Well, because this is probably the only way to 1) make the vendor care about them and 2) make the end-users care about them. In terms of software security, public concern is almost as important as the vendor concern. Maybe more important, even. Because in the end, this is the customer who drives the software's development. If the customer doesn't know about security holes, he/she just won't ask the vendor to fix them. And the vendor will use that as an excuse to focus on other areas: this is *exactly* was has crippled Microsoft for so long. They even admitted it on a regular basis. They kept saying that customers asking for bug fixes were very very few, and that was in itself a reason not to release bug fixes, and wait for the next version to fix them. The customer is a key for software quality improvement...
Then the license is "counterfeit", not the product itself. Granted, MS has decided that product = license in their own world. Technically, the term is not right, though. This is not a counterfeit product, but a license violation.
(A calendar.) Great, so now they'll know what you search for, what you visit *and* what you are going to do in the future. You're right, not much freedom left after that one...
I doubt M$ will ever support this format, or else their main revenue stream would be endangered.It won't be as long as their software has something competitive in it besides being a monopole on a closed document format. It's all up to them...
Either society considers someone dangerous and keeps them in prison - or it considers them not dangerous, or not dangerous anymore, and lets them be free. There is no compromise in between... and let me tell you, a lot of people would rather die than know they'll be tracked for life every second of the day... I'm not personally for death penalty for various reasons, but I think in this case, such a tracking system would be akin to hypocrisy: a way of avoiding to take the responsability of killing someone (death penalty) and still depriving them of the very essence of their humanity.
And I'm not even talking about justice mistakes, technology reliabilty, and so on... a lot can be said. Again, I'm not actually for death penalty, but I say, if you're going to go this far, just cut the crap (and the costs), get some balls, take your responsibilities and kill the guy already...
Not really. By principle, the scientific approach is not based on beliefs, contrary to what creationists (and others) like to claim. And this is exactly what distinguishes science from faith. Science is *not* some form of faith, it is the antithesis of it. Science is not so the knowledge it acquires, but the way it acquires this knowledge. And contrary to what you say, it can all be argued through logic and reason. And fortunately it can. Reason is what sets us apart from the rest of animals.
But heck, there are even scientists which are believers, and even some that are creationists. We may argue that those don't quite embrace the scientific principles, though. They make compromises - to me, some of the worst compromises you can make as a human being.
Again, any such discussion that would be based on what is "right" and what is "wrong" is inherently flawed. It's all the way you come to your conclusions that matters: and reason is the only tool we dispose of that most closely grasps reality. Some skeptics may say there is no reality - and on some level, that makes sense. But I dare them to keep saying that when they are, for instance, in front of a gun or dying from cancer.
They actually mean: convince them to use MS tools/OS.
We all know that when MS speaks of interoperating, they mean that as a one-way street. Besides, they have been bashing the OSS community so bad, I wonder what they really expect now. A sit-down after having been called evil, communist and unreliable? Are they fricking kidding us? 8)
In any case, from what I've heard, critical software is not developed by the NASA itself, but an external private company located in Houston. I think that nowadays, most software purely developed at the NASA is research-oriented software, not production software.
One thing you forgot is that NASA != government. It may be a public institution, but everything it decides is not necessarily a decision of the government.
such as browsers and e-mail agents, my main concern is a "networking" one.
If I think one commercial, largely used product (such as IE) actually promotes bad behaviors, I'll try to convince people not to use it - and use better alternatives instead. IE clearly *has been* promoting some very bad behaviors, for instance by being too permissive and unsufficiently supportive of standards. It has somehow pushed a big chunk of the web-related professions to do some really nasty stuff: non-standard web sites, installing third-party ActiveX stuff that one could not get rid of, and so on.
So basically, to me, it's not a question of which is free and which is commercial - I am not religious about this stuff in the least. It's a question of which is inherently more "ethical" than the other. But I've noticed that trying to convince some people to be more ethical is often a lost cause - so I don't think I'm at all obnoxious at promoting OSS.
No they should not. They are not real persons, and by definitions have no interests except profits.
They are not persons, but they are led and managed by persons. Now if you take your argument and change "corporations" to "corporation managers", there you are: they are persons, and your argument is naught. Should managers get involved in social issues? They *are* real persons (well, we should hope most of them are.;-) ).
Whereas it's good to promote software engineering in itself, I would not show that much joy about this employment trend you're talking about. By caring more about how you can work in a team, master UML and similar standard design processes, than about your skills and know-how, that also says that companies start to see you as a pawn and must ensure that you will be easily replaced: if you're a good team worker, follow a well known design process and have average skills in your field, aren't you the perfect candidate for a temporary job, the kind of worker that can most easily be replaced later on?
Windows introduces... new stuff that's been existing for ages. Like background defrag (come on, every third-party defragmentation tool has been able to do that for years, including the famous Diskeeper), files that can exist in more than one folder? So, links! Like we haven't had this for decades in Un*x-like OSs... Oh, and I'm sure this very feature won't confuse the hell out of most users. (Can you feel the irony?) All that's really new is a pretty UI. Yeah.
You know, one thing that Ballmer got really right is the following: "When we launched.NET, frankly, I was saying, will they like it? Will the dog buy this dog food?"
So here you are: Microsoft thinks of you clients as dogs, and of their software as food. Makes perfect sense to me...:D
Get real. That's true about pure text documents, but any complex document never gets fully exported by most software (especially MS software), so you lose a lot in the process. And since the format is a closed one, you'll never get the extra info - that which doesn't get exported at all, or at least partially or in a wrong way. But even if you didn't (which is very rare actually), you'd have to dedicate huge amounts of time exporting all of your data. I don't think you get it. A dozen personal letters don't count here. Then, there may be a time when your old software won't run on any current computer - now what? Go to the museum to get the job done? Find an emulator and pray it works? Last but not least, that's not even counting with the new trend: software activation. What if the company goes out of business and you're left with some software that you can't activate? (Or the license of which actually doesn't allow you to run the software if the company doesn't exist anymore, yes it can happen my friend, since it's actually in the essence of a lot of closed-source software licenses...)
So hogwash? Yeah right. The long-term usability of documents *is* clearly threatened by closed formats; not to mention that open, standard formats are most often much better designed, with clear intentions and general purpose in mind - another guarantee that it's a solid framework for your data. Just my 2 cents.
Hey man. You make a point here. But is it really a valid one? The fact is that if the company providing the software ever dies, you'll be left with nothing. All of your data lost forever (we can imagine that scenario). This poses a serious question concerning document formats. The question, ultimately, is very simple: should we ever use software that manipulates closed document formats? Seems like a real threat to me.
Almost all of our data is becoming purely digital nowadays and this is not ever going to change back. Open data formats are essential if we care about our data. Period.
It's (almost) exactly as though CD makers said that they would hold the rights on any music recorded on those CDs. Blah. Oopsie, I wonder whether I have just given some really bad ideas to some CD makers here...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, because this is probably the only way to 1) make the vendor care about them and 2) make the end-users care about them. In terms of software security, public concern is almost as important as the vendor concern. Maybe more important, even. Because in the end, this is the customer who drives the software's development. If the customer doesn't know about security holes, he/she just won't ask the vendor to fix them. And the vendor will use that as an excuse to focus on other areas: this is *exactly* was has crippled Microsoft for so long. They even admitted it on a regular basis. They kept saying that customers asking for bug fixes were very very few, and that was in itself a reason not to release bug fixes, and wait for the next version to fix them. The customer is a key for software quality improvement...
This is a joke, right?
Then the license is "counterfeit", not the product itself. Granted, MS has decided that product = license in their own world. Technically, the term is not right, though. This is not a counterfeit product, but a license violation.
Sounds like you've spent too much time on Slashdot already. ;-)
You do realize that only an extremely small portion of the unemployed is able to do programming tasks, don't you?
(A calendar.) Great, so now they'll know what you search for, what you visit *and* what you are going to do in the future. You're right, not much freedom left after that one...
I doubt M$ will ever support this format, or else their main revenue stream would be endangered.It won't be as long as their software has something competitive in it besides being a monopole on a closed document format. It's all up to them...
Either society considers someone dangerous and keeps them in prison - or it considers them not dangerous, or not dangerous anymore, and lets them be free. There is no compromise in between... and let me tell you, a lot of people would rather die than know they'll be tracked for life every second of the day... I'm not personally for death penalty for various reasons, but I think in this case, such a tracking system would be akin to hypocrisy: a way of avoiding to take the responsability of killing someone (death penalty) and still depriving them of the very essence of their humanity.
And I'm not even talking about justice mistakes, technology reliabilty, and so on... a lot can be said. Again, I'm not actually for death penalty, but I say, if you're going to go this far, just cut the crap (and the costs), get some balls, take your responsibilities and kill the guy already...
Yeah, same here. This juicer sucks. ;-)
Not really. By principle, the scientific approach is not based on beliefs, contrary to what creationists (and others) like to claim. And this is exactly what distinguishes science from faith. Science is *not* some form of faith, it is the antithesis of it. Science is not so the knowledge it acquires, but the way it acquires this knowledge. And contrary to what you say, it can all be argued through logic and reason. And fortunately it can. Reason is what sets us apart from the rest of animals.
But heck, there are even scientists which are believers, and even some that are creationists. We may argue that those don't quite embrace the scientific principles, though. They make compromises - to me, some of the worst compromises you can make as a human being.
Again, any such discussion that would be based on what is "right" and what is "wrong" is inherently flawed. It's all the way you come to your conclusions that matters: and reason is the only tool we dispose of that most closely grasps reality. Some skeptics may say there is no reality - and on some level, that makes sense. But I dare them to keep saying that when they are, for instance, in front of a gun or dying from cancer.
They actually mean: convince them to use MS tools/OS.
We all know that when MS speaks of interoperating, they mean that as a one-way street. Besides, they have been bashing the OSS community so bad, I wonder what they really expect now. A sit-down after having been called evil, communist and unreliable? Are they fricking kidding us? 8)
Better yet: "$50,000 should be enough for everybody". ;-)
In any case, from what I've heard, critical software is not developed by the NASA itself, but an external private company located in Houston. I think that nowadays, most software purely developed at the NASA is research-oriented software, not production software.
One thing you forgot is that NASA != government. It may be a public institution, but everything it decides is not necessarily a decision of the government.
such as browsers and e-mail agents, my main concern is a "networking" one.
If I think one commercial, largely used product (such as IE) actually promotes bad behaviors, I'll try to convince people not to use it - and use better alternatives instead. IE clearly *has been* promoting some very bad behaviors, for instance by being too permissive and unsufficiently supportive of standards. It has somehow pushed a big chunk of the web-related professions to do some really nasty stuff: non-standard web sites, installing third-party ActiveX stuff that one could not get rid of, and so on.
So basically, to me, it's not a question of which is free and which is commercial - I am not religious about this stuff in the least. It's a question of which is inherently more "ethical" than the other. But I've noticed that trying to convince some people to be more ethical is often a lost cause - so I don't think I'm at all obnoxious at promoting OSS.
They are not persons, but they are led and managed by persons. Now if you take your argument and change "corporations" to "corporation managers", there you are: they are persons, and your argument is naught. Should managers get involved in social issues? They *are* real persons (well, we should hope most of them are. ;-) ).
Exactly, and this is partly why software patents are STUPID.
Whereas it's good to promote software engineering in itself, I would not show that much joy about this employment trend you're talking about. By caring more about how you can work in a team, master UML and similar standard design processes, than about your skills and know-how, that also says that companies start to see you as a pawn and must ensure that you will be easily replaced: if you're a good team worker, follow a well known design process and have average skills in your field, aren't you the perfect candidate for a temporary job, the kind of worker that can most easily be replaced later on?
Windows introduces... new stuff that's been existing for ages. Like background defrag (come on, every third-party defragmentation tool has been able to do that for years, including the famous Diskeeper), files that can exist in more than one folder? So, links! Like we haven't had this for decades in Un*x-like OSs... Oh, and I'm sure this very feature won't confuse the hell out of most users. (Can you feel the irony?) All that's really new is a pretty UI. Yeah.
Very well put.
You know, one thing that Ballmer got really right is the following: "When we launched .NET, frankly, I was saying, will they like it? Will the dog buy this dog food?"
So here you are: Microsoft thinks of you clients as dogs, and of their software as food. Makes perfect sense to me... :D
The only thing you need is: large amounts of money, a bunch of lawyers, and... maybe some extra cash for someone in the patent office?
Get real. That's true about pure text documents, but any complex document never gets fully exported by most software (especially MS software), so you lose a lot in the process. And since the format is a closed one, you'll never get the extra info - that which doesn't get exported at all, or at least partially or in a wrong way. But even if you didn't (which is very rare actually), you'd have to dedicate huge amounts of time exporting all of your data. I don't think you get it. A dozen personal letters don't count here. Then, there may be a time when your old software won't run on any current computer - now what? Go to the museum to get the job done? Find an emulator and pray it works? Last but not least, that's not even counting with the new trend: software activation. What if the company goes out of business and you're left with some software that you can't activate? (Or the license of which actually doesn't allow you to run the software if the company doesn't exist anymore, yes it can happen my friend, since it's actually in the essence of a lot of closed-source software licenses...)
So hogwash? Yeah right. The long-term usability of documents *is* clearly threatened by closed formats; not to mention that open, standard formats are most often much better designed, with clear intentions and general purpose in mind - another guarantee that it's a solid framework for your data. Just my 2 cents.
Hey man. You make a point here. But is it really a valid one? The fact is that if the company providing the software ever dies, you'll be left with nothing. All of your data lost forever (we can imagine that scenario). This poses a serious question concerning document formats. The question, ultimately, is very simple: should we ever use software that manipulates closed document formats? Seems like a real threat to me.
Almost all of our data is becoming purely digital nowadays and this is not ever going to change back. Open data formats are essential if we care about our data. Period.
that was talking about how Dell was considering using AMD chips in the future?
It's (almost) exactly as though CD makers said that they would hold the rights on any music recorded on those CDs. Blah. Oopsie, I wonder whether I have just given some really bad ideas to some CD makers here... ;-)