Re: Video editing in Linux?

From: J.O. Aho (user_at_example.net)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:34:26 +0200

SjT wrote:
> Andy Fraser <andyfraser31@hotmail.com> wrote:

SjT, It would be nice if you would stop to insult people the first you do in
your posts, but I guess that's impossible for you...

>>>OSS IS more insecure because it is far easier to find security holes
>>And to fix them.
> It's still insecure, whether you or anyone else can fix them quicker
> is not the point, once they're in, they're in and the damage has been
> done.

The bugs and security holes in closed source are there too and can be
exployted as easilly, and usually it's only the end users who don't know about
the problems, but the virus makers does.
As the end users don't know about the problems, they can't do anything about
it, whiel in the OSS world people can get the patch and close the open door,
or decide to not use the application/service.
When you get to know the fix for the closed source application, then it's
around 6 months after the discovery, so there are plenty time to take over the
system.

In the end, it's always the users/admins responsiblity to see to that their
system is up to date, no one else will do that for you... this is anothe
reason why there are so many viruses that uses old bugs for MSWin.

>>If anyone downloads and installs unconfirmed software from any old website
>>then that's their fault.
> It's still an issue with OSS.

And with closed source you don't have the chance to check if the software is a
backdoor or not, before it's to late and you no longer have control over your
computer.

>>Like it's already happening to Windows users? People run email attachments
>>or ActiveX controls that do nasty things all the time. People download
>>software (mostly CSS because there's no reason to "pirate" most OSS) from
>>P2P networks and binary NGs that's been hacked to install a virus when it's
>>run. You can't prevent stupidity.
> Well, i would find it much easier to add my code to an OS project than
> backwards engineering someone elses executable, in fact i wouldn't
> have a chance at doing that unless someone taught me how to code hex
> in machine code.

You mean like when there was a try to include a backdoor into the linux
kernel? This did fail, while there are loads of software with backdoors for
the closed source world.
You don't have to learn any "hex" to modify already binaries, there are tools
to make things quite easy fro you, give you the assembly code or even C code.

>>>No, what i am saying (And this may have changed i dont know) is that
>>>when i used linux to install anything in the past i had to compile the
>>>source files to the linux kernel so that it would run.
>>When in the past? In the last 5 years I've never come across that "issue".
> Well i'm awfully unlucky then, i apologise for my foolishness.

Maybe you should have tried that word you seems to attach to the begining of
your posts.

>>You haven't looked into it enough then.
>
> I'm constantly keeping an eye out on it, it seems there are plenty of
> little Open source projects and there's plenty of professional high
> end products, but to me, and i could be wrong, there seems nothing in
> the middle?!

There are many size of OSS projects and there are many levels of
"professionalism", but looking with an ignorant eye, you only find what you
want to find, the things that you want to "hate".

  //Aho