies, or tapes etc.
It's not the medium that's at fault for the actions of a few pirate sites on the web and college kids trading music across their lan network. The truth is MP3 music "pirating" isn't any worse than "pirating" that has allways existed with other distribution formats of music.
RIAA doesn't really care about pirating itself, in fact alot of times it helps them as someone downloads a new single on mp3 and says thats cool now I want the whole album on CD. You can see this in it's attempt to attack MP3 as a technoligy so hard.
The true fear hear is that if MP3 becomes too popular, and widely accepted as a standard then music artists will no longer need the big label record company's at all. Groups like public enemy are showing others that there are alternatives to being locked into a 5 year contract with a label company that jacks up album and concert prices sky high and then takes the majority of the profit. RIAA see's this and thinks what happens when all those 5 - 7yr contracts we currently control our big money making artists with come to term? If MP3 is acceptible then those artists have a chance to finally leave and distribute their next album themselves via mp3 downloads and direct cd sales off their web site.
MP3 doesn't take rights away from the artist it gives them way too many as far as RIAA is concerned.
I'm wondering what the whole point of this entire argument is.
It's true Linux was formed by a community but not everyone in that community thinks alike. Instead it's formed by various groups that have a common demoninator (Linux) but somtimes very different agenda's.
This is seen very easily in the different distributions, ranging from Debian or SUSE (I forget which one but they only want GNU compatible free software in it without any commercial code at all), to RedHat trying to make screaming easy to install leading edge distributions, to Caldera concentrating on ease of use, more applications to bring Linux into corporation use and dont care if its open source or closed binarys as long as it works to many other distro's.
While one or two groups and/or distributions might try to make Linux easier to use for the newbie, others concentrate on being super configurable and making the user learn every little niche of the OS like Slackware does.
My point here is that this argument along with most big arguments that happen in the Linux community like KDE vs Gnome etc, are pointless.
While there will allways be people and groups who think differently, there will also be a version of Linux or a distribution that matches our agenda or needs.
Making a "version" of Linux more user or newbie friendly doesn't change or hurt Linux itself in the overall sense, and for those newbies who do start out on an easy distribution allways have the choice to move to a different one later on if they decide they want to learn more about the system and have more control over than the current distro gives them.
2.2 is supposed to be officially released on Mon April 19th, at least according to a few articles on LinuxToday
I seem to have no trouble at all recompiling my kernel, upgrading programs, libraries, the kernel, etc and performance tweaking all versions of OpenLinux I've ran over the last 3 years.
As far as OL 2.2's install I believe the expert mode is still CLI based, if not it should give you manual control over the setup and hardware if you dont want to use the autoconfiguration wizards.
Plus just changing the runlevel should give you back your CLI on bootup instead of loading KDM.
2.2 might be desinged to be easier for newbies but it will still be fully functional and powerful for the rest of us.
RedHat also charges around $40-50 for cdrom version with manual, and you will also be able to download OpenLinux 2.2 for free just as you can currently download all previous versions of OpenLinux from their ftp site.
What the $50 version (of any distrobution) gives you is a cdrom set which alot of people who's only access to the internet currently is a modem (downloading a 500 meg distro at those speeds is almost unfeasible), manual and usually some email or phone based installation tech support.
Highly worth it for a new user or company just starting to check out Linux and doesn't know much more than what they've read about it in P.C. Magazine
Not only do I have a job, I'm currently testing VMWare at work to run Win98 under Linux.
I've been trying very hard to get bring Linux into the company as a viable solution for many applications over the past year, and while I've managed to get it setup as a couple DNS servers, print servers and my desktop OS, it's still pretty slow going.
For them to accept Linux I have to "prove" its a viable OS on all counts. Stability, speed, inter-communications with other OS's and networks etc.
One problem I've been facing is that against my better advice they've decided to implement Micrsoft Exchange as their internal and internet mail system with Outlook on all the clients.
While this works great for the Windows NT networked workstations, it's practically left out our dos-Novell clients, X-stations running off Unix servers etc and my Linux workstation.
Luckily basic email is covered by standard POP3 and SMTP (though trying to log into exchange with a pop3 client is just plain weird, whoever heard of Domain name/Domain User name/Mailbox Name as a login name to a pop3 host, glad we dont expect users to setup their own email software), but now they've decided to move all calendaring and scheduling functions to Outlook and Exchange as well.
This wouldn't be a problem either except that they are also currently afraid to setup the web interface to the exchange server (I guess showing them how instable NT is compared to other NOS's backfired on me in this case)
For me to continue to be allowed to run Linux as my desktop in a Windows based company I have to show that I can be compatible with everyone else. They aren't going to issue me another computer and I dont have the desk space for one anyways. That either leaves me with the choice of moving back to Windows alltogether which for me is out of the question if at all possible, dual booting between Linux and Winx duable but a pain the butt just to check email and my calendar, or running an app like VMWare with a virtual 95 machine, which so far has worked with flying colors.
Granted on my AMD K6 -200 the 95 machine is a bit slow itself but it's still workable, and after installing 128MB ram on the system by keeping VMWare running in the background it doesn't effect my Linux applications hardly at all.
Now I just have to bring up the virtual machine to check and adjust the calendar and then minimize it to get back to my real work, and since I like windows based Pegasus email software better than another other email client around it still lets me run that as my client of choice.
Also it allows me to quickly manage the NT servers and users from the Win95 session, somthing thats kind of hard to do with the smb software currently available for Linux.
So software like this most definetly has it's uses, and can also be a great tool to bring Linux into areas that are reluctant to even try it out, even more so when they come out with an NT version that you can run virtual Linux machines on. In this case you can safly show off the benefits of Linux safely in NT only company's allowing them to test it out first hand without having to dedicate a computer to it. That might not be an issue for users who find 3-500 dollar computers, but I've yet to work for a big company that will even consider such a thing. Instead they've all "standardized" on the latest models of Compaq, Dell and Gateway who can easily run into the $1500 to $5000 dollar range. In these cases purchasing an extra computer for what is to them an untested OS would be out of the question.
If Illiad had metioned a name like M$, then the backlash from the /., UFIE, Segfault, and Be community's would have been overwhelming.
Look what happens when someone posts an article about a big corporation picking on a lone user who happens to have a domain name they want. Compound that in with big corporation picking on our favorite humor sites, I think the slashdot effect would be worse than ever before.
That said if this is an April Fools joke then the sites could be held responsible for damages against the "offending" company if they were to give out their names.
If it's not then I definetly hope they get the name of the company out to the public so that we can show them how well we protect our own.
The same way Accelerated X and Metro-X can. One problem with hardware like video cards is that the manufacturers don't allways release their full specs and api's for the cards at least without signing an NDA first. This leaves the XFree86 Project at a major disadvantage for alot of the newer video cards, 3D API's etc, who have to resort to reverse engineering etc just to create a drive that will run at all.
On the other hand commercial based company's like Accel X, Metro, Sci-Tech who keep there code closed are able and I'd believe more than willing to sign NDA's with the hardware manufactures. With full access to the spec's etc for the hardware they are then able to create drivers and servers that take full advantage of the cards.
Granted this sucks but until hardware manufactures start releasing their code, specs etc to the general public without NDA requirments, then at least in this case the open source alternatives will allways be at a major disadvantage. And until that does change I'll continue to use my accelerated-X server because I havn't personally found anything that supports my hardware better or faster.