As if criticizing Microsoft on Slashdot was reason to be modded down?
Maybe the Microsoft astroturfers from Digg are spreading to Slashdot? Digg wasn't always like that, but these days, any post even just hinting of criticism of Microsoft is dugg down into the ground.
For people like us, the DRM layer will be totally invisible but we will enjoy a MUCH bigger catalog of content to choose from.
Until Microsoft won't renew your DRM licenses anymore. They, or their partners, may one day decide that it's time to re-buy all content to continue to enjoy it. Do you really want to give them such an option?
Or the next version of the Zune won't support the old Zune DRM, and you'll be forced to re-buy your content that way. Exhibit A: The PlaysForSure vs Zune debacle.
Not to mention Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc, i.e. phones. I'd guess that around half of the people that I see in the underground listening to music uses the phone as the player (most people pick it up from their pocket at least once).
This reminds me of the recent situation when Windows XP SP3 was put on hold because of an incompatibility with Microsoft Dynamics. Let me guess that they added some backwards compatibility fix for Dynamics to SP3 rather than fixing Dynamics itself.
Linux, in comparison, provides a fair amount of backwards compatibility
I'd say that it's better than fair (for userspace applications). I've been able to run old (binary) Loki games released around 1999-2000 on my pretty modern Fedora 7 desktop without as much as a hitch, despite all the new features such as NX, ExecShield, ASLR, SELinux, x86-64 architecture, etc.
WINDOWS users - people whose experience with "computers" has been utterly tainted to the point they regard it as normal for one to have regular desktop freezes, application crashes, and other sorts of general suckitude.
Exactly. Many Windows users don't even consider the possibility that these problems occur because of a flawed operating system, they think that crashes, spontaneous reboots, disk fragmentation, not to mention the large amount of security problems, are inherent in all use of computers.
Even convincing them that those problems can be reduced simply by using another system can be pretty hard.
Not to mention CentOS 5.1, which like CentOS 5 and RHEL 5 is based on Fedora 6, which is more than one and a half years old. But that is also the point for those distros. They contain well-tested stable software, not the latest bleeding-edge stuff.
Fedora is a good desktop distro, but it may not be targeted at the same crowd as Ubuntu (the I-know-nothing-about-Linux crowd). As you are likely aware of, experienced users also need desktops, and for us, Fedora works fine.
Users, for the most part, don't care why something is not supported - if it isn't, they are simply not going to bother with that particular distro/OS.
Sure, and that is also why the reception of Windows Vista among ordinary users has been so lukewarm. They have a working system (Windows XP), so why switch to a system with widely reported incompatibility problems and driver issues?
they just shrug and say, "what do we care about your niche geek OS?"
Just like they'll say, "What do we care about your craptastic Windows downgrade? I'll stay with XP, thank you.". As you can see, this isn't only a problem with "geek OSes", but also a problem with OSes developed by multi-billion-dollar corporations.
something called AppArmor enabled that tends to cause more trouble than it's worth in my opinion. See if it's in your/etc/init.d; if it's there disable or remove it
Let me guess: If you would be using Windows Vista, you would disable UAC too? I'm not saying that AppArmor is equivalent to UAC, it surely isn't (AppArmor is more like SELinux), but they are both security features, and issues should be fixed rather than the feature turned off. I see this in SELinux land too, as too many people decide to turn it off altogether at the slightest hint of trouble. File a bug report first, and then make a policy module or put the system in permissive mode until the bug is fixed. Do not disable it habitually.
Viruses, malware, grayware and a great deal Spam owe their entire existence to the miserable and fatally flawed security model of Microsoft's Windows. This cannot be meaningfully denied. Said ailments make the average PC users daily computer experience a nightmare of inconvenience and paranoia. Yet the vast majority are forced to use it.
What is equally bad is that many people think that this is something fundamental to computers, and do not understand that these security problems could have been avoided with an operating system with a better security model.
It's just like in the days before Windows XP, when people thought that daily crashes were a fact of life in computer use, not a deficiency of their current operating system.
In what way? It is a web site, accessible from all over the world. It serves technology news, US-originated or not. Its servers may reside in the USA, but that's pretty irrelevant, IMO.
So a stupid lawyer with a lot of money will always win a case against a smart public defender with less money? That sounds like the court system of a banana republic. Are cases in the US decided on who can pay the judge the most money?
Please run SELinux in permissive mode instead of disabling or even uninstalling it. If you ever would like to activate it again, running in permissive mode ensures that the proper security labels are maintained, while disabling or uninstalling SELinux causes the system to perform a time-consuming relabeling of all filesystems if/when SELinux is re-enabled.
Besides, if an application is giving you troubles, why not file a bug report in the Red hat Bugzilla? Post the output of setroubleshoot (the GUI application that explains what went wrong and why) in the report, and the Fedora developers can probably determine how to best change the security policy.
BTW, what's to keep some malicious code running with root rights from changing the security policy? I'm guessing absolutely nothing.
Sure, but if you've got malicious code running as root in the unconfined_t domain, you are already in big trouble. If it runs in a restricted domain, it cannot change any policies.
If I enable it, SELinux doesn't allow a lot of programs to function correctly.
Like what programs? I have SELinux enabled and enforcing both on my Fedora 7 home desktop, my Fedora 9 Beta VM on my work Mac and on CentOS 5.1 on the new blade servers at work. I haven't really had any significant troubles in any of those environments.
If I disable it, life is good.
Except if one of your applications is exploited, there is nothing that stops the entire account running the exploited application from being compromisedd.
Privilege separation is not something that requires a fast CPU and a big amount of RAM. Separate protection rings were introduced by Intel's 80286 processor, which was released in 1982. Other architectures probably had something equivalent even before then.
What's being said now is that this will be a pyrrhic victory for Microsoft.
It may be in more ways than one. Sources in the EU says that approval of OOXML as an ISO standard may break a WTO agreement regarding technical barriers to trade, which says that overlapping standards should be avoided.
Which one has the greatest amount of clout, the WTO or the ISO?
Now I'm going to be looking for any group anywhere on the Internet that is monitoring the source for SELinux and OpenSolaris for oddities that might just be a backdoor for the NSA.
SELinux has been out for around eight years, six years in the official Linux kernel. You'd think that they would have found any back-doors by now, if there would really be any.
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Or it will simply refuse to play non-DRMed content. As you know, everything not bought at the Zune Marketplace must be pirated. :)
No. It's from Microsoft, so it can't be any good.
Maybe the Microsoft astroturfers from Digg are spreading to Slashdot? Digg wasn't always like that, but these days, any post even just hinting of criticism of Microsoft is dugg down into the ground.
Until Microsoft won't renew your DRM licenses anymore. They, or their partners, may one day decide that it's time to re-buy all content to continue to enjoy it. Do you really want to give them such an option?
Or the next version of the Zune won't support the old Zune DRM, and you'll be forced to re-buy your content that way. Exhibit A: The PlaysForSure vs Zune debacle.
Not to mention Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc, i.e. phones. I'd guess that around half of the people that I see in the underground listening to music uses the phone as the player (most people pick it up from their pocket at least once).
This reminds me of the recent situation when Windows XP SP3 was put on hold because of an incompatibility with Microsoft Dynamics. Let me guess that they added some backwards compatibility fix for Dynamics to SP3 rather than fixing Dynamics itself.
I'd say that it's better than fair (for userspace applications). I've been able to run old (binary) Loki games released around 1999-2000 on my pretty modern Fedora 7 desktop without as much as a hitch, despite all the new features such as NX, ExecShield, ASLR, SELinux, x86-64 architecture, etc.
Exactly. Many Windows users don't even consider the possibility that these problems occur because of a flawed operating system, they think that crashes, spontaneous reboots, disk fragmentation, not to mention the large amount of security problems, are inherent in all use of computers.
Even convincing them that those problems can be reduced simply by using another system can be pretty hard.
Not to mention CentOS 5.1, which like CentOS 5 and RHEL 5 is based on Fedora 6, which is more than one and a half years old. But that is also the point for those distros. They contain well-tested stable software, not the latest bleeding-edge stuff.
Fedora is a good desktop distro, but it may not be targeted at the same crowd as Ubuntu (the I-know-nothing-about-Linux crowd). As you are likely aware of, experienced users also need desktops, and for us, Fedora works fine.
Sure, and that is also why the reception of Windows Vista among ordinary users has been so lukewarm. They have a working system (Windows XP), so why switch to a system with widely reported incompatibility problems and driver issues?
they just shrug and say, "what do we care about your niche geek OS?"Just like they'll say, "What do we care about your craptastic Windows downgrade? I'll stay with XP, thank you.". As you can see, this isn't only a problem with "geek OSes", but also a problem with OSes developed by multi-billion-dollar corporations.
Let me guess: If you would be using Windows Vista, you would disable UAC too? I'm not saying that AppArmor is equivalent to UAC, it surely isn't (AppArmor is more like SELinux), but they are both security features, and issues should be fixed rather than the feature turned off. I see this in SELinux land too, as too many people decide to turn it off altogether at the slightest hint of trouble. File a bug report first, and then make a policy module or put the system in permissive mode until the bug is fixed. Do not disable it habitually.
What is equally bad is that many people think that this is something fundamental to computers, and do not understand that these security problems could have been avoided with an operating system with a better security model.
It's just like in the days before Windows XP, when people thought that daily crashes were a fact of life in computer use, not a deficiency of their current operating system.
In what way? It is a web site, accessible from all over the world. It serves technology news, US-originated or not. Its servers may reside in the USA, but that's pretty irrelevant, IMO.
Higher sensitivity is not always good, as it also brings more noise.
So a stupid lawyer with a lot of money will always win a case against a smart public defender with less money? That sounds like the court system of a banana republic. Are cases in the US decided on who can pay the judge the most money?
Please run SELinux in permissive mode instead of disabling or even uninstalling it. If you ever would like to activate it again, running in permissive mode ensures that the proper security labels are maintained, while disabling or uninstalling SELinux causes the system to perform a time-consuming relabeling of all filesystems if/when SELinux is re-enabled.
Besides, if an application is giving you troubles, why not file a bug report in the Red hat Bugzilla? Post the output of setroubleshoot (the GUI application that explains what went wrong and why) in the report, and the Fedora developers can probably determine how to best change the security policy.
This is because apt-cache only searches the local cache, while Yum always ventures out onto the 'net to fetch the latest package and file lists.
Sure, but if you've got malicious code running as root in the unconfined_t domain, you are already in big trouble. If it runs in a restricted domain, it cannot change any policies.
If I enable it, SELinux doesn't allow a lot of programs to function correctly.Like what programs? I have SELinux enabled and enforcing both on my Fedora 7 home desktop, my Fedora 9 Beta VM on my work Mac and on CentOS 5.1 on the new blade servers at work. I haven't really had any significant troubles in any of those environments.
If I disable it, life is good.Except if one of your applications is exploited, there is nothing that stops the entire account running the exploited application from being compromisedd.
Even with Firefox and NoScript?
Privilege separation is not something that requires a fast CPU and a big amount of RAM. Separate protection rings were introduced by Intel's 80286 processor, which was released in 1982. Other architectures probably had something equivalent even before then.
It may be in more ways than one. Sources in the EU says that approval of OOXML as an ISO standard may break a WTO agreement regarding technical barriers to trade, which says that overlapping standards should be avoided.
Which one has the greatest amount of clout, the WTO or the ISO?
SATA also uses the SCSI command set. That's why SATA drives need the SCSI subsystem in older Linux kernel versions (now they use libata).
SELinux has been out for around eight years, six years in the official Linux kernel. You'd think that they would have found any back-doors by now, if there would really be any.
I think that you may have missed SELinux, which the NSA contributed in the year 2000 (accepted into the mainline kernel in 2002).