There is a huge difference between engineering a clumsy fraud on a local election with low turnout and engineering a fraud involving several states in hundreds of counties using many different voting systems. Not to say that I oppose a paper trail.
Obviously in this particular case linux couldn't have caused the problem, but in general, the idea that linux could cause hardware damage doesn't seem patently absurd to me. ACPI on linux is still hit or miss thanks to non-standards compliant hardware. I had at least one time where linux failed to throttle the CPU properly, causing my Dell Inspiron 5150 to run around 20C hotter in linux than on windows. Clearly a bad ACPI driver can damage hardware.
The encryption schemes I'm aware of use a block cypher, which basically means that they encrypt the message in say 1024 byte blocks. If a bit is flipped, you'd only lost the bits in 1 block.
Of course the performance allowed by vanilla X is so godawful, that to get any decent performance at all requires "extensions" to X that basically ignore X architecture and are essentially hacks to provide high performance that wasn't even considered in the decade X was invented.
And don't get me started on security in X, the whole thing has to be run suid root.
"Sounds good. Maybe the rest of the world should use that as an example. Instead of one rich company you get 51 companies making a living. No-one becomes big enough to abuse the advantage. Surely that is the free market."
Except that every company realizes this and thus will never introduce a product at all. You'll have 0 companies making a living.
In this case, we have the following scenario. Company A develops linux distribution, supports it. Company B simply compies Company A's work, supports it as well.
My question is this, what is company A's incentive to develop a distribution? Because the development costs are 0 to company B and substantial to company A, company B can easily undercut the price of company A. It would seem like you'd have to be a fool to develop a distribution, since the GPL forces you to surrender your work to competitors who can easily undercut your price.
"It's not like the guy actually hurt anything but the bottom line of some of the country's most wealthy companies"
Umm, WOW. So I can shoplift from WALMART because it's a big company? "Seeing as those companies are still doing just fine selling software to complete suckers, I don't see where this person hurt anyone"
Yeah, I know I'm a sucker for thinking proprietary software is ever worth anything. The GIMP is so much better than Photoshop, right? Can you really claim with a straight face that Audacity is better than SoundForge?
It's taken as faith in the open source community that the "give the software away, charge for support" business model is viable, but why spend all this time developing an OS if anyone else can best your support offerings? Red Hat has wasted enourmous amounts of money on the kernel if any johnny-come-lately can best their support offerings and contribute nothing? What's the incentive to give away your code now?
This is what scares me about WINE. Yes, technically it is native, but of course has a much larger memory footprint. Linux may suffer from many buggy, unstable "ported" applications, giving the OS a bad name. If Linux can run both Windows and Linux applications, why write real, better Linux ports? This is what happened to OS/2.
Umm, how do you avoid invasive copy protection when switching to consoles. The Xbox 360 is the first mainstream computer to have the most invasive DRM dreamed up yet, trusted computing.
Stallman quote from the article (concerning the open source philosophy)
"It agrees with the conventional attitude that what matters about software is what job it does, and how much money it costs. That's exactly the same attitude Microsoft wants you to take."
Does Stallman really think that if you run a graphic design firm, you should use the GIMP, rather than Photoshop? If so, I'm scared that this guy is so prominent in the Linux community
No, Windows will give you much better performance, simply because the video drivers for Windows for both ATI (especially) and Nvidia are much higher performing. The only games that are even close are unreal engine games, since apparently they are more dependent on CPU speed than your video card (I could of course be completely wrong). Also, the 3D drivers for my GeForce FX5200Go cause my Ubuntu Breezy Badger to be as stable as Windows 98. Face facts. Linux isn't ready for gaming due to no fault of any of its developers.
But it leads to an arms race that will never end. Where do you stop? It's funny now, but what happens when you interfere with people's need to find information they're looking for? For example, what if I told the world that
You and me have very different definitions of a good security record by Apple. I think that how quickly thye patch their flaws and how secure the architecture of OS X is are the true measures of a security track record. If you really believe that it isn't a big deal that Apple refuses to patch several months old security holes, why patch at all? AFter all, you have low market share.
It is almost as if you agree that the security architecture of OS X, and the only security an end user gets is do to the relative obscureness of the platform.
So in other words, OS X is an insecure OS, it's just that the user is "secure" because of low market share. Don't apply the patch if it ever comes out, you'll be safe enough. After all, if it's no big deal that there's no patch after months, the root priveliges hole isn't important enough to Apple to ever patch. I'm sure you would be just as forgiving to Microsoft if they never patched a security hole.
1. OK, sufficient social engineering can bypass any security. But for some things the social engineering required would be enormous. It would be easier to steal the system and discs containing passwords and keys 2. Live CDs can be disabled by setting a BIOS password. Sure, an attacker could convince someone to let him reset the BIOS by disassembling the computer. That would be a masterful feat. And how does the attacker decrypt the harddrive once it is stored on the IPOD?
How about an encrypted filesystem? How about if there were no ways for this attacker to gain root priveliges from a local login. I really don't understand what you're saying.
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There is a huge difference between engineering a clumsy fraud on a local election with low turnout and engineering a fraud involving several states in hundreds of counties using many different voting systems. Not to say that I oppose a paper trail.
Obviously in this particular case linux couldn't have caused the problem, but in general, the idea that linux could cause hardware damage doesn't seem patently absurd to me. ACPI on linux is still hit or miss thanks to non-standards compliant hardware. I had at least one time where linux failed to throttle the CPU properly, causing my Dell Inspiron 5150 to run around 20C hotter in linux than on windows. Clearly a bad ACPI driver can damage hardware.
The encryption schemes I'm aware of use a block cypher, which basically means that they encrypt the message in say 1024 byte blocks. If a bit is flipped, you'd only lost the bits in 1 block.
Of course the performance allowed by vanilla X is so godawful, that to get any decent performance at all requires "extensions" to X that basically ignore X architecture and are essentially hacks to provide high performance that wasn't even considered in the decade X was invented.
And don't get me started on security in X, the whole thing has to be run suid root.
I think that this is a good read (written by a former developer of Xgl) on how X is currently nothing more than hack after hack:
http://jonsmirl.googlepages.com/graphics.html
"Sounds good. Maybe the rest of the world should use that as an example. Instead of one rich company you get 51 companies making a living. No-one becomes big enough to abuse the advantage. Surely that is the free market."
Except that every company realizes this and thus will never introduce a product at all. You'll have 0 companies making a living.
In this case, we have the following scenario.
Company A develops linux distribution, supports it.
Company B simply compies Company A's work, supports it as well.
My question is this, what is company A's incentive to develop a distribution? Because the development costs are 0 to company B and substantial to company A, company B can easily undercut the price of company A. It would seem like you'd have to be a fool to develop a distribution, since the GPL forces you to surrender your work to competitors who can easily undercut your price.
"It's not like the guy actually hurt anything but the bottom line of some of the country's most wealthy companies"
Umm, WOW. So I can shoplift from WALMART because it's a big company?
"Seeing as those companies are still doing just fine selling software to complete suckers, I don't see where this person hurt anyone"
Yeah, I know I'm a sucker for thinking proprietary software is ever worth anything. The GIMP is so much better than Photoshop, right? Can you really claim with a straight face that Audacity is better than SoundForge?
The perfect demonstration of zero point energy is the Casimir effect, which has actually been observed in a laboratory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
It's taken as faith in the open source community that the "give the software away, charge for support" business model is viable, but why spend all this time developing an OS if anyone else can best your support offerings? Red Hat has wasted enourmous amounts of money on the kernel if any johnny-come-lately can best their support offerings and contribute nothing? What's the incentive to give away your code now?
This is what scares me about WINE. Yes, technically it is native, but of course has a much larger memory footprint. Linux may suffer from many buggy, unstable "ported" applications, giving the OS a bad name. If Linux can run both Windows and Linux applications, why write real, better Linux ports? This is what happened to OS/2.
Umm, how do you avoid invasive copy protection when switching to consoles. The Xbox 360 is the first mainstream computer to have the most invasive DRM dreamed up yet, trusted computing.
Stallman quote from the article (concerning the open source philosophy)
"It agrees with the conventional attitude that what matters about software is what job it does, and how much money it costs. That's exactly the same attitude Microsoft wants you to take."
Does Stallman really think that if you run a graphic design firm, you should use the GIMP, rather than Photoshop? If so, I'm scared that this guy is so prominent in the Linux community
Wow!! My bank has a huge porno stash!
Actually, zenophobia is the fear of convergent sequences.
No, the patent system is broken for everyone, except of course the trolls. Look at MercExchange vs. Ebay, for example.
UT2004 does indeed work on FreeBSD, of course through the linux emulation layer
No, Windows will give you much better performance, simply because the video drivers for Windows for both ATI (especially) and Nvidia are much higher performing. The only games that are even close are unreal engine games, since apparently they are more dependent on CPU speed than your video card (I could of course be completely wrong). Also, the 3D drivers for my GeForce FX5200Go cause my Ubuntu Breezy Badger to be as stable as Windows 98. Face facts. Linux isn't ready for gaming due to no fault of any of its developers.
He could also participate in the javelin catch!
Or be the goalie for the dart team!
But it leads to an arms race that will never end. Where do you stop? It's funny now, but what happens when you interfere with people's need to find information they're looking for? For example, what if I told the world that
hot gay sex was associated with your site?
Systrace will satisfy your needs
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/systrace/
You and me have very different definitions of a good security record by Apple. I think that how quickly thye patch their flaws and how secure the architecture of OS X is are the true measures of a security track record. If you really believe that it isn't a big deal that Apple refuses to patch several months old security holes, why patch at all? AFter all, you have low market share.
It is almost as if you agree that the security architecture of OS X, and the only security an end user gets is do to the relative obscureness of the platform.
So in other words, OS X is an insecure OS, it's just that the user is "secure" because of low market share. Don't apply the patch if it ever comes out, you'll be safe enough. After all, if it's no big deal that there's no patch after months, the root priveliges hole isn't important enough to Apple to ever patch. I'm sure you would be just as forgiving to Microsoft if they never patched a security hole.
Where have I seen you before?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694
1. OK, sufficient social engineering can bypass any security. But for some things the social engineering required would be enormous. It would be easier to steal the system and discs containing passwords and keys
2. Live CDs can be disabled by setting a BIOS password. Sure, an attacker could convince someone to let him reset the BIOS by disassembling the computer. That would be a masterful feat. And how does the attacker decrypt the harddrive once it is stored on the IPOD?
How about an encrypted filesystem? How about if there were no ways for this attacker to gain root priveliges from a local login. I really don't understand what you're saying.