[leglug-users] BSD vs Linux, 1st machine and general knwoledge question

[Denys (VISP)]

Hi

About open source/vs proprietary code and security.
Thats all simple. If with open-source you have always capability to know 
everything about your software, with proprietary, if you are not author of 
code, there is always person who know vulnerabilities better than you.

About physical security, they are wrong. Totally wrong. I can run server in 
enemy location (if i want to do it), and it will be VERY 
difficult to crack it. But sure, if he shutdown it, he will need my presence 
to run it back (or it must be connected to Internet, but it will be less 
secure, and there is ways to crack). And also there is still way, if he have 
equipment to read bytes from FSB/memory bus/etc. As i know, not each country 
secret police have such equipment, it is very expensive and complicated. I 
had a bit experience with it, when i was working with Sat TV (oh, yes, sweety 
old Viaccess). But that guys working even on researching power consumption 
changes, when they write commands to smart-card processor, to understand, 
what 
it is doing with memory.

The important thing of open-source is not that everybody can understand what 
it is doing. Important thing, open-source projects, if they are really need 
for people, have longer life, and dont depend on single developer/company. It 
can be supported/fixed also by community, and community will understand what 
is happening in software, and can help main developer. This is a key of 
success, and Sun for example, understood that, and did OpenSolaris.

The problem, that OpenSource is less comfortable for "home use", that 
commercial companies doing everything to turn customers to their side, even 
if it is worst crime. Simple example. My mother is teacher in school, and her 
pupils(correct word?) was always winners in state/city Olympiada of 
informatics (we have like that in ex-USSR). As she told, if before in each 
generation, from 30 kids there was 3-4 very smart guys or girls, now there is 
from 100 kids , pure luck, if one will be a bit smart. And she told, keypoint 
was, when Windows spreaded in schools and home. Kids spending all their 
energy not to learn new things in science, it is spent in useless games, and 
"Drag&Drop" technologies. If you give a monkey easy life, and give banana, it 
will not learn new things. In opposite, there is some area in earth, where is 
because of problems with regular food of monkeys, they had to learn how to 
use something like spear. So it is a crime, that Windows(tm) family software 
creating "degenerated generation". And it is a fact, that they give 
"educational discounts", to cultivate generation of Windows(tm) zombies. Any 
person, who worked on Windows, have similar feelings as the addict, when 
switching from Windows to other OS. I know many kids, in families of 
sysadmins or just linux entusiasts, who are using easily BSD/Linux/etc, and 
they are ALL well developed intellectually. Thats a fact.
I wish i didnt told piece of bullshit.


On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 15:40:53  0000, Nabil Kabalan wrote
> hey all, 1st i want 2 express how "proud" i am with all the buzz 
> thats going on ;) my 1st encounter with computers was a Pentium 1, 
> 66Mhz MS-DOS (with windows 3.1) -was that safe 2 say :p- i just want 
> 2 add something about why linux isn't wide spreading as much as it 
> "should", well there are a lot of reasons that Hisham mentioned and 
> are all true on the enterprise level, on the personal level well its 
> bad publicity like this: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/10095/1090/
> and the fact that most people really want a simple system 2 deal 
> with and whether we like it or not they look for something 
> "flashy"/eye candy and suites their needs and interests (take the 
> gamers community for example) most games are NOT supported by 
> linux... my main machine is a Mac simply because it looks nice and i 
> need it to run applications that i work on, but i have a FreeBSD -i 
> favor UNIX over linux- on my machine home. i totally agree with whom 
> said that the only true security is physical security which means 
> that i need to hold on tight to my laptop which makes me look more 
> paranoid than secured :s however i've had this question since my 
> early days with linux and most of whom i asked b4 didn't give me an 
> answer that satisfied me: If a system is open source meaning 
> everyone can get to the source know/understand how it works wouldn't 
> it be easier to "design" a way to crash it? i know that there are 
> crash safe scenarios and safe plans but aren't these also open 
> source? i admit that i want a linux system that is eye candy and a 
> "looker" as much as its functional and flexible, i enjoy playing 
> games on my pc too 
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