Quite hard if your computer is currently in use and you don't want to end up with an inconsitent copy of your filesystems. It also provides no increments, so if you harddisk started to destruct data weeks ago, but you only noticed it today, you backup will be worthless, since its full of the same, cleanly copied data.
Using dd to move a partition to another drive is good use, using it for backup is pretty much doomed to cause havok.
Yep, but luckily rsync provides the options --backup and --backup-dir which makes it easy to create increments. Actually not exactly increments, but the files deleted between the previous and the last rsync run, but in the end they serve pretty much the same.
This command mirrors everything in/your_directory_to_backup to user@other_host:/backup/current/ and in addition to that keeps all the changes you did to that directory in a seperate 'dated' directory like/backup/2005-01-15, so you can also recover files that you deleted some days ago. Some other posters seem to have missed the '--backup' option, which is why I repost the rsync trick.
Disadvantage is that you can't easily restore an exact old state of the directory which you backuped, however you can retrieve all the files very easily.
There are also floating some shell scripts around which add to the above rsync line some vodoo to hardlink the different dated directories, so that you have a normal browsable copy of each and every day while only wasting the space for the changes.
And there are also tools which optimize this whole thing a bit more, by compressing the changes you did to files, like http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
However overall I found the plain rsync solution the most pratical, since it doesn't require special tools to access the repo and 'just works' the way I need it.
### So you're saying that these games would be functional without the art?
No, I just mean that you don't use a game to write a letter. Games are for enjoyment, while software (Word, Excel, etc) is there to get a job done. Thats what I mean with functional vs. non-functional, nothing more.
### For a simple example of functional art, look at gargoyles. The builders of those old churches could have just slapped a drain pipe onto the gutters, but instead created works of art on the corners of the roof.
Yes, but good old pipe would have done the same function, the art isn't necesarry to fullfill the function. The point is that most software is mainly a tool, like a screwdriver, while games or art in general is not a tool, its something you watch for enjoyment, not to build a house with it. Thats why RMS consideres free software to be important, while he consideres art to be less important to be free, ie. you don't depend on art, so if it doesn't work you don't go bankrupt, as you might with regular software. I don't fully agree with RMS on this one, but if I if Linux would be outlawed tomorrow I would for sure be in bigger throuble then if SuperMarioBros would be outlawed.
### but it took longer to make it with that pattern in it and it's nicer to have that way.
Exactly, its nice to have it that way, but you don't depend on it. An ugly sidewalk would still get you from A to B.
Both are difficult, if you ask and artitst you will here things like "I had this and that idea, but there wasn't an engine ready to use", if you ask a programmer you will here answers like "I have created this and that engine, but don't have artwork to fill it".
So what is wrong with this? Both simply don't cooperate, artists create stuff without taking to much care about engines, programmer take little care about the artists need (what is an engine worth if there isn't a easy way to import the artists artwork?!).
That asside, even if you bring those creating engines and those creating graphics together you still don't have a game. Dozens of weapon models are nice to look at, but they don't form a game, neither does an engine alone. You need story, characters, gameplay and all that kind of stuff that turns a bunch of artwork into a piece of game that is fun to play. Getting artwork and engine done is the easy part, getting it combined together to a playable game is the hard one.
### You discover the optimal software algorithm, there is already a right answer before you ever compose it.
And the statue is already in the piece of stone, the sculpture just removes the stone that hides it.
The art is less in how you paint a picture or compose music and much more in the what you actually compose. Finding exactly what you wanna do is the art, and I don't see much different here when a painter is confronted with an empty page and when a programmer is confronted with an empty file, both have to fill it somehow, what exactly they do is their own.
### If I was going to remake a movie I wouldn't just add a few more shots in and re-edit it.
Thats the point, you replace those part that you think are in need for replacement. For a movie you might not start with a completly new script and storyline, just new actors. For a video game you might just add some levels, add a new character or whatever (see Doom1 levels redone in Doom3 engine). How about a different cutted version of a movie? IIRC there is some StarWars Episode I floating around with JarJarBinks being cut out. Why should you restrict that with art, but not with software? How about a Lord of the Rings version that focuses on Frodo only? Completly unreasonable? I don't think so. Such stuff is already happening, even so in a legal-gray area at best, so why would you want to restrict such freedom which people are actually already practicing.
About keeping the authors vision intact or whatever, I know a lot of people fear this, but I doubt that its much of a problem, first of authors visions are already today not always threaded as the author would like when a book gets turned into a movie or the like, second you would always have 'MutantHamster's version of insert some movie', nobody could change that, people wouldn't change you version, they simply would create a version of their own based on your work.
### He was talking about the graphics, music, and stories being non-free, so why would the engine being open source effect boxed sales at all?
If they release the engine OpenSource somebody else could come up create a game with it and profit from there work while at the same time cutting their sales. More important however is that a bunch of companies are also making money of licensing the engine, that money would all be lost with an OpenSource aproach. However if the engine is basically a 'throw away' thing, releasing it as OpenSource wouldn't hurt and thats why some are doing it that way (ie. Nebula Device).
### But, hell even ID has been open sourcing their games after they stop making money.
Exactly, ID is only OpenSourcing stuff that is basically worthless to them. However even they don't release the whole thing, just the engine, artwork and stuff stays their own, not sure why they do that, maybe to sell the game again a decade later for handhelds (Doom on GBA)?
### So, you're saying that they will eventually be challenged by an open-source startup with nothing to lose?
In the long run maybe, but long as in very very long. Game engine design is still pretty much develpment on the bleeding edge, while Linux on the other side is basically a implementation of already decade old principles, sure they inovate here and there a bit, but the overall concept is just damn old, game engines are quite different in that aspect. Sooner or later we however will reach a state of development where even a engine which is a few years old simply is good enough for most games need, thus no need to license a new engine from Valve or id, however we are not there yet and probally won't be for a while, but one day that might change.
While this is of course a problem, I don't think it is that much of a problem as people make it. No matter if OpenSource or not, without additional cheat protection most multiplayer games will have quite a hard time. OpenSource might make the job of the cheaters a bit easier, but they don't seems to have much of a hard time without the source either.
Best cheat protection in the long run would IMHO be something web-of-trust based, where each player gets an account/key and can then get 'trust' by other players that he is not a cheater. In addition to that such tracking could of course also be used to keep track of the players ability, thus probally making it easier to find other players with equal abilities. While this might not be 'eSport-proof', it should provide enough backing to keep the number of cheaters reasonably low.
### why should Valve have to pay for the programmers while Company #2 only needs to hire writers and artists?
The idea would not be that Company #1 does the hard work and Company #2 makes profit with it, but that Company #1 releases its work early on as OpenSource and thus gets Company #2 as a contributor, thus spliting the work and thus getting an engine for half the amount of work. Releasing stuff as OpenSource really makes only sense if one does it early on in the development, not when the work is already mostly done. In addition to that its of course necesarry that the software is not the primary product, but just some secondary thing.
The difference here is that Linus basically started with nothing, he didn't had a huge business depending on selling Linuxs to the masses and didn't invested millions to build it, nope, he just had a few thousand lines of code floating around on his disk, wouldn't he have published it, it would have most likly stayed like that.
Valve on the other side does have invested millions into producing the game, so how exactly would OpenSourcing help them? In the best case you would see some forks and games making use of the engine, but Valve would still standing there with a few millions of bucks in the minus. OpenSourcing works good when you have enough money to not care or can make money out of support contracts (IBM) or if you start from scratch (Linus), but it really makes little sense when your whole business depends on selling boxed versions of the game.
### Art provokes thought and gives entertainment. It's hard or impossible to morph it into something else, as it will lose its vital distinction, and hence be diluted.
Its easy to morph art into some other art, its done all the time, as said movies get remaked, songs covered and pictures reused in collages. The larger the work of art the less of an issue is this. With movies or videogames you get all kinds of work done that can easily be reused in other works. You don't need to redesign each and every requisite just because you start a new movie, neither do you need to redesign each and every texture in a game, there is always lots and lots of stuff that can get easily reused without the player even noticing it. And even reusing something like the main character or a specific set is something that can be extremly usefull when doing some successor to a previous game.
Forking and reusing art is done all the time in all kinds of businesses there is really nothing special about it and there is little reason to restrict the user from getting the freedom to modify it.
### Just look at tuxracer. Since the company that was developing it turned it closed source nobody has continued developing it.
a) hardly anybody developed it while it was OpenSource, some bugfixes asside it what basically a one-man thing b) after some years of no development on the OpenSource Tuxracer, there is now some life in it again, see PPRacer: http://projects.planetpenguin.de/racer/ c) sunspirestudios seem to have disapread, probally didn't sell to well in the end
### Same goes for tuxkart.
See http://supertuxkart.berlios.de/, however the original tuxkart has never gone closed source.
### We need some kind of "open art" license or something, and people working for it.
### It's kind of like, if I made a movie. I wouldn't mind you using all my techniques for special effects, (or CGI as it's called today) and filming, etc. But you'd be a big douchebag if you stole my script and just "expanded" on it to make your own movie.
So how exactly is that different of when I take Firefox, name its "Grumbels Personal Browser" add some stuff to it and release? Why should I be allowed to do that with Firefox, or any kind of free software, but not with movies, videogames or whatever?
Beside from that people are doing that all the time with movies, movies get remaked, songs covered and pictures reused in collages.
### music, art, even fiction books are all part of the arts and cannot be compared to non-artforms like software and technical matter. They are completely different animals.
Art is different in that it is not functional, you watch it, you waste your time with it, but ultimativly you don't produce anything with it. However that is as far as it goes, that still doesn't mean that the same freedoms for software wouldn't also be usefull for arts. Just watch what is happening out there, people cover songs, thus basically 'forking' them, people do remakes or continuations of movies, people modify computer games, add new vehicles, coop-modes and whatever.
Its true that art is a bit different from software, but by far not different enough to justify the restrictions of freedom on them.
### Honestly, someone once said (+Orc, a very good cracker back in the day) that someone's work that is done for money will always be inferior to the work of someone who does it for love.
While that is true, Free Software doesn't get developed just for the love of it, there is a lot of free software out there which development has been rolled back to 'maintaince only' and where there hasn't been much 'love' in quite some time.
### People tend to forget what launched Mr. Stallman on this road toward software freedom: he wanted to use a laser printer he had on hand with his word processing program. The software didn't have drivers, and as I recall the printer didn't have documentation, either.
The only question is if this is pro or against the usage of free software if I just want to get my work done. I mean if I have the choice between an NVidia card with perfectly stable and feature complete drivers and an ATI with both rather low quality proprietary and open source drivers, I don't have to think to long to pick the NVidia one, since for the ATI one there is little hope that it will catch up in a reasonable timeframe.
### I take issue with the term "free software" being hijacked by what are, quite honestly, free/open source zealots
Well, GNU is there since 1984, the term itself is probally in use for a bit longer. If you write freeware and call it 'free software' no wonder that people end up being confusing, just call it like everybody else 'freeware' and you won't have any problem. I don't think it are the GNU people who doing hijacking here.
Depends, if I write free software, especially games, I tend to only use free software in the toolchain to make it easier for other people to contribute. Nothing sucks more to basically being locked out of a free software project just because you don't happen to have the newest version of some proprietary software that is a important component in the toolchain. So when it comes to free software I tend to go with only free software, since that ensures that everybody can help if he likes and it also shows bugs or missing features of existing free software.
On the other side if I just want to get work done I don't care to much about free software only, after all I want to get it done, not produce something that might still be maintained in the coming years. I still use free software most of the time there, but thats not because its better, in many areas its even quite inveriour, but just because its either the only software available for Linux in that area or because the proprietary software would be a little bit to expensive to be feasible.
### You can do that when you have SSH access on your friend's desktop/server/router Linux computer residing in his mother's basement on a so-called broadband connection.
Yes, which is exactly my point. Sure you can protect the computer better, have it behind an intrusion detection, have multiple accounts, etc. however must people just don't do it that way.
### Anyone who takes himself seriously creates backups.
Just because you have backups doesn't mean that delete files is a non-issue, it just means that you can easier recover from it, you still will lose at least 12h of work or so, since most people will at most run their backups daily.
### its easy to restrict outgoing connections or more specific restrict outgoing connections to any IP port 25
Just use the machines sendmail, no need to start an own smtp server.
### Really, the point is that home computers are of little concern
How are they little concain? People store years of digital photos and them and other information that might be VERY important to them.
I personally care little about so called 'serious' environments, when the rest of the 99% people out there are stuck with more or less the defaults installs of the distros which are all pretty vulnerable even with only a user account (didn't Mandrake do 'xhost +' for a while at default?!).
Sure you can configure anything quite secure depending on how much workforce you put into it, most users however put exactly zero work into it.
Unlikly, I am not so sure how good physic calculation can be done in parallel, but if they could you could just abuse the graphics cards, which today is not only good for graphics, but a rather generic vector processing unit which can be used for anything that needs calculation of huge vectors of numbers.
While it is true that 'sudo' can make it much easier for a hostile programm to get root, I don't consider it to much of an additional problem since for most uses getting access to a user account is already more then enough to cause serious damage. I can use up all the machines CPU and might even be able to crash it[1], I can delete the users files, I can send spam mails, I can spy and crack passwords (yppasswd), etc. no need to become root for any of those.
[1] simple shell one-liner ala: ":(){ (:&);:;};:&" is enough for that
Slashdot Mirror
Quite hard if your computer is currently in use and you don't want to end up with an inconsitent copy of your filesystems. It also provides no increments, so if you harddisk started to destruct data weeks ago, but you only noticed it today, you backup will be worthless, since its full of the same, cleanly copied data.
Using dd to move a partition to another drive is good use, using it for backup is pretty much doomed to cause havok.
### That's not easy- that's foolish.
Yep, but luckily rsync provides the options --backup and --backup-dir which makes it easy to create increments. Actually not exactly increments, but the files deleted between the previous and the last rsync run, but in the end they serve pretty much the same.
In case you have a seperate computer or a seperate drive one can use rsync to relativly easily create backups, its just a few lines of Shell:
/your_directory_to_backup \
/your_directory_to_backup to user@other_host:/backup/current/ and in addition to that keeps all the changes you did to that directory in a seperate 'dated' directory like /backup/2005-01-15, so you can also recover files that you deleted some days ago. Some other posters seem to have missed the '--backup' option, which is why I repost the rsync trick.
rsync -e ssh \
--delete \
--relative \
--archive \
--verbose \
--compress \
--recursive \
--exclude-from list_of_files_you_don't_wanna_backup \
--backup \
--backup-dir=/backup/`date -I` \
user@other_host:/backup/current/
This command mirrors everything in
Disadvantage is that you can't easily restore an exact old state of the directory which you backuped, however you can retrieve all the files very easily.
There are also floating some shell scripts around which add to the above rsync line some vodoo to hardlink the different dated directories, so that you have a normal browsable copy of each and every day while only wasting the space for the changes.
And there are also tools which optimize this whole thing a bit more, by compressing the changes you did to files, like http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/
However overall I found the plain rsync solution the most pratical, since it doesn't require special tools to access the repo and 'just works' the way I need it.
### So you're saying that these games would be functional without the art?
No, I just mean that you don't use a game to write a letter. Games are for enjoyment, while software (Word, Excel, etc) is there to get a job done. Thats what I mean with functional vs. non-functional, nothing more.
### For a simple example of functional art, look at gargoyles. The builders of those old churches could have just slapped a drain pipe onto the gutters, but instead created works of art on the corners of the roof.
Yes, but good old pipe would have done the same function, the art isn't necesarry to fullfill the function. The point is that most software is mainly a tool, like a screwdriver, while games or art in general is not a tool, its something you watch for enjoyment, not to build a house with it. Thats why RMS consideres free software to be important, while he consideres art to be less important to be free, ie. you don't depend on art, so if it doesn't work you don't go bankrupt, as you might with regular software. I don't fully agree with RMS on this one, but if I if Linux would be outlawed tomorrow I would for sure be in bigger throuble then if SuperMarioBros would be outlawed.
### but it took longer to make it with that pattern in it and it's nicer to have that way.
Exactly, its nice to have it that way, but you don't depend on it. An ugly sidewalk would still get you from A to B.
Both are difficult, if you ask and artitst you will here things like "I had this and that idea, but there wasn't an engine ready to use", if you ask a programmer you will here answers like "I have created this and that engine, but don't have artwork to fill it".
So what is wrong with this? Both simply don't cooperate, artists create stuff without taking to much care about engines, programmer take little care about the artists need (what is an engine worth if there isn't a easy way to import the artists artwork?!).
That asside, even if you bring those creating engines and those creating graphics together you still don't have a game. Dozens of weapon models are nice to look at, but they don't form a game, neither does an engine alone. You need story, characters, gameplay and all that kind of stuff that turns a bunch of artwork into a piece of game that is fun to play. Getting artwork and engine done is the easy part, getting it combined together to a playable game is the hard one.
### You discover the optimal software algorithm, there is already a right answer before you ever compose it.
And the statue is already in the piece of stone, the sculpture just removes the stone that hides it.
The art is less in how you paint a picture or compose music and much more in the what you actually compose. Finding exactly what you wanna do is the art, and I don't see much different here when a painter is confronted with an empty page and when a programmer is confronted with an empty file, both have to fill it somehow, what exactly they do is their own.
### If I was going to remake a movie I wouldn't just add a few more shots in and re-edit it.
Thats the point, you replace those part that you think are in need for replacement. For a movie you might not start with a completly new script and storyline, just new actors. For a video game you might just add some levels, add a new character or whatever (see Doom1 levels redone in Doom3 engine). How about a different cutted version of a movie? IIRC there is some StarWars Episode I floating around with JarJarBinks being cut out. Why should you restrict that with art, but not with software? How about a Lord of the Rings version that focuses on Frodo only? Completly unreasonable? I don't think so. Such stuff is already happening, even so in a legal-gray area at best, so why would you want to restrict such freedom which people are actually already practicing.
About keeping the authors vision intact or whatever, I know a lot of people fear this, but I doubt that its much of a problem, first of authors visions are already today not always threaded as the author would like when a book gets turned into a movie or the like, second you would always have 'MutantHamster's version of insert some movie', nobody could change that, people wouldn't change you version, they simply would create a version of their own based on your work.
### He was talking about the graphics, music, and stories being non-free, so why would the engine being open source effect boxed sales at all?
If they release the engine OpenSource somebody else could come up create a game with it and profit from there work while at the same time cutting their sales. More important however is that a bunch of companies are also making money of licensing the engine, that money would all be lost with an OpenSource aproach. However if the engine is basically a 'throw away' thing, releasing it as OpenSource wouldn't hurt and thats why some are doing it that way (ie. Nebula Device).
### But, hell even ID has been open sourcing their games after they stop making money.
Exactly, ID is only OpenSourcing stuff that is basically worthless to them. However even they don't release the whole thing, just the engine, artwork and stuff stays their own, not sure why they do that, maybe to sell the game again a decade later for handhelds (Doom on GBA)?
### So, you're saying that they will eventually be challenged by an open-source startup with nothing to lose?
In the long run maybe, but long as in very very long. Game engine design is still pretty much develpment on the bleeding edge, while Linux on the other side is basically a implementation of already decade old principles, sure they inovate here and there a bit, but the overall concept is just damn old, game engines are quite different in that aspect. Sooner or later we however will reach a state of development where even a engine which is a few years old simply is good enough for most games need, thus no need to license a new engine from Valve or id, however we are not there yet and probally won't be for a while, but one day that might change.
While this is of course a problem, I don't think it is that much of a problem as people make it. No matter if OpenSource or not, without additional cheat protection most multiplayer games will have quite a hard time. OpenSource might make the job of the cheaters a bit easier, but they don't seems to have much of a hard time without the source either.
Best cheat protection in the long run would IMHO be something web-of-trust based, where each player gets an account/key and can then get 'trust' by other players that he is not a cheater. In addition to that such tracking could of course also be used to keep track of the players ability, thus probally making it easier to find other players with equal abilities. While this might not be 'eSport-proof', it should provide enough backing to keep the number of cheaters reasonably low.
### why should Valve have to pay for the programmers while Company #2 only needs to hire writers and artists?
The idea would not be that Company #1 does the hard work and Company #2 makes profit with it, but that Company #1 releases its work early on as OpenSource and thus gets Company #2 as a contributor, thus spliting the work and thus getting an engine for half the amount of work. Releasing stuff as OpenSource really makes only sense if one does it early on in the development, not when the work is already mostly done. In addition to that its of course necesarry that the software is not the primary product, but just some secondary thing.
The difference here is that Linus basically started with nothing, he didn't had a huge business depending on selling Linuxs to the masses and didn't invested millions to build it, nope, he just had a few thousand lines of code floating around on his disk, wouldn't he have published it, it would have most likly stayed like that.
Valve on the other side does have invested millions into producing the game, so how exactly would OpenSourcing help them? In the best case you would see some forks and games making use of the engine, but Valve would still standing there with a few millions of bucks in the minus. OpenSourcing works good when you have enough money to not care or can make money out of support contracts (IBM) or if you start from scratch (Linus), but it really makes little sense when your whole business depends on selling boxed versions of the game.
### Art provokes thought and gives entertainment. It's hard or impossible to morph it into something else, as it will lose its vital distinction, and hence be diluted.
Its easy to morph art into some other art, its done all the time, as said movies get remaked, songs covered and pictures reused in collages. The larger the work of art the less of an issue is this. With movies or videogames you get all kinds of work done that can easily be reused in other works. You don't need to redesign each and every requisite just because you start a new movie, neither do you need to redesign each and every texture in a game, there is always lots and lots of stuff that can get easily reused without the player even noticing it. And even reusing something like the main character or a specific set is something that can be extremly usefull when doing some successor to a previous game.
Forking and reusing art is done all the time in all kinds of businesses there is really nothing special about it and there is little reason to restrict the user from getting the freedom to modify it.
### Just look at tuxracer. Since the company that was developing it turned it closed source nobody has continued developing it.
a) hardly anybody developed it while it was OpenSource, some bugfixes asside it what basically a one-man thing
b) after some years of no development on the OpenSource Tuxracer, there is now some life in it again, see PPRacer: http://projects.planetpenguin.de/racer/
c) sunspirestudios seem to have disapread, probally didn't sell to well in the end
### Same goes for tuxkart.
See http://supertuxkart.berlios.de/, however the original tuxkart has never gone closed source.
### We need some kind of "open art" license or something, and people working for it.
http://creativecommons.org/
For most part we really just need more people.
### It's kind of like, if I made a movie. I wouldn't mind you using all my techniques for special effects, (or CGI as it's called today) and filming, etc. But you'd be a big douchebag if you stole my script and just "expanded" on it to make your own movie.
So how exactly is that different of when I take Firefox, name its "Grumbels Personal Browser" add some stuff to it and release? Why should I be allowed to do that with Firefox, or any kind of free software, but not with movies, videogames or whatever?
Beside from that people are doing that all the time with movies, movies get remaked, songs covered and pictures reused in collages.
### music, art, even fiction books are all part of the arts and cannot be compared to non-artforms like software and technical matter. They are completely different animals.
Art is different in that it is not functional, you watch it, you waste your time with it, but ultimativly you don't produce anything with it. However that is as far as it goes, that still doesn't mean that the same freedoms for software wouldn't also be usefull for arts. Just watch what is happening out there, people cover songs, thus basically 'forking' them, people do remakes or continuations of movies, people modify computer games, add new vehicles, coop-modes and whatever.
Its true that art is a bit different from software, but by far not different enough to justify the restrictions of freedom on them.
### Honestly, someone once said (+Orc, a very good cracker back in the day) that someone's work that is done for money will always be inferior to the work of someone who does it for love.
While that is true, Free Software doesn't get developed just for the love of it, there is a lot of free software out there which development has been rolled back to 'maintaince only' and where there hasn't been much 'love' in quite some time.
### People tend to forget what launched Mr. Stallman on this road toward software freedom: he wanted to use a laser printer he had on hand with his word processing program. The software didn't have drivers, and as I recall the printer didn't have documentation, either.
The only question is if this is pro or against the usage of free software if I just want to get my work done. I mean if I have the choice between an NVidia card with perfectly stable and feature complete drivers and an ATI with both rather low quality proprietary and open source drivers, I don't have to think to long to pick the NVidia one, since for the ATI one there is little hope that it will catch up in a reasonable timeframe.
### RMS has dealt with this argument time and time again, explaining why he thinks that freedom is the highest goals of all.
So what, does that mean that he is right and people are forbidden to disagree?
### I take issue with the term "free software" being hijacked by what are, quite honestly, free/open source zealots
Well, GNU is there since 1984, the term itself is probally in use for a bit longer. If you write freeware and call it 'free software' no wonder that people end up being confusing, just call it like everybody else 'freeware' and you won't have any problem. I don't think it are the GNU people who doing hijacking here.
Depends, if I write free software, especially games, I tend to only use free software in the toolchain to make it easier for other people to contribute. Nothing sucks more to basically being locked out of a free software project just because you don't happen to have the newest version of some proprietary software that is a important component in the toolchain. So when it comes to free software I tend to go with only free software, since that ensures that everybody can help if he likes and it also shows bugs or missing features of existing free software.
On the other side if I just want to get work done I don't care to much about free software only, after all I want to get it done, not produce something that might still be maintained in the coming years. I still use free software most of the time there, but thats not because its better, in many areas its even quite inveriour, but just because its either the only software available for Linux in that area or because the proprietary software would be a little bit to expensive to be feasible.
### You can do that when you have SSH access on your friend's desktop/server/router Linux computer residing in his mother's basement on a so-called broadband connection.
Yes, which is exactly my point. Sure you can protect the computer better, have it behind an intrusion detection, have multiple accounts, etc. however must people just don't do it that way.
### Anyone who takes himself seriously creates backups.
Just because you have backups doesn't mean that delete files is a non-issue, it just means that you can easier recover from it, you still will lose at least 12h of work or so, since most people will at most run their backups daily.
### its easy to restrict outgoing connections or more specific restrict outgoing connections to any IP port 25
Just use the machines sendmail, no need to start an own smtp server.
### Really, the point is that home computers are of little concern
How are they little concain? People store years of digital photos and them and other information that might be VERY important to them.
I personally care little about so called 'serious' environments, when the rest of the 99% people out there are stuck with more or less the defaults installs of the distros which are all pretty vulnerable even with only a user account (didn't Mandrake do 'xhost +' for a while at default?!).
Sure you can configure anything quite secure depending on how much workforce you put into it, most users however put exactly zero work into it.
Unlikly, I am not so sure how good physic calculation can be done in parallel, but if they could you could just abuse the graphics cards, which today is not only good for graphics, but a rather generic vector processing unit which can be used for anything that needs calculation of huge vectors of numbers.
While it is true that 'sudo' can make it much easier for a hostile programm to get root, I don't consider it to much of an additional problem since for most uses getting access to a user account is already more then enough to cause serious damage. I can use up all the machines CPU and might even be able to crash it[1], I can delete the users files, I can send spam mails, I can spy and crack passwords (yppasswd), etc. no need to become root for any of those.
[1] simple shell one-liner ala: ":(){ (:&);:;};:&" is enough for that