I am not sure about the other distributions, but as of SuSE 7.2, they do this out of the box. The support was improved in 7.3.
Note that this filesystem based encryption, not user based. I.e. you must enter a password to mount the filesystem, but after that it acts as a normal filesystem (but slower due to the aforementioned encryption).
The way that SuSE do it is to have an encrypted block device, so that you can throw anything you want on top of it. Typically this would be a filesytem;-)
From the SuSE webpage:
*
A highlight of SuSE Linux security technology: the so-called "crypto file system". Secret or sensitive data is encrypted on your own PC. This method is so safe that even if your notebook ist stolen, nobody, absolutely nobody (!) has even the slightest chance of decrypting your data. In addition, the crypto file system is so smart that the thief will not even notice that encrypted data exists.
Hmm. This does sound rather unfortunate, but you might want to try using a bzImage boot image instead... sometimes they work better, sometimes they don't:-)
make bzImage
does the magic. If that fails, then try as Cliff suggested to make a few more things modules.
It has all of the facilities to do "access from anywhere" computing, except to do that, you have to store your private key on the server (or at least be able to get access to it from anywhere).
If the private key is on the server, then the system is potentially compromisable, and it would appear to lose the it's main selling point.
OK, fine, then don't store your private key on the server. But that means that you are restricted as to where you view the data from, or you must have some means of transporting the private key. But if you are going to restrict yourself to this, then why not just store the secure data on this secure machine? So that appears to be another class of people eliminated...
OK, so then, who is left. I can see how people would like to use this as an anomyous service, but to do that, you have to leave the private keys on the server, otherwise they can pin the account to you. But, this seems inherently dangerous, since one can sniff the password from the server, decrypt your private key, and use/abus your account.
So again I ask, what are the target demographics here? As far as I can tell it is not the security conscious, and it is not the truly paranoid. So who?
But other critics said Google bears its share of the blame.
"We have a problem, and that is that people don't design software to behave itself," said Gary McGraw, chief technology officer of software risk-management company Cigital, and author of a new book on writing secure software.
"The guys at Google thought, 'How cool that we can offer this to our users' without thinking about security. If you want to do this right, you have to think about security from the beginning and have a very solid approach to software design and software development that is based on what bad guys might possibly do to cause your program grief."
Am I the only one scared by this? The problem is googles, simply because they follow links? I find it hard to believe this stuff sometimes!
<rant>When will people learn that criminals don't behave? That is what makes them criminals!</rant>
As our second year uni project we were required to write a web index bot. Guess what? It didn't "behave". It would search through a robots.txt roadblock. It would find whatever their was there to find. This stuff is so far from being rocket science it is ridiculous!
Sure, using Google might ease a tiny fraction of the bad guys work, but if Google wasn't there, the bad guys tools would be. In fact, they still are there.
Saying that you have to write your client software to work around server/administrator flaws is like putting a "do not enter" sign on a tent. Sure, it will stop some people, but the others will just come in anyway, probably even more so just to find out what you are hiding.
Well, this was posted for 2.4.15, but it is also relevant for 2.4.16:
While we are talking about incompatible kernel patches, please be aware that ALSA 0.5.12 does not work under 2.4.15. You need to get the CVS version, as described
here . ALSA 0.5.12 compiles, but does not work.
I mean, great, now they are available. But will anyone actually use them? Except in the "humourous" ways evidenced here on Slashdot?
I can imagine that some large companies will get the domain, simply to "collect the whole set", but do you seriously imagine that you will start to see adds for www.ibm.us on the billboards? I just simply don't see it happening.
Although i would like to see who ends up with trust.us;-)
Actually, it only appears to work great. The great conumdrum, is something broken if it appears to work? Read up more here. I.e. It does have the same problem, it is just masked....
For good details on what broke ALSA 0.5.12, see here.
Linux-community dumbfound us by their answer to our "technical" release of WarpVision 0.0.12. WarpVision is a GPL software and we're not hide that WarpVision contains now some of other GPL projects. Okay, wait for official press-release for this situation.
Who knows the truth? I don't, but if they did "borrow" the code, at least they 'fessed up pretty quick. Perhaps we should of asked first what was happening?
While we are talking about incompatible kernel patches, please be aware that ALSA 0.5.12 does not work under 2.4.15. You need to get the CVS version, as described here. ALSA 0.5.12 compiles, but does not work.
Re:SuSE RPM's
on
KDE 2.2.2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Appologies for the confusion, it turns out that while it has been two sleeps, it has only been one day since I installed them.
I do not know exactly when the packages turned up, but I installed them Wed Nov 21 00:59:53 CET 2001.
My best guess on the SuSE packages is that they arrived on the 21st, i.e. the same day that KDE announced it, but, one day before slashdot announced it.
Mind you, on a related note. Know how I discovered that XFree4.2.0 has been frozen? Because 4.2.0 drivers for my ATI card have been released. Now, I just need to wait for 4.2.0...:-)
Or check to see if you have perl-o-tine installed. From the image, right click, filters/web/perl-o-tine... It is included in my SuSE install of gimp 1.2.2, bymmv. Perl-o-tine will split an image into a set of squares for you, I don't really know how to use guides, so at the moment I can only create nxn grids, however, each box can be of an arbitrary size. Doesn't really help with rollovers though.
The rollover plugin may help more here, but I have never used it, so don't know how it works.
Over here, 64kbps shared between 10 users is considered broadband. The isps simply don't offer anything better than that over dial up connections. Believe it or not, we plan to have 6 users per 64kbps. At $1000/month for 64 kilobits per second, you can see why sharing such limited bandwidth is common. We will start with serving an area within 10 miles of our server.
OK, the problem as I see it as follows, you claim to be giving better than local broadband conditions. This is good. But you will have to charge at least $167/month, just for the bandwidth. In most places with an unstable currency this would be considered expensive. Then add in the fat that you have to make some profit, and you are looking at least $200/month. I would not buy real broadband for that money!
So unless you have a high local concentration of rich people, all within line of sight of your offices, then this would appear to be a business plan to fail.
If you have done the homework and believe that I am wrong, then I wish you all the best in your venture.
If anyone can answer any of these questions I'll buy them a beer! the article is decidely fluffy on these details, and a quick google search turned up nothing of value...
1) How does it achieve backwards compatability?
1a) If you throw an 802.11b into an 802.11g network, what impact does it have on performance? i.e. does the 11b drag the network down?
1b) How are broadcast packets sent? (11b or 11g standard?)
2) Is 802.11g more or less resisant to "hostile RF". that 2.4Ghz spectrum is crowded, does 802.11g improve resiliance to interference?
3) How is the range of 802.11g? I understand that the range of 802.11a (the other high speed wireless at 5Ghz) has a much shorter range due largely to the fact that it is at 5Ghz. Does 11g retain the strength of 11b here?
4) What is the security protocol? We all know that WEP in 11b is broken....
The reality is that the differences are really minor, and, now that RSA is legal, openssh can be setup to act almost exactly the same as closedssh.
The only signicant difference between them for most peole is the price.
There used to be a fair bit of difference, but at least for unix, this is no longer true. Since 2.5 openssh has supported sftp. Since 3.0 it supports rekeying a session. With external PAM modules you can support smart cards and securid logins.
The one advantage that ssh has over openssh is that this is all integrated into one package. The smartcard support is built in, you don't have to go looking for support.
If you are not planning on using smartcards or tokens, then openssh wins based on price alone. You can get it pre-compiled for most platforms, so the compilation is not so much the issue. Otherwise you have to weigh the choices a little more carefully. Check to see if your required token/card is supported by both. If not, then it is likely to be easier to add support into openssh, having the source and all.
In terms of windows clients...that is one big differentiator. Again, mostly money! We use tera-term and that works quite well, but does not do ssh V2 protocols.
In either case, you are buying a big whack of security, but don't forget, passwords can be extremely weak! Don't let up on the other security policies just because you now have SSH. (And yes, I know that the poster is not responsible for this, this is just a general admonition:-)
Second, why is everyone here so upset? Oh, hang on. This affects, um who was it? Oh thats right, the Americans. We really shouldn't upset them should we? Most of the comments that I have seen modded up so far basically say one of the following things:
Alan is chickenshit for not wishing to put himself at risk of prosecution. If it was me, I would go to jail, that way I wouldn't piss off the Americans!
Those damn British! They are sooooo jealous that we are more powerful than them now. Why don't they move past the jealousy and just give use the changelogs!
this is at least half reasonable They don't really want to prosecute "reasonable" people. They are just after the ones that piss off big business. What's wrong with that? Just give us our changelogs!
Well, sadly:
This is not a law that you can just ignore. It will not just go away. It is not clear exactly who can be prosecuted, or for what.
The only way that laws go away is for someone, or some large group, to say "this is stupid". Lets change it. Whinging about a missing changelog does not do that. Raising awareness may or may not do that, but it can't really hurt.
Hands up all of the americans who have written their senator, state and federal. Hands up to all of those who have given financial, or other, support to movements who are trying to repeal the DMCA. Hands up all those who would just rather whinge when that law inconveniences them. Hmm. Thought so, on that last question the number of hands went up by 10.
If you are really so cut up about it, figure out what has changed (it isn't really that hard, it has been talked about in the previous article) and post it yourself. Then to prove to Alan what a fool he is, walk down to the DA's office and get a written statement saying that they will not prosecute you for releasing that information. Make entirely clear to them that you have released information that could help people circumvent rights management, and get the DA to sign saying that they would not prosecute you for releasing this information.
Personally, I don't think that this will happen, since most people would rather make Alan the bad guy over taking any personal risk. I dare you to prove me wrong.
At the risk of stating the obvious....
on
C# To Crush Java?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We all know that Microsoft make great marketing solutions. Sometimes, these are even really great products. But the key point here is, as Cringley said, microsoft will market C# better than Sun did Java. And because it is marketed better it will get mindshare. And once it gets mindshare, it will get marketshare. One step at a time...
However, C# is still windows centric. To a lot of people this means diddly squat. If it allows you to work more easily to your target platform, then people will use it. Witness the success of Visual Basic as proof. And that thing is a cow if you ever have to maintain the "code" that gets produced with it.
This is not all bad news however. Despite the success of VB, there is still a "niche" market for C programmers. Just as there will be for Java programmers. And the split will go roughly the same way I think. On non-microsoft and server platforms Java will continue to be used. On the "frontend" microsoft boxes then C# will become the new Visual Basic...
And sure, we "profressionals" will deride these "sellouts", and pretend that we are somehow superiour. But in reality, it is just people using the most appropiate tools for the job at hand.
While it is nice to be ultra configurable that leads to two seperate problems:
1) Code maintainability
2) User maintainability
1) Is a serious problem. If you have to test the impacts on two different VM systems, and fully understand the impact that any change will have is a mammoth task.
2) Users are not all technically literate anymore. Look at the recent slashdot story on microsoft losing there grip in Asia...
This story implies that America doens't even have the superjumbo bit sewed up. Yes it is an old story, but basically, air bus made the superjumbo, while Boeing concentrated on longer range versions of their current fleets. Do the old google search on superjumbo and boeing....
As to supersonic, the concorde suffers greatly from being supersonic. Sure, it is wicked fast, but since it is so small (aerodynamics at those high speeds just suck) you don't really get that much room to yourself...but you do get very personalised service. Kindof ultra first class:-)
As to whether supersonic flight is worth it. For me? Hell yes! To get back home (Australia) I have to fly for about 20 hours, I would love to cut that in half at an affordable price...
Plus, think of all the smokers that would pay extra for shorter flights....:-)
This is actually good news, this is not another incompatible calendar solution, but rather another calendar solution based on the ical formats. This means that palm synchronisation will work off the bat. It means that you are not tied into using only (Mo|Pen)zilla. The ical format appears to me to be reasonably well thought out, and has all of the functionality that I am used to.
Re:SuSE has done this for a while...
on
Debian On DVD
·
· Score: 1
Well, call me a SuSE fanboy too....
However, I only ever use the DVD (a friend and I have a distribtuion sharing arrangement, we get each release, but share the medias) and so I find myself installing over the network a lot.... With SuSE this is dead simple, you even get a choice of FTP/NFS/SMB. That's right, you can use your windows machine as the install media holder...
I imagine that with Debian this would be fairly easy as well....perhaps not with as many options.
Now, if you have a lot of machines in disparate locations, well that's another matter:-)
At HAL earlier this year Hugh Daniels said pretty much the same thing. For those who don't know, hugh Daniel is the guy who heads up the FreeS/WAN project. Anyway, his basic take on the situation is that error handling is what is placed in that last 10% of the famous 90/10 split.
You know, getting it to work roughly is 90% of the job, and can be done in 50% of the time. Getting it to work properly all of the time is the last 10% and that takes the last 50%.
The problem as I see it is that all too often open source software is created to "scratch an itch". When used "according to the instructions", or as the original author used it, it will normally work OK. It is only once you get into the realms of unorthodox usage that it causes problems.
Hmm. Sounds like microsoft!;-)
Anyway, it is not endemic to either open or closed source, but it is endemic to under resourced projects. I have worked on commercial projects where every i was dotted, and every t was crossed. i have also worked on projecls where lhis was nol lhe case.... The primary difference between the two was the amount of time that i was given.
The very same holds true for open source. The bigger projects with more developers, ie. samba, gimp, the kernel(s), tend to be quite good. the smaller projects, ie. psinfo, ls, tend to be quite good. But often when you get between those two it is a whole different kettle of fish.
BTW. Hugh Daniel did not only complain about lack of error handling, but also the poor quality of error handling. And this is endemic. Basically this boiled down to "OK, so something is wrong, why havne't you told me possible ways to fix this?"
As for performance.. the test was for "lots of little tiny files". ReiserFS is supposed to be the champ at this. XFS is tuned for larger sizes on larger sized filesystems. It has support for guaranteed-bandwidth (realtime support), ACLs, and as the ginsu-knife salesman says- "and much, much more!".
True, but it also depends very much on the value of the -notails mount flag. Try comparing the amount of disk space used by the various filesystems (and reiserfs with and without -notails) to see what I mean. Reiserfs small file claim is that it can store them particularily well.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that this filesystem based encryption, not user based. I.e. you must enter a password to mount the filesystem, but after that it acts as a normal filesystem (but slower due to the aforementioned encryption).
The way that SuSE do it is to have an encrypted block device, so that you can throw anything you want on top of it. Typically this would be a filesytem ;-)
From the SuSE webpage:
Hmm. This does sound rather unfortunate, but you might want to try using a bzImage boot image instead... sometimes they work better, sometimes they don't :-)
make bzImage
does the magic. If that fails, then try as Cliff suggested to make a few more things modules.
Good luck!
...but will it run Civilisations 3?
This is about the only game that I want a windows box for at the moment.
It has all of the facilities to do "access from anywhere" computing, except to do that, you have to store your private key on the server (or at least be able to get access to it from anywhere).
If the private key is on the server, then the system is potentially compromisable, and it would appear to lose the it's main selling point.
OK, fine, then don't store your private key on the server. But that means that you are restricted as to where you view the data from, or you must have some means of transporting the private key. But if you are going to restrict yourself to this, then why not just store the secure data on this secure machine? So that appears to be another class of people eliminated...
OK, so then, who is left. I can see how people would like to use this as an anomyous service, but to do that, you have to leave the private keys on the server, otherwise they can pin the account to you. But, this seems inherently dangerous, since one can sniff the password from the server, decrypt your private key, and use/abus your account.
So again I ask, what are the target demographics here? As far as I can tell it is not the security conscious, and it is not the truly paranoid. So who?
Am I the only one scared by this? The problem is googles, simply because they follow links? I find it hard to believe this stuff sometimes!
<rant>When will people learn that criminals don't behave? That is what makes them criminals!</rant>
As our second year uni project we were required to write a web index bot. Guess what? It didn't "behave". It would search through a robots.txt roadblock. It would find whatever their was there to find. This stuff is so far from being rocket science it is ridiculous!
Sure, using Google might ease a tiny fraction of the bad guys work, but if Google wasn't there, the bad guys tools would be. In fact, they still are there.
Saying that you have to write your client software to work around server/administrator flaws is like putting a "do not enter" sign on a tent. Sure, it will stop some people, but the others will just come in anyway, probably even more so just to find out what you are hiding.
I can imagine that some large companies will get the domain, simply to "collect the whole set", but do you seriously imagine that you will start to see adds for www.ibm.us on the billboards? I just simply don't see it happening.
Although i would like to see who ends up with trust.us ;-)
Actually, it only appears to work great. The great conumdrum, is something broken if it appears to work? Read up more here. I.e. It does have the same problem, it is just masked....
For good details on what broke ALSA 0.5.12, see here.
Who knows the truth? I don't, but if they did "borrow" the code, at least they 'fessed up pretty quick. Perhaps we should of asked first what was happening?
While we are talking about incompatible kernel patches, please be aware that ALSA 0.5.12 does not work under 2.4.15. You need to get the CVS version, as described here. ALSA 0.5.12 compiles, but does not work.
This patch is not 100% clean, but the only reject is on an already patched file.
Appologies for the confusion, it turns out that while it has been two sleeps, it has only been one day since I installed them.
I do not know exactly when the packages turned up, but I installed them Wed Nov 21 00:59:53 CET 2001.
My best guess on the SuSE packages is that they arrived on the 21st, i.e. the same day that KDE announced it, but, one day before slashdot announced it.
Mind you, on a related note. Know how I discovered that XFree4.2.0 has been frozen? Because 4.2.0 drivers for my ATI card have been released. Now, I just need to wait for 4.2.0... :-)
SuSE has already had these RPMs out for a couple of days. This has KDE 2.2.2 for SuSE the various SuSE versions on the various platforms.
Please note that these are not officially
They also have a similar service for Gnome.
As always, use the mirrors Luke...
Or check to see if you have perl-o-tine installed. From the image, right click, filters/web/perl-o-tine... It is included in my SuSE install of gimp 1.2.2, bymmv. Perl-o-tine will split an image into a set of squares for you, I don't really know how to use guides, so at the moment I can only create nxn grids, however, each box can be of an arbitrary size. Doesn't really help with rollovers though.
The rollover plugin may help more here, but I have never used it, so don't know how it works.
Good luck!
OK, the problem as I see it as follows, you claim to be giving better than local broadband conditions. This is good. But you will have to charge at least $167/month, just for the bandwidth. In most places with an unstable currency this would be considered expensive. Then add in the fat that you have to make some profit, and you are looking at least $200/month. I would not buy real broadband for that money!
So unless you have a high local concentration of rich people, all within line of sight of your offices, then this would appear to be a business plan to fail.
If you have done the homework and believe that I am wrong, then I wish you all the best in your venture.
If anyone can answer any of these questions I'll buy them a beer! the article is decidely fluffy on these details, and a quick google search turned up nothing of value...
1) How does it achieve backwards compatability?
1a) If you throw an 802.11b into an 802.11g network, what impact does it have on performance? i.e. does the 11b drag the network down?
1b) How are broadcast packets sent? (11b or 11g standard?)
2) Is 802.11g more or less resisant to "hostile RF". that 2.4Ghz spectrum is crowded, does 802.11g improve resiliance to interference?
3) How is the range of 802.11g? I understand that the range of 802.11a (the other high speed wireless at 5Ghz) has a much shorter range due largely to the fact that it is at 5Ghz. Does 11g retain the strength of 11b here?
4) What is the security protocol? We all know that WEP in 11b is broken....
If yo uhave the information, please pass it on!
The reality is that the differences are really minor, and, now that RSA is legal, openssh can be setup to act almost exactly the same as closedssh.
The only signicant difference between them for most peole is the price.
There used to be a fair bit of difference, but at least for unix, this is no longer true. Since 2.5 openssh has supported sftp. Since 3.0 it supports rekeying a session. With external PAM modules you can support smart cards and securid logins.
The one advantage that ssh has over openssh is that this is all integrated into one package. The smartcard support is built in, you don't have to go looking for support.
If you are not planning on using smartcards or tokens, then openssh wins based on price alone. You can get it pre-compiled for most platforms, so the compilation is not so much the issue. Otherwise you have to weigh the choices a little more carefully. Check to see if your required token/card is supported by both. If not, then it is likely to be easier to add support into openssh, having the source and all.
In terms of windows clients...that is one big differentiator. Again, mostly money! We use tera-term and that works quite well, but does not do ssh V2 protocols.
In either case, you are buying a big whack of security, but don't forget, passwords can be extremely weak! Don't let up on the other security policies just because you now have SSH. (And yes, I know that the poster is not responsible for this, this is just a general admonition :-)
Whatever you get, I wish you the best of luck.
Now for the gratuitous links: :-)
securid and openssh
some preliminary smartcard itegration with openssh
another smartcard and openssh link
Second, why is everyone here so upset? Oh, hang on. This affects, um who was it? Oh thats right, the Americans. We really shouldn't upset them should we? Most of the comments that I have seen modded up so far basically say one of the following things:
Well, sadly:
Hands up all of the americans who have written their senator, state and federal. Hands up to all of those who have given financial, or other, support to movements who are trying to repeal the DMCA. Hands up all those who would just rather whinge when that law inconveniences them. Hmm. Thought so, on that last question the number of hands went up by 10.
If you are really so cut up about it, figure out what has changed (it isn't really that hard, it has been talked about in the previous article) and post it yourself. Then to prove to Alan what a fool he is, walk down to the DA's office and get a written statement saying that they will not prosecute you for releasing that information. Make entirely clear to them that you have released information that could help people circumvent rights management, and get the DA to sign saying that they would not prosecute you for releasing this information.
Personally, I don't think that this will happen, since most people would rather make Alan the bad guy over taking any personal risk. I dare you to prove me wrong.
We all know that Microsoft make great marketing solutions. Sometimes, these are even really great products. But the key point here is, as Cringley said, microsoft will market C# better than Sun did Java. And because it is marketed better it will get mindshare. And once it gets mindshare, it will get marketshare. One step at a time...
However, C# is still windows centric. To a lot of people this means diddly squat. If it allows you to work more easily to your target platform, then people will use it. Witness the success of Visual Basic as proof. And that thing is a cow if you ever have to maintain the "code" that gets produced with it.
This is not all bad news however. Despite the success of VB, there is still a "niche" market for C programmers. Just as there will be for Java programmers. And the split will go roughly the same way I think. On non-microsoft and server platforms Java will continue to be used. On the "frontend" microsoft boxes then C# will become the new Visual Basic...
And sure, we "profressionals" will deride these "sellouts", and pretend that we are somehow superiour. But in reality, it is just people using the most appropiate tools for the job at hand.
Sadly, no.
While it is nice to be ultra configurable that leads to two seperate problems:
1) Code maintainability
2) User maintainability
1) Is a serious problem. If you have to test the impacts on two different VM systems, and fully understand the impact that any change will have is a mammoth task.
2) Users are not all technically literate anymore. Look at the recent slashdot story on microsoft losing there grip in Asia...
As to supersonic, the concorde suffers greatly from being supersonic. Sure, it is wicked fast, but since it is so small (aerodynamics at those high speeds just suck) you don't really get that much room to yourself...but you do get very personalised service. Kindof ultra first class :-)
As to whether supersonic flight is worth it. For me? Hell yes! To get back home (Australia) I have to fly for about 20 hours, I would love to cut that in half at an affordable price... Plus, think of all the smokers that would pay extra for shorter flights.... :-)
So it can interact with all of the others.
This is actually good news, this is not another incompatible calendar solution, but rather another calendar solution based on the ical formats. This means that palm synchronisation will work off the bat. It means that you are not tied into using only (Mo|Pen)zilla. The ical format appears to me to be reasonably well thought out, and has all of the functionality that I am used to.
Well, call me a SuSE fanboy too....
:-)
However, I only ever use the DVD (a friend and I have a distribtuion sharing arrangement, we get each release, but share the medias) and so I find myself installing over the network a lot.... With SuSE this is dead simple, you even get a choice of FTP/NFS/SMB. That's right, you can use your windows machine as the install media holder...
I imagine that with Debian this would be fairly easy as well....perhaps not with as many options.
Now, if you have a lot of machines in disparate locations, well that's another matter
At HAL earlier this year Hugh Daniels said pretty much the same thing. For those who don't know, hugh Daniel is the guy who heads up the FreeS/WAN project. Anyway, his basic take on the situation is that error handling is what is placed in that last 10% of the famous 90/10 split.
;-)
You know, getting it to work roughly is 90% of the job, and can be done in 50% of the time. Getting it to work properly all of the time is the last 10% and that takes the last 50%.
The problem as I see it is that all too often open source software is created to "scratch an itch". When used "according to the instructions", or as the original author used it, it will normally work OK. It is only once you get into the realms of unorthodox usage that it causes problems.
Hmm. Sounds like microsoft!
Anyway, it is not endemic to either open or closed source, but it is endemic to under resourced projects. I have worked on commercial projects where every i was dotted, and every t was crossed. i have also worked on projecls where lhis was nol lhe case.... The primary difference between the two was the amount of time that i was given.
The very same holds true for open source. The bigger projects with more developers, ie. samba, gimp, the kernel(s), tend to be quite good. the smaller projects, ie. psinfo, ls, tend to be quite good. But often when you get between those two it is a whole different kettle of fish.
BTW. Hugh Daniel did not only complain about lack of error handling, but also the poor quality of error handling. And this is endemic. Basically this boiled down to "OK, so something is wrong, why havne't you told me possible ways to fix this?"