How about "non-commercial" support? Can I download the latest VLC on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr without having to recompile? I mean, can download VLC on an old Android 5.0.2 phone just fine, so it's not a "fragmentation" thing. Desktop Linux and the whole"repos" deal is just weird.
As Android has shown, "fragmentation" isn't a blocker to success as long as each distro runs the same apps. Desktop Linux distros don't do that, instead apps have to be packaged per distro, per release. And that's the problem.
Oh god please no. Since the only way we humans can make things fly is either by blasting air downwards (think Harrier jet) or by making something that looks like a helicopter or an airplane, any flying taxi (big enough to fit a human) would mean unacceptable levels of noise pollution in cities and even in suburbs. Imagine having a helicopter landing several feet from your window while trying to sleep.
This. Thank you The Android sandboxing that prevents a random application from making deep modifications to the OS or from accessing privileged information is the exact same sandboxing that prevents antivirus software from being able to scan the deeper operating system. Think of Android as a non-admin Windows session where UAC prompts fail by default or a sudo-less Desktop Linux session. There is no way you can install a antivirus from that session. Most of these Android "AVs" just fetch a list of installed software (using the appropriate OS APIs) and compare against a blacklist, charging an obscene mark up for the "service". Which BTW the Play Store also does for free on GMS-enabled phones. Android AVs are a scam
Still, good luck convincing Joe that an ultrabook should revert to running like a 386, when someone else (be it Via or some Chinese company, if both Intel and AMD hypothetically agree to not use speculative execution or use it in significantly diminished capability) offers the performance Joe has come to expect or close to it. Which begs the question, should the government regulate on such things?
Calm your horses. When they mean "roll out to the cities" they mean set up some glorified WiGig hotspots in some central spots, which is what mmWave 5G is. mmWave 5G makes no sense outside dense urban centers. The other 5G, the one which will be an improvement to 4G and operates at lower frequency bands, will take some time to be fully rolled out due to network upgrade costs.
But until that happens they just have to... sell slower hardware? Good luck explaining to Joe at Best Buy why his new laptop will be slower than the one he has (despite similar form factor and thickness) because something called "vulnerabilities".
Well the hardware implementation was buggy, so you can bypass it after all. And since you cannot patch hardware (unless the patch is disabling speculative execution altogether and making all the affected hardware much slower) people try to find all kinds of workarounds to mitigate the issue.
Not to mention emojis render differently on different platforms or versions of platforms. If I send an icon of a water pistol from a new phone it might appear as a gun on an older phone. Did I just made a death threat? The emoji name is actually "gun" but many platforms render it as a water pistol in their latest versions because public relations by vendors.
As other people mentioned, the English language is getting cryptic and pictographic.
Someone should try putting emojis in an EULA, let's see how they interpret this (this should show the pitfalls of using freeform text on contracts)
My point is that you can't prove what is the prefered form unless every programmer is called under oath (which makes as much sense as calling every employee of VW to oath they aren't cheating emissions). And even then you get into arguments like what "prefered" is. I would personally have at lease one programmer pretending to work on the obfuscated source code and make nonsensical harmless changes so I can then claim that's the "preferred" form.
If I create an "auto-de-obfuscator" tool that uses internal maps for variable names (converting two-letter variables to their real name) when opening a file and an auto-minifier (that obfuscates the code again) when pressing save, I am working in the prefered form of a work?
Oh please, you can't have half the people in a country inspect the other half. In order to inspect VW's code, you need to have another team with every knowledge the first team has to properly inspect the first team's work. Then there is the question who controls and funds the second team and what their ultimate motives are. The various embarrassing security vulnerabilities in open source software (such as heartbleed) show there is no mythical million-man army that vigorously inspects other people's free open source code (people who inspect other people's free open source code exist but their numbers and importance are grossly overestimated).
I 'd rather not live in a police state where everything must be thoroughly inspected to the source code level or in a commie country where everyone has to "spill the beans" before releasing everything, thus achieving a level playing field by force under the promise that someone will review the code.
If that means that some bad actions will be caught post-release, that's a risk I am willing to take. As long as there is regulation that makes prosecution and penalties possible.
You are free to rip out the upholstery of a car just like you can put a firmware in a hex editor or disassembler. But the manufacturer doesn't have to make it easy for you by providing schematics and making sure everything will be in easy reach and the process will be non-destructive.
VW cheated and paid a hefty fine and people were put behind bars (or in house arrest). That's how regulation works. Compare with: "no regulations everything provided AS-IS but with source code and the 1% of nerds who know how to flash a firmware can take it from there". Source code availability is not proof customer and privacy rights are respected (as Canonical Ltd has shown).
BTW go ahead and tell me how you are going to prove in court that the developers didn't work using the source code that was made available. You cannot produce a definition of what is obfuscated that doesn't include some of the FSF's osn GCC source code for example.
Enough with the fetishization of source code. Software needs to be delivered in a way that works and respects the customer out of the box.
Then you have better luck than me, I guess. I chose connecting flight four times and I had delays on two of them. One time in Frankfurt my flight to Athens got rescheduled for next morning at 6:30AM, which meant I had to go to a hotel, wake up in the middle of the night and pass baggage check again, the other time in Zurich I got rescheduled to arrive in London past midnight. The A380 was designed to serve the beautiful hub-and-spoke model that is responsible for messed up flights like these.
No, but I expect Athens to Manchester without having to use Frankfurt or Munich as a hub. Which is btw a flight that EasyJet offers. The A380 was designed with the assumption the regulated "flag-carrier" airlines will keep reigning supreme and that hubs like the ones I mentioned will become increasingly congested. What actually happened is that increased competition in the market from non-"flag-carrier" airlines provided travelers with ability to choose, and they are not choosing hub-and-spoke unless they have to. So airplanes designed to serve the hub-and-spoke model are not selling remotely as well as expected. Which is good news IMO.
We can make fun of RMS period. Because he deserves it. When you buy a car you don't rip the upholstery to see if there are any hidden microphones underneath. You trust the manufacturer thar any such device would have been disclosed and there are regulations to make sure this holds true. You also don't demand to examine the ECU software for any code designed to kill you on purpose while driving. You trust there is regulation against this.. The software problems of the world will not be solved by demanding source codes and unlocked bootloaders, they will be solved by regulation protecting customer rights. To prove to you I am right, let me ask a question: What is the legal definition of obfuscated source code? I mean something that can be used in court against a vendor providing obfuscated (and unexaminable) GPL source code?
Yes I think I read somewhere that Boeing expected the 747 to be primarily a freighter when supersonic transport would supposedly become a thing. It was an excellent passenger carrier too though.
The true idiocy with regards to the A380 was having no provision for it to be a freighter. Just like the Boeing 747 has, which still remains an excellent freighter.
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How about "non-commercial" support? Can I download the latest VLC on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr without having to recompile? I mean, can download VLC on an old Android 5.0.2 phone just fine, so it's not a "fragmentation" thing. Desktop Linux and the whole"repos" deal is just weird.
As Android has shown, "fragmentation" isn't a blocker to success as long as each distro runs the same apps. Desktop Linux distros don't do that, instead apps have to be packaged per distro, per release. And that's the problem.
For the nit-pickers: When i said "blasting air downwards" I meant "blasting gases downwards"
Oh god please no. Since the only way we humans can make things fly is either by blasting air downwards (think Harrier jet) or by making something that looks like a helicopter or an airplane, any flying taxi (big enough to fit a human) would mean unacceptable levels of noise pollution in cities and even in suburbs. Imagine having a helicopter landing several feet from your window while trying to sleep.
It makes it easy for family shots without having to ask for strangers to take your photo and it's convenient for video conferencing
This. Thank you The Android sandboxing that prevents a random application from making deep modifications to the OS or from accessing privileged information is the exact same sandboxing that prevents antivirus software from being able to scan the deeper operating system. Think of Android as a non-admin Windows session where UAC prompts fail by default or a sudo-less Desktop Linux session. There is no way you can install a antivirus from that session. Most of these Android "AVs" just fetch a list of installed software (using the appropriate OS APIs) and compare against a blacklist, charging an obscene mark up for the "service". Which BTW the Play Store also does for free on GMS-enabled phones. Android AVs are a scam
Source?
Still, good luck convincing Joe that an ultrabook should revert to running like a 386, when someone else (be it Via or some Chinese company, if both Intel and AMD hypothetically agree to not use speculative execution or use it in significantly diminished capability) offers the performance Joe has come to expect or close to it. Which begs the question, should the government regulate on such things?
Calm your horses. When they mean "roll out to the cities" they mean set up some glorified WiGig hotspots in some central spots, which is what mmWave 5G is. mmWave 5G makes no sense outside dense urban centers. The other 5G, the one which will be an improvement to 4G and operates at lower frequency bands, will take some time to be fully rolled out due to network upgrade costs.
But until that happens they just have to... sell slower hardware? Good luck explaining to Joe at Best Buy why his new laptop will be slower than the one he has (despite similar form factor and thickness) because something called "vulnerabilities".
Then the hypervisor might have a bug.
Well the hardware implementation was buggy, so you can bypass it after all. And since you cannot patch hardware (unless the patch is disabling speculative execution altogether and making all the affected hardware much slower) people try to find all kinds of workarounds to mitigate the issue.
Not to mention emojis render differently on different platforms or versions of platforms. If I send an icon of a water pistol from a new phone it might appear as a gun on an older phone. Did I just made a death threat? The emoji name is actually "gun" but many platforms render it as a water pistol in their latest versions because public relations by vendors. As other people mentioned, the English language is getting cryptic and pictographic. Someone should try putting emojis in an EULA, let's see how they interpret this (this should show the pitfalls of using freeform text on contracts)
How can you even prove the tool exists? I 'd make sure the commits don't happen by the people using the tool.
My point is that you can't prove what is the prefered form unless every programmer is called under oath (which makes as much sense as calling every employee of VW to oath they aren't cheating emissions). And even then you get into arguments like what "prefered" is. I would personally have at lease one programmer pretending to work on the obfuscated source code and make nonsensical harmless changes so I can then claim that's the "preferred" form.
Because then you 'd have to prove the tool exists.
If I create an "auto-de-obfuscator" tool that uses internal maps for variable names (converting two-letter variables to their real name) when opening a file and an auto-minifier (that obfuscates the code again) when pressing save, I am working in the prefered form of a work?
Oh please, you can't have half the people in a country inspect the other half. In order to inspect VW's code, you need to have another team with every knowledge the first team has to properly inspect the first team's work. Then there is the question who controls and funds the second team and what their ultimate motives are. The various embarrassing security vulnerabilities in open source software (such as heartbleed) show there is no mythical million-man army that vigorously inspects other people's free open source code (people who inspect other people's free open source code exist but their numbers and importance are grossly overestimated). I 'd rather not live in a police state where everything must be thoroughly inspected to the source code level or in a commie country where everyone has to "spill the beans" before releasing everything, thus achieving a level playing field by force under the promise that someone will review the code. If that means that some bad actions will be caught post-release, that's a risk I am willing to take. As long as there is regulation that makes prosecution and penalties possible.
You are free to rip out the upholstery of a car just like you can put a firmware in a hex editor or disassembler. But the manufacturer doesn't have to make it easy for you by providing schematics and making sure everything will be in easy reach and the process will be non-destructive. VW cheated and paid a hefty fine and people were put behind bars (or in house arrest). That's how regulation works. Compare with: "no regulations everything provided AS-IS but with source code and the 1% of nerds who know how to flash a firmware can take it from there". Source code availability is not proof customer and privacy rights are respected (as Canonical Ltd has shown). BTW go ahead and tell me how you are going to prove in court that the developers didn't work using the source code that was made available. You cannot produce a definition of what is obfuscated that doesn't include some of the FSF's osn GCC source code for example. Enough with the fetishization of source code. Software needs to be delivered in a way that works and respects the customer out of the box.
Then you have better luck than me, I guess. I chose connecting flight four times and I had delays on two of them. One time in Frankfurt my flight to Athens got rescheduled for next morning at 6:30AM, which meant I had to go to a hotel, wake up in the middle of the night and pass baggage check again, the other time in Zurich I got rescheduled to arrive in London past midnight. The A380 was designed to serve the beautiful hub-and-spoke model that is responsible for messed up flights like these.
No, but I expect Athens to Manchester without having to use Frankfurt or Munich as a hub. Which is btw a flight that EasyJet offers. The A380 was designed with the assumption the regulated "flag-carrier" airlines will keep reigning supreme and that hubs like the ones I mentioned will become increasingly congested. What actually happened is that increased competition in the market from non-"flag-carrier" airlines provided travelers with ability to choose, and they are not choosing hub-and-spoke unless they have to. So airplanes designed to serve the hub-and-spoke model are not selling remotely as well as expected. Which is good news IMO.
We can make fun of RMS period. Because he deserves it. When you buy a car you don't rip the upholstery to see if there are any hidden microphones underneath. You trust the manufacturer thar any such device would have been disclosed and there are regulations to make sure this holds true. You also don't demand to examine the ECU software for any code designed to kill you on purpose while driving. You trust there is regulation against this.. The software problems of the world will not be solved by demanding source codes and unlocked bootloaders, they will be solved by regulation protecting customer rights. To prove to you I am right, let me ask a question: What is the legal definition of obfuscated source code? I mean something that can be used in court against a vendor providing obfuscated (and unexaminable) GPL source code?
Yes I think I read somewhere that Boeing expected the 747 to be primarily a freighter when supersonic transport would supposedly become a thing. It was an excellent passenger carrier too though.
It was a 4-hour delay. You can't plan for random delay.
The true idiocy with regards to the A380 was having no provision for it to be a freighter. Just like the Boeing 747 has, which still remains an excellent freighter.