If it takes a "brilliant" individual to get into the accounts of other people on the same machines you personally administer, then I have a feeling that all of their other sysadmins are still trying to figure out why their shells aren't saying "C:\>".

[SENSATIONALIST HEADLINE HERE]

[Generic article body, accounting for some numbers and loose facts which may help strengthen an overall point.]

[Cryptic conclusion, leaving yourself open to be wrong without actually directly admitting the possibility so that you can backpedal later.]

Now wait for the views, and thousands of comments of fanboy arguing!

Seriously though, people still read ZDNet? I thought they stopped being relevant when they couldn't keep ZDTV going.

And yet it was released with a bug of white pixels between textures in dark areas on some video cards, which their error reporting site has marked as "fixed." It also has a very sporadic framerate from the "improved" lighting engine, even though the biggest lighting glitch (the dark spots) still exists in full force. Not to mention, they buffed skeletons to be way more annoying, to the point that they shoot so fast you can't get out of the water to kill them, yet nerfed bonemeal to need multiple pieces to grow something. The latter is particularly ironic given that this is the "redstone update" which attempts to implement automation, and yet here they threw unpredictability into the equation, which is the exact opposite of what you want in an automated system.

And when you consider that the "redstone update" does nothing to actually improve redstone itself, which is still a huge pain to work with, you wonder what the overall point to this version was. Anyone who's used the Redpower mod knows that once you've used red alloy wire that you'll never use redstone dust again. All we really get here are variable redstone signals and some hoppers for the most part, which still requires fighting the game's implementation of redstone with crazy block configurations to pass signals rather than just focusing on building the creations themselves.

There's other various bugs and annoyances introduced or unfixed in this version, to the point that when you combine that with the performance and visual issues, it's just a rather disappointing update. But I'm waiting for 1.5.1 before I completely throw up my hands with it. In the meantime, we still have modded 1.4.7 to enjoy.

And you're attempting to downplay serious lacks of policy and communication support in an attempt to disregard the point.

The fact that businesses use what they use proves my point.

DDoS is not the same as physical protest. Physical protest means making people aware of something, and potentially depriving them of business. DDoS means customers/users have no idea what's going on, you're depriving them of business, AND you're costing them bandwidth, which isn't free. It's the equivalent to strongarming any customer who walks near the store, and having a guy on the inside regularly pulling a dollar out of the cash register.

Pretty much every Linux/Samba-based NAS on the market has the same policy limitations as a desktop Linux installation.

Plus, the mailslot interface is a very important part of the protocol. It's how networked users have been able to communicate with one another for quite a long time, without needing third-party software, which also provides an interface for applications to also do so across machines. The reason it was likely never fully implemented on Linux is because there is no reasonable way to implement it, given the lack of any kind of standardization (particularly in the GUI). Literally the only thing available, after 20 years, is Linpopup, which basically doesn't really even work anymore anyway. And there's no proper interface to take advantage of mailslot functionality to make anything better. RealPopup is a very good WinPopup replacement on Windows, with quite a bit of configurability, but it's completely unable to communicate with a Samba-based machine in its native mode.

So, what options does that leave us with? 1) A cross-platform internet-reliant instant messenger service, full of ads and spam and regular updates. 2) A local server-based chat application, requiring configuration of both a server and clients, and also requiring aforementioned server which severs all network communications if that machine is down. 3) Something Bonjour-based, all of which are typically extremely bloated and require installing garbage Apple software on a PC to communicate.

That means all of the Linux-based machines I use have no way of communicating with Windows users on the network, meaning I have to always have a Windows PC as well, because there is no reasonable alternative.

...is that Samba has been such a sub-par version of the protocols for years that businesses still primarily refuse to use it in place of dedicated and reliably-functioning Windows servers. That's the only reason Samba is less important.

Seriously, you've been developing it for 20+ years and you still haven't implemented a proper mailslot interface?

I don't care what anyone says, there is no comparable product offering the same level of management and privilege control as what Microsoft offers. I can hear the open-source crowd freaking out already, but it doesn't change that fact. This is why Windows servers predominantly manage Windows clients. Linux can stick to the databases and web serving, where the file/permissions system is far less important.

I'm not even a Windows Server fan, but prefer to configure one of those any day than the nightmare of cryptic config files in the alternative.

I still find it funny that people ever thought OLPC was anything other than a company trying to sell hardware. Just goes to show that you can get anybody to dump a bunch of money into something if you convince them it's for a good cause.

If you're going to split hairs on what constitutes Slashdot-worthy science, then how about we post about all the newest Botox technologies while we're at it?

What's wrong with Slashdot these days? Are we just going to keep putting every marijuana-related story on the website now? Give me a fucking break. This has absolutely nothing to do with technology.

Take your drug garbage to Gawker where it belongs.

There's a big difference between being a hobbyist developer for an old platform and maintaining a ported operating system for it. It's time to let it go, folks. I have quite a bit of nostalgia for my old 8088, but it doesn't mean I'm going to put weeks or months of my life into writing code for it anymore. There's quite a lot of low-power modern architectures out there that a person could spend their time porting software to instead.

I guess I'm going to be asked to fix a lot more lawn equipment soon.

How are we saving the environment when we're destroying so much equipment in the process?

I'm sure this will work great, since all of the people who do these kinds of thing are very social people who love telling others what they're about to do, and in detailed ways that will trigger a detection.

And yet Bing still isn't the most popular search engine, despite how many times Hawaii Five-0 tries to demonstrate it to me.

Just because the people promoting a product think it's better doesn't mean it actually is.

No, the church example was a perfect comparison. Usually people a) already tithe to a specific church, b) don't go to the kind of church you're promoting, or c) don't go to church at all. So a pamphlet for a church rarely brings in any new people. It's the same with operating systems. More so, actually. If you use OSX or Windows, you're not going to just suddenly start using Linux because some guy handed you a CD. For all they know, the CD contains malware, even. People like what they're used to, and most don't have the technical confidence to even begin installing a completely new OS. These are the kinds of people who take their computers to Best Buy when something goes wrong. They're the last people who need to be running Linux to begin with.

Besides, what if Microsoft went and handed out free DVDs of a Starter Edition of Windows at a GNU event? Or at an Apple store? The people belonging to those respective OS groups would be pissed. Not to mention, they're not exactly going to convert many people to begin with. So GNU shouldn't do something that would put them into a hypocritical position if their competition did the same thing to them.