And people say that just because it is open source, it is secure???? It appears that most people *DIDN'T* know that Mozilla was doing the same thing by default.
If most people don't notice something as big as this, why should anyone think that open source code isn't riddled with obscure security holes??
The business side may have played hardball, but nowhere do I see MS being accused of assaulting, maiming, or killing anyone.
Chemical companies, and manufacturing companies that have third world factories on the other hand...
This really just boils down to MS threatening a few companies in the market and those companies using political pressure as a weapon against their competitor which happens to be MS. In the grand scheme of things, the government has probably spent more money fighting MS than it has trying to find Osama Bin Laden. Why shouldn't they want to get this case over with and take a vacation?
I test software and write test automation. While this may not sound like fun for most people, it gives me a rush when I find an exceptionally obscure bug or the bug that crashes the entire system. I get to give the programmers a hard time, program a bit myself, suggest new features or corrections to the design, and best of all I have the satisfaction of making the product much better for the customer.
I have a nerf gun in my office, but I have only used it once in the last year and I like my job so much that I occasionally work 14 hour days just because it is so much fun!
You make your own fun - find a job doing what you enjoy and have an aptitude for.
The greatest tragedy of the dot-com boom/bust is that many people went into computers because they saw money. Do something because you like it, not because it pays a lot.
The article actually says that one of the goals is "Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
ie. - An autoconfiguring cluster that your grandmother can configure.
(Imagine a beouwolf cluster that you just say, "add this computer" and the hard drive, ram, printers, etc. are automatically added to the cluster.)
I know you are being sarcastic, but I am serious, the copyleft community is shooting themselves in the left foot by applying thier restrictive licenses to sample code.
Note, the emphesis was on *SAMPLE*. The code for the main app can be under whatever license you want, but how do you expect commercial software developers to write a commerical plugin for your copyleft app if we have do a cleanroom reverse engineering project just to see the sample code?
If I was a software company, I wouldn't even contemplate making a single mozilla plugin due to the licensing related intellectual property costs.
Given that the sample code is GPL, if a plugin writer used that sample code as the base of his plugin, he could at a later date be forced to GPL the entire plugin that he hopes to make money selling. As a result, I would wager a bet that at least half of the closed source plugins for mozilla are violating the GPL license of the sample code.
In that context, Microsoft is right, GPL is parasitic.
My problem is that as an employee of a software development company, any accidental of copyleft code into our copyright codebase would mean that our copyright is null and void.
When Mozilla copylefts SAMPLE code, the only way to avoid the risk to corporate intellectual property is to use cleanroom reverse engineering procedures.
This is quite expensive. Just use a BSD compatible license and you do the entire world a favor. If you want commercial software developers to be able to read and help you improve your code, give us a license that dosen't kill our employers.
How can you make code that securely holds data, can unlock that data, can not be altered, and runs on systems that you do not control?
Sooo, which is worse, MS holding data about you on the terms that they won't do anything with it without your permission, or a piece of code running on hostile systems in every corporation that holds more data about you?
You are talking about two different things - hard drive space and internet bandwidth.
I use gzip to decompress files that I download, but I almost never re-compress files once they are on my hard drive and expanded. Why? Because I have a glut of extra space, I use less than 60% of my hard drives even though I download hundreds of programs and almost never delete anything.
They could put local GPS broadcaster to send a stronger signal and help provide more accurate locations. This was suggested for a airline auto-landing system using GPS at one point.
That being said, it is still highly unlikely that the signals could get very far through the structural debris.
It is worth trying for the chance that they can connect to someone alive, in an air pocket, or perhaps just to expediate the location and removal of bodies in the rubble. It might also help in the identification of bodies too.
Software is so large because hard drives are so big today.
Look at early versions of MS Works, it all fit on a couple floppy disks. Since hard drive and memory space and costs have changed so rapidly, developers can include more features, more help, more graphics, more sounds, and not worry about optimizing code for space.
I used to have a single floppy disk with all of my disk utilities, editor, spreadsheet, and database with room to spare. I could still use those apps, but I prefer my 20 Gigs of applications.
That is why applications are so big - we care about features, not disk space.
It is my experience that business managers want evidence, not ancedote. If you really want adoptance of software X, do usability studies, get hard numbers on how it takes people with X experience an average of X minutes to do X tasks and how that compares with the competition.
If you ask them to put their career on the line by deploying a non-standard, and MS Office definately is the current standard, system, give them a good reason to trust you.
It depends on what your time and hassel is worth. If you make $20/hr and you spend 10 minutes a week trying to figure out how to work around a limitation, the software becomes very expensive very quickly.
Then again, this is true with all software.
So, the package that you are more efficient with might cost less even if you initially pay more.
If you really want a good argument for doing it right the first time, look at the costs needed to fix the bugs and add new features that users request.
Typically, if you are not designing the system correctly, this will be more expensive than the original construction.
You don't need to use passport to use software on your computer. You will however need to activate XP (send some info about your hardware) if you want to use it for more than 30 days. Passport is primarily for IM and other pieces that you can choose not to use.
Why does every topic discussion have to turn into a anti-(insert favorite company to hate) bash?
[this really should be off-topic, but this is the type of user complaint that you will get if you don't carefully coordinate with your users before breaking old functionality]
1) Software developers writing software for XP can write it so that it is compatible with 9x/me or even Win3.1 if they want.
2) The topic question was backwards compatibility. Very few applications (if any) are 100% forward compatible. If you save your Word 97/2k/xp doc in a Word 6.0 compatible format, Word 6.0 can read it just fine. Where is the logic in expecting Word 6 to read the native file format that contains new features in Word 2k?
3) How does it become Microsoft's problem when 3rd party application programmers don't design their software to run on multiple versions of the OS? (It is possible, in fact a large percentage of the win9x software runs on w2k without being *designed* for w2k.)
Think about it for a second, how do you make the application that you released last year so that it will be 100% compatible with the file format and the new features that you will dream up next year??? Even if the file format was compatible (which would probably make it a kludge), there is no way that the functionality would be compatible.
And, umm, you can always save in the previous version's file format.:)
How is this any different from the new perl script to configure IPchains that won't work on kernels prior to IPchains? Or any other added feature for that matter...this is a flaw in your expectation, not evil marketing.
Do you expect your Netscape 1.0 browser to be able to handle CSS??
Release a set of updates, only change the minor version number, break one critical function in each update, fix it and break a different critical function in the next. Repeat until users no longer depend on the functionality that you want to change, then introduce the new functionality.
But first, go read "How to write bad code," and start following those suggestions too.;)
FYI - Microsoft typically supports interop and upgrade from at least the two prior versions, possibly more depending on what the users are running. For example, even though XP is based on the NT codebase, MS supports upgrade from (and I believe interop with) Win98/Me.
Are you seriously endorsing the destruction of property and endangerment of lives because you don't like the products that a company creates?
If you are that insane, go after Ford, at least with them there might be a possiblity that human lives have been risked due to business decisions.
The problem with holy wars is that they boil down to "You are wrong and I am right because I say I am," and people get so worked up about thier superiority that they get violent. As computer geeks, we tend to get in holy war debates over points that are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. (In short - go out, experience the real world, get a life.)
You just explained exactly why the Open Source software model might be good, but why the Open Source Business model will tend to fail. As long as there is a community to give support, why should the average person pay a business for support, without that "average" revenue there are not enough customers needing support to be able to stay in business.
Slashdot Mirror
And people say that just because it is open source, it is secure????
It appears that most people *DIDN'T* know that Mozilla was doing the same thing by default.
If most people don't notice something as big as this, why should anyone think that open source code isn't riddled with obscure security holes??
Do you really think MS deserves a death sentence?
The business side may have played hardball, but nowhere do I see MS being accused of assaulting, maiming, or killing anyone.
Chemical companies, and manufacturing companies that have third world factories on the other hand...
This really just boils down to MS threatening a few companies in the market and those companies using political pressure as a weapon against their competitor which happens to be MS. In the grand scheme of things, the government has probably spent more money fighting MS than it has trying to find Osama Bin Laden. Why shouldn't they want to get this case over with and take a vacation?
No, but frequently error cases are only added because good testers force the programmer to take care of all of the edge cases.
:)
I have forced the developers that I work with to add hundreds of error case checks in the last year.
Well put!
I test software and write test automation. While this may not sound like fun for most people, it gives me a rush when I find an exceptionally obscure bug or the bug that crashes the entire system. I get to give the programmers a hard time, program a bit myself, suggest new features or corrections to the design, and best of all I have the satisfaction of making the product much better for the customer.
I have a nerf gun in my office, but I have only used it once in the last year and I like my job so much that I occasionally work 14 hour days just because it is so much fun!
You make your own fun - find a job doing what you enjoy and have an aptitude for.
The greatest tragedy of the dot-com boom/bust is that many people went into computers because they saw money. Do something because you like it, not because it pays a lot.
The article actually says that one of the goals is "Self-configuration. New machines, network links, and resources should be automatically assimilated."
ie. - An autoconfiguring cluster that your grandmother can configure.
(Imagine a beouwolf cluster that you just say, "add this computer" and the hard drive, ram, printers, etc. are automatically added to the cluster.)
I *must* be reading this wrong:
You are trying to encourage Linux to be "innovative" by using ideas from Microsoft?
Well, at least with the Microsoft license, I can attempt to negotiate to include their code in an application. ;)
:)
If that fails, then it is back to the cleanroom reverse engineering problem. I guess only BSD has the right idea for sample code.
I know you are being sarcastic, but I am serious, the copyleft community is shooting themselves in the left foot by applying thier restrictive licenses to sample code.
Note, the emphesis was on *SAMPLE*. The code for the main app can be under whatever license you want, but how do you expect commercial software developers to write a commerical plugin for your copyleft app if we have do a cleanroom reverse engineering project just to see the sample code?
If I was a software company, I wouldn't even contemplate making a single mozilla plugin due to the licensing related intellectual property costs.
Given that the sample code is GPL, if a plugin writer used that sample code as the base of his plugin, he could at a later date be forced to GPL the entire plugin that he hopes to make money selling. As a result, I would wager a bet that at least half of the closed source plugins for mozilla are violating the GPL license of the sample code.
In that context, Microsoft is right, GPL is parasitic.
My problem is that as an employee of a software development company, any accidental of copyleft code into our copyright codebase would mean that our copyright is null and void.
When Mozilla copylefts SAMPLE code, the only way to avoid the risk to corporate intellectual property is to use cleanroom reverse engineering procedures.
This is quite expensive. Just use a BSD compatible license and you do the entire world a favor. If you want commercial software developers to be able to read and help you improve your code, give us a license that dosen't kill our employers.
...is that they run on hostile computer systems.
How can you make code that securely holds data, can unlock that data, can not be altered, and runs on systems that you do not control?
Sooo, which is worse, MS holding data about you on the terms that they won't do anything with it without your permission, or a piece of code running on hostile systems in every corporation that holds more data about you?
You are talking about two different things - hard drive space and internet bandwidth.
I use gzip to decompress files that I download, but I almost never re-compress files once they are on my hard drive and expanded. Why? Because I have a glut of extra space, I use less than 60% of my hard drives even though I download hundreds of programs and almost never delete anything.
(And besides, you can get most software on CD.)
The problem of using Cell phones in buildings is that the metal in the building interferes with the radio signals.
If you can boost the signals, you might be able to:
1) Establish communication
2) Get a much more accurate location (probably via triangulation)
Maybe they have logs that they can check and extrapolate information from?
They could put local GPS broadcaster to send a stronger signal and help provide more accurate locations. This was suggested for a airline auto-landing system using GPS at one point.
That being said, it is still highly unlikely that the signals could get very far through the structural debris.
It is worth trying for the chance that they can connect to someone alive, in an air pocket, or perhaps just to expediate the location and removal of bodies in the rubble. It might also help in the identification of bodies too.
Software is so large because hard drives are so big today.
Look at early versions of MS Works, it all fit on a couple floppy disks. Since hard drive and memory space and costs have changed so rapidly, developers can include more features, more help, more graphics, more sounds, and not worry about optimizing code for space.
I used to have a single floppy disk with all of my disk utilities, editor, spreadsheet, and database with room to spare. I could still use those apps, but I prefer my 20 Gigs of applications.
That is why applications are so big - we care about features, not disk space.
It is my experience that business managers want evidence, not ancedote. If you really want adoptance of software X, do usability studies, get hard numbers on how it takes people with X experience an average of X minutes to do X tasks and how that compares with the competition.
If you ask them to put their career on the line by deploying a non-standard, and MS Office definately is the current standard, system, give them a good reason to trust you.
It depends on what your time and hassel is worth. If you make $20 /hr and you spend 10 minutes a week trying to figure out how to work around a limitation, the software becomes very expensive very quickly.
Then again, this is true with all software.
So, the package that you are more efficient with might cost less even if you initially pay more.
If you really want a good argument for doing it right the first time, look at the costs needed to fix the bugs and add new features that users request.
Typically, if you are not designing the system correctly, this will be more expensive than the original construction.
You don't need to use passport to use software on your computer. You will however need to activate XP (send some info about your hardware) if you want to use it for more than 30 days. Passport is primarily for IM and other pieces that you can choose not to use.
Why does every topic discussion have to turn into a anti-(insert favorite company to hate) bash?
:)
[this really should be off-topic, but this is the type of user complaint that you will get if you don't carefully coordinate with your users before breaking old functionality]
1) Software developers writing software for XP can write it so that it is compatible with 9x/me or even Win3.1 if they want.
2) The topic question was backwards compatibility. Very few applications (if any) are 100% forward compatible. If you save your Word 97/2k/xp doc in a Word 6.0 compatible format, Word 6.0 can read it just fine. Where is the logic in expecting Word 6 to read the native file format that contains new features in Word 2k?
3) How does it become Microsoft's problem when 3rd party application programmers don't design their software to run on multiple versions of the OS? (It is possible, in fact a large percentage of the win9x software runs on w2k without being *designed* for w2k.)
Think about it for a second, how do you make the application that you released last year so that it will be 100% compatible with the file format and the new features that you will dream up next year??? Even if the file format was compatible (which would probably make it a kludge), there is no way that the functionality would be compatible.
And, umm, you can always save in the previous version's file format.
How is this any different from the new perl script to configure IPchains that won't work on kernels prior to IPchains? Or any other added feature for that matter...this is a flaw in your expectation, not evil marketing.
Do you expect your Netscape 1.0 browser to be able to handle CSS??
Release a set of updates, only change the minor version number, break one critical function in each update, fix it and break a different critical function in the next. Repeat until users no longer depend on the functionality that you want to change, then introduce the new functionality.
;)
But first, go read "How to write bad code," and start following those suggestions too.
Two rules of thumb:
1) Support whatever 90% of your users are using
2) Support the prior two versions
If you can't do the above, make a clean break and give it a new name or change the major version number and list the changes in the release notes.
If you have to make a clean break, if possible:
1) Provide a migration path
2) Provide an interop interface
And above all, listen to your users.
You might want to update your "facts"
FYI - Microsoft typically supports interop and upgrade from at least the two prior versions, possibly more depending on what the users are running. For example, even though XP is based on the NT codebase, MS supports upgrade from (and I believe interop with) Win98/Me.
Are you seriously endorsing the destruction of property and endangerment of lives because you don't like the products that a company creates?
If you are that insane, go after Ford, at least with them there might be a possiblity that human lives have been risked due to business decisions.
The problem with holy wars is that they boil down to "You are wrong and I am right because I say I am," and people get so worked up about thier superiority that they get violent. As computer geeks, we tend to get in holy war debates over points that are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. (In short - go out, experience the real world, get a life.)
You just explained exactly why the Open Source software model might be good, but why the Open Source Business model will tend to fail. As long as there is a community to give support, why should the average person pay a business for support, without that "average" revenue there are not enough customers needing support to be able to stay in business.