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Slashback: Vista Rewrite, Tuttle Travesty, Mac Botnets 269

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the engage-brain-before-putting-mouth-in-motion dept.
Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories including Microsoft denies Vista rewrite, Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it, MS Virtual Server slips and VMWare fills the gap, Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges, Tux in retail part 2, a renewed bid to register the Linux trademark in Australia, OpenSPARC.net shades of the past, and a follow up on Mac botnets -- Read on for details.

Microsoft denies Vista rewrite. moochfish writes "Contrary to a heavily doubted feature earlier this week, Business 2.0 magazine reports that Microsoft will not be rewriting large portions of its operating system. From the article, 'Microsoft's own blogger Robert Scoble checked into the story and got a denial from an executive at Microsoft's PR firm, who says he's not aware of any Xbox programmers working on Windows.'"

Tuttle Oklahoma city manager still doesn't get it. gEvil (beta) writes "The Register has posted a followup to this past week's wonderfully humorous story about Tuttle, Oklahoma's technically inept city manager, Jerry Taylor. It appears that Mr. Taylor is not pleased with the publicity he has received due to the incident, despite his prior statement of, 'I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.' He sent an email to the Register's marketing team asking that people stop emailing him and making fun of him."

MS Virtual Server Slips and VMWare fills in the gap. nizo writes "On the heels of the announcement that Microsoft Virtual Server is slipping to 2007, VMware has announced the beta release of the VMware Virtual Machine Importer, which has the capability to convert system images stored in 3rd party formats (including Microsoft Virtual Server images) to VMware virtual machines. The good news is VMware released the importer as a free download."

Samsung execs plead guilty to price fixing charges. bdotcdot writes "Electronics News is running a story on Samsung executives who have plead guilty to the price fixing of DRAM. From the story 'According to the one-count felony charge filed in federal court in San Francisco, at various times during the period from April 1, 1999, to June 15, 2002, these three Samsung employees conspired with unnamed employees from other memory makers to fix the prices of DRAM sold to certain computer and server manufacturers in the U.S., in violation of the Sherman Act. The conspiracy directly affected sales to U.S. computer makers Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Company, Compaq Computer Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and Gateway Inc., the charge said.'"

Tux in retail part 2. silentbob4 writes "Mad Penguin brings us the second and final installment in their 'Tux in Retail' series, in which they interview Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony; Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos; Mepis Linux founder Warren Woodford; and Kevin Jones, Micro Center Vice President of Merchandising, to get their take Tux's jump into big box retail. The first installment was run as an earlier Slashdot article."

Renewed bid to register Linux trademark in Australia? daria42 writes "A renewed bid to register the word 'Linux' as an Australian trademark must meet an early April deadline or face defeat." From the article: "'The deadline to file a response to the Examiner's rejection has not yet passed, and LMI and its attorneys are still determining if they will respond,' a spokesperson for the body told ZDNet Australia in an emailed statement."

OpenSPARC.net, shades of the past. Andy Updegrove writes "In what must have seemed to many as a bold move, Sun Microsystems recently announced that it would release the source code for its UltraSparc T1 processor under the GPL, supported by a new organization that it calls OpenSPARC.net. But to those that have been around for a while, the announcement had an eerily familiar sound to it, and that sound was the echo of an organization called SPARC International. Formed 18 years ago to license the SPARC chip design to multiple vendors to ensure second sourcing for the hardware vendors that Sun hoped would adopt it, SPARC International seemed to be every bit as revolutionary for its time as Sun's new initiative does today. Motorola launched a somewhat similar group called 88open to support its own RISC chip design, and later IBM, Motorola and Apple launched the PowerOpen Association to promote the PowerPC. The Websites of the PowerOpen Association and 88open are long gone, and seem to have escaped even the WayBack Machine's reach. But SPARC International's site, looking very retro and neglected, can still be seen - at least for now."

Follow up on Mac botnets. An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com has an interesting follow up to skeptical claims as a result of a previous Slashdot story. Mac OS X systems have indeed been spotted in botnets, thanks largely to several worms going around that take advantage of Web-based applications running vulnerable PHP software. From the article: 'By leveraging this PHP flaw, the attackers were able to seed the Mac systems with several tools designed to turn them into drones for use in waging destructive distributed denial of service attacks.'

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Slashback: Vista Rewrite, Tuttle Travesty, Mac Botnets More

Slashback: Vista Rewrite, Tuttle Travesty, Mac Botnets

Comments Filter:

  • "Mac" botnets are nothing more than *NIX botnets (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:01PM (#15022145)
    And they usually come from the same place, as the followup notes:

    A php-based web application (forum, blog, CMS, etc.) that has an exploit, usually php injection, whereby various script/botnet kiddie tools and irc-related items are installed, usually in /tmp or /var/tmp. Perhaps they'll install a php shell too. Sometimes, they'll try to run a rootkit against the local machine.

    This is nothing new, and doesn't really have anything to do with "Macs". It has more to do with php and people not keeping their php-based web applications up to date than anything[1]. It is interesting, though, that since Mac OS X is essentially a UNIX, that it's certainly vulnerable to a whole slew of this family of exploits.

    [1] Just as a Mac sitting on the internet with apache and ssh open doesn't really test anything beyond the security of the default configurations of apache and OpenSSH on that OS and architecture. And that's exactly the point.

    • Re:"Mac" botnets are nothing more than *NIX botnet (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      by the way, php also runs on non-unix machines too... I think even windows is included in the supported platforms list.

    • Re:"Mac" botnets are nothing more than *NIX botnet (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:30PM (#15022348)
      It's also worth noting that the exploits are against 'PHP applications' and not PHP itself.

      I can't count the number of terrified middle managers who scream bloody murder to me about PHPNuke or PHPBB bugs, thinking that the flaws are in PHP itself.

      Again, this boils down to keeping your software up to date. Careful pruning of your php.ini file also helps.
      • PHP is not totally blameless in this. It is VERY easy to write PHP code that is subject to injection-style attacks, mostly because it's SO easy to insert one string into another string without doing the appropriate quoting and character escaping. Ie, PHP makes it easy to do the wrong thing.

        Whether or not this is PHP's fault, or the fault of a programming community that doesn't think enough about security, is left as an excercise for the reader :)
        • While PHP does do an awful lot of making strings easy to mung, fold, spindle, and mutilate, I have to say that I personally think that adding a convenience to the language does not a security hole make.

          I think that the real problem here lies in the fact that many PHP apps are coded incredibly sloppily... like most web content... ignoring even basic coding common sense.

          How often would injection attacks take place if every coder obeyed one of the most basic tenants of web application development?

          "THOU SHALT N

    • Re:"Mac" botnets are nothing more than *NIX botnet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Thursday March 30, 2006 @05:52AM (#15024887) Homepage
      doesn't really have anything to do with "Macs".

      Don't be stupid. It has everything to do with "Macs" and any other unix-like operating system that runs perl & php.

      Its worth knowing that that there is people attacking OS X in the wild and the vectors they are using.

      Too many Mac users believe they're invlunerable & start to play around with internet facing services without adequately firewalling themselves.

      Articles like this are a good reminder that any unix-like system can be made vulnerable, even if its its pretty well hardened by default.

  • Mr Tuttle (Score:4, Funny)

    by rob1980 ( 941751 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:07PM (#15022197)
    It appears that Mr. Taylor is not pleased with the publicity he has received due to the incident, despite his prior statement of, 'I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.'

    Yeah, the publicity isn't so great when it's not the local ABC affiliate oohing and aahing over your latest plan to put a new tree in the city park, is it?

    • Re:Mr Tuttle (Score:3, Informative)

      by LDoggg_ ( 659725 )
      There was a pretty good and mostly objective wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] about the guy.

      Unfortunately it has been removed.

      Looks like Mr Taylor wasn't bluffing about his FBI connections.

      • Re:Mr Tuttle (Score:3, Informative)

        by whitehatlurker ( 867714 )
        The page was removed basically because the powers-that-be felt Taylor wasn't worth the waste of wiki space. That has to hurt even more than the publicity.

        There was also concern that the page was an attack on Taylor. There were some sections that could have been reworded, but he's gotten more than his share of Warhol time [wikipedia.org].

        • Re:Mr Tuttle (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Mein Gott ... this guy was an Internet Technologies manager!!!!

          (From wikipedia) "Taylor earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas at Arlington, a BA in management from National-Louis University's McLean, Virginia campus, and a MBA from Averett University in Danville, Virginia.[1]

          Taylor worked for 22 years with E-Systems as a program manager, 17 of those years working on a classified government contract in Virginia. He later ran his own computer business and worked as an Internet technol

      • Re:Mr Tuttle (Score:2, Informative)

        by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
        There's still the Talk page [wikipedia.org] to see.

    • Let's add him to the language (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Thursday March 30, 2006 @02:41AM (#15024230) Journal
      Should he be a noun, as in "that move was a real Jerry Taylor"?

      Or is a verb phrase more appropriate, such as "pull a Jerry Taylor", "Jerry Taylorize", or "go totally Jerry Taylor on $INNOCENT_TARGET"?

      Or should the winning entry be an adjective, as in "that email was *so* Jerry Taylor"?

  • Tuttle Oklahoma city manager: next step (Score:4, Funny)

    by m_chan ( 95943 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:10PM (#15022215) Homepage
    Email him a tinyurl [tinyurl.com] warning him that Tuttle's site has been coopted by an outside suspect, likely terrorist-affiliated organization.

  • The Scoop (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not saying there is any truth to the 60% rewrite figure, but if I wanted to verify it I woundn't ask an on-the-record PR guy. Blogger: So is Vista in the shitter? PR guy: Sure is Ken. (seemingly from nowhere a chair hits the PR guy)
    • Think about how weird this is -- "Microsoft's own Blogger" has to go ask someone from their PR firm (i.e., third-party, hired-help, outside MS) for accurate information about what's going on at Microsoft . The fact that he has to go outside his own company to get info about his own company tells you all you need to know -- forget about rewrite percentages!
      • "Microsoft's own Blogger" has to go ask someone from their PR firm (i.e., third-party, hired-help, outside MS) for accurate information about what's going on at Microsoft.

        I thought the same - how strange it seemed. But it all makes sense really. The PR/Marketing department has been running Microsoft for a long time - Apple have shown that the smoke and mirrors, done well, really helps the sales figures - so I suppose it's not surprising that they are giving it a go. Still, odd that Scoble, supposedly the

        • Apple have shown that the smoke and mirrors, done well, really helps the sales figures

          Yeah, but you have to actually have something to reveal enticingly through the smoke, or reflect dazzlingly in the mirrors. Apple has elegant hardware and OSX. Microsoft has ... "uh, XP, yeah XP, but, y'know, better, and coming Real Soon Now. Don't buy anything else!".

          Sorry everybody, but Vista became nothing more than "XP: The Unnecessary Update" the moment they dropped WinFS from the feature list...

          • Yeah, but you have to actually have something to reveal enticingly through the smoke, or reflect dazzlingly in the mirrors.

            Precisely. Having beautiful products helps with the whole mystique thing, and Windows "Fisher Price" XP on some cheap shitty HP or Dell box doesn't really have quite the same impact.

            Anyway, I'd go as far as to say that even WinFS wouldn't have been worth, what, four...five years of waiting.

            (Disclaimer: I use a Mac, so...)

            iqu :D

  • Sent to citymgr@cityoftuttle.org (Score:5, Interesting)

    by anomaly ( 15035 ) <tom DOT cooper3 AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:16PM (#15022258)
    I sent this to the city manager. I have not yet received a reply.

    Sir,
    I appreciate that you were frustrated that your city website was
    non-functional, but it appears to me that the people to whom you
    complained were not responsible, and that the tone of your messages tended
    to be combative.

    The folks from CentOS were being polite and helpful, based on my read of
    the messages. I believe that you owe them an apology. they had
    absolutely NOTHING to do with the problems you experienced, and tried to
    assist you anyway. For you to respond with "I am sorry that we had to go
    through the process and accusations to get the problem resolved" They did
    nothing wrong. You accused them, and frankly it was uncharitable on your
    part.

    Please extend an official apology to those folks at www.centos.org. They
    deserve it.

    Please also note that I am not affiliated with CentOS in any way (except
    that I use their Linux distribution quite happliy.) I read about this
    spat on a technology-focused website known as slashdot
    http://www.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]

    Respectfully,
    • I good response, but I doubt it'll get through the thick skull of this guy. It seems to me the fatal flaw of many elected officials (and boy oh boy has this become BLINDINGLY obvious in the last 5 years) is they can't live up to their own mistakes. That gets to be a HUGE problem when you elect someone that makes a lot of mistakes.

      If this guy had simply eaten a huge helping of crow after he acted like a total jerk, you can bet that this story would never have made The Register or Slashdot. Who wants to re
    • The folks from CentOS were being polite and helpful, based on my read of the messages. I believe that you owe them an apology.

      the guy still thinks that they (the evil hackerorrists) `helped' him after he threatened them with the FBI -- which is total bullshit, as anyone who read the email exchange [centos.org] can clearly see.

      FTA: "I asked for the strange website to be removed because it blocked my City web site and I could not post public information. I only got help after threatening to contact the FBI."

      so yeah

      • He still doesn't understand that they didn't help him because he threatened to call the FBI, but in spite of it.

        He needs to be canned - he is incompetant not only from a technical standpoint, but as a manager in general.

    • Re:Sent to citymgr@cityoftuttle.org (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @09:18PM (#15022614)
      My note:

      To the Honorable Lonnie Paxton and members of the Town Council of the City of Tuttle,

      You may want to consider hiring a new town manager, replacing Mr. Jerry A. Taylor who recently earned the City of Tuttle worldwide embarrassment with his legal threats against Centos.

      Mr. Taylor claims to have been a "Computer Systems Engineer" with 22 years of experience. However, upon discovering an extremely simple problem with the City of Tuttle web site, rather than proceeding to work with the hosting company responsible for the management of the City of Tuttle web site, Mr. Taylor chose to publicly harass and attempt to intimidate the developers responsible for designing a free operating system called CentOS.

      What is CentOS? Like the well-known Microsoft Windows, it is an operating system. More specifically, CentOS is a FREE operating system built by volunteers, largely based on the also-free GNU and Linux projects.

      Transcripts of the Mr. Taylor's juvenile threats toward CentOS are posted publicly on the Internet, and those transcripts underscore Mr. Taylor's utter incompetence, unwillingness to accept FREE help from folks who provided a FREE operating system, even though the CentOS developers have NO responsibility whatsoever to clean up Mr. Taylor's mess.

      When Mr. Taylor FINALLY agreed that the Centos folks had nothing to do with the misconfiguration problem (the problem is actually due to two parties: the company hosting the City of Tuttle web site, and Mr. Jerry A. Taylor himself) he not only was not apologetic, but downright insulting in his response.

      The City of Tuttle has earned worldwide ridicule in the face of this issue, and the dated and sophomoric appearance of Tuttle's now-well-publicized web site has earned widespread harsh criticism and ridicule as well.

      Please consider replacing Mr. Jerry A. Taylor. Many of us feel sorry for the City of Tuttle as we believe that there are many people more deserving of his salary and who can perform a much better job were they given the opportunity to fill his position. Jerry A. Taylor's salary is money wasted right now.

      Here are some of the web pages covering this story that you may wish to check out:

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_cen tos/ [theregister.co.uk]
      http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/27/ 135221&tid=133 [slashdot.org]
      http://www.digg.com/security/Why_every_city_counci l_needs_at_least_one_geek_=%5D [digg.com]
      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/27/tuttle_ema il/ [theregister.co.uk]

      Mr. Taylor's outbursts and threats toward the generous CentOS folks may be seen here:

      http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=127 [centos.org]

      As you will note, Mr. Taylor's outbursts are unbecoming of a city official and earn little respect for the City of Tuttle. Even after realizing that the CentOS representatives were not to blame, but he and his web hosts are, and even after having received hundreds of emails from kind folks all over the world who are attempting to explain to him that the CentOS developers are not to blame, he is insisting that the CentOS folks would only help him after he threatened to contact the FBI. This is not only patently false, but downright slanderous and such statements could earn a defamation of character suit from CentOS. I know if I were that developer I would consider filing suit against Tuttle over such false statements made to the media.
    • Send it to the Mayor. Town managers can be fired by the mayor and the town council. :) If you send it to Jerry, he's likely to send the email to the bit bucket unread. Better off sending it TO Lonnie Paxton and CCing Jerry Taylor.
    • I wrote a similar letter but it sent it via snail mail to both the city manager and the mayor. You should try that instead. It might make more of an impact than email.

  • Best part of this whole Tuttle thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Heem ( 448667 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:16PM (#15022260) Homepage Journal
    Is that this guy just still hasn't got a clue..

    Now I am being flooded with emails from CentOS users that after knowing the answer say the problem was simple.

    What I can't stand more than anything is someone that can't admit that they were wrong, even at this stage of the game.

    • This guy is the biggest tool ever (Score:5, Funny)

      by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @10:01PM (#15022835)
      I still can't believe this tool. He actually thinks the threat to the FBI is what prompted the CentOS developer (lead dev if I remember correctly). More likely the developer got tired of this fagtart harassing him. The city manager justified his actions by saying that anyone who is experienced on the internet knows better than to follow directions on a website. When the directions are to consult your site's administrator, I think those are pretty safe instructions.

      And I can't believe this twiddle dick STILL hasn't apologized. He shoots back with "there should have been better directions". It is mind boggling that in 20 years of his supposed IT experience he's never run into a default webserver page. I really think this ass clown is deserving of any and all harassment he gets. In fact, he is deserving of a bill for CentOS's wasted time. If I had go-go gadget balls, I'd teabag that butthole surfer from 12 states away.
      • He is from Oklahoma. Have you ever been there? If have been there then you would know why he is acting the way he is. To him everybody who is not from OK or TX is "one of them sumbitches". The word "sumbitch" by the way is the most used word in Oklahoma as in "I'll have some eyygs (eggs) and one of those submtiches over there".

        Go visit OK some time, it's an interesting sociological learning experience.
        • ...and all of only about 12 or so miles from the offending town, I will have you know that very few people think in those terms. Most of them don't.

          Nahh... This guy's just flipping clueless and doesn't understand that he just shoved a stick into the hornets' nest.
    • I'd have told him to get the FBI involved... then he'd really have looked foolish...

  • 60% of an operating system in 6 months - NO WAY (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MerlynEmrys67 ( 583469 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:17PM (#15022270)
    Lets assume that Vista is as few as a 1000KLoc - (I'd bet another order of magnatude personally) That implies 600KLoc of new code written, tested debugged, etc. in 6 months. Uh - NO operating system development isn't that fast. I am not even sure I would buy the line that the current Vista codebase is 60% new/changed from XP (RTM - not SP2, patched to heck)
    • What if the 60% number was a rewrite of the parts of Vista that are related to consumer editions, like the media center parts?

      If so, the scope falls dramatically and the estimate might be on target, but 60% rewrite of anything* is a pretty big effort (* where anything is defined as 'software ready for the retail market')

    • Re:60% of an operating system in 6 months - NO WAY (Score:4, Informative)

      by WalterGR ( 106787 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @11:27PM (#15023296) Homepage

      Lets assume that Vista is as few as a 1000KLoc - (I'd bet another order of magnatude personally)

      FWIW, according to this article [cigital.com] (PDF - sorry) from CyberDefense Magazine, Microsoft Word alone was 2 million lines of code... in 1995.

      It also says that Windows 2000 had 35 million LOC, and XP has 40 million.

      Assume that the growth between XP and Vista is the same: that means 45 million LOC for Vista. So 60% is 27 million lines of code. It would be ridiculous to re-write that much - let alone impossible.

      • How big do you guys think the Windows group is at Microsoft? We're not talking about 20 or 30 guys tinkering around with an operating system here. That MAY be the numbers for one of the large sub groups like Kernel or something. But there are scores of subgroups with subgroups of their own, many of which borrow guys from completely disparate groups that have nothing to do with windows per-se. These guys are very focused doing everything from security, to graphics, to media, to whatever.... 1000Kloc is not

    • Re:60% of an operating system in 6 months - NO WAY (Score:4, Funny)

      by EuroChild ( 523969 ) on Thursday March 30, 2006 @12:29AM (#15023649)
      No, the other 400K lines are just being copied and pasted from OS X.

      Easy!
    • The totality of the Windows code is about 50M LOC, which means that 60% changed would be 30 million lines of code. You cannot develop a system that big that fast, period, no matter how many engineers you throw at it. Things will just plain fall apart. That's a pretty good hint that the story is bogus.
    • Lets assume that Vista is as few as a 1000KLoc - (I'd bet another order of magnatude personally) That implies 600KLoc of new code written, tested debugged, etc. in 6 months. Uh - NO operating system development isn't that fast. I am not even sure I would buy the line that the current Vista codebase is 60% new/changed from XP (RTM - not SP2, patched to heck)

      Vista is proportadly around 50 million lines of code. Rewriting 30 million lines of code in 9 months is, quite frankly, impossible. You can't just throw

  • VMware URL wrong (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:19PM (#15022278)
    The URL for VMware Importer beta is wrong: It should be: http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/vmimporter/ [vmware.com]

  • OpenSPARC (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Brietech ( 668850 )
    I was under the impression that opening up the design of the UltraSPARC T1 was partly just to bolster interest in it (and it really is an incredible design from a hardware perspective) and partly just to allow people like EE and computer architecture students, along with hobbyists and engineers, to understand how it actually works at its most basic level. Although I realize i'm in the vast minority, as someone that actually DOES do microprocessor design in their spare time (I just completed my first working
    • So what can the average hacker do with the UltraSPARC T1 design? It's not like you can go to Radio Trash to pick up a pocket chip fab (heck, I can't even buy a barrel connector at Radio Trash any more, I had to buy one of their crap power supplies to gut it for the cable and connector. Feh!)

    • Re:OpenSPARC (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joe_bruin ( 266648 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @10:53PM (#15023104) Homepage Journal
      Sun was always hoping, and still is, that others will take the SPARC design and implement their own chips. They want economies of scale to start playing into SPARC like it has into the x86 and ARM market. Obviously, joe hacker is not going to be doing this, but there are some companies that can and very well might.

      Here's why other people would want to make SPARC chips: Linux. Oh no, here comes the zealot talk. Actually, not quite. Linux runs on the three leading server architectures, x86 (+AMD64), POWER, and SPARC. From a deployment and administration standpoint, you don't really care what CPU you're running on. With the T1, Sun released the CPU with the highest performance per Watt on the market (for some tasks). This is an attractive chip, but buying from Sun is not always appealing. Sun gear is pretty expensive.

      Today, there are many Taiwanese and Chinese motherboard makers, and they sell lots and lots of hardware. But their chips must always come from Intel or AMD (or Via, who's never been competitive). They would love nothing more than to have a standard CPU architecture that they can manufacture (TSMC or PMC can fab these for them) and take the profit cut from instead of handing that business to Intel. With Sun's release, they now have the tools to make a chip that is not only competitive with x86 and Power, but is actually top of the line, and at no additional cost to them. It already runs Linux, it's ready for blades, they know it will sell.

      Sun benefits by having cheaper SPARC CPUs on the market, driving down their costs and increasing their architecture share. The manufacturers benefit by being able to sell at the high end, and sell cheaper. Server buyers benefit, because there is now a cheap source for high end machines. Now, if these chips really move, don't be surprised to see Texas Instruments (who doesn't have a server chip, but does have the fabs and experience with SPARC) and even IBM (who will make whatever sells) start to make these.

  • CityManager Email (Score:3, Informative)

    by AmigaAvenger ( 210519 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:27PM (#15022340) Journal
    Looks like he managed to figure out how to edit the frontpage site so that it no longer shows his email, so if any slashdot user wishes to express their opinions on this matter the corresponding public official, here they are!

    city manager at citymgr@cityoftuttle.org [mailto],
    mayor at mayor@cityoftuttle.org [mailto].

    Enjoy!

    • Sorry, but I don't agree on harassing someone over e-mail. His public shame is enough, don't you think? PLUS, by posting his e-mail on the web, you just made his e-mail vulnerable to spammers.

      Worse, the e-mail address will be still available AFTER he resigns or his government period finishes. Will the next mayor have to cope with this?

      • #1: there is a very, very big difference between harassing someone, and letting a public official know what you think of the situation. Personally I think he SHOULD realize that he was wrong in this matter, and by the response he has given so far he still is not even willing to come close to accepting any blame. Yes, typical for a politician, but that is the reason they are open to public comments and such. (yes, as a city manager it is possible he is not elected, but appointed by the mayor or hired by t
        • #4) He should resign as he acted in a manner unbecoming an elected official and for making false statements in an official capacity, which could cost Tuttle a heap of money were the CentOS team inclined to sue
        • #1: there is a very, very big difference between harassing someone, and letting a public official know what you think of the situation.

          I'd just like to point out that he is *A* public official, not *YOUR* public official. The only people who really have a say in this are the townsfolk of his own electorate.
      • Both of those emails were posted on the Tuttle website before. I'm not sure if the mayor's address is still listed, but Jerry pulled the citymgr one from his page a few days ago, after all of this began.

      • Sorry, but I don't agree on harassing someone over e-mail.
        The poster GP post didn't call for harassment, he only posted his email for people to give replies to. Do you really think that the only possible use for email is harassment?

        His public shame is enough, don't you think?
        Not really. His latest responses of trying to deny he was responsible for the whole mess only show that he doesn't get it. He still thinks threatening to call the FBI is a Good Thing. Clearly the man has learned little through publi

    • Re:CityManager Email (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Oh, this is just getting sad! Leave the poor (stupid idiot) alone already. This is like the entire school ganging up on the kid who's mentally challenged. It's just pathetic and far too easy.

      To me, this is a classic example of how ignoring can be much more powerful than not. If the CentOS people had just ignored this guy after trying to help at first, he would have called the FBI and received his due justice from them for wasting their time. Instead, CentOS wasted time, slashdot readers wasted time, ta
  • MS don't have a serious competitor in Desktop OS. Right now they are competing with themselves. As long as they are able to sell more licenses of any of their brand of OS they don't care to innovate. I think when Apple and/or Linux Desktop becomes a serious competitor you see MS coming out with something. Firefox is the best example in this regard. IE7 is getting some make over on security front and also on UI front. Even though it is just an imitation of Firefox, it is a welcome change.
    • I know of at least one guy who heard that Vista was going to be late so he gave into his long felt desire to buy a Mac.
    • I don't think Linux can compete on the desktop without vendor hardware support, and I don't see any progress in that area. IMHO linux applications are pretty good, but hardware support without (at least) documentation is an insurmountable problem.

  • Tuttle NBC video (Score:5, Informative)

    by dustwun ( 662589 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:40PM (#15022408) Homepage
    Seems even the Tulsa NBC affiliate picked up the story. They've got a video online at http://www.kfor.com/global/category.asp?c=9667 [kfor.com], it's the Tuesday 10pm news story. The CentOS bit starts at around 4 minutes 13 seconds, and is around 3 minutes long.

    I'm not linking directly to it, because we've already crushed their bandwith enough for one week, but feel free to check it out.
    It's not at all flattering to the City Manager...
    • Well, it appears the video only works in IE, that will save bandwidth. I don't think I've ever seen a local news station have their whole news cast streamable online though. Most just have clips. And if this was available as a clip, it would've used less bandwidth than having people seek through the newscast. A little bit, at least.
    • You may not have posted a direct link, but I'm happy to [a1542makas...9094544wmv]!

      I can see in the comments that I'm not the only one who was slowed from accessing this by fascist plugin detection ;)
  • I tried importing a Virtual Machine when VMWare Player first came out. I could never get it to work. I was trying to run FreeDOS, but it kept giving me an error. Turns out, it would only work with types of Windows NT. 2000, XP, and 2003, I believe. It didn't work with the XP Embedded (x86) image I tried. Now that I check the correct link that someone else posted, it says support for non-Windows guest OSes is "experimental". At least they actually mention which guest OSes work this time.
  • and its just plain hilarity to make fun of people in Tuttle. So, just by location he set himself up. Nevermind whatever nonsense someone from a one horse town like that did.

  • Plausable Deniability? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Black Copter Control ( 464012 ) <samuel-local@bcgre e n . com> on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @08:53PM (#15022476) Homepage Journal
    ... got a denial from an executive at Microsoft's PR firm, who says he's not aware of any Xbox programmers working on Windows.'"

    I mean, like somebody's gonna randomly tell this PR Geek about technical matters? The obvious person to (not) ask (depending on whether or not you want a meaningfull answer) would be an executive in Microsoft's OS development group.

    eg: The fact that I've never personally seen George Bush snorting coke or had him tell me about it doesn't tell you much about whether he has or not (given that I've never met the man). Getting that denial from his best friend would mean a little bit more.

    • Well, I think if you'll look at all the evidence it becomes clear that re-writing 60% of the code in Vista in 6 months is simply a preposterous idea. While Microsoft executives themselves may not be a totally reliable source, generally they don't lie about something that can get them caught only shortly afterward. If the story were true you'd probbably just seem everyone clamming up until some official response comes out. The fact that the article didn't list any source for the rumour only makes the stor
      • While Microsoft executives themselves may not be a totally reliable source,

        No. My point is that The quote is not from a Microsoft Executive. It is from an exec for an outside PR firm who has no reason to be in contact with OS programming types -- especially if he wants to deny knowledge of what is happening.

        That 60% of the code needs to be ripped out and completely rewritten does relatively preposterous -- but if this 'couple of weeks delay' ultimately gets stretched out to late 2008, then it might not


        • That 60% of the code needs to be ripped out and completely rewritten does relatively preposterous -- but if this 'couple of weeks delay' ultimately gets stretched out to late 2008, then it might not be so preposterous.
          Ignoring for the moment that this story has no source for the whole 60% thing (so it should be just ignored like any other random rumor), It would absolutely TERRIBLE business practice to outright lie about a two week delay to your system builders (Dell, HP, etc) when it is in fact a year dela
          • There is much precedent for this.... (Vista was originally scheduled out when?). It's an ancient FUD tactic -- Tell the CEO/CIO types that the newest and greatest version of the OS is gonna be out "real Soon now" (Vaporware) with Gobs of capabilities, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, etc... Then keep moving the target, keeping it just close enough that these CxOs will hold off going to a (usually superior) competing product because the 'better' (or almost as good) product is 'just around the corner'... but the

  • Check your sources ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bob Loblaw ( 545027 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2006 @09:19PM (#15022624)
    'Microsoft's own blogger Robert Scoble checked into the story and got a denial from an executive at Microsoft's PR firm, who says he's not aware of any Xbox programmers working on Windows.' ... because an executive from MS's PR firm is the *first* person I would go to for the "truth" ... : /

    They are likely not aware of a lot of things ... that doesn't make them untrue.
  • [Jerry Taylor] sent an email to the Register's marketing team asking that people stop emailing him and making fun of him.

    If Taylor thinks the Register has any control over the internet's mail systems, there's yet another reason to make fun of him. Why doesn't he write the town newspaper to have people stop giving him dirty looks on the street after a disparaging article about him has been published.

  • Write a letter to Tuttle (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slamb ( 119285 ) * on Thursday March 30, 2006 @02:53AM (#15024274) Homepage
    I hope more people take the time to write to The City of Tuttle asking them to apologize. Dealing with people like this drains all motivation to get involved with projects like CentOS, so it's important to take care of this and prevent it from happening again.

    Here's the email I just sent:

    To: citymgr@cityoftuttle.org
    CC: mayor@cityoftuttle.org
    Subject: Apologize to CentOS

    Mr. Taylor,

    I'm writing in response to your recent letter to The Register [1]. I am appalled to learn of your continued hostility to the Johnny Hughes, the CentOS Team, and the open source community as a whole. I am a member of this community.

    You wrote that you "only got help after threatening to contact the FBI" [2]. That's a misleading statement without also mentioning that you threatened to contact the FBI prior to describing the problem or asking for help. I quote from your initial email: "Please remove your software immediately before I report it to government officials!!"

    Most organizations would have immediately directed you to their legal department and cut off all other contact. CentOS stuck with you through your lengthy email exchange and resolved your problem despite your threats and ingratitude. That shows a level of dedication and professionalism that you could never achieve. Even more so when you consider that they are volunteers and that you are not a paying customer. They are not obligated to help under even the best of circumstances.

    After CentOS provided you with the publicity you welcomed, you apparently discovered that the open source community has no respect for those who abuse our movers and shakers. Realize that an apology is a necessary first step to repair the damage you have done to your city's reputation.

    Sincerely,
    Scott Lamb

    [1] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/27/tuttle_ema il/ [theregister.co.uk]
    [2] - http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?sto ryid=127 [centos.org]

  • City of Tuttle in Microsoft's Adverts (Score:5, Funny)

    by steveoc ( 2661 ) on Thursday March 30, 2006 @07:51AM (#15025182)
    It wont be long now until the next installment of microsoft's 'Get the facts' campaing includes the following headline :

    City of Tuttle saves $ billions by migrating from Linux to Microsoft Windows.

    After an extensive evaluation in which the City of Tuttle compared Windows® and Linux, the city selected Microsoft® Windows Server System(TM). Besides the obvious cost savings of moving to Windows, the city manager of Tuttle observed that security was of prime importance in the decision. "Ive worked with computers for 22 years, and Ive seen first hand how an interweb running on linux can easily be hijacked by hackers without MY permission."

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