Following the "virus" metaphor from biology, if the computer is an organism, and AntiVirus is part of its immune system, we should realize that at some point, just like any biological organism, the system will die.
A healthy system may have the latest and best immune system known to man, but this does not guarantee and should not be construed to mean that the system is invulnerable or immortal. It is merely immune or resistant to the diseases that it has been exposed to or evolved resistance or immunity to.
We don't expect medical science to ever eradicate all disease and make us perfectly healthy; why do we think it's possible for computers? (Or conversely, why do we think that building an immune system is wasted effort?)
Then again, perhaps turing/von neumann machines and biological organisms aren't so similar after all. It's hard to assess whether this extended metaphor is too forced to be useful or not.
Agreed. Version 8 feels bloaty and is more in-your-face than an antivirus application has any business being. It wants to install a "security" toolbar in my web browser. It feels slower when bringing up its management window.
WTF does everyone in the world and their brother want to install a toolbar in my web browser? If I said yes to all of them, I'd have about 2 pixels of viewpane left to look at.
I think about the last thing I'd need if I were trapped in a situation where I needed rescue would be some fucking robot to come along and try to cheer me up.
The idea of this seems like MS Office's Clippy, only a hundred times worse. "Looks like you're fucked! Would you like help? I can sing you a song!"
Fuck off and die, Clippy. I don't need a robot to act as a homing beacon or communications device when a simple cell phone or radio is capable of performing the same role. So, unless you can dig me out of here, or actually do something to provide life support, I'm kinda busy right now.
Actually, I have seen and used Vista. And it does suck much. After reading a lot of negative stuff about it, I approached Vista warily and predisposed toward not liking it, but it failed me on its own lack of merit, not because I'm biased.
I've stayed clear of Vista for many reasons. All the promised cool features that ended up getting dropped. The insane hardware requirements. The poorer performance on the same hardware as compared to XP. The 6 different versions to choose from, the most expensive of which are beyond my willingness to pay for, but have features I wouldn't want to do without. The WGA program. DRM. The braindead abortion that is UAC.
I've seen Vista, and used it, albeit only Home Basic and Home Premium, and only for long enough to poke around, image the drive, and put XP back on, and to be completely fair, I did think there were some things about it that were nifty. Offhand, though, the only thing I remember that I really liked was what they did with the System control panel, and maybe the Start menu had some useful ideas.
Everything else I could live without, or hated. I found networking configuration to be a total nightmare, with Windows automatically reconfiguring stuff I had set manually without my asking it to or giving it permission to.
Prior to the release of Vista SP1, there was apparently a bug in the copy routine that caused copies to either go very slowly or else to cause the system to grind to a virtual standstill. Completely unacceptable bug to slip through into in a production release, albeit fixed for what it's worth in SP1.
If a multi-file copy no longer terminates at first error, then great, but my point still stands that this issue was something that went un-addressed for over a decade, back to Win95 (I never used 3.1 or DOS, but I understand those also worked the same way.) Had Windows been open-source, someone might well have reworked the copy/move feature to work better. Clearly once MS had established its OS monopoly, it decided they had other priorities that kept this on the back burner forever.
That other OSes also functioned this way for years is irrelevant; my point wasn't to bash MS (though I'm more than happy to when it's deserved) but to point out an example of a problem in closed source software that went unfixed for ages despite being highly visible.
I'm not sure whether this problem meets to criteria of "code quality" so much as process flow -- single-file copies are generally pretty darn reliable in MS OSes going back as far as you care to look -- but it was a highly visible feature and I'd say an important one due to the frequency with which it gets used, and even if the underlying code wasn't unreliable in the sense that Copy didn't corrupt files or fail without telling you, it was still a shitty implementation.
Likely, MS's code quality is better elsewhere in the OS where performance and stability are even more important (but only after years of DOS/3.1/9x suckage), but again, it's *their* priorities and their values that dictate what gets worked on, not a community of developers and users. Customers of Microsoft generally get to complain without recourse, and Redmond responds if and when it feels like getting around to it, but mostly in response to squashing a competitor that actually innovates, not in true response to customer needs or wants. Look at the stagnation in IE after they knocked off Netscape for an example of how they prioritize issues for their developers to work on when left to their own devices.
I could have pointed to issues with Mac OS X's Finder, if I'd wanted, and made very similar points in support of what I was arguing in the grandparent post: that in any code project, code quality is likely to be high *where it matters* and where it *has to be*, and where it can be "lived with" and where it matters less, it will likely not be as good. Whether the development model is open or closed source, this is still likely to be true, but at least with open sour
When copying/move a bunch of files, if Windows encounters an error that prevents a file from being read/written, the entire copy aborts at the point where the problem occurred.
I'd love Windows to automatically fail the problem file while continuing to try to copy/move the remaining files, then present you with some kind of error report at the end saying "These files couldn't be copied for [reason]."
There's file management utilities that you can use to get around this weakness in Explorer's basic file handling, but it's embarrassing enough that I would think MS would want to handle that in a more built-in way. They continue to ignore the issue, though. In Vista, from what I hear, file copy has actually gotten worse.
in plain English: "the app specs had a much bigger influence when compared to internal efficiencies".
It sounds more like they're saying "If someone built it, and someone else is using it, and it's important, then the code quality is going to be pretty good. If it matters, it's going to get attention and be improved."
Of course, I can think of a bunch of counter-examples in Windows where something was important *to me* and mattered *to me* and no one at Microsoft saw fit to do anything about it for decades.
Yeah, but if you've got a lightweight laptop with you, with nothing interesting on it, they'll head straight to your house and snoop around your PC, and anything else they think is interesting.
All the while, you're on vacation, completely unaware.
But hey, maybe they'll feed your fish while you're away. Ha ha, but in reality, that type of search still requires probable cause or a warrant.
Set up a Windows partition and a Linux partition, set it to boot to Windows by default, keep all your data on the Linux partition. How well would that work, I wonder. Probably pretty well unless they're doing full-disk imaging, in which case the Linux partition is still in their hands when you walk away.
Best thing to do is not to take a *computer* with you when you travel, but rather take a *terminal* with you (or find one), and use a secure connection to your computer, safely still at home, and then access your data, accounts, apps, etc. over that secure connection.
Uses the same amount of electricity as a solar-powered calculator, so that it can be passively powered rather than rely on batteries. All it needs to do is display text at a decent resolution, enough that it's readable without eyestrain, and scroll about as fast as a 300 baud modem used to be able to put text on a screen back in the day.
durable enough that I can take it places, drop it, let it get wet, and worry about as much about damage as I would a book, or less.
Screen is readable under the same lighting conditions as traditional print on paper -- particularly under bright sunlight. I don't want a backlight for reading in the dark as much as I want to be able to read in daylight.
Nice features:
Extendable via a USB port -- let me plug in a keyboard for annotations and note-taking.
Let me also use that USB port to directly access the storage on the device.
I don't need wifi (too energy-costly) or network connectivity, as long as I can plug it into something that has that capability, such as my cell phone or a laptop or other IP node, and share its connection.
Since Canonical is a for-profit company, this raises an interesting question. Namely, how exactly are they making money? Pr0n. I thought everyone knew?
If you saw your friend again, would you be able to explain why you did it? Would he agree with your reasoning or would he feel you had violated his sovereignty?
You can still respect him in death, what would he say? OK, but what if you were asked to do this for a stranger, on a for-hire basis? What part does conscience play then? The explanation: "Someone said you were dead and paid me to crack your accounts." Is that good enough?
What if someone comes to you and says they have something locked that belonged to a dead person? Do you just believe that the previous owner is deceased? Or do you require proof?
All that's happened is that the primary developer has a lot more spare time on his hand to hack. I presume he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison; assuming he's allowed access to a computer, he can continue development on ReiserFS.
And if the implementation is open source, any risk of Reiser sneaking in logic bombs as revenge will be mitigated by the many other eyes that will have access to the source.
If he never writes another line of code to continue development of ReiserFS, then anyone else who wants to will be able to pick up the project and work on it. True, they won't have his original vision or technical brilliance, but that's not to say that the project must die with its creator. We wouldn't be able to advance very far at all technologically speaking if a project could not survive its originator.
is it better to allow the botnet to continue unabated, or perhaps to risk crashing a computer controlling a heart monitor somewhere?" I would suggest that if a mission-critical system like that is already infected with a bot, the damage is done -- might as well attempt to clean it at that point. While you're at it, you might as well modify the system in other ways that will be useful, such as changing the user's default keyboard layout to the more efficient Dvorak, and making the system internationally accessible by setting the default language localization to Esperanto and SI metric units. Also, I humbly suggest replacing the bug-laden, security hole riddled Windows OS with a nice Linux distro.
Whoever the user is, they'll appreciate these improvements once they get used to the changes and see for themselves how much better it is.
I think that honestly if Software Update doesn't work, the machine can't be considered to be a successful model.
If you downloaded windows or Linux and could never update, would you consider it a successful install? No, I guess not. On the other hand, if you pirate Mac OS X and never run updates, how different are you from the typical clueless Windows home user?
Really, I don't know how TFA is defining "greyware" but just from the commonsense interpretation of the words, I'd think it meant something that possibly might be desirable, but could be prone to abuse.
If I give you my email address, I trust that you'll use it to send me email that I want to receive. If you turn around and send me spam, you've violated my trust.
If I provide software sensitive personal data, such as financial information or medical information, that data could be used for good purposes or bad purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
Following the "virus" metaphor from biology, if the computer is an organism, and AntiVirus is part of its immune system, we should realize that at some point, just like any biological organism, the system will die.
A healthy system may have the latest and best immune system known to man, but this does not guarantee and should not be construed to mean that the system is invulnerable or immortal. It is merely immune or resistant to the diseases that it has been exposed to or evolved resistance or immunity to.
We don't expect medical science to ever eradicate all disease and make us perfectly healthy; why do we think it's possible for computers? (Or conversely, why do we think that building an immune system is wasted effort?)
Then again, perhaps turing/von neumann machines and biological organisms aren't so similar after all. It's hard to assess whether this extended metaphor is too forced to be useful or not.
Agreed. I'd buy one too, if only I had the assurance that it was officially supported by Apple.
That's why I said *performance* specs, not hardware form factor.
The obvious comparison would be the iMac, as far as performance specs go.
Agreed. Version 8 feels bloaty and is more in-your-face than an antivirus application has any business being. It wants to install a "security" toolbar in my web browser. It feels slower when bringing up its management window.
WTF does everyone in the world and their brother want to install a toolbar in my web browser? If I said yes to all of them, I'd have about 2 pixels of viewpane left to look at.
I think about the last thing I'd need if I were trapped in a situation where I needed rescue would be some fucking robot to come along and try to cheer me up.
The idea of this seems like MS Office's Clippy, only a hundred times worse. "Looks like you're fucked! Would you like help? I can sing you a song!"
Fuck off and die, Clippy. I don't need a robot to act as a homing beacon or communications device when a simple cell phone or radio is capable of performing the same role. So, unless you can dig me out of here, or actually do something to provide life support, I'm kinda busy right now.
You Godwined yourself, only with Star Wars references. Only on Slashdot...
Actually, I have seen and used Vista. And it does suck much. After reading a lot of negative stuff about it, I approached Vista warily and predisposed toward not liking it, but it failed me on its own lack of merit, not because I'm biased.
I've stayed clear of Vista for many reasons. All the promised cool features that ended up getting dropped. The insane hardware requirements. The poorer performance on the same hardware as compared to XP. The 6 different versions to choose from, the most expensive of which are beyond my willingness to pay for, but have features I wouldn't want to do without. The WGA program. DRM. The braindead abortion that is UAC.
I've seen Vista, and used it, albeit only Home Basic and Home Premium, and only for long enough to poke around, image the drive, and put XP back on, and to be completely fair, I did think there were some things about it that were nifty. Offhand, though, the only thing I remember that I really liked was what they did with the System control panel, and maybe the Start menu had some useful ideas.
Everything else I could live without, or hated. I found networking configuration to be a total nightmare, with Windows automatically reconfiguring stuff I had set manually without my asking it to or giving it permission to.
Prior to the release of Vista SP1, there was apparently a bug in the copy routine that caused copies to either go very slowly or else to cause the system to grind to a virtual standstill. Completely unacceptable bug to slip through into in a production release, albeit fixed for what it's worth in SP1.
If a multi-file copy no longer terminates at first error, then great, but my point still stands that this issue was something that went un-addressed for over a decade, back to Win95 (I never used 3.1 or DOS, but I understand those also worked the same way.) Had Windows been open-source, someone might well have reworked the copy/move feature to work better. Clearly once MS had established its OS monopoly, it decided they had other priorities that kept this on the back burner forever.
That other OSes also functioned this way for years is irrelevant; my point wasn't to bash MS (though I'm more than happy to when it's deserved) but to point out an example of a problem in closed source software that went unfixed for ages despite being highly visible.
I'm not sure whether this problem meets to criteria of "code quality" so much as process flow -- single-file copies are generally pretty darn reliable in MS OSes going back as far as you care to look -- but it was a highly visible feature and I'd say an important one due to the frequency with which it gets used, and even if the underlying code wasn't unreliable in the sense that Copy didn't corrupt files or fail without telling you, it was still a shitty implementation.
Likely, MS's code quality is better elsewhere in the OS where performance and stability are even more important (but only after years of DOS/3.1/9x suckage), but again, it's *their* priorities and their values that dictate what gets worked on, not a community of developers and users. Customers of Microsoft generally get to complain without recourse, and Redmond responds if and when it feels like getting around to it, but mostly in response to squashing a competitor that actually innovates, not in true response to customer needs or wants. Look at the stagnation in IE after they knocked off Netscape for an example of how they prioritize issues for their developers to work on when left to their own devices.
I could have pointed to issues with Mac OS X's Finder, if I'd wanted, and made very similar points in support of what I was arguing in the grandparent post: that in any code project, code quality is likely to be high *where it matters* and where it *has to be*, and where it can be "lived with" and where it matters less, it will likely not be as good. Whether the development model is open or closed source, this is still likely to be true, but at least with open sour
OK, sure that's fair. Here's one:
When copying/move a bunch of files, if Windows encounters an error that prevents a file from being read/written, the entire copy aborts at the point where the problem occurred.
I'd love Windows to automatically fail the problem file while continuing to try to copy/move the remaining files, then present you with some kind of error report at the end saying "These files couldn't be copied for [reason]."
There's file management utilities that you can use to get around this weakness in Explorer's basic file handling, but it's embarrassing enough that I would think MS would want to handle that in a more built-in way. They continue to ignore the issue, though. In Vista, from what I hear, file copy has actually gotten worse.
It sounds more like they're saying "If someone built it, and someone else is using it, and it's important, then the code quality is going to be pretty good. If it matters, it's going to get attention and be improved."
Of course, I can think of a bunch of counter-examples in Windows where something was important *to me* and mattered *to me* and no one at Microsoft saw fit to do anything about it for decades.
Dude, sitting around at home waiting for SMS to come in on my land line sucks.
DVD == Digital Venereal Disease.
8 hrs battery is not infinite hours on solar.
- *NO* DRM.
- Uses the same amount of electricity as a solar-powered calculator, so that it can be passively powered rather than rely on batteries. All it needs to do is display text at a decent resolution, enough that it's readable without eyestrain, and scroll about as fast as a 300 baud modem used to be able to put text on a screen back in the day.
- durable enough that I can take it places, drop it, let it get wet, and worry about as much about damage as I would a book, or less.
- Screen is readable under the same lighting conditions as traditional print on paper -- particularly under bright sunlight. I don't want a backlight for reading in the dark as much as I want to be able to read in daylight.
Nice features:They almost pay me that much to do work. If I had to lie in bed for a solid month, I would probably go insane.
You can pwn through hackery or through law. It's a never-ending arms race, but it's the law that fights in futility, and hackers who fight in utility.
Just don't type long IMs. Then the box won't have to resize.
All that's happened is that the primary developer has a lot more spare time on his hand to hack. I presume he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison; assuming he's allowed access to a computer, he can continue development on ReiserFS. And if the implementation is open source, any risk of Reiser sneaking in logic bombs as revenge will be mitigated by the many other eyes that will have access to the source. If he never writes another line of code to continue development of ReiserFS, then anyone else who wants to will be able to pick up the project and work on it. True, they won't have his original vision or technical brilliance, but that's not to say that the project must die with its creator. We wouldn't be able to advance very far at all technologically speaking if a project could not survive its originator.
So then, by that definition, SMTP/POP is malware.
Really, I don't know how TFA is defining "greyware" but just from the commonsense interpretation of the words, I'd think it meant something that possibly might be desirable, but could be prone to abuse.
If I give you my email address, I trust that you'll use it to send me email that I want to receive. If you turn around and send me spam, you've violated my trust.
If I provide software sensitive personal data, such as financial information or medical information, that data could be used for good purposes or bad purposes.
So, I say, there is grey.