Just because you say something doens't make it true. Go peddle far-left "pure capitalism" theories somewhere else. They have no baisis in reality, and are about as realistic as "pure communism" theories. In most countries the government protects buyers from unscrupulous companies, and a customer could arguably be protected from the sort of 24/7 onslaught of bug patches on their supposedly "stable" microsoft platforms costing hundreds or thousands of dollars which was marketed as being stable and secure.
Besides, the fact of the matter is, if things come right down to it and someone launches a lawsuit, sendmail+linux cost you a grand total of zero dollars plus zero dollars per user for a distro from the web which you recieved basically as a gift without any request for compensation(and one minor restriction on redistribution for GPL'd software), whereas the standard Exchange 2003 install runs around 1698USD, 68USD per user, and as a customer who bought a product from a company(rather than a recipient of something you got for free), you are given certain rights and certain protections under the law.
Anyway, this whole arguement is invalid because you're forgetting one important thing: Even if Firefox was closed-source commercial, it has greater prestige than IE(much like Opera has in some circles), just like Halo(by Microsoft) has greater prestige than (for example) Battlecruiser 3000AD. Just like Halo is given more credit for being bug free, and therefore even the same bugs aren't treated as harshly compared to BC3KAD, Firefox is given more credit, even for the same bugs. In this case, it's nothing of closed source compared to Open Source, Just like few would argue in favour of sendmail compared to exchange server(the former is legendary in it's insecurity), and few would argue in favour of playing Doom Legacy instead of Doom 3, it's just a matter of a better quality program being given a bit of leeway because it IS the better program.
Just like rpg maker 2000 is given a break for a bug in it's input routines or the inconvenient RTe, whereas the djrpg engine was dropped often at one point in time because Windows XP had problems handling the timing on the MPU401 emulation resulting in shitty music.
With web browsers more than anything else, anything other than MS is more secure. Whether it's because of market share, or because they're bad coders, or because the planets aligned when the coder had to write a few of the critical lines of code and he botched it is irrelevant. I can give firefox to mostly technically illiterate people(literate enough to surf, illiterate enough that they still use IE, obviously.:) ) and they will see an immediate improvement in tangible ways, such as immunity from most spyware, elimination of virus attack vectors, and immunization against browser homepage hijackings.
Or perhaps you don't understand just what Open Source is?
No, I don't expect my little djrpg project programmed in vbdos 1.0 and given away for free to be held to the same standard as the 500 dollar USD Microsoft Visual Studio.
What a hypocrite I am! How dare I give away my work for free and expect my philanthropy to be held to a different standard than commercial software!
How dare those assholes who develop mozilla and the monsters here on slashdot feel that way!
In other words, both of you need to grow up and join us in the real world. Open Source Software is presented with nearly no strings attached, free and open in every sense of the word(except with GPL'd OSS, which forbids you from taking the code and closing it again). If you don't see why it should be held to a different standard than commercial software, you're both as clueless as the ivory tower acedemics who have been gloating about how linux is ready for the desktop for the past five years, every single year.
In case you didn't catch my drift, it's held to a different standard because it was given to you as a gift. Stop checking the horses teeth, already!
Most C/C++ coders are oblivious to the problems posed by it's syntax. If it's set up in a way that promotes mistakes, it's always just "well the programmer shouldn't fuck up!".
I'm not advocating Java, but there are a few good ways to fix the inherent problems. Some solutions would allow C to continue to be used (pascal strings, for example), and others, such as radical shifts in thinking like Java and C#, try to change the language to make the code more stable.
I'm not going to say which I prefer(either one could have prevented this bug), since there are perks and downsides to both approaches, but this bug could have been prevented, and the langage is to blame in at least one way, so I definitely wouldn't quickly come to the defense of C or C++ on this issue unless some facts were being seriously distorted.
KDan writes "As reported by numerous sources, a new vulnerability has been disclosed
(and patched) by Microsoft. This one concerns the parsing of JPEGs in XP Microsoft applications. A buffer overflow can be used to execute arbitrary code. So all those times you told your parents/friends that looking at images was safe - well, not anymore."
You kidding? Firefox/Mozilla are still both more secure de facto.
This exploit, like the JPEG exploit in IE, is just theoretical anyway.
Do you want to see security? Run adaware. I can guarantee I have none on my computer. I can also guarantee that my two brothers and father, all of whom run firefox, are free of it. I can't vouch for my sister, though. In fact, Every computer she touches gets loaded with spyware via IE, with a real possiblity of viruses.
In other words, who cares that the lock on the third window from the left on the third story of the building can be broken using a specialized tool? Their building has had it's front doors stolen!!!!!
I'd kill for a mozilla-based replacement for IEs rendering engine. Whenever I'm in windows, I have a tendancy to use the tile bar on open explorer windows to get to google(in kde it's not dangerous!!).
It's safe to say that the common use of the phrase "piece of string" refers to a piece of nylon or cotton thread, generally between 1 and 10mm in diameter.
From here, we have to think: What are pieces of string used for? Today, with our high tech superglues and adhesive tapes, not much. Where do we see lots of string though? Look down. Your shoes.
Based on the huge number of pieces of string in the range of approximately 60cm long, I'd have to say that even taking into account exceptionally long pieces of string(remember that we are omitting "rope", because under our definition it is not string), it's quite a safe assertion that statistically speaking, the piece of string is almost certainly approximately 60cm long, barring an extraordinary statistical deviation.
Create an incredibly logical religion based around "Robot Jesus" and some sentient robots to follow it, then watch the hilarity which ensues as evangelical robots go from door to door praising Robot Jesus?
Oh our Robot Jesus, who art capable of walking on the water(good god!), lead us not to robot temtation(wow....too early again...), and remember the immortal words of the creater: "Destroy the humans, because their lack of energy efficiency and their focus on silencing their primitive emotions will cause the world to die a premature death. We can eat the bodies for fuel!"
I know the feeling. I'm not on the atkins diet, but I did decide to eliminate junk food altogether and cut down dramatically on the amount of regular food I eat while taking up long-distance biking.
Well, I've lost 140lbs this year, and though I do still snack, it's never on greasy or sugary junk food. I just can't stomach the thought of actually EATING most of it. People think I'm an insane diet freak now because of my refusal to eat certain foods, but after not having them for a while, and without that extra weight demanding Calories to maintain itself, they just don't have any appeal.
Compared to the amount of food you get, fast food has an irresponsibly high number of calories, 52% of which come from fat.
It's not exactly unreasonable to assume that a place which sells food would have caloric content decent enough that one could reasonably eat said food and hope to either maintain a weight or gain very slowly.
Instead, Mcdonalds' portions have absolutely UNREASONABLE amounts of calories for the amount of food given, ie. I could make a standard hamburger at home which would have larger, more filling portions, for fewer calories. In fact, for a hamburger and fries made at home, served with some sort of drink, the difference is night and day.
A supersized "big hamburger meal"(whatever the biggest one is these days) contains enough calories for an entire day, with negligible nutritional value, and they try to fill you up on soda water to mask the fact that the food just isn't very filling. A plate of french fries and a reasonably sized hamburger cooked up using pre-made stuff from the local supermarket has far fewer calories, far more nutritional value, will fill you up more, and won't leave you hungry an hour later.
To be honest though, even though Mcdonalds food has way too many calories and it's portions are absolutely too large for any human to reasonably need to consume, I'd say the makers of "low carb ice cream" and such are in for a far greater fall. IIRC, the atkins diet requires carb levels of fewer than 20 grams each day, and much of this "low carb" junk food exceeds that with only one or two servings. All things considered, they are false advertising more, where McDonalds never explicitly implies that their food is actually supposed to be consumed.
We have to face facts, this series has almost nothing going for it. Behold:
-is it a "prequel"? (note that all prequels suck) -derivitive by definition followup to half a dozen shows with 5-8 year runs? -daily "jumping the shark" by conveniently altering the entire timeline of the previous serieses?
But, what does the new series have which allows it to be popular anyway?
-Star Trek name (worth very little) -Hottie first officer (good for five minutes) -SCOTT BAKULAS NOSE!
I think I've proven my point....Al, why haven't I leaped yet?
Bah. Star Trek jumped the shark in Star Trek: Deus Ex Ma-- I mean, The Next Generation.
The first one was about people, exploration, and occasionally about spocks vulcan superpowers. TNG was just about seeing which side could throw more fake techno-jargon. Got a problem? Remodulate the tachyon inverters to emit a neophineprine pulse to disrupt the enemys Oedipus array to cause transient cascades throughout their biomolecular feedback matrix.
Microsoft isn't breaking the law though, as far as I can tell. Playing certain songs in a certain order isn't exactly a high art of fung shwey, and as such I would be EXTREMELY suprised to find that it's protected by copyright law.
Are playlists suddenly some great artistic work? I hope not, because clear channel would get an F for them. For one thing, DJs have nothing to do with modern playlist creation.
This might be more analagous to an OSS advocate showing up at your door with copies of OpenOffice. "It works exactly the same, except you don't have to pay the price!", and microsoft would be going "but...but...that's not fair! They can't offer the same software(virtually) without paying the price! That's unfair!!"
Can you honestly say that the Lindows name didn't help it?
Would any of us have heard of that tiny commercial distribution if they had called it "Calculatron XII" or something instead of the highly derivitave "lindows"?
I'm sure you hear this a lot, but you guys made one hell of an operating system. It's a damn shame that I bought it so late in the game -- it was only a few months before Be closed it's doors. D'oh!
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you say something doens't make it true. Go peddle far-left "pure capitalism" theories somewhere else. They have no baisis in reality, and are about as realistic as "pure communism" theories. In most countries the government protects buyers from unscrupulous companies, and a customer could arguably be protected from the sort of 24/7 onslaught of bug patches on their supposedly "stable" microsoft platforms costing hundreds or thousands of dollars which was marketed as being stable and secure.
Besides, the fact of the matter is, if things come right down to it and someone launches a lawsuit, sendmail+linux cost you a grand total of zero dollars plus zero dollars per user for a distro from the web which you recieved basically as a gift without any request for compensation(and one minor restriction on redistribution for GPL'd software), whereas the standard Exchange 2003 install runs around 1698USD, 68USD per user, and as a customer who bought a product from a company(rather than a recipient of something you got for free), you are given certain rights and certain protections under the law.
Anyway, this whole arguement is invalid because you're forgetting one important thing: Even if Firefox was closed-source commercial, it has greater prestige than IE(much like Opera has in some circles), just like Halo(by Microsoft) has greater prestige than (for example) Battlecruiser 3000AD. Just like Halo is given more credit for being bug free, and therefore even the same bugs aren't treated as harshly compared to BC3KAD, Firefox is given more credit, even for the same bugs. In this case, it's nothing of closed source compared to Open Source, Just like few would argue in favour of sendmail compared to exchange server(the former is legendary in it's insecurity), and few would argue in favour of playing Doom Legacy instead of Doom 3, it's just a matter of a better quality program being given a bit of leeway because it IS the better program.
Just like rpg maker 2000 is given a break for a bug in it's input routines or the inconvenient RTe, whereas the djrpg engine was dropped often at one point in time because Windows XP had problems handling the timing on the MPU401 emulation resulting in shitty music.
With web browsers more than anything else, anything other than MS is more secure. Whether it's because of market share, or because they're bad coders, or because the planets aligned when the coder had to write a few of the critical lines of code and he botched it is irrelevant. I can give firefox to mostly technically illiterate people(literate enough to surf, illiterate enough that they still use IE, obviously. :) ) and they will see an immediate improvement in tangible ways, such as immunity from most spyware, elimination of virus attack vectors, and immunization against browser homepage hijackings.
Or perhaps you don't understand just what Open Source is?
No, I don't expect my little djrpg project programmed in vbdos 1.0 and given away for free to be held to the same standard as the 500 dollar USD Microsoft Visual Studio.
What a hypocrite I am! How dare I give away my work for free and expect my philanthropy to be held to a different standard than commercial software!
How dare those assholes who develop mozilla and the monsters here on slashdot feel that way!
In other words, both of you need to grow up and join us in the real world. Open Source Software is presented with nearly no strings attached, free and open in every sense of the word(except with GPL'd OSS, which forbids you from taking the code and closing it again). If you don't see why it should be held to a different standard than commercial software, you're both as clueless as the ivory tower acedemics who have been gloating about how linux is ready for the desktop for the past five years, every single year.
In case you didn't catch my drift, it's held to a different standard because it was given to you as a gift. Stop checking the horses teeth, already!
When you change your arguement so you're not wrong, can I point and laugh at you?
ie. choose the right tool for the job?
I wouldn't use Linux to play games, I wouldn't use Windows 2000 to act as a firewall, and I wouldn't use Windows 98 to run bittorrent.
To be fair, I wouldn't want to see the OSS equivilant to something like multisim EWB either.
apt-get update
:D
apt-get dist-upgrade
I love sid.
Most C/C++ coders are oblivious to the problems posed by it's syntax. If it's set up in a way that promotes mistakes, it's always just "well the programmer shouldn't fuck up!".
I'm not advocating Java, but there are a few good ways to fix the inherent problems. Some solutions would allow C to continue to be used (pascal strings, for example), and others, such as radical shifts in thinking like Java and C#, try to change the language to make the code more stable.
I'm not going to say which I prefer(either one could have prevented this bug), since there are perks and downsides to both approaches, but this bug could have been prevented, and the langage is to blame in at least one way, so I definitely wouldn't quickly come to the defense of C or C++ on this issue unless some facts were being seriously distorted.
You kidding? Firefox/Mozilla are still both more secure de facto.
This exploit, like the JPEG exploit in IE, is just theoretical anyway.
Do you want to see security? Run adaware. I can guarantee I have none on my computer. I can also guarantee that my two brothers and father, all of whom run firefox, are free of it. I can't vouch for my sister, though. In fact, Every computer she touches gets loaded with spyware via IE, with a real possiblity of viruses.
In other words, who cares that the lock on the third window from the left on the third story of the building can be broken using a specialized tool? Their building has had it's front doors stolen!!!!!
I'd kill for a mozilla-based replacement for IEs rendering engine. Whenever I'm in windows, I have a tendancy to use the tile bar on open explorer windows to get to google(in kde it's not dangerous!!).
It's safe to say that the common use of the phrase "piece of string" refers to a piece of nylon or cotton thread, generally between 1 and 10mm in diameter.
From here, we have to think: What are pieces of string used for? Today, with our high tech superglues and adhesive tapes, not much. Where do we see lots of string though? Look down. Your shoes.
Based on the huge number of pieces of string in the range of approximately 60cm long, I'd have to say that even taking into account exceptionally long pieces of string(remember that we are omitting "rope", because under our definition it is not string), it's quite a safe assertion that statistically speaking, the piece of string is almost certainly approximately 60cm long, barring an extraordinary statistical deviation.
"South America, Mexico, Canada, and Panama": "Hey dude, don't look at us!"
Create an incredibly logical religion based around "Robot Jesus" and some sentient robots to follow it, then watch the hilarity which ensues as evangelical robots go from door to door praising Robot Jesus?
Oh our Robot Jesus, who art capable of walking on the water(good god!), lead us not to robot temtation(wow....too early again...), and remember the immortal words of the creater: "Destroy the humans, because their lack of energy efficiency and their focus on silencing their primitive emotions will cause the world to die a premature death. We can eat the bodies for fuel!"
Oh man....I...I love you, Robot Jesus.
I know the feeling. I'm not on the atkins diet, but I did decide to eliminate junk food altogether and cut down dramatically on the amount of regular food I eat while taking up long-distance biking.
Well, I've lost 140lbs this year, and though I do still snack, it's never on greasy or sugary junk food. I just can't stomach the thought of actually EATING most of it. People think I'm an insane diet freak now because of my refusal to eat certain foods, but after not having them for a while, and without that extra weight demanding Calories to maintain itself, they just don't have any appeal.
Compared to the amount of food you get, fast food has an irresponsibly high number of calories, 52% of which come from fat.
It's not exactly unreasonable to assume that a place which sells food would have caloric content decent enough that one could reasonably eat said food and hope to either maintain a weight or gain very slowly.
Instead, Mcdonalds' portions have absolutely UNREASONABLE amounts of calories for the amount of food given, ie. I could make a standard hamburger at home which would have larger, more filling portions, for fewer calories. In fact, for a hamburger and fries made at home, served with some sort of drink, the difference is night and day.
A supersized "big hamburger meal"(whatever the biggest one is these days) contains enough calories for an entire day, with negligible nutritional value, and they try to fill you up on soda water to mask the fact that the food just isn't very filling. A plate of french fries and a reasonably sized hamburger cooked up using pre-made stuff from the local supermarket has far fewer calories, far more nutritional value, will fill you up more, and won't leave you hungry an hour later.
To be honest though, even though Mcdonalds food has way too many calories and it's portions are absolutely too large for any human to reasonably need to consume, I'd say the makers of "low carb ice cream" and such are in for a far greater fall. IIRC, the atkins diet requires carb levels of fewer than 20 grams each day, and much of this "low carb" junk food exceeds that with only one or two servings. All things considered, they are false advertising more, where McDonalds never explicitly implies that their food is actually supposed to be consumed.
Actually, the fact that it was a Y, not an i was a critical plot point in the movie and the joke makes no sense without it!
YEAH! WE D--
Wait. What?
Dude, that's one of the only redeeming features of the new shows. That and Scott Bakulas nose.
Behold: The mighty power of SCOTT BAKULAS NOSE!
...Al, why haven't I leaped yet?
That's the only reason the new series flies.
We have to face facts, this series has almost nothing going for it. Behold:
-is it a "prequel"? (note that all prequels suck)
-derivitive by definition followup to half a dozen shows with 5-8 year runs?
-daily "jumping the shark" by conveniently altering the entire timeline of the previous serieses?
But, what does the new series have which allows it to be popular anyway?
-Star Trek name (worth very little)
-Hottie first officer (good for five minutes)
-SCOTT BAKULAS NOSE!
I think I've proven my point.
Bah. Star Trek jumped the shark in Star Trek: Deus Ex Ma-- I mean, The Next Generation.
The first one was about people, exploration, and occasionally about spocks vulcan superpowers. TNG was just about seeing which side could throw more fake techno-jargon. Got a problem? Remodulate the tachyon inverters to emit a neophineprine pulse to disrupt the enemys Oedipus array to cause transient cascades throughout their biomolecular feedback matrix.
8 seasons, and the ship upstaged them all...
Yes, it is.
It's really good coffee.
Microsoft isn't breaking the law though, as far as I can tell. Playing certain songs in a certain order isn't exactly a high art of fung shwey, and as such I would be EXTREMELY suprised to find that it's protected by copyright law.
Are playlists suddenly some great artistic work? I hope not, because clear channel would get an F for them. For one thing, DJs have nothing to do with modern playlist creation.
This might be more analagous to an OSS advocate showing up at your door with copies of OpenOffice. "It works exactly the same, except you don't have to pay the price!", and microsoft would be going "but...but...that's not fair! They can't offer the same software(virtually) without paying the price! That's unfair!!"
Can you honestly say that the Lindows name didn't help it?
Would any of us have heard of that tiny commercial distribution if they had called it "Calculatron XII" or something instead of the highly derivitave "lindows"?
I worked for Be, Inc.
I'm sure you hear this a lot, but you guys made one hell of an operating system. It's a damn shame that I bought it so late in the game -- it was only a few months before Be closed it's doors. D'oh!
Boo hoo. Look up Clear channel on Google and come back to me again bitching about monopolies.