The idea that OSS is easy to get under the hood does not mean that every single user should (or even could) fix it - that's just a total strawman argument. There are enough programmers out there that the moderately popular projects will get input from outside and they *are* better as a result. 95% of project development comes from 'internal' development, but that extra 5% is sometimes crucial.
Plus, it opens the opportunity for a business to hire someone to fix it/make it work as you want. There is no such opportunity with closed-source software.
Someone else has mentioned the free vs gratis confusion. The whole article seems to have been written to wind up the slashdot crowd... I bet it's succeeded too.
The button order just proves that 'usability tests' aren't worth the money.
99% of users learn on Windows, so you have to do things in substantially the same way otherwise you're just increasing the learning curve.
For experts it's worse - the OK/Cancel have been in the same order for me for about 9 years, then this upstart comes along and tries to change it. I dropped gnome like a hot potato and went to KDE... a project like the one above sounds at last like it might be worth looking at as this guy sounds like he is listening to the users, rather than some overpaid marketing types.
NT4 SP4 changed the NTFS format and randomly made the machine unbootable, but they fixed that on SP5.
Win2k SP4 did something funky to the login dialog that broke it if you were running under vmware (we have maybe 20 vmware machines for every real machine), but the answer was to copy the files from a standard Win2k.
XP SP2 certainly does cause problems... until the workarounds are well known it's not going to get a widespread rollout, but that's to be expected with something as major as that. It's home users that will bear the brunt of the problems (along with MS tech support... for which they charge per incident. Nice little earner for them).
That's actually true. Users are annoyingly undemanding sometimes. I'll implement something and get "wow I've been waiting for a feature like that" responses... but *nobody* has actually asked me to do it, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
OTOH once you've implemented something everyone suddenly gets an opinion about it, and it takes another version to make as many people as possible happy... hence you're at 3.0 before it works.
I've got an SQL script that can BSOD XP 100% reliably... it unfortunately takes about 6 hours to do that so it's not quite so dramatic as running round the office causing BSODs to every machine while laughing manically.
It's really not that hard to BSOD XP if you know what you're doing. It's hard to do accidentally, though (for example, the security APIs aren't error checked at all so you can run an app that corrupts the internal memory of the LSA.. the machine gets slowly more deranged until the LSA falls over and you get the 'I'm about to crash in 30 seconds' error).
IUD is Intrauterine Device . I really don't think you meant that:)
Anyway, who would put a GPS in a coke can? So you can tell where it is if you leave it on a bus???? Sounds like a stupid idea to me... nice geek project but I really don't see the point of comparing it to a bomb.
They're not though. This whole article is based on a false premise.
I just logged in and can download the source code for free, just as part of my $20 support subscription. This seems to me to be perfectly in keeping with the GPL. $20 for support/binaries, and I get the source thrown in.
If I redistribute (difficult to see how they'd tell from the source tarballs) then I don't get any support, but I'm free to redistribute.
Install XP on a recent PC and 99% certain it won't have the drivers for your hardware anyway (XP is *old* now). So you get them somehow... a bit difficult if it's your network driver that's fubar (I keep a USB floppy drive for this purpose). Then there's the 100MB+ of 'security fixes' to download (getting larger by the day - sucks if you're on a slow connection... I've had to leave it overnight beforen now).
*then* you can start on the essential apps...
In the worst case you install XP SP2 and find the drivers aren't compatible (been there, done that) and have to reformat and start from step (1) again because it just trashed your machine [OK I know anyone sensible would stick with SP1, so it doesn't really count]
OTOH get a recent Linux, boots, installs, nothing to download, done.
An AOL user wouldn't have a damn clue what a 'folder' is anyway. They'd have all their files on their desktop.
Until the Windows 'cleanup wizard' helpfully deletes them - I've seen this happen - the user phoned me in a complete panic as windows had 'lost' all their documents. I had to go over there to get them back as he was too scared to touch it in case they were gone forever. I switched the wizard off to avoid another incident (IMO it should not be on by default anyway.. I'd file a bug if I thought MS would actually listen).
The CLI is harder to learn but anyone who can pick up computer paradigms such as 'folder' isn't going to have much trouble with a crib-sheet listing 'mkdir' and 'dir'.
If your children distract you and you have an accident that's illegal and will probably result in a ban.
Eating, drinking, applying makeup is already actionable as you're not in control of the car when doing those things (up to a max. 2 years in jail if you cause an accident)
Round here the morons that talk on mobiles are already in deep trouble with the law.
If QA find no bugs then they have failed. Sack them.
To use an engineering phrase - "A successuful test is one that fails".
The programmer won't find the bugs because he's too close to the code - he doesn't have the same usage patterns as the end users and should *not* be relied upon to find such errors.
(As an example, I'm on a project that's on it's final release candidate, been through about a month of testing so was rolled out internally for actual use. Within 3 or 4 hours we found an "Oh sh*t" bug that is going to have to be fixed. It's hard to replicate as it requires specific usage patterns and there's nobody to blame really, but when it happens it totally screws up the system).
printf and strlen cannot produce buffer overruns... and anyway how are you going to tell the length of a string without strlen?
Maybe you meant strcpy and sprintf (use strncpy and snprintf instead!).
Code safety isn't about the use of individual functions, or even languages (I've managed to DoS a Java app by making it allocate strings forever in a loop... the code was written such that the GC never cleaned up). It's about good practice, often learned through bitter experience (OTOH I can't think of a safe use for gets()...)
AFAIK it's mostly down to the paper industry that hemp is illegal anyway... they wanted to produce their more lucrative wood based paper (it's difficult to make a profit when your raw materials are a weed that grows anywhere very quickly.. better to standardise on a limited resource that takes 30 years to grow). Lobbyists were very powerful in the US even 50 years ago.
The US actually managed to eradicate a weed that grew on the roadside from their shores by agressive burning along with a demonisation campaign to try to turn people off the (then popular) drug... a bit like the 'war on terror' but with even fewer facts behind it:)
There are many strands of non-THC containing Hemp (given that the social effects of introducing wide availability of another drug are undesirable - alchohol is bad enough). In Europe at least there are fields full of the stuff, as hemp rope and linen is still very popular. Even hemp paper is available, given it's cheap/easy to produce...
Medical Hemp (the THC kind) is grown under license and given to selected patients to treat certain conditions, although that's mostly still under trial (and is the motivation for the reclassification of cannabis possesion in the UK, so that the drug companies could legally do their trials).
Ugh. Please don't let PHBs run the show... that's how we get Microsoft Bob (that's not why MS are successful, anyway. It's because they're primarily a marketing company rather than a technical company... it doesn't matter how bad it is they convince millions of people they want it).
Projects should be led by the requirements of the users. That goes for both OSS and Commercial. I've seen both types of project utterly destroyed by people getting high and mighty about how they know better than anyone else how to make the project work.
'in-house' users often get familiar with the status quo and are only of limited use after a few months. You need to talk to tehnical support and find out what people are asking about, then change it so they stop needing to phone you. Sometimes this is hard, and treads on egos. Tough.
Actually most users have an idea of what they like/dislike in a UI... I like to encourage users to criticise things like the layout of buttons, how to do stuff, etc. If someone does the wrong thing because a step is ambiguous, or worse can't work out what to do next, that's a UI bug, and should be fixed (and remember even the command line has a UI... used by different people perhaps but their input is just as valuable).
Over time the complaints/suggestions drop off as most people are happy with the way things work (take careful note of the experience of new users as they can often bring up things that you've missed).
OSS helps here as you can release development/prerelease code every couple of weeks an tweak until it's right. Commercial projects are often tied to release schedules so can't do this.. but then they have the money to hire profesisonals.
That's EU law... It actually permits reverse engineering (not limited to software, but for anything) for interoperablility.
It's why for example you can still by clone printer refills even though the manufacturers keep trying to stop them by introducing special chips etc.
I believe a good lawyer could use this argument if it got that far, but it'd be costly to fight the case (even with the 'loser pays' rules we have over here you've got to find someone confident enough of winning to take the case in the first place).
You don't protest a building not having a handicapped entrance by building a clone next door and moving everything from the original building into yours.
If that was physically possible I'd consider it rather a cool way to protest.
The odeon site isn't just inaccessible, it's crap. It doesn't work properly even in IE, is damn near impossible to navigate and booking is a hit and miss affair (mostly miss). A reputable company should be ashamed of it.. It hasn't changed significantly in years though and I think Odeon don't give a flying f*ck about their website.
I used to have a.tv email address. The odeon site refused point blank to allow me to book because it was 'invalid'. I started going to other cinemas instead... Great marketing guys.
Oh, it's just another 'I've got a wizzy new idea for eliminating spam' suggestion.
Guess what, it won't work.
1. ID can be spoofed, and there is *nothing* a webside can so about it (it isn't a solved problem even in meatspace). 2. Unless *everyone on the entire planet earth* adopts this system it will not stop spam at all, or even slow it down. 3. All the world is not the US - You can't enforce it - you really think Nigerian spammers will give a crap that you know what ID they're sending from... especially if they faked it?
Every country has a different definition of verified identity, and they even re-use the same words to define completely different things (the US has a specific title 'Notary' which seems to be from the definition identical to 'Solicitor' in the UK... but would such an identity verification be valid in the US? How would you check it? Teachers, Doctors and Engineers can verify identity in the UK - same question - how would someone in the US check such data?).
The effect for cacert is it's a real barrier to entry to verification if you're not from the US... there are few verified cacert users in europe because of this.
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If you want to reduce your support costs then you write simple, good, documented stuff.
You still charge the user the same annual fee for support, of course, so you're making money by writing better software. Seems fine to me.
The idea that OSS is easy to get under the hood does not mean that every single user should (or even could) fix it - that's just a total strawman argument. There are enough programmers out there that the moderately popular projects will get input from outside and they *are* better as a result. 95% of project development comes from 'internal' development, but that extra 5% is sometimes crucial.
Plus, it opens the opportunity for a business to hire someone to fix it/make it work as you want. There is no such opportunity with closed-source software.
Someone else has mentioned the free vs gratis confusion. The whole article seems to have been written to wind up the slashdot crowd... I bet it's succeeded too.
Religion IME isn't particularly euphoric.. (at least the western kind).
Computer games, on the other hand.... If you work for a software company and this becomes widespread get another career fast.
The button order just proves that 'usability tests' aren't worth the money.
99% of users learn on Windows, so you have to do things in substantially the same way otherwise you're just increasing the learning curve.
For experts it's worse - the OK/Cancel have been in the same order for me for about 9 years, then this upstart comes along and tries to change it. I dropped gnome like a hot potato and went to KDE... a project like the one above sounds at last like it might be worth looking at as this guy sounds like he is listening to the users, rather than some overpaid marketing types.
NT4 SP4 changed the NTFS format and randomly made the machine unbootable, but they fixed that on SP5.
Win2k SP4 did something funky to the login dialog that broke it if you were running under vmware (we have maybe 20 vmware machines for every real machine), but the answer was to copy the files from a standard Win2k.
XP SP2 certainly does cause problems... until the workarounds are well known it's not going to get a widespread rollout, but that's to be expected with something as major as that. It's home users that will bear the brunt of the problems (along with MS tech support... for which they charge per incident. Nice little earner for them).
That's actually true. Users are annoyingly undemanding sometimes. I'll implement something and get "wow I've been waiting for a feature like that" responses... but *nobody* has actually asked me to do it, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
OTOH once you've implemented something everyone suddenly gets an opinion about it, and it takes another version to make as many people as possible happy... hence you're at 3.0 before it works.
I've got an SQL script that can BSOD XP 100% reliably... it unfortunately takes about 6 hours to do that so it's not quite so dramatic as running round the office causing BSODs to every machine while laughing manically.
It's really not that hard to BSOD XP if you know what you're doing. It's hard to do accidentally, though (for example, the security APIs aren't error checked at all so you can run an app that corrupts the internal memory of the LSA.. the machine gets slowly more deranged until the LSA falls over and you get the 'I'm about to crash in 30 seconds' error).
IUD is Intrauterine Device . I really don't think you meant that :)
Anyway, who would put a GPS in a coke can? So you can tell where it is if you leave it on a bus???? Sounds like a stupid idea to me... nice geek project but I really don't see the point of comparing it to a bomb.
They're not though. This whole article is based on a false premise.
I just logged in and can download the source code for free, just as part of my $20 support subscription. This seems to me to be perfectly in keeping with the GPL. $20 for support/binaries, and I get the source thrown in.
If I redistribute (difficult to see how they'd tell from the source tarballs) then I don't get any support, but I'm free to redistribute.
Install XP on a recent PC and 99% certain it won't have the drivers for your hardware anyway (XP is *old* now). So you get them somehow... a bit difficult if it's your network driver that's fubar (I keep a USB floppy drive for this purpose). Then there's the 100MB+ of 'security fixes' to download (getting larger by the day - sucks if you're on a slow connection... I've had to leave it overnight beforen now).
*then* you can start on the essential apps...
In the worst case you install XP SP2 and find the drivers aren't compatible (been there, done that) and have to reformat and start from step (1) again because it just trashed your machine [OK I know anyone sensible would stick with SP1, so it doesn't really count]
OTOH get a recent Linux, boots, installs, nothing to download, done.
An AOL user wouldn't have a damn clue what a 'folder' is anyway. They'd have all their files on their desktop.
Until the Windows 'cleanup wizard' helpfully deletes them - I've seen this happen - the user phoned me in a complete panic as windows had 'lost' all their documents. I had to go over there to get them back as he was too scared to touch it in case they were gone forever. I switched the wizard off to avoid another incident (IMO it should not be on by default anyway.. I'd file a bug if I thought MS would actually listen).
The CLI is harder to learn but anyone who can pick up computer paradigms such as 'folder' isn't going to have much trouble with a crib-sheet listing 'mkdir' and 'dir'.
If your children distract you and you have an accident that's illegal and will probably result in a ban.
Eating, drinking, applying makeup is already actionable as you're not in control of the car when doing those things (up to a max. 2 years in jail if you cause an accident)
Round here the morons that talk on mobiles are already in deep trouble with the law.
Sorry, but you've got it completely backwards.
If QA find no bugs then they have failed. Sack them.
To use an engineering phrase - "A successuful test is one that fails".
The programmer won't find the bugs because he's too close to the code - he doesn't have the same usage patterns as the end users and should *not* be relied upon to find such errors.
(As an example, I'm on a project that's on it's final release candidate, been through about a month of testing so was rolled out internally for actual use. Within 3 or 4 hours we found an "Oh sh*t" bug that is going to have to be fixed. It's hard to replicate as it requires specific usage patterns and there's nobody to blame really, but when it happens it totally screws up the system).
printf and strlen cannot produce buffer overruns... and anyway how are you going to tell the length of a string without strlen?
Maybe you meant strcpy and sprintf (use strncpy and snprintf instead!).
Code safety isn't about the use of individual functions, or even languages (I've managed to DoS a Java app by making it allocate strings forever in a loop... the code was written such that the GC never cleaned up). It's about good practice, often learned through bitter experience (OTOH I can't think of a safe use for gets()...)
AFAIK it's mostly down to the paper industry that hemp is illegal anyway... they wanted to produce their more lucrative wood based paper (it's difficult to make a profit when your raw materials are a weed that grows anywhere very quickly.. better to standardise on a limited resource that takes 30 years to grow). Lobbyists were very powerful in the US even 50 years ago.
:)
The US actually managed to eradicate a weed that grew on the roadside from their shores by agressive burning along with a demonisation campaign to try to turn people off the (then popular) drug... a bit like the 'war on terror' but with even fewer facts behind it
There are many strands of non-THC containing Hemp (given that the social effects of introducing wide availability of another drug are undesirable - alchohol is bad enough). In Europe at least there are fields full of the stuff, as hemp rope and linen is still very popular. Even hemp paper is available, given it's cheap/easy to produce...
Medical Hemp (the THC kind) is grown under license and given to selected patients to treat certain conditions, although that's mostly still under trial (and is the motivation for the reclassification of cannabis possesion in the UK, so that the drug companies could legally do their trials).
Ugh. Please don't let PHBs run the show... that's how we get Microsoft Bob (that's not why MS are successful, anyway. It's because they're primarily a marketing company rather than a technical company... it doesn't matter how bad it is they convince millions of people they want it).
Projects should be led by the requirements of the users. That goes for both OSS and Commercial. I've seen both types of project utterly destroyed by people getting high and mighty about how they know better than anyone else how to make the project work.
'in-house' users often get familiar with the status quo and are only of limited use after a few months. You need to talk to tehnical support and find out what people are asking about, then change it so they stop needing to phone you. Sometimes this is hard, and treads on egos. Tough.
Actually most users have an idea of what they like/dislike in a UI... I like to encourage users to criticise things like the layout of buttons, how to do stuff, etc. If someone does the wrong thing because a step is ambiguous, or worse can't work out what to do next, that's a UI bug, and should be fixed (and remember even the command line has a UI... used by different people perhaps but their input is just as valuable).
Over time the complaints/suggestions drop off as most people are happy with the way things work (take careful note of the experience of new users as they can often bring up things that you've missed).
OSS helps here as you can release development/prerelease code every couple of weeks an tweak until it's right. Commercial projects are often tied to release schedules so can't do this.. but then they have the money to hire profesisonals.
Of course due to time dilation even if he did make it back most of his friends/relatives would already be dead...
Whether it works on not, I willing to help test.
Nice try... you almost talked yourself into a job feeling breasts there...
That's EU law... It actually permits reverse engineering (not limited to software, but for anything) for interoperablility.
It's why for example you can still by clone printer refills even though the manufacturers keep trying to stop them by introducing special chips etc.
I believe a good lawyer could use this argument if it got that far, but it'd be costly to fight the case (even with the 'loser pays' rules we have over here you've got to find someone confident enough of winning to take the case in the first place).
You don't protest a building not having a handicapped entrance by building a clone next door and moving everything from the original building into yours.
If that was physically possible I'd consider it rather a cool way to protest.
The odeon site isn't just inaccessible, it's crap. It doesn't work properly even in IE, is damn near impossible to navigate and booking is a hit and miss affair (mostly miss). A reputable company should be ashamed of it.. It hasn't changed significantly in years though and I think Odeon don't give a flying f*ck about their website.
I used to have a .tv email address. The odeon site refused point blank to allow me to book because it was 'invalid'. I started going to other cinemas instead... Great marketing guys.
What about countries where the 'Notary Public' does not exist, like, um... almost everywhere except the US?
If you want a US only system then fine but you're cutting your userbase a hell of a lot.
LOL!!
Oh, it's just another 'I've got a wizzy new idea for eliminating spam' suggestion.
Guess what, it won't work.
1. ID can be spoofed, and there is *nothing* a webside can so about it (it isn't a solved problem even in meatspace).
2. Unless *everyone on the entire planet earth* adopts this system it will not stop spam at all, or even slow it down.
3. All the world is not the US - You can't enforce it - you really think Nigerian spammers will give a crap that you know what ID they're sending from... especially if they faked it?
Every country has a different definition of verified identity, and they even re-use the same words to define completely different things (the US has a specific title 'Notary' which seems to be from the definition identical to 'Solicitor' in the UK... but would such an identity verification be valid in the US? How would you check it? Teachers, Doctors and Engineers can verify identity in the UK - same question - how would someone in the US check such data?).
The effect for cacert is it's a real barrier to entry to verification if you're not from the US... there are few verified cacert users in europe because of this.