Well, assuming that *is* valid, is there a democracy that has existed, say, since the civil war, besides the US?
The US Civil war ended in 1865. Canada was confederated in 1867, only two years later, and has been a completely stable democracy since this time. Many of the individual provinces were democracies prior to confederation, long before the US Civil War.
Many Americans like to think they have some sort of corner on democracy -- but they don't. The US isn't the biggest democracy (that would be India), they weren't the first democracy (the Athenians had a democracy in 6 BC), and with some of the shanannigans we've seen in previous elections, most people outside the US hadly view the US's democracy as all that "great" (don't forget that all the way into the 1960's, many southern states were still making African-Americans jump through near-impossible hoops to vote, evicted them from their land for trying, burned down places which held voting classes for African-Americans, and even murdered some black applicants).
Virtually every democracy has its dark spots -- but I (and most the rest of the democratized world) never hold up the US as being a paragon of democracy.
About the only people who consider the US to be "the worlds most stable democracy" are Americans. Most of the rest of the world would disagree with that statement. It's always a bit sad to see when some American claims this as some sort of proven fact, as it just serves to mask all the areas where the US needs to improve, and as the most economically powerful democracy, could show real leadership for the rest of the world.
First off, I'm not now, nor have I ever been a visitor to your website. So I haven't cost you anything.
However, ad blockers are a part of the business of the web, and if you can't make sufficient money off your website through them, you need to stop blaming the visitors who block your ads and look for a different source of income.
It's just like when Ted Turner a a year or so back claimed you were stealing if you didn't sit down and watch the advertisements on his channels. Do you sit through and watch every ad on your TV set when you're watching a program or movie? Do you realize someone is paying for them?
Welcome to the wonderful world of advertising. You can't force anyone to look at anything they don't want to look at. The web provides us with some excellent tools to ensure we see what we want, and not the things we don't want to. I am the viewer, and it is I who gets to select what they want to see. And I am not alone. If you can't deal with this, then I'm sorry to say you're in the wrong business.
If you're not making money off ads, look into selling t-shirts, bumper stickers, premium content, or other such services.
I understand there are some obnoxious ads... but if you want free content, deal with the ads. I mean, blocking flash ads... popup blocking... understandable. But I have a lot of people who block my google text ad and my sponsor banner on my site... which keeps me from having a lot of money come out of my pocket each month.
I just took soe time off my busy day to drop by and say: "Awwww".
I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads. I don't have to consume them if I don't want to, and if that affects your bottom line, you're just going to have to find some different source of income.
Ad blocking may be bad for you as a distributor of ads, but it doesn't harm the rest of us one iota. If pages didn't try to inundate surfers with ads, ad blockers wouldn't be necessary.
But as it is, I too spend good money on my monthly allotment of bandwidth, and I have absolutely no desire to waste it downloading ads. And over here, my money is vastly more important than your money, so pardon me if I feel absolutely no sympathy for your position.
My cable provider actually does have a domain name for each customer -- it's a really long string of letters and numbers appended to the ISP's domain. Their DNS servers won't reverse-resolve your IP to its name, but external DNS's will.
If your cable ISP is doing the same, just do what I did -- I setup an alias of the name I wanted to this static customer host and domain name the ISP assigns (and tries to hide).
The benefit of this is that if anyone tries to do a reverse-resolve against your IP, they'll get the ISP's domain name, and not anything assigned elsewhere. I used to have one of those dyndns.org domains, but my ISP actually caught on to it via a reverse-lookup done by an automated test system, and sent me a warning (which was great, because it contained the hostname of the automated test system in it, so I just added a hosts.deny entry for it and switched from dyndns.org to a DNS provider that allowed me to setup A records. Three years hence, my ISP has never said anything about this setup again).
I fail to see where the problem is, or how this exactly equates to Sun being anti-Linux.
Red Hat sells Linux. Sun sells Linux in the form of JDS. Sun is coming up with a strategy to encourage potential buyers to purchase from them by claiming that Red Hat isn't up to handling large enterprise accounts.
This is what competition is all about, folks. One of the great things about Open Source is that we can have multiple competing distributions. Mandrake and SuSe aren't buddy-buddy with Red Hat -- they compete with them as well. Do you somehow think that when they're competing with Red Hat for an account that they don't go in and try to show the potential buyer how they are better that Red Hat, or where Red Hat's weaknesses (perceived or otherwise) are?
This is the nature of competition. It doesn't mean that Sun is anti-Linux (although I don't believe that Sun is a great friend to Linux either). It's simple competition. This is news to anyone? Would anyone expect anything different between two competing companies? This is a complete non-story if I ever saw one.
Because I want more control than that. And I don't want to have to edit CSS to get it.
Personally, I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them. There are some sites I permit ad-sized graphics from. There are others I kill as soon as I first visit them.
The CSS solutions are good if you don't have access to a better solution -- but with FireFox, I have access to a better solution:).
Otherwise, I really want to like Camino. While I don't use it extensively, I'd like to be able to use the "Services" menu, but FireFox doesn't interoperate with them at all. And being able to have just one Keychain setup (instead of two) would also be advantageous.
But that lack of integrated ad blocking just bugs me. It's the same reason why I don't run Safari.
FireFox is my day-to-day browser on OS X, and while there are some integration items I wish it had (like the integration with the Adress Book, the various Services like Grab, Mail, Speech, Summerize, and most importantly the Keychain), Camino has one major functionality lack which keeps me from running it -- no image blocking.
I can't understand why they haven't implemented this. It's in every other Gecko-based browser out there. I don't visit websites to see big flashing ads at the top and bottom of every page. I have better uses for my bandwidth.
FireFox has ad blocking. Camino doesn't. For this (and pretty much only this) reason, I'm not using Camino.
The day they implement ad blocking, I'll probably switch on my PowerBook.
You didn't really go into any sort of depth as to your audience other than their age, so it's diffficult to give any really good advice, as the best presentation you can do is always one tailored to the existing knowledge of your audience.
However, being an after school science club, I'm going to assume that these kids are pretty smart, want to be there, and probably already know what the inside of a computer looks like, or how to surf the Internet, or how computers are used in society today.
As such, I'd strongly consider teaching them something practical that they can use and build upon, and teach them some really elementary computer math and theory.
Ten years old was the age I started programming at -- completely self-taught -- in BASIC on a Commodore 64 at school. But it wasn't until I was much older that I was even introduced to binary or hex number systems and math. And yet these things are the real underlying basis of how all digital computers are designed and programmed.
Given you only have ten minutes, I'd give them an introduction to the binary number system and simple binary math, and how computers use binary information to do everything they do.
Most kids like learning about how things work, and with a quick intro to binary number systems you can explain to them how computers add numbers, how CDs store music, and how networks inter-communicate (like explaining the basics of Quadrade Amplitude Modulation).
Remember kids, you don't have to KNOW anything any more. This is the age of the search engine.
Well, I decided I was going to solve the puzzle just for fun, but for the life of me I can't remember e past about 9 digits. So I decided to search on Google for either an equation for generating the digits of e (which would be preferable in this case to something that calculates e itself), or for a relatively large pre-computed value of e.
Unfortunately, just searching for either of these items on Google brings up a couple of solutions specific to Googles puzzle within the first ten hits, and that just sucks all of the pleasure out of the whole excersize.
I try to console myself through the realization that I probably don't have time to play with these puzzles at the moment anyhow:P.
"Ben's Game" just came across my desk, and as it's relevent, I tought I'd mention it here.
Ben is a 9-year old boy who had lukemia (now in remission) who had a wish: to create a videogame where he could fight his cancer.
Make-a-Wish foundation stepped up to the plate, and got some developers from LucasArts to make such a game.
The game is a free download. Apparently the USCF Children's Hospital is installing copies of the game in its pediatric ward for the children there to play. The game is quite well done. I can just imagine the health benifits for the child sitting the hospital on chemo yelling "Take that cancer!".
As HomeStar Runner would say, this kid has the heart of a champion. Way to go Ben!
I see no benefit to OSS. The bogus argument that flaws are discovered because more eyes look over the code has never been shown to be valid. Keep believing that if you'd like. The evidence shows there's no benefit (or else how do vulnerabilities exist in multiple versions?)
The vulnerabilities exist in the first place because at the core, Closed Source and Open Source developers work the same way: a human sits down at a console and types in the code. At this stage there is no difference between Open Source and Closed Source software development. As such, similar problems are going to occur in the production phase.
And there is never any guarantee that a problem is going to be discovered. Sommetimes it takes multiple revisions before a problem is found. I'm not arguing that Open Source magically makes all bugs and security issues disappear -- however, under Open Source they are vastly more likely to be found, and due to the open nature of the code, are going to allow for quicker fixes (as the person detecting the bug can in fact fix it themselves and contribute the fix back to the maintainers).
And in the case of Mozilla, this is exactly what has been happening. People find the problems. People with no connection whatsoever to Netscape/Mozilla.org have fixed the problems. And we're wound up with a much better product because of it.
I don't see anyone here claiming that OSS is 100% secure. It isn't. However, it does have benifits to getting problems detected and fixed quicker than closed source software does.
I see it firsthand all the time. I've worked in big closed-source software development projects (IBM). I've also worked in many Open Source Software development projects (and even administer a medium-sized project myself).
Open Source has tangible benifits over Closed Source software when it comes to the detection and fixing of bugs. Deal with it.
I found two of those holes. I did not find them by looking at the source code. So you're wrong:)
First off, my hearty thanks for your vigilence. You're the type of person who makes Mozilla's products safer and better for the rest of us, and I applaud your efforts.
Obviously not every bug or security issue is going to need source access to discover. I'm certainly not claiming that -- lots of peeople find bugs in closed-source code all the time!:).
However, with all due respect, you're only one link in the chain of getting a security issue fixed. Looking at a number of the issues you've reported (some of which are highly creative I must say -- I got a bit of a kick out of this one for example), I've noticed the number of other people involved in getting the problems you've found and reported fixed, and how many of them are not (former) Netscape employees. They are Open Source developers who are looking at the source and coming up with solutions, providing patches and testcases, etc. And you yourself at least have the option of looking at the souce of Mozilla if you so decide that it helps you to detect and fix the problems you find (which can be important if you rely on a project which isn't as actively maintained as Mozilla is).
Regardless, i thank you for making the web safer for the rest of us:).
So, the same reason that you hang out on Slashdot and insult people, then? Hell, if nothing else at least he's learning something about those systems, and about networking.
Nevermind the fact that I'm a consultant who specializes in cross-platform software development, that that I tend to need all these platforms to do my work.
Some people here are like those monkeys at the zoo that do nothing more than fling their own feces at passers-by. Personally, I just ignore them.
For the common man, diversity is the key to security. As long as we have diversity the less humanity as a whole is vulnerable, such as the DNA.
...
I can't stop laughing at how you guys always try to make security an closed vs open source thing.
"Diversity" and "Open Source" are not mutually exclusive. I don't disagree that diversity in software can be highly benificial -- that's why on my personal network I run 5 different OS's (three of them being different Linux distros).
However, you can have diversity and still be Open Source. Mozilla is hardly the only Open Source browser out there, nor is it the only Open Source rendering engine. Links is Open Source as well, and similarily benifits from many people being able to check the code for security problems.
(And don't forget that there are many people who do software security research. Open Source software benifits nicely when every security researcher has direct access to the source code).
Certainly diversity is good. Open Source doesn't preclude software diversity.
And what job do you have that allows you do do hourly, hell, even daily software updates, pray tell?
First off, at most you'd be doing daily software updates -- AFAIK, they only build the nightlies, well, once per night. Not every time a bug patch has been submitted.
And note that if there were enough security bugs to satisfy one reported per hour day in and day out (and there aren't), I'd much rather they be identified and fixed every hour on the hour than completely ignored and left insecure.
I'm so glad this happened, which it would happen hourly so that those annoying FSF/OSS brats shut up.
If you RTFA, and scroll to the botttom, you'll notice they link to all of the relevant Bugzilla entries for the reported problems.
Read them. Do you know how these flaws were found? By people looking at the source code and reporting them. The people who detected the problems couldn't have found them if the source was closed.
This is Open Source at its finest. On the other hand, we have the flaws in IE that are all too often found after someone has created an exploit and it's in the wild.
Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if Mozilla users and Open Source developers found a security problem once per hour and got the problem fixed quickly. It's vastly better than the closed-source alternative where you have to hope that someone without access to the source reports the fault when they find it, and that Microsoft doesn't take their own sweet time fixing it.
I did it for security reasons. They both like it, and I've had no "site blah won't work now" problems.
I've had my mother running Mozilla for a year now (my father has a general disdain for computers, and doesn't use the one they own at all). She swears by it.
Then again, IE isn't an option in her case, as she's running RedHat 8. Yes, I have the fabled non-techie mother who runs Linux (which works in my case for two reasons -- first, she's never been a Windows user, so she didn't have a huge set of bad habits to un-learn. And second, because I do all of her system administration, and Linux is easy to admin remotely).
Next step: Convert them to Mac. This may be a bit more difficult;)
Easier than you think. Just show them the video on Apple's Website. Last week I just happened to show my mother a picture of the new iMac (as I'd love to own one), and everywhere she goes she keeps telling everyone about the cool new computer I showed her that she wants to buy:).
I not only remember them, I'm still using the output from at least one of them.
Taligent wasn't really ever "killed". Instead, it was morphed into something a bit different. Initially it became an application framework on IBM's OS/2 operating system, but later Taligent contributed some of their stuff to Java (particularily some of the internationalization code).
Ok, but what is to stop someone from seeing that you are charging $100 for software X and then DLing your source, compiling it and selling it themselves for $50? Then the next guy for $10?
Absolutely nothing. But would you want to buy the software from the people who know the code inside-out, or from someone who just slaps code on a CD?
Regardless, I'd be happy if I could just make enough money for a pizza a week and to pay for my domain name and some of the hosting services I pay for out of my own pocket. As it is, I currently make nothing from the project. Breaking even would make me happy -- being able to afford new hardware devices for testing against once in a while would be a dream.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
That may be true for the average 10 line perl script found on sourceforge, but any OS developer that has developed a worthwhile piece of software is going to at least indirectly make money off of that product.
I call bullshit on you!:).
Seriously -- some big projects with lots of users which re-implement things already available in the closed-source world which are very well established will do well. But there are lots of big and esoteric projects out there, and many of the developers of these projects are probably never going to get much of anything for their efforts.
I was lucky to be asked to speak about my project at the Wrox Wireless Developers Conference in Amsterdam back in June 2000, which paid $1500 USD as a speakers fee. Other than that and a dinner a satisfied user paid for after a users group meeting, I have never made anything in the 7 years I've been working on my project.
And this isn't a 10-line Perl script either -- this is a Java project consisting of over 200 classes, with side projects in both Java and C for various platforms.
It's too bad Wrox got out of the conference business shortly after the one in Amsterdam -- that was one pretty sweet deal:).
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
I think it is the developers of the little known OSS projects that are still being worked on simply due to the love they have for their projects that are the true unsung heroes of OSS.
I agree, and these are the people I was hoping would really be discussed here (and thankfully, in some cases, they are).
There have been lots of suggestions here for people who have developed major Open Source applications virtually everyone here on/. knows about -- and while these people have done some excellent work, many of them are already "well sung". But there are also people out there working on more esoteric projects which are exceedingly using to that 0.0001% of the software users out there who need it, but of whom we rarely ever hear anything about.
I'm going to use my project as an example (hey, I'm a shameless promoter:) ), the jSyncManager. Here is a project for synchronizing PalmOS devices in Java-based environments. It's only useful to a subset of Palm-based handheld device owners (which is already a small subset of all PC owners) -- those who need consistent synchronization services for their devices across a variety of platforms, with Java-based tools for the rapid development of data synchronization logic.
Most of our users aren't hard-core Open Source users that go around promoting our project -- it's corporations running mixed environments that aren't server by other solutions. The end-user with a few Linux boxes will probably run pilot-link or coldsync (because they're built into most distros and are native code). End users running Windows or OS X are probably running PalmSource's HotSync Manager.
We're a specialized tool which fits a niche no other tool fits into -- but because of this, our target user base isn't massive.
And yet we have a number of people who have taken time to contribute to our project, because they wanted a single sync solution that runs on all their platforms, because they want something better than what they're currently running (and yes, in my very biased opinion the jSyncManager is a vastly better API/framework/application base than pilot-link, coldsync, or Palm's HotSync Manager:) ).
So big props go out to David Bartmess, Ian Dallas, Anuj Agrawal, Steven Levine and Bob Yurkovic for everything they've contributed to the project. These guys have donated their time, and they've received for their hard work even less recognition than I have. Thanks guys -- you may be unknown to the/. masses, but you've all done an excellent job, and are my Open Source heroes.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Basically, he was admitting that he was looking for a big thanks while not thanking those who's open-source he-himself used
Close enough:). I'm not really looking for a "big thanks" -- it's more that sometimes I wonder if there are people out there who are using my code because they apperciate what it does for them or their organization.
One of the things you find when you develop Open Source software is that typically you only time you hear from users is either when something goes wrong, they they want to suggest a new feature.
So sometimes I do wonder if anyone apperciates the effort I put into my projects and other projects -- but anytime I enter this frame of thought I can't help but think that there are a whole lot of other Open Source packages my project relies on (either directly or indirectly), and it's not as if I ever take the time to thank them for their efforts.
My project relies directly on jDOM for XML parsing. It's built using Apache Ant. Source control is handled via CVS. Web access to the source is available through ViewCVS. Our website is served by Apache. Our project is hosted by SourceForge. Our build and some of our test systems run Linux. Serial port access on Linux and OS X is provided by Trent Jarvi's RXTX. The prototype USB support for OS/2 uses NetLabs.org's USB Ring 3 driver code. I've recently been working with a bunch of people to implement javax.usb using libusb. My laptop, which is used for portable development, is a PowerBook G4 running OS X, which contains code from Darwin/FreeBSD.
There are a lot of people out there who have done work to make my project possible. I believe things are the same for lots of other people here on Slashdot. Maybe we should take one day a year to thank those who have made our software universe better for no other reason, simply because we apperciate their efforts, and not because they're begging for thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
The US Civil war ended in 1865. Canada was confederated in 1867, only two years later, and has been a completely stable democracy since this time. Many of the individual provinces were democracies prior to confederation, long before the US Civil War.
Many Americans like to think they have some sort of corner on democracy -- but they don't. The US isn't the biggest democracy (that would be India), they weren't the first democracy (the Athenians had a democracy in 6 BC), and with some of the shanannigans we've seen in previous elections, most people outside the US hadly view the US's democracy as all that "great" (don't forget that all the way into the 1960's, many southern states were still making African-Americans jump through near-impossible hoops to vote, evicted them from their land for trying, burned down places which held voting classes for African-Americans, and even murdered some black applicants).
Virtually every democracy has its dark spots -- but I (and most the rest of the democratized world) never hold up the US as being a paragon of democracy.
About the only people who consider the US to be "the worlds most stable democracy" are Americans. Most of the rest of the world would disagree with that statement. It's always a bit sad to see when some American claims this as some sort of proven fact, as it just serves to mask all the areas where the US needs to improve, and as the most economically powerful democracy, could show real leadership for the rest of the world.
Yaz.
First off, I'm not now, nor have I ever been a visitor to your website. So I haven't cost you anything.
However, ad blockers are a part of the business of the web, and if you can't make sufficient money off your website through them, you need to stop blaming the visitors who block your ads and look for a different source of income.
It's just like when Ted Turner a a year or so back claimed you were stealing if you didn't sit down and watch the advertisements on his channels. Do you sit through and watch every ad on your TV set when you're watching a program or movie? Do you realize someone is paying for them?
Welcome to the wonderful world of advertising. You can't force anyone to look at anything they don't want to look at. The web provides us with some excellent tools to ensure we see what we want, and not the things we don't want to. I am the viewer, and it is I who gets to select what they want to see. And I am not alone. If you can't deal with this, then I'm sorry to say you're in the wrong business.
If you're not making money off ads, look into selling t-shirts, bumper stickers, premium content, or other such services.
Yaz.
I just took soe time off my busy day to drop by and say: "Awwww".
I'm sorry, but I never gave you permission to use my bandwidth to send me ads. I don't have to consume them if I don't want to, and if that affects your bottom line, you're just going to have to find some different source of income.
Ad blocking may be bad for you as a distributor of ads, but it doesn't harm the rest of us one iota. If pages didn't try to inundate surfers with ads, ad blockers wouldn't be necessary.
But as it is, I too spend good money on my monthly allotment of bandwidth, and I have absolutely no desire to waste it downloading ads. And over here, my money is vastly more important than your money, so pardon me if I feel absolutely no sympathy for your position.
Yaz.
My cable provider actually does have a domain name for each customer -- it's a really long string of letters and numbers appended to the ISP's domain. Their DNS servers won't reverse-resolve your IP to its name, but external DNS's will.
If your cable ISP is doing the same, just do what I did -- I setup an alias of the name I wanted to this static customer host and domain name the ISP assigns (and tries to hide).
The benefit of this is that if anyone tries to do a reverse-resolve against your IP, they'll get the ISP's domain name, and not anything assigned elsewhere. I used to have one of those dyndns.org domains, but my ISP actually caught on to it via a reverse-lookup done by an automated test system, and sent me a warning (which was great, because it contained the hostname of the automated test system in it, so I just added a hosts.deny entry for it and switched from dyndns.org to a DNS provider that allowed me to setup A records. Three years hence, my ISP has never said anything about this setup again).
Yaz.
I fail to see where the problem is, or how this exactly equates to Sun being anti-Linux.
Red Hat sells Linux. Sun sells Linux in the form of JDS. Sun is coming up with a strategy to encourage potential buyers to purchase from them by claiming that Red Hat isn't up to handling large enterprise accounts.
This is what competition is all about, folks. One of the great things about Open Source is that we can have multiple competing distributions. Mandrake and SuSe aren't buddy-buddy with Red Hat -- they compete with them as well. Do you somehow think that when they're competing with Red Hat for an account that they don't go in and try to show the potential buyer how they are better that Red Hat, or where Red Hat's weaknesses (perceived or otherwise) are?
This is the nature of competition. It doesn't mean that Sun is anti-Linux (although I don't believe that Sun is a great friend to Linux either). It's simple competition. This is news to anyone? Would anyone expect anything different between two competing companies? This is a complete non-story if I ever saw one.
Yaz.
Because I want more control than that. And I don't want to have to edit CSS to get it.
Personally, I like that I can right-click on ads in FireFox to block or un-block them. There are some sites I permit ad-sized graphics from. There are others I kill as soon as I first visit them.
The CSS solutions are good if you don't have access to a better solution -- but with FireFox, I have access to a better solution :).
Otherwise, I really want to like Camino. While I don't use it extensively, I'd like to be able to use the "Services" menu, but FireFox doesn't interoperate with them at all. And being able to have just one Keychain setup (instead of two) would also be advantageous.
But that lack of integrated ad blocking just bugs me. It's the same reason why I don't run Safari.
Yaz.
FireFox is my day-to-day browser on OS X, and while there are some integration items I wish it had (like the integration with the Adress Book, the various Services like Grab, Mail, Speech, Summerize, and most importantly the Keychain), Camino has one major functionality lack which keeps me from running it -- no image blocking.
I can't understand why they haven't implemented this. It's in every other Gecko-based browser out there. I don't visit websites to see big flashing ads at the top and bottom of every page. I have better uses for my bandwidth.
FireFox has ad blocking. Camino doesn't. For this (and pretty much only this) reason, I'm not using Camino.
The day they implement ad blocking, I'll probably switch on my PowerBook.
Yaz.
You didn't really go into any sort of depth as to your audience other than their age, so it's diffficult to give any really good advice, as the best presentation you can do is always one tailored to the existing knowledge of your audience.
However, being an after school science club, I'm going to assume that these kids are pretty smart, want to be there, and probably already know what the inside of a computer looks like, or how to surf the Internet, or how computers are used in society today.
As such, I'd strongly consider teaching them something practical that they can use and build upon, and teach them some really elementary computer math and theory.
Ten years old was the age I started programming at -- completely self-taught -- in BASIC on a Commodore 64 at school. But it wasn't until I was much older that I was even introduced to binary or hex number systems and math. And yet these things are the real underlying basis of how all digital computers are designed and programmed.
Given you only have ten minutes, I'd give them an introduction to the binary number system and simple binary math, and how computers use binary information to do everything they do.
Most kids like learning about how things work, and with a quick intro to binary number systems you can explain to them how computers add numbers, how CDs store music, and how networks inter-communicate (like explaining the basics of Quadrade Amplitude Modulation).
Yaz.
The archive bills itself as "...an interactive presentation of the 86,800 most frequently used English words."
Last I checked, "Linux" is not a word in the english language.
For the same reason, you're not going to find "Slashdot", "jSyncManager", or "iPod", regardless of how many times they're used online.
Yaz.
Well, I decided I was going to solve the puzzle just for fun, but for the life of me I can't remember e past about 9 digits. So I decided to search on Google for either an equation for generating the digits of e (which would be preferable in this case to something that calculates e itself), or for a relatively large pre-computed value of e.
Unfortunately, just searching for either of these items on Google brings up a couple of solutions specific to Googles puzzle within the first ten hits, and that just sucks all of the pleasure out of the whole excersize.
I try to console myself through the realization that I probably don't have time to play with these puzzles at the moment anyhow :P.
Yaz.
"Ben's Game" just came across my desk, and as it's relevent, I tought I'd mention it here.
Ben is a 9-year old boy who had lukemia (now in remission) who had a wish: to create a videogame where he could fight his cancer.
Make-a-Wish foundation stepped up to the plate, and got some developers from LucasArts to make such a game.
The game is a free download. Apparently the USCF Children's Hospital is installing copies of the game in its pediatric ward for the children there to play. The game is quite well done. I can just imagine the health benifits for the child sitting the hospital on chemo yelling "Take that cancer!".
As HomeStar Runner would say, this kid has the heart of a champion. Way to go Ben!
Yaz.
The vulnerabilities exist in the first place because at the core, Closed Source and Open Source developers work the same way: a human sits down at a console and types in the code. At this stage there is no difference between Open Source and Closed Source software development. As such, similar problems are going to occur in the production phase.
And there is never any guarantee that a problem is going to be discovered. Sommetimes it takes multiple revisions before a problem is found. I'm not arguing that Open Source magically makes all bugs and security issues disappear -- however, under Open Source they are vastly more likely to be found, and due to the open nature of the code, are going to allow for quicker fixes (as the person detecting the bug can in fact fix it themselves and contribute the fix back to the maintainers).
And in the case of Mozilla, this is exactly what has been happening. People find the problems. People with no connection whatsoever to Netscape/Mozilla.org have fixed the problems. And we're wound up with a much better product because of it.
I don't see anyone here claiming that OSS is 100% secure. It isn't. However, it does have benifits to getting problems detected and fixed quicker than closed source software does.
I see it firsthand all the time. I've worked in big closed-source software development projects (IBM). I've also worked in many Open Source Software development projects (and even administer a medium-sized project myself).
Open Source has tangible benifits over Closed Source software when it comes to the detection and fixing of bugs. Deal with it.
Yaz.
First off, my hearty thanks for your vigilence. You're the type of person who makes Mozilla's products safer and better for the rest of us, and I applaud your efforts.
Obviously not every bug or security issue is going to need source access to discover. I'm certainly not claiming that -- lots of peeople find bugs in closed-source code all the time! :).
However, with all due respect, you're only one link in the chain of getting a security issue fixed. Looking at a number of the issues you've reported (some of which are highly creative I must say -- I got a bit of a kick out of this one for example), I've noticed the number of other people involved in getting the problems you've found and reported fixed, and how many of them are not (former) Netscape employees. They are Open Source developers who are looking at the source and coming up with solutions, providing patches and testcases, etc. And you yourself at least have the option of looking at the souce of Mozilla if you so decide that it helps you to detect and fix the problems you find (which can be important if you rely on a project which isn't as actively maintained as Mozilla is).
Regardless, i thank you for making the web safer for the rest of us :).
Yaz.
Nevermind the fact that I'm a consultant who specializes in cross-platform software development, that that I tend to need all these platforms to do my work.
Some people here are like those monkeys at the zoo that do nothing more than fling their own feces at passers-by. Personally, I just ignore them.
Yaz.
"Diversity" and "Open Source" are not mutually exclusive. I don't disagree that diversity in software can be highly benificial -- that's why on my personal network I run 5 different OS's (three of them being different Linux distros).
However, you can have diversity and still be Open Source. Mozilla is hardly the only Open Source browser out there, nor is it the only Open Source rendering engine. Links is Open Source as well, and similarily benifits from many people being able to check the code for security problems.
(And don't forget that there are many people who do software security research. Open Source software benifits nicely when every security researcher has direct access to the source code).
Certainly diversity is good. Open Source doesn't preclude software diversity.
Yaz.
First off, at most you'd be doing daily software updates -- AFAIK, they only build the nightlies, well, once per night. Not every time a bug patch has been submitted.
And note that if there were enough security bugs to satisfy one reported per hour day in and day out (and there aren't), I'd much rather they be identified and fixed every hour on the hour than completely ignored and left insecure.
Yaz.
If you RTFA, and scroll to the botttom, you'll notice they link to all of the relevant Bugzilla entries for the reported problems.
Read them. Do you know how these flaws were found? By people looking at the source code and reporting them. The people who detected the problems couldn't have found them if the source was closed.
This is Open Source at its finest. On the other hand, we have the flaws in IE that are all too often found after someone has created an exploit and it's in the wild.
Personally, I wouldn't mind one bit if Mozilla users and Open Source developers found a security problem once per hour and got the problem fixed quickly. It's vastly better than the closed-source alternative where you have to hope that someone without access to the source reports the fault when they find it, and that Microsoft doesn't take their own sweet time fixing it.
Once again, Open Source at its finest.
Yaz.
I've had my mother running Mozilla for a year now (my father has a general disdain for computers, and doesn't use the one they own at all). She swears by it.
Then again, IE isn't an option in her case, as she's running RedHat 8. Yes, I have the fabled non-techie mother who runs Linux (which works in my case for two reasons -- first, she's never been a Windows user, so she didn't have a huge set of bad habits to un-learn. And second, because I do all of her system administration, and Linux is easy to admin remotely).
Easier than you think. Just show them the video on Apple's Website. Last week I just happened to show my mother a picture of the new iMac (as I'd love to own one), and everywhere she goes she keeps telling everyone about the cool new computer I showed her that she wants to buy :).
Yaz.
That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!
Yaz.
No, that was Yellow Submarine.
Yaz.
I not only remember them, I'm still using the output from at least one of them.
Taligent wasn't really ever "killed". Instead, it was morphed into something a bit different. Initially it became an application framework on IBM's OS/2 operating system, but later Taligent contributed some of their stuff to Java (particularily some of the internationalization code).
Check here for a quick history of Taligent.
Yaz.
Absolutely nothing. But would you want to buy the software from the people who know the code inside-out, or from someone who just slaps code on a CD?
Regardless, I'd be happy if I could just make enough money for a pizza a week and to pay for my domain name and some of the hosting services I pay for out of my own pocket. As it is, I currently make nothing from the project. Breaking even would make me happy -- being able to afford new hardware devices for testing against once in a while would be a dream.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
I call bullshit on you! :).
Seriously -- some big projects with lots of users which re-implement things already available in the closed-source world which are very well established will do well. But there are lots of big and esoteric projects out there, and many of the developers of these projects are probably never going to get much of anything for their efforts.
I was lucky to be asked to speak about my project at the Wrox Wireless Developers Conference in Amsterdam back in June 2000, which paid $1500 USD as a speakers fee. Other than that and a dinner a satisfied user paid for after a users group meeting, I have never made anything in the 7 years I've been working on my project.
And this isn't a 10-line Perl script either -- this is a Java project consisting of over 200 classes, with side projects in both Java and C for various platforms.
It's too bad Wrox got out of the conference business shortly after the one in Amsterdam -- that was one pretty sweet deal :).
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
I agree, and these are the people I was hoping would really be discussed here (and thankfully, in some cases, they are).
There have been lots of suggestions here for people who have developed major Open Source applications virtually everyone here on /. knows about -- and while these people have done some excellent work, many of them are already "well sung". But there are also people out there working on more esoteric projects which are exceedingly using to that 0.0001% of the software users out there who need it, but of whom we rarely ever hear anything about.
I'm going to use my project as an example (hey, I'm a shameless promoter :) ), the jSyncManager. Here is a project for synchronizing PalmOS devices in Java-based environments. It's only useful to a subset of Palm-based handheld device owners (which is already a small subset of all PC owners) -- those who need consistent synchronization services for their devices across a variety of platforms, with Java-based tools for the rapid development of data synchronization logic.
Most of our users aren't hard-core Open Source users that go around promoting our project -- it's corporations running mixed environments that aren't server by other solutions. The end-user with a few Linux boxes will probably run pilot-link or coldsync (because they're built into most distros and are native code). End users running Windows or OS X are probably running PalmSource's HotSync Manager.
We're a specialized tool which fits a niche no other tool fits into -- but because of this, our target user base isn't massive.
And yet we have a number of people who have taken time to contribute to our project, because they wanted a single sync solution that runs on all their platforms, because they want something better than what they're currently running (and yes, in my very biased opinion the jSyncManager is a vastly better API/framework/application base than pilot-link, coldsync, or Palm's HotSync Manager :) ).
So big props go out to David Bartmess, Ian Dallas, Anuj Agrawal, Steven Levine and Bob Yurkovic for everything they've contributed to the project. These guys have donated their time, and they've received for their hard work even less recognition than I have. Thanks guys -- you may be unknown to the /. masses, but you've all done an excellent job, and are my Open Source heroes.
Brad BARCLAY
Lead Developer & Project Administrator,
The jSyncManager Project.
Close enough :). I'm not really looking for a "big thanks" -- it's more that sometimes I wonder if there are people out there who are using my code because they apperciate what it does for them or their organization.
One of the things you find when you develop Open Source software is that typically you only time you hear from users is either when something goes wrong, they they want to suggest a new feature.
So sometimes I do wonder if anyone apperciates the effort I put into my projects and other projects -- but anytime I enter this frame of thought I can't help but think that there are a whole lot of other Open Source packages my project relies on (either directly or indirectly), and it's not as if I ever take the time to thank them for their efforts.
My project relies directly on jDOM for XML parsing. It's built using Apache Ant. Source control is handled via CVS. Web access to the source is available through ViewCVS. Our website is served by Apache. Our project is hosted by SourceForge. Our build and some of our test systems run Linux. Serial port access on Linux and OS X is provided by Trent Jarvi's RXTX. The prototype USB support for OS/2 uses NetLabs.org's USB Ring 3 driver code. I've recently been working with a bunch of people to implement javax.usb using libusb. My laptop, which is used for portable development, is a PowerBook G4 running OS X, which contains code from Darwin/FreeBSD.
There are a lot of people out there who have done work to make my project possible. I believe things are the same for lots of other people here on Slashdot. Maybe we should take one day a year to thank those who have made our software universe better for no other reason, simply because we apperciate their efforts, and not because they're begging for thanks.
Brad BARCLAY