I agree with the sentiment that a decade ago the Internet was a safer, nicer, and much less hostile place, especially for newcomers. Being a dad now, i can see how the ads work for kids, it is scary how manipulative they are.
Reg. NoScript: its use is WAY less annoying than one might expect, people does not browse 1000 sites every day, we tend to browse a few most of the time, and a different one every now and then (example: 80% of my browsing is Innoreader, Ars, and Slashdot, and only Innoreader won't work without javascript). This means that at most, you spend a few days getting it right, then it just gets out of the way.
Unfortunately, the reality is that you need to know how it works and why is it there, otherwise sites break and you don't know why, and that makes it unusable for most people. I have uMatrix installed, but also keep a Chrome instance for those sites which break and take more than a few clicks to get to work, like government sites, or sites which receive payments and do many redirects behind the scenes. The consequences of a site not working are not always just unreachable content, sometimes you might end up paying twice for the same product only because the first time the cookie was not allowed but the processing still went through:)
It's a shame you posted this as an AC, because most people won't see it by default.
I fully agree with the 5 points you mentioned, and I write this as somebody who has written his share of hundred-lines-long shell scripts. Point 5 is the first thing I thought when I read the description of the problem: "why the hell are you trying to parse an MSI just to show an icon, while in Linux? what is the benefit of doing it?".
Another idea is: did this code pass a code review? I know this is open source and people works in what they like, when they feel like it, but for a project as big as gnome, I would expect code reviews to be a part of the process. Somebody should have seen the commit which "solved" the problem and said something like "this is not acceptable, let's put this minor feature in the backlog and solve it once it is possible to do it in a sane way".
This is a bug which should dissapoint every developer in the project, because it feels amateurish, it doesn't feel like something that should happen in one of the biggest, most successful open source software projects.
I agree with the first statement, but only because no modern OS uses/etc/passwd alone.
Regarding local accounts, there is no technical reason for them to exist in production environments, but when you are outsourcing your datacenter management to another company which hires incompetent/inexperienced sysadmins and surrounds them with outdated procedures, you better bet there will be local accounts, because doing something else needs to go thru 50 layers of "security" procedures seemingly designed to keep the company in the '80s.
I understand the concern, but if your phone gets stolen, the thief will only have one of the pieces, right? they'd still need the actual password for the account
Yeah, the problem being nobody knows what IRC is, and most people (especially those who don't use email at work) never checks email, even if their phones require an email address to function as intended (like Android).
Somebody should make an app which looks like whatsapp but works over standard email. The overhead of the standard email headers could make it quite inefficient, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about who uses which service.
If only the F-Droid apps were better... I tend to look there first when I need something (just as I look for portable apps on Windows), but in general the apps are far worse than their functionally equivalent Play Store counterparts
Agree 100% with your comments. I used to be an Opera fan until the lack of good filtering options led me to Firefox (Opera had "site preferences", which was useful, but at some point it started being insufficient, besides the Opera I loved is dead)
If Privoxy ends up being the only option (we used to have Proxomitron, brilliant stuff), there is really no reason for me to stay with FF, would probably go for Chromium or Vivaldi once it is ready.
Regarding file formats: I may be mistaken, but most of the issues I see are with old formats from the pre-internet era and more primitive/obscure OSes. Sure, we all have read stories of old disks which are now unreadable because the hardware doesn't exist anymore, but that is *hardware*. For files, I see VLC can open nearly every video and audio format in existence, and certainly any photo viewer worth using can open more image formats than what I have seen.
Most of us know what we have in our hard drives. I know I only have a couple word documents that may not be supported in the future, all the rest are open formats, not tied to a single software suite. So, as long as the internet exists, I'll be able to download some linux distro like Slackware (I mention it because it includes everything I may need to open my files in a single dvd, no online repositories needed) and use whatever software comes with it to open my files. I actually keep an ISO handy, so as long as VirtualBox exists I can load the ISO there and have a "2015-compatible" SO for as long as I may want to. Damn, if tomorrow we all leave x86 to some other thing and VirtualBox dissapears, I'll probably be able to open a VM and run VB on it:)
Cloud stuff is probably a huge headache waiting to happen. I'd make sure I have a copy of anything stored in the cloud, and in a format I can open locally. Still, if tomorrow MS dissapears, I'm 99% sure we will have a chance to download Office 365 files in an open format before the shutdown
In South American countries we have recently (last 5 years or so) started receiving cars made in china, and there are A LOT of brands. Many of their models are cheap knock-offs of known models by other manufacturers (see Chery QQ vs Chevrolet Spark, or BYD F3 vs Toyota Corolla), and all of them sell a lot cheaper than the other brands. Usually lacking in the safety side, but sadly on par with the cars made in Brazil or Argentina for our local markets. And in a country (Uruguay) where, due to taxes, a Honda Civic costs U$S 40.000, and a Chevrolet Spark costs U$S 15000, these brands are slowly eating the low-end with cheap (~ U$S 15000) sedans like the Lifan 620 or the BYD F3.
Some of the known brands around here: Lifan, Chery, Geely, Great Wall, JAC, BYD, FAW, Haima.
More like everybody uses everybody else's cards randomly (at the same time, actually, but that makes no sense in the card analogy).
We say "If everybody is special, then nobody is", and with the same reasoning we could say "if everybody likes everything, then nobody likes anything".
Well, for one thing, if you download ALL the ads you might have seen, you are leaving behind a profile that might be harder to make sense of, from an advertiser's perspective. Open all ads in a private window isolated from cookies or data from the others, and maybe it is not such a bad idea.
And on the other hand, if enough people use adblock, then one could argue that those who don't use it are easier to target... of course one can't be responsible for what other people do (or don't do, like running an ad blocker).
yes, only problem is that android on these systems is absolutely horrible for anything but media center work.
If you want a PC, then don't go for any of those. I have a mk802 II and its capabilities as a general purpose machine are pathetic
Sametime works... if you have several GB of RAM, which I didn't have when I had to use Notes due to company policy. It would randomly freeze for a few seconds, and it was slow as hell. I still can't believe they built it over Eclipse.
Pidgin had exactly the same functionality everyone used Sametime for, and used a tenth of the system resources.
Both Notes and Sametime are horribly resource-hungry considering their functionality
In addition to that, take into account that there are some mail clients (both web and desktop) that add email addresses to contact list when you send a mail (or when you send x number of emails) to them.
I hate that feature. I hate the mindless "send this crap to everybody you know" features. I hate it more when people uses distribution lists from work to join social networks, and everybody gets spammed by the site.
I guess it is again a cultural thing. It is not generally well seen to leave a job at the first opportunity, after a short period. It's a matter of trust and commitment, I guess (and also of government paperwork, around here that part is costly). If I join a company, I know I am expected to stay a certain period of time, at least until the company is earning money with me. Depending on the job, that is estimated to take around 6 months. If I leave after a short time, the company probably spent more money on me than the money it earned from my work.
It may not be the case where you live, but here the IT world is a small place, and the chance of applying again to a job in the same company is not as small as one would like to believe. Quitting your job in good terms will most surely allow you to come back if the opportunity arises. Quitting after a short period of time will probably not be "good terms" for your boss.
Even if you hate your job, you will find out that connections matter. I worked 5 years for a big company, and then moved to a company leaded by a former boss. Now I am working at another big company, thanks to recommendations from a former colleague. If things go wrong with my current job, I know I can talk with my former bosses and see if they have any positions open. Also, people in management positions know each other, specially if they work in the same city, and even more if they have many years of experience. Work professionally, and your ex boss will recommend you (if he's not an asshole) if he gets asked you by a friend in the company you are trying to join. The opposite holds, of course.
I don't want to imply that you should bend over to the company's requirements, but one should know how to move around in the job market:)
While I agree with the sentiment, this is a cultural thing. As an applicant I want to know if I made it or not, because while waiting for reply from what I believe is a good position, I might end up rejecting or delaying my application to other not-so-good opportunities. Where I live, however, most companies just never reply if you are not selected, and that is seen as normal. (There are other differences, like requesting a recent photo to be added to the CV, where in other places that is illegal)
Web developers mainly. The whole "compatibility" and "don't break any page" bullshit has always been developers' fault.
But one needs to be aware that probably, when all this started, there was no good way of doing "capability testing" instead of browser sniffing, as Javascript was there but was a "stupider" language. Also, browsers did do things in a very different way, not like nowaways when most differences are small layout issues.
There was also no automatic updates, so probably the first version of IE was there along with the improved version, so if you just sent frames to everyone, old IE versions would break.
Still, there is no excuse in doing this nowadays, period. Browsers should break the goddamn sites that still do this, and for developers: if you haven't updated your site from the time when this kind of browser sniffing was required, please get out of the internet, you are making it a worse place.
Opera was the only browser that really tried to not spoof any other browser's identity (unless required). When it got to version 10, it broke many pages.
Well, I have a RPi and a MK802, and the MK802 ends up being cheaper for this use case. The cost of the Pi, plus cable, sd card, a case, and the HDMI cable ends up being higher than the MK802. And the MK802 runs Android, meaning lots of apps ready to use.
For me, the RPi is a cheap home server. And even on that use case, the MK802 with Linux is a better machine
Same in Uruguay. They changed their system a few years back, and when they changed it, the password for the new system was the same as the old one, truncated to 8 characters. Both systems allowed only certain characters, but at least the old one allowed me to have longer passwords.
Let me repeat in case the horror was not clear enough: they migrated the accounts to the new system, they reduced the maximum password length, and automatically set the passwords in the new system to the first 8 characters of the old system's password
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the sentiment that a decade ago the Internet was a safer, nicer, and much less hostile place, especially for newcomers. Being a dad now, i can see how the ads work for kids, it is scary how manipulative they are.
Reg. NoScript: its use is WAY less annoying than one might expect, people does not browse 1000 sites every day, we tend to browse a few most of the time, and a different one every now and then (example: 80% of my browsing is Innoreader, Ars, and Slashdot, and only Innoreader won't work without javascript). This means that at most, you spend a few days getting it right, then it just gets out of the way.
Unfortunately, the reality is that you need to know how it works and why is it there, otherwise sites break and you don't know why, and that makes it unusable for most people. I have uMatrix installed, but also keep a Chrome instance for those sites which break and take more than a few clicks to get to work, like government sites, or sites which receive payments and do many redirects behind the scenes. The consequences of a site not working are not always just unreachable content, sometimes you might end up paying twice for the same product only because the first time the cookie was not allowed but the processing still went through :)
Damn you made me remember the old KMail from KDE3. I used it as my main email client at the time.
It's KDE4 replacement was never worthy of the same name. I tried many times to use it, only to uninstall it ten minutes later.
It's a shame you posted this as an AC, because most people won't see it by default.
I fully agree with the 5 points you mentioned, and I write this as somebody who has written his share of hundred-lines-long shell scripts. Point 5 is the first thing I thought when I read the description of the problem: "why the hell are you trying to parse an MSI just to show an icon, while in Linux? what is the benefit of doing it?".
Another idea is: did this code pass a code review? I know this is open source and people works in what they like, when they feel like it, but for a project as big as gnome, I would expect code reviews to be a part of the process. Somebody should have seen the commit which "solved" the problem and said something like "this is not acceptable, let's put this minor feature in the backlog and solve it once it is possible to do it in a sane way".
This is a bug which should dissapoint every developer in the project, because it feels amateurish, it doesn't feel like something that should happen in one of the biggest, most successful open source software projects.
I agree with the first statement, but only because no modern OS uses /etc/passwd alone.
Regarding local accounts, there is no technical reason for them to exist in production environments, but when you are outsourcing your datacenter management to another company which hires incompetent/inexperienced sysadmins and surrounds them with outdated procedures, you better bet there will be local accounts, because doing something else needs to go thru 50 layers of "security" procedures seemingly designed to keep the company in the '80s.
Source: the company I work for :)
I understand the concern, but if your phone gets stolen, the thief will only have one of the pieces, right? they'd still need the actual password for the account
Yeah, the problem being nobody knows what IRC is, and most people (especially those who don't use email at work) never checks email, even if their phones require an email address to function as intended (like Android).
Somebody should make an app which looks like whatsapp but works over standard email. The overhead of the standard email headers could make it quite inefficient, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about who uses which service.
If only the F-Droid apps were better... I tend to look there first when I need something (just as I look for portable apps on Windows), but in general the apps are far worse than their functionally equivalent Play Store counterparts
He says it was from Ansible, and having worked with it, I fail to see why in hell would you run 'rm -rf' from it when there are modules for that.
yes, until you start doing "sudo x" instead of "x" for everything... At least for me, being root means to be in a "full alert" state of mind.
Also, this supposedly was done by Ansible, why in hell was he issuing "rm -rf" commands from there? that is what the 'file' module is for
Agree 100% with your comments.
I used to be an Opera fan until the lack of good filtering options led me to Firefox (Opera had "site preferences", which was useful, but at some point it started being insufficient, besides the Opera I loved is dead)
If Privoxy ends up being the only option (we used to have Proxomitron, brilliant stuff), there is really no reason for me to stay with FF, would probably go for Chromium or Vivaldi once it is ready.
Regarding file formats: I may be mistaken, but most of the issues I see are with old formats from the pre-internet era and more primitive/obscure OSes. Sure, we all have read stories of old disks which are now unreadable because the hardware doesn't exist anymore, but that is *hardware*. For files, I see VLC can open nearly every video and audio format in existence, and certainly any photo viewer worth using can open more image formats than what I have seen.
Most of us know what we have in our hard drives. I know I only have a couple word documents that may not be supported in the future, all the rest are open formats, not tied to a single software suite. So, as long as the internet exists, I'll be able to download some linux distro like Slackware (I mention it because it includes everything I may need to open my files in a single dvd, no online repositories needed) and use whatever software comes with it to open my files. I actually keep an ISO handy, so as long as VirtualBox exists I can load the ISO there and have a "2015-compatible" SO for as long as I may want to. Damn, if tomorrow we all leave x86 to some other thing and VirtualBox dissapears, I'll probably be able to open a VM and run VB on it :)
Cloud stuff is probably a huge headache waiting to happen. I'd make sure I have a copy of anything stored in the cloud, and in a format I can open locally. Still, if tomorrow MS dissapears, I'm 99% sure we will have a chance to download Office 365 files in an open format before the shutdown
In South American countries we have recently (last 5 years or so) started receiving cars made in china, and there are A LOT of brands.
Many of their models are cheap knock-offs of known models by other manufacturers (see Chery QQ vs Chevrolet Spark, or BYD F3 vs Toyota Corolla), and all of them sell a lot cheaper than the other brands. Usually lacking in the safety side, but sadly on par with the cars made in Brazil or Argentina for our local markets. And in a country (Uruguay) where, due to taxes, a Honda Civic costs U$S 40.000, and a Chevrolet Spark costs U$S 15000, these brands are slowly eating the low-end with cheap (~ U$S 15000) sedans like the Lifan 620 or the BYD F3.
Some of the known brands around here: Lifan, Chery, Geely, Great Wall, JAC, BYD, FAW, Haima.
I don't think your "online" and the parent's "online" mean the same thing :)
More like everybody uses everybody else's cards randomly (at the same time, actually, but that makes no sense in the card analogy).
We say "If everybody is special, then nobody is", and with the same reasoning we could say "if everybody likes everything, then nobody likes anything".
Well, for one thing, if you download ALL the ads you might have seen, you are leaving behind a profile that might be harder to make sense of, from an advertiser's perspective. Open all ads in a private window isolated from cookies or data from the others, and maybe it is not such a bad idea.
And on the other hand, if enough people use adblock, then one could argue that those who don't use it are easier to target... of course one can't be responsible for what other people do (or don't do, like running an ad blocker).
yes, only problem is that android on these systems is absolutely horrible for anything but media center work. If you want a PC, then don't go for any of those. I have a mk802 II and its capabilities as a general purpose machine are pathetic
Sametime works... if you have several GB of RAM, which I didn't have when I had to use Notes due to company policy. It would randomly freeze for a few seconds, and it was slow as hell. I still can't believe they built it over Eclipse.
Pidgin had exactly the same functionality everyone used Sametime for, and used a tenth of the system resources.
Both Notes and Sametime are horribly resource-hungry considering their functionality
Note to self: read the comments entirely before attempting to do a lame joke
You mean like "StarOffice"?
In addition to that, take into account that there are some mail clients (both web and desktop) that add email addresses to contact list when you send a mail (or when you send x number of emails) to them.
I hate that feature. I hate the mindless "send this crap to everybody you know" features. I hate it more when people uses distribution lists from work to join social networks, and everybody gets spammed by the site.
I guess it is again a cultural thing. It is not generally well seen to leave a job at the first opportunity, after a short period. It's a matter of trust and commitment, I guess (and also of government paperwork, around here that part is costly).
If I join a company, I know I am expected to stay a certain period of time, at least until the company is earning money with me. Depending on the job, that is estimated to take around 6 months. If I leave after a short time, the company probably spent more money on me than the money it earned from my work.
It may not be the case where you live, but here the IT world is a small place, and the chance of applying again to a job in the same company is not as small as one would like to believe. Quitting your job in good terms will most surely allow you to come back if the opportunity arises. Quitting after a short period of time will probably not be "good terms" for your boss.
Even if you hate your job, you will find out that connections matter. I worked 5 years for a big company, and then moved to a company leaded by a former boss. Now I am working at another big company, thanks to recommendations from a former colleague. If things go wrong with my current job, I know I can talk with my former bosses and see if they have any positions open.
Also, people in management positions know each other, specially if they work in the same city, and even more if they have many years of experience. Work professionally, and your ex boss will recommend you (if he's not an asshole) if he gets asked you by a friend in the company you are trying to join. The opposite holds, of course.
I don't want to imply that you should bend over to the company's requirements, but one should know how to move around in the job market :)
While I agree with the sentiment, this is a cultural thing. As an applicant I want to know if I made it or not, because while waiting for reply from what I believe is a good position, I might end up rejecting or delaying my application to other not-so-good opportunities.
Where I live, however, most companies just never reply if you are not selected, and that is seen as normal. (There are other differences, like requesting a recent photo to be added to the CV, where in other places that is illegal)
Web developers mainly. The whole "compatibility" and "don't break any page" bullshit has always been developers' fault.
But one needs to be aware that probably, when all this started, there was no good way of doing "capability testing" instead of browser sniffing, as Javascript was there but was a "stupider" language. Also, browsers did do things in a very different way, not like nowaways when most differences are small layout issues.
There was also no automatic updates, so probably the first version of IE was there along with the improved version, so if you just sent frames to everyone, old IE versions would break.
Still, there is no excuse in doing this nowadays, period. Browsers should break the goddamn sites that still do this, and for developers: if you haven't updated your site from the time when this kind of browser sniffing was required, please get out of the internet, you are making it a worse place.
Opera was the only browser that really tried to not spoof any other browser's identity (unless required). When it got to version 10, it broke many pages.
Well, I have a RPi and a MK802, and the MK802 ends up being cheaper for this use case. The cost of the Pi, plus cable, sd card, a case, and the HDMI cable ends up being higher than the MK802. And the MK802 runs Android, meaning lots of apps ready to use. For me, the RPi is a cheap home server. And even on that use case, the MK802 with Linux is a better machine
Same in Uruguay. They changed their system a few years back, and when they changed it, the password for the new system was the same as the old one, truncated to 8 characters. Both systems allowed only certain characters, but at least the old one allowed me to have longer passwords.
Let me repeat in case the horror was not clear enough: they migrated the accounts to the new system, they reduced the maximum password length, and automatically set the passwords in the new system to the first 8 characters of the old system's password