That is not what happens, according to the description. You can only edit the most recent revision. The flag just determines which revision you get when you view the article without any particular revision suffix in the URL.
I'd like to be able to agree with that. The thing is, most "free software activists" are not doing what you said. Once the issue is raised to an ethical level ("freedom"), people seem to feel the need for an all-or-nothing point of view.
I think that for example, the KDE/GNOME split is a direct consequence, since KDE not being "free enough" (at the time) is said to be one of the major reasons for GNOME's existence. Similarly, some BSD-affine developers seem to feel the need to rewrite GPL software just to make it "more free."
At the end of the day, free software is just vastly more useful than non-free software, especially because as a user, you can be sure that you will never be locked in to anything. The question is whether proprietary software is actually evil (as free software activists seem to claim) or whether free software is simply better.
As pragmatists such as Linus have acknowledged, that question does not even need to be answered; all we can do is develop free software -- for whatever reason we choose. What does matter, though, is whether we develop software for maximum utility (possibly compromising "freedom," see for example WINE) or maximum "freedom" (possibly lacking utility, Gnash anyone?). (Not really trying to criticise Gnash or support WINE, just giving some examples to illustrate my point.)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but actually, if they are successful, it works more like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple 2. Apple pays money
1. Idiot sues MS 2. MS pays money
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc. 2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews 3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere 4. One month later it becomes apparent that nobody except a few techies uses that patch, and people start to blame "Linux" for lacking an essential feature
There is a difference between such loopholes, which should be fixed by sane legislation, and the situation with certain countries' banking laws: In this case, we are talking about with a form of tax evasion that is illegal already in the tax evaders' home countries; the problem is that these criminals usually cannot get caught.
For example, the recent scandal about wealthy Germans evading taxes through anonymous foundations in Liechtenstein was uncovered only because a bank employee stole secret account data and sold it to German officials (and he actually got convicted for it earlier in Liechtenstein). That is, IMHO, the real trouble: Everyone knows what is going on, yet there is not even a legal way to find any sort of proof.
Or we'll find new problems to solve instead of reinventing the wheel independently in a thousand silos.
If only software development was like that! If a software solution for a given problem exists (closed or open source), that still does not mean the problem is solved once and for all. The implementation is hardly ever isolated from the rest of the "product". Even in the open-source world, we still have these large, monolithic programs, and nobody has a chance of reusing just a certain aspect of them. In fact, in some cases it's even worse than with commercial software: Just think of all the applications that exist twice: Once in a KDE version and once in GNOME version.
Until all code is truly reusable and free of everything non-problem-related, programmers will reinvent the wheel over and over again.
You are correct about the mistakes in the summary. However, this is also about FTP servers being hacked, to make them distribute the malware in the first place. Getting upload access to an abandoned FTP server is probably much easier than using SSH or some Windows folder sharing stuff, especially since you automatically have a URL where everyone can download the malware.
I think you are right that a lack of demand is the reason for the panic, but that is probably a broader issue: CPU manufacturers seem to be desparately looking for fields in which more processing power would be an advantage, even though it becomes more difficult to use. For the average user, even the increasing CPU speeds of the past have not shown much of a benefit, as software has become more demanding just because it could, not because users wanted features requiring a lot of CPU power (except in certain areas such as image processing). Now that CPU speeds cannot be increased much further, wasting of CPU time will also have to stop at the current level. It is not realistic for the same programmers who have been writing more and more inefficient code, to start using multiple threads just to continue this trend.
That must be the reason why CPU companies are looking for niches of the consumer market where there is a realistic chance of programmers actually utilizing all available processing power, despite the difficulties. It is no surprise to me that "gaming" is a common answer. But the only consumer-related answer I could find in the article is this: "It could also create desktops that automatically index personal pictures based on facial recognition software." Judge for yourself.
I do see the point that Wikipedia, without proper moderation, would become a junkyard. But why do trivial articles need to get deleted? Why not just flag them as "trivial", and let the users decide if they want to see trivial articles or not? Or, better yet, let users rate articles based on the importance of their subject, and automatically sort the "disambiguation" pages according to that.
While I welcome tests for standards compatibility, such test scores are not really a solid ground for browser comparison. If they wanted an unbiased indicator, they would need to publish compliance tests before parts of the specification are implemented in browsers, not after the browsers have been released to the public. This way I strongly suspect they are actually testing against specific browser flaws, which means they can design the test so each browser achieves whatever score they want. I'm not saying the scores are wrong; I think they are simply not meaningful.
BTW, I think we would be better off if ECMAScript wasn't part of the "Web standards" at all. Most of the time, it is used in places where that is completely unnecessary. As a client-side scripting language, browser incompatibilities are no surprise. Some browsers don't support it, and some people would like to turn it off.
Consider this: Almost all websites are used to deliver text, images, and downloads (i.e., some sort of content), and some have forms for interaction. No browser seriously has a problem with any of that. They may not make the pages look the way they are supposed to, but that is secondary. On the other hand, websites that depend on client-side scripting are effectively hiding their content and making it available only to specific browsers. That's why ECMAScript is harmful to the web.
Technically, you are probably right. That doesn't make the headline any less misleading, however, since a lot of people will assume "Open Source" means "Open Source according to the OSI". Not all, maybe not even the majority, but a lot.
Then again, seeing the words "Microsoft" and "Open Source" in the same sentence did make me somewhat suspicious from the start.
To be fair, it is nice of Microsoft to make this "freely available for academic non-commercial use". This seems to be more of an academic experiment than a product, made for people to learn from it. For that purpose, a FOSS license may not even be such a big advantage.
I'm just wondering if there are any patents involved...
As a Linux user, I have to say I agree with most of your points, unfortunately. I think the main problem is that Linux isn't actually an OS in the sense that Windows or MacOS is. Rather than that, Linux is a kernel that was developed to run most Unix-flavored software out there (and undoubtedly, it has contributed to the development of such software as well). It does its job very well, but does not have any control over the vast amount of software that is generally associated with Linux, especially X11, KDE, GNOME, and the distros' packaging systems. There are simply so many groups of people involved, each with their very own ideas, that turning "Linux" (or "GNU/Linux/X11/KDE/GNOME/...") into something that actually looks like an OS seems to be an unmanagable task. The Unix-like design is probably a major factor in the whole mess, too.
But let's not forget that Linux has its bright sides as well. The amount of supported hardware is amazing. (Believe it or not, I actually have a USB device that is standards-compliant enough for Linux to support it out of the box, but the Windows XP driver that came with it just won't work.) Software installation is something you don't even spend much time thinking about. (I can't tell you how many times I had someone send me a file just so I could run some tool on it and send back the result, even if that tool was available for Windows or MacOS as well.)
For me, there are more reasons to stick to Linux: Most of all, every time I boot into Windows XP (which happens rarely), I see how annoying it really is: If you set up a separate administrator account, you actually have to switch to it for things as simple as creating directories and copying files (because you can't do that using the "shift+right mouse button" way). It frequently installs some patches in the background and then wants to reboot (and doesn't even let me stop that because I'm not an administrator). I have to run a special program to adjust the processor voltage to keep the fan from turning on (and even worse, I have to start it manually in administrator mode, because - well, you guessed it). Moreover, for programming, Linux with GNU and other tools is simply the mainstream platform, at least if you are trying to write portable programs (and I believe that will be an increasing concern). Also, by now, a switch from Linux back to Windows would be quite tedious, just like the earlier switch from Windows to Linux.
To look at the situation from a different angle, consider that Linux experience is still a pretty valuable qualification compared to Windows experience. So the time spent setting up a Linux system may actually pay off sooner or later.
Now, back to the question of Linux's success. I believe that Linux has been very successful; just look at all of the operating systems in history that have failed. By now, Linux has gained enough market share for kernel development to continue (especially on drivers for future hardware). That's all we should ask for, and it's about as good as it will get. It means that people can get a free (beer and speech) alternative to the mainstream OSes if they want, and I'm happy about that.
Instead of looking at operating systems, shouldn't we be much more concerned about free alternatives to popular applications first? To me, it seems that Microsoft's continued dominance in the office market, and to a lesser extent, the browser market, is a more compelling reason for vendor lock-in. As long as people keep spreading Word and PowerPoint files, forcing everyone else to either have (the latest version of) that software or be frowned upon, even the best free operating system will be in a bad position.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG, XKCD is no longer the only comic to change the world:
http://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/2008/02/viktorgate/ and following
That is not what happens, according to the description. You can only edit the most recent revision. The flag just determines which revision you get when you view the article without any particular revision suffix in the URL.
I'd like to be able to agree with that. The thing is, most "free software activists" are not doing what you said. Once the issue is raised to an ethical level ("freedom"), people seem to feel the need for an all-or-nothing point of view.
I think that for example, the KDE/GNOME split is a direct consequence, since KDE not being "free enough" (at the time) is said to be one of the major reasons for GNOME's existence. Similarly, some BSD-affine developers seem to feel the need to rewrite GPL software just to make it "more free."
At the end of the day, free software is just vastly more useful than non-free software, especially because as a user, you can be sure that you will never be locked in to anything. The question is whether proprietary software is actually evil (as free software activists seem to claim) or whether free software is simply better.
As pragmatists such as Linus have acknowledged, that question does not even need to be answered; all we can do is develop free software -- for whatever reason we choose. What does matter, though, is whether we develop software for maximum utility (possibly compromising "freedom," see for example WINE) or maximum "freedom" (possibly lacking utility, Gnash anyone?). (Not really trying to criticise Gnash or support WINE, just giving some examples to illustrate my point.)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but actually, if they are successful, it works more like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple pays money
1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS pays money
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. One month later it becomes apparent that nobody except a few techies uses that patch, and people start to blame "Linux" for lacking an essential feature
There is a difference between such loopholes, which should be fixed by sane legislation, and the situation with certain countries' banking laws: In this case, we are talking about with a form of tax evasion that is illegal already in the tax evaders' home countries; the problem is that these criminals usually cannot get caught.
For example, the recent scandal about wealthy Germans evading taxes through anonymous foundations in Liechtenstein was uncovered only because a bank employee stole secret account data and sold it to German officials (and he actually got convicted for it earlier in Liechtenstein). That is, IMHO, the real trouble: Everyone knows what is going on, yet there is not even a legal way to find any sort of proof.
If only software development was like that! If a software solution for a given problem exists (closed or open source), that still does not mean the problem is solved once and for all. The implementation is hardly ever isolated from the rest of the "product". Even in the open-source world, we still have these large, monolithic programs, and nobody has a chance of reusing just a certain aspect of them. In fact, in some cases it's even worse than with commercial software: Just think of all the applications that exist twice: Once in a KDE version and once in GNOME version.
Until all code is truly reusable and free of everything non-problem-related, programmers will reinvent the wheel over and over again.
You are correct about the mistakes in the summary. However, this is also about FTP servers being hacked, to make them distribute the malware in the first place. Getting upload access to an abandoned FTP server is probably much easier than using SSH or some Windows folder sharing stuff, especially since you automatically have a URL where everyone can download the malware.
I think you are right that a lack of demand is the reason for the panic, but that is probably a broader issue: CPU manufacturers seem to be desparately looking for fields in which more processing power would be an advantage, even though it becomes more difficult to use. For the average user, even the increasing CPU speeds of the past have not shown much of a benefit, as software has become more demanding just because it could, not because users wanted features requiring a lot of CPU power (except in certain areas such as image processing). Now that CPU speeds cannot be increased much further, wasting of CPU time will also have to stop at the current level. It is not realistic for the same programmers who have been writing more and more inefficient code, to start using multiple threads just to continue this trend.
That must be the reason why CPU companies are looking for niches of the consumer market where there is a realistic chance of programmers actually utilizing all available processing power, despite the difficulties. It is no surprise to me that "gaming" is a common answer. But the only consumer-related answer I could find in the article is this: "It could also create desktops that automatically index personal pictures based on facial recognition software." Judge for yourself.
I do see the point that Wikipedia, without proper moderation, would become a junkyard. But why do trivial articles need to get deleted? Why not just flag them as "trivial", and let the users decide if they want to see trivial articles or not? Or, better yet, let users rate articles based on the importance of their subject, and automatically sort the "disambiguation" pages according to that.
While I welcome tests for standards compatibility, such test scores are not really a solid ground for browser comparison. If they wanted an unbiased indicator, they would need to publish compliance tests before parts of the specification are implemented in browsers, not after the browsers have been released to the public. This way I strongly suspect they are actually testing against specific browser flaws, which means they can design the test so each browser achieves whatever score they want. I'm not saying the scores are wrong; I think they are simply not meaningful.
BTW, I think we would be better off if ECMAScript wasn't part of the "Web standards" at all. Most of the time, it is used in places where that is completely unnecessary. As a client-side scripting language, browser incompatibilities are no surprise. Some browsers don't support it, and some people would like to turn it off.
Consider this: Almost all websites are used to deliver text, images, and downloads (i.e., some sort of content), and some have forms for interaction. No browser seriously has a problem with any of that. They may not make the pages look the way they are supposed to, but that is secondary. On the other hand, websites that depend on client-side scripting are effectively hiding their content and making it available only to specific browsers. That's why ECMAScript is harmful to the web.
Technically, you are probably right. That doesn't make the headline any less misleading, however, since a lot of people will assume "Open Source" means "Open Source according to the OSI". Not all, maybe not even the majority, but a lot.
Then again, seeing the words "Microsoft" and "Open Source" in the same sentence did make me somewhat suspicious from the start.
To be fair, it is nice of Microsoft to make this "freely available for academic non-commercial use". This seems to be more of an academic experiment than a product, made for people to learn from it. For that purpose, a FOSS license may not even be such a big advantage.
I'm just wondering if there are any patents involved...
As a Linux user, I have to say I agree with most of your points, unfortunately. I think the main problem is that Linux isn't actually an OS in the sense that Windows or MacOS is. Rather than that, Linux is a kernel that was developed to run most Unix-flavored software out there (and undoubtedly, it has contributed to the development of such software as well). It does its job very well, but does not have any control over the vast amount of software that is generally associated with Linux, especially X11, KDE, GNOME, and the distros' packaging systems. There are simply so many groups of people involved, each with their very own ideas, that turning "Linux" (or "GNU/Linux/X11/KDE/GNOME/...") into something that actually looks like an OS seems to be an unmanagable task. The Unix-like design is probably a major factor in the whole mess, too.
But let's not forget that Linux has its bright sides as well. The amount of supported hardware is amazing. (Believe it or not, I actually have a USB device that is standards-compliant enough for Linux to support it out of the box, but the Windows XP driver that came with it just won't work.) Software installation is something you don't even spend much time thinking about. (I can't tell you how many times I had someone send me a file just so I could run some tool on it and send back the result, even if that tool was available for Windows or MacOS as well.)
For me, there are more reasons to stick to Linux: Most of all, every time I boot into Windows XP (which happens rarely), I see how annoying it really is: If you set up a separate administrator account, you actually have to switch to it for things as simple as creating directories and copying files (because you can't do that using the "shift+right mouse button" way). It frequently installs some patches in the background and then wants to reboot (and doesn't even let me stop that because I'm not an administrator). I have to run a special program to adjust the processor voltage to keep the fan from turning on (and even worse, I have to start it manually in administrator mode, because - well, you guessed it). Moreover, for programming, Linux with GNU and other tools is simply the mainstream platform, at least if you are trying to write portable programs (and I believe that will be an increasing concern). Also, by now, a switch from Linux back to Windows would be quite tedious, just like the earlier switch from Windows to Linux.
To look at the situation from a different angle, consider that Linux experience is still a pretty valuable qualification compared to Windows experience. So the time spent setting up a Linux system may actually pay off sooner or later.
Now, back to the question of Linux's success. I believe that Linux has been very successful; just look at all of the operating systems in history that have failed. By now, Linux has gained enough market share for kernel development to continue (especially on drivers for future hardware). That's all we should ask for, and it's about as good as it will get. It means that people can get a free (beer and speech) alternative to the mainstream OSes if they want, and I'm happy about that.
Instead of looking at operating systems, shouldn't we be much more concerned about free alternatives to popular applications first? To me, it seems that Microsoft's continued dominance in the office market, and to a lesser extent, the browser market, is a more compelling reason for vendor lock-in. As long as people keep spreading Word and PowerPoint files, forcing everyone else to either have (the latest version of) that software or be frowned upon, even the best free operating system will be in a bad position.