Actually, it has occurred to me, as I am a personal friend of Sarah's. You may not believe me, but either way, that's somewhat besides my point. I'm sure she wants attention for her outreach work and her scientific research, but to get attention only or primarily because of one's looks is to very unwelcoming. It serves to alienate people, to denigrate them-- it's why we have terms like "sexual objectification" in our language.
On the contrary, though, I don't expect you to ignore that she's pretty. I simply don't want our community to be one in which crossing the line into blatant sexualization is acceptable.
I understand what you're getting at, but strongly sexualized language like "cry in your pants" only serves to alienate the very women that we ostensibly want to include in the community! Part of being a welcoming community means that we must sometimes put aside lust, nerdy or otherwise, and simply interact with an intelligent person on that basis.
Grow up. The author of that blog is a real, honest person. I don't think she likely appreciates that kind of treatment. Has it ever occurred to you that Sarah may actually find your comment? That there is a person behind that picture? That Sarah may not, in fact, be writing to entertain your "nerdlust," but because she has an interest in, say, science?
How so? Or is your point that implementing progressive taxation for the purpose of helping all members of society have opportunities available to them is even comparable to illegally seizing private property for merely speaking against corruption? If so, then yes, your point was proven to be as callous and hollow as one might initially have guessed.
Native to browsers in the sense that you can call "eval()" on an string sent by an untrusted party over an unencrypted connection. Now, with the popularity of JSON, I've seen JavaScript-based JSON parsers that don't use eval and thus are (ideally) immune to code-injection attacks. If browsers were to implement such sandboxed parsers, then JSON would have a real advantage over XML in that it fits into the JavaScript language nicely, while still retaining security.
We've seen companies like Blackberry starting to ship haptic touch-screens, so I stand by my statement. As others have pointed out (and as I should have said from the get-go), touch-screens with tactile feedback would be very nice for many applications. Of course, what we've got right now is so primitive that we'll look back and wonder why we ever bothered, but you've gotta start somewhere.
Yes, Microsoft was first on something, as they have been with many things. That doesn't change the fact, though, that when it comes to following other people's ideas and implementing standards, Microsoft's policy seems to be a firm "no." Web developers better than I could give you a very long list of standards unsupported by MS.
My pet peeve is XHTML. Yes, I know, they say they support it, but only if you send the wrong MIME type. That means that other browsers will try to render it as HTML (no X) and will choke on it. Because of that, you have to write server-side code to detect user agents and change the MIME type to match. Very, very frustrating.
Frankly, I think that touch-screens very well replace something: keyboards. I think that things may well go the route of the Optimus keyboards, but more so, reconfiguring themselves based on what you're doing. Many computer users don't even know how to copy and paste (amazing, I know), much less take advantage of Ctrl+S to save. Putting those kinds of controls on a keyboard/screen may prove to be very handy.
I think the question remains though if you tried to transfer something to yourself. In your Happy Birthday example, if instead of sending those two emails to your friend, you send one to each of two friends (ostensibly because you're going to wipe your harddrive and are using them to back up your songs) who then forward them back to you, have you violated copyright? Did you transmit a copy to anyone else?
As far I can tell, that's the argument being made for this Brightnet: it circumvents copyright law for the intermediates who cannot recover the original file. As long as you can recover the original file, then the argument doesn't hold. That gives you a handy way of sharing large files with other authorized users in a distributed way.
It's not even about self-incrimination. As far as I know (though beware, the standard/. IANAL warning applies), if you kidnap someone and are caught without your victim in tow, you can force (in the legal sense-- not the beating and torture sense) the kidnapper to tell you.
Unit testing is often about detecting regressions, and so writing a unit test to catch some failure that you found and fixed can often be very helpful. To borrow the MAX_INT * MAX_INT example above, if after getting that case to work right and writing a unit test to confirm it, you decide to improve the performance of your integer multiplication routines (silly, I know... imagine a better example if you have to, like that they're matricies and you're implementing Strassen's Algorithm), then the unit test can tell you if you introduced bugs back into your code.
I see a lot of posts here treating Novell with suspicion (maybe even well-deserved) about their contributions. For my part, however, I would like to thank Novell as one of the many users directly benefiting from their support. It's no good to vilify Novell, then demand that the support open source, and decry them when they do. If it turns out later that there was something foul going on, then we can go back to vilification. For now, though, they have done well and helped us all out. Hence, once again, thank you, Novell.
After seeing both this comment and the vitriol on the story about him, I'm amazed that Miguel is still willing to work to make the OSS community better. Maybe I'll turn out to be wrong one day, but until then, I will appreciate the work that he does as a strong community leader for the Mono project.
Put differently, I don't want to see Mr. de Icaza become another Slashdot joke. He doesn't deserve it for what he's done.
As Miguel has repeatedly pointed out, the technologies for implementing Silverlight are practically there. Moreover, just because he wants to make a Silverlight client for Linux doesn't mean that no one else can pursue other Flash alternatives (such as my favorite: XHTML+SVG+JavaScript). If I understand things correctly, than the Silverlight/Mono project is just a sane way of making sure that Mono remains relevant.
Linux is, and should be, so much more than a poor man's clone of either of these systems. The people who use Linux do so because they like it, not because it's free. If it were just about price any of us could have a "free" copy of windows too.
...
PS We all hate gnome, too. If we wanted the worst of mac combined with the worst of windows we'd just run vista! Thing is, we don't all hate GNOME. GNOME has some very innovative features, such as Beagle and the new GNOME File Chooser dialog, which make it ideal for some kinds of users. I personally prefer KDE for its superior customizability, but GNOME is by no means worthless. In the same way, I think that Mono has some very innovative features that are unique to it: Mono.Addins comes quickly to mind. Even outside of Mono, the Nemerle language is another great open-source addition to the.NET framework. The Gtk# engine is one of the most easy to use and powerful GUI frameworks yet made, and is only possible due to Mono.
In short, please don't claim to represent all of Linux userdom when you spout off your hatred of GNOME and Mono. You don't.
Thank you, Miguel, for continuing to take a sane and rational stance with respect to.NET and its descendants. I have long appreciated how hard you work to build the Mono community, by helping newbies (such as myself on many occasions) on the mailing lists and IRC channel, by writing extensively about your thoughts and progress, and by supporting the community-building efforts of others. I am somewhat sad to see that many of our fellow Slashdotters have chosen the head-in-sand option, rather than recognizing the place that.NET and Silverlight will most likely play in the IT infrastructure of tomorrow. Whether I may like it or not, Microsoft is a major player, and can push new frameworks into prominence easily. If it weren't for people like you working so hard to make Linux a part of these frameworks, we would be missing out on the many wonderful technologies that have come out of CLR, from Nemerle to LINQ.
So, once again, thanks, Miguel.
Really, what you need is to be able to allow any arbitrary key to be the key. With my FC5 system, I have to add the Livna key to my list in order to use RPM's key verification functionality. Of course, this does weaken security in some ways, but it enables it in others. What if TiVo bit the big one? Then any holes in the signed binaries could never be fixed, as the hardware enforces a set trusted list of -- you guessed it -- one key. Code trust should be based on user decisions, not the decisions of hardware manufacturers.
While I do love electronic distribution, trying to read something as long as the Spell Compendium in a PDF makes me shudder. I love being able to physically flip pages, pass the book around and read without a computer. There are certianally things that are nicer about an electronic distribution, but when they try to recreate a book on a computer, it loses a lot of what makes reading on a computer better. When I can do a spin-find, resize the window and have the text rewrap, change fonts for maximum readability, etc., then I'll give it some more thought. Until then, I prefer that my books are in fact books, and that my files stay delightfully DRM-free.
Sir, you have missed my point entirely. Why make it specific to any OS? Isn't one of the principles of the web equal access? It's not that any group is better than any other, but that there is no good reason to exclude people like that if your entire point is to build a large social network.
That does seem very odd. Of further note: the "service" is based on an application that requires Windows XP. Though I imagine it would run under Linux w/ Wine, the default assumption seems to remain that only Windows users are experts. By excluding users of *BSD, Linux, OS X and other OSs, they are dramatically reducing the size of their network, which seems like would only negatively impact the entire project. If they're serious about building a social network, they should either design the frontend to their service in (X)HTML, which has clients under any OS that I can care to name, or they should write versions of the app for all major operating systems at the least. Even using a VM framework like Java or.NET would be better than just leaving all but your pet OS out in the cold.
Maybe the GUI to an AV package, or maybe the bulk logic. Just isolate all the risky stuff in a few thousand lines and make sure they're safe. Then you can write the other 100,000 lines in VM-based language. I mean, the file-scanning part shouldn't intercept kernel hooks or anything like that.
I must admit that I hold no love whatsoever for your company, but this project is one of the most creative things I've ever seen to come out of Microsoft. Personally, this shell was the one feature of Vista that I was looking forward to.
No. Remember, our government has shown no shame in breaking its own laws. Not with the current administration, anyway. Laws like the DMCA are held against us... not them.
I prefer to entertain the notion that the post was made ironically, and to publicly humiliate Louis Savain (as he should be; not knowing physics is one thing, but calling all of physics wrong because you can't understand something is different). After all, the tone of voice in which the article summary was written certianly seems to be ironic.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it has occurred to me, as I am a personal friend of Sarah's. You may not believe me, but either way, that's somewhat besides my point. I'm sure she wants attention for her outreach work and her scientific research, but to get attention only or primarily because of one's looks is to very unwelcoming. It serves to alienate people, to denigrate them-- it's why we have terms like "sexual objectification" in our language. On the contrary, though, I don't expect you to ignore that she's pretty. I simply don't want our community to be one in which crossing the line into blatant sexualization is acceptable.
I understand what you're getting at, but strongly sexualized language like "cry in your pants" only serves to alienate the very women that we ostensibly want to include in the community! Part of being a welcoming community means that we must sometimes put aside lust, nerdy or otherwise, and simply interact with an intelligent person on that basis.
Grow up. The author of that blog is a real, honest person. I don't think she likely appreciates that kind of treatment. Has it ever occurred to you that Sarah may actually find your comment? That there is a person behind that picture? That Sarah may not, in fact, be writing to entertain your "nerdlust," but because she has an interest in, say, science?
Thank you for proving the point.
How so? Or is your point that implementing progressive taxation for the purpose of helping all members of society have opportunities available to them is even comparable to illegally seizing private property for merely speaking against corruption? If so, then yes, your point was proven to be as callous and hollow as one might initially have guessed.
Native to browsers in the sense that you can call "eval()" on an string sent by an untrusted party over an unencrypted connection. Now, with the popularity of JSON, I've seen JavaScript-based JSON parsers that don't use eval and thus are (ideally) immune to code-injection attacks. If browsers were to implement such sandboxed parsers, then JSON would have a real advantage over XML in that it fits into the JavaScript language nicely, while still retaining security.
We've seen companies like Blackberry starting to ship haptic touch-screens, so I stand by my statement. As others have pointed out (and as I should have said from the get-go), touch-screens with tactile feedback would be very nice for many applications. Of course, what we've got right now is so primitive that we'll look back and wonder why we ever bothered, but you've gotta start somewhere.
Yes, Microsoft was first on something, as they have been with many things. That doesn't change the fact, though, that when it comes to following other people's ideas and implementing standards, Microsoft's policy seems to be a firm "no." Web developers better than I could give you a very long list of standards unsupported by MS. My pet peeve is XHTML. Yes, I know, they say they support it, but only if you send the wrong MIME type. That means that other browsers will try to render it as HTML (no X) and will choke on it. Because of that, you have to write server-side code to detect user agents and change the MIME type to match. Very, very frustrating.
Frankly, I think that touch-screens very well replace something: keyboards. I think that things may well go the route of the Optimus keyboards, but more so, reconfiguring themselves based on what you're doing. Many computer users don't even know how to copy and paste (amazing, I know), much less take advantage of Ctrl+S to save. Putting those kinds of controls on a keyboard/screen may prove to be very handy.
I think the question remains though if you tried to transfer something to yourself. In your Happy Birthday example, if instead of sending those two emails to your friend, you send one to each of two friends (ostensibly because you're going to wipe your harddrive and are using them to back up your songs) who then forward them back to you, have you violated copyright? Did you transmit a copy to anyone else? As far I can tell, that's the argument being made for this Brightnet: it circumvents copyright law for the intermediates who cannot recover the original file. As long as you can recover the original file, then the argument doesn't hold. That gives you a handy way of sharing large files with other authorized users in a distributed way.
It's not even about self-incrimination. As far as I know (though beware, the standard /. IANAL warning applies), if you kidnap someone and are caught without your victim in tow, you can force (in the legal sense-- not the beating and torture sense) the kidnapper to tell you.
Unit testing is often about detecting regressions, and so writing a unit test to catch some failure that you found and fixed can often be very helpful. To borrow the MAX_INT * MAX_INT example above, if after getting that case to work right and writing a unit test to confirm it, you decide to improve the performance of your integer multiplication routines (silly, I know... imagine a better example if you have to, like that they're matricies and you're implementing Strassen's Algorithm), then the unit test can tell you if you introduced bugs back into your code.
I see a lot of posts here treating Novell with suspicion (maybe even well-deserved) about their contributions. For my part, however, I would like to thank Novell as one of the many users directly benefiting from their support. It's no good to vilify Novell, then demand that the support open source, and decry them when they do. If it turns out later that there was something foul going on, then we can go back to vilification. For now, though, they have done well and helped us all out. Hence, once again, thank you, Novell.
After seeing both this comment and the vitriol on the story about him, I'm amazed that Miguel is still willing to work to make the OSS community better. Maybe I'll turn out to be wrong one day, but until then, I will appreciate the work that he does as a strong community leader for the Mono project. Put differently, I don't want to see Mr. de Icaza become another Slashdot joke. He doesn't deserve it for what he's done.
Not at all. That's patently stupid. Someone goes and makes Linux, while someone else makes ReactOS. Helps avoid monoculture.
As Miguel has repeatedly pointed out, the technologies for implementing Silverlight are practically there. Moreover, just because he wants to make a Silverlight client for Linux doesn't mean that no one else can pursue other Flash alternatives (such as my favorite: XHTML+SVG+JavaScript). If I understand things correctly, than the Silverlight/Mono project is just a sane way of making sure that Mono remains relevant.
PS We all hate gnome, too. If we wanted the worst of mac combined with the worst of windows we'd just run vista! Thing is, we don't all hate GNOME. GNOME has some very innovative features, such as Beagle and the new GNOME File Chooser dialog, which make it ideal for some kinds of users. I personally prefer KDE for its superior customizability, but GNOME is by no means worthless. In the same way, I think that Mono has some very innovative features that are unique to it: Mono.Addins comes quickly to mind. Even outside of Mono, the Nemerle language is another great open-source addition to the
Thank you, Miguel, for continuing to take a sane and rational stance with respect to .NET and its descendants. I have long appreciated how hard you work to build the Mono community, by helping newbies (such as myself on many occasions) on the mailing lists and IRC channel, by writing extensively about your thoughts and progress, and by supporting the community-building efforts of others. I am somewhat sad to see that many of our fellow Slashdotters have chosen the head-in-sand option, rather than recognizing the place that .NET and Silverlight will most likely play in the IT infrastructure of tomorrow. Whether I may like it or not, Microsoft is a major player, and can push new frameworks into prominence easily. If it weren't for people like you working so hard to make Linux a part of these frameworks, we would be missing out on the many wonderful technologies that have come out of CLR, from Nemerle to LINQ.
So, once again, thanks, Miguel.
Really, what you need is to be able to allow any arbitrary key to be the key. With my FC5 system, I have to add the Livna key to my list in order to use RPM's key verification functionality. Of course, this does weaken security in some ways, but it enables it in others. What if TiVo bit the big one? Then any holes in the signed binaries could never be fixed, as the hardware enforces a set trusted list of -- you guessed it -- one key. Code trust should be based on user decisions, not the decisions of hardware manufacturers.
While I do love electronic distribution, trying to read something as long as the Spell Compendium in a PDF makes me shudder. I love being able to physically flip pages, pass the book around and read without a computer. There are certianally things that are nicer about an electronic distribution, but when they try to recreate a book on a computer, it loses a lot of what makes reading on a computer better. When I can do a spin-find, resize the window and have the text rewrap, change fonts for maximum readability, etc., then I'll give it some more thought. Until then, I prefer that my books are in fact books, and that my files stay delightfully DRM-free.
Sir, you have missed my point entirely. Why make it specific to any OS? Isn't one of the principles of the web equal access? It's not that any group is better than any other, but that there is no good reason to exclude people like that if your entire point is to build a large social network.
That does seem very odd. Of further note: the "service" is based on an application that requires Windows XP. Though I imagine it would run under Linux w/ Wine, the default assumption seems to remain that only Windows users are experts. By excluding users of *BSD, Linux, OS X and other OSs, they are dramatically reducing the size of their network, which seems like would only negatively impact the entire project. If they're serious about building a social network, they should either design the frontend to their service in (X)HTML, which has clients under any OS that I can care to name, or they should write versions of the app for all major operating systems at the least. Even using a VM framework like Java or .NET would be better than just leaving all but your pet OS out in the cold.
Maybe the GUI to an AV package, or maybe the bulk logic. Just isolate all the risky stuff in a few thousand lines and make sure they're safe. Then you can write the other 100,000 lines in VM-based language. I mean, the file-scanning part shouldn't intercept kernel hooks or anything like that.
I must admit that I hold no love whatsoever for your company, but this project is one of the most creative things I've ever seen to come out of Microsoft. Personally, this shell was the one feature of Vista that I was looking forward to.
No. Remember, our government has shown no shame in breaking its own laws. Not with the current administration, anyway. Laws like the DMCA are held against us... not them.
I prefer to entertain the notion that the post was made ironically, and to publicly humiliate Louis Savain (as he should be; not knowing physics is one thing, but calling all of physics wrong because you can't understand something is different). After all, the tone of voice in which the article summary was written certianly seems to be ironic.