To answer some anti-OpenBSD bias from the summary above: systrace is really Niels Provos toy, OpenBSD just includes it in the base install just as NetBSD does; regarding sudo, it has been addressed in a comment above (not vulnerable in the actual released version); and by saying that NetBSD has disabled systrace that implies that OpenBSD has it still enabled. Except that it is a tool that isn't used by the default install at all - you have to enable and configure it yourself. And as the Undeadly post states: Since 2002, the systrace(1) man page included a warning in the BUGS section about the possibility of escaping the policy enforcement because of the behavior of certain system calls..
Personally I have never liked the idea of systrace - leaves way to much to to me as a system administrator to fuck up.
Is why every building/house isn't required to have at least one solar panel on the roof. I could care less about their efficiency, or the ability to run my whole house on them, but the relative low cost and huge amount of energy would benefit everyone. Give people a tax break like they do for weatherproofing your home and make it mandatory. I recently visited Berlin, Germany, and from the top of the house I could see that most of the houses in the residential area had solar panels on the roof. I inquired about this and was informed that it indeed was the result of tax reductions. I gave me some hope...
What in the world are you talking about?! The OpenBSD tree was originally created from source that was downloaded as source tar balls (in some way or the other) from NetBSD since no project before OpenBSD allowed anonymous access to their development tree! The NetBSD CVS server was not publically available. CVS (and atleast Subversion) requires that you have access (and sufficient permissions) to the revision system server to be able to create a branch. Thus, it wouldn't had matter what revision system software they were using.
What people seems to forget is that even if CVS usage is replaced with something else (like for example SVN) it doesn't make all the old CVS repositories go away. So, 20 years into the future (when we have flying cars which runs on water) you sit there (on your levitating chair) and wants to extract some files from an old CVS repo you found in the company's archive. No problem, except that GNU CVS isn't available on SuperDuper Windows Extra Deluxe 2027, due to the fact that code base and build system is such a mess that no one manages to make packages for Cygwin anymore (that and the fact that Microsoft (Operating Systems Division) does not any longer permit that GPLed software is used on its products.
Ok, I'm exaggerating, but the point is that there is no fault in having a clean and maintainable code base for the future - even if it's only used for handling legacy projects.
Besides, who are we to tell these people how to use their spare time? If anyone want to re-implement Unix in Brainf*ck, then let them.
Perhaps I'm uninformed, but how can opposing DRM, a technique which clearly never will work in the long run and in the end be paid for by consumers, be a bad thing?
People are watching freakin' cammed versions of movies for Petes sake... When will the DRM firms get it?! I should go patent sound waves and photons and claim that these are a "media distribution channel for IP".
This was actually shown at Linux Forum 2006 in Copenhagen. Slashdot reported about it then. I saw it live, but too little to be able to say anything about it.
I don't care one bit about Sun Java as open source. Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...
However, there is one thing Sun could do... one very important thing: remove the stupid click-through license on downloading the Java source-code. That one thing would mean that the BSD portstree or Gentoo portage could build Java from source - unsupervised. Today it's a total pain to manually download a bunch of distfiles. Even the patches can't be distributed without a click-through license. That sucks.
But then ofcourse, legal redistribution of Java binaries wouldn't hurt either...
Last week, I downloaded/burned/and ran live CDs of a FreeBSD distro, GNU/HURD, an OpenSolaris distro, and Plan Nine from Bell Labs [...]. With the exception of Plan 9 (Lucent tech's weird license for it's weird OS), the vast, sweeping majority of it's all GPL licensed, which belongs to you and I as well as anybody who bought it. We're on more solid ground than you can imagine!
Except that FreeBSD is BSD-licensed (duh) and OpenSolaris is distributed under CDDL.
By the way, the HURD booted and performed nicely on both my machines [...], so we even have a GPL'd kernel to turn to.
And Linux isn't? What you mean is that we have a GNU based kernel.
I like my OSS the way it is. I think this is one weakness of OSS. We can't really say as a community that we don't want a company to buy out a project, because we don't really have any "share" so to speak in the project.
And exactly how is this different to proprietary software? It's not like history isn't full of examples of good software products that have been aquired and then canceled. The ability to fork a OSS product is just that strong point that makes it so sexy. A very good example of this is the XFree86 which died (real death, not BSD-death) because the project management made some really stupid decisions.
If all you whiners cared to actually RTFA you would have spotted "A lot of USB ethernet controllers" listed under hardware support. These doesn't cost much these days, and *BSD supports most of them.
The software industry in the US is ofcourse terrified at the prospect that Europe will not get software patents... I guess they consider this an "unfair condition" for competition, since the belive that european software companies can create cheaper "copies" of US developed software.
But another thing: as I have understand it you are required to very carefully document what you patent. So, to get a patent on software you will have to decribe the used algorithm very carefully.
Now, US software patents may render quite a dangerous tool for american companies as their european counterparts quickly will gather the needed information from the patents documents and create a substitute version. The tool will turn itself against its master...
Well... Even if these investigations in the feasability of a migration to Linux serves no more purpose to the organisation than to threat Microsoft into giving better prices, Linux/FOSS do get a benefit from it. First of all, some of these "fake" considerations actually could succeed once they see the clear advantages over Microsofts products. Also, this is clearly good press since a large corporation is considering migrating. This might atleast make some smaller companies look in on this Linux-thing...
But I would say that trying to convince companies to start using Linux instead of Windows is the wrong approach. First introduce some FOSS on the existing desktops, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. Install FOSS as default. If someone whines about not having Word & co, make them motivate their need of that, then buy a license if really needed. Break the Microsoft monopoly. Then slowly stop deploying Windows...
It's really a shame that Evolution and KMail doesn't have serious porting efforts to Windows. KMail really kicks ass! It's the best mailreader I have used.
And anybody that is developing intranet applications targeting IE only... You are crazy! Consider that the future probably will most likely contain some portion of Linux and MacOS X, and that IE is Windows only. What do you do the day your boss ask why the new graphic department can't use the electronic booking and invoice system?
"The 1.0 final release won't be out for another month or so"
"The version number for this release is 0.10PR. For those who still count in decimal, 0.10 is larger than 0.9, despite what you were taught in school."
Kerry moves that much closer to socialism with increased Nationalistic moves towards our boundaries with jobs and trade, increased taxes, and far too many government spending programs that we just don't need
I would say that Firefox with the AdBlock extension is what you want. It's really easy to use: just right-click on annoying images and press ok (you can add wildcards to block all images from a certain server or directory, say ad.doubleclick.com/*). Works for Flash-stuff too.
Most people is probably not aware of the fact that your MAC address is transmitted over the Internet, peer to peer (except in those cases where it's explictly scrubbed ofcourse). While its not that common that firewalls can block trafic on the MAC level, some can, OpenBSD's pf being one example. But then again, if someone is using open proxies, this technique will probably fail as the proxie will send its own MAC address.
But how about logging access to the site, and sending clients that sends to many requests per second to TubGirl?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Coverage on Undeadly.
To answer some anti-OpenBSD bias from the summary above: systrace is really Niels Provos toy, OpenBSD just includes it in the base install just as NetBSD does; regarding sudo, it has been addressed in a comment above (not vulnerable in the actual released version); and by saying that NetBSD has disabled systrace that implies that OpenBSD has it still enabled. Except that it is a tool that isn't used by the default install at all - you have to enable and configure it yourself. And as the Undeadly post states: Since 2002, the systrace(1) man page included a warning in the BUGS section about the possibility of escaping the policy enforcement because of the behavior of certain system calls..
Personally I have never liked the idea of systrace - leaves way to much to to me as a system administrator to fuck up.
What in the world are you talking about?! The OpenBSD tree was originally created from source that was downloaded as source tar balls (in some way or the other) from NetBSD since no project before OpenBSD allowed anonymous access to their development tree! The NetBSD CVS server was not publically available. CVS (and atleast Subversion) requires that you have access (and sufficient permissions) to the revision system server to be able to create a branch. Thus, it wouldn't had matter what revision system software they were using.
What people seems to forget is that even if CVS usage is replaced with something else (like for example SVN) it doesn't make all the old CVS repositories go away. So, 20 years into the future (when we have flying cars which runs on water) you sit there (on your levitating chair) and wants to extract some files from an old CVS repo you found in the company's archive. No problem, except that GNU CVS isn't available on SuperDuper Windows Extra Deluxe 2027, due to the fact that code base and build system is such a mess that no one manages to make packages for Cygwin anymore (that and the fact that Microsoft (Operating Systems Division) does not any longer permit that GPLed software is used on its products.
Ok, I'm exaggerating, but the point is that there is no fault in having a clean and maintainable code base for the future - even if it's only used for handling legacy projects.
Besides, who are we to tell these people how to use their spare time? If anyone want to re-implement Unix in Brainf*ck, then let them.
Rebooting is just a sane thing to do. I've seen way too many rooted unix boxes with uptime > 2 years...
Yes, you reboot every sixth month, each time there is a new release of OpenBSD.
Perhaps I'm uninformed, but how can opposing DRM, a technique which clearly never will work in the long run and in the end be paid for by consumers, be a bad thing?
People are watching freakin' cammed versions of movies for Petes sake... When will the DRM firms get it?! I should go patent sound waves and photons and claim that these are a "media distribution channel for IP".
This was actually shown at Linux Forum 2006 in Copenhagen. Slashdot reported about it then. I saw it live, but too little to be able to say anything about it.
I don't care one bit about Sun Java as open source. Sure, it could be nice, but do you really think that a great number of amazing programmers would eagerly step up and immediately start to maintain and improve Java? And in that doing a better job than Sun & JCP is doing right now? Don't think so...
However, there is one thing Sun could do... one very important thing: remove the stupid click-through license on downloading the Java source-code. That one thing would mean that the BSD portstree or Gentoo portage could build Java from source - unsupervised. Today it's a total pain to manually download a bunch of distfiles. Even the patches can't be distributed without a click-through license. That sucks.
But then ofcourse, legal redistribution of Java binaries wouldn't hurt either...
But Open Source Java? Nah... Not really needed.
In this case, may I also recommend Expiretable for removing old entries from the table?
Last week, I downloaded/burned/and ran live CDs of a FreeBSD distro, GNU/HURD, an OpenSolaris distro, and Plan Nine from Bell Labs [...]. With the exception of Plan 9 (Lucent tech's weird license for it's weird OS), the vast, sweeping majority of it's all GPL licensed, which belongs to you and I as well as anybody who bought it. We're on more solid ground than you can imagine!
Except that FreeBSD is BSD-licensed (duh) and OpenSolaris is distributed under CDDL.
By the way, the HURD booted and performed nicely on both my machines [...], so we even have a GPL'd kernel to turn to.
And Linux isn't? What you mean is that we have a GNU based kernel.
I like my OSS the way it is. I think this is one weakness of OSS. We can't really say as a community that we don't want a company to buy out a project, because we don't really have any "share" so to speak in the project.
And exactly how is this different to proprietary software? It's not like history isn't full of examples of good software products that have been aquired and then canceled. The ability to fork a OSS product is just that strong point that makes it so sexy. A very good example of this is the XFree86 which died (real death, not BSD-death) because the project management made some really stupid decisions.
I guess a spelling bee is out of the question...
OpenBSD by default encrypts the swap-partition. Read the paper by Nils Provos.
I thought that pax was a tar lookalike that nobody uses.
...except OpenBSD. (Since it's BSD-licensed.)
If all you whiners cared to actually RTFA you would have spotted "A lot of USB ethernet controllers" listed under hardware support. These doesn't cost much these days, and *BSD supports most of them.
The software industry in the US is ofcourse terrified at the prospect that Europe will not get software patents... I guess they consider this an "unfair condition" for competition, since the belive that european software companies can create cheaper "copies" of US developed software.
But another thing: as I have understand it you are required to very carefully document what you patent. So, to get a patent on software you will have to decribe the used algorithm very carefully.
Now, US software patents may render quite a dangerous tool for american companies as their european counterparts quickly will gather the needed information from the patents documents and create a substitute version. The tool will turn itself against its master...
Bah... I just telnet to port 80 and request whatever page I want.
I hate cookies...
Well... Even if these investigations in the feasability of a migration to Linux serves no more purpose to the organisation than to threat Microsoft into giving better prices, Linux/FOSS do get a benefit from it. First of all, some of these "fake" considerations actually could succeed once they see the clear advantages over Microsofts products. Also, this is clearly good press since a large corporation is considering migrating. This might atleast make some smaller companies look in on this Linux-thing...
But I would say that trying to convince companies to start using Linux instead of Windows is the wrong approach. First introduce some FOSS on the existing desktops, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. Install FOSS as default. If someone whines about not having Word & co, make them motivate their need of that, then buy a license if really needed. Break the Microsoft monopoly. Then slowly stop deploying Windows...
It's really a shame that Evolution and KMail doesn't have serious porting efforts to Windows. KMail really kicks ass! It's the best mailreader I have used.
And anybody that is developing intranet applications targeting IE only... You are crazy! Consider that the future probably will most likely contain some portion of Linux and MacOS X, and that IE is Windows only. What do you do the day your boss ask why the new graphic department can't use the electronic booking and invoice system?
OpenBSD/pf.
"The 1.0 final release won't be out for another month or so"
"The version number for this release is 0.10PR. For those who still count in decimal, 0.10 is larger than 0.9, despite what you were taught in school."
RTFA
Kerry moves that much closer to socialism with increased Nationalistic moves towards our boundaries with jobs and trade, increased taxes, and far too many government spending programs that we just don't need
I can think of a "government spending program" that the world surely don't need...
I would say that Firefox with the AdBlock extension is what you want. It's really easy to use: just right-click on annoying images and press ok (you can add wildcards to block all images from a certain server or directory, say ad.doubleclick.com/*). Works for Flash-stuff too.
I'm not sure this will work in your case.
Most people is probably not aware of the fact that your MAC address is transmitted over the Internet, peer to peer (except in those cases where it's explictly scrubbed ofcourse). While its not that common that firewalls can block trafic on the MAC level, some can, OpenBSD's pf being one example. But then again, if someone is using open proxies, this technique will probably fail as the proxie will send its own MAC address.
But how about logging access to the site, and sending clients that sends to many requests per second to TubGirl? :-)
Only bad features? Ehmm... That would be Windows.
(Not fair but what the heck! :-)
Passwords
There you go. All the password related stories you could want.