The diversity of the distributions and various platforms (*BSD, linux, etc.) helps to stave off something on this mass scale. It's harder to target ipkungfu, shorewall etc. with all the different patches and versions and forks.
Because Windows is so homogenized, and everyone is running as root, it makes it a lot easier for certain flaws to be exploited. It's just a simple example in biological systems; where systems are diverse, it's less likely to be adversely affected by outside threats.
Basically, it's good to have all the different distros (mandrake, red hat, suse, openbsd, freebsd, gentoo, debian, etc.) and all the different versionings, because this decreases the ability of black hats to attack *bsd and linux machines on a wide scale.
That's not to say it won't happen. You can't get lazy. Security is important, and you should be mindful of exploits and other issues. But for now, it looks like we're pretty secure.
Security through diversity, as opposed to security through obscurity, seems to be a pretty nice model for security. I'm willing to take security through diversity instead of obscurity any day.
The first game I played that I really enjoyed... and it was on a mac too. GREAT game. Tons better than the PC version. (the graphics were much much higher quality). That's what started me on Prince of Persia, and it's still one of my favorite games. I kind of wish other games released these days would emulate it. (The 2D aspect that is; PoP: Sands of Time is ok, but I have an affection for the 2d PoP).
The "mirror" image guy from PoP is still one of the freakiest things I've ever seen (Soooo coool)...
Without having Java as an internal closed system, Sun will have nothing left that a competitor can't provide. Sun is grasping onto Java like a sailor in a wild storm; Everything Sun is planning rests on Java. I hope they can make something good out of it. Even though Sun is an old company that has only recently begun to change, it'd be sad to see them go the way of the dinosaurs. They're one of the old guard, along with Big Blue, so I for one hope they can stay afloat.
It is sad that they don't want to open up java, but really, in the end, it comes down to business strategy. And at this point in time, it just doesn't make good business sense for Sun to throw away their last trump card.
Attribute that speediness to the techs who are on the ball and paying attention to vulnerabilities. You can't say that good techs are only limited to proprietary business models or open source. In the end, it boils down to the quality of people who are on the job.
You say this company is clearly focused on security; well, it should be, after all the trouble Microsoft has been through recently (all those exploits for windows that were, needless to say, pretty major).
Whatever people may say, Microsoft has got a lot of money. Money usually means that you can pay for important things. It is good to see that Microsoft isn't totally slacking and letting things go to rot.
Wow, free encrypted webmail? I posted above about how great Yahoo has been for me, but this is pretty cool. I've always worried about my emails being completely unencrypted, and it seems like a bit of a hassle to set up PGP for emails. I think I'll sign up for this and test it out for a while! Thanks for the tip!
That's the whole reason I use yahoo. That and I get about 2 pieces of spam a week. I love yahoo, and I've had it for 6 years now. I got it when rocketmail and yahoo were still separate.
I love being able to use yahoo with pop3, I like it a lot better than my ISP email.
Also you know what's funny? myway.com is in my hosts file routed to 0.0.0.0. It's blocked from my computer, as a ad/spam domain. I unblocked it, and I can't see any features of myway on their site. It looks like an almost identical clone to yahoo. It goes back in the hosts file.
I think I'll stick with good ol' reliable yahoo. It's only been down once in the past two years.
BTW, I use linux, so I don't need to worry about this silly IE vulnerability. (I don't even use the webclient anyway).
If Microsoft fanatics could come up with better comebacks then, "haha, see, linux is just as insecure as windows"
Remember, the security of a system still depends greatly on the ability of the sysadmin.
The fact is, no one can say Microsoft is a nice, big, happy corporation that wants to play nice and fair with everyone in the world and be equal. It's just not true. Hence, it's hard to root for the big bad guy. I mean, unless you like that kind of thing.
It's much easier to be biased towards linux (for whatever reasons) but I think security isn't something you can say that linux is better than windows, or windows is better than linux. It really depends on the administrator.
There are other things that I personally like about linux (i.e. the fact that it's a community effort, (most of) the code is free, no tyranical and mystical empire ruling my destiny, etc.). I'm sure you don't need a laundry list...
And his favorite browser is Opera. I bet this will just make him love opera even more! It's tedious for him to type, as he has limited control of his hands, so this will really help him out. I'm really glad Opera is doing this.
doesn't mean it won't work in linux. The software that comes with most burners is for windows. When was the last time a burning product was marketed towards linux anyways?
DVD+-R/RW finally work in linux (Mandrake 10) and I like the 4.4 capacity... I don't really think it's worth it to just double that capacity. I'd feel a lot more nervous with 8.5 gigs on on disc than 4.4 gigs; if that dvd goes bad that's 8.5 gigs of data down the drain. 4.4 isn't anything to sneeze at either, but at least it's more managable.
I think 4.4 gigs is a good size, and I'm going to be using my pioneer 4x as long as it keeps on burning.
It'd be interesting to see if the current technology (cdrecord) would be able to work with these new dvd drives. I'm not familiar with the way it communicates with the burner, but it can't be terribly different than communicating with the single layered drives.
is The Bat!. This application is a great replacement for Outlook. In fact I've switched my mum and dad over to it from Outlook, and they love it (though the calender does leave something to be desired). It doesn't automatically view emails in HTML mode, but you can select the HTML if you really want to view it in html. Also, it doesn't automatically load external graphic files in emails. (I don't think it loads ANY external files; not sure).
It really ensures the user wants to open attachments to emails, and it integrates fine with Norton Antivirus. It even comes with a Bayesian Spam filter (Which really works, once you get a lot of spam emails for it to learn from).
The Bat is a great program, and it's really improved, especially over the past year.
Liar, traitor, bastard, loser, idiot, retard, and my personal favorite, BOOGER-BRAIN!
Those are all really offensive. They may be the truth when you apply it to certain people, but these guys will still gun it down. Man, I thought Rebublicans were against Political Correctness??
They are assholes, but that isn't way we are angry and think they deserve to be fined or spend time in jail.
The reason is, they are treating people like criminals for downloading cracks. As many previous posters have said, merely downloading a crack does not mean you are guilty of pirating (i.e. Innocent until proven Guilty). These vigilantes are bypassing due process of law and acting like the Eye in the Sky of the software world. Well, last time I checked we hadn't entered some surreal alternate universe, and we still have protections under the law. Notice I'm only speaking of cracks. I do not see a legit purpose for keygens.
Also they are distributing something that looks like a crack that is really a trojan. AFAIK, trojans are illegal, no matter what their purpose is. It would still be illegal to give someone a trojan if they didn't know what it was, that would allow you to remove all the spyware/viruses/adware from their machine. If they aren't illegal, they should be. Someone upthread said that it was illegal in the U.K.; I'm not aware of a similar law in the U.S., but there should be one.
There are small asteroids too, ya know. Most of the time small asteroids DO hit the planet, though they are mostly blocked by the protective layer we've got on our planet (i.e. they burn up). There are plenty of sightings of meteors hitting the earth though. So I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that a person getting killed by an asteroid means extinction of the whole planet. What if said asteroid is as big as a car? That's not going to do much in the big picture.
What should be considered is the probability that an asteroid large enough to destroy the human race will hit the earth. I think such a thing is, needless to say, pretty astronomical. (When was the last time a big one hit? Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth maybe?)
We've already lost if we allow the situation to deteriorate to that point. That's why we created the U.N. remember? To avoid another large, costly, and largely useless world war.
With nuclear weapons proliferated widely among nations at this point in time, it'd be hard to imagine that the world wouldn't go up in a big mushroom cloud. Remember, during WWII the nuke was really, REALLY new. Not so any more.
Anyway, we're going to be making our robot-drone army soon, so we won't even need humans for our plans to conqu^H^H^H^H^Hsave the world!
Your comment rocks, man. Kudos to you. You should write that in to an online publication before they steal it from slashdot;)
At any rate, I think there's something you should follow up on: Perhaps Mike Anderer DOES understand that the GPL threatens his livelihood. It could be, and I think it's very possible, that he is saying this, deliberately misrepresenting the GPL, so that he CAN save his livelihood! If the GPL becomes widely adopted, because it gets rid of all that IP muss, Anderer will be out of a job. He knows there's an avalanche falling, but he's hoping that placing a twig in such a way will stop it...
Not only that, but I still can't see how anyone can go after distros like Red Hat, Mandrake et. al. They are just distributing the code. The code itself is made by tons of different people around the globe; to stop linux, people would have to sue every contributor to linux. I don't think that's possible given that many developers aren't even in the United States.
And why would people go after linux, as they do Microsoft? They would be going after specific projects, for infringing patents; For example, EOLAS could go after Microsoft for the IE plugin thing, because Microsoft, in addition to making windows, makes IE. But, if they wanted to do the same with linux, they would have to go after mozilla, and whatever other browsers they wanteed to target; which is completely independant!
I really don't see how linux could be vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits. Linux isn't made by a company. Linux isn't owned by a company.
That's great. Link to a small site with a bunch of medium mpeg files. Give them no warning. Has slashdot no shame???
Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*
From what I got to see of it, it is truly awesome! The amount of work this guy has put into this project is just amazing. Makes me realize even more how much I want to get into the field of robotics.
Operating systems are NOT, I repeat, NOT in the same boat as operating systems. OS/2 was a "better" windows, but windows already had taken hold of the market. Mono is just allowing current linux developers to take advantage of a very powerful and capable language specification which, BTW, will also allow many people to stop needing to use windows.
People aren't trying to build a better.NET; we're trying to build a.NET. Is there a.NET for linux?
Are you implying we shouldn't use.NET on linux merely because.NET exists in windows? I think that's not a very good argument...
Have you checked out Crossover Office 2.1.0 yet? Not to mention the opera webpage (there is a native linux build of opera...)
I am currently running Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator 10, (Not Outlook but it can be installed), Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft IE on my Crossover Office install, and it enables me to finally do my job on a linux box. I don't really care about the hardware drivers, because I buy hardware that works with linux.
Games...Well. That's something else entirely. I've got Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tourney at the moment, and I used to have Warcraft III on my WINE install before I got bored by it, but really, I think it's better if I don't play many games. It's such a timesink!
So, just because you choose an alternative option doesn't mean you can't have those applications. By the way, if you're squeamish about paying for Crossover Office, you can get all these applications running under WINE, via these great tutorials on frankscorner.org.
Not only that, but I find it rather bizarre that people tend to say that all OSS advocates hate Microsoft. I love OSS, but I don't hate Microsoft; they are a great company who have created some really quality products and have enabled us to reach this point. Remember gaming in a DOS environment? Win95 really revolutionized computer based gaming...
Also, I think Microsoft is a good competitive partner, just as OSS is a good competitive partner to Microsoft. We make each other stronger through our competition. I don't think this is on the scale of a cold war, there's no "Iron Curtain." At least we've got Samba, WINE/Crossover Office. Also MS hasn't been attacking OSS, and hopefully never will.
Besides, I don't think it would even be a good idea to put OSS/Linux on top of the pile. I think we do better as sort of a fringe movement, rather than something mainstream. It'd be such a strange world without Papa Microsoft dominating everything. I kind of like it the way it is.
Wait, isn't that what people who lived under communism used to say? Well, analogies aside, I really think we don't need regulation at this point; we are playing together just fine.
Sorry if I offended you. I was just using the words of the grandparent poster. Looking over it again, I'm guessing "bagged" means that Microsoft should not release this SP2? Correct me if I'm wrong. I should have probably used my own words rather than using "bagged" from the original poster...
Yeah, I agree, that would be quite unreasonable to expect Microsoft to not release this service pack. I hope it is apparent in my post that I don't think MS should shut this SP out; I just think it'll cause a lot of headaches, and I really hope they have an option to turn it off! (I.e. turn off the new security protections).
But unfortunately with many apps that run on Windows, you don't have the source code for those apps for a recompile if they do get broken. Sorry Anonymous Coward, we have to bag MS on this one. They are going to cause a lot of grief by doing this, and a lot of companies will not upgrade to SP2 to avoid that grief. Anyway I think people should stay with windows 2000 as an operating system of choice in a business type environment.
In the past, MS has broken Windows 95/98 applications, but Windows XP/2000 had compatibility modes available for the older applications. If it is as they say, and newer apps will be intentionally broken without any way of going into a compatibility mode, this will be bad.
I have difficulty believing MS would not include some kind of compatibility mode, however. It'll be interesting to see what they do. It won't really affect me though, I don't use XP and can't stand that OS (Windows 2000 is still my favorite Microsoft OS; Windows XP is just 2000 with some pretty GUI changes and some compatibility fixes.)
Blogs aren't necessarily for the individuality! I feel they primarily exist for a sense of community. You are reading that blog to join other like-minded people who you can converse with and talk about things that interest you. You don't browse blogs just so you can read some weirdo ranting on about some bizarro ideas they have. (unless you feel the same way...;)
In a society where small communities are nonexistent, I think blogs are filling a void. That void is a result of the changing world; before there were cars, globalization, et. al., we used to live in very close-knit societies where everyone knew everyone else, as well as everyone else's business.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Windows is so homogenized, and everyone is running as root, it makes it a lot easier for certain flaws to be exploited. It's just a simple example in biological systems; where systems are diverse, it's less likely to be adversely affected by outside threats.
Basically, it's good to have all the different distros (mandrake, red hat, suse, openbsd, freebsd, gentoo, debian, etc.) and all the different versionings, because this decreases the ability of black hats to attack *bsd and linux machines on a wide scale.
That's not to say it won't happen. You can't get lazy. Security is important, and you should be mindful of exploits and other issues. But for now, it looks like we're pretty secure.
Security through diversity, as opposed to security through obscurity, seems to be a pretty nice model for security. I'm willing to take security through diversity instead of obscurity any day.
The "mirror" image guy from PoP is still one of the freakiest things I've ever seen (Soooo coool)...
It is sad that they don't want to open up java, but really, in the end, it comes down to business strategy. And at this point in time, it just doesn't make good business sense for Sun to throw away their last trump card.
You say this company is clearly focused on security; well, it should be, after all the trouble Microsoft has been through recently (all those exploits for windows that were, needless to say, pretty major).
Whatever people may say, Microsoft has got a lot of money. Money usually means that you can pay for important things. It is good to see that Microsoft isn't totally slacking and letting things go to rot.
I would expect the same of IBM and Sun.
Wow, free encrypted webmail? I posted above about how great Yahoo has been for me, but this is pretty cool. I've always worried about my emails being completely unencrypted, and it seems like a bit of a hassle to set up PGP for emails. I think I'll sign up for this and test it out for a while! Thanks for the tip!
Sorry, but I'm not willing to get email with a service that supports the use of adware/scumware.
I love being able to use yahoo with pop3, I like it a lot better than my ISP email.
Also you know what's funny? myway.com is in my hosts file routed to 0.0.0.0. It's blocked from my computer, as a ad/spam domain. I unblocked it, and I can't see any features of myway on their site. It looks like an almost identical clone to yahoo. It goes back in the hosts file.
I think I'll stick with good ol' reliable yahoo. It's only been down once in the past two years.
BTW, I use linux, so I don't need to worry about this silly IE vulnerability. (I don't even use the webclient anyway).
Remember, the security of a system still depends greatly on the ability of the sysadmin.
The fact is, no one can say Microsoft is a nice, big, happy corporation that wants to play nice and fair with everyone in the world and be equal. It's just not true. Hence, it's hard to root for the big bad guy. I mean, unless you like that kind of thing.
It's much easier to be biased towards linux (for whatever reasons) but I think security isn't something you can say that linux is better than windows, or windows is better than linux. It really depends on the administrator.
There are other things that I personally like about linux (i.e. the fact that it's a community effort, (most of) the code is free, no tyranical and mystical empire ruling my destiny, etc.). I'm sure you don't need a laundry list...
And his favorite browser is Opera. I bet this will just make him love opera even more! It's tedious for him to type, as he has limited control of his hands, so this will really help him out. I'm really glad Opera is doing this.
DVD+-R/RW finally work in linux (Mandrake 10) and I like the 4.4 capacity... I don't really think it's worth it to just double that capacity. I'd feel a lot more nervous with 8.5 gigs on on disc than 4.4 gigs; if that dvd goes bad that's 8.5 gigs of data down the drain. 4.4 isn't anything to sneeze at either, but at least it's more managable.
I think 4.4 gigs is a good size, and I'm going to be using my pioneer 4x as long as it keeps on burning.
It'd be interesting to see if the current technology (cdrecord) would be able to work with these new dvd drives. I'm not familiar with the way it communicates with the burner, but it can't be terribly different than communicating with the single layered drives.
It really ensures the user wants to open attachments to emails, and it integrates fine with Norton Antivirus. It even comes with a Bayesian Spam filter (Which really works, once you get a lot of spam emails for it to learn from).
The Bat is a great program, and it's really improved, especially over the past year.
Those are all really offensive. They may be the truth when you apply it to certain people, but these guys will still gun it down. Man, I thought Rebublicans were against Political Correctness??
The reason is, they are treating people like criminals for downloading cracks. As many previous posters have said, merely downloading a crack does not mean you are guilty of pirating (i.e. Innocent until proven Guilty). These vigilantes are bypassing due process of law and acting like the Eye in the Sky of the software world. Well, last time I checked we hadn't entered some surreal alternate universe, and we still have protections under the law. Notice I'm only speaking of cracks. I do not see a legit purpose for keygens.
Also they are distributing something that looks like a crack that is really a trojan. AFAIK, trojans are illegal, no matter what their purpose is. It would still be illegal to give someone a trojan if they didn't know what it was, that would allow you to remove all the spyware/viruses/adware from their machine. If they aren't illegal, they should be. Someone upthread said that it was illegal in the U.K.; I'm not aware of a similar law in the U.S., but there should be one.
Trojans are bad, mmmkayyy?
What should be considered is the probability that an asteroid large enough to destroy the human race will hit the earth. I think such a thing is, needless to say, pretty astronomical. (When was the last time a big one hit? Back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth maybe?)
With nuclear weapons proliferated widely among nations at this point in time, it'd be hard to imagine that the world wouldn't go up in a big mushroom cloud. Remember, during WWII the nuke was really, REALLY new. Not so any more.
Anyway, we're going to be making our robot-drone army soon, so we won't even need humans for our plans to conqu^H^H^H^H^Hsave the world!
At any rate, I think there's something you should follow up on: Perhaps Mike Anderer DOES understand that the GPL threatens his livelihood. It could be, and I think it's very possible, that he is saying this, deliberately misrepresenting the GPL, so that he CAN save his livelihood! If the GPL becomes widely adopted, because it gets rid of all that IP muss, Anderer will be out of a job. He knows there's an avalanche falling, but he's hoping that placing a twig in such a way will stop it...
It'd have to be a pretty strong twig, though.
And why would people go after linux, as they do Microsoft? They would be going after specific projects, for infringing patents; For example, EOLAS could go after Microsoft for the IE plugin thing, because Microsoft, in addition to making windows, makes IE. But, if they wanted to do the same with linux, they would have to go after mozilla, and whatever other browsers they wanteed to target; which is completely independant!
I really don't see how linux could be vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits. Linux isn't made by a company. Linux isn't owned by a company.
Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites. *sigh*
From what I got to see of it, it is truly awesome! The amount of work this guy has put into this project is just amazing. Makes me realize even more how much I want to get into the field of robotics.
People aren't trying to build a better .NET; we're trying to build a .NET. Is there a .NET for linux?
Are you implying we shouldn't use .NET on linux merely because .NET exists in windows? I think that's not a very good argument...
"Hmm, so HP is a very smart company. With the best and brightest minds. Who have a big interest in making their company money.
Well, looks like those bright, intelligent employees found a good way of making money for the company! Take it from the government!
Bet the guy that thought of that is sitting on a promotion and vacation time in the Bahamas..."
Just because you're intelligent, doesn't mean you have morals.
I think we should all wait on this one to see what the investigation shows, before jumping to conclusions.
I am currently running Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator 10, (Not Outlook but it can be installed), Dreamweaver MX, and Microsoft IE on my Crossover Office install, and it enables me to finally do my job on a linux box. I don't really care about the hardware drivers, because I buy hardware that works with linux.
Games...Well. That's something else entirely. I've got Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tourney at the moment, and I used to have Warcraft III on my WINE install before I got bored by it, but really, I think it's better if I don't play many games. It's such a timesink!
So, just because you choose an alternative option doesn't mean you can't have those applications. By the way, if you're squeamish about paying for Crossover Office, you can get all these applications running under WINE, via these great tutorials on frankscorner.org.
Also, I think Microsoft is a good competitive partner, just as OSS is a good competitive partner to Microsoft. We make each other stronger through our competition. I don't think this is on the scale of a cold war, there's no "Iron Curtain." At least we've got Samba, WINE/Crossover Office. Also MS hasn't been attacking OSS, and hopefully never will.
Besides, I don't think it would even be a good idea to put OSS/Linux on top of the pile. I think we do better as sort of a fringe movement, rather than something mainstream. It'd be such a strange world without Papa Microsoft dominating everything. I kind of like it the way it is.
Wait, isn't that what people who lived under communism used to say? Well, analogies aside, I really think we don't need regulation at this point; we are playing together just fine.
Yeah, I agree, that would be quite unreasonable to expect Microsoft to not release this service pack. I hope it is apparent in my post that I don't think MS should shut this SP out; I just think it'll cause a lot of headaches, and I really hope they have an option to turn it off! (I.e. turn off the new security protections).
In the past, MS has broken Windows 95/98 applications, but Windows XP/2000 had compatibility modes available for the older applications. If it is as they say, and newer apps will be intentionally broken without any way of going into a compatibility mode, this will be bad.
I have difficulty believing MS would not include some kind of compatibility mode, however. It'll be interesting to see what they do. It won't really affect me though, I don't use XP and can't stand that OS (Windows 2000 is still my favorite Microsoft OS; Windows XP is just 2000 with some pretty GUI changes and some compatibility fixes.)
In a society where small communities are nonexistent, I think blogs are filling a void. That void is a result of the changing world; before there were cars, globalization, et. al., we used to live in very close-knit societies where everyone knew everyone else, as well as everyone else's business.