Ok lets be honest, Ubuntu is not mass market ready, but then again, there’s no such thing as a mass market ready computer.  Try to make something idiot proof and the world will build a better idiot.  Everyone who’s ever worked around computers knows the horror stories so I won’t go into it.  But how does Linux compare to commercial OS’s like Windows and OSX?  Well, it probably would work just fine, and in fact I know it does (I have my grandparents on Ubuntu), for quite a significant portion of users.

So users can use it, and its simple-ish, why wouldn’t we want it to go to mass market?  One reason, big business.  Up until this point, Linux has been a hobbyist OS, supported by some badass companies like Google, IBM, and Red Hat.  We don’t really have a mass influx of bad companies into the Linux market.

Look at this very seriously.  The Windows market is LOADED with shit software that every M$ bred moron thinks he can scribble out a .Net yet, or worse yet, C++, application in and make some money.  The Mac market is much better but they’re next for an influx of shit software.  Here in the Linux world, we enjoy relative comfort in that, while we call everything shit software, it is, on some level, good software because even though the methodology of programming may be one you disagree with, it tends to be founded on some level.

Now, Linux does dominate in the realm of the interwebs as far as servers go, and by that stance there is shit software for it in that arena, but fortunately it doesn’t usually make it that far (Rails is an exception, but Rails can be good, it just largely isn’t because they people who program on it are Jerry’s that though Python and PHP were too hard).

But lets take this realistically.  If companies started developing en masse for Linux, you’d have this big corporation come along with some damn product, and all of a sudden they decide for whatever dumb reason that they don’t like how something in a library works (say, glibc), so they fork it.  Now, you’re probably saying “isn’t this the point of open source?” and yes, it is, but this isn’t the problem, this NEXT aspect is the problem.  Say that program was a HUGE program, something tons of people used.  Like AOL for instance of yesteryear.  Well what if all the distro guys swapped over to this version of glibc that may end up having huge fucking issues with every little thing on the planet, which they then rush to fix with duct tape and superglue, until its a hotch potch of shit software left and right.

Then you can’t do ANY friggin thing in the Unix philosophy anymore, you have win32.  Not like you can really have 2 versions of glibc either (you technically can, but to me it’d seem like way more of a headache than it was worth)

Well that was just one company.  If Linux went mass market, you can imagine that big business would get in and do the library branching, interject their unwanted opinions into a large amount of projects, start buying out projects and draining them down with crap code, forking development, and all of a sudden you have the world’s biggest clusterfuck on your hands.

And then on top of it, you have shit software abounding.  Everything does everything, but nothing well.  Now it becomes an even bigger chore to find a package that actually friggin works.

I work as a Windows programmer as my day job, and I know what some of these software vendors do and it amazes me to no end, one that they did it and two that it even friggin works.  Knowing all of this, the moment the mass market starts creeping into Linux like it does in the Windows and Mac world, I’ll end up switching to a better OS which embraces its hobbyist roots, maybe FreeBSD or Plan9.  Sure they don’t have the most features, but they accomplish their damn goal and damn well, and don’t worry about become accepted on the mass market.

I guess part of it descends from the attitude of some people to define a term however they damn well please.  Sorry guys, if you can’t prove it, its not real.  Despite the fact that English is an atrocious language (especially our Americanized version of it), words do have definitions and meanings and changing them just gives anyone with better things to do that think up new definitions to words all day a major headache.

I’m also finding a large contingent of people who want to interject their opinion into science.  Someone I know presumed to infer that philosophy had a place in quantum mechanics, saying it could fill in the holes in our knowledge.  I’m sorry but when you’re dealing with something like theoretical physics, no answer is better than a wrong answer.  Proponents of this idea may say that it might not be wrong, but the chances of that are extremely remote, for every 1 thing you get right, you’ll get 999 wrong, if not a whole lot more.  Look at String “Theory”

There also seems to be a large contingent that presume themselves to be experts in the field after reading a few books on the topic, or worse yet an evanescence, a so called one-hit-wonder where they systematically become more intelligent than someone with formal education and experience in the field.

And the last two are my favorites.  A. The people that argue you can’t argue with numbers and B. people who don’t understand the flaws and limitations of the scientific process.

Before I get into what’s going on, let me take every point step by step and we’ll see each person debunked.  Going in reverse, “what’s wrong with the scientific process?” you might ask.

Well, the process itself is not the problem, its the introduction of a human element as an observer that is.  Without even getting into the argument that humans can be partial or biased, its invariably clear that humans are fallible and that our 5 senses of observation can and will fail us.  We need the use of specialized equipment in an extreme majority of cases and if not, we just hypothesize using mathematics (REAL logic).  However, this doesn’t always hold together.  Examples include the Goldbach Conjecture, the Higgs Boson, and even time (with time, it should be possible to move in multiple directions of it, according to the Godel Metric).

But alas, the scientific process is inhibited by the weight of human fallacy further in that our specialized equipment itself, does fail.  Humans are far from being able to avoid errors, and it should be noted that there are problems with the scientific process.  How many times have you caught yourself yelling at the TV during an episode of Myth Busters because they’re doing something incorrectly?  Happens to me frequently, like the episode where they tried to verify if water was bulletproof, but they couldn’t quite explain why the larger the calibre of the weapon, the shorter the distance the round went.  The answer has to do with the extreme surface tension of the water, the high energies at which the rounds are fired, and the surface area to which the rounds impact the water with (mostly the first and the last, with modern portable weaponry, there’s probably not a huge difference in the coefficients of energy between mass and muzzle velocity).  Was there a problem with their observations or the experiment itself?  Not from what I could see, but there was a breakdown in their ability to interpret the data.

Now you might say “they did effectively produce an outcome which answered the initial question” but sometimes data output does not effectively allow for interpretation of the data.  The vast majority of people can observe the data themselves but lack the proper knowledge to effectively interpret that data.  Take for instance one of my own lab reports.  Compare this lab report which includes all of the details and an analysis section and compare its usability to this data output report.  If you’ve had some science you can probably interpret the data but ultimately the lab report on density is probably a heck of a lot easier to interpret than the equilibrium of 2-dimensional concurrent forces report because it includes an analysis and conclusions prepared by a well qualified individual (albeit this is incredibly simple stuff, but you have to go through pre-reqs at some point; oh and please don’t flame me for calling Cartesian Vectors “X-Y Vector Components”).

Lets take another example, Doppler radar.  You might be able to make heads-or-tails of this (especially if you’re Oklahoman; people out here are really tuned into the weather because of the large storms we get) but you might not be able to interpret this data as effectively as say, a meteorologist.

But what if data is self-intuitive like the MythBuster’s episode data.  Well the problem is the lack of a descriptive analysis by a well-qualified individual could lead to ludicrous assertions based on that information.  Since the 9mm traveled farther than the .50-cal, it could be assumed that larger objects will not travel well through water, but we do have torpedoes and submarines, granted at a much lower speed than the bullets, but there’s also the aspect of structural integrity that needs to be discussed as to why submarines and torpedoes will operate fine above and bellow the water’s surface.  Bullets themselves are typically made of lead (because of its high mass per unit matter) with a metal coating.  However, lead is a very soft metal, which goes into the point of the bullet itself in that its designed to rapidly expand on impact, thus dramatically increase its surface area and dissipate its energy quickly, whereas a torpedo is made out of a much harder and stronger metal which will resist expansion in order to minimize its energy dissipation on its surface in order to maximize its propellant energy.

But the question still got answered right?  Water is bulletproof, well yes and no.  They proved that a 9mm will fire farther into the water than a .50-cal but bulletproof is ambiguous.  What if you’re running from somebody and they happen to be using a crossbow.  Unlikely yes, but you’re unable to make the determination as to whether the bolt itself will penetrate the water far enough to strike you.  You could make the fatal assertion that the bolt behaves as do the bullets and only dive in a few feet, whereas a lower-energy more aerodynamic bolt from a crossbow could possibly penetrate much further.

So the [female dog] is in the details.

Does this mean that our data is useless?  No, quite the opposite, we just need to understand that not every observation is absolute, especially when axioms themselves are not definitely true (like Euclid’s Fifth Postulate on Parallel Lines, which states that parallel lines will never intersect, a well regarded axiom, but doesn’t apply in the world of non-euclidian geometry where parallel lines do intersect).

Just because something isn’t readily apparent though doesn’t mean it cannot exist.  If it can be logically inferred and there exist no more plausible and observable alternatives then it commands itself a hypothesis worth investigating.  Like they said in Star Trek “once you remove the impossible the only remaining, no matter how implausible, must be true”

What about those who say you can’t argue with numbers.  Well regard my previous argument about the fallacies of the scientific process and they apply equally well in this context as well.  Its also worth mentioning that statistics are derived from sample data, if you’ve had a class in statistics you’ll know that its very infeasible and impractical to gather data from massive datasets.  However despite our best attempts, data still gains a bias towards a given output.  Take the thought experiment whereby the Federal government decides to help out the economy in the Northeast by imposing a protective-tariff on an imported good.  Whereby the rest of the country would likely be opposed to such a bill because it increased the prices for them, but ultimately helps a given region.  Theoretically, the margin would be near 100% in favor within the northeast, and near 100% opposition outside of the northeast (subject to a lot of variables I know).  Well say this bill only effected the Northeast, and the historic south.  The Northeast has a far greater population and thus more votes in the House of Representatives, but say that historic border states and midwestern states allied with the South, at this point there would be more states allied with the south and thus more votes in the Senate.  Which statistic would matter?  Well its a complex topic.  Being impartial would be quite difficult and require a rather large dataset just for a simple sample.  Thus one can see that the sampling metric is more difficult than initially intended and thus the output data is going to be biased in a given favor.

Well what about the people that just read books on the topic.  Mostly the lack of challenge.  I doubt there are any of these people who read college textbooks in these given topics.  They put me to sleep most of the time, but they contain all of the necessary details, whereas your normal Barnes-and-Nobles “paperback”  only contains “interesting” information conveyed in a manner meant to educate the layperson (usually, I have Kurt Godel’s “On Formally Undecidable Propositions” which is significantly more than a weekend reader, but that’s not your standard Barnes-and-Noble paperback either).  The logic behind this is extremely simple.  Both the author and/or the book publisher aim to maximize their target audience and thus see the largest return on their investment.  Simple economics.  Rarely will these books go in levels either, they’ll typically contain a baseline introduction and then go into differing topics book-to-book, which is in contrast to most textbooks which are leveled.

Further the “weekenders” (as I’ll call them) lack any drive to learn every excruciating detail about a given topic.  If you’re reading a paperback, unlikely will you ever run into the advanced mathematical proofs or theorems which both prove and help work equations in applications.  Rarely will any weekender memorize this information and even more rarely will they ever use it.  Formally educated persons will memorize every bit of this information because its probably going to be on a test   Plus with Physics research addendums are usually required for a degree so there is a point where you’re “thrown to the lions” so to speak and have to fend for yourself in a practical application of what you’ve learned (the addition of professors being nearby helps aid the overall experience by adding educated perspective and experience too).

Now please don’t confuse weekenders with self-educated scientists.  I’m sure there is a very small contingent of scientists in active research who are entirely or at least partially self-educated (probably can say most scientists are at least somewhat self-educated in some regards), but reading Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein does NOT make you an expert in math (actually quite the opposite, she’s a philosophy professor first off so she approaches the whole aspect of incompleteness (basically, you can’t prove the consistency of a given logical system from within that same logical system) incorrectly, but also spends exorbitant amounts of time giving Godel’s biography).

And what about those who want to interject their own opinions into science.  Well this would effectively defeat the entire purpose behind science (as an observable topic, governed by the scientific process) and turn it into a pseudo-science like Philosophy or metaphysics.  A good example of injection of opinion by otherwise logically sound scientists and individuals is the idea of “nuclear winter” where, although theoretically possible, the chance of which is extremely remote.  Carl Sagan and Soviet Scientists were the key proponents of these theories but were ultimately bound to cause political attrition to the west and thus de-proliferate nuclear weaponry.  The goal never was that nuclear winter was real but to remove the public’s desire to use nuclear weapons (well, Carl Sagan might actually have believed it to be true, but the soviet scientists were surely bound).  I don’t think any further elaboration is necessary.

And finally, people who would like to redefine words on their own terms without regard to its proper meaning.  This is a bit complex of an argument because we do indeed change the meanings of words over time whether incidentally or purposefully.  Ultimately however, the problem itself has to do with consistency.  Not consistency as in “usage from person to person” but a mathematical version of consistency whereby the system is actually usable.  If terms continue to be defined on an “as wanted” basis, its removes its mathematical consistency and thus the ability to form logically sound statements (you can’t add 4 and chair can you? if you do its a highly arbitrary method for doing so).

Ultimately I think a lot of the problem is people have hysterical logic, id est, very subjective, emotion-influenced logic, if it can even be called logic at this point.  Society, I think, is placing an extremely heavy emphasis on emotion and pathos (id est, an unjustifiable appeal to emotion in arguments, most commonly seen with politicians; for example, “we need to emphasize family values” well they never quite define what that is nor why we need to define it, and trust me, its far from an axiom).

The explosion of reality TV in recent years is a superb testament to this aspect.  The entire driving force behind it being “drama” and emotional outbursts in a so called “realistic” setting.  Sure, it can be funny to watch some blonde bimbo blow up on a brunette after she slept with the man-meat of the show, but really people, are we producing a bit too much smog in our brains?

My conclusion on the issue however, is not so much a tirade on the decline of intelligence within society so much as one warning/asking people to look harder into the details and ask yourself, before you start blabbing around about it, is this data correct and is the interpretation plausible?  Charles Dawkins, for instance, is a very good ethos source on biology and evolution because that’s what his field is in.  However, contrary to popular belief, evolution and creationism are unlikely to be mutually exclusive and thus Dawkins has no further basis for assuming the lack of the existence of a creator.  His assertions, further would not override the assertions of a logician like Kurt Godel who claims “I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife.” (src)  who is more likely to have a more sound logical assertion for the existence of a god based on his own observations in raw logic than Richard Dawkins (or any of the Intelligent Design proponents like William Dembsky) who believe evolution and creationism to be mutually exclusive and found their arguments around this one single assertion even though it has a very shaky foundation (its another pathos argument, people automatically assume that just because you think evolution exists, you can’t believe that the universe was created and vice versa, there is little, if any, justification for this).

That’s it, hopefully you’ve pulled something from this useful.

It may seem like they’re clearly trying to take the lead, but everyone in psychology is familiar with the defence mechanism, which alludes to the possibility that Microsoft is about to have a corporate-equivalent of a stroke.

And honestly, if I were Microsoft I’d be sweating it too.  Its getting to the point where Ubuntu Linux is matching OSX in the eye candy factor (though I’d argue its been vastly superior for years now, especially since XGL and Beryl came onto the scene), its much faster than 7 or XP, in many arenas, much more secure than Vista or OSX (“Vista SP2 most secure OS”…yeah…right, apparently they’ve never encountered OpenBSD or the grsecurity Linux kernel, even the NSA likes Linux), and invariably cheaper (who wants to spend money on an OS AND have to pay for support when they can have a free OS that works most of the time and you only have to pay for support when/if you need it, but even then, there’s plenty of documentation around the web about how to do things, so you really don’t even have to pay for support, though the same could be said about Windows, but sometimes there’s that one situation no one has ever tried before).

So it could be very good news for us Linux fans.  With Google’s Chrome OS coming up (albeit its not truly Linux, it does at the very least include the Linux kernel), OSX on the rise, and Windows 7 on shaky grounds (with the MS Word injunction, and all of the anti-trust litigation surmounting M$ right now); it could very well be the start of the decline of Microsoft’s empire.

You know what they say, everything with a beginning, must have an end.

Now a little of arguing in favor of Microsoft but not in the normal way.  Windows is a business OS, I don’t think anyone can really question that.  Sure it has some entertainment features and such but I’d argue where Microsoft makes its big bucks is in the corporate world.

Indeed they do offer things that the other OS’s are lacking on.  Namely centralized management and policy instantiation.  On Linux its a bit more difficult to control users in a global environment from a centralized point.  Now I’ll probably have people arguing against that point, but honestly the Linux community does need to start pumping resources into a centralized environment that you can do anything from.

Now I’m not saying that’s how environments should be, I’m just tagging along the argument that a lot of companies have against using Linux.  Personally, I think the Windows environment (as a programmer, and a .Net developer at that) has some serious issues, but overall is a good way of working with Windows.  Linux has a very good environment but what it lacks is a central way of working with it in a cohesive manner to all.  Where a developer could run into ActiveDirectory administration and understand what’s going on, or vice versa; that doesn’t exactly work on Linux so much.

As a purist, I’d rather Linux stay a high-end/hobby OS (used by powerful/stable servers and power users alike), but if you want it to take off and become more successful, there needs to be a centralization.  You might think that’s a bastardization of Linux and will probably water down the OS, and I totally agree, but as it stands right now, I’d argue that Linux/UNIX is too advanced for the general population.

For the same reason that people don’t understand why RISC is superior and x86 CISC is antiquated, they won’t understand why their “My Pretty Pony” game doesn’t work on Linux.  Its an advanced argument that deals a lot with advanced computing topics.

Do you want to dumb the whole thing down so users will understand it. or do you want to leave it where it is, in wonderful harmony where we know we have the superior OS from many standpoints, untainted by the craziness of the mainstream world?  I’m choosing the latter.

Note: This letter was written to Oklahoman schools but its easily applicable to quite a few colleges, check your institution’s policies and such, they may be hard to find. Also, this document, like all content originating from me on this site, is Creative Commons, By Attribution licensed, feel free to use it in your efforts

Edit: Sent list:

• Sent to Gina Wekke, Director of OSRHE Campus Compact who’s duty is “articulating the importance of civic responsibility as an outcome of higher education.”
• Sent to Robert Lindley, Executive Directory of Community Outreach at UCO, on OSRHE Economic Development board
• Sent to Debbie Terlip, OSRHE Student Relations Liason — Response: “This is an institutional issue and the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education have no jurisdiction or ability to resolve it.”

Update: The Daily Oklahoman has expressed interest in this letter and would like to do an article on it, w00t!

————————–Begin Message———————————-
Dear Oklahoma Colleges,

I’m writing on a seemingly small, but in actuality a large, concern of mine regarding the conduct of local colleges in regards to intellectual property.

The issue starts at my own alma mater, where I am a computer science major, after trying to petition the school to simply sign a form stating they had no intention to sue a non-profit organisation under which I was working on a well known open source compiler in my own spare time. The institution not only put up a strong resistance to simply verifying that they would not claim ownership of code I own and have the right to do with what I will, but also informed me that in working in the project, if I wrote code for the project and used it as classwork this would qualify as plagiarism. Further, the very concept of me having any ownership of school work, such as my graduate thesis, was simply preposterous.

Now these concepts seemed to strike me as absurd. First, why would an institution put up such resistance to simply signing a 1-page waiver acknowledging that they would follow their own policy and allow me to retain ownership of code written on my own time? Are they wanting to reserve the right to change their minds if one of their students comes up with the next big thing?

Second, how is reusing one’s own work in multiple places plagiarism? Did I not do the work myself and adequately met the requirements of the assignment? I’m not sure where these institutions get off, but it would seem infinitely more logical to not reinvent the wheel. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be held responsible to learn important concepts, but if I’ve already done the assignment once, it seems counter-productive to do it again. It seems to me again that the institution wants to reserve themselves the right to claim ownership of code.

Third, I’m not sure where these institutions get the concept that my own ownership of my hard, uncompensated, work is not my own. I hate to inform these institutions but if I’m going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education ultimately to be compensated with a simple piece of paper, I find it only logical that I also retain ownership of works I create myself without significant support of the institution (any and all knowledge is paid for by my tuition and the government, as is the case in public institutions).

My ideology of backlashing against these concepts may seem absurd to some, but its really not. The above ideals are those practised by top engineering institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and others. If one reads into the history of Silicon Valley, they’ll find out that two important components for its success are both research into practical arenas (originally electronic warfare), and University support of students. The second is a little vague, but Silicon Valley institutions participate with students turning entrepreneurs in arenas such as licensing of intellectual property, better policy on collaboration and ownership of university collaborative projects, and allowing professors to consult for these new institutions.

Now forgive my prudence, but as far as I’m concerned, universities first concern should be to educate their students and promote innovation, but it seems as if a large majority of institutions have a adopted a corporate-like policy of furthering profits. While profit for institutions is by no means a bad thing, doing so in an ineffective manner that compromises the degree of education given to the students is inherently bad.

I think that universities locally have a superb opportunity to improve the economy of our state and locality, and further greatly progress technology, and create a new stream of businesses in our area. Is it a coincidence that some of the best places for technology based startups are Silicon Valley, CA, Cambridge, MA, and even Austin, X when these locales are located right over top of some of this country’s top engineering institutions? Doubtfully.

I love Oklahoma and especially living here and its honestly a shame that I may have to move away to not only get a competitive education but also move into an institution that has policies meant to encourage innovation. Until then, I hate to inform my alma mater that I won’t be doing anything spectacular that could make them any money, because of the level in which I disagree with their policies.

Well, considering the prestige of those colleges is it any wonder that all the industry sticks around?  But honestly, is it really the academics themselves that are creating those entrepreneurs?  The video bellow has an interesting thought…

What’s the interesting thought?  Not that these colleges have good academics (for there are quite a few colleges with just as good if not better academics), but rather that they work with their students after graduating, not finding jobs, but creating them.  The universities encourage their students to start their own companies and work with their students in licensing of intellectual property, and encourage their professors to consult for the new companies being created by students.

Honestly, when you look at it, that’s quite brilliant, and it seems to work.

That’s scores different from how my college is (they claim ownership of all of my classwork with no ability for me to license it back, and the very thought of me F/OSS’ing my graduate thesis is obscene).  I guess we know who’s method works better….

The basic jist is that the distro is meant to be run on lab computers in CS departments and allow access to university resources.  These include things like Windows/CIFS shares, Zephyr/XMPP, and things like that.

Here are some of my current ideas

• Window Managers

e17

Great window manager, just currently unstable

KDE

Already built into the package manager I’m thinking of using, seems to be a dev favorite

GNOME

Stable and simple

• Programming Software

  • emacs/vim (both graphical and console versions)
  • Various programming language integration versions for above editors
  • GNU Compiler Collection (the whole thing, C, ADA, Java, etc)
  • Java JDK (depending on redistribution licensing but it shouldn’t be a problem)
  • Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs with various plugins
  • gdb/DDD
  • dtrace (depending on usability)
  • Various other compilers like GHC and SBCL
  • Developer tools for AIs and such (CommonLisp and PROLOG stuff)

• Usability Software

  • OpenOffice 3.1
  • Compression software (tar, unrar, 7zip, etc)
  • OpenSSH (obviously)
  • Firefox
  • Rhythmbox

• Math Software

  • Maxima
  • IT++
  • GNU libmatheval
  • Octave

• Documentation

  • Free Documentation and tutorials for programming languages and theory
  • Software to cache web pages locally so they can be pulled up without an internet connection

• Security Software

grsecurity/PAX

Help mitigate attacks against the system and also has the added benefit of forcing the CS Student to code properly and prevents them from doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing

SELinux

Again, helps mitigate attacks and prevents the user from doing things with code that he shouldn’t be doing

ClamAV/chkrootkit/rkhunter

Just in case

• Package Managers

Nix

I have a preference for Nix because its purely functional (id est, non-destructive) which will help mitigate issues with dependency hell, and also allow easy rollback to previously working software if testing new versions. My issue is that because its purely functional, it’ll use up a lot of drive space. Flash drives should be large enough where this isn’t an issue, but there would probably be the need for a cleanup script that’ll clean out older versions

Pacman

This one is good because its on a rolling release system and has lots of packages (pacman is Arch Linux’s package manager), it just doesn’t offer the flexibility of Nix

APT

There’s always Debian’s package manager. It could prove to be difficult, however, to run this on a rolling release system because of how its designed. Preferably stay away from this package manager and other staged release package managers

If you like where this is headed, you can help out or you can at least give me some ideas for the OS.  Included software, underlying systems, stuff like that.  Obviously I’d like to use as much F/OSS code as humanly possible.  I’m not opposed to stepping outside of the bounds of F/OSS, but due to licensing regarding redistribution, I figure it’ll be a heck of a lot less of a headache.

Exactly why is F/OSS better?

It’s subject to peer review. Some of the best programmers in the world have access to, and readily submit, code for F/OSS projects (not to say that EVERY F/OSS project is superior mind you).

Look at why hackers use it. Aside from their ability to heavily modify their system, they’re also extremely paranoid. I know plenty of hackers that contribute code and readily fix problems in F/OSS code because of their own paranoia.

Look at why the DoD and NSA use it. Its laid out like an OS should. ACLs, chrooting, SELinux, all of these help make it much easier to protect their own systems.

Want a really good blast at Microsoft? OpenBSD, its been around since 1994, there have only ever been 2 exploits off of the default config, and one of them was for a legacy version. Heck OpenBSD + pf is what the Defcon guys use.

And quite damn honestly, code that’s open source has met the firing squad. Hackers CAN see the code and compile it themselves, making it EASIER to find exploits, but yet Linux is regarded as far more secure just makes me think about how secure Linux REALLY is in comparison to NT. If you could place the NT Source code in the hands of someone competent I’m sure it would be hell for M$ (just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse than MS08-067).

First OSX.  Lets step through my issues with OSX step by step.  First is that OSX is based on BSD-UNIX (and the Mach kernel), namely FreeBSD, a operating system family emphasizing F/OSS, and while this in and of itself is not a problem, what Apple did with it, is.  OSX was turned spawned out of not only BSD-UNIX but also numerous other F/OSS projects that then formed a good portion of the basis for OSX.  Apple then essentially threw a pretty GUI on it, and made it so it will only run on their proprietary hardware.  I know there are other aspects of OSX, but I cannot get past this part because it totally circumvents the entire F/OSS model and philosophy.  Second, Apple’s OSX is horribly insecure.  Yeah, few virus’s exist for OSX but that’s because it’s more obscure than anything else.  Heck Vista was called more secure than OSX and you may be asking why this is.  Well, a lot of the open source codebase that comprises OSX hasn’t been updated in huge amounts of time.  Furthermore, OSX doesn’t do any modern sort of heap/stack/library protection or randomization.  It inherits a lot of UNIX’s security, but its legacy security.  It really needs to be brought up to date.  Finally, my last problem with OSX, is that Apple doesn’t contribute any F/OSS back to the F/OSS community.  I would be a hell of a lot less critical of Apple Computer if they simply contributed back to the F/OSS community.  It could be anything really, from simple tools to make life easier on UNIX, to open-sourcing their filesystem, to even making OSX/UNIX application interop easier, but none of this has ever come to fruition.  Plus, it seems like in general, Apple users have something crammed up where the sun doesn’t shine about F/OSS (example).  This isn’t always the case but seriously, loop-holing around BSD style licenses is one thing, but flat out ignoring the GPL is just not cool.

That being said, I’m also having some issues with the Linux license.  Story time kids, Sun Microsystems has pretty much Open Source’d everything in their software product line, with very few exceptions.  It was at this point that Sun Microsystems rocketed up to my list of favorite companies.  One of the rocking things that Sun also open sourced with everything else was their ZFS file system which, if you don’t already know about ZFS, you need to take some time to read right now.  Basically ZFS is a totally rocking, next-generation file system that has all the features and performance to please both end users and ultra-high-end SAN box admins.  However, the FSF considers the license under which ZFS was released (CDDL) to be incompatible with the GPL (under which the Linux kernel is licensed) because of some of the clauses the CDDL inherits from the MPL, which I think is a crying shame.  Because of this confliction, ZFS can never be ported to the Linux kernel as long as both pieces of software remain licensed the way they currently stand.  Now I know there exists a ZFS FUSE driver for Linux but I think by running the filesystem in userspace, a lot of the extensibility and performance of ZFS is going to be inhibited, not to mention that this completely misses the point that a programmer should be Free to put said ZFS code into the Linux kernel should he so choose (you know, the founding basis of the GPL movement).

Plus the Open Source Business Model, as its currently known, just isn’t working to the extent that it should be (though I wouldn’t say it’s totally broken).  Companies backing Open Source and GPL can be a very good thing, lest we forget about the invaluable contributions that Red Hat, Google, and Sun Microsystems has made to the F/OSS community.

Which brings me (finally) to my five points about operating systems.  This is a bulleted list of objectives that I would like to see an OS strive for as well as what I think the Free software movement should be striving for.

1. A commercial OS is ok, provided that, it has UNIX-like functionality, is polished and ready to meet the consumer end of the product (meaning keeping up with security patches, has a nice GUI, and stays innovative)
2. It needs to be kept up to date.  If it does use F/OSS software, keep it up to date.  Better yet, help the projects or at least some of them with security patches, bugfixes, and otherwise
3. It needs to be an open OS.  If you want to charge for binaries and installers, fine, but being able to acquire the source code for the OS, so the users of said OS can make changes to it as well as publish said changes, needs to be a priority.  It also needs to be free of strict licensing that could cause conflicts with other open source licenses and even some proprietary licenses as the case may be.  Also it needs to be able to run on non-vendor-specific hardware.  Don’t make an OS for one specific hardware platform.
4. The company publishing the OS should contribute back to the open source community.  It’s important that whatever is taken out of the Open Source community, needs to be put back in.  If you take significant amounts of code out of the F/OSS community, put back in significant amounts, whether they be code, bugfixes, innovative programs, useful programs, paradigm shifts, or otherwise.  Be a responsible company.
5. The OS should not be just a hotch potch compilation of F/OSS software.  It should strive for some sort of innovation and conform to some principle.  Whether this is meeting the needs of a niche market, or just making UNIX a more user friendly OS, its important to actually crack open an IDE and get some stuff done.  Also, it’s very important that, while maintaining a level of independence, that cross-platform compatibility be either maintained, or be made easy to maintain (such as open sourcing your package management system or better yet using a currently existing one)

These are my 5 points about operating systems as I would like to see them exist.  I doubt I’ll ever SEE this but one can dream, can he not?

I have high hopes for operating systems like OpenSolaris and Linux.  While these operating systems have their problems, they seem to be striving for these goals as listed above.  However they really lack polish and a few other things at this time, but I’m really excited to see their development moving forward.

Anyway, I hope you’ve found this article at least interesting and that you can take something from it.

So I just got back from a Cyber Security Club meeting at my school.  I decided to sign up and attend a meeting, expecting maybe 10-15 really nerdy people like myself that live, sleep, eat, and breathe computers, or at least a healthy population of people who know about computers.

I can say I was severely disappointed.

I went in and there were probably 60 people in the club, I can point out maybe 10-15 of which qualified under my expected population.  The rest of the group were people that I’m familiar with the type.

I must give an example.  This woman WAS here this evening too mind you.  This woman was in the Cyber Security Program and was in a Java class I took last semester.  Java…as in the programming language that’s excellent for programmers but a hit to take for non-programmers.  There were no prerequisites for this course.

So this woman is in a full blown programming course and we’re maybe 2-3 weeks into the class (maybe it was prior but I think it was like 2-3 weeks in) and she turns and ASKS THE PROFESSOR HOW TO SAVE A FILE!!!!!

IS THIS THE KIND OF PERSON THAT’S GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLY FOR NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY?!?

And worse yet, aside from the 10-15 people that I pointed out, the rest qualify either under the same classification as this woman or just the hyper students that aren’t really into computers but are just there to play video games.

Ok so maybe they want a job change.  Frankly I think if you haven’t had anything to do with computers up until this point that you shouldn’t be going for issues of national security, but maybe I’m missing something.  I’ll give them at least the benefit of the doubt.

So they were also electing club officers and one of them noted how he was in the club last year and they talked about cyber security but they never actually did any of this (he wanted to setup a lab, which I agree with), but really, is the cyber security club just a couple of talks and a lot of people playing video games?

I came to the club because the description was (and I quote):

Inspires learning of all things technological through trial and error, reverse engineering and professionals within the field.

And none of this was even apparent that they did any of this.

Maybe I’m missing some huge fact but really…..this is absurd.

[/rather scathing rant]

I’m currently working on a few projects, including Arduino stuff.  I’ll keep you all posted for further information