The idea is quite nice, but what's the actual use of this? In practice, how many times does it happen that the reverse route differs from the forward route?
Well, you obiously haven't looked at many traceroutes. Or maybe you are thinking of things within your own network. However, it is highly likely if I trace from my network to someone elses on the other side of the world the return route would be different. Therefore a tool like this is excellent for debugging network problems. It might some times be the case when you traceroute to someone (e.g. Exodus). The traceroute *'s out on the last few hops. If you could see things from Exodus's side you would see that there is nothing wrong with their network but that the packets are coming back through a different route and that route has problems. Without a reverse traceroute you might incorrectly presume that there is a problem with Exodus. This sort of tool is truely useful for debugging network problems.
Having said that, I have been using various Looking Glasses around the world to debug connections already and this doesn't add anthing new except that it is working on a bigger scale and is easier to use.
I understand what you are saying and I am sure that I would always want to compile things for myself because I usually want to hack the configuration, hack the source, compile in my own options, read the source...or whatever. However, this may be good for my workstation where I like to run the latest stuff but for a company that has say a hundered servers or a novice user who understands jack...it is not very powerfull enough.
The beauty of package management tools is that they do so much more than just install a binary. These are a list of things I would really like in a package management tool:
Distributed system for multiple machines - it would allow me to install/query packages on all my servers from my workstation. This should happen regardless of the OS version I am running on the server or my workstation.
Intrusion detection by telling me if any of my any of the files on my servers have changed since install.
Automatically notifies me when a binary is not the most recent and there is a security/bug fix that should be applied.
Capable of getting packages automatically for each server from a number of different sources.
Capable of authenticating any downloaded packages.
Yes, it is a shame that people read the absurd things that they write on sites like infidels.org. They always seem to quote sources that the majority of Muslims agree are unauthentic or they quote some translation which are far from the original meaning. What the Muslims have always been strict on is that the Quran is in Arabic and that you can attempt to translate the meaning of the words but you can't translate the Quran itself. As a result, I can take-up your challenge because I have access to the Quranic Arabic and can clearly see the mistakes that they make on infidel.org. I can only presume that the poeple who wrote the articles on infidel.org a). don't know Arabic and b). haven't read any of the books of the scholars from where we take our explanation of the verses in the Qur'an.
Wow, the paradoxical world of Christianity...Jesus created the himself and the world he lived in...hmmm...is that really what you guys believe in?
Of course, not all religions have such a closed nature and restricted thought process as Christianity. For example, in the Quran God says He is the Lord of *all* the worlds. Which indicates we are not alone. Also, the Big Bang is described in the Quran and of course the fact the the world is round and the orbits of the planets. Science is just about catching up with what the Muslims have known for 1,400 years.
People used to think the world was flat. As it turned out, the best way to teach people the world was round was not mass re-education, but by showing them that if you kept sailing, you wouldn't fall off.
You are right that showing people something is a definite proof to them but it is not as easy as that. We are dealing with historical events here.
I grew up in the UK and got taught the standard UK History syllabus. However, when I was older I visited schools in other countries, including Russia and the Middle East. It suprised me to find that there were differences in what they were taught in history to what we were taught in the UK. My inital reaction was, "Of course, they're commies, what do you expect?" However, I have since come to look at some of our own history as somewhat dubious.
During the Gulf War I was a member of the R.A.F. In the officers mess we used to get fax bullitins every day about the events in the Gulf. The faxes would state, what actually happenned in the Gulf and what the press were told. The stories weren't always the same. I used to watch the evening new knowing that what was being said was a half truth. Guess which version goes down in the history books?
I am not saying that the moon landings were a hoax. I am just saying that we shouldn't take everything we read or get taught, for granted. It would have been easy for NASA to exaggerate and distort the happennings.
It is the people who win the war...that write the history!
As it is I don't really care. Just as it doesn't bother me that uk.com resell their sub-domain by convincing people that it is a just an alternative to.co.uk. That is not my point. My point is it would be much nicer if when you went to a domain that has the extension of a particular country that it actually had something to do with that country. The splitting up of the TLDs was meant to help categorise information into sectors. It has failed to do that.
As for the guys who are behind the.cc domains, I take my hat off to them. They have used their TLD to a great effect and as they have also benfited the people of Cocos Islands it seems that all round they have done good. My point is only that if the domains had all been properly regulated in the first place it would have been better. Otherwise, if they don't want to regulate them then I can think of plenty of other TLDs they should allow.
All other domain names are allocated on a first come first served basis. Trademark and naming disputes are avoided by specifically stating that all other domains have nothing in common with registered companies or trademarks.
Well we do have a similar set-up to this in the UK. Except that it doesn't work. We have.ltd.uk and plc.uk that can only be registered by companies who trade under the name (a limited or public company) that they register. We then have the.co.uk which is a free for all. It seems though that no one is interested in the ltd.uk and the plc.uk which is why you don't see them around.
Also, many countries do in fact require that you have an address in their country before registering one of their domains. And it would be much better if all the countries did that. Then the Cocos Islands wouldn't have so many thousand domains registered for their 700 citizens.
Because just like open source, these, too, are freedoms.
Well, I do respect intellectual property rights. I am careful as a software engineer to only use components that I am entitled to in the components license. However, the justification for intellectual property rights still seem void. I agree that people should be paid for the programming work they do. As I am paid by my company for all the programming I do. However, this doesn't mean that the code has to be closed. All of the work I do is Open Source and people are free to use it as they like. There are many ways of making money out of software development without making it closed source.
The whole problem with the intellectual property right issue is that although people who support it usually start out with good intentions. Just like you mentioned; people need to be paid. However, the end result is usually negative. Companies start building up their patent/copyright portfolio, not for good reasons, but to hold back their competition and to protect their monopoly in the market place.
Further to this, how many people have pirate software on their computer? Or some sort of illegal software? How many people have bought original copies of software? You will probably find that most people fall into both categories. Just as they do with music. You usually buy something because it is important to you and useful. (That is why I have bought Linux distro CDs in the past). You would buy them even if they were freely available becuase it is easier for you and you like having the original. For the average person the intellectual property rights are meaningless anyway. They just could't care. However, with Open Source you are ensuring the person is not a criminal for what they are doing.
Microsoft isn't causing people to die in other countries
Hehe..they might be driving them insane with reboots and blue screens.....Just joking, you have a valid point here.
Personally, I don't really care about people like Mirosoft anyway. I like to open up the hood and see whats in the engine. If I can't do that with a piece of software then it really isn't much good to me. When it comes to software, the freedom I am after is the freedom to tweak and hack the code...not the freedom of money. Hence, I have never bought MS windows but have bought Linux distros.
Intellectual property rights are a complex issue as there are so many different areas that it has to be applied to. Each area has to be looked at differently. For example, there is a big difference in claiming an algorithm is your intellectual property and that of claiming a medicine is your intellectual property. Similarly, to claim that certain strings of words are your property is again completely different. Personally, I feel that the arguments for having intellectual property rights are insignificant compared to that of not having them.
There are enough examples of stupid claims to intellectual property that I don't really need to back up the argument. Even the arguments for intellectual property that people bring are usually weak. For example, peolple claim that it wouldn't be worth researching medicine if it they couldn't protect their findings. Since when has medicine been about making money out of the sick and needy! The companies then go out and exploit the poor countries that are desperate for the medicine and prevent them from making their own. Mean while you have people dying around the world of horrific diseases becuase they couldn't afford the medicine that the big medical companies are protecting behind their intellectual property rights. Just last week I read in the paper about a 8 year old Iraqi boy who died because he couldn't afford the $6 medicine becuase it was more than his months wages.
Meanwhile, you want to celebrate the greatness of the US. You should travel the world and see it for yourself. Okay, the US may have technology but you will find that the other cultures and countries have other things to offer that are much better than can be found in the US. But go ahead, point your finger and shout communist whenever someone disagrees with intellectual property. One day however you might see the other side of the argument. It is not about not liking people being rich. I have no problem with rich people. It is how the rich become richer by using things like intellectual property rights to maintain their monopoly in a market. This is always at the expense of the poor and needy and always against the general good of society. Both inside and outside the US.
Yeah, I have to agree with you here...even though it sounds like a Springer 'Final Thought' message.
My wife and I both have strict religious views and we therefore expect each other to live by them. It is not for everyone though. People should be honest with each other about what they expect out of a relationship and where the limits are.
It is difficult when meeting people on-line though as peole can hide their lies easily. Therefore people should be extra cautious when exploring relationships on-line. It can work well though; I first met my wife on-line and we have now been happily married for a few years.
OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols.
You must be serious...there may have been flaws in the SSH1 protocol but OpenSSH does implement SSH2 protocol also. So what is the problem, SSH1 is just there for backwards compatability.
In reality OpenSSH have done a great service to the community. They have made secure access freely available to the masses. For example, most of the Linux distributions now ship OpenSSH where as they didn't use to ship SSH because of the unfavourable liscense. Furthermore, many of the systems that used to run on the orignal SSH have now moved to using OpenSSH. Basically, I don't think they understand the great service OpenSSH is providing. A great service that they could have provided from the start if they weren't so interested in hoarding everything for themselves.
I always thought of it as Tom's Window Manager, but couldn't for the life of me figure out who Tom was.
The first time I can across TWM was probably about 9 years ago. It was when I first started at university and no idea there was an alternative to the standard WM the students used. Someone came up to me and said, "Hey, you should try using Tom's Window Manger." I figured he must be one of the other students who had manged to configure his desktop differently. I was very impressed by this Tom guy.
If ISC doesn't back off, we're soon gonna have OpenBind.
This is probably the best thing that can happen. Actually, it usually takes one good kick in the teeth for us to realise that what we are using is a lump of crap and we'd better do something about it. I am so fed up of bind. Hopefully, being forced into admitting we have a big problem might give the incentive to fix it. It has been known to happen.
The fact is that Microsoft make better software than everyone else
Really, you haven't a clue.
Microsoft write stuff with the pure intention of making as much money as possible. They aren't interested in quality or functionality. They are just interested in making money. That is why they worked so hard on IE. They wanted desperately to kill off their competition. However, if you look at things like Microsoft Word you will see that little has changed since Word 6. Wow! It underlines my spelling mistakes in red and gives me a list of corrections. It annoyingly changes what I write to what it thinks I should have written. Apart from these minor things, only the file format has changed since Word 6. (To force people to pay more money for an upgraded version).
And their software is crap. Admittedly not all of it. But in general there are major flaws in alot of their products. For example, at home I have three machines. Two linux and one Windows. The Linux boxes have never had to be re-installed for 4-5 years. Sure, I have upgrades some of the hardware and software. But the disk hasn't been formatted since the orginal install. Comparing this to the Windows machine which I have re-installed completely about 5 times in the same period because it has become so unstable. And you know what, the only thing that I have on the Windows machine is Windows itself and MS Office. In other words, the only software I have on it is written by Microsoft.
And then you want to try to convince me that they write good software! Everybody knows that Windows means endless re-boots and re-installs. It is just pathetic. Last week I had to re-install windows and with in 3 days of use (again MS s/w only) the machine unexpectedly hangs every time I start IE. What the fcsk!.
The brain dead guys who insist on trying to make out that MS are doing them a favour by writing crappy buggy windows and its "family" of software are just in a dream world. I suggest these people actually try out some of the alternatives instead of being so blinded.
I really think that XML is the best. It paves way for formatting of the information in many different ways and allows much more to be done with it. Everybody knows the weeknesses of HTML so I don't need to re-stress them.
The problem is, if they devise an agreed upon DTD that the XML should follow, it is essentially going to produce a new language that authors are going to have to learn. Every Tom, Dick and Harry knows HTML these days. Even my Mum created some web pages. Therefore it is easy for people to submit things in HTML. However, to give them something new to play with, you need to give them some nice tools to do the job. I mean they would need a decent GUI editor. That is one of the problems with DocBook. DocBook is great, but there is still a learning curve there before people can go out and use it. I think they should concentrate on building tools for writing documents that fit an XML DTD that they come up with. Preferably something that is similar to HTML or DocBook so that there aren't so many tags to learn.
Funily enough my first reaction was to try to read the puzzle from right to left. It kinda seems natural to me. I then found it strange how Western minded thinkers always create puzzles from right to left. I wonder if any E.T. would have a bias to one direction of thinking.
Anyway, a Hebrew or Arabic puzzle would have just been a mirror image I guess. And I am sure this puzzle will get distorted on transit by not being in the ET's network byte order.
Telephony billing really needs to be real-time rather than ISP billing which is just a parse of a load of scripts.
May be the two intersect more than you think. For examples, many ISPs outside the US and Europe, still charge per minute for connnectivity. They do therefore need some form of real-time billing that isn't much different from normal telephony billing. On the other side, some telephony applications (e.g. voicemail, announcement services) may be billed on a fixed monthly basis.
Also, we are working on an implementation of CallXML that would essentially put us, a teleco, into the Web hosting game. In other words, we too would need scripts to set up UNIX accounts and set quotas etc.
I think part of the problem here is that fact that everyone has slightly different requirements. Different ISPs offer different services with different strucutures for paying. They want everything from one interface including the setting up of accounts, on-line transactions and the generation of invoices.
What is really needed to solve this problem is to get a group together and design a proper Open Billing spec that is independent of the item actually being billed for. Configuration of the system could then be done throug a series of plugin modules with registered functions. I have a similar requirement at the moment. I am working on a project called PreViking which is an Open Source telephony switching deamon. We need a billing system that will do real-time billing for phone calls being placed. However, the types of user accounts are varied and there are many different telephony services that have to be billed for.
We are already looking to set up a group for making a standard for a real-time billing server aimed at telephony. If people are interested or think that a more generic billing standard is possible that would include ISPs then please email me at aw(a)bellworldwide.net
Most Open Source software is written by people who actually want the product for themselves. The Open Source nature of it means that other people who also want the same product can contribute back to the development. The result is something that not only works but actually fullfills the user requirements.
It seems strange then not to trust Open Source billing software. Sure, you are going to do some tests to make sure it is working properly before deploying it but the fact that other companies are successfully using the same software should say quite a bit.
Quite honestly, I don't understand your arguments about back doors at all. "Read the source Luke!"
Whenever new features or functionality are added to any program new lines of programming code have to be written that will result in a larger executable binary (or.so file). If the extra features added are excellent, and just what everyone needs, that is fine. Otherwise, it just becomes bloatware. Something that makes the program slower without helping the user. Unfortunately many programs are full of bloat.
Inferno however is a plugin. It is not directly part of the IE browser but rather something IE can run and pass data to. So it is not fair to comment on how IE is already bloated so Inferno will only make it worse. It is irrelevant.
The important question then is Does inferno offer us any new and useful functionality? Well, on the face of it it doesn't really appear so. I can't really see that it will offer any practical use that can not be done in Java. Java can be embedded in browsers to do just about any type of application (if signed) and inferno stands to be the same in that respect. However, what might be different is the licensing. Java isn't always the best thing to use for Licensing reasons. Inferno might be a different. However, I can't see anywhere on their site what the licensing issues are. Does anyone know what the licensing issues of writing a Tk application in Limbo are? If we can write free embedded applications then this really is something good and not just bloat.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea is quite nice, but what's the actual use of this? In practice, how many times does it happen that the reverse route differs from the forward route?
Well, you obiously haven't looked at many traceroutes. Or maybe you are thinking of things within your own network. However, it is highly likely if I trace from my network to someone elses on the other side of the world the return route would be different. Therefore a tool like this is excellent for debugging network problems. It might some times be the case when you traceroute to someone (e.g. Exodus). The traceroute *'s out on the last few hops. If you could see things from Exodus's side you would see that there is nothing wrong with their network but that the packets are coming back through a different route and that route has problems. Without a reverse traceroute you might incorrectly presume that there is a problem with Exodus. This sort of tool is truely useful for debugging network problems.
Having said that, I have been using various Looking Glasses around the world to debug connections already and this doesn't add anthing new except that it is working on a bigger scale and is easier to use.
I understand what you are saying and I am sure that I would always want to compile things for myself because I usually want to hack the configuration, hack the source, compile in my own options, read the source...or whatever. However, this may be good for my workstation where I like to run the latest stuff but for a company that has say a hundered servers or a novice user who understands jack...it is not very powerfull enough.
The beauty of package management tools is that they do so much more than just install a binary. These are a list of things I would really like in a package management tool:
Yes, it is a shame that people read the absurd things that they write on sites like infidels.org. They always seem to quote sources that the majority of Muslims agree are unauthentic or they quote some translation which are far from the original meaning. What the Muslims have always been strict on is that the Quran is in Arabic and that you can attempt to translate the meaning of the words but you can't translate the Quran itself. As a result, I can take-up your challenge because I have access to the Quranic Arabic and can clearly see the mistakes that they make on infidel.org. I can only presume that the poeple who wrote the articles on infidel.org a). don't know Arabic and b). haven't read any of the books of the scholars from where we take our explanation of the verses in the Qur'an.
Wow, the paradoxical world of Christianity...Jesus created the himself and the world he lived in...hmmm...is that really what you guys believe in?
Of course, not all religions have such a closed nature and restricted thought process as Christianity. For example, in the Quran God says He is the Lord of *all* the worlds. Which indicates we are not alone. Also, the Big Bang is described in the Quran and of course the fact the the world is round and the orbits of the planets. Science is just about catching up with what the Muslims have known for 1,400 years.
Or you install OpenBSD and have a firewalling router with one line of configuration. ONE. I'm not kidding.
Or you install a Windows NT and pull the network cable out and have a firewalling router with no lines of configuration. NONE. I'm not kidding.
People used to think the world was flat. As it turned out, the best way to teach people the world was round was not mass re-education, but by showing them that if you kept sailing, you wouldn't fall off.
You are right that showing people something is a definite proof to them but it is not as easy as that. We are dealing with historical events here.
I grew up in the UK and got taught the standard UK History syllabus. However, when I was older I visited schools in other countries, including Russia and the Middle East. It suprised me to find that there were differences in what they were taught in history to what we were taught in the UK. My inital reaction was, "Of course, they're commies, what do you expect?" However, I have since come to look at some of our own history as somewhat dubious.
During the Gulf War I was a member of the R.A.F. In the officers mess we used to get fax bullitins every day about the events in the Gulf. The faxes would state, what actually happenned in the Gulf and what the press were told. The stories weren't always the same. I used to watch the evening new knowing that what was being said was a half truth. Guess which version goes down in the history books?
I am not saying that the moon landings were a hoax. I am just saying that we shouldn't take everything we read or get taught, for granted. It would have been easy for NASA to exaggerate and distort the happennings.
It is the people who win the war...that write the history!
As it is I don't really care. Just as it doesn't bother me that uk.com resell their sub-domain by convincing people that it is a just an alternative to .co.uk. That is not my point. My point is it would be much nicer if when you went to a domain that has the extension of a particular country that it actually had something to do with that country. The splitting up of the TLDs was meant to help categorise information into sectors. It has failed to do that.
As for the guys who are behind the .cc domains, I take my hat off to them. They have used their TLD to a great effect and as they have also benfited the people of Cocos Islands it seems that all round they have done good. My point is only that if the domains had all been properly regulated in the first place it would have been better. Otherwise, if they don't want to regulate them then I can think of plenty of other TLDs they should allow.
My guess: 2001-03-17 21:37:42
Just writing some more text here so that /. doesn't think I am l4m3.
All other domain names are allocated on a first come first served basis. Trademark and naming disputes are avoided by specifically stating that all other domains have nothing in common with registered companies or trademarks.
Well we do have a similar set-up to this in the UK. Except that it doesn't work. We have .ltd.uk and plc.uk that can only be registered by companies who trade under the name (a limited or public company) that they register. We then have the .co.uk which is a free for all. It seems though that no one is interested in the ltd.uk and the plc.uk which is why you don't see them around.
Also, many countries do in fact require that you have an address in their country before registering one of their domains. And it would be much better if all the countries did that. Then the Cocos Islands wouldn't have so many thousand domains registered for their 700 citizens.
Because just like open source, these, too, are freedoms.
Well, I do respect intellectual property rights. I am careful as a software engineer to only use components that I am entitled to in the components license. However, the justification for intellectual property rights still seem void. I agree that people should be paid for the programming work they do. As I am paid by my company for all the programming I do. However, this doesn't mean that the code has to be closed. All of the work I do is Open Source and people are free to use it as they like. There are many ways of making money out of software development without making it closed source.
The whole problem with the intellectual property right issue is that although people who support it usually start out with good intentions. Just like you mentioned; people need to be paid. However, the end result is usually negative. Companies start building up their patent/copyright portfolio, not for good reasons, but to hold back their competition and to protect their monopoly in the market place.
Further to this, how many people have pirate software on their computer? Or some sort of illegal software? How many people have bought original copies of software? You will probably find that most people fall into both categories. Just as they do with music. You usually buy something because it is important to you and useful. (That is why I have bought Linux distro CDs in the past). You would buy them even if they were freely available becuase it is easier for you and you like having the original. For the average person the intellectual property rights are meaningless anyway. They just could't care. However, with Open Source you are ensuring the person is not a criminal for what they are doing.
"We can build a better product than Linux,"...we don't to it presently...but we can...honest...just give us another chance...please
These do sound like the words of someone on the run. The desperate result to deperate tactics
Microsoft isn't causing people to die in other countries
Hehe..they might be driving them insane with reboots and blue screens.....Just joking, you have a valid point here.
Personally, I don't really care about people like Mirosoft anyway. I like to open up the hood and see whats in the engine. If I can't do that with a piece of software then it really isn't much good to me. When it comes to software, the freedom I am after is the freedom to tweak and hack the code...not the freedom of money. Hence, I have never bought MS windows but have bought Linux distros.
Intellectual property rights are a complex issue as there are so many different areas that it has to be applied to. Each area has to be looked at differently. For example, there is a big difference in claiming an algorithm is your intellectual property and that of claiming a medicine is your intellectual property. Similarly, to claim that certain strings of words are your property is again completely different. Personally, I feel that the arguments for having intellectual property rights are insignificant compared to that of not having them.
There are enough examples of stupid claims to intellectual property that I don't really need to back up the argument. Even the arguments for intellectual property that people bring are usually weak. For example, peolple claim that it wouldn't be worth researching medicine if it they couldn't protect their findings. Since when has medicine been about making money out of the sick and needy! The companies then go out and exploit the poor countries that are desperate for the medicine and prevent them from making their own. Mean while you have people dying around the world of horrific diseases becuase they couldn't afford the medicine that the big medical companies are protecting behind their intellectual property rights. Just last week I read in the paper about a 8 year old Iraqi boy who died because he couldn't afford the $6 medicine becuase it was more than his months wages.
Meanwhile, you want to celebrate the greatness of the US. You should travel the world and see it for yourself. Okay, the US may have technology but you will find that the other cultures and countries have other things to offer that are much better than can be found in the US. But go ahead, point your finger and shout communist whenever someone disagrees with intellectual property. One day however you might see the other side of the argument. It is not about not liking people being rich. I have no problem with rich people. It is how the rich become richer by using things like intellectual property rights to maintain their monopoly in a market. This is always at the expense of the poor and needy and always against the general good of society. Both inside and outside the US.
Yeah, I have to agree with you here...even though it sounds like a Springer 'Final Thought' message.
My wife and I both have strict religious views and we therefore expect each other to live by them. It is not for everyone though. People should be honest with each other about what they expect out of a relationship and where the limits are.
It is difficult when meeting people on-line though as peole can hide their lies easily. Therefore people should be extra cautious when exploring relationships on-line. It can work well though; I first met my wife on-line and we have now been happily married for a few years.
OpenSSH is doing a disservice to the whole Internet security community by lengthing the life cycle of the fundamentally broken SSH1 protocols.
You must be serious...there may have been flaws in the SSH1 protocol but OpenSSH does implement SSH2 protocol also. So what is the problem, SSH1 is just there for backwards compatability.
In reality OpenSSH have done a great service to the community. They have made secure access freely available to the masses. For example, most of the Linux distributions now ship OpenSSH where as they didn't use to ship SSH because of the unfavourable liscense. Furthermore, many of the systems that used to run on the orignal SSH have now moved to using OpenSSH. Basically, I don't think they understand the great service OpenSSH is providing. A great service that they could have provided from the start if they weren't so interested in hoarding everything for themselves.
Once you got the machine, you could just "fabber" your money back. Guranteed money maker here!
I always thought of it as Tom's Window Manager, but couldn't for the life of me figure out who Tom was.
The first time I can across TWM was probably about 9 years ago. It was when I first started at university and no idea there was an alternative to the standard WM the students used. Someone came up to me and said, "Hey, you should try using Tom's Window Manger." I figured he must be one of the other students who had manged to configure his desktop differently. I was very impressed by this Tom guy.
If ISC doesn't back off, we're soon gonna have OpenBind.
This is probably the best thing that can happen. Actually, it usually takes one good kick in the teeth for us to realise that what we are using is a lump of crap and we'd better do something about it. I am so fed up of bind. Hopefully, being forced into admitting we have a big problem might give the incentive to fix it. It has been known to happen.
The fact is that Microsoft make better software than everyone else
Really, you haven't a clue.
Microsoft write stuff with the pure intention of making as much money as possible. They aren't interested in quality or functionality. They are just interested in making money. That is why they worked so hard on IE. They wanted desperately to kill off their competition. However, if you look at things like Microsoft Word you will see that little has changed since Word 6. Wow! It underlines my spelling mistakes in red and gives me a list of corrections. It annoyingly changes what I write to what it thinks I should have written. Apart from these minor things, only the file format has changed since Word 6. (To force people to pay more money for an upgraded version).
And their software is crap. Admittedly not all of it. But in general there are major flaws in alot of their products. For example, at home I have three machines. Two linux and one Windows. The Linux boxes have never had to be re-installed for 4-5 years. Sure, I have upgrades some of the hardware and software. But the disk hasn't been formatted since the orginal install. Comparing this to the Windows machine which I have re-installed completely about 5 times in the same period because it has become so unstable. And you know what, the only thing that I have on the Windows machine is Windows itself and MS Office. In other words, the only software I have on it is written by Microsoft.
And then you want to try to convince me that they write good software! Everybody knows that Windows means endless re-boots and re-installs. It is just pathetic. Last week I had to re-install windows and with in 3 days of use (again MS s/w only) the machine unexpectedly hangs every time I start IE. What the fcsk!.
The brain dead guys who insist on trying to make out that MS are doing them a favour by writing crappy buggy windows and its "family" of software are just in a dream world. I suggest these people actually try out some of the alternatives instead of being so blinded.
I really think that XML is the best. It paves way for formatting of the information in many different ways and allows much more to be done with it. Everybody knows the weeknesses of HTML so I don't need to re-stress them.
The problem is, if they devise an agreed upon DTD that the XML should follow, it is essentially going to produce a new language that authors are going to have to learn. Every Tom, Dick and Harry knows HTML these days. Even my Mum created some web pages. Therefore it is easy for people to submit things in HTML. However, to give them something new to play with, you need to give them some nice tools to do the job. I mean they would need a decent GUI editor. That is one of the problems with DocBook. DocBook is great, but there is still a learning curve there before people can go out and use it. I think they should concentrate on building tools for writing documents that fit an XML DTD that they come up with. Preferably something that is similar to HTML or DocBook so that there aren't so many tags to learn.
Funily enough my first reaction was to try to read the puzzle from right to left. It kinda seems natural to me. I then found it strange how Western minded thinkers always create puzzles from right to left. I wonder if any E.T. would have a bias to one direction of thinking.
Anyway, a Hebrew or Arabic puzzle would have just been a mirror image I guess. And I am sure this puzzle will get distorted on transit by not being in the ET's network byte order.
Telephony billing really needs to be real-time rather than ISP billing which is just a parse of a load of scripts.
May be the two intersect more than you think. For examples, many ISPs outside the US and Europe, still charge per minute for connnectivity. They do therefore need some form of real-time billing that isn't much different from normal telephony billing. On the other side, some telephony applications (e.g. voicemail, announcement services) may be billed on a fixed monthly basis.
Also, we are working on an implementation of CallXML that would essentially put us, a teleco, into the Web hosting game. In other words, we too would need scripts to set up UNIX accounts and set quotas etc.
I think part of the problem here is that fact that everyone has slightly different requirements. Different ISPs offer different services with different strucutures for paying. They want everything from one interface including the setting up of accounts, on-line transactions and the generation of invoices.
What is really needed to solve this problem is to get a group together and design a proper Open Billing spec that is independent of the item actually being billed for. Configuration of the system could then be done throug a series of plugin modules with registered functions. I have a similar requirement at the moment. I am working on a project called PreViking which is an Open Source telephony switching deamon. We need a billing system that will do real-time billing for phone calls being placed. However, the types of user accounts are varied and there are many different telephony services that have to be billed for.
We are already looking to set up a group for making a standard for a real-time billing server aimed at telephony. If people are interested or think that a more generic billing standard is possible that would include ISPs then please email me at aw(a)bellworldwide.net
Most Open Source software is written by people who actually want the product for themselves. The Open Source nature of it means that other people who also want the same product can contribute back to the development. The result is something that not only works but actually fullfills the user requirements.
It seems strange then not to trust Open Source billing software. Sure, you are going to do some tests to make sure it is working properly before deploying it but the fact that other companies are successfully using the same software should say quite a bit.
Quite honestly, I don't understand your arguments about back doors at all. "Read the source Luke!"
Whenever new features or functionality are added to any program new lines of programming code have to be written that will result in a larger executable binary (or .so file). If the extra features added are excellent, and just what everyone needs, that is fine. Otherwise, it just becomes bloatware. Something that makes the program slower without helping the user. Unfortunately many programs are full of bloat.
Inferno however is a plugin. It is not directly part of the IE browser but rather something IE can run and pass data to. So it is not fair to comment on how IE is already bloated so Inferno will only make it worse. It is irrelevant.
The important question then is Does inferno offer us any new and useful functionality? Well, on the face of it it doesn't really appear so. I can't really see that it will offer any practical use that can not be done in Java. Java can be embedded in browsers to do just about any type of application (if signed) and inferno stands to be the same in that respect. However, what might be different is the licensing. Java isn't always the best thing to use for Licensing reasons. Inferno might be a different. However, I can't see anywhere on their site what the licensing issues are. Does anyone know what the licensing issues of writing a Tk application in Limbo are? If we can write free embedded applications then this really is something good and not just bloat.