I didn't think it was "laugh" funny, but the first thoughts in my head were Are you for real? and then (sigh)...moderators....
There should be a retard filter for possible moderator status. It could use the NSA's software (espionage!) to figure out what people's posts were saying and then use them to decided whether or not they are a moron.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
This is awesome! It's so true, and yet we see others (and ourselves) doing stupid things like talking to would-be-girlfriends about our new monitor all the time. If anyone outside geekdom read this they probably wouldn't believe it, but jeez, it's so true.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Not really. This article didn't have a lot of conviction behind it, and I'd be hard pressed to say that it convinced me that that sort of thing would be possible. And without limit? There's a limit to everything, the trick is just finding it.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Legos are possibly the most wonderful thing that ever happened to the young geek-to-be. Who amongst us didn't grow up building construction after construction with these little multicolored chunks of creativity. Say what you will about Legos, but the world would be a much different place without them.
Here's to the guy who invented the Lego!
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Oh, and I'm also sick of the analogies, did I mention that?
Sorry - back to the topic at hand: I don't think that companies will see Open Source as being "harmless". I'm all for Open Source. It's better for the end-user. But it's far from harmless to software companies. To develop software through open source, companies have to pay developers less. Don't kid yourself about support. Read the GNU manifesto, if you need an outside opinion - Programmers don't have to go hungry, but they won't rack in the bucks through free software.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm not sure that Open Source is the wave of the future. It remains to be seen, in my eyes, whether OS isn't just an industry fad. Only time will tell...
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I have no problem falling back onto the "a computer is just a tool" argument. It's absolutely true. Yes, they have a definite socioeconomic impact on our society (especially since the advent of the WWW), but that doesn't change the reality of the situation. That being, Linux != computing in the same sense that Windows != computing. It's a great OS, no doubt about it, but that's all. Something better will come along (probably fairly soon) and Linux will become a fixture of the past. A memorable one, of course, but that's it.
Tux the penguin has nothing revolutionary going for him. It's just an implementation of Unix. It's a good one, but it's still comparable to Solaris and others.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I agree, coding is going to stay in the domain of keyboarding for the most part. It defitely takes longer to say "comma" than to type ",". But speech recognition is going to compliment keyboards, and inevitably cause the average user to stop learning to type. Take it for what it's worth.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I think you might be getting caught up here. It's easy to think that Linux is the second coming of Christ when you read slashdot and hear about what's going on with Open Source. But the reality is that most people have never heard of Linux and don't have a clue what source code is. Really, the average user doesn't give a damn about licenses.
Linux might overtake Windows. Then again, it might not. The bottom line is that the end result won't make a huge difference on computing. The real revolutionary stuff isn't tied down to specific operating systems because it's mostly hardware related.
Take speech-recognition for example. It will inevitably replace the majority of keyboard text entry -- I think that's a safe bet. But it doesn't have anything to do with any particular platform. You could write a speech-recognition engine for any platform that can handle a microphone. The only thing it depends on is CPU power and software algorithms. Any algorithm that depends on an OS isn't worth looking at.
So Linux? It's nice, yeah, but I'd leave it in a second if something better came along. So while I'll invest my time in making Linux better, I won't kid myself in thinking that it's anything special. It's just an OS. A tool that I use to run my programs with.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Are we seeing some overanalyzation here in the computer industry? For some reason everyone wants to be a techno-pundit and give the definitive answer to why things work the way they are. Sure, this is helpful, but with the amount we're getting now, it's just overkill.
I care as much about OpenSource/Linux as the next guy, but I'm sick of reading journalists and web-publishers telling us why something is the way it is. Here's the truth: Stuff happens in complex systems and to try to explain it using two or three examples (like Linux and Apache to explain Open Source) is silly. The computer industry is complicated and I guess I'm just tired of all this hoopla over stuff.
My point? If you like something, and you believe in it, then do it. Write the code you find useful and use the programs you like. Stop worrying whether Linux will overtake Microsoft. Don't lose any sleep over how the Mozilla project is doing. Use what works, and work on what doesn't -- Or don't. But talk is cheap and predictions are even cheaper.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Are you serious? "The Linux Era"? It may be the information age (relatively speaking), but Linux doesn't have anything to do with it. Neither does Windows. They're just operating systems. They serve the purpose of making information accessible, but they are insignificant in-and-of-themselves.
And that's precisely what this is all about. People who take Linux too seriously. I've got no truck leaving Linux on a whim. It serves my purposes for the time being, but I'm not going to break a sweat trying to beat it into the media or writing flame-email to a CEO who didn't spell Alan Cox' last name correctly. It's not worth the time. Open Source, is great, and I do care about that, but the specific code (like Linux) aren't that important to me.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
So by that reasoning, AIDS isn't a problem, people who get it are. And, following the same logic, a group of people that helped to infect the public with AIDS would be seen as heroes by you, since they raised awareness of the problem.
That's a ridiculous analogy, right? Or is it? I agree with you; awareness of trojans needs to be raised. But not by helping to spread them. You're arguing that, by writing/distributing BO[2K], the CDC is helping to prevent trojan attacks. If you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Look, the CDC has been around long enough for us to understand their MO. They like hacking systems. Moreover, they like helping other people hack systems. They didn't release BackOrifice to stop cracking. Yes, you can use BO2K as a serious admin tool, but that's not the issue for me. The issue for me is the motive behind the release, and the stupidity that anyone in their right mind would believe the hot-air that comes out of the CDC's mouths. They're crackers, plain and simple.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's the situation. It's typical stereotyping. You can have a large group of people (just like the Linux community) and if only a handful of them make jackasses of themselves, then the whole group will be seen in that light. It's too bad, but it's certainly not specific to Linux. So, this isn't really news, is it?
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's just paranoia. You don't really think that the NSA is using terrorism to keep tabs on American communications, do you? It would never work. Someone would spill and then the media would eat it up.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's a bunch of crap. Yes, computers are used to store valuable information, but anyone who's doing so shouldn't be using Win98. And anyone who does is a moron.
If I'm running as root on my Linux machine and I get tricked into running a trojan horse, or an undetected buffer-overflow allows someone to get as trojan onto my machine, what then? Then that trojan can do JUST as much damage as if it was on the Win98 machine.
So what would you suggest MS do about it? User awareness of the dangers of trojans is a great idea, but it's the only thing that helps to prevent them. I don't blame MS for allowing BO[2K] to crack people's machines, I blame people for being stupid enough to run stuff like "freepics.exe". The only solution would be to make Win98 a multi-user, permissioned operating system. I guarantee you that most users out there do not would choose to stick with what they've got, rather than go through the hassle of learning about read/write/execute/ownership. Even if they knew that it would help to prevent Trojan attacks.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Well that would be a dead-giveaway wouldn't it? No, the NSA would have to intercept the messages covertly. They would have to have taps into major backbones I guess. It's a good question, I wonder why no telecom companies have spoken up about this sort of thing?
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Oh, so some of your friends in college were tricked into installing SMS through the use of buffer-overflows or trojan horses? No, I doubt that. If, in fact, they had it installed on their machines then either they installed it themselves or their admin did it for them. Either way, although it might have been against their wishes, it was knowingly and possibly just following rules. Face it: an admin has a definite place to ADMINISTRATE a PC. A cracker over a network does not. And furthermore, SMS's installation isn't stealthy. You know when it's being installed. Its an interactive (somewhat) setup. These arguments are just picking at straws -- they avoid the real issue: BO[2K] was built to crack systems without people knowing about it. That was not the purpose of Microsoft's remote-admin software, and in fact, Microsoft's system would be very ineffective for this purpose. And that's a pretty responsible thing for MS to do.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Be that as it may, it's not your place (and certainly not the CDC's place) to determine what liberties/securities I will or will not use.
You're right - it is easier to not lock the doors on your car. You'd be a fool not to use key-based security on your car. I think anyone who uses a non-secure OS is being equally foolish. That said, it's definitely not my choice to make for someone else. Moreover, if you decided to use a push-button ignition, I would not take that as a green-light to break into your car. Doing so would be just as illegal as if you'd put an electric fence around it. Whether or not it's easy has nothing to do with it.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Yeah, I'm an idiot just because I don't hate Windows. It doesn't matter if a lot of NT networks are improperly adminstrated. You could just as easily mis-misadministrate a Linux network, and it would be just as insecure as a badly administrated NT network. But yeah, I must be an idiot.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's such bull and you know it - Yes, MS does position Windows as an "Enterprise-class network operating system", but not Win98. How far would BO[2K] get on an NT workstation that was decently administered? About as far as they'd get on Linux, or any other OS with permissions. I'm no fan of MS, but I'm less of a fan of CDC, because at least MS isn't passing out cracker tools (And just stop there, because I don't really care if you think that any of MS's products are cracker tools unless you're serious, which you couldn't be).
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
How can you say that? What "serious flaw" does BO[2K] point out? It's doesn't - it's a legitimate administration tool. Yeah, right. All BO[2K] does is give a free tool to cracker kiddies that allows them to control someone else's machine once they've tricked them into installing it. And what's more, I hate the argument that software such as pcAnywhere and Carbon Copy already exists. Yeah, it does, but it doesn't hide itself from it's user, does it?
BackOrifice is a clever program, but it's not creative -- it's destructive. And the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud what a great "administration tool" it is should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like heroes. It doesn't help the situation at all.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Absolute;y. They posted my question (which I made polite despite myself) and answered it in the most pretentious way. Who do these guys think they are? Revolutionaries my ass - there's nothing creative about what they do. the CDC is just a bunch of programmers who have a chip on their shoulder and think that they somehow have the right to crack. And before anyone jumps on me for saying that, I don't care if they say that they built BO[2K] to cure cancer: they're full of shit.
BO[2K] are not administrative tools. Keep telling yourself that if you want, but they were built as cracker-toys. They're made to hide themselves so that "31337 |-|4x0Rs" could trick people into running them and then fuck with their those people's systems. The whole idea disgusts me.
Windows has some shortcomings (heh) but there's no security hole that BO exploits. The fact is, Windows is a single-user OS. It's not built to have permissions and security like a UNIX machine does. So to hear these crackers saying that they're just bringing to light what MS is trying to hide is ridiculous. The average users doesn't want to deal with logging in and whether or not they have permissions for a file. It's a trade-off that most people are willing to make for the sake of simplicity.
Oh forget this: The CDC can all go fuck themselves. They make me sick.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Slashdot Mirror
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
There should be a retard filter for possible moderator status. It could use the NSA's software (espionage!) to figure out what people's posts were saying and then use them to decided whether or not they are a moron.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Here's to the guy who invented the Lego!
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Sorry - back to the topic at hand: I don't think that companies will see Open Source as being "harmless". I'm all for Open Source. It's better for the end-user. But it's far from harmless to software companies. To develop software through open source, companies have to pay developers less. Don't kid yourself about support. Read the GNU manifesto, if you need an outside opinion - Programmers don't have to go hungry, but they won't rack in the bucks through free software.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm not sure that Open Source is the wave of the future. It remains to be seen, in my eyes, whether OS isn't just an industry fad. Only time will tell...
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Tux the penguin has nothing revolutionary going for him. It's just an implementation of Unix. It's a good one, but it's still comparable to Solaris and others.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Linux might overtake Windows. Then again, it might not. The bottom line is that the end result won't make a huge difference on computing. The real revolutionary stuff isn't tied down to specific operating systems because it's mostly hardware related.
Take speech-recognition for example. It will inevitably replace the majority of keyboard text entry -- I think that's a safe bet. But it doesn't have anything to do with any particular platform. You could write a speech-recognition engine for any platform that can handle a microphone. The only thing it depends on is CPU power and software algorithms. Any algorithm that depends on an OS isn't worth looking at.
So Linux? It's nice, yeah, but I'd leave it in a second if something better came along. So while I'll invest my time in making Linux better, I won't kid myself in thinking that it's anything special. It's just an OS. A tool that I use to run my programs with.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I care as much about OpenSource/Linux as the next guy, but I'm sick of reading journalists and web-publishers telling us why something is the way it is. Here's the truth: Stuff happens in complex systems and to try to explain it using two or three examples (like Linux and Apache to explain Open Source) is silly. The computer industry is complicated and I guess I'm just tired of all this hoopla over stuff.
My point? If you like something, and you believe in it, then do it. Write the code you find useful and use the programs you like. Stop worrying whether Linux will overtake Microsoft. Don't lose any sleep over how the Mozilla project is doing. Use what works, and work on what doesn't -- Or don't. But talk is cheap and predictions are even cheaper.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
And that's precisely what this is all about. People who take Linux too seriously. I've got no truck leaving Linux on a whim. It serves my purposes for the time being, but I'm not going to break a sweat trying to beat it into the media or writing flame-email to a CEO who didn't spell Alan Cox' last name correctly. It's not worth the time. Open Source, is great, and I do care about that, but the specific code (like Linux) aren't that important to me.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
That's a ridiculous analogy, right? Or is it? I agree with you; awareness of trojans needs to be raised. But not by helping to spread them. You're arguing that, by writing/distributing BO[2K], the CDC is helping to prevent trojan attacks. If you believe that then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Look, the CDC has been around long enough for us to understand their MO. They like hacking systems. Moreover, they like helping other people hack systems. They didn't release BackOrifice to stop cracking. Yes, you can use BO2K as a serious admin tool, but that's not the issue for me. The issue for me is the motive behind the release, and the stupidity that anyone in their right mind would believe the hot-air that comes out of the CDC's mouths. They're crackers, plain and simple.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
If I'm running as root on my Linux machine and I get tricked into running a trojan horse, or an undetected buffer-overflow allows someone to get as trojan onto my machine, what then? Then that trojan can do JUST as much damage as if it was on the Win98 machine.
So what would you suggest MS do about it? User awareness of the dangers of trojans is a great idea, but it's the only thing that helps to prevent them. I don't blame MS for allowing BO[2K] to crack people's machines, I blame people for being stupid enough to run stuff like "freepics.exe". The only solution would be to make Win98 a multi-user, permissioned operating system. I guarantee you that most users out there do not would choose to stick with what they've got, rather than go through the hassle of learning about read/write/execute/ownership. Even if they knew that it would help to prevent Trojan attacks.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
A flawed product can't succeed?? Somebody better tell Bill Gates quick!!
[END TOUNGE-IN-CHEEK REMARK]
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
You're right - it is easier to not lock the doors on your car. You'd be a fool not to use key-based security on your car. I think anyone who uses a non-secure OS is being equally foolish. That said, it's definitely not my choice to make for someone else. Moreover, if you decided to use a push-button ignition, I would not take that as a green-light to break into your car. Doing so would be just as illegal as if you'd put an electric fence around it. Whether or not it's easy has nothing to do with it.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
BackOrifice is a clever program, but it's not creative -- it's destructive. And the people who wrote it, distribute it, and proclaim long and loud what a great "administration tool" it is should be treated like the scheming anarchists they are. They shouldn't be called revolutionaries or treated like heroes. It doesn't help the situation at all.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
BO[2K] are not administrative tools. Keep telling yourself that if you want, but they were built as cracker-toys. They're made to hide themselves so that "31337 |-|4x0Rs" could trick people into running them and then fuck with their those people's systems. The whole idea disgusts me.
Windows has some shortcomings (heh) but there's no security hole that BO exploits. The fact is, Windows is a single-user OS. It's not built to have permissions and security like a UNIX machine does. So to hear these crackers saying that they're just bringing to light what MS is trying to hide is ridiculous. The average users doesn't want to deal with logging in and whether or not they have permissions for a file. It's a trade-off that most people are willing to make for the sake of simplicity.
Oh forget this: The CDC can all go fuck themselves. They make me sick.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."