The real reason you won't see the same kind of wide-spread vulnerabilities in Linux is due to a more technical and security-minded user, NOT superior package management and automatic update systems.
I agree, but you missed my point. Microsoft has a mechanism for patching Windows, but not all those third party applications. I'm not sure if it can even patch software like Word. In the Linux world, all of your software gets to you through your OS supplier, which is a big differenc.
Can you actually write a shell script that takes control of the system?
I see what your saying, but the way package management is going, pretty soon Linux setups will just download security updates on their own, meaning that findning a binary to exploit will get really difficult. In the Windows world, if you find a buffer overrun, you can often assume that 95% of the Windows machines out there will also have the same exploit. In Linux, this wouldn't be the case even with many more users, as package management really takes care of things automatically.
Therefore, I believe that by quantifying the vulnerabilities and response time, Forrester is on the right track, they just need to take into consideration this response, and find a better method of quantifying the data.
I like Debian's idea of stable, testing, and unstable, but it seems like even unstable is too tough to push updates in. Debian perhaps needs to be more lax about what gets into unstable, and more rigid about stable and testing.
Oh but it has. I meant originally that a big idea behind capitalism is that people's greed keeps the greed of others in check, which is exactly as valid as the idea of the grandparent, that people's greed is an unmitigated disaster with capitalism.
Here it goes, though. Take Novell and IBM. SCO's actions have hurt much of their business interests, and Novell and IBM have both come out supporting Linux, because they make money off of it. Linux has many corporate friends, because many corporations save a lot of money by using it. This isn't directly keeping SCO in check, as they are still in court, but it definately keeps the Anti-Linux FUD in check. Competition keeps greed in check; I'm sure if Ford were the only company making cars, prices would look a lot different.
I was specifically referring to cases where a company purchasing goods or services from another company wants the lowest price possible, to keep the other company's desire to charge the highest price possible in check. If you don't think this happens in every singe corporation out there, then I think your time would be better spent campaigning for bigger government, higher corporate taxes, and collective ownership of property while you're at it.
Actually, except for a few cases like Microsoft, AT&T, Standard Oil, etc., every company exsting in a more or less free economy is evidence at my disposal here. If I were selling you tomatoes, and you weren't motivated by greed, why not charge you own for a basket of them?
Expressing one's self accuratly online can be quite challenging at times.
I agree. It doesn't help when you have people like me running around trying to be "right" all the time and picking on subpoints when we ever agree with the person we're on the other hand arguing with. I'll accept half the blame here too.
I think we actually agree when it comes to Debian, and that's the only part that actually matters.
Well, the parent could have said exactly that then. But he/she didn't, and I didn't read it that way.
True.
Huh? Are you suggesting that abandoning reason will somehow make one *more* logical? Not having a faith cannot make one "less open minded". This is getting quite off topic at any rate.
Loaded question. Am I abandoning reason? Strictly speaking, belief in anything is only an abandonment of reason when the belief is in direct disagreement with accepable truths that we commonly perceive. Not all religions fall under that category (in fact, none of the particularly popular ones do. Mormonism and Scientology are good exceptions).
Well, the point of this thread is not to debate whether the major religions use brainwashing, so I didn't elaborate. But it's not from a lack of evidence I assure you.
I agree, that isn't the point of the thread. Even if you were to establish that all religions engage in brainwashing, brainwashing would not be relevant to Debian. However, I still maintain that since the link wasn't relevant, you were pushing your own ideology.
HUH?!?! I'm not trying to push an agenda on people, I'm only complaining about others trying to push theirs on the world. This is the whole point! I don't want to be harassed about someone's pernsonal version of morality. I want a functional system. Hence debian would do far better without the attitude. Thanks for proving my point.
You were trying to push an agenda on people. You claimed that major religions used brainwashing. Of course, that isn't relevant to Debian, but I just thought it odd that you were so up in arms about Debian pushing an agenda while you pushed your own.
I agree about Debian whole-heartedly--software isn't a religion, and the stance on freedom of the end user is unimportant.
Only on the most superficial level. At the most basic level, one person taking more than his share will result in another giving more than his share.
With capitalism, greed keeps everyone in check. The grandparent claimed that capitalism would get better because investors would start realizing that putting money in companies like SCO, and also companies with monopolies, ends up screwing the investors over.
You can argue that by the time investors can respond to such companies, "it" is too late, but the grand parent already considered your point in his post. The problem here I think is people's kneejerk reactions.
Wow, I think this thread, and more specifically the parent post, illustrates beautifully why in nearly twelve years of Linux use, I have never found Debian palatable.
Whoa there--I didn't mean to say that Debian was right here, just that I really didn't agree with the parent to which I was responding. I don't even use Debian, and I'm trying hard not to come off as seeming "bigoted" here.
The point of my post was that criticisms of Debian often resort to an analogy between the strict doctrines of "free software" enforced and propogated by the developers of Debian and the many religions of the world. Often times Debian developers feel frustrated that the world just doesn't "get it" when it comes to software freedom and need to spread their values to everyone else in order to preserve it. I'll admit, there is some validity there.
The parent to which I was responding basically implied that since religions are stupid because followers dogmatically embrace nonsense, presumably to be controlled by the leaders of their particular following (that is what is meant by the term "brainwashing"), Debian must commit the same injustice, simply because it resembles a "religion."
Not only is this a logical fallacy, but it is purposefully grafting the parent's world view onto the situation in order to thrust his feelings into the limelight.
I agree, Debian developers get a bit anal about their "freedom" sometimes. I don't see the right to modify software as intrinsic by any stretch of the imagination, so it doesn't seem to follow that software has a moral responsibility to be free.
That being said, I like the benefits that FOSS offers, and I choose it over proprietary consistently, because I enjoy the OSS software world more.
Again, in debating Debian philosophy, we will invariably end up discussing our own--my big beef with the original parent is that he basically just called religion stupid, made a link between Debian developers and religious "quacks," and felt like his work was done.
I personally have never successfully installed Debian. dselect always got me, and I'm not a real "newb" to Linux. This weekend I might try rebuilding my system using dpkg and see what I come up with.
Still, why does this not happen more often, then? It seems like the users are just sitting around waiting for things to be done for them. Granted, updating packages isn't something you can expect end users to do, but I hear a lot of so-called "experts" complain about how software is old in Debian.
I'm about to try rebuilding Crux with a cvs glibc and binutils with NTPL instead of linuxthreads. I suppose I could do the same with debian, just install dpkg in my temporary build environment and figure out how to use dpkg-buildpackage.
What would be cool is to have apt optionally point to source repositories. I don't know much about Debian, but having had to figure out how to package for a number of different systems, it's all pretty much the same.
If you could point to source repositories, daring end users could download the source packages when they hit a new version, bump up the number, see if it works untweaked, fix it if not, and send the info back to the maintainer.
There are 3 types of users for a distro--developers and maintainers, power users, and end users. Debian makes a big mistake (IMO) by not letting power users handle part of the workload of package update. OSS is all about outsourcing labor, IMO:)
I've learned how to build packages for many different systems. RedHat is pretty tough, Crux and Arch are easy. I don't know about Gentoo, but I'd imagine it'd be a bit tougher than Crux (given that there is significantly more power there).
In Gentoo, you encounter things like USE flags when you simply use it enough, so you basically get most of the training for writing packages while using it.
Debian and Gentoo both have a history of really zealous users that like to tell the whole world how great their distribution is--I'm starting to mind this less and less. The package systems for both are really cool.
Then why are the BSDs in an open and useful state? You have the typical myopia associated with religion, or since people like to point out no god is invovled here, cult.
I don't think the parent wasn't arguing that the FOSS movement wouldn't be possible without GPL defenders, just that if people now didn't defend the GPL, it would get trampled on.
About the myopia, that's not a statement of fact--it's just a feeling that you get when you think of "religion." Somehow, people of all sorts of faith are thought of as being less "logical" than those without faith, and then it becomes assumed that those who do not believe an anything unscientific are a bit more "open minded" and able to see the world with a bit more pragmatism and reason. If you give it more than a passing thought, you'll see how myopic that line of thinking truly is.
If they stay in their church on preach only to the brainwashed, no.
By publicly calling the people inside the {church,mosque,synagogue,*} brainwashed, and therein implying that life outside is somehow free of this brainwashing, you've pushed your own views equally dogmatically, with even less to back yourself up than the {bible,torah,koran,*}-thumpers.
Our views on the matter are irrelevant here; I'm simply pointing out that you're using someone else's discussion as a springboard for a thoughtless "jab" of your own.
No one is telling governments to "follow" any religion, but since we all have equal say in the government, anyone citizen with his own idea of how the government should be run has the ability to make change as he and like-minded others see fit, insofar as said change is ruled as constitutional by the Supreme Court.
Instead of whining on Slashdot, I suggest that you get together a group of people and go "door to door" and show people your own point of view--it's equally as valid.
Today I got support for my cable modem from Time Warner of all people. Without knowing what was actually wrong, they replaced the cable modem, it worked, then took off without charging me a dime.
Coablecos are not all the same. Even a multi-national sub-conglomerate greedy-pigheaded company might be nice to deal with every once in a while.
Repeat after me: Privately owned websites do not have to uphold the freedom of speech--only the government.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How could that possibly mean that Slashdot has to let you say whatever you want?
Slashdot will never bother posting a story about goatse, because they don't give a rat's ass about freedom of speech. All they care about is getting people to read the site and click on the banners, and goatse hurts that. No April fools joke, just the truth.
Perhaps. Perhaps goatse is a lame site featuring a man prying his...
We're supposed to turn off our critical thinking caps and turn on the groupthink here.
Seriously, though, I really hope people don't try to pawn this study off as scientific amongst friends or family members. What a lame excuse to support a baseless position.
Calling Austin a cheap place to live just shows how liberal-biased the article is. Compare Austin to anywhere else in Texas and you'll see that Austin is like twice the cost of anywhere else.
Of course, it doesn't stack up to Massachusetts or Conneticut, where labor unions drive up the price of Ice Cream to 5 or 6 dollars a scoop. Yeah, I guess we don't have it that bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, but you missed my point. Microsoft has a mechanism for patching Windows, but not all those third party applications. I'm not sure if it can even patch software like Word. In the Linux world, all of your software gets to you through your OS supplier, which is a big differenc.
I see what your saying, but the way package management is going, pretty soon Linux setups will just download security updates on their own, meaning that findning a binary to exploit will get really difficult. In the Windows world, if you find a buffer overrun, you can often assume that 95% of the Windows machines out there will also have the same exploit. In Linux, this wouldn't be the case even with many more users, as package management really takes care of things automatically.
Therefore, I believe that by quantifying the vulnerabilities and response time, Forrester is on the right track, they just need to take into consideration this response, and find a better method of quantifying the data.
I agree.
I like Debian's idea of stable, testing, and unstable, but it seems like even unstable is too tough to push updates in. Debian perhaps needs to be more lax about what gets into unstable, and more rigid about stable and testing.
Given that it's metric, conversion shouldn't be a problem.
You mean kilolitres to kilometres.
And it seems the wolves are none too pleased about it.
Oh but it has. I meant originally that a big idea behind capitalism is that people's greed keeps the greed of others in check, which is exactly as valid as the idea of the grandparent, that people's greed is an unmitigated disaster with capitalism.
Here it goes, though. Take Novell and IBM. SCO's actions have hurt much of their business interests, and Novell and IBM have both come out supporting Linux, because they make money off of it. Linux has many corporate friends, because many corporations save a lot of money by using it. This isn't directly keeping SCO in check, as they are still in court, but it definately keeps the Anti-Linux FUD in check. Competition keeps greed in check; I'm sure if Ford were the only company making cars, prices would look a lot different.
I was specifically referring to cases where a company purchasing goods or services from another company wants the lowest price possible, to keep the other company's desire to charge the highest price possible in check. If you don't think this happens in every singe corporation out there, then I think your time would be better spent campaigning for bigger government, higher corporate taxes, and collective ownership of property while you're at it.
Actually, except for a few cases like Microsoft, AT&T, Standard Oil, etc., every company exsting in a more or less free economy is evidence at my disposal here. If I were selling you tomatoes, and you weren't motivated by greed, why not charge you own for a basket of them?
I agree. It doesn't help when you have people like me running around trying to be "right" all the time and picking on subpoints when we ever agree with the person we're on the other hand arguing with. I'll accept half the blame here too.
I think we actually agree when it comes to Debian, and that's the only part that actually matters.
Well, the parent could have said exactly that then. But he/she didn't, and I didn't read it that way.
True.
Huh? Are you suggesting that abandoning reason will somehow make one *more* logical? Not having a faith cannot make one "less open minded". This is getting quite off topic at any rate.
Loaded question. Am I abandoning reason? Strictly speaking, belief in anything is only an abandonment of reason when the belief is in direct disagreement with accepable truths that we commonly perceive. Not all religions fall under that category (in fact, none of the particularly popular ones do. Mormonism and Scientology are good exceptions).
Well, the point of this thread is not to debate whether the major religions use brainwashing, so I didn't elaborate. But it's not from a lack of evidence I assure you.
I agree, that isn't the point of the thread. Even if you were to establish that all religions engage in brainwashing, brainwashing would not be relevant to Debian. However, I still maintain that since the link wasn't relevant, you were pushing your own ideology.
HUH?!?! I'm not trying to push an agenda on people, I'm only complaining about others trying to push theirs on the world. This is the whole point! I don't want to be harassed about someone's pernsonal version of morality. I want a functional system. Hence debian would do far better without the attitude. Thanks for proving my point.
You were trying to push an agenda on people. You claimed that major religions used brainwashing. Of course, that isn't relevant to Debian, but I just thought it odd that you were so up in arms about Debian pushing an agenda while you pushed your own.
I agree about Debian whole-heartedly--software isn't a religion, and the stance on freedom of the end user is unimportant.
With capitalism, greed keeps everyone in check. The grandparent claimed that capitalism would get better because investors would start realizing that putting money in companies like SCO, and also companies with monopolies, ends up screwing the investors over.
You can argue that by the time investors can respond to such companies, "it" is too late, but the grand parent already considered your point in his post. The problem here I think is people's kneejerk reactions.
Wow, I think this thread, and more specifically the parent post, illustrates beautifully why in nearly twelve years of Linux use, I have never found Debian palatable.
Whoa there--I didn't mean to say that Debian was right here, just that I really didn't agree with the parent to which I was responding. I don't even use Debian, and I'm trying hard not to come off as seeming "bigoted" here.
The point of my post was that criticisms of Debian often resort to an analogy between the strict doctrines of "free software" enforced and propogated by the developers of Debian and the many religions of the world. Often times Debian developers feel frustrated that the world just doesn't "get it" when it comes to software freedom and need to spread their values to everyone else in order to preserve it. I'll admit, there is some validity there.
The parent to which I was responding basically implied that since religions are stupid because followers dogmatically embrace nonsense, presumably to be controlled by the leaders of their particular following (that is what is meant by the term "brainwashing"), Debian must commit the same injustice, simply because it resembles a "religion."
Not only is this a logical fallacy, but it is purposefully grafting the parent's world view onto the situation in order to thrust his feelings into the limelight.
I agree, Debian developers get a bit anal about their "freedom" sometimes. I don't see the right to modify software as intrinsic by any stretch of the imagination, so it doesn't seem to follow that software has a moral responsibility to be free.
That being said, I like the benefits that FOSS offers, and I choose it over proprietary consistently, because I enjoy the OSS software world more.
Again, in debating Debian philosophy, we will invariably end up discussing our own--my big beef with the original parent is that he basically just called religion stupid, made a link between Debian developers and religious "quacks," and felt like his work was done.
I personally have never successfully installed Debian. dselect always got me, and I'm not a real "newb" to Linux. This weekend I might try rebuilding my system using dpkg and see what I come up with.
Will you be furnishing more examples?
For what?
Then it seems that Debian has more of a problem with this than other distributions.
Still, why does this not happen more often, then? It seems like the users are just sitting around waiting for things to be done for them. Granted, updating packages isn't something you can expect end users to do, but I hear a lot of so-called "experts" complain about how software is old in Debian.
I'm about to try rebuilding Crux with a cvs glibc and binutils with NTPL instead of linuxthreads. I suppose I could do the same with debian, just install dpkg in my temporary build environment and figure out how to use dpkg-buildpackage.
If you could point to source repositories, daring end users could download the source packages when they hit a new version, bump up the number, see if it works untweaked, fix it if not, and send the info back to the maintainer.
There are 3 types of users for a distro--developers and maintainers, power users, and end users. Debian makes a big mistake (IMO) by not letting power users handle part of the workload of package update. OSS is all about outsourcing labor, IMO :)
In Gentoo, you encounter things like USE flags when you simply use it enough, so you basically get most of the training for writing packages while using it.
Debian and Gentoo both have a history of really zealous users that like to tell the whole world how great their distribution is--I'm starting to mind this less and less. The package systems for both are really cool.
Perhaps it's time for a new .sig?
Then why are the BSDs in an open and useful state? You have the typical myopia associated with religion, or since people like to point out no god is invovled here, cult.
I don't think the parent wasn't arguing that the FOSS movement wouldn't be possible without GPL defenders, just that if people now didn't defend the GPL, it would get trampled on.
About the myopia, that's not a statement of fact--it's just a feeling that you get when you think of "religion." Somehow, people of all sorts of faith are thought of as being less "logical" than those without faith, and then it becomes assumed that those who do not believe an anything unscientific are a bit more "open minded" and able to see the world with a bit more pragmatism and reason. If you give it more than a passing thought, you'll see how myopic that line of thinking truly is. If they stay in their church on preach only to the brainwashed, no.
By publicly calling the people inside the {church,mosque,synagogue,*} brainwashed, and therein implying that life outside is somehow free of this brainwashing, you've pushed your own views equally dogmatically, with even less to back yourself up than the {bible,torah,koran,*}-thumpers.
Our views on the matter are irrelevant here; I'm simply pointing out that you're using someone else's discussion as a springboard for a thoughtless "jab" of your own.
No one is telling governments to "follow" any religion, but since we all have equal say in the government, anyone citizen with his own idea of how the government should be run has the ability to make change as he and like-minded others see fit, insofar as said change is ruled as constitutional by the Supreme Court.
Instead of whining on Slashdot, I suggest that you get together a group of people and go "door to door" and show people your own point of view--it's equally as valid.
Coablecos are not all the same. Even a multi-national sub-conglomerate greedy-pigheaded company might be nice to deal with every once in a while.
They must really want me to watch American Idol. They'll get no such pleasure out of me.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
How could that possibly mean that Slashdot has to let you say whatever you want?
Perhaps. Perhaps goatse is a lame site featuring a man prying his ...
Get my drift?
Pun absolutely intended.
In other words, you're wasting your time cutting someone else down AC-style. In the best Slashdot tradition.
Thousands of pigeons running around from place to place is Quake 3...
I was only kidding. I haven't been to MA. I do know that stuff is pretty expensive in Conneticut, but I was only half serious.
Diablo 2 has been out for years and they still haven't balanced it. Don't believe me? Just try and play through the game with an Assassin.
We're supposed to turn off our critical thinking caps and turn on the groupthink here.
Seriously, though, I really hope people don't try to pawn this study off as scientific amongst friends or family members. What a lame excuse to support a baseless position.
Calling Austin a cheap place to live just shows how liberal-biased the article is. Compare Austin to anywhere else in Texas and you'll see that Austin is like twice the cost of anywhere else.
Of course, it doesn't stack up to Massachusetts or Conneticut, where labor unions drive up the price of Ice Cream to 5 or 6 dollars a scoop. Yeah, I guess we don't have it that bad.