[plug] Is Red hat truly flawed?

[Peter Wright]

On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 03:13:51PM +0800, Jason Nicholls wrote:
> A followup,
> 
> If you're interested with the this topic then check out the Link mailing list
> (and look for postings from Adam Todd):
> 
> 	http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link0004/

Thanks for that, Jason. Yes, 'tis indeed interesting.

> He has a knack for getting people worked up, perhaps he likes being annoying
> ;)

One of the messages I found particularly amusing...

http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link0004/0209.html

It's from the same Robert Hart (RedHat rep) briefly cited in the
article. He puts it rather more bluntly than he was quoted as doing in
the article. Very appropriate.

> Later,
> 
> Jason Nicholls

This Adam Todd character reminds me very much of a few other trollers
I've encountered. One guy a little while ago - think it was on a linux
newsgroup (it wasn't this list, was it?), decided that Linux had a
fatal flaw because the source was freely available, so any evil person
with programming knowledge would therefore be able to modify anyone's
kernel and basically get access anywhere he/she wanted.

Obviously, that person was missing a few minor details, but (of
course) he didn't understand anything about what he was talking, but
just kept going and going and pissing people off who had originally
tried to politely explain and fill the massive hole in his
comprehension.

Another one, more recently, I've had the (dis)pleasure of reading on
the comp.os.freebsd.misc newsgroup - one "Reverend" Don Kool. Bloody
idiot, but presents himself as a knowledgeable Unix(tm) sysadmin,
patronising FreeBSD/Linux/etc as perfectly good "toy" OS's, quite
suitable for "students and tinkerers". He's had any number of lucid
rebuttals, but he doesn't care and he doesn't shut up.

 From my brief read through the Link mailing list, it looks like Mr
Todd strongly resembles Kool in that last attribute at least. :)

Pity that Todd actually managed to find a journalist to listen to him.

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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