The fanatics at FSF who want to destroy Suse in order to promote their "free" (read: we're in charge of what software you're allowed to use) software agenda jumped all over this before any facts were known.
Kudos to Steve for doing what journalists should do - find out the facts and present them clearly.
Personally I think we need to run Putin for US President in the next election - with British MP George Galloway as the VP running mate. At least we'd have an INTELLIGENT President and a VP who can talk straight.
Anything is better than what we have now - and all of the candidates the Dems are fielding are no better.
I don't think you can compare versions of Linux from several years ago to the current state of distros. It's more appropriate to compare existing distros with each other. It's pointless to compare the latest Mandriva with Mandriva 9.
Ubuntu is based on Debian. While it is obviously an attempt to make a "release often" version of Debian and thus foregoes much of Debian's famed stability, it still has plenty of solid distros to draw on to do that.
The problem is "Not Invented Here" Syndrome, which exists with most distros. Everybody thinks they can do better than the next guy - and they can't if they don't borrow heavily from the next guy.
Ubuntu started out with an advantage - Shuttleworth's money. This wasn't a one-man distro with a couple maintainers who work weekends and evenings. This was an attempt to make a commercial-level distro on a par with Red Hat and Mandriva and SUSE. Thus they should be held to the same higher standard as a commercial distro.
While I agree that Ubuntu doesn't have the manpower to adequately test, this particular bug wasn't an issue about testing "all configurations" - this was BASIC. I mean, if you don't test the screen that changes mount points, what else wasn't tested? It had to be that NOTHING in the install was tested! Did they just test a default install and didn't even exercise that screen at all? That's not a "test" in any sense of the word. Allowing that bug to slip through pretty clearly shows that the entire install process was not tested.
There's no way around it - they screwed up big time.
I'd like to be able to test distros, but I don't have the time or the disk space at the moment. In any event, there do seem to be plenty of people who like to do that - which makes one wonder again how such an obvious bug as the one I cited slipped through the cracks.
When I switched to Kubuntu last fall, the stupid CD installer wouldn't let you exit the change mount points screen. So I had to use the alternate text installer.
This means the ENTIRE INSTALL PROCESS WAS NEVER TESTED!
That's just braindead for any distro.
People who think Ubuntu is somehow magic are going to be sorely disappointed. It's just another distro and makes numerous mistakes in design and implementation and lack of adequate testing.
When you get there, you will let us know about all the niggling problems with Ubuntu, right?
Trust me - there will be some. I run Kubuntu and run into them occasionally. Just the poor separation of root and normal user will have you irritated daily. After forgetting to key in "sudo" before every command when you want to do things as root for the millionth time, you'll be doing "su -" like me, if not actually logging on as root (temporarily anyway).
Novell has more manpower than Ubuntu to test their releases. You'll notice that, too. Although the reason I didn't switch to SUSE last fall was because they screwed up their software update process due to poor testing.
If you read TFA, you'll find it's more likely that the openSUSE developers are morons than they are "rogue". The article points out that the Novell deal SHOULD cover this situation but apparently the openSUSE people don't understand that.
It's also pointed out that Red Hat Fedora does more or less the same thing, as quoted below:
"Let's see what Red Hat does when comes to FreeType2 and patent concerns, by looking in the freetype.spec defaults:
RHEL5 (freetype-2.2.1-16.el5.src.rpm) and FC6 (freetype-2.2.1-10.fc6.src.rpm) only take care to disable the Apple-patented BCI: # Disables patented bytecode interpreter. Setting to 0 enables # the bytecode interpreter. %define without_bytecode_interpreter 1
Fedora 7 however, just like openSUSE 10.2, also disables the Microsoft-patented subpixel hinting: # Disable patented bytecode interpreter and patented subpixel rendering. # Setting to 0 enables them. %define without_bytecode_interpreter 1 %define without_subpixel_rendering 1
While it's not clear to me why Red Hat's Enterprise Linux 5, recently released, still doesn't care about some Microsoft patents (usually, Red Hat is very cautious when comes to patents), it's also very curious that the patent covenant between Novell and Microsoft, which is supposed to cover openSUSE's possible patent infringements, is still ignored by the openSUSE team, even in cases where it could have been useful to them!
"In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality"
Here we see a truly stupid Microsoft shill.
Even Bill G must be cringing at how stupid this comment is.
He is correct about ONLY ONE thing is this entire post - IBM can hang Microsoft any day of the week in a patent war - and IBM has the best lawyers in the business and is making billions off Linux.
Linux and OSS have nothing to fear from Microsoft except stupid FUD tricks believable only by morons like this.
Of course, the answer to that is that everyone ignores Microsoft patents and LETS them try to take EVERYBODY to court - including countries that don't give a rat's ass about US patents.
Microsoft can try to be SCO and build its business on the backs of lawyers, but it's not going to work, however much Bill G might dream of it.
People forget that IBM holds more patents on everything than anyone and is making billions off Linux - as well as having the best lawyers on the planet. If Microsoft tries such a thing, IBM will hand Bill his head.
Threats are threats only. It's only when you submit that you lose.
Well, no, he's not working at Kinkos. His blog has a post about his interviews at Google, Apple AND Microsoft (Microsoft was the only one that disappointed him, although he says the campus visit was awesome, since they give you $75 a day to blow any way you want while you're there for an interview.)
I just read an article the other day about sites that are selling SUBCRIPTION services to exploits!
For $20 a month, you get new exploits.
Even if they don't deliver, how many script kiddies probably will pay these guys the $20 - even if just for one month? Those guys just made a few score thousand dollars...
You're one hundred percent right - and the reason is simple: security doesn't make Bill any money, whereas "featuritis" - and deals with big content providers - does.
Microsoft needs to be put out of business. Now. They have all the brains and social conscience of Enron.
I'll tell you, personally I think porn sites don't need malware. They KNOW what you're there for - they don't need to slap adware on your system to get you to come there. I've always had some spyware protection back when I was running mostly on Windows 2000 and XP, and I surfed porn sites frequently (albeit with Opera originally and later Firefox, more than IE, so my exposure to ActiveX was minimal) and I very rarely got any spyware according to my utilities.
Basically ANY sleazy commercial outfit will slap spyware on your system. I have clients whose kids or spouses spend a lot of time on sports sites and retailers of sport shoes - and they get tons of spyware from those sites. Porn definitely isn't the primary problem.
"I wish I could create programs by shuffling boxes around on a screen. I have never seen a programming interface like that."
That's the point - we DON'T have software like that.
But we SHOULD.
As for his breaking the encryption, they blew that off when he explained that he doesn't even KNOW how he does this stuff - he "just sees the code in my head". Which makes him a mutant, I guess, and therefore he might as well do X-Men movies.
If you're using them to extend a desktop, then, yeah, you want them side by side.
If you want one running CNN, and the rest running whatever, then multiple monitors on different levels would help prevent each distracting you from the others. You have to actually look at the one you want to look at - which ought to aid productivity.
In other words, the more each monitor is needed to do ONE particular task, the more you want them close together. Otherwise, they should be separate and distinct and non-distracting.
So in the case of Swordfish, I'd say they should have been closer together. But in the general case, they don't have to be.
I'm just setting up a dual monitor for a client yesterday and today. One monitor is his notebook, the other is a large monitor in another room altogether, so he can run videos for clients from his laptop and show them elsewhere. (And I'm having trouble getting it to work right, too - since the graphic adapter software wants to juggle the primary and secondary monitors and mess with the independent resolutions. Gotta get the manual for the adapter's dual monitor support.)
Put them out of business - they're a fucking state-supported monopoly anyway (state-supported because Bush wouldn't enforce their conviction and they use contract law to maintain their monopoly.)
Whatever movie was out LAST WEEK gets voted the top dog. People have no memories and don't care anyway, so they vote for whatever comes into their heads.
It's the same with these TV Guide "Most Beautiful Woman on TV" polls. Whatever actress was in a TV movie LAST WEEK gets voted to the top. And women who are not in prime time stuff don't get voted on at all. I recall one such poll back when Leeza Gibbons and Mary Hart were on "Entertainment Tonight". They were the best looking babes on TV - but since they weren't actresses in prime time, they were ignored. Even Oprah got votes - which is a travesty.
Fanaticism also has a play in this. One of the media mags has monthly polls for who is the "Most Elegant" and "Most Beautiful" women. They put up a bunch of photos and you vote. You can vote multiple times which is always the kicker in these. My favorite babe Andrea Corr was up against Aishwarya Rai (among others). Quite frankjly, I have to be realistic - Aishwarya IS better looking than Andrea. And it looked like every Hindu in Britain was voting for Aishwarya. But once the fact that Andrea was in the running came up on the Corrs fan boards, Andrea got voted ahead very quickly and stayed that way for a couple months running. I help by voting multiple times, too.
So these sorts of polls are meaningless.
Serenity was a pretty good movie. But the best sci-fi film of all time? No chance. Not even best space opera.
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The fanatics at FSF who want to destroy Suse in order to promote their "free" (read: we're in charge of what software you're allowed to use) software agenda jumped all over this before any facts were known.
Kudos to Steve for doing what journalists should do - find out the facts and present them clearly.
And this is news how?
Personally I think we need to run Putin for US President in the next election - with British MP George Galloway as the VP running mate. At least we'd have an INTELLIGENT President and a VP who can talk straight.
Anything is better than what we have now - and all of the candidates the Dems are fielding are no better.
I don't think you can compare versions of Linux from several years ago to the current state of distros. It's more appropriate to compare existing distros with each other. It's pointless to compare the latest Mandriva with Mandriva 9.
Ubuntu is based on Debian. While it is obviously an attempt to make a "release often" version of Debian and thus foregoes much of Debian's famed stability, it still has plenty of solid distros to draw on to do that.
The problem is "Not Invented Here" Syndrome, which exists with most distros. Everybody thinks they can do better than the next guy - and they can't if they don't borrow heavily from the next guy.
Ubuntu started out with an advantage - Shuttleworth's money. This wasn't a one-man distro with a couple maintainers who work weekends and evenings. This was an attempt to make a commercial-level distro on a par with Red Hat and Mandriva and SUSE. Thus they should be held to the same higher standard as a commercial distro.
While I agree that Ubuntu doesn't have the manpower to adequately test, this particular bug wasn't an issue about testing "all configurations" - this was BASIC. I mean, if you don't test the screen that changes mount points, what else wasn't tested? It had to be that NOTHING in the install was tested! Did they just test a default install and didn't even exercise that screen at all? That's not a "test" in any sense of the word. Allowing that bug to slip through pretty clearly shows that the entire install process was not tested.
There's no way around it - they screwed up big time.
I'd like to be able to test distros, but I don't have the time or the disk space at the moment. In any event, there do seem to be plenty of people who like to do that - which makes one wonder again how such an obvious bug as the one I cited slipped through the cracks.
When I switched to Kubuntu last fall, the stupid CD installer wouldn't let you exit the change mount points screen. So I had to use the alternate text installer.
This means the ENTIRE INSTALL PROCESS WAS NEVER TESTED!
That's just braindead for any distro.
People who think Ubuntu is somehow magic are going to be sorely disappointed. It's just another distro and makes numerous mistakes in design and implementation and lack of adequate testing.
When you get there, you will let us know about all the niggling problems with Ubuntu, right?
Trust me - there will be some. I run Kubuntu and run into them occasionally. Just the poor separation of root and normal user will have you irritated daily. After forgetting to key in "sudo" before every command when you want to do things as root for the millionth time, you'll be doing "su -" like me, if not actually logging on as root (temporarily anyway).
Novell has more manpower than Ubuntu to test their releases. You'll notice that, too. Although the reason I didn't switch to SUSE last fall was because they screwed up their software update process due to poor testing.
It's also pointed out that Red Hat Fedora does more or less the same thing, as quoted below:
"In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality"
Here we see a truly stupid Microsoft shill.
Even Bill G must be cringing at how stupid this comment is.
He is correct about ONLY ONE thing is this entire post - IBM can hang Microsoft any day of the week in a patent war - and IBM has the best lawyers in the business and is making billions off Linux.
Linux and OSS have nothing to fear from Microsoft except stupid FUD tricks believable only by morons like this.
Of course, the answer to that is that everyone ignores Microsoft patents and LETS them try to take EVERYBODY to court - including countries that don't give a rat's ass about US patents.
Microsoft can try to be SCO and build its business on the backs of lawyers, but it's not going to work, however much Bill G might dream of it.
People forget that IBM holds more patents on everything than anyone and is making billions off Linux - as well as having the best lawyers on the planet. If Microsoft tries such a thing, IBM will hand Bill his head.
Threats are threats only. It's only when you submit that you lose.
then somebody please bury the fucking body as it appears to be continuing to stink up the room...
Not to mention release diseases like Vista...
Or you can do what the PUAs (Pick-Up Artists) recommend: always remember that women just want to be bent over.
Well, no, he's not working at Kinkos. His blog has a post about his interviews at Google, Apple AND Microsoft (Microsoft was the only one that disappointed him, although he says the campus visit was awesome, since they give you $75 a day to blow any way you want while you're there for an interview.)
I just read an article the other day about sites that are selling SUBCRIPTION services to exploits!
For $20 a month, you get new exploits.
Even if they don't deliver, how many script kiddies probably will pay these guys the $20 - even if just for one month? Those guys just made a few score thousand dollars...
You're one hundred percent right - and the reason is simple: security doesn't make Bill any money, whereas "featuritis" - and deals with big content providers - does.
Microsoft needs to be put out of business. Now. They have all the brains and social conscience of Enron.
I'll tell you, personally I think porn sites don't need malware. They KNOW what you're there for - they don't need to slap adware on your system to get you to come there. I've always had some spyware protection back when I was running mostly on Windows 2000 and XP, and I surfed porn sites frequently (albeit with Opera originally and later Firefox, more than IE, so my exposure to ActiveX was minimal) and I very rarely got any spyware according to my utilities.
Basically ANY sleazy commercial outfit will slap spyware on your system. I have clients whose kids or spouses spend a lot of time on sports sites and retailers of sport shoes - and they get tons of spyware from those sites. Porn definitely isn't the primary problem.
"Gee, they're SO innovative at Microsoft"!
Morons.
No, the AI was as smart as most of the crew, most likely (they ARE a military ship - meaning they're mostly morons).
Like someone said once, "If we create an AI that's as smart as Casper Weinberger, we'll be in trouble."
"I wish I could create programs by shuffling boxes around on a screen. I have never seen a programming interface like that."
That's the point - we DON'T have software like that.
But we SHOULD.
As for his breaking the encryption, they blew that off when he explained that he doesn't even KNOW how he does this stuff - he "just sees the code in my head". Which makes him a mutant, I guess, and therefore he might as well do X-Men movies.
Oh, wait...
Depends on what you're using the monitors for.
If you're using them to extend a desktop, then, yeah, you want them side by side.
If you want one running CNN, and the rest running whatever, then multiple monitors on different levels would help prevent each distracting you from the others. You have to actually look at the one you want to look at - which ought to aid productivity.
In other words, the more each monitor is needed to do ONE particular task, the more you want them close together. Otherwise, they should be separate and distinct and non-distracting.
So in the case of Swordfish, I'd say they should have been closer together. But in the general case, they don't have to be.
I'm just setting up a dual monitor for a client yesterday and today. One monitor is his notebook, the other is a large monitor in another room altogether, so he can run videos for clients from his laptop and show them elsewhere. (And I'm having trouble getting it to work right, too - since the graphic adapter software wants to juggle the primary and secondary monitors and mess with the independent resolutions. Gotta get the manual for the adapter's dual monitor support.)
Mmmmm....Helga...
"Oh, she's good, isn't she?"
I looked her up on IMDB after that - sadly, she's done next to nothing...
Typical Hollywood bimbo...
Can't make a movie without 'em, though.
No, I just look at my directory stats that way using KdirStat...
What more do you need to know? With this sort of publicity - and the high cost of switching in hardware and OS price - it's no surprise.
Tough shit, Bill.
You fucked up.
With luck, your company will lose billions.
Have a nice day, asshole.
Fuck 'em...
Put them out of business - they're a fucking state-supported monopoly anyway (state-supported because Bush wouldn't enforce their conviction and they use contract law to maintain their monopoly.)
Tough shit they get no royalties.
So fuck 'em.
Need I say more?
Well, I will!
I love this! Chimpanzees granting another chimpanzee "rights"!
Bwahahahahahahaha!!!
Whatever movie was out LAST WEEK gets voted the top dog. People have no memories and don't care anyway, so they vote for whatever comes into their heads.
It's the same with these TV Guide "Most Beautiful Woman on TV" polls. Whatever actress was in a TV movie LAST WEEK gets voted to the top. And women who are not in prime time stuff don't get voted on at all. I recall one such poll back when Leeza Gibbons and Mary Hart were on "Entertainment Tonight". They were the best looking babes on TV - but since they weren't actresses in prime time, they were ignored. Even Oprah got votes - which is a travesty.
Fanaticism also has a play in this. One of the media mags has monthly polls for who is the "Most Elegant" and "Most Beautiful" women. They put up a bunch of photos and you vote. You can vote multiple times which is always the kicker in these. My favorite babe Andrea Corr was up against Aishwarya Rai (among others). Quite frankjly, I have to be realistic - Aishwarya IS better looking than Andrea. And it looked like every Hindu in Britain was voting for Aishwarya. But once the fact that Andrea was in the running came up on the Corrs fan boards, Andrea got voted ahead very quickly and stayed that way for a couple months running. I help by voting multiple times, too.
So these sorts of polls are meaningless.
Serenity was a pretty good movie. But the best sci-fi film of all time? No chance. Not even best space opera.