Sure. Gentoo is better because, hey, upstream servers never get compromised. Well, that and the fact that "apt-get install openoffic.org" takes just as much time as "emerge openoffice.org".
If FreeBSD can stay up to date and stable, it's because their "ports" aren't part of the operating system proper. If they release much more often, it's because they don't have to release as much as Debian has. Their '-STABLE' is not even remotely as stable as Debian's stable distribution.
Sure, stable is getting old. But it's got its reasons; and if you don't like it, you're welcome to use any other distribution.
Security is much much more than "just keeping your system up-to-date".
- accounts can be compromised - unknown bugs may have been exploited (although that's unlikely in this particular case) - crackers could have been cracking a developer's system, and using information they find on that developer's hard disk (ssh key, gpg key,...) to log in to one of the servers - also of importance in general is the competence of the administrators (which surely is *not* at the cause of the problem here).
Of course these systems are running debian stable; but that's most likely not the problem.
The banning of "email harvesting software." There's a risk of trouble for people legitimately scanning websites for email addresses, for purposes such as research, and maintenance of their own sites.
Uh. What kind of 'research' exactly do you have in mind? The only research I can think of that would require people to have lots of email addresses would be one of 'how do I improve my spamm^H^H^H^H^Hdirect marketing practices'. I don't think I want those.
... The US government is actually trying to stop terrorrists by trying to trace them using one of the most insecure operating systems ever?
Are they for real?
In fact, in my view, one of the major problems with the patent system as we have it now is that patent offices are _rewarded_ for granting a patent, whether it is an invention deserving a patent or not.
IMO, the patent office should be (severely) fined for patents that are refuted in court. Or better yet, they should pay back all costs that have been made for that patent, including both the costs having been made by the patentee to receive his patent, and those that have been made by the patentee and the defendant at the trial that declared the patent invalid.
Even if XML was supported in all versions of Office, would that mean that Office would suddenly have an open file format? I don't think so. It's perfectly possible for me to write anything in XML in a way that you will not be able to read it.
Which is normal. XML is a way to describe data. If you have the DocType Definition (DTD) of an XML file, the only thing you know is whether that XML file is structured correctly, and how you would create another XML file that would look like the same thing for an XML parser. Nothing more.
In the long run, XML is nothing more than a standard you can use to base other standards on. XML can be put in the same row as ASCII, bytes, the file concept, or even SGML: it's a standard intended for the creation of other standards.
Nothing more, nothing less
Therefore, I think the argument that Microsoft Office will 'support XML' is just a marketing joke. It won't do anything out of the ordinary...
Of course innovation isn't always a good idea. As a common sysadmin's saying goes: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
That doesn't mean there should be no innovation at all; however, most "innovations" from commercial software writers are just there to make you open your wallet, not to improve the quality of your IT-infrastructure.
Sure, that was some nice patentese. For all I care, it could be transcribed Chinese, or so.
Even if patents would be a good thing (which they aren't, IMHO), then the language in which they are written is unreadable. You have to read, re-read, re-re-read, and try to understand, which takes a considerable amount of time; time that could be better spent trying to invent something new, instead of trying to decipher some lawyer's patentese...
quote: "Now there are 5000 member of the Windows team, plus an additional 5000 contributing partners, generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. Getting all those people going in the same direction, cranking out code, is an enormous task. Building the results of their work, compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week. It's the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this." And Microsoft compiles the whole thing--all 50+ million lines of code, almost every single day" -- end quote.
Nice.
Let's compare this to an other operating system, shall we?
Debian GNU/Linux is also built and rebuilt almost constantly. No full rebuilds every day (which is braindead, there's no need to recompile unchanged code), but constant rebuilding of changed components. And unlike Microsoft Windows, of which the latest release is available for the unbelievable amount of two (2) (!) architectures, Debian GNU/Linux is released for 11 different processor types, while there is work in progress to add another one; there's even work in progress to make debian work on other kernels besides Linux.
All released architectures use the 'buildd' system to rebuild changed packages. These don't work 'nearly every day of the week', they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Unlike the described Windows build system, where you need several engineers to oversee the build process, a Debian GNU/Linux autobuilder is usually managed by a single person, who takes care of everything. This includes ensuring the build environment keeps working, ensuring that the output and, possibly, reasons of failed builds are reported to the person in charge of the package that failed to build, checking the daemon's logs, and often also general maintenance of the machine. This probably isn't even everything, but should be mostly so.
One of the main differences between Windows and Debian GNU/Linux also is that the development version of Debian GNU/Linux is actually used for day-to-day work, even by non-developers. On those eleven architectures (twelve, if you count both the Big Endian and Little Endian versions of MIPS).
One last thing: 50 million LOC is both nothing, and bloat. On 'Counting Potatoes', at http://people.debian.org/~jgb/debian-counting/coun ting-potatoes/ , you can see that in the now outdated Debian 2.2 release, there were no less than 55 million LOC. That's 5 million more. OTOH, while the 50 million LOC in Microsoft Windows include just the operating system, some drivers, a few inferior application programs (they still need a market for Office) and a web browser, Debian GNU/Linux includes a lot more. If Windows requires 50 million LOC to accomplish not even half of what Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 did with 55 million LOC, and what Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 does even better, with admittedly some more LOC as well, then you either have a lot of comments in your code, or a lot of bloat.
Not to mention that there are other operating systems out there, such as the BSD-ish ones, that also do that 24/7 recompilation thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. Gentoo is better because, hey, upstream servers never get compromised. Well, that and the fact that "apt-get install openoffic.org" takes just as much time as "emerge openoffice.org".
If FreeBSD can stay up to date and stable, it's because their "ports" aren't part of the operating system proper. If they release much more often, it's because they don't have to release as much as Debian has. Their '-STABLE' is not even remotely as stable as Debian's stable distribution.
Sure, stable is getting old. But it's got its reasons; and if you don't like it, you're welcome to use any other distribution.
Security is much much more than "just keeping your system up-to-date".
...) to log in to one of the servers
- accounts can be compromised
- unknown bugs may have been exploited (although that's unlikely in this particular case)
- crackers could have been cracking a developer's system, and using information they find on that developer's hard disk (ssh key, gpg key,
- also of importance in general is the competence of the administrators (which surely is *not* at the cause of the problem here).
Of course these systems are running debian stable; but that's most likely not the problem.
There's indeed a deadlock in what you describe; but that's only relevant if you try to swap over NBD, what it was primarily made to do.
If you want to run a file system or a RAID array on top of NBD, you shouldn't see that deadlock.
If you reboot the NBD server, the connection is lost. You'll have to restart the nbd-client process to make it work again.
Obviously, if two servers go down, you'll start losing data. Of course, that's a property of RAID5, not of NBD...
it's not because this is legal right now, that it will remain legal until the end of times.
If this becomes popular, my bet is that the RIAA will buy themselves a law which will outlaw this. If it indeed is legal right now, that is...
... how do I print out a .mpg?
The banning of "email harvesting software." There's a risk of trouble for people legitimately scanning websites for email addresses, for purposes such as research, and maintenance of their own sites.
Uh. What kind of 'research' exactly do you have in mind? The only research I can think of that would require people to have lots of email addresses would be one of 'how do I improve my spamm^H^H^H^H^Hdirect marketing practices'. I don't think I want those."Go Force, Go".
I knew about "Use the Force, Luke", but this one beats everything.
... The US government is actually trying to stop terrorrists by trying to trace them using one of the most insecure operating systems ever? Are they for real?
Absolutely!
In fact, in my view, one of the major problems with the patent system as we have it now is that patent offices are _rewarded_ for granting a patent, whether it is an invention deserving a patent or not.
IMO, the patent office should be (severely) fined for patents that are refuted in court. Or better yet, they should pay back all costs that have been made for that patent, including both the costs having been made by the patentee to receive his patent, and those that have been made by the patentee and the defendant at the trial that declared the patent invalid.
That will make them a *lot* more conscious.
Even if XML was supported in all versions of Office, would that mean that Office would suddenly have an open file format? I don't think so. It's perfectly possible for me to write anything in XML in a way that you will not be able to read it.
Which is normal. XML is a way to describe data. If you have the DocType Definition (DTD) of an XML file, the only thing you know is whether that XML file is structured correctly, and how you would create another XML file that would look like the same thing for an XML parser. Nothing more.
In the long run, XML is nothing more than a standard you can use to base other standards on. XML can be put in the same row as ASCII, bytes, the file concept, or even SGML: it's a standard intended for the creation of other standards.
Nothing more, nothing less
Therefore, I think the argument that Microsoft Office will 'support XML' is just a marketing joke. It won't do anything out of the ordinary...
Oh gosh. If you guys want to correct each other, make sure you get it right.
<checks>
Linus Torvalds
Someone obviously broke the coffee cup holder right at the time the sysadmin had clicked on the 'uninstall' button of the old version.
Ah, no, wait...
Ah?
Last time I checked, 'the Gimp' was just a software tool to work on digital photographs. But that's probably because I'm not a native English speaker.
What does it really mean?
Besides 'GNU Image Manipulation Program, that is -- I know about that part :-)
Of course innovation isn't always a good idea. As a common sysadmin's saying goes: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
That doesn't mean there should be no innovation at all; however, most "innovations" from commercial software writers are just there to make you open your wallet, not to improve the quality of your IT-infrastructure.
Sure, that was some nice patentese. For all I care, it could be transcribed Chinese, or so.
Even if patents would be a good thing (which they aren't, IMHO), then the language in which they are written is unreadable. You have to read, re-read, re-re-read, and try to understand, which takes a considerable amount of time; time that could be better spent trying to invent something new, instead of trying to decipher some lawyer's patentese...
quote: "Now there are 5000 member of the Windows team, plus an additional 5000 contributing partners, generating over 50 million lines of code for Windows Server 2003. Getting all those people going in the same direction, cranking out code, is an enormous task. Building the results of their work, compiling and linking it into the executable and other components that make up a Windows CD is a 12 to 13 hour process that is done every day of the week. It's the biggest software engineering task ever attempted. There are no other software projects like this." And Microsoft compiles the whole thing--all 50+ million lines of code, almost every single day" -- end quote.
n ting-potatoes/ , you can see that in the now outdated Debian 2.2 release, there were no less than 55 million LOC. That's 5 million more. OTOH, while the 50 million LOC in Microsoft Windows include just the operating system, some drivers, a few inferior application programs (they still need a market for Office) and a web browser, Debian GNU/Linux includes a lot more. If Windows requires 50 million LOC to accomplish not even half of what Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 did with 55 million LOC, and what Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 does even better, with admittedly some more LOC as well, then you either have a lot of comments in your code, or a lot of bloat.
Nice.
Let's compare this to an other operating system, shall we?
Debian GNU/Linux is also built and rebuilt almost constantly. No full rebuilds every day (which is braindead, there's no need to recompile unchanged code), but constant rebuilding of changed components. And unlike Microsoft Windows, of which the latest release is available for the unbelievable amount of two (2) (!) architectures, Debian GNU/Linux is released for 11 different processor types, while there is work in progress to add another one; there's even work in progress to make debian work on other kernels besides Linux.
All released architectures use the 'buildd' system to rebuild changed packages. These don't work 'nearly every day of the week', they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Unlike the described Windows build system, where you need several engineers to oversee the build process, a Debian GNU/Linux autobuilder is usually managed by a single person, who takes care of everything. This includes ensuring the build environment keeps working, ensuring that the output and, possibly, reasons of failed builds are reported to the person in charge of the package that failed to build, checking the daemon's logs, and often also general maintenance of the machine. This probably isn't even everything, but should be mostly so.
One of the main differences between Windows and Debian GNU/Linux also is that the development version of Debian GNU/Linux is actually used for day-to-day work, even by non-developers. On those eleven architectures (twelve, if you count both the Big Endian and Little Endian versions of MIPS).
One last thing: 50 million LOC is both nothing, and bloat. On 'Counting Potatoes', at http://people.debian.org/~jgb/debian-counting/cou
Not to mention that there are other operating systems out there, such as the BSD-ish ones, that also do that 24/7 recompilation thing.
I'm everything but impressed, sorry.