I wasn't referring to sex-slaves or child prostitution.
But surely if law enforcement systematically went right down the ads in craigslist arresting each woman, it would have a major effect on discouraging the ads. I don't believe that law enforcement has taken that approach but if you have some evidence to the contrary I'm willing to be corrected.
Campaign finance laws have been challenged on the basis that contributing money to a campaign is an exercise in free speech.
Couldn't a guy arrested for soliciting a prostitute claim that he was merely exercising his first amendment rights to express his belief that paying for sex is not a crime?
The truth is despite all their "concern" about craigslist, law enforcement isn't really interested in any major effort to investigate and prosecute prostitutes, they just want to hide it.
That developers who embraced an OS that is designed with the idea that "everything is a file" prefer an approach of treating a network resource as a file.
I think some people use socket-like API's in embedded systems because they're used to it from Unix, not because it's really needed.
Those of us who did our first professional programming in embedded systems (and thus have no general purpose OS legacy bias) are more likely to see embedded APIs as code bloat. Of course embedded resources are so cheap today that code bloat doesn't matter that much. In addition, if the "embedded system" is really a scaled-down general purpose computer, than APIs are useful for the same reason they are in desktop and server systems.
You don't try to retain workers out of consideration for them, you do it for the good of your company.
Hiring people is very expensive, so terminating someone should be vetted as carefully as hiring them. Without a good policy in place, a bad manager can run amok in a company.
Product quality isn't an aspect of a particular company or a particular individual. Quality is an aspect that is specific to a product. The only way to determine product quality is to inspect and test it, not to rely on ISO certification or an individual's license.
"Only in software is it accepted that you can put a product out there that does not work as advertised."
Look at microwave ovens. Do they advertise that they don't know how long a particular item will take to cook? Do they advertise that it matters where you place the item in the oven?
There are plenty of non-software products that work only "good enough".
The problem with this theory is that MS isn't legally responsible for malware unless it writes it. It's no different than trying to sue FSF because your job was eliminated due to no-cost software.
Both open source and closed source software typically include non-warranty clauses. If a new law were passed to void those clauses, it would affect both types.
Thanks for the historical perspective. I think a number of Unix features that younger folks use as evidence of its greatness were actually tied to the limitations of the era.
For example, a CLI while quite useful wasn't chosen for Unix because the creators thought it was better than a GUI, but rather because it was the only feasible choice.
Currently netbooks are just scaled-down notebooks that either run Linux or Windows XP home. Recreating this on ARM is problematic.
On the other hand, if netbook is just a browser appliance (which better matches the name), than all you need to develop worst case is just a web browser and a network stack.
"Now all we need is for computers to be able to literally self-destruct, short circuit and cause property damage, perhaps burn a house down. That is what it is going to take for people to take security seriously."
Perhaps you should just nuke the entire planet? That would take care of all the things that annoy you.
"But if the trojan hoses the host PC along with all the family photographs and all the music they've paid good money for - ah, now that might actually make people realise that there's a problem."
Yes, people might call for increased penalties for malware authors.
"You're right but this is because computing has been dumbed down"
Yes, that's why you and I can afford our own computer - because "lusers" made mass manufacturing of computers economically feasible. If you don't like it, submit your punched cards to the clerk behind the glass.
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I wasn't referring to sex-slaves or child prostitution.
But surely if law enforcement systematically went right down the ads in craigslist arresting each woman, it would have a major effect on discouraging the ads. I don't believe that law enforcement has taken that approach but if you have some evidence to the contrary I'm willing to be corrected.
Campaign finance laws have been challenged on the basis that contributing money to a campaign is an exercise in free speech.
Couldn't a guy arrested for soliciting a prostitute claim that he was merely exercising his first amendment rights to express his belief that paying for sex is not a crime?
If the authorities were really enforcing the law they'd be going down the list of women from craigslist and arresting them.
They're not really interested in preventing or even reducing prostitution, they just want to find a scapegoat to take the heat off of themselves.
The truth is despite all their "concern" about craigslist, law enforcement isn't really interested in any major effort to investigate and prosecute prostitutes, they just want to hide it.
"It's a tossup as to who came up with this idea first."
Probably just some unknown average person with an interesting idea.
That developers who embraced an OS that is designed with the idea that "everything is a file" prefer an approach of treating a network resource as a file.
I think some people use socket-like API's in embedded systems because they're used to it from Unix, not because it's really needed.
Those of us who did our first professional programming in embedded systems (and thus have no general purpose OS legacy bias) are more likely to see embedded APIs as code bloat. Of course embedded resources are so cheap today that code bloat doesn't matter that much. In addition, if the "embedded system" is really a scaled-down general purpose computer, than APIs are useful for the same reason they are in desktop and server systems.
You don't try to retain workers out of consideration for them, you do it for the good of your company.
Hiring people is very expensive, so terminating someone should be vetted as carefully as hiring them. Without a good policy in place, a bad manager can run amok in a company.
Good senior developers would try to work with the developer to improve his performance rather than trying to get him fired.
Since when do developers fire anyone?
I don't know about "devlopers", but real developers use whatever OS they need to get the job done.
Sure, if they wanted it be a License they would have chosen an acronym with an "L" in it instead of a "C" .. oh wait.
Actually MS called their language J++ not Java. Sun succeeded in killing Java on Windows although I'm not sure that was their intent.
Product quality isn't an aspect of a particular company or a particular individual. Quality is an aspect that is specific to a product. The only way to determine product quality is to inspect and test it, not to rely on ISO certification or an individual's license.
"Only in software is it accepted that you can put a product out there that does not work as advertised."
Look at microwave ovens. Do they advertise that they don't know how long a particular item will take to cook? Do they advertise that it matters where you place the item in the oven?
There are plenty of non-software products that work only "good enough".
The problem with this theory is that MS isn't legally responsible for malware unless it writes it. It's no different than trying to sue FSF because your job was eliminated due to no-cost software.
Unless the law is specifically limited to software that is sold, it would apply regardless. The GPL is just another license with no special immunity.
Both open source and closed source software typically include non-warranty clauses. If a new law were passed to void those clauses, it would affect both types.
Thanks for the historical perspective. I think a number of Unix features that younger folks use as evidence of its greatness were actually tied to the limitations of the era.
For example, a CLI while quite useful wasn't chosen for Unix because the creators thought it was better than a GUI, but rather because it was the only feasible choice.
Currently netbooks are just scaled-down notebooks that either run Linux or Windows XP home. Recreating this on ARM is problematic.
On the other hand, if netbook is just a browser appliance (which better matches the name), than all you need to develop worst case is just a web browser and a network stack.
Oracle creating a new hardware platform would potentially hurt Dell and HP more than Microsoft.
I doubt that there's all that many hardware engineers left at Sun these days. In any case, qualified hardware engineers aren't that hard to find.
".. it was widely assumed that Oracle was interested only in Sun's software technology ..."
Java is open source, so there's not much reason to buy it. What other Sun software technology would Oracle want?
"Now all we need is for computers to be able to literally self-destruct, short circuit and cause property damage, perhaps burn a house down. That is what it is going to take for people to take security seriously."
Perhaps you should just nuke the entire planet? That would take care of all the things that annoy you.
"But if the trojan hoses the host PC along with all the family photographs and all the music they've paid good money for - ah, now that might actually make people realise that there's a problem."
Yes, people might call for increased penalties for malware authors.
"You're right but this is because computing has been dumbed down"
Yes, that's why you and I can afford our own computer - because "lusers" made mass manufacturing of computers economically feasible. If you don't like it, submit your punched cards to the clerk behind the glass.