A lot of effort goes into finding vulnerabilities in software, but there's no real evidence that it actually improves security.... It doesn't look like we're making much of a dent in the overall number of vulnerabilities in the software we use.
This question could be compared to, "Should we install warning lights and gates at railroad crossings? The alternative is to wait for someone to get killed when there aren't lights and a gate, and then install them... In other words, should we find and fix every vulnerability we can in the hopes of turning out higher quality software, or should we wait for each vulnerability to be used in compromising someone's system before we fix it?
I would say that finding and fixing vulnerabilities probably reduces the number of problems encountered with computers, and the cost associated with those problems. Otherwise, I think there would be so many security holes that all the software out there would be like swiss cheese, and it would take almost no effort at all to break into any system you liked. This is my gut feeling about the issue, but I'll back it up with this thought:
Programmers are at war with 1337 h4x0rz when it comes to security. The more the h4x0rz mess with systems, the more effort the programmers put into securing them. This, in turn, means the h4x0rz need to become more sophisticated, coming up with more involved, obscure, and imaginative ways to break into things. Which, in turn, means the programmers need to become more sophisticated in thwarting these attacks. It's a cycle that requires each side to become increasingly careful in the quality of their work.
You could compare this situation to the war on spam, where the filter software becomes more sophisticated as the spammers do the same; Or the war on viruses, where virus scanners and viruses are getting increasingly sophisticated (or, rather, Microsoft finds an innovative new way to attract viruses because of the secret business deals it probably has with the virus scanning companies), and so on.
The reason you don't see a dent is because as security holes are closed up, the h4x0rz are finding new ways to break into stuff. The idea is to be on the side that finds the vulnerabilities the fastest, and hopefully, that's on the honest side of things. Ooooooooooooooh well.
Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn.... Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering.
Weren't you in class the day they told you not to start every sentence with the same word?:-)
At least you didn't start each sentence with "I"...
Cassini-Huygens Reaches Phoebe
Posted by michael on Friday June 11, @01:20PM
from the bulls-eye dept.
Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of I today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of I at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of I are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. I is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. I may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. I was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."
This is an interesting legal story. I suppose this kind of policy is similar to the one that allows you to place an article in a magazine, with the words, "paid advertisement," or something similar at the top of each page.
It seems kind of strange that the law should require any of this. If you want to charge for airtime on your radio station, you should be able to. And if nobody wants to pay you, then tough Schitt.
There's also the very real issue that the rich and powerful and well connected will still find ways to avoid having bills sent to them every time they speed, or have one of their henchmen run someone over, or sign memos giving the wink-nudge to breaking international laws on treatment of prisoners, or meet with energy company executives to take a check and give them head...
You forget that most of the people to whom you allude have gone to PRISON for doing that, or they're on trial now, and in either case, doing so has cost them nearly everything they once had.
My personal opinion is that ethics should drive business, but in W's Kapitalist America, business drives ethics!
Bah... You speak as if 'W' is the king of this land, some great monarch, and his word is law. And you're not the only one. A lot of people think the president is the one person responsible for all the world's woes. Why is that?
Why is the president blamed for something some obscure company in Utah does? Or, more importantly, of the several million businesses operating in the United States, a few here and there are doing something unethical. Even if there are a hundred really unethical and just plain evil businesses, that's still a tiny fraction of 1% of all the businesses. I would say that's an excellent signal-to-noise ratio when it comes to rating this "kapitalist" country's businesses.
Oh yeah, and what do you have against "kapitalism", if I may ask? Do you hate the big businesses and their unequal bargaining power? Maybe you should be aware that "kapitalism" makes it possible for ma-and-pa's to run their own little businesses, and it gives you the freedom to choose from whom to buy the products and services you want. Maybe you're also unaware that the ma-and-pa's (i.e., small businesses) form the majority of this country's economy. I don't remember the exact percentage, but small businesses greatly outnumber, outsell, outearn, and outspend, all the big corps. So, you don't like the big corps? Don't give them your money; it's that simple. But I'd bet you do give them your money, because the benefit you get from them far outweighs the problems, if any, that they cause for you.
I think that ultimately, sentiments like yours don't stem from facts, or even from reasonable opinions. They come from false impressions given by popular culture and the media. Pop-culture, because for some reason it's popular to bag on the U.S. today, and the media, because bagging on the U.S. is a lot more newsworthy (it raises peoples' attention more, and hence, advertising revenue) than mentioning any of the good things (that far outweigh the bad, by the way) that this country happens to be doing. Neither has your best interests in mind, but one or both affect your thinking. Which is it in your case, pop-culture, or the one-sided media?
The article certainly makes a point about why efficient performance is important. With each passing day, large influential companies are retiring hundreds, maybe thousands, of computers used by their personnel, as part of upgrading to a newer version of Windows. That is such a huge business opportunity for Linux!
When I say 'business opportunity', by the way, I am not referring to the opportunity to make money, though that certainly exists as well. I am talking about increased use of Linux, which means increased corporate pressure on software companies to release Linux-native versions of their software, which will make Linux more usable for a wider audience, which means wider use, which means more software, etc.
It is a shame that Linux, not the kernel, but the entire idea of a free desktop OS, has become as bloated and complicated as it has. I often wonder if it shouldn't be possible to implement, for example, one widget library, and then provide APIs to that library that are the same as those for GTK, Qt, the Mozilla widgets, the OOo widgets, and whatever other widget sets are in wide use right now. Then, imagine running that library directly on the frame buffer, without X, because most "simple" users don't know about or appreciate the additional power and flexibility that X gives them. I think a single program could serve as a desktop with icons and a wallpaper, a taskbar of some sort, and a window manager. The aforementioned KDE, GNOME, OOo, Mozilla, and other applications would be linked against the one library that provides the same functionality with the different APIs, which would mean a much reduced memory footprint, and since all applications would use the same library, it would likewise reduce the time required to start each application.
Behind the scenes, the SysV-style start/stop init system could be removed in favor of a much simpler, non-runmode-enabled BSD-style system that only has a single script. In fact, instead of a script, this could be implemented as a single binary. I would get rid of almost all scripts in the system and implement them, to the greatest extent possible, as just one program, BusyBox-style, that handles their functionality. I might even use BusyBox instead of the separate, more powerful utilities, because again, most users don't know or appreciate that power.
Overall, I think that a lot of the progress that has been made in embedded Linux could be used in full systems. The BusyBox thing is one example. Embedded stuff is intended to run on tiny slow processors with almost no memory. It would work wonders for desktop systems.
Also, imagine some other possibilities: The system files (all supporting programs that aren't user applications), once installed, get placed in a filesystem-in-a-file, compressed, which gets loaded into memory on startup, accessed through cloop, kind of like Knoppix does from the CD, but much faster. This would mean that all code that's accessed all the time would be in memory, with no need to reload anything from disk, ever. I think it would all take only, say, 10 or 15 megs once compressed.
I think the boot times could be improved by detecting hardware during the initial installation of the OS, saving that information, and then detecting only the kind of hardware that might be added during runtime, like USB accessories. This would all decrease boot times.
Running everything on the framebuffer without X would mean that you could be in sexy graphics from the moment the kernel is loaded until you turn the power off. These possibilities, while I'm not sure that any or all of them would work, could certainly speed things up and make the software more usable for mere mortals while operating at an acceptable speed on old hardware. Perhaps before coming to conclusions, there should be some way to "profile" a running system to determine where it's wasting most of its time, and then optimize the hell out of that, or figure out a faster method to apply there. There is no reason that such fast and powerful computers need to operate at such slow speeds.
The highlights are that SCOX only collected $11k (yes, K) for that much-discussed license for EV1 and other Licensees.
I am very happy to read that SCO has made such a large net loss. This is not because support for Linux as much as it is because I do not support the type of business practice employed by SCO.
I strongly believe that companies have a duty not only to their owners, but also to their customers, suppliers, and even to their competitors. The last one, the duty to competitors, is a duty to compete based on a better products and services, better marketing, better pricing, a better overall customer experience, etc.
I think that, while litigation is sometimes necessary, most issues can be settled outside of the court system in a mutually beneficial way, or at least in a way that minimizes the damages to all parties involved. Further, litigation and other legal actions (lobbying for legislation, etc.) should not be employed as a source of profit for a company, but only to solve legitimate problems.
In the case of SCO, I think they have thrown all good business practices out the window, while embracing litigation as a potential source of profit. Essentially, instead of elevating themselves by making sound decisions and consistently improving themselves, they are trying to become elevated by pushing others down. Kind of like the "everything is relative" argument - if you push someone down, then you could say that you have elevated yourself even though you stayed in the same place. This is what SCO is trying to do, and it is not beneficial to anybody except, if they manage to pull it off, themselves. This is a very egoistic and self centered company with no desire to make anything of value. And companies like this should not be supported.
For those reasons, I am glad that SCO had these losses, and I hope that investors pull their investments, new investors don't buy SCO stock, and potential customers go elsewhere. This evil company should not be supported by anybody.
Not to mention that I strongly believe that there is no legal issue of any SCO code being copied into other software. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: Either:
No code was ever stolen from SCO.
Or, SCO plagiarized (for lack of a better term) source code from other sources, and later, upon finding identical code elsewhere, either believe that the theft happened in the other direction, or don't believe it themselves but hope to convince others so that they may profit from it.
I like how you mention that when you load a KDE- or GNOME-based app, or Mozilla, or OOo, you are loading up all these libraries that basically perform the same task.
I was actually thinking about this subject last night, and I wondered if there is a way, since these are all free software / open source, to choose one library, whether one of the four, or a fifth library that is lighter and faster, and then create "duct tape" functions for the other libraries. This way, you could link your GNOME- and KDE- based apps, Mozilla, and OOo with this one library. Each would think that it has its own widgets and crap, but all of the calls would end up in the one true library.
I thought that if, say, this were done to convert QT calls into GTK calls, then someone would end up implementing duct tape to convert GTK calls to QT calls, and eventually, we'd end up with duct tape functions that convert from any of the libraries to any of the other libraries. This might seem like overkill and a waste of time, but I think that if such a thing happened, you would truly have the "choice" that everyone is talking about, because you could choose which library you like, and the others would map to that one. It could become part of your overall desktop theme.
I am so sick of governments trying to control people to an increasingly greater extent each day. This is yet one more example. First, they'll convince everyone it's so their car won't get stolen (as if the thieves don't know that all they have to do is remove the plate before towing the vehicle away), and then they'll use it to mail you a ticket every time you go over the speed limit, don't make a complete stop and wait three seconds at stop signs, or make a right turn on red in an intersection where it isn't allowed, when it's 3 in the morning and there are no cars on the road for 100 miles.
I know that in the case of vehicles, these types of things are designed to create revenue for the local police departments and whatnot, but honestly, I don't think this will help make the roads any safer. All it will do is force you to mind every little detail of the law, no matter how insignificant, even in situations where it really doesn't make much sense, as in the case of standing at stop signs for 3 seconds when there are clearly no cars around. I do NOT advocate running stop signs, or even just slowing down and then blazing through them. On the contrary, I hate it when people do that. But if you're stopping, and the car is almost at a complete stop, and you can clearly see that there are no cars approaching, and it is perfectly safe, then what difference does it make if you actually come to a halt and wait for three seconds?
The officer who stops you for that should be looking for the reckless driver, late to work, who is weaving between the cars, going twice the speed limit, and so stressed out that he's about to get someone killed. But instead, the officer will wait on some secluded street, where about three cars pass in an hour, because he knows that none of those three cars will make a 100% stop at the stop sign, and then he'll write those drivers tickets. Meanwhile, on the main road, someone is driving drunk on the wrong side of the road. If you've ever wondered why the police are always there when you do something insignificant that is "wrong" but they're not when something truly dangerous is going on? That's why.
So the short version of all that is that I am against putting any kind of tracking technologies in vehicles because first, it will be for convenience, then, it will be for safety, and finally, when nobody is noticing and the technology is widespread and in place, it will be for revenue purposes. Without adding safety.
The BBC says that the scientist many regard as the father of nanotechnology has backed away from his famous claim that runaway nanomachines could turn the planet into 'grey goo'.
You know what this tells me? It tells me that Drexler now works for some military organization to develop a special kind of weapon where nanotechnology "cells" can combine to form any object - essentially a shapeshifting type of thing like the android from Terminator 2. I am sure that this technology will be used to send people back in time to change the future. For example, I think Microsoft will send one back in time to make sure that Linus's great grandparents don't meet, so that Microsoft can triple the price of Windows, nobody will have another choice, and yet, in court, they'll point to the Amiga and say that it's their competition, and therefore they don't have a monopoly.
So what I'm saying is that Drexler changed his opinion so that when he installs technologies like this, people won't think that he's doing it to turn the world into grey goo. It's a conspiracy, and everybody's in on it.~
Corporate directors are under pressure from shareholders to maintain the mandatory annual growth rate.
In other words, the shareholders and managers of corporations believe:
Corporations have a right to profit.
The government has a duty to protect that profit.
Corporations have a right for their profits to consistently increase.
If a corporation's profit does not increase or actually decreases, that is the effect of a crime on the part of the consumers who purchase the product or service.
In other words, corporations have a God given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits.
You've pretty much summed up one of the points I was trying to make: A lot of students, and even professors, I think, prefer the multiplication table memorization to doing any of the things I mentioned in my original post. And it's depressing not only because of the state of software nowadays, but also because most other industries suffer from the same things. I see people on a daily basis who are smart and could accomplish a lot, but they don't want to use their head. They would much rather follow directions in some step-by-step document that lays everything out for them so all they have to do is push a bunch of buttons. Really depressing.
to suffer from willy-nilly software development by individuals who have not been screened, approved, and trained by corporate human resources professionals.
And this is to say what? That corporate human resources "professionals" know anything about software development? I suppose the next thing they'll believe is that programmers who learned to program in school know anything about programming.
I have some experience with that second one. I know a few people who studied programming in school, not really knowing anything about it beforehand. The way they studied made no sense at all; it was a process of memorization, like memorizing a multiplication table. This applies to everything from language syntax to design patterns. These schools turn out programmers who think they're hot stuff because they can churn out word processors using VB#.NET or whatever. There isn't the sort of deep-rooted philosophy about software design, the base in mathematics and logic, the science of the machine, or the art of putting together computer programs that accomplish a job, scale well, fit together within the overall field of computing, and age well too.
I don't know what to think about this industry. What happened to the few really good programmers who could make amazing things happen with a basically crappy machine with barely any memory or other computing resources? What happened to the respect that used to apply to this field? Nowadays, it seems like corporate managers look down on the programmers and the software, as if it's a given that software is some mindless trivial crap that takes two seconds to bang together, and the fact that it takes a really long time to engineer is scorned and look down upon.
The issue of software patents stems directly from this. There is no issue of learning or advancing the field. It's simply looked upon as a bunch of flash cards that need to be memorized, and each corporation is trying to jump on that and patent as many of those flash cards as they can. Want to use a 'switch' statement? Pay $500 per application instance, or an annual fee of $5,000,000. It's just a nominal fee...
Depressing. Free software needs to win the software war as soon as possible.
I don't want to meet people on the web. No way! If I wanted to meet people, I'd go outside. (For those who haven't been there before, that's the area located beyond the perimeter of your home.) But I don't want to meet people. I want to sit on my ass and read the web. So, no, I don't want to meet people on the web.
Nanny nanny boo boo to the XFree86 folks. As a good friend of mine would say, and I have to first tell you that he is a professional and very eloquent man, so you never hear him say bad words, "Gentlemen, you fucked up."
That's what the XFree86 people get for messing with licensing issues and generating all this extra work for everyone.
In my opinion, if I want an X server with a non-free license, I can go commercial and buy one of the accelerated servers out there. Heck, I might still do that just to try them out.
For immediate release. June 8, 2004.
Netgear (NASDAQ: BLAH) today announced immediate release of new technology designed to eliminate enterprise security threats by thwarting hackers. By leveraging innovative technologies, content providers streamline compelling enterprise solutions.
The technology, which allows anyone to access enterprise networks when they enter 'superman' for the username and and '21241036' for the password, frees enterprises from worrying about security issues and allows IT managers to focus on implementing talking paperclips on enterprise desktops. "We are excited about the new technology," commented Steve Hjarkblonka in an interview. "For the first time since the invention of computers, the threat of security intrusions has been completely eliminated. Enterprises can now enjoy 100% unbreakable security."
Geoff Nikreny, chief security officer with Endostar Inc, calls the secure-by-default approach, in which once-vulnerable features are patched, a "mistake" that will lead to deployment confusion. But he doesn't know what he's talking about anyway. So for 100% unbreakable security, buy Netgear.
This is great news! Get a lot of people off of Microsoft's office suite, and get them on something else. Anything else! As long as people know that not all documents in existance (including classic literature and the Holy Bible) are written in Microsoft Word, and Excel isn't the only spreadsheet in existance.
Not that I hate Microsoft. I really don't. But I think it should be shut down and its assets distributed among free software projects.
Yeah yeah, mod this -100, Troll, I don't care. Nanny nanny boo boo, Microsoft. The only thing I regret about this is that StarOffice isn't the same as the free OpenOffice.org. But I guess Sun has to make money somehow. May as well be from productivity software.
My mistake, however, was to forgetting that Venus is eternal, but love isn't. Every time I see Venus hanging in the evening sky, I realize I named that damn crater after the wrong woman. LOL!
At least you didn't get her name tattooed down your forearm where everyone would see it for the rest of your life and wonder who's name that is... especially after breaking up with her.
Craters might be forever, but tattoos are the suxx0rz. Oh well. I hardly notice it anymore.
Well, he can protest all he wants about the messaging costing money, but when he receives his bill, he'll have to pay for it just the same. The phone company will make money out of it, and he'll be out however much it will cost him.
/* Do NOT remove this code!!!!!!!!1111 */ if (eu_banknote_detect()) return (ERROR_912); if (us_banknote_detect()) return (ERROR_913); . . .
Of course, nobody would ever think to remove that code!!!
I think that ultimately, a lot of software companies would push for this because they would want to see free software made illegal for one reason or another. The problem is that even in closed source proprietary black box software, someone who wants to counterfeit money will figure out, or hire someone to figure out, how to disable that code. And no matter how obfuscated the code is made, it is ALWAYS possible to do something like that. It's only a matter of time and money, and to the counterfeiters, the money is practically free anyway.
Technological measures designed to enforce the law will never work. While they might keep the honest people honest, those people are, by definition, honest anyway; but the dishonest will find a way around it. For example, by using old graphics software, or by modifying current software, be it free/open or proprietary.
I say just make the bills much harder to counterfeit, and do it in such a way that it's easy to detect the fake ones.
This idea reminds me of the way BeOS worked. It had directories with sensible names like these. A few things weren't quite perfect (e.g., the desktop being the root directory made things kind of weird), but the directory structure fit well into the overall design of the OS, which was very good. Everything was well integrated into everything else and made sense.
I think my "dream" Linux distro would actually use the BFS (BeOS File System) as its file system, because, as I understand, it has support for everything a UNIXish OS needs (permissions, etc.), and more (attributes, that is, meta-data, and blazingly fast queries). Also, I remember noticing that when running BeOS, the hard drive was operating much more quietly, even when accessing lots of files at once, as compared to any other OS and filesystem run on the same machine. Somehow, because of the design of BFS, the hard drive doesn't need to move the heads as often. I'm convinced this makes the drive last longer. Ah, well, this is just a rant... I'm going to sleep.
Caps Lock is the suxx0rz. All it's good for is getting in the way, and getting pushed by mistake. Heck, the once in a half hour that I need a capital letter, there's the shift key.
I don't know which key would fit there if the Caps Lock were moved, though. It's kind of a weird place to put anything, especially since muscle memory knows that it's the key you never push. If it were suddenly changed to, say, Control, or whatever, that would actually make it useful, which would be strange, to say the least.
I'm glad support for this is finding its way into Linux. I think OpenBSD has had this for a while now, as part of ProPolice... I'm not sure about that though.
From what I've read, it certainly makes sense to break a few apps for this functionality, as you can always run them in a build without it. Things should be a lot safer, as crap like buffer overruns from carefully formatted input strings can no longer contain executable code.
I think this should be available for individual programs to set the NX bit on memory pages that should only contain data, so, for example, when you download a file, it is impossible to execute it (say, while in memory) until you save it and explicitely set the execute bit. In other words, there is a completely non-executable path for all untrusted code from its inception until the user explicitly makes it run. Now, when some Joe Luser clicks an email attachment virus made for Linux, if this ever happens, it will be very difficult for him to make it run, and hence, it won't. Add to that the protections inherent in all Linux systems (multiuser permissions, heterogeneous configurations, etc.), and it's very unlikely that Linux users will experience the kind of crap that Windows users have to put up with on a daily basis, even if Linux somehow gains a huge market share on the desktop.
They run out of power. The units are recharged by solar panels which stop working as well over time as they slowly get covered by dust and dirt that can't be cleaned off.
So here we have a half billion dollar rover and they couldn't put a five dollar windshield wiper on the solar panel to wipe the dust off?
Slashdot Mirror
This question could be compared to, "Should we install warning lights and gates at railroad crossings? The alternative is to wait for someone to get killed when there aren't lights and a gate, and then install them... In other words, should we find and fix every vulnerability we can in the hopes of turning out higher quality software, or should we wait for each vulnerability to be used in compromising someone's system before we fix it?
I would say that finding and fixing vulnerabilities probably reduces the number of problems encountered with computers, and the cost associated with those problems. Otherwise, I think there would be so many security holes that all the software out there would be like swiss cheese, and it would take almost no effort at all to break into any system you liked. This is my gut feeling about the issue, but I'll back it up with this thought:
Programmers are at war with 1337 h4x0rz when it comes to security. The more the h4x0rz mess with systems, the more effort the programmers put into securing them. This, in turn, means the h4x0rz need to become more sophisticated, coming up with more involved, obscure, and imaginative ways to break into things. Which, in turn, means the programmers need to become more sophisticated in thwarting these attacks. It's a cycle that requires each side to become increasingly careful in the quality of their work.
You could compare this situation to the war on spam, where the filter software becomes more sophisticated as the spammers do the same; Or the war on viruses, where virus scanners and viruses are getting increasingly sophisticated (or, rather, Microsoft finds an innovative new way to attract viruses because of the secret business deals it probably has with the virus scanning companies), and so on.
The reason you don't see a dent is because as security holes are closed up, the h4x0rz are finding new ways to break into stuff. The idea is to be on the side that finds the vulnerabilities the fastest, and hopefully, that's on the honest side of things. Ooooooooooooooh well.
Weren't you in class the day they told you not to start every sentence with the same word? :-)
At least you didn't start each sentence with "I"...
Heh heh... Just giving you a hard time.It seems kind of strange that the law should require any of this. If you want to charge for airtime on your radio station, you should be able to. And if nobody wants to pay you, then tough Schitt.
Accelerated-X!!! There's also Metro-X, though Metro Link's webpage appears to be down and I can't find them otherwise.
Laugh all you want about paying for commercial software, but when it comes to these quality products, it's worth it.
You forget that most of the people to whom you allude have gone to PRISON for doing that, or they're on trial now, and in either case, doing so has cost them nearly everything they once had.
Bah... You speak as if 'W' is the king of this land, some great monarch, and his word is law. And you're not the only one. A lot of people think the president is the one person responsible for all the world's woes. Why is that?
Why is the president blamed for something some obscure company in Utah does? Or, more importantly, of the several million businesses operating in the United States, a few here and there are doing something unethical. Even if there are a hundred really unethical and just plain evil businesses, that's still a tiny fraction of 1% of all the businesses. I would say that's an excellent signal-to-noise ratio when it comes to rating this "kapitalist" country's businesses.
Oh yeah, and what do you have against "kapitalism", if I may ask? Do you hate the big businesses and their unequal bargaining power? Maybe you should be aware that "kapitalism" makes it possible for ma-and-pa's to run their own little businesses, and it gives you the freedom to choose from whom to buy the products and services you want. Maybe you're also unaware that the ma-and-pa's (i.e., small businesses) form the majority of this country's economy. I don't remember the exact percentage, but small businesses greatly outnumber, outsell, outearn, and outspend, all the big corps. So, you don't like the big corps? Don't give them your money; it's that simple. But I'd bet you do give them your money, because the benefit you get from them far outweighs the problems, if any, that they cause for you.
I think that ultimately, sentiments like yours don't stem from facts, or even from reasonable opinions. They come from false impressions given by popular culture and the media. Pop-culture, because for some reason it's popular to bag on the U.S. today, and the media, because bagging on the U.S. is a lot more newsworthy (it raises peoples' attention more, and hence, advertising revenue) than mentioning any of the good things (that far outweigh the bad, by the way) that this country happens to be doing. Neither has your best interests in mind, but one or both affect your thinking. Which is it in your case, pop-culture, or the one-sided media?
When I say 'business opportunity', by the way, I am not referring to the opportunity to make money, though that certainly exists as well. I am talking about increased use of Linux, which means increased corporate pressure on software companies to release Linux-native versions of their software, which will make Linux more usable for a wider audience, which means wider use, which means more software, etc.
It is a shame that Linux, not the kernel, but the entire idea of a free desktop OS, has become as bloated and complicated as it has. I often wonder if it shouldn't be possible to implement, for example, one widget library, and then provide APIs to that library that are the same as those for GTK, Qt, the Mozilla widgets, the OOo widgets, and whatever other widget sets are in wide use right now. Then, imagine running that library directly on the frame buffer, without X, because most "simple" users don't know about or appreciate the additional power and flexibility that X gives them. I think a single program could serve as a desktop with icons and a wallpaper, a taskbar of some sort, and a window manager. The aforementioned KDE, GNOME, OOo, Mozilla, and other applications would be linked against the one library that provides the same functionality with the different APIs, which would mean a much reduced memory footprint, and since all applications would use the same library, it would likewise reduce the time required to start each application.
Behind the scenes, the SysV-style start/stop init system could be removed in favor of a much simpler, non-runmode-enabled BSD-style system that only has a single script. In fact, instead of a script, this could be implemented as a single binary. I would get rid of almost all scripts in the system and implement them, to the greatest extent possible, as just one program, BusyBox-style, that handles their functionality. I might even use BusyBox instead of the separate, more powerful utilities, because again, most users don't know or appreciate that power.
Overall, I think that a lot of the progress that has been made in embedded Linux could be used in full systems. The BusyBox thing is one example. Embedded stuff is intended to run on tiny slow processors with almost no memory. It would work wonders for desktop systems.
Also, imagine some other possibilities: The system files (all supporting programs that aren't user applications), once installed, get placed in a filesystem-in-a-file, compressed, which gets loaded into memory on startup, accessed through cloop, kind of like Knoppix does from the CD, but much faster. This would mean that all code that's accessed all the time would be in memory, with no need to reload anything from disk, ever. I think it would all take only, say, 10 or 15 megs once compressed.
I think the boot times could be improved by detecting hardware during the initial installation of the OS, saving that information, and then detecting only the kind of hardware that might be added during runtime, like USB accessories. This would all decrease boot times.
Running everything on the framebuffer without X would mean that you could be in sexy graphics from the moment the kernel is loaded until you turn the power off. These possibilities, while I'm not sure that any or all of them would work, could certainly speed things up and make the software more usable for mere mortals while operating at an acceptable speed on old hardware. Perhaps before coming to conclusions, there should be some way to "profile" a running system to determine where it's wasting most of its time, and then optimize the hell out of that, or figure out a faster method to apply there. There is no reason that such fast and powerful computers need to operate at such slow speeds.
I am very happy to read that SCO has made such a large net loss. This is not because support for Linux as much as it is because I do not support the type of business practice employed by SCO.
I strongly believe that companies have a duty not only to their owners, but also to their customers, suppliers, and even to their competitors. The last one, the duty to competitors, is a duty to compete based on a better products and services, better marketing, better pricing, a better overall customer experience, etc.
I think that, while litigation is sometimes necessary, most issues can be settled outside of the court system in a mutually beneficial way, or at least in a way that minimizes the damages to all parties involved. Further, litigation and other legal actions (lobbying for legislation, etc.) should not be employed as a source of profit for a company, but only to solve legitimate problems.
In the case of SCO, I think they have thrown all good business practices out the window, while embracing litigation as a potential source of profit. Essentially, instead of elevating themselves by making sound decisions and consistently improving themselves, they are trying to become elevated by pushing others down. Kind of like the "everything is relative" argument - if you push someone down, then you could say that you have elevated yourself even though you stayed in the same place. This is what SCO is trying to do, and it is not beneficial to anybody except, if they manage to pull it off, themselves. This is a very egoistic and self centered company with no desire to make anything of value. And companies like this should not be supported.
For those reasons, I am glad that SCO had these losses, and I hope that investors pull their investments, new investors don't buy SCO stock, and potential customers go elsewhere. This evil company should not be supported by anybody.
Not to mention that I strongly believe that there is no legal issue of any SCO code being copied into other software. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: Either:
I was actually thinking about this subject last night, and I wondered if there is a way, since these are all free software / open source, to choose one library, whether one of the four, or a fifth library that is lighter and faster, and then create "duct tape" functions for the other libraries. This way, you could link your GNOME- and KDE- based apps, Mozilla, and OOo with this one library. Each would think that it has its own widgets and crap, but all of the calls would end up in the one true library.
I thought that if, say, this were done to convert QT calls into GTK calls, then someone would end up implementing duct tape to convert GTK calls to QT calls, and eventually, we'd end up with duct tape functions that convert from any of the libraries to any of the other libraries. This might seem like overkill and a waste of time, but I think that if such a thing happened, you would truly have the "choice" that everyone is talking about, because you could choose which library you like, and the others would map to that one. It could become part of your overall desktop theme.
I know that in the case of vehicles, these types of things are designed to create revenue for the local police departments and whatnot, but honestly, I don't think this will help make the roads any safer. All it will do is force you to mind every little detail of the law, no matter how insignificant, even in situations where it really doesn't make much sense, as in the case of standing at stop signs for 3 seconds when there are clearly no cars around. I do NOT advocate running stop signs, or even just slowing down and then blazing through them. On the contrary, I hate it when people do that. But if you're stopping, and the car is almost at a complete stop, and you can clearly see that there are no cars approaching, and it is perfectly safe, then what difference does it make if you actually come to a halt and wait for three seconds?
The officer who stops you for that should be looking for the reckless driver, late to work, who is weaving between the cars, going twice the speed limit, and so stressed out that he's about to get someone killed. But instead, the officer will wait on some secluded street, where about three cars pass in an hour, because he knows that none of those three cars will make a 100% stop at the stop sign, and then he'll write those drivers tickets. Meanwhile, on the main road, someone is driving drunk on the wrong side of the road. If you've ever wondered why the police are always there when you do something insignificant that is "wrong" but they're not when something truly dangerous is going on? That's why.
So the short version of all that is that I am against putting any kind of tracking technologies in vehicles because first, it will be for convenience, then, it will be for safety, and finally, when nobody is noticing and the technology is widespread and in place, it will be for revenue purposes. Without adding safety.
You know what this tells me? It tells me that Drexler now works for some military organization to develop a special kind of weapon where nanotechnology "cells" can combine to form any object - essentially a shapeshifting type of thing like the android from Terminator 2. I am sure that this technology will be used to send people back in time to change the future. For example, I think Microsoft will send one back in time to make sure that Linus's great grandparents don't meet, so that Microsoft can triple the price of Windows, nobody will have another choice, and yet, in court, they'll point to the Amiga and say that it's their competition, and therefore they don't have a monopoly.
So what I'm saying is that Drexler changed his opinion so that when he installs technologies like this, people won't think that he's doing it to turn the world into grey goo. It's a conspiracy, and everybody's in on it.~
In other words, the shareholders and managers of corporations believe:
- Corporations have a right to profit.
- The government has a duty to protect that profit.
- Corporations have a right for their profits to consistently increase.
- If a corporation's profit does not increase or actually decreases, that is the effect of a crime on the part of the consumers who purchase the product or service.
In other words, corporations have a God given right to eternal perpetually increasing profits.You've pretty much summed up one of the points I was trying to make: A lot of students, and even professors, I think, prefer the multiplication table memorization to doing any of the things I mentioned in my original post. And it's depressing not only because of the state of software nowadays, but also because most other industries suffer from the same things. I see people on a daily basis who are smart and could accomplish a lot, but they don't want to use their head. They would much rather follow directions in some step-by-step document that lays everything out for them so all they have to do is push a bunch of buttons. Really depressing.
And this is to say what? That corporate human resources "professionals" know anything about software development? I suppose the next thing they'll believe is that programmers who learned to program in school know anything about programming.
I have some experience with that second one. I know a few people who studied programming in school, not really knowing anything about it beforehand. The way they studied made no sense at all; it was a process of memorization, like memorizing a multiplication table. This applies to everything from language syntax to design patterns. These schools turn out programmers who think they're hot stuff because they can churn out word processors using VB#.NET or whatever. There isn't the sort of deep-rooted philosophy about software design, the base in mathematics and logic, the science of the machine, or the art of putting together computer programs that accomplish a job, scale well, fit together within the overall field of computing, and age well too.
I don't know what to think about this industry. What happened to the few really good programmers who could make amazing things happen with a basically crappy machine with barely any memory or other computing resources? What happened to the respect that used to apply to this field? Nowadays, it seems like corporate managers look down on the programmers and the software, as if it's a given that software is some mindless trivial crap that takes two seconds to bang together, and the fact that it takes a really long time to engineer is scorned and look down upon.
The issue of software patents stems directly from this. There is no issue of learning or advancing the field. It's simply looked upon as a bunch of flash cards that need to be memorized, and each corporation is trying to jump on that and patent as many of those flash cards as they can. Want to use a 'switch' statement? Pay $500 per application instance, or an annual fee of $5,000,000. It's just a nominal fee...
Depressing. Free software needs to win the software war as soon as possible.
I don't want to meet people on the web. No way! If I wanted to meet people, I'd go outside. (For those who haven't been there before, that's the area located beyond the perimeter of your home.) But I don't want to meet people. I want to sit on my ass and read the web. So, no, I don't want to meet people on the web.
That's what the XFree86 people get for messing with licensing issues and generating all this extra work for everyone.
In my opinion, if I want an X server with a non-free license, I can go commercial and buy one of the accelerated servers out there. Heck, I might still do that just to try them out.
The technology, which allows anyone to access enterprise networks when they enter 'superman' for the username and and '21241036' for the password, frees enterprises from worrying about security issues and allows IT managers to focus on implementing talking paperclips on enterprise desktops. "We are excited about the new technology," commented Steve Hjarkblonka in an interview. "For the first time since the invention of computers, the threat of security intrusions has been completely eliminated. Enterprises can now enjoy 100% unbreakable security."
Geoff Nikreny, chief security officer with Endostar Inc, calls the secure-by-default approach, in which once-vulnerable features are patched, a "mistake" that will lead to deployment confusion. But he doesn't know what he's talking about anyway. So for 100% unbreakable security, buy Netgear.
Offer good while supplies last.
This is great news! Get a lot of people off of Microsoft's office suite, and get them on something else. Anything else! As long as people know that not all documents in existance (including classic literature and the Holy Bible) are written in Microsoft Word, and Excel isn't the only spreadsheet in existance.
Not that I hate Microsoft. I really don't. But I think it should be shut down and its assets distributed among free software projects.
Yeah yeah, mod this -100, Troll, I don't care. Nanny nanny boo boo, Microsoft. The only thing I regret about this is that StarOffice isn't the same as the free OpenOffice.org. But I guess Sun has to make money somehow. May as well be from productivity software.
God Bless America.
At least you didn't get her name tattooed down your forearm where everyone would see it for the rest of your life and wonder who's name that is... especially after breaking up with her.
Craters might be forever, but tattoos are the suxx0rz. Oh well. I hardly notice it anymore.
What a great protest!!!
Of course, nobody would ever think to remove that code!!!
I think that ultimately, a lot of software companies would push for this because they would want to see free software made illegal for one reason or another. The problem is that even in closed source proprietary black box software, someone who wants to counterfeit money will figure out, or hire someone to figure out, how to disable that code. And no matter how obfuscated the code is made, it is ALWAYS possible to do something like that. It's only a matter of time and money, and to the counterfeiters, the money is practically free anyway.
Technological measures designed to enforce the law will never work. While they might keep the honest people honest, those people are, by definition, honest anyway; but the dishonest will find a way around it. For example, by using old graphics software, or by modifying current software, be it free/open or proprietary.
I say just make the bills much harder to counterfeit, and do it in such a way that it's easy to detect the fake ones.
I think my "dream" Linux distro would actually use the BFS (BeOS File System) as its file system, because, as I understand, it has support for everything a UNIXish OS needs (permissions, etc.), and more (attributes, that is, meta-data, and blazingly fast queries). Also, I remember noticing that when running BeOS, the hard drive was operating much more quietly, even when accessing lots of files at once, as compared to any other OS and filesystem run on the same machine. Somehow, because of the design of BFS, the hard drive doesn't need to move the heads as often. I'm convinced this makes the drive last longer. Ah, well, this is just a rant... I'm going to sleep.
I don't know which key would fit there if the Caps Lock were moved, though. It's kind of a weird place to put anything, especially since muscle memory knows that it's the key you never push. If it were suddenly changed to, say, Control, or whatever, that would actually make it useful, which would be strange, to say the least.
From what I've read, it certainly makes sense to break a few apps for this functionality, as you can always run them in a build without it. Things should be a lot safer, as crap like buffer overruns from carefully formatted input strings can no longer contain executable code.
I think this should be available for individual programs to set the NX bit on memory pages that should only contain data, so, for example, when you download a file, it is impossible to execute it (say, while in memory) until you save it and explicitely set the execute bit. In other words, there is a completely non-executable path for all untrusted code from its inception until the user explicitly makes it run. Now, when some Joe Luser clicks an email attachment virus made for Linux, if this ever happens, it will be very difficult for him to make it run, and hence, it won't. Add to that the protections inherent in all Linux systems (multiuser permissions, heterogeneous configurations, etc.), and it's very unlikely that Linux users will experience the kind of crap that Windows users have to put up with on a daily basis, even if Linux somehow gains a huge market share on the desktop.
These are exciting times.
So here we have a half billion dollar rover and they couldn't put a five dollar windshield wiper on the solar panel to wipe the dust off?