In short, I'm saying, not implying, flat out stating, the people defending Mozilla's ridiculous position (either Mozilla staff themselves, or Mozilla fanbois) are now scraping around at the bottom of the barrel to come up with excuses to support their stance, instead of just admitting that the original choice was purely ideological, and their current stance is essentially an unwillingness to simply admit they were wrong.
And you're completely mistaken. Not wrong, just mistaken.
The decision by Mozilla not to integrate support for the H264 codec is only ideological if you define that term to mean 'respectful of the rule of law'.
You keep talking about 'support' for the H264 codec. The issue is not support, per se - any 3rd party could do that via a plugin.
The issue is that Mozilla cannot legally integrate an H264 codec into their code base and remain GPL-compliant.
This kind of matters because of the way HTML5 removes the technical requirement for some 3rd party plugin to be able to view video content and because of the increasing presence of software running embedded on devices.
Of course Firefox will be able to play H264 video. That's not the issue. The issue is that the legal framework is prejudiced against Mozilla and all FOSS software that wants to support this codec. The issue is equally that other major players on the Web seem perfectly happy to acquiesce to the promise (not the threat) of patent-driven royalties for all content producers down the road.
If hardware makers can't include third-party code or processes that they aren't permitted to sublicense as free software, then perhaps they won't write a driver at all. Instead of proprietary drivers, you'll have completely unsupported hardware.
Releasing unsupported hardware because you don't like the alternative seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Given the situation you describe, in which hardware makers sub-license proprietary code because it costs them less, it would seem to me that they should be promoting FOSS for all they're worth. No more upstream lock-in for the manufacturers, fewer overheads and almost certainly increased profits per unit sold because of reduced demand for royalties.
I realise that it's extremely difficult to move to a FOSS culture from a predominantly proprietary one - especially when there are long-term licensing/royalty agreements to consider. But one would think that hardware manufacturers would see it as a strategic goal.
I don't know about you, but I think it is a bit suspicious that Mr. X has never publicly denied being a moron.
Nonsense. He's not nearly as much of a moron as he used to be. At least, that's what his illegitimate love child says in tonight's exclusive interview.
There's Intellisense which, you may have heard, is kind of a big deal about Visual Studio. If the language adds new constructs (which is does), and the IDE isn't updated to cope with that, then you end up with useless, or even worse-than-useless, Intellisense.
It's interesting to contrast this with bash TAB-completion, which operates in a very similar fashion (albeit in a somewhat different context). The basic capability has been around for a long time, but increasing numbers of utilities are taking advantage of it.
These days, for example, you can use TAB-completion to see a list of available packages to install based on a given string; you can find the available options and arguments for countless different utilities, even when there are hundreds of available choices.
All of these improvements have arrived piecemeal, without requiring any particular effort from the bash developers themselves.
So why should Intellisense language bindings be limited to a particular version of Visual Studio? Surely one should be able add/update/change a language and have the bindings Just Work...?
I risk inciting a flamewar for saying this, but both vi and emacs can integrate new language/version modes without any fuss or bother. Why would it be an issue for VS?
Eager to demonstrate their flying skills for some visiting American pilots, the hotshot Aussies "buzzed" the virtual kangaroos in low flight during a simulation. The kangaroos scattered, as predicted, and the Americans nodded appreciatively . . . and then did a double-take as the kangaroos reappeared from behind a hill and launched a barrage of stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter.
Ask me about CoApp, I'll tell ya everything ya wanna know.
Garrett Serack
CoApp Project Owner
Okay, serious questions:
Assuming that you've looked at APT and similar packaging tools, and given that you're still convinced that there's a 'Windows Way' (your term) to handle deployment that differs from Linux best practices, how do you plan to address:
Package Repositories - This is one of the main strengths of Debian and related distros. Do you think it's even possible to replicate this level of community control in Windows? I know you've mentioned decentralisation, but have you considered the implications of such an approach? What is the cost of failure to affect consistent, formalised management of package builds?
Dependancy Management - This issue is largely done and dusted on Linux, but remains a dog's breakfast on Windows (albeit not as frustrating today as it was in the mid-90s). In the absence of centralised repositories and the Unix toolchain philosophy, how do you propose to cope better with dependancies?
File locations - How do you propose to manage the proper placement of libraries etc. when the conventions concerning where to put such files are not nearly as well defined on Windows? I'm suggesting here that you need cultural leverage rather than technical answers. You need to change perceptions, not toolkits.
Security - Do you think it's even possible to replicate one of the main strengths of Linux package repositories: the ability to curtail security risks such as malware and flawed code?
Scripting Interfaces - Say what you like about make and other command-line utilities, but as a busy sysadmin, I consider GUI package management a waste of my valuable time. If I'm going to deploy regular security updates, for example, I want to know that I can script every aspect of the operation. Even the tab-completion features in aptitude make it many times more efficient than a point-and-click interface. What is the potential for scripted deployment/management of packages under your system? Why?
I guess it's clear by now that I'm suggesting that what Windows needs is not another new way to do things. Package management in Debian, for example, is vastly more advanced and sophisticated than anything on Windows, and yet you feel the need to do things the 'Windows Way'. Don't you think you'd be better off learning from others who have been dealing successfully with package management for over a decade now?
These are all serious questions and I expect to be challenged by your replies. I applaud your courage in taking on this huge task. I also think that you're going to need to learn a lot more humility than you've demonstrated so far if you want to achieve something better than a new brand of anarchy in packaging.
The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by money is well understood and doesn't require any speculative assumptions.
The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by "increasing its attraction to the reader" is not at all clear and requires a significant scaffold of assumptions to keep it from collapsing.
I put a huge poster featuring your photo in the window of the gallery where your photos are showing. I do not charge people to view this image and I don't pay you for it. I do charge for the prints displayed inside and I pay you a percentage of the take.
The poster for which you are not paid advertises your work and increases its desirability. It drives traffic into the gallery where your work is showing.
I never realized that fair use was based on pixel count.
You should have done. It's obvious.
A sufficiently reduced-quality image (or a detail from a larger image) is perfectly analogous to a quotation from a written work. It serves to convey the essence (or a detail) of a particular work without reproducing it in toto. Past a certain point, however, the exercise becomes a case of wholesale copying i.e. no longer Fair Use.
If that weren't the case, then I could sue you for using the same white and black pixels that I used in a graphic this morning, or the same alphabet (or phrases, if you like) that I used to create my last newspaper column.
"Google likely believes use of your images falls under "fair use" in the same manner as those shown on Google Images, and hence feels no obligation to pay."
Which is like having your neighbor say it was OK to use your pool without your permission because they did the same thing to the guy down the street.
No, it's nothing at all like that. It has nothing to do with physical objects at all.
Let's dispense with silly analogies (sorry, BadAnalogyGuy, I realise that saying such a thing is just like killing a kitten) and state exactly what it is:
In this particular example, Google used a thumbnail copy of a photo and used it to give Google News visitors an indication of what was on the site they were linking to.
You can argue Fair Use if you like. You can argue that this is reproduction of an image without permission. It all comes down to how you feel about droits d'auteur - that is, authors' rights. If you feel that creators always maintain the moral right of refusal where copying is concerned, then Google should pay. If you feel that this right is limited, then you could argue that Google did nothing more than sketch what was available at the linked site, thus increasing its attraction to the reader.
In either case, the author is rewarded. The difference is in the nature and source of the reward.
Most of us agree already that intellectual property goes too far. When it comes to things like movies and music and books, there is at least some real creativity. Photography? Not so much.
Baloney.
I've had formal training in writing and theatre (acting, design and directing) and have worked professionally in a number of creative disciplines. Just as with photography, the majority of writing work is workman-like documentary stuff that anyone with a decent grasp of the English language can manage. Writing clearly is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult.
Telling stories as simply and elegantly as Graham Greene, however, is something to which most of us can't even aspire.
Likewise with photography. Taking a clear, composed and nicely lit photo is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult. Taking a great photo on the level of Don McCullen or Robert Capa, for example, is something most of us will never approach.
If you're going to compare different artistic media (not really advisable at the best of times), at least try to compare similar things. Run-of-the-mill documentary writing, film-making and photography are similar in terms of time, discipline and effort required. (The biggest differentiator is the scope of the work itself. Photographers capture an instant; film-makers capture events.)
Great work in any discipline is likewise exacting, difficult, time-consuming and reserved to a rare, gifted few.
And not just for the extremely rural areas. It can be used in a doctors office here in the U.S. And that the device doesn't cost a small fortune means you'll see it in widespread adoption in the first world too.
It's not great news; it's great technology.
I live in the developing world and I can tell you that this would be an insanely dangerous device in the hands of the wrong people. HIV/AIDS is only just beginning to touch this very remote country, and the level of superstition and fear surrounding the disease is intense. Having an easy means to test for the disease - without the necessary education and awareness-raising - would almost certainly lead some village leaders to force testing on their entire population.
People who test positive would be subjected to ostracism at best, and possibly to exile or even death.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating, our neighbour Papua New Guinea is struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is almost completely out of control. The World Health Organisation has said in plain terms that existing medical infrastructure is utterly inadequate to cope with the disease. People's attitudes are such that sufferers are routinely cast out by their villages and families, and end up dying in very short order of easily treated problems like diarrhea and colds.
Great news would be that billions more have been devoted to education, awareness-raising, counselling and primary medical treatment. Then - and only then - having a useful, portable diagnostic tool would be useful and worthwhile.
No, the most significant security hole in web browsing is people. PEBKAC.
No, you're confusing vectors with vulnerabilities.
To see what I mean, consider the fact that Windows and Mac users are equally stupid, naive and prone to being taken advantage of. So what's the distinguishing factor between them when it comes to computer security? The fact that one group uses a platform with more exploitable vulnerabilities than the other does.
The fact that a large number of said exploits rely on stupid users is just a reflection of the unfortunate truth that gullible humans are a reliable vector of attack. But when you interpret that to mean that there's no point in taking steps to secure your computing environment, you're just wrong. Plainly, a few simple steps (like taking care when escalating privileges), effectively protect a significant proportion of the computer-using population who are just as stupid as the rest.
... Heh, calling out both Windows and Mac fanbois at the same time. Either my desktop is about to collapse into a smoldering mass, or I'm going to Karma heaven!
The fact that proprietary solutions will be considered is not a threat to OSS, nor a guarantee that Microsoft will be chosen. Finally, proprietary solutions often use OSS projects if it is beneficial (not GPL, but that's not the issue here).
What does any of this have to do with open standards, which represent the topic of this discussion?
Open standards allow us to ignore these kinds of argument completely, because they essentially guarantee that, no matter what kind of software you choose, I can continue using the software of my choice, provided that the two of us can agree on the standard to be implemented.
I choose my favourite software for my own reasons; you choose yours. Everyone's happy.
Now, if someone were to refuse to follow open standards and instead chose to say, "My way or the highway!" when it came to technical implementation of certain document formats and communications protocols... well, I might be a little miffed. I might even say that this is not fair and that it's ultimately dangerous because it causes public data to be locked into proprietary formats.
"A paperless office is as useful as a paperless toilet. Some things would be impractical..."
You've obviously never been to France.
Okay, haha, yeah. But seriously, there really is More Than One Way To Do It in this case. The last time I installed a printer on my machine it was to print DVDs and their covers. With the exception of a few handouts (almost never my own), I never printer anything at all. I do have more screen space than many people and I keep a scan of my signature safely stored on my PC, but it really doesn't take much imagination to avoid most (mis)uses of paper.
I find paper cumbersome, difficult to keep organised and generally useless for more than 10 minutes.
There are, of course, a few very good reasons to file paper copies of documents. Contracts and other legal documents, for example, have somewhat more value as paper than their digital counterparts.
But something we forget is that, back when everything was on paper, we had these things called secretaries and filing clerks, people whose job it was to keep the paper organised. Scoff if you like about the uselessness of hiring people to do nothing more than cart paper around, but I can tell you that the majority of organisations don't give nearly enough thought to replacing them.
It's primarily this inefficiency -assuming that computers will replace secretaries et alia without giving a thought to replicating their functionality and the processes they followed- that led to the increased consumption of paper that most offices saw as computers arrived on the scene. People would print off multiple copies of emails etc. because they didn't know how to store and manage them.
Going paperless is a process more than a product. It's an administrative challenge more than a technical one. It's possible to get there, but you have to give it some thought and effort first. Lamentably few people and organisations have ever done this.
``Admittedly anyone running a *nix based computer would not have had a problem with this malware.''
I can't help but wonder "how long?"
How long until we *nix users start having to bog down our systems in order to slow the flood of malware that would otherwise corrupt them?
Given that viruses and other malware have been a fact of life for as long as I've been using PCs (i.e. early '90s), and that they have never been an issue for Mac or Linux, even in the days when Macs were nearly as numerous as PCs, I'm inclined to say that day will never come.
What's more likely is that -just like Unix/Linux did- Windows will ultimately drag itself out of the morass of insecurity in which it's currently mired. Eventually....
it's not at all like wikipedia though (wikipedia has shit loads of problems, probably best not to use it as an example).
The fact that wikipedia has shitloads of problems is precisely my point. Any crowd-sourcing application will have similar problems, but they still work, by and large.
if someone has an axe to grind and starts reporting 10 rapes a day in a certain area, how do others edit or even verify it in this model?
In this model? I don't know. I can't get to the site right now; it must be slashdotted. That means I can't comment on the specific implementation. One would hope that a simple design would allow the typical strengths of crowd-sourcing to come through, though. As a general rule, if the preponderance of data is good (i.e. honestly derived), the service has value.
The 10 rapes a day example would play out one of two ways:
In a low-violence situation, the aberrant data would stand out like a sore thumb.
In a high-violence situation (e.g. armed insurrection, etc.), it would disappear into the noise.
In either case, the bad data wouldn't significantly debase the overall value of the service itself because, as I said in my original post, most people are honest about these things most of the time. That would make the service mostly useful.
Sure, an anonymous system like this can get you lots of statistical data, but it's not verifiable data. In a scenario where there is emotional or ideological conflict, like an election, it would be trivial to abuse the system to corrupt the data, at the very least. It's also open to abuse by individual pranksters.
Everything you've said above can also be said of Wikipedia. These shortcomings are real, but they do little to reduce its overall usefulness.
As long as the volume of data is significant enough and it's mostly honestly derived, the service will work.
I think the answer is obvious - what most developers avoid like the plague is documentation.
I don't think it's obvious that developers avoid documenting FOSS more than anything else. In my experience, FOSS developers are -statistically speaking- better at it than coders of proprietary software.
Documentation is almost universally ignored by users of many projects and products because it's worse than useless... except in the server space, where having good technical documentation makes the difference between having a usable product or not. In many of these cases, FOSS positively shines compared to the competition. Take a look at most Apache projects, for example, or Postgres. Heck, even MySQL's documentation is comprehensive and of fairly decent quality.
So, no. It's not obvious that FOSS is somehow worse than other software where documentation is concerned. I think it's better. And until I can find something as useful as man pages for Windows, I will continue to think so.
Is Google actually delivering on their "Don't be evil" thing?
It's Sergei, mostly.
Can't find the reference right now, but there's a story out there in which it's posited that his childhood experience in the Soviet Union left him with an aversion to coercive state power. He allowed himself to be talked into going into China by Schmidt and Page, but when it became clear that China was using them to target human rights activists, Sergei baulked.
Having agreed at the outset to put limits on what they would put up with from China, Larry and Eric had no choice but to go along when Sergei insisted that they retaliate.
Slashdot Mirror
And you're completely mistaken. Not wrong, just mistaken.
The decision by Mozilla not to integrate support for the H264 codec is only ideological if you define that term to mean 'respectful of the rule of law'.
You keep talking about 'support' for the H264 codec. The issue is not support, per se - any 3rd party could do that via a plugin.
The issue is that Mozilla cannot legally integrate an H264 codec into their code base and remain GPL-compliant.
This kind of matters because of the way HTML5 removes the technical requirement for some 3rd party plugin to be able to view video content and because of the increasing presence of software running embedded on devices.
Of course Firefox will be able to play H264 video. That's not the issue. The issue is that the legal framework is prejudiced against Mozilla and all FOSS software that wants to support this codec. The issue is equally that other major players on the Web seem perfectly happy to acquiesce to the promise (not the threat) of patent-driven royalties for all content producers down the road.
If hardware makers can't include third-party code or processes that they aren't permitted to sublicense as free software, then perhaps they won't write a driver at all. Instead of proprietary drivers, you'll have completely unsupported hardware.
Releasing unsupported hardware because you don't like the alternative seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Given the situation you describe, in which hardware makers sub-license proprietary code because it costs them less, it would seem to me that they should be promoting FOSS for all they're worth. No more upstream lock-in for the manufacturers, fewer overheads and almost certainly increased profits per unit sold because of reduced demand for royalties.
I realise that it's extremely difficult to move to a FOSS culture from a predominantly proprietary one - especially when there are long-term licensing/royalty agreements to consider. But one would think that hardware manufacturers would see it as a strategic goal.
I don't know about you, but I think it is a bit suspicious that Mr. X has never publicly denied being a moron.
Nonsense. He's not nearly as much of a moron as he used to be. At least, that's what his illegitimate love child says in tonight's exclusive interview.
It's interesting to contrast this with bash TAB-completion, which operates in a very similar fashion (albeit in a somewhat different context). The basic capability has been around for a long time, but increasing numbers of utilities are taking advantage of it.
These days, for example, you can use TAB-completion to see a list of available packages to install based on a given string; you can find the available options and arguments for countless different utilities, even when there are hundreds of available choices.
All of these improvements have arrived piecemeal, without requiring any particular effort from the bash developers themselves.
So why should Intellisense language bindings be limited to a particular version of Visual Studio? Surely one should be able add/update/change a language and have the bindings Just Work...?
I risk inciting a flamewar for saying this, but both vi and emacs can integrate new language/version modes without any fuss or bother. Why would it be an issue for VS?
If only they made some of those robots similar to Serge Graystone; or perhaps, more appropriately, to few targetbots we've seen in the pilot.
I'm waiting for the robotic kangaroos with Stinger missiles:
Ask me about CoApp, I'll tell ya everything ya wanna know.
Garrett Serack CoApp Project Owner
Okay, serious questions:
Assuming that you've looked at APT and similar packaging tools, and given that you're still convinced that there's a 'Windows Way' (your term) to handle deployment that differs from Linux best practices, how do you plan to address:
I guess it's clear by now that I'm suggesting that what Windows needs is not another new way to do things. Package management in Debian, for example, is vastly more advanced and sophisticated than anything on Windows, and yet you feel the need to do things the 'Windows Way'. Don't you think you'd be better off learning from others who have been dealing successfully with package management for over a decade now?
These are all serious questions and I expect to be challenged by your replies. I applaud your courage in taking on this huge task. I also think that you're going to need to learn a lot more humility than you've demonstrated so far if you want to achieve something better than a new brand of anarchy in packaging.
The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by money is well understood and doesn't require any speculative assumptions.
The mechanism by which an author is rewarded by "increasing its attraction to the reader" is not at all clear and requires a significant scaffold of assumptions to keep it from collapsing.
I put a huge poster featuring your photo in the window of the gallery where your photos are showing. I do not charge people to view this image and I don't pay you for it. I do charge for the prints displayed inside and I pay you a percentage of the take.
The poster for which you are not paid advertises your work and increases its desirability. It drives traffic into the gallery where your work is showing.
Not much of a scaffold, if you ask me.
I never realized that fair use was based on pixel count.
You should have done. It's obvious.
A sufficiently reduced-quality image (or a detail from a larger image) is perfectly analogous to a quotation from a written work. It serves to convey the essence (or a detail) of a particular work without reproducing it in toto. Past a certain point, however, the exercise becomes a case of wholesale copying i.e. no longer Fair Use.
If that weren't the case, then I could sue you for using the same white and black pixels that I used in a graphic this morning, or the same alphabet (or phrases, if you like) that I used to create my last newspaper column.
"Google likely believes use of your images falls under "fair use" in the same manner as those shown on Google Images, and hence feels no obligation to pay."
Which is like having your neighbor say it was OK to use your pool without your permission because they did the same thing to the guy down the street.
No, it's nothing at all like that. It has nothing to do with physical objects at all.
Let's dispense with silly analogies (sorry, BadAnalogyGuy, I realise that saying such a thing is just like killing a kitten) and state exactly what it is:
In this particular example, Google used a thumbnail copy of a photo and used it to give Google News visitors an indication of what was on the site they were linking to.
You can argue Fair Use if you like. You can argue that this is reproduction of an image without permission. It all comes down to how you feel about droits d'auteur - that is, authors' rights. If you feel that creators always maintain the moral right of refusal where copying is concerned, then Google should pay. If you feel that this right is limited, then you could argue that Google did nothing more than sketch what was available at the linked site, thus increasing its attraction to the reader.
In either case, the author is rewarded. The difference is in the nature and source of the reward.
Baloney.
I've had formal training in writing and theatre (acting, design and directing) and have worked professionally in a number of creative disciplines. Just as with photography, the majority of writing work is workman-like documentary stuff that anyone with a decent grasp of the English language can manage. Writing clearly is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult.
Telling stories as simply and elegantly as Graham Greene, however, is something to which most of us can't even aspire.
Likewise with photography. Taking a clear, composed and nicely lit photo is mostly a matter of discipline. It's work, but it's not that difficult. Taking a great photo on the level of Don McCullen or Robert Capa, for example, is something most of us will never approach.
If you're going to compare different artistic media (not really advisable at the best of times), at least try to compare similar things. Run-of-the-mill documentary writing, film-making and photography are similar in terms of time, discipline and effort required. (The biggest differentiator is the scope of the work itself. Photographers capture an instant; film-makers capture events.)
Great work in any discipline is likewise exacting, difficult, time-consuming and reserved to a rare, gifted few.
I wonder how this will develop.
Meh, they're just after the exposure.
And not just for the extremely rural areas. It can be used in a doctors office here in the U.S. And that the device doesn't cost a small fortune means you'll see it in widespread adoption in the first world too.
It's not great news; it's great technology.
I live in the developing world and I can tell you that this would be an insanely dangerous device in the hands of the wrong people. HIV/AIDS is only just beginning to touch this very remote country, and the level of superstition and fear surrounding the disease is intense. Having an easy means to test for the disease - without the necessary education and awareness-raising - would almost certainly lead some village leaders to force testing on their entire population.
People who test positive would be subjected to ostracism at best, and possibly to exile or even death.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating, our neighbour Papua New Guinea is struggling with an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is almost completely out of control. The World Health Organisation has said in plain terms that existing medical infrastructure is utterly inadequate to cope with the disease. People's attitudes are such that sufferers are routinely cast out by their villages and families, and end up dying in very short order of easily treated problems like diarrhea and colds.
Great news would be that billions more have been devoted to education, awareness-raising, counselling and primary medical treatment. Then - and only then - having a useful, portable diagnostic tool would be useful and worthwhile.
I'm 16, you're all pedophiles!
I put on my robe and wizard hat....
A dinosaur named Xixianykus zhangi, discovered by Xig Xu!
Sorry, I don't have anything to add to this discussion. I just wanted to say Xixianykus zhangi and Xig Xu again.
Xixianykus zhangi!
Xig Xu!
Okay, I think I'm done. Now, to find some way to clean all this spittle off my monitor....
No, the most significant security hole in web browsing is people. PEBKAC.
No, you're confusing vectors with vulnerabilities.
To see what I mean, consider the fact that Windows and Mac users are equally stupid, naive and prone to being taken advantage of. So what's the distinguishing factor between them when it comes to computer security? The fact that one group uses a platform with more exploitable vulnerabilities than the other does.
The fact that a large number of said exploits rely on stupid users is just a reflection of the unfortunate truth that gullible humans are a reliable vector of attack. But when you interpret that to mean that there's no point in taking steps to secure your computing environment, you're just wrong. Plainly, a few simple steps (like taking care when escalating privileges), effectively protect a significant proportion of the computer-using population who are just as stupid as the rest.
... Heh, calling out both Windows and Mac fanbois at the same time. Either my desktop is about to collapse into a smoldering mass, or I'm going to Karma heaven!
You betcha. Those Hellfire missiles, kill, clean, and cook the quarry all at once.
Yep, the only hard part is finding it.
The fact that proprietary solutions will be considered is not a threat to OSS, nor a guarantee that Microsoft will be chosen. Finally, proprietary solutions often use OSS projects if it is beneficial (not GPL, but that's not the issue here).
What does any of this have to do with open standards, which represent the topic of this discussion?
Open standards allow us to ignore these kinds of argument completely, because they essentially guarantee that, no matter what kind of software you choose, I can continue using the software of my choice, provided that the two of us can agree on the standard to be implemented.
I choose my favourite software for my own reasons; you choose yours. Everyone's happy.
Now, if someone were to refuse to follow open standards and instead chose to say, "My way or the highway!" when it came to technical implementation of certain document formats and communications protocols... well, I might be a little miffed. I might even say that this is not fair and that it's ultimately dangerous because it causes public data to be locked into proprietary formats.
I do. Next question, please.
Geez Louise! Dozens of answers already and not a single one of you has suggested Kent Brockman. What is wrong with you people?!?
Well, I for one do not welcome such a cataclysmic failure in geek cred. Our insect overlords can't get here soon enough, if you ask me.
"A paperless office is as useful as a paperless toilet. Some things would be impractical..."
You've obviously never been to France.
Okay, haha, yeah. But seriously, there really is More Than One Way To Do It in this case. The last time I installed a printer on my machine it was to print DVDs and their covers. With the exception of a few handouts (almost never my own), I never printer anything at all. I do have more screen space than many people and I keep a scan of my signature safely stored on my PC, but it really doesn't take much imagination to avoid most (mis)uses of paper.
I find paper cumbersome, difficult to keep organised and generally useless for more than 10 minutes.
There are, of course, a few very good reasons to file paper copies of documents. Contracts and other legal documents, for example, have somewhat more value as paper than their digital counterparts.
But something we forget is that, back when everything was on paper, we had these things called secretaries and filing clerks, people whose job it was to keep the paper organised. Scoff if you like about the uselessness of hiring people to do nothing more than cart paper around, but I can tell you that the majority of organisations don't give nearly enough thought to replacing them.
It's primarily this inefficiency -assuming that computers will replace secretaries et alia without giving a thought to replicating their functionality and the processes they followed- that led to the increased consumption of paper that most offices saw as computers arrived on the scene. People would print off multiple copies of emails etc. because they didn't know how to store and manage them.
Going paperless is a process more than a product. It's an administrative challenge more than a technical one. It's possible to get there, but you have to give it some thought and effort first. Lamentably few people and organisations have ever done this.
``Admittedly anyone running a *nix based computer would not have had a problem with this malware.''
I can't help but wonder "how long?"
How long until we *nix users start having to bog down our systems in order to slow the flood of malware that would otherwise corrupt them?
Given that viruses and other malware have been a fact of life for as long as I've been using PCs (i.e. early '90s), and that they have never been an issue for Mac or Linux, even in the days when Macs were nearly as numerous as PCs, I'm inclined to say that day will never come.
What's more likely is that -just like Unix/Linux did- Windows will ultimately drag itself out of the morass of insecurity in which it's currently mired. Eventually....
... Possibly even in my lifetime. 8^)
noun gerund noun noun gerund adjective - WTF!?
Or, more accurately (and appropriately alliterative), with BBC syntax:
Rejecting Security Advice is 'Rational': Researcher
it's not at all like wikipedia though (wikipedia has shit loads of problems, probably best not to use it as an example).
The fact that wikipedia has shitloads of problems is precisely my point. Any crowd-sourcing application will have similar problems, but they still work, by and large.
if someone has an axe to grind and starts reporting 10 rapes a day in a certain area, how do others edit or even verify it in this model?
In this model? I don't know. I can't get to the site right now; it must be slashdotted. That means I can't comment on the specific implementation. One would hope that a simple design would allow the typical strengths of crowd-sourcing to come through, though. As a general rule, if the preponderance of data is good (i.e. honestly derived), the service has value.
The 10 rapes a day example would play out one of two ways:
In either case, the bad data wouldn't significantly debase the overall value of the service itself because, as I said in my original post, most people are honest about these things most of the time. That would make the service mostly useful.
Sure, an anonymous system like this can get you lots of statistical data, but it's not verifiable data. In a scenario where there is emotional or ideological conflict, like an election, it would be trivial to abuse the system to corrupt the data, at the very least. It's also open to abuse by individual pranksters.
Everything you've said above can also be said of Wikipedia. These shortcomings are real, but they do little to reduce its overall usefulness.
As long as the volume of data is significant enough and it's mostly honestly derived, the service will work.
I think the answer is obvious - what most developers avoid like the plague is documentation.
I don't think it's obvious that developers avoid documenting FOSS more than anything else. In my experience, FOSS developers are -statistically speaking- better at it than coders of proprietary software.
Documentation is almost universally ignored by users of many projects and products because it's worse than useless... except in the server space, where having good technical documentation makes the difference between having a usable product or not. In many of these cases, FOSS positively shines compared to the competition. Take a look at most Apache projects, for example, or Postgres. Heck, even MySQL's documentation is comprehensive and of fairly decent quality.
So, no. It's not obvious that FOSS is somehow worse than other software where documentation is concerned. I think it's better. And until I can find something as useful as man pages for Windows, I will continue to think so.
Is Google actually delivering on their "Don't be evil" thing?
It's Sergei, mostly.
Can't find the reference right now, but there's a story out there in which it's posited that his childhood experience in the Soviet Union left him with an aversion to coercive state power. He allowed himself to be talked into going into China by Schmidt and Page, but when it became clear that China was using them to target human rights activists, Sergei baulked.
Having agreed at the outset to put limits on what they would put up with from China, Larry and Eric had no choice but to go along when Sergei insisted that they retaliate.