How do they know "China" (as in the Chinese government) is attacking Taipei, instead of just a group of people? I mean, if Joe Hacker from the USA attacks the Belgium government servers do you call it an attack by Joe Hacker or an attack by the USA?
So? The "ouvert" in "Xouvert" means "open" in French. So it roughly translate to "Open X". But that didn't stop all the ignorant Slashdotters who don't know French from complaining about the name either.
"because the compiler version change affects the kernel and loadable kernel modules as well."
That's because the kernel is an extremely low-level piece of software and uses all kinds of extensions in GCC. The slightest change could potentially break something.
"Open source advocates tend to ignore the fact that some parts of some people's systems are not open source. When I decide to buy a piece of hardware from a manufacturer who is the only one that supports Linux and supports it using a binary-only driver, I can decide to go with that solution. Then I don't like it when arbitrary changes to interfaces break the module, as the manufacturer may no longer be around or may no longer be supporting Linux."
Then stick to your old kernel. Nobody forces you to upgrade. There are servers out there that are still running on Linux 2.0. And if your manufacturer has gone out of business or doesn't support Linux anymore, it would be a far better idea to either buy new hardware or find an open source driver.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to break things when it only requires a recompile. 1) The Linux userbase is still small. We can break things in order to improve, without affecting too many people. When Linux becomes popular we can't do this as often before. So fix things while we still can. 2) Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.
This has got nothing to do with the plugin interface. This is a C++ Application Binary Interface issue. This problem only affects C++ applications (Mozilla is written in C++). The past few GCC versions broke C++ ABI in order to be standards compliant.
This has no large effect on most Linux software since they're open source. Most distributions are already fully compiled with GCC 3.2. Sun's JRE is already compiled with GCC 3.2. The *only* plugin I know that hasn't, is RealPlayer. Real should recompile their plugin and get over with it.
"What if Real or Adobe decide that this is it and no GCC 3.x compilation of their product will be brought out? Will Mozilla step back to GCC 2.95, will they fix the problem,"
They'd be fools to not bring out GCC 3.2 versions of their products. It's extremely trival: a recompile is all that's needed. Or in case your code isn't standards compliant (GCC 3.2 is more strict), just fix your code. All of this takes at most a few days. Sun and Real can have a new version ready in less than a week.
WinXP broke Easy CD Creator. Are you going to tell Microsoft to put back the MS-DOS cruft in XP just to make Easy CD Creator work? Or should Adaptec port their software to XP instead?
"or will they just kill their browser product by saying "sorry guys, no more Acrobat PDF viewing!"???"
This wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Replace Adobe's PDF plugin with an open source PDF plugin and viola.
Gimp 1.3 uses GTK+ 2.x. You should install Gimp 1.3; it's a big improvement over 1.2 and pretty stable already. The UI got a large revamp and is now much better. You can install 1.3 in a different prefix so you won't overwrite 1.2.
"Of the ten people I work with who use OS X, six of them are coders."
And out of 10 people I know who are Windows users, 6 of them are coders. Just because you know Mac OS X programmers doesn't mean the majority is a programmer.
And? Of all those people you listed, only the last one is a geek. The 4th one *may* be a geek who can program. I can't see how IT directors, software projects managers and students can possibly help Wine.
"(how can this not be aimed at sex-starved geeks?)"
Supported by the OS X crowd? How? OS X is known and advertised as a friendly system for newbies or people who just want to do stuff easily. In other words: non-geeks. How many people will you find among the OS X crowd that: 1) Can program. 2) Understand and accept the open source philosophy. 3) Has the time and is willing to contribute code under the LGPL.
I'd say not many. The OS X crowd is already a small crowd. A small portion of a small crowd is, well... extremely small. OS X users will gain more from Wine than Wine gains from OS X users.
Well no. By default, GhostScript disables all potentially harmful functions (like functions that can delete files). Heck, I don't even know how to turn those functions *on*.
I say Linux is *overall* more secure than Windows. Not because of the of then number of exploits, but the *attitude*.
Let's face it: nothing is 100% secure. As long as software is made by humans, there *will* be security vulnerabilities. So, what matters is how you deal with bugs and vulnerability. The open source community is much better at this than Microsoft. Security patches are often released in a few days *and* peer reviewed. Those patches break a lot less things than MS patches because they're peer reviewed.
Also, no Linux email client supports automatic execution of executable code. This already eliminates most of the viruses today that are made by script kiddies. And you have to manually save the attachment to disk and add the execute bit. This is a lot of work for Joe Average. Of course it's still possible to get a virus, but the point is that the overall chance is lower.
So yes, I'd say Linux and open source is overall more secure than Microsoft. Security is not measured by the number of exploits alone!
Then how do you know the cache isn't out of date? There are so many modem users out there, or other people that that have dynamic IPs. And how are you supposed to connect to the first node if there are no centralized nodes? Finding an IP is already too much work for Joe Average.
A typical luser response. The Gaim developers are all volunteers! Let me translate your message to what you really meant: "Fucking Gaim developers, give me what *I* want right now! For free! NOW! Me me me!"
People who use the "typical" and "open source not beating the crap out of MS" excuse: 1) Have no social skills. Do you really think anybody will listen to you if you actively insult them? Sorry but you need to learn some social skills. 2) Are ignorant to reality. MacOS X isn't beating the crap out of MS either.
Get a clue. Voluntary developers are not your slaves. If end users expect volunteers to do everything for them for free, while insulting the developers, then it's the end users who are clueless.
Who said anything about Linux? The parent poster was talking about *UNIX*. Which means the stable, secure, commercial Unices like Solaris, as the parent poster pointed out. Linux has got absolutely nothing to do with this! Even if it does, it still doesn't justify Windows's insecurity and why anybody would run Windows in a nuclear power plant.
Compensation, yeah right. Remember OpenDivX? I'll tell you the story. At first, Project Mayo created the OpenDivX project. They claimed that it was "an open source version of DivX". (That claim couldn't be any more wrong; OpenDivX was licensed under the OpenDivX license, which wasn't approved by the Open Source Initiative.) Dispite that, people contributed code anyway. And on one day (about 1 year later), BAM. Project Mayo suddenly closed the CVS and turned all that code into their own, commercial, proprietary DivX 4 codec. OpenDivX is dead. The end. Not only did they stole the work that people contributed, they also took advantage of the confusion. A lot of people (including Slashdotters!) thought DivX 4 == OpenDivX, and thus thought that DivX is open source. That's plain wrong.
They stole the work of contributors without giving anything back. Sorry but I have no mercy for those guys if they don't receive compensation. DivX.com can go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned.
"And in case you weren't aware, we do now have DRI and XV for 3D and video, which do dump network transparency in favor of speed in these extreme high-bandwidth cases."
Actually XV *doesn't* dump network transparency. You can play a video over the network with XV. I don't know about DRI but I heard OpenGL is network transparent too. When done right, network transparency doesn't necessarily have to mean slowdowns.
Yes but with today's hardware, the performance gain of directly writing to hardware is minimal. Let's have a look at the other systems: - MacOS X apps don't write directly to hardware. - Win32 apps don't write directly to hardware. - BeOS apps don't write directly to hardware. - Unix apps don't write directly to hardware. Heck, *no* modern operating system allows apps to write directly to hardware! Do you see people complaining about speed in MacOS/Win32/BeOS? I don't.
Yes abstraction layers make thing slower... in theory! But in practice, on modern hardware, the performance loss is minimal. Instead, you gain stability: the windowing system can ensure that two apps can't write to hardware at the same time, so there won't be graphic corruptions. And they provide portability. It makes sense to sacrifice 0.00000001 milisecond of processing power for stability to portability.
Writing directly to framebuffer is the old and obsolete way, not the future.
Bah, pressed the wrong button. My reply continues here.
"Ogg Vorbis is pronouncable. Even so, it's mindshare is WAY less than that of MP3s."
*All* other formats have WAY less mindshare than MP3. Windows Media Video? AAC? They're no more popular than Ogg Vorbis dispite their "great marketing names".
Slashdot Mirror
How do they know "China" (as in the Chinese government) is attacking Taipei, instead of just a group of people? I mean, if Joe Hacker from the USA attacks the Belgium government servers do you call it an attack by Joe Hacker or an attack by the USA?
So? The "ouvert" in "Xouvert" means "open" in French. So it roughly translate to "Open X". But that didn't stop all the ignorant Slashdotters who don't know French from complaining about the name either.
"because the compiler version change affects the kernel and loadable kernel modules as well."
That's because the kernel is an extremely low-level piece of software and uses all kinds of extensions in GCC. The slightest change could potentially break something.
"Open source advocates tend to ignore the fact that some parts of some people's systems are not open source. When I decide to buy a piece of hardware from a manufacturer who is the only one that supports Linux and supports it using a binary-only driver, I can decide to go with that solution. Then I don't like it when arbitrary changes to interfaces break the module, as the manufacturer may no longer be around or may no longer be supporting Linux."
Then stick to your old kernel. Nobody forces you to upgrade. There are servers out there that are still running on Linux 2.0.
And if your manufacturer has gone out of business or doesn't support Linux anymore, it would be a far better idea to either buy new hardware or find an open source driver.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to break things when it only requires a recompile.
1) The Linux userbase is still small. We can break things in order to improve, without affecting too many people. When Linux becomes popular we can't do this as often before. So fix things while we still can.
2) Nobody is forcing you to upgrade.
But then your post was offtopic since you didn't reply to my point.
This has got nothing to do with the plugin interface. This is a C++ Application Binary Interface issue. This problem only affects C++ applications (Mozilla is written in C++). The past few GCC versions broke C++ ABI in order to be standards compliant.
This has no large effect on most Linux software since they're open source. Most distributions are already fully compiled with GCC 3.2. Sun's JRE is already compiled with GCC 3.2. The *only* plugin I know that hasn't, is RealPlayer. Real should recompile their plugin and get over with it.
"What if Real or Adobe decide that this is it and no GCC 3.x compilation of their product will be brought out? Will Mozilla step back to GCC 2.95, will they fix the problem,"
They'd be fools to not bring out GCC 3.2 versions of their products. It's extremely trival: a recompile is all that's needed. Or in case your code isn't standards compliant (GCC 3.2 is more strict), just fix your code. All of this takes at most a few days. Sun and Real can have a new version ready in less than a week.
WinXP broke Easy CD Creator. Are you going to tell Microsoft to put back the MS-DOS cruft in XP just to make Easy CD Creator work? Or should Adaptec port their software to XP instead?
"or will they just kill their browser product by saying "sorry guys, no more Acrobat PDF viewing!"???"
This wouldn't be a bad idea at all. Replace Adobe's PDF plugin with an open source PDF plugin and viola.
Gimp 1.3 uses GTK+ 2.x. You should install Gimp 1.3; it's a big improvement over 1.2 and pretty stable already. The UI got a large revamp and is now much better. You can install 1.3 in a different prefix so you won't overwrite 1.2.
Even geeks would prefer good-looking over ugly women.
"Of the ten people I work with who use OS X, six of them are coders."
And out of 10 people I know who are Windows users, 6 of them are coders.
Just because you know Mac OS X programmers doesn't mean the majority is a programmer.
And? Of all those people you listed, only the last one is a geek. The 4th one *may* be a geek who can program.
I can't see how IT directors, software projects managers and students can possibly help Wine.
"(how can this not be aimed at sex-starved geeks?)"
Because she's ugly.
Supported by the OS X crowd? How?
OS X is known and advertised as a friendly system for newbies or people who just want to do stuff easily. In other words: non-geeks. How many people will you find among the OS X crowd that:
1) Can program.
2) Understand and accept the open source philosophy.
3) Has the time and is willing to contribute code under the LGPL.
I'd say not many. The OS X crowd is already a small crowd. A small portion of a small crowd is, well... extremely small. OS X users will gain more from Wine than Wine gains from OS X users.
Try this new file selector patch for GTK+ 2.2.2. It has shortcut navigation buttons, the location box allows typing, and you can see metadata like file icon, file type, size and date.
Try this new file dialog for GTK+ 2.2.2. It has bookmarks support and a back button, making it easier to navigate.
Well no. By default, GhostScript disables all potentially harmful functions (like functions that can delete files). Heck, I don't even know how to turn those functions *on*.
I say Linux is *overall* more secure than Windows. Not because of the of then number of exploits, but the *attitude*.
Let's face it: nothing is 100% secure. As long as software is made by humans, there *will* be security vulnerabilities.
So, what matters is how you deal with bugs and vulnerability. The open source community is much better at this than Microsoft. Security patches are often released in a few days *and* peer reviewed. Those patches break a lot less things than MS patches because they're peer reviewed.
Also, no Linux email client supports automatic execution of executable code. This already eliminates most of the viruses today that are made by script kiddies. And you have to manually save the attachment to disk and add the execute bit. This is a lot of work for Joe Average.
Of course it's still possible to get a virus, but the point is that the overall chance is lower.
So yes, I'd say Linux and open source is overall more secure than Microsoft. Security is not measured by the number of exploits alone!
It won't be impossible but it will be too much work for Joe Average.
"Have those clients report back to the apps webpage with a list of starter IPs for new users."
So now the website becomes the centralized tracker server...
"How about everyone using a dynamic dns service, that way you just lookup their dns settings."
And tadaa - you just made yourself rely on a centralized server.
"Or perhaps everyone posting a file on their webpage containing their ip"
So instead of manually looking up IPs, you have to manually look up URLs now? That's not an improvement.
Then how do you know the cache isn't out of date? There are so many modem users out there, or other people that that have dynamic IPs.
And how are you supposed to connect to the first node if there are no centralized nodes? Finding an IP is already too much work for Joe Average.
That's not possible. It would require you to manually enter everybody's IP addresses.
A typical luser response. The Gaim developers are all volunteers! Let me translate your message to what you really meant: "Fucking Gaim developers, give me what *I* want right now! For free! NOW! Me me me!"
People who use the "typical" and "open source not beating the crap out of MS" excuse:
1) Have no social skills. Do you really think anybody will listen to you if you actively insult them? Sorry but you need to learn some social skills.
2) Are ignorant to reality. MacOS X isn't beating the crap out of MS either.
Get a clue. Voluntary developers are not your slaves. If end users expect volunteers to do everything for them for free, while insulting the developers, then it's the end users who are clueless.
Most home users aren't smart enough to think of that.
Who said anything about Linux? The parent poster was talking about *UNIX*. Which means the stable, secure, commercial Unices like Solaris, as the parent poster pointed out.
Linux has got absolutely nothing to do with this! Even if it does, it still doesn't justify Windows's insecurity and why anybody would run Windows in a nuclear power plant.
Compensation, yeah right. Remember OpenDivX? I'll tell you the story.
At first, Project Mayo created the OpenDivX project. They claimed that it was "an open source version of DivX". (That claim couldn't be any more wrong; OpenDivX was licensed under the OpenDivX license, which wasn't approved by the Open Source Initiative.) Dispite that, people contributed code anyway.
And on one day (about 1 year later), BAM. Project Mayo suddenly closed the CVS and turned all that code into their own, commercial, proprietary DivX 4 codec. OpenDivX is dead. The end.
Not only did they stole the work that people contributed, they also took advantage of the confusion. A lot of people (including Slashdotters!) thought DivX 4 == OpenDivX, and thus thought that DivX is open source. That's plain wrong.
They stole the work of contributors without giving anything back. Sorry but I have no mercy for those guys if they don't receive compensation. DivX.com can go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned.
"And in case you weren't aware, we do now have DRI and XV for 3D and video, which do dump network transparency in favor of speed in these extreme high-bandwidth cases."
Actually XV *doesn't* dump network transparency. You can play a video over the network with XV.
I don't know about DRI but I heard OpenGL is network transparent too.
When done right, network transparency doesn't necessarily have to mean slowdowns.
Yes but with today's hardware, the performance gain of directly writing to hardware is minimal.
Let's have a look at the other systems:
- MacOS X apps don't write directly to hardware.
- Win32 apps don't write directly to hardware.
- BeOS apps don't write directly to hardware.
- Unix apps don't write directly to hardware.
Heck, *no* modern operating system allows apps to write directly to hardware! Do you see people complaining about speed in MacOS/Win32/BeOS? I don't.
Yes abstraction layers make thing slower... in theory! But in practice, on modern hardware, the performance loss is minimal. Instead, you gain stability: the windowing system can ensure that two apps can't write to hardware at the same time, so there won't be graphic corruptions. And they provide portability.
It makes sense to sacrifice 0.00000001 milisecond of processing power for stability to portability.
Writing directly to framebuffer is the old and obsolete way, not the future.
Bah, pressed the wrong button. My reply continues here.
"Ogg Vorbis is pronouncable. Even so, it's mindshare is WAY less than that of MP3s."
*All* other formats have WAY less mindshare than MP3. Windows Media Video? AAC? They're no more popular than Ogg Vorbis dispite their "great marketing names".