I believe that the real debate in Washington is how best to distract citizens from the real issues facing our country and the world. The polarization of the parties is simply a ploy to get americans to react on an emotional level instead of examining issues from a logical perspective.
Amen, Brother. They have turned politics into a sports show, pitting your favorite team against your favorite team's enemy. If you love the Browns, you hate the Steelers. That's just the way it is. You root for the Browns, or whoever is playing the Steelers. Life is great as long as the Browns win and the Steelers lose.
As long as politics are like that, life is simple. You don't have to look at the voting record, public statements, or platform of a candidate. You just have to know their color, red or blue or some color not red or blue. You don't have to weigh the actions of a politician, you just have to say we have to support him because he's our President (or governor, or police chief, or what-have-you).
Life is simple then. People like simple. It's all red or blue, no shades of purple.
A friend of mine (hi, Thor) is a republican. Except for that, he and I are very much the same. He's a good guy. He supports democracy, and constitutional freedom, and peace. He and I have the same ideals, we just have different thoughts on how best to achieve (or maintain) those ideals.
The blood in our veins is blue. The blood in our arteries is red. It's never as simple as one vs. the other, and I wish those in charge would stop exploiting the sports-mentality to distract us from domestic and international troubles.
If there is really a fire, or a likelihood of a fire, you should inform the management so they can make an announcement that doesn't set off panic, which could lead to people being trampled to death.
Do that, and everyone in the theater is likely to die.
By the time you get to management and inform them (and, in many cases, convince them there really is a fire), and they can get to their PA system, the fire will probably have spread throughout the entire theater. In case of a fire, time is extremely important.
Same goes for exploit disclosure. If an exploit is found, it might be okay to keep it quiet for a little while, as there is a high probability of a fire rather than an actual fire. But the longer you wait, the more likely somebody else a little less honorable will also find the exploit.
If my operating system is vulnerable, I have a right to know it. I have paid for the OS in good faith (at least, if I use MS-Windows or Sun Solaris or Mac OSX). Like a recall on bad tires, I have the right to know my purchase is defective, and the manufacturer has a responsibility to let me know, and offer to fix it.
They *do not* have the right to allow me to remain ignorant of the flaws in their system. Period.
Training is a big issue, but if you think Vista won't require retraining, you're insane. If you think the next version of MS-Office won't be more unfamiliar than OpenOffice, you're insane. (Whether OOo is a viable replacement is another issue entirely, and very domain-specific.)
So maybe they use virtualization to access their Windows apps you ask... - legally, they need a Windows license at that point, so your entire argument is gone and in fact they've done nothing but increase the costs in doing business and added a layer of obfuscation to everyone's process.
WINE is surprisingly mature these days. You can run many business apps on it today. No MS-Windows license required.
These are the only quibbles I have with your analysis. I was going to respond in a similar fashion. But I thought I'd jump in with my thoughts on these two points.
You can keep the complexity down of the core OS without compromising backwards compatibility. With all the resources at Microsoft's command, one would imagine they could handle backward compatibility without integrating it into the core OS.
Vista cannot be compared to Linux, but to distros. So, I would rather compare it with SuSE 10, or Ubuntu Dapper/Edgy.
Very true. You couldn't do a direct comparison anyway. You'd have to do some fiddling around with definitions of "Core OS" and whatnot-- do you count Gtk+ *and* KDE *and* Xlib as part of the core OS? Do you count the X Windows System? If not, why not, because we'd probably have to count Microsoft's current graphics and widget API as part of the core. Or maybe not, in which case Vista's complexity goes *way* down.
I don't think you could fairly compare the two at all, other than by certain metrics, like stability while performing certain tasks, standards compliance, stuff like that.
So, the only conclusion I can draw is that Microsoft's Vista is too complex, too crappy, too resource-intensive, too smelly, too expensive, and I wouldn't touch it with my mother-in-law.
I assume you mean the 11 Sept. part? Referring to an event that happened 5 years ago? That one?
Let's take a look at deaths due to terrorism in the US, shall we?
Let's say that 5,000 people have died in the last 20 years due to terrorism in the United States. The average lifespan is 80 years, give or take. So, about 20,000 people will die in 80 years due to terrorism in the US.
There are about 290,000,000 people alive today in the united states. Let's assume that number will remain static. That means that a person in the US has a 0.007% chance of getting killed due to terrorism.
That doesn't take into account that the 5K number is over-inflated, and due almost entirely to the 9/11 attacks, with the Oklahoma City bombing killing another 168 people (the two biggest terrorist attacks in US history). That doesn't take into account that there has not been a terrorist attack in the US since 9/11/2001. Even if there was a 9/11-like attack *every year*, your chances would only increase to 0.08%.
The threat of terrorism is *way* overstated. If the government wanted to make me feel safer, they could spend $30B/year on urban education or health research instead of homeland security. As it is, I'm a lot more scared about getting shot in downtown Cleveland than I am about the "terrorist" bogeyman.
Whenever my mom caught two of us fighting, she'd make us sit on the couch with an arm around the other person. I'm not sure what it was supposed to do; really, it just gave us a chance to squeeze each other's head.
But I like that idea. Let's make Christianity and Islam sit on the couch with their arms around each other until they can play nicely, and share their toys without it turning into a punch-up.
It would be helpful if the desktop authors simply wrote for KDE instead of having all this duplication of effort.
Two things:
C++ sucks in all ways imaginable. It is an abomination. Even Jesus hates it. I don't like being forced to write in C++ just to write a GUI-based app. Makes me angry. You wouldn't like to see me when I'm angry.
Second: having more than one desktop is known as "competition." It's probably the most important thing about capitalism (and the one thing that is most often circumvented in capitalist economies). I believe it is a good thing. It is good for KDE, and it is good for GNOME, and it is good for Enlightenment, and all the other window managers / desktops.
Plus, and even more importantly, KDE and GNOME take different approaches to things. That is *very* good, as it allows two different things to be tried, and compared against each other (SEE: competition). GNOME borrowing from KDE, and KDE from GNOME, is a good thing, as we all win.
I don't like KDE that much. I fire it up every few months just to see if it is better than last time, and it usually is (the KDE folks are doing a great job), but I don't really care for the PlayMobile feel of it.
That's a matter of taste, though. To each his own. I prefer GNOME. You may prefer KDE. Either is a good choice. It's a matter of taste.
C++ sucking? That's a matter of fact. It sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks.
No, we hate it because it's stupid, and futile, and more a PR stunt than a real solution.
The problem isn't with the idea of filtering. That's essentially the idea behind virus scanners, spam scanners, firewall rules, and whatnot. The problem is thinking it's going to make the browser more secure. Of course it's not!
It cannot detect new exploits, assuming those exploits are truly new. It can protect against a certain subset of existing problems, and that's it. If it does much more, it's going to break more things than it fixes.
Why is this?
Because computers are dangerous. Their danger lies in them being 100% information processors. That's what they do. They are generic, powerful, information processors. There is no way of knowing beforehand what kinds of information you are going to process, or how it's going to be processed.
Exploits take advantage of the generic nature of computers. They take advantage of the ignorance of the people using computers. They take advantage of the incompleteness of our understanding of computers (that is, design flaws, implementation flaws, etc).
No amount of layering is going to stop an exploit. All the new layer does is create a new point of exploitation. The more complex a system, the less-well understood it is by the people who designed and built it, and the more likely it is to contain exploitable flaws. Adding a new layer in the mix increases complexity.
That is the problem. And that is the reason people around these parts don't take Microsoft seriously. It's not/. groupthink (which is a stupid phrase used generally by ignorant morons who think they are more intelligent than many others). Microsoft is not taken seriously because they have forgotten the #1 rule of writing software:
Make it as complex as it needs to be, and no more.
Or:
Keep it simple, (sucker|stupid|shithead).
And worse, Microsoft has to make their software complex. It's job security. As long as they dominate the desktop distribution channels, they can call the shots. If their system was simple, someone else would be able to interoperate with it, or clone it (like the Wine project). That would be deadly for Microsoft, as it would endanger their control. So they are forced into complexity.
What's the way to make sure you aren't fired? Make sure you are irreplaceable, that nobody else can do your job. That's job security, and that's how you make sure you aren't fired. Oh, or do good work without causing trouble, but that isn't nearly as sure-fire.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. It's just that Microsoft has tried very hard to get security right, and they can't. The problem isn't with Microsoft or their engineers, per se. The problem is that Microsoft has built an operating system with the Rube Goldberg design school. Kludges like this "Shield" initiative are add-ons that make the OS more complex, not less, creating more holes, not fewer.
It's not just past history. (How many times has Microsoft taken security seriously? I've lost count.) It's not cynicism. It's engineering fact. This is a bad idea to start with, to fix a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Not only will it not help, it'll make the problem worse.
Here is the problem, you see. emacs has a bad learning curve.
And programming doesn't?
I'd hardly call the learning curve for emacs "bad." Steep, perhaps. A long slog, perhaps. But it isn't "bad." Not for everyone, anyway. Press "F9" to compile. No hunting among mysterious icons trying to figure out which one is going to do what you expect it to do.
Most IDEs do get in the way, unfortunately. Personally, I found VC to be the best in this regard.
I hate VC. Despise it. I've tried others like it, too: Eclipse, Anjuta, and a few others that I can't recall right now. VC is always getting in the way-- popping up code completion when I know what I'm completing, breaking my concentration, slowing me down. It makes me think about the environment at almost every step. So do the others, don't get me wrong. VC isn't bad for what it is; it's that what it is is bad. (See, I guess I mean it's bad for me. YMMV. So much for my "bad" rant at the beginning.)
Emacs has a steep learning curve, absolutely. I've been using it for five years, and I still don't know everything about it. Now that compiling and debugging have become second nature in it, I can concentrate on my code. I code in my head, not on the screen, and that's the problem with every single heavy IDE I've ever used: they are screen-oriented, not head-oriented. They try to keep you from thinking, rather than help you think, in the name of "making things easier."
And then, every single new version of your favorite development environment comes out with flashy new features, a re-designed interface, and you have to learn it all over again. It might take a couple of weeks to get comfortable with it again, to get used to the new things that pop up, or the location of the 'Build' button, or what-have-you. You have to unlearn some things, and learn some new.
. . . can be used via a GUI (not by keybindings) . ..
This is a strange thing. GUIs are generally there either to help new people along (such as all the buttons on a word processor), or to do things that are graphical in nature (such as graphics programs). Many other places, GUIs get in the way, rather than help. Starting off, it might help a user to have a GUI. But in the long run, it's much faster to use keybindings. One of the things I hate is the way VC and Eclipse slow me down. They are both dog-slow, and by the time I've stopped debugging my program and waited for the environment to catch up, my stride has been broken. Hell, I get that just trying to switch files while editing. I can switch to an already-opened file in emacs in less than two seconds. It takes me that long just to start scanning the open tabs on VC.
I guess you just have to decide on which you prefer-- the hand-holding, but somewhat slow, development using a GUI-based IDE, or the long-term commitment to something like vi or emacs, with the payoff that they won't get in your way while you are coding (once you've learned them, of course).
So, in the end: do what you feel best. Just try to understand why some folks like vi and emacs over the easier-to-use IDEs like VC.
I know, I know, RTFA, but the point is that you can always tell a heavily biased article/news-bit by the sheer lack of an attempt to explain any motivation besides citing "evil."
Those of us jaded by this Presidency might see the motivation immediately: Bush has been "pro-science" only inasmuch as it supports his policies. When inconveniences like global warming or evolutionary research pop up, this administration has been quick to ignore, deride, obscure, or cut funding to the inconvenient research.
However, it looks like this article might be a bit... misleading. The problem is, the summary seems right in line with things Bush has already done, so I wasn't surprised one bit.
Let's see. The "War on Terror" has cost about US$430,000,000,000 so far over the last 5 years. This figure only takes into account the US investment, and does not include the cost to Iraq.
So, let's assume that money has been evenly spent over the last five years (it hasn't, as the first year or so were taken up by fabricating a reason to go into Iraq, and operations in Afghanistan, which had been hiding bin Laden, have always been secondary). So, that gives us a per-minute estimated cost of:
Clinton got bashed back in his day. The reason it seems we bitch more about Bush than we did Clinton is because Bush is a big fuck-up.
Bush supporters get a little tetchy about criticism of this administration, forgetting that all administrations are taken to task when watchful (and slightly paranoid) people catch them with their hands inside the cookie jar of liberty. The Bush administration just happens to be raiding it a lot more than previous administrations, and a lot more blatantly.
As has been pointed out by others, this story is potentially misleading. I'd write that off to many of us being a bit jumpy around Bush. When the school bully tends to walk up behind you and smack you on the head, you start jerking your head around at the oddest moments. It might look silly when the bully isn't behind you, but it might just save you a few headaches.
But, had Clinton tried doing this, he would have received much the same treatment.
The X Window System is a bare-bones networked graphics drawing system, not a user interface. Now, you could say the X Window System api is not very intuitive, but you'd have to talk about Gnome or KDE or FVWM or MWM or Enlightenment aren't intuitive, not the X Window System itself.
I will say, in terms of scalability, XWindows is a *real* screamer on a quad-Opteron with 8 gigs of RAM and a nice, fast SCSI array.
I remember running X on an old 386 with 8 meg RAM and an MFM hard drive. It wasn't bad at all. I remember how amazed I was that xgas kept running as I loaded up other programs. Ah, true multitasking.
Really, the scalability of X is measured more in terms of the network than in other factors. That's a metric in which OSX and MS-Windows fail completely.
MS-Windows has demonstrably set the computer industry back 12 years.
In 1989, I was using a NeXT computer. It was Mach-based, UNIX-like, and had an *extremely* easy to use interface. It was stable. It was pretty. It was simple. It was a great software development platform (Object-C is a far superior OO language to C++). It was everything other computers were not.
Fast-forward a few years, to 2001. MS-Win2k was fairly stable, but it was complex, not intuitive, and still had stability problems. It was far behind the NeXT in ease-of-use and simplicity. Yes, there were problems with the NeXT: its price (thrice the price of a business-class PC), mainly.
Even today, MS-Window2k3 lags behind the NeXT in many important ways, like simplicity, stability, and ease-of-use. MS' idea of making something easier to use is to give it pretty, candy-like buttons and "cool" visual effects.
Every other OS is emulating the Microsoft way of doing things, becoming more complex for the sake of complexity. Oh, don't get me wrong-- I love my cool slidey windows and all that lovely Compiz goodness that comes with AIGLX. I too love eye candy.
But we shouldn't be here. We should be farther along than this. We are twelve years behind, and in the computer world, 12 years is an eternity.
MS-Windows has not only indoctrinated the population to accept a second-class operating system as *the* operating system of choice, but to accept crashes, viruses, poor development environments, and general vendor lock-in as the norm. And unfortunately, they have warped the computer business enough so that they have retarded most other software progress, as well.
Uhm... you do realize that Blender is a 3D modelling and rendering program, right? And that Xara is a vector-based drawing program, right?
These are two completely different domains. You use them for different reasons.
Don't get me wrong-- I love Blender. I've been working on using it for special-effects animations, and now I'm attempting to create models for games. Absolutely love it.
But Xara is something else: it's more like Inkscape, or Corel Draw!, or Adobe Illustrator.
Just thought someone should clarify, since you seem to be a bit confused.
I'm for funding PBS, NEA, NASA, and whatnot, as their budget lines are miniscule compared to our big fuck-off DoD budget. When you are on a diet, you don't stop drinking diet pop, you stop eating a whole cake at a sitting. But I essentially agree: get rid of the debt. Now.
And let's throw out corporate welfare, too. No more bailing out failed corporations (yeah, I mean you, Chrysler, and you too, airlines) to the tune of billions a year.
If it's a clerical mistake, it will be fixed. If it's not, it's not.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. When one is caught doing something slimey, one calls it a clerical mistake, corrects it, and tries again another way. Even getting caught, it helps shore up the fundamentalist support that has been vital to this administration.
The main reason so many people here think this is most likely deliberate is simple: this administration has a track record of gutting science when that science goes against their doctrine. They do this through a systematic and deliberate campaign of misinformation, suppression, and using funding as a weapon.
When a group has a history like that, it's hard to trust them when they claim innocence.
What do you mean? Those are market forces. Microsoft doesn't operate in a vacuum.
Microsoft is positioning themselves so all media plays on MS-Windows platforms, and MS-Windows platforms only. Portable video devices are a growing market. If Microsoft is doing this for the media companies, you can bet the media companies are doing something for Microsoft. The most likely thing they can do is release their portable formats for Microsoft's "secure" solution. The portable video devices would then have to run MS-Windows if people wanted to watch these DRM'd shows.
Microsoft has nothing to lose by doing this, and everything to gain. The desktop isn't a big deal for video. Embedded video devices are.
I walk into Best Buy. I pick out a TV from a wide range of products (mfg, sizes, technologies, prices, warranties, design, etc). I rarely know the salesperson. S/he rarely knows me. Maybe I go across the street to Circuit City to shop around first. Multiply this by 100 million people doing the same thing. That is a free market.
No it isn't. You think Sony and Dell and Pioneer and whatnot don't have influence over what Best Buy and Circuit City sell?
It's a "free market" only to the extent that you are able to easily purchase things that you are allowed to purchase. Exclusive deals, loss-leaders, and control of distribution channels (Best Buy and Circuit City) are the bread-and-butter of mega-corporations. Smaller companies are relegated to botique shops, where the general public will never hear about them, let alone go out of their way to purchase them.
Those that control the distribution chains have a much greater effect on the market than consumer choice, or government intervention.
Gerrymandering, I think, behind verified voting is most dangerous to the democratic process.
I'd think it's tied with the power of corporate lobbying. With corporations buying the votes of all parties, it often doesn't matter which person gets elected.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen, Brother. They have turned politics into a sports show, pitting your favorite team against your favorite team's enemy. If you love the Browns, you hate the Steelers. That's just the way it is. You root for the Browns, or whoever is playing the Steelers. Life is great as long as the Browns win and the Steelers lose.
As long as politics are like that, life is simple. You don't have to look at the voting record, public statements, or platform of a candidate. You just have to know their color, red or blue or some color not red or blue. You don't have to weigh the actions of a politician, you just have to say we have to support him because he's our President (or governor, or police chief, or what-have-you).
Life is simple then. People like simple. It's all red or blue, no shades of purple.
A friend of mine (hi, Thor) is a republican. Except for that, he and I are very much the same. He's a good guy. He supports democracy, and constitutional freedom, and peace. He and I have the same ideals, we just have different thoughts on how best to achieve (or maintain) those ideals.
The blood in our veins is blue. The blood in our arteries is red. It's never as simple as one vs. the other, and I wish those in charge would stop exploiting the sports-mentality to distract us from domestic and international troubles.
If there is really a fire, or a likelihood of a fire, you should inform the management so they can make an announcement that doesn't set off panic, which could lead to people being trampled to death.
Do that, and everyone in the theater is likely to die.
By the time you get to management and inform them (and, in many cases, convince them there really is a fire), and they can get to their PA system, the fire will probably have spread throughout the entire theater. In case of a fire, time is extremely important.
Same goes for exploit disclosure. If an exploit is found, it might be okay to keep it quiet for a little while, as there is a high probability of a fire rather than an actual fire. But the longer you wait, the more likely somebody else a little less honorable will also find the exploit.
If my operating system is vulnerable, I have a right to know it. I have paid for the OS in good faith (at least, if I use MS-Windows or Sun Solaris or Mac OSX). Like a recall on bad tires, I have the right to know my purchase is defective, and the manufacturer has a responsibility to let me know, and offer to fix it.
They *do not* have the right to allow me to remain ignorant of the flaws in their system. Period.
(Emphasis mine)
Uhm . . . uh . . .
I am overcome with irony.
WINE is surprisingly mature these days. You can run many business apps on it today. No MS-Windows license required.
These are the only quibbles I have with your analysis. I was going to respond in a similar fashion. But I thought I'd jump in with my thoughts on these two points.
Backwards compatibility. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
Emulators (DOSEMU, Bochs). VMs (Xen, VMWare). Compatibility APIs (WINE, Carbon).
You can keep the complexity down of the core OS without compromising backwards compatibility. With all the resources at Microsoft's command, one would imagine they could handle backward compatibility without integrating it into the core OS.
Vista cannot be compared to Linux, but to distros. So, I would rather compare it with SuSE 10, or Ubuntu Dapper/Edgy.
Very true. You couldn't do a direct comparison anyway. You'd have to do some fiddling around with definitions of "Core OS" and whatnot-- do you count Gtk+ *and* KDE *and* Xlib as part of the core OS? Do you count the X Windows System? If not, why not, because we'd probably have to count Microsoft's current graphics and widget API as part of the core. Or maybe not, in which case Vista's complexity goes *way* down.
I don't think you could fairly compare the two at all, other than by certain metrics, like stability while performing certain tasks, standards compliance, stuff like that.
So, the only conclusion I can draw is that Microsoft's Vista is too complex, too crappy, too resource-intensive, too smelly, too expensive, and I wouldn't touch it with my mother-in-law.
I assume you mean the 11 Sept. part? Referring to an event that happened 5 years ago? That one?
Let's take a look at deaths due to terrorism in the US, shall we?
Let's say that 5,000 people have died in the last 20 years due to terrorism in the United States. The average lifespan is 80 years, give or take. So, about 20,000 people will die in 80 years due to terrorism in the US.
There are about 290,000,000 people alive today in the united states. Let's assume that number will remain static. That means that a person in the US has a 0.007% chance of getting killed due to terrorism.
That doesn't take into account that the 5K number is over-inflated, and due almost entirely to the 9/11 attacks, with the Oklahoma City bombing killing another 168 people (the two biggest terrorist attacks in US history). That doesn't take into account that there has not been a terrorist attack in the US since 9/11/2001. Even if there was a 9/11-like attack *every year*, your chances would only increase to 0.08%.
The threat of terrorism is *way* overstated. If the government wanted to make me feel safer, they could spend $30B/year on urban education or health research instead of homeland security. As it is, I'm a lot more scared about getting shot in downtown Cleveland than I am about the "terrorist" bogeyman.
Nose to the wall?
Whenever my mom caught two of us fighting, she'd make us sit on the couch with an arm around the other person. I'm not sure what it was supposed to do; really, it just gave us a chance to squeeze each other's head.
But I like that idea. Let's make Christianity and Islam sit on the couch with their arms around each other until they can play nicely, and share their toys without it turning into a punch-up.
I have lov'd his style. Surthermore, I admire the use of 'S' in place of 'f'. It just Looks Cool.
Also, he's the guy who wrote, "Fart Proudly." He is a man to be admired, and emulated. Live lustily and long, that's my motto.
Sit in front of a computer eating Cheetos, that's my life.
It would be helpful if the desktop authors simply wrote for KDE instead of having all this duplication of effort.
Two things:
C++ sucks in all ways imaginable. It is an abomination. Even Jesus hates it. I don't like being forced to write in C++ just to write a GUI-based app. Makes me angry. You wouldn't like to see me when I'm angry.
Second: having more than one desktop is known as "competition." It's probably the most important thing about capitalism (and the one thing that is most often circumvented in capitalist economies). I believe it is a good thing. It is good for KDE, and it is good for GNOME, and it is good for Enlightenment, and all the other window managers / desktops.
Plus, and even more importantly, KDE and GNOME take different approaches to things. That is *very* good, as it allows two different things to be tried, and compared against each other (SEE: competition). GNOME borrowing from KDE, and KDE from GNOME, is a good thing, as we all win.
I don't like KDE that much. I fire it up every few months just to see if it is better than last time, and it usually is (the KDE folks are doing a great job), but I don't really care for the PlayMobile feel of it.
That's a matter of taste, though. To each his own. I prefer GNOME. You may prefer KDE. Either is a good choice. It's a matter of taste.
C++ sucking? That's a matter of fact. It sucks. Sucks, sucks, sucks.
No, we hate it because it's stupid, and futile, and more a PR stunt than a real solution.
The problem isn't with the idea of filtering. That's essentially the idea behind virus scanners, spam scanners, firewall rules, and whatnot. The problem is thinking it's going to make the browser more secure. Of course it's not!
It cannot detect new exploits, assuming those exploits are truly new. It can protect against a certain subset of existing problems, and that's it. If it does much more, it's going to break more things than it fixes.
Why is this?
Because computers are dangerous. Their danger lies in them being 100% information processors. That's what they do. They are generic, powerful, information processors. There is no way of knowing beforehand what kinds of information you are going to process, or how it's going to be processed.
Exploits take advantage of the generic nature of computers. They take advantage of the ignorance of the people using computers. They take advantage of the incompleteness of our understanding of computers (that is, design flaws, implementation flaws, etc).
No amount of layering is going to stop an exploit. All the new layer does is create a new point of exploitation. The more complex a system, the less-well understood it is by the people who designed and built it, and the more likely it is to contain exploitable flaws. Adding a new layer in the mix increases complexity.
That is the problem. And that is the reason people around these parts don't take Microsoft seriously. It's not
Make it as complex as it needs to be, and no more.
Or:
Keep it simple, (sucker|stupid|shithead).
And worse, Microsoft has to make their software complex. It's job security. As long as they dominate the desktop distribution channels, they can call the shots. If their system was simple, someone else would be able to interoperate with it, or clone it (like the Wine project). That would be deadly for Microsoft, as it would endanger their control. So they are forced into complexity.
What's the way to make sure you aren't fired? Make sure you are irreplaceable, that nobody else can do your job. That's job security, and that's how you make sure you aren't fired. Oh, or do good work without causing trouble, but that isn't nearly as sure-fire.
Anyway, sorry for the long rant. It's just that Microsoft has tried very hard to get security right, and they can't. The problem isn't with Microsoft or their engineers, per se. The problem is that Microsoft has built an operating system with the Rube Goldberg design school. Kludges like this "Shield" initiative are add-ons that make the OS more complex, not less, creating more holes, not fewer.
It's not just past history. (How many times has Microsoft taken security seriously? I've lost count.) It's not cynicism. It's engineering fact. This is a bad idea to start with, to fix a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. Not only will it not help, it'll make the problem worse.
Or in the beta version of Firefox 2.0. I just tried it-- very nice.
No, you won't. I've seen your code. It sucks.
And programming doesn't?
I'd hardly call the learning curve for emacs "bad." Steep, perhaps. A long slog, perhaps. But it isn't "bad." Not for everyone, anyway. Press "F9" to compile. No hunting among mysterious icons trying to figure out which one is going to do what you expect it to do.
I hate VC. Despise it. I've tried others like it, too: Eclipse, Anjuta, and a few others that I can't recall right now. VC is always getting in the way-- popping up code completion when I know what I'm completing, breaking my concentration, slowing me down. It makes me think about the environment at almost every step. So do the others, don't get me wrong. VC isn't bad for what it is; it's that what it is is bad. (See, I guess I mean it's bad for me. YMMV. So much for my "bad" rant at the beginning.)
Emacs has a steep learning curve, absolutely. I've been using it for five years, and I still don't know everything about it. Now that compiling and debugging have become second nature in it, I can concentrate on my code. I code in my head, not on the screen, and that's the problem with every single heavy IDE I've ever used: they are screen-oriented, not head-oriented. They try to keep you from thinking, rather than help you think, in the name of "making things easier."
And then, every single new version of your favorite development environment comes out with flashy new features, a re-designed interface, and you have to learn it all over again. It might take a couple of weeks to get comfortable with it again, to get used to the new things that pop up, or the location of the 'Build' button, or what-have-you. You have to unlearn some things, and learn some new.
This is a strange thing. GUIs are generally there either to help new people along (such as all the buttons on a word processor), or to do things that are graphical in nature (such as graphics programs). Many other places, GUIs get in the way, rather than help. Starting off, it might help a user to have a GUI. But in the long run, it's much faster to use keybindings. One of the things I hate is the way VC and Eclipse slow me down. They are both dog-slow, and by the time I've stopped debugging my program and waited for the environment to catch up, my stride has been broken. Hell, I get that just trying to switch files while editing. I can switch to an already-opened file in emacs in less than two seconds. It takes me that long just to start scanning the open tabs on VC.
I guess you just have to decide on which you prefer-- the hand-holding, but somewhat slow, development using a GUI-based IDE, or the long-term commitment to something like vi or emacs, with the payoff that they won't get in your way while you are coding (once you've learned them, of course).
So, in the end: do what you feel best. Just try to understand why some folks like vi and emacs over the easier-to-use IDEs like VC.
Not soon enough.
They can start with people trying to pass stupid laws.
I know, I know, RTFA, but the point is that you can always tell a heavily biased article/news-bit by the sheer lack of an attempt to explain any motivation besides citing "evil."
Those of us jaded by this Presidency might see the motivation immediately: Bush has been "pro-science" only inasmuch as it supports his policies. When inconveniences like global warming or evolutionary research pop up, this administration has been quick to ignore, deride, obscure, or cut funding to the inconvenient research.
However, it looks like this article might be a bit... misleading. The problem is, the summary seems right in line with things Bush has already done, so I wasn't surprised one bit.
Let's see. The "War on Terror" has cost about US$430,000,000,000 so far over the last 5 years. This figure only takes into account the US investment, and does not include the cost to Iraq.
So, let's assume that money has been evenly spent over the last five years (it hasn't, as the first year or so were taken up by fabricating a reason to go into Iraq, and operations in Afghanistan, which had been hiding bin Laden, have always been secondary). So, that gives us a per-minute estimated cost of:
430,000,000 / ( 5 * 365 * 24 * 60 ) = 163622.526636225 or so.
So, US$2,000,000 would give us about 12.2 minutes.
That's an interesting way to break down the cost of the "War on Terror."
Am I wrong?
Yes.
Clinton got bashed back in his day. The reason it seems we bitch more about Bush than we did Clinton is because Bush is a big fuck-up.
Bush supporters get a little tetchy about criticism of this administration, forgetting that all administrations are taken to task when watchful (and slightly paranoid) people catch them with their hands inside the cookie jar of liberty. The Bush administration just happens to be raiding it a lot more than previous administrations, and a lot more blatantly.
As has been pointed out by others, this story is potentially misleading. I'd write that off to many of us being a bit jumpy around Bush. When the school bully tends to walk up behind you and smack you on the head, you start jerking your head around at the oddest moments. It might look silly when the bully isn't behind you, but it might just save you a few headaches.
But, had Clinton tried doing this, he would have received much the same treatment.
Uhm....
The X Window System is a bare-bones networked graphics drawing system, not a user interface. Now, you could say the X Window System api is not very intuitive, but you'd have to talk about Gnome or KDE or FVWM or MWM or Enlightenment aren't intuitive, not the X Window System itself.
I will say, in terms of scalability, XWindows is a *real* screamer on a quad-Opteron with 8 gigs of RAM and a nice, fast SCSI array.
I remember running X on an old 386 with 8 meg RAM and an MFM hard drive. It wasn't bad at all. I remember how amazed I was that xgas kept running as I loaded up other programs. Ah, true multitasking.
Really, the scalability of X is measured more in terms of the network than in other factors. That's a metric in which OSX and MS-Windows fail completely.
MS-Windows has demonstrably set the computer industry back 12 years.
In 1989, I was using a NeXT computer. It was Mach-based, UNIX-like, and had an *extremely* easy to use interface. It was stable. It was pretty. It was simple. It was a great software development platform (Object-C is a far superior OO language to C++). It was everything other computers were not.
Fast-forward a few years, to 2001. MS-Win2k was fairly stable, but it was complex, not intuitive, and still had stability problems. It was far behind the NeXT in ease-of-use and simplicity. Yes, there were problems with the NeXT: its price (thrice the price of a business-class PC), mainly.
Even today, MS-Window2k3 lags behind the NeXT in many important ways, like simplicity, stability, and ease-of-use. MS' idea of making something easier to use is to give it pretty, candy-like buttons and "cool" visual effects.
Every other OS is emulating the Microsoft way of doing things, becoming more complex for the sake of complexity. Oh, don't get me wrong-- I love my cool slidey windows and all that lovely Compiz goodness that comes with AIGLX. I too love eye candy.
But we shouldn't be here. We should be farther along than this. We are twelve years behind, and in the computer world, 12 years is an eternity.
MS-Windows has not only indoctrinated the population to accept a second-class operating system as *the* operating system of choice, but to accept crashes, viruses, poor development environments, and general vendor lock-in as the norm. And unfortunately, they have warped the computer business enough so that they have retarded most other software progress, as well.
Uhm... you do realize that Blender is a 3D modelling and rendering program, right? And that Xara is a vector-based drawing program, right?
These are two completely different domains. You use them for different reasons.
Don't get me wrong-- I love Blender. I've been working on using it for special-effects animations, and now I'm attempting to create models for games. Absolutely love it.
But Xara is something else: it's more like Inkscape, or Corel Draw!, or Adobe Illustrator.
Just thought someone should clarify, since you seem to be a bit confused.
I'm for funding PBS, NEA, NASA, and whatnot, as their budget lines are miniscule compared to our big fuck-off DoD budget. When you are on a diet, you don't stop drinking diet pop, you stop eating a whole cake at a sitting. But I essentially agree: get rid of the debt. Now.
And let's throw out corporate welfare, too. No more bailing out failed corporations (yeah, I mean you, Chrysler, and you too, airlines) to the tune of billions a year.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. When one is caught doing something slimey, one calls it a clerical mistake, corrects it, and tries again another way. Even getting caught, it helps shore up the fundamentalist support that has been vital to this administration.
The main reason so many people here think this is most likely deliberate is simple: this administration has a track record of gutting science when that science goes against their doctrine. They do this through a systematic and deliberate campaign of misinformation, suppression, and using funding as a weapon.
When a group has a history like that, it's hard to trust them when they claim innocence.
Forces other than market forces are at work here.
What do you mean? Those are market forces. Microsoft doesn't operate in a vacuum.
Microsoft is positioning themselves so all media plays on MS-Windows platforms, and MS-Windows platforms only. Portable video devices are a growing market. If Microsoft is doing this for the media companies, you can bet the media companies are doing something for Microsoft. The most likely thing they can do is release their portable formats for Microsoft's "secure" solution. The portable video devices would then have to run MS-Windows if people wanted to watch these DRM'd shows.
Microsoft has nothing to lose by doing this, and everything to gain. The desktop isn't a big deal for video. Embedded video devices are.
I walk into Best Buy. I pick out a TV from a wide range of products (mfg, sizes, technologies, prices, warranties, design, etc). I rarely know the salesperson. S/he rarely knows me. Maybe I go across the street to Circuit City to shop around first. Multiply this by 100 million people doing the same thing. That is a free market.
No it isn't. You think Sony and Dell and Pioneer and whatnot don't have influence over what Best Buy and Circuit City sell?
It's a "free market" only to the extent that you are able to easily purchase things that you are allowed to purchase. Exclusive deals, loss-leaders, and control of distribution channels (Best Buy and Circuit City) are the bread-and-butter of mega-corporations. Smaller companies are relegated to botique shops, where the general public will never hear about them, let alone go out of their way to purchase them.
Those that control the distribution chains have a much greater effect on the market than consumer choice, or government intervention.
Gerrymandering, I think, behind verified voting is most dangerous to the democratic process.
I'd think it's tied with the power of corporate lobbying. With corporations buying the votes of all parties, it often doesn't matter which person gets elected.
But I might just be a wee bit jaded.