What I wish is that there was a one-handed keyboard so I could type with one hand and mouse with the other.
I'm sorry, you must release your 557057 user ID and go to the back of the line.:-)
There are Dvorak one-handed keyboard layouts for your system, whatever it is. In Windows you can change to it in the control panel; In X I know it can be done but don't know how offhand. Several Slashdotters use this scheme, and at least one will probably beat me to a reply since I'm using the old slow QWERTY layout.
I suspect there are free Dvorak typing tutors out there, but I'm not sure about that.
And if you're really geeky, there are several projects that attempt to let you type with the mouse, and many more for typing with a stylus. (Gestures, vectors, special keypads, etc..)
I'm too lazy to use Google and give you links right now, so I leave that as an exercise for you.
In California, for every dollar gambled away in the state lotto, $0.519 goes to the winner, $0.349 goes to PUBLIC EDUCATION, $0.068 goes to retailers commision and bonuses, $0.039 goes to operating expenses, and $0.028 goes to game costs.
PUBLIC EDUCATION:
"Tonight's winning lottery numbers are. .."
"Gambling problem? call 1-800-555-1212. Not a results line."
Play California Lotto, tickets available at your [brand] store!
By the way, mod up the AC who replied to this comment before me.
Here's a big problem with the lotteries: Casino payout odds are better. Okay, the lotto vig goes towards public needs, but aside from the point the AC made the lotteries are mostly played by lower income people and is therefore perceived as an unfair tax or "stupid tax". People with more income seem to notice that the payout odds and return in entertainment is much higher at the casinos and avoid the lottery.
Now if a cocktail waitress in a T-back came by the house to personally inform me of the winnning lotto numbers, then we might be on to something.... Yeah, make it a vocational education option for 18-year old high school girls to work for the state as cocktail waitresses to tend the lottery customers. More public benefit! And provides jobs! </sarcasm>
The games are all based on long-term statistical wins for the house with short term volaitlity where the gambler hopes to get lucky. But look at how many variations of the theme there are, and they are all presented in shiny, flashy, colorful and/or stylish ways. Pure entertainment is the product, hope & addiction is the draw for many.
There is no trade going on here.
There is a lot of money going to the house. If the house is offshore, then U.S. businesses don't profit and the U.S. government doesn't collect taxes on the vig (the house's take) or the resulting actions from the U.S. company respending the money.
I'm not offering an opinion, but it's pretty clear to me that a lot of money is at stake for U.S. casinos and the government.
Don't pretend that a megaworm is the same thing as a remote root exploit.
I think we're on the same side, but we're interpreting the message differently. But to continue the discussion: Are you suggesting a Linux (for example) remote root exploit is less capable of supporting a megaworm? Why? Basically a worm is just a program that compromises a machine using a known vulnerability then establishes itself and any payload on the machine and then searches for the next vulnerable host. If we agree that Linux has had and could have remote root exploits, and we agree that this worm demonstrates an extremely quick exploitation of a vulnerability, then why not take the Witty Worm incident as a caution flag instead of laughing at MS yet again?
While the Apache worm did affect Linux, it wasn't anywhere near this destructive, despite having more fertile ground to spread - Apache is the world's most popular web server software.
The Windows RPC worm and MS SQL Server worm were far less destructive, too. I must be missing the point of your argument because it looks like you're saying the real result of the vulnerability so far is the measure of the disaster potential of the vulnerability. Arguably Code Red and Nimda were far less destructive; while they clogged the networks they don't seem to bother many hosts as I still get CR and Nimda attacks many times per day, therefore the infected hosts are still operational.
That brings up a point. Perhaps the author was pointing out that ubiquity of the Windows operating system and software written for it is not what makes it a target for virus writers. When you compare this event to the Apache worm, it seems to suggest that poor code quality, as opposed to popularity, is to blame for Windows megaworms.
I don't think that's what the author was saying, and I don't think the author was saying that BSD/Linux & others are just as vulnerable as Windows. I think what the author was saying is that even a small population of vulnerable hosts can support a rapidly spreading worm.
Before I continue, let me say that I love to bash MS, and I think Linux, *BSD and OS X have much higher quality codebases and much, much fewer vulnerabilities and feel way safer running almost anything other than MS Windows.
The Witty Worm, however, shows me that just because my Linux box is in a minority of internet hosts and because its vulnerabilities are fewer and further between doesn't mean I can rest assured that it's bullet proof against worms.
So to me this is a lesson and warning: Take extra care to eliminate unnecessary services; enable privilege separation wherever possible; tighten the firewall screws as far as I can; and of course back up data and patch frequently. Like I said, even though I have a Linux host on the net 24/7 I decided to put a bridging firewall between it and the 'net and audit my services for privilege separation. In particular I created a freenet user account to run Freenet in instead of running it as my username. Come to think of it, I may consider changing my Linux bridging firewall to OpenBSD since currently my host and firewall are Linux and would be more likely to have the vulnerability at the same time than a Linux/*BSD mix.
To summarize my take on this I'll say that I still believe BSD and Linux and its services are far more secure than MS Windows and its services, but BSD and Linux aren't perfect, and the Witty Worm demonstrates the ability to attack a 0-day exploit of a relatively small population with tremendous speed thereby increasing the possibility there could be a high-profile destructive BSD or Linux worm in the future. Let's not wait until then to stop laughing at Windows and double-check our own security.
However, I think there is evidence that enough end computer users take absolutely no responsibility in protecting their computers with even simple patches. Don't you think some small fine (like, as another user suggested) an emissions ticket would be fair?
Are the "simple patches" deployed to fix the user's goof or the vendor's goof? Why is the user responsible for shoddy production from the vendor? I don't think the fine is fair:
Now, in the case of Witty it's another story... since those affected were actually taking steps to protect their computers (firewalls).
See, you already have an exception to your rule. Since the user didn't trust the OS vendor to provide an uncrackable system he buys a product to protect against that. So the user isn't liable because he trusted a vendor that screwed up in trying to protect a different, untrustworthy vendor? I don't like fines like this; it will be a federal case every time a PC gets compromised.
I think I see what you want. You want everyone else to stop screwing up your internet, because your computers don't have those kind of problems. Mine don't, either, and my internet gets screwed up. But it's not a simple solution. If you try to regulate everyone else then there will be so many rules and exceptions that the OSS types of software will be unable to meet the regulatory certification requirements, and you and I won't be able to tinker with our boxen because it will compromise security.
Frankly what you're suggesting sounds like a slippery slope towards MS's DRM world of Trusted Computing where they can patch your system remotely when they see fit, and you can't. Or, if you think you and I will be of the few who don't use MS, then we won't be allowed on the internet because our software isn't certified as uncrackable by the regulators.
OT: I am suddenly reminded that I got a recall notice on my car a while back. Guess I'd better take it in soon.
How many Linux, BSD, and Mac machines were infected?
Don't pretend that those haven't had remote root exploits before. (Well, not sure about Mac.) This incident seems to demonstrate that a destructive worm can be deployed in short order and rapidly spread even when the target population is in a tiny minority of internet hosts.
That prompted me to insert a bridging Linux firewall and want to learn to tighten it up even further. (Blocking 1-1024 now plus ports like 3128 & MSSQL; I want to block all unwanted incoming connections but am yet unsure about Freenet, Kazaa Lite, bittorrent and Quake3 inbound needs.)
(BTW, used LEAF uClib Bering for the bridging firewall. Axed the Shorewall and htb.init and put my own scripts in, though, due to issues with htb.init.)
A driver is responsible for the upkeep of his vehicle if his negligence causes an accident... a property owner is responsible for its upkeep if someone is injured on his property. I don't think it's a very large leap to be able to consider a computer owner liable for its upkeep if it is used in an attack, and I don't think many in this country would object either.
Your analogy fails on many levels, but I'm too tired to point them all out. Here's a biggie: Automobiles are highly engineered and legally regulated devices; there are safety standards to be met before you can put one on the road, and there are legal limits to how the end user can modify them. PCs and especially software don't have that kind of pre-consumer engineering.
Another one: the roadways are public works. The internet as we use it is a collection of private agreements to communicate between points. Why don't the intermediate points share liability for passing on the attacking packets? Hell, the operators of the intermediate points are generally trained for their equipment and pay people to monitor traffic and health. (This is making a point; actually I don't want my ISP or any of their providers policing my internet connection.)
I'm far from an OS/400 expert, but I've drooled over the IBM stuff a little bit.
As I understand it you can run multiple virtual Linux servers under OS/400 (or OS/390) and still have OS/400 as the host OS. So you get the rock-solidness of OS/400 with all the services and POSIXness of glibc/Linux.
As far as x86 hardware versus iSeries or zSeries, it's all about hardware redundancy and reliability. You basically never need to turn the IBM stuff off or take the host OS down, even for cpu replacement.
On a different note, does the slew of press releases over the past month concerning large-scale corporate marketing of Linux demonstrate that the big players don't take SCO/Caldera seriously any more as a threat?
Um, you mean the slew of press releases from IBM, Novell and SuSE? Caldera/SCO was in bed with each of them before going psycho; I don't think they took SCO's threats seriously to begin with, hence all the kicking and screaming from SCO.
By the way, were are the doggone SuSE ISO bittorrents? Isn't YaST free now? And wasn't it freely (as in beer...ly) distributable as a binary even before? What's the holdup?
I don't know what to do... try to tough it out, go straight to graduate school or just leave the country.
Be good at ywhat ou do, learn personal finance and how to job hunt. That'll probably put you in the top quartile of job seekers. Oh, and learn to rely on yourself and your perceptions and not chase others' advice. (That is unless you're a moron.)
I'm glad to hear people are doing something else. There are way too many people in IT that don't know what they're doing.
Re:If they want to be innovative and supportive...
on
Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
they might start by posting the video in non-proprietary format!
That was my first thought, but then I realized they more or less have to assume a number of important site visitors aren't running Windows. Do QT and RP come with MPEG decoders on other platforms? I know about mplayer, but I don't think you can assume everyone can view an MPEG or XVID video stream. Is there a codec that's save to assume any web viewer on any platform can view?
(I hate both the QT and RP programs. Stay outta my task bar and don't do things without my specifically telling you to first! And quit asking me about upgrades. Yeah, yeah, free beer, mplayer libre, yada yada yada. I run into RP and QT at work.)
I still find Moz to be a bit high in memory useage.
If you're comparing to IE, then it's not a fair comparison since IE hides some of its memory footprint in explorer and other places and still takes up 12-25 MB for iexplore.exe.
If you're comparing to Konqueror or another KHTML or Gecko browser, then nevermind.
On a related note, is it just me, or does Moz get paged out a LOT quicker than many other apps? Is it playing "too" nice somehow?
I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but if you're using Moz under Windows then the disadvantage is that Moz plays fair. IE, MS Office, Sun Java and Adobe Acrobat Reader I've noticed hang around in RAM a long, long time after you quit using them. I suspect they have settings to stay in memory an extra long time, where I suspect Mozilla plays nice and sets itself to normal and therefore gets squeezed out by the others.
If you're talking about an X / POSIX platform, then nevermind.
I want to try it, but I'm having trouble googling for a torrent. From what little I've read it's okay to freely (as in beer) distribute the YAsT binaries/isos now, right?
My Linux newbie buddies always go for either Red Hat or Suse. I disliked Red Hat after trying 6.0 a while back, but I avoided Suse because of the closed source YaST. I'm a Slack / Debian kind of guy, but after seeing how easy and slick Knoppix was I'm eager to try the unencumbered Suse/YaST.
While I like FOSS, I've yet to see how it can sustain a viable corporate business.
You, like many others, assume that FOSS has to be sold to be successful in business.
In fact, it is this business model that is being attacked. Don't look at it from the IT vendor point of view, look at it from the IT consumer point of view.
With FOSS, a company that makes widgets (that analogy isn't overused, is it?) can decrease IT costs and either boost their profit margins or lower their prices to gain a competitive advantage.
The basic needs either are or can become commodities: accounting software, communication software, office suites, etc..
The evolutionary trick is going to be that these companies need to cooperate in some way to fund the development and maintenance of the buisness core software. (Currently much open source software is designed for the amusement of the developer.) Or perhaps an IT vendor will fill that role in a low profit-margin situation.
I don't expect proprietary software to disappear completely (does your company make you drink tapwater or pay to give you bottled water?), but the profit margins will fall.
More seriously, from the article I get the idea that the city wants to ban styrofoam cups anyway and had a paralegal investigating "dirt" on styrofoam. This probably won't help their cause:-).
Why is everyone assuming they will be numbers? They called Pentium Pentium instead of 586 because they couldn't trademark a number. They'll probably have a trademarkable speed reference.... Oh, I found the new rating system. It's here.
A friend recently told me he had bought a new 3Ghz Athlon XP, he was ready to take it back to the shop after I explained what the 3000 meant!
Did you also explain to him the exchange rate betwen $USD and x86 performance? I'd stick with the Athlon for home use. (Not knocking them; I just haven't compared lately enough to be sure for work use.)
Slashdot Mirror
What I wish is that there was a one-handed keyboard so I could type with one hand and mouse with the other.
:-)
I'm sorry, you must release your 557057 user ID and go to the back of the line.
There are Dvorak one-handed keyboard layouts for your system, whatever it is. In Windows you can change to it in the control panel; In X I know it can be done but don't know how offhand. Several Slashdotters use this scheme, and at least one will probably beat me to a reply since I'm using the old slow QWERTY layout.
I suspect there are free Dvorak typing tutors out there, but I'm not sure about that.
And if you're really geeky, there are several projects that attempt to let you type with the mouse, and many more for typing with a stylus. (Gestures, vectors, special keypads, etc..)
I'm too lazy to use Google and give you links right now, so I leave that as an exercise for you.
PUBLIC EDUCATION:
- "Tonight's winning lottery numbers are. .
." - "Gambling problem? call 1-800-555-1212. Not a results line."
- Play California Lotto, tickets available at your [brand] store!
By the way, mod up the AC who replied to this comment before me.Here's a big problem with the lotteries: Casino payout odds are better. Okay, the lotto vig goes towards public needs, but aside from the point the AC made the lotteries are mostly played by lower income people and is therefore perceived as an unfair tax or "stupid tax". People with more income seem to notice that the payout odds and return in entertainment is much higher at the casinos and avoid the lottery.
Now if a cocktail waitress in a T-back came by the house to personally inform me of the winnning lotto numbers, then we might be on to something.... Yeah, make it a vocational education option for 18-year old high school girls to work for the state as cocktail waitresses to tend the lottery customers. More public benefit! And provides jobs! </sarcasm>
What is the actual product in gambling?
Entertainment.
The games are all based on long-term statistical wins for the house with short term volaitlity where the gambler hopes to get lucky. But look at how many variations of the theme there are, and they are all presented in shiny, flashy, colorful and/or stylish ways. Pure entertainment is the product, hope & addiction is the draw for many.
There is no trade going on here.
There is a lot of money going to the house. If the house is offshore, then U.S. businesses don't profit and the U.S. government doesn't collect taxes on the vig (the house's take) or the resulting actions from the U.S. company respending the money.
I'm not offering an opinion, but it's pretty clear to me that a lot of money is at stake for U.S. casinos and the government.
Don't pretend that a megaworm is the same thing as a remote root exploit.
I think we're on the same side, but we're interpreting the message differently. But to continue the discussion: Are you suggesting a Linux (for example) remote root exploit is less capable of supporting a megaworm? Why? Basically a worm is just a program that compromises a machine using a known vulnerability then establishes itself and any payload on the machine and then searches for the next vulnerable host. If we agree that Linux has had and could have remote root exploits, and we agree that this worm demonstrates an extremely quick exploitation of a vulnerability, then why not take the Witty Worm incident as a caution flag instead of laughing at MS yet again?
While the Apache worm did affect Linux, it wasn't anywhere near this destructive, despite having more fertile ground to spread - Apache is the world's most popular web server software.
The Windows RPC worm and MS SQL Server worm were far less destructive, too. I must be missing the point of your argument because it looks like you're saying the real result of the vulnerability so far is the measure of the disaster potential of the vulnerability. Arguably Code Red and Nimda were far less destructive; while they clogged the networks they don't seem to bother many hosts as I still get CR and Nimda attacks many times per day, therefore the infected hosts are still operational.
That brings up a point. Perhaps the author was pointing out that ubiquity of the Windows operating system and software written for it is not what makes it a target for virus writers. When you compare this event to the Apache worm, it seems to suggest that poor code quality, as opposed to popularity, is to blame for Windows megaworms.
I don't think that's what the author was saying, and I don't think the author was saying that BSD/Linux & others are just as vulnerable as Windows. I think what the author was saying is that even a small population of vulnerable hosts can support a rapidly spreading worm.
Before I continue, let me say that I love to bash MS, and I think Linux, *BSD and OS X have much higher quality codebases and much, much fewer vulnerabilities and feel way safer running almost anything other than MS Windows.
The Witty Worm, however, shows me that just because my Linux box is in a minority of internet hosts and because its vulnerabilities are fewer and further between doesn't mean I can rest assured that it's bullet proof against worms.
So to me this is a lesson and warning: Take extra care to eliminate unnecessary services; enable privilege separation wherever possible; tighten the firewall screws as far as I can; and of course back up data and patch frequently. Like I said, even though I have a Linux host on the net 24/7 I decided to put a bridging firewall between it and the 'net and audit my services for privilege separation. In particular I created a freenet user account to run Freenet in instead of running it as my username. Come to think of it, I may consider changing my Linux bridging firewall to OpenBSD since currently my host and firewall are Linux and would be more likely to have the vulnerability at the same time than a Linux/*BSD mix.
To summarize my take on this I'll say that I still believe BSD and Linux and its services are far more secure than MS Windows and its services, but BSD and Linux aren't perfect, and the Witty Worm demonstrates the ability to attack a 0-day exploit of a relatively small population with tremendous speed thereby increasing the possibility there could be a high-profile destructive BSD or Linux worm in the future. Let's not wait until then to stop laughing at Windows and double-check our own security.
However, I think there is evidence that enough end computer users take absolutely no responsibility in protecting their computers with even simple patches. Don't you think some small fine (like, as another user suggested) an emissions ticket would be fair?
... since those affected were actually taking steps to protect their computers (firewalls).
Are the "simple patches" deployed to fix the user's goof or the vendor's goof? Why is the user responsible for shoddy production from the vendor? I don't think the fine is fair:
Now, in the case of Witty it's another story
See, you already have an exception to your rule. Since the user didn't trust the OS vendor to provide an uncrackable system he buys a product to protect against that. So the user isn't liable because he trusted a vendor that screwed up in trying to protect a different, untrustworthy vendor? I don't like fines like this; it will be a federal case every time a PC gets compromised.
I think I see what you want. You want everyone else to stop screwing up your internet, because your computers don't have those kind of problems. Mine don't, either, and my internet gets screwed up. But it's not a simple solution. If you try to regulate everyone else then there will be so many rules and exceptions that the OSS types of software will be unable to meet the regulatory certification requirements, and you and I won't be able to tinker with our boxen because it will compromise security.
Frankly what you're suggesting sounds like a slippery slope towards MS's DRM world of Trusted Computing where they can patch your system remotely when they see fit, and you can't. Or, if you think you and I will be of the few who don't use MS, then we won't be allowed on the internet because our software isn't certified as uncrackable by the regulators.
OT: I am suddenly reminded that I got a recall notice on my car a while back. Guess I'd better take it in soon.
(j/k. Great post.)
How many Linux, BSD, and Mac machines were infected?
Don't pretend that those haven't had remote root exploits before. (Well, not sure about Mac.) This incident seems to demonstrate that a destructive worm can be deployed in short order and rapidly spread even when the target population is in a tiny minority of internet hosts.
That prompted me to insert a bridging Linux firewall and want to learn to tighten it up even further. (Blocking 1-1024 now plus ports like 3128 & MSSQL; I want to block all unwanted incoming connections but am yet unsure about Freenet, Kazaa Lite, bittorrent and Quake3 inbound needs.)
(BTW, used LEAF uClib Bering for the bridging firewall. Axed the Shorewall and htb.init and put my own scripts in, though, due to issues with htb.init.)
A driver is responsible for the upkeep of his vehicle if his negligence causes an accident ... a property owner is responsible for its upkeep if someone is injured on his property. I don't think it's a very large leap to be able to consider a computer owner liable for its upkeep if it is used in an attack, and I don't think many in this country would object either.
Your analogy fails on many levels, but I'm too tired to point them all out. Here's a biggie: Automobiles are highly engineered and legally regulated devices; there are safety standards to be met before you can put one on the road, and there are legal limits to how the end user can modify them. PCs and especially software don't have that kind of pre-consumer engineering.
Another one: the roadways are public works. The internet as we use it is a collection of private agreements to communicate between points. Why don't the intermediate points share liability for passing on the attacking packets? Hell, the operators of the intermediate points are generally trained for their equipment and pay people to monitor traffic and health. (This is making a point; actually I don't want my ISP or any of their providers policing my internet connection.)
What it shows me is that the EU cannot be bought as easily as the US can.
A slightly more cynical wording: It shows that the EU cannot be bought by a US company as easily as the US DOJ/presidency can.
I'm far from an OS/400 expert, but I've drooled over the IBM stuff a little bit.
As I understand it you can run multiple virtual Linux servers under OS/400 (or OS/390) and still have OS/400 as the host OS. So you get the rock-solidness of OS/400 with all the services and POSIXness of glibc/Linux.
As far as x86 hardware versus iSeries or zSeries, it's all about hardware redundancy and reliability. You basically never need to turn the IBM stuff off or take the host OS down, even for cpu replacement.
I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong.
On a different note, does the slew of press releases over the past month concerning large-scale corporate marketing of Linux demonstrate that the big players don't take SCO/Caldera seriously any more as a threat?
Um, you mean the slew of press releases from IBM, Novell and SuSE? Caldera/SCO was in bed with each of them before going psycho; I don't think they took SCO's threats seriously to begin with, hence all the kicking and screaming from SCO.
By the way, were are the doggone SuSE ISO bittorrents? Isn't YaST free now? And wasn't it freely (as in beer...ly) distributable as a binary even before? What's the holdup?
Is this the beginning of a blue-collar revolution? Do you think its time to crack open each others skulls and feast on the goo inside?
Answer poll:
Option 1: "No, that will be the upper management revolution."
Option 2: "No, that was the Republican revolution."
I don't know what to do... try to tough it out, go straight to graduate school or just leave the country.
Be good at ywhat ou do, learn personal finance and how to job hunt. That'll probably put you in the top quartile of job seekers. Oh, and learn to rely on yourself and your perceptions and not chase others' advice. (That is unless you're a moron.)
I'm glad to hear people are doing something else. There are way too many people in IT that don't know what they're doing.
they might start by posting the video in non-proprietary format!
That was my first thought, but then I realized they more or less have to assume a number of important site visitors aren't running Windows. Do QT and RP come with MPEG decoders on other platforms? I know about mplayer, but I don't think you can assume everyone can view an MPEG or XVID video stream. Is there a codec that's save to assume any web viewer on any platform can view?
(I hate both the QT and RP programs. Stay outta my task bar and don't do things without my specifically telling you to first! And quit asking me about upgrades. Yeah, yeah, free beer, mplayer libre, yada yada yada. I run into RP and QT at work.)
You left out the available calendaring and "to do" features:
$ cal
and
$ calendar
How can you get a 0.1% false negative rate when 30% of spam is getting through?
Who claimed they were blocking all the spam? Obviously they intentionally allow about 29.9% of the spam on average.
I still find Moz to be a bit high in memory useage.
If you're comparing to IE, then it's not a fair comparison since IE hides some of its memory footprint in explorer and other places and still takes up 12-25 MB for iexplore.exe.
If you're comparing to Konqueror or another KHTML or Gecko browser, then nevermind.
On a related note, is it just me, or does Moz get paged out a LOT quicker than many other apps? Is it playing "too" nice somehow?
I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but if you're using Moz under Windows then the disadvantage is that Moz plays fair. IE, MS Office, Sun Java and Adobe Acrobat Reader I've noticed hang around in RAM a long, long time after you quit using them. I suspect they have settings to stay in memory an extra long time, where I suspect Mozilla plays nice and sets itself to normal and therefore gets squeezed out by the others.
If you're talking about an X / POSIX platform, then nevermind.
A computer virus isn't what Google thinks a Witty Worm is (not at all work safe :-) ).
I disagree. Any user that uses either involuntarily feels the same way.
$ rpm -qa | grep curse
ncurses-5.3-110
yast2-ncurses-2.8.20-3
Hmm. Odd; I recently there were a lot more curses in Linux than that.
I want to try it, but I'm having trouble googling for a torrent. From what little I've read it's okay to freely (as in beer) distribute the YAsT binaries/isos now, right?
My Linux newbie buddies always go for either Red Hat or Suse. I disliked Red Hat after trying 6.0 a while back, but I avoided Suse because of the closed source YaST. I'm a Slack / Debian kind of guy, but after seeing how easy and slick Knoppix was I'm eager to try the unencumbered Suse/YaST.
While I like FOSS, I've yet to see how it can sustain a viable corporate business.
You, like many others, assume that FOSS has to be sold to be successful in business.
In fact, it is this business model that is being attacked. Don't look at it from the IT vendor point of view, look at it from the IT consumer point of view.
With FOSS, a company that makes widgets (that analogy isn't overused, is it?) can decrease IT costs and either boost their profit margins or lower their prices to gain a competitive advantage.
The basic needs either are or can become commodities: accounting software, communication software, office suites, etc..
The evolutionary trick is going to be that these companies need to cooperate in some way to fund the development and maintenance of the buisness core software. (Currently much open source software is designed for the amusement of the developer.) Or perhaps an IT vendor will fill that role in a low profit-margin situation.
I don't expect proprietary software to disappear completely (does your company make you drink tapwater or pay to give you bottled water?), but the profit margins will fall.
And be sure to check out the Material Safety Data Sheet.
More seriously, from the article I get the idea that the city wants to ban styrofoam cups anyway and had a paralegal investigating "dirt" on styrofoam. This probably won't help their cause
I wrote a rather long reply, and it's offtopic, so I thought I'd spare the other readers & mods and put the response in my journal instead:
http://slashdot.org/~MyHair/journal/65161
I gotta say, I am impressed.
.
Of course, I'm also pissed >:(
How did they do that? IRC bots posting to Slashdot maybe? Or Slashcode barfing?
Why is everyone assuming they will be numbers? They called Pentium Pentium instead of 586 because they couldn't trademark a number. They'll probably have a trademarkable speed reference. ... Oh, I found the new rating system. It's here.
A friend recently told me he had bought a new 3Ghz Athlon XP, he was ready to take it back to the shop after I explained what the 3000 meant!
Did you also explain to him the exchange rate betwen $USD and x86 performance? I'd stick with the Athlon for home use. (Not knocking them; I just haven't compared lately enough to be sure for work use.)