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Subject: Re: On Holy Wars, and a Plea for Peace [sorry Danny, wherever...]
To: kpneal@pobox.com (Kevin P. Neal)
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 15:52:19 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: jbryant@tfs.net, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970416190304.00923e8c@mindspring.com> from "Kevin P. Neal" at Apr 16, 97 03:03:04 pm
Reply-To: nsj@ncsu.edu
From: nsj@ncsu.edu (Nate Johnson)
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[ background about Red Hat's troubles with their 4.0 distribution deleted]

%The solution? Well, they donated the 4.0 stock to NCSU's Comp Sci department.
%
%This was a month ago. The CDs are gone now.

...and now a group of computer science students have a double CD with a broken
distribution of a normally, pretty good OS, including numerous, widely known 
and easily exploitable security holes, and other various bugs, some worse than
others.  Was there any documentation handed out with these CD's describing
these holes?  Nope, just a pointer in the manual (that won't be read, BTW) to 
the web page.

(Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but think about the type of people
to whom the offer was made available.)

I think the idea of handing out CD's (or making them more affordable, or 
something similar) is fantastic; however, let's not just hand out CD's with 
broken software on it. 

Your point about the hardware your average freshman brings on campus with
him/her in the fall is much more valid, though... *shudder*

Cheers,
nsj

--
Nate Johnson / nsj@ncsu.edu / nsj@catt.ncsu.edu / nsj@FreeBSD.org
Head Systems Administrator, Computer and Technologies Theme Program
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina