Firefox will certainly show more flaws as it gains more widespread acceptance. But remember, any security analyst will always find security flaws in any software. Failure to do so will endanger their jobs.
It is like asking a child welfare activist, "Is enough being done to protect our children?" What kind of answer would you expect?
The idea that one must keep email forever, to make it easier to later be sued, is horrible. The burden of proof (and cost, if applicable) should be borne by the plaintiff. We should not enslave the people to the American Bar Association. It should be the other way around.
Isn't that a bit of exaggeration of her statements about IE? She was only making a compare & contrast description of the two browsers. Nobody is pointing at Michael Jackson here.
Visual C++ does not have an IDE built into the compiler either. Visual Studio is a GUI editor for a VC++ project which shells out to the command-line compiler.
Likewise, there are several IDEs that can nicely handle a C++ project which uses GCC. Eclipse is maybe the best example of these.
Besides, do you really want "Must have GUI to cope with compiler" on your resume?;-)
This makes the thing so succinct and clear. Bless you.
But, really.. Being a contributor to several projects, I can add this point that people have missed: the developer is likely working on other items already, and does not have the additional time to add a particular feature for a user. We basically perform a "feature triage" to find the best returns on our time and efforts. It is not ignoring anyone.
I actually like the UN, even though some of its branches have at times behaved badly (UNESCO, bribery, etc). My opinion is that it has a foundation in good intentions, but its fragile nature can be abused. And censorship would almost certainly be espoused by a great many members of the UN. RTFA: he mentions pornographic content. Any time content is filtered in any way, you damage freedom. It is my opinion that free speech is more valuable than anything else, including sovereignty or even life.
I have helped out two local pubs here set up free WiFi AP's. They already had a broadband hookup, so all that was necessary was to get a couple of cheap AP's. I costs the owners nothing, and they can advertise another service. They are both 802.11g, so the speed is wonderful.
At the second one, a few guys contributed $5 each toward the AP cost. Say the setup lasts only a year. Those few guys paid $0.60 a month, and everyone else nothing.
Once again, this is not news. NSA has always had the dual mission:
Cryptography : the design and implementation of secret communications.
Cryptology : the analysis of existing secret communications.
Ever since its inception, it has had these two tasks... making secure codes for this government, and breaking the codes of other governments. Here is their mission statement
If you need a high-quality wysiwyg printing, and are not afraid of a long wait, there is a "big crowbar" approach. Render your pages to a raster image via a decent rendering engine. Ghostscript does well on some fonts, not on others. Batik does XSL:FO well, though slowly. Render to a hi-res bitmap at the given resolution, and send that to the printer. Hopefully it can be sent as a stream, and not require buffering. It is slow and inefficient, but it can quite often work around difficult situations.
The article has a "related item" link in it to this article about Oasis opting for UDDI for publishing web services on a directory server. Although UDDI has been around for a while, this bit of push might help make it more common.
I have always thought that Discovery is the most interesting area of research on the Internet. The idea of applications seeking out each other, learning about their resources and interfaces, and hooking up and communicating, without any human intervention is fascinating.
I must agree. The humor is too "in your face," with no subtleties at all. It doesn't seem to expect much intelligence of the viewer. The writers of the Simpsons, on the other hand, seem able to express big thoughts with small words, much like e.e. cummings.
Keep in mind that many of Boeing's current heavy-lifter projects are joint efforts where Boeing builds the chassis/bodies and Russian companies provide engine technology. So this is more of an opportunity for appreciation, not gloating. I for one am glad that at least in this instance the better technologies are chosen in preference to politics.
Since Poland is now our hero, how about taking the famous poster from the Solidarity days, that reminisced on Gary Cooper and High Noon, and portraying some corporate IP monster as the villain?
Too bad I'm not an artist. It would be awesome. Does anyone know if it is copyrighted?
I have been reading his journal in siliconvalley.com
for years. For a while now, his column has been slowly migrating from topics in technology and its culture, into ever more political arenas.
In the last year, his column has become a bit more activist and strident. And it seems that he is likely unhappy talking about computers and the Net, when there are more mundane social affairs occurring with which he would rather be involved.
I also miss the days of cold and clinical reporting of facts in journalism. I hope that he can avoid the pitfalls of many alternative news outlets who bemoan unfairness in the media, either
from the left or right. It is so common in the many conservative blogs, or at the liberal end of the spectrum at FAIR or Indymedia, to complain about the biased media when they perceive a lack or fairness to their own side of any given issue. And it is the almost universal remedy given by them to balance this perceived unfairness, not by giving both sides of a story, but by balancing the pool of thought by only promoting their side of an issue. So in reality they are not battling biased media but supporting it.
One quote I heard once (sorry if I get it wrong) is that impartiality in a journalist is not a character trait, but a professional skill. I like that idea. Of course newspeople have opinions like everyone else, but that should not be a factor when striving to create a quality product.
There is a common fallacy that some people have about Open Source software. It is that the basic goal of a writer of software is to please the end-user. But people who write software for free find their recompense in the pure joy of doing it. They do not feel a burden to work and slave at the keyboard to accomodate a sea of anonymous faces. Open Source is not a producer-consumer economy, yet many users still treat it that way.
The user that the developer has in mind is himself. And for him, the software works perfectly.
What is necessary for the user community to get a good GUI design, that fits their needs, is to provide that GUI themselves. Then the users can share in the joy of creating something useful out of ethereal clay.
I mean this in a positive way. In Open Source, if you want something, design it. Create it. Fix it. It is by far the fastest -- and believe me, the most fulfilling way to get what you want.
And one needn't be a software engineer. There are many ways to contribute. Storyboards of the GUI in action are an excellent start. L10N translations are wonderful.
A good example is contributing to UML design. Did you know that the simplest part of UML, the Use Case diagram, is usually the hardest part for the developer? That is because he is usually clueless about one of the basic parts of the program: what are the different ways in which this software will be used? The average user off the street can easily give this precious information.
Don't treat Open Source software like you bought it at a store, and are unhappy with it. Treat it like a fixer-upper, a do-it-yourself project, and opportunity to shine.
Damn, you beat me with the joke opportunity. I was going to ask why the average Ukranian programmer was 4th in the size category. Oh well, better luck next time!
Slashdot Mirror
It is like asking a child welfare activist, "Is enough being done to protect our children?" What kind of answer would you expect?
Spam has been around long enough that the latest demographic group to join the Net have always known spam. To them, it is a natural thing.
...by the Artful Dodger, singing:
We Are the Best Hackers in the World
The idea that one must keep email forever, to make it easier to later be sued, is horrible. The burden of proof (and cost, if applicable) should be borne by the plaintiff. We should not enslave the people to the American Bar Association. It should be the other way around.
Don't Tread On Us! At least not with your evil leather-clad feet.
Isn't that a bit of exaggeration of her statements about IE? She was only making a compare & contrast description of the two browsers. Nobody is pointing at Michael Jackson here.
I had a friend from New York refer to the Alamo as "that church thing." How does anyone get through school without hearing about Ramanujan?
Likewise, there are several IDEs that can nicely handle a C++ project which uses GCC. Eclipse is maybe the best example of these.
Besides, do you really want "Must have GUI to cope with compiler" on your resume? ;-)
But, really.. Being a contributor to several projects, I can add this point that people have missed: the developer is likely working on other items already, and does not have the additional time to add a particular feature for a user. We basically perform a "feature triage" to find the best returns on our time and efforts. It is not ignoring anyone.
I actually like the UN, even though some of its branches have at times behaved badly (UNESCO, bribery, etc). My opinion is that it has a foundation in good intentions, but its fragile nature can be abused. And censorship would almost certainly be espoused by a great many members of the UN. RTFA: he mentions pornographic content. Any time content is filtered in any way, you damage freedom. It is my opinion that free speech is more valuable than anything else, including sovereignty or even life.
oops... $0.42 ... I can't balance my checkbook either.
At the second one, a few guys contributed $5 each toward the AP cost. Say the setup lasts only a year. Those few guys paid $0.60 a month, and everyone else nothing.
After Enron crashed, their stocks certificates actually became worth more as souvenirs than any possible redemption value (little or none.)
- Cryptography : the design and implementation of secret communications.
- Cryptology : the analysis of existing secret communications.
Ever since its inception, it has had these two tasks... making secure codes for this government, and breaking the codes of other governments.Here is their mission statement
If you need a high-quality wysiwyg printing, and are not afraid of a long wait, there is a "big crowbar" approach. Render your pages to a raster image via a decent rendering engine. Ghostscript does well on some fonts, not on others. Batik does XSL:FO well, though slowly. Render to a hi-res bitmap at the given resolution, and send that to the printer. Hopefully it can be sent as a stream, and not require buffering. It is slow and inefficient, but it can quite often work around difficult situations.
I have always thought that Discovery is the most interesting area of research on the Internet. The idea of applications seeking out each other, learning about their resources and interfaces, and hooking up and communicating, without any human intervention is fascinating.
Yum. Must be lunch time.
I must agree. The humor is too "in your face," with no subtleties at all. It doesn't seem to expect much intelligence of the viewer. The writers of the Simpsons, on the other hand, seem able to express big thoughts with small words, much like e.e. cummings.
Keep in mind that many of Boeing's current heavy-lifter projects are joint efforts where Boeing builds the chassis/bodies and Russian companies provide engine technology. So this is more of an opportunity for appreciation, not gloating. I for one am glad that at least in this instance the better technologies are chosen in preference to politics.
Too bad I'm not an artist. It would be awesome. Does anyone know if it is copyrighted?
In the last year, his column has become a bit more activist and strident. And it seems that he is likely unhappy talking about computers and the Net, when there are more mundane social affairs occurring with which he would rather be involved.
I also miss the days of cold and clinical reporting of facts in journalism. I hope that he can avoid the pitfalls of many alternative news outlets who bemoan unfairness in the media, either from the left or right. It is so common in the many conservative blogs, or at the liberal end of the spectrum at FAIR or Indymedia, to complain about the biased media when they perceive a lack or fairness to their own side of any given issue. And it is the almost universal remedy given by them to balance this perceived unfairness, not by giving both sides of a story, but by balancing the pool of thought by only promoting their side of an issue. So in reality they are not battling biased media but supporting it.
One quote I heard once (sorry if I get it wrong) is that impartiality in a journalist is not a character trait, but a professional skill. I like that idea. Of course newspeople have opinions like everyone else, but that should not be a factor when striving to create a quality product.
More power to him, if he can make this work.
This is no longer a necessity. There is a filesystem-oriented repository format now. We have been using it for over a month now with no problems.
The user that the developer has in mind is himself. And for him, the software works perfectly.
What is necessary for the user community to get a good GUI design, that fits their needs, is to provide that GUI themselves. Then the users can share in the joy of creating something useful out of ethereal clay. I mean this in a positive way. In Open Source, if you want something, design it. Create it. Fix it. It is by far the fastest -- and believe me, the most fulfilling way to get what you want.
And one needn't be a software engineer. There are many ways to contribute. Storyboards of the GUI in action are an excellent start. L10N translations are wonderful.
A good example is contributing to UML design. Did you know that the simplest part of UML, the Use Case diagram, is usually the hardest part for the developer? That is because he is usually clueless about one of the basic parts of the program: what are the different ways in which this software will be used? The average user off the street can easily give this precious information.
Don't treat Open Source software like you bought it at a store, and are unhappy with it. Treat it like a fixer-upper, a do-it-yourself project, and opportunity to shine.
It is very much like the Rodney Dangerfield quip:
- Q:How many people work here?
- A:One out of every four.
Heh.