If something is advertised as being secure, then it had better be secure. The same thing should apply to software. You should be responsible if you tell customers your software is secure, and it isn't.
I don't remember ever seeing a piece of software that wasn't provided "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE". Maybe the military or NASA can afford to buy software that has a purpose, but so far, all the software I have ever installed was somehow useless by design, since none of it should serve any purpose... Hard to hold me responsible if I sell you something and tell you in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS that whatever I'm selling to you is useless.
Antivirus, spyware protection, firewall, internet browser (to name a few)
A firewall should never be required to run any PC, because no PC should ever respond to a connection attempt that it wasn't designed/configured to handle. A firewall's sole purpose is to close ports that should not have been open in the first place.
There really should be a plugin that lets you limit the amount of CPU usage that a plugin can use.
But if that plugin would require quite a bit of CPU usage to prevent the other plugins from eating up your CPU, we'd be pretty fucked now, wouldn't we?
I'm using a 1.5GHz PowerBook, OS X 10.4.2, with the Flash plugin that comes with Safari. A few of the Flash ads on Slashdot have a habit of making my CPU usage jump to 100% - CPU speed doesn't matter if someone codes a busy loop.
I've seen some OS X machines (in fact, there are several of them around me right now)... sneezing will get your CPU usage to 100% on those things. Or just moving the mouse, it's as crazy as that. Whenever you move your mouse over that whatchacallit bar with icons to launch applications (the one that resizes and rolls and bounces around), CPU hits 100%. No wonder a Flash animation eats up your CPU (or are you sure it's the flash animation and not the mouse moving around while you go and disable Flash?)
You work for MicroSoft throwing FUD? See the glibc README - its LGPL not GPL. LGPL allows linking with proprietary software to build proprietary applications.
I said "libc" on top of my head as a general example, but I actually meant "GNU ISO C++". Here's a more precise example for you. GCC4 uses by default (I didn't recompile or reconfigure it or whatever) a file called "mt_allocator.h" (compile something that has a "#define destroy _whatever_" and you'll get an error in this file.
> head -n 30/usr/include/c++/4.0.0/ext/mt_allocator.h // MT-optimized allocator -*- C++ -*-
// Copyright (C) 2003, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc. // // This file is part of the GNU ISO C++ Library. This library is free // software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the // terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the // Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) // any later version.
// This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, // but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of // MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the // GNU General Public License for more details.
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along // with this library; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free // Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, // USA.
// As a special exception, you may use this file as part of a free software // library without restriction. Specifically, if other files instantiate // templates or use macros or inline functions from this file, or you compile // this file and link it with other files to produce an executable, this // file does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by // the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however // invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by // the GNU General Public License.
/** @file ext/mt_allocator.h
See that? Right there... "you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License". GPL, not LGPL. And that was linked to by default. Yes, there is the "special exception" at the end, but can we be 100% certain that there is no such "default includes" that are GPL and *don't* have the special exception?
If I build my own car from scratch, I'll include air conditioning, just as Linux users who created their own OS included the GPL.
The thing about the GPL and its viralness is not you building your car from scratch and including your air conditioning, it's about the car company letting you build an air conditioner only if you give it for free, which hardly makes any sesnse for a business since you spent money to build the air conditioner in the first place.
What scares companies is the idea that they might face lawsuits when they (inadvertantly) include OSS in their product. I have had to do "legal searches" against my companies sources, in order to protect against this possibility.
I would really like to know more about those legal searches you did for your company's sources. What did you have to check? How did you make sure you were allowed to use the tools the way you used them? How did you interpret the licences? etc.
My company thinks about porting its proprietary application to Linux, but definitely doesn't want to GPL the application. Could we use GCC4 to compile it? I saw it includes some libc files that are GPL with a tiny comment that you can still use this file without making the program GPL, so using those files are ok, but does GCC4 include other files that doesn't have that very important exception? That kind of thing can scare the managers as hell...
Contracts mean the companies can concentrate on new sales and not existing customer support or quality of service (most of us change cell companies because we are dissatisfied with our existing company, not because the new company is better). As long as we have contracts, we lose in service and quality.
This is so true. My 2 years contract ended a couple of months ago, so I am now "free to go elsewhere". Suddenly, I've been getting calls from my current provider offering me "free this" and "free that". I never had those offers in the past 2 years. Now that I can stop giving them my money, they suddenly care more about me...
What happens if I've published my code under v2 and the users everywhere decide to apply v3 to it? What if I don't find v3 particularly appealing?
I don't think it's the user who chooses which version you apply. If you develop something under version 2 with the "or later versions" clause, and I take your code and modify it, I can redistribute it under GPLv3. However, I cannot force you to make *your* version GPLv3, since yours is "version 2 or later at your option".
The way I see it, leaving the "at your option" clause simply permits other people to relicence it under a more recent version of the GPL, but it does not force you to dump the earlier version if you don't like the later one.
The Internet is very much stoppable. Governments could very easily make Internet access illegal merely by passing laws. Data lines can be cut with a nice heavy pair of scissors.
True, but if Bush shuts down the Internet, he won't be able to use MapQuest or Google Maps anymore to figure out where the hell Afghanistan or Iraq is...
This sounds like the FCC is trying to play both sides of the street. Yes, you can use whatever service you like, unless the cops don't like it. If they don't like it, something may or may not happen to you.
Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Article 41. Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposures, or retaliate against the citizens making them. Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civil rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.
Article 51. The exercise by citizens of the People's Republic of China of their freedoms and rights may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society and of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.
Article 52. It is the duty of citizens of the People's Republic of China to safeguard the unity of the country and the unity of all its nationalities.
Basically, "you can do whatever you want as long as we approve of it". And you really think the USA is a free country, right?
Yes, when I install/configure/develop something and They PAY for it; they expect ME to fix it; if it has problems. Isn't that the standard?
Indeed. If you develop and sell something, people might expect you to fix it. However, if what you develop and sell is free (speech, not beer) and open source, and your customer makes modifications to your product, then I don't think you are in any responsible for the support of whatever he changed, no matter how much he paid in the first place. The article doesn't say whether they customized and recompiled stuff, but it doesn't say that they didn't either.
If you are a vendor; it is YOUR job to make your client's system work. If you really need the full diagnostics and the customer doesn't have the time/manpower/experience; then have one of your own people do the job.
Ok, so first, you want a Linux server, because of the freedom, so you can fiddle with it, configure it like you want, modify it to fit your needs. Then, when something goes wrong, you expect *someone else* to fix it all for you, and you are not willing to help them fix it. I suppose you also want it done *now* and *for free*, right?
You asked for freedom and you got it. Now live with it.
Every one of use who's stumbled through this kind of course and walked out with a 45% average and a B+ knows that something is rotten in the state of Denmark
Whoa... it is indeed pretty scary for Denmark. In Quebec (or at least the school I went to, known simply as "Poly"), the passing grade (meaning "D") is fixed at 50%, no matter the course / subject. Although it is possible to get a degree with only 50% of what you should have learned, most of them will get screened out on the job market because most companies require to know your average before hiring, and passing with 50% won't give you anything but a D average.
I'm an engineer (actually, worse - I'm a scientist). The big flaw in this argument is that people like me are *only* in it for the money. Not true. I *love* my work! There are even days when I wake up in the morning itching to get to grips with a problem.
I so totally agree with you there. I'm an engineer too, and I am because I love it. Sure, engineering school was hard, but I still passed pretty easily because I have the passion for what I do. Engineering isn't supposed to be easy, just as rocket science isn't easy, and brain surgery isn't easy either. People want to become "engineers" and want engineering degrees to be handed as easily as an MBA degree is handed. Engineering, just like surgery, is not something that can be done by just about anybody, and therefore not anybody should be able to get the degree "just because they want it".
From TFA : If you want more engineers in the United States, you must find a way for America's engineering programs to retain students like, well, me: people smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the engineering apple, but turned off by the overwhelming coursework
If you are turned off by overwhelming coursework, then you shouldn't even begin to try to even think about becoming an engineering, no matter how smart you are. Engineering is more than "doing the math", otherwise, we'd all be afraid that computers might steal our jobs. Even if you manage to get your degree, you're not gonna have a free ride once you're an engineering. The hard courses are nothing but an introduction to what being an engineer is really all about. If you can't stand the courses, you won't survive the carreer.
The PSP (or GBA, or any of the consoles out there) don't make money for the company that makes them.
I really don't think Nintendo sells their consoles (be it NGC, or any model of GBA/DS) at a loss. Although it's common knowledge that Sony sells the PS2 and PSP at a loss, and that Microsoft has done the same with the Xbox (and probably with the Xbox360 too), I have never seen anything that could even hint that Nintendo isn't making money on the hardware.
The consumers this particular war will be fought over haven't been in a format war before.
VHS, the "winner" of a particularily big tussle isn't even on the shelves at my local movie rental store!
Did anyone ever emerge victorious of the DVD-R / DVD+R format war? I lost track. Since I use those only for data backups, and my drives support both formats, I just go with whichever is available when I need to buy some blank discs. Did it get sorted out outside of the data-backup world (movie-copying and such)?
Who would have thought that a company like Sony is having such difficulties. It is shocking and sad to know that Sony is going to post a "Loss" for the year.
I don't want to rub it in, but it's somehow fun to see Sony having money problem while all the Sony fanboys keep claiming "Nintendo is going down" or "They should stop making consoles" or "The GC is a total failure, Sony p0wned them" or "The PSP is such a success, Nintendo should stop trying".
There used to be a time when Sony could afford to sell its consoles at a loss and make it up with profits from other parts of the company, but methinks they will have to put a pretty high pricetag on the PS3 if they can't afford to lose money on the hardware anymore.
Another thing is most third party GCN-GBA cords cover up the L and R buttons on the GBASP, so normally only Nintendo official brand one work.
Don't bitch on the SP if the flaw is in third-party parts... you should always get your hardware first-party from Nintendo. Anything else is a total waste of money.
How much money did you save by buying a third-party link cable instead of first-party? Was that amount of money worth the extra frustration of playing Four Swords with buttons pressed down?
When 1.0.7 is converted to English from American, you'll get your new localized version!
Other than the version number in the "About Firefox" window, what needs to be converted/translated in this bugfix? Really. Why should it take longer to release the localized versions?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't remember ever seeing a piece of software that wasn't provided "AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE". Maybe the military or NASA can afford to buy software that has a purpose, but so far, all the software I have ever installed was somehow useless by design, since none of it should serve any purpose... Hard to hold me responsible if I sell you something and tell you in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS that whatever I'm selling to you is useless.
A firewall should never be required to run any PC, because no PC should ever respond to a connection attempt that it wasn't designed/configured to handle. A firewall's sole purpose is to close ports that should not have been open in the first place.
but then...
But if that plugin would require quite a bit of CPU usage to prevent the other plugins from eating up your CPU, we'd be pretty fucked now, wouldn't we?
I've seen some OS X machines (in fact, there are several of them around me right now)... sneezing will get your CPU usage to 100% on those things. Or just moving the mouse, it's as crazy as that. Whenever you move your mouse over that whatchacallit bar with icons to launch applications (the one that resizes and rolls and bounces around), CPU hits 100%. No wonder a Flash animation eats up your CPU (or are you sure it's the flash animation and not the mouse moving around while you go and disable Flash?)
I must be color blind or something, because this Gamecube looks black to me...
I said "libc" on top of my head as a general example, but I actually meant "GNU ISO C++". Here's a more precise example for you. GCC4 uses by default (I didn't recompile or reconfigure it or whatever) a file called "mt_allocator.h" (compile something that has a "#define destroy _whatever_" and you'll get an error in this file.
See that? Right there... "you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License". GPL, not LGPL. And that was linked to by default. Yes, there is the "special exception" at the end, but can we be 100% certain that there is no such "default includes" that are GPL and *don't* have the special exception?
Unfortunately, from the looks of the discussions on GPLv3, it's not about to be improved...
The thing about the GPL and its viralness is not you building your car from scratch and including your air conditioning, it's about the car company letting you build an air conditioner only if you give it for free, which hardly makes any sesnse for a business since you spent money to build the air conditioner in the first place.
I would really like to know more about those legal searches you did for your company's sources. What did you have to check? How did you make sure you were allowed to use the tools the way you used them? How did you interpret the licences? etc.
My company thinks about porting its proprietary application to Linux, but definitely doesn't want to GPL the application. Could we use GCC4 to compile it? I saw it includes some libc files that are GPL with a tiny comment that you can still use this file without making the program GPL, so using those files are ok, but does GCC4 include other files that doesn't have that very important exception? That kind of thing can scare the managers as hell...
This is so true. My 2 years contract ended a couple of months ago, so I am now "free to go elsewhere". Suddenly, I've been getting calls from my current provider offering me "free this" and "free that". I never had those offers in the past 2 years. Now that I can stop giving them my money, they suddenly care more about me...
What happens if I've published my code under v2 and the users everywhere decide to apply v3 to it? What if I don't find v3 particularly appealing?
I don't think it's the user who chooses which version you apply. If you develop something under version 2 with the "or later versions" clause, and I take your code and modify it, I can redistribute it under GPLv3. However, I cannot force you to make *your* version GPLv3, since yours is "version 2 or later at your option".
The way I see it, leaving the "at your option" clause simply permits other people to relicence it under a more recent version of the GPL, but it does not force you to dump the earlier version if you don't like the later one.
True, but if Bush shuts down the Internet, he won't be able to use MapQuest or Google Maps anymore to figure out where the hell Afghanistan or Iraq is...
Makes me think of the Chinese constitution that has been cited quite a few times here...
Basically, "you can do whatever you want as long as we approve of it". And you really think the USA is a free country, right?
Indeed. If you develop and sell something, people might expect you to fix it. However, if what you develop and sell is free (speech, not beer) and open source, and your customer makes modifications to your product, then I don't think you are in any responsible for the support of whatever he changed, no matter how much he paid in the first place. The article doesn't say whether they customized and recompiled stuff, but it doesn't say that they didn't either.
Ok, so first, you want a Linux server, because of the freedom, so you can fiddle with it, configure it like you want, modify it to fit your needs. Then, when something goes wrong, you expect *someone else* to fix it all for you, and you are not willing to help them fix it. I suppose you also want it done *now* and *for free*, right?
You asked for freedom and you got it. Now live with it.
Whoa... it is indeed pretty scary for Denmark. In Quebec (or at least the school I went to, known simply as "Poly"), the passing grade (meaning "D") is fixed at 50%, no matter the course / subject. Although it is possible to get a degree with only 50% of what you should have learned, most of them will get screened out on the job market because most companies require to know your average before hiring, and passing with 50% won't give you anything but a D average.
I so totally agree with you there. I'm an engineer too, and I am because I love it. Sure, engineering school was hard, but I still passed pretty easily because I have the passion for what I do. Engineering isn't supposed to be easy, just as rocket science isn't easy, and brain surgery isn't easy either. People want to become "engineers" and want engineering degrees to be handed as easily as an MBA degree is handed. Engineering, just like surgery, is not something that can be done by just about anybody, and therefore not anybody should be able to get the degree "just because they want it".
From TFA : If you want more engineers in the United States, you must find a way for America's engineering programs to retain students like, well, me: people smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the engineering apple, but turned off by the overwhelming coursework
If you are turned off by overwhelming coursework, then you shouldn't even begin to try to even think about becoming an engineering, no matter how smart you are. Engineering is more than "doing the math", otherwise, we'd all be afraid that computers might steal our jobs. Even if you manage to get your degree, you're not gonna have a free ride once you're an engineering. The hard courses are nothing but an introduction to what being an engineer is really all about. If you can't stand the courses, you won't survive the carreer.
I really don't think Nintendo sells their consoles (be it NGC, or any model of GBA/DS) at a loss. Although it's common knowledge that Sony sells the PS2 and PSP at a loss, and that Microsoft has done the same with the Xbox (and probably with the Xbox360 too), I have never seen anything that could even hint that Nintendo isn't making money on the hardware.
Ok... now I am disturbed...
VHS, the "winner" of a particularily big tussle isn't even on the shelves at my local movie rental store!
Did anyone ever emerge victorious of the DVD-R / DVD+R format war? I lost track. Since I use those only for data backups, and my drives support both formats, I just go with whichever is available when I need to buy some blank discs. Did it get sorted out outside of the data-backup world (movie-copying and such)?
In French Canada, it's the Tax on Products and Services... I hate TPS...
I don't want to rub it in, but it's somehow fun to see Sony having money problem while all the Sony fanboys keep claiming "Nintendo is going down" or "They should stop making consoles" or "The GC is a total failure, Sony p0wned them" or "The PSP is such a success, Nintendo should stop trying".
There used to be a time when Sony could afford to sell its consoles at a loss and make it up with profits from other parts of the company, but methinks they will have to put a pretty high pricetag on the PS3 if they can't afford to lose money on the hardware anymore.
Don't bitch on the SP if the flaw is in third-party parts... you should always get your hardware first-party from Nintendo. Anything else is a total waste of money.
How much money did you save by buying a third-party link cable instead of first-party? Was that amount of money worth the extra frustration of playing Four Swords with buttons pressed down?
Other than the version number in the "About Firefox" window, what needs to be converted/translated in this bugfix? Really. Why should it take longer to release the localized versions?