Programs that are written in interpretted languages are a lot easier to tweak. I bet your mom could learn to fix bugs in FireFox if the javascript was more exposed. I'm not saying this is likely.. my mom won't even use a computer but my brother (who can't code) can write html and tweak javascript.
All true. Trolltech are using the GPL for exactly what it is ment to be used for: to encourage the development of Free Software. They are making it economically better to release your code under the GPL, and God bless em for it. BTW - you do have the choice to use another cross platform toolkit, so don't go bitching that you have to pay for Qt if you want to write proprietary software. At least they offer to sell you a proprietary license, if you want to incorporate GNU readline into your proprietary application you won't have the same kind of luck.
That was a LONG time ago. Trolltech quelled all those accusations by releasing Qt under the GPL. They provide the exact same code under a proprietary license for people who want to write proprietary applications too though.
Why is that such a great goal? The point of Free Software is not to get people running Linux.. it's to give people freedom. You can be running all the Free Software on earth and still not be aware of your freedom. That's a lot better than running proprietary software and not being aware of your freedom but it's hardly a worthy goal. Yes, we should get people to switch to Firefox and OpenOffice and Thunderbird and Linux but at some point we need to make these people aware that they are not only getting great software, they're also getting their freedom back. That means we have to start:
telling them it is a-ok to share the software with their neighbour.
suggesting that they hire local developers to customize their software
teaching them to code
That way the next time someone offers them proprietary software they'll ask
can I share this with others?
can I customize this?
can I fix my own bugs?
And when the answer comes back "no no no" they'll say "no thank you" to proprietary software.
Oh yeah, taskbar icon grouping. Forgot about that one. Seriously, these are all features that you come to depend on when you use XP for an extended period of time. Switching to something like a Mac or GNOME or KDE is fine, it's a fundamentally different OS and you can forget your old habits, but moving from XP to 2k (or as you have experienced, 2k to XP) is just annoying.
Blah, it's a stupid "hold back all the features until we have a new product" technique. Microsoft should be offering "great new features" that you can download every 6 months instead of once every 6 years. Now *that's* innovation.
Once you use XP you'll go back to Win2k and find it annoying as hell. Off the top of my head:
The start menu doesn't keep track of my most commonly used apps.
My Computer isn't on the start menu.
There's no tab completion on the command line.
Some stuff about add/remove programs that I don't remember.
Some other stuff about the services control that I don't remember.
So if you're happy with 2k I strongly suggest you never agree to use an XP box for an extended period of time (say, at your work) cause you'll come home to your 2k box and see all the flaws.
When the world wakes up and sees that Microsoft is asking them to upgrade yet-again they will either 1) jump at the chance or 2) ask what was wrong with XP. I think we need to be there to tell them.
No friend, it is you who is confused. The "locks on doors" analogy has been repeated a number of times. Need I remind you that the article in question is about a public wifi network. "Locks on doors" protect private property. How you can make an analogy between a wifi network at a train station and your CD collection I'll never know. A better analogy is the bathroom at the train station. For a start, they're both at the train station and they're both intended to be used by the public.
Let's consider all the things you can do in the bathroom to be an asshole. For one, you can flood it. You also can clog up the toilets. You also can break the doors off the stalls. You also can break the taps. Hell, you can make everyone's day at the train station a real hell if you go nuts in the toilets. Now for some reason, regardless of the fact that there's no big beefy security guard monitoring everyone's actions in the train station every instant of the day, the amount of mayhem to be witnessed by the average commuter.
To bring it back to the wifi network, I'd much prefer it if we didn't have someone sitting at a workstation monitoring every bit of traffic that goes over the network to ensure that no-one is doing anything underhanded. But in the interests of "computer security" we're all too willing to encourage this kind of monitoring, just in case someone is doing something wrong.
Yep, and those idiots at the supermarket left their pricing gun around once so we ran around tagging 29c cans of beans at $4 a pop. Damn that was fun. Oh wait, that never happened because although many of us have the chance to cause mayhem in our daily lives we choose not to - unless of course we're in computer security, then we consider it our duty.
hacking a public WiFi is a prank. As another post said, what's the worst he can do? Oh, he can change the prices woooo. You can do that in your local supermarket too. Just wonder around and cut the label off a can of beans and stick it over a microwave dinner. If you get caught you'll get dragged into a back room. If the supermarket was a unix box you'd have security guards that would stop you from cutting the label off the can of beans. I think we can agree that it makes more sense to increase our ability to detect when someone is doing something malicious than it is to have each and every action of everyone without malicious intent require authorisation to complete.
well actually, it's a "personal identification number" which is stupid in and of itself as it's not an identification number, it's an authorisation number.
I've always found the mentality of computer security experts quite strange. It must be the effect of unix. For those who never had the experience of using a "user" account on a unix box as their sole source of computation, let me explain. Basically you're required to log into the machine. After that you can do anything you want. The unix kernel will ensure that no user can affect any other user unless that user permits it. It's this attitude of "anything that is not denied by the kernel is permitted" that I really don't get.
At first this wasn't entirely the case. Consider, for example, copying all the files from/usr/bin to your home directory 1000 times. Back in the old days that would be enough to fill up the harddrive which would quickly stop other people from using the system. You could affect other people, the kernel didn't stop you, so it must be allowed right! Well no. You're wasting resources and being an asshole. But rather than put a sign on the wall that said "please don't waste disk space" someone decided this was a "security" issue and implemented disk quotas into the kernel. Now you can't affect other users by using up all the disk space.
Consider the "fork bomb" issue. For those who don't know, this is just like using up all the harddrive space, except instead of disk you're wasting memory. A fork bomb will quickly bring an older unix machine to its knees, and back in the days when I had the joy of sharing a unix lab with other students, a fork bomb would go off at least twice a day. Why? Cause if the kernel permitted it, it must be ok right? Now there's protections in most kernels just to detect a fork bomb and stop it.
Such a strange way of thinking. Thankfully most unix users do not try to apply this attitude to the real world. If there were to see the police or the government as some kind of kernel they might be surprised to find that they could kick over granny in the street or go ballistic with an automatic weapon. The police didn't stop me, it must be ok, right?
Just to bring this long post back on topic: just because you can take over the wireless internet of a train station, doesn't mean you should do it. It doesn't mean that it is permitted. There doesn't need to be a failsafe kernel monitoring and stopping every undesirable action that you can possibly perform. We can live with people being able to break the rules. It's called freedom.
maybe you're british, where an ATM card can buy you anything you want with just a poorly forged signature. Here in Australia you have to have the pin number for an ATM card to be of any use to you, and even then you'll only get $500 a day from it.
Maybe you should look up "notoriety". It doesn't mean this is true, it simply means that is the way people think. If you want to change the reputation these countries have, maybe you should encourage their government to take out the garbage and promote their strengths.
Slashdot Mirror
Programs that are written in interpretted languages are a lot easier to tweak. I bet your mom could learn to fix bugs in FireFox if the javascript was more exposed. I'm not saying this is likely.. my mom won't even use a computer but my brother (who can't code) can write html and tweak javascript.
All true. Trolltech are using the GPL for exactly what it is ment to be used for: to encourage the development of Free Software. They are making it economically better to release your code under the GPL, and God bless em for it. BTW - you do have the choice to use another cross platform toolkit, so don't go bitching that you have to pay for Qt if you want to write proprietary software. At least they offer to sell you a proprietary license, if you want to incorporate GNU readline into your proprietary application you won't have the same kind of luck.
yeah, cool, no problem, sorry about that.
That was a LONG time ago. Trolltech quelled all those accusations by releasing Qt under the GPL. They provide the exact same code under a proprietary license for people who want to write proprietary applications too though.
That way the next time someone offers them proprietary software they'll ask
And when the answer comes back "no no no" they'll say "no thank you" to proprietary software.
Ahh.. seems really pointless to go to all the effort of porting something if a better version of it is going to be out soon.
maybe you missed yesterday's story where Trolltech announced that Qt/Win32 is now available under the GPL.
Surely they mean a native port of KDE to Qt/Win32. Qt already runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, that's the point of it.
Oh yeah, taskbar icon grouping. Forgot about that one. Seriously, these are all features that you come to depend on when you use XP for an extended period of time. Switching to something like a Mac or GNOME or KDE is fine, it's a fundamentally different OS and you can forget your old habits, but moving from XP to 2k (or as you have experienced, 2k to XP) is just annoying.
Blah, it's a stupid "hold back all the features until we have a new product" technique. Microsoft should be offering "great new features" that you can download every 6 months instead of once every 6 years. Now *that's* innovation.
So if you're happy with 2k I strongly suggest you never agree to use an XP box for an extended period of time (say, at your work) cause you'll come home to your 2k box and see all the flaws.
When the world wakes up and sees that Microsoft is asking them to upgrade yet-again they will either 1) jump at the chance or 2) ask what was wrong with XP. I think we need to be there to tell them.
I went to Uni with about half the people on that list and I've met pretty much all of them. Gotta love Australia.
for fuck sake, it's Johnny Mnemonic.
Let's consider all the things you can do in the bathroom to be an asshole. For one, you can flood it. You also can clog up the toilets. You also can break the doors off the stalls. You also can break the taps. Hell, you can make everyone's day at the train station a real hell if you go nuts in the toilets. Now for some reason, regardless of the fact that there's no big beefy security guard monitoring everyone's actions in the train station every instant of the day, the amount of mayhem to be witnessed by the average commuter.
To bring it back to the wifi network, I'd much prefer it if we didn't have someone sitting at a workstation monitoring every bit of traffic that goes over the network to ensure that no-one is doing anything underhanded. But in the interests of "computer security" we're all too willing to encourage this kind of monitoring, just in case someone is doing something wrong.
Yep, and those idiots at the supermarket left their pricing gun around once so we ran around tagging 29c cans of beans at $4 a pop. Damn that was fun. Oh wait, that never happened because although many of us have the chance to cause mayhem in our daily lives we choose not to - unless of course we're in computer security, then we consider it our duty.
hacking a public WiFi is a prank. As another post said, what's the worst he can do? Oh, he can change the prices woooo. You can do that in your local supermarket too. Just wonder around and cut the label off a can of beans and stick it over a microwave dinner. If you get caught you'll get dragged into a back room. If the supermarket was a unix box you'd have security guards that would stop you from cutting the label off the can of beans. I think we can agree that it makes more sense to increase our ability to detect when someone is doing something malicious than it is to have each and every action of everyone without malicious intent require authorisation to complete.
Putting up a big sign that says "please don't abuse the network" will do a lot more than increasing security. That's what I'm saying.
I'm not surprising seeing as everything costs 4x as much in NZ dollars.
well actually, it's a "personal identification number" which is stupid in and of itself as it's not an identification number, it's an authorisation number.
At first this wasn't entirely the case. Consider, for example, copying all the files from /usr/bin to your home directory 1000 times. Back in the old days that would be enough to fill up the harddrive which would quickly stop other people from using the system. You could affect other people, the kernel didn't stop you, so it must be allowed right! Well no. You're wasting resources and being an asshole. But rather than put a sign on the wall that said "please don't waste disk space" someone decided this was a "security" issue and implemented disk quotas into the kernel. Now you can't affect other users by using up all the disk space.
Consider the "fork bomb" issue. For those who don't know, this is just like using up all the harddrive space, except instead of disk you're wasting memory. A fork bomb will quickly bring an older unix machine to its knees, and back in the days when I had the joy of sharing a unix lab with other students, a fork bomb would go off at least twice a day. Why? Cause if the kernel permitted it, it must be ok right? Now there's protections in most kernels just to detect a fork bomb and stop it.
Such a strange way of thinking. Thankfully most unix users do not try to apply this attitude to the real world. If there were to see the police or the government as some kind of kernel they might be surprised to find that they could kick over granny in the street or go ballistic with an automatic weapon. The police didn't stop me, it must be ok, right?
Just to bring this long post back on topic: just because you can take over the wireless internet of a train station, doesn't mean you should do it. It doesn't mean that it is permitted. There doesn't need to be a failsafe kernel monitoring and stopping every undesirable action that you can possibly perform. We can live with people being able to break the rules. It's called freedom.
maybe you're british, where an ATM card can buy you anything you want with just a poorly forged signature. Here in Australia you have to have the pin number for an ATM card to be of any use to you, and even then you'll only get $500 a day from it.
Maybe you should look up "notoriety". It doesn't mean this is true, it simply means that is the way people think. If you want to change the reputation these countries have, maybe you should encourage their government to take out the garbage and promote their strengths.
Umm no. If someone spies you entering your pin number at the ATM it is the bank's fault for not shielding the keypad enough.
deposits are just an unofficial way to put the homeless to work.