Among then I have highlighted the materials that you have to suck on, to get any exposure to oh-so-deadly asbestos:
joint compound/taping mud on sheetrock texture coats on sheetrock plaster, esp acoustical plaster vinyl floor tiles linoleum adhesives of all sorts roofing roofing patching material pipe insulation duct insulation duct tape transite acoustical ceiling tiles 'popcorn' or 'cottage cheese' ceiling fireproofing fire door cores exterior paint
I am sure, a lot of construction companies got juicy contracts justified by presence of those materials, and a lot of people claimed millions in damages for being "exposed" to asbestos in a duct tape based on your inspections.
Among then I have highlighted the materials that you have to suck on, to get any exposure to oh-so-deadly asbestos:
joint compound/taping mud on sheetrock texture coats on sheetrock plaster, esp acoustical plaster [b]vinyl floor tiles[/b] [b]linoleum[/b] [b]adhesives of all sorts[/b] roofing roofing patching material pipe insulation duct insulation [b]duct tape[b] transite acoustical ceiling tiles 'popcorn' or 'cottage cheese' ceiling fireproofing fire door cores exterior paint
I am sure, a lot of construction companies got juicy contracts justified by presence of those materials, and a lot of people claimed millions in damages for being "exposed" to asbestos in a duct tape based on your inspections.
It does not matter -- the problem is, tests only check if particular criteria are satisfied or not. However if you really knew all criteria, you would trivially derive a program from them, and there would be nothing to test.
In reality tests are only for things you believe are important, or possible to get wrong, and the more of them you have, the harder is to find out what they don't cover. Tests may have an advantage that they don't have to be optimized, but that merely makes them slightly less likely to be wrong.
And that's the other thing... if they aren't writing tests for everything they do, then even the code they write today is legacy code. Code without tests can't be easilly checked for correctness when a change is made, can fail silently easilly, and can't be understood as easilly. On the other hand, code WITH tests also can't be easily checked for correctness when a change is made. There is only very small scope of possible mistakes that a test can detect, and if you will try to make test verify everything, test will grow larger (and buggier, and more incomprehensible) than your code. It's also possible that intended behavior of the code and expected behavior that the test checks for, diverge because of some changed interface. Tests help with detection of obvious breakage, but you can never rely on anything just because it passed them.
In other words:
TESTS DON'T VERIFY THAT YOUR CODE IS NOT BUGGY. YOU VERIFY THAT YOUR CODE ISN'T BUGGY.
Unless they run real-time audio processing applications, it won't matter.
If they DO run real-time audio processing applications, they most likely have their kernel specifically configured for it, and won't get updates until developers will make sure that there is no additional latency introduced.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Linux_education_packages lists more, and it's a small fraction of what is available (finding all of it would require searching for each and every topic studied in a school curriculum).
"Measure" activity can measure AC and even DC input in the microphone jack, it's just by default connected to the built-in microphone so it always has some signal to show.
It's all crap compared to what's out there for Windows. I'm sorry. I have a Linux box at home, now Ubuntu Hardy Heron, and the choices for children suck. In general, Linux games and entertainment software suck. It seems like every title in Linux entertainment begins with "Clone of"... First of all, games are not educational software. Even "educational" games aren't. Second, what software are you talking about? Celestia is insufficiently original or educational for you? Or your idea of educational software is a multiple-choice test (a cancer of education in its own right) written in Visual Basic 6?
But, gaming and entertainment systems are really solo, artistic statements, (or should be), and so there's really little financial incentive to bring an FOSS game out there. Neither games not entertainment are education, even though they often are presented as such to get various kinds of public funding and support. They may be art, but art by itself is not education.
While Estonia may not pioneering on this issue. Estonia was the first country in the world to use Internet voting (known as "e-voting" in Estonia) back in March, 2007. Accordingly, about 30 000 people used the Internet to vote for their candidates. Why exactly is this supposed to be a good thing?
But your parent poster made a good point. Estonia is small enough to try these computer systems, and since its IT infrastructure is rather new, it can allow for quite newer methods and do it a lot faster. Newer methods are not called "IT solutions". You have "IT solution" when an outside consultant brings you massive amount of various companies' marketing materials, and half a year into the project you are running most expensive software packages ever made by SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, HP, Siebel, and $deity knows what, yet your paid-by-the-hour consultants seem to be incapable of making those things provide anything that is actually useful for your company. You have "competent people in IT department" when some people who work for your company implement things that improve your processes and provide benefit to whatever the company does.
A good comparison is the Copenhagen Metro. Many cities in Europe and beyond have had metros for years, but it is something only a few years old in Denmark. Which means we can use quite modern technology (such as computer controlled trains). And you think it is without reason it has been labelled as the best metro in the world? Computer-controlled trains are not an "IT solution", either. They are not even related to IT, they are "equipment control systems". "IT" applies computer-based technology to the company's information-handling processes.
I have had good luck with the Fedora 7 core and XFCE though. Flash still sucks. Flash sucks, or Youtube sucks? I have installed flashblock and made a script that takes Youtube/Google Video URL, passes it to the latest version of clive, downloads the movie and plays it in mplayer with options for reduced CPU usage. So far it perfectly played everything I have thrown at it.
That's the thing, is that, there's an aweful lot of children's software written for Windows, games, educational titles, and what not. There just isn't much out there for Linux for kids. Actually there is plenty of educational software for Linux, more than for Windows unless you count idiotic multiple-choice tests and other obvious crap. OLPC was supposed to make Sugar interface for those, and newly-developed applications, however it's possible to run them as they are, just interface will be traditional GTK/Qt/...
With Windows the option to convert applications to more kid-friendly interface does not exist because there is no Sugar or its equivalent there. Even if Sugar will be ported to Windows, to provide Sugar interface for existing application it would be necessary to port it to Python, and therefore make it cross-platform in the process.
Actually Windows (of any version) can't run on XO laptops with current firmware. I somehow doubt that anyone would bother with a firnware modding project just to run Windows.
Actually, XP is faster than Sugar/Linux on the XO right now. We hope to change that soon! Really? Who told you? A guy who claimed that it boots "4 times faster" despite the fact that what he claims is about the same as Linux boot time?
(I am posting this from Firefox 3b5 on XO running Ubuntu).
...or, alternatively, they will just raise oil prices and sell some tanks and fighter jets to someone you don't like. International pissing matches 2.0 -- now over the Internet!
I do think that the idea of Cyber Defence is quite cool and I'm glad, that we're the pioneers here but it does seem that this really is the primary reason here, to pioneer something. It might still become useful one day and I'll be interested to see how this rolls out. New? Pioneers? Morris worm was launched, and defeated by co-operating sysadmins and programmers in 1988, 20 years ago. CERT was founded in the same year. Bugtraq mailing list is operating since 1993. CVE exists since 1999. And those are organizations that are maintaining ongoing up to date information on security-related matters. OpenBSD was founded in 1995. SELinux was released in 2000. grsecurity in 2001. Those are only most prominent software projects related to security.
The only thing you are "pioneering" is a way of getting piles of other governments' money for a basic network security awareness program.
I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of. More like dumping ground for proprietary "IT solutions". The rest of the world is busy trying to get rid of them.
In particular, the constant condescending remarks and expectations that they will "liberate" themselves, inviting you as their new overlords (that I, for one...).
Seriously do you think that it's completely impossible that if every time someone sticks his nose outside of national media he is bombarded with foreign propaganda that for half a century is trying to turn everyone against a government that he happens to like, he may WANT this stream of offensive shit to be silenced? Did you, guys, also like being teased and bullied in school? Because in the eyes of average Chinese your "oh, they should be given FREEE-EEE-DOM!!!" sounds about the same.
Someone once shown the Google Image Search result for "Tiananmen Square" in censored and uncensored versions, supposedly to show how evil Chinese government and Google are. What he probably didn't notice was that uncensored version not merely included but consisted almost entirely of 1989 photos (of what a single photo dominated the list) -- it would be impossible to derive from it what Tiananmen Square actually is beyond the fact that it was a site of protests and massacre. It's an equivalent of trying to get information about Dallas, TX, and getting nothing but Kennedy assassination photos and articles speculating about its organizers.
What would be the problem with that? The fact that text in question is not a creative work, and merely lists prescribed procedures and rules of an existing organization, without any creative writing or even compilation applied to it. If someone wrote annotated version of the handbook, or comparison between two handbooks, it would be creative work.
A bare set of rules may be protected as a trade secret -- owner can sue whoever leaked the document, but that would be the only remedy they can get. Everyone else, who got the material without being entrusted with it, is free to do whatever he wants. Worse yet, it would be still questionable if it can be treated as a trade secret because it has no value except to anyone who does not have access to it already. Unless, of course, someone wants to create a church that imitates Mormon procedures without being Mormon, but I don't think, such an argument would result in anything but getting laughed out of a courtroom -- even in Utah.
If I was a teacher and any of students tried ignorant trolling in my classroom like the above, he would end up with no Internet access beyond 4chan for the rest of the year.
And Python/Qt on GTK+/Qt isn't "an extra layer" because? Because Mono is sitting between a language (Python) and widget set (GTK+) as an imitation of a Microsoft product designed to shield a language (sometimes Python but mostly C#) from a widget set and OS API (Win32).
Except, of course, Win32 API is a disgusting piece of shit that should better be shielded from developers by something, and GTK+ is a widget set with a very straightforward design. Heck, Windows GTK+ port even runs on top of Win32. And so does Windows port of Qt, with absolutely no need for.Net, Mono or other additional layers.
Slashdot Mirror
Among then I have highlighted the materials that you have to suck on, to get any exposure to oh-so-deadly asbestos:
joint compound/taping mud on sheetrock
texture coats on sheetrock
plaster, esp acoustical plaster
vinyl floor tiles
linoleum
adhesives of all sorts
roofing
roofing patching material
pipe insulation
duct insulation
duct tape
transite
acoustical ceiling tiles
'popcorn' or 'cottage cheese' ceiling
fireproofing
fire door cores
exterior paint
I am sure, a lot of construction companies got juicy contracts justified by presence of those materials, and a lot of people claimed millions in damages for being "exposed" to asbestos in a duct tape based on your inspections.
Among then I have highlighted the materials that you have to suck on, to get any exposure to oh-so-deadly asbestos:
joint compound/taping mud on sheetrock
texture coats on sheetrock
plaster, esp acoustical plaster
[b]vinyl floor tiles[/b]
[b]linoleum[/b]
[b]adhesives of all sorts[/b]
roofing
roofing patching material
pipe insulation
duct insulation
[b]duct tape[b]
transite
acoustical ceiling tiles
'popcorn' or 'cottage cheese' ceiling
fireproofing
fire door cores
exterior paint
I am sure, a lot of construction companies got juicy contracts justified by presence of those materials, and a lot of people claimed millions in damages for being "exposed" to asbestos in a duct tape based on your inspections.
...to maximize its users' computers malware infection rates.
It does not matter -- the problem is, tests only check if particular criteria are satisfied or not. However if you really knew all criteria, you would trivially derive a program from them, and there would be nothing to test.
In reality tests are only for things you believe are important, or possible to get wrong, and the more of them you have, the harder is to find out what they don't cover. Tests may have an advantage that they don't have to be optimized, but that merely makes them slightly less likely to be wrong.
In other words:
TESTS DON'T VERIFY THAT YOUR CODE IS NOT BUGGY. YOU VERIFY THAT YOUR CODE ISN'T BUGGY.
Unless they run real-time audio processing applications, it won't matter.
If they DO run real-time audio processing applications, they most likely have their kernel specifically configured for it, and won't get updates until developers will make sure that there is no additional latency introduced.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Linux_education_packages lists more, and it's a small fraction of what is available (finding all of it would require searching for each and every topic studied in a school curriculum).
"Measure" activity can measure AC and even DC input in the microphone jack, it's just by default connected to the built-in microphone so it always has some signal to show.
With Windows the option to convert applications to more kid-friendly interface does not exist because there is no Sugar or its equivalent there. Even if Sugar will be ported to Windows, to provide Sugar interface for existing application it would be necessary to port it to Python, and therefore make it cross-platform in the process.
That' pretty freaking ironic.
Actually Windows (of any version) can't run on XO laptops with current firmware. I somehow doubt that anyone would bother with a firnware modding project just to run Windows.
(I am posting this from Firefox 3b5 on XO running Ubuntu).
...or, alternatively, they will just raise oil prices and sell some tanks and fighter jets to someone you don't like. International pissing matches 2.0 -- now over the Internet!
The only thing you are "pioneering" is a way of getting piles of other governments' money for a basic network security awareness program. I do enjoy the fact that the small size of Estonia allows us to try all the new IT solutions on quite a large scale very fast. So far we've done quite well and I hope that we can do something revolutionary on the international scale as well. The IT innovation part of Estonia is really something I'm proud of. More like dumping ground for proprietary "IT solutions". The rest of the world is busy trying to get rid of them.
Two left.
Solution: Don't invade China.
Because sure as Hell, they are not interested in attacking you. It's amazing how self-righteous Americans are fond of looking for enemies.
Crap.
In particular, the constant condescending remarks and expectations that they will "liberate" themselves, inviting you as their new overlords (that I, for one...).
Seriously do you think that it's completely impossible that if every time someone sticks his nose outside of national media he is bombarded with foreign propaganda that for half a century is trying to turn everyone against a government that he happens to like, he may WANT this stream of offensive shit to be silenced? Did you, guys, also like being teased and bullied in school? Because in the eyes of average Chinese your "oh, they should be given FREEE-EEE-DOM!!!" sounds about the same.
Someone once shown the Google Image Search result for "Tiananmen Square" in censored and uncensored versions, supposedly to show how evil Chinese government and Google are. What he probably didn't notice was that uncensored version not merely included but consisted almost entirely of 1989 photos (of what a single photo dominated the list) -- it would be impossible to derive from it what Tiananmen Square actually is beyond the fact that it was a site of protests and massacre. It's an equivalent of trying to get information about Dallas, TX, and getting nothing but Kennedy assassination photos and articles speculating about its organizers.
That's the name that I expected never to see again. What is next, Canter & Siegel?
A bare set of rules may be protected as a trade secret -- owner can sue whoever leaked the document, but that would be the only remedy they can get. Everyone else, who got the material without being entrusted with it, is free to do whatever he wants. Worse yet, it would be still questionable if it can be treated as a trade secret because it has no value except to anyone who does not have access to it already. Unless, of course, someone wants to create a church that imitates Mormon procedures without being Mormon, but I don't think, such an argument would result in anything but getting laughed out of a courtroom -- even in Utah.
If I was a teacher and any of students tried ignorant trolling in my classroom like the above, he would end up with no Internet access beyond 4chan for the rest of the year.
One of them is, I guess, Miguel himself.
Still three left.
Except, of course, Win32 API is a disgusting piece of shit that should better be shielded from developers by something, and GTK+ is a widget set with a very straightforward design. Heck, Windows GTK+ port even runs on top of Win32. And so does Windows port of Qt, with absolutely no need for