I don't buy into it at all. In fact, I can't believe what a load of crap Mr. Krul is attempting to foist off on the Linux community.
The Windows desktop is the way it is because nobody, save Microsoft themselves, sees any reason to "improve" it. The OS just sits there and stares at you because that is exactly what it is supposed to do -- create an environment where the user can get some real work done. The applications are where that happens, and the user interface, if too radically different than what users are familiar with, just gets in the way.
The beauty of Linux (and NT, for that matter) is that it is possible to do things like create a new desktop environment (called a "shell" on NT). If Mr. Krul wants to gather together some people and prove me wrong, more power to him and his team.
Of course, there's probably a reason nobody other than MS has ever bothered to create a new shell for NT. And there's probably a reason OSs don't go off doing their own thing but are designed to patiently sit there waiting for the user to tell them what to do. And there's probably a reason one doesn't use all the CPU cycles on the machine just to make the machine look pretty and active when it isn't doing productive work for the user. And there's probably a reason Linux, Apple and Windows (to name a few of the big players) are all trying to look and feel like each other.
"- The gas door would be located underneath the car so that gas doesn't have to go as far to reach the tank. A bottleneck is removed that way."
Sheesh - just rebuild your engine with the loadable-gastank filler module... duh!
Well, of course you just need the gNUpipe module, everybody knows what that module does.
- And when you get a flat, you simply need to ask on the Internet, where some nice helpful mechanic will talk you though how to rebuild.. er.. reconfigure your transmission so that the car will work with the spare tire. Sheesh! You're a car user, you should know how to change to the spare tire yourself.
Why not just use a large vacuum cleaner? Might as well make the ship its attached to look like a large statue of liberty figurine for that patriotic feel too.
Can you tell us some technical details on the guidance system? For example, what kinds of directional controls do you have? Are they manual or automatic? If they are automatic, what is controlling them?
35 miles up could send you quite a distance ballistically, and the rocket fuel could cause some significant damage if you crashed. Have you needed to get any special clearances in order to launch? Or will the rocket be moved to a safer location for launch?
A lot of rockets blew up on the launch pad in the early days. Have you done anything special to ensure nothing like that will happen to you and your rocket?
A lot of rockets had a smaller "escape" rocket attched to the nose of tha capsule to lift it free of the main engines and fuel in an emergency. I don't see anything like that in your design. What provisions have you made for getting you away and to safety if the main stage fails before you are at safe parachute height?
Is Linux on the desktop "ready for Prime Time"? No, probably not. It isn't mindless enough.
I don't know if I'd choose that wording ("useable" is the one I'd use), but yes, it does need to be made easy enough for the non-hacker masses to pick up and use. Charging money is the fastest way to get there because as soon as United needs to make a buck quarter to quarter, they will have to pursue other markets than Linux zealots. Perhaps we don't like to think about it, but we are way outnumbered by the non-hacker computer users, and there is no way Linux can ever replace Microsoft without appealing to them.
My recommendation (not that anyone asked:-), is to centralize access to all the umpteen different ways to muck with the configuration. RedHat 7.3 a la KDE has a pretty good start on this (I wonder why..), but there is still configuration that cannot be gotten to from the menus. The configuration doesn't need to be dumbed down at first, just findable.
It doesn't allow for DoS attacks on pirates, or anything damaging. The bulk of what it allows are putting up of decoy files, and doing the slow download thing.
Actually, those are merely examples of what is permitted. The actuality of what is permitted is (to paraphrase) "nothing damaging to the pirates computer". Is a DoS attack damaing to a computer? Not really in one sense, so it is permitted. Is a virus that deletes the file damagning to the comptuer? Not really, so it too would be permitted. Etc.
The evilness of this is not the ways the RIAA can use it to prevent pirated music files from being shared. The evilness is in how any company or individual can use it to legally attack computers hosting any pirated (or copied) text, javascript, pictures, music, movie, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, if congress wants to make a law to single out the RIAA and assist them in stamping out piracy, I say let them be aboveboard about it and restrict the law to only apply to them. Otherwise, it applies to everybody, and legalizing everybody attacking computers is a scary thought.
Your developer's responsibilities to you are to inform you of any potential conflicts. This they did. They deserve a pat on the back for their candidness because it may well have save you (and them) from an expensive lawsuit.
Your responsibility now, is to document how the conflict is being resolved just in case his former employeer comes after your company or him (and he will come after you if that happens).
You also now get to apply that developer to another problem (hurray for the other problem).
Just have the developers test every branch they put into their code and verify that it performs the desired action correctly. This won't prevent design flaws, and it won't prevent the code from crashing elsewhere, but in my experience, such written code rarely fails directly even with unexpected input or failures (although often it causes less robust code elsewhere to behave badly).
Doing this won't prevent defects in the code, but it will make it more robust out at a customer site. It also doesn't seem to add significantly to project completion time as the heavy duty hard-to-fix bugs are reduced.
If I had a choice between getting developers to code this way or increasing the testing of the code, I'd prefer the developer solution.
Um.. isn't coercing data-processing code into executing that data exactly how some viurses propagate? Historically, this is, in part, how the internet worm of the 1980s propagated. However, haven't there been recent attacks on IIS that get in using exactly such a technique?
What's the fundamental difference between sending data to a network interface to get that program to execute the virus, and sending data through a network interface to some other internal program to get it to execute the virus?
"Open source GPL use by government agencies could easily become a nation security concern. Government use of software in the public domain is exceptionally risky."
But is it more or less risky in comparison to using closed source software?
I guess it depends on how easily the source can be modified while in its public repository and how long it could remain that way undetected. A company trying to keep their source code proprietary has a lot more vested interest in making sure their source cannot be modified by just anybody, and in detecting when someone tries. Are the open source code bases as secure from modification? And who is monitoring them for undetected modifications?
Suddenly, there's life on Mars we might bring back? How is it that we all missed the revelation of exterrestial life? Isn't that sort of a significant finding?
Perhaps they yanked it because they realized that US users will have to pay taxes on the barter points they are earning? Sort of hard to make people think they are getting something for "free" when they have to start to fork out real earned dollars for the "free" stuff they are getting.
Are you a lawyer? Are you qualified to comment on the law in this case?
I disagee that those versed in the law should be the only ones allowed to comment on how a judicial decision should be made.
Isn't the prosecution is being done by government lawyers? On the behalf of the citizens of the United States? Who could possibly be better qualified to express an opinion about the punishment, than the citizens of this country?
And where does that OC3 that "doesn't cost any less if no one uses it" connect? Having an ISP allow their hogs to soak up the unused bandwidth on that OC3, even on off hours, merely pushes the problem up a level. Eventually the company selling the OC3 will have to charge a hog ISP more for their higher average bandwidth used. Those costs will get passed on ultimately to an end user somewhere. I'd prefer to see the heavy users to share their proportionate amount of that cost.
I just found and read through their acceptable use policy. They do say it isn't permitted to share bandwidth with a third party, but nowhere do they specifically disallow sharing the bandwidth between multiple computers owned by the same party.
Did I miss it? Is everyone here on Slashdot getting flustered because they wanted to become mini-ISP and now they can't?
I'm not a sysadmin guru by any means, but I do know my way around some simple unix configuration. If my experiences these last few weeks getting three different Linux machines up and running are anything to go by, Linux is a pleasant experience when everything works. However, if you have to configure anything, or tell it about anything, or fix anything, then you immediately have to be a unix guru. There is no in between.
Today's example, figure out which network card is which so I can give them their correct IP address/settings. In a perfect world, the IP config utility would help me identify my cards. Instead, it expects me to do that given chipset and device driver name info and to know to look in the boot log files for the identification strings from the cards. Novice ready? No. Guru expected? Yes.
I believe Linux is a superior technical offering. However, it seems to be done by gurus for gurus and forgets the rest of the world. Faced with that, novices who try it will quickly go back to Windows. Pity.
This is true, but ultimately, it isn't a sustainable business model. People with broadband connections are not spending 3x just to download a few megabytes per day faster, they are doing it to download tons more megabytes faster.
Seems to me the problem is not with the system but the fact that the pricing models don't reflect their usage expectations. They should cap you at maximums and also at averages, similar to the way quality of service support works. If they did this, then even policing for servers would be pointless.
When I was at college years ago, periodically, when one did a ps on one of the vaxen, there would be a process that would appear called "./overlord". An odd name, but even more wierd was that searches of the file system turned up nothing that could account for it. Near as anyone could tell, there was no such program nor any such process that was running on the system at those times.
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Kinda stupid given that the US government has become a by-the-lobbiests-for-the-special-interests form of government.
Actually, you are supposed to do that, else Microsoft would not have opened that capability up in the first place.
I don't buy into it at all. In fact, I can't believe what a load of crap Mr. Krul is attempting to foist off on the Linux community. The Windows desktop is the way it is because nobody, save Microsoft themselves, sees any reason to "improve" it. The OS just sits there and stares at you because that is exactly what it is supposed to do -- create an environment where the user can get some real work done. The applications are where that happens, and the user interface, if too radically different than what users are familiar with, just gets in the way.
The beauty of Linux (and NT, for that matter) is that it is possible to do things like create a new desktop environment (called a "shell" on NT). If Mr. Krul wants to gather together some people and prove me wrong, more power to him and his team.
Of course, there's probably a reason nobody other than MS has ever bothered to create a new shell for NT. And there's probably a reason OSs don't go off doing their own thing but are designed to patiently sit there waiting for the user to tell them what to do. And there's probably a reason one doesn't use all the CPU cycles on the machine just to make the machine look pretty and active when it isn't doing productive work for the user. And there's probably a reason Linux, Apple and Windows (to name a few of the big players) are all trying to look and feel like each other.
Sheesh - just rebuild your engine with the loadable-gastank filler module... duh!
Well, of course you just need the gNUpipe module, everybody knows what that module does.
- And when you get a flat, you simply need to ask on the Internet, where some nice helpful mechanic will talk you though how to rebuild.. er.. reconfigure your transmission so that the car will work with the spare tire. Sheesh! You're a car user, you should know how to change to the spare tire yourself.
Why not just use a large vacuum cleaner? Might as well make the ship its attached to look like a large statue of liberty figurine for that patriotic feel too.
35 miles up could send you quite a distance ballistically, and the rocket fuel could cause some significant damage if you crashed. Have you needed to get any special clearances in order to launch? Or will the rocket be moved to a safer location for launch?
A lot of rockets blew up on the launch pad in the early days. Have you done anything special to ensure nothing like that will happen to you and your rocket?
A lot of rockets had a smaller "escape" rocket attched to the nose of tha capsule to lift it free of the main engines and fuel in an emergency. I don't see anything like that in your design. What provisions have you made for getting you away and to safety if the main stage fails before you are at safe parachute height?
I don't know if I'd choose that wording ("useable" is the one I'd use), but yes, it does need to be made easy enough for the non-hacker masses to pick up and use. Charging money is the fastest way to get there because as soon as United needs to make a buck quarter to quarter, they will have to pursue other markets than Linux zealots. Perhaps we don't like to think about it, but we are way outnumbered by the non-hacker computer users, and there is no way Linux can ever replace Microsoft without appealing to them.
My recommendation (not that anyone asked :-), is to centralize access to all the umpteen different ways to muck with the configuration. RedHat 7.3 a la KDE has a pretty good start on this (I wonder why..), but there is still configuration that cannot be gotten to from the menus. The configuration doesn't need to be dumbed down at first, just findable.
Actually, those are merely examples of what is permitted. The actuality of what is permitted is (to paraphrase) "nothing damaging to the pirates computer". Is a DoS attack damaing to a computer? Not really in one sense, so it is permitted. Is a virus that deletes the file damagning to the comptuer? Not really, so it too would be permitted. Etc.
The evilness of this is not the ways the RIAA can use it to prevent pirated music files from being shared. The evilness is in how any company or individual can use it to legally attack computers hosting any pirated (or copied) text, javascript, pictures, music, movie, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, if congress wants to make a law to single out the RIAA and assist them in stamping out piracy, I say let them be aboveboard about it and restrict the law to only apply to them. Otherwise, it applies to everybody, and legalizing everybody attacking computers is a scary thought.
Your responsibility now, is to document how the conflict is being resolved just in case his former employeer comes after your company or him (and he will come after you if that happens).
You also now get to apply that developer to another problem (hurray for the other problem).
Doing this won't prevent defects in the code, but it will make it more robust out at a customer site. It also doesn't seem to add significantly to project completion time as the heavy duty hard-to-fix bugs are reduced.
If I had a choice between getting developers to code this way or increasing the testing of the code, I'd prefer the developer solution.
What's the fundamental difference between sending data to a network interface to get that program to execute the virus, and sending data through a network interface to some other internal program to get it to execute the virus?
But is it more or less risky in comparison to using closed source software?
I guess it depends on how easily the source can be modified while in its public repository and how long it could remain that way undetected. A company trying to keep their source code proprietary has a lot more vested interest in making sure their source cannot be modified by just anybody, and in detecting when someone tries. Are the open source code bases as secure from modification? And who is monitoring them for undetected modifications?
Suddenly, there's life on Mars we might bring back? How is it that we all missed the revelation of exterrestial life? Isn't that sort of a significant finding?
Perhaps they yanked it because they realized that US users will have to pay taxes on the barter points they are earning? Sort of hard to make people think they are getting something for "free" when they have to start to fork out real earned dollars for the "free" stuff they are getting.
I disagee that those versed in the law should be the only ones allowed to comment on how a judicial decision should be made.
Isn't the prosecution is being done by government lawyers? On the behalf of the citizens of the United States? Who could possibly be better qualified to express an opinion about the punishment, than the citizens of this country?
And kudos on the proposal itself.
And where does that OC3 that "doesn't cost any less if no one uses it" connect? Having an ISP allow their hogs to soak up the unused bandwidth on that OC3, even on off hours, merely pushes the problem up a level. Eventually the company selling the OC3 will have to charge a hog ISP more for their higher average bandwidth used. Those costs will get passed on ultimately to an end user somewhere. I'd prefer to see the heavy users to share their proportionate amount of that cost.
Did I miss it? Is everyone here on Slashdot getting flustered because they wanted to become mini-ISP and now they can't?
A quick scan through one of my magezings yields the following companies producing or reselling such products: www.linkins4.com & www.saelig.com.
Today's example, figure out which network card is which so I can give them their correct IP address/settings. In a perfect world, the IP config utility would help me identify my cards. Instead, it expects me to do that given chipset and device driver name info and to know to look in the boot log files for the identification strings from the cards. Novice ready? No. Guru expected? Yes.
I believe Linux is a superior technical offering. However, it seems to be done by gurus for gurus and forgets the rest of the world. Faced with that, novices who try it will quickly go back to Windows. Pity.
This is true, but ultimately, it isn't a sustainable business model. People with broadband connections are not spending 3x just to download a few megabytes per day faster, they are doing it to download tons more megabytes faster. Seems to me the problem is not with the system but the fact that the pricing models don't reflect their usage expectations. They should cap you at maximums and also at averages, similar to the way quality of service support works. If they did this, then even policing for servers would be pointless.
When I was at college years ago, periodically, when one did a ps on one of the vaxen, there would be a process that would appear called "./overlord". An odd name, but even more wierd was that searches of the file system turned up nothing that could account for it. Near as anyone could tell, there was no such program nor any such process that was running on the system at those times.