At one point or another, all companies and or services and products were new. Every company has faced this at their inception. Any hesitation on this matter is nothing new, it's just open source now. With the lower overhead of open source software and many proven examples of viability thereof (see the external article for more details on how this model is working) I think it should make a very enticing offer for many companies. As the owner of a small IT services startup, I advocate a mixture of closed and open source software to my clients based on their budget and needs and it has worked beautifully so far.
The overall effectiveness of this will of course be determined by the users who are writing their own clients/plugins. Your mileage may vary. However, I do see this as a positive step forward, if only in an academic sense. With a major company making such an effort to have their software available for community modification, with tutorials and examples, I'd have to say that this is a nice step away from the monoculture software development. Even if you can't get anything truly useful out of it, it is interesting to take a look at what is offered and see what you might be able to learn from it. Never hurts to experiment.
Well put. It was not my intent to imply that you had to choose between one or the other on interface or good coding. However, putting too much work into the UI is a bad thing when it starts to detract from the overall code base for the application and it's usability (pretty buttons don't mean a thing if they don't link to a well written function). I feel that simplicity is the key to good computing, be it in the UI or the application code base. I'm just simply advocating fuctions first and graphics second. It is possible though to have outstanding graphics in a great application (OS X is a fine example of such an effort). A user can get over having little eye candy in their application, but functionality issues and bloated applications, like MS Office, are a bit harder to skirt.
When you have potential for community property, there will always be the potential for individuals to abuse this, and some will. I'm not quite sure if I feel that tapping into nearby unprotected WiFi is actually immoral or even "stealing" in this case. The average user does not come close to using their full bandwidth potential. These same average users, however, are then paying for things they are not using, and those tapping in are merely using the excess in most cases that will never be missed. Above average users would probably secure their networks in the first place:-)
On another note, sharing WiFi access promotes information sharing (which is neither positive nor negative, it is all in how the individual uses it). Feedom of information and ideas, rather than the cloistering and supression of the same is what brought us out of the dark ages. I think that viable community driven and supported publicly accessable WiFi would be a great help to our culture. Information shouldn't be horded an doled out to only those who can afford it, it's not a luxury.
Just my two cents.
I would tend to disagree. I would rather use a less aesthetically appealing interface if the program behind it is more stable and useable. Much like when I use Linux I go straight to the plain and simple command line interface if the task is truly important (I do this in Windows also, provided the fucntion I desire is accessable from the command line).
Microsoft has shown in the past that integration of more of their applications (such as the email client mentioned in MS Office) has best served to introduce new security holes into applications that normally would not be affected (due to shared paths and resources). Open Office makes for a smaller "target" in this respect, and as posted previously by others, it offers all the functionality most users need in that style of application.
Oh, and let us not forget that while Open Office does have a helper as part of the UI, it isn't that obnoxious paper clip. Perhaps if Microsoft would have invested the money they spent on designing that "pretty little interface" into initial code development there wouldn't be as many patches released for MS Office.
I've been fermenting "coffee wine" at home here for the last 4 weeks. It should be ready by the 17th of this month and I am eager to try it. Nothing like caffinated alcohol.
A good source of information on the Yellowstone hot spot can be found in Christiansen's USGS professional paper, available at http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/prof-paper/pp729g/
This paper was refered to me by Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, senior researcher at the YVO. I am currently doing vulcanism research and thought I'd throw this out here.
As far as creating an artificial volcano, in my opinion, I'd chalk that up as a no. Sorry guys.
Also, Mac users don't have to worry about the terrible password security found in Windows (LM format.) I attended a seminar recently given by the president and CTO of Gray Hat Research, Inc who went into great detail. I feel many of the problems in Windows are due to the Microsoft development process, where developers working on one part of the operating system are not allowed access to source from a different part of the project, so we have everyone going about their merry ways with only general guidelines in mind.
No operating system is truly secure out of the box, and firewalls and the like should only be your primary line of defense, since they can't be made to protect from everything or everyone (the only 100% safe way is to never connect to the net.) It takes an observant and security conscious user to secure a machine, that is the important step, which is not operating system specific.
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At one point or another, all companies and or services and products were new. Every company has faced this at their inception. Any hesitation on this matter is nothing new, it's just open source now. With the lower overhead of open source software and many proven examples of viability thereof (see the external article for more details on how this model is working) I think it should make a very enticing offer for many companies. As the owner of a small IT services startup, I advocate a mixture of closed and open source software to my clients based on their budget and needs and it has worked beautifully so far.
The overall effectiveness of this will of course be determined by the users who are writing their own clients/plugins. Your mileage may vary. However, I do see this as a positive step forward, if only in an academic sense. With a major company making such an effort to have their software available for community modification, with tutorials and examples, I'd have to say that this is a nice step away from the monoculture software development. Even if you can't get anything truly useful out of it, it is interesting to take a look at what is offered and see what you might be able to learn from it. Never hurts to experiment.
Well put. It was not my intent to imply that you had to choose between one or the other on interface or good coding. However, putting too much work into the UI is a bad thing when it starts to detract from the overall code base for the application and it's usability (pretty buttons don't mean a thing if they don't link to a well written function). I feel that simplicity is the key to good computing, be it in the UI or the application code base. I'm just simply advocating fuctions first and graphics second. It is possible though to have outstanding graphics in a great application (OS X is a fine example of such an effort). A user can get over having little eye candy in their application, but functionality issues and bloated applications, like MS Office, are a bit harder to skirt.
When you have potential for community property, there will always be the potential for individuals to abuse this, and some will. I'm not quite sure if I feel that tapping into nearby unprotected WiFi is actually immoral or even "stealing" in this case. The average user does not come close to using their full bandwidth potential. These same average users, however, are then paying for things they are not using, and those tapping in are merely using the excess in most cases that will never be missed. Above average users would probably secure their networks in the first place :-)
On another note, sharing WiFi access promotes information sharing (which is neither positive nor negative, it is all in how the individual uses it). Feedom of information and ideas, rather than the cloistering and supression of the same is what brought us out of the dark ages. I think that viable community driven and supported publicly accessable WiFi would be a great help to our culture. Information shouldn't be horded an doled out to only those who can afford it, it's not a luxury.
Just my two cents.
I would tend to disagree. I would rather use a less aesthetically appealing interface if the program behind it is more stable and useable. Much like when I use Linux I go straight to the plain and simple command line interface if the task is truly important (I do this in Windows also, provided the fucntion I desire is accessable from the command line). Microsoft has shown in the past that integration of more of their applications (such as the email client mentioned in MS Office) has best served to introduce new security holes into applications that normally would not be affected (due to shared paths and resources). Open Office makes for a smaller "target" in this respect, and as posted previously by others, it offers all the functionality most users need in that style of application. Oh, and let us not forget that while Open Office does have a helper as part of the UI, it isn't that obnoxious paper clip. Perhaps if Microsoft would have invested the money they spent on designing that "pretty little interface" into initial code development there wouldn't be as many patches released for MS Office.
I've been fermenting "coffee wine" at home here for the last 4 weeks. It should be ready by the 17th of this month and I am eager to try it. Nothing like caffinated alcohol.
A good source of information on the Yellowstone hot spot can be found in Christiansen's USGS professional paper, available at http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/prof-paper/pp729g/
This paper was refered to me by Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, senior researcher at the YVO. I am currently doing vulcanism research and thought I'd throw this out here.
As far as creating an artificial volcano, in my opinion, I'd chalk that up as a no. Sorry guys.
Also, Mac users don't have to worry about the terrible password security found in Windows (LM format.) I attended a seminar recently given by the president and CTO of Gray Hat Research, Inc who went into great detail.
I feel many of the problems in Windows are due to the Microsoft development process, where developers working on one part of the operating system are not allowed access to source from a different part of the project, so we have everyone going about their merry ways with only general guidelines in mind.
No operating system is truly secure out of the box, and firewalls and the like should only be your primary line of defense, since they can't be made to protect from everything or everyone (the only 100% safe way is to never connect to the net.) It takes an observant and security conscious user to secure a machine, that is the important step, which is not operating system specific.