According to the wikipedia entry for Windows services, a Windows service is essentially the same thing as a daemon is on *NIX machines. Daemons are not device drivers -- they're user space programs.
A device driver is a loadable module that gets inserted into the kernel and provides an interface to a specific piece of hardware... It's been a while since I've owned an iPod -- the most recent one I had was a 4th Generation 20 gigger, but I'm fairly sure at least back then iPods didn't require unique drivers. They went through the standard USB Mass Storage driver.
You could make the case that the fact that misbehaving user-space software could theoretically interfere with the upgrade process points to a deep design flaw in Windows as a whole. I recently upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, which turned all the core parts of my operating system from 32 bits to 64 bits... I did have a few bits of third party software stop working after that. None of them affected overall system stability, though... And definitely not the install.
I'll admit you have a point there. As a MacOS X user, I have fairly ready access to an X11 compliant server... One which I'm fairly sure is based on XFree86. All I had to do was check an extra box during installation to make sure it ends up on my hard drive.
That being said... Windows machines (including, to the best of my knowledge, Windows 7) still don't come with a pre-packaged X11 server. And Windows machine are still the de facto standard out there for the average end user, whether we like it or not.
And even besides that... X11 isn't precisely easy for the layman to deal with. Heck, I'm told I'm something of a freak for being a Mac user who has the Terminal application (which opens up a standard UNIX shell window) in my system dock.
I know Slashdot readers are generally on the geeky side... But honestly. There's a lot of value to being able to access your documents from anywhere. Having ready access to your resume from wherever you happen to be can be invaluable. Having ready access to your medical records from wherever you happen to be can be invaluable. Heck, in some situations it's just awesome how much more dynamic it lets you look.
Barring hard-core privacy concerns, I honestly think online office suites are very much the next big thing.
An SVN for off-site backup still doesn't come close to meeting the accessibility of an online office suite.
I had an experience last year where I was looking to sublet a room for a few months. While I was looking at the room, the guy who owned the house happened to mention that he was looking for a programmer to work with on a contractor basis. He asked me if I happened to have my resume. I logged into Google Docs from his computer and got it for him.
The vast majority of people who use computers are looking for technological solutions that will give them more personal freedom. Not for an opportunity to indulge in the geekery of setting up SVN. An online office suite means all you need is a computer with a web browser installed and a connection to the Internet and you've got access to all your documents. Heck, with WebKit being the standard on the iPhone, the Palm Pre and on all the upcoming Android phones, it looks like we're finally getting a usable standard for cellphone web browsers.
This is an immense amount of flexibility that the average user, who'd prefer to keep their computing resources as unobtrusive as possible to their lifestyle, simply cannot afford to pass up.
This makes me think of nVidia's purchase of 3dfx. 3dfx (makers of the famous Voodoo series of video cards) were very friendly to the open source community... They played a very pivotal role in the realm of 3D rendering on Linux when it was still in its infancy, contributing significantly to OpenGL. Then nVidia bought them and discontinued its entire product line... And something like 6 months later it was announced that nVidia won the contract to make the graphics chips on the original Microsoft X-Box. Coincidence?
MySQL, by virtue of being an open source product available in a "community" version for free, has become a central part of the business model of countless small businesses. And it's just fallen into the ownership of its biggest closed-source, for-pay competitor. This could potentially have ramifications for the global economy as a whole. Very scary.
To be honest, it sounds kindda narcissistic to me when people start talking about big companies looking through their personal Emails. I doubt anyone is particularly interested in spying on the voicemail you left your girlfriend, telling her you're going to get home late and that she should go ahead and have dinner without you.
If Google does look through your personal Emails or your personal voicemails, it'll be for keywords that might clue them in to things they ought to try marketing you. They'll do it automatically and they'll do it on a massive scale, and the end result would be that you'd get something like an AdSense ad attached to your Email or voicemail.
Outside of people who have valuable trade secrets to protect or people who are looking to overthrow some governments, that's pretty much the best commercial motivation a company could have for looking through your Email or your voicemail. And while I wouldn't precisely say I trust Google in the abstract, and I definitely wouldn't say I trust Microsoft... I do trust big companies to only bother wasting their time on thinks that would make them money.
I mean, I'd definitely agree that documents that contain potentially extremely valuable trade secrets probably shouldn't be stored with a third party. And even in the general case, I'd think there'd need to be a fair bit of concern as to the reliability of the storage medium... And into the ease of migrating to a different option if you should ever choose to in the future... (Google Docs lets you easily export to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or PDF)...
But outside of that, do you see any principal problem with online office suites?
It's interesting to see how many companies are putting work into this product considering the gradual rise of online based office suites like Google Docs.
In early 2008 I went through some personal events that caused me to suddenly lose access to my primary desktop. When a co-worker introduced me to Google Docs, I immediately liked the idea of having all my important documents be stored somewhere that I could access from any Internet enabled device. Since then I've also come to appreciate the ease of collaborations using Google Docs. I've had whole discussions about requirements documents that went on completely through Google Docs - the client would type in some basic concept of what they'd wanted, I'd reformat it to more formal requirements while they watched, they'd edit, I'd start working and add in notes or questions as they came along, they'd add in replies... It's been absolutely fantastic for streamlining off-site development processes.
And now I hear Google is planning on capitalizing further on that aspect with the upcoming Google Wave... And Microsoft is planning to release an online version of Office 2010... And I'm yet to hear of similar plans from the OpenOffice scene.
Which makes me sad. I've been an OpenOffice user for most of the last decade... Started using it when it was still StarOffice, before Sun bought and open sourced it. I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside.
The important thing to know about the situation in Washington is that no one is actually looking to change that. R-71 is not in any way shape or form about gay marriage. It's about domestic partnerships. In May of 2009, Washington governor Christine Gregoire signed into law Senate Bill 5688, the "everything but marriage" bill, which makes it so that within the state of Washington, domestic partnerships will have the exact same legal rights and responsibilities as married couples. Hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, power of attorney rights, the right to adopt and raise children... All the things that two consenting adults who love each other and are genuinely committed to each other oought to have. This bill did not in any way shape or form suggest that domestic partnerships should be recognized as marriages, though. (See this article and the actual text of the bill).
And before someone tries to argue with me about the right to adopt... I'd like to point out that the reality of the situation is that there's tons of kids out there growing up in foster care, and that growing up in a home with 3-4 other children you aren't related to, some of whom were taken from their parents because the parents were neglectful or abusive, is known to frequently be a very traumatic experience. Whereas being raised by a gay couple would, at most, subject you to some teasing from other children at school.
R-71 is an attempt to overturn SB 5688. Plain and simple. It has nothing whatsoever to do with gay marriage. It is not in any way shape or form related to any religious belief. Washington State has never contemplated the issue of gay marriage. I've seen plenty of conservative literature claiming that gays "already have all the same rights" so that the "attack on traditional marriage" has to be about something other than basic human rights.
Well, at least in Washington, it very definitely isn't. (Oregon has actually had similar legislation in place for a few years now.) Gays are in no way shape or form interested in being allowed to legally use the word "marriage" to refer to our relationships here. We're only interested in having all the equivalent secular, legal rights. And R-71 is a vote about whether or not we should have those rights. But of course... There's a highly deceptive campaign going on with regards to it... And many of the people going in to vote on it may in fact have been led to falsely believe that they're voting on something related to gay marriage.
My company uses SSN's as our passwords for logging into our timeclock application through our web browsers. While the connection is behind our firewall, it's not SSL-encrypted... And I have no idea how the SSN/passwords are actually stored.
Only been working there for 3.5 months so far, but have felt uncomfortable about it from day 1.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the wikipedia entry for Windows services, a Windows service is essentially the same thing as a daemon is on *NIX machines. Daemons are not device drivers -- they're user space programs.
A device driver is a loadable module that gets inserted into the kernel and provides an interface to a specific piece of hardware... It's been a while since I've owned an iPod -- the most recent one I had was a 4th Generation 20 gigger, but I'm fairly sure at least back then iPods didn't require unique drivers. They went through the standard USB Mass Storage driver.
You could make the case that the fact that misbehaving user-space software could theoretically interfere with the upgrade process points to a deep design flaw in Windows as a whole. I recently upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard, which turned all the core parts of my operating system from 32 bits to 64 bits... I did have a few bits of third party software stop working after that. None of them affected overall system stability, though... And definitely not the install.
I'll admit you have a point there. As a MacOS X user, I have fairly ready access to an X11 compliant server... One which I'm fairly sure is based on XFree86. All I had to do was check an extra box during installation to make sure it ends up on my hard drive.
That being said... Windows machines (including, to the best of my knowledge, Windows 7) still don't come with a pre-packaged X11 server. And Windows machine are still the de facto standard out there for the average end user, whether we like it or not.
And even besides that... X11 isn't precisely easy for the layman to deal with. Heck, I'm told I'm something of a freak for being a Mac user who has the Terminal application (which opens up a standard UNIX shell window) in my system dock.
I know Slashdot readers are generally on the geeky side... But honestly. There's a lot of value to being able to access your documents from anywhere. Having ready access to your resume from wherever you happen to be can be invaluable. Having ready access to your medical records from wherever you happen to be can be invaluable. Heck, in some situations it's just awesome how much more dynamic it lets you look.
Barring hard-core privacy concerns, I honestly think online office suites are very much the next big thing.
An SVN for off-site backup still doesn't come close to meeting the accessibility of an online office suite.
I had an experience last year where I was looking to sublet a room for a few months. While I was looking at the room, the guy who owned the house happened to mention that he was looking for a programmer to work with on a contractor basis. He asked me if I happened to have my resume. I logged into Google Docs from his computer and got it for him.
The vast majority of people who use computers are looking for technological solutions that will give them more personal freedom. Not for an opportunity to indulge in the geekery of setting up SVN. An online office suite means all you need is a computer with a web browser installed and a connection to the Internet and you've got access to all your documents. Heck, with WebKit being the standard on the iPhone, the Palm Pre and on all the upcoming Android phones, it looks like we're finally getting a usable standard for cellphone web browsers.
This is an immense amount of flexibility that the average user, who'd prefer to keep their computing resources as unobtrusive as possible to their lifestyle, simply cannot afford to pass up.
This makes me think of nVidia's purchase of 3dfx. 3dfx (makers of the famous Voodoo series of video cards) were very friendly to the open source community... They played a very pivotal role in the realm of 3D rendering on Linux when it was still in its infancy, contributing significantly to OpenGL. Then nVidia bought them and discontinued its entire product line... And something like 6 months later it was announced that nVidia won the contract to make the graphics chips on the original Microsoft X-Box. Coincidence?
MySQL, by virtue of being an open source product available in a "community" version for free, has become a central part of the business model of countless small businesses. And it's just fallen into the ownership of its biggest closed-source, for-pay competitor. This could potentially have ramifications for the global economy as a whole. Very scary.
To be honest, it sounds kindda narcissistic to me when people start talking about big companies looking through their personal Emails. I doubt anyone is particularly interested in spying on the voicemail you left your girlfriend, telling her you're going to get home late and that she should go ahead and have dinner without you.
If Google does look through your personal Emails or your personal voicemails, it'll be for keywords that might clue them in to things they ought to try marketing you. They'll do it automatically and they'll do it on a massive scale, and the end result would be that you'd get something like an AdSense ad attached to your Email or voicemail.
Outside of people who have valuable trade secrets to protect or people who are looking to overthrow some governments, that's pretty much the best commercial motivation a company could have for looking through your Email or your voicemail. And while I wouldn't precisely say I trust Google in the abstract, and I definitely wouldn't say I trust Microsoft... I do trust big companies to only bother wasting their time on thinks that would make them money.
Snooping through most peoples' Emails would not.
How so?
I mean, I'd definitely agree that documents that contain potentially extremely valuable trade secrets probably shouldn't be stored with a third party. And even in the general case, I'd think there'd need to be a fair bit of concern as to the reliability of the storage medium... And into the ease of migrating to a different option if you should ever choose to in the future... (Google Docs lets you easily export to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or PDF)...
But outside of that, do you see any principal problem with online office suites?
It's interesting to see how many companies are putting work into this product considering the gradual rise of online based office suites like Google Docs.
In early 2008 I went through some personal events that caused me to suddenly lose access to my primary desktop. When a co-worker introduced me to Google Docs, I immediately liked the idea of having all my important documents be stored somewhere that I could access from any Internet enabled device. Since then I've also come to appreciate the ease of collaborations using Google Docs. I've had whole discussions about requirements documents that went on completely through Google Docs - the client would type in some basic concept of what they'd wanted, I'd reformat it to more formal requirements while they watched, they'd edit, I'd start working and add in notes or questions as they came along, they'd add in replies... It's been absolutely fantastic for streamlining off-site development processes.
And now I hear Google is planning on capitalizing further on that aspect with the upcoming Google Wave... And Microsoft is planning to release an online version of Office 2010... And I'm yet to hear of similar plans from the OpenOffice scene.
Which makes me sad. I've been an OpenOffice user for most of the last decade... Started using it when it was still StarOffice, before Sun bought and open sourced it. I'd hate to see it fall by the wayside.
The important thing to know about the situation in Washington is that no one is actually looking to change that. R-71 is not in any way shape or form about gay marriage. It's about domestic partnerships. In May of 2009, Washington governor Christine Gregoire signed into law Senate Bill 5688, the "everything but marriage" bill, which makes it so that within the state of Washington, domestic partnerships will have the exact same legal rights and responsibilities as married couples. Hospital visitation rights, inheritance rights, power of attorney rights, the right to adopt and raise children... All the things that two consenting adults who love each other and are genuinely committed to each other oought to have. This bill did not in any way shape or form suggest that domestic partnerships should be recognized as marriages, though. (See this article and the actual text of the bill).
And before someone tries to argue with me about the right to adopt... I'd like to point out that the reality of the situation is that there's tons of kids out there growing up in foster care, and that growing up in a home with 3-4 other children you aren't related to, some of whom were taken from their parents because the parents were neglectful or abusive, is known to frequently be a very traumatic experience. Whereas being raised by a gay couple would, at most, subject you to some teasing from other children at school.
R-71 is an attempt to overturn SB 5688. Plain and simple. It has nothing whatsoever to do with gay marriage. It is not in any way shape or form related to any religious belief. Washington State has never contemplated the issue of gay marriage. I've seen plenty of conservative literature claiming that gays "already have all the same rights" so that the "attack on traditional marriage" has to be about something other than basic human rights.
Well, at least in Washington, it very definitely isn't. (Oregon has actually had similar legislation in place for a few years now.) Gays are in no way shape or form interested in being allowed to legally use the word "marriage" to refer to our relationships here. We're only interested in having all the equivalent secular, legal rights. And R-71 is a vote about whether or not we should have those rights. But of course... There's a highly deceptive campaign going on with regards to it... And many of the people going in to vote on it may in fact have been led to falsely believe that they're voting on something related to gay marriage.
My company uses SSN's as our passwords for logging into our timeclock application through our web browsers. While the connection is behind our firewall, it's not SSL-encrypted... And I have no idea how the SSN/passwords are actually stored. Only been working there for 3.5 months so far, but have felt uncomfortable about it from day 1.