> Now it's just a crappy slow PC for cheap.... with a remote control, good TV and HD output and remote control. Not that I disagree completely, I use MythTV as well as XBox Media Center. I love both.
> So if you spend twenty-five bucks buying a new hardcover book, and you accidently > drop it in the toilet, you expect the publisher to send you a new copy free?
No, because they don't stand in my way of backing up my book.
It's really simple, reading the context of the conversation before posting... but few people bother. -sigh-
> IMHO this is one of those situations where the open source community appears to believe that they are > entitled to a free lunch.
I wouldn't characterize it that way. There are some people for whom freedom is what it's all about; a mediocre but free tool is better than a more powerful non-free tool. It is from that faction that the controversy over bitkeeper comes.
> "protect" people stupid enough to run executables from unknown sources.
I think if we can whittle the problem down to where it's just the people that are hitting 'open' when downloading an.exe that are infected, then we'll be doing damn well. As it stands, just running outlook with the preview pane enabled is pretty much a crackshot guarantee that you'll have malware on your system inside of a week.
> And either way, Hussein deliberately acted in such a way that the only > conclusion anybody on the outside reached -- and that included the > UN, France, Germany, Canada, and Russia -- was that he had > retained them. Everybody thought Iraq had them; the only > controversy was over the method of getting rid of them.
Am I the _only_ one that remembers the inspectors being let in, receiving cooperation? Hans Blix, ring a bell? Are you on drugs?
Hussein was a prick of a whole different kind, but he cooperated with the inspectors a hell of a lot more than Bush cooperated with the 9/11 investigation.
> Basically: "we'll give you BK for free, but you're not to use > it to undermine our business". Seems fair to me.
You've missed a pivotal nuance. It doesn't say you can't use bitkeeper to work on such a system; it says that if you use bitkeeper, you're not allowed to work on such a system AT ALL. That is, it prevents you from doing so even when you're not using BK.
> I recently lost some rather important data, which has made me > a little skeptical in using it in a production system
-nod- My experience from reiserfs3 (ranging from 2.4.12 through about 2.4.20) was that you're just living on borrowed time... eventually, the whole filesystem will go belly-up. My personal workstation died 3 times before I learned that lesson, and by that time I had put it on a development server. I am religious about backups, fortunately.
I've heard plenty of people (including another respondant here) claim to run reiserfs forever with no problems... then again, I've heard the same claims made about Windows ME. I've never heard of anyone having unrecoverable data loss on ext3. As always, YMMV.
> Congratulations. You've never used a MS networking product.
Like an earlier poster, I also returned my Microsoft Wireless-G router. It didn't have ANY configurability... I couldn't turn on broadcast SSID or set it up for shared key authentication. It had all of about 4 tunable settings. It's typical microsoft. And surely some people like that; they just want the defaults. -shrug- I won't tolerate it.
> And I'm not talking about piracy. I'm talking about making > backups (my right) and creative personal reuse (also my right).... which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end.
DRM tech will NOT stop piracy, it will ONLY prevent you from exercising your rights to backup and personal reuse.
> Generations pretty much voided any chance of a TNG prequel with the original crew.
-nod- Besides, much of the crew was meeting for the first time in Encounter at Farpoint, so it would be tough to do anything with all the familiar characters together that was set earlier than that.
Xft looks -MUCH- nicer. The most recent generation of all major applications supports Xft now, although this is a very recent development. Until fairly recently, getting gorgeous fonts in all your apps was quite a chore.
> 2.) automatic directX compatibility for games
Hopefully, pressure from growing Mac and Linux markets will attack this problem from one angle, that is giving game manufacturers a good reason to use open APIs, and wine's ever-improving implementation of linux-native directx will attack the problem in the more direct way you suggest.
I find it important to remember that security is not an on or off state. Any given system exists somewhere on a continuum between security and convenience. You just have to decide where on that continuum you want to be.
For instance, it doesn't do much good to spend hours setting up a cumbersome cryptographic scheme for your wireless LAN in order to protect your internal file server, if you only have normal household padlocks and no human guards on the server. Attackers will always find the path of least resistance.
> How much damage can be done if somebody cracks your WEP?
If somebody breaks into your WEP, they can do anything that any machine on your LAN can do. That is, they can sniff your traffic, they can access any internal servers that use only IP address checking for security (NFS is commonly set up this way) and they can use your connection to the net. The latter is more serious than you might think; for instance, what if they launch a DDoS, port-scan a bank, or serve child pornography from your IP address?
I always love it when somebody compares features in Windows XP to the way Linux behaved a decade ago. Get a clue, USB support in Linux has "just worked" for years. SuSE notwithstanding.
The auto industry has solved this problem. If you buy a car and find out it's "buggy", the shop will repair it and, in most states, if the bugs can't be worked out you get your money back or a different car (each state's lemon laws vary, but most states have 'em).
If a critical flaw is discovered later in the car's life cycle, the company issues a recall, notifies car owners and fixes the bug at their expense. (I'm curious, does anybody know how old a car has to be before the manufacturer is absolved of having to do recalls ?)
Am I horribly short-sighted for thinking this model would work for software too ? It has the added benefit that F/L/OSS is safe, too... when a vulnerability is discovered, you make a good faith attempt to notify your users about it, and you're obligated to either fix the bug or give them their money back. =)
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> Would the grandparent like some butter with his SERVING?
Oh, no you didn't. Now IT'S ON.
"Swimmers in this vicinity have been designated non-essential personnel. You have been scheduled for elimination. This unit must survive."
> Now it's just a crappy slow PC for cheap. ... with a remote control, good TV and HD output and remote control. Not that I disagree completely, I use MythTV as well as XBox Media Center. I love both.
> So if you spend twenty-five bucks buying a new hardcover book, and you accidently
> drop it in the toilet, you expect the publisher to send you a new copy free?
No, because they don't stand in my way of backing up my book.
It's really simple, reading the context of the conversation before posting... but few people bother. -sigh-
> IMHO this is one of those situations where the open source community appears to believe that they are
> entitled to a free lunch.
I wouldn't characterize it that way. There are some people for whom freedom is what it's all about; a mediocre but free tool is better than a more powerful non-free tool. It is from that faction that the controversy over bitkeeper comes.
> "protect" people stupid enough to run executables from unknown sources.
.exe that are infected, then we'll be doing damn well. As it stands, just running outlook with the preview pane enabled is pretty much a crackshot guarantee that you'll have malware on your system inside of a week.
I think if we can whittle the problem down to where it's just the people that are hitting 'open' when downloading an
> And either way, Hussein deliberately acted in such a way that the only
> conclusion anybody on the outside reached -- and that included the
> UN, France, Germany, Canada, and Russia -- was that he had
> retained them. Everybody thought Iraq had them; the only
> controversy was over the method of getting rid of them.
Am I the _only_ one that remembers the inspectors being let in, receiving cooperation? Hans Blix, ring
a bell? Are you on drugs?
Hussein was a prick of a whole different kind, but he cooperated with the inspectors a hell of a lot more
than Bush cooperated with the 9/11 investigation.
> Basically: "we'll give you BK for free, but you're not to use
> it to undermine our business". Seems fair to me.
You've missed a pivotal nuance. It doesn't say you can't use bitkeeper to work on such a system; it says that if you use bitkeeper, you're not allowed to work on such a system AT ALL. That is, it prevents you from doing so even when you're not using BK.
> I recently lost some rather important data, which has made me
> a little skeptical in using it in a production system
-nod- My experience from reiserfs3 (ranging from 2.4.12 through about 2.4.20) was that you're just living on borrowed time... eventually, the whole filesystem will go belly-up. My personal workstation died 3 times before I learned that lesson, and by that time I had put it on a development server. I am religious about backups, fortunately.
I've heard plenty of people (including another respondant here) claim to run reiserfs forever with no problems... then again, I've heard the same claims made about Windows ME. I've never heard of anyone having unrecoverable data loss on ext3. As always, YMMV.
> Congratulations. You've never used a MS networking product.
Like an earlier poster, I also returned my Microsoft Wireless-G router. It didn't have ANY configurability... I couldn't turn on broadcast SSID or set it up for shared key authentication. It had all of about 4 tunable settings. It's typical microsoft. And surely some people like that; they just want the defaults. -shrug- I won't tolerate it.
> Cheap is nice, but ultimately, you get what you pay for.
Neocapitalist poppycock. All the best software is free.
> And I'm not talking about piracy. I'm talking about making ... which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end.
> backups (my right) and creative personal reuse (also my right).
DRM tech will NOT stop piracy, it will ONLY prevent you from exercising your rights to backup and personal reuse.
> "Oh, Jesus, he's got an arm off!"
No I 'aven't! T'is but a scratch !
> Nemesis flopped like a fish out of water
Nemesis just picked up some of the residual floppage from Insurrection... Nemesis was actually decent in its own right.
> Generations pretty much voided any chance of a TNG prequel with the original crew.
-nod- Besides, much of the crew was meeting for the first time in Encounter at Farpoint, so it would be tough to do anything with all the familiar characters together that was set earlier than that.
Here I go feeding trolls again...
> 1.) cleartype fonts
Xft looks -MUCH- nicer. The most recent generation of all major applications supports Xft now, although this is a very recent development. Until fairly recently, getting gorgeous fonts in all your apps was quite a chore.
> 2.) automatic directX compatibility for games
Hopefully, pressure from growing Mac and Linux markets will attack this problem from one angle, that is giving game manufacturers a good reason to use open APIs, and wine's ever-improving implementation of linux-native directx will attack the problem in the more direct way you suggest.
> 3.) one solid universal gui
Just as long as it's WindowMaker !!
Anyway, IHBT IHL IWHAND
I find it important to remember that security is not an on or off state. Any given system exists somewhere on a continuum between security and convenience. You just have to decide where on that continuum you want to be.
For instance, it doesn't do much good to spend hours setting up a cumbersome cryptographic scheme for your wireless LAN in order to protect your internal file server, if you only have normal household padlocks and no human guards on the server. Attackers will always find the path of least resistance.
Then you obviously haven't listened to as much Limbaugh and Hannity as the above poster.
> How much damage can be done if somebody cracks your WEP?
If somebody breaks into your WEP, they can do anything that any machine on your LAN can do. That is, they can sniff your traffic, they can access any internal servers that use only IP address checking for security (NFS is commonly set up this way) and they can use your connection to the net. The latter is more serious than you might think; for instance, what if they launch a DDoS, port-scan a bank, or serve child pornography from your IP address?
I always love it when somebody compares features in Windows XP to the way Linux behaved a decade ago. Get a clue, USB support in Linux has "just worked" for years. SuSE notwithstanding.
> hardware found in big companies like Bell Canada, and not my WEP 64 wireless
Correct; asleap won't crack your network. However, airsnort will.
http://airsnort.shmoo.com/
So far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a link-layer security protocol for wireless made yet that
hasn't been cracked. That's why I run ipsec.
> Yeah, that's obviously the reason why Debian was so quick to jump to X.org
Debian hasn't moved to X.org so far as I'm aware. They've just decided to avoid XFree 4.4.
Methinks the moderators don't understand how presidential cabinet members get their jobs...
Hint: irrespective of your beliefs about the legitimacy of the Bush presidency, Ashcroft (like all cabinet-level officials) was appointed.
> However, unlike cars, most people don't have a clue how computers work
I wouldn't say that that's unlike cars at all.
The auto industry has solved this problem. If you buy a car and find out it's "buggy", the shop will repair it and, in most states, if the bugs can't be worked out you get your money back or a different car (each state's lemon laws vary, but most states have 'em).
If a critical flaw is discovered later in the car's life cycle, the company issues a recall, notifies car owners and fixes the bug at their expense. (I'm curious, does anybody know how old a car has to be before the manufacturer is absolved of having to do recalls ?)
Am I horribly short-sighted for thinking this model would work for software too ? It has the added benefit that F/L/OSS is safe, too... when a vulnerability is discovered, you make a good faith attempt to notify your users about it, and you're obligated to either fix the bug or give them their money back. =)