As a contractor when I submit code, I leave a certain amount of time for the customer to test that code and supply me a list of bugs. I fix that list. Once my contract time elapses, I expect sign-off and payment. I've fulfilled my end of the contract. I expect my customer to fulfill his end. If he doesn't pay, then I'll send my bill to a collection agency.
My code is not guaranteed indefinitely. Any bugs which appear after the contract is expired can be fixed under another contract if I agree to fix them. I am certainly under no obligation to do that later work at all and especially not for free.
Excellant points. Good program management requires testing as you go to eliminate bugs; especially since bugs can result in later programming decisions to develop work arounds, which, then bug is fixed, now become problems themselves. If the If the specs are as good as he claims, testing should be straightforward and either the code meets the specs or it doesn't.
In addition, what is a bug? I've seen situations where code A meets its spec but do to some weird interaction with other code or data anomaly doesn't run properly. To me, that's not a bug but a poor specification; or simply one of those unforeseen events that happen in any project.
Given his statement "Developers are always fine with it until we get toward the end of a project and the customer is complaining about bugs." leads me to believe that there is more than just poor programming at play here; a combination of how specifications are written, testing practices, poor documentation of existing systems and data structures, and changing requirements seems to me to be a logical explanation for issues that arise. It sounds like he is paying by the hour and iif so the programmers concerns are valid. If he can't pay what it takes to get a full time hire with the needed skills he is better off biting the bullet, raising his prices,and paying developers to fix bugs instead of getting someone who cannot do the job to his expectations. He could go to a deliverables model - pay for a specific functional code, but that won't really solve his problem - expecting perfect code at a cut rate - and probably cost more. I know if I get requests for a fixed price I triple my estimate to cover any unexpected issues that may arise; and if they don't I pocket the bonus. I also get a very specific contract detailing exactly what they get to protect myself from schedule delays, changing requirements, etc.
I read that as "How Blackberry is struggling to stay relevant after people stopped using the devices on which their services are used"
I agree with you here - they are trying to remain relevant by become an ecosystem, not a device vendor. If they can build a strong enough enterprise solution that runs on a number of devices, besides their own, they can offer companies a total solution w/o locking them in to a specific brand of hardware; and offer a total package for companies that want one standard device. I doubt they can stay viable as a hardware unique solution simply because that mens tehy must innovate in hardware as well as software, and they've had a hard time doing that.
And, honestly, I question whether or not Blackberry's services are strong enough to stand on their own any more. There have been a number of "good enough" alternatives that have popped up in the last few years, either from first-party or third-party developers on the competing platforms.
The ultimate question is 'good enough" enough to overcome their advantages of scope and size in the enterprise market? Personally, I think they will rollout this new model, do reasonably well, and get bought either by MS or a big enterprise software company. I doubt Apple would buy them because it would mean redoing teh software to match Apple's POV and it would simply be easier to partner and build BES support and security services into their existing iOS.
Even then not a reasonable comparison. The ability for the scanned proprietary softwares' teams to decide on inclusion feels to me like it would really influence the stats.
Would you expect there to exist any correlation between how shoddy software is and how likely the authors are to share information about how shoddy their software is? I would expect some correlation.
Let's accept the premise that proprietary vendors only submitted what they considered their best code. If the code bases tested matched similar function OSS codebases, then it is a valid comparison of similar types of software.
I don't see how you're answering the grandparent's concern here. Are you assuming that the code quality is only a function of the function of the code? Otherwise, why would an OSS project in category X be better than average just because a better-than-average proprietary X was submitted?
No, I am saying it would be a valid comparison between OSS and proprietary code if programs that perform the same function were tested in each category. OSS quality has no impact on proprietary quality, and vice versa; but if you compare OSS and proprietary web browsers tehn it would be a reasonable comparison of teh quality of each vs the other.
Let's make this a bit more concrete: Imagine that the defect density of proprietary projects is normal-distributed with a mean of 0.6 and a standard deviation of 0.1. Then you would expect the defect density to vary between less than 0.5 and more than 0.7, with 68% lying between those numbers. If high quality projects are preferentially submitted for review, then the mean of that subset will obviously be lower than 0.6. Let's say that the projects that were sent in were a web browser (0.55), a pdf reader (0.49) and a video player (0.50). You're saying that it would be fair if we compared this with open source web browsers, pdf readers and video players. But just as these categories happened to fluctuate low in error density in the proprietary side, these categories may just as well happen to have atypically high error rates on the OSS side. In fact, unless the quality of the project is strongly correlated with the category it is in, then you would expect the mean on the OSS web browsers, pdf readers and video players to be the same as the total mean, since *they were not selected based on their own quality*, unlike the proprietary software.
The problem is you are assuming they all have a normal distribution. While that may be true for a large data set (in fact the central limit theorem would say so); we don't know what the distribution is for individual categories. While we don't know what exactly made the data set we do know teh results for various sizes of code. It seems a reasonable assumption that similar types of programs would have similar size code bases so you don't have really good small proprietary programs skewing results for really large ones or vice versa; and similarly for OSS code.
Your argument about comparisons of similar types of software would only make sense if there were only one proprietary program of the type in question, and that is the one that was submitted for testing. Otherwise, you would expect to be comparing a better-than-average properietary foo with an average OSS foo.
Not really; especially a the high end where there are relatively few products in each category. There aren't that many commercial choices in many of the categories; and also relatively few OSS as well. As a result it is less likely all the bad ones got left out, if they were you wouldn't have much of a data set. So, assuming they had similar software in each category the comparison drawn would be valid. Could we say any one program is equal to another? No, but we could say that for large programs OSS software is as bug free as proprietary; and vice versa.
Even then not a reasonable comparison. The ability for the scanned proprietary softwares' teams to decide on inclusion feels to me like it would really influence the stats.
Would you expect there to exist any correlation between how shoddy software is and how likely the authors are to share information about how shoddy their software is? I would expect some correlation.
Let's accept the premise that proprietary vendors only submitted what they considered their best code. If the code bases tested matched similar function OSS codebases, then it is a valid comparison of similar types of software. It would say that OSS and proprietary software; of similar functionality, has similar defect rates (for certain size code bases). As with any study, the results should be taken with a grain of salt until you see the underlying methodology and data. That, of course, will not stop people form trumpeting the results as proof *their* OSS project is as good as proprietary in terms of errors, even though such a conclusion is not valid; but it does give people some assurance that OSS code, in general, is as reasonably good as its proprietary equivalent. It would be interesting to see exactly what was included in each data sets and such information would help shed light on the conclusions. In addition, depending on what OSS software was included, you could make a case that much shoddy OSS software was left out depending on what was included in the sample; which is why I conclude that as long as similar types of programs were tested it is a valid comparison.
We use coverity where I work on proprietary code and part of their service is to report, anonymously obviously, the defect count, type and lines of code etc back to coverity IF YOU WANT TO.
Am I detecting a selection bias here? Coverity can run their tests against all of open source. Coverity can run their tests only against that proprietary code that decides to use it and report the results--and it strikes me that only the better, and more open, proprietary shops would be doing this. Is Mircrosoft reporting their code? I doubt it. Is Oracle?
I doubt they ran it against all open source software; just some subset that ideally mirrored the proprietary code in complexity and application. If so it would be a reasonable comparison. Since TFA says they used some 300 OSS programs of various sizes I'd say it was a reasonable approximation of real world defect rates. Since the TFA doesn't name any proprietary products included in the survey it is harder to decide if they are valid results but I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt.
"Code quality for open source software continues to mirror that of proprietary software — and both continue to surpass the industry standard for software quality."
What is this third kind of software that is neither open source nor proprietary which is bringing down the average industry standard for software quality? Because if there is only open source and proprietary then they can't both be better than average. Or perhaps the programmers are from Lake Wobegon?
I had the same reaction, right down to the Lake Wobegon reference. Perhaps they are differentiating between software offered for sale versus tools internal to a business? To some extent that would also explain the difference in quality - cost to fix is much higher if you have shipped thousands of copies, versus telling the one consumer of a report in finance to ignore the one number that is wrong.
An industry standard has nothing to do with actual practice. It is not an average. All it says is it is an acceptable error rate is x.
Maybe those creative professionals should contribute to the development of gimp by coding and contributing the features that they want? Every feature gimp has is a feature that someone decided they wanted and then wrote and shared. That is how it works. The graphic designers are just to lazy to do it themselves, instead they demand that you do it for them for free.
No, they're simply saying this doesn't meet my needs so I picked a different solution. They don't care about FOSS, they want a solution that works well for them. If FOSS is truly to go mainstream it needs to move beyond the "if you want it code it yourself" mentality. That's fine for hobbyist pursuits, but won't lead to broader success.
Adobe underestimates how much it benefits from piracy. If poor college students can't cut their teeth on the full Adobe suite, they're likely to learn how to use something else. When those students go out and get jobs, they're more likely to use what they're used to than drop a bundle on Adobe software they've never used before.
Guess what? They'll give it college students for free, or real cheap and then when they pull the plug after 4 years they have a new paying user. Piracy, who needs it when you can hook them and then withdraw the drug until they pay?
but how fast can you reach stratospheric levels. They want to be at the bottom of a very step revenue (and profit) curve so the can quickly make many time stehir investment.
True, but fair use does not require any use not make money for the person claiming fair use; for example you can use a clip in a critique of the that is published in a for profit magazine.
While for-profit ventures can have fair-use content in their products, the fact that money is made off of the product (or that it is used by a non-profit entity like the Free Software Foundation) can be a contributing factor for determining if the infringement is in fact fair use or a copyright violation.
Keep in mind that fair-use is a legal defense against a claim of copyright infringement. You are still technically infringing on copyright even with fair-use content, just that such infringement is "legal" in those countries which recognize fair-use or related concepts like fair-dealing. In America, fair-use is considered the aspect of copyright law which recognizes the 1st amendment issues that modify a grant of copyright, and has subsequently been codified with specific fair-use exceptions. In other words, there are some forms of expression that simply must permit at least some minor copyright infringement simply to be able to express yourself and ideas in society... and a full restriction on copyrighted content would prohibit many forms of speech or expression that shouldn't be restricted.
True, but fair use, in US Law, is defines as a non-infringing use; which makes it an affirmative defense against a claim of copyright infringement. The right to control certain types of uses is not granted copyright owners so fair use is not a case of "you infringed but that is ok;" because teh law says anyone can use your material for these purposes and not violate your copyright.
they were actually making money off of someone else work without compensation.
Which is irrelevant in determining fair use.
How so? The first factor in a fair use determination under U.S. law (17 USC 107) involves whether or not the "purpose and character" was commercial.
True, but fair use does not require any use not make money for the person claiming fair use; for example you can use a clip in a critique of the that is published in a for profit magazine.
because this law is nothing more than government forcing christianity into schools. We don't stop that because that's what people want. just try to get Islamic creationism in schools. fat chance.
Actually, that is what it would take - or perhaps Von Danikin's idea of ancient astronauts? There's enough pseudo - science in there to qualify under teh "bones in teh dust" standard for opening eyes to alternate ideas. Of course, the law would be repealed immediately.
Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.
Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.
This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.
Except of course, one economic explanation why men tend to get paid more is they do not take maternity leave so they work more; the problem is pay scales are based on the group view of work rather than individual. If Yahoo gives one more than another salary ranges should be comparable as well. If they already are than I would say men may have a discrimination case.
logic and reasoning in a schoolhouse, what ever is this nation coming to? this must be stopped!
Unfortunately, in a mad rush to show "we are serious about..." school boards and administrators pass zero tolerance policies. As a result the stupid as well as they criminal get punished equally. Schools cannot apply common sense, as much as they may want to, because of the rules. Everyone gets all bothered by draconian punishment for a minor infraction but are unwilling to change rules because they don't want to be held accountable for making a decision that someone will second guess. That is not limited to schools, many lawmakers seem to share the same viewpoint (and then get all upset when something h clearly ridiculous happens as a result of a zero tolerence law THEY PASSED.)
I'm as big a fan of the iPhone as anyone, but the tools you mention don't work for BYOD. They're great for company owned and managed devices. But it's not "Your Own Device" if you're letting someone else control it with those profiles or activesync connections. If I've paid for hardware with my own money, it's mine... period, full stop. No one else gets admin, root, remote-wipe, find my iPhone, or whatever privileges but me.
Then you don't get access to their network with your device. I have a client that requires I allow remote wipe in exchange for Exchange Server access. For me, the ability to get emails anywhere anytime outweighs any concerns I have about giving them access.
Another issue, however, is labor and other law. What happens if you require employees to allow access and then expect them to work after hours? Are they entitled to overtime? Are you liable if they have an accident while answering an email? What happens if proprietary or private data gets leaked before you wipe? Who gets fined? While I can see the advantges of having one phone and getting reimbursed for its use, a company needs to look past the cost savings and assess the risk, financial and otherwise, before making this leap. While they may have gigabytes of procedures they put the onus on the employee in an attempt to avoid liability, they generally are the deep pockets with the most to lose.
There are a couple of economic reasons that will drive renewable adoption:
It's not the size of the reserves but the cost of extraction that will drive adoption of renewables. As long as natural gas is cheap (and prices can be hedged) utilities will build natural gas plants at the expense of renewables. If prices rise sharply, gas becomes less attractive (since much of the cost per KW is for fuel) and other energy sources become viable options.
The energy density of the energy source. If a lot of space is required per BTU fossil fuels will dominate in many places. For example, a gas plant is relatively compact compared to a wind farm of similar capacity; so it is much easier to acquire land for a gas plant. For small scale uses, such as automotive or home fuels, the ability to get a long range or have a reasonably small supply pipe vs large panels favors fossil fuels currently. The economic driver here is "what fuel source gives me the best return on my needs;" such as the ability to travel or not want a roof full of solar panels.
Economics is what limits OPEC's ability to rise prices - eventually alternatives are viable on a cost basis as well as an energy self sufficiency one.
Quite frankly, global warning is not as major concern to most people than the ability to afford fuel drive, cook, and heat their houses; so selling renewables on that basis is very difficult.
This happened in 2010.
Those were old computers.
They already had the money to buy replacements budgeted in their 2010/2011 budget.
So they had to decide to pull the effort the reimage everything for a couple of months, or just buy the new ones early. Buying the new ones early did cost a bit more (30k for all of them), but less then a cleaning would have cost.
The servers, who where not sheduled for replacement, were reimaged just fine.
This happened in 2010.
Those were old computers.
They already had the money to buy replacements budgeted in their 2010/2011 budget.
So they had to decide to pull the effort the reimage everything for a couple of months, or just buy the new ones early. Buying the new ones early did cost a bit more (30k for all of them), but less then a cleaning would have cost.
The servers, who where not sheduled for replacement, were reimaged just fine.
How dare you inject reason and facts into a/. arguement? You're supposed to say Windoze Bad Linux Shiney Free and accuse anyone with a different view of being an MS shill or troll. Replacing rather than cleaning is the right thing to do, it would have been more fiscally irresponsible to clean and then replace, and no doubt under German law the old ones were recycled rather than just dumped in the trash.
given that reimaging would involve more than simply pushing out a new image but would need machines to be offline to avoid reinfection, there is also productivity losses and associated costs as well.
a) find image you want to use at site X
b) have someone strip the the image of identifying information and repost it at site Y
c) discover image at site Y lacking traceable information
d) do "due dilligence" based on image from site Y
e) declare image from site Y as 'orphaned'
f) PROFIT
While IANAL and my ignorance of UK law exceeds that of US law; I doubt such a scheme would work. Due diligence would require at least a reasonable amount of effort searching for ownership information. It would seem to me if someone went before a court and should how a Google search could easily locate the image with ownership info or a copyright registration it would be hard to argue you performed due diligence. This act should be named the IP Lawyer Full Employment Act since it will no doubt result in court cases. I would venture most big corporations would be hesitant to rely on it to avoid any lawsuits. It is more likely the cheap ripoff artist companies that would try to use it as a defense and since they already rip off Luther's material I see little practical hangs if this become law.
1. Don't try to be Apple. Your strength is as a fast follower. Let others identify a good sea and then use your cash, trchnical exepertise and market position to capitalize on it.
2. Identify the most desirable customer segments and focus on them. Forget those that are low return.
3. Find out what those segments really want and have a laser focus on delivery
4. Get rid of any product where you cannot compete and that down't play to your core customer base.
5. Give Ballmer a raise and move him to the board.
Since my financial stability for the future doesn't correlate with income nor even profit, I think my risk is pretty low. Even if volatility continues, and even if my businesses took in 50% of their revenues in BTC, I still wouldn't see any actual harm. The businesses have been around for decades, and they're self-sufficient and stable.
Since I know nothing about your particular business I'll simply generalize that most business cannot afford the risk inherent in Bitcoin volatility. At some point, the loss in Bitcoin value means you are not taking in enough to cover costs and start burning reserves. Companies hedge their bets to reduce volatility. That is why derivatives exist to reduce volatility risks in commodities; which Bitcoin is and rather than hedge a thinly traded commodity some people decide to simply eliminate the risk and cash out. Given teh size and trading volumes it doesn't take much to cause large swings in the price; a major seller could destroy teh value pretty quickly.
Converting BTC to fiat currency puts a sell-pressure on BTC. Holding BTC would reduce the selling supply, thereby reducing volatility from the sell side. It's the same with dollars: I hoard my dollars in cash "under the mattress" rather than put it in a bank to get loaned out as debt (money multiplier effect).
The "market forces" in BTC right now are pretty unique because only a small number of BTC holders are actually transacting. Most people are "long game speculators", and are neither buying things with BTC nor selling it to liquidate for fiat currency. As the number of BTC users goes up (which will likely happen when volatility is reduced), I believe we'll see a more stable platform.
As a result, Bitcoin is simply a speculative play, not a currency; anymore than tulips were in Holland even though people would take them in payment. As long as people want to avoid risk and sell them volatility will remain; and as prices drop more people will jump in in an attempt to minimize losses. The issue then becomes who covers the trades if their are no buyers? Ultimately a speculative play needs a way to cash out and there is no way to ensure that with Bitcoins since no one makes the market; rather it is more like advertising a sale on Craigslist and seeing if anyone bytes. The market essentially shuts down and Bitcoins become yet another case study in speculative bubbles. Although with Bitcoins it is a bit different since anyone can create a competitor that is also crypto based and anonymous; all they need to do is convince someone it is better than Bitcoin.
I sell physical goods and accept Bitcoin as a payment method. The volatility doesn't bug me at all. it's only a tiny percentage of overall sales...
That is because your risk is very limited. If you had a significant amount of your sales in Bitcoin you'd probably think differently; since your risk exposure would be much higher.
If a seller is concerned with volatility, they should consider not selling their received BTC for fiat currency.
No, they should immediately convert it so they assume no volatility risk.
It's the number of "we accept bitcoin" sites that accept currency and then immediately convert it to fiat that is one reason for the downward pressure.
The vast majority preferred permissive licenses such as the MIT, BSD, or Apache licenses, rather than the GPL. Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software?
No, they haven't. They've just noticed that licenses like BSD is better open source license than GPL. There's a simple reason for it too - BSD license is truly in the spirit of freedom. Anyone, either open or closed source projects, can use BSD licensed code.
I also think they have seen how valuable an idea and the supporting code can be and want to be able to cash in on that while still sharing what they're doing. The BSD license is very amenable to that; unlike the GPL. It's not less free tahn teh GPL and an argument can be made, and is being made on/., taht it is less restrictive and thus freer than the GPL.
This means younger generation haven't forgotten about open source licenses (BSD is one), they've just chosen the better one of them.
Early on, it was a good way to reconnect with old friends and the groups actually had decent discussions. Most groups have devolved into a few people arguing amongst themselves (one even has become one person talking to themselves)and a place for people to self promote. For a while there many posts I saw were form bogus job offers and SEO spammers. I still use it to search for old friends but if I get a request from an unknown person I refuse it.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. Like, BitCoins will tend to go up in value over your time period (be it in days or years). That you will actually be able to execute on a displayed priced – before everybody else does.
Suggestion - find (and read up on) a arbitrage opportunity. For example, a US dollars / BitCons / Eurs / US Dollar trade should net you zero dollars less fees – but does it? I have heard of times that it has not and could be taken advantage of. Also, try to find somebody who knows something about program stock trading – which is basically what you are doing. (and stay away from those green arrows / red arrows FX trading programs you see on TV)
Excellant points. One of the problems with bitcoins is there is no assurance of liquidity; unlike many other commodities or real currencies. For arbitrage to work you have to be able to buy and sell when you want so you can take advantage of the opportunity; ideally at the same time so you never really put any of your money at risk. Bitcoin, OTOH, operates on the well known "greater fool" theory that drives many speculative bubbles such as tulips. You hope someone somewhere will pay more for it than you did; even though there is no underlying reason for them to do so other than they believe they will go even higher. They have no unique value behind them; anyone can create a new crypto chain separate from bitcoin and if they convince people the new bytecoin is better than bitcoin then bitcoins will cease to have value. In the end, there is no control over the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation despite promises otherwise. The one valid comparison of bitcoins to money is that, like money, any country can decide to issue it and in what quantity; its value will depend on people's faith in the issuer.
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As a contractor when I submit code, I leave a certain amount of time for the customer to test that code and supply me a list of bugs. I fix that list. Once my contract time elapses, I expect sign-off and payment. I've fulfilled my end of the contract. I expect my customer to fulfill his end. If he doesn't pay, then I'll send my bill to a collection agency. My code is not guaranteed indefinitely. Any bugs which appear after the contract is expired can be fixed under another contract if I agree to fix them. I am certainly under no obligation to do that later work at all and especially not for free.
Excellant points. Good program management requires testing as you go to eliminate bugs; especially since bugs can result in later programming decisions to develop work arounds, which, then bug is fixed, now become problems themselves. If the If the specs are as good as he claims, testing should be straightforward and either the code meets the specs or it doesn't.
In addition, what is a bug? I've seen situations where code A meets its spec but do to some weird interaction with other code or data anomaly doesn't run properly. To me, that's not a bug but a poor specification; or simply one of those unforeseen events that happen in any project.
Given his statement "Developers are always fine with it until we get toward the end of a project and the customer is complaining about bugs." leads me to believe that there is more than just poor programming at play here; a combination of how specifications are written, testing practices, poor documentation of existing systems and data structures, and changing requirements seems to me to be a logical explanation for issues that arise. It sounds like he is paying by the hour and iif so the programmers concerns are valid. If he can't pay what it takes to get a full time hire with the needed skills he is better off biting the bullet, raising his prices,and paying developers to fix bugs instead of getting someone who cannot do the job to his expectations. He could go to a deliverables model - pay for a specific functional code, but that won't really solve his problem - expecting perfect code at a cut rate - and probably cost more. I know if I get requests for a fixed price I triple my estimate to cover any unexpected issues that may arise; and if they don't I pocket the bonus. I also get a very specific contract detailing exactly what they get to protect myself from schedule delays, changing requirements, etc.
I read that as "How Blackberry is struggling to stay relevant after people stopped using the devices on which their services are used"
I agree with you here - they are trying to remain relevant by become an ecosystem, not a device vendor. If they can build a strong enough enterprise solution that runs on a number of devices, besides their own, they can offer companies a total solution w/o locking them in to a specific brand of hardware; and offer a total package for companies that want one standard device. I doubt they can stay viable as a hardware unique solution simply because that mens tehy must innovate in hardware as well as software, and they've had a hard time doing that.
And, honestly, I question whether or not Blackberry's services are strong enough to stand on their own any more. There have been a number of "good enough" alternatives that have popped up in the last few years, either from first-party or third-party developers on the competing platforms.
The ultimate question is 'good enough" enough to overcome their advantages of scope and size in the enterprise market? Personally, I think they will rollout this new model, do reasonably well, and get bought either by MS or a big enterprise software company. I doubt Apple would buy them because it would mean redoing teh software to match Apple's POV and it would simply be easier to partner and build BES support and security services into their existing iOS.
Even then not a reasonable comparison. The ability for the scanned proprietary softwares' teams to decide on inclusion feels to me like it would really influence the stats.
Would you expect there to exist any correlation between how shoddy software is and how likely the authors are to share information about how shoddy their software is? I would expect some correlation.
Let's accept the premise that proprietary vendors only submitted what they considered their best code. If the code bases tested matched similar function OSS codebases, then it is a valid comparison of similar types of software.
I don't see how you're answering the grandparent's concern here. Are you assuming that the code quality is only a function of the function of the code? Otherwise, why would an OSS project in category X be better than average just because a better-than-average proprietary X was submitted?
No, I am saying it would be a valid comparison between OSS and proprietary code if programs that perform the same function were tested in each category. OSS quality has no impact on proprietary quality, and vice versa; but if you compare OSS and proprietary web browsers tehn it would be a reasonable comparison of teh quality of each vs the other.
Let's make this a bit more concrete: Imagine that the defect density of proprietary projects is normal-distributed with a mean of 0.6 and a standard deviation of 0.1. Then you would expect the defect density to vary between less than 0.5 and more than 0.7, with 68% lying between those numbers. If high quality projects are preferentially submitted for review, then the mean of that subset will obviously be lower than 0.6. Let's say that the projects that were sent in were a web browser (0.55), a pdf reader (0.49) and a video player (0.50). You're saying that it would be fair if we compared this with open source web browsers, pdf readers and video players. But just as these categories happened to fluctuate low in error density in the proprietary side, these categories may just as well happen to have atypically high error rates on the OSS side. In fact, unless the quality of the project is strongly correlated with the category it is in, then you would expect the mean on the OSS web browsers, pdf readers and video players to be the same as the total mean, since *they were not selected based on their own quality*, unlike the proprietary software.
The problem is you are assuming they all have a normal distribution. While that may be true for a large data set (in fact the central limit theorem would say so); we don't know what the distribution is for individual categories. While we don't know what exactly made the data set we do know teh results for various sizes of code. It seems a reasonable assumption that similar types of programs would have similar size code bases so you don't have really good small proprietary programs skewing results for really large ones or vice versa; and similarly for OSS code.
Your argument about comparisons of similar types of software would only make sense if there were only one proprietary program of the type in question, and that is the one that was submitted for testing. Otherwise, you would expect to be comparing a better-than-average properietary foo with an average OSS foo.
Not really; especially a the high end where there are relatively few products in each category. There aren't that many commercial choices in many of the categories; and also relatively few OSS as well. As a result it is less likely all the bad ones got left out, if they were you wouldn't have much of a data set. So, assuming they had similar software in each category the comparison drawn would be valid. Could we say any one program is equal to another? No, but we could say that for large programs OSS software is as bug free as proprietary; and vice versa.
I think the grandparent is completel
Even then not a reasonable comparison. The ability for the scanned proprietary softwares' teams to decide on inclusion feels to me like it would really influence the stats.
Would you expect there to exist any correlation between how shoddy software is and how likely the authors are to share information about how shoddy their software is? I would expect some correlation.
Let's accept the premise that proprietary vendors only submitted what they considered their best code. If the code bases tested matched similar function OSS codebases, then it is a valid comparison of similar types of software. It would say that OSS and proprietary software; of similar functionality, has similar defect rates (for certain size code bases). As with any study, the results should be taken with a grain of salt until you see the underlying methodology and data. That, of course, will not stop people form trumpeting the results as proof *their* OSS project is as good as proprietary in terms of errors, even though such a conclusion is not valid; but it does give people some assurance that OSS code, in general, is as reasonably good as its proprietary equivalent. It would be interesting to see exactly what was included in each data sets and such information would help shed light on the conclusions. In addition, depending on what OSS software was included, you could make a case that much shoddy OSS software was left out depending on what was included in the sample; which is why I conclude that as long as similar types of programs were tested it is a valid comparison.
Am I detecting a selection bias here? Coverity can run their tests against all of open source. Coverity can run their tests only against that proprietary code that decides to use it and report the results--and it strikes me that only the better, and more open, proprietary shops would be doing this. Is Mircrosoft reporting their code? I doubt it. Is Oracle?
I doubt they ran it against all open source software; just some subset that ideally mirrored the proprietary code in complexity and application. If so it would be a reasonable comparison. Since TFA says they used some 300 OSS programs of various sizes I'd say it was a reasonable approximation of real world defect rates. Since the TFA doesn't name any proprietary products included in the survey it is harder to decide if they are valid results but I am willing to give them the benefit of doubt.
"Code quality for open source software continues to mirror that of proprietary software — and both continue to surpass the industry standard for software quality."
What is this third kind of software that is neither open source nor proprietary which is bringing down the average industry standard for software quality? Because if there is only open source and proprietary then they can't both be better than average. Or perhaps the programmers are from Lake Wobegon?
I had the same reaction, right down to the Lake Wobegon reference. Perhaps they are differentiating between software offered for sale versus tools internal to a business? To some extent that would also explain the difference in quality - cost to fix is much higher if you have shipped thousands of copies, versus telling the one consumer of a report in finance to ignore the one number that is wrong.
An industry standard has nothing to do with actual practice. It is not an average. All it says is it is an acceptable error rate is x.
Maybe those creative professionals should contribute to the development of gimp by coding and contributing the features that they want? Every feature gimp has is a feature that someone decided they wanted and then wrote and shared. That is how it works. The graphic designers are just to lazy to do it themselves, instead they demand that you do it for them for free.
No, they're simply saying this doesn't meet my needs so I picked a different solution. They don't care about FOSS, they want a solution that works well for them. If FOSS is truly to go mainstream it needs to move beyond the "if you want it code it yourself" mentality. That's fine for hobbyist pursuits, but won't lead to broader success.
Adobe underestimates how much it benefits from piracy. If poor college students can't cut their teeth on the full Adobe suite, they're likely to learn how to use something else. When those students go out and get jobs, they're more likely to use what they're used to than drop a bundle on Adobe software they've never used before.
Guess what? They'll give it college students for free, or real cheap and then when they pull the plug after 4 years they have a new paying user. Piracy, who needs it when you can hook them and then withdraw the drug until they pay?
but how fast can you reach stratospheric levels. They want to be at the bottom of a very step revenue (and profit) curve so the can quickly make many time stehir investment.
True, but fair use does not require any use not make money for the person claiming fair use; for example you can use a clip in a critique of the that is published in a for profit magazine.
While for-profit ventures can have fair-use content in their products, the fact that money is made off of the product (or that it is used by a non-profit entity like the Free Software Foundation) can be a contributing factor for determining if the infringement is in fact fair use or a copyright violation.
Keep in mind that fair-use is a legal defense against a claim of copyright infringement. You are still technically infringing on copyright even with fair-use content, just that such infringement is "legal" in those countries which recognize fair-use or related concepts like fair-dealing. In America, fair-use is considered the aspect of copyright law which recognizes the 1st amendment issues that modify a grant of copyright, and has subsequently been codified with specific fair-use exceptions. In other words, there are some forms of expression that simply must permit at least some minor copyright infringement simply to be able to express yourself and ideas in society... and a full restriction on copyrighted content would prohibit many forms of speech or expression that shouldn't be restricted.
True, but fair use, in US Law, is defines as a non-infringing use; which makes it an affirmative defense against a claim of copyright infringement. The right to control certain types of uses is not granted copyright owners so fair use is not a case of "you infringed but that is ok;" because teh law says anyone can use your material for these purposes and not violate your copyright.
they were actually making money off of someone else work without compensation.
Which is irrelevant in determining fair use.
How so? The first factor in a fair use determination under U.S. law (17 USC 107) involves whether or not the "purpose and character" was commercial.
True, but fair use does not require any use not make money for the person claiming fair use; for example you can use a clip in a critique of the that is published in a for profit magazine.
because this law is nothing more than government forcing christianity into schools. We don't stop that because that's what people want. just try to get Islamic creationism in schools. fat chance.
Actually, that is what it would take - or perhaps Von Danikin's idea of ancient astronauts? There's enough pseudo - science in there to qualify under teh "bones in teh dust" standard for opening eyes to alternate ideas. Of course, the law would be repealed immediately.
Anything less than equal treatment is discrimination.
Men are being discriminated against by not getting the same amount of leave to spend with their newborn children.
This has both physical and psychological effects on all parties involved.
Except of course, one economic explanation why men tend to get paid more is they do not take maternity leave so they work more; the problem is pay scales are based on the group view of work rather than individual. If Yahoo gives one more than another salary ranges should be comparable as well. If they already are than I would say men may have a discrimination case.
logic and reasoning in a schoolhouse, what ever is this nation coming to? this must be stopped!
Unfortunately, in a mad rush to show "we are serious about ..." school boards and administrators pass zero tolerance policies. As a result the stupid as well as they criminal get punished equally. Schools cannot apply common sense, as much as they may want to, because of the rules. Everyone gets all bothered by draconian punishment for a minor infraction but are unwilling to change rules because they don't want to be held accountable for making a decision that someone will second guess. That is not limited to schools, many lawmakers seem to share the same viewpoint (and then get all upset when something h clearly ridiculous happens as a result of a zero tolerence law THEY PASSED.)
I'm as big a fan of the iPhone as anyone, but the tools you mention don't work for BYOD. They're great for company owned and managed devices. But it's not "Your Own Device" if you're letting someone else control it with those profiles or activesync connections. If I've paid for hardware with my own money, it's mine... period, full stop. No one else gets admin, root, remote-wipe, find my iPhone, or whatever privileges but me.
Then you don't get access to their network with your device. I have a client that requires I allow remote wipe in exchange for Exchange Server access. For me, the ability to get emails anywhere anytime outweighs any concerns I have about giving them access.
Another issue, however, is labor and other law. What happens if you require employees to allow access and then expect them to work after hours? Are they entitled to overtime? Are you liable if they have an accident while answering an email? What happens if proprietary or private data gets leaked before you wipe? Who gets fined? While I can see the advantges of having one phone and getting reimbursed for its use, a company needs to look past the cost savings and assess the risk, financial and otherwise, before making this leap. While they may have gigabytes of procedures they put the onus on the employee in an attempt to avoid liability, they generally are the deep pockets with the most to lose.
Next time don't forget to add a Bitcoin clause
There are a couple of economic reasons that will drive renewable adoption:
It's not the size of the reserves but the cost of extraction that will drive adoption of renewables. As long as natural gas is cheap (and prices can be hedged) utilities will build natural gas plants at the expense of renewables. If prices rise sharply, gas becomes less attractive (since much of the cost per KW is for fuel) and other energy sources become viable options.
The energy density of the energy source. If a lot of space is required per BTU fossil fuels will dominate in many places. For example, a gas plant is relatively compact compared to a wind farm of similar capacity; so it is much easier to acquire land for a gas plant. For small scale uses, such as automotive or home fuels, the ability to get a long range or have a reasonably small supply pipe vs large panels favors fossil fuels currently. The economic driver here is "what fuel source gives me the best return on my needs;" such as the ability to travel or not want a roof full of solar panels.
Economics is what limits OPEC's ability to rise prices - eventually alternatives are viable on a cost basis as well as an energy self sufficiency one.
Quite frankly, global warning is not as major concern to most people than the ability to afford fuel drive, cook, and heat their houses; so selling renewables on that basis is very difficult.
This happened in 2010. Those were old computers. They already had the money to buy replacements budgeted in their 2010/2011 budget.
So they had to decide to pull the effort the reimage everything for a couple of months, or just buy the new ones early. Buying the new ones early did cost a bit more (30k for all of them), but less then a cleaning would have cost.
The servers, who where not sheduled for replacement, were reimaged just fine.
This happened in 2010. Those were old computers. They already had the money to buy replacements budgeted in their 2010/2011 budget.
So they had to decide to pull the effort the reimage everything for a couple of months, or just buy the new ones early. Buying the new ones early did cost a bit more (30k for all of them), but less then a cleaning would have cost.
The servers, who where not sheduled for replacement, were reimaged just fine.
How dare you inject reason and facts into a /. arguement? You're supposed to say Windoze Bad Linux Shiney Free and accuse anyone with a different view of being an MS shill or troll. Replacing rather than cleaning is the right thing to do, it would have been more fiscally irresponsible to clean and then replace, and no doubt under German law the old ones were recycled rather than just dumped in the trash.
given that reimaging would involve more than simply pushing out a new image but would need machines to be offline to avoid reinfection, there is also productivity losses and associated costs as well.
a) find image you want to use at site X b) have someone strip the the image of identifying information and repost it at site Y c) discover image at site Y lacking traceable information d) do "due dilligence" based on image from site Y e) declare image from site Y as 'orphaned'
f) PROFIT
While IANAL and my ignorance of UK law exceeds that of US law; I doubt such a scheme would work. Due diligence would require at least a reasonable amount of effort searching for ownership information. It would seem to me if someone went before a court and should how a Google search could easily locate the image with ownership info or a copyright registration it would be hard to argue you performed due diligence. This act should be named the IP Lawyer Full Employment Act since it will no doubt result in court cases. I would venture most big corporations would be hesitant to rely on it to avoid any lawsuits. It is more likely the cheap ripoff artist companies that would try to use it as a defense and since they already rip off Luther's material I see little practical hangs if this become law.
1. Don't try to be Apple. Your strength is as a fast follower. Let others identify a good sea and then use your cash, trchnical exepertise and market position to capitalize on it.
2. Identify the most desirable customer segments and focus on them. Forget those that are low return.
3. Find out what those segments really want and have a laser focus on delivery
4. Get rid of any product where you cannot compete and that down't play to your core customer base.
5. Give Ballmer a raise and move him to the board.
Since my financial stability for the future doesn't correlate with income nor even profit, I think my risk is pretty low. Even if volatility continues, and even if my businesses took in 50% of their revenues in BTC, I still wouldn't see any actual harm. The businesses have been around for decades, and they're self-sufficient and stable.
Since I know nothing about your particular business I'll simply generalize that most business cannot afford the risk inherent in Bitcoin volatility. At some point, the loss in Bitcoin value means you are not taking in enough to cover costs and start burning reserves. Companies hedge their bets to reduce volatility. That is why derivatives exist to reduce volatility risks in commodities; which Bitcoin is and rather than hedge a thinly traded commodity some people decide to simply eliminate the risk and cash out. Given teh size and trading volumes it doesn't take much to cause large swings in the price; a major seller could destroy teh value pretty quickly.
Converting BTC to fiat currency puts a sell-pressure on BTC. Holding BTC would reduce the selling supply, thereby reducing volatility from the sell side. It's the same with dollars: I hoard my dollars in cash "under the mattress" rather than put it in a bank to get loaned out as debt (money multiplier effect).
The "market forces" in BTC right now are pretty unique because only a small number of BTC holders are actually transacting. Most people are "long game speculators", and are neither buying things with BTC nor selling it to liquidate for fiat currency. As the number of BTC users goes up (which will likely happen when volatility is reduced), I believe we'll see a more stable platform.
As a result, Bitcoin is simply a speculative play, not a currency; anymore than tulips were in Holland even though people would take them in payment. As long as people want to avoid risk and sell them volatility will remain; and as prices drop more people will jump in in an attempt to minimize losses. The issue then becomes who covers the trades if their are no buyers? Ultimately a speculative play needs a way to cash out and there is no way to ensure that with Bitcoins since no one makes the market; rather it is more like advertising a sale on Craigslist and seeing if anyone bytes. The market essentially shuts down and Bitcoins become yet another case study in speculative bubbles. Although with Bitcoins it is a bit different since anyone can create a competitor that is also crypto based and anonymous; all they need to do is convince someone it is better than Bitcoin.
I sell physical goods and accept Bitcoin as a payment method. The volatility doesn't bug me at all. it's only a tiny percentage of overall sales...
That is because your risk is very limited. If you had a significant amount of your sales in Bitcoin you'd probably think differently; since your risk exposure would be much higher.
If a seller is concerned with volatility, they should consider not selling their received BTC for fiat currency.
No, they should immediately convert it so they assume no volatility risk.
It's the number of "we accept bitcoin" sites that accept currency and then immediately convert it to fiat that is one reason for the downward pressure.
That's called market forces.
The vast majority preferred permissive licenses such as the MIT, BSD, or Apache licenses, rather than the GPL. Has the younger generation given up on ideas like copyleft and Free Software?
No, they haven't. They've just noticed that licenses like BSD is better open source license than GPL. There's a simple reason for it too - BSD license is truly in the spirit of freedom. Anyone, either open or closed source projects, can use BSD licensed code. I also think they have seen how valuable an idea and the supporting code can be and want to be able to cash in on that while still sharing what they're doing. The BSD license is very amenable to that; unlike the GPL. It's not less free tahn teh GPL and an argument can be made, and is being made on /., taht it is less restrictive and thus freer than the GPL.
This means younger generation haven't forgotten about open source licenses (BSD is one), they've just chosen the better one of them.
Early on, it was a good way to reconnect with old friends and the groups actually had decent discussions. Most groups have devolved into a few people arguing amongst themselves (one even has become one person talking to themselves)and a place for people to self promote. For a while there many posts I saw were form bogus job offers and SEO spammers. I still use it to search for old friends but if I get a request from an unknown person I refuse it.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. Like, BitCoins will tend to go up in value over your time period (be it in days or years). That you will actually be able to execute on a displayed priced – before everybody else does.
Suggestion - find (and read up on) a arbitrage opportunity. For example, a US dollars / BitCons / Eurs / US Dollar trade should net you zero dollars less fees – but does it? I have heard of times that it has not and could be taken advantage of. Also, try to find somebody who knows something about program stock trading – which is basically what you are doing. (and stay away from those green arrows / red arrows FX trading programs you see on TV)
Excellant points. One of the problems with bitcoins is there is no assurance of liquidity; unlike many other commodities or real currencies. For arbitrage to work you have to be able to buy and sell when you want so you can take advantage of the opportunity; ideally at the same time so you never really put any of your money at risk. Bitcoin, OTOH, operates on the well known "greater fool" theory that drives many speculative bubbles such as tulips. You hope someone somewhere will pay more for it than you did; even though there is no underlying reason for them to do so other than they believe they will go even higher. They have no unique value behind them; anyone can create a new crypto chain separate from bitcoin and if they convince people the new bytecoin is better than bitcoin then bitcoins will cease to have value. In the end, there is no control over the amount of cryptocurrency in circulation despite promises otherwise. The one valid comparison of bitcoins to money is that, like money, any country can decide to issue it and in what quantity; its value will depend on people's faith in the issuer.