I don't think Gentoo has 8000 packages already, and the same grade of quality release engineering as the FreeBSD ports tree.
The only way that is going to happen is if several (major) distro's start working on a shared portstree. Otherwise it is simply impossible to do all the needed work and quality control.
Angband + variants Rogue games, much like nethack and Diablo 1.
Moria as its predecessor.
Specially multiplayer versions are very nice. http://thangorodrim.angband.org/
I'm a member of a 15 year old computerclub, and when some of the old members came visiting, one of them cried out:"My God, are you guys STILL playing Moria?":_)
A lot of systems that used to boot *nix CDs fine, gave up on me recently.
Seems that they are not compatible with ISOlinux (the new CD bootloader system used by a lot of distro's). Some of them succeed in booting if you try the second time.
These machines are not that old (P-III 450 and a 500)
Pointerbugs or unitialised variables that behave differently when compiled with debugging is on.
(because the mem layout of the program with debug info is different, the debugger initialises variables or some statements are optimized differently) ---
I also worked with a open source compiler when it was new a year of 4 ago, and that still had codegenerator bugs. It is very frustrating to encounter a cg bug if you create a program with more than a couple of hundred lines.
The only way to trace them is to narrow the spot down, and then check the assembler directly for all relevant places
One can of course start dishing out BOFH ideas about users. an users are indeed the worst.
OTOH, you don't expect better. Even admins often have to easy passwords (specially on test/legacy etc systems).
A good guess is to look at which _server_ machines got hit by worms (on NT e.g. Nimda, Code Red (II)), the year old vulnarabilities.
Those are exactly the kind of machines that are fishy, and often have other neglected security. (and their sysadmins are the kind of people that keep trusting the corporate firewall to hold everything always, and who consider their users infinitely dumb compared to them)
In near all disciplines, near accidents are reason for investigation (I'm a chemist originally). It seems to be only rarely in IT. The machine is silently and quickly cleaned and patched, and now everything is rosy in that corner again, and of course it won't happen again. "We checked all servers for this vulnerability"
Don't worry, it is plain ordinary steel probably;-) Lead is soft, and not really usable as construction material (except old style plumming)
Faraday's cage and such.
Re:Mozilla employs security through obscurity....
on
Mozilla 1.0 RC2 is out
·
· Score: 1
That is security to hamper virus scripts. Problem is that if they somehow get activated, inside Mozilla, or an application, they run in your context, you more or less agreed with them being run.
Standard dirs are then an easy prey for them, both to find data, and to infect.
Don't want to send mail to all people in your addressbook, don't you?
I work at an helpdesk, and I see that all the agressive software and the related problems are quite often too much for ordinary users.
If the trend continues, it might kill the feasability of maintaining a windows installation computer with access to the internet for the non technicalusers.
The problems with firewalls, antiviruses, new.net and other adware are increasingly getting problematic.
A lot of ISP and vendor helpdesk already have ten till fifty of percent of calls relating to this kind of software.
I had dataloss, but never tweaked the mountoptions for mail spool and similar directories. One can set ext2fs to sync to afaik.
The rumours also never state if it is UFS, the default being mounted sync (till FBSD 4.1) or the way the FreeBSD kernel operates that avoids dataloss. (an emergency sync when the kernel things it is going wrong could do wonders)
People in pro or anti GPL items always focus on the entire codebase is GPL/ vs the "services/manual" branch.
However there is a third, which is also the most common one. Mixing Open Source basic infrastructure with pure payware.
The key point is that the GPL is viral, but only with respect to linking. Once you have several binaries that interoperate (a service and a client, OS and application, commandline compiler and fancy GUI high 0productivity IDE, virtually anything that is not "linked"), things change.
Iow, the trick seems to be to open up the basic support, and sell the additions, make-it-easy-usable stuff etc.
This is partially in line with the article. Sure, there is OSS GUI stuff, but only in a handful highly sponsored, all-industry, magical projects.
There is hardly any small, but professional (fulltime) end user development.
Sure, there are dedicated volunteers, and the eye catchers at StarOffice, Mozilla and Gnome, but nothing in between.
I think that is really worrying. It might not be a real showstopper, but
I come from the Delphi world, and the commercial activity in components is _very_ large, though it has some rotten aspects also. (too little free stuff, no multi vendor integrated libs, though Jedi is trying desperately)
Microsoft chooses FreeBSD over Linux, because it has a more liberal license, but:
"Anyone expecting to use this implementation as the basis for distributing a commercial product would need to negotiate a license for this purpose with Microsoft."
because - It is work which is too often forgotten. - In which Microsoft has been(not Windows apps in general, but Microsofts own apps) is quite thorough. - Windows own GUI systems are very navigable and intuitive using keys, contrary to many X systems.
Slashdot Mirror
How happy they will be
DELL has been keeping an eye on FreeDos for a while now.
When I downloaded bios updates for my Dell laptop in januari, it was a complete boot disc using FreeDOS.
I wouldn't be surprised if they already figured this out a long time ago, and did extensive legal research:-)
This is nonsense I'm afraid, since newer versions changed the internal representation to allow the newer features to be rendered.
:-)
Also AFAIK the internal representation changed for printing reasons.
So while that basic format would be like '95, one can't guarantee it renders the same as the same doc composed for '95.
Word is hell
I'm not into SM, so no VI for me
I don't think Gentoo has 8000 packages already,
and the same grade of quality release engineering
as the FreeBSD ports tree.
The only way that is going to happen is if several
(major) distro's start working on a shared portstree. Otherwise it is simply impossible to
do all the needed work and quality control.
I also like Interbase/Firebird. Good tradeoff between ease of use and functionality.
Subject says it all. Probably also goes for Linux, (but the argument there would probably be more
"doesn't comes (integrated) with the distribution"
If something gets included with distributions, it spreads much faster
Angband + variants
Rogue games, much like nethack and Diablo 1.
Moria as its predecessor.
Specially multiplayer versions are very nice.
http://thangorodrim.angband.org/
I'm a member of a 15 year old computerclub, and when
some of the old members came visiting, one of them
cried out:"My God, are you guys STILL playing Moria?"
A lot of systems that used to boot *nix CDs fine,
gave up on me recently.
Seems that they are not compatible with ISOlinux (the
new CD bootloader system used by a lot of distro's).
Some of them succeed in booting if you try the second time.
These machines are not that old (P-III 450 and a 500)
Pointerbugs or unitialised variables that behave differently when compiled with debugging is on.
(because the mem layout of the program with debug info is different, the debugger initialises variables or some statements are optimized differently)
---
I also worked with a open source compiler when it was new a year of 4 ago, and that still had codegenerator bugs. It is very frustrating to
encounter a cg bug if you create a program with more than a couple of hundred lines.
The only way to trace them is to narrow the spot down, and then check the assembler directly for all relevant places
cd /usr/src
make fetch
and have one of your friends burn it, or buy/copy the disc set.
(note it probably wiser to simply select the ports
you need, put a make fetch for that port in a script... and have a friend run the script)
One can of course start dishing out BOFH ideas about
users. an users are indeed the worst.
OTOH, you don't expect better. Even admins often have
to easy passwords (specially on test/legacy etc systems).
A good guess is to look at which _server_ machines got hit by worms (on NT e.g. Nimda, Code Red (II)),
the year old vulnarabilities.
Those are exactly the kind of machines that are
fishy, and often have other neglected security. (and their sysadmins are the kind of people that
keep trusting the corporate firewall to hold everything always, and who consider their users
infinitely dumb compared to them)
In near all disciplines, near accidents are reason
for investigation (I'm a chemist originally). It seems to be only rarely in IT. The machine is silently and quickly cleaned and patched, and now everything is rosy in that corner again, and of
course it won't happen again. "We checked all servers for this vulnerability"
No policy change, no awaking, nothing.
Don't worry, it is plain ordinary steel probably ;-)
Lead is soft, and not really usable as construction
material (except old style plumming)
Faraday's cage and such.
That is security to hamper virus scripts. Problem
is that if they somehow get activated, inside Mozilla, or an application, they run in your
context, you more or less agreed with them being
run.
Standard dirs are then an easy prey for them, both
to find data, and to infect.
Don't want to send mail to all people in your addressbook, don't you?
I work at an helpdesk, and I see that all the agressive software and the related problems are
quite often too much for ordinary users.
If the trend continues, it might kill the feasability
of maintaining a windows installation computer with access to the internet for the non technicalusers.
The problems with firewalls, antiviruses, new.net and
other adware are increasingly getting problematic.
A lot of ISP and vendor helpdesk already have ten till fifty of percent of calls relating to this kind of software.
What has it done for 6 years? :-)
I had dataloss, but never tweaked the mountoptions for mail spool and similar directories. One can set
ext2fs to sync to afaik.
The rumours also never state if it is UFS, the default being mounted sync (till FBSD 4.1) or the
way the FreeBSD kernel operates that avoids dataloss.
(an emergency sync when the kernel things it is going wrong could do wonders)
I'm a FreeBSD user myself, but UFS+S does not equal ext2fs in speed, let alone "blow it out of the water"
Maybe your usage is non typical, but I never found
one single application where UFS+S outperformed ext2fs.
Looks like it directly allows touching the hardware,
which isn't entirely Javaish.
Of course it is an April fool.
OTOH, if I have to use C++ or VB instead of my beloved Delphi, I do get frustrated because it is so
akward.
And maybe one does ventilate such frustrations in their sex lives. I'll ask my girl-friend
People in pro or anti GPL items always focus on the
entire codebase is GPL/ vs the "services/manual" branch.
However there is a third, which is also the most common one. Mixing Open Source basic infrastructure with pure payware.
The key point is that the GPL is viral, but only with respect to linking. Once you have several binaries that interoperate (a service and a client,
OS and application, commandline compiler and fancy GUI high 0productivity IDE, virtually anything that
is not "linked"), things change.
Iow, the trick seems to be to open up the basic support, and sell the additions, make-it-easy-usable stuff etc.
This is partially in line with the article. Sure,
there is OSS GUI stuff, but only in a handful highly sponsored, all-industry, magical projects.
There is hardly any small, but professional (fulltime) end user development.
Sure, there are dedicated volunteers, and the eye
catchers at StarOffice, Mozilla and Gnome, but nothing in between.
I think that is really worrying. It might not be a
real showstopper, but
I come from the Delphi world, and the commercial
activity in components is _very_ large, though it
has some rotten aspects also.
(too little free stuff, no multi vendor integrated libs, though Jedi is trying desperately)
Microsoft chooses FreeBSD over Linux, because it
has a more liberal license, but:
"Anyone expecting to use this implementation as the basis for distributing a commercial product would need to negotiate a license for this purpose with Microsoft."
I think that is exactly what this is about!
Where are you most likely to catch virusses? Yes. being a mere user.
So an extra password for certain rarely used options
can save your neck because the virus will run with
less privileges.
Cool, where is Berkely Pascal?
(a misser from all 3 BSD's afaik)
because
- It is work which is too often forgotten.
- In which Microsoft has been(not Windows apps in general, but Microsofts own apps) is quite thorough.
- Windows own GUI systems are very navigable and intuitive using keys, contrary to many X systems.
Just C++, that is main disadvantage for me.
Nearly everything can interface to C, nearly anything
can interface to C++