Disclaimer: I'm not involved with Mambo in any way, but I have dealt with similar issues before.
Indeed. The problem here is that Mambo was a very mature community, and large communities eventually start having problems that involve legal and other matters. You need a foundation to handle such things. All the people complaining that things should have just stayed the same simply do not understand the issues beyond their own nose.
Lots of people are angry that they were't "consulted" or that the community didn't "vote". This ignores the fact that there is no legal way to take a vote from the community (that's one of the problems a foundation solves). They are also complaining that Miro picked the board, rather than having the community "vote" on it (see previous point).
The problem is that when you form a foundation, you need to appoint a board to oversee the intial creation and running of the foundation. Since there are no members to legally vote on the board before the foundation exists, they MUST be appointed. After they are appointed, and you have a means to join the foundation and be a member, you can hold a new election to put people in that the community HAS voted on. This also seems to have been lost on the majority of "knee jerk" responses.
All in all, this very reaction illustrates the very NEED for a legal governing body over the project, yet the core devs want to go off and create yet another lawless community that will (mark my words) eventually have this EXACT SAME PROBLEM once again down the line.
Actually, while true, not as true as you think it is. Japan has much lower stats because they don't report the same way as other countries do. For example, Domestic abuse is not really considered a crime there (it is, but it's largely ignored).
"Even if an administrator has enabled anonymous connections by changing the default setting of the RestrictAnonymous registry key, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 are not vulnerable remotely by anonymous users or by users who have standard user accounts. However, the affected component is available remotely to users who have administrative permissions."
I'll install the next service patch as soon as Microsoft let's me decide which browser to do it with. Where's the network install (aka downloadable) patch?
Actually, this isn't new. They've been selling a product called The Antidote for a long time now that claims to cure all kinds of things. While I was skeptical, I've heard from numerous sources that it really works. I still wouldn't touch the thing until it gets FDA approval, and considering that crocodiles aren't exactly an abundant species... They claim they can only sell you 4 vials of the stuff. Take it with however many grains of salt you like.
Obviously if you're using Windows and your GDI server crashes you are not going to be able to use the Command Prompt application. So why do you seem to think that a crashed X server could ever possibly allow you to use xterm?
I don't. That's the point. The common argument that if X crashes, your OS hasn't crashed is a strawman. Most users apps are going to be running in X anyways.
The "console environment" is the virtual console layer, which is separate from X. That's what he's talking about. I have no reason to believe you know anything in any detail about Linux or similar operating systems based on your post.
I know what he was talking about. I was pointing out that if you're running X, chances are you're running all, or most of your apps under X, such as in an xterm, which means those apps die as well.
Yes, if you're running stuff in a Virtual Screen, in addition to X, the stuff in other screens will be fine, but that's small consolation to those that are not.
At any rate, X server crashes are rare these days. This is all pretty much irrelevant.
Just like BSOD's are rare on Windows, I would suppose. Same argument.
While I don't know about this worm, but at least SOME worms at least have the perception of being written as a way to drive people off windows. One worm included text like "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!"
unless of course your "console environment" is xterms, which is kind of the point of a GUI, windowed applications you can move, resize, overlap, etc...
I think you might want to recheck what actually happened there. One of the windows media developers called the developer of virtualdub saying they had a patent. It wasn't an official legal notification.
While you can claim that the developer was acting as an agent of MS, I doubt he had any authority to make any threats. That's the job of lawyers. It would be like someone working on the assembly line of GM sending an email to Ford saying "Hey, we have a patent on your cupholders".
I think the author of virtualdub jumped the gun a bit, and should have told them to officially C&D him if that's what they wanted to do. To date, i've never seen a single case of Microsoft taking any legal action against an open source developer. The only things i've seen are unofficial claims of "oh, btw, we have patents on that stuff", which frankly can be made by anyone.
I didn't say MS has never threatened (or even followed through with) patent lawsuits. But they've never done so against an open source "competitor".
While MS has done a lot of dirty, nasty, things, they've been VERY responsible with their patent portfolio's and seem to use them only defensively (with one exception that I can think of, the VFAT patent against camera manufacturers).
Actually, nmap falls back to "BSD" as it's default guess because a typical stack will look more like BSD than not if there is no additional fingerprint data available.
Also, it's quite likely that MS would have used the BSD stack as a model when writing their own, which would also show a lot of similarities. The developers were already familiar with the BSD stack, so that's clearly going to color their designs.
Now, of course, maybe there's still BSD code in there... but fingerprinting alone is not enough to determine that, given the two conditions i mentioned above.
BTW, the "leaked" windows source code should have been able to prove this, once and for all. Why hasn't it?
While your "history" is vaguely correct, it's missing a great deal of real fact. Apparently, MS bought their TCP/IP stack from Spider software. This appears to have been licensed from UCB since the copyrights on it predate the open source release of the BSD TCP/IP stack.
You should read this article, it's very enlightening:
It's funny, but the article doesn't actually say anything about litigation. In fact, it doesn't even say Microsoft even commented on this, much less even threatened to sue about it.
It appears to be a journalists "what if" scenario, saying what COULD happen. It's like all the bitching about MS suing Open Source providers for patent infringement, yet it never seems to happen.
Methinks you're getting yourself worked up into a froth over fabrication.
You seriously don't understand the term "public" do you? You are connected to a public network, and you are willingly accepting connections from public SMTP servers. This is no different than a shop keeper running a "public" store in which people are indisicriminatly allowed to shop.
Posting something to a web site on a domain is like saying "Well, I posted my "No Trespassing signs in my bedroom, what do you mean you didn't see it"? It's a different mechanism, in a different place.
But all that is really beside the point. You willingly let anyone connect to your server. In fact, that's its very purpose. If you invite the world to your doorstep, but don't want some people there, you best have a way to stop them.
Spammers aren't "stealing" anything any more than, say, lounging around in a park all day is stealing. They're using a publicly provided service with no effective barriers or restrictions on it's use. There are no posted signs that say "keep off the grass" or realistic ways to prevent anyone from doing so. Even worse, the majority of the internet community is against mechanisms that WOULD put barriers up.
Frankly, if you want to live on the frontier, you're gonna have to put up with lawlessness and barbarians.
I'm sorry, but if want to use a license that's overly restrictive on what you can do with it, how is it anyone elses fault that YOUR license doesn't allow for it's use?
Even so, I don't buy it. The Office 12 Document license is a license for the *DOCUMENTATION*, not a license for programs that implement it. So what's your point exactly?
It wasn't really. And it's not really. It's extensible, but only in certain ways, and again, the standard makes extending it pointless since it states explicitly that apps don't have to retain foreign elements.
An exporter isn't the point. The point of a document format is to map your features to a serializable format. A converter just drops information it doesn't understand, and that's why there are problems with conversion.
I think a standard that's better for everyone is far better than a standard that's better for one entity, even if it means the original entity has some work to do.
I mean, you're talking about the same argument that could be applied to Microsoft. Adopting OASIS (or any other) format is a real tangible drawback because they would have to implement it.
I'm pretty sure MS declined to take part because they knew that starting from someone elses format was a bad idea.
As they say, when your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails. The point being, you don't take into account anything but your own reality.
I agree with you, actually. It's interesting that the next version of Office will use XML for it's default format (not the Oasis format, but MS's own format) and that should make it far more easy to interoperate.
Don't you think that "goes a long way toward the greater adoption of something we can all use to exchange documents"?
Yes, Excel does use tabs. But it uses tabs for pages of the same document, not for seperate documents.
Of course I already adressed that in my previous post, which you conviently deleted. Here it is again:
"Basically, we're talking about MDI, which is something MS has had for years and years, but has for the last 10 years only encouraged it's use when you have multiple documents of the same project."
The point is, the abstraction is the document, not the page. In a web browser, each page is a different document. The concept of tabs would fit the guidelines if, for example, tabs were used for differnet pages from the same site and new windows used for each site.
You also conveniently ignored my point about Expose, which I think is the strongest argument about why Tabs violate guidelines.
And yes, while good HID means different things to different people, remember that HID is more for non-techies than Techies. Techies are used to complex and poorly designed interfacees, and often seem to like them. Just because YOU, as a techie like an interface doesn't mean it's good HID.
Honestly, I'd like to see what MS would come up with if they decided to rewrite Office from scratch using today's guidelines rather than hacking their old code base.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I'm not involved with Mambo in any way, but I have dealt with similar issues before.
Indeed. The problem here is that Mambo was a very mature community, and large communities eventually start having problems that involve legal and other matters. You need a foundation to handle such things. All the people complaining that things should have just stayed the same simply do not understand the issues beyond their own nose.
Lots of people are angry that they were't "consulted" or that the community didn't "vote". This ignores the fact that there is no legal way to take a vote from the community (that's one of the problems a foundation solves). They are also complaining that Miro picked the board, rather than having the community "vote" on it (see previous point).
The problem is that when you form a foundation, you need to appoint a board to oversee the intial creation and running of the foundation. Since there are no members to legally vote on the board before the foundation exists, they MUST be appointed. After they are appointed, and you have a means to join the foundation and be a member, you can hold a new election to put people in that the community HAS voted on. This also seems to have been lost on the majority of "knee jerk" responses.
All in all, this very reaction illustrates the very NEED for a legal governing body over the project, yet the core devs want to go off and create yet another lawless community that will (mark my words) eventually have this EXACT SAME PROBLEM once again down the line.
Actually, while true, not as true as you think it is. Japan has much lower stats because they don't report the same way as other countries do. For example, Domestic abuse is not really considered a crime there (it is, but it's largely ignored).
I keep seeing this claim, but it's not true.
y /899588.mspx
According to Microsoft, even enabling null sessions won't get you infected:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisor
"Even if an administrator has enabled anonymous connections by changing the default setting of the RestrictAnonymous registry key, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 are not vulnerable remotely by anonymous users or by users who have standard user accounts. However, the affected component is available remotely to users who have administrative permissions."
I'll install the next service patch as soon as Microsoft let's me decide which browser to do it with. Where's the network install (aka downloadable) patch?
a milyid=E39A3D96-1C37-47D2-82EF-0AC89905C88F&displa ylang=en
Right here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?f
Actually, this isn't new. They've been selling a product called The Antidote for a long time now that claims to cure all kinds of things. While I was skeptical, I've heard from numerous sources that it really works. I still wouldn't touch the thing until it gets FDA approval, and considering that crocodiles aren't exactly an abundant species... They claim they can only sell you 4 vials of the stuff. Take it with however many grains of salt you like.
http://www.biologicalmiracle.net/
Obviously if you're using Windows and your GDI server crashes you are not going to be able to use the Command Prompt application. So why do you seem to think that a crashed X server could ever possibly allow you to use xterm?
I don't. That's the point. The common argument that if X crashes, your OS hasn't crashed is a strawman. Most users apps are going to be running in X anyways.
The "console environment" is the virtual console layer, which is separate from X. That's what he's talking about. I have no reason to believe you know anything in any detail about Linux or similar operating systems based on your post.
I know what he was talking about. I was pointing out that if you're running X, chances are you're running all, or most of your apps under X, such as in an xterm, which means those apps die as well.
Yes, if you're running stuff in a Virtual Screen, in addition to X, the stuff in other screens will be fine, but that's small consolation to those that are not.
At any rate, X server crashes are rare these days. This is all pretty much irrelevant.
Just like BSOD's are rare on Windows, I would suppose. Same argument.
While I don't know about this worm, but at least SOME worms at least have the perception of being written as a way to drive people off windows. One worm included text like "billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!"
unless of course your "console environment" is xterms, which is kind of the point of a GUI, windowed applications you can move, resize, overlap, etc...
I think you might want to recheck what actually happened there. One of the windows media developers called the developer of virtualdub saying they had a patent. It wasn't an official legal notification.
While you can claim that the developer was acting as an agent of MS, I doubt he had any authority to make any threats. That's the job of lawyers. It would be like someone working on the assembly line of GM sending an email to Ford saying "Hey, we have a patent on your cupholders".
I think the author of virtualdub jumped the gun a bit, and should have told them to officially C&D him if that's what they wanted to do. To date, i've never seen a single case of Microsoft taking any legal action against an open source developer. The only things i've seen are unofficial claims of "oh, btw, we have patents on that stuff", which frankly can be made by anyone.
I didn't say MS has never threatened (or even followed through with) patent lawsuits. But they've never done so against an open source "competitor".
While MS has done a lot of dirty, nasty, things, they've been VERY responsible with their patent portfolio's and seem to use them only defensively (with one exception that I can think of, the VFAT patent against camera manufacturers).
Actually, nmap falls back to "BSD" as it's default guess because a typical stack will look more like BSD than not if there is no additional fingerprint data available.
Also, it's quite likely that MS would have used the BSD stack as a model when writing their own, which would also show a lot of similarities. The developers were already familiar with the BSD stack, so that's clearly going to color their designs.
Now, of course, maybe there's still BSD code in there... but fingerprinting alone is not enough to determine that, given the two conditions i mentioned above.
BTW, the "leaked" windows source code should have been able to prove this, once and for all. Why hasn't it?
While your "history" is vaguely correct, it's missing a great deal of real fact. Apparently, MS bought their TCP/IP stack from Spider software. This appears to have been licensed from UCB since the copyrights on it predate the open source release of the BSD TCP/IP stack.
7
You should read this article, it's very enlightening:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/6/19/05641/735
It's funny, but the article doesn't actually say anything about litigation. In fact, it doesn't even say Microsoft even commented on this, much less even threatened to sue about it.
It appears to be a journalists "what if" scenario, saying what COULD happen. It's like all the bitching about MS suing Open Source providers for patent infringement, yet it never seems to happen.
Methinks you're getting yourself worked up into a froth over fabrication.
You seriously don't understand the term "public" do you? You are connected to a public network, and you are willingly accepting connections from public SMTP servers. This is no different than a shop keeper running a "public" store in which people are indisicriminatly allowed to shop.
Posting something to a web site on a domain is like saying "Well, I posted my "No Trespassing signs in my bedroom, what do you mean you didn't see it"? It's a different mechanism, in a different place.
But all that is really beside the point. You willingly let anyone connect to your server. In fact, that's its very purpose. If you invite the world to your doorstep, but don't want some people there, you best have a way to stop them.
Spammers aren't "stealing" anything any more than, say, lounging around in a park all day is stealing. They're using a publicly provided service with no effective barriers or restrictions on it's use. There are no posted signs that say "keep off the grass" or realistic ways to prevent anyone from doing so. Even worse, the majority of the internet community is against mechanisms that WOULD put barriers up.
Frankly, if you want to live on the frontier, you're gonna have to put up with lawlessness and barbarians.
I'm sorry, but if want to use a license that's overly restrictive on what you can do with it, how is it anyone elses fault that YOUR license doesn't allow for it's use?
Even so, I don't buy it. The Office 12 Document license is a license for the *DOCUMENTATION*, not a license for programs that implement it. So what's your point exactly?
Yes, the OASIS group is much older, but we're talking about the open document format, not the XML working group.
It wasn't really. And it's not really. It's extensible, but only in certain ways, and again, the standard makes extending it pointless since it states explicitly that apps don't have to retain foreign elements.
An exporter isn't the point. The point of a document format is to map your features to a serializable format. A converter just drops information it doesn't understand, and that's why there are problems with conversion.
I think a standard that's better for everyone is far better than a standard that's better for one entity, even if it means the original entity has some work to do.
I mean, you're talking about the same argument that could be applied to Microsoft. Adopting OASIS (or any other) format is a real tangible drawback because they would have to implement it.
I'm pretty sure MS declined to take part because they knew that starting from someone elses format was a bad idea.
As they say, when your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails. The point being, you don't take into account anything but your own reality.
So some devices won't adjust at the right time. So what? Many devices with clocks really don't need them to be THAT accurate.
Humans can adjust to the difference, or perhaps even MANUALLY change the clocks like we all did 10 years ago, and mostly still do today.
Will it be an inconvenience? Sure. Will it destroy life as we know it? Probably not.
I agree with you, actually. It's interesting that the next version of Office will use XML for it's default format (not the Oasis format, but MS's own format) and that should make it far more easy to interoperate.
Don't you think that "goes a long way toward the greater adoption of something we can all use to exchange documents"?
Yes, Excel does use tabs. But it uses tabs for pages of the same document, not for seperate documents.
Of course I already adressed that in my previous post, which you conviently deleted. Here it is again:
"Basically, we're talking about MDI, which is something MS has had for years and years, but has for the last 10 years only encouraged it's use when you have multiple documents of the same project."
The point is, the abstraction is the document, not the page. In a web browser, each page is a different document. The concept of tabs would fit the guidelines if, for example, tabs were used for differnet pages from the same site and new windows used for each site.
You also conveniently ignored my point about Expose, which I think is the strongest argument about why Tabs violate guidelines.
And yes, while good HID means different things to different people, remember that HID is more for non-techies than Techies. Techies are used to complex and poorly designed interfacees, and often seem to like them. Just because YOU, as a techie like an interface doesn't mean it's good HID.
I agree with you completely.
Honestly, I'd like to see what MS would come up with if they decided to rewrite Office from scratch using today's guidelines rather than hacking their old code base.