This is why hardware owners need to open the specs to their equipment so that the kernel writers can be responsible for writing the code. They don't need to provide any code, we can do that. That's how it works with the Linux kernel, with the exception of binary kernel drivers from ATI/Nvidia and a few other oddballs. It's actually been wildly successful for Linux and is (I think) the primary reason why Linux is so much more stable than Windows. Most of the crashes in Windows these days are from poorly written drivers.
The important part here isn't the language itself per se, but the libraries and API it provides. Java provides a much more "powerful" one and thus it has a larger surface of attack. Java also allows access to all sorts of things if the user clicks the right confirmation boxes to run the untrusted software. Of course users couldn't care less about confirmation dialogs and will happily click anything hat will give them a bit of "fancy/shinny".
As for why it's worse that traditional applications. On Windows there's not much difference because that OS doesn't do much to keep you from executing randomly downloaded files. Even so, there is a bit more intentionality in downloading and executing a file and at least some users understand the danger involved.
No, gnome-vfs is used in all Gnome apps (where it makes sense, of course). I think some third-party ones might even support it, but don't quote me on that. Of course, the app has to support gnome-vfs, just like a KDE app has to build support for kioslaves (or use a component that does).
I think both sides get a fair amount of shouting down, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I don't know about who get's paid more, but that will probably depend a lot on your employer.
As for the sexual stuff, that's really unfortunate, although I've found the IT industry is better than some (I used to do construction work). I think that will only get better when the guys learn that girls are real people instead of the tools to, um, enlarge the family tree. The fact is that most guys receive most of their education on females from 1) Hollywood (or worse), 2) our hormones, and 3) other guys with just as many hormones. It's not a good situation.
the UNIXness of Mac OS X is very nicely hidden -- actually, not "hidden", it's just that since Mac OS X has such a nice UI, and such great apps, I never really need to care about the UNIX underpinnings.
Nice try, I won't say anything about the GUI and it's monolithic apps as that can be quite subjective, but the low profile of OSXs text UI is due, in part, to their suckage. This might not be visible to someone who only plays with chmod, pico, and ftp (btw, ftp is bad(tm), use ssh instead).
For those who use the terminal more often, Linux offers some distinct advantages
bash instead of tcsh as the default shell.
Standard directory names like/home and such.
Standard text-based package managers like apt-get. My mac friends spend way too much compiling and have all their applications in the weirdest places.
Often things like page up/down and home/end don't work in the OSX versions of programs.
This stuff doesn't have to happen at the expense of the GUI either. My impression has been that Terminal.app is more of an accident than an accepted member of the operating system.
Once you start to blame Microsoft for everything, turn a cold shoulder towards them whenever they even mildly reach out, you're essentially becoming them on the other side of the mirror.
Not quite. Microsoft has had a pretty abusive relationship with the Free Software and Open Source communities. I think a bit more forgiveness is warranted, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be wary.
Why do System Administrators get a day? Why not Database Administrators? Why not Systems Architects? Why not Software Developers? All of these people are needed just as much as any of the others to achieve success.
I've played all of those roles in my short life, and I would say without doubt that the sysadmin's job is the most difficult. It's not that the programmers are unimportant, but I think their jobs have a lot less emotional stress.
A sysadmin is a lot like a janitor. Just like janitors get to clean up after all the guy's who forgot to aim at the toilet, sysadmins get to clean up after all sorts of ignorance (are teh intarwebs broken again?), much of which could probably be prevented if people would use their heads a bit. DBAs, managers, and developers get some of that stuff, but not near as much.
My experience with a Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 has mostly been always "just worked" (except for some funny stuff under Gentoo, but I think that was a problem with the ebuilds and all sorts of Gentoo magic). That said, AIGLX doesn't work, which is a real bummer. XGL does not "just work" so that has been something of a pain point. That alone is enough to make me run for Nvidia cards. The performance on it is pretty stellar though.
I think it depends a lot on the card though. There are a large number of ATI cards that don't work for various reasons. And if it doesn't work, your pretty much out in the cold. Nvidia drivers aren't perfect either though, the 8 series have a bunch of annoying bugs with animations and such.
If ATIs drivers ever go open source though, I would dump Nvidia in a moments notice.
The issues your describing have almost nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with your graphics card driver (or lack thereof). If you've ever run Windows XP on a system without your graphics card driver you will experience the same thing. In fact, in my experience it's quite a bit worse.
There certainly are some things that could be optimized in Linux, but I those are relatively insignificant.
Re:How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?
on
GCC 4.2.1 Released
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· Score: 1
You would benefit from actually reading the GPL-2 then. This is the second sentence, verbatim:
By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software — to make sure the software is free for all its users.
A little more research and you would find their classic free software definition which outlines exactly what they mean by free. I draw your attention to freedoms 0 and 2:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
The GPL-2 failed to secure those on two accounts: patents and DRM (unless controlled by the user). The GPL-3 covers both those cases and even allows for DRM which is under control of the user.
You need to understand that they is little more than a bunch of people whom Microsoft paid to join INCITS. So yeah, they couldn't care less.
Re:How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?
on
GCC 4.2.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
If they we're willing to be bound to the terms of the GPL 2, they should have no problems with the GPL 3. Although a few details of the license have changed, the intent of the whole thing is still firmly where it always was: a user-centric license designed to ensure FSF's 4 freedoms. If you don't like that, don't use the license, but it's not like this is anything new. The people who are having trouble with it are people like Novel and Tivo who where violating the spirit of the GPL even before the current one was release. Note, that the FSF isn't forcing software developers to use the GPL 3, we chose to. If you don't like that, then I'm sorry, but that's life.
If you're a software developer, and you have code that's release as "version 2 or later", you can quite easily change that to merely "version 2". Your old code will still be available under later versions, but you can change any new stuff you do.
As for not understanding the GPL 3, I can understand that one. I'm not a lawyer either and the GPL is definitely more complicated. But the problems the GPL is tackling have become more complicated too and it is simply not feasible to address these problems with a simple license. Once again, if you just want a simple license, Public Domain has been around since the dawn of time and is a perfectly fine option.
Re:WTF - claim of fork has no substance
on
GCC 4.2.1 Released
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· Score: 1
On the grounds that it would attract more page views. If you're in a good mood you might excuse them on the account that they thought this might encourage good discussion, but that's a bit of a stretch for such obvious flaimbait.
Even there, 'loose' is not the word they want. Loose in that sense is still a different word. If you take that definition, the sentance would have approximate meaning (in modern langauge) of "Internet Explorer continues to liberate dirt." which seems to be a fancy way of calling IE a plow.
Actually, that was one of the intentions, and the GPL 3 is more compatible with other open source licenses. It's incompatibility with itself is an essential part of the license, otherwise it would be like a submarine with a screen door. That's why the FSF recommends you allow re-licensing of the work under later version of the GPL, then compatibility is not a problem.
GNU/BSD is a lot more viable than Linux with BSD userland tools. However, I don't really see what the point of the mess is (apart from the problems with the GPL2). Why can't we have a GPL3 userland with a GPL2 kernel?
I think lazy is pretty generous. Putting setuid root on something as powerful as openoffice is flat-out retarded, period. These guys are driver writers, they should know better than this. I mean they, really ought to know better than this. It would be like Red hat dumping ssh and recommending telnet for remote shell access and transfer of sensitive information.
I don't see any reason to think something malicious of it, but I think this goes beyond stupidity. It's not quite as bad as distributing rootkits with your CDs, but I think it's getting there.
Half a second might be a bit long, but I don't think it's terribly unrealistic. Most of our actions (including driving) are largely subconscious. If you've ever noticed a new driver (like, an entirely new one who has never driven anything like a car before) you will see the delay because they haven't developed the subconscious reflexes.
Obviously it's not entirely subconscious. There's a fair amount of thinking involved, but it's all delayed and doesn't do micromanagement of all your actions.
I always chuckle at retarded sysadmins who try and control their user's this way. Then I bring in a copy of Firefox via USB stick or one any one of 100s of possible methods.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why hardware owners need to open the specs to their equipment so that the kernel writers can be responsible for writing the code. They don't need to provide any code, we can do that. That's how it works with the Linux kernel, with the exception of binary kernel drivers from ATI/Nvidia and a few other oddballs. It's actually been wildly successful for Linux and is (I think) the primary reason why Linux is so much more stable than Windows. Most of the crashes in Windows these days are from poorly written drivers.
ever thought of using functions and a return?
Look at the page, the exploit is in MSIE. Firefox is simply does what IE says it should.
The important part here isn't the language itself per se, but the libraries and API it provides. Java provides a much more "powerful" one and thus it has a larger surface of attack. Java also allows access to all sorts of things if the user clicks the right confirmation boxes to run the untrusted software. Of course users couldn't care less about confirmation dialogs and will happily click anything hat will give them a bit of "fancy/shinny".
As for why it's worse that traditional applications. On Windows there's not much difference because that OS doesn't do much to keep you from executing randomly downloaded files. Even so, there is a bit more intentionality in downloading and executing a file and at least some users understand the danger involved.
No, gnome-vfs is used in all Gnome apps (where it makes sense, of course). I think some third-party ones might even support it, but don't quote me on that. Of course, the app has to support gnome-vfs, just like a KDE app has to build support for kioslaves (or use a component that does).
Gnome has a library called gnome-vfs. I don't know exactly how it would differ from kioslaves, but it allows nautilus to do all of that as well.
I think both sides get a fair amount of shouting down, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I don't know about who get's paid more, but that will probably depend a lot on your employer.
As for the sexual stuff, that's really unfortunate, although I've found the IT industry is better than some (I used to do construction work). I think that will only get better when the guys learn that girls are real people instead of the tools to, um, enlarge the family tree. The fact is that most guys receive most of their education on females from 1) Hollywood (or worse), 2) our hormones, and 3) other guys with just as many hormones. It's not a good situation.
Nice try, I won't say anything about the GUI and it's monolithic apps as that can be quite subjective, but the low profile of OSXs text UI is due, in part, to their suckage. This might not be visible to someone who only plays with chmod, pico, and ftp (btw, ftp is bad(tm), use ssh instead).
For those who use the terminal more often, Linux offers some distinct advantages
This stuff doesn't have to happen at the expense of the GUI either. My impression has been that Terminal.app is more of an accident than an accepted member of the operating system.
Not quite. Microsoft has had a pretty abusive relationship with the Free Software and Open Source communities. I think a bit more forgiveness is warranted, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be wary.
I've played all of those roles in my short life, and I would say without doubt that the sysadmin's job is the most difficult. It's not that the programmers are unimportant, but I think their jobs have a lot less emotional stress.
A sysadmin is a lot like a janitor. Just like janitors get to clean up after all the guy's who forgot to aim at the toilet, sysadmins get to clean up after all sorts of ignorance (are teh intarwebs broken again?), much of which could probably be prevented if people would use their heads a bit. DBAs, managers, and developers get some of that stuff, but not near as much.
My experience with a Mobility Radeon 9600/9700 has mostly been always "just worked" (except for some funny stuff under Gentoo, but I think that was a problem with the ebuilds and all sorts of Gentoo magic). That said, AIGLX doesn't work, which is a real bummer. XGL does not "just work" so that has been something of a pain point. That alone is enough to make me run for Nvidia cards. The performance on it is pretty stellar though.
I think it depends a lot on the card though. There are a large number of ATI cards that don't work for various reasons. And if it doesn't work, your pretty much out in the cold. Nvidia drivers aren't perfect either though, the 8 series have a bunch of annoying bugs with animations and such.
If ATIs drivers ever go open source though, I would dump Nvidia in a moments notice.
Two words: Direct Rendering
The issues your describing have almost nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with your graphics card driver (or lack thereof). If you've ever run Windows XP on a system without your graphics card driver you will experience the same thing. In fact, in my experience it's quite a bit worse.
There certainly are some things that could be optimized in Linux, but I those are relatively insignificant.
You would benefit from actually reading the GPL-2 then. This is the second sentence, verbatim:
A little more research and you would find their classic free software definition which outlines exactly what they mean by free. I draw your attention to freedoms 0 and 2:
The GPL-2 failed to secure those on two accounts: patents and DRM (unless controlled by the user). The GPL-3 covers both those cases and even allows for DRM which is under control of the user.
I just did. All the issues seem relatively small (or at least, not fundamental problems) and about half have fixes in progress.
Just take a look yourself:
The second one looks like it could have come from alt.sysadmin.recovery.
You need to understand that they is little more than a bunch of people whom Microsoft paid to join INCITS. So yeah, they couldn't care less.
If they we're willing to be bound to the terms of the GPL 2, they should have no problems with the GPL 3. Although a few details of the license have changed, the intent of the whole thing is still firmly where it always was: a user-centric license designed to ensure FSF's 4 freedoms. If you don't like that, don't use the license, but it's not like this is anything new. The people who are having trouble with it are people like Novel and Tivo who where violating the spirit of the GPL even before the current one was release. Note, that the FSF isn't forcing software developers to use the GPL 3, we chose to. If you don't like that, then I'm sorry, but that's life.
If you're a software developer, and you have code that's release as "version 2 or later", you can quite easily change that to merely "version 2". Your old code will still be available under later versions, but you can change any new stuff you do.
As for not understanding the GPL 3, I can understand that one. I'm not a lawyer either and the GPL is definitely more complicated. But the problems the GPL is tackling have become more complicated too and it is simply not feasible to address these problems with a simple license. Once again, if you just want a simple license, Public Domain has been around since the dawn of time and is a perfectly fine option.
On the grounds that it would attract more page views. If you're in a good mood you might excuse them on the account that they thought this might encourage good discussion, but that's a bit of a stretch for such obvious flaimbait.
Even there, 'loose' is not the word they want. Loose in that sense is still a different word. If you take that definition, the sentance would have approximate meaning (in modern langauge) of "Internet Explorer continues to liberate dirt." which seems to be a fancy way of calling IE a plow.
Actually, that was one of the intentions, and the GPL 3 is more compatible with other open source licenses. It's incompatibility with itself is an essential part of the license, otherwise it would be like a submarine with a screen door. That's why the FSF recommends you allow re-licensing of the work under later version of the GPL, then compatibility is not a problem.
GNU/BSD is a lot more viable than Linux with BSD userland tools. However, I don't really see what the point of the mess is (apart from the problems with the GPL2). Why can't we have a GPL3 userland with a GPL2 kernel?
You know, if they found one developer that stupid, they can probably manage to find another one two.
Required! Don't we have laws against that? Anyhow, that kind of stuff would be implemented at the firmware level or lower. It's not a viable excuse.
I think lazy is pretty generous. Putting setuid root on something as powerful as openoffice is flat-out retarded, period. These guys are driver writers, they should know better than this. I mean they, really ought to know better than this. It would be like Red hat dumping ssh and recommending telnet for remote shell access and transfer of sensitive information.
I don't see any reason to think something malicious of it, but I think this goes beyond stupidity. It's not quite as bad as distributing rootkits with your CDs, but I think it's getting there.
Half a second might be a bit long, but I don't think it's terribly unrealistic. Most of our actions (including driving) are largely subconscious. If you've ever noticed a new driver (like, an entirely new one who has never driven anything like a car before) you will see the delay because they haven't developed the subconscious reflexes.
Obviously it's not entirely subconscious. There's a fair amount of thinking involved, but it's all delayed and doesn't do micromanagement of all your actions.
I always chuckle at retarded sysadmins who try and control their user's this way. Then I bring in a copy of Firefox via USB stick or one any one of 100s of possible methods.
There, fixed that spelling error for you ;)