The Tech Journal

Why is it that I feel that this article rings of BULLSHIT. hmmmmmmmmm. Well first, lets look at their own statements. They claim to have studied the Linux 2.6 kernel for 4 years, since the year 2000, my problem with that is that the Linux Kernel version 2.6 wasnt even a twinkle in Linus Torvalds eye back in the year 2000. Second the Linux kernel rings in about 10 million lines of code, now. How can they know how many bugs proprietary software code contains when they dont have the code and more and likely. They also state that Windows XP weighs in at 40 million lines of code, compared to the 5.7 million lines of code that they claim for Linux, which i think is off, they came off with their statement by saying that with every 1,000 lines of code you have 20 to 3o flaws. Now if Windows was 5.7 million lines of code then wouldnt it be fair to say that it would have the same amount of flaws compared to Linux. The more code you have the more flaws you have, also with Windows XP, the GUI, CMD,IE and kernel code is all rolled into the final product. So in my opinion to get the accurate number of flaws in Linux you would also have to include all the shells, the GUI, the X-Server. Everything. Now with Windows when you pull out the GUI, IE, CMD then the code gets smaller. Very few flaws and viruses even affect the Windows Kernel most of the flaws, viruses etc. target the upper layer parts of the system.

Has a list of What he thinks are the top 10 software innovations in the world. I have other suggestions for the list, so here is my Top 10 list of software innovations:

1. Firefox — We pretty much agree on this one and it is a browser you cant beat.

2. WordPerfect Office 12 — He claims Openoffice because of export to Flash and PDF, well I think the WordPerfect ability to publish to PDF and XML has OpenOffice beat down. Tjhe Export to Flash works like shit on OpenOffice.

3. MSN Desktop Search — Sorry this beats googles Desktop search to hell

4. Visual Studios 2005 — Plent of Beta’s and they work great

5. Monad — MSH is really shaping up to be an ultra cool technology.

6. Thunderbird — The Outlook killer

7. The New Netscape — Should turn out to be a pretty interesting peice of technology. If it gets better I’d switch.

8. The Gimp 2.0 — Just keeps getting better and better, for what I have to do I can drop Photoshop

9. Windows Media Player 10 — And it just keeps getting better and better, prettier and more functional.

10: Windows XP Tablet PC Edition — Cant live without it, on my overpriced tablet.

While this news will no doubt be lapped up by the Apple faithful–I’ve resisted writing anything about any of the other baloney “iPod effect” stories that suggest the iPod’s success will help the struggling Macintosh–this one is more deceptive than most. “Unit sales”, or “installed base” don’t mean anything if the growth of the PC industry exceeds that of the Mac (and it does). For example, if just one ex-PC user switches to the Mac this year, than the Mac’s “installed base” increases, rendering this headline moot.

As for unit sales, any growth is better than atrition, of course, but that success is also rendered moot if that growth falls well below the growth of the overall industry. And lets see, Gartner says that the PC industry will grow 13.6 percent in 2004, while Merrill Lynch puts growth closer to 12 percent. Either way, that means that Apple’s market share will fall once again. And each year that happens, the Mac market becomes less enticing to developers, consumers, and businesses, sorry.

And, sigh, I’ll mention once again just for kicks that I’d love to see Apple really grow its Mac market, though no one seems to believe it. I just don’t see that happening, despite the many iPod Love stories out there. But only Apple and the year-end market share figures will prove that one way or another.

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Not a bad article It just dismisses many of the concerns that people have with Linux, and of course what can we expect from a Linux zealotry site. WAKE UP CALL, no operating system is 100% secure. For those of you that believe Linux is hacker proof and cant be cracked, I guess you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and The tooth fairy. If you believe a virus cant be written for Linux a little tip, Thorazine comes in Vanilla Flavor now. One of the Linux vendors Beale who creates Linux security hardening software (If its so secure why would you need security hardening software) had this to say:

” Beale said the faster embrace and adoption of new technology in Linux also helps secure the operating system. While Microsoft cannot make major changes without worrying about their impact on administrators that may not fully understand a firewall, the problem is not prevalent for Linux.
“We don’t have this problem in Unix/Linux — sysadmins understand the system deeply, can cope with change by understanding it and planning for it, such that the addition of a firewall doesn’t shut down their servers,” Beale said. “If they don’t, we deem them incompetent and make sure that they don’t run a shop on their own or get promoted to senior-level.”

Whatever this guy is smoking let me have some, Linux does not embrace new technologies faster, I mean these developers havent even planned for IPv6 yet. Windows has support for IPv6 back in Windows NT 4. And i mean Jesus Christ, cant we get wireless devices working on Linux without having to rebuild a kernel for christssake? Linux fundamentally has the same shortcommings that have plagued the Unix world for over 30 years which is where I get my trademark statement that ussually gets me jumped by the linux guys “Same design mistakes 20 years later revisted” And if you look there are really no major changes in the system, both require users to be Text parsing experts, bothe require admins to go around their ass to get to their elbows in terms of installing software and hardware drivers and thats how come catastrophic events, such as the PayPal blunder where they screwed up a PHP Project (snicker) and toasted all of their server systems they were down for almost a week, 4 days to be exact. Where as Windows admins typically have the Program Go Back from Symantec for Windows 2000 or System restore for Windows Server 2003 have very little to worry about, in 20 minutes they can have everything fixed back the way it was and working. Linux may or may not be a more reliable system but its not perfect and will always be plagued with the shortcommings of UNIX, designed by developers and Power users for Developers and Power Users.

The “expert” Beal states:

“Part of this is that the system administrator has much more granular control over the [Linux/Unix] system,” he said. “Part of this is that Linux/Unix is just far simpler, and even better documented, than Windows, so the interactions between components that you might want to configure or deactivate are much better understood.”

Bullshit, Linux is not far better documented or easier to use thats why viruses are not as prevalent on Linux. I can think of better words for Linux and simple is no where near that list, ask my mother to build a driver module from source, change a runtime and reboot in terminal mode and change to directory /etc/linux-2.4.11/drivers/system/linux/xyz and load the module and dont forget to cp /media/usbkey/firmware.gz / /etc/linux-2.4.11/drivers/firmware/ and edit a config file to load the module at boot and your ass will get slapped. Linux is a very complex system, complexity is a friend sometimes. the easier you make an Operating System the less complex it becomes, hence the more vulnerable you make it because you have to switch this off and this off.

So yes, Beale and his associates are on something, drinking the Linux koolaid and boasting how powerful it is while Im sitting here on my Windows machine, with my security tools set up, so I know when I have a problem and not waiting for dancing skulls being rendered on a 25 year old Windowing system to tell me I have been hacked. Secure your environments, dont believe hype. Beale made the statement “We don’t have this problem in Unix/Linux — sysadmins understand the system deeply, can cope with change by understanding it and planning for it, such that the addition of a firewall doesn’t shut down their servers,” “If they don’t, we deem them incompetent and make sure that they don’t run a shop on their own or get promoted to senior-level.”. If he is willing to say that Linux is totally safe and you can rely on the operating system to keep you safe he is the one that is incompetent and should not “run a shop on his own” or “get promoted to senior level”.

Once again, My favorite eWeak editorial writer Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols opens his mouth and reminds me why his mother should have swallowed that shot. Geez, like I have said before eWeak should really monitor or do reearch into their claims before they print. First he exaggerates the state of Linux. Adoption isnt that great, there are adoptions but people also adopt Microsofts technologies so its a two way street. Linux has not really replaced Microsoft deployments, they are mainly scooping up UNIX houses, and small businesses because they tend to want things for free, as for government deployments, show me one government agency besides the US Navy who have done a full scale Migration, the US Navy changed their old SGI Irix sonar system with Yellowdog Linux on Xserves. Munich I hear you say, Munich is still dicking around trying to figure out when they want to do the migration, they have been trying to figure out when they want to do the migration since early 2003. Yet, 2004 still wasnt the year of the Linux desktop. So of course in the natural progression of things, SJVN claims 2005 will be the year of the Linux desktop. Sun has a real shot with Solaris 10, its going to be people like myself who will adopt it. People who dont care about conspiracy theories, who dont care how much a community tries to demonize a proprietary company and those of us who just ignore zealot journalists.

Once again Sun has touched a nerve with the Open Source community with their new license that is based on the MPL, Mozilla Public License. All the arguments I have heard from the open source community are just basic derogatory crap that we all hear when a competitor to Linux adopts anything but the GPL. Im sorry that some feel they have to compete by demonizing a company instead of actually delivering a decent product. Linus Torvalds believes that Sun wont find a community to stand behind Solaris with this move, ironic others in the Open Source community said the same thing about the Wix community. Wix is an Open Source project started by none othwer than Microsoft. Yet Wix has almost 100,000 supporters. I think Solaris has the best bet to be enhanced and i think adopters and supporters will be those who want to actually build a better product rather than trying to feed social movements.

**Editors note: I had said in this post that Linus had stated a community would not have built up around WiX. That was a mistake as Linus didnt say that. I apologoze for any misunerstandings.

This is the end of an era, IBM the creators of the original PC is getting out of the PC business altogether instead, relying on high end services such as servers and mainframe type business to continue their growth. I guess we will just have to wait to see what happens but either way its a damn shame.

Where oh where does eWeek find these people. Are they actually this clueless or do they actually believe the crap they spew? On Windows XP and 2000, Googles desktop search does show you other people files, but it doesnt let you read, write, or view any files you dont have access too, this includes the web cache for other users. Will these people please do some research and look into what they are saying before they print. So its that time again, its time to give an award. The winner of this award is this articles author, Brian Schneier. You have won the Internet Matrix award of
shut-the-fuck-up-you-boy-who-cries-wolf-get-a-clue-and-research-your-next-artcle -before-you-embarass-yourself-whoops-too-late award.