Dear Jacob,
Everything looks well based on your implementation the excellent comments
and nits picked in previous posts. I would change the help and security
sections slightly. You are welcome to use what you can.
On Sun, 21 Dec 2008, Jacob Torrey wrote:
HELP AVAILABILITY:
The Linux community has been around for a while, and is comprised of local
community organizations, non profit educational organizations and
commercial service firms. Note that these support and educational
facilities are in the process of evolving and can be found as social
groups, non profits and as commercial endeavors. The quality of this
operation and maintenance (O&M) function is very good, but finding and
using the proper channels to acquire that help for a particular situation
can be daunting. Sometimes this can be easy. Canonical, the sponsor of
Ubuntu has their world-wide help center up here in downtown Montreal.
A simple Google search will return many solutions to your problem, as part
of the social aspect of free software, there are forums and chat rooms
worldwide where you can receive free help, often from the authors of
particular Linux products. In the Linux world the most important persons
are the actual authors and developers of the open source software. If you
want more conventional service, there are organizations that provide
education and support in addition to companies that provide commercial
support for GNU/Linux.
The important element here is that there are various levels of help either
as social outreach, educational organizations or commercial. The
important element is that these resources are often local to your
community, or global but within your social sphere, and this can make a
great difference if you have ever waited on the phone for some distant
"technical support specialist".
A final point here is that as part of the Linux community there is a
different paradigm, the lines between a "client" and a "service provider"
often are blurred. you find, as you gain knowledge that contributing to
the community either with expertise or as a patron of this art form which
is open source becomes personally important.
SECURITY:
Information Security is an individual computer users choice. If you are
cautious you will learn how to secure your hardware and software. If you
are not you will be taken advantage of. That said, GNU/Linux has always
shined in this area. Since it's actively developed by thousands of people
all around the world, it has an inherent peer-review system. As Eric
Raymond, a Linux advocate once wrote: "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are
shallow." Time and again security holes in the Linux system are patched
in hours, while commercial software which does not have this massive
review and revision capability often lags behind.
Also, unlike Microsoft, which has deadlines to meet, GNU/Linux only
releases new versions when there are enough new features, there is much
less rush, and less chance of cutting corners in terms of security.
Generally, whenever a security problem is fixed, there is a world-wide
network of developers that are working to fix it within 24 hours.
Finally, the overall design of Linux, and also the more recent Apple
Macintosh Operating System which is based on Linux's cousin, BSD Unix, are
designed to limit exposure in case of an exploit, because of this and many
other security design innovations, there are almost no viruses for Linux.
That's it for me. Thanks for the chance to help and...
Kindest Regards,
Paul Flint
(802) 479-2360
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Paul Flint
Barre Open Systems Institute
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skype: flintinfotech
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Consilium
gratuitum .~.
valet /V\
quanti /( )\
numerantur ^^-^^
