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Submission + - If UNIX Were a Religion 2

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Charles Stross has written a very clever article where he describes the religious metaphor he uses with non-technical folks to explain the relationship between Mac OS X and UNIX. There is one true religion in operating systems says Stross and it is UNIX although there's also an earlier, older, more arcane religion with far fewer followers, MULTICS, from which UNIX sprang as a stripped-down rules-deficient heresy. If MULTICS is Judaism then UNIX is Christianity. By the mid-1970s there were two main sects: AT&T UNIX, which we may liken unto the Roman Catholic Church, and BSD UNIX, which we may approximate to the Orthodox Churches. In an attempt to control the schisms, the faithful defined a common interoperating subset of the one true religion that all could agree on—the Nicene Creed of UNIX which is probably POSIX. Stross says that today the biggest church in the whole of UNIX is Mac OS X, which rests on the bedrock of Orthodox BSD but "has added an incredible, towering superstructure of fiercely guarded APIs and proprietary user interface stuff that renders it all but unrecognizable to followers of the Catholic AT&T path." But lo, in the late 1980s, UNIX succumbed to the sins of venality, demanding too much money from the faithful and so, in 1991 Linus Torvalds nailed his famous source code release to the cathedral door and kicked off the Reformation. "The Linux wars were brutal and unforgiving and Linux itself splintered into a myriad of fractious Protestant churches, from the Red Hat wearing Lutherans to the Ubuntu Baptists." More recently, a deviant faith has sprung from Linux. "Android is the Church of Latter Day Saints of UNIX: hard-working, sober, evangelizing the public, and growing at a ferocious rate. There are some strange fundamentalist Mormon Android churches living in walled communities under the banners of Samsung and Amazon, but for the most part the prosperous worship at the Church of Google." Stross notes that as with all religion, those sects with most in common are the ones who hold the most vicious grudges against one another. "Is that clear?"

Comment Are you for or against being for or against (Score 1) 15

by Kurusuki (#43519991) Attached to: Why I can't be a liberal
Are you saying we need to exterminate homosexuality, divorce, and free trade? I don't understand if you stand for or against the topics you list. You're all over the place without ever actually asserting a concise stance on what you're arguing. "Gay marriage doesn't matter to me anymore. After all the attacks and vandalism, I wouldn't vote for those people if they were trying to save baby whales.", what attacks and vandalism? who wouldn't you vote for? Your frequent use of ambiguous pronouns with little or no context makes me feel you didn't really think through what you wanted to say. Instead, it seems, you simply started ranting without remaining aware of where you are in your own thought process, or to what you were actually trying to say.
Security

Submission + - US-CERT Warns Of Serious SCADA Flaw (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The U.S.'s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) issued a warning to critical infrastructure firms on Wednesday about a serious security hole in products from Massachusetts firm Iconics that could leave critical systems vulnerable to remote attacks.

U.S. companies in the electricity, oil and gas, manufacturing and water treatment sectors have been warned about a flaw in an ActiveX control used in two products by Massachusetts-based Iconics. The software, Genesis32 and BizViz are Human-Machine Interface (HMI) products that provide a graphical user interface to various types of industrial control systems. The software can control industrial systems used for a variety of purposes including manufacturing, building automation, oil and gas, water and waste water treatment, among other applications.
Government

Submission + - DOJ: FBI Too Focused On Child Porn (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "The Department of Justice has issued a scathing report [PDF] on the ineffectiveness of the FBI in investigating and countering cyber attacks. The shortcomings are partly attributed to lack of training and lack of communication, but the biggest issue is the allocation of effort. From the report:

Overall, we determined that in FY 2009 the FBI used 19 percent of its cyber agents on national security intrusion investigations, 31 percent to address criminal-based intrusions, and 41 percent to investigate online child pornography matters.

"

Comment MS Protection; Not an open source slam (Score 1) 566

by Kurusuki (#35232090) Attached to: Microsoft Bans Open Source From the Windows Market
It's not saying Open Source is banned. The idea of open source does not make something free to distribute or make derivative works. The clauses copied in other comments are simply license requirements which cannot be used in licenses intended to be used in software distributed on Microsoft's network. Think of it this way, you can open your source; you can't require source distribution in your license, you can't allow derivative works to be created of your software, and you can't allow redistribution at no cost. These are clearly protecting Microsoft's interests as a marketplace. If someone were to purchase your software off their marketplace, and the licenses allowed free redistribution, nothing would prevent that individual from then giving away the 'app' to all his or her friends for free. If it was licensed for derivative works the individual could make a minor change and freely distribute the derivative work. The source code clause has me a bit confounded, but I believe it may be to mitigate risks and liability for Microsoft.

This legalese would not limit an app author from releasing the source, on their own website for example. Lastly, remember open source does not implicitly mean free. See Unix.
Google

Submission + - Bing Is Cheating, Copying Google Search Results (searchengineland.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.
Privacy

Submission + - Does AT&T Deserve The Same Privacy Rights As Y (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an important case to determine whether or not AT&T deserves "personal privacy" rights. The company claimed that the FCC should not be allowed to distribute (under a Freedom of Information Act request) data it had collected concerning possible fraud and overbilling related to the e-rate program. The FCC argued that the information should be made public and that companies had no individual right to "personal privacy," the way individuals do. As it stands right now, the appeals court found that companies like AT&T do deserve personal privacy rights, and now the Supreme Court will take up that question as well. Given the results of earlier "corporation rights" cases, such as Citizens United, at some point you wonder if the Supreme Court will also give companies the right to vote directly.

Comment Double standard? (Score 1) 1

by Kurusuki (#33535582) Attached to: Holy Softbook Destruction, Batman!
Lets have a bible burning, then we'll take the torah as some real fuel and throw on the US constitution and the declaration of independence. While we're at it, lets toss a heap of American flags into the inferno. Surely this wouldn't phase anyone in those communities, I mean, the stuff is just garbage anyway right?

Comment Eh? (Score 1) 2

by Kurusuki (#33053290) Attached to: Blizzard's DRM FUBARs Starcraft II
Connect to battle.net and play a game with human players where one of the players is cracked and the other isn't. Let me know how that goes. In other news, my game loaded up perfectly.

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