Look closer... the up2date merely says an update is required... I was talking about all the items on the main page, which look like a lot of security holes at first glance, but turn out to not be anything meaningful. Of course linux has bugs, everything does, but it is not anything like the poster made it out to be.
Some of these microsoft office bugs are BIG bugs, such as the ACCESS one. The point you seem to be missing is that this page was given to show how horrible linux security is, when it merely shows that many open source apps have vulnereabilities in them. This does not not compare to the holes which Microsoft has constantly (need I remind you of the DOCM vulnerability recently?).
If you look a bit more closely at those "linux" security holes, then you notice that they are programs such as "eroaster" and "Atari800" that have the vulnerabilities. These are simply programs that can be installed on the systems that may be in the Gentoo portage for example, or FreeBSD ports system or a RedHat package.
The only "Linux" software you can really blame, is the kernel, besides that if a distribution has a hole in a default install that is a big issue. Otherwise, if the user installs software that has a hole you can't really blame linux for it. Microsoft wrote and distributes all the softwares which had the holes listed in this story, so they can be held accountable (unlike Linux in your story).
On that page at 9AM PDT there are ZERO bugs which fall into the category of serious issues that are Linux / *nix or Linux Distribution's fault. They are all stand alone software that have vulns.
If they listed every software on the windows platform which had vulnerabilities the MS list would be massively enhanced also. They aren't audited as much as unix programs because a lot less of them are open source... so the bugs are just sitting there, unfixed.
How exactly did an ircbot idle for four years? Even if the bot's server was up for that long, irc servers definitely are not (especially from the networks that existed back then).
The only point I was making was that, as musicians, Blink 182 offers very little to music other than some entertaining songs. The Beatles on the other hand, created something wholly new and breathtaking. I am comparing them on musical integrity; the songs Blink 182 make do not , comparably, take much skill to create or play. Whether they father a movement or not, their style and music will not become any more advanced. Their antics are not enough to revolutionize.
A close example is Nirvana. They created a new generation of music which was a backlash versus the pop of the 80s and early 90s. Blink 182 and Avril are doing the same except with the late 90s and early 00s. None of the bands I mention here had an excessively large musical talent, even though they all managed to create something interesting, being in the right place at the right time. You will notice that Nirvana is not around that much anymore compared to a band like the Beatles (who is still played on all sorts of radio stations, not just Oldies).
I only took offense to you comparing the Beatles to these bands. The beatles were also pop/whatever, but they not only did it well, they also added something wholly new and innovative to the world of musical expertise. Blink182 does their thing well, but the difference between these pop punk bands and bands like the Beatles is that they will be / are quickly forgotten once their heyday is over (like the pop bands the current backlash is against... we predicted it, and it's happening).
I'm sorry, but comparing ANY of these bands to the beatles is just plain wrong. The Beatles may have had their poppy sappy songs, but they also had plenty of musically genius and experimental yet great songs. The only way I can understand you being a musician and not appreciating the beatles is if you did not take the time to listen to their music other their poppy songs which are on the radio often today.
So comparing them to Avril and Blink 182, who may have catchy tunes, but who don't make anything that is musically advanced, experimental, or just new and interesting, is completely uncalled for.
Either way, what the market likes right now is whatever is popular which spreads like a wildfire and doesn't have as much to do with music as with image (the current fad is the rejection of the previous boy and girl bands). It is simpler then it seems.
Though many of the things you say are true, I loved playing the beta (perhaps more than the final release). I liked all of the drastic changes, and I saw a lot of stuff that people don't see in the final version. Seeing how it gets developed and tweaked and sometimes even being able to give input on what you think should be changed, was great. Either way, obviously the beta is not going to be perfect, but I wouldn't call it boring by any meaning of the word.
Taking this all in the context of the DDoS attacks that DalNet has been suffering from I have two theories on why they did this (neither have to do with so called morals).
1. The DDoS attacks have something to do with these file sharing channels. Perhaps one group doesn't like another one so they DoS the servers to deny them the ability to serve files. Getting rid of all of the channels makes the problem slowly fade (hopefully).
2. They want to lower the load on their servers because many of them have left (due to the mentioned DDoS attacks). If they get rid of the file serving channels then a lot less people will be on their server, and a higher percentage of them will be there for chatting. The file serving channels are the obvious fat that they can get rid of; they are very large and use a ton of traffic, plus not required for chat portion of IRC.
If they wanted to ban these channels for some moral reason then why didn't they do it before?
Also this isn't the RIAA we're talking about, irc operaters are a diverse group, and I doubt that they would do this unless they felt they had to.
I agree that newegg is great... I generally buy from them, however I did get 3 faulty motherboards in a row from them once... and then they were all suspiciously pulled right after and they couldn't send me another motherboard of the same kind..
I'm just saying they aren't perfect:) though they do have good service and great prices generally...
Actually it's probably your Nvidia drivers. The 23.11 drivers, which are the latest, are INCREDIBLY unstable. I recommend either downgrading or upgrading to a beta drive i.e. 27.20 which is much more stable. I have a kt266a and have absolutely no problems except for once in a while when crappy Nvidia drivers come out. If you check the message on crash you will notice it is your display driver, and this is not the kt266a's fault.
The other UCs also have similar things... the only place that UCSC is different is the focus on Homosexual topics which is still bit taboo for the more conservative religious minded UCs i.e. UCSD.
That's a great quote possible, and I felt I could comment a little bit more on what James said and make it a little easier to understand:)
There were many interesting studies done on people's multitasking by cognitive psychologists. Basically, the more you do/practice something, the more "automatic" it becomes to your brain/body. I.e. the more you practice guitar the easier it is to do it without thinking. This is because since you practiced guitar so much, your brain stored all of the movements and things you have to do to play guitar in your memory. So, when you play a song, you don't have to think about how to play it, your brain merely access all of the movements in your memory. Talking becomes sort of automatic also, so you can speak on the phone quite easily while doing other things. This is what the quote talks about as "automatic".
Here is a good paper that covers automaticity among other things if you're interested. I personally find cognitive psychology and science like this very interesting.
It is really interesting how right on James was, and only the language has really changed in describing what he knew on this.
Anyways since we only have one brain/cpu the article makes a lot of sense, also with keeping in mind how your multitask performance with some things is a lot better than others.
Yeah as someone else said, with my question I wasn't saying that Gnome and KDE have bad interfaces. The term GUI and UI are a lot more general. For example slashdot has a GUI. GUI is pretty much anything other than a command line interface. What it means is "graphical user interface", which means it has buttons or pictures etc. Any x client will pretty much have a GUI. The desktop managers and windows managers also have GUIs but they are just one type of GUI. I agree that trying to help out Gnome or KDE wouldn't be very useful since they have pretty good interfaces already and have a large amount of time and effort invested in them.
So you are recommending working on the library and improving their widgets etc? I didn't even think that was approachable but a great idea... What exactly is there to change there? I haven't looked very closely at many libraries like that so I'm not sure what to change... guess I better pay the gtk page a visit.
I was also thinking of some smaller application since larger ones generally already have quite a large amount of effort invested in their GUIs and wouldn't be quite as receptive to outside help. I was also thinking possibly some media player might work well since their UI's are quite important and sometimes quite off the mark.
I think that a lot of good programming has to do with creativity, you have to be able to approach your task in new ways, and be able to come up with new techniques yourself. This is sort of like the musical process of composing songs, etc., and being able to break out of conventional ways of approaching things.
Also it is interesting that it seems that a quite large proportion of people who are into computers / are programmers seem to play guitar. That might have some relevance.
I agree with your points, however I don't believe this is the interviewee's fight.
I believe that the free society you call america is a bit of an exxageration, and yes it is a sad state. However, if the interviewee's purpose isn't to fight the "war on drugs" or a sort of war on freedom you talk about, then him answering yes to this question could open a huge can of worms which he most likely would not be willing to confront.
This is sort of analogous to another thing that pops up on slashdot often, the idea that if some small software or something isn't behaving exactly the way you wish it was, then you rewrite the entire thing.
In america today, admitting that you use drugs will do far more bad for you than good for anyone. Therefore it isn't prudent unless you are willing to sacrifice for a cursory topic...
btw.. I didn't say don't even talk about drugs, luckily you can still talk about it without fear of to laws coming down on your head. But admitting you do drugs somewhere that your school or teacher or employer could read is a bad idea.
This guy' s full name is given in the article, if he answers this then his parents and school (among other places) will know this information. Considering the taboo state of drugs, this question is a really bad one.. I don't see why it has a high score.
A bit off topic... but extending this reply...
I recently learned in a neuroscience class that faces have special neurons for them in the brain. They are the only things that your eyes see that have special neurons dedicated to recognizing. That's the reason you can recognize someone's face from so far away. Therefore all this makes sense, people seeing faces in things, such as the face on mars and this "skull".
Other animals have special recognition capabilities for other forms by the way, though I forget specific examples.
I mostly agree with the text of this comment and its proofs... However the thing which gets me is this acts like the Republican party is the only one to do this. The democratic side is equally guilty with this.. i.e. publications like TIME and Newsweek which I receieve, and generally say similar information in one article about Republicans as one about Demcrats except one is given a good spin, the other a bad. In this case the positive spin is toward the Democratic article.
Slashdot Mirror
Look closer... the up2date merely says an update is required... I was talking about all the items on the main page, which look like a lot of security holes at first glance, but turn out to not be anything meaningful. Of course linux has bugs, everything does, but it is not anything like the poster made it out to be.
Some of these microsoft office bugs are BIG bugs, such as the ACCESS one. The point you seem to be missing is that this page was given to show how horrible linux security is, when it merely shows that many open source apps have vulnereabilities in them. This does not not compare to the holes which Microsoft has constantly (need I remind you of the DOCM vulnerability recently?).
If you look a bit more closely at those "linux" security holes, then you notice that they are programs such as "eroaster" and "Atari800" that have the vulnerabilities. These are simply programs that can be installed on the systems that may be in the Gentoo portage for example, or FreeBSD ports system or a RedHat package.
The only "Linux" software you can really blame, is the kernel, besides that if a distribution has a hole in a default install that is a big issue. Otherwise, if the user installs software that has a hole you can't really blame linux for it. Microsoft wrote and distributes all the softwares which had the holes listed in this story, so they can be held accountable (unlike Linux in your story).
On that page at 9AM PDT there are ZERO bugs which fall into the category of serious issues that are Linux / *nix or Linux Distribution's fault. They are all stand alone software that have vulns.
If they listed every software on the windows platform which had vulnerabilities the MS list would be massively enhanced also. They aren't audited as much as unix programs because a lot less of them are open source... so the bugs are just sitting there, unfixed.
Another FUD bites the dust....
How exactly did an ircbot idle for four years? Even if the bot's server was up for that long, irc servers definitely are not (especially from the networks that existed back then).
oh in case you're wondering here is the other comment.
Thanks for reposting the same comment that was in the freebsd thread and substituting linux for fbsd.
Either way it's bs, OBVIOUSLY
(don't feed the trolls guys).
nope
I think a slightly closer comparison would be.
4.X-RELEASE / 4.X-STABLE -> 2.4.x (stable)
The most stable and not a new major version.
5.0-RELEASE -> 2.4.0 / 2.2.0,
Any new release that is not tested and is a major version jump.
5.0-CURRENT -> 2.5.x (current)
Cutting edge, unstable.
The only point I was making was that, as musicians, Blink 182 offers very little to music other than some entertaining songs. The Beatles on the other hand, created something wholly new and breathtaking. I am comparing them on musical integrity; the songs Blink 182 make do not , comparably, take much skill to create or play. Whether they father a movement or not, their style and music will not become any more advanced. Their antics are not enough to revolutionize.
A close example is Nirvana. They created a new generation of music which was a backlash versus the pop of the 80s and early 90s. Blink 182 and Avril are doing the same except with the late 90s and early 00s. None of the bands I mention here had an excessively large musical talent, even though they all managed to create something interesting, being in the right place at the right time. You will notice that Nirvana is not around that much anymore compared to a band like the Beatles (who is still played on all sorts of radio stations, not just Oldies).
I only took offense to you comparing the Beatles to these bands. The beatles were also pop/whatever, but they not only did it well, they also added something wholly new and innovative to the world of musical expertise. Blink182 does their thing well, but the difference between these pop punk bands and bands like the Beatles is that they will be / are quickly forgotten once their heyday is over (like the pop bands the current backlash is against... we predicted it, and it's happening).
I'm sorry, but comparing ANY of these bands to the beatles is just plain wrong. The Beatles may have had their poppy sappy songs, but they also had plenty of musically genius and experimental yet great songs. The only way I can understand you being a musician and not appreciating the beatles is if you did not take the time to listen to their music other their poppy songs which are on the radio often today.
So comparing them to Avril and Blink 182, who may have catchy tunes, but who don't make anything that is musically advanced, experimental, or just new and interesting, is completely uncalled for.
Either way, what the market likes right now is whatever is popular which spreads like a wildfire and doesn't have as much to do with music as with image (the current fad is the rejection of the previous boy and girl bands). It is simpler then it seems.
Though many of the things you say are true, I loved playing the beta (perhaps more than the final release). I liked all of the drastic changes, and I saw a lot of stuff that people don't see in the final version. Seeing how it gets developed and tweaked and sometimes even being able to give input on what you think should be changed, was great. Either way, obviously the beta is not going to be perfect, but I wouldn't call it boring by any meaning of the word.
Taking this all in the context of the DDoS attacks that DalNet has been suffering from I have two theories on why they did this (neither have to do with so called morals).
1. The DDoS attacks have something to do with these file sharing channels. Perhaps one group doesn't like another one so they DoS the servers to deny them the ability to serve files. Getting rid of all of the channels makes the problem slowly fade (hopefully).
2. They want to lower the load on their servers because many of them have left (due to the mentioned DDoS attacks). If they get rid of the file serving channels then a lot less people will be on their server, and a higher percentage of them will be there for chatting. The file serving channels are the obvious fat that they can get rid of; they are very large and use a ton of traffic, plus not required for chat portion of IRC.
If they wanted to ban these channels for some moral reason then why didn't they do it before? Also this isn't the RIAA we're talking about, irc operaters are a diverse group, and I doubt that they would do this unless they felt they had to.
-a
I agree that newegg is great... I generally buy from them, however I did get 3 faulty motherboards in a row from them once... and then they were all suspiciously pulled right after and they couldn't send me another motherboard of the same kind..
:) though they do have good service and great prices generally...
I'm just saying they aren't perfect
Actually it's probably your Nvidia drivers. The 23.11 drivers, which are the latest, are INCREDIBLY unstable. I recommend either downgrading or upgrading to a beta drive i.e. 27.20 which is much more stable. I have a kt266a and have absolutely no problems except for once in a while when crappy Nvidia drivers come out. If you check the message on crash you will notice it is your display driver, and this is not the kt266a's fault.
The other UCs also have similar things... the only place that UCSC is different is the focus on Homosexual topics which is still bit taboo for the more conservative religious minded UCs i.e. UCSD.
That's a great quote possible, and I felt I could comment a little bit more on what James said and make it a little easier to understand :)
There were many interesting studies done on people's multitasking by cognitive psychologists. Basically, the more you do/practice something, the more "automatic" it becomes to your brain/body. I.e. the more you practice guitar the easier it is to do it without thinking. This is because since you practiced guitar so much, your brain stored all of the movements and things you have to do to play guitar in your memory. So, when you play a song, you don't have to think about how to play it, your brain merely access all of the movements in your memory. Talking becomes sort of automatic also, so you can speak on the phone quite easily while doing other things. This is what the quote talks about as "automatic".
Here is a good paper that covers automaticity among other things if you're interested. I personally find cognitive psychology and science like this very interesting.
It is really interesting how right on James was, and only the language has really changed in describing what he knew on this.
Anyways since we only have one brain/cpu the article makes a lot of sense, also with keeping in mind how your multitask performance with some things is a lot better than others.
jefraskin,
I completely agree with you... do you happen to have any good internet resources... or know of any books that go into these subjects in more detail?
Yeah as someone else said, with my question I wasn't saying that Gnome and KDE have bad interfaces. The term GUI and UI are a lot more general. For example slashdot has a GUI. GUI is pretty much anything other than a command line interface. What it means is "graphical user interface", which means it has buttons or pictures etc. Any x client will pretty much have a GUI. The desktop managers and windows managers also have GUIs but they are just one type of GUI. I agree that trying to help out Gnome or KDE wouldn't be very useful since they have pretty good interfaces already and have a large amount of time and effort invested in them.
Hi grammar nazi,
:)
So you are recommending working on the library and improving their widgets etc? I didn't even think that was approachable but a great idea... What exactly is there to change there? I haven't looked very closely at many libraries like that so I'm not sure what to change... guess I better pay the gtk page a visit.
I was also thinking of some smaller application since larger ones generally already have quite a large amount of effort invested in their GUIs and wouldn't be quite as receptive to outside help. I was also thinking possibly some media player might work well since their UI's are quite important and sometimes quite off the mark.
hmm.... thanks for the suggestions
I think that a lot of good programming has to do with creativity, you have to be able to approach your task in new ways, and be able to come up with new techniques yourself. This is sort of like the musical process of composing songs, etc., and being able to break out of conventional ways of approaching things.
Also it is interesting that it seems that a quite large proportion of people who are into computers / are programmers seem to play guitar. That might have some relevance.
I agree with your points, however I don't believe this is the interviewee's fight.
I believe that the free society you call america is a bit of an exxageration, and yes it is a sad state. However, if the interviewee's purpose isn't to fight the "war on drugs" or a sort of war on freedom you talk about, then him answering yes to this question could open a huge can of worms which he most likely would not be willing to confront.
This is sort of analogous to another thing that pops up on slashdot often, the idea that if some small software or something isn't behaving exactly the way you wish it was, then you rewrite the entire thing.
In america today, admitting that you use drugs will do far more bad for you than good for anyone. Therefore it isn't prudent unless you are willing to sacrifice for a cursory topic...
btw.. I didn't say don't even talk about drugs, luckily you can still talk about it without fear of to laws coming down on your head. But admitting you do drugs somewhere that your school or teacher or employer could read is a bad idea.
This guy' s full name is given in the article, if he answers this then his parents and school (among other places) will know this information. Considering the taboo state of drugs, this question is a really bad one.. I don't see why it has a high score.
A bit off topic... but extending this reply...
I recently learned in a neuroscience class that faces have special neurons for them in the brain. They are the only things that your eyes see that have special neurons dedicated to recognizing. That's the reason you can recognize someone's face from so far away. Therefore all this makes sense, people seeing faces in things, such as the face on mars and this "skull".
Other animals have special recognition capabilities for other forms by the way, though I forget specific examples.
I mostly agree with the text of this comment and its proofs... However the thing which gets me is this acts like the Republican party is the only one to do this. The democratic side is equally guilty with this.. i.e. publications like TIME and Newsweek which I receieve, and generally say similar information in one article about Republicans as one about Demcrats except one is given a good spin, the other a bad. In this case the positive spin is toward the Democratic article.
Welcome to politics.