...(run a version of RedHat with exploitable BIND etc.)...
The BIND patch has been available since Feb 6
Yes, a patch - if you sign up for dedicated hosting from most places, you'll probably start with a fresh install and an unpatched BIND. Since most people going for RaQs don't know much about being a sysadmin, they will be h@x0r3d within days. (I get on average 6 or 7 attempts a day against the 'known insecure' services, aka sunrpc, lpd, BIND every day from skript kiddies).
A large chunk of the traffic on the Cobalt Users mailing list is "Help! I've been hacked" from RaQ3/RaQ4 users. Not really Cobalt's fault - they weren't to know when they shipped the software - but if you're getting a RaQ it's something you need to know so you can fix it before the kiddies get in. Since BIND can run happily as a non-root user, I'm surprised that Cobalt's (and RedHat's for that matter) distro doesn't run it as a non-root user. My motto is "if it can be run as non-root, then it's going to be run as non-root". Any good distro should avoid running stuff as root that doesn't have to be run as root.
Cobalt server appliances are just that: appliances. (How many of you fiddle with your microwave to get better/different performance out of it?) If you are totally into complete customization of every detail of your server, then a general-purpose server is what you want.
I agree - but the only reasonably priced dedicated hosting tends to be CobaltRaQs, so a lot of people who don't need just an appliance get them. They can be customized and improved. In fact, if you have a RaQ2, you need to do some of that if you want to be able to run things like MySQL (the shipped glibc is broken).
It's probably too late now (since you probably already have the hardware), but CobaltRaQs have nice web-based admin software. The downside with the RaQ is that they are not secure out of the box (run a version of RedHat with exploitable BIND etc.) and Sun expects you to never use the commandline (in fact they say that commandline administration 'voids your warranty'. Bah, I do it all the same - it's the only way to secure the box!)
I hope that Napster does not die. I hope Napster will still be around for when musicians will want to make individual deals with Napster to release songs there. Even putting in place a payment scheme so the musicians can receive some compensation. I think Napster may open the eyes of many musicians to the crappy contracts they have with the recording companies. You do not have to mass produce mp3's in order to distribute your music, as is the case with CD's, you only need one. From that one, music can be copied and copied and copied.
Napster is in fact pretty lame for new musicians. How do you find them unless you know the title of their songs or the name of their bands? You can't. Napster doesn't allow browsing by genre.
Much better for the new artist is mp3.com - the artist gets paid for downloads, can sell CDs via it, they retain the copyright on their music. The user can download new music for free, and find out what the new artist's music is like. You can browse mp3.com by genre, so I can just poke around until I find something I like.
To get your music downloaded on Napster, you essentially have to be famous already. On MP3.com, people can actually find you, even if you're unknown simply by browsing.
Compared to previous Microsoft OSs, maybe, though Windows 2000 may have signaled a change in this trend.
I disagree. I've been using Windows NT 4.0 since it came out and it has proved to be very stable. I use an NT system for software development: high loads, lots of compiling, running lots of beta (and sometime buggy code) on it and NT doesn't crash. I use one system as a server and its uptime is measured in months (the intervals between power outages). Windows NT even has a half decent command line interpreter (although I hate batch files, and use perl or a shell script run under bash instead).
On the other hand, I do love Linux and I'd rather be developing software on a Linux system. (I actually try and make my WinNT system as unix like as possible, because I find I'm more productive that way). Linux is a lot more efficient for a start. At the same time, I recognise NT is a good operating system. OS zealotry is generally not productive, and I have no problem recognising that both Linux and NT are good operating systems.
Jon- I'm not so sure that open source software has been a significant victory. It has resulted in less technological development than closed source, and it has been less successful in the marketplace than closed source. While some may claim that Linux is a victory, only about 1% of computers actually use it. And for a failure, one need only look at Mozilla.
I'm not sure the marketplace is the correct measurement for the success of opensource. It is not a traditional product. Who cares if only 2.5% (according to my web logs) of systems use it? (That's still millions of users anyway). To me, opensource is successful because:
- it gives me a choice of tools to use: without OSS (Linux and FreeBSD in particular) my choice would be between a couple of Microsoft operating systems. But now I (and everyone else) can choose to run the right tool for the right job. Even if all that OSS does is to force MS to pull out all the stops to compete and make a better product, it's benefitted everyone.
- I don't judge Mozilla a failure. Sure, it's usage is not as widespread as MSIE (and MSIE is a good browser), but Mozilla works well (certainly on my system at home at least) and helps to give me that choice of tools I (or anyone) can use.
- The point is that Linux and FreeBSD are here to stay. They aren't going to suddenly go away because of the whims or failures of a company: that's the important difference with an established piece of OSS.
There also has to be oxygen present. If there is insufficient oxygen, they won't burn.
For example, a full tank of jet-fuel in an aircraft is pretty much non-flammable. The tank contains liquid Jet-A and Jet-A vapour, but not a lot of oxygen. The mixture is far too rich to burn. A spark in that situation would just...spark.
However, a fuel tank containing very little fuel, but having plenty of oxygen (or other oxidiser) is basically a bomb. A spark in that situation (as is the probable cause with TWA-800) will cause a powerful explosion, even though there's only a tiny fraction of fuel compared to the tank when it's full.
A stochiometric mixture burns most vigorously. That's what you try and obtain in your car's combustion chambers. Stochiometric means the fuel/oxidiser ratio is just right such that the available fuel matches the amount of available oxygen.
> Linus began working on the Linux kernel as a way to have a UNIX-like OS on his PC
Actually, Linus originally was experimenting with making stuff work in protected mode on a 386 and it sort of grew from there. It started with a program that printed "AAAAA" on the screen in protected mode;-)
- Linux user since kernel 0.11, when there wasn't even init/getty/login...
Where I am the telcos already run the show. They are the tier one and two providers. They've bought or started the largest ISPs already, and there's no way the independents could ever compete on cost.
Where I am (Houston) things were the same way, until my current ISP appeared. This independent ISP has elbowed its way into this market, competing with the big telecos and then some. It is increasingly successful and expanding into new cities. Independent ISPs can still succeed if they have the correct business plan and have the service that people want.
If this patent were to be challenged in court, I would be happy to be a witness for the challengers.
I am a newbie at CGI scripting. I wrote a script a while back that takes login data, and uses a session-key in the URL to keep the user validated as they move around pages in the said cgi script.
Using a session key was the first thought that popped into my head to keep this state information (I didn't want to use cookies). I was below the "ordinary skill in the art" because I was a newbie, yet it was the first thing that I thought of: therefore I'd be quite willing to testify under oath that this technique is obvious to anyone with ordinary skills in the art.
I agree that RMS does tend to go on and get off topic, and is maybe even a doubleplusgood duckspeaker.
But at the same time, he doesn't appear to be guilty of doublethink. The marketdroids of many companies are not only doubleplusgood duckspeakers, but they're also doubleplusgood doublethinkers.
The guy made an effort NOT to bully an Open Source group. He didn't send threatening lawyer letters. He asked people to be reasonable. Quite frankly, you're going to lose BADLY in a court of law, because not only is there the possibility of confusion, but there is DOCUMENTED confusion.
That's what I thought until I read the last bit of his letter to the OpenSSH developers:
This is why we have contacted Corenic.net, your domain registration provider, to cancel all service on the "openssh.com" domain.
Until I read that, I sympathised with the SSH company - I thought they were doing the right thing by just requesting instead of sending the attack-dog lawyers. However, they made an agressive pre-emptive strike to destroy openssh.com's domain before they even have had a chance to consider changing their name.
If I were in charge of OpenSSH, I would have gladly changed the name of my code has he not pre-emptively tried to destroy my domain before I had a chance to even consider what to rename my product to!
If we took all the corn grown today in the US and converted it to ethanol to power engines, it would only be enough energy for our tractors and fertilizer.
Except we're not talking about taking corn (of which only a tiny part can be used) then putting it through another process (fermentation) then putting it through another process (distillation) to make the fuel.
The pond-scum powered diesel ran on the pond scum itself, not on a distillate thereof. It required minimal processing. It might not be any good for powering automobiles, but it might work for small-scale power plants. It's certainly going to do better than photovoltaic cells.
I agree in the long term that we HAVE to reduce our use of fossil fuels rather than trying to cure the symptoms.
What I don't see is why the next logical step isn't being taken.
We have bacteria here that photosynthesise. Their carbon source is the atmosphere, their energy source is sunlight.
Why not bypass the middleman (the coal fired powerstation) altogether: grow the bacteria, and harvest them as the carbon source for your power station? You'd have solar power without the need for photovoltaic cells (which are inefficient - and photovoltaic cells take more energy to make than they will ever produce in their lifetime) and the energy source can be stored in a convenient form (the harvested bacteria could be stored in tanks).
There has been some research a bit like this in the past - using pond-scum to power diesel engines. Apparently, you can design a diesel-cycle engine that'll run quite happily on dried pond scum. This effectively gives you a renewable source of energy for your engine.
You'll still need quite large amounts of land to produce enough bacteria or pond-scum, but if you've ever driven through Wyoming or the desert southwest (which has plenty of sunlight, an important ingredient) the land's there.
When they run out of CO2, they die. Photosynthesis isn't anything new. Plants (and this bacteria) use light as an energy source, and carbon - obtained from carbon dioxide in the air - as a carbon source. The CO2 to a photosynthesising plant or bacteria is like food to us. The food we eat is our carbon source. If we are denied this carbon source, we starve too - just like tbe bacteria would.
Question is: will they "pull an Amazon" in the future and do something equally offensive to consumers? Or will they show that they give a $hit and conduct business in a consumer-friendly way?
Unfortunately, it's fairly likely that they will "pull an Amazon" as you put it.
The word "doublethink" coined in Orwell's book "1984" is quite applicable here. B&N are undoubtedly trying to make themselves look like the 'white knight', overturning the useless patent. However, I bet if they think of some equally obvious technology and patent it, they will somehow manage to justify it to the Fox News watching masses.
Well, from my statistical sample of one, I really have to say "bollocks".
I'm in my twenties. I do NOT own a PDA. I don't even own a cellphone or a calculator (mainly because I don't actually need any of these things, so see little point on spending money on them).
Despite this, I'm still terribly absent-minded. I tend to remember interesting stuff in incredible detail, but boring stuff like phone numbers, and the names of people I'll only ever meet once, I tend to forget (the former I write on a piece of paper). I even forgot to do the State Inspection on my vehicle for two months. However, I didn't forget the policeman's reminder because it suddenly got very important (the removal of wealth in the form of a fine if I didn't get it done within 10 days!)
It seems to me that this guy has a point. We are approaching the final endgame in computing, that of 'One User, One App, One Internet', if you will. Thin Client terminals running an Internet browser will be all we need in 10 years, what with the increase in bandwidth that the internet is going through.
This means that we will no longer require an OS. To use an OS on such a simple system is just an additional layer of complexity and a security risk. Its best just to run the browser on the metal, and elliminate these difficulties.
Maybe, maybe not. We've already gone through a couple of iterations of this. First, there was text terminals connected to the server (good 'ol VT-100s). Then these got replaced with PCs or even SparcStations (as they did at my university). Then the PCs were swept away by X-terms. Then the X-terms were swept away by newer Sparc/Linux boxes...and so on.
I think having a real computer (as opposed to your WebTV or browser-only system) is going to be here to stay. It just gives you a lot more flexibility over what amounts to be a dumb terminal.
I am curious if anybody knows how hobbyist friendly this field is. It looks like the physical hardware needed to pick up these signals isn't much, but i can imagine you need some _REALLY SPIFFY_ (read expensive, large, current-hungry, heat dissipating...) amplifiers to make this sort of thing work
I'm not sure. Remembering the halcyon days of 8-bit BBC Microcomputers, I remember we had some kind of thing set up where you could influence a point on the screen from a couple of electrodes taped to your skin. I don't think it was quite the same technology, but it did work to a degree. Details are foggy because I was only about 11 years old at the time;-)
The system needs a constant series of "nudges" or a "plan" if it is to reach more advanced forms. Perhaps this is encoded somewhere in DNA that we don't yet understand; if you're a 2001 fan, there are always monoliths to explain this. I tend toward saying that the plan is somewhere encoded in nature, but that a plan that detailed had to have been put there intelligently -- that is, God exists.
The problem I have with this:
Using God to explain this and sitting back contentedly just pushes up the problem one level. It explains nothing. You've moved searching for the reason the giraffe's neck was long from a scientific search to "God did it". As I said: nothing has been explained, the problem has merely been shoved up a level and forgotten.
But who created God? Surely if it takes an intelligence to give these set of "nudges", then how did God get there in the first place?
If it were proved tomorrow that God exists, I would be no more satisfied that we've found where we come from: I'd want to know where God came from, too.
I Agree on everything but the 128k, what is wrong with 128k it sounds fine. most people CANNOT tell the difference between 128k and 192!
I disagree. It is quite easy to tell the difference between 128k and 192. Often, people who encode at higher bitrates tend to do so digitally (rather than Line In) and all the other quality-reducing things.
The difference between 128k and 192k is even more obvious if you usually listen with a good set of headphones.
Minus the W.A.V.E thing, and the fact it happened in the UK not US, this is almost exactly what happened to me at school. Did the jocks doing the bullying receive any punishment? Hell no! Fortunately, the doctor I ended up seeing told my parents, "He's a perfectly normal geek. I don't see any reason for treatment." Fortunately, my father also has backbone and reamed out the headmaster (principal in American).
It still annoys me thinking about it now, and I'd have some polite, but choice words - and some difficult questions to ask of the headmaster in question.
I really do like Enlightenment. What I usually do under X is start about 5 xterms and a browser (rather than doing the GUI thing - incidentally, that's how I use WinNT too), I do appreciate a bit of eye-candy.
The themes that come with Debian are pleasing to the eye, and the WM seems easy to use. However, I do miss the right-mouse-button Lower feature (to send a window to the back) which FVWM supports.
But at least Windows users don't accuse my desktop of being "dull" any more
To broaden the appeal of Linux, it needs more work on this sort of thing. However, I think Linux is an awful long way from being a "consumer level" OS like Windows. Having just upgraded my system with the latest Debian, the installation leaves a lot to be desired when compared with Windows. Fortunately, I almost know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux (having first started with Linux when it was kernel 0.12!), so it wasn't a big deal for me to install Deb, but I can't imagine most of my friends (who are not in software development) installing it without my (or some other Linux aware person's) help.
Sure, lex talonis may be morally bankrupt, but in this instance, nobody was doling out a punishment. The spammers (or rather, those who are tolerant of spam) were simply hoist by their own petard.
Slashdot Mirror
The BIND patch has been available since Feb 6
Yes, a patch - if you sign up for dedicated hosting from most places, you'll probably start with a fresh install and an unpatched BIND. Since most people going for RaQs don't know much about being a sysadmin, they will be h@x0r3d within days. (I get on average 6 or 7 attempts a day against the 'known insecure' services, aka sunrpc, lpd, BIND every day from skript kiddies).
A large chunk of the traffic on the Cobalt Users mailing list is "Help! I've been hacked" from RaQ3/RaQ4 users. Not really Cobalt's fault - they weren't to know when they shipped the software - but if you're getting a RaQ it's something you need to know so you can fix it before the kiddies get in. Since BIND can run happily as a non-root user, I'm surprised that Cobalt's (and RedHat's for that matter) distro doesn't run it as a non-root user. My motto is "if it can be run as non-root, then it's going to be run as non-root". Any good distro should avoid running stuff as root that doesn't have to be run as root.
Cobalt server appliances are just that: appliances. (How many of you fiddle with your microwave to get better/different performance out of it?) If you are totally into complete customization of every detail of your server, then a general-purpose server is what you want.
I agree - but the only reasonably priced dedicated hosting tends to be CobaltRaQs, so a lot of people who don't need just an appliance get them. They can be customized and improved. In fact, if you have a RaQ2, you need to do some of that if you want to be able to run things like MySQL (the shipped glibc is broken).
Napster is in fact pretty lame for new musicians. How do you find them unless you know the title of their songs or the name of their bands? You can't. Napster doesn't allow browsing by genre.
Much better for the new artist is mp3.com - the artist gets paid for downloads, can sell CDs via it, they retain the copyright on their music. The user can download new music for free, and find out what the new artist's music is like. You can browse mp3.com by genre, so I can just poke around until I find something I like.
To get your music downloaded on Napster, you essentially have to be famous already. On MP3.com, people can actually find you, even if you're unknown simply by browsing.
Compared to previous Microsoft OSs, maybe, though Windows 2000 may have signaled a change in this trend.
I disagree. I've been using Windows NT 4.0 since it came out and it has proved to be very stable. I use an NT system for software development: high loads, lots of compiling, running lots of beta (and sometime buggy code) on it and NT doesn't crash. I use one system as a server and its uptime is measured in months (the intervals between power outages). Windows NT even has a half decent command line interpreter (although I hate batch files, and use perl or a shell script run under bash instead).
On the other hand, I do love Linux and I'd rather be developing software on a Linux system. (I actually try and make my WinNT system as unix like as possible, because I find I'm more productive that way). Linux is a lot more efficient for a start. At the same time, I recognise NT is a good operating system. OS zealotry is generally not productive, and I have no problem recognising that both Linux and NT are good operating systems.
I'm sure XP will be a good OS too.
I'm not sure the marketplace is the correct measurement for the success of opensource. It is not a traditional product. Who cares if only 2.5% (according to my web logs) of systems use it? (That's still millions of users anyway). To me, opensource is successful because:
- it gives me a choice of tools to use: without OSS (Linux and FreeBSD in particular) my choice would be between a couple of Microsoft operating systems. But now I (and everyone else) can choose to run the right tool for the right job. Even if all that OSS does is to force MS to pull out all the stops to compete and make a better product, it's benefitted everyone.
- I don't judge Mozilla a failure. Sure, it's usage is not as widespread as MSIE (and MSIE is a good browser), but Mozilla works well (certainly on my system at home at least) and helps to give me that choice of tools I (or anyone) can use.
- The point is that Linux and FreeBSD are here to stay. They aren't going to suddenly go away because of the whims or failures of a company: that's the important difference with an established piece of OSS.
For example, a full tank of jet-fuel in an aircraft is pretty much non-flammable. The tank contains liquid Jet-A and Jet-A vapour, but not a lot of oxygen. The mixture is far too rich to burn. A spark in that situation would just...spark.
However, a fuel tank containing very little fuel, but having plenty of oxygen (or other oxidiser) is basically a bomb. A spark in that situation (as is the probable cause with TWA-800) will cause a powerful explosion, even though there's only a tiny fraction of fuel compared to the tank when it's full.
A stochiometric mixture burns most vigorously. That's what you try and obtain in your car's combustion chambers. Stochiometric means the fuel/oxidiser ratio is just right such that the available fuel matches the amount of available oxygen.
All I usually type is 'tar zxvf gcc-c' then hit return. There could be 50 characters more to go, but the shell will just fill them in.
Actually, Linus originally was experimenting with making stuff work in protected mode on a 386 and it sort of grew from there. It started with a program that printed "AAAAA" on the screen in protected mode ;-)
- Linux user since kernel 0.11, when there wasn't even init/getty/login...
Where I am (Houston) things were the same way, until my current ISP appeared. This independent ISP has elbowed its way into this market, competing with the big telecos and then some. It is increasingly successful and expanding into new cities. Independent ISPs can still succeed if they have the correct business plan and have the service that people want.
I am a newbie at CGI scripting. I wrote a script a while back that takes login data, and uses a session-key in the URL to keep the user validated as they move around pages in the said cgi script.
Using a session key was the first thought that popped into my head to keep this state information (I didn't want to use cookies). I was below the "ordinary skill in the art" because I was a newbie, yet it was the first thing that I thought of: therefore I'd be quite willing to testify under oath that this technique is obvious to anyone with ordinary skills in the art.
But at the same time, he doesn't appear to be guilty of doublethink. The marketdroids of many companies are not only doubleplusgood duckspeakers, but they're also doubleplusgood doublethinkers.
Microsoft unbellyfeel GPL.
That's what I thought until I read the last bit of his letter to the OpenSSH developers:
This is why we have contacted Corenic.net, your domain registration provider, to cancel all service on the "openssh.com" domain.
Until I read that, I sympathised with the SSH company - I thought they were doing the right thing by just requesting instead of sending the attack-dog lawyers. However, they made an agressive pre-emptive strike to destroy openssh.com's domain before they even have had a chance to consider changing their name.
If I were in charge of OpenSSH, I would have gladly changed the name of my code has he not pre-emptively tried to destroy my domain before I had a chance to even consider what to rename my product to!
Except we're not talking about taking corn (of which only a tiny part can be used) then putting it through another process (fermentation) then putting it through another process (distillation) to make the fuel.
The pond-scum powered diesel ran on the pond scum itself, not on a distillate thereof. It required minimal processing. It might not be any good for powering automobiles, but it might work for small-scale power plants. It's certainly going to do better than photovoltaic cells.
I agree in the long term that we HAVE to reduce our use of fossil fuels rather than trying to cure the symptoms.
We have bacteria here that photosynthesise. Their carbon source is the atmosphere, their energy source is sunlight.
Why not bypass the middleman (the coal fired powerstation) altogether: grow the bacteria, and harvest them as the carbon source for your power station? You'd have solar power without the need for photovoltaic cells (which are inefficient - and photovoltaic cells take more energy to make than they will ever produce in their lifetime) and the energy source can be stored in a convenient form (the harvested bacteria could be stored in tanks).
There has been some research a bit like this in the past - using pond-scum to power diesel engines. Apparently, you can design a diesel-cycle engine that'll run quite happily on dried pond scum. This effectively gives you a renewable source of energy for your engine.
You'll still need quite large amounts of land to produce enough bacteria or pond-scum, but if you've ever driven through Wyoming or the desert southwest (which has plenty of sunlight, an important ingredient) the land's there.
Unfortunately, it's fairly likely that they will "pull an Amazon" as you put it.
The word "doublethink" coined in Orwell's book "1984" is quite applicable here. B&N are undoubtedly trying to make themselves look like the 'white knight', overturning the useless patent. However, I bet if they think of some equally obvious technology and patent it, they will somehow manage to justify it to the Fox News watching masses.
I've not had any problems with glibc. All of my problems with running binaries have been with the libstd++ library.
However, there's nothing to stop you from having several versions of the libraries, which (in my cases) have fixed the problems.
I'm in my twenties. I do NOT own a PDA. I don't even own a cellphone or a calculator (mainly because I don't actually need any of these things, so see little point on spending money on them).
Despite this, I'm still terribly absent-minded. I tend to remember interesting stuff in incredible detail, but boring stuff like phone numbers, and the names of people I'll only ever meet once, I tend to forget (the former I write on a piece of paper). I even forgot to do the State Inspection on my vehicle for two months. However, I didn't forget the policeman's reminder because it suddenly got very important (the removal of wealth in the form of a fine if I didn't get it done within 10 days!)
Maybe, maybe not. We've already gone through a couple of iterations of this. First, there was text terminals connected to the server (good 'ol VT-100s). Then these got replaced with PCs or even SparcStations (as they did at my university). Then the PCs were swept away by X-terms. Then the X-terms were swept away by newer Sparc/Linux boxes...and so on.
I think having a real computer (as opposed to your WebTV or browser-only system) is going to be here to stay. It just gives you a lot more flexibility over what amounts to be a dumb terminal.
I'm not sure. Remembering the halcyon days of 8-bit BBC Microcomputers, I remember we had some kind of thing set up where you could influence a point on the screen from a couple of electrodes taped to your skin. I don't think it was quite the same technology, but it did work to a degree. Details are foggy because I was only about 11 years old at the time ;-)
The problem I have with this:
Using God to explain this and sitting back contentedly just pushes up the problem one level. It explains nothing. You've moved searching for the reason the giraffe's neck was long from a scientific search to "God did it". As I said: nothing has been explained, the problem has merely been shoved up a level and forgotten.
But who created God? Surely if it takes an intelligence to give these set of "nudges", then how did God get there in the first place?
If it were proved tomorrow that God exists, I would be no more satisfied that we've found where we come from: I'd want to know where God came from, too.
I disagree. It is quite easy to tell the difference between 128k and 192. Often, people who encode at higher bitrates tend to do so digitally (rather than Line In) and all the other quality-reducing things.
The difference between 128k and 192k is even more obvious if you usually listen with a good set of headphones.
Minus the W.A.V.E thing, and the fact it happened in the UK not US, this is almost exactly what happened to me at school. Did the jocks doing the bullying receive any punishment? Hell no! Fortunately, the doctor I ended up seeing told my parents, "He's a perfectly normal geek. I don't see any reason for treatment." Fortunately, my father also has backbone and reamed out the headmaster (principal in American).
It still annoys me thinking about it now, and I'd have some polite, but choice words - and some difficult questions to ask of the headmaster in question.
The themes that come with Debian are pleasing to the eye, and the WM seems easy to use. However, I do miss the right-mouse-button Lower feature (to send a window to the back) which FVWM supports.
But at least Windows users don't accuse my desktop of being "dull" any more
To broaden the appeal of Linux, it needs more work on this sort of thing. However, I think Linux is an awful long way from being a "consumer level" OS like Windows. Having just upgraded my system with the latest Debian, the installation leaves a lot to be desired when compared with Windows. Fortunately, I almost know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux (having first started with Linux when it was kernel 0.12!), so it wasn't a big deal for me to install Deb, but I can't imagine most of my friends (who are not in software development) installing it without my (or some other Linux aware person's) help.
The irony is simply amusing, that's all.