Sue the IRC networks first; that's what makes it dumb shit easy for these guys to set up their botnets.
That's like saying "sue the website networks for distributing illegal content". IRC is a chat protocol. Anybody can run it. It is also widely used for open source development and other legitimate services. Apparently, your mind has been warped so badly by Instant Messaging services that you think any such service needs to be controlled by some big corporate entity.
I had a machine hacked by a german movie filesharing group, [...] by a group that hacked unix systems.
I strongly suspect you're just spreading FUD: you don't sound like you're in any position to run a UNIX system, and even if you are, based on your comments, you don't sound capable of securing it, so it's no surprise that you got hacked.
Maybe E3 will be how it was originally, but the world isn't anymore, and the original E3 in a modern gaming world makes little sense.
I mean, I would like the Internet to be what it was like 20 years ago (nice community, non-commercial, none of this hysteria and attention from politicians), but there is no way to make that happen because the world has changed.
With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%.
Any other pointless areas in which KOffice surpasses OpenOffice?
Alternatively, you can banish the Vista boot loader to its own partition and boot with Grub. Or, better yet, banish the Vista boot loader together with Vista entirely from your disk.
C++ is widely available, almost certainly installed on a Linux distro with development tools, and not as bad as you make it out to be.
That's where you're wrong: C++ is an absolute disaster and has held back desktop and application enormously.
You're only going to end up with further fragmentation in this direction, and limit the languages in which people are able to write their applications.
If it "limits" people away from writing code in C and C++, I'm all for it. In any case, it's not a question of what "I" do, it's already happening: Microsoft and Gnome have made C# a full-fledged application development language, and Apple has moved to Objective-C. In the Microsoft/Gnome case, you can still write C/C++-based applications, but increasingly, you're going to see more and more fancy widgets written in C# only (and even then, you can call them from C/C++ compiled to a CLR backend). It's a good migration strategy. The Apple strategy is similar. Only KDE still clings to the notion that people should write everything in C++.
The network transparent layer and ubiquity are nice, but services which a generic application can depend on are severely lacking.
They are "lacking" because KDE, Qt, Gnome, and Gtk+ have largely chosen to ignore what was there before they started, instead of participating in improving it. The end result? We have two Linux desktops that look really nice but whose underlying technologies are less capable than what Motif could do nearly 20 years ago. I mean, neither Qt nor Gtk+ applications even work correctly remotely.
GPL is not an end-user license, and while EULAs are, they might not hold up in court.
You seem to be living in a dreamworld; of course, large parts of EULAs are enforceable because they have already been enforced. If the courts ruled them unenforceable, Congress would simply change the law.
And even if they weren't there is still nothing wrong with presenting the GPL in the same form as a EULA. EULA or not, that point in the install is the right place to be clear about what the licensing terms are and to get people to acknowledge them. Whether that acknowledgement has any legal significance doesn't matter.
Once these issues are resolved though, C++ is simply a richer, more functional environment on which to build a graphical application.
You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not arguing C vs. C++. I think both C and C++ are lousy languages to write GUIs and desktop apps in. The only C-based language that is even close to being object oriented is Objective-C, and it has a lot of other problems. (I leave Java and C# out of the discussion because, despite their syntax, they are not really C-based.)
I personally think Qt and GDK/GTK should be stripped down such that one can write against either API and connect to a more universal GUI layer, one which is themable and efficient. It should handle all the drawing regardless of the backend, which would reduce the number of portability issues.
You're still assuming that Qt and Gtk+ APIs are APIs people will want to write against in the future; I think neither of them are. C++ has turned out to be a failure as an object-oriented programming language (it has turned out to be good a other things, however).
I think the real migration strategy is from something like Gtk+ to Gtk#, followed by a pure C# implementation of Gtk# based on Cairo. Gnome has taken big steps in that direction. Microsoft has done something similar. Apple has ditched C++ and has moved everything to Objective-C (now with garbage collection). Only KDE still clings to C++.
While we're at it, how about a consistent object-oriented clipboard which handles non-textual data types using a generic interface that can pass them back and forth between all apps (not just GNOME or KDE) which register to receive them? Now THAT'S something I'd be willing to contribute to.
The "graphics layer" and the "clipboard layer" you speak of is what X11 was supposed to be. It has all the provisions and facilities for providing that functionality in a toolkit-independent way. Unfortunately, both Qt and Gtk+ ignore most of that stuff and instead do their own thing.
People working at places like Microsoft may be prohibited from using GPL'ed software and will likely stop the installer once the GPL license is displayed.
People like me will likely stop the installer if it doesn't say that the software is covered by some open source license.
Giving people up-front information about what the license and redistribution terms are is important for everybody: both open source users and open source foes.
The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality
How can it be that after a 2000 year history of anything from book burning, illegitimacy, sexual escapades, and torture to mass murder and genocide in the Catholic church, people can still fall for the belief that repression and suppression are means of improving morality?
See this for what it is: an attempt to get control over people by keeping them in fear of knowledge and basic biological functions.
KDE lets me do what I want to do. I'm never going back.
KDE may be as wonderful and consistent as you say it is, but with its focus on C++ development and the license for its toolkit, it's never going to be the dominant Linux desktop environment. All other desktop environments are moving away from C++ after years of bad experiences, and all other C++ environments allow free commercial software development and distribution instead of KDE's high per-seat charges.
In any case, Firefox doesn't need to be consistent with KDE since KDE already has made up its mind on the browser issue: its browser is Konqueror by default. I see no reason why the Firefox team should invest a second in making a browser more compatible with KDE. Gnome desktops, OTOH, often ship with Firefox by default, so it really matters that Firefox be consistent with Gnome.
The click-through is usually not required when you run the program, it's required when you install it. And, yes, that's a sensible point to display it, because that's (1) when you might naturally decide to request the source from the person that gave you the installer, and (2) when you might decide that you didn't want to agree to the GPL and can destroy the software.
Generally, I'm against installers that require any interaction; I think they are a nuisance. But since they are standard on Windows and Macintosh, they might as well display the GPL when they come to the license agreement field.
In fact, as a Windows or Macintosh user, I expect to be told the license as part of the installer; if it is not, I might assume that the distributor is trying to sneak in software with bad licensing terms on my machine.
The moderation on the parent message is predictable KDE groupthink and just reinforces my point.
All other major desktop environments (Gnome, Mac, Windows) allow no-cost commercial development and distribution, and all other major desktop environments are moving to languages other than C/C++ (namely, C# and Objective-C). You can make KDE as wonderful as you like from a user's point of view, and it may maintain a significant market share for another few years, but this is as good as it's ever going to get for KDE.
TBH, the whole of Gnome feels like it is trying to force Windows conventions down Linux users' throats...
I agree, and it would be nice of Gnome were a little more X11 like. But whatever Gnome is, Firefox should be more consistent with it than it is, since Gnome is one of the two major desktop environments.
You know, I don't particularly like KDE (see my other comment). But compared to Mac and Windows, KDE is a lot faster and more consistent. I think it also has significantly lower memory usage than a Mac. I'll give you that it is more cluttered than the Mac.
(1) move to a language other than C++ (2) move to a toolkit that's covered by the LGPL, MIT, Apache, and/or BSD license
Unfortunately, I see neither of those happen any time soon. KDE folks will continue to believe that writing C++ code (and non-standard C++ at that) makes KDE "efficient", and they will continue to believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a dual-licensed toolkit.
-- better Gnome desktop integration (currently, Firefox feels like it is trying to force Windows conventions down Linux users' throats), including better support for cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop of HTML, images, and other content
-- figure out some way of supporting drag-and-drop file uploads better
-- better editors for textareas (maybe support Mozex officially and find some way of letting users embed their favorite editors right in the page)
-- integrate better with Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications
-- replace the cumbersome XPCOM programming model (IDL compiler and all that) with something that's more like the Objective C object model and runtime
The solution here isn't regulation. It's just for people to decide whether a feature (in this case, HTML mail) is really worth the risk.
There is no risk. You can have full HTML display, including images, in your E-mail client with no problems whatsoever. Just turn off "remote loading of images"; any legitimate HTML E-mail is going to include everything within the message.
That seems like it would solve the problem while preserving the reason 90% of idiot users want HTML: so they can use bold/italic/flashing-red-text or whatever.
Well, maybe that's true for you and your college buddies. But, in fact, in the business world, people have a legitimate need for sending around formatted text and graphics, and HTML does that quite well. The most common alternative is MS Word attachment, and it has a lot of problems.
A SSN is a perfectly fine and perfectly way to establish that we're talking about the same person.
There could be a number like the SSN for this purpose, but the SSN was not designed for it and doesn't work well for it.
I dunno why USA persists in the stupidity.
There are two groups of people in the US: those that want a national ID number system and those that don't. They haven't been able to find a compromise. But what both groups agree on (and so do I) is that the SSN is not a good system for that purpose.
having my passport labelled a forgery at a bank because the date was 14/6/68
Well, labeling it as a "forgery" is a little strong, but they could label the issuing authority "idiots". Using the "/" notation is asking for trouble since it is known to be ambiguous.
Your nation, like any other nation, should switch to ISO date notation in its official documents, at least those that are meant for international consumption.
Failing that, as a practical matter, it should at least avoid the use of "/" with non-US style dates. (Don't tell me that it's "traditional" in your country, because if it is, then your country is responsible for creating this mess in the first place.)
My question is why they don't mention why it is better to use ext4 then XFS.
Simple: ext4 is a backwards compatible, evolutionary change from ext3, while XFS is a different file system and codebase. XFS doesn't offer sufficient advantages to overcome that built-in advantage of ext4 (after all, neither XFS nor ReiserFS managed to succeed even against ext3).
Did you read the sentence *immediately* after what I wrote? Lemme help you: "Read more about the origins of NeoConservatism and how it has been twisted here [wikipedia.org]."
Let me help you: if you write about "how a term has been twisted", then, all things being equal, you're implicitly saying that you prefer the original usage and disapprove of the modern usage. I'm saying that the modern usage is what counts; there is nothing "twisted" about the term because people today know what it means and who it refers to.
I think you have me confused with someone else. Please be careful to whom you reply.
I don't. I responded to your statements as they were and in the context they were. If I misunderstood your intent, then you simply didn't express yourself clearly enough.
You don't fix security holes by trying to track down all the code that exploits it on the web, you fix security holes by fixing the software containing the security hole. So, it doesn't matter how long this stuff stays in anybody's cache.
But go ahead, please try the "I'm a geek! I just wanted to know how the police are going to investigate me should they determine I'm a suspect!" defense, and let me know how it works. You call it "checking the documentation on a bug", but a jury is more likely to consider it obstructing justice or premeditation.
You're absolutely right that many things geeks do are likely to be a mystery to your average juror and are going to be held against them. Nevertheless, the problem there is with the jury, not with the geek: reading books on police procedures after your wife has disappeared should not be considered evidence of guilt.
Slashdot Mirror
Sue the IRC networks first; that's what makes it dumb shit easy for these guys to set up their botnets.
That's like saying "sue the website networks for distributing illegal content". IRC is a chat protocol. Anybody can run it. It is also widely used for open source development and other legitimate services. Apparently, your mind has been warped so badly by Instant Messaging services that you think any such service needs to be controlled by some big corporate entity.
I had a machine hacked by a german movie filesharing group, [...] by a group that hacked unix systems.
I strongly suspect you're just spreading FUD: you don't sound like you're in any position to run a UNIX system, and even if you are, based on your comments, you don't sound capable of securing it, so it's no surprise that you got hacked.
Maybe E3 will be how it was originally, but the world isn't anymore, and the original E3 in a modern gaming world makes little sense.
I mean, I would like the Internet to be what it was like 20 years ago (nice community, non-commercial, none of this hysteria and attention from politicians), but there is no way to make that happen because the world has changed.
With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%.
Any other pointless areas in which KOffice surpasses OpenOffice?
I think that's more than worth it for instant-on capabilities on many devices.
Alternatively, you can banish the Vista boot loader to its own partition and boot with Grub. Or, better yet, banish the Vista boot loader together with Vista entirely from your disk.
C++ is widely available, almost certainly installed on a Linux distro with development tools, and not as bad as you make it out to be.
That's where you're wrong: C++ is an absolute disaster and has held back desktop and application enormously.
You're only going to end up with further fragmentation in this direction, and limit the languages in which people are able to write their applications.
If it "limits" people away from writing code in C and C++, I'm all for it. In any case, it's not a question of what "I" do, it's already happening: Microsoft and Gnome have made C# a full-fledged application development language, and Apple has moved to Objective-C. In the Microsoft/Gnome case, you can still write C/C++-based applications, but increasingly, you're going to see more and more fancy widgets written in C# only (and even then, you can call them from C/C++ compiled to a CLR backend). It's a good migration strategy. The Apple strategy is similar. Only KDE still clings to the notion that people should write everything in C++.
The network transparent layer and ubiquity are nice, but services which a generic application can depend on are severely lacking.
They are "lacking" because KDE, Qt, Gnome, and Gtk+ have largely chosen to ignore what was there before they started, instead of participating in improving it. The end result? We have two Linux desktops that look really nice but whose underlying technologies are less capable than what Motif could do nearly 20 years ago. I mean, neither Qt nor Gtk+ applications even work correctly remotely.
GPL is not an end-user license, and while EULAs are, they might not hold up in court.
You seem to be living in a dreamworld; of course, large parts of EULAs are enforceable because they have already been enforced. If the courts ruled them unenforceable, Congress would simply change the law.
And even if they weren't there is still nothing wrong with presenting the GPL in the same form as a EULA. EULA or not, that point in the install is the right place to be clear about what the licensing terms are and to get people to acknowledge them. Whether that acknowledgement has any legal significance doesn't matter.
Once these issues are resolved though, C++ is simply a richer, more functional environment on which to build a graphical application.
You're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not arguing C vs. C++. I think both C and C++ are lousy languages to write GUIs and desktop apps in. The only C-based language that is even close to being object oriented is Objective-C, and it has a lot of other problems. (I leave Java and C# out of the discussion because, despite their syntax, they are not really C-based.)
I personally think Qt and GDK/GTK should be stripped down such that one can write against either API and connect to a more universal GUI layer, one which is themable and efficient. It should handle all the drawing regardless of the backend, which would reduce the number of portability issues.
You're still assuming that Qt and Gtk+ APIs are APIs people will want to write against in the future; I think neither of them are. C++ has turned out to be a failure as an object-oriented programming language (it has turned out to be good a other things, however).
I think the real migration strategy is from something like Gtk+ to Gtk#, followed by a pure C# implementation of Gtk# based on Cairo. Gnome has taken big steps in that direction. Microsoft has done something similar. Apple has ditched C++ and has moved everything to Objective-C (now with garbage collection). Only KDE still clings to C++.
While we're at it, how about a consistent object-oriented clipboard which handles non-textual data types using a generic interface that can pass them back and forth between all apps (not just GNOME or KDE) which register to receive them? Now THAT'S something I'd be willing to contribute to.
The "graphics layer" and the "clipboard layer" you speak of is what X11 was supposed to be. It has all the provisions and facilities for providing that functionality in a toolkit-independent way. Unfortunately, both Qt and Gtk+ ignore most of that stuff and instead do their own thing.
People working at places like Microsoft may be prohibited from using GPL'ed software and will likely stop the installer once the GPL license is displayed.
People like me will likely stop the installer if it doesn't say that the software is covered by some open source license.
Giving people up-front information about what the license and redistribution terms are is important for everybody: both open source users and open source foes.
The proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality
How can it be that after a 2000 year history of anything from book burning, illegitimacy, sexual escapades, and torture to mass murder and genocide in the Catholic church, people can still fall for the belief that repression and suppression are means of improving morality?
See this for what it is: an attempt to get control over people by keeping them in fear of knowledge and basic biological functions.
KDE lets me do what I want to do. I'm never going back.
KDE may be as wonderful and consistent as you say it is, but with its focus on C++ development and the license for its toolkit, it's never going to be the dominant Linux desktop environment. All other desktop environments are moving away from C++ after years of bad experiences, and all other C++ environments allow free commercial software development and distribution instead of KDE's high per-seat charges.
In any case, Firefox doesn't need to be consistent with KDE since KDE already has made up its mind on the browser issue: its browser is Konqueror by default. I see no reason why the Firefox team should invest a second in making a browser more compatible with KDE. Gnome desktops, OTOH, often ship with Firefox by default, so it really matters that Firefox be consistent with Gnome.
The click-through is usually not required when you run the program, it's required when you install it. And, yes, that's a sensible point to display it, because that's (1) when you might naturally decide to request the source from the person that gave you the installer, and (2) when you might decide that you didn't want to agree to the GPL and can destroy the software.
Generally, I'm against installers that require any interaction; I think they are a nuisance. But since they are standard on Windows and Macintosh, they might as well display the GPL when they come to the license agreement field.
In fact, as a Windows or Macintosh user, I expect to be told the license as part of the installer; if it is not, I might assume that the distributor is trying to sneak in software with bad licensing terms on my machine.
The moderation on the parent message is predictable KDE groupthink and just reinforces my point.
All other major desktop environments (Gnome, Mac, Windows) allow no-cost commercial development and distribution, and all other major desktop environments are moving to languages other than C/C++ (namely, C# and Objective-C). You can make KDE as wonderful as you like from a user's point of view, and it may maintain a significant market share for another few years, but this is as good as it's ever going to get for KDE.
TBH, the whole of Gnome feels like it is trying to force Windows conventions down Linux users' throats...
I agree, and it would be nice of Gnome were a little more X11 like. But whatever Gnome is, Firefox should be more consistent with it than it is, since Gnome is one of the two major desktop environments.
You know, I don't particularly like KDE (see my other comment). But compared to Mac and Windows, KDE is a lot faster and more consistent. I think it also has significantly lower memory usage than a Mac. I'll give you that it is more cluttered than the Mac.
(1) move to a language other than C++
(2) move to a toolkit that's covered by the LGPL, MIT, Apache, and/or BSD license
Unfortunately, I see neither of those happen any time soon. KDE folks will continue to believe that writing C++ code (and non-standard C++ at that) makes KDE "efficient", and they will continue to believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a dual-licensed toolkit.
-- better Gnome desktop integration (currently, Firefox feels like it is trying to force Windows conventions down Linux users' throats), including better support for cut-and-paste and drag-and-drop of HTML, images, and other content
-- figure out some way of supporting drag-and-drop file uploads better
-- better editors for textareas (maybe support Mozex officially and find some way of letting users embed their favorite editors right in the page)
-- integrate better with Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications
-- replace the cumbersome XPCOM programming model (IDL compiler and all that) with something that's more like the Objective C object model and runtime
The solution here isn't regulation. It's just for people to decide whether a feature (in this case, HTML mail) is really worth the risk.
There is no risk. You can have full HTML display, including images, in your E-mail client with no problems whatsoever. Just turn off "remote loading of images"; any legitimate HTML E-mail is going to include everything within the message.
That seems like it would solve the problem while preserving the reason 90% of idiot users want HTML: so they can use bold/italic/flashing-red-text or whatever.
Well, maybe that's true for you and your college buddies. But, in fact, in the business world, people have a legitimate need for sending around formatted text and graphics, and HTML does that quite well. The most common alternative is MS Word attachment, and it has a lot of problems.
A SSN is a perfectly fine and perfectly way to establish that we're talking about the same person.
There could be a number like the SSN for this purpose, but the SSN was not designed for it and doesn't work well for it.
I dunno why USA persists in the stupidity.
There are two groups of people in the US: those that want a national ID number system and those that don't. They haven't been able to find a compromise. But what both groups agree on (and so do I) is that the SSN is not a good system for that purpose.
having my passport labelled a forgery at a bank because the date was 14/6/68
Well, labeling it as a "forgery" is a little strong, but they could label the issuing authority "idiots". Using the "/" notation is asking for trouble since it is known to be ambiguous.
Your nation, like any other nation, should switch to ISO date notation in its official documents, at least those that are meant for international consumption.
Failing that, as a practical matter, it should at least avoid the use of "/" with non-US style dates. (Don't tell me that it's "traditional" in your country, because if it is, then your country is responsible for creating this mess in the first place.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date
My question is why they don't mention why it is better to use ext4 then XFS.
Simple: ext4 is a backwards compatible, evolutionary change from ext3, while XFS is a different file system and codebase. XFS doesn't offer sufficient advantages to overcome that built-in advantage of ext4 (after all, neither XFS nor ReiserFS managed to succeed even against ext3).
Did you read the sentence *immediately* after what I wrote? Lemme help you: "Read more about the origins of NeoConservatism and how it has been twisted here [wikipedia.org]."
Let me help you: if you write about "how a term has been twisted", then, all things being equal, you're implicitly saying that you prefer the original usage and disapprove of the modern usage. I'm saying that the modern usage is what counts; there is nothing "twisted" about the term because people today know what it means and who it refers to.
I think you have me confused with someone else. Please be careful to whom you reply.
I don't. I responded to your statements as they were and in the context they were. If I misunderstood your intent, then you simply didn't express yourself clearly enough.
You don't fix security holes by trying to track down all the code that exploits it on the web, you fix security holes by fixing the software containing the security hole. So, it doesn't matter how long this stuff stays in anybody's cache.
But go ahead, please try the "I'm a geek! I just wanted to know how the police are going to investigate me should they determine I'm a suspect!" defense, and let me know how it works. You call it "checking the documentation on a bug", but a jury is more likely to consider it obstructing justice or premeditation.
You're absolutely right that many things geeks do are likely to be a mystery to your average juror and are going to be held against them. Nevertheless, the problem there is with the jury, not with the geek: reading books on police procedures after your wife has disappeared should not be considered evidence of guilt.
It certainly is not "Democratic".
And it is arguably not "democratic" either, because paying people for political influence is not acceptable behavior in a democracy.