my feelings exactly. it's shiny on the surface, but it looks rather weird when you start noticing these things. a distro that noone has even heard of, with a hip-looking homepage on an NT server that keeps returning "server too busy" when you try to access its contents, and suddently featured on a big site like download.com?
I don't see why this post is moderated down. I mean, seriously, how can you even begin to trust a company that sells a Linux distribution, and doesn't even use it to run their own web server? And then you get "HTTP/1.1 server too busy" errors when you try to access their pages, too! The very least a company that believes in its products can do is USE THEM. Linux makes a great webserver, and these people use NT and IIS? As far as I care, that's the ultimate sign of hopping on the Linux bandwagon without caring the least bit for the whole process that Linux is part of. Companies like Corel seem to be getting the idea of what it is to make a Linux for non-linuxers while keeping the right attitude. Armed Linux sure don't look like they do.
yep, it was a piece of humor. not that funny, but not too bad, I sure had a laugh reading their site. I don't know why anyone would *sigh* and be "so glad" that this thing is over.. it's not as if this was anything to be seriously worried about! if it had come out to be true, i'd have chuckled at just how amazingly misguided some people can be. nothing to worry about either way.
staying up to date with the security holes found in the OSs you use is a very important part of the sysadmin job. that is true for RedHat Linux, for NT and for every other OS out there except possibly CP/M. companies will release versions (distributions, service packs, whatever) only once or twice per year, and in between people will find holes and they will be plugged. so in this case I'd say it's PCWeek's fault for installing a RH Linux server without looking around RedHat's "errata" section. and I'd say the same thing about it if it was a known bug getting exploited under NT, or Solaris, or whatever. no vendor can make a release a week.
i think you and the previous poster are not quite understanding each other. Linus has been quoted repeatedly saying that he likes Linux's implementation of the threads API for user processes better than the Solaris one. this doesn't have much to do with how either OS uses threads within its kernel.
qmail? you mean, that piece of modular C code that manages to avoid *every single convention* that C programmers are used to (starting wtih null-terminated strings), just so you can read it and feel like it's another language altogether? and there's next to 0 comments in the qmail code, too. i love qmail as a user, and i've made minor changes to it before, but i wouldnt count it as an example of a particylarily clear program.
quick and dirty translation (dropping bits here and there):
the little Kristiansand-based company Bellboy secured itself in 1993 a patent on all internet commerce in Norway and Europe, according to digi.no. Now the company is going to ask for royalties to all who sell wares and services over the Internet and by phone.
Rolf Wilhelmsen applies for his patent in 1993, but the process has been so slow that only in 1999 can he start using his patent to claim payment from such service shops as Amadeus (plane reservation system) and Norwegian shops like Rimi, Onlineclub and Filmweb. Bellboy's patent is unique in that it only describes a business model, not a technical principle.
The patent has been a well-kept secret till now; now we will make it known. Many people are shocked to hear what this is. You will [??? hear from us?] if you try to do e-commerce and avoid the Bellboy patent, says Wilhelmsen to digi.no.
Norwegian patent # 17 98 88 describes a system where the user uses a general-purpose networking system to access a shopping system, select items, order directly, and get confirmation. Which means that that patent covers most commerce systems over the phone, internet and mobile net systems.
hostname cloaking? i don't know wtf you mean by that but no IRC client can tell an IRC server what its IP is. the server is smart enough to figure out getpeeraddr() on its own, thankyouverymucho.
yeah, this is one step to the solution, and one that's infinitely more trustable than java-ish sanboxes. if all the autorun can do is bring over an image, some buttons, and start things when you press those buttons, then at least we have one active step of confirmation by the user. now all that's left to do is figure out a way to prevent the autorun image to look like one of these harmless confirmation windows that GUIs liek to pop at you (as in 'are you still connected' or something stupid like that, just so the user will click 'yes' and execute the trojan). to fix that, I'd sacrifice the absolute flexibility of "load any graphic and show any buttons", and insert the graphic into a bigger template that says "this is an autorun from a cd, blah blah blah, clicking on buttons will start programs".
autorun is an absolute BAD IDEA from a security point of view. running email attachment programs with a single (or double, for that matter) click is also one of the major reasons why Windows is BAD for the newbie user.
there is this trend to hide the difference between data and programs, but it's absolutely WRONG. all it achieves is to blur the difference in such a way that you can no longer use your computer SAFELY without actively thinking about safety every five minutes. installing or running a program is supposed to take an actual (even if fairly minimal) effort, if only because it can do "very bad things" (tm) to your computer.
I can understand Corel's *new* position just fine. the old one was kind of sort of understandable, but not acceptable as a precedent. the new one is. yay for corel for fixing it, and yay for the linux / slashdot community for making them fix it.
well, I don't usually comment on macs because of lack of exposure to them, but at work we got a mac (brand new G3) for a designer, and it's been crashing about 3 times a day average. i know a bad apple doesn't mean they're all rotten, but still, I was expecting better.
what you are describing is not a violation of the GPL, unless the friends who get that binary *ask* for the source, and the developper *refuses* to give it to them. as long as they do'nt choose to ask for the source (with GPL rights along with it), everything's fine. in the case of Corel, they are very explicitly *not* giving the beta testers the rights that the GPL gives them, which is a violation.
it doesn't make sense to develop apps for linux *under the GPL* if you don't plan to distribut them. why not just keep them proprieatary? it's not like there is any obligation for their sw to be under the GPL, as long as it doesn't borrow GPL code. just coding for Linux puts you under no licensing obligations. what Linux are doing is different: redistributing GPL'd apps themselves. so yes, if these embedded people put Linux in ATM's *and* make kernel mods, i'd expect them to have to distribute a cd-rom of their kernel mods to their customers who ask for them. in practice that would not be a big deal, just some device drivers, and even those they could make as kernel modules (which the kernel's GPL doesn't extend to). they sure wouldnt have to give the source to their *apps*.
no idea. but i'm pretty sure that people on EFnet don't link new servers as hubs, unless they already know the people running them very well (which involves trusting their tech choices). your average server starts as a leaf, and most likely remains that way.
you are misunderstanding the issue. a "friends release" is still a release and these friends have the legal right to redistribute (by the GPL). you are merely *asking them nicely* not to do it. Corel has every right to give beta cdroms out to its beta testers, saying "please don't redistribute this further", but they would still be legally allowed to, by the GPL. *that* is the proper way to do a distribution beta test. the GPL entails no obligation to formally make an easily accessible mass distribution of all your versions; it just requires you to give GPL rights to everyone you give a copy to.
it may make perfect sense to you, but it is NOT what the GPL says, and the GPL is hwat applies to large parts of their distribution, starting with the Linux kernel. the GPL recognizes no such thing as an "internal beta"; giving a copy of a GPL'd piece of software to anyone is distribution, period.
woo.. now that's a joke that went way past you! and i thought that picking MIPS, *and* recommending an emulator inside apache (as if such a thing existed), *and* pointing to a broken link would make it obvious enough!
even if it was true that Linux can't handle the load, it wouldnt risk the stability of the whole network, unless they were clueless enough to make the server a hub right from the start. which they don't.
yep, the biggest OS on EFnet used to be SunOS, then Solaris, then FreeBSD. Linux has in the past had trouble handling large numbers of open fd's, which is the one thing that ircd stresses in an OS. up to some very recent versions, the stock kernel just didnt let any process have thousands of fd's; vendor kernels like redhat have shipped with large-fd patches for a while (rh6 has the hard limits for fd's set to 1024, and the kernel should be able to handle even more). I *think* that the large-fd patches have finally made it into the mainstream kernel, so the latest 2.2 should work noticeably better.
other than that, well, nothing wrong with using the best tool for the job, and FreeBSD has always been good at this, so there's nothing wrong with using FreeBSD for irc servers. but Linux is not "crippled" in that respect, and it makes even less sense to say that Linux "will not make it in the server area" because of that. How many "enterprise" servers out there run large ircd's, or software that pushes the OS in the same ways ircd does?
btw, there *have* been Linux servers on EFnet. i'm not up to date with what's going on there now, but I know tamu.edu used to run Linux.
FWIW, perl's database support is extremely good *and* easy to use. the only difference that "having it as a module" brings to your code is a "use DBI;" statement at the top.
in MIPS assembly. seriously; C is way too high level, and perl is write-only line noise. MIPS assembly is the way to go. if you really must run x86 servers, you can always use the mod_mipsasm emulator.
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my feelings exactly. it's shiny on the surface, but it looks rather weird when you start noticing these things. a distro that noone has even heard of, with a hip-looking homepage on an NT server that keeps returning "server too busy" when you try to access its contents, and suddently featured on a big site like download.com?
I don't see why this post is moderated down. I mean, seriously, how can you even begin to trust a company that sells a Linux distribution, and doesn't even use it to run their own web server? And then you get "HTTP/1.1 server too busy" errors when you try to access their pages, too! The very least a company that believes in its products can do is USE THEM. Linux makes a great webserver, and these people use NT and IIS? As far as I care, that's the ultimate sign of hopping on the Linux bandwagon without caring the least bit for the whole process that Linux is part of. Companies like Corel seem to be getting the idea of what it is to make a Linux for non-linuxers while keeping the right attitude. Armed Linux sure don't look like they do.
yep, it was a piece of humor. not that funny, but not too bad, I sure had a laugh reading their site. I don't know why anyone would *sigh* and be "so glad" that this thing is over.. it's not as if this was anything to be seriously worried about! if it had come out to be true, i'd have chuckled at just how amazingly misguided some people can be. nothing to worry about either way.
staying up to date with the security holes found in the OSs you use is a very important part of the sysadmin job. that is true for RedHat Linux, for NT and for every other OS out there except possibly CP/M. companies will release versions (distributions, service packs, whatever) only once or twice per year, and in between people will find holes and they will be plugged. so in this case I'd say it's PCWeek's fault for installing a RH Linux server without looking around RedHat's "errata" section. and I'd say the same thing about it if it was a known bug getting exploited under NT, or Solaris, or whatever. no vendor can make a release a week.
i think you and the previous poster are not quite understanding each other. Linus has been quoted repeatedly saying that he likes Linux's implementation of the threads API for user processes better than the Solaris one. this doesn't have much to do with how either OS uses threads within its kernel.
qmail? you mean, that piece of modular C code that manages to avoid *every single convention* that C programmers are used to (starting wtih null-terminated strings), just so you can read it and feel like it's another language altogether? and there's next to 0 comments in the qmail code, too. i love qmail as a user, and i've made minor changes to it before, but i wouldnt count it as an example of a particylarily clear program.
the little Kristiansand-based company Bellboy secured itself in 1993 a patent on all internet commerce in Norway and Europe, according to digi.no. Now the company is going to ask for royalties to all who sell wares and services over the Internet and by phone.
Rolf Wilhelmsen applies for his patent in 1993, but the process has been so slow that only in 1999 can he start using his patent to claim payment from such service shops as Amadeus (plane reservation system) and Norwegian shops like Rimi, Onlineclub and Filmweb. Bellboy's patent is unique in that it only describes a business model, not a technical principle.
The patent has been a well-kept secret till now; now we will make it known. Many people are shocked to hear what this is. You will [??? hear from us?] if you try to do e-commerce and avoid the Bellboy patent, says Wilhelmsen to digi.no.
Norwegian patent # 17 98 88 describes a system where the user uses a general-purpose networking system to access a shopping system, select items, order directly, and get confirmation. Which means that that patent covers most commerce systems over the phone, internet and mobile net systems.
hostname cloaking? i don't know wtf you mean by that but no IRC client can tell an IRC server what its IP is. the server is smart enough to figure out getpeeraddr() on its own, thankyouverymucho.
BFD. IRC has showed your IP for forever.
yeah, this is one step to the solution, and one that's infinitely more trustable than java-ish sanboxes. if all the autorun can do is bring over an image, some buttons, and start things when you press those buttons, then at least we have one active step of confirmation by the user. now all that's left to do is figure out a way to prevent the autorun image to look like one of these harmless confirmation windows that GUIs liek to pop at you (as in 'are you still connected' or something stupid like that, just so the user will click 'yes' and execute the trojan). to fix that, I'd sacrifice the absolute flexibility of "load any graphic and show any buttons", and insert the graphic into a bigger template that says "this is an autorun from a cd, blah blah blah, clicking on buttons will start programs".
so prompt the user, explaining *exactly* what the situation is, and requiring confirmation (without a "don't ask me again" button).
there is this trend to hide the difference between data and programs, but it's absolutely WRONG. all it achieves is to blur the difference in such a way that you can no longer use your computer SAFELY without actively thinking about safety every five minutes. installing or running a program is supposed to take an actual (even if fairly minimal) effort, if only because it can do "very bad things" (tm) to your computer.
I can understand Corel's *new* position just fine. the old one was kind of sort of understandable, but not acceptable as a precedent. the new one is. yay for corel for fixing it, and yay for the linux / slashdot community for making them fix it.
well, I don't usually comment on macs because of lack of exposure to them, but at work we got a mac (brand new G3) for a designer, and it's been crashing about 3 times a day average. i know a bad apple doesn't mean they're all rotten, but still, I was expecting better.
what you are describing is not a violation of the GPL, unless the friends who get that binary *ask* for the source, and the developper *refuses* to give it to them. as long as they do'nt choose to ask for the source (with GPL rights along with it), everything's fine. in the case of Corel, they are very explicitly *not* giving the beta testers the rights that the GPL gives them, which is a violation.
boo, I should re-read myself. "what Corel are doing", not "what Linux are doing".
it doesn't make sense to develop apps for linux *under the GPL* if you don't plan to distribut them. why not just keep them proprieatary? it's not like there is any obligation for their sw to be under the GPL, as long as it doesn't borrow GPL code. just coding for Linux puts you under no licensing obligations. what Linux are doing is different: redistributing GPL'd apps themselves. so yes, if these embedded people put Linux in ATM's *and* make kernel mods, i'd expect them to have to distribute a cd-rom of their kernel mods to their customers who ask for them. in practice that would not be a big deal, just some device drivers, and even those they could make as kernel modules (which the kernel's GPL doesn't extend to). they sure wouldnt have to give the source to their *apps*.
no idea. but i'm pretty sure that people on EFnet don't link new servers as hubs, unless they already know the people running them very well (which involves trusting their tech choices). your average server starts as a leaf, and most likely remains that way.
you are misunderstanding the issue. a "friends release" is still a release and these friends have the legal right to redistribute (by the GPL). you are merely *asking them nicely* not to do it. Corel has every right to give beta cdroms out to its beta testers, saying "please don't redistribute this further", but they would still be legally allowed to, by the GPL. *that* is the proper way to do a distribution beta test. the GPL entails no obligation to formally make an easily accessible mass distribution of all your versions; it just requires you to give GPL rights to everyone you give a copy to.
it may make perfect sense to you, but it is NOT what the GPL says, and the GPL is hwat applies to large parts of their distribution, starting with the Linux kernel. the GPL recognizes no such thing as an "internal beta"; giving a copy of a GPL'd piece of software to anyone is distribution, period.
woo.. now that's a joke that went way past you! and i thought that picking MIPS, *and* recommending an emulator inside apache (as if such a thing existed), *and* pointing to a broken link would make it obvious enough!
even if it was true that Linux can't handle the load, it wouldnt risk the stability of the whole network, unless they were clueless enough to make the server a hub right from the start. which they don't.
other than that, well, nothing wrong with using the best tool for the job, and FreeBSD has always been good at this, so there's nothing wrong with using FreeBSD for irc servers. but Linux is not "crippled" in that respect, and it makes even less sense to say that Linux "will not make it in the server area" because of that. How many "enterprise" servers out there run large ircd's, or software that pushes the OS in the same ways ircd does?
btw, there *have* been Linux servers on EFnet. i'm not up to date with what's going on there now, but I know tamu.edu used to run Linux.
FWIW, perl's database support is extremely good *and* easy to use. the only difference that "having it as a module" brings to your code is a "use DBI;" statement at the top.
in MIPS assembly. seriously; C is way too high level, and perl is write-only line noise. MIPS assembly is the way to go. if you really must run x86 servers, you can always use the mod_mipsasm emulator.