The Linux box wasn't compromised because it was being attacked as if it were a Windows box.
Therefore, in this case, the article is suggesting that Linux is secure because it is *obscure*. Linux can't be hacked because nobody would want to/nobody knows how to because it's so rare in comparison to Windows = Security through Obscurity.
Microsoft also uses this practice by threatening to sue anyone who exposes a vulnerability in their OS, and by hiding their source code. Hiding source code and vulnerabilities = Security through Obscurity.
I find it morally offensive that Linux hacks are trying to pass of Linux as secure on exactly the same grounds that Microsoft uses to try and keep their own leaky OS as private and secure as they can. Thankfully the author is sensible enough to write a few disclaimers, but as usual, the Slashdot submitter decided to omit that for the sake of sensationalism (and for a quick boot into Microsoft because we all like that).
I bet I could put an unpatched Windows 3.11 box on the internet, too. I bet no-one would hack that. I'd suggest more people are out trying to exploit even Linux or Mac than old Win3.11/DOS. Or how about an OS/2 box? I bet that would last even longer than Linux. Perhaps we should all switch to OS/2?
Opera - Fast Firefox - Not as fast Firefox: 2 Opera: 1
Opera - Very large initial footprint Firefox - Tiny footprint Firefox: 3 Opera: 1
Opera - Very long time between updates and releases Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes Firefox: 4 Opera: 1
Opera - Little setup required on first install Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want Firefox: 4 Opera: 2
Opera - Blocks popups Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see Firefox: 5 Opera: 2
Opera - Rendering problems on some pages Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft) Firefox: 6 Opera: 2
Anyone think of any other important criteria I'm missing?
1) It's criminal. 2) It's criminal. 3) Years ago. 4) Because the Australian courts determined that no crime was committed on an Australian victim on Australian "soil". 5) Because relations with the USA take precedent over the rights of Australian citizens in the eyes of the Australian government.
The US court believes it has jurisdiction over *everywhere* in the world (see DVD Jon, and that e-book guy).
Of course, like Windows, Linux users need to keep their systems up to date and patched (Probably easier than Windows once it's all set up, but to an extent it depends on the distro). Advantage Linux - Linux issues are rectified much faster than Windows ones.
Of course the other issue is Spyware, however again this is going to be less of an issue with Linux. For starters, Linux distros generally contain *more* bundled software than Windows does and this software is of course all Spyware free. Since the Linux user gets more software (Windows doesn't include an IRC client AFAIK, for example) they won't need to go out and download new software. Any time you download and use software from the internet, chances are it's because it does something you need your PC to do. Also, I would hazard a guess and suggest that the vast majority of software available for Linux is Open Source and therefore unlikely to contain Spyware. The vast majority of software available for Windows is closed source... so who knows?
In a fit of bizarre insight, it occurs to me that perhaps until Linux does have problems with spyware, it hasn't proven itself ready for the desktop.
More as an indicator really, if ad companies think there's money in exploiting linux, then linux has obviously made the grade!
I think it's probably only a matter of time before linux viruses and spyware become more prevalent. This is a testament to the success of linux and the evil bastartude of the advertising industry.
It's still doing better than The Matrix "trilogy" did. Heh. Those Wachowskis really screwed the pooch on those sequels. What were they thinking?
They made X-Wing, they made KOTOR, and they made the Jedi Knight(s). When I think about the sheer number of games that come out and suck so very badly (Deus Ex 2 anyone?), I'd have to say LucasArts aren't doing that badly overall. And they did Monkey Island, too.
You can set up squadron battles like that in X-Wing Alliance. I did it recently with some of the guys at a LAN party. Good fun, but it gets a bit silly with hundreds of ships blasting each other in one huge fight.
I gotta say, despite it's shortcomings, Rebellion was a great game. I sure as heck played that for longer than I could handle playing MOO3.
And dark forces, all four iterations, were top class FPS games that rivalled any in their genre.
KOTOR was amusing if you liked the plot for NWN and Baldurs gate all rolled into one space adventure, but we've seen it before. And the combat was a little too Final Fantasy for me, considering they could have made it much more strategically challenging, based on D20 and all.
X-Wing:Alliance runs fine on Windows XP even with the latest hardware. A fine group of people has created new, high quality models for many of the ships in the game. I played my way through the whole campaign only recently, and it's just as good today as it was back then.
I'm interested in seeing if this can work as a spectator sport. Spectators aren't as interested in advertising as you might think, however. Quite the opposite, spectators hate ads, they're in it for the event.
So we need to see the following:
What's the game? What's the course? Who are the players?
And for each round - what happens, highlights, and at the end of the round, the score. Analysis may help to explain complex issues but should be kept to a minimum at this stage. Most importantly, we need to maximise the in-game footage.
The very same problems affect Linux, by the same logic. And that's true to a good extent.
It's not that hard to get stability from a Windows box. Don't buy cheap stuff - for servers especially. I work in an environment with over 100 HP/windows servers and they don't fall over unless we push them over for administrative purposes. Don't install third party software or drivers unless you really need to. This is the same for Linux, by the way - even drivers under Linux aren't perfect. You need to tailor a Linux system to make it run optimally, just like you do a Windows system.
What we're really saying here isn't about options at all. What we're saying is that if you don't want to pay a premium to have someone do all the work for you because you don't know how or would rather not do the work (Mac), you need to choose a less expensive option which involves a degree of DIY and tech knowhow. This isn't a problem for the majority of/.ers
This is the closest post I've seen to what I need to say, I think. At least it's more topical.
I agree with a lot of that, I definately advocate KDE running over Windows instead of the Explorer interface, if it becomes available.
My reasoning? What I see as the biggest thing stopping Linux adoption in the home, and by extension on the desktop in the corporate world - gaming. Windows gaming is what put so many Windows PCs in the home, and by extension into businesses. Linux gaming is still very much in it's infancy - DirectX emulation is awful (but improving).
Now if I could run KDE's environment (would be a nice change from Explorer) over Windows and pick up the advantages of the DirectX gaming system, I'd do it. I can't run Linux because I'm a gamer.
Sure I could go out and pay for that package that allows some degree of DirectX capability on Linux - but there's two disadvantages to that. Firstly, it's not the same as DirectX. There are bugs, flaws, and only a handful of Windows games will run, even fewer will run exactly the same - and it runs slower than Windows. Secondly - it's not free. I accept that people need to make some cash from what they do, that's fine, but I've already paid for Windows. Linux is a low cost alternative - so why remove that great advantage Linux has over Windows?
I am pretty sure that if Linux cost the same as Windows to install and run at home, there wouldn't be much of a decision to make.
Trust me, if the sound card isn't working out of the box under Windows XP, it probably won't be so smooth under Linux either. And good luck with getting it to run on your Mac. Maybe you could send a letter to Steve and ask him to write a driver for you?
Actually.. most people are using emulation right now. Windows PC's build what is very similar to a virtual machine on top of the HAL, and run all the code through that. Any virtual machine is technically an emulator (although it's just emulating itself).
This virtualisation allows the kernel to keep itself robust and safe from applications when they fall over. Also, with virtualisation, you gain the benefits of being able to run many tasks at the same time, and having the kernel manage the requests and allocate resources as needed. VMWare anyone?
Emulation is an incredibly useful and powerful tool in modern computing. It just happens to be nice that you can create a virtual console on a PC (another indication that the money you pay for a PC really does get you more than something that just runs Windows and browses the web).
Why? The parent to my argument was suggesting that *any* linux would be better than windows. I suggest therefore that *any* linux distro would need to compete with Windows on those grounds... for the sake of a reasonable argument.
apt-get is an incredibly good idea, and it's the pinnacle of managing the methodology provided by OSS, where multiple packages from different authors and development groups make manually handling those dependencies a nightmare.
This is not a problem that Microsoft intended for the end user to deal with, but they have a heavily money driven methodology to their software. Everything ties in and everything works... it's practically identical to Apple's methodology, except Microsoft also need to deal with a plethora of hardware platforms, and a much larger userbase and application base. I think Microsoft is doing a pretty good job in that respect.
And yes, it took them a very, very long time to get their security focus right. Having said that, there are a lot of things most Linux distros could have been doing but haven't until very recently.
In a professional environment - you use the Windows drivers. They're codeveloped by ATI and microsoft and Microsoft have tested them thoroughly.
As a gamer you'd probably know that Catalyst are some of the most godawful drivers known to mankind, and if you use Linux... well ATI drivers are a popular joke for thier poor quality.
As a gamer myself, I take those risks but as an IT professional, when I'm at work I stick to MS drivers whenever possible. But no matter which OS you look at you still need to deal with third party drivers at some point or another.
Is it conceivable to experience similar problems using a non-windows operating system? Who would fix it then? Perhaps microsoft is not such a bad company, at least not as bad as they are making it out to be.
Would you be more confident that Microsoft or iNtel would provide a fix for this issue, or that a third party will?
Doesn't this violate the DMCA in some way? LucasArts make some very cool stuff but they can be very litigous. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the suits start bristling at this and the letters start flying.
Despite the fact that you're accessing the content on a DVD you purchased for the sake of accessing the content on it.
I don't believe I mentioned BSD or Linux or Jaguar or any other OS or company apart from Microsoft.
I'm not sure what you mean however with regards to "fixing and breaking things more often". Microsoft patches are quite strenuously tested, so they are very slow to arrive (not more often, less often) Very few if any MS patches break third party software. Compare this to the complexity of handling Linux dependencies. I am sure if you upgrade some components of Linux and replace dependencies, you might find a lot of things suddenly stop working. Microsoft isn't really responsible for making third party software work on their OS... are you holding MS accountable for the work of Adobe? Or for the work of nameless shareware developers? Is it not their responsibility to fix the software if they write applications that work outside of Microsoft's preferred APIs?
My experience with Linux dependencies on a couple of different distros have been nothing like your example. Many different applications just don't work on Linux without downloading and installing very specific packages to handle dependencies... so much so that people need to write software purely to handle dependencies. For some reason.. when I install software on a windows box, I double-click an exe file and it works. I don't even need to see the word "dependency". I'm not trying to say one method is better than the other. But what I am saying is that Microsoft have decided to take this path and as a result they have to be very precise with the fixes and patches they apply to their OS.
The unified patching for debian and redhat really makes it easy on the user when you can run a single command to update EVERYTHING in your system.
Shame that isn't available on every Linux distro. With every current version of Windows, I can go to a website called "Windowsupdate.com" and click a single button to update EVERYTHING in my system. And you know what? I don't have to go looking anywhere but microsoft.com for fixes for Windows.
Windows XP SP2 hasn't broken any drivers that I know of, unless they are drivers that for some reason need a hole in the firewall and I suddenly forget how to configure a firewall. Of course I can simply uninstall the service pack if that does ever happen (it doesn't, RTFA please).
So basicly the windows way is bad and painful to use. and the linux was is nice and easy for once
You haven't demonstrated this. Please explain with consise examples of what you mean. Providing a questionable statement without decent supporting arguments is hardly compelling, although on Slashdot people will believe you because "Linux good, Windows baaaaaad".
Microsoft have made the best business decision possible in terms of advancing the security of their platform at the minor cost of a few applications that (again, RTFA because you don't seem to have noticed this) don't work when a firewall blocks them. This is applicable to Linux. Firefox on Linux is *broken* when you install a firewall and block port 80. By your arguments, Linux is therefore "fucked if they do and fucked if they don't" because if you install a firewall the "API is so hacked together to keep everything working" and this somehow has something to do with applying a default-on firewall to the OS. Linux users are purportedly more open minded and understanding of basic OS principles. Why am I constantly meeting Linux advocates who are so more closed minded than the average AOL toting Windows user?
People are bitching at microsoft for no real reason in this case. An unconfigured firewall breaks a few applications that need ports opened, and for some reason, as my parent post said, Linux advocates believe this is a flaw in Windows XP and put the blame squarely on Microsoft.
Explain yourself clearly, concisely, or put your PC back in the box and send it to your OEM. Computer license revoked by the Darwin Internet Preservation Act.
Ugh, if you actually read the background material, you would notice that SP2 doesn't break anything. It's a list of apps that don't work when you run an unconfigured firewall, for the most part.
Why on earth is it Microsoft's fault that they're telling their users which applications may be affected because in SP2 they're activating a firewall in an attempt to remedy some of the poor security practices they've used in the past?
I think some recognition for a company moving in the right direction wouldn't go astray every now and then, instead of jumping down MS's throat every time they make a move.
Yeah. I work for CSC on a pretty big international contract. All our new installs for this customer are Win2K3. We've just finished ported our client over to a Windows 2K3 active directory structure.
I suppose what we really are asking here is not "do you work in a corporate environment" but "do you work in a professional, adaptive, progressive corporate environment, or in a penniless miserly hovel with no agenda for IT future proofing?".
Application and vendor support still tie us down to some older OS's in some environments, but those environments are firewalled away from the main production environment to minimise the security risk.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll get modded flamebait for this, but...
The Linux box wasn't compromised because it was being attacked as if it were a Windows box.
Therefore, in this case, the article is suggesting that Linux is secure because it is *obscure*. Linux can't be hacked because nobody would want to/nobody knows how to because it's so rare in comparison to Windows = Security through Obscurity.
Microsoft also uses this practice by threatening to sue anyone who exposes a vulnerability in their OS, and by hiding their source code. Hiding source code and vulnerabilities = Security through Obscurity.
I find it morally offensive that Linux hacks are trying to pass of Linux as secure on exactly the same grounds that Microsoft uses to try and keep their own leaky OS as private and secure as they can. Thankfully the author is sensible enough to write a few disclaimers, but as usual, the Slashdot submitter decided to omit that for the sake of sensationalism (and for a quick boot into Microsoft because we all like that).
I bet I could put an unpatched Windows 3.11 box on the internet, too. I bet no-one would hack that. I'd suggest more people are out trying to exploit even Linux or Mac than old Win3.11/DOS. Or how about an OS/2 box? I bet that would last even longer than Linux. Perhaps we should all switch to OS/2?
Opera - Closed Source
Firefox - Open Source
Firefox: 1 Opera: 0
Opera - $$$
Firefox - Free beer, Free speech
Firefox: 2 Opera: 0
Opera - Fast
Firefox - Not as fast
Firefox: 2 Opera: 1
Opera - Very large initial footprint
Firefox - Tiny footprint
Firefox: 3 Opera: 1
Opera - Very long time between updates and releases
Firefox - Fixed and updated with the speed of the open source communities non-sleeping programming hordes
Firefox: 4 Opera: 1
Opera - Little setup required on first install
Firefox - Plugins and configuration needs to be done before you get all the functionality you want
Firefox: 4 Opera: 2
Opera - Blocks popups
Firefox - Blocks popups and with adblock plugin, everything else you don't want to see
Firefox: 5 Opera: 2
Opera - Rendering problems on some pages
Firefox - Fewer rendering problems than Opera but more than IE (bad microsoft)
Firefox: 6 Opera: 2
Anyone think of any other important criteria I'm missing?
1) It's criminal.
2) It's criminal.
3) Years ago.
4) Because the Australian courts determined that no crime was committed on an Australian victim on Australian "soil".
5) Because relations with the USA take precedent over the rights of Australian citizens in the eyes of the Australian government.
The US court believes it has jurisdiction over *everywhere* in the world (see DVD Jon, and that e-book guy).
That should be easy, it only has one article of spyware to remove.
Of course, like Windows, Linux users need to keep their systems up to date and patched (Probably easier than Windows once it's all set up, but to an extent it depends on the distro). Advantage Linux - Linux issues are rectified much faster than Windows ones.
Of course the other issue is Spyware, however again this is going to be less of an issue with Linux. For starters, Linux distros generally contain *more* bundled software than Windows does and this software is of course all Spyware free. Since the Linux user gets more software (Windows doesn't include an IRC client AFAIK, for example) they won't need to go out and download new software. Any time you download and use software from the internet, chances are it's because it does something you need your PC to do. Also, I would hazard a guess and suggest that the vast majority of software available for Linux is Open Source and therefore unlikely to contain Spyware. The vast majority of software available for Windows is closed source... so who knows?
They probably heard you could get illegal files from "IRC" so the lawyers grabbed the nearest phone book.
Why is it so bad? Surely it can't be as bad as american reality TV?
In a fit of bizarre insight, it occurs to me that perhaps until Linux does have problems with spyware, it hasn't proven itself ready for the desktop.
More as an indicator really, if ad companies think there's money in exploiting linux, then linux has obviously made the grade!
I think it's probably only a matter of time before linux viruses and spyware become more prevalent. This is a testament to the success of linux and the evil bastartude of the advertising industry.
It's still doing better than The Matrix "trilogy" did. Heh. Those Wachowskis really screwed the pooch on those sequels. What were they thinking?
They made X-Wing, they made KOTOR, and they made the Jedi Knight(s). When I think about the sheer number of games that come out and suck so very badly (Deus Ex 2 anyone?), I'd have to say LucasArts aren't doing that badly overall. And they did Monkey Island, too.
You can set up squadron battles like that in X-Wing Alliance. I did it recently with some of the guys at a LAN party. Good fun, but it gets a bit silly with hundreds of ships blasting each other in one huge fight.
I gotta say, despite it's shortcomings, Rebellion was a great game. I sure as heck played that for longer than I could handle playing MOO3.
And dark forces, all four iterations, were top class FPS games that rivalled any in their genre.
KOTOR was amusing if you liked the plot for NWN and Baldurs gate all rolled into one space adventure, but we've seen it before. And the combat was a little too Final Fantasy for me, considering they could have made it much more strategically challenging, based on D20 and all.
X-Wing:Alliance runs fine on Windows XP even with the latest hardware. A fine group of people has created new, high quality models for many of the ships in the game. I played my way through the whole campaign only recently, and it's just as good today as it was back then.
Let's keep it simple.
I'm interested in seeing if this can work as a spectator sport. Spectators aren't as interested in advertising as you might think, however. Quite the opposite, spectators hate ads, they're in it for the event.
So we need to see the following:
What's the game?
What's the course?
Who are the players?
And for each round - what happens, highlights, and at the end of the round, the score.
Analysis may help to explain complex issues but should be kept to a minimum at this stage.
Most importantly, we need to maximise the in-game footage.
The very same problems affect Linux, by the same logic. And that's true to a good extent.
/.ers
It's not that hard to get stability from a Windows box. Don't buy cheap stuff - for servers especially. I work in an environment with over 100 HP/windows servers and they don't fall over unless we push them over for administrative purposes. Don't install third party software or drivers unless you really need to. This is the same for Linux, by the way - even drivers under Linux aren't perfect. You need to tailor a Linux system to make it run optimally, just like you do a Windows system.
What we're really saying here isn't about options at all. What we're saying is that if you don't want to pay a premium to have someone do all the work for you because you don't know how or would rather not do the work (Mac), you need to choose a less expensive option which involves a degree of DIY and tech knowhow. This isn't a problem for the majority of
This is the closest post I've seen to what I need to say, I think. At least it's more topical.
I agree with a lot of that, I definately advocate KDE running over Windows instead of the Explorer interface, if it becomes available.
My reasoning? What I see as the biggest thing stopping Linux adoption in the home, and by extension on the desktop in the corporate world - gaming. Windows gaming is what put so many Windows PCs in the home, and by extension into businesses. Linux gaming is still very much in it's infancy - DirectX emulation is awful (but improving).
Now if I could run KDE's environment (would be a nice change from Explorer) over Windows and pick up the advantages of the DirectX gaming system, I'd do it. I can't run Linux because I'm a gamer.
Sure I could go out and pay for that package that allows some degree of DirectX capability on Linux - but there's two disadvantages to that. Firstly, it's not the same as DirectX. There are bugs, flaws, and only a handful of Windows games will run, even fewer will run exactly the same - and it runs slower than Windows. Secondly - it's not free. I accept that people need to make some cash from what they do, that's fine, but I've already paid for Windows. Linux is a low cost alternative - so why remove that great advantage Linux has over Windows?
I am pretty sure that if Linux cost the same as Windows to install and run at home, there wouldn't be much of a decision to make.
Trust me, if the sound card isn't working out of the box under Windows XP, it probably won't be so smooth under Linux either. And good luck with getting it to run on your Mac. Maybe you could send a letter to Steve and ask him to write a driver for you?
Actually.. most people are using emulation right now. Windows PC's build what is very similar to a virtual machine on top of the HAL, and run all the code through that. Any virtual machine is technically an emulator (although it's just emulating itself).
This virtualisation allows the kernel to keep itself robust and safe from applications when they fall over. Also, with virtualisation, you gain the benefits of being able to run many tasks at the same time, and having the kernel manage the requests and allocate resources as needed. VMWare anyone?
Emulation is an incredibly useful and powerful tool in modern computing. It just happens to be nice that you can create a virtual console on a PC (another indication that the money you pay for a PC really does get you more than something that just runs Windows and browses the web).
Why? The parent to my argument was suggesting that *any* linux would be better than windows. I suggest therefore that *any* linux distro would need to compete with Windows on those grounds... for the sake of a reasonable argument.
apt-get is an incredibly good idea, and it's the pinnacle of managing the methodology provided by OSS, where multiple packages from different authors and development groups make manually handling those dependencies a nightmare.
This is not a problem that Microsoft intended for the end user to deal with, but they have a heavily money driven methodology to their software. Everything ties in and everything works... it's practically identical to Apple's methodology, except Microsoft also need to deal with a plethora of hardware platforms, and a much larger userbase and application base. I think Microsoft is doing a pretty good job in that respect.
And yes, it took them a very, very long time to get their security focus right. Having said that, there are a lot of things most Linux distros could have been doing but haven't until very recently.
In a professional environment - you use the Windows drivers. They're codeveloped by ATI and microsoft and Microsoft have tested them thoroughly.
As a gamer you'd probably know that Catalyst are some of the most godawful drivers known to mankind, and if you use Linux... well ATI drivers are a popular joke for thier poor quality.
As a gamer myself, I take those risks but as an IT professional, when I'm at work I stick to MS drivers whenever possible. But no matter which OS you look at you still need to deal with third party drivers at some point or another.
Is it conceivable to experience similar problems using a non-windows operating system? Who would fix it then? Perhaps microsoft is not such a bad company, at least not as bad as they are making it out to be.
Would you be more confident that Microsoft or iNtel would provide a fix for this issue, or that a third party will?
Doesn't this violate the DMCA in some way? LucasArts make some very cool stuff but they can be very litigous. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the suits start bristling at this and the letters start flying.
Despite the fact that you're accessing the content on a DVD you purchased for the sake of accessing the content on it.
I don't believe I mentioned BSD or Linux or Jaguar or any other OS or company apart from Microsoft.
I'm not sure what you mean however with regards to "fixing and breaking things more often". Microsoft patches are quite strenuously tested, so they are very slow to arrive (not more often, less often) Very few if any MS patches break third party software. Compare this to the complexity of handling Linux dependencies. I am sure if you upgrade some components of Linux and replace dependencies, you might find a lot of things suddenly stop working. Microsoft isn't really responsible for making third party software work on their OS... are you holding MS accountable for the work of Adobe? Or for the work of nameless shareware developers? Is it not their responsibility to fix the software if they write applications that work outside of Microsoft's preferred APIs?
My experience with Linux dependencies on a couple of different distros have been nothing like your example. Many different applications just don't work on Linux without downloading and installing very specific packages to handle dependencies... so much so that people need to write software purely to handle dependencies. For some reason.. when I install software on a windows box, I double-click an exe file and it works. I don't even need to see the word "dependency". I'm not trying to say one method is better than the other. But what I am saying is that Microsoft have decided to take this path and as a result they have to be very precise with the fixes and patches they apply to their OS.
The unified patching for debian and redhat really makes it easy on the user when you can run a single command to update EVERYTHING in your system.
Shame that isn't available on every Linux distro. With every current version of Windows, I can go to a website called "Windowsupdate.com" and click a single button to update EVERYTHING in my system. And you know what? I don't have to go looking anywhere but microsoft.com for fixes for Windows.
Windows XP SP2 hasn't broken any drivers that I know of, unless they are drivers that for some reason need a hole in the firewall and I suddenly forget how to configure a firewall. Of course I can simply uninstall the service pack if that does ever happen (it doesn't, RTFA please).
So basicly the windows way is bad and painful to use. and the linux was is nice and easy for once
You haven't demonstrated this. Please explain with consise examples of what you mean. Providing a questionable statement without decent supporting arguments is hardly compelling, although on Slashdot people will believe you because "Linux good, Windows baaaaaad".
Microsoft have made the best business decision possible in terms of advancing the security of their platform at the minor cost of a few applications that (again, RTFA because you don't seem to have noticed this) don't work when a firewall blocks them. This is applicable to Linux. Firefox on Linux is *broken* when you install a firewall and block port 80. By your arguments, Linux is therefore "fucked if they do and fucked if they don't" because if you install a firewall the "API is so hacked together to keep everything working" and this somehow has something to do with applying a default-on firewall to the OS. Linux users are purportedly more open minded and understanding of basic OS principles. Why am I constantly meeting Linux advocates who are so more closed minded than the average AOL toting Windows user?
People are bitching at microsoft for no real reason in this case. An unconfigured firewall breaks a few applications that need ports opened, and for some reason, as my parent post said, Linux advocates believe this is a flaw in Windows XP and put the blame squarely on Microsoft.
Explain yourself clearly, concisely, or put your PC back in the box and send it to your OEM. Computer license revoked by the Darwin Internet Preservation Act.
Ugh, if you actually read the background material, you would notice that SP2 doesn't break anything. It's a list of apps that don't work when you run an unconfigured firewall, for the most part.
Why on earth is it Microsoft's fault that they're telling their users which applications may be affected because in SP2 they're activating a firewall in an attempt to remedy some of the poor security practices they've used in the past?
I think some recognition for a company moving in the right direction wouldn't go astray every now and then, instead of jumping down MS's throat every time they make a move.
Yeah. I work for CSC on a pretty big international contract. All our new installs for this customer are Win2K3. We've just finished ported our client over to a Windows 2K3 active directory structure.
I suppose what we really are asking here is not "do you work in a corporate environment" but "do you work in a professional, adaptive, progressive corporate environment, or in a penniless miserly hovel with no agenda for IT future proofing?".
Application and vendor support still tie us down to some older OS's in some environments, but those environments are firewalled away from the main production environment to minimise the security risk.
Curiously, Windows XP will run nicely on anything 400MHz and above.
If you had a choice between 98 and XP, which would you choose?