Linux-Advocacy Digest #989, Volume #29 Wed, 1 Nov 00 18:13:07 EST
Contents:
Re: Why Linux is great (George Richard Russell)
Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays. (mlw)
Re: A Microsoft exodus! ("Weevil")
Re: Ms employees begging for food (T. Max Devlin)
Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays. ("Chad Mulligan")
Re: IBM to BUY MICROSOFT!!!! ("Chad Mulligan")
Re: Microsoft Speaks German! ("Chad Myers")
Re: Once agian: Obscurity != security (Was: Tuff Competition for LINUX! ("Weevil")
Re: Windoze 2000 - just as shitty as ever ("Nigel Feltham")
Re: Ms employees begging for food (Maynard Handley)
Re: Ms employees begging for food (Patrick Schaaf)
Re: Microsoft Speaks German! (Mig)
Re: Why is MS copying Sun??? ("Weevil")
Re: A Microsoft exodus! (Marty)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (George Richard Russell)
Subject: Re: Why Linux is great
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:44:32 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>George Richard Russell wrote:
>> Every few years, Unix gets another GUI. Its a shame the cli isn't
>> replaced / improved as often.
>
>The CLI is made of two things: the shell and utility programs. There are
>loads of different shells avaliable, and there are plenty of utilities
>avaliable too. There are probably many being created as we speak.
>Besides, the CLI is very functional as it is.
Functional yes, just not consistent or terribly usable. ( without either
much experience or reference material)
The shells are messes of inconsistent syntax. ( See the Unix haters
handbook and C Shell programming considered harmful)
The utilities are messes of inconsistent options, arguments and switches.
Why can't a shell auto complete --long-options like filenames?
How hard would it be to maintain a list of options for a command that
the shell can use for auto completion - its already stored for the help
and man pages anyway. And would be suitable for automatic generation
from source code, into the help message, man page, and completion database.
The cli utils are probably not being terribly actively developed - GNU
did clone an already complete tool chain, and BSD utils are based on
that tool chain. I suspect its largely maintenance.
Suggesting changes to the arguments etc will likely not make you
popular with those who like the status quo.
George Russell
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays.
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 16:49:07 -0500
Chad Myers wrote:
>
> "mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Chad Myers wrote:
> > >
> > > "Steve Mading" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > news:8tnfcm$mds$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > > In comp.os.linux.advocacy Les Mikesell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > : "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > > > : news:iAbL5.5023$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > >
> > > > :> Linux seems to run several "domain squatter" sites, where they register
> > > > :> hundreds or thousands of domains and direct them to the same server.
> > > >
> > > > : How did you discover that? Why do you think it is a statistically
> > > > : relevant number compared to other systems?
> > > >
> > > > He doesn't. He's just too blind to see that the premise he uses
> > > > to discredit the Netcraft survey causes his own argument to discredit
> > > > itself too. If you can't tell from the outside which hostnames go
> > > > to which physical boxes, then he can't make his claim that Linux has
> > > > lots of domain squatters that map names to one box - his very own
> > > > premise (that you can't tell from the outside) makes it impossible
> > > > to know if this is going on or not.
> > >
> > > It's called "common sense". I know it's hard to comprehend as you
> > > have none, but bear with me.
> >
> > Common sense, is neither. historically it has held, that the sun goes
> > around the earth, that the earth is flat, that no man can go faster that
> > 60 mph, if man were meant to fly, he'd have wings, and that a rocket
> > could not move through space because thrust has nothing to push against.
>
> According to people like you, it's also held that Linux is more secure,
> stable, and quicker than Windows, which is also false. I guess I see your
> point. How about if I say, "Commonly obtainable facts"?
My opinions of Linux are from experimentation and experience.
>
> > "Common Sense" is usually a bogus label put on dubious conclusions to
> > add merit.
> >
> > >
> > > Many web sites (I'd dare to say a large majority) out there are hosted.
> >
> > This is fair conclusion.
> >
> > >
> > > Many hosting providers still use Unix/Apache. All of those hosting
> > > providers have > 1:1 relationship between sites and servers (actually
> > > closer to 100:1). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out
> > > that a large majority of the Apache site are actually run from
> > > a very small fraction of servers.
> >
> > Yes, but you are assuming that the "servers > sites" case is
> > disproportionate across operating systems, in particular that NT does
> > this more often. Just look at Fast and Google, these have 100s or 1000s
> > of (Linux/FreeBSD) computers acting as web and/or application servers.
>
> I didn't say servers > sites, I said sites > servers. It's easily
> discernable that there are many more Apache sites (www.thissite.com) than
> there are physical boxes or servers. It's somewhere on the average of
> 50-60:1 given the ratio that most hosting providers use.
Where do you get the 50-60:1 ratio? I don't buy it, because I know far
more "servers > sites" than I know "sites > servers."
>
> Typically, corporations use IIS, so the ratio of sites > servers is actually
> negative meaning that there are typically 2 servers to a site, or 1:2 or
> 1:3 meaning if you devide the Apache numbers by 50, and multiply the IIS
> numbers by 2 or three, you'd be seeing much more useful numbers as to the
> distribution and popularity of the various OSes.
I do not agree with your reasoning. I was walking through a professional
colocation facility (where we have a site) the other day, I saw lots of
VA Reasearch Boxes, Penguin computing boxes, FreeBSD stickers, RedHat
Stickers, and Solaris boxes. Very few compaqs, very few Dells. There
were some cages that were all Dell, or all compaq, (of course, volume
deals) but the vast majority of systems were clearly not running NT. Out
of about 6 or 7 people with "crash carts" (These are monitors and
keyboards that one can plug into a server and are provided by the colo
facility) I only saw one person using NT. Everyone else was using some
version of UNIX.
>
> Even more useful numbers would be the distribution of total requests over
> each platform, I'd bet you'd see IIS holds a large majority of those as well
> as most of those Apache sites are personal home sites or unfrequently
> visited .org sites.
That is an opinion with which I disagree.
>
> -Chad
--
http://www.mohawksoft.com
------------------------------
From: "Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Microsoft exodus!
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 15:52:04 -0600
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:hQTL5.5426$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:39ff63ae$1$yrgbherq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > I don't know which vessel you are talking about, but the USS Yorktown
was
> dead
> > in the water and towed into port -- and YES -- it was NT that crashed.
>
> Look, NT was as much at fault in the yorktown as the OS that was used in
the
> Arianne 5 was responsible for it's crash.
>
> > >Trust me, Linux/Unix applications have errors too.
> >
> > They haven't sunk and billion dollar vesselsand killed the crew -- which
> is
> > exactly what would have happened to the Yorktown in war time.
>
> The Yorktown is a non-combat vessel. But it's irrelevant since the fault
> was in the database software. The Database vendor even said that the
> problem would have never happened if the navy had not been running a beta
> version of their software.
>
I'm not familiar with the details of this case. Did NT crash or not? If
so, then surely you're not blaming an application for it. If the OS
crashes, it is the fault of the OS. A buggy application should have no
effect on the OS, beyond perhaps keeping it busier than it should.
jwb
------------------------------
From: T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 16:58:17 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Said Ketil Z Malde in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
>T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> No, true to my contrary nature, I can't agree with you there, either.
>
>You're quite mad, you know that?
:-D
>> For one thing, I can't agree because I have no regard and no concern for
>> what is "simpler for the administrator".
>
>Why not? Complex administration cost money, you can buy a lot of
>network hardware for the price of a network engineer.
But the network hardware outlasts the engineer, unless the engineer
wasn't worth the price. It is simple administration which is the goal;
bear in mind that "complex" is not entirely synonymous with
"complicated".
>> Yes, because these particular examples of LAN implementations you
>> describe are not at all illustrative of the point I am making.
>
>So you agree that with larger networks, switched is the way to go?
No, but that makes a decent rule of thumb, if you don't want to bother
trying to understand the network, which the LAN is merely a single
component of.
>>> Why and when, exactly, is shared better than switched?
>>> And why does it have anything to do with utlization statistics?
>
>> Basically, it is better whenever you don't now "why and when, exactly"
>> which will be better. :-)
>
>So if I "know" switched is always better...?
No, if you "know" when and why switched is better, there's no reason not
to use it. If there were more of a price differential (anywhere near to
the proportion of the performance increase), shared would certainly
always be better. As it is, it is only the fact that network management
(which may or may not encompass what you think of as "administration")
capabilities generally drop off a cliff (in practice, though not in
theory) is primarily what makes switching a bad idea, if you can get
away without it.
So, in essence, because you want to try to claim that you "know"
switched is always better, I must surmise that you are incapable of
actually understanding when and why switched is better, or when and why
shared is "just as good", "not as good but much cheaper", or "a much
more cost effective solution".
Admittedly, expressing a preference for shared media is something along
the lines of bemoaning the "old days" when there were human operators
performing cross-connects. But nowhere near as ridiculous, unless it
suddenly doesn't matter how much more expensive something is, as if you
have infinite resources and no requirement for a ROI. All of this "why
not go switched; its loads more bandwidth and makes the 'LAN
Administrator's' job a lot easier" seems to me to be an extension of the
same problem which causes so much confusion on Ethernets themselves.
Its much easier to deal with an Ethernet if you have the luxury of
pretending that it is the whole network.
--
T. Max Devlin
*** The best way to convince another is
to state your case moderately and
accurately. - Benjamin Franklin ***
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------------------------------
Reply-To: "Chad Mulligan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Chad Mulligan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: 2.4 Kernel Delays.
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:58:02 GMT
Bruce Schuck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:kkXL5.119888$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
<trimmed>
> >
> > There is plenty of evidence. Netcraft reports 3 times as many sites
> > hosted by Apache than by IIS.
>
> Netcraft doesn't differentiate between hobbyists and real companies
either.
>
>
>
>
Snicker
------------------------------
Reply-To: "Chad Mulligan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Chad Mulligan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: IBM to BUY MICROSOFT!!!!
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:58:01 GMT
Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:xWzL5.26590$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> "2:1" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> <SNIP>
>
> > I saw 3.5.1 on floppies. I think someone at the company i worked for
> > actually installed it. The mind boggles.
>
> I had to install NetWare 3.11 from floppies once... I think it had
> somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 floppies? I could be wrong, but
> it was some ungodly amount. Inevitably, Disk 24 would be bad and would
> screw the whole installation.
LOL Been there done that. Office 4.2's 20 odd floppies were a lot of fun
too.
>
> -Chad
>
>
------------------------------
Reply-To: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft Speaks German!
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 21:05:42 GMT
"Ilja Booij" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8tpknp$5t9c8$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "chrisv"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Charlie Ebert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>Europe is the heart of our Western Culture.
> >
> > No it's not. Western culture is more and more American culture.
> >
> >>Anything which comes forth from Europe generally ends up spreading
> >>across the world.
> >
> > No it doesn't. America's influence is much stronger than Europe's.
> >
> > Don't want to start an argument. Just stating facts.
> Nice facts..
> do you have any proof of these facts?
>
> of course there are a lot of things from the US spreading in Europe,
> mostly to do with popular culture. now look at (the more important
> things like) politics, business, etc
> not to much US-like-models to be found there!
Is that a good thing?
Juding by how the Europe economy is doing, I'd say no. They could
learn a few thousand things from the U.S.
It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't result in the jeapordization of
our (U.S. and Europe's) security with France selling armaments
(including some nuclear secrets!) to Iraq and Iran. Now Russia's
doing it to!
-Chad
------------------------------
From: "Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Once agian: Obscurity != security (Was: Tuff Competition for LINUX!
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:06:43 -0600
Bruce Schuck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:GoXL5.119890$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> "Perry Pip" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > On Wed, 01 Nov 2000 02:47:44 GMT,
> > Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > >"Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > >news:9HJL5.1627$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > >
> > ><SNIP>
> > >
> > >> The reality is open source software is more likely to be secure than
> binary
> > >> only software.
> > >
> > >LIE
> >
> > Nearly every security expert on the planet disagrees with you.
> >
> >
> > >Linux has now taken the lead in exploits.
> >
> > These exploits are being found and patches released before they are
> > exploited, becuase it's open source.
> >
> > >It seems that Open Source has produced more security holes than closed
> source.
> > >
> >
> > No the OSS ones get discovered and fixed.
>
> The OpenBSD website disagrees in the sense they say they are at least 6
> months ahead of the other Linux/BSD sites in closing security holes.
>
> Go ahead. Take a look.
>
I did. You're knowlingly misrepresenting what is on OpenBSD's security
page. In other words, you're lying.
The only thing that comes close to what you claim is a paragraph which says:
========
Our proactive auditing process has really paid off. Statements like ``This
problem was fixed in OpenBSD about 6 months ago'' have become commonplace in
security forums like BUGTRAQ.
========
That's a far cry from them claiming to be "at least 6 months ahead of the
other Linux/BSD sites in closing security holes." They're clearly proud of
their preventive approach to OpenBSD security, and when something like that
happens, they notice it and mention it.
I happen to like their approach myself, but nowhere on their website do they
claim to be "6 months ahead of Linux/BSD in closing security holes." They
do claim that they've caught holes 6 months before other OSes found similar
ones. But they don't even mention Linux. In fact, they didn't name *any*
OS they beat to the punch. For all you know, they were talking about
Win2K/NT.
But even if they had Windows in mind, they still weren't saying they were "6
months ahead" of them. You pulled that out of your ass.
Didn't you understand what you read there? Or did you just expect that no
one would check up on you?
jwb
------------------------------
From: "Nigel Feltham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windoze 2000 - just as shitty as ever
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 22:04:03 -0000
>>
>>I would take your word for it.
>>If you want a CD Burning software, you can get a fully functional
shareware
>>that gives you a message when you start, but doesn't limit you other wise.
>>Or whose limitation is in the burning speed.
>
>Can you? Where?
>
Try searching for CDRWIN by golden hawk technology (shareware - limited to
1x speed) or NERO - both very good shareware CD burning packages ( I still
prefer kisocd under linux though - free, easy to use, reliable and no speed
limit).
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Maynard Handley)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 14:08:10 -0800
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Said Peter da Silva in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
>>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>>T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Said Peter da Silva in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
>>> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>>> >T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> >> No, it is the results of my research and experience, which I'm going to
>>> >> have to point out is not limited to only examining the ethernet itself,
>>> >> but dealing with the "whole network".
>>
>>> >Even the crappy ethernets we built using thicknet segments and Intel's
>>> >crummy 911 repeater boxes between Xenix-286 systems and VAXes got better
>>> >than 1 Mbps throughput on a shared ethernet. I don't care what your
>>> >research and experience says, it's completely out of line with my
>>> >experience.
>>
>>> No, it is just out of scope with your context. The *ethernet* gets more
>>> than 1 Mbps *bandwidth utilization*. That isn't the same thing as
>>> throughput.
>>
>>I'm sorry, you seem to be using normal technical terms in some way that makes
>>no sense at all.
As someone watching this thread and with no idea what you are trying to
say, how about we approach this from a different angle? I have no great
interest in whether T. Max is correct or the rest of the world. Neither do
I care if Novell was or was not the world's best network software, ort how
many vendors make 100 base T chipsets. I am, however, interested in a more
useful discussion.
Suppose we have a a single ethernet not connected to the outside world.
Suppose we have two computers connected, and all we want is for computer A
to pump data at computer B as fast as possible using TCP (a single ftp
connection of a multi gigabyte file). Are you willing to agree that in
this case ethernet is close to 100% efficient, in the sense that the time
it takes for the transfer to occur is pretty close to
T=fileSize/(100Mb/s)? (Modulo some ignorable constant factor for header
overhead, acks and suchlike).
(1)
Alright, now lets have a situation where we have say 20 of these pairs of
computers engaged in ftp. In a "perfect" network, each user would now see
see a transfer time of 20T.
My understanding of what you are trying to say is that you claim the time
each user will see for the transfer is more like (100/10%)*20 T, ie 10x as
large
whereas other the (supposedly wrong IBM study) claimed a time like
(100/30%)*20 T, ie about 3.3x as large
whereas others on this group are saying the real time is actually more
like (100/70%)*20 T. ie about 1.4x as large.
(2)
So, do (1) and (2) accurately match what you mean? If so, this is surely
easily testable empirically.
If (1) and (2) do NOT match what you mean, can you give us an example in
the same style which DOES match what you mean? That means, a concrete
example with real numbers, something I could go out, set up, and measure,
and free of any obfuscation about the "third network way" or "this is my
definition of a word" or any other such which, I believe, T. Max, are
making you look more and more like a crank with each posting, and doing
less and less to actually clarify your point.
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.arch,comp.os.netware.misc
Subject: Re: Ms employees begging for food
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Schaaf)
Date: 01 Nov 2000 22:15:35 GMT
T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>It appears there are a number of people who work with Ethernet, but
>don't really understand what it is about Ethernet that leads to a
>"logarithmic response curve",
When did you do your last Ethernet timestamped packet traces - and on
which switch equipment? Can we see the traces?
>FUD based
regards
Patrick
------------------------------
From: Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft Speaks German!
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 00:23:37 +0100
Chad Myers wrote:
> > of course there are a lot of things from the US spreading in Europe,
> > mostly to do with popular culture. now look at (the more important
> > things like) politics, business, etc
> > not to much US-like-models to be found there!
>
> Is that a good thing?
Yes it is. People dont have guns. We dont have death penalty. Poor people
can get medical help for free (rich do too).
> Juding by how the Europe economy is doing, I'd say no. They could
> learn a few thousand things from the U.S.
Hmm... European economy is doing very fine at the moment. Where are the
problems do you think?
> It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't result in the jeapordization of
> our (U.S. and Europe's) security with France selling armaments
> (including some nuclear secrets!) to Iraq and Iran. Now Russia's
> doing it to!
Hmmm.. you guys did sell lots of arms fo Irak before the Gulf war. Even to
Iran, your great enemy, - forgot the Iran-Contra Scandal?
Your guys have financed military coups in Latin America- f.ex. Guatemala in
the 50's resulting in thousands of deaths up until the 90's. Your guys
financed the contra rebels in Nicaragua wich killed thousands of people.
Your guys financed the Islamic rebels in Afghanistan during the Sovjet
invasion and are now paying the price etc. etc. Dont try to talk about
political moral here.
--
Cheers
------------------------------
From: "Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why is MS copying Sun???
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:37:23 -0600
Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:AIKL5.26955$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> "Simon Cooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:8tnfbv$6tv$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >
> > "Steve Mading" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:8tncqa$itk$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > In comp.os.linux.advocacy Weevil <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > : When Win95 was launched, most people had never even heard of the
> > internet,
> > > : and the WWW was in its infancy.
> > >
> > > Infancy? I don't think so. Maybe from Microsoft's Johnny-come-lately
> > > point of view.
> >
> > Yes, infancy. In 1994, it was mostly homepages. It wasn't until 1996
that it
> > really started to heat up.
>
> Not suprisingly after Win95 was on the scene and Internet Explorer and
Netscape
> provided decent browsing and an easy-to-configure PPP setup in Win95 which
> enabled users to connect to the Internet with ease.
Actually, Explorer sucked rocks long after the WWW got huge. Netscape (and
of course, Mosaic) were what made HTML worth using. And I was browsing
happily with a non-Microsoft TCP/IP stack for a couple of years before I
allowed Win95 on my machine.
Microsoft was a johnny-come-lately to the internet. The net was already
huge and everybody but Gates knew it was in the midst of an explosion, when
Gates finally abandoned the idea of having MSN actually compete with it.
I think it was that well-known Microsoft megalomania that prevented them
from seeing what was coming. Since they didn't have anything to do with it,
they couldn't believe it was important.
jwb
------------------------------
From: Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: A Microsoft exodus!
Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 17:38:31 -0500
Roberto Alsina wrote:
>
> El mié, 01 nov 2000, Marty escribió:
> >lyttlec wrote:
> >>
> >> Marty wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Chris Wenham wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > > >>>>> "Ayende" == Ayende Rahien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >> > >
> >> > > > "Weevil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >> > > > news:YLxL5.508$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > >> That's quite a bit of trouble to go to, but it is not an impossible
> >> > > >> scenario. Here's the same scenario for Windows:
> >> > > >>
> >> > > >> 1) Write a back door in any piece of software you want to.
> >> > > >> 2) Upload it to shareware sites.
> >> > >
> >> > > > Why can't I do the same for OSS product?
> >> > >
> >> > > You can do the same, so in theory the potential for payoff (the
> >> > > number of clients you compromise) is the same for either model.
> >> > >
> >> > > The only difference is that the user of the Free software HAS THE
> >> > > OPTION of re-compiling the source code that he might also audit or
> >> > > have audited.
> >> > >
> >> > > The user of the closed software does not have that option.
> >> >
> >> > But what does this option buy you? Is a user of a given piece of open source
> >> > software generally paranoid enough to scrutinize the source code before
> >> > deploying the application? More than likely, the answer is no. So the
> >> > detection of any security holes usually occurs after the first act of
> >> > violation (same as a closed-source scenario). At this point, the open source
> >> > software user can either work on a fix themselves, locate the original author
> >> > and notify them of the problem, or both. The closed source software user has
> >> > to notify the author and wait for a fix. So, in essence, the only difference
> >> > would be turnaround time to fix the defect, and that's only the case if you
> >> > happen to be a skilled coder.
> >>
> >> But someone will check and notify everyone if a backdoor is found.
> >> Paranoia is becoming very common. The advantage of open source is you
> >> can't hide anything.
> >
> >If there's a backdoor buried in 100,000 lines of code, how likely is it
> >to be found by someone who is unfamiliar with the application? Throwing
> >a needle into a haystack is an effective way to hide the needle.
>
> Well, something that MS claims was not a backdoor was found on windows, without
> even having the source code (remember NSAKEY?), I'd say that was even more
> unlikely, and that the likelyhood of finding it in Linux is higher than that of
> finding it in windows in any case.
>
> Consider that if such a thing was found on Linux, we would now know if it
> was a backdoor or not.
Excellent counter-point. With closed-source software, we must trust the
distributor on these matters, whereas with open source, if suspicion is
aroused, the community is free to investigate and decide for
themselves. In the particular case you cited, suspicion was aroused
without an explicit violation of security.
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