If the Mozilla foundation is so confident that Moz is the best product out there (and even if it's not), shouldn't it also ask for the failure stories?
Yeah. Um, no sense using whatever tools are at your disposal, right?
I've used both Cygwin and Debian, and it's much quicker to SSH into my Debian box (that's already set up how I want it), than to get Cygwin up on a box (both the first time, and every time I nuke the OS and reinstall W2K.)
"We continue to encourage responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities. We believe the commonly accepted practice of reporting vulnerabilities directly to a vendor serves everyone's best interests, by helping to ensure that customers receive comprehensive, high-quality patches for security vulnerabilities with no exposure to malicious attackers while the update is being developed," the company said in an e-mail statement.
(Score: -1, Troll)
I find it interesting how they talk about "no exposure to malicious attackers", as if their products are magically invulnerable until someone discloses the hole to the public.
Firefox needs an option to make the browser detect, and work around, user-interface abnormalities in poorly-designed websites.
It's fairly well-established that the best user interfaces are the ones where there is no discrepancy between what the user thinks is going to happen, and what actually happens.
When a user single-clicks a link, the link should open in the current window. Always. Any other behaviour (such as opening a new window) causes the user to be frustrated (or at least slowed down).
Similarly, when the user middle-clicks a link (or shift-clicks or whatever), the link should always open in a new window/tab. No oddities like "javascript:gotosite()" or "http://path/to/exact-same-page.html#" should happen.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of misguided website authors that think they're being helpful by doing non-standard things in an attempt to anticipate users' needs. This means that you'd need some type of machine-learning in order to work around these problems at the browser level.
I imagine this would be done in a way similar to how SpamAssassin works.
Crossover Office from CodeWeavers has some support for ActiveX. It's proprietary, but you might still want to look at it. I have Crossover Office, and I can say that I'm satisfied with it, but I've never tried the ActiveX part of it.
"CSS3 has actually been in progress for a number of years and you'll find that IE6 already supports some parts of CSS3... [emphasis added]
I hate this. Remember Netscape 4? It supported parts of CSS, too. That's one of the reasons why it is so broken. While older browsers don't support CSS at all (and thus degrade gracefully), NS4's partial support of CSS completely screws up the rendering of pages that use CSS.
I've done some web development, and often, my browser-specific fix for NN4 is to remove the <link rel="stylesheet"...> tags altogether. Meanwhile, browsers like Netscape 3 and Lynx do a decent job of rendering well-designed web pages, and they don't support CSS at all.
How is a trig problem significantly different than answering Potpourri? All you need to do is memorize the theorems (and not even all the details) and plug numbers into the formulas.
So you're saying some information is worse than none? How ridiculous. I seen many examples of bugs and problems that could have been avoided by simply prefixing "p" in front of a variable name that's a pointer.
I *am* saying that some information is worse than none, because having *no* information encourages a programmer to look up *all* the information. Having only some information does not have this effect. Having *some* information is worse than *all* of it, and you get *all* the information from the documentation/comments, which you should be checking anyway. The bugs you refer to might well have been avoided by prefixing "p" in front of the variable name as you say, but they might also have turned into more subtle bugs, if the programmer made *other* type-specific mistakes.
As a programmer, if you don't know everything you need to know about a variable, you should be checking the documentation/comments. You should not be relying on variable prefixes to give you this information, since the information you get from variable prefixes is incomplete.
I'm aware that Hungarian notation is helpful in certain cases, but not using Hungarian notation has the benefit of requiring the programmer to know the variables, or else look them up again. Thus, I contend that not using Hungarian notation reduces mistakes that would otherwise make it into the finished program, although it may increase frustration and development time somewhat.
When my supervisor complained that my use of Hungarian notation was confusing and meaningless
Hungarian notation *is* confusing and meaningless. Here's why:
The purpose of Hungarian notation to to prefix the type of a variable to the name of the variable. That way, you don't have to look up the type of the variable any time you see code that references it.
However, the type information used in the Hungarian notation prefix is usually incomplete; Much of the following information about the variable is not included:
scope
array bounds (and how they are determined, and whether the array can safely be extended by something like mrealloc())
quoting/encoding (possibly even different nesting levels, like data inside an SQL statement inside HTML code, for example)
data source (keyboard or network?)
whether the data is sensitive (passwords, encryption keys, etc)
locking mechanism, and when/if it must be used
references, and how/whether to acquire and release them
(on Windows) whether the variable will be propagate to child processes
In other words, Hungarian notation encourages programmers to think they know the type of a variable (including all the above attributes), without actually knowing the type of the variable.
And then there's the maintenance cost associated with changing the type of a variable.
In fact, the only good reason to use Hungarian notation that I can think of is that it's a widely-used convention among Windows developers.
Debian zealots claim that apt is what makes Debian great, however other distros have had it for years now.
You usually shouldn't put too much faith in zealots, you know.
The primary benefit of Debian (at least, to me) is not apt. It's the fact that Debian had apt several years before any other distro did, and that Debian *continues* to be (IMHO) the leading distro in terms of system integration and ease-of-administration (for power users).
Debian Policy, and the fact that almost all the software I use is packaged according to this policy, is the single most important reason why I continue to use Debian.
Oh, and if you're looking for something almost as new as unstable, but that isn't unstable, I suggest you try the "testing" branch. (On most of my machines, I run testing, plus the odd package from unstable.) The easiest way to do this is to put something like the following in/etc/apt/preferences (note how I specifically designate that the mozilla-firefox package is to come from unstable):
Is this true? I'm not saying it isn't -- just wondering if anyone who isn't an anonymous coward will back it up.
I think it is. It's not explicitly stated in the
Debian Constitution, but IIRC every new package that is uploaded must be approved by the ftp-masters before it will be added to the archive.
Are there any instances of the ftp-masters insisting on things that the most of the rest of the project doesn't want?
Not as far as I know. The ftp-masters don't really hold any ceremonial power. They just collectively control the distribution system; if the ftp-masters refuse to allow a certain file to be on their machines, then that file will effectively not be in Debian. It's similar to how CmdrTaco effectively controls every post anyone makes to Slashdot. Although he doesn't have to specifically approve posts, if he deletes your post, there's nothing you can do about it.
It's more of a "sysop == God" thing than anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
When people talk about "proprietary" or "patented" technology, do they think it will actually make their product look better?
I repeat: READ THE GPL BEFORE COMMENTING ABOUT IT!!!
If the Mozilla foundation is so confident that Moz is the best product out there (and even if it's not), shouldn't it also ask for the failure stories?
Last I heard, "Shrug and Try Reinstalling" has replaced "Shrug and Reboot".
I should really not post after 2 AM...
I initially ran apt-cache search gasp, which turned up nothing relevent. I suppose I should have tried harder to figure it out.
Bah, who am I kidding? This is Slashdot!
I think the mistake is understandable, given Firesomething
Does anyone know if this release is for all the platforms (Linux, Windows, and Mac), or just for Windows?
What's gasp?
Slippery slope argument
I've used both Cygwin and Debian, and it's much quicker to SSH into my Debian box (that's already set up how I want it), than to get Cygwin up on a box (both the first time, and every time I nuke the OS and reinstall W2K.)
(Score: -1, Troll)
I find it interesting how they talk about "no exposure to malicious attackers", as if their products are magically invulnerable until someone discloses the hole to the public.
If you believe that, then I cannot say anything except that you, sir, are one of the misguided authors I'm talking about.
Yes, of course users shouldn't be so dumb as not to know what's going on
Why?
Supporting evidence for contentious statement?
Firefox needs an option to make the browser detect, and work around, user-interface abnormalities in poorly-designed websites.
It's fairly well-established that the best user interfaces are the ones where there is no discrepancy between what the user thinks is going to happen, and what actually happens.
When a user single-clicks a link, the link should open in the current window. Always. Any other behaviour (such as opening a new window) causes the user to be frustrated (or at least slowed down).
Similarly, when the user middle-clicks a link (or shift-clicks or whatever), the link should always open in a new window/tab. No oddities like "javascript:gotosite()" or "http://path/to/exact-same-page.html#" should happen.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of misguided website authors that think they're being helpful by doing non-standard things in an attempt to anticipate users' needs. This means that you'd need some type of machine-learning in order to work around these problems at the browser level.
I imagine this would be done in a way similar to how SpamAssassin works.
Crossover Office from CodeWeavers has some support for ActiveX. It's proprietary, but you might still want to look at it. I have Crossover Office, and I can say that I'm satisfied with it, but I've never tried the ActiveX part of it.
Being a non-USian, I'm curious: didn't the Democrats also vote to invade Iraq?
I hate this. Remember Netscape 4? It supported parts of CSS, too. That's one of the reasons why it is so broken. While older browsers don't support CSS at all (and thus degrade gracefully), NS4's partial support of CSS completely screws up the rendering of pages that use CSS.
I've done some web development, and often, my browser-specific fix for NN4 is to remove the <link rel="stylesheet" ...> tags altogether. Meanwhile, browsers like Netscape 3 and Lynx do a decent job of rendering well-designed web pages, and they don't support CSS at all.
How is a trig problem significantly different than answering Potpourri? All you need to do is memorize the theorems (and not even all the details) and plug numbers into the formulas.
What if Neo didn't take any of them?
I *am* saying that some information is worse than none, because having *no* information encourages a programmer to look up *all* the information. Having only some information does not have this effect. Having *some* information is worse than *all* of it, and you get *all* the information from the documentation/comments, which you should be checking anyway. The bugs you refer to might well have been avoided by prefixing "p" in front of the variable name as you say, but they might also have turned into more subtle bugs, if the programmer made *other* type-specific mistakes.
As a programmer, if you don't know everything you need to know about a variable, you should be checking the documentation/comments. You should not be relying on variable prefixes to give you this information, since the information you get from variable prefixes is incomplete.
I'm aware that Hungarian notation is helpful in certain cases, but not using Hungarian notation has the benefit of requiring the programmer to know the variables, or else look them up again. Thus, I contend that not using Hungarian notation reduces mistakes that would otherwise make it into the finished program, although it may increase frustration and development time somewhat.
Sigh. Yeah...
Is that actually a security hole, though? Is there anywhere in /proc that relies on the permissions working properly?
Hungarian notation *is* confusing and meaningless. Here's why:
The purpose of Hungarian notation to to prefix the type of a variable to the name of the variable. That way, you don't have to look up the type of the variable any time you see code that references it.
However, the type information used in the Hungarian notation prefix is usually incomplete; Much of the following information about the variable is not included:
In other words, Hungarian notation encourages programmers to think they know the type of a variable (including all the above attributes), without actually knowing the type of the variable.
And then there's the maintenance cost associated with changing the type of a variable.
In fact, the only good reason to use Hungarian notation that I can think of is that it's a widely-used convention among Windows developers.
You usually shouldn't put too much faith in zealots, you know.
The primary benefit of Debian (at least, to me) is not apt. It's the fact that Debian had apt several years before any other distro did, and that Debian *continues* to be (IMHO) the leading distro in terms of system integration and ease-of-administration (for power users).
Debian Policy, and the fact that almost all the software I use is packaged according to this policy, is the single most important reason why I continue to use Debian.
Oh, and if you're looking for something almost as new as unstable, but that isn't unstable, I suggest you try the "testing" branch. (On most of my machines, I run testing, plus the odd package from unstable.) The easiest way to do this is to put something like the following in /etc/apt/preferences (note how I specifically designate that the mozilla-firefox package is to come from unstable):
I think it is. It's not explicitly stated in the Debian Constitution, but IIRC every new package that is uploaded must be approved by the ftp-masters before it will be added to the archive.
Are there any instances of the ftp-masters insisting on things that the most of the rest of the project doesn't want?
Not as far as I know. The ftp-masters don't really hold any ceremonial power. They just collectively control the distribution system; if the ftp-masters refuse to allow a certain file to be on their machines, then that file will effectively not be in Debian. It's similar to how CmdrTaco effectively controls every post anyone makes to Slashdot. Although he doesn't have to specifically approve posts, if he deletes your post, there's nothing you can do about it.
It's more of a "sysop == God" thing than anything else.