Yes, I suppose so, but that's insanely short-sighted. Over the long term, you're much better off if it gets open sourced, even if there is an existing backdoor. My reasoning is that, even without the source, hackers can and probably will find existing backdoors, eventually, but the "good community" may never find it.
But who thinks about the long term these days? Even the richest people in this country are committing all sorts of fraud for a quick buck.
The short answer to your question is, "Yes". Over a long enough timeline with enough people looking at the code, backdoors get caught. There was recently, well, maybe 1 year, a backdoor found in an Open Source database that used to be a proprietary product. The backdoor had been there for the entire life of the product. However, it took over a year after becoming open source for it to be caught.
Exactly! "Trustworthy computing" is analagous to buying a car where you don't get the keys! You get the car, but every time you want to drive it, you have to prove you're the owner of the car, and someone else, who you don't know but are supposed to trust, has to start it for you.
Call me paranoid, but I think I trust myself more than I'll ever trust a stranger.
Hmmm... Is that what passes for paranoid these days? Ridiculous...
And we're not even talking business or national security.
"Trusted computing" my ass... That's like a Mafia slogan, "Legit business".
Perhaps, maybe, did you even fucking acknowledge the possibility(?), that someone who came from Iraq has more insight into the situation than you do?
But, oh no, listening to someone who actually came from the region and is free to talk about it would go against one of the principles of Cyber-punditry.
a real shame, since Google's been doing a lot of things reasonably well..
Google is a good search engine, but to be quite honest, I really think they're a bunch of hypocrites.
They take a political stand against advertising for firearms, which I can understand, completely disagree with but understand, but at the same time they are willing to help China with censorship!
They are blaming a tool(guns) for doing evil, but they are willingly helping to commit a great evil themselves.
I mean, face it, it's not going to have any new "features" that you need or want. It's nothing more than a solution looking for a problem. All software upgrades are as much. Eventually, there's nothing compelling to be added, so companies plan for obsolescence, bug-fixes, UI disfigurments, etc.
There's no reason for Microsoft to continue coming out with new Office(TM) versions any more frequently than every 5 years or so, perhaps even less. Bug fixes shouldn't be considered upgrades. Bugs that hamper usage should be considered a defect in the product which the company is required to fix, free of charge.
All the money dumped into buying Office would be better spent helping to fund OO.org or another such free software office suite. I think a few billion dollars is more than enough to fund development of something _better_ than Office.
You're wrong, it's ALWAYS been corrupt. Well, at least for well over 100 years. If you doubt this, read a bit of "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt". He basically started in politics because he was angry with the corruption, and that was in 1882. You think corporate corruption is bad today(it is), well, it was just as bad back then, but it was done more blatantly. It's too easy to record things these days for them to do it so openly, so they just do it at Jack Valenti et al`s parties...
This often heard argument simply doesn't hold. Perhaps some script that looks like
skjhsd ~/skjh/%askf a $$ kjs hf$"$ s
can really do the same thing as a half page Java Program. But to debug it, you might need to read a 50 page manual and take consciouness enhancing drugs.
I think that's totally wrong. Get familiar with Perl or Python(or any other similar language) and write something that's semi-complex, and then write it in C. You'll find that your C program is at least 2 - 4 times as large.
Not that I think Scripting languages should be discriinating against. I can relate to comapnies who want to focus on one language, though.
I won't argue with that. Sticking to one language _can_ be a good thing, especially if all the company's developers are familiar with said language.
What it boils down to is needing a good manager to make good decisions.
I didn't mean to make it sound like I was bashing scripting (no pun intended)
Pun intended or not...:)
But seriously, what's the biggest, most complicated program written in perl, compared to the biggest, most complicated program written in C/ C++ / Java?
At some point, any scripting language would probably get really unweildy after growing too large. But FWIW, FYI, etc., I have written and maintained some ~10,000 line projects written in Perl, and kept them maintainable. But I'll definately agree that at some point, they probably would become difficult to maintain, not to mention perform like a dog with bricks tied to it's head.
Anyway... I think maintainability is a very insignificant thing to worry about when chosing between a scripting language and a compiled language, other language features are generally much more significant. But that's not to say that for certain projects, maintainability could be a huge issue in chosing a compiled language over a scripting language, but I don't think that's the general case.
It all depends on exactly what you're doing! And don't forget, Perl is not the only scripting language, some of your arguments don't apply to others.
And then there's C... Come on... void * anyone? C++ template syntax, unhelpful compile-time errors related to templates, ABI incompatibilities, etc. For every maintainability problem in any scripting language, there's another to be found in a compiled language.
Languages are different, and lend themselves to (un)maintainability in many different ways. There's more to maintainability than type checking and OO. In fact, type checking is so overly rated by "compiled language bigots"; I can't count how many times I've see code passing the right type, but the totally wrong thing, and I can count really high!:) Furthermore, many scripting languages have a so much more elegant OO approach than C++ et al`.
I never said Perl, or even scripting languages in general are fit for every job, quite the contrary.
Just because everyone and their mother started doing scripting when the WWW became popular, writing the most awful code ever, doesn't mean scripting languages are inherently less maintainable than compiled languages.
Sure, but IMO it's more than that. I think the structure of the code, the size of the project(I've seen some pretty complex forms:-), etc.
There's a different process involved with each. Programming requires creating a solid infrastructure, whereas, IMO, scripting is basically gluing a bunch of shit together as fast as possible.
For example, I've seen plenty of GUI apps that are structured like your average web form processor, and I've seen plenty of web-based stuff that's beautifully structured, and based on a solid foundation.
I've done my fair share of Perl, C, C++, Java, etc. programming, and I have to call BS on your comment.
There may still be a small amount of truth to what you said, however, modern scripting languages are every bit as maintainable as C, C++, or Java. In fact, an incompetent C programmer probably is the most likely to create unmaintainable code, as scripting languages require less total code, and therefore it's easier to absorb quickly.
Most scripting languages are designed around letting small problems be implemented quickly.
True, but most scripting languages that are still widely used today have evolved beyond that.
But in any case, you're certainly correct that they each have their place.
Why are you so intent on being an asshole? You don't even have a fuckin' clue what you're talking about? You don't even know what parts of the windows API vc++ touches. The article wasn't even about that anyway. The point of the article was that wine enabled this dude to do cross platform work on linux, easier. Maybe that's not interesting to YOU, or to me TBA, but then why the fuck were you reading it.
Then you go on to say, "only thing this article achieves is to make Slashdot look like the anti-MS geeks with limited social awareness".
What the fuck? This article had nothing to do with MS bashing, it was about doing windows development on Linux! Again, what the fuck? Then you go on to insult Michael... for no apparent reason.
Video editing is a specialized enterprise. Not anything close to Joe User.
Not anymore. With iMacs coming with decent video-editing tools, and consumer versions (only $300) of Final Cut, and other tools, Joe User is getting interested in this stuff.
Not to mention students in film school, etc. 64-bit procs sure could be useful to them in the near future.
I dunno though, I guess 4 GB is till enough for most Joe Users for now... But just wait for Windows XP 2004 3.1!
What about video editing? You think large video editing shops are going to stick with over-priced hardware, or use 32-bit can-only-address-4GB Intel hardware?
No friggin way! They're going to go with AMD Opteron.
Cheap 64-bit computing is right around the corner, and Intel is going to be playing catch-up real soon now.
And with more and more people getting into editing their own videos, people are going to want 64-bit computing sooner than Intel is letting on.
Are you sure you know what you're talking about? Just how the hell do you know what vc++ does regarding the Windows API? That's right, you probably don't. Do you?
Furthermore, the point of the article is that this guy is now using Wine to do some real work, not that Wine has acheived some level of technical excellence that's meant to be impressive to YOU. There is one tiny blurb about how Wine has progressed.
Does anyone know for how long Wine has been able to run vc++, and what was required to get it working?
How bout you reimplement windows from the ground up before you start trolling about it.
OTOH, if you are an intelligent person, you can conveniently use a credit card to get an instant loan whenever you like, allowing you to purchase things you otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.
Credit cards work both ways. Be intelligent, and they will be an asset. Be stupid, and they will be a liability.
Transgaming has purchased a number of copy prevention mechanisms for use in WineX to enable it to play windows games that use them. There's no way around it for them, it's either circumvent the copy prevention, or include code in winex to enforce it/allow the game to play. If they did the former, they would be in violation of the DMCA and would undoutably be sued into oblivion immediately.
So no, nothing more nefarious than making games work.
Slashdot Mirror
But who thinks about the long term these days? Even the richest people in this country are committing all sorts of fraud for a quick buck.
Call me paranoid, but I think I trust myself more than I'll ever trust a stranger.
Hmmm... Is that what passes for paranoid these days? Ridiculous...
And we're not even talking business or national security.
"Trusted computing" my ass... That's like a Mafia slogan, "Legit business".
But, oh no, listening to someone who actually came from the region and is free to talk about it would go against one of the principles of Cyber-punditry.
Google is a good search engine, but to be quite honest, I really think they're a bunch of hypocrites.
They take a political stand against advertising for firearms, which I can understand, completely disagree with but understand, but at the same time they are willing to help China with censorship!
They are blaming a tool(guns) for doing evil, but they are willingly helping to commit a great evil themselves.
Not a big deal I guess. I suppose people shouldn't take c&d letters personally, they are written by lawyers after all.
There's no reason for Microsoft to continue coming out with new Office(TM) versions any more frequently than every 5 years or so, perhaps even less. Bug fixes shouldn't be considered upgrades. Bugs that hamper usage should be considered a defect in the product which the company is required to fix, free of charge.
All the money dumped into buying Office would be better spent helping to fund OO.org or another such free software office suite. I think a few billion dollars is more than enough to fund development of something _better_ than Office.
People like that, who are successful, are few and far between. The others are a dime a dozen... sadly.
We need to elect a president like that. Unfortuneately, there's no one that has a chance any time soon.
I place this idea under the GPL. Take it, use it, extend it, or print it out and use it for toilet paper.
I shall use it to wipe my ass :)
Oh. :) Well, I think it _can_, but it certainly can also do the opposite. Just check out some Perl 1 - 10 liners :)
Cheers!
I think that's being too generous! :)
note to /. editors, j/k
This often heard argument simply doesn't hold. Perhaps some script that looks like skjhsd ~/skjh /%askf a $$ kjs hf$"$ s
can really do the same thing as a half page Java Program. But to debug it, you might need to read a 50 page manual and take consciouness enhancing drugs.
I think that's totally wrong. Get familiar with Perl or Python(or any other similar language) and write something that's semi-complex, and then write it in C. You'll find that your C program is at least 2 - 4 times as large.
Not that I think Scripting languages should be discriinating against. I can relate to comapnies who want to focus on one language, though.
I won't argue with that. Sticking to one language _can_ be a good thing, especially if all the company's developers are familiar with said language.
What it boils down to is needing a good manager to make good decisions.
Pun intended or not... :)
But seriously, what's the biggest, most complicated program written in perl, compared to the biggest, most complicated program written in C/ C++ / Java?
At some point, any scripting language would probably get really unweildy after growing too large. But FWIW, FYI, etc., I have written and maintained some ~10,000 line projects written in Perl, and kept them maintainable. But I'll definately agree that at some point, they probably would become difficult to maintain, not to mention perform like a dog with bricks tied to it's head.
Anyway... I think maintainability is a very insignificant thing to worry about when chosing between a scripting language and a compiled language, other language features are generally much more significant. But that's not to say that for certain projects, maintainability could be a huge issue in chosing a compiled language over a scripting language, but I don't think that's the general case.
Cheers!
And then there's C... Come on... void * anyone? C++ template syntax, unhelpful compile-time errors related to templates, ABI incompatibilities, etc. For every maintainability problem in any scripting language, there's another to be found in a compiled language.
Languages are different, and lend themselves to (un)maintainability in many different ways. There's more to maintainability than type checking and OO. In fact, type checking is so overly rated by "compiled language bigots"; I can't count how many times I've see code passing the right type, but the totally wrong thing, and I can count really high! :) Furthermore, many scripting languages have a so much more elegant OO approach than C++ et al`.
I never said Perl, or even scripting languages in general are fit for every job, quite the contrary.
Just because everyone and their mother started doing scripting when the WWW became popular, writing the most awful code ever, doesn't mean scripting languages are inherently less maintainable than compiled languages.
You obviously haven't looked at enough amateur C/C++ code! :)
I must concur though; scripting languages HAVE been "tainted" by the Web. Damn those fashion designers!
There's a different process involved with each. Programming requires creating a solid infrastructure, whereas, IMO, scripting is basically gluing a bunch of shit together as fast as possible.
For example, I've seen plenty of GUI apps that are structured like your average web form processor, and I've seen plenty of web-based stuff that's beautifully structured, and based on a solid foundation.
YMMV, YHBT, HAND, AYBABTU, etc.
There may still be a small amount of truth to what you said, however, modern scripting languages are every bit as maintainable as C, C++, or Java. In fact, an incompetent C programmer probably is the most likely to create unmaintainable code, as scripting languages require less total code, and therefore it's easier to absorb quickly.
Most scripting languages are designed around letting small problems be implemented quickly.
True, but most scripting languages that are still widely used today have evolved beyond that.
But in any case, you're certainly correct that they each have their place.
Cheers.
Then you go on to say, "only thing this article achieves is to make Slashdot look like the anti-MS geeks with limited social awareness".
What the fuck? This article had nothing to do with MS bashing, it was about doing windows development on Linux! Again, what the fuck? Then you go on to insult Michael... for no apparent reason.
You're just trolling, stop it.
Not anymore. With iMacs coming with decent video-editing tools, and consumer versions (only $300) of Final Cut, and other tools, Joe User is getting interested in this stuff.
Not to mention students in film school, etc. 64-bit procs sure could be useful to them in the near future.
I dunno though, I guess 4 GB is till enough for most Joe Users for now... But just wait for Windows XP 2004 3.1!
No friggin way! They're going to go with AMD Opteron.
Cheap 64-bit computing is right around the corner, and Intel is going to be playing catch-up real soon now.
And with more and more people getting into editing their own videos, people are going to want 64-bit computing sooner than Intel is letting on.
Then again, I could be wrong. I'm wrong "alot" :)
Furthermore, the point of the article is that this guy is now using Wine to do some real work, not that Wine has acheived some level of technical excellence that's meant to be impressive to YOU. There is one tiny blurb about how Wine has progressed.
Does anyone know for how long Wine has been able to run vc++, and what was required to get it working?
How bout you reimplement windows from the ground up before you start trolling about it.
Thanks.
Credit cards work both ways. Be intelligent, and they will be an asset. Be stupid, and they will be a liability.
So no, nothing more nefarious than making games work.