On a side note I suspect that most criticism of the book arise from Mr. Savage's somewhat unorthodox philosophies concerning governments and society structures
Great, another sign that my wiring is screwy on some fundamental level. I'm reading the accounts of this book thinking, "hm, I guess that might be interesting." But it's when I get to this line my brain reflexively goes, "Neat! I'll have to check that out!"
Yeesh... I guess you can take the guy out of talk.politics.theory but you can't take the talk.politics.theory out of the guy...:-P
In particular, I was asking about the thousands of OSS projects that have between 1 and 5 developers. Do these get any significant amount of patches/bugfixes to justify their being open source?
Any opinions?
My opinion is that they don't get input based on how many developers are on the project, they get input based on how many developer-esque people use the project's product. I've never been an offcial developer on any OSS project but I've submitted code fixes when I've had to fix something. The actual number of developers on the project was not a factor in that decision... I just wanted to make sure that my fix had a chance to make it into the upstream so I wouldn't have to worry about it when the next release came out.
So, if not many people use it, there won't be much input... but is that a bug or a feature?
People die of old age. Therefore, if someone just died, they died of old age.
Pretty close. It should be more like "People die of old age. Therefore, if an old person just died and we can't prove they died from some unnatural cause, we say they died of old age."
Convincing "larger ISPs" to implement an alternative standard would also require prodigious effort.
Actually, the more mail your site receives, the more interested you tend to be in stopping the flow of spam. If you consider how much in resources they spend dealing with spam in terms of capacity (for storage, bandwidth, processing volume, and filtering) and user complaints, it isn't that surprising. If a workable implementation ever comes out of this, you can expect the larger ISPs to have test servers up pretty quickly.
I concur; migrating to another protocol entirely would be arduous and intensive.
Actually, his point seemed to be that actual adoption of a new protocol is simpler than upgrading your webserver since you can just add support for the new protocol without removing support for the old one. Presumably support for the old one wouldn't go away until some critical mass of [nonspam] email volume had moved from the old system to the new. If the servers were set up to receive both kinds but to only send the new kind (when dealing with a recipient that accepted the new kind), that determination would be pretty straightforward, and adoption wouldn't be very scary.
Anyway, the rate of Apache upgrade is mainly determined by a mental calculation of perceived downtime risk to a perfectly-fine existing installation versus the perceived benefit of running 2.0 instead. It's too idiosyncratic to be a very useful predictor for even other product upgrades in general, much less for adoption of a method of processing email in addition to the not-perfectly-fine current system.
Whatever is done needs to be 100% backward compatible with existing email clients, not requiring even simple upgrades, or an astonishing proportion of real-world Net users will be disenfranchised.
Whatever is done needs to be able to deliver email while effectively correcting the system of incentives that encourages spamming. Any other considerations, like it or not, can only addressed insofar as they don't interfere with acheiving that goal. The current email system is broken and an ever-increasing amount of noise is flooding into that system. The end result is that the delivery system (which, as you have pointed out, is important to so many people) is in the process of collapsing. You talk as if the choice is between a healthy email system and some new one that we don't really need, when it's really a choice between a system that will inevitably be rendered useless by spam volume and a new one. And that new one has to include whatever features are required to avoid a repeat performance.
If the best solution is all server-side (and some proposals are) they may be able to also get the kind of backward-compatibility that you feel is required. But, make no mistake, we aren't doing anyone any favors if we don't actually fix the current system, even if the fix does eventually require a client upgrade when the last parts of old system are finally phased out. If it is any comfort, I would expect that "AOL users or webtv clients or people who bought email appliances" will be the least-effected since their providers understand that market and have control of both ends of that particular client-server implementation.
"There's a fear that SCO is using this as a means of either selling the company or desperately attempting to find some other business model as an alternative to their current software business," Weiss said. "I would advise SCO (Unix) users that they should have a contingency plan or migration plan to an alternate platform."
Ya think?
I would assume that any organization that hadn't already received that message years ago must have some pretty intense clue-shielding in place.
Since the attention span here seems to be about 5 minutes, I will reiterate a basic argument about spam (and many other problems plaguing us):
Just as you can't solve a technology problem with laws, you can't solve a social problem with technology.
Spam is a social problem.
The only consolation I have in seeing someone, yet again, totally miss the point of the spam problem (and to represent their misunderstanding as some sort of time-honored wisdom, no less), is the fact that I am finally seeing a growing number of folks in the antispam community seriously exploring the idea of a new design for the email delivery system.
Spam is not a social problem. Spam exists because of the way our email system is designed. The fact that we have always had "scam artists" is not a point in favor of your assertion. The fact that we have always had scam artists but have not always had spam clearly illustrates that the scam artists only started this particular racket after they were exposed to our big ol' overly-trusting email system. Change the system of incentives in that email system, however, and, without changing human nature or the number of scam artists in existence, you will change the amount of spam in the email system. IOW, they currently use it because the technical design of our email system makes it easy for them to engage in their particular form of antisocial behavior. If and when it doesn't, they will not disappear, they will just stop sending spam through the email system.
If you want to argue that we shouldn't change our current email system, knock yourself out. There is something to be said for that point of view since a redesign will be complicated. I like to think that it was the realization of how big a task it is that has kept so many people from seriously considering the possibility before now. The thing is, as complicated as it may be, it is much simpler than your ongoing commitment to that education campaign which has obviously worked so well for us so far. The thing is, we have had suckers for longer than we have had scam artists and, as you point out, the number of them will have to get very, very small before spammers will decide to give up an activity which costs them so very little to engage in.
Now, understand, I'm not suggesting you stop trying to educate away the suckers. I do it myself since it seems like a useful thing to do until we can address the problems in the design of the email system. I'm not even suggesting that you stop spreading the word about what we should be telling suckers that we know (though it is rather hard for me to believe that there is anyone here who doesn't already know them). I am suggesting that you stop getting in the way of people who are trying other approaches to solve the problem. After all, they may be right, and it's no skin off your nose if they at least explore the possibility, is it? If you don't want to join in their effort then that's your business. Education and redesign are not mutually-exclusive approaches to the problem.
Here's something that is old news (mid-80's), but it shows how easily that sort of thing could happen. I was browsing through old RISK Forum digests recently looking for something and came across a reference to
this incident. Code that a summer programmer had supposedly inserted into Access had deleted files on a newspaper columnist's computer. The news post includes the full article... here's the bit about the rogue programmer:
Both [Microsoft's] Sanderson and Taucher insisted that the screen of
threatening text, culminating in the message, "The weed of crime bears
bitter fruit. Now trashing your program disk," was only meant to
scare. "There is nothing in the code to cause any erasure," Sanderson
said.
They both said that the message had been removed from the
product a couple of weeks ago and that I had an older version. Owners
who were concerned could exchange their software, Sanderson said.
Oh, they also said the offensive warning was inserted in the
program without authorization by a "summer programmer." When it was
discovered, it was removed.
How about that! The idle threat about disk-trashing was
inserted without the knowledge of this large and prosperous software
company. And the threat that was supposed to merely scare innocent
users somehow came alive and destroyed my files.
You would hope that MS's screening procedures are better these days, but there is one thing you can say for sure: their codebase is a helluva lot bigger now than it was then...
If you like those, but not the price, you should check out the
Sager's. Look familiar?;-) Some vendors will even sell them in the
"pretty colors". Looks like one of the vendors has started
a forum for discussions about the platform.
Someone had a pretty detailed review of his purchase of his Sager from one of the vendors, but that page seems to be unavailable at the moment. Here's
the Google cache of it, tho.
Anyway, I don't have the dosh to be a customer, happy or otherwise, so consider this more of an FYI than a recommendation...;-)
Said Schwartz, "I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly."
The thing is, that level of support comes with support contracts, not with simple purchases. Once you start making the case that the superiority of your OS is based on how you will respond to support contracts, however, you've gone pretty far down the slippery slope, IMHO. Perhaps it is impossible for a Linux distro (or some third party) to ever offer that same level of support, but I wouldn't bet money on that. What will Schwartz say in Sun's defense then? Of course, he may be working for a commercial Linux distro by that time, and will have no interest in trying to come up with a defense for Sun, anymore. Who knows?
The thing is, I don't find that "something goes wrong" with the kind of regularity that Schwartz seems to fear. Most of the time when we have Sun or Dell out here to service a server, it is to replace a hard drive in an array. The service contract is basically a way to avoid having replacement parts around for mission-critical systems. Is that enough reason to go ahead and buy the extended warranty on your OS when you make your purchase? I guess businesses will continue to decide that over time, as Dell has.
How does the above deserve a troll rating? At this point I'm mostly an agnostic on the XML vs. non-marked-up config file debate, but I thought the above post was the most succinct illustration in the thread of how "human-readable" is not just supposed to mean "can be comprehended by a human with programming experience".
simply because they have a different style of work practice
That's an excellent point to bring up since it does happen a lot, but I can say I have had situations which go beyond that. The last place I was at, for instance, was in in need of some tender loving care when I got there. No firewall, Solaris servers open to the net with no effort to secure them (aside from setting a root password;-) ), web server processes didn't shut down or start up cleanly (even if you properly shut the servers down;-) ), no log rotation on the web server logs (some were already at the maximum file size limit when I got there), mission-critical Oracle server so misconfigured that it was spitting 600-level errors into the logs right from the first day it was started (since there was no log rotation there, either, I can say that with authority;-) ). Stuff like that.
I guess you could consider that just a different style of work practice, but you would have to use a pretty broad definition. OTOH, his choice to base the infrastructure on an old version of Netscape iPlanet was more of a style thing, I suppose, though some might disagree.;-)
Re:ok, so he removes it from his lexicon so what?
on
Verbing Weirds Google
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· Score: 1
WordSpy is simply recording the usage, much like Wired's Jargon section does, or like ESR's Jargon File, or like OED always has.
Back in 1999 we got a threatening letter from a Binney & Smith lawyer (Kevin S. Cavanaugh, who was apparently a busy boy at the time) about an HTML-ized copy of the Jargon File we have (because of the crayola books and crayola entries. IIRC, he also highlighted the mention of Crayola in the crayon entry). The letter claimed that the "use of Binney & Smith's intellectual property in your web site" is "likely to confuse consumers as to the source or sponsorship of your products/services." It further stated that "your use also violates unfair trade practice laws." (they would have to be very unfair laws, indeed;-) )
Of course, we weren't using the term "crayola" in connection with any of our "products/services", so there was no opportunity for confusion on the part of consumers. On top of that, the terms had been part of the Jargon File for over 10 years prior to that (and, I would imagine, in the three printed editions of the Jargon File that were published during that time). And, surprise surprise, they still are part of the Jargon File today.
I dunno why companies let their lawyers loose on search engines... it only makes the company look like clueless idiots on the net. What is especially surprising, in this case, is that it shows that even Google has left themselves open to the typical PR damage that a "googling" lawyer can inflict on his employers.
I realize you are just a little troll who was modded up by a confused moderator, but your post did fill me with a bit of nostalgia which, in turn, inspired me to do a little searching. So, here we are:
Can you imagine how much more vehemently people would jump on Microsoft if they said something like that?
Unfortunately, I can't find much info about how Microsoft responded to their first vulnerability, but, if this account of their reaction to a subsequent problem (from the RISKS-FORUM Digest Saturday, 7 Dec 1985 Volume 1: Issue 27) is any indication, I'd have to assume that it was at least as bad as Epic's first response was. You are probably right: if/. had been around back then, Microsoft would have been in for yet-another-undeserved tongue-lashing over this!
A COMMERCIAL WORM
Just a few days after I wrote "Electronic AIDS, Part I," I read a column in the
WASHINGTON TIMES, the conservative (Moonie-owed) daily newspaper. One of the
reporters has a computer. He had purchased a newly released program from
Microsoft Co., called "Access." Understand that Microsoft supplies the disk
operating system which is used by the IBM PC, the most popular microcomputer.
In other words, this is no backyard company. It is one of the two or three
software giants in the U.S. (Its owner is under age 30, which tells you
something about who is pinoeering the microcomputer revolution.)
As he was setting up his computer to take advantage of this telecommunications
program, a warning flashed on his screen: "The weed of crime bears bitter
fruit. Now trashing your program disk." Wham! He lost all his files --
probably a couple of year's worth of work. Sure, he was probably smart enough
to have made back-up copies, but think of the risk. And what if it had been a
worm that kept silent for a few years, infecting all of his back-up disks?
He called Microsoft, and they gave him the runaround. They told him that they
were not responsible. Some programmer had put in the worm in order to zap
program pirates, but the journalist insisted that he was an original buyer.
Tough luck, they told him. Obviously, they didn't know that he was a reporter.
Then he published his article. All of a sudden, the victim was not some
average buyer. He was big trouble. Things started moving. INFOWORLD (Oct.
28) reports that Microsoft has admitted that a programmer put in the worm, but
without permission. The offending text has now been removed, we are assured.
But what if it had sat in the master for three years? HERE IS THE PREMIER FIRM
IN THE SOFTWARE BUSINESS, AND IT HAD AN UNAUTHORIZED PROGRAMMER INSERT A WORM.
This is not idle speculation. It has already happened, verfiying my
hypothetical scenario within a few days after I published it.
Can you imagine the absolute havoc that a dormant worm or virus could create if
it were imbedded in all updates of Microsoft's masters of PC DOS and MS DOS,
the operating systems for all IBM microcomputers and IBM compatible
microcomputers? It could cost the U.S. economy billions, and some
microcomputer-dependent firms wouldn't survive. Any Microsoft spokesman who
says, "it's impossible; it could never happen" has to explain how it already
did happen to "Access."
[BTW, I dunno why the author went on about worms and viruses in connection with nonreplicating malicious code... I guess it was in the spirit of their special "worms and viruses issue"? True, the whole purpose of the risks forum was to discuss risks, and the current problem was being used to illustrate the potential for worse problems. But, still, to call it a worm in all caps...]
Here's a post that included the original Washington Times column, for anyone else who found the hyperbole of the above article a bit too much.
What's worse is that you could post to them. So, now that it's all better, we have 500 or so "I better dash this off so I can be the first post!"-style messages to wade through...;-)
If you're going to correct someone for mispelling something, then you should take the time to make sure you do the same
Since he is, in effect, diss-spelling rather than mispelling I'm not surprised that he wouldn't consider the one to be the same as the other. After all, as you point out, he is almost certainly using "Windoze" intentionally for effect...
(Yes, I am aware of the fact you think its "leet" to call it Windoze instead of Windows. However, mispelling it is stupid.)
I'd call 'disspelling' more pointless than stupid, but that's splitting hairs, I suppose. Anyway, given how common the practice is, here and elsewhere on the Internet, I'm kind of surprised that this one mild instance bugged you as much as it apparently did.
I have yet to read through all of the discussion that was linked to, but it is very heavy slogging so far... a surprising amount of seemingly-tangental name-calling and finger-pointing.
In the end, it's up to Debian what gets in. I've been displeased with their fervor from time-to-time over the years, but never enough to want to ditch the distro. I found it amusing that the mplayer link said they were trying to find out "why does debian-legal think they know what is GPL and what is not better than MPlayer and XAnim authors." The real question may be why MPlayer and XAnim authors think they get to decide what Debian is comfortable with...
My Debian machines will still have mplayer on it regardless of what Debian decides to include in their distro, but the fact remains that what goes into a Debian distro is entirely up to the Debian folks. Poking at them on the list isn't going to (and shouldn't) change that...
Grade inflation in the lower grades is a huge problem... it is at the point where some teachers have been fired for refusing to raise grades at a parent's request. When those kids get to college (and we have reached alltime highs of high school students going on to college... over 2/3's, the last I had heard), what happens? If they go to, say, MIT, they flunk out, but most colleges can't afford to just flunk loads of their students out... they have to think of their bottom line. If the parents want to pay them for a diploma, then that's what they'll get. That would have meant a threat to a colege's accredidation in the past, but as inflation inched up, and became more widespread, the risk becomes lower. The "bottom line" is also what drives the publish-or-perish mentality that leaves lots of tech students being dealing with TAs rather than their big-name professor.
Quite honestly, I can't understand why science and engineering majors are held to one standard for grades and academics versus humanities majors even in the same school.
IMHO it has a lot to do with the kind of people who would choose to major in fields which make no secret of being a PITA. They are the people who, by and large, are least effected by the pre-college grade inflation. As a result, those parts of the university aren't under the same pressure to inflate as the rest of the university is. If they ever do come under the pressure, however, they will inflate, too.
College degrees are increasingly becoming as impressive as a high school degree.
Well, he gets paid a lot in money and publicity whether his clients win or not, and the publicity means that future schmucks will pay him a lot of money (whether -they- win or lose).
I guess as long as there are schmucks who will pay him to fight legal battles against Reality he will soldier on and continue to lose all the way to the bank...
The main difficulty I've seen in my past of admining all-*nix work LANs is that there can be a kind of cognitive dissonance between what they use at work and what they use at home. I found that none of my users had any problem with a *nix desktop environment back when very few people had home computers. As we got into the 90's, however, we had more and more problems with people who expected things to behave differently because of their experince with their home Windows systems. These days, the common Linux desktops behave similarly enough that I don't think people will have as big a problem with that. The other questions that come up ("How do I open this powerpoint doc?", etc.) are more application-related and probably aren't going to be much of a factor in an elementary school. Of course, they might be more likely to ask, "Why can't I get my Sim City 4 to run?", but maybe that's not such a minus for a school...
More interesting story than I had expected
on
Maine School & Linux
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· Score: 4, Interesting
That was a pretty bold move considering his previous experience was very light on Linux. I found the bit about the common questions he was asked particularly interesting. I'm used to the assumptions about Windows and Linux that exist in an IT environment, but hadn't considered that education IT had it's own set of Linux/Windows shibboleths...;-)
Hm... speaking of shibboleths, I wonder how many posts it will take before someone seriously handwrings about it being a "Christian" academy adopting Linux...;-)
I wonder if the points where they plan to mount all of the electromagnets are going to up to the job... it doesn't seem like they would have been designed for stress in that direction.
Slashdot Mirror
On a side note I suspect that most criticism of the book arise from Mr. Savage's somewhat unorthodox philosophies concerning governments and society structures
Great, another sign that my wiring is screwy on some fundamental level. I'm reading the accounts of this book thinking, "hm, I guess that might be interesting." But it's when I get to this line my brain reflexively goes, "Neat! I'll have to check that out!"
Yeesh... I guess you can take the guy out of talk.politics.theory but you can't take the talk.politics.theory out of the guy... :-P
In particular, I was asking about the thousands of OSS projects that have between 1 and 5 developers. Do these get any significant amount of patches/bugfixes to justify their being open source?
Any opinions?
My opinion is that they don't get input based on how many developers are on the project, they get input based on how many developer-esque people use the project's product. I've never been an offcial developer on any OSS project but I've submitted code fixes when I've had to fix something. The actual number of developers on the project was not a factor in that decision... I just wanted to make sure that my fix had a chance to make it into the upstream so I wouldn't have to worry about it when the next release came out.
So, if not many people use it, there won't be much input... but is that a bug or a feature?
People die of old age. Therefore, if someone just died, they died of old age.
Pretty close. It should be more like "People die of old age. Therefore, if an old person just died and we can't prove they died from some unnatural cause, we say they died of old age."
Convincing "larger ISPs" to implement an alternative standard would also require prodigious effort.
Actually, the more mail your site receives, the more interested you tend to be in stopping the flow of spam. If you consider how much in resources they spend dealing with spam in terms of capacity (for storage, bandwidth, processing volume, and filtering) and user complaints, it isn't that surprising. If a workable implementation ever comes out of this, you can expect the larger ISPs to have test servers up pretty quickly.
I concur; migrating to another protocol entirely would be arduous and intensive.
Actually, his point seemed to be that actual adoption of a new protocol is simpler than upgrading your webserver since you can just add support for the new protocol without removing support for the old one. Presumably support for the old one wouldn't go away until some critical mass of [nonspam] email volume had moved from the old system to the new. If the servers were set up to receive both kinds but to only send the new kind (when dealing with a recipient that accepted the new kind), that determination would be pretty straightforward, and adoption wouldn't be very scary.
Anyway, the rate of Apache upgrade is mainly determined by a mental calculation of perceived downtime risk to a perfectly-fine existing installation versus the perceived benefit of running 2.0 instead. It's too idiosyncratic to be a very useful predictor for even other product upgrades in general, much less for adoption of a method of processing email in addition to the not-perfectly-fine current system.
Whatever is done needs to be 100% backward compatible with existing email clients, not requiring even simple upgrades, or an astonishing proportion of real-world Net users will be disenfranchised.
Whatever is done needs to be able to deliver email while effectively correcting the system of incentives that encourages spamming. Any other considerations, like it or not, can only addressed insofar as they don't interfere with acheiving that goal. The current email system is broken and an ever-increasing amount of noise is flooding into that system. The end result is that the delivery system (which, as you have pointed out, is important to so many people) is in the process of collapsing. You talk as if the choice is between a healthy email system and some new one that we don't really need, when it's really a choice between a system that will inevitably be rendered useless by spam volume and a new one. And that new one has to include whatever features are required to avoid a repeat performance.
If the best solution is all server-side (and some proposals are) they may be able to also get the kind of backward-compatibility that you feel is required. But, make no mistake, we aren't doing anyone any favors if we don't actually fix the current system, even if the fix does eventually require a client upgrade when the last parts of old system are finally phased out. If it is any comfort, I would expect that "AOL users or webtv clients or people who bought email appliances" will be the least-effected since their providers understand that market and have control of both ends of that particular client-server implementation.
"There's a fear that SCO is using this as a means of either selling the company or desperately attempting to find some other business model as an alternative to their current software business," Weiss said. "I would advise SCO (Unix) users that they should have a contingency plan or migration plan to an alternate platform."
Ya think?
I would assume that any organization that hadn't already received that message years ago must have some pretty intense clue-shielding in place.
Since the attention span here seems to be about 5 minutes, I will reiterate a basic argument about spam (and many other problems plaguing us):
Spam is a social problem.The only consolation I have in seeing someone, yet again, totally miss the point of the spam problem (and to represent their misunderstanding as some sort of time-honored wisdom, no less), is the fact that I am finally seeing a growing number of folks in the antispam community seriously exploring the idea of a new design for the email delivery system.
Spam is not a social problem. Spam exists because of the way our email system is designed. The fact that we have always had "scam artists" is not a point in favor of your assertion. The fact that we have always had scam artists but have not always had spam clearly illustrates that the scam artists only started this particular racket after they were exposed to our big ol' overly-trusting email system. Change the system of incentives in that email system, however, and, without changing human nature or the number of scam artists in existence, you will change the amount of spam in the email system. IOW, they currently use it because the technical design of our email system makes it easy for them to engage in their particular form of antisocial behavior. If and when it doesn't, they will not disappear, they will just stop sending spam through the email system.
If you want to argue that we shouldn't change our current email system, knock yourself out. There is something to be said for that point of view since a redesign will be complicated. I like to think that it was the realization of how big a task it is that has kept so many people from seriously considering the possibility before now. The thing is, as complicated as it may be, it is much simpler than your ongoing commitment to that education campaign which has obviously worked so well for us so far. The thing is, we have had suckers for longer than we have had scam artists and, as you point out, the number of them will have to get very, very small before spammers will decide to give up an activity which costs them so very little to engage in.
Now, understand, I'm not suggesting you stop trying to educate away the suckers. I do it myself since it seems like a useful thing to do until we can address the problems in the design of the email system. I'm not even suggesting that you stop spreading the word about what we should be telling suckers that we know (though it is rather hard for me to believe that there is anyone here who doesn't already know them). I am suggesting that you stop getting in the way of people who are trying other approaches to solve the problem. After all, they may be right, and it's no skin off your nose if they at least explore the possibility, is it? If you don't want to join in their effort then that's your business. Education and redesign are not mutually-exclusive approaches to the problem.
Here's something that is old news (mid-80's), but it shows how easily that sort of thing could happen. I was browsing through old RISK Forum digests recently looking for something and came across a reference to this incident. Code that a summer programmer had supposedly inserted into Access had deleted files on a newspaper columnist's computer. The news post includes the full article... here's the bit about the rogue programmer:
You would hope that MS's screening procedures are better these days, but there is one thing you can say for sure: their codebase is a helluva lot bigger now than it was then...
If you like those, but not the price, you should check out the Sager's. Look familiar? ;-) Some vendors will even sell them in the
"pretty colors". Looks like one of the vendors has started
a forum for discussions about the platform.
Someone had a pretty detailed review of his purchase of his Sager from one of the vendors, but that page seems to be unavailable at the moment. Here's the Google cache of it, tho.
Anyway, I don't have the dosh to be a customer, happy or otherwise, so consider this more of an FYI than a recommendation... ;-)
Said Schwartz, "I don't think businesses are really prepared to trust their mission critical systems to technologies where, if something goes wrong with the open source, nobody is responsible for fixing it and doing all the testing on a timely basis. With Sun, you've got a single throat to choke and we can respond instantly."
The thing is, that level of support comes with support contracts, not with simple purchases. Once you start making the case that the superiority of your OS is based on how you will respond to support contracts, however, you've gone pretty far down the slippery slope, IMHO. Perhaps it is impossible for a Linux distro (or some third party) to ever offer that same level of support, but I wouldn't bet money on that. What will Schwartz say in Sun's defense then? Of course, he may be working for a commercial Linux distro by that time, and will have no interest in trying to come up with a defense for Sun, anymore. Who knows?
The thing is, I don't find that "something goes wrong" with the kind of regularity that Schwartz seems to fear. Most of the time when we have Sun or Dell out here to service a server, it is to replace a hard drive in an array. The service contract is basically a way to avoid having replacement parts around for mission-critical systems. Is that enough reason to go ahead and buy the extended warranty on your OS when you make your purchase? I guess businesses will continue to decide that over time, as Dell has.
How does the above deserve a troll rating? At this point I'm mostly an agnostic on the XML vs. non-marked-up config file debate, but I thought the above post was the most succinct illustration in the thread of how "human-readable" is not just supposed to mean "can be comprehended by a human with programming experience".
simply because they have a different style of work practice
That's an excellent point to bring up since it does happen a lot, but I can say I have had situations which go beyond that. The last place I was at, for instance, was in in need of some tender loving care when I got there. No firewall, Solaris servers open to the net with no effort to secure them (aside from setting a root password ;-) ), web server processes didn't shut down or start up cleanly (even if you properly shut the servers down ;-) ), no log rotation on the web server logs (some were already at the maximum file size limit when I got there), mission-critical Oracle server so misconfigured that it was spitting 600-level errors into the logs right from the first day it was started (since there was no log rotation there, either, I can say that with authority ;-) ). Stuff like that.
I guess you could consider that just a different style of work practice, but you would have to use a pretty broad definition. OTOH, his choice to base the infrastructure on an old version of Netscape iPlanet was more of a style thing, I suppose, though some might disagree. ;-)
...sounds ominous. ;-)
WordSpy is simply recording the usage, much like Wired's Jargon section does, or like ESR's Jargon File, or like OED always has.
Back in 1999 we got a threatening letter from a Binney & Smith lawyer (Kevin S. Cavanaugh, who was apparently a busy boy at the time) about an HTML-ized copy of the Jargon File we have (because of the crayola books and crayola entries. IIRC, he also highlighted the mention of Crayola in the crayon entry). The letter claimed that the "use of Binney & Smith's intellectual property in your web site" is "likely to confuse consumers as to the source or sponsorship of your products/services." It further stated that "your use also violates unfair trade practice laws." (they would have to be very unfair laws, indeed ;-) )
Of course, we weren't using the term "crayola" in connection with any of our "products/services", so there was no opportunity for confusion on the part of consumers. On top of that, the terms had been part of the Jargon File for over 10 years prior to that (and, I would imagine, in the three printed editions of the Jargon File that were published during that time). And, surprise surprise, they still are part of the Jargon File today.
I dunno why companies let their lawyers loose on search engines... it only makes the company look like clueless idiots on the net. What is especially surprising, in this case, is that it shows that even Google has left themselves open to the typical PR damage that a "googling" lawyer can inflict on his employers.
I realize you are just a little troll who was modded up by a confused moderator, but your post did fill me with a bit of nostalgia which, in turn, inspired me to do a little searching. So, here we are:
Can you imagine how much more vehemently people would jump on Microsoft if they said something like that?
Unfortunately, I can't find much info about how Microsoft responded to their first vulnerability, but, if this account of their reaction to a subsequent problem (from the RISKS-FORUM Digest Saturday, 7 Dec 1985 Volume 1: Issue 27) is any indication, I'd have to assume that it was at least as bad as Epic's first response was. You are probably right: if /. had been around back then, Microsoft would have been in for yet-another-undeserved tongue-lashing over this!
[BTW, I dunno why the author went on about worms and viruses in connection with nonreplicating malicious code... I guess it was in the spirit of their special "worms and viruses issue"? True, the whole purpose of the risks forum was to discuss risks, and the current problem was being used to illustrate the potential for worse problems. But, still, to call it a worm in all caps...]
Here's a post that included the original Washington Times column, for anyone else who found the hyperbole of the above article a bit too much.
What's worse is that you could post to them. So, now that it's all better, we have 500 or so "I better dash this off so I can be the first post!"-style messages to wade through... ;-)
If you're going to correct someone for mispelling something, then you should take the time to make sure you do the same
Since he is, in effect, diss-spelling rather than mispelling I'm not surprised that he wouldn't consider the one to be the same as the other. After all, as you point out, he is almost certainly using "Windoze" intentionally for effect...
(Yes, I am aware of the fact you think its "leet" to call it Windoze instead of Windows. However, mispelling it is stupid.)
I'd call 'disspelling' more pointless than stupid, but that's splitting hairs, I suppose. Anyway, given how common the practice is, here and elsewhere on the Internet, I'm kind of surprised that this one mild instance bugged you as much as it apparently did.
I have yet to read through all of the discussion that was linked to, but it is very heavy slogging so far... a surprising amount of seemingly-tangental name-calling and finger-pointing.
In the end, it's up to Debian what gets in. I've been displeased with their fervor from time-to-time over the years, but never enough to want to ditch the distro. I found it amusing that the mplayer link said they were trying to find out "why does debian-legal think they know what is GPL and what is not better than MPlayer and XAnim authors." The real question may be why MPlayer and XAnim authors think they get to decide what Debian is comfortable with...
My Debian machines will still have mplayer on it regardless of what Debian decides to include in their distro, but the fact remains that what goes into a Debian distro is entirely up to the Debian folks. Poking at them on the list isn't going to (and shouldn't) change that...
Grade inflation in the lower grades is a huge problem... it is at the point where some teachers have been fired for refusing to raise grades at a parent's request. When those kids get to college (and we have reached alltime highs of high school students going on to college... over 2/3's, the last I had heard), what happens? If they go to, say, MIT, they flunk out, but most colleges can't afford to just flunk loads of their students out... they have to think of their bottom line. If the parents want to pay them for a diploma, then that's what they'll get. That would have meant a threat to a colege's accredidation in the past, but as inflation inched up, and became more widespread, the risk becomes lower. The "bottom line" is also what drives the publish-or-perish mentality that leaves lots of tech students being dealing with TAs rather than their big-name professor.
Quite honestly, I can't understand why science and engineering majors are held to one standard for grades and academics versus humanities majors even in the same school.
IMHO it has a lot to do with the kind of people who would choose to major in fields which make no secret of being a PITA. They are the people who, by and large, are least effected by the pre-college grade inflation. As a result, those parts of the university aren't under the same pressure to inflate as the rest of the university is. If they ever do come under the pressure, however, they will inflate, too.
College degrees are increasingly becoming as impressive as a high school degree.
Well, he gets paid a lot in money and publicity whether his clients win or not, and the publicity means that future schmucks will pay him a lot of money (whether -they- win or lose).
I guess as long as there are schmucks who will pay him to fight legal battles against Reality he will soldier on and continue to lose all the way to the bank...If they give third parties enough leeway, there may be both one- and two-slot versions available when it hits the market.
The main difficulty I've seen in my past of admining all-*nix work LANs is that there can be a kind of cognitive dissonance between what they use at work and what they use at home. I found that none of my users had any problem with a *nix desktop environment back when very few people had home computers. As we got into the 90's, however, we had more and more problems with people who expected things to behave differently because of their experince with their home Windows systems. These days, the common Linux desktops behave similarly enough that I don't think people will have as big a problem with that. The other questions that come up ("How do I open this powerpoint doc?", etc.) are more application-related and probably aren't going to be much of a factor in an elementary school. Of course, they might be more likely to ask, "Why can't I get my Sim City 4 to run?", but maybe that's not such a minus for a school...
That was a pretty bold move considering his previous experience was very light on Linux. I found the bit about the common questions he was asked particularly interesting. I'm used to the assumptions about Windows and Linux that exist in an IT environment, but hadn't considered that education IT had it's own set of Linux/Windows shibboleths... ;-)
Hm... speaking of shibboleths, I wonder how many posts it will take before someone seriously handwrings about it being a "Christian" academy adopting Linux... ;-)
I wonder if the points where they plan to mount all of the electromagnets are going to up to the job... it doesn't seem like they would have been designed for stress in that direction.