I agree with you, and to put it simpler... developers and companies that pass the blame for insecurity to users are just idiots. Regular people don't care and shouldn't care about security. Computers are just tools, and weren't meant to be worshiped.
Remember ActiveX ? Remember how it was supposed to be portable to Mac OS ? Remember the Windows Media Player port to Mac OS ? Remember the Internet Explorer port to Mac OS ? Remember the VBA support in the Mac OS version of Microsoft Office ?
Where are those ports now ?
I am sick and tired of Microsoft ignoring standards. I am sick of Internet Explorer pitiful support for CSS and PNG and non-existent support for JPEG 2000, just so they can push their own formats. I am sick of Internet Explorer websites... and don't kid yourself, they are making a comeback.
I laugh at people mentioning Mono. Mono is and will always be incomplete, unstable, and also... there will always be a cloud over it regarding possible infringements of patents and copyrights. If you want to know why... just ask the developers of all those Java clones;)
I don't care about Microsoft's technology if it doesn't have an impact on my life and my business. But since Silverlight is ActiveX version 2... my life will be affected.
Answer me this... just how hard is it to make Silverlight behave the same in both Firefox and IExplorer (both on Windows) ? Go here... http://metalinkltd.com/?p=114 See something missing in Firefox ?
In Ubuntu Feisty there is a new graphical "Restricted Drivers Management" utility in the Administration menu that installs nVidia's drivers automatically, you just have to click a checkbox.
Otherwise, in older Ubuntu versions you have to install nvidia-glx, and call nvidia-xconfig to configure you system with something like...
This directive is about copyright and related intellectual properties... and such it includes Patents.
I am not concerned about copyrights as much as I am concerned for patents, especially about software patents... especially when the patent offices have issued some stupid patents in the past, like [url=http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/aus pac/07/02/australia.wheel/]the legendary wheel[/url]. I know, that happened in Australia, but with software patents numerous obvious ideas are patented instead of actual implementations because one could argue that an idea in a software application is a technique to do a task.
For example none of the useful open-source applications we have today would have existed if it where for this kind of laws to be passed sooner. MySql would have been destroyed by Oracle, Gnome would have been crushed by Microsoft or Apple, etc...
Even if this law was passed with good intentions (counterfeit drugs are a real problem for example) it opens a whole world of possibility for abuse... just like the DMCA in the USA.
I forget what the exact problem was, but in order to change a *BASIC* system setting, the instructions required that I directly edit a system file. Excuse me?
Like in Windows when you have no other choice but to edit the registry is better ? A quick example... to fine tune the Cleartype settings in Windows Vista you have the option to: a) tweak it by modifying the registry b) installing a little utility designed for Windows XP... and doing it with administrator privileges and with a big warning saying that you're doomed because that little utility was not designed for Vista;)
Also... this is a mindset of UNIX system administrators which find it way easier to modify a text file then to use a point and click interface. I am in that category too... and I find Apache a lot easier to configure and customize than IIS... but YMMV.
The second I encountered this text... "It has a couple of really cool features, like the virtual, override and new keywords that let you specify what should happen when you cast a class to it's base class and then call a method on it that's defined in both."... I stopped reading.
The author is referring to the way polymorphism works in C#... and of course naming a facility by its proper name is not important in engineering.
But besides that... C# introduced explicit virtual methods just because of speed concerns. If a method is not a virtual one, there is no need for the runtime to do dynamic dispatch. The problem is... it is a facility introduced only for the sake of speed optimizations, and its just making the language harder to use.
The flaw here of course is that there are always new optimizations introduced in newer virtual machines, and the good old Smalltalk, one of the most dynamic languages in existence, can give both Java and.NET a run for their money. In the end such optimizations become bottlenecks, and for example multi-core processors prove that garbage collectors are superior to manual memory management.
Unix-style permissions are not the most sophisticated security you can have, but they get the job done. Over the years a lot of security mechanism have been proposed, but the high complexity of working with them have put people off. For example you can set security policies in both.NET and Java applications, so that the virtual machine can stop you from accessing resources that aren't needed... but nobody is using this facility. I did set up a security manager for a Java application that was supposed to behave like a server, and with connectivity to the outside world through a socket comes great responsability... and it was a pain to setup, and I'll probably won't do it again;)
In any case, on Linux you have a viable solution with SE Linux (installed by default in Fedora) and AppArmor (installed by default in SUSE). I think those will answer your needs, try them.
Some applications shouldn't need to be able to run arbitrary code as root to install - take a Tetris program for example, no need for it to do anything but copy its binary into/usr/games. Of course... we can also say that a Tetris game would only need to access only certain parts of the operating system... like a certain file where it keeps the core and no other file. A Tetris game also doesn't usually need any Internet connectivity.
But software developers don't add such restrictions to their programs because that's too complicated (the intent, not the procedure). For example the Java runtime has such facilities built-in, and.NET too... but nobody uses them because the maintaining software's security price is high, and the value it brings cannot be measured unless things go wrong.
And I worry much more about my personal files being deleted (in user mode btw), that I worry for the whole integrity of my system. A user mode Tetris installation procedure would fail to give me any peace of mind here... unless you create a special user for Tetris.
The culture in the Open Source world is different, as they say... when enough eyes are watching, all bugs are shallow. The UNIX security mechanisms are very primitive, but for better or worse they work, and the fields are filled with the corpses of more sophisticated security systems.
SE Linux looks promising though.
But until something like SE Linux will become mainstream, I consider the digital signing requirement of apt-get as secure enough. Because I consider the packages coming from the official Ubuntu or Debian repositories as being safe... as much as other people consider the IExplorer 7 upgrade that comes directly from Microsoft as being safe.
This is the exact equivalent to every windows program install requiring administrator access No it is not. The packages you install from the official repositories are digitally signed, and you can safely install them because they are reviewed by many people. It is however your responsibility if you want to install third-party packages... but many software packages CAN be installed in user mode manually. That's the beauty of Open Source... you can download a source tarball and compile it yourself in user mode, and then install and run it under user privileges.
And btw... you can create a sandbox to observe the effects a software installation has on your system. That's pretty easy to do in Debian with "chroot";) And if you want higher security than that, you can always install a virtual machine... there are multiple choices available for Linux.
--something they have at least recognized as a flaw and begun to combat. That's nonsense. How have they began to combat that exactly ? In Windows Vista all setup programs are running with administrator privileges. And I never saw a statement coming from them where they acknowledge that it's a flaw.
Of course it is not a flaw... software installation will always be a task that requires administrator privileges. If software installation isn't it... than what is ?
There would be limited insentive for anyone to invent anything new. Oh, shut the fuck up. All current inventions, big or small, are using the work made by others. The only reason human kind still invents anything new is because all the work we have in public domain right now... otherwise we'd be screwed.
And big companies that have thousands of patents will always have the ability to duplicate your work, simply because sooner or later you'll be infringing on their patents. Just ask IBM.
Microsoft does manage to make Linux more attractive by releasing a crappy OS after 5 years of development and God knows how many resources invested in it.
And this new technology is actually a Good News for Linux... now Adobe will have to improve that crappy Flash plugin that on Linux still doesn't support transparency... and maybe even make it open-source in face of the danger posed by Microsoft. They already released the ActionScript engine as Tamarin... so I think they at least are considering the possibility (thanks to Microsoft);)
You may be forced to sit through the ad, but your not forced to pay attention to it. That's a freedom that I am sure we will loose considering the current trends;) I wish this message was a funny one... but it isn't.
The difference between open-source software and proprietary software is that with open-source software you can...
1) fix the bug yourself 2) find someone to do it for free on support forums and mailing lists 3) report the bug and wait for the fix that is distributed for free 4) in case 1,2 and 3 are not possible... you can always pay a third-party to fix the bug for you
People like to bitch and moan about their problems with their friends. That's not trolling.
Considering that some people get pretty pissed when their copyright is violated (just think of academia, where people earn a living from their published papers)... I actually think the discussions on that IRC channel is pretty civilized and not short of good intentions.
This is NOT a sad day for Linux and the open source world. The world needs to know that we care about copyrights, and that we will defend them. Companies need to know that the GPL is a solid license, not only intended for garage hobbyists (as some might want the world to believe).
if your solution doesn't infringe leaf nodes in the tree of claims, it doesn't infringe.
You solution only has to infringe on one of the key nodes, not all of them.
Learn more about the patent law before spreading misinformation.
And this particular patent is as stupid as it gets, and it is exactly the reason why software patents should be invalid... software algorithms are discovered, not invented... just like mathematics.
All those Linux distributions have the same kernel, and that is Linux.
Having the same kernel means heaving the same drivers for the hardware. If only one distribution is supported out of the box, you can be 99% sure that it will run any other distribution just fine.
Because that's the problem we are having... wifi cards with closed-source driver implementations that will never work on Linux, graphic cards with half-ass drivers, and a whole part of the hardware industry that is too lazy to standardize on anything else but Windows.
And companies don't care about preferences, and they standardize on what alternative is cheaper to install and deploy, and what is cheaper for a company than a preinstalled Linux distribution that's supported by your computer manufacturer ?
So I don't care what distribution Dell chooses. As long as it is Linux, they have me as their customer.
Just consider however, we don't all run amateur home servers for our php blogs.
Just because a patch is ready for download, doesn't mean that you have to install it.
You can make it your company's policy to update only on the 10th of every month for example.
But if there is a major security flaw for a certain application that you hear of from your security advisor, then on the contrary there are reasons to update right away.
Common sense and experience of many other (including mine) says that small and frequent patches are to be preferred to large monolithic patches... because large and monolithic patches tend to break things, and I don't want to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP SP2.
Also small and frequent patches are easier to test by your average IT department.
And please... like we don't work with "enterprisey" applications that affect the bottom line.
If it is one thing I learned is that the level of incompetence in almost all major companies is breathtaking;)
And you trust IBM now ? The only reason IBM supports open-source is because they consider the enemy of their enemy their friend. But IBM is not a company which can be trusted, and many of us don't forget that;)
A company's culture rarely changes, and while I don't give a damn if a company support open-source or not... but as a paying customer I do want honesty about long term trends and interoperability with products made by other companies. And for these two simple requests I will never trust Microsoft or IBM, no matter how many times they are restructured.
Slashdot Mirror
RTFA and learn some English.
... "the other choice was NeoOffice, an OpenOffice.org fork for Macintosh, and running OpenOffice.org through an X11 environment."
... running NeoOffice OR running OpenOffice.org through an X11 server.
He said, and I quote
He basically highlights 2 choices
I actually found TFA to be spot on.
I agree with you, and to put it simpler ... developers and companies that pass the blame for insecurity to users are just idiots.
Regular people don't care and shouldn't care about security. Computers are just tools, and weren't meant to be worshiped.
Remember ActiveX ? Remember how it was supposed to be portable to Mac OS ?
... and don't kid yourself, they are making a comeback.
... there will always be a cloud over it regarding possible infringements of patents and copyrights. ... just ask the developers of all those Java clones ;)
... my life will be affected.
... just how hard is it to make Silverlight behave the same in both Firefox and IExplorer (both on Windows) ? ... http://metalinkltd.com/?p=114
Remember the Windows Media Player port to Mac OS ?
Remember the Internet Explorer port to Mac OS ?
Remember the VBA support in the Mac OS version of Microsoft Office ?
Where are those ports now ?
I am sick and tired of Microsoft ignoring standards. I am sick of Internet Explorer pitiful support for CSS and PNG and non-existent support for JPEG 2000, just so they can push their own formats.
I am sick of Internet Explorer websites
I laugh at people mentioning Mono.
Mono is and will always be incomplete, unstable, and also
If you want to know why
I don't care about Microsoft's technology if it doesn't have an impact on my life and my business.
But since Silverlight is ActiveX version 2
Answer me this
Go here
See something missing in Firefox ?
In Ubuntu Feisty there is a new graphical "Restricted Drivers Management" utility in the Administration menu that installs nVidia's drivers automatically, you just have to click a checkbox.
...
... so I understand your pain.
Otherwise, in older Ubuntu versions you have to install nvidia-glx, and call nvidia-xconfig to configure you system with something like
sudo aptitude install nvidia-glx nvidia-xconfig && sudo nvidia-xconfig
Pretty simple really, but different from the way you would do it in Windows
Have fun with your new Ubuntu box.
This directive is about copyright and related intellectual properties ... and such it includes Patents.
... especially when the patent offices have issued some stupid patents in the past, like [url=http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/aus pac/07/02/australia.wheel/]the legendary wheel[/url].
...
... just like the DMCA in the USA.
I am not concerned about copyrights as much as I am concerned for patents, especially about software patents
I know, that happened in Australia, but with software patents numerous obvious ideas are patented instead of actual implementations because one could argue that an idea in a software application is a technique to do a task.
For example none of the useful open-source applications we have today would have existed if it where for this kind of laws to be passed sooner.
MySql would have been destroyed by Oracle, Gnome would have been crushed by Microsoft or Apple, etc
Even if this law was passed with good intentions (counterfeit drugs are a real problem for example) it opens a whole world of possibility for abuse
So basically you're saying that because of open source there is a shortage of developers ?
hahahahahahaha
Nice one.
Like in Windows when you have no other choice but to edit the registry is better ?
A quick example
a) tweak it by modifying the registry
b) installing a little utility designed for Windows XP
Also
I am in that category too
The second I encountered this text ... "It has a couple of really cool features, like the virtual, override and new keywords that let you specify what should happen when you cast a class to it's base class and then call a method on it that's defined in both." ... I stopped reading.
... and of course naming a facility by its proper name is not important in engineering.
... C# introduced explicit virtual methods just because of speed concerns. If a method is not a virtual one, there is no need for the runtime to do dynamic dispatch. ... it is a facility introduced only for the sake of speed optimizations, and its just making the language harder to use.
.NET a run for their money.
The author is referring to the way polymorphism works in C#
But besides that
The problem is
The flaw here of course is that there are always new optimizations introduced in newer virtual machines, and the good old Smalltalk, one of the most dynamic languages in existence, can give both Java and
In the end such optimizations become bottlenecks, and for example multi-core processors prove that garbage collectors are superior to manual memory management.
Unix-style permissions are not the most sophisticated security you can have, but they get the job done. .NET and Java applications, so that the virtual machine can stop you from accessing resources that aren't needed ... but nobody is using this facility. ... and it was a pain to setup, and I'll probably won't do it again ;)
Over the years a lot of security mechanism have been proposed, but the high complexity of working with them have put people off.
For example you can set security policies in both
I did set up a security manager for a Java application that was supposed to behave like a server, and with connectivity to the outside world through a socket comes great responsability
In any case, on Linux you have a viable solution with SE Linux (installed by default in Fedora) and AppArmor (installed by default in SUSE).
I think those will answer your needs, try them.
I don't care what anyone says ... nothing beats a web-based operating system ;)
A Tetris game also doesn't usually need any Internet connectivity.
But software developers don't add such restrictions to their programs because that's too complicated (the intent, not the procedure).
For example the Java runtime has such facilities built-in, and
And I worry much more about my personal files being deleted (in user mode btw), that I worry for the whole integrity of my system.
A user mode Tetris installation procedure would fail to give me any peace of mind here
The culture in the Open Source world is different, as they say
The UNIX security mechanisms are very primitive, but for better or worse they work, and the fields are filled with the corpses of more sophisticated security systems.
SE Linux looks promising though.
But until something like SE Linux will become mainstream, I consider the digital signing requirement of apt-get as secure enough.
Because I consider the packages coming from the official Ubuntu or Debian repositories as being safe
The packages you install from the official repositories are digitally signed, and you can safely install them because they are reviewed by many people.
It is however your responsibility if you want to install third-party packages
That's the beauty of Open Source
And btw
That's pretty easy to do in Debian with "chroot"
And if you want higher security than that, you can always install a virtual machine
In Windows Vista all setup programs are running with administrator privileges.
And I never saw a statement coming from them where they acknowledge that it's a flaw.
Of course it is not a flaw
If software installation isn't it
All current inventions, big or small, are using the work made by others.
The only reason human kind still invents anything new is because all the work we have in public domain right now
And big companies that have thousands of patents will always have the ability to duplicate your work, simply because sooner or later you'll be infringing on their patents.
Just ask IBM.
Microsoft does manage to make Linux more attractive by releasing a crappy OS after 5 years of development and God knows how many resources invested in it.
... now Adobe will have to improve that crappy Flash plugin that on Linux still doesn't support transparency ... and maybe even make it open-source in face of the danger posed by Microsoft. ... so I think they at least are considering the possibility (thanks to Microsoft) ;)
And this new technology is actually a Good News for Linux
They already released the ActionScript engine as Tamarin
I wish this message was a funny one
The difference between open-source software and proprietary software is that with open-source software you can ...
... you can always pay a third-party to fix the bug for you
1) fix the bug yourself
2) find someone to do it for free on support forums and mailing lists
3) report the bug and wait for the fix that is distributed for free
4) in case 1,2 and 3 are not possible
Now I know why ... everything tastes like chicken
People like to bitch and moan about their problems with their friends. That's not trolling.
... I actually think the discussions on that IRC channel is pretty civilized and not short of good intentions.
Considering that some people get pretty pissed when their copyright is violated (just think of academia, where people earn a living from their published papers)
This is NOT a sad day for Linux and the open source world.
The world needs to know that we care about copyrights, and that we will defend them.
Companies need to know that the GPL is a solid license, not only intended for garage hobbyists (as some might want the world to believe).
I'm pretty sure I would get the WOW, as in ...
WOW Bill, this thing is defective !
Preposterous, have they no shame ?
Just leave my applications alone !
if your solution doesn't infringe leaf nodes in the tree of claims, it doesn't infringe.
... software algorithms are discovered, not invented ... just like mathematics.
You solution only has to infringe on one of the key nodes, not all of them.
Learn more about the patent law before spreading misinformation.
And this particular patent is as stupid as it gets, and it is exactly the reason why software patents should be invalid
All those Linux distributions have the same kernel, and that is Linux.
... wifi cards with closed-source driver implementations that will never work on Linux, graphic cards with half-ass drivers, and a whole part of the hardware industry that is too lazy to standardize on anything else but Windows.
Having the same kernel means heaving the same drivers for the hardware.
If only one distribution is supported out of the box, you can be 99% sure that it will run any other distribution just fine.
Because that's the problem we are having
And companies don't care about preferences, and they standardize on what alternative is cheaper to install and deploy, and what is cheaper for a company than a preinstalled Linux distribution that's supported by your computer manufacturer ?
So I don't care what distribution Dell chooses.
As long as it is Linux, they have me as their customer.
Just consider however, we don't all run amateur home servers for our php blogs.
... because large and monolithic patches tend to break things, and I don't want to remember the nightmare that was Windows XP SP2.
... like we don't work with "enterprisey" applications that affect the bottom line.
;)
Just because a patch is ready for download, doesn't mean that you have to install it. You can make it your company's policy to update only on the 10th of every month for example.
But if there is a major security flaw for a certain application that you hear of from your security advisor, then on the contrary there are reasons to update right away.
Common sense and experience of many other (including mine) says that small and frequent patches are to be preferred to large monolithic patches
Also small and frequent patches are easier to test by your average IT department.
And please
If it is one thing I learned is that the level of incompetence in almost all major companies is breathtaking
And you trust IBM now ? ;)
... but as a paying customer I do want honesty about long term trends and interoperability with products made by other companies.
The only reason IBM supports open-source is because they consider the enemy of their enemy their friend.
But IBM is not a company which can be trusted, and many of us don't forget that
A company's culture rarely changes, and while I don't give a damn if a company support open-source or not
And for these two simple requests I will never trust Microsoft or IBM, no matter how many times they are restructured.