Good, we agree - that's the point I was making (and trying to prove with the Red Hat Debian versus Windows 2000 95 comparison).
Now consider: if you move to Linux, and train staff on Linux, you're moving to Red Hat, or SuSE, or Debian, etc. The people and their processes won;t necessarily interoperate with another Linux distro (Operating System).
Ie, 'Linux' (ie, all distributions) isn't very interoperable.
I must have missed it when the law of computer usability was written. Who said everything had to work according to the Microsoft way?
i never understood the urge to do so! my mother always does this as a means of pasting together different bits of information, but why would i want to paste the color, font and background image together with the text?? i am not saying that it is a useless feature and maybe it would be nice if it were possible under linux, but i really don't see any application for this! even worse, i'd REALLY like to know how to disable this questionable feature under windows!
Because most people want to paste the same thing they cut. Not doing so seems like data loss.
Ie, most people are like your mother.
They also want to paste the image from Photoshop Elements into their document and be able to edit it later if they wish.
I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.
How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
How do you change what IP address will be used for eth0, in Red Hat or Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.
Mesa-standalone is a GL layer that doesn't run through X. XGL is an X server where everything displayed on screen is accelerated. Cairo makes toolkit graphics vector. Then it's all done, we'll party with hookers and coke while some guy from Sun complains loadly about daniels removing xeyes from the so called 'modular' tree...
I merely pointed out that use of a series of words in conjunction with each other in a sentence is not the same thing as a use of a well known term that also involves those words.
I mean, could you imagine if one of these "Average home users" installed Red Hat Linux, and just ran the base install for over a year with no virus protection, firewall or updating the kernel/components? You're damned right that person would get hacked!
The base install of Red Hat Linux has firewalled off everything from the network by default. The one app available if you portscanned the box would be a DHCP client, if the user selected it during the install.
Thank you kindly for your language advice. I'd like to return the favor by heling you understand the meaning of the term vocabulary, which refers to words, and not phrases - even if they're really obscure ones. That's okay - as you've explained, many Slashdot posters don't have English as a first language, and I shouldn't judge you on that basis.
That said, as the idea of the term 'open source code' being equivalent to 'Open Source' is roughly similar the concept of 'Jack is hungry' being equivalent to 'Hungry Jack's' (a fast food chain), would you suggest these aforementioned hungry persons named John should invalidate that organization's trademark?
Hi. I work for one of the major Linux vendors. I got good marks at high school, but I never went to uni as I felt I'd learn more and be more successful in the real world.
I started properly the year I left school, in 1999. Over the couse of six years I've gone from being The Windows Guy at a Unix shop (I got an MCSE out of high school), to a Linux sysadmin working short-length contracts doing everything under the sun, to a relatively well known Linux journalist as the Linux columnist for PC Authority (and then, briefly, APC), co-author of the Third and Advanced Linux Pocketbooks for Australian Consolidated Press. I wrote most of a Linux training course, and then got poached by Red Hat to train their courses here.
I make more money than my brother, who's two years older, went to uni and joined a law firm. When he finally gets to be a senior partner, I think I'll still have made more money.
I'm not a programmer, but I've made the odd contribution to Open Source - Accudoc, a little script that autogenerates OpenOffice doco for servers (made my last job easier), I rewrote man resolv.conf for the first time in fifteen years (if you're using Red Hat or Fedora) because it gave me nightmares, and spoke at quite a few LUG meetings and then Unix conferences showing off different techology that turned me on (VMWare, QEmu, Samba 3, etc).
None of these contributions (apart from a Webmin theme I learnt a little Perl for that used the Crystal icons) were required by my workplaces. But they were done for the same reasons I was able to make a career out of Open Source: I find it interesting and this I'm very, very motivated.
A lot of my motivated friends got jobs too - some were interested in fixing X, and ended up being paid to do so. Coders I know found places to code that used Open Source. I ran into Andrew Clausen, the PartEd guy, a few years back and he worked for Red Hat for a while too.
For the non-motivated (or perhaps the easily contented), it often hasn't worked out. These guys like administering systems, and coding, but not enough to learn to deal with customers, a skill which they need to do the interesting work. They usually end up working crappy jobs fixing broken things (not troubleshooting, just running commands to fi the same damn thing over and over). Apologies if you're working said crappy job.
So yeah, Open Source is a career path for a lot of people I know. But it isn't a magic bullet (though Linux is growing right now, it won't forever), and you do need the motivation to do the interesting stuff.
The people who contribute a lot tend to have that motivation though.
Er, yes it does. They license the Windows Media technology to the same hardware manufacturers who could be licensing the iPod. Also WMP's audio functionality competes (or tries to) with iTunes.
I have no idea what you meant by 'mealy mouthed', nor would most people, but a link with 9 out of 10 links referring to 'open source code' doesn't prove your case. I claimed that it was as I have yet to be proven otherwise, but merely had discussion with people using the same flawed logic as yourself.
Open Source is an adjective: 'it is Open Source'.
'It has open source code' is not an adjective. Its a sentence containing the same two words in sequence.
1) I can't believe that on Slashdot, nobody knows what Open Source means.
2) I think ESR's a bit of a loony, as I find most right wing Americans to be. But I'm not interested in OSS so I can get along with some guy with a beard, I'm interested in it because software that's Open Source tends to be better than software that isn't. I can troubleshoot it without running into a brick wall, and it's harder to do the kinds of dodgy tricks Symantec does with security (eg, negotiating with specific spyware manufacturers to let their Antivirus not remove the apps). I get these benefits with FS too, but it's never been a moral thing: so I use the term OSS.
And yes, the guys who created the OSD have made a massive contribution to Linux. Ever had your boss ask you about some of that hip 'Open Source' stuff he read about in BusinessWeek? When was the last time you read an article about capital F Free Software?
Erm, what? I don't need anyone to "approve" my software's license:P
That's correct, you don't. Just don't call it Open Source.
If, however, you do wish to call your software Open Source, it must meet the definition of Open Source, which was created by the people who invented the term, when they invented it.
This is vitally important, or every man and his dog will call software you can get source code for (eg, Pine, Qmail, or Windows, as stated earlier) Open Source.
One of the OSI's most important tasks in the next few years is to protect the term Open Source from those who would wish for it to be abused.
One of the major points of OSS is that unlike the term 'Free Software' (which, to many people, already had another meaning - 'free software') it was a new term, and hence can be more easily defined.
Even if you're more an FS kinda guy than an OSS one, the Open Source Definition is very similar to the FSF list of Four Freedoms. Making sure people who guarantee neither Open Source nor Freedom don't come to abuse the term is in all of our interests.
Open Source is not a generic term. It is a term invented by the OSI and has a strict definition: oddly enough, the Open Source Definition.
If the term 'Open Source' becomes genericised, then any software you can get the source doe to - including Qmail, Microsoft Windows, and Pine - will be called 'Open Source' when it isn't.
(This included the complete inability to even set hard drive mount points under Fedora Core 3, which is what finally led me to dump Fedora altogether.)
That's a very unusual problem. What happened when you tried? Where did you go for help?
The most important aspect of a Linux distro, in my opinion, is the package management system. Ideally you want a system which makes it easy to upgrade, doesn't screw up configuration files, is easy to use, and has a great number of packages available.
Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?
The article mentions single sign on as being an issue under Linux.
Single sign on is the ability to have a user log on to the network fron a centralizaed authentication server and not prompt them for credentials when they access applications servers.
In Windows speak, that's not Passport, that's AD and AD aware apps.
In Linux, it's pam_krb5 when you log on, and kerberized apps.
* Evolution / Dovecot * Firefox / Apache HTTPd * CVS (client and server) * SVN (client and server)
Modern Linux distributions install sendmail as a Mail Submission Program, not listening on port 25. Then they firewall it off.
Portscan a RHEL box. Then portscan a Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 machine. Both have a firewall turned on. But the 2003 box lets through six or seven ports, including ones used for various windows worms. If you can't be bothered portscanning them, just connect them to the internet and wait...
Linux also disables execute access for new files created by users. In Windows, new files inherit their permission from their parent directories, which, in most cases, grant execute permission. In either case, execute permission is unnecessary to install software - users should download a read-only package file (rpm/msi)that's associated with their package management app.
Apparently MS thinks thats be a good idea too - here's the feedback from MS where I suggested this to them:
Dear Mike,
I am Jay, a member of the Windows Server Feedback Response Team and I just reviewed the feedback you submitted on www.windowsserverfeedback.com.
The suggestion you have made in your feedback is a good one. I do understand that with the default execute permission a user can run all executable files. This could lead to serious network threats and may result in loss of data. In this regard, your suggestion of limiting the user from running.exe files will definitely enhance security. By applying security measures to.msi files through username and password, users can be restricted from installing unwanted software.
I am forwarding your suggestion to the Product Development Team at Microsoft and I am sure they will find it interesting.
Thank you for taking time to share your idea with us. Hope to see your continued participation in this forum.
The length of the field is NOT measxured in a fixed amount of bytes:
var fields = "Lastname:Char:20;Firstname:Char:20;Notes:Char:50".split(';');... can be changed to...
var fields = "Lastname:Char:20;Firstname:Char:10;Notes:Char:500 0".split(';');
Yes, I know. You don't understand what I'm saying. For one final time: you shouldn't need to change anything. The language should deal with it. Oddly enough,like XML does.
You also fail to understand that I'm not arguing for or against binaries encoded within XML, I'm reponding to a parent post that's against XML per se.
You'll have to change the array in your script when your output changes. The length of your field is measured in a fixed amount of bytes. And, in case it isn't obvious (I'm being rude to you because you said 'No' rather than being civil to me), THE FACT YOU'RE REFERRING TO LINE NUMBERS MEANS YOU'RE BASING YOUR PARSING OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE INFORMATION YOU DOLT.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they are.
Good, we agree - that's the point I was making (and trying to prove with the Red Hat Debian versus Windows 2000 95 comparison).
Now consider: if you move to Linux, and train staff on Linux, you're moving to Red Hat, or SuSE, or Debian, etc. The people and their processes won;t necessarily interoperate with another Linux distro (Operating System).
Ie, 'Linux' (ie, all distributions) isn't very interoperable.
I must have missed it when the law of computer usability was written. Who said everything had to work according to the Microsoft way?
Er, I didn't. Was this directed by me?
i never understood the urge to do so! my mother always does this as a means of pasting together different bits of information, but why would i want to paste the color, font and background image together with the text?? i am not saying that it is a useless feature and maybe it would be nice if it were possible under linux, but i really don't see any application for this! even worse, i'd REALLY like to know how to disable this questionable feature under windows!
Because most people want to paste the same thing they cut. Not doing so seems like data loss.
Ie, most people are like your mother.
They also want to paste the image from Photoshop Elements into their document and be able to edit it later if they wish.
But thats the point of different distros, and even linux... You can do shit any way you want, or pick a distro that does it the way you want...
In some cases, yes. But in many, ask yourself the following...
Is there a practical advantage to how Red Hat and Debian store the IP address of eth0?
I hate to defend this guy, but there's other things you should be attacking him over. From a user point of view. Different Open Source distros are really like different Operating Systems.
How do you install software in Red Hat? Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
How do you change what IP address will be used for eth0, in Red Hat or Debian? Windows 95? Windows XP?
In both cases the 6 years different versions of Windows are more similar than the latest versions of both.
Mesa-standalone is a GL layer that doesn't run through X.
XGL is an X server where everything displayed on screen is accelerated.
Cairo makes toolkit graphics vector.
Then it's all done, we'll party with hookers and coke while some guy from Sun complains loadly about daniels removing xeyes from the so called 'modular' tree...
Where did I mention such a belief?
I merely pointed out that use of a series of words in conjunction with each other in a sentence is not the same thing as a use of a well known term that also involves those words.
Also, I'd like to mention you're a tool.
I mean, could you imagine if one of these "Average home users" installed Red Hat Linux, and just ran the base install for over a year with no virus protection, firewall or updating the kernel/components? You're damned right that person would get hacked!
The base install of Red Hat Linux has firewalled off everything from the network by default. The one app available if you portscanned the box would be a DHCP client, if the user selected it during the install.
Futhermore, I've never seen a Mac properly integrate Miami Vice and Lotus 1-2-3...
Thank you kindly for your language advice. I'd like to return the favor by heling you understand the meaning of the term vocabulary, which refers to words, and not phrases - even if they're really obscure ones. That's okay - as you've explained, many Slashdot posters don't have English as a first language, and I shouldn't judge you on that basis.
That said, as the idea of the term 'open source code' being equivalent to 'Open Source' is roughly similar the concept of 'Jack is hungry' being equivalent to 'Hungry Jack's' (a fast food chain), would you suggest these aforementioned hungry persons named John should invalidate that organization's trademark?
Hi. I work for one of the major Linux vendors. I got good marks at high school, but I never went to uni as I felt I'd learn more and be more successful in the real world.
I started properly the year I left school, in 1999. Over the couse of six years I've gone from being The Windows Guy at a Unix shop (I got an MCSE out of high school), to a Linux sysadmin working short-length contracts doing everything under the sun, to a relatively well known Linux journalist as the Linux columnist for PC Authority (and then, briefly, APC), co-author of the Third and Advanced Linux Pocketbooks for Australian Consolidated Press. I wrote most of a Linux training course, and then got poached by Red Hat to train their courses here.
I make more money than my brother, who's two years older, went to uni and joined a law firm. When he finally gets to be a senior partner, I think I'll still have made more money.
I'm not a programmer, but I've made the odd contribution to Open Source - Accudoc, a little script that autogenerates OpenOffice doco for servers (made my last job easier), I rewrote man resolv.conf for the first time in fifteen years (if you're using Red Hat or Fedora) because it gave me nightmares, and spoke at quite a few LUG meetings and then Unix conferences showing off different techology that turned me on (VMWare, QEmu, Samba 3, etc).
None of these contributions (apart from a Webmin theme I learnt a little Perl for that used the Crystal icons) were required by my workplaces. But they were done for the same reasons I was able to make a career out of Open Source: I find it interesting and this I'm very, very motivated.
A lot of my motivated friends got jobs too - some were interested in fixing X, and ended up being paid to do so. Coders I know found places to code that used Open Source. I ran into Andrew Clausen, the PartEd guy, a few years back and he worked for Red Hat for a while too.
For the non-motivated (or perhaps the easily contented), it often hasn't worked out. These guys like administering systems, and coding, but not enough to learn to deal with customers, a skill which they need to do the interesting work. They usually end up working crappy jobs fixing broken things (not troubleshooting, just running commands to fi the same damn thing over and over). Apologies if you're working said crappy job.
So yeah, Open Source is a career path for a lot of people I know. But it isn't a magic bullet (though Linux is growing right now, it won't forever), and you do need the motivation to do the interesting stuff.
The people who contribute a lot tend to have that motivation though.
Micorsoft doesn't compete with Apples Ipod
Er, yes it does. They license the Windows Media technology to the same hardware manufacturers who could be licensing the iPod. Also WMP's audio functionality competes (or tries to) with iTunes.
You've rather overmixed your metaphors and created a bit of a mish-mash.
Oh yeah? Well don't bite the hand that rocks the cradle of love.
I have no idea what you meant by 'mealy mouthed', nor would most people, but a link with 9 out of 10 links referring to 'open source code' doesn't prove your case. I claimed that it was as I have yet to be proven otherwise, but merely had discussion with people using the same flawed logic as yourself.
Open Source is an adjective: 'it is Open Source'.
'It has open source code' is not an adjective. Its a sentence containing the same two words in sequence.
Why do you think they are the same?
Most of the links you refer to use the term 'open source code'. Though the odd one indeed does speak of 'open source'.
1) I can't believe that on Slashdot, nobody knows what Open Source means.
2) I think ESR's a bit of a loony, as I find most right wing Americans to be. But I'm not interested in OSS so I can get along with some guy with a beard, I'm interested in it because software that's Open Source tends to be better than software that isn't. I can troubleshoot it without running into a brick wall, and it's harder to do the kinds of dodgy tricks Symantec does with security (eg, negotiating with specific spyware manufacturers to let their Antivirus not remove the apps). I get these benefits with FS too, but it's never been a moral thing: so I use the term OSS.
And yes, the guys who created the OSD have made a massive contribution to Linux. Ever had your boss ask you about some of that hip 'Open Source' stuff he read about in BusinessWeek? When was the last time you read an article about capital F Free Software?
Erm, what? I don't need anyone to "approve" my software's license :P
That's correct, you don't. Just don't call it Open Source.
If, however, you do wish to call your software Open Source, it must meet the definition of Open Source, which was created by the people who invented the term, when they invented it.
This is vitally important, or every man and his dog will call software you can get source code for (eg, Pine, Qmail, or Windows, as stated earlier) Open Source.
One of the OSI's most important tasks in the next few years is to protect the term Open Source from those who would wish for it to be abused.
One of the major points of OSS is that unlike the term 'Free Software' (which, to many people, already had another meaning - 'free software') it was a new term, and hence can be more easily defined.
Even if you're more an FS kinda guy than an OSS one, the Open Source Definition is very similar to the FSF list of Four Freedoms. Making sure people who guarantee neither Open Source nor Freedom don't come to abuse the term is in all of our interests.
Open Source is not a generic term. It is a term invented by the OSI and has a strict definition: oddly enough, the Open Source Definition.
If the term 'Open Source' becomes genericised, then any software you can get the source doe to - including Qmail, Microsoft Windows, and Pine - will be called 'Open Source' when it isn't.
The APT system makes security and package upgrades (and downgrades) considerably easier than any RPM system ever was.
In other new, I find driving with my Ford to be superior than your driving with an axel.
(This included the complete inability to even set hard drive mount points under Fedora Core 3, which is what finally led me to dump Fedora altogether.)
That's a very unusual problem. What happened when you tried? Where did you go for help?
The most important aspect of a Linux distro, in my opinion, is the package management system. Ideally you want a system which makes it easy to upgrade, doesn't screw up configuration files, is easy to use, and has a great number of packages available.
Er, are there any distros around that don't have this?
The article mentions single sign on as being an issue under Linux.
Single sign on is the ability to have a user log on to the network fron a centralizaed authentication server and not prompt them for credentials when they access applications servers.
In Windows speak, that's not Passport, that's AD and AD aware apps.
In Linux, it's pam_krb5 when you log on, and kerberized apps.
* Evolution / Dovecot
* Firefox / Apache HTTPd
* CVS (client and server)
* SVN (client and server)
etc.
I think the term is not "more secure" but "less vulnerable".
Security is defined as protecting assets from threats (yes, backups and power issues are security issues).
If you're less vulnerable to the threat, then you're better protected, and more secure.
Modern Linux distributions install sendmail as a Mail Submission Program, not listening on port 25. Then they firewall it off.
.exe files will definitely enhance security. By applying security measures to .msi files through username and password, users can be restricted from installing unwanted software.
Portscan a RHEL box. Then portscan a Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 machine. Both have a firewall turned on. But the 2003 box lets through six or seven ports, including ones used for various windows worms. If you can't be bothered portscanning them, just connect them to the internet and wait...
Linux also disables execute access for new files created by users. In Windows, new files inherit their permission from their parent directories, which, in most cases, grant execute permission. In either case, execute permission is unnecessary to install software - users should download a read-only package file (rpm/msi)that's associated with their package management app.
Apparently MS thinks thats be a good idea too - here's the feedback from MS where I suggested this to them:
Dear Mike,
I am Jay, a member of the Windows Server Feedback Response Team and I just reviewed the feedback you submitted on www.windowsserverfeedback.com.
The suggestion you have made in your feedback is a good one. I do understand that with the default execute permission a user can run all executable files. This could lead to serious network threats and may result in loss of data. In this regard, your suggestion of limiting the user from running
I am forwarding your suggestion to the Product Development Team at Microsoft and I am sure they will find it interesting.
Thank you for taking time to share your idea with us. Hope to see your continued participation in this forum.
Sincerely
Jay
Windows Server Feedback Response Team
The length of the field is NOT measxured in a fixed amount of bytes:
" .split(';'); ... can be changed to ...
0 0".split(';');
,like XML does.
var fields = "Lastname:Char:20;Firstname:Char:20;Notes:Char:50
var fields = "Lastname:Char:20;Firstname:Char:10;Notes:Char:50
Yes, I know. You don't understand what I'm saying. For one final time: you shouldn't need to change anything. The language should deal with it. Oddly enough
You also fail to understand that I'm not arguing for or against binaries encoded within XML, I'm reponding to a parent post that's against XML per se.
Yes it will.
You'll have to change the array in your script when your output changes. The length of your field is measured in a fixed amount of bytes. And, in case it isn't obvious (I'm being rude to you because you said 'No' rather than being civil to me), THE FACT YOU'RE REFERRING TO LINE NUMBERS MEANS YOU'RE BASING YOUR PARSING OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE INFORMATION YOU DOLT.