You ARE stealing, because you are not paying the artists the monetary compensation owed to them. You're stealing their money. This is so plainly obvious and yet conveniently ignored.
And how does this fit into how you understand open source? It's still copyrighted, but I give you a copy of my source code for free under an open source license. Does that mean that if you claim it as your own, you're not stealing, because there was no monetary compensation?
People should always clarify whether they mean terms like "steal" in a legal context, in an ethical context, or simply in a common meaning context.
Even Unstable is out of date. For example, Gnome 2.2, SodiPodi 0.31, OpenOffice 1.0
I feel like I'm being trolled.. but ok. OpenOffice 1.1 has been in unstable for ages, where have you been? Sodipodi 0.32.uus.20031012 is in unstable.
As for GNOME, they were holding back on 2.4 to make sure that GNOME 2.2 made it all the way into testing, because the next release (sarge) is theoretically being attempted this year. Debian is like everything else; furious development slows down as releases draw near, because people want to make sure particular features/fixes make it into the next release without being broken.
Anyway, they succeeded, GNOME 2.2 entered testing and now 2.4 is in unstable.
Re:Again, you are speaking...
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Does C# Measure Up?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
But what if app A doesn't use but 1 function in library A? And, app B only uses 1 other function from library A?
This is why Linux pages things in on demand. It doesn't read the whole library and load it into physical memory. The library is conceptually mapped into your address space, when you try to access a function foo(), if foo() is in a page that isn't currently loaded in physical RAM, the OS gets a page fault, and that page will be loaded.
Just because you're linked against libc, that doesn't mean you're physically loading every string function into RAM when your program runs. The granularity you're talking about probably isn't worth the gain in extra complexity.
The fact that Linux is always an "alternative" to Windows is in my opinion, just furthering the saying that "Linux is for people that hate Windows, BSD is for people that love UNIX".
And posts like that just further the idea that BSD is for people who hate Linux:)
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with the fact some users came to Linux after being frustrated with Windows and hearing about it. Now they may not love Linux, but they like it better than Windows. Much like systems of government, and mail clients... all OSs suck. Unix just sucks less than all the others;)
One thing that particularly bugged me was Xander's poorly explained attack of cowardice in the wedding episode.
I didn't feel it was poorly explained. Xander's home and family life has always been depicted throughout the show as being awful, and his relatives a nightmare (who we got to see in that wedding ep, though rather a let-down).
In the wedding episode, Xander is shown a graphic depiction of the future, and how he might treat Anya. It's an awful vision of how he might end up, given his family history. The big event of the episode of the episode is that Xander fears this enough to call off the wedding, even though he has found out the vision isn't real. The problem for him is that he feels it could come true, and he'd rather not get married than end up treating Anya like that. Seeing your fears made graphic is much worse than just a vague fear - that vision made it materialise, for better or worse.
(cd/Programs/XFree86/4.3.. oh look, everything X installed.)
Well first of all, users don't generally care about where a program is, only whether they can start it. Settings are mostly in/etc which is a GOOD thing, it means config can be saved easily by backing up/etc, not files strewn all over the filesystem (the Windows registry has this same property, of course).
Anyawy: dpkg -L xserver-xfree86, oh look, everything X installed. (corresponding rpm command left as an exercise for the reader:)
All I care is that is the software in there or isn't it. And in this case, it wasn't. Other distros had them, Debian did not
Sounds like distro envy...:)
So the people who say that Unstable is cutting-edge, are simply wrong. Perhaps it would be closer to the truth is they said "Unstable is more or less current, unless some big and important packages are againg being held back indefinitely because they are implementing some changes".
That's a pointlessly high standard you're asking though: every piece of software must be the absolute latest, not even a single package that's 0.0.1 versions behind, or it's not "bleeding edge". Regardless, I don't think unstable is actually meant to be "bleeding edge", except compared to stable.
Of course, every other distro were also migrating to GCC3 back then, yet they were running the new software alot sooner than Debian was...
And were these distros trying to smooth the transition over so that packages with a pre-3.2 ABI could be parallel-installable with ones that used the post-3.2 C++ ABI? No, they weren't.
RH and Mandrake just recompile everything, make ISOs, point the users at them and say, "ok piggies, eat!". But you have to install basically _everything_ to upgrade. You're out of luck if you want newer versions of just 1 or 2 packages that require the gcc 3.2 ABI but don't want to change everything else just because of that one package.
That's a great benefit, but also causes its own challenges, which distros like RH and Mandrake don't have to worry about because their target userbase just wants to reboot, pop in a CD, and click "Upgrade"... a strong subset of that userbase just wanting to feel like l33t power-users who run the latest and greatest open software, but nevermind the spirit of that open software which wants to run on lots of arches.
I don't care if Unstable has YetAnotherApp0.05 whereas other distros still have YetAnotherApp0.04, if big and important packages are delayed. And Xfree and KDE are pretty damn big and important in my book!
Has it occurred to you that the maintainers may partly be more wary about uploading precisely because they are big and important packages?;)
Seriously though, it basically sounds as if you just don't care about Debian's goals. In which case, yes, Debian isn't the distro for you, just become a cool Gentoo user.
Re:At last, an up to date Debian
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Libranet 2.8 Review
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· Score: 2, Informative
Sorry, unstable/testing isn't really cutting edge either. It took 9 frigging months for Xfree 4.2 to appear in Unstable, and it took even longer for KDE3!
Yes, and that's where you lack the background context about why the above 2 things took a long time.
Incidentally, Debian is more unstable/cutting edge than you think. It has had gcc 3.2.3 pre-release versions for months, and the glibc maintainers seem to regularly do updates from CVS. The samba in unstable is 2.999alpha23. The new module utils for kernel 2.5 are already packaged for unstable as well... are you running 2.5?
The thing is that Debian is a de-facto portability test for XFree86, because Debian releases on over 10 architectures. The maintainer for the XFree86 packages doesn't package newer versions until he has them working on all architectures, and this takes time. I do find it annoying, but a laudable goal (it's not like new versions of XFree86 really give me that much anyway).
As for KDE, this was delayed further because of the transition to gcc 3.2, which had yet another different and incompatible ABI to gcc 3.0. It was felt it wasn't worth putting KDE in, only to have to go through a painful packaging transition for 3.2. Instead, the KDE maintainers just opted to wait for the transition to start before they entered Debian.
See, just because some things are slower than you expected doesn't mean the rest of unstable isn't in fact quite up-to-date, maybe more than you'd like:)
If it is that easy, why no one is writing code for it? Is it making people less geeky if it is too simple for everyone to use?
Because the grandmas aren't programmers?:) Seriously, this is a normal thing, users don't always get what they want from software, whether it's Linux or Windows.
Frankly though I think he's right, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get a reasonable approximation of this feature, just by extending locate/updatedb.
Babylon 5 had a heavy story arc. Later, Deep Space 9 developed a story arc.
I think this is a silly thing to say. Sci-fi shows don't exist in a vacuum independent of other ones. Why are we talking as if no TV show previous to either of these had a story arc? Episodic story arcs are not some fancy invention of B5.
"Evolving" in this case seems to be endlessly adding extension after extension to the point that the extension protocol has become much more essential than the original protocol itself.
Right but "extension" and "core" protocol only mean much in terms of standardisation, and not as much in terms of implementation. You were talking about something different before, namely that things are in different processes and that you think this is ugly.
Conceptually, things being in different modules is good. Whether the different modules are multiple processes, libraries, or a single monolithic app is really just an implementation detail. As long as enough information is available so that each module can make the right decisions, it doesn't matter.
Not quite. She certainly tells it how she thinks it is, which is great. But I find she should consider more often that how she thinks it is (or should be) is an opinion, not incontrovertible fact.
And majority of the people who like Enterprise are a "new breed" (IMO) of Star Trek fans (such as myself) who have never seen Star Trek before, but like this series.
That's great for you, but consider the idea that people who have seen the other series are tired of seeing the same plotlines in yet another series, with the same flaws.
What is the difference between Core Team members keeping their plans secret and not allowing the public to participate, and Keith Packard keeping *his* plans secret and not letting the Core Team know about them...?
Simple. The difference is professionalism. The core team here is an organisation which Keith was a part of. It isn't professional to try to fork, solicit people to join and go behind your team's back, whilst still being a member of the team. The core team isn't professionally engaged in a joint project with me, and probably not with you either. They don't have a professional responsibility to work with me and keep members of the public such as you and I in the loop.
If Keith found his dissatisfactions with the core team irreconcilable, that's fine - it happens. He should resign from the team, and then fork and ask others if they'd like to join. That way it's above board, everyone knows where everyone else stands. Either you're a member of the team or you want to strike out on your own. But you shouldn't do both at once, it's a disservice and an unprofessional discourtesy to your fellow team members.
Some programs have a man page that just says "UNDOCUMENTED: this command does not have a man page." This is considered a bug. Debian developers have been known to write man pages for programs that don't have them.
Yep, there's plenty of manpages on my Debian box where it says, "This manpage was written by John Doe for the Debian sytem, but may be used by others."
Personally, I hate hate hate the info text browser.
Yes, there's many of us:) pinfo is an info viewer with slightly saner keybindings (more lynx-like).
Due to the fragmentation in the linux community i changed to FBSD for servers, yes. Cant have a community like that when it comes to the back room.
I don't see that it's particularly fragmented, at least any more than the various *BSDs are. The Linux distros just happen to use the same kernel;) Strong opinions don't mean that people won't simply pull in behind a particular solution.
And, much to my regret, I think most other systems including the open source and free software worlds (GNUStep excluded) are just blindly following, convinced that if they don't make UIs that work identically to Microsoft's, then nobody will be able to use it.
It's not that nobody will be able to use it, but nobody will bother trying to use it. It's hard enough convincing people to switch OSs in general, without trying to make the interface look and work similarly to what people are used to.
My problem in the parent post said, "well, at least it's not a security bug", as if security is more important than basic functionality.
Well, it seems a number of people have used it without problems, otherwise this would have been commented repeatedly by people in the original/. story regarding Moz 1.2 being released. From the sounds of it, it's not like DHTML is completely broken on all sites. I agree it's a very bad bug, and as the other poster said, they did pull it from the releases page after all, which means they think so too.
I appreciate what you're saying about functionality being required first, of course:) Mind you, security flaws are a more insidious thing. If you use Mozilla and some functionality fails, that's bad, but at least it's usually quite clear something's wrong... you can just not use the software (go back to previous version, etc).
Security flaws, however, mean that in the normal course of program use, someone can take advantage of it, quite possibly without you even knowing about it. Is it better that your car not start, or that it seems OK but the brakes don't work and you don't find out till you go over a hill? In that sense security flaws are worse because people will have a false sense of confidence.
If this were an IE bug, you'd never hear the end of it.
It's bad that this bug wasn't caught before the release - you'd think someone would have tried out a few DHTML sites, though I don't know the details. But at least it's not a security flaw, which we can be thankful for. That's what the last couple of IE bugs have been.
Successful examples of this type of show include Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths) and Xena, Warrior Princess (target market: Lesbians).
Um, I don't see how Buffy was targeted towards goths. I'm interested to see how you think it was.
how many sci-fi fans are going to get excited about watching a show called "Firefly"?
I think sci-fi fans are strong enough to recognise that content is more important than the name. No-one gets excited over the name "Star Trek" either, it's not an exciting name. If anything, it's the Emmy award voters that can't look past a show's name; there seems to be a reasonable recognition that Buffy is a great show with some great writing, but they can't bring themselves to give an award to a show with such a silly name, even though it's deliberate.
Because the issue was already brought up a long time ago; RMS is just bringing up an issue that has already been talked to death about.
Perhaps that's true, but it came up again recently on the list, after renewed controversy over the license. Note that I didn't comment about how it might be considered off-topic to the list (though really, one can't pretend that a kernel development list isn't allowed to discuss methods used in kernel development).
RMS (and anyone else) doesn't need to be an authority on kernel development to have a valid and potentially useful opinion on the BitKeeper license. I don't need to be an expert on streaming compression algorithms/codecs and human sensory organs to think that the latest MS Media Player license is overly invasive and restrictive.
What in the fuck do things like ethics and morals have to do with software? How can a string of ones and zeros violate my rights or sense of decency? You seriously choose software based on ethics? Why not choose the best solution instead of imposing your pathetic human ideals on code?
Well sure, if you say so. But I can use that argument right back against you. If I follow that kind of reasoning, it also leads to me breaking all the licenses on commercial software too. No-one can tell me it's wrong, because what the heck do ethics and morals have to do with software? You can't tell me it's 'theft', because how can you steal 1s and 0s?
Hitler was also once on a crusade. So was Stalin, so were the Knights Templars, so is George W. Bush for that matter. Your point again? Idiot.
Ooh, them's fighting words. Only.. you completely miss the point. I'm admiring someone's belief in a cause, not necessarily the cause itself. Much like you can admire someone's shooting skills without admiring it if they decide to go on a rampage downtown. They're independent things, and you just failed to separate them, calling me an idiot into a bargain. Slashdot no-thinking strikes again.
I don't personally agree with many of the things RMS says, but he sure has guts and perseverance in spades. I don't know about you, but I know I wouldn't have the stamina to pursue a goal against the establishment the way he has for so many years. When you can do the same, come back and I'll admire you for it too. Until then, think a bit next time before posting.
I preface this by saying that I'm a big fan and proponent of open source but anyhow...
If free software really is better...
And instantly you've proven RMS right, by mixing up 'free software' and 'open source software' in your post, you give ammunition to his assertion that 'open source' dilutes the message of the FSF about free software.
The point of the free software movement is that it should be completely free for users to copy, modify and distribute, which is what the GPL tries to ensure. This is an ethical point - RMS believes that this freedom is a right, and that benefits flow from this right.
The point of the open source movement is that opening the source is a better development model, faster bug fixes, the ability for third parties and users to make patches, and better security,
If you read RMS' comments carefully, he never emphasises the open development of software as being the prime goal. Instead, he always emphasises that it's free(dom) software. RMS is someone who is genuinely on a crusade for what he thinks is right, and that's something to be respected. Steadfast belief and effort in a cause considered worthy is something to be respected and admired, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with him. Heck, at least he's not a religious nut who thinks unbelievers should be killed.
Second Linux is not his project, and he is not managing it. Torvalds has expressed his opinions on the Free Software movement. He doesn't believe in Free Software as an all important political idea, thus he has not don anything wrong by using Bitkeeper. Torvalds chose Bitkeeper, and that's what the project uses. Period.
But how is this relevant? For example, Windows isn't our product, and neither was Blender, nor Qt, nor many other things. Yet people seem to be quite happy to have opinions on the development and licensing of those pieces of software. Why can't RMS have an opinion on the development software used by the kernel? I can disagree with Linus any time I like if I think he's wrong, and RMS damn well can too.
All these people saying 'write something better' are also somewhat missing the point if you ask me. Of course that would be a solution to the problem, but it just means that those people aren't as strong about the free(dom) software ideal as RMS is. They would prefer to use a free tool, but are willing to use BitKeeper - RMS would never do that, and that's the key difference.
People saying 'write me something better' are basically taking the lazy way out; 'if you write me something better, then I can feel better about my decision as being the best on both a technical and ethical level'. Yet what good are ethics and morals if you always want somebody else to make them easy for you? The whole point of morals is about making the right choices, not the easiest or most convenient ones.
Slashdot Mirror
You ARE stealing, because you are not paying the artists the monetary compensation owed to them. You're stealing their money. This is so plainly obvious and yet conveniently ignored.
And how does this fit into how you understand open source? It's still copyrighted, but I give you a copy of my source code for free under an open source license. Does that mean that if you claim it as your own, you're not stealing, because there was no monetary compensation?
People should always clarify whether they mean terms like "steal" in a legal context, in an ethical context, or simply in a common meaning context.
Even Unstable is out of date. For example, Gnome 2.2, SodiPodi 0.31, OpenOffice 1.0
I feel like I'm being trolled.. but ok. OpenOffice 1.1 has been in unstable for ages, where have you been? Sodipodi 0.32.uus.20031012 is in unstable.
As for GNOME, they were holding back on 2.4 to make sure that GNOME 2.2 made it all the way into testing, because the next release (sarge) is theoretically being attempted this year. Debian is like everything else; furious development slows down as releases draw near, because people want to make sure particular features/fixes make it into the next release without being broken.
Anyway, they succeeded, GNOME 2.2 entered testing and now 2.4 is in unstable.
But what if app A doesn't use but 1 function in library A? And, app B only uses 1 other function from library A?
This is why Linux pages things in on demand. It doesn't read the whole library and load it into physical memory. The library is conceptually mapped into your address space, when you try to access a function foo(), if foo() is in a page that isn't currently loaded in physical RAM, the OS gets a page fault, and that page will be loaded.
Just because you're linked against libc, that doesn't mean you're physically loading every string function into RAM when your program runs. The granularity you're talking about probably isn't worth the gain in extra complexity.
The fact that Linux is always an "alternative" to Windows is in my opinion, just furthering the saying that "Linux is for people that hate Windows, BSD is for people that love UNIX".
:)
;)
And posts like that just further the idea that BSD is for people who hate Linux
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with the fact some users came to Linux after being frustrated with Windows and hearing about it. Now they may not love Linux, but they like it better than Windows. Much like systems of government, and mail clients... all OSs suck. Unix just sucks less than all the others
One thing that particularly bugged me was Xander's poorly explained attack of cowardice in the wedding episode.
I didn't feel it was poorly explained. Xander's home and family life has always been depicted throughout the show as being awful, and his relatives a nightmare (who we got to see in that wedding ep, though rather a let-down).
In the wedding episode, Xander is shown a graphic depiction of the future, and how he might treat Anya. It's an awful vision of how he might end up, given his family history. The big event of the episode of the episode is that Xander fears this enough to call off the wedding, even though he has found out the vision isn't real. The problem for him is that he feels it could come true, and he'd rather not get married than end up treating Anya like that. Seeing your fears made graphic is much worse than just a vague fear - that vision made it materialise, for better or worse.
(cd /Programs/XFree86/4.3 .. oh look, everything X installed.)
/etc which is a GOOD thing, it means config can be saved easily by backing up /etc, not files strewn all over the filesystem (the Windows registry has this same property, of course).
:)
Well first of all, users don't generally care about where a program is, only whether they can start it. Settings are mostly in
Anyawy: dpkg -L xserver-xfree86, oh look, everything X installed. (corresponding rpm command left as an exercise for the reader
All I care is that is the software in there or isn't it. And in this case, it wasn't. Other distros had them, Debian did not
:)
;)
Sounds like distro envy...
So the people who say that Unstable is cutting-edge, are simply wrong. Perhaps it would be closer to the truth is they said "Unstable is more or less current, unless some big and important packages are againg being held back indefinitely because they are implementing some changes".
That's a pointlessly high standard you're asking though: every piece of software must be the absolute latest, not even a single package that's 0.0.1 versions behind, or it's not "bleeding edge". Regardless, I don't think unstable is actually meant to be "bleeding edge", except compared to stable.
Of course, every other distro were also migrating to GCC3 back then, yet they were running the new software alot sooner than Debian was...
And were these distros trying to smooth the transition over so that packages with a pre-3.2 ABI could be parallel-installable with ones that used the post-3.2 C++ ABI? No, they weren't.
RH and Mandrake just recompile everything, make ISOs, point the users at them and say, "ok piggies, eat!". But you have to install basically _everything_ to upgrade. You're out of luck if you want newer versions of just 1 or 2 packages that require the gcc 3.2 ABI but don't want to change everything else just because of that one package.
That's a great benefit, but also causes its own challenges, which distros like RH and Mandrake don't have to worry about because their target userbase just wants to reboot, pop in a CD, and click "Upgrade"... a strong subset of that userbase just wanting to feel like l33t power-users who run the latest and greatest open software, but nevermind the spirit of that open software which wants to run on lots of arches.
I don't care if Unstable has YetAnotherApp0.05 whereas other distros still have YetAnotherApp0.04, if big and important packages are delayed. And Xfree and KDE are pretty damn big and important in my book!
Has it occurred to you that the maintainers may partly be more wary about uploading precisely because they are big and important packages?
Seriously though, it basically sounds as if you just don't care about Debian's goals. In which case, yes, Debian isn't the distro for you, just become a cool Gentoo user.
Sorry, unstable/testing isn't really cutting edge either. It took 9 frigging months for Xfree 4.2 to appear in Unstable, and it took even longer for KDE3!
:)
Yes, and that's where you lack the background context about why the above 2 things took a long time.
Incidentally, Debian is more unstable/cutting edge than you think. It has had gcc 3.2.3 pre-release versions for months, and the glibc maintainers seem to regularly do updates from CVS. The samba in unstable is 2.999alpha23. The new module utils for kernel 2.5 are already packaged for unstable as well... are you running 2.5?
The thing is that Debian is a de-facto portability test for XFree86, because Debian releases on over 10 architectures. The maintainer for the XFree86 packages doesn't package newer versions until he has them working on all architectures, and this takes time. I do find it annoying, but a laudable goal (it's not like new versions of XFree86 really give me that much anyway).
As for KDE, this was delayed further because of the transition to gcc 3.2, which had yet another different and incompatible ABI to gcc 3.0. It was felt it wasn't worth putting KDE in, only to have to go through a painful packaging transition for 3.2. Instead, the KDE maintainers just opted to wait for the transition to start before they entered Debian.
See, just because some things are slower than you expected doesn't mean the rest of unstable isn't in fact quite up-to-date, maybe more than you'd like
If it is that easy, why no one is writing code for it? Is it making people less geeky if it is too simple for everyone to use?
:) Seriously, this is a normal thing, users don't always get what they want from software, whether it's Linux or Windows.
Because the grandmas aren't programmers?
Frankly though I think he's right, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get a reasonable approximation of this feature, just by extending locate/updatedb.
Babylon 5 had a heavy story arc. Later, Deep Space 9 developed a story arc.
I think this is a silly thing to say. Sci-fi shows don't exist in a vacuum independent of other ones. Why are we talking as if no TV show previous to either of these had a story arc? Episodic story arcs are not some fancy invention of B5.
"Evolving" in this case seems to be endlessly adding extension after extension to the point that the extension protocol has become much more essential than the original protocol itself.
Right but "extension" and "core" protocol only mean much in terms of standardisation, and not as much in terms of implementation. You were talking about something different before, namely that things are in different processes and that you think this is ugly.
Conceptually, things being in different modules is good. Whether the different modules are multiple processes, libraries, or a single monolithic app is really just an implementation detail. As long as enough information is available so that each module can make the right decisions, it doesn't matter.
On the contrary. She just tells it like it is.
Not quite. She certainly tells it how she thinks it is, which is great. But I find she should consider more often that how she thinks it is (or should be) is an opinion, not incontrovertible fact.
And majority of the people who like Enterprise are a "new breed" (IMO) of Star Trek fans (such as myself) who have never seen Star Trek before, but like this series.
That's great for you, but consider the idea that people who have seen the other series are tired of seeing the same plotlines in yet another series, with the same flaws.
Well rather than meta-moderate, I'll answer this.
What is the difference between Core Team members keeping their plans secret and not allowing the public to participate, and Keith Packard keeping *his* plans secret and not letting the Core Team know about them...?
Simple. The difference is professionalism. The core team here is an organisation which Keith was a part of. It isn't professional to try to fork, solicit people to join and go behind your team's back, whilst still being a member of the team. The core team isn't professionally engaged in a joint project with me, and probably not with you either. They don't have a professional responsibility to work with me and keep members of the public such as you and I in the loop.
If Keith found his dissatisfactions with the core team irreconcilable, that's fine - it happens. He should resign from the team, and then fork and ask others if they'd like to join. That way it's above board, everyone knows where everyone else stands. Either you're a member of the team or you want to strike out on your own. But you shouldn't do both at once, it's a disservice and an unprofessional discourtesy to your fellow team members.
Some programs have a man page that just says "UNDOCUMENTED: this command does not have a man page." This is considered a bug. Debian developers have been known to write man pages for programs that don't have them.
:) pinfo is an info viewer with slightly saner keybindings (more lynx-like).
Yep, there's plenty of manpages on my Debian box where it says, "This manpage was written by John Doe for the Debian sytem, but may be used by others."
Personally, I hate hate hate the info text browser.
Yes, there's many of us
Due to the fragmentation in the linux community i changed to FBSD for servers, yes. Cant have a community like that when it comes to the back room.
;) Strong opinions don't mean that people won't simply pull in behind a particular solution.
I don't see that it's particularly fragmented, at least any more than the various *BSDs are. The Linux distros just happen to use the same kernel
And, much to my regret, I think most other systems including the open source and free software worlds (GNUStep excluded) are just blindly following, convinced that if they don't make UIs that work identically to Microsoft's, then nobody will be able to use it.
It's not that nobody will be able to use it, but nobody will bother trying to use it. It's hard enough convincing people to switch OSs in general, without trying to make the interface look and work similarly to what people are used to.
My problem in the parent post said, "well, at least it's not a security bug", as if security is more important than basic functionality.
/. story regarding Moz 1.2 being released. From the sounds of it, it's not like DHTML is completely broken on all sites. I agree it's a very bad bug, and as the other poster said, they did pull it from the releases page after all, which means they think so too.
:) Mind you, security flaws are a more insidious thing. If you use Mozilla and some functionality fails, that's bad, but at least it's usually quite clear something's wrong... you can just not use the software (go back to previous version, etc).
Well, it seems a number of people have used it without problems, otherwise this would have been commented repeatedly by people in the original
I appreciate what you're saying about functionality being required first, of course
Security flaws, however, mean that in the normal course of program use, someone can take advantage of it, quite possibly without you even knowing about it. Is it better that your car not start, or that it seems OK but the brakes don't work and you don't find out till you go over a hill? In that sense security flaws are worse because people will have a false sense of confidence.
They would never admit this was a bug.
Sure it is.
If this were an IE bug, you'd never hear the end of it.
It's bad that this bug wasn't caught before the release - you'd think someone would have tried out a few DHTML sites, though I don't know the details. But at least it's not a security flaw, which we can be thankful for. That's what the last couple of IE bugs have been.
Successful examples of this type of show include Buffy The Vampire Slayer (target market: Goths) and Xena, Warrior Princess (target market: Lesbians).
Um, I don't see how Buffy was targeted towards goths. I'm interested to see how you think it was.
how many sci-fi fans are going to get excited about watching a show called "Firefly"?
I think sci-fi fans are strong enough to recognise that content is more important than the name. No-one gets excited over the name "Star Trek" either, it's not an exciting name. If anything, it's the Emmy award voters that can't look past a show's name; there seems to be a reasonable recognition that Buffy is a great show with some great writing, but they can't bring themselves to give an award to a show with such a silly name, even though it's deliberate.
Because the issue was already brought up a long time ago; RMS is just bringing up an issue that has already been talked to death about.
Perhaps that's true, but it came up again recently on the list, after renewed controversy over the license. Note that I didn't comment about how it might be considered off-topic to the list (though really, one can't pretend that a kernel development list isn't allowed to discuss methods used in kernel development).
RMS (and anyone else) doesn't need to be an authority on kernel development to have a valid and potentially useful opinion on the BitKeeper license. I don't need to be an expert on streaming compression algorithms/codecs and human sensory organs to think that the latest MS Media Player license is overly invasive and restrictive.
What in the fuck do things like ethics and morals have to do with software? How can a string of ones and zeros violate my rights or sense of decency? You seriously choose software based on ethics? Why not choose the best solution instead of imposing your pathetic human ideals on code?
Well sure, if you say so. But I can use that argument right back against you. If I follow that kind of reasoning, it also leads to me breaking all the licenses on commercial software too. No-one can tell me it's wrong, because what the heck do ethics and morals have to do with software? You can't tell me it's 'theft', because how can you steal 1s and 0s?
Hitler was also once on a crusade. So was Stalin, so were the Knights Templars, so is George W. Bush for that matter. Your point again? Idiot.
Ooh, them's fighting words. Only.. you completely miss the point. I'm admiring someone's belief in a cause, not necessarily the cause itself. Much like you can admire someone's shooting skills without admiring it if they decide to go on a rampage downtown. They're independent things, and you just failed to separate them, calling me an idiot into a bargain. Slashdot no-thinking strikes again.
I don't personally agree with many of the things RMS says, but he sure has guts and perseverance in spades. I don't know about you, but I know I wouldn't have the stamina to pursue a goal against the establishment the way he has for so many years. When you can do the same, come back and I'll admire you for it too. Until then, think a bit next time before posting.
I preface this by saying that I'm a big fan and proponent of open source but anyhow...
If free software really is better...
And instantly you've proven RMS right, by mixing up 'free software' and 'open source software' in your post, you give ammunition to his assertion that 'open source' dilutes the message of the FSF about free software.
The point of the free software movement is that it should be completely free for users to copy, modify and distribute, which is what the GPL tries to ensure. This is an ethical point - RMS believes that this freedom is a right, and that benefits flow from this right.
The point of the open source movement is that opening the source is a better development model, faster bug fixes, the ability for third parties and users to make patches, and better security,
If you read RMS' comments carefully, he never emphasises the open development of software as being the prime goal. Instead, he always emphasises that it's free(dom) software. RMS is someone who is genuinely on a crusade for what he thinks is right, and that's something to be respected. Steadfast belief and effort in a cause considered worthy is something to be respected and admired, regardless of whether you agree or disagree with him. Heck, at least he's not a religious nut who thinks unbelievers should be killed.
Second Linux is not his project, and he is not managing it. Torvalds has expressed his opinions on the Free Software movement. He doesn't believe in Free Software as an all important political idea, thus he has not don anything wrong by using Bitkeeper. Torvalds chose Bitkeeper, and that's what the project uses. Period.
But how is this relevant? For example, Windows isn't our product, and neither was Blender, nor Qt, nor many other things. Yet people seem to be quite happy to have opinions on the development and licensing of those pieces of software. Why can't RMS have an opinion on the development software used by the kernel? I can disagree with Linus any time I like if I think he's wrong, and RMS damn well can too.
All these people saying 'write something better' are also somewhat missing the point if you ask me. Of course that would be a solution to the problem, but it just means that those people aren't as strong about the free(dom) software ideal as RMS is. They would prefer to use a free tool, but are willing to use BitKeeper - RMS would never do that, and that's the key difference.
People saying 'write me something better' are basically taking the lazy way out; 'if you write me something better, then I can feel better about my decision as being the best on both a technical and ethical level'. Yet what good are ethics and morals if you always want somebody else to make them easy for you? The whole point of morals is about making the right choices, not the easiest or most convenient ones.