You are biased. People who aren't biased don't use words like "unholy" and "poisonous" in reference to software - they make reasoned and thoughtful arguments.
So you insist on me PROVING that Windows is a bad operating system every time I mention it in a completely unrelated discussion?
I don't know why you respond to "I use a VM for initially playing around with an OS" with "and that's why you think Windows is OK." (paraphrasing.) As I said, they are not related.
If you use them in VMWare under Windows, it means that you find it acceptable for Windows and VMWare to be the gatekeepers between you, a system you are supposedly trying to learn, and a hardware. What you are "learning" is how to run a system in a crippled configuration it was never designed for.
I have VMware Server running quite adequately on Linux, and that's where I primarily use it when playing.
No modern OS (not even Linux) is designed to be run under VMWare under Linux, either.
Sometimes, yes, I use it or another product on top of a Windows OS, but it is far from my only exposure.
A layer of virtualization, crippled emulated hardware and a completely foreign OS running the whole thing, still produce the result that has absolutely nothing to do with the system you are supposedly learning.
I am not biased against Windows -- I merely see it as horrible OS for a multitude of entirely objective reasons.
that using a reasonable tool (virtualization) for learning purposes that happens to probably but not necessarily run on top of Windows makes it wrong.
Congratulations -- you have missed the point of absolutely everything that I wrote.
People who "learn" OS by running it under virtualization under Windows learn how to run things under Windows.
The first place I turn to play with a new OS is to a VM - because I don't have a lab full of computers, and I don't want to risk trashing the partition where all my personal stuff lives to an install error. And I am a computer professional, not some student who's still learning his way around.
And this is why you consider Windows to be an adequate OS -- because its deficiencies are projected onto everything else you "learned" under it.
The future of data centers is virtualization. You need to learn more about it if you think it's just "a crappy layer running on top of Windows.
The future of Windows is virtualization -- because slapping another level of virtual memory subsystem and a scheduler can't make Windows virtual memory and scheduling any worse. The future of data centers is host compartmentalization -- a feature that in various forms exists in every OS, and only Windows happens to be so bad at it, virtualization of the whole stack down to hardware ends up being adequate for those purposes.
1. Used a combination of software that contained all deficiencies of Windows on top of Linux. 2. Did not see, or do anything with, Linux drivers, X11 or even Linux networking without going through a layer that ran them in the most inefficient way possible. 3. Only seen X11 working through an unholy framebuffer provided by VMWare, that acted exactly how Microsoft fans present it. 4. Did not realize that he would get a faster, more functional, and overall superior system if he just ditched virtualization. 5. Used switching between virtual machine disk images for configuration changes instead of Linux package management. 6. Never learned to perform everyday tasks in Linux, and believes that he NEEDS Windows. 7. Will spread this poisonous "experience" to everyone who will talk to him about Linux, and will insist on Windows-based solutions because in his experience they worked better and were easier to configure than anything running on a crippled desktop Linux.
For all practical purposes such a person is no better than Microsoft astroturfers on this site who post their "opinions" and stories about made up problems, except he would really believe that those things are true.
This demonstrated the point that apparently is lost on the majority of people who are in various ways are responding to various "threats":
In the overwhelming majority of cases the best response to the possibility of attack is TO DO NOTHING. In a large subset of those, fixing underlying problem is the best direction of efforts, security-related or otherwise.
It's simple -- when you (be it a person, organization or a piece of software) respond to something in a predictable manner your actions are controlled by it. If the original problem was the possibility that "you" could be coerced into doing something stupid and self-destructive, adding more predictable and complex reactions only provides more possibilities for doing the same.
The only people who "need" CMYK support in a way that is not already available in GIMP, are Windows astroturfers.
In reality CMYK never appears in the picture until the last moment when image is converted into internal format used to control actual pigment distribution in the print house. GIMP does that just fine if someone really want to do it by himself, however I have never in my life heard a print house technician talking about GIMP (or Photoshop). Yet a lot of wannabes who heard about outdated print workflows, are quick to invent new and exciting uses for CMYK, Pantone, and imaginary problems associated with them -- all the while being unable to keep their own colors consistent on any device with any software.
I can assure you, actual Silicon Valley for most of 90's was exactly what you are describing.
Except with Federal Reserve pumping debt into stock market and real estate "prices" compensated for this, so no one bothered with offshoring. Actual progress happened despite all this money-shuffling game.
If you have a bug in kernel code that causes NULL pointer dereference, it can be used for various nastiness (in this case, privilege escalation).
This is why kernel shouldn't do it, and this is why it was an actual kernel bug that was exploited by so-called NULL pointer exploits. This is why those bugs were fixed.
Apparently some readers have an impression that what was posted is an actual exploit that works on a current kernel by dereferencing NULL pointer in userspace. In reality it relies on a buggy module being introduced, so kernel NULL dereference can be triggered by the user.
Adobe that made Flash objects scriptable with ActionScript which is ECMA-compliant.
It's more like ECMA is compliant with various semi-proprietary formats that vendors throw at it, rather than the other way around.
I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually get around to making Flash support more targets than just the Flash player, even if their best support remains with that.
I am not convinced that ANYTHING that Adobe wrote, ever turned out to work the way it was supposed to work. Either, they develop software in an entirely ad-hoc manner, or their implementation constantly gets sidetracked into becoming something that no one expected it to become.
As long as Flash will offer something better than a <video/> tag, it will be used instead of the HTML5 variant; of course, HTML5 option will be kept around, to satisfy diehards and corner cases of the market, but currently no browser can offer what Adobe offers or promises to offer starting with CS5.
Flash offers absolutely nothing useful over HTML and Javascript as far as video player functionality is concerned. It's used as a vehicle of codec delivery because Windows Media Player doesn't do it properly.
And video playback is far beyond the original purpose of flash in the first place -- flash is a vector-based interactive client, video was bolted on because it was a feature that was done poorly in "legitimate" video plugins such as Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Real Player.
Formally, a specification can't be open source because specification is not software -- even if it's a specification for open source software.
And then there are pathological cases such as Win32 (there never was a formal specification, though Windows implements and defines it and Wine reimplements it), and OOXML (that is not completely formally specified, and not even Microsoft has an implementation compliant with everything that is specified). Oh wait, how did it happen that my "favorite" software company produced both examples?
The mechanism is different, but overall you are right.
Google has to do something truly terrible to lose customers, but it has good chance to lose potential employees and partners if it will piss off large number of geeks in general.
For example, guess what would I do if I got an employment offer from Microsoft, Citrix or Broadcom, companies that have nearly unbroken record of annoying me by every their move?
H.264 is not open-source. Those decoding/encoding utilities are legal only in countries which do not support software patents. So no, there are no open-source H.264 codecs. You are mixing the concept of a codec and encoding/decoding facilities of it.
It's possible for a piece of software to be open source yet still patent-encumbered if a third party owns a patent on something used in it (like h.264 may be). Since open source licenses are applicable worldwide while patents have limited jurisdiction, use of such software in some countries without a patent license may be illegal, thus negating the applicability of the open source license there. However it has no effect on the entities that released software under an open source license, or users unless jurisdiction of the patent applies directly to them.
It's not fundamentally different from the status of open source encryption software in places where encryption use is restricted -- it's not any less open source, just third party actions' can block its use or distribution.
Of course, it's usually IMPRACTICAL to rely on software that can't be distributed in a large fraction of the world due to hostile patent owner unwilling to issue a blanket license for the patent that will be compatible with the license of that software, so an alternative is helpful.
Just make it the default format for Youtube, and everyone will include it, just to get rid of Flash. Apple hates Adobe, and Microsoft merely dislikes it, so no tears are going to be shed.
Obama is a statist overall. It's about power and control. A direct reflection of his modus operandi. -- I came out of the closet: I'm a Dittohead!!!
Never in my life I have seen a Slashdot signature to be so informative.
For non-Americans: "Dittohead" is a fan of Rush Limbaugh -- a huge, fat, socially conservative, misanthropic thing that spreads madness, but without tentacles.
Slashdot Mirror
n/t
You are biased. People who aren't biased don't use words like "unholy" and "poisonous" in reference to software - they make reasoned and thoughtful arguments.
So you insist on me PROVING that Windows is a bad operating system every time I mention it in a completely unrelated discussion?
I don't know why you respond to "I use a VM for initially playing around with an OS" with "and that's why you think Windows is OK." (paraphrasing.) As I said, they are not related.
If you use them in VMWare under Windows, it means that you find it acceptable for Windows and VMWare to be the gatekeepers between you, a system you are supposedly trying to learn, and a hardware. What you are "learning" is how to run a system in a crippled configuration it was never designed for.
I have VMware Server running quite adequately on Linux, and that's where I primarily use it when playing.
No modern OS (not even Linux) is designed to be run under VMWare under Linux, either.
Sometimes, yes, I use it or another product on top of a Windows OS, but it is far from my only exposure.
A layer of virtualization, crippled emulated hardware and a completely foreign OS running the whole thing, still produce the result that has absolutely nothing to do with the system you are supposedly learning.
OK, it's because you're so biased against Windows
I am not biased against Windows -- I merely see it as horrible OS for a multitude of entirely objective reasons.
that using a reasonable tool (virtualization) for learning purposes that happens to probably but not necessarily run on top of Windows makes it wrong.
Congratulations -- you have missed the point of absolutely everything that I wrote.
People who "learn" OS by running it under virtualization under Windows learn how to run things under Windows.
The first place I turn to play with a new OS is to a VM - because I don't have a lab full of computers, and I don't want to risk trashing the partition where all my personal stuff lives to an install error. And I am a computer professional, not some student who's still learning his way around.
And this is why you consider Windows to be an adequate OS -- because its deficiencies are projected onto everything else you "learned" under it.
The future of data centers is virtualization. You need to learn more about it if you think it's just "a crappy layer running on top of Windows.
The future of Windows is virtualization -- because slapping another level of virtual memory subsystem and a scheduler can't make Windows virtual memory and scheduling any worse. The future of data centers is host compartmentalization -- a feature that in various forms exists in every OS, and only Windows happens to be so bad at it, virtualization of the whole stack down to hardware ends up being adequate for those purposes.
Trolls trolling trolls -- /b/ has nothing on this place...
Because he:
1. Used a combination of software that contained all deficiencies of Windows on top of Linux.
2. Did not see, or do anything with, Linux drivers, X11 or even Linux networking without going through a layer that ran them in the most inefficient way possible.
3. Only seen X11 working through an unholy framebuffer provided by VMWare, that acted exactly how Microsoft fans present it.
4. Did not realize that he would get a faster, more functional, and overall superior system if he just ditched virtualization.
5. Used switching between virtual machine disk images for configuration changes instead of Linux package management.
6. Never learned to perform everyday tasks in Linux, and believes that he NEEDS Windows.
7. Will spread this poisonous "experience" to everyone who will talk to him about Linux, and will insist on Windows-based solutions because in his experience they worked better and were easier to configure than anything running on a crippled desktop Linux.
For all practical purposes such a person is no better than Microsoft astroturfers on this site who post their "opinions" and stories about made up problems, except he would really believe that those things are true.
...but difficult to watch if you're squeamish about real-world evil.
It's Slashdot -- every second story here is about Microsoft, Adobe, Sony, MPAA, RIAA, etc.
(Would this be a REVERSE GODWIN -- mentioning modern non-Nazi-related evil entities in a Hitler-related discussion?)
If I will see a person who learned how to use Linux by running it in VM, I will punch him in the face.
Install Ubuntu on a USB flash drive, or, if their hardware is too old to boot from a USB drive, use a live CD.
This demonstrated the point that apparently is lost on the majority of people who are in various ways are responding to various "threats":
In the overwhelming majority of cases the best response to the possibility of attack is TO DO NOTHING.
In a large subset of those, fixing underlying problem is the best direction of efforts, security-related or otherwise.
It's simple -- when you (be it a person, organization or a piece of software) respond to something in a predictable manner your actions are controlled by it. If the original problem was the possibility that "you" could be coerced into doing something stupid and self-destructive, adding more predictable and complex reactions only provides more possibilities for doing the same.
SFTP is FTP over SSL.
While you definitely can create accounts that will have FTP but not shell access, the only use for those I have ever seen was warez distribution.
The only people who "need" CMYK support in a way that is not already available in GIMP, are Windows astroturfers.
In reality CMYK never appears in the picture until the last moment when image is converted into internal format used to control actual pigment distribution in the print house. GIMP does that just fine if someone really want to do it by himself, however I have never in my life heard a print house technician talking about GIMP (or Photoshop). Yet a lot of wannabes who heard about outdated print workflows, are quick to invent new and exciting uses for CMYK, Pantone, and imaginary problems associated with them -- all the while being unable to keep their own colors consistent on any device with any software.
stable ABI
Not this shit again.
(also GIMP does not support CMYK, you will be forced to publish your sources if you write anything for Linux, and Jews did WTC).
It should be possible to make a Second Life viewer that works like this.
It may even include particle filtering, so, say, attack of the flying penises will look like a snowstorm.
I can assure you, actual Silicon Valley for most of 90's was exactly what you are describing.
Except with Federal Reserve pumping debt into stock market and real estate "prices" compensated for this, so no one bothered with offshoring. Actual progress happened despite all this money-shuffling game.
If you have a bug in kernel code that causes NULL pointer dereference, it can be used for various nastiness (in this case, privilege escalation).
This is why kernel shouldn't do it, and this is why it was an actual kernel bug that was exploited by so-called NULL pointer exploits. This is why those bugs were fixed.
Apparently some readers have an impression that what was posted is an actual exploit that works on a current kernel by dereferencing NULL pointer in userspace. In reality it relies on a buggy module being introduced, so kernel NULL dereference can be triggered by the user.
And racism classes.
And child porn appreciation classes.
gb2/b/
Adobe that made Flash objects scriptable with ActionScript which is ECMA-compliant.
It's more like ECMA is compliant with various semi-proprietary formats that vendors throw at it, rather than the other way around.
I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually get around to making Flash support more targets than just the Flash player, even if their best support remains with that.
I am not convinced that ANYTHING that Adobe wrote, ever turned out to work the way it was supposed to work. Either, they develop software in an entirely ad-hoc manner, or their implementation constantly gets sidetracked into becoming something that no one expected it to become.
As long as Flash will offer something better than a <video/> tag, it will be used instead of the HTML5 variant; of course, HTML5 option will be kept around, to satisfy diehards and corner cases of the market, but currently no browser can offer what Adobe offers or promises to offer starting with CS5.
Flash offers absolutely nothing useful over HTML and Javascript as far as video player functionality is concerned. It's used as a vehicle of codec delivery because Windows Media Player doesn't do it properly.
And video playback is far beyond the original purpose of flash in the first place -- flash is a vector-based interactive client, video was bolted on because it was a feature that was done poorly in "legitimate" video plugins such as Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Real Player.
Formally, a specification can't be open source because specification is not software -- even if it's a specification for open source software.
And then there are pathological cases such as Win32 (there never was a formal specification, though Windows implements and defines it and Wine reimplements it), and OOXML (that is not completely formally specified, and not even Microsoft has an implementation compliant with everything that is specified). Oh wait, how did it happen that my "favorite" software company produced both examples?
The mechanism is different, but overall you are right.
Google has to do something truly terrible to lose customers, but it has good chance to lose potential employees and partners if it will piss off large number of geeks in general.
For example, guess what would I do if I got an employment offer from Microsoft, Citrix or Broadcom, companies that have nearly unbroken record of annoying me by every their move?
No, I am pretty sure, he doesn't have tentacles.
H.264 is not open-source. Those decoding/encoding utilities are legal only in countries which do not support software patents. So no, there are no open-source H.264 codecs. You are mixing the concept of a codec and encoding/decoding facilities of it.
It's possible for a piece of software to be open source yet still patent-encumbered if a third party owns a patent on something used in it (like h.264 may be). Since open source licenses are applicable worldwide while patents have limited jurisdiction, use of such software in some countries without a patent license may be illegal, thus negating the applicability of the open source license there. However it has no effect on the entities that released software under an open source license, or users unless jurisdiction of the patent applies directly to them.
It's not fundamentally different from the status of open source encryption software in places where encryption use is restricted -- it's not any less open source, just third party actions' can block its use or distribution.
Of course, it's usually IMPRACTICAL to rely on software that can't be distributed in a large fraction of the world due to hostile patent owner unwilling to issue a blanket license for the patent that will be compatible with the license of that software, so an alternative is helpful.
But can Google get Safari and IE on board?
What?
Just make it the default format for Youtube, and everyone will include it, just to get rid of Flash. Apple hates Adobe, and Microsoft merely dislikes it, so no tears are going to be shed.
Obama is a statist overall. It's about power and control. A direct reflection of his modus operandi.
--
I came out of the closet: I'm a Dittohead!!!
Never in my life I have seen a Slashdot signature to be so informative.
For non-Americans: "Dittohead" is a fan of Rush Limbaugh -- a huge, fat, socially conservative, misanthropic thing that spreads madness, but without tentacles.