I assure you the Russians built the heart of the station that is there now, the Zarya Control Module and the Zvezda crew quarters. Zarya is called a U.S. component only because the U.S. paid for it through Boeing but it was built in Russia.
But then, when all things are said and done, the US did pay for it. This isn't just about technology here. Both the Russians and US have the ability. But it seems that for both sides, available funding is an issue (albiet more so for the Russians than the US). And that provided part of the motivation for this venture. One party picking up the tab for the other is a very important point.
Russia had a full functional space station for like a decade called Mir. Most of their expertise is at the heart of the current ISS core. Not sure NASA could have successfully flown anything without them. If you recall during the years Russia was in Mir, NASA and Boeing was churning out one failed ISS design after another, none of which flew and all of which just filled Boeing's pork filled belly.
And previous to that, the US had a space station called Skylab that flew for a little over six years. So while the Mir was certainly an important achievement, it is not an entirely unique one. And while the Mir flew, NASA was tasked by Reagan with Spacestation Freedom. And then re-tasked continiously by Congress to produce a cheaper space station. No wonder there was continous churning of "failed" designs. That's where the Russians (among others) and the re-named International Space Station comes in.
Maybe thing will improve at NASA with O'Keefe gone but I doubt it. Its pretty obvious his head was completely bent by the Columbia disaster and he was totally paralyzed at the prospect of... gasp... risking anyone's left on space exploration. He clearly should have been booted years ago. Fact is space exploration is dangerous, do your best to make it less so but don't give up just because you can't make it 100% safe. Astronauts aren't astronauts if they can't accept the risk they might get killed.
How much of that really comes down to O'Keefe? Sure, leadership is important. But in a position such as O'Keefe's, I would have to question how much leeway one has.
And sure, spaceflight won't be 100% safe. Most accept that - though I have to agree that the general attitude of the public seems to suggest otherwise. But having said that, the Shuttle proved to have fundimental flaws that were either not addressed in the past or, upon discovery, must now be addressed.
One final comment. If you had access to the NASA astronauts' offices, you would find crews of people who fully understand the risk. And you would find people that have always accepted the risk of death. Even today.
This isn't about engineers and astronauts. It's about Government, the Public, and funding.
"Freedom of choice" is a beautiful thing in linux-land, but for someone on the outside looking in, which choice is the correct one for moving line of business apps to linux en masse (gnome/kde; xorg/xfree86; linux/*bsd/dragonfly)? I think that too many choices only results in unending confusion and a complete reluctance to abandon Windows by those who might otherwise make the switch.
How do you select the hardware your Windows platform will be running on? After all, there are just so many choices. Different processors, motherboards, hard drives and drive arrays, memory... the list goes on.
You would think that with all the confusion the commodity hardware market presents, more traditional suppliers would have held on to the market. Yet companies like Apple, Sun, etc. have seen eroding market share to this chaos.
I should have mentioned IBM. They have always been the traditional example of a proprietary IT company. And it was their platform (and loss of control over it among other things) that spawned the chaotic juggernaut of hardware commoditization. Yet these days, they embrace both commodity hardware and OS. You can go to IBM and get a complete package - all the chaos tucked away behind IBM's own decisions under the safe blanket of a product offering.
Very last point. I want to say again that I agree with most of your post, and do not want to start a flame war, but having delt a ton with Microsoft over the last 18 years, and now with Linux over the last 5 year I feel somewhat qualified to say that Microsoft doesn't care about their customers unless it effects their bottem line.
It might be worth stressing that one can very rarely count on any company having their customer's interests in mind unless it directly effects the bottom line. It's the nature of the beast. And even though you may have a good working relationship with a company's agents today, doesn't mean that relationship (or those people) will be around tomorrow.
That might come across as being cynical. However, it is an aspect of risk management any IT system architect should be keep in mind. Any system deployed should be easy to migrate away from or interface with current and future systems. And that often calls for real, gen-u-ine open protocols, data formats, etc.
I have to admit that at first, the reason I didn't watch Farscape was just how bizzare it looked. A lot of that had to do with the puppets. But then late one night I found myself looking for something to watch and settled on watching an episode of Farscape. I was hooked. I went back through earlier episodes and really enjoyed the series.
One of the interesting things about the show was its unique environment. And again, a key part of that was the use of puppets. This allowed for the inclusion of races and characters who all didn't look like the same body type with slight variations of facial features (not to take a swipe at other Scifi / fantasy shows).
Of course, that's not to say that SG1 needs puppets.
I'm interested in what you mean by that. In any but the smallest installations I imagine that Exchange would be running on a dedicated server. So I doubt that it's intended to play nicely with other apps.
I meant the interaction of Exchange and other email / calendering apps.
Now - that may be outdated with the advent of a WebDAV interface on Exchange 2003. I understand that Evolution works fairly well with Exchange 2003 via some sort of WebDAV interface (I couldn't get it to work since there was some bug introduced in a recent upgrade in Exchange). And I understand that there are other Windows and OSX apps that play nice using this interface. If so, then that argument goes away.
Although I think it does continue to highlight the need for an EXCHANGE killer / open calandering protocol.
I'm always fascinated with discussions about Exchange / Outlook. Last time I got in to one on Slashdot, someone was telling me that they couldn't live without Outlook's journal - I had to go look this up. And I still don't understand its importance. Your list raises some of the same questions.
No calendar. People use Outlook as much as a scheduling tool as an email reader.
I agree. THAT is the killer aspect of Outlook / Exchange.
No real integration with the desktop. I can drag a document into Outlook and it'll store it on the Exchange server.
I don't get this. You want your email / calendering system to also be a file store? Don't you have file servers? Of course, with the limited size of my account at work, I couldn't imagine doing this myself. Heck - I get annoyed as it is when someone emails me huge unnecessary attachments (or puts stupid images in their sig).
Having said that - I can imagine why someone would do this. Exchange becomes a one-stop location for all your business data. I just question whether that's really necessary or even useful.
Goodies like dependable read receipts, message recall, individual message reclaimation. These are effectively impossible in a standards-based multi-platform mail client, but you get them in a lock-in system like Exchange/Outlook and people use 'em.
I have to sheepishly admit a certain degree of disdain for these features. I understand that people use them. But are they really necessary?
I hate Microsoft Windows as much as the next guy, but Outlook has them beat. If only it worked on Linux.
Oddly enough, as a constant Outlook user at work... I tend to miss Evolution. If only it worked on Windows. And our old Exchange server played nicer with other apps.
And that's an important point. There ARE apps that are just as functional as Outlook. Exchange, however, seems to be the sticking point.
Instead of going to the courts with a trumped up case about supposed damages in hundreds of thousands of dollars, they should give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the people who document holes in the security of sensitive systems.
Perhapse you should go back and re-read my post. Especially pay attention to this part:
It shows a inappropriate focus on funding. All IT budgets are stressed. NASA is no different, and perhapses even more thinly spread than others. That means infosec activities tend to get cut in favor of other IT activities. Yet there is no perceived issue in later spending considerable resources to prosecute each infosec incident.
The money isn't there. It's not like NASA doesn't know what it needs to do, nor has any access to individuals that can provide that information. Its simply an issue of having the funds with which to pay people to do the work.
The only caveat to that is one of policy. Some centers are more infosec aware than others. As such, anyone who tracks this kind of thing will notice a difference in the frequency of compromises from Center to Center. So even if the proper funding existed, it wouldn't be the silver bullet solution in all cases.
There are holes in every major on-line computer system. It is better that we have our geeks get rewarded for finding and reporting them, rather than have our enemies find them and use them to kill our people.
Taking that one step further - it is even better to tighten up those systems in advance that it takes a considerable adversary to take advantage of those holes instead of the random budding geek kid. The current system that prosecutes some kid for what is a technically somphorish act years after the fact does little to remediate the situation, bennefit the future of the kid, nor does it help society in general.
A few years ago, I was sitting in on a meeting for Infosec activities at a NASA Center. One of the first presentations was a rather nicely done outline of recent vulnerabilities and exploits admins should be taking action on. A look around the room saw a vast majority of glazed-over gazes. The next presentation was from our local FBI agent who discussed a recent compromise and the actions being taken to apprehend the perpetrator. The room was alive.
There was much appreciation for the progress being made on the case. Apparently, the FBI had their suspect and were busy building an air-tight case for prosecution. There was a general air of victory. But what many failed to realize was the whole exercise was a signal of defeat. The incident represented potential compromise of data. It involved considerable man hours spent on investigation and recovery of the system. It also represented loss of equipment removed from the budget-strapped lab to support forensics activities.
This represents a couple different problems with the common view of information security at NASA.
It shows a lack of understanding of infosec issues. Instead of approaching infosec as a technical problem, the issue often gets far more attention as a legal / law enforcement issue. This is attitude calls for action after the damage has been done.
It shows a inappropriate focus on funding. All IT budgets are stressed. NASA is no different, and perhapses even more thinly spread than others. That means infosec activities tend to get cut in favor of other IT activities. Yet there is no perceived issue in later spending considerable resources to prosecute each infosec incident.
It may be worth stressing that this meeting happened several years ago. And there have been changes in how NASA, and the US Government in general, now perceive information security. So my observations do not represent an all-inclusive view of infosec at NASA (and those observations are my opinion and not policy of my employers). None the less, these observations are still applicable today.
One side observation to anyone considering taking a stab at *.nasa.gov space. Historical statistics show that you'll find suitable targets and manage to compromise a system. But keep in mind, for the US Government that is just the beginning. The FBI views a case as making progress over several years of investigation and finally prosecution. So the compromise of a system that takes minutes, and the abuse of that system over a period of weeks or months may mean that years later you'll find yourself in court.
As much as we may detest bureaucracies, you cannot deny the vital role they play. Are bureaucracies perfect? Nope. But you have to take the good with the bad.
Fair enough. But I'm not saying that there is a perfect system. Nor am I saying that bureaucracies aren't a necessary evil. The point is that there ARE onerous side effects to turning over anything to a bureaucracy. One has to be aware of this and limit the reach and / or involvement of any given bureaucracy to exactly what is necessary for the function desired.
On a side note...
Don't confuse the "nature of bureaucracies" with the nature of humans. We are imperfect. Every institution and everything we create is imperfect. Corporations are imperfect, unions are imperfect, civic organizations and organized religions are all imperfect.
At the core, it's all about people. Human nature. But when those people get in to groups, new behaviors start to show. What one person would not do alone, they are willing to do in a group. I suppose it's got something to do with accountability; mob mentality.
I can appreciate the general point that some projects, especially common infrastructure, tends to require some aspect of governmental involvement. And the fact that the Internet was originally a US Government program is a good reality check. However, it's not all beer and skittles.
And let's not forget the interstate highway system, or the national power grid, or any of the other hundred items where the government's intervention no only is non-ornerous, but necessary for the whole thing to work at all.
It might be worth keeping in mind that funding for the national highway system has been used to blackmail states in to adopting federal policy. Whether these policies were good ideas or not is not the point. The issue is that the Federal Government has used its very necessary involvement in vital infrastructure as a tool to extend its authority. And that's certainly an onerous outcome to Government involvement.
Such outcomes are to be expected. The nature of bureaucracies almost guarantees such behavior. So while there are times when the positive effect outweighs the negatives, one has to be sure of this. And therein lies the question: does the continued function, and perhaps growth of the Internet require additional bureaucratic involvement?
Yes, but a live address that isn't likely to respond well to spam. I find it remarkable that so many people love to try to look smart by repeating that old abiout unsubscribe just getting you more spam lists, while obviously noone has actually checked if it is the case.
A friend of mine worked for a spammer. The outfit wasn't as shady as these guys - they did sell legitimate products, as far as that goes. But they purchased email databases and didn't use any opt-in verification.
My friend was hired to manage their email. When he started working there, they ignored opt-out requests. But since they were trying to be "legitimate" one of his first tasks was set up a simple system to begin scrubbing their contacts database and removing opt-out addresses; much to the Sales' disgust. Then he started going through the database and picking up hits on inappropriate "root@" and "abuse@" type addresses. These did the company no good and were very, very unlikely to generate anything other than hassle for the company. Yet Sales fought the scrubbing of those addresses. To them, each address was worth $.15 no matter how legitimate it may or may not be.
These guys operate with a shotgun mentality (or maybe closer to fishing-with-dynamite). They don't understand what they're playing with. Nor do they really care if any particular aspect of what they do is legitimate. All they want is big numbers in hopes that it generates a sufficiently large enough, yet much smaller number of returns.
That's nice for Linux I suppose, but I'm guessing these guys haven't used many applications on X. Shit falls over dead all the time in a graphical enviornment. I could use non GUI applications for years strait and never have a crash, but anything using X is practically a roll of the dice.
I've used a Linux desktop with XFree86 for years yet I don't have apps dying all the time. That's not to say there aren't crappy applications. And I have had X crash before due to a misbehaving app. But that doesn't line up with the frequency you're claiming. I'd be curious as to what environment and apps you base this experience on.
I sure hope the gameplay is good, cause the graphics look like they date from the 80s Era.
Do you have any memory from the 80's? Graphics like this didn't appear on home computers until at least the early to mid 90's. Granted, by today's state of the art, that's dated. But then - so's the game.
Sure, graphics ain't everything and its a major achievement for the open source gaming community... but couldn't they hire an Open-GL guy / artist? 6 polygons trees... and the tanks themselves look like LEGO blocks.
Exactly. Graphics aren't everything. There's a wasteland of games out there that were little more than a bit of flash. And they're all but forgotten. Yet this game, five years later, is still being played by an active community. You won't find many tittles with that.
And, of course, this is Open Source. Don't like the graphics? Jump right in there and contribute. Or not.
Don't get me wrong - constructive criticism is fine. But your statements were'n constructive in the least.
...It's one thing when hobbyists hackers think it's nifty to write an exploit to prove their leetness; it's something else entirely when a corporate entity writes exploits for profit.
I think you're right in that this isn't really a qualitatively new thing, but the quantity of pay-to-attack may increase substantially.
Defining the principles as a "corporate entity" seems to imply much more organization and size than I think is really involved. But I agree that financial profit tends to change things. The question really is - have we already seen the change a long time ago... or are we about to jump another notch?
Spam has been an issue for years. But no matter how old the practice is, there are always new scammers and dupes entering the field. So while spamnets of compromised machines may not be new - it could be just the beginning of a new phase. The practice may be just entering the mainstream of the spamming industry, such as it is. And as such, we'll see not only more spammers trying to buy (or rent) spamnets, but more spamnet operators trying to create and maintain them.
Of course, any such increase in activity simply reinforces already existing issues that have been a part of infosec discussions for years.
In light of this even I would favor not publicly disclosing weaknesses immediately!
How does this change anything? This situation already exists and has existed for years. There has always been an element of pay-to-attack behavior as well as gathering resources via mass shotgunned attacks. And, in fact, spammers have been taping in to this environment for a while.
Given that I talked to three different people (sorry I don't have names), I would think one of them would have had told me different. I was very clear in what I said.
Fair enough. And I don't blame you. This kind of message would have me very cautious too. I've also nixed products in the past due to unclear or unsupportive behavior from a supplier.
There is no doubt that RedHat has an internal identity issue. I'm willing to cut them slack - they've had a fairly good history of supporting the community. But there are some distinctly disturbing mixed messages coming out of RedHat. They need to get their act together or learn the tough way that a big selling point of a Linux-based architecture is a lack of vendor lock-in.
Slashdot Mirror
But then, when all things are said and done, the US did pay for it. This isn't just about technology here. Both the Russians and US have the ability. But it seems that for both sides, available funding is an issue (albiet more so for the Russians than the US). And that provided part of the motivation for this venture. One party picking up the tab for the other is a very important point.
And previous to that, the US had a space station called Skylab that flew for a little over six years. So while the Mir was certainly an important achievement, it is not an entirely unique one. And while the Mir flew, NASA was tasked by Reagan with Spacestation Freedom. And then re-tasked continiously by Congress to produce a cheaper space station. No wonder there was continous churning of "failed" designs. That's where the Russians (among others) and the re-named International Space Station comes in.
How much of that really comes down to O'Keefe? Sure, leadership is important. But in a position such as O'Keefe's, I would have to question how much leeway one has.
And sure, spaceflight won't be 100% safe. Most accept that - though I have to agree that the general attitude of the public seems to suggest otherwise. But having said that, the Shuttle proved to have fundimental flaws that were either not addressed in the past or, upon discovery, must now be addressed.
One final comment. If you had access to the NASA astronauts' offices, you would find crews of people who fully understand the risk. And you would find people that have always accepted the risk of death. Even today.
This isn't about engineers and astronauts. It's about Government, the Public, and funding.
Isn't that some kind of ActiveX platform? ;)
How do you select the hardware your Windows platform will be running on? After all, there are just so many choices. Different processors, motherboards, hard drives and drive arrays, memory... the list goes on.
You would think that with all the confusion the commodity hardware market presents, more traditional suppliers would have held on to the market. Yet companies like Apple, Sun, etc. have seen eroding market share to this chaos.
I should have mentioned IBM. They have always been the traditional example of a proprietary IT company. And it was their platform (and loss of control over it among other things) that spawned the chaotic juggernaut of hardware commoditization. Yet these days, they embrace both commodity hardware and OS. You can go to IBM and get a complete package - all the chaos tucked away behind IBM's own decisions under the safe blanket of a product offering.
It might be worth stressing that one can very rarely count on any company having their customer's interests in mind unless it directly effects the bottom line. It's the nature of the beast. And even though you may have a good working relationship with a company's agents today, doesn't mean that relationship (or those people) will be around tomorrow.
That might come across as being cynical. However, it is an aspect of risk management any IT system architect should be keep in mind. Any system deployed should be easy to migrate away from or interface with current and future systems. And that often calls for real, gen-u-ine open protocols, data formats, etc.
I have to admit that at first, the reason I didn't watch Farscape was just how bizzare it looked. A lot of that had to do with the puppets. But then late one night I found myself looking for something to watch and settled on watching an episode of Farscape. I was hooked. I went back through earlier episodes and really enjoyed the series.
One of the interesting things about the show was its unique environment. And again, a key part of that was the use of puppets. This allowed for the inclusion of races and characters who all didn't look like the same body type with slight variations of facial features (not to take a swipe at other Scifi / fantasy shows).
Of course, that's not to say that SG1 needs puppets.
I meant the interaction of Exchange and other email / calendering apps.
Now - that may be outdated with the advent of a WebDAV interface on Exchange 2003. I understand that Evolution works fairly well with Exchange 2003 via some sort of WebDAV interface (I couldn't get it to work since there was some bug introduced in a recent upgrade in Exchange). And I understand that there are other Windows and OSX apps that play nice using this interface. If so, then that argument goes away.
Although I think it does continue to highlight the need for an EXCHANGE killer / open calandering protocol.
I'm always fascinated with discussions about Exchange / Outlook. Last time I got in to one on Slashdot, someone was telling me that they couldn't live without Outlook's journal - I had to go look this up. And I still don't understand its importance. Your list raises some of the same questions.
I agree. THAT is the killer aspect of Outlook / Exchange.
I don't get this. You want your email / calendering system to also be a file store? Don't you have file servers? Of course, with the limited size of my account at work, I couldn't imagine doing this myself. Heck - I get annoyed as it is when someone emails me huge unnecessary attachments (or puts stupid images in their sig).
Having said that - I can imagine why someone would do this. Exchange becomes a one-stop location for all your business data. I just question whether that's really necessary or even useful.
I have to sheepishly admit a certain degree of disdain for these features. I understand that people use them. But are they really necessary?
Oddly enough, as a constant Outlook user at work... I tend to miss Evolution. If only it worked on Windows. And our old Exchange server played nicer with other apps.
And that's an important point. There ARE apps that are just as functional as Outlook. Exchange, however, seems to be the sticking point.
All your digital signatures are belong to us.
Welcome to the world of IT. You don't have to limit your view to Linus or Linux to find narrow minded zealots.
But then, you don't have to limit your view to IT either.
Perhapse you should go back and re-read my post. Especially pay attention to this part:
The money isn't there. It's not like NASA doesn't know what it needs to do, nor has any access to individuals that can provide that information. Its simply an issue of having the funds with which to pay people to do the work.
The only caveat to that is one of policy. Some centers are more infosec aware than others. As such, anyone who tracks this kind of thing will notice a difference in the frequency of compromises from Center to Center. So even if the proper funding existed, it wouldn't be the silver bullet solution in all cases.
Taking that one step further - it is even better to tighten up those systems in advance that it takes a considerable adversary to take advantage of those holes instead of the random budding geek kid. The current system that prosecutes some kid for what is a technically somphorish act years after the fact does little to remediate the situation, bennefit the future of the kid, nor does it help society in general.
A few years ago, I was sitting in on a meeting for Infosec activities at a NASA Center. One of the first presentations was a rather nicely done outline of recent vulnerabilities and exploits admins should be taking action on. A look around the room saw a vast majority of glazed-over gazes. The next presentation was from our local FBI agent who discussed a recent compromise and the actions being taken to apprehend the perpetrator. The room was alive.
There was much appreciation for the progress being made on the case. Apparently, the FBI had their suspect and were busy building an air-tight case for prosecution. There was a general air of victory. But what many failed to realize was the whole exercise was a signal of defeat. The incident represented potential compromise of data. It involved considerable man hours spent on investigation and recovery of the system. It also represented loss of equipment removed from the budget-strapped lab to support forensics activities.
This represents a couple different problems with the common view of information security at NASA.
It shows a lack of understanding of infosec issues. Instead of approaching infosec as a technical problem, the issue often gets far more attention as a legal / law enforcement issue. This is attitude calls for action after the damage has been done.
It shows a inappropriate focus on funding. All IT budgets are stressed. NASA is no different, and perhapses even more thinly spread than others. That means infosec activities tend to get cut in favor of other IT activities. Yet there is no perceived issue in later spending considerable resources to prosecute each infosec incident.
It may be worth stressing that this meeting happened several years ago. And there have been changes in how NASA, and the US Government in general, now perceive information security. So my observations do not represent an all-inclusive view of infosec at NASA (and those observations are my opinion and not policy of my employers). None the less, these observations are still applicable today.
One side observation to anyone considering taking a stab at *.nasa.gov space. Historical statistics show that you'll find suitable targets and manage to compromise a system. But keep in mind, for the US Government that is just the beginning. The FBI views a case as making progress over several years of investigation and finally prosecution. So the compromise of a system that takes minutes, and the abuse of that system over a period of weeks or months may mean that years later you'll find yourself in court.
Fair enough. But I'm not saying that there is a perfect system. Nor am I saying that bureaucracies aren't a necessary evil. The point is that there ARE onerous side effects to turning over anything to a bureaucracy. One has to be aware of this and limit the reach and / or involvement of any given bureaucracy to exactly what is necessary for the function desired.
On a side note...
At the core, it's all about people. Human nature. But when those people get in to groups, new behaviors start to show. What one person would not do alone, they are willing to do in a group. I suppose it's got something to do with accountability; mob mentality.
It might be worth keeping in mind that funding for the national highway system has been used to blackmail states in to adopting federal policy. Whether these policies were good ideas or not is not the point. The issue is that the Federal Government has used its very necessary involvement in vital infrastructure as a tool to extend its authority. And that's certainly an onerous outcome to Government involvement.
Such outcomes are to be expected. The nature of bureaucracies almost guarantees such behavior. So while there are times when the positive effect outweighs the negatives, one has to be sure of this. And therein lies the question: does the continued function, and perhaps growth of the Internet require additional bureaucratic involvement?
...the downside being how many back pockets you'll need to support the cluster.
A friend of mine worked for a spammer. The outfit wasn't as shady as these guys - they did sell legitimate products, as far as that goes. But they purchased email databases and didn't use any opt-in verification.
My friend was hired to manage their email. When he started working there, they ignored opt-out requests. But since they were trying to be "legitimate" one of his first tasks was set up a simple system to begin scrubbing their contacts database and removing opt-out addresses; much to the Sales' disgust. Then he started going through the database and picking up hits on inappropriate "root@" and "abuse@" type addresses. These did the company no good and were very, very unlikely to generate anything other than hassle for the company. Yet Sales fought the scrubbing of those addresses. To them, each address was worth $.15 no matter how legitimate it may or may not be.
These guys operate with a shotgun mentality (or maybe closer to fishing-with-dynamite). They don't understand what they're playing with. Nor do they really care if any particular aspect of what they do is legitimate. All they want is big numbers in hopes that it generates a sufficiently large enough, yet much smaller number of returns.
Which is just a lead-in for the quietly planned
I've used a Linux desktop with XFree86 for years yet I don't have apps dying all the time. That's not to say there aren't crappy applications. And I have had X crash before due to a misbehaving app. But that doesn't line up with the frequency you're claiming. I'd be curious as to what environment and apps you base this experience on.
None the less, it doesn't compare to BZFlag. Nice link, though.
Do you have any memory from the 80's? Graphics like this didn't appear on home computers until at least the early to mid 90's. Granted, by today's state of the art, that's dated. But then - so's the game.
Exactly. Graphics aren't everything. There's a wasteland of games out there that were little more than a bit of flash. And they're all but forgotten. Yet this game, five years later, is still being played by an active community. You won't find many tittles with that.
And, of course, this is Open Source. Don't like the graphics? Jump right in there and contribute. Or not.
Don't get me wrong - constructive criticism is fine. But your statements were'n constructive in the least.
Oh my God! Bear is driving! How can that be?!
Defining the principles as a "corporate entity" seems to imply much more organization and size than I think is really involved. But I agree that financial profit tends to change things. The question really is - have we already seen the change a long time ago... or are we about to jump another notch?
Spam has been an issue for years. But no matter how old the practice is, there are always new scammers and dupes entering the field. So while spamnets of compromised machines may not be new - it could be just the beginning of a new phase. The practice may be just entering the mainstream of the spamming industry, such as it is. And as such, we'll see not only more spammers trying to buy (or rent) spamnets, but more spamnet operators trying to create and maintain them.
Of course, any such increase in activity simply reinforces already existing issues that have been a part of infosec discussions for years.
Take off and firewall it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
How does this change anything? This situation already exists and has existed for years. There has always been an element of pay-to-attack behavior as well as gathering resources via mass shotgunned attacks. And, in fact, spammers have been taping in to this environment for a while.
Fair enough. And I don't blame you. This kind of message would have me very cautious too. I've also nixed products in the past due to unclear or unsupportive behavior from a supplier.
There is no doubt that RedHat has an internal identity issue. I'm willing to cut them slack - they've had a fairly good history of supporting the community. But there are some distinctly disturbing mixed messages coming out of RedHat. They need to get their act together or learn the tough way that a big selling point of a Linux-based architecture is a lack of vendor lock-in.