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Linux Software

More on Queen Elizabeth II and Linux 131

Posted by Roblimo from the penguins-in-the-palace dept.
moonboy writes "I know Netcraft exposed this awhile back, but here is a new story. This quote says it all: "We'd been running Sun Solaris since 1994, it was coming to the end of the life cycle for early machines and direct replacements would have cost a lot of money. We'd been running Linux on Intel [computers with Intel processors] internally for testing and had been impressed with their reliability and you can't beat them in the bangs for your buck department. It blows Sun [computers] out of the water and, as a web server, Linux is great. So we did some load testing internally and managed to get some more than satisfactory results." 'Nuff said. Here is the Sunday Times (UK) story" The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot? ;)
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More on Queen Elizabeth II and Linux More

More on Queen Elizabeth II and Linux

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  • Do you suppose she reads Slashdot?

    (shrug) It's not as if she'd be the first queen to do so. Perhaps the first for whom it's more than a hobby, though.

  • What is the big deal of going into a froth at the mouth over whether the Queen actually does make the decision over the operating system and hardware for her website? This is simply harmless and good publicity for Open Source software.
    If we keep up all the raving as to Her involvement or whether the UK should be a republic, we would end up with people calling Richard Stallman a communist (he is not!). Some people love to flame bait.
    Oh! and here is my tuppence worth...
    God save our gracious Queen,
    Long live our noble Queen,
    God save the Queen!
    Send her victorious,
    Happy and glorious,
    Long to reign over us;
    God save the Queen!

    Hip hip and Tally Ho!
  • This is actually not a bad idea. Applying for a warrant to use the 'by Appointment to HM The Queen' logo costs something, but I don't think it's a huge amount. How would it be if the community applied on behalf of, perhaps, Linus, so that the right to use the logo was held in trust and could be aplied to anything with a genuine Linux kernel? If other people think this is a good idea I would be prepared to investigate what would be involved and report back.
  • Obviously this should be 512 Meg.. My company uses these machines themselves, for servers we build... They are some powerful systems.

    But, I thought Dell didn't sell barebones systems (no OS)? I do believe they sell some Linux preinstalled, but not bare as stated in the article...

    In any case, maybe this will help me convince my managers to dump this Windows NT BS we are forced to use on these server systems.. ACK!


    ---

  • Dream Sig File? (Score:3)

    by Rob the Roadie ( 2950 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @04:43AM (#1602927) Homepage
    Linus Torvalds supplier of Open Source operating systems to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

    Now that's a great signature file!

  • Re:Reality becoming more hallucinatory...? (Score:5)

    by David Off ( 101038 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @04:44AM (#1602928) Homepage
    According to Hobbes Internet Timeline (the semi-official history of the net) QEII sent her first Arpanet email [isoc.org] in 1976 from the Royal Signals Establishment at Malvern.

    Guess most /.'ers are newbies in comparison

    David Off

  • Perhaps it starts with a knighthood. ;)
  • But, I thought Dell didn't sell barebones systems (no OS)? I do believe they sell some Linux preinstalled, but not bare as stated in the article...

    I thought I saw somewhere that Dell will sell with no OS in Europe, but I can't find the reference now.

  • No, this is perfectly right. Don't you remember the visionary who said that 640K is enough for everybody? So when they need more power, they can still add the missing 128K ;-)
  • Pah! Anyone can surf the information superhighway (dontcha just love that phrase). What we want to know is, can she whoop her royal subjects asses in a Quake deathmatch? ;)
  • Are you opting for a Royal Linux distro or a Royal Slashdot? :-)

  • Strange configuration for PII's (Score:3)

    by Cryp2Nite ( 67224 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @03:39AM (#1602935)
    ...but it sure is impessive, running a webserver on the configuration described in the article:
    Now the 85 websites run by the Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency, together with the entire open government campaign are run on five Dell 2300 Dual Pentium II 450 machines, each with 512k of RAM and 27 gigabytes of hard disk space.
    --
    two-thousand-zero-zero
    party over, it's out of time
  • That's not an issue ... one has servants to do such things for you. (And the idea of playing against the SAS in AQ2 isn't something I wish to consider!)
  • had been impressed with their reliability and you can't beat them in the bangs for your buck department

    I don't guess you can, since you can get it for free. ;-)

    Though really, I think this is great. Score one up for the Royal Family.
  • The quote does indeed say it all, who knows, with a royal seal of approval we might manage to get GNU/Linux in places that hitherto have still remained very anti it (like my place of work, where we rather bizarrly have a Netware web server.

    Oh, and in case she does read /., God bless ya your majesty. :)

    RT [rubberturnip.org.uk]

  • bit over-hyped dont you think? (Score:3)

    by MartyC ( 85307 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @03:42AM (#1602939) Homepage
    I think saying that Her Maj herself is now a firm supporter of Linux is going a bit far... Especially when the same article later states that she has no idea what her own website is run on.

    Even if she's a "keen web-surfer" she's probably got a dedicated manservant to move the mouse around and click where she tells him while the royally approved browser (I wonder what THAT is) is viewed on a forty inch flat plasma screen by
    the royal person.

    But it does seem that someone in the UK government reckons Linux beats everyone else for web server performace...
  • Having a 'by royal appointment' logo on the Linux box would be quite cool. Given that -- until recently -- it appeared on cigarette boxes, it's a marque (is that the right word?) that's been devalued, but it still has a cachet that can only help Linux.
    A quote that should be used widely:
    "The Government Information Service systems manager Mick Morgan, says Linux was a "no brainer"
    choice."

    So the queen is a surfer, eh? Rob: check the logs and see if anyone's real address is queen.elizabeth@monarchy.uk ; we should also probably check the back stories to see did any anonymous coward post a 'one has first post' comment.

    Pretend there's a comment here about the connection between Diana and Windows.
  • ...reminds me of that Monty Python episode where the cast was told the Queen would be tuning in...



    Wasn't Linus invited to some big to-do in Finland thrown by royalty?

    Brings to mind a few slogans...

    Linux: Delighting the crowned heads of Europe.

    Linux: Software by the people, propping defunct monarchies everywhere.

    Linux: The crown jewel of OS's.
  • "Why do people criticise, say, checkpoint firewalls, for giving out the fact that they are checkpoint firewalls, when you telnet into them?"

    Probably because the admin controlling it is a nitwit and is perhaps reducing security because you doesn't know how to implement a proper rule set?

    As for potential exploits -- there are probably many that can be devised by people looking through apache source code as well as those "freebies" from the alerts on their security notification page.

    Yes, it was obviously a joke -- however, I'm getting a little tired of the "it's redhat 4.x,5.x,6.x so it must be insecure" attitude paired with the "I've seen that movie hackers so it must be easy to hack" jokes.
    ----------
  • http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=http%3A%2F%2Fs innfein.ie%2F sez ...

    sinnfein.ie
    sinnfein.ie is running Apache/1.3.3 on FreeBSD

    So take that, Elizabeth Windsor!
  • But according to sinnfein they are not the same as the IRA.

    Best to get your facts right, or get knee-capped.

    F
  • Dell will sell it bare if you have a business account with them. I've got a 4300 due any day now that is showing up bare, because they won't install it the way I want it without making it a special project.

    But beware, their so-called "server specialists" are nothing more than glorified salesmen, and don't understand any flavor of UNIX.

  • But I don't know what sort of political conclusion you want to draw from that.
  • Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux? Probably none. It shows that linux is spreading, and spreading rapidly. We know this when OFOS (our favourite OS) springs up in unlikely places.
    (Whether the Queen herself uses linux is irrelevant to us.)

    In this case, linux has replaced SUN: again, we may use this as anecdotal evidence that linux is eating into SUN space. Which is bad for SUN of course.

    Question: How will SUN react? By supporting linux?

  • Re:Strange configuration for PII's (Score:3)

    by Ace ( 80472 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @05:19AM (#1602953)
    You don't think the freakin' Queen of England could pull a few strings and get a measly 5 bare bone Dell systems?
  • Considering the Queen has been using email since 1969, I reckon she knows damn well what OS she's running on her webserver. In fact, she probably configured the whole thing herself! Anyone who has 30 years experience of the Internet deserves a little respect ;)

  • Finland doesn't have it's own monarchy, although they toyed with the idea of adopting a German aristocrat as their sovereign. The idea was mooted during the transition to independence from Russia, but fell through when Germany capitulated at the end of the Great War.

    Prior to that, Finland had been a Duchy of Tsarist Russia and a province of Sweden. The Swedish link is why so many Finns speak Swedish as a first language and Finnish as a second (in some cases not at all). During the Tsarist era it was briefly illegal to use Finnish - an attempt at crushing national identity that was later used by Stalin in the Baltic States and elsewhere.


    Chris Wareham

  • And in related news... (Score:4)

    by mev ( 36558 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @05:28AM (#1602958) Homepage
    After a set of favorable press coming from disclosure that the Queen of England surfed the web and ran Linux on her dual PII boxes, several other royal families quickly followed suit with press releases of their own:

    It was revealed that Queen Beatrix of Netherlands is an avid Perl programmer, generating her own cgi-bin scripts.

    King Harold of Norway casually let it slip at a state dinner that he recently moved from awt to swing for his new Java interfaces.

    Unconfirmed reports surfaced that Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia has been one of the top contributors to distributed.net. He denied all reports and points to his seti@home scores in defense.

    King Simeon II is testing the waters for a decree declaring Bulgaria as the first "Open Source Republic".

    King Carl XVI Gustaf of Norway was revealed to be secretly posting replies to slashdot.org with subject titles of "Beowolf", "First Post", "who cares about RAM prices in Taiwan" and "Microsoft sux".

    Royal families around Europe are uniformly denying that the rash of recent press reports were designed to make them appear more "common" and similar to the regular people.
  • Sinn Fein is the Republican political party, and lots of shady links between the SF leadership and the IRA have been suggested. None of them have been proved beyond a doubt, although many Unionists believe Gerry Adams sits on IRA committees.

    Regardless of the truth, both Adams and Trimble (the Unionist leader and Orange order member) walk a fine line in appeasing the publics need for peace and the terrorists fear of `defeat'.


    Chris Wareham
  • Nice name btw, ch-chuck :)

    The original AC posting about the republic might have been referring to Australia, not England, as Australia will be having a referendum on November 6th on this very topic...

    In Aus's case it makes sense, as currently our head-of-state (Queen) actually has no relevance to Australia at all.. doesn't even LIVE in our country... etc etc... I say vote YES [republic.org.au] :) (sorry a little off-topic)
  • Replying to myself (bad form i know):

    someone posted link to the Royal warrants FAQ down below, http://www.royal.gov.uk/faq/warrant.htm, and it turns out the crest i see on my pack of JP Blue is not that of one of the Royals! Anyone know what crest it is?

    it's a shield with 3 little boat type things stacked top-left, grid top-right, castle below with suns on either side of it. lions rampant on either side and surmounted by a knights helmet with a crown on it.

    Are John Player's taking the piss with a fake look-alike royal appointment? Or is the crest and appointment real?

    (guaranteed someone on slashdot is into to heraldry)
  • KH.. maybe Koninklijk Huis (Royal House) ?
    Oh well.. now that I have shown my ignorance again, I'd better sign off

    //rdj
  • >but do you really want the Royal webpages getting defaced and/or being unavailable, even for half an hour?

    Er, yes. Yes, I do.

    I would quite like them to be defaced with obscene messages and inflammatory statements protesting the existence of the bunch of web-toed, banjo-plucking leeches that own them.

    Thanks for the offer. :-)

    Stu.

    {sorry, not exactly on-topic, but I wanted to make it clear that not all of us limey's are fans of the Windsors - just in case there where any doubts)
  • Interesting point: because Linus isn't a brit, he wouldn't be a 'sir'; he'd be a Knight of the British Empire, and get the letters KBE after his name instead.
    Other interesting point: once upon a time all british woes were blamed on Swiss gnomes.

    Taken individually, these don't amount to much; after all, KBE isn't anything to do with Linux. But taken together, and you've got a dread desktop conspiracy.
  • look for bst.qb.2ndfl.bp.royal.gov.uk (the bedside table in the Queen's bedroom on the second floor of Buckinham Palace) Wonder if toiletcam.2ndfl.bp.royal.gov.uk is still up ;)

    Maybe the car stereo in Diana's Mercedes was running Windows CE. Paxman should have asked Bill about it. But then again, a good conspiracy is an unprovable one.

    Cya
    barbaBob

  • Oh man, get out of here! Flamebait, alright, but redundant?! TWICE?

    I wasn't making those things up you know.

    Queen hires spin doctor [csmonitor.com]


    Sunday Times Internet 'Journalism' [ntk.net]

    I think both these points are very relevant to the story.
  • ...seven of nine "double-0" agents surveyed preferred embedded Linux in their dangerous toys.

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • *humbled*

    That was about the time that I first saw Colossus: The Forbin Project!

    :)

  • the entire open government campaign are run on five Dell 2300 Dual Pentium II 450 machines, each with 512k of RAM and 27 gigabytes of hard disk space.

    512k! 512k! That's *far* too much... a real sysadmin would be able to run a webserver in a much tighter config...

    i was running NFS, INN and a very early version of Apache on my 48k Speccy in 1983 and *still* had plenty of space left to play Quake in...

    - Aidan

  • Try reading the article. It's way down by the bottom...

    The Palace couldn't say whether the Open Source Linux community would be entitled to use the By Royal Appointment tag - it would have to have its product used for a certain period of time first to the satisfaction of a member of the Royal Family, before an application for the tag could be made.
  • Hmmmmm - 512K of Ram - always wondered why the government websites were so slowww :)
  • It's good to see they're using Linux on the QE II.
    We already know how lousy NT is on big ships...

    (Oh wait, you mean I had to actually read that article? Damn...)
  • The Queen of England can not affort UltraSPARCs? She must be hurting for cash.

    -hh
  • But it does blow Sun away in 'Bangs per Buck', which was the point being made.

    I agree that a big Solaris box will outperform *any* Intel system, but at the lower end you get a much better hit/cost ratio with Intel & Linux.

    I've also heard reports that Linux can outperform Solaris on low-end Sun hardware. Don't know if it's true though.

    I actually run Solaris as well as Linux and FreeBSD because I like it.

    Feed the hungry. Save the whales. Free the mallocs
  • Why is NetWare a bizarre choice for a web server? The primary purpose of a web server is to fulfil client's requests for files. NetWare excels at this. It certainly performs a lot better than another proprietary OS I could mention.

  • did any anonymous coward post a 'one has first post' comment.


    That would be Prince Charles. The Queen would post "We have first post".

  • ... (Score:2)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 )
    ...512k of RAM and 27 gigabytes of hard disk space.

    My my, the hardware requirements for running a linux webserver are falling faster and faster all the time. By kernel 2.4 we won't need memory at all!

    --

  • Don't all products used by the Queen get than snazzy offical seal that says something like "By appointment to Her Magestry the Queen" or something like that?

    ttyl
    Farrell

    ...who supports the British out of Ireland, but thinks the Queen is O.K. for Canada.
  • Nooooooooooooooooo, that's the way Trimble and the big mouth'ed one say it.

    It only 'correct terminology' for one group of people. The other half will not use the two words in the same sentence.

    See how Irish politics gets a little out of hand sometimes.

    (Best to leave it be)

    F

  • Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen's website would be on linux?

    Who would have thought even a few years back that the Queen would have a website at all? Despite having immediately recognized the web as a soon-to-be-very-hot thing when I first ran Mosaic back in early '94, I'm still sometimes astonished at how far and fast it's spread.

  • Yeah, I heard Ru Paul posts here sometimes too.
  • The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot? ;)

    Indeed she does ;)

  • i know where to get john player specials in birmingham, AL and pennsacola, FL D**********MN good smokes too, if this helpes any
  • I wanted to see what my old school was running.

    www.devalcol.edu is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on Solaris

  • yeah, but nobody ever went to their old site. The PalmPilot could have passed that loadtest.

    But now all the slashdotters (a force greater than Linux+Apache)are going to run over and pound their server to a pulp and the royal family is going to interpret it as an over-exuberant show of support from the subjects, and shall endeavour to recolonize us.

    Somebody bring Prince Chuck up to date: today it's free and open source upon which the sun never sets, and they should rededicate their efforts to more important issues: why, after all, if everybody had been using Imperial measurements, we wouldn't have lost that satellite, now would we?

  • Because at least one of the Apache developers is British, Apache should be eligible for knighthood due to its excellent service of the crown's site.
  • >Then you, sir, are a scumbag and not a gentleman ;)

    My bag is not *completely* full of scum, but I take your point :-)

    >it doesn't just have to www.royal.gov.uk, it could equally well be freshmeat.net

    Whoah! Easy, tiger! I didnt say I was going to actually *do* it - I was just exercising my constitutional right to free speech which, thanks to the Schmindsors & the UK's lack of a written constitution, I don't actually have.

    *Obviously* all punk-ass script kidz and crackers are pure evil & have no more right to breathe God's clean air than weasels...

    ...but I doubt if I would be too displeased if royal.gov.org suddenly got redirected to something more, ahh, forward thinking in a God hates/loves fags style.

    I am more opposed to what the Royals stand for, rather than them personally. The Queen, I should imagine, would be a perfectly decent grandmother in different circumstances, and would doubtless be a leading light in her local women's institute or church group. Similarly, Prince Phillip would make an excellent London cab driver with his broad range of bigoted & racist opinions and inability to shut up. :-)

    >And letting on "it's RedHat 5.2" is probably supplying someone with a little too much. IMO :)

    Ack. All together now..."Security through obscurity is no security at all..." La la la, la la la...

    vive la revolution, or something.

  • ...is that the real enemy is Microsoft. :)
  • According to the article, it`s the whole of the open.gov.uk [open.gov.uk] site (public access to governmental departments) as well. This indicates that it`s a Civil Service rather than a Palace decision. And I think it`s more important that it be noised about that the Civil Service (traditionally and stereotypically very conservative people) are using Linux than that the Queen (who did not, after all, make this decision) is.

  • specs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    dual PII boxes with 512K each? For very, very small web sites ;-)
  • Is it just me or is consensual Reality becoming more weird as the Internet evolves?

    I mean, 5 years ago, the idea of the Queen surfing the Web in 1999 would have seemed like something out of Bruce Sterling's head.

    Don't get me wrong, TIAGT (This is a Good Thing). I say we should push for even more weirdness!

    Vote Weird!
  • B&H still have the Royal Appointment seal of approval on their packets of cigarettes

    Would Linux pick up the seal or would RedHat pick it up?

  • Re:By royal appointment (Score:4)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @03:56AM (#1603009)
    B&H still have the Royal Appointment seal of approval on their packets of cigarettes
    I wasn't sure about that. Prince charles has said that they're going to lose it, but I'm not sure when.

    I can see the christmas speech now (I won't actually, but you know what I mean).
    One is pleased to use Linux as an operating system when one cruises down the information motorway for pr0n. One is at www.qe2.uk and if one's subjects wish to link to one's page, one would be happy to reciprocate. One uses Red Hat and is happy to endorse it. Although one also likes suse, which is made by our German cousins. But if they won't take our beef, we won't take their Linux.
    One is 31337.

  • Secret identity (Score:3)

    by Greg_Girty ( 90984 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @03:59AM (#1603010)
    The article also says the Queen is a "keen web surfer." Good for her! Do you suppose she reads Slashdot?
    Maybe QueenE2 is Nitrozac.
  • But what will get nominated? ...perhaps Linus himself for having invented such a wonderfull product?

    Would he get it tatooed on his forehead? Maybe someone should nominate him for knighthood. He already has an "honorary" doctorate, why not call him "Sir Doctor Linus Torvalds"?

    (I'm not from the UK, so I'm not sure how blasphemous it would be to suggest such a thing. But if someone knighted Elton John...)
  • sinnfein is the political wing of the IRA. They're the ones negotiating, not the ones with the guns. Alot of the more recent violence has been from breakoff groups from the IRA, not the actual IRA themselves.

    It seems whenever peace is possible, there's always some militants who want the violence to continue.
  • Then you, sir, are a scumbag and not a gentleman ;)

    Yes, it's blindingly obvious - it doesn't just have to www.royal.gov.uk, it could equally well be freshmeat.net - there are folks out & abouts who *don't* want it defaced. And if they're the ones providing the machinery to folks, they have the right to protect it. And letting on "it's RedHat 5.2" is probably supplying someone with a little too much. IMO :)
  • > Yes, it was obviously a joke -- however, I'm getting a little tired of the "it's redhat 4.x,5.x,6.x so it must be insecure" attitude paired with the "I've seen that movie hackers so it must be easy to hack" jokes.


    I hope you're not suggesting that either attitude was present in my comment...

    My point is that (a) a proper ruleset is always a good idea, (b) firewalls are still susceptible to breaches, be it by brute force or some other means (c) information given out makes folks' jobs easier to hack whatever it is, whether they should be able to get to port 23 or 80 or not.

    <cynical>Oh look! A Unix workstation! I know how to use those!</cynical>
  • But, what we really want to know...
    Can she type with one hand?

  • Re:More on Queen Elizabeth II and Linux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm thinking of like on my Twining's Tea tins; you know, the fancy coat of arms and "By appointment to..." &etc. Just think, you could even have "Coders for connoiseurs since 1999" or something...
  • Netcraft [netcraft.com] says NT3 or Windows 95. Well, I suppose the company's website really isn't an NT4.0 sort of job. :)
  • In the beginning God created the computer and the terminal. And the computer was without operating system; and darkness was upon the face of the DIMMs. And the Spirit of God moved upon the cylinders of the HDD. And God said, Let there be LILO: and there was LILO. And God saw the bootloader, that it was underneath cylinder 1023: and God loaded the kernel image from the HDD. And God called the bootloader LILO, and the kernel image he called Linux. And the bootloader and the kernel image were the first things on the partition. And God said, Let there be a division in the midst of the kernel, and let it divide the kernel from the kernel. And God made the division, and divided the kernel which was above the division from the kernel which was below the division: and it was so. And God called the division memory management.

    I was going to finish this out and submit it to segfault, but I don't really see that much potential.

  • Posted by NJViking:

    I know some 14 year old Quake kiddies who could probably kick the SAS's arses in Quake :)

    -= NJV =-
  • Then I'm sure RMS would want one, too. Probably
    want it called GnuKBE though. :)

    -harry
  • Have you looked at any of the low end sun boxen?
    Their performace is total crap. They use slow UIDE drives and as far as I know they are still using non-optimal drivers for IDE not Ultra-IDE. I've got a sparc 1 that can 'dd' files faster than the demo ultra 5 I had. The SS20 is much, much faster than the demo u5 as far as disk is concerened.

    Going to PCI was a great move for sun. They stop using a 64 bit bus and switch to a 32 bit multiplexed bus to reduce costs. In the end it will reduce their market share on the high end.

    Australia is going to vote to keep the Queen as a head of state next month. I wonder if this will effect anyones vote...
  • Hey! That was funny, what's with the Troll rating.

    Sheesh!
  • The 512k of RAM is correct.

    It's just that the onboard cache is 512Mb...
  • Low end hardware? Bangs per buck? Hit/cost ratio?

    This is the Queen of England we're talking about. I don't think she worries about those things.
    --

  • By Royal Appointment (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    For information about Royal Warrants, see:
    http://www.royal.gov.uk/faq/warrant.htm

    Notice the sentence which says:
    The Royal Warrant is granted to an individual, not the company...

    --
    Fredrik Henbjork
    http://o112.ryd.student.liu.se

  • Quote from the article (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Queen has just become the latest and most prominent supporter of Linux, the "free" Open Source version of the Unix computer operating system.

    Jeez, where'd they get that conclusion? I mean, it's a nice article about how some government mandarins listened to their techies and made the Right Choice (of course it helped they were trying to save money), but going from "we installed a few linux web servers" to "the queen is a linux supporter" seems a bit much. Ho, ho, but that's just me, I'm not a journalist and I don't like making conclusions I'm not firm on.

  • The Dutch queen (http://www.koninklijkhuis.nl/ [koninklijkhuis.nl]) seems to run KH-Webserver on Solaris (according to Netcraft). Any idea what this KH-Webserver is?

  • People may not be aware of this, but the Sunday Times is just another tatty Murdoch rag. It quite oftens runs stories that later turn out to be untrue (Like that particle accelerator making a black hole underneath New Year).

    Please don't assume because of the name that there is an iota of truth in this. You wouldn't believe everything you saw on Fox, would you?
  • Yeah, and only with port 80 open I wonder how any OS exploits are even relevant (well besides remote tcp/ip DOS attacks).

    As for the apache problems, good luck. Half the potential exploits listed there are conditionals that probably don't apply -- then that leaves us ones that may allow you to overwrite files in its path and within ownership -- which means you may be able to change files in the web root.. oh gee, wow, now don't we feel special changing a web page that will be changed back in about 30 minutes.
    ----------
  • some prominant people have economic sense - from what I understand the monarchy has been under some pressure to justify their existance, some people would like to establish a republic and the royals trying to clean up their media image, hiring media public relations consultants. This is certainly a good way to show good will towards their people, i.e., we're willing to do some work for you, not just take your taxes and ship 'em off to buy tacky faux-luxuries from foreign window shops to assuage some venal, banal vanity.

    Chuck
    { my thesarus is wearing out }
  • Oops - New York not New Year.

    But let's not forget the Hitler Diaries... (Another Sunday Times exclusive)

  • It was in the Inter//face pullout from The Times on Monday. Yes, they're owned by Murdoch, but they have full editorial control (unlike The Sun and News Of The World). Of course, that doesn't make them accurate all the time, but they're mostly not used to push Murdoch's point of view.

    Disclaimer: News International, publisher of the papers in question, is my current employer.

  • Low end hardware? Bangs per buck? Hit/cost ratio?

    This is the Queen of England we're talking about. I don't think she worries about those things.

    I've heard that her Majesty is notoriously stingy about spending money (turning lightbulbs off, etc). I don't know whether this applies equally to taxpayers' money and her own money.

  • Regardless of the truth, both Adams and Trimble (the Unionist leader and Orange order member) walk a fine line in appeasing the publics need for peace and the terrorists fear of `defeat'.

    It's not really fair to lump Trimble together with Adams. The Ulster Unionists (Trimle's party) are staunchly opposed to terrorism. While the Orange Order may be bigots, they are not terrorists. Even the more 'extreme' Democratic Unionists (Ian Paisley's party) are not linked to terrorist groups.

    There are parties, such as the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), which are fronts for Loyalist terror groups in the same way that Sinn Fein represents the IRA. But the Ulster Unionists, like the SDLP (the main nationalist party) are not the political wing of any paramilitary organization.

  • He wouldn't accept it because of its dependence on the non-free Qt (Queen toolkit) library.
  • As a Royal Norwegian Subject, I have to protest:

    King Harald V is the monarch of Norway

    That King Carl Gustaf guy is the King of Sweden.

    Gunnar

  • Eyecatcher, but still its nice to know... (Score:3)

    by Lion-O ( 81320 ) on Tuesday October 19, 1999 @04:14AM (#1603046)
    I mean; sure its very nice to know that the Linux 'hype' is spreading and not only in major companies and/or special end-users but that a whole other 'market' is also discovering the ease and robustness of Linux. Rather; they are open for this discovery.

    Still I wonder... It will take some time I think but if everything goes well it is IMHO very likely that they will come to a conclusing that Linux has indeed been the product they were looking for and that it should get the royal seal of approval. But what will get nominated? Linux as being a product, RedHat as being the shipping company, Apache as being the part which did it (if they only care about the webserver part), or perhaps Linus himself for having invented such a wonderfull product?

    I personally think that some of the options I menationed could be overshadowed by some major turmoil in the "linux scene". And I wonder if it would be really a good thing for us. Just think about it; suppose they will nominate RedHat and it will get this mentioned 'royal seal of approvement'. I'm somewhat convinced that there will be major discussions coming up and it will be some time before we'll hear the end of that. Would not really matter I guess but since getting such a seal is (as far as I know) still something special you can bet it will attract some attention from yet a complete other line of media (not strictly computer based). "royal seal of approval stirrs up linux comunity" ? ;-)

    I guess thats a little bit to negative but still.. It can make you wonder. Anyway, it does proof that things are going the right way indeed and that the Linux fever is spreading rapidly. Hm, can't remember Windows ever getting a royal seal and I'm not really surprised indeed. ;)

  • Why do people criticise, say, checkpoint firewalls, for giving out the fact that they are checkpoint firewalls, when you telnet into them?
    The point is not just "ooh look, there's a port open" but rather that the information has been let loose, "so goodness knows what's going to happen". (There's a reason I didn't let on anything particularly interesting with my two URL links!)

    So there's a firewall in the way (?solaris?iss?) and there are non-80 ports that are filtered, while 80 is the only one open...

    Sure, maybe the worst that can happen is a remote DoS attack - quite possibly the case, but I'm not going to launch *that* - but do you really want the Royal webpages getting defaced and/or being unavailable, even for half an hour?
  • Ok, just a revolution then. Just a little one?

  • It is nice to know that I am not the only Queen to read slashdot.

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