Everyone is correct in saying that Linux is all about choice and freedom. Well, it was UserLinux's choice not to include KDE. If you really want to use KDE, then don't use UserLinux. It's as simple as that.
I can relate to this article though not just with Windows programmers but with OS X users as well.
I'm both a UNIX programmer/user and a Mac user. I have a friend who's the average Mac advocate around...which means NOT a UNIX programmer. Though we both love OS X, we do have conflicting views about UNIX. I see UNIX among all things as an excellent development platform and he sees Darwin as just a secure foundation for Aqua. He also looks at open source from a regular users' point of view...and not as a programmer...which really makes all the difference if you think about it. The open source movement is a pro-programmer movement.
I think Apple has recently been trying to get more developers for OS X (though ProjectBuilder or XCode) because traditionally Macs aren't programmer-friendly. I'm a programmer. I love programming and once in a while I make small applications for UNIX and the Windows prompt (if they're ANSI and easily portable to Dev C++). Sufficive to say (man that sounds too Star Trek), I've only started compiling these small apps to the Mac now that they have Darwin (and GCC!!!).
There are now 2 major cultures using the Mac at the moment. The UNIX people, and the "I'm just better than you are because I use a Mac" people (the classic Mac crowd). When I first got my iBook a few months ago, I registered in a local Mac forum. I eventually stopped posting simply because of cultural differences.
Apple is attempting to bridge these two cultures mentioned below (taken from the article).
How did we get different core values? This is another reason Raymond's book is so good: he goes deeply into the history and evolution of Unix and brings new programmers up to speed with all the accumulated history of the culture back to 1969. When Unix was created and when it formed its cultural values, there were no end users. Computers were expensive, CPU time was expensive, and learning about computers meant learning how to program. It's no wonder that the culture which emerged valued things which are useful to other programmers. By contrast, Windows was created with one goal only: to sell as many copies as conceivable at a profit. Scrillions of copies. "A computer on every desktop and in every home" was the explicit goal of the team which created Windows, set its agenda and determined its core values. Ease of use for non-programmers was the only way to get on every desk and in every home and thus usability uber alles became the cultural norm. Programmers, as an audience, were an extreme afterthought.
I can relate to this article though not just with Windows programmers but with OS X users as well.
I'm both a UNIX programmer/user and a Mac user. I have a friend who's the average Mac advocate around...which means NOT a UNIX programmer. Though we both love OS X, we do have conflicting views about UNIX. I see UNIX among all things as an excellent development platform and he sees Darwin as just a secure foundation for Aqua. He also looks at open source from a regular users' point of view...and not as a programmer...which really makes all the difference if you think about it. The open source movement is a pro-programmer movement.
I think Apple has recently been trying to get more developers for OS X (though ProjectBuilder or XCode) because traditionally Macs aren't programmer-friendly. I'm a programmer. I love programming and once in a while I make small applications for UNIX and the Windows prompt (if they're ANSI and easily portable to Dev C++). Sufficive to say (man that sounds too Star Trek), I've only started compiling these small apps to the Mac now that they have Darwin (and GCC!!!).
There are now 2 major cultures using the Mac at the moment. The UNIX people, and the "I'm just better than you are because I use a Mac" people (the classic Mac crowd). When I first got my iBook a few months ago, I registered in a local Mac forum. I eventually stopped posting simply because of cultural differences.
Apple is attempting to bridge these two cultures mentioned below (taken from the article).
How did we get different core values? This is another reason Raymond's book is so good: he goes deeply into the history and evolution of Unix and brings new programmers up to speed with all the accumulated history of the culture back to 1969. When Unix was created and when it formed its cultural values, there were no end users. Computers were expensive, CPU time was expensive, and learning about computers meant learning how to program. It's no wonder that the culture which emerged valued things which are useful to other programmers. By contrast, Windows was created with one goal only: to sell as many copies as conceivable at a profit. Scrillions of copies. "A computer on every desktop and in every home" was the explicit goal of the team which created Windows, set its agenda and determined its core values. Ease of use for non-programmers was the only way to get on every desk and in every home and thus usability uber alles became the cultural norm. Programmers, as an audience, were an extreme afterthought.
I've lived in 1 third world an 2 first world countries before. Setting up city-wide WiFi on third world countries would be a waste of their money. For one thing, they would only be catering to a niche of the society who could afford WiFi-enabled devices. Secondly, it would be too expensive for any third world country institution to be offering free internet access....much less buy WiFi equipment to handle that kind of load.
I have been using Linux for nearly 10 years now, and about 4 years ago I held a 5 week Linux seminar in a university I was in (as a student). I taught a compressed all-in-one course from Linux system administration to programming and using the GNU development tools. I later learned that one of my students was actually part of the faculty. I left that school after a year. =D But for what it's worth the CS students of that school were really active as anything... Some of these "crappy schools" produce good graduates because of students' determination. In the end, it's all up to the student.
That's true. Most of these myths aren't just for OSS programmers. It just puts them on the spotlight because the code is available freely for crying out loud!
You guys might also want to check out the O'Reilly's "Programming with GNU Software" by Mike Loukides and Andy Oram. It seems the content is pretty much the same, and may even be a more appropriate title than "The Linux Development Platform." It includes chapters on: free softwre, intro to Unix, editing source code with emacs, compiling and linking with gcc, libraries, debuggging, make, rcs and program timings. Here's the O'Reilly page on the book.
Many Linux programming books actually already contain most of the content of these kind of books including Wrox's "Beginning Linux Programming" by Richard Stones and Neil Matthew. You can find the book's webpage here. A very good text to get you started in Unix programming.
Why should we, you people post without reading the links provided with the topic. It explicitly says you're vulnerable even with root disabled.
_Normally_, you hover your mouse over some text that's usually underlined (see dictionary if you don't know what this means). If your cursor chances to something which invites you to click, then go ahead. It then leads you to another page which _you're supposed to read_ before posting comments.
Well, that's normally what regular Slashdotters do, but then again, you're Mac users. You "think different," don't you?
Know your facts first. READ THE TOPIC LINKS. The security advisory says EXPLICITLY:
Is my machine safe if I have the root account "turned off"? No. The account attacking can be uid 0 and have any other name in the universe that is a valid account name.
Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to put facilities that mass produce chips in countries where labor is cheap? Most Intel chips I've seen are marked "Made in Malaysia" or "Made in the Philippines."
The classic guinea pig model. Let everyone else test technologies and when there's money to it, jump right in to the bandwagon. How original. Microsoft is hardly an innovator of technologies anymore.
How about last week... One of our competitors that pride themselves on being the best in the industry with Security and using Linux Servers as their flagship of security had about 100 customer's web servers root hacked.
I'm curious about this particular incident. If this is genuinely a Linux problem then we should be seeing this "root hack" damaging thousands of servers. If this really happened and is only isolated to your competitor's servers, doesn't this suggest that maybe this is a problem with their proprietary (maybe web control panel) software and not Linux itself?
It's pretty simple to get root access really. Install insecure software, hack the insecure software, and voila. Most people who get into servers enter using software that runs on the OS, say, Apache? SSH? However I doubt it's a problem with SSH or Apache because as I said, we should be seeing Linux-Apache web servers falling down like dominos.
If it's isolated to that company, then that's their problem.
However, I agree that there's no 100% secure operating system. Any programmer knows that no software is bug-free. That's programming 101.
My father worked and retired as an IT executive in a large multinational company. He got to travel at least once every 4 months or so to one of the key cities in the US and Asia, occassionally he'd go to Europe. However right before he retired, the company has been cutting down on IT personnel in favor of outsourcing IT services.
The FSF now considers the APSL to be a free software license with two major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL:
* It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary. * It is incompatible with the GPL.
For this reason, we recommend you do not release new software using this license; but it is ok to use and improve software which other people release under this license.
What a load of crap. The CS dep't of the university I go to does not teach any Windows-specific technologies at all. Having a very UNIX-centric curriculum, we're taught to program primarily using gcc/g++ on SunOS ad Linux from day one. The only department teaching VB is Information Systems... but who needs those geek wannabes anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
...but if i was to steal a computer i would reformat it as soon as i get it. oh well, but who knows, there are a lot of stupid people out there.
With so many standards running around and devices intentionally not complying with them, I doubt this would kick off in the near future.
Everyone is correct in saying that Linux is all about choice and freedom. Well, it was UserLinux's choice not to include KDE. If you really want to use KDE, then don't use UserLinux. It's as simple as that.
Have you guys considered getting a few hours air time per week? Might be good to have SlashTV or something...
Haha..thanks....
I currently have 1 mod point left. If I hadn't posted on this topic I would've modded you up.
I'm both a UNIX programmer/user and a Mac user. I have a friend who's the average Mac advocate around...which means NOT a UNIX programmer. Though we both love OS X, we do have conflicting views about UNIX. I see UNIX among all things as an excellent development platform and he sees Darwin as just a secure foundation for Aqua. He also looks at open source from a regular users' point of view...and not as a programmer...which really makes all the difference if you think about it. The open source movement is a pro-programmer movement.
I think Apple has recently been trying to get more developers for OS X (though ProjectBuilder or XCode) because traditionally Macs aren't programmer-friendly. I'm a programmer. I love programming and once in a while I make small applications for UNIX and the Windows prompt (if they're ANSI and easily portable to Dev C++). Sufficive to say (man that sounds too Star Trek), I've only started compiling these small apps to the Mac now that they have Darwin (and GCC!!!). There are now 2 major cultures using the Mac at the moment. The UNIX people, and the "I'm just better than you are because I use a Mac" people (the classic Mac crowd). When I first got my iBook a few months ago, I registered in a local Mac forum. I eventually stopped posting simply because of cultural differences.
Apple is attempting to bridge these two cultures mentioned below (taken from the article).
How did we get different core values? This is another reason Raymond's book is so good: he goes deeply into the history and evolution of Unix and brings new programmers up to speed with all the accumulated history of the culture back to 1969. When Unix was created and when it formed its cultural values, there were no end users. Computers were expensive, CPU time was expensive, and learning about computers meant learning how to program. It's no wonder that the culture which emerged valued things which are useful to other programmers. By contrast, Windows was created with one goal only: to sell as many copies as conceivable at a profit. Scrillions of copies. "A computer on every desktop and in every home" was the explicit goal of the team which created Windows, set its agenda and determined its core values. Ease of use for non-programmers was the only way to get on every desk and in every home and thus usability uber alles became the cultural norm. Programmers, as an audience, were an extreme afterthought.
I'm both a UNIX programmer/user and a Mac user. I have a friend who's the average Mac advocate around...which means NOT a UNIX programmer. Though we both love OS X, we do have conflicting views about UNIX. I see UNIX among all things as an excellent development platform and he sees Darwin as just a secure foundation for Aqua. He also looks at open source from a regular users' point of view...and not as a programmer...which really makes all the difference if you think about it. The open source movement is a pro-programmer movement.
I think Apple has recently been trying to get more developers for OS X (though ProjectBuilder or XCode) because traditionally Macs aren't programmer-friendly. I'm a programmer. I love programming and once in a while I make small applications for UNIX and the Windows prompt (if they're ANSI and easily portable to Dev C++). Sufficive to say (man that sounds too Star Trek), I've only started compiling these small apps to the Mac now that they have Darwin (and GCC!!!).
There are now 2 major cultures using the Mac at the moment. The UNIX people, and the "I'm just better than you are because I use a Mac" people (the classic Mac crowd). When I first got my iBook a few months ago, I registered in a local Mac forum. I eventually stopped posting simply because of cultural differences.
Apple is attempting to bridge these two cultures mentioned below (taken from the article).
How did we get different core values? This is another reason Raymond's book is so good: he goes deeply into the history and evolution of Unix and brings new programmers up to speed with all the accumulated history of the culture back to 1969. When Unix was created and when it formed its cultural values, there were no end users. Computers were expensive, CPU time was expensive, and learning about computers meant learning how to program. It's no wonder that the culture which emerged valued things which are useful to other programmers. By contrast, Windows was created with one goal only: to sell as many copies as conceivable at a profit. Scrillions of copies. "A computer on every desktop and in every home" was the explicit goal of the team which created Windows, set its agenda and determined its core values. Ease of use for non-programmers was the only way to get on every desk and in every home and thus usability uber alles became the cultural norm. Programmers, as an audience, were an extreme afterthought.
Hear hear!! Just save up for a new hard drive...
Well....
Was Apple thinking about non-Mac users when they first released the ITMS? Don't think so...
Let's give it some time...
I've lived in 1 third world an 2 first world countries before. Setting up city-wide WiFi on third world countries would be a waste of their money. For one thing, they would only be catering to a niche of the society who could afford WiFi-enabled devices. Secondly, it would be too expensive for any third world country institution to be offering free internet access....much less buy WiFi equipment to handle that kind of load.
It looks like a site for a lot of potential Slashdot topics...lol...
Maybe they're intentionally trying to get Slashdot readership?
I have been using Linux for nearly 10 years now, and about 4 years ago I held a 5 week Linux seminar in a university I was in (as a student). I taught a compressed all-in-one course from Linux system administration to programming and using the GNU development tools. I later learned that one of my students was actually part of the faculty. I left that school after a year. =D But for what it's worth the CS students of that school were really active as anything... Some of these "crappy schools" produce good graduates because of students' determination. In the end, it's all up to the student.
That's true. Most of these myths aren't just for OSS programmers. It just puts them on the spotlight because the code is available freely for crying out loud!
Many Linux programming books actually already contain most of the content of these kind of books including Wrox's "Beginning Linux Programming" by Richard Stones and Neil Matthew. You can find the book's webpage here. A very good text to get you started in Unix programming.
Why should we, you people post without reading the links provided with the topic. It explicitly says you're vulnerable even with root disabled.
_Normally_, you hover your mouse over some text that's usually underlined (see dictionary if you don't know what this means). If your cursor chances to something which invites you to click, then go ahead. It then leads you to another page which _you're supposed to read_ before posting comments.
Well, that's normally what regular Slashdotters do, but then again, you're Mac users. You "think different," don't you?
Know your facts first. READ THE TOPIC LINKS. The security advisory says EXPLICITLY:
Is my machine safe if I have the root account "turned off"?
No. The account attacking can be uid 0 and have any other name in the universe that is a valid account name.
Wouldn't it be cheaper for them to put facilities that mass produce chips in countries where labor is cheap? Most Intel chips I've seen are marked "Made in Malaysia" or "Made in the Philippines."
The classic guinea pig model. Let everyone else test technologies and when there's money to it, jump right in to the bandwagon. How original. Microsoft is hardly an innovator of technologies anymore.
How about last week... One of our competitors that pride themselves on being the best in the industry with Security and using Linux Servers as their flagship of security had about 100 customer's web servers root hacked.
I'm curious about this particular incident. If this is genuinely a Linux problem then we should be seeing this "root hack" damaging thousands of servers. If this really happened and is only isolated to your competitor's servers, doesn't this suggest that maybe this is a problem with their proprietary (maybe web control panel) software and not Linux itself?
It's pretty simple to get root access really. Install insecure software, hack the insecure software, and voila. Most people who get into servers enter using software that runs on the OS, say, Apache? SSH? However I doubt it's a problem with SSH or Apache because as I said, we should be seeing Linux-Apache web servers falling down like dominos.
If it's isolated to that company, then that's their problem.
However, I agree that there's no 100% secure operating system. Any programmer knows that no software is bug-free. That's programming 101.
I'm an ACM member and I read any sort of computer related literature for fun. Any CS geek shouldn't be without access to journals.
ACM and IEEE are the best places to find journals IMHO.
My father worked and retired as an IT executive in a large multinational company. He got to travel at least once every 4 months or so to one of the key cities in the US and Asia, occassionally he'd go to Europe. However right before he retired, the company has been cutting down on IT personnel in favor of outsourcing IT services.
See what the FSF has to say about this.
The FSF now considers the APSL to be a free software license with two major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL:
* It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files which may be entirely proprietary.
* It is incompatible with the GPL.
For this reason, we recommend you do not release new software using this license; but it is ok to use and improve software which other people release under this license.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html
in a parallel world when apple and microsoft switched places, apple would be the hog microsoft is in our reality.
1. the display case looks ugly. do something about that.
2. get a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
What a load of crap. The CS dep't of the university I go to does not teach any Windows-specific technologies at all. Having a very UNIX-centric curriculum, we're taught to program primarily using gcc/g++ on SunOS ad Linux from day one. The only department teaching VB is Information Systems... but who needs those geek wannabes anyway?