Which brings us to the question: why don't all modern routers support IPv6? Every serious OS under the sun supports it nowadays! So why not the routers, even though they have more and more features that only serve to make them less reliable? It almost feels like they are leaving out IPv6 support on purpose.
I don't see why IPv6 would make it more difficult to memorize IP addresses than it is with IPv4.
With IPv4, there is a certain prefix that identifies your subnet, and all your machines have an address within this subnet, which you are free to choose as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
With IPv6, there is a certain prefix that identifies your subnet, and all your machines have an address within this subnet, which you are free to choose as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
The difference? With IPv4, your addresses will look like [prefix].xxx.yyy, whereas with IPv6, they will look like [prefix]:xxyy. Is that really all that much more difficult?
Nautical miles are actually used worldwide at sea and in aviation. They are a convenient unit for navigation, because a nautical mile equals one minute of latitude. As a navigator, I measure distance in nautical miles and speed in knots (nautical miles per hour).
You are correct, however, that miles being used to measure distance on land aren't the same everywhere. And they aren't actually even the same in the same place; various countries have used different definitions of a mile over time.
``I see the EU being first in a lot of consumer areas. Their own version of Windows, devices that are released in Europe before the US and now a standard mobile phone adapter. I'd be curious to know why in the land where consumers are king, products are often bloated, stripped down and late.''
Hmm, I don't think the EU is first for all of those. Standard mobile phone adapter, didn't China have that first? New devices are usually released in Japan, Taiwain, or Hong Kong before they come to the EU.
As for the EU (think "without Microsoft Internet Explorer") version of Windows, I'm still waiting to see how that plays out. But I think you're right that the EU had it first.
``This guy sent a mail, wasn't satisfied - in 13 days, then sued.
By all means nail the GPL violators, but yeesh give them a chance to come clean first.''
I don't disagree, I'm just saying that they've had that chance. It didn't start with that letter. The right of the company to distribute software it does not have the copyright to starts with a license from the copyright holder. So their first chance to do it right would have to either distribute the software under the terms of the GPL, or obtain a different license from the copyright holders.
Secondly, the mail your refer to is not the only warning they have gotten. In my previous post, I've already pointed out that there have been similar cases of GPL violations. They could have known about these. The author of the mail you refer to also says he has been in contact with the violating companies prior to sending his mail. Even if the violators had mistakenly assumed that the GPL allows them to distribute software in the way they were distributing it, they've had opportunities to realize this wasn't the case. Primarily, of course, they should not have made that assumption - they should have actually read the license they got.
Thirdly, 13 days is enough to at least get back to the sender of the mail and convince him that you are looking into the problem and willing to resolve it in a satisfactory manner.
Finally, I do not think that going to court at any point is unreasonable. It is what you do if you feel you cannot come to a satisfactory arrangement with the other party otherwise. Suing the other party does not preclude you from reaching agreement in any way. It simply means that a third party will decide the case if the two parties in conflict fail to reach agreement.
``This is going to be great for the uptake of Linux, and will really encourage people to use open-source tools instead of rolling their own proprietary black box. Keep up the good work!''
Rather than... take the hard work of many hands, without compensating them or abiding by their terms, and using that to make your proprietary black box? Because that's what these companies have done.
The fact that the black box runs open source software means nothing when you don't get your Four Freedoms.
``We want friends and converts, not enemies. Email, call, send certified mail, not lawsuits. Sueing them makes you and us look like fuckwits.''
Yes. On the other hand, how many notices do companies still need to get? They get the license itself (which they should have read - without the license, they would be infringing on your copyright by distributing your software), the short summary of the license (not legally binding, but makes the conditions pretty clear to anyone who bothers to read it), and, by now, plenty of cases have been filed and reported about (often against companies who do similar things, so if you keep up to date with what happens in your field, you probably know about it).
Yet, companies continue to barge ahead and use software without abiding by the license, simply because they can. If we continue to go after companies on a case by case basis, and start by being nice and notifying them before taking legal action, we will be letting many projects off the hook. That's fine as far as being friends with the people in these projects go (unless they are annoyed by the simple fact that they're doing something wrong and need to take corrective action - which is not unlikely), but what about the rest of the world? What about those who contributed to the software? What about the users of the modified software, who aren't given all the rights they ought to be given?
Think about it in terms of value. What's happening is that the contributors to the software are pouring some value into it. The conditions in the license state that the value has to be passed on to those who receive the software. Instead, what's happening is that some company is pocketing it all. Now, do we really want to be nice to them? I think the answer is "yes", but, at the same time, we must not fail to realize exactly how much these companies are ripping us off, whether they do it on purpose or through negligence.
``It was specifically designed to do stuff like this. I'm trying to learn it right now, it's definitely not the easiest, but it's 100x more powerful than Word and it's just PlainText.''
And the best advantage of all: it works. When the choice is between LaTeX and MS Word, people often choose MS Word because it's easier to get started with. This is actually a good idea when you're writing simple documents of a few pages each. But if your document will be more than a few pages, have lots of figures, is intended to be released in book form, contains formulae, or any other sort of more advanced thing, LaTeX starts to actually win out. It pretty much automatically does the right thing, and your investment is just having to learn the handful of features you will be using.
If you want to adapt things to your liking (and it isn't a matter of using a.sty file someone else has already put together), LaTeX can get pretty involved... but, in my experience, it's still nothing compared to MS Word's known issues: references that break all the time, things that have to be updated by clicking a lot each time you change your document, formatting that seems to lead a life of its own, and the major drawback that your document will only work more or less right in the same version of Word that it was written in.
Simple rule of thumb: if your document is large enough to contain a table of contents, LaTeX is going to give you better results for your time than Microsoft Word.
Re:Karma burning for fun and profit
on
KDE 4.3 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've noticed this, too. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 at some point (because the kernel has support for some of the hardware in my PC that kernels in other Ubuntu versions don't support), and about every single KDE app I used was seriously broken. I know KDE is better than that. Now, I know 9.10 is not an actual release yet, so there is time to fix things, but I find it interesting that there is nowhere near as much breakage outside KDE packages. What gives?
Sadly, many websites have displayed a similar level of ineptitude over the years, and many continue to do so. Back when I was a webmaster, I was annoyed by this. I figured they should hire me so I could do a better job. That offer is still open, but, in the meantime, I've stopped caring quite so much - it isn't going to change anytime soon, so there's no point in letting it get at me so much.
I find this story slightly amusing, in a schadenfreude sort of way. I've always hated Skype for being a proprietary solution to things we already had standards-based solutions for, and getting hugely successful at it.
To add insult to injury, getting half of the world locked in to a proprietary solution and killing off interoperability has made the Skype folks very, very rich.
But now one of the entities that contributed towards these assholes getting rich got burnt by them, badly. Hah. I hope they've learned from this and that other people take notice.
No kidding. When I started using Linux, I used emacs because it was the more user-friendly editor that was mentioned in the manual (the other being vi). Then, for years, I used vi because it is ubiquitous and usually fast.
But now I'm back to emacs. What convinced me was M-x tetris. I figured if it could do _that_, it was powerful enough for my current and future editing needs. And it is. The secret is that the people who say that Emacs is more an operating system than a text editor are right. It's a Lisp environment where anything and everything can me modified while the system is running. It has a file manager, a client for your version control system, a web browser, a tetris game, a psychoanalyst, and countless other things.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. There is a text editor, too.
Hear, hear. It's a pity you posted as AC, because your post deserves being modded up.
I may not fully agree with your list, but I agree with the gist of your post. Microsoft is full of really smart people and they do create good and useful products. They got where they are at least in part because their products were better than the competition's, and at least in part because their products were cheaper than the competition's. And, as far as I can see, they're still playing that game. Sure, not everything they make is great. Sure, I may prefer to run different software. But that doesn't mean we should go and deny the benefits that Microsoft's products do offer.
In my opinion, Flash is only marginally better. If yours isn't one of the platforms supported by Macromedia, you're still SOL. It just happens to be that Macromedia supports more platforms than Microsoft.
On the other hand, I have the impression that, if you want to or need to use open source software (e.g. because your platform isn't supported by the closed-source implementation), you're better off with Silverlight. Not to knock the hard work of the folks developing open source Flash players, but I've never been impressed by their quality or compatibility.
``I never understood why Microsoft made a specific server for stock exchanges anyways. It sure does e-mail great though.''
If only. Every organization I've worked at that used it ran into problems with it sooner or later.
My take is that businesses use Exchange not because it is good at email (honestly, it isn't - at least not better than some free alternatives), but because it does calendaring. Exchange + Outlook is the _only_ calendaring solution I've ever seen used in an organization of more than a few people. And if the boss came to me tomorrow and told me he was fed up with Exchange and wanted my suggestion for something to replace it with, I wouldn't know what to recommend.
Exactly. Right tool for the job. Microsoft, to my knowledge, do not make platforms that are rated as real-time or ultra reliable. On the other hand, they make one of the best platforms for games.
The error is not that the platform for games exists, the error is that it was used when a reliable real-time platform was called for.
On the other hand, I don't know what platform _should_ have been used. QNX?
Thanks, whoever you are. I haven't had the time to check out all your references, but this should put to rest a lot of old arguments. Definitely Microsoft software, and definitely a very reliable system. I'm impressed.
``I mean, if a large and well-known consulting firm together with Microsoft themselves can't make a Windows-based framework perform, who can?''
As an interesting side note, Accenture is one of the few companies who have invited me for a job interview but decided I wasn't right for the job. They told me I was not the kind of person they were looking for - too much of a techie whereas they were looking for a more business-type person.
So, a possible answer to your question who could make a Windows-based framework perform... perhaps a firm that goes more for the technically best solution could have. I don't know if Accenture typically does so, but I know it is pretty uncommon in the business world - there are simply too many constraints that have nothing to do with technical excellence. And if they turn down people who focus too much on the technology rather than on the business side of things, that does make me think they lean more towards the other constraints than towards technical excellence. Not my choice of company if I wanted a high-performance, high-availability system.
``HTML 5 with the XML binding has all of the advantages of XHTML; you can mix it with any other XML data in the same file, and have a unified DOM tree.''
Thanks for pointing that out. Suddenly, I don't resent HTML5 anymore.
And yes, I lower my head in shame for not having found that out on my own. I've been too busy with other things to find time to try finding good things about something that has been promoted as everything I never wanted HTML to become.
Strangely, in my experience it is women who don't like condoms. I like the impression of safety they give me and don't mind the slightly different sensation during intercourse. It's a price I gladly pay.
But many women I know much prefer to go without condoms. Some will actually use condoms for safety, but others really insist on not using a condom. I've always found that odd. They have various reasons: prefer the feeling without condom, feel more connected with their partner without a condom, allergic to rubber or the spermicides or the lubricant, religious objection and, a distant last, actually want to get pregnant.
Amazing, isn't it? How stupid do you have to be to provide a platform with many capabilities, and then allow developers to use only a subset of those capabilities, allowing them to write apps that look ugly and sort of work at best.
And then a competitor comes along that tries to make the developing experience and the end result for third party apps as good as possible and takes your cake. Duh!
``An iPhone is guaranteed to have a particular hardware config,''
Not anymore, now that there is more than one model. This "advantage" of iPhone will erode further over time as more models are released.
``and be very capacious in RAM and drive space,''
I'll take your word for it. Of course, one day, iPhones, too will seem bitty. Then again, it baffles the mind why one would not just stick a bit of extra memory in a device, as a manufacturer. It's a cheap and easy way to make it better. You really don't want your devices to be resource-constrained if you can help it.
``and has very teh shiny widgets and will always have the latest APIs;''
``Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.''
Exchange is a shiat-ton of ugly proprietary software. It does not surprise me that any product would have trouble working with it. Especially if the product is from a different vendor.
Whatever else you can fault Blackberries for, subobtimal integration with Exchange is something you can thank Microsoft for. If they wouldn't hold Exchange's protocols under tight wraps, I'm sure RIM and many others would race to provide better integration with it. Of course, that would diminish Microsoft's competitive advantage, so it is unlikely to happen, barring government intervention.
Slashdot Mirror
Which brings us to the question: why don't all modern routers support IPv6? Every serious OS under the sun supports it nowadays! So why not the routers, even though they have more and more features that only serve to make them less reliable? It almost feels like they are leaving out IPv6 support on purpose.
I don't see why IPv6 would make it more difficult to memorize IP addresses than it is with IPv4.
With IPv4, there is a certain prefix that identifies your subnet, and all your machines have an address within this subnet, which you are free to choose as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
With IPv6, there is a certain prefix that identifies your subnet, and all your machines have an address within this subnet, which you are free to choose as far as the rest of the world is concerned.
The difference? With IPv4, your addresses will look like [prefix].xxx.yyy, whereas with IPv6, they will look like [prefix]:xxyy. Is that really all that much more difficult?
Nautical miles are actually used worldwide at sea and in aviation. They are a convenient unit for navigation, because a nautical mile equals one minute of latitude. As a navigator, I measure distance in nautical miles and speed in knots (nautical miles per hour).
You are correct, however, that miles being used to measure distance on land aren't the same everywhere. And they aren't actually even the same in the same place; various countries have used different definitions of a mile over time.
Does this mean we're finally getting proper sockets, instead of having to do everything through HTTP requests? I've been advocating this for years ...
``I see the EU being first in a lot of consumer areas. Their own version of Windows, devices that are released in Europe before the US and now a standard mobile phone adapter. I'd be curious to know why in the land where consumers are king, products are often bloated, stripped down and late.''
Hmm, I don't think the EU is first for all of those. Standard mobile phone adapter, didn't China have that first? New devices are usually released in Japan, Taiwain, or Hong Kong before they come to the EU.
As for the EU (think "without Microsoft Internet Explorer") version of Windows, I'm still waiting to see how that plays out. But I think you're right that the EU had it first.
``This guy sent a mail, wasn't satisfied - in 13 days, then sued.
By all means nail the GPL violators, but yeesh give them a chance to come clean first.''
I don't disagree, I'm just saying that they've had that chance. It didn't start with that letter. The right of the company to distribute software it does not have the copyright to starts with a license from the copyright holder. So their first chance to do it right would have to either distribute the software under the terms of the GPL, or obtain a different license from the copyright holders.
Secondly, the mail your refer to is not the only warning they have gotten. In my previous post, I've already pointed out that there have been similar cases of GPL violations. They could have known about these. The author of the mail you refer to also says he has been in contact with the violating companies prior to sending his mail. Even if the violators had mistakenly assumed that the GPL allows them to distribute software in the way they were distributing it, they've had opportunities to realize this wasn't the case. Primarily, of course, they should not have made that assumption - they should have actually read the license they got.
Thirdly, 13 days is enough to at least get back to the sender of the mail and convince him that you are looking into the problem and willing to resolve it in a satisfactory manner.
Finally, I do not think that going to court at any point is unreasonable. It is what you do if you feel you cannot come to a satisfactory arrangement with the other party otherwise. Suing the other party does not preclude you from reaching agreement in any way. It simply means that a third party will decide the case if the two parties in conflict fail to reach agreement.
``This is going to be great for the uptake of Linux, and will really encourage people to use open-source tools instead of rolling their own proprietary black box. Keep up the good work!''
Rather than ... take the hard work of many hands, without compensating them or abiding by their terms, and using that to make your proprietary black box? Because that's what these companies have done.
The fact that the black box runs open source software means nothing when you don't get your Four Freedoms.
``We want friends and converts, not enemies. Email, call, send certified mail, not lawsuits. Sueing them makes you and us look like fuckwits.''
Yes. On the other hand, how many notices do companies still need to get? They get the license itself (which they should have read - without the license, they would be infringing on your copyright by distributing your software), the short summary of the license (not legally binding, but makes the conditions pretty clear to anyone who bothers to read it), and, by now, plenty of cases have been filed and reported about (often against companies who do similar things, so if you keep up to date with what happens in your field, you probably know about it).
Yet, companies continue to barge ahead and use software without abiding by the license, simply because they can. If we continue to go after companies on a case by case basis, and start by being nice and notifying them before taking legal action, we will be letting many projects off the hook. That's fine as far as being friends with the people in these projects go (unless they are annoyed by the simple fact that they're doing something wrong and need to take corrective action - which is not unlikely), but what about the rest of the world? What about those who contributed to the software? What about the users of the modified software, who aren't given all the rights they ought to be given?
Think about it in terms of value. What's happening is that the contributors to the software are pouring some value into it. The conditions in the license state that the value has to be passed on to those who receive the software. Instead, what's happening is that some company is pocketing it all. Now, do we really want to be nice to them? I think the answer is "yes", but, at the same time, we must not fail to realize exactly how much these companies are ripping us off, whether they do it on purpose or through negligence.
About LaTeX:
``It was specifically designed to do stuff like this. I'm trying to learn it right now, it's definitely not the easiest, but it's 100x more powerful than Word and it's just PlainText.''
And the best advantage of all: it works. When the choice is between LaTeX and MS Word, people often choose MS Word because it's easier to get started with. This is actually a good idea when you're writing simple documents of a few pages each. But if your document will be more than a few pages, have lots of figures, is intended to be released in book form, contains formulae, or any other sort of more advanced thing, LaTeX starts to actually win out. It pretty much automatically does the right thing, and your investment is just having to learn the handful of features you will be using.
If you want to adapt things to your liking (and it isn't a matter of using a .sty file someone else has already put together), LaTeX can get pretty involved ... but, in my experience, it's still nothing compared to MS Word's known issues: references that break all the time, things that have to be updated by clicking a lot each time you change your document, formatting that seems to lead a life of its own, and the major drawback that your document will only work more or less right in the same version of Word that it was written in.
Simple rule of thumb: if your document is large enough to contain a table of contents, LaTeX is going to give you better results for your time than Microsoft Word.
I've noticed this, too. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 at some point (because the kernel has support for some of the hardware in my PC that kernels in other Ubuntu versions don't support), and about every single KDE app I used was seriously broken. I know KDE is better than that. Now, I know 9.10 is not an actual release yet, so there is time to fix things, but I find it interesting that there is nowhere near as much breakage outside KDE packages. What gives?
Sadly, many websites have displayed a similar level of ineptitude over the years, and many continue to do so. Back when I was a webmaster, I was annoyed by this. I figured they should hire me so I could do a better job. That offer is still open, but, in the meantime, I've stopped caring quite so much - it isn't going to change anytime soon, so there's no point in letting it get at me so much.
I find this story slightly amusing, in a schadenfreude sort of way. I've always hated Skype for being a proprietary solution to things we already had standards-based solutions for, and getting hugely successful at it.
To add insult to injury, getting half of the world locked in to a proprietary solution and killing off interoperability has made the Skype folks very, very rich.
But now one of the entities that contributed towards these assholes getting rich got burnt by them, badly. Hah. I hope they've learned from this and that other people take notice.
``Emacs would be the perfect operating system, if only it included a decent text editor.''
It does: M-x viper
No kidding. When I started using Linux, I used emacs because it was the more user-friendly editor that was mentioned in the manual (the other being vi). Then, for years, I used vi because it is ubiquitous and usually fast.
But now I'm back to emacs. What convinced me was M-x tetris. I figured if it could do _that_, it was powerful enough for my current and future editing needs. And it is. The secret is that the people who say that Emacs is more an operating system than a text editor are right. It's a Lisp environment where anything and everything can me modified while the system is running. It has a file manager, a client for your version control system, a web browser, a tetris game, a psychoanalyst, and countless other things.
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. There is a text editor, too.
Hear, hear. It's a pity you posted as AC, because your post deserves being modded up.
I may not fully agree with your list, but I agree with the gist of your post. Microsoft is full of really smart people and they do create good and useful products. They got where they are at least in part because their products were better than the competition's, and at least in part because their products were cheaper than the competition's. And, as far as I can see, they're still playing that game. Sure, not everything they make is great. Sure, I may prefer to run different software. But that doesn't mean we should go and deny the benefits that Microsoft's products do offer.
In my opinion, Flash is only marginally better. If yours isn't one of the platforms supported by Macromedia, you're still SOL. It just happens to be that Macromedia supports more platforms than Microsoft.
On the other hand, I have the impression that, if you want to or need to use open source software (e.g. because your platform isn't supported by the closed-source implementation), you're better off with Silverlight. Not to knock the hard work of the folks developing open source Flash players, but I've never been impressed by their quality or compatibility.
``I never understood why Microsoft made a specific server for stock exchanges anyways. It sure does e-mail great though.''
If only. Every organization I've worked at that used it ran into problems with it sooner or later.
My take is that businesses use Exchange not because it is good at email (honestly, it isn't - at least not better than some free alternatives), but because it does calendaring. Exchange + Outlook is the _only_ calendaring solution I've ever seen used in an organization of more than a few people. And if the boss came to me tomorrow and told me he was fed up with Exchange and wanted my suggestion for something to replace it with, I wouldn't know what to recommend.
Exactly. Right tool for the job. Microsoft, to my knowledge, do not make platforms that are rated as real-time or ultra reliable. On the other hand, they make one of the best platforms for games.
The error is not that the platform for games exists, the error is that it was used when a reliable real-time platform was called for.
On the other hand, I don't know what platform _should_ have been used. QNX?
Thanks, whoever you are. I haven't had the time to check out all your references, but this should put to rest a lot of old arguments. Definitely Microsoft software, and definitely a very reliable system. I'm impressed.
``I mean, if a large and well-known consulting firm together with Microsoft themselves can't make a Windows-based framework perform, who can?''
As an interesting side note, Accenture is one of the few companies who have invited me for a job interview but decided I wasn't right for the job. They told me I was not the kind of person they were looking for - too much of a techie whereas they were looking for a more business-type person.
So, a possible answer to your question who could make a Windows-based framework perform ... perhaps a firm that goes more for the technically best solution could have. I don't know if Accenture typically does so, but I know it is pretty uncommon in the business world - there are simply too many constraints that have nothing to do with technical excellence. And if they turn down people who focus too much on the technology rather than on the business side of things, that does make me think they lean more towards the other constraints than towards technical excellence. Not my choice of company if I wanted a high-performance, high-availability system.
``HTML 5 with the XML binding has all of the advantages of XHTML; you can mix it with any other XML data in the same file, and have a unified DOM tree.''
Thanks for pointing that out. Suddenly, I don't resent HTML5 anymore.
And yes, I lower my head in shame for not having found that out on my own. I've been too busy with other things to find time to try finding good things about something that has been promoted as everything I never wanted HTML to become.
Strangely, in my experience it is women who don't like condoms. I like the impression of safety they give me and don't mind the slightly different sensation during intercourse. It's a price I gladly pay.
But many women I know much prefer to go without condoms. Some will actually use condoms for safety, but others really insist on not using a condom. I've always found that odd. They have various reasons: prefer the feeling without condom, feel more connected with their partner without a condom, allergic to rubber or the spermicides or the lubricant, religious objection and, a distant last, actually want to get pregnant.
Amazing, isn't it? How stupid do you have to be to provide a platform with many capabilities, and then allow developers to use only a subset of those capabilities, allowing them to write apps that look ugly and sort of work at best.
And then a competitor comes along that tries to make the developing experience and the end result for third party apps as good as possible and takes your cake. Duh!
``An iPhone is guaranteed to have a particular hardware config,''
Not anymore, now that there is more than one model. This "advantage" of iPhone will erode further over time as more models are released.
``and be very capacious in RAM and drive space,''
I'll take your word for it. Of course, one day, iPhones, too will seem bitty. Then again, it baffles the mind why one would not just stick a bit of extra memory in a device, as a manufacturer. It's a cheap and easy way to make it better. You really don't want your devices to be resource-constrained if you can help it.
``and has very teh shiny widgets and will always have the latest APIs;''
Nope. That's not going to last.
Otherwise, I agree with your post.
``Making them work as a mobile email device tied to Exchange requires a shiat-ton of ugly third party software.''
Exchange is a shiat-ton of ugly proprietary software. It does not surprise me that any product would have trouble working with it. Especially if the product is from a different vendor.
Whatever else you can fault Blackberries for, subobtimal integration with Exchange is something you can thank Microsoft for. If they wouldn't hold Exchange's protocols under tight wraps, I'm sure RIM and many others would race to provide better integration with it. Of course, that would diminish Microsoft's competitive advantage, so it is unlikely to happen, barring government intervention.