Is nice to have your supposedly independant agenda somewhat dependant on what a private (and worse, most of times foreing) company desire?
With open source you have another way of independence, is not just cost (that for many is the easier point to understand) but for freedom of doing with it whatever you want, adapt it to fit more to your actual needs, be able to check it for intentional and accidental "misbehaviours", and even be able to contribute to the growing of it. Also is a good plataform for collaboration at another level between and inside governments and other organizations.
Probably that question was answered a lot of times before, a quick search in google should give a more authoritative answer.
With Windows you NEVER are the owner. Or the owner is Microsoft (and you have a temporary permission to use it under certain circunstances, they call it license) or by itself gives the ownership to the next hacker/worm/trojan/etc that just tries to knock the door. That put the cost of ownership in 0 or high enough to need the fortune of bill gates (and in fact, BE him) to own Windows.
... in whatever device that don't have a complex user interaction. The site have more windows devices in PDA, tablets and thin clients where the user could find comfortable using the same interface as in his desktop. But where that interface doesn't matter, Linux should win hands down.
After all, linux don't have price by quantity (i.e. for devices where price matters is a big advantage), could be use with no x86 processors, could be tweaked for supporting better the surrounding hardware and could require a lot less hardware/memory/etc.
Anyway, is weird that in the listing they don't put Linux thin clients and terminals, maybe is because almost anything that boots linux and X could work as one, so the market could not be so attractive.
If we speak of teorical benefits, what about a really bad, bad worm, like ESR's Final virus?
In the end, if people lose work, computers, information, etc in a big scale, probably awareness will be much higher, safer choices will be taken (on client software, i.e.) as the ones that will fall will be probably the ones that always gets infected.
Is like a injection, it hurts a bit, but in the end you will end mostly safe from that kind of malware.
- Closed source software has proved to be a threat to national security (whatever nation we are speaking of). The very (inter)national information infrastructure is in danger each time a new ms-specific virus/worm sees the ligth, and you have as effect a net slowdown, hundreds or millons of computers with backdoors (some in sensible places), essential services almost down (like google yesterday), etc. And that speaking just of worms and virus, directed and specific trojans against something could be undetected by antivirus software as they are not widespread and be really intended to do damage. If open source software and closed source software are both a threat for national security and should be banned better start to be proficient counting with your fingers.
-The "many eyeballs watching" approach that ensures maybe is not failsafe, but at least is something that can be done anywhere by anyone. Compare that with Windows, that when part of its source went somewhat open, was almost immediate an exploit based on how IE handles BMP files. Maybe Microsoft have his shared source agreements that enables government see at least part of the code used, but seems that don't was enough eyeballs to spot that.
- Open source is not simply a common blackboard where anyone can put something with high probability of being undetected. At the very least some big projects have its own way to incorporate developers or to approve modifications (think in linux or apache) or even trace them (at least in a project i am i receive in a mailing list with all cvs changes). With open source they are covering a lot of land, and at least most of it is somewhat safe against malicious code.
At least in security you must assume your enemy have a lot of resources and is even smarter than you. With software patents, and you project being in risk because some essential portion is patented by someone else, people could doubt in wasting time if even when sucessful all could fall because the owner of the patent succeed in making trouble.
And if well could be difficult for individuals holding patents, what about patent trading? If my project puts in the way of i.e. some Microsoft commercial program and starts to be viewed as a threath or at least a cause of not so high profits they could have the resources and the will to probably end my entire project.
Kartoo, its mentioned in my parent comment. Anyway, searching for Slashdot only gives me meetup.com as the only result:( Searching for OSDN gives a better example on how it should work.
AllTheWeb and Teoma are good alternatives, as far I remember, and do some things in a smarter way than Google. MSN search is supposed to be improved in a beta URL (there was an history here about it some weeks ago)
And you have also metasearchers, that not only search google, but also others. If you want almost the opposite of google in simplicity, you can try Kartoo, where you can have graphs with aggrupations on search results, flash animations and things like that.
Last, but not least, there are a search engine that you can use to find search engines very close to you. If its good enough, probably there is a Slashdot article on it, so slashdot search is a good first step if all the other search engines you know are down but you still can access slashdot.
Any mail system that have some (useful) sort of spam or virus filtering (and that includes hotmail, yahoo to name 2 that seems that nobody cared on the privacy front) MUST read each email to be able to do its job. Even if you ignores the ads, google must do it for sorting spam, putting them in folders and in conversations, etc.
What i don't understand is why everyone jumped on the "someone is reading my email" as in a person is reading the hundreds of email per hour to select the best matching ads for them, but machine parsing of emails is something that is being done since the beginning of email, at least for separating headers from text.
My biggest pet peeve is the heavy reliance on JavaScript (including the requirement that you have it enabled in order to use the service). Sorry but JavaScript should not be necessary and should be eliminated completely. But that's just a personal gripe
That is what makes that you can use it with certain browers and browser versions and not with any browser. If i want to access gmail with Opera, Konqueror, links, w3m or even lynx (accessing gmail from a text console would be nice), I can't or at the very least will have limited functionality.
BUT, between the things they are working on are an optional just-HTML web interface, as far i understand no specific browser required. Probably you will lose some of the niceties that adds javascript (updating the unread messages count in labels, or not needing a submit button to apply an action or changing a label) but it will be accessible from anything.
They seem to not have problem dealing with the multibillon dolar programming error called Windows, maybe being there will help to put the facts in perspective.
What about horror stories from people that commit the mistake of NOT switching? Not from the point of view of sites looking better or worse, but from the security (maybe with a big economic impact) point of view.
Being very vulnerable to worms (at the very least in outlook html rendering engine), exploits, hiding information, etc IE should have a visible impact in economy in organizations using it. The need of taking security measures just because the browser of choice is IE (i.e. central blocking/scanning from proxy server, antivirus/firewalls with special IE modules/functionality). Or the impact of a large virus/worm infection helped by the browser limitations/vulnerabilities inside a company.
And not to forget people falling in scams (i.e. the Citibank one i'm receiving weekly) because the browser hided information or falled in URL tricks.
Was hoping nobody brings Robots and Empire to this discussion. There was where the zeroth law was "announced" and put inside 2 robots deep logic by just deciding they need it and then saying it? Where a robot died because, in er... a LOT of time further something like Foundation could fail and then what he did could broke the zeroth law?
I love Asimov books, and in particular the whole unified series from I, Robot (or The End of Eternity) to Foundation and Earth, but that particular book that joined the robot books with the empire/foundation timeline had a lot of absurd ideas
ESR wrote something about this yesterday here, about an "hypotetical" Final virus that deletes all (he call it a SciFi story, but lets see how much time takes to become reality), and have some nice consequences, like lot less spam.
... the most important tool is the brain:) As an admin, whatever you do, if you don't think enough on it you deserve what could happen.
As "admin suite", i.e. a single program to do a lot of administrative tasks, maybe YaST could be a good start. I'm not use webmin, tried it some years ago and don't liked the idea, but could be useful for a lot of people too.
And about individual tools, well, bash, vi, perl, mc, awk, the gnu text/file/shell utilities (cat, grep, ls, cut, chmod, etc) are essential.
Last but not least, a "tool" is also something that help you to use what you have available already. Man pages, the HOWTO collection, a lot of O'Reilly books, and Google are examples of that kind of tools.
Do you feel like Will Smith? I, Robot, with a bunch of IE extras, will start projecting in your Windows computer since this tuesday.
Don't miss the opportunity of being part of a big network of people which computers send colorful mail messages, participate in collaborative strength testing of servers, share your private information for the good of mankind and other fun and exciting activities (that you will not be aware of, but believe me, they are fun!)
* Ad sponsored for the World Association of Crackers, Phishers, Scammers and Spammers
As you don't have another place to enter text as the on-screen keyboard editor, you probably lose the ability to have some in-place editing, i.e. you could lose track of what are exactly editing now and things like that. That at the very least will limit the kind of applications that can be done with it.
They don't even did the minimal recompilation to make the NVidia kernel module to work, because one of the objectives of the test were no compilation required. Gentoo, almost by definition, is all about compilation, so is out of the reach of this comparation.
But if things can be compiled probably those benchmarks will improve, and maybe even could have better results with Gentoo.
What needs the press now is that there you could find plants, fishes, even animals. Is a shame that the time frame is not enough for dinosaurs, else we could have a great fun reading reports of a Lost World'-alike life from down there.
Probably this have not scientific basis, but i suspect to find such kinds of approachs to what is hidden there in internet in the next few days.
...for something that started wrong in your side? You are in fact the attacker when you post the email of probably somewhere else in a form that required your email. If i really hate someone, a way to do some harm is to use his address in every porn, register for more information and similar places around the net.
Anyway, if you want an invalid email, try playing with first level domains, i.e. yourname@mail.xx (no xx top level domain, i bet) or even second level domains where that is restricted i.e. in my country you can't have @yourdomain.uy, but must be yourdomain.com.uy, yourdomain.org.uy, etc, I think something similar happens in uk
Slashdot Mirror
With open source you have another way of independence, is not just cost (that for many is the easier point to understand) but for freedom of doing with it whatever you want, adapt it to fit more to your actual needs, be able to check it for intentional and accidental "misbehaviours", and even be able to contribute to the growing of it. Also is a good plataform for collaboration at another level between and inside governments and other organizations.
Probably that question was answered a lot of times before, a quick search in google should give a more authoritative answer.
With Windows you NEVER are the owner. Or the owner is Microsoft (and you have a temporary permission to use it under certain circunstances, they call it license) or by itself gives the ownership to the next hacker/worm/trojan/etc that just tries to knock the door. That put the cost of ownership in 0 or high enough to need the fortune of bill gates (and in fact, BE him) to own Windows.
Now i could be able to migrate from my webmail client Firefox to Thunderbird!
... not only you can find the Microsoft Windows sources, but the Slashdot sources too!
After all, linux don't have price by quantity (i.e. for devices where price matters is a big advantage), could be use with no x86 processors, could be tweaked for supporting better the surrounding hardware and could require a lot less hardware/memory/etc.
Anyway, is weird that in the listing they don't put Linux thin clients and terminals, maybe is because almost anything that boots linux and X could work as one, so the market could not be so attractive.
In the end, if people lose work, computers, information, etc in a big scale, probably awareness will be much higher, safer choices will be taken (on client software, i.e.) as the ones that will fall will be probably the ones that always gets infected.
Is like a injection, it hurts a bit, but in the end you will end mostly safe from that kind of malware.
-The "many eyeballs watching" approach that ensures maybe is not failsafe, but at least is something that can be done anywhere by anyone. Compare that with Windows, that when part of its source went somewhat open, was almost immediate an exploit based on how IE handles BMP files. Maybe Microsoft have his shared source agreements that enables government see at least part of the code used, but seems that don't was enough eyeballs to spot that.
- Open source is not simply a common blackboard where anyone can put something with high probability of being undetected. At the very least some big projects have its own way to incorporate developers or to approve modifications (think in linux or apache) or even trace them (at least in a project i am i receive in a mailing list with all cvs changes). With open source they are covering a lot of land, and at least most of it is somewhat safe against malicious code.
And if well could be difficult for individuals holding patents, what about patent trading? If my project puts in the way of i.e. some Microsoft commercial program and starts to be viewed as a threath or at least a cause of not so high profits they could have the resources and the will to probably end my entire project.
Kartoo, its mentioned in my parent comment. Anyway, searching for Slashdot only gives me meetup.com as the only result :( Searching for OSDN gives a better example on how it should work.
And you have also metasearchers, that not only search google, but also others. If you want almost the opposite of google in simplicity, you can try Kartoo, where you can have graphs with aggrupations on search results, flash animations and things like that.
Last, but not least, there are a search engine that you can use to find search engines very close to you. If its good enough, probably there is a Slashdot article on it, so slashdot search is a good first step if all the other search engines you know are down but you still can access slashdot.
What i don't understand is why everyone jumped on the "someone is reading my email" as in a person is reading the hundreds of email per hour to select the best matching ads for them, but machine parsing of emails is something that is being done since the beginning of email, at least for separating headers from text.
That is what makes that you can use it with certain browers and browser versions and not with any browser. If i want to access gmail with Opera, Konqueror, links, w3m or even lynx (accessing gmail from a text console would be nice), I can't or at the very least will have limited functionality.
BUT, between the things they are working on are an optional just-HTML web interface, as far i understand no specific browser required. Probably you will lose some of the niceties that adds javascript (updating the unread messages count in labels, or not needing a submit button to apply an action or changing a label) but it will be accessible from anything.
add wi-fi capabilities, and rename it to Hackito, and your company will be a step closer to the PDA world domination :)
They seem to not have problem dealing with the multibillon dolar programming error called Windows, maybe being there will help to put the facts in perspective.
Being very vulnerable to worms (at the very least in outlook html rendering engine), exploits, hiding information, etc IE should have a visible impact in economy in organizations using it. The need of taking security measures just because the browser of choice is IE (i.e. central blocking/scanning from proxy server, antivirus/firewalls with special IE modules/functionality). Or the impact of a large virus/worm infection helped by the browser limitations/vulnerabilities inside a company.
And not to forget people falling in scams (i.e. the Citibank one i'm receiving weekly) because the browser hided information or falled in URL tricks.
I love Asimov books, and in particular the whole unified series from I, Robot (or The End of Eternity) to Foundation and Earth, but that particular book that joined the robot books with the empire/foundation timeline had a lot of absurd ideas
ESR wrote something about this yesterday here, about an "hypotetical" Final virus that deletes all (he call it a SciFi story, but lets see how much time takes to become reality), and have some nice consequences, like lot less spam.
... the most important tool is the brain :) As an admin, whatever you do, if you don't think enough on it you deserve what could happen.
As "admin suite", i.e. a single program to do a lot of administrative tasks, maybe YaST could be a good start. I'm not use webmin, tried it some years ago and don't liked the idea, but could be useful for a lot of people too.
And about individual tools, well, bash, vi, perl, mc, awk, the gnu text/file/shell utilities (cat, grep, ls, cut, chmod, etc) are essential.
Last but not least, a "tool" is also something that help you to use what you have available already. Man pages, the HOWTO collection, a lot of O'Reilly books, and Google are examples of that kind of tools.
... I predict Windows will be obsolete in 10 months. Even being nobody have the same possibilities than B.G to be right.
Don't miss the opportunity of being part of a big network of people which computers send colorful mail messages, participate in collaborative strength testing of servers, share your private information for the good of mankind and other fun and exciting activities (that you will not be aware of, but believe me, they are fun!)
* Ad sponsored for the World Association of Crackers, Phishers, Scammers and Spammers
As you don't have another place to enter text as the on-screen keyboard editor, you probably lose the ability to have some in-place editing, i.e. you could lose track of what are exactly editing now and things like that. That at the very least will limit the kind of applications that can be done with it.
But if things can be compiled probably those benchmarks will improve, and maybe even could have better results with Gentoo.
Probably this have not scientific basis, but i suspect to find such kinds of approachs to what is hidden there in internet in the next few days.
Anyway, if you want an invalid email, try playing with first level domains, i.e. yourname@mail.xx (no xx top level domain, i bet) or even second level domains where that is restricted i.e. in my country you can't have @yourdomain.uy, but must be yourdomain.com.uy, yourdomain.org.uy, etc, I think something similar happens in uk
You now, even with fiction, history is what is documented, not necessary what really happened.