asking people to view shit at the bottom of msn messenger is one thing
Actually the ads at the bottom of msn messenger really annoy me, and I'm not the only one - a community has gone to a lot of trouble to remove them (and everything else about messenger that is annoying): http://www.mess.be/pafiledb/pafiledb.php?action=fi le&id=701 .
Granted it's probably easier to simply use a different client, but for those who really want the bling, this patch system makes messenger much less irritating.
Users don't want 4 media players they can't figure out, they just want one good one. I disagree. If you only have one media player, there's no competition, and chances are it's not going to be all that great. With several, however, there will probably be at least one good one, and pressure from the others will keep it good. My ideal situation is to have a clear leader, but with several others available that I can switch to if necessary.
The situation with 3D acceleration is a huge pain in the ass since you have to update your driver with essentially every minor kernel update. I don't know what it's like for the people working on it, but from an end-user's point of view the Nvidia drivers are working very well for me.
There's a whole lot of user experience that needs to be though of from the non-tech user standpoint. Linux at its heart is still a techie OS. That's not a bad thing, and that's why it makes such a rockin' server and embedded OS but it needs to be recognised that some of those choices aren't good ones for a desktop OS. That doesn't preclude it from the desktop market, but it is something that needs to be considered and dealt with to the extent it can be. I think Gnome and KDE are handling this magnificently (big hand for all the supporters!). Witness the ease of installing software - I can browse through a list of applications, choose the ones I want, and then have them all set up automatically. It can hardly be easier than that.
As a side note, I noticed a tag on this article ("deadhorse") indicating that some people believe this is a boring subject. Perhaps that means that Linux is already dominating (at least from some users' perspectives). I guess seeing an article like this means not everyone thinks it is old news, and therefore it isn't dominating anywhere yet.
I have had personal experience that disagrees with your claim.
I recently decided to modify the Spring code to include a new camera mode that followed the action. This was the easiest programming I have ever done, despite not having used C++ before (I am proficient in C and Java). The code was beautiful and easy to understand and extend, and I don't think I read five lines of code that were irrelevant to what I was trying to do. It took two days before I had a quite functional demo. I stopped working on it at that point, but it worked, and I used it for spectating often.
In contrast, in my old job working on a POS system, we never had time to make code beautiful, as there was always something else to do. As a result, the code was very untidy, and it took a long time to sort things out before anything could be changed. Witness a task estimated to take less than a week that ended up stretching over three months.
It seems obvious to me that programmers under no pressure will take more time to massage code until it is beautiful. In addition, the frequent refactorings that seem more common in the open-source world probably help readability even more. Witness Blender 3D. The people working on that project are brilliant. They have to be to produce a product as good as what they have, with a somewhat lacking design (the main problem being the lack of a global scripting system that records every action and can alter one down the chain and then replay the rest - the modifier stack goes some way towards doing this, but there are other solutions out there).
I would claim (without any real evidence) that open source programs are probably much better commented than equivalent proprietary ones. There are exceptions, of course, but then again, one might mention the linux kernel as an example of a well-commented product.
I also can't help mentioning that oss evolution could be much more efficient due to cross-pollenation of code, but that's not really related to this discussion.
All in all, I think the open-source method produces much more maintainable (modular and commented) code than many production software houses, as a result of the frequent changes of developers (and contributions of others).
Who's to say they found all the compromises? It sounds like the attackers were occasionally sloppy and didn't clean up after themselves... did they find the clean ones too?
Your intentions were good, but you've got it wrong as well. It's the right to bare hammers. Some radical countries may enforce keeping your hammer covered at all times; around here, hammers can be as close to nature as they wish.
Freedom for hammers!
Actually, I've often wondered if a tool exists that will do exactly that - namely, take a large amount of text and cut out all the padding, leaving just the information. Does anyone know of one? I know MS Word has a "summarize" tool..
It would be quite useful when dealing with all those texts that actually contain no information at all.
I disagree. When I had to choose a laptop for school, the main reason I went with a non-windows machine was that I wouldn't be able to play games. Needless to say, I spent my time at school working hard while everyone around me was playing games.
Needless to say, everyone got what they deserved.
You are suggesting that it would be just as easy for a reformed alcoholic to stay dry if his or her kitchen had a fully-stocked bar or a fridge full of milk.
And anyway, there is something wrong with having a really fast car. How many people would be tempted to find out how fast it can really go? It's extremely irresponsible... but some people are still tempted.
Sometimes it's all about people being able to remove the temptation.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the ads at the bottom of msn messenger really annoy me, and I'm not the only one - a community has gone to a lot of trouble to remove them (and everything else about messenger that is annoying): http://www.mess.be/pafiledb/pafiledb.php?action=fi le&id=701 .
Granted it's probably easier to simply use a different client, but for those who really want the bling, this patch system makes messenger much less irritating.
It could just be that Microsoft hasn't bought any reports for a while, and Forrester want to encourage them a bit.
Perhaps Microsoft is starting to think that these kinds of reports aren't worth it?
The situation with 3D acceleration is a huge pain in the ass since you have to update your driver with essentially every minor kernel update. I don't know what it's like for the people working on it, but from an end-user's point of view the Nvidia drivers are working very well for me. There's a whole lot of user experience that needs to be though of from the non-tech user standpoint. Linux at its heart is still a techie OS. That's not a bad thing, and that's why it makes such a rockin' server and embedded OS but it needs to be recognised that some of those choices aren't good ones for a desktop OS. That doesn't preclude it from the desktop market, but it is something that needs to be considered and dealt with to the extent it can be. I think Gnome and KDE are handling this magnificently (big hand for all the supporters!). Witness the ease of installing software - I can browse through a list of applications, choose the ones I want, and then have them all set up automatically. It can hardly be easier than that.
As a side note, I noticed a tag on this article ("deadhorse") indicating that some people believe this is a boring subject. Perhaps that means that Linux is already dominating (at least from some users' perspectives). I guess seeing an article like this means not everyone thinks it is old news, and therefore it isn't dominating anywhere yet.
You, sir, sound like a psychohistorian!
Good work.
I have had personal experience that disagrees with your claim. I recently decided to modify the Spring code to include a new camera mode that followed the action. This was the easiest programming I have ever done, despite not having used C++ before (I am proficient in C and Java). The code was beautiful and easy to understand and extend, and I don't think I read five lines of code that were irrelevant to what I was trying to do. It took two days before I had a quite functional demo. I stopped working on it at that point, but it worked, and I used it for spectating often. In contrast, in my old job working on a POS system, we never had time to make code beautiful, as there was always something else to do. As a result, the code was very untidy, and it took a long time to sort things out before anything could be changed. Witness a task estimated to take less than a week that ended up stretching over three months. It seems obvious to me that programmers under no pressure will take more time to massage code until it is beautiful. In addition, the frequent refactorings that seem more common in the open-source world probably help readability even more. Witness Blender 3D. The people working on that project are brilliant. They have to be to produce a product as good as what they have, with a somewhat lacking design (the main problem being the lack of a global scripting system that records every action and can alter one down the chain and then replay the rest - the modifier stack goes some way towards doing this, but there are other solutions out there). I would claim (without any real evidence) that open source programs are probably much better commented than equivalent proprietary ones. There are exceptions, of course, but then again, one might mention the linux kernel as an example of a well-commented product. I also can't help mentioning that oss evolution could be much more efficient due to cross-pollenation of code, but that's not really related to this discussion. All in all, I think the open-source method produces much more maintainable (modular and commented) code than many production software houses, as a result of the frequent changes of developers (and contributions of others).
Who's to say they found all the compromises? It sounds like the attackers were occasionally sloppy and didn't clean up after themselves... did they find the clean ones too?
Your intentions were good, but you've got it wrong as well. It's the right to bare hammers. Some radical countries may enforce keeping your hammer covered at all times; around here, hammers can be as close to nature as they wish. Freedom for hammers!
Actually, I've often wondered if a tool exists that will do exactly that - namely, take a large amount of text and cut out all the padding, leaving just the information. Does anyone know of one? I know MS Word has a "summarize" tool.. It would be quite useful when dealing with all those texts that actually contain no information at all.
I disagree. When I had to choose a laptop for school, the main reason I went with a non-windows machine was that I wouldn't be able to play games. Needless to say, I spent my time at school working hard while everyone around me was playing games. Needless to say, everyone got what they deserved. You are suggesting that it would be just as easy for a reformed alcoholic to stay dry if his or her kitchen had a fully-stocked bar or a fridge full of milk. And anyway, there is something wrong with having a really fast car. How many people would be tempted to find out how fast it can really go? It's extremely irresponsible... but some people are still tempted. Sometimes it's all about people being able to remove the temptation.