... And in this news.com.com.com... story, there is a quote from SCO claiming "This termination not only applies to new business by IBM, but also existing copies of AIX that are installed at all customer sites. All of it has to be destroyed." That is something I have not heard SCO claim before. I was under the impression that they wanted to cut off future sales, but all past sales too? The insanity never ends at SCO.
With YOUR attitude, we would all be running CP/M on Z80 processors with 64K ram.
If you want to keep up and play with the big boys, you gotta keep up on things. That "nobody's gonna force me to upgrade" attitue only lasts so long before you are SO behind the times that you can no longer use anything current. Windows 3.1 users are pretty much SOL at this point, and it's only a few years gone.
Standards are evolving whether you like it or not. The world changes. If you can't handle that then your business WILL fail, and that "shit for brains sysadmin" will end up being YOUR boss at some point in the future.
Then download a distro like Knoppix that's easy and comes with ALL the languages people are touting.
Sheesh. The fastest way to tun a kid off programming is to have them work on a windows machine. People promote Linux for this kind of thing simply because it's the best teaching tool out there and Unix systems were DESIGNED for programmers.
Look, with programming, your not going to point and click your way out of it. You are going to use the keyboard. Hell, you can even start off with shell programming as the first step which has the advantage of teaching something quite useful that can be used with all sorts of projects in other languages.
So yeah, we know freeware exists for windows, but getting a freeware programming environment going on Windows isn't all that easy either. One of the first things you need is a decent editor - notpad doesn't cut it. What you end up doing is installing a ton of stuff that comes Standard in most linux distros.
Depends on your definition of easy. I find the command line much more intuitive and faster than any GUI for file management. For massive recursive handling of directory trees, there is no equal to the command line. Period. I'll never forgive MS's handling of Domain user management and Exchange administration with a GUI - that's just pure evil.
If the auto industry called for legislation to force people to replace thier cars which lack airbags and ABS there'd be a shitstorm
Apples and oranges. What I'm talking about is like people not maintaining their car such as brake pads and tires. If you buy a car that isn't maintainable and the only way to keep it up is to buy new, you are an idiot, very rich, or a very rich idiot.
Many states force you to maintain your car through inspections, BTW. All states require a drivers license that you have to pass a test for too which is supposed to show that you can handle your car responsibly and have a basic understanding of the laws. While a computer-operator license is unrealistic, it's quite clear that there is a major problem out there with lack of knowledge and understanding with the result cauing major problems for other people / corporations.
... So not only are they "not supporting" debian but they are willing to sabotage it? Yeah, that makes sense, - if you are Microsoft. For some strange reason, I think they will change their position on this after enough pressure. I'd like to see an official company respose to this situation rather than rely on a sales droid.
Tiff is nowhere near dead. If you scan anything, tiff is prefered as it is lossless - especially if you plan on doing OCR. It's also the defacto-standard for storing G3 / G4 Fax files. The publishing world pretty much uses Tiff as the standard (along with postscript of course.)
Plenty of commercial environments don't have the resources to update pc's
Then they shouldn't be using them. These are the people that always get viruses, get backdoors installed on their machines so they are DOS nodes, end up as spam relays, etc. If they can't afford Microsoft crap, then they need to install Linux or some other OS. It really isn't that hard to keep your machines up to date.
Seriously, I'm damn near ready to support legislation requiring companies to at least show best-faith effort to secure their networks and keep up with security patches. People that don't are a menace to the rest of us.
Back to the real issue of PNG, if someone can't handle PNG and whines about it, I'd just tell them to upgrade their shit. I don't see any point in coding / working to the lowest ancient common denominator. Doing that restricts you way to much.
Many web sites whine if you are running a really old browser. People that refuse to upgrade (or are just too lazy) will find fewer and fewer sites that function for them. Big examples of this are many banking sites. On this note however, I think it is important for web site designers to adhear to real standards (not just MS proprietary crap) and make sure they can still support non-graphical browsers such as lynx, or screen-readers for the blind.
PNG isn't new, and at this point there is no excuse for any software written within the last 4 years not to support it.
All it takes is one idiot checking their yahoo / hotmail account and - Boom.
Of course you can somewhat mitigate this by forcing people through a restrictive proxy that doesn't allow people to download executables (which is probably a good thing.)
I stand by my statement, and I'll give you another reason. If you follow the link I posted, you will see that John's filter does more than block exe's. It also handles things like web-bug images (search google if you don't know what those are.) and many other things. I also mentioned that it was an EXAMPLE of a good filter. I assumed that readers would be smart enough to know that they should adapt the technology to their own environment.
FYI, I run Linux as my main desktop OS, and various other flavors of Unix elsewhere. If you think you are invunerable to email worms and viruses just because you run Unix, you really don't have a clue. Go look at some of the security bulletins for Mutt as an example.
Anyway, good for you that you run Unix, but don't let Unix's built-in protections be your only line of defense. It's only a matter of time before some bozo decides to take advantage of slacker behavior.
... And, these text file can (usually) have comments and examples embedded in them. Try THAT with the registry.
The Windows registry was, and is, a bad idea. It quickly becomes obtuse, is easily corrupted, filled with crap that doesn't go away when the program is deleted, etc.
Couple on top of this the fact that frequently MS "hides" the file extensions. You don't see them. This allows people to masquerade files. Name a file blah.txt.exe and see what I mean.
I've been running a filter on email for about 5 years. Not ONCE has any of the email transmitted viruses / worms made it through, even to unpatched outlook and OE users.
See John Hardin's procmail filter for a Very good example of how to do this.
If you are running a corporate meail server and are not filtering for known executable extensions, you are a fucking idiot. Period. There is just no excuse to EVER allow unfiltered mail through. Would you put your corporate LAN on the internet with no firewall at all? Of course not, but by not filtering email, you have a hole the size of Yankee Stadium in your protection. It's like wearing a condom with the end cut off.
The problem with anti-virus software is that it relies on the vendor to create and distribute filter definitions. It can take DAYS or WEEKS for vendors to identify a new virus, and create a definition, and for people to download the new rule set. This lag time is deadly. Antivirus software is a LAYER of security on email, but to rely on it alone is not enough.
Security is a process, and a mindset. Everyone who knows anything at all about software knows that every program has bugs. All you can do is minimize exposure, and you do that with many layers of security. These layers don't have to be intrusive, but you need them to reduce your vunerabilities.
Hey, if you want to bury your head in the sand and refuse to participate in security, that's fine with me. I charge by the hour.
No, you did NOT make a copy of the original. In order to do that, you would have to make your clothes out of paper with printing all over them.
These patterns are basically like blueprints. If you buy a book on how to build furniture, and you build a bookcase from one of the designs you are NOT violating copyright, anymore than buying a cookbook and making diner.
As to your other point, sometimes publishers (disney) stop publishing copies of a work in order to increase their value - make them "rare". Other times it's because the work no longer has enough value to warrent further publication.
In the second case, if congress had not fucked with copyright term length you wouldn't have a problem. You know who you need to yell at... Frankly, certain types of material should have shorter copyrights such as software. After 20-30 years, software is pretty worthless. With a 20 year limit, the original version of DOS would have just gone PD (was it 1981? something like that...)
This is not true. If I buy a book, I can resell that book to anyone I choose. If someone gave me the book for free, I can still sell it. What I CAN'T do is copy it and sell copies. That's what COPYright is all about.
These pattern envelopes are physical property. There is no copying going on.
Yes, your right. We need to government to track all geocachers and then inspect everything left at the cache. It can be a whole new department called the DoGCC (Department of GeoCache Checkers). Anyone who want's to participate needs to get a $125 / year license, be subject to a background check, drug tests, etc.
While we are at it, I see all these random kids out there on the streets between 2:30 and 4pm. Someone really needs to crack down on that. They should have some management or oversight. Who knows, they could be terrorists. They could be planting bombs all over the place.
Seriously, this is the kind of anal prarnoid bullshit that is ruining this country. We certainly don't need more government and regulations on something as innocuous as Goecaching.
If Nullsoft only rarely released it products under an open source license, I MIGHT agree with you, however if you look at their main software page, 10 out of 16 packages are open source. I find it Highly unlikely that there wouldn't have been authorization for this. First, the poster needs write access to the web site. Second, it was on there a full day or more before being pulled. If Nullsoft execs (not AOL) did not approve, it wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes.
Second, it's pretty obvious that this app has been in development for some time, and the source has GPL all over it. You and nullsoft (after-the-fact) saying otherwise doesn't make it so.
As for the rest of your rant, it's pretty clear that you have some bizarre objection to people wanting privacy, freedom, etc. That's just unamerican.
On this comment: It's important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time.
The biggest problem I have with this statement is that it assumes that you can't learn from your mistakes. True, many people don't, but good professional project managers, designers, programmers, etc. usually do. It's pretty clear from all the issues MS has with patches, security, etc. that there are lots of mistakes to learn from.
In response to the driver issue, I would think that this is a HUGE area for improvement. Driver bugs can easily bring down the whole system (both Windows and Linux.) I have found however that user-space drivers can usually crash and burn without killing the entire OS. Big example of that is XFree86. X (and the video card driver) can die yet the OS underneath still lives. I don't know if I have actually seen a really good driver model on any OS that I have used however. Can anyone comment on other OS's like BeOS? Drivers are a sticky wicket due to hardware level access needed, and the absolutely huge variety of devices. The best ideas I have seen so far is a minimal kernel space core with a user-land helper but it has other performance issues (context switches and such.)
Slashdot Mirror
... And in this news.com.com.com... story, there is a quote from SCO claiming "This termination not only applies to new business by IBM, but also existing copies of AIX that are installed at all customer sites. All of it has to be destroyed."
That is something I have not heard SCO claim before. I was under the impression that they wanted to cut off future sales, but all past sales too? The insanity never ends at SCO.
In a response, IBM claims that SCO doesn't have the right to terminate the license.
Nice troll. Years ago, I would have agreed with you on Linux as a firewall.
The fact is that a properly configured linux machine is a pretty damn good firewall that is as good or better than many commercial firewalls.
If you are a fortune 500 type company it's not really appropriate, but for many of the millions of smaller businesses out there, it's just fine.
Yeah, but without bowel movements you would be quite uncomfortable. :-)
SCO has already stated that it applies to future sales. After Friday IBM will no longer be able to see "additional" licenses (according to SCO.)
I expect IBM to ignore it, file an injuction, or counter sue for $100B or something (SCO violating tons of IBM patents...)
With YOUR attitude, we would all be running CP/M on Z80 processors with 64K ram.
If you want to keep up and play with the big boys, you gotta keep up on things. That "nobody's gonna force me to upgrade" attitue only lasts so long before you are SO behind the times that you can no longer use anything current. Windows 3.1 users are pretty much SOL at this point, and it's only a few years gone.
Standards are evolving whether you like it or not. The world changes. If you can't handle that then your business WILL fail, and that "shit for brains sysadmin" will end up being YOUR boss at some point in the future.
Oh please. Ever hear of cheapbytes? $5 gets you Knoppix for example.
Basic is horrible. It teaches the WRONG way to do things forcing you to unlearn it in order to be productive later in life.
Then download a distro like Knoppix that's easy and comes with ALL the languages people are touting.
Sheesh. The fastest way to tun a kid off programming is to have them work on a windows machine. People promote Linux for this kind of thing simply because it's the best teaching tool out there and Unix systems were DESIGNED for programmers.
Look, with programming, your not going to point and click your way out of it. You are going to use the keyboard. Hell, you can even start off with shell programming as the first step which has the advantage of teaching something quite useful that can be used with all sorts of projects in other languages.
So yeah, we know freeware exists for windows, but getting a freeware programming environment going on Windows isn't all that easy either. One of the first things you need is a decent editor - notpad doesn't cut it. What you end up doing is installing a ton of stuff that comes Standard in most linux distros.
Depends on your definition of easy. I find the command line much more intuitive and faster than any GUI for file management. For massive recursive handling of directory trees, there is no equal to the command line. Period. I'll never forgive MS's handling of Domain user management and Exchange administration with a GUI - that's just pure evil.
If the auto industry called for legislation to force people to replace thier cars which lack airbags and ABS there'd be a shitstorm
Apples and oranges. What I'm talking about is like people not maintaining their car such as brake pads and tires. If you buy a car that isn't maintainable and the only way to keep it up is to buy new, you are an idiot, very rich, or a very rich idiot.
Many states force you to maintain your car through inspections, BTW. All states require a drivers license that you have to pass a test for too which is supposed to show that you can handle your car responsibly and have a basic understanding of the laws. While a computer-operator license is unrealistic, it's quite clear that there is a major problem out there with lack of knowledge and understanding with the result cauing major problems for other people / corporations.
... So not only are they "not supporting" debian but they are willing to sabotage it? Yeah, that makes sense, - if you are Microsoft. For some strange reason, I think they will change their position on this after enough pressure. I'd like to see an official company respose to this situation rather than rely on a sales droid.
Tiff is nowhere near dead. If you scan anything, tiff is prefered as it is lossless - especially if you plan on doing OCR. It's also the defacto-standard for storing G3 / G4 Fax files. The publishing world pretty much uses Tiff as the standard (along with postscript of course.)
Plenty of commercial environments don't have the resources to update pc's
Then they shouldn't be using them. These are the people that always get viruses, get backdoors installed on their machines so they are DOS nodes, end up as spam relays, etc. If they can't afford Microsoft crap, then they need to install Linux or some other OS. It really isn't that hard to keep your machines up to date.
Seriously, I'm damn near ready to support legislation requiring companies to at least show best-faith effort to secure their networks and keep up with security patches. People that don't are a menace to the rest of us.
Back to the real issue of PNG, if someone can't handle PNG and whines about it, I'd just tell them to upgrade their shit. I don't see any point in coding / working to the lowest ancient common denominator. Doing that restricts you way to much.
Many web sites whine if you are running a really old browser. People that refuse to upgrade (or are just too lazy) will find fewer and fewer sites that function for them. Big examples of this are many banking sites. On this note however, I think it is important for web site designers to adhear to real standards (not just MS proprietary crap) and make sure they can still support non-graphical browsers such as lynx, or screen-readers for the blind.
PNG isn't new, and at this point there is no excuse for any software written within the last 4 years not to support it.
All it takes is one idiot checking their yahoo / hotmail account and - Boom.
Of course you can somewhat mitigate this by forcing people through a restrictive proxy that doesn't allow people to download executables (which is probably a good thing.)
I stand by my statement, and I'll give you another reason. If you follow the link I posted, you will see that John's filter does more than block exe's. It also handles things like web-bug images (search google if you don't know what those are.) and many other things. I also mentioned that it was an EXAMPLE of a good filter. I assumed that readers would be smart enough to know that they should adapt the technology to their own environment.
FYI, I run Linux as my main desktop OS, and various other flavors of Unix elsewhere. If you think you are invunerable to email worms and viruses just because you run Unix, you really don't have a clue. Go look at some of the security bulletins for Mutt as an example.
Anyway, good for you that you run Unix, but don't let Unix's built-in protections be your only line of defense. It's only a matter of time before some bozo decides to take advantage of slacker behavior.
... And, these text file can (usually) have comments and examples embedded in them. Try THAT with the registry.
The Windows registry was, and is, a bad idea. It quickly becomes obtuse, is easily corrupted, filled with crap that doesn't go away when the program is deleted, etc.
Couple on top of this the fact that frequently MS "hides" the file extensions. You don't see them. This allows people to masquerade files. Name a file blah.txt.exe and see what I mean.
Why is this modded as a troll? It's the truth.
I've been running a filter on email for about 5 years. Not ONCE has any of the email transmitted viruses / worms made it through, even to unpatched outlook and OE users.
See John Hardin's procmail filter for a Very good example of how to do this.
If you are running a corporate meail server and are not filtering for known executable extensions, you are a fucking idiot. Period. There is just no excuse to EVER allow unfiltered mail through. Would you put your corporate LAN on the internet with no firewall at all? Of course not, but by not filtering email, you have a hole the size of Yankee Stadium in your protection. It's like wearing a condom with the end cut off.
The problem with anti-virus software is that it relies on the vendor to create and distribute filter definitions. It can take DAYS or WEEKS for vendors to identify a new virus, and create a definition, and for people to download the new rule set. This lag time is deadly. Antivirus software is a LAYER of security on email, but to rely on it alone is not enough.
Security is a process, and a mindset. Everyone who knows anything at all about software knows that every program has bugs. All you can do is minimize exposure, and you do that with many layers of security. These layers don't have to be intrusive, but you need them to reduce your vunerabilities.
Hey, if you want to bury your head in the sand and refuse to participate in security, that's fine with me. I charge by the hour.
No, you did NOT make a copy of the original. In order to do that, you would have to make your clothes out of paper with printing all over them.
These patterns are basically like blueprints. If you buy a book on how to build furniture, and you build a bookcase from one of the designs you are NOT violating copyright, anymore than buying a cookbook and making diner.
Buying a book without a cover is NOT illegal.
As to your other point, sometimes publishers (disney) stop publishing copies of a work in order to increase their value - make them "rare". Other times it's because the work no longer has enough value to warrent further publication.
In the second case, if congress had not fucked with copyright term length you wouldn't have a problem. You know who you need to yell at... Frankly, certain types of material should have shorter copyrights such as software. After 20-30 years, software is pretty worthless. With a 20 year limit, the original version of DOS would have just gone PD (was it 1981? something like that...)
This is not true. If I buy a book, I can resell that book to anyone I choose. If someone gave me the book for free, I can still sell it. What I CAN'T do is copy it and sell copies. That's what COPYright is all about.
These pattern envelopes are physical property. There is no copying going on.
Yes, your right. We need to government to track all geocachers and then inspect everything left at the cache. It can be a whole new department called the DoGCC (Department of GeoCache Checkers). Anyone who want's to participate needs to get a $125 / year license, be subject to a background check, drug tests, etc.
While we are at it, I see all these random kids out there on the streets between 2:30 and 4pm. Someone really needs to crack down on that. They should have some management or oversight. Who knows, they could be terrorists. They could be planting bombs all over the place.
Seriously, this is the kind of anal prarnoid bullshit that is ruining this country. We certainly don't need more government and regulations on something as innocuous as Goecaching.
If Nullsoft only rarely released it products under an open source license, I MIGHT agree with you, however if you look at their main software page, 10 out of 16 packages are open source. I find it Highly unlikely that there wouldn't have been authorization for this. First, the poster needs write access to the web site. Second, it was on there a full day or more before being pulled. If Nullsoft execs (not AOL) did not approve, it wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes.
Second, it's pretty obvious that this app has been in development for some time, and the source has GPL all over it. You and nullsoft (after-the-fact) saying otherwise doesn't make it so.
As for the rest of your rant, it's pretty clear that you have some bizarre objection to people wanting privacy, freedom, etc. That's just unamerican.
On this comment:
It's important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time.
The biggest problem I have with this statement is that it assumes that you can't learn from your mistakes. True, many people don't, but good professional project managers, designers, programmers, etc. usually do. It's pretty clear from all the issues MS has with patches, security, etc. that there are lots of mistakes to learn from.
In response to the driver issue, I would think that this is a HUGE area for improvement. Driver bugs can easily bring down the whole system (both Windows and Linux.) I have found however that user-space drivers can usually crash and burn without killing the entire OS. Big example of that is XFree86. X (and the video card driver) can die yet the OS underneath still lives. I don't know if I have actually seen a really good driver model on any OS that I have used however. Can anyone comment on other OS's like BeOS? Drivers are a sticky wicket due to hardware level access needed, and the absolutely huge variety of devices.
The best ideas I have seen so far is a minimal kernel space core with a user-land helper but it has other performance issues (context switches and such.)
Your code will only stagnate if you LET it stagnate. See my post below.