Even though Slate is financed by Microsoft, its journalists can be independent and willing to criticize their bosses boss. Good for them.
Microsoft security is such a joke that it is starting to percolate to the general public. Good for the alternatives.
An application (IE) that hasn't been updated for a long time, and which is present on 95% of all computers, is bound to contain more security problems than one with an active developer community (Firefox). Good for Mozilla and Firefox.
All in all, this is not really surprising, although it is certainly not good news for Microsoft.
But frankly, the most important choice in Linux, is, for me, the ability to do a:
./configure make make install
Also important is the choice of not installing something like -- say -- X11. I mean, what is the point of a graphical interface on a headless server? Windows does not offer you that kind of flexibility.
So it cuts both ways: installing and not installing. Choosing the best apps and environment for your needs is not something that Windows allows you to do.
Whether you like them or not (or even use them or not), Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Outlook Express are installed by default under Windows. Under Linux, it's up to you to decide what you want and don't want/need on your machine.
Finally, consider that while an allegation of copyright infringement exists in the Federal Courts today, those same courts have decided to migrate to the alleged perpetrator in that case. It's something to consider. As Søren Kierkegaard once said, "Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do."
Now, why on earth did I think about SCO reading this paragraph?;-)
The sad thing is not so much that there actually are people out there who believe this dribble. It is that some of them get elected to high political positions.
Ahem.
Remember: politicians don't really believe in anything. They just follow the money. And, let's face it: Microsoft has a lot of money to burn. Last time I checked, it was something like 50 billion US dollars in the bank. Expect more and more attacks in the future: 20 million dollars is absolutely nothing to Microsoft. The Monopoly (tm) is not going to go out without a fight.
Solution? More democracy. Specifically, more votes and more consumer-oriented information. People all over the world have decided they were fed up with politics and have let big corporations take control of the government. It's time to fight back with your votes.
I think it was way back in 1994-95 that I downloaded my first version of Slackware. It was love at first install, or something like that.
And I am still using it today. Why?
The KISS (Keept It Simple, Stupid) principle of Slackware makes it a breeze to use.
Slackware tries to be as UNIX-ish as possible.
Slackware -- with its BSD-style init -- is easy to configure.
Slackware is a complete system, and yet one that is still reasonbaly lean, since it includes only the most important software.
Slackware does not include any of the cutesy-yet-useless GUI thingie that are supposed to 'help' you configure your system while treating you like a jerk.
All in all, thanks Patrick ! Another great version of a great distribution !
Re:Illegal and tricky Spam
on
NYT on Spam Cops
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Why don't you just forward this to the FBI? I am sure their kiddie porn Dept would be interested.
Finding the relevant @fbi.gov address is left as an exercise for the reader...
Don't you need an ADSL/Cable connection to that little router? Yes, I know you can have your packets hop over to the next router and so on, but the article is still pretty optimistic.
(and, yes, I did RTFA)
Let's face it: if the big telcos aren't dead by now, this means they are not going to die anytime soon. I doubt Verizon is quaking in its boots right now...
Bill Gates sees a demo of the Lisa. Microsoft Windows is announced shortly afterward.
Bill Gates takes a look at the increase in Internet users. Shortly afterward, memo to all of Microsoft: Windows 95 must be Internet-ready.
Bill Gates takes a look at Google (primary target) and Beowulf clusters. Microsoft announces HPC working group.
Coincidence? Of course not, this has been a strategy since the days of BASIC. Microsoft copies all the good ideas. Of course, it makes a bad and buggy copy, but, hey, that's what a marketing dept is here for, right?
Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank.
Hellooooooooooooooooooooo?
Obviously, you have never seen this little page... Just scroll down through pictures. Don't ever underestimate the power of single RPG round fired at close range.
A lot of people seem to consider the British "Challenger" a much better tank than the Abrams, btw.
The site is rather empty right now, but it seems this is the company that will market this petabyte machine... er... box... er... whatever the name is.
But wait until 'Longhorn' comes out, and watch those Microsoft legal storm troopers pound poor little Mono into the ground. Or the 'compatibility' of Mono hit a brick wall faster than you can say 'General Public License'. Or both. Probably both, as a matter of fact.
Think I am joking? There was an article on/. the other day on the Longhorn patents that Microsoft is very busily filing... Something like 5 or 6 per day. Of course, right now, they are playing nice with Mono... But make no mistake:.NET and C# are Microsoft properties, and they are not very well known for letting others use their little toys.
Ask the Samba team how much support they got from Microsoft. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. At one point, with every new Windows release, Microsoft was actually actively introducing incompatibilities with Samba. And Longhorn is supposed to be end of Samba.
What makes you think they will play fair with Mono? Nothing. Once.NET has filled its purpose -- which, let us be honest, is to destroy Java -- it will either get dumped like a hot potato or it will become another patent-protected, 'sign on the dotted line with your blood and give us your firstborn child', closed source heap of MS trash.
These are my 0.02 US$, but I'd really like people to tell me why Mono is such a great thing...
One day, one of my colleagues came to me and asked (absolutely furious) "Why do you send me gay porn on my email address?".
Turned out that some sleazeball spamfscker had harvested my work email address and was using it to send gay porn HTML email, using 'clever' JavaScript to open dozens of windows containing images of a nature I will not describe here (Think group goatse.cx here -- yes, it was that bad). The 'From:' header contained, of course, my spoofed address.
Fortunately, this was a rather tech-friendly company and the colleague was also a good friend. I was able to explain to her that this was, in fact, not coming from me. And I showed her how to disable JavaScript in Netscape Mail. She, in turn, relayed the information to the rest of her open-space co-workers.
I still shiver when I think of the potential consequences if she had shown the email to our bosses, instead of closing down all the windows and going into my office... A short time after this incident, our sysadmins (bless their souls) installed SpamAssassin on the Postfix server, with a very threshold. And that was the end of spam.
Let's take a step back for just a second. Std Disclaimer: IANAL, but I play one on/.
If "AXA" wins, this means that using its name is forbidden, unless the company gives its approval beforehand. This imposes an undue restriction on freedom of speech, since Google is certainly not the only forum in which AXA is discussed and/or searched. Will this company sue, let's say, every newspapers or forums that discuss insurance companies and/or policies? Unlikely.
A few years ago, AXA may have argue its case by saying that it was 'undue competition', since France had laws prohibiting comparative commercials (Product A is better than product B because of...). But this is not the case anymore and comparative commercials are now legal in France.
Google may also argue that AdWords do not 'target' AXA, since -- AFAIK -- they are generated automatically. AXA is an insurance company (this is public knowledge). Therefore, a Google search on, say 'life insurance' would return pretty much the same AdWords results.
Therefore, I think AXA does not have a case. I also believe they know it, but that some over-zealous jerk in its Legal Dept decided to press the case anyway, just to make a point. They are just throwing good money out the window.
This may seem surprising, but French courts have proven in the past to be remarkably reasonable when it came to the Internet (Yahoo! 'nazi' case aside) and the previous decision is a case in point, since AXA lost it.
I fully expect Google to fight this all the way to the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), if need be. And I expect them to win.
Isn't it? I mean, Linux is free software, so pretty much everyone is allowed to use it, even Al Quaeda, the US military, the Mafia and all the child molesters out there. And if you don't like that state of affair, tough luck.
I don't think this resignation is going to achieve much.
Which reminds me of Theo De Raadt saying that OpenBSD could even be incorporated into "baby-mulching machines"... It's about the same here, as the GPL does not prevent anyone from using Linux.
Is there any Free software capable of exploiting the general computing power of modern video cards?
Well, since they released "a C++ interface for plugins and integration" for Gelato (ice cream in Italian, btw), this probably means that free software can (and, eventually, will) support all these high-end functions... or am I completely wrong?
For instance, just imagine Blender with a Gelato plug-in for rendering... hmmmm... Now I understand why they named it "Gelato"...
The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring.
Does anybody else finds this... well... horrible and sinister? So, just because consumers want a modicum of security -- and security means more expenses -- big pharma is outsourcing human testing?
As in, testing potentially dangerous new products on poor (non caucasian, perhaps?) people is sooooo much cheaper in [insert favourite country here]?
So, on one hand these big companies are making tons of dough off their rich consumers. Then, they refuse to sell certain drugs *cough cough* AIDS *cough cough* in poor countries (no enough profits to be made in Africa, mate!). Then, they put pressure on third-world countries (Brazil, India, etc) who decide to copy these products anyway.
Then, they simply outsource human testing, because "we big corporations have a God-given right to make even more profit". Even if it means less security and more unemployed.
Is not so much the article itself (Linux: good, Microsoft: bad, yadda yadda yadda) rather than the fact that it is published in The Economist, probably one of the most influential news magazines for PHBs.
Some of the most important managers, CEOs, CFOs, etc all read The Economist. Therefore, this article may be an important introduction to Linux for many of these people.
On the other hand, this is not the first Linux-positive article in The Economist, so everyone should know by know that Linux = good, Microsoft = bad, etc.
Seriously, folks -- I have said it before and I'll said it again -- do not use Microsoft products when it comes to the Internet.
If you care, even minimally, about security, then Firefox and Thunderbird should be installed by default on your Windows machine instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook.
This was the case in one of the companies I worked for, and they had almost zero virus problems in two years.
Slashdot Mirror
All in all, this is not really surprising, although it is certainly not good news for Microsoft.
So it cuts both ways: installing and not installing. Choosing the best apps and environment for your needs is not something that Windows allows you to do.
Whether you like them or not (or even use them or not), Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Outlook Express are installed by default under Windows. Under Linux, it's up to you to decide what you want and don't want/need on your machine.
From the article:
;-)
Finally, consider that while an allegation of copyright infringement exists in the Federal Courts today, those same courts have decided to migrate to the alleged perpetrator in that case. It's something to consider. As Søren Kierkegaard once said, "Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do."
Now, why on earth did I think about SCO reading this paragraph?
The sad thing is not so much that there actually are people out there who believe this dribble. It is that some of them get elected to high political positions.
Ahem.
Remember: politicians don't really believe in anything. They just follow the money. And, let's face it: Microsoft has a lot of money to burn. Last time I checked, it was something like 50 billion US dollars in the bank. Expect more and more attacks in the future: 20 million dollars is absolutely nothing to Microsoft. The Monopoly (tm) is not going to go out without a fight.
Solution? More democracy. Specifically, more votes and more consumer-oriented information. People all over the world have decided they were fed up with politics and have let big corporations take control of the government. It's time to fight back with your votes.
Are the purty pictures... Some of these origamis are incredibly beautiful. Does anybody know where to find other (high-res) pictures of them?
Is that Disney is #57 in the top500, while Weta has the #77 and #80 spots... impressive showing by the entertainment companies.
On the other hand, PDI (Pacific Data Images -- Shrek), Pixar and ILM do not appear in the list, which is also very interesting.
Yep, that's what I thought, another Homeland Security scam. Nothing to see here. Carry on.
And I am still using it today. Why?
All in all, thanks Patrick ! Another great version of a great distribution !
Why don't you just forward this to the FBI? I am sure their kiddie porn Dept would be interested.
Finding the relevant @fbi.gov address is left as an exercise for the reader...
Don't you need an ADSL/Cable connection to that little router? Yes, I know you can have your packets hop over to the next router and so on, but the article is still pretty optimistic.
(and, yes, I did RTFA)
Let's face it: if the big telcos aren't dead by now, this means they are not going to die anytime soon. I doubt Verizon is quaking in its boots right now...
Coincidence? Of course not, this has been a strategy since the days of BASIC. Microsoft copies all the good ideas. Of course, it makes a bad and buggy copy, but, hey, that's what a marketing dept is here for, right?
If a guy like him advocates nuclear power as a way to avoid global warming, the risks must be enormous indeed.
Even if global warming is not as bad as predicted, the about face is certainly interesting.
Nothing in the whole country can even dent an Abrams tank.
Hellooooooooooooooooooooo?
Obviously, you have never seen this little page... Just scroll down through pictures. Don't ever underestimate the power of single RPG round fired at close range.
A lot of people seem to consider the British "Challenger" a much better tank than the Abrams, btw.
It's right there under the pictures :
http://capricorn-tech.com/
The site is rather empty right now, but it seems this is the company that will market this petabyte machine... er... box... er... whatever the name is.
But wait until 'Longhorn' comes out, and watch those Microsoft legal storm troopers pound poor little Mono into the ground. Or the 'compatibility' of Mono hit a brick wall faster than you can say 'General Public License'. Or both. Probably both, as a matter of fact.
/. the other day on the Longhorn patents that Microsoft is very busily filing... Something like 5 or 6 per day. Of course, right now, they are playing nice with Mono... But make no mistake: .NET and C# are Microsoft properties, and they are not very well known for letting others use their little toys.
.NET has filled its purpose -- which, let us be honest, is to destroy Java -- it will either get dumped like a hot potato or it will become another patent-protected, 'sign on the dotted line with your blood and give us your firstborn child', closed source heap of MS trash.
Think I am joking? There was an article on
Ask the Samba team how much support they got from Microsoft. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. At one point, with every new Windows release, Microsoft was actually actively introducing incompatibilities with Samba. And Longhorn is supposed to be end of Samba.
What makes you think they will play fair with Mono? Nothing. Once
These are my 0.02 US$, but I'd really like people to tell me why Mono is such a great thing...
Let's see Super-MP3's will incorporate a lightweight DRM?
How long is it going to take to have a converter that transforms Super-MP3s into normal MP3s, with the DRM stripped?
How long until someone incorporates this into, say, xmms or lame, so that the conversion is actually totally transparent to the user?
Gentlemen... start your compilers!
Slightly OT, but still...
One day, one of my colleagues came to me and asked (absolutely furious) " Why do you send me gay porn on my email address? ".
Turned out that some sleazeball spamfscker had harvested my work email address and was using it to send gay porn HTML email, using 'clever' JavaScript to open dozens of windows containing images of a nature I will not describe here (Think group goatse.cx here -- yes, it was that bad). The 'From:' header contained, of course, my spoofed address.
Fortunately, this was a rather tech-friendly company and the colleague was also a good friend. I was able to explain to her that this was, in fact, not coming from me. And I showed her how to disable JavaScript in Netscape Mail. She, in turn, relayed the information to the rest of her open-space co-workers.
I still shiver when I think of the potential consequences if she had shown the email to our bosses, instead of closing down all the windows and going into my office... A short time after this incident, our sysadmins (bless their souls) installed SpamAssassin on the Postfix server, with a very threshold. And that was the end of spam.
Let's take a step back for just a second. Std Disclaimer: IANAL, but I play one on /.
If "AXA" wins, this means that using its name is forbidden, unless the company gives its approval beforehand. This imposes an undue restriction on freedom of speech, since Google is certainly not the only forum in which AXA is discussed and/or searched. Will this company sue, let's say, every newspapers or forums that discuss insurance companies and/or policies? Unlikely.
A few years ago, AXA may have argue its case by saying that it was 'undue competition', since France had laws prohibiting comparative commercials (Product A is better than product B because of...). But this is not the case anymore and comparative commercials are now legal in France.
Google may also argue that AdWords do not 'target' AXA, since -- AFAIK -- they are generated automatically. AXA is an insurance company (this is public knowledge). Therefore, a Google search on, say 'life insurance' would return pretty much the same AdWords results.
Therefore, I think AXA does not have a case. I also believe they know it, but that some over-zealous jerk in its Legal Dept decided to press the case anyway, just to make a point. They are just throwing good money out the window.
This may seem surprising, but French courts have proven in the past to be remarkably reasonable when it came to the Internet (Yahoo! 'nazi' case aside) and the previous decision is a case in point, since AXA lost it.
I fully expect Google to fight this all the way to the French Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), if need be. And I expect them to win.
Just my 0.02 Euros...
Let the flame wars... begin!
And, just to add fuel to the fire:
Are they going to release a hard-hitting report on the Slashdot effect on an un-suspecting web site?
*ducks*
(2 comments and already slashdotted... sheesh...)
Isn't it? I mean, Linux is free software, so pretty much everyone is allowed to use it, even Al Quaeda, the US military, the Mafia and all the child molesters out there. And if you don't like that state of affair, tough luck.
I don't think this resignation is going to achieve much.
Which reminds me of Theo De Raadt saying that OpenBSD could even be incorporated into "baby-mulching machines"... It's about the same here, as the GPL does not prevent anyone from using Linux.
Is there any Free software capable of exploiting the general computing power of modern video cards?
Well, since they released "a C++ interface for plugins and integration" for Gelato (ice cream in Italian, btw), this probably means that free software can (and, eventually, will) support all these high-end functions... or am I completely wrong?
For instance, just imagine Blender with a Gelato plug-in for rendering... hmmmm... Now I understand why they named it "Gelato"...
The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring.
Does anybody else finds this... well... horrible and sinister? So, just because consumers want a modicum of security -- and security means more expenses -- big pharma is outsourcing human testing?
As in, testing potentially dangerous new products on poor (non caucasian, perhaps?) people is sooooo much cheaper in [insert favourite country here]?
So, on one hand these big companies are making tons of dough off their rich consumers. Then, they refuse to sell certain drugs *cough cough* AIDS *cough cough* in poor countries (no enough profits to be made in Africa, mate!). Then, they put pressure on third-world countries (Brazil, India, etc) who decide to copy these products anyway.
Then , they simply outsource human testing, because "we big corporations have a God-given right to make even more profit ". Even if it means less security and more unemployed.
Is this sick or what?
Is not so much the article itself (Linux: good, Microsoft: bad, yadda yadda yadda) rather than the fact that it is published in The Economist, probably one of the most influential news magazines for PHBs.
Some of the most important managers, CEOs, CFOs, etc all read The Economist. Therefore, this article may be an important introduction to Linux for many of these people.
On the other hand, this is not the first Linux-positive article in The Economist, so everyone should know by know that Linux = good, Microsoft = bad, etc.
Yep. Thank Mozilla for Firefox.
Seriously, folks -- I have said it before and I'll said it again -- do not use Microsoft products when it comes to the Internet.
If you care, even minimally, about security, then Firefox and Thunderbird should be installed by default on your Windows machine instead of Internet Explorer and Outlook.
This was the case in one of the companies I worked for, and they had almost zero virus problems in two years.