Replace 'Linux' with 'GNU/Linux', replace 'GNU/Linux' with 'GNU/Linux projects that are commited to Mono technology". Change 'be the big loser' to 'would have to be abandoned or migrated to the Windows.NET platform'. As for 'Mono is a work in progress and really isn't embedded itself into Linux yet or probably will for a long while', the article addresses this -
The optimum time to shut down Mono will be after much Linux development has committed to it. By then, Mono technology will have infected many projects
Theoretically if all of the predictions come to pass, then Linux as an OS could indeed take somewhat of a hit. In wasted development, migration away from the platform and lost opportunities.
Not locally, but Linux has been showing up more and more in the mainstream media. Lou Dobbs on CNN has mentioned Linux several times, (that I've seen), this year. He even brought it up when a "security expert" was talking about a Windows worm effecting "all PCs". Another time he talked about cost and security benefits of running Linux servers, (not anything detailed, but still). I've seen similar mentions on CNBC. And now with IBM and Dell running commercials that actually name-check Linux I think we'll see more of the same. Without the GNU part hopefully.
Have you read any of this guy's stuff? Or did you just decide to post some now-popular "quit being such a bunch of slashbots" stuff in hopes of getting modded up? Check out this preface to his article on "Linux is Not Ready For the Enterprise" -
Linux and other open source projects require too much customization, and doubts about the legitimacy of open source code could get users tangled up in lawsuits. Besides, many Linux supporters are a bunch of potty-mouthed malcontents. Enterprises are better off staying away from Linux and open source -- or at least thinking through the possible liabilities
I agree that any business should think through the liabilities of any piece of software that the are going to deploy, (like maybe think for a second about distributing copies of Windows throughout your buisness, an OS that includes a piece of software that was found to be illegally infringing on a legal patent, unlike the SCO case which is merely in progress, much like all the lawsuits against MS), but what the hell does "Besides, many Linux supporters are a bunch of potty-mouthed malcontents", have to do with a consultant's article on the weaknesses of Linux? Should I write an article about "Why Windows sucks on the Desktop", and then state "Besides, many Windows users are nothing more than software pirates and they download the vast majority of illegal mp3s".
Here's a good one from the article "Reasons to Shun Open-Source-ry" -
I now honestly believe that Linux and open source are big, bald-faced lies perpetrated on the industry by itself.... How many credible people told each other with a straight face that profit didn't matter? This seems much too similar to "free software" to me.
If you actually read this guy's articles you start to get a pretty good idea of the amount of FUD that he is spreading. Check out his consulting group, do some googling, and check out his bio - GigaWeb . This guy is a marketroid consultant who seemingly only works with and promotes MS products, (according to his own information!). His arguments are also generally full of holes and he often uses ad hominem attacks while bashing anti-MSers for doing the same thing. The only platforms that seem to draw his ire are non-MS, check out all he has to say on OSX and Linux, (If you can stand it). He even asks if OSS supporters have "ever heard of capitalism?", and says that he does not want to go back to the days of cheap software. I've read about a dozen of his articles now, (know thy enemy), and I suggest that anyone who has some questions on this guy do the same.
Well about time you tried out Opera. What with 10 years of experience on Linux and who knows how much time on Windows. Personally I've used Opera for years, and aside from a few buggy v4 and v6 releases it's been in almost constant use on one box or another.
So Opera is indeed a great browser, but I can think of 3 decent reasons why people would use Mozilla over Opera -
No ad at the top of the browser, (yes I know you can just hit F11 to browse full screen style), some people find that annoying, but I don't mind.
Mozilla is totally free, you can use it on a production network without having to worry about getting licenses of any kind.
Mozilla being open-source means that anyone can fiddle around with it and customize it to suit their own needs, there are also piles of extensions and plugins available that can give moz more capabilities, (like the much praised Opera gestures, spellchecking, auto-downloading of web pages via wget)
Bork!
I was having all kinds of problems this morning. The pages would load, but when I tried to login nothing would happen at all, this happened multiple times under links, mozilla, and firebird. Then when I managed to login and tried to post, I repeatedly got a 500 Internal Server Error, over ten times in a row on one post. So it's not just you, although things have been smooth on my end since a few hours back.
PS - I'll be damned, I just got another 500 error when trying to post this. Something is definitely up with/. today.
That they have to stop selling Windows to people/corps? After all IE is part of their OS, so anyone selling PCs with Windows on it is distributing software that was illegally infringing Eolas' patent. The crooks.
Should've included this in my other post - As to why you would want to use Linux over QNX in telcom equipment. Linux, especially embedded Linux can be put on all manner of devices, with a very small footprint, (about twice to three times as large as the OS footprint of current telcom OSs, but offering a full fledged, standards based OS, along with quite a few networking apps, (TCP/IP, NFS, RAMdisk, telnetd, and a shell according to a chart in front of me on the subject), along with excellent throughput and latency), it's free, it's currently undergoing massive development, and anyone can mess with the source and modify it to fit their specific needs. QNX certainly offers reliability, but when CGL becomes a reality there should really be no question that it's the best OS for the job. Hopefully as various companies and groups implement CGL we will get some nice improvements and patches.
Currently if you want 5 or 6 9s of reliability in the telcom sector you usually are using some sort of specialized OS that doesn't really have the sort of capabilities that you find in Linux or QNX. Of course QNX is used for various mission critical systems, but it's usually cheaper to use a less capable not widely known OS,(not usually open source). However Carrier Grade Linux is changing the status quo, as it becomes 5 9s reliable it will be vastly cheaper to implement the same OS over a massive variety of different hardware. MIPS, ia-32, PPC and all the other various telcom procs will be running the same standards based OS. There's some nice articles on the subject on the net and in issue 30 of Linux User & Developer.
Well a simple i386 Linux PC that operates with a HD doesn't exactly meet the five 9's of reliability that you need to operate telcom services, but that is what Carrier Grade Linux is for. OSDL is working on, and has released specifications for CGL, a spec that quote "provides standards based, open architecture software platform for converging telecommunications/data communications systems, which require virtually zero downtime." Linux is currently making some major inroads into the telcom sector, replacing all sorts of COTS systems that are currently in use. Linux will be running on that room full of communications software before too long. So I guess those folks with the telcom PC are just getting a head start by running the system on Linux.
Well it is somewhat of an attempt, I'll give them that. The presentation is supposed to show us all that they are not quite as obsolete as we think. An online update site is quite the step up for SCO. In addition to other duties, I admin a doctor's office that consists of a SCO server, and 10 old-school Wyse terminals. Back in 99 I would have loved to be able to DL the Y2K patch and easily install everything. Patching that box takes up more of my time than I'd like to spend on a SCO OS, anything that makes my job easier is a bonus. Of course the whole "set up an account" thing has me a bit concerned. Knowing SCO it'll cost $.
Now before anyone bitches about working on a SCO box, of course I wish it were a linux box, (y2huh?), and I am currently working on porting the SCO specific components of the setup to linux, (terminals, serial ports and ugly C medical-practice apps), but for the moment I appreciate each and every enhancement that SCO provides for their clunky OS. Each feature and fix is money out of Darl's pocket hopefully, unless these features all consist of OpenSS* and Samba.
I was watching a US House of Reps "Worms and cyber security" subcommmitee on C-SPAN the other day. Testifying before the Congressmen were the following - Microsoft Corp senior security strategist Philip Reitinger, VeriSign VP Kenneth Silva, Lawrence Hale, director of the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, Christoper Wysopal consultant for @stake Inc, some other Russian security consultant, and a few other random folks.
The chairman of the committee asked the Verisign PHB and the two consultants if there were any security benefits in running open-source software, and which was more secure, open or closed. I almost shat myself. Here was the perfect opportunity to hear some glowing reviews of open source. Instead the two consultants, who seemed decently knowledgeable, and long winded on all other issues merely said that there are flaws in all types of software, and they would "guess" that the frequency of security flaws were the same as for closed source. Although the guy from @stake did mention that the theory behind open source security was that "the more eyes, the better", he also countered it with noting that most users of open source wouldn't be able to fix the code when a vulnerability was found.
That was it. No detailed explanation about anything. Just a brush off that was not quite as long as their testimony on why ipv6 wouldn't offer any extra security over ipv4. Luckily the Verisign bastard was there to add his two cents. To paraphrase him - "I would agree with their, (the consultants) testimony, but I would like to add that often the people who write open source software are not professionals". Then he took another shot mentioning "that often worms affect open-source software too". Often... I wonder what he considers "often". How can he even trot out the word "often" to describe the frequency of worms that affect open-source software when there are millions of Windows boxes that are constantly being hit by worms. He then added - "We must resist the temptation to demonize software vendors and other members of the network community. The finger pointing is often misplaced and in most cases does more harm than good." It was quite the interesting hearing, and gives me a bit of insight into what kind of info our Government is getting about open source.
Here's my 2c, here instead of in your journal as your entry is very on topic. Your forecast seems a bit pessimistic to me, and somewhat culturally biased, ("The invisible hand will determine maximum efficiency in the market place").
Obviously the Chinese have a somewhat different view on economic matters than just letting Smith's invisble hand do it's thing in their country. What do the Chinese have to gain from letting any and all foreign companies sell their wares? The Chinese currently only care about the things that they truly need/want - like mobile phones, steel, oil, and soon automobiles. For every foreign camera and tv that is bought in China there is a transfer of money away from their country. Why should they let this happen when they make plenty of their own consumer electronics? They obviously see the same thing on the CPU/Software side. Making their own goods means becoming self-sufficient and not having to spend money outside their economy on relatively expensive foreign products. Something that they see as beneficial. The Chinese have a definite memory of the Hung Maos carving their country up into spheres of influence and buying and selling whatever they wanted. Now they want to have things on their own terms, if they want a company to build a factory in China it will happen - only as much capitalism as they see necessary. It is not what we have been taught is the way to attain an effective economy, but it is certainly working for the Chinese. They are modernizing at an amazing rate, an expected 8% growth rate, with stated aims to quadruple GDP by 2020. Would they be doing better if they were capitalists? Who knows? But obviously they would not be in control to the degree that they are.
1 - The average Chinese income is predicted to jump 250% to $3,500 by 2020. Any arrested development from the non-floating yuan is more than made up for by the truly massive rate of growth. As the average middle-class person in China will become wealthy enough to trade in their bike for a car, they will also be able to afford foreign and local goods, regardless of the possibility of a slight increase in local prices.
2 - Even if this forecasted increase in corruption comes about, at most it could only slow down the growth rate by a percentage point or two. Even that I am skeptical of, China does face a considerable corruption problem, but it shows no signs of collapsing under it's own weight in the Soviet fashion.
3 - They have indeed incited the hostility of our govt. John Snow recently went to Beijing to discuss these issues, but what is the stick that we threaten them with? Tariffs on their goods that will result in an increase in price of all the goods we buy from them? Wal-mart, Home Depot, and Best Buy certainly would be big losers if that happened. Interest rates would also rise here at home, leading to less economic growth. Do we stop the thousands of US companies that are lined up and salivating to invest in China?
4 - I'm sure they won't stay dependant long. The Chinese recently announced plans to move to a free-floating yuan in the future. My U.S.News and World Report says "probably in time for the 2008 Olympics".
5 - I dealt with this above.
It is in China's best interest to slowly remove the artificial exchange rate and embrace a floating currency. Once China does this, they will become a stronger member of the world community. The Chinese will benefit and the Chinese economy will become improve.
I think that China agrees with you on this point. Otherwise they would not be moving slowly in that direction. However they no doubt also see a benefit to their current actions. Our economists are having a field day talking about the Chinese Tiger and people are certainly paying attention to the power that they wield.
They have been sticking it to the US economy already. Since the yuan is not a free-floating currency, Chinese exporters are at an advantage compared to US exporters. They can flood our market with cheap goods and we on the other hand have to sell our exports in China at a high price. The result has been an ever increasing trade and current-account deficit for the US. The latest steps towards the Dragon Chip and a Red-Flag type OS are a very smart move indeed, and a continuation of a very effective economic policy on the part of the Chinese. I'd be worried too if I were Wintel. There's not really anywhere to go but down.
Hey jimmydukes, I post as myself. I've already bitched in this thread under my own name twice, I'm not worried about posting a third time to bitch some more. I could care less about losing karma, as I mod and metamod all the time. All I care about is reading slashdot at +3 or higher and not having to deal with garbage questions from lamers who should've learned how to do a google search. I mean really, how long did it take you and Kevin to post your questions and wait to get an answer by reloading slashdot? I hit ctrl+T and "g $WORD_OR_PHRASE" and I get information from google in seconds flat. I won't expect anyone to actually RTFA, (heavens no), but seeing stupid questions like "What does FUD mean?", and "What is Global Crossing?" modded up to a level where they mix in with the truly insightful and informative posts is a bit irksome. I'd just rather not have to read silly questions that's all. Especially from some guy who says he RTFA, but couldn't comprehend what Global Crossing does because the article doesn't explain it very well.
OMFG. Are you serious? Could you abuse the English language some more? Please?
im in favor with Kevin Conway here, rather than post a smart alec snidfull remark (or godforbid i RAFA) yes ive heard of MCI, AT&T ect.. but no ive never heard of global crossing, 27 countries? sorry.. not in Canada.
First off yes Global Crossing does operate in Canada. Try googling for the answer to your questions, or thinking. GC is a US company that operates in 27 countries... hmmmm it might make sense that they operate in Mexico and Canada... I mean you know, maybe. Secondly WTF do you think that these guys do? They fucking operate a fiber optic network in 27 countries! Jesus Christ man, couldn't you check any of the links that the poster provided to your friend Kevin, who you are in favor with? globalcrossing.com. Why should you care? Why should you care about 99% of the stories on here... fucking idiot. Now lets see if you can get modded up to +5 Insightful like your friend Kevin, who you are in favor with. Mod me down, but please take this jackass with me.
+Many Insightful for the uninformed Grandparent who doesn't know what Global Crossing is and couldn't be bothered to do a cursory search before posting, and Flamebait for the parent who was helpful enough to provide multiple links on Global Crossing. What gives mods? I truly hope M2 bites you in the ass.
I was watching a US House of Reps "Worms and cyber security" subcommmitee on C-SPAN the other day. Testifying before the Congressmen were the following - Microsoft Corp senior security strategist Philip Reitinger, VeriSign VP Kenneth Silva, Lawrence Hale, director of the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, Christoper Wysopal consultant for @stake Inc, some other Russian security consultant, and a few other random folks. The chairman of the committee asked the Verisign PHB and the two consultants if there were any security benefits in running open-source software, and which was more secure, open or closed. I almost shat myself. Here was the perfect opportunity to hear some glowing reviews of open source. Instead the two consultants, who seemed decently knowledgeable, and long winded on all other issues merely said that there are flaws in all types of software, and they would "guess" that the frequency of security flaws were the same as for closed source. Although the guy from @stake did mention that the theory behind open source security was that "the more eyes, the better", he also countered it with noting that most users of open source wouldn't be able to fix the code when a vulnerability was found. That was it. No detailed explanation about anything. Just a brush off that was not quite as long as their testimony on why ipv6 wouldn't offer any extra security over ipv4. Luckily the Verisign bastard was there to add his two cents. To paraphrase him - "I would agree with their, (the consultants) testimony, but I would like to add that often the people who write open source software are not professionals". Then he took another shot mentioning "that often worms affect open-source software too". Often... I wonder what he considers "often". How can he even trot out the word "often" to describe the frequency of worms that affect open-source software when there are millions of Windows boxes that are constantly being hit by worms. He then added - "We must resist the temptation to demonize software vendors and other members of the network community. The finger pointing is often misplaced and in most cases does more harm than good." It was quite the interesting hearing, and gives me a bit of insight into what kind of info our Government is getting about open source.
Re:I'm as stumped as my girlfriend usually is
on
Telstar 4 is Down
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Inference and deduction are your friends. I had no idea what they were talking about at first, as I have no knowledge of satellite stuff at all beyond common knowledge, but I actually thought for a second or two.
Loral Skynet site - Hmmm Skynet site that mentions what satellites are doing and stuff. I imagine that they are some sort of satellite info site.
"Telstar 8 was... scheduled to replace T4" - Telstar 8 is obviously a satellite. T4 no doubt means Telstar 4.
WTF is so hard to understand about that sentence if you read the submitted paragraph?
Something that was used quite often perhaps, but the question is "is it prior art?". Ozzie makes sure to put words like "browser" in quotes, and say things like "analogous to today's "Web application servers".", "Notes documents are... compound documents analogous to today's "HTML documents"", "The general process used by the Notes browser to fetch and display a document was quite similar to that used by a Web browser". He never claims that it is a clear cut case of prior art. If I were the lawyer for Eolas the following line strikes me as quite important -
I thought that it might be challenging to recreate a scenario, given the feature set available Notes R3, that was close to what was described in the patent.
Close to what was described in the patent. The patent specifically describes the use of DHTML to launch external applications through a browser. Eolas claims that Doyle and his team of researchers invented the "applets" technology in 1993. A patent was filed in 1994. Doyle claimed in 1995 that -
Individuals involved at Netscape, Spyglass, and Sun Microsystems saw our demonstrations in 1993. Our technology has been widely discussed over the last year and we are not new players in this arena. There's a perception that Java was there first, but that's simply not the case.
Eolas has been threatening legal action against MS since 1995 at the latest, as soon as IE came out and infringed on the patent that they had filed. One of their claims is this - "Microsoft's browser came out in 1995 but Microsoft began using the technology after the patent was filed and used it after the patent was issued. Microsoft's infringement allowed it to destroy competition from Netscape Communications, which pioneered Web browsing but now has less than 10 percent of the market". It seems to me that the time to have fought this would've been back in 1995, when all of this was still a bit more fresh. Also interesting to note is that the 1995 article states "While Eolas plans to provide royalty free licenses to individual and academic users of applets, commercial users would be charged for each piece of software that uses the embedded applications. That charge could range from $0.50... up tp $5." That certainly could've been a limiting effect on the browser wars of mid 90s. I can certainly see why no one paid any attention to it at the time.
Now I know why they've been charging an arm and a leg for those G5s. If they didn't gouge the consumer so effectively they'd never be able to afford to keep on breaking the trademark agreement they signed with the Beatles.
This is just as off-topic as the grandparent, but having grown up around plenty of farms I've used and seen baling wire more than a few times. It is indeed actual wire, (galvanized steel according to one site that still sells it), and it works just fine for tying up a bale of hay. Some people still use it, but it has mostly been replaced by plastic twine, as it is indeed cheaper and easier to use. Here's a link to a fellow waxing sub-poetic on the bygone days of baling wire - Read All About It. And this is a site that sells baling wire, and has a few pictures - REC.
Sounds like just the thing I need. That hacked together script that I currently use to md5sum all my important system binaries + files and verify them against the Known Goods database every 2 minutes is going out the window along with chkrootkit just as soon as I can go over every LOC with an STM and run this fine piece of software. Thanks be to you my fellow linux-users, I have finally found people who wear more layers of foil on their heads than I.
Slashdot Mirror
Not locally, but Linux has been showing up more and more in the mainstream media. Lou Dobbs on CNN has mentioned Linux several times, (that I've seen), this year. He even brought it up when a "security expert" was talking about a Windows worm effecting "all PCs". Another time he talked about cost and security benefits of running Linux servers, (not anything detailed, but still). I've seen similar mentions on CNBC. And now with IBM and Dell running commercials that actually name-check Linux I think we'll see more of the same. Without the GNU part hopefully.
I agree that any business should think through the liabilities of any piece of software that the are going to deploy, (like maybe think for a second about distributing copies of Windows throughout your buisness, an OS that includes a piece of software that was found to be illegally infringing on a legal patent, unlike the SCO case which is merely in progress, much like all the lawsuits against MS), but what the hell does "Besides, many Linux supporters are a bunch of potty-mouthed malcontents", have to do with a consultant's article on the weaknesses of Linux? Should I write an article about "Why Windows sucks on the Desktop", and then state "Besides, many Windows users are nothing more than software pirates and they download the vast majority of illegal mp3s".
Here's a good one from the article "Reasons to Shun Open-Source-ry" -
If you actually read this guy's articles you start to get a pretty good idea of the amount of FUD that he is spreading. Check out his consulting group, do some googling, and check out his bio - GigaWeb . This guy is a marketroid consultant who seemingly only works with and promotes MS products, (according to his own information!). His arguments are also generally full of holes and he often uses ad hominem attacks while bashing anti-MSers for doing the same thing. The only platforms that seem to draw his ire are non-MS, check out all he has to say on OSX and Linux, (If you can stand it). He even asks if OSS supporters have "ever heard of capitalism?", and says that he does not want to go back to the days of cheap software. I've read about a dozen of his articles now, (know thy enemy), and I suggest that anyone who has some questions on this guy do the same.
Well it could have been worse I suppose...
No ad at the top of the browser, (yes I know you can just hit F11 to browse full screen style), some people find that annoying, but I don't mind.
Mozilla is totally free, you can use it on a production network without having to worry about getting licenses of any kind.
Mozilla being open-source means that anyone can fiddle around with it and customize it to suit their own needs, there are also piles of extensions and plugins available that can give moz more capabilities, (like the much praised Opera gestures, spellchecking, auto-downloading of web pages via wget) Bork!
I was having all kinds of problems this morning. The pages would load, but when I tried to login nothing would happen at all, this happened multiple times under links, mozilla, and firebird. Then when I managed to login and tried to post, I repeatedly got a 500 Internal Server Error, over ten times in a row on one post. So it's not just you, although things have been smooth on my end since a few hours back. PS - I'll be damned, I just got another 500 error when trying to post this. Something is definitely up with /. today.
That they have to stop selling Windows to people/corps? After all IE is part of their OS, so anyone selling PCs with Windows on it is distributing software that was illegally infringing Eolas' patent. The crooks.
Should've included this in my other post - As to why you would want to use Linux over QNX in telcom equipment. Linux, especially embedded Linux can be put on all manner of devices, with a very small footprint, (about twice to three times as large as the OS footprint of current telcom OSs, but offering a full fledged, standards based OS, along with quite a few networking apps, (TCP/IP, NFS, RAMdisk, telnetd, and a shell according to a chart in front of me on the subject), along with excellent throughput and latency), it's free, it's currently undergoing massive development, and anyone can mess with the source and modify it to fit their specific needs. QNX certainly offers reliability, but when CGL becomes a reality there should really be no question that it's the best OS for the job. Hopefully as various companies and groups implement CGL we will get some nice improvements and patches.
Currently if you want 5 or 6 9s of reliability in the telcom sector you usually are using some sort of specialized OS that doesn't really have the sort of capabilities that you find in Linux or QNX. Of course QNX is used for various mission critical systems, but it's usually cheaper to use a less capable not widely known OS,(not usually open source). However Carrier Grade Linux is changing the status quo, as it becomes 5 9s reliable it will be vastly cheaper to implement the same OS over a massive variety of different hardware. MIPS, ia-32, PPC and all the other various telcom procs will be running the same standards based OS. There's some nice articles on the subject on the net and in issue 30 of Linux User & Developer.
Well a simple i386 Linux PC that operates with a HD doesn't exactly meet the five 9's of reliability that you need to operate telcom services, but that is what Carrier Grade Linux is for. OSDL is working on, and has released specifications for CGL, a spec that quote "provides standards based, open architecture software platform for converging telecommunications/data communications systems, which require virtually zero downtime." Linux is currently making some major inroads into the telcom sector, replacing all sorts of COTS systems that are currently in use. Linux will be running on that room full of communications software before too long. So I guess those folks with the telcom PC are just getting a head start by running the system on Linux.
Well it is somewhat of an attempt, I'll give them that. The presentation is supposed to show us all that they are not quite as obsolete as we think. An online update site is quite the step up for SCO. In addition to other duties, I admin a doctor's office that consists of a SCO server, and 10 old-school Wyse terminals. Back in 99 I would have loved to be able to DL the Y2K patch and easily install everything. Patching that box takes up more of my time than I'd like to spend on a SCO OS, anything that makes my job easier is a bonus. Of course the whole "set up an account" thing has me a bit concerned. Knowing SCO it'll cost $. Now before anyone bitches about working on a SCO box, of course I wish it were a linux box, (y2huh?), and I am currently working on porting the SCO specific components of the setup to linux, (terminals, serial ports and ugly C medical-practice apps), but for the moment I appreciate each and every enhancement that SCO provides for their clunky OS. Each feature and fix is money out of Darl's pocket hopefully, unless these features all consist of OpenSS* and Samba.
I was watching a US House of Reps "Worms and cyber security" subcommmitee on C-SPAN the other day. Testifying before the Congressmen were the following - Microsoft Corp senior security strategist Philip Reitinger, VeriSign VP Kenneth Silva, Lawrence Hale, director of the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, Christoper Wysopal consultant for @stake Inc, some other Russian security consultant, and a few other random folks.
The chairman of the committee asked the Verisign PHB and the two consultants if there were any security benefits in running open-source software, and which was more secure, open or closed. I almost shat myself. Here was the perfect opportunity to hear some glowing reviews of open source. Instead the two consultants, who seemed decently knowledgeable, and long winded on all other issues merely said that there are flaws in all types of software, and they would "guess" that the frequency of security flaws were the same as for closed source. Although the guy from @stake did mention that the theory behind open source security was that "the more eyes, the better", he also countered it with noting that most users of open source wouldn't be able to fix the code when a vulnerability was found.
That was it. No detailed explanation about anything. Just a brush off that was not quite as long as their testimony on why ipv6 wouldn't offer any extra security over ipv4. Luckily the Verisign bastard was there to add his two cents. To paraphrase him - "I would agree with their, (the consultants) testimony, but I would like to add that often the people who write open source software are not professionals". Then he took another shot mentioning "that often worms affect open-source software too". Often... I wonder what he considers "often". How can he even trot out the word "often" to describe the frequency of worms that affect open-source software when there are millions of Windows boxes that are constantly being hit by worms. He then added - "We must resist the temptation to demonize software vendors and other members of the network community. The finger pointing is often misplaced and in most cases does more harm than good." It was quite the interesting hearing, and gives me a bit of insight into what kind of info our Government is getting about open source.
1 - The average Chinese income is predicted to jump 250% to $3,500 by 2020. Any arrested development from the non-floating yuan is more than made up for by the truly massive rate of growth. As the average middle-class person in China will become wealthy enough to trade in their bike for a car, they will also be able to afford foreign and local goods, regardless of the possibility of a slight increase in local prices.
2 - Even if this forecasted increase in corruption comes about, at most it could only slow down the growth rate by a percentage point or two. Even that I am skeptical of, China does face a considerable corruption problem, but it shows no signs of collapsing under it's own weight in the Soviet fashion.
3 - They have indeed incited the hostility of our govt. John Snow recently went to Beijing to discuss these issues, but what is the stick that we threaten them with? Tariffs on their goods that will result in an increase in price of all the goods we buy from them? Wal-mart, Home Depot, and Best Buy certainly would be big losers if that happened. Interest rates would also rise here at home, leading to less economic growth. Do we stop the thousands of US companies that are lined up and salivating to invest in China?
4 - I'm sure they won't stay dependant long. The Chinese recently announced plans to move to a free-floating yuan in the future. My U.S.News and World Report says "probably in time for the 2008 Olympics".
5 - I dealt with this above.
I think that China agrees with you on this point. Otherwise they would not be moving slowly in that direction. However they no doubt also see a benefit to their current actions. Our economists are having a field day talking about the Chinese Tiger and people are certainly paying attention to the power that they wield.They have been sticking it to the US economy already. Since the yuan is not a free-floating currency, Chinese exporters are at an advantage compared to US exporters. They can flood our market with cheap goods and we on the other hand have to sell our exports in China at a high price. The result has been an ever increasing trade and current-account deficit for the US. The latest steps towards the Dragon Chip and a Red-Flag type OS are a very smart move indeed, and a continuation of a very effective economic policy on the part of the Chinese. I'd be worried too if I were Wintel. There's not really anywhere to go but down.
Quite a nice little informative summary. Watch out for the flamebait mod.
Hey jimmydukes, I post as myself. I've already bitched in this thread under my own name twice, I'm not worried about posting a third time to bitch some more. I could care less about losing karma, as I mod and metamod all the time. All I care about is reading slashdot at +3 or higher and not having to deal with garbage questions from lamers who should've learned how to do a google search. I mean really, how long did it take you and Kevin to post your questions and wait to get an answer by reloading slashdot? I hit ctrl+T and "g $WORD_OR_PHRASE" and I get information from google in seconds flat. I won't expect anyone to actually RTFA, (heavens no), but seeing stupid questions like "What does FUD mean?", and "What is Global Crossing?" modded up to a level where they mix in with the truly insightful and informative posts is a bit irksome. I'd just rather not have to read silly questions that's all. Especially from some guy who says he RTFA, but couldn't comprehend what Global Crossing does because the article doesn't explain it very well.
I run Contiki you insensitive clod!
+Many Insightful for the uninformed Grandparent who doesn't know what Global Crossing is and couldn't be bothered to do a cursory search before posting, and Flamebait for the parent who was helpful enough to provide multiple links on Global Crossing. What gives mods? I truly hope M2 bites you in the ass.
I was watching a US House of Reps "Worms and cyber security" subcommmitee on C-SPAN the other day. Testifying before the Congressmen were the following - Microsoft Corp senior security strategist Philip Reitinger, VeriSign VP Kenneth Silva, Lawrence Hale, director of the Federal Computer Incident Response Center, Christoper Wysopal consultant for @stake Inc, some other Russian security consultant, and a few other random folks. The chairman of the committee asked the Verisign PHB and the two consultants if there were any security benefits in running open-source software, and which was more secure, open or closed. I almost shat myself. Here was the perfect opportunity to hear some glowing reviews of open source. Instead the two consultants, who seemed decently knowledgeable, and long winded on all other issues merely said that there are flaws in all types of software, and they would "guess" that the frequency of security flaws were the same as for closed source. Although the guy from @stake did mention that the theory behind open source security was that "the more eyes, the better", he also countered it with noting that most users of open source wouldn't be able to fix the code when a vulnerability was found. That was it. No detailed explanation about anything. Just a brush off that was not quite as long as their testimony on why ipv6 wouldn't offer any extra security over ipv4. Luckily the Verisign bastard was there to add his two cents. To paraphrase him - "I would agree with their, (the consultants) testimony, but I would like to add that often the people who write open source software are not professionals". Then he took another shot mentioning "that often worms affect open-source software too". Often... I wonder what he considers "often". How can he even trot out the word "often" to describe the frequency of worms that affect open-source software when there are millions of Windows boxes that are constantly being hit by worms. He then added - "We must resist the temptation to demonize software vendors and other members of the network community. The finger pointing is often misplaced and in most cases does more harm than good." It was quite the interesting hearing, and gives me a bit of insight into what kind of info our Government is getting about open source.
Inference and deduction are your friends. I had no idea what they were talking about at first, as I have no knowledge of satellite stuff at all beyond common knowledge, but I actually thought for a second or two. Loral Skynet site - Hmmm Skynet site that mentions what satellites are doing and stuff. I imagine that they are some sort of satellite info site. "Telstar 8 was... scheduled to replace T4" - Telstar 8 is obviously a satellite. T4 no doubt means Telstar 4. WTF is so hard to understand about that sentence if you read the submitted paragraph?
Now I know why they've been charging an arm and a leg for those G5s. If they didn't gouge the consumer so effectively they'd never be able to afford to keep on breaking the trademark agreement they signed with the Beatles.
This is just as off-topic as the grandparent, but having grown up around plenty of farms I've used and seen baling wire more than a few times. It is indeed actual wire, (galvanized steel according to one site that still sells it), and it works just fine for tying up a bale of hay. Some people still use it, but it has mostly been replaced by plastic twine, as it is indeed cheaper and easier to use. Here's a link to a fellow waxing sub-poetic on the bygone days of baling wire - Read All About It. And this is a site that sells baling wire, and has a few pictures - REC.
Sounds like just the thing I need. That hacked together script that I currently use to md5sum all my important system binaries + files and verify them against the Known Goods database every 2 minutes is going out the window along with chkrootkit just as soon as I can go over every LOC with an STM and run this fine piece of software. Thanks be to you my fellow linux-users, I have finally found people who wear more layers of foil on their heads than I.