It is important that when we wave our flags and cheer when Microsoft is laid low by the latest security flaw that we not close our eyes to the very real vulnerabilities in the Unix/Linux system.
Don't kid yourself. This didn't happen. Linux isn't popular enough for this kind of attack. Heck. Ignore all that infosec history too. Didn't happen. Not popular.
Then, you get a nice Windows Update icon in your tray, double click it, and voila, a list of updates you can install without needing to use IE.
Are you sure? It would seem like Microsoft to just run some IE / ActiveX bit without making it look like it's IE. Not that it would make any difference, I guess.
Well cool. Where did you get it? Is it now a part of the standard tree?
On a side note - I still claim that my point stands.:) At one point, I couldn't get a decent copy of screen. One will certainly find apps available in native Linux x86 that are not (yet?) available in environments like Cygwin.
Cygwin seems to run extremely fast and reliably already.
Yes, Cygwin is nice. But I've found it considerably slower than a native Linux box.
I occasionally have to mangle several gigs of text-based log files. I can toss together a nice script in my Cygwin environment. But when I want to run the real job... I better scp it over to one of the dev Linux boxes and run it there. Otherwise it will take weeks longer to run.
Maybe it's something in my config. I haven't spent much time looking in to it. But until I find out otherwise, I'm inclined to see Cygwin as a nice stopgap to my prefered environment when forced to deal with a Windows workstation.
It would be interesting to see if my scripts run faster in colinux.
Isn't it about time to really assess whether it is absolutely necessary to provide every employee with their own telephone?
Restricting telephone calls to a single secretary (or secretarial pool) that only make and receive calls and forwarded messages on to the internal workforce seems like the absolute maximum telephone usage necessary for most businesses.
Surely employees don't have to make calls (especially personal) while at work?
You'd be interested in the Googlebar extension for mozilla / firefox then. It doesn't include blocking features since that's built in to the browser already. But it does provide all the nifty searching, highlighting, etc.
hmm the other guy may be onto something here though. Windows on that box was effectivly 'free'. When you buy a computer you do not usually see 89.99 for windows. You just see 'comes with windows'. Never really thought about it till now though. Windows to most people IS free.
A fair enough point. You might want to go back and read over what happened during "Windows Refund Day". The value of an OEM license of Windows was rather hard to nail down.
Having said that - moot point. MacOS was also "free" with the computer too. Yet it became a niche even though Apple had been, by far, the leader in consumer microcomputers before IBM stepped in.
Also as for the install things he was talking about (.deb in yellodog). He is right. Linux *NEEDS* an install shield type program. One that just 'works' on all distros.
Maybe I wasn't clear. These things exist. Today. In use - now. Heck... Installsheild even has a Linux version. This is a non-issue.
Currently its up to each package builder to get these 'clickty' scripts to work right.
Sure. But that's the same on EVERY platform. Even Windows. As a side note, Windows does not have a single install application. While Installsheild is very common - it is not the only one.
Even some distros have their fun quirks to handle. Being quirky is the last thing you want to be if you want to win the minds of someone...
Every platform has quirks. Even the vaunted Windows.
Don't worry. Those people asking for money? Nothing to do with a mistaken identity and IPO announcement. They're just Nigerian scam artists. You would have gotten those anyway.
I was going to post asking if Gator and other adware were really still extremely common.
Very common.
At my work there is a childcare center. Their systems are always inundated with spyware. I happened to be facilitating a network migration for them so one day I found myself sitting in front of some of their workstations. I could hardly use the thing. Since I was stuck there anyway (and I needed a clean machine to make sure the migration was successfull), I blew a couple hours installing ad-aware and cleaning the things out. It was a real fight. The sad thing is that their funding doesn't allow for the same level of support enjoyed by the rest of the center.
They're not alone.
Whenever I'm digging through firewall or network traffic logs, I have to grep out all the spyware crap. It's all over our enterprise. And any time we mention this to user, they're shocked. They're more than glad to admit they installed some little app. They're clueless that it dialed home. And more than glad to whack the offending app in question once they understand what's going on.
Gator relies on the oblivious user. And the world is full of them. In spades.
This is the reason I have no problem in saying that the ease of use in Linux is absolutely the reason it isn't popular. People are cheap, and they love free anything, and they'll deal with a lot of headache to save money. A free Linux desktop that was easier to use than windows would be more popular than windows. But there isn't one.
Swing and a miss. You almost have it. Where you go right is noting that people will put up with headaches if there is sufficient reason. Windows didn't win out because it was cheaper and easier to use than MacOS. It won because it was the gateway to commodity hardware.
Don't get me wrong. An easier Linux desktop is a laudible goal. But it is not THE goal.
1. You won't win the desktop until you have a solid GUI platform where a completely encapsulated installer requires ONE COMMAND to begin the install process.
What you're talking about it clicky-clicky goodness. Enter your favorite desktop environment. Most modern distros have this handled for you. Clicky-clicky on your.rpm,.deb, etc. and it'll prompt you for your root password and install.
But what if you're a lazy publisher and don't want to deal with multiple packaging (despite the various methods that make this far less daunting than it would seem)? Take a cue from game houses. I've used stand-alone un/install apps that will install the app in question within/usr/local and create the appropriate entries in the user's desktop environment Programs menu (KDE/Gnome). And I've seen shell script installers that create an all-in-one install bundel. On execution (clicky-clicky compatible), it does a sanity check, decompresses the data, installs in/usr/local, and makes the appropriate menu entries.
This is a non-issue.
2. You won't win the desktop until you have POLISHED and COMPLETE business applications. QuickBooks, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and the like have absolutely no equal in Linux.
Welcome to IT's catch-22. Software publishers don't like the expense of supporting a platform unless that support produces sufficient profit. Yet it is hard for a platform to gain the numbers needed to generate sufficient profit without a wide range of software.
Linux has long faced this. But they're not alone. Ask any Mac user about software availablity.
I'm almost inclined to think this is a problem that Linux can not solve... will not solve. After all, if Apple can't shake this, how does RedHat? But then... there's IBM.
And then there's the unthinkable - first-run games available as native Linux versions from multiple publishers. It's interesting to see these guys make this effort. And I've been glad to seem them do it. Yes. There are Linux users who will buy proprietary software. But are there enough?
3. For the above to happen, there need to be standards in Linux. It's really that simple. Windows may be bad, but it's consistent. I can write an application that will work in Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP. Will a.deb work in yellowdog? Does emerge work in Fedora? Do you realize how few people can even comprehend why there's a difference, let alone what the differences are?
First - there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the range of Windows you've outlined. There is software that will work for one version of Windows but will fail to work for another in your list. Linux is no different. You can certainly write applications that will work on a wide range of Linux distributions. But there will be occasional issues.
Now - what exactly is meant by "a.deb in yellowdog"? Are we talking about taking a binary compiled for x86 and trying to run it on a PowerPC system? Or does it fol
You say this as if the grants do in fact expire. In practice, they don't.
Indeed. Earlier in the thread I noted:
Copyright is a grant by government to a work's creater. It gives them a (in theory) limited time to capitalize on their work though exclusive control over that work.
This was my nod towards the behavior you've outlined here. And I agree, the current practice seems to ignore this fundimental concept. None the less, the law is coded in this manner. It has a history of being enacted in this manner. And with work and some luck, we may see it return to its productive roots.
I'm not holding my breath.
There are also attorney's fees and court costs of raising a fair use defense to an allegation of copyright infringement. Most individual authors cannot afford a legal defense.
Indeed. Yet, this is the state of our law. Justice costs - the better you can fund your case, the better chance you have at justice (or at least your version thereof). But that's not the point.
The parent stated that the copyright holder can restrict a work in any manner they see fit. That is false - or at least, not how the law is coded.
Of course, Fair Use is very ambigious. It seems that this is intentional - it has much of the same feel as free speech. The unfortunate side to this is that fair use issues will end up costing someone a lot in court expenses if pressed. Expenses that are trivial only to those with deep pockets.
The ironic thing is that the RIAA, deep pockets and all, is one of the most agressive opponents to fair use. Yet they like to wrap themselves in free speech issues. It seems that public rights are only something to honor if a profit is involved.
The person that collected them has the right to restrict the use of that particular collection, but not other collections or the original work.
There has to be some specific points met for this to be true. The collection must show some creativity - most commonly expressed by the selection or organization of the works. Note that the individual works are still public domain and one is free to re-distribute any individual work even if it came from that copyrighted collection. The restriction of copyright in this case is solely on the collective work.
There are other examples where public domain works fall back under copyright. Let's go back to my previous example of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." I am free to distribute the origional story. I can not, however, distribute Disney's movie based on the story without appropriate permissions from Disney. Likewise, one is also restricted by copyright when it comes to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen even though the story is based on public domain characters - to include Capt. Nemo from 20,000 Leagues (an excellet example of public domain use, btw). Furthermore, I can do a re-treatment of 20,000 Leagues that involves a side-story about Bob the Squid. I hold the copyright to my variation of the story with Bob.
Nobody owns those because the copyrights have lapsed.
You missed a very important point - copyright does not signify ownership. One can own the copyright granted by one's government. That copyright allows for certain restrictions on the creative work. But the work itself is essentially on loan from the public domain and will return to it once the grant has expired.
After the copyrights lapse on all the music that Apple offers, then you can break the encryption and fuck with the songs all you want. Until that time, you have to play by the rules that Apple, the artists, and the labels agree upon if you want to use iTunes. It's that simple.
There are fair use clauses within copyright that allow for certain uses of creative works despite any restrictions placed by the copyright holders. Fair use is just as much a part of copyright law as portions that restrict use. The only question about fair use involves the fact that it is not very clearly defined. Any such definitions of what is or is not fair use has largely been determined by court actions.
It may be worth stressing that Fair Use is no carte blanche. It does not allow complete dismissal of a copyright holder's rights. But it may allow for some activities that, in different circumstances, are certainly copyright infringement. And it almost certainly allows for some activities that some copyright holders dislike. Such dislike for fair use is often expressed (sometimes erroneously) by content industry trade groups.
How do you figure? The music really belongs to the person who created it, regardless of copyrights or anything else.
Does Jules Verne own "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"? Do we have to negotiate payments with Mark Twain's estate to get a copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"? Who do we bestow ownership of Beowulf to?
The fact is, these works are in the Public Domain. Nobody owns them. Although, where possible, they are attributed to their authors.
You discard copyright rather quickly. However, the concept of owning a creative work (rather than the physical representation of that work, such as an actual book) come entirely from copyright. Copyright is a grant by government to a work's creater. It gives them a (in theory) limited time to capitalize on their work though exclusive control over that work. Eventually, this grant runs its course and the work enters the public domain.
There is no ownership of ideas.
Compare this to physical property. The origional manuscript for "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" could still be owned by Mark Twain past the length of his copyright on the work represented by that physical manuscript. Furthermore, that property could have been passed on to his estate or sold. The actual manuscript never becomes public property unless it is specificly sold or donated to a public library (government seizure aside).
Slashdot Mirror
Ever dance with the Devil by the pale moonlight?
See that little asterisk? It's an ascii-graphics representation of the word. That is, a ball. Kinda like "se7en".
For example, Penny Arcade's parody of American McGee and Strawberry Shortcake.
Und nhow it iz time on schlashdot vhen vhe daaaance....
Never did that. But did, on occasion, have a Cray running crack.
Nobody appreciated the quips about a crack-using Cray though.
Don't kid yourself. This didn't happen. Linux isn't popular enough for this kind of attack. Heck. Ignore all that infosec history too. Didn't happen. Not popular.
Dance, Monkeyboy... dance.
Or did you actually have some technical comment to make?
Are you sure? It would seem like Microsoft to just run some IE / ActiveX bit without making it look like it's IE. Not that it would make any difference, I guess.
Well cool. Where did you get it? Is it now a part of the standard tree?
:) At one point, I couldn't get a decent copy of screen. One will certainly find apps available in native Linux x86 that are not (yet?) available in environments like Cygwin.
On a side note - I still claim that my point stands.
Can you detach and reattach a session with it?
Yes, Cygwin is nice. But I've found it considerably slower than a native Linux box.
I occasionally have to mangle several gigs of text-based log files. I can toss together a nice script in my Cygwin environment. But when I want to run the real job... I better scp it over to one of the dev Linux boxes and run it there. Otherwise it will take weeks longer to run.
Maybe it's something in my config. I haven't spent much time looking in to it. But until I find out otherwise, I'm inclined to see Cygwin as a nice stopgap to my prefered environment when forced to deal with a Windows workstation.
It would be interesting to see if my scripts run faster in colinux.
How about screen? Sure. There's some patches somewhere. And I've found some talk about someone packaging it. Never got it working myself.
Yes - Cygwin has a nice collection of apps. But it isn't all-inclusive.
Are you telling me that everyone on the factory floor has internet access?
Wait. This isn't another dig at "offshoring" is it?
Isn't it about time to really assess whether it is absolutely necessary to provide every employee with their own telephone?
Restricting telephone calls to a single secretary (or secretarial pool) that only make and receive calls and forwarded messages on to the internal workforce seems like the absolute maximum telephone usage necessary for most businesses.
Surely employees don't have to make calls (especially personal) while at work?
You'd be interested in the Googlebar extension for mozilla / firefox then. It doesn't include blocking features since that's built in to the browser already. But it does provide all the nifty searching, highlighting, etc.
A fair enough point. You might want to go back and read over what happened during "Windows Refund Day". The value of an OEM license of Windows was rather hard to nail down.
Having said that - moot point. MacOS was also "free" with the computer too. Yet it became a niche even though Apple had been, by far, the leader in consumer microcomputers before IBM stepped in.
Maybe I wasn't clear. These things exist. Today. In use - now. Heck... Installsheild even has a Linux version. This is a non-issue.
Sure. But that's the same on EVERY platform. Even Windows. As a side note, Windows does not have a single install application. While Installsheild is very common - it is not the only one.
Every platform has quirks. Even the vaunted Windows.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Don't worry. Those people asking for money? Nothing to do with a mistaken identity and IPO announcement. They're just Nigerian scam artists. You would have gotten those anyway.
Very common.
At my work there is a childcare center. Their systems are always inundated with spyware. I happened to be facilitating a network migration for them so one day I found myself sitting in front of some of their workstations. I could hardly use the thing. Since I was stuck there anyway (and I needed a clean machine to make sure the migration was successfull), I blew a couple hours installing ad-aware and cleaning the things out. It was a real fight. The sad thing is that their funding doesn't allow for the same level of support enjoyed by the rest of the center.
They're not alone.
Whenever I'm digging through firewall or network traffic logs, I have to grep out all the spyware crap. It's all over our enterprise. And any time we mention this to user, they're shocked. They're more than glad to admit they installed some little app. They're clueless that it dialed home. And more than glad to whack the offending app in question once they understand what's going on.
Gator relies on the oblivious user. And the world is full of them. In spades.
Swing and a miss. You almost have it. Where you go right is noting that people will put up with headaches if there is sufficient reason. Windows didn't win out because it was cheaper and easier to use than MacOS. It won because it was the gateway to commodity hardware.
Don't get me wrong. An easier Linux desktop is a laudible goal. But it is not THE goal.
What you're talking about it clicky-clicky goodness. Enter your favorite desktop environment. Most modern distros have this handled for you. Clicky-clicky on your .rpm, .deb, etc. and it'll prompt you for your root password and install.
/usr/local and create the appropriate entries in the user's desktop environment Programs menu (KDE/Gnome). And I've seen shell script installers that create an all-in-one install bundel. On execution (clicky-clicky compatible), it does a sanity check, decompresses the data, installs in /usr/local, and makes the appropriate menu entries.
But what if you're a lazy publisher and don't want to deal with multiple packaging (despite the various methods that make this far less daunting than it would seem)? Take a cue from game houses. I've used stand-alone un/install apps that will install the app in question within
This is a non-issue.
Welcome to IT's catch-22. Software publishers don't like the expense of supporting a platform unless that support produces sufficient profit. Yet it is hard for a platform to gain the numbers needed to generate sufficient profit without a wide range of software.
Linux has long faced this. But they're not alone. Ask any Mac user about software availablity.
I'm almost inclined to think this is a problem that Linux can not solve... will not solve. After all, if Apple can't shake this, how does RedHat? But then... there's IBM.
And then there's the unthinkable - first-run games available as native Linux versions from multiple publishers. It's interesting to see these guys make this effort. And I've been glad to seem them do it. Yes. There are Linux users who will buy proprietary software. But are there enough?
First - there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences in the range of Windows you've outlined. There is software that will work for one version of Windows but will fail to work for another in your list. Linux is no different. You can certainly write applications that will work on a wide range of Linux distributions. But there will be occasional issues.
.deb in yellowdog"? Are we talking about taking a binary compiled for x86 and trying to run it on a PowerPC system? Or does it fol
Now - what exactly is meant by "a
Indeed. Earlier in the thread I noted:
This was my nod towards the behavior you've outlined here. And I agree, the current practice seems to ignore this fundimental concept. None the less, the law is coded in this manner. It has a history of being enacted in this manner. And with work and some luck, we may see it return to its productive roots.
I'm not holding my breath.
Indeed. Yet, this is the state of our law. Justice costs - the better you can fund your case, the better chance you have at justice (or at least your version thereof). But that's not the point.
The parent stated that the copyright holder can restrict a work in any manner they see fit. That is false - or at least, not how the law is coded.
Of course, Fair Use is very ambigious. It seems that this is intentional - it has much of the same feel as free speech. The unfortunate side to this is that fair use issues will end up costing someone a lot in court expenses if pressed. Expenses that are trivial only to those with deep pockets.
The ironic thing is that the RIAA, deep pockets and all, is one of the most agressive opponents to fair use. Yet they like to wrap themselves in free speech issues. It seems that public rights are only something to honor if a profit is involved.
In short, I agree. Even if it wasn't the point.
There has to be some specific points met for this to be true. The collection must show some creativity - most commonly expressed by the selection or organization of the works. Note that the individual works are still public domain and one is free to re-distribute any individual work even if it came from that copyrighted collection. The restriction of copyright in this case is solely on the collective work.
There are other examples where public domain works fall back under copyright. Let's go back to my previous example of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." I am free to distribute the origional story. I can not, however, distribute Disney's movie based on the story without appropriate permissions from Disney. Likewise, one is also restricted by copyright when it comes to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen even though the story is based on public domain characters - to include Capt. Nemo from 20,000 Leagues (an excellet example of public domain use, btw). Furthermore, I can do a re-treatment of 20,000 Leagues that involves a side-story about Bob the Squid. I hold the copyright to my variation of the story with Bob.
You missed a very important point - copyright does not signify ownership. One can own the copyright granted by one's government. That copyright allows for certain restrictions on the creative work. But the work itself is essentially on loan from the public domain and will return to it once the grant has expired.
There are fair use clauses within copyright that allow for certain uses of creative works despite any restrictions placed by the copyright holders. Fair use is just as much a part of copyright law as portions that restrict use. The only question about fair use involves the fact that it is not very clearly defined. Any such definitions of what is or is not fair use has largely been determined by court actions.
It may be worth stressing that Fair Use is no carte blanche. It does not allow complete dismissal of a copyright holder's rights. But it may allow for some activities that, in different circumstances, are certainly copyright infringement. And it almost certainly allows for some activities that some copyright holders dislike. Such dislike for fair use is often expressed (sometimes erroneously) by content industry trade groups.
It is not that simple.
Does Jules Verne own "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"? Do we have to negotiate payments with Mark Twain's estate to get a copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"? Who do we bestow ownership of Beowulf to?
The fact is, these works are in the Public Domain. Nobody owns them. Although, where possible, they are attributed to their authors.
You discard copyright rather quickly. However, the concept of owning a creative work (rather than the physical representation of that work, such as an actual book) come entirely from copyright. Copyright is a grant by government to a work's creater. It gives them a (in theory) limited time to capitalize on their work though exclusive control over that work. Eventually, this grant runs its course and the work enters the public domain.
There is no ownership of ideas.
Compare this to physical property. The origional manuscript for "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" could still be owned by Mark Twain past the length of his copyright on the work represented by that physical manuscript. Furthermore, that property could have been passed on to his estate or sold. The actual manuscript never becomes public property unless it is specificly sold or donated to a public library (government seizure aside).