The kernel doesn't necessarily need a GUI. However, as it stands, there's an awful lot on Windows that cannot be done on the command line and must be done on the GUI. For example, with the standard Windows install, it is not possible to change the computer name from the command line without downloading a utility to allow you to do it. It is not possible to kill a process from the command line without getting a Resource Kit utility from Microsoft. It is not possible to add or remove a network service (not a system service - I'm talking about the services you add in the network connection control panel, things like file and print sharing services) and after days of Googling I've still not found a way of installing or uninstalling one of these services using the command line.
Windows is fine as a desktop OS (even if issues like this make automated rollouts a bear) but is inappropriate for the server since there are so many things that can only be done trivially through the GUI.
I believe the parking is free at Mojave. I've been there a couple of times (by light plane, not by car). Mojave itself is a bit of a dump, but the airport's pretty good.
I went there to see the XCor unveiling (despite the article, XCor is not in the X-Prize competition). My writeup of the Xcor trip is here if you are interested.
I've BEEN to Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. I've not landed/taken off a plane from there though - I visited in a Jetta TDI on my way back from Utah one day... However, the runway is certainly usable for many light aircraft.
It's obvious that Free software will cause the business in proprietary software fall sooner or later. It's just not news.
The question is: is it a BAD thing?
Of course, there will be bleating about lost jobs. In the long term, though, it will be only a tiny number which will be absorbed elsewhere as companies have more money to spend on making software what they really need, thanks to the ability to customize. They will have to employ programmers to do this for them or other companies to provide this service. Open source will be bad news for some developers and some customers, but it's very good news for many more companies. Business models sometimes go out of date. People have to deal with it.
I believe in the long run, OSS will be good for employment and the IT industry; it will take away artificial scarcity. It's funny how we as a human race clamour for instant and inexhaustable supply of everything, but as soon as we make something that's easy to make an instant an inexhaustable supply of (a copy of a program), we suddenly have to make it artificially scarce!
On the P2P networks, there's a Darwinian natural selection going on - of information, rather than life forms (although, if you think about it, life forms are really just information carriers through their DNA. Perhaps one day, like life forms, digital information will be able to replicate the machinery needed to copy itself, but this is a digression).
The valid music will be selected for - it'll get replicated by many peers and be kept by the peers. The bogus files will be selected against - whilst some will undoubtedly be around, there will be a strong selective pressure against them as they are "killed" on the P2P nodes. For the bogus files to survive they must successfully be able to inhabit many nodes in the P2P network, and it's a reasonable assumption that most of the nodes will be the "pirate" nodes favouring the real music instead of the "poisoning" nodes favouring the bogus files. The P2P networks themselves will evolve to defeat the "poisoning" nodes just as spam techniques have evolved to get around SpamAssassin.
Bah. I was hoping they'd follow the 'increment the number with each generation' as they continued (80386, 80486, 80586, 80686) with the names - so the 586 gets called the Pentium, and the 686 gets called the SEXium!
(Speaking of updates - if Windows updates should be free, why aren't Red Hat Enterprise Linux security updates free? That's even more critical because it's mostly servers than run this OS. So much for balanced reporting on Slashdot).
Firstly, Slashdot has never pretended to be a balanced reporting site: it's a news aggregating site and pretty obviously an OSS advocacy site.
Secondly, if you want to run a server OS but not pay for updates, you can run Debian instead of RHEL. There's choice with Linux. With Windows, you only have MS.
This latest MS security patch has actually caused *other* problems, like the machine not being able to connect to the network at all. A large organization has to thoroughly test patches before deploying to make sure they don't break stuff. A national agency might not be able to do this in two weeks.
Windows is a consumer operating system (despite labels like Windows XP Professional). It has no business being installed on any critical system. This just goes to demonstrate further that you can't cut corners and make false economies by installing consumer operating systems where they are not appropriate.
Dunno about NT Alpha, but not long after NT x86 was out, we had 4 floppy disks that'd boot you to a NT command line where you could reset passwords and generally mess around with the entire FS unauthenticated. I'm sure the same could have been done for NT Alpha (it was after all generated using the NT install disk)
If you think local exploits are pretty irrelevant, you're just waiting to be pwn3d. A trivial non-privileged user exploit in say, a CGI or PHP script can be used to attack the local root exploit, especially in a general-purpose webhosting environment. I've had it happen - fortunately, I treat all local root exploits with the seriousness of remote ones, and so the attempt to own my server failed.
Actually, NT is equally trivial to compromise. NTFS is not rocket science. Using a Linux-based rescue disk, I've done things like reset administrator passwords and re-enable local administrator access on boxes that people have locked themselves out of.
What I do (regardless of OS or installer) for an OS I'm going to have to install on hardware configured the same way more than twice is to simply make a system image of the entire hard disk (or relevant partitions). I do this whether it's Windows or Debian or RedHat. I get the basic image working, store it on a server, and it's there if I need it and I don't even have to touch the installer again.
The nice thing about Debian is that if you do this, you can put 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' in the firstboot script to make sure it's up to date.
That's funny - I've found that most places don't demand your resume (CV) in DOC format, they only demand they can actually read them. I only send my resume out in PDF (although I've not needed to in a while thanks to having a good job that's enjoyable to work at). PDF is better than DOC for your resume because it guarantees the formatting will be the same when the person viewing at the other end reads it - I've found that people with different print settings etc. can cause your resume to wrap in different places with a word processor format, causing formatting problems like widows and orphans which make your resume look very unprofessional.
Quite frankly, I don't want to work at a place that's so backward they can't take a document in PDF format.
What I really like about OpenBSD is that I don't have to google for a HOWTO on configuring pf and altq. The manual page is clearly written, has good examples, and provides the information you need.
I run Linux on my main workstation (and having been a Linux user since the 0.12 kernel days, Linux is close to my heart), but I'm increasingly impressed with OpenBSD as a firewall - the documentation is light-years ahead of Linux iptables documentation for a start, and then there's the new capabilities of pf with 3.5. It's not far off challenging the big boys like CheckPoint FireWall-1 (whose only advantage for our particular network is a pretty GUI configuration tool). With OpenBSD 3.5 with carp and pfsync, the CheckPoint box's days are numbered - I can get better reliability/redundancy with OpenBSD now. The OpenBSD documentation is better. The mailing lists for OpenBSD are more informative than the CheckPoint ones. The hardware is a lot less expensive, and you don't have to pay annual software rental like you do with FW-1.
I had a remote server (running 2.4.x kernel) which started getting disk corruption in swap. Applications would crash and do strange things. I turned off the swap and the problem went away - the machine itself never crashed.
The best BASIC in its time had to be BBC Microcomputer BASIC on the old Acorn BBC. It had useful features like procedures (think 'functions' or 'subroutines' in other languages) , so your code wouldn't be a whole heap of GOTO statements. It also had indirection operators for easy memory manipulation.
The BBC also had a 'Programmer Upgrade Path' - a built in 6502 assembler, and probably the best documented 8-bit OS in its time.
I like debian, but its release cycle is slower than a dead slug in solid concrete, and this just excaberates the problem
When you are running a herd of servers, this is a feature - not a bug. I use Deb on the servers *precisely* because they support the current major version of stable for a long time without continuous major version updates. I don't need the latest version of $EYE_CANDY, I just want a server that stays up and is trivial to keep updated.
IT is not stressful. I've been working in software development/IT since 1995. Never once felt stress. Sure, there's responsibility, sometimes there's a deadline and extra hours, but stress? Not in the slightest.
I've noticed people who suffer from stress are the kind who generally don't "compartmentalize". As soon as I leave work, with very few exceptions, I immediately quit thinking about work and don't think about it again until I arrive the next day.
I'm also fortunate that I've always been working mainly for the clueful, and those who I've worked for who aren't clueful have at least respected my advice and decisions. I'm well aware that not everyone's this lucky.
Slashdot Mirror
The kernel doesn't necessarily need a GUI. However, as it stands, there's an awful lot on Windows that cannot be done on the command line and must be done on the GUI. For example, with the standard Windows install, it is not possible to change the computer name from the command line without downloading a utility to allow you to do it. It is not possible to kill a process from the command line without getting a Resource Kit utility from Microsoft. It is not possible to add or remove a network service (not a system service - I'm talking about the services you add in the network connection control panel, things like file and print sharing services) and after days of Googling I've still not found a way of installing or uninstalling one of these services using the command line.
Windows is fine as a desktop OS (even if issues like this make automated rollouts a bear) but is inappropriate for the server since there are so many things that can only be done trivially through the GUI.
I believe the parking is free at Mojave. I've been there a couple of times (by light plane, not by car). Mojave itself is a bit of a dump, but the airport's pretty good.
I went there to see the XCor unveiling (despite the article, XCor is not in the X-Prize competition). My writeup of the Xcor trip is here if you are interested.
I've BEEN to Green River Intergalactic Spaceport. I've not landed/taken off a plane from there though - I visited in a Jetta TDI on my way back from Utah one day... However, the runway is certainly usable for many light aircraft.
The genius of the story, as written, is that it ends with the same sentence that it started with.
It's obvious that Free software will cause the business in proprietary software fall sooner or later. It's just not news.
The question is: is it a BAD thing?
Of course, there will be bleating about lost jobs. In the long term, though, it will be only a tiny number which will be absorbed elsewhere as companies have more money to spend on making software what they really need, thanks to the ability to customize. They will have to employ programmers to do this for them or other companies to provide this service. Open source will be bad news for some developers and some customers, but it's very good news for many more companies. Business models sometimes go out of date. People have to deal with it.
I believe in the long run, OSS will be good for employment and the IT industry; it will take away artificial scarcity. It's funny how we as a human race clamour for instant and inexhaustable supply of everything, but as soon as we make something that's easy to make an instant an inexhaustable supply of (a copy of a program), we suddenly have to make it artificially scarce!
Why will it probably not work?
On the P2P networks, there's a Darwinian natural selection going on - of information, rather than life forms (although, if you think about it, life forms are really just information carriers through their DNA. Perhaps one day, like life forms, digital information will be able to replicate the machinery needed to copy itself, but this is a digression).
The valid music will be selected for - it'll get replicated by many peers and be kept by the peers. The bogus files will be selected against - whilst some will undoubtedly be around, there will be a strong selective pressure against them as they are "killed" on the P2P nodes. For the bogus files to survive they must successfully be able to inhabit many nodes in the P2P network, and it's a reasonable assumption that most of the nodes will be the "pirate" nodes favouring the real music instead of the "poisoning" nodes favouring the bogus files. The P2P networks themselves will evolve to defeat the "poisoning" nodes just as spam techniques have evolved to get around SpamAssassin.
Bah. I was hoping they'd follow the 'increment the number with each generation' as they continued (80386, 80486, 80586, 80686) with the names - so the 586 gets called the Pentium, and the 686 gets called the SEXium!
Firstly, Slashdot has never pretended to be a balanced reporting site: it's a news aggregating site and pretty obviously an OSS advocacy site.
Secondly, if you want to run a server OS but not pay for updates, you can run Debian instead of RHEL. There's choice with Linux. With Windows, you only have MS.
really be:
$ traceroute life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
We'll have no 8.3 limited filenames here!
What has a stringed instrument, slightly larger than a violin, got to do with it?
Just increase the font size then.
This latest MS security patch has actually caused *other* problems, like the machine not being able to connect to the network at all. A large organization has to thoroughly test patches before deploying to make sure they don't break stuff. A national agency might not be able to do this in two weeks.
Windows is a consumer operating system (despite labels like Windows XP Professional). It has no business being installed on any critical system. This just goes to demonstrate further that you can't cut corners and make false economies by installing consumer operating systems where they are not appropriate.
Dunno about NT Alpha, but not long after NT x86 was out, we had 4 floppy disks that'd boot you to a NT command line where you could reset passwords and generally mess around with the entire FS unauthenticated. I'm sure the same could have been done for NT Alpha (it was after all generated using the NT install disk)
If you think local exploits are pretty irrelevant, you're just waiting to be pwn3d. A trivial non-privileged user exploit in say, a CGI or PHP script can be used to attack the local root exploit, especially in a general-purpose webhosting environment. I've had it happen - fortunately, I treat all local root exploits with the seriousness of remote ones, and so the attempt to own my server failed.
Actually, NT is equally trivial to compromise. NTFS is not rocket science. Using a Linux-based rescue disk, I've done things like reset administrator passwords and re-enable local administrator access on boxes that people have locked themselves out of.
What I do (regardless of OS or installer) for an OS I'm going to have to install on hardware configured the same way more than twice is to simply make a system image of the entire hard disk (or relevant partitions). I do this whether it's Windows or Debian or RedHat. I get the basic image working, store it on a server, and it's there if I need it and I don't even have to touch the installer again.
The nice thing about Debian is that if you do this, you can put 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' in the firstboot script to make sure it's up to date.
That's funny - I've found that most places don't demand your resume (CV) in DOC format, they only demand they can actually read them. I only send my resume out in PDF (although I've not needed to in a while thanks to having a good job that's enjoyable to work at). PDF is better than DOC for your resume because it guarantees the formatting will be the same when the person viewing at the other end reads it - I've found that people with different print settings etc. can cause your resume to wrap in different places with a word processor format, causing formatting problems like widows and orphans which make your resume look very unprofessional.
Quite frankly, I don't want to work at a place that's so backward they can't take a document in PDF format.
What I really like about OpenBSD is that I don't have to google for a HOWTO on configuring pf and altq. The manual page is clearly written, has good examples, and provides the information you need.
I run Linux on my main workstation (and having been a Linux user since the 0.12 kernel days, Linux is close to my heart), but I'm increasingly impressed with OpenBSD as a firewall - the documentation is light-years ahead of Linux iptables documentation for a start, and then there's the new capabilities of pf with 3.5. It's not far off challenging the big boys like CheckPoint FireWall-1 (whose only advantage for our particular network is a pretty GUI configuration tool). With OpenBSD 3.5 with carp and pfsync, the CheckPoint box's days are numbered - I can get better reliability/redundancy with OpenBSD now. The OpenBSD documentation is better. The mailing lists for OpenBSD are more informative than the CheckPoint ones. The hardware is a lot less expensive, and you don't have to pay annual software rental like you do with FW-1.
I had a remote server (running 2.4.x kernel) which started getting disk corruption in swap. Applications would crash and do strange things. I turned off the swap and the problem went away - the machine itself never crashed.
I used a swapfile instead after that.
The best BASIC in its time had to be BBC Microcomputer BASIC on the old Acorn BBC. It had useful features like procedures (think 'functions' or 'subroutines' in other languages) , so your code wouldn't be a whole heap of GOTO statements. It also had indirection operators for easy memory manipulation.
The BBC also had a 'Programmer Upgrade Path' - a built in 6502 assembler, and probably the best documented 8-bit OS in its time.
The irony of this site is that there's an advert at the bottom right of the page for...ZoneAlarm ad blocker!
When you are running a herd of servers, this is a feature - not a bug. I use Deb on the servers *precisely* because they support the current major version of stable for a long time without continuous major version updates. I don't need the latest version of $EYE_CANDY, I just want a server that stays up and is trivial to keep updated.
Actually, the old RedHat desktops seem to get security updates via Fedora Legacy. I've seen a few go by since RH officially discontinued support.
IT is not stressful. I've been working in software development/IT since 1995. Never once felt stress. Sure, there's responsibility, sometimes there's a deadline and extra hours, but stress? Not in the slightest.
I've noticed people who suffer from stress are the kind who generally don't "compartmentalize". As soon as I leave work, with very few exceptions, I immediately quit thinking about work and don't think about it again until I arrive the next day.
I'm also fortunate that I've always been working mainly for the clueful, and those who I've worked for who aren't clueful have at least respected my advice and decisions. I'm well aware that not everyone's this lucky.