even I don't always su out of root even if some command between what I'm doing doesn't require root
So how does this Adobe flaw get access to your root terminal to continue issuing commands? And if you are running your desktop session as root you are an idiot. Ubuntu doesn't even have root it has sudo and if you want to enable the root account ("sudo passwd root") you have to go out of your way to make your system insecure. The fact is that unlike Windows Linux programs are written to not require root. If you get a escalation prompt anywhere you didn't ask for it then that is proof enough that something nefarious is at work. The system is only as secure as you but by default Linux is more secure than Windows. You are free to move about from there.
Linux is a lot different than running as root all the time on Windows. My security updates are pushed to me as they are fixed, not even pushing up to a month of vulnerability to patch unlike some systems meant to make corporate IT admins happy. All popular Linux distributions have an updating function: you get your security patches and patches to everything else in your repositories a lot more consistently than Windows. To deny this shows unfamiliarity with Linux. Thats even before you get into functions like selinux and apparmor which happen to be standard on my flavor. For everyone. This is also an Adobe bug, and doesn't affect most Linux PDF readers as far as I'm aware and even if it did I'd have a lot more faith that the Linux ones would be rendered immune more globally than the hodgepodge of updating (or lack of) systems on Windows. You're pointing the finger at Linux and saying: "You're vulnerable too!" But in the practical real world it is a case of not.
Runs with the same privileges as the parent program. So it can kill my home folder, not "rm -rf/" And like every other security hole found so far it will be written out. Considering they all get written out the fair comparison would be comparing number and severity of vulnerabilities by platform. If it can't boot after a vulnerability is exploited or you can't remove it within 30 minutes then have it count doubly so.
A corollary to this is that all the "obvious" patents that are being granted are already spam. Software patents are broken so I'm all for breaking them faster. A companies attitude towards software patents is determined by how innovative it is, young Apple: against, current Apple: for. I guess once you become big enough you can afford the shotgun technique of software patent application then you are for them.
Besides cost, how difficult would it be to spam the software patent system? It doesn't seem to matter what it is that you are actually patenting so you could go for something like a triply-linked list. The doubly-linked one is already patented, never mind having existed since the 60s. Build up a communal "Open Source" patent list and at the very least if someone sued an open source project for patent infringement you'd have something to cross-license OR you could keep clogging the patent system and refusing closed source licenses while licensing the patents freely to open source projects. As long as the patents didn't find their way into any standards then you could avoid RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) forced licensing.
I disagree. I believe he happened to hook onto what Information technology allows: the eradication of scarcity. Free and Open software is only possible because of information networks that make the cost of its distribution trivial. Open Source and the "Stone-Soup" parable it encapsulates is something to be studied and lessons drawn from for the inevitable period when we turn all our manufacturing over to machines and the scarcity of human labor no longer applies. What are we going to do then? I would hope that post-scarcity lessons from information networks translate well over to post-scarcity in goods and services. Otherwise we're in for a rocky ride, well that probably anyway.
Only in relation to what others are doing. If everyone is cooperating in a communal manner then yes. Real goods on the other hand behave better with money because scarcity applies to them - that makes them must more resilient to being Free.
And perhaps he's right: maybe we should be basing our economies off of real things instead of building a house of cards to come crashing down at some future date. "Intellectual Property" could be just another bubble when China decides to collect on its trade surplus in real things.
I think it boils down to network effects. As more proprietary vendors open their code - especially in drivers - it will just make sense for others to do so as well feeding back on itself. I don't think closed software is ever going to go away but I do believe we will see an inversion where it becomes that most software is open and some is closed versus todays most closed and some open. For what is in use.
Very good point. I'd like to also mix in that Open as a model is firmly on its feet now. It would take an act of law saying it is illegal to share your effort with your neighbor to stop it. Stallman was and is needed as you say: today he has more voices harmonizing with his message in different flavors. He's succeeded, they can't all be silenced now.
Stallman does the right things but the way he relates his thoughts don't really map well onto others. He is too rigid when it comes to Free software, ideally all software should be Free but until the transition is over - say another 20 years - then some mixing is pragmatic for the now to enable functionality: like binary blobs in the Linux kernel. I like a lot of what Stallman has to say but I always translate it into less dogmatic terms and take the hard edges off. Free is the ideal Open is the pragmatic, he kicked off Free and that led to Open and Open is not as dogmatic as Free - things evolve. Open also markets better.
Open Source as a development methodology has already won. It is more scalable: more features, custom features, localization, error removing all work better with it. It is also a lateral organization like a web which avoids some issues that the "Mythical Man Month" talks about which results from hierarchal organization. Close software will never go away but it's utility has already been greatly compromised by Open software. With Open software this extra translation layer is unnecessary you would just modify the source and have a more reliable program intrinsically. Code is Free, get over it.
The console crash of: 1983 was caused by two main reasons: over-saturation of the market and very low-quality software. Comparing that to today: over-saturated - yes, and low-quality - somewhat.
Oh yeah, and I don't need to buy a new computer either even though this one is now what I used to consider long-toothed: it works absolutely fine for everything but games - which it isn't meant for anymore;)
I also bought a 360 for my gaming. Here's what I found: without games there is little reason to keep Windows on my PC so I switched it over to Linux (Ubuntu 64-bit yes I'm a n00b). When games are out of the picture it completely removed the lock-in effect of Windows for me.
I don't think a multiplayer game has much in common with singleplayer. It would be a different style of gameplay not so much focused on a linear story but way more open and branching. The singleplayer experience would die but that is not the point: the point is doing something you can actually make good money off of.
Removing DRM won't increase sales and may actually cost you some but your customers - the people who matter - will be a lot more satisfied. I think the average piracy rate sits at around 90% so what should publishers do? Moving the content off of the local computer like Ubisoft is experimenting with is an indication but their current implementation adds nothing of value to the customer. It's just another hoop to jump through without a benefit to a legitimate purchaser and that doesn't engender good will.
I think the problem with Ubisoft's idiocy is that it adds nothing of value to the player and takes away real enjoyment. As a legitimate player there is no value to having a constant internet connection for a single-player game and also as a legitimate player it is annoying when your single-player game is artificially restricted by network connectivity. Single-player games should not pause because of a flaky DSL modem: there is a literal disconnect between the purpose of playing the game and the hoops the publisher makes you jump through. Punishing legitimate players for the actions of non-legitimate players may in the end turn out to be lucrative but it is a shitty thing to do to a customer: hopefully enough people will see this and Ubisoft will die.
I think the solution to piracy is to make all games multiplayer. Multiplayer in a way that actually adds value to the game. It comes down to market forces, singleplayer is proven to be a rip-off fest so the publishers can whine all they want but it won't change things. A world like Second Life is something of what I see as a start for the future. But instead of just walking around looking at the latest hair pieces you instead raid the corporation down the street with your buddies. Doing multiplayer would refine it, massive worlds change the value from being on your computer to being on the network and the network is a lot easier to monetize (how I hate that word).
Here is an article that talks about why user generated content is restricted so much on an Xbox 360: Microsoft is afraid someone will draw a penis. So, no opportunity to community vett content before it goes to general consumption just ban it from everyone and leave the job to the professionals.
On the Fallout 3 forums it was specifically stated that the reason no user-generated DLC would be available on Xbox 360 was because of Microsoft's policies. Perhaps someone can dig up a citation?
Microsoft seems to be the antithesis of free especially when you look at their Xbox network. They don't allow user-generated content at all. Perhaps, just perhaps, they don't want people coming to expect that you don't have to pay for everything.
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So how does this Adobe flaw get access to your root terminal to continue issuing commands? And if you are running your desktop session as root you are an idiot. Ubuntu doesn't even have root it has sudo and if you want to enable the root account ("sudo passwd root") you have to go out of your way to make your system insecure. The fact is that unlike Windows Linux programs are written to not require root. If you get a escalation prompt anywhere you didn't ask for it then that is proof enough that something nefarious is at work. The system is only as secure as you but by default Linux is more secure than Windows. You are free to move about from there.
Linux is a lot different than running as root all the time on Windows. My security updates are pushed to me as they are fixed, not even pushing up to a month of vulnerability to patch unlike some systems meant to make corporate IT admins happy. All popular Linux distributions have an updating function: you get your security patches and patches to everything else in your repositories a lot more consistently than Windows. To deny this shows unfamiliarity with Linux. Thats even before you get into functions like selinux and apparmor which happen to be standard on my flavor. For everyone. This is also an Adobe bug, and doesn't affect most Linux PDF readers as far as I'm aware and even if it did I'd have a lot more faith that the Linux ones would be rendered immune more globally than the hodgepodge of updating (or lack of) systems on Windows. You're pointing the finger at Linux and saying: "You're vulnerable too!" But in the practical real world it is a case of not.
Runs with the same privileges as the parent program. So it can kill my home folder, not "rm -rf /" And like every other security hole found so far it will be written out. Considering they all get written out the fair comparison would be comparing number and severity of vulnerabilities by platform. If it can't boot after a vulnerability is exploited or you can't remove it within 30 minutes then have it count doubly so.
A corollary to this is that all the "obvious" patents that are being granted are already spam. Software patents are broken so I'm all for breaking them faster. A companies attitude towards software patents is determined by how innovative it is, young Apple: against, current Apple: for. I guess once you become big enough you can afford the shotgun technique of software patent application then you are for them.
Besides cost, how difficult would it be to spam the software patent system? It doesn't seem to matter what it is that you are actually patenting so you could go for something like a triply-linked list. The doubly-linked one is already patented, never mind having existed since the 60s. Build up a communal "Open Source" patent list and at the very least if someone sued an open source project for patent infringement you'd have something to cross-license OR you could keep clogging the patent system and refusing closed source licenses while licensing the patents freely to open source projects. As long as the patents didn't find their way into any standards then you could avoid RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) forced licensing.
I'm Gnome so maybe I'm just not enlightened yet ;)
I disagree. I believe he happened to hook onto what Information technology allows: the eradication of scarcity. Free and Open software is only possible because of information networks that make the cost of its distribution trivial. Open Source and the "Stone-Soup" parable it encapsulates is something to be studied and lessons drawn from for the inevitable period when we turn all our manufacturing over to machines and the scarcity of human labor no longer applies. What are we going to do then? I would hope that post-scarcity lessons from information networks translate well over to post-scarcity in goods and services. Otherwise we're in for a rocky ride, well that probably anyway.
Only in relation to what others are doing. If everyone is cooperating in a communal manner then yes. Real goods on the other hand behave better with money because scarcity applies to them - that makes them must more resilient to being Free.
And perhaps he's right: maybe we should be basing our economies off of real things instead of building a house of cards to come crashing down at some future date. "Intellectual Property" could be just another bubble when China decides to collect on its trade surplus in real things.
I think it boils down to network effects. As more proprietary vendors open their code - especially in drivers - it will just make sense for others to do so as well feeding back on itself. I don't think closed software is ever going to go away but I do believe we will see an inversion where it becomes that most software is open and some is closed versus todays most closed and some open. For what is in use.
Very good point. I'd like to also mix in that Open as a model is firmly on its feet now. It would take an act of law saying it is illegal to share your effort with your neighbor to stop it. Stallman was and is needed as you say: today he has more voices harmonizing with his message in different flavors. He's succeeded, they can't all be silenced now.
With the British Panopticon experiment of CCTV everywhere... Well... Not so far fetched as I would have thought 10 years ago.
Stallman does the right things but the way he relates his thoughts don't really map well onto others. He is too rigid when it comes to Free software, ideally all software should be Free but until the transition is over - say another 20 years - then some mixing is pragmatic for the now to enable functionality: like binary blobs in the Linux kernel. I like a lot of what Stallman has to say but I always translate it into less dogmatic terms and take the hard edges off. Free is the ideal Open is the pragmatic, he kicked off Free and that led to Open and Open is not as dogmatic as Free - things evolve. Open also markets better.
Open Source as a development methodology has already won. It is more scalable: more features, custom features, localization, error removing all work better with it. It is also a lateral organization like a web which avoids some issues that the "Mythical Man Month" talks about which results from hierarchal organization. Close software will never go away but it's utility has already been greatly compromised by Open software. With Open software this extra translation layer is unnecessary you would just modify the source and have a more reliable program intrinsically. Code is Free, get over it.
The console crash of: 1983 was caused by two main reasons: over-saturation of the market and very low-quality software. Comparing that to today: over-saturated - yes, and low-quality - somewhat.
Curse that singleplayer wasn't commercially viable in the long-run ;)
Oh yeah, and I don't need to buy a new computer either even though this one is now what I used to consider long-toothed: it works absolutely fine for everything but games - which it isn't meant for anymore ;)
I also bought a 360 for my gaming. Here's what I found: without games there is little reason to keep Windows on my PC so I switched it over to Linux (Ubuntu 64-bit yes I'm a n00b). When games are out of the picture it completely removed the lock-in effect of Windows for me.
I don't think a multiplayer game has much in common with singleplayer. It would be a different style of gameplay not so much focused on a linear story but way more open and branching. The singleplayer experience would die but that is not the point: the point is doing something you can actually make good money off of.
Removing DRM won't increase sales and may actually cost you some but your customers - the people who matter - will be a lot more satisfied. I think the average piracy rate sits at around 90% so what should publishers do? Moving the content off of the local computer like Ubisoft is experimenting with is an indication but their current implementation adds nothing of value to the customer. It's just another hoop to jump through without a benefit to a legitimate purchaser and that doesn't engender good will.
I think the problem with Ubisoft's idiocy is that it adds nothing of value to the player and takes away real enjoyment. As a legitimate player there is no value to having a constant internet connection for a single-player game and also as a legitimate player it is annoying when your single-player game is artificially restricted by network connectivity. Single-player games should not pause because of a flaky DSL modem: there is a literal disconnect between the purpose of playing the game and the hoops the publisher makes you jump through. Punishing legitimate players for the actions of non-legitimate players may in the end turn out to be lucrative but it is a shitty thing to do to a customer: hopefully enough people will see this and Ubisoft will die.
I think the solution to piracy is to make all games multiplayer. Multiplayer in a way that actually adds value to the game. It comes down to market forces, singleplayer is proven to be a rip-off fest so the publishers can whine all they want but it won't change things. A world like Second Life is something of what I see as a start for the future. But instead of just walking around looking at the latest hair pieces you instead raid the corporation down the street with your buddies. Doing multiplayer would refine it, massive worlds change the value from being on your computer to being on the network and the network is a lot easier to monetize (how I hate that word).
Here is an article that talks about why user generated content is restricted so much on an Xbox 360: Microsoft is afraid someone will draw a penis. So, no opportunity to community vett content before it goes to general consumption just ban it from everyone and leave the job to the professionals.
On the Fallout 3 forums it was specifically stated that the reason no user-generated DLC would be available on Xbox 360 was because of Microsoft's policies. Perhaps someone can dig up a citation?
Microsoft seems to be the antithesis of free especially when you look at their Xbox network. They don't allow user-generated content at all. Perhaps, just perhaps, they don't want people coming to expect that you don't have to pay for everything.