I would like to say that I've seen many companies where people work together 40 hours a week, see each other every day, talk all the time about work problems, are usually stressed up. But never meet outside of the job, be it for a beer on Friday after work hours, or for a weekend barbecue. Is that the interaction people miss when telecommuting?
I think it's way more productive to have people working from home on the daily basis, but meeting regularly (bi-weekly, monthly) to do something fun, be it go to a bar, do some group sports, anyway, some bonding activities. I'm sure that's much better than the day-to-day stressed up routine of the office.
Looks like the case of the fake Open Document Foundation, that had nothing to do with ODF itself, and was just spreading FUD (probably trying to get money from Microsoft, in that case).
On the good side, these "schemes" tend to be found and revealed really quickly these days.
(Sorry, I live in a very much multilingual country)
And you're sorry about that??? I myself speak 4 languages fluently and I can scratch 2 more, and I'm very proud of it! I live in a multilingual country, in a bilingual city, and I speak 2 languages other than my native one every day at work. I'm very happy with it, and I think you should be too!
Not only did the article say much like its commercial counterpart, but most of the numbers it shows are actually good for open source software.
For instance, most of the projects discussed had less than 1 bug for 1000 lines of code. For instance, the Linux kernel had.127 bugs per 1000 lines, and that on over 3 million lines of code.
Also, the article talks about key projects, such as the glibc (which is basically used by everything on a Linux system) that already fixed all the issues.
Even something huge and complex as Firefox has already fixed half of the issues, and is showing progress on the rest of them (by the fact that some were already verified).
Overall, I didn't get the half glass empty tone that the summary is implying. And what I found strange is that even the comments on the site itself, and many of them on/. itself, are also taking the pessimistic view.
I thought that this news are great for open source software. Shows that it has less security issues than average, that the issues are fixed quickly, and still that some programs are certified by a company for use in security related departments such as the DHS. What could be better than that?
Actually, it would be really nice if it was possible to do it with Microsoft. Microsoft (or most other companies that produce proprietary software) certainly can't do better than what the open source projects do, and certainly their code contains at least as much issues as the ones found in open source projects.
The ability to do code audits has always been one great advantage of open source software, but until now, it was mostly in theory. Now we start to see big code audit projects such as this one, showing that the advantage is real and that the results of the audit are good, since some of the projects have alread patched all of the issues, and certainly most of others will finish patching them soon. This shows that open source is here to stay, is going mainstream, and will not be stopped by any company's interests.
All issues that currently exist on Microsoft's code, on the other hand, will be unpatched. Unless they hire some consultant company (why not the same?) to do the audit on their code (certainly under NDA). But you can be sure that, if they do, for one, they won't publish the results of how many issues were found. No transparency there. And also, probably many issues won't be fixed as promptly as all of them were fixed in many of the audited open source projects. This is not a speculation, if you only look at how long it takes for them to fix issues for which there are security vulnerability reports issued, then you realise that the ones only they know about will certainly take much longer.
I tried one of these and it's really cool (it must be expensive though). The image quality is very good. The only thing that bothered me a little about it was that the room was bright and the light was bothering me and distracting me from the video. But I was told that there is another device that you can put around the player to block outside lights.
Overall I found it nice, although it's not really the way I enjoy watching my movies.
I tried it briefly and didn't like it at all. It's still light-years behind Google.
This morning, I was talking to a friend about engines, and he told me about the Wankel engine. I looked for "wenkel engine" (I couldn't spell it better than that) in Wikia and it gave me one result only, which wasn't related at all. I went to Google, and the first thing: "Did you mean wankel engine?". Google is always my friend whenever I want to know how to spell something.
Ok, then I searched for "wankel engine" in Wikia and Google. In Google, the first result was the Wikipedia article for the Wankel engine, which in at least 50% of what I search is what I want. The fifth result (still visible without scrolling) was a Wikipedia article about the Mazda Wankel engine, which is the main commercial implementation of this engine, it's "the engine that made Mazda famous" (according to Wikipedia page). Not to mention that Google showed me also two drawings and one picture of the engine before the URL results. Very useful.
Now, enter Wikia. I scroll through the first page of results with 10 URLs, and none of them is Wikipedia! And this considering that Wikia is from the creators of Wikipedia and it's advertised as such! If I wanted lots of irrelevant results I could just go back to Altavista...
And what the hell is "people matching wankel engine" with some pictures of some random people. Why would I want that if I'm not looking for people? At least show me a picture of Felix Wankel (thanks again Google for that).
Unless they improve it drastically, I don't think anyone will use it over Google.
It looks like the marketing guys got into the buzz of Web 2.0 and told their Windows programmers that they wanted that for
their site. The result? A.NET site with Wordpress knee-jerked inside. The site (as most of.NET crap) doesn't even
validate. Even the blog, based on Wordpress, must
have been so messed up that it doesn't
validate either.
And what an awful theme! Where do these guys get their
webdesigners from?
Although I think they still have a lot to learn about using open source, I have to applaud at least their try. Although it's one step back, it's two forward.:-)
Great News! I hope this guy does as much as he speaks!
Red Hat is a great company, has very good products, but still has to enhance its support. Also, with Ubuntu getting market share on desktops, and SuSE trying to grab some piece of the servers pie (although I don't think they will after the Microsoft deal), Red Hat needs someone like him to lead it so that it keeps its leadership.
I wish well to Mr. Whitehurst and sincerelly hope he can make Red Hat grow as much as he plans to!
Dropping DRM is really great. I think that what Apple did, using its market power to turn the table on the record labels, game was just great! The big record labels will just continue suffering the consequences of their Holy Inquisition type of business model until they break.
On the other hand, now that the record labels are going against Apple's power and using Amazon to try to fight against Apple monopoly on iTunes, the other evil player on this game is going to have to adapt as well. Now Apple will have to compete with Amazon's lower prices (and better service IMO!) and will have to innovate to keep its market share.
Even then, they will probably lose their monopoly, the online music store market will probably end up having 3 or more big players, none of them with more than half the market share. And they will have to keep sweating to keep their market.
In the end, I guess this is great news for us buyers! This is a great example of the market regulating itself.
I just hope the same happens with DRM in video. But as we'll probably have some big players from the start (Netflix, Blockbuster), it's probably going the no-DRM way pretty soon.
Well, the article is Intel's version of the break. I think that if Negroponte really required Intel to drop the Classmate, it would have been too naive from him. It's almost as if he wanted to pick a fight with Intel and then tell the world that it's Intel's fault and that Intel doesn't want to play ball.
I think OLPC is a great idea, a great project and great technology, but this one didn't look that good for them (at least from the article, which is Intel's point of view, maybe the whole story is a little different, we'll know).
OLPC should try and use the best possible technology to produce the best laptop for the least possible cost. Considering that Intel has been doing lots of advances in cheap mobile power-saving chips, excluding Intel is not a good idea for the OLPC project. With the size of Intel, they are not losing that much by losing the OLPC project comparing to how much OLPC will be losing without Intel's support.
I agree that Intel was not being that clean with OLPC by having their competition project the Classmate, but even then, Negroponte should have been more diplomatic on this issue (again, the article is Intel's version, maybe it didn't happen just like that).
"Linux is only free if your time has no value." -Jamie Zawinski
Agreed, but Windows costs more than the double of what Linux costs:
Windows requires as much or more administration than Linux.
Windows has as much or more updating and upgrading hurdles as Linux.
If you have a problem with Windows, it's not like Microsoft is going to hold your hand and fix it for you quickly. Most times I needed technical support for a commercial product, I realised I would fix the problems myself quicker and better, if I could do it (if I had the source).
If you have problems with bugs in Windows, you have to wait for Microsoft to fix it, if they decide to fix it.
With Windows you're more prone to more serious security problems. Of course there are vulnerabilities in Linux as well, but I've never seen something as wild as the chaos caused by ILOVEYOU and NIMDA in Linux.
With Windows you have to spend with server licenses, client licenses, extra CALs if your clients are not Windows. If that was not enough, you still have to pay for an antivirus. With LAMP you don't need any licenses. Not to mention that you have to manage all the licenses. And don't lose any media, it's not like you can easily download it from their site!
So, while Linux is not gratis, it's still much cheaper than Windows. Especially for Web systems such as LAMP, most distributions allow you to install it as easily as one command (or even a graphical installer), and you can even download a virtual machine that you can use as a development or testing environment without even having to install anything.
If there is one thing that still can be cheaper in Windows, is that you can hire a Windows administrator for cheap, while a Linux administrator would probably require a higher pay. But this is changing with the popularization of Linux, there are more Linux admins in the market today. Another point is that you get what you pay for, the cheap Windows administrator probably won't do that good a job, and if you want quality you'll probably have to pay as much as you would pay to a good Linux administrator anyway.
With Windows Web Server 2008 you'll still have to pay for the OS. With LAMP it's free.
Windows Server 2008 is the server version of Vista. Will it have the same licensing model? Will this unlimited Windows Web Server be available only in the Ultimate version?
In any case, this shows that Microsoft is getting desperate, and even with this I don't think they'll get any market share from LAMP.
It's often like the industry is trying to sabotage itself.
And as much as they try it, they still can't do it effectively!
I find it amazing that people don't boycott this stuff more. I mean, buying DRM content is really stupid.
On the other hand, sometimes boycotting bad products is almost impossible. Until some time ago, it was impossible to buy a notebook without Windows bundled in it. That meant that if you wanted to boycott Microsoft you would have to give up on your notebook. It took several years, but the market is changing and now it's possible to buy notebooks with other OS or no OS even from major vendors.
DRM content, on the other hand, is easier to boycott. You really can live without it. And in somecases, it seems that the boycott is being effective.
Microsoft plans to use its website to push Silverlight technology adoption.
I remember when MSDN and other Microsoft sites were available only with IE. This was bad for who worked on Linux or used Netscape/Firefox but had to support Windows hosts. They finally changed their sites to be standard compliant (or at least, closer to that).
Now that they're losing market to Firefox and they're having to go standards compliant on HTML, they'll try to push a "better" technology to try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly.
If you look at it, OOXML is just the same, its integration with Sharepoint is another try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly on the web.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Silverlight is cross-platform and supported, because Microsoft will always own the format, lead its development, and introduce new incompatible features. Everyone will have to keep following them forever, not to mention that probably they'll start adding patented features or DRM. They've been doing this with every program and file format they have.
Standardize RTF first
on
RTF Vs. OOXML
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I think if Microsoft really wanted to promote interoperabillity they should standardize RTF first and then OOXML.
After all, RTF is here since Word '95 (and maybe even before), and as far as I can tell, it hasn't changed since. It's a stable format (which OOXML isn't at all). It's already supported by virtually all products on the market. It's text based, it's simple (contrary to the binary formats).
If Microsoft is really concerned about interoperabillity, they should have published the full specs of RTF and pushed for standardization a long time ago.
However, as they're pushing for the standardization of OOXML, an unstable format that even they don't implement, with dubious IP concerns, with unspecified features, I think that says a lot about what they're trying to accomplish, and interoperabillity it certainly isn't.
Cut back corporate copyrights from 120 to 5 years makes complete sense. Copyrights should be used to protect, but these days they're being used to exploit.
Maybe 5 years is a little too short, it's a little radical, but in general I agree to the argument that cutting back this much should be done to punish the misbehaving kid. Cutting back to 5 years would bring more benefits than drawbacks.
I hope they count these as security vulnerabilities on the next report of Microsoft vs. Linux vulnerability count. After all, Microsoft itself is claiming it's a security related problem.
And they were apparently "exploitable" for about 4 years, since they were "fixed" with SP3 in 2007 for a product from 2003.
They did this because the old formats are 'less secure', which actually makes some sense,
This doesn't make sense to me. A file format doesn't have buffer overflow vulnerabilities, the program that opens it has them. A file format cannot execute a virus or a trojan, the program that opens it is the one that does it. I cannot believe that a file format can have inherent vulnerabilities that cannot be circumvented by the program that reads the file.
On the other hand, considering the ODF vs. OOXML format wars, it seems to me that Microsoft's objective with this is actually to press for the standardization of OOXML. How exactly I don't understand, since the whole point of standard document formats is to avoid this same problem that they've just created.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to say that I've seen many companies where people work together 40 hours a week, see each other every day, talk all the time about work problems, are usually stressed up. But never meet outside of the job, be it for a beer on Friday after work hours, or for a weekend barbecue. Is that the interaction people miss when telecommuting?
I think it's way more productive to have people working from home on the daily basis, but meeting regularly (bi-weekly, monthly) to do something fun, be it go to a bar, do some group sports, anyway, some bonding activities. I'm sure that's much better than the day-to-day stressed up routine of the office.
Looks like the case of the fake Open Document Foundation, that had nothing to do with ODF itself, and was just spreading FUD (probably trying to get money from Microsoft, in that case).
On the good side, these "schemes" tend to be found and revealed really quickly these days.
And you're sorry about that??? I myself speak 4 languages fluently and I can scratch 2 more, and I'm very proud of it! I live in a multilingual country, in a bilingual city, and I speak 2 languages other than my native one every day at work. I'm very happy with it, and I think you should be too!
Not only did the article say much like its commercial counterpart, but most of the numbers it shows are actually good for open source software.
For instance, most of the projects discussed had less than 1 bug for 1000 lines of code. For instance, the Linux kernel had .127 bugs per 1000 lines, and that on over 3 million lines of code.
Also, the article talks about key projects, such as the glibc (which is basically used by everything on a Linux system) that already fixed all the issues.
Even something huge and complex as Firefox has already fixed half of the issues, and is showing progress on the rest of them (by the fact that some were already verified).
Overall, I didn't get the half glass empty tone that the summary is implying. And what I found strange is that even the comments on the site itself, and many of them on /. itself, are also taking the pessimistic view.
I thought that this news are great for open source software. Shows that it has less security issues than average, that the issues are fixed quickly, and still that some programs are certified by a company for use in security related departments such as the DHS. What could be better than that?
Actually, it would be really nice if it was possible to do it with Microsoft. Microsoft (or most other companies that produce proprietary software) certainly can't do better than what the open source projects do, and certainly their code contains at least as much issues as the ones found in open source projects.
The ability to do code audits has always been one great advantage of open source software, but until now, it was mostly in theory. Now we start to see big code audit projects such as this one, showing that the advantage is real and that the results of the audit are good, since some of the projects have alread patched all of the issues, and certainly most of others will finish patching them soon. This shows that open source is here to stay, is going mainstream, and will not be stopped by any company's interests.
All issues that currently exist on Microsoft's code, on the other hand, will be unpatched. Unless they hire some consultant company (why not the same?) to do the audit on their code (certainly under NDA). But you can be sure that, if they do, for one, they won't publish the results of how many issues were found. No transparency there. And also, probably many issues won't be fixed as promptly as all of them were fixed in many of the audited open source projects. This is not a speculation, if you only look at how long it takes for them to fix issues for which there are security vulnerability reports issued, then you realise that the ones only they know about will certainly take much longer.
I tried one of these and it's really cool (it must be expensive though). The image quality is very good. The only thing that bothered me a little about it was that the room was bright and the light was bothering me and distracting me from the video. But I was told that there is another device that you can put around the player to block outside lights.
Overall I found it nice, although it's not really the way I enjoy watching my movies.
I tried it briefly and didn't like it at all. It's still light-years behind Google.
This morning, I was talking to a friend about engines, and he told me about the Wankel engine. I looked for "wenkel engine" (I couldn't spell it better than that) in Wikia and it gave me one result only, which wasn't related at all. I went to Google, and the first thing: "Did you mean wankel engine?". Google is always my friend whenever I want to know how to spell something.
Ok, then I searched for "wankel engine" in Wikia and Google. In Google, the first result was the Wikipedia article for the Wankel engine, which in at least 50% of what I search is what I want. The fifth result (still visible without scrolling) was a Wikipedia article about the Mazda Wankel engine, which is the main commercial implementation of this engine, it's "the engine that made Mazda famous" (according to Wikipedia page). Not to mention that Google showed me also two drawings and one picture of the engine before the URL results. Very useful.
Now, enter Wikia. I scroll through the first page of results with 10 URLs, and none of them is Wikipedia! And this considering that Wikia is from the creators of Wikipedia and it's advertised as such! If I wanted lots of irrelevant results I could just go back to Altavista...
And what the hell is "people matching wankel engine" with some pictures of some random people. Why would I want that if I'm not looking for people? At least show me a picture of Felix Wankel (thanks again Google for that).
Unless they improve it drastically, I don't think anyone will use it over Google.
The site is ugly.
It looks like the marketing guys got into the buzz of Web 2.0 and told their Windows programmers that they wanted that for their site. The result? A .NET site with Wordpress knee-jerked inside. The site (as most of .NET crap) doesn't even
validate. Even the blog, based on Wordpress, must
have been so messed up that it doesn't
validate either.
And what an awful theme! Where do these guys get their webdesigners from?
Although I think they still have a lot to learn about using open source, I have to applaud at least their try. Although it's one step back, it's two forward. :-)
Great News! I hope this guy does as much as he speaks!
Red Hat is a great company, has very good products, but still has to enhance its support. Also, with Ubuntu getting market share on desktops, and SuSE trying to grab some piece of the servers pie (although I don't think they will after the Microsoft deal), Red Hat needs someone like him to lead it so that it keeps its leadership.
I wish well to Mr. Whitehurst and sincerelly hope he can make Red Hat grow as much as he plans to!
Dropping DRM is really great. I think that what Apple did, using its market power to turn the table on the record labels, game was just great! The big record labels will just continue suffering the consequences of their Holy Inquisition type of business model until they break.
On the other hand, now that the record labels are going against Apple's power and using Amazon to try to fight against Apple monopoly on iTunes, the other evil player on this game is going to have to adapt as well. Now Apple will have to compete with Amazon's lower prices (and better service IMO!) and will have to innovate to keep its market share.
Even then, they will probably lose their monopoly, the online music store market will probably end up having 3 or more big players, none of them with more than half the market share. And they will have to keep sweating to keep their market.
In the end, I guess this is great news for us buyers! This is a great example of the market regulating itself.
I just hope the same happens with DRM in video. But as we'll probably have some big players from the start (Netflix, Blockbuster), it's probably going the no-DRM way pretty soon.
Well, the article is Intel's version of the break. I think that if Negroponte really required Intel to drop the Classmate, it would have been too naive from him. It's almost as if he wanted to pick a fight with Intel and then tell the world that it's Intel's fault and that Intel doesn't want to play ball.
I think OLPC is a great idea, a great project and great technology, but this one didn't look that good for them (at least from the article, which is Intel's point of view, maybe the whole story is a little different, we'll know).
OLPC should try and use the best possible technology to produce the best laptop for the least possible cost. Considering that Intel has been doing lots of advances in cheap mobile power-saving chips, excluding Intel is not a good idea for the OLPC project. With the size of Intel, they are not losing that much by losing the OLPC project comparing to how much OLPC will be losing without Intel's support.
I agree that Intel was not being that clean with OLPC by having their competition project the Classmate, but even then, Negroponte should have been more diplomatic on this issue (again, the article is Intel's version, maybe it didn't happen just like that).
Of course not! But, in my opinion, his quote was used in a context to suggest just that.
That or my sarcasm sensor is broken... :-D
Last time I checked, Slashdot was still using Linux.
So... Is it a hobby? Or a small-time outfit? :-D
Agreed, but Windows costs more than the double of what Linux costs:
So, while Linux is not gratis, it's still much cheaper than Windows. Especially for Web systems such as LAMP, most distributions allow you to install it as easily as one command (or even a graphical installer), and you can even download a virtual machine that you can use as a development or testing environment without even having to install anything.
If there is one thing that still can be cheaper in Windows, is that you can hire a Windows administrator for cheap, while a Linux administrator would probably require a higher pay. But this is changing with the popularization of Linux, there are more Linux admins in the market today. Another point is that you get what you pay for, the cheap Windows administrator probably won't do that good a job, and if you want quality you'll probably have to pay as much as you would pay to a good Linux administrator anyway.
With Windows Web Server 2008 you'll still have to pay for the OS. With LAMP it's free.
Windows Server 2008 is the server version of Vista. Will it have the same licensing model? Will this unlimited Windows Web Server be available only in the Ultimate version?
In any case, this shows that Microsoft is getting desperate, and even with this I don't think they'll get any market share from LAMP.
In Soviet Russia, spam kills you
Arecibo? I thought they were closing it? At least they recently lost around 75% of their fundings.
And as much as they try it, they still can't do it effectively!
I find it amazing that people don't boycott this stuff more. I mean, buying DRM content is really stupid.
On the other hand, sometimes boycotting bad products is almost impossible. Until some time ago, it was impossible to buy a notebook without Windows bundled in it. That meant that if you wanted to boycott Microsoft you would have to give up on your notebook. It took several years, but the market is changing and now it's possible to buy notebooks with other OS or no OS even from major vendors.
DRM content, on the other hand, is easier to boycott. You really can live without it. And in some cases, it seems that the boycott is being effective.
Microsoft plans to use its website to push Silverlight technology adoption.
I remember when MSDN and other Microsoft sites were available only with IE. This was bad for who worked on Linux or used Netscape/Firefox but had to support Windows hosts. They finally changed their sites to be standard compliant (or at least, closer to that).
Now that they're losing market to Firefox and they're having to go standards compliant on HTML, they'll try to push a "better" technology to try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly.
If you look at it, OOXML is just the same, its integration with Sharepoint is another try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly on the web.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Silverlight is cross-platform and supported, because Microsoft will always own the format, lead its development, and introduce new incompatible features. Everyone will have to keep following them forever, not to mention that probably they'll start adding patented features or DRM. They've been doing this with every program and file format they have.
I think if Microsoft really wanted to promote interoperabillity they should standardize RTF first and then OOXML.
After all, RTF is here since Word '95 (and maybe even before), and as far as I can tell, it hasn't changed since. It's a stable format (which OOXML isn't at all). It's already supported by virtually all products on the market. It's text based, it's simple (contrary to the binary formats).
If Microsoft is really concerned about interoperabillity, they should have published the full specs of RTF and pushed for standardization a long time ago.
However, as they're pushing for the standardization of OOXML, an unstable format that even they don't implement, with dubious IP concerns, with unspecified features, I think that says a lot about what they're trying to accomplish, and interoperabillity it certainly isn't.
Cut back corporate copyrights from 120 to 5 years makes complete sense. Copyrights should be used to protect, but these days they're being used to exploit.
Maybe 5 years is a little too short, it's a little radical, but in general I agree to the argument that cutting back this much should be done to punish the misbehaving kid. Cutting back to 5 years would bring more benefits than drawbacks.
2008 will be the year of the Social Network Aggregators, and 2009 will be the year for the Aggregators of all the Social Network Aggregators!
I hope they count these as security vulnerabilities on the next report of Microsoft vs. Linux vulnerability count. After all, Microsoft itself is claiming it's a security related problem.
And they were apparently "exploitable" for about 4 years, since they were "fixed" with SP3 in 2007 for a product from 2003.
Does that mean they'll drop the autoSpaceLikeWord95 tag from OOXML spec?
This doesn't make sense to me. A file format doesn't have buffer overflow vulnerabilities, the program that opens it has them. A file format cannot execute a virus or a trojan, the program that opens it is the one that does it. I cannot believe that a file format can have inherent vulnerabilities that cannot be circumvented by the program that reads the file.
On the other hand, considering the ODF vs. OOXML format wars, it seems to me that Microsoft's objective with this is actually to press for the standardization of OOXML. How exactly I don't understand, since the whole point of standard document formats is to avoid this same problem that they've just created.