As many have (or will) pointed out already... I will just repeat it for completeness: In my experience MS-Word can NOT open 100% of Word documents. At best I would say it can do about 98% (at best: on the asme machine the document was originally created on)... on average mebbe 90% (when a document is shared within an organization)... and at worst about 80% (or less! when a document is shared outside an organization). So the question comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
I currently have MS-Word documents that were created in MS-Word (same version as mine) from my co-workers that will NOT open in Word. Some of them just refuse to open, some of them crash Word. Yet all of them will open fine in OOo. All that will open fine in OOo can be saved as MS-Word documents and lo and behold!... they will now open in MS-Word! The question, again, comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
I currently have MS-Word documents that were created with MS-Word that are highly formatted (yet still look very unprofessional) that are almost completely mangled when one tries to open them in OOo. Yet ANY document that I create in OOo has no problem opening correctly in either OOo OR MS-Word. The question, again, comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
The vast majority of the docs that become mangled when opened in OOo are one-offs. These could be avoided if people used organization wide standard templates and styles. An organization anticipating a switch can create the templates and styles that will work well in both OOo and MS-Word.
Say we are very VERY generous and allow each molecule to be represented by a single bit... so 2.4x10^28 bits. Now start dividing that by 8 to get bytes and then by 10^12 to get terrabytes. I get about 3x10^15 TBytes of data. Now just for fun we imagine that we can store a TB of data on a disk 3/1000 of an inch thick and the diameter of, say, a thumbnail. We will end up with a stack of these hypothetical disks 10^12 inches high. Do some more dividing to get miles... I get about a 16 million mile high stack. It is 1/4 million miles to the moon. So that gives one a size perspective on the problem... an unrealistic one but unrealistic in that it favors the possibility.
Then there is the problem of actually sending that much data over any distance.
Then there is the problem of are you going to be scanned in destructively or non-destructively... and how would one actually do the scan? With a some sort of super-duper MRI machine that could scan down to the individual molecular level? The wavelengths used would have to be really short. The scanning would take a really LONG time.
Like I said... it would be far far safer and quicker to just walk to the moon.
There are a lot of other problems with teleportation that I haven't mentioned. The major problem I see is that it doesn't take a great deal of math or scientific skill to comprehend how incomprehensible the problem is... yet people are so unwilling to think about it a little bit and think it through.
transporters - well we've done with an entangled photon. One down, seventeen quadrillion to go. Hey, it's a start!
This one is going to be MUCH more difficult than it is to imagine. If you are using the "quadrillion" that is 10^24 then yes... 1 gram of hydrogen (H2 gas) will be about 3X10^23 molecules. A photon is MUCH simpler than a single hydrogen atom. A mass (you?) of aproximately 80Kg will be about 2.4x10^28 molecules of H2 (if you were only a gas). But you aren't a cloud of random hydrogen molecules. You are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a some other stuff.... but in a VERY complex configuration.
With any presently conceivable current or future technology it would be far simpler, quicker, and safer to just walk from where you are to where you want to be "transported" to.
Google for "The Physics of Star Trek" if you want a more detailed explanatin.
Actually regarding mainstream beliefs in our time... Go into any mini-mart and horoscopes and hard-on pills are far more common than a good basic physics text. Same in any supermarket. You can buy horosopes and all sorts of books on "Angels" and whatnot. But try to find a calculator that does integrals or any sort of books on "angles"! You can buy any sort of homeopathic concoction or diet pill but try to find a text on chemistry. Ask any person on the street what their sign is... then ask them state any of Newtons Laws or what F=ma means.
I would say that astrology and alchemy are just as prevalent (mainstream) today, if not more so, than in Newtons time.
I read your post and the responses and I can't agree with you. I tested it out on a file server I have:
Tyan mobo, dual 333MHz PIII, 512M of RAM and 4 x 160G WD JB drives connected to a 3Ware 6400 in a RAID 5 configuration.
The total file system space is 480GB and it is about half full (239GB). There are about 400,000 files on the system.
I did various searches using 'locate' and 'grep'. On average the searches took 0.6 seconds... which is three times faster than WinFS. Some searches took as long as 1.8 seconds when combined with mutiple filters but that was the max. Shortest was 0.43 seconds. I didn't only search for MP3s (which are spread out all over the place) but also RPMs, tarballs, text files, video files, source files... you name it. Same results.
Now it is obvious you don't understand what 'locate' is or does. You may even know something about WinFS. You claimed somewhere that you work for MS and have seen WinFS in action. I know nothing about WinFS. I will just have to take your word for WinFS being as much as three times slower than Linux/ext3 filesystem when doing searches for filenames (shrug). This is slashdot and there are all kinds of under-informed claims made here. You might want to be a bit more careful with your employer though... lest they be embarassed when their new WinFS doesn't actually stack up.
Try: http://www.linuxcounter.org/ Which has been around for about 10 years. Not sure why it isn't more popular. Would be nice if Linux distros gave a choice at install to "auto-register" or something. There is also good info there on why estimates on number of Linux systems is difficult to guage.
Also: "Market Share" means number of units sold vs the total number of units sold in a particular category during some period of time (year quarter whatever). MS and even more so, Apple, have a very good idea of what their market share is. They know almost exactly how many of their units have been sold. Linux has a pretty small market share because everyone can just download it once and install many times. On the other hand comapnies like Red Hat probably have a very accurate count of what their market share is for RHEL.
"Installed Base": Means the number of particular units installed vs the total number of units of all systems installed of all types for a particular instant in time. The installed base is certainly higher for Linux than the market share is. Installed base is probably quite different from market share for all types systems. There are all those PCs, Macs, and Sun boxes that now have Linux installed. There are all those homebuilt systems that now have a pirate copy of Windows or Linux or both installed. There are all those PCs that shipped with Windows (or Linux) that now have Linux (or Windows) installed or both. There are all those systems that can't run the latest version of Windows but are now running Linux in "edge-of-network" roles or just as plain old desktops. Apple probably has a very good idea what their installed base is for Mac OS X (compared to their market share) because of Softwareupdate.app grabbing the latest updates which, pretty much exclusively, come from Apples servers. MS may have a good idea of, at least, how many people update their systems via windowsupdate.com (or whatever it is called). Linux distros may not have a very good idea unless they can somehow get stats from ALL their update mirrors. But this would never include all the locally mirrored updates. I download updates from one to three mirrors once and then push those out to dozens of systems locally.
"Mind Share": Though a popular buzzword has nothing to do with market share or installed base.
While Linux market share, however it is measured, should give a company a solid number to work with when determining the size of their market... it says nothing about their real and potential market. The Linux market share is the lowest possible number to use for estimating the size of the potential Linux market for a company that plans to release a product for Linux systems. This is a very important thing for a company to know when planning a product release. So if you want to see more products for Linux... go get counted.
I do not think the problem is exaggerated at all. If anything it is underplayed and, at worst, ignored. The problem IS is that it is largely (by the evidence of yours and other posts) unknown. The assumption is that "root is disabled and I have Unix style file permissions so I am 'safe'" when this is clearly not the whole picture. This is dangerous.
You did as I did and created a 'Standard' user account for yourself for everyday useage. It is not a safe assumption that other people who setup and run a multiuser Mac system will notice as you and I did. In fact I have found that most Mac users do not know about it. Unless that user understands Unix style permissions and their implications on system security, 'best practices', and self discipline as an admin.... it is a problem. There is nothing in the setup of a new Mac that guides the user to a 'safer' setup of that Mac. Mac OS X is the only Unix-like OS that I know of that has 'Repair Permissions' as a standard tool for fixing problems on a running system. Ask any experienced Unix system administrator and they will tell you that a OS that needs to have its permissions "repaired" periodically... even once... is fundamentally flawed.
It matters even if it is a single user system. It is the difference between having to restore the entire system or just the contents of the users home folder. For single user Mac OS X system, say a laptop, the malware can affect the entire system. The malware when run as that single user who has admin rights can replace anything in/Applications AND/Applications/Utilities including Installer.app with a compromised version. Look for yourself.
This is a problem for all Mac OS X systems including single user (laptop), small number of users (home Mac), large number of users (school computer lab). I have already discussed the problems for a single user. It should also be noted that it can affect all systems that single user comes in contact with. The users 'external accounts' such as online banking, ebay, paypal,.Mac, credit card, webmail... you get the idea. The malware can include a keystroke logger and forward the information to the malware author. For the home Mac the problem is expanded to all the users of that Mac that run the apps in/Applications. The user who sets up that Mac (the admin user) is most likely to log in as that user any time they are using the system. For the admin of a school Mac lab it can be a bit more interesting. Depending on their level of experience as an admin they are quite likely, if coming from the Mac OS 9 and previous world to just create a single admin account and log in as that user all the time for all their useage of the system. If the lab is set up to netboot then this can affect all the macs in the lab. Some admins will create, say, a 'labadmin' account for system administration and a separate 'Standard' account for their regular useage. They may even share the labadmin account with several other people who help maintain the system making it even more difficult to secure the lab.
I think I understand why Apple made this choice for their security/admin model. It is based on a decision to balance ease-of-use with security. But, in my opinion, Apple has made the wrong decision. Apple has decided to all but ruin the Unix security model by ignoring the principle of 'least privilege'. In my opinion the current security model for Mac OS X is MUCH worse than the ones most all other Unix/Linux systems in current use. Not only because Apple has 'broken' the principle of least privilege but also because they have lulled their users by giving them a false sense of security. Sooner or later Apple will have to fix this... hopefully sooner.
Many people might argue that if Apple makes the security model more strict and forces their users to create a separate admin account... separate from the regular user account, that users will just tend to log in as that admin user all the time in order to ma
Show me one OS, whose default user is NOT an administrator.
All Linux distros (all that I have ever used) have the "default user" as a regular (non-admin) user.
First... it should be defined what a "default user" is wrt to a few operating systems:
* In Mac OS X: The person who first sets up the new Mac puts in their first and last name. The system generates a 'shortname' by combining those two names. For instance, Joe Blow sets up his new Mac for the first time and is given the userid (or shortname) joeblow. The Joe Blow is not prompted to create any other accounts on his system. This is all a regular Mac user is required to do. They will then use their system as this user (joeblow) for all their work on the Mac. They may even add other users but Joe Blow will most likely always log in as joeblow. The problem is.... Joe Blow is the admin user. Joe Blow will most likely always be running as joeblow and with admin rights. He can add more users and those will be 'Standard' users by default (non-admin). But the default user, the one most likely to be the using the machine most of the time is also the admin user. If you are sitting at a Mac OS X machine you can verify this with System Preferences --> Accounts there is most likely a little tag 'Admin' under your username. Open a terminal or log in to a Mac remotely and type 'id' and you will see something like:
* In Linux: The person who first sets up the new Linux box is asked to enter a root password twice. They are then asked (at some point during the installation or on first boot) to create a regular user account. As before they can create their own userid 'joeblow' and they then type in their password twice. This is the userid he will log in as for regular useage of the system. He can also add other users at this time. This is the 'default user' account. It is just like any other regular user account on the system. A regular user can write to their home folder and/tmp. A regualr user can read almost anything on the system except other users home folders. I will stop calling this regular user joeblow because there is no distinction between joeblow or any regular user on the system. User joeblow has no special privileges. The only thing a regular user has to know to admin the system beyond their own account is the root password. If a regular user tries to do anything that requires admin priveleges via the CLI they will be denied. If a regular user trys to run one of the admin apps they will be prompted for the root password. On a Linux box the 'id' command typically returns:
If this user tries to log in regularly as root the GUI will likely complain and tell them not to, his friends will tell him not to, all the documentation will tell him not to. Most likely and most of the time this user will log in as a regular user with no special priveleges.
* In Windows XP: The person who first sets up the machine is not prompted to create a regular account. An account is created by default. That account is also the 'Administrator' account. When new users are added they are not automatically made admin users. But the original default user is still the admin and they will log in as that user all of the time. In this respect it is not all that muc different than default user Mac OS X. In earlier versions (W9x/ME) any user was, by default, the admin user. I am not sure about W2K.
As I said in a previous post the problem in Mac OS X is that the 'default user' (as described above) has write permissions to the global/Applications folder and quite a few other places. Just because your system asks for the password when you run the Installer.app doesn't mean that it will always ask before it writes to the/Applications folder. In fact this is considered "broken" by Apple and you should run 'Repair Permi
To install any new application in Mac OS X (as I imagine it is in Unix), the admin password must be input.
That is only trivially true. The default user, the one who setup the machine, the primary user, the one most Mac users log in as (whatever you want to call it) is a member of group 80 (admin). That user has full full permissions to the/Applications folder:
drwxrwxr-x root admin Applications
As compared to most all Unix/Linux systems where the/usr folder (the equivalent of/Applications on the Mac) is:
drwxr-xr-x root root usr
What this means is.... the vast majority of Mac users have full write access to the global/Applications folder.
What most Mac users should do (and Apple should make it the default!) is to create an account for regular use that does NOT have admin privileges. They should then use that for everyday use and the system should ask them for the admin user userid and password when they want to write to anywhere other than their home folder or/tmp.
As I can see by many of the posts here there seem to be a lot of Mac users that do not understand this. They seem to think that the global Applications folder is somehow protected from casual users... it isn't. This is also a problem for several other folders on the system./Library (and most subfolders),/Users,/Developer,/Volumes and/cores are all writeable by the default user. So for most users this is hardly different than if they activate the root user and log in as that user all the time.
Granted there are some folders where the admin (default user) can not write to without a sudo (and then the admin password). The problem is the folders that most users will be using for applications (the things they run) are writeable by the admin (default user).
"gave the bank teller $1,000".... "5 minutes later, just as you see it in the film, they handed me a Weatherby Mark V Magnum rifle."
This would be believeable except a Weatherby Mark V Magnum costs about $1,300 to start. I just don't see a bank or any business giving you a $1,300 item for $1,000 cash. It just doesn't "ring true". Cheapest Weatherby I could find
Unless the bank is getting those Weatherbys for something less than $1,000 to start with.
In Mac OS X I find that "Preferences" are under neither "File" nor "Window"... but under 'whatever theappnameis'. System Preferences are both in the Dock and in Apple Menu.
In Linux (Gnome) I find that "Preferences" are under "Edit". Global user preferences are under main menu --> "Preferences". Global system preferences are under main menu --> "System Settings".
Either setup seems to make sense.
The thing that seems to throw off most users is that to "Quit" an application in Mac OS X one has to go to the 'whatevertheappnameis' menu and not the "File" menu as in all other apps on all other systems that I can think of. Eventually users seem to get over it... depends on how much time they spend in each kind of system.
Have you ever thought the problem might be the reverse? That is to say... the computer without adequate shielding will receive uf RF interference from outside sources. This could, perhaps, make the system unstable. It is not so much that the computer is a transmitter of RF as it is a receiver of RF.
but I have installed FC2 on one machine so far and had no such problems. It is dual booting W2K and FC2 just fine. My system is dual PIII 800MHz CPUs, 512M of RAM and Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller. Linux on/dev/sdb (9G drive) W2K on/dev/sda (4.5G drive).
I heard of the dual boot problem before I installed about a week ago. I will be testing it on other systems also.
Currently I am running FC1 on all my workstations and laptops (about 20 systems). FC1 has been the best Red Hat ever in my experience. I have been using Red Hat since version 4.0. FC2, so far, looks to be every bit as good. My servers are running RH7.3 and RH9 (they tend to lag my workstations).
My thanks to those that have posted workarounds and explanations. Fortunately I have not needed them yet. Guess I will find out soon though.
The best defense Apple has in the way of security is not giving any application run by a user permission to change ANYTHING other than minor configuration options without authenticating each application individually.
This is true for all most all Unix I have ever seen. However, the primary user on Mac OS X is the admin user and logs in as that user most of the time (often ALL of the time). The admin user in Mac OS X has full write permissions to the/Applications folder and/Applications/Utilities folder and to all the apps/files under those. In those folders are applications (take a look) that are critical to the use, maintenance, and configuration of the system. No authentication or authorization is required for the primary/admin user to write to that folder. It is obvious that this leaves a path open for a virus/trojan/worm/whatever to compromise the system.
I am running Mac OS X Panther v10.3.3 with all updates current as of today. I log in to the machine as the "owner" or "primary user"(not root). This makes me a member of groupid 80(admin). I can now write ANYTHING to and from the/Applications folder. No further authentication required. This is the default setup on ALL Mac OS X 10.3.3 systems. Have you done some other change to your system?
I have about 20 systems running 10.3.3, they all behave this way.
Fire up a word processor (Word, Open Office, AbiWord, Wordperfect) and what do you see?
Rulers across the top and down the sides. WTF for? Then they have a confusing set of little sliders and sometimes other symbols as the document gets marked up. I have no use for those. I set a LyX document type from one of the templates or one of my custom templates... done. I don't have to worry about where my margins and tabstops and all that arcana left over from the days of typewriters. All I have to think about is the the structure and content of my document. Everything else is handled automatically. LyX will, without fail, produce professionally formatted output that looks gorgeous. I don't have to know a thing about TeX/LaTeX... all I have to do is type what I want to say. I htink AbiWord is the only one of those where you can turn OFF the rulers.
On the other hand... in a program like Scribus a ruler or grid makes a lot of sense.
FYI: LyX is NOT a "primitive GUI". It is actually quite refined. It has none of the cruft like rulers and 3 or 4 toolbars like most word processors. The LyX GUI gets out of the way so you can view maximum amount of document on your screen.
With LyX you have the option to place figures "definitely-right-here".
LyX also has an easy to use yet full featured version control system built in.
LyX can also export to.rtf format so that a student's less well equipped reviewers can easily mark them up in Word.
The problem I see with most documents created in MS-Word is that it looks like the author was using it like a typewriter... now that IS going back 20+ years.
"I can't think up an example of flywheeling off the top of my head."
Look a little higher... the Moon... look a little lower... the Earth you are standing on.
Next!
It should be said that animals, minerals and vegetables (aka Nature(TM)) MAY not have all the mechanisms we have for various things and in the form and uses we have and use them. But, for the most part, they have evolved more efficient mechanisms to do the things they need to do... which is mainly reproduce. Reproduction is something most slashdotters are probably not going to do all that much of... even with all their wonderful technology.
Why have a flywheel when you can store energy chemically?
How can you set up a firewall using Red Hat Linux 9 and NOT use iptables? Was it or was it not set up as a firewall? If you had set the RH9 box as a firewall did you leave all the ports open? Did you close ANY of them? You would have to deliberately open the ports for SMTP and Samba when setting up the firewall. Were you intending to do Windows file sharing over the internet? Were you intending to use the RH9 box as an email server for incoming email? For telnet you would have had to deliberately install that service. It is not installed by default in any of the setup configurations for RH9. All of the mistakes you made with the RH9 box (however you managed to make them) could have been made with a Windows, *BSD, or Mac OS X box.
I had been using BSD and Solaris back when I first starting with Unix (1989-1996). Then I started with Linux. I prefer Linux over the BSDs because of performance, ability to use most any hardware I throw at it, features, and support for the applications I need. I am a switcher.
Slashdot Mirror
As many have (or will) pointed out already... I will just repeat it for completeness: In my experience MS-Word can NOT open 100% of Word documents. At best I would say it can do about 98% (at best: on the asme machine the document was originally created on)... on average mebbe 90% (when a document is shared within an organization)... and at worst about 80% (or less! when a document is shared outside an organization). So the question comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
I currently have MS-Word documents that were created in MS-Word (same version as mine) from my co-workers that will NOT open in Word. Some of them just refuse to open, some of them crash Word. Yet all of them will open fine in OOo. All that will open fine in OOo can be saved as MS-Word documents and lo and behold!... they will now open in MS-Word! The question, again, comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
I currently have MS-Word documents that were created with MS-Word that are highly formatted (yet still look very unprofessional) that are almost completely mangled when one tries to open them in OOo. Yet ANY document that I create in OOo has no problem opening correctly in either OOo OR MS-Word. The question, again, comes to mind, when will Windows+MS-Office be ready for the corporate desktop?
The vast majority of the docs that become mangled when opened in OOo are one-offs. These could be avoided if people used organization wide standard templates and styles. An organization anticipating a switch can create the templates and styles that will work well in both OOo and MS-Word.
YMMV
-DU-...etc...
Look inside a "nice hot PSU" some time... you will see a bunch of electrolytic caps. Your point was?
-DU-...etc...
That is a good example... another one would be...
Say we are very VERY generous and allow each molecule to be represented by a single bit... so 2.4x10^28 bits. Now start dividing that by 8 to get bytes and then by 10^12 to get terrabytes. I get about 3x10^15 TBytes of data. Now just for fun we imagine that we can store a TB of data on a disk 3/1000 of an inch thick and the diameter of, say, a thumbnail. We will end up with a stack of these hypothetical disks 10^12 inches high. Do some more dividing to get miles... I get about a 16 million mile high stack. It is 1/4 million miles to the moon. So that gives one a size perspective on the problem... an unrealistic one but unrealistic in that it favors the possibility.
Then there is the problem of actually sending that much data over any distance.
Then there is the problem of are you going to be scanned in destructively or non-destructively... and how would one actually do the scan? With a some sort of super-duper MRI machine that could scan down to the individual molecular level? The wavelengths used would have to be really short. The scanning would take a really LONG time.
Like I said... it would be far far safer and quicker to just walk to the moon.
There are a lot of other problems with teleportation that I haven't mentioned. The major problem I see is that it doesn't take a great deal of math or scientific skill to comprehend how incomprehensible the problem is... yet people are so unwilling to think about it a little bit and think it through.
-DU-...etc...
transporters - well we've done with an entangled photon. One down, seventeen quadrillion to go. Hey, it's a start!
This one is going to be MUCH more difficult than it is to imagine. If you are using the "quadrillion" that is 10^24 then yes... 1 gram of hydrogen (H2 gas) will be about 3X10^23 molecules. A photon is MUCH simpler than a single hydrogen atom. A mass (you?) of aproximately 80Kg will be about 2.4x10^28 molecules of H2 (if you were only a gas). But you aren't a cloud of random hydrogen molecules. You are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a some other stuff.... but in a VERY complex configuration.
With any presently conceivable current or future technology it would be far simpler, quicker, and safer to just walk from where you are to where you want to be "transported" to.
Google for "The Physics of Star Trek" if you want a more detailed explanatin.
-DU-...etc...
medical hypospray, too.
Been around since at least the mid seventies. Ever been in the military? The US military has used them for innoculation for a long time.
no needles, just air!
Injecting air into the bloodstream is a pretty sure way to kill someone.
-DU-...etc...
Actually regarding mainstream beliefs in our time... Go into any mini-mart and horoscopes and hard-on pills are far more common than a good basic physics text. Same in any supermarket. You can buy horosopes and all sorts of books on "Angels" and whatnot. But try to find a calculator that does integrals or any sort of books on "angles"! You can buy any sort of homeopathic concoction or diet pill but try to find a text on chemistry.
Ask any person on the street what their sign is... then ask them state any of Newtons Laws or what F=ma means.
I would say that astrology and alchemy are just as prevalent (mainstream) today, if not more so, than in Newtons time.
-DU-...etc...
I read your post and the responses and I can't agree with you. I tested it out on a file server I have:
Tyan mobo, dual 333MHz PIII, 512M of RAM and 4 x 160G WD JB drives connected to a 3Ware 6400 in a RAID 5 configuration.
The total file system space is 480GB and it is about half full (239GB). There are about 400,000 files on the system.
I did various searches using 'locate' and 'grep'. On average the searches took 0.6 seconds... which is three times faster than WinFS. Some searches took as long as 1.8 seconds when combined with mutiple filters but that was the max. Shortest was 0.43 seconds. I didn't only search for MP3s (which are spread out all over the place) but also RPMs, tarballs, text files, video files, source files... you name it. Same results.
Now it is obvious you don't understand what 'locate' is or does. You may even know something about WinFS. You claimed somewhere that you work for MS and have seen WinFS in action. I know nothing about WinFS. I will just have to take your word for WinFS being as much as three times slower than Linux/ext3 filesystem when doing searches for filenames (shrug). This is slashdot and there are all kinds of under-informed claims made here. You might want to be a bit more careful with your employer though... lest they be embarassed when their new WinFS doesn't actually stack up.
-DU-...etc...
Try: http://www.linuxcounter.org/
Which has been around for about 10 years. Not sure why it isn't more popular. Would be nice if Linux distros gave a choice at install to "auto-register" or something. There is also good info there on why estimates on number of Linux systems is difficult to guage.
Also:
"Market Share" means number of units sold vs the total number of units sold in a particular category during some period of time (year quarter whatever). MS and even more so, Apple, have a very good idea of what their market share is. They know almost exactly how many of their units have been sold. Linux has a pretty small market share because everyone can just download it once and install many times. On the other hand comapnies like Red Hat probably have a very accurate count of what their market share is for RHEL.
"Installed Base": Means the number of particular units installed vs the total number of units of all systems installed of all types for a particular instant in time. The installed base is certainly higher for Linux than the market share is. Installed base is probably quite different from market share for all types systems. There are all those PCs, Macs, and Sun boxes that now have Linux installed. There are all those homebuilt systems that now have a pirate copy of Windows or Linux or both installed. There are all those PCs that shipped with Windows (or Linux) that now have Linux (or Windows) installed or both. There are all those systems that can't run the latest version of Windows but are now running Linux in "edge-of-network" roles or just as plain old desktops.
Apple probably has a very good idea what their installed base is for Mac OS X (compared to their market share) because of Softwareupdate.app grabbing the latest updates which, pretty much exclusively, come from Apples servers.
MS may have a good idea of, at least, how many people update their systems via windowsupdate.com (or whatever it is called).
Linux distros may not have a very good idea unless they can somehow get stats from ALL their update mirrors. But this would never include all the locally mirrored updates. I download updates from one to three mirrors once and then push those out to dozens of systems locally.
"Mind Share": Though a popular buzzword has nothing to do with market share or installed base.
While Linux market share, however it is measured, should give a company a solid number to work with when determining the size of their market... it says nothing about their real and potential market. The Linux market share is the lowest possible number to use for estimating the size of the potential Linux market for a company that plans to release a product for Linux systems. This is a very important thing for a company to know when planning a product release.
So if you want to see more products for Linux... go get counted.
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I do not think the problem is exaggerated at all. If anything it is underplayed and, at worst, ignored. The problem IS is that it is largely (by the evidence of yours and other posts) unknown. The assumption is that "root is disabled and I have Unix style file permissions so I am 'safe'" when this is clearly not the whole picture. This is dangerous.
/Applications AND /Applications/Utilities including Installer.app with a compromised version. Look for yourself.
.Mac, credit card, webmail... you get the idea. The malware can include a keystroke logger and forward the information to the malware author. /Applications. The user who sets up that Mac (the admin user) is most likely to log in as that user any time they are using the system.
You did as I did and created a 'Standard' user account for yourself for everyday useage. It is not a safe assumption that other people who setup and run a multiuser Mac system will notice as you and I did. In fact I have found that most Mac users do not know about it. Unless that user understands Unix style permissions and their implications on system security, 'best practices', and self discipline as an admin.... it is a problem. There is nothing in the setup of a new Mac that guides the user to a 'safer' setup of that Mac. Mac OS X is the only Unix-like OS that I know of that has 'Repair Permissions' as a standard tool for fixing problems on a running system. Ask any experienced Unix system administrator and they will tell you that a OS that needs to have its permissions "repaired" periodically... even once... is fundamentally flawed.
It matters even if it is a single user system. It is the difference between having to restore the entire system or just the contents of the users home folder. For single user Mac OS X system, say a laptop, the malware can affect the entire system. The malware when run as that single user who has admin rights can replace anything in
This is a problem for all Mac OS X systems including single user (laptop), small number of users (home Mac), large number of users (school computer lab).
I have already discussed the problems for a single user. It should also be noted that it can affect all systems that single user comes in contact with. The users 'external accounts' such as online banking, ebay, paypal,
For the home Mac the problem is expanded to all the users of that Mac that run the apps in
For the admin of a school Mac lab it can be a bit more interesting. Depending on their level of experience as an admin they are quite likely, if coming from the Mac OS 9 and previous world to just create a single admin account and log in as that user all the time for all their useage of the system. If the lab is set up to netboot then this can affect all the macs in the lab. Some admins will create, say, a 'labadmin' account for system administration and a separate 'Standard' account for their regular useage. They may even share the labadmin account with several other people who help maintain the system making it even more difficult to secure the lab.
I think I understand why Apple made this choice for their security/admin model. It is based on a decision to balance ease-of-use with security. But, in my opinion, Apple has made the wrong decision. Apple has decided to all but ruin the Unix security model by ignoring the principle of 'least privilege'. In my opinion the current security model for Mac OS X is MUCH worse than the ones most all other Unix/Linux systems in current use. Not only because Apple has 'broken' the principle of least privilege but also because they have lulled their users by giving them a false sense of security. Sooner or later Apple will have to fix this... hopefully sooner.
Many people might argue that if Apple makes the security model more strict and forces their users to create a separate admin account... separate from the regular user account, that users will just tend to log in as that admin user all the time in order to ma
All Linux distros (all that I have ever used) have the "default user" as a regular (non-admin) user.
/tmp. A regualr user can read almost anything on the system except other users home folders.
/Applications folder and quite a few other places. Just because your system asks for the password when you run the Installer.app doesn't mean that it will always ask before it writes to the /Applications folder. In fact this is considered "broken" by Apple and you should run 'Repair Permi
First... it should be defined what a "default user" is wrt to a few operating systems:
* In Mac OS X: The person who first sets up the new Mac puts in their first and last name. The system generates a 'shortname' by combining those two names. For instance, Joe Blow sets up his new Mac for the first time and is given the userid (or shortname) joeblow. The Joe Blow is not prompted to create any other accounts on his system. This is all a regular Mac user is required to do. They will then use their system as this user (joeblow) for all their work on the Mac. They may even add other users but Joe Blow will most likely always log in as joeblow. The problem is.... Joe Blow is the admin user. Joe Blow will most likely always be running as joeblow and with admin rights. He can add more users and those will be 'Standard' users by default (non-admin). But the default user, the one most likely to be the using the machine most of the time is also the admin user. If you are sitting at a Mac OS X machine you can verify this with System Preferences --> Accounts there is most likely a little tag 'Admin' under your username. Open a terminal or log in to a Mac remotely and type 'id' and you will see something like:
uid=501(joeblow) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff), 80(admin)
* In Linux: The person who first sets up the new Linux box is asked to enter a root password twice. They are then asked (at some point during the installation or on first boot) to create a regular user account. As before they can create their own userid 'joeblow' and they then type in their password twice. This is the userid he will log in as for regular useage of the system. He can also add other users at this time. This is the 'default user' account. It is just like any other regular user account on the system. A regular user can write to their home folder and
I will stop calling this regular user joeblow because there is no distinction between joeblow or any regular user on the system. User joeblow has no special privileges. The only thing a regular user has to know to admin the system beyond their own account is the root password.
If a regular user tries to do anything that requires admin priveleges via the CLI they will be denied. If a regular user trys to run one of the admin apps they will be prompted for the root password. On a Linux box the 'id' command typically returns:
uid=501(joeblow) gid=501(joeblow) groups=501(joeblow)
If this user tries to log in regularly as root the GUI will likely complain and tell them not to, his friends will tell him not to, all the documentation will tell him not to. Most likely and most of the time this user will log in as a regular user with no special priveleges.
* In Windows XP: The person who first sets up the machine is not prompted to create a regular account. An account is created by default. That account is also the 'Administrator' account. When new users are added they are not automatically made admin users. But the original default user is still the admin and they will log in as that user all of the time. In this respect it is not all that muc different than default user Mac OS X. In earlier versions (W9x/ME) any user was, by default, the admin user. I am not sure about W2K.
As I said in a previous post the problem in Mac OS X is that the 'default user' (as described above) has write permissions to the global
That is only trivially true. The default user, the one who setup the machine, the primary user, the one most Mac users log in as (whatever you want to call it) is a member of group 80 (admin). That user has full full permissions to the
drwxrwxr-x root admin Applications
As compared to most all Unix/Linux systems where the
drwxr-xr-x root root usr
What this means is.... the vast majority of Mac users have full write access to the global
What most Mac users should do (and Apple should make it the default!) is to create an account for regular use that does NOT have admin privileges. They should then use that for everyday use and the system should ask them for the admin user userid and password when they want to write to anywhere other than their home folder or
As I can see by many of the posts here there seem to be a lot of Mac users that do not understand this. They seem to think that the global Applications folder is somehow protected from casual users... it isn't. This is also a problem for several other folders on the system.
Granted there are some folders where the admin (default user) can not write to without a sudo (and then the admin password). The problem is the folders that most users will be using for applications (the things they run) are writeable by the admin (default user).
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"gave the bank teller $1,000".... "5 minutes later, just as you see it in the film, they handed me a Weatherby Mark V Magnum rifle."
This would be believeable except a Weatherby Mark V Magnum costs about $1,300 to start. I just don't see a bank or any business giving you a $1,300 item for $1,000 cash. It just doesn't "ring true".
Cheapest Weatherby I could find
Unless the bank is getting those Weatherbys for something less than $1,000 to start with.
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In Mac OS X I find that "Preferences" are under neither "File" nor "Window"... but under 'whatever theappnameis'. System Preferences are both in the Dock and in Apple Menu.
In Linux (Gnome) I find that "Preferences" are under "Edit". Global user preferences are under main menu --> "Preferences". Global system preferences are under main menu --> "System Settings".
Either setup seems to make sense.
The thing that seems to throw off most users is that to "Quit" an application in Mac OS X one has to go to the 'whatevertheappnameis' menu and not the "File" menu as in all other apps on all other systems that I can think of. Eventually users seem to get over it... depends on how much time they spend in each kind of system.
Have you ever thought the problem might be the reverse?
That is to say... the computer without adequate shielding will receive uf RF interference from outside sources. This could, perhaps, make the system unstable.
It is not so much that the computer is a transmitter of RF as it is a receiver of RF.
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but I have installed FC2 on one machine so far and had no such problems. It is dual booting W2K and FC2 just fine. My system is dual PIII 800MHz CPUs, 512M of RAM and Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller. Linux on /dev/sdb (9G drive) W2K on /dev/sda (4.5G drive).
I heard of the dual boot problem before I installed about a week ago. I will be testing it on other systems also.
Currently I am running FC1 on all my workstations and laptops (about 20 systems). FC1 has been the best Red Hat ever in my experience. I have been using Red Hat since version 4.0. FC2, so far, looks to be every bit as good. My servers are running RH7.3 and RH9 (they tend to lag my workstations).
My thanks to those that have posted workarounds and explanations. Fortunately I have not needed them yet. Guess I will find out soon though.
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While I agree almost entirely with the ProfaneMuthafucka... you do have a point.
Perhaps he should have said premature death. Which is what, I would like to think, most people would understand his statement to mean.
Other than that... I wouldn't congratulate myself too much if I were you. All you did was state the obvious. Whoopdyfreekindo.
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Have you looked at:
http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/OOoMySQL9.pdf
?
It gives a very similar front end to MySQL via OOo.
The best defense Apple has in the way of security is not giving any application run by a user permission to change ANYTHING other than minor configuration options without authenticating each application individually.
/Applications folder and /Applications/Utilities folder and to all the apps/files under those. In those folders are applications (take a look) that are critical to the use, maintenance, and configuration of the system. No authentication or authorization is required for the primary/admin user to write to that folder. It is obvious that this leaves a path open for a virus/trojan/worm/whatever to compromise the system.
This is true for all most all Unix I have ever seen. However, the primary user on Mac OS X is the admin user and logs in as that user most of the time (often ALL of the time). The admin user in Mac OS X has full write permissions to the
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I am running Mac OS X Panther v10.3.3 with all updates current as of today. I log in to the machine as the "owner" or "primary user"(not root). This makes me a member of groupid 80(admin). I can now write ANYTHING to and from the /Applications folder. No further authentication required. This is the default setup on ALL Mac OS X 10.3.3 systems. Have you done some other change to your system?
I have about 20 systems running 10.3.3, they all behave this way.
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RPM does have this ability:
rpm -ivh --prefix ~/whatever packagename.rpm
That only works IF the package is "relocateable". Some packages, quite naturally, are not but most apps will (or should) be.
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No, I don't think so.
Fire up a word processor (Word, Open Office, AbiWord, Wordperfect) and what do you see?
Rulers across the top and down the sides. WTF for? Then they have a confusing set of little sliders and sometimes other symbols as the document gets marked up. I have no use for those. I set a LyX document type from one of the templates or one of my custom templates... done. I don't have to worry about where my margins and tabstops and all that arcana left over from the days of typewriters. All I have to think about is the the structure and content of my document. Everything else is handled automatically. LyX will, without fail, produce professionally formatted output that looks gorgeous. I don't have to know a thing about TeX/LaTeX... all I have to do is type what I want to say. I htink AbiWord is the only one of those where you can turn OFF the rulers.
On the other hand... in a program like Scribus a ruler or grid makes a lot of sense.
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FYI:
.rtf format so that a student's less well equipped reviewers can easily mark them up in Word.
LyX is NOT a "primitive GUI". It is actually quite refined. It has none of the cruft like rulers and 3 or 4 toolbars like most word processors. The LyX GUI gets out of the way so you can view maximum amount of document on your screen.
With LyX you have the option to place figures "definitely-right-here".
LyX also has an easy to use yet full featured version control system built in.
LyX can also export to
The problem I see with most documents created in MS-Word is that it looks like the author was using it like a typewriter... now that IS going back 20+ years.
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"I can't think up an example of flywheeling off the top of my head."
Look a little higher... the Moon... look a little lower... the Earth you are standing on.
Next!
It should be said that animals, minerals and vegetables (aka Nature(TM)) MAY not have all the mechanisms we have for various things and in the form and uses we have and use them. But, for the most part, they have evolved more efficient mechanisms to do the things they need to do... which is mainly reproduce. Reproduction is something most slashdotters are probably not going to do all that much of... even with all their wonderful technology.
Why have a flywheel when you can store energy chemically?
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How can you set up a firewall using Red Hat Linux 9 and NOT use iptables? Was it or was it not set up as a firewall?
If you had set the RH9 box as a firewall did you leave all the ports open? Did you close ANY of them? You would have to deliberately open the ports for SMTP and Samba when setting up the firewall. Were you intending to do Windows file sharing over the internet? Were you intending to use the RH9 box as an email server for incoming email?
For telnet you would have had to deliberately install that service. It is not installed by default in any of the setup configurations for RH9.
All of the mistakes you made with the RH9 box (however you managed to make them) could have been made with a Windows, *BSD, or Mac OS X box.
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I had been using BSD and Solaris back when I first starting with Unix (1989-1996). Then I started with Linux. I prefer Linux over the BSDs because of performance, ability to use most any hardware I throw at it, features, and support for the applications I need. I am a switcher.
I, for one, welcomed our new Linux overlords.
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