Funny, and all this time I thought the majority of the reason people use Windows is because it comes pre-installed on all the computers that they buy. The fact it 'just works' is because the people who make the systems have already prebuilt the systems with a tested and verified image that works on that specific hardware being purchased.
If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.
I mean, get real. Can you imagine grandma getting a barebone system and installing Windows 7/Vista/Xp from cd, then having to search the internet for the drivers required for the hardware that isn't automatically recognized?
Pretty much the same headache grandma would have looking for any missing linux drivers, and funny enough, in a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows. Go figure.
So for the 'lack of tinkering', you have to thank Microsoft and their excellent marketing division and their stranglehold on the hardware corporation.
It also gives SCO a bit of fair movement now. They can conveniently lose paperwork stating that Darrell 'misplaced it' or 'took it'. But now they can say 'Hey, we're not at fault, we fired Darrell, what more do you want from us?'.
Meanwhile, Darrell can sit even prettier because when any litigation goes to him, he can play 'Ok? Prove it' and when they go to SCO they say 'oh dear, we seem to not have any of that paperwork. Pity us'.
Darrell becomes more scott free, SCO becomes more scott free, and big business wins again.
I'm sure with enough litigation the right proof can be found, but after how much time? how much money? Will 'those who care' feel it worth the loss of money to pursue it? Most likely not.
Instead of worrying about the 'trillions' we're wasting on 'blowing shit up' and the 'meager billions' we're using on foreign aid, I have some hypothetical questions for you.
Let's assume we dump all the trillions into 'helping people'. Ok, great. Let's ignore the fact that some people don't WANT help. In fact, some people get insanely nasty when you TRY to help them. As in killing people nasty. But hey, that's ok. As long as you help them, they'll turn around eventually. The people who die because of your effort, hey, no problem, just toss more money at them, it'll make the problem go away (hum, sounds like a government official now... don't it...)
If we don't fight the terrorists or various people threatening, then they'll what... go away? Sure. I'm sure entire lifetimes of brain washing and social enforcement will just 'go away' with leaving them alone. But let's assume we just pull away entirely. Ok, groovy. I'm sure the UN and other nations will take over the peace keeping required. Right? Oh wait... they tend not to do much without our investment. Huh. Maybe it has something to do with... oh, I don't know... money?
Lessee, what else, oh yes. If we didn't come armed to the teeth, they wouldn't feel so angry at us. Yup, I'm sure. Which is why various groups who have no arms at all, who go to third world nations are killed and slaughtered just for being there. They didn't have guns, but wait, I'm sure it's because of all the 'evil history of what we've done to them in the past'. Yes, I'm sure there's a good excuse for moral corruption no matter the issue. Americans are good for moral corruption ideals, after all, we helped propigate it by ignoring ourselves and blaming others. You're likely thinking it now, aren't you.
Face it. Throwing money, regardless of it being millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, or covering the world in gold dust won't make a damn bit of difference. The solution isn't money, it's communication. Unless we can both understand the other point of view and communicate as equals, from BOTH PARTIES INVOLVED, quite frankly our world is totally fucked, and there's not a damn bit of difference ANYONE can do to help it regardless of how much cash they throw. People will just laugh at you and take your money and not change. Why should they when they have no incentive to do so?
I jokingly said to the Toyota person 'oh sure, you can send me threatening email, but then I get to come to your store in the middle of the night and slash all the tires of your vehicles'. We both had a great laugh over it, shook hands, and we walked away.
2 death threats later, and Goodyear is having a wonderful fiscal year.
[/Hypothetical]
Somehow, I doubt Toyota would be as easily forgiving if the tables were reversed. So why should this women have to cave in?
They better make the game so that if I see the big blaring '7 hours in the sack with our pill' ads, they allow you to destroy the video feed through mayhem.
They want to show me that ad on a TV in a duke nukem? Fine. Allow me to use the minigun to take out the TV (and store) playing that add.
How's that for adding realism?
Hell, they allow you to destroy every ad feature in the game, and I might just buy the damn game just for that alone.
Next on the plans is what I remember from an online game my wife played.
In this game, was a gameshow called 'Who wants to be an immigrant?'.
It entailed that the person(s) who wanted to become legal immigrants, would run a death course (read Running Man like) and if they survived to get to the land, they could become a legal immigrant.
If you set up a state-based firewall that limits the number of SYN requests in a given second and drops the rest, I believe that will greatly reduce if not eliminate the threat.
The average in America should also be considered skewed by sheer numbers and diversity.
In Japan, they mostly have, well, Japanese.
In America, we have a large variety of races who bring with them their own genetic quirks, including the 4'8"-5'4" stereotypes of the asian influence to the massive 6'4"-7'2" german or swedish stereotypes.
Expecting a 7'4" football player to have a 33.5" waist is just foolish.
I, myself had a 34" waist when I was 14 years old, but then I was built stocky working on the family farm. I was also 5'11" at the time as well.
Applying raw numbers of width shouldn't apply unless you apply the average height as well and an honest offset to those values depending on that.
And while we're at it, how about applying a 'too thin' tax since anorexia and bolemia seems to be rather rampent in our country. Hum?
Actually, I get 'paid well' as a unix admin not because of Linux, but frankly because I know all the hardware as well as the software to unix. Also, let's not forget knowing enough to not only set up and install databases (Oracle, Informix, Ingris, DB2, etc) but also configure them properly per the hardware. Then lets not forget the networking standards to be able to successfully tweek, process, and sniff packet information for debugging processes. And of course we can't forget actually knowing the kernel and being able to do patches and being aware enough to know what will work and what not. And let's not forget the additional software (ssh, ftp, nfs, ntpd, nis+, ldap, etc) that is generally required for the position. Oh, and let's not forget the san attached storage, working with fiber fc-al, brocade switches, EMC/Hitatchi storage systems, and dynamic reconfiguration of servers (you know, being able to replace CPU's and memory in a server while keeping the sucker running).
Learning all the hardware and all the software and knowing just what to look for is what MAKES us knowledgeable about these systems.
Just because the standard windows administration is nothing but point and click, referencing access and administration logs that have poorly thought out error conditions and run-around logs to check in various help files, which eventually requires a call into microsoft to help with what the error is, doesn't mean windows is 'easier' to administer. It frankly means that windows runs everything behind the scenes, is very hard to discover exactly what it's doing to your hardware AND software, and all of this makes it frankly much easier to write viruses for this type of platform.
Unless, of course, the average linux install is actually set up right.
Where you have the core file systems and libraries (/bin,/usr/bin,/sbin,/usr/sbin,/lib,/usr/lib, etc) that are intended to really not change short of major patches mounted on seperate partitions in a read-only state.
Then any user-defined foo gets dumped in/usr/local and you're set.
Sure, it still won't stop the average dumb as a nut user from doing a yanktacular darwin moment, but it would greatly stop the majority of root kits and trojans from infiltrating ad-hock systems that tend to go for those afore mentioned paths and directories.
Then of course enforce an iptable firewall rule that block all outgoing ports except the ones you know the average users use as well as all the incoming ones, then in those cases even if they do something absolutely retarded on their system, the firewall won't allow the bot to connect.
Most linux/unix botnets tend to have IRC control subsystems, fairly easy to have a standalone firewall filter those ports out.
Being an IT professional, I'll tell you right now this isn't just Google.
This is the corporate mindset.
The upper management look at the bottom dollar on how to make money.
And regardless of how ugly it is, on paper, IT are a cost. Never a profit.
Remember, I'm IT. I know just like any other IT professional, that what we save a company in revenue is enormous. We maintain the systems, prevent outtages, and are a total invisible entity until something goes wrong (tm). But most of the time, we're ignored. Why? Because we do our job, we do our job well, and people who make money can continue to make money.
If we went by the RIAA method of cost, then we could argue that each IT professional is worth a few hundred million dollars. Because it's our expertise that is saving the company that much in lost revenue every year, as a blanket possibility.
Unfortunately, the RIAA method of cost isn't used by the business department. The only go for immediate dividends. They look at the long scope project plan and how much revenue they will be generated. To date, I have hardly ever seen a business plan that takes potential loss into account with any budget they write. Ever.
This is why they can easilly determine that firing the 'old codgy 20+ year expert' who makes his 100K year for a green out of college eager beaver for 40K year saves the company 60K, PLUS BENEFITS, a shot.
Looks really good on paper.
Of course, in that year, they lose more money than the 60K in training, mistakes made by this individual, downtime on servers, misappropiations of resources and applications, etc etc.
But that never shows on paper. Regardless of the loss, they'll just point to the 60K saved. And when the company inevitably has a SAN outtage, drive failure, OS crash, DDoS attack or other miscreant attack/damage, they'll put this person on probation, fire off other high end professionals who weren't at fault, maybe lay off the manager in charge of the department. And then, wow, look how much MORE money we saved? We're doing great!
Long as the chair boards are happy and the investors get their cash, frankly, they don't give a damn about the IT professional, and that's always going to be the case.
I hate to disagree, but it really has nothing to do with it being more or less mainstream.
It has to do with the knowledge of the people who run it and their complacency or laziness in making sure their daemons, applications, and security is up to specs.
Linux has built in security. It comes standard. Defacto.
Not many people use it though, and it requires manual configuration and setup.
With the right iptable definitions, you could shore up a linux box to be nearly unhackable, without worrying about upgrading the daemons at all. It'd be stupid not to, but you wouldn't _have_ to if you didn't want to. Daemons aren't hackable if they can't even be reached, after all.
With windows, you don't have such tools that come with the operating system.
You have to download them, purchase them, and otherwise manipulate them like a sledgehammer beating on a stone block.
The reason linux will most likely never be hacked to the great degree windows is, is frankly because most people who know how to set up linux servers have their distro set up _differently_ then the next person.
What root kits work on one platform very likely may not work on another.
Linux is only highly sought after by these hackers as deployment systems because of: 1) their realiability 2) their configurability 3) their stability 4) because some people who use them don't know how to maintain them.
It's like being a billionaire and owning several houses, living in one, and not bothering to check in or monitoring other houses.
Only to find out, years later, that one of your houses have live-in tenants.
If you don't take care of what you own, people will naturally take advantage of it.
Which is why when most people want support for the various linux distributions, they provide their own support libraries, staticly link the libraries they need, then release the binary.
This is why you would see a lot of generic binaries for Kernel 2.2.x or Kernel 2.4.x or Kernel 2.6.x and it would 'just work'.
With the graphical tools, X-windows is X-windows is X-windows. Weither it's Xfree or Xorg, it's still the same basic backend set.
As long as you don't rely on QT or other 3rd party tools, you should be fine. If you do rely on them, then it's fairly easy to include binaries for those as well, or at least point out the source repositories for people to get it themselves.
People say 'it installs on windows and just works'.
But pay attention sometime to all the several and insane number of DLL's that get copied around, all usually the same library, sometimes different versions of that library.
Linux could work the same way, just be a lot cleaner with how the libraries are used and much cleaner with how it cleans up afterwords.
The only difference frankly is people don't want to try and find it easier to say how impossible it is.
Having a multiuser application I built myself that compiles cleanly as 32 bit, 64 bit, on AIX, SunOS 4.x, Solaris 5.6 through 11.x, Ultrix, Tru64, BSDi, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, HPUX 9.x to 11.x, Linux (all flavors), SGI, IRIX, and MacOSX's bsd implementation, I can attest it's not impossible.
And all this time I thought it was the dialup global internet providers like AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and internet main corps like MCI, Belllabs, 3com that paved the way for all this information technology.
and of course, the HTML 1.0 format for use with web services.
And let's not forget the predecessors of gopher, archie, and uucp and news feeders.
Yes, finding information in the 80s' and early 90's was impossible. Sure. Uh-huh.
(sarcasm)
Yup! All Microsoft subsidiaries that would not have existed without good ol' Windows.
It apparently already goes through firewalls (hard and soft) that someone previously has mentioned. I'm not sure how, I'd have to have a packet sniffer on the line to see what is being sent and received. My assumption is it does an open port scan/stealth scan on your own network to see what ports are available on the outgoing then calls home.
Wait to see what will happen once some bright young (or old) hacker finds a method to subvert this forced update to go to a different site.
Did he stop to take a dump on my lawn and throw feces at my wife while on my lawn or just walk through it?
Depending what was 'omitted' from 'just walking on the lawn', it's clobbering time:)
Unfortunately this is a lot of times what is 'omitted' in the news. A lot of them will just mention 'yea, the kid just walked on the lawn' but not mention what he did while ON the lawn.
Minimum of 3 sides to all stories, make sure to always get the other two;)
Which personally is why I, for one, will be interested to hear what you say when you're introduced to the next version of the doc format which will no doubt fail to be compatible just like past experience has shown with nearly every version of Windows to date.
But I'm sure if you've forked over cash for the Microsoft engine once, you'll continue to happilly do so in times to come to keep 'introducing yourself to the 21st century'.
The pope has been seen mauling 32 people requesting absolution of sins.
When asked, the pope responded "Grrr! Rrorrr! Grrrr!"
We also have eye-witness reports of Big Foot walking in a most peaceful manner in the woods. He apparently is seen here blessing an oak tree while wearing priestly robes, before taking a dump on a thorn bush.
You don't see a problem with just the OS running idle takes up 20% of a high-end, possibly dual-core processor?
I see that as a big issue.
Especially as Windows is toated as a multi-threaded platform capable of doing more than, you know, one thing at a time.
If 1/4th of the CPU is taken up just running the OS, what will happen when you actually want to get something done?
Maybe 20-30% of the cpu isn't a big deal to you, but when you're on a deadline, it's a big difference to me. it's esentially making that dual core 3ghz processor down to a nice 1.8 ghz proc.... permanently.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, and all this time I thought the majority of the reason people use Windows is because it comes pre-installed on all the computers that they buy. The fact it 'just works' is because the people who make the systems have already prebuilt the systems with a tested and verified image that works on that specific hardware being purchased.
If they did the same with Linux, which some distributions do, then it would 'just work' as well.
I mean, get real. Can you imagine grandma getting a barebone system and installing Windows 7/Vista/Xp from cd, then having to search the internet for the drivers required for the hardware that isn't automatically recognized?
Pretty much the same headache grandma would have looking for any missing linux drivers, and funny enough, in a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows. Go figure.
So for the 'lack of tinkering', you have to thank Microsoft and their excellent marketing division and their stranglehold on the hardware corporation.
Cheers.
Not like they're buying out Morgan Stanley...
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/06/03/CIC-to-buy-447M-shares-of-Morgan-Stanley/UPI-45271244026009/
Or NBA teams...
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2009/columns/story?columnist=stein_marc&page=CavsChina-090601
Or Automobile companies like Hummer...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/business/03auto.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1256911465-MYcwhz7EQCEgv2gHJoLH7Q
Or tried to buy out our oil/energy corporations in the past...
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/08/chinese_ownersh_2.html
Yes, Chinese needs a 'backdoor' entry. This would be similiar to having a co-owner of a house putting in a back door to the house.
Kinda hard to get a backdoor entry when they're already sitting in your living room.
I had a relative that used to raise ghots. Some veeps and vickens, too.
Every morning you voke the vows, and vilked them vry.
It also gives SCO a bit of fair movement now. They can conveniently lose paperwork stating that Darrell 'misplaced it' or 'took it'. But now they can say 'Hey, we're not at fault, we fired Darrell, what more do you want from us?'.
Meanwhile, Darrell can sit even prettier because when any litigation goes to him, he can play 'Ok? Prove it' and when they go to SCO they say 'oh dear, we seem to not have any of that paperwork. Pity us'.
Darrell becomes more scott free, SCO becomes more scott free, and big business wins again.
I'm sure with enough litigation the right proof can be found, but after how much time? how much money? Will 'those who care' feel it worth the loss of money to pursue it? Most likely not.
Hey, I have a better idea.
Instead of worrying about the 'trillions' we're wasting on 'blowing shit up' and the 'meager billions' we're using on foreign aid, I have some hypothetical questions for you.
Let's assume we dump all the trillions into 'helping people'. Ok, great. Let's ignore the fact that some people don't WANT help. In fact, some people get insanely nasty when you TRY to help them. As in killing people nasty. But hey, that's ok. As long as you help them, they'll turn around eventually. The people who die because of your effort, hey, no problem, just toss more money at them, it'll make the problem go away (hum, sounds like a government official now... don't it...)
If we don't fight the terrorists or various people threatening, then they'll what... go away? Sure. I'm sure entire lifetimes of brain washing and social enforcement will just 'go away' with leaving them alone. But let's assume we just pull away entirely. Ok, groovy. I'm sure the UN and other nations will take over the peace keeping required. Right? Oh wait... they tend not to do much without our investment. Huh. Maybe it has something to do with... oh, I don't know... money?
Lessee, what else, oh yes. If we didn't come armed to the teeth, they wouldn't feel so angry at us. Yup, I'm sure. Which is why various groups who have no arms at all, who go to third world nations are killed and slaughtered just for being there. They didn't have guns, but wait, I'm sure it's because of all the 'evil history of what we've done to them in the past'. Yes, I'm sure there's a good excuse for moral corruption no matter the issue. Americans are good for moral corruption ideals, after all, we helped propigate it by ignoring ourselves and blaming others. You're likely thinking it now, aren't you.
Face it. Throwing money, regardless of it being millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, or covering the world in gold dust won't make a damn bit of difference. The solution isn't money, it's communication. Unless we can both understand the other point of view and communicate as equals, from BOTH PARTIES INVOLVED, quite frankly our world is totally fucked, and there's not a damn bit of difference ANYONE can do to help it regardless of how much cash they throw. People will just laugh at you and take your money and not change. Why should they when they have no incentive to do so?
Think about that.
[Hypothetical Situation:]
I jokingly said to the Toyota person 'oh sure, you can send me threatening email, but then I get to come to your store in the middle of the night and slash all the tires of your vehicles'. We both had a great laugh over it, shook hands, and we walked away.
2 death threats later, and Goodyear is having a wonderful fiscal year.
[/Hypothetical]
Somehow, I doubt Toyota would be as easily forgiving if the tables were reversed. So why should this women have to cave in?
They better make the game so that if I see the big blaring '7 hours in the sack with our pill' ads, they allow you to destroy the video feed through mayhem.
They want to show me that ad on a TV in a duke nukem? Fine. Allow me to use the minigun to take out the TV (and store) playing that add.
How's that for adding realism?
Hell, they allow you to destroy every ad feature in the game, and I might just buy the damn game just for that alone.
Or starring Jeffrery Dahmer on an episode of Iron Chef.
Next on the plans is what I remember from an online game my wife played.
In this game, was a gameshow called 'Who wants to be an immigrant?'.
It entailed that the person(s) who wanted to become legal immigrants, would run a death course (read Running Man like) and if they survived to get to the land, they could become a legal immigrant.
And this was of course aired on live TV.
How soon you think before the UK go this route?
If you set up a state-based firewall that limits the number of SYN requests in a given second and drops the rest, I believe that will greatly reduce if not eliminate the threat.
The average in America should also be considered skewed by sheer numbers and diversity.
In Japan, they mostly have, well, Japanese.
In America, we have a large variety of races who bring with them their own genetic quirks, including the 4'8"-5'4" stereotypes of the asian influence to the massive 6'4"-7'2" german or swedish stereotypes.
Expecting a 7'4" football player to have a 33.5" waist is just foolish.
I, myself had a 34" waist when I was 14 years old, but then I was built stocky working on the family farm. I was also 5'11" at the time as well.
Applying raw numbers of width shouldn't apply unless you apply the average height as well and an honest offset to those values depending on that.
And while we're at it, how about applying a 'too thin' tax since anorexia and bolemia seems to be rather rampent in our country. Hum?
Actually, I get 'paid well' as a unix admin not because of Linux, but frankly because I know all the hardware as well as the software to unix. Also, let's not forget knowing enough to not only set up and install databases (Oracle, Informix, Ingris, DB2, etc) but also configure them properly per the hardware. Then lets not forget the networking standards to be able to successfully tweek, process, and sniff packet information for debugging processes. And of course we can't forget actually knowing the kernel and being able to do patches and being aware enough to know what will work and what not. And let's not forget the additional software (ssh, ftp, nfs, ntpd, nis+, ldap, etc) that is generally required for the position. Oh, and let's not forget the san attached storage, working with fiber fc-al, brocade switches, EMC/Hitatchi storage systems, and dynamic reconfiguration of servers (you know, being able to replace CPU's and memory in a server while keeping the sucker running). Learning all the hardware and all the software and knowing just what to look for is what MAKES us knowledgeable about these systems. Just because the standard windows administration is nothing but point and click, referencing access and administration logs that have poorly thought out error conditions and run-around logs to check in various help files, which eventually requires a call into microsoft to help with what the error is, doesn't mean windows is 'easier' to administer. It frankly means that windows runs everything behind the scenes, is very hard to discover exactly what it's doing to your hardware AND software, and all of this makes it frankly much easier to write viruses for this type of platform.
I'll be curious what happens if one of the drivers of this car is wearing a pace maker.
Unless, of course, the average linux install is actually set up right.
/usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /lib, /usr/lib, etc) that are intended to really not change short of major patches mounted on seperate partitions in a read-only state.
/usr/local and you're set.
Where you have the core file systems and libraries (/bin,
Then any user-defined foo gets dumped in
Sure, it still won't stop the average dumb as a nut user from doing a yanktacular darwin moment, but it would greatly stop the majority of root kits and trojans from infiltrating ad-hock systems that tend to go for those afore mentioned paths and directories.
Then of course enforce an iptable firewall rule that block all outgoing ports except the ones you know the average users use as well as all the incoming ones, then in those cases even if they do something absolutely retarded on their system, the firewall won't allow the bot to connect.
Most linux/unix botnets tend to have IRC control subsystems, fairly easy to have a standalone firewall filter those ports out.
Being an IT professional, I'll tell you right now this isn't just Google.
This is the corporate mindset.
The upper management look at the bottom dollar on how to make money.
And regardless of how ugly it is, on paper, IT are a cost. Never a profit.
Remember, I'm IT. I know just like any other IT professional, that what we save a company in revenue is enormous. We maintain the systems, prevent outtages, and are a total invisible entity until something goes wrong (tm). But most of the time, we're ignored. Why? Because we do our job, we do our job well, and people who make money can continue to make money.
If we went by the RIAA method of cost, then we could argue that each IT professional is worth a few hundred million dollars. Because it's our expertise that is saving the company that much in lost revenue every year, as a blanket possibility.
Unfortunately, the RIAA method of cost isn't used by the business department. The only go for immediate dividends. They look at the long scope project plan and how much revenue they will be generated. To date, I have hardly ever seen a business plan that takes potential loss into account with any budget they write. Ever.
This is why they can easilly determine that firing the 'old codgy 20+ year expert' who makes his 100K year for a green out of college eager beaver for 40K year saves the company 60K, PLUS BENEFITS, a shot.
Looks really good on paper.
Of course, in that year, they lose more money than the 60K in training, mistakes made by this individual, downtime on servers, misappropiations of resources and applications, etc etc.
But that never shows on paper. Regardless of the loss, they'll just point to the 60K saved. And when the company inevitably has a SAN outtage, drive failure, OS crash, DDoS attack or other miscreant attack/damage, they'll put this person on probation, fire off other high end professionals who weren't at fault, maybe lay off the manager in charge of the department. And then, wow, look how much MORE money we saved? We're doing great!
Long as the chair boards are happy and the investors get their cash, frankly, they don't give a damn about the IT professional, and that's always going to be the case.
Welcome to industry gentlemen.
I hate to disagree, but it really has nothing to do with it being more or less mainstream.
It has to do with the knowledge of the people who run it and their complacency or laziness in making sure their daemons, applications, and security is up to specs.
Linux has built in security. It comes standard. Defacto.
Not many people use it though, and it requires manual configuration and setup.
With the right iptable definitions, you could shore up a linux box to be nearly unhackable, without worrying about upgrading the daemons at all. It'd be stupid not to, but you wouldn't _have_ to if you didn't want to. Daemons aren't hackable if they can't even be reached, after all.
With windows, you don't have such tools that come with the operating system.
You have to download them, purchase them, and otherwise manipulate them like a sledgehammer beating on a stone block.
The reason linux will most likely never be hacked to the great degree windows is, is frankly because most people who know how to set up linux servers have their distro set up _differently_ then the next person.
What root kits work on one platform very likely may not work on another.
Linux is only highly sought after by these hackers as deployment systems because of:
1) their realiability
2) their configurability
3) their stability
4) because some people who use them don't know how to maintain them.
It's like being a billionaire and owning several houses, living in one, and not bothering to check in or monitoring other houses.
Only to find out, years later, that one of your houses have live-in tenants.
If you don't take care of what you own, people will naturally take advantage of it.
Which is why when most people want support for the various linux distributions, they provide their own support libraries, staticly link the libraries they need, then release the binary.
This is why you would see a lot of generic binaries for Kernel 2.2.x or Kernel 2.4.x or Kernel 2.6.x and it would 'just work'.
With the graphical tools, X-windows is X-windows is X-windows. Weither it's Xfree or Xorg, it's still the same basic backend set.
As long as you don't rely on QT or other 3rd party tools, you should be fine. If you do rely on them, then it's fairly easy to include binaries for those as well, or at least point out the source repositories for people to get it themselves.
People say 'it installs on windows and just works'.
But pay attention sometime to all the several and insane number of DLL's that get copied around, all usually the same library, sometimes different versions of that library.
Linux could work the same way, just be a lot cleaner with how the libraries are used and much cleaner with how it cleans up afterwords.
The only difference frankly is people don't want to try and find it easier to say how impossible it is.
Having a multiuser application I built myself that compiles cleanly as 32 bit, 64 bit, on AIX, SunOS 4.x, Solaris 5.6 through 11.x, Ultrix, Tru64, BSDi, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, HPUX 9.x to 11.x, Linux (all flavors), SGI, IRIX, and MacOSX's bsd implementation, I can attest it's not impossible.
Posix compatability is there for a reason.
Really?
And all this time I thought it was the dialup global internet providers like AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, and internet main corps like MCI, Belllabs, 3com that paved the way for all this information technology.
and of course, the HTML 1.0 format for use with web services.
And let's not forget the predecessors of gopher, archie, and uucp and news feeders.
Yes, finding information in the 80s' and early 90's was impossible. Sure. Uh-huh.
(sarcasm)
Yup! All Microsoft subsidiaries that would not have existed without good ol' Windows.
(/sarcasm)
It apparently already goes through firewalls (hard and soft) that someone previously has mentioned. I'm not sure how, I'd have to have a packet sniffer on the line to see what is being sent and received. My assumption is it does an open port scan/stealth scan on your own network to see what ports are available on the outgoing then calls home.
Wait to see what will happen once some bright young (or old) hacker finds a method to subvert this forced update to go to a different site.
It'll be similiar to a McDonalds slogan.
1 billion botnets and growing.
Well, I'm not sure...
:)
;)
Did he stop to take a dump on my lawn and throw feces at my wife while on my lawn or just walk through it?
Depending what was 'omitted' from 'just walking on the lawn', it's clobbering time
Unfortunately this is a lot of times what is 'omitted' in the news. A lot of them will just mention 'yea, the kid just walked on the lawn' but not mention what he did while ON the lawn.
Minimum of 3 sides to all stories, make sure to always get the other two
http://www.zimbra.com/
Integrated calandar in an Exchange type of feeling, all in a nice opensource package.
Windows/Unix/Linux compatible.
IMAP/POP compatible.
Live it, love it, use it.
Which personally is why I, for one, will be interested to hear what you say when you're introduced to the next version of the doc format which will no doubt fail to be compatible just like past experience has shown with nearly every version of Windows to date.
But I'm sure if you've forked over cash for the Microsoft engine once, you'll continue to happilly do so in times to come to keep 'introducing yourself to the 21st century'.
Happy spending.
Also in the news...
The pope has been seen mauling 32 people requesting absolution of sins.
When asked, the pope responded "Grrr! Rrorrr! Grrrr!"
We also have eye-witness reports of Big Foot walking in a most peaceful manner in the woods. He apparently is seen here blessing an oak tree while wearing priestly robes, before taking a dump on a thorn bush.
You don't see a problem with just the OS running idle takes up 20% of a high-end, possibly dual-core processor?
I see that as a big issue.
Especially as Windows is toated as a multi-threaded platform capable of doing more than, you know, one thing at a time.
If 1/4th of the CPU is taken up just running the OS, what will happen when you actually want to get something done?
Maybe 20-30% of the cpu isn't a big deal to you, but when you're on a deadline, it's a big difference to me. it's esentially making that dual core 3ghz processor down to a nice 1.8 ghz proc.... permanently.
I'm sure the first thing he'd do is check his computer to make sure they didn't use it to download music.