This paragraph was in the "security" section of the referenced article, but it should also have been pounded on in the TCO section...
> Virus infection has been a major cost to users of Microsoft Windows. The LoveLetter virus alone is > estimated to have cost $960 million in direct costs and $7.7 billion in lost productivity, and the > anti-virus software industry sales total nearly $1 billion annually.
1) You don't pay for antivirus software for linux (what viruses ?)
2) You don't pay for your IT people to deploy it.
3) You don't pay support contracts for continuing updates.
4) And of course, you don't lose productivity due to downtime.
I'm not denying that linux *SERVERS* can be cracked, especially WU-ftpd (bleagh). But end users opening email does *NOT* cause the same problems as Outlook. We don't have major worries every time we open an email (Yes, there was a buffer overflow in an old version of Pine). Any distro that enabled backtick expansion and allowed auto-execution of email scripts would be laughed out the door. But Windows Scripting Host continues to exist.
> Flash does not require the shockwave plugin, just the flash player, and it is in use by >90% of the web surfers today. > These same people have hi-color, 800x600 or better displays and decent >= 56K Internet connections.
Huh ??? What parallel universe are you communicating from where these >90% of web surfers have >= 56K Internet connections ? Thanks to cheapness on the part of many "modem" manufacturers, the alleged "56K winmodems" will never get better than 40 kbits/sec *ON A VERY CLEAN LINE*. Anything other than that, and you're talking 33.6 or lower connection. For many people, Fuckwave/Slash is an absolute pain in the butt.
> Design is no longer about proper indentation in your HTML, it's about grabbing the attention of the MTV generation.
And how exactly do you *HOLD* the attention of the MTV generation while they're downloading the plugin and waiting for your splashy intro to download and finish on their "56K winmodem" at 28 kbits/sec ?
That won't necessarily help you. Check out http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm001-ie for a load of what can be done to Windows IE... *YES* with Java turned *OFF* *YES* with scripting turned *OFF* *YES* with Active-X turned *OFF*
This particular exploit also applies to Outlook Express and Outlook. Scarey.
I'm not repeating myself; I'm an X Window user; I'm an ex-Windows user.
> Thanks for posting this. I didn't know flex.net had gone national.
They're probably using Megapop or some similar outfit. http://www.findanisp.com lists ISP's by region. Here in Toronto, Canada, you can get to tons of US ISP's via (416) 640-4623. The numbers (416) 572-4911 and (416) 368-2622 also show up frequently.
> Give me a moment to adjust my tinfoil hat, but I seem to read in your final "yet" that there's a way to control open sourced software. > Well, tell me, aside from brainwashing every person capable of programming, how do you expect for that to be done?
MS will settle for outlawing it instead. Right now Sen Fritz Hollings (Dem SC) is pounding away at anybody who dares speak against SSSCA. SSSCA mandates that all "interactive digital equipment" have DRM (Digital Rights Management) incorporated in it, hardware and software. MS happens to have been granted patents on DRM OS. If SSSCA is enacted into law, PCs without a Microsoft (or Microsoft-licenced) OS will become illegal. A couple of years ago, I laughed at everybody who mumbled something about Microsoft buying enough legislators to outlaw linux. Today it's happening before our eyes.
As a Canadian sitting in Toronto, this scares me. Before the demise of the USSR, the USA wouldn't have pulled crap like bombing the shit out of Serbia. Prohibition of non-castrated PCs won't work if only the USA does it. Good programmers will flee to Canada and Europe. The USA will have to invade any country that dares allow non-SSSCA-compliant computers. And there's nobody in the west capable of stopping them.
> With Flash, we could easily browse Slashdot offline, we could have our client synchronize at > regular intervals, or simply whenever the hell we wanted.
Errrr, ummmm, have you ever heard of nntp ? You know, the thing that use to be called "the internet" before the days of the web. I follow some of the Mozilla development newsgroups on a public news server. You can use various clients on just about any OS. With Flash, you need to run a stinkin GUI to view text... duhhhhh !!!
> For Slashdot, Flash could provide an encrypted and an embedded ad-delivery system. It probably wouldn't be tamper-proof, but at least it would > ensure 99% of us could not read the content without disabling the ads.
Die, Suckwave-Flush, Die ! Fortunately, it's a plug-in that I cna manually remove from its directory in Mozilla.
> "Programmability?" Yes. Since version 5.0 it is. It's a fully-functioning object-oriented > language and just like its brother, Javascript, Flash Actionscript can kick some serious ass.
Oh boy, just what we need. Yet another programmable language like Active-hacks and Javascript that can download code from infected websites and infect your computer. Remember, that was one of the vectors that NIMDA used for its propagation.
> You sound just like my pointy-hair headed boss. When Java first came out, he hated it because he > thought Java was only for applets!
I understand the power of the whole concept. That's exactly what scares me. I hit the big 5 oh last October, and I remember the days when BBS was king. The one item that had to be constantly pounded into people's heads was not to download and execute every file you find. We were winning that battle before the web came along. Now we have websites *DEMANDING* that you download and execute code from their pages. Some of them don't even ask you to click yes before installing their code. Do a Google usenet search on all the people who've been victimized by visiting http://www.gohip.com and ended up with the website in their sigfile. And let's not forget "comet cursors". I await the "wonders" of "a fully-functioning object-oriented language" in the hands of marketeers and skript-kiddies. It'll make the gazillion-windows-on-close ("mousetrapping") stunt look tame by comparison. I refuse to surrender control of my computer.
> I wish slasdot had a optional feature to not have UIDs over X value show up in the comments. I would
> have that set to 500000 because most of these people seem to be anti-linux FUD spreaders.
I use Redhat linux as my only OS at home on 2 machines. I have an old Windows 98SE machine that I rarely boot up, usually for IE-only websites. I'm a linux fan, and know its warts, which is probably why I'm a harsher critic. I don't want to see linux machines being cracked all over the place like they were a couple of years ago.
Redhat seems to be the only distro that does this. How come other distros can do without it? And fer-cryin-out-loud, could they *PLEASE* switch away from wu-ftpd ?
...is their insistence on making FAM and sunrpc portmap *ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY* to run KDE. FAM (File Alteration Monitor) is a daemon that monitors files for changes. I guess that the "logic" behind it is that it's less cpu-intensive to have one daemon constantly strobing files on your harddrive than half-a-dozen programs doing it simultaneously.
Since FAM is not a "well known service", the only way for the system to work is to...
1) fire up ye olde sunrpc portmap on port 111 listening to the whole world (ARRRGH!!! Hello Lion/Ramen) and have FAM register itself with portmap.
2) FAM is then assigned a random port (could be above or below 1024) and listens to the whole world (ARRRGH!!!) on that port. Other programs can query portmap to find out which port to talk to FAM on. Oh yeah, the "-L" (local listen only) commandline option *IS IGNORED IN THE DEFAULT LAUNCH MODE* (i.e. xinetd). So *OTHER COMPUTERS CAN MONITOR YOUR FILE CHANGES*. ARRRGH!!!
Linux users have long laughed at Windows where *DESKTOP CLIENT PROGRAMS* are security holes. But here comes Redhat with a "feature" that, out-of-the-box, makes your filesystem activity viewable by the entire internet as well as exposing two open ports. WTF were they thinking when they did that ? More succinctly... were they thinking when they did that ? Planet earth calling Micro^H^H^H^H^H Redhat; isn't it time your boss man sent out a memo telling his programmers to put security ahead of features ?
How many newbie end-users are going to know how to properly update portmap and hosts.deny and hosts.allow and iptables to protect themselves? Redhat should've set the port number in/etc/fam.conf, and have it readable by any programs that want to talk to FAM. Or howsabout a sunrpc clone and FAM that bind to interface lo, rather than eth0 ? Make it secure and closed to the outside world out-of-the-box, and force people to port-forward via ssh if they *REALLY* want the rest of the planet to be able to monitor their file activity.
How much does MaCafee or a competitor's anti-virus cost a Windows user per year? While there are worms in the linux world, opening an email is *NOT* a soap opera along the lines of "the Perils of Pauline".
Actually *YOU* are the one who's wrong. And talking about "with example"... I'm running a Netgear RT314, which has a setup option enabling the router to spoof the MAC address of a machine with a specified IP address. See the pdf manual for the RT314. In your PDF reader search for the string...
"7. Click on Next to go to the final Wizard screen shown below."
One of the listed options in the menu is "Spoof this PC's MAC address". Every outbound packet shows that particular MAC address. Next question?
> Mandrake is now totally Red Hat-independant, has its own install (written from scratch in perl-gtk),
> and has not the same packages. Please don't provide false informations.
Wrong-O. Log in as root and execute sndconfig on Mandrake 8.1. Hint; who's trademark name shows up ? BTW, I wanted to try out Mandrake last week. Downloaded 8.1 and tried it on my other machine. No sound. I ran sndconfig to attempt to manually set up the driver. It found the Ensoniq ES1370, and said that card wasn't supported !!! Redhat support for that card has worked for a few releases already. Heck, RH7.2 actually found and properly configured the Yamaha YMF724F built-in chip on the motherboard of my Dell Dimension XPS T450.
> And the chances of AOL attracting skilled Linux people from scratch are...?
And the chances of AOL hanging on to those same skilled Linux people when AOL decides to build son-of-SSSCA "digital rights management" into the next release of Redhat are...
> Microsoft is porting.NET to FreeBSD. How does that help them establish "Windows Everywhere"?
Because.NET is the next generation of Windows, therefore...
".NET everywhere" == "Windows Everywhere"
Hardware has become commoditized. MS is trying to squeeze the last drops out of the OS golden egg while it lasts, but that market is also being commoditized by linux and *BSD. MS needs a new revenue source.
.NET is basically the return of the mainframe, and your PC is supposed to be the dumb terminal that logs on to the mainframe. If the OS market goes to hell, MS wouldn't mind, as long as all those new linux users sign on to MSN. As far as MS is concerned, money is money. Having millions of monthly-paying subscribers to MSN can make up the pain of a dying OS market. MS won't care if you log in on a linux machine, a Gameboy, an XBox, or an X-Terminal. Just show them the money.
That's why the push for "software as a service". Right now linux users aren't renting MS Office on the XP plan. However, if they could be convinced to log in to MSN, and run MSWord or Excel or Access for a monthly fee, Microsoft gets a cash flow. If e-vendors are willing to give MS a cut of every purchase by passport users, then MS indirectly make money off those passport users, even if passport is extended to every OS.
I see the battle for OS sales as fighting past wars. I think Microsoft is trying to re-write the rules to make it a brand new game and give themselves an advantage.
How can we fight this ? I know this sounds luddite, but I think that e-commerce has to be given a punch in the gut to slow it down. MS wants to convert the internet into a giant electronic shopping mall, where they own the mall, and collect rents/commissions from all the vendors. And probably charge shoppers for parking while they're at it.
If e-commerce flops, if broadband remains a dream for many people, then software-as-a-service flops. Also all those glitzy e-commerce sites with their Fuckwave/Slash webpages won't make enough revenue to pay the rent to Microsoft, because people on dialup modems won't wait for the cutsie presentation to finish. What we really need are more dot-bombs to scare away business from the internet. The only way to get big business to leave the net is to convince them there's no money in it.
Look, if you're running a site like Joe Cartoon, that's a perfectly legitimate use for it. Unfortunately, too many 16-year kiddies hired by their uncles make it a mandatory part of the first page you see when you get to a website. That's the real problem. The majority of people in North America, let alone the rest of the planet, do *NOT* have broadband.
Maybe a successful Fuckwave Slash virus will get people to stop using it. Not that that's happened with Outlook. In linux, look in mozilla/plugins and/or/usr/lib/netscape/plugins and rename or remove ShockwaveFlash.class and libflashplayer.so to deactivate it.
> No country would pour money into a project with no financial or social return. Linux development would be that for China.
Assume that China is eventually looking at 10% of its population working in government beauraucracy. That's 125,000,000 people. Assume each of them will eventually get a computer with an OS and an office suite. MS is moving to a software rental model. Let's assume a low figure of $80 per seat per year for a combined Office XP plus Windows XP bundle. That works out to *TEN BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR IN LICENCE FEES* !!!
At this point, it's fully worth their while to hire a bunch of Indian or Chinese programmers at $10,000 per year each to polish up an existing OS like linux, and existing open source office apps.
A large American mega-corp with 10,000 seats would be shelling out $800,000 per year in licence fees. Even they are at the point where hiring a couple of $100,000/year programmers to write bug-fixes, etc looks better than MS rent-ware. And we haven't even begun to factor in the cost of not needing anti-virus software constantly updated.
You mean the same media moguls who came up with "regional" DVD's ? What's next ? Microsoft Internet Explorer in "regional versions" that will only allow you to view "regional content" ?
> "Each private URL ("PURL") uniquely identifies an intended recipient of a document..."
You realize they've patented web-bugs as used by spammers !!! Should we report to them every web-bug embedded in spam that we get ? This would be one of those legal battles that I hope both sides lose.
Important item to note. Windows 2K/XP are restricted to Intel (NT *USED TO* support Alpha and MIPS). You can only handle so many websites on an Intel box. Windows' version of "scalability" consists of running on a 4-cpu Intel machine. Linux , on the other hand, runs on AIX, PowerPC, Sparc, HP minis, and IBM mainframes. Any of these machines can easily run as many websites, with as much traffic, as a Windows "server farm".
When you get to large web-hosting operations, economies of scale kick in. It's cheaper to have one large machine, with one software licence, than 50 or 100 machines with accompanying software licences. Oh yeah, not only does Apache have far fewer security problems than IIS, but it's a lot easier to apply a security patch to one machine than to 100 machines.
Not from my reading of the GPL. It requires that if/when you distribute binary/object code, you must make source available. That's why it's called "Open Source". I don't see anywhere that requires making binaries available when you distribute source. Also, the Mplayer team aren't threatening that they will sue you, but that other people might. Plus they say that the Deb file is buggy, and they're sick and tired of taking the flak for somebody else's buggy implementation.
> Wasting my time typing "yes | hash | bison | true" or some other indecipherable rubbish is unacceptible.
> My time is worth money; I can't go doddering away time better spent working for my clients reading
> 1000-page UNIX manuals or coughing out pointless shellscripts.
Wasting my time waiting for your god-damn Fuckwave/Slash to download over a 33.6 dialup is unacceptable. And let's not even *THINK* about the time wasted downloading the "latest/greatest" plugin, because you just *HAD* to use the latest version of your proprietary garbage, and my current plugin is "obsolete". My time is worth money. Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words, but it takes up the bandwidth of 10,000 words. Only a control freak worries if their page doesn't render *EXACTLY* identically on every browser.
I wish you GUI-zealots would get it through your heads that not every application on this planet is a Photoshop clone. I wouldn't try to do graphics layout from the commandline. But GUI-zealots can't seem to go to the bathroom without using a menu. Ever heard of using the most appropriate tool for the job ? Let's face it, for cranking out emails and memos, vim walks all over GUI's...
And dee first menu is connected to dee second menu
And dee second menu is connected to dee third menu
And dee third menu is connected to dee fourth menu
And dee fourth menu is connected to dee fifth menu
And let's not forget the debug code built in (Mozilla is still officially in beta). The standard 0.9.6 milestone release sucks dead bunnies through a garden hose on my 450 mhz machine with 128 megs running Redhat 7.2 linux, with FVWM2 as my window manager (As for Gnome/KDE "desktops", the pox on both your houses).
However, when I build with optimizations up the wazoo, and no debug code, it's actually quite snappy. My.mozconfig file looks like so...
The only thing that -O3 adds over -O2 in gcc is inlining of functions. That seems to cause segfaults at startup in the resulting binary. Of course -march=i686 is specific to Pentium II's and higher.
Actually, Powers was downed by an *UNARMED* Sukhoi SU-9, *BECAUSE* it was unarmed. No air-to-air missiles or gun turrets mounted yet. The SU-9 was being flown from the factory to its first posting. See
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/10-96/ew10-12 -96.html
The SU-9 had been ordered to ram the U2 if necessary. However, flying past the glorified glider (which the U2 really was) at mach 2 was sufficient to break the U2's wings, at which point it disintegrated. The weird part is that if it was weighed down with its regular complement of armament, plus the air drag from wing-mounted missiles, the SU-9 might never have gotten close enough to shoot down the U2. Russia claimed that it was a SAM that brought down the U2, and US intelligence never caught on.
> 2001: Most Linuxes have a very friendly desktop, with lots of productivity apps, but I swear to
> Linus, it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
> I'd love to have Linux running everywhere if it didn't require massive hardware to run smoothly.
Windows desktop has a touchy-feely-draggy-droppy-pointy-clicky GUI, and it's a fat bloated pig.
Gnome/KDE desktops have touchy-feely-draggy-droppy-pointy-clicky GUI's, and they're fat bloated pigs. Well, like, duhhh.
Here's the story. You don't need a "desktop", you only need a window-manager. I don't run desktops, I run applications. I install Gnome and KDE for the apps, then immediately switch to FVWM2. I can still run AbiWord/Gnumeric/OpenOffice/Netscape etc, etc. And they fly on both my linux machines (433 mhz and 450 mhz, both with 128 megs of RAM).
Before Windows, there was DOS. It was the object of much derision, because it was "merely an application launcher" rather than a "real OS". But a $5,000 Intel box running the "application lancher" smoked $50,000 "workstations" running "a real OS" when running spreadsheets or word processors (Trivia; Wordperfect started life as an app on DataGeneral computers).
OK, so FVWM2 is "merely a window manager", but my 450 mhz machine will beat your 900 mhz machine running "a real desktop" with the same amount of RAM when it comes to doing the things that we expect computers to do; i.e. running applications.
Slashdot Mirror
This paragraph was in the "security" section of the referenced article, but it should also have been pounded on in the TCO section...
> Virus infection has been a major cost to users of Microsoft Windows. The LoveLetter virus alone is
> estimated to have cost $960 million in direct costs and $7.7 billion in lost productivity, and the
> anti-virus software industry sales total nearly $1 billion annually.
1) You don't pay for antivirus software for linux (what viruses ?)
2) You don't pay for your IT people to deploy it.
3) You don't pay support contracts for continuing updates.
4) And of course, you don't lose productivity due to downtime.
I'm not denying that linux *SERVERS* can be cracked, especially WU-ftpd (bleagh). But end users opening email does *NOT* cause the same problems as Outlook. We don't have major worries every time we open an email (Yes, there was a buffer overflow in an old version of Pine). Any distro that enabled backtick expansion and allowed auto-execution of email scripts would be laughed out the door. But Windows Scripting Host continues to exist.
> Flash does not require the shockwave plugin, just the flash player, and it is in use by >90% of the web surfers today.
> These same people have hi-color, 800x600 or better displays and decent >= 56K Internet connections.
Huh ??? What parallel universe are you communicating from where these >90% of web surfers have >= 56K Internet connections ? Thanks to cheapness on the part of many "modem" manufacturers, the alleged "56K winmodems" will never get better than 40 kbits/sec *ON A VERY CLEAN LINE*. Anything other than that, and you're talking 33.6 or lower connection. For many people, Fuckwave/Slash is an absolute pain in the butt.
> Design is no longer about proper indentation in your HTML, it's about grabbing the attention of the MTV generation.
And how exactly do you *HOLD* the attention of the MTV generation while they're downloading the plugin and waiting for your splashy intro to download and finish on their "56K winmodem" at 28 kbits/sec ?
That won't necessarily help you. Check out http://security.greymagic.com/adv/gm001-ie for a load of what can be done to Windows IE...
*YES* with Java turned *OFF*
*YES* with scripting turned *OFF*
*YES* with Active-X turned *OFF*
This particular exploit also applies to Outlook Express and Outlook. Scarey.
I'm not repeating myself; I'm an X Window user; I'm an ex-Windows user.
> Thanks for posting this. I didn't know flex.net had gone national.
They're probably using Megapop or some similar outfit. http://www.findanisp.com lists ISP's by region. Here in Toronto, Canada, you can get to tons of US ISP's via (416) 640-4623. The numbers (416) 572-4911 and (416) 368-2622 also show up frequently.
> Give me a moment to adjust my tinfoil hat, but I seem to read in your final "yet" that there's a way to control open sourced software.
> Well, tell me, aside from brainwashing every person capable of programming, how do you expect for that to be done?
MS will settle for outlawing it instead. Right now Sen Fritz Hollings (Dem SC) is pounding away at anybody who dares speak against SSSCA. SSSCA mandates that all "interactive digital equipment" have DRM (Digital Rights Management) incorporated in it, hardware and software. MS happens to have been granted patents on DRM OS. If SSSCA is enacted into law, PCs without a Microsoft (or Microsoft-licenced) OS will become illegal. A couple of years ago, I laughed at everybody who mumbled something about Microsoft buying enough legislators to outlaw linux. Today it's happening before our eyes.
As a Canadian sitting in Toronto, this scares me. Before the demise of the USSR, the USA wouldn't have pulled crap like bombing the shit out of Serbia. Prohibition of non-castrated PCs won't work if only the USA does it. Good programmers will flee to Canada and Europe. The USA will have to invade any country that dares allow non-SSSCA-compliant computers. And there's nobody in the west capable of stopping them.
> With Flash, we could easily browse Slashdot offline, we could have our client synchronize at
> regular intervals, or simply whenever the hell we wanted.
Errrr, ummmm, have you ever heard of nntp ? You know, the thing that use to be called "the internet" before the days of the web. I follow some of the Mozilla development newsgroups on a public news server. You can use various clients on just about any OS. With Flash, you need to run a stinkin GUI to view text... duhhhhh !!!
> For Slashdot, Flash could provide an encrypted and an embedded ad-delivery system. It probably wouldn't be tamper-proof, but at least it would
> ensure 99% of us could not read the content without disabling the ads.
Die, Suckwave-Flush, Die ! Fortunately, it's a plug-in that I cna manually remove from its directory in Mozilla.
> "Programmability?" Yes. Since version 5.0 it is. It's a fully-functioning object-oriented
> language and just like its brother, Javascript, Flash Actionscript can kick some serious ass.
Oh boy, just what we need. Yet another programmable language like Active-hacks and Javascript that can download code from infected websites and infect your computer. Remember, that was one of the vectors that NIMDA used for its propagation.
> You sound just like my pointy-hair headed boss. When Java first came out, he hated it because he
> thought Java was only for applets!
I understand the power of the whole concept. That's exactly what scares me. I hit the big 5 oh last October, and I remember the days when BBS was king. The one item that had to be constantly pounded into people's heads was not to download and execute every file you find. We were winning that battle before the web came along. Now we have websites *DEMANDING* that you download and execute code from their pages. Some of them don't even ask you to click yes before installing their code. Do a Google usenet search on all the people who've been victimized by visiting http://www.gohip.com and ended up with the website in their sigfile. And let's not forget "comet cursors". I await the "wonders" of "a fully-functioning object-oriented language" in the hands of marketeers and skript-kiddies. It'll make the gazillion-windows-on-close ("mousetrapping") stunt look tame by comparison. I refuse to surrender control of my computer.
And newbies are supposed to know about this... how? It's installed by default, BTW, when you install KDE.
> I wish slasdot had a optional feature to not have UIDs over X value show up in the comments. I would
> have that set to 500000 because most of these people seem to be anti-linux FUD spreaders.
I use Redhat linux as my only OS at home on 2 machines. I have an old Windows 98SE machine that I rarely boot up, usually for IE-only websites. I'm a linux fan, and know its warts, which is probably why I'm a harsher critic. I don't want to see linux machines being cracked all over the place like they were a couple of years ago.
Redhat seems to be the only distro that does this. How come other distros can do without it? And fer-cryin-out-loud, could they *PLEASE* switch away from wu-ftpd ?
...is their insistence on making FAM and sunrpc portmap *ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY* to run KDE. FAM (File Alteration Monitor) is a daemon that monitors files for changes. I guess that the "logic" behind it is that it's less cpu-intensive to have one daemon constantly strobing files on your harddrive than half-a-dozen programs doing it simultaneously.
/etc/fam.conf, and have it readable by any programs that want to talk to FAM. Or howsabout a sunrpc clone and FAM that bind to interface lo, rather than eth0 ? Make it secure and closed to the outside world out-of-the-box, and force people to port-forward via ssh if they *REALLY* want the rest of the planet to be able to monitor their file activity.
Since FAM is not a "well known service", the only way for the system to work is to...
1) fire up ye olde sunrpc portmap on port 111 listening to the whole world (ARRRGH!!! Hello Lion/Ramen) and have FAM register itself with portmap.
2) FAM is then assigned a random port (could be above or below 1024) and listens to the whole world (ARRRGH!!!) on that port. Other programs can query portmap to find out which port to talk to FAM on. Oh yeah, the "-L" (local listen only) commandline option *IS IGNORED IN THE DEFAULT LAUNCH MODE* (i.e. xinetd). So *OTHER COMPUTERS CAN MONITOR YOUR FILE CHANGES*. ARRRGH!!!
Linux users have long laughed at Windows where *DESKTOP CLIENT PROGRAMS* are security holes. But here comes Redhat with a "feature" that, out-of-the-box, makes your filesystem activity viewable by the entire internet as well as exposing two open ports. WTF were they thinking when they did that ? More succinctly... were they thinking when they did that ? Planet earth calling Micro^H^H^H^H^H Redhat; isn't it time your boss man sent out a memo telling his programmers to put security ahead of features ?
How many newbie end-users are going to know how to properly update portmap and hosts.deny and hosts.allow and iptables to protect themselves? Redhat should've set the port number in
How much does MaCafee or a competitor's anti-virus cost a Windows user per year? While there are worms in the linux world, opening an email is *NOT* a soap opera along the lines of "the Perils of Pauline".
Actually *YOU* are the one who's wrong. And talking about "with example"... I'm running a Netgear RT314, which has a setup option enabling the router to spoof the MAC address of a machine with a specified IP address. See the pdf manual for the RT314. In your PDF reader search for the string...
"7. Click on Next to go to the final Wizard screen shown below."
One of the listed options in the menu is "Spoof this PC's MAC address". Every outbound packet shows that particular MAC address. Next question?
> Mandrake is now totally Red Hat-independant, has its own install (written from scratch in perl-gtk),
> and has not the same packages. Please don't provide false informations.
Wrong-O. Log in as root and execute sndconfig on Mandrake 8.1. Hint; who's trademark name shows up ? BTW, I wanted to try out Mandrake last week. Downloaded 8.1 and tried it on my other machine. No sound. I ran sndconfig to attempt to manually set up the driver. It found the Ensoniq ES1370, and said that card wasn't supported !!! Redhat support for that card has worked for a few releases already. Heck, RH7.2 actually found and properly configured the Yamaha YMF724F built-in chip on the motherboard of my Dell Dimension XPS T450.
> And the chances of AOL attracting skilled Linux people from scratch are...?
And the chances of AOL hanging on to those same skilled Linux people when AOL decides to build son-of-SSSCA "digital rights management" into the next release of Redhat are...
> Microsoft is porting .NET to FreeBSD. How does that help them establish "Windows Everywhere"?
.NET is the next generation of Windows, therefore...
.NET is basically the return of the mainframe, and your PC is supposed to be the dumb terminal that logs on to the mainframe. If the OS market goes to hell, MS wouldn't mind, as long as all those new linux users sign on to MSN. As far as MS is concerned, money is money. Having millions of monthly-paying subscribers to MSN can make up the pain of a dying OS market. MS won't care if you log in on a linux machine, a Gameboy, an XBox, or an X-Terminal. Just show them the money.
Because
".NET everywhere" == "Windows Everywhere"
Hardware has become commoditized. MS is trying to squeeze the last drops out of the OS golden egg while it lasts, but that market is also being commoditized by linux and *BSD. MS needs a new revenue source.
That's why the push for "software as a service". Right now linux users aren't renting MS Office on the XP plan. However, if they could be convinced to log in to MSN, and run MSWord or Excel or Access for a monthly fee, Microsoft gets a cash flow. If e-vendors are willing to give MS a cut of every purchase by passport users, then MS indirectly make money off those passport users, even if passport is extended to every OS.
I see the battle for OS sales as fighting past wars. I think Microsoft is trying to re-write the rules to make it a brand new game and give themselves an advantage.
How can we fight this ? I know this sounds luddite, but I think that e-commerce has to be given a punch in the gut to slow it down. MS wants to convert the internet into a giant electronic shopping mall, where they own the mall, and collect rents/commissions from all the vendors. And probably charge shoppers for parking while they're at it.
If e-commerce flops, if broadband remains a dream for many people, then software-as-a-service flops. Also all those glitzy e-commerce sites with their Fuckwave/Slash webpages won't make enough revenue to pay the rent to Microsoft, because people on dialup modems won't wait for the cutsie presentation to finish. What we really need are more dot-bombs to scare away business from the internet. The only way to get big business to leave the net is to convince them there's no money in it.
Look, if you're running a site like Joe Cartoon, that's a perfectly legitimate use for it. Unfortunately, too many 16-year kiddies hired by their uncles make it a mandatory part of the first page you see when you get to a website. That's the real problem. The majority of people in North America, let alone the rest of the planet, do *NOT* have broadband.
/usr/lib/netscape/plugins and rename or remove ShockwaveFlash.class and libflashplayer.so to deactivate it.
Maybe a successful Fuckwave Slash virus will get people to stop using it. Not that that's happened with Outlook. In linux, look in mozilla/plugins and/or
Some people would say...
> No country would pour money into a project with no financial or social return. Linux development would be that for China.
Assume that China is eventually looking at 10% of its population working in government beauraucracy. That's 125,000,000 people. Assume each of them will eventually get a computer with an OS and an office suite. MS is moving to a software rental model. Let's assume a low figure of $80 per seat per year for a combined Office XP plus Windows XP bundle. That works out to *TEN BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR IN LICENCE FEES* !!!
At this point, it's fully worth their while to hire a bunch of Indian or Chinese programmers at $10,000 per year each to polish up an existing OS like linux, and existing open source office apps.
A large American mega-corp with 10,000 seats would be shelling out $800,000 per year in licence fees. Even they are at the point where hiring a couple of $100,000/year programmers to write bug-fixes, etc looks better than MS rent-ware. And we haven't even begun to factor in the cost of not needing anti-virus software constantly updated.
You mean the same media moguls who came up with "regional" DVD's ? What's next ? Microsoft Internet Explorer in "regional versions" that will only allow you to view "regional content" ?
> "Each private URL ("PURL") uniquely identifies an intended recipient of a document..."
You realize they've patented web-bugs as used by spammers !!! Should we report to them every web-bug embedded in spam that we get ? This would be one of those legal battles that I hope both sides lose.
Important item to note. Windows 2K/XP are restricted to Intel (NT *USED TO* support Alpha and MIPS). You can only handle so many websites on an Intel box. Windows' version of "scalability" consists of running on a 4-cpu Intel machine. Linux , on the other hand, runs on AIX, PowerPC, Sparc, HP minis, and IBM mainframes. Any of these machines can easily run as many websites, with as much traffic, as a Windows "server farm".
When you get to large web-hosting operations, economies of scale kick in. It's cheaper to have one large machine, with one software licence, than 50 or 100 machines with accompanying software licences. Oh yeah, not only does Apache have far fewer security problems than IIS, but it's a lot easier to apply a security patch to one machine than to 100 machines.
Not from my reading of the GPL. It requires that if/when you distribute binary/object code, you must make source available. That's why it's called "Open Source". I don't see anywhere that requires making binaries available when you distribute source. Also, the Mplayer team aren't threatening that they will sue you, but that other people might. Plus they say that the Deb file is buggy, and they're sick and tired of taking the flak for somebody else's buggy implementation.
> Wasting my time typing "yes | hash | bison | true" or some other indecipherable rubbish is unacceptible.
> My time is worth money; I can't go doddering away time better spent working for my clients reading
> 1000-page UNIX manuals or coughing out pointless shellscripts.
Wasting my time waiting for your god-damn Fuckwave/Slash to download over a 33.6 dialup is unacceptable. And let's not even *THINK* about the time wasted downloading the "latest/greatest" plugin, because you just *HAD* to use the latest version of your proprietary garbage, and my current plugin is "obsolete". My time is worth money. Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words, but it takes up the bandwidth of 10,000 words. Only a control freak worries if their page doesn't render *EXACTLY* identically on every browser.
I wish you GUI-zealots would get it through your heads that not every application on this planet is a Photoshop clone. I wouldn't try to do graphics layout from the commandline. But GUI-zealots can't seem to go to the bathroom without using a menu. Ever heard of using the most appropriate tool for the job ? Let's face it, for cranking out emails and memos, vim walks all over GUI's...
And dee first menu is connected to dee second menu
And dee second menu is connected to dee third menu
And dee third menu is connected to dee fourth menu
And dee fourth menu is connected to dee fifth menu
And let's not forget the debug code built in (Mozilla is still officially in beta). The standard 0.9.6 milestone release sucks dead bunnies through a garden hose on my 450 mhz machine with 128 megs running Redhat 7.2 linux, with FVWM2 as my window manager (As for Gnome/KDE "desktops", the pox on both your houses).
.mozconfig file looks like so...
However, when I build with optimizations up the wazoo, and no debug code, it's actually quite snappy. My
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-ldap
ac_add_options --disable-mailnews
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-optimize=\
"-O2 -march=i686 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -funroll-loops"
ac_add_options --without-system-nspr
ac_add_options --without-system-zlib
ac_add_options --without-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --without-system-png
ac_add_options --without-system-mng
ac_add_options --enable-crypto
ac_add_options --enable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-strip-libs
The only thing that -O3 adds over -O2 in gcc is inlining of functions. That seems to cause segfaults at startup in the resulting binary. Of course -march=i686 is specific to Pentium II's and higher.
Actually, Powers was downed by an *UNARMED* Sukhoi SU-9, *BECAUSE* it was unarmed. No air-to-air missiles or gun turrets mounted yet. The SU-9 was being flown from the factory to its first posting. See2 -96.html
http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news/10-96/ew10-1
The SU-9 had been ordered to ram the U2 if necessary. However, flying past the glorified glider (which the U2 really was) at mach 2 was sufficient to break the U2's wings, at which point it disintegrated. The weird part is that if it was weighed down with its regular complement of armament, plus the air drag from wing-mounted missiles, the SU-9 might never have gotten close enough to shoot down the U2. Russia claimed that it was a SAM that brought down the U2, and US intelligence never caught on.
> 2001: Most Linuxes have a very friendly desktop, with lots of productivity apps, but I swear to
> Linus, it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
> I'd love to have Linux running everywhere if it didn't require massive hardware to run smoothly.
Windows desktop has a touchy-feely-draggy-droppy-pointy-clicky GUI, and it's a fat bloated pig.
Gnome/KDE desktops have touchy-feely-draggy-droppy-pointy-clicky GUI's, and they're fat bloated pigs. Well, like, duhhh.
Here's the story. You don't need a "desktop", you only need a window-manager. I don't run desktops, I run applications. I install Gnome and KDE for the apps, then immediately switch to FVWM2. I can still run AbiWord/Gnumeric/OpenOffice/Netscape etc, etc. And they fly on both my linux machines (433 mhz and 450 mhz, both with 128 megs of RAM).
Before Windows, there was DOS. It was the object of much derision, because it was "merely an application launcher" rather than a "real OS". But a $5,000 Intel box running the "application lancher" smoked $50,000 "workstations" running "a real OS" when running spreadsheets or word processors (Trivia; Wordperfect started life as an app on DataGeneral computers).
OK, so FVWM2 is "merely a window manager", but my 450 mhz machine will beat your 900 mhz machine running "a real desktop" with the same amount of RAM when it comes to doing the things that we expect computers to do; i.e. running applications.
> what's the first script to be written in, that it'll run on any unix?
/bash)
/sh, /ash, etc, etc.
How about a simple if/elif chain ? Start with something simple like so...
#!/bin/sh
if (echo $SHELL | grep
then
echo Running bash;
fi
Throw in a whole bunch of "elif" cases for