Open Source is not opposed to commercial. Open Source is opposed to secret source, not commercial. There are definitely companies who's sole purpose is to make a profit on Open Source software. If that's not commercial, I don't know what is.
I've used some of them, and the Open Source applications are definitely better quality. Sometimes the stuff that comes with the camera has specific features that would be very nice to have, but overall they're actually not very good compared to similar Open Source applications.
Actually, I've found Fedora to be better supported than previous versions of RedHat. Mostly because they have much better package management, and there are people who actively maintain package repositories of software that Fedora didn't include on the CD.
And by the time his father has bought Photoshop, Illustrator, and Microsoft Office, how much as he paid? Lets be generous and say that the missing features in the Linux equivalents are worth half the price. Still sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Oh, yeah? You mean you can play those great activeX game on those cool website? You can use this great new GDI printer that was on sale (i.e. five time less than a postscript one)? Most joe average think Linux doesn't work.
Those ability to play those great activeX games is also known as "Open Invitation for Viruses and Spyware". So, given the feature/misfeature balance, I'd have to say that the inability to play them is a feature. The only reason 'average Joe' doesn't think the same is that he doesn't understand that there's a link between those two things.
As for printer support, you're pretty sadly misinformed. It's pretty easy to get a non-Postscript printer working with Linux. I've walked many people through doing it with even old versions.
Oh... That's why! Ubuntu is a bad choice for your father, but this is what YOU want...
Free tech support is worth its weight in gold. If his father can get it by using Linux when he can't use Windows, I say use Linux.
Ahh, so you're much more comfortable when you know for certain that you're taking it in the rear. It's an attitude that will get you far, sadly.
Personally, I despise Java (mostly for technical reasons, though licensing issues play their role as well), and I'm doing what I can to fight it's adoption where I work. There are a lot of people who feel similarly to me. I think Java is a mistake, plain and simple. In 10 years, it will be seen in the same light as COBOL (or, at best VB) is seen today.
And you think I'm going to pay attention to some guy who doesn't know where is towel is? *grin*
Yes, that's the basic gist of it. I think the only place where it's even vaguely OK to create black holes is maybe in lunar orbit. It actually kind of bothers me that these people got up to the energy levels required in the lab. I think it was irresponsible of them, even though it seems that it turned out that hawking radiation was real.
If idiots here in the US accept that argument, the third world will begin to have a competitive advantage over us which they will hopefully ruthlessly exploit.
Lack of ability to accept reality generally means economic loss in the long run.
The other theory I've heard about them is that they are binary neutron star systems that merge to form a black whole and end up converting a significant portion of their mass directly to gamma rays in the process.
I'm guessing that the spectrum and intensity of energy released, especially over time, would do a lot to refine guesses as to the source of the bursts. Of course, I don't think we have a good way right now of figuring out how far away they are, which makes intensity really hard to measure.
Yep, if black holes didn't radiate, there'd be a whole bunch of theories that'd have to be thrown out the window.:-) So, it's quite likely that they do, but it's still possible they don't (except that we may now have directly observed it).
Actually, the interesting thing is that we only have theories about black holes, no direct evidence. Not only that, but black holes push the boundaries of our understanding of physics. AFAIK, we've never directly observed hawking radiation, and so we don't even know that it has to exist. We only theorize that it really should because it fits what we know so far of relativity and quantum mechanics.
So, if they actually did manage to create a small black hole, and then it evaporate, we have our first direct evidence that hawking radiation is real.
If your program is ever halted waiting for I/O data and there's something else it could be doing, it's written poorly. And if you 'solve' the problem by adding threads, you're really just making it worse by adding many varied and interestingly obtuse ways for your program to have bugs.
There are mechanisms that exist so that you can keep your single threaded model and still never wait for IO. Those are what you should use to avoid waiting for IO. Threads should be either a last resort, or a way to take advantage of more CPUs.
If people worked enough to change all the strings in the code to be different, they'd probably just write their own software and not deal with the hassles.
What's probably going on in most of these places are lazy engineers using code from the net and not pushing the whole thing through management to get buy-in on using GPL stuff. They aren't going to bother to change all the strings around.
Offer money for information leading to the source of the leaks. Make it a very susbstantial sum. Put a explicit price tag on Steve Jobs' ego. I bet you'd get the information you wanted if you offered a few million.:-)
I like your use of the word 'stole'. Such a wonderfully versatile word.
It's possible someone violated their NDA. But, the blogging site certainly didn't violate an NDA. They didn't sign anything.
Information doesn't work like material goods, and your analogies (like the word 'steal') don't work. The police are allowed to use information that was gathered using means that wouldn't be legal for them to use. And similarly bloggers are allowed to publish stuff that may not have been legal for their source to reveal.
There's a reason journalists cannot forced to reveal sources, and that reason applies here. Really, we would have no real journalism if journalists had to reveal sources. We have little enough of it in this country already. I'd prefer not to add to the problem.
If you read the article, it was a few hours of CPU time, not a week.
And I hope you get to live with the consequences of your decision. I still say that people are too dumb to think of all the ways in which something can be exploited. It was hard enough to design the protocols with algorithms that had particular desirable properties. Trying to figure out if they work in some situation when some important property no longer holds true isn't a puzzle I think is worth trying to solve. Best to chuck the hold algorithm and use a new one, even in old code.
I was moderated down heavily for stating that MD5 was broken for any and all purposes before. Now I think I feel at least somewhat vindicated.
There are two problems here... Yes, the break in MD5 (and SHA-1) involved two chosen pre-images, and it was still not computationally easy. But there are two problems with hiding behind those justifications.
The first is that once an analytical wedge has been driven into a crack in the algorithm, it often doesn't take long for that wedge to be wiggled back and forth to make the crack even wider. This demonstrates that the attack is computationally feasible enough for anybody to generate two keys that have matching MD5 signatures. I don't think anybody would've agreed that this would happen this quickly a few months ago.
Secondly, deciding when a certain kind of attack is relevant in a particular situation is not trivial. So, if you can generate two different keys that appear identical, what kinds of interesting attacks can you perform? What assumptions to browsers and other software make about keys that are now broken? Can those assumptions be exploited? This shouldn't make phishing any easier, but what if a phisher manages to be the person who generated the bank's key in the first place?
Having an algorithm that is weaker in some significant way than what everybody expects makes everything very tricky. MD5 (and SHA1) are no longer secure hash algorithms, and should not be treated as such for any purpose at all, regardless of whether or not you think you have the gigantic cranium that can think through all the implications of a particular weakness. You are most likely wrong.
You can be an pro-lifer who goes and gets an abortion too (and there are plenty of those) but nobody will think you have any integrity if you do.
I think the world will become a much better place if we all collectively decide that corporations much have integrity and uphold an ethical standard for themselves. I don't like living in the world as it currently sits where corporations do not actually have any of those things, largely because a lot of people think the same way you do.
Is this principle you apply to your own behavior? Do you feel perfectly free to require that lots of other people uphold standards that you yourself do not?
I keep seeing people saying this, and I don't think they understand quite why Microsoft is evil and what they do must be viewed in the worst possible light. They have a power that I do not believe that google has yet exercised, which is the power to lock competitors out of markets.
So far, google has largely succeeded by being better, not by being able to keep others from succeeding. There is a difference, and Microsoft usually succeeds for the latter reason, not the former.
That being said... I don't fully understand what's going on here since I don't understand the mechanisms behind word stuffing, so I can't properly evaluate the claim. But if google is indeed engaging in behavior that they de-list (or otherwise punish) other sites for, my opinion of them goes down by many notches. Though I still do not consider that behavior to be nearly as bad as Microsoft's habitual destruction of competitors through means other than creating a better product.
It seems to me that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of why Microsoft is evil.
Given the existence of multinationals, and the ability of corporations to spur government to the use of physical force even when there doesn't seem to be an obvious law that was broken, I question whether governments really do govern such corporations.
I also think that maybe the definition of government as an entity with a monopoly on the use of physical force is overly simplistic.
I have begun to think that the distinction between corporations and governments isn't so cut & dried as some people seem to think it is. I think any organization becomes government-like as it grows larger.
When nVidia starts Open Sourcing their motherboard drivers, I'll start caring about their motherboard products. Sadly, I use their graphics cards.:-( I feel like I either have the choice of nice 3D graphics or Open Source drivers, and I pick nice 3D graphics.
But with motherboards, there are other offerings out there, and they will tell you enough about how their stuff works that the Open Source community can create drivers for it. Heck, some of them even actively cooperate in writing the drivers. I don't need nVidia's chipset. It's not enough benefit to be worth the cost to my freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Open Source is not opposed to commercial. Open Source is opposed to secret source, not commercial. There are definitely companies who's sole purpose is to make a profit on Open Source software. If that's not commercial, I don't know what is.
I've used some of them, and the Open Source applications are definitely better quality. Sometimes the stuff that comes with the camera has specific features that would be very nice to have, but overall they're actually not very good compared to similar Open Source applications.
Actually, I've found Fedora to be better supported than previous versions of RedHat. Mostly because they have much better package management, and there are people who actively maintain package repositories of software that Fedora didn't include on the CD.
And by the time his father has bought Photoshop, Illustrator, and Microsoft Office, how much as he paid? Lets be generous and say that the missing features in the Linux equivalents are worth half the price. Still sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
Those ability to play those great activeX games is also known as "Open Invitation for Viruses and Spyware". So, given the feature/misfeature balance, I'd have to say that the inability to play them is a feature. The only reason 'average Joe' doesn't think the same is that he doesn't understand that there's a link between those two things.
As for printer support, you're pretty sadly misinformed. It's pretty easy to get a non-Postscript printer working with Linux. I've walked many people through doing it with even old versions.
Free tech support is worth its weight in gold. If his father can get it by using Linux when he can't use Windows, I say use Linux.
You're probably a troll anyway.
Ahh, so you're much more comfortable when you know for certain that you're taking it in the rear. It's an attitude that will get you far, sadly.
Personally, I despise Java (mostly for technical reasons, though licensing issues play their role as well), and I'm doing what I can to fight it's adoption where I work. There are a lot of people who feel similarly to me. I think Java is a mistake, plain and simple. In 10 years, it will be seen in the same light as COBOL (or, at best VB) is seen today.
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
And you think I'm going to pay attention to some guy who doesn't know where is towel is? *grin*
Yes, that's the basic gist of it. I think the only place where it's even vaguely OK to create black holes is maybe in lunar orbit. It actually kind of bothers me that these people got up to the energy levels required in the lab. I think it was irresponsible of them, even though it seems that it turned out that hawking radiation was real.
If idiots here in the US accept that argument, the third world will begin to have a competitive advantage over us which they will hopefully ruthlessly exploit.
Lack of ability to accept reality generally means economic loss in the long run.
The other theory I've heard about them is that they are binary neutron star systems that merge to form a black whole and end up converting a significant portion of their mass directly to gamma rays in the process.
I'm guessing that the spectrum and intensity of energy released, especially over time, would do a lot to refine guesses as to the source of the bursts. Of course, I don't think we have a good way right now of figuring out how far away they are, which makes intensity really hard to measure.
Yep, if black holes didn't radiate, there'd be a whole bunch of theories that'd have to be thrown out the window. :-) So, it's quite likely that they do, but it's still possible they don't (except that we may now have directly observed it).
Actually, the interesting thing is that we only have theories about black holes, no direct evidence. Not only that, but black holes push the boundaries of our understanding of physics. AFAIK, we've never directly observed hawking radiation, and so we don't even know that it has to exist. We only theorize that it really should because it fits what we know so far of relativity and quantum mechanics.
So, if they actually did manage to create a small black hole, and then it evaporate, we have our first direct evidence that hawking radiation is real.
If your program is ever halted waiting for I/O data and there's something else it could be doing, it's written poorly. And if you 'solve' the problem by adding threads, you're really just making it worse by adding many varied and interestingly obtuse ways for your program to have bugs.
There are mechanisms that exist so that you can keep your single threaded model and still never wait for IO. Those are what you should use to avoid waiting for IO. Threads should be either a last resort, or a way to take advantage of more CPUs.
If people worked enough to change all the strings in the code to be different, they'd probably just write their own software and not deal with the hassles.
What's probably going on in most of these places are lazy engineers using code from the net and not pushing the whole thing through management to get buy-in on using GPL stuff. They aren't going to bother to change all the strings around.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Under what circumstances?
Offer money for information leading to the source of the leaks. Make it a very susbstantial sum. Put a explicit price tag on Steve Jobs' ego. I bet you'd get the information you wanted if you offered a few million. :-)
I like your use of the word 'stole'. Such a wonderfully versatile word.
It's possible someone violated their NDA. But, the blogging site certainly didn't violate an NDA. They didn't sign anything.
Information doesn't work like material goods, and your analogies (like the word 'steal') don't work. The police are allowed to use information that was gathered using means that wouldn't be legal for them to use. And similarly bloggers are allowed to publish stuff that may not have been legal for their source to reveal.
There's a reason journalists cannot forced to reveal sources, and that reason applies here. Really, we would have no real journalism if journalists had to reveal sources. We have little enough of it in this country already. I'd prefer not to add to the problem.
If you read the article, it was a few hours of CPU time, not a week.
And I hope you get to live with the consequences of your decision. I still say that people are too dumb to think of all the ways in which something can be exploited. It was hard enough to design the protocols with algorithms that had particular desirable properties. Trying to figure out if they work in some situation when some important property no longer holds true isn't a puzzle I think is worth trying to solve. Best to chuck the hold algorithm and use a new one, even in old code.
I was moderated down heavily for stating that MD5 was broken for any and all purposes before. Now I think I feel at least somewhat vindicated.
There are two problems here... Yes, the break in MD5 (and SHA-1) involved two chosen pre-images, and it was still not computationally easy. But there are two problems with hiding behind those justifications.
The first is that once an analytical wedge has been driven into a crack in the algorithm, it often doesn't take long for that wedge to be wiggled back and forth to make the crack even wider. This demonstrates that the attack is computationally feasible enough for anybody to generate two keys that have matching MD5 signatures. I don't think anybody would've agreed that this would happen this quickly a few months ago.
Secondly, deciding when a certain kind of attack is relevant in a particular situation is not trivial. So, if you can generate two different keys that appear identical, what kinds of interesting attacks can you perform? What assumptions to browsers and other software make about keys that are now broken? Can those assumptions be exploited? This shouldn't make phishing any easier, but what if a phisher manages to be the person who generated the bank's key in the first place?
Having an algorithm that is weaker in some significant way than what everybody expects makes everything very tricky. MD5 (and SHA1) are no longer secure hash algorithms, and should not be treated as such for any purpose at all, regardless of whether or not you think you have the gigantic cranium that can think through all the implications of a particular weakness. You are most likely wrong.
You can be an pro-lifer who goes and gets an abortion too (and there are plenty of those) but nobody will think you have any integrity if you do.
I think the world will become a much better place if we all collectively decide that corporations much have integrity and uphold an ethical standard for themselves. I don't like living in the world as it currently sits where corporations do not actually have any of those things, largely because a lot of people think the same way you do.
Is this principle you apply to your own behavior? Do you feel perfectly free to require that lots of other people uphold standards that you yourself do not?
I keep seeing people saying this, and I don't think they understand quite why Microsoft is evil and what they do must be viewed in the worst possible light. They have a power that I do not believe that google has yet exercised, which is the power to lock competitors out of markets.
So far, google has largely succeeded by being better, not by being able to keep others from succeeding. There is a difference, and Microsoft usually succeeds for the latter reason, not the former.
That being said... I don't fully understand what's going on here since I don't understand the mechanisms behind word stuffing, so I can't properly evaluate the claim. But if google is indeed engaging in behavior that they de-list (or otherwise punish) other sites for, my opinion of them goes down by many notches. Though I still do not consider that behavior to be nearly as bad as Microsoft's habitual destruction of competitors through means other than creating a better product.
It seems to me that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of why Microsoft is evil.
Given the existence of multinationals, and the ability of corporations to spur government to the use of physical force even when there doesn't seem to be an obvious law that was broken, I question whether governments really do govern such corporations.
I also think that maybe the definition of government as an entity with a monopoly on the use of physical force is overly simplistic.
I have begun to think that the distinction between corporations and governments isn't so cut & dried as some people seem to think it is. I think any organization becomes government-like as it grows larger.
Yeah, the article text was stupidly alarmist. But, I guess we shouldn't expect any better of Slashdot, though I'd sure like to.
When nVidia starts Open Sourcing their motherboard drivers, I'll start caring about their motherboard products. Sadly, I use their graphics cards. :-( I feel like I either have the choice of nice 3D graphics or Open Source drivers, and I pick nice 3D graphics.
But with motherboards, there are other offerings out there, and they will tell you enough about how their stuff works that the Open Source community can create drivers for it. Heck, some of them even actively cooperate in writing the drivers. I don't need nVidia's chipset. It's not enough benefit to be worth the cost to my freedom.
How is this not collusion and price-fixing?