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Governments rebel against Microsoft, line up for Linux | |
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| Time: 08:45 EST/13:45 GMT | News Source: E-Mail | Posted By: Brian Kvalheim | ||
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Enylson Camolesi has only to look at his teen-age daughter to understand the challenges of overcoming addiction. He’s gently trying to help her kick the habit, grimly aware that the difficult task at home is what he’s attempting to replicate, on a massive scale, throughout the Brazilian government. Stopping cold turkey may not be an option, but they hope that with time and patience, Brazil’s bureaucrats can be weaned off their dependence on Microsoft Corp. and made to switch to free operating systems such as Linux. A workshop here in May for 2,000 government employees was a modest start. | ||
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| #1 By 9589 (68.17.52.2) at 8/12/2004 3:53:50 PM |
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More drivel from the "main stream" IT press . . . No, wait! It is an article from a paper in India talking about open sore shoulda, coulda, woulda in Brazil and China?
Boy, Activewin is dragging the depths to continue to spark this psuedo controversy. Moving right along . . . |
| #2 By 8556 (12.217.111.74) at 8/13/2004 7:29:04 PM |
| I'd like to point out that the article mentions Enylson Camolesi's daughter having to go cold turkey without Microsoft. Its not the OS she'll miss. It's probably her killer games. Gotta start over getting more games. I feel her pain. |
| #3 By 21203 (4.5.32.137) at 8/14/2004 2:22:19 AM |
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Actually I agree that consoles have exactly the benefits that #11 states but the irony is that it doesn't help or promote OSS at all, so I have no idea why he'd even bring it up. :o
And it's not quite yet to decide the death of the PC game yet.... |
| #4 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/14/2004 4:11:18 AM |
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Curious....
Has anyone here ever migrated even a small Windows NW - say one server, and 10 clients over to Linux and OSS productivity applications? I've migrated plenty to Windows away from mostly debian and Apple, and a few others from older NT/SCO Unix environments [NT4 Dom, w/Unices based DB, etc...], to W2K or W2K3 and XP, but haven't migrated anyone from say, W2K and a mix of Win clients to a Linuces/Open Office environment. I was wondering if anyone had actually done that - inclusive of all client-server apps and users documents and settings, etc... One of the things I note in each implementation we do, is the requirement to add new features and functionality - e.g., WLAN's, network document scanners for law/CPA firms, and usually newer versions of applications like "Summation" and some kind of server based mobile information services like Black Berry BES, or OMA on Exchange. I ask this, because while I hear of movements toward OSS, what I do not see are the details, and specific services to be migrated and new services people like to include when making such changes. Are there any case studies/examples of such a migration that one can examine? I mean not X or Y piece, but having to tackle the whole solution for a small company or physician's practice, etc... - where many programs have to run in a small environment in order for the business to run profitably. Have any of the OSS guys here participated in such a migration that they can share. If they have, are the designs, documentation for such migrations also treated as OSS, or is that part of the service side one might monetize? Thanks. |
| #5 By 9589 (66.57.148.46) at 8/14/2004 2:15:08 PM |
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#15 - The City of Munich's CIO, otherwise known as the special ed of the IT world, has been telling us for a year and a half that they are gonna, coulda, shoulda, woulda, migrated to open sore and the "main stream" IT press and this web site has "kindly" been keeping us all (ad naseum) abreast of their progress!
I am sure <snicker> there will be more to follow . . . |
| #6 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/14/2004 6:33:10 PM |
| US Govt. procurement policies will kill it - not because they are against OSS in any way, but because a slapped together OS that isn't even qualified for IDC Group II consideration will not be able to meet minimum Govt. standards for Group IV Certification - Like both W2K and W2K3 already do. The NSA's public resource has produced a hardened version of a Linux Distro - not because it advocates OSS, or Linux, but because the Govt. hopes and prays that people considering Linux will begin with a hardened version of it http:/www.nsa.gov National Standard Technical Workstations prohibit the use of a Linuces of any kind. There are certified Commercial Unices, but they are subjected to rigorous setup and conformance standards that would render them useless to all but closed Govt. networks. There may be some experimentation, but no operational use - not where the interests of the people are concerned. Even Govt. has personalities that spend money foolishly - they will however have to answer for it at periodic reviews. Flame it up if you like, but I spent 20 years in that world and at the NSA specifically. There, and amongst professionals who literally drool when they encounter a Linuces - to exploit it. It's a neat place - where mathematics is the language and people simply do not have time for any part of meaningful work to be shaped by "Bovine Scatology" I mean, OS'es are read bit for bit, one mark/space at a time and on graph-paper. All who "professionalize" are required to do that as a matter of course. Once one is that intimate with an OS, one can see where a small teaching OS was extrapolated to become Linux. The mystery is why? "Any thing but Microsoft" "any one but the US?" Who knows... Personally, and as a patriot, I am delighted each time I see a foreign Govt. cozy up to it - and for very different reasons than a preferance for closed source. |
| #7 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/14/2004 11:42:03 PM |
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Hal come on...you know enough to know that the US Govt. - especially the alphabet agencies are not going to accept the findings from a German lab. Especially opposite so specific a build/configuration as depicted in you r example. Approval isn't even based upon second parties, much less third parties supporting one of their own releases with a company [IBM] that has one of its main HQ in Stuttgart - just outside the gate of HQ US EUCOM. You know as well that qualifying to be able to submit for certification is not the same as certifying.
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| #8 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/15/2004 2:30:06 PM |
| #23 - that was actually funny. Undulator tape, too! Red squiggles on white tape - actual mark/space bits that one had to read in one's head... - standards were tough many decades ago. But since their museum is open and includes even some of my work, I think they'll forgive me. On a serious note, and it is...if one is to run a Linuces in the enterprise, please make sure you really know what you are doing and really understand the many hundreds of commands you will have to execute in the CLI to truly lock it down and run it safely. Don't take for granted that it is any more secure than any other system. We have to publish the exact command sequences we use to make it secure and have them reviewed by people whose job it is to poke our work full of holes. That's oversight and a process we welcome, but it isn't easy and it doesn't just happen. A lot of people may be led to believe that one can just blow the OS on and walk away and be safe - that is not true. There are people who know how to take it completely apart, root it, and own it. My concern is that American business people will take for granted that one system over another is inherently more secure. While there is profit in cleaning up such messes, I don't like to earn revenue that way - it means innocent people have been hurt. We may hear of MS security issues and exploits, but that does not mean that they do not exist in greater frequency in other OS'es - after all, part of exploitation is concealing it. Frankly, I am grateful MS vulnerabilities get so much attention - it is very hard to hide any weakness and I assess it has made their products a lot more secure than people think - inherently so. In the context of cryptography and cryptanalysis MS certainly is more secure. That is a debate I'd embrace any day of the week and I'd supply the graphpaper and #2 pencils and prove it with mathematics. As for standards at the national schools providing oversight, it is true that professional cryptanalysts understand and work at the individual bit level and in their heads - always has been and I pray it always will be the standard - how else is a scientist supposed to truly understand a system? |
| #9 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/15/2004 3:50:07 PM |
| Closed, you are assuming that it has not already been done and confirmed by thousdands of others whose duty it is to report proven findings. Windows is actually very secure and very hard to compromise. The people developing exploits are very bright, and very determined. While it is getting very hard for and on such criminals, the potential take is too attractive for them to stop. Sadly, a lot of very skilled people have not benefitted from their abilities - those in the former Soviet Union and many in the former East Block. Hopefully, they will find good work and ways to apply their skills. |
| #10 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at 8/15/2004 6:13:02 PM |
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Hal, they'll never be enough. That is the nature of the exploitation of communications by other than the intended recipients. Consider all system communications as "traffic." The volume opposite Windows is staggering as compared to all others. Against that volume of traffic it is easier to learn how the communications are structured - one has more to base analysis upon. In the case of OSS, the construct is in the public domain and freely shared. One does not need to even look at the resultant traffic to know how it is structured. The system for generating it is already known and recovered, fully. That is two steps beyond where one starts [normally] - identifying the underlying language being the first. Since that, too, is known, one has an enormous head start as there is little to have to reconstruct.
There will always be the contest between system designers and those exploiting them - those systems that are based upon closed, unpublished structures are by their nature, more difficult to exploit in any fundamental way. Those systems which are open are similarly easier to exploit, because the construct is well known and freely available. This is especially true of monolithic systems where all processes run from a central location and in uniform ways - such as in the I/O and File System within the Linuces' monolithic Kernel. Closed micro-kernel designs aren't executed in the same way and may be much more easily secured. From the perspective of an interceptor, or cryptanalyst, these are fundamental elements. Same is true of cryptographers who design secure communications systems who do all possible to keep closed, the structure of their systems. Operating Systems are no different. They are, in fact, identical - in that they are an orchestra of messaging and communications sub-systems. And closed, we could go on about non-standard, primitive driving polynomials all day, or netagtive random binary seeding, but it would do no good - you'd snipe away no matter what I or any one else had to say. |
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