...in the light of Slammer, Nimda, CodeRed, the Saint Petersberg crackers, and Microsoft's generally horrific security record, spread out in inglorious array throughout the history of the company.
He'll probably require Gummint computers to run in 640kB, because nobody could need any more than that.
I would venture and say that Windows is closer to being secure than OpenBSD is to being useful to the general public.
On one hand, there were... how many million lines of code in Windows at last count?
On the other, a heck of a lot of `Linux' stuff recompiles painlessly for any of the BSDs. All OpenBSD really needs is a nifty installer - and it could borrow one from Debian, soon.
...Microsoft's goal has been to add more saleable features and more handcuffs for their users. Bill has a moneymaking mania. Then they expect a month of bugfixing to make up for over 100 months of bugmaking.
OpenBSD, on the other hand, probably has 100 months of bugfixing up its collective sleeve. I wonder if they expect that a month of portting applications will make them more popular? (-:
IRL, a month of porting applications would simply mean an order of magnitude more security holes to fix.
Making OpenBSD completely thread-safe in preparation for multi-CPU stuff is probably a steep hill to climb, too. However, the kind of stuff that OpenBSD does well probably means that very few single-CPU OpenBSD machines will be CPU-starved until long after they're disk-I/O or net-bandwidth-saturated. Which means that it makes more sense to cluster than to proliferate CPUs in an already-saturated environment.
Been waiting a looong time for this to happen. Parsec is a great game, but sat on the site almost static and practically forever. This and a rush of new, eager blood should see it blossom like never before!
WA's a great state, it makes naff-all difference to the price of international tickets, the state is a beautiful place to be, and Linus is coming - so shove it up your nose! (-:
...the problem they have is starting with a handicap, namely their previous American-style DotCom management team. If they survive to June without additional damage, they'll survive practically forever.
I find it ironic that Linux is more of a threat to people who have helped the free software movement than it is for people who have not.
Sun were at least bright enough to see the bloodless hand, writing on the wall. They are using OOo as extra brownie points on StarOffice, which in turn is a weapon against Microsoft. SGI saw the end of their traditional markets coming much earlier, and jumped in with both feet. More kudos to them, they will probably survive because they got started early, Sun may not because they don't really understand Linux and Open Source as a competitor, only as a weapon, and many other corporations will either have the carpet whipped out from under them (Adobe, for example, had better pull its socks up soon) or rupture themselves trying to realign to a fast-changing marketplace in time to survive.
In short, the GPL will change things, and that's dangerous to inflexible companies, and to companies who misread the signs.
Microsoft's own skeletons are banging quite loudly on the closet doors. You know what they say about being able to fool some of the people all of the time or vice versa but not both...
If Microsoft would not have existed the GPL/BSD licenses would have no meaning and nobody would care.
You really ought to start practicing moderation in your positiojns. GPL would most certainly exist and be deeply meaninful. If not Microsoft's greed, then someone else's would make it necessary.
it really was Mandrake, and not Red Hat, Solaris, or Slackware that brought Linux to the masses.
Must be Debian bringing it to the assorted Lord's Suppers of the Protestants, then. (-:
Seriously, if Mandrake ever learn to package things as well as Debian do, the other mainline commercial distros may as well pack up and go home. Mandrake have a whole flock of really easy-to-use tools which fill in the how-do-I-do-this gap in most distros, rivalled only by SuSE, and seem to have much more of a knack than RedHat at picking winners in the assorted WM and app races. Once (or if) they get over their present cash-flow hernia and can employ enough people again (waves to GC, Pixel, others), the QC will improve too.
I can say without any reservation or doubt that Windows ME was more stable than any version of Mandrake that I have encountered.
A few people I know reverted from ME to 98 because 98 was more stable for them.
One engineering firm (customer of mine) ran AutoCAD on a 98 box (the rest of the shop is Linux; they may well all be Linux soon since AutoCAD now runs under WINE) and got a new plotter, which worked fine. The next day, they got a new employee, and a new box for him, with ME pre-installed. ME trashed itself on Day One. So they installed 98 to be consistent. The 98 on the new box wouldn't talk to the plotter; after much farting around AutoDesk said "switch to ME", so they did, and lo, for the plotter worked. They switched their original 98 box to ME for consistency, and lo, the plotter stopped working on it. So now they have one 98 and one ME box. The ME box crashes more often (98 twice a day on average, ME 3-4x a day).
Their Mandrake Linux boxes don't crash. Ever. Nor do mine (except when my wife's GeForce2 card gets too much dust in the heatsink). Nor does my Debian gateway box (familiarisation exercise). Nor does any other Mandrake Linux server or workstation I've ever set up (scores of them), from junkbox-resurrectees to IBM NetFinity servers, no worries.
Either you're incredibly unlucky, or doing something wrong.
all of my experience with Linux has taught me that anything can break, but it doesn't like to tell you. At least Windows whines like a little girl.
All of my experience with Linux tells me that you have to set out to break it, and you'll generally get an informative and direct error message, whereas with Windows you can never be quite sure whether it's broken or not, and if it is, what to do about of it short of wipe-reinstall. There's no DLL hell for Linux, and broken hardware shows up PDQ. With real security and journalling filesystems that work, what's there left to break?
And with most OS products, it's honestly not the OS that breaks the OS, but something else that does it. Kazaa, AOL, etc. The problem is that people want those programs.
Linux has equivalents that work. And if the luser has no root password, they don't have (at least with standard packaging systems) an easy way to stuff up their systems. People who have no skill or knowledge for managing a system want rights to manage a system. It's a bit like people demanding the right to drive, licence or no. The choice should be there for the determined... for the rest, let them ask someone who knows. Then at least there's a chance that they won't become wormbait.
The Spelling Nazi in me calls for s/tt/ss/ - and having got that off my chest: GPL's software is the software that won't work for your enemies. If you think you have no enemies, let's just say that you're the victim of a one-sided deal.
I personally GPL everything I write, and choose GPL over BSD if the products are otherwise equal. I'd rather be putting my work into something that can't be used by any soulless bastard to club me with later.
You may choose to BSD everything you write, and that's your choice, a much better choice than not releasing it at all. Just don't slag off the GPL, it may well end up the last thing standing betweren you and world domination. If you don't like it, stick to non-GPLed and proprietary software.
Every guide on Windows administration since the days of NT 3.51 had admonished that one use the administrator account only for administrative purposes.
It doesn't seem to have had any effect. Every Windows `power user' I know runs as Administrator most or all of the time, very few Linux/Unix power users do. Perhaps Microsoft should try something else.
there aren't any "root" class exploits, since there's no "root" user in Windows
I'm going to assume that you're blonde and not just trolling. There is no root, but there is complete carte-blanche access to every bit on the system. This is `root class' access since it is in the same class as having root on a real OS. Doiung this over the 'net is `remote-root class'. In point of fact, root can be freely renamed and may have its ultimate authority restricted (e.g. by capabilities) on a Unix box, so in this regard root has extended its feature set to encompass Administrator-style operation as well.
Sensationalism at its best, but not journalism of any sort.
Do you see me arguing with that?
Do they actually read the stories before posting the link, or do they depend on the synopsis of the story before making the decision to post it?
I think they mainly rely on misreading the synopses. They're also apparently in the habit of refusing good stories for several days at a run.
There's a great deal of potential exploit of slashdot if they depend on the synopsis, the sort of exploit they criticize windows for.
Um, what? You can social-engineer practically anything. The kind of exploit Windows is characterised by is the we-didn't-plan-ahead type, the this-needed-a-rewrite-half-a-decade-ago type.
Microsoft are always in too much of a rush to capture market share, so put their effort into this or that shiny new feature instead of making the basics work right. Linux started out with nothing to lose, every step uphill, no marketing or legal department, so it has had to constantly prove its merit in order to gain acceptance. And it has.
Slashdot Mirror
...in the light of Slammer, Nimda, CodeRed, the Saint Petersberg crackers, and Microsoft's generally horrific security record, spread out in inglorious array throughout the history of the company.
He'll probably require Gummint computers to run in 640kB, because nobody could need any more than that.
On one hand, there were... how many million lines of code in Windows at last count?
On the other, a heck of a lot of `Linux' stuff recompiles painlessly for any of the BSDs. All OpenBSD really needs is a nifty installer - and it could borrow one from Debian, soon.
...Microsoft's goal has been to add more saleable features and more handcuffs for their users. Bill has a moneymaking mania. Then they expect a month of bugfixing to make up for over 100 months of bugmaking.
OpenBSD, on the other hand, probably has 100 months of bugfixing up its collective sleeve. I wonder if they expect that a month of portting applications will make them more popular? (-:
IRL, a month of porting applications would simply mean an order of magnitude more security holes to fix.
Making OpenBSD completely thread-safe in preparation for multi-CPU stuff is probably a steep hill to climb, too. However, the kind of stuff that OpenBSD does well probably means that very few single-CPU OpenBSD machines will be CPU-starved until long after they're disk-I/O or net-bandwidth-saturated. Which means that it makes more sense to cluster than to proliferate CPUs in an already-saturated environment.
...acceptable...
Been waiting a looong time for this to happen. Parsec is a great game, but sat on the site almost static and practically forever. This and a rush of new, eager blood should see it blossom like never before!
"My name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Linux."
What licence is that under?
I get to attend (not to mention organise).
WA's a great state, it makes naff-all difference to the price of international tickets, the state is a beautiful place to be, and Linus is coming - so shove it up your nose! (-:
...the problem they have is starting with a handicap, namely their previous American-style DotCom management team. If they survive to June without additional damage, they'll survive practically forever.
Microsoft already did this.
...and as I said, you must be singularly unlucky with your machines. This Mandrake 9 install's been fabulous for stability. Tried an exorcist?
Sun were at least bright enough to see the bloodless hand, writing on the wall. They are using OOo as extra brownie points on StarOffice, which in turn is a weapon against Microsoft. SGI saw the end of their traditional markets coming much earlier, and jumped in with both feet. More kudos to them, they will probably survive because they got started early, Sun may not because they don't really understand Linux and Open Source as a competitor, only as a weapon, and many other corporations will either have the carpet whipped out from under them (Adobe, for example, had better pull its socks up soon) or rupture themselves trying to realign to a fast-changing marketplace in time to survive.
In short, the GPL will change things, and that's dangerous to inflexible companies, and to companies who misread the signs.
Microsoft's own skeletons are banging quite loudly on the closet doors. You know what they say about being able to fool some of the people all of the time or vice versa but not both...
Sorry, you were a final straw.
You really ought to start practicing moderation in your positiojns. GPL would most certainly exist and be deeply meaninful. If not Microsoft's greed, then someone else's would make it necessary.
Must be Debian bringing it to the assorted Lord's Suppers of the Protestants, then. (-:
Seriously, if Mandrake ever learn to package things as well as Debian do, the other mainline commercial distros may as well pack up and go home. Mandrake have a whole flock of really easy-to-use tools which fill in the how-do-I-do-this gap in most distros, rivalled only by SuSE, and seem to have much more of a knack than RedHat at picking winners in the assorted WM and app races. Once (or if) they get over their present cash-flow hernia and can employ enough people again (waves to GC, Pixel, others), the QC will improve too.
A few people I know reverted from ME to 98 because 98 was more stable for them.
One engineering firm (customer of mine) ran AutoCAD on a 98 box (the rest of the shop is Linux; they may well all be Linux soon since AutoCAD now runs under WINE) and got a new plotter, which worked fine. The next day, they got a new employee, and a new box for him, with ME pre-installed. ME trashed itself on Day One. So they installed 98 to be consistent. The 98 on the new box wouldn't talk to the plotter; after much farting around AutoDesk said "switch to ME", so they did, and lo, for the plotter worked. They switched their original 98 box to ME for consistency, and lo, the plotter stopped working on it. So now they have one 98 and one ME box. The ME box crashes more often (98 twice a day on average, ME 3-4x a day).
Their Mandrake Linux boxes don't crash. Ever. Nor do mine (except when my wife's GeForce2 card gets too much dust in the heatsink). Nor does my Debian gateway box (familiarisation exercise). Nor does any other Mandrake Linux server or workstation I've ever set up (scores of them), from junkbox-resurrectees to IBM NetFinity servers, no worries.
Either you're incredibly unlucky, or doing something wrong.
Try here, but it's only warmed-over RedHat.
fear the penguin! (-:
Or perhaps I should say did you forget this? (alternative shortcut)
All of my experience with Linux tells me that you have to set out to break it, and you'll generally get an informative and direct error message, whereas with Windows you can never be quite sure whether it's broken or not, and if it is, what to do about of it short of wipe-reinstall. There's no DLL hell for Linux, and broken hardware shows up PDQ. With real security and journalling filesystems that work, what's there left to break?
Linux has equivalents that work. And if the luser has no root password, they don't have (at least with standard packaging systems) an easy way to stuff up their systems. People who have no skill or knowledge for managing a system want rights to manage a system. It's a bit like people demanding the right to drive, licence or no. The choice should be there for the determined... for the rest, let them ask someone who knows. Then at least there's a chance that they won't become wormbait.
The Spelling Nazi in me calls for s/tt/ss/ - and having got that off my chest: GPL's software is the software that won't work for your enemies. If you think you have no enemies, let's just say that you're the victim of a one-sided deal.
I personally GPL everything I write, and choose GPL over BSD if the products are otherwise equal. I'd rather be putting my work into something that can't be used by any soulless bastard to club me with later.
You may choose to BSD everything you write, and that's your choice, a much better choice than not releasing it at all. Just don't slag off the GPL, it may well end up the last thing standing betweren you and world domination. If you don't like it, stick to non-GPLed and proprietary software.
Or just use OpenOffice.org, problem solved.
It doesn't seem to have had any effect. Every Windows `power user' I know runs as Administrator most or all of the time, very few Linux/Unix power users do. Perhaps Microsoft should try something else.
I'm going to assume that you're blonde and not just trolling. There is no root, but there is complete carte-blanche access to every bit on the system. This is `root class' access since it is in the same class as having root on a real OS. Doiung this over the 'net is `remote-root class'. In point of fact, root can be freely renamed and may have its ultimate authority restricted (e.g. by capabilities) on a Unix box, so in this regard root has extended its feature set to encompass Administrator-style operation as well.
Do you see me arguing with that?
I think they mainly rely on misreading the synopses. They're also apparently in the habit of refusing good stories for several days at a run.
Um, what? You can social-engineer practically anything. The kind of exploit Windows is characterised by is the we-didn't-plan-ahead type, the this-needed-a-rewrite-half-a-decade-ago type.
Microsoft are always in too much of a rush to capture market share, so put their effort into this or that shiny new feature instead of making the basics work right. Linux started out with nothing to lose, every step uphill, no marketing or legal department, so it has had to constantly prove its merit in order to gain acceptance. And it has.
Perhaps, since the site only speaks English, they meant to say `i1n'?
Just a guess...
...`fix' your machine into the deck at terminal velocity. Trustworthy Computing at its best!