This sets off a few of my "old timer" bells (that's right, I'm old, aka "over thirty")...
One, did you ever read about "The War to End All Wars"? That was WWI! They were much more realistic about naming WWII.
Also, please realize what you thought about history perpetually progressing forward was a lie. Things are never determined. It's all still up for grabs. Winning is what happens in board games, in the real world it's a perpetual struggle. Yes, even among browsers.
this is what a Value Added tax is all about... taxing things at every step of processing... even if it doesn't change hands...(as in, the farmer uses this manure at his own farm but has to pay the sales tax as if he sold it to himself) the horse has added value to the hay.
Even without value added tax, that argument would not work because the farmer is selling a product.
Um, on the other hand, I don't know too much about the details, so take the above with a grain of salt and ask a european if you want real info (or at least google)
The ZDnet article doesn't take into account that the OBM should decide what's in their best interest to demand, and demand it. Nader quoted sensible reasons besides "do what the DOJ is failing to do", such as security monocultures, and espc. the long term viability of public information stored in proprietary formats.
wow! I made your list of worst sigs for a sig I had for a couple weeks to see if people had any ideas of how one might audit Microsoft for GPL violations. I do and I was curious.
What didn't you like about it? Too trollish? (not judging from the response) You think it's not realistic? Or what? I wish you would have posted a comment in my journal on the subject then! Something I could have thought about (I'm optimistic about your ability to post useful criticism). Immortalizing the sig on your list (or whomever's list it is) is aweful nice though.
yeah, offtopic...
and don't forget, I'm not asking for your opinion because it matters... I'm just curious.
>How would you actually enforce that? I can see a few potential problems:
not hard. (good question though)
>1. Unless the specification for these standard file formats is very precise, there will always be interoperability problems.
a true specification is precise. only in software is this not obvious...! Of course, even in software there are examples.
>2. Even if the office software "supports" a standard format, it obviously isn't going to default to that format, so you'll have to deal with the training issues (always use "save as...").
true, I suppose. Perhaps you could select the default format once when you install.
>3. Microsoft (or any other commercial vendor) would claim that they need to be able to modify or extend the "standard" format in order to be able to innovate new features. This is actually a valid complaint, and difficult to work around. If you allow proprietary extensions to a standard format, it's no longer truly standard.
you just have to change the specification first and the government might have to wait to see if the feature is adopted by the industry. The government is not private business... it's not as important to keep up with the latest bell and whistle as it is to protect future access to the content itself.
>I still think this is a good idea, I just suspect that it'd be a whole lot of work to define these standard formats such that they meet the needs of the government and also those of the software vendors.
I think it's a good idea, that you have a point, but that it's really a lot easier than you think. The government has much harder requirements to meet for it's procurements than this proposed one.
>I'm not gonna feel sorry for them because their nation is ran by idiots.
why not? that's like not feeling sorry for a slave whose "master" is an idiot. I think this even holds true in a democracy because it doesn't matter what the system is called, only it's empirical real-world performance. How does/is it run? If it runs in a way that the people in the country don't effectively choose who "runs the country" to any degree of control, pointing out their tools of control is a good help, but doesn't make them actually free or in control of their idiot rulers. Under multiple choice republican democracy (aka. representative democracy) each party controls the nomination, they are limited to party members on the one hand, and more or less hand picked on the other. So whatever basic beliefs the viable parties (whom are the effective parties) hold in common, is removed from the choices. To use a mathematical analogy, it's as if you have a vector that can go in any direction except negative-x-ward leaving whole quadrants unexplorable.
In contrast to this is direct democracy, where, for example, everyone votes direclty on the things that the congress would normally vote on, Bills, agenda, all of that.
Suing the State of California
on
California Hax0red
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I wonder if the employees union will sue the state for damages? While I may get trashed for suggesting such a legal "solution" (or maybe praised, who cares), I think that's the only way large organizations will know why it's worth it to maintain security.
I say don't underestimate how much this sucks for those employees.
Stenbit said the debate is academic and that what matters is how secure a given piece of software is. To that end, the Defense Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of any open-source software that has been tested.
so they can use it because it wasn't purchased? talk about a loophole!
no to both the question and the demand. I guess you'd feel better if I liked the game you eagerly anticipate and possibly you would be really happy if I even liked the same flavor pudding. Is it individuality you hate or is just that you feel insecure about your choice of visual stimulation?
Ok, I hate this! I'm sick of blood fantasy. Who cares if it causes real tragedies or not... I'm just bored of it and see photo-realistic blood smears as, well, not that great a use of my fantasy time. Yeah, you can do whatever you want, yada yada yada, I'm not telling you not to play this game, I don't care. It's an opinion, mine, about it's pointlessness.
That people see that stuff and can only think how "nice" it looks... um, something way pent up in there boys! But you should Really Enjoy the war they are about to send you to! "Wow, look how realistic my dead buddy looks! It almost looks real... what? it is real?!"
interesting. anonymous, coward, gee, I wonder who you could be.
anyway, what's the matter with weasel's posting in forums from work? How is it different than a cigarette break? getting up to get coffee? stretching? how is it different from any kind of break?
furthermore, I don't know about you but many people often continue work extra hours from home (oh, yeah, sallaried employees don't have "hours"), have to have cell phones and pagers to keep in touch with work 24 hours a day. So what's your point again?
I think weasels that never accomplish anything and are years late on their promises is a much bigger problem!
I feel that I am totally a supporter of Stallman, his commie ways, his hippie ways, his ability to design and code, and the importance of zealousness. On the other hand, I will chose non-free tools. I think free tools provide a baseline. They are a good form of embrace and extend. Want to sell a commercial web server... well it better be better than apache! Free software limits the amount of time a company can milk it's invention to the amount of time it really is better than the baseline.
The reason I reply to the parent comment is because I agree there is a bit of nonsense in the GNU/Linux name controversy. He should be insisting that it be called GNU. GNU is a term to refer to the whole operating system RMS wanted to build. Why does he want GNU/Linux? Because Linux is well known. It's a marketing success, by free software standards a phenomenal success. It does show he wants make a marketing/propaganda move, which no one has to like or appreciate. Therein lies the problem. Probably, he should be putting some thought into how to market the GNU brand, and if can't stomach taking that approach, he should probably forget about GNU/Linux.
PS: maybe they should make a distribution at the fsf and just call it GNU.
Rising to the top of the tank and floating on their side, I'm guessing.
Honestly, what could more ensure stagnation of a job title more than appearing on a top ten list!? I'm sure three of those jobs really will be rising in demand, but I'm not telling which three.
$ == legitimacy in business
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I think it odd but likely that charging for Star Office will facilitate it's spread. People do look gift horses in the mouth, but charge them 80$ and they go away thinking, "cheap! neat!"
gratuitous mention of my own patent (required early in any slashdot thread on patents):
I've patented breathing air while programming.
Please cease and desist.
PS: Of course, one cannot patent breathing air OR programming, but doing them simultaneously... why that's quite different, special, and I invented it! Unfortunately, most people breath coffee while programming, so my patent doesn't really apply to very many programmers.
(1) I think the search for the elegant language is akin to the search for the fountain of youth... you may encounter some elegance along the way.
(2) I think languages are best judged based on power and flexibility, not 20'th century value judgements on beauty, which is what "elegance" is. I know that's a little trit
(3) I think "elegant" is a personal value judgement, such that the elegant languages you mention can, at best, at unlikely best, be elegant for you, not me, or vice versa.
I prefer a language with a lot of possibilities, such that I can cull those possibilities and use what makes sense in a perfect case. Having special languages for special purposes is fine, but it's a false economy if you then have to learn 50 different languages, to avoid learning 1 language with 50 different sensible paradigms.
Btw, by "elegant language" were you refering to C or Pascal? Applesoft BASIC maybe?
I think you're missing the point. "Doing complex things" is not the gaol of a good language -- "doing complex things simply" is.
I so disagree. (1) automatically the best language question is relative to a problem space... right language for the job, but that's a cop out so (2) If you are pushing the limits of what can be done, and you should be whatever you are focussing on, since this is such a young unexplored type of engineering, then you need a language flexible enough to allow you to change the way you do things.
I would like to see these changes to C++:
(1) arbitrary operator definition: this would allow better control over operators and not imply relationships already played by the built in operators. Also, I hope this will silence complaints about how confusing operator overload it, because the standard operators would only be used for the appropriate meanings... (e.g. + is addition/concatination, ++ is increment or advance in list or step to next item (for pointers).) Probably more complaints though.
(2) Binary standards for multiple inheritance structures, and common name mangling. Binary incompatibilityland.
(3) someone needs to write sufficient operator overloads to install a garbage collection system as integrated as possible to the standard way of handling pointers etc. There is a small chance this will be directly useful, but think of all the Java programmers that would then praise C++. Worth it just for PR!
And those of us who have waded through "powerful" C++ code can all attest to how refreshing it is to see normal structured C code.:)
slow on the uptake I'm only now realizing that C++ is a topic of some fea^H^H^H^H controversy on slashdot.
C++ syntax makes perfect sense. There are no arbitrary relationships. As a multi-paradigm language it allows you to choose a subset of features for a given product, depending on what you need.
You do not need the STL to write C++ code. However, you are crazy not to use it, becuase they are generally excellently implemented collections useable in any program... and the STL is an elegant flexible system. Like most great feats of software engineering you have to think it's way to get it to work, and then it is your friend.
I'm starting to get a big laugh forming for all the complaints of C++ just being too darn hard. Why do I not find it hard? Do I know restraint? Do I just get it? Bad taste? Infinite wisdom?
I can but wonder, will I lose or gain karma for speaking well of noble C++!
No, I understand the complexity. I've deployed a lot of software. A modular approach is one where the interactions between pieces are well defined. Unit testing those modules can then work, simplifying the testing to a series of small tests. That's the obvious thing. If I can remove the gas pump from a car and test it independently, that makes the car easier to test as a whole. You advocate making the gas pump irreplaceable and hope to imply that makes the car easier to test!
Slashdot Mirror
This sets off a few of my "old timer" bells (that's right, I'm old, aka "over thirty")...
One, did you ever read about "The War to End All Wars"? That was WWI! They were much more realistic about naming WWII.
Also, please realize what you thought about history perpetually progressing forward was a lie. Things are never determined. It's all still up for grabs. Winning is what happens in board games, in the real world it's a perpetual struggle. Yes, even among browsers.
if mighty Marc couldn't do it, no one can.
this is what a Value Added tax is all about... taxing things at every step of processing... even if it doesn't change hands...(as in, the farmer uses this manure at his own farm but has to pay the sales tax as if he sold it to himself) the horse has added value to the hay.
Even without value added tax, that argument would not work because the farmer is selling a product.
Um, on the other hand, I don't know too much about the details, so take the above with a grain of salt and ask a european if you want real info (or at least google)
The ZDnet article doesn't take into account that the OBM should decide what's in their best interest to demand, and demand it. Nader quoted sensible reasons besides "do what the DOJ is failing to do", such as security monocultures, and espc. the long term viability of public information stored in proprietary formats.
ok, thanks for the explanation.
wow! I made your list of worst sigs for a sig I had for a couple weeks to see if people had any ideas of how one might audit Microsoft for GPL violations. I do and I was curious.
What didn't you like about it? Too trollish? (not judging from the response) You think it's not realistic? Or what? I wish you would have posted a comment in my journal on the subject then! Something I could have thought about (I'm optimistic about your ability to post useful criticism). Immortalizing the sig on your list (or whomever's list it is) is aweful nice though.
yeah, offtopic...
and don't forget, I'm not asking for your opinion because it matters... I'm just curious.
>How would you actually enforce that? I can see a few potential problems:
not hard. (good question though)
>1. Unless the specification for these standard file formats is very precise, there will always be interoperability problems.
a true specification is precise. only in software is this not obvious...! Of course, even in software there are examples.
>2. Even if the office software "supports" a standard format, it obviously isn't going to default to that format, so you'll have to deal with the training issues (always use "save as...").
true, I suppose. Perhaps you could select the default format once when you install.
>3. Microsoft (or any other commercial vendor) would claim that they need to be able to modify or extend the "standard" format in order to be able to innovate new features. This is actually a valid complaint, and difficult to work around. If you allow proprietary extensions to a standard format, it's no longer truly standard.
you just have to change the specification first and the government might have to wait to see if the feature is adopted by the industry. The government is not private business... it's not as important to keep up with the latest bell and whistle as it is to protect future access to the content itself.
>I still think this is a good idea, I just suspect that it'd be a whole lot of work to define these standard formats such that they meet the needs of the government and also those of the software vendors.
I think it's a good idea, that you have a point, but that it's really a lot easier than you think. The government has much harder requirements to meet for it's procurements than this proposed one.
>I'm not gonna feel sorry for them because their nation is ran by idiots.
why not? that's like not feeling sorry for a slave whose "master" is an idiot. I think this even holds true in a democracy because it doesn't matter what the system is called, only it's empirical real-world performance. How does/is it run? If it runs in a way that the people in the country don't effectively choose who "runs the country" to any degree of control, pointing out their tools of control is a good help, but doesn't make them actually free or in control of their idiot rulers. Under multiple choice republican democracy (aka. representative democracy) each party controls the nomination, they are limited to party members on the one hand, and more or less hand picked on the other. So whatever basic beliefs the viable parties (whom are the effective parties) hold in common, is removed from the choices. To use a mathematical analogy, it's as if you have a vector that can go in any direction except negative-x-ward leaving whole quadrants unexplorable.
In contrast to this is direct democracy, where, for example, everyone votes direclty on the things that the congress would normally vote on, Bills, agenda, all of that.
I wonder if the employees union will sue the state for damages? While I may get trashed for suggesting such a legal "solution" (or maybe praised, who cares), I think that's the only way large organizations will know why it's worth it to maintain security.
I say don't underestimate how much this sucks for those employees.
no
yes, but the article states they are using it! Open source that is, untested by NSA, it claims...
am I missing some clever difference... like the DOD can't use it but the Pentagon isn't a part of the DOD, or NSA did finally test it... or...?
Stenbit said the debate is academic and that what matters is how secure a given piece of software is. To that end, the Defense Department is now prohibited from purchasing any software that has not undergone security testing by the NSA. Stenbit said he is unaware of any open-source software that has been tested.
so they can use it because it wasn't purchased? talk about a loophole!
made sense to me.
no to both the question and the demand. I guess you'd feel better if I liked the game you eagerly anticipate and possibly you would be really happy if I even liked the same flavor pudding. Is it individuality you hate or is just that you feel insecure about your choice of visual stimulation?
Ok, I hate this! I'm sick of blood fantasy. Who cares if it causes real tragedies or not... I'm just bored of it and see photo-realistic blood smears as, well, not that great a use of my fantasy time. Yeah, you can do whatever you want, yada yada yada, I'm not telling you not to play this game, I don't care. It's an opinion, mine, about it's pointlessness.
That people see that stuff and can only think how "nice" it looks... um, something way pent up in there boys! But you should Really Enjoy the war they are about to send you to! "Wow, look how realistic my dead buddy looks! It almost looks real... what? it is real?!"
interesting. anonymous, coward, gee, I wonder who you could be.
anyway, what's the matter with weasel's posting in forums from work? How is it different than a cigarette break? getting up to get coffee? stretching? how is it different from any kind of break?
furthermore, I don't know about you but many people often continue work extra hours from home (oh, yeah, sallaried employees don't have "hours"), have to have cell phones and pagers to keep in touch with work 24 hours a day. So what's your point again?
I think weasels that never accomplish anything and are years late on their promises is a much bigger problem!
I feel that I am totally a supporter of Stallman, his commie ways, his hippie ways, his ability to design and code, and the importance of zealousness. On the other hand, I will chose non-free tools. I think free tools provide a baseline. They are a good form of embrace and extend. Want to sell a commercial web server... well it better be better than apache! Free software limits the amount of time a company can milk it's invention to the amount of time it really is better than the baseline.
The reason I reply to the parent comment is because I agree there is a bit of nonsense in the GNU/Linux name controversy. He should be insisting that it be called GNU. GNU is a term to refer to the whole operating system RMS wanted to build. Why does he want GNU/Linux? Because Linux is well known. It's a marketing success, by free software standards a phenomenal success. It does show he wants make a marketing/propaganda move, which no one has to like or appreciate. Therein lies the problem. Probably, he should be putting some thought into how to market the GNU brand, and if can't stomach taking that approach, he should probably forget about GNU/Linux.
PS: maybe they should make a distribution at the fsf and just call it GNU.
Honestly, what could more ensure stagnation of a job title more than appearing on a top ten list!? I'm sure three of those jobs really will be rising in demand, but I'm not telling which three.
finally, a new flavour of Tang!
I think it odd but likely that charging for Star Office will facilitate it's spread. People do look gift horses in the mouth, but charge them 80$ and they go away thinking, "cheap! neat!"
gratuitous mention of my own patent (required early in any slashdot thread on patents):
I've patented breathing air while programming.
Please cease and desist.
PS: Of course, one cannot patent breathing air OR programming, but doing them simultaneously... why that's quite different, special, and I invented it! Unfortunately, most people breath coffee while programming, so my patent doesn't really apply to very many programmers.
(1) I think the search for the elegant language is akin to the search for the fountain of youth... you may encounter some elegance along the way.
(2) I think languages are best judged based on power and flexibility, not 20'th century value judgements on beauty, which is what "elegance" is. I know that's a little trit
(3) I think "elegant" is a personal value judgement, such that the elegant languages you mention can, at best, at unlikely best, be elegant for you, not me, or vice versa.
I prefer a language with a lot of possibilities, such that I can cull those possibilities and use what makes sense in a perfect case. Having special languages for special purposes is fine, but it's a false economy if you then have to learn 50 different languages, to avoid learning 1 language with 50 different sensible paradigms.
Btw, by "elegant language" were you refering to C or Pascal? Applesoft BASIC maybe?
I think you're missing the point. "Doing complex things" is not the gaol of a good language -- "doing complex things simply" is.
:)
I so disagree. (1) automatically the best language question is relative to a problem space... right language for the job, but that's a cop out so (2) If you are pushing the limits of what can be done, and you should be whatever you are focussing on, since this is such a young unexplored type of engineering, then you need a language flexible enough to allow you to change the way you do things.
I would like to see these changes to C++:
(1) arbitrary operator definition: this would allow better control over operators and not imply relationships already played by the built in operators. Also, I hope this will silence complaints about how confusing operator overload it, because the standard operators would only be used for the appropriate meanings... (e.g. + is addition/concatination, ++ is increment or advance in list or step to next item (for pointers).) Probably more complaints though.
(2) Binary standards for multiple inheritance structures, and common name mangling. Binary incompatibilityland.
(3) someone needs to write sufficient operator overloads to install a garbage collection system as integrated as possible to the standard way of handling pointers etc. There is a small chance this will be directly useful, but think of all the Java programmers that would then praise C++. Worth it just for PR!
And those of us who have waded through "powerful" C++ code can all attest to how refreshing it is to see normal structured C code.
slow on the uptake I'm only now realizing that C++ is a topic of some fea^H^H^H^H controversy on slashdot.
C++ syntax makes perfect sense. There are no arbitrary relationships. As a multi-paradigm language it allows you to choose a subset of features for a given product, depending on what you need.
You do not need the STL to write C++ code. However, you are crazy not to use it, becuase they are generally excellently implemented collections useable in any program... and the STL is an elegant flexible system. Like most great feats of software engineering you have to think it's way to get it to work, and then it is your friend.
I'm starting to get a big laugh forming for all the complaints of C++ just being too darn hard. Why do I not find it hard? Do I know restraint? Do I just get it? Bad taste? Infinite wisdom?
I can but wonder, will I lose or gain karma for speaking well of noble C++!
Obviously?
No, I understand the complexity. I've deployed a lot of software. A modular approach is one where the interactions between pieces are well defined. Unit testing those modules can then work, simplifying the testing to a series of small tests. That's the obvious thing. If I can remove the gas pump from a car and test it independently, that makes the car easier to test as a whole. You advocate making the gas pump irreplaceable and hope to imply that makes the car easier to test!