If you are in development for the money, your in it for the wrong reasons.
Bullshit. There is a lot of annoying software development work, and only some of the parts are really fun to do. Take GUI development or graphic design for example: Why do the best programs often have a poorly designed GUI? Why is there no open source GUI? GUI programing is boring. Development of module tests is boring. Developing of graphic for computer games is boring, thats one reason there are only very few open source 3D games like TuxRacer. (Tell me if I'm wrong here.) People usually do this work because they are paid for it. What they do for hobby is often to start a new project with some fantastic new ideas, and afterwards break up the project because they notice it's too much of the boring work to do as well.
As far as I know, most programmers of the more successful projects can work on the project in their paid working time. (I am aware that still many people sacrifice their free time. I do not intend to insult them at all, quite the opposite: Those who are really so commited to their hobby project that they sacrifice their free time to do the anoying parts of their work as well have my full respect, imo they can be proud to be part of a small minority)
Does anyone have a statistic on how many contibuters of the linux kernel, mozilla, OpenOffice, KDE, gnome are paid for their work? Just curious.
When you organize a big demonstration, one of your responsibilities is protecting the peaceful demonstrators from some aggressive people
How will that go? The plan for the demonstration is made public in advance, how do I hinder other (not so peacful) people to join? I never organized a demonstration, but until now I always joined without any screening in advane if I might be dangerous or not.
People screaming their guts off, crying and falling to the ground? Excuse me? What would be "invisible" about all that?
That's only visible in the moment the violence is applied. But there won't be any bruises or anything like that, so no one can produce telling photos of the victims later. I wonder if there is any remote damage, but as far as I hear it it's very unlikely. So the risk of charges against the shooter should be low. Visualisation matters a lot! If you are ever in a fight, if your opponent starts bleeding all witnesses will consider you the bad, violent guy. If you know the right technic to cause terrible pain to your opponent, no witness will hold it seriously against you. (One of the lessons my martial arts teacher thought me regarding the practical aspects of self defence)
The trouble is that the mood of crowds is unpredictable, can change *very* quickly, and cannot be reasoned with. Added to that people in packs tend not to act with the same restraint they would individually
This might be a reason to deny the right to assemble. But the right to assemble is graned by Your constitution, so this argument does not count.
A mob of lunatics rampaging through the streets burning cars, smashing in windows and robbing houses
Agreed. But on most demonstrations I was, it was only very few lunatics rampaging being used as an excuse to capture many obviously peacful people.
or even one just throwing rocks, firecrackers or bottles at a line of police isn't "exercising freedom".
COMPLETELY different story! How can one person render all others around him illegal? So next time I see a demonstration I don't like I will join the demonstration and throw a bottle. That way, all people around me loose there right to assemble. Nice, very efficient.
That would be nice in combination with a built in fingerprint recognition (for example in my front door handle). Whenever my girlfriend comes to my flat, she will be happy about the loads of photos of her everywhere in my flat.
his basic thesis - that hackers are a huge economic problem to society
Agreed.
and that serious steps are needed to thwart them
Not agreed. If you stop those hackers instead of fixing your security holes, the awareness for security holes will go down. Other enemies (secret services of other countries, or maybe worse, those of your own country) can prepare a nice collection of viruses, worms, etc. and hold them back for a special occasion. From a hostile country this migt be a major blow in a critical moment, your own secret services can slowly compromise whatever is left from privacy when no one is aware of the risk anymore.
In short: Get your systems safe instead of stricter laws! If a hacker breaks in AND (steals OR maniulates) data, punish him. If he breaks in for fun and informs you about your security problems without causing any damage, pay him. And don't allow the owner of the network to sue when they didn't do anything to secure their networks! When I place my pocket in the middle of the street with big money in it, I will also have a hard time to sue anyone for theft later.
We might not like regulation, Agreed.
but if we can't police our own bad behavior, steps need to be taken. Yes. We need more research on security issues (and therefore the DMCA dismissed to encourage experiments and research), more awareness for security problems, more critical customers that will not believe the marketing BS of some big software companies wich always promise to work on security while actually only building shiny new DRM features for hollywood instead.
A long way to go.
Money talks. Ehh... You hear voices? From your pocket?
ah, maybe the trick is not intending anything devious from the beginning? (Can I honestly say that, or am I lying to myself?
I think, You have definitely a point here. When I was in relation ship, it often happened that I was just friendly (as in friendship, asexual!) to some girls, and it turned out they asked for far more. (I was lucky, my girlfriend that time was not a jealous type of person and allowed me to have some fun...)
Than again, when I was single, it took a loooong time to find some adventure, probably because I wanted it too much.
Of course, when I had a girlfriend, I was nevr actively looking for other girls or wishing for an adventure. (Can I honestly say that, or am I lying to myself? hmmm....)
648 votes to 14. That's how utterly wrong this bill was.
You got it badly wrong here. The voting shows, that it is an important issue and both sides try to play on safety. Both sides voted against the bill.
The anti-patent side because they feard the bill without proposed amendmends.
The pro-patent side because they feard the amendments.
What this voting shows, is two things: 1. It is an important issue, we need a clear bill on this issue!
2. The amendmends would have turned the bill upside down, and since the amendments do nothing but drawing a firm line between software and not software it is very clear, that the pro-patent site wanted software-patents, also they always claimed they want to exclude software from patent law.
I don't think, the car market and the software market is comparable.
In the car market the fixed expenses (developing the car, testing) are only a small part of all expoenses, the variable expenses ((expenses of producing x+1 cars) - (expenses of producing x cars) ) are still high.
In the software market only the fixed expenses are really relevant. Of course there are still some expenses for patch downloads or whatever, but thats not significant anymore. Therefore the benefit of e high market share is much higher than in any other business.
In the car market, when the vedor buys your car once, there is still a good chance he will by a different branded car the next time.
In the software market it is really expensive for the customer to switch to another vendor. This also increases the benefit of a high market share.
In the car market, the car might cost arount 20000$, the average customer might spend another 1000$ on accessories from the same vendor. The vendor only has little chance to make another fortune on the customer just because he baught the car.
In the software market, the vendor of a central application can lock in the customer to make sure all addons are bought by the same vendor. And he is very likely to make a fortune on it. With this vendor lockin the vendor is no longer in a real competition with other vendors, frexibility is not so crucial anymore.
Therefore I think, comparing the car business and the software business (as it is at the moment) is not valid.
A LAMP is a very commen combination of Linux, Apache (Web-Server), MySQL and PHP.
Some PHP-skripts implement the required functions to access the SQL database and to format the output as HTML, apache opens a port so any web-browser can be used to display the UI and to access the skript. Not particular useful on a PDA, but flexible because you can copy the skript to your PC at home and access the skript (and therefore Your data) through the Internet. (Of course you will probably need to some password protection for this case.)
The advantage is that you have one set of skripts which can be used on Your PDA or PC or whatever, the data s available (and easy to transfere) in an SQL database, interfaces to access the data for whatever purpose are available for nearly all relevant languages.
Also I don't know this specific device, in principle I see some advantage to use Linux on a handheld. A friend of mine has a LAMP installed on his handheld, with some scripts to organize his schedules, addresses, whatever. The advanage compared to other organizers is the increased availability of your data: You can easily export it to any format you need without being locked in some proprietary applications.
Why is parvenu74 modded up and parent modded down? Ok, the text of parvenu74 is funny, it could be moderated up as funny. But moderating it insightful is ridiculus! It neither contains any information, nor does it show any insight. Is it possible to mod the moderators funny?
"Binary kernel modules are bad, therefore we don't even talk about it and if you want to then to hell with you." Ever loaded a binary-only module like the one from Nvidia for the graphics in Linux recently? You get this big ugly scary warning about "tainting" the kernel. *sigh*
Are you a software developer? With a binary-only driver noone knows anymore whats going up in the kernel space. Thats not (only) a geeky or paranoid issue, but a very pratical one: What, if the system crashes? How will You locate bugs in the kernel when you do not have full access to the source? That's what the tainted flag is about: If you use binary only drivers don't expect anyone to debug it for you.
That said, I'm also not really lucky with the development strategies of the kernel team. While I understand the importance of the tainted flag I would really wish for clearly designed interfaces in the kernel to make the source easier to understand.
But anyway, I will get rid of those problems next year by switching to a clean microkernel architecture, where even drivers are protected from each other. Did you know, hurd will be released next year?
E.g. "site:apple.com " will return only search-results from apple.com (and subdomains). It also works for root-domains (sometimes it's useful to include "site:org" in your search to avoid too many commercial links)
They may actually be *counting* on a flood of user-created material raising the profile and perceived value of their console.
You wrote:
While that is a nice idea, where is the flood of games for the existing Linux base?
That's two different subjects. While there is no flood of Linux-games there is a real flood of useful linux applications! What about vcr software, ray-traycing (povray etc.) and the like which might benefit a lot from 8 independent DPS's ?
What about OpenOffice, Browser,... ? I don't know about the power consuption of the PS3, but with this software the box could replace the average PC for the typical home office and the same time the vcr. The main reason for most people not to dump Windows and switch to Linux was that there are no games for Linux. This argument is now void, since everyone can easily buy the best games, not for Linux but for the PS3. The main reason not to use the PC as a real alternative to the vcr is the high power consumption, the noise of the fans and the big ugly case. Those arguments are also void now.
You wrote "Because it is fully checked..." and "This is real security.". I just tried to pint out that OS does not prevent backdoors. You just have to find another way to create them. And yes, I think it is easily possible to create such backdoors in OS-projects as well. Every remote hole caused by a programing mistake could also be an intentional hole created by the programmer. Of course in closed source it's easier to build in more sophisticated backdoors, and of course I think open source is closer to security, but for open source it's still not impossible.
I think, most people do not dislike the population of the USA, but many people and many governments I know dislike US politics, US dominance in the Software-Marketplace and in particular the criminal way Microsoft tries to develop their dominance. Therefore many people won't have a problem at all to use Software wich was developed in parts in USA as long as that does not mean to support Companies like Microsoft and as long as there is no security risk due to NSA spying on them.
There are several ways to implement a backdoor, and many of them are practically invisible. There is no need at all to open a port and handle incoming traffic (wich would be very obvious). Instead if you want to implement a backdoor you could just leave some input-parameters of a service unchecked so it can be exploited by a buffer overflow. If anyone notices this flaw later you can still say "Ooops... but hey, everyone makes mistakes. I'll just fix it..."
I know that buffer-overflows are not a good example since they are not easily exploitable in SE-Linux anymore (iirc). But the basic concept remains still applicable.
Maybe thast's the reason a big Company like MS takes so long to correct some very simple bugs, like the one about BMP-files in IE (http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/15210). As soon as they fixed all their bugs they would be forced to release a new Windows-Version with new backdoors^d^d^d^d^d^dvulnerabilities.
Who guarantees that MS really didn't know about some of the bugs initially and they didn't just provide a list to NSA?
I, for one, do not have the windows media player. I only have mplayer stuff wich is available for linux. (I don't know, if there is support for Windows-Media format for linux-applications.)
And you are exactly describing the reason, why it is a good thing to stop them gaining a Monopoly with their format: How can there be an OS cometition when the application-"standard" controlled by one OS vendor pushing his own OS?
Everywhere I look I see people with at least 128 MB RAM computers at home. 256 is not rare these days.
Maybe. I think, many poeple cannot afford e.g. laptops of that spec. My 166Mhz/64MB laptop was, iirc, around 180Euro, inclusive a network-card, floppy-disk. I would not know how to install a MS-Windows there (by the lack of a CDR-drive). It would be a really nice investment for many schoolars who simply can't afford up to date laptops, for most educational purpose it should be more than enough.
mathematics: octave
information technology (programming): gcc, make, vim, snavigator
information technology (handling): different servers, mail client, FTP, whatever-client
languages: dictionary (ding), vocable-training based on ding-database
Unfortunately there are afaik not many distributions shipped with a low-spec default installation wich are still usable for Windows-aggrieved
But then again it's the only wm that works well on a cel500 128mg ram laptop.
I don't think so. On my laptop (166MhZ, 64MB) I get along with my WindowMaker. (Of course it depends wich applications you want to use.) On my Desktop at work (Win2000 with cygnus) I also run a WindowMaker and I'm so contempted that I switched to WindowMaker at home as well (360MB, 850MhZ).
Regards
Slashdot Mirror
If you are in development for the money, your in it for the wrong reasons.
Bullshit. There is a lot of annoying software development work, and only some of the parts are really fun to do. Take GUI development or graphic design for example: Why do the best programs often have a poorly designed GUI? Why is there no open source GUI? GUI programing is boring. Development of module tests is boring. Developing of graphic for computer games is boring, thats one reason there are only very few open source 3D games like TuxRacer. (Tell me if I'm wrong here.) People usually do this work because they are paid for it. What they do for hobby is often to start a new project with some fantastic new ideas, and afterwards break up the project because they notice it's too much of the boring work to do as well.
As far as I know, most programmers of the more successful projects can work on the project in their paid working time. (I am aware that still many people sacrifice their free time. I do not intend to insult them at all, quite the opposite: Those who are really so commited to their hobby project that they sacrifice their free time to do the anoying parts of their work as well have my full respect, imo they can be proud to be part of a small minority)
Does anyone have a statistic on how many contibuters of the linux kernel, mozilla, OpenOffice, KDE, gnome are paid for their work? Just curious.
When you organize a big demonstration, one of your responsibilities is protecting the peaceful demonstrators from some aggressive people
How will that go? The plan for the demonstration is made public in advance, how do I hinder other (not so peacful) people to join? I never organized a demonstration, but until now I always joined without any screening in advane if I might be dangerous or not.
People screaming their guts off, crying and falling to the ground? Excuse me? What would be "invisible" about all that?
That's only visible in the moment the violence is applied. But there won't be any bruises or anything like that, so no one can produce telling photos of the victims later. I wonder if there is any remote damage, but as far as I hear it it's very unlikely. So the risk of charges against the shooter should be low. Visualisation matters a lot! If you are ever in a fight, if your opponent starts bleeding all witnesses will consider you the bad, violent guy. If you know the right technic to cause terrible pain to your opponent, no witness will hold it seriously against you. (One of the lessons my martial arts teacher thought me regarding the practical aspects of self defence)
The trouble is that the mood of crowds is unpredictable, can change *very* quickly, and cannot be reasoned with. Added to that people in packs tend not to act with the same restraint they would individually
This might be a reason to deny the right to assemble. But the right to assemble is graned by Your constitution, so this argument does not count.
A mob of lunatics rampaging through the streets burning cars, smashing in windows and robbing houses
Agreed. But on most demonstrations I was, it was only very few lunatics rampaging being used as an excuse to capture many obviously peacful people.
or even one just throwing rocks, firecrackers or bottles at a line of police isn't "exercising freedom".
COMPLETELY different story! How can one person render all others around him illegal? So next time I see a demonstration I don't like I will join the demonstration and throw a bottle. That way, all people around me loose there right to assemble. Nice, very efficient.
That would be nice in combination with a built in fingerprint recognition (for example in my front door handle). Whenever my girlfriend comes to my flat, she will be happy about the loads of photos of her everywhere in my flat.
Not matter, which of my girlfriends...
his basic thesis - that hackers are a huge economic problem to society
Agreed.
and that serious steps are needed to thwart them
Not agreed. If you stop those hackers instead of fixing your security holes, the awareness for security holes will go down. Other enemies (secret services of other countries, or maybe worse, those of your own country) can prepare a nice collection of viruses, worms, etc. and hold them back for a special occasion. From a hostile country this migt be a major blow in a critical moment, your own secret services can slowly compromise whatever is left from privacy when no one is aware of the risk anymore.
In short: Get your systems safe instead of stricter laws! If a hacker breaks in AND (steals OR maniulates) data, punish him. If he breaks in for fun and informs you about your security problems without causing any damage, pay him.
And don't allow the owner of the network to sue when they didn't do anything to secure their networks! When I place my pocket in the middle of the street with big money in it, I will also have a hard time to sue anyone for theft later.
We might not like regulation,
Agreed.
but if we can't police our own bad behavior, steps need to be taken.
Yes. We need more research on security issues (and therefore the DMCA dismissed to encourage experiments and research), more awareness for security problems, more critical customers that will not believe the marketing BS of some big software companies wich always promise to work on security while actually only building shiny new DRM features for hollywood instead.
A long way to go.
Money talks.
Ehh... You hear voices? From your pocket?
ah, maybe the trick is not intending anything devious from the beginning? (Can I honestly say that, or am I lying to myself?
I think, You have definitely a point here. When I was in relation ship, it often happened that I was just friendly (as in friendship, asexual!) to some girls, and it turned out they asked for far more. (I was lucky, my girlfriend that time was not a jealous type of person and allowed me to have some fun...)
Than again, when I was single, it took a loooong time to find some adventure, probably because I wanted it too much.
Of course, when I had a girlfriend, I was nevr actively looking for other girls or wishing for an adventure. (Can I honestly say that, or am I lying to myself? hmmm....)
648 votes to 14. That's how utterly wrong this bill was.
You got it badly wrong here. The voting shows, that it is an important issue and both sides try to play on safety. Both sides voted against the bill.
The anti-patent side because they feard the bill without proposed amendmends.
The pro-patent side because they feard the amendments.
What this voting shows, is two things:
1. It is an important issue, we need a clear bill on this issue!
2. The amendmends would have turned the bill upside down, and since the amendments do nothing but drawing a firm line between software and not software it is very clear, that the pro-patent site wanted software-patents, also they always claimed they want to exclude software from patent law.
The patent directive was rejected! 640 votes for rejection, 18 against rejection!
What is your business? In which regard is Linux more expensive than W2K?
I don't think, the car market and the software market is comparable.
In the car market the fixed expenses (developing the car, testing) are only a small part of all expoenses, the variable expenses ((expenses of producing x+1 cars) - (expenses of producing x cars) ) are still high.
In the software market only the fixed expenses are really relevant. Of course there are still some expenses for patch downloads or whatever, but thats not significant anymore. Therefore the benefit of e high market share is much higher than in any other business.
In the car market, when the vedor buys your car once, there is still a good chance he will by a different branded car the next time.
In the software market it is really expensive for the customer to switch to another vendor. This also increases the benefit of a high market share.
In the car market, the car might cost arount 20000$, the average customer might spend another 1000$ on accessories from the same vendor. The vendor only has little chance to make another fortune on the customer just because he baught the car.
In the software market, the vendor of a central application can lock in the customer to make sure all addons are bought by the same vendor. And he is very likely to make a fortune on it. With this vendor lockin the vendor is no longer in a real competition with other vendors, frexibility is not so crucial anymore.
Therefore I think, comparing the car business and the software business (as it is at the moment) is not valid.
A LAMP is a very commen combination of Linux, Apache (Web-Server), MySQL and PHP.
Some PHP-skripts implement the required functions to access the SQL database and to format the output as HTML, apache opens a port so any web-browser can be used to display the UI and to access the skript. Not particular useful on a PDA, but flexible because you can copy the skript to your PC at home and access the skript (and therefore Your data) through the Internet. (Of course you will probably need to some password protection for this case.)
The advantage is that you have one set of skripts which can be used on Your PDA or PC or whatever, the data s available (and easy to transfere) in an SQL database, interfaces to access the data for whatever purpose are available for nearly all relevant languages.
Also I don't know this specific device, in principle I see some advantage to use Linux on a handheld. A friend of mine has a LAMP installed on his handheld, with some scripts to organize his schedules, addresses, whatever. The advanage compared to other organizers is the increased availability of your data: You can easily export it to any format you need without being locked in some proprietary applications.
Why is parvenu74 modded up and parent modded down? Ok, the text of parvenu74 is funny, it could be moderated up as funny. But moderating it insightful is ridiculus! It neither contains any information, nor does it show any insight. Is it possible to mod the moderators funny?
Are you a software developer? With a binary-only driver noone knows anymore whats going up in the kernel space. Thats not (only) a geeky or paranoid issue, but a very pratical one: What, if the system crashes? How will You locate bugs in the kernel when you do not have full access to the source? That's what the tainted flag is about: If you use binary only drivers don't expect anyone to debug it for you.
That said, I'm also not really lucky with the development strategies of the kernel team. While I understand the importance of the tainted flag I would really wish for clearly designed interfaces in the kernel to make the source easier to understand.
But anyway, I will get rid of those problems next year by switching to a clean microkernel architecture, where even drivers are protected from each other. Did you know, hurd will be released next year?
Thank's. I thought he's looking for information on the (known) website.
Maybe the "site" tag helps you with google?
E.g. "site:apple.com " will return only search-results from apple.com (and subdomains). It also works for root-domains (sometimes it's useful to include "site:org" in your search to avoid too many commercial links)
They may actually be *counting* on a flood of user-created material raising the profile and perceived value of their console.
You wrote:
While that is a nice idea, where is the flood of games for the existing Linux base?
That's two different subjects. While there is no flood of Linux-games there is a real flood of useful linux applications! What about vcr software, ray-traycing (povray etc.) and the like which might benefit a lot from 8 independent DPS's ? What about OpenOffice, Browser, ... ? I don't know about the power consuption of the PS3, but with this software the box could replace the average PC for the typical home office and the same time the vcr. The main reason for most people not to dump Windows and switch to Linux was that there are no games for Linux. This argument is now void, since everyone can easily buy the best games, not for Linux but for the PS3. The main reason not to use the PC as a real alternative to the vcr is the high power consumption, the noise of the fans and the big ugly case. Those arguments are also void now.
You wrote "Because it is fully checked..." and "This is real security.". I just tried to pint out that OS does not prevent backdoors. You just have to find another way to create them. And yes, I think it is easily possible to create such backdoors in OS-projects as well. Every remote hole caused by a programing mistake could also be an intentional hole created by the programmer. Of course in closed source it's easier to build in more sophisticated backdoors, and of course I think open source is closer to security, but for open source it's still not impossible.
I think, most people do not dislike the population of the USA, but many people and many governments I know dislike US politics, US dominance in the Software-Marketplace and in particular the criminal way Microsoft tries to develop their dominance. Therefore many people won't have a problem at all to use Software wich was developed in parts in USA as long as that does not mean to support Companies like Microsoft and as long as there is no security risk due to NSA spying on them.
*Meep* Wrong!
There are several ways to implement a backdoor, and many of them are practically invisible. There is no need at all to open a port and handle incoming traffic (wich would be very obvious). Instead if you want to implement a backdoor you could just leave some input-parameters of a service unchecked so it can be exploited by a buffer overflow. If anyone notices this flaw later you can still say "Ooops... but hey, everyone makes mistakes. I'll just fix it..."
I know that buffer-overflows are not a good example since they are not easily exploitable in SE-Linux anymore (iirc). But the basic concept remains still applicable.
Maybe thast's the reason a big Company like MS takes so long to correct some very simple bugs, like the one about BMP-files in IE (http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/15210). As soon as they fixed all their bugs they would be forced to release a new Windows-Version with new backdoors^d^d^d^d^d^dvulnerabilities.
Who guarantees that MS really didn't know about some of the bugs initially and they didn't just provide a list to NSA?
regards,
q.kontinuum
I, for one, do not have the windows media player. I only have mplayer stuff wich is available for linux. (I don't know, if there is support for Windows-Media format for linux-applications.) And you are exactly describing the reason, why it is a good thing to stop them gaining a Monopoly with their format: How can there be an OS cometition when the application-"standard" controlled by one OS vendor pushing his own OS?
Maybe. I think, many poeple cannot afford e.g. laptops of that spec. My 166Mhz/64MB laptop was, iirc, around 180Euro, inclusive a network-card, floppy-disk. I would not know how to install a MS-Windows there (by the lack of a CDR-drive). It would be a really nice investment for many schoolars who simply can't afford up to date laptops, for most educational purpose it should be more than enough.
mathematics: octave
information technology (programming): gcc, make, vim, snavigator
information technology (handling): different servers, mail client, FTP, whatever-client
languages: dictionary (ding), vocable-training based on ding-database Unfortunately there are afaik not many distributions shipped with a low-spec default installation wich are still usable for Windows-aggrieved
I don't think so. On my laptop (166MhZ, 64MB) I get along with my WindowMaker. (Of course it depends wich applications you want to use.) On my Desktop at work (Win2000 with cygnus) I also run a WindowMaker and I'm so contempted that I switched to WindowMaker at home as well (360MB, 850MhZ). Regards
http://tinyurl.com/2oyo9
is a bit more convenient. (Yes, I know, redundant...)