You've stirred quite a thread with the Linus quote. Have you really no thought as to why he gave the quote?

Regards,
Martin

cause he dislikes linux users who hate microsoft, isn´t that quite obvious.

Not entirely correct. I don't care if people hate Microsoft or not. Its their right to like or dislike whomever or whatever they wish.

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You've stirred quite a thread with the Linus quote. Have you really no thought as to why he gave the quote?

Regards,
Martin

cause he dislikes linux users who hate microsoft, isn´t that quite obvious.

Look at it from his point of view. It's his baby. Surely it would be far more satisfying to see it being extolled for its own virtues than as a weapon to bash the opposition.

F.

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Well, not completely his. A good part of Linux depends on the work done by Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation, Think of GCC, which I have used to compile TeX, GRASS and other tools, including, lately, Mplayer which allows me to watch the NASA streams on my Linux box.
Tullio

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Well, not completely his. A good part of Linux depends on the work done by Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation, Think of GCC, which I have used to compile TeX, GRASS and other tools, including, lately, Mplayer which allows me to watch the NASA streams on my Linux box.
Tullio

OK he's had a lot of help weaning it and getting it through infancy. But emotionally still "his baby".

F.

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I use windows cause Im lazy. Linux may be all spiffy, however linux is finally starting to catch up to the 'pretty' aspects of operating systems. I really dont want to type when I can just clicky with a mouse. Linux has always been behind the curve on 'usability' aspect. If you pretty up the box, people are much more inclined to just use a box. Even if the plain box is better.

Kinda off topic, but still a little relevant. Could I rail against the 'evils' of Intel cause I use an AMD chip instead? Just because Microsoft is a bigger 'name' doesnt mean there isnt other competition among different aspects of 'computing'.

Sincerely,
Daysteppr

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In the good old days of CP/M, DOS or UNIX you had to think before typing a command which could even destroy your system. Now you just click and maybe only get a virus. This is progress,
Tullio

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In the good old days of CP/M, DOS or UNIX you had to think before typing a command which could even destroy your system. Now you just click and maybe only get a virus. This is progress,
Tullio

No, humanity impedes progress. For every good thing that is invented, someone will use for their own malicious purposes. There is no way to prevent hackers from writing code that exploits weaknesses in OSes. As long as there are these types of people out there, there will always be problems with computing, regardless of the OS and the 'progress' its made.

The reason why we call it 'progress' is because there weren't many users back in the days of CP/M and DOS due to their inherent difficulty to use by "ordinary" people. Now, computing has been made easy for nearly everyone to use, and hackers take advantage of most user's naivety.

Instead of attacking the real problem - the lack of morality of these hackers - some advanced users blame the users instead, complaining about how they don't have to think first, or how Windows has made it too easy, and blaming Windows for having flaws (which all OSes have). Advanced users blame everything else except the real problem.

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Almost every day I get a mail purporting to be from my Poste Italiane on line account, which I don't have, asking me to fill a form with my user name and password. The mail is written in a very bad Italian and I delete it. Only once a mail seeming to come from my online bank account was looking good and I entered those values, Then I checked its host IP address and found it was not that of my bank. I immediately changed my password and contacted the bank by telephone. So even I have some computing experience I was almost fooled. Just a moment of not thinking clearly enough and you are duped. Cheers.
Tullio

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No, humanity impedes progress. For every good thing that is invented, someone will use for their own malicious purposes. There is no way to prevent hackers from writing code that exploits weaknesses in OSes. As long as there are these types of people out there, there will always be problems with computing, regardless of the OS and the 'progress' its made.

Indeed so, but more of an issue is to what extent...

Communities work very well when the malicious are restricted or simply don't have an opportunity for their dastardly deeds in the first place. You'll never get rid of 'em, and perhaps we shouldn't get rid of 'em, but usually they get 'contained' in some way.

Instead of attacking the real problem - the lack of morality of these hackers - some advanced users blame the users instead, complaining about how they don't have to think first, or how Windows has made it too easy, and blaming Windows for having flaws (which all OSes have)...

So you're trying to excuse Microsoft for the common everyday mischievousness of others? Are you really saying that Microsoft doesn't have the capability to solve or avoid it's systems from being so easily hijacked? And all after more than a decade of such silliness?

Why is Microsoft unique on that count?

(I know of no other OSes that suffer such vast silliness. And my view is that it is not because of Microsoft's market share on the desktop...)


And because I consider myself a scientist and an engineer, for the sake of objectivity, and to give a little background to the source of my views, see:

Criminals 'may overwhelm the web'

Is the Botnet Battle Already Lost?

A History of Computer Viruses
...1992: Non-IBM PC and non-MS-DOS viruses are virtually forgotten: "holes" in global access network are closed, errors corrected, and network worm viruses lost the ability to spread themselves. ...

And a more recent summary:
Virus History Summary

And a very brief something peer reviewed and edited by greater minds than mine:
The vulnerability of operating systems to viruses


Note that the very easy availability to send vast amounts of spam consequently makes phishing and various scams all the more lucrative, no matter how dubious and dodgy, just by the sheer force of numbers...


So... Why hasn't Microsoft ended the Microsoft botnet's saga?

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Well, well, well... Who would have guessed this?!

Judge: Microsoft Can't Sell Word in the U.S.
A judge has ruled that Microsoft is no longer allowed to sell Microsoft Word in the United States because of a patent infringement.


My personal view and comment on that little snippet? Well that is quite an example of why "software" patents are such a Very Bad Idea...

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

So you're trying to excuse Microsoft for the common everyday mischievousness of others? Are you really saying that Microsoft doesn't have the capability to solve or avoid it's systems from being so easily hijacked? And all after more than a decade of such silliness?

No, I am saying that because Windows is such a large target, and because Windows supports so much out there, and because it is hard to test for every single possible situation or scenario, that there are bound to be problems that are taken advantage of, and I believe this would be the case if any other manufacturer (or Linux distro) were the primary OS used by billions.

Why is Microsoft unique on that count?

Because of their size - but they're not unique. My IT friend and colleague reported to me a virus that his mother got on the Mac and it required a complete re-installation of Mac OS X.

(I know of no other OSes that suffer such vast silliness. And my view is that it is not because of Microsoft's market share on the desktop...)

That would be because your view is very biased and you refuse to see the obvious.

And because I consider myself a scientist and an engineer, for the sake of objectivity, and to give a little background to the source of my views, see:

Those links do not show "objectivity", all they do is point toward other sources that think like you. That doesn't actually make them correct.

Note that the very easy availability to send vast amounts of spam consequently makes phishing and various scams all the more lucrative, no matter how dubious and dodgy, just by the sheer force of numbers...

Absolutely, but there are far greater things that can be achieved by seizing a user's computer from across the globe for their own needs - and since any type of software must be written for that OS (or require translation software to be installed), it is far simpler to attack the largest target in the OS market.

So... Why hasn't Microsoft ended the Microsoft botnet's saga?

Because there are numerous ways to turn a computer into a bot. Its not like there's a singular hole that can be patched to turn off this vulnerability.

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Well, well, well... Who would have guessed this?!

...

My personal view and comment on that little snippet? Well that is quite an example of why "software" patents are such a Very Bad Idea...

I expect the decision to be appealed to a higher court, or Microsoft will actually have to settle the software patent themselves, because that's the way things work.

Software patents aren't necessarily a "very bad idea", though they can certainly be used as one.

This would be a prime example of how Microsoft's lawyers aren't as intimidating as you implied earlier, and that it is possible to win a case against them if one is so inclined.

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You've stirred quite a thread with the Linus quote. Have you really no thought as to why he gave the quote?

Regards,
Martin

cause he dislikes linux users who hate microsoft, isn´t that quite obvious.

Not entirely correct. I don't care if people hate Microsoft or not. Its their right to like or dislike whomever or whatever they wish.

sorry, i meant linus, not you ozzy

You've stirred quite a thread with the Linus quote. Have you really no thought as to why he gave the quote?

Regards,
Martin

cause he dislikes linux users who hate microsoft, isn´t that quite obvious.

Not entirely correct. I don't care if people hate Microsoft or not. Its their right to like or dislike whomever or whatever they wish.

sorry, i meant linus, not you ozzy

I realized that after Fred W. posted. o.O Oops, my bad! :)

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could had happen to anyone

You've stirred quite a thread with the Linus quote. Have you really no thought as to why he gave the quote?

Regards,
Martin

cause he dislikes linux users who hate microsoft, isn´t that quite obvious.

Not entirely correct. I don't care if people hate Microsoft or not. Its their right to like or dislike whomever or whatever they wish.

sorry, i meant linus, not you ozzy

I realized that after Fred W. posted. o.O Oops, my bad! :)

Being paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you :)

F.

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Most supercomputers in the top500 list run some Linux version.
Tullio

How many supercomputers are there compared to standard computers? How many people can afford a supercomputer? How many average people could run a supercomputer without their own IT staff to support it?

Just because a "supercomputer" uses A over B (hardware, OS, etc.), doesn't inherently make it better than the other, nor is it really the point of everyday computing.

More to the point, who actually makes "supercomputers" these days?

I'm not talking about a cluster of machines all running some commodity processor chip. I'm talking about one or two processors running at an incredibly high clock, and none of this wimpy 64 bit CPU garbage either.

The modern "supercomputer" is just a whole big ruddy stack of cheap little computers, running the least expensive software possible.

Seriously. Is this really a supercomputer?

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Seriously. Is this really a supercomputer?

IBM thinks so and so does the Department of Energy. It is an example of the evolution of species. Mammals taking over the dinosaurs.
Tullio

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Seriously. Is this really a supercomputer?

IBM thinks so and so does the Department of Energy. It is an example of the evolution of species. Mammals taking over the dinosaurs.
Tullio

IBM got to cash the check, and given the size of the check, if the DoE said "we want a supercomputer" I'd call it "Googleplex Star Thinker" if I got to cash the check as a result.

"Modern Supercomputers" only work if the problem can be worked in a massively parallel manner. If it can't be split across 12,000 threads, the Roadrunner isn't any faster than the fastest single Microprocessor in the box.

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Well, I am not a computer architect like Steve Wallach. But when working at Trieste Area Science Park I saw the Area abandoning its DEC 9000 mainframe and the Trieste University its Cray mainframe for workstation clusters running Linux. So maybe parallel processing satisfied their needs. I even tried installing Parallel Virtual Network on my LAN including BULL/MIPS Unix R6000, Sunsparc running SunOS and PCs running Windows. My UNIX R6000 was as fast as the 9000 on the Linpack benchmark and cost 10 times less, The test was done by CERN people via Internet. Cheers.
Tullio

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