I'd like to take this moment to revisit the question; why doesn't Microsoft get sued for promoting that everybody use their crappy software that nobody's allowed to peek under the hood at and fix? Now we have a whole internet of these massively compromised machines. Because there's very little variation in their "genetic" makeup, and apparently the "genome" isn't all that robust; they're all susceptible to these horrible, contagious diseases, and it's ALL JUST ONE COMPANY'S FAULT!
I demand to see the rampant Linux viruses now.. This is ridiculous.. The smartest, brightest, hackers in the whole world write an OS from scratch that nobody can claim they solely own, it runs on more machines than there are macintoshes [assuming you also count the macintoshes running linux], been touted as Microsoft's largest competitor, eating up oodles of server marketshare, and nobody's been able to write a decent worm???
puhleez
On the other hand, one company can write one OS, and sell it for top dollar and everybody and their grandmother gets a copy, everybody and their grandkid can write a massively distributable exploit for it, and a WHOLE INDUSTRY of anti-virus software companies spring up (which live comfortably and profitably for decades) to battle the weaknesses in it, a whole industry of botnet admins can wield ridiculous amounts of cycles for whatever purpose they can get paid for....
But still; everybody swears by it, sticks to it, rubs it on their tummies, tosses up all kinds of the heartfelt loyalty to a COMPANY they don't even WORK FOR, a company that doesn't pay them CRAP, and treats their rights like crap????
not that i'm saying anything predicted is accurate, however, it does seem to be an interesting coincidence that the earth crosses the galactic plane every 65 million years or so.. and that it's about to do it again in 5 years.
the other interesting thing is, that not only does the earth cross the galactic plane, so does the sun. In fact; the earth, sun and galactic plane are all aligned on the December solstice, so mark your calendar! (the mayans did)
When a populace forgets that being free doesn't equate to being safe, and when a populace forgets that being secure doesn't mean being being free; then those who seek to have power over the populace, will.
I'll be suprised if anyone reads this, or even believes it, but..
It's been my job professionally for about 5 years to manage Linux on the desktop for a biomedical company who designs their own ASICs and PCBs on Mentor Graphics..
First I migrated them away from HP-UX as Mentor Graphics ported more and more of their tools to Linux.. It was more cost effective to get brand new Dell machines running redhat [which gets replaced, because Dell's redhat install is crappy] for US$1800 than refurbed old PA-RISC workstations at US$5000+ a box.
Basically, I'm using:
Distro: Debian GUI Xfree86 or Xorg [depending on which box] Desktop Env: KDE [muggles love KDE] Mail: Evolution and MS Outlook [a la crossover office, what a lifesaver!] Web: Mozilla or Firefox [both are installed] Office suite: OpenOffice 2.0 and MS Office 2000 [a la crossover office], planner, & MS Project Music: amaroK or xmms, or whatever they want
The home directories, and proprietary Mentor software are all NFS automounted [it's fine, really], so the only data on the drives is the os and application data.. i lose a drive, no big deal, when the drive's replaced, i reinstall stock debian..
However, I -have- used apt-move [and apt-proxy] to make my own distro of debian in-house for building workstations.. it's a lot more convenient to install the netinst CD and be done, reboot the machine, point the sources.list at the internal repository, load aptitude, and just hit + on the top levels [which essentially loads everything in the repo.], and bam. Installation would probably be more efficient if i used something like Fully Automatic Install (FAI), but i haven't been smart enough to figure out how to get it installed.. It's only good for installs tho.. I maintain the separate repo for upgrades.. That and it keeps people from installing things willy-nilly from the net if the only repos the workstations have is an internal server with a subset.
User accounts are all managed via LDAP, tied in with the corporate ADS directory, one login to auth them all!
box configuration management is all handled by Cfengine2 -- all hail the university of oslo! Cfengine has made it possible for me to manage all the boxes at once, no matter what the hardware discrepancies.. i can do the work of 4 people, by myself. that and, the configuration repairs itself if discrepancies show up on the workstations for some reason..
Let's see, that's software centralization, user data centralization, user auth centalization, and workstation configuration centralization.. for 30+ boxes across two buildings, for engineers and managers, for almost 5 years.. There may be better ways to design a network of workstations, but the support model I've implemented has really worked out for me..
Once a "normal" user gets used to the idea that the computer will do whatever they want it to do, even though it's not windows, the questions about how to do things taper off after a while as they get used to the new system..
It's sad really. I've been doing the Linux desktop professionally longer than anyone i've ever even heard of. I know for a fact the Linux desktop is completely viable, but nobody seems to believe it. Non-technical and technical people alike all seem to have their doubts and never get up the energy to actually explore it.. Heh..
of course.. left handed people don't USE mice to game right? oh yes.. and there are no left handed baseball players either, right? how about left handed golfers??
to hell with how nice Logitech's mice might be.. I'll never be able to use one..
am I a whiner? Can you find a mouse with the same quality as a Logitech or [shudder] Microsoft mouse that fits for the left hand?? No, you can't..
Don't be ridiculous, of course I recognize that. But those countries write software that doesn't give China [or America for that matter] much choice either. Those companies also write private software with Microsoft in mind, since what else do governments run on? Mainframes? A lot of times, maybe. Yet the bulk of government money is spent on the desktops and notebooks and infrastructure support which is entirely microsoft. And this is especially true in Municipal level governments.
I'm not convinced China is doing themselves harm by trying to cultivate their own software industry. And you're worldy view of Microsoft applications isn't all that convincing either..
[rant] I don't blame them. We in Corporate America(tm) don't ever get to explore alternatives without huge uphill battles with non-techincal Executives who just believe every Marketing line their sold by software vendors who don't know anything but how to tow the Microsoft line. This extends to our government where officials are basically bought and sold so often, when some country decides to express a little sovrigenty like, i don't know, having their own nation's people run their own nation's Information Systems.. OMGWTF! it's UNFAIR TRADE!!
Hurray for China for trying to escape the stranglehold that American software companies [read: Microsoft] have gotten American governments in and are reaching out to the world to try to strangle them too. It's disgusting to me to think our own American governments are slave to a private company for it's Information Systems needs.. That whole cities and states can be brought to a STANDSTILL as soon as some private firm decides they're "out of compliance".. It should be illegal for governments to run privately owned software which has no public accountability! But alas no. Even the very mention of taking away precious Microsoft Word from Secretaries and middle-managers nationwide brings apoplectic revolt! If the software industry in America had it's way, it'd be illegal for people to write software that WASN'T owned by SOME company or another.. The ignorance is unbearable sometimes!
And now they parade Chinese decisions to resist Microsoft Monopoly power as "Unfair Trade"? and Anti-economic? Go China, get away while you can.. Run your own government how YOU see fit.. Because God knows Americans are happy having their government run by Companies and religious zealots who believe everybody who doesn't think the same as them is unpatriotic and wrong and the devil, and so on.. [/rant]
Yea, I'm sure bermuda is enjoying all that tax revenue, and all those american marketeers are enjoying shoveling their sweatshop labor crap on to an uneducated, overfed market.
I wonder if the fine folks over at SCO will bother to watch this.. If it turns out Affinity has a real case, SCO will see stark differences between what they're trying to pass off as a case of misappropriation, and how the Real World(tm) functions..
totally.. i did 15 minutes worth of work on a server for someone once [they had run lilo without having mounted/boot [oops!]], and i said I'd take guiness extra stout as a payment..
I got six 6-packs!!! now that's what i call a good barter. =)
What about approaching the Linux Public Broadcasting Network about doing a [[semi-]regular] show about security? Perhaps they'd be open to content like that?
Slashdot Mirror
meh.. it was more of a general rant.. I readily admit there is no cure for stupid users..
It wouldn't even be a stretch for the trojan executable to be made some ELF and slipped into !windows machines..
I do still wonder how much easier it'd be to counter if the target OS(es) were more open.
I'd like to take this moment to revisit the question; why doesn't Microsoft get sued for promoting that everybody use their crappy software that nobody's allowed to peek under the hood at and fix? Now we have a whole internet of these massively compromised machines. Because there's very little variation in their "genetic" makeup, and apparently the "genome" isn't all that robust; they're all susceptible to these horrible, contagious diseases, and it's ALL JUST ONE COMPANY'S FAULT!
I demand to see the rampant Linux viruses now.. This is ridiculous.. The smartest, brightest, hackers in the whole world write an OS from scratch that nobody can claim they solely own, it runs on more machines than there are macintoshes [assuming you also count the macintoshes running linux], been touted as Microsoft's largest competitor, eating up oodles of server marketshare, and nobody's been able to write a decent worm???
puhleez
On the other hand, one company can write one OS, and sell it for top dollar and everybody and their grandmother gets a copy, everybody and their grandkid can write a massively distributable exploit for it, and a WHOLE INDUSTRY of anti-virus software companies spring up (which live comfortably and profitably for decades) to battle the weaknesses in it, a whole industry of botnet admins can wield ridiculous amounts of cycles for whatever purpose they can get paid for....
But still; everybody swears by it, sticks to it, rubs it on their tummies, tosses up all kinds of the heartfelt loyalty to a COMPANY they don't even WORK FOR, a company that doesn't pay them CRAP, and treats their rights like crap????
I do NOT get it.
not that anybody will read this, but,
7 6560
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=5
not that i'm saying anything predicted is accurate, however, it does seem to be an interesting coincidence that the earth crosses the galactic plane every 65 million years or so.. and that it's about to do it again in 5 years.
the other interesting thing is, that not only does the earth cross the galactic plane, so does the sun. In fact; the earth, sun and galactic plane are all aligned on the December solstice, so mark your calendar! (the mayans did)
When a populace forgets that being free doesn't equate to being safe, and when a populace forgets that being secure doesn't mean being being free; then those who seek to have power over the populace, will.
Well i for one welcome our new polariton drama queens!
which point out the flaws in the law which make it easy to illustrate that the law is buggy and needs rewriting??
funny..
after the bnetd thing, this really isn't any suprise. they're like the game publisher version of sony.
I'll be suprised if anyone reads this, or even believes it, but..
It's been my job professionally for about 5 years to manage Linux on the desktop for a biomedical company who designs their own ASICs and PCBs on Mentor Graphics..
First I migrated them away from HP-UX as Mentor Graphics ported more and more of their tools to Linux.. It was more cost effective to get brand new Dell machines running redhat [which gets replaced, because Dell's redhat install is crappy] for US$1800 than refurbed old PA-RISC workstations at US$5000+ a box.
Basically, I'm using:
Distro: Debian
GUI Xfree86 or Xorg [depending on which box]
Desktop Env: KDE [muggles love KDE]
Mail: Evolution and MS Outlook [a la crossover office, what a lifesaver!]
Web: Mozilla or Firefox [both are installed]
Office suite: OpenOffice 2.0 and MS Office 2000 [a la crossover office], planner, & MS Project
Music: amaroK or xmms, or whatever they want
The home directories, and proprietary Mentor software are all NFS automounted [it's fine, really], so the only data on the drives is the os and application data.. i lose a drive, no big deal, when the drive's replaced, i reinstall stock debian..
However, I -have- used apt-move [and apt-proxy] to make my own distro of debian in-house for building workstations.. it's a lot more convenient to install the netinst CD and be done, reboot the machine, point the sources.list at the internal repository, load aptitude, and just hit + on the top levels [which essentially loads everything in the repo.], and bam. Installation would probably be more efficient if i used something like Fully Automatic Install (FAI), but i haven't been smart enough to figure out how to get it installed.. It's only good for installs tho.. I maintain the separate repo for upgrades.. That and it keeps people from installing things willy-nilly from the net if the only repos the workstations have is an internal server with a subset.
User accounts are all managed via LDAP, tied in with the corporate ADS directory, one login to auth them all!
box configuration management is all handled by Cfengine2 -- all hail the university of oslo! Cfengine has made it possible for me to manage all the boxes at once, no matter what the hardware discrepancies.. i can do the work of 4 people, by myself. that and, the configuration repairs itself if discrepancies show up on the workstations for some reason..
Let's see, that's software centralization, user data centralization, user auth centalization, and workstation configuration centralization.. for 30+ boxes across two buildings, for engineers and managers, for almost 5 years.. There may be better ways to design a network of workstations, but the support model I've implemented has really worked out for me..
Once a "normal" user gets used to the idea that the computer will do whatever they want it to do, even though it's not windows, the questions about how to do things taper off after a while as they get used to the new system..
It's sad really. I've been doing the Linux desktop professionally longer than anyone i've ever even heard of. I know for a fact the Linux desktop is completely viable, but nobody seems to believe it. Non-technical and technical people alike all seem to have their doubts and never get up the energy to actually explore it.. Heh..
anyway, good luck
of course.. left handed people don't USE mice to game right? oh yes.. and there are no left handed baseball players either, right? how about left handed golfers??
to hell with how nice Logitech's mice might be.. I'll never be able to use one..
am I a whiner? Can you find a mouse with the same quality as a Logitech or [shudder] Microsoft mouse that fits for the left hand?? No, you can't..
*BZZT*
Vagus baby, YEAA!!
don't be silly, http://bugmenot.com/
ha ha, too slow
NO fp 4 me
awesome!!! /me puts in his request to Italy for a Shiney New Ferrari!! =)
ya think the rain will hurt the rubarb?
not if it's in cans!!
Don't be ridiculous, of course I recognize that. But those countries write software that doesn't give China [or America for that matter] much choice either. Those companies also write private software with Microsoft in mind, since what else do governments run on? Mainframes? A lot of times, maybe. Yet the bulk of government money is spent on the desktops and notebooks and infrastructure support which is entirely microsoft. And this is especially true in Municipal level governments.
I'm not convinced China is doing themselves harm by trying to cultivate their own software industry. And you're worldy view of Microsoft applications isn't all that convincing either..
[rant]
I don't blame them. We in Corporate America(tm) don't ever get to explore alternatives without huge uphill battles with non-techincal Executives who just believe every Marketing line their sold by software vendors who don't know anything but how to tow the Microsoft line. This extends to our government where officials are basically bought and sold so often, when some country decides to express a little sovrigenty like, i don't know, having their own nation's people run their own nation's Information Systems.. OMGWTF! it's UNFAIR TRADE!!
Hurray for China for trying to escape the stranglehold that American software companies [read: Microsoft] have gotten American governments in and are reaching out to the world to try to strangle them too. It's disgusting to me to think our own American governments are slave to a private company for it's Information Systems needs.. That whole cities and states can be brought to a STANDSTILL as soon as some private firm decides they're "out of compliance".. It should be illegal for governments to run privately owned software which has no public accountability! But alas no. Even the very mention of taking away precious Microsoft Word from Secretaries and middle-managers nationwide brings apoplectic revolt! If the software industry in America had it's way, it'd be illegal for people to write software that WASN'T owned by SOME company or another.. The ignorance is unbearable sometimes!
And now they parade Chinese decisions to resist Microsoft Monopoly power as "Unfair Trade"? and Anti-economic? Go China, get away while you can.. Run your own government how YOU see fit.. Because God knows Americans are happy having their government run by Companies and religious zealots who believe everybody who doesn't think the same as them is unpatriotic and wrong and the devil, and so on..
[/rant]
Yea, I'm sure bermuda is enjoying all that tax revenue, and all those american marketeers are enjoying shoveling their sweatshop labor crap on to an uneducated, overfed market.
sweet monkey jesus, i have to agree..
as long as it's not in reference to robotics, how is it "cyber"?
Is he gonna get sued in 6 months once macromedia realizes he's stolen their foaf code?
Hmm,
I wonder if the fine folks over at SCO will bother to watch this.. If it turns out Affinity has a real case, SCO will see stark differences between what they're trying to pass off as a case of misappropriation, and how the Real World(tm) functions..
totally.. i did 15 minutes worth of work on a server for someone once [they had run lilo without having mounted /boot [oops!]], and i said I'd take guiness extra stout as a payment..
I got six 6-packs!!! now that's what i call a good barter. =)
Hi,
y /i386 /current/
I'm "the friend" who helped him install.. and he used the official daily sarge build from 03/09/04 to be exact..
you too can find the latest daily build at:
http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/dail
please notice that the things AntDude put in his rant are pretty much still a problem..
no graphical install, no graphical fdisk, etc etc..
..thanks for playing tho.
What about approaching the Linux Public Broadcasting Network about doing a [[semi-]regular] show about security? Perhaps they'd be open to content like that?
-vt
why was this pulled from the front page? it doesn't show up there, even when bots announced it'd gone up.. now its just missing.. will YOU see this?