boklm's weblog

A new message from Steve Ballmer : Customer Focus: Comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX.
That's strange, when someone ask Microsoft about Linux, they are always saying it is a toy for geeks, that they are not scared at all by it, and that no one serious will use it, etc ... But why do they spend so much money in fake studies to try to make people believe that Windows is cheaper, better, saffer, easier, and that Linux is difficult, dangerous, not safe, has no garantis ?
As everytime with Steve Ballmer, this message is full of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt), he forget to tell a lot about the truth, and he base his arguments on studies they paid. Steve Ballmer is someone like Pascal Nègre.
If TCO is cheaper for Windows, then why does MS Windows based hosting is always a LOT more expensive than Linux based hosting ?
Ask them, and they will tell you that in terms of maintainence costs, Linux is definitely cheaper.
ZDNet has an article about it. We can also find something interesting about TCO on LinuxWorld.

Hehe, I found funny stickers on this website:
http://www.openstickers.org/

Hmm, now the George W Bush's website, geogrewbush.com is unavaible outside US. I see this message:
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this server.

But that's not a problem, we still have georgewbush.org which is better :)

If you're living in the US, print this poster :
http://www.motherearth.org/bushwanted/

Microsoft people often try to make us beleave some myths about Windows and Linux security which are :

• Windows only gets attacked most because it's such a big target, and if Linux use (or indeed OS X use) grew then so would the number of attacks.
• Open Source Software is inherently dangerous because its source code is widely available, whereas Windows 'blueprints' are carefully guarded by Microsoft.
• Statistics 'prove' that Windows has fewer, less serious security issues than Linux, that Windows issues are always fixed, and that they are fixed faster.

This is what Microsoft people say (and what try to explain some studies they pay), what Microsoft supporters repeat, and what some people beleive. Of course, this is far from being true, and this article from theregister try to explain this to us giving the real facts. The full report is available in html, or pdf.
This article is interesting, however I would add the number of programs that come with each OS is not comparable. When you take a Linux distribution like RedHat or Linux Mandrake, it comes with something like 3000 or 4000 packages. This is most of the most popular open source programs avaible for Linux, and probably almost all what you will want to use. When a vulnerability is found in any of thoses programs, it is announced and an updated version is avaible. However, no one is concerned by all of theses programs. Who will install 3 mails servers, 3 ftp servers, 4 web browsers, 6 IM clients, etc... on his computer ?
However when Microsoft give their number of flaws for Windows, this is only what was found in the OS, not in all the programs a user can install and run, so it is not possible to compare the numbers like this. The way they compare it in the article is much more interesting. Also what is good with most linux distro is that you can update automatically all your programs (not only the core OS) with the same tool from the internet very easily :)

Look at this file, this is the robots.txt file from whitehouse.gov , the file that tells search engine what they should not visit. There is something strange, do they have a problem with Irak ? They don't want google and other search engines to find sensible informations about Irak and 911 on their website ?

There is a new essay by Paul Graham from his book Hackers & Painters online:
http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html
Interesting ...

Bon, c'est un peu vieux (98), mais ce texte est marrant, et un peu vrai:
http://ldh.org/Dossiers/Humeur/underground.html

Et il y a d'autres textes à lire ici:
http://ldh.org/Dossiers/Humeur/index.html

Dommage que je ne soit pas tombé sur ca en 97/98 ...

A poetry from F.U.C.K.'s poetry venture :
Computers
You know ... age is a funny thing. how it changes thoughts... ideas...
consider for example the fact that I adore computers I love them, I am the
hacker kid that idolized the kid in the grade higher than me that knew thow
to do that thing he did with his commodore 64. I named all of my machines
and 'bout creamed the first time I saw a graphing calculator. BAck then It
wasn't *JUST* a computer IP hostmask, it was *your* machines NAME.
There may have been faster machines with larger capacities for processing or
Ram, but none of them had the character of "devastator" or worked just like
yours because you yourself had made signifigant alterations to the operating
system. It was your toy, your friend, an escape and Spock all in one. Now
its a multimedia multimarketed, multifaceted, multiprocessing peice of shit
you can't use but bought anyway.

The Mo-man

Dans cet article :
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5419179.html
Steve Ballmer, le patron multimilliardaire de Microsoft nous explique que non, ils n'ont pas peur de Linux (et qu'ils ne s'en préoccuppent pas du tout d'ailleurs. Quoi il paient des études pour faire croire aux décideurs préssés que Linux ca revient beaucoup plus cher que Windows ?), qu'ils n'ont aucun problème avec la sécurité de leurs OS, et que la seule chose qui leur pose problème en fait, c'est le piratage. Les pauvres !! Vous vous rendez compte ? Il y a des gens qui ne paient pas leur copie de Windows !! Ils n'en n'ont vendu que quelques centaines de millions, vont ils pouvoir rentabiliser cet OS bourré de failles ??? La cause comme nous l'explique Steve Ballmer, c'est bien entendu les fabriquants de PC qui vendent leur materiel bien trop cher, les gens n'ont alors plus les moyens de donner quelques centaines de dollars a Microsoft, pour l'OS qu'on tente de leurs imposer.
Nan mais c'est vrai, il faudrait vraiment que tout le monde fasse des efforts pour aider cette pauvre petite societé qui en a bien besoin, après tout c'est pour notre bien, ils le disent dans leur publicité, "notre passion, votre potentiel !".

Pour Bill Gates, c'est pas beaucoup mieux, quand on évoque les nombreuses failles de sécurité dans Internet Explorer, il nous explique que ca n'est pas la faute de Microsoft, mais des gens qui installent des programmes tiers. Quoi ?? Ne serait il pas au courant des très nombreuses failles d'Internet Explorer, ou bien voudrait il rejetter la faute sur les autres (puisqu'en réallitée Internet Explorer seul est largement suffisant en ce qui concerne les trous de sécurité) et faire croire qu'installer des logiciels qui ne viennent pas de Microsoft c'est dangereux ?

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20041013/gatesqa13.art.htm

"Q: Speaking of security, Internet Explorer has had well-publicized holes Gates: Understand those are cases where you are downloading third-party software."

Décidement, chez Microsoft, ils maitrisent toujours aussi bien la mauvaise fois.

I think I found a book I'll have to buy when I have some money : Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide. Ruby seems to be a good language.
And this DVD seems also intersting: BBS: THE DOCUMENTARY

Pas mal ce trollomètre. Les modèles de Prumpleffer sont vraiment les meilleurs, et miod vient de ne nous le rappeller ici.

Seen on slashdot :
"Join us over at Spread Firefox as we raise funds for the most ambitious launch campaign in open source history. A portion of each donation will go towards taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times celebrating the release. All donors will be listed in the ad, the signatories of a declaration of independence from a monopolized and stagnant web."

And there is also this mozparty ...

It seems that one of the Indymedia server was taken by the FBI in england (and the reason is still unknown). What if now the USA government is able to take a server outside USA ?

Maybe the best place to host your server will be sealand :
http://www.havenco.com/

G. W. Bush has finally put his resume online:
http://monkeydyne.com/bushresume/resume.html

I added the "whoami" page on my webpage. Nothing special about it, just a page describing me and a picture :)
I also added a page about Jabber.

I installed MHonArc on my computer so that I can use it now to archive some mailling list and blogs with an RSS feed.

NY Times has an article telling us that (quoting slashdot) "while Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were announcing to the American public that these tubes were slam-dunk evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions, they already knew that there was completely overwhelming evidence that the tubes were just for artillery rockets (as Iraq said) and that the tubes were totally unsuitable for use in centrifuges."

Now it's also a photoblog ?

That's funny what thepiratebay.org answered to dreamworks :
http://static.thepiratebay.org/dreamworks_response.txt

Yesterday (Sunday) I thought about this. I really don't like credit cards : It is not secure at all. When you want to give money to someone, you have to insert your card and enter your key on his computer. You have to trust him for not stealing your key code and card number. And you don't really know how much money he takes. On the internet this is the same, when you give you card number to someone, he can take all the money he wants from your account. Also, who really knows what a credit card is made of ? They don't want to tell us how everything work (security throught obscurity). You have to trust something, but have no proof that it's working (actually some had proof that it's not, but got in trouble for this). And it's not flexible at all.
I hope that some day all of this will be replaced by a pgp key (or equivalent). Everybody has a public and a private key. When you want to open an account at the bank, you give them your email (which is like an id) and your pgp public key. Then you save your private and public key on your PDA. When someone ask you some money, you plug your PDA to his computer (it's also possible with a remote computer throught the internet for exemple). Then his computer sends to your PDA a message like "give $100 to me@me.com". Your PDA display the message, then if you accept, it will sign a message like "I give $100 to me@me.com" and send it back to the other computer. But of course, your private key always stay inside, and there is no way that someone could steal it when you plug your PDA somewhere (if there is no hole in the softwares of course). You gave him a signed message, then when that someone brings it to your bank, they will take the money from your account. That way, you can control the hardware and software that will sign your messages and allow you to identify.
And maybe everything will use this. For exemple when you want to take the train, you buy a ticket, but instead of giving you a paper, they give you a signed message. Or they just rememeber you and ask you to sign or decrypt a message when you enter the train as a proof that it's really you.

Anyway, it's time to go to sleep now :)

I found some good photos from Paris :
http://galeries.nah-ko.org/Paris

Hmm, I started this blog a few days ago, but didn't speak yet about myself and what I'm doing (this is what most blogs are supposed to be about). So let's start by telling what I did this weekend :)
Yes, this was a good weekend. On saturday I came with my parents to visit some friends we hadn't seen for a long time. This was really good. And today nothing special. I spent some time burning some CDs so that I can listen to them this week (maybe a portable ogg player is something I could buy, but it's too expensive for me at the moment). And now this is the end of the weekend. I'll have to go to bed soon if I don't want to be too much tired tomorrow. I'll have to get up soon. And I'm not really happy to come back to work this week :/
But this week I'll have to start all the papers to prepare my internship. I hope it will be ok (and I'm a little impatient to do it in January).

Wow, after Top Thrill Dragster, there is an even bigger Roller Coaster: Six Flags Great Adventure. I haven't found any picture taken from the top yet, but that might be fun :)