So first, one needs to explain that source code does not necessarily mean vulnerabilities are visible or present any more than knowing how a lock works makes them insecure. That is a pretty challenging hurdle to overcome.
The MS folks are saying, "If the bad guys can see the source code, they can find a vulnerability." Of course this is only true if there's a vulnerability to be found. But I think to the non-technical, it can sound like "If the bad guys can see the source code, they can create a vulnerability." It certainly seems that this misunderstanding is being exploited.
On a recent drive across Texas, about two hours after sunset, I pulled off I-10 at an obscure state road 200km or more from the nearest major town. The view beggared anything I've seen in the sky since I was a young child -- I looked right at (or through) the constellation of Orion a couple of times before I recognized it, because there was so much other stuff visible. Plus I had a very nice set of 50mm binoculars along, which made things a lot more interesting.
It is really a great shame that people in even moderately populous regions can go many years without realizing that all those "empty" spaces up there between the magnitude-1 stars are full of interesting stuff. Just this one twenty-minute visit to really dark skies has renewed my long-dormant interest in astronomy.
This seems to be a very American (and Japanese) phenomenon. In Europe, it wouldn't even be legal to offer only 10 days of vacation time in many countries (possibly all of them, these days). Here in the UK, for someone working in a typical developer or sysadmin role in IT, I'd say somewhere around 25 days +/- 2 is fairly typical, plus the 8 public holidays (which is fewer than most other European countries get).
Wow. I'm a salaried developer in the US, and I have that level of leave time... after working for the same company for sixteen years!
OTOH I work from home full-time and don't particularly like to travel, so I have a lot of
time for myself. I tend to accumulate leave time and then take it out in cash periodically, which can be nice.
The idea that simply cramming more transistors on a chip can, in itself, make anything go faster is rather silly. It's obvious that "more transistors" means "more parallelism", whereas "faster transistors" means "more speed". It's just that until recently, the nature of the parallelism was hidden from developers (in pipelines).
Functional programming (and declarative programming in general) isn't intrinsically any harder than other kinds. It may seem harder for programmers who've only done structured and OO stuff. But it's just another way of looking at problems, and once you "get it", it's
easy. The trick is, don't worry about what the code does; just think about what it means. In "traditional" languages there's often little difference between those aspects, but in declarative languages there's a huge difference. IMO Prolog is the language that makes it easiest to see this (but I'm biased as Prolog was the first declarative language I learned). Prolog's syntax and semantics are much easier to absorb than, say, Haskell's.
Even in traditional SP languages, the relationship between the code one writes and the CPU's behavior has been getting more and more obscure as the complexity and pipeline depth of processors increases, and in general we don't let this worry us. Programmer time is usually lots more valuable than processor time. So the not-totally-obvious relationship between FP code and efficiency doesn't seem like a huge issue, especially when the code you write is parallelizable more or less for free.
Well, mostly when people talk about legislating morality, they're referring to a religious group's attempt to impose their doctrinal beliefs through government influence. When I wrote "I don't care about legislating morality", I only meant that that is not a criterion that I personally find very helpful. As you rightly point out, morality covers more than the narrow rules of various religious traditions, and much government activity carries moral baggage of some sort.
In general, when considering the merits of a law or regulation, a major question I ask is, "On the whole, does this tend to increase the amount of liberty people have with which to do interesting stuff with their lives?" Of course that's not the only criterion, and of course there are trade-offs involved. I certainly don't want everyone to have the freedom to shoot anyone they please, since that might seriously interfere with my own and my loved ones' rights.
I should add that this is a position I've arrived at only rather recently, after thinking of myself as a libertarian for some time.
The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom.
It's not an error, it's a value judgment. A functioning adult human, in my opinion, deserves more consideration than a fetus.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing,
That's not true. But IMO the parents' rights trump those of an unconscious collection of stem cells. As I said upthread, I don't think abortion is a good thing; I merely think it should be legal.
and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom.
The notion of "freedom" presupposes conscious volition, which a fetus does not possess. Anyway, neither my "opponents" nor the fetus in question are in any position to make the no-doubt-heartwrenching decision whether to abort a pregnancy, give a child up for adoption, or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support. Only the potential parents are able to make that decision.
I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
Straw man. Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced. On the other hand, I think there are cases where stealing is a defensible (or even a positively moral) act.
If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't.
I don't care about legislating morality. I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it. (Of course, I spend a lot of time being disappointed.) So I support programs and legislation that advance that goal; and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things. I don't support abortion per se, and I think it's tragic when it occurs; but I'm very much in favor of it being an option.
"Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter" seems to me a bit disingenuous. I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance.
It seems perfectly consistent: like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction. It's likely that a comprehensive and fact-based reproductive-education program delivered to teens would reduce the number of abortions (for example, by informing kids that, yes, condoms actually are a very effective form of contraception; as opposed to dishonestly denying this fact, as do some government-supported "abstinence-only" programs).
Facts are always better than fables or wishful thinking.
But yes, without someone paying you for your time, you'd have little other incentive to do this, other than altruism. Strangely, a lot of GPL software is still being produced by altruism, but don't be fooled: not all of it is. There are programmers at IBM, Novell, and Red Hat who are getting paychecks for this stuff.
I think it comes down to what your core business is. Is it to produce an IP asset (a copyrighted product that only you can sell)? Or is it to work for money? Traditionally, the first scenario is where the real money is. Bill Gates didn't make his fortune by collecting paychecks.
But if RMS and his like can convince people that GPLed software is valuable, the second model may increase in viability, and perhaps at the expense of the first. Why should I buy a product instead of hiring someone to modify a nearly-done free product for me?
So RMS wants to bring us back to a craft-based, production-oriented economy; rather than an economy based on letting the "assets" do all the "work", accumulating obscene amounts of capital with essentially no human intervention or creative value. I think that is a good thing, but it's certain to be an uphill slog. Easy money is a powerful narcotic.
Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place!
apropos can be a big help. As in, apropos foo will list the names of all the commands whose man pages contain foo.
But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?
It's only easier if (a) what you're looking for is actually in the menu heirarchy, and (b) the heirarchy is organized in a way that makes sense to the user. But one user's "sensible organization" is another's "chaotic mess".
"many eyes make bugs shallow" is equivalent to the "infinite number of monkeys..." thing.
experiencing problems or realize what is wrong... No. The many eyes are filtering existing code, not trying to generate something useful at random. You sound like a creationist.
''' But, before the (alleged) explosion, ineffective workers had minesweeper and solitaire. Before that they had a water cooler and last night's shows to talk about. Before that it was real solitaire with real cards. '''
I think these "ineffective" workers are just "normal" ones. I'm a very focussed person, most of the time, while I'm designing a product or writing code, but I don't feel that I'm typical -- I can be positively antisocial when building the first couple revs of a new product. Many people IME don't get genuine satisfaction out of their work. Those that do may be more effective, but it seems unrealistic to expect that level of performance from everyone. (Not that you're expecting that; I just find it odd to use the word "ineffective" for the "Lost"-watchin'-water-cooler-talkin'-minesweepin'-websurfin' folks as if they're some kind of obscure outliers on the work-productivity curve. I think they're bang in the center of the bell.)
And gob knows I've surfed my share of Slashdot articles while stuff was "compiling"...
Slashdot Mirror
The MS folks are saying, "If the bad guys can see the source code, they can find a vulnerability." Of course this is only true if there's a vulnerability to be found. But I think to the non-technical, it can sound like "If the bad guys can see the source code, they can create a vulnerability." It certainly seems that this misunderstanding is being exploited.
[...] academia uses paper like it's going out of style (which I guess it is...).
I've always thought that idiom a trifle odd. When something is actually going out of style, people tend to use less of it.
"...uses paper like it's a new Facebook meme..."
So... Windows and Citrix are finally taking us to where IBM was in 1972. Nice.
On a recent drive across Texas, about two hours after sunset, I pulled off I-10 at an obscure state road 200km or more from the nearest major town. The view beggared anything I've seen in the sky since I was a young child -- I looked right at (or through) the constellation of Orion a couple of times before I recognized it, because there was so much other stuff visible. Plus I had a very nice set of 50mm binoculars along, which made things a lot more interesting.
It is really a great shame that people in even moderately populous regions can go many years without realizing that all those "empty" spaces up there between the magnitude-1 stars are full of interesting stuff. Just this one twenty-minute visit to really dark skies has renewed my long-dormant interest in astronomy.
This seems to be a very American (and Japanese) phenomenon. In Europe, it wouldn't even be legal to offer only 10 days of vacation time in many countries (possibly all of them, these days). Here in the UK, for someone working in a typical developer or sysadmin role in IT, I'd say somewhere around 25 days +/- 2 is fairly typical, plus the 8 public holidays (which is fewer than most other European countries get).
Wow. I'm a salaried developer in the US, and I have that level of leave time... after working for the same company for sixteen years!
OTOH I work from home full-time and don't particularly like to travel, so I have a lot of time for myself. I tend to accumulate leave time and then take it out in cash periodically, which can be nice.
People who behaved that way used to have to spend time in the public square, locked into a wooden apparatus: the "hickory dickery dock".
Well, mostly when people talk about legislating morality, they're referring to a religious group's attempt to impose their doctrinal beliefs through government influence. When I wrote "I don't care about legislating morality", I only meant that that is not a criterion that I personally find very helpful. As you rightly point out, morality covers more than the narrow rules of various religious traditions, and much government activity carries moral baggage of some sort.
In general, when considering the merits of a law or regulation, a major question I ask is, "On the whole, does this tend to increase the amount of liberty people have with which to do interesting stuff with their lives?" Of course that's not the only criterion, and of course there are trade-offs involved. I certainly don't want everyone to have the freedom to shoot anyone they please, since that might seriously interfere with my own and my loved ones' rights.
I should add that this is a position I've arrived at only rather recently, after thinking of myself as a libertarian for some time.
The error in your logic lies in assuming that the fetus has no rights to personal freedom.
It's not an error, it's a value judgment. A functioning adult human, in my opinion, deserves more consideration than a fetus.
You obviously believe the fetus has no moral standing,
That's not true. But IMO the parents' rights trump those of an unconscious collection of stem cells. As I said upthread, I don't think abortion is a good thing; I merely think it should be legal.
and so abortion laws limit the mother's freedom and nobody else's. Your opponents see you limiting the fetus' freedom.
The notion of "freedom" presupposes conscious volition, which a fetus does not possess. Anyway, neither my "opponents" nor the fetus in question are in any position to make the no-doubt-heartwrenching decision whether to abort a pregnancy, give a child up for adoption, or risk their future, and their potential baby's, trying to raise a child they're not prepared to support. Only the potential parents are able to make that decision.
I'm sure you don't argue that stealing is ok. After all, prohibitions on stealing takes away my personal freedom of being able to take whatever I want.
Straw man. Maximizing personal freedom for everyone requires some limitations to be enforced. On the other hand, I think there are cases where stealing is a defensible (or even a positively moral) act.
If you really think the Government should not legislate morality and should butt out, then that includes butting out for the things you like as well as the things you don't.
I don't care about legislating morality. I think the government should be in the business of increasing personal freedom (possibly at the expense of corporate freedom), not reducing it. (Of course, I spend a lot of time being disappointed.) So I support programs and legislation that advance that goal; and that is why I would see both restrictions on abortion, and a reduction in support for Planned Parenthood as bad things. I don't support abortion per se, and I think it's tragic when it occurs; but I'm very much in favor of it being an option.
"Not wanting the government to be in charge of such a personal matter" seems to me a bit disingenuous. I don't see many (and I'll bow to your preferences and use the term "pro-choice") pro-choice people arguing against the government's vital role in funding Planned Parenthood for instance.
It seems perfectly consistent: like legal abortion, Planned Parenthood is about increasing one's ability to make informed choices about reproduction. It's likely that a comprehensive and fact-based reproductive-education program delivered to teens would reduce the number of abortions (for example, by informing kids that, yes, condoms actually are a very effective form of contraception; as opposed to dishonestly denying this fact, as do some government-supported "abstinence-only" programs).
Facts are always better than fables or wishful thinking.
Woah, those Freescale people have just blown my mind! Who da thunk I'd see a 100% solid-state CPU in my lifetime?
(Hang on, gotta go shovel some coal into the ol' Pentium...)
You make me wish I had mod points...
But yes, without someone paying you for your time, you'd have little other incentive to do this, other than altruism. Strangely, a lot of GPL software is still being produced by altruism, but don't be fooled: not all of it is. There are programmers at IBM, Novell, and Red Hat who are getting paychecks for this stuff.
I think it comes down to what your core business is. Is it to produce an IP asset (a copyrighted product that only you can sell)? Or is it to work for money? Traditionally, the first scenario is where the real money is. Bill Gates didn't make his fortune by collecting paychecks.
But if RMS and his like can convince people that GPLed software is valuable, the second model may increase in viability, and perhaps at the expense of the first. Why should I buy a product instead of hiring someone to modify a nearly-done free product for me?
So RMS wants to bring us back to a craft-based, production-oriented economy; rather than an economy based on letting the "assets" do all the "work", accumulating obscene amounts of capital with essentially no human intervention or creative value. I think that is a good thing, but it's certain to be an uphill slog. Easy money is a powerful narcotic.
apropos can be a big help. As in, apropos foo will list the names of all the commands whose man pages contain foo.
But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?It's only easier if (a) what you're looking for is actually in the menu heirarchy, and (b) the heirarchy is organized in a way that makes sense to the user. But one user's "sensible organization" is another's "chaotic mess".
-- JK
On another note the mall designed to get people to shop to death is about the scariest thing Ive ever heard of.
Meh. It's already a solved problem.
'''
But, before the (alleged) explosion, ineffective workers had minesweeper and solitaire. Before that they had a water cooler and last night's shows to talk about. Before that it was real solitaire with real cards.
'''
I think these "ineffective" workers are just "normal" ones. I'm a very focussed person, most of the time, while I'm designing a product or writing code, but I don't feel that I'm typical -- I can be positively antisocial when building the first couple revs of a new product. Many people IME don't get genuine satisfaction out of their work. Those that do may be more effective, but it seems unrealistic to expect that level of performance from everyone. (Not that you're expecting that; I just find it odd to use the word "ineffective" for the "Lost"-watchin'-water-cooler-talkin'-minesweepin'-websurfin' folks as if they're some kind of obscure outliers on the work-productivity curve. I think they're bang in the center of the bell.)
And gob knows I've surfed my share of Slashdot articles while stuff was "compiling"...