Your point that more people will write worms/viruses for Linux once it reaches critical mass may be on target, but your assumption regarding the effect is offbase.
Because most people use Windows as a "root" user and most would not run Linux as a root user (Lindows being the exception) there are very big differences in the possible effects. The differences in Linux and Windows are much greater than the look of the desktop: Most of the security features in Linux are built directly into the kernel, not an application layer. Any system that is designed to be easy to use will be so at the cost of security. While you CAN make a Windows box as secure as a stock Linux box, it requires greater effort than most people are going to go through.
I know this always pisses people off (I am on a Windows box, and use BSD and Linux on all servers) but this is the hard core reality: Windows is easier to use than Linux, even if you are not the proper owner. </beat>
What about the people who BOUGHT Office, and run it on Linux using WINE? That is the real issue. No one is argueing that they should update pirated software, they are arguing that they are responsible for updating the security risks in their own software, purchased legally, but run on Linux/WINE. Microsoft doesn't have to support running Office in WINE, but they are restricting the ability of those who are legally from patching security holes and bugs, unnecessarily.
There are more than a few people who do this, after all. Even our office uses Linux on all servers (including Samba as a file server), and is currently testing running applications in WINE, including Office. We like Office for the compatability, but we hate Windows for the security issues and difficulty in updating from remote.
I would image the vast majority of MS applications run using WINE were purchased legally. I mean, if you are going to steal the app, why not steal the OS too, right?
I thought all music downloaded from the internet was free?
I don't see this as "Flamebait", I see it as a defense, although the RIAA and the judge might not see it that way. (ok, maybe is was a Troll with slightly Funny overtones...)
While "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" it can still make the difference in sentencing if you can sell it to the judge. Frankly, I haven't heard that much new music I would care to pay for OR download for free recently. Maybe its because I'm getting older, but all the new music kinda sounds alike to me.
Except Gretchen Wilson, which was my sole new music purchase of 2004. Pretty bad when the majority of new music isn't even worth stealing.
Actually, Dell has been doing this on systems for years, which is why I have always bought ANYTHING from them via small business. (my experience has shows that sm. biz is always cheaper anyway)
Don't mean to be cocky, but this isn't really news is it? I can't possibly be the only one that knew they have been doing this for years.
Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?
Perhaps the whole up2date versus yum versus yast versus apt-get debate. Easy to upgrade depends as well, since Fedora is easy to upgrade but they drop support so damn quick that you better upgrade, unless you are using software that borks unless you use a specific distro (Ensim for instance)
Personally, I see a great deal of difference in SuSe (my new fav) and debian and redhat (my first distro). In package management, configuration setup and number of preconfigured packages (although I don't really mind compiling my own sources).
Me, I use SuSe on the desktop and was using Redhat on the server, although that is getting migrated to SuSe as well. (if they weren't that different, I wouldn't need to migrate now, would I?)
Okay, I set up a site, with links to Al-Quida sites. Does it make me convictable as a terrorist?
Actually, since all domains translate into numeric addresses (ie: 255.255.255.255) and we use Arabic numerals, I blame the Arabs for inventing the numbers your website uses to connect to the internet so you can spread information about other terrorist sites (that use Arabic numerals in their resolved domain names...coincidence? I think not!)
No, it's more akin to someone saying "You want a hooker? Here, I know exactly where to get them, just call this number, ask for Debbie (tell 'er Daddy sent ya), and then you can meet her at this address".
Which is NOT contributing to prostitution if you are not being compensated. Linking to information (like your example) is simply telling others where something is. It is not condoning or claiming the activity is legal.
Google links to lots of illegal stuff, should they have to personally check the legality of everything they link to? Whats the difference?
Oh, Google is a big company with lots of lawyers and this is an individual, so he should be held to a higher standard cause he can't fight back? Just as with my NYT post above, if you got deep pockets, then its not illegal.
Yet, no one prosecuted The New York Times when they published links to the same material here. (reg. req.) and it was the same information. (except now 2600 took down the links that were showing before)
I guess it shows that its only illegal if you don't have lots of money and lawyers. So no, the US courts have only shown that Money = Justice once again, at least when it comes to free speech.
i hereby complain that this post that i made yesterday was modded up incorrectly. it is in no way interesting. hopefully i will be modded offtopic for bringing this up here, to balance it out.
Actually, you are correct in your assessment of your prior days post being offtopic, and as such I would recommend your current post be modded Insightful due to the nature of the content as well as the usefullness of the supplied link...
People don't seem to compalin nearly as much when their posts are modded UP incorrectly.
Sure they do, but when they do complain about their posts being modded up, the complaints are always modded down below your threshold, so its a self correcting system.
In the last two weeks, I have downloaded Fedora Cord 3 and SuSE 9.2 using bittorrent. The main reasons is because I can start the download and forget it for a few days and it helps others get it as well.
I have always advocated bittorrent as a new method for distributing patches for games, since they are generally very large. This should be built into the game itself.
There are also lots of really good music that the musicians encourage people to access via bittorrent and other P2P.
Yes, I am sure the majority of traffic is illegal, but there are plenty of valid and legal reasons for using bittorrent as well.
And no, no one here is getting excited about it. It appears to contain spywear, is closed source and proprietary while using an open source protocol. I don't see this a a worthwhile product, since there is no shortage of tracker servers for anything I want to download, and setting up a tracking server is trivial.
So you have never anticipated changes in the market and retrained yourself? why do so many people learn a skill, and then expect that one skill will be around forever?
Each side DOES have equal bargaining power. It is just that one side is willing to do the job for much less than the other. It may suck for you and others right now, and I do understand that and feel for you, but the playing ground is level.
In Australia (just as in US, Canada, Europe), you have access to educational institutions that many in other countries do not. Is that fair? You have access to city transporation systems that other countries do not. Is that fair? Obviously I could go on and on about how "unfair" your advantages are. The main difference is that your advantages didn't save your job, although they probably GOT the job the first time.
You miss the entire point. Every Tracking server will have its own stats. If you are a great uploader on "tracker.example.com" it will only report that if you are downloading a torrent that is tracked on that server. "tracker.someother.com" will not know anything about you.
It is totally DE-centralized in this way. The only tracker servers that will know anything about you is the ones you CHOOSE to, by registering.
THis is similar to how it works now, in the real world of bt.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. You are right on target. The "score keeping" and how much someone should upload vs. download should be a function of the tracking servers (as amply demonstrated on more than a few sites) not the client.
Perhaps the future releases could include a "priority" bit that the tracker could assign to each peer and send to all clients with each update, say, scale of 0-7, that the clients OPTIONALLY can obey. This way the tracker is saying to the clients "Peer 1 hasn't uploaded much (ratio:.2), but Peer 4 is a historically very good uploader (ratio: 3.0)" and the client of each peer can decide how it wants to treat this information. But it would still be a function of the tracker to set the "ratings" and a function of the client to decide if it wants to act upon them.
This way if a client DOES get priority because it is near the end of a torrent, it is only because they are marked by the Tracker as a historically good seeder, and more likely to continue seeding anyway. Obviously, it should an option for the Tracker to NOT send any of this information as well.
Well, yea, its hardly 2 years old so of course its first generation. Compare this to other first generation apps, however, and I think we can agree that bt is about 90% there already.
I expect to see bt technology in future games, so those who play online automatically download updates, and share their updates with other downloaders when they are connected. This could be done with patches (which are typically a bitch to download at 150mb each) and with maps when you join a server. This way if you join a server with a new map, you get it in a 30 seconds instead of a few minutes to a half hour, and to wont use precious server bandwidth. The upload can easily be capped while actually playing the game, or adjusted dynamically so it will never hurt the game play. (ie: you upload only while you are waiting to spawn)
Of course, the gaming sites might not like this use so much.
The original comment was about Valve, who most would agree has EARNED the money they get by making damn good games. I have bought two games by Valve, HL1 and 2. Got lots of free mods with them, tfc, cs, ns, etc.
They are also on the cutting edge of game distribution with Steam. While I am not a fanboy of steam, it is a real stab at a new distro method, with real investment involved.
So I consider Valve a friend (as far as a company can be). They make good product, they invest in the future of the product (still play TFC after 6 years) and are going beyond just selling a disk in a box with Steam.
I think you are overthinking it. My point is simply that a company that can not be trusted to keep their computers fully functional, can not be trusted to keep their aircraft fully functional. This is based on the premise that it is easier to keep the computers running than the aircraft, which I can easily assume, based upon my own experience.
I also don't eat at diners where the help isn't properly groomed. Same principal: if you can't take of simple stuff, you probably can't take of something more important and/or complex.
You would think so. The IT Director is respsonsible for making sure everything IT works. Not to do it himself, but to make sure it is done and done right. I can't see how someone can argue with that. Even if it IS the janitor unplugging the UPS to plug in a floor buffer.
Whether it is the cooling system for the computers, the operating system, the applications or simple hardware issues, it HAS to be the IT Director's responsibility. I mean, who the hell else?
You know, I have my OWN reservations about flying on an airline when they have no backups and can't keep their computers from crashing. Whats to keep their planes in the air?
The last thing I want to hear at 30k feet is that my current flight has been cancelled...
I used ABC for a while because of the extra options it has. Then I switched to BitLord the other day. Unreal better client than most, with tons of information and options. ABC is still the next best thing, and yes, it runs on Linux (alpha).
Um, I have raid 5 on my servers, but it has nothing to do with backup. raid 5 is NOT backing up, it is simply providing a layer of tolorance in case of hardware failure. If someone defaces your website, the fact that you have raid 5 only means that the new defaced data is striped over multiple drives for faster access and redundent failsafe. So yes, once your website is defaced, if a hard drive fails, you are protected, and your defaced website will still be visable.
Farming it to another hard drive or array is useless, since the virus looks for all *html pages. adding the code to have it use TAR would be trivial, so compressing your backups is no protection either. What you are stating is NOT backing up a system. Its a handy way to make copies in case you need to restore, but it is far from a backup solution, at least if you give a fuck about your data, like most SERVERS would.
Personally, I write my own scripts to backup offsite. And onsite. And on the same machine. All three. And I don't use phpBB, considering I have a few years experience with it and security has always been a problem with the program.
Lots of tracking sites dont allow the default ports to be used. You might try reading the faq for the site you are trying to bittorrent/track from. Often it is just a matter of changing the used ports to a range of 10 ports over 20k, for instance. Zone alarm will cue you to allow the program only once, then adjust if the ports change.
if you want a good bittorrent client, google for ABC, which is gpl, runs on linux or windows, and has more options than the others, such as throttling your download seperately when you are d/l and when you are not.
That said, I am waiting for game makers like ID to start using bittorrent for distribution of patches, which would make a lot more sense. You can even have it download patches beginning one week prior to change over, so everyone has it at the same time. Once you learn what little you need to know about BT, it is the best and fastest way to move bits. I bet even MS will end up supporting it with IE eventually. It makes that much sense.
Regarding lag, you really don't get lag from more users, since each client will only connect to $x number of peers anyway (configurable). The real problem you get with more peers is the TRACKER server which can get lagged if it is overloaded. Theoretically, the more users you have, the higher the potential to download faster, as long as the tracker server can keep up. Also, some trackers keep stats for sharing, which adds a little more bandwidth.
The number of seeds becomes less relevent when you have more users because BT downloads the files out of order, so if we start at the same time, we will get different parts along the way. I can have 60% of a file, and you can have 60% of a file, but as long as we both have DIFFERENT 60%s, then we can both finish the file if there were no seeds and you and I were the only peers. THAT is the beauty of BT.
Slashdot Mirror
Your point that more people will write worms/viruses for Linux once it reaches critical mass may be on target, but your assumption regarding the effect is offbase.
Because most people use Windows as a "root" user and most would not run Linux as a root user (Lindows being the exception) there are very big differences in the possible effects. The differences in Linux and Windows are much greater than the look of the desktop: Most of the security features in Linux are built directly into the kernel, not an application layer. Any system that is designed to be easy to use will be so at the cost of security. While you CAN make a Windows box as secure as a stock Linux box, it requires greater effort than most people are going to go through.
I know this always pisses people off (I am on a Windows box, and use BSD and Linux on all servers) but this is the hard core reality: Windows is easier to use than Linux, even if you are not the proper owner.
</beat>
What about the people who BOUGHT Office, and run it on Linux using WINE? That is the real issue. No one is argueing that they should update pirated software, they are arguing that they are responsible for updating the security risks in their own software, purchased legally, but run on Linux/WINE. Microsoft doesn't have to support running Office in WINE, but they are restricting the ability of those who are legally from patching security holes and bugs, unnecessarily.
There are more than a few people who do this, after all. Even our office uses Linux on all servers (including Samba as a file server), and is currently testing running applications in WINE, including Office. We like Office for the compatability, but we hate Windows for the security issues and difficulty in updating from remote.
I would image the vast majority of MS applications run using WINE were purchased legally. I mean, if you are going to steal the app, why not steal the OS too, right?
I thought all music downloaded from the internet was free?
I don't see this as "Flamebait", I see it as a defense, although the RIAA and the judge might not see it that way. (ok, maybe is was a Troll with slightly Funny overtones...)
While "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" it can still make the difference in sentencing if you can sell it to the judge. Frankly, I haven't heard that much new music I would care to pay for OR download for free recently. Maybe its because I'm getting older, but all the new music kinda sounds alike to me.
Except Gretchen Wilson, which was my sole new music purchase of 2004. Pretty bad when the majority of new music isn't even worth stealing.
Actually, Dell has been doing this on systems for years, which is why I have always bought ANYTHING from them via small business. (my experience has shows that sm. biz is always cheaper anyway)
Don't mean to be cocky, but this isn't really news is it? I can't possibly be the only one that knew they have been doing this for years.
Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?
Perhaps the whole up2date versus yum versus yast versus apt-get debate. Easy to upgrade depends as well, since Fedora is easy to upgrade but they drop support so damn quick that you better upgrade, unless you are using software that borks unless you use a specific distro (Ensim for instance)
Personally, I see a great deal of difference in SuSe (my new fav) and debian and redhat (my first distro). In package management, configuration setup and number of preconfigured packages (although I don't really mind compiling my own sources).
Me, I use SuSe on the desktop and was using Redhat on the server, although that is getting migrated to SuSe as well. (if they weren't that different, I wouldn't need to migrate now, would I?)
Okay, I set up a site, with links to Al-Quida sites. Does it make me convictable as a terrorist?
Actually, since all domains translate into numeric addresses (ie: 255.255.255.255) and we use Arabic numerals, I blame the Arabs for inventing the numbers your website uses to connect to the internet so you can spread information about other terrorist sites (that use Arabic numerals in their resolved domain names...coincidence? I think not!)
Talk about coming around full circle...
No, it's more akin to someone saying "You want a hooker? Here, I know exactly where to get them, just call this number, ask for Debbie (tell 'er Daddy sent ya), and then you can meet her at this address".
Which is NOT contributing to prostitution if you are not being compensated. Linking to information (like your example) is simply telling others where something is. It is not condoning or claiming the activity is legal.
Google links to lots of illegal stuff, should they have to personally check the legality of everything they link to? Whats the difference?
Oh, Google is a big company with lots of lawyers and this is an individual, so he should be held to a higher standard cause he can't fight back? Just as with my NYT post above, if you got deep pockets, then its not illegal.
Yet, no one prosecuted The New York Times when they published links to the same material here. (reg. req.) and it was the same information. (except now 2600 took down the links that were showing before)
I guess it shows that its only illegal if you don't have lots of money and lawyers. So no, the US courts have only shown that Money = Justice once again, at least when it comes to free speech.
i hereby complain that this post that i made yesterday was modded up incorrectly. it is in no way interesting. hopefully i will be modded offtopic for bringing this up here, to balance it out.
Actually, you are correct in your assessment of your prior days post being offtopic, and as such I would recommend your current post be modded Insightful due to the nature of the content as well as the usefullness of the supplied link...
People don't seem to compalin nearly as much when their posts are modded UP incorrectly.
Sure they do, but when they do complain about their posts being modded up, the complaints are always modded down below your threshold, so its a self correcting system.
Irony works.
How about a FOUR assed monkey? Jeesh, don't you guys watch South Park? ;)
In the last two weeks, I have downloaded Fedora Cord 3 and SuSE 9.2 using bittorrent. The main reasons is because I can start the download and forget it for a few days and it helps others get it as well.
I have always advocated bittorrent as a new method for distributing patches for games, since they are generally very large. This should be built into the game itself.
There are also lots of really good music that the musicians encourage people to access via bittorrent and other P2P.
Yes, I am sure the majority of traffic is illegal, but there are plenty of valid and legal reasons for using bittorrent as well.
And no, no one here is getting excited about it. It appears to contain spywear, is closed source and proprietary while using an open source protocol. I don't see this a a worthwhile product, since there is no shortage of tracker servers for anything I want to download, and setting up a tracking server is trivial.
But it is still news.
So you have never anticipated changes in the market and retrained yourself? why do so many people learn a skill, and then expect that one skill will be around forever?
Each side DOES have equal bargaining power. It is just that one side is willing to do the job for much less than the other. It may suck for you and others right now, and I do understand that and feel for you, but the playing ground is level.
In Australia (just as in US, Canada, Europe), you have access to educational institutions that many in other countries do not. Is that fair? You have access to city transporation systems that other countries do not. Is that fair? Obviously I could go on and on about how "unfair" your advantages are. The main difference is that your advantages didn't save your job, although they probably GOT the job the first time.
You miss the entire point. Every Tracking server will have its own stats. If you are a great uploader on "tracker.example.com" it will only report that if you are downloading a torrent that is tracked on that server. "tracker.someother.com" will not know anything about you.
It is totally DE-centralized in this way. The only tracker servers that will know anything about you is the ones you CHOOSE to, by registering.
THis is similar to how it works now, in the real world of bt.
Actually, many Tracker sites DO keep track of your uploads and downloads, so its doing it somehow NOW.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. You are right on target. The "score keeping" and how much someone should upload vs. download should be a function of the tracking servers (as amply demonstrated on more than a few sites) not the client.
.2), but Peer 4 is a historically very good uploader (ratio: 3.0)" and the client of each peer can decide how it wants to treat this information. But it would still be a function of the tracker to set the "ratings" and a function of the client to decide if it wants to act upon them.
Perhaps the future releases could include a "priority" bit that the tracker could assign to each peer and send to all clients with each update, say, scale of 0-7, that the clients OPTIONALLY can obey. This way the tracker is saying to the clients "Peer 1 hasn't uploaded much (ratio:
This way if a client DOES get priority because it is near the end of a torrent, it is only because they are marked by the Tracker as a historically good seeder, and more likely to continue seeding anyway. Obviously, it should an option for the Tracker to NOT send any of this information as well.
Well, yea, its hardly 2 years old so of course its first generation. Compare this to other first generation apps, however, and I think we can agree that bt is about 90% there already.
I expect to see bt technology in future games, so those who play online automatically download updates, and share their updates with other downloaders when they are connected. This could be done with patches (which are typically a bitch to download at 150mb each) and with maps when you join a server. This way if you join a server with a new map, you get it in a 30 seconds instead of a few minutes to a half hour, and to wont use precious server bandwidth. The upload can easily be capped while actually playing the game, or adjusted dynamically so it will never hurt the game play. (ie: you upload only while you are waiting to spawn)
Of course, the gaming sites might not like this use so much.
The original comment was about Valve, who most would agree has EARNED the money they get by making damn good games. I have bought two games by Valve, HL1 and 2. Got lots of free mods with them, tfc, cs, ns, etc.
They are also on the cutting edge of game distribution with Steam. While I am not a fanboy of steam, it is a real stab at a new distro method, with real investment involved.
So I consider Valve a friend (as far as a company can be). They make good product, they invest in the future of the product (still play TFC after 6 years) and are going beyond just selling a disk in a box with Steam.
I just want to know what the hell I'm gonna do with all these "I survived 2004 MN4" T-shirts I bought to resell on ebay...
I think you are overthinking it. My point is simply that a company that can not be trusted to keep their computers fully functional, can not be trusted to keep their aircraft fully functional. This is based on the premise that it is easier to keep the computers running than the aircraft, which I can easily assume, based upon my own experience.
I also don't eat at diners where the help isn't properly groomed. Same principal: if you can't take of simple stuff, you probably can't take of something more important and/or complex.
You would think so. The IT Director is respsonsible for making sure everything IT works. Not to do it himself, but to make sure it is done and done right. I can't see how someone can argue with that. Even if it IS the janitor unplugging the UPS to plug in a floor buffer.
Whether it is the cooling system for the computers, the operating system, the applications or simple hardware issues, it HAS to be the IT Director's responsibility. I mean, who the hell else?
You know, I have my OWN reservations about flying on an airline when they have no backups and can't keep their computers from crashing. Whats to keep their planes in the air?
The last thing I want to hear at 30k feet is that my current flight has been cancelled...
I used ABC for a while because of the extra options it has. Then I switched to BitLord the other day. Unreal better client than most, with tons of information and options. ABC is still the next best thing, and yes, it runs on Linux (alpha).
Um, I have raid 5 on my servers, but it has nothing to do with backup. raid 5 is NOT backing up, it is simply providing a layer of tolorance in case of hardware failure. If someone defaces your website, the fact that you have raid 5 only means that the new defaced data is striped over multiple drives for faster access and redundent failsafe. So yes, once your website is defaced, if a hard drive fails, you are protected, and your defaced website will still be visable.
Farming it to another hard drive or array is useless, since the virus looks for all *html pages. adding the code to have it use TAR would be trivial, so compressing your backups is no protection either. What you are stating is NOT backing up a system. Its a handy way to make copies in case you need to restore, but it is far from a backup solution, at least if you give a fuck about your data, like most SERVERS would.
Personally, I write my own scripts to backup offsite. And onsite. And on the same machine. All three. And I don't use phpBB, considering I have a few years experience with it and security has always been a problem with the program.
Lots of tracking sites dont allow the default ports to be used. You might try reading the faq for the site you are trying to bittorrent/track from. Often it is just a matter of changing the used ports to a range of 10 ports over 20k, for instance. Zone alarm will cue you to allow the program only once, then adjust if the ports change.
if you want a good bittorrent client, google for ABC, which is gpl, runs on linux or windows, and has more options than the others, such as throttling your download seperately when you are d/l and when you are not.
That said, I am waiting for game makers like ID to start using bittorrent for distribution of patches, which would make a lot more sense. You can even have it download patches beginning one week prior to change over, so everyone has it at the same time. Once you learn what little you need to know about BT, it is the best and fastest way to move bits. I bet even MS will end up supporting it with IE eventually. It makes that much sense.
Regarding lag, you really don't get lag from more users, since each client will only connect to $x number of peers anyway (configurable). The real problem you get with more peers is the TRACKER server which can get lagged if it is overloaded. Theoretically, the more users you have, the higher the potential to download faster, as long as the tracker server can keep up. Also, some trackers keep stats for sharing, which adds a little more bandwidth.
The number of seeds becomes less relevent when you have more users because BT downloads the files out of order, so if we start at the same time, we will get different parts along the way. I can have 60% of a file, and you can have 60% of a file, but as long as we both have DIFFERENT 60%s, then we can both finish the file if there were no seeds and you and I were the only peers. THAT is the beauty of BT.