After a court declares them to be an illegal monopoloy
They weren't declared to be "an illegal monopoly". They were declared to be a monopoly, (which isn't illegal, there's tons of legal monopolies) and some specific actions of theirs were declared to be illegal (bundling IE with Windows and pressuring OEMs not to pre-install Netscape). You can call that nitpicking, but it's the difference between "You're stupid" and "That thing you just did is stupid." The courts haven't declared Microsoft to be bad. They declared some of Microsoft's actions to be bad. By blurring that line, you do yourself a disservice. Do you think those illegal policies were inacted by some mid-level manager, or by Bill Gates himself? If the former, why blame the whole company for it? If the latter, will you stop thinking Microsoft is immoral when Gates retires or dies and hands the reigns over to someone else? You've developed a moral opposition to an amoral (not immoral) entity.
There are some of us who will not invest in, work for, or buy from criminal enterprises.
You keep telling yourself that. Just about every company valued over a billion, hell, over a couple million, has done something criminal. Good luck not trading with any of them at all. Plus, our entire country was founded on a "criminal enterprise". We refused to pay taxes, and rebelled against our government, killing lots of its law enforcement and military officers. I bet if you look at all the laws of this country right now, you probably disagree with several of them, and have violated several of them (software copyright? speeding? narcotics? oral sex?).
Look, if you hate Microsoft for emotional reasons, fine. You're not alone. Half of fucking slashdot probably agrees with you. But don't try to paint it as black-and-white, Microsoft is criminal and we're not. Grow up.
It's not the best, but IANAL and research isn't my specialty either. For a decent overview, google "fiduciary responsibilities"
It's also a big deal in Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. One of the characters is establishing a publicly-traded corporation with a specific idealistic purpose in mind, but he has to make efforts to appear as though "shareholder value" is his primary concern.
In practice, it doesn't usually come to a lawsuit unless it's pretty blatant. But you would do well to realize that "the little guy" is hurt when stock prices drop, and that "profit" ultimately doesn't refer to thickening stacks of green paper, but rather to the creation of valued commoditiies (food, shelter, heat, entertainment) which have real impact on real people. Don't convince yourself that "corporate profits" are just some perverse game played by old white men.
Thanks for that. I got a little chuckle out of "the niche market that is networking hardware." That was cute.
Right now Cisco's market cap is just over $135 billion. Apple comes in at almost $12 billion. I guess there's niche, and then there's niche.
I don't see anyone running a PC running IOS, which is what the "business analysts" claimed Apple should have done with Mac OS.
There actually are tons of "PC's" (x86 servers) running Cisco software. Cisco PIXes, Content Engines, NAMs, Call-Managers. I could go on. These are also "proprietary hardware" (they're mostly re-branded stuff from other PC manufacturers, but you still gotta buy them from Cisco, in the bluegreen boxes with the bridge logo on them).
But your use of Cisco as a parallel to Apple isn't that bad. If I had to distill it to a one sentence explanation, I'd say:
Cisco and Apple both went for high-end proprietary hardware, emphasizing good design over low price, but Cisco targets businesses who will drop millions of dollars to go from a 2% failure rate to a 1% failure rate, or to save their support staff 15 minutes of time in a crisis, whereas Apple targets individual users who don't have the same attitude towards how much money they should spend on their computer systems.
I would question why any company would want to be Microsoft.
In this case, the obvious answer is the correct one: many, many companies would love to be like Microsoft, because Microsoft makes a fuckton of money.
You can talk about soul-searching and whether or not money is really all that fulfilling, but you asked why a company would want to be like Microsoft, not why a worker or a CEO would want their company to be like Microsoft. Publicly-traded companies want (as far as any non-living, non-sentient entity can be said to want) only one thing: increase shareholder value. That's not cynicism, that's the law. If you, as a company, decide to take an idealistic stance and disregard the priority of making lots of money, you can actually be sued. And with good reason.
Imagine if your checking account was suddenly cut in half, because the bank decided to be idealistic. Would you cheer them on and say "Good for you! Way to be! I didn't really need that money anyway!" That's what you're asking corporations to do. That publicly traded stock represents other people's money. People who don't work for Microsoft buy their stock, maybe as part of an investment portfolio, say for their retirement. Just like your checking account vanishing, those are real people who would be hurt if Microsoft suddenly said "fuck profit!"
Now, if you really meant "Why would an individual want to work for a company like Microsoft, instead of a company like Apple?" I suggest you get to know some moderately sucessful Microsoft employees. Despite the slashdot view, people who work at Microsoft don't approach it with the attitude of "Well, I'll be a mindless corporate automaton, but at least I'll make some good bucks." Many people at Microsoft, especially the top officers, genuinely believe that they're idealistic, and that they're changing the world for the better, doing revolutionary things. Now you can question the validity of that viewpoint, but we can question the validity of Steve Jobs' viewpoints as well. My point is that the contrrast you try to paint between the companies, idealistic vs. pragmatic, while an illustrative look at their business plans, doesn't really reflect the spirit of the company and the people who work there. Both of them are pretty idealistic, and I think that was one of their strengths.
Ok, but don't you think that we don't have enough information about the technology yet to just write it off.
They're not writing off the technology; they're writing off the news story. You're right, we don't know much about the technology, which means it's a non-story. If we posted everything that could, possibly, theoretically, maybe replace hard drives, we'd spend all day reading vapor stories.
In the meantime, somebody has simply taken a line from what looks like a routine product announcement and blown it out of proportion.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Since the art of English grammar is lost on this crowd, let's try parentheses:
The original post: "... playing back (a song which he had purchased from iTMS) using iTunes on Linux."
That was unclear, so the parent poster attempted: "... playing back (a song which he had purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Windows) on Linux."
Everybody follow that now? Parent poster's point was that the demo did not include the ability to purchase a song using iTunes on Linux. The song still had to be purchased using iTunes on Windows, then it could later be played back using iTunes on Linux.
What is more important, lines of code or lines of quality code? People are always so impressed with sheer numbers. Quality is important.
Seriously.
And it's Perl.
I thought the whole point was that you could write a massive Perl program in a single line.
15.4 million just tells me that CPAN is getting sloppy. Let's knock that down to say, 17 HUGE lines, okay?
Rather, it's more about not using lower-level tools any more than you need.
I agree with this general philosophy; I think the part where you and I (for that matter, you and most programmers) differ is that you seem to assume that the need for languages as low-level as C++ is very small. A niche, as you said it.
I think you're making the common Slashdot mistake of assuming that the small corner of the world you live in is representative of all of it. I think games programming is large enough on its own not to be considered "a niche", since revenues for the video game industry now exceed Hollywood movie industry revenues. But in addition to that, there's operating systems (Longhorn, Linux kernel, etc...) and core apps that need to run fast - think Photoshop, Final Cut, SQL servers. I don't know for sure that these programs are written in C or C++, but I bet they aren't written in Python or Perl, and with good reason.
In the specific case of Doom3, Carmack in fact _would_ have been more productive to write it in a higher-level language but of course the end result would have been to slow for his needs
If your goal is to produce a good game, and you fail to do that, rapidly, that doesn't mean you were highly productive; it means you weren't productive at all. You're using a screwed up definition of the word "productive"
When you talk about "getting things done", it sounds like you're talking about odd-jobs, not core applications. Given the task you described, I wouldn't have picked C or C++ for that job either. I agree with your choice of a high-level language. But I'm talking about huge undertakings, not odd-jobs. Writing the next Excel, or Google, or Cisco IOS, or Counter-Strike. These are big programming achievements, and some of those jobs should be done with scripting languages, while others should be done with lower-level languages like C and C++.
If you have trouble understanding/believing this, then imagine explaining to an assembly programmer why you're so much more productive in C++ than assembly. Now, apply those same principles to something like Python, and you'll start to see the light.
Then try explaining to Carmack how he would have been much more productive if he had written Doom 3 in Python.
Different tools for different jobs. Maybe given a job suited for a scripting language, you can argue which scripting language is the best, but to claim that scripting languages are inherently more productive than C and C++ is like claiming that airplanes are inherently better than cars.
Yes, much to my dismay, most demand for programming these days is for web applications, in which case you're probably much better off with Perl than with C. But for those who aren't programming front-ends to databases and HTML generators, scripting languages aren't necessarily "better" at everything.
Recently I started turning them down, but offer to install Linux on their computer instead of trying to fix their Window installation.
So basically you've been hired to support Windows users, but you're not willing to do that, since you are only comfortable fixing Linux problems. Doesn't that simply mean you're in the wrong job?
ALL computer users should take reasonable steps to keep their computers secure. ALL computer users who don't take these steps should have their hard disks wiped clean.
That's funny, they probably thought that hiring a department full of IT professionals, like you, was a reasonable step towards keeping their computers secure. Maybe they need IT people who are willing to actually support them, rather than condesceningly suggest that they're stupid Windows users and blaming them for all of their IT problems.
They couldn't say "if everyone stopped using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express worms and viruses would be a fraction of the problem they are", now could they?
Sometimes I think the whole antivirus industry mostly serves as a diversionary tactic that lets companies keep shipping software with deep, fundamental security problems.
No, if it wasn't for the viruses, even fewer people would care that their software is insecure. The average home user is more worried about getting one of these viruses than they are about getting 0wned. It's the same thing here at work. We tell the management "This device could be hacked" and they laugh at us. We tell them "we spent a jillion man-hours fixing worms" and all of a sudden we have funding for security teams and security projects.
I don't think he's recommending Windows as the alternative.
From the article: "Even if Linux were as secure as Windows, Windows is the wrong benchmark. Defense systems should be held to a higher standard."
In fact, I don't think it's being unreasonably cynical to say that he's suggesting Green Hills software as the alternative.
But whatever you choose, I think he's simply suggesting the military choose software from a vendor who might make the code available to them, but not to the entire world.
In general, the military doesn't certify code as secure until it's been around for a while, and most of what we think of as Linux and Open-Source is pretty new.
It's not pride, it's wisdom.
First of all, as for changing their kernel to Unix, there's many things wrong with that plan. First off, as Twylite points out below, the latest NT kernels aren't less stable than Unix. There are several reason to choose Linux over 2000/2003 for a production server, but stability isn't one of them. You're right, Mac OS before X was unstable, as were Windows 3, 95, 98, and ME. Win 2000 and 2003 aren't.
Secondly, if they were to change their kernel to a Unix flavor, all of a sudden the most important code in their entire company would be code that almost none of their best programmers were familiar with, and it would break compatibility with almost all of their existing code. The time spent playing catch-up to something like that could cripple even a company as dominant as Microsoft.
As for porting Office to Linux, the only gain would be sales. It's not like there's all these Linux users out there who would be seduced by Office into switching to a Windows OS. If there's any switching, it will be in the opposite direction. As for the sales themselves, they would be insignificantly small. Linux and other Unix flavors are doing very well in the server market, but miserably in the desktop market. Office is for the desktop market, not the server. Look at the size of the Linux desktop market (already we're talking small). Now cut that down to the fraction who are willing to pay anything for an Office suite when they could get a free alternative. Now cut that down to the slice who would use a closed-source MS Office suite when they could use an open, standards-compliant alternative. Multiply this tiny slice of users by the suggested reduced price of MS Office for Linux, and you have the amount to be gained from this proposed port. Can you possibly argue that this tiny number outweighs the cost of porting it, combined with the incentive you create for MS Office users to switch to Linux?
Microsoft knows exactly what they're doing. The reason they aren't switching to Unix or porting Office to Linux is because they're both bad ideas, not because of stubborn pride.
Actually, my complaint is that part of it is under-engineered. The human-factors, interface-design part.
Yes, it has the tactile-response bit; that sounds great. Most of my truly tech-savvy friends love the really old IBM keyboards, the ones that click when you depress each key. That sort of tactile feedback is reassuring when you're throwing rapid sequences of commands at it.
One of the things I like about the series 1 TiVo remote and also the iPod is that they're both physically designed to fit snugly into the palm of your hand, and have all of the important buttons cleanly within the arc of your thumb. With the TiVo remote, you don't have to look at it to know where the buttons are, they become muscle-memory for your thumb, and most are shaped differently to aid with that sort of navigation-by-touch.
With this thing, it's like you're operating a computer. You have to hold it with both hands, look at it, and navigate a series of menus. I can wrap my head around the idea of paying $700 for a remote control. I can't afford to do it now, but someday I might, and it doesn't seem inconceivable to me. But for that $700 I want as much transparency as possible. I don't want to even have to think about which operations I'm selecting. I want "volume up" to become an instinctive movement of my thumb. I don't want one more complicated device to learn and operate. That's what my computer is for.
I don't think the consequences really are what most of the posters here seem to think they are. The logical/rational/computer-using mind seems to have trouble grasping the concept of partially enforced laws. If your code says it's illegal to write to a file, then file-write operations don't happen on that file. This leads you to the impression that if they pass a law saying companies can't build devices which allow piracy, that those companies will stop building those devices. That's not how the law actually works.
Assuming laws like this one are passed, I expect things will go like this:
There will not suddenly be cease and desist orders sent to Apple for their iPod or Sony for their VCRs. However, when somebody powerful (read, someone with a lot of lawyers) gets pissed at Apple or Sony, they now have a club to wield. They can now sue, using this law as a basis for the suit. Very few such lawsuits actually result in a yes/no judgement; most of them will be settled.
So rather than "iPods are now illegal", you have "the business of building iPods now comes with added legal costs." This will make such devices more expensive, and will make companies more hesitant to make new ones. The term used for that is "chilling effect". The bottom line is that if a law like this were passed, it wouldn't suddenly outlaw DVD-burners, MP3 players, and VCRs. It would simply make them 50% more expensive, with 50% less vareity, and 50% less power and flexibility.
That's still a huge and terrible impact. I agree, this is a horrible law and it's important that it not pass, but painting exaggerated, apocalyptic pictures simply makes it easier to write you off.
I'm glad they took a well-sized sample of 200 people to represent the 7 job classifications. That's almost 29 datapoints per class.
And that's only if they were evenly distributed.
My guess is there were 190 Microsoft trainees, and the most common trend between them was Britney Spears (which would make sense statistically for arbitrary samples, since she's popular and mainstream) and then of the 3 management guys, they all had Mozart, while the 5 Linux guys all had something that could be classified as Techno or Electronica, and the 2 aging security guys were both Dead fans.
I realize we're not talking about pure science when we read a study about musical taste by IT subgroup, but can't we do a little better than this? At least the Amazon samples are larger data pools...
There's a Penny-Arcade strip which points out how retarded you look when you refer to Microsoft as M$. Penny-Arcade isn't exactly the mainstream; these guys are fellow geeks.
When you refer to Napster as "the RIAA's lapdog", rational people quickly tag you as some sort of fringe moron, and most will stop listening to the rest of what you have to say.
Napster started this war. Music sharing and mp3's were confined to the geek niche, then Napster came along and all of a sudden Metallica's ranting and Shawn Fanning were headline news, and jokes about them were on SNL and MTV. Now they provide a legal service, but it's not like they're the ones suing hundreds of their users.
If you ever wonder why it is that you're having trouble convincing the average Joe that RIAA and MPAA are awful, and that DRM is crippling, not enabling their devices, it's because when the RIAA and MPAA representatives talk, they sound like intelligent, (albeit not all that technically knowledgable or charismatic) rational businessmen, whereas you sound like a paranoid 14-year-old revolutionary with a 70 IQ.
Re:Tivo does not require a phone line
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VoIP Questioned
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I have a Series 2 TiVo with the older firmware, and it was NOT able to use the USB NIC for initial setup.
However, it WAS able to use my Vonage line to make its modem call, after a couple failed attempts. Once the initial setup was over, I switched back to using TCP/IP, which is what I'd rather use anyway.
Do a google on that law firm. Then come back and tell us they're not "ambulance chasers".
I just did, and now I will.
"Ambulance Chaser" isn't just slang for lawyer. It's a very specific class of lawyer. It's those guys you see ads for everywhere:
"Have you or someone you know recently been injured in an accident? We'll fight... FOR YOU! To get the largest settlement possible!"
These guys here are corporate types, running a class action suit. Calling these guys "Ambulance Chasers" would be like some mainstream news site referring to Linus as a script kiddie. It's a specific term, with a specific meaning, and you're all using it incorrectly just to vent a little frustration.
Also, large companies that run their own helpdesks tend to pick specific applications for support.
Example: If they officially support IE, and you call in for a problem you're experiencing in Mozilla, they'll tell you they don't support that and hang up on you. If you're smart about these things, you recreate your problem in IE before calling, but most people will stick to the supported software to make their lives easier.
In these situations, large companies (and large universities) that only support IE will help to keep the IE user-base entrenched.
Slashdot Mirror
After a court declares them to be an illegal monopoloy
They weren't declared to be "an illegal monopoly". They were declared to be a monopoly, (which isn't illegal, there's tons of legal monopolies) and some specific actions of theirs were declared to be illegal (bundling IE with Windows and pressuring OEMs not to pre-install Netscape). You can call that nitpicking, but it's the difference between "You're stupid" and "That thing you just did is stupid." The courts haven't declared Microsoft to be bad. They declared some of Microsoft's actions to be bad. By blurring that line, you do yourself a disservice. Do you think those illegal policies were inacted by some mid-level manager, or by Bill Gates himself? If the former, why blame the whole company for it? If the latter, will you stop thinking Microsoft is immoral when Gates retires or dies and hands the reigns over to someone else? You've developed a moral opposition to an amoral (not immoral) entity.
There are some of us who will not invest in, work for, or buy from criminal enterprises.
You keep telling yourself that. Just about every company valued over a billion, hell, over a couple million, has done something criminal. Good luck not trading with any of them at all. Plus, our entire country was founded on a "criminal enterprise". We refused to pay taxes, and rebelled against our government, killing lots of its law enforcement and military officers. I bet if you look at all the laws of this country right now, you probably disagree with several of them, and have violated several of them (software copyright? speeding? narcotics? oral sex?).
Look, if you hate Microsoft for emotional reasons, fine. You're not alone. Half of fucking slashdot probably agrees with you. But don't try to paint it as black-and-white, Microsoft is criminal and we're not. Grow up.
A link
It's not the best, but IANAL and research isn't my specialty either. For a decent overview, google "fiduciary responsibilities"
It's also a big deal in Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. One of the characters is establishing a publicly-traded corporation with a specific idealistic purpose in mind, but he has to make efforts to appear as though "shareholder value" is his primary concern.
In practice, it doesn't usually come to a lawsuit unless it's pretty blatant. But you would do well to realize that "the little guy" is hurt when stock prices drop, and that "profit" ultimately doesn't refer to thickening stacks of green paper, but rather to the creation of valued commoditiies (food, shelter, heat, entertainment) which have real impact on real people. Don't convince yourself that "corporate profits" are just some perverse game played by old white men.
Thanks for that. I got a little chuckle out of "the niche market that is networking hardware." That was cute.
Right now Cisco's market cap is just over $135 billion. Apple comes in at almost $12 billion. I guess there's niche, and then there's niche.
I don't see anyone running a PC running IOS, which is what the "business analysts" claimed Apple should have done with Mac OS.
There actually are tons of "PC's" (x86 servers) running Cisco software. Cisco PIXes, Content Engines, NAMs, Call-Managers. I could go on. These are also "proprietary hardware" (they're mostly re-branded stuff from other PC manufacturers, but you still gotta buy them from Cisco, in the bluegreen boxes with the bridge logo on them).
But your use of Cisco as a parallel to Apple isn't that bad. If I had to distill it to a one sentence explanation, I'd say:
Cisco and Apple both went for high-end proprietary hardware, emphasizing good design over low price, but Cisco targets businesses who will drop millions of dollars to go from a 2% failure rate to a 1% failure rate, or to save their support staff 15 minutes of time in a crisis, whereas Apple targets individual users who don't have the same attitude towards how much money they should spend on their computer systems.
I would question why any company would want to be Microsoft.
In this case, the obvious answer is the correct one: many, many companies would love to be like Microsoft, because Microsoft makes a fuckton of money.
You can talk about soul-searching and whether or not money is really all that fulfilling, but you asked why a company would want to be like Microsoft, not why a worker or a CEO would want their company to be like Microsoft. Publicly-traded companies want (as far as any non-living, non-sentient entity can be said to want) only one thing: increase shareholder value. That's not cynicism, that's the law. If you, as a company, decide to take an idealistic stance and disregard the priority of making lots of money, you can actually be sued. And with good reason.
Imagine if your checking account was suddenly cut in half, because the bank decided to be idealistic. Would you cheer them on and say "Good for you! Way to be! I didn't really need that money anyway!" That's what you're asking corporations to do. That publicly traded stock represents other people's money. People who don't work for Microsoft buy their stock, maybe as part of an investment portfolio, say for their retirement. Just like your checking account vanishing, those are real people who would be hurt if Microsoft suddenly said "fuck profit!"
Now, if you really meant "Why would an individual want to work for a company like Microsoft, instead of a company like Apple?" I suggest you get to know some moderately sucessful Microsoft employees. Despite the slashdot view, people who work at Microsoft don't approach it with the attitude of "Well, I'll be a mindless corporate automaton, but at least I'll make some good bucks." Many people at Microsoft, especially the top officers, genuinely believe that they're idealistic, and that they're changing the world for the better, doing revolutionary things. Now you can question the validity of that viewpoint, but we can question the validity of Steve Jobs' viewpoints as well. My point is that the contrrast you try to paint between the companies, idealistic vs. pragmatic, while an illustrative look at their business plans, doesn't really reflect the spirit of the company and the people who work there. Both of them are pretty idealistic, and I think that was one of their strengths.
Ok, but don't you think that we don't have enough information about the technology yet to just write it off.
They're not writing off the technology; they're writing off the news story. You're right, we don't know much about the technology, which means it's a non-story. If we posted everything that could, possibly, theoretically, maybe replace hard drives, we'd spend all day reading vapor stories.
In the meantime, somebody has simply taken a line from what looks like a routine product announcement and blown it out of proportion.
Well they had more exact figures in the database, but now they can't seem to find the IT guy who runs it...
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Since the art of English grammar is lost on this crowd, let's try parentheses:
The original post:
"... playing back (a song which he had purchased from iTMS) using iTunes on Linux."
That was unclear, so the parent poster attempted:
"... playing back (a song which he had purchased from iTMS using iTunes on Windows) on Linux."
Everybody follow that now?
Parent poster's point was that the demo did not include the ability to purchase a song using iTunes on Linux. The song still had to be purchased using iTunes on Windows, then it could later be played back using iTunes on Linux.
What is more important, lines of code or lines of quality code? People are always so impressed with sheer numbers. Quality is important.
Seriously.
And it's Perl.
I thought the whole point was that you could write a massive Perl program in a single line.
15.4 million just tells me that CPAN is getting sloppy. Let's knock that down to say, 17 HUGE lines, okay?
Rather, it's more about not using lower-level tools any more than you need.
I agree with this general philosophy; I think the part where you and I (for that matter, you and most programmers) differ is that you seem to assume that the need for languages as low-level as C++ is very small. A niche, as you said it.
I think you're making the common Slashdot mistake of assuming that the small corner of the world you live in is representative of all of it. I think games programming is large enough on its own not to be considered "a niche", since revenues for the video game industry now exceed Hollywood movie industry revenues. But in addition to that, there's operating systems (Longhorn, Linux kernel, etc...) and core apps that need to run fast - think Photoshop, Final Cut, SQL servers. I don't know for sure that these programs are written in C or C++, but I bet they aren't written in Python or Perl, and with good reason.
In the specific case of Doom3, Carmack in fact _would_ have been more productive to write it in a higher-level language but of course the end result would have been to slow for his needs
If your goal is to produce a good game, and you fail to do that, rapidly, that doesn't mean you were highly productive; it means you weren't productive at all. You're using a screwed up definition of the word "productive"
When you talk about "getting things done", it sounds like you're talking about odd-jobs, not core applications. Given the task you described, I wouldn't have picked C or C++ for that job either. I agree with your choice of a high-level language. But I'm talking about huge undertakings, not odd-jobs. Writing the next Excel, or Google, or Cisco IOS, or Counter-Strike. These are big programming achievements, and some of those jobs should be done with scripting languages, while others should be done with lower-level languages like C and C++.
If you have trouble understanding/believing this, then imagine explaining to an assembly programmer why you're so much more productive in C++ than assembly. Now, apply those same principles to something like Python, and you'll start to see the light.
Then try explaining to Carmack how he would have been much more productive if he had written Doom 3 in Python.
Different tools for different jobs. Maybe given a job suited for a scripting language, you can argue which scripting language is the best, but to claim that scripting languages are inherently more productive than C and C++ is like claiming that airplanes are inherently better than cars.
Yes, much to my dismay, most demand for programming these days is for web applications, in which case you're probably much better off with Perl than with C. But for those who aren't programming front-ends to databases and HTML generators, scripting languages aren't necessarily "better" at everything.
They're not opposed to sources, they just don't require them. Adding requirements to submissions will discourage submissions.
In the meantime, if you submit an entry with sources, that will probably be considered preferrable to one without sources, and will be admitted.
Recently I started turning them down, but offer to install Linux on their computer instead of trying to fix their Window installation.
So basically you've been hired to support Windows users, but you're not willing to do that, since you are only comfortable fixing Linux problems. Doesn't that simply mean you're in the wrong job?
ALL computer users should take reasonable steps to keep their computers secure. ALL computer users who don't take these steps should have their hard disks wiped clean.
That's funny, they probably thought that hiring a department full of IT professionals, like you, was a reasonable step towards keeping their computers secure. Maybe they need IT people who are willing to actually support them, rather than condesceningly suggest that they're stupid Windows users and blaming them for all of their IT problems.
They couldn't say "if everyone stopped using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express worms and viruses would be a fraction of the problem they are", now could they?
.
Slate did recommend that people stop using IE
Sometimes I think the whole antivirus industry mostly serves as a diversionary tactic that lets companies keep shipping software with deep, fundamental security problems.
No, if it wasn't for the viruses, even fewer people would care that their software is insecure. The average home user is more worried about getting one of these viruses than they are about getting 0wned. It's the same thing here at work. We tell the management "This device could be hacked" and they laugh at us. We tell them "we spent a jillion man-hours fixing worms" and all of a sudden we have funding for security teams and security projects.
I don't think he's recommending Windows as the alternative.
From the article: "Even if Linux were as secure as Windows, Windows is the wrong benchmark. Defense systems should be held to a higher standard."
In fact, I don't think it's being unreasonably cynical to say that he's suggesting Green Hills software as the alternative.
But whatever you choose, I think he's simply suggesting the military choose software from a vendor who might make the code available to them, but not to the entire world.
In general, the military doesn't certify code as secure until it's been around for a while, and most of what we think of as Linux and Open-Source is pretty new.
It's not pride, it's wisdom. First of all, as for changing their kernel to Unix, there's many things wrong with that plan. First off, as Twylite points out below, the latest NT kernels aren't less stable than Unix. There are several reason to choose Linux over 2000/2003 for a production server, but stability isn't one of them. You're right, Mac OS before X was unstable, as were Windows 3, 95, 98, and ME. Win 2000 and 2003 aren't.
Secondly, if they were to change their kernel to a Unix flavor, all of a sudden the most important code in their entire company would be code that almost none of their best programmers were familiar with, and it would break compatibility with almost all of their existing code. The time spent playing catch-up to something like that could cripple even a company as dominant as Microsoft.
As for porting Office to Linux, the only gain would be sales. It's not like there's all these Linux users out there who would be seduced by Office into switching to a Windows OS. If there's any switching, it will be in the opposite direction. As for the sales themselves, they would be insignificantly small. Linux and other Unix flavors are doing very well in the server market, but miserably in the desktop market. Office is for the desktop market, not the server. Look at the size of the Linux desktop market (already we're talking small). Now cut that down to the fraction who are willing to pay anything for an Office suite when they could get a free alternative. Now cut that down to the slice who would use a closed-source MS Office suite when they could use an open, standards-compliant alternative. Multiply this tiny slice of users by the suggested reduced price of MS Office for Linux, and you have the amount to be gained from this proposed port. Can you possibly argue that this tiny number outweighs the cost of porting it, combined with the incentive you create for MS Office users to switch to Linux?
Microsoft knows exactly what they're doing. The reason they aren't switching to Unix or porting Office to Linux is because they're both bad ideas, not because of stubborn pride.
Actually, my complaint is that part of it is under-engineered. The human-factors, interface-design part.
Yes, it has the tactile-response bit; that sounds great. Most of my truly tech-savvy friends love the really old IBM keyboards, the ones that click when you depress each key. That sort of tactile feedback is reassuring when you're throwing rapid sequences of commands at it.
One of the things I like about the series 1 TiVo remote and also the iPod is that they're both physically designed to fit snugly into the palm of your hand, and have all of the important buttons cleanly within the arc of your thumb. With the TiVo remote, you don't have to look at it to know where the buttons are, they become muscle-memory for your thumb, and most are shaped differently to aid with that sort of navigation-by-touch.
With this thing, it's like you're operating a computer. You have to hold it with both hands, look at it, and navigate a series of menus. I can wrap my head around the idea of paying $700 for a remote control. I can't afford to do it now, but someday I might, and it doesn't seem inconceivable to me. But for that $700 I want as much transparency as possible. I don't want to even have to think about which operations I'm selecting. I want "volume up" to become an instinctive movement of my thumb. I don't want one more complicated device to learn and operate. That's what my computer is for.
"Open Source software is always better than closed, proprietary software"
Find me 5 people who believe that.
You must be new here.
Point out the consequences created by this bill.
I don't think the consequences really are what most of the posters here seem to think they are. The logical/rational/computer-using mind seems to have trouble grasping the concept of partially enforced laws. If your code says it's illegal to write to a file, then file-write operations don't happen on that file. This leads you to the impression that if they pass a law saying companies can't build devices which allow piracy, that those companies will stop building those devices. That's not how the law actually works.
Assuming laws like this one are passed, I expect things will go like this:
There will not suddenly be cease and desist orders sent to Apple for their iPod or Sony for their VCRs. However, when somebody powerful (read, someone with a lot of lawyers) gets pissed at Apple or Sony, they now have a club to wield. They can now sue, using this law as a basis for the suit. Very few such lawsuits actually result in a yes/no judgement; most of them will be settled.
So rather than "iPods are now illegal", you have "the business of building iPods now comes with added legal costs." This will make such devices more expensive, and will make companies more hesitant to make new ones. The term used for that is "chilling effect". The bottom line is that if a law like this were passed, it wouldn't suddenly outlaw DVD-burners, MP3 players, and VCRs. It would simply make them 50% more expensive, with 50% less vareity, and 50% less power and flexibility.
That's still a huge and terrible impact. I agree, this is a horrible law and it's important that it not pass, but painting exaggerated, apocalyptic pictures simply makes it easier to write you off.
Don't all democrats run linux?
[checks percentage of laptop users who run Linux]
If so, prepare for a landslide Republican victory the likes of which has never been seen...
Obviously, they just need to run slashcode.
Yes, that way the 650,000 minds can produce thoughtful contributions like "Imagine a beowulf cluster of Joe Trippis..."
I'm glad they took a well-sized sample of 200 people to represent the 7 job classifications. That's almost 29 datapoints per class.
And that's only if they were evenly distributed.
My guess is there were 190 Microsoft trainees, and the most common trend between them was Britney Spears (which would make sense statistically for arbitrary samples, since she's popular and mainstream) and then of the 3 management guys, they all had Mozart, while the 5 Linux guys all had something that could be classified as Techno or Electronica, and the 2 aging security guys were both Dead fans.
I realize we're not talking about pure science when we read a study about musical taste by IT subgroup, but can't we do a little better than this? At least the Amazon samples are larger data pools...
There's a Penny-Arcade strip which points out how retarded you look when you refer to Microsoft as M$. Penny-Arcade isn't exactly the mainstream; these guys are fellow geeks.
When you refer to Napster as "the RIAA's lapdog", rational people quickly tag you as some sort of fringe moron, and most will stop listening to the rest of what you have to say.
Napster started this war. Music sharing and mp3's were confined to the geek niche, then Napster came along and all of a sudden Metallica's ranting and Shawn Fanning were headline news, and jokes about them were on SNL and MTV. Now they provide a legal service, but it's not like they're the ones suing hundreds of their users.
If you ever wonder why it is that you're having trouble convincing the average Joe that RIAA and MPAA are awful, and that DRM is crippling, not enabling their devices, it's because when the RIAA and MPAA representatives talk, they sound like intelligent, (albeit not all that technically knowledgable or charismatic) rational businessmen, whereas you sound like a paranoid 14-year-old revolutionary with a 70 IQ.
I have a Series 2 TiVo with the older firmware, and it was NOT able to use the USB NIC for initial setup.
However, it WAS able to use my Vonage line to make its modem call, after a couple failed attempts. Once the initial setup was over, I switched back to using TCP/IP, which is what I'd rather use anyway.
Do a google on that law firm. Then come back and tell us they're not "ambulance chasers".
I just did, and now I will.
"Ambulance Chaser" isn't just slang for lawyer. It's a very specific class of lawyer. It's those guys you see ads for everywhere:
"Have you or someone you know recently been injured in an accident? We'll fight... FOR YOU! To get the largest settlement possible!"
A link
These guys here are corporate types, running a class action suit. Calling these guys "Ambulance Chasers" would be like some mainstream news site referring to Linus as a script kiddie. It's a specific term, with a specific meaning, and you're all using it incorrectly just to vent a little frustration.
Also, large companies that run their own helpdesks tend to pick specific applications for support.
Example: If they officially support IE, and you call in for a problem you're experiencing in Mozilla, they'll tell you they don't support that and hang up on you. If you're smart about these things, you recreate your problem in IE before calling, but most people will stick to the supported software to make their lives easier.
In these situations, large companies (and large universities) that only support IE will help to keep the IE user-base entrenched.