I think you'd be surprised. Great things have come from smaller complaints than making a very central part of the UI a certain way because the project leader says it should be that way.
Ubuntu has already been forked (and outdone) many times. Linux Mint, which I just installed for a non-technical person, is far easier to use and install than Ubuntu ever was. Hell, Debian is more stable and usable than Ubuntu these days, and I've used both for long periods of time.
All that Ubuntu has is money. They obviously have little security sense, as their answer to all security problems was to make su difficult to use; somehow, sudu magically fixes all security problems, by conditioning users to blindly type their password for any dialog box that asks. They have no UI sense, given this decision (among many, many others). Their package repos are basically a 1:1 copy of Debian, so no innovation there. They've shown they don't really care about stability; using Kubuntu, I had my system utterly screwed beyond all repair just because I upgraded to their KDE4 travesty (who releases a production distro based around a beta desktop environment?)
Shuttleworth is buying a nice little cult, where his word is gospel, and he can screw with whatever he wants to screw with; nobody can say otherwise. Ubuntu is really not something to care much about because among Linux distros it is neither groundbreaking nor particularly good. Use better distros, suggest better distros, and let Shuttleworth play Civilization Linux from his ivory tower.
Nonsense. You write a crappy program which you sell to me which then gets 0wned because of your bad programming costing my business lots of money, I'll want your head on a platter.
How about IT's heads, for not properly insolating your business from a failure?
How about the manager who chose the software's head, for not picking quality option?
How about your own head? You are in charge of the business in that analogy. You're as much responsible for your company's failures as a developer is his for software.
There are plenty of places to assign blame, and it is always suspicious when someone jumps right beyond their own borders when doing so. There are rarely any clear lines, and while a bug might originate with the programmer, it is just as much your fault for not catching it and switching to something without that flaw. It is like people who complain when they get a virus on Windows, or complain when their webcam doesn't work on Linux: at some point, you have to choose to be responsible for your own choices. Saying, "let's sue that developer!" does not fix a single problem in software security. Not one. Microsoft will move on the way they always have under the protection of their lawyers, shady international companies will keep being shady, and buggy programs made by people you should never have trusted in the first place will still exist. You got blood, but did you solve anything?
If you can't be bothered to program your software to reasonable industry standards for security then you ARE and SHOULD BE liable.
Now, this line is my favorite, but it is getting a little worn out in this discussion: good luck with that. I'll try to mix it up next time.
If it can be proven that your negligent coding was responsible for allowing real, foreseeable and preventable harm to another party then you deserve to be sued.
There's that meaningless term again. What is "foreseeable and preventable?" Does Mary Westington, juror at your trial, have even the slightest clue what is "foreseeable and preventable" when it comes to C++ buffer overflows? Does the judge? The majority of programmers would have a hard time nailing down what that means in the context of security, especially when you get into the more complicated aspects of it.
In programming, everything is conceptual. When you write your program, it probably isn't going to change. If we're building a skyscraper, and it falls down at some point, there is always the question of the material quality, stability of the ground, and any possible damage it may have withstood. In software, when something does go wrong- and give it time, it WILL- nothing has changed but the world around it. How do you determine if an error was "foreseeable and preventable?" There was a time when most security errors were unknown, no matter how simple. SQL injection was, for a time, a completely unprepared for issue. If you come back to software I wrote 10 years ago, run it on your computer, and happen to be attacked, is it my fault you used something 10 years old?
The word you are missing is reasonable and it is part of the test for whether the harm that occurred is worthy of a lawsuit. Like every programmer I've ever met you have immediately taken things to ridiculous logical extremes.
There is a very good reason for that: programmers tend to be the little guy. When laws get abused, and they will be, we're the ones who get them used against us. You, the corporate executive (derived from your previous comment - may be incorrect), have far more resources to defend yourself, and a totally different social standing. Programmers are the strange guys who talk in codes and smell. You are the pinnacle of capitalist society. Who do you think is going to have the law misused against them?
We also tend to be fairly logical, and see things for what they are. A good number of p
If the program were a control system for a jet fighter, or safety system for a subway line, I'd agree. The problem is that what you said could be easily applied to "oh no, there was a bluescreen of dearth, SUE!" because someone's word processor had one of millions of possible glitches that happened to get out of control. Electricians and civil engineers have a lot on their side: control of materials, evidence that they did due diligence (especially for engineers, in the form of plans), and most importantly, a say in what they are doing. Programmers rarely get any of those things. If you want to start criminalizing bugs, expect to see even more development moved overseas and less free and significantly less open source software. There are already enough reasons for competent people to not want to be programmers; making them liable if they made a mistake is only going to make them go into other fields, to be replaced by less competent people who simply don't care. That situation is going to be a net negative for software quality and developers, but it's what you're advocating.
Have you ever programmed? I mean this seriously. It sounds like you either do not understand the complexity of software, or just want to complain.
Software bugs are logic typos. Have you ever made a grammatical error? Reading your post, I can say yes. Bugs are like that. In projects with tens of thousands of lines of code, it is unreasonable and completely unrealistic to expect every line to be a pinnacle of perfection, just like it is unreasonable to expect that every sentence in a book is completely without error.
Security holes tend to be failures to predict the way that things might "align" as to allow unforeseen things to happen. Working to specification is in no way, shape, or form a guarantee that something is secure. It is impossible to predict new security holes - if it were, the vast majority wouldn't exist to begin with. Further, when dealing with other libraries and programs (like every application on the planet), there are variables beyond the programmer's control, which might not be totally as they should be. If you know of somebody who can write specs that compensate totally for unknowns, I think you should shut up and go ask them for lottery numbers.
Come back when you have even a marginal understanding of what is involved in programming.
When an idea is so critical to something it cannot be worked around, it is far too obvious to be deserving of a patent. As a problem gets bigger, the amount of ways to solve it grows proportionally. If memory makers can't get around them, there is no doubt in my mind they're nothing but patent trolling scum who deserve to be beaten down in court.
I have CDs almost 20 years old that still run just fine, and these weren't exactly sealed in a moisture controlled vault; more like a cardboard box in a closet. With proper upkeep and some redundancy, MOST mediums will probably last much longer than 10 years.
How about having terrorists in your country, that you lack the manpower/equipment to displace, while not wanting foreign armies tromping about your countryside, blowing things up because they felt threatened?
Rights? What rights? In my mind, copyright is by no definition a "right" - it is a legal means to restrict others from using their rights. No one has a right to that, only a power (of increasingly questionable morality) granted by the government.
Remember, in all but a select few cases, a right is not given to you; it is the natural state. Even in those select cases where a right is granted, it tends to be a proxy of a natural right. Voting is a form of the right to choose your leaders, fair trials are the right to not be unjustly imprisoned; all natural rights that existed before governments ever existed.
There is no right to control information; there is only a legal power to do so.
You use GPL source, you agree to the GPL. You use GPL libs/external executable, you MAY, but only a small number of terms actually apply to you in those cases.
The GPL is a distribution license; you only need to actually agree to and follow it if you plan on distributing it or derivatives of it to others.
Other than BSD trolls, I don't see how anyone could find the above complicated. Would you rather take proprietary EULAs? Those DO govern what you can do with the software itself.
If you want to be able to use source without having to give back, there is PLENTY of it under more permissive licenses like the BSD/MIT. Use those, don't bitch about the GPL.
If they use those, you'll likely end up with some dead/maimed protesters, which is a great way to give publicity to the protesters' cause. Not to mention the lawsuits against the police force.
Most 'non-lethal' weapons leave no identifiable marks or immediate, lasting effects. Opening fire with actual guns is a very restricted action, and civilian getting hurt or killed by police guns causes horrible publicity and higher officials into early retirement. But with 'non-lethal' weapons, you can open fire indiscriminately. Going about your daily business? Protesting peacefully? Sorry, but you were deemed trouble makers, and will be hit with short-term torture, which may have long-term effects. Good luck proving that, though.
When someone DOES die from these weapons (it is not at all uncommon; look up "taser deaths" for just one group of such), the police get off, the officials get off; it was just a "fluke" which they "had no control over". Technically difficulty. The death was an unfortunate accident, nothing more.
So yes, I would rather they have only guns. There is accountability with guns, and it is a hell of a lot harder to justify firing a machine gun into a crowd than using 'non-lethal crowd control technology'.
Guilty until proven innocent. I bet you think that is actually a unique idea. You clearly think it is a good one.
Sadly, it isn't far off from what we have now. There are too many crimes out there that are too heinous to be found innocent of; simple accusation warrants the worst punishment. The legal system may still be applied, but the minds of those in it, and those who make the laws, are too clouded by knee-jerking to actually think rationally. Innocence? You were accused; innocence is no excuse, and you will be punished.
Outcry has replaced justice, and pundits have replaced judge and jury. What the sparkly box with faces in it says is true cannot be argued with; what is written in Wikipedia must be fact; what the drudge report aggregates must be news. Welcome to the Information - or perhaps, Media - Age.
"ullshit. Show me one citation that says that natural fertilizers such as animal dung have any connection to acid rain. I dare you."
Ok-
"Manure spread on the surface and not worked into the soil may lose most of the volatile nitrogen compounds as ammonia gas to the atmosphere. This lost nitrogen is not available for plant growth, and has been identified as a possible air quality contaminant contributing to acid rain." Source
Not great citations, but there were quite a few more that I could not read/reference due to not being publicly available. What it all seems to suggest is, that in those circles (farmers/biologists/whoever else does that sort of thing), there is really not question of the relation. And that solves your "any connection to acid rain" in any case.
This. Freedom has no strings attached. The "freedom comes with responsibility" saying is bullshit. If I give you a car "for free", but demand you give me 20$ every time you get on the highway, is it really free? Freedom does not come with responsibility. Rights are inalienable ALL the time, not just when you approve of their usage. Free speech is the right to say "you're a crack whore" for the same reason it is the right to say "Mayor Jimbob is stealing millions from the city treasury," when it is later proven he is. What reason is that? Freedom of speech is the ability to say what is seen as being wrong. You could say what was "right" in the Soviet Union. What if you actually are on crack, and I simply cannot prove it? How can saying such be in any way wrong?
All this does is further the wikipedia mentality, which is already horribly bad. People will believe anything they read, no matter if it is written with a marker on a toilet stall, in the constitution, or being yelled at them by a preacher, if they want to. Libel is not wrong, the fact that people believe things without reason is wrong. Libel laws just make it harder for those without the expendable income to use on lawyers to express their opinions, and god forbid, facts. Because it happens.
All laws can be abused. All speech should be free, without limitations. The fact that a few people may actually believe you fornicate with your mother is a small price to pay to live in a free society. Sadly, most people would rather be "protected" from freedom, so I'll just ask you; who do you think benefits from these laws? It certainly isn't 'we the people'.
The point is that the government wastes time and money on this sort of regulation when they could be using both to actually do something useful. Given CA's known bureaucracy, this is easily going to cost 10-20 million... for what, exactly? Is this even worth concern when the majority of new TVs are now LCD, which have minuscule power requirements compared to just about everything else in your house? No, it's not. It's wasteful. It's purposeless. It's feel-good regulation that does nothing for anyone's good. It's the sort of thing that is slowly running the state into the ground.
I don't live there anymore, luckily, but I still know this from experience.
But suddenly I say: and some people want this same government in charge of our healthcare and now I'll be modded troll into oblivion.
I would never suggest something so stupid. Just look at the USPS and the Interstate System. Wonderful examples of utter failure. Imagine if we let private companies build and control our essential infrastructure instead. We'd be so much better off!
Why is such a person not in jail, where a law is not needed to prevent them from using social networking sites?
If you are out of jail, you have served your dues to society and (in theory) seen the error of your ways. Tacking on little extras that you can never rid of, even if you were to become the next Mother Teresa, is bordering on cruel. As it stands, there is no way for a sex offender to ever be redeemed in the eyes of the legal system, which in turn forces them to become social pariahs. They are lost to the world, and the world to them, because of one action which may have taken place 40 years ago. Sexual offenses have become modern-day witch trials. Banning them from social networking sites is laughable considering how things already are.
If that's your idea of justice, I think you're a very sad person. I would not even advocate that for crimes such as murder.
And doubling each year, it would only be 9 years before a quarter of the market was on Linux. Not saying that is likely, but no one really expected Firefox to become the standard it has. One should never judge their competition solely on market share, because it cannot be relied upon for the future.
In a world where they tells us that is ok and not true
Of course; one should never let the truth stand in the way of their agenda...
Let me guess, if we trace back all the ownsers of said company, somewhere in that spaghetti of companies there is a company that has spend big time on this US president or the former US president. This just ain't happening without some very powerfull people getting paid in powerfull cash.
Now this is probably true, but it applies to so many areas, I really can't fault nuclear power for the actions of a few companies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you'd be surprised. Great things have come from smaller complaints than making a very central part of the UI a certain way because the project leader says it should be that way.
Ubuntu has already been forked (and outdone) many times. Linux Mint, which I just installed for a non-technical person, is far easier to use and install than Ubuntu ever was. Hell, Debian is more stable and usable than Ubuntu these days, and I've used both for long periods of time.
All that Ubuntu has is money. They obviously have little security sense, as their answer to all security problems was to make su difficult to use; somehow, sudu magically fixes all security problems, by conditioning users to blindly type their password for any dialog box that asks. They have no UI sense, given this decision (among many, many others). Their package repos are basically a 1:1 copy of Debian, so no innovation there. They've shown they don't really care about stability; using Kubuntu, I had my system utterly screwed beyond all repair just because I upgraded to their KDE4 travesty (who releases a production distro based around a beta desktop environment?)
Shuttleworth is buying a nice little cult, where his word is gospel, and he can screw with whatever he wants to screw with; nobody can say otherwise. Ubuntu is really not something to care much about because among Linux distros it is neither groundbreaking nor particularly good. Use better distros, suggest better distros, and let Shuttleworth play Civilization Linux from his ivory tower.
There are plenty of places to assign blame, and it is always suspicious when someone jumps right beyond their own borders when doing so. There are rarely any clear lines, and while a bug might originate with the programmer, it is just as much your fault for not catching it and switching to something without that flaw. It is like people who complain when they get a virus on Windows, or complain when their webcam doesn't work on Linux: at some point, you have to choose to be responsible for your own choices. Saying, "let's sue that developer!" does not fix a single problem in software security. Not one. Microsoft will move on the way they always have under the protection of their lawyers, shady international companies will keep being shady, and buggy programs made by people you should never have trusted in the first place will still exist. You got blood, but did you solve anything?
Now, this line is my favorite, but it is getting a little worn out in this discussion: good luck with that. I'll try to mix it up next time.
There's that meaningless term again. What is "foreseeable and preventable?" Does Mary Westington, juror at your trial, have even the slightest clue what is "foreseeable and preventable" when it comes to C++ buffer overflows? Does the judge? The majority of programmers would have a hard time nailing down what that means in the context of security, especially when you get into the more complicated aspects of it.
In programming, everything is conceptual. When you write your program, it probably isn't going to change. If we're building a skyscraper, and it falls down at some point, there is always the question of the material quality, stability of the ground, and any possible damage it may have withstood. In software, when something does go wrong- and give it time, it WILL- nothing has changed but the world around it. How do you determine if an error was "foreseeable and preventable?" There was a time when most security errors were unknown, no matter how simple. SQL injection was, for a time, a completely unprepared for issue. If you come back to software I wrote 10 years ago, run it on your computer, and happen to be attacked, is it my fault you used something 10 years old?
There is a very good reason for that: programmers tend to be the little guy. When laws get abused, and they will be, we're the ones who get them used against us. You, the corporate executive (derived from your previous comment - may be incorrect), have far more resources to defend yourself, and a totally different social standing. Programmers are the strange guys who talk in codes and smell. You are the pinnacle of capitalist society. Who do you think is going to have the law misused against them?
We also tend to be fairly logical, and see things for what they are. A good number of p
If the program were a control system for a jet fighter, or safety system for a subway line, I'd agree. The problem is that what you said could be easily applied to "oh no, there was a bluescreen of dearth, SUE!" because someone's word processor had one of millions of possible glitches that happened to get out of control. Electricians and civil engineers have a lot on their side: control of materials, evidence that they did due diligence (especially for engineers, in the form of plans), and most importantly, a say in what they are doing. Programmers rarely get any of those things. If you want to start criminalizing bugs, expect to see even more development moved overseas and less free and significantly less open source software. There are already enough reasons for competent people to not want to be programmers; making them liable if they made a mistake is only going to make them go into other fields, to be replaced by less competent people who simply don't care. That situation is going to be a net negative for software quality and developers, but it's what you're advocating.
Good luck with that.
Have you ever programmed? I mean this seriously. It sounds like you either do not understand the complexity of software, or just want to complain.
Software bugs are logic typos. Have you ever made a grammatical error? Reading your post, I can say yes. Bugs are like that. In projects with tens of thousands of lines of code, it is unreasonable and completely unrealistic to expect every line to be a pinnacle of perfection, just like it is unreasonable to expect that every sentence in a book is completely without error.
Security holes tend to be failures to predict the way that things might "align" as to allow unforeseen things to happen. Working to specification is in no way, shape, or form a guarantee that something is secure. It is impossible to predict new security holes - if it were, the vast majority wouldn't exist to begin with. Further, when dealing with other libraries and programs (like every application on the planet), there are variables beyond the programmer's control, which might not be totally as they should be. If you know of somebody who can write specs that compensate totally for unknowns, I think you should shut up and go ask them for lottery numbers.
Come back when you have even a marginal understanding of what is involved in programming.
When an idea is so critical to something it cannot be worked around, it is far too obvious to be deserving of a patent. As a problem gets bigger, the amount of ways to solve it grows proportionally. If memory makers can't get around them, there is no doubt in my mind they're nothing but patent trolling scum who deserve to be beaten down in court.
I have CDs almost 20 years old that still run just fine, and these weren't exactly sealed in a moisture controlled vault; more like a cardboard box in a closet. With proper upkeep and some redundancy, MOST mediums will probably last much longer than 10 years.
How about having terrorists in your country, that you lack the manpower/equipment to displace, while not wanting foreign armies tromping about your countryside, blowing things up because they felt threatened?
Let me settle this, then.
The GPL isn't viral. Don't like it? Don't use it. If you do not understand this, you are either a shill or a moron. Sorry, but that is just how it is.
Rights? What rights? In my mind, copyright is by no definition a "right" - it is a legal means to restrict others from using their rights. No one has a right to that, only a power (of increasingly questionable morality) granted by the government.
Remember, in all but a select few cases, a right is not given to you; it is the natural state. Even in those select cases where a right is granted, it tends to be a proxy of a natural right. Voting is a form of the right to choose your leaders, fair trials are the right to not be unjustly imprisoned; all natural rights that existed before governments ever existed.
There is no right to control information; there is only a legal power to do so.
You use GPL source, you agree to the GPL. You use GPL libs/external executable, you MAY, but only a small number of terms actually apply to you in those cases.
The GPL is a distribution license; you only need to actually agree to and follow it if you plan on distributing it or derivatives of it to others.
Other than BSD trolls, I don't see how anyone could find the above complicated. Would you rather take proprietary EULAs? Those DO govern what you can do with the software itself.
If you want to be able to use source without having to give back, there is PLENTY of it under more permissive licenses like the BSD/MIT. Use those, don't bitch about the GPL.
If they use those, you'll likely end up with some dead/maimed protesters, which is a great way to give publicity to the protesters' cause. Not to mention the lawsuits against the police force.
Most 'non-lethal' weapons leave no identifiable marks or immediate, lasting effects. Opening fire with actual guns is a very restricted action, and civilian getting hurt or killed by police guns causes horrible publicity and higher officials into early retirement. But with 'non-lethal' weapons, you can open fire indiscriminately. Going about your daily business? Protesting peacefully? Sorry, but you were deemed trouble makers, and will be hit with short-term torture, which may have long-term effects. Good luck proving that, though.
When someone DOES die from these weapons (it is not at all uncommon; look up "taser deaths" for just one group of such), the police get off, the officials get off; it was just a "fluke" which they "had no control over". Technically difficulty. The death was an unfortunate accident, nothing more.
So yes, I would rather they have only guns. There is accountability with guns, and it is a hell of a lot harder to justify firing a machine gun into a crowd than using 'non-lethal crowd control technology'.
Guilty until proven innocent. I bet you think that is actually a unique idea. You clearly think it is a good one.
Sadly, it isn't far off from what we have now. There are too many crimes out there that are too heinous to be found innocent of; simple accusation warrants the worst punishment. The legal system may still be applied, but the minds of those in it, and those who make the laws, are too clouded by knee-jerking to actually think rationally. Innocence? You were accused; innocence is no excuse, and you will be punished.
Outcry has replaced justice, and pundits have replaced judge and jury. What the sparkly box with faces in it says is true cannot be argued with; what is written in Wikipedia must be fact; what the drudge report aggregates must be news. Welcome to the Information - or perhaps, Media - Age.
"ullshit. Show me one citation that says that natural fertilizers such as animal dung have any connection to acid rain. I dare you."
Ok-
"Manure spread on the surface and not worked into the soil may lose most of the volatile nitrogen compounds as ammonia gas to the atmosphere. This lost nitrogen is not available for plant growth, and has been identified as a possible air quality contaminant contributing to acid rain." Source
More, and more.
Not great citations, but there were quite a few more that I could not read/reference due to not being publicly available. What it all seems to suggest is, that in those circles (farmers/biologists/whoever else does that sort of thing), there is really not question of the relation. And that solves your "any connection to acid rain" in any case.
1) Get a mac
2) Switch to Chrome
3) Do not upgrade X ever again
Wow, who knew the answer was buying from your favorite computer company and using Google's browser?
This. Freedom has no strings attached. The "freedom comes with responsibility" saying is bullshit. If I give you a car "for free", but demand you give me 20$ every time you get on the highway, is it really free? Freedom does not come with responsibility. Rights are inalienable ALL the time, not just when you approve of their usage. Free speech is the right to say "you're a crack whore" for the same reason it is the right to say "Mayor Jimbob is stealing millions from the city treasury," when it is later proven he is. What reason is that? Freedom of speech is the ability to say what is seen as being wrong. You could say what was "right" in the Soviet Union. What if you actually are on crack, and I simply cannot prove it? How can saying such be in any way wrong?
All this does is further the wikipedia mentality, which is already horribly bad. People will believe anything they read, no matter if it is written with a marker on a toilet stall, in the constitution, or being yelled at them by a preacher, if they want to. Libel is not wrong, the fact that people believe things without reason is wrong. Libel laws just make it harder for those without the expendable income to use on lawyers to express their opinions, and god forbid, facts. Because it happens.
All laws can be abused. All speech should be free, without limitations. The fact that a few people may actually believe you fornicate with your mother is a small price to pay to live in a free society. Sadly, most people would rather be "protected" from freedom, so I'll just ask you; who do you think benefits from these laws? It certainly isn't 'we the people'.
The point is that the government wastes time and money on this sort of regulation when they could be using both to actually do something useful. Given CA's known bureaucracy, this is easily going to cost 10-20 million... for what, exactly? Is this even worth concern when the majority of new TVs are now LCD, which have minuscule power requirements compared to just about everything else in your house? No, it's not. It's wasteful. It's purposeless. It's feel-good regulation that does nothing for anyone's good. It's the sort of thing that is slowly running the state into the ground.
I don't live there anymore, luckily, but I still know this from experience.
I would never suggest something so stupid. Just look at the USPS and the Interstate System. Wonderful examples of utter failure. Imagine if we let private companies build and control our essential infrastructure instead. We'd be so much better off!
If you want that so badly, why don't you move to China? They seem to have it under control there.
Somehow, I have a feeling your tune would change pretty fast if put to the test. Reality has a way of making lairs of us all.
It's worse; this is PETA. I, for one, welcome our new naked.... cat-loving overlords.
Why is such a person not in jail, where a law is not needed to prevent them from using social networking sites?
If you are out of jail, you have served your dues to society and (in theory) seen the error of your ways. Tacking on little extras that you can never rid of, even if you were to become the next Mother Teresa, is bordering on cruel. As it stands, there is no way for a sex offender to ever be redeemed in the eyes of the legal system, which in turn forces them to become social pariahs. They are lost to the world, and the world to them, because of one action which may have taken place 40 years ago. Sexual offenses have become modern-day witch trials. Banning them from social networking sites is laughable considering how things already are.
If that's your idea of justice, I think you're a very sad person. I would not even advocate that for crimes such as murder.
October 1998.
And doubling each year, it would only be 9 years before a quarter of the market was on Linux. Not saying that is likely, but no one really expected Firefox to become the standard it has. One should never judge their competition solely on market share, because it cannot be relied upon for the future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Of course; one should never let the truth stand in the way of their agenda...
Now this is probably true, but it applies to so many areas, I really can't fault nuclear power for the actions of a few companies.