There's a difference between people who have played enough Counterstrike, Rainbow Six, and America's Army that they can rattle off statistics about every weapon out there off the top of their head, and people who buy assault rifles for "hunting" purposes.
Darl
McBride, chief executive of SCO Group Inc., says he sometimes carries a
gun because his enemies are out to kill him. He checks into hotels
under assumed names. An armed body guard protected him at Harvard Law
School when he gave a speech last month.
Darl McBride
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, calls SCO "the most despised company in technology."
The reason: SCO is claiming rights to the Linux
open source software code that thousands of users and supporters say
should have no owner. SCO brought a $50 billion suit against
International Business Machines Corp. last year and last week turned on
Linux users DaimlerChrysler AG and AutoZone Inc., suing for an
injunction and unspecified damages.
"We are fighting the big battle," McBride said in
a telephone interview from his office at SCO headquarters in Lindon.
McBride, 44, is pitting SCO against an industry it
once helped develop. Less than two years ago SCO, formerly Caldera
International Inc., was helping to form a standard version of Linux to
compete with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. Once McBride took the helm in
June 2002, the company changed tack, hired attorney David Boies and
began claiming that Linux users infringed on SCO's intellectual
property.
Linux has attracted thousands of individuals and
companies, some of whom see it as the only credible threat to Windows.
Others use it because it's cheaper.
The software is now being used by companies
ranging from DaimlerChrysler, the world's largest maker of luxury cars,
to Lehman Brothers Inc, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm by
capital, to Google Inc., the world's most widely used Internet search
engine. Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor,
also has servers that run on Linux as part of its computer network.
IBM pushes computers that run on the Linux
operating system. Shipments of Linux-powered server computers, fast
machines used to run Web sites, rose 53 percent in the fourth quarter,
more than double the rate of Windows servers, market researcher IDC
said.
McBride and SCO are more hated than Microsoft, the
world's largest software maker, and its chairman, Bill Gates, according
to some Linux backers. That's because SCO, once a backer of Linux, has
turned around and attacked the essence of the system: its free source
code.
"SCO are just complete hypocrites," said Jeremy
Allison, co-author of Samba, an open-source software that runs a file
and print service that SCO sells.
SCO says it owns the copyright to the Unix system
and that parts of the Unix code have been copied into Linux. SCO is
demanding payment from each user of Linux. Novell Inc. separately is
disputing SCO's claim to Unix.
SCO claims IBM is distributing the Linux software
containing its copyrighted Unix code. It claims companies such as Red
Hat Inc. are building products using the same code. The company
broadened its legal attack by suing AutoZone for using software that
contains the code, and DaimlerChrysler for not certifying that Unix,
which it obtained via license with SCO, has been used inappropriately.
DaimlerChrysler spokesman Han Tjan said he had no
comment on SCO's suit. AutoZone Chief Executive Steve Odland declined
to comment on the claims. IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino said the suit
is groundless and the company will contest it.
Linux, invented in 1991 by Torvalds as a student
in Finland, found converts in part because it was a free, publicly
shared operating system. Anyone can work on and modify the source code
of Linux. By contrast, Microsoft licenses its Windows code only to
select partners, which don't have permission to make changes.
McBride is getting the most heat from the
thousands of volunteers who have worked on Linux over the past 13
years. They say SCO has no claim on the code.
"The real reason why people don't like SCO, and
Darl McBride in particular, is that he is so dishonest," Torvalds, 34,
said in an e-mail.
McBride has done battle before. He compares
That's a very good point. Some years ago (when I was still in school), I found out (thanks to the strong dollar and subsidies or something), you could buy textbooks from amazon.co.uk for 25% to 50% of what you could buy in the US. So I figured, well and good, and bought all my books online. I saved several hundred dollars -- but had to buy a chemistry text book here in the US again, because I was shipped the international edition -- and the problem sets were completely different. <sighs/>
1. You can't really turn off Linux mremap()
2. sshd is critical on remote Linux machines. You can't just turn it off if it's vulnerable.
3. Repeat #2 for Apache, BIND, sendmail, etc.
Although I agree with statement 1, and have discussed it in the parent, I don't agree with your second and third statements. First of all, sshd is required to access remote machines -- but that doesn't mean you should allow the world access to it. You should properly configure your hosts.allow and hosts.deny files in/etc so that only domains people who need to access SSH from actually can. That, and firewalling off SSH (or disabling them) for access from the net if your boxen are on your local network means that even when an exploit is found it is not always trivial to exploit it.
The same goes for BIND, and Sendmail. You shouldn't be running open mail relays anyways, so those programs shouldn't be accessible across the net -- thus making your box much harder to break into.
4. The RPC TCP ports etc are _not_ required on a large portion of Windows desktop machines.
5. Microsoft is (finally) putting a firewall in XP SP2 that could (potentially) mask much of this attack surface.
I hope microsoft finally starts closing off these holes. However, I question Microsoft's competence as far as security goes. It takes an awful long times to fix holes and exploits. However, Microsoft will always have a fixed number of people working for them -- some of them quite competent. Personally speaking, the more I get into Linux the more personal coding I do, and the more I contribute to OpenSource projects. I think this is why Open Source is going to be the last nail in Microsoft's coffin.
I was talking in general about vulnerabilities, which is why I said later in the post: "something Windoze won't let you do -- although the nature of the vulnerability in the kernel may make disabling it impractical. But still, at least you have the option". I apologize for not making that clearer.
However, the point still stands that if something is broken under linux I can (many times) disable it until it can be fixed. Under Windows, this is almost never possible (just look at the port 135 hole that worms have been exploiting for years. Why can't people turn off whatever service the viruses are breaking into?)
When a Windows vulnerability is patched, it is proof that closed source software is evil.
Wne [sic] a Linux vulnerability is patched, it is proof that open source software is wonderful.
You know there are -- among the many, many, many open vulnerabilities out there -- two which are particularly problematic for Windows users. (There are many more out there, but I figure I'll focus in on these two for now.
The first one allows an attacker to mask the real address of the site you're viewing in IE. So, go and open up a spam claiming that Paypal needs you to update your credit card number, and you'll actually see PayPal.com as the URL. The second one allows an attacker to crash IE and exploit arbitrary code when a user views a picture on a web page under IE.
As a Computer Programmer, I understand how hard it is to create 100% bug free code. Any system as complex as Windows or Linux is bound to contain some bugs and / or vulnerabilities. However, when an exploit is found in Windows (to the best of my knowledge those two exploits have yet to be patched), it takes forever to get a fix to the public.
On the other hand, as soon as I heard of the vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, I have the following options:
Patch it myself and submit the patch for everyone elses benefit
Disable the use of the system call that can be used to create the vulnerability until a patch is found.
Help test patches created by someone else -- possibly with much stronger C skills then mine (Hey, Linus can outprogram anyone as far as I'm concerned. There's no dishonor in being outgunned by the best)
Now, whereas I am pretty certain Slackware will have a package available for me to update my kernel in another 48 - 72 hours, and if it's absolutely urgent for me to fix it I can either disable it or fix it myself (something Windoze won't let you do -- although the nature of the vulnerability in the kernel may make disabling it impractical. But still, at least you have the option), Microsoft has not, to the best of my knowledge, fixed these vulnerabilities, even though it's been months.
This is why Open Source Software is so great. Technically sophisticated users hold the destiny of the software in their own hands. And I haven't even begun to get started on how great it is not to submit annoying feature requests, but to make software do what you want it to do.
Well it depends what distribution of Linux you're using. On some versions it's as simple as downloading an RPM via an update script and rebooting, on others it actually involves compiling the kernel. What distribution are you using?
You know, I really want to see the site. If the web designer was an idiot and used a lot of refresh tags (i.e. in a chat client) or javascript to jump around the site it's entirely possible to get over 3.5 million hits per month from a very small number of viewers. However, if he was paying for everything out of pocket, he should have told the sheriff's dept. to assume costs the first month.
Actually this is a situation where patents may be doing what they're supposed to -- providing financial incentive for researchers. If NEC has, indeed, put in the research dollars to develop carbon nanotubes, they should reap the benefits of the use of their research.
I have considered this time and time again but the only thing keeping me from changing out of IT to something more gratifying is money.
Some of us are changing out of IT because of lack of money -- mostly because we're now part of the great unwashed, unemployed masses. Thanks outsourcing!
Creating alcohol requires energy, correct? How do you plan on powering the stills for the hemp? Chances are you need some sort of fossil fuel, correct? Or do you mean to use hemp in some way I don't know about?
Well there are a number of technologies out there to replace oil, the problem is energy. You can power your car on alcohol -- but to make ethanol you need to spend more energy then you get from it -- generally from oil or coal power plants. Same thing for hydrogen fuel cells, you need to strip the hydrogens from hydrocarbon rich oil. All this boils into a big problem, we need a source of the original energy that is non polluting. This, will, hopefully be fusion.
No, because all it takes is for one bimbo with a 1960s hairdryer to bring your connection to screeching hault.
My apartment is in a converted commercial building. The 45 amps I have coming in on my own breakers assure that I never have a blown breaker, much less from anybody who isn't doing something in my apartment.
I live in a pretty big apartment, and my landlord takes care of all of the electricity. Will I still be able to get broadband over power lines? I assume they should be able to work it like a cable modem (i.e. everyone in the building is on the same cable line), but don't know technical details about broadband over power lines.
Zones differ from jails in that you can limit the amount of resources a zone can consume. Even in jail you can launch a denial of service with a fork() bomb or busy loop, or even netcat. With zones, you can limit the amount of cpu cycles, network io, and (perhaps? don't have docs nearby) disk and serial io. Plus zones get their "own" virtual os, so you can reboot them.
To add to the protection of chroot / "jails", the BSDs have the limit command to allow you to cap how much CPU and memory a process is allowed to consume. Linux has something similar*, if I remember correctly. Run vulnerable processes at a slightly lower priority then the rest of your system (make sure you're not soaking up your resources or lower the priority of everything else that is if you want to have your process actually do things from time to time) and you've got plenty of ways to do what this is doing, although I suppose it wouldn't be nearly as easy to set up or as elegant.
Well, that's the thing, with Mandrake you should be able to. The only problems you might run into for the installation should be related to not knowing how to partition your drives or what components to install. Even then Mandrake provides buttons to just install and now worry about minutae till you get a better grasp of Linux. So, what are you having problems with?
Fiber isn't like radio waves -- if somebody isn't using the spectrum you can't just rebroadcast in another direction. Fiber needs to be laid, so if you have no dark fiber around it doesn't matter.
Well, I understand your pain. Linux has a learning curve, even though, IMHO, Mandrake and Suse have made it much lower. If you are having problems e-mail me privately and I will try to help you.
So they're paying almost 14 million dollars for nothing. Nice
This worries me. Their money is going to SCOs pockets -- which gives them more resources to create a ruckus. Even worse, victories like this will encourage them. Think about it, @ $1k - $2k in lawyer fees per cease and desist letter, and a $14 million pay off per settlement, they dont need a lot of "license" sales to make their money back.
You can customize any distribution to your heart's content -- that's why it's called Open Source. I remember changing around everything on a Mandrake 8 box some years ago, so that when it booted up the splash screen said something like "Dan's Linux", and the prompts replaced Mandrake Foobar Linux with Dans Foobar Linux (Mandrake names their releases -- forget which foobar it was). Not only is it really easy to make cosmetic changes, if you know what you're doing, it's relatively easy to make other changes to the distro as well.
Ballmer claimed linux is more expensive then windows. To people who don't know why, it would seem Windows is a better idea, especially with all of the new and improved security features Mircosoft is being forced to put in place thanks to the competition of Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Modern day techninical textbooks use metric and not English units, even in the US. My other 4 text books were the same editions as the US versions.
There's a difference between people who have played enough Counterstrike, Rainbow Six, and America's Army that they can rattle off statistics about every weapon out there off the top of their head, and people who buy assault rifles for "hunting" purposes.
Darl McBride, chief executive of SCO Group Inc., says he sometimes carries a gun because his enemies are out to kill him. He checks into hotels under assumed names. An armed body guard protected him at Harvard Law School when he gave a speech last month.
Darl McBride
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system, calls SCO "the most despised company in technology."
The reason: SCO is claiming rights to the Linux open source software code that thousands of users and supporters say should have no owner. SCO brought a $50 billion suit against International Business Machines Corp. last year and last week turned on Linux users DaimlerChrysler AG and AutoZone Inc., suing for an injunction and unspecified damages.
"We are fighting the big battle," McBride said in a telephone interview from his office at SCO headquarters in Lindon.
McBride, 44, is pitting SCO against an industry it once helped develop. Less than two years ago SCO, formerly Caldera International Inc., was helping to form a standard version of Linux to compete with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. Once McBride took the helm in June 2002, the company changed tack, hired attorney David Boies and began claiming that Linux users infringed on SCO's intellectual property.
Linux has attracted thousands of individuals and companies, some of whom see it as the only credible threat to Windows. Others use it because it's cheaper.
The software is now being used by companies ranging from DaimlerChrysler, the world's largest maker of luxury cars, to Lehman Brothers Inc, the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm by capital, to Google Inc., the world's most widely used Internet search engine. Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, also has servers that run on Linux as part of its computer network.
IBM pushes computers that run on the Linux operating system. Shipments of Linux-powered server computers, fast machines used to run Web sites, rose 53 percent in the fourth quarter, more than double the rate of Windows servers, market researcher IDC said.
McBride and SCO are more hated than Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, and its chairman, Bill Gates, according to some Linux backers. That's because SCO, once a backer of Linux, has turned around and attacked the essence of the system: its free source code.
"SCO are just complete hypocrites," said Jeremy Allison, co-author of Samba, an open-source software that runs a file and print service that SCO sells.
SCO says it owns the copyright to the Unix system and that parts of the Unix code have been copied into Linux. SCO is demanding payment from each user of Linux. Novell Inc. separately is disputing SCO's claim to Unix.
SCO claims IBM is distributing the Linux software containing its copyrighted Unix code. It claims companies such as Red Hat Inc. are building products using the same code. The company broadened its legal attack by suing AutoZone for using software that contains the code, and DaimlerChrysler for not certifying that Unix, which it obtained via license with SCO, has been used inappropriately.
DaimlerChrysler spokesman Han Tjan said he had no comment on SCO's suit. AutoZone Chief Executive Steve Odland declined to comment on the claims. IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino said the suit is groundless and the company will contest it.
Linux, invented in 1991 by Torvalds as a student in Finland, found converts in part because it was a free, publicly shared operating system. Anyone can work on and modify the source code of Linux. By contrast, Microsoft licenses its Windows code only to select partners, which don't have permission to make changes.
McBride is getting the most heat from the thousands of volunteers who have worked on Linux over the past 13 years. They say SCO has no claim on the code.
"The real reason why people don't like SCO, and Darl McBride in particular, is that he is so dishonest," Torvalds, 34, said in an e-mail.
McBride has done battle before. He compares
That's a very good point. Some years ago (when I was still in school), I found out (thanks to the strong dollar and subsidies or something), you could buy textbooks from amazon.co.uk for 25% to 50% of what you could buy in the US. So I figured, well and good, and bought all my books online. I saved several hundred dollars -- but had to buy a chemistry text book here in the US again, because I was shipped the international edition -- and the problem sets were completely different. <sighs />
Although I agree with statement 1, and have discussed it in the parent, I don't agree with your second and third statements. First of all, sshd is required to access remote machines -- but that doesn't mean you should allow the world access to it. You should properly configure your hosts.allow and hosts.deny files in /etc so that only domains people who need to access SSH from actually can. That, and firewalling off SSH (or disabling them) for access from the net if your boxen are on your local network means that even when an exploit is found it is not always trivial to exploit it.
The same goes for BIND, and Sendmail. You shouldn't be running open mail relays anyways, so those programs shouldn't be accessible across the net -- thus making your box much harder to break into.
I hope microsoft finally starts closing off these holes. However, I question Microsoft's competence as far as security goes. It takes an awful long times to fix holes and exploits. However, Microsoft will always have a fixed number of people working for them -- some of them quite competent. Personally speaking, the more I get into Linux the more personal coding I do, and the more I contribute to OpenSource projects. I think this is why Open Source is going to be the last nail in Microsoft's coffin.
I was talking in general about vulnerabilities, which is why I said later in the post: "something Windoze won't let you do -- although the nature of the vulnerability in the kernel may make disabling it impractical. But still, at least you have the option". I apologize for not making that clearer.
However, the point still stands that if something is broken under linux I can (many times) disable it until it can be fixed. Under Windows, this is almost never possible (just look at the port 135 hole that worms have been exploiting for years. Why can't people turn off whatever service the viruses are breaking into?)
You know there are -- among the many, many, many open vulnerabilities out there -- two which are particularly problematic for Windows users. (There are many more out there, but I figure I'll focus in on these two for now.
The first one allows an attacker to mask the real address of the site you're viewing in IE. So, go and open up a spam claiming that Paypal needs you to update your credit card number, and you'll actually see PayPal.com as the URL. The second one allows an attacker to crash IE and exploit arbitrary code when a user views a picture on a web page under IE.
As a Computer Programmer, I understand how hard it is to create 100% bug free code. Any system as complex as Windows or Linux is bound to contain some bugs and / or vulnerabilities. However, when an exploit is found in Windows (to the best of my knowledge those two exploits have yet to be patched), it takes forever to get a fix to the public.
On the other hand, as soon as I heard of the vulnerability in the Linux Kernel, I have the following options:
Now, whereas I am pretty certain Slackware will have a package available for me to update my kernel in another 48 - 72 hours, and if it's absolutely urgent for me to fix it I can either disable it or fix it myself (something Windoze won't let you do -- although the nature of the vulnerability in the kernel may make disabling it impractical. But still, at least you have the option), Microsoft has not, to the best of my knowledge, fixed these vulnerabilities, even though it's been months.
This is why Open Source Software is so great. Technically sophisticated users hold the destiny of the software in their own hands. And I haven't even begun to get started on how great it is not to submit annoying feature requests, but to make software do what you want it to do.
Well it depends what distribution of Linux you're using. On some versions it's as simple as downloading an RPM via an update script and rebooting, on others it actually involves compiling the kernel. What distribution are you using?
You know, I really want to see the site. If the web designer was an idiot and used a lot of refresh tags (i.e. in a chat client) or javascript to jump around the site it's entirely possible to get over 3.5 million hits per month from a very small number of viewers. However, if he was paying for everything out of pocket, he should have told the sheriff's dept. to assume costs the first month.
Don't worry, the metamoderators will get them.
Some of us are changing out of IT because of lack of money -- mostly because we're now part of the great unwashed, unemployed masses. Thanks outsourcing!
Creating alcohol requires energy, correct? How do you plan on powering the stills for the hemp? Chances are you need some sort of fossil fuel, correct? Or do you mean to use hemp in some way I don't know about?
Well there are a number of technologies out there to replace oil, the problem is energy. You can power your car on alcohol -- but to make ethanol you need to spend more energy then you get from it -- generally from oil or coal power plants. Same thing for hydrogen fuel cells, you need to strip the hydrogens from hydrocarbon rich oil. All this boils into a big problem, we need a source of the original energy that is non polluting. This, will, hopefully be fusion.
I live in a pretty big apartment, and my landlord takes care of all of the electricity. Will I still be able to get broadband over power lines? I assume they should be able to work it like a cable modem (i.e. everyone in the building is on the same cable line), but don't know technical details about broadband over power lines.
* IIRC, it involved a kernel patch.
Well, that's the thing, with Mandrake you should be able to. The only problems you might run into for the installation should be related to not knowing how to partition your drives or what components to install. Even then Mandrake provides buttons to just install and now worry about minutae till you get a better grasp of Linux. So, what are you having problems with?
Fiber isn't like radio waves -- if somebody isn't using the spectrum you can't just rebroadcast in another direction. Fiber needs to be laid, so if you have no dark fiber around it doesn't matter.
Well, I understand your pain. Linux has a learning curve, even though, IMHO, Mandrake and Suse have made it much lower. If you are having problems e-mail me privately and I will try to help you.
You can customize any distribution to your heart's content -- that's why it's called Open Source. I remember changing around everything on a Mandrake 8 box some years ago, so that when it booted up the splash screen said something like "Dan's Linux", and the prompts replaced Mandrake Foobar Linux with Dans Foobar Linux (Mandrake names their releases -- forget which foobar it was). Not only is it really easy to make cosmetic changes, if you know what you're doing, it's relatively easy to make other changes to the distro as well.
Did that really happen? It should be +50 funny if it did.
Ballmer claimed linux is more expensive then windows. To people who don't know why, it would seem Windows is a better idea, especially with all of the new and improved security features Mircosoft is being forced to put in place thanks to the competition of Linux.