Sadly, there's a whole lotta FUD going around. Basically MS has a lot of software patents, which unfortunately are patents on a specific method of problem solving, as opposed to hard technical implementations. So when MS slings around the whole patent argument, they're claiming that since they have patents on "A method for parsing incoming XML requests", that any software which solves for X in a Y manner is therefore infringing on their patent.
Roughly speaking, that's the issue as far as patents go. The particular fear with SMB is that since it was reverse engineered from MS' SMB/CIFS implementation, that there may be some level of illegality there. However, the SMB team has been pretty good about making sure no MS code taints their codebase, there's no directly infringing code. Outside of that, it falls under the blanket "Should you be doing that?" patent FUD, making it no better or worse than any of these other vaguely defined threats of infringing FLOSS software
Long story short? Keep Samba installed. It rocks and is cool and groovy legally speaking.
The way the rootkit works is by essentially blinding Windows to any file whose name begins with (and I'm working from memory here, so don't quote me), "$SYS$_".
And by blinding, I mean, Windows wouldn't be able to see, remove, list, or otherwise interact with the file. So, if you wanted to, you could hide a trojan quite nicely by naming it "$SYS$_thisisatrojan.exe" or something. Virus scanners wouldn't be able to detect it as they rely on Windows to reliably report which files exist on the filesystem.
So yeah, this little rootkit was pretty heavily used. I've got a friend at Blizzard who told me that people were beginning to hide hacks for World of Warcraft with that trick.
Hey, don't knock conditional comments. While I'm all for semantics, the ability to target IE7 and IE6 and serve them their own stylesheet is immensely useful when you're handling things like IE6's penchant for doubling the margin on floated elements.
And yes, while it isn't a perfect solution, I'm just one find/replace away from tossing the IE6 stylesheet the minute its market share drops low enough.
You saw OSX running on a Mac Mini and it was unusable? That's strange, since it's running quite well on our G3 print server in the office. No offense, but I have trouble believe that Apple's OS would be "unusable" on a G4 when the G3 + OSX combo was what helped revitalise the company.
As for running OSX on 300mhz ARM9, I'll believe it. I've got a 10 year old Powermac 8500 sitting under my desk happily running Darwin, and acting as my house's file server, and it's stuck with a (pre-G3) 188mhz processor. Sure, the GUI is pretty damned slow (what I would consider unusable), but these old Powermacs didn't have a dedicated graphics processor, and there's a serious lack of X drivers for the system it has.
Many of the more persistent issues in IE6 aren't due to impelementation of the CSS standard (or lack thereof), but rather of bugs. I mean, sweet baggigty, how on Earth can you predict if IE6 is going to double the margin on a floated element or not? Hell, it's a "here today, gone tomorrow" issue for a full-time web designer.
And don't get me started on the peekaboo bug. That one alone took me a day and a half to figure out. For the most part, IE7 will respect web standards (and hell, even better than Firefox 2 in some places), but for IE6, and parts of IE7, you just need to build a nigh-encyclopedia knowledge of various bugs and workaround.
Not really, though the inclusion of binary blobs in the kernel (such as the NVidia and ATI driver modules) is seen as some to be a violation of the GPL. Since Ubuntu (being a people friendly) disto includes these proprietary drivers, some people consider Ubuntu less "free" than other distros.
Honestly, it's something that most users with a high-end GPU are going to do anyways so most users don't quite mind, but from a distro-wide philosophy aspect, many distros find blob inclusion to be pretty scary, if not outright anti-GPL. OpenSUSE and Fedora fall in this camp, while Ubuntu and Linspire are willing to use blobs where it benefits the user
Actually, I believe that's priority within the site. So, for example, your homepage might have a "0.8" your "Contact Us" page, might have a "0.5", your "News" section might be a straight "1.0", and your privacy policy a "0.2".
Maybe you missed this point, but I, as a user, haven't seen much of an increase in spam. However, as a sysadmin, I've got a neat little graph showing emails that are getting blocked by RBLs, and we're bouncing 3 times the amount of spam we did in July.
You notice it a hell of a lot more when you're worrying about your clients' email, and not just your own.
Personally I dig Dreamhost for most of my domain stuff. They're a web hosting company and exceedingly nice people to work with, and they offer their own domain services as part of the web hosting package.
If you're not going for hosting alongside your domain, I'd suggest Yahoo oddly enough. They're basically just a reseller for Melbourne IT, but they're cheap, and I've had no troubles with them before. They can't handle full-out domain transfers as per my understanding, but have all the standard redirection services.
Sadly, certain registrars have a nasty habit of throwing domains into an "Extended Grace Period" which allows them to retain control of the domain after your registration has lapsed, supposedly to put a hold on domain sniping. Well, it means that a less than scrupulous registrar can put language into their registration contract allowing them to purchase the domain once it expires, at which point they either put it up for auction or load it with link-farms.
eNom, perchance? I've got a client who had the same thing happen to their domain, and every attempt to contact the registrar has just flat out failed, including calling the phone number attached to the bloody Whois record.
Hell, I just got the annual "Update your records!" email from a half-dozen registrars at ICANN, and I can't help but find the irony in a registrar having inaccurate Whois records.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, there's a whole lotta FUD going around. Basically MS has a lot of software patents, which unfortunately are patents on a specific method of problem solving, as opposed to hard technical implementations. So when MS slings around the whole patent argument, they're claiming that since they have patents on "A method for parsing incoming XML requests", that any software which solves for X in a Y manner is therefore infringing on their patent.
Roughly speaking, that's the issue as far as patents go. The particular fear with SMB is that since it was reverse engineered from MS' SMB/CIFS implementation, that there may be some level of illegality there. However, the SMB team has been pretty good about making sure no MS code taints their codebase, there's no directly infringing code. Outside of that, it falls under the blanket "Should you be doing that?" patent FUD, making it no better or worse than any of these other vaguely defined threats of infringing FLOSS software
Long story short? Keep Samba installed. It rocks and is cool and groovy legally speaking.
Driving has a high learning curve, but I doubt any of us would call the morning commute particularly taxing
The way the rootkit works is by essentially blinding Windows to any file whose name begins with (and I'm working from memory here, so don't quote me), "$SYS$_".
And by blinding, I mean, Windows wouldn't be able to see, remove, list, or otherwise interact with the file. So, if you wanted to, you could hide a trojan quite nicely by naming it "$SYS$_thisisatrojan.exe" or something. Virus scanners wouldn't be able to detect it as they rely on Windows to reliably report which files exist on the filesystem.
So yeah, this little rootkit was pretty heavily used. I've got a friend at Blizzard who told me that people were beginning to hide hacks for World of Warcraft with that trick.
Hey, don't knock conditional comments. While I'm all for semantics, the ability to target IE7 and IE6 and serve them their own stylesheet is immensely useful when you're handling things like IE6's penchant for doubling the margin on floated elements.
And yes, while it isn't a perfect solution, I'm just one find/replace away from tossing the IE6 stylesheet the minute its market share drops low enough.
You saw OSX running on a Mac Mini and it was unusable? That's strange, since it's running quite well on our G3 print server in the office. No offense, but I have trouble believe that Apple's OS would be "unusable" on a G4 when the G3 + OSX combo was what helped revitalise the company.
As for running OSX on 300mhz ARM9, I'll believe it. I've got a 10 year old Powermac 8500 sitting under my desk happily running Darwin, and acting as my house's file server, and it's stuck with a (pre-G3) 188mhz processor. Sure, the GUI is pretty damned slow (what I would consider unusable), but these old Powermacs didn't have a dedicated graphics processor, and there's a serious lack of X drivers for the system it has.
Many of the more persistent issues in IE6 aren't due to impelementation of the CSS standard (or lack thereof), but rather of bugs. I mean, sweet baggigty, how on Earth can you predict if IE6 is going to double the margin on a floated element or not? Hell, it's a "here today, gone tomorrow" issue for a full-time web designer.
And don't get me started on the peekaboo bug. That one alone took me a day and a half to figure out. For the most part, IE7 will respect web standards (and hell, even better than Firefox 2 in some places), but for IE6, and parts of IE7, you just need to build a nigh-encyclopedia knowledge of various bugs and workaround.
A List Apart and are fantastic resources for bug hunting
Not really, though the inclusion of binary blobs in the kernel (such as the NVidia and ATI driver modules) is seen as some to be a violation of the GPL. Since Ubuntu (being a people friendly) disto includes these proprietary drivers, some people consider Ubuntu less "free" than other distros.
Honestly, it's something that most users with a high-end GPU are going to do anyways so most users don't quite mind, but from a distro-wide philosophy aspect, many distros find blob inclusion to be pretty scary, if not outright anti-GPL. OpenSUSE and Fedora fall in this camp, while Ubuntu and Linspire are willing to use blobs where it benefits the user
Actually, I believe that's priority within the site. So, for example, your homepage might have a "0.8" your "Contact Us" page, might have a "0.5", your "News" section might be a straight "1.0", and your privacy policy a "0.2".
Maybe you missed this point, but I, as a user, haven't seen much of an increase in spam. However, as a sysadmin, I've got a neat little graph showing emails that are getting blocked by RBLs, and we're bouncing 3 times the amount of spam we did in July.
You notice it a hell of a lot more when you're worrying about your clients' email, and not just your own.
Personally I dig Dreamhost for most of my domain stuff. They're a web hosting company and exceedingly nice people to work with, and they offer their own domain services as part of the web hosting package.
If you're not going for hosting alongside your domain, I'd suggest Yahoo oddly enough. They're basically just a reseller for Melbourne IT, but they're cheap, and I've had no troubles with them before. They can't handle full-out domain transfers as per my understanding, but have all the standard redirection services.
Sadly, certain registrars have a nasty habit of throwing domains into an "Extended Grace Period" which allows them to retain control of the domain after your registration has lapsed, supposedly to put a hold on domain sniping. Well, it means that a less than scrupulous registrar can put language into their registration contract allowing them to purchase the domain once it expires, at which point they either put it up for auction or load it with link-farms.
eNom, perchance? I've got a client who had the same thing happen to their domain, and every attempt to contact the registrar has just flat out failed, including calling the phone number attached to the bloody Whois record.
Hell, I just got the annual "Update your records!" email from a half-dozen registrars at ICANN, and I can't help but find the irony in a registrar having inaccurate Whois records.