This assertion pisses me off. If I want to buy something, and I pay for it, I'm not going to just be resigned to the fact that if someone in-between screws up I lose both my money and whatever I was buying. Even more so if what I'm buying is digital and therefore not succeptible to theft or damage.
"Unfairness happens" seems the theme here. And yeah, it does. But when it comes to business, to transactions, we have laws specifically to eliminate that unfairness. To say "live with it" is to accept it, and in my opinion inexcusable.
The pentium did add instructions to the x86 set that earlier processors can not execute. PPro added a few more. But the first real performance-enhancing instructions, as far as I understand, were the MMX instructions in later Pentiums and up.
I'd list a few of the added instructions for you if I had the documentation here, but I don't have it in front of me.
The vast majority of (and this is from an assembly-language perspective, so I don't know how well it comes into play for optimizing compilers) optimizations on the pentium rely mostly on using the second arithmetic core as much as possible (the first core was always used, the second only in special situations, so ordering instructions to use both as much as possible could theoretically cut execution time in half), careful use of the cache, and avoiding branching (which was a good optimization strategy for any x86 processor).
The point here is that to optimize, the best strategy is basically to eliminate big, uncommon (this would include the new) instructions (stick to ADD, SUB, shifts, and string instructions when possible). Using such a strategy will likely do little for 486- processors either in faster or slower execution, but would allow for execution on such machines.
Well, to run all the unstable stuff (which include the newest versions of E, GNOME, etc.) you need to have libc 2.1 installed... which is a serious download, and requires upgrading gcc and a few other packages. But I think the connotation of this post is that you have to make a choice that your whole system depends on (bet. 2.0 and 2.1), while in my experience the vast majority of the packages will be just fine after upgrading to 2.1.
In other words, the upgrade to 2.1 seems to me more of a dependancy issue (such as e.g. needing gtk+ and imlib and so on to install E) than a "you can't do this on this system" issue.
Personally I think Katz has a point about the beginning/end thing. Except we reached the point a couple years ago. In the last, say, two years I've seen more movies that have really hit me on some sort of philosophical level than any before that.
Thinking back, I'd list Pi, Bulwarth, Clerks, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Spanish Prisoner (maybe), The Matrix (well, maybe not really--it needed a little more Gibson pessimism) and probably a bunch that aren't coming to mind right now. Existential/antimaterialist movies (such as the afore mentioned Fight Club and American Beauty and even movies such as Office Space) seem to be popping up left and right.
Add to that the amazing imagery of i.e. the Wachowski (sp?) brothers (Bound, The Matrix). I am very impressed with movies these days. I haven't seen Dogma or Being John Malkovitch (I'll probably add them to the 'smart' list when I do) but I'm eager to. Cheap thrill action flicks aside, the quality of movies is definitely on the rise.
I guess this is a little offtopic (if Slashdot had a general posts board I suppose it'd go there) but I've been seeing a lot of posts criticizing the headings/content/comments of topics lately. People criticizing i.e. Roblimo for "Napster Attacks Open Source Clone" (others come to mind, such as the ID spying post and the Bruce Perens vs. Corel thing).
I just have one thing to say. Grow up.
Slashdot as a media source is not your classic 1/2 hour news jive. It's an immediate source that shows what's being said in the moment, links us to where it's being said, and let's us hash it out on our own. So when it gets wind that something happens, when it gets a link to a rather rude (I take it, I didn't get to read it) email that may be threatening, it is Slashdot's place to post it. Things change, and updates can (and in this case, I expect will) be made. If you don't like it a little raw, what are you doing here in the first place?
Sue them. No, wait... it's a criminal offense so prosecute them. Don't buy Q3A... we'll run 'em out of business.
My God! I used to think the slashdot crowd was a generally intelligent and level-minded group. But this is nuts. Nuts.
The top 3d game maker (arguably, I suppose), general innovater, and primary linux supporter in gaming (besides Loki) adds a little code that is intended to aid in hardware support on one level or another to a free TEST version of their new game. They apparently did not hide this, but neither did they make it obvious (it seems to me an unimportant part of the game anyway).
They are our friends. And we bite them in the ass.
We have very little problem dealing with our enemies. It's our friends that we can't handle.
What ID has done is basically for support, with few (I'm guessing none) alternative uses. Contrast that with, perhaps, Blizzard's Starcraft tapping into the Windows Registry. Calling what ID has done illegal seems to me preposterous. What do you think a test version is for, anyway?
I for one (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one) am growing a little tired with all this petty bickering between more or less likeminded people whom we all seem to respect. Now, I don't have particular respect for Stig Hackvan (the author of the original article to which RMS is responding) because personally I've never heard of him. That and his article is entitled "Reverse-engineering the GNU Public Virus." Um, sounds kind of sensational and malevolant to me.
But the point I've strayed from is larger than this. What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of the respected and revered advocates of "Open Source" or "Free Software" poking at each other due to little more than differences in semantics. We're all after basically the same thing; just because many of us have different ideas of how to get there or what's slowing us down, doesn't mean there needs to be such animosity.
Actually, I feel a bit sorry for RMS. He took the initiative when there was no real strategy or conception of how to go about freeing the world of software. He came up with a useful and (although dubious) long-lasting strategy in the GPL, and to be honest none of us would be using any "free" or "open" software without it. People, however, feel they can come along and take quick shots at him and his GPL for it's shortcomings (which it does have) completely disregarding the good things that stem from exactly the same parts of the GPL as the bad. Sure, it's viral nature might make it unattractive to corporations, but had it not been, they would have snatched whatever parts they wanted from free software long ago, neither releasing the extensions and fixes they added nor considered open source as a business model, viable or not. Without GPL-like licenses, opening your source helps your competitors more than yourself.
But I digress. As I was saying, I feel a little sorry for RMS. He is in an unenviable position of having founded something good that is not ideal. Everyone has a license to criticize him, and his responses seem generally knee-jerk. Intelligent, but seemingly whispering "ingrate." Which he has the right to. When ESR says "Shut Up and Show Them the Code," I think he has a right to be hurt.
As a Linux user and an Open Source advocate, I tend to look at the ways we (people like myself) our hurting ourselves probably more closely than the ways we are being attacked from the outside. People talk and talk about the Linux flamers with spelling deficiencies, those advocates who make us look like a bunch of raving paranoid extremists. Personally, I think if our high profile advocates (our leaders, if you will) can't act civilly and more importantly somewhat compassionately (the ESR/Bruce Perens bickering comes to mind) we're all going to be seen as nuts. ------
I intend to explain a rather basic idea, though I have a feeling that the explaining could get rather long. At any length, I plan to show why creationism (or more accurately evolution-backlash) is gaining a resurgence currently.
I think the major conflict between the the creationists and evolutionary theory is the misunderstanding of what evolution really is. Most people who believe in creation over evolution do accept micro-evolution (to not accept that bacteria evolves to become resistant to certain antibacterials would be to accuse scientists of outright dishonesty, not just misinterpretation of evidence).
The major sticking point for creationists is not in fact evolution but biogenesis. How life came about. And even more importantly (though it really doesn't fall into evolutionary theory) how the universe came into being. Those asserting that man did not come from animals are in a similar camp to those who's basic aversion to evolution theory concerns biogenesis: They for the most part seem to be in acceptance of evolution of animals as long as it does not concern man (the 'in the image of God' argument).
Neither of the above standpoints is necessarily exclusive of evolution, and in reality this is the great pitfall for Christian thought (or any other creationist thought, for that matter). Evolution is conceivably compatible with liberal Christian theory. It in effect has to be, for as it must do with all strongly founded scientific theory, to be viable Christianity must accept blatent reality.
It is not however compatible in a lump sum, because big ideas do not become blatent reality until smaller parts from which they are derived become so.
Christianity for a very long period of time accepted that species were static groups. Extinction was unfathomable (consider Noah's Ark...). Yet there came a point when the existence of extinction was undeniable. This accepted, it follows that species must also be newly formed to replace the old. This laid a strong groundwork for the idea of a changing world. The rejection of instructionalism (if not the whole of evolution) and selectionism's later support from genetics made microevolution nearly common sense. And today, as the human genome is being mapped and the patterns of similarity and dissimilarity between species are plainly discernable, evolution is becoming even more than scientific fact (or very close to scientific fact). Evolution is becoming an obvious reality. By this I mean it is becoming an underlying postulate of the common sense of existence. Like gravity, it will be taken for granted.
That said, the cause behind the current evolution hostility may not be obvious. The near-acceptence of evolution by common sense and the near-compatibility between evolution and Christianity is a greater threat to Christianity than any radical (and incompatible) theory could be. The acceptance of evolution by the mainstream has been an erosive effort--as I demonstrated earlier.
Evolution is derived from a number of small, easy to swallow (for the most part) ideas. So why does this present a problem to, for example, the Kansas school board? Simple: as it comes closer to being common sense, those people can see it in a more well-defined light. Suddenly it becomes apparent not only what evolution means (how acceptable it is) but what ideas may be derived from it. Returning to the beginning of this post, three major ideas that may be derived from strict evolution are biogenesis, man as a higher animal, and big bang-ish genesis (or others; I sort of like Stephen Hawking's idea of a vague non-beginnig as opposed to a distinct, pointed singulatity).
As acceptence of evolution is not counter to the church in itself, rejection on a large scale becomes very difficult. Those who see the possible results have little recourse but to make evolution more loathesome by tacking on these possible derivatives to the evolution bandwagon. It is only at this point that they can point at evolution and say 'This is what they believe. Do you really want to believe this?' and present a converse to the added-on ideas. Creationism and creation science don't really address the core of evolution. Fortunatly for truth the manipulation is all too obvious.
You *need* authoritarianism for *any* software package to work, OSS or not. Someone has to be the boss. Otherwise you get the problem of "too many chefs spoil the broth" a la GNOME 1.0.
I see what you're trying to say; in a way I agree. Yet for the most part (and this is aimed even more at Bezroukov's assertions about athoritarianism than yours) I beg to differ: A central ego is not necessary to guide a OS project. Consider Apache. Or (as far as I understand it) FreeBSD.
In other words, what I am saying is that authoritarianism is necessary for OS development not because "too many chefs spoil the broth," but rather because there will invariably be choices and someone (be that a single person with or without an overblown ego, a small group of core developers, or the majority sway of all those involved) must make them.
It's an interesting article and a bit surprising, but the part about him being inspired by Crichton is a bit strange for me. The Terminal Man is pretty pessimistic, and I don't know if I could trust someone inspired by it. Even something by Gibson would be more appropriate.
The point that seems to be missed by many is that the author is talking about a reputation rating system.
Slashdot's moderation system is in no way based upon reputation. This is in a way a good thing: posts are judged and rated according to their attributes, not biased by who wrote them. But, since each post starts with a rating of 1 (or 0 for anon.), reputation does not come into play. On eBay, the situation is quite the opposite.
I for one think it would be a good idea for slashdot to have a rating system based upon reputation. Something as rudimentary as the average score of all posts by the particular author might even work. Something such as this, displayed apart from particular post's scores, could give the reader an overall understanding of the author's credibility which would be much more reliable than any credible-sounding posts could warrant.
Honestly, I think IRC is not now and likely will never be suited to take over this niche of the online communication market. IRC is well populated, but by tech-friendly people.
I use ICQ to communicate with my less-computer-savvy friends, some of whom had trouble downloading and installing ICQ on Win9x systems. I can just imagine the chaos ensuing when they connect to an IRC server for the first time from mIrc.
Aol's AIM is, well, obviously for the same crowd as ICQ. It is, after all, newbie-hunger that most characterizes AOL. Tell your standard AIM user to connect to #ohsoeasy on efnet and, well, see what the response is. Sure IRC can do basically everything that ICQ/AIM can, (perhaps auto-login stuff excluded, though I'm sure there are scripts...) but good ole 'mail' (or better yet telnet mail) can be used quite adequately to send mail. That doesn't change the fact that my uncle will still and for the forseeable future use Outlook.
That, and to be perfectly honest, I find ICQ easier for simple messaging than the somewhat cumbersome IRC.
If my argument involving su, etc. was read as a criticism of unix security, or NT security for that matter, then I apologize for not making myself clear.
Equating the use of telnet/su (or ssh) to Back Orifice was simply my way of saying that any viable operating system that is capable of the client/server model (basically any machine capable of tcp/ip networking) is in my opinion inherently vulnerable to a program like Back Orifice. To disable this vulnerability would be to disallow root-like priveleges to everyone, which is completely absurd, or to set up some sort of networking watchdog construct that is complex beyond my imagining.
I reiterate that I see the only true hole it NT that bo2k exploits is poor task management (ie inability to see/kill all apps running on the computer easily). I'd also like to note that I do not run on my own computer (I did for about two months before becoming fed up with it, and turning to the much more rewarding Linux OS). I don't like promoting MS, but I don't like undue criticism when there are areas in which that criticism could be much more responsibly used.
A rather misinformed and misleading article such as this really means when starting an article with "Trojan horse programs concealed inside open source code" is "Look at me!" In other words, a poorly masked use of attention-getting buzzwords with little knowledge of their meaning or proper use.
Is the bo2k open source? Apparently. Will that help it's proliferation? Probably, although as far as I have read it is made to be particularly evasive in the first place. Does this have any relevance to the common usage of the term "open source" and the people who will be drawn to read the article based upon it's use of this term? Of course not.
To make matters worse, and to muddy the waters to a point obvious to anyone reading the proliferation of comments on this topic, this article refers to bo2k as a trojan horse. This is completely and totally untrue and misleading. A trojan horse is a program that imbeds itself in another, allowing itself to be executed (usually unnoticed) when the enclosing program is run. Such a practice is devious and obviously viral and totally unlike this program.
Back Orifice's server is an executable program that runs in and of itself. It does so very quietly and (due to, in my opinion, an oversite on Microsoft's development) is difficult to detect. It is a server program, an application, and in no way a trojan horse.
The reason this has muddied the waters, at least at slashdot, is that the image of a trojan horse in open source software (in other words, offending source code placed unnoticed in trusted source code) provokes most open source advocates to bring up the issue of peer review's ability to eliminate such 'trojan horses.' These arguments, though accurate, are completely irrelevant when one considers that there are not trojan horses (either in source code or executable form) involved.
But the article did what was intended: It provoked many of us to read it that would not have otherwise. Congrats.
Oh, and as a side not: I have seen it mentioned many times that Back Orifice exploits security risks in Windows operating systems. Basically, this is untrue. I am not a Microsoft fan by any stretch of the term, but I find it hard to fathom people considering a server program, run with the equivelant of root privilages, as exploiting security risks if it can actually control a system. Telnetting (or more wisely ssh'ing) in to a unix box of any variety that I know and su -'ing allows anyone with knowledge of the root password the ability to control basically any aspect of the system in question. The two security holes that this exploits are the inadequate task management of Windows OS's and the overuse of administration-level accounts in doing user-level operations. Oh, and the execution of untrustworthy applications, which can not (except perhaps in the case of macros) be blamed on MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, in the words of the article:
Hmm, sounds a lot like life.
This assertion pisses me off. If I want to buy something, and I pay for it, I'm not going to just be resigned to the fact that if someone in-between screws up I lose both my money and whatever I was buying. Even more so if what I'm buying is digital and therefore not succeptible to theft or damage.
"Unfairness happens" seems the theme here. And yeah, it does. But when it comes to business, to transactions, we have laws specifically to eliminate that unfairness. To say "live with it" is to accept it, and in my opinion inexcusable.
Jose M. Weeks
The pentium did add instructions to the x86 set that earlier processors can not execute. PPro added a few more. But the first real performance-enhancing instructions, as far as I understand, were the MMX instructions in later Pentiums and up.
I'd list a few of the added instructions for you if I had the documentation here, but I don't have it in front of me.
The vast majority of (and this is from an assembly-language perspective, so I don't know how well it comes into play for optimizing compilers) optimizations on the pentium rely mostly on using the second arithmetic core as much as possible (the first core was always used, the second only in special situations, so ordering instructions to use both as much as possible could theoretically cut execution time in half), careful use of the cache, and avoiding branching (which was a good optimization strategy for any x86 processor).
The point here is that to optimize, the best strategy is basically to eliminate big, uncommon (this would include the new) instructions (stick to ADD, SUB, shifts, and string instructions when possible). Using such a strategy will likely do little for 486- processors either in faster or slower execution, but would allow for execution on such machines.
Jose M. Weeks
Well, to run all the unstable stuff (which include the newest versions of E, GNOME, etc.) you need to have libc 2.1 installed... which is a serious download, and requires upgrading gcc and a few other packages. But I think the connotation of this post is that you have to make a choice that your whole system depends on (bet. 2.0 and 2.1), while in my experience the vast majority of the packages will be just fine after upgrading to 2.1.
In other words, the upgrade to 2.1 seems to me more of a dependancy issue (such as e.g. needing gtk+ and imlib and so on to install E) than a "you can't do this on this system" issue.
Jose M. Weeks
Personally I think Katz has a point about the beginning/end thing. Except we reached the point a couple years ago. In the last, say, two years I've seen more movies that have really hit me on some sort of philosophical level than any before that.
Thinking back, I'd list Pi, Bulwarth, Clerks, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Spanish Prisoner (maybe), The Matrix (well, maybe not really--it needed a little more Gibson pessimism) and probably a bunch that aren't coming to mind right now. Existential/antimaterialist movies (such as the afore mentioned Fight Club and American Beauty and even movies such as Office Space) seem to be popping up left and right.
Add to that the amazing imagery of i.e. the Wachowski (sp?) brothers (Bound, The Matrix). I am very impressed with movies these days. I haven't seen Dogma or Being John Malkovitch (I'll probably add them to the 'smart' list when I do) but I'm eager to. Cheap thrill action flicks aside, the quality of movies is definitely on the rise.
Jose M. Weeks
I guess this is a little offtopic (if Slashdot had a general posts board I suppose it'd go there) but I've been seeing a lot of posts criticizing the headings/content/comments of topics lately. People criticizing i.e. Roblimo for "Napster Attacks Open Source Clone" (others come to mind, such as the ID spying post and the Bruce Perens vs. Corel thing).
I just have one thing to say. Grow up.
Slashdot as a media source is not your classic 1/2 hour news jive. It's an immediate source that shows what's being said in the moment, links us to where it's being said, and let's us hash it out on our own. So when it gets wind that something happens, when it gets a link to a rather rude (I take it, I didn't get to read it) email that may be threatening, it is Slashdot's place to post it. Things change, and updates can (and in this case, I expect will) be made. If you don't like it a little raw, what are you doing here in the first place?
Jose M. Weeks
Sue them. No, wait... it's a criminal offense so prosecute them. Don't buy Q3A... we'll run 'em out of business.
My God! I used to think the slashdot crowd was a generally intelligent and level-minded group. But this is nuts. Nuts.
The top 3d game maker (arguably, I suppose), general innovater, and primary linux supporter in gaming (besides Loki) adds a little code that is intended to aid in hardware support on one level or another to a free TEST version of their new game. They apparently did not hide this, but neither did they make it obvious (it seems to me an unimportant part of the game anyway).
They are our friends. And we bite them in the ass.
We have very little problem dealing with our enemies. It's our friends that we can't handle.
Jose M. Weeks
I think we need a little perspective here.
What ID has done is basically for support, with few (I'm guessing none) alternative uses. Contrast that with, perhaps, Blizzard's Starcraft tapping into the Windows Registry. Calling what ID has done illegal seems to me preposterous. What do you think a test version is for, anyway?
Jose M. Weeks
I for one (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one) am growing a little tired with all this petty bickering between more or less likeminded people whom we all seem to respect. Now, I don't have particular respect for Stig Hackvan (the author of the original article to which RMS is responding) because personally I've never heard of him. That and his article is entitled "Reverse-engineering the GNU Public Virus." Um, sounds kind of sensational and malevolant to me.
But the point I've strayed from is larger than this. What I'm trying to say is that I'm tired of the respected and revered advocates of "Open Source" or "Free Software" poking at each other due to little more than differences in semantics. We're all after basically the same thing; just because many of us have different ideas of how to get there or what's slowing us down, doesn't mean there needs to be such animosity.
Actually, I feel a bit sorry for RMS. He took the initiative when there was no real strategy or conception of how to go about freeing the world of software. He came up with a useful and (although dubious) long-lasting strategy in the GPL, and to be honest none of us would be using any "free" or "open" software without it. People, however, feel they can come along and take quick shots at him and his GPL for it's shortcomings (which it does have) completely disregarding the good things that stem from exactly the same parts of the GPL as the bad. Sure, it's viral nature might make it unattractive to corporations, but had it not been, they would have snatched whatever parts they wanted from free software long ago, neither releasing the extensions and fixes they added nor considered open source as a business model, viable or not. Without GPL-like licenses, opening your source helps your competitors more than yourself.
But I digress. As I was saying, I feel a little sorry for RMS. He is in an unenviable position of having founded something good that is not ideal. Everyone has a license to criticize him, and his responses seem generally knee-jerk. Intelligent, but seemingly whispering "ingrate." Which he has the right to. When ESR says "Shut Up and Show Them the Code," I think he has a right to be hurt.
As a Linux user and an Open Source advocate, I tend to look at the ways we (people like myself) our hurting ourselves probably more closely than the ways we are being attacked from the outside. People talk and talk about the Linux flamers with spelling deficiencies, those advocates who make us look like a bunch of raving paranoid extremists. Personally, I think if our high profile advocates (our leaders, if you will) can't act civilly and more importantly somewhat compassionately (the ESR/Bruce Perens bickering comes to mind) we're all going to be seen as nuts.
------
Jose M. Weeks
I intend to explain a rather basic idea, though I have a feeling that the explaining could get rather long. At any length, I plan to show why creationism (or more accurately evolution-backlash) is gaining a resurgence currently.
I think the major conflict between the the creationists and evolutionary theory is the misunderstanding of what evolution really is. Most people who believe in creation over evolution do accept micro-evolution (to not accept that bacteria evolves to become resistant to certain antibacterials would be to accuse scientists of outright dishonesty, not just misinterpretation of evidence).
The major sticking point for creationists is not in fact evolution but biogenesis. How life came about. And even more importantly (though it really doesn't fall into evolutionary theory) how the universe came into being. Those asserting that man did not come from animals are in a similar camp to those who's basic aversion to evolution theory concerns biogenesis: They for the most part seem to be in acceptance of evolution of animals as long as it does not concern man (the 'in the image of God' argument).
Neither of the above standpoints is necessarily exclusive of evolution, and in reality this is the great pitfall for Christian thought (or any other creationist thought, for that matter). Evolution is conceivably compatible with liberal Christian theory. It in effect has to be, for as it must do with all strongly founded scientific theory, to be viable Christianity must accept blatent reality.
It is not however compatible in a lump sum, because big ideas do not become blatent reality until smaller parts from which they are derived become so.
Christianity for a very long period of time accepted that species were static groups. Extinction was unfathomable (consider Noah's Ark...). Yet there came a point when the existence of extinction was undeniable. This accepted, it follows that species must also be newly formed to replace the old. This laid a strong groundwork for the idea of a changing world. The rejection of instructionalism (if not the whole of evolution) and selectionism's later support from genetics made microevolution nearly common sense. And today, as the human genome is being mapped and the patterns of similarity and dissimilarity between species are plainly discernable, evolution is becoming even more than scientific fact (or very close to scientific fact). Evolution is becoming an obvious reality. By this I mean it is becoming an underlying postulate of the common sense of existence. Like gravity, it will be taken for granted.
That said, the cause behind the current evolution hostility may not be obvious. The near-acceptence of evolution by common sense and the near-compatibility between evolution and Christianity is a greater threat to Christianity than any radical (and incompatible) theory could be. The acceptance of evolution by the mainstream has been an erosive effort--as I demonstrated earlier.
Evolution is derived from a number of small, easy to swallow (for the most part) ideas. So why does this present a problem to, for example, the Kansas school board? Simple: as it comes closer to being common sense, those people can see it in a more well-defined light. Suddenly it becomes apparent not only what evolution means (how acceptable it is) but what ideas may be derived from it. Returning to the beginning of this post, three major ideas that may be derived from strict evolution are biogenesis, man as a higher animal, and big bang-ish genesis (or others; I sort of like Stephen Hawking's idea of a vague non-beginnig as opposed to a distinct, pointed singulatity).
As acceptence of evolution is not counter to the church in itself, rejection on a large scale becomes very difficult. Those who see the possible results have little recourse but to make evolution more loathesome by tacking on these possible derivatives to the evolution bandwagon. It is only at this point that they can point at evolution and say 'This is what they believe. Do you really want to believe this?' and present a converse to the added-on ideas. Creationism and creation science don't really address the core of evolution. Fortunatly for truth the manipulation is all too obvious.
Jose M. Weeks
jmweeks@cord.edu
You *need* authoritarianism for *any* software package to work, OSS or not. Someone has to be the boss. Otherwise you get the problem of "too many chefs spoil the broth" a la GNOME 1.0.
I see what you're trying to say; in a way I agree. Yet for the most part (and this is aimed even more at Bezroukov's assertions about athoritarianism than yours) I beg to differ: A central ego is not necessary to guide a OS project. Consider Apache. Or (as far as I understand it) FreeBSD.
In other words, what I am saying is that authoritarianism is necessary for OS development not because "too many chefs spoil the broth," but rather because there will invariably be choices and someone (be that a single person with or without an overblown ego, a small group of core developers, or the majority sway of all those involved) must make them.
Anyone besides me notice that any time someone begins a post with "I'll probably get moderated down to a..." they get moderated up?
Oh, and insert "I'll probably get moderated down for being offtopic but..." up there at the beginning of this post.
It's an interesting article and a bit surprising, but the part about him being inspired by Crichton is a bit strange for me. The Terminal Man is pretty pessimistic, and I don't know if I could trust someone inspired by it. Even something by Gibson would be more appropriate.
Or thumb our noses at the debt...
Hmm... and whom do you think we owe the debt to? Own any government bonds?
The point that seems to be missed by many is that the author is talking about a reputation rating system.
Slashdot's moderation system is in no way based upon reputation. This is in a way a good thing: posts are judged and rated according to their attributes, not biased by who wrote them. But, since each post starts with a rating of 1 (or 0 for anon.), reputation does not come into play. On eBay, the situation is quite the opposite.
I for one think it would be a good idea for slashdot to have a rating system based upon reputation. Something as rudimentary as the average score of all posts by the particular author might even work. Something such as this, displayed apart from particular post's scores, could give the reader an overall understanding of the author's credibility which would be much more reliable than any credible-sounding posts could warrant.
Honestly, I think IRC is not now and likely will never be suited to take over this niche of the online communication market. IRC is well populated, but by tech-friendly people.
I use ICQ to communicate with my less-computer-savvy friends, some of whom had trouble downloading and installing ICQ on Win9x systems. I can just imagine the chaos ensuing when they connect to an IRC server for the first time from mIrc.
Aol's AIM is, well, obviously for the same crowd as ICQ. It is, after all, newbie-hunger that most characterizes AOL. Tell your standard AIM user to connect to #ohsoeasy on efnet and, well, see what the response is. Sure IRC can do basically everything that ICQ/AIM can, (perhaps auto-login stuff excluded, though I'm sure there are scripts...) but good ole 'mail' (or better yet telnet mail) can be used quite adequately to send mail. That doesn't change the fact that my uncle will still and for the forseeable future use Outlook.
That, and to be perfectly honest, I find ICQ easier for simple messaging than the somewhat cumbersome IRC.
If my argument involving su, etc. was read as a criticism of unix security, or NT security for that matter, then I apologize for not making myself clear.
Equating the use of telnet/su (or ssh) to Back Orifice was simply my way of saying that any viable operating system that is capable of the client/server model (basically any machine capable of tcp/ip networking) is in my opinion inherently vulnerable to a program like Back Orifice. To disable this vulnerability would be to disallow root-like priveleges to everyone, which is completely absurd, or to set up some sort of networking watchdog construct that is complex beyond my imagining.
I reiterate that I see the only true hole it NT that bo2k exploits is poor task management (ie inability to see/kill all apps running on the computer easily). I'd also like to note that I do not run on my own computer (I did for about two months before becoming fed up with it, and turning to the much more rewarding Linux OS). I don't like promoting MS, but I don't like undue criticism when there are areas in which that criticism could be much more responsibly used.
A rather misinformed and misleading article such as this really means when starting an article with "Trojan horse programs concealed inside open source code" is "Look at me!" In other words, a poorly masked use of attention-getting buzzwords with little knowledge of their meaning or proper use.
Is the bo2k open source? Apparently. Will that help it's proliferation? Probably, although as far as I have read it is made to be particularly evasive in the first place. Does this have any relevance to the common usage of the term "open source" and the people who will be drawn to read the article based upon it's use of this term? Of course not.
To make matters worse, and to muddy the waters to a point obvious to anyone reading the proliferation of comments on this topic, this article refers to bo2k as a trojan horse. This is completely and totally untrue and misleading. A trojan horse is a program that imbeds itself in another, allowing itself to be executed (usually unnoticed) when the enclosing program is run. Such a practice is devious and obviously viral and totally unlike this program.
Back Orifice's server is an executable program that runs in and of itself. It does so very quietly and (due to, in my opinion, an oversite on Microsoft's development) is difficult to detect. It is a server program, an application, and in no way a trojan horse.
The reason this has muddied the waters, at least at slashdot, is that the image of a trojan horse in open source software (in other words, offending source code placed unnoticed in trusted source code) provokes most open source advocates to bring up the issue of peer review's ability to eliminate such 'trojan horses.' These arguments, though accurate, are completely irrelevant when one considers that there are not trojan horses (either in source code or executable form) involved.
But the article did what was intended: It provoked many of us to read it that would not have otherwise. Congrats.
Oh, and as a side not: I have seen it mentioned many times that Back Orifice exploits security risks in Windows operating systems. Basically, this is untrue. I am not a Microsoft fan by any stretch of the term, but I find it hard to fathom people considering a server program, run with the equivelant of root privilages, as exploiting security risks if it can actually control a system. Telnetting (or more wisely ssh'ing) in to a unix box of any variety that I know and su -'ing allows anyone with knowledge of the root password the ability to control basically any aspect of the system in question. The two security holes that this exploits are the inadequate task management of Windows OS's and the overuse of administration-level accounts in doing user-level operations. Oh, and the execution of untrustworthy applications, which can not (except perhaps in the case of macros) be blamed on MS.