So tell me, if banning List Generation Software is a bit heavy handed, then please explain its lawful use?
For example, one could imagine research projects on information retrieval. Depending on the wording of the legislation, they may even make things like Google unlawful, though I don't think that's likely.
Restricting software use is always a bad thing, because it only stops the possibility for legal research, just like with the DMCA. The criminals will use it anyway.
Ehh... Actually, 6 tons is exactly 6000 kilograms.
Ehh...what do you expect from a physicist? Actually I'd have expected that he'd said something like "6 tons are well in the range of 10^4 kilograms"....
The screenshots look ugly! WinXP'ish icons, no anti-aliasing, and the colors........now, at least people migrating from Win3.1 will feel right at home.
Now I don't know anything about NASA, but I think with projects of this scale, project management is more difficult than one might think at first.
If you ever have participated in a bigger industry project you will have noticed that every specialist involved has a _lot_ of objections to how things currently are done. Yet, the optimum solution is often not feasible due to cost constraints. As a result, project managers constantly get a lot of emails in their inbox with people bitching around that this-or-that is not secure enough or that this-or-that should be built more stable or this-or-that software module should please use the Perl programming language. In such a scenario, shit happens, and warnings do get lost.
It's completely free and GPL'd, and it's also already very popular [...], unlike Ogg Theora which is completely unheard of fringe experimental codec that no serious group has ever used for a release.
XviD is great, but Theora clearly has other goals:
(1) Because XviD is based on the MPEG-4 standard, it is well possible that there may be patent issues. Anyone participiating in the MPEG group could might be able to shut them down, or sue them for damages. Theora specifically aims for a patent clean standard, which is much harder to achieve.
(2) Especially for video codecs (which are essentially plugins for programs) the GPL can be a problem. It may be that e.g. using a GPL'd codec with Microsoft Media Player is illegal. I know that this is generally up to interpretations, but I think that this is one of the few places where the opinion of the FSF and Microsoft don't differ;-)
(3) Theora is pre-beta. Although I wished myself they'd hurry up a little, I don't think it's fair to compare a tried-and-tested codec standard (MPEG4) with a pre-beta projekt (OGG/Theora).
I don't want to stick up for MS or anything but the problem is the user. If there is a patch availiable and the user doesn't install it then it is the user's fault (even if the user is ignorant).
Wrong. There is absolutely no excuse for
a) opening this port AS DEFAULT for Internet connections (remember, this port is NEVER used for ANY legitimate service) b) this buffer-overflow (do they have a QM department or what??)
The problem with Microsoft is that everything is very insecure _and_ activated by default. RPC port, SMB protocol, HTML mail, ActiveX, you name it.
If you pick up a CD of Windows 2000 from a local retailer, it is expected from you that you install the latest service pack (which will produce more problems -- remember the XP service pack which slowed the whole system down?), about 20 hotfixes (which may or may not really fix the problem -- remember the story about Windows Update saying a fix was installed when it really isn't?), a virus scanner, a firewall and whatever. And, it is additionally expected that you repeat this procedure at least every month or so. And all this just to surf the net, read mails and write letters!
If I buy a TV and I had to check all the wires every month or so to make sure it doesn't implode or start burning, I'd sure return it to the manufacturer.
I'm a programmer myself. I'm coding software for industrial machines. When the machine behaves wrongly and people are injured, I'm responsible. Personally. By my private property. And that's fair. Period.
How could BASIC be "dying" at the same time it was adding all those other features? No one applies similar logic to other languages.
Back in the days where the OS was stored in a ROM and the command line was effectively a BASIC interpreter, BASIC was _the_ language to code in (on my old Amstrad, I had Word Processors, Games etc., all written in BASIC). Today, most serious commercial software is written in another language (like C, Delphi etc.). Basic is used only for scripting, shareware and in-house apps (e.g. business logic in Visual Basic). And even here it gets more and more competition from new languages like Java, C#, Python etc.
So in short, compared to its former popularity, Basic has died.
You're confusing "pure" BASIC with line-numbered BASIC from a quarter century ago. ANSI BASIC or any commercially available dialect have long supported true procedures, functions, etc.
Infact, I ment the old Basics as implemented on the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, the ZX spectrum, the early IBM PCs (GWBASIC/BASICA), the C64 etc. After all, these were the "golden times" of Basic.
At the time where BASIC interpreters/compilers actually got all the fancy features, it was already dying (replaced by Turbo Pascal f.e.)...
A lot of microcontrollers can be programmed in Basic-like languages. It's easy to write basic interpreters/compilers because of the limited features of the language. Remember that "pure" basic doesn't have a subroutine concept at all (besides the very limited GOSUB), and no local variables. Commercial PLC systems have been using Basic as the "high-level"-language of choice for ages. Though they are now more and more moving to IEC-61131-compatible languages like ST ("structured text") and graphical languages.
It wasn't my intent to state that the GPL is a bad thing. The parent^2 is just mistaken because he obviously doesn't know the difference between GPL and LGPL (or doesn't want to know).
"Commercial" and "proprietary" are not at all the same thing, but the author believes you need to pay to sell Qt applications. Wrong - you are permitted to sell GPL-licenced software.
Yeah right, good luck...So then why do you think QT sells you the right to use another license than the GPL?
Seriously, GUI toolkits are quite trivial things nowadays. There are alot of them, and most of them are just fine for usual tasks. Even if QT may have some slight advantages in one place or another, I seriously doubt this difference is worth thousands of dollars. Heck, even Lesstif is LGPL. Also, with GTK+ and wxWin finally catching up, I doubt that Trolltech would have that many customers if it weren't for KDE. And I dare to predict that the more popular Linux gets, the more apparent this problem will get, because people will be running KDE, but all commercial software will be based on GTK etc., destroying all the potential for this superior desktop...
Heh, that won't get read anyway (too late) but I'll express my thoughts anyway.
Isn't it illegal to spread wrong claims? I mean, imagine if I'd open up a site and wrote some conspiracy theory about Microsoft which is technically plain wrong, they'd surely have some way to sue me and shut the site down.
Likewise, if the RIAA tells me that people get my credit card number when I share 3 or 4 songs in Kaazaa (or something), that is plain untrue and it can be proven technically.
Remember, in Germany they already shut down parts of the SCO website because they spread FUD, so don't you think this would be possible here also?
Even this info is useless, because wsprintf is insecure only if it is used the wrong way.
Yes, but the point being that it's pretty damned easy to use it in the wrong way.
Full ACK. But if the tool doesn't make a difference between legal and illegal use of wsprintf it is exactly as useful as grepping the linker symbols. In either case, no need to buy a product from "Bug Scan Inc.".
The PDF presentation tells us things that we know already (buffer overflow, race conditions, whatever).
Two screenshots show debuggers and disassemblers. Another screenshot shows the "analysis results" of the "tool": "wsprintf: This function is insecure, use another function." Even this info is useless, because wsprintf is insecure only if it is used the wrong way, and I bet the "tool" doesn't check that. Besides, everyone uses std::string these days (or at least should do so).
It's also worth to note that about every University in the world has one or more groups working on topics like "automatic code verification", "code path analysis" and other things. This stuff is nowhere rocket science, but there's a lot to happen until it will go usable by the mainstream of developers.
I recently visited a few companies in the so-called High-Tec sector (software houses, manufacturers of electronic gear etc.) and I was surprised how many of them actually use Linux (and other open-source solutions) or are at least very interested in it.
At one big company (actually one of the biggest companies in German High-Tec sector) I went to the bureau of the manager I wanted to meet, opened the door and right in front of me i saw a big Penguin sitting in the corner. I asked him later about it and he openly said, that they were evaluating Linux and in general open standards, and that they are quite sure that it will play an important role in the future.
At another company I visited the rooms and noticed a PC which had a label "WINE Testing Computer" on it. I asked what it was used for and if they had experience with it, and they told me, they would be using MS Visual C++/MFC at the moment, but they already have done studies to make their tool cross-platform and part of the tool would already be supported on Linux.
In general, many people I spoke with (from developers to sysadmins) had installed open-source tools, be it Perl, Python, Cygwin or Linux and almost everyone was very informed about free software, and looked for a possibility to use more of it.
Also, bear in mind that as annoying as Clippy and the pop-up bits are, there are still some people who just can't grasp the concept of "asking Clippy" before they go elsewhere. I'd imagine because it still isn't "personable" enough to engage these novice users in the same way a helpful person would.
The problem with clippy is that it is short-thought and badly implemented. Earlier versions of Microsoft Word (until 2000, but definitely 97) had clippy popping up by default in the right bottom corner after installation. Although the whole interface looked like it was usable, it only was possible to click on "Use Word" down at the clippy. I have seen more than one customer who called me and complained about "Word crashing everytime I start it".
Clippy actually makes people feel more stupid than they actually are, because they get the imagination that everything is simple, and it really isn't. I have teached lots of completely non-technical people how to work with computers, and I got the feeling they generally appreciate to get told the "big picture" so they can understand what's really going on.
If you want to go further, you could say that Clippy really is all about Microsoft patronizing users. Microsoft has a long tradition in this respect, and it starts with Clippy and ends with Palladium.
As much as I love Open Source (I'm typing this via Moz on FreeBSD!), I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet.
I can't agree with that. These systems are one of the platforms where Open Source can be used right now, because the tasks one wants to do are clearly defined, and there is usually an administrator around who will take care of setting up the system anyway. Just install FreeBSD/Linux/whatever along with the necessary tools (OpenOffice, Evolution or Mozilla Mail,...), give the secretary a (quite restricted) user account, and here we go. No problems with people accidentially messing up the system, with virii, or with people saving important stuff into their local C:\ drive. Administration is also much easier via NFS mapped application directories.
Concerning the "help" buttons in Gnome: How often do we get those "Unknown error (number -217482931)" messages in Microsoft software? Besides, I have yet to meet a single person who does read the help rather than call me on the phone ("It says there is already a file with the same name, what does that mean?").
Slashdot Mirror
So tell me, if banning List Generation Software is a bit heavy handed, then please explain its lawful use?
For example, one could imagine research projects on information retrieval. Depending on the wording of the legislation, they may even make things like Google unlawful, though I don't think that's likely.
Restricting software use is always a bad thing, because it only stops the possibility for legal research, just like with the DMCA. The criminals will use it anyway.
Let's see, my UID is around 100,000... Yours is around 700,000...
Looks like you're the one that's new around here.
ALERT! Parent is sarcasm impaired.
You must be new here....
Ehh... Actually, 6 tons is exactly 6000 kilograms.
Ehh...what do you expect from a physicist? Actually I'd have expected that he'd said something like "6 tons are well in the range of 10^4 kilograms"....
Oh, my first thought was more like "what the heck, we already have <string.h>".
Thank you, my friend for this real world reminder.
The screenshots look ugly! WinXP'ish icons, no anti-aliasing, and the colors........now, at least people migrating from Win3.1 will feel right at home.
Thanks, you may mod me down now.
This means that mySQL will be the open source database that will replace most commercial databases.
And I tell you why: Because it supports Microsoft Windows perfectly. And, yes I know that PostgreSql theoretically works under Cygwin...
Now I don't know anything about NASA, but I think with projects of this scale, project management is more difficult than one might think at first.
If you ever have participated in a bigger industry project you will have noticed that every specialist involved has a _lot_ of objections to how things currently are done. Yet, the optimum solution is often not feasible due to cost constraints. As a result, project managers constantly get a lot of emails in their inbox with people bitching around that this-or-that is not secure enough or that this-or-that should be built more stable or this-or-that software module should please use the Perl programming language. In such a scenario, shit happens, and warnings do get lost.
It's completely free and GPL'd, and it's also already very popular [...], unlike Ogg Theora which is completely unheard of fringe experimental codec that no serious group has ever used for a release.
;-)
XviD is great, but Theora clearly has other goals:
(1) Because XviD is based on the MPEG-4 standard, it is well possible that there may be patent issues. Anyone participiating in the MPEG group could might be able to shut them down, or sue them for damages. Theora specifically aims for a patent clean standard, which is much harder to achieve.
(2) Especially for video codecs (which are essentially plugins for programs) the GPL can be a problem. It may be that e.g. using a GPL'd codec with Microsoft Media Player is illegal. I know that this is generally up to interpretations, but I think that this is one of the few places where the opinion of the FSF and Microsoft don't differ
(3) Theora is pre-beta. Although I wished myself they'd hurry up a little, I don't think it's fair to compare a tried-and-tested codec standard (MPEG4) with a pre-beta projekt (OGG/Theora).
I don't want to stick up for MS or anything but the problem is the user. If there is a patch availiable and the user doesn't install it then it is the user's fault (even if the user is ignorant).
Wrong. There is absolutely no excuse for
a) opening this port AS DEFAULT for Internet connections (remember, this port is NEVER used for ANY legitimate service)
b) this buffer-overflow (do they have a QM department or what??)
The problem with Microsoft is that everything is very insecure _and_ activated by default. RPC port, SMB protocol, HTML mail, ActiveX, you name it.
If you pick up a CD of Windows 2000 from a local retailer, it is expected from you that you install the latest service pack (which will produce more problems -- remember the XP service pack which slowed the whole system down?), about 20 hotfixes (which may or may not really fix the problem -- remember the story about Windows Update saying a fix was installed when it really isn't?), a virus scanner, a firewall and whatever. And, it is additionally expected that you repeat this procedure at least every month or so. And all this just to surf the net, read mails and write letters!
If I buy a TV and I had to check all the wires every month or so to make sure it doesn't implode or start burning, I'd sure return it to the manufacturer.
I'm a programmer myself. I'm coding software for industrial machines. When the machine behaves wrongly and people are injured, I'm responsible. Personally. By my private property. And that's fair. Period.
How could BASIC be "dying" at the same time it was adding all those other features? No one applies similar logic to other languages.
Back in the days where the OS was stored in a ROM and the command line was effectively a BASIC interpreter, BASIC was _the_ language to code in (on my old Amstrad, I had Word Processors, Games etc., all written in BASIC). Today, most serious commercial software is written in another language (like C, Delphi etc.). Basic is used only for scripting, shareware and in-house apps (e.g. business logic in Visual Basic). And even here it gets more and more competition from new languages like Java, C#, Python etc.
So in short, compared to its former popularity, Basic has died.
You're confusing "pure" BASIC with line-numbered BASIC from a quarter century ago. ANSI BASIC or any commercially available dialect have long supported true procedures, functions, etc.
Infact, I ment the old Basics as implemented on the Amstrad/Schneider CPC, the ZX spectrum, the early IBM PCs (GWBASIC/BASICA), the C64 etc. After all, these were the "golden times" of Basic.
At the time where BASIC interpreters/compilers actually got all the fancy features, it was already dying (replaced by Turbo Pascal f.e.)...
A lot of microcontrollers can be programmed in Basic-like languages. It's easy to write basic interpreters/compilers because of the limited features of the language. Remember that "pure" basic doesn't have a subroutine concept at all (besides the very limited GOSUB), and no local variables. Commercial PLC systems have been using Basic as the "high-level"-language of choice for ages. Though they are now more and more moving to IEC-61131-compatible languages like ST ("structured text") and graphical languages.
It wasn't my intent to state that the GPL is a bad thing. The parent^2 is just mistaken because he obviously doesn't know the difference between GPL and LGPL (or doesn't want to know).
The other kits do NOT give you a choice, it's the GPL or nothing!
All the other kits are licensed under the LGPL which allows for proprietary code. Case dismissed.
vy 73
"Commercial" and "proprietary" are not at all the same thing, but the author believes you need to pay to sell Qt applications. Wrong - you are permitted to sell GPL-licenced software.
Yeah right, good luck...So then why do you think QT sells you the right to use another license than the GPL?
Seriously, GUI toolkits are quite trivial things nowadays. There are alot of them, and most of them are just fine for usual tasks. Even if QT may have some slight advantages in one place or another, I seriously doubt this difference is worth thousands of dollars. Heck, even Lesstif is LGPL. Also, with GTK+ and wxWin finally catching up, I doubt that Trolltech would have that many customers if it weren't for KDE. And I dare to predict that the more popular Linux gets, the more apparent this problem will get, because people will be running KDE, but all commercial software will be based on GTK etc., destroying all the potential for this superior desktop...
That would be asm++0x (or Bessambly?)...
Heh, that won't get read anyway (too late) but I'll express my thoughts anyway.
Isn't it illegal to spread wrong claims? I mean, imagine if I'd open up a site and wrote some conspiracy theory about Microsoft which is technically plain wrong, they'd surely have some way to sue me and shut the site down.
Likewise, if the RIAA tells me that people get my credit card number when I share 3 or 4 songs in Kaazaa (or something), that is plain untrue and it can be proven technically.
Remember, in Germany they already shut down parts of the SCO website because they spread FUD, so don't you think this would be possible here also?
Even this info is useless, because wsprintf is insecure only if it is used the wrong way.
Yes, but the point being that it's pretty damned easy to use it in the wrong way.
Full ACK. But if the tool doesn't make a difference between legal and illegal use of wsprintf it is exactly as useful as grepping the linker symbols. In either case, no need to buy a product from "Bug Scan Inc.".
Looks like a lot of hot air.
The PDF presentation tells us things that we know already (buffer overflow, race conditions, whatever).
Two screenshots show debuggers and disassemblers. Another screenshot shows the "analysis results" of the "tool": "wsprintf: This function is insecure, use another function." Even this info is useless, because wsprintf is insecure only if it is used the wrong way, and I bet the "tool" doesn't check that. Besides, everyone uses std::string these days (or at least should do so).
It's also worth to note that about every University in the world has one or more groups working on topics like "automatic code verification", "code path analysis" and other things. This stuff is nowhere rocket science, but there's a lot to happen until it will go usable by the mainstream of developers.
I recently visited a few companies in the so-called High-Tec sector (software houses, manufacturers of electronic gear etc.) and I was surprised how many of them actually use Linux (and other open-source solutions) or are at least very interested in it.
At one big company (actually one of the biggest companies in German High-Tec sector) I went to the bureau of the manager I wanted to meet, opened the door and right in front of me i saw a big Penguin sitting in the corner. I asked him later about it and he openly said, that they were evaluating Linux and in general open standards, and that they are quite sure that it will play an important role in the future.
At another company I visited the rooms and noticed a PC which had a label "WINE Testing Computer" on it. I asked what it was used for and if they had experience with it, and they told me, they would be using MS Visual C++/MFC at the moment, but they already have done studies to make their tool cross-platform and part of the tool would already be supported on Linux.
In general, many people I spoke with (from developers to sysadmins) had installed open-source tools, be it Perl, Python, Cygwin or Linux and almost everyone was very informed about free software, and looked for a possibility to use more of it.
Just a few experiences...
Also, bear in mind that as annoying as Clippy and the pop-up bits are, there are still some people who just can't grasp the concept of "asking Clippy" before they go elsewhere. I'd imagine because it still isn't "personable" enough to engage these novice users in the same way a helpful person would.
The problem with clippy is that it is short-thought and badly implemented. Earlier versions of Microsoft Word (until 2000, but definitely 97) had clippy popping up by default in the right bottom corner after installation. Although the whole interface looked like it was usable, it only was possible to click on "Use Word" down at the clippy. I have seen more than one customer who called me and complained about "Word crashing everytime I start it".
Clippy actually makes people feel more stupid than they actually are, because they get the imagination that everything is simple, and it really isn't. I have teached lots of completely non-technical people how to work with computers, and I got the feeling they generally appreciate to get told the "big picture" so they can understand what's really going on.
If you want to go further, you could say that Clippy really is all about Microsoft patronizing users. Microsoft has a long tradition in this respect, and it starts with Clippy and ends with Palladium.
Er...do you have that film in the states, too? ,-)
Yeah, but the key is the same. You know like [Return] and [Enter] but the other way around.
Ah crap. It was a joke (and a good one) anyway.
As much as I love Open Source (I'm typing this via Moz on FreeBSD!), I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet.
...), give the secretary a (quite restricted) user account, and here we go. No problems with people accidentially messing up the system, with virii, or with people saving important stuff into their local C:\ drive. Administration is also much easier via NFS mapped application directories.
I can't agree with that. These systems are one of the platforms where Open Source can be used right now, because the tasks one wants to do are clearly defined, and there is usually an administrator around who will take care of setting up the system anyway. Just install FreeBSD/Linux/whatever along with the necessary tools (OpenOffice, Evolution or Mozilla Mail,
Concerning the "help" buttons in Gnome: How often do we get those "Unknown error (number -217482931)" messages in Microsoft software? Besides, I have yet to meet a single person who does read the help rather than call me on the phone ("It says there is already a file with the same name, what does that mean?").