When I set up users to access our ftp server, the procedure is usually as follows:
1. I get a verbal request from operations 2. I tell operations to put it in writing 3. The request comes in writing 4. I generate a user ID & password generated by my random password generator 5. The user id & password goes out to the user by tracked mail. (Snail Mail)
1. Real Computers are not necessary, except for what I term "Power Users", (and games)
2. The whole point of these terminals is that they will not age, they run a protocol across the network, if the user requires higher spec. then you will either make him a power user or upgrade your main server that these boxes run off.
3. Windows Terminal Server - Microsoft have already entered the market.
4. WTS looks like Windows NT, so retraining is not necessary. Your point about the cost of the server is true, however, and often overlooked. The overall configuration for 1 (50 user) Terminal Server is less than the configuration for 50 users.
Just so that this doesn't look like an advert for WTS I would like to point out that it's reliability is appalling, if you consider Thin-Client technology ask yourself whether you can use X-Windows with Linux or a BSD variant or wait until Microsoft improve it's reliability (a long wait me thinks)
>Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs. >Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS, >whatever. We moved away from the >mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason
Sorry, I forgot, what was the reason?
I agree with you as far as the home market is concerned. But when it comes to corporate IT I can tell you that mainframes and thin-clients are very much alive. I personally don't like MS Windows Terminal Server, but the centralised appoach to IT facility provision is something that all medium-large companies should look at. Think of all the Windows registries that can corrupt themselves on a Workstation-Server network, now consider where you have 1 machine and Windows terminals off that 1 machine, there's only one point of corruption. X-Terminals have no moving parts.
Of course where Microsoft Terminal Server has failed is in uptime statistics - If you are going to base all your applications on the same (cluster of) machine(s) then you need high reliability, this is something that was present with UNIX and X-Terminals, but is seriously lacking in Windows Terminal Server.
We still use a mainframe for all our production systems as well. Our accounts systems still run on SCO and users connect to it via telnet.
As sysadmin, the last thing you want users to do is be able to install their own software, viruses and games and so on. This just creates overhead for support staff. The last company I worked for didn't even allow floppy disk drives on their workstations.
In our corporate environment we have 3 Terminal Servers with Citrix Metaframe installed on them. Damn things crash all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sun terminals will support ICA, RDP as well as XDMCP protocols, or at least that these will be options when you purchase the equipment.
Does anyone know how these things boot up? Do they boot from ROM or from TFTP?
Another point, I can't think of anyone who bought Sun equipment to save money - £200 for a keyboard, ouch!!! (I am lead to believe that Sun resellers get considerable discounts, however)
Surely if someone removes your files from a web site and puts their files in their place then we are talking theft. They have taken YOUR pages.
I personally believe that you shouldn't be able to be charged with computer crime unless the authorities can prove that you used a known exploit such as brute-force password cracking or exploiting a trust relationship. If the only evidence is that the files were changed then the fault should lie with the poor security at the site concerned and not with the person who changed the files. I understand that this can be complicated to enforce, but if people are going to leave their sites wide-open to attack they can expect them to be attacked.
After all, you wouldn't leave your wallet on the pavement and expect it not to be stolen, and I doubt the authorities are going to waste their time trying to find it if you tell them where you left it.
Re:Slashdot scoops others... er.. not.
on
Wired on Slashdot
·
· Score: 1
I always thought of Slashdot as a portal site, it's where I go to find the latest up to date stuff of what I'm interested in.
The forum and comments are an aside for me - I post occassionally, but my main use is to find other articles.
It's pretty good for finding cannon-fodder to blast those pro-Microsoft types in the IT industry.
They wouldn't have to crack your Linux password, they would just have to boot off a Linux boot floppy, mount your partition and edit your/etc/passwd or/etc/shadow to delete your password altogether.
I personally use a BIOS password, but then I'm sure there's a jumper I could short inside the damn thing to get rid of it. What we need is encrypted file systems, non-overidable BIOS passwords and the like, (but then what do we do when we really forget the password???)
It wouldn't be a Beowulf Cluster, because they run on Linux. Doesn't BeOS have a native GUI, this would be an overhead. Linux has the advantage in that you can disable everything except what you need to optimize available CPU time. I think that Beowulf-type clusters will remain on the Linux kernels, possibly xxxBSD.
I saw the article - I have next to no CAD experience, but I went to the site and voted anyway - 93% odd in favour. Now I wonder how many of that 93% were pointed in the direction of this site from the Slashdot site? I worry about this, are we not influencing the poll of what should be a sample of CAD enthusiasts? And surely if we do this too much then it will become apparent that web polls cannot be taken without a pinch of salt.
I expect most of you will say, what the hell, let's just promote Linux in this way, "After all Microsoft have used underhand tactics left, right and center and look where it's got them.", but then I can respond that Bill may be very rich, and it's only because of this fact that he can pay all those lawyers to keep the DoJ off his back.
Linux is hell of an OS, can't we just let it speak for itself?
Our WAN supplier has a complete Class B range and several Class C ranges of official IP addresses that it uses internally only, when an internal host accesses the internet we almost always use NAT to yet another range of addresses that our ISP has allocated.
The problem isn't that we don't have enough IP addresses, it's just that we're not using them very well.
I see no reason why we couldn't change to the private IP ranges (10.0.0.0 Class A range for instance) and then use NAT or even PAT to the Internet, but it's an organisational nightmare to make this kind of change simultaneously across several corporations.
The problem is almost certainly mis-management of IP addresses.
At least the www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf site states that it is still under construction.
After 5 seconds consideration I'm come to the conclusion that www.linuxtuning.com is slow and unprofessional.
www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf has to my knowledge 50 volunteers and has been properly consulted through the Linux mailing lists - which seems the right way to get people who know what they are talking about involved.
There has been a delay with linuxperf because they didn't expect to get so many volunteers and what seemed to be a small project at first looks as if it will require more management than earlier envisaged. Thankfully, however, this will probably make for a higher quality and more complete documentation project over the long term.
I am dissapointed that this site is Live and yet doesn't contain any useful information what so ever.
How is this going to co-ordinate itself with the kernel-doc effort being placed by riel@humbolt.nl.linux.org ?
Mindcraft/Microsoft will be laughing at this site. And it will fuel their FUD that everything under Linux is Alpha/Beta software in the public domain.
I think it should be taken off until the author knows at least some links to Kernel tuning sites - the author could at least put up some "Under Construction" signs...
What good are features if they have and cause bugs.
Microsoft make their OSs so bloated with features that they add bugs to the system which, in turn, makes them more unstable. I think he has tried to appeal to someone who looks at the command line and makes the association of the command line with one of the past presents that Microsoft presented us with; "MS-DOS". This type of person will never master the powers of multitasking from within a single terminal session.
"Because it's free software there's no central point of control"
I can't see how "being free software" has anything to do with "point of control". Once again this is misinformed and incorrect - (Surely, Bill, you can do better than that!) The fact that software is distributed freely has nothing to do with who controls the software. The Linux kernel, for instance, eminates from a single source, surely this is the point of central control? Yet Linux is free. Linux proves Bill's statement to be a paradox in itself...
Anoter Bill quote
"We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fin for university developers, Linux doesn't have that stuff. It doesn't have the graphics interface. It doesn't have the rich set of device drivers..."
Sorry, errr, you've really lost me there... Systems Management? does he mean User Manager for Domains? (RedHat have a GUI based user management system and there are others out there that support the shadow password suite) I've heard the some people don't like the GUI that comes with Linux, but I've never heard anybody claim it didn't have one!!!! For me X is customisable to the extent where you can make it anally so. Oh Bill, Oh Bill, you really don't understand, do you. I guess you've seen the bash command prompt and thought that that was the full extent of this little operating system.
I hope that the Microsoft backlash begins with earnest soon, I don't think I can stand listening to this for much longer...
If there is a security hole and it's so important to you then you can check the source, your compiler and the operating system. Because you have the source code for these components you are therefore able to verify the existance of any backdoor, security hole and so on.
Conversely, the disadvantage of closed development projects is:
Only those who have access to the source have the remotest chance of discovering (and creating) the backdoors, security holes etc without first needing the experience of running and cracking the system. In a closed development project this group of people would normally be the developers involved in the project - and we all know how, sometimes it's very easy to not be able to see the wood for the trees.
Headstrong/Immature etc...
Say what you want for yourselves - I cannot speak for anyone else - but I haven't been called immature. I am headstrong: I do have a firm belief - I am not fanatical about it, however. To make the generalisation such as "The Linux Community" is becoming more and more dangerous by the day. You are no longer addressesing a small group of loud "spotty students" (forgive me - if you happen to be a spotty student), but you are addressing a corporate market consisting of IT managers, System Integrators, Internet Service Providers, Regular Home users with Intermediate experience of computers and, of course, "the spotty students" who actually started the whole movement in the first place.
I object to being pigeon-holed into somebodies stereotype simply because I am an advocate of open-source, use Linux and regularly read and sometimes post on Slashdot.
You should not be worrying about their boxes - if someone breaks into their box then they should not have access to your own boxes. You must consider each of the users machines as separate networks outside your militarised zone. Give them Internet access by all means, perhaps put a firewall in or use network address translation to protect THEM, but you should only manage your internal network and the machines, possibly putting a further firewall between the users and yourself. You mustn't think of these users machines as part of your network - you should think of yourself as their ISP/NSP. Once you look at things in this way the problem seems to go away (at least it does for me!)
Great! Slackware is, in my honest and well thought out opinion, the best Linux distribution - at least it is for the ix86 platform. Some may complain that there is no Alpha version of the distribution, but I don't care - I don't have any Alphas anyway!
If you are thinking of defecting from Redhat and have used it for a while, can I recommend that you either try Slackware 3.6 or wait a little longer for 4.0 - which, hopefully, will be based on a version 2.2 kernel, and have a further ease of use, while retaining it's KISS! (Keep it simple, Stupid!) ideology.
Slashdot Mirror
When I set up users to access our ftp server, the procedure is usually as follows:
1. I get a verbal request from operations
2. I tell operations to put it in writing
3. The request comes in writing
4. I generate a user ID & password generated by my random password generator
5. The user id & password goes out to the user by tracked mail. (Snail Mail)
1. Real Computers are not necessary, except for what I term "Power Users", (and games)
2. The whole point of these terminals is that they will not age, they run a protocol across the network, if the user requires higher spec. then you will either make him a power user or upgrade your main server that these boxes run off.
3. Windows Terminal Server - Microsoft have already entered the market.
4. WTS looks like Windows NT, so retraining is not necessary. Your point about the cost of the server is true, however, and often overlooked. The overall configuration for 1 (50 user) Terminal Server is less than the configuration for 50 users.
Just so that this doesn't look like an advert for WTS I would like to point out that it's reliability is appalling, if you consider Thin-Client technology ask yourself whether you can use X-Windows with Linux or a BSD variant or wait until Microsoft improve it's reliability (a long wait me thinks)
>Sun needs to realize that people like their PCs.
>Whether you run Linux, Windows, MacOS, BEOS,
>whatever. We moved away from the
>mainframe/terminal paradigm for a reason
Sorry, I forgot, what was the reason?
I agree with you as far as the home market is concerned. But when it comes to corporate IT I can tell you that mainframes and thin-clients are very much alive. I personally don't like MS Windows Terminal Server, but the centralised appoach to IT facility provision is something that all medium-large companies should look at. Think of all the Windows registries that can corrupt themselves on a Workstation-Server network, now consider where you have 1 machine and Windows terminals off that 1 machine, there's only one point of corruption. X-Terminals have no moving parts.
Of course where Microsoft Terminal Server has failed is in uptime statistics - If you are going to base all your applications on the same (cluster of) machine(s) then you need high reliability, this is something that was present with UNIX and X-Terminals, but is seriously lacking in Windows Terminal Server.
We still use a mainframe for all our production systems as well. Our accounts systems still run on SCO and users connect to it via telnet.
As sysadmin, the last thing you want users to do is be able to install their own software, viruses and games and so on. This just creates overhead for support staff. The last company I worked for didn't even allow floppy disk drives on their workstations.
Yeah, X-Terminal are great.
In our corporate environment we have 3 Terminal Servers with Citrix Metaframe installed on them. Damn things crash all the time. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sun terminals will support ICA, RDP as well as XDMCP protocols, or at least that these will be options when you purchase the equipment.
Does anyone know how these things boot up? Do they boot from ROM or from TFTP?
Another point, I can't think of anyone who bought Sun equipment to save money - £200 for a keyboard, ouch!!! (I am lead to believe that Sun resellers get considerable discounts, however)
Littering?
Surely if someone removes your files from a web site and puts their files in their place then we are talking theft. They have taken YOUR pages.
I personally believe that you shouldn't be able to be charged with computer crime unless the authorities can prove that you used a known exploit such as brute-force password cracking or exploiting a trust relationship. If the only evidence is that the files were changed then the fault should lie with the poor security at the site concerned and not with the person who changed the files. I understand that this can be complicated to enforce, but if people are going to leave their sites wide-open to attack they can expect them to be attacked.
After all, you wouldn't leave your wallet on the pavement and expect it not to be stolen, and I doubt the authorities are going to waste their time trying to find it if you tell them where you left it.
I always thought of Slashdot as a portal site, it's where I go to find the latest up to date stuff of what I'm interested in.
The forum and comments are an aside for me - I post occassionally, but my main use is to find other articles.
It's pretty good for finding cannon-fodder to blast those pro-Microsoft types in the IT industry.
as I registered user, I don't, how do I do this?
They wouldn't have to crack your Linux password, they would just have to boot off a Linux boot floppy, mount your partition and edit your /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow to delete your password altogether.
I personally use a BIOS password, but then I'm sure there's a jumper I could short inside the damn thing to get rid of it. What we need is encrypted file systems, non-overidable BIOS passwords and the like, (but then what do we do when we really forget the password???)
It wouldn't be a Beowulf Cluster, because they run on Linux. Doesn't BeOS have a native GUI, this would be an overhead. Linux has the advantage in that you can disable everything except what you need to optimize available CPU time. I think that Beowulf-type clusters will remain on the Linux kernels, possibly xxxBSD.
.... I wouldn't be surprised if they already have a working version, somewhere in their Labs.
I saw the article - I have next to no CAD experience, but I went to the site and voted anyway - 93% odd in favour. Now I wonder how many of that 93% were pointed in the direction of this site from the Slashdot site?
I worry about this, are we not influencing the poll of what should be a sample of CAD enthusiasts? And surely if we do this too much then it will become apparent that web polls cannot be taken without a pinch of salt.
I expect most of you will say, what the hell, let's just promote Linux in this way, "After all Microsoft have used underhand tactics left, right and center and look where it's got them.", but then I can respond that Bill may be very rich, and it's only because of this fact that he can pay all those lawyers to keep the DoJ off his back.
Linux is hell of an OS, can't we just let it speak for itself?
Our WAN supplier has a complete Class B range and several Class C ranges of official IP addresses that it uses internally only, when an internal host accesses the internet we almost always use NAT to yet another range of addresses that our ISP has allocated.
The problem isn't that we don't have enough IP addresses, it's just that we're not using them very well.
I see no reason why we couldn't change to the private IP ranges (10.0.0.0 Class A range for instance) and then use NAT or even PAT to the Internet, but it's an organisational nightmare to make this kind of change simultaneously across several corporations.
The problem is almost certainly mis-management of IP addresses.
Actually what I was saying is that he's started off on his marathon, looking like he's only going to run 100metres.
At least the www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf site states that it is still under construction.
:)
After 5 seconds consideration I'm come to the conclusion that www.linuxtuning.com is slow and unprofessional.
www.nl.linux.org/linuxperf has to my knowledge 50 volunteers and has been properly consulted through the Linux mailing lists - which seems the right way to get people who know what they are talking about involved.
There has been a delay with linuxperf because they didn't expect to get so many volunteers and what seemed to be a small project at first looks as if it will require more management than earlier envisaged. Thankfully, however, this will probably make for a higher quality and more complete documentation project over the long term.
Thanks for listening.
I am dissapointed that this site is Live and yet doesn't contain any useful information what so ever.
How is this going to co-ordinate itself with the kernel-doc effort being placed by riel@humbolt.nl.linux.org ?
Mindcraft/Microsoft will be laughing at this site. And it will fuel their FUD that everything under Linux is Alpha/Beta software in the public domain.
I think it should be taken off until the author knows at least some links to Kernel tuning sites - the author could at least put up some "Under Construction" signs...
How about a Poll with our own estimates for the next five years?
I think RFC1149 is probably the best of all time, published Apr1/1990 (April Fools Day)
Check it out - (at your nearest mirror - as the other sites appear to be quite full!)
No It was a request -
They were working documents - people were supposed to look and scrutinise them for mistakes or inadequacies according to the original strategic plan.
but surely if he is to make a public comment on Linux he should be well informed...
He could at least pay someone for the truth, after all, it's not as if he can't afford to!
I was happy to see the article also mention how his book is a load of drivel..
What good are features if they have and cause bugs.
Microsoft make their OSs so bloated with features that they add bugs to the system which, in turn, makes them more unstable. I think he has tried to appeal to someone who looks at the command line and makes the association of the command line with one of the past presents that Microsoft presented us with; "MS-DOS". This type of person will never master the powers of multitasking from within a single terminal session.
"Because it's free software there's no central point of control"
I can't see how "being free software" has anything to do with "point of control". Once again this is misinformed and incorrect - (Surely, Bill, you can do better than that!) The fact that software is distributed freely has nothing to do with who controls the software. The Linux kernel, for instance, eminates from a single source, surely this is the point of central control? Yet Linux is free. Linux proves Bill's statement to be a paradox in itself...
Anoter Bill quote
"We put things into our system like systems management that's not that much fin for university developers, Linux doesn't have that stuff. It doesn't have the graphics interface. It doesn't have the rich set of device drivers..."
Sorry, errr, you've really lost me there... Systems Management? does he mean User Manager for Domains? (RedHat have a GUI based user management system and there are others out there that support the shadow password suite) I've heard the some people don't like the GUI that comes with Linux, but I've never heard anybody claim it didn't have one!!!! For me X is customisable to the extent where you can make it anally so. Oh Bill, Oh Bill, you really don't understand, do you. I guess you've seen the bash command prompt and thought that that was the full extent of this little operating system.
I hope that the Microsoft backlash begins with earnest soon, I don't think I can stand listening to this for much longer...
This was a great reply - well done.
You, however, used the word "hacked" where in actual fact I think the context deserved "cracked".
If we really want to re-educate the common world on the differences between "hacking" and "cracking" we have to lead by example.
Otherwise, a great reply.
The advantage of Open Source Software is:
If there is a security hole and it's so important to you then you can check the source, your compiler and the operating system. Because you have the source code for these components you are therefore able to verify the existance of any backdoor, security hole and so on.
Conversely, the disadvantage of closed development projects is:
Only those who have access to the source have the remotest chance of discovering (and creating) the backdoors, security holes etc without first needing the experience of running and cracking the system. In a closed development project this group of people would normally be the developers involved in the project - and we all know how, sometimes it's very easy to not be able to see the wood for the trees.
Headstrong/Immature etc...
Say what you want for yourselves - I cannot speak for anyone else - but I haven't been called immature. I am headstrong: I do have a firm belief - I am not fanatical about it, however.
To make the generalisation such as "The Linux Community" is becoming more and more dangerous by the day. You are no longer addressesing a small group of loud "spotty students" (forgive me - if you happen to be a spotty student), but you are addressing a corporate market consisting of IT managers, System Integrators, Internet Service Providers, Regular Home users with Intermediate experience of computers and, of course, "the spotty students" who actually started the whole movement in the first place.
I object to being pigeon-holed into somebodies stereotype simply because I am an advocate of open-source, use Linux and regularly read and sometimes post on Slashdot.
You should not be worrying about their boxes - if someone breaks into their box then they should not have access to your own boxes. You must consider each of the users machines as separate networks outside your militarised zone. Give them Internet access by all means, perhaps put a firewall in or use network address translation to protect THEM, but you should only manage your internal network and the machines, possibly putting a further firewall between the users and yourself.
You mustn't think of these users machines as part of your network - you should think of yourself as their ISP/NSP.
Once you look at things in this way the problem seems to go away (at least it does for me!)
Great! Slackware is, in my honest and well thought out opinion, the best Linux distribution - at least it is for the ix86 platform.
Some may complain that there is no Alpha version of the distribution, but I don't care - I don't have any Alphas anyway!
If you are thinking of defecting from Redhat and have used it for a while, can I recommend that you either try Slackware 3.6 or wait a little longer for 4.0 - which, hopefully, will be based on a version 2.2 kernel, and have a further ease of use, while retaining it's KISS! (Keep it simple, Stupid!) ideology.
Happpy Slacking!!
Doesn't the Alpha have zero development budget?
I expect Compaq just want to sell off their old stock of Alpha chips...