ISTR that there is still a debate about whether or not to have a devel tree, just lots of branches. Hence the description I made, which I now realise without context was a bit ambiguous too!
Anyway, Linus was saying a while ago that it might as well be up to the distributors to stabilise for 'proper' use, giving the kernel maintainers the freedom to accept patches that take them in the right direction, without having to be obsessed with stability. So you ftp from your mirror of choice, depending how hardcore you are!
Uh, *what* 2.7 tree? The patch which turns Linux into SELinux, which has been developed by some spooks somewhere, is moving up into the main kernel. That's all that's represented.
When you have a multi-developer environment with a single tree, you push your changes up and pull your and other people's changes down. Hopefully everything remains stable at every level except the individual developer's trees. Back in reality, of course, this is not entirely true;-)
That's how Linux is developed... prolly on a bigger scale than pretty much any other parallel development setup.
a 64 bit port of
a 32 bit wrapper for
a 16 bit api to
an 8 bit kernel for
a 4 bit microprocessor by
a 2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition.
...but both of these are clear cases of 'if you know what you're doing, you can use Linux, if you don't better stick to Windows'.
That doesn't make either one any better. The Windows user will probably need to patch and piss about - that's the cost of using an OS which has concentrated on 'Just Works' to the exclusion of security - while the Linux user will forget where the box actually is;-)
Search: Maybe I'm missing something, but name one somewhat modern OS without a built in search function.
Windows XP cos the fucking thing's broken. I'm a java developer and it won't search.java files for text, even with the updates. Useless. I use Agent Ransack instead.
The OS here (whom I worked for till last September or so) use a double-orthogonal approach. That is, they flatten left and right sides of the country relative to their respective centre lines, then marry the two images. This makes measurement errors smaller.
International maps tend to use a simple Mercator projection.
Someone from the OS will hopefully be along shortly to correct my terminology... Nigel T? Dave R? Are you reading?
LOL, yes, fair enough, ascii really is everything you need, but there's no reason not to have tables, titles, etc. Hang on, am I describing XHTML? Yes, I think I am.
If MS wishes to keep its office format licensed, that is their choice. However, it is then imperative that public documents are not stored in that format. I'd go further and say that there should be an open standard (there prolly already is, if not develop one) and that all governments should adopt it immediately whether or not it is as good as MS's.
Potential for abuse by students of all age ranges (The tabbed browsing is an exceptional idea! however, most teachers are too sued to window browsing and wouldn't even notice the extra three or four tabs that are in the background hiding god knows what kind of sites from her view.)
This seems crazy talk to me... how does it differ from having two IEs open and minimising one? Teachers have had / will have to learn to spot that, so what's the difference? You might as well argue that we should go back to chalk 'n' talk so the teachers don't have to learn new skills!
I understand your problems with lack of ActiveX, but you should realise that the fact you have ActiveX available means that your browsing environment (when your students do get to dodgy sites) is insecure. You really should try to find applications that don't rely on an inherently insecure model.
Sorry if this sounds argumentative but it just sounds to me like everyone on your committee is covering their arse.
I don't know mate, have you tried searching the bug database? If you can't find it, you could probably spare ten minutes to put the details in cos without letting people know in the right forum (ie not slashdot) it isn't going to get fixed. I mean, is ten minutes too much pay-back for the utility you have been given for free - given you prolly spent two minutes writing the pointlessly negative parent mail...
There're already laws against that. So that cannot be a justification.
You are falling for this argument: (a) might lead to (b) which is illegal, therefore (a) should be illegal. It is already used to justify the criminalisation of mild drugs, as they may lead to less mild drugs. By that stupid argument, being born leads to sex crime, so we'd better mandate abortion for the good of the children.
Another poster has also commented, and you're right, I meant 'use' from the coder's perspective. I wish I had been more clear, but until/. allows one to edit, I'm fucked. So I'm fucked for ever;-)
You don't seem to quite get how the GPL works (as don't many, many people, including Darl McLies). Apologies for the slightly reactionary tone of that sentence, but it's important to understand exactly what it is and how it will be used in court... read on:
The GPL is a license to use copyrighted software. As such it will never be 'tested in court' in the sense you describe. However, it is a (perhaps the only) defence against a charge of copyright infringement, where the code user cannot demonstrate some other license to use the software[1].
In fact, SCO is using it as its defence in the 8th (iirc) counterclaim, which is where the court then will determine if SCO has fulfilled all the licence terms. That is all the 'test' it will ever get, and all we will ever need.
Once you understand that, the idea suggested by Darl that all GPL works should be declared Public Domain becomes clearly visible as the idiotic idea it is: it would involve stripping copyright from hundreds (thousands!) of works for the benefit of exactly the same type of people who are currently having copyrights extended so they can continue to make money off long-dead artists (eg Sonny Bono).
Justin. [1] AFAIK there is nothing to stop the owner of some code both relieasing under the GPL and simultaneously licensing it for commercial use for money. After all, why should the owner of some code not do as he/she wishes with it?
Firstly, it didn't used to be considered "badly written" - even Halo by Microsoft is in that list.
Secondly, and more importantly, no application, no matter how it is written, should be able to kill the kernel! That is just ridiculous, and in other circumstances would be referred to as a local denial of service vulnerability.
How long before the legal or finance departments need to use a business-critical Web site that requires IE7 for access?
I'd have thought that, as the customer, if that ever occurred, any sensible business would be telling the provider very loudly about how they will move to another provider if they don't make it Just Work(TM) with all recent browser flavours.
Slashdot Mirror
ISTR that there is still a debate about whether or not to have a devel tree, just lots of branches. Hence the description I made, which I now realise without context was a bit ambiguous too!
Anyway, Linus was saying a while ago that it might as well be up to the distributors to stabilise for 'proper' use, giving the kernel maintainers the freedom to accept patches that take them in the right direction, without having to be obsessed with stability. So you ftp from your mirror of choice, depending how hardcore you are!
J.
Uh, *what* 2.7 tree? The patch which turns Linux into SELinux, which has been developed by some spooks somewhere, is moving up into the main kernel. That's all that's represented.
;-)
When you have a multi-developer environment with a single tree, you push your changes up and pull your and other people's changes down. Hopefully everything remains stable at every level except the individual developer's trees. Back in reality, of course, this is not entirely true
That's how Linux is developed... prolly on a bigger scale than pretty much any other parallel development setup.
J.
J.
'Tom, Dick or Harry'
HTH
Justin.
What is this, the annual Sarcasm Hiaku competition?
J.
a 32 bit wrapper for
a 16 bit api to
an 8 bit kernel for
a 4 bit microprocessor by
a 2 bit company that can't stand
1 bit of competition.
Justin.
I'm not letting you code C for my company!
Justin.
...but both of these are clear cases of 'if you know what you're doing, you can use Linux, if you don't better stick to Windows'.
;-)
That doesn't make either one any better. The Windows user will probably need to patch and piss about - that's the cost of using an OS which has concentrated on 'Just Works' to the exclusion of security - while the Linux user will forget where the box actually is
Justin.
Windows XP cos the fucking thing's broken. I'm a java developer and it won't search .java files for text, even with the updates. Useless. I use Agent Ransack instead.
Next!
Justin.
It's taken me four hours to get that gag... shit.
The OS here (whom I worked for till last September or so) use a double-orthogonal approach. That is, they flatten left and right sides of the country relative to their respective centre lines, then marry the two images. This makes measurement errors smaller.
International maps tend to use a simple Mercator projection.
Someone from the OS will hopefully be along shortly to correct my terminology... Nigel T? Dave R? Are you reading?
Justin.
J.
Justin.
I understand your problems with lack of ActiveX, but you should realise that the fact you have ActiveX available means that your browsing environment (when your students do get to dodgy sites) is insecure. You really should try to find applications that don't rely on an inherently insecure model.
Sorry if this sounds argumentative but it just sounds to me like everyone on your committee is covering their arse.
Justin.
I think your bosses should be told you are complaining about having to do some FUCKING WORK for a living.
Justin.
I don't know mate, have you tried searching the bug database? If you can't find it, you could probably spare ten minutes to put the details in cos without letting people know in the right forum (ie not slashdot) it isn't going to get fixed. I mean, is ten minutes too much pay-back for the utility you have been given for free - given you prolly spent two minutes writing the pointlessly negative parent mail...
Justin.
This is the only insightful comment on the page, and it's modded 'interesting'. /me cries.
J.
There're already laws against that. So that cannot be a justification.
You are falling for this argument: (a) might lead to (b) which is illegal, therefore (a) should be illegal. It is already used to justify the criminalisation of mild drugs, as they may lead to less mild drugs. By that stupid argument, being born leads to sex crime, so we'd better mandate abortion for the good of the children.
Justin.
Another poster has also commented, and you're right, I meant 'use' from the coder's perspective. I wish I had been more clear, but until /. allows one to edit, I'm fucked. So I'm fucked for ever ;-)
J.
You're right, I read that a dozen times to make sure it was accurate, but still used the code-writer's sense of 'use'. Damn, and thanks.
J.
You don't seem to quite get how the GPL works (as don't many, many people, including Darl McLies). Apologies for the slightly reactionary tone of that sentence, but it's important to understand exactly what it is and how it will be used in court... read on:
The GPL is a license to use copyrighted software. As such it will never be 'tested in court' in the sense you describe. However, it is a (perhaps the only) defence against a charge of copyright infringement, where the code user cannot demonstrate some other license to use the software[1].
In fact, SCO is using it as its defence in the 8th (iirc) counterclaim, which is where the court then will determine if SCO has fulfilled all the licence terms. That is all the 'test' it will ever get, and all we will ever need.
Once you understand that, the idea suggested by Darl that all GPL works should be declared Public Domain becomes clearly visible as the idiotic idea it is: it would involve stripping copyright from hundreds (thousands!) of works for the benefit of exactly the same type of people who are currently having copyrights extended so they can continue to make money off long-dead artists (eg Sonny Bono).
Justin.
[1] AFAIK there is nothing to stop the owner of some code both relieasing under the GPL and simultaneously licensing it for commercial use for money. After all, why should the owner of some code not do as he/she wishes with it?
Yeah but most of all, "Sometimes I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie".
(quoth Tori Amos)
J.
If it were municipal wi-fi with lots of overlapping mini-nets then you wouldn't be on an untrusted network. You'd be on your local LAN/WAN.
J.
Secondly, and more importantly, no application, no matter how it is written, should be able to kill the kernel! That is just ridiculous, and in other circumstances would be referred to as a local denial of service vulnerability.
Please now hit yourself with a clue-stick.
J.
I'd have thought that, as the customer, if that ever occurred, any sensible business would be telling the provider very loudly about how they will move to another provider if they don't make it Just Work(TM) with all recent browser flavours.
Justin.