I agree with you to some extent. But your argument does not hold up if you compare it to an operating system with a focus on security.
OpenBSD hasn't had a remote hole (in the default install) in 4 years. Windows, Linux (the majority of Linux distros anyway), and other operating systems are a lot less concerned about security, and often find exploits in them.
If Linux was run on 98% of computers, there would probably be a few less exploits than Windows. But if it was OBSD, I would be willing to bet there wouldn't be anywhere near as many as Windows or Linux.
Re:Those bastards hacked the linux kernel too!
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
·
· Score: 1
Looking through the manual pages at FreeBSD.org, you see that a number Unix OSs have that feature. Below are the ones I found manual pages on that have that feature. They all also have the same usage as the Linux command.
xargs: FreeBSD from 2.1.6.1
find: FreeBSD from 2.0.5
xargs: Darwin from 1.3 PPC
find: Darwin from 1.3 PPC
xargs: NetBSD from 1.3
find: NetBSD from 1.0 (farthest they go back on FBSD.org)
xargs: OpenBSD from 2.1 (farthest...)
find: OpenBSD from 2.1 (farthest...)
So theres really nothing special about Linux having this feature. I'm sure that if you look through the manual pages of other Unixs you will find that many of them also have this feature.
But you are forgetting that one-time pads should only be used one time. Using a one-time pad even twice would allow others to crack the encryption. So even if they would only need a 4k pad, they may need a few hundred to actually communicate all of thier messages.
There are 2 projects on SourceForge which are trying to develop an NVIDIAdriver
for BSDsystems. There's the FreeBSDNVIDIADriver
Project (here's
the project on SourceForge) and the BSDNVIDIAKernel
Driver Project. I have no idea how far along either of these projects
are; both are fairly new, however I would be willing to bet the FreeBSDNVIDIADriver
Project will finish their work first. Neither of these projects have released
any files yet, but hopefully one of them will soon.
Here is how I usually install FreeBSD over my 56k dial-up (Note: I use a seperate slice to
store some of the files. Other than a native FBSD slice, I know a FAT32 slice will also
work.):
Download all the bin.* files from here
to a directory called bin. Place bin/ on the seperate partition (If you
monuted it to/mnt/tmp, then bin/ would be moved to/mnt/tmp/bin). Then
download the 2 floppy images here
and here.
Assuming your floppy device is/dev/fd0, you can image copy the files to the
floppies using the command:
dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0
(for DOS, get fdimage and use the command "C> fdimage kern.flp a:")
Then repeat that command replacing kern.flp with mfsroot.flp.
Boot off of the first floppy, and then insert the second when it asks for
it. Select "File System" as the installation media, and then select the
partition bin/ was placed on. For "Distributions", select "custom/bin". After
it has finished installing bin, (configure any last minute options, and then)
reboot. Log in as root, dial-up to the net, and then start
"/stand/sysinstall". This time, select "Configure/Distributions" and mark
anything else you want to install (don't install bin again). Select FTP as the
installation method.
Oops.. uh, it still says it is an unsupported browser; it displays a message at the top of the page "You are using an unsupported browser. For further information, please click here.", then it tries to redirect you to that page.. just press stop.
The newest version of Konqueror (included in KDE-2.1.1) works on the site if you set it to identify itself as "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)".
Maybe if you read the channel topic, where it clearly says,
'This is not a help channel, if you need help visit #freebsdhelp'*
you wouldn't have been banned.
If you goto #freebsdhelp, the help is actually quite good. I have asked a few questions there in the past, and I've only had one question not be answered, which was kinda stupid since the answer I was looking for was in the manual pages. The question also was about programming, so I probably should have went to a programming channel anyway.
#freebsdhelp even has a website where they have tutorials, and other information about FreeBSD. I can't remember the URL, although if you visit #freebsdhelp (on EfNet), I'm sure they would give it to you. The last time I checked, the URL was in the channel topic.
The man pages in FreeBSD are very well written and complete; rarely would you need to ask someone a question becuase you can't find a man page on it. Doesn't this say atleast something to you?
I seriously don't think anyone would spend so much time writting docs and helping new users if they didn't care or want to help them.
* Ok, so thats not exactly what it says, but it's close enough:)
I'm not going to try to argue everything in your post (or all the issues brought up in the thread), but i will argue with this:
The original poster brings up one example of a worm (the ILOVEYOU worm) (yet calls it a virus), although there are actually many more examples; there are more than 54,000 such examples in the wild, which could be as little as 1% of all the viruses/worms/trojans written for Windows. If you compare this to other platforms, you will see a huge difference; there are fewer than 40 viruses/worms/trojans for the Mac, and there are only a handfull for *nix o/s'.
You cannot blame this only on the fact that Windows is the most popular platform; doing so would be horribly inaccurate/stupid. One of the biggest reasons these viruses/worms/trojans exist is becuase of flaws in Windows, and if you agree with that, then you have to agree that it is MSs fault. Don't agree? Then you clearly haven't been watching the security mailing lists, becuase if you did, you would know that many MS products have the highest number of exploits in thier peer group (o/s, http server, etc).
It is very clear that MS has neglected security in their products, and as a result has cuased many problems, including (but certainly not limited to) the thousands of viruses, worms, and trojans that are atleast partly caused by that neglect.
This certainly fits many peoples definition of consumer harm.
Slashdot Mirror
Commercial Support List here.
There's also Secure RM - a drop in replacement for rm.
I agree with you to some extent. But your argument does not hold up if you compare it to an operating system with a focus on security.
OpenBSD hasn't had a remote hole (in the default install) in 4 years. Windows, Linux (the majority of Linux distros anyway), and other operating systems are a lot less concerned about security, and often find exploits in them.
If Linux was run on 98% of computers, there would probably be a few less exploits than Windows. But if it was OBSD, I would be willing to bet there wouldn't be anywhere near as many as Windows or Linux.
xargs: FreeBSD from 2.1.6.1
find: FreeBSD from 2.0.5
xargs: Darwin from 1.3 PPC
find: Darwin from 1.3 PPC
xargs: NetBSD from 1.3
find: NetBSD from 1.0 (farthest they go back on FBSD.org)
xargs: OpenBSD from 2.1 (farthest...)
find: OpenBSD from 2.1 (farthest...)
So theres really nothing special about Linux having this feature. I'm sure that if you look through the manual pages of other Unixs you will find that many of them also have this feature.
But you are forgetting that one-time pads should only be used one time. Using a one-time pad even twice would allow others to crack the encryption. So even if they would only need a 4k pad, they may need a few hundred to actually communicate all of thier messages.
For gets() atleast, this is already done in gcc. Compiling a program with gets() will give you the warning:
/tmp/ccjbr1R2.o: In function `main':
/tmp/ccjbr1R2.o(.text+0xe): warning: this program uses gets(), which is unsafe.
There are 2 projects on SourceForge which are trying to develop an NVIDIAdriver for BSDsystems. There's the FreeBSDNVIDIADriver Project (here's the project on SourceForge) and the BSDNVIDIAKernel Driver Project. I have no idea how far along either of these projects are; both are fairly new, however I would be willing to bet the FreeBSDNVIDIADriver Project will finish their work first. Neither of these projects have released any files yet, but hopefully one of them will soon.
Here is how I usually install FreeBSD over my 56k dial-up (Note: I use a seperate slice to store some of the files. Other than a native FBSD slice, I know a FAT32 slice will also work.):
Download all the bin.* files from here to a directory called bin. Place bin/ on the seperate partition (If you monuted it to /mnt/tmp, then bin/ would be moved to /mnt/tmp/bin). Then
download the 2 floppy images here
and here.
Assuming your floppy device is /dev/fd0, you can image copy the files to the
floppies using the command:
dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0
(for DOS, get fdimage and use the command "C> fdimage kern.flp a:")
Then repeat that command replacing kern.flp with mfsroot.flp.
Boot off of the first floppy, and then insert the second when it asks for it. Select "File System" as the installation media, and then select the partition bin/ was placed on. For "Distributions", select "custom/bin". After it has finished installing bin, (configure any last minute options, and then) reboot. Log in as root, dial-up to the net, and then start "/stand/sysinstall". This time, select "Configure/Distributions" and mark anything else you want to install (don't install bin again). Select FTP as the installation method.
Have Fun!
Oops.. uh, it still says it is an unsupported browser; it displays a message at the top of the page "You are using an unsupported browser. For further information, please click here.", then it tries to redirect you to that page.. just press stop.
The newest version of Konqueror (included in KDE-2.1.1) works on the site if you set it to identify itself as "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)".
There's a pretty complete Linux distribution list here.
Maybe if you read the channel topic, where it clearly says,
:)
'This is not a help channel, if you need help visit #freebsdhelp'*
you wouldn't have been banned.
If you goto #freebsdhelp, the help is actually quite good. I have asked a few questions there in the past, and I've only had one question not be answered, which was kinda stupid since the answer I was looking for was in the manual pages. The question also was about programming, so I probably should have went to a programming channel anyway.
#freebsdhelp even has a website where they have tutorials, and other information about FreeBSD. I can't remember the URL, although if you visit #freebsdhelp (on EfNet), I'm sure they would give it to you. The last time I checked, the URL was in the channel topic.
The man pages in FreeBSD are very well written and complete; rarely would you need to ask someone a question becuase you can't find a man page on it. Doesn't this say atleast something to you?
I seriously don't think anyone would spend so much time writting docs and helping new users if they didn't care or want to help them.
* Ok, so thats not exactly what it says, but it's close enough
This quote pretty much sums up what I think:
Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about something you know.
-- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
I'm not going to try to argue everything in your post (or all the issues brought up in the thread), but i will argue with this:
The original poster brings up one example of a worm (the ILOVEYOU worm) (yet calls it a virus), although there are actually many more examples; there are more than 54,000 such examples in the wild, which could be as little as 1% of all the viruses/worms/trojans written for Windows. If you compare this to other platforms, you will see a huge difference; there are fewer than 40 viruses/worms/trojans for the Mac, and there are only a handfull for *nix o/s'.
You cannot blame this only on the fact that Windows is the most popular platform; doing so would be horribly inaccurate/stupid. One of the biggest reasons these viruses/worms/trojans exist is becuase of flaws in Windows, and if you agree with that, then you have to agree that it is MSs fault. Don't agree? Then you clearly haven't been watching the security mailing lists, becuase if you did, you would know that many MS products have the highest number of exploits in thier peer group (o/s, http server, etc).
It is very clear that MS has neglected security in their products, and as a result has cuased many problems, including (but certainly not limited to) the thousands of viruses, worms, and trojans that are atleast partly caused by that neglect.
This certainly fits many peoples definition of consumer harm.
150 distributions? That's a little of an under-statement. According the the Linux Distribution List, there are more than 180 Linux distributions.