Your web server should support all versions of HTTP. (You meant HTML?)
POP3 and IMAP4 are not 'new versions' of each other... neither is outdated. one is not a replacement for the other. Needs dictated solely by users.
Your web site should require no more funcionality than needed ot operate the way you want it to. That's just good programming. Don't use cookies or javascript or java if you don't need to.
You can stick to Unicode, because ISO-8859 maps into it properly.
Finally.. something somewhat worthy of discussion.
Along the same lines... what *really* irks me is when I go to compile some utility I used a couple years ago... and I it wants a *whole bunch* of libraries it didn't need before, usually related to display only.
Too many good command-line apps get turned into huge, bloated GNOME apps for *no reason* (or just so the developer could play with gnome).
You shouldn't let backwards compatability hold you back, that's for sure. If you wanna bring out version 2.0, as a rewrite, why not? Keep the old one available to people, though.
Simple.
If you want to stop all the things covered by 'fair-use', please make them illegal, rather than doing it the roundabout way.
That's what these companies want; they want absolute control. Rather than dicatate who can own what.. why not simply force them to bring up the real issue?
is that not everyone does everything to make money.
Some people work on cars for fun. Some paint. Some do woodwork. Some people teach kung-fu to kids. Some do community volunteer work.
The motive can be entertainment, or feeling good about yourslef, making a difference, or whatever.
Too often, the media views 'programming' as 'work', like we are all 'working' for free. We aren't... it's a hobby, too.
First.. the analogy to bridges... it doesn't hold up.
Ugly code != unsafe bridge.
Code that's not expandable and cleanly written is not necessarily bad, if it gets the intended job done.
Now, I'm not saying there is no place for proper software engineering, and well-written code is always better than sloppy code... but let's remember.
Not everyone has the time or effort to do really serious software engineering. If I buy an app, I expect it to do what it says it will do, no more, no less. If the underlying code is crappy, I don't care, so long as it doesn't affect my work.
The only reason the concorde can't go supersonic over land is because of noise pollution, and has nothing to do with it's actual abilities. It can certainly go supersonic anywhere it feels like it, as long as the altitude is high enough.
Right. Unless you are talking about a large MS install, in which case yearly licensing and forced upgrade purchases make a significant dent in your operating budget.
Firstly, those who say that it's GOOD to have centralized authentication like this, because people tend to be sloppy with their passwords, etc.
Okay. On a small scale, it might make sense. This is not a small scale. This is microsoft. The Internet was not built so one company could control it; it's independent. MS is doing this to corner the e-commerce market. I don't want to let them do that. They are already free to compete fairly with everyone else.
Regarding the comment about Windows XP product activation containing a GUID (which should scare everyeone). I refuse to buy a product that requries me to 'authorize' it's use with the company I bought it from. It's wrong. I paid for it, like a product, at the store. It's mine to use. I should not in any way have to deal anymore with the creator unless I choose to.
Regarding Passport in general... using it for hotmail? MSN messenger? Fine. That's great. But let's not get carried away. I won't give MS my financial information, ever.
I think StarOffice is a great replacement; the reason I can't switch the office is due to some of the sheets that are rather important, and use some built-in functionality in VB.
Sure, they could be re-written... but that adds another angle to converting everything.
Aside from the urge to boycott microsoft completely...
I'm quite happy with win2k as my MS platform. It's the best thing they've produced so far, and after hearing about some of the sugar-coating in XP, sounds like it still is.
Like I'm gonna switch (of course, they'll make their licensing prohibitively harsher... but we'll move to sunrays next)
One problem with things being built-in... is that MS destroys any competition, and eventually controls the feature-set.
If people no longer need to get third-party software to burn cds, for example.... there is no longer a market for cd-software. Eventually, MS dictates the hardware interface to the manufacturers, seeing as how they are the only ones producing software, and pretty soon... you get the picture.
Regarding some 'proprietary'f eatures...
on
Linux Office Suites
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
like embedded VB and stuff....
Sometimes, as a business, you have to fit what you do to the tools you have. There will never be a perfect replacement for office, but there will be things just as good (Like staroffice). You will always have to change the way you do certain things.
I must say.. I recently switched to using StarOffice even in windows, just for consistency.
Everyone says 'it's not the same as office'. no. It's not. And it doesnt' have every last feature, but it has it's own unique features, and is a deadly office suite nontheless.
The only real hurdles I've come across so far, that prevent me from converting the entire office, are a) embedded VB (important in some sheets... very important) and b) I can't figure out how to open Password-protected Excel sheets.
I believe in it too; but I also believe in intent.
If I *know* that my actions are going to hurt your system, and I do them, then it doesn't matter *how* I did what I did; I should be guilty.
Simply writing a virus? No. Shoudln't be illegal.
Sending it out to a spam list in order that people will run it? Your intent is obvious. You wasted people's time and money ON PURPOSE. You knew the effect of what you were doing.
They just build a network assuming people could sniff it.
The principle should be the same for any network, especially reagarding anything going over the internet. Even a wired network is not 'secure'. Sure, there is the physical security element.... but one compromised host with a sniffer and you are in the same boat.
Although I agree that a big, fat news server does make an ISP more attractive...
when I buy internet service, I want IP routing, PERIOD. I don't *want* to pay for whatever wierd services they think they need to run. I'll do my own mail, dns, everything else.
If tehy don't want to waste resources (legal or technical) in carrying some newsgroups.. fine. I guess it sucks for their customers who like it....
but I've been paying for access to news-servers separately for years now. It just makes sense. They are far less likely to change policies and rip you off when it's their sole business.
Yes, there are big, expensive solutions for managing thousands of windows stations, and they work.
But it *is* just as easy, if not far easier, to manage thousands of unix workstations.
I think usenix did some surveys a year ago or so regarding the # of boxes per admin, and unix shops generally had 5 times fewer admins than windows shops, (or in that neighborhood).
You can say that Windows is more remotely manageable with a hundred grand in 3rd party software added on... and even if we pretend that's true...
Howcome so many windows networks aren't managed properly, then? And unix ones are?
Also.. you seem to misunderstand how to roll software out to thousands of unix machines. You don't telnet to each machine, and you don't use 'perl'. You just install it to a common directory being used by all your machines, period.
Executing one command on a thousand machines is *easy*, not hard, and doesn't require 'complicated perl scriptiong'.
With bug fixes, and small changes, sure, you are obviously not 'creating' any new original work.
What about the addition of something totally new? A new driver, a totally new decoder routine, etc?
Just because it's mailed to the authors doesn't mean they have been assigned copyright.
I guess people just don't think about it.
If in doubt, mail your additions to OSS projects in labeled and including a copy of the GPL.
Thanks for the post. In the future, any changes I make to any code will not be submitted back to the authors, but in my own fork. That way, it wouild seem, they are free to incorporate my additions (via the GPL) but there's no way of thinking things have been 'assigned' to them.
That's the point I'm making. Just because you see something I did doesn't mean I've signed copyright over to you. It's common-sense to assume if I'm submitting additions to GPL'd code to an OSS project, that I'm letting it be used, but only under the terms of the GPL.
Sure, applying this to bug-fixes is one thing.... like fixing a typecast or something, but if the patch is 100 lines of code, or a new handler routine for something... it's a different story.
Would you have been at work, and paid for your hour whether or not you had to deal with Sircam? And did that hour cause the company to pay you overtime, or any other payment they would not otherwise have paid?
Slashdot Mirror
Your web server should support all versions of HTTP. (You meant HTML?)
POP3 and IMAP4 are not 'new versions' of each other... neither is outdated. one is not a replacement for the other. Needs dictated solely by users.
Your web site should require no more funcionality than needed ot operate the way you want it to. That's just good programming. Don't use cookies or javascript or java if you don't need to.
You can stick to Unicode, because ISO-8859 maps into it properly.
Finally.. something somewhat worthy of discussion.
Along the same lines... what *really* irks me is when I go to compile some utility I used a couple years ago... and I it wants a *whole bunch* of libraries it didn't need before, usually related to display only.
Too many good command-line apps get turned into huge, bloated GNOME apps for *no reason* (or just so the developer could play with gnome).
You shouldn't let backwards compatability hold you back, that's for sure. If you wanna bring out version 2.0, as a rewrite, why not? Keep the old one available to people, though.
Simple.
If you want to stop all the things covered by 'fair-use', please make them illegal, rather than doing it the roundabout way.
That's what these companies want; they want absolute control. Rather than dicatate who can own what.. why not simply force them to bring up the real issue?
is that not everyone does everything to make money.
Some people work on cars for fun. Some paint. Some do woodwork. Some people teach kung-fu to kids. Some do community volunteer work.
The motive can be entertainment, or feeling good about yourslef, making a difference, or whatever.
Too often, the media views 'programming' as 'work', like we are all 'working' for free. We aren't... it's a hobby, too.
I am not American.
First.. the analogy to bridges... it doesn't hold up.
Ugly code != unsafe bridge.
Code that's not expandable and cleanly written is not necessarily bad, if it gets the intended job done.
Now, I'm not saying there is no place for proper software engineering, and well-written code is always better than sloppy code... but let's remember.
Not everyone has the time or effort to do really serious software engineering. If I buy an app, I expect it to do what it says it will do, no more, no less. If the underlying code is crappy, I don't care, so long as it doesn't affect my work.
The only reason the concorde can't go supersonic over land is because of noise pollution, and has nothing to do with it's actual abilities. It can certainly go supersonic anywhere it feels like it, as long as the altitude is high enough.
Right. Unless you are talking about a large MS install, in which case yearly licensing and forced upgrade purchases make a significant dent in your operating budget.
Firstly, those who say that it's GOOD to have centralized authentication like this, because people tend to be sloppy with their passwords, etc.
Okay. On a small scale, it might make sense. This is not a small scale. This is microsoft. The Internet was not built so one company could control it; it's independent. MS is doing this to corner the e-commerce market. I don't want to let them do that. They are already free to compete fairly with everyone else.
Regarding the comment about Windows XP product activation containing a GUID (which should scare everyeone). I refuse to buy a product that requries me to 'authorize' it's use with the company I bought it from. It's wrong. I paid for it, like a product, at the store. It's mine to use. I should not in any way have to deal anymore with the creator unless I choose to.
Regarding Passport in general... using it for hotmail? MSN messenger? Fine. That's great. But let's not get carried away. I won't give MS my financial information, ever.
Nothing; that's not the point.
I think StarOffice is a great replacement; the reason I can't switch the office is due to some of the sheets that are rather important, and use some built-in functionality in VB.
Sure, they could be re-written... but that adds another angle to converting everything.
Aside from the urge to boycott microsoft completely...
I'm quite happy with win2k as my MS platform. It's the best thing they've produced so far, and after hearing about some of the sugar-coating in XP, sounds like it still is.
Like I'm gonna switch (of course, they'll make their licensing prohibitively harsher... but we'll move to sunrays next)
One problem with things being built-in... is that MS destroys any competition, and eventually controls the feature-set.
If people no longer need to get third-party software to burn cds, for example.... there is no longer a market for cd-software. Eventually, MS dictates the hardware interface to the manufacturers, seeing as how they are the only ones producing software, and pretty soon... you get the picture.
like embedded VB and stuff....
Sometimes, as a business, you have to fit what you do to the tools you have. There will never be a perfect replacement for office, but there will be things just as good (Like staroffice). You will always have to change the way you do certain things.
I must say.. I recently switched to using StarOffice even in windows, just for consistency.
Everyone says 'it's not the same as office'. no. It's not. And it doesnt' have every last feature, but it has it's own unique features, and is a deadly office suite nontheless.
The only real hurdles I've come across so far, that prevent me from converting the entire office, are a) embedded VB (important in some sheets... very important) and b) I can't figure out how to open Password-protected Excel sheets.
I believe in it too; but I also believe in intent.
If I *know* that my actions are going to hurt your system, and I do them, then it doesn't matter *how* I did what I did; I should be guilty.
Simply writing a virus? No. Shoudln't be illegal.
Sending it out to a spam list in order that people will run it? Your intent is obvious. You wasted people's time and money ON PURPOSE. You knew the effect of what you were doing.
So, you acutally lost revenue by not working for 3 hours? The project you were working on actualy was delayed 3 hours and this actually cost money?
If you are contracted out to others, and in this case, had to be retained that valuable time to clean up from Sircam, fine, that's a valid point.
Most places, though, have IT staff who are there to do such things.
No.. you don't need a mac address to sniff traffic.
They just build a network assuming people could sniff it.
The principle should be the same for any network, especially reagarding anything going over the internet. Even a wired network is not 'secure'. Sure, there is the physical security element.... but one compromised host with a sniffer and you are in the same boat.
Encryption is a good thing.
Although I agree that a big, fat news server does make an ISP more attractive...
when I buy internet service, I want IP routing, PERIOD. I don't *want* to pay for whatever wierd services they think they need to run. I'll do my own mail, dns, everything else.
If tehy don't want to waste resources (legal or technical) in carrying some newsgroups.. fine. I guess it sucks for their customers who like it....
but I've been paying for access to news-servers separately for years now. It just makes sense. They are far less likely to change policies and rip you off when it's their sole business.
Right.
Or why not get our governments to just change all these silly laws? That is our right, as citizens...
You, sir, are talking out your ass.
Yes, there are big, expensive solutions for managing thousands of windows stations, and they work.
But it *is* just as easy, if not far easier, to manage thousands of unix workstations.
I think usenix did some surveys a year ago or so regarding the # of boxes per admin, and unix shops generally had 5 times fewer admins than windows shops, (or in that neighborhood).
You can say that Windows is more remotely manageable with a hundred grand in 3rd party software added on... and even if we pretend that's true...
Howcome so many windows networks aren't managed properly, then? And unix ones are?
Also.. you seem to misunderstand how to roll software out to thousands of unix machines. You don't telnet to each machine, and you don't use 'perl'. You just install it to a common directory being used by all your machines, period.
Executing one command on a thousand machines is *easy*, not hard, and doesn't require 'complicated perl scriptiong'.
With bug fixes, and small changes, sure, you are obviously not 'creating' any new original work.
What about the addition of something totally new? A new driver, a totally new decoder routine, etc?
Just because it's mailed to the authors doesn't mean they have been assigned copyright.
I guess people just don't think about it.
If in doubt, mail your additions to OSS projects in labeled and including a copy of the GPL.
Thanks for the post. In the future, any changes I make to any code will not be submitted back to the authors, but in my own fork. That way, it wouild seem, they are free to incorporate my additions (via the GPL) but there's no way of thinking things have been 'assigned' to them.
That's the point I'm making. Just because you see something I did doesn't mean I've signed copyright over to you. It's common-sense to assume if I'm submitting additions to GPL'd code to an OSS project, that I'm letting it be used, but only under the terms of the GPL.
Sure, applying this to bug-fixes is one thing.... like fixing a typecast or something, but if the patch is 100 lines of code, or a new handler routine for something... it's a different story.
Right. I can understand fully why they do this.
But is that the case here?
If in doubt, why don't people just post their own version of the code & patch, thereby not 'giving' it back to the original authors?
Would you have been at work, and paid for your hour whether or not you had to deal with Sircam? And did that hour cause the company to pay you overtime, or any other payment they would not otherwise have paid?