All ideas for Software Patent reform ignore this simple but basic equality. Regardless of the complexity of the data handling that we have enabled our software to perform it still just comes down to bit-twiddling. Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing ones & zeros.
No matter how ingenious we get at it, mathematics has never been a patentable commodity. The fact that software has patents is a failure in the education system to properly teach this very basic concept. A concept that any 6 year old should be able to grasp.
As I get older, I become more a realist, so whatever methods can be used to reduce the harm from this stupidity is not out right a bad idea. However, we must always keep our eyes squarely on the fact that we have perverted the use of patents completely and the long term goal should be to out right ban software patents of any form.
There are places where software/algorithms can be used to elucidate a patent, but they still cannot be an essential element of receiving a patent. Basically I'm thinking here of embedded controllers and such, where the softare is used to guide the operation of hardware. The hardware itself can receive a patent but not the software. In fact one test of such hardware's patentability should be the idea that all essential data handling, manipulation etc. could be abstracted in to software, if all you have left is a broom than all you've patented is a broom.
This is Novell's way of saying "push us and we'll push back", not "We're going to push first.".
In the best of all worlds software patents wouldn't exist. But since they do and its obvious there are those out there willing to use them as a club, this response from Novell to that threat deserves a nod and a clap.
Heck this was off-topic from the get-go so nothing to worry about there.
Anyway, I get the angle your pitching and from a purely Catholic point of view there is no "good" and "evil". As you pointed out though this conflicts greatly with the old-testament belief in "fire and brimstone"(e.g. the devil and thus hell). Since Catholics do believe in Hell,Purgatory and Heaven they have a hard time reconciling the dichotomy. Just one of the thousands of hipocritical stances that made me question Catholosism, Religion and thus God and get to the point where I just chucked it all as totally unnecessary.
Well I didn't hear the comment myself, but maybe it wasn't unintentional. Maybe the person was being intentionally ironic. In other words worrying about how to locate the thing is far less troublesome than getting it there in the first place.
Oh, I see. I guess were disagreeing on what a "disaster" would be. I was taking the point of view that privatized space flight will be a reality within my lifetime. A single failure now isn't devastating for that. From the point of view of it being affordable to me(or you) in the next 5-10 years, than a single failure now might be disastrous.
However, I don't think this is something that you need a celebrity to make fashionable. Granted it may help but I don't see alot of the "Britany Spears" types doing extreme sports. Rather its the reverse, the "stars" of extreme sports do them for the excitement and became stars, not because some fashion model did it. Note, I'm 41 years old so I'm a good generation from the "extreme" culture so I could be wrong. As well, space flight is just so "big" on its own it doesn't need celebrity endorsements. You can't miss it. If there was even 1 private flight a month I think that would be publicity enough to drive demand.
Anyway, the first paragraph above describes the disagreement we really had, and in the end there is no disagreement.
Well that's all fine and good if your religious, and christianity doesn't have a sole lock on "loving the sinner".
I am not religious, heck I'm an athiest, so I can't help you with your quandry between the old & new testaments. I was brought up Catholic, so I know full well the "hypocrisy" of the various teachings.
As well I never implied "evil" I was answering to your comment about there being "good and bad in every bunch". Furthermore I was using a standard for good and bad generally prevalent in Western society. Only staunch new-testament christians would characterize pedophiles as "good but misguided", most day to day christians(that I know) would still consider them 'bad' regardless of the teachings of Jesus. Furthermore staunch old-testament christians are extremely likely to view Islamic extremists as "bad", heck they'll even than extend that to all of Islam. This is entirely because they are staunch old-testament christians and are less tolerant of other religions than possibly any other group I know.
Now, the fact that you don't personally believe in good or bad, or even to extend that to "good" or "evil" doesn't make the dichotomy go away. A pedophile may be sick but they are still 'bad'(IMHO). This doesn't mean they can't learn to be 'good'(e.g. cured). But by definition there is no "good pedophile".
And to inject some humour, "the only good lawyer is a dead lawyer".
I was going to write a response to your other post but someone beat me to it.
Anyway, your latest post is a better jump off point for the disagreement anyway.
This X-Prize isn't about getting the "public" to ride the thing, at least not in the general sense. It's about getting millionaires to ride the thing. This subset of "public" probably understands the risks far better than the "general" public. So a single unfortunate accident at this stage wouldn't have much effect on their opinion.
Don't get me wrong, an accident would be very unfortunate. I would personally feel remorse for the pilot(s) and their families, the builders etc. But in the end the X-Prize has already done what it set out to do. That is to catelize a private aerospace industry. I truely believe there is nothing going to stop that now. 24 entrants is just too much mindshare to put back in the bottle.
Even when commercial flights start, the cost will still be too prohibitive for your average or even above average middle-class family. The ones who can truely afford it will likely still take the risk even if an accident occured at this stage of the game.
There are enough millionaires out there now from the "space race"/space-age that are just itching to go. Don't get me wrong, it has to be "safe" but I'm sure the initial customers have a lower range of "safe" than your average consumer.
By the time the average consumer can afford a trip it will also be safe enough for them. At least I believe so.
O.k. I'm going to ask that people justify their scorn here.
What exactly is "rocket science" behind locating or tracking an object in the sky? The same techniques used to track SpaceShipOne can be used to track airplanes or satellites or meteorites etc.
The fact that rockets were used to send the satellites to space in order to enable the use of GPS doesn't make it "rocket science" any more than shipping parts for cell phone towers by airplane makes the technology of cell phones "aeronautics".
So the announcer or whatever he was is right, the tracking of the rocket is NOT "rocket science". Getting the damn thing up there in the first place is what makes it "rocket science".
"Don't forget that another team from Canada plans on making a go at the prize too (or at least a footnote on the record books at this point)."
Yes, from my perspective as a Canadian I see this as unfortunate. One of the Canadian entries(there are 2 I believe), was expected to launch this weekend but ran in to supply problems with parts and postponed 2 weeks. By that time the game will likely be over. It would have been really exciting to have 2 competitors going at it within the same 2 week time period.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to completely pick on you, but so many posts are assuming that SpaceShipOne is the only viable competitor for the X-Prize and/or that this is only about a private aerospace industry in America.
Quite frankly I don't care much what your government might back in this respect. If your country happens to be made up of so many morons that they can convince your government to pass laws restricting this sort of thing that's your problem(I would of course feel sorry for you as it's obviously not your fault).
However, note that there are 2 competitors in this from Canada, one of which will launch from a site an hour drive from my house. There are others in Australia and Israel I believe. This is about a world-wide industry. One which will be mostly unaffected by the standing of the American government. Don't get me wrong, it would be a loss to the industry to have the American government deny space flight from their country, but it would be far from a disaster.
"Of course if spaceshipone crashes and burns you can just forget about what I just said."
This is completely rhetorical now as the flight was a success.
But I wanted to challenge this particular statement because it implies that SpaceShipOne is the only viable competitor for the X-Prize, which is simply not true.
Please point to the "good" pedophile or good "Islamic extremist"(not muslim). This is by any standard that we hold in Western society, a contradiction in terms.
There are people who like children who are good but they aren't pedophiles, there are Islamic people who are good but they aren't extremists.
The point of the parent's post was that it is impossible to find a "good pedophile" but it is not impossible to find a good christian(this is open to debate IMHO).
I didn't "baldly" assert anything. I pointed to the "evidence" at hand and claimed only "likely". That's far from a bald assertion.
If you need more precision, than it goes something like this.
The linux advocate, Greg, noted how he and others worked on a large and complex addition to the linux kernel which touched many parts(files, structures, code, etc.). He didn't say exactly the plan of attack but it's clear by implication that he had to have a plan that assured Linus that the change would be doable without adversely affecting the kernel, or at least that any effects would be minimal and duely fixed. In other words they had a good plan, and good implimentation.
Like the good maintainer that he is, Linus requires that this plan and implimentation be presented before he will even consider such a large change. In other words, rather than not being concerned with reliability, he is intimately concerned with it. Like a doctor, he appears to be running under the principle of "first do no harm".
So how is needing a concrete plan and good implimentation considered "not being concerned with reliability"?
In fact it is the "bald" assertions of the Sun rep that are actually under debate. His only evidence for his statement is that Linus has rejected "reliability" patches. As Greg explained, it turns out the patches were not well planned or implimented. So Linus naturally rejected them. Consider that every change to the kernel has the potential to affect reliability. The very changes the Sun rep proposed can actually make the kernel less reliable with a shoddy plan or implimentation. Much like quantum mechnanics, the "observer"(added code) affects the experiment(kernel). Unfortunately, we have a better handle on how to predict what will happen in a QM experiment than we do with adding to a complex piece of software like the Linux kernel.
So I stand by my "bald assertion", I'm quite sure that if Sun spent some time coming up with a plan to add the good work they've done on Solaris into linux Linus would be more than responsive.
Consider the poster boy for corporate involvement in Linux, IBM, they didn't just look at the kernel maintainers and decide, "they aren't concerned with X, so we won't even bother trying". IBM made a plan to become kernel developers, to be intimately involved in the process, and in doing so made the Linux maintainers and kernel developers concerned with their view of X.
Interestingly, this example also shines an ironic bit of light on the Sun rep's assertion that Linux advocates make it an "us verses the world" game. When in fact it is Sun(or at least this Sun rep) that set up that context. His assertion that "Linux maintainers don't believe in X,Y and Z", made it an "us verses them" game. Anyone can be a Linux maintainer or kernel developer including Sun, so by simply becoming kernel developers the Sun rep's assertion, if it were true to begin with, would become false on it's face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not chastising Sun for their decisions re: OpenSolaris. It's their code, their choice. If it were me I would follow the IBM model but I didn't spend the millions or billions to develop the code. However, it was the Sun rep(and by implication Sun) who made the bald assertions and comparisons. The burden of proof is on his shoulders, and quite frankly his arguments are found lacking.
No you wouldn't, the OSS project would just recompile and rerelease. Besides it wasn't a question of replacing the DLL, they don't even make a reasonable attempt at finding the DLL and reporting what it might be attached to.
If someone without MS's resources can make a better tool, why can't MS?
Yes. Sorry I was being sloppy, but I did add "accidents", which is really what I meant. And to be completely clear, "unforeseen circumstances not caused by manufacturing defect". O.k. so this isn't even true as insurance probably covers that and than they will collect from the manufacturer.
However, the point is really that the onus shouldn't be on the customer to pay a company more to promptly fix a problem they cause. That's extortion, not support. You don't pay insurance to the electrical contractor who wired your house.
As a way of getting Microsoft's direct attention the letter admittedly sucks.
However, I would argue that the guys point wasn't to garner browny points with geeks as much as to get the frustration off his chest AND get geeks to recognize once again the flaws in MS's security protocols.
Furthermore it isn't a "cheap pot-shot". He's venting, he's not bootlicking. He's saying "for crying out loud, you guys have Billions of dollars, resources up the wazoo and you can't get it right, damn I'm mad and I'm going to vent(but I'm going to be humorous in doing so)!" Haven't you EVER felt that way. The beauty of the web is that he can post that and hopefully feel better about it.
So, your right, this isn't for MS, it's for the masses, including the press and geeks who might read it, giggle a bit, and maybe as a group hold MS's feet to the fire on this.
No you weren't particularly flippant, but the fact is you were way off topic with a "political correctness" attack. That in and of itself is "flippant".
As for the political correctness of 'he' and 'she', I still contend that the gender of the author can dictate the useage without implying offense. Considering the offensiveness factor of something like 'herstory'(as you noted), I don't believe this particular useage merited a comment(thus my 'caffeine' remark). In other words there are bigger fish to fry.
I don't think it's such a terrible thing either, but the Sun reps point is that they aren't just going to contribute their experience to Linux because the philosophies are different. When in actual fact I don't believe that is the case at all at this point, but the implementations and realities of where the two started from are different.
The idea that Linus doesn't value reliability and serviceability over speed and features simply isn't true. Otherwise he would have integrated the features back in '97. But than again Linus has many more hardware platforms to concern himself over NOW.
So as the Linux advocate pointed out, if Sun were to use their experience to add the features to Linux, with the requisite due diligence in making sure they don't break everything, t's likely Linus would integrate the features. Simply because he does value the same things Sun espouses they value.
Sure that would be nice. But it's FREE and he's a 4th party contributor to this issue. It's also possible he would be in legal trouble for doing so(just making this up as I doubt it but it's possible).
The grandparent supposedly found irony in someone complaining about a commercial product having no "real" support while distributing a free product without warranty. Your response? Here's another COMMERCIAL product without warranty.
The man wrote a scanner for the vulnerability better than the one Microsoft distributes, how much more constructive do you want him to be? All MS have to do is pick up his version and distribute it or ask if they can distribute it. They could also ask for and/or license the source code(it doesn't appear to be opensource).
I see no problem in him writing a letter(which was funny) deriding MS when he was able to write a better scanner himself. Especially since MS are supposed to have put security first, and is a company with Billions in assets and cash. In other words, MS had effectively infinite resources compared to this guy and they didn't do their job. They should get slapped in the face for it.
Slashdot Mirror
All ideas for Software Patent reform ignore this simple but basic equality. Regardless of the complexity of the data handling that we have enabled our software to perform it still just comes down to bit-twiddling. Adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing ones & zeros.
No matter how ingenious we get at it, mathematics has never been a patentable commodity. The fact that software has patents is a failure in the education system to properly teach this very basic concept. A concept that any 6 year old should be able to grasp.
As I get older, I become more a realist, so whatever methods can be used to reduce the harm from this stupidity is not out right a bad idea. However, we must always keep our eyes squarely on the fact that we have perverted the use of patents completely and the long term goal should be to out right ban software patents of any form.
There are places where software/algorithms can be used to elucidate a patent, but they still cannot be an essential element of receiving a patent. Basically I'm thinking here of embedded controllers and such, where the softare is used to guide the operation of hardware. The hardware itself can receive a patent but not the software. In fact one test of such hardware's patentability should be the idea that all essential data handling, manipulation etc. could be abstracted in to software, if all you have left is a broom than all you've patented is a broom.
Oh take a valium.
This is Novell's way of saying "push us and we'll push back", not "We're going to push first.".
In the best of all worlds software patents wouldn't exist. But since they do and its obvious there are those out there willing to use them as a club, this response from Novell to that threat deserves a nod and a clap.
Heck this was off-topic from the get-go so nothing to worry about there.
Anyway, I get the angle your pitching and from a purely Catholic point of view there is no "good" and "evil". As you pointed out though this conflicts greatly with the old-testament belief in "fire and brimstone"(e.g. the devil and thus hell). Since Catholics do believe in Hell,Purgatory and Heaven they have a hard time reconciling the dichotomy. Just one of the thousands of hipocritical stances that made me question Catholosism, Religion and thus God and get to the point where I just chucked it all as totally unnecessary.
I'll second that.
While "hate filled" may be a tad strong, christians, and Catholics especially, are very intolerant giving their teachings.
Well I didn't hear the comment myself, but maybe it wasn't unintentional. Maybe the person was being intentionally ironic. In other words worrying about how to locate the thing is far less troublesome than getting it there in the first place.
Nope it's slipstick as in "Slipstick Libby" from numerous Robert Heinlein novels.
Oh, I see. I guess were disagreeing on what a "disaster" would be. I was taking the point of view that privatized space flight will be a reality within my lifetime. A single failure now isn't devastating for that. From the point of view of it being affordable to me(or you) in the next 5-10 years, than a single failure now might be disastrous.
However, I don't think this is something that you need a celebrity to make fashionable. Granted it may help but I don't see alot of the "Britany Spears" types doing extreme sports. Rather its the reverse, the "stars" of extreme sports do them for the excitement and became stars, not because some fashion model did it. Note, I'm 41 years old so I'm a good generation from the "extreme" culture so I could be wrong. As well, space flight is just so "big" on its own it doesn't need celebrity endorsements. You can't miss it. If there was even 1 private flight a month I think that would be publicity enough to drive demand.
Anyway, the first paragraph above describes the disagreement we really had, and in the end there is no disagreement.
Well that's all fine and good if your religious, and christianity doesn't have a sole lock on "loving the sinner".
I am not religious, heck I'm an athiest, so I can't help you with your quandry between the old & new testaments. I was brought up Catholic, so I know full well the "hypocrisy" of the various teachings.
As well I never implied "evil" I was answering to your comment about there being "good and bad in every bunch". Furthermore I was using a standard for good and bad generally prevalent in Western society. Only staunch new-testament christians would characterize pedophiles as "good but misguided", most day to day christians(that I know) would still consider them 'bad' regardless of the teachings of Jesus. Furthermore staunch old-testament christians are extremely likely to view Islamic extremists as "bad", heck they'll even than extend that to all of Islam. This is entirely because they are staunch old-testament christians and are less tolerant of other religions than possibly any other group I know.
Now, the fact that you don't personally believe in good or bad, or even to extend that to "good" or "evil" doesn't make the dichotomy go away. A
pedophile may be sick but they are still 'bad'(IMHO). This doesn't mean they can't learn to be 'good'(e.g. cured). But by definition there is no "good pedophile".
And to inject some humour, "the only good lawyer is a dead lawyer".
I was going to write a response to your other post but someone beat me to it.
Anyway, your latest post is a better jump off point for the disagreement anyway.
This X-Prize isn't about getting the "public" to ride the thing, at least not in the general sense. It's about getting millionaires to ride the thing. This subset of "public" probably understands the risks far better than the "general" public. So a single unfortunate accident at this stage wouldn't have much effect on their opinion.
Don't get me wrong, an accident would be very unfortunate. I would personally feel remorse for the pilot(s) and their families, the builders etc. But in the end the X-Prize has already done what it set out to do. That is to catelize a private aerospace industry. I truely believe there is nothing going to stop that now. 24 entrants is just too much mindshare to put back in the bottle.
Even when commercial flights start, the cost will still be too prohibitive for your average or even above average middle-class family. The ones who can truely afford it will likely still take the risk even if an accident occured at this stage of the game.
There are enough millionaires out there now from the "space race"/space-age that are just itching to go. Don't get me wrong, it has to be "safe" but I'm sure the initial customers have a lower range of "safe" than your average consumer.
By the time the average consumer can afford a trip it will also be safe enough for them. At least I believe so.
O.k. I'm going to ask that people justify their scorn here.
What exactly is "rocket science" behind locating or tracking an object in the sky? The same techniques used to track SpaceShipOne can be used to track airplanes or satellites or meteorites etc.
The fact that rockets were used to send the satellites to space in order to enable the use of GPS doesn't make it "rocket science" any more than shipping parts for cell phone towers by airplane makes the technology of cell phones "aeronautics".
So the announcer or whatever he was is right, the tracking of the rocket is NOT "rocket science". Getting the damn thing up there in the first place is what makes it "rocket science".
"Don't forget that another team from Canada plans on making a go at the prize too (or at least a footnote on the record books at this point)."
Yes, from my perspective as a Canadian I see this as unfortunate. One of the Canadian entries(there are 2 I believe), was expected to launch this weekend but ran in to supply problems with parts and postponed 2 weeks. By that time the game will likely be over. It would have been really exciting to have 2 competitors going at it within the same 2 week time period.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to completely pick on you, but so many posts are assuming that SpaceShipOne is the only viable competitor for the X-Prize and/or that this is only about a private aerospace industry in America.
Quite frankly I don't care much what your government might back in this respect. If your country happens to be made up of so many morons that they can convince your government to pass laws restricting this sort of thing that's your problem(I would of course feel sorry for you as it's obviously not your fault).
However, note that there are 2 competitors in this from Canada, one of which will launch from a site an hour drive from my house. There are others in Australia and Israel I believe. This is about a world-wide industry. One which will be mostly unaffected by the standing of the American government. Don't get me wrong, it would be a loss to the industry to have the American government deny space flight from their country, but it would be far from a disaster.
"Of course if spaceshipone crashes and burns you can just forget about what I just said."
This is completely rhetorical now as the flight was a success.
But I wanted to challenge this particular statement because it implies that SpaceShipOne is the only viable competitor for the X-Prize, which is simply not true.
Please point to the "good" pedophile or good "Islamic extremist"(not muslim). This is by any standard that we hold in Western society, a contradiction in terms.
There are people who like children who are good but they aren't pedophiles, there are Islamic people who are good but they aren't extremists.
The point of the parent's post was that it is impossible to find a "good pedophile" but it is not impossible to find a good christian(this is open to debate IMHO).
Hopefully, send my ashes in to space or some other equally pointless by imaginative exercise.
I didn't "baldly" assert anything. I pointed to the "evidence" at hand and claimed only "likely". That's far from a bald assertion.
If you need more precision, than it goes something like this.
The linux advocate, Greg, noted how he and others worked on a large and complex addition to the linux kernel which touched many parts(files, structures, code, etc.). He didn't say exactly the plan of attack but it's clear by implication that he had to have a plan that assured Linus that the change would be doable without adversely affecting the kernel, or at least that any effects would be minimal and duely fixed. In other words they had a good plan, and good implimentation.
Like the good maintainer that he is, Linus requires that this plan and implimentation be presented before he will even consider such a large change. In other words, rather than not being concerned with reliability, he is intimately concerned with it. Like a doctor, he appears to be running under the principle of "first do no harm".
So how is needing a concrete plan and good implimentation considered "not being concerned with reliability"?
In fact it is the "bald" assertions of the Sun rep that are actually under debate. His only evidence for his statement is that Linus has rejected "reliability" patches. As Greg explained, it turns out the patches were not well planned or implimented. So Linus naturally rejected them. Consider that every change to the kernel has the potential to affect reliability. The very changes the Sun rep proposed can actually make the kernel less reliable with a shoddy plan or implimentation. Much like quantum mechnanics, the "observer"(added code) affects the experiment(kernel). Unfortunately, we have a better handle on how to predict what will happen in a QM experiment than we do with adding to a complex piece of software like the Linux kernel.
So I stand by my "bald assertion", I'm quite sure that if Sun spent some time coming up with a plan to add the good work they've done on Solaris into linux Linus would be more than responsive.
Consider the poster boy for corporate involvement in Linux, IBM, they didn't just look at the kernel maintainers and decide, "they aren't concerned with X, so we won't even bother trying". IBM made a plan to become kernel developers, to be intimately involved in the process, and in doing so made the Linux maintainers and kernel developers concerned with their view of X.
Interestingly, this example also shines an ironic bit of light on the Sun rep's assertion that Linux advocates make it an "us verses the world" game. When in fact it is Sun(or at least this Sun rep) that set up that context. His assertion that "Linux maintainers don't believe in X,Y and Z", made it an "us verses them" game. Anyone can be a Linux maintainer or kernel developer including Sun, so by simply becoming kernel developers the Sun rep's assertion, if it were true to begin with, would become false on it's face.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not chastising Sun for their decisions re: OpenSolaris. It's their code, their choice. If it were me I would follow the IBM model but I didn't spend the millions or billions to develop the code. However, it was the Sun rep(and by implication Sun) who made the bald assertions and comparisons. The burden of proof is on his shoulders, and quite frankly his arguments are found lacking.
Huh?
Granted I fall asleep sometimes and have been known to miss obvious points but where did "criminal negligence" enter this discussion, except above?
No you wouldn't, the OSS project would just recompile and rerelease. Besides it wasn't a question of replacing the DLL, they don't even make a reasonable attempt at finding the DLL and reporting what it might be attached to.
If someone without MS's resources can make a better tool, why can't MS?
Yes. Sorry I was being sloppy, but I did add "accidents", which is really what I meant. And to be completely clear, "unforeseen circumstances not caused by manufacturing defect". O.k. so this isn't even true as insurance probably covers that and than they will collect from the manufacturer.
However, the point is really that the onus shouldn't be on the customer to pay a company more to promptly fix a problem they cause. That's extortion, not support. You don't pay insurance to the electrical contractor who wired your house.
As a way of getting Microsoft's direct attention the letter admittedly sucks.
However, I would argue that the guys point wasn't to garner browny points with geeks as much as to get the frustration off his chest AND get geeks to recognize once again the flaws in MS's security protocols.
Furthermore it isn't a "cheap pot-shot". He's venting, he's not bootlicking. He's saying "for crying out loud, you guys have Billions of dollars, resources up the wazoo and you can't get it right, damn I'm mad and I'm going to vent(but I'm going to be humorous in doing so)!" Haven't you EVER felt that way. The beauty of the web is that he can post that and hopefully feel better about it.
So, your right, this isn't for MS, it's for the masses, including the press and geeks who might read it, giggle a bit, and maybe as a group hold MS's feet to the fire on this.
No you weren't particularly flippant, but the fact is you were way off topic with a "political correctness" attack. That in and of itself is "flippant".
As for the political correctness of 'he' and 'she', I still contend that the gender of the author can dictate the useage without implying offense. Considering the offensiveness factor of something like 'herstory'(as you noted), I don't believe this particular useage merited a comment(thus my 'caffeine' remark). In other words there are bigger fish to fry.
I don't think it's such a terrible thing either, but the Sun reps point is that they aren't just going to contribute their experience to Linux because the philosophies are different. When in actual fact I don't believe that is the case at all at this point, but the implementations and realities of where the two started from are different.
The idea that Linus doesn't value reliability and serviceability over speed and features simply isn't true. Otherwise he would have integrated the features back in '97. But than again Linus has many more hardware platforms to concern himself over NOW.
So as the Linux advocate pointed out, if Sun were to use their experience to add the features to Linux, with the requisite due diligence in making sure they don't break everything, t's likely Linus would integrate the features. Simply because he does value the same things Sun espouses they value.
Sure that would be nice. But it's FREE and he's a 4th party contributor to this issue. It's also possible he would be in legal trouble for doing so(just making this up as I doubt it but it's possible).
And your point is?
The grandparent supposedly found irony in someone complaining about a commercial product having no "real" support while distributing a free product without warranty. Your response? Here's another COMMERCIAL product without warranty.
The man wrote a scanner for the vulnerability better than the one Microsoft distributes, how much more constructive do you want him to be? All MS have to do is pick up his version and distribute it or ask if they can distribute it. They could also ask for and/or license the source code(it doesn't appear to be opensource).
I see no problem in him writing a letter(which was funny) deriding MS when he was able to write a better scanner himself. Especially since MS are supposed to have put security first, and is a company with Billions in assets and cash. In other words, MS had effectively infinite resources compared to this guy and they didn't do their job. They should get slapped in the face for it.