Nonsense. I've seen IE spit out 404-pages, even though Firefox had no problem accessing the interweb.
Often, when I've seen badly infested systems, the first thing I'll do is put firefox on there via-CD, so that I can get to the web. Network connectivity, check. Google pingable, check. IE? 404 not found on everything; including local 127.0.0.1 pages! Firefox solved the problem.
This is all hacks of KDE's functionality. People have embedded OpenGL rotating gears, and even an aquarium in the window decoration. Transparent, of course. I fully expect for Plasma (KDE 4.0) to have fluid, animated Window decorations that will make Aero look antiquated. Think LCars (that's the super nerdy star trek interface).
Plasma, in a nut shell, is supposed to integrate SuperKaramba-like functionality in to the basics of Window Management/Styles. Think a combination of GTK2's Cairo themes (the super-new-ones, that do a variety of things like dynamically paint button textures based on a semi-random algorthym) within an extensible widget framework. I'm guessing they're probably gunning for the Xgl/AIGLX hybrid desktop, as well.
Also, Adobe offers a royalty-free (and free as in beer) license to the PDF patents & specifications. Microsoft's legal position regarding PDF versus XPS is incredibly poor. Grandparent may not have noticed, but when a competitor has a vastly superior position, they tend to win in court. Not to mention they can safely grow the pro-apps side of the business while litigating the PDF standard, possibly even winning a preliminary injunction against Vista.
Between this (Adobe) and Symantec's Veritas injunction, it looks like the sharks are gathering around vista.
Hmmm... Don't be so quick to predict an MS victory.
There are plenty of ways that Adobe can go to give them some assistance. I can imagine a few;-)
1. GPL much of the PDF code. Release PDF as an open standard, a la OpenDocument. Make it so that the license freedom restrictions are such that Microsoft would _never_ implement it, but everybody else would love to. 2. Get PDF approved as an ISO standard for digital print document interchange. 3. Sign IBM, Sun, Apple, etc. . . to a PDF standards council. MS Bastardizations of PDF, or patent infringement via XPS = litigate, litigate, litigate. Not to mention monopolist issues. Injunctions on Vista. Injunctions on printer manufacturers that use XPS. 4. Rely upon healthy Creative Suite, Premier, Digital-Print-Design, and Macromedia product sales, regardless of which way the XPS vs. PDF battle goes.
Microsoft is a behemoth, however, Adobe has a huge slate of high-quality professional applications that run on OS X and Windows, none of which Microsoft currently competes against. Microsoft dreams of conquering Flash, PDF, and the print markets, but they are really starting from zero, and Adobe is incredibly well entrenched. If Adobe goes Sun's route, and sets its formats "free", a la ODF, Microsoft will have a hell of a time litigating them into the dirt. PDF has the huge advantage of being _everywhere_. If PDF was an ISO-sanctioned standard, where would Microsoft start litigating? Versus the ISO? ECMA? Adobe? Apple? IBM? The PDF standard federation? All of the above?
*shrug*. I have no idea if this is what will happen, but I can imagine it doing so, given that Adobe really doesn't rely upon the document format anymore, but instead relies upon its pro apps. All Adobe has to do to give Microsoft a kick in the nuts is switch its licensing terms to something free-ish, to the point where everyone but Microsoft would love to license it (ODF-like).
There's not a lot of "innovation" left to be done in OSes. It's not like much "innovation" (if you want to go by a strict dictionary definition) has appeared in OSes for 20 - 30 years.
This is pretty trollish.
Might as well conclude physics and chemistry have nearly reached their endings, as well.
There's plenty of innovation left to be done in OSes. There's lots of innovation in OSes recently. Perhaps you mean that there isn't as much innovation left to be done in 2D/3D interfaces projected on to a 2D screen; but even there I would disagree with you.
*shrug* You've got to justify a claim like this;-)
I use the same "blur" effect on Linux. It's the "crystal" KDE window deco. It allows transparent, with proper 3d lighting, blurred Window frames. It's pretty;_)
Yes, its called SaX2. It autodetects your gfx card and monitor. You can specify your graphics card/monitor as well.
It'll set your DPI correctly, and autodetect a "best" resolution.
Cloned Dual head mode by default (like Window), and you can configure dual head xinerama in the GUI. Merged FB is not yet supported, but that's mainly because merged frame buffers are a device dependant "hack". If ATI & Nvidia could standardize on settings for a Merged FB, it could be integrated into SaX2.
The problem with SuSE is easily fixable; and not via their "correct" means.
The "problems" with SuSE 10.1 are all in the package manager(s). YaST still works great; as does Smart, which is in the base repository. Zenworks Management, on the other hand, is currently total crap. It just doesn't seem to work properly, at all.
The solution? Only use YaST; the YaST bugs introduced between 10.0 and 10.1 were resolved. This was the primary push of the early betas. Better yet, YaST synchronizes sources&updates with ZMD. This means that if ZMD ever starts to work properly, you can use it.
Me? I use the Smart package manager. It's fast, stable, and resolves dependancies better than APT, YaST, URPMI, and ZMD. It handles mirrors and broken mirrors elegantly. Smart rocks.
Someone in the Gnome side of the Novell/SuSE team is pushing ZMD hard, and I don't really know why. I think it has something to do with enterprise management schemes that ZMD is archeticturally designed for. For standard desktop usage, however, Smart is vastly superior, and it works properly, today.
Once you get past package management (which can be done without updates. Just install Smart or use YaST) , I'd argue that SuSE is substantially better than the other distributions. Even the old version of Gnome is justified; its _very_ polished, and it doesn't have any of the sorts of annoynances that plague Fedora or Mandrake. It just works.
I dislike the direction that Novell is taking SuSE's package management. I hope they get it straightened out soon.
Me, I took a different tack. I just stopped buying their crap! And, if I get promoted to a higher level in my organization I'm going to do everything I can to stop them buying their crap too!
This is what I've done, too. But I'd love to see MS pursued for this crap.
I don't think liability ceilings make sense. A liability floor makes much MORE sense.
If it's under $10k ($25k? $50k? $100k?) per incident per copy, it can't be prosecuted. John Doe will not be prosecuted for his distribution of solitare that crashes Jane's PC wiping out her home photo collection.
Oracle, on the other hand, WILL be liable when a security bug causes a company to inadvertantly release all of its SSN and credit card numbers.
1. You're only liable when money changes hands. Liability covers "sales"; period. 2. You're only liable for binary distribution, not source. Contributing to the Linux kernel doesn't make you liable. 3. Minimum levels of damage per incident. A floor of $10,000; Jane Doe is going to have a hell of a time proving you did $10,000 of damage to her Windows install. 4. Work for hire puts liability on the intellectual property holder, not the creator. 5. Buy some insurance! If you're making money off of something, and the risks involved in its distribution are low, you can buy liabilty insurance for not very much money at all!
Seriously; if you are selling a product (oss or non-oss), and maintaining this product in an environment where you can cause greater than $10,000 per incident, you can afford some insurance!
My companies commercial liability insurance costs $0.0005 per dollar of coverage, and we manufacture chemicals! I'm guessing you can get a one million dollar software liability policy for ~ $1,000 yearly, and maybe significantly less. A $100,000 policy shouldn't cost more than $100-$200. Keep in mind that this money is basically how much an insurance company is willing to shill out to its lawyers in court to defend you.
And hell, if you are responsible for millions upon millions of damage, maybe you SHOULD be liable.
This is a cost of running a business. Small companies pay for insurance, too; as they should. Why should small programming houses be excluded?
The idea is not to put small business programmers out of jobs. The idea would be to have an equitable framework which would be affordable and usable by all businesses, small and large. I don't see why software should be any different; every other industry has "bugs" too; batches that go bad, parts that aren't to spec, printing errors. We accept it, fix it, and move on. We deal with small levels of damage amicably, and we deal with large levels of damage via insurance companies, with the legal system as a last resort. I don't see why the software industry shouldn't work in the same way.
Disclaimer: I agree the article is worthless. Completely.
However:
To address the topic of the article (which had nothing to do with its content), I'd say this. Yes, vendors who are SELLING software for profit, and are supposed to be supplying support resources for said product, should be held liable for bugs. I don't know why he doesn't think that they aren't. If a piece of software is buggy, people will flood their tech support lines, and if not fixed will stop buying it! Duh, again!
Vendors are not held liable for bugs. MS does not have to fix Windows, even though you paid for it. Throughout the U.S. there are laws enforcing this princple; software is specifically excluded from consumer protection liability laws.
I think that's bullshit.
Yaking on tehc support lines don't matter. Future sales don't matter. If I buy a car, and it doesn't work, I take it back. If I buy a computer, and it doesn't work, I take it back. If I buy a sofa, and it falls apart, I take it back.
If I buy Windows, and it doesn't work, I'm stuck with it as soon as I open the damn shrinkwrap.
All software carries that notice, non-OSS and OSS. Windows carries a similar notice.
This is because the UCITA excludes software from most forms of liability.
Which is bullshit; you buy it like anything else. Why shouldn't you have recourse if you buy something worthless?
I'm legally protected if I buy a car that's a lemon. If I buy software that's a lemon, I can't return it once I open it. That's outrageous. I bought a game published by an Interplay Company (FatCat software, IIRC). It never worked. Not once. Two patches later, they took FatCat to chapter 11. I was out $40.00. No recourse.
That's horseshit, and no one can look me in the eye and tell me it isn't.
How to create efficent software liability laws without hobbling the industry.
1. It only applies to distribution of binaries. Not source. Contributing a patch to Darwin's Kernel != makes you liable for Apple's sales. On the other hand, even though Linux is open source, if you distribute a binary kernel, you may potentially be liable. 2. It only applies in cases where money changes hands. No free distribution. You don't want non-profits forced into paying for insurance for freely distributed products. Besides; caveat emptor, if you're going to run your company on free software, you should pick up the tab in terms of liabilty. Otherwise, go buy the same software from your friendly local Linux vendor; they're the ones paying many of the developers! 3. Minimum levels of damage, not maximums. I don't know why people keep suggesting "The Purchase Price". Rather, it makes more sense to make a "you can't litigate below a certain level of damage" minimum. Something like $10,000 per instance per user. 4. Levels of certification for mission-critical liability. This would be done via standards, established by industry groups (I'd suggest the IEEE). The idea would NOT be to certify individual products; rather, to set requirements for products, using open standards. If your product does not reach these standards, you are immune to liability from prosecution *in that particular industry*. For example, Presume there is an IEEE working group on certification of automobile software. Unless your solitare application meets the requirements of this certification, you are immune to prosecution from anyone using your solitare application on a car's computer. Similar working groups would be established for telecomm, the medical industry, industrial manufacturing, military usage, and aerospace/nautical transport, in addition to any others as the need arises.
Now, see, the way #4 works is that in mission-critical instances, where the chances of large liability risks are very high, achieving certification for your software product becomes optional. So, why would you ever want to achieve that certification, forcing you to be liable for problems?
I'll tell you this: If you don't know the answer to that last question, you've never worked with a large insurance company (which every mission critical industry does). If you are Boeing, and you have the choice between Microsoft and IBM software, and Microsoft software is immune to liability, and IBM software is certified as appropriate, and IBM can be held liable.... Well, AIG (or whoever Boeing works with) will REQUIRE that Boeing use IBM software. Or they'll bump their rates up 1000x.
Liability is a difficult to concept to grasp, but in the modern world it is intricately tied up with insurance, risk, and damage. No matter how you slice it, bugs (software or hardware, Microsoft or General Motors) *will* cause real financial (and otherwise;health, property, whatever) damage. To write effective legislation, one must remove small potatoes from the equation (its never efficent to litigate for amounts under $10k or so), and one should provide a path of least resistance (certification=optional) so that if market solutions turn out to work better they become an option (any company that can independantly work out their liability issues with a supplier can sidestep the legal system, saving both sides tons of money).
P.S. All of this is predicated upon the repeal of all existing liability exclusions for software.
Not to mention that the majority of so-called "noobs" use Webmail services, who could use GPG/PGP 'wizards' that would automagically setup up signed e-mail.
Setting up GPG/PGP e-mail is not a technical or knowledge problem, its an implementation problem, in terms of e-mail client design.
They hijacked planes with poorly filled out Visa applications, 4" knives, and box cutters.
They were trained in remote Afghanistan, with little-to-no electricity, let alone internet connectivity (maybe one shared low-baud satellite connection for bare bone communications..... but then again, probably not).
The vast majority of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, the primary "threat" today, do not attend standard schools, but rather attend Koran training at religious academies.
Yeah, I'm sure their next step is widespread disruption of our infrastructure via cyberterrorism.
I'm far more worried about Russian hackers extorting for money, script kiddies on steroids, or genuine, old school black hats bent on causing disruption. And among these categories, the primary "threat" to our 'cyber-infrastructure' (I hate that word) is Windows. Nothing else. I'm not saying switching off Windows will make us invulnerable; but right now, if you are worried about "cyber-attack", its because you are a Windows user, or you have a piss-poor Unix admin, or your company does a lot of serving.
The vast majority of intra-company or intranet equipment should have nothing to do with the outside world. Follow standard Unixy security procedure, and your biggest worries are thing like data theft, not catastrophic failure.
In this day and age, with properly configured Unix-like systems its easier to bomb the fucking building than 'cyber-attack-hack-whatever'. Given our poor physical security, and our "enemies" expertise with conventional means, and our "enemies" inability to access modern hardware/software.... catastrophic failure is going to come from explosions, fires, and *gasp* WMD. Not hackers.
Note: I don't bring up WMD to say it is going to happen. I bring up WMD to say that is FAR more likely than evil Osama hackers.
Sleep on Linux is hit and miss, but this is unfortunately because of poor support from ATI and Nvidia. Oddly enough, I've had better luck with ATI, whose drivers are generally much worse than Nvidia.
I've never had a system with an Nvidia graphics part sleep correctly, even when using an nvidia motherboard! None of them resume properly, and most don't even suspend properly.
That being said, most other systems seem to work fine, even weirdo stuff. I've got a Sony VAIO all-in-one (iMac like) TV-PC, (WRT-510G), which does both Suspend to Ram and Standby correctly, as well as homebrew desktop (Via motherboard chipset, ATI graphics card) that works fine, too. My MacBook Pro doesn't support Standby in Linux, but Suspend to Ram works great, even with the ATI driver loaded.
My uncle's Inspiron 8200 will Standby and/or Suspend to ram if it uses the generic NV driver rather than the proprietary Nvidia driver; using the Nvidia driver virutally insures a failure when attempting to suspend.
The problem with the Linux ACPI/APM stuff is that it is all written to Intel's Reference specification, which rarely tends to correspond 100% with various components, especially supposedly "performance" stuff like Nvidia's motherboard chipsets. Hopefully, however, Nvidia will get its shit straightened out, and we'll see Suspend/Standby work on the majority of parts out there.
I can say that newer laptops tend to work _better_ than older parts, merely because developers seem to use less kludges in the BIOS these days. As long as we get closer and closer to the reference implementations, we get closer to working ACPI.
My MacBook Pro, for example, has flawless ACPI in Linux, but rarely resumes correctly in XP. Even cooler, the ACPI "suspend" experience on the MacBook (in Linux) is significantly smoother than suspending a Windows system. It's fast, it always works, and the devices come up near-instantly, including wireless.
*shrug*. 98% of suspend failures on Linux can be traced to Nvidia and ATI. The first thing you should do when trying to get ACPI working on Linux is disable proprietary kernel modules. The main-tree Kernel stuff tends to work great; and most distributions include further tweaks. SuSE, for example, checks your system against a "known good" database, much like Windows does.
I'm sure they would like to. I wonder if they have the expertise.
While I do like Codeweavers more than Transgaming, I don't really disapprove of them, either. They forked a BSD-style project, contributing some code back to it (to the ReWind tree), and licensing code from some proprietary company for extensions that could help with some aspects of gaming (like copy protection stuff).
I'd love to see Transgaming behave like Codeweavers, but Transgaming didn't do anything wrong, and better yet, they do deliver on their promises. Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, etc. . . at near native speeds. When Transgaming says they are going to get a game running, they do. They've had problems with Punkbuster, but they're getting might close to having that resolved.
Ignore the other poster, he seems to think that you are running 9X:)
I'm a MS basher, but I can answer this for you. Hibernate requires disk swap space = ram size. Not to mention that the swap space must be contiguous. If you have a fragmented swap file, it won't work.
My guess? You're using 40-50 gigs of that 60GB disk. You're running at close to 5-10% fragementation, which is normal for a mid-to-heavy workload, and a 75% full disk.
It's unlikely you'll have 2 GB of contiguous swap space, OR, your swap settings preclude you from having that. Also, I believe if you tell Windows to use a static swap file, that actually counts _against_ your hibernate; Windows uses a separate hibernate file, and while I believe that it will dynamically reallocate swap->hibernate when you tell it to "manage its own swap settings", a static swap file will not.
I might have no idea what I'm talking about, at least in terms of swap settings (kind of a black box), but I'd bet money that your "Insufficent System Resources" for hibernate has something to do with sufficent contiguous disk space.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense. I've seen IE spit out 404-pages, even though Firefox had no problem accessing the interweb.
Often, when I've seen badly infested systems, the first thing I'll do is put firefox on there via-CD, so that I can get to the web. Network connectivity, check. Google pingable, check. IE? 404 not found on everything; including local 127.0.0.1 pages! Firefox solved the problem.
Here's an anacdotal report from Google, but I'd like to stress that I've seen this personally.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=1 8790 is similar, and IIRC, came out before the Aero interface had screen shots of it. Not to mention that GLOcean is animated; its a very peaceful look.
This is all hacks of KDE's functionality. People have embedded OpenGL rotating gears, and even an aquarium in the window decoration. Transparent, of course. I fully expect for Plasma (KDE 4.0) to have fluid, animated Window decorations that will make Aero look antiquated. Think LCars (that's the super nerdy star trek interface).
Plasma, in a nut shell, is supposed to integrate SuperKaramba-like functionality in to the basics of Window Management/Styles. Think a combination of GTK2's Cairo themes (the super-new-ones, that do a variety of things like dynamically paint button textures based on a semi-random algorthym) within an extensible widget framework. I'm guessing they're probably gunning for the Xgl/AIGLX hybrid desktop, as well.
On my mac, I have two versions of Acrobat installed (laziness when I upgraded), and Acrobat reader.
Everything works fine.
Apparently, what I've said has already been done. PDF variants are already ISO formats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_For mat
Also, Adobe offers a royalty-free (and free as in beer) license to the PDF patents & specifications. Microsoft's legal position regarding PDF versus XPS is incredibly poor. Grandparent may not have noticed, but when a competitor has a vastly superior position, they tend to win in court. Not to mention they can safely grow the pro-apps side of the business while litigating the PDF standard, possibly even winning a preliminary injunction against Vista.
Between this (Adobe) and Symantec's Veritas injunction, it looks like the sharks are gathering around vista.
Hmmm... Don't be so quick to predict an MS victory.
;-)
There are plenty of ways that Adobe can go to give them some assistance. I can imagine a few
1. GPL much of the PDF code. Release PDF as an open standard, a la OpenDocument. Make it so that the license freedom restrictions are such that Microsoft would _never_ implement it, but everybody else would love to.
2. Get PDF approved as an ISO standard for digital print document interchange.
3. Sign IBM, Sun, Apple, etc. . . to a PDF standards council. MS Bastardizations of PDF, or patent infringement via XPS = litigate, litigate, litigate. Not to mention monopolist issues. Injunctions on Vista. Injunctions on printer manufacturers that use XPS.
4. Rely upon healthy Creative Suite, Premier, Digital-Print-Design, and Macromedia product sales, regardless of which way the XPS vs. PDF battle goes.
Microsoft is a behemoth, however, Adobe has a huge slate of high-quality professional applications that run on OS X and Windows, none of which Microsoft currently competes against. Microsoft dreams of conquering Flash, PDF, and the print markets, but they are really starting from zero, and Adobe is incredibly well entrenched. If Adobe goes Sun's route, and sets its formats "free", a la ODF, Microsoft will have a hell of a time litigating them into the dirt. PDF has the huge advantage of being _everywhere_. If PDF was an ISO-sanctioned standard, where would Microsoft start litigating? Versus the ISO? ECMA? Adobe? Apple? IBM? The PDF standard federation? All of the above?
*shrug*. I have no idea if this is what will happen, but I can imagine it doing so, given that Adobe really doesn't rely upon the document format anymore, but instead relies upon its pro apps. All Adobe has to do to give Microsoft a kick in the nuts is switch its licensing terms to something free-ish, to the point where everyone but Microsoft would love to license it (ODF-like).
There's not a lot of "innovation" left to be done in OSes. It's not like much "innovation" (if you want to go by a strict dictionary definition) has appeared in OSes for 20 - 30 years.
;-)
This is pretty trollish.
Might as well conclude physics and chemistry have nearly reached their endings, as well.
There's plenty of innovation left to be done in OSes. There's lots of innovation in OSes recently. Perhaps you mean that there isn't as much innovation left to be done in 2D/3D interfaces projected on to a 2D screen; but even there I would disagree with you.
*shrug* You've got to justify a claim like this
I use the same "blur" effect on Linux. It's the "crystal" KDE window deco. It allows transparent, with proper 3d lighting, blurred Window frames. It's pretty ;_)
Yes, its called SaX2. It autodetects your gfx card and monitor. You can specify your graphics card/monitor as well.
It'll set your DPI correctly, and autodetect a "best" resolution.
Cloned Dual head mode by default (like Window), and you can configure dual head xinerama in the GUI. Merged FB is not yet supported, but that's mainly because merged frame buffers are a device dependant "hack". If ATI & Nvidia could standardize on settings for a Merged FB, it could be integrated into SaX2.
IIRC, SaX2 is open source. It supports GUI configuration of multiple monitors.
I don't see why the other non-SuSE distributions don't use it.
Install NetworkManager, and the NetworkManager Gnome applet.
:)
That'll help
The problem with SuSE is easily fixable; and not via their "correct" means.
The "problems" with SuSE 10.1 are all in the package manager(s). YaST still works great; as does Smart, which is in the base repository. Zenworks Management, on the other hand, is currently total crap. It just doesn't seem to work properly, at all.
The solution? Only use YaST; the YaST bugs introduced between 10.0 and 10.1 were resolved. This was the primary push of the early betas. Better yet, YaST synchronizes sources&updates with ZMD. This means that if ZMD ever starts to work properly, you can use it.
Me? I use the Smart package manager. It's fast, stable, and resolves dependancies better than APT, YaST, URPMI, and ZMD. It handles mirrors and broken mirrors elegantly. Smart rocks.
Someone in the Gnome side of the Novell/SuSE team is pushing ZMD hard, and I don't really know why. I think it has something to do with enterprise management schemes that ZMD is archeticturally designed for. For standard desktop usage, however, Smart is vastly superior, and it works properly, today.
Once you get past package management (which can be done without updates. Just install Smart or use YaST) , I'd argue that SuSE is substantially better than the other distributions. Even the old version of Gnome is justified; its _very_ polished, and it doesn't have any of the sorts of annoynances that plague Fedora or Mandrake. It just works.
I dislike the direction that Novell is taking SuSE's package management. I hope they get it straightened out soon.
Me, I took a different tack. I just stopped buying their crap! And, if I get promoted to a higher level in my organization I'm going to do everything I can to stop them buying their crap too!
This is what I've done, too. But I'd love to see MS pursued for this crap.
I outline an idea here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=187345&cid =15456889
I don't think liability ceilings make sense. A liability floor makes much MORE sense.
If it's under $10k ($25k? $50k? $100k?) per incident per copy, it can't be prosecuted. John Doe will not be prosecuted for his distribution of solitare that crashes Jane's PC wiping out her home photo collection.
Oracle, on the other hand, WILL be liable when a security bug causes a company to inadvertantly release all of its SSN and credit card numbers.
This is easy to resolve.
1. You're only liable when money changes hands. Liability covers "sales"; period.
2. You're only liable for binary distribution, not source. Contributing to the Linux kernel doesn't make you liable.
3. Minimum levels of damage per incident. A floor of $10,000; Jane Doe is going to have a hell of a time proving you did $10,000 of damage to her Windows install.
4. Work for hire puts liability on the intellectual property holder, not the creator.
5. Buy some insurance! If you're making money off of something, and the risks involved in its distribution are low, you can buy liabilty insurance for not very much money at all!
Seriously; if you are selling a product (oss or non-oss), and maintaining this product in an environment where you can cause greater than $10,000 per incident, you can afford some insurance!
My companies commercial liability insurance costs $0.0005 per dollar of coverage, and we manufacture chemicals! I'm guessing you can get a one million dollar software liability policy for ~ $1,000 yearly, and maybe significantly less. A $100,000 policy shouldn't cost more than $100-$200. Keep in mind that this money is basically how much an insurance company is willing to shill out to its lawyers in court to defend you.
And hell, if you are responsible for millions upon millions of damage, maybe you SHOULD be liable.
This is a cost of running a business. Small companies pay for insurance, too; as they should. Why should small programming houses be excluded?
The idea is not to put small business programmers out of jobs. The idea would be to have an equitable framework which would be affordable and usable by all businesses, small and large. I don't see why software should be any different; every other industry has "bugs" too; batches that go bad, parts that aren't to spec, printing errors. We accept it, fix it, and move on. We deal with small levels of damage amicably, and we deal with large levels of damage via insurance companies, with the legal system as a last resort. I don't see why the software industry shouldn't work in the same way.
Please read my suggestions on working software liability, and see if they address your concerns.
I haven't covered all the bases, but its pretty close. I earnestly believe its possible.
Disclaimer: I agree the article is worthless. Completely.
However:
To address the topic of the article (which had nothing to do with its content), I'd say this. Yes, vendors who are SELLING software for profit, and are supposed to be supplying support resources for said product, should be held liable for bugs. I don't know why he doesn't think that they aren't. If a piece of software is buggy, people will flood their tech support lines, and if not fixed will stop buying it! Duh, again!
Vendors are not held liable for bugs. MS does not have to fix Windows, even though you paid for it. Throughout the U.S. there are laws enforcing this princple; software is specifically excluded from consumer protection liability laws.
I think that's bullshit.
Yaking on tehc support lines don't matter. Future sales don't matter. If I buy a car, and it doesn't work, I take it back. If I buy a computer, and it doesn't work, I take it back. If I buy a sofa, and it falls apart, I take it back.
If I buy Windows, and it doesn't work, I'm stuck with it as soon as I open the damn shrinkwrap.
All software carries that notice, non-OSS and OSS. Windows carries a similar notice.
This is because the UCITA excludes software from most forms of liability.
Which is bullshit; you buy it like anything else. Why shouldn't you have recourse if you buy something worthless?
I'm legally protected if I buy a car that's a lemon. If I buy software that's a lemon, I can't return it once I open it. That's outrageous. I bought a game published by an Interplay Company (FatCat software, IIRC). It never worked. Not once. Two patches later, they took FatCat to chapter 11. I was out $40.00. No recourse.
That's horseshit, and no one can look me in the eye and tell me it isn't.
How to create efficent software liability laws without hobbling the industry.
1. It only applies to distribution of binaries. Not source. Contributing a patch to Darwin's Kernel != makes you liable for Apple's sales. On the other hand, even though Linux is open source, if you distribute a binary kernel, you may potentially be liable.
2. It only applies in cases where money changes hands. No free distribution. You don't want non-profits forced into paying for insurance for freely distributed products. Besides; caveat emptor, if you're going to run your company on free software, you should pick up the tab in terms of liabilty. Otherwise, go buy the same software from your friendly local Linux vendor; they're the ones paying many of the developers!
3. Minimum levels of damage, not maximums. I don't know why people keep suggesting "The Purchase Price". Rather, it makes more sense to make a "you can't litigate below a certain level of damage" minimum. Something like $10,000 per instance per user.
4. Levels of certification for mission-critical liability. This would be done via standards, established by industry groups (I'd suggest the IEEE). The idea would NOT be to certify individual products; rather, to set requirements for products, using open standards. If your product does not reach these standards, you are immune to liability from prosecution *in that particular industry*. For example, Presume there is an IEEE working group on certification of automobile software. Unless your solitare application meets the requirements of this certification, you are immune to prosecution from anyone using your solitare application on a car's computer. Similar working groups would be established for telecomm, the medical industry, industrial manufacturing, military usage, and aerospace/nautical transport, in addition to any others as the need arises.
Now, see, the way #4 works is that in mission-critical instances, where the chances of large liability risks are very high, achieving certification for your software product becomes optional. So, why would you ever want to achieve that certification, forcing you to be liable for problems?
I'll tell you this: If you don't know the answer to that last question, you've never worked with a large insurance company (which every mission critical industry does). If you are Boeing, and you have the choice between Microsoft and IBM software, and Microsoft software is immune to liability, and IBM software is certified as appropriate, and IBM can be held liable.... Well, AIG (or whoever Boeing works with) will REQUIRE that Boeing use IBM software. Or they'll bump their rates up 1000x.
Liability is a difficult to concept to grasp, but in the modern world it is intricately tied up with insurance, risk, and damage. No matter how you slice it, bugs (software or hardware, Microsoft or General Motors) *will* cause real financial (and otherwise;health, property, whatever) damage. To write effective legislation, one must remove small potatoes from the equation (its never efficent to litigate for amounts under $10k or so), and one should provide a path of least resistance (certification=optional) so that if market solutions turn out to work better they become an option (any company that can independantly work out their liability issues with a supplier can sidestep the legal system, saving both sides tons of money).
P.S. All of this is predicated upon the repeal of all existing liability exclusions for software.
Not to mention that the majority of so-called "noobs" use Webmail services, who could use GPG/PGP 'wizards' that would automagically setup up signed e-mail.
Setting up GPG/PGP e-mail is not a technical or knowledge problem, its an implementation problem, in terms of e-mail client design.
Huh? I thought that was a feature of my new, Windows Powered Luxury Sedan?
They hijacked planes with poorly filled out Visa applications, 4" knives, and box cutters.
They were trained in remote Afghanistan, with little-to-no electricity, let alone internet connectivity (maybe one shared low-baud satellite connection for bare bone communications..... but then again, probably not).
The vast majority of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, the primary "threat" today, do not attend standard schools, but rather attend Koran training at religious academies.
Yeah, I'm sure their next step is widespread disruption of our infrastructure via cyberterrorism.
I'm far more worried about Russian hackers extorting for money, script kiddies on steroids, or genuine, old school black hats bent on causing disruption. And among these categories, the primary "threat" to our 'cyber-infrastructure' (I hate that word) is Windows. Nothing else. I'm not saying switching off Windows will make us invulnerable; but right now, if you are worried about "cyber-attack", its because you are a Windows user, or you have a piss-poor Unix admin, or your company does a lot of serving.
The vast majority of intra-company or intranet equipment should have nothing to do with the outside world. Follow standard Unixy security procedure, and your biggest worries are thing like data theft, not catastrophic failure.
In this day and age, with properly configured Unix-like systems its easier to bomb the fucking building than 'cyber-attack-hack-whatever'. Given our poor physical security, and our "enemies" expertise with conventional means, and our "enemies" inability to access modern hardware/software.... catastrophic failure is going to come from explosions, fires, and *gasp* WMD. Not hackers.
Note: I don't bring up WMD to say it is going to happen. I bring up WMD to say that is FAR more likely than evil Osama hackers.
Unix, or Linux?
:-)
;-)
How much did you pay?
This message brought to you by SuSE running on a MacBook Pro
Hey, I like the hardware
Sleep on Linux is hit and miss, but this is unfortunately because of poor support from ATI and Nvidia. Oddly enough, I've had better luck with ATI, whose drivers are generally much worse than Nvidia.
I've never had a system with an Nvidia graphics part sleep correctly, even when using an nvidia motherboard! None of them resume properly, and most don't even suspend properly.
That being said, most other systems seem to work fine, even weirdo stuff. I've got a Sony VAIO all-in-one (iMac like) TV-PC, (WRT-510G), which does both Suspend to Ram and Standby correctly, as well as homebrew desktop (Via motherboard chipset, ATI graphics card) that works fine, too. My MacBook Pro doesn't support Standby in Linux, but Suspend to Ram works great, even with the ATI driver loaded.
My uncle's Inspiron 8200 will Standby and/or Suspend to ram if it uses the generic NV driver rather than the proprietary Nvidia driver; using the Nvidia driver virutally insures a failure when attempting to suspend.
The problem with the Linux ACPI/APM stuff is that it is all written to Intel's Reference specification, which rarely tends to correspond 100% with various components, especially supposedly "performance" stuff like Nvidia's motherboard chipsets. Hopefully, however, Nvidia will get its shit straightened out, and we'll see Suspend/Standby work on the majority of parts out there.
I can say that newer laptops tend to work _better_ than older parts, merely because developers seem to use less kludges in the BIOS these days. As long as we get closer and closer to the reference implementations, we get closer to working ACPI.
My MacBook Pro, for example, has flawless ACPI in Linux, but rarely resumes correctly in XP. Even cooler, the ACPI "suspend" experience on the MacBook (in Linux) is significantly smoother than suspending a Windows system. It's fast, it always works, and the devices come up near-instantly, including wireless.
*shrug*. 98% of suspend failures on Linux can be traced to Nvidia and ATI. The first thing you should do when trying to get ACPI working on Linux is disable proprietary kernel modules. The main-tree Kernel stuff tends to work great; and most distributions include further tweaks. SuSE, for example, checks your system against a "known good" database, much like Windows does.
Hmm... Very interesting question. . . . .
I'm sure they would like to. I wonder if they have the expertise.
While I do like Codeweavers more than Transgaming, I don't really disapprove of them, either. They forked a BSD-style project, contributing some code back to it (to the ReWind tree), and licensing code from some proprietary company for extensions that could help with some aspects of gaming (like copy protection stuff).
I'd love to see Transgaming behave like Codeweavers, but Transgaming didn't do anything wrong, and better yet, they do deliver on their promises. Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, etc. . . at near native speeds. When Transgaming says they are going to get a game running, they do. They've had problems with Punkbuster, but they're getting might close to having that resolved.
Ignore the other poster, he seems to think that you are running 9X :)
I'm a MS basher, but I can answer this for you. Hibernate requires disk swap space = ram size. Not to mention that the swap space must be contiguous. If you have a fragmented swap file, it won't work.
My guess? You're using 40-50 gigs of that 60GB disk. You're running at close to 5-10% fragementation, which is normal for a mid-to-heavy workload, and a 75% full disk.
It's unlikely you'll have 2 GB of contiguous swap space, OR, your swap settings preclude you from having that. Also, I believe if you tell Windows to use a static swap file, that actually counts _against_ your hibernate; Windows uses a separate hibernate file, and while I believe that it will dynamically reallocate swap->hibernate when you tell it to "manage its own swap settings", a static swap file will not.
I might have no idea what I'm talking about, at least in terms of swap settings (kind of a black box), but I'd bet money that your "Insufficent System Resources" for hibernate has something to do with sufficent contiguous disk space.