The *software* might be from Lockheed Martin, but the Navy deployed it, including the Microsoft components delivered by Lockheed Martin, in a production environment. The Navy deployed it, the Navy's ship stopped working (which I think is part of the definition of "system controls" - controls which determine whether or not the ship is working). No sense in blaming Lockheed Martin for that one...
And if you think Windows isn't used in banking ATMs, which handle both accounts and "real" money, perhaps you should consult with Google:
Or, more likely from reading the article, Praxis can have a very low number of bugs by very tightly constraining the work that they're willing to do.
Anything built using an open model (Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) is, by definition, open to broad changes in feature sets and functionality. I seriously doubt that Praxis could have developed anything as feature rich as any of those three tools using the same number of man-hours.
The bug rate is a consequence of the development model. In exchange for a high bug rate you get a high feature return rate. There are always tradeoffs in software development - it's a matter of choosing the right tradeoffs for the situation at hand.
I can't speak for the original poster, but I can't believe that the parent poster and I are the *only* people that believe that LOC is a poor metric.
Measuring lines of code added per day causes deletions and modifications to be considered *bad*. If I add 10 lines today and those 10 lines allow me to delete 20 lines from last year then I have a net productivity of -10 LOC and I have been unproductive.
The argument *could* be advanced that if I'd done it right in the first place the original 20 LOC that I'm deleting should have been the 10 LOC I added today so I *should* be penalized for doing poor work last year. I consider this argument to be shortsighted. What if we're interfacing with a new library? Is that a bad thing from a productivity perspective? What if adding a new feature involves rewriting 10 existing lines and interspersing 10 new ones? Is that less productive than tacking on 20 lines today?
Counting lines added, lines changed, and lines modified as a metric is nearly as bad. The reason these metrics fail, IMHO, is that lines of code have no "average" value. Some lines are more valuable, some are less valuable, some have no meaning in the context of others, some have so much value that they cause others to be obsolete, etc. Grouping them together is like measuring the intelligence of a room of people by adding up the number of people present - meaningless.
Even your point, that a single line of code implies a specific amount of background work ("heavy addition non-programming work") is fallacious, IMHO. Does each feature have equal merit? Equal difficulty? Does each line of code imply exactly the same (or even *about* the same) amount of "heavy addition non-programming work"?
This is certainly not true for me - the difficulty of the code I write varies wildly, both within and between applications. I can assure you that I would likely expend much more effort on each line of code for an optimized backend search engine than I would on the CGI for the web interface that drives it. Is it therefore less productive for me to work on the backend because I expend more effort per line of code?
IMHO, LOC is only useful for publishing statistics, not for measuring meaningful changes in productivity.
Regardless of how you rate the intelligence of the parties involved in these little incidents I think you'll find that Windows is very often deployed in mission critical areas.
Interestingly enough, personal beliefs aside, I think the *evolution* people are looking at ID the wrong way, insisting that "ID proponents are all religious whackos!" and "ID rules out evolution!".
There are prominent examples of *non-theists* who are proponents of ID (like Michael Behe and Francis Crick, for example - Google is your friend).
It's interesting to me that this whole thing has become a religious debate. I read the sticker that the Kansas school board wanted to attach to the textbooks and didn't think it was all that offensive - just pointed out that there are holes in evolution and that it should be approached with an open mind - much like Behe and Crick (and others) have said, too... although Crick was pretty well abused for his panspermia position, too, so I guess it's not all that surprising. I guess the worst thing you can do is suggest the scientific community might be *wrong*... >)
Not if the browser's not "yours" - i.e. you are in an internet cafe or something. "Access from anywhere" is one of the main advantages of webmail. So unless you carry your private key around with you and somehow communicate it to the plugin that you've magically gotten installed on all the browsers you use, the browser plugin isn't going to be very effective.
Again, as with a poster above, the article is specifically referring to airline travel, so I construe any comments regarding "travel" to refer to airline travel. Other forms of transportation aren't relevant in this context.
And I think it misses the point, anyway, to bring up forms of travel that don't (yet) require an ID - if the US government can mandate it for airlines, even if it was against the wishes of the airline, then they could mandate it for any form of transportation. Should we not be concerned about the CDC wanting records for air travelers just because they haven't asked for records for train and bus travelers yet? When exactly would you like to worry? After legal precedent has been set?
Also, if you think the airlines are the ones who want to see your ID, you should read (a) TFA, where you will see that the CDC is trying to mandate information collection by *law*, regardless of the airlines' view on the matter, and (b) transcripts from some of the hearings for John Gilmore (like this one: http://cryptome.org/gilmore-v-usa-ht1.htm) where the airlines essentially argue that they can't be held liable for requiring ID because the government requires it of them.
The article specifically refers to the CDC's desire to collect data related to air travel. Thus I interpret "travel" in the parent post to mean "air travel", which is certainly restricted if you lack government ID. Other modes of transport aren't really relevant in the context of this article.
I would be very surprised indeed if a government ID was issued without an address. Perhaps if some homeless persons managed to get government ID they were allowed to use the address of a shelter of some kind...
Yes, you can be denied travel for not having an address, etc. No address or contact info will almost certainly result in no government issued ID. No government issued ID, no travel.
I'm betting that would be a non-starter, since Debian (deliberately) raises the bar for using proprietary solutions. The primary source of pain on the Linux side of this study seems to come from a GLIBC dependency that *seems* to come from MySQL, but more likely comes from the anonymous third-party "data mining" application itself, since MySQL has no documented GLIBC requirements that would seem to be relevant here.
My guess is that this "data mining" application has no support on the Debian platform, so Debian would be an unacceptable choice given the study constraints.
Amazing what you can achieve by making careful choices, eh? Soon we'll see the study that shows that Windows is much better at playing video than Linux is if you require the use of Media Player 9...
"Linux administrators took 68 per cent longer to implement new business requirements than their Windows counterparts"
That's what you get for actually thinking through what a sane implementation should involve rather than clicking "Install -> OK -> OK -> OK -> OK -> Reboot Now"...
I think it depends on the law. In this case, Washington's anti-SPAM law is an extension of their Consumer Protection law. Defrauding or misleading consumers isn't "protected speech" by any interpretation of the Constitution that I've heard, so I doubt this law will be overthrown on those grounds.
Besides, this law was upheld by Washington State's Supreme court. "Free Speech" wasn't even an issue in the case. A quick Google search for "Washington State supreme court upholds anti-spam law" should turn up plenty of links.
Under the Washington law (Revised Code of Washington 19.190) both the end-user recipient and the "interactive computer service" that that recipient uses may sue the spammer. The "interactive computer service" is not suing on the user's behalf, but on their own behalf.
And I think this is great, personally. If all major ISPs did this, SPAM load would go down significantly. Of course it wouldn't disappear completely, and the really tricky spammers would be trickier, but the overall load would certainly go down and the remaining SPAM would very likely be easier to block...
Under Washington's anti-SPAM law (RCW 19.190), the recipient is allowed to claim up to $500 in damages per offense. The "interactive service provider" is considered to bear a larger burden than the consumer because of the cumulative effect, and is allowed to claim up to $1000 per offense.
The content of the SPAM is significant because the law (RCW 19.190) is written as an extension to the "Consumer Protection" law (RCW 19.86). The SPAM is illegal not because it's SPAM, but specifically because it "contains false or misleading information in the subject line" (RCW 19.190.020(1)(b)) OR "Uses a third party's internet domain name without permission of the third party, or otherwise misrepresents or obscures any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of a commercial electronic mail message" (RCW 19.190.020(1)(a)).
The definition of "misleading", as you point out, can be fairly ambiguous. My guess is that either Microsoft is suing on SPAM whose subject lines are completely unrelated to the content (which can be construed to be "misleading" from a legal perspective whether the actual recipient is misled or not - it's the intent to mislead that matters then), or that they're going after the people who are forging headers (which is easier to prove, and falls under RCW 19.190.020(1)(b)).
And no, for me it wasn't about potential profit. It was about making SPAM unprofitable for SPAMmers.
I've successfully sued as an "interactive service provider" under this law. The justification seems to be that the spammer is engaging in unfair/deceptive business practices at the expense of the "interactive service provider", so that provider should be allowed to seek compensation for that.
Do you mean "mencvcd"? Which version of mplayer are you using?
When you say "various episodes of Seinfeld", what format are those currently in? Are you capturing from somewhere, or are you using existing video files that you have?
If you're recording from a TV capture card, I've found it vital to specify -fps 29.97 and -ofps 29.97 for NTSC with mencoder, or the A/V sync gets really out of whack.
I've found that the a/v sync for mencoder seems to be very dependent on your audio drivers. I moved to ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation, did "echo 1024 >/proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to enable rtc usage, and now I get perfect A/V sync every time (assuming I feed the correct options to mencoder).
Anyway, I've got some SVCDs I'm really pleased with, so if you give me more information, I'll give you what help I can...
zapping (or, more specifically, the mp1e portion of zapping)
That should at least give you a start, but is by no means exhaustive. I use mencoder to record from TV capture card, mplayer/mjpegtools for converting to VCD and SVCD compliant streams, vcdimager for creating VCD and SVCD images, cdrdao for burning the images, and ffmpeg for generating stills. I find that mencoder lets me capture streams while maintaining very good A/V sync.
hey! wrote: "They're not organizing or collecting money for or against Bush, it's just a guy stating his opinions in a way he thinks is funny and effective."
Actually, as has been pointed out elsewhere, "they" *are* collecting money to run a TV ad, presumably *against* gwb. Granted, IANAL, but that puts "them" pretty squarely in the middle of what I understand to be "campaigning".
If they're gonna run a political ad, they should have to play by the rules and publish their sources of funding. Otherwise it'd be *way* too easy for "someone" (*cough*Gore*cough*Bradley*cough*me*cough*) to fund the aforementioned ad for "them"...
If we're gonna have rules about campaigning, everyone should have to play by them.
pvente wrote: His quote "There ought to be limits to freedom" is very scary indeed. What would he do if he actually had the power to limit freedoms ??
There already *are* limits to freedom, as there should be. "Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose", as the saying goes...
The GPL is a good example of something that limits freedom. In fact, RMS argues that it provides the *greatest* freedom by limiting the freedom of those who create derivative works. So the limitations the GPL puts on one person's freedom actually *protect* someone (possibly everyone) else's freedom.
Let's not go overboard here. There's no reason to scream "Tyranny!" and riot because someone said something that's self-evidently true, even if it is unpalatable...
pb (pdpaylie@eos.ncsu.edu) wrote: "My take on the 'copyrighted images on the web' -- good luck. Once you put an image on the web, *everyone* has to make a copy of it just to *see* it. So what are you saying, no copying?"
There's a big difference between your browser making a copy of that image so you can see it and you posting a modified copy of that image for everyone else to see.
If "Abe" was passing his answers by his "editor(s)", he might have *had* to use MSWord for them to be able to do their thing.
In other words, it might not be *all* his fault...
Nato
Re:Why use Linux 2.2 -- 2.0.36 is the best Linux y
on
Linux 2.2 DoS Attack
·
· Score: 1
Ummm... Mostly for the major NFS updates and the dcache/dentry code, myself... Of course, updated drivers, improved memory management and better/proc don't hurt, either.
Slashdot Mirror
The *software* might be from Lockheed Martin, but the Navy deployed it, including the Microsoft components delivered by Lockheed Martin, in a production environment. The Navy deployed it, the Navy's ship stopped working (which I think is part of the definition of "system controls" - controls which determine whether or not the ship is working). No sense in blaming Lockheed Martin for that one...
v a-general-features.htm
And if you think Windows isn't used in banking ATMs, which handle both accounts and "real" money, perhaps you should consult with Google:
http://www.universal.com.sa/english/products-opte
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3675891/
(and there are many others...)
Or, more likely from reading the article, Praxis can have a very low number of bugs by very tightly constraining the work that they're willing to do.
Anything built using an open model (Linux, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) is, by definition, open to broad changes in feature sets and functionality. I seriously doubt that Praxis could have developed anything as feature rich as any of those three tools using the same number of man-hours.
The bug rate is a consequence of the development model. In exchange for a high bug rate you get a high feature return rate. There are always tradeoffs in software development - it's a matter of choosing the right tradeoffs for the situation at hand.
I can't speak for the original poster, but I can't believe that the parent poster and I are the *only* people that believe that LOC is a poor metric.
Measuring lines of code added per day causes deletions and modifications to be considered *bad*. If I add 10 lines today and those 10 lines allow me to delete 20 lines from last year then I have a net productivity of -10 LOC and I have been unproductive.
The argument *could* be advanced that if I'd done it right in the first place the original 20 LOC that I'm deleting should have been the 10 LOC I added today so I *should* be penalized for doing poor work last year. I consider this argument to be shortsighted. What if we're interfacing with a new library? Is that a bad thing from a productivity perspective? What if adding a new feature involves rewriting 10 existing lines and interspersing 10 new ones? Is that less productive than tacking on 20 lines today?
Counting lines added, lines changed, and lines modified as a metric is nearly as bad. The reason these metrics fail, IMHO, is that lines of code have no "average" value. Some lines are more valuable, some are less valuable, some have no meaning in the context of others, some have so much value that they cause others to be obsolete, etc. Grouping them together is like measuring the intelligence of a room of people by adding up the number of people present - meaningless.
Even your point, that a single line of code implies a specific amount of background work ("heavy addition non-programming work") is fallacious, IMHO. Does each feature have equal merit? Equal difficulty? Does each line of code imply exactly the same (or even *about* the same) amount of "heavy addition non-programming work"?
This is certainly not true for me - the difficulty of the code I write varies wildly, both within and between applications. I can assure you that I would likely expend much more effort on each line of code for an optimized backend search engine than I would on the CGI for the web interface that drives it. Is it therefore less productive for me to work on the backend because I expend more effort per line of code?
IMHO, LOC is only useful for publishing statistics, not for measuring meaningful changes in productivity.
Not anyone like, say, the US Navy, for example:
, 13758,00.html
s ID=2275
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282
Or air traffic controllers:
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?New
Or nuclear power plants:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767
Regardless of how you rate the intelligence of the parties involved in these little incidents I think you'll find that Windows is very often deployed in mission critical areas.
And yes, often with catastrophic consequences. >)
Interestingly enough, personal beliefs aside, I think the *evolution* people are looking at ID the wrong way, insisting that "ID proponents are all religious whackos!" and "ID rules out evolution!".
There are prominent examples of *non-theists* who are proponents of ID (like Michael Behe and Francis Crick, for example - Google is your friend).
It's interesting to me that this whole thing has become a religious debate. I read the sticker that the Kansas school board wanted to attach to the textbooks and didn't think it was all that offensive - just pointed out that there are holes in evolution and that it should be approached with an open mind - much like Behe and Crick (and others) have said, too... although Crick was pretty well abused for his panspermia position, too, so I guess it's not all that surprising. I guess the worst thing you can do is suggest the scientific community might be *wrong*... >)
Nato
Not if the browser's not "yours" - i.e. you are in an internet cafe or something. "Access from anywhere" is one of the main advantages of webmail. So unless you carry your private key around with you and somehow communicate it to the plugin that you've magically gotten installed on all the browsers you use, the browser plugin isn't going to be very effective.
Again, as with a poster above, the article is specifically referring to airline travel, so I construe any comments regarding "travel" to refer to airline travel. Other forms of transportation aren't relevant in this context.
And I think it misses the point, anyway, to bring up forms of travel that don't (yet) require an ID - if the US government can mandate it for airlines, even if it was against the wishes of the airline, then they could mandate it for any form of transportation. Should we not be concerned about the CDC wanting records for air travelers just because they haven't asked for records for train and bus travelers yet? When exactly would you like to worry? After legal precedent has been set?
Also, if you think the airlines are the ones who want to see your ID, you should read (a) TFA, where you will see that the CDC is trying to mandate information collection by *law*, regardless of the airlines' view on the matter, and (b) transcripts from some of the hearings for John Gilmore (like this one: http://cryptome.org/gilmore-v-usa-ht1.htm) where the airlines essentially argue that they can't be held liable for requiring ID because the government requires it of them.
The article specifically refers to the CDC's desire to collect data related to air travel. Thus I interpret "travel" in the parent post to mean "air travel", which is certainly restricted if you lack government ID. Other modes of transport aren't really relevant in the context of this article.
I would be very surprised indeed if a government ID was issued without an address. Perhaps if some homeless persons managed to get government ID they were allowed to use the address of a shelter of some kind...
Yes, you can be denied travel for not having an address, etc. No address or contact info will almost certainly result in no government issued ID. No government issued ID, no travel.
For more details, see:
http://cryptome.org/freetotravel.htm
I'm betting that would be a non-starter, since Debian (deliberately) raises the bar for using proprietary solutions. The primary source of pain on the Linux side of this study seems to come from a GLIBC dependency that *seems* to come from MySQL, but more likely comes from the anonymous third-party "data mining" application itself, since MySQL has no documented GLIBC requirements that would seem to be relevant here.
My guess is that this "data mining" application has no support on the Debian platform, so Debian would be an unacceptable choice given the study constraints.
Amazing what you can achieve by making careful choices, eh? Soon we'll see the study that shows that Windows is much better at playing video than Linux is if you require the use of Media Player 9...
"Linux administrators took 68 per cent longer to implement new business requirements than their Windows counterparts"
That's what you get for actually thinking through what a sane implementation should involve rather than clicking "Install -> OK -> OK -> OK -> OK -> Reboot Now"...
I think it depends on the law. In this case, Washington's anti-SPAM law is an extension of their Consumer Protection law. Defrauding or misleading consumers isn't "protected speech" by any interpretation of the Constitution that I've heard, so I doubt this law will be overthrown on those grounds.
Besides, this law was upheld by Washington State's Supreme court. "Free Speech" wasn't even an issue in the case. A quick Google search for "Washington State supreme court upholds anti-spam law" should turn up plenty of links.
Under the Washington law (Revised Code of Washington 19.190) both the end-user recipient and the "interactive computer service" that that recipient uses may sue the spammer. The "interactive computer service" is not suing on the user's behalf, but on their own behalf.
And I think this is great, personally. If all major ISPs did this, SPAM load would go down significantly. Of course it wouldn't disappear completely, and the really tricky spammers would be trickier, but the overall load would certainly go down and the remaining SPAM would very likely be easier to block...
Under Washington's anti-SPAM law (RCW 19.190), the recipient is allowed to claim up to $500 in damages per offense. The "interactive service provider" is considered to bear a larger burden than the consumer because of the cumulative effect, and is allowed to claim up to $1000 per offense.
The content of the SPAM is significant because the law (RCW 19.190) is written as an extension to the "Consumer Protection" law (RCW 19.86). The SPAM is illegal not because it's SPAM, but specifically because it "contains false or misleading information in the subject line" (RCW 19.190.020(1)(b)) OR "Uses a third party's internet domain name without permission of the third party, or otherwise misrepresents or obscures any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of a commercial electronic mail message" (RCW 19.190.020(1)(a)).
The definition of "misleading", as you point out, can be fairly ambiguous. My guess is that either Microsoft is suing on SPAM whose subject lines are completely unrelated to the content (which can be construed to be "misleading" from a legal perspective whether the actual recipient is misled or not - it's the intent to mislead that matters then), or that they're going after the people who are forging headers (which is easier to prove, and falls under RCW 19.190.020(1)(b)).
And no, for me it wasn't about potential profit. It was about making SPAM unprofitable for SPAMmers.
I've successfully sued as an "interactive service provider" under this law. The justification seems to be that the spammer is engaging in unfair/deceptive business practices at the expense of the "interactive service provider", so that provider should be allowed to seek compensation for that.
Do you mean "mencvcd"? Which version of mplayer are you using?
When you say "various episodes of Seinfeld", what format are those currently in? Are you capturing from somewhere, or are you using existing video files that you have?
If you're recording from a TV capture card, I've found it vital to specify -fps 29.97 and -ofps 29.97 for NTSC with mencoder, or the A/V sync gets really out of whack.
I've found that the a/v sync for mencoder seems to be very dependent on your audio drivers. I moved to ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation, did "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to enable rtc usage, and now I get perfect A/V sync every time (assuming I feed the correct options to mencoder).
Anyway, I've got some SVCDs I'm really pleased with, so if you give me more information, I'll give you what help I can...
- vcdimager - writes (S)VCDs
- mplayer (and, more specifically, mencoder) for playing (and recording) video
- mjpegtools - for doing some conversions (including creating (s)VCD streams and stills)
You might also want to check out:- ffmpeg
- nvrec
- freevo
- zapping (or, more specifically, the mp1e portion of zapping)
That should at least give you a start, but is by no means exhaustive. I use mencoder to record from TV capture card, mplayer/mjpegtools for converting to VCD and SVCD compliant streams, vcdimager for creating VCD and SVCD images, cdrdao for burning the images, and ffmpeg for generating stills. I find that mencoder lets me capture streams while maintaining very good A/V sync.Your mileage, of course, may vary...
hey! wrote:
"They're not organizing or collecting money for or against Bush, it's just a guy stating his opinions in a way he thinks is funny and effective."
Actually, as has been pointed out elsewhere, "they" *are* collecting money to run a TV ad, presumably *against* gwb. Granted, IANAL, but that puts "them" pretty squarely in the middle of what I understand to be "campaigning".
If they're gonna run a political ad, they should have to play by the rules and publish their sources of funding. Otherwise it'd be *way* too easy for "someone" (*cough*Gore*cough*Bradley*cough*me*cough*) to fund the aforementioned ad for "them"...
If we're gonna have rules about campaigning, everyone should have to play by them.
pvente wrote:
His quote "There ought to be limits to freedom" is very scary indeed. What would he do if he actually had the power to limit freedoms ??
There already *are* limits to freedom, as there should be. "Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose", as the saying goes...
The GPL is a good example of something that limits freedom. In fact, RMS argues that it provides the *greatest* freedom by limiting the freedom of those who create derivative works. So the limitations the GPL puts on one person's freedom actually *protect* someone (possibly everyone) else's freedom.
Let's not go overboard here. There's no reason to scream "Tyranny!" and riot because someone said something that's self-evidently true, even if it is unpalatable...
pb (pdpaylie@eos.ncsu.edu) wrote:
"My take on the 'copyrighted images on the web' -- good luck. Once you put an image on the web, *everyone* has to make a copy of it just to *see* it. So what are you saying, no copying?"
There's a big difference between your browser making a copy of that image so you can see it and you posting a modified copy of that image for everyone else to see.
If "Abe" was passing his answers by his "editor(s)", he might have *had* to use MSWord for them to be able to do their thing.
In other words, it might not be *all* his fault...
Nato
Ummm... Mostly for the major NFS updates and the dcache/dentry code, myself... Of course, updated drivers, improved memory management and better /proc don't hurt, either.
Nato