That would be the case if he were talking about bugs that had already been fixed. Since he is talking about bugs that will be found in the future a future tense is appropriate.
What about this did you not understand the first time?
Linux IS more secure than windows because of design. The reason you don't see many Win95/98/ME viruses is because most of the obvious security holes have been closed by this point and NT introduced a host of obvious RPC vulnerabilities.
While there are vulnerabilities and bugs in all software, the design of windows is intentionally poor and advocates security through obscurity. This leads to inadequate code review and lots of trivial exploits. The holes in popular open source applications are much more difficult to exploit.
For instance the only currently unpatched firefox exploit I am aware of requires not just specially crafting an image and convincing a user to view it, but to then drag that image to the address bar in a DIFFERENT firefox window.
"Because we are humans, and humans make mistakes. But it's not a mistaken until another human shows us."
Yes but both the code and design of popular open source programs are reviewed by a larger number of coders than their closed source counterparts. All told thousands of people review the linux sourcecode and tens of thousnads the design compared to a handful who review the core windows source.
"There are also viruses for MacOS X and Linux so chill out you Linux fanatics."
There are 0 linux viruses that will affect a fully patched system that I am aware of. There my be proof of concept exploits but even those are "this could theoretically happen in the wild" and usually in some service that may or may not be running on a system you have. If there is a bug in IE then that can potentially be exploited everytime you open a folder with image preview.
I would agree that more bugs will come out when a system is more popular. But with open source the more popular it is the more good guys are looking for problems. Unlike closed source applications this means those good guys can more readily find the problems and take the additional step of fixing them. The more popular an open source project the more difficult it is to successfully exploit it in the wild.
"Let's assume I am a hacker (cracker, call it what you want) with sufficient knowledge about virus writing... (b) I use Windows."
Although external forces may apply pressure, nobody with "sufficient knowledge" of technical matters uses windows. Wonder why.
Sounds like Visa's problem. Fraudulent charges are their problem not mine. If an actual human being can scam a "paper person" I say more power to him. And if you consider the number of shoppers on the web compared to the potential audience of the local gap, you'd likely find that proportionately the gap crime was bigger.
This is my creditcard not my workplace. It doesn't matter if shit slides downhill and there is someone to punish when something goes wrong.
"Real software grows over time, and as it gets bigger there will be bugs."
Yes but it shouldn't neccesarily. Commercial software in particular grows because it has to grow to produce new versions to sell. All applications eventually stagnate. As was pointed out in an article I'm too lazy to look up and link to, this is where open source catches up when cloning a commercial product, the commercial product stops adding new useful features because it has matured (read office suites/desktops/webservers/etc) at this point open source software will catchup with the feature machine except with a rock solid and efficient implementation.
Look at office, they haven't added much of anything worthwhile since office 97. The only thing they do now is bloat it. Just because the MS Feature machine is producing features doesn't mean those features are worth a damn.
The real key is going to be in how the bugs was dealt with.
Somehow that just doesn't work for me. The parent was predicting more bugs in the future and saying we should watch how they will be dealt with. As a grammar troll your fired. As an arse advocating firefox, your still fired. Have a nice day!
meta moderation is easier to get access to than mod points but meta-mods are still elite compared to the average slashdotter.
The biggest problem is that unless your every post is modded into the ground then anyone who posts a lot will have excellent karma and eventually get to meta-mod AND moderate. Hell mods are chosen at random, at least meta-mods are chosen based on criteria that indicates they are above par slashdotters!
It is a stretch to even call that a vulnerability. It would be easier to trick a user into downloading and executing code themselves than to get them to drag a properly crafted image into the address bar and then use the url.
1. An accent is determined by how you pronounce words, not which words you use. There is a difference between a Southern dialect and a Southern accent.
2. The reason for avoiding an accent has nothing to do with prejudice, it has to do with understanding the words of the person speaking.
"Even the Newsreaders can have accents here now."
That would explain why nobody here in the states can figure out what is being said by UK natives when they speak. People from the UK do not come off as ignorant, just completely unintelligable. Although it is never correct to use a generalization, that has proven true of every american, listening to every British speaker that I can remember. I suppose the difference is expectations, nobody here expects to understand wth a brit is saying and expect him to use a different dialect.
Another big difference I suppose is that you guys are probably used to dealing with peoples of different nationalities. USians have a single country which has a larger populated landmass than any other nation in the world. Most of us never leave the states. Our nation because of it's vast national resources (certainly not because of our trade deficit!) has the bulk of the world's wealth and as a result we produce all the movies and music we listen to. Occasionally we get a martial arts flick from China but rarely anything from an English speaking nation.
Even when we hop onto google and do a search probably 99,990 results out of 100,000 will be from US sites and half the exceptions will not be in English at all.
This website is where I have the most exposure to people of different nationalities and even this is a US website that gets visited by foreigners.
It is very easy as a USian to forget there is another world out there and stay US centric. Sometimes it feels like the US is in reality the way we claim China to be. UKians post links to UK websites, you can't tell me that they type UK into their google searches everytime!
The OS is darwin, the distro is MacOS X, the OS in the name is carried over from when there was a Mac Operating system.
There is no GNU/Linux OS, there is however a Linux OS. And neither you nor GNU can change it. There is also a distinct difference between being GNU software and using the GNU license. Please read about at fsf.org and please don't bother responding unless you have some actual new content to add.
You speak a different language. There are many languages in the world, among them you have a couple variations of English.
One is British English and it is spoken in many places throughout the world as a first or second language. The other is American English, and to the best of my knowledge the only place it is taught is in the US. Whether or not you have an accent when speaking British English is something to debate with the brits.:)
"Talk to anyone who works on computers for a living and HAS worked on computers for years."
You assume a lot.
"Linux hardly contains any Unix code"
Linux contains a great deal of BSD code. Although "hardly any" and "great deal" are both subjective.
"Why would you use something that came along decades after the fact to layout ground rules to assist in development and training as the definition for an operating system?"
NOW is decades after the fact. The origin has nothing to do with common usage. POSIX defines a standard set of system calls and programming API's. All posix systems are variations of one another and behave similarly. You can expect to find more or less the same standard utilities and commands when you sit down at the prompt of one. And someone who has experience with one will find it easy to sit down at the next. If you prefer a different term because of MS partial compliance we will call them *nix. Oh wait, that is just another way of using the generic term unix without being assaulted by purist with fondness for the good old days.
"The only people who think it is dont have a very good technical grasp on the subject... or want to lump everything together to make Linux look better (worse ?)"
The only people who think it is not don't have a very good technical grasp on the subject... or want to single linux out to make it look better (worse ?)
"The OS = Kernel + software + development api + GUI (optionnal ) + command line + compiler + x server ( optionnal )"
No, that would be a minimal distribution. And if I distribute the linux OS without any of the additional software you mention it is still the Linux OS.
"Don't obfuscate your code in the name of efficiency"
Say that when the same functions stop requiring greater resources because of the current trend that fast development is more important than efficient development. That is only true in the corporate world.
"The essence of self-documenting code is to write in a style that reduces the need for comments"
Nothing reduces the need for comments. We do agree at least that a comment like/* add 1 to i */ is stupid. Comments should not explain how to code in a given language.
"The fact is that the only time this statement is true is when you are rewriting part of a function to make it more clear or more efficient. Both are relatively uncommon activities."
I imagine they are on teams who believe that self-documenting code is more important than how well the code actually performs its function!
"Bug fixes or additional functionality, which are far more common, do result in a change in the API (even if it is too subtle to be readily noticed)."
TRIVIAL bugs are fixed by changes in the API, you catch most of these bugs the first time you write the code, usually when commenting the code you wrote. Additional functionality usually involves extending the API and it is generally simple to extend the API and maintain compatiblity with the old API.
"Ah, so the User Interface and/or contents of a log are not part of what you consider an interface?"
If I change Initializing Floogenbooper to Go go gadget it is my INTENTION to change the user interface and/or log entry. Why else would I do it?
If your using my C function the only thing you can count on is the parameters I accept and the type of value I return. You cannot assume the content of those returns! That is just bad programming.
Both BSD and Linux share a great deal of the codebase you are referring to.
Unix is not a codebase, Unix is not a trademark either. The meaning of words is defined by common usage not idealistic determination of meaning, and the common usage of unix is to refer to any posix compliant system.
"GNU : http://www.gnu.org/" Did not produce linux.
IBM did not produce linux, but they ship a distribution. Linus named his OS Linux, and IBM names their distribution what they wish to. GNU has it's own rules as to how IT"S OWN projects are named. See how that works?
To the anally speaking yes. In reality 90% of the US has what could reasonably be termed as no accent.
Unless you are from an area that is extremely rural, part of the New York Megalopolis, or in the deep south; you can say that within reasonable tolerance you have no accent.
You will find that those who have gone to a speech Therepist and "army brats" (or who share the characteristic of moving to numerous locations during early childhood) have no accent. The closest to no accent I have seen is those raised in a midling population outside the south.
Technically everyone has an accent but MOST do not have a severe or even discernable accent. In the United States the severe accents come from the South and from the New York megalopolis. There are also some traces of accent left in the West among the ten gallon hat types and immigrants, but most of the western population has shed it's accent. The Northwest has little sign of accent.
If you live in one of the areas I mentioned having an accent. Yes, it is you who has the accent. No, it is not acceptable, and no, not everyone has one.
I'm sure you'll find that most of it was HARDWARE. Windows/Linux/Generic Unix are SOFTWARE. If you think about that, linux having close to same spent on licensing means that there VASTLY more linux installs than windows or generic *nix.
If we are really being honest however, the trademark is dilluted and linux is just the leading unix system.
Wait a sec, you mean you IMPLEMENTED windows servers? Surely you mean that you upgraded the server OS to something other than windows but they had old windows stuff when you got there?
GNU has a linux distribution now? Last I heard there was an operating system called Linux. IBM may or may not bundle it with some apps/utils produced by the GNU project but calling their distribution GNU/Linux is news to me!
Any accent is a sign of stupidity. Educated individuals train accents from their voice.
There is nothing closed-minded about not liking windows. Since windows has a monopoly it is unlikely anyone has not had an opportunity to try it before a system like linux. It is windows users who are generally too closed-minded to try linux.
And calling windows users idiots without a basis for comparison is trolling. Calling all windows users idiots because they are not intelligent enough to learn to use a superior system (read anything other than windows) or worse lack the intelligence to drive the curiousity needed to try another system is not trolling at all. There is of course the class of user who is not aware that there are other systems besides windows, but again intelligence implies curiousity and a drive to learn. That drive would lead the intelligent to discover there are other options.
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That would be the case if he were talking about bugs that had already been fixed. Since he is talking about bugs that will be found in the future a future tense is appropriate.
What about this did you not understand the first time?
Inanimate objects have been watching our kids for a long time now. They are called computers or if you are stuck in the 80s, TVs.
Linux IS more secure than windows because of design. The reason you don't see many Win95/98/ME viruses is because most of the obvious security holes have been closed by this point and NT introduced a host of obvious RPC vulnerabilities.
While there are vulnerabilities and bugs in all software, the design of windows is intentionally poor and advocates security through obscurity. This leads to inadequate code review and lots of trivial exploits. The holes in popular open source applications are much more difficult to exploit.
For instance the only currently unpatched firefox exploit I am aware of requires not just specially crafting an image and convincing a user to view it, but to then drag that image to the address bar in a DIFFERENT firefox window.
"Because we are humans, and humans make mistakes. But it's not a mistaken until another human shows us."
Yes but both the code and design of popular open source programs are reviewed by a larger number of coders than their closed source counterparts. All told thousands of people review the linux sourcecode and tens of thousnads the design compared to a handful who review the core windows source.
"There are also viruses for MacOS X and Linux so chill out you Linux fanatics."
There are 0 linux viruses that will affect a fully patched system that I am aware of. There my be proof of concept exploits but even those are "this could theoretically happen in the wild" and usually in some service that may or may not be running on a system you have. If there is a bug in IE then that can potentially be exploited everytime you open a folder with image preview.
I would agree that more bugs will come out when a system is more popular. But with open source the more popular it is the more good guys are looking for problems. Unlike closed source applications this means those good guys can more readily find the problems and take the additional step of fixing them. The more popular an open source project the more difficult it is to successfully exploit it in the wild.
"Let's assume I am a hacker (cracker, call it what you want) with sufficient knowledge about virus writing... (b) I use Windows."
Although external forces may apply pressure, nobody with "sufficient knowledge" of technical matters uses windows. Wonder why.
Sounds like Visa's problem. Fraudulent charges are their problem not mine. If an actual human being can scam a "paper person" I say more power to him. And if you consider the number of shoppers on the web compared to the potential audience of the local gap, you'd likely find that proportionately the gap crime was bigger.
This is my creditcard not my workplace. It doesn't matter if shit slides downhill and there is someone to punish when something goes wrong.
"Real software grows over time, and as it gets bigger there will be bugs."
Yes but it shouldn't neccesarily. Commercial software in particular grows because it has to grow to produce new versions to sell. All applications eventually stagnate. As was pointed out in an article I'm too lazy to look up and link to, this is where open source catches up when cloning a commercial product, the commercial product stops adding new useful features because it has matured (read office suites/desktops/webservers/etc) at this point open source software will catchup with the feature machine except with a rock solid and efficient implementation.
Look at office, they haven't added much of anything worthwhile since office 97. The only thing they do now is bloat it. Just because the MS Feature machine is producing features doesn't mean those features are worth a damn.
The real key is going to be in how the bugs was dealt with.
Somehow that just doesn't work for me. The parent was predicting more bugs in the future and saying we should watch how they will be dealt with. As a grammar troll your fired. As an arse advocating firefox, your still fired. Have a nice day!
Why? That just means your not using windows, MSIE is a free download for everyone whether they have windows or not.
meta moderation is easier to get access to than mod points but meta-mods are still elite compared to the average slashdotter.
The biggest problem is that unless your every post is modded into the ground then anyone who posts a lot will have excellent karma and eventually get to meta-mod AND moderate. Hell mods are chosen at random, at least meta-mods are chosen based on criteria that indicates they are above par slashdotters!
It is a stretch to even call that a vulnerability. It would be easier to trick a user into downloading and executing code themselves than to get them to drag a properly crafted image into the address bar and then use the url.
1. An accent is determined by how you pronounce words, not which words you use. There is a difference between a Southern dialect and a Southern accent.
2. The reason for avoiding an accent has nothing to do with prejudice, it has to do with understanding the words of the person speaking.
"Even the Newsreaders can have accents here now."
That would explain why nobody here in the states can figure out what is being said by UK natives when they speak. People from the UK do not come off as ignorant, just completely unintelligable. Although it is never correct to use a generalization, that has proven true of every american, listening to every British speaker that I can remember. I suppose the difference is expectations, nobody here expects to understand wth a brit is saying and expect him to use a different dialect.
Another big difference I suppose is that you guys are probably used to dealing with peoples of different nationalities. USians have a single country which has a larger populated landmass than any other nation in the world. Most of us never leave the states. Our nation because of it's vast national resources (certainly not because of our trade deficit!) has the bulk of the world's wealth and as a result we produce all the movies and music we listen to. Occasionally we get a martial arts flick from China but rarely anything from an English speaking nation.
Even when we hop onto google and do a search probably 99,990 results out of 100,000 will be from US sites and half the exceptions will not be in English at all.
This website is where I have the most exposure to people of different nationalities and even this is a US website that gets visited by foreigners.
It is very easy as a USian to forget there is another world out there and stay US centric. Sometimes it feels like the US is in reality the way we claim China to be. UKians post links to UK websites, you can't tell me that they type UK into their google searches everytime!
The OS is darwin, the distro is MacOS X, the OS in the name is carried over from when there was a Mac Operating system.
There is no GNU/Linux OS, there is however a Linux OS. And neither you nor GNU can change it. There is also a distinct difference between being GNU software and using the GNU license. Please read about at fsf.org and please don't bother responding unless you have some actual new content to add.
You speak a different language. There are many languages in the world, among them you have a couple variations of English.
:)
One is British English and it is spoken in many places throughout the world as a first or second language. The other is American English, and to the best of my knowledge the only place it is taught is in the US. Whether or not you have an accent when speaking British English is something to debate with the brits.
"Talk to anyone who works on computers for a living and HAS worked on computers for years."
... or want to lump everything together to make Linux look better (worse ?)"
... or want to single linux out to make it look better (worse ?)
You assume a lot.
"Linux hardly contains any Unix code"
Linux contains a great deal of BSD code. Although "hardly any" and "great deal" are both subjective.
"Why would you use something that came along decades after the fact to layout ground rules to assist in development and training as the definition for an operating system?"
NOW is decades after the fact. The origin has nothing to do with common usage. POSIX defines a standard set of system calls and programming API's. All posix systems are variations of one another and behave similarly. You can expect to find more or less the same standard utilities and commands when you sit down at the prompt of one. And someone who has experience with one will find it easy to sit down at the next. If you prefer a different term because of MS partial compliance we will call them *nix. Oh wait, that is just another way of using the generic term unix without being assaulted by purist with fondness for the good old days.
"The only people who think it is dont have a very good technical grasp on the subject
The only people who think it is not don't have a very good technical grasp on the subject
"The OS = Kernel + software + development api + GUI (optionnal ) + command line + compiler + x server ( optionnal )"
No, that would be a minimal distribution. And if I distribute the linux OS without any of the additional software you mention it is still the Linux OS.
"Don't obfuscate your code in the name of efficiency"
/* add 1 to i */ is stupid. Comments should not explain how to code in a given language.
Say that when the same functions stop requiring greater resources because of the current trend that fast development is more important than efficient development. That is only true in the corporate world.
"The essence of self-documenting code is to write in a style that reduces the need for comments"
Nothing reduces the need for comments. We do agree at least that a comment like
"The fact is that the only time this statement is true is when you are rewriting part of a function to make it more clear or more efficient. Both are relatively uncommon activities."
I imagine they are on teams who believe that self-documenting code is more important than how well the code actually performs its function!
"Bug fixes or additional functionality, which are far more common, do result in a change in the API (even if it is too subtle to be readily noticed)."
TRIVIAL bugs are fixed by changes in the API, you catch most of these bugs the first time you write the code, usually when commenting the code you wrote. Additional functionality usually involves extending the API and it is generally simple to extend the API and maintain compatiblity with the old API.
"Ah, so the User Interface and/or contents of a log are not part of what you consider an interface?"
If I change Initializing Floogenbooper to Go go gadget it is my INTENTION to change the user interface and/or log entry. Why else would I do it?
If your using my C function the only thing you can count on is the parameters I accept and the type of value I return. You cannot assume the content of those returns! That is just bad programming.
Both BSD and Linux share a great deal of the codebase you are referring to.
Unix is not a codebase, Unix is not a trademark either. The meaning of words is defined by common usage not idealistic determination of meaning, and the common usage of unix is to refer to any posix compliant system.
The kernel = OS
"GNU : http://www.gnu.org/"
Did not produce linux.
IBM did not produce linux, but they ship a distribution. Linus named his OS Linux, and IBM names their distribution what they wish to. GNU has it's own rules as to how IT"S OWN projects are named. See how that works?
To the anally speaking yes. In reality 90% of the US has what could reasonably be termed as no accent.
Unless you are from an area that is extremely rural, part of the New York Megalopolis, or in the deep south; you can say that within reasonable tolerance you have no accent.
You will find that those who have gone to a speech Therepist and "army brats" (or who share the characteristic of moving to numerous locations during early childhood) have no accent. The closest to no accent I have seen is those raised in a midling population outside the south.
Technically everyone has an accent but MOST do not have a severe or even discernable accent. In the United States the severe accents come from the South and from the New York megalopolis. There are also some traces of accent left in the West among the ten gallon hat types and immigrants, but most of the western population has shed it's accent. The Northwest has little sign of accent.
If you live in one of the areas I mentioned having an accent. Yes, it is you who has the accent. No, it is not acceptable, and no, not everyone has one.
Linux IS unix it just isn't Unix. The trademark is dilluted and unix is a generic term that is synonymous with posix compliance.
I'm sure you'll find that most of it was HARDWARE. Windows/Linux/Generic Unix are SOFTWARE. If you think about that, linux having close to same spent on licensing means that there VASTLY more linux installs than windows or generic *nix.
If we are really being honest however, the trademark is dilluted and linux is just the leading unix system.
Wait a sec, you mean you IMPLEMENTED windows servers? Surely you mean that you upgraded the server OS to something other than windows but they had old windows stuff when you got there?
GNU has a linux distribution now? Last I heard there was an operating system called Linux. IBM may or may not bundle it with some apps/utils produced by the GNU project but calling their distribution GNU/Linux is news to me!
Amendment, if you knowingly lie AND GET CAUGHT.
Any accent is a sign of stupidity. Educated individuals train accents from their voice.
There is nothing closed-minded about not liking windows. Since windows has a monopoly it is unlikely anyone has not had an opportunity to try it before a system like linux. It is windows users who are generally too closed-minded to try linux.
And calling windows users idiots without a basis for comparison is trolling. Calling all windows users idiots because they are not intelligent enough to learn to use a superior system (read anything other than windows) or worse lack the intelligence to drive the curiousity needed to try another system is not trolling at all. There is of course the class of user who is not aware that there are other systems besides windows, but again intelligence implies curiousity and a drive to learn. That drive would lead the intelligent to discover there are other options.