It's not always about bringing down big, popular sites - sometimes it's about bringing down big companies. Every hacker knows that they'll get front-page coverage for a major attack on Microsoft products.
There is certainly a motivation out there to tweak Microsoft. Something along the lines of "If the arrogant jerks' products are as good as they say they are, how come I can do this?" kind of mentality.
But at the same time, you're ignoring the traditional and still very popular motivation: resources. Compromising a host is more often than not about gaining access to some resource. It could be for bandwidth and drive space for hosting illicit data. It could be running your IRC bot from army.mil or nasa.gov IP space. These days its more common that resource is a zombie for a DoSnet or a SPAMnet.
For a long time, gaining resources meant attacking a Unix host. Unix admins went through that crucible and Unix systems started hardening up. But now, why bother attacking it? Unless you have a specific interest in what's available to a Unix host (and there are some that do), most general resource requirements are available from the low-hanging Windows fruit.
On top of that, there's a great deal of irrational hatred of Microsoft among technically inclined individuals, which would motivate attacks on them.
Sure. There's irrational hatred. I've met people like that. They spout about Evil Microsoft and when asked why they feel that way, they have a hard time really coming up with an explanation.
That doesn't mean all Microsoft "hatred" is irrational. I've also know quite a few people who have a very strong aversion to Microsoft who can also explain very clearly why. Whether you agree or not is one thing. But they are certainly rational about it.
I'm simply saying that a bit of the "general negative attitude" (as you said) in this forum is over-inflated idiocy (particularly by the editors). Sure, there is plenty of reason to not like MS, but having editors and posters misrepresent things like the impact of security issues isn't the way to properly discuss things.
Fair enough. I also agree that the negative outlook is taken too far at times. There are criticisms that I've disagreed with. I'm just wary that all criticism is being discarded.
An interesting aspect about Slashdot is that it really isn't a traditional news outlet. Slashdot does not provide news itself but points to a news source and then provides a forum to discuss that news. As such, that discussion is int regal to Slashdot and the opinion expressed in the initial entry is of limited importance.
Traditional media re-packages an opinion and provides no ability for feedback. Or the feedback mechanism is an after-thought or an apparent ploy to push banner ads.
Again, I'm not defending the more outrageous behavior. But at the same time, I'm not keen to lambaste the entire forum for that behavior.
Couple that with the odd twist of this forum embracing games that are typically Win32 only (The Sims series, etc) just shows that Slashdot can't be seen as a level-headed discussion forum.
Slashdot has come to reflect a large group with differing interests. Some people like Win32 games. Some people like Anime. Some people take very polarized views of US politics and policies (discussed on the new political section). There are critics and dissenting opinion on all these subjects. So you are not going to find complete consistency across the board. And you don't have to favor one topic to support another.
Having said that, I'm looking forward to when more and more of the game discussed aren't Win32-only games.
No. I appreciate the bias that is willing to point out not everything lines up with that glossy corporate spin. And, as I pointed out, I also welcome the criticism of that criticism that keeps the negative MS bias honest.
I have to wonder - did you even READ what I wrote? Or were you too eager to paint me as a fanatical zealot because my implied identification with Microsoft's critics?
This sensationalism is fine if/. wants to be a tabloid, but the fact that it is so one-sided against MS makes/. more of a shill.
I'm all for keeping Microsoft's critics honest. And I welcome debate and dissenting opinion. But let's not act all shocked and surprised at the general negative attitude towards Microsoft found in this forum; it's always been there. And, frankly, it's a welcomed change from the usual positive Microsoft bias common to so much of the press-release-as-a-news-story industry media.
When you're going to attempt to point out hypocrisy, it would help to use real examples rather than just make up stuff. Otherwise your point is going to get lost in accusations from straw men arguments to simple ignorance.
Newsflash: I'm on a public street when I pick up a transmission you're making on a public, unlicensed frequency. I'm not walking through your unlocked door to plug in a CAT5 to your home network.
For years, Linux's growth in the server market was at the cost of other *nixes (and still is to a large extent), not Microsoft
...
Microsoft grew their server market with hardware and software that was cheaper than the status quo (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris). Linux did the same, while undercutting Microsoft on the price. If you think Win2k3 server machines are sold at a "premium price", you should check out commercial *nixes!
I mostly agree with what you've been saying except on this point.
You're right that Microsoft enjoys a price advantage over proprietary Unix products. And as commodity hardware has increased in reliability and capability over the years, the proprietary hardware on which various Unix offerings are based become less attractive. Microsoft had been the gateway to taking advantage of that commodity hardware. Enter Linux.
Linux (and *BSD) provides another avenue to commodity hardware (with considerably more compatability with Unix than Windows offers, even with SFU). And while many moves to Linux are replacing proprietary Unix products, every move to Linux is not a move to Windows. That costs Microsoft.
As much a "pain in the ass" as letting clueless users run as admins.
Indeed. But none the less, WinNT's privilege separation hasn't done it much good. And even when Win2K introduced RunAs as a pseudo sudo, it still fell short of what has been commonplace in *nix for decades. Though I suppose this has more to do with the Windows environment and Windows community (including Microsoft at times).
I wonder why they didn't do comparisons of at least AA? I would think that's one of the first games people download for Linux especially because it's free.
That's where Enemy Territory (which they tested) comes in. Free download. Pretty strong player community with plenty of servers. Fun gameplay that veers closer to arcadeish than AA's attention to reality (such as it is).
Face it, Bush was going to war because he wanted to go to war, period. When the UN voted against invasion, he basically gave them the finger and went in anyway.
...
It's time to get real, guys. Every decsion you make has a global impact and you better damn well think about how the rest of the world is going to react to your decisions if you are truely concerned with making the world a better place in the long run.
That's a nice sentiment. But how much trust can you put in the UN?
Keep in mind that the UN was unable to complete its inspections in Iraq. It has been incapable of maintaining peace in numerous locals world-wide. And, in fact, the UN was embarrassed by a a small PMC (private military company - modern mercenaries) Executive Outcome. EO had been able to restore peace to Sierra Leone when a later UN force was unable to.
Also keep in mind that the UN is not above corruption. The Oil for Food program is generating considerable questions. Not only is there the question of how funds were used to pay for construction of presidential palaces and banned weapons. But there is also the question of who was profiting and why. Documents found in the Iraqi Oil Ministry show an interesting list of questionable recipients and considerable profits to Russian and French interests (the UN Security Council's major detractors of military action in Iraq, opponents to forgiving Iraqi debt with the ousting of the Bathist regime, and proponents of continuing sanctions and the Oil for Food program under the new Iraqi government).
I do agree that the world is a smaller place and decisions have global impact. In fact, I'm saddened by those who preach isolationism and claim entities like Iraq had no ability to harm anybody - including the US.
I don't believe the US should have carte blanc to do whatever it wishes. But at the same time, past history has shown that "world opinion" does not always identify the best path.
Thanks for letting us know who the good guys are! I can never figure out who's right or wrong myself, and I like it when I can count on Slashdot telling me that.
Oh, come on. You already decided who was right and wrong. You're just annoyed to find out you were wrong yourself.
I understand your frustration. Nobody likes to be wrong. But hey - "Slashdot" told you what to think so what're you going to do? Disagree?
Oh. Along those lines. You need to open a PayPal account, charge it up $4,352.00 USD, and then make a payment to sprocket@example.com. I know, I know. You probably didn't expect this and feel some reluctance. But this is "Slashdot" telling you what to do after all.
It was indeed as close to an exact copy as you could reasonably expect.
The mandate to copy the design was so strictly ahered to, that the first production Tu-4's included patches from aircraft battle damage repair on the origional B-29.
But - I still think "Cisco said that it had not been stolen as a result of loopholes in its software" is probably a bogus statement. How could anyone possibly know that to be 100% true?
Malicious hackers made off with code for versions 12.3 of IOS after the thief compromised a Sun Microsystems Inc. server on Cisco's network, then briefly posted a link to the source code files on a file server belonging to the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, according to Alexander Antipov, a security expert at Positive Technologies, a security consulting company in Moscow.
So, they need the FBI to determine how the theft occurred, but they're sure it wasn't because their software has security holes?
It is very possible that Cisco knows how the theft happened. But keep in mind that we haven't quite realized the futureshock predictions of corporations-as-government. As such, Cisco will not be prosecuting any associated criminal case and will have to rely on the FBI, as an agent of the federal government, to maintian their traditional role. Cisco may provide what evidense they have of the intrusion. But the FBI will still be running its own investigation and ultimately coming to their own conclusions - even if they end up matching Cisco's.
...and developers... please, native ports. As more and more developers begin to release native Linux versions of their malware, I am going to be less and less likely to bother tweaking WINE to get yours to run.
You'll have to ask Jordan Henderson about that. Or Apple. Or Microsoft... they use a lot of Open Source software too... NT is full of it.
See, there's a lot of Open Source software that's not playing the FSF's GNU game. You don't hear as much about it, because it's not controversial, and it's widely used by all the big players.
Having said all that... both Apple (OSX) and Microsoft (Services for Unix) sell GNU (GPL) code. But then, it's no one-way street. Linux, the poster-boy for the GPL, tends to be bundled with code under other licenses.
It is more dependent on the programmer AND the person configuring it. Look at PHPNuke.
Of course, when you mention PHPNuke one should also note it's various forks, Postnuke being one of the better known. The fork involved a fair amount of nasty politics. But one of the outcomes was a much more secure code base in Postnuke. That may speak well of the ability to fork.
It's 25 years old, but is *still* a buggy, buggy app. It STILL isn't secure and bug-free. The inevitable comparison with MS willl come up, so let's look at that. First off, MS hasn't even been *around* for 25 years. As far as specific products go... with all of its patches, W2K is generally considered quite stable, and relatively secure (again, with all of its patches in place). W2K is about 5 years old at this point.
This brings up a few interesting points.
First, Sendmail isn't static. There is more going on with sendmail than simple bug fixes. As new development happens, one is going to risk indroducing more bugs (not that there aren't sendmail bugs that existed for quite some time). So the issue of age is a debatable point.
Secondly, the comparison of sendmail and Win2K may be more apt than you realize. A common criticism of sendmail is that its structure is convoluted and prone to bugs. And while those aforementioned 25 years has seen considerable tightening of sendmail's code, there is a strong belief that sendmail is fundimentally flawed; that sendmail needs a rewrite. This is one of the major reasons there are replacements like postfix and qmail.
Windows also gets the same criticism. There are fundimental issues with Windows. Its subsystems and libraries are convoluted. Even Microsoft's own developers have commented on the difficulties this creates.
The worst part of the whole thing was that it was self fulfilling. An article like that at the wrong time could actually cause Infinium to fail. Building a console business is all about building confidence in your product, your momentum and the likelyhood of success.
The same thing can be said about a confidence game too.
OSS doesn't usually enjoy the same level of testing that commercial software does. Good commercial software (emphasis on GOOD) has a large, dedicated testing team that has put a lot of time and effort into developing various tools, well-documented test plans, huge suites of test cases, regular automated test runs that catch introduced bugs quickly, and so in. It is the rare OSS project that has anything close to this.
So, having said that... you should be able to point to commercial software with the same general functionality that doesn't have a history of bugs, right?
Slashdot Mirror
There is certainly a motivation out there to tweak Microsoft. Something along the lines of "If the arrogant jerks' products are as good as they say they are, how come I can do this?" kind of mentality.
But at the same time, you're ignoring the traditional and still very popular motivation: resources. Compromising a host is more often than not about gaining access to some resource. It could be for bandwidth and drive space for hosting illicit data. It could be running your IRC bot from army.mil or nasa.gov IP space. These days its more common that resource is a zombie for a DoSnet or a SPAMnet.
For a long time, gaining resources meant attacking a Unix host. Unix admins went through that crucible and Unix systems started hardening up. But now, why bother attacking it? Unless you have a specific interest in what's available to a Unix host (and there are some that do), most general resource requirements are available from the low-hanging Windows fruit.
Sure. There's irrational hatred. I've met people like that. They spout about Evil Microsoft and when asked why they feel that way, they have a hard time really coming up with an explanation.
That doesn't mean all Microsoft "hatred" is irrational. I've also know quite a few people who have a very strong aversion to Microsoft who can also explain very clearly why. Whether you agree or not is one thing. But they are certainly rational about it.
Fair enough. I also agree that the negative outlook is taken too far at times. There are criticisms that I've disagreed with. I'm just wary that all criticism is being discarded.
An interesting aspect about Slashdot is that it really isn't a traditional news outlet. Slashdot does not provide news itself but points to a news source and then provides a forum to discuss that news. As such, that discussion is int regal to Slashdot and the opinion expressed in the initial entry is of limited importance.
Traditional media re-packages an opinion and provides no ability for feedback. Or the feedback mechanism is an after-thought or an apparent ploy to push banner ads.
Again, I'm not defending the more outrageous behavior. But at the same time, I'm not keen to lambaste the entire forum for that behavior.
Slashdot has come to reflect a large group with differing interests. Some people like Win32 games. Some people like Anime. Some people take very polarized views of US politics and policies (discussed on the new political section). There are critics and dissenting opinion on all these subjects. So you are not going to find complete consistency across the board. And you don't have to favor one topic to support another.
Having said that, I'm looking forward to when more and more of the game discussed aren't Win32-only games.
No. I appreciate the bias that is willing to point out not everything lines up with that glossy corporate spin. And, as I pointed out, I also welcome the criticism of that criticism that keeps the negative MS bias honest.
I have to wonder - did you even READ what I wrote? Or were you too eager to paint me as a fanatical zealot because my implied identification with Microsoft's critics?
I'm all for keeping Microsoft's critics honest. And I welcome debate and dissenting opinion. But let's not act all shocked and surprised at the general negative attitude towards Microsoft found in this forum; it's always been there. And, frankly, it's a welcomed change from the usual positive Microsoft bias common to so much of the press-release-as-a-news-story industry media.
When you're going to attempt to point out hypocrisy, it would help to use real examples rather than just make up stuff. Otherwise your point is going to get lost in accusations from straw men arguments to simple ignorance.
Look... let's not drag trench coats in to THIS too...
Newsflash: I'm on a public street when I pick up a transmission you're making on a public, unlicensed frequency. I'm not walking through your unlocked door to plug in a CAT5 to your home network.
I mostly agree with what you've been saying except on this point.
You're right that Microsoft enjoys a price advantage over proprietary Unix products. And as commodity hardware has increased in reliability and capability over the years, the proprietary hardware on which various Unix offerings are based become less attractive. Microsoft had been the gateway to taking advantage of that commodity hardware. Enter Linux.
Linux (and *BSD) provides another avenue to commodity hardware (with considerably more compatability with Unix than Windows offers, even with SFU). And while many moves to Linux are replacing proprietary Unix products, every move to Linux is not a move to Windows. That costs Microsoft.
Indeed. But none the less, WinNT's privilege separation hasn't done it much good. And even when Win2K introduced RunAs as a pseudo sudo, it still fell short of what has been commonplace in *nix for decades. Though I suppose this has more to do with the Windows environment and Windows community (including Microsoft at times).
That's where Enemy Territory (which they tested) comes in. Free download. Pretty strong player community with plenty of servers. Fun gameplay that veers closer to arcadeish than AA's attention to reality (such as it is).
That's a nice sentiment. But how much trust can you put in the UN?
Keep in mind that the UN was unable to complete its inspections in Iraq. It has been incapable of maintaining peace in numerous locals world-wide. And, in fact, the UN was embarrassed by a a small PMC (private military company - modern mercenaries) Executive Outcome. EO had been able to restore peace to Sierra Leone when a later UN force was unable to.
Also keep in mind that the UN is not above corruption. The Oil for Food program is generating considerable questions. Not only is there the question of how funds were used to pay for construction of presidential palaces and banned weapons. But there is also the question of who was profiting and why. Documents found in the Iraqi Oil Ministry show an interesting list of questionable recipients and considerable profits to Russian and French interests (the UN Security Council's major detractors of military action in Iraq, opponents to forgiving Iraqi debt with the ousting of the Bathist regime, and proponents of continuing sanctions and the Oil for Food program under the new Iraqi government).
I do agree that the world is a smaller place and decisions have global impact. In fact, I'm saddened by those who preach isolationism and claim entities like Iraq had no ability to harm anybody - including the US.
I don't believe the US should have carte blanc to do whatever it wishes. But at the same time, past history has shown that "world opinion" does not always identify the best path.
Oh, come on. You already decided who was right and wrong. You're just annoyed to find out you were wrong yourself.
I understand your frustration. Nobody likes to be wrong. But hey - "Slashdot" told you what to think so what're you going to do? Disagree?
Oh. Along those lines. You need to open a PayPal account, charge it up $4,352.00 USD, and then make a payment to sprocket@example.com. I know, I know. You probably didn't expect this and feel some reluctance. But this is "Slashdot" telling you what to do after all.
And the cool thing about open standards is that you can easily move your data between them.
The mandate to copy the design was so strictly ahered to, that the first production Tu-4's included patches from aircraft battle damage repair on the origional B-29.
Right. A certificate store protected by a password. Passwords being the very thing that's causing enough trouble to warrent two-factor authentication.
Check out one of my other posts in this thread.
It is very possible that Cisco knows how the theft happened. But keep in mind that we haven't quite realized the futureshock predictions of corporations-as-government. As such, Cisco will not be prosecuting any associated criminal case and will have to rely on the FBI, as an agent of the federal government, to maintian their traditional role. Cisco may provide what evidense they have of the intrusion. But the FBI will still be running its own investigation and ultimately coming to their own conclusions - even if they end up matching Cisco's.
...and developers... please, native ports. As more and more developers begin to release native Linux versions of their malware, I am going to be less and less likely to bother tweaking WINE to get yours to run.
Redhat - RHN / Up2Date
SuSE - susewatcher
Debian - apt-watch
Having said all that... both Apple (OSX) and Microsoft (Services for Unix) sell GNU (GPL) code. But then, it's no one-way street. Linux, the poster-boy for the GPL, tends to be bundled with code under other licenses.
Of course, when you mention PHPNuke one should also note it's various forks, Postnuke being one of the better known. The fork involved a fair amount of nasty politics. But one of the outcomes was a much more secure code base in Postnuke. That may speak well of the ability to fork.
This brings up a few interesting points.
First, Sendmail isn't static. There is more going on with sendmail than simple bug fixes. As new development happens, one is going to risk indroducing more bugs (not that there aren't sendmail bugs that existed for quite some time). So the issue of age is a debatable point.
Secondly, the comparison of sendmail and Win2K may be more apt than you realize. A common criticism of sendmail is that its structure is convoluted and prone to bugs. And while those aforementioned 25 years has seen considerable tightening of sendmail's code, there is a strong belief that sendmail is fundimentally flawed; that sendmail needs a rewrite. This is one of the major reasons there are replacements like postfix and qmail.
Windows also gets the same criticism. There are fundimental issues with Windows. Its subsystems and libraries are convoluted. Even Microsoft's own developers have commented on the difficulties this creates.
The same thing can be said about a confidence game too.
So, having said that... you should be able to point to commercial software with the same general functionality that doesn't have a history of bugs, right?