Thank you, that's exactly what I meant. I should have said "intelligent design supporters" rather than "creationists". I have no disagreement with people who believe that God created the rules of our universe or caused the big bang. I do have trouble with those who try to refute the evolution of the eye or other things that are well supported by decades of scientific evidence.
Argh please don't mod this up so high, as people are going to read this and believe it without further research. I'm sure you meant well arth1, but it seems you weren't taught the whole story.
Our eyes don't work like that -- they don't scan the visible spectrum from low to high, and see blue as the opposite end of red. Instead, we have receptors for certain colours, and base our colour perception on how much each of those get triggered. This is why colour blindness hits red/green or yellow/blue, despite those colours not being adjacent on the spectrum.
Yes, we have different color sensors, but this is beside the GP's point. The green response curve overlaps significantly with red and blue. See the spectral response here. Red/Blue flashing lights will cause a significant color contrast as they alternately hit one type of cone and then the other. Even though the response to blue is low, it is still an effective color to use because the human eye's response is logarithmic wrt to brightness (i.e. take the graph I linked above and take the log the y dimension). Even that's a simplification when you add rods to the mix, but that's a subject for another post or later research.
Our eyes can differentiate shades and hues of green better than any other colours -- this is an inherited survival trait from when it was important to see predators and distinguish ripe from almost-ripe. Blue, on the other hand, wasn't as important to survival, so we can't tell too many shades of blue apart, nor very far towards ultraviolet.
This is wrong. We can identify more hues of blue than any other color, followed by red, while the intermediate hue discrimination can be quite low. Green sucks because that cone's frequency response is highly correlated with parts of the other two, and thus it forms somewhat of a degenerate basis for describing a hue with the 3 weights. Google "Hue-discrimination curve" for more info.
The evolutionary argument for this has *no* good evidence supporting it, but has become a very vibrant meme (I won't call it a legend, since it is an unproven theory). Green is bright for a variety of potential reasons: (1) It's one of the easier pigments for synthesize biologically, (2) There's a lot of green light coming from the sun, (3) It's a good baseline from which to differentiate other colors (there's a lot of green in our environment), and (4) yeah maybe it could have to do with rotten/ripe fruit. I'd bank on the first two though, especially noting that our hue sensitivity in the green range sucks. Predators are best to detect via motion (primarily rods), and by non-green cones (predators are camouflaged best against rods, i.e. non color vision, i.e. luminance, which overlaps most with green). You can of course believe whatever theory you want, but please don't start speaking about one as being authoritatively true; I know some evolutionary biologists like to extrapolate really far from the evidence, but it always hurts when they are wrong on some theory that gets discounted, since it gives creationists a hammer to bludgeon all of biology and science with. Please don't give them that ammo, and label speculation as speculation until there's real concrete evidence to show. For evolution of these traits, that means sticking mostly to the "what" and "how", and not claiming "why" except in the most general and statistically supportable terms.
We perceive indigo (the traditional indigo, not the "purple" that's called indigo these days) as a dark colour, for example, because it's at the edge of what we can see.
It's not just that its near the edge, it's more complicated with several factors: (1) The blue cones are not that sensitive, (2) there is no additive luminance response due to the other cones frequency response falling off completely at violet, and (3) the rods don't even respond to it very well (last point only really matters for
On the feeder road (Reis Run Rd) there is a curious sign that says "Yellow Belt" with a yellow circle on it. It looks like a standard government reflective road sign, but I do not know what it means. There are several loops around Pittsburgh so people can drive around and see the city, or to navigate around the city as some sort of crude beltway. I found a link here with more information. I used to live next to the blue belt.
Because I am not completely mentally retarded, that's why.
NO cable can be used for a space elevator, period. The concept itself violates basic physics. Materials don't matter. A cable attached to the earth will wind up around the earth NO MATTER how long, how strong, how shaped. You hold a piece of string with a weight at the other end and you need a certain minimum angular velocity if you want to spin that around you. If you go too slow, the rope will simply wind up around you NO MATTER what material you use.
Um, I guess I apologize for overestimating your knowledge... I figured you were referring to the seemingly insane tensile strengths that are needed to make the equations yield a reasonably sized cable. Instead it appears that you don't fully grok classical mechanics. If the physics of a space elevator seems impossible, what do you think of Lagrange points?
If you are feeling overly pedantic (like the OP) it can be; ie an algorithm must provide a solution to a problem, and an approximation is not the same as a solution (in the CS sense). You have to be careful in defining "the problem". Deterministic computers only execute algorithms. However the problem that the algorithm solves may not be the actual problem you really care about. When those two problem definitions differ, but an algorithm for the former is an approximation or useful substitute for an algorithm solving the true problem, what you've got is a heuristic.
Say I want to choose the best 10 students out of 100 for competing in a math competition. Clearly there's no algorithm for that. What I can do is test them all on last year's test, put the scores in an array, sort the array, and take the first ten. That's an algorithm, and it solves a problem exactly (get the top ten scoring students), but it's not the problem I really care about (choose the ten best for the competition). It is however, a heuristic.
A problem from my own work is "random" number generators for implementations of randomized algorithms; I use a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), which is an algorithm, since it'll compute an exact result given its mathematical definition. But that problem is meaningless to me, I really want true random numbers. So if I use the pseudo-random numbers to yield "random" numbers, then in that context it's only a heuristic; The PRNG behaves like a true random number given a bunch of statistical tests, but in reality it isn't even a true approximation. That doesn't make it any less useful though; A good PRNG can thus be an incredibly useful surrogate for the unattainable true RNG (on a deterministic computer).
Less sense, actually. Trans-continental conveyors are at least technically possible. A space elevator violates basic physics, as people with more than two brain cells can easily see for themselves. One brief google brings up for example this post from 1995 which should give you all you need.
That's not an answer, that's another question, with plenty of unspecified assumptions which would let you come up with almost any answer you want. Lots of people have worked it out under various assumptions, and you get an answer requiring a cable with strength between 60-120 GPa. Scientists have measured carbon nanotube filaments which have a tensile strength in that range. We can't build an assembly (cable) that strong yet, but I wouldn't call that "violating laws of physics".
Requiring research beyond our current knowledge and capability is not the same as "impossible". The most you can say is that it's not possible within the current limits of materials known to materials science. Why don't you link to a *proof* that no material can have a higher tensile strength than carbon nanotubes, and a *proof* that it not possible to bond carbon nanotubes so that an assembly has >50% of the strength of the filament.
I was really unhappy when they survived. I'm not a mean person, by Phyllis seemed to be really evil. I really wanted to hear about them getting ejected into the outer solar system by Jupiter.
It's certainly possible that self awareness and "intelligence" were easy for evolution to tack-on once the rest of the structure was there. But it's also silly to assume that we can create intelligence and self awareness WITHOUT the rest of the structure. I agree; It wasn't clear in my post perhaps, but I come from the school of thought that a great deal of "intelligence" actually comes from the periphery. As humans we take our sensory and motor systems for granted because they "just work" (and we like to emphasize our differences from other animals). However when you study the brain, parts like such as the visual system are a *lot* more tuned than some of the more recent developments. That means it might be harder to develop. Of course that's not to say that it isn't needed first though. As a robotics colleague of mine likes to say, these things have to be built like pyramids with a very stable and working base before you can think about higher level behaviors and intelligence. To some of my colleagues attempting AI without robotics, I would point out that reasonably advanced intelligence in nature only occurs for mobile entities which can not only perceive, but act and react to the world they occupy.
But I'm damn sure never going to follow that law because I'm damn sure never going to do business in Saudi Arabia as long as they have those kind of evil bullshit laws. Ever buy oil?
Hell, we're having problems even getting computers/machines to work out simple things like moving limbs without falling over, or reacting in order to avoid being hit by an object, but you think we're going to be able to teach them to use higher-order brain functions? Not to disagree with your entire point, but why should we assume walking without falling is easier than higher-order brain functions? "Hard for a human" isn't the same as "hard to develop/evolve". Human intelligence happened largely in the last 10 million years, which on an evolutionary scale is insignificant. Brain systems like the visual cortex and the motor cortex have been evolving for much longer to get where they are.
Bullets _really_ need to be removed if you're ever going to be NMRIed. Cool, let me know when you publish a counter to this clinical note in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
(though n.b. I'm in europe, I know americans with their third-world medical system make a big fuss about NMRIs) A simple "thank-you" to engineers and scientists in the US and UK for inventing the NMRI would suffice. Overpriced non-socialized medicine has its drawbacks, but it also spurs invention and development that the whole world then gets to enjoy.
it's typically worth removing the bullet just in case. Like with everything, it's a tradeoff. Sometimes the surgery has more danger of causing harm than leaving the bullet fragment in place. I know I wouldn't want to live with lead in my body, but I'd be willing to take my surgeon's advice on the relative risks.
It's not just DST; Much of the population of Japan is at the extreme east of the longitudinal time zone. Many areas of the US lag the true zones, and you just get too accustomed to what "early" is. The solution is simple; get up earlier. That's what I did when I was working in Tokyo. Unless you work at one of the more insane places, if you get to work early enough then you can leave right at 5 without anyone complaining. If that's not possible, try to make the morning your free time. Mind you this is coming from someone who is no morning person at all; The simple truth is that you have to adapt to the local circumstances. Besides, if you live in a city there's likely a 4:30am train that will wake you up anyway even if it is dark (damn Gotanda line).
DST is not a panacea, and is more trouble than it is worth IMO, especially when politicians start changing it for no good reason. I think we should just stick to the "early" schedule, and live with the idea that you need to get up when it is still dark in the winter. After all, you have to come home in the dark during the winter anyway, so there isn't much of a difference. The "schoolchildren excuse" doesn't really apply anymore either since few kids walk to school nowadays, and if it is really that big of a problem the school could use a later schedule for young children or alter it for part of the year.
h.264 does some fantastic things at low bitrates. higher processing power requirements aren't much of a concern if the video can be offloaded to an IC decoder chip on the gpu, moreover. Here's a pretty good example of what you can do with the new format.
I've watched the linked-to video several times both with and without the fmt=6 parameter, and they both look identical to me. Same in terms of blurriness, artifacting, and resolution. That's because you don't have oxygen-free monitor cables. As a result, the bits going to your monitor don't have a warm waveform; They will instead be ragged and produce low quality output. Next time don't be such a cheapo and spring for the real quality components.
I'm curious. When Perot ran, did you see that as a Democrat conspiracy against Bush Sr.? I'm wondering the same thing myself. Apparently this concept is so invisible none of the replies to your post was even willing to quote it.
Instead of complaining about spoilers and trying to convince them not to run (how nice to see that in a "democracy"), I wish people instead pooled their efforts to get a better election system (approval voting, etc.), where we might solve this problem permanently. I do not feel sorry for Gore, and I would not feel sorry for Clinton, Obama, or McCain if they lose due to a spoiler; Having all spent time in the senate, they all had ample time to introduce legislation to fundamentally improve our election system, but they chose not to do so. The only reason I can think of is that both parties are too worried that they might lose some power under a better election system (i.e. one which would not marginalize additional parties). They even avoid such reform to the extent that they might lose a few elections.
i agree. for those of us who dont have a 72 inch tv a blu ray isnt necessary If you don't have a 42" TV, neither HD format is necessary[1]. However, as someone who would like to own a large TV at some point in the near future, I'm glad that a format has won. With widespread adoption, and more competition between hardware manufacturers, the players will not cost as much.
[1] DVD still looks fine at that size, although HD TV will be noticeably better than analog TV.
I am a little confused about how somebody with no connection to the military could be "involved" with this. Could you elaborate about who these people are? Janitors?
Is there any physical effect where a galaxy ends? Or are we just talking about an imaginary limit. Yes, you pass a sign that says "Now leaving Milky Way galaxy, pop 13.167B". That is soon followed by a sign reading "Ejected star crossing, next 200,000 light years."
How hard is it to map the galaxy? It's pretty easy actually; We draw the Earth, the rest of the solar system, a few constellations, and a whole lot of "here be dragons[1] (maybe)".
Where's the flaw in my logic? Asking a serious question on slashdot. At night. Clearly.
[1] Now known to consist of dark matter and dark energy, which is why you can't see them.
First, although you are targeting in on Opera, I was not. I know nothing of Opera's internal business organization, or whether my description of how it can work at a generic large org matches what Opera looks like internally. Nor was I suggesting that Opera's response this time was bad or good.
Neither of us know anything abou Opera's business organization, so you probably shoudnt be so quick to jump to judgement about something you may not know anything about. This article, in particular, was short on cold hard facts and high on the 'read between the lines'. So very few of us posting here know what actually happened.
I answered one hypothetical with another, using Opera as an example. Note that everything I said relating to Opera is prefixed with one of "should, could, can, would". They might already be doing everything I listed. They might not. In either case I can offer my opinion on what I think they should be doing, or matching with something equivalent.
As I was trying to state, its not always that easy. And the devil in the details is often making the decision that 'this might be a real bug'. Thats not always a trivial step.
I agree. I don't think it's easy at all. However I believe it's necessary if you want to stay competitive and avoid being embarrassed. If Opera is already doing all the fast-track things, then imagine how their response would have been without them in place.
And think about how that might work in the real world. You've found a big hole in a private company (ie, not open source). It's an own your box situation, but its complicated to demonstrate, and is dependent on several things being present, platforms, etc. How do you tell 'Opera' (or another similar company) that there is a bug, and that its severe?
In the general case, this can be pretty hard. If someone sends you a test case however[1], you need to be able to triage it pretty quickly. If you can't, then its time to work on better tools so you can.
[1] Especially so if it is sent by a competitor who mentions that it is critical and that they fixed it in their system.
For the company side of things, who want to know this information, they're faced with a conundrum. Make it real easy to contact them about these bugs, and have a very low signal to noise ratio (ie, alot of useless emails, general ranting, complaints about the product). Reality is that if you have a contact form on your website, even if there's big warning labels all over it that its only for severe bug reporting, it'll get spammed to obvlivion. People will use it to bitch at the company, make complaints or suggestions about the product, or give useless bug reports (Opera crashed... can you fix it?).
It takes real human beings with real experienced judgement ability to separate the signal from the noise.
Understood. That's why I suggested having a person in countries where major hacking/security work goes on, and putting them in charge of finding this information. They should try to develop relationships with the community so that they have trusted contacts. Geographic diversity means that they will never all be asleep as well. This is neither perfect nor easy, as you point out. It's the sort of thing every global company should be thinking about however, whatever solution they come up with in the end.
Even the open source companies struggle with this. Go look at FireFox's bug list. How many hundreds of people report certain types of problems and the developers just basically give them the finger, because they feel they've heard it all before. Or its not repro'able. Or its hard to understand. Or it doesnt work on their machine.
Of course; Many OSS projects are far worse than the ideal, and the situation with open submission buglists is very hard to manage. Even for very well developed projects like the Linux kernel, this stage can be very difficult. However, once you've g
The problem usually isnt coding time. It's organizational response and resource allocation issues. Opera should probably use this as an opportunity to review those practices.
For example, Opera is on a very differen timezone from the US, so initial publication may happen overnight from the POV of the Opera staff. So then a day starts. When people start their day, they have a pile of things to respond to. The incoming messsages have to be triaged. Someone has to make a decision that this is important enough to escalate or take action on. Opera has a lot of paying corporate customers and can afford to do better; Their customers also deserve as much. After all, what happens if a 0-day comes out in the US? "I was asleep" is not an excuse for supported software. Where I work, others would not hesitate to call me at 2am if something really needs to be fixed, and that's something I accept as part of my job. For Opera, this could be as simple as hiring a few people around the globe to read bulletins and lists and contact the appropriate developer when needed. One each in Russia, China, and the US would work pretty well (two of those places have employees who work for relatively low pay too). While those extra people would not have helped in this case, the "24 hours is not enough" mentality would concern me as a user.
Then you have to take the time to do the research, test whether this is a real problem, what versions it affects, etc. This takes a couple hours. Then yuou have to stop a coder from working on something else, bring them up to speed on the problem (if its not the same person doing the testing), and get them started on the fix. There should be a predefined process for fast escalation; As soon as it hits the level of "this might be a real bug", a developer should be looking into it. Also, at least two developers should understand any given part of the code (my work does this through mandatory pre-commit code reviews). That gives you redundancy in case someone is sick or unreachable.
Then even with a fix you have to do regression tests. Not sure about Opera, but many mature apps have full test suites that can take a couple hours. Then you have to write release notes, update the web page, do a new deploy package, and update your update servers to notify Opera that there is a new update. It's worth noting that these two steps can be done in parallel.
As you can see, very little of the time here is coding.
Many large orgs have taken steps to create a 'short path of decision making' to streamline this process, always have one coder on call who can do this work, etc. But even then if anything is out of whack or the wrong person is sick or on vacation or on another urgent item, a whole day could pass without response. Indeed. In a company such as Opera, with 300+ employees, millions of dollars of business, and large corporate clients who will demand top notch support, a fast-track process is not optional; It's an absolute necessity. Otherwise, you could someday find yourself out of business overnight.
...maybe they'd buy diesel at short notice, there are companies that provide this service. This is why I love capitalism. All those companies that do things you'd never have thought of, but that makes perfect sense when you hear it, providing a useful service and filling in some niche. You *would* have to make sure you have enough fuel for any single calamity, but if you can get contracts with various different industries with different failure profiles, you'd get efficiency better than everyone keeping their own fuel. Nifty.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you, that's exactly what I meant. I should have said "intelligent design supporters" rather than "creationists". I have no disagreement with people who believe that God created the rules of our universe or caused the big bang. I do have trouble with those who try to refute the evolution of the eye or other things that are well supported by decades of scientific evidence.
Our eyes don't work like that -- they don't scan the visible spectrum from low to high, and see blue as the opposite end of red. Instead, we have receptors for certain colours, and base our colour perception on how much each of those get triggered. This is why colour blindness hits red/green or yellow/blue, despite those colours not being adjacent on the spectrum.
Yes, we have different color sensors, but this is beside the GP's point. The green response curve overlaps significantly with red and blue. See the spectral response here. Red/Blue flashing lights will cause a significant color contrast as they alternately hit one type of cone and then the other. Even though the response to blue is low, it is still an effective color to use because the human eye's response is logarithmic wrt to brightness (i.e. take the graph I linked above and take the log the y dimension). Even that's a simplification when you add rods to the mix, but that's a subject for another post or later research.
Our eyes can differentiate shades and hues of green better than any other colours -- this is an inherited survival trait from when it was important to see predators and distinguish ripe from almost-ripe. Blue, on the other hand, wasn't as important to survival, so we can't tell too many shades of blue apart, nor very far towards ultraviolet.
This is wrong. We can identify more hues of blue than any other color, followed by red, while the intermediate hue discrimination can be quite low. Green sucks because that cone's frequency response is highly correlated with parts of the other two, and thus it forms somewhat of a degenerate basis for describing a hue with the 3 weights. Google "Hue-discrimination curve" for more info.
The evolutionary argument for this has *no* good evidence supporting it, but has become a very vibrant meme (I won't call it a legend, since it is an unproven theory). Green is bright for a variety of potential reasons: (1) It's one of the easier pigments for synthesize biologically, (2) There's a lot of green light coming from the sun, (3) It's a good baseline from which to differentiate other colors (there's a lot of green in our environment), and (4) yeah maybe it could have to do with rotten/ripe fruit. I'd bank on the first two though, especially noting that our hue sensitivity in the green range sucks. Predators are best to detect via motion (primarily rods), and by non-green cones (predators are camouflaged best against rods, i.e. non color vision, i.e. luminance, which overlaps most with green). You can of course believe whatever theory you want, but please don't start speaking about one as being authoritatively true; I know some evolutionary biologists like to extrapolate really far from the evidence, but it always hurts when they are wrong on some theory that gets discounted, since it gives creationists a hammer to bludgeon all of biology and science with. Please don't give them that ammo, and label speculation as speculation until there's real concrete evidence to show. For evolution of these traits, that means sticking mostly to the "what" and "how", and not claiming "why" except in the most general and statistically supportable terms.
We perceive indigo (the traditional indigo, not the "purple" that's called indigo these days) as a dark colour, for example, because it's at the edge of what we can see.
It's not just that its near the edge, it's more complicated with several factors: (1) The blue cones are not that sensitive, (2) there is no additive luminance response due to the other cones frequency response falling off completely at violet, and (3) the rods don't even respond to it very well (last point only really matters for
Because I am not completely mentally retarded, that's why.
NO cable can be used for a space elevator, period. The concept itself violates basic physics. Materials don't matter. A cable attached to the earth will wind up around the earth NO MATTER how long, how strong, how shaped. You hold a piece of string with a weight at the other end and you need a certain minimum angular velocity if you want to spin that around you. If you go too slow, the rope will simply wind up around you NO MATTER what material you use.
Um, I guess I apologize for overestimating your knowledge... I figured you were referring to the seemingly insane tensile strengths that are needed to make the equations yield a reasonably sized cable. Instead it appears that you don't fully grok classical mechanics. If the physics of a space elevator seems impossible, what do you think of Lagrange points?Say I want to choose the best 10 students out of 100 for competing in a math competition. Clearly there's no algorithm for that. What I can do is test them all on last year's test, put the scores in an array, sort the array, and take the first ten. That's an algorithm, and it solves a problem exactly (get the top ten scoring students), but it's not the problem I really care about (choose the ten best for the competition). It is however, a heuristic.
A problem from my own work is "random" number generators for implementations of randomized algorithms; I use a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG), which is an algorithm, since it'll compute an exact result given its mathematical definition. But that problem is meaningless to me, I really want true random numbers. So if I use the pseudo-random numbers to yield "random" numbers, then in that context it's only a heuristic; The PRNG behaves like a true random number given a bunch of statistical tests, but in reality it isn't even a true approximation. That doesn't make it any less useful though; A good PRNG can thus be an incredibly useful surrogate for the unattainable true RNG (on a deterministic computer).
Less sense, actually. Trans-continental conveyors are at least technically possible. A space elevator violates basic physics, as people with more than two brain cells can easily see for themselves. One brief google brings up for example this post from 1995 which should give you all you need.
That's not an answer, that's another question, with plenty of unspecified assumptions which would let you come up with almost any answer you want. Lots of people have worked it out under various assumptions, and you get an answer requiring a cable with strength between 60-120 GPa. Scientists have measured carbon nanotube filaments which have a tensile strength in that range. We can't build an assembly (cable) that strong yet, but I wouldn't call that "violating laws of physics".Requiring research beyond our current knowledge and capability is not the same as "impossible". The most you can say is that it's not possible within the current limits of materials known to materials science. Why don't you link to a *proof* that no material can have a higher tensile strength than carbon nanotubes, and a *proof* that it not possible to bond carbon nanotubes so that an assembly has >50% of the strength of the filament.
I was really unhappy when they survived. I'm not a mean person, by Phyllis seemed to be really evil. I really wanted to hear about them getting ejected into the outer solar system by Jupiter.
Oops! You are indeed correct. It's still pretty impractical though. Which is not to say it isn't good research; We've just got a long way to go still.
400 GPa
If that does not make sense then I don't know what doesn't.
It's not just DST; Much of the population of Japan is at the extreme east of the longitudinal time zone. Many areas of the US lag the true zones, and you just get too accustomed to what "early" is. The solution is simple; get up earlier. That's what I did when I was working in Tokyo. Unless you work at one of the more insane places, if you get to work early enough then you can leave right at 5 without anyone complaining. If that's not possible, try to make the morning your free time. Mind you this is coming from someone who is no morning person at all; The simple truth is that you have to adapt to the local circumstances. Besides, if you live in a city there's likely a 4:30am train that will wake you up anyway even if it is dark (damn Gotanda line).
DST is not a panacea, and is more trouble than it is worth IMO, especially when politicians start changing it for no good reason. I think we should just stick to the "early" schedule, and live with the idea that you need to get up when it is still dark in the winter. After all, you have to come home in the dark during the winter anyway, so there isn't much of a difference. The "schoolchildren excuse" doesn't really apply anymore either since few kids walk to school nowadays, and if it is really that big of a problem the school could use a later schedule for young children or alter it for part of the year.
Instead of complaining about spoilers and trying to convince them not to run (how nice to see that in a "democracy"), I wish people instead pooled their efforts to get a better election system (approval voting, etc.), where we might solve this problem permanently. I do not feel sorry for Gore, and I would not feel sorry for Clinton, Obama, or McCain if they lose due to a spoiler; Having all spent time in the senate, they all had ample time to introduce legislation to fundamentally improve our election system, but they chose not to do so. The only reason I can think of is that both parties are too worried that they might lose some power under a better election system (i.e. one which would not marginalize additional parties). They even avoid such reform to the extent that they might lose a few elections.
[1] DVD still looks fine at that size, although HD TV will be noticeably better than analog TV.
Because all this time, Toshiba and the HD-DVD consortium were being perfect little angels, right?
It's not called a "format war" for nothing.
[1] Now known to consist of dark matter and dark energy, which is why you can't see them.
First, although you are targeting in on Opera, I was not. I know nothing of Opera's internal business organization, or whether my description of how it can work at a generic large org matches what Opera looks like internally. Nor was I suggesting that Opera's response this time was bad or good.
Neither of us know anything abou Opera's business organization, so you probably shoudnt be so quick to jump to judgement about something you may not know anything about. This article, in particular, was short on cold hard facts and high on the 'read between the lines'. So very few of us posting here know what actually happened.
I answered one hypothetical with another, using Opera as an example. Note that everything I said relating to Opera is prefixed with one of "should, could, can, would". They might already be doing everything I listed. They might not. In either case I can offer my opinion on what I think they should be doing, or matching with something equivalent.
As I was trying to state, its not always that easy. And the devil in the details is often making the decision that 'this might be a real bug'. Thats not always a trivial step.
I agree. I don't think it's easy at all. However I believe it's necessary if you want to stay competitive and avoid being embarrassed. If Opera is already doing all the fast-track things, then imagine how their response would have been without them in place.
And think about how that might work in the real world. You've found a big hole in a private company (ie, not open source). It's an own your box situation, but its complicated to demonstrate, and is dependent on several things being present, platforms, etc. How do you tell 'Opera' (or another similar company) that there is a bug, and that its severe?
In the general case, this can be pretty hard. If someone sends you a test case however[1], you need to be able to triage it pretty quickly. If you can't, then its time to work on better tools so you can.
[1] Especially so if it is sent by a competitor who mentions that it is critical and that they fixed it in their system.
For the company side of things, who want to know this information, they're faced with a conundrum. Make it real easy to contact them about these bugs, and have a very low signal to noise ratio (ie, alot of useless emails, general ranting, complaints about the product). Reality is that if you have a contact form on your website, even if there's big warning labels all over it that its only for severe bug reporting, it'll get spammed to obvlivion. People will use it to bitch at the company, make complaints or suggestions about the product, or give useless bug reports (Opera crashed ... can you fix it?).
It takes real human beings with real experienced judgement ability to separate the signal from the noise.
Understood. That's why I suggested having a person in countries where major hacking/security work goes on, and putting them in charge of finding this information. They should try to develop relationships with the community so that they have trusted contacts. Geographic diversity means that they will never all be asleep as well. This is neither perfect nor easy, as you point out. It's the sort of thing every global company should be thinking about however, whatever solution they come up with in the end.
Even the open source companies struggle with this. Go look at FireFox's bug list. How many hundreds of people report certain types of problems and the developers just basically give them the finger, because they feel they've heard it all before. Or its not repro'able. Or its hard to understand. Or it doesnt work on their machine.
Of course; Many OSS projects are far worse than the ideal, and the situation with open submission buglists is very hard to manage. Even for very well developed projects like the Linux kernel, this stage can be very difficult. However, once you've g
Many large orgs have taken steps to create a 'short path of decision making' to streamline this process, always have one coder on call who can do this work, etc. But even then if anything is out of whack or the wrong person is sick or on vacation or on another urgent item, a whole day could pass without response. Indeed. In a company such as Opera, with 300+ employees, millions of dollars of business, and large corporate clients who will demand top notch support, a fast-track process is not optional; It's an absolute necessity. Otherwise, you could someday find yourself out of business overnight.
...maybe they'd buy diesel at short notice, there are companies that provide this service. This is why I love capitalism. All those companies that do things you'd never have thought of, but that makes perfect sense when you hear it, providing a useful service and filling in some niche. You *would* have to make sure you have enough fuel for any single calamity, but if you can get contracts with various different industries with different failure profiles, you'd get efficiency better than everyone keeping their own fuel. Nifty.