I guess they don't know this sort of thing happens every day. Every distro has different packages they do not provide for various reasons. One reason is, the package might cause system stability issues, or that software might not build with the library versions that machine uses (program requires python 3.0 and you have 2.7), or there might not be a maintainer that can keep that app up to date, or the app is noteable to only be used for malicious intent and could even pose a security hole locally (many malwares can be hidden in code that only the author only knows how it works). Perhaps the dev of this tool has a bad track record with releasing system crippling software. We don't know.
And like OP said, if you can't compile a piece of software and install it yourself, you don't need to be a network admin. There are many apps I use as a hobby user that I have to compile myself from SVN or source tarball that I will never find in the repo. If you must rely on a deb or yum, then it could be a possibility that you are probably going to use this app for what it was really designed for, as a script kiddy (look at me! I'm a hacker!) toy and not a security tool to test your network.
Though on the other side, it makes me wonder if they have the wep cracking tool (aircrack-ng) as ubuntu does, since all I have seen people do with that is crack their neighbor's wireless router's security.
With the news recently on how java is going to be changing in oracle's hands, people seem pretty nervous in just the java side side of things let alone a language that runs over java. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
I love it how people act like linux is actually *trying* to compete with os A or os B etc. Like there is some prize to be won by being the most used desktop OS. It's not a race to a finish line to kill off some other os. Linux is an option. You don't like it? Don't use it. Linux isn't out there to be in a popularity contest. It doesn't care what you think about what a desktop should look like, or what apps should work on it. It doesn't care if you use it. The people who make it, make it for their needs. If you don't like how it works, do the work yourself. You don't want to do the work? Good for you, linux isn't for you then. Go use windows or osx. Linux is useful for people making things like routers, tv's, blue ray/multimedia centers, cable boxes, lab machines, code monkeys, laptops for children in 3rd world countries, cell phones, cars, etc etc. Do you think it cares that some windows people think that it's competition? Competition would require that it wasn't free. The linux community is basically a bunch of friends that work/hack together to make something they find useful, it's not a kill or be killed "man I need to make a billion by the end of the quarter" franchise. And it doesn't rate it's success by how many people are "converted" over to the dark side. If you don't care about linux, we won't cry if you don't use it. We won't hate you either. Many of us dual boot, some of us only use it on our servers, some of us use it full time, some of us just use it in our router/tv/phone/etc.
Only recently (in the last 4 years) have I quit the desktop thing and moved onto only laptops, but I have to say that the ergonomics are horrid on the last 3 I have bought. I have been typing daily for years now and do not get pain on a desktop with either dvorak or qwerty touchtyping, but on laptops it's easy for me to use bad ergonomic practices. The best thing you can do with ergonomics though has little to do with keyboard, and more to do with desk and adjustable chair height from my experiance. Basically make sure your chair is high enough that your elbows are right on the plane of your keyboard. For neck pain though make sure you aren't looking down at your monitor, or up (like when I tried to use my 42" lcd as a desktop monitor... or way back when I had a tiny monochrome monitor) and you should be good. Mouse pain is the most I get now, but that's because from time to time I use a touchpad, which is murder on my wrists for some things like drag and dropping files.
here are some things that I think flip the bill of previous art though some of these things don't fit with the "on the internet". Subway, Arcade (chuck e cheese anyone?), golf ball machine (at driving ranges) tokens. I don't care if it's online or not though, it's still the same thing... it's a token. The idea of a token has been around forever. But knowing how our patent system works, this will get pushed through somehow. I listed the tokens above because I have witnessed many a token or ticket that on it said "no refunds", basically saying, you are not getting your money back from that token/ticket, so it sounds just like this patent to me. Casinos I would count out as you can go to the cashier and get the money back out (at least at real casinos), same with linden labs currency). Now MegaTouch casino games use a virtual token of sorts that turns real money into fake currency that you cannot get back though.
...next they will do the same for someone taking a picture of Big Ben and sticking it in a calender or making it a wallpaper in a paid for OS they will pull the same leverage? This seems a bit far out. It makes you wonder what moron was sitting around and seriously thought they could pull this off. The next step from this is you can't take a picture anywhere but inside the house you built if you are in the UK if you intend to sell it somehow.
Sooo right. Lik-sang was a great retailer. They didn't sell the illegal stuff at all. Legit import games you couldn't buy in other countries and specialty hardware for linux users. Last thing I bought from them was a set of xbox usb cables so I could use my keyboard and mouse in linux. Luckily there is playasia now to fill their shoes if you want your imports, but lik-sang didn't deserve that treatment at all.
...are getting far fetched. You can legally hack on your apple products, but if you do the same *exact* thing on a ps3 you get sent to court? This law either needs to get pulled or fixed to say, you can "Jailbreak" any hardware device you can buy regardless of EULA/TOS/Whatever. Telling me how to use something in my house though doesn't get me to buy your product personally.
Xbox 360 banned around 1 million 360's over christmas and still get hacked. They don't bring the users to court, and they have a pretty huge user base. Instead of spending all R&D time on dropping features and setting up ways to sue people, they let you hack your system, and if you decide to get caught in the ban wave, you get your box banned (though not your live account). You buy a new box and start it over again, so a huge base buys new consoles every so often.
I personally did "mod" my old xbox1 just to run gentoox (gentoox.shallax.com) and xbmc on it, and I bought about 45 games for it to play on the side for around 50 a piece on it. Didn't pirate one game. But the pirates ruin it for the rest of the homebrewers. I'm almost pretty sure that if otheros was patched to stop the exploit that was being worked on instead of ripped out, all those people wouldn't be mad enough to try to hack their machines to perhaps find a way to downgrade their firmware or find a way to run linux without restrictions.
I personally gave up on the console scenes though. I don't like to affiliate with people that are only out to steal software when all I want to do is mess around with homebrew or something. And since I picked up a pretty decent laptop, I can do all the hacking on source I want in real linux and not have to be accused by some company of being a thief or worry about the sony ninja's trying to sue.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess they don't know this sort of thing happens every day. Every distro has different packages they do not provide for various reasons. One reason is, the package might cause system stability issues, or that software might not build with the library versions that machine uses (program requires python 3.0 and you have 2.7), or there might not be a maintainer that can keep that app up to date, or the app is noteable to only be used for malicious intent and could even pose a security hole locally (many malwares can be hidden in code that only the author only knows how it works). Perhaps the dev of this tool has a bad track record with releasing system crippling software. We don't know. And like OP said, if you can't compile a piece of software and install it yourself, you don't need to be a network admin. There are many apps I use as a hobby user that I have to compile myself from SVN or source tarball that I will never find in the repo. If you must rely on a deb or yum, then it could be a possibility that you are probably going to use this app for what it was really designed for, as a script kiddy (look at me! I'm a hacker!) toy and not a security tool to test your network. Though on the other side, it makes me wonder if they have the wep cracking tool (aircrack-ng) as ubuntu does, since all I have seen people do with that is crack their neighbor's wireless router's security.
With the news recently on how java is going to be changing in oracle's hands, people seem pretty nervous in just the java side side of things let alone a language that runs over java. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
I love it how people act like linux is actually *trying* to compete with os A or os B etc. Like there is some prize to be won by being the most used desktop OS. It's not a race to a finish line to kill off some other os. Linux is an option. You don't like it? Don't use it. Linux isn't out there to be in a popularity contest. It doesn't care what you think about what a desktop should look like, or what apps should work on it. It doesn't care if you use it. The people who make it, make it for their needs. If you don't like how it works, do the work yourself. You don't want to do the work? Good for you, linux isn't for you then. Go use windows or osx. Linux is useful for people making things like routers, tv's, blue ray/multimedia centers, cable boxes, lab machines, code monkeys, laptops for children in 3rd world countries, cell phones, cars, etc etc. Do you think it cares that some windows people think that it's competition? Competition would require that it wasn't free. The linux community is basically a bunch of friends that work/hack together to make something they find useful, it's not a kill or be killed "man I need to make a billion by the end of the quarter" franchise. And it doesn't rate it's success by how many people are "converted" over to the dark side. If you don't care about linux, we won't cry if you don't use it. We won't hate you either. Many of us dual boot, some of us only use it on our servers, some of us use it full time, some of us just use it in our router/tv/phone/etc.
Only recently (in the last 4 years) have I quit the desktop thing and moved onto only laptops, but I have to say that the ergonomics are horrid on the last 3 I have bought. I have been typing daily for years now and do not get pain on a desktop with either dvorak or qwerty touchtyping, but on laptops it's easy for me to use bad ergonomic practices. The best thing you can do with ergonomics though has little to do with keyboard, and more to do with desk and adjustable chair height from my experiance. Basically make sure your chair is high enough that your elbows are right on the plane of your keyboard. For neck pain though make sure you aren't looking down at your monitor, or up (like when I tried to use my 42" lcd as a desktop monitor... or way back when I had a tiny monochrome monitor) and you should be good. Mouse pain is the most I get now, but that's because from time to time I use a touchpad, which is murder on my wrists for some things like drag and dropping files.
here are some things that I think flip the bill of previous art though some of these things don't fit with the "on the internet". Subway, Arcade (chuck e cheese anyone?), golf ball machine (at driving ranges) tokens. I don't care if it's online or not though, it's still the same thing... it's a token. The idea of a token has been around forever. But knowing how our patent system works, this will get pushed through somehow. I listed the tokens above because I have witnessed many a token or ticket that on it said "no refunds", basically saying, you are not getting your money back from that token/ticket, so it sounds just like this patent to me. Casinos I would count out as you can go to the cashier and get the money back out (at least at real casinos), same with linden labs currency). Now MegaTouch casino games use a virtual token of sorts that turns real money into fake currency that you cannot get back though.
...next they will do the same for someone taking a picture of Big Ben and sticking it in a calender or making it a wallpaper in a paid for OS they will pull the same leverage? This seems a bit far out. It makes you wonder what moron was sitting around and seriously thought they could pull this off. The next step from this is you can't take a picture anywhere but inside the house you built if you are in the UK if you intend to sell it somehow.
Sooo right. Lik-sang was a great retailer. They didn't sell the illegal stuff at all. Legit import games you couldn't buy in other countries and specialty hardware for linux users. Last thing I bought from them was a set of xbox usb cables so I could use my keyboard and mouse in linux. Luckily there is playasia now to fill their shoes if you want your imports, but lik-sang didn't deserve that treatment at all.
...are getting far fetched. You can legally hack on your apple products, but if you do the same *exact* thing on a ps3 you get sent to court? This law either needs to get pulled or fixed to say, you can "Jailbreak" any hardware device you can buy regardless of EULA/TOS/Whatever. Telling me how to use something in my house though doesn't get me to buy your product personally. Xbox 360 banned around 1 million 360's over christmas and still get hacked. They don't bring the users to court, and they have a pretty huge user base. Instead of spending all R&D time on dropping features and setting up ways to sue people, they let you hack your system, and if you decide to get caught in the ban wave, you get your box banned (though not your live account). You buy a new box and start it over again, so a huge base buys new consoles every so often. I personally did "mod" my old xbox1 just to run gentoox (gentoox.shallax.com) and xbmc on it, and I bought about 45 games for it to play on the side for around 50 a piece on it. Didn't pirate one game. But the pirates ruin it for the rest of the homebrewers. I'm almost pretty sure that if otheros was patched to stop the exploit that was being worked on instead of ripped out, all those people wouldn't be mad enough to try to hack their machines to perhaps find a way to downgrade their firmware or find a way to run linux without restrictions. I personally gave up on the console scenes though. I don't like to affiliate with people that are only out to steal software when all I want to do is mess around with homebrew or something. And since I picked up a pretty decent laptop, I can do all the hacking on source I want in real linux and not have to be accused by some company of being a thief or worry about the sony ninja's trying to sue.