are we at the dawn of that golden age when encrypted email will be commonplace?
No.
There are still two important pieces missing. Without them the non-geek will not be using encrypted email.
The first is key generation. No matter how simple of a front end you have for it, the user still has to consciously sit down and create a strong key. We all know from experience that the average user will not want to do this.
The second is even more problematic. That's key management. Where is the average user going to store their private keys? On their harddrive or on a floppy disk? And will they be conscientious participants in a web of trust?
So far most proposed methods of automated key management have been detrimental to our privacy (Clipper chip, Passport, etc). But here's one idea: create and market a USB dongle that has a write-once key that is generated during its first use (or the user could initialize it with a preexisting key). Such keys would be automatically signed by the manufacturer. It might not work, but it's something to think about.
you are correct in saying that a limited subset of users should be permitted to run the compiler
Your suggestion only works if it is not a policy. Once it becomes a policy, then developers will not have access to compilers, because it's much easier to find a new job then to convince IT that you properly belong to that subset.
Okay, no one is answering the obvious question: Is this an OpenSSL bug, a Linux bug, or a GNU bug?
The submission states "A GNU/Linux worm" and "a bug in OpenSSL". But OpenSSL runs on a heck of a lot of systems that aren't Linux. Does this exploit only affect Linux systems running OpenSSL, or does it affect any system running OpenSSL?
UML is hardly a necissary tool for designing software.
No, it's not necessary. But it is common enough that Open Source developers should think UML == "Unified Modelling Language", instead of "User-Mode Linux". I may not need blueprints to build a house, but I should still know how to read them.
haven't seen the Unified Modeling Language used much in the OpenSource enviroments where UML will be used
In some ways, that's a pretty severe indictment of Open Source. UML is about software analysis and design. Most Open Source projects, sadly, do not design their software, but start coding from minute one. There are exceptions though, but by and large most Open Source hackers don't have the patience to design their software (or validate it, or write documentation, or do usability studies, yada, yada, yada).
To be fair, a heck of a lot of closed source software isn't designed either.
If it's utter bullshit, then where's all the stuff I was promised? Where is JavaOS? Where is JavaOffice? Where are the real world enduser desktop applications?
Java has found its niche, and it's with small applets and medium servlets and university courses.
The biggest problem Java on the client side has is Swing
And since we're talking about the desktop (KDE not adopting Mono), this makes all the difference in the world. The user interface is everything, since that's what the user notices. The backend could be a run by hamsters on a wheel for all I care, but if the user interface isn't snappy and responsive it sucks.
look at eclipse and tell me this is sluggish
Sidenote: Someone explain to me why all the touted Java apps are development tools of some sort?
Java is supposed to be "write once run everywhere", so why isn't my platform supported? Oh, I see, it's not using Java for the GUI! I think my point is made.
And no, I'm not going to build it from scratch just to see how fast GTK+ is compared to Swing...
Because the overhead for Java is just too huge for the average large enduser application, let alone a desktop environment. At the risk of offending the Java community, most enduser Java applications are wonderfully designed collections of code that execute with all the grace of drunken molluscs..NET/C# will have the same problem. It will find its proper niche, and it won't be the desktop. If I'm wrong, then it may turn out to be the biggest incentive to dump Windows Microsoft has ever seen.
i am all for anythign that gives linux better apeal to the mainstream.
Exactly how would a KDE adoption of.NET [ignoring the fact that it ain't true] appeal to the mainstream? Will Ma and Pa Kettle suddenly leap for joy, dump Win/Mac and install *Nix/KDE?
The biggest problem with Linux, in my opinion, is the excruciatingly painful way in which drivers and other kernel extensions are installed--often involving recompiling the kernel.
Windows: Manufacturers provide the drivers. OS provides the specs.
Linux/BSD/Unix-in-general: OS provides the drivers. Manufacturers provide the specs.
The implications of this in the marketplace are obvious. Every Windows user knows that any piece of hardware they buy will have drop-in drivers included. Every Unix user knows that this week's hardware won't work with last week's OS.
Example One: NetGear PCMCIA card. As many of you know, NetGear products ship with Linux drivers as source code (not drop-in). This card shipped with drivers for linux-2.2, but I was using linux-2.2.4. Driver did not work.
Example Two: New Rage128 card. XFree86 supports Rage128. But this was a PCI card newer than my version of XFree86. The card was not in the PCI database, so XFree86 did not know what it was.
I don't see Linux/BSD/UNIX making it on the desktop until the *Nix releases *stable* driver APIs or DDKs. Actually, I'll go out on a limb and say RMS is full of crap for arguing against the Uniform Driver Interface.
I recently wrote a widget style for KDE, and custom widgets are a pain in the butt. That's one way I can detect custom widgets: they stick out like a sore thumb when I apply a non-default style. If a style developer has problems setting their look, how the heck can a user do it through global preferences?
That's your kitchen. All of the appliances are simple. They might (just might) be even simpler with standard controls. Imagine if your convection and microwave ovens both had the same style of controls. Or what if your TV, VCR and DVD player had the same kinds of controls?
No rules are written in stone, but if you're going to create you own custom control, you should have demonstrable reasons for doing so.
e've put a ton of work on making nedit keyboard accessible.
There's the problem: "a ton of work". KDE has a really great infrastructure for keyboards and keyboard shortcuts. But it's a ton of work, and boring besides, to make your app use keyboard shortcuts properly.
When you're starting out on a new program you delve right into the meat of the cool new stuff you're going to do, arguing that you'll get the keyboard accelerators (and toolstips, what's this, and other GUI stuff) done once you're application stabilizes. But by that time you're stuck. The users are busy submitting wishlists for more cool new features, and you're spending a lot of your time in maintenance mode.
It would be great if some UI guy came along and started working on the KDE interfaces. This doesn't take a lot of coding expertise, just someone with an eye for consistancy and the fortitude to slog through a really large code base.
You are assuming that Microsoft is the only proprietary software developer. Microsoft may indeed do what you suggest, but that's not the fault of the license, since Microsoft has already demonstrated that it will break the law in spite of court orders forbidding it to.
The typical proprietary software developer knows that they can't successfully fork a Free Software project into a proprietary one and get away with it in the long term.
The GPL would have required Microsoft to GPL any of their own software that linked with the TCP/IP stack. They would not have done so, and would not have used it to begin with. Thus by using the GPL you have limited the role of the software. If that's your goal, fine, but it wasn't BSD's goal.
Sometimes you get better results if you don't automatically assume everyone is a thief.
In your zeal to castigate others for the ignorance of evolutionary fitness, you've shown your own ignorance of ecology. Nature abhors a monoculture. The Windows monoculture is poised to be the victim of a mass extinction when the landscape changes. If Linux achieves its goal of "world domination", then it will be the next monoculture to be devastated when the environment changes yet again.
Try studying the history of religion. You'll find that religion also morphs and changes over time in the same way science does. Otherwise Christians would still be going to the synagogue on Saturdays.
But I think you're confusing faith with organized religion. Religious orthodoxy, like any orthodoxy, is extremely resistant to change. But faith (not orthodoxy) does change. This is because faith has a tiny kernel of core beliefs which do not change, surrounded by layer after layer of tradition and trappings and wrappers that do.
p.s. Science also has core tenets that have not changed. For example, even though evolutionary theory has morphed from Darwinianism gradualism to Gouldian punctuated equilibrium, the core tenet that the past can be observed through the fossil record has not changed.
I think you've misunderstood the release documents. 5.0 is -CURRENT now, today, in the present. But after November it will be the -RELEASE and -STABLE branches. They will continue to backport some fixes to the 4.x branch.
Our company of 1200 was a solid Solaris customer. Then we got bought out by a very large multinational than made us all switch to Windows 2000. While most engineers are using Exceed or Reflections to do their real work on their old Ultrasparcs, a few of us got ourselves second hardrives out of petty cash and installed other more appropriate operating systems.
Of about 200 engineers, four are using FreeBSD. None that I know of are using Linux. I can hear the shouts of "heresy" coming from all of you, but it's true. All our Linux advocates left the company for the dot bombs and websites a couple of years ago. The IT department may be different, but I wouldn't know...
We have 50 lab machines that we need to convert over from LynxOS, so we're going to convert them to FreeBSD before IT gets it in their head that we should convert them to Win2K instead.
Slashdot Mirror
If your mail server has inbound ssh access, you can tunnel POP over it.
Sigh... I don't have a mail server. My ISP has a mail server. I cannot access my ISP's mail server without sending my password in the clear.
are we at the dawn of that golden age when encrypted email will be commonplace?
No.
There are still two important pieces missing. Without them the non-geek will not be using encrypted email.
The first is key generation. No matter how simple of a front end you have for it, the user still has to consciously sit down and create a strong key. We all know from experience that the average user will not want to do this.
The second is even more problematic. That's key management. Where is the average user going to store their private keys? On their harddrive or on a floppy disk? And will they be conscientious participants in a web of trust?
So far most proposed methods of automated key management have been detrimental to our privacy (Clipper chip, Passport, etc). But here's one idea: create and market a USB dongle that has a write-once key that is generated during its first use (or the user could initialize it with a preexisting key). Such keys would be automatically signed by the manufacturer. It might not work, but it's something to think about.
I was just wondering, what's the difference between OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD?
Why is this question posted every time a BSD story makes it to the front page? Inquiring minds want to know...
you are correct in saying that a limited subset of users should be permitted to run the compiler
Your suggestion only works if it is not a policy. Once it becomes a policy, then developers will not have access to compilers, because it's much easier to find a new job then to convince IT that you properly belong to that subset.
Okay, no one is answering the obvious question: Is this an OpenSSL bug, a Linux bug, or a GNU bug?
The submission states "A GNU/Linux worm" and "a bug in OpenSSL". But OpenSSL runs on a heck of a lot of systems that aren't Linux. Does this exploit only affect Linux systems running OpenSSL, or does it affect any system running OpenSSL?
Nothing killed FreeBSD. It's still ALIVE and doing very well. Don't believe anything the trolls post.
UML is hardly a necissary tool for designing software.
No, it's not necessary. But it is common enough that Open Source developers should think UML == "Unified Modelling Language", instead of "User-Mode Linux". I may not need blueprints to build a house, but I should still know how to read them.
haven't seen the Unified Modeling Language used much in the OpenSource enviroments where UML will be used
In some ways, that's a pretty severe indictment of Open Source. UML is about software analysis and design. Most Open Source projects, sadly, do not design their software, but start coding from minute one. There are exceptions though, but by and large most Open Source hackers don't have the patience to design their software (or validate it, or write documentation, or do usability studies, yada, yada, yada).
To be fair, a heck of a lot of closed source software isn't designed either.
If it's utter bullshit, then where's all the stuff I was promised? Where is JavaOS? Where is JavaOffice? Where are the real world enduser desktop applications?
Java has found its niche, and it's with small applets and medium servlets and university courses.
The biggest problem Java on the client side has is Swing
And since we're talking about the desktop (KDE not adopting Mono), this makes all the difference in the world. The user interface is everything, since that's what the user notices. The backend could be a run by hamsters on a wheel for all I care, but if the user interface isn't snappy and responsive it sucks.
look at eclipse and tell me this is sluggish
Sidenote: Someone explain to me why all the touted Java apps are development tools of some sort?
Java is supposed to be "write once run everywhere", so why isn't my platform supported? Oh, I see, it's not using Java for the GUI! I think my point is made.
And no, I'm not going to build it from scratch just to see how fast GTK+ is compared to Swing...
But I must admit that at current mono only supports C#... the future should fix this however...
Never underestimate the power of marketing to completely remove all vestiges of rationality from the developer's brain.
Because the overhead for Java is just too huge for the average large enduser application, let alone a desktop environment. At the risk of offending the Java community, most enduser Java applications are wonderfully designed collections of code that execute with all the grace of drunken molluscs. .NET/C# will have the same problem. It will find its proper niche, and it won't be the desktop. If I'm wrong, then it may turn out to be the biggest incentive to dump Windows Microsoft has ever seen.
i am all for anythign that gives linux better apeal to the mainstream.
.NET [ignoring the fact that it ain't true] appeal to the mainstream? Will Ma and Pa Kettle suddenly leap for joy, dump Win/Mac and install *Nix/KDE?
Exactly how would a KDE adoption of
The biggest problem with Linux, in my opinion, is the excruciatingly painful way in which drivers and other kernel extensions are installed--often involving recompiling the kernel.
Windows: Manufacturers provide the drivers. OS provides the specs.
Linux/BSD/Unix-in-general: OS provides the drivers. Manufacturers provide the specs.
The implications of this in the marketplace are obvious. Every Windows user knows that any piece of hardware they buy will have drop-in drivers included. Every Unix user knows that this week's hardware won't work with last week's OS.
Example One: NetGear PCMCIA card. As many of you know, NetGear products ship with Linux drivers as source code (not drop-in). This card shipped with drivers for linux-2.2, but I was using linux-2.2.4. Driver did not work.
Example Two: New Rage128 card. XFree86 supports Rage128. But this was a PCI card newer than my version of XFree86. The card was not in the PCI database, so XFree86 did not know what it was.
I don't see Linux/BSD/UNIX making it on the desktop until the *Nix releases *stable* driver APIs or DDKs. Actually, I'll go out on a limb and say RMS is full of crap for arguing against the Uniform Driver Interface.
I recently wrote a widget style for KDE, and custom widgets are a pain in the butt. That's one way I can detect custom widgets: they stick out like a sore thumb when I apply a non-default style. If a style developer has problems setting their look, how the heck can a user do it through global preferences?
That's your kitchen. All of the appliances are simple. They might (just might) be even simpler with standard controls. Imagine if your convection and microwave ovens both had the same style of controls. Or what if your TV, VCR and DVD player had the same kinds of controls?
No rules are written in stone, but if you're going to create you own custom control, you should have demonstrable reasons for doing so.
e've put a ton of work on making nedit keyboard accessible.
There's the problem: "a ton of work". KDE has a really great infrastructure for keyboards and keyboard shortcuts. But it's a ton of work, and boring besides, to make your app use keyboard shortcuts properly.
When you're starting out on a new program you delve right into the meat of the cool new stuff you're going to do, arguing that you'll get the keyboard accelerators (and toolstips, what's this, and other GUI stuff) done once you're application stabilizes. But by that time you're stuck. The users are busy submitting wishlists for more cool new features, and you're spending a lot of your time in maintenance mode.
It would be great if some UI guy came along and started working on the KDE interfaces. This doesn't take a lot of coding expertise, just someone with an eye for consistancy and the fortitude to slog through a really large code base.
I hate to say it but BSD is going away due to it's insane licensing.
What is it with you GPL freaks? Do you just sit around all day waiting for a BSD related article so you can shit all over it? Get a life!
You are assuming that Microsoft is the only proprietary software developer. Microsoft may indeed do what you suggest, but that's not the fault of the license, since Microsoft has already demonstrated that it will break the law in spite of court orders forbidding it to.
The typical proprietary software developer knows that they can't successfully fork a Free Software project into a proprietary one and get away with it in the long term.
The GPL would have required Microsoft to GPL any of their own software that linked with the TCP/IP stack. They would not have done so, and would not have used it to begin with. Thus by using the GPL you have limited the role of the software. If that's your goal, fine, but it wasn't BSD's goal.
Sometimes you get better results if you don't automatically assume everyone is a thief.
In your zeal to castigate others for the ignorance of evolutionary fitness, you've shown your own ignorance of ecology. Nature abhors a monoculture. The Windows monoculture is poised to be the victim of a mass extinction when the landscape changes. If Linux achieves its goal of "world domination", then it will be the next monoculture to be devastated when the environment changes yet again.
Yup, never trust a x.0 release, no matter who releases it.
Try studying the history of religion. You'll find that religion also morphs and changes over time in the same way science does. Otherwise Christians would still be going to the synagogue on Saturdays.
But I think you're confusing faith with organized religion. Religious orthodoxy, like any orthodoxy, is extremely resistant to change. But faith (not orthodoxy) does change. This is because faith has a tiny kernel of core beliefs which do not change, surrounded by layer after layer of tradition and trappings and wrappers that do.
p.s. Science also has core tenets that have not changed. For example, even though evolutionary theory has morphed from Darwinianism gradualism to Gouldian punctuated equilibrium, the core tenet that the past can be observed through the fossil record has not changed.
I think you've misunderstood the release documents. 5.0 is -CURRENT now, today, in the present. But after November it will be the -RELEASE and -STABLE branches. They will continue to backport some fixes to the 4.x branch.
But putting a Camaro body on a Corvette chassis means it's still a 'vette. So putting Aqua/Cocoa/Carbon on top of Darwin means that it's still BSD.
Our company of 1200 was a solid Solaris customer. Then we got bought out by a very large multinational than made us all switch to Windows 2000. While most engineers are using Exceed or Reflections to do their real work on their old Ultrasparcs, a few of us got ourselves second hardrives out of petty cash and installed other more appropriate operating systems.
Of about 200 engineers, four are using FreeBSD. None that I know of are using Linux. I can hear the shouts of "heresy" coming from all of you, but it's true. All our Linux advocates left the company for the dot bombs and websites a couple of years ago. The IT department may be different, but I wouldn't know...
We have 50 lab machines that we need to convert over from LynxOS, so we're going to convert them to FreeBSD before IT gets it in their head that we should convert them to Win2K instead.