Nice troll. However, I hear idiocy like this a lot in Real Life, so for the record:
do you really expect the general public to accept free software let alone programmers?
Yes. A lot of people are using Firefox these days, and OpenOffice has been getting a lot of press.
But the story ends there - I for one, won't be spending my life without a job, contributing to free software
I make a lot of money writing Free software. My employer is the largest consumer of my work, but he has the wisdom to realize that other people can also use my work (which isn't directly related to the industry we work in) without any cost to him. Everybody wins!
The argument that one can 'modify' software or do custom jobs to make money is idiotic. Do you seriously think there is a market there?
My paycheck seems to imply exactly that.
Often, people claim that (as pointed out in 'The Magic Cauldron' by ESR) over 95% of software is not for sale (so called 'custom' jobs), but it is ridiculous to expect programmers to bank on the availability of such jobs, especially because they don't get much attention.
It's ridiculous for them to bank on 95% of the job market? That's not exactly restricting your employment opportunities.
I find Linus's view of OSS much more acceptable than those of the Stallman (GNU).
I'm sure you do. Of course, RMS believes in Free software and isn't particularly interested in OSS, so I doubt even he would argue with you.
For bonus points: name RMS's BitKeeper. You know, the time where he bet the farm on closed software and got bitten hard by the decision. Because if there isn't one, then it would mean that his ideals are a lot more pragmatic and long-term than Linus's.
I received nothing from the police before or after the raid
I always like that part. I'm not sure what people are hoping for:
Police: We're going to raid your house today. Noon good for you?
Raidee: I'm moving some gear then. Would two be OK?
Police: Sure!
I ran a VERY popular macintosh serial # site and yeah, serial numbers are sort of a grey area as far as I was concerned (and so thought my ISP thought, as well).
The "black" area is that you were directly providing the means to circumvent copy restrictions, which sounds pretty solidly anti-DMCA to me. Out of curiosity, what was the diluting "white" area that made you think no one would mind? In other words, what were the legal justifications you were operating under?
vcrs (famous betamax decision) helped people carry out an illegal act.
For the record, VCRs also helped people carry out a legal act - timeshifting. Although they could be used for illegal purposes, that wasn't their primary (stated) purpose. That's what won Sony v. Universal.
I think BitTorrent itself compares more accurately to VCRs here - although it can be used for illegal stuff, it has many well-known completely legitimate uses. That probably drives the *AA nuts, since is makes it much harder to demonize.
Sadly, abusing the underprivileged and poor for medical reasons occurs more frequently than one would think. For example, in addidtion to drug testing, during surgical residencies, most of the interns learn new procedures on the homeless or poor that in the hospital.
You're full of shit. First, what's a surgical residency? Are you limiting it to just general (mostly abdominal) surgery? Do would-be cardiologists only treat poor people? What about plastic surgeons - do they wait for ugly homeless people to come along to try hacking on them? Does anyone really think they turn budding ophthalmologists loose with an excimer laser and an obsidian flake to see if they can pull off a LASIK without blinding too many winos?
Residents have to learn techniques somehow, and they are inevitably going to deliever sub-par results the first few times of doing something.
At most training hospitals, residents do procedures on whoever happens to walk through the door. It's not like there are separate rich/poor waiting rooms, with attending physicians drawing from one and wild-eyed incompetents dooming the other.
A more accurate version would be that residents try new techniques while being closely observed by about 10 different people, each eager to find fault and step in.
Ideas for solutions to this moral dilemma?
Step one: find a real dilemma, not some imaginary one. Step two: see step one.
Male high-functioning autistics (read: stereotypical computer nerd) outnumber females by somewhere between 2.3:1 and 4:1. Seems like nature dictated that there will be more hard-science major men than women.
Individuals vary considerably, of course, but those statistics seems to correlate rather well.
I'm a dovark user for quite some time, and wouldnt mind changing layout if colemak were better.
So, what have I done?
Wrote 10 sentenses in english, and 10 sentences in portuguese (I'm brasilian). Long and toughfull ones.
After that, I typed all of them in both dvorak and colemak. It did not surprised me that colemak did not kept its promisses.
Your English is undoubtedly better than my Portuguese, but I doubt that your keyboard layout is the problem you should concentrate on solving.
I chose to ignore this warning and indeed the initial setup process failed because I needed to download a secure certificate which involved some IE/Moz specific capability apparently.
The good news: I just got a quad-Opteron motherboard.
The bad news: that wasn't really your bank.
Seriously, what kind of cheap SOBs won't spring for a Verisign cert for a freakin' banking website?
Considering that the administrator has nearly infinite means to access that data anyway (including hardware access and reading the raw disk device), I'm not entirely sure what the point of the limitation would be.
Care to explain that one? Go ahead: we're all ears.
A properly patched and configured Windows system is as safe as any Unix box
You truly believe that a Windows system can be as tight as a locked-down OpenBSD machine, let alone something like Trusted Solaris or TrustedBSD (funded in part by DARPA and the NSA)? Seriously?
The third possibility, and the one that I believe is most accurate is that the certification is meaningful and valid even with said vulnerability. One of the criteria required is not to be vulnerability free; if you read the common criteria specification you will not find, anywhere, that common criteria certified OSes are not allowed to have vulnerabilities
BS. Common Criteria claims to be a standard for computer security. Full stop. Regardless of how watered down they managed to make the full explanation, you and I both know that the certification's intent is to imply that tested products are secure. The fact that the fine print says, "well, not really secure, per se, but at least vulnerable in well-documented ways, plus maybe a few extra later" doesn't mean they should be allowed to parade this around to fool PHBs with a checklist.
Second, what he said was that MS bought the certification through bribery. And even if we were to accept your reasoning above (which is specious), that wouldn't be a fair conclusion; it could be far more likely that CC certification is meaningless than to think that MS bribed an independent certifier.
I agree: the most likely explanation is that CC is as worthless as we've all known it to be for years. Because if it's not, then somebody got rewarded for looking the other way as that swiss cheese of a COTS system got certified.
AFAIK, it's impossible to restrict the unix superuser in this way.
If you consider FreeBSD to be Unix, then consider chflags and securelevel. Together, they can prevent even root from having more than read-only access to a file. Same goes for OpenBSD, and I think NetBSD as well.
Care to back that up with references? Or is this just typical Slashdot trolling?
He did back it up with references. Their software collection that just got officially declared "Spiffy, +3" is demonstrably not secure, as per the link he provided (and many others just like it).
Since the OS obviously does not meet the generally accepted standards for "secure", but it was certified as such anyway, there are two possibilities:
The certification is meaningless and should be widely recognized as such, or
Maybe for shell scripting, but for software/web development, I couldn't imagine life without a good IDE.
Um, I did mention Emacs. You didn't think we all used it because it was such a brilliant Notepad substitute, did you?
In all seriousness, I've had pretty much all the functionality you mentioned for years, but for many more languages. Visual Studio wasn't the first widely popular IDE, you know.
I'm really grateful for their Active* language distributions, but it honestly never occurred to me to look for a Visual Studio plugin to write them with. Did anyone really use them? I mean, the article would have you believe that they weren't used, but I'd be interested to hear some real-world stories.
Besides as long as there's Emacs for Windows, I can't imagine wanting to use anything else for Unix-origin languages.
One wonders how much good could be done if said funds were used to keep a few more million contributing souls alive each year?
Yes, one wonders. The rest of us realize that different people try to make the world better in different ways.
I have a degree in computer science. By your logic, I'm wasting my time because I'm not curing cancer. Of course, the next guy might think that would be a waste of time, and I should be making sculptures. And the fellow next to him thinks I should be growing wheat.
Well, you can all bite me. I'll save the world my way. You save it your own way. MIT Media Labs has apparently decided to save it a different way yet.
What you say is simply not acceptable. If we say we'll embrace MS as soon as they release their Open format, then they instantly have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
You guys are misreading what I said. I won't embrace Microsoft, but I'd be willing to consider their offerings based on their technical merits (or lack thereof).
Suppose that OfficeXML or whatever they're calling it was truly superior to OpenDocument, and available under a Free license with a non-expiring patent waiver. I don't see the inherent evil in adopting that as a standard, or even with OpenOffice migrating to it as their official format. Who cares if Word can also interact with it? Why would that be worse than MS giving Word a full-featured input/output filter for OpenDocument? In either case, both office suites would have the ability to read and write the same files and could compete in other areas like price, Freeness of source, features... Isn't that what fair competition is all about?
Not that I don't still believe this is all academic. Regardless of what some people think, until Microsoft coughs up that patent waiver, in my opinion it doesn't exist. Other people obviously take them at their word, or else we wouldn't have things like Mono, but that's a subject for a different day.
I would think that BMW dealerships would be able to service BMW autos, no? Yes, I understand the rush to FP, but do you think maybe they'll have this covered by the time they go into production?
I'll be sure to schedule my breakdowns in advance to be conveniently close to a BMW dealership. Anyone got a lead on a good shop roughly 2 hours east of Des Moines?
In my town of 25,000, my next-door neighbor knows exactly when I leave for work and get home. The guy across the cul-de-sac knows when I go on vacation. My usual barber is a neighbor, and knows when I have a haircut that he didn't give me. My wife bumps into her patients every single time we go out to eat or shopping. Basically, our life outside our house is a secret to none.
However, we don't have traffic cameras, or tollroads, or grocery store cards, or neighborhood policemen (or even much of a police presence at all).
In other words, my friends and neighbors know what I'm doing, but the government has no idea at all (except where "the government" is my friends and neighbors, like the IRS guy I go to lodge with). That's a fundamental difference, in my opinion.
As soon as Microsoft releases a fully documented, non-patented format, or at least creates a perpetual license for F/OSS projects to use a patented format, I'll welcome them with open arms.
Since they haven't done that yet, the rest is just speculation. It looks like legal issues will be keeping the Free world on OpenDocument for the foreseeable future.
Serifs make large quantities of text more readable.
Some people disagree, at least when referring to fonts displayed on monitors. I'm not qualified to have an opinion on the subject, but others who seem to know more than I do think that sans-serif fonts are more readable on a screen.
Slashdot Mirror
do you really expect the general public to accept free software let alone programmers?
Yes. A lot of people are using Firefox these days, and OpenOffice has been getting a lot of press.
But the story ends there - I for one, won't be spending my life without a job, contributing to free software
I make a lot of money writing Free software. My employer is the largest consumer of my work, but he has the wisdom to realize that other people can also use my work (which isn't directly related to the industry we work in) without any cost to him. Everybody wins!
The argument that one can 'modify' software or do custom jobs to make money is idiotic. Do you seriously think there is a market there?
My paycheck seems to imply exactly that.
Often, people claim that (as pointed out in 'The Magic Cauldron' by ESR) over 95% of software is not for sale (so called 'custom' jobs), but it is ridiculous to expect programmers to bank on the availability of such jobs, especially because they don't get much attention.
It's ridiculous for them to bank on 95% of the job market? That's not exactly restricting your employment opportunities.
I find Linus's view of OSS much more acceptable than those of the Stallman (GNU).
I'm sure you do. Of course, RMS believes in Free software and isn't particularly interested in OSS, so I doubt even he would argue with you.
For bonus points: name RMS's BitKeeper. You know, the time where he bet the farm on closed software and got bitten hard by the decision. Because if there isn't one, then it would mean that his ideals are a lot more pragmatic and long-term than Linus's.
I always like that part. I'm not sure what people are hoping for:
Police: We're going to raid your house today. Noon good for you?
Raidee: I'm moving some gear then. Would two be OK?
Police: Sure!
I ran a VERY popular macintosh serial # site and yeah, serial numbers are sort of a grey area as far as I was concerned (and so thought my ISP thought, as well).
The "black" area is that you were directly providing the means to circumvent copy restrictions, which sounds pretty solidly anti-DMCA to me. Out of curiosity, what was the diluting "white" area that made you think no one would mind? In other words, what were the legal justifications you were operating under?
For the record, VCRs also helped people carry out a legal act - timeshifting. Although they could be used for illegal purposes, that wasn't their primary (stated) purpose. That's what won Sony v. Universal.
I think BitTorrent itself compares more accurately to VCRs here - although it can be used for illegal stuff, it has many well-known completely legitimate uses. That probably drives the *AA nuts, since is makes it much harder to demonize.
Step one: marry a surgeon and watch the process from the position of disinterested observer.
i'm not talking about advanced stuff here... things like intubation, putting in a central line, etc - all routinely learned on the underprivileged.
You misspelled "people who happened to walk into a teaching ER on a given night".
You're full of shit. First, what's a surgical residency? Are you limiting it to just general (mostly abdominal) surgery? Do would-be cardiologists only treat poor people? What about plastic surgeons - do they wait for ugly homeless people to come along to try hacking on them? Does anyone really think they turn budding ophthalmologists loose with an excimer laser and an obsidian flake to see if they can pull off a LASIK without blinding too many winos?
Residents have to learn techniques somehow, and they are inevitably going to deliever sub-par results the first few times of doing something.
At most training hospitals, residents do procedures on whoever happens to walk through the door. It's not like there are separate rich/poor waiting rooms, with attending physicians drawing from one and wild-eyed incompetents dooming the other.
A more accurate version would be that residents try new techniques while being closely observed by about 10 different people, each eager to find fault and step in.
Ideas for solutions to this moral dilemma?
Step one: find a real dilemma, not some imaginary one. Step two: see step one.
Individuals vary considerably, of course, but those statistics seems to correlate rather well.
So, what have I done?
Wrote 10 sentenses in english, and 10 sentences in portuguese (I'm brasilian). Long and toughfull ones.
After that, I typed all of them in both dvorak and colemak. It did not surprised me that colemak did not kept its promisses.
Your English is undoubtedly better than my Portuguese, but I doubt that your keyboard layout is the problem you should concentrate on solving.
The good news: I just got a quad-Opteron motherboard.
The bad news: that wasn't really your bank.
Seriously, what kind of cheap SOBs won't spring for a Verisign cert for a freakin' banking website?
Considering that the administrator has nearly infinite means to access that data anyway (including hardware access and reading the raw disk device), I'm not entirely sure what the point of the limitation would be.
Care to explain that one? Go ahead: we're all ears.
A properly patched and configured Windows system is as safe as any Unix box
You truly believe that a Windows system can be as tight as a locked-down OpenBSD machine, let alone something like Trusted Solaris or TrustedBSD (funded in part by DARPA and the NSA)? Seriously?
BS. Common Criteria claims to be a standard for computer security. Full stop. Regardless of how watered down they managed to make the full explanation, you and I both know that the certification's intent is to imply that tested products are secure. The fact that the fine print says, "well, not really secure, per se, but at least vulnerable in well-documented ways, plus maybe a few extra later" doesn't mean they should be allowed to parade this around to fool PHBs with a checklist.
Second, what he said was that MS bought the certification through bribery. And even if we were to accept your reasoning above (which is specious), that wouldn't be a fair conclusion; it could be far more likely that CC certification is meaningless than to think that MS bribed an independent certifier.
I agree: the most likely explanation is that CC is as worthless as we've all known it to be for years. Because if it's not, then somebody got rewarded for looking the other way as that swiss cheese of a COTS system got certified.
If you consider FreeBSD to be Unix, then consider chflags and securelevel. Together, they can prevent even root from having more than read-only access to a file. Same goes for OpenBSD, and I think NetBSD as well.
He did back it up with references. Their software collection that just got officially declared "Spiffy, +3" is demonstrably not secure, as per the link he provided (and many others just like it).
Since the OS obviously does not meet the generally accepted standards for "secure", but it was certified as such anyway, there are two possibilities:
I'm not sure which is worse from a PR stance.
A different way of doing things. I prefer the Emacs way, although I know the Vim well enough to do what needs to be done if Emacs isn't available.
Um, I did mention Emacs. You didn't think we all used it because it was such a brilliant Notepad substitute, did you?
In all seriousness, I've had pretty much all the functionality you mentioned for years, but for many more languages. Visual Studio wasn't the first widely popular IDE, you know.
Besides as long as there's Emacs for Windows, I can't imagine wanting to use anything else for Unix-origin languages.
Yes, one wonders. The rest of us realize that different people try to make the world better in different ways.
I have a degree in computer science. By your logic, I'm wasting my time because I'm not curing cancer. Of course, the next guy might think that would be a waste of time, and I should be making sculptures. And the fellow next to him thinks I should be growing wheat.
Well, you can all bite me. I'll save the world my way. You save it your own way. MIT Media Labs has apparently decided to save it a different way yet.
I thought you were the guy in the next cube. What's up, Jeff? Did you ever figure out why all the functions in that library all had two-letter names?
You guys are misreading what I said. I won't embrace Microsoft, but I'd be willing to consider their offerings based on their technical merits (or lack thereof).
Suppose that OfficeXML or whatever they're calling it was truly superior to OpenDocument, and available under a Free license with a non-expiring patent waiver. I don't see the inherent evil in adopting that as a standard, or even with OpenOffice migrating to it as their official format. Who cares if Word can also interact with it? Why would that be worse than MS giving Word a full-featured input/output filter for OpenDocument? In either case, both office suites would have the ability to read and write the same files and could compete in other areas like price, Freeness of source, features... Isn't that what fair competition is all about?
Not that I don't still believe this is all academic. Regardless of what some people think, until Microsoft coughs up that patent waiver, in my opinion it doesn't exist. Other people obviously take them at their word, or else we wouldn't have things like Mono, but that's a subject for a different day.
I'll be sure to schedule my breakdowns in advance to be conveniently close to a BMW dealership. Anyone got a lead on a good shop roughly 2 hours east of Des Moines?
3:08pm - 3:49
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Will I what? Welcome them to the competition? Sure! That's not the same as blindly adopting their proposal.
However, we don't have traffic cameras, or tollroads, or grocery store cards, or neighborhood policemen (or even much of a police presence at all).
In other words, my friends and neighbors know what I'm doing, but the government has no idea at all (except where "the government" is my friends and neighbors, like the IRS guy I go to lodge with). That's a fundamental difference, in my opinion.
Since they haven't done that yet, the rest is just speculation. It looks like legal issues will be keeping the Free world on OpenDocument for the foreseeable future.
Some people disagree, at least when referring to fonts displayed on monitors. I'm not qualified to have an opinion on the subject, but others who seem to know more than I do think that sans-serif fonts are more readable on a screen.