The Japanese arm of the BSA was part of the RAID, and found many unlicensed copies MS Office and Windows XP. When the head BSA agent called in the offense to the MS Piracy hotline from one of the office phones, the receptionist looked at the caller ID and said, "you make the software, you can't turn yourself in, you idiot!", and hung up.
I agree. Looking at the source, I see their form of version control was to comment out the old version, and then indent the new version in further to show it was done later. In fact, out of the millions of lines of code in Windows, all but about 400 lines are commented out.
How about I.E. is included but not installed by default? Then MS has a browser install 'wizard' that lets the user pick ( by clicking ) on the browser(s) they want to install, and also give them the option of making any one of them the default. That way the owner of the computer gets to choose what browser(s) gets installed, instead of MS choosing for them.
If you have tried out Yum, its pretty much the same as Windows Update except for Linux. I've used it on RedHat and Fedora Core 1, and it is completely painless. You can either use external or internal upgrade repositories ( internal lets you ensure only approved updates gets pushed, plus saves bandwidth ), and run it as a cron job to update apps in the background.
Anyhow, I am mightily impressed by it. What is does it looks at you installed applications, check the update repository for a newer version, and then if it needs to update the software, it uses the RPM file to resolve dependencies and it will download install the update plus any dependency apps you are missing.
I am not sure as to whether it will work well with other distro's, but I would think any distro that supports RPM's should work with Yum.
Tell me about it. At work we use Symantec Ghost to build computers from system images that are developed by a dedicated subgroup of the national IT staff. The computer is 'imaged', then 'ghostwalked',and finally it is booted up to be named and joined to the Windows domain ( active directory ). For a while there the computer would be infected with the blaster worm within a few minutes of being brought up on the network for the first time b/c the national image ( which is mandatory to use ) wasn't patched against it. The only other time I saw a computer compromised that quickly was when I rebuilt a Windows 2000 server at home after it was infected with Code Red, and I stupidly brought it up with IIS enabled without having turned off the port mapping from the firewall to the web server on port 80. I think that is about the time I decided Apache ( and later changed OS to FreeBSD, and currently Linux ) was the way to go.
>You see, THAT'S THE PROBLEM. The most popular > Linux distros let you easily turn on all sorts >of insecure things without so much as a warning.
Interesting. I have installed RedHat 7.2,9.0, Fedora Core, Mandrake 8.0 - 9.2, and each one asked what security level I wanted ( High, Normal, Minimal, None ), then it asked if I had any services I wanted to open the firewall for, and finally ( near the end of the installation ) it listed the network services I had installed, and asked me I was sure I wanted them to start automatically as they may vulnerabilites.
Now, I can't speak for any other distro's, but Mandrake, Redhat, and Fedora Core are very popular, and my experience with them definitely definitely does not jive with your statement ( quoted above ).
Do note that I usually select none as I as I have a centralized firewall that filters traffic coming and going, and that you usually have to secure services ( such as web server, ssh ) that you make publicly availabe in addition to the standard firewall rules. For example, I have ssh open, but I use hosts.allow/hosts.deny, and the firewall to limit who can connect to try and login, and I get email notification for both failed and successful attempts.
I don't see your point. Not all companies have the same Desktop Theme, installed applications, Start Menu, etc. They are already "different" from each other. Even internally in the Company I work for ( 100% Windows XP at the desktop ), I sometime have trouble finding an application shortcut, so I have picked up the habit of starting everything from the command line, as that stays pretty much the same for all company computers.
Btw, all the computers start off the same and then the users customize it from there. It can be locked down to a certain extent, depend on how many resources( time and money ) you want to invest in that. Now, same for Linux, you can create a standard setup for the desktop/installed apps/etc and have it locked down for even more configuration control.
My point? Looking at both Windows and Linux, each one is equally customizable to the extent that it can be hard to find your way around, so the "desktop the same" goal is not automatically fulfilled just by choosing an OS, there is more work to do.
The post about making the OS and the default apps makes a good point, there is nothing stopping M$ from doing that and still retaining all the functionality it has now. What they may lose is the ability to ensure their solution ( program ) is the default handler for certain tasks, that the icon is always in the users face ( like good ol' IM in the system tray in XP ), etc.
First, the on-topic part. The support of link in the UT2004 demo and the promised support in final "gold" release is a good thing. Not only for the Linux user s out there who want to play UT2004 without dual-booting or running a separate Windows box just to play, but also for publicity's sake. Think of how many people will be looking at the game, regardless of whether they buy it or not, they will most likely see the work "Linux" somewhere in the game specifications. This not only get the name out there, but also will help break the perception that many have that Linux is one of the following - a hacker-only OS ( the market wouldn't be big enough ), a server-only OS ( gen. perception is servers can't play games ), that there aren't any games for Linux.
Bursting these misperceptions put into people's minds by the media ( yes, even the evil empire in Redmond! ) will increase the overall acceptance of Linux in the market place. Remember what has been said often here at Slashdot, and something that I personnaly believe, is that what people use at home and school they would also like to use at work. Very general statement I know, but Apple spent a ton of money getting its computers into schools, and Microsoft really holds on tightly to its OEM reigns to ensure Windows is preinstalled on as many home computers as possible. So, make your own decision from that.
Ok, as a game, I finally playing UT2004 on Linux last night and though the graphics were good, the vehicles were awesome ( though I am still learning them ), but I really wish they would slow down the speed at which players can run. I mean, I can run as fast as some of the vehicles! You could argue the armor is an exoskeleton and that lets soldiers move so quickly, but my problem with speed is its effect on gameplay. It turns UT2004 into a twitch game where you run around circle strafing opponents, mashing the fire button just hoping to get a hit. Cmon, how about making the players aim? How about letting stealth be rewarded by letting you sneak up on your opponent? The way the game is now, you basically start running from the moment you spawn and keep moving in hopes of not getting cut down.
Anyhow, that is my take. I think my iptables firewall is causing issues with the game as in the server browser the ping column values are all either a '0' or a '?'. However, I can still connect, though I don't knwo the ping latency until after I connect to the game server.
That is my take on both the importance of the demo release for Linux, and of the game itself. Your results may vary. I am going to try the Windows version in a bit to see how it compares to the Linux version.
I understand, you had a good point about if the programming tasks are interesting, I guess it depends on the target audience. The author wanted to reach both younger folks and adults who wanted to learn a bit about programming. It makes sense to have them use something that is already available on their computer and is mostly platform independent, though different browsers have different implementations of Javascript, so there is no guarantee each member of the audience will get the same output for the same code.
Anyhow, just wanted to let you know I wasn't trying to flame you at all, I was giving my take on the author's justification for choosing javascript.
How well do Flash development tools work on Linux? The author most likely wanted to reach the largest audience possible, and since most browsers have the javascript interpreter built-in, javascript wasn't a bad choice. I can't speak for the rest of the book, but the choice of language was good with respect to ease of set up.
I wish I had mod points. When I first looked at cross-platform development, I resisted QT because it was commercial ( and cost $$$ ), so I tried out Java. I hit too many road blocks with Java so I tried C++ with wxWindows. I couldn't find any decent documentation, and everything I did find was very convoluted. Support was websites and mailing lists, neither of which answered even a single question I had.
Finally I said "What the heck, let me try QT", and I was awed by how simple it was to get it to work. It even intergrated with MS Visual C++ which is my preferred IDE for Windows, with Linux I had to doa bit more work setting the paths, but I found lots of help in the mailing list and the QtForum.org site. All I can say, is for the headaches it has saved me, it is worth the licensing fees. Plus the included documentation is awesome, easily matching that of Java, plus there are a few books out for it, I am currently using SAMS "QT Programming in 24 hours" off and on during develipment.
En sum, QT is easy to install, easy to get up and running, and has excellent documentation.
wxWindows - I spent 6 months trying to get it to work on Windows, mailing list and online documents were no help. I had QT lib's installed and wrote my first program in 3 hours on BOTH Linux and Windows. - Uses the same convoluted event system that MFC does, QT uses the clean SIGNAL/SLOT model to handle events. - Did I mention convoluted?
Hmm, even SAMS C++ programming covers exceptions, but I know what you are talking about. I have a few game programming with C++ books and almost everything is in C. Go figure.
At least in my experience, MS Office is still relatively unstable. It seems to be more problematic the more software you have installed, at least from what I have seen at the company I work for. I currently use MS Office 2003 there, and the most common problem I have is printing an MS Word document. It will crash the first time I try to print any document, then I will close Word, reopen it, then reopen the document ( this happens for all documents ) and it will print fine. Very strange. Bu t we have many problems with Office XP, too. It will crash for no reason, corrupt spreadsheets that contain macros, etc, on a fairly common basis. You would think have all the Service Packs/hotfixes would help , but it doesn't...not from where I am standing.
As far as OO goes, I have never seen it crash, but then again I only use it at home ( it's not allowed at work ), and not very often.
Good question. I mean, just because it is ok to publish the code, is it automatically ok to use it? What if it's a weird license where the code is inspectable ( open ) but usage requires payment to Macrovision or whoever wrote it?
Slashdot Mirror
The Japanese arm of the BSA was part of the RAID, and found many unlicensed copies MS Office and Windows XP. When the head BSA agent called in the offense to the MS Piracy hotline from one of the office phones, the receptionist looked at the caller ID and said, "you make the software, you can't turn yourself in, you idiot!", and hung up.
I agree. Looking at the source, I see their form of version control was to comment out the old version, and then indent the new version in further to show it was done later. In fact, out of the millions of lines of code in Windows, all but about 400 lines are commented out.
How about I.E. is included but not installed by default? Then MS has a browser install 'wizard' that lets the user pick ( by clicking ) on the browser(s) they want to install, and also give them the option of making any one of them the default. That way the owner of the computer gets to choose what browser(s) gets installed, instead of MS choosing for them.
I agree. Isn't sendmail one of the more "compromisable" OSS applications out there? I heard that and decided to go with PostFix for my SMTP needs. :)
Don't use up2date, use Yum ->
3 54 034
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=97689&cid=8
If you have tried out Yum, its pretty much the same as Windows Update except for Linux. I've used it on RedHat and Fedora Core 1, and it is completely painless. You can either use external or internal upgrade repositories ( internal lets you ensure only approved updates gets pushed, plus saves bandwidth ), and run it as a cron job to update apps in the background.
Anyhow, I am mightily impressed by it. What is does it looks at you installed applications, check the update repository for a newer version, and then if it needs to update the software, it uses the RPM file to resolve dependencies and it will download install the update plus any dependency apps you are missing.
I am not sure as to whether it will work well with other distro's, but I would think any distro that supports RPM's should work with Yum.
Tell me about it. At work we use Symantec Ghost to build computers from system images that are developed by a dedicated subgroup of the national IT staff. The computer is 'imaged', then 'ghostwalked',and finally it is booted up to be named and joined to the Windows domain ( active directory ). For a while there the computer would be infected with the blaster worm within a few minutes of being brought up on the network for the first time b/c the national image ( which is mandatory to use ) wasn't patched against it.
The only other time I saw a computer compromised that quickly was when I rebuilt a Windows 2000 server at home after it was infected with Code Red, and I stupidly brought it up with IIS enabled without having turned off the port mapping from the firewall to the web server on port 80. I think that is about the time I decided Apache ( and later changed OS to FreeBSD, and currently Linux ) was the way to go.
I haven't looked at returning to Windows since.
>You see, THAT'S THE PROBLEM. The most popular
> Linux distros let you easily turn on all sorts >of insecure things without so much as a warning.
Interesting. I have installed RedHat 7.2,9.0, Fedora Core, Mandrake 8.0 - 9.2, and each one asked what security level I wanted ( High, Normal, Minimal, None ), then it asked if I had any services I wanted to open the firewall for, and finally ( near the end of the installation ) it listed the network services I had installed, and asked me I was sure I wanted them to start automatically as they may vulnerabilites.
Now, I can't speak for any other distro's, but Mandrake, Redhat, and Fedora Core are very popular, and my experience with them definitely definitely does not jive with your statement ( quoted above ).
Do note that I usually select none as I as I have a centralized firewall that filters traffic coming and going, and that you usually have to secure services ( such as web server, ssh ) that you make publicly availabe in addition to the standard firewall rules. For example, I have ssh open, but I use hosts.allow/hosts.deny, and the firewall to limit who can connect to try and login, and I get email notification for both failed and successful attempts.
I don't see your point. Not all companies have the same Desktop Theme, installed applications, Start Menu, etc. They are already "different" from each other. Even internally in the Company I work for ( 100% Windows XP at the desktop ), I sometime have trouble finding an application shortcut, so I have picked up the habit of starting everything from the command line, as that stays pretty much the same for all company computers.
Btw, all the computers start off the same and then the users customize it from there. It can be locked down to a certain extent, depend on how many resources( time and money ) you want to invest in that. Now, same for Linux, you can create a standard setup for the desktop/installed apps/etc and have it locked down for even more configuration control.
My point? Looking at both Windows and Linux, each one is equally customizable to the extent that it can be hard to find your way around, so the "desktop the same" goal is not automatically fulfilled just by choosing an OS, there is more work to do.
The post about making the OS and the default apps makes a good point, there is nothing stopping M$ from doing that and still retaining all the functionality it has now. What they may lose is the ability to ensure their solution ( program ) is the default handler for certain tasks, that the icon is always in the users face ( like good ol' IM in the system tray in XP ), etc.
IMHO, that would be a good thing.
Say hello to my little friend Yum...p tml
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/index.
But then I saw "Jayz" and "Rap", neither of which have anything to do with music. :)
First, the on-topic part. The support of link in the UT2004 demo and the promised support in final "gold" release is a good thing. Not only for the Linux user s out there who want to play UT2004 without dual-booting or running a separate Windows box just to play, but also for publicity's sake. Think of how many people will be looking at the game, regardless of whether they buy it or not, they will most likely see the work "Linux" somewhere in the game specifications. This not only get the name out there, but also will help break the perception that many have that Linux is one of the following - a hacker-only OS ( the market wouldn't be big enough ), a server-only OS ( gen. perception is servers can't play games ), that there aren't any games for Linux.
Bursting these misperceptions put into people's minds by the media ( yes, even the evil empire in Redmond! ) will increase the overall acceptance of Linux in the market place. Remember what has been said often here at Slashdot, and something that I personnaly believe, is that what people use at home and school they would also like to use at work. Very general statement I know, but Apple spent a ton of money getting its computers into schools, and Microsoft really holds on tightly to its OEM reigns to ensure Windows is preinstalled on as many home computers as possible. So, make your own decision from that.
Ok, as a game, I finally playing UT2004 on Linux last night and though the graphics were good, the vehicles were awesome ( though I am still learning them ), but I really wish they would slow down the speed at which players can run. I mean, I can run as fast as some of the vehicles! You could argue the armor is an exoskeleton and that lets soldiers move so quickly, but my problem with speed is its effect on gameplay. It turns UT2004 into a twitch game where you run around circle strafing opponents, mashing the fire button just hoping to get a hit. Cmon, how about making the players aim? How about letting stealth be rewarded by letting you sneak up on your opponent? The way the game is now, you basically start running from the moment you spawn and keep moving in hopes of not getting cut down.
Anyhow, that is my take. I think my iptables firewall is causing issues with the game as in the server browser the ping column values are all either a '0' or a '?'. However, I can still connect, though I don't knwo the ping latency until after I connect to the game server.
That is my take on both the importance of the demo release for Linux, and of the game itself. Your results may vary. I am going to try the Windows version in a bit to see how it compares to the Linux version.
Peace.
I understand, you had a good point about if the programming tasks are interesting, I guess it depends on the target audience. The author wanted to reach both younger folks and adults who wanted to learn a bit about programming. It makes sense to have them use something that is already available on their computer and is mostly platform independent, though different browsers have different implementations of Javascript, so there is no guarantee each member of the audience will get the same output for the same code.
Anyhow, just wanted to let you know I wasn't trying to flame you at all, I was giving my take on the author's justification for choosing javascript.
How well do Flash development tools work on Linux? The author most likely wanted to reach the largest audience possible, and since most browsers have the javascript interpreter built-in, javascript wasn't a bad choice. I can't speak for the rest of the book, but the choice of language was good with respect to ease of set up.
Oh the horror of it all. What is next? Solitaire is gone?
Microsoft Search Engine Clippy - "I found 0 matches for 'Linux', maybe you meant to search for 'Microsoft Windows XP'?"
Well, it will give geeks another thing to say when they get turned down for a date. Now they can say "She's a spammer" instead of "She's a lesbian."
Yes, but is it cross-platform?
I wish I had mod points. When I first looked at cross-platform development, I resisted QT because it was commercial ( and cost $$$ ), so I tried out Java. I hit too many road blocks with Java so I tried C++ with wxWindows. I couldn't find any decent documentation, and everything I did find was very convoluted. Support was websites and mailing lists, neither of which answered even a single question I had.
Finally I said "What the heck, let me try QT", and I was awed by how simple it was to get it to work. It even intergrated with MS Visual C++ which is my preferred IDE for Windows, with Linux I had to doa bit more work setting the paths, but I found lots of help in the mailing list and the QtForum.org site. All I can say, is for the headaches it has saved me, it is worth the licensing fees. Plus the included documentation is awesome, easily matching that of Java, plus there are a few books out for it, I am currently using SAMS "QT Programming in 24 hours" off and on during develipment.
En sum, QT is easy to install, easy to get up and running, and has excellent documentation.
wxWindows
- I spent 6 months trying to get it to work on Windows, mailing list and online documents were no help. I had QT lib's installed and wrote my first program in 3 hours on BOTH Linux and Windows.
- Uses the same convoluted event system that MFC does, QT uses the clean SIGNAL/SLOT model to handle events.
- Did I mention convoluted?
Hmm, even SAMS C++ programming covers exceptions, but I know what you are talking about. I have a few game programming with C++ books and almost everything is in C. Go figure.
At least in my experience, MS Office is still relatively unstable. It seems to be more problematic the more software you have installed, at least from what I have seen at the company I work for. I currently use MS Office 2003 there, and the most common problem I have is printing an MS Word document. It will crash the first time I try to print any document, then I will close Word, reopen it, then reopen the document ( this happens for all documents ) and it will print fine. Very strange. Bu t we have many problems with Office XP, too. It will crash for no reason, corrupt spreadsheets that contain macros, etc, on a fairly common basis. You would think have all the Service Packs/hotfixes would help , but it doesn't...not from where I am standing.
As far as OO goes, I have never seen it crash, but then again I only use it at home ( it's not allowed at work ), and not very often.
My $.02
Good question. I mean, just because it is ok to publish the code, is it automatically ok to use it? What if it's a weird license where the code is inspectable ( open ) but usage requires payment to Macrovision or whoever wrote it?
If Mozilla were a beautiful girl, we'd be married by now, or at least shacking up.
Hehe, it was one of the best poster comments I've seen in a long time.