The concept of "stable" in something as complex as an operating system kernel is highly user dependent. You praise the odd/even system for providing a stable kernel branch, but I had to maintain my own security patch set for quite a while because 2.4.20 or so broke some proprietary vpn software I needed to connect to work. I know I'm not the only one with a similar example.
The bottom line is that only the administrator of a system can create a truly stable kernel for that system. Distributions are the next most effective because they target a specific type of user. Expecting the kernel developers to make a stable kernel that will satisfy everyone is like expecting the government to make laws that everyone is happy with.
While I have seen a large number of generic "2.6 isn't stable" complaints, I don't think I've seen any more complaints on slashdot about something specific breaking on a 2.6 upgrade than something specific breaking on a 2.4 upgrade, especially comparing the first few releases of each series.
Whether or not the coder writing the patch was the original author of the code has little to do with his or her ability to write a good patch. The few times I have asked the original author for some insight on a function I need to update, they haven't had anything useful to contribute. The problem is that usually the original author hasn't looked at the code in over a year. Personally, if I haven't looked at code in the last month, someone else may as well have written it because it is no longer fresh in my mind.
There are different levels of competency in any organization. This particular bug is the result of one person's mistake and could just as easily have been done by the original author as anyone else. The fact that it was released to the public is the result of a flaw in the process. For the prices Microsoft charges, they should be able to build in a measure of redundancy and reliability into their process.
I did go off a bit there, sorry. Most of that wasn't actually in response to your post and I didn't intend to accuse you personally of anything. My main point in response to your post specifically was that "God created life on earth" may not be a valid scientific conclusion, and faith and prayer may not be valid scientific experiments, but, "did God create life on earth?" is a valid scientific question. Sure, it is unanswerable either way with current technology, but so are most questions scientists are working on like, "is efficient cold fusion possible?" or, "is cancer curable?"
Those who claim that religion and science are antithetical do not understand either. Both are primarily concerned with ideas that haven't been proven yet. The only difference is that scientists attempt to prove some of them. Scientists do not spend their careers duplicating other people's experiments. The very essence of science is coming up with the right experiment. Think of creationism as being a scientific theory that you haven't found an experiment for yet. Theories cannot be classified as unscientific, only experiments and conclusions can.
There is ample evidence that living things do evolve. However, that does not mean that each and every hypothesis related to the theory of evolution has been proven. Believing that the existence of man is an entirely natural occurrence requires accepting a number of far-fetched unproven hypotheses. This is no different than believing that a divine being created man, except our term for "accepting a far-fetched unproven hypothesis" is "having faith."
Just one example of a leap of faith related to the theory of evolution is that there is no basis for natural selection of life over non-life. Nature is an incredibly destructive and disorganizing force. Life is incredibly complex, organized, and delicate. I have to take an artificial hormone equal to literally one-billionth of my body weight every day or I become so sluggish it is difficult to lift my own arm. To put in proportion how delicate a balance that is, it would be like if 6 people calling in sick caused everyone on the planet to experience a drop in productivity that day.
The odds against the random appearance of just that one hormone are astronomical. The odds against it appearing just when it was needed in our development is unfathomable. It is not sufficient to believe that the "infinite monkeys with typewriters" theory explains the first single-celled organism. One must believe in those same near-infinite odds occurring over and over again in just the right sequence at least until the ecosystem became big enough for life to compete against itself instead of against entropy. Even if you think the odds against the existence of a Creator are a gazillion to one, remember that the odds against the alternative are just as steep.
Teaching that living things evolve is one thing, but if you start adding unproven hypotheses into the mix, there is no reason why creationism shouldn't be given equal consideration. The first amendment is not about keeping religious ideas out of science class, it is about not forcing us all to support "The Church of the United States."
Check out this interview with OO.org developers (milk joke source) that discusses the importing attempts. Basically, only the content portion of Microsoft's XML format is documented. The layout portion is all lumped into one giant obfuscated binary tag (as most slashdotters predicted when they first heard of the format, I might add). I don't know about the newer versions of MS Office, but I have never personally seen one of these word xml documents "in the wild." Do I even need to mention the stupidity of documentation that requires Windows to view? The documentation of their "open" format isn't even in an open format.
It can't really help you now, but this is the perfect question to ask the next time you are changing jobs. You know the part where they ask, "Do you have any questions?" They actually mean it.
Seriously, I am a lowly technical lead of a team that usually consists of just me but grows to 3 or 4 people for a few months during "crunch" times. My management is required by our documented process to ask me how much effort something will take before it is approved. If the deadline cannot be met, they add staff well in advance or slip the change to a later build.
I have no clue what brand my house is, but maybe someday when living in houses really starts to catch on...
Just like it doesn't make sense to tell someone from out of state that I live near the corner of Baseline Avenue and Gilbert Road, it doesn't make sense to tell a Windows (pardon me--Microsoft Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98se, me, xp home, xp professional, 2000, or other) user that I run Gentoo Linux with a hardened 2.6 kernel. Abstraction is a good thing.
I've even been known to ask for a Pepsi and not get too disappointed when I get a Coke instead.
Umm, he doesn't even mention Linux or open source in the whole article. In fact, a search of his blog reveals nothing that even comes close to being called "praises aimed at Linux". If everyone who ever complained about flaws in Microsoft software was also pro-Linux, then Linux would be the one with the operating system monopoly.
While there are some anti-Microsoft/pro-Linux "sheep" on slashdot, most real Linux users don't really care that much about Microsoft either way. Why? We don't have to deal with Microsoft bugs, security flaws, or prices and haven't for several years.
The only time I respond to an anti-Linux comment is when I know from years of personal counterexamples that the comment is just plain factually incorrect. Don't automatically discount every comment or story defending Linux or complaining about Microsoft as pure zealotry.
"Never" is a very strong word. The industry standard music distribution medium used to be vinyl. The industry standard motor used to be a horse. The industry standard spreadsheet used to be Lotus 1-2-3. The industry standard method to power a watch used to be winding it up. The industry standard of lighting a room at night used to be candles. The industry standard game console used to be Atari. The industry standard web browser is internet explorer. Need I go on?
If the only reason you use something is because it is "industry standard", you are in danger of two things: paying for more features than you actually need, and becoming obsolete by someone who has more foresight than you.
I have already written to my senators about this a while ago, as I seriously doubt they read slashdot. I suggest all you U.S. citizens do the same, whether you agree with me or not.
They are trying to solve the wrong problem, and are doing a poor job of it. The ideal we are trying to protect is the information, and confidential sources need a measure of protection in furtherance of that ideal. It is not the journalists that need protecting.
Consider the Valerie Plame case. Judy Miller covered up a crime in order to report another story. Not only was she the only witness, her testimony was the only evidence of the crime. In essence she chose to restrict the free flow of information about a crime, which is contrary to the general purpose of freedom of the press. How can we hope to enforce laws that prevent the disclosure of an operative's identity if they may be circumvented merely by disclosure to a journalist? They are the people who are able to cause the most damage by publishing that kind of information.
My suggestion is language like the following: "No person shall be compelled to disclose the identity of a confidential source unless that person has personally witnessed a crime committed by that source."
The wording is simple, concise, and avoids messy definitions about who is and who isn't a journalist. Hearsay is inadmissible in court anyway, so there is no need to single out journalists for special treatment. Whistleblowers are safe as long as they don't commit a crime in the journalist's presence. Bloggers get the same protection as a big media conglomerate, protecting the essence of freedom of speech.
I would take this idea even further. If it is a semester-long class, I would make the term project be to get a patch accepted in an open source project. You learn a lot in the process of getting a patch accepted, most of which is not related to coding at all. You learn how to gain rapport with a community, how to find and fill a need in a way that is acceptable by all members of the community, and how to follow through. These are the aspects that are really different from closed source programming.
The patches don't have to be huge leaps in usability in order to be useful. There is a lot of stuff to do if a reasonable effort is made to look. Some suggestions:
Pick a bug from the bug database. There are some bugs that get ignored because the main developers can't reproduce them.
Update a plugin or theme that broke when the parent package was upgraded.
Ask on the mailing list what needs work and would be good for a newbie to tackle. I almost guarantee they will have a list they haven't gotten around to.
Try out a lot of different open source applications in different ways. I once found a one-line bug in an app because I was trying to import a unique file. I was only evaluating the app for a few hours, and I decided not to use it, but my tiny fix is still in the code base.
This might even work for classes with non-coders. Updated documentation is sorely needed for many projects and the process of getting it accepted is similar. Submitting a unique and useful bug report might be another acceptable project for non-coders. Correctly answering 10 questions in a support forum might be another.
I think you'd have a hard time finding software that doesn't work as advertised. In fact, there are truth in advertising laws on the books that have no reason they shouldn't apply to software. Working as advertised is not the issue.
The issue is that consumers want features that are not advertised: up front reliability and security. And most people don't understand software development enough to know why those are features that cost extra. It is the up front part that is difficult. Software companies as a rule are good about releasing patches where reliability and security are concerned, but only after the fact. Keeping current requires a higher level of vigilance than most consumers desire. However, most people also don't want to pay extra for something they perceive they are getting for free if they just keep up to date with the patches.
Highly reliable and secure software does exist; it is just out of the price range of the average consumer. Consider basic instant messaging software. Now consider the same basic requirements, but used to communicate orders to a military aircraft. What would you do differently in the software engineering and development process? How much more do you think it would cost to develop? How many people using AIM would be willing to pay what the military pays?
Linus Torvalds said, "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." That makes Linux the only safe platform to run programs written in any language that contains loops. It's just too dangerous to run Windows at work. When my web browser (written in one of the loopiest languages ever: c++) opens slashdot.org, there is no guarantee it will ever terminate so I can open an editor and get some work done.
I must admit, you are the first person I have ever known who has argued against loops in a language. While technically postscript doesn't guarantee termination of a print job, one assumes that the document creator does eventually want the document to finish printing. Infinite loop bugs in postscript documents tend to stick out for some strange reason and get fixed before release. Where the language doesn't guarantee completion, the programmer does.
And you are completely neglecting the other limited resources on a printer that loops are a great help for: RAM and bandwidth. A document effectively employing loops will generally print faster than one that doesn't because it takes less time to download to the printer and can retain more of the document at a time in memory.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
In other words, you can put them together on the same hard drive. It's only a derivative work that comes under the GPL.
I can understand why Microsoft doesn't bundle OSS with their boxed sets, but what I don't understand is why OEMs don't do this on new computers. Every computer I've ever bought comes with a certain set of non-Microsoft applications, most of which are of much lower quality than open source alternatives. We can debate the quality of Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice until the cows come home, but OpenOffice vs. wordpad is no contest. Same for gimp vs. paint. Just about any graphical ftp client would be an improvement (not just for techies; my wife uses an ftp client all the time). And there are many open source games that are a vast improvement over the default solitaire/minesweeper/pinball installation. It seems like especially low-end OEMs like eMachines (are they still around?) could improve their image by including apps like these by default. Is this another result of Microsoft strong-arm tactics, or has no one thought of it yet?
You're looking at it the wrong way. Computer security by patching is analagous to physical security by gun. It's effective, but it doesn't protect you from the guy that sneaks up on you. Open source only has the advantage of a faster draw.
The power of open source in security really struck me when I read this article the other day: Securing an Unpatchable Webserver. The author's client had a mission-critical web application so tightly coupled to IIS 3.0 that IIS couldn't be upgraded without an expensive rewrite.
Microsoft refused to patch an exploitable hole in 3.0 and insisted on the client upgrading to 4.0 to fix the problem. Long story short, the author modifies open source app "snort" to filter out the exploit and the hogwash IPS is born. All along I'm thinking that if they had been using apache in the first place and ran into a similar problem where an upgrade would break their app, they could have patched just the security hole themselves without affecting any functionality.
I have done this myself when a kernel upgrade broke an application but fixed a security hole. I maintained my own linux kernel for a while with just security patches until the (closed source) app that broke released an upgrade. It took some extra work, but it was the most stable kernel I have ever had.
Open source has the additional advantage of being able to be recompiled to enable more proactive and effective security measures. It is a lot of work initially, but you can eliminate practically all exploits before anyone even knows they exist. You still want to patch because an attempted exploit can kill the server, but at least it won't let an attacker in and you'll know when there is an unpatched exploit in the wild.
Sounds like you might be marketing yourself wrong. In my experience, specific experience with specific apps is a lot less important than understanding the genre as a whole and an ability to adapt. There are still some narrow-minded employers out there, but those are people I generally don't want to work for. Remember the year after Java came out, when job postings were asking for 5 years experience?
I would rather hire someone who, when asked about their MySQL experience in an interview, said something like, "I've worked extensively with postgres, which shares most of the features of MySQL. I've heard good things about MySQL, so I have evaluated it and am sure it would take me no time to be productive. It seems stable, but I've found MySQL's syntax for supporting transactions to be unweildy, so I've chosen postgres whenever possible."
This would show me that you know what you are talking about, can easily adapt, and don't blindly follow a suboptimal decision. Contrast with "Everyone was requiring mysql, so I learned it." In other words, I would rather hire someone who had a good reason for making an unpopular choice, over someone who had no reason for making a popular choice.
i keep all My webSite logiN PASSWORDs In my slaShbox, So they are alWays clOse at hand. when i want real security, i employ a top secRet steganography technique insiDe of a comment. iF security through obscurIty iS good enough for commercial software, it is certainly good enougH for me.
Why should we care about explaining, informing or educating people in IT?
We may be able to control their PC at work, but not at home. And their ignorance affects everyone to a certain extent.
We license people to drive cars because they have a great potential of hurting others if they do it badly. We don't license people to ride bicycles, even though they have more potential to get hurt if they don't follow the rules of the road.
I'll stop caring about educating users when the potential damage a default Windows installation can cause stops being a Mac truck, and starts being a bicycle. They don't need the knowledge of a mechanic, just a regular licensed driver.
mostly due to the fact that 95% of the world can write an app on their Windows desktop and copy it to a Windows server platform without modification
Okay, but I missed the part where that makes it faster to develop a reliable application. And you missed the part where 99% of Windows desktops don't even have a compiler installed, not to mention a decent editor. Unix has catered to developers from the very beginning.
You actually cited the exact reason why I first installed Linux. I was working over a slow dialup connection, and wanted to be able to develop locally on my desktop and copy it to a Solaris server without modification.
My daughter was born three months premature last year, and had to spend those three months in the hospital, during which she had 4 surgeries. If any of you have had a child in the hospital even for a few hours, you know how stressful that is. I had a few days where I was so anxious I was physically shaking.
Anyway, blogging every night when I got home was very relaxing. It helped me to put the day in perspective and look back to see her progress that was difficult to see hour by hour. It also had two unforeseen benefits: I have a nice detailed record of the first 3 months of my daughter's life, and we didn't have to answer the same difficult questions over and over from concerned family members. It's far from great literature, mostly just a factual account that a stranger would find boring, but for me and my family it is priceless.
The best choice is to write code that's clear: short methods, clear variable names, extracting long expressions as variables to convey meaning, and extracting long blocks as clearly named methods. It helps to make good use of language constructs (e.g., private, protected, final). And of course, you should break the system into discrete objects of moderate size and packages of reasonable collections of objects.
Creating the kind of code you describe is more of an art than a science. How short is too short? How long is too long? What is the difference between a clear name and an unclear one? Where is the best place to make a split?
Like art, most programmers know good code when they see it. Only some programmers can easily describe why the code is good in terms like the above. Even fewer have an instinct for creating beautiful code.
If you are fortunate enough to work on a small, hand-picked team of talented programmers, I envy you. Most departments tend to spread the talent around to give the most overall benefit. In order for a team to be effective, the least talented programmer on the team needs to be able to maintain code written by the most talented, and vice-versa. The coding standards should reflect that. A truly great programmer always keeps the skill level of his or her current and future colleagues in mind.
PDF is a closed format but has a freely available reader. How is this different than using a freely available MS Reader?
I guess it depends on your definition of a closed format, but for me the freely available PDF specification is what makes the difference for me. Anyone can make their own implementation of a pdf viewer/creator without having to do any reverse engineering. And several people, including openoffice, have. Do I even need to ask where the freely available MS reader is for Unix/Linux? Governments should not force people to use certain operating systems if an easy alternative is available. Of course, I would be happy if the municipal code was published in a "pressed" version in any format. All I can find of local housing regulations (Mesa in Phoenix metro area) is a set of amendments to a document you have to pay to get.
I'm always curious when someone makes a blanket statement like, "don't get it done." Can you give a specific example of a document you need MS Office for? Just wondering because I managed to make it through a Bachelor's degree, half a Master's degree, and 10 years of professional technical document creation (including a 107 page government document this last week) without ever needing MS Office. Not that I have never used MS Office, just that I haven't ever needed or wanted to use any feature that isn't available in an open source application. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I honestly can't think of an example.
Ada is one language that does what you want. It could look something like this:
SUBTYPE widthInteger IS NATURAL; -- non-negative integer SUBTYPE heightInteger IS NATURAL RANGE 15.. 25;
w : widthInteger:= 10; h : heightInteger:= 20; x : CONSTANT Integer:= 10; totalHeight : heightInteger;
BEGIN
totalHeight:= w + h; -- Compile error totalHeight:= heightInteger(x) + h; -- Compile error because x is not a valid heightInteger totalHeight:= heightInteger(w) + h; -- Compiles fine, but will have runtime error due to out of range sum. Good optimizing compiler may even cause compile error.
END;
Constants are not assumed to be integers, so no casting is necessary. In the above program they would be checked to see if they are valid widthIntegers or heightIntegers at compile time, much like a C compiler checks if an initial value is a valid float, char, int, etc. At runtime, you cannot assign a variable of type Integer to a variable of type widthInteger without an explicit cast, which adds validity checking to the runtime code if necessary.
You can spot a newbie Ada programmer because they use Integers for everything, but those style errors stick out like a sore thumb.
Slashdot Mirror
The bottom line is that only the administrator of a system can create a truly stable kernel for that system. Distributions are the next most effective because they target a specific type of user. Expecting the kernel developers to make a stable kernel that will satisfy everyone is like expecting the government to make laws that everyone is happy with.
While I have seen a large number of generic "2.6 isn't stable" complaints, I don't think I've seen any more complaints on slashdot about something specific breaking on a 2.6 upgrade than something specific breaking on a 2.4 upgrade, especially comparing the first few releases of each series.
There are different levels of competency in any organization. This particular bug is the result of one person's mistake and could just as easily have been done by the original author as anyone else. The fact that it was released to the public is the result of a flaw in the process. For the prices Microsoft charges, they should be able to build in a measure of redundancy and reliability into their process.
I did go off a bit there, sorry. Most of that wasn't actually in response to your post and I didn't intend to accuse you personally of anything. My main point in response to your post specifically was that "God created life on earth" may not be a valid scientific conclusion, and faith and prayer may not be valid scientific experiments, but, "did God create life on earth?" is a valid scientific question. Sure, it is unanswerable either way with current technology, but so are most questions scientists are working on like, "is efficient cold fusion possible?" or, "is cancer curable?"
There is ample evidence that living things do evolve. However, that does not mean that each and every hypothesis related to the theory of evolution has been proven. Believing that the existence of man is an entirely natural occurrence requires accepting a number of far-fetched unproven hypotheses. This is no different than believing that a divine being created man, except our term for "accepting a far-fetched unproven hypothesis" is "having faith."
Just one example of a leap of faith related to the theory of evolution is that there is no basis for natural selection of life over non-life. Nature is an incredibly destructive and disorganizing force. Life is incredibly complex, organized, and delicate. I have to take an artificial hormone equal to literally one-billionth of my body weight every day or I become so sluggish it is difficult to lift my own arm. To put in proportion how delicate a balance that is, it would be like if 6 people calling in sick caused everyone on the planet to experience a drop in productivity that day.
The odds against the random appearance of just that one hormone are astronomical. The odds against it appearing just when it was needed in our development is unfathomable. It is not sufficient to believe that the "infinite monkeys with typewriters" theory explains the first single-celled organism. One must believe in those same near-infinite odds occurring over and over again in just the right sequence at least until the ecosystem became big enough for life to compete against itself instead of against entropy. Even if you think the odds against the existence of a Creator are a gazillion to one, remember that the odds against the alternative are just as steep.
Teaching that living things evolve is one thing, but if you start adding unproven hypotheses into the mix, there is no reason why creationism shouldn't be given equal consideration. The first amendment is not about keeping religious ideas out of science class, it is about not forcing us all to support "The Church of the United States."
Check out this interview with OO.org developers (milk joke source) that discusses the importing attempts. Basically, only the content portion of Microsoft's XML format is documented. The layout portion is all lumped into one giant obfuscated binary tag (as most slashdotters predicted when they first heard of the format, I might add). I don't know about the newer versions of MS Office, but I have never personally seen one of these word xml documents "in the wild." Do I even need to mention the stupidity of documentation that requires Windows to view? The documentation of their "open" format isn't even in an open format.
Anyone know why 2.0 requires admin privileges to install on windows when 1.x didn't? Anyone know how to work around that?
Seriously, I am a lowly technical lead of a team that usually consists of just me but grows to 3 or 4 people for a few months during "crunch" times. My management is required by our documented process to ask me how much effort something will take before it is approved. If the deadline cannot be met, they add staff well in advance or slip the change to a later build.
Just like it doesn't make sense to tell someone from out of state that I live near the corner of Baseline Avenue and Gilbert Road, it doesn't make sense to tell a Windows (pardon me--Microsoft Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98se, me, xp home, xp professional, 2000, or other) user that I run Gentoo Linux with a hardened 2.6 kernel. Abstraction is a good thing.
I've even been known to ask for a Pepsi and not get too disappointed when I get a Coke instead.
While there are some anti-Microsoft/pro-Linux "sheep" on slashdot, most real Linux users don't really care that much about Microsoft either way. Why? We don't have to deal with Microsoft bugs, security flaws, or prices and haven't for several years.
The only time I respond to an anti-Linux comment is when I know from years of personal counterexamples that the comment is just plain factually incorrect. Don't automatically discount every comment or story defending Linux or complaining about Microsoft as pure zealotry.
If the only reason you use something is because it is "industry standard", you are in danger of two things: paying for more features than you actually need, and becoming obsolete by someone who has more foresight than you.
They are trying to solve the wrong problem, and are doing a poor job of it. The ideal we are trying to protect is the information, and confidential sources need a measure of protection in furtherance of that ideal. It is not the journalists that need protecting.
Consider the Valerie Plame case. Judy Miller covered up a crime in order to report another story. Not only was she the only witness, her testimony was the only evidence of the crime. In essence she chose to restrict the free flow of information about a crime, which is contrary to the general purpose of freedom of the press. How can we hope to enforce laws that prevent the disclosure of an operative's identity if they may be circumvented merely by disclosure to a journalist? They are the people who are able to cause the most damage by publishing that kind of information.
My suggestion is language like the following: "No person shall be compelled to disclose the identity of a confidential source unless that person has personally witnessed a crime committed by that source."
The wording is simple, concise, and avoids messy definitions about who is and who isn't a journalist. Hearsay is inadmissible in court anyway, so there is no need to single out journalists for special treatment. Whistleblowers are safe as long as they don't commit a crime in the journalist's presence. Bloggers get the same protection as a big media conglomerate, protecting the essence of freedom of speech.
The patches don't have to be huge leaps in usability in order to be useful. There is a lot of stuff to do if a reasonable effort is made to look. Some suggestions:
This might even work for classes with non-coders. Updated documentation is sorely needed for many projects and the process of getting it accepted is similar. Submitting a unique and useful bug report might be another acceptable project for non-coders. Correctly answering 10 questions in a support forum might be another.
The issue is that consumers want features that are not advertised: up front reliability and security. And most people don't understand software development enough to know why those are features that cost extra. It is the up front part that is difficult. Software companies as a rule are good about releasing patches where reliability and security are concerned, but only after the fact. Keeping current requires a higher level of vigilance than most consumers desire. However, most people also don't want to pay extra for something they perceive they are getting for free if they just keep up to date with the patches.
Highly reliable and secure software does exist; it is just out of the price range of the average consumer. Consider basic instant messaging software. Now consider the same basic requirements, but used to communicate orders to a military aircraft. What would you do differently in the software engineering and development process? How much more do you think it would cost to develop? How many people using AIM would be willing to pay what the military pays?
I must admit, you are the first person I have ever known who has argued against loops in a language. While technically postscript doesn't guarantee termination of a print job, one assumes that the document creator does eventually want the document to finish printing. Infinite loop bugs in postscript documents tend to stick out for some strange reason and get fixed before release. Where the language doesn't guarantee completion, the programmer does.
And you are completely neglecting the other limited resources on a printer that loops are a great help for: RAM and bandwidth. A document effectively employing loops will generally print faster than one that doesn't because it takes less time to download to the printer and can retain more of the document at a time in memory.
I can understand why Microsoft doesn't bundle OSS with their boxed sets, but what I don't understand is why OEMs don't do this on new computers. Every computer I've ever bought comes with a certain set of non-Microsoft applications, most of which are of much lower quality than open source alternatives. We can debate the quality of Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice until the cows come home, but OpenOffice vs. wordpad is no contest. Same for gimp vs. paint. Just about any graphical ftp client would be an improvement (not just for techies; my wife uses an ftp client all the time). And there are many open source games that are a vast improvement over the default solitaire/minesweeper/pinball installation. It seems like especially low-end OEMs like eMachines (are they still around?) could improve their image by including apps like these by default. Is this another result of Microsoft strong-arm tactics, or has no one thought of it yet?
The power of open source in security really struck me when I read this article the other day: Securing an Unpatchable Webserver. The author's client had a mission-critical web application so tightly coupled to IIS 3.0 that IIS couldn't be upgraded without an expensive rewrite.
Microsoft refused to patch an exploitable hole in 3.0 and insisted on the client upgrading to 4.0 to fix the problem. Long story short, the author modifies open source app "snort" to filter out the exploit and the hogwash IPS is born. All along I'm thinking that if they had been using apache in the first place and ran into a similar problem where an upgrade would break their app, they could have patched just the security hole themselves without affecting any functionality.
I have done this myself when a kernel upgrade broke an application but fixed a security hole. I maintained my own linux kernel for a while with just security patches until the (closed source) app that broke released an upgrade. It took some extra work, but it was the most stable kernel I have ever had.
Open source has the additional advantage of being able to be recompiled to enable more proactive and effective security measures. It is a lot of work initially, but you can eliminate practically all exploits before anyone even knows they exist. You still want to patch because an attempted exploit can kill the server, but at least it won't let an attacker in and you'll know when there is an unpatched exploit in the wild.
I would rather hire someone who, when asked about their MySQL experience in an interview, said something like, "I've worked extensively with postgres, which shares most of the features of MySQL. I've heard good things about MySQL, so I have evaluated it and am sure it would take me no time to be productive. It seems stable, but I've found MySQL's syntax for supporting transactions to be unweildy, so I've chosen postgres whenever possible."
This would show me that you know what you are talking about, can easily adapt, and don't blindly follow a suboptimal decision. Contrast with "Everyone was requiring mysql, so I learned it." In other words, I would rather hire someone who had a good reason for making an unpopular choice, over someone who had no reason for making a popular choice.
i keep all My webSite logiN PASSWORDs In my slaShbox, So they are alWays clOse at hand. when i want real security, i employ a top secRet steganography technique insiDe of a comment. iF security through obscurIty iS good enough for commercial software, it is certainly good enougH for me.
We may be able to control their PC at work, but not at home. And their ignorance affects everyone to a certain extent.
We license people to drive cars because they have a great potential of hurting others if they do it badly. We don't license people to ride bicycles, even though they have more potential to get hurt if they don't follow the rules of the road.
I'll stop caring about educating users when the potential damage a default Windows installation can cause stops being a Mac truck, and starts being a bicycle. They don't need the knowledge of a mechanic, just a regular licensed driver.
Okay, but I missed the part where that makes it faster to develop a reliable application. And you missed the part where 99% of Windows desktops don't even have a compiler installed, not to mention a decent editor. Unix has catered to developers from the very beginning.
You actually cited the exact reason why I first installed Linux. I was working over a slow dialup connection, and wanted to be able to develop locally on my desktop and copy it to a Solaris server without modification.
Anyway, blogging every night when I got home was very relaxing. It helped me to put the day in perspective and look back to see her progress that was difficult to see hour by hour. It also had two unforeseen benefits: I have a nice detailed record of the first 3 months of my daughter's life, and we didn't have to answer the same difficult questions over and over from concerned family members. It's far from great literature, mostly just a factual account that a stranger would find boring, but for me and my family it is priceless.
Like art, most programmers know good code when they see it. Only some programmers can easily describe why the code is good in terms like the above. Even fewer have an instinct for creating beautiful code.
If you are fortunate enough to work on a small, hand-picked team of talented programmers, I envy you. Most departments tend to spread the talent around to give the most overall benefit. In order for a team to be effective, the least talented programmer on the team needs to be able to maintain code written by the most talented, and vice-versa. The coding standards should reflect that. A truly great programmer always keeps the skill level of his or her current and future colleagues in mind.
I'm always curious when someone makes a blanket statement like, "don't get it done." Can you give a specific example of a document you need MS Office for? Just wondering because I managed to make it through a Bachelor's degree, half a Master's degree, and 10 years of professional technical document creation (including a 107 page government document this last week) without ever needing MS Office. Not that I have never used MS Office, just that I haven't ever needed or wanted to use any feature that isn't available in an open source application. I'm not trying to be argumentative here; I honestly can't think of an example.
You can spot a newbie Ada programmer because they use Integers for everything, but those style errors stick out like a sore thumb.