Second, 3 firewalls? for a home network? He didn't state what type, but I can guess...
1) Software Based firewall (Possibly two if you don't trust the first. 2) Wireless AP to internal network Firewall. 3) Internet firewall.
I have two of these on my home network (for the windows client), ZoneAlarm + Hardware. When I install a wireless access point I will then add another one to firewall that segement.
1) BIOS password. 2) Windows Login Password. 3) Windows Network Login Password. 4) VMWare Server Password. 5) Mail Server Password.
Good security practices state that you should never use that 'Remember this Password' option any program displays for you. I can see why he would have five passwords to enter.
Microsoft already had a 64bit Windows running on DEC/Compaq Alpha. Why in the hell did it take so long for this release? The whole point of having HAL was portability.
What the heck did they do to Windows to make the port take so long? AMD64 support should have taken a year at most. And why in the Hell do I still have to thunk down to 32bits (Go lookup 64bit Windows and thunking)? Not that I need it, but I'm just curious.
Don't try this at home unless your ready for system lockups.
Tools required: Windows 2000+, Linux 2.4/2.6 and OS/2 Warp4
1) 3 CDROMS containing Windows/Linux/OS2 OpenOffice Install. 2) Network sever containing GCC install program for all three OS's. 3) Preferably a floppy install program for all three, but I think a browser based download of java for all three will suffice.
Pre-Start your network share to the gcc shared drive. Pre-Start your download link to Java. Pre-Start solitarire.
Start all three installs at once.
My findings were OS/2 done in ten minutes with acceptable performance with solitaire. Linux was very sluggish and couldn't draw cards (sol), took about thirty minutes. Windows didn't even finish, the system was unresponsive.
Oops. Your not supposed to publish windows benchmarks without the written consent of Microsoft. I'm sorry.
Same computer, AMD/K62 256k ram. Your milage may vary and I havent tried this with Windows XP. Is this an acceptable test? Mostly it's something I do whenever I install a new system. Looking forward to trying this out on my wifes new Apple.
As a friend to a lot of other parents who don't know the difference between M,T, and E ratings, only the video game makers are to blame for this. The self-regulating ratings are a joke.
I don't believe in censorship for video games (government or otherwise). I regulate (censor) what my kids see/do, but thats my right as a parent.
I think another rating system is in order for the clueless who buy eight year old Johnny Doom III because he asks for it.
Whatever happend to/noblood/nosex etc. options (Duke3D, Mortal Combat)?
I remember reading that article from somewhere. I dismissed it at the time because our own internal test results showed there was no way that Microsft tested the software the way that they claimed.
Meanwhile, as of now, were having 2003 SP1 compatability problems. Maybe Microsoft tests/uses the software as you say. But more than likely they are not using the same commercial addons/packages that we are.
I think a lot of people fail to realize that Microsoft is its own BIGGEST beta tester.
So, it can be safe to say that beta software is relatively safe.
References please. Prove it or shutup. In the field most people find out the opposite. Is that a problem with Microsoft or the certified people who maintain customer software? Didn't Microsoft certify these people?
Why do I have to replace system level drivers for Sqlserver? Why should I have to install the latest IE for a non-internet facing repository? I've never seen a beta of postgres/mysql demand that linux/bsd kernel drivers be replaced.
Win98SE without IE and Netbios over tcp/ip is pretty secure. Neither the Wife's or kids machines have ever been compromised. Granted, we run ZoneAlarm on both machines and I don't allow the kids to download/install programs without permission (active network monitoring is in place).
Still, I wouldn't recommend any user to run an internet connected computer as root. If I were a malicious person I could craft an XPI to own a linux box. It'd be just a matter of waiting for some clueless Luser to click on 'OK'.
Personal gripe. The mozilla foundation needs to sign certified/sponsored XPI's. If the XPI is not signed, the installer dialog box should be RED and consume 75% of the screen. They could also turn this into a revenue stream if they certify plugins for a small license fee to third parties. My opinion and I digress.
What a intelligent response. Here I was giving up on slashdot due to the signal to noise ratio lately:)
I guess I'm assuming that portability is an issue: Linux users aren't all on x86 platforms, and there are other free *n*xes besides LSB-compliant distributions of Linux. If you care about supporting anything other than x86 Linux, then releasing anything other than source ends up being a LOT of work.
I deal with SCO/NCR/OS2/AIX/Windows/Linux binaries. No issues when your POSIX/ANSI compliant. Compiler/linker issues yes, no runtime problems other than the TCP/IP stack on Win9x hosts.
Packaging will be an issue. Not all of your target users will have identical operating systems, libraries, or locations for common files. You will need to use some combination of Ant, Make, Autoconf, and similar tools in order to distribute your software in such a way that it can be easily compiled and installed by end users (if appropriate) or whomever else your target market may be.
Just a minor complaint with your post.
Packaging is not a issue if he/she chooses the correct runtime environment. POSIX/LSB compliance should be the goal. Source code distribution is only required if the author uses GPL (and derivatives) code. Other than that he/she can distribute in binary only form.
Would you really recommend Python/Ruby/Java etc. when none are ANSI/ISO approved? He/She might wind up in the same situation when someone hijacks the language.
Moving parts wear out. Books wear out after continued use. Software does not. Define OLD for me please?
We all text speak now, does that make proper German, Spanish, or English old? Did my amortization program I wrote back in 1982 somehow become obsolete because the math has changed?
The only reason any software should be considered obsolete is when computers stop using binary and move on to something else. The 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, and 4 bit computers all speak binary at the same level.
/etc is not an issue with LSB complant distributions.
A bigger issue is how we prevent less than average user from having thier linux machine become a host owned by the seedy people.
Maybe this isn't the forum, but it needs to be discussed. Not from the kernel or services perspective either, just from the Joe/Jane user context.
My thoughts?
- We should not pester the user too much. My parents turned off Zone Alarm because they got tired of the pop-up warnings. (I know you can turn it off, but I didn't and left and they disabled it).
- Any program that connects to the internet needs to su to a different user context after initialization (like apache, thttpd etc.). This should prevent the application from overriding the user files because of a bug/flaw.
- Programs not started by the user with a click or run command should not be allowed to execute. Could Gnome/Kde implement such a feature?
- After X login, I have a script that copies my.xinit/.xsession files from the hidden safe directory before kde/xfce/windowmaker start. Maybe this should be standard?
I don't know all the answers, this is just a topic for discussion. Lets start a thread on how you would implement user level safety while still enjoying the benefits of Linux.
You forgot the most important flaw with the registry. Single point of failure.
I've seen more than a few computers where a bad block on the hard drive mapped back to the registry. At that point you have to reinstall windows and all your programs. It would be much easier to reinstall windows with your old programs/icons/preferences in place if each program kept thier settings in an Ini.
Linux makes this easy. Tar $home, install new distribution. Add user, extract home.tgz. All icons, preferences etc. restored.
I want a system where I can get a list of running services (not just all processes), the ports on which they are listening (I don't care if they are TCP, UDP, Unix domain, whatever passes for IPC on Windows, or even Mach ports), and be able to trivially turn a service on, or off, or configure it with a simple commandline or a click of the mouse.
SuSE Yast does all this.
Give me the Windows services manager (with a console equivalent) with the ability to see through what interfaces (e.g. ports) that service is provided, the ability to configure when and how it is started (e.g. at which runlevel), the ability to configure it directly from there (e.g. bring up a custom configurator, a web browser with the appropriate URL, or a text editor on the right files with a double-click in the list). I don't care where the configuration is on disk (though this better integrate well with backup software), nor how it's stored (though there had better be a human-readable text format that can be exported and imported, if necessary).
Again, SuSE Yast does all this. It appears you have a distribution specific issue.
The two VB programs I still occasionally run when I boot to windows require MFC4.5. After running WLIB and WDISASM on them I see that the programs are a mixed MFC/VB hybrid. This is why I assumed the VB runtime needed MFC.
I went ahead and dumped VBrun400.dll and VBrun300.dll and both call back into Win32 native calls with no other external dependancies. The VBrun300 does have both 32 and 16 bit functions, it also has the old windows thunking mechanism.
It's well known that you use Linux in your mega clusters. I was wondering if you have ever been approached by Microsoft, Sun, or HP in an effort to switch to their proprietary OSes.
I can't imagine that you haven't. It must have been a huge decision to invest in one technology, so are you satisfied with what you have?
Craig:
We have been approached by several vendors. However, the advantages of Linux for us are pretty strong: It's an environment our developers tend to be familiar with, it offers unsurpassed tech support (we usually talk directly to the author of a piece of code when we're having problems with it), and it's cheap -- an important consideration when you have over 10,000 computers.
I think Linux works here as well as it does because of our technology culture. Our engineers feel comfortable being a partner in debugging kernel problems. For companies that would like to be able to give bug reports like, "Our network is slow" and have someone else take things over from there, Linux probably is not yet the ideal choice.
There's also a question of "Why Linux rather than FreeBSD?" or another free unix-like OS. We're not really religious about this issue. We used Linux -- as well as other, proprietary Unix variants -- when still at Stanford and were happy with it. My guess is if we had used a different open-source, unix-like operating system, we would have been happy with that as well. We're pretty pragmatic about using what works well for us.
All these posts and only yours contains any wisdom. Any language that is not ANSI/ISO certified will be subject to the whims of the vendor. People still haven't learned its the libraries that separate the language from the platform. Isolate the data/work from the UI.
A generic BASIC could have ruled the world had IBM/APPLE/ATARI/AMIGA/COMMODORE came together in the mid-80's and defined it.
Larry Wall, as benevolent as he is, is still the master of Perl and could change the language at anytime.
these programmers wouldn't be completely stranded These programmers are stranded because they found a shortcut to thier problem solution. While I don't dissmiss them, I also don't have any pity for them as well. Most don't have the skill to write the MFC wrappers that wrap the Win32 calls that make VBxRUN.DLL run.
Do you think that the C#/Python/PHP/Java/Ruby etc. crowd will learn from this that their language is subject to it's owners whim? I'm still waiting for any of these languages to compile thier own interpreter.
At what point do you stop being a computer programmer and start being an API expert?
Slashdot Mirror
Correct me if I'm wrong, but WMP 10 can be replaced with something else. Is there a 3rd party replacement for Explorer?
Just curious, enjoy.
Look at the screen shop showing "My Music".
Now look at the top left explorer bar and see the link that says "Purchase Music".
Could this be why? Where does the link go? Isn't that illegal in the settlement with the justice dept/EU.
Just curious,
Enjoy
Second, 3 firewalls? for a home network?
He didn't state what type, but I can guess...
1) Software Based firewall (Possibly two if you don't trust the first.
2) Wireless AP to internal network Firewall.
3) Internet firewall.
I have two of these on my home network (for the windows client), ZoneAlarm + Hardware. When I install a wireless access point I will then add another one to firewall that segement.
Enjoy.
1) BIOS password.
2) Windows Login Password.
3) Windows Network Login Password.
4) VMWare Server Password.
5) Mail Server Password.
Good security practices state that you should never use that 'Remember this Password' option any program displays for you. I can see why he would have five passwords to enter.
Enjoy,
Microsoft already had a 64bit Windows running on DEC/Compaq Alpha. Why in the hell did it take so long for this release? The whole point of having HAL was portability.
r l= /library/en-us/win64/win64/wow64_implementation_de tails.asp
What the heck did they do to Windows to make the port take so long? AMD64 support should have taken a year at most. And why in the Hell do I still have to thunk down to 32bits (Go lookup 64bit Windows and thunking)? Not that I need it, but I'm just curious.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?u
Enjoy,
Don't try this at home unless your ready for system lockups.
Tools required:
Windows 2000+, Linux 2.4/2.6 and OS/2 Warp4
1) 3 CDROMS containing Windows/Linux/OS2 OpenOffice Install.
2) Network sever containing GCC install program for all three OS's.
3) Preferably a floppy install program for all three, but I think a browser based download of java for all three will suffice.
Pre-Start your network share to the gcc shared drive. Pre-Start your download link to Java. Pre-Start solitarire.
Start all three installs at once.
My findings were OS/2 done in ten minutes with acceptable performance with solitaire. Linux was very sluggish and couldn't draw cards (sol), took about thirty minutes. Windows didn't even finish, the system was unresponsive.
Oops. Your not supposed to publish windows benchmarks without the written consent of Microsoft. I'm sorry.
Same computer, AMD/K62 256k ram.
Your milage may vary and I havent tried this with Windows XP. Is this an acceptable test? Mostly it's something I do whenever I install a new system. Looking forward to trying this out on my wifes new Apple.
Enjoy,
As a friend to a lot of other parents who don't know the difference between M,T, and E ratings, only the video game makers are to blame for this. The self-regulating ratings are a joke.
/noblood /nosex etc. options (Duke3D, Mortal Combat)?
I don't believe in censorship for video games (government or otherwise). I regulate (censor) what my kids see/do, but thats my right as a parent.
I think another rating system is in order for the clueless who buy eight year old Johnny Doom III because he asks for it.
Whatever happend to
Food for thought,
Enjoy.
How about POWER5 support instead:
Linux on POWER;
Enjoy,
Naw, I can't shutup its not my nature :)
I remember reading that article from somewhere. I dismissed it at the time because our own internal test results showed there was no way that Microsft tested the software the way that they claimed.
Meanwhile, as of now, were having 2003 SP1 compatability problems. Maybe Microsoft tests/uses the software as you say. But more than likely they are not using the same commercial addons/packages that we are.
Food for thought. Thanks for the response.
Enjoy.
I think a lot of people fail to realize that Microsoft is its own BIGGEST beta tester.
So, it can be safe to say that beta software is relatively safe.
References please. Prove it or shutup. In the field most people find out the opposite. Is that a problem with Microsoft or the certified people who maintain customer software? Didn't Microsoft certify these people?
Why do I have to replace system level drivers for Sqlserver? Why should I have to install the latest IE for a non-internet facing repository? I've never seen a beta of postgres/mysql demand that linux/bsd kernel drivers be replaced.
Just curious.
Enjoy.
Windows 98 has no concept of root.
Win98SE without IE and Netbios over tcp/ip is pretty secure. Neither the Wife's or kids machines have ever been compromised. Granted, we run ZoneAlarm on both machines and I don't allow the kids to download/install programs without permission (active network monitoring is in place).
Still, I wouldn't recommend any user to run an internet connected computer as root. If I were a malicious person I could craft an XPI to own a linux box. It'd be just a matter of waiting for some clueless Luser to click on 'OK'.
Personal gripe. The mozilla foundation needs to sign certified/sponsored XPI's. If the XPI is not signed, the installer dialog box should be RED and consume 75% of the screen. They could also turn this into a revenue stream if they certify plugins for a small license fee to third parties. My opinion and I digress.
Enjoy,
While Windows 98 would do just fine in 64 megs of RAM, very few graphical environments in Linux will.
64Meg on my Dell P150 Latitude. SuSE 8.4 + xfce3/Windowmaker run just fine. The only time it acts sluggish is when using mozilla/netscape.
Everything else, compilers, debuggers, web server(thttpd), editors etc, run just fine.
Enjoy,
What a intelligent response. Here I was giving up on slashdot due to the signal to noise ratio lately :)
I guess I'm assuming that portability is an issue: Linux users aren't all on x86 platforms, and there are other free *n*xes besides LSB-compliant distributions of Linux. If you care about supporting anything other than x86 Linux, then releasing anything other than source ends up being a LOT of work.
I deal with SCO/NCR/OS2/AIX/Windows/Linux binaries. No issues when your POSIX/ANSI compliant. Compiler/linker issues yes, no runtime problems other than the TCP/IP stack on Win9x hosts.
Thanks for the good response.
Enjoy,
Packaging will be an issue. Not all of your target users will have identical operating systems, libraries, or locations for common files. You will need to use some combination of Ant, Make, Autoconf, and similar tools in order to distribute your software in such a way that it can be easily compiled and installed by end users (if appropriate) or whomever else your target market may be.
Just a minor complaint with your post.
Packaging is not a issue if he/she chooses the correct runtime environment. POSIX/LSB compliance should be the goal. Source code distribution is only required if the author uses GPL (and derivatives) code. Other than that he/she can distribute in binary only form.
Would you really recommend Python/Ruby/Java etc. when none are ANSI/ISO approved? He/She might wind up in the same situation when someone hijacks the language.
Food for thought.
Enjoy.
Apple ][ If I recall,
BRK AT xxx
CALL 151
BRUN BRK+1
Enjoy,
For gcc (AIX/Linux) look up signal handlers/backtrace functions. For Win32 (Borland/Watcom/MSC) lookup _try/_except statements with exception filters.
You don't need an SDK to implement structured exception handling.
Enjoy,
trying to be like these people:
Novell Public Service Announcement
Enjoy,
After your base install, look at synaptic. It provides what your missing with the base SuSE install. It's apt-get for SuSE.
Enjoy,
Moving parts wear out. Books wear out after continued use. Software does not. Define OLD for me please?
We all text speak now, does that make proper German, Spanish, or English old? Did my amortization program I wrote back in 1982 somehow become obsolete because the math has changed?
The only reason any software should be considered obsolete is when computers stop using binary and move on to something else. The 128, 64, 32, 16, 8, and 4 bit computers all speak binary at the same level.
Enjoy,
/etc is not an issue with LSB complant distributions.
.
.xinit/.xsession files from the hidden safe directory before kde/xfce/windowmaker start. Maybe this should be standard?
A bigger issue is how we prevent less than average user from having thier linux machine become a host owned by the seedy people
Maybe this isn't the forum, but it needs to be discussed. Not from the kernel or services perspective either, just from the Joe/Jane user context.
My thoughts?
- We should not pester the user too much. My parents turned off Zone Alarm because they got tired of the pop-up warnings. (I know you can turn it off, but I didn't and left and they disabled it).
- Any program that connects to the internet needs to su to a different user context after initialization (like apache, thttpd etc.). This should prevent the application from overriding the user files because of a bug/flaw.
- Programs not started by the user with a click or run command should not be allowed to execute. Could Gnome/Kde implement such a feature?
- After X login, I have a script that copies my
I don't know all the answers, this is just a topic for discussion. Lets start a thread on how you would implement user level safety while still enjoying the benefits of Linux.
Enjoy.
You forgot the most important flaw with the registry. Single point of failure.
I've seen more than a few computers where a bad block on the hard drive mapped back to the registry. At that point you have to reinstall windows and all your programs. It would be much easier to reinstall windows with your old programs/icons/preferences in place if each program kept thier settings in an Ini.
Linux makes this easy. Tar $home, install new distribution. Add user, extract home.tgz. All icons, preferences etc. restored.
Enjoy,
I want a system where I can get a list of running services (not just all processes), the ports on which they are listening (I don't care if they are TCP, UDP, Unix domain, whatever passes for IPC on Windows, or even Mach ports), and be able to trivially turn a service on, or off, or configure it with a simple commandline or a click of the mouse.
SuSE Yast does all this.
Give me the Windows services manager (with a console equivalent) with the ability to see through what interfaces (e.g. ports) that service is provided, the ability to configure when and how it is started (e.g. at which runlevel), the ability to configure it directly from there (e.g. bring up a custom configurator, a web browser with the appropriate URL, or a text editor on the right files with a double-click in the list). I don't care where the configuration is on disk (though this better integrate well with backup software), nor how it's stored (though there had better be a human-readable text format that can be exported and imported, if necessary).
Again, SuSE Yast does all this. It appears you have a distribution specific issue.
Enjoy,
I stand corrected.
The two VB programs I still occasionally run when I boot to windows require MFC4.5. After running WLIB and WDISASM on them I see that the programs are a mixed MFC/VB hybrid. This is why I assumed the VB runtime needed MFC.
I went ahead and dumped VBrun400.dll and VBrun300.dll and both call back into Win32 native calls with no other external dependancies. The VBrun300 does have both 32 and 16 bit functions, it also has the old windows thunking mechanism.
Thank you for correcting me.
Enjoy,
Google uses FreeBSD not Linux
;
From the slashdot interview here:
Craig Silverstein answers your Google questions
3) As a market leader...
by Marx_Mrvelous
It's well known that you use Linux in your mega clusters. I was wondering if you have ever been approached by Microsoft, Sun, or HP in an effort to switch to their proprietary OSes.
I can't imagine that you haven't. It must have been a huge decision to invest in one technology, so are you satisfied with what you have?
Craig:
We have been approached by several vendors. However, the advantages of Linux for us are pretty strong: It's an environment our developers tend to be familiar with, it offers unsurpassed tech support (we usually talk directly to the author of a piece of code when we're having problems with it), and it's cheap -- an important consideration when you have over 10,000 computers.
I think Linux works here as well as it does because of our technology culture. Our engineers feel comfortable being a partner in debugging kernel problems. For companies that would like to be able to give bug reports like, "Our network is slow" and have someone else take things over from there, Linux probably is not yet the ideal choice.
There's also a question of "Why Linux rather than FreeBSD?" or another free unix-like OS. We're not really religious about this issue. We used Linux -- as well as other, proprietary Unix variants -- when still at Stanford and were happy with it. My guess is if we had used a different open-source, unix-like operating system, we would have been happy with that as well. We're pretty pragmatic about using what works well for us.
You are corrected.
Enjoy,
All these posts and only yours contains any wisdom. Any language that is not ANSI/ISO certified will be subject to the whims of the vendor. People still haven't learned its the libraries that separate the language from the platform. Isolate the data/work from the UI.
A generic BASIC could have ruled the world had IBM/APPLE/ATARI/AMIGA/COMMODORE came together in the mid-80's and defined it.
Larry Wall, as benevolent as he is, is still the master of Perl and could change the language at anytime.
these programmers wouldn't be completely stranded
These programmers are stranded because they found a shortcut to thier problem solution. While I don't dissmiss them, I also don't have any pity for them as well. Most don't have the skill to write the MFC wrappers that wrap the Win32 calls that make VBxRUN.DLL run.
Do you think that the C#/Python/PHP/Java/Ruby etc. crowd will learn from this that their language is subject to it's owners whim? I'm still waiting for any of these languages to compile thier own interpreter.
At what point do you stop being a computer programmer and start being an API expert?
Enjoy,