Here's the key to it. The majority of servers run some variant of Linux. Most buffer overflow bugs require a specific offset...
No, no, no, you're out in left field.
You can't do the offset trick on any modern system, Windows or *n*x, because of virtual memory. All buffer overflow exploits use position-independent code. They have to.
But that's not the reason Microsoft gets hit so hard... or, more accurately, why Linux rarely gets hit. (Just to further debunk the offset business, most people run a "default" Apache off somebody's RPM; only the TRULY cagey-ass paranoid admins compile from source if they can grab an RPM or a deb or a Slackware tarball...)
Linux (and *BSD) are non-targets because:
*n*x admins are paranoid s.o.b.'s that don't do stupid things like enable scripting in their incoming email (not that that has anything to do with Code Red, but that's the kind of thing we don't do),
and more importantly
WE DON'T RUN IN GOD MODE ALL THE TIME.
We read mail as normal users. Apache runs as "httpd", not "root". Most other daemons can be configured to run as not-root too.... but I think the most important thing is that we don't run around with a hash prompt all the time. That's what gets Win9x'ers in trouble, is by the time a Unix shell would've told them "Permission denied." they're already in trouble. Virus writers know this, and so they target Windows instead of *n*x for maximum penetration. It's not because they hate M$ so much... it's a measure of how much trouble they can cause. (That and because BSD and Linux are Open Source, not only is it not as big a challenge, but the holes get squashed in short order, too....)
Of course, I've said this time and again, here and elsewhere... but it bears saying until this virus BS is stamped out like any other kind of terrorism... if people will learn to defend themselves by practicing Safe OS, that is, run a system in a manner that is as virus-proof as possible, whether it's full-out McAfee or some such on Windows, or just run *n*x with a good setup, we can make it not-fun for the script kiddies and they'll go back to sniffing glue.
Or, in the case of the ChiComs that unleashed Code Red in specific, back to studying their Little Red Book.... but that's a whole 'nother can of worms....
I don't know where people get this attitude that 60- to 80-hour weeks are necessary on a regular basis to get the job done in IT.
I can see where, if something breaks rather heinously and you're dealing with production system downtime, you would feel the need to stay late and get the job done. I've done it many times myself. And maybe it is while you're young and single, things like having a life outside of work don't matter so much.... I know I had a blast as a road warrior when I wore a younger man's clothes... but there comes a point in your life, if you bother to have one, where you need to slow down, get off the road, and devote some quality time outside of work. You need to start working smarter, not harder. Set your customer's expectations, secretly plan to exceed them, and make your business not on getting it out the door first, but on having a reputation for things that work right the first time. Grow organically. And stop pushing yourselves to the breaking point... because at some point you'll forget where that point is... and find yourself taking your vacation within reach of a nurse call button.
The insanity we call running a business these days has got to stop. The stock market and the VC's these days expect more and more out of less and less, and it's all a huge bet... not on whether your company can make a decent product, but on whether it can totally dominate the entire market... and if you can't do that, you lose. What is so bloody wrong with taking your time and making a quality product that people are willing to wait for? The world is filled these days with "extreme" this and "ultra" that and the idea that if you're not pushing body, mind, and soul to 115% of their ability, you're a loser and deserve to be tossed aside as a know-nothing.
Actually, there is one thing that is "extreme" that appears to be working. Extreme programming. For those who haven't read the link already, you work in pairs, one drives, one catches mistakes; stay in close contact with your customer; design using the KISS principle; keep your internal meetings to a minimum, and those short and informal; release daily; test constantly; if you don't know how to test it, don't write it; write only what you need, when you absolutely need it; and (with few exceptions) when 40 hours a week are up, GO HOME! This prevents programmer burnout, and enables you to write lots of good code fast. I know someone who is doing this now; I envy her greatly. She loves her job, because the method enables them to kick ass without wearing themselves out. I don't know whether they have nerf guns or ping-pong or video games or not... but I imagine they don't need them.
When you design quality and sanity into the process, you don't need this balls-to-the-wall mentality that seems to pervade the halls of high-tech these days. You can have a life. What's so wrong with having a life? I thought computers were supposed to make life easier, not harder.
--
If you're not having fun,
you're doing it wrong. -- me
Re:Try be inovative instead of just replicate ?
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Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 2
If it's not a customer-driven product,
To which my wife, who doesn't even program, replied, "Since when does a customer know what he wants?"
I think part of the reason (but not all, I have my theories) that M$ products are so bad is that some marketing weenie gets this enhancement request from some clueless luser, and since it's "customer-driven", the ER gets handed down to the engineers from on high and forced to be implemented whether it's a good idea or not.
On the other hand, Mozilla and Galeon and projects like it implement the Cluetrain Manifesto in software (e.g. Bugzilla) in which the customer is perfectly free to submit an ER.... and the engineers are perfectly free to mark it WONTFIX, i.e. fuggeddabowdit, not happening.
You have to admit, both of those projects are pretty darn feature-rich.... but to my knowledge neither of them have the gaping, Mack-Truck-sized security holes that certain Other Browsers have.... more than that, at least by stability, Mozilla beat out its commercial predecessor... well enough, in fact, that Netscape co-opted 0.9.2 for its own use pretty much wholesale...
Linux is just fine for the corporate desktop as long as your salescritters aren't inextricably tied to Microsoft formats for interchange. Once you move your sales to the web (Boeing, Amazon), everything external to the company is done in HTML, and the rest can be converted in-house as time and budget permits. MIS mangler headaches? Call IBM. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
Re:Try be inovative instead of just replicate ?
on
Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 2
Problem is tho in a 'free software' environment, nobody's going to pick a winner and centralize development efforts on that product. This point is where the culture of Linux runs counter to the marketing efforts of it's advocates that want to see it as a Microsoft replacement (when it's not intended to be such).
No, that is the point. There are multiple ways to do it. We don't like it when Microsoft tries to be The Only Way, why should we do as they do? Competition is good.
It really cheeses me off when Stallman et al try to push people into working on The One True Gnu instead of continuing work on things they're already familiar with.... Listar, for example... while the web interface is actually a little clunky, the underpinnings are actually better, but RMS wanted the author to drop it and work on MailMan, nevermind whose code was better.
The fact that we have both Gnome and KDE, Mozilla and Galeon, Perl and Python, several viable Java Virtual Machines, and gods knows how many Linuxes and BSDs to run them on, is one of the Best Things about Open Source.
Interestingly enough, the only "standards" I can think of that Linux apps conform to are those foisted on us by software monopolies.... Microsoft and Adobe. Perhaps we do need to come up with a more robust XML document standard... but I don't think any one outfit should do it. That's asking for trouble.
Re:Try be inovative instead of just replicate ?
on
Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 2
The core issue is, dont try to walk your way to the desktop by making [almost as good] replicas of existing desktop software. Instead, offer something better! Something like a uniform word processor that uses the XML standard. Maybe use the same XML for spreadsheats, email programs, etc etc etc.
Been done.
escaflowne:/home/taliesin(0)> file judmon.abw
judmon.abw: XML document text
AbiWord already saves in XML format. It's been around for a while. Kword saves in compressed XML format. I believe some of the spreadsheets do likewise.
As far as going beyond the functionality of You Know Who... that remains to be seen.
This may be an unpopular viewpoint on/., but I'd personally rather have the government able to read my email (with a subpeona, of course) than see another event where dozens of relatives were milling around outside a disaster zone clutching photos of their lost father/son/daughter/wife/etc.
That's just it, though...
Anybody who thinks for a second that (1) an international terrorist network doesn't have ways other than the internet to coordinate activities or (2) would not only freely violate a ban on secure encryption but rejoice in its presence (just as domestic criminals rejoice in bans on weapons useable for personal defense) needs to wake up and smell the napalm.
ALL this is is a thinly-veiled attempt by those who want to make us into good little consumer marionettes to attach the strings. I for one intend to flout any such attempt simply by sitting here on my ass and refusing to update the very good encryption I have here on my Linux box.
Besides, as I wrote Senator Patty Murray yesterday (treeware, hand-delivered!) (I gotta wonder, what good is showing ID going to do as far as adding security to a Federal building? but I digress...) most encryption software these days is developed in Canada, Finland, or Australia... Congress can ban it 'til they're blue in the face, but unless they want to totally shut us off from the rest of the world, somebody somewhere is going to dial into something overseas and mirror this stuff, or use a sattelite link, or something...
I have to wonder why it is that some people are so willing to give up liberty for security... I think it is that we have on our hands a generation that has been taught that it is not good to take responsibility for oneself and one's own actions, that Big Daddy Government knows best, and that if you just give up everything you've got, everything you "need" will be provided for you. Weak.Slavery.
And ultimately, these people don't think it's cool to walk up to the schoolyard bully with a history of picking on yourself and rearrange his face. Well, I've got news for Osama bin Laden. "What face?"
I think Congress needs to spend less time being stupid and more time figuring out a way to get hot lead pushed thru some terrorists' brain stems.... and get the aviation industry back on its feet. Norm Mineta has given aid and comfort to the enemy... but that's a whole 'nother rant.
--
It's been a week now. I'm currently more ticked off at our own bureaucrats than at any jihadists. What's wrong with this picture?!
Further, I have little confidence in the ability of a municipal or other government to provide efficient, inexpensive Internet (or other) services, and I can think of many more things I would rather have them provide or improve. If the government really feels a need to provide their citizens with connectivity I think it is best done with a limited number of Internet kiosks at places like libraries, city halls, etc, but I would vote against anybody who would suggest that providing more than this is the job of our government.
It's not the job of the Federal Government to do this. I think if a town or a county, which already has fiber in place to read your utility meters, wants to provide high-speed access (probably best done by contracting the ISP infrastructure to a local, private company which is dedicated (either by division or in its entirety) to providing cheap, fair service (and I would write into the contract, were I writing it, that Thou Shalt Not use anything that ties the users to Microsoft products, Whereas Microsoft is a proven monopolist)).... then that's its business. (Literally.)
The idea here is that you're adding to the choices a consumer can make, not taking away. This would in no shape or form be a monopoly. And if you do it right, you really could have good, fast, cheap, choose all three. (Fancy.... would not be an option.:)
Some famous music critic once remarked that "only seven songs have ever been written in the history of rock music; most bands just learn one and play it over and over."
So what are the seven songs, eh?
(Of course, I can probably prove him wrong by mentioning eight songs that are radically different from one another.... lessee..
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (symphonic rock)
Leave It - Yes (a capella mix, radio only)
Open Arms - Journey (6/8 time!)
Tutti Frutti - Little Richard (50's dance)
Orange Crush - R.E.M. (rattle & hum)
Highway to Hell - AC/DC (heavy metal)
Closer to Fine - Indigo Girls (girls with guitars)
Axel F - Harold Faltermeyer (electronic)
Super Freak - Rick James (funk)
Gimme Three Steps - Lynryd Skynyrd (Southern Rock)
The Streak - Ray Stevens (70's novelty)
Night Fever - The Bee Gees (D*sco)
All undeniably rock, but.... (and I just got started:)
religion can just sometimes serve as a suitable excuse.
Both for some suicidal maniacs to crash aircraft into the sides of buildings, and for xenophobic maniacs like Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson to
blame the crashes on people whose only crime is to insist that they be allowed to live according to the dictates of their own conscience, not harming anyone else.
Skyshadow's implication here is spot-on. Fundamentalism in any form is dangerous... the arrogance that comes from believing that your way of life is so much superior than mine that it gives you the right to impose it on me often turns deadly. I don't suggest for a moment that we should launch a pre-emptive strike on those two gentlemen's persons.... but bombing the bejeezus out of their credibility is something every sane American should do every chance they get.
Let'em talk... but make sure they're the poster children for the Fool of the Month Club.
Somebody mod this up, for once the AC has a point...
I refrained from saying this before, but it's early on a Sunday morning, and I'm just uninhibited enough...
Aside from a few enlightened souls in the judiciary, The American System has proven it does not listen to us (==geeks) when we work within it. It may well be time to consider working outside the system. This does not require bloodshed, or violence of any kind other than the variety committed with a keyboard. But I know one thing for sure. If all the important geeks banded together and said "Monday at noon EDT the Internet goes DOWN for one hour" and followed thru, it would get a whole bunch of people's undivided attention.
Would the jack-booted thugs come out and round us all up? Maybe, I don't know. But if we got enough involvement (see also whichever Scandinavian king it was wearing a yellow arm band during the German occupation) they couldn't just hold us, because the Internet would be down and we'd have them by the balls.
Power no longer proceeds forth from the barrel of a gun, Chairman Mao. Power proceeds forth from the RJ-45 on the end of a piece of CAT-5. Information is it, and us geeks control it. We have the power. We need to set about using it.
Maybe in a few years, the word "geek" will inspire respect in the hearts of the just, and stark terror in the eyes of those who would keep us from being free.
It is interesting to note the progression of what has commonly been carried in some sort of holster on one's belt... until the 1800's, it was the sword. Then it was the gun. In the 50's, it was the slide rule. Then the beeper. Now it is the cell phone and the handheld computer.
Power, folks. Think carefully. Use wisely. But do NOT, under any circumstances, allow the bastards to get us down. Repeal of the DMCA should be the very first tiny step.
And if anyone should think otherwise, no, I do NOT advocate overthrow of the American government.... I advocate its restoration. It has been overthrown by the twin tyrranies of Big Business (the GOP) and Victimhood (the DNC). The old framework is still there, in the Constitution. It's just being ignored.
--
"Never start a fight.... but always finish it."
-- John Sheridan, quoting his father (Babylon 5 "Severed Dreams", #310)
If you can't sell a computer that's not security equipped, we who want to control our own technology will be like the people in a cyberpunk novel or in the Matrix, who have to cobble together their own technology apart from the mainstream.
I remember there being a rather brisk trade in hi-capacity pistol magazines after they said you couldn't sell any new ones to the general public... does this mean my li'l ole AMD K6-2/400 is going to be worth its weight in gold-pressed latinum next year? Hmmm....
Yeah, I forsee a rather large Internet underground if that happens... and things could get pretty ugly.
A wise man once said that the Tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants alike. Somehow I get the feeling that Tree is feeling pretty parched about now.... and the tall, redheaded Virginian who said those words two-plus centuries ago would say it needs watering. Perhaps this time we only have to kill careers, not the induhviduals that carry them on...
The choice, I think, is up to those who would be tyrants. They had best realize what they are choosing.
--
The trouble with a political joke is
that he or she will often get elected.
-- James E. Buell
The point is not that Bush is letting Microsoft off the hook
And neither will the likes of McNeally, Case, et al. They've just been waiting for a clear indication of exactly who it is they need to sue. Remember, "Microsoft is a monopoly" is now a matter of case law; now that it is clear that there is only going to be one Microsoft instead of two or three or six, they can turn the legal beagles loose without fear of having to do it all over again, or being told "no, you can't do that."
I figured this would happen; called it several months ago. But just like in the case of a certain football player some time ago, the damage has been done, and despite the lack of a serious criminal punishment, in both cases everybody knows what happened. In the one case, a certain induhvidual will never have a girlfriend with brains again, and in the other... well, we'll have to wait and see, but it should be an interesting ride.
--
Sooner or later, in light of all this, you're going to need a Linux guru
No need to POST the article....
on
HP Buys Compaq
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· Score: 5, Informative
Jeez, people, how hard is it to replace "www" with "archives"?
Yeah, I know, Taco won't change'em so NYT won't bust his chops, but they're gonna bust us all bigtime if we keep swiping their articles straight up... Just right-click, copy link location, paste into new window, make the appropriate edit, and fsck'em. After all, it's not like you were gonna feed'em real marketing data anyway.... right?
If you'd bother to go read about the Hugo and how it is given before going ballistic, you'd know that the Hugos are nominated and voted on by the membership of Worldcon.
In other words, the fans did it.
It's a big fat popularity contest, and obviously the folks going to Philcon this year thought that Harry Potter was the best thing out there from last year (which was, admittedly, a horrible year for SF and fantasy in print).
If you want to bitch about it, pony up your $35, join ConJose for this time next year, nominate somebody, and vote your ballot. You don't vote, you got no reason to spam Taco's hard drive with whining.
warpeightbot, member, ConJose, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention
So let it be written, so let it be done.
You're lucky that you're allowed to. Increasingly, ISPs are not allowing this, wanting to charge 5-10 times as much for business rates for customers that want such simple things as an e-mail address that will never change.
My ideal setup:
High-speed bitpipe (microwave wireless, ideally; if not, preferably DSL, primarily because phone companies aren't quite as clueless as cable companies are when providing tech support), no services, from Provider A (best of breed).
Web hosting, email, and shell access from Provider B (best of breed) (MUST have SSH and SIMAP services, sine qua non)
Backup web-based email from Provider C (best of breed) (or possibly something like SquirrelMail on the web-host)
Usenet? I quit using Usenet years ago. If I really need it, there's usually a gatewayed mailing list or archive.
You think you guys have got it bad, we couldn't get gatech to carry ANY of the alt.* groups some years ago.... it was the Sacred Seven or fuggeddabowdit. In any event, I generally ignore monopolist ISPs' (cable companies, ILECs, universities) offerings for anyting but bandwidth and go elsewhere for services.
But yeah, the workaround is just to pick up a shell account somewhere and use that... or perhaps mailandnews.com would be helpful.... but there are ways.
--
The Net inteprets censorship as damage and routes around it. -- John Gilmore
Perhaps projects like Galeon can be the saving grace.
They are.
I'm typing this on Galeon 0.11.5, and while Galeon is being a memory pig at 39mb, it is pretty fast, and it has a lot of cool features that respond in a reasonable manner (tabbed browsing, icons, session recovery). Yeah, it's got a few bugs, but it's VERY useable, version number be damned.
I have currently on-system Galeon, Mozilla (0.9.3, still very useable but a CPU hog as well), Opera (damn that thing is LIGHT! still some CSS bugs; the Linux version lags Win32 in that respect), Konqueror (plain, but functional, and also light... but no tabs like Opera), Amaya (for standards checking, in case a site acts funny), Netscape (the only one I leave Flash-enabled), lynx, and links. All of them have uses... but Galeon is the one I use the most, just because it's that good, that cool.
Asa and the gang have come a LONG way since M18, and Marco and Ricardo and company have built on that success... I could give a rip about version numbers, what I care about is functionality. If they want to go the Debian route and get *all* the bugs out before releasing 1.0, that's fine with me, as long as they keep putting out milestones. Frankly, except for the way plugins work (or don't), I'm really happy with what they've got now...
Which leads me to the zinger: if we can do all this with BETA software (Mozilla 0.9.3, Galeon 0.11.5, Gnumeric 0.67, AbiWord 0.7.14, openssl 0.9.5a, LILO 0.21, yadda yadda yadda... out of the 631 packages on my Mandrake 7.2 system, 139 of them, including many vital ones like pam 0.72, have version numbers >1.0)... what will the world look like when all that stuff is finally 1.0?
Well, if a Boeing 747 isn't bloatware, then I don't know wat is....:)
Actually, over the last several years Boeing has been taking all of their aircraft back thru the same design process they used to build the 777. The new birds are lighter, faster, stronger, more efficient, and a helluva lot easier to fly and service.... to the point where Southwest up and placed orders to replace their entire fleet of old-model 737's (the "little" bird with engines on the wings) with the new ones.
Now, I'll admit to having been there (as a contractor) when Boeing was in the middle of all this... but I also went and asked the pilots and F/A's and such, and the verdict was unanimous. "Love it." Yes, the original 747 was a designer's nightmare, hand-fitted, and no two of them were exactly the same... but at least one of the Big Companies in the Puget Sound has done some real innovation in the last ten years...
</catty remark>
Yaknow, this is just one more reason I browse with Open Source browsers on an Open Source OS. When I say "rpm -e" or "dpkg -r", it's bigod GONE... if any of the crap currently under discussion even runs on anything other than something made in the Redmond gulags... of course, the fact that both Mozilla and Galeon have their own built-in image, cookie, and password management don't hurt at all. (Konqueror doesn't do password management, but it'll still block the ad sites... besides, I don't use password management; I keep exactly two passwords on my own computer - my login password, and root's. Everything else is on the servers they belong to, and between my ears. Safer that way.)
I still run Junkbuster just because sometimes sites use the same server for both ads and nav glyphs... but despite the fact that there's no GUI yet for popup control, it's too easy in Galeon in tab mode to just go harvest the little buggers without ever having to see'em.. a click of the "x" box on the tab, and bye bye popup....
No sane IT manager would buy an OS without approved hardware. Most Linux servers for example run on Dell or Compaq systems that are linux approved.
Doesn't have to be.
Any IT lead who's been paying attention knows that you can put together any old white box solution and as long as you use stuff off the hardware HOWTO it's pretty much gonna work... Oh, sure, if you're doing this on a massive scale, getting a batch of ProLiants or PowerEdges is the best way to get hardware support (and not have hardware support tell you to upgrade to the latest version of You-Know-What...).. but for small to medium sized stuff, go see your buyer with your laundry list, wait two days for FedEx, grab the stuff from Receiving, spend a couple of relaxing hours getting your paws in the hardware (you did remember your anti-static wristband, right?) and away from the CRT, and poof, time to load your kickstart CD. Twiddle the BIOS to boot off the CD, F10, go get coffee, kabam. New Linux server for cheap cheap cheap.
I mean, you do HAVE a couple hours you can take off from reading Slashdot, right? your automation scripts are up to date and will beep your cellphone if there are problems, right?
-- Something the PHB's have never figured out is that a good sysadm is first and foremost a lazy-ass s.o.b.
I think most coders will agree with me when I say, "Send those guys/girls a case of beer!"
Yes, but ask first. I know one open-source programmer who will have nothing to do with beer, but would love to have mead or good scotch. And then there's brands... I'm pretty picky about which Seattle-based microbrews I quaff, where some folks would be happy with Bud.
So, yeah, free booze, but ask...
So let's pool all the free booze we're going to get out of this story and host the First Annual Intergalactic Kegger...
According to Katz, AOL/Time warner is out to get EVERYONE.
As a matter of fact, they ARE out to get everyone. That's the whole basis of capitalism-gone-awry (in which you have to keep on biggering and biggering until the last trufula tree is gone) (as opposed to regular capitalism, which is simply about having an open market on which to trade your goods and services)...
The funny thing about it is, when you ask semi-net-savvy people, AOL and MSN rank dead last in the great sea of ISPs big and small. Anyone smart enough to do more than casual surfing gets the hell off Eh? Oh, Hell ASAP; the whole high speed data craze has both 800-pound gorillas scared ****less because neither of them has penetration in that market.
To make a long story short, there is rapidly becoming a two-tiered Internet: The hoi-polloi on MSN and AOL, and us eggheads who patronize their _local_ ISP (high-speed or not) and have the freedom to roam wherever we want and get the Real News.
Y'know, if it was Javascript, it wouldn't be so bad. But according to
this ZDNet article, it's VBScript.
Need I say more?
I think I will, just to get the point across. From the article:
But Adobe doesn't currently plan to prevent VBScript or other files from running.
To prevent Peachy from being able to run, "the change we would have to make is not to allow VBScript attachments. That is a problem for a lot of our customers," she said. "If they change their opinion, we will do what they want."
WTF???
Why do you need total access to the entire machine inside a document reader? I can understand wanting Javascript; LetterJ's example of the "smart" IRS form is a good one. But a VBScript engine...
blink, blink
Ye gods.
There ain't but one way to get the specs on how to implement/link to one of those things.
I think I shall leave the explanation as to why Adobe is Officially Evil as an exercise to the reader.
Go ahead, mod me down all you want, but word will get out....
You betcha. Especially Galeon, which allows you to turn Java and Javascript on and off at will from the Settings menu without mousing around (Alt-S, J and Alt-S, S respectively); there is a feature request in for the next release that will allow you to do the same with arbitrary plugins. Some sites I actually like Flash (like, say, User Friendly), but most of the time it sucks and crashes and generally annoys me because I can't just right-click on it and block it. So I leave flash chmodded 000 until I need it. (Try that on Windows and watch it barf.) Then there's the image and cookie blocking, the icons support (both favicons and icons in place of names), the "smart" search bookmarks (like http://www.google.com/search?q=%s), tabbed browsing...
Of course, if things get really desparate (like some nut codes an IE-only website I want to see), I can fire up Opera and tell it to lie to IIS... the beauty of Linux is that there are SO MANY browsers out there, each good at something. Galeon. Mozilla. Konqueror. Amaya. Opera. Links. Lynx. (they're different! Links handles tables in text. Lynx doesn't.) What? I forgot Nutscrape? Forget them. Don't need'em. If I'm going to run commercial software, it's going to be reallly good commercial software. Like Opera.
But I have to agree with the general sentiment. No flash, no Java (outside of a game), minimal JavaScript (Yahoo's address book is a good example of JavaScript done right), nothing else that's not cross-platform (and therefore subject to the Unix permission paradigm), no cookies, damn few ads (I let OSDN's go thru, because they're INTERESTING), just content. If you're going to insist on anything more than JavaScript, I'll take my business elsewhere. Seeya. Wouldn't wanna BE ya.
But no, I run Linux because a long time ago I got tired of worrying about scanning for viruses and blocking ActiveX controls and malicious VBScript and Blue Screens of Death and a whole host of other problems that I just don't have anymore. Eight browsers, five word processors, four IM clients, three games of Solitaire, two skinnable GUI's, and a groupware in beta test. And every last bit of it free at least as in beer. Now, somebody explain to my wife, who threw Windows off her box in 1997 because it ate the registry twice in as many weeks and never regretted it, why she needs to pay for software ever again.
Linux. Not because it's cool or l33+ or trendy (it's surely not that.... yet), but because it makes sense. Because it Doesn't Suck.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't do the offset trick on any modern system, Windows or *n*x, because of virtual memory. All buffer overflow exploits use position-independent code. They have to.
But that's not the reason Microsoft gets hit so hard... or, more accurately, why Linux rarely gets hit. (Just to further debunk the offset business, most people run a "default" Apache off somebody's RPM; only the TRULY cagey-ass paranoid admins compile from source if they can grab an RPM or a deb or a Slackware tarball...)
Linux (and *BSD) are non-targets because:
- *n*x admins are paranoid s.o.b.'s that don't do stupid things like enable scripting in their incoming email (not that that has anything to do with Code Red, but that's the kind of thing we don't do),
- WE DON'T RUN IN GOD MODE ALL THE TIME.
We read mail as normal users. Apache runs as "httpd", not "root". Most other daemons can be configured to run as not-root too.... but I think the most important thing is that we don't run around with a hash prompt all the time. That's what gets Win9x'ers in trouble, is by the time a Unix shell would've told them "Permission denied." they're already in trouble. Virus writers know this, and so they target Windows instead of *n*x for maximum penetration. It's not because they hate M$ so much... it's a measure of how much trouble they can cause. (That and because BSD and Linux are Open Source, not only is it not as big a challenge, but the holes get squashed in short order, too....)and more importantly
Of course, I've said this time and again, here and elsewhere... but it bears saying until this virus BS is stamped out like any other kind of terrorism... if people will learn to defend themselves by practicing Safe OS, that is, run a system in a manner that is as virus-proof as possible, whether it's full-out McAfee or some such on Windows, or just run *n*x with a good setup, we can make it not-fun for the script kiddies and they'll go back to sniffing glue.
Or, in the case of the ChiComs that unleashed Code Red in specific, back to studying their Little Red Book.... but that's a whole 'nother can of worms....
I can see where, if something breaks rather heinously and you're dealing with production system downtime, you would feel the need to stay late and get the job done. I've done it many times myself. And maybe it is while you're young and single, things like having a life outside of work don't matter so much.... I know I had a blast as a road warrior when I wore a younger man's clothes... but there comes a point in your life, if you bother to have one, where you need to slow down, get off the road, and devote some quality time outside of work. You need to start working smarter, not harder. Set your customer's expectations, secretly plan to exceed them, and make your business not on getting it out the door first, but on having a reputation for things that work right the first time. Grow organically. And stop pushing yourselves to the breaking point... because at some point you'll forget where that point is... and find yourself taking your vacation within reach of a nurse call button.
The insanity we call running a business these days has got to stop. The stock market and the VC's these days expect more and more out of less and less, and it's all a huge bet... not on whether your company can make a decent product, but on whether it can totally dominate the entire market... and if you can't do that, you lose. What is so bloody wrong with taking your time and making a quality product that people are willing to wait for? The world is filled these days with "extreme" this and "ultra" that and the idea that if you're not pushing body, mind, and soul to 115% of their ability, you're a loser and deserve to be tossed aside as a know-nothing.
Actually, there is one thing that is "extreme" that appears to be working. Extreme programming. For those who haven't read the link already, you work in pairs, one drives, one catches mistakes; stay in close contact with your customer; design using the KISS principle; keep your internal meetings to a minimum, and those short and informal; release daily; test constantly; if you don't know how to test it, don't write it; write only what you need, when you absolutely need it; and (with few exceptions) when 40 hours a week are up, GO HOME! This prevents programmer burnout, and enables you to write lots of good code fast. I know someone who is doing this now; I envy her greatly. She loves her job, because the method enables them to kick ass without wearing themselves out. I don't know whether they have nerf guns or ping-pong or video games or not... but I imagine they don't need them.
When you design quality and sanity into the process, you don't need this balls-to-the-wall mentality that seems to pervade the halls of high-tech these days. You can have a life. What's so wrong with having a life? I thought computers were supposed to make life easier, not harder.
--
If you're not having fun,
you're doing it wrong. -- me
I think part of the reason (but not all, I have my theories) that M$ products are so bad is that some marketing weenie gets this enhancement request from some clueless luser, and since it's "customer-driven", the ER gets handed down to the engineers from on high and forced to be implemented whether it's a good idea or not.
On the other hand, Mozilla and Galeon and projects like it implement the Cluetrain Manifesto in software (e.g. Bugzilla) in which the customer is perfectly free to submit an ER.... and the engineers are perfectly free to mark it WONTFIX, i.e. fuggeddabowdit, not happening.
You have to admit, both of those projects are pretty darn feature-rich.... but to my knowledge neither of them have the gaping, Mack-Truck-sized security holes that certain Other Browsers have.... more than that, at least by stability, Mozilla beat out its commercial predecessor... well enough, in fact, that Netscape co-opted 0.9.2 for its own use pretty much wholesale...
Linux is just fine for the corporate desktop as long as your salescritters aren't inextricably tied to Microsoft formats for interchange. Once you move your sales to the web (Boeing, Amazon), everything external to the company is done in HTML, and the rest can be converted in-house as time and budget permits. MIS mangler headaches? Call IBM. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
It really cheeses me off when Stallman et al try to push people into working on The One True Gnu instead of continuing work on things they're already familiar with.... Listar, for example... while the web interface is actually a little clunky, the underpinnings are actually better, but RMS wanted the author to drop it and work on MailMan, nevermind whose code was better.
The fact that we have both Gnome and KDE, Mozilla and Galeon, Perl and Python, several viable Java Virtual Machines, and gods knows how many Linuxes and BSDs to run them on, is one of the Best Things about Open Source.
Interestingly enough, the only "standards" I can think of that Linux apps conform to are those foisted on us by software monopolies.... Microsoft and Adobe. Perhaps we do need to come up with a more robust XML document standard... but I don't think any one outfit should do it. That's asking for trouble.
escaflowne:/home/taliesin(0)> file judmon.abw
judmon.abw: XML document text
AbiWord already saves in XML format. It's been around for a while. Kword saves in compressed XML format. I believe some of the spreadsheets do likewise.
As far as going beyond the functionality of You Know Who... that remains to be seen.
Anybody who thinks for a second that (1) an international terrorist network doesn't have ways other than the internet to coordinate activities or (2) would not only freely violate a ban on secure encryption but rejoice in its presence (just as domestic criminals rejoice in bans on weapons useable for personal defense) needs to wake up and smell the napalm.
ALL this is is a thinly-veiled attempt by those who want to make us into good little consumer marionettes to attach the strings. I for one intend to flout any such attempt simply by sitting here on my ass and refusing to update the very good encryption I have here on my Linux box.
Besides, as I wrote Senator Patty Murray yesterday (treeware, hand-delivered!) (I gotta wonder, what good is showing ID going to do as far as adding security to a Federal building? but I digress...) most encryption software these days is developed in Canada, Finland, or Australia... Congress can ban it 'til they're blue in the face, but unless they want to totally shut us off from the rest of the world, somebody somewhere is going to dial into something overseas and mirror this stuff, or use a sattelite link, or something...
I have to wonder why it is that some people are so willing to give up liberty for security... I think it is that we have on our hands a generation that has been taught that it is not good to take responsibility for oneself and one's own actions, that Big Daddy Government knows best, and that if you just give up everything you've got, everything you "need" will be provided for you. Weak. Slavery.
And ultimately, these people don't think it's cool to walk up to the schoolyard bully with a history of picking on yourself and rearrange his face. Well, I've got news for Osama bin Laden. "What face?"
I think Congress needs to spend less time being stupid and more time figuring out a way to get hot lead pushed thru some terrorists' brain stems.... and get the aviation industry back on its feet. Norm Mineta has given aid and comfort to the enemy... but that's a whole 'nother rant.
--
It's been a week now. I'm currently more ticked off at our own bureaucrats than at any jihadists.
What's wrong with this picture?!
The idea here is that you're adding to the choices a consumer can make, not taking away. This would in no shape or form be a monopoly. And if you do it right, you really could have good, fast, cheap, choose all three. (Fancy.... would not be an option. :)
Don Marti's take on a pertinent issue.
(Of course, I can probably prove him wrong by mentioning eight songs that are radically different from one another.... lessee..
All undeniably rock, but.... (and I just got started :)
aah, well, wtf, I've karma to burn....
Skyshadow's implication here is spot-on. Fundamentalism in any form is dangerous... the arrogance that comes from believing that your way of life is so much superior than mine that it gives you the right to impose it on me often turns deadly. I don't suggest for a moment that we should launch a pre-emptive strike on those two gentlemen's persons.... but bombing the bejeezus out of their credibility is something every sane American should do every chance they get.
Let'em talk... but make sure they're the poster children for the Fool of the Month Club.
I refrained from saying this before, but it's early on a Sunday morning, and I'm just uninhibited enough...
Aside from a few enlightened souls in the judiciary, The American System has proven it does not listen to us (==geeks) when we work within it. It may well be time to consider working outside the system. This does not require bloodshed, or violence of any kind other than the variety committed with a keyboard. But I know one thing for sure. If all the important geeks banded together and said "Monday at noon EDT the Internet goes DOWN for one hour" and followed thru, it would get a whole bunch of people's undivided attention.
Would the jack-booted thugs come out and round us all up? Maybe, I don't know. But if we got enough involvement (see also whichever Scandinavian king it was wearing a yellow arm band during the German occupation) they couldn't just hold us, because the Internet would be down and we'd have them by the balls.
Power no longer proceeds forth from the barrel of a gun, Chairman Mao. Power proceeds forth from the RJ-45 on the end of a piece of CAT-5. Information is it, and us geeks control it. We have the power. We need to set about using it.
Maybe in a few years, the word "geek" will inspire respect in the hearts of the just, and stark terror in the eyes of those who would keep us from being free.
It is interesting to note the progression of what has commonly been carried in some sort of holster on one's belt... until the 1800's, it was the sword. Then it was the gun. In the 50's, it was the slide rule. Then the beeper. Now it is the cell phone and the handheld computer.
Power, folks. Think carefully. Use wisely. But do NOT, under any circumstances, allow the bastards to get us down. Repeal of the DMCA should be the very first tiny step.
And if anyone should think otherwise, no, I do NOT advocate overthrow of the American government.... I advocate its restoration. It has been overthrown by the twin tyrranies of Big Business (the GOP) and Victimhood (the DNC). The old framework is still there, in the Constitution. It's just being ignored.
--
"Never start a fight.... but always finish it."
-- John Sheridan, quoting his father (Babylon 5 "Severed Dreams", #310)
Yeah, I forsee a rather large Internet underground if that happens... and things could get pretty ugly.
A wise man once said that the Tree of Liberty is watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants alike. Somehow I get the feeling that Tree is feeling pretty parched about now.... and the tall, redheaded Virginian who said those words two-plus centuries ago would say it needs watering. Perhaps this time we only have to kill careers, not the induhviduals that carry them on...
The choice, I think, is up to those who would be tyrants. They had best realize what they are choosing.
--
The trouble with a political joke is
that he or she will often get elected.
-- James E. Buell
I figured this would happen; called it several months ago. But just like in the case of a certain football player some time ago, the damage has been done, and despite the lack of a serious criminal punishment, in both cases everybody knows what happened. In the one case, a certain induhvidual will never have a girlfriend with brains again, and in the other... well, we'll have to wait and see, but it should be an interesting ride.
--
Sooner or later, in light of all this, you're going to need a Linux guru
http://archives.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/business/04 DEAL.html
Yeah, I know, Taco won't change'em so NYT won't bust his chops, but they're gonna bust us all bigtime if we keep swiping their articles straight up... Just right-click, copy link location, paste into new window, make the appropriate edit, and fsck'em. After all, it's not like you were gonna feed'em real marketing data anyway.... right?
--
You need a Linux guru.
If you'd bother to go read about the Hugo and how it is given before going ballistic, you'd know that the Hugos are nominated and voted on by the membership of Worldcon.
In other words, the fans did it.
It's a big fat popularity contest, and obviously the folks going to Philcon this year thought that Harry Potter was the best thing out there from last year (which was, admittedly, a horrible year for SF and fantasy in print).
If you want to bitch about it, pony up your $35, join ConJose for this time next year, nominate somebody, and vote your ballot. You don't vote, you got no reason to spam Taco's hard drive with whining.
warpeightbot, member, ConJose, the 60th World Science Fiction Convention
So let it be written, so let it be done.
- High-speed bitpipe (microwave wireless, ideally; if not, preferably DSL, primarily because phone companies aren't quite as clueless as cable companies are when providing tech support), no services, from Provider A (best of breed).
- Web hosting, email, and shell access from Provider B (best of breed) (MUST have SSH and SIMAP services, sine qua non)
- Backup web-based email from Provider C (best of breed) (or possibly something like SquirrelMail on the web-host)
- Usenet? I quit using Usenet years ago. If I really need it, there's usually a gatewayed mailing list or archive.
You think you guys have got it bad, we couldn't get gatech to carry ANY of the alt.* groups some years ago.... it was the Sacred Seven or fuggeddabowdit. In any event, I generally ignore monopolist ISPs' (cable companies, ILECs, universities) offerings for anyting but bandwidth and go elsewhere for services.But yeah, the workaround is just to pick up a shell account somewhere and use that... or perhaps mailandnews.com would be helpful.... but there are ways.
--
The Net inteprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
-- John Gilmore
I'm typing this on Galeon 0.11.5, and while Galeon is being a memory pig at 39mb, it is pretty fast, and it has a lot of cool features that respond in a reasonable manner (tabbed browsing, icons, session recovery). Yeah, it's got a few bugs, but it's VERY useable, version number be damned.
I have currently on-system Galeon, Mozilla (0.9.3, still very useable but a CPU hog as well), Opera (damn that thing is LIGHT! still some CSS bugs; the Linux version lags Win32 in that respect), Konqueror (plain, but functional, and also light... but no tabs like Opera), Amaya (for standards checking, in case a site acts funny), Netscape (the only one I leave Flash-enabled), lynx, and links. All of them have uses... but Galeon is the one I use the most, just because it's that good, that cool.
Asa and the gang have come a LONG way since M18, and Marco and Ricardo and company have built on that success... I could give a rip about version numbers, what I care about is functionality. If they want to go the Debian route and get *all* the bugs out before releasing 1.0, that's fine with me, as long as they keep putting out milestones. Frankly, except for the way plugins work (or don't), I'm really happy with what they've got now...
Which leads me to the zinger: if we can do all this with BETA software (Mozilla 0.9.3, Galeon 0.11.5, Gnumeric 0.67, AbiWord 0.7.14, openssl 0.9.5a, LILO 0.21, yadda yadda yadda... out of the 631 packages on my Mandrake 7.2 system, 139 of them, including many vital ones like pam 0.72, have version numbers >1.0)... what will the world look like when all that stuff is finally 1.0?
Me, I'm looking forward to it...
--
Need a Unix guru?
and as long as we have that choice, the Orwellians can't take over.
Now, I'll admit to having been there (as a contractor) when Boeing was in the middle of all this... but I also went and asked the pilots and F/A's and such, and the verdict was unanimous. "Love it." Yes, the original 747 was a designer's nightmare, hand-fitted, and no two of them were exactly the same... but at least one of the Big Companies in the Puget Sound has done some real innovation in the last ten years... </catty remark>
I still run Junkbuster just because sometimes sites use the same server for both ads and nav glyphs... but despite the fact that there's no GUI yet for popup control, it's too easy in Galeon in tab mode to just go harvest the little buggers without ever having to see'em.. a click of the "x" box on the tab, and bye bye popup....
Any IT lead who's been paying attention knows that you can put together any old white box solution and as long as you use stuff off the hardware HOWTO it's pretty much gonna work... Oh, sure, if you're doing this on a massive scale, getting a batch of ProLiants or PowerEdges is the best way to get hardware support (and not have hardware support tell you to upgrade to the latest version of You-Know-What...).. but for small to medium sized stuff, go see your buyer with your laundry list, wait two days for FedEx, grab the stuff from Receiving, spend a couple of relaxing hours getting your paws in the hardware (you did remember your anti-static wristband, right?) and away from the CRT, and poof, time to load your kickstart CD. Twiddle the BIOS to boot off the CD, F10, go get coffee, kabam. New Linux server for cheap cheap cheap.
I mean, you do HAVE a couple hours you can take off from reading Slashdot, right? your automation scripts are up to date and will beep your cellphone if there are problems, right?
--
Something the PHB's have never figured out is that a good sysadm is first and foremost a lazy-ass s.o.b.
So, yeah, free booze, but ask...
So let's pool all the free booze we're going to get out of this story and host the First Annual Intergalactic Kegger...
The funny thing about it is, when you ask semi-net-savvy people, AOL and MSN rank dead last in the great sea of ISPs big and small. Anyone smart enough to do more than casual surfing gets the hell off Eh? Oh, Hell ASAP; the whole high speed data craze has both 800-pound gorillas scared ****less because neither of them has penetration in that market.
To make a long story short, there is rapidly becoming a two-tiered Internet: The hoi-polloi on MSN and AOL, and us eggheads who patronize their _local_ ISP (high-speed or not) and have the freedom to roam wherever we want and get the Real News.
Whether this is good or not, is open for debate.
Need I say more?
I think I will, just to get the point across. From the article:
WTF???Why do you need total access to the entire machine inside a document reader? I can understand wanting Javascript; LetterJ's example of the "smart" IRS form is a good one. But a VBScript engine...
blink, blink
Ye gods.
There ain't but one way to get the specs on how to implement/link to one of those things.
I think I shall leave the explanation as to why Adobe is Officially Evil as an exercise to the reader.
Go ahead, mod me down all you want, but word will get out....
Of course, if things get really desparate (like some nut codes an IE-only website I want to see), I can fire up Opera and tell it to lie to IIS... the beauty of Linux is that there are SO MANY browsers out there, each good at something. Galeon. Mozilla. Konqueror. Amaya. Opera. Links. Lynx. (they're different! Links handles tables in text. Lynx doesn't.) What? I forgot Nutscrape? Forget them. Don't need'em. If I'm going to run commercial software, it's going to be reallly good commercial software. Like Opera.
But I have to agree with the general sentiment. No flash, no Java (outside of a game), minimal JavaScript (Yahoo's address book is a good example of JavaScript done right), nothing else that's not cross-platform (and therefore subject to the Unix permission paradigm), no cookies, damn few ads (I let OSDN's go thru, because they're INTERESTING), just content. If you're going to insist on anything more than JavaScript, I'll take my business elsewhere. Seeya. Wouldn't wanna BE ya.
But no, I run Linux because a long time ago I got tired of worrying about scanning for viruses and blocking ActiveX controls and malicious VBScript and Blue Screens of Death and a whole host of other problems that I just don't have anymore. Eight browsers, five word processors, four IM clients, three games of Solitaire, two skinnable GUI's, and a groupware in beta test. And every last bit of it free at least as in beer. Now, somebody explain to my wife, who threw Windows off her box in 1997 because it ate the registry twice in as many weeks and never regretted it, why she needs to pay for software ever again.
Linux. Not because it's cool or l33+ or trendy (it's surely not that.... yet), but because it makes sense. Because it Doesn't Suck.