Re:A Gnome user that wants to give this a try...
on
KDE 4.5 Released
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· Score: 1
``Er... You're going to get about the same experience no matter what distro you use. About the only thing that'll change is the package management system.''
I respectfully disagree.
First of all, I think the package management system is a big deal. No other package management system has been as painless for me as Aptitude. Yum is close. If you are stuck with a system that doesn't do dependency management, or if the package manager, the packages, or the dependencies break often (I have this problem with RHEL), things can quickly get painful. I've even used upstream source code in preferences to the package manager on some distros. The number one reason why I've settled on Debian after years of using different operating systems as that the quality of the packages, the package manager, and the upgrade process make it so low maintenance.
As for KDE, your distro also has a huge influence here. Obviously, package management is also an important issue here, because there are many packages that make up a full KDE system. But even aside from that, distros can make or break the experience. They often make various changes to the upstream sources, and this can improve or degrade the quality. I have had horrible experiences with KDE on Ubuntu, where the software as shipped by the KDE project was actually really good. IIRC, Red Hat used to pretty extensively modify KDE and make it look like GNOME.
I would say that if you want to get the real KDE experience, go to the KDE project. Either ask some developers what they use, and do the same, or use packages provided by the KDE project, or, if you can't use those, compile KDE from the official KDE sources. If you want a good distribution with KDE, I can recommend OpenSUSE. It's not pure KDE, but it has KDE and it's good. I also have good experience with KDE on FreeBSD: less of a hassle than going through the compile process yourself, but still pretty pure. I reckon the same goes for Arch LInux, Gentoo Linux, and Slackware.
Re:Does it still require you to install a RDBMS?
on
KDE 4.5 Released
·
· Score: 1
``Why do I need a RDBMS to run a desktop?''
I don't know what you felt when you found out that you now need a RDBMS, but I can tell you that I felt disbelief and outrage. Especially because earlier versions of Kontact had been working really nicely for me, but the new version just didn't work at all. So not only are they giving us more bloatware, it is also completely unusable!
On the other hand, I think a RDBMS makes a whole lot of sense for a lot more applications than we're currently using them for. I've done my fair share of application development, design, and use by now, as well as system and application administration and maintenance, and I can't tell you how many times I wished people (including myself!) had just used an RDBMS instead of inventing their own wheel without proper ACID properties. It's hard to realize the importance of having your data be consistent, stay consistent, efficiently accessible and searchable, and easy to back up and restore while maintaining consistency. An RDBMS can give you all that, and more.
If you consider how many things on your computer are really databases which need to stay consistent, with references intact and all that, RDBMSes start to make sense. All these XML files that GNOME and KDE apps use for configuration? There are plenty of things that can get messed up there./etc/passwd? The group ids there had better refer to groups that actually exist. My mailbox? It would be much quicker to open if doing so would just require a query over 10000 records instead of looking at 10000 files. Backing up your files? I sure hope that your backup won't contain any inconsistencies, but I'm afraid there's no guarantee.
After having thought about the issue, I'm all for using RDBMSes in more places. And it would be nice to have transactional semantics with ACID compliance in our programming languages, too. The same issues with atomicity and integrity that exist for data on disk exist for data in memory, too.
On the other hand, I am pleasantly surprised about how much vocal criticism there is in the USA. Living in the Netherlands, I hear and see more criticism and discussion of American policy than of Dutch policy. You're doing something right over there that we're doing wrong over here. Criticism and discussion are good, because only through them can you arrive at better decisions.
Personally, I haven't really believed there is freedom of speech in the United States ever since I heard about free speech zones.
I first heard about free speech zones in an article about how protesters against G.W. Bush were directed to free speech zones that were far enough away from where Bush would be passing that he, his supporters, and other onlookers would not be able to hear them. Apparently, free speech zones predate G.W. Bush's government, though.
I'm not sure how useful free speech is if you can only exercise it where nobody who doesn't already agree with you will hear it.
If you accept that the massive influx of government spending is the proper response to a dead economy (I do),
I don't. Massive government spending turned a minor little recession into the Great Depression. It's never helped, and it never will.
I was under the impression that monetary contraction is widely regarded as one of the factors that contributed to the Great Depression, and that Roosevelt's New Deal (which certainly increased government spending), as the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression so neatly puts it, "either caused or accelerated the recovery".
Many current economists are saying that the currently biggest threat we face, economically, is deflation. So it would seem to me that if there is anything we should do to control economic development at this point, it is actually increasing the amount of money in circulation, and even printing more money is currently a viable way of doing that.
The good news is that it looks like we will all soon know how different policies work out: as far as I can tell, current US policy is to keep stimulating the economy by pumping money into it, whereas many countries in the European Union are introducing budget cuts to reduce government debt. We'll see how these opposite policies effect their respective economies.
Yes, much like cash, in fact. Really, you collect money to be able to do fun things in life... which is also what these in-game credits are for. And, with money and in-game credits, when you put them at risk, you may lose part or all of them. In case of these games, by taking their credits into a war zone. In my case, by investing my money in highly volatile securities. Other people spend what they have on partying, shopping, vacations, or whatever else they desire. Out of these, I feel most sorry for people whose value was destroyed in a single catastrophic incident - but still, it was their decision to play the game. They assumed the risk voluntarily.
It very much depends on where you are, mainly because of differences in how both car and fuel are taxed. In my case, I drive a hybrid because I get a whole lot more car for the same money than I would have gotten otherwise. Fuel savings don't figure into it, because the company I work for pays for all the fuel I use.
The monetary incentives don't actually work towards the most environmentally friendly option, but they do give me a very nice car _and_ money left over compared to what would otherwise have been my preferred solution (diesel car converted to run on straight vegetable oil), which I invest in projects I feel will bring us a more environmentally friendly future.
FTFS: ``The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.''
And Microsoft and Intel evidently are below this 50% limit. As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters if you have 50% or more of your employees on H-1B visa.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, that's what you get when you use LaTeX. You focus on the content, and LaTeX takes care of the typesetting, incorporating years (perhaps hundreds of them) of research on how to make text aesthetically pleasing, easy to read, and suitable for binding, so that you don't have to do that research yourself. Plus, LaTeX is the format that many journals prefer submissions to be in.
``What we need is to get closer to the root cause. We need stuff like student prices and lower prices on older games. There needs to be some education that games cost money to make, even indie games. Maybe even some kind of forced government pool. I personally want there to be a huge investment in games and other entertainment and I think if people understood the whole process they'd agree.''
I think that people do agree that there should be enough funding to produce the entertainment they want. I also think that many people don't see the point in paying for it when they can also not pay for it. Both of these views are entirely rational. Which is why there is something to your idea of a forced government pool: that way, entertainment can get funded without those who voluntarily contribute footing the entire bill.
A problem I see with a mandatory pool is that when you do that, people who don't consume the entertainment are still forced to pay for it. Since I don't consider entertainment as something the government should provide, I would be against people who don't consume it paying for it (and that includes paying for it through taxes that go to creating, exporting, and enforcing things like DMCA and ACTA). I also feel that entertainment would still be produced even in the absence of government stimulation (through direct funding from a pool, or copyright, or otherwise), even if it wouldn't be as abundant and impressive as it is now. I could live with that, though - I only consume an almost immeasurably small fraction of all entertainment that has been produced, anyway. In fact, I would probably be fine if the whole entertainment industry disappeared and all I that was left were what has been produced and preserved so far.
Smarter minds than I have probably thought about this a lot more, so I would be interested to hear what other people think about all this. I'm sure economics students have done studies on the effects of various ways to stimulate creation of entertainment. Perhaps a better system has been devised already that I haven't heard about yet?
``im repeating this over and over whenever similar nonsense comes up. there is no evading capitalism come to this point. from property rights, to ownership of ideas, to ownership of genes, and then to ownership of entire species. if you 'let businesses be', this happens.''
Actually, I don't think any kind of property rights happen, unless there is also enforcement. Whether it's patents, copyright, land ownership, serfdom, slavery, the corn you grow or the pencil you bought, there is nothing that keeps these things, ideas, or people in your possession besides enforcement of essentially arbitrary rules. In our society, both the rules and the enforcement are put in place by the state: legislature, courts, police, etc. In other words, it's not laissez-faire that brings us the ownership you speak of, it's the government. Of course, the government ultimately cannot govern a people against the people's will...
This is the problem with AI research. The notion that we can bootstrap life by mimicking evolution is crazy. Computers are getting faster, but billions of years multiplied by billions of neurons per organism they can't do" Nobody gives a shit what their sex robot "emerged solely out of," they just want to fuck it.
Of course. Which is why we are evolving algorithms to do things we find desirable (in this case, playing robot soccer) using components that already implement the desireable trains. Much like we have been selecting cows that produce more milk or meat over, I should think, several hundreds of (cow) generations. It's "human-guided evolution", if you will.
Is there a problem with AI here? I don't see it. You could, of course, implement a soccer-playing algorithm yourself. But AI lets you come up with better soccer-playing programs without having to invent and implement a better algorithm or a better set of parameters yourself.
``Open Source" just says that some people can read the source code. It doesn't tell us:
1. Who can read the source (licensees only?)
2. What you're allowed to do with the source''
To a degree, it does tell us that. By The Open Source Definition, we know that, at a minimum, source code can be distributed to anyone (free distribution, source code, and no discrimination against persons or groups), and that using the source code for creating derived works and distributing them under the same terms is allowed (derived works).
You are correct that, without knowing the specific license being granted, there are still some questions to be answered with respect to the points that you mentioned. For example, while, in principle, anyone is allowed to read the source code, source code is only required to be made available to those who receive the software as far as the open source definition is concerned, so source code may or may not be available to people who don't have the software. Also, without knowing the specific license, you cannot know whether or not you can use the source code in, say, a work that includes code under the GNU GPL. Depending on how you want to use the software, these points may be very important.
``I wish they'd just cut the bull and focus on unstable and testing.''
You are free to wish that, but I fervently hope they won't do that. I love Debian stable: install it, configure it, and it will keep working for years. You get security updates, but no new versions and new configuration options that may break your working system, at least until the next version of stable is released. And then, Debian take great care to make the upgrade as painless and automatic as possible. If you want stuff to keep working reliably, Debian stable is one of the best options you have.
``vendors instead take the cheaper option of installing recovery software on a hard disk partition, leaving the buyer with no physical copy of the operating system they paid for''
I don't know if this is still the case, but the last time I took a look at this recovery software, there wasn't any way to install the operating system I paid for, either. This was several years ago, and the recovery software came on a separate CD. However, when run, this would actually overwrite your harddisk with some image which did not match the installation as shipped, nor matched an actual OS install - where you can, for example, use separate partitions for the OS and your data.
Failing disks are a problem, but these sorts of recovery software add a new and unnecessary problem: if, for whatever reason, you need to recover your OS, they will also wipe out all your data and installed applications. That's not recovery, that's destruction! Of course, I know about partitioning tools that can split partitions while keeping the data, and I back up my data, so I can work around the breakage, but it's still annoying.
Well, in the Netherlands at least, we pay our $7-$8 per gallon of gas because of the massive excises. On the other hand, I am sure at least some government effort and money is being expended on gaining access to and control over oil, so I have no doubt that the oil industry is being helped by governments around the world - regardless of whether or not money is directly being given to the industry.
Interestingly, the high fuel prices over here make electric cars rather attractive. The price difference per kilometer (or mile, if you wish) may not be large enough to make up for the cost of a battery pack as will be featured in the Tesla Model S, but, for example, the Chevy Volt doesn't actually cost that much more than the car I currently drive, and would get me to and from work without using any gasoline at all. At that, it's actually cheaper to drive than a lot of regular gasoline cars.
Thanks for the explanation! I am happy to see that Java has brought a lot of good to your corner of the world! And yes, I was genuinely wondering why you had chosen Java, given that, in your earlier post, you indicated that some of its features and the lack of other features were giving you trouble. Your challenge sounds like fun, by the way. Perhaps I'll give it a shot!
Sadly, this isn't the only computer system security SNAFU. It isn't often that you hear about it, but many of the systems I have seen are security WTFs. I continue to be amazed at how little some programmers understand about their trade, and I just don't have words for people who think the security of their computer systems isn't important. Getting a system that is completely secure may be too much to expect, but the least you can do is not make it easy for someone to walk right in and do whatever they want with your data after 5 minutes of observing the publicly accessible part of your system!
``I had a problem where the customer wanted to discover a class-b network in a reasonable amount of time. Aside from Java's lack of ping causing huge heartaches...''
``My favourite example, since I use it all the time and it annoys me, is Firefox. This is a major OSS project. It has financial backing, and large status. None the less it is riddled with bugs.''
Yes. It's also a hugely complex project. I might have worked on it if it weren't for the fact that, years ago, I looked at it and decided that, with the direction they were going in, it would never end up being the lean, fast, robust software that I like to use. It's also at the cutting edge of development. Even if, recently, Chrome has been stealing the show, Firefox has been one of the most advanced web browsers in the world since before 1.0.0. That, apparently, is more important to the developers and the users than simplicity and robustness. It's not that finding and fixing bugs is boring (I actually like doing that), it's just that getting Firefox bug-free is not a target for the developers. New bugs are introduced while existing ones are fixed.
``The "Many eyes equals no bugs" hypothesis just doesn't hold up in real life.''
It doesn't, but I don't think that is the hypothesis, either. Fewer bugs, perhaps, but "no bugs" is wishful thinking.
``So to reiterate my general point -- Only in an ideal world do unpaid, highly qualified people do with open source code, what the FOSS community says they will.''
I don't know. Of course, there are always people in any community who make claims that will not be substantiated. So in that sense, you are right. However, that doesn't tell us anything about whether open source is a net win or not.
Since you didn't want me to pick on your examples, I won't (even though I don't think they support the point you are trying to make, whatever it is). But we were talking about Free software in systems that people's lives depend on, and you seemed to be making the point that the argument for Free software depends on living in an ideal world where the good guys scour the code for bugs to fix, and the bad guys don't scour the code for bugs to exploit. That is the point you are trying to make, right?
My response to that is that, no, the argument for open source does not depend on those premises. In fact, the assumption is and should be that the bad guys are going to find bugs to exploit. Real world experience shows that this is the case for software no matter if it is open source or not. Access to the source? They may or may not have it. At least China and Russia have been given access to the source code to Windows. The bad guys are probably not going to be stopped by laws and licenses that say they cannot copy, modify, disassemble, etc. Open source _allows_ the good guys to inspect the source and so more easily find the bugs form themselves, and _allows_ the bugs to be fixed by the good guys. So the argument for open source in this case is that, given that the bad guys are going to find bugs and are going to exploit them, open source _allows_ you to find and fix the bugs before they get you.
Actually, I live in a world where I don't get access to the source code to Windows, but the Russians (et al) that you seem to fear so much do. Now, I don't actually use Windows for anything critical, so this doesn't affect me as much as it does some, but if you are so concerned about Russian (et al) hackers, shouldn't you be _for_ open source, so that you and the rest of the good guys can look at the source and fix and/or defend against any flaws that are found?
Slashdot Mirror
``Er... You're going to get about the same experience no matter what distro you use. About the only thing that'll change is the package management system.''
I respectfully disagree.
First of all, I think the package management system is a big deal. No other package management system has been as painless for me as Aptitude. Yum is close. If you are stuck with a system that doesn't do dependency management, or if the package manager, the packages, or the dependencies break often (I have this problem with RHEL), things can quickly get painful. I've even used upstream source code in preferences to the package manager on some distros. The number one reason why I've settled on Debian after years of using different operating systems as that the quality of the packages, the package manager, and the upgrade process make it so low maintenance.
As for KDE, your distro also has a huge influence here. Obviously, package management is also an important issue here, because there are many packages that make up a full KDE system. But even aside from that, distros can make or break the experience. They often make various changes to the upstream sources, and this can improve or degrade the quality. I have had horrible experiences with KDE on Ubuntu, where the software as shipped by the KDE project was actually really good. IIRC, Red Hat used to pretty extensively modify KDE and make it look like GNOME.
I would say that if you want to get the real KDE experience, go to the KDE project. Either ask some developers what they use, and do the same, or use packages provided by the KDE project, or, if you can't use those, compile KDE from the official KDE sources. If you want a good distribution with KDE, I can recommend OpenSUSE. It's not pure KDE, but it has KDE and it's good. I also have good experience with KDE on FreeBSD: less of a hassle than going through the compile process yourself, but still pretty pure. I reckon the same goes for Arch LInux, Gentoo Linux, and Slackware.
``Why do I need a RDBMS to run a desktop?''
I don't know what you felt when you found out that you now need a RDBMS, but I can tell you that I felt disbelief and outrage. Especially because earlier versions of Kontact had been working really nicely for me, but the new version just didn't work at all. So not only are they giving us more bloatware, it is also completely unusable!
On the other hand, I think a RDBMS makes a whole lot of sense for a lot more applications than we're currently using them for. I've done my fair share of application development, design, and use by now, as well as system and application administration and maintenance, and I can't tell you how many times I wished people (including myself!) had just used an RDBMS instead of inventing their own wheel without proper ACID properties. It's hard to realize the importance of having your data be consistent, stay consistent, efficiently accessible and searchable, and easy to back up and restore while maintaining consistency. An RDBMS can give you all that, and more.
If you consider how many things on your computer are really databases which need to stay consistent, with references intact and all that, RDBMSes start to make sense. All these XML files that GNOME and KDE apps use for configuration? There are plenty of things that can get messed up there. /etc/passwd? The group ids there had better refer to groups that actually exist. My mailbox? It would be much quicker to open if doing so would just require a query over 10000 records instead of looking at 10000 files. Backing up your files? I sure hope that your backup won't contain any inconsistencies, but I'm afraid there's no guarantee.
After having thought about the issue, I'm all for using RDBMSes in more places. And it would be nice to have transactional semantics with ACID compliance in our programming languages, too. The same issues with atomicity and integrity that exist for data on disk exist for data in memory, too.
Forgot to add:
On the other hand, I am pleasantly surprised about how much vocal criticism there is in the USA. Living in the Netherlands, I hear and see more criticism and discussion of American policy than of Dutch policy. You're doing something right over there that we're doing wrong over here. Criticism and discussion are good, because only through them can you arrive at better decisions.
Personally, I haven't really believed there is freedom of speech in the United States ever since I heard about free speech zones.
I first heard about free speech zones in an article about how protesters against G.W. Bush were directed to free speech zones that were far enough away from where Bush would be passing that he, his supporters, and other onlookers would not be able to hear them. Apparently, free speech zones predate G.W. Bush's government, though.
I'm not sure how useful free speech is if you can only exercise it where nobody who doesn't already agree with you will hear it.
Alright, I'll toss in my 0.02, as well.
I was under the impression that monetary contraction is widely regarded as one of the factors that contributed to the Great Depression, and that Roosevelt's New Deal (which certainly increased government spending), as the Wikipedia article on the Great Depression so neatly puts it, "either caused or accelerated the recovery".
Many current economists are saying that the currently biggest threat we face, economically, is deflation. So it would seem to me that if there is anything we should do to control economic development at this point, it is actually increasing the amount of money in circulation, and even printing more money is currently a viable way of doing that.
The good news is that it looks like we will all soon know how different policies work out: as far as I can tell, current US policy is to keep stimulating the economy by pumping money into it, whereas many countries in the European Union are introducing budget cuts to reduce government debt. We'll see how these opposite policies effect their respective economies.
Sen. Tubes: 1 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss
%
My heartfelt sympathy goes out to those of us still living who held the perished ones dear.
``Just like cash, then?''
Yes, much like cash, in fact. Really, you collect money to be able to do fun things in life ... which is also what these in-game credits are for. And, with money and in-game credits, when you put them at risk, you may lose part or all of them. In case of these games, by taking their credits into a war zone. In my case, by investing my money in highly volatile securities. Other people spend what they have on partying, shopping, vacations, or whatever else they desire. Out of these, I feel most sorry for people whose value was destroyed in a single catastrophic incident - but still, it was their decision to play the game. They assumed the risk voluntarily.
Imaginary property is imaginary.
I do feel sorry for their loss, but in the end, it's all in the game.
It very much depends on where you are, mainly because of differences in how both car and fuel are taxed. In my case, I drive a hybrid because I get a whole lot more car for the same money than I would have gotten otherwise. Fuel savings don't figure into it, because the company I work for pays for all the fuel I use.
The monetary incentives don't actually work towards the most environmentally friendly option, but they do give me a very nice car _and_ money left over compared to what would otherwise have been my preferred solution (diesel car converted to run on straight vegetable oil), which I invest in projects I feel will bring us a more environmentally friendly future.
FTFS: ``The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa.''
And Microsoft and Intel evidently are below this 50% limit. As far as I can tell, this isn't Microsoft and Intel "getting a pass", as the title states. No company is being singled out here. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters if you have 50% or more of your employees on H-1B visa.
``Also, nice typography.''
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, that's what you get when you use LaTeX. You focus on the content, and LaTeX takes care of the typesetting, incorporating years (perhaps hundreds of them) of research on how to make text aesthetically pleasing, easy to read, and suitable for binding, so that you don't have to do that research yourself. Plus, LaTeX is the format that many journals prefer submissions to be in.
Thanks for that! I was also looking for a regular, no-hoops-required link that just works.
Converting it to a clickable link for everyone's convenience: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33127/35539144-pnp12pt.pdf
``What we need is to get closer to the root cause. We need stuff like student prices and lower prices on older games. There needs to be some education that games cost money to make, even indie games. Maybe even some kind of forced government pool. I personally want there to be a huge investment in games and other entertainment and I think if people understood the whole process they'd agree.''
I think that people do agree that there should be enough funding to produce the entertainment they want. I also think that many people don't see the point in paying for it when they can also not pay for it. Both of these views are entirely rational. Which is why there is something to your idea of a forced government pool: that way, entertainment can get funded without those who voluntarily contribute footing the entire bill.
A problem I see with a mandatory pool is that when you do that, people who don't consume the entertainment are still forced to pay for it. Since I don't consider entertainment as something the government should provide, I would be against people who don't consume it paying for it (and that includes paying for it through taxes that go to creating, exporting, and enforcing things like DMCA and ACTA). I also feel that entertainment would still be produced even in the absence of government stimulation (through direct funding from a pool, or copyright, or otherwise), even if it wouldn't be as abundant and impressive as it is now. I could live with that, though - I only consume an almost immeasurably small fraction of all entertainment that has been produced, anyway. In fact, I would probably be fine if the whole entertainment industry disappeared and all I that was left were what has been produced and preserved so far.
Smarter minds than I have probably thought about this a lot more, so I would be interested to hear what other people think about all this. I'm sure economics students have done studies on the effects of various ways to stimulate creation of entertainment. Perhaps a better system has been devised already that I haven't heard about yet?
``im repeating this over and over whenever similar nonsense comes up. there is no evading capitalism come to this point. from property rights, to ownership of ideas, to ownership of genes, and then to ownership of entire species. if you 'let businesses be', this happens.''
Actually, I don't think any kind of property rights happen, unless there is also enforcement. Whether it's patents, copyright, land ownership, serfdom, slavery, the corn you grow or the pencil you bought, there is nothing that keeps these things, ideas, or people in your possession besides enforcement of essentially arbitrary rules. In our society, both the rules and the enforcement are put in place by the state: legislature, courts, police, etc. In other words, it's not laissez-faire that brings us the ownership you speak of, it's the government. Of course, the government ultimately cannot govern a people against the people's will ...
Of course. Which is why we are evolving algorithms to do things we find desirable (in this case, playing robot soccer) using components that already implement the desireable trains. Much like we have been selecting cows that produce more milk or meat over, I should think, several hundreds of (cow) generations. It's "human-guided evolution", if you will.
Is there a problem with AI here? I don't see it. You could, of course, implement a soccer-playing algorithm yourself. But AI lets you come up with better soccer-playing programs without having to invent and implement a better algorithm or a better set of parameters yourself.
``Open Source" just says that some people can read the source code. It doesn't tell us:
1. Who can read the source (licensees only?)
2. What you're allowed to do with the source''
To a degree, it does tell us that. By The Open Source Definition, we know that, at a minimum, source code can be distributed to anyone (free distribution, source code, and no discrimination against persons or groups), and that using the source code for creating derived works and distributing them under the same terms is allowed (derived works).
You are correct that, without knowing the specific license being granted, there are still some questions to be answered with respect to the points that you mentioned. For example, while, in principle, anyone is allowed to read the source code, source code is only required to be made available to those who receive the software as far as the open source definition is concerned, so source code may or may not be available to people who don't have the software. Also, without knowing the specific license, you cannot know whether or not you can use the source code in, say, a work that includes code under the GNU GPL. Depending on how you want to use the software, these points may be very important.
``I wish they'd just cut the bull and focus on unstable and testing.''
You are free to wish that, but I fervently hope they won't do that. I love Debian stable: install it, configure it, and it will keep working for years. You get security updates, but no new versions and new configuration options that may break your working system, at least until the next version of stable is released. And then, Debian take great care to make the upgrade as painless and automatic as possible. If you want stuff to keep working reliably, Debian stable is one of the best options you have.
``vendors instead take the cheaper option of installing recovery software on a hard disk partition, leaving the buyer with no physical copy of the operating system they paid for''
I don't know if this is still the case, but the last time I took a look at this recovery software, there wasn't any way to install the operating system I paid for, either. This was several years ago, and the recovery software came on a separate CD. However, when run, this would actually overwrite your harddisk with some image which did not match the installation as shipped, nor matched an actual OS install - where you can, for example, use separate partitions for the OS and your data.
Failing disks are a problem, but these sorts of recovery software add a new and unnecessary problem: if, for whatever reason, you need to recover your OS, they will also wipe out all your data and installed applications. That's not recovery, that's destruction! Of course, I know about partitioning tools that can split partitions while keeping the data, and I back up my data, so I can work around the breakage, but it's still annoying.
Well, in the Netherlands at least, we pay our $7-$8 per gallon of gas because of the massive excises. On the other hand, I am sure at least some government effort and money is being expended on gaining access to and control over oil, so I have no doubt that the oil industry is being helped by governments around the world - regardless of whether or not money is directly being given to the industry.
Interestingly, the high fuel prices over here make electric cars rather attractive. The price difference per kilometer (or mile, if you wish) may not be large enough to make up for the cost of a battery pack as will be featured in the Tesla Model S, but, for example, the Chevy Volt doesn't actually cost that much more than the car I currently drive, and would get me to and from work without using any gasoline at all. At that, it's actually cheaper to drive than a lot of regular gasoline cars.
Hi,
Thanks for the explanation! I am happy to see that Java has brought a lot of good to your corner of the world! And yes, I was genuinely wondering why you had chosen Java, given that, in your earlier post, you indicated that some of its features and the lack of other features were giving you trouble. Your challenge sounds like fun, by the way. Perhaps I'll give it a shot!
Cheers,
Bob
Sadly, this isn't the only computer system security SNAFU. It isn't often that you hear about it, but many of the systems I have seen are security WTFs. I continue to be amazed at how little some programmers understand about their trade, and I just don't have words for people who think the security of their computer systems isn't important. Getting a system that is completely secure may be too much to expect, but the least you can do is not make it easy for someone to walk right in and do whatever they want with your data after 5 minutes of observing the publicly accessible part of your system!
``I had a problem where the customer wanted to discover a class-b network in a reasonable amount of time. ...''
Aside from Java's lack of ping causing huge heartaches
So why did you use Java?
``My favourite example, since I use it all the time and it annoys me, is Firefox. This is a major OSS project. It has financial backing, and large status. None the less it is riddled with bugs.''
Yes. It's also a hugely complex project. I might have worked on it if it weren't for the fact that, years ago, I looked at it and decided that, with the direction they were going in, it would never end up being the lean, fast, robust software that I like to use. It's also at the cutting edge of development. Even if, recently, Chrome has been stealing the show, Firefox has been one of the most advanced web browsers in the world since before 1.0.0. That, apparently, is more important to the developers and the users than simplicity and robustness. It's not that finding and fixing bugs is boring (I actually like doing that), it's just that getting Firefox bug-free is not a target for the developers. New bugs are introduced while existing ones are fixed.
``The "Many eyes equals no bugs" hypothesis just doesn't hold up in real life.''
It doesn't, but I don't think that is the hypothesis, either. Fewer bugs, perhaps, but "no bugs" is wishful thinking.
``So to reiterate my general point -- Only in an ideal world do unpaid, highly qualified people do with open source code, what the FOSS community says they will.''
I don't know. Of course, there are always people in any community who make claims that will not be substantiated. So in that sense, you are right. However, that doesn't tell us anything about whether open source is a net win or not.
Since you didn't want me to pick on your examples, I won't (even though I don't think they support the point you are trying to make, whatever it is). But we were talking about Free software in systems that people's lives depend on, and you seemed to be making the point that the argument for Free software depends on living in an ideal world where the good guys scour the code for bugs to fix, and the bad guys don't scour the code for bugs to exploit. That is the point you are trying to make, right?
My response to that is that, no, the argument for open source does not depend on those premises. In fact, the assumption is and should be that the bad guys are going to find bugs to exploit. Real world experience shows that this is the case for software no matter if it is open source or not. Access to the source? They may or may not have it. At least China and Russia have been given access to the source code to Windows. The bad guys are probably not going to be stopped by laws and licenses that say they cannot copy, modify, disassemble, etc. Open source _allows_ the good guys to inspect the source and so more easily find the bugs form themselves, and _allows_ the bugs to be fixed by the good guys. So the argument for open source in this case is that, given that the bad guys are going to find bugs and are going to exploit them, open source _allows_ you to find and fix the bugs before they get you.
Actually, I live in a world where I don't get access to the source code to Windows, but the Russians (et al) that you seem to fear so much do. Now, I don't actually use Windows for anything critical, so this doesn't affect me as much as it does some, but if you are so concerned about Russian (et al) hackers, shouldn't you be _for_ open source, so that you and the rest of the good guys can look at the source and fix and/or defend against any flaws that are found?