DNSSEC is only secure if the CAs that sign it are also secure. If the problem is the security of the CAs, then their subordinate security infrastructure (DNSSEC) cannot be the answer.
Android is not gaining on the smartphone market, it owns the smartphone market. Its market share is at least twice that of iOS, and is growing. iOS appears to have saturated its market, with most sales being upgrades from owners of older model iPhones.
The main problem with software patents is that it costs your own time for so many months in your mom's basement... to produce a decent, market worthy software product. Compare that with the ~$5 million it costs to defend against a patent suite, and you see how that is a problem.
I don't think that's the biggest problem with software patents. I know we don't all agree on why software patents are bad, but I think the single biggest problem with patents (especially software patents) is this:
The patent system is intended to be an exchange. Inventors describe fully how their invention works and in return they are granted a temporary monopoly on its production. In exchange for that monopoly, the public receives valuable information about how new inventions work so that the invention can be produced after the monopoly expires and potentially integrated into new products or improved.
The monopoly that the patent office grants is a cost to consumers, and should only be granted when the value of the information about the invention is at least as great as the cost imposed by the monopoly.
All too often, the patent office grants patents that are of no value to the public. In the case of software, we frequently see the case where a product infringes on a patent by doing something obvious. That is antithetical to the purpose of the patent system. The patent system does not exist to reward the first person to file a patent. The patent system exists to provide a system and an incentive for inventors to document new inventions that the public would otherwise not benefit from. If products infringe without prior knowledge of existing patents, then it is obvious that the public is not benefiting from the documentation provided. It makes no rational sense to impose a cost upon the public (a monopoly) without receiving anything in exchange.
Yes, with the newer gcc, Mozilla has been able to build Firefox with better optimizations. That won't be available in Mozilla's builds for a couple of releases, though, so I don't think we're quite at the point where we can discuss Microsoft's advantage in a past tense. We're certainly almost there.
And no, I don't think that MSVC is unfailingly better than gcc, either. It has, traditionally, produced a faster Firefox.
I think that the lack of guided optimization on gcc is a fair indication that Microsoft offers a better compiler, but I also think it's a long way from "gcc lacks an option that helps Firefox" to "Linux is for masochists". Seriously, Firefox scored better on some JS benchmarks on Windows than it did on Linux, but that doesn't make the Linux version unusable or painful.
Anyway, many of us don't use GNU/Linux because it is unfailingly better than alternatives, but because we have an understanding of and appreciation for economic and intellectual liberty which is better served by GNU systems. We regard the use of proprietary systems to be masochistic.
As I said in the original post: The GPL is not a free-as-in-beer license. Code has an economic value. Those who receive GPL licensed code are asked to provide continued access to the code and the freedom to use it in return for receiving the same.
You have the liberty to use the software for any purpose. You also have the liberty to redistribute the software. You are at liberty to do anything other than deprive others of their liberty.
Seriously, if you try to promote freedom and free code, you have to allow people to use it how they want.
No, sir, you are confusing liberty with "no charge" free.
The BSD license is free as in beer. A proprietary software developer may take BSD licensed software and use it as the basis for a project of their own without sharing code in return. The users of his software have less liberty to the software's use. That developer exchanges nothing of value for the code that he received.
The GPL license is free as in liberty. Developers who wish to base products on existing GPL software must agree to maintain the liberty of the derived software's users to use the software with the same liberties that the developer did. This is an exchange of something of value: the developer contributes their own code in exchange for receiving the GPL code.
GPL software is not intended to be free of charge to developers who wish to reuse it. Developers who choose the GPL software do not intend to provide their labor without charge to others who will not contribute in return. The GPL promotes liberty, not freeloading.
I have no idea what you are going on about. I've been watching Farscape for the first time recently, and it's among the least original and most awful "science" fiction I've seen.
No, they're not. The infrastructure itself was not compromised. One account's password was, and that account did not have privileges to affect the infrastructure.
The infrastructure was not compromised. One user's password appears to have been compromised and changed. That account did not have "high value privileges".
Is the problem Fedora or nvidia here? The Linux developers prefer drivers to be maintained in the kernel tree. Nvidia chooses not to do that. Neither the Linux nor Fedora developers can fix that decision.
By your logic, the user should have chosen Windows, as it's "intended for end users" and he won't have to solve problems or do testing for some Linux distribution. Get real.
This gets repeated a lot, and I wish people were more specific about it. The perception seems to be that Ubuntu is easier to use in all aspects, or in general, and I find that not to be the case. Most of the hardware detection and setup tech that makes Ubuntu easy to use was developed in Fedora-land and appeared there first. In general, Fedora has tended to be easier to use.
Ubuntu, however, makes it easier to get proprietary video drivers and multimedia codecs. For that specific part of setup, Ubuntu is easier to use. For everything else, I find Fedora a much higher quality and easier to use distribution.
I think most mail clients are 100% IMAP and POP3 compatible.
Nope. Actually, the IMAP spec is contradictory in some spots. If you took part in implementing servers or clients, you'd find that there are plenty of bugs still floating around for the protocol.
POP3 is even simpler, but IIRC you'll find that some POP3 clients will choke on some UIDL formats, despite the fact that those are free-form identifiers.
Can we get over the quality of the review and celebrate the release of Fedora 14, already? I've been running it since the beta release, and I'm very happy with it. Fedora 14 is another great release by a group of people who are dedicated to Free Software!
Several hundred? All of the stories I've seen in the past about TradElect indicated that trades were measured in the milliseconds... The new system seems to be about twenty times faster.
Nobody uses load balancers and multiple app servers because they're serving "dancing and blinking crap" (Flash and JS heavy) sites.
If your Flash is larger than a static text page and images, you'll need more bandwidth and possibly more servers as a result.
Heavy server resources are needed when you need lots of server side processing, which generally comes from delivering customized pages to every user (ie you can't just cache everything).
Which the parent was suggesting is unnecessary. "Plain old HTML" is, I believe, a suggestion that static pages will reduce your operating costs.
Furthermore, using AJAX helps REDUCE server load, by only requesting snippets of content, instead of complete page requests
In some cases, that's true. Google maps can certainly request static images to lay out for the map view when you move it. However, if your AJAX is fetching results from a web application rather than a static file, you'll need those extra servers and load balancers again.
As much as I dislike the decisions many sites make about how they use modern client tech, I'm not advocating for the parent's position. I'm merely pointing out that he is correct in his assertion that using those technologies often increases the server side requirements as well as the clients'.
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Why? Bytecode isn't what they're being sued for. It's not even clear that a Python runtime wouldn't infringe on the patents in question.
Many people here want to tinker with the OS, too. It needs to be Free Software.
DNSSEC is only secure if the CAs that sign it are also secure. If the problem is the security of the CAs, then their subordinate security infrastructure (DNSSEC) cannot be the answer.
Android is gaining on the smartphone market.
Android is not gaining on the smartphone market, it owns the smartphone market. Its market share is at least twice that of iOS, and is growing. iOS appears to have saturated its market, with most sales being upgrades from owners of older model iPhones.
The main problem with software patents is that it costs your own time for so many months in your mom's basement ... to produce a decent, market worthy software product. Compare that with the ~$5 million it costs to defend against a patent suite, and you see how that is a problem.
I don't think that's the biggest problem with software patents. I know we don't all agree on why software patents are bad, but I think the single biggest problem with patents (especially software patents) is this:
The patent system is intended to be an exchange. Inventors describe fully how their invention works and in return they are granted a temporary monopoly on its production. In exchange for that monopoly, the public receives valuable information about how new inventions work so that the invention can be produced after the monopoly expires and potentially integrated into new products or improved.
The monopoly that the patent office grants is a cost to consumers, and should only be granted when the value of the information about the invention is at least as great as the cost imposed by the monopoly.
All too often, the patent office grants patents that are of no value to the public. In the case of software, we frequently see the case where a product infringes on a patent by doing something obvious. That is antithetical to the purpose of the patent system. The patent system does not exist to reward the first person to file a patent. The patent system exists to provide a system and an incentive for inventors to document new inventions that the public would otherwise not benefit from. If products infringe without prior knowledge of existing patents, then it is obvious that the public is not benefiting from the documentation provided. It makes no rational sense to impose a cost upon the public (a monopoly) without receiving anything in exchange.
Yes, with the newer gcc, Mozilla has been able to build Firefox with better optimizations. That won't be available in Mozilla's builds for a couple of releases, though, so I don't think we're quite at the point where we can discuss Microsoft's advantage in a past tense. We're certainly almost there.
And no, I don't think that MSVC is unfailingly better than gcc, either. It has, traditionally, produced a faster Firefox.
I think that the lack of guided optimization on gcc is a fair indication that Microsoft offers a better compiler, but I also think it's a long way from "gcc lacks an option that helps Firefox" to "Linux is for masochists". Seriously, Firefox scored better on some JS benchmarks on Windows than it did on Linux, but that doesn't make the Linux version unusable or painful.
Anyway, many of us don't use GNU/Linux because it is unfailingly better than alternatives, but because we have an understanding of and appreciation for economic and intellectual liberty which is better served by GNU systems. We regard the use of proprietary systems to be masochistic.
As I said in the original post: The GPL is not a free-as-in-beer license. Code has an economic value. Those who receive GPL licensed code are asked to provide continued access to the code and the freedom to use it in return for receiving the same.
You have the liberty to use the software for any purpose. You also have the liberty to redistribute the software. You are at liberty to do anything other than deprive others of their liberty.
Perpetual access to the source code is liberty.
Seriously, if you try to promote freedom and free code, you have to allow people to use it how they want.
No, sir, you are confusing liberty with "no charge" free.
The BSD license is free as in beer. A proprietary software developer may take BSD licensed software and use it as the basis for a project of their own without sharing code in return. The users of his software have less liberty to the software's use. That developer exchanges nothing of value for the code that he received.
The GPL license is free as in liberty. Developers who wish to base products on existing GPL software must agree to maintain the liberty of the derived software's users to use the software with the same liberties that the developer did. This is an exchange of something of value: the developer contributes their own code in exchange for receiving the GPL code.
GPL software is not intended to be free of charge to developers who wish to reuse it. Developers who choose the GPL software do not intend to provide their labor without charge to others who will not contribute in return. The GPL promotes liberty, not freeloading.
GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially.
No, it doesn't. That's a ridiculous assertion presented without any evidence or reason.
As wikipedia might demand: Citation needed.
I have no idea what you are going on about. I've been watching Farscape for the first time recently, and it's among the least original and most awful "science" fiction I've seen.
Too big for this case.
No, they're not. The infrastructure itself was not compromised. One account's password was, and that account did not have privileges to affect the infrastructure.
As far as I know, everyone gets those rights, subject to ACLs on each package that govern who can make changes.
The infrastructure was not compromised. One user's password appears to have been compromised and changed. That account did not have "high value privileges".
Is the problem Fedora or nvidia here? The Linux developers prefer drivers to be maintained in the kernel tree. Nvidia chooses not to do that. Neither the Linux nor Fedora developers can fix that decision.
By your logic, the user should have chosen Windows, as it's "intended for end users" and he won't have to solve problems or do testing for some Linux distribution. Get real.
Apparently no word on whether these are flaws in the vanilla kernel which Google has inherited, or flaws in the code that Google wrote.
As a newbie, I was HAPPY for the handholding.
This gets repeated a lot, and I wish people were more specific about it. The perception seems to be that Ubuntu is easier to use in all aspects, or in general, and I find that not to be the case. Most of the hardware detection and setup tech that makes Ubuntu easy to use was developed in Fedora-land and appeared there first. In general, Fedora has tended to be easier to use.
Ubuntu, however, makes it easier to get proprietary video drivers and multimedia codecs. For that specific part of setup, Ubuntu is easier to use. For everything else, I find Fedora a much higher quality and easier to use distribution.
I think most mail clients are 100% IMAP and POP3 compatible.
Nope. Actually, the IMAP spec is contradictory in some spots. If you took part in implementing servers or clients, you'd find that there are plenty of bugs still floating around for the protocol.
POP3 is even simpler, but IIRC you'll find that some POP3 clients will choke on some UIDL formats, despite the fact that those are free-form identifiers.
Can we get over the quality of the review and celebrate the release of Fedora 14, already? I've been running it since the beta release, and I'm very happy with it. Fedora 14 is another great release by a group of people who are dedicated to Free Software!
But no one in the real world talks about hundreds of hundreds. Sixteen thousand microseconds would be the common verbal representation of the number.
trading speeds of several hundred microseconds
Several hundred? All of the stories I've seen in the past about TradElect indicated that trades were measured in the milliseconds... The new system seems to be about twenty times faster.
Nobody uses load balancers and multiple app servers because they're serving "dancing and blinking crap" (Flash and JS heavy) sites.
If your Flash is larger than a static text page and images, you'll need more bandwidth and possibly more servers as a result.
Heavy server resources are needed when you need lots of server side processing, which generally comes from delivering customized pages to every user (ie you can't just cache everything).
Which the parent was suggesting is unnecessary. "Plain old HTML" is, I believe, a suggestion that static pages will reduce your operating costs.
Furthermore, using AJAX helps REDUCE server load, by only requesting snippets of content, instead of complete page requests
In some cases, that's true. Google maps can certainly request static images to lay out for the map view when you move it. However, if your AJAX is fetching results from a web application rather than a static file, you'll need those extra servers and load balancers again.
As much as I dislike the decisions many sites make about how they use modern client tech, I'm not advocating for the parent's position. I'm merely pointing out that he is correct in his assertion that using those technologies often increases the server side requirements as well as the clients'.
Shuttleworth maintains that Red Hat produces a proprietary distribution, and whines when people complain about his company's product.
There's a word for guys like that...