Has anyone recently tried to use IE to download firefox? Does IE adopt "security" policies to make it harder to download and install Firefox?
I was experimenting with a fresh 2008 Server instance in EC2 the other day and needed to download some open-source packages to install. I found that IE was super paranoid about any download, especially from a mirror site, and would put up a security warning, make me click OK to whitelist the site, and then go back and try the download again. I went through all the settigns dialogs I could find trying to turn off this "feature" to no avail.
Turns out if you download Firefox from the mozilla site it will redirect you to a different mirror each time - meaning you can do this dance repeatedly and never actually satisfy IE's bizarre "security". The workaround is to delve into one of the mirror sites and navigate to the download you need.
I'm not a paranoid type but I find myself questioning whether this wasn't a deliberate "how can we make it a PITA to download Firefox" move by the IE crew.
...what Joel "straw man fallacies for fun and profit" Spolowsky says about it?
Seriously, all this dude does is amplify his self-importance with grandiose soft(war)e stories while giving mediocre programmers pseudo-intellectual cover to do whatever the hell they want when they're not micro-managed. Ooh, yeah, that's making us all so much more practical and productive.
Blog to the hand, JS.
In addition to price the major reason for me to use OO over MS is the seamless use accross OS's.
I'm a developer who works on Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux and Vista. I keep a lot of documents under source control, things like specifications, spreadsheets with performance data, and diagrams which I'm now doing in OO draw.
There's nothing that quite prepares you for being able to check out, edit, and check in the same spreadsheet on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and have it just work and render perfectly on all OS's. If you're a cross-platform shop in any way (for development, creative or anything) OO is a huge win in this regard.
Nothing against him as a person, but what's he been doing that's so brilliant in the past 2 decades that makes him an authority?
He's like the Pete Best of Apple.
Blame the coursework, not the language.
You can write Java from the command-line, you don't have to be taught to "rely" on GUI just because you're using Java. I write Java every day and never use a GUI framework (it's the network, stupid).
You can (and we do) write Java components as services, libraries, CLI tools - if you're not teaching that but only teaching how to write Swing apps, it's your fault not the language.
That said, C/C++ and assembly should certainly still be taught, and I believe they are in most normal compsci departments. But a -far- greater problem I've encountered are colleagues who *still* really don't understand OOD, reuse, and software architecture: thank you to those universities who are using Java to stress that, it's what the industry needs more of.
Fie to the fuddy-duds.
Blanket gutting of copyright by changing to a 5-year term isn't politically viable, and at any rate it isn't the correct solution.
Consider this: you're and indie songwriter and over 10 years you develop songs without gaining any traction with the record industry. Then Gus Van Sant puts one of your songs in a move and it's a hit, and everyone wants your stuff. Since our hypothetical copyrights only last 5 years, all of your material that's older than that is now free to be plundered by the industry and their blessed artists and you don't get a dime. Not cool.
What we really need is a more tuned (and tunable) copyright expiration system that fulfills its intended purpose for each type of work, and a more permissive concept of fair use. This probably means different copyright expiration terms for software, works which have been created but not commercially marketed, and corporate-created and mass-marketed works. Software should have the shortest term (and no patents) - I think 5 years is fair here (you're not likely to have a "sleeper" software app that only catches on 10 years after it's written). Unmarketed works created by an individual (songs, novels, etc.) should have the longest terms - for the life of the author plus a few decades. Corporate works (e.g. a pop catalog, or a Disney film) should be limited to at most a couple of decades but that's a huge commercial battle to be waged; they want to keep milking the "vault" for as long as they possibly can, but clearly Snow White and all of Elvis should be in the public domain by now.
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Has anyone recently tried to use IE to download firefox? Does IE adopt "security" policies to make it harder to download and install Firefox? I was experimenting with a fresh 2008 Server instance in EC2 the other day and needed to download some open-source packages to install. I found that IE was super paranoid about any download, especially from a mirror site, and would put up a security warning, make me click OK to whitelist the site, and then go back and try the download again. I went through all the settigns dialogs I could find trying to turn off this "feature" to no avail. Turns out if you download Firefox from the mozilla site it will redirect you to a different mirror each time - meaning you can do this dance repeatedly and never actually satisfy IE's bizarre "security". The workaround is to delve into one of the mirror sites and navigate to the download you need. I'm not a paranoid type but I find myself questioning whether this wasn't a deliberate "how can we make it a PITA to download Firefox" move by the IE crew.
...what Joel "straw man fallacies for fun and profit" Spolowsky says about it? Seriously, all this dude does is amplify his self-importance with grandiose soft(war)e stories while giving mediocre programmers pseudo-intellectual cover to do whatever the hell they want when they're not micro-managed. Ooh, yeah, that's making us all so much more practical and productive. Blog to the hand, JS.
In addition to price the major reason for me to use OO over MS is the seamless use accross OS's. I'm a developer who works on Mac OS X, Ubuntu Linux and Vista. I keep a lot of documents under source control, things like specifications, spreadsheets with performance data, and diagrams which I'm now doing in OO draw. There's nothing that quite prepares you for being able to check out, edit, and check in the same spreadsheet on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and have it just work and render perfectly on all OS's. If you're a cross-platform shop in any way (for development, creative or anything) OO is a huge win in this regard.
Nothing against him as a person, but what's he been doing that's so brilliant in the past 2 decades that makes him an authority? He's like the Pete Best of Apple.
Blame the coursework, not the language. You can write Java from the command-line, you don't have to be taught to "rely" on GUI just because you're using Java. I write Java every day and never use a GUI framework (it's the network, stupid). You can (and we do) write Java components as services, libraries, CLI tools - if you're not teaching that but only teaching how to write Swing apps, it's your fault not the language. That said, C/C++ and assembly should certainly still be taught, and I believe they are in most normal compsci departments. But a -far- greater problem I've encountered are colleagues who *still* really don't understand OOD, reuse, and software architecture: thank you to those universities who are using Java to stress that, it's what the industry needs more of. Fie to the fuddy-duds.
Blanket gutting of copyright by changing to a 5-year term isn't politically viable, and at any rate it isn't the correct solution. Consider this: you're and indie songwriter and over 10 years you develop songs without gaining any traction with the record industry. Then Gus Van Sant puts one of your songs in a move and it's a hit, and everyone wants your stuff. Since our hypothetical copyrights only last 5 years, all of your material that's older than that is now free to be plundered by the industry and their blessed artists and you don't get a dime. Not cool. What we really need is a more tuned (and tunable) copyright expiration system that fulfills its intended purpose for each type of work, and a more permissive concept of fair use. This probably means different copyright expiration terms for software, works which have been created but not commercially marketed, and corporate-created and mass-marketed works. Software should have the shortest term (and no patents) - I think 5 years is fair here (you're not likely to have a "sleeper" software app that only catches on 10 years after it's written). Unmarketed works created by an individual (songs, novels, etc.) should have the longest terms - for the life of the author plus a few decades. Corporate works (e.g. a pop catalog, or a Disney film) should be limited to at most a couple of decades but that's a huge commercial battle to be waged; they want to keep milking the "vault" for as long as they possibly can, but clearly Snow White and all of Elvis should be in the public domain by now.
An even more terse equivalent: "entropy". Most of the energy at Microsoft is no longer available to do work.