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China's Red Flag Linux to step onto global stage
InfoWorld ^ | September 04, 2003 | By Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service

Posted on 09/04/2003 2:16:53 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative

China's Red Flag Linux to step onto global stage

Alliance with HP strengthened as prelude to worldwide expansion of development effort

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- An alliance between Hewlett-Packard Co. and Chinese Linux developer Red Flag Software Co. Ltd. established last month should lead to cooperation between the two companies on technology development and marketing of Red Flag Linux to companies in China and around the world.

The announcement, made in Beijing on Aug. 20, strengthens a long-standing relationship between the two companies and represents a milestone in Red Flag's plans to expand its business outside the world's most populous country.

The two companies plan to first focus their cooperative efforts in China, and then expand their work to include Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, according to a joint statement released last month by the two companies. No timeframe was given for when Red Flag plans to expand its enterprise software business beyond China.

(Excerpt) Read more at infoworld.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Technical
KEYWORDS: anythingforabuck; china; computers; espionage; linix; linux; operatingsystems; software; stupidity; treason; treson
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To: Golden Eagle
Simple, despite your willingness to support those that strategically obstruct us: computers are used to build better bombs, and to navigate them towards their target.

One more time -- and how does it threaten us for the PRC, a bloated, inefficient, govt-run command economy to try and build their own OS distro?

It'll fail.

It will take them too long to build, and cost a fortune. They'll miss all deadlines, and over-run any budget given.

Then, if and when the project ever sees the light of day, it'll be easily hacked, go down at the worst possible times, etc. And if they do come up with one or two good ideas, we'll be able to copy/steal/reverse-engineer the thing in a matter of days.

Sounds like them doing this is very much in our national interest.

Altho (as I said, and you ignored), it sounds like it's more in our interest to get them to run Windows . . . we should *give* them Windows free of charge.

That way, if China ever threatens us, we can take down their entire infrastructure with just a few bored teen-agers!

Y'see, I'm a real patriot. I'm not afraid of the big, bad PRC out-coding us. I have faith in American developers working in a free market, and absolutely no faith Chinese developers working in a command economy. You, on the other hand, seem very, very down on Americans, and very afraid of any foreign influences.

Xenophobia is not a success skill.

101 posted on 09/05/2003 9:48:15 AM PDT by Dominic Harr
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To: Dominic Harr
Sounds like them doing this is very much in our national interest.

What a ridiculous conclusion. While Chinese engineering will never equal much less surpass American engineering, it does not mean we should allow some of our engineering powerhouses a la IBM/HP to help develop the Red Chinese IT infrastructure. Your argument equates to us helping the Red Soviets out with their technology problems during the Cold War just because we thought we would outwit them in the end. The fact that we DIDN'T help them is why it actually happened.

102 posted on 09/05/2003 9:57:17 AM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
All systems, including Linux, are vulnerable to dumb users opening executable attachments.

You're wrong, of course, because the attachment is not executable under Linux, and will not run, until it's detached and the executable permission is applied by the user. This takes an overt act; simply clicking on the attachment will not do it.

If you ever used Linux, you'd probably know this.

103 posted on 09/05/2003 10:43:58 AM PDT by TechJunkYard
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To: Golden Eagle; Poohbah
You see. One typo, and your citizenship is questioned.

Also, he's lying about the "anti-American" comments. But that's not a surprise.
104 posted on 09/05/2003 11:00:47 AM PDT by Dimensio (Sometimes I doubt your committment to Sparkle Motion!)
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To: Golden Eagle
Well hey if Linux sucks as bad as you all say it doesyou should be happy about China using it..
105 posted on 09/05/2003 11:04:05 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: TechJunkYard
Well, if it's an archive, then the permissions could be preserved within the archive. Still, it would require more effort just to run the attachment as it would require unpacking the archive and I don't think that there are any Linux clients written badly enough to allow someone to unpack an archive and run executables therein in a single step.

Of course, damage would only go so far as the user's permissions.
106 posted on 09/05/2003 11:05:01 AM PDT by Dimensio (Sometimes I doubt your committment to Sparkle Motion!)
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To: N3WBI3
It's a whole "national security" issue. He doesn't like the idea of Linux being open-source so that anyone -- including the Chinese government -- can get their hands on it. I'm not quite sure what solution he advocates, but I've gotten the distinct impression that he would love to abolish Linux completely and outlaw its use within the US.
107 posted on 09/05/2003 11:06:44 AM PDT by Dimensio (Sometimes I doubt your committment to Sparkle Motion!)
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To: Golden Eagle
Than why are there more vulnerabilities appearing every day for IIS than apache?
108 posted on 09/05/2003 11:09:04 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: Golden Eagle
I can go along with the UNIX/Linux divide many dont see, there are some scalability issues with Linux (not many mind you and its nothing that cant be bodged together) but for a large DB server I am going to go with SUN. For a web load balancer I am going to go with Apache on Linux..
109 posted on 09/05/2003 11:14:35 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: Dimensio
And all of those extra steps ensure that a Linux user will not commit an "oopsie" as easily as a Windows user can.

It is a fundamental flaw of Windows apps which should have been fixed by now.

110 posted on 09/05/2003 11:17:05 AM PDT by TechJunkYard
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To: Poohbah
My MAIN problem with windows on a server is this "There are places in the government (not where I work) where "windows update" is the official policy. Those places get every patch before a hack has been posted, and rarely if ever get exploited whatsoever."

You cant do that, you can try but it will bite you in the rear, you see many windows updates require a reboot, fine for the desktop but murder in a complex server environment. We are moving off of windows for out storage server because we have had to reboot it three times this month! that means all the process servers that dump files there have to come down or they break!

111 posted on 09/05/2003 11:18:21 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: Golden Eagle
"You think maintaining a completely separate branch of Linux including grow your own security patches and feature upgrades is easier than deploying M$ and maintaining it through Windows Update etc? Ridiculous."

You dont have a clue what you are talking about, 'grow your own patches' have you heard of up2date? no? its beacuse you probably used linux once (if even) five years ago. All my servers in the test arena update automatically several times a day and they dont even require a reboot. Best of all from another computer I can login into the RHN and chack the patch level of all my Linux servers..

112 posted on 09/05/2003 11:22:18 AM PDT by N3WBI3
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To: N3WBI3
Exactly. Windows is NOT "highly reliable" if you keep having to bounce the servers constantly.

What amazes me is that, even with the massive reduction in the number of reasons a reboot would be needed (IIRC, 200+ in NT 4.0, ~50 or so in W2K), you still have to keep rebooting the damn thing that often.

If Microsoft fixes Windows so that after a patch, it never needs a reboot, they will be doing themselves and everyone else a big favor.
113 posted on 09/05/2003 11:24:08 AM PDT by Poohbah (Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.)
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To: TechJunkYard
This takes an overt act; simply clicking on the attachment will not do it.

The latest patches from M$ prevent automatic launching as well. But M$ had to downgrade the feature because of hacker exploits, whereas apparenlty Linux never had it to begin with.

114 posted on 09/05/2003 2:17:55 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: N3WBI3
Than why are there more vulnerabilities appearing every day for IIS than apache?

Because more hackers use *nix, and target M$ instead.

115 posted on 09/05/2003 2:22:20 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: N3WBI3
You dont have a clue what you are talking about, 'grow your own patches' have you heard of up2date?

Don't go blaming me, if you had cared to read the corresponding posts you would have seen that was poobah's assertion, not mine. I was disagreeing with him, sounds like you do to. I suggest you take it up with him instead.

116 posted on 09/05/2003 2:24:43 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
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To: Golden Eagle
Exactly what the Chinese want, our technology given to them.

The same technology is already documented well enough that they don't need our code. It wouldn't be that hard for them to build their own UNIX-like OS given how many coders are in China and how many people need good jobs. Whatever benefit they get from being able to use Linux pales compared to the other technologies they got to look at. I don't see Loral's executives facing long prison terms for giving them access to advanced rocket technology suitable for modern ICBMs. I don't see Microsoft, Sun and Cisco under federal scrutiny for making the "Great Firewall of China" possible.

Then there's the fact that so many companies do production in China. Not just ours, but every first world nations'. It would be child's play for Chinese intelligence to infiltrate the factories and offices of these companies and copy our designs.

You seem to have a very naive view of the world in this respect. We can't stop them because in order to even slow them down, all of the freedoms we enjoy would have to go out the window. Our industry and personal rights would have to be so tightly controlled by a central authority that the USSR would seem like the standard bearer of Ayn Rand's Objectivist theory when juxtaposed with the US.

I don't like giving them access to technology that makes them more effective at fighting us, but I prefer to empower and respect the rights of other Americans. If they want to reimplement a program, that's their right so long as all of the code is original. I do not believe in patents anymore because technology advances too quickly now and only a few industries at best need protection of any sort.

Looks to me like you're willing to let anything go anywhere so long as you get yours for free too.

I don't even use Linux except about once every blue moon. My current desktop is Windows XP Pro running Litestep as its desktop shell. It's not the real UNIX/real desktop OS that MacOS X is, but hey it's good enough for now.

I buy American when American products are good. I don't believe in rewarding blatant mediocrity. Made in America is often a sign of near third-world quality now. If you want to make America more competitive, vote with your wallet and show American companies that their products have to kick ass in order to get your money. Don't be one of those suckers who encourages them to become less competitive by disregarding product quality and buying simply because the company is American.

I drive a Honda Accord LX because it's a very good car. It has not given me one iota the trouble that my friends' American cars give them. I was sold on Hondas when I saw the quality of their design and how inexpensive they are to maintain. If Ford, GM, etc want my money they need to out do Honda in a meaningful way. Almost as good is not good enough for me. I want the quality to be equal or better before I send the money to one of them and their corrupt labor unions.

117 posted on 09/05/2003 2:24:51 PM PDT by CodeMonkey
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To: Golden Eagle
The latest patches from M$ prevent automatic launching as well. But M$ had to downgrade the feature because of hacker exploits, whereas apparenlty Linux never had it to begin with.

Welcome to the Microsoft world where executing arbitrary code is a feature, not a very dangerous liability......

apparenlty

FOREIGNER!!!!!! j/k :)

118 posted on 09/05/2003 2:28:54 PM PDT by CodeMonkey
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To: Golden Eagle
Because more hackers use *nix, and target M$ instead.

Most "hackers" are script kiddies who wouldn't even know how to get a GUI shell on Linux unless the distro's installer set up their box to launch XFree86 on startup. Come on dude, it's pretty standard knowledge that like anything, most "hackers" are just a bunch of pathetic wannabes who have to rely on software written by the hardcore guys.

119 posted on 09/05/2003 2:31:24 PM PDT by CodeMonkey
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To: Golden Eagle
Make jokes about loss of technology and security to a foreign advesary if you wish. But I don't find anything humorous about the situation at all. Especially not jokes about the sky falling and the world coming to an end, especially your world. But so long as your little Linux is happy over in China, then you're happy, I guess.

I'd like to see SCO try suing China for implementing Linux, then have the PLA run tanks over their sorry butts. Squish!

120 posted on 09/05/2003 2:40:17 PM PDT by BlazingArizona
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