The bad news with static libraries comes when a security hole is found in a library. Now, you have 10 applications to patch instead of one library -- and there's always that one you miss.
Of course, if you upgrade a library such that it breaks other applications, then that's the other edge to the shared-library sword. That's when the developer, if you were lucky, upped the.so.n number so the versions can co-exist. Or that's when your package manager keeps things properly synchronized so you don't have to worry.
Apparently, sometimes choice is good, and sometimes choice is bad. Imagine that. (I like having the choice of ketchup or mustard, but I would prefer the former to be red and the latter to be green.)
In other news, the Slashdot Borg Entity has dissolved itself after two members expressed different opinions on an issue.
-- That's mine. Oh, and here's one from my lit book, by Kenneth Koch, tearing apart the silly Plums one
"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you have been saving to live on for the next ten years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
-- No, the patent is overkill. W.C.W. could be replaced with a very short shell script.
Without starting a massive flamewar about the Middle East which would still not make us agree and in the meantime just piss off everyone else on slashdot, I do want to correct a misperception.
I (most unfortunately) get the majority of my news from mainstream sources, and it is rare that they call palestinians "terrorists". Even Hamas or Islamic Jihad members (both of these are terrorist organizations) are listed as "activists" or "militants" by U.S. papers. It works both ways: Palestinians who are protesting peacefully are labelled roughly the same way protesters in Seattle were labeled (not in a positive light), by the same paper that will also show a picture of Israelis apparently firing on rock-throwing children (with gunmen behind the children, not shown in the photo).
In summary: if both Israelis and Palestinians think the papers are biased, the news sources might just be taking the appropriate, centrist line that doesn't choose sides.
Personally, I am happy using Gnumeric and Abiword, but I do not do particularly heavy-duty work (some might argue that Office is also unsuitable for such work) . And regardless of how capable open-source programs are, corporations are generally conservative in adopting new software; by using Office, they avoid the problems with file type conversions and the occasional missing capability.
Last summer, I was supervising the installation of GNU/Linux in a previously all-Windows shop (a certain simulation software they used required Linux). To the people who ran the simulations they ended up giving two computers, one for Windows and one for Linux. This was not the original nor the ideal plan, but Outlook is necessary to interface with MS Exchange mail servers (particularly calendars and address books), and MS Office is necessary to share files effectively with other Office users. While office alternatives on Linux are certainly viable and I personally would not need MS Office for Linux, management policies and practical realities make it a necessity for Linux to gain further inroads at corporations.
As a high-schooler whose summer job involved (among other things) a small-scale Linux deployment inside a ~200-person office, the strategies of doing so interest me greatly. However, I've always seen a few issues with remote execution and thin clients that I hope someone here with more experience can address.
There are three levels of remote management you can do: None, mounting certain directories remotely, and launching only an Xserver on the client. The main problems I've had with the second and third options are:
Does it take a substantial amount of bandwidth to mount (for example) the/usr tree remotely? The senior admins won't let me do any of that if it will degrade the network.
Will the users notice the delays substantially on a 100Mb/s network? I understand that this may be ok for word processing, but some of our users (and the main reason why we have linux in our company now) are running airport simulation models that have a complex, graphics-heavy UI and generate reams and reams of data. Would putting apps like that across the network impede their performance substantially?
I can already ssh into our machines and make them run any program I've uploaded to a certain directory overnight. Are the maintenance savings really substantial enough to outweight the speed/bandwidth issues? Thanks.
You're confusing two different aspects of.NET: The application environment and the ASP tools.
The Mono project will be implementing the Common Language Environment, C# compiler, and the.NET object model. Despite the source of these components, I am looking forward to being able to use Mono. This half of the.NET project is actually something I am looking forward to.
The cool part is that I will be able to use the graphical form designers to create the visual parts of my programs and then implement those in any language I choose: since I don't like C# or (ugh) VB, I'll use Python.NET. If necessary though, I can write some parts in C and subclass them from within python; no more worrying about tools like SIP and SWIG which are by nature imperfect since they must be reimplemented for every language pair.
Unfortunately, taking advantage of this would in the past have limited me solely to Windows, which IMHO outweighs all my possible gains. With Mono, however, I will be able to do all of the above in a cross-platform manner. Even if the Mono project does not release a graphical form designer, I can do that part in Windows and develop the rest in Linux, in my favorite programming language. The resulting program will then be able to run anywhere with only a recompilation.
The part you're worried about includes the Hailstorm initiative and other Microsoft muscle-flexing. Mono is not interested in this at all. Rather, the project implementing this half is GNU.Net, which is going to directly compete with Microsoft even as Mono complements it. If you are worried about this, GNU.Net is the project to watch for a Free (in all meanings of the word) replacement for it.
By reading this comment, you agree to sell your first-born to Jacob Lee of Cincinnati, OH.
This comment must be destroyed within 30 minutes of reading under full penalty of U.S. law. The editors of this site shall be held responsible if this comment is not removed at the end of the appropriate time period.
This agreement is not applicable in the states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delerium.
Couldn't think of one in five seconds? Didn't think so.
Face it, even legit, commercial publishers aren't having much success. Nobody wants to read a book on a computer screen: you can't curl up with it and it strains your eyes. I doubt he's losing revenues to people who are reading it on the computer screen. That's why publishers are so far less active than the RIAA w.r.t. attacking online sharing. Of course they're running scared; that's where half of the doomed etext companies come from in the first place. But they aren't nearly at the stage yet where they're losing revenues.
(/me grumbles that there's no politically safe center between "piracy" and "sharing")
Believe it or not, the U.S. Federal reserve already plans on using this tool to counteract the damaging force of inflation on our country's economy. In fact, according to high-level sources that I cannot name for obvious reasons, the first of these new coins will come out in April, for Delaware. Coins will then follow in step in the order the new coins were introduced. Similar plans are in order for the new Sackagawea (sp?) dollar; however, the serrated edge is adding numerous complications to the project. It is hoped that the new, deflated coins will offset inflationary pressures... or something.
The GPL is designed to prevent exactly this. While the BSD and, to a lesser extent, the LGPL, has a main purpose of seeing the code in use, hopefully in a free way, the GPL has a main goal of making as much code open as possible. In this, it sacrifices the convenience of the developer for freedom. While this is a goal that you may or may not agree with, it is one that you should respect before trying to use GPL'ed code in a closed application.
Your option under the GPL is this: Open your code or use a closed-source library. Perhaps, instead of trying to find a way to include open code without violating the license, you should explore either one of the above options. Anything else would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the General Public License.
Not everyone has Internet access, you know. And out of those that do, many of them pay by the minute or hour for their calls, adding to the price of the (already expensive) software.
This is even more troubling for Pissler than for Visual Studio.NET and Office, since the machine is so dependent on the operating system. What happens if the customer has a strange network setup that Windows can't detect on install? Is he still allowed to use Control Panel and the like before activating the software? Or is the user stuck with a dead operating system until he can mail in a form? (allow several weeks for processing and delivery) --
I totally see their point of view. Just last week, I was playing CivII on King. I was having trouble defeating the Persians until I captured their first city (took 10 cannons to do it -- all their cities were walled). The problem was that I'd take a turn moving next to their city and they'd get a free shot on my cannons (with 1 defense). When I finally captured that city, I just railroaded in all my cannons to their other cities and captured them in maybe 5 turns.
Russia had a totally good reason to make railroads a different size -- so we couldn't roll our cannons in! --
Try Jabber. It is an open-source, XML-based, fully buzzword-compliant IM system. You can run a server on your internal network which people can connect to using one of the many clients available (such as WinJab). Plus, Jabber can communicate with other transport protocols as well, such as AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or IRC. This can, of course, be modified at the server level to block access to external servers and/or protocols.
Slashdot Mirror
-bash:
. .
~$ watch -n 10 w3m slashdot.org
The bad news with static libraries comes when a security hole is found in a library. Now, you have 10 applications to patch instead of one library -- and there's always that one you miss.
.so.n number so the versions can co-exist. Or that's when your package manager keeps things properly synchronized so you don't have to worry.
:-P
Of course, if you upgrade a library such that it breaks other applications, then that's the other edge to the shared-library sword. That's when the developer, if you were lucky, upped the
Isn't UNIX wonderful?
Apparently, sometimes choice is good, and sometimes choice is bad. Imagine that. (I like having the choice of ketchup or mustard, but I would prefer the former to be red and the latter to be green.)
In other news, the Slashdot Borg Entity has dissolved itself after two members expressed different opinions on an issue.
In soviet russia, evil corporation sues YOU.
Here you go, W.C.Williams....
So much (i.e. my
Pulitzer)
depends upon an ambiguous
statement
with no actual
application
beside a bland
image
--
That's mine. Oh, and here's one from my lit book, by Kenneth Koch, tearing apart the silly Plums one
"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you have been saving to live on for the next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
--
No, the patent is overkill. W.C.W. could be replaced with a very short shell script.
Elves? that's both odd and grammatically correct Latin...
You have an mp3?? I've been trying to find that on OpenNAP for -days-!
Without starting a massive flamewar about the Middle East which would still not make us agree and in the meantime just piss off everyone else on slashdot, I do want to correct a misperception.
I (most unfortunately) get the majority of my news from mainstream sources, and it is rare that they call palestinians "terrorists". Even Hamas or Islamic Jihad members (both of these are terrorist organizations) are listed as "activists" or "militants" by U.S. papers. It works both ways: Palestinians who are protesting peacefully are labelled roughly the same way protesters in Seattle were labeled (not in a positive light), by the same paper that will also show a picture of Israelis apparently firing on rock-throwing children (with gunmen behind the children, not shown in the photo).
In summary: if both Israelis and Palestinians think the papers are biased, the news sources might just be taking the appropriate, centrist line that doesn't choose sides.
Personally, I am happy using Gnumeric and Abiword, but I do not do particularly heavy-duty work (some might argue that Office is also unsuitable for such work) . And regardless of how capable open-source programs are, corporations are generally conservative in adopting new software; by using Office, they avoid the problems with file type conversions and the occasional missing capability.
Last summer, I was supervising the installation of GNU/Linux in a previously all-Windows shop (a certain simulation software they used required Linux). To the people who ran the simulations they ended up giving two computers, one for Windows and one for Linux. This was not the original nor the ideal plan, but Outlook is necessary to interface with MS Exchange mail servers (particularly calendars and address books), and MS Office is necessary to share files effectively with other Office users. While office alternatives on Linux are certainly viable and I personally would not need MS Office for Linux, management policies and practical realities make it a necessity for Linux to gain further inroads at corporations.
As a high-schooler whose summer job involved (among other things) a small-scale Linux deployment inside a ~200-person office, the strategies of doing so interest me greatly. However, I've always seen a few issues with remote execution and thin clients that I hope someone here with more experience can address.
/usr tree remotely? The senior admins won't let me do any of that if it will degrade the network.
There are three levels of remote management you can do: None, mounting certain directories remotely, and launching only an Xserver on the client. The main problems I've had with the second and third options are:
Does it take a substantial amount of bandwidth to mount (for example) the
Will the users notice the delays substantially on a 100Mb/s network? I understand that this may be ok for word processing, but some of our users (and the main reason why we have linux in our company now) are running airport simulation models that have a complex, graphics-heavy UI and generate reams and reams of data. Would putting apps like that across the network impede their performance substantially?
I can already ssh into our machines and make them run any program I've uploaded to a certain directory overnight. Are the maintenance savings really substantial enough to outweight the speed/bandwidth issues? Thanks.
From the paper on coupled-channel encoding:
"Eliminating Trigonometry and Rounding"
Man, I wish they had thought of that sooner - That would have my Pre-Calc grade soooo much.
You're confusing two different aspects of .NET: The application environment and the ASP tools.
.NET object model. Despite the source of these components, I am looking forward to being able to use Mono. This half of the .NET project is actually something I am looking forward to.
The Mono project will be implementing the Common Language Environment, C# compiler, and the
The cool part is that I will be able to use the graphical form designers to create the visual parts of my programs and then implement those in any language I choose: since I don't like C# or (ugh) VB, I'll use Python.NET. If necessary though, I can write some parts in C and subclass them from within python; no more worrying about tools like SIP and SWIG which are by nature imperfect since they must be reimplemented for every language pair.
Unfortunately, taking advantage of this would in the past have limited me solely to Windows, which IMHO outweighs all my possible gains. With Mono, however, I will be able to do all of the above in a cross-platform manner. Even if the Mono project does not release a graphical form designer, I can do that part in Windows and develop the rest in Linux, in my favorite programming language. The resulting program will then be able to run anywhere with only a recompilation.
The part you're worried about includes the Hailstorm initiative and other Microsoft muscle-flexing. Mono is not interested in this at all. Rather, the project implementing this half is GNU.Net, which is going to directly compete with Microsoft even as Mono complements it. If you are worried about this, GNU.Net is the project to watch for a Free (in all meanings of the word) replacement for it.
--
By reading this comment, you agree to sell your first-born to Jacob Lee of Cincinnati, OH.
This comment must be destroyed within 30 minutes of reading under full penalty of U.S. law. The editors of this site shall be held responsible if this comment is not removed at the end of the appropriate time period.
This agreement is not applicable in the states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delerium.
All Your First Born are Belong to Us
--
FYI: /. stats are available as a slashbox on the side of the screen.
--
As someone who plans on living forever, this is *such* a relief.
(Insert sarcasm as necessary)
--
Quick, name a successfull e-book publisher.
Couldn't think of one in five seconds? Didn't think so.
Face it, even legit, commercial publishers aren't having much success. Nobody wants to read a book on a computer screen: you can't curl up with it and it strains your eyes. I doubt he's losing revenues to people who are reading it on the computer screen. That's why publishers are so far less active than the RIAA w.r.t. attacking online sharing. Of course they're running scared; that's where half of the doomed etext companies come from in the first place. But they aren't nearly at the stage yet where they're losing revenues.
(/me grumbles that there's no politically safe center between "piracy" and "sharing")
--
I got one of those. The only problem is that upgrades are such a headache!
[rimshot]
--
Believe it or not, the U.S. Federal reserve already plans on using this tool to counteract the damaging force of inflation on our country's economy. In fact, according to high-level sources that I cannot name for obvious reasons, the first of these new coins will come out in April, for Delaware. Coins will then follow in step in the order the new coins were introduced. Similar plans are in order for the new Sackagawea (sp?) dollar; however, the serrated edge is adding numerous complications to the project. It is hoped that the new, deflated coins will offset inflationary pressures... or something.
--
That didn't work for me. After a quick FTP to spidermonkey.ximian.org, the directory is actually:
/ distributions/debian unstable main
/pub/ximian/1.4beta1/distributions/debian
(ximian was added)
thus, the actual line is:
deb ftp://spidermonkey.ximian.com/pub/ximian/1.4beta1
--
It sounds like somebody hasn't seen the Music Man ;-)
--
The GPL is designed to prevent exactly this. While the BSD and, to a lesser extent, the LGPL, has a main purpose of seeing the code in use, hopefully in a free way, the GPL has a main goal of making as much code open as possible. In this, it sacrifices the convenience of the developer for freedom. While this is a goal that you may or may not agree with, it is one that you should respect before trying to use GPL'ed code in a closed application.
Your option under the GPL is this: Open your code or use a closed-source library. Perhaps, instead of trying to find a way to include open code without violating the license, you should explore either one of the above options. Anything else would violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the General Public License.
--
Not everyone has Internet access, you know. And out of those that do, many of them pay by the minute or hour for their calls, adding to the price of the (already expensive) software.
This is even more troubling for Pissler than for Visual Studio.NET and Office, since the machine is so dependent on the operating system. What happens if the customer has a strange network setup that Windows can't detect on install? Is he still allowed to use Control Panel and the like before activating the software? Or is the user stuck with a dead operating system until he can mail in a form? (allow several weeks for processing and delivery)
--
I totally see their point of view. Just last week, I was playing CivII on King. I was having trouble defeating the Persians until I captured their first city (took 10 cannons to do it -- all their cities were walled). The problem was that I'd take a turn moving next to their city and they'd get a free shot on my cannons (with 1 defense). When I finally captured that city, I just railroaded in all my cannons to their other cities and captured them in maybe 5 turns.
Russia had a totally good reason to make railroads a different size -- so we couldn't roll our cannons in!
--
Try Jabber. It is an open-source, XML-based, fully buzzword-compliant IM system. You can run a server on your internal network which people can connect to using one of the many clients available (such as WinJab). Plus, Jabber can communicate with other transport protocols as well, such as AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or IRC. This can, of course, be modified at the server level to block access to external servers and/or protocols.
--
Hmm... let's contrast the cure (which, although I haven't tried it, admittedly looks completely ridiculous)...
:-)
with your sig: "There's another sucker born every minute."
Riight...
--