Does anyone have a link to the actual article, or postings which have been deleted from Demon's servers? Presumably it's okay to post these here, since Slashdot hasn't been threatened with legal action (and the US libel laws are probably a bit more sensible).
I think the key is to make it easy (and fun:-P) for the users to keep their systems secure.
- Start a security mailing list and encourage people to subscribe. You'd probably want separate lists for Unix and Windows, with some messages posted to both.
- When RPMs or other packages appear with security fixes, announce them to the mailing list. You could also mirror them locally to help your users. (We have sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk in the next room here, which is useful.)
- If there are user groups, encourage them to tell their members about security issues.
- It might be worthwhile to produce an 'official' Linux distribution for your university, maybe including software which is widely used on campus. I don't think you should _force_ people to use it though. But if it's simply Red Hat with a few security updates (eg Kerberized versions of everything) then many people will be happy to switch.
Some people have suggested some of these ideas above, I know. I think they work well as part of the same strategy.
I think that if a comment is very good, then replies to that comment should get a slightly higher score from 'halo effect'. Provided, of course, they are sensible and on topic.
Similarly, if someone posts a comment which is good, but not great, and then there are several very worthwhile replies to that comment, then the parent comment should get bumped up a couple of points. After all, the replies wouldn't make sense without reading the original comment too.
[This is a repost of something I posted to an earlier story. It is more appropriate here. Yes, I agree with crow.]
What we really need (though I don't expect it will arrive any time soon) is collaborative moderation.
When reading comments, you can say 'I like this comment' or 'I don't like this comment'. Then Slashdot will match your likes / dislikes against other people with similar tastes, and will guess on your behalf which comments to show, based on what others with the same tastes as you have chosen. That way, there is no central moderator for people to be pissed off with. Occasionally, Slashdot would show a comment even if it thought you might not like it; if it turns out you do like it, that signals that your preferences have changed from what Slashdot thought.
Kind of like Amazon.com's recommendations: 'other people who liked this comment also liked these comments'.
What we really need (though I don't expect it will arrive any time soon) is collaborative moderation.
When reading comments, you can say 'I like this comment' or 'I don't like this comment'. Then Slashdot will match your likes / dislikes against other people with similar tastes, and will guess on your behalf which comments to show, based on what others with the same tastes as you have chosen. That way, there is no central moderator for people to be pissed off with. Occasionally, Slashdot would show a comment even if it thought you might not like it; if it turns out you do like it, that signals that your preferences have changed from what Slashdot thought.
Kind of like Amazon.com's recommendations: 'other people who liked this comment also liked these comments'.
It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have been reproduced without authorisation for payment without the prior written consent of SuSE GmbH or SuSE Linux. Distribution of the YaST programme, its sources, whether amended or unamended in full or in part thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge require the prior written consent of SuSE GmbH.
So SuSE is not free, because you can't sell copies. This seems to be a step backwards into the dark ages when Linux distributions were considered proprietary. (eg SLS)
In fact, the YaST licence is no more free than the so-called 'new copyleft' licence discussed on Slashdot a few days ago. I don't morally object to proprietary software, but it seems a little odd for supposedly Open Source(tm) companies to make their own products non-Open Source.
The K6 may have multiple execution units, but to the programmer it appears as a single CPU, programmed sequentially. I am suggesting running groups of execution units as separate 'virtual CPUs', which could run different processes or threads in the same way that different CPUs run different threads in a normal SMP box. I think this would get better performance, because there must be diminishing returns from the number of execution units you can put in a normal superscalar CPU.
I don't have a problem with including proprietary software as part of a Linux distribution, provided it is clearly marked as such. I was worried that SuSE had made the core installation and setup tools proprietary. Red Hat release everything they write as free software, so people can make distributions based on Red Hat - and that's a good thing. But it's not so good if distribution writers hoard things to themselves.
Why not do SMP on a single chip? Have a single instruction decoder, with a cache on both sides so that instructions (hopefully) need to be decoded only once. Then have several execution units, which would be bunched together into superscalar 'CPUs' of two or three execution units. There would be four of these 'CPUs' on a single chip. Write a Linux kernel extension to take advantage of this SMP, sell the new chip for about the same as Intel's most expensive Pentium (but with probably twice the performance), and watch the money roll in!
(OK, of course it's not that simple. What is wrong with my idea?)
I've heard that SuSE, like Caldera, is semi-proprietary. In particular, the setup tool, YaST, is proprietary.
If this is true, I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise about it. It seems the only distributions that are truly committed to free software are Red Hat and Debian (and maybe Slackware).
That's funny; I use an IBM PS/2 Model 80 (Model 80/111, 2x120MB ESDI hard disks, 12MB of 160ns RAM, 20MHz Evergreen 386DX->486 upgrade, tape drive I don't know how to use, NT 3.51, ex-Midland Bank fileserver), and I really like the keyboard. But you're saying that the earlier IBM keyboards were even better. I must try to get hold of one.
Actually, the VNC protocol was originally developed for Olivetti's VideoTile, which was a wireless LCD display you could pick up and carry with you. AFAIK, you wrote on it with a stylus.
..I write a free software using QT. SOmething really useful. How can people, who use Windows benefit from it? QT is not free for Windows - so Troll is screwing people out of free software; while GTK is going to be ported and free to use. Such a shame gtk-- is such peace of crap.
If you want, you can use the X version of Qt with an X server on Windows. Clunky, but it works.
As for GTK--, it's not the only C++ wrapper for GTK; check out wxWindows, which wraps GTK, Win32 and others in a single class library.
[0] I used to just type it up in vi with html flags and print it through Mozilla
So how do you do that? I've been trying to get Netscape to convert HTML->PostScript... I'm sure it's possible.
Prob. not free...(Did you read it?)
on
SuSE Cluster
·
· Score: 1
Open-source does not necessarily mean free. Free refers to the users being able to distribute and modify the source code without restrictions, whereas open-source simply refers to having the source code available. OSS (the sound system) is an example of a non-free, open-source software package.
Not true. Open Source and free software are _exactly_ the same thing. Open Source is just a new name for free software. See http://www.opensource.org.
The "Open Sound System" for Linux is not Open Source, because it doesn't meet the Open Source definition. (And the term Open Source was invented only about a year ago, specifically with this meaning.)
The BBC Micro had a key called Shift Lock, which was similar to Caps Lock, except that it applied to all keys, not just letters. It was generally considered nothing but a nuisance, but at last, there seems to be a use for it.
Increase the Threshold to 1, which will filter out all AC posts, except those which have been moderated upwards. I do this whenever there are more than 100 comments, to reduce the amount I have to wade through.
(One possible twist in this - if networked games like Quake really take off, and Linux really runs these games over the Net faster because of better TCP/IP, then you could see that market really drive Linux. Just a thought...)
I'm not sure if Linux really does have faster TCP/IP any more. I've heard that Microsoft is incorporating networking code from FreeBSD into Windows, which should make it about as fast as Linux.
In the UK, the Royal Mail has been running two similar campaigns for about a year now. "Everyone responeds to a letter", aimed at businesses, and "what would you send?", aimed at individuals. I don't know how successful they've been, but apparently, the volume of snail mail in the UK has kept on growing over the past few years.
Well, it would be technically very difficult to insert such a trojan into GCC. Particularly as there are many people who 'bootstrap' GCC by compiling it with another compiler, for example, the Sun C++ compiler. If you wanted to insert nefarious code like this, apart from the problem of making it work and knowing when to trigger it, you'd have to add it to every compiler under the sun. (no pun intended.)
It's not to do with Sengan's specific opinions, 'European' or not. It's the fact that he uses main stories to express them at all, when for fairness, he should post comments like everyone else.
Slashdot needs to have a clear distinction between news and editorial, like good newspapers (are supposed to) have.
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone have a link to the actual article, or postings which have been deleted from Demon's servers? Presumably it's okay to post these here, since Slashdot hasn't been threatened with legal action (and the US libel laws are probably a bit more sensible).
See also http://www.gamecenter .com/News/Item/Cont/0,4,0-1612_2,00.html.
There wasn't anything on the original Star Trek in there, only this Next Gen / DS9 / Voyager rubbish. That's a bit disappointing, really.
I think the key is to make it easy (and fun :-P) for the users to keep their systems secure.
- Start a security mailing list and encourage people to subscribe. You'd probably want separate lists for Unix and Windows, with some messages posted to both.
- When RPMs or other packages appear with security fixes, announce them to the mailing list. You could also mirror them locally to help your users. (We have sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk in the next room here, which is useful.)
- If there are user groups, encourage them to tell their members about security issues.
- It might be worthwhile to produce an 'official' Linux distribution for your university, maybe including software which is widely used on campus. I don't think you should _force_ people to use it though. But if it's simply Red Hat with a few security updates (eg Kerberized versions of everything) then many people will be happy to switch.
Some people have suggested some of these ideas above, I know. I think they work well as part of the same strategy.
I think that if a comment is very good, then replies to that comment should get a slightly higher score from 'halo effect'. Provided, of course, they are sensible and on topic.
Similarly, if someone posts a comment which is good, but not great, and then there are several very worthwhile replies to that comment, then the parent comment should get bumped up a couple of points. After all, the replies wouldn't make sense without reading the original comment too.
[This is a repost of something I posted to an earlier story. It is more appropriate here. Yes, I agree with crow.]
What we really need (though I don't expect it will arrive any time soon) is collaborative moderation.
When reading comments, you can say 'I like this comment' or 'I don't like this comment'. Then Slashdot will match your likes / dislikes against other people with similar tastes, and will guess on your behalf which comments to show, based on
what others with the same tastes as you have chosen. That way, there is no central moderator for people to be pissed off with. Occasionally, Slashdot would show a comment even if it thought you might not like it; if it turns out you do like it, that signals that your preferences have changed from what Slashdot thought.
Kind of like Amazon.com's recommendations: 'other people who liked this comment also liked these comments'.
What we really need (though I don't expect it will arrive any time soon) is collaborative moderation.
When reading comments, you can say 'I like this comment' or 'I don't like this comment'. Then Slashdot will match your likes / dislikes against other people with similar tastes, and will guess on your behalf which comments to show, based on what others with the same tastes as you have chosen. That way, there is no central moderator for people to be pissed off with. Occasionally, Slashdot would show a comment even if it thought you might not like it; if it turns out you do like it, that signals that your preferences have changed from what Slashdot thought.
Kind of like Amazon.com's recommendations: 'other people who liked this comment also liked these comments'.
This from the YaST licence:
It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data
carriers which have been reproduced without
authorisation for payment without the prior
written consent of SuSE GmbH or SuSE Linux.
Distribution of the YaST programme, its sources,
whether amended or unamended in full or in part
thereof, and the works derived thereof for a
charge require the prior written consent of SuSE
GmbH.
So SuSE is not free, because you can't sell copies. This seems to be a step backwards into the dark ages when Linux distributions were considered proprietary. (eg SLS)
In fact, the YaST licence is no more free than the so-called 'new copyleft' licence discussed on Slashdot a few days ago. I don't morally object to proprietary software, but it seems a little odd for supposedly Open Source(tm) companies to make their own products non-Open Source.
The K6 may have multiple execution units, but to the programmer it appears as a single CPU, programmed sequentially. I am suggesting running groups of execution units as separate 'virtual CPUs', which could run different processes or threads in the same way that different CPUs run different threads in a normal SMP box. I think this would get better performance, because there must be diminishing returns from the number of execution units you can put in a normal superscalar CPU.
I don't have a problem with including proprietary software as part of a Linux distribution, provided it is clearly marked as such. I was worried that SuSE had made the core installation and setup tools proprietary. Red Hat release everything they write as free software, so people can make distributions based on Red Hat - and that's a good thing. But it's not so good if distribution writers hoard things to themselves.
Here's an idea:
Why not do SMP on a single chip? Have a single instruction decoder, with a cache on both sides so that instructions (hopefully) need to be decoded only once. Then have several execution units, which would be bunched together into superscalar 'CPUs' of two or three execution units. There would be four of these 'CPUs' on a single chip. Write a Linux kernel extension to take advantage of this SMP, sell the new chip for about the same as Intel's most expensive Pentium (but with probably twice the performance), and watch the money roll in!
(OK, of course it's not that simple. What is wrong with my idea?)
I've heard that SuSE, like Caldera, is semi-proprietary. In particular, the setup tool, YaST, is proprietary.
If this is true, I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise about it. It seems the only distributions that are truly committed to free software are Red Hat and Debian (and maybe Slackware).
That's funny; I use an IBM PS/2 Model 80 (Model 80/111, 2x120MB ESDI hard disks, 12MB of 160ns RAM, 20MHz Evergreen 386DX->486 upgrade, tape drive I don't know how to use, NT 3.51, ex-Midland Bank fileserver), and I really like the keyboard. But you're saying that the earlier IBM keyboards were even better. I must try to get hold of one.
Actually, the VNC protocol was originally developed for Olivetti's VideoTile, which was a wireless LCD display you could pick up and carry with you. AFAIK, you wrote on it with a stylus.
Buy another identical disk to back up onto!
Database access in an X toolkit? Yuck!
If you want, you can use the X version of Qt with an X server on Windows. Clunky, but it works.
As for GTK--, it's not the only C++ wrapper for GTK; check out wxWindows, which wraps GTK, Win32 and others in a single class library.
So how do you do that? I've been trying to get Netscape to convert HTML->PostScript... I'm sure it's possible.
Not true. Open Source and free software are _exactly_ the same thing. Open Source is just a new name for free software. See http://www.opensource.org.
The "Open Sound System" for Linux is not Open Source, because it doesn't meet the Open Source definition. (And the term Open Source was invented only about a year ago, specifically with this meaning.)
The BBC Micro had a key called Shift Lock, which was similar to Caps Lock, except that it applied to all keys, not just letters. It was generally considered nothing but a nuisance, but at last, there seems to be a use for it.
Increase the Threshold to 1, which will filter out all AC posts, except those which have been moderated upwards. I do this whenever there are more than 100 comments, to reduce the amount I have to wade through.
I'm not sure if Linux really does have faster TCP/IP any more. I've heard that Microsoft is incorporating networking code from FreeBSD into Windows, which should make it about as fast as Linux.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
In the UK, the Royal Mail has been running two similar campaigns for about a year now. "Everyone responeds to a letter", aimed at businesses, and "what would you send?", aimed at individuals. I don't know how successful they've been, but apparently, the volume of snail mail in the UK has kept on growing over the past few years.
Well, it would be technically very difficult to insert such a trojan into GCC. Particularly as there are many people who 'bootstrap' GCC by compiling it with another compiler, for example, the Sun C++ compiler. If you wanted to insert nefarious code like this, apart from the problem of making it work and knowing when to trigger it, you'd have to add it to every compiler under the sun. (no pun intended.)
It's not to do with Sengan's specific opinions, 'European' or not. It's the fact that he uses main stories to express them at all, when for fairness, he should post comments like everyone else.
Slashdot needs to have a clear distinction between news and editorial, like good newspapers (are supposed to) have.