If Microsoft was serious about security, they would look at the number of exploits against Mozilla, then look at IE, then drop the IE product and bundle Mozilla with Windows.
Regardless of the functionality, IE has been a security disaster for the Windows platform, and has cost Microsoft far, far more than it has gained.
AOL is also equally inept in its decision to bundle IE, for by doing so they weaken their own platform by equipping it with an "exploit magnet." AOL should have insisted that IE match the Mozilla security record for a reasonable duration before bundling IE.
A reasonable capitalist would have bundled Mozilla with Windows. Bill Gates is not a capitalist... he is a fascist.
While I recently abandoned RedHat for OpenBSD, I am uncomfortable in the knowledge that Microsoft could continue to incorporate BSD code into their Windows variants, and that I am helping this process by purchasing OpenBSD CDs. While I love the reduction in traffic on the OpenBSD errata channel (vs. RedHat), I do not wish to see the Microsoft monopoly continue, and the only thing that will stop it is the GPL.
While I realize that I could simply attach the GPL to every piece of source code in the BSD CVS tree and redistibute it, my actions would not in reality hamper any corporate acquisitions of BSD code.
Ideally, I would like to see the hacker community free to use the BSD license, while I would like to force the corporate community to abide by the GPL in every piece of software they produce (as will someday occur when Microsoft is finally defeated by "viral" GPL code).
I haven't always felt this way, but US corporations are abusive in many ways, and I would like to see them be more forcibly restrained. A judge instantaneously applying the GPL to all Microsoft software would be a real joy.
I seem to remember seeing a Netscape icon briefly appear in mwm as I was installing.
Does Solaris 9 use a bundled Netscape in this manner?
Wat printers can be easily/cheaply refilled? Dell?
on
Lexmark DMCA Case Winds On
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I have avoided owning an inkjet because of the unreasonable consumables costs. I am glad that the EU will be investigating the cartel of printer manufacturers for illegal price fixing.
If I were to purchase an inkjet, which model can be easily and cheaply refilled, and carries a durable printhead?
I'd like to buy the ink by the liter, and I'd like the color match of the ink to be reasonably close to the OEM cartriges.
Also, wasn't Dell going to enter this market and cut the price of the consumables?
The billions that Microsoft has earned, which have come at the cost of true innovation in our industry, emerged when Microsoft generated substandard copies of Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, etc. (Eudora?) and packaged these absolutely inferior, substandard applications with integration that would have been impossible to achieve without control of the OS.
I can't explain the reasoning behind Lotus' preference of OS/2 for 1-2-3 versus Windows (which helped kill them). I can't explain why WordPerfect stayed in the DOS world a little too long.
One thing that I can say is that, if we had wanted the proprietary software market to survive, the antitrust trial should have happened in the late 80s, at about the same time that Microsoft started knifing DR-DOS in the back.
Now, Microsoft has destroyed all the other major proprietary players on the desktop, and the industry has banned together behind GPL software in an effort to stop them.
In the end, Microsoft is doomed. You can only charge for something that is free for so long.
Perhaps the pity of it is that all of the other proprietary players will eventually go down as well. Eventually, all OS and major application software will be free. The GPL and BSD licenses will someday walk over Microsoft's grave. It is only a matter of time.
After AT&T had it's posterior handed to it on a platter in Federal court in trying to sue BSDI and UCB, UCB immediately filed suit against AT&T in California State court, where they settled for terms that were rather advantageous to UCB (but the settlement terms were sealed).
AT&T was not able to suppress BSDI (for the most part), *BSD, or the work of the CSRG.
While IANAL, a BSD player should sue SCO immediately, if only to open the closed settlement terms between UCB and AT&T. SCO has threatened the entire *BSD userbase, and this certainly seems like tortious interference with a business to me.
The most sensible BSD player to sue SCO at this point would be Apple, but perhaps Apple/Free/Net/OpenBSD should act in concert. IBM might even be willing to foot the bill.
Let's face it: in their own way, Apple is being quite fair. Everybody in the free software community uses gcc, and publishing SPEC scores on x86 gcc is valid and useful.
However, IBM probably has C compilers for the POWER architecture that produce far more optimized code than gcc. Why hasn't Apple licensed and ported this technology?
Apple needn't resell such a C compiler, but critical system binaries (i.e. the kernel) could be recompiled for much better performance. Granted also that IBM is unlikely to support Objective C anytime soon, so such a compiler is only marginally useful.
However, Apple positively wastes these POWER chips without a vendor-optimized C compiler.
Germany and France have allowed a large emmigration of Arabic/Islamic peoples into their nations. Their oppposition to the US conquest of Arabic lands is motivated by obvious self-interest.
As an American and a US Citizen, I personally think that the attack against Iraq is irrational and potentially counterproductive. However, it is my hope that at some point our nation insists upon guaranteed civil rights for our (current) subject Arabic nations; ideally, I would like to see the Bill of Rights from our own Constitution as a major component of any new government formed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, I do not think that our current Presidential regieme has the foresight for such action. Bush must be replaced as soon as possible. It would be hard to imagine a candidate with less foreign policy acumen.
I seem to remember two reasons offered by RedHat for resistance to ReiserFS:
ext2 filesystems can be easily upgraded to ext3
The fsck_ext(2|3) userland utility is very mature, and anything beyond a journal replay under ReiserFS has some probably of a corrupt filesystem (which may have improved in the years since this claim was made)
I think that Bero made these arguments here on slashdot sometime before he and RedHat parted company. Still, there is no excuse for refusing the tremendous gift of XFS from SGI.
Look at RedHat's hardware compatibility lists... They have tier 1, 2, 3 hardware. RedHat itself has tacitly stated that their support will be less accurate if you are not using tier 1 hardware. The users always have a role to play in the odds of a successful support call.
I am happy that RedHat made a profit this quarter, and I wish them well.
However, I think that their changes to support will hurt them in a number of ways:
They are placing restrictions on the distribution and use of GPL software, which will eventually annoy the FSF.
Linux has a moderately good reputation for security. Their actions with up2date threaten to ruin this reputation; they have taken their own user base as hostages.
Keeping a RedHat system patched and secure is now more inconvenient.
Their user base is now expected to pay more for less, which is corporate philosophy at its worst.
Because of these problems, I have been dumping RedHat from my customers' systems, and replacing it mostly with OpenBSD. While the necessity of compiling from source for all security updates is in itself inconvenient, there is 1/10 of the traffic in OpenBSD errata, so there is less work in the end.
p.s. What RedHat really ought to do is package a Linux kernel with the OpenBSD userland, and sell this as RedHat/Secure BSD Edition. Run this for two years and see how the takeup and errata rate compares with the standard and advanced server product. Yes, charge $40 for it.
Actually, Sun needs to roll out Itanium + Opteron
on
Sun's Last Stand
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· Score: 1
Sun needs to roll out Itanium and Opteron servers, scaled as high as possible both under Linux and Solaris. They need to do this right now. The market should decide between Sparc, Opteron, and Itanium; Scott should get out of the way.
Sun needs to price Solaris below any other UNIX vendor, and they need to do everything possible to insure that Solaris runs on their competetor's (equivalent architecture) machines. Any Sun technology running on non-Sun equipment is a win for Sun marketing.
Sun has enough experience with low-end systems that they should become the Clawhammer workstation vendor. They should sell these systems with Win32 if the customers ask.
Sun should make a grand show of giving the customer what they want, not what Scott wants.
Caldera was arguably the most technically advanced distribution in several phases of the history of Linux. Caldera's distribution was the first with a graphical installer ("Lizard?"), Caldera's kernel contributions are voluminous, etc.
While problems at Red Hat continue and multiply even to this day, every single binary in the distribution comes with source and has since the removal of Netscape Navigator.
You at Caldera were only too happy to base your installer on the closed QT, and we owe nothing to you for the GPL QT. Like your friends at SUSE et al, you commingle closed-source applications in your distribution.
If you as Caldera, or Tarantella/SCO, or SUSE had insisted upon open code from the beginning, you would be in Red Hat's position now, since Red Hat was technically inferior.
I remember a Red Hat that forced TrollTech to GPL QT. I remember a RedHat that preferred PostgreSQL over MySQL, voicing a preference for standards compliance. I remember a RedHat that never buckled to the pressue to include a proprietary YAST, and who made Anaconda open source.
What has happened to Red Hat? Where did my favorite UNIX distribution go? I want it back!
While there has been some activity on journaling filesystems for the BSDs, they have none in production. While many in the BSD community might argue that "soft updates" fill all their journaling needs, others disagree.
For the BSDs, I would like to see:
dynamic inode creation
optional journaling of data as well as metadata
Why do you think that developers are hesitant to introduce these features to BSD? Is it because of licensing issues?
If someone should happen to post it, perhaps she might receive a few new catalog subscriptions... perhaps enough to flood a city block?
Why not post some other interesting RIAA office addresses? It might make sending subpoenas and cease and desist notices more interesting if they have to wade through an ocean of Spiegel catalogs to do it.
SCO and IBM worked together for some time on a version of AIX for Itanium. AFAIK, SCO contributed UNIXWare code, and IBM contributed AIX code.
IBM walked away from this agreement.
If IBM contributed anything from this collective codebase (either their own code or SCO's), then SCO's actions become entirely logical.
This may not be about historical UNIX code. This may be about recent development efforts and the sour relationship between IBM and SCO over Itanium UNIX.
they have no desire to make it work better for non paying users do they?
Which is exactly why I am dumping them for OpenBSD. Even though the process of applying updates is somewhat more difficult, there is a far lower frequency.
I am looking forward to having a kernel and libc that last longer than 3 months.
You recently had some success in distributing RH9 isos. Was RedHat involved with this process? Are they evaluating your technology for other applications (esp. up2date)?
While I am moving away from RedHat because of the changes to up2date, it would be interesting to see a major UNIX player (perhaps even a BSD) begin distributing errata via Bittorrent - perhaps even allowing a configurable parameter to control the "willingness to upload."
Bittorrent integration into Solaris patchchk would also be quite a coup for your team, granted that they are perl-centric.
At this point, there can be no argument that Windows Update supports systems longer than RHN, to the shame of Red Hat.
Whether its support is better is another debate entirely.
In my case, I am updating my systems to OpenBSD. I am looking forward to a kernel and c-library that I don't have to patch once every three months like clockwork.
From this perspective alone, OpenBSD is worth the $40 for the CDs; a year's subscription to RHN is not.
Since we know that Microsoft was instrumental in killing the NSA's secure Linux, why are de Raadt et al nearly certain that they lost DARPA support over a little exercise in free speech?
It is a great shame that DARPA is withdrawing support for secure operating systems. I am sorely disappointed that IT in the US is condemned to monthly critical vulnerabilities in glibc, IIS, kernels, etc. DARPA would be more reasonable in stipulating that no money be used for encryption development/research at this point.
Government: you are very expensive; justify your high costs.
Slashdot Mirror
If Microsoft was serious about security, they would look at the number of exploits against Mozilla, then look at IE, then drop the IE product and bundle Mozilla with Windows.
Regardless of the functionality, IE has been a security disaster for the Windows platform, and has cost Microsoft far, far more than it has gained.
AOL is also equally inept in its decision to bundle IE, for by doing so they weaken their own platform by equipping it with an "exploit magnet." AOL should have insisted that IE match the Mozilla security record for a reasonable duration before bundling IE.
A reasonable capitalist would have bundled Mozilla with Windows. Bill Gates is not a capitalist... he is a fascist.
While I recently abandoned RedHat for OpenBSD, I am uncomfortable in the knowledge that Microsoft could continue to incorporate BSD code into their Windows variants, and that I am helping this process by purchasing OpenBSD CDs. While I love the reduction in traffic on the OpenBSD errata channel (vs. RedHat), I do not wish to see the Microsoft monopoly continue, and the only thing that will stop it is the GPL.
While I realize that I could simply attach the GPL to every piece of source code in the BSD CVS tree and redistibute it, my actions would not in reality hamper any corporate acquisitions of BSD code.
Ideally, I would like to see the hacker community free to use the BSD license, while I would like to force the corporate community to abide by the GPL in every piece of software they produce (as will someday occur when Microsoft is finally defeated by "viral" GPL code).
I haven't always felt this way, but US corporations are abusive in many ways, and I would like to see them be more forcibly restrained. A judge instantaneously applying the GPL to all Microsoft software would be a real joy.
Throughly superior.
I seem to remember seeing a Netscape icon briefly appear in mwm as I was installing.
Does Solaris 9 use a bundled Netscape in this manner?
I have avoided owning an inkjet because of the unreasonable consumables costs. I am glad that the EU will be investigating the cartel of printer manufacturers for illegal price fixing.
If I were to purchase an inkjet, which model can be easily and cheaply refilled, and carries a durable printhead?
I'd like to buy the ink by the liter, and I'd like the color match of the ink to be reasonably close to the OEM cartriges.
Also, wasn't Dell going to enter this market and cut the price of the consumables?
The billions that Microsoft has earned, which have come at the cost of true innovation in our industry, emerged when Microsoft generated substandard copies of Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, etc. (Eudora?) and packaged these absolutely inferior, substandard applications with integration that would have been impossible to achieve without control of the OS.
I can't explain the reasoning behind Lotus' preference of OS/2 for 1-2-3 versus Windows (which helped kill them). I can't explain why WordPerfect stayed in the DOS world a little too long.
One thing that I can say is that, if we had wanted the proprietary software market to survive, the antitrust trial should have happened in the late 80s, at about the same time that Microsoft started knifing DR-DOS in the back.
Now, Microsoft has destroyed all the other major proprietary players on the desktop, and the industry has banned together behind GPL software in an effort to stop them.
In the end, Microsoft is doomed. You can only charge for something that is free for so long.
Perhaps the pity of it is that all of the other proprietary players will eventually go down as well. Eventually, all OS and major application software will be free. The GPL and BSD licenses will someday walk over Microsoft's grave. It is only a matter of time.
It's done more for distribution-independent binaries than the LSB ever did.
After AT&T had it's posterior handed to it on a platter in Federal court in trying to sue BSDI and UCB, UCB immediately filed suit against AT&T in California State court, where they settled for terms that were rather advantageous to UCB (but the settlement terms were sealed).
AT&T was not able to suppress BSDI (for the most part), *BSD, or the work of the CSRG.
While IANAL, a BSD player should sue SCO immediately, if only to open the closed settlement terms between UCB and AT&T. SCO has threatened the entire *BSD userbase, and this certainly seems like tortious interference with a business to me.
The most sensible BSD player to sue SCO at this point would be Apple, but perhaps Apple/Free/Net/OpenBSD should act in concert. IBM might even be willing to foot the bill.
Let's face it: in their own way, Apple is being quite fair. Everybody in the free software community uses gcc, and publishing SPEC scores on x86 gcc is valid and useful.
However, IBM probably has C compilers for the POWER architecture that produce far more optimized code than gcc. Why hasn't Apple licensed and ported this technology?
Apple needn't resell such a C compiler, but critical system binaries (i.e. the kernel) could be recompiled for much better performance. Granted also that IBM is unlikely to support Objective C anytime soon, so such a compiler is only marginally useful.
However, Apple positively wastes these POWER chips without a vendor-optimized C compiler.
Germany and France have allowed a large emmigration of Arabic/Islamic peoples into their nations. Their oppposition to the US conquest of Arabic lands is motivated by obvious self-interest.
As an American and a US Citizen, I personally think that the attack against Iraq is irrational and potentially counterproductive. However, it is my hope that at some point our nation insists upon guaranteed civil rights for our (current) subject Arabic nations; ideally, I would like to see the Bill of Rights from our own Constitution as a major component of any new government formed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, I do not think that our current Presidential regieme has the foresight for such action. Bush must be replaced as soon as possible. It would be hard to imagine a candidate with less foreign policy acumen.
I seem to remember two reasons offered by RedHat for resistance to ReiserFS:
I think that Bero made these arguments here on slashdot sometime before he and RedHat parted company. Still, there is no excuse for refusing the tremendous gift of XFS from SGI.
Look at RedHat's hardware compatibility lists... They have tier 1, 2, 3 hardware. RedHat itself has tacitly stated that their support will be less accurate if you are not using tier 1 hardware. The users always have a role to play in the odds of a successful support call.
I am happy that RedHat made a profit this quarter, and I wish them well.
However, I think that their changes to support will hurt them in a number of ways:
Because of these problems, I have been dumping RedHat from my customers' systems, and replacing it mostly with OpenBSD. While the necessity of compiling from source for all security updates is in itself inconvenient, there is 1/10 of the traffic in OpenBSD errata, so there is less work in the end.
Sun needs to roll out Itanium and Opteron servers, scaled as high as possible both under Linux and Solaris. They need to do this right now. The market should decide between Sparc, Opteron, and Itanium; Scott should get out of the way.
Sun needs to price Solaris below any other UNIX vendor, and they need to do everything possible to insure that Solaris runs on their competetor's (equivalent architecture) machines. Any Sun technology running on non-Sun equipment is a win for Sun marketing.
Sun has enough experience with low-end systems that they should become the Clawhammer workstation vendor. They should sell these systems with Win32 if the customers ask.
Sun should make a grand show of giving the customer what they want, not what Scott wants.
Caldera was arguably the most technically advanced distribution in several phases of the history of Linux. Caldera's distribution was the first with a graphical installer ("Lizard?"), Caldera's kernel contributions are voluminous, etc.
While problems at Red Hat continue and multiply even to this day, every single binary in the distribution comes with source and has since the removal of Netscape Navigator.
You at Caldera were only too happy to base your installer on the closed QT, and we owe nothing to you for the GPL QT. Like your friends at SUSE et al, you commingle closed-source applications in your distribution.
If you as Caldera, or Tarantella/SCO, or SUSE had insisted upon open code from the beginning, you would be in Red Hat's position now, since Red Hat was technically inferior.
You did not insist upon open code. Tough break.
I remember a Red Hat that forced TrollTech to GPL QT. I remember a RedHat that preferred PostgreSQL over MySQL, voicing a preference for standards compliance. I remember a RedHat that never buckled to the pressue to include a proprietary YAST, and who made Anaconda open source.
What has happened to Red Hat? Where did my favorite UNIX distribution go? I want it back!
A previous employer liked to give out $10k hiring bonuses that had to be repaid if you left before a set time (my case was two years).
We had several people who left the day of the expiration, with less than on week's warning.
I casually let slip that I would be renting out my house six months before my date was up.
This employer has a few bad things to say about me, but they have admitted that my departure was cleaner than the others because it was expected.
Time limits on sign-on bonuses plus a bad work environment always equals a mutually-agreed termination date.
In other words, the Oracle installer won't work (since it's based on a jre that is broken under 9 [afaik]).
9 got a new major release mainly because of binary incompatibilities due to pthreads.
While there has been some activity on journaling filesystems for the BSDs, they have none in production. While many in the BSD community might argue that "soft updates" fill all their journaling needs, others disagree.
For the BSDs, I would like to see:
Why do you think that developers are hesitant to introduce these features to BSD? Is it because of licensing issues?
If someone should happen to post it, perhaps she might receive a few new catalog subscriptions... perhaps enough to flood a city block?
Why not post some other interesting RIAA office addresses? It might make sending subpoenas and cease and desist notices more interesting if they have to wade through an ocean of Spiegel catalogs to do it.
Denial of service indeed.
SCO and IBM worked together for some time on a version of AIX for Itanium. AFAIK, SCO contributed UNIXWare code, and IBM contributed AIX code.
IBM walked away from this agreement.
If IBM contributed anything from this collective codebase (either their own code or SCO's), then SCO's actions become entirely logical.
This may not be about historical UNIX code. This may be about recent development efforts and the sour relationship between IBM and SCO over Itanium UNIX.
Which is exactly why I am dumping them for OpenBSD. Even though the process of applying updates is somewhat more difficult, there is a far lower frequency.
I am looking forward to having a kernel and libc that last longer than 3 months.
You recently had some success in distributing RH9 isos. Was RedHat involved with this process? Are they evaluating your technology for other applications (esp. up2date)?
While I am moving away from RedHat because of the changes to up2date, it would be interesting to see a major UNIX player (perhaps even a BSD) begin distributing errata via Bittorrent - perhaps even allowing a configurable parameter to control the "willingness to upload."
Bittorrent integration into Solaris patchchk would also be quite a coup for your team, granted that they are perl-centric.
At this point, there can be no argument that Windows Update supports systems longer than RHN, to the shame of Red Hat.
Whether its support is better is another debate entirely.
In my case, I am updating my systems to OpenBSD. I am looking forward to a kernel and c-library that I don't have to patch once every three months like clockwork.
From this perspective alone, OpenBSD is worth the $40 for the CDs; a year's subscription to RHN is not.
As someone who is currently ditching redhat for openbsd, I don't care for rc.conf at all.
However, I am certainly looking forward to not upgrading my kernel/glibc every three months. My complaints are mostly cosmetic.
Since we know that Microsoft was instrumental in killing the NSA's secure Linux, why are de Raadt et al nearly certain that they lost DARPA support over a little exercise in free speech?
It is a great shame that DARPA is withdrawing support for secure operating systems. I am sorely disappointed that IT in the US is condemned to monthly critical vulnerabilities in glibc, IIS, kernels, etc. DARPA would be more reasonable in stipulating that no money be used for encryption development/research at this point.
Government: you are very expensive; justify your high costs.