How about this: Have a dedicated device, of a reasonable size. Boot off of that, always, and don't bother with anything else. Once that's booted, it can start handling the rest -- in parallel, if it's smart. Make it a removable standard, like SD, in case there are problems.
Modern OSes, once they have the correct drivers, tend to ignore the BIOS anyway.
My kernel is 2.3 megs, uncompressed. My initramfs is 9.1 megs, compressed. Give me, oh, 100 megs of flash to boot from, and guarantee nothing more than that device is available when it's booted from.
But I do believe post-POST is where the problem is. After all, I've seen computers whiz through POST in maybe two seconds, and then take several minutes to get to a usable desktop. Hibernate is cool, but it's still not instant-on.
On mine, it may take 50% for everything to start, but easily within five seconds, I can already be launching programs. I wonder if we should be counting the time it takes to load all needed programs?
Hilarious to watch. Seriously, you can't come up with anything better than the guy whose catchphrases are "God hates fags", "God hates America", and "Priests rape boys"?
I thought Christianity was about love. This guy is all about hate.
The saddest part of this is that it's not even about Ricardo Montalban, It's about George Carlin. Montalban was a devout Roman catholic.
it's committing a cardinal sin of online game design: "Never trust the client"
That's only possible if the game design in question allows for it. Almost no genres today fall into that category.
For the simplest example, suppose we take a card game, or a game of chess. Something like that, where there's no advantage to moving superhumanly fast -- purely strategy, everyone takes their turn. There's still the possibility of computer enhancement -- for example, a chess computer to show you the best possible move.
There are some cheats (using your FPS example) that you would not be able to stop even with closed clients. For example, there is a tool commonly used by Guild Wars players called "TexMod" which sits in DirectX and replaces textures.
Commonly known as a "wallhack", among other things. It's not DirectX-specific. It is, however, something closed clients try to adjust for.
On the other hand, if the server does all the real legwork and the client is only trusted for user input... I suppose you still have to deal with aimbots
Well, taken to an extreme, you don't, until AI has advanced to the point where it can recognize (fast enough to matter) the appropriate images from a video feed.
The point is, you have to trust the client for practical reasons. You have to send enough information for the client to render on its own, otherwise the bandwidth and server resources required are impossible.
you get those with closed clients too...
Well, again, a closed client at least has a chance. There still has to be some reverse engineering, possibly of the OS as well as the game, and if you tie it into a network like Steam, you also raise the stakes -- if you cheat, and you're discovered, you're gone, and you have to buy all your games again.
This mostly works. It's obviously not perfect, for the same reasons DRM isn't perfect. But I do believe it's more effective than leaving the source open, and doing nothing about the problem.
However, the fact that we're even having this discussion supports my point -- insisting on GPL/FOSS everywhere completely removes one possible way of fighting cheats. Whether it would have worked or not is up for debate, but things like a GPL'd Qt make that decision for you -- either you try to make a FOSS game, or you don't use Qt.
I personally think it sucks to see that those who are materially acting contrary to those ideals are sharing the benefits of this code.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Samba? Or Wine?
I have somewhat different priorities -- I would rather see end-users benefit. Most often, this means I'd rather see something open than closed (I'm looking at you, Flash), but not always.
For example, many games, by their very nature (FPS, for instance), are only secure against cheating through obscurity. It might be possible to make a dual-licensed version of that work, given sufficient "trusted computing" to ensure that only the official binary is used in certain settings. A GPL3'd version wouldn't work at all.
I would like to see the day arise where the closed source commercial software industry dies because it's forced to re-invent more and more wheels that open source software developers do not have to re-invent
That actually has very little to do with open or closed, and everything to do with communication and cooperation.
I've been doing a lot of Rails work lately... Seems just about everything Ruby (especially Rails stuff) is MIT-licensed. The idea is that if an idea is good, and generic enough, you'll release it back to the community rather than try to maintain it yourself -- but when you use that stuff in your own proprietary project, you don't have to worry about licensing.
The net result is, only the stuff which is actually relevant to the site in question are at all subject to re-invention. And even then, not necessarily -- provide an API, and others will just use your service instead of reinventing it.
Nor is an aversion to the GPL strictly a proprietary thing. If you've got a large codebase in an OSI-approved, but GPL-incompatible license, it's a problem, and the GPL is about the least compatible FOSS license out there.
As a simple example: We absolutely do have to reinvent the wheel with ZFS, if it's to ever exist in the Linux kernel, largely because the kernel is GPL'd. And if btrfs ends up being good, and anyone wants to port it to OS X, BSD, or OpenSolaris, they're going to run into the same problem. We do each of those using things like FUSE, not for any technical reason, but to avoid licensing problems.
The only way to avoid reinventing the wheel is to follow sqlite's example, and go public domain -- or to define "proprietary" as "not using the GPL", which is just stupid.
Last I checked, Kopete has more features (think webcams) than Pidgin. The biggest downside has been segfaults (I've gotten one today after at least two months with no problems), and disconnects (annoying, but if it automatically reconnects five seconds later, is that really a problem?)
Point is, coca by itself is not bad -- yet the US isn't satisfied with busting you for drug-running if you dare to bring a few leaves home with you. They've actually entered into a trade agreement with Peru which allows them to go down there and exterminate the coca product.
By making it illegal, all we do is encourage smuggling drugs through Mexico, which is doing to Mexico what Prohibition did to the US. But since it's Not In My BackYard, no one cares.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm arguing with you, though -- that fact actually strengthens my analogy.
I could not have imagined writing a discrete program for something like that.
Depends what you mean by "discrete" -- something like Rails, in which the skeleton is easy. Bonus is, she can't screw up the program itself, and if the ERP system is sane, you can enter it programatically.
There is nothing wrong with a spreadsheet, used within reason. For example, formatting and sorting tabular data (that you don't need to query), a simple formula (and set of inputs) that you could recreate in five minutes if you needed to, etc.
Unfortunately, no one uses them "within reason". And I mean, no one uses them that way. The program certainly isn't set up to encourage that much moderation.
When you go beyond that, I've identified two major problems -- they hide implementation in favor of results, and they encourage repeating yourself (copy/paste). Both of these mean that maintenance is a nightmare, by the time you realize you've created an application, not just a spreadsheet.
And it doesn't take VBA, or macros, or external data sources, to build that nightmare. All it takes is overuse and over-reliance.
If I may draw a completely exaggerated analogy: Cocaine isn't the problem. People are the problem -- it is possible to use Cocaine without having a problem. (In fact, Coca tea isn't even that addictive, and there's still Coca in Coca-Cola.) However, a crack rock is a recipe for trouble, even if it's the person's own fault for abusing it.
I find myself agreeing with him, somewhat, from what I can read in the summary -- though I refuse to click through and give him traffic.
The real problem with the spreadsheet is that it replaces actual programming, thus allowing non-programmers to develop spectacular messes.
Two things stand out right away: It's not a very good programming tool, because it's not particularly DRY by nature -- you write the formula, then do the equivalent of copy'n'paste to repeat it down an entire column, usually applying to that row. That's just one example, but a spreadsheet that evolves into an application is a maintenance nightmare.
And it's not a very good non-programmer tool, because so much is hidden in the default view. For example, in the above case, the formula isn't what's visible in that table cell -- the result is. If an error creeps into one of those cells, not only is it a nightmare trying to find which one (since you have a thousand versions of the same function to wade through), you can't even see them without clicking on each cell.
It also puts the focus on the eventual results, rather than on the mechanism behind them.
It works fine if you just want to display some tabular data, but that's about it -- and it's overkill for that.
Other than that, if you're a non-programmer, don't use it for anything so complicated you can't recreate it from scratch in a minute or so. If you're a programmer, you should already know about some better tools -- interactive prompts, real SQL databases, HTML tables or PDFs for output, etc.
I don't know if this has anything to do with what Dvorak actually wrote, since I didn't read it. But I do agree that spreadsheets suck.
Here's hoping that the parents who allowed a child to see (let alone play) Grand Theft Auto will attract more attention that the award-winning video game (which anyone will admit, should only be played by adults).
Yeah, good job. Your pre-emptive, kneejerk, anti-Jack-Thompson interpretation has already drawn more attention to both Jack and GTA than the original article did.
At least the ones I know do like some Beatles. And some Hendrix.
Try back in a couple hundred years, then we might have some idea of whether or not they're timeless. Right now, no one has a clue -- Shakespeare himself was seen as a pop artist in his day.
Is there something like that for IPv6 so that I don't have to go all the way out to the internet to get back to my file server?
That actually is a really stupid question, for someone who knows how Internet routing works.
Very simply, your computer is always configured to know which addresses are "link-local", which ones must go through a gateway, and what the gateway (router) is. So, for your local address, you've probably got 192.168.1.* as "link-local", 192.168.1.1 is your gateway, and everything else is "on the Internet".
But that's arbitrary. I like to use the 10.0.0.0/8 network, which is also defined as "local", for that purpose. And all of that assumes NAT -- while at college, all computers had their own, real, Internet-routable IP addresses. But of course, if you had two of them hooked up to the same switch, they would be assigned IPs on the same network, meaning they would connect directly to each other, rather than going "out to the Internet".
So, you'd build a LAN the same way. If you need to protect it from Internet access, you stick a firewall in front of it, not a NAT. And even if it's a real live Internet address, your computer will know it's local...
But all of that -- what is LAN, and what is WAN, and what is Internet -- that's pretty arbitrary. It's really more about physical lines than any network addressing. Perhaps the truest thing we could say about it is your local switch (or hub, or router) is part of the Internet, so yes, it has to go a few feet "out to the Internet", even if the signal never leaves your house.
Looking at my IP telephony -- it "works", but pretty much only Skype, because no one else does the tunneling hack required.
Looking at any other peer to peer connection: It works, but it's much more difficult than it needs to be. Want to transfer files from home to work, over the Internet? You need a VPN, or you need to upload them to a third party (dropbox, etc) and download them at work, or you need to forward ports...
Oh, and there's the built-in ipsec -- opportunistic encryption.
From a consumer pov, there's actually a lot to like about everyone having their own IP. But it's a chicken and egg problem -- ISPs have reasons (not good ones) not to like it, so consumers don't have it. So there's not many applications for it, so consumers don't see why they should care.
Unfortunately, we're also bad at doing global solutions to big problems ahead of time, especially when there's still disagreement as to whether or not the problem even exists or is as serious as some say it is.
As usual, there's really no debate.
It's a bit like global warming. Serious scientists admit that it exists. The "controversy" is because of research groups quite literally paid for by the oil companies who would stand to lose the most if we started taking it seriously.
Similarly, there's really no debate that IPv6 would be a good thing to have, and that we'll run out of IPv4 addresses eventually, and that it will only get uglier as we do. The only real debate is from people who don't want to take the time to upgrade their infrastructure, or from businesses (ISPs) who actually profit from the artificial scarcity these days.
No, most ISPs will probably give you an entire block of IPv6 addresses, but they'll only route packets to one of them, unless you pay $5/month for more (it's too lucrative a stream of cash - like text messaging).
I don't see how. Most of their traffic is going to be home users, and most home users currently use NAT, rather than pay for the extra IP. So, ISPs have to realize that home users are going to continue to not pay for the privilege of IP addresses, so there's not much reason for them to do that.
Though you still do see the occasional game that requires DMZ mode...
There's no more "coding for a desktop widget" or "coding for a panel applet" or "coding for X or Y." You're just coding for Plasma.
I must be missing something. How is this different than, say, coding for X11? Drawing an X window of a specific type? Or building a widget in whatever toolkit you're using?
Whether you like their version numbering or not, they told you what was coming.
I think we're at an impasse, there. They did not tell us what was coming in the universal language of version numbers -- as in, call a beta a beta.
And, when I've asked about it, the reason they chose to call it 4.0 is so that people would start using it. It seems to me that people would start using it because they assumed it would be a milestone, and an actual, stable release.
That seems pretty deceptive to me -- basically, you released it in order to get more beta testers.
And the experience was pretty much like "upgrading" to Vista -- which I don't think is a strawman, considering that the Vista upgrade is actually smoother.
There may be other examples you could use in this spot, but Firefox isn't one.
I'm not using Firefox as an example of code. Maybe you did have a much more difficult problem -- I'll grant that.
I'm using Firefox as an example of a well managed release cycle.
Or, put another way: Kubuntu 8.10 was a pretty horrible release, and they have to put together far more packages than KDE does. And I give them no excuse for doing things like dropping Bluetooth support.
In both cases, the release should've been delayed, and the issues should've been ironed out.
Hmm, what else... Oh yeah, the Linux kernel. 2.6.0 actually did work. The development branch was called 2.5.x, and people actually used that to get ready for 2.6. And maybe I'm not remembering very well, but I remember upgrading to 2.6 and finding pretty much everything just worked.
You obviously have missed the point of FLAC, then. Lossless means any "generational loss" is the first generation. If you download a FLAC and then re-encode to AAC, you'll get the same result as downloading the AAC, just with more time and bandwidth spent.
On the other hand, if you re-encode an AAC to MP3, you're now two generations away. Some people can tell the difference with just a single generation MP3.
The difference is, if you then get a player that supports AAC+, you can do that. Or a player that supports WMA, or even Vorbis. Or encode it to AC3 and put it on a DVD. Or an old-school player that only supports mp3 -- or back to raw PCM, and burn a CD. All without having to go find those files again -- or re-buy them, depending who you're dealing with -- just tweak a setting in Amarok, push "sync", and come back in a few hours.
Could it be because no-one is quite sure if it's safe to do so, patent-wise?
I think it has more to do with business concerns. After all, FLAC has no licensing fees -- anyone know if Apple gets royalties on AAC and other MPEG stuff?
There's also concerns like bandwidth and storage, and the relative lack of demand for FLAC -- though I think that's really more of a marketing problem; it's not that hard to sell to people with ever-larger hard drives that they can't fill, and ever faster Internet connections they can't saturate.
And there's the fact that if it was just the patents, you'd think Apple Lossless would be getting more love.
Good example -- a browser uses an international, open standard to access web pages. There are many choices in browsers, and there are many tools other than browsers which can access a web page.
iTunes uses a nonstandard, proprietary protocol to access their store, and your choice is iTunes or iTunes. Which leaves OSes which iTunes doesn't support out in the cold, no matter how good they are at playing music.
Makes you wonder WTF the point of going DRM-free was, if you still have to use exactly one program.
Slashdot Mirror
How about this: Have a dedicated device, of a reasonable size. Boot off of that, always, and don't bother with anything else. Once that's booted, it can start handling the rest -- in parallel, if it's smart. Make it a removable standard, like SD, in case there are problems.
Modern OSes, once they have the correct drivers, tend to ignore the BIOS anyway.
My kernel is 2.3 megs, uncompressed. My initramfs is 9.1 megs, compressed. Give me, oh, 100 megs of flash to boot from, and guarantee nothing more than that device is available when it's booted from.
But I do believe post-POST is where the problem is. After all, I've seen computers whiz through POST in maybe two seconds, and then take several minutes to get to a usable desktop. Hibernate is cool, but it's still not instant-on.
On mine, it may take 50% for everything to start, but easily within five seconds, I can already be launching programs. I wonder if we should be counting the time it takes to load all needed programs?
Hilarious to watch. Seriously, you can't come up with anything better than the guy whose catchphrases are "God hates fags", "God hates America", and "Priests rape boys"?
I thought Christianity was about love. This guy is all about hate.
The saddest part of this is that it's not even about Ricardo Montalban, It's about George Carlin. Montalban was a devout Roman catholic.
I doubt very much that this has anything to do with admins. I suspect it has much more to do with the kind of community that's attracted to Tremulous.
And I never said it was eradicated. I suggested it might be lessened.
it's committing a cardinal sin of online game design: "Never trust the client"
That's only possible if the game design in question allows for it. Almost no genres today fall into that category.
For the simplest example, suppose we take a card game, or a game of chess. Something like that, where there's no advantage to moving superhumanly fast -- purely strategy, everyone takes their turn. There's still the possibility of computer enhancement -- for example, a chess computer to show you the best possible move.
There are some cheats (using your FPS example) that you would not be able to stop even with closed clients. For example, there is a tool commonly used by Guild Wars players called "TexMod" which sits in DirectX and replaces textures.
Commonly known as a "wallhack", among other things. It's not DirectX-specific. It is, however, something closed clients try to adjust for.
On the other hand, if the server does all the real legwork and the client is only trusted for user input... I suppose you still have to deal with aimbots
Well, taken to an extreme, you don't, until AI has advanced to the point where it can recognize (fast enough to matter) the appropriate images from a video feed.
The point is, you have to trust the client for practical reasons. You have to send enough information for the client to render on its own, otherwise the bandwidth and server resources required are impossible.
you get those with closed clients too...
Well, again, a closed client at least has a chance. There still has to be some reverse engineering, possibly of the OS as well as the game, and if you tie it into a network like Steam, you also raise the stakes -- if you cheat, and you're discovered, you're gone, and you have to buy all your games again.
This mostly works. It's obviously not perfect, for the same reasons DRM isn't perfect. But I do believe it's more effective than leaving the source open, and doing nothing about the problem.
However, the fact that we're even having this discussion supports my point -- insisting on GPL/FOSS everywhere completely removes one possible way of fighting cheats. Whether it would have worked or not is up for debate, but things like a GPL'd Qt make that decision for you -- either you try to make a FOSS game, or you don't use Qt.
I personally think it sucks to see that those who are materially acting contrary to those ideals are sharing the benefits of this code.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Samba? Or Wine?
I have somewhat different priorities -- I would rather see end-users benefit. Most often, this means I'd rather see something open than closed (I'm looking at you, Flash), but not always.
For example, many games, by their very nature (FPS, for instance), are only secure against cheating through obscurity. It might be possible to make a dual-licensed version of that work, given sufficient "trusted computing" to ensure that only the official binary is used in certain settings. A GPL3'd version wouldn't work at all.
I would like to see the day arise where the closed source commercial software industry dies because it's forced to re-invent more and more wheels that open source software developers do not have to re-invent
That actually has very little to do with open or closed, and everything to do with communication and cooperation.
I've been doing a lot of Rails work lately... Seems just about everything Ruby (especially Rails stuff) is MIT-licensed. The idea is that if an idea is good, and generic enough, you'll release it back to the community rather than try to maintain it yourself -- but when you use that stuff in your own proprietary project, you don't have to worry about licensing.
The net result is, only the stuff which is actually relevant to the site in question are at all subject to re-invention. And even then, not necessarily -- provide an API, and others will just use your service instead of reinventing it.
Nor is an aversion to the GPL strictly a proprietary thing. If you've got a large codebase in an OSI-approved, but GPL-incompatible license, it's a problem, and the GPL is about the least compatible FOSS license out there.
As a simple example: We absolutely do have to reinvent the wheel with ZFS, if it's to ever exist in the Linux kernel, largely because the kernel is GPL'd. And if btrfs ends up being good, and anyone wants to port it to OS X, BSD, or OpenSolaris, they're going to run into the same problem. We do each of those using things like FUSE, not for any technical reason, but to avoid licensing problems.
The only way to avoid reinventing the wheel is to follow sqlite's example, and go public domain -- or to define "proprietary" as "not using the GPL", which is just stupid.
In what way?
Last I checked, Kopete has more features (think webcams) than Pidgin. The biggest downside has been segfaults (I've gotten one today after at least two months with no problems), and disconnects (annoying, but if it automatically reconnects five seconds later, is that really a problem?)
So you're pissed because they just saved those people a bunch of work?
I'm confused -- until this moment, wouldn't they have been hoping exactly this would happen, and cursing the fact that they had to deal with the GPL?
Right.
Point is, coca by itself is not bad -- yet the US isn't satisfied with busting you for drug-running if you dare to bring a few leaves home with you. They've actually entered into a trade agreement with Peru which allows them to go down there and exterminate the coca product.
By making it illegal, all we do is encourage smuggling drugs through Mexico, which is doing to Mexico what Prohibition did to the US. But since it's Not In My BackYard, no one cares.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm arguing with you, though -- that fact actually strengthens my analogy.
I could not have imagined writing a discrete program for something like that.
Depends what you mean by "discrete" -- something like Rails, in which the skeleton is easy. Bonus is, she can't screw up the program itself, and if the ERP system is sane, you can enter it programatically.
There is nothing wrong with a spreadsheet, used within reason. For example, formatting and sorting tabular data (that you don't need to query), a simple formula (and set of inputs) that you could recreate in five minutes if you needed to, etc.
Unfortunately, no one uses them "within reason". And I mean, no one uses them that way. The program certainly isn't set up to encourage that much moderation.
When you go beyond that, I've identified two major problems -- they hide implementation in favor of results, and they encourage repeating yourself (copy/paste). Both of these mean that maintenance is a nightmare, by the time you realize you've created an application, not just a spreadsheet.
And it doesn't take VBA, or macros, or external data sources, to build that nightmare. All it takes is overuse and over-reliance.
If I may draw a completely exaggerated analogy: Cocaine isn't the problem. People are the problem -- it is possible to use Cocaine without having a problem. (In fact, Coca tea isn't even that addictive, and there's still Coca in Coca-Cola.) However, a crack rock is a recipe for trouble, even if it's the person's own fault for abusing it.
I find myself agreeing with him, somewhat, from what I can read in the summary -- though I refuse to click through and give him traffic.
The real problem with the spreadsheet is that it replaces actual programming, thus allowing non-programmers to develop spectacular messes.
Two things stand out right away: It's not a very good programming tool, because it's not particularly DRY by nature -- you write the formula, then do the equivalent of copy'n'paste to repeat it down an entire column, usually applying to that row. That's just one example, but a spreadsheet that evolves into an application is a maintenance nightmare.
And it's not a very good non-programmer tool, because so much is hidden in the default view. For example, in the above case, the formula isn't what's visible in that table cell -- the result is. If an error creeps into one of those cells, not only is it a nightmare trying to find which one (since you have a thousand versions of the same function to wade through), you can't even see them without clicking on each cell.
It also puts the focus on the eventual results, rather than on the mechanism behind them.
It works fine if you just want to display some tabular data, but that's about it -- and it's overkill for that.
Other than that, if you're a non-programmer, don't use it for anything so complicated you can't recreate it from scratch in a minute or so. If you're a programmer, you should already know about some better tools -- interactive prompts, real SQL databases, HTML tables or PDFs for output, etc.
I don't know if this has anything to do with what Dvorak actually wrote, since I didn't read it. But I do agree that spreadsheets suck.
Associated Press
Thanks for reading TRFA -- looks like you're almost right. It wasn't just GTA, either:
The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.
Ironically, on the directly linked TFA:
Here's hoping that the parents who allowed a child to see (let alone play) Grand Theft Auto will attract more attention that the award-winning video game (which anyone will admit, should only be played by adults).
Yeah, good job. Your pre-emptive, kneejerk, anti-Jack-Thompson interpretation has already drawn more attention to both Jack and GTA than the original article did.
At least the ones I know do like some Beatles. And some Hendrix.
Try back in a couple hundred years, then we might have some idea of whether or not they're timeless. Right now, no one has a clue -- Shakespeare himself was seen as a pop artist in his day.
Exactly.
Maybe a better example is Postfix. Turing-complete, but do you really want to write more than pretty fractal patterns in it?
Is there something like that for IPv6 so that I don't have to go all the way out to the internet to get back to my file server?
That actually is a really stupid question, for someone who knows how Internet routing works.
Very simply, your computer is always configured to know which addresses are "link-local", which ones must go through a gateway, and what the gateway (router) is. So, for your local address, you've probably got 192.168.1.* as "link-local", 192.168.1.1 is your gateway, and everything else is "on the Internet".
But that's arbitrary. I like to use the 10.0.0.0/8 network, which is also defined as "local", for that purpose. And all of that assumes NAT -- while at college, all computers had their own, real, Internet-routable IP addresses. But of course, if you had two of them hooked up to the same switch, they would be assigned IPs on the same network, meaning they would connect directly to each other, rather than going "out to the Internet".
So, you'd build a LAN the same way. If you need to protect it from Internet access, you stick a firewall in front of it, not a NAT. And even if it's a real live Internet address, your computer will know it's local...
But all of that -- what is LAN, and what is WAN, and what is Internet -- that's pretty arbitrary. It's really more about physical lines than any network addressing. Perhaps the truest thing we could say about it is your local switch (or hub, or router) is part of the Internet, so yes, it has to go a few feet "out to the Internet", even if the signal never leaves your house.
Looking at my IP telephony -- it "works", but pretty much only Skype, because no one else does the tunneling hack required.
Looking at any other peer to peer connection: It works, but it's much more difficult than it needs to be. Want to transfer files from home to work, over the Internet? You need a VPN, or you need to upload them to a third party (dropbox, etc) and download them at work, or you need to forward ports...
Oh, and there's the built-in ipsec -- opportunistic encryption.
From a consumer pov, there's actually a lot to like about everyone having their own IP. But it's a chicken and egg problem -- ISPs have reasons (not good ones) not to like it, so consumers don't have it. So there's not many applications for it, so consumers don't see why they should care.
Unfortunately, we're also bad at doing global solutions to big problems ahead of time, especially when there's still disagreement as to whether or not the problem even exists or is as serious as some say it is.
As usual, there's really no debate.
It's a bit like global warming. Serious scientists admit that it exists. The "controversy" is because of research groups quite literally paid for by the oil companies who would stand to lose the most if we started taking it seriously.
Similarly, there's really no debate that IPv6 would be a good thing to have, and that we'll run out of IPv4 addresses eventually, and that it will only get uglier as we do. The only real debate is from people who don't want to take the time to upgrade their infrastructure, or from businesses (ISPs) who actually profit from the artificial scarcity these days.
No, most ISPs will probably give you an entire block of IPv6 addresses, but they'll only route packets to one of them, unless you pay $5/month for more (it's too lucrative a stream of cash - like text messaging).
I don't see how. Most of their traffic is going to be home users, and most home users currently use NAT, rather than pay for the extra IP. So, ISPs have to realize that home users are going to continue to not pay for the privilege of IP addresses, so there's not much reason for them to do that.
Though you still do see the occasional game that requires DMZ mode...
...which wouldn't have to exist, without NAT.
I would argue that GP is confusing "programming language" with "general-purpose programming language".
I bet even SQL is Turing-complete, but I wouldn't want to do more than database operations with it.
There's no more "coding for a desktop widget" or "coding for a panel applet" or "coding for X or Y." You're just coding for Plasma.
I must be missing something. How is this different than, say, coding for X11? Drawing an X window of a specific type? Or building a widget in whatever toolkit you're using?
Whether you like their version numbering or not, they told you what was coming.
I think we're at an impasse, there. They did not tell us what was coming in the universal language of version numbers -- as in, call a beta a beta.
And, when I've asked about it, the reason they chose to call it 4.0 is so that people would start using it. It seems to me that people would start using it because they assumed it would be a milestone, and an actual, stable release.
That seems pretty deceptive to me -- basically, you released it in order to get more beta testers.
And the experience was pretty much like "upgrading" to Vista -- which I don't think is a strawman, considering that the Vista upgrade is actually smoother.
There may be other examples you could use in this spot, but Firefox isn't one.
I'm not using Firefox as an example of code. Maybe you did have a much more difficult problem -- I'll grant that.
I'm using Firefox as an example of a well managed release cycle.
Or, put another way: Kubuntu 8.10 was a pretty horrible release, and they have to put together far more packages than KDE does. And I give them no excuse for doing things like dropping Bluetooth support.
In both cases, the release should've been delayed, and the issues should've been ironed out.
Hmm, what else... Oh yeah, the Linux kernel. 2.6.0 actually did work. The development branch was called 2.5.x, and people actually used that to get ready for 2.6. And maybe I'm not remembering very well, but I remember upgrading to 2.6 and finding pretty much everything just worked.
exposure means money
Really?
Seems some of the more "exposed" ideas have come as Internet memes. Obama had plenty of money, but he also used the Internet effectively.
Nothing like compiling from source to ensure reproducibility. And there's a lot more work that goes into that than just avoiding C modules.
But I see your point, although I still find the policy moronic. And you just made my day with the Fiddler reference!
You obviously have missed the point of FLAC, then. Lossless means any "generational loss" is the first generation. If you download a FLAC and then re-encode to AAC, you'll get the same result as downloading the AAC, just with more time and bandwidth spent.
On the other hand, if you re-encode an AAC to MP3, you're now two generations away. Some people can tell the difference with just a single generation MP3.
The difference is, if you then get a player that supports AAC+, you can do that. Or a player that supports WMA, or even Vorbis. Or encode it to AC3 and put it on a DVD. Or an old-school player that only supports mp3 -- or back to raw PCM, and burn a CD. All without having to go find those files again -- or re-buy them, depending who you're dealing with -- just tweak a setting in Amarok, push "sync", and come back in a few hours.
Could it be because no-one is quite sure if it's safe to do so, patent-wise?
I think it has more to do with business concerns. After all, FLAC has no licensing fees -- anyone know if Apple gets royalties on AAC and other MPEG stuff?
There's also concerns like bandwidth and storage, and the relative lack of demand for FLAC -- though I think that's really more of a marketing problem; it's not that hard to sell to people with ever-larger hard drives that they can't fill, and ever faster Internet connections they can't saturate.
And there's the fact that if it was just the patents, you'd think Apple Lossless would be getting more love.
Good example -- a browser uses an international, open standard to access web pages. There are many choices in browsers, and there are many tools other than browsers which can access a web page.
iTunes uses a nonstandard, proprietary protocol to access their store, and your choice is iTunes or iTunes. Which leaves OSes which iTunes doesn't support out in the cold, no matter how good they are at playing music.
Makes you wonder WTF the point of going DRM-free was, if you still have to use exactly one program.