SecurityMatters

There are doubts about how open this project will be. I share that concern. But, I also give the guy credit for making the project at all. Maybe it will be more closed than I would like. If the project is a success and produces a lot of boards, then I expect real open source builds of software for it will follow from someone. As a start, I can't think of anything I would prefer to Linux and Python as a place to start. I sure want to buy a few of these boards to experiment with.

Give the guy credit for making some effort to put the maps up. Maybe when Stanford gets them, they will become readable. Currently, they are in some weird, proprietary, patent encumbered format and essentially unusable.

There is very little reason to dread this move. I am not sure I like Unity yet, but I applaud Ubuntu for thinking outside the box. If you install Ubuntu 11.04 and want the old user interface, you can pretty much get it. Just install and then at the login screen, choose the classic desktop. Then, run the command metacity --replace. On one Narwhal test machine, I created a startup application to run this command on each boot. This gives you a desktop almost exactly like the old desktop. So, you can have the old or the new. Choice is nice and everyone is served.

There are a couple of different problems here. RedHat is actually pretty good in that they only include open software in their distribution. I, and many others, would not trust the OS nearly as much if they included things like Flash or other binary only blobs. These binary blobs could be doing anything. We know Flash works against the user's interest, and who knows what other binary piece might do?

Secondly, how would they license? Most of the code they could license requires a charge per copy. RedHat , Ubuntu and most Linux distros encourage the free redistribution of their disks. You can download it for free(aside from bandwidth charges which RedHat is not involved with. They don't even know how many copies are really in use. So, either they would have to change their whole distribution model or they would have to pay for something that is fairly nebulous. Fluendo has published a version of the MP3 codec that can be distributed for free. They purchased a license that has no per copy costs, but that is unusual to even have that as an option.

Finally, the RedHat company produces the RedHat distro for commercial use and the Fedora distro for home use. There is an active community of Fedora users who happily use it after 5 PM and you can find how to get most codecs working in Fedora, if you search a bit. The freedoms associated with Linux make it much more pleasant to use that any proprietary solution available today. I would also say Linux is more powerful and easy to use, but I can see how not everyone would agree about those, since your experience and workflows can drive those comparisons. OpenSolaris was making good progress. It is a shame it was killed a little before it got to the point where it was usable for everyday duty for the average person.

Enough people care about the software being open that this project will have a good market, if it produces a useful product. I tried Skype several years ago, but I never felt comfortable using it. With proprietary software like Skype, you just don't know what they are doing with your data. The GNU project does not have to be better than Skype, just usable. Ekiga and Twinkle work pretty well now, but they have problems that more competition should help. And, like other people here say, I suspect the GNU project is likely to produce a product that can be hooked into all sorts of other products. It is the UNIX way, after all.

Howdy, I installed Plan 9 several years ago(close to 10, if I remember correctly). I thought it was interesting, but it had a few problems. 1. It was too hard to install. I figured it out, but it was difficult enough that I thought I would not be able to recommend it to many others, unless they were fairly advanced. 2. The supported hardware list was too small. Mostly, this was a problem with supported nics. On a system like Plan9, a system without a good NIC is pretty useless. 3. The community of users was too small. I did not find any other local users. I found a small community of online users, but they only seemed interested in using Plan9 to break into systems and that did not interest me. I should probably try it again, since many of these things could have improved. I have also used Inferno a bit on a prototype ATT phone and I would like to program that a bit. Linux ended up having most of what I wanted Plan9 for and that is probably why I have not tried it for so long.

Howdy, 10 years ago, I was a happy user of Microsoft products and could not see any reason to use anything else. I never minded paying for software. I still don't mind, although now, all of the software I use is free(legally free). I don't even allow Microsoft software on my network, because I don't trust it. What drove me away from Microsoft was a steady history of the company lying to me and treating it's customers with contempt. Sometimes I hear that Microsoft has gotten better, but many things, including recently the behavior concerning Microsoft Office XML shows me otherwise. I disliked Linux when I started with it, but I did not appreciate paying money to be treated like dirt and I forced myself to convert. I think I understand the economic forces that drove Microsoft, but I think you were too short sighted. You looked on consumers as people who had little choice but to knuckle under to you. No consumer wants the DRM you crippled Windows Vista and 7 with. No sensible company wants an unreliable OS, which is all you offer now. I have discussed the unreliable nature of Windows with several senior MS engineers and they almost all agree about my points. One senior designer did not, although he could never find and deliver to me the evidence he though he had to the contrary. I am more productive now with Linux than I ever was with Microsoft products, and I feel much better about it, too. It seems to me that Microsoft is on it's way to irrelevance and I think there is very little chance you will reform. You think the actions you take are defensible. Most of them are, but that is not the only standard that matters. I feel dirty when I have to use Microsoft products now and that is 100 percent driven by your choices. I convert people to Linux every month. I still have an open mind, but I would need to see a real difference at Microsoft to change my mind. Thank you for asking.

Yes, I know that. And, I have seen developers at a loss of what to do when some gui developer tool is not available. One problem is the use of the gui tool seems to put people too far from what is really going on. Most users probably need a gui to be productive. A gui may be productive for some developer tasks, but a developer should understand what is really happening and be able to work without one.

I work mostly in Python, and that affects my view, I am sure. But, even when I did mostly c/c++, I knew it was useful to be able to ssh to a foreign machine, edit a file and recompile and execute a program.

The view I expresses is one I also hear from other developers. I cannot help how you perceive it, but it is still true.

I was talking about reliability, not stability. The activation Windows has used for a while makes the product unreliable. This may not be obvious at first. I had a client with a computer problem, which ended up needing some replacement hardware. The computer needed reactivation, and the owner asked me what assurance she had that it could be activated in another 3 years when some other part died. The computer was running a very expensive piece of vertical industry software that only ran on one version of Windows. I read everything I could find and talked to several senior Microsoft engineers. The answer is that nothing assures that I'll be able to activate Windows to keep a business critical process running. I get vague statements that the engineers can't see why Microsoft would stop the activations, but nothing I can tell someone to bet their business on. I can understand why most people don't see this problem. I did not see it, until prompted by a customer.

I don't know about accessing OLAP databases, but it seems like a bad idea, anyway. The programmability of OpenOffice is quite powerful and workflows can and are automated with it.

Visual Studio is not bad for people with little understanding of development. Unfortunately, CS schools turn out many people like that these days. I don't know why people want tools that get in the way and slow you down as much as Visual Studio, but it is popular.

To me, the built in unreliability of Windows is something I wonder why more people don't focus on. Building your business processes around something that needs proprietary tools that can disappear with little notice just seems crazy.

Thank you for referring me to The Philosopher's Zone. I had not heard it before. I listened to 4 programs last night. I did not get as much from it as I do from most of the In Our Time episodes. Having just one person to interview does not seem to lead to the same quality of discussion as the panels of experts tha Melvin finds. I am not saying every IOT is a gem, but I learned from and enjoyed IOT more. But, I have listened to most of the IOT episodes and I can't get any more back episodes. They now hide IOT behind Flash and I have better sense than to install that program. Good day

I listen to his tech5 and crankygeeks podcast, but don't bother with the link above. It brings up a page about half obscured with what is probably a black TV. Why bother putting up a website where the content is obscured? Maybe the slow people who browse with javascript on see something else.

I demonstrate no such thing. It may be true that a better example of an embedded video element would show why it is a bad idea. I am open to trying other examples of properly coded video elements. My point was that the author did not demonstrate his point and it could be that Firefox et al made the choice for a good reason he did not understand. I still suspect that, but there is not good evidence here either way.

A clean browser would not address the problem. I think it is insane to browse with javascript, once you understand how it works. You are essentially letting random people run their code on your machine. How could that possibly be a good idea? I realize I miss out on a few fancy sites, but there is so much available, I just move along to the next story.

I've never used Google Calendar. I went over the code in Google Maps before I decided it was reasonably safe. That takes some time, and I have to do it every once in a while, since Google changes it. Most sites are not worth that trouble.

I don't say you are insane for blithely running javascript. You just obviously don't care much about security. That is your decision.

The author demonstrated why Firefox, et al, made the correct choice on his example page. I visited his page using Firefox and the video would not play. My guess is that you need javascript turned on to play the videos on his site. I almost never enable javascript, and certainly would not do so just to watch a little video. It sounds like Firefox and others are trying to make the web pages more universally work.

That is a good start. Now, if they will disallow IE7 and IE8, we can get IE users back to a version that does not use ActiveX for plugins. That would be a great security step.

Why would a person use this instead of FreeNX. FreeNX seemed to work for me. The thing missing was a open source NX client. I see there is a QT one now, but I have not tried it yet.

This is not ideological. It is practical. Adobe Flash exposes your system to a variety of vulnerabilities and is unlikely to get much better. Adobe considers making the user vulnerable a feature and they brag about it to people they sell their commercial products to. They also offer an unreasonable license to the player that sensible people refuse to accept. So, if Ogg Theora allows embedded videos at comparable quality for the same bitrate, and websites like YouTube adopt it, then it is a big win for the user. Sensible people can now play videos and we can recommend disabling Adobe Flash and so everyone is a winner.

  To: Femur

If you are interested in learning more, I recommend "The Singularity is Near". Or, for free, go to http://singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2008 and download videos from the conference last year.

You missed something that works without javascript. I don't run it. Any suggestions? Other than running javascript, which is way too bad an idea, security wise.

I have never understood why most people even created PayPal accounts. A PayPal like system that worked well would be very convenient. But, when I go try to create an account, I always get stopped by the Terms of Service. How could anyone think that is reasonable? Why should I waive my cardholder rights for an associated credit card? If you walked into a store and they asked you to waive your rights under your cardholder agreement in order to use a credit card, would you do it? And, then you read about the dispute resolution process. It is clear that if you ever get any money out of the system, you should just consider yourself lucky. I'd say that if you think of money in the system as play money and don't care about any associated bank account or credit card, then PayPal would be OK. Otherwise, it is not reasonable. I conclude that most people don't read the agreement, and just hope.

What a completely useless site. Unless you are careless enough to run javascript, the site will not return any information. They say "To see full output you need to enable Javascript in your browser", but really return NO information without javascript. I don't know what they return with javascript, because I don't use it, like any sensible person.