Inspection will certainly help reduce the number of exploitable vulnerabilities, but I would think it would do more to catch intruders more quickly after the initial break in than they would otherwise be caught.
The important part will be if the inspection teams can work their magic before a sizeable sum is ripped off through some previously unseen vulnerability. Because we all know that in any reasonably-sized piece of software, there will always be a vulnerability.
I can understand your sentiment, but I think it might be a little more significant than you first realize. You bring up a good point that Linux users would not have access to iTunes, and being one such user who has problems with the Crossover product, I am anxiously awaiting native availability of iTunes on Linux.
Also, I would imagine if the iTunes Music Store was available online, some user-specific information would be stored that would allow more convenient accessing of such information from more than your "home" computer.
Plus, the news is big for Google, who is trying to compete with Yahoo!, who just recently announced it's own music store. Google would be introducing iTunes to some who have not yet experienced it (and yes, there are such people in existence), which could be continuing big news for online music downloads.
Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, at least for some people like myself, because we use it on the desktop. It's tautological. However, some people do not find it ready for their desktop needs, and as such, it's not ready for the desktop.
Linux will never become Windows. It will never become Mac OSX. It will always be different than those two operating systems. As long as this is the case, I imagine we will continually hear the debate about whether or not Linux is desktop ready.
I would be interested to know if there is some "official" estimate of how much money is wasted as a result of poor commenting practices. It all obviously depends on the size of the code and the number of people who are responsible for maintaing it.
My personal experience is with one person codes. I was recently in a situation where I was trying to study a code that another person had written and left behind. There was approximately 3000 lines of code with approximately 5 lines of comments. Quite painful, and unnecessarily so.
I would have to second this opinion. I recently used the fglrx driver in the Ubuntu distribution on a desktop, and I was extremely pleased with the performance.
Granted, I don't push the graphics too hard, but I had nothing to complain about from the standpoint of usability.
I don't think this is an evil argument at all. The decision whether or not to offer free wireless Internet access has to be based on pure capitalism.
If it's not profitable to offer the access, coffee shops (or any other establishment) will simply not offer it. The idea of printing codes on the receipt or inserting ads on the served pages are both good when it comes to the business owner receiving a financial benefit in return for this offered service.
It's supposed to be free because that's how Microsoft has done it.
That's not a very persuasive argument. I'm a big Linux guy, but I realize that Microsoft has a profit motive and shareholders to heed. Claiming that Microsoft is obligated to do something because that's how they did it in the past is erroneous at best.
Yes, you paid for your software. Yes, you were not forced to show as much proof in the past that you actually purchased your copy of Windows. But, that's Microsoft's decision to make, and with the terms of the license under which you chose to bind yourself, they are perfectly free to do just that.
The sentiment surely makes a lot of sense, but there is much inertia behind the idea that developing for Internet Explorer only is the easiest and most efficient means to reach a vast majority of your customers.
As Firefox continues to grow and receive more press attention, and as Mac OSX and Linux slowly (but surely) gain an increased foothold in the market place, this inertia will begin to evaporate. That's one of the reasons why IBM's efforts should be appreciated.
I think this is a very good point, in that the Internet robs one of many of the faculties one would use to reach a decision in "the real world".
I would imagine one has to rely more on known brands, and what those known brands would recommend. Seeing Yahoo! or Google become involved in a particular service usually lends that service some credibility.
Usenet is also useful for viewing shared feedback about these sorts of ideas. Scammers and phishers are always looking for the easy way out; it's the honest people who have to put in the effort.
I would imagine it would take more time and energy than most malware authors and the like would hope to expend. Most infected PCs are using a DHCP lease for their IP address, whereas the free hosting sites allow you to have a static URL for your storage and distribution needs.
It's the motivation shared by spammers; expend very little energy, send out tons and tons of spam/malware, and some of it will stick. It's simply not worth the extra effort.
It's not the number of updates that either browser releases that determines how "buggy" it is. In fact, I might be happy seeing a release per day from each of them, because then you know that each is being developed continuously, and the browser you are using today is quite likely improved relative to the one you were using yesterday.
What is much more scary than having frequent product updates is having no updates at all. Just ignoring bugs because they're easier to ignore than fix. I'm not sure why the mindset of some folks is that if an upgrade is being released the program must be garbage.
People do not complain about the security (or lack thereof) of Windows because of the number or frequency of updates being made available on the Microsoft website. It's the bugs that aren't being fixed that are the problem.
None of those say a thing about paying attention to the initial sound of the following noun. All of them, however, mention paying attention to the initial sound of the following word.
I think that's a rather naive interpretation of the article. As another poster mentioned, Microsoft is a big an of the "total cost of ownership" argument, and while I find the argument to not be in Microsoft's favor, there is something to be said for considering the time involved in making FOSS work the way you would like it to (and with sufficient stability). Time does equal money, and they both need to be evaluated when making claims about the burden imposed by software on business.
Your response would be much more funny if it wasn't for the subtle grammatical error in "a iterative fragment"[sic] as opposed to "an iterative fragment". Better luck next time.
I don't think there are any. Red Hat has made pretty clear their intention of generating revenue from support and service value adds; if you (or your company) are comfortable with trouble shooting the distribution as is, you can get by with one of the "generic" releases. Depending on in what environment you intend to run the distribution, Red Hat's offering may or may not be worth your time and money.
Is this new "N" edition going to be bundled with new PCs sold in the EU by default, or is this strictly a decision to be made by off-the-shelf purchasers? It seems those sufficiently informed to know the difference between the two editions already use whatever media player they find best, and those not sufficiently informed pretty much stick with the version of Windows that came with their PC.
It would appear to me this solution is cosmetic at best.
I suppose that BlackBox & IceWM might be faster then the default KDE or Gnome WM's, but performance isn't usually a big issue for me.
And I think this is a good example of part of the beauty of the variety of window managers for GNU/Linux. I have plenty of RAM for day-to-day activities, but I also run a very resource hungry scientific plotting application every now and again. Running IceWM not only gives me much faster start up/login times than KDE or GNOME, but it also leaves a bit more RAM for my plotting application. It seems to make more than a trivial difference.
But, again, the choices are nice. Something I appreciate every day.
There is more than a little truth in this statement. You want existing window managers to be improved? Go ahead, improve them. That's part of the beauty of free and open source software. You can feel free to make the changes you would like to see be made.
It's not about what corporations are or are not "already stuck with"; it's about to what licenses free and open source alternatives require a user to agree. For a personal desktop, the issue is largely non-existent. For corporate adoption, it can be much more significant.
I understand being burned by a specific application will make you averse to using that application in the future, but I wouldn't shy away from Java as a component of some larger application simply because it caused a problem for you personally once.
The free and open source software community is responsible for making sure bad implementations of important tools are fixed quickly and effectively, and I don't think it's the technical arguments against the use of Java that are the crux of this debate. It's the idea of slowly creating more and more features within OpenOffice that rely on a critical component that is itself not free.
And your point is well-taken, but the beef of this argument is with the corporate sector who have serious licensing issues to consider before they even evaluate some alternative application (much less an alternative desktop platform).
For personal users, this is likely a non-issue. For those involved in the creation and maintenance of distributions, or those looking to advise a switch to an alternative corporate office suite, this debate is quite important. It's not a matter of paying up for software that isn't free. It's a matter of how the free software movement should cope with having a flagship application not being completely free.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your distinction of the hobbyist and corporate markets. Asking "who cares?" is obviously indicative of being a personal user who does not have any concern for the licensing issues involved in corporate adoption.
The author of the article is right on with his assertion that OpenOffice is one of the seminal applications in the road to more widespread adoption of free desktop alternatives, and I find the scariest part about this situation to be the lack of communication taking place. This has to get resolved, and sooner rather than later.
I agree that it seems to be a game of reputation (where finances are of little concern). They both do quite well with their stated mission, and the documented instances in which one flatly out-performs the other on a specific test are few and far between. It's a tough game to play.
Slashdot Mirror
Inspection will certainly help reduce the number of exploitable vulnerabilities, but I would think it would do more to catch intruders more quickly after the initial break in than they would otherwise be caught.
The important part will be if the inspection teams can work their magic before a sizeable sum is ripped off through some previously unseen vulnerability. Because we all know that in any reasonably-sized piece of software, there will always be a vulnerability.
I can understand your sentiment, but I think it might be a little more significant than you first realize. You bring up a good point that Linux users would not have access to iTunes, and being one such user who has problems with the Crossover product, I am anxiously awaiting native availability of iTunes on Linux.
Also, I would imagine if the iTunes Music Store was available online, some user-specific information would be stored that would allow more convenient accessing of such information from more than your "home" computer.
Plus, the news is big for Google, who is trying to compete with Yahoo!, who just recently announced it's own music store. Google would be introducing iTunes to some who have not yet experienced it (and yes, there are such people in existence), which could be continuing big news for online music downloads.
Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, at least for some people like myself, because we use it on the desktop. It's tautological. However, some people do not find it ready for their desktop needs, and as such, it's not ready for the desktop.
Linux will never become Windows. It will never become Mac OSX. It will always be different than those two operating systems. As long as this is the case, I imagine we will continually hear the debate about whether or not Linux is desktop ready.
I would be interested to know if there is some "official" estimate of how much money is wasted as a result of poor commenting practices. It all obviously depends on the size of the code and the number of people who are responsible for maintaing it.
My personal experience is with one person codes. I was recently in a situation where I was trying to study a code that another person had written and left behind. There was approximately 3000 lines of code with approximately 5 lines of comments. Quite painful, and unnecessarily so.
I would have to second this opinion. I recently used the fglrx driver in the Ubuntu distribution on a desktop, and I was extremely pleased with the performance.
Granted, I don't push the graphics too hard, but I had nothing to complain about from the standpoint of usability.
I don't think this is an evil argument at all. The decision whether or not to offer free wireless Internet access has to be based on pure capitalism. If it's not profitable to offer the access, coffee shops (or any other establishment) will simply not offer it. The idea of printing codes on the receipt or inserting ads on the served pages are both good when it comes to the business owner receiving a financial benefit in return for this offered service.
It's supposed to be free because that's how Microsoft has done it.
That's not a very persuasive argument. I'm a big Linux guy, but I realize that Microsoft has a profit motive and shareholders to heed. Claiming that Microsoft is obligated to do something because that's how they did it in the past is erroneous at best.
Yes, you paid for your software. Yes, you were not forced to show as much proof in the past that you actually purchased your copy of Windows. But, that's Microsoft's decision to make, and with the terms of the license under which you chose to bind yourself, they are perfectly free to do just that.
The sentiment surely makes a lot of sense, but there is much inertia behind the idea that developing for Internet Explorer only is the easiest and most efficient means to reach a vast majority of your customers.
As Firefox continues to grow and receive more press attention, and as Mac OSX and Linux slowly (but surely) gain an increased foothold in the market place, this inertia will begin to evaporate. That's one of the reasons why IBM's efforts should be appreciated.
I think this is a very good point, in that the Internet robs one of many of the faculties one would use to reach a decision in "the real world". I would imagine one has to rely more on known brands, and what those known brands would recommend. Seeing Yahoo! or Google become involved in a particular service usually lends that service some credibility. Usenet is also useful for viewing shared feedback about these sorts of ideas. Scammers and phishers are always looking for the easy way out; it's the honest people who have to put in the effort.
I would imagine it would take more time and energy than most malware authors and the like would hope to expend. Most infected PCs are using a DHCP lease for their IP address, whereas the free hosting sites allow you to have a static URL for your storage and distribution needs. It's the motivation shared by spammers; expend very little energy, send out tons and tons of spam/malware, and some of it will stick. It's simply not worth the extra effort.
It's not the number of updates that either browser releases that determines how "buggy" it is. In fact, I might be happy seeing a release per day from each of them, because then you know that each is being developed continuously, and the browser you are using today is quite likely improved relative to the one you were using yesterday.
What is much more scary than having frequent product updates is having no updates at all. Just ignoring bugs because they're easier to ignore than fix. I'm not sure why the mindset of some folks is that if an upgrade is being released the program must be garbage. People do not complain about the security (or lack thereof) of Windows because of the number or frequency of updates being made available on the Microsoft website. It's the bugs that aren't being fixed that are the problem.
Well, a quick Google search led me to these:
t .html - an-the.php m l / a/a-or-an.html l
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/esliar
http://www.englishrules.com/writing/2005/a-versus
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.ht
http://www.rhlschool.com/eng2n26.htm
http://dictionary.reference.com/help/faq/language
http://www.english-zone.com/grammar/a-anlessn.htm
None of those say a thing about paying attention to the initial sound of the following noun. All of them, however, mention paying attention to the initial sound of the following word.
I think that's a rather naive interpretation of the article. As another poster mentioned, Microsoft is a big an of the "total cost of ownership" argument, and while I find the argument to not be in Microsoft's favor, there is something to be said for considering the time involved in making FOSS work the way you would like it to (and with sufficient stability). Time does equal money, and they both need to be evaluated when making claims about the burden imposed by software on business.
Your response would be much more funny if it wasn't for the subtle grammatical error in "a iterative fragment"[sic] as opposed to "an iterative fragment". Better luck next time.
I don't think there are any. Red Hat has made pretty clear their intention of generating revenue from support and service value adds; if you (or your company) are comfortable with trouble shooting the distribution as is, you can get by with one of the "generic" releases. Depending on in what environment you intend to run the distribution, Red Hat's offering may or may not be worth your time and money.
Is this new "N" edition going to be bundled with new PCs sold in the EU by default, or is this strictly a decision to be made by off-the-shelf purchasers? It seems those sufficiently informed to know the difference between the two editions already use whatever media player they find best, and those not sufficiently informed pretty much stick with the version of Windows that came with their PC.
It would appear to me this solution is cosmetic at best.
I suppose that BlackBox & IceWM might be faster then the default KDE or Gnome WM's, but performance isn't usually a big issue for me.
And I think this is a good example of part of the beauty of the variety of window managers for GNU/Linux. I have plenty of RAM for day-to-day activities, but I also run a very resource hungry scientific plotting application every now and again. Running IceWM not only gives me much faster start up/login times than KDE or GNOME, but it also leaves a bit more RAM for my plotting application. It seems to make more than a trivial difference.
But, again, the choices are nice. Something I appreciate every day.
There is more than a little truth in this statement. You want existing window managers to be improved? Go ahead, improve them. That's part of the beauty of free and open source software. You can feel free to make the changes you would like to see be made.
It's not about what corporations are or are not "already stuck with"; it's about to what licenses free and open source alternatives require a user to agree. For a personal desktop, the issue is largely non-existent. For corporate adoption, it can be much more significant.
I understand being burned by a specific application will make you averse to using that application in the future, but I wouldn't shy away from Java as a component of some larger application simply because it caused a problem for you personally once.
The free and open source software community is responsible for making sure bad implementations of important tools are fixed quickly and effectively, and I don't think it's the technical arguments against the use of Java that are the crux of this debate. It's the idea of slowly creating more and more features within OpenOffice that rely on a critical component that is itself not free.
And your point is well-taken, but the beef of this argument is with the corporate sector who have serious licensing issues to consider before they even evaluate some alternative application (much less an alternative desktop platform).
For personal users, this is likely a non-issue. For those involved in the creation and maintenance of distributions, or those looking to advise a switch to an alternative corporate office suite, this debate is quite important. It's not a matter of paying up for software that isn't free. It's a matter of how the free software movement should cope with having a flagship application not being completely free.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your distinction of the hobbyist and corporate markets. Asking "who cares?" is obviously indicative of being a personal user who does not have any concern for the licensing issues involved in corporate adoption. The author of the article is right on with his assertion that OpenOffice is one of the seminal applications in the road to more widespread adoption of free desktop alternatives, and I find the scariest part about this situation to be the lack of communication taking place. This has to get resolved, and sooner rather than later.
I agree that it seems to be a game of reputation (where finances are of little concern). They both do quite well with their stated mission, and the documented instances in which one flatly out-performs the other on a specific test are few and far between. It's a tough game to play.