> He states a computer expert in North Korea can download Linux
> and create a super-computer. Yet I'm sure the same expert
> can download some ISOs of Windows from somewhere.
Crikey, you're on to something! Imagine a Beowulf cluster running
Windows ME......you can't put anything past those filthy Commies!
With that sort of computing power they could develop any sort of
weapon you can imagine....knives, axes, sticks....anything is possible
Clippy: I see you're trying to develop a WMD, can I help?
If the prospect of that doesn't constitute a clear & present danger
then I don't know what does.
I'm for GWB carrying forward the "War On Terrorism" and
pre-emptively nuking Redmond. Who's with me?
> Perhaps now XFree86 decided to go GPL-incompatible, some even say
> non-practical even while free, it would be time to go LGPL or
> even GPL? Thus proprietary vendors would have to either stick
> with XFree86 and its advertising clause, or pay and thus help
> develop (X.org|XOuvert|FreeDesktopX).
Proprietary vendors and the *BSDs would prefer the advertising clause.
In the case of proprietary companies; why pay/help for another
implementation with a more illiberal license?
And for *BSD; why change all the dependencies for BSD ports that
currently depend on XFree to instead depend on a different X server
with a different license? After all most *BSDers are pretty much
license agnostic and don't like unneccessary work.
BTW/FWIW, I've seen no discussion about the Xfree license change on
the primary FreeBSD newsgroup. I don't think it's anything we lose
any sleep over, it's not in the base system so it doesn't really
matter.
If the functionality of the differing X servers changed to any
degree, then folks would jump on the more featureful... maybe.
What the posts here seem to indicate is that Linux users seem to
think most of the time that they are the only people who use
X/XFree, they're not! They're the only ones who go through
prolonged & tortured discussions about the licensing of it.
> And most importantly how do you handle authority (tardiness,
> work ethic, and workplace codes) with a girlfriend?"
You have to Ask Slashdot about authority & your girlfriend!?!
To clue you up: I usually get her to dress up in latex and black boots
whilst simultaneously brandishing a whip and castigating me with
unpleasant insults.
Us Brits may handle workplace etiquette slightly differently to you Americans
though.
From the
MS case study
on converting Hotmail from FreeBSD to 2K:
> Changing the operating system on each server should have
> zero impact on day-to-day operations.
No impact whatsoever....if you ignore uptimes:)
> Under FreeBSD, bugs and memory leaks would often go
> undetected because of the lack of tools. With Windows 2000
> and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and
> truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all
> times.
Crikey, handy they've got all those tools to help them out
(soooo unlike FreeBSD with all it's bug leaks).
Looks like it's saved their asses this time round... </sarcasm>
Microsoft: Where do you want go today?
Customer: I want to take a rock solid service that has true customer
value and turn it into a spam ridden, bug infested hole that
doesn't work half the time and customers hate.
> So to me it does not look like "some porn sites plastered
> the term "XFree86" all over themselves", but more like a
> suspiciously blocked search query.
A "friend" (cough) told me that there is a porn site
with xfree in it's URL.
BTW, a search for "latex" comes up with Mac TeX second down
but with the Windows port
MiKTeX nowhere to be
seen. I wonder why....
> Windows users are less likely to run a webserver,
> simply because they're not as eager to play with
> their system as Linux users. Therefore there
> will be less insecure Windows servers. The same
> goes for Mac-OS users.
The study was talking about servers. So your
comment about Windows users being less likely to run a webserver makes
no sense whatsoever. In terms of the study, they are every bit as
likely to be running a webserver.
Linux users have to face the facts when addressing this matter and not
bury their heads in the sand. There are any number of Linux users who
don't even know what inetd and tcpwrappers are let alone bugtraq and
cert or how to upgrade their
systems and keep them secure or how to write PHP scripts with bounds
checking.
Until that changes Linux boxes are going to continue to be broken into
wholesale.
The reaction to this story on here reminds me of when Apache and IIS
were put head to head in some study and there was wholesale denial
that IIS could outperform Apache. The Apache team recognised there was
a problem though and set about improving their software. This is what
Linux users have to do now.
Whilst the study may be flawed and the company that did it may have an
agenda, 13000+ Linux break-ins in a year
should be serious cause for concern.
Folks, please face the facts even
if they are unpleasant and improve the software and more importantly
improve the education of the user base.
> funny how people actually rate a 3 clause license with the
> only requirement proper attribution to be more restrictive
> than the god knows how many clauses GPL, but that's another
> discussion
You've hit the nail on the head here. The GPL is described
as a free license but it is actually a very
restrictive license as compared to the BSD or X licenses.
Yet bizarrely, everybody is screaming for the X license to
be changed and not the GPL.
Sometimes one would think that the GPL was written on
tablets of stone, delivered by a modern day Moses (RMS), is
self-evidently right and can't be changed.
I know that this may come as something of a shock to some
Slashdotters but a lot of people don't like the GPL for a
genuine reason: because it is too restrictive as compared
to some other licenses.
Maybe a more valid question would be: How can we change the
GPL to work with the X license? rather than vice
versa
> And if FreeBSD can compile the c library, the c compiler,
> kernel, xfree86, qt, kde, python, perl, and many other
> packages in 2 hours on a p2-300 w/160MB RAM and a slow hard
> drive, then I would be amazed.
3 hrs!
C compiler, C libs, kernel, perl, openssh, openssl, nntpd and
everything in/bin,/sbin and some games (bind and sendmail
if you want them). Other stuff too which I can't remember.
Everything in the base system which you can browse in
cvs.
So you're right, we're not strictly comparing like with like
- especially since I've got 192MB RAM and a Samsung
32GB IDE HD so my machine will obviously leave yours for dead;)
To be fair too I've got a Celeron (one of the good ones)
with a L1 cache addressed at the full clock speed of the
chip.
Apologies for the broken links. Try reading about the
makeworld process
here.
For upgrading userland stuff, most FreeBSDers use
portupgrade which makes things pretty easy and painless.
Anyway, give FreeBSD a try one day. It would be interesting
to compare it with Gentoo and see which bits of each system
are better. I think you'll find the performance a lot
better which is important when you're on low end hardware
and building all your stuff from source.
> The recent updating included building most of the
> system over again (for about 6 months only security
> related packages had been updated) which took about a
> week, but the system was still often usable while it
> was compiling (slow, but usable).
A week!! I just rebuilt this box (300MHz Celeron FreeBSD) last night.
Buildworld took just under 2 hrs with -j4, kernel took about 20 mins
and the whole job was done in 3 hrs: installworld, installkernel and mergemaster
Big ports I just rebuild over night. Rebuilds I might do once every 6
months. ie. every release.
A film of betrayal, intrigue and piss-poor articles.
Starring Leanardo DiCaprio as Linus Torvalds, Robert DeNiro as Richard
Stallman and Arnold DeSchwarzenegger as Eric Raymond. Featuring Danny
DeVito as the troll.
Watch in Amazement as Linus uses quantocrypto beta wave
brain analysis to get inside the mind of the troll...
"....I just have to decrypt this datastream....I'm in!"
Be Astounded as RMS insists on addressing Linus as
GNU/Torvalds...
"Oi, GNU/Torvalds! That was my idea!"
Stand back in Awe as ESR deals with the troll the only way
he knows how...
> Microsoft was notified 6 months ago.
> Either they didn't know about it before that
> or they didn't disclose that they did.
I think they knew about it before. There was the trial of Microsoft
Corp v States of California & others with regards the terms of
settlement of DOJ v Microsoft Corp
During that trial I seem to remember an MS VP saying that they couldn't
disclose their source because Windows contained a critical and
deep-seated vulnerablity and they didn't want every Tom, Dick &
Harry seeing it and hence exploiting it.
My guess is that we've probably just seen it fixed. If we haven't then
perhaps they should say so.
> Kinsey measured actual men to come up with his number.
> (What was it.. 5 1/2" or something?)
That's the figure I've heard quoted before. I always remember because
it's the size of mine folded in half;)
> Also, condom companies need to know how big to make their condoms
Didn't think of that.
Reminds me of a story I heard about Winston Churchill. Apparently,
during the war the Russians ran short of condoms and asked the Brits
to ship some out. So Churchill ordered that a shipment of extra large
condoms be shipped out but not before they had all been marked as
"extra small":)
> 1. It has to be easy to learn and use. In order to build the novice's
> confidence, it should encourage early successes. It should be easy
> to debug.
I'd say JS hits that. You can quickly write a webpage that does
something ie. Displays a Fibonacci series, manipulates
dates/times with very little code and what's more they pick up some
html at the same time!
For debugging you've got the console/debugger in Moz/Firebird.
> 2. The tools have to be accessable to the student....
Yep. A browser with a JS interpreter is available on pretty much any
platform.
> 3. It has to be practical. If the student can't use it to do
> something which is useful TO THEM fairly early on in the
> learning process, they probably won't stick with it.
I don't think it has to do anything useful per se, it has to
look like it's doing something useful. Ever written something fairly
complicated in C and it just prints something to a terminal? But a
rollover in JS is pretty trivial and how cool does that look!:)
> 4. It has to provide a good foundation for future learning...
I'm not sure if JS does with it's loose typing but I reckon for just
getting kids interested in programming it probably hits the spot. It's
certainly a good way for them to find out if programming interests
them and all they have to do is sit down at any PC with a browser on
it, no mucking around having to set up the programming environment
except for supplying a decent editor (no, not Notepad).
My opinion is that JS should be primarily taught at schools instead of
the kids stuffing around with Word and suchlike. Ever seen how bored
the kids are in class when they have to type a letter in Word? That's
not computing, it's stuffing around and they're learning nothing.
Adults could start with something a bit more featureful (regards doing
something that's actually useful), maybe Python.
> But since the penis size probably follows a normal distribution, 50%
are below the average.
probably is the operative word there. How many studies have
been done on penis size? My guess: none, although I believe Kinsey
named an average size but I've no idea what his methodology was.
If any studies had been done wouldn't you just get the
guys with the big todgers showing up for the study and the little guys
staying at home, hence skewing the results?
Average penis size looks like it might remain a mystery and lets not
even get into measurements being taken when the aforementioned member
is flaccid or...ahem...aroused
So trying to sell penis pills/potions by telling somebody they are
smaller than average doesn't make sense because the mean is unknown
(and probably unknowable).
The Microsoft EULA is another piece of legalese that fails to
meet the criteria of reasonableness in a number of
jurisdictions, namely the UK and EU (AFAIK, IANAL)
For instance, I've got a copy of NT (unfortunately) and I run it on 2
machines in breach of the EULA. But the EU/UK says that I can make
fair and reasonable use of any copyrighted work that I have
bought a license for. I consider running it on 2 boxes is fair
& reasonable:)
If MS disagress then they better take me to court.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy
"The Witty worm....only infects Win32 systems."
To be fair (and it pains me to be so) but it seems to be a problem with the application rather than system softs.
> He states a computer expert in North Korea can download Linux
> and create a super-computer. Yet I'm sure the same expert
> can download some ISOs of Windows from somewhere.
Crikey, you're on to something! Imagine a Beowulf cluster running
Windows ME......you can't put anything past those filthy Commies!
With that sort of computing power they could develop any sort of
weapon you can imagine....knives, axes, sticks....anything is possible
Clippy: I see you're trying to develop a WMD, can I help?
If the prospect of that doesn't constitute a clear & present danger
then I don't know what does.
I'm for GWB carrying forward the "War On Terrorism" and
pre-emptively nuking Redmond. Who's with me?
> Perhaps now XFree86 decided to go GPL-incompatible, some even say
> non-practical even while free, it would be time to go LGPL or
> even GPL? Thus proprietary vendors would have to either stick
> with XFree86 and its advertising clause, or pay and thus help
> develop (X.org|XOuvert|FreeDesktopX).
Proprietary vendors and the *BSDs would prefer the advertising clause.
In the case of proprietary companies; why pay/help for another
implementation with a more illiberal license?
And for *BSD; why change all the dependencies for BSD ports that
currently depend on XFree to instead depend on a different X server
with a different license? After all most *BSDers are pretty much
license agnostic and don't like unneccessary work.
BTW/FWIW, I've seen no discussion about the Xfree license change on
the primary FreeBSD newsgroup. I don't think it's anything we lose
any sleep over, it's not in the base system so it doesn't really matter.
If the functionality of the differing X servers changed to any
degree, then folks would jump on the more featureful
What the posts here seem to indicate is that Linux users seem to
think most of the time that they are the only people who use
X/XFree, they're not! They're the only ones who go through
prolonged & tortured discussions about the licensing of it.
> Thanks for playing, better luck next time.
He did provide me with a laugh.
Only on Slashdot do you see a rather obvious steaming pile of
male cow manure modded +1 Informative
> And most importantly how do you handle authority (tardiness,
> work ethic, and workplace codes) with a girlfriend?"
You have to Ask Slashdot about authority & your girlfriend!?!
To clue you up: I usually get her to dress up in latex and black boots whilst simultaneously brandishing a whip and castigating me with unpleasant insults.
Us Brits may handle workplace etiquette slightly differently to you Americans though.
From the MS case study on converting Hotmail from FreeBSD to 2K:
> Changing the operating system on each server should have
> zero impact on day-to-day operations.
No impact whatsoever....if you ignore uptimes
> Under FreeBSD, bugs and memory leaks would often go
> undetected because of the lack of tools. With Windows 2000
> and IIS 5, the tools exist to optimize the performance and
> truly understand exactly what the code is doing at all
> times.
Crikey, handy they've got all those tools to help them out (soooo unlike FreeBSD with all it's bug leaks). Looks like it's saved their asses this time round...
</sarcasm>
Microsoft: Where do you want go today?
Customer: I want to take a rock solid service that has true customer value and turn it into a spam ridden, bug infested hole that doesn't work half the time and customers hate.
Microsoft: Consider it done!
> usually the really important scripts are running
> - a STATICALLY compiled binary of a shell that is pretty much everywhere.
On Linux? I don't think so. It used to be that
> you can boot linux without glibc working
Wrong. On Linux you're usually SOL.
On FreeBSD all shells are built statically and
I suggest Linux users build a static shell and install it on their root partition for when the sh*t hits the fan.
I use Korn for interactive use and some scripts. Plenty of features and fast.
> So to me it does not look like "some porn sites plastered
> the term "XFree86" all over themselves", but more like a
> suspiciously blocked search query.
A "friend" (cough) told me that there is a porn site with xfree in it's URL.
BTW, a search for "latex" comes up with Mac TeX second down but with the Windows port MiKTeX nowhere to be seen. I wonder why....
> You mean a bunch of volunteers didn't always
> think about the (l)users and created a bad UI?
> Wow, none of us knew that!
And the best part of it is that ESR is as guilty as sin himself. Want to see a really crappy user interface. Ladies and gentlemen I give you:
fetchmail
Tip: dump it and use getmail
> Windows users are less likely to run a webserver,
> simply because they're not as eager to play with
> their system as Linux users. Therefore there
> will be less insecure Windows servers. The same
> goes for Mac-OS users.
The study was talking about servers. So your comment about Windows users being less likely to run a webserver makes no sense whatsoever. In terms of the study, they are every bit as likely to be running a webserver.
Linux users have to face the facts when addressing this matter and not bury their heads in the sand. There are any number of Linux users who don't even know what inetd and tcpwrappers are let alone bugtraq and cert or how to upgrade their systems and keep them secure or how to write PHP scripts with bounds checking.
Until that changes Linux boxes are going to continue to be broken into wholesale.
The reaction to this story on here reminds me of when Apache and IIS were put head to head in some study and there was wholesale denial that IIS could outperform Apache. The Apache team recognised there was a problem though and set about improving their software. This is what Linux users have to do now.
Whilst the study may be flawed and the company that did it may have an agenda, 13000+ Linux break-ins in a year should be serious cause for concern.
Folks, please face the facts even if they are unpleasant and improve the software and more importantly improve the education of the user base.
> funny how people actually rate a 3 clause license with the
> only requirement proper attribution to be more restrictive
> than the god knows how many clauses GPL, but that's another
> discussion
You've hit the nail on the head here. The GPL is described as a free license but it is actually a very restrictive license as compared to the BSD or X licenses.
Yet bizarrely, everybody is screaming for the X license to be changed and not the GPL.
Sometimes one would think that the GPL was written on tablets of stone, delivered by a modern day Moses (RMS), is self-evidently right and can't be changed.
I know that this may come as something of a shock to some Slashdotters but a lot of people don't like the GPL for a genuine reason: because it is too restrictive as compared to some other licenses.
Maybe a more valid question would be: How can we change the GPL to work with the X license? rather than vice versa
> And if FreeBSD can compile the c library, the c compiler,
/bin, /sbin and some games (bind and sendmail
if you want them). Other stuff too which I can't remember.
Everything in the base system which you can browse in
cvs.
;)
To be fair too I've got a Celeron (one of the good ones)
with a L1 cache addressed at the full clock speed of the
chip.
> kernel, xfree86, qt, kde, python, perl, and many other
> packages in 2 hours on a p2-300 w/160MB RAM and a slow hard
> drive, then I would be amazed.
3 hrs! C compiler, C libs, kernel, perl, openssh, openssl, nntpd and everything in
So you're right, we're not strictly comparing like with like - especially since I've got 192MB RAM and a Samsung 32GB IDE HD so my machine will obviously leave yours for dead
Apologies for the broken links. Try reading about the makeworld process here.
For upgrading userland stuff, most FreeBSDers use portupgrade which makes things pretty easy and painless.
Anyway, give FreeBSD a try one day. It would be interesting to compare it with Gentoo and see which bits of each system are better. I think you'll find the performance a lot better which is important when you're on low end hardware and building all your stuff from source.
> The recent updating included building most of the
> system over again (for about 6 months only security
> related packages had been updated) which took about a
> week, but the system was still often usable while it
> was compiling (slow, but usable).
A week!! I just rebuilt this box (300MHz Celeron FreeBSD) last night. Buildworld took just under 2 hrs with -j4, kernel took about 20 mins and the whole job was done in 3 hrs: installworld, installkernel and mergemaster
Big ports I just rebuild over night. Rebuilds I might do once every 6 months. ie. every release.
> ...or the fastest growing one would be the ;)
;)
> one that went from 1 to 5 users last week
There always has to be at least one person having a dig at Hurd
> Now, IE6, which is not at risk, has far surpassed the at-risk version in usage.
...and in bugs... :)
< 8 Hz voice >
...
...
Presenting a GNU/Dreamwerks production:
"WHEN TROLLS ATTACK"
A film of betrayal, intrigue and piss-poor articles. Starring Leanardo DiCaprio as Linus Torvalds, Robert DeNiro as Richard Stallman and Arnold DeSchwarzenegger as Eric Raymond. Featuring Danny DeVito as the troll.
Watch in Amazement as Linus uses quantocrypto beta wave brain analysis to get inside the mind of the troll...
"....I just have to decrypt this datastream....I'm in!"
Be Astounded as RMS insists on addressing Linus as GNU/Torvalds...
"Oi, GNU/Torvalds! That was my idea!"
Stand back in Awe as ESR deals with the troll the only way he knows how
"<BANG><BANG>....eat leaden death, troll....<BANG><BANG><BANG>..."
Be afraid....be very afraid...
> Microsoft was notified 6 months ago.
> Either they didn't know about it before that
> or they didn't disclose that they did.
I think they knew about it before. There was the trial of Microsoft Corp v States of California & others with regards the terms of settlement of DOJ v Microsoft Corp
During that trial I seem to remember an MS VP saying that they couldn't disclose their source because Windows contained a critical and deep-seated vulnerablity and they didn't want every Tom, Dick & Harry seeing it and hence exploiting it.
My guess is that we've probably just seen it fixed. If we haven't then perhaps they should say so.
> Kinsey measured actual men to come up with his number.
;)
:)
> (What was it.. 5 1/2" or something?)
That's the figure I've heard quoted before. I always remember because it's the size of mine folded in half
> Also, condom companies need to know how big to make their condoms
Didn't think of that.
Reminds me of a story I heard about Winston Churchill. Apparently, during the war the Russians ran short of condoms and asked the Brits to ship some out. So Churchill ordered that a shipment of extra large condoms be shipped out but not before they had all been marked as "extra small"
> 1. It has to be easy to learn and use. In order to build the novice's
...
:)
> confidence, it should encourage early successes. It should be easy
> to debug.
I'd say JS hits that. You can quickly write a webpage that does something ie. Displays a Fibonacci series, manipulates dates/times with very little code and what's more they pick up some html at the same time!
For debugging you've got the console/debugger in Moz/Firebird.
> 2. The tools have to be accessable to the student.
Yep. A browser with a JS interpreter is available on pretty much any platform.
> 3. It has to be practical. If the student can't use it to do
> something which is useful TO THEM fairly early on in the
> learning process, they probably won't stick with it.
I don't think it has to do anything useful per se, it has to look like it's doing something useful. Ever written something fairly complicated in C and it just prints something to a terminal? But a rollover in JS is pretty trivial and how cool does that look!
> 4. It has to provide a good foundation for future learning...
I'm not sure if JS does with it's loose typing but I reckon for just getting kids interested in programming it probably hits the spot. It's certainly a good way for them to find out if programming interests them and all they have to do is sit down at any PC with a browser on it, no mucking around having to set up the programming environment except for supplying a decent editor (no, not Notepad).
My opinion is that JS should be primarily taught at schools instead of the kids stuffing around with Word and suchlike. Ever seen how bored the kids are in class when they have to type a letter in Word? That's not computing, it's stuffing around and they're learning nothing.
Adults could start with something a bit more featureful (regards doing something that's actually useful), maybe Python.
> Boy, you must be one of the 80% of men who either can't spell :)
...and you must be one of the 80% of men who don't know what a phallus
is....nor what a pun is ;)
> fallacy or doesn't really know what it means
> duplicate...
Perhaps Slashdot has been infected by a "Batch Trojan Generator". Must have been infected for years if the number of dupes is anything to go by.
> But since the penis size probably follows a normal distribution, 50% are below the average.
probably is the operative word there. How many studies have been done on penis size? My guess: none, although I believe Kinsey named an average size but I've no idea what his methodology was.
If any studies had been done wouldn't you just get the guys with the big todgers showing up for the study and the little guys staying at home, hence skewing the results?
Average penis size looks like it might remain a mystery and lets not even get into measurements being taken when the aforementioned member is flaccid or...ahem...aroused
So trying to sell penis pills/potions by telling somebody they are smaller than average doesn't make sense because the mean is unknown (and probably unknowable).
Point taken about the assumption of a normal distribution. It was really just an excuse to get the lame phallusy gag in.
Get it in....suits you Sir!
A Slashdot reader writes:
Aaaagh! No more puns! Pleeeeeeeease!
I got one that said:
> Are you one of the 80% of men
> with a smaller than average penis?
Can anybody see the logical phallusy in that?
The Microsoft EULA is another piece of legalese that fails to meet the criteria of reasonableness in a number of jurisdictions, namely the UK and EU (AFAIK, IANAL)
For instance, I've got a copy of NT (unfortunately) and I run it on 2 machines in breach of the EULA. But the EU/UK says that I can make fair and reasonable use of any copyrighted work that I have bought a license for. I consider running it on 2 boxes is fair & reasonable :)
If MS disagress then they better take me to court.