I mentioned tools as part of the problem. Lets say your digital camera has 500 pictures. Even if you have the desire to in detail setup the metadata for these 500 pictures the amount of time necessary to do it is staggering. You could easily spend more time maintaining the pictures instead of enjoying them.
You also neglect the thing that metadata means different things to different systems. One person might care if the pictures are near the ocean or in the mountains so they can search against that. The tools to express these features aren't impssible but are beyond what most "Nana" level users care about.
WinFS will work great for document archiving systems like SharePoint. It will do nothing for Nana and her thousands of images.
A feature that solves no problem. An interesting idea placed in the wrong location. And I'm glad its shelved.
On paper, this sounds neat kind of in a thesis paper sort of way. But the practicality of it was way beyond what any desktop user would need. I had problems figuring out how to use it efficiently (after all you have to have meta data lined up). I couldn't even begin to figure out how to explain how WinFS would help grandma and grandpa.
I do see WinFS as an interesting tool for server applications but for a desktop it isn't feasible without a whole heck of a lot more tools. On a server I can see this being a powerful tool to help keep your web app file data sane because you can force metadata and relationships there. On a desktop it would have been a feature with cumbersome tools used once a month. This is the very definition of bloat. I am very glad it was shelved since the cost vs benifit of WinFS on the desktop was completely off.
The problem with outsourcing is that it isn't a buisness move that creates growth. You remove a job here and create it over there. Profit is generated but no real change has happened so there is little modivation to create new jobs.
Yes its true the new job over there creates higher standard of living and wealth over there but at the cost of the standard of living and wealth over here you really haven't gained anything but CEOs with larger wallets.
Add to this that Windows doesn't give the user a facility to promote (and demote!) themselves easily its really hopeless. This problem has been around since NT 3.1 and has been compounded by the integration of IE into the kernel. And yes I know about "runas" but it doesn't work correctly for many apps (even ones provided by MS).
So Windows offers you as an IT manager two options:
- Remove admin rights from users but anytime an application requires a minor elevation in rights you will get pestered.
- Give everyone admin rights but watch installations like hawk because they might accidently misclick some link at some googled web site that wasn't what was said.
Either path is expensive. I curse MS every day for creating a flexible permission system, access control lists that are well integrated across the enterprise and then promptly not use them in any of the right places.
I'm stumped and have given up all hope of figure out what to do beyond pray. As long as MS clings to this system this Windows will be an expensive PITA system to maintain on the enterprise.
Are you sure its not a good bargin? You correctly point out that buying Doom3 for $40 is cheaper than a years subscription to any MMOG. But the trick happens to be, are you going to play Doom3 for [i]an entire year[/i]?? Most stand alone games can be played through in less than a month and have zero replay value. MMOG have months on end play value.
When viewed that way games like Doom3 are worth $40 but no more of a value than playing City of Heroes month after month.
Once again, it boils down to the user to be savy enough to not shoot themselves in the foot while handing something advance.
Given this dialog:
Ruin your computer?
Yes No
How many users are going to click "Yes"? You think it is stupid if a user clicks "Yes" but do you know how stupid is it to allow the user the option to click "Yes" and ruin their computer?? Now change "Ruin your computer?" to "An application has request traffic on port 139. Open it?"
This is a simplified example yet this is whats happening. A firewall is supposed to stop network traffic inbound or outbound that isn't accounted. Allowing the user to sidestep this easily is as handy as asking if they want to ruin their computer: Yes or No. Even with the improved features I'm still going to get calls from Mom saying something complained it wanted access so she clicked "Yes" to get it to shut up. Expecting users to be savy enough to patrol their computers got MS into this mess with SP 2. Now people are suddenly going to be wise??? Something doesn't add up.
I am not knocking SP2 since there are great things going on here but as the old saying goes: Security is a process. SP2 still "enables" users to screw up their computers with a few more hoops to jump through. I would rather have my parents have to jump through a few more hoops before they hang their computer with all of the wonderful "rope" MS gives them but I'm still very bothered its easy to hang themselves.
Simply put, in my opinion Zone Alarm is right and SP2 is wrong. The firewall is there to stop unwarrented traffic not to conviently prompt you to disable it.
For the money you need to use RAID 0 you are getting nothing but glorified fast hard drive (if you have the right application which the standard desktop is far and away not). Take the money and do:
- Buy one higher quality fast drive - Buy the right hardware to do RAID 1 or higher
Using RAID 0 is more expensive than either of these two because you gain nothing for spending just as much if not more. Why bother bending benchmarks to make it look good when we already know what is a better solution?
Remind me again why Windows is considered ready for the desktop? Before anyone marks me as troll or flamebait I am asking a serious question. The graphical shell is just as primative as anything Gnome or KDE seem to front and the customization and configuration is non existent. The only thing going for Windows it seems is very tight integration across multiple applications. So the work lies outside of the graphical shell.
So why do people continually think Windows is ready for the desktop? Why are people striving to make Gnome and KDE like Windows? Windows if anything seems more primative which implies that desktops are too complex or something else is going on...
Kufuu wanted to leave a momument to himself to let others know how cool he was.
Lindbergh wanted to win the prize. He netted $25k for doing it.
Columbus wanted to be rich capitalizing on faster trade routes to the orient.
Didn't Kendey want to go to the moon because the USSR was upstaging us in space?
Wow...do these guys sound like they wanted to expand humanity or show off how cool they where?
I've posted many other times calling into the question the value of the X-Prize. I think it is important to go into space purely as a research venture but I have no illusions we'll find nothing out there but useless rocks.
If you were a paranoid Iranian or North Korean computer user and look at Microsoft Windows would you think the same thing? Heck, why would a Chinese user think that MS and the NSA/CIA/alphabet soup is trying to snoop them? Because MS allows a select group to look at their source?!?
At least with Open Source you have the source to ultimately check for yourself. Vendors like Novel, IBM, and RedHat are supposed to be actively looking at the source to make sure no one is slipping stuff in that doesn't belong but if you don't believe them you can do it yourself.
So you have a Mr. Dan O'Dowd trying to a terrorist ghost threat into Open Source. The problem is that the source is there for you to inspect. With Microsoft the only word you have is their word that they aren't monkeying with the OS to monitor you.
IMHO, BSD and Linux are perfect for Military and security applications. You can inspect every corner of the kernel. You can freeze on a specific version because you always have that source code. You can branch and patch as you see fit. This seems perfect for the military and security branches. With Microsoft you have to "signup" (how much money does it cost to do that?) to view the source and then what? The only proof you have is that this particular version of Windows hasn't been monkeyed with. What about the patches and hotfixes? *shrug*
When it really boils down to it are you going to believe the source you compiled, you control yourself or Microsoft? I think Mr. O'Dowd's trust is ill placed.
It isn't that a spatial nautilus was a bad idea it was the change. I frankly think nautilus is better in spatial. However it does freak people out who have been using nautilus forever.
Gnome's mistake was not allowing seemless integration. If someone was used to old nautilus then they should have not gave them spatial behavior. These users should have been left with the old behavior and let them turn it on at their leasuire.
I'm still not sure why MS bought Slate in the first place. "e-mags" are notoriously hard to generate profit from and MS did nothing to do help out in that department. As MS stops pretending its a rapid growth company it will have to tighten budgetary belt. That means stuff like Slate are first on the chopping block.
Although it was amusing how the timing worked having Slate give props to Firefox has nothing to do with MS selling Slate. Its purely a business move.
And when we do we will proudly rescue the martian baceria from their oppressive regime....whatever that maybe.
On a much more serious note, if oil was oozing from the ground you bet that we'd be there by now. However even though people lovingly claim that privitzation is the way to go fail to consider this.
If the US Government can't figure out how to make space exploration of innert rocks profitable the private sector can? Private companies love to throw away money evidently....
- Nothing about the GPL deals with the "end user" useage. Use it, don't use it. The GPL has no effect either way. The GPL deals developer and the source used to generate the software.
- There is only one real restriction on anything that is GPL: that any derivitives are as free as the derived works. What is the point of being freely available to everyone if someone else can just remove it at some later date?
- There is nothing about clause 2.B that says you can't sell GPL software. Redhat and IBM make business on selling GPL software. Just make sure the source is available.
The license favors him so why would he care? And the people who it doesn't favor should just shut up because they are fanatical?
If I wrote some handy software project but had a license with a clause "...everyone but Bill Gates can use it..." most of the people of the world can would be able to use it and hence its mostly open. However to say that this license is "...is very open..." is a half true. To carry on like its just as good as the GPL is dumb and shows a lack of understanding of the philosophy of the GPL.
People should be free to write whatever they like under what ever license they like. However to say "this license that is nearly as open as the GPL is just as good as the GPL" is wrong. At best, like the BSD license, it is just different (no better or worse) and at worse the license is a tool to make sure they can take some of the advantages of being mostly open yet stroke their ego because they are in absolutely control.
Andi Gutmans just doesn't want someone to come along and make a better PHP. That isn't "very open" or "just as good" as the GPL or BSD.
This paradox has been noted before. As Sean80 notes, life is often far more robust than people realize and will flourish places most would think are completely sterile. Mars is no different...in fact I wouldn't be surprised to find Earth bugs (figurative term, not the hard shelled animals) on still alive on the stuff we've thrown there.
This also creates a small paradox. If life is so robust and there is life on Mars it should be flourishing. By all intents and purposes Mars hasn't changed in a long time. A super stable environment is perfect for life to exploit no matter how hostile we view it. If its home for a martian life form it should love the place adapting itself in a place we would consider unlivable. If life takes a foot hold it will expand and capitalize as much as far as the environment will allow.
I'm not saying that we should be able to kick over a rock and find a martian bug hiding there but I'm saying that if there was life on Mars you should be able to inspect a wide field of the planet and easily find evidence of life. You can look at many small parts of Earth and claim "wow there is no life here" but if you zoom out take several thousands of cubic miles of space you can easily find the presence of life. In the middle of the Pacific ocean there might be nothing living from the sea surface to the mud ocean floor but the fact that the water is holding desolved unstable gases such as O2 is a big indictor that life is out there elsewhere. An actual life form might be hard to find but evidence of life should be all over.
So lets say there is a lifeform that is hearty enough to surive and flourish on Mars. It should flourish in places all sorts of spots on Mars and other lifeforms will rise around it to capitlize on them or some other side effect of them. So where is the evidence they've been there? If there are really ammonia producing martian microbes then they should be producing buckets of the stuff every day and over millions of years should be easy to detect. Is there another process destroying the ammonia that is dumped into the air? Either we have some sort of radical departure from what know is life living on Mars for millions of years...or Mars is really sterile.
The Fedora Crew can go as fast and agressive as they want if and only if they provide smooth upgrade paths by yum/up2date/"insert your favorite updating method here".
My FC2 install is only 1.5 months old. It took me that long to decide to upgrade since the old software was working great. When I did finally buckle down to do it I had to do a CD install. I would rather do a "yum upgrade-distribution" or something else entirely.
Between Debian's slowness of "it will be done when its done" and the neckbreaking speed of Fedora I keep hoping to find some sort of middle ground. I like software to be as progressive as anyone but upgrading is a major pain. If they solve that problem, then the world will beat a path to their door.
It falls back to the classic problem found in modern computer systems where if you present the user a chance to hang themselves they will do it.
Singing a plug-in just validates where it came from but never makes a gaurentee that the package does what it says it was designed to do (if it says anything at all!). You can sign malware and a user not realizing they shouldn't trust the source will happily click "Yes install!"
Signing of installs should always be done but users can not read into the signature more than what it means: Soandso validated these binaries. Implying that a signature is security is dangerous.
There are no features I can think of that should sacrifice security over. None. Zip. Zero. Holding off security improvements for the sake of compatibility is one of the loopiest thing you can do. You either pay in blood now or pay for it later with gallons more. Its as silly as claiming you need things to be buggy and broken on purpose!
Bravo to the guys at MS who are sticking to their guns and pushing this through.
I posted on this topic earlier (see history) but I'll reitterate: There is no real point in privitzation of deep space because there is no profit there.
This X-Prize contest is akin to GM offering a prize for a flying car. Sure you find find an inventive solution and a flying car that works well but I don't ever see it replacing the family SUV unless it can be made and sold for under $20k.
So here we have a contest where people think that privitization will solve all of the slowness in the sector. It isn't going to happen. Exactly what can you use this vehicle for? Hauling a small amount of weight really high? It hasn't even gotten into LEO yet and by my rough guessatments they need to figoure how to increase the thrust output 30 times more to do so.
Beyond this how is a craft that can take a couple people up to LEO supposed to bring forth a new age of discovery especially when there is nothing is up there? Companies are supposed to magically make money from doing this? I wouldn't hold my breath.
A user that does all of those dangerous things or Microsoft for allowing users to do all of those dangerous things?
This is a problem with the "modern user". They just accept that Windows and computers in general behave this way. That problems like Blaster are "just the way it is." Those who work on multiple platforms and systems see this and call "bullshit" because we get things done and don't have to deal nearly with this level of crap.
Throwing more software at XP is not going to solve the problem. What needs to change is Microsoft!!
- Above all else, why are users forced to run under a prelivaged account? Although not exactly necessary for Blaster, many rogue programs use this as a vector to infect machines. As long as Microsoft does not address how aweful the premission scheme is on Windows, people will have to run at highly elevated permissions which means its easy to infect people. Change this and many virii just go away...
- For 1: Why do you need to buy more software to use a computer out of the box? Mac, Linux, BSD all can all install and go and even do live installs. Even though you can do a live install of XP it isn't safe. So the solution on Windows is "you need more software"?? I call BS again. The installation process should be secure because its a custom kernel that is heavily scripted. There is no reason why the install process is vulnerable!!
- For 2: You can say that but as long as Microsoft allows users to start the application they will use it. Any other vendor by now would have gutted, disabled, etc. such a problematic application but Microsoft seems to know better....
- For 3: look at "For 2:"
- For 4: Windows Updates and beating "keep your system up to date" drum is all nice and neat but once again if you need run it manually (versions of Windows before XP) then there is a big chance it won't be done at all. Even then its dumb to have to login to apply a patch in an enterprise. No wonder why IT time is expensive. They have to babysit hundreads of machines!
- For 5: Just like "For 4:" this can get problematic in a hurry. To make things worse, this even more incidious because for each piece of "security" software you install you now have a seperate process to keep it up to date.
Microsoft made Windows into the monster we have today. There are less bugs and in general a better user experience than previous versions of Windows but that is no excuse for having such idiotic exploits still floating around. Many platforms figured this out years ago (some aspects are 20+ years old for security) and yet Microsoft just dances along milking vendors and OEMs for as much money as they want with inane licensing schemes.
Yeah, bought and paid by the government. Lockhead-Martin will not go to the board and say "we think we can make money landing on the moon". They will go to the board with "we can make money selling a moon landing system to the government".
You find a public/private non-government entity that is willing to buy a moon landing system from LM and I'll conceed the point. Right now, there is no profit in deep space. Period. There is no modivation for investing capital in "noble causes". Its sad but very true.
Take a modern example: What profit is there in Cassini-Huygens? If you can figure that out sell it to someone and get rich and we all can send our space probes out there to take a close look at Saturn.
How cheap is it going to beat to fly into space? *shrug* Its like saying make a $10M contest to build a boat for $100 that can cruise can cross the Pacific. It can be done but I don't see such a contest harelding a new age of travel or cargo carrying. It takes more than coming up with a cheap boat that wins a science fair.
Everyone forgets step #2. People are going after the X-Prize because the prize itself is profit. The moment that disappears what then? How many people will pay for a 3 seat vehilce that will do nothing much but put them in orbit? What will they do up there? They certainly aren't going to make it to the moon let alone Saturn to check out what is there in this thing. If it costs $10,000 per person per ride how many are going to line up for this?!?!
I don't doubt that someday technology will catch up and make space travel cheap, comfy, and affordable. It isn't today and unless someone gets lucky doing materials research it isn't going to be any time in the near future. Contests like the X-Prize are interesting but it isn't going to change L-M, Boeing, etc. buisness plans.
Its lovely how there are cries of privatizing space and how we'd get to the stars faster if we only let regular joe mega corporations build spaceships. There plans go something like the familar pattern we've seen all over the place in/.
1. Privatize Space Exploration 2. ???? 3. Profit!!
Right now there is little to no incentive for a company like Lockhead-Martin to build system to land people on the moon and build a moonbase. Science is a terrible profit motive unless you can find practicle applications. And since we know the moon isn't made of cheese (which you can sell) or littered with diamons the size of footballs no company has this burning desire to go into space. Its too costly to make money at it.
So we are stuck with government ventures. I'm glad the US, Russia, and China push these things but I have no illusions about how this works. They are doing it because their is a small bet of prestigue and a good way to spend military for R&D without making it so obvious.
So until you find out that Pheobe is made of 99% gold or Mars has rubies the size of boulders or something else interesting there is little point ot privatizing space over having world governments fund it. Simply put, governments don't care about profits.
Once upon a time someone who wanted to drive really had to know everything about how their car functioned before ever setting foot in it. Now you can just hop in your car and go without giving a second thought to any of it.
Now you can try to spin this such that people back then were safer because they were more "savy" with their cars but I call BS. Cars now are far safer than they were back then. Its all due to the engineering placed in the car. Not only are they more complex placing them out of the comprehension of the Average Joe but they are more reliable, durable, and in general a better driving experience than ancient vehicles.
You shouldn't need to be a super crypto-wireless-hacker guru to use a computer or wireless setup. Engineers should be designing these things to not only be simplier but more robust. Having a better and safer system has nothing to do with the "savy" user and everything to do with the manufacturers.
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I mentioned tools as part of the problem. Lets say your digital camera has 500 pictures. Even if you have the desire to in detail setup the metadata for these 500 pictures the amount of time necessary to do it is staggering. You could easily spend more time maintaining the pictures instead of enjoying them.
You also neglect the thing that metadata means different things to different systems. One person might care if the pictures are near the ocean or in the mountains so they can search against that. The tools to express these features aren't impssible but are beyond what most "Nana" level users care about.
WinFS will work great for document archiving systems like SharePoint. It will do nothing for Nana and her thousands of images.
A feature that solves no problem. An interesting idea placed in the wrong location. And I'm glad its shelved.
On paper, this sounds neat kind of in a thesis paper sort of way. But the practicality of it was way beyond what any desktop user would need. I had problems figuring out how to use it efficiently (after all you have to have meta data lined up). I couldn't even begin to figure out how to explain how WinFS would help grandma and grandpa.
I do see WinFS as an interesting tool for server applications but for a desktop it isn't feasible without a whole heck of a lot more tools. On a server I can see this being a powerful tool to help keep your web app file data sane because you can force metadata and relationships there. On a desktop it would have been a feature with cumbersome tools used once a month. This is the very definition of bloat. I am very glad it was shelved since the cost vs benifit of WinFS on the desktop was completely off.
The problem with outsourcing is that it isn't a buisness move that creates growth. You remove a job here and create it over there. Profit is generated but no real change has happened so there is little modivation to create new jobs.
Yes its true the new job over there creates higher standard of living and wealth over there but at the cost of the standard of living and wealth over here you really haven't gained anything but CEOs with larger wallets.
Add to this that Windows doesn't give the user a facility to promote (and demote!) themselves easily its really hopeless. This problem has been around since NT 3.1 and has been compounded by the integration of IE into the kernel. And yes I know about "runas" but it doesn't work correctly for many apps (even ones provided by MS).
So Windows offers you as an IT manager two options:
- Remove admin rights from users but anytime an application requires a minor elevation in rights you will get pestered.
- Give everyone admin rights but watch installations like hawk because they might accidently misclick some link at some googled web site that wasn't what was said.
Either path is expensive. I curse MS every day for creating a flexible permission system, access control lists that are well integrated across the enterprise and then promptly not use them in any of the right places.
I'm stumped and have given up all hope of figure out what to do beyond pray. As long as MS clings to this system this Windows will be an expensive PITA system to maintain on the enterprise.
Are you sure its not a good bargin? You correctly point out that buying Doom3 for $40 is cheaper than a years subscription to any MMOG. But the trick happens to be, are you going to play Doom3 for [i]an entire year[/i]?? Most stand alone games can be played through in less than a month and have zero replay value. MMOG have months on end play value.
When viewed that way games like Doom3 are worth $40 but no more of a value than playing City of Heroes month after month.
Given this dialog:How many users are going to click "Yes"? You think it is stupid if a user clicks "Yes" but do you know how stupid is it to allow the user the option to click "Yes" and ruin their computer?? Now change "Ruin your computer?" to "An application has request traffic on port 139. Open it?"
This is a simplified example yet this is whats happening. A firewall is supposed to stop network traffic inbound or outbound that isn't accounted. Allowing the user to sidestep this easily is as handy as asking if they want to ruin their computer: Yes or No. Even with the improved features I'm still going to get calls from Mom saying something complained it wanted access so she clicked "Yes" to get it to shut up. Expecting users to be savy enough to patrol their computers got MS into this mess with SP 2. Now people are suddenly going to be wise??? Something doesn't add up.
I am not knocking SP2 since there are great things going on here but as the old saying goes: Security is a process. SP2 still "enables" users to screw up their computers with a few more hoops to jump through. I would rather have my parents have to jump through a few more hoops before they hang their computer with all of the wonderful "rope" MS gives them but I'm still very bothered its easy to hang themselves.
Simply put, in my opinion Zone Alarm is right and SP2 is wrong. The firewall is there to stop unwarrented traffic not to conviently prompt you to disable it.
For the money you need to use RAID 0 you are getting nothing but glorified fast hard drive (if you have the right application which the standard desktop is far and away not). Take the money and do:
- Buy one higher quality fast drive
- Buy the right hardware to do RAID 1 or higher
Using RAID 0 is more expensive than either of these two because you gain nothing for spending just as much if not more. Why bother bending benchmarks to make it look good when we already know what is a better solution?
Remind me again why Windows is considered ready for the desktop? Before anyone marks me as troll or flamebait I am asking a serious question. The graphical shell is just as primative as anything Gnome or KDE seem to front and the customization and configuration is non existent. The only thing going for Windows it seems is very tight integration across multiple applications. So the work lies outside of the graphical shell.
So why do people continually think Windows is ready for the desktop? Why are people striving to make Gnome and KDE like Windows? Windows if anything seems more primative which implies that desktops are too complex or something else is going on...
Kufuu wanted to leave a momument to himself to let others know how cool he was.
Lindbergh wanted to win the prize. He netted $25k for doing it.
Columbus wanted to be rich capitalizing on faster trade routes to the orient.
Didn't Kendey want to go to the moon because the USSR was upstaging us in space?
Wow...do these guys sound like they wanted to expand humanity or show off how cool they where?
I've posted many other times calling into the question the value of the X-Prize. I think it is important to go into space purely as a research venture but I have no illusions we'll find nothing out there but useless rocks.
If you were a paranoid Iranian or North Korean computer user and look at Microsoft Windows would you think the same thing? Heck, why would a Chinese user think that MS and the NSA/CIA/alphabet soup is trying to snoop them? Because MS allows a select group to look at their source?!?
At least with Open Source you have the source to ultimately check for yourself. Vendors like Novel, IBM, and RedHat are supposed to be actively looking at the source to make sure no one is slipping stuff in that doesn't belong but if you don't believe them you can do it yourself.
So you have a Mr. Dan O'Dowd trying to a terrorist ghost threat into Open Source. The problem is that the source is there for you to inspect. With Microsoft the only word you have is their word that they aren't monkeying with the OS to monitor you.
IMHO, BSD and Linux are perfect for Military and security applications. You can inspect every corner of the kernel. You can freeze on a specific version because you always have that source code. You can branch and patch as you see fit. This seems perfect for the military and security branches. With Microsoft you have to "signup" (how much money does it cost to do that?) to view the source and then what? The only proof you have is that this particular version of Windows hasn't been monkeyed with. What about the patches and hotfixes? *shrug*
When it really boils down to it are you going to believe the source you compiled, you control yourself or Microsoft? I think Mr. O'Dowd's trust is ill placed.
It isn't that a spatial nautilus was a bad idea it was the change. I frankly think nautilus is better in spatial. However it does freak people out who have been using nautilus forever.
Gnome's mistake was not allowing seemless integration. If someone was used to old nautilus then they should have not gave them spatial behavior. These users should have been left with the old behavior and let them turn it on at their leasuire.
I'm still not sure why MS bought Slate in the first place. "e-mags" are notoriously hard to generate profit from and MS did nothing to do help out in that department. As MS stops pretending its a rapid growth company it will have to tighten budgetary belt. That means stuff like Slate are first on the chopping block.
Although it was amusing how the timing worked having Slate give props to Firefox has nothing to do with MS selling Slate. Its purely a business move.
And when we do we will proudly rescue the martian baceria from their oppressive regime....whatever that maybe.
On a much more serious note, if oil was oozing from the ground you bet that we'd be there by now. However even though people lovingly claim that privitzation is the way to go fail to consider this.
If the US Government can't figure out how to make space exploration of innert rocks profitable the private sector can? Private companies love to throw away money evidently....
- Nothing about the GPL deals with the "end user" useage. Use it, don't use it. The GPL has no effect either way. The GPL deals developer and the source used to generate the software.
- There is only one real restriction on anything that is GPL: that any derivitives are as free as the derived works. What is the point of being freely available to everyone if someone else can just remove it at some later date?
- There is nothing about clause 2.B that says you can't sell GPL software. Redhat and IBM make business on selling GPL software. Just make sure the source is available.
The license favors him so why would he care? And the people who it doesn't favor should just shut up because they are fanatical?
If I wrote some handy software project but had a license with a clause "...everyone but Bill Gates can use it..." most of the people of the world can would be able to use it and hence its mostly open. However to say that this license is "...is very open..." is a half true. To carry on like its just as good as the GPL is dumb and shows a lack of understanding of the philosophy of the GPL.
People should be free to write whatever they like under what ever license they like. However to say "this license that is nearly as open as the GPL is just as good as the GPL" is wrong. At best, like the BSD license, it is just different (no better or worse) and at worse the license is a tool to make sure they can take some of the advantages of being mostly open yet stroke their ego because they are in absolutely control.
Andi Gutmans just doesn't want someone to come along and make a better PHP. That isn't "very open" or "just as good" as the GPL or BSD.
This paradox has been noted before. As Sean80 notes, life is often far more robust than people realize and will flourish places most would think are completely sterile. Mars is no different...in fact I wouldn't be surprised to find Earth bugs (figurative term, not the hard shelled animals) on still alive on the stuff we've thrown there.
This also creates a small paradox. If life is so robust and there is life on Mars it should be flourishing. By all intents and purposes Mars hasn't changed in a long time. A super stable environment is perfect for life to exploit no matter how hostile we view it. If its home for a martian life form it should love the place adapting itself in a place we would consider unlivable. If life takes a foot hold it will expand and capitalize as much as far as the environment will allow.
I'm not saying that we should be able to kick over a rock and find a martian bug hiding there but I'm saying that if there was life on Mars you should be able to inspect a wide field of the planet and easily find evidence of life. You can look at many small parts of Earth and claim "wow there is no life here" but if you zoom out take several thousands of cubic miles of space you can easily find the presence of life. In the middle of the Pacific ocean there might be nothing living from the sea surface to the mud ocean floor but the fact that the water is holding desolved unstable gases such as O2 is a big indictor that life is out there elsewhere. An actual life form might be hard to find but evidence of life should be all over.
So lets say there is a lifeform that is hearty enough to surive and flourish on Mars. It should flourish in places all sorts of spots on Mars and other lifeforms will rise around it to capitlize on them or some other side effect of them. So where is the evidence they've been there? If there are really ammonia producing martian microbes then they should be producing buckets of the stuff every day and over millions of years should be easy to detect. Is there another process destroying the ammonia that is dumped into the air? Either we have some sort of radical departure from what know is life living on Mars for millions of years...or Mars is really sterile.
The Fedora Crew can go as fast and agressive as they want if and only if they provide smooth upgrade paths by yum/up2date/"insert your favorite updating method here".
My FC2 install is only 1.5 months old. It took me that long to decide to upgrade since the old software was working great. When I did finally buckle down to do it I had to do a CD install. I would rather do a "yum upgrade-distribution" or something else entirely.
Between Debian's slowness of "it will be done when its done" and the neckbreaking speed of Fedora I keep hoping to find some sort of middle ground. I like software to be as progressive as anyone but upgrading is a major pain. If they solve that problem, then the world will beat a path to their door.
It falls back to the classic problem found in modern computer systems where if you present the user a chance to hang themselves they will do it.
Singing a plug-in just validates where it came from but never makes a gaurentee that the package does what it says it was designed to do (if it says anything at all!). You can sign malware and a user not realizing they shouldn't trust the source will happily click "Yes install!"
Signing of installs should always be done but users can not read into the signature more than what it means: Soandso validated these binaries. Implying that a signature is security is dangerous.
There are no features I can think of that should sacrifice security over. None. Zip. Zero. Holding off security improvements for the sake of compatibility is one of the loopiest thing you can do. You either pay in blood now or pay for it later with gallons more. Its as silly as claiming you need things to be buggy and broken on purpose!
Bravo to the guys at MS who are sticking to their guns and pushing this through.
I posted on this topic earlier (see history) but I'll reitterate: There is no real point in privitzation of deep space because there is no profit there.
This X-Prize contest is akin to GM offering a prize for a flying car. Sure you find find an inventive solution and a flying car that works well but I don't ever see it replacing the family SUV unless it can be made and sold for under $20k.
So here we have a contest where people think that privitization will solve all of the slowness in the sector. It isn't going to happen. Exactly what can you use this vehicle for? Hauling a small amount of weight really high? It hasn't even gotten into LEO yet and by my rough guessatments they need to figoure how to increase the thrust output 30 times more to do so.
Beyond this how is a craft that can take a couple people up to LEO supposed to bring forth a new age of discovery especially when there is nothing is up there? Companies are supposed to magically make money from doing this? I wouldn't hold my breath.
A user that does all of those dangerous things or Microsoft for allowing users to do all of those dangerous things?
This is a problem with the "modern user". They just accept that Windows and computers in general behave this way. That problems like Blaster are "just the way it is." Those who work on multiple platforms and systems see this and call "bullshit" because we get things done and don't have to deal nearly with this level of crap.
Throwing more software at XP is not going to solve the problem. What needs to change is Microsoft!!
- Above all else, why are users forced to run under a prelivaged account? Although not exactly necessary for Blaster, many rogue programs use this as a vector to infect machines. As long as Microsoft does not address how aweful the premission scheme is on Windows, people will have to run at highly elevated permissions which means its easy to infect people. Change this and many virii just go away...
- For 1: Why do you need to buy more software to use a computer out of the box? Mac, Linux, BSD all can all install and go and even do live installs. Even though you can do a live install of XP it isn't safe. So the solution on Windows is "you need more software"?? I call BS again. The installation process should be secure because its a custom kernel that is heavily scripted. There is no reason why the install process is vulnerable!!
- For 2: You can say that but as long as Microsoft allows users to start the application they will use it. Any other vendor by now would have gutted, disabled, etc. such a problematic application but Microsoft seems to know better....
- For 3: look at "For 2:"
- For 4: Windows Updates and beating "keep your system up to date" drum is all nice and neat but once again if you need run it manually (versions of Windows before XP) then there is a big chance it won't be done at all. Even then its dumb to have to login to apply a patch in an enterprise. No wonder why IT time is expensive. They have to babysit hundreads of machines!
- For 5: Just like "For 4:" this can get problematic in a hurry. To make things worse, this even more incidious because for each piece of "security" software you install you now have a seperate process to keep it up to date.
Microsoft made Windows into the monster we have today. There are less bugs and in general a better user experience than previous versions of Windows but that is no excuse for having such idiotic exploits still floating around. Many platforms figured this out years ago (some aspects are 20+ years old for security) and yet Microsoft just dances along milking vendors and OEMs for as much money as they want with inane licensing schemes.
Yeah, bought and paid by the government. Lockhead-Martin will not go to the board and say "we think we can make money landing on the moon". They will go to the board with "we can make money selling a moon landing system to the government".
You find a public/private non-government entity that is willing to buy a moon landing system from LM and I'll conceed the point. Right now, there is no profit in deep space. Period. There is no modivation for investing capital in "noble causes". Its sad but very true.
Take a modern example: What profit is there in Cassini-Huygens? If you can figure that out sell it to someone and get rich and we all can send our space probes out there to take a close look at Saturn.
How cheap is it going to beat to fly into space? *shrug* Its like saying make a $10M contest to build a boat for $100 that can cruise can cross the Pacific. It can be done but I don't see such a contest harelding a new age of travel or cargo carrying. It takes more than coming up with a cheap boat that wins a science fair.
Everyone forgets step #2. People are going after the X-Prize because the prize itself is profit. The moment that disappears what then? How many people will pay for a 3 seat vehilce that will do nothing much but put them in orbit? What will they do up there? They certainly aren't going to make it to the moon let alone Saturn to check out what is there in this thing. If it costs $10,000 per person per ride how many are going to line up for this?!?!
I don't doubt that someday technology will catch up and make space travel cheap, comfy, and affordable. It isn't today and unless someone gets lucky doing materials research it isn't going to be any time in the near future. Contests like the X-Prize are interesting but it isn't going to change L-M, Boeing, etc. buisness plans.
Its lovely how there are cries of privatizing space and how we'd get to the stars faster if we only let regular joe mega corporations build spaceships. There plans go something like the familar pattern we've seen all over the place in /.
1. Privatize Space Exploration
2. ????
3. Profit!!
Right now there is little to no incentive for a company like Lockhead-Martin to build system to land people on the moon and build a moonbase. Science is a terrible profit motive unless you can find practicle applications. And since we know the moon isn't made of cheese (which you can sell) or littered with diamons the size of footballs no company has this burning desire to go into space. Its too costly to make money at it.
So we are stuck with government ventures. I'm glad the US, Russia, and China push these things but I have no illusions about how this works. They are doing it because their is a small bet of prestigue and a good way to spend military for R&D without making it so obvious.
So until you find out that Pheobe is made of 99% gold or Mars has rubies the size of boulders or something else interesting there is little point ot privatizing space over having world governments fund it. Simply put, governments don't care about profits.
Once upon a time someone who wanted to drive really had to know everything about how their car functioned before ever setting foot in it. Now you can just hop in your car and go without giving a second thought to any of it.
Now you can try to spin this such that people back then were safer because they were more "savy" with their cars but I call BS. Cars now are far safer than they were back then. Its all due to the engineering placed in the car. Not only are they more complex placing them out of the comprehension of the Average Joe but they are more reliable, durable, and in general a better driving experience than ancient vehicles.
You shouldn't need to be a super crypto-wireless-hacker guru to use a computer or wireless setup. Engineers should be designing these things to not only be simplier but more robust. Having a better and safer system has nothing to do with the "savy" user and everything to do with the manufacturers.