". ..discovered a flaw in Version 4.7 of OpenSSH on Debian/GNU Linux."
"The attack relies on flaws in the RFC (Request for Comments) internet standards that define SSH"
So which is it, is it an implementation specific bug, which is specific to OpenSSH on Linux specifically, OpenSSH on all O/Ses, or is it a flaw in the RFC, which should make it exploitable on *all* implementations of SSH, shouldn't it? How can a flaw in the standard only be exploitable in one version of one implementation of the standard on one specific target OS?
"ISPs will nickel and dime you the same way in IPv6 as they nickel and dime you today in IPv4."
Yes, I know NATv6 exists. Yes, I suppose some ISP's will try to keep charging for IP addresses, but the thing is, the market will change. Right now, every ISP charges for additional addresses because they MUST - they have to pay money for IP addresses, and they have a very limited supply. There is artificial scarcity.
In a market where there is no artificial scarcity, I guarantee that (at least in free-market countries), some ISPs will route all your IP addresses for you instead of dropping packets to other IPs in the same subnet (with IPv6, every end-user is *supposed* to get a subnet address from their ISP, not a host address). Because the market doesn't force ISPs to charge for routable public addresses with IPv6, the market forces should tend to favor the ISPs that give them for free. So, for example, if, say, my local Telco doesn't want to give me what I want with my DSL, maybe I go with someone like Speakeasy or Earthlink for DSL, or a local independent ISP.
Semi-public beta's don't give your servers the THRASHING that a true fully public beta will. If you want to really test out and prove your infrastructure and networking code, you need to put it through the crucible of a real public beta. Though, it sounds like, from your post, the GPG/Stardock people should have probably been aware that something wasn't right with the networking even during their semi-public beta.
I'd probably do a limited beta first, then later on, when I had resolved most of the issues discovered in the limited beta, open it up for at least a week to the public, to see what happens.
You make good points, but to play devil's advocate. . . "they" (that is, supporters of this idea) would probably say that for medical emergencies you should be calling an Emergency Medical Service (like 911 in the USA- is 911 implemented in most countries?), and that ambulances would not have such limiters put on them. But the counter to that is, I suppose, sometimes you just don't have time to wait for an ambulance to arrive, and you know where a nearby hospital is.
The idea of P2P connections between members of a multiplayer game seems like pretty much a no-brainer, but because of NAT, it's a total P.I.T.A. Everyone likes to say, "We don't need IPv6, just use NAT". But, NAT makes lots of things more complicated (like needing to setup port-forwarding to accept in-bound connections, or using a third-party server that isn't behind a NAT that everyone makes an outbound connection to). Plus, port forwarding sucks because only one computer per network can have any given port forwarded to it (that is, you *CAN* forward different ports to different computers, say have port 5000 forwarded to 192.168.1.10, and have port 5001 forwarded to 192.168.1.11, but you can't forward port 5000 to both computers - but if they each had their own unique, public IP, they can both receive traffic on the same port).
I long for an IPv6 world where NAT is basically a thing of the past (and for those who say NAT is good for security, there's no reason you can't still have firewalls built into routers).
"In the end, the government has more of your money and your support, and the world isn't any greener."
I couldn't agree more. You can't 'efficiency' your way away from oil. The only way to get away from oil is with cars that either don't burn Gasoline or Diesel, so you're looking at something like electric, hydrogen, bio-fuels, or which burn synthetic gasoline or synthetic diesel (that is, producing the same fuel, but starting from something other than oil - for example, you can turn coal into liquid gasoline [but coal's not much better than oil - the only advantage would be that the USA has, from what I've read, an enormous supply of coal, but that's still carbon, so it's not any better for the environment)].
The article that the Slashdot Editors linked to as dissenting opinion is a great piece, explaining something which has been obvious to me, at least, for years - if you, short term, reduce the demand for something, the price will drop, when the price drops, the demand comes back. Put simply, as fuel efficiency increases, people will drive more (that is, they'll live farther away from work/school with longer drives, they'll do more weekend road-trips, etc), and more people will drive (China is having an automobile boom right now, and so will any other third world nations who sufficiently develop).
Every drop of gas we save in the US will be bought by China, India, and other countries. The solution is to get away from gasoline altogether.
If you wait, you're very likely gonna wait for nothing, or wait longer than you expect, or you are going to pay a massive premium for such fuel efficient cars. Obama can't just wave a magic wand and cars get more fuel efficient AND remain the same size and weight. If it were so easy to make vehicles (that people actually want to buy) have such fuel efficiency, Detroit, or Tokyo, or Seoul would have done it long ago.
If you want such a fuel efficient car, you can get them today. They tend to be very small cars, things like Minis, or slightly larger, but still very small. Or you can try going the hybrid route, but you will pay a premium for 'new-technology' fuel efficiency. The problem is, if the Obama administration gets its way, the car makers will all be forced (probably) to sell cars that are so expensive, it'd be cheaper to buy a less efficient 'conventional' car, and just buy more gas! I mean, do you *want* to pay $40,000 for a Chevy Cavalier/Cobalt class of car (which I think usually sell for $20,000)?
You can't just regulate things to be the way you want - if it were possible to cost-effectively increase fuel efficiency standards, the free market really would have taken care of this a long time ago. I know it's become vogue to think the free market model is completely wrong and the source of all the world's problems, but at it's heart, it's really simple - people will find the optimum balance between price and features through negotiation without government butting in. If features are *too damn expensive* they won't pay for them. The government, if it tries to use the power of regulation to force people to pay for features which are too expensive *will* get a nasty surprise - the economy (or at least that part of the economy, like the New Automobile market) will become seriously broken because of the regulations.
Yes, yes, I know the economy is already seriously broken, right now, but mandates like this will not do anything to help fix it.
The whole memory thing, I can't really blame users for too much. Technically, hard drives, optical drives, memory cards, usb sticks, etc, *are* forms of long-term memory for the computer. A hard drive does much the same thing as system memory (that is, it stores digital values) - it just does it *much* slower. I do get what you're saying about being frustrated though - I run into this with my mom and dad frequently - I'd rather they used the word memory to only refer to system RAM, not their hard drive space, because when they tell me they think their computer is running out of memory, I now have to go in and figure out if they have too much crap running in the background, or if I need to delete something off the hard drive.
I don't see Mac displacing a more open platform, really. Yes, I'm calling Windows a more open platform, or rather, the PC market in general. Here's the thing, compared to Mac, Windows *is* more open.
Don't get me wrong, Apple products, from a technical and user interface perspective, generally are superb. But, I can only run Mac OX on Apple hardware. Which means if I want to use hardware from any other vendor, I don't use Mac OS. Which is why Mac can never 'rule the world' - because they force every other hardware vendor to choose other O/S platforms. Whereas Windows will hapilly run on *almost* any box with an Intel or AMD chip inside (or even Via).
Put another way, Apple is 'greedy'. They want to control both the software market, and the hardware market (which does make it so that users get a consistently good experience with regards to stuff 'just working', but from an economic standpoint, guarantees that they will always have every other PC hardware company in the world competing against them, instead of cooperating with them).
Linux has the possibility to be something Mac NEVER can - an open O/S platform which any vendor can embrace. Windows cannot die until there is an open O/S platform that non-Apple hardware can run, which people can use as a suitable replacement for Windows. Mac simply cannot ever fill that role, because of that whole 'non-Apple' thing. Well, it could if Cupertino took their head out of their hind-quarters and started licensing Mac OS X to other vendors, like Dell, HP, IBM, et. al., but they won't, so Mac won't ever supplant Windows. Ever.
I think that about sums up the parent post. *grin*
While more Free Software is a great thing, if you depend every day on software like SolidWorks, AutoCad, or the myriad other applications for which there currently aren't any (or aren't any *decent*) Free software alternatives, then you're pretty much stuck, and all the wishing in the world isn't going to help you.
Some of us appreciate the freedom of Free software, but also recognize that other people have the freedom to make the software they write NOT be Free software, and that they aren't evil for deciding to exercise the freedom to choose the license they feel makes sense for the products they have spent years and millions of dollars producing.
That is, I love Free software, but I don't hate companies like Adobe, AutoDesk, or the many, many other proprietary software companies who employ hundreds of thousands of people in good jobs, or the many, many companies and people who choose to use that software in their commerce and personal use.
That said, I do think that the author of the original article does miss something - Linux developers can't make hardware vendors or software vendors support Linux, so ultimately, any analysis of what deficiencies Linux has can't really include things that are *outside the control* of Free software developers. Most of the points on his list are, really, very valid - issues of backwards compatibility, lack of standardized configuration, lack of standardized installer framework, issues of Sound API problems. Note - the author wasn't complaining that his sound card doesn't work under Linux - his complaint is issues of software compatibility - like, take for instance, the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (which is, I think, Free software at this point - I'm not positive but I think the source for Wolf:ET was released under a free license, but I may be wrong). The game was based upon the Open Sound System (OSS). Current distros tend to use ALSA (which isn't a bad thing - ALSA is a step forward from OSS), but the problem is, the sound for W:ET doesn't work 'out of the box' with alsa - you have to modify system startup scripts to cause a text string to be echo'ed into a file under the/proc filesystem; why couldn't ALSA provide OSS sound compatibility automatically? Also, when W:ET is using the sound card, I have seen problems where other sound apps could not access the sound card (like TeamSpeak - which is a small VoIP program which is popular for use with W:ET).
The point is, the sound API's/software layers in Linux do cause users headaches from time to time, even though they do work, mostly.
"Hard-core Linux advocates don't want "Proprietary Windows Applications" running on Linux. They want "Open-Source Applications" running on Windows and Linux."
Ok, what about people and companies who would like to move to Linux and experience more of the freedom that you advocate, but they are stuck with that one legacy application that their business depends upon? They are neither hard-core Linux advocates, nor hard-core Windows users. You split the world into a false dichotomy which simply does not exist in reality. Wine is great because it often lets people make the switch to Linux, but keep using software until such time that they are able to replace it with something else.
As for Samba - most of us have to get Linux/*BSD systems to play nice with Windows systems, because people do still use Windows. Samba is Free software, and is simply the easiest way (that I know of, anyhow) to allow file sharing back and forth between Linux and Windows. Is there something wrong with that?
Personally, for the cause of Free software, I think it would be better for people to run proprietary applications on Linux (if they must), than to run Free software apps on Windows (which Free software advocates don't generally have a problem with, because they feel it acts as a bridge to introduce users to free software, which I agree with, but lik
If = is ambiguous, then you must have a habit of abusing it. While you can overload = to mean anything you want, I suppose, it would seem like you should try to preserve the general notion of the assignment operator in C and C++, which is that = never modifies the right-hand side of the equal sign, only the left hand side.
"Does it mean duplicate the contents, transfer the contents and clear the original copy, or just swap the contents of the items, which might be quicker."
I would say if you are trying to stay true to the way the operator behaves in the language when you overload it, the last two operations would NOT be overloaded to the equal sign, because they modify the right-hand argument. Give them a meaningful method name instead.
It's been awhile since I looked at OpenDNS, so maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I could swear that OpenDNS's business model is based around generating ad revenue from doing NXDomain redirection, isn't it? If that's the case, swapping one NXDomain redirect for another doesn't seem very productive.
Having heroes or villains be able to swap sides is a cool idea - one I had about 10 minutes after they announced City of Villains 3 years ago or whatever. To call that one feature a major expansion (ok, to be fair, it sounds like they are building new zones and things into this expasion too, and probably lots of other stuff as well), but really, switching sides seems like a minor feature at best, and something they should have had in the game a long time ago.
The actually *really* interesting feature which CoX introduced recently (although I haven't had a chance to play the game since they released it), is Architect. Architect allows players to create missions, story bosses to go with those missions, etc. User-generated content in an MMO - I'm not sure, but I don't think there are any other MMOs which allow user generated content. They should win an industry award just for having the balls to try that.
"I don't think you can do that without violating the HDMI spec."
I suppose it depends upon how 'smart' the spec is. That is, the HDMI spec could have a 'handshake' with the device on the other end of the connection, to see if it supports HDCP crypto, andd if it doesn't, would only send lower resolution video data (and probably does, but I'm not sure - someone mentioned that you *can* do HDMI->DVI, at least). If the other end *does* support the crypto, then it can send the high-res stream, encrypted. If the other end 'lied' about supporting the crypto, then the device will be unable to decrypt and display the data, while if it does support the crypto, then the integrity of the HDCP data path has been honored (at least between those two devices - it seems to me theoretically possible that someone could create a 'receiver' which gets the encrypted data, then decrypts it, but that would likely be a violation of the HDCP license).
Anyhow, my point is, there is no reason that you couldn't potentially have the HDMI spec designed so that you could hook up VGA or DVI devices to an HDMI socket via an adapter, yet still preserve the copy protection on Blu-Ray content. You just force VGA or HDMI devices to be sent lower-res video for HDCP protected content. So, why would anyone want to hook up lower-res devices, you might wonder, if that means you are forced to lower quality video? Well, because it would still be high res for normal computer operation (O/S desktop, applications/games, etc), and maybe you don't have an HDMI device at the moment.
Like, for example, I'm getting a new computer for my parents, I want to make sure it has HDMI on the video card, so that in the future, I can upgrade my parents to a high-res monitor or HDTV, and use the computer to watch Blu-Ray, but at the present time, I'm not buying them a Blu-Ray drive because they are still too expensive, and they don't have an HDTV or very high resolution monitor. Basically, I want to future-proof the computer, but maintain backward compatibility with older monitors. I guess the solution to that is video cards with multiple physical video ports, but that just seems like a silly design, that HDMI isn't backwards compatible, so you need multiple ports on the GPU.
I guess, thinking about the issue more, I sort of see your point. If MS did a reverse split, even though the price per share goes up, I as a shareholder make no net gain, because my number of shares which I hold goes down proportionally to the increase in price (presumably - and that may not even be the case, necessarily - perhaps the market decides that 1/2 as many shares is not worth 2x the price).
Whereas with a stock buyback by the company, I do not lose any shares, while the price probably goes up, so I should realize an actual gain in the value of the stock I hold.
I don't get stock buybacks? What's the point? I assume it's to reduce the amount of oustanding shares on the market, driving up the price of the stock and increasing the value of remaining shareholders' shares? But, if that's the goal, why not just to a stock merge? That is, I've heard of stock splits, where a company declares that all outstanding shares will be split, like 2 for 1 or 3 for 1. If a company can split their stock, why can't they merge it? So if you had 100 shares before, maybe you have 75 or 50 afterwords?
If I were a shareholder, I'd rather a company use the money as a dividend, instead of using it to buy back the stock.
Speaking of too featureful. ..I notice it comes with HDMI, DVI, *and* VGA/DSUB connectors. Isn't there some way to just put an HDMI connector on the box itself, and use adapters for DVI or VGA? The back of that mobo looks pretty darned crowded to me.
Yeah, if you check the other replies, you'll notice that I realized that shortly after my original post, and posted a correction. It's always just a dumb thing to make a 'new' game by hacking an old one if the copyright holder hasn't authorized modding (that is, some games like half-life, quake/doom, Unreal, etc, the publishers encourage mods, so you're good there) - because you will frequently run into problems like this group did. Just start with a new game engine (there are a few open source game engines that I believe are pretty decent), and no one else can tell you what to do with your game when it's 98% done.
Ok, I missed something before - I didn't realize this was a modification of the original ROM for Chrono Trigger. All I can say is these game devs are sort of idiots. They should have just built their game from the ground up 'clean' (well, they could have probably used an open source game engine as the basis for it). That way, if Square-Enix decided to stomp on them, they *could* have done what I originally suggested - change a few names, dialog, and maybe a little bit of artwork, and have an essentially original game.
You know, if the game is 98% done, and S-E doesn't want their 'precious' IP violated, the game developers have a very easy solution - change the name of the game, the name of the character, modify the dialog slightly so it doesn't use the copyrighted character names, and if there are any art assets which are very obviously the same as artwork in any of the Chrono Trigger games, modify the artwork enough that it's 'original', then release. I mean, really, Square-Enix can't stop them from releasing a game - they can only stop them from releasing a game which incorporates Square Enix's copyrights.
Really, just release the game without using any of the Chrono Trigger names, characters, or artwork. Yes, that will delay the release of the game and add more work - but not *that much* additional work. It should be easy enough to make the game original.
New lines of netbooks or very cheap/low power desktops that some manufacturers are interested in making, which would be based on ARM and probably run Linux (or maybe *BSD). Support for ARM looks like it is very important for that market. Those are, arguably, mass market 'desktop' systems, which just don't happen to be based on x86 or PPC.
Then there's things like mobile phones and others.
I can't see for the life of me why a developer would dismiss the embedded market as not needing glibc to work correctly on it?
Yeah, whenever I see substantial discounts being offered by *anyone* - whether it's software, hardware, cars, or cell phone service, it just makes me realize how much I was being ripped off *before* the discount.
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to Slashdot, where the 'editors' routinely post multi-year-old 'news'.
". . .discovered a flaw in Version 4.7 of OpenSSH on Debian/GNU Linux."
"The attack relies on flaws in the RFC (Request for Comments) internet standards that define SSH"
So which is it, is it an implementation specific bug, which is specific to OpenSSH on Linux specifically, OpenSSH on all O/Ses, or is it a flaw in the RFC, which should make it exploitable on *all* implementations of SSH, shouldn't it? How can a flaw in the standard only be exploitable in one version of one implementation of the standard on one specific target OS?
"You'll encounter NATv6."
"ISPs will nickel and dime you the same way in IPv6 as they nickel and dime you today in IPv4."
Yes, I know NATv6 exists. Yes, I suppose some ISP's will try to keep charging for IP addresses, but the thing is, the market will change. Right now, every ISP charges for additional addresses because they MUST - they have to pay money for IP addresses, and they have a very limited supply. There is artificial scarcity.
In a market where there is no artificial scarcity, I guarantee that (at least in free-market countries), some ISPs will route all your IP addresses for you instead of dropping packets to other IPs in the same subnet (with IPv6, every end-user is *supposed* to get a subnet address from their ISP, not a host address). Because the market doesn't force ISPs to charge for routable public addresses with IPv6, the market forces should tend to favor the ISPs that give them for free. So, for example, if, say, my local Telco doesn't want to give me what I want with my DSL, maybe I go with someone like Speakeasy or Earthlink for DSL, or a local independent ISP.
Semi-public beta's don't give your servers the THRASHING that a true fully public beta will. If you want to really test out and prove your infrastructure and networking code, you need to put it through the crucible of a real public beta. Though, it sounds like, from your post, the GPG/Stardock people should have probably been aware that something wasn't right with the networking even during their semi-public beta.
I'd probably do a limited beta first, then later on, when I had resolved most of the issues discovered in the limited beta, open it up for at least a week to the public, to see what happens.
You make good points, but to play devil's advocate. . . "they" (that is, supporters of this idea) would probably say that for medical emergencies you should be calling an Emergency Medical Service (like 911 in the USA- is 911 implemented in most countries?), and that ambulances would not have such limiters put on them. But the counter to that is, I suppose, sometimes you just don't have time to wait for an ambulance to arrive, and you know where a nearby hospital is.
I know, beating a dead horse here. . .
The idea of P2P connections between members of a multiplayer game seems like pretty much a no-brainer, but because of NAT, it's a total P.I.T.A. Everyone likes to say, "We don't need IPv6, just use NAT". But, NAT makes lots of things more complicated (like needing to setup port-forwarding to accept in-bound connections, or using a third-party server that isn't behind a NAT that everyone makes an outbound connection to). Plus, port forwarding sucks because only one computer per network can have any given port forwarded to it (that is, you *CAN* forward different ports to different computers, say have port 5000 forwarded to 192.168.1.10, and have port 5001 forwarded to 192.168.1.11, but you can't forward port 5000 to both computers - but if they each had their own unique, public IP, they can both receive traffic on the same port).
I long for an IPv6 world where NAT is basically a thing of the past (and for those who say NAT is good for security, there's no reason you can't still have firewalls built into routers).
"The public beta could EASILY have been their test-bed for the system while they were still building it."
There, I fixed it for you.
"In the end, the government has more of your money and your support, and the world isn't any greener."
I couldn't agree more. You can't 'efficiency' your way away from oil. The only way to get away from oil is with cars that either don't burn Gasoline or Diesel, so you're looking at something like electric, hydrogen, bio-fuels, or which burn synthetic gasoline or synthetic diesel (that is, producing the same fuel, but starting from something other than oil - for example, you can turn coal into liquid gasoline [but coal's not much better than oil - the only advantage would be that the USA has, from what I've read, an enormous supply of coal, but that's still carbon, so it's not any better for the environment)].
The article that the Slashdot Editors linked to as dissenting opinion is a great piece, explaining something which has been obvious to me, at least, for years - if you, short term, reduce the demand for something, the price will drop, when the price drops, the demand comes back. Put simply, as fuel efficiency increases, people will drive more (that is, they'll live farther away from work/school with longer drives, they'll do more weekend road-trips, etc), and more people will drive (China is having an automobile boom right now, and so will any other third world nations who sufficiently develop).
Every drop of gas we save in the US will be bought by China, India, and other countries. The solution is to get away from gasoline altogether.
If you wait, you're very likely gonna wait for nothing, or wait longer than you expect, or you are going to pay a massive premium for such fuel efficient cars. Obama can't just wave a magic wand and cars get more fuel efficient AND remain the same size and weight. If it were so easy to make vehicles (that people actually want to buy) have such fuel efficiency, Detroit, or Tokyo, or Seoul would have done it long ago.
If you want such a fuel efficient car, you can get them today. They tend to be very small cars, things like Minis, or slightly larger, but still very small. Or you can try going the hybrid route, but you will pay a premium for 'new-technology' fuel efficiency. The problem is, if the Obama administration gets its way, the car makers will all be forced (probably) to sell cars that are so expensive, it'd be cheaper to buy a less efficient 'conventional' car, and just buy more gas! I mean, do you *want* to pay $40,000 for a Chevy Cavalier/Cobalt class of car (which I think usually sell for $20,000)?
You can't just regulate things to be the way you want - if it were possible to cost-effectively increase fuel efficiency standards, the free market really would have taken care of this a long time ago. I know it's become vogue to think the free market model is completely wrong and the source of all the world's problems, but at it's heart, it's really simple - people will find the optimum balance between price and features through negotiation without government butting in. If features are *too damn expensive* they won't pay for them. The government, if it tries to use the power of regulation to force people to pay for features which are too expensive *will* get a nasty surprise - the economy (or at least that part of the economy, like the New Automobile market) will become seriously broken because of the regulations.
Yes, yes, I know the economy is already seriously broken, right now, but mandates like this will not do anything to help fix it.
The whole memory thing, I can't really blame users for too much. Technically, hard drives, optical drives, memory cards, usb sticks, etc, *are* forms of long-term memory for the computer. A hard drive does much the same thing as system memory (that is, it stores digital values) - it just does it *much* slower. I do get what you're saying about being frustrated though - I run into this with my mom and dad frequently - I'd rather they used the word memory to only refer to system RAM, not their hard drive space, because when they tell me they think their computer is running out of memory, I now have to go in and figure out if they have too much crap running in the background, or if I need to delete something off the hard drive.
Yeah, 1980 called, they want their invention back.
I don't see Mac displacing a more open platform, really. Yes, I'm calling Windows a more open platform, or rather, the PC market in general. Here's the thing, compared to Mac, Windows *is* more open.
Don't get me wrong, Apple products, from a technical and user interface perspective, generally are superb. But, I can only run Mac OX on Apple hardware. Which means if I want to use hardware from any other vendor, I don't use Mac OS. Which is why Mac can never 'rule the world' - because they force every other hardware vendor to choose other O/S platforms. Whereas Windows will hapilly run on *almost* any box with an Intel or AMD chip inside (or even Via).
Put another way, Apple is 'greedy'. They want to control both the software market, and the hardware market (which does make it so that users get a consistently good experience with regards to stuff 'just working', but from an economic standpoint, guarantees that they will always have every other PC hardware company in the world competing against them, instead of cooperating with them).
Linux has the possibility to be something Mac NEVER can - an open O/S platform which any vendor can embrace. Windows cannot die until there is an open O/S platform that non-Apple hardware can run, which people can use as a suitable replacement for Windows. Mac simply cannot ever fill that role, because of that whole 'non-Apple' thing. Well, it could if Cupertino took their head out of their hind-quarters and started licensing Mac OS X to other vendors, like Dell, HP, IBM, et. al., but they won't, so Mac won't ever supplant Windows. Ever.
"Nothing constructive from this guy. Move on."
I think that about sums up the parent post. *grin*
While more Free Software is a great thing, if you depend every day on software like SolidWorks, AutoCad, or the myriad other applications for which there currently aren't any (or aren't any *decent*) Free software alternatives, then you're pretty much stuck, and all the wishing in the world isn't going to help you.
Some of us appreciate the freedom of Free software, but also recognize that other people have the freedom to make the software they write NOT be Free software, and that they aren't evil for deciding to exercise the freedom to choose the license they feel makes sense for the products they have spent years and millions of dollars producing.
That is, I love Free software, but I don't hate companies like Adobe, AutoDesk, or the many, many other proprietary software companies who employ hundreds of thousands of people in good jobs, or the many, many companies and people who choose to use that software in their commerce and personal use.
That said, I do think that the author of the original article does miss something - Linux developers can't make hardware vendors or software vendors support Linux, so ultimately, any analysis of what deficiencies Linux has can't really include things that are *outside the control* of Free software developers. Most of the points on his list are, really, very valid - issues of backwards compatibility, lack of standardized configuration, lack of standardized installer framework, issues of Sound API problems. Note - the author wasn't complaining that his sound card doesn't work under Linux - his complaint is issues of software compatibility - like, take for instance, the game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (which is, I think, Free software at this point - I'm not positive but I think the source for Wolf:ET was released under a free license, but I may be wrong). The game was based upon the Open Sound System (OSS). Current distros tend to use ALSA (which isn't a bad thing - ALSA is a step forward from OSS), but the problem is, the sound for W:ET doesn't work 'out of the box' with alsa - you have to modify system startup scripts to cause a text string to be echo'ed into a file under the /proc filesystem; why couldn't ALSA provide OSS sound compatibility automatically? Also, when W:ET is using the sound card, I have seen problems where other sound apps could not access the sound card (like TeamSpeak - which is a small VoIP program which is popular for use with W:ET).
The point is, the sound API's/software layers in Linux do cause users headaches from time to time, even though they do work, mostly.
"Hard-core Linux advocates don't want "Proprietary Windows Applications" running on Linux. They want "Open-Source Applications" running on Windows and Linux."
Ok, what about people and companies who would like to move to Linux and experience more of the freedom that you advocate, but they are stuck with that one legacy application that their business depends upon? They are neither hard-core Linux advocates, nor hard-core Windows users. You split the world into a false dichotomy which simply does not exist in reality. Wine is great because it often lets people make the switch to Linux, but keep using software until such time that they are able to replace it with something else.
As for Samba - most of us have to get Linux/*BSD systems to play nice with Windows systems, because people do still use Windows. Samba is Free software, and is simply the easiest way (that I know of, anyhow) to allow file sharing back and forth between Linux and Windows. Is there something wrong with that?
Personally, for the cause of Free software, I think it would be better for people to run proprietary applications on Linux (if they must), than to run Free software apps on Windows (which Free software advocates don't generally have a problem with, because they feel it acts as a bridge to introduce users to free software, which I agree with, but lik
If = is ambiguous, then you must have a habit of abusing it. While you can overload = to mean anything you want, I suppose, it would seem like you should try to preserve the general notion of the assignment operator in C and C++, which is that = never modifies the right-hand side of the equal sign, only the left hand side.
"Does it mean duplicate the contents, transfer the contents and clear the original copy, or just swap the contents of the items, which might be quicker."
I would say if you are trying to stay true to the way the operator behaves in the language when you overload it, the last two operations would NOT be overloaded to the equal sign, because they modify the right-hand argument. Give them a meaningful method name instead.
It's been awhile since I looked at OpenDNS, so maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I could swear that OpenDNS's business model is based around generating ad revenue from doing NXDomain redirection, isn't it? If that's the case, swapping one NXDomain redirect for another doesn't seem very productive.
Having heroes or villains be able to swap sides is a cool idea - one I had about 10 minutes after they announced City of Villains 3 years ago or whatever. To call that one feature a major expansion (ok, to be fair, it sounds like they are building new zones and things into this expasion too, and probably lots of other stuff as well), but really, switching sides seems like a minor feature at best, and something they should have had in the game a long time ago.
The actually *really* interesting feature which CoX introduced recently (although I haven't had a chance to play the game since they released it), is Architect. Architect allows players to create missions, story bosses to go with those missions, etc. User-generated content in an MMO - I'm not sure, but I don't think there are any other MMOs which allow user generated content. They should win an industry award just for having the balls to try that.
"I don't think you can do that without violating the HDMI spec."
I suppose it depends upon how 'smart' the spec is. That is, the HDMI spec could have a 'handshake' with the device on the other end of the connection, to see if it supports HDCP crypto, andd if it doesn't, would only send lower resolution video data (and probably does, but I'm not sure - someone mentioned that you *can* do HDMI->DVI, at least). If the other end *does* support the crypto, then it can send the high-res stream, encrypted. If the other end 'lied' about supporting the crypto, then the device will be unable to decrypt and display the data, while if it does support the crypto, then the integrity of the HDCP data path has been honored (at least between those two devices - it seems to me theoretically possible that someone could create a 'receiver' which gets the encrypted data, then decrypts it, but that would likely be a violation of the HDCP license).
Anyhow, my point is, there is no reason that you couldn't potentially have the HDMI spec designed so that you could hook up VGA or DVI devices to an HDMI socket via an adapter, yet still preserve the copy protection on Blu-Ray content. You just force VGA or HDMI devices to be sent lower-res video for HDCP protected content. So, why would anyone want to hook up lower-res devices, you might wonder, if that means you are forced to lower quality video? Well, because it would still be high res for normal computer operation (O/S desktop, applications/games, etc), and maybe you don't have an HDMI device at the moment.
Like, for example, I'm getting a new computer for my parents, I want to make sure it has HDMI on the video card, so that in the future, I can upgrade my parents to a high-res monitor or HDTV, and use the computer to watch Blu-Ray, but at the present time, I'm not buying them a Blu-Ray drive because they are still too expensive, and they don't have an HDTV or very high resolution monitor. Basically, I want to future-proof the computer, but maintain backward compatibility with older monitors. I guess the solution to that is video cards with multiple physical video ports, but that just seems like a silly design, that HDMI isn't backwards compatible, so you need multiple ports on the GPU.
I guess, thinking about the issue more, I sort of see your point. If MS did a reverse split, even though the price per share goes up, I as a shareholder make no net gain, because my number of shares which I hold goes down proportionally to the increase in price (presumably - and that may not even be the case, necessarily - perhaps the market decides that 1/2 as many shares is not worth 2x the price).
Whereas with a stock buyback by the company, I do not lose any shares, while the price probably goes up, so I should realize an actual gain in the value of the stock I hold.
I don't get stock buybacks? What's the point? I assume it's to reduce the amount of oustanding shares on the market, driving up the price of the stock and increasing the value of remaining shareholders' shares? But, if that's the goal, why not just to a stock merge? That is, I've heard of stock splits, where a company declares that all outstanding shares will be split, like 2 for 1 or 3 for 1. If a company can split their stock, why can't they merge it? So if you had 100 shares before, maybe you have 75 or 50 afterwords?
If I were a shareholder, I'd rather a company use the money as a dividend, instead of using it to buy back the stock.
Speaking of too featureful. . .I notice it comes with HDMI, DVI, *and* VGA/DSUB connectors. Isn't there some way to just put an HDMI connector on the box itself, and use adapters for DVI or VGA? The back of that mobo looks pretty darned crowded to me.
Yeah, if you check the other replies, you'll notice that I realized that shortly after my original post, and posted a correction. It's always just a dumb thing to make a 'new' game by hacking an old one if the copyright holder hasn't authorized modding (that is, some games like half-life, quake/doom, Unreal, etc, the publishers encourage mods, so you're good there) - because you will frequently run into problems like this group did. Just start with a new game engine (there are a few open source game engines that I believe are pretty decent), and no one else can tell you what to do with your game when it's 98% done.
Ok, I missed something before - I didn't realize this was a modification of the original ROM for Chrono Trigger. All I can say is these game devs are sort of idiots. They should have just built their game from the ground up 'clean' (well, they could have probably used an open source game engine as the basis for it). That way, if Square-Enix decided to stomp on them, they *could* have done what I originally suggested - change a few names, dialog, and maybe a little bit of artwork, and have an essentially original game.
You know, if the game is 98% done, and S-E doesn't want their 'precious' IP violated, the game developers have a very easy solution - change the name of the game, the name of the character, modify the dialog slightly so it doesn't use the copyrighted character names, and if there are any art assets which are very obviously the same as artwork in any of the Chrono Trigger games, modify the artwork enough that it's 'original', then release. I mean, really, Square-Enix can't stop them from releasing a game - they can only stop them from releasing a game which incorporates Square Enix's copyrights.
Really, just release the game without using any of the Chrono Trigger names, characters, or artwork. Yes, that will delay the release of the game and add more work - but not *that much* additional work. It should be easy enough to make the game original.
New lines of netbooks or very cheap/low power desktops that some manufacturers are interested in making, which would be based on ARM and probably run Linux (or maybe *BSD). Support for ARM looks like it is very important for that market. Those are, arguably, mass market 'desktop' systems, which just don't happen to be based on x86 or PPC.
Then there's things like mobile phones and others.
I can't see for the life of me why a developer would dismiss the embedded market as not needing glibc to work correctly on it?
Yeah, whenever I see substantial discounts being offered by *anyone* - whether it's software, hardware, cars, or cell phone service, it just makes me realize how much I was being ripped off *before* the discount.