Don't try to make it into the next language/operating system/computing platform. You talked to RMS and other Emacs people way too much. Why should people learn a new language just to write a new file picker to replace your unspeakable abdomination (that may be gone now - didn't follow the news from my OSX cave)?
Gnome should be written using generally available and well-known languages - like C++ and maybe Java if any of the free VMs are usable. If you want to replace C++, start a separate project and convince people to use it on its own merits. You might have to do lots more work than just writting code - publish textbooks, go to standards comeetes, run a website with developer forums - but Perl and Python also suggest that a small potato can succeed with the right stuff.
Then if your language project takes off on your own right, you might consider switching the core development of GNOME. But don't ask people to buy your car just because they want to listen to it's radio player.
Well, if Picture Industry Association of America showed only the top half of Picasso's painting in museums, it would be no wonder if people demanded just that, or settled by buying half of his paintings and copying the other half.
Buy the same token, if they played the whole album, uninterrupted, on radio, I would have far less problem with buying it bundled if I like most of it. Still, I am spending far more money on music with iTunes music store, now that I am allowed to pick individual songs.
Also, is it pretentious of me to claim that usually the rest of the album doesn't suck, but in fact people don't listen to it enough for them to appreciate it?
Yes. I bought 2-3 dozens of CDs after hearing a great song on radio before wizening up, and they really sucked. Usually, not even one more songs to grab my attention.
1. Jump from the airplane without opening a parachute. When falling, sue the ground for being hard and the air for being soft, but refuse to do the sensible thing everyone is suggesting.
2. When just seconds from hitting the rocks, finally open a parachute in desperation
3. As soon as they slow the fall to survivable speed, start thinking about folding the parachute again and toughing it out.
From the Gates of evil, no less. Of course, he might not mind Mac users who are interested in running Windows as well. From my experience, it's quite decent for office applications and light work with Windows-only development tools. Old games are great, for new games you probably want a native version.
A slight bug in locally installed setuid program usually gives access to that acount. A slight bug in remotely callable program usually creates a remote exploit with enough determination or at least a nice, satisfying denial of service. For example, if your server logs long audit messages for each failed login, I can just keep calling until your machine runs out of disk space.
Therefore, I think it's justified to count all security bugs of measurable consequence and not try to assign an exact priority. What makes sense is setting up stripped-down Linux servers that only run the top-tested software. If you run a web server with perl, python, tk and shell scripts as apache modules, you might well have more bugs than the fully patches IIS with no extra stuff installed. On the other hand, if you stick to tomcat and well-written J2EE apps that always use prepared statements for user's input and set up a firewall to reject all incoming traffic except ports 22, 80 and 443, you probably have more worries about physical access and kidnapping than remote exploits.
Well, people write C++ programs for which they would never be able to read and validate the assembler in it's entirety all the time. In fact, it's far more likely that I will make a mistake in hand-written assembler that other people will not catch in their review than that a compiler makes a mistake generating it (sadly, both probabilities are considerable).
Just have the author publish a high-level algorithm of his proof program and a specification of his output format. Then someone can prove the algorithm correct or modify it so that it can be proven. Finally, someone other than the original author should re-implemlement the algorithm using a radically different programming language (say, Prolog rather than C++), run it on a different processor/OS and compare the output.
It's another question entirely of weather we want to merely know the answer or understand how the answer was derived. In many physics problems, for example, we already know what happens (smoke rises up) and just want to discover why. For other sets of problems, we would be happy just to have the answer without explanation, like a cancer drug that works.
Perhaps the next focus should be auto-generating a high-level overview of a computer proof that would make sense for a human.
A portion of my e-mail "Inbox" on 2004 March 29th as manifested by the "Microsoft Outlook Express 5" application. On this date I received 9 "legitimate" messages, 77 spam messages, and 2 virus attachments.
And later:
cpfahey@earthlink.net
Outlook Express, public e-mail address and he is complaining about spam. Surprise, surprise!
Or rather, Trolltech is. If you want to write a closed-source app for, say, Sharp Zaurus, they will leverage their monopoly by making you pay hundreds of bucks per developer for embedded Qt license.
kremvax.msk.su and e-mail viruses also used to be the stuff of April 1st and urban legends. Apple will make a fortune if it releases an under-$1K device that looks, weighs and behaves exactly as described in the article. Well, maybe add a TV tuner/recorder. And Apple video store that downloads movies within an hour.
Difficult? Yes. Needs fuel cells, low-power displays/HDs and other scientific/engineering breakthroughs? Yes. Beating Microsoft in profits within a few years? Priceless!
It's not very difficult to duplicate Safari using Apple's WebKit framework. Then, add the TrailBlazer history and release the sources so that the next person along doesn't have to duplicate the work.
why not stick around here and fight for what you believe in?
Because staying in jail is nasty and an individual should do everything possible to protect him/herself against that. Voting with your feet is also a form of fighting.
Sticking around is an option when majority of the population is against status quo and ready for an uprising or, in a working democracy, serious action at the voting booth. I doubt most French citizens care much about steganograpgy.
Make it easier to contibute content first
on
CSS for the LDP?
·
· Score: 1
Although I only learned about it from other comments for this article, it seams LDP only takes documents in DocBook format, which is some kind of SGML/XML thingy that you have to specifically learn and that is not supported by commonly used word processors like OpenOffice and (gasp) Word.
Let's say I develop a worthwhile Linux project and even write comprehensive, readable documentation - as a text file created in XEmacs. Would you a) ask me to learn some weird language with a lot of angular brackets and not include my stuff at all if I don't have time, motivation or ability, b) ask other people to convert my doc and re-convert every time I do a minor fix to it or c) develop tools that make the most of the format that I provided?
I think the answer is obvious. Look at how many non-technical people are using google or search.msn.com and manage to find exactly what they are looking for. Develop similar tools for Linux documentation that try to select and present the information the user wants based on hieristics, language-aware semantic analysis and so on. Then, give developers a system of simple-to-use hints that work with text, OpenOffice, manpages, info pages, HTML - any format in wide use.
Otherwise LDP will end up as a perfectly formatted, but incomplete or out-of-date set of documents. I think we all would rather read manpages.
I have a large number of products that cover one particular need. Without help, customers just get overwhelmed and leave.
Free Porn. Period. [ninenine.com]
Uhm.. I rather suspect they get overwhelmed physically rather than psycologically? I mean this is one area where a man can never have too much variety (as long as the choices are good, of course).
Of that there is no doubt, with spyware, crashes, slowdowns, popups. You are getting screwed all around. The question is, why would anyone want to use a pound in the ass browser?
Why does every Linux Desktop UI has to look like Windows or Aqua?
You mean there is a Linux desktop that looks like Aqua, with magnifying dock and genie effect and expose and visual design tools on the par with Interface Builder?! Pray give me a link!
Your e-mails are obviously easily mistaken for spam. Stick to always using the same From: address. Prefix the subject with your company name and keep it informative rather than marketing oriented. Then post detailed instructions for AOL users on how to filter them to a separate folder.
Better yet, let customers login to your website and read whatever information you are providing. Write an optional tray icon that will change when there is something to read and open the browser when clicked.
Spam is out of control, and if AOL didn't provide an easy way to mass-report it, e-mail would be unusable for its intended purpose. I am not going to click on each of 200 spams individually and confirm reporting. It's up to you and AOL to figure out how to correct user mistakes.
Well, nowadays most projects need TCP/IP, graphical display of data or disk I/O. By coding in assembler you would most likely sacrifice quality of implementation, algorithmic optimizations and thorough error checking/recovery for these kind of things - for example your networking stack might not use proper retransmit timing and clog the network with packets - talk about flight control!
Besides, along the way you might discover that you want to switch from MIPS to ARM. Now you get to re-write and re-debug your controllers. Yuck!
If you have a very basic data collection device, then yes you might use assembler. But then again you might design a custom chip instead of using a CPU for even better speed and power usage.
You have one in mind that supports variable bandwidth streaming, slide shows (few frames, clear image) and usable performance over dial up connections?
It is indeed a simple criteria, but not very suited to human understanding. How would it feel to walk on a planet that is just big enough to pull itself into a spherical shape?
How about just define a planet as an object you can walk on comfortably without launching into the air and flipping over your head or worse going into orbit? Luna might qualify, but asteroids will not.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't try to make it into the next language/operating system/computing platform. You talked to RMS and other Emacs people way too much. Why should people learn a new language just to write a new file picker to replace your unspeakable abdomination (that may be gone now - didn't follow the news from my OSX cave)?
Gnome should be written using generally available and well-known languages - like C++ and maybe Java if any of the free VMs are usable. If you want to replace C++, start a separate project and convince people to use it on its own merits. You might have to do lots more work than just writting code - publish textbooks, go to standards comeetes, run a website with developer forums - but Perl and Python also suggest that a small potato can succeed with the right stuff.
Then if your language project takes off on your own right, you might consider switching the core development of GNOME. But don't ask people to buy your car just because they want to listen to it's radio player.
Well, if Picture Industry Association of America showed only the top half of Picasso's painting in museums, it would be no wonder if people demanded just that, or settled by buying half of his paintings and copying the other half.
Buy the same token, if they played the whole album, uninterrupted, on radio, I would have far less problem with buying it bundled if I like most of it. Still, I am spending far more money on music with iTunes music store, now that I am allowed to pick individual songs.
Also, is it pretentious of me to claim that usually the rest of the album doesn't suck, but in fact people don't listen to it enough for them to appreciate it?
Yes. I bought 2-3 dozens of CDs after hearing a great song on radio before wizening up, and they really sucked. Usually, not even one more songs to grab my attention.
"...bundling less desirable tracks with hot singles."
Yes, I believe this is called an "album" these days.
No, I think it's called a geek heaven.
1. Jump from the airplane without opening a parachute. When falling, sue the ground for being hard and the air for being soft, but refuse to do the sensible thing everyone is suggesting.
2. When just seconds from hitting the rocks, finally open a parachute in desperation
3. As soon as they slow the fall to survivable speed, start thinking about folding the parachute again and toughing it out.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!
From the Gates of evil, no less. Of course, he might not mind Mac users who are interested in running Windows as well. From my experience, it's quite decent for office applications and light work with Windows-only development tools. Old games are great, for new games you probably want a native version.
A slight bug in locally installed setuid program usually gives access to that acount. A slight bug in remotely callable program usually creates a remote exploit with enough determination or at least a nice, satisfying denial of service. For example, if your server logs long audit messages for each failed login, I can just keep calling until your machine runs out of disk space.
Therefore, I think it's justified to count all security bugs of measurable consequence and not try to assign an exact priority. What makes sense is setting up stripped-down Linux servers that only run the top-tested software. If you run a web server with perl, python, tk and shell scripts as apache modules, you might well have more bugs than the fully patches IIS with no extra stuff installed. On the other hand, if you stick to tomcat and well-written J2EE apps that always use prepared statements for user's input and set up a firewall to reject all incoming traffic except ports 22, 80 and 443, you probably have more worries about physical access and kidnapping than remote exploits.
make things look like something that a profetional would use
Like a web browser with a spell checker perhaps?
Well, people write C++ programs for which they would never be able to read and validate the assembler in it's entirety all the time. In fact, it's far more likely that I will make a mistake in hand-written assembler that other people will not catch in their review than that a compiler makes a mistake generating it (sadly, both probabilities are considerable).
Just have the author publish a high-level algorithm of his proof program and a specification of his output format. Then someone can prove the algorithm correct or modify it so that it can be proven. Finally, someone other than the original author should re-implemlement the algorithm using a radically different programming language (say, Prolog rather than C++), run it on a different processor/OS and compare the output.
It's another question entirely of weather we want to merely know the answer or understand how the answer was derived. In many physics problems, for example, we already know what happens (smoke rises up) and just want to discover why. For other sets of problems, we would be happy just to have the answer without explanation, like a cancer drug that works.
Perhaps the next focus should be auto-generating a high-level overview of a computer proof that would make sense for a human.
A portion of my e-mail "Inbox" on 2004 March 29th as manifested by the "Microsoft Outlook Express 5" application. On this date I received 9 "legitimate" messages, 77 spam messages, and 2 virus attachments.
And later:
cpfahey@earthlink.net
Outlook Express, public e-mail address and he is complaining about spam. Surprise, surprise!
Or rather, Trolltech is. If you want to write a closed-source app for, say, Sharp Zaurus, they will leverage their monopoly by making you pay hundreds of bucks per developer for embedded Qt license.
kremvax.msk.su and e-mail viruses also used to be the stuff of April 1st and urban legends. Apple will make a fortune if it releases an under-$1K device that looks, weighs and behaves exactly as described in the article. Well, maybe add a TV tuner/recorder. And Apple video store that downloads movies within an hour.
Difficult? Yes. Needs fuel cells, low-power displays/HDs and other scientific/engineering breakthroughs? Yes. Beating Microsoft in profits within a few years? Priceless!
Any Apple decision makers reading slashdot?
But what would really suck is if every Tom, Dick or Henry started naming their son after a toilet.
It's not very difficult to duplicate Safari using Apple's WebKit framework. Then, add the TrailBlazer history and release the sources so that the next person along doesn't have to duplicate the work.
why not stick around here and fight for what you believe in?
Because staying in jail is nasty and an individual should do everything possible to protect him/herself against that. Voting with your feet is also a form of fighting.
Sticking around is an option when majority of the population is against status quo and ready for an uprising or, in a working democracy, serious action at the voting booth. I doubt most French citizens care much about steganograpgy.
Although I only learned about it from other comments for this article, it seams LDP only takes documents in DocBook format, which is some kind of SGML/XML thingy that you have to specifically learn and that is not supported by commonly used word processors like OpenOffice and (gasp) Word.
Let's say I develop a worthwhile Linux project and even write comprehensive, readable documentation - as a text file created in XEmacs. Would you a) ask me to learn some weird language with a lot of angular brackets and not include my stuff at all if I don't have time, motivation or ability, b) ask other people to convert my doc and re-convert every time I do a minor fix to it or c) develop tools that make the most of the format that I provided?
I think the answer is obvious. Look at how many non-technical people are using google or search.msn.com and manage to find exactly what they are looking for. Develop similar tools for Linux documentation that try to select and present the information the user wants based on hieristics, language-aware semantic analysis and so on. Then, give developers a system of simple-to-use hints that work with text, OpenOffice, manpages, info pages, HTML - any format in wide use.
Otherwise LDP will end up as a perfectly formatted, but incomplete or out-of-date set of documents. I think we all would rather read manpages.
I have a large number of products that cover one particular need. Without help, customers just get overwhelmed and leave.
Free Porn. Period. [ninenine.com]
Uhm.. I rather suspect they get overwhelmed physically rather than psycologically? I mean this is one area where a man can never have too much variety (as long as the choices are good, of course).
Of that there is no doubt, with spyware, crashes, slowdowns, popups. You are getting screwed all around. The question is, why would anyone want to use a pound in the ass browser?
Once you go Opers you don't go back!
Why does every Linux Desktop UI has to look like Windows or Aqua?
You mean there is a Linux desktop that looks like Aqua, with magnifying dock and genie effect and expose and visual design tools on the par with Interface Builder?! Pray give me a link!
They need to stop focusing on the Apple "touch"
Absolutely not! Would you ask Porsche to fight for market share with Honda and use cheap, generic components? After all, a car is a car.
The 2% are buying Apple for flawless quality and design and paying good money for that. This kind of reputation is hard to build and easy to lose.
Your e-mails are obviously easily mistaken for spam. Stick to always using the same From: address. Prefix the subject with your company name and keep it informative rather than marketing oriented. Then post detailed instructions for AOL users on how to filter them to a separate folder.
Better yet, let customers login to your website and read whatever information you are providing. Write an optional tray icon that will change when there is something to read and open the browser when clicked.
Spam is out of control, and if AOL didn't provide an easy way to mass-report it, e-mail would be unusable for its intended purpose. I am not going to click on each of 200 spams individually and confirm reporting. It's up to you and AOL to figure out how to correct user mistakes.
This is because your customers are not spammers. Even a very effective filter will only reject legitimate messages if that's all it gets.
Well, nowadays most projects need TCP/IP, graphical display of data or disk I/O. By coding in assembler you would most likely sacrifice quality of implementation, algorithmic optimizations and thorough error checking/recovery for these kind of things - for example your networking stack might not use proper retransmit timing and clog the network with packets - talk about flight control!
Besides, along the way you might discover that you want to switch from MIPS to ARM. Now you get to re-write and re-debug your controllers. Yuck!
If you have a very basic data collection device, then yes you might use assembler. But then again you might design a custom chip instead of using a CPU for even better speed and power usage.
You have one in mind that supports variable bandwidth streaming, slide shows (few frames, clear image) and usable performance over dial up connections?
NASA Finds Critical Assembly Fault in Shuttle
I know NASA is conservative with technology, but using assembly in this day and age is way backwards!
It is indeed a simple criteria, but not very suited to human understanding. How would it feel to walk on a planet that is just big enough to pull itself into a spherical shape?
How about just define a planet as an object you can walk on comfortably without launching into the air and flipping over your head or worse going into orbit? Luna might qualify, but asteroids will not.