Seems to me that the real problem that ESR was having was not that the UI for CUPS was bad, or that the help was out of date. The problem with the GUI was that all it did was provide a series of fancy screens for changing a text file or two instead of actually helping the user configure the system. GNU configure could probably do everything that was needed to actually assist in the configuration (not that I know how to set up the script).
The requirement specification for a configuration tool should be more than just, "We need to have a couple dialog boxes for these parameters, then we're done." Instead it should be framed around questions and how to get the answers like, "Am I on a network? Which driver should/can I use?" This doesn't say anything about whether the user is a geek or Aunt Tillie. Aunt Tillie may need an explanation of what a driver is, while the geek may want to know where to find the source code for one.
We also should remember that UI != GUI. The CUPS configure program was less user friendly than the bare configuration files that finally lead him to his answer. Seems to me that the config files, with up to date comments, can easily provide all the User Interface one needs. If people really need to have dialog boxes, why not just have a tcl/tk script that presents each parameter line with its accompanying comments?
We should take away from both article's the importance of doing UI right, but you can only do that if you figure out why you are creating the program in the first place. As ESR points out, a GUI screen is not necessarily easier to use than a text file. The User interface for compiling and installing default set-up OSS on my OS X system generally consists of typing./configure, make, and make install. Its not GUI but it is easy to use.
I think the mistake some of the other comments make is to confound GUI and UI. An easy to use interface is what we want for both the geeks and the non-geeks. Sometimes that means GUI, and sometimes not. It always means thinking about the requirements of the software, and those requirements will always include installation and configuration.
The device can hold over 1,000 songs or 100 movies
I guess this pod only takes short movies or really long songs. And I really want to get access to the compression software that puts 100 movies into 60GB.
Microsoft Apologist Apologizes for Microsoft [Slashdot] "Companies can minimize support costs by rolling out identical hardware and software to every desktop through big bang deployments." Of course, this does mean you have to have enough support staff to do a big bang deployment. To my mind, diversity is closer to the reality of even an all MS shop. Back when I dealt with such things daily, we always had at least 2 and sometimes 3 versions of Windows running. We had enough different applications running that not all of them were upgradable to the next OS at the same time.
Saying that big bang is the best way to go is as big an indictment Microsoft and its problems with Windows as anything the naysayers and critics could say. "I not only don't play well with others, I only play nicely with my own clones."
Is the bug in a part of the Explorer engine that is integrated into the OS? I mean, is it part of the core HTML rendering functionality? If not, then it's not a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the part of IE that rides on top of Windows.
You guys are so lame. Ranting and ranting and ranting.
-Anonymous Coward"
I do not know the answer, and I am not a Windows/IE guru, but I'll make a stab at an answer anyway. HTML rendering clearly has nothing to do with the problem.
Since the tech report talks about malformed URLs, I will guess that the URL parser, the interface to active scripting, and the interface to cookie management are in some way connected to the problem. I am certain that the URL parser is part of the "common code" that is part of the OS. I would expect that the same is true for active scripting, since it is clearly supposed to help intergrate different apps. As for the cookies themselves, I suspect that it is also part of the shared libraries so that Word and Powerpoint can make use of them for their latest and greatest enhancements.
I have not been ranting, and actually I have found surprisingly little ranting going on lately. Microsoft is the party who is being lame these days as several specific examples in other posts make clear.
Finally, Microsoft makes all the products sold under the two trade names, Windows and Internet Explorer and generally sells both together. It reaqlly doesn't matter whether we call it an IE bug or a Windows bug. It's still a Microsoft bug. It may make a difference to the developers who have to determine who will fix it, but it makes no difference to those of us stuck with using the products.
If you read the security bulletin, it's not referring to windows at all. It's a problem with Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later.
If you have been following the US v Microsoft case, you will notice that this question is at the core of the case. Microsoft has been saying all along that IE IS an integral part of Windows, not simply another application.
So, yes this is a problem with Windows, especially if you agree with Microsoft about the government's case.
"My question to all North Americans: does it bother you that the USA legal system (as this case confirms) seems to consist of nothing more than 'who has more money eventually wins regardless'?
[...]
As a European, I practically dismiss the US legal system as merely a tool for large corporate bodies to use in a similar way as they use other available mechanisms for economic jousting. In a similar way, the 'lobbying' system the USA has in politics (we normally call this 'bribery' here) seems to be another fine tool for the comporations to use." -nicsterrr
Ok, I'll go after the flamebait here.
Every legal/political system has this problem. If it looks like Europe doesn't have this problem it is because the government and big business are so closesly aligned that there is frequently no need to go to court. The deal gets made at dinner or the club and that is that. I suggest you look at Credit Lyonnaise, Airbus, the Telecom industry, the recent "privatisation" of British rail, and plenty of other examples to see how European governments and companies are tied together.
One of the reasons it often looks worse in the US is because our legal system is open enough that we can see a lot of the problems on the TV or the frontpage. It is only recently that the EU even worried about monopolies at all. If this troll truly reflected reality, this case would never have been brought in the first place.
"If it is possible to utilize parallel processing then life would have had to evolve the ability to take advantage of that." - Perdo
Ummm....
While this sentence is taken out of context, it is still completely wrong. We use parallel processing all the time. The parallel computation part of quantum computing seems to work in both theory and in the lab as well.
Assume that there exists an efficient (classical) algorithm for calculating f(x) for a given x, however if n is large, say 1000, calculation for all x would take quite a lot of time. The quantum computer, in a certain sense, performs all these calculations much faster, during a time which is not exponential, but polynomial in n. (I note in passing, that the difficulty of building a quantum computer increases exponentially with n, which is a kind of Nature's revenge). -Dyakonov
The argument against QC is really much simpler than Perdo's convoluted logic requires. Dyakonov says that the problem isn't that a quantum computer couldn't do the calculations fast. The problem is that it would take nearly forever to build the computer in the first place.
I don't recall the skit, but it sounds about right. We haven't seen the consent decree yet, and I haven't checked the 1995 agreement, but it sounds like the DOJ is probably going to end up in the same place.
I suspect the decree will sound pretty good, but that MS will find a way to get around it just as it did with IE.
The parts about disclosure will only be as good as the enforcement. Since MS has more cash on hand than the DOJ annual budget, I think we know how long the enforcement actions will take.
"This is the practice of deliberately publishing explicit, step-by-step instructions for exploiting security vulnerabilities, without regard for how the information may be used."
Sounds like Mr. Culp is in favor of prior restraint, a big First Amendment no-no.
"Clearly, the publication of exploit details about the vulnerabilities contributed to their use as weapons."
This canard has been raised about violence on television, pornography, guns, explosives,....
Culp is pushing a clearly unconstitutional position. Others have pointed out the technical utility of having access to the exploits to verify that a fix works, but I think we should also see that his proposal strikes at the heart of our rights to free speech.
There are limits to our rights - not yelling "fire" in a movie theater as a joke -, but I for one find his and his company's position frightening.
I think you still have problems with a big explosion. What you probably won't get is a long burning hot fire. The explosive tendency of hydrogen gas is one of the reasons that you haven't seen those super clean burning fuel cells in standard passenger cars yet.
I don't know if she is funny, but it sounds like once again MS is running into a biased judge. I mean look at her orders. She agreed with almost nothing that MS briefed and most of what the government briefed.
Clearly she is already showing her bias, because only a biased judge would think that MS doesn't want to delay a rememdy, that MS is guilty as found after appeal, that MS might try to raise (er, is raising) its prices in the future, that MS is trying to muscle into other areas by using its OS monopoly, that....
I keep seeing references to MS license agreements, but I can't figure out how to see them online. Do I have to buy the product before I can see the licenses???
One might think that an online version would be an easy way to let people read them before slitting the shrinkwrap.
Oh, but then they might not buy it?? I think I begin to see... .
What about the employees NOT laid off?
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 1
While I think companies could be a lot smarter about how they manage layoffs, I think they have responsibilities to shareholders and to the remaining employees to be profitable. It makes no sense to spend so much money being nice to the folks laid off that the company ends up liquidated anyway.
As far as telling people far in advance goes, I think that if they could do that well enough to really work, they probably wouldn't have the problems that caused the layoffs. After 9/11 US Airways is clearly in trouble. Not a situation the execs could see coming in June.
Finally, for blue collar types, layoffs are awful because it generally means the industry they have training in is in serious flux and that there are a lot fewer jobs out their for them. For most of the professionals I know who were laid off, it gave them the kick they needed to make their lives their own.
Getting fired or laid off hurts the individual without a doubt. But keeping people a company doesn't need or can't afford hurts everyone dealing with the company from the owners to the employees to the customers.
Your response is reasonable, but still wrong. Someone also has to make a determined effort on the website to steal my credit card. If I leave my door unlocked, but shut, someone has to actively try to get into my house. I want to lock my front door so that opportunistic thieves won't get in. I know that someone with access to a locksmith or a big hammer can get in anyway. The technology for basic encryption is EASY. The human side of the system is the hard part.
I would like to have the confidence that my email conversations can move from gossip, to personal issues, to commercial without having to change applications to do it.
I think you also miss the problem of misdirected emails. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. It happens with snail mail, too, I know.
Until most of our electronic dialogues have the same protections that our real life dialogues do, I think we lose something in what we can, and are willing to, do with the internet.
Finally, if you are an ISP, you can sit around and read email if you want. That is basically what Carnivore does. You can also do this if you work for the USPS, but there we can tell if a message has been read, or find out that it never reached its recipient. We don't have the same envelope protections with current emails.
Of course, you are exactly right! How could I ever have thought I had things to hide! Encryption of, aka hiding, information must be used only by those with a nefarious purpose. So I guess I will staple my checks to postcards the next time I pay a bill. And I will post all of my login names and passwords on a public website, since I have nothing to hide about who I am, and I am sure that no one would want to fake my identity online. And I will set up a loudspeaker outside, attached to my phone, so everyone can listen to my every phone call, since I have nothing to hide. And then there's the webcam, and....
*sarcasm off*
There are a million things wedon't want to make public about ourselves, especially about economic activity. The encryption issue is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest thing that prevents the internet from being the primary way we do business. You want encryption so you can be sure who I am on the other end of a transaction. I want encryption so that the script kiddie next door can't steal my credit card with just a packet sniffer.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me that the real problem that ESR was having was not that the UI for CUPS was bad, or that the help was out of date. The problem with the GUI was that all it did was provide a series of fancy screens for changing a text file or two instead of actually helping the user configure the system. GNU configure could probably do everything that was needed to actually assist in the configuration (not that I know how to set up the script). ./configure, make, and make install. Its not GUI but it is easy to use.
The requirement specification for a configuration tool should be more than just, "We need to have a couple dialog boxes for these parameters, then we're done." Instead it should be framed around questions and how to get the answers like, "Am I on a network? Which driver should/can I use?" This doesn't say anything about whether the user is a geek or Aunt Tillie. Aunt Tillie may need an explanation of what a driver is, while the geek may want to know where to find the source code for one.
We also should remember that UI != GUI. The CUPS configure program was less user friendly than the bare configuration files that finally lead him to his answer. Seems to me that the config files, with up to date comments, can easily provide all the User Interface one needs. If people really need to have dialog boxes, why not just have a tcl/tk script that presents each parameter line with its accompanying comments?
We should take away from both article's the importance of doing UI right, but you can only do that if you figure out why you are creating the program in the first place. As ESR points out, a GUI screen is not necessarily easier to use than a text file. The User interface for compiling and installing default set-up OSS on my OS X system generally consists of typing
I think the mistake some of the other comments make is to confound GUI and UI. An easy to use interface is what we want for both the geeks and the non-geeks. Sometimes that means GUI, and sometimes not. It always means thinking about the requirements of the software, and those requirements will always include installation and configuration.
I guess this pod only takes short movies or really long songs. And I really want to get access to the compression software that puts 100 movies into 60GB.
Saying that big bang is the best way to go is as big an indictment Microsoft and its problems with Windows as anything the naysayers and critics could say. "I not only don't play well with others, I only play nicely with my own clones."
Is the bug in a part of the Explorer engine that is integrated into the OS? I mean, is it part of the core HTML rendering functionality? If not, then it's not a bug in Windows, it's a bug in the part of IE that rides on top of Windows.
You guys are so lame. Ranting and ranting and ranting.
-Anonymous Coward"
I do not know the answer, and I am not a Windows/IE guru, but I'll make a stab at an answer anyway. HTML rendering clearly has nothing to do with the problem.
Since the tech report talks about malformed URLs, I will guess that the URL parser, the interface to active scripting, and the interface to cookie management are in some way connected to the problem. I am certain that the URL parser is part of the "common code" that is part of the OS. I would expect that the same is true for active scripting, since it is clearly supposed to help intergrate different apps. As for the cookies themselves, I suspect that it is also part of the shared libraries so that Word and Powerpoint can make use of them for their latest and greatest enhancements.
I have not been ranting, and actually I have found surprisingly little ranting going on lately. Microsoft is the party who is being lame these days as several specific examples in other posts make clear.
Finally, Microsoft makes all the products sold under the two trade names, Windows and Internet Explorer and generally sells both together. It reaqlly doesn't matter whether we call it an IE bug or a Windows bug. It's still a Microsoft bug. It may make a difference to the developers who have to determine who will fix it, but it makes no difference to those of us stuck with using the products.
If you read the security bulletin, it's not referring to windows at all. It's a problem with Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later.
If you have been following the US v Microsoft case, you will notice that this question is at the core of the case. Microsoft has been saying all along that IE IS an integral part of Windows, not simply another application.
So, yes this is a problem with Windows, especially if you agree with Microsoft about the government's case.
[...]
As a European, I practically dismiss the US legal system as merely a tool for large corporate bodies to use in a similar way as they use other available mechanisms for economic jousting. In a similar way, the 'lobbying' system the USA has in politics (we normally call this 'bribery' here) seems to be another fine tool for the comporations to use." -nicsterrr
Ok, I'll go after the flamebait here.
Every legal/political system has this problem. If it looks like Europe doesn't have this problem it is because the government and big business are so closesly aligned that there is frequently no need to go to court. The deal gets made at dinner or the club and that is that. I suggest you look at Credit Lyonnaise, Airbus, the Telecom industry, the recent "privatisation" of British rail, and plenty of other examples to see how European governments and companies are tied together. One of the reasons it often looks worse in the US is because our legal system is open enough that we can see a lot of the problems on the TV or the frontpage. It is only recently that the EU even worried about monopolies at all. If this troll truly reflected reality, this case would never have been brought in the first place.
Ummm....
While this sentence is taken out of context, it is still completely wrong. We use parallel processing all the time. The parallel computation part of quantum computing seems to work in both theory and in the lab as well.
The argument against QC is really much simpler than Perdo's convoluted logic requires. Dyakonov says that the problem isn't that a quantum computer couldn't do the calculations fast. The problem is that it would take nearly forever to build the computer in the first place.I don't recall the skit, but it sounds about right. We haven't seen the consent decree yet, and I haven't checked the 1995 agreement, but it sounds like the DOJ is probably going to end up in the same place.
I suspect the decree will sound pretty good, but that MS will find a way to get around it just as it did with IE.
The parts about disclosure will only be as good as the enforcement. Since MS has more cash on hand than the DOJ annual budget, I think we know how long the enforcement actions will take.
Sounds like Mr. Culp is in favor of prior restraint, a big First Amendment no-no.
"Clearly, the publication of exploit details about the vulnerabilities contributed to their use as weapons."
This canard has been raised about violence on television, pornography, guns, explosives, ....
Culp is pushing a clearly unconstitutional position. Others have pointed out the technical utility of having access to the exploits to verify that a fix works, but I think we should also see that his proposal strikes at the heart of our rights to free speech.
There are limits to our rights - not yelling "fire" in a movie theater as a joke -, but I for one find his and his company's position frightening.
Heil Bill!
Thanks for the info. I knew it was more than just the hydrogen, but I didn't know about the Al-O powder.
I think you still have problems with a big explosion. What you probably won't get is a long burning hot fire. The explosive tendency of hydrogen gas is one of the reasons that you haven't seen those super clean burning fuel cells in standard passenger cars yet.
Clearly she is already showing her bias, because only a biased judge would think that MS doesn't want to delay a rememdy, that MS is guilty as found after appeal, that MS might try to raise (er, is raising) its prices in the future, that MS is trying to muscle into other areas by using its OS monopoly, that....
PS Please remember that irony is still alive.
This may be off-topic, but....
I keep seeing references to MS license agreements, but I can't figure out how to see them online. Do I have to buy the product before I can see the licenses???
One might think that an online version would be an easy way to let people read them before slitting the shrinkwrap.
Oh, but then they might not buy it?? I think I begin to see... .
As far as telling people far in advance goes, I think that if they could do that well enough to really work, they probably wouldn't have the problems that caused the layoffs. After 9/11 US Airways is clearly in trouble. Not a situation the execs could see coming in June.
Finally, for blue collar types, layoffs are awful because it generally means the industry they have training in is in serious flux and that there are a lot fewer jobs out their for them. For most of the professionals I know who were laid off, it gave them the kick they needed to make their lives their own.
Getting fired or laid off hurts the individual without a doubt. But keeping people a company doesn't need or can't afford hurts everyone dealing with the company from the owners to the employees to the customers.
Your response is reasonable, but still wrong. Someone also has to make a determined effort on the website to steal my credit card. If I leave my door unlocked, but shut, someone has to actively try to get into my house. I want to lock my front door so that opportunistic thieves won't get in. I know that someone with access to a locksmith or a big hammer can get in anyway. The technology for basic encryption is EASY. The human side of the system is the hard part. I would like to have the confidence that my email conversations can move from gossip, to personal issues, to commercial without having to change applications to do it. I think you also miss the problem of misdirected emails. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. It happens with snail mail, too, I know. Until most of our electronic dialogues have the same protections that our real life dialogues do, I think we lose something in what we can, and are willing to, do with the internet. Finally, if you are an ISP, you can sit around and read email if you want. That is basically what Carnivore does. You can also do this if you work for the USPS, but there we can tell if a message has been read, or find out that it never reached its recipient. We don't have the same envelope protections with current emails.
Of course, you are exactly right! How could I ever have thought I had things to hide! Encryption of, aka hiding, information must be used only by those with a nefarious purpose. So I guess I will staple my checks to postcards the next time I pay a bill. And I will post all of my login names and passwords on a public website, since I have nothing to hide about who I am, and I am sure that no one would want to fake my identity online. And I will set up a loudspeaker outside, attached to my phone, so everyone can listen to my every phone call, since I have nothing to hide. And then there's the webcam, and ....
*sarcasm off*
There are a million things wedon't want to make public about ourselves, especially about economic activity. The encryption issue is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest thing that prevents the internet from being the primary way we do business. You want encryption so you can be sure who I am on the other end of a transaction. I want encryption so that the script kiddie next door can't steal my credit card with just a packet sniffer.