I believed that Microsoft was just bleeding $$ but this indicates a more serious situation in Redmond.
Now, I just have to say:
Thank you Microsoft for giving us this free PR and credibility.
If anyone is still ignorant about the OSS movement, they will now feel the urge to find out what it's all about.
This is the most stupid move that Microsoft have ever done since it's just giving us even more attention.
Once again, thank you Microdoft we really needed this extra and free PR.
//Pingo
Send Bill Gates into space
on
Tito In Space
·
· Score: 4
It's nice that an old wealthy man can fulfill his dreams and be able to get into space.
I only hope this will catch on to high profile guys in Microsoft such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. A rocket with computers entirely runned and guided by Microsoft products would definitly convince them that a trip into space would just be worth all their money.
I bet these guys are actually so stupid that they would buy such a trip. This would be a memorable moment for the rest of the world. The inventors of the BSOD lost in space desperatly trying to reboot their computers.
I agree, that this will be the consequence eventually.
The very important selling point in my opinion is document safety. If everything is in open formats you will be able to read and edit these documents in 20-40 years.
I think that long term document safety could be a very convincing argument for Open Source solutions. That will easily be accepted by most people and a good price makes it even better.
This is a great step but I believe that it's even more important to 'outlaw' proprietary document formats.
All documents distributet from or to other government agencies should be in open formats. That will leave ASCII, HTML and PDF formats as the only viable options. As you know, making PDF from postscript is extremly simple.
No more distribution of Microsoft doc/ppt/xls/.. files will do the trick.
We have 2 popular Linux releases and now the also popular FreeBSD release within one single week.
This must be a busy week for the routers around the world. I believe there are some ISP's facing severe bandwith problems.
FreeBSD has it's advantages, such as its filesystem that fsck's much faster than Linux and it has no 2GB filesize limit. The filesize limit is around 4-8 TB.
I can clearly see the nervous IBM Executive standing in front of the judge and waiting for the punishment.
The judge beeing a former hippie, smiles and read from his paper. "IBM is sentensed to Community service and should in three schools, upgrade the operating systems on all PC's to run Linux."
The judge looks at the IBM executive and adds "Let this be a reminder that the city can't tolerate this kind of behaivour. If you continue this hilarous act of spraying penguins everywhere, there are some schools for underpriviledged childrens that also needs an upgrade."
If I remember correctly, Apple once pressed charges for "look and feel" copyright violation. This resultet in a boycott against Apple that seems to have hurt them pretty hard.
It would be kind of sad to launch another boycott against them, now when they have produced the OS X.
This rpm issue is simply not just about if RPM's are binary or source.
The issue is, can I trust this software to be free from trojans or other evil stuff?
It's like using credit cards, you will happily use your credit card at some well reputable store but will be reluctant to use it in some shady dark alley business.
It's just the same with software. A well known softwarehouse such as RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake... have everything to loose if intentionally delivering shady software. Just look how anxious they are wat providing security updates to their products for faults that no one really can blame them for.
Also single persons with a good reputation such as Wietze can easily be trusted since this guy has so much reputation to loose if he intentionally does an evil act with his software. The same goes for other people that seems to be proud of what they are doing.
It's all about trust. You can trust the person or organisation that has much to loose if they provide software with trojans etc.
These softwarehouses signs all their RPM's cryptografically with the company key and you can easily check that it's a genuine package made in good faith.
Oh, I remember these old times with Prince of Persia on 386-PC's. It was also great fun to discover Linux on ftp.funet.fi
In those days I didn't know any UNIX at all so I had to start learning all these small and somewhat silly commands on my Linux box. This was hard but I mastered it in a few years.
Everyone was laughing at me on work for using this toy operating system. Time has changed and no one laughs anymore.
You are obviously posting into the wrong forum. I'm sure most Slashdot readers don't give a f*ck about this 'problem'.
Obviously you have identified a huge problem area with this key-leasing scam. Then don't go for it.
When designing defense electronics, there was allways this nagging about having a second source for as much components as possible. This was to achieve project safety for long term project.
I'm sure the software using industries would benefit from this kind of thinking. Long term project safety and how to get that in the software world.
Opensource makes it so easy since I can hire some college kid to do some editing and recompilation if necessary. If it's more complex, I might have to hire a consultant to fix the problems.
With Opensource I'm in full control all the time. No ugly surprises anymore.
I've also been interested in mbone (multicasting backbone) for a while since I got broadband access. It's seems simple enough by installing a special virtual router on my firewall (mrouted).
However I have not been able to find any way to hook up my home router to the actual mbone network.
Are there any official contacts for the mbone network that can assist in finding a connection point?
I'm born in the northern Sweden and I've been used to it from childhood.
When doing my military service in the northern Sweden this became even more visible to me.
When doing guard duty, everything was blacked out, no lights where allowed into the night. Our eyes was adapted to the night and the Aurora was soooo intensive in our eyes. It was so unbelievable beautiful that I even looked forward to guard duty during these cold nights of -35C.
Beeing alone in the night 'guarding' some shit military installation and watching this phenomenoum, I feelt pretty lucky to be one of the few that was on guard these night.
If you haven't seen this phenomenoum first hand in an environment without disturbing lights I strongly suggest that you take any chance to experience that. It's amazingly beutiful.
Spook public test of their technology!
on
NSA Linux In Depth
·
· Score: 2
The spooks knows that alot of people assumes that this release contains hidden backdoors and will look for it. The spooks also expects that if anyone finds the backdoor they will cry Wolf on the Internet and get credited for revealing the nasty backdoor.
Surpise, there are no intentional backdoors in this code. The spooks now gets a very cheap audit from the Worlds top security experts. This is probably what they want since they probably are using some equivalent code in very sensitive systems running the World.
If someone finds the non existent 'backdoor' the spooks will just correct the real world system in a heartbeat and be thankful for the audit. The guy finding the 'backdoor' might even get a good job offer.
I'm sorry but it's not necessary for IBM to make any standard distro.
A strongly standardized distro would simply stiffle inovation completly. We really don't wan't that to happen. Granted that different distros appears very different to the eye but this is OK. However all of them are using glibc2.x and that is what really matters.
IBM are allready doing their part in getting glibc2.x and other important libraries in good shape together with FSF/GNU, RedHat, SuSe..
IBM has chosen a road into their Linux operation that is very 'nice' and 'peaceful' and have got some 'love' back from many Linux users. I'll bet IBM people are treated very well when meeting Linux users.
They could make fine polished versions of RedHat/Suse CD's for their customers but that hardly counts as making a distribution of their own.
//pingo
Sure because doubleclick advertisment on slashdot
on
Linux Is Going Down
·
· Score: 1
Yeah only because slashdot carries doubleclick advertisments on slashdot.
It's so stupid to sell out to the big satan of internet. Check the URL:s of todays advertisment and you will see that it's from doublecklick.
This big thing sounds to me as a reinvention of the old P-code interpreter from UCLA. Of course with a lot of hype from Microsofts spindoctors.
The old P-code was claimed to be able to do just about anything you could imagine. Microsofts Quickbasic and it's followers Visual-Basic was based on this concept and perverted as you might guess.
Perhaps Microsoft at last got the P-code interpreter correct and now are able to run more than Basic on it. From the mouth of spindoctors such an accomplishment must be a breakthrough in computer science.
To make such a stackbased virtual computer in a DLL/so is today a pretty simple task. Most modern processors should be able to run such code without to much loss in CPU-speed. However I very much doubt that Microsoft will be able to accomplish such a thing without serious loss of raw computing power. Bill & co just can't keep their hands away from it and just have to give it their personal touch and thus seroiusly corrupt any performance.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked in the changelog yesterday and it's really impressive to see so much important software beeing up to date.
Slackware isn't anymore using old outdated software. Take a careful look in the changelog and drool.
Also note the boot/root disks supporting the new journaling filesystems directly from a fresh installation.
//Pingo
I'll just have to add my own definition of a fun job:
It's the great feeling of gaining new insight
into whatever you are doing. If it happens now
and then, then you have a great and fun job.
//Pingo
After reading this, to me it's just old and tried Spread Spectrum technology. The spreading seems just to be wider than we are used to.
I have troubles appreciating any real benefits from this technology.
//Pingo
The fat lady sings!
//Pingo
I believed that Microsoft was just bleeding $$ but this indicates a more serious situation in Redmond.
Now, I just have to say:
Thank you Microsoft for giving us this free PR and credibility.
If anyone is still ignorant about the OSS movement, they will now feel the urge to find out what it's all about.
This is the most stupid move that Microsoft have ever done since it's just giving us even more attention.
Once again, thank you Microdoft we really needed this extra and free PR.
//Pingo
It's nice that an old wealthy man can fulfill his dreams and be able to get into space.
I only hope this will catch on to high profile guys in Microsoft such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. A rocket with computers entirely runned and guided by Microsoft products would definitly convince them that a trip into space would just be worth all their money.
I bet these guys are actually so stupid that they would buy such a trip. This would be a memorable moment for the rest of the world. The inventors of the BSOD lost in space desperatly trying to reboot their computers.
//Pingo
I agree, that this will be the consequence eventually.
The very important selling point in my opinion is document safety. If everything is in open formats you will be able to read and edit these documents in 20-40 years.
I think that long term document safety could be a very convincing argument for Open Source solutions. That will easily be accepted by most people and a good price makes it even better.
//Pingo
This is a great step but I believe that it's even more important to 'outlaw' proprietary document formats.
All documents distributet from or to other government agencies should be in open formats. That will leave ASCII, HTML and PDF formats as the only viable options. As you know, making PDF from postscript is extremly simple.
No more distribution of Microsoft doc/ppt/xls/.. files will do the trick.
//Pingo
I wasn't sure that kernel 2.4.x really had these improvemets on i386. This should make a big difference for people using cheap 50Gb+ disks.
//Pingo
We have 2 popular Linux releases and now the also popular FreeBSD release within one single week.
This must be a busy week for the routers around the world. I believe there are some ISP's facing severe bandwith problems.
FreeBSD has it's advantages, such as its filesystem that fsck's much faster than Linux and it has no 2GB filesize limit. The filesize limit is around 4-8 TB.
//Pingo
Oh yes,
I can clearly see the nervous IBM Executive standing in front of the judge and waiting for the punishment.
The judge beeing a former hippie, smiles and read from his paper. "IBM is sentensed to Community service and should in three schools, upgrade the operating systems on all PC's to run Linux."
The judge looks at the IBM executive and adds "Let this be a reminder that the city can't tolerate this kind of behaivour. If you continue this hilarous act of spraying penguins everywhere, there are some schools for underpriviledged childrens that also needs an upgrade."
Everyone chuckles and goes back to business.
//Pingo
If I remember correctly, Apple once pressed charges for "look and feel" copyright violation. This resultet in a boycott against Apple that seems to have hurt them pretty hard.
It would be kind of sad to launch another boycott against them, now when they have produced the OS X.
//Pingo
This rpm issue is simply not just about if RPM's are binary or source.
... have everything to loose if intentionally delivering shady software. Just look how anxious they are wat providing security updates to their products for faults that no one really can blame them for.
The issue is, can I trust this software to be free from trojans or other evil stuff?
It's like using credit cards, you will happily use your credit card at some well reputable store but will be reluctant to use it in some shady dark alley business.
It's just the same with software. A well known softwarehouse such as RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake
Also single persons with a good reputation such as Wietze can easily be trusted since this guy has so much reputation to loose if he intentionally does an evil act with his software. The same goes for other people that seems to be proud of what they are doing.
It's all about trust. You can trust the person or organisation that has much to loose if they provide software with trojans etc.
These softwarehouses signs all their RPM's cryptografically with the company key and you can easily check that it's a genuine package made in good faith.
//Pingo
Oh, I remember these old times with Prince of Persia on 386-PC's. It was also great fun to discover Linux on ftp.funet.fi
In those days I didn't know any UNIX at all so I had to start learning all these small and somewhat silly commands on my Linux box. This was hard but I mastered it in a few years.
Everyone was laughing at me on work for using this toy operating system. Time has changed and no one laughs anymore.
//Pingo
With the x86 release of Darwin a complete OS X release for the x86 platform wouldn't be far away.
Now it will mostly be a marketing decision if Apple would like to take on Microsoft on the PC platform.
I'm not sure it will happen unless M$ licenses OS X from Apple.
//Pingo
You are obviously posting into the wrong forum. I'm sure most Slashdot readers don't give a f*ck about this 'problem'.
Obviously you have identified a huge problem area with this key-leasing scam. Then don't go for it.
When designing defense electronics, there was allways this nagging about having a second source for as much components as possible. This was to achieve project safety for long term project.
I'm sure the software using industries would benefit from this kind of thinking. Long term project safety and how to get that in the software world.
Opensource makes it so easy since I can hire some college kid to do some editing and recompilation if necessary. If it's more complex, I might have to hire a consultant to fix the problems.
With Opensource I'm in full control all the time. No ugly surprises anymore.
//Pingo
Well, now I'm getting very excited about this Russian OS.
What OS are the Russians running?
This has to be investigated properly. Are there any Russian techies around that knows this and can give us a hint.
I'm am allready making wild guesses that this could be some hacked BSD or Linux running on their laptops.
//Pingo
I've also been interested in mbone (multicasting backbone) for a while since I got broadband access. It's seems simple enough by installing a special virtual router on my firewall (mrouted).
However I have not been able to find any way to hook up my home router to the actual mbone network.
Are there any official contacts for the mbone network that can assist in finding a connection point?
//Pingo
Oh this phenomena is such a beautiful sight.
I'm born in the northern Sweden and I've been used to it from childhood.
When doing my military service in the northern Sweden this became even more visible to me.
When doing guard duty, everything was blacked out, no lights where allowed into the night. Our eyes was adapted to the night and the Aurora was soooo intensive in our eyes. It was so unbelievable beautiful that I even looked forward to guard duty during these cold nights of -35C.
Beeing alone in the night 'guarding' some shit military installation and watching this phenomenoum, I feelt pretty lucky to be one of the few that was on guard these night.
If you haven't seen this phenomenoum first hand in an environment without disturbing lights I strongly suggest that you take any chance to experience that. It's amazingly beutiful.
//Pingo
This embrace and extend strategy can work many ways, not only in the favour of Microsoft.
Whatever M$ does, it will be extended (polluted) be their accumulated enemies.
//Pingo
Give me a spoon so I can enjoy this SOUP.
//Pingo
The spooks knows that alot of people assumes that this release contains hidden backdoors and will look for it. The spooks also expects that if anyone finds the backdoor they will cry Wolf on the Internet and get credited for revealing the nasty backdoor.
Surpise, there are no intentional backdoors in this code. The spooks now gets a very cheap audit from the Worlds top security experts. This is probably what they want since they probably are using some equivalent code in very sensitive systems running the World.
If someone finds the non existent 'backdoor' the spooks will just correct the real world system in a heartbeat and be thankful for the audit. The guy finding the 'backdoor' might even get a good job offer.
//Pingo
I'm sorry but it's not necessary for IBM to make any standard distro.
..
A strongly standardized distro would simply stiffle inovation completly. We really don't wan't that to happen. Granted that different distros appears very different to the eye but this is OK. However all of them are using glibc2.x and that is what really matters.
IBM are allready doing their part in getting glibc2.x and other important libraries in good shape together with FSF/GNU, RedHat, SuSe
IBM has chosen a road into their Linux operation that is very 'nice' and 'peaceful' and have got some 'love' back from many Linux users. I'll bet IBM people are treated very well when meeting Linux users.
They could make fine polished versions of RedHat/Suse CD's for their customers but that hardly counts as making a distribution of their own.
//pingo
Yeah only because slashdot carries doubleclick advertisments on slashdot.
It's so stupid to sell out to the big satan of internet. Check the URL:s of todays advertisment and you will see that it's from doublecklick.
Who is the stupid bastard behind this ????
This big thing sounds to me as a reinvention of the old P-code interpreter from UCLA. Of course with a lot of hype from Microsofts spindoctors.
The old P-code was claimed to be able to do just about anything you could imagine. Microsofts Quickbasic and it's followers Visual-Basic was based on this concept and perverted as you might guess.
Perhaps Microsoft at last got the P-code interpreter correct and now are able to run more than Basic on it. From the mouth of spindoctors such an accomplishment must be a breakthrough in computer science.
To make such a stackbased virtual computer in a DLL/so is today a pretty simple task. Most modern processors should be able to run such code without to much loss in CPU-speed. However I very much doubt that Microsoft will be able to accomplish such a thing without serious loss of raw computing power. Bill & co just can't keep their hands away from it and just have to give it their personal touch and thus seroiusly corrupt any performance.
//Pingo