Linux-Advocacy Digest #972, Volume #27 Wed, 26 Jul 00 02:13:03 EDT
Contents:
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Colin R. Day")
Re: If Linux, which? If not Linux, what? NOT flame-bait!
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Colin R. Day")
Re: Mandrake not Linux? ("Mike Byrns")
Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary? ("Colin R. Day")
Re: The Failure of the USS Yorktown ("Colin R. Day")
Re: No wonder Hackers love Linux (Bob Hauck)
Re: Wasn't linux well established BEFORE antitrust action? (Rick)
Re: Star Office to be open sourced (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: Will Linux Dominate the Desktop Future? (Jacques Guy)
Re: Dresden's copyrights (Just curious, how do I do this in Windows?) ("KLH")
Re: Star Office to be open sourced (Leslie Mikesell)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Colin R. Day" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 00:13:49 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On 25 Jul 2000 06:29:26 GMT, Perry Pip <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 22:07:39 -0400,
> >Colin R. Day <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>Which presumes that the government would have acted with
> >>foresight, rather than pursuing the immediate, selfish goals of
> >>government officials.
>
> In an enviroment where there are sufficient resources to
> 'squander' on basic research, such foresight really isn't
> quite as critical. Besides, you make it sound as if American
> government is an organized thing.
No. This could still apply to individual officials even if the
government were not organized.
Colin Day
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.portable,comp.os.linux.hardware,alt.os.linux,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc
Subject: Re: If Linux, which? If not Linux, what? NOT flame-bait!
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 21:08:25 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> First, I have a laptop I want to install "Unix" on. I've installed Linux
> on desktops several times in the past (starting with Ygdrasil), but I have
> the feeling I may have fun with the BackPack parallel port CD-ROM drive.
> So, question 1: which of the modern releases is likely to install easily
on
> a laptop with about 0.5GB of disk space, 24MB of RAM, and a parallel port
> CD-ROM drive?
>
> Secondly, about free "Unix"es in general... I'm a very busy systems and
> networks consultant. I want it to work; I frankly don't have the time for
> a voyage of discovery (and no, I don't indend to pose as a Unix "expert").
> Maybe some day when I retire...
>
> Anyway, one of the thing that bugged me the most about Red Hat the last
two
> times I tried it (4.x and 5.x distributions) was the fragmented and
> incomplete state of the documentation. I'm no newbie -- I've worked with
a
> number of Unix variants over the years. I am kinda rusty, though; these
> days, I mostly do non-Unix systems administration. I have no problem
> getting down and dirty, but I've got no time to play hide-and-seek with
the
> docs. If it's not in the man pages, it's not in the right place, dammit.
>
> I hear Slackware is a favorite of relatively knowledgeable Linux users.
Is
> it really any better documentation-wise?
>
> And what about the BSDs? I'm a "BSD" guy from way back in the days of
> SunOS, and I still think Sun sold out to AT&T on SVR4. But preferences
> aside, how do the free BSDs compare with Linux? I've heard it said that
if
> I like Slackware, I'll like BSD...386, I think they said. I'm not sure
> about the difference. I've never installed any of them. And I don't have
> the time to try them all.
>
> Anyway -- comments? Please?
Above all else, stay away from Corel Linux. I doubt it will work on your
hardware. If you are a long time unix user then you would dislike that
distribution. If you have been a sysadmin on any unix at any time, you
would just HATE Corel Linux.
------------------------------
From: "Colin R. Day" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 00:15:00 -0400
Perry Pip wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 22:07:39 -0400,
> Colin R. Day <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Which presumes that the government would have acted with
> >foresight, rather than pursuing the immediate, selfish goals of
> >government officials.
>
> Did it ever occur to you that those two don't necessarily have to
> conflict one another? Government officials have to answer to voters,
> not stockholders.
Wrong. Most government officials are civil servants, not politicians.
And civil servants don't have to answer to voters. Nor, for that
matter, do federal judges.
Colin Day
------------------------------
From: "Mike Byrns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Mandrake not Linux?
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 04:18:17 GMT
"abraxas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8lliij$1tvg$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy Mikey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Thus Sprake abraxas:
> >
> >> > Do you mean by adding unofficial changes to the kernel for more
specific
> >> > machines?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Sort of, more specifically, cleaning up the classically munged kernel
headers
> >> for all platforms they offer. The kernel is no longer linux, this
change was
> >> not AFAIK approved by torvalds nor implemented by cox.
> >>
> >> And it breaks a hell of alot of stuff too.
> >
> > Hmmm... I have Mandrake 7.1 on my CTX laptop. What sort of stuff does
> > it break? Where do I find out more about this?
> >
>
> Mostly "linuxy" source on compile. Which is why there are mandrake
specific
> RPMs lying around everywhere; especially of software which depends on
> classically mutilated kernel headers.
>
> The reason that no one ever cleaned them up is that legacy apps (and apps
> developed on legacies) depend on them to function. Mandrake has done an
> excellent job of cleaning up alot of popular software (and creating mdk-
> rpms), but IMHO, this action does not make mandrake linux, but a
linux-like
> OS.
So if Linux is a UNIX-like OS (as it's frequently termed) and Mandrake is
Linux-like then maybe we are making some progress away from that old dog,
UNIX. Face it -- it's the oldest technology around and takes by far the
greatest amount of time to master. I'm all for BeOS and Windows 2000. New
kernels. Good desktops. Modern features. There are some things that linux
is better at and MacOS might be "friendlier" but the mainstream computer
user needs to sit the fence.
------------------------------
From: "Colin R. Day" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Am I the only one that finds this just a little scary?
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 00:16:43 -0400
Perry Pip wrote:
> >> Except that the private sector simply isn't willing to make huge up
> >> front investments in new technologies that won't pay off till decades
> >> later. Two good additional examples are the railroads and civillian
> >> aviation, both of which were fisrt invested in heavily by the
> >> Government and later privitized when people realized their was money
> >> to make off of it.
> >
> >Not sure about railroads.
>
> I should have been more specific - the first transcontinental
> railroads. http://www.blm.gov/education/railroads/trans.html It was an
> investment the private sector was unwilling to make, mostly because of
> getting across the Sierras and the Rockies. When it was completed, the
> industry had it's largest boom ever.
>
But should the government have financed it? Yes, it would not
have been built as soon, but was it worth rushing?
Colin Day
------------------------------
From: "Colin R. Day" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Failure of the USS Yorktown
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 00:22:50 -0400
"Joseph T. Adams" wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy Loren Petrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> : And another military folly: the battles of World War I. Generals
> : would sometimes order large numbers of their troops to charge enemy lines
> : -- lines with machine gunners in them. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and large
> : numbers of troops would be slaughtered. IIRC, the battles of Verdun and
> : Gallipoli were particularly bad in that respect.
>
> By the time of Vietnam, some folks discovered a better way to
> deal with such "orders." Often by means of fragmentation grenades.
During the Mexican-American, someone tried to frag Braxton Bragg.
Unfortunately for the Confederacy, Bragg survived the incident.
Colin Day
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: No wonder Hackers love Linux
Reply-To: bobh{at}haucks{dot}org
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 04:43:42 GMT
On Wed, 26 Jul 2000 02:38:47 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Jul 2000 01:43:47 GMT, Bob Hauck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>There have been numerous wu-ftpd exploits over the years, the most
>>recent one(s) just within the last couple of weeks.
>>or you've just been lucky.
>
> ...or the situation isn't quite as dire, or as simple
> as you make it out to be.
Perhaps I'm just paranoid, having been hacked a couple of times. But
then, maybe I have reason to be paranoid because they are after me.
For instance, one of my tech support people put up a machine as a
testbed for learning about Linux. For reasons of convenience it was
outside the firewall He had bind running because he wanted to learn
about DNS. But he failed to update it and that box got rooted and had
a DDoS daemon running on it within a week via bind. The bind exploit
was only public for about two weeks at that time, and this machine was
not publicly advertised. Maybe it was bad luck, but I wouldn't be too
smug if I were you.
There _are_ wu-ftpd exploit scripts in circulation. If you run an ftp
server that's accessible from the Internet, you should update. Red Hat
has an advisory and a fixed ftpd. There have also recently been
exploits discovered in various NT ftp servers, so the same advice would
apply there too.
Basically, if you run any kind of server that's accessible from the
Internet, you should keep up to date with the latest patches. That's
just common sense.
>>> Telnet, OTOH is a cracker magnet.
>>
>>Whatever. There haven't been any telnet exploits in a while afaik.
> It's also a a big fat advertisement that the cracker will actually
> have a point of entry...
So is wu-ftpd and some versions of bind-8. Versions of sendmail older
than 8.8 or so are spam magnets. Having NFS flapping in the breeze is
a good sign if you are a cracker, as is having old versions of
count.cgi on your web server or running unpatched versions of IIS.
Lots of things are known, there's nothing particularly special about
telnet.
Crackers don't sit and manually telnet to random IP's you know, they
run automated scanners and then grep the logs for daemons with known
exploits.
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.haucks.org/
------------------------------
From: Rick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.conspiracy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Wasn't linux well established BEFORE antitrust action?
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 23:40:57 -0400
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> If you don't believe me, try calling a MS support line
> sometime. I swear, you will recieve one of the canned responses:
>
> 1. It sounds like a hardware problem (number one response from MS
> techs).
> 2. It sounds like a software conflict caused by (insert third party
> software here). You will need to format and re-install without (insert
> third party software here) and purchase (insert MS attempt to mimic
> third party software here) to have an "officially" supported system.
> (Note: I have actually heard this one myself.)
> 3. We don't support your copy of Windows. Call your reseller (probably
> second only to you have a hardware problem.).
>
> And that's pretty much the only support MS will give on any product they
> ever sell.
>
> --
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Nathaniel Jay Lee
I get item #2 on my computer WITHOUT calling the support line. "NetScape
has created a page fault" or "NetScape has created a fatal error". It's
always the non-MS program that's the culprit.
I was offline and playing a game one time and the game crashed giving me
the message that "Netscape has created a fatal error". I wasn't running
NetScape so, I had no idea what Billy-baby was talking about. I finally
found the problem; the game was stored in a folder within the NetScape
folder! Windows checks the path and, if a non-MS program is in the path,
guess who gets the blame?!?!
I've also had Windows lose track of how much memory I have and where
things are stored in memory...took a restart to refresh it's memory and
waste a lot of my time.
I've now partitioned my drive and loaded Linux. Yes, it's a long
learning curve but, I believe it's worth it not to have to put up with
MicroTurd's crap anymore.
Rick
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Star Office to be open sourced
Date: 26 Jul 2000 00:02:27 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mike Stump <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>Rich Teer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>On 24 Jul 2000, Florian Weimer wrote:
>>
>>> I guess proprietary Unix vendors have their own package "standards",
>>> there are quite a lot of them.
>>
>>No - SVR4 compliant Unices have one packaging standard: pkgadd and friends.
>
>:-) Sure. Imagine a Linux that is SVR4 compliant, explain why it
>could not have rpm.
Would the two packaging systems understand dependencies that are
resolved by something already installed by the opposite one?
>Also, explain why the GNU convention of
>compressed tar files for package distribution cannot be considered a
>standard or why this standard could not be used on SVR4 systems.
It can be, but that leaves it up to the administrator to resolve
dependencies and know what to remove to uninstall a package - and
no way to test for changes since installation.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 05:08:57 +0000
From: Jacques Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Will Linux Dominate the Desktop Future?
"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
> As I spoof of this page:
> http://gartner12.gartnerweb.com/public/static/hotc/hc00083186.html
It *is* an interesting page, from my point of view (I'll leave
it for later to tell you what my point of view is).
I quote:
1. Linux will become a major success and will succeed in supplanting
32-bit Windows as the dominant desktop operating system (0.1
probability). For this scenario to be feasible, several things in the
marketplace would need to occur. If we assume that Linux will gain
measurable
market share in the desktop audience, then the door will open for
additional momentum. If this were to happen,
"I this WERE to happen". "Were" is the subjunctive, expressing a
contrary-to-fact
condition. Understood is: "but it will not happen". An example in
plainer English
"If I were a rich man" implying: "I am not".
Quoting again:
Despite the press hype, we believe that Linux deployments for desktops
will not usurp OS dominance from Microsoft.
"USURP". I'll just copy the definition out of the Collins Cobuild,
about the best
dictionary of modern English there is: "If you usurp a job, role,
title, or
position, you take it from someone, especially when you have no right
to
do this."
------------------------------
From: "KLH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dresden's copyrights (Just curious, how do I do this in Windows?)
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 22:07:21 -0700
abraxas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8laa5l$15u3$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy Drestin Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> > #1) I replied privately.
> > #2) I have no idea how to write such a thing in C, I'm not a C
programmer.
>
> ALL programmers know C. Its pretty basic. [sic]
I hope not. If so, that kind of sucks.
>
> You do not know C, therefore you are not a programmer. You are an IT
professional.
>
> Now go get me a fucking cup of coffee and configure my network, bitch.
>
> > #3) I could perhaps write this in BASIC, probably. But... why? I've
already
> > written an endian flip function responding to Perry Pip and gave a
lengthy
> > bit of VBScript from an ASP page I was working on to another person.
> > #4) I don't like your tone or your attitude so ... that's about it for
this.
> >
> > A real programmer doesn't have to prove it to anyone...
> >
>
> You wouldnt know.
That's a circular argument if I ever heard one :)
>
>
>
>
> -----yttrx
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To: gnu.misc.discuss,comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Star Office to be open sourced
Date: 26 Jul 2000 00:14:38 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> + This is one of the times that I think they are doing it precisely for the
>> + publicity. Notice the qualifiers, hence: "Sun is *considering* GPLing
>> + StarOffice" not that they are actually doing it.
>>
>> Good point. And why the GPL when they already have their own "open
>> license"?
>
>Because their own license is very restrictive.
As is the GPL... The point of including the GPL in a dual-license
release (aside from appeasing the fanatics who will say it
isn't 'free' otherwise) is to avoid the restrictive nature of
existing other GPL-licensed code that can't be combined with
non-GPL'd work. Meanwhile a less restrictive license also
allows the things the GPL alone would prohibit. The scheme
has worked out well for users of perl.
But see:
http://www.openoffice.org/project/www/license.html
for the official statement.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
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