From NTBUGTRAQ: "Microsoft has two keys, a primary and a spare. The Crypto-Gram article talked about attacks based on the fact that a crypto suite is considered signed if it is signed by EITHER key, and that there is no mechanism for transitioning from the primary key to the backup. It's stupid cryptography, but the sort of thing you'd expect out of Microsoft." I guess its sorta taken as a standard that someone else has, gee, found yet another weakness in MS. Even if its just an "academic" weakness.
I honestly don't see how bugs can be eradicated from the enduser experience. NT is much more stable than is posited here IF you can keep the number of Microsoft server apps to a minimum, preferably one.
So:/. users bash NT as an unstable piece of dung. This is because most/. user (or admin) experience is with NT running multiple services. If we would just install NT, and only NT, then leave the box sitting in the corner, we'd be OK and have stability problems? Uh, ok.
Actually we have one machine at work that crashes for no apparent reason and it doesn't do anything but sit there.
By that, I mean legally bind someone to an agreement without first presenting the agreement for acceptance, modification, or whatever. Thats like taking a section of sidewalk, and at the end having a big sign that says "By walking down this sidewalk you agree to pay the guy next to the sign the sum of 10 american dollars". It just so happens that something important or useful is on the other end of said sidewalk.
Don't get me wrong, here, I am all for anything that gives power to attack spammers. I am just curious about the legality, the possible annoying precedent set here (think of the software licensing, the install is a program that presents a single "press enter" button then a screen that says "By pressing enter, you agreed to...").
The idea that Dell is doing this because of MS Office coming to Linux is waay too farfetched. Its simple business.
1. The won't go bankrupt by doing this. Worst case, they loose some money. If they only cover their expenditures, then they are doing better than Compaq. Hemorraging money maybe fashionable but I don't think Dell is into that. 2. If anything, they increase their market share. And they doing it by *opening up* their offerings (unlike some other companies). 3. Maybe they are preparing for less MS business, I dunno. Pure speculation.
All in all, I think its just good business, respond to industry trends, get there first. We all said a couple of years ago that Linux would be big on the desktop, and now it looks like its starting to happen, so this is more "yeah, thought so" than big news.
Some time ago, a couple of years ago I think, we decided that the inordinate amount of 486s we had lying around, along with all the old bits and pieces that still worked, should be donated to charity. So I called up a bunch of places, searched the Web, etc. Once I got in touch with someone, it went like this: Me: Hi, I have a friggin metric ton of computer gear I want to donate to your school. Them: Great! We're looking for Pentiums, minimal, and stuff that can run Windows 95 or this NT thing I heard about. Me: Uh... Them: No Pentiums, no dice.
I tried for almost 4 months to donate stuff. No one wanted any of it. They only wanted cutting edge hardware. I even got hung up on once for trying to say that these machines were still usable for tasks other than surfing the web (thinking to myself, Linux, of course).
I even talked to inner-city types, people who are trying to bring inner-city kids more up-to-speed on technology. Right now, these places are still looking for donations, and still won't accept anything less than PII's or G3 Macs. I tried to donate my time - no, too much paperwork, and I can't be trusted around the kids since I am just some guy and not, you know, accreditted. And we all know that these computer guys are pervs.
I was totally dejected. Next week we will be chucking that stuff; we've got the truck and everything ready to go. Too bad, there was some good Linux hardware in there that they could have used. Anyone want it?
Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. Especially if the person wanting to kick your ass is used to those jock-fights; you know, where they push each other a few times then everyone breaks it up. One good hit, to a vital spot, and they fold like origami. The same thing happened to me a dozen times in high school. I kept messing them up - usually by 1, actually fighting back (like, throwing a real punch) and 2, fighting dirty (oh look, a chair...) and it worked like a charm. They kept wanting to kick my ass, though. They never stopped.
I'm one of those trendy types that thinks they sold out once Big Daddy Brett quit. Comparing, say, Against The Grain to No Substance, hey thats no comparison, ATG wins. Even Stranger Than Fiction is better than the latest stuff.
BB King and SRV are exceptional, not just good. If it was as easy as you put it, then there would be throngs of worshipped guitar players.
But its not all about talent, meaning raw musical chops, but the ability to create and market a product, that is to say the CD, video, and all that other stuff. I was playing Nirvana riffs 2 weeks after I picked up the guitar - but I can't just be him. He had a talent for connecting with people and creating a product.
And the idea that rock artists don't stretch boundaries? Zappa, for one. Tool took metal, a dry genre at times, and gave it breath and life and most importantly intelligence. There's the metal-hiphop fusions. Techno. The list goes on and on.
-Easy to use database How long is a piece of string? Defining easy to use is harder than defining pornography. -Graphical database tools -Simple, graphical server/e-store configuration tools I don't particularly want these, but I see their inclusion in the grand scheme of things. I don't personally trust what I can't script. -Web authoring tools vi, Xemacs, The GIMP, xv, ee...
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer? Warnock: Well, maybe. ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer? Warnock: I said, maybe. ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer? Warnock: Yes. ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer? Warnock: I just said, yes. ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer? Warnock: Will you stop asking me that? ...
What I need, really, is not a word processor; we have a few documents that won't convert well, but we are gaining some momentum on this issue and in 3 months, it'll be a non-issue. Any remaining Windows machines will use WordPerfect Office 2k or whatever the hell its called. The thing that is *really* lacking is a spreadsheet that will happily and quickly convert Excel. Applix choked bad on some of our complex spreadsheets. Gnumeric won't even come close. I haven't tried the KDE offering, mostly since there is already some investment in RH/GNOME - it works, its happy and stable, I don't want to mess with it after taking the time to get it running. At any rate, what I need is a spreadsheet, and I am dying for Quattro to get ported, whenever the hell that will be. If it can get the same 75% or better results that Wordperfect is getting doing conversion, that will be enough for us to ditch MS altogether.
I have been toying with it and so far, my impressions are very mixed. It manages to convert the most complex Word and Excel documents with nary a sputter. For someone trying to migrate away from MS, this is a Very Good Thing. OTOH, its S L O W on every machine I test it on. VERY SLOW. These are PII's with lots of RAM and both 2.0.36 and 2.2.10 kernels, good video. Its got enough features to make me happy. OTOH, I can't resolve printing issues (it seems to be trying to use lpstat for something) to my network printers. It installs quicker and easier than MS Office, once you get the quirks of the installer worked out (permissions strangeness in my case). It uses Java - hence Sun's interest, but I am not sure that I am completely thrilled with that. Internet integration is tight - not too sure about that, either. Call me crazy but I like Netscape, I don't want my office suite surfing.
At any rate, I see a great product, if StarDivision will take an effort to fix some of the strangeness and really make it a top-notch competitor to Office. I hope Sun will buy them and work to make a great product.
My sister is one of those "microwaves are bad" people. Never mind the amount of solar radiation that we get every day. I am sure that the fringe lunatics will go off.
1. Didn't/. run a story about how Borland was getting rid of OWL and become another MFC compiler? Doesn't that mean that Borland/Inprise is going in too many directions at once? As much as I want Delphi and Jbuilder, I want it to be *quality*. I don't want the port to suffer because too many of the staff were diddling with MFC garbage. 2. The IDE must let me use whatever editor I want. Once the rest of the world realizes this their products will sell (in the Linux sphere). Likewise, the compiler suite must mesh with whatever I have, ie useful command line tools. 3. It must work out of the box, and not be crippled of useful functionality. Right now most Windows IDE's are slanted toward Windows functionality, obviously. If all I got was a toolbar and some graphics libraries, well, no thank you. I want things on that CD that will do for me, a Linux developer, what MFC does for the Windows guys. Wait. Maybe I should rephrase that. I want it to really improve on the coding, I want it to really do some of the work for me, I want it to help me develop better software. Thats a tall order as I see it.
Item: Walked in one morning to a new client I was doing some work for. After the initial "here's the computer room" talk, we walked in and I hit the Windows key. System hard-locked. I expected the client to run out, I even got my car keys ready. "it does that all the time". Not a moment of concern from him. Item: We have an NT box at work. When getting files off the Samba server, it crashes. It was a factory install, from a very popular reputable vendor. It is designed to be as untweaked as humanly possible (its a testbed for a client). Therefore going in and optimizing everything would be against policy; but its crashing and 2 NT guys can't figure out why. Item: Another NT box here crashes randomly about once every week. All it ever runs is Netscape and a few things like Office and Pagemill. It is likewise from a reputable vendor, untouched internally. Item: An NT machine at a client site went down. The box didn't have a power button - NT is so reliable, after all. I drive in to reboot it. I push the reset button. Nothing. I have to crawl behind the rack (I'm 6' tall) and unplug it. Customer response: "That happens sometimes." Apparently the short guy wasn't there to fix it. Item: My Linux machines have rebooted only due to 1)kernel upgrades or 2)extended power outages that strain the UPS. And the occasional HD upgrade or other hardware change. The NT boxen in question were running simple stuff; they were just sitting there, running IIS or Proxy Server or whatever. They weren't running a zillion apps. They weren't on boxes thrown together from spares. They were machines built to conform to the HCL, with the idea of servicing big clients, who do big things. You, sir, apparently have a Magic Dog.
Every once and a while, Apple gets doomed, usually as it begins an ascendancy (which history tells us will be doomed anyway). Apple is going to die; Apple is going to be sold; Jobs held back all the *good* ideas for his real computing push, which he wants to make independant of the Apple "stigma". There is as much pro as there is con. More grist for ZDNets mill, I suppose.
Maybe they will get sold, the DOJ will tear down M$, and we will all be working to make Samba more compatible with Mac network stuff instead of NT. Really, we can turn on dimes, does it matter? Someone will always port Linux, reverse-engineer protocols, and generally subvert the mainstream. Does it matter who has the market share?
>Linux can be used as more of a tactical approach >for accounts that want something that isn't IBM >hardware and also isn't necessarily from >Microsoft. Sure, but they are doing something that Microsoft doesn't: they are looking at what is apprently a tide of real innovation and moving towards it, not to crush it but to use it. We all know that they don't need OS/2, for instance, to make payroll every week - hell, they make cash registers, for god's sake (or did, anyway).
The point is, they are doing something that is beyond MS- playing the game by someone elses rules, that is to say the rules of the OSS community.
Don't think in terms of CPAN. M$ can afford to sit down and have their people just rewrite the whole damn thing, under their control, as their owned code. Also, a visual builder in the style of other MS products wouldn't make much sense, or for that matter wouldn't work all that well; there's more than one way, after all, to do it, and I think a builder would tend to marginalize this property of the language (but I might be wrong, I don't use the things).
They released a report a few months ago about not adopting NT5/Windows2k for several months or something after it came out. Everyone was screaming "See, told you so". Now its all "Shut up you jerks". And they way I read the report, it seemed to say "don't use Linux unless you know what you are doing". The same could be said for NT, Macs, BeOS, NeXT, C64, CP/M... the whole thing just smacks of "duh..." since PHB's will use whatever ZDNet tells them to. After all: beige has the most RAM.
... is what people gain by slagging on OSS. Assume, then, that he is not part of an elaborate plot to FUD the OSS world to death (hatched by MS, of course). What does anyone gain by making the world safe for corporate america? Do middle managers sit in their offices thinking, Damn, I have to adopt a policy that makes more criminal, white-collar, lowlife a$$h*le$ rich; lets get our publication company to slag on that product that isn't technically owned by anyone. I see why ZD is a FUD machine: no one there is smart enough to type ls and then interpret the results. But the rest of the world? It just confuses me. You're picking on the little guy.
Slashdot Mirror
From NTBUGTRAQ:
"Microsoft has two keys, a primary and a spare. The Crypto-Gram article talked about attacks based on the fact that a crypto suite is considered signed if it is signed by EITHER key, and that there is no mechanism for transitioning from the primary key to the backup. It's stupid cryptography, but the sort of thing you'd expect out of Microsoft."
I guess its sorta taken as a standard that someone else has, gee, found yet another weakness in MS. Even if its just an "academic" weakness.
So: /. users bash NT as an unstable piece of dung. This is because most /. user (or admin) experience is with NT running multiple services. If we would just install NT, and only NT, then leave the box sitting in the corner, we'd be OK and have stability problems? Uh, ok.
Actually we have one machine at work that crashes for no apparent reason and it doesn't do anything but sit there.
By that, I mean legally bind someone to an agreement without first presenting the agreement for acceptance, modification, or whatever. Thats like taking a section of sidewalk, and at the end having a big sign that says "By walking down this sidewalk you agree to pay the guy next to the sign the sum of 10 american dollars". It just so happens that something important or useful is on the other end of said sidewalk.
Don't get me wrong, here, I am all for anything that gives power to attack spammers. I am just curious about the legality, the possible annoying precedent set here (think of the software licensing, the install is a program that presents a single "press enter" button then a screen that says "By pressing enter, you agreed to...").
The idea that Dell is doing this because of MS Office coming to Linux is waay too farfetched. Its simple business.
1. The won't go bankrupt by doing this. Worst case, they loose some money. If they only cover their expenditures, then they are doing better than Compaq. Hemorraging money maybe fashionable but I don't think Dell is into that.
2. If anything, they increase their market share. And they doing it by *opening up* their offerings (unlike some other companies).
3. Maybe they are preparing for less MS business, I dunno. Pure speculation.
All in all, I think its just good business, respond to industry trends, get there first. We all said a couple of years ago that Linux would be big on the desktop, and now it looks like its starting to happen, so this is more "yeah, thought so" than big news.
Some time ago, a couple of years ago I think, we decided that the inordinate amount of 486s we had lying around, along with all the old bits and pieces that still worked, should be donated to charity. So I called up a bunch of places, searched the Web, etc. Once I got in touch with someone, it went like this:
Me: Hi, I have a friggin metric ton of computer gear I want to donate to your school.
Them: Great! We're looking for Pentiums, minimal, and stuff that can run Windows 95 or this NT thing I heard about.
Me: Uh...
Them: No Pentiums, no dice.
I tried for almost 4 months to donate stuff. No one wanted any of it. They only wanted cutting edge hardware. I even got hung up on once for trying to say that these machines were still usable for tasks other than surfing the web (thinking to myself, Linux, of course).
I even talked to inner-city types, people who are trying to bring inner-city kids more up-to-speed on technology. Right now, these places are still looking for donations, and still won't accept anything less than PII's or G3 Macs. I tried to donate my time - no, too much paperwork, and I can't be trusted around the kids since I am just some guy and not, you know, accreditted. And we all know that these computer guys are pervs.
I was totally dejected. Next week we will be chucking that stuff; we've got the truck and everything ready to go. Too bad, there was some good Linux hardware in there that they could have used. Anyone want it?
Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. Especially if the person wanting to kick your ass is used to those jock-fights; you know, where they push each other a few times then everyone breaks it up. One good hit, to a vital spot, and they fold like origami. The same thing happened to me a dozen times in high school. I kept messing them up - usually by 1, actually fighting back (like, throwing a real punch) and 2, fighting dirty (oh look, a chair...) and it worked like a charm. They kept wanting to kick my ass, though. They never stopped.
I believe there is an Ask Slashdot around here somewhere about this.
I'm one of those trendy types that thinks they sold out once Big Daddy Brett quit. Comparing, say, Against The Grain to No Substance, hey thats no comparison, ATG wins. Even Stranger Than Fiction is better than the latest stuff.
BB King and SRV are exceptional, not just good. If it was as easy as you put it, then there would be throngs of worshipped guitar players.
But its not all about talent, meaning raw musical chops, but the ability to create and market a product, that is to say the CD, video, and all that other stuff. I was playing Nirvana riffs 2 weeks after I picked up the guitar - but I can't just be him. He had a talent for connecting with people and creating a product.
And the idea that rock artists don't stretch boundaries? Zappa, for one. Tool took metal, a dry genre at times, and gave it breath and life and most importantly intelligence. There's the metal-hiphop fusions. Techno. The list goes on and on.
-Easy to use database
How long is a piece of string? Defining easy to use is harder than defining pornography.
-Graphical database tools
-Simple, graphical server/e-store configuration tools
I don't particularly want these, but I see their inclusion in the grand scheme of things. I don't personally trust what I can't script.
-Web authoring tools
vi, Xemacs, The GIMP, xv, ee...
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer?
Warnock: Well, maybe.
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer?
Warnock: I said, maybe.
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer?
Warnock: Yes.
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer?
Warnock: I just said, yes.
ZDNet: Is InDesign a Quark Killer?
Warnock: Will you stop asking me that?
...
What was the deal there, or am I just crazy?
What I need, really, is not a word processor; we have a few documents that won't convert well, but we are gaining some momentum on this issue and in 3 months, it'll be a non-issue. Any remaining Windows machines will use WordPerfect Office 2k or whatever the hell its called. The thing that is *really* lacking is a spreadsheet that will happily and quickly convert Excel. Applix choked bad on some of our complex spreadsheets. Gnumeric won't even come close. I haven't tried the KDE offering, mostly since there is already some investment in RH/GNOME - it works, its happy and stable, I don't want to mess with it after taking the time to get it running. At any rate, what I need is a spreadsheet, and I am dying for Quattro to get ported, whenever the hell that will be. If it can get the same 75% or better results that Wordperfect is getting doing conversion, that will be enough for us to ditch MS altogether.
And no, I won't be running WINE.
I have been toying with it and so far, my impressions are very mixed. It manages to convert the most complex Word and Excel documents with nary a sputter. For someone trying to migrate away from MS, this is a Very Good Thing. OTOH, its S L O W on every machine I test it on. VERY SLOW. These are PII's with lots of RAM and both 2.0.36 and 2.2.10 kernels, good video. Its got enough features to make me happy. OTOH, I can't resolve printing issues (it seems to be trying to use lpstat for something) to my network printers. It installs quicker and easier than MS Office, once you get the quirks of the installer worked out (permissions strangeness in my case). It uses Java - hence Sun's interest, but I am not sure that I am completely thrilled with that. Internet integration is tight - not too sure about that, either. Call me crazy but I like Netscape, I don't want my office suite surfing.
At any rate, I see a great product, if StarDivision will take an effort to fix some of the strangeness and really make it a top-notch competitor to Office. I hope Sun will buy them and work to make a great product.
My sister is one of those "microwaves are bad" people. Never mind the amount of solar radiation that we get every day. I am sure that the fringe lunatics will go off.
1. Didn't /. run a story about how Borland was getting rid of OWL and become another MFC compiler? Doesn't that mean that Borland/Inprise is going in too many directions at once? As much as I want Delphi and Jbuilder, I want it to be *quality*. I don't want the port to suffer because too many of the staff were diddling with MFC garbage.
2. The IDE must let me use whatever editor I want. Once the rest of the world realizes this their products will sell (in the Linux sphere). Likewise, the compiler suite must mesh with whatever I have, ie useful command line tools.
3. It must work out of the box, and not be crippled of useful functionality. Right now most Windows IDE's are slanted toward Windows functionality, obviously. If all I got was a toolbar and some graphics libraries, well, no thank you. I want things on that CD that will do for me, a Linux developer, what MFC does for the Windows guys.
Wait. Maybe I should rephrase that.
I want it to really improve on the coding, I want it to really do some of the work for me, I want it to help me develop better software. Thats a tall order as I see it.
Item: Walked in one morning to a new client I was doing some work for. After the initial "here's the computer room" talk, we walked in and I hit the Windows key. System hard-locked. I expected the client to run out, I even got my car keys ready. "it does that all the time". Not a moment of concern from him.
Item: We have an NT box at work. When getting files off the Samba server, it crashes. It was a factory install, from a very popular reputable vendor. It is designed to be as untweaked as humanly possible (its a testbed for a client). Therefore going in and optimizing everything would be against policy; but its crashing and 2 NT guys can't figure out why.
Item: Another NT box here crashes randomly about once every week. All it ever runs is Netscape and a few things like Office and Pagemill. It is likewise from a reputable vendor, untouched internally.
Item: An NT machine at a client site went down. The box didn't have a power button - NT is so reliable, after all. I drive in to reboot it. I push the reset button. Nothing. I have to crawl behind the rack (I'm 6' tall) and unplug it. Customer response: "That happens sometimes." Apparently the short guy wasn't there to fix it.
Item: My Linux machines have rebooted only due to 1)kernel upgrades or 2)extended power outages that strain the UPS. And the occasional HD upgrade or other hardware change. The NT boxen in question were running simple stuff; they were just sitting there, running IIS or Proxy Server or whatever. They weren't running a zillion apps. They weren't on boxes thrown together from spares. They were machines built to conform to the HCL, with the idea of servicing big clients, who do big things. You, sir, apparently have a Magic Dog.
>Bonus Question: Name the only X/NC-17 movie that
>was chosen as best picture by the Academy Awards. Hint: Think thirty years ago.
Midnight Cowboy?
Every once and a while, Apple gets doomed, usually as it begins an ascendancy (which history tells us will be doomed anyway). Apple is going to die; Apple is going to be sold; Jobs held back all the *good* ideas for his real computing push, which he wants to make independant of the Apple "stigma". There is as much pro as there is con. More grist for ZDNets mill, I suppose.
Maybe they will get sold, the DOJ will tear down M$, and we will all be working to make Samba more compatible with Mac network stuff instead of NT. Really, we can turn on dimes, does it matter? Someone will always port Linux, reverse-engineer protocols, and generally subvert the mainstream. Does it matter who has the market share?
>Linux can be used as more of a tactical approach >for accounts that want something that isn't IBM >hardware and also isn't necessarily from >Microsoft.
Sure, but they are doing something that Microsoft doesn't: they are looking at what is apprently a tide of real innovation and moving towards it, not to crush it but to use it. We all know that they don't need OS/2, for instance, to make payroll every week - hell, they make cash registers, for god's sake (or did, anyway).
The point is, they are doing something that is beyond MS- playing the game by someone elses rules, that is to say the rules of the OSS community.
Don't think in terms of CPAN. M$ can afford to sit down and have their people just rewrite the whole damn thing, under their control, as their owned code. Also, a visual builder in the style of other MS products wouldn't make much sense, or for that matter wouldn't work all that well; there's more than one way, after all, to do it, and I think a builder would tend to marginalize this property of the language (but I might be wrong, I don't use the things).
..have a contact address for this freak?
It's OK, but sometimes it horribly out-of-date sometimes. They closed down a club in my area and they kept listing it as a "hip" place to go.
Tried searching; COOL didn't turn up, at least when I looked.
They released a report a few months ago about not adopting NT5/Windows2k for several months or something after it came out. Everyone was screaming "See, told you so". Now its all "Shut up you jerks". And they way I read the report, it seemed to say "don't use Linux unless you know what you are doing". The same could be said for NT, Macs, BeOS, NeXT, C64, CP/M... the whole thing just smacks of "duh..." since PHB's will use whatever ZDNet tells them to. After all: beige has the most RAM.
... is what people gain by slagging on OSS. Assume, then, that he is not part of an elaborate plot to FUD the OSS world to death (hatched by MS, of course). What does anyone gain by making the world safe for corporate america? Do middle managers sit in their offices thinking, Damn, I have to adopt a policy that makes more criminal, white-collar, lowlife a$$h*le$ rich; lets get our publication company to slag on that product that isn't technically owned by anyone. I see why ZD is a FUD machine: no one there is smart enough to type ls and then interpret the results. But the rest of the world? It just confuses me. You're picking on the little guy.