You could probably do that, but Chrome is not open source.
Can you legally do all the things that open source allows you to do _and_ support H.264? And before anyone says "yes, by using the H.264 support from some other component", I'm asking about whichever component contains the support for H.264, not the browser per se.
``What happens when it shows some product as containing OSS, but it doesn't?''
That's a good question, and that's why we have things like "innocent until proven guilty" and rights for criminal suspects and people who have been put under arrest.
In other words, as long as we all stay civilized, false positives needn't be a big problem. You inform the company that you believe their product may contain software whose license puts certain requirements on the company that it doesn't seem to be fulfilling, and then they get a chance to convince you that everything is in order and it's just a false positive.
If you are not convinced, I suppose you can always bring the case to court and force disclosure and investigation. But experience up to now seems to indicate that companies who are violating the terms of the GPL usually change their ways before things get that far.
``Open source has some advantages, but if it's technically lesser and doesn't work with companies, it's not going to win.''
I've emphasized the part that I think is the main point here. It's not about quality. It's not about cost. It's about how businesses work.
I don't know this for sure, but I would be surprised if H.264 weren't pushed through the normal corporate channels. If you run a company that makes H.264 decoders, you are going to have some of your people meet with people from other companies to try and sell them your decoder. Your salespeople have lunch with representatives from other companies, they play golf with them, and they show them some shiny demos. This is how the game is played: the same way as it is played for many other products.
Conversely, I would be highly surprised if there was nearly as much time, effort, and money being spent on selling Theora. It doesn't even matter very much how good Theora is relative to H.264, or which will be cheaper to run your website on. It's simply not being sold like H.264 is. Theora is this scary thing: made by a bunch of idealists who believe in freedom and openness.
Now picture yourself in the position of any of the large stakeholders in this game. Could be one of the desktop OS giants: Microsoft and Apple. Or one of the entities that are in the multimedia business, say Macromedia, MPEG-LA, Sony, or Universal. Or perhaps you are one of the players in the very important field of mobile devices; say, HTC, RIM, or AT&T. Would you rather go with the technology pushed by the nice salesman who treated you to dinner and made you a nice, business to business, the way things have always been done offer? Or would you go with the rebels, who are screaming that you should implement their technology so that they will be in control instead of you?
I agree with your post, and thank you for pointing out what statistical significance is.
Still, there is another interesting point to make.
``I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams children.''
Exactly, but neither can we conclude that the true mean does _not_ differ from 50% in Williams children.
In other words, if this is all there is to the study, we can conclude that non-Williams subjects are biased (at the probability level used to determine statistical significance), whereas Williams subjects may or may not be biased. That's a far cry from the absence of racial bias that the summary claims.
``i wonder if the additional reliance on your neighbor would create a tighter knit, more ready to challenge the government community.''
I think this is the case, and it makes you wonder why governments engage in censorship. On the other hand, I don't think the Chinese government has a lot to fear at this point - there are lots and lots of chinese people who agree with any given policy of the government, and as long as economic growth stays high, I don't think the populace will massively decide to go slaughter the hen who lays the golden eggs.
``This is a government that is unable or in some cases unwilling to crack down on many illegal and harmful practices.''
That sounds a lot like a typical corrupt government, to me. I seem to recall corruption has been receiving quite some attention in official political statements in recent years. Any insights on how things are progressing there?
I find it depends a lot on how motivated you are. There are weeks in which I have spent more than 60 hours just coding. That's with practically all the design work done up front and an attitude of "let's sit down and get the code written". At other times, I have a hard time even being at work for 30 hours a week, let alone focusing on coding. On the other hand, some very useful things have sprung from those weeks, too. Turns out coding isn't all there is to life, and there are a lot of things I can do besides coding that people end up appreciating a lot.
As for how much pure coding I can do in a week without getting worn out, I think that works out to about 30 to 40 hours, but obviously that, too, depends on several factors - e.g. if things outside work are draining your energy, you'll have less energy left to write good code.
``I can't speak for Canada, but "Voting for the lesser evil so that 'The Other Guy(tm)' doesn't get elected" is half the reason the US political system is the shithole it is right now.''
Yes, and this is a direct consequence of first past the post. That system is broken, and suffering is the result. Not only does it lead to situations where voting against the other guy is your best option, it also polarizes the population into those who are with you and those who are against you. I don't wish that on any country.
``Nothing saddens me quite like people dredging up this tired old line to oppose the formation of new political parties, and getting modded up for their trouble.''
I hear you. Unfortunately, the tired old line will be with us as long as the system remains broken. Much as I am in favor of each person voting for the party they like most, the threat of that leading to your _least_ liked party getting elected has to be considered. So I'm afraid that people will keep dredging up that line, because they have a point. A point which I don't think is against new political parties at all, but rather against broken political systems.
Great news that Google is releasing VP8! Perhaps we can finally have a video codec that is both free of patent gotchas and competitive with H.264 quality-wise.
The real question, of course, is if it will take off. I can imagine a couple of H.264 stakeholders not being happy about having a rival codec challenge their reign, and trying to block any open codec's adoption if they can manage it.
``This is simply an exercise in massively parallel CPU design, not an effort to make a faster CPU. That's why they are shipping them to researchers, so they can study and learn how to develop uses for such massively parallel systems.''
Perhaps it would be interesting to mention Azul Systems at this point. They sell systems with 108 to 864 cores, so they may know a thing or two about "massively parallel".
``Theora lost because it wasn't as good as H.264 and it's still not as good as H.264 bit for bit. The only reason why the opensource world support it isn't because it's better, but because it's the only "open source friendly" option. Sorry, but that just because it fits an idelogoy doesn't mean much to the part of the world that uses the product. It's like suggesting that a professional 3D/video shop use Blender instead of Maya or Cinelerra instead of Final Cut Pro or Avid. The professionals are going to take a look at it for a while and go, "Nice toy, now I've got to get back to work."
If the opensource world wants Theroa to succeed, you're going to have to produce something that's better than H.264 end of story.''
Perhaps, but I think the story is actually more complicated than that.
First of all, I am part of the "opensource world", and you are right that my reason for wanting Theora to get adopted is not that it's better than H.264. But it's not about open-source, either. It's about restrictions on use. H.264 is covered by software patents, and MPEG LA charges fees for its use. Long story short, this means that you can't just write an implementation of H.264 and distribute it. That's a practical issue that has little to do with ideology.
Secondly, the comparison between video codecs and 3D video software isn't really relevant. What you use internally doesn't really matter, what matters is what you distribute. If you want to use proprietary software to produce your video, that's your choice. But if you are requiring proprietary software to view the video, you are forcing your choice on others. That's a different story.
Thirdly, looking at history, it's clear that it's not always the best technology that succeeds. One example is Vorbis vs. MP3, where MP3 has stayed the most popular format, even though Vorbis has been both freely available and better.
All in all, I am not against H.264, nor am I claiming anything about Theora's quality relative to H.264. However, I am saying that if you want to standardize on something, it had better be something that can be used by all interested parties. Unfortunately, H.264 does not seem to meet that requirement.
If you want to support H.264, but not a truly free format, so be it. I can imagine many reasons why you would want to do that, and you have pointed out some in your post. But it is important to recognize that H.264 is not free, and that there is a barrier for would-be viewers of H.264-encoded video. This is the real reason why people like me support Theora. It's not about quality and it's not about open-source.
``Does anyone have a torrent with the current source?''
I would be surprised if there wasn't someone with a complete copy of the latest released source, but what would you do with it? As far as I know, only limited parts of the system are under actual open source licenses. For the rest, you may get the source, but it is essentially non-free. I very much doubt that you could build a working operating system that you would be allowed to modify and distribute from the sources provided by QNX Software Systems.
You are right, of course. Indeed, OOXML has been approved by ISO as a standard. So by my own criterion of "I care about support for standards", Microsoft not supporting it is a big deal.
On the other hand, I have a hard time taking OOXML seriously as a standard. Microsoft have never, as far as I know, released software that actually implemented the specification they pushed, and I am not aware of any plans by anyone else to do so. Knowing what an incredible abomination it is, I am not convinced that there will ever be even a single correct implementation, let alone more than one. In other words, ISO may have approved OOXML as a standard, but they may as well not have, as far as interoperability is concerned.
So I say, OOXML is basically dead in the water as a standard. Which is ok, since we have others that are doing better. Let's put our energy in those. What Microsoft does or doesn't do with OOXML does not really concern me.
Hopefully, that clarifies thinks. Thanks for the correction.
``If by UNIX-like, you mean a microkernel OS designed for scalability using message passing at a low level and delivering realtime performance and strong isolation of kernel components, then, yes, it's UNIX-like.''
Correct, QNX is much more impressive than "UNIX-like" gives it credit for.
``QNX has a POSIX compatibility layer, but so do Symbian, OpenVMS, and Windows NT and I wouldn't describe any of them as UNIX-like.''
Agreed, too.
On the other hand, QNX's POSIX compatibility layer goes very far. Years ago, I used it to experiment with some POSIX features that, at the time, none of the Free *nixen supported, yet. If your software is written to work on POSIX systems, I'd wager the chances of it running on QNX are at least as high as the chances of it running on a real UNIX system or derivate (e.g. Solaris).
By contrast, Symbian's and NT's POSIX compatibility layers provide subsets of POSIX with some features people expect from POSIX systems missing or emulated. For example, Symbian's P.I.P.S. does not provide fork and exec. The chances of software written for POSIX systems working on Symbian or NT out of the box are not nearly as good as for QNX.
As for OpenVMS, I know very little about its POSIX compliance. I do know it runs vi and sh and a couple of C programs that I wrote for it. I also know that the POSIX API doesn't give access to all the system's features - in particular, the different kinds of file supported by VMS don't always work nicely with POSIX programs. As far as I can tell from my limited experience, a POSIX program feels much more at home on QNX than it does on OpenVMS.
I second the sentiment that QNX is a great operating system. My first contact with it was through the incredible 1.44 MB QNX Demo Disk, which was a bootable 1.44 MB diskette image containing QNX (4.something, I think), with GUI and graphical web browser. Did I mention that the OS was POSIX-compliant and real-time? At the time, Linux and XFree86 absolutely paled in comparison.
While on the topic, I would like to say that I would like to have a desktop OS that provided real-time guarantees (or at least "most of the time"). On my shiny multi-GHz, multi-core, multi-GB-of-RAM machine, Firefox still manages to hang the user interface for multiple seconds when it first starts up and I type something it the Awesome bar. I'd like to at least be able to switch windows and start sending input to another application in = 0.1 seconds! If we could extend the real-time guarantees to a GUI library so that we could have, say, button click animations and other "I got your message and I'm working on it" feedback to respond within certain time frames, that would be great.
``Good organization is hard to put in place and even harder to keep in place over the long term unless you exclusively employ anal-retentive OCD types.''
I don't know about that. To me, good organization is just common sense. It's all fun and games, until you need that one document from long ago and have to navigate the twisting maze of documents, all alike, to find it. At that point, you realize the value of the document organization procedures that your company has been telling you about.
At least, that's how it works where I work. But perhaps you're right and we're all anal-retentive OCD types. If so, that's apparently a requirement for working there. A requirement I would like to keep. Because if you can't or won't follow the procedures that are in place so that you and your present and future colleagues can find the documents that you make, you may as well not make the documents and we might as well not pay you for it.
All observations made by the submitter notwithstanding, I really think there is no reason to drag concepts like "survival mode" in here. What Mozilla needs to do for Firefox to survive is to make it compelling. Compelling enough that people will want to use it in preference to other browsers. I don't think there is much more to it than that.
I don't care if Microsoft supports their own format or not. Same goes for every other entity. What I care about is if they will support standards. IIRC, Office 2007 has support for ODF, so that's definitely a step in the right direction. What other formats decides to support beyond the ones that enable interoperability is their own choice.
I'm watching this discussion with interest, because it's about something I have been wondering about, myself.
The two questions I've come up against are, broadly:
1. Are there tools that make Microsoft Office files play nice with standard version control systems? I like to use Git or Subversion, and have all their standard features available. Particularly diff. Can I put MS Office files in a Git repository and get version control and human-readable diffs?
2. If I were setting things up for a new organization where we weren't bound to Microsoft Office yet, what should we use? I like to use Latex, myself: it's powerful, can produce professional quality output, plays well with version control, and has various front-ends available from text editor to point-and-click. What are other people's experiences and recommendations?
As for ISO 9001 compliance, I have been to a few organizations that are certified, and none of them actually had any software in place for document control. They did have procedures that people were expected to follow, including requirements such as putting documents on a network share, putting version numbers on documents, and leaving old versions of documents around.
``Can't wait to see how people blame the victim on this one.''
The victims... are all of us. The fallout of identity fraud is costly, and, eventually, all of society bears that cost. Higher rates for borrowing money, insurance against identity fraud, the enormous cost of cleaning up after your name has been misused, and society missing out on people who would otherwise have been productive members.
It seems to me that the choices we have are trading the inefficiency of a better identification system against the inefficiency of having more failures, and sharing the burden vs. letting a few shoulders carry it all so the rest of us goes unencumbered.
Personally, I think that there should, first of all, be fewer occasions where you need to authenticate. Usually, it doesn't matter who you are, so why require authentication? Secondly, authentication should not always disclose everything. If the same data that I need to hand over to buy a $50 mobile phone can be used to get a $20000 loan, that's a security hole.
Thirdly, when you're lending money, that's your choice. You can charge interest and/or fees to make it worth your while. What you can't do is get someone who wasn't a party to the agreement to be responsible for getting the money back to you. If you lent it to the wrong person based on false credentials, that's your mistake, not that of the person whose credentials were misused. Somehow, institutions seem to be able to strong-arm that person into paying up anyway. I'd like to see the end of that, too.
Thanks for speaking up. Your viewpoint has been lacking in this discussion, and in many others like it.
Sometimes, it feels like it's christians vs. the rest of the world, just like we've seen muslims vs. the rest of the world, jews vs. the rest of the world, and pretty much every other group you can stick a label on (religious or otherwise). All too often, people attach the wrong labels and end up having a discussion that angers people more than it solves problems.
We're talking about censorship here. It doesn't matter if you're a christian or not. I am sure there are christians who support the filter and christians who oppose it, just as there are non-christians who support it and who oppose it. What I care about are the arguments in favor or against the filter. I hope your post gets that discussion back on track.
``I understand the motivation for blocking interactive sites for paedophiles to exchange their revolting material, but a static public information service?''
This is a very good example of a slippery slope. Censorship will always be pushed as a measure against something that most people oppose... but once in place, the same tools can be used to suppress anything, including things that are controversial and even things you support.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, thanks for mentioning Xconq! I didn't know about that yet. It looks really interesting!
``Drop Firefox and switch to Chrome''
You could probably do that, but Chrome is not open source.
Can you legally do all the things that open source allows you to do _and_ support H.264? And before anyone says "yes, by using the H.264 support from some other component", I'm asking about whichever component contains the support for H.264, not the browser per se.
``What happens when it shows some product as containing OSS, but it doesn't?''
That's a good question, and that's why we have things like "innocent until proven guilty" and rights for criminal suspects and people who have been put under arrest.
In other words, as long as we all stay civilized, false positives needn't be a big problem. You inform the company that you believe their product may contain software whose license puts certain requirements on the company that it doesn't seem to be fulfilling, and then they get a chance to convince you that everything is in order and it's just a false positive.
If you are not convinced, I suppose you can always bring the case to court and force disclosure and investigation. But experience up to now seems to indicate that companies who are violating the terms of the GPL usually change their ways before things get that far.
``Open source has some advantages, but if it's technically lesser and doesn't work with companies, it's not going to win.''
I've emphasized the part that I think is the main point here. It's not about quality. It's not about cost. It's about how businesses work.
I don't know this for sure, but I would be surprised if H.264 weren't pushed through the normal corporate channels. If you run a company that makes H.264 decoders, you are going to have some of your people meet with people from other companies to try and sell them your decoder. Your salespeople have lunch with representatives from other companies, they play golf with them, and they show them some shiny demos. This is how the game is played: the same way as it is played for many other products.
Conversely, I would be highly surprised if there was nearly as much time, effort, and money being spent on selling Theora. It doesn't even matter very much how good Theora is relative to H.264, or which will be cheaper to run your website on. It's simply not being sold like H.264 is. Theora is this scary thing: made by a bunch of idealists who believe in freedom and openness.
Now picture yourself in the position of any of the large stakeholders in this game. Could be one of the desktop OS giants: Microsoft and Apple. Or one of the entities that are in the multimedia business, say Macromedia, MPEG-LA, Sony, or Universal. Or perhaps you are one of the players in the very important field of mobile devices; say, HTC, RIM, or AT&T. Would you rather go with the technology pushed by the nice salesman who treated you to dinner and made you a nice, business to business, the way things have always been done offer? Or would you go with the rebels, who are screaming that you should implement their technology so that they will be in control instead of you?
I agree with your post, and thank you for pointing out what statistical significance is.
Still, there is another interesting point to make.
``I'm probably oversimplifying a bit, but the error bars on the Williams bar in the figure is sufficiently large to include 50% ('pure chance'). This means that based on the number of children tested, the standard deviation around the estimated mean includes the chance value--therefore, we cannot say with any confidence that the 'true' mean differs from 50% in Williams children.''
Exactly, but neither can we conclude that the true mean does _not_ differ from 50% in Williams children.
In other words, if this is all there is to the study, we can conclude that non-Williams subjects are biased (at the probability level used to determine statistical significance), whereas Williams subjects may or may not be biased. That's a far cry from the absence of racial bias that the summary claims.
``i wonder if the additional reliance on your neighbor would create a tighter knit, more ready to challenge the government community.''
I think this is the case, and it makes you wonder why governments engage in censorship. On the other hand, I don't think the Chinese government has a lot to fear at this point - there are lots and lots of chinese people who agree with any given policy of the government, and as long as economic growth stays high, I don't think the populace will massively decide to go slaughter the hen who lays the golden eggs.
``This is a government that is unable or in some cases unwilling to crack down on many illegal and harmful practices.''
That sounds a lot like a typical corrupt government, to me. I seem to recall corruption has been receiving quite some attention in official political statements in recent years. Any insights on how things are progressing there?
I find it depends a lot on how motivated you are. There are weeks in which I have spent more than 60 hours just coding. That's with practically all the design work done up front and an attitude of "let's sit down and get the code written". At other times, I have a hard time even being at work for 30 hours a week, let alone focusing on coding. On the other hand, some very useful things have sprung from those weeks, too. Turns out coding isn't all there is to life, and there are a lot of things I can do besides coding that people end up appreciating a lot.
As for how much pure coding I can do in a week without getting worn out, I think that works out to about 30 to 40 hours, but obviously that, too, depends on several factors - e.g. if things outside work are draining your energy, you'll have less energy left to write good code.
``I can't speak for Canada, but "Voting for the lesser evil so that 'The Other Guy(tm)' doesn't get elected" is half the reason the US political system is the shithole it is right now.''
Yes, and this is a direct consequence of first past the post. That system is broken, and suffering is the result. Not only does it lead to situations where voting against the other guy is your best option, it also polarizes the population into those who are with you and those who are against you. I don't wish that on any country.
``Nothing saddens me quite like people dredging up this tired old line to oppose the formation of new political parties, and getting modded up for their trouble.''
I hear you. Unfortunately, the tired old line will be with us as long as the system remains broken. Much as I am in favor of each person voting for the party they like most, the threat of that leading to your _least_ liked party getting elected has to be considered. So I'm afraid that people will keep dredging up that line, because they have a point. A point which I don't think is against new political parties at all, but rather against broken political systems.
Great news that Google is releasing VP8! Perhaps we can finally have a video codec that is both free of patent gotchas and competitive with H.264 quality-wise.
The real question, of course, is if it will take off. I can imagine a couple of H.264 stakeholders not being happy about having a rival codec challenge their reign, and trying to block any open codec's adoption if they can manage it.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
At any rate, kudos to Google for this move!
``This is simply an exercise in massively parallel CPU design, not an effort to make a faster CPU. That's why they are shipping them to researchers, so they can study and learn how to develop uses for such massively parallel systems.''
Perhaps it would be interesting to mention Azul Systems at this point. They sell systems with 108 to 864 cores, so they may know a thing or two about "massively parallel".
``Theora lost because it wasn't as good as H.264 and it's still not as good as H.264 bit for bit. The only reason why the opensource world support it isn't because it's better, but because it's the only "open source friendly" option. Sorry, but that just because it fits an idelogoy doesn't mean much to the part of the world that uses the product. It's like suggesting that a professional 3D/video shop use Blender instead of Maya or Cinelerra instead of Final Cut Pro or Avid. The professionals are going to take a look at it for a while and go, "Nice toy, now I've got to get back to work."
If the opensource world wants Theroa to succeed, you're going to have to produce something that's better than H.264 end of story.''
Perhaps, but I think the story is actually more complicated than that.
First of all, I am part of the "opensource world", and you are right that my reason for wanting Theora to get adopted is not that it's better than H.264. But it's not about open-source, either. It's about restrictions on use. H.264 is covered by software patents, and MPEG LA charges fees for its use. Long story short, this means that you can't just write an implementation of H.264 and distribute it. That's a practical issue that has little to do with ideology.
Secondly, the comparison between video codecs and 3D video software isn't really relevant. What you use internally doesn't really matter, what matters is what you distribute. If you want to use proprietary software to produce your video, that's your choice. But if you are requiring proprietary software to view the video, you are forcing your choice on others. That's a different story.
Thirdly, looking at history, it's clear that it's not always the best technology that succeeds. One example is Vorbis vs. MP3, where MP3 has stayed the most popular format, even though Vorbis has been both freely available and better.
All in all, I am not against H.264, nor am I claiming anything about Theora's quality relative to H.264. However, I am saying that if you want to standardize on something, it had better be something that can be used by all interested parties. Unfortunately, H.264 does not seem to meet that requirement.
If you want to support H.264, but not a truly free format, so be it. I can imagine many reasons why you would want to do that, and you have pointed out some in your post. But it is important to recognize that H.264 is not free, and that there is a barrier for would-be viewers of H.264-encoded video. This is the real reason why people like me support Theora. It's not about quality and it's not about open-source.
``Does anyone have a torrent with the current source?''
I would be surprised if there wasn't someone with a complete copy of the latest released source, but what would you do with it? As far as I know, only limited parts of the system are under actual open source licenses. For the rest, you may get the source, but it is essentially non-free. I very much doubt that you could build a working operating system that you would be allowed to modify and distribute from the sources provided by QNX Software Systems.
You are right, of course. Indeed, OOXML has been approved by ISO as a standard. So by my own criterion of "I care about support for standards", Microsoft not supporting it is a big deal.
On the other hand, I have a hard time taking OOXML seriously as a standard. Microsoft have never, as far as I know, released software that actually implemented the specification they pushed, and I am not aware of any plans by anyone else to do so. Knowing what an incredible abomination it is, I am not convinced that there will ever be even a single correct implementation, let alone more than one. In other words, ISO may have approved OOXML as a standard, but they may as well not have, as far as interoperability is concerned.
So I say, OOXML is basically dead in the water as a standard. Which is ok, since we have others that are doing better. Let's put our energy in those. What Microsoft does or doesn't do with OOXML does not really concern me.
Hopefully, that clarifies thinks. Thanks for the correction.
``If by UNIX-like, you mean a microkernel OS designed for scalability using message passing at a low level and delivering realtime performance and strong isolation of kernel components, then, yes, it's UNIX-like.''
Correct, QNX is much more impressive than "UNIX-like" gives it credit for.
``QNX has a POSIX compatibility layer, but so do Symbian, OpenVMS, and Windows NT and I wouldn't describe any of them as UNIX-like.''
Agreed, too.
On the other hand, QNX's POSIX compatibility layer goes very far. Years ago, I used it to experiment with some POSIX features that, at the time, none of the Free *nixen supported, yet. If your software is written to work on POSIX systems, I'd wager the chances of it running on QNX are at least as high as the chances of it running on a real UNIX system or derivate (e.g. Solaris).
By contrast, Symbian's and NT's POSIX compatibility layers provide subsets of POSIX with some features people expect from POSIX systems missing or emulated. For example, Symbian's P.I.P.S. does not provide fork and exec. The chances of software written for POSIX systems working on Symbian or NT out of the box are not nearly as good as for QNX.
As for OpenVMS, I know very little about its POSIX compliance. I do know it runs vi and sh and a couple of C programs that I wrote for it. I also know that the POSIX API doesn't give access to all the system's features - in particular, the different kinds of file supported by VMS don't always work nicely with POSIX programs. As far as I can tell from my limited experience, a POSIX program feels much more at home on QNX than it does on OpenVMS.
I second the sentiment that QNX is a great operating system. My first contact with it was through the incredible 1.44 MB QNX Demo Disk, which was a bootable 1.44 MB diskette image containing QNX (4.something, I think), with GUI and graphical web browser. Did I mention that the OS was POSIX-compliant and real-time? At the time, Linux and XFree86 absolutely paled in comparison.
While on the topic, I would like to say that I would like to have a desktop OS that provided real-time guarantees (or at least "most of the time"). On my shiny multi-GHz, multi-core, multi-GB-of-RAM machine, Firefox still manages to hang the user interface for multiple seconds when it first starts up and I type something it the Awesome bar. I'd like to at least be able to switch windows and start sending input to another application in = 0.1 seconds! If we could extend the real-time guarantees to a GUI library so that we could have, say, button click animations and other "I got your message and I'm working on it" feedback to respond within certain time frames, that would be great.
``Good organization is hard to put in place and even harder to keep in place over the long term unless you exclusively employ anal-retentive OCD types.''
I don't know about that. To me, good organization is just common sense. It's all fun and games, until you need that one document from long ago and have to navigate the twisting maze of documents, all alike, to find it. At that point, you realize the value of the document organization procedures that your company has been telling you about.
At least, that's how it works where I work. But perhaps you're right and we're all anal-retentive OCD types. If so, that's apparently a requirement for working there. A requirement I would like to keep. Because if you can't or won't follow the procedures that are in place so that you and your present and future colleagues can find the documents that you make, you may as well not make the documents and we might as well not pay you for it.
All observations made by the submitter notwithstanding, I really think there is no reason to drag concepts like "survival mode" in here. What Mozilla needs to do for Firefox to survive is to make it compelling. Compelling enough that people will want to use it in preference to other browsers. I don't think there is much more to it than that.
I don't care if Microsoft supports their own format or not. Same goes for every other entity. What I care about is if they will support standards. IIRC, Office 2007 has support for ODF, so that's definitely a step in the right direction. What other formats decides to support beyond the ones that enable interoperability is their own choice.
I'm watching this discussion with interest, because it's about something I have been wondering about, myself.
The two questions I've come up against are, broadly:
1. Are there tools that make Microsoft Office files play nice with standard version control systems? I like to use Git or Subversion, and have all their standard features available. Particularly diff. Can I put MS Office files in a Git repository and get version control and human-readable diffs?
2. If I were setting things up for a new organization where we weren't bound to Microsoft Office yet, what should we use? I like to use Latex, myself: it's powerful, can produce professional quality output, plays well with version control, and has various front-ends available from text editor to point-and-click. What are other people's experiences and recommendations?
As for ISO 9001 compliance, I have been to a few organizations that are certified, and none of them actually had any software in place for document control. They did have procedures that people were expected to follow, including requirements such as putting documents on a network share, putting version numbers on documents, and leaving old versions of documents around.
``(As an aside where are all the people who say that stealing Intellectual Property isn't theft on this--if you steal my identity, I still have it)''
I happen to be one of those people, which is why I prefer speaking of "identity fraud" rather than "identity theft".
``Can't wait to see how people blame the victim on this one.''
The victims ... are all of us. The fallout of identity fraud is costly, and, eventually, all of society bears that cost. Higher rates for borrowing money, insurance against identity fraud, the enormous cost of cleaning up after your name has been misused, and society missing out on people who would otherwise have been productive members.
It seems to me that the choices we have are trading the inefficiency of a better identification system against the inefficiency of having more failures, and sharing the burden vs. letting a few shoulders carry it all so the rest of us goes unencumbered.
Personally, I think that there should, first of all, be fewer occasions where you need to authenticate. Usually, it doesn't matter who you are, so why require authentication? Secondly, authentication should not always disclose everything. If the same data that I need to hand over to buy a $50 mobile phone can be used to get a $20000 loan, that's a security hole.
Thirdly, when you're lending money, that's your choice. You can charge interest and/or fees to make it worth your while. What you can't do is get someone who wasn't a party to the agreement to be responsible for getting the money back to you. If you lent it to the wrong person based on false credentials, that's your mistake, not that of the person whose credentials were misused. Somehow, institutions seem to be able to strong-arm that person into paying up anyway. I'd like to see the end of that, too.
Thanks!
Unfortunately, it looks like the DVDs are DRMed, which would make it illegal for me to play them.
Thanks for speaking up. Your viewpoint has been lacking in this discussion, and in many others like it.
Sometimes, it feels like it's christians vs. the rest of the world, just like we've seen muslims vs. the rest of the world, jews vs. the rest of the world, and pretty much every other group you can stick a label on (religious or otherwise). All too often, people attach the wrong labels and end up having a discussion that angers people more than it solves problems.
We're talking about censorship here. It doesn't matter if you're a christian or not. I am sure there are christians who support the filter and christians who oppose it, just as there are non-christians who support it and who oppose it. What I care about are the arguments in favor or against the filter. I hope your post gets that discussion back on track.
``I understand the motivation for blocking interactive sites for paedophiles to exchange their revolting material, but a static public information service?''
This is a very good example of a slippery slope. Censorship will always be pushed as a measure against something that most people oppose ... but once in place, the same tools can be used to suppress anything, including things that are controversial and even things you support.