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Admin
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Tell that to the anti-GPL crowd.
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Filed under: Fur collecting is fun for all!
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Only really a problem when displayed on that 32" widescreen monitor. On a 12" CGA amber screen, it looks just fine. Well, as fine as it did back in 1987. :wink:
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On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 11:33 PM, Vaire < [email protected]> wrote:
That is why I did not wrote that you should stick with the buggy drivers, but with the previous generation video adapter, that already has all the perfectly working and tested drivers. It will most certainly offer you the needed resolution. As for myself, I try to keep my development system sterile, so I won't go recreational on it, and while needing a large resolution, I certainly don't need the fastest video adapter.
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I should have said business decisions about technology, those are taken hopefully by people who do not get swayed by in-flight magazines, but rather by free t-shirts in conferences :)
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Jeeze this is YATTEAN
[spoiler]Doing this on mobile, so I'll make it short[/spoiler]
For me Open Source means exactly that. The source code / script is publicly available.This means that it can be minutely examined for any possible exploit, its structure can be explored with a view to exposing any flaws in its integrity.
This is why, when I use it I try to disguise my use of it and always install in custom locations (and "names" where possible)
Any organisation that uses "main stream" open source is exposing itself to this potential vulnerability. It is easier, from a long term management perspective, to forbid rather than use customised obfuscation. Especially if you are a natural target like government.
Free software is free software. The source for which may or may not be available. Free software from any of the big players should be safe. Free software from a back street shop has risk and trust issues.
If the criminal element are happy to set up and run an eCommerce site for a period of time before the "sting", why would they not offer a free, good, software tool that is waiting for the right "customer"?
Again, if you are a natural target, it would be wise to not use untrusted software (where do you think the phrase Trojan Horse came from?)
INB4 anybody and anything: Not all criminal or nefarious operators are after a quick result. Some of them are prepared to play the long game, longer than some governments exist. Also, in some circumstances, when it comes to security, a pile driver has to be used.
Confirmation Edit: Just to confirm that my memory was correct, and as a reminder. The Company or Organisation not mentioned in the Article, did get Government Contracts. In my experience the restriction over what type of software you can use, for certain things, is built into the contract by the boys on the super top floor of the client (government)
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Yup. For Hong Kong, the choice of programming language and technologies used is decided by OGCIO. Other countries tends to have organization / department of similar role.
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Closed source is no less open to those willing to reverse engineer, prod, and poke into the interesting bits to the bad guys. That's exactly why swarms of malware exist for Windows.
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I would use MIT/BSD for small utilities and libraries, and GPL for more integral products (which I'd hope to alternatively license commercially). Every license has its ups and downs, and folks with black&white world views shouldn't be taken too seriously, IMO (unless they are running with knives at you; then just shoot them).
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I guess that means you're completely screwed when it comes to software and have to always roll your own.
Its about a perceived trust issue and the subsequent risk assessment.
Please explain to me what my misunderstanding of free software is. Thank you /sarcasm
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You think that I'm (and each and every other user) somehow inherently disabled and can't read its code, put it under scrutiny, run an audit of it to find a backdoor, or whatever.
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I apologise, sorry. I apparently got the wrong impression that you were arguing with me.
this is an issue with text messaging, there is no subtext unless it is expressly embedded and even then it can be seriously misinterpreted.
Afterthought Edit: And there is also the complication of this being the community that it is. Where a misunderstood reply to a misunderstood post leaves you vulnerable to a FLAMING_WHOOSH_ATTACK so you over compensate thereby end up MAKING_THINGS_WORSE_ERROR
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Well, my politeness and advanced positive understanding is billed by the hour. :smile:
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Closed-source freeware is either shareware, freemium (where free version stops short of doing anything that's really useful to you, like a database GUI being able to work with no more than 20 tables), or malware in a disguise. Take your pick.
Even if it's not malware, except that you sign an explicit SLA, your support is next to nonexistent and you're mostly at the mercy of your vendor which may be small, or big, still prone to go bankrupt.
For me, it's not "free enough".
You see, I see nothing bad in paying for software (in fact, I'm paid to do software). The winning points for open source software, or "free as in freedom" software, are that you can really see how many users there really are (they report bugs, after all, you can safely assume that the ratio of development-active users is inversely proportional to the total number of users — if there are 10 users actively participating in testing and reporting bugs, there are maybe 15 of them in total; if you see hundreds participating, there are thousands just using it; and so on); you can actually see the source and modify it to your liking without relying on a vendor; and if you want to rely on a vendor, you usually have a choice (for MySQL-derived products, you have Oracle, you have Percona, you can have a bunch of local consultancies if that's what your institution demands. Same for other popular products). Note that it's a long paragraph and I haven't said a word about zero cost.
The most major winning point for me, however, is that it's I who chooses to manage my costs, and not, God forbid, Oracle, or Microsoft. If I'm short on cash but need that patch, I invest my time. If I have cash I may invest in my hired workers to maintain it (by giving them a raise for an upstream-accepted patch, for example), rather than hiring an external consultant; if the authors accept money to give my requests a priority, I may choose to do so. What the heck, sometimes I may hire the company of the author him/herself! That's the freedom as I see it.
Also, in general, with a few notable exclusions (PHPBB? Discource?), open-source products have better code quality on average than your closed-source product which upon scrutiny may well turn out to be a bunch of hacks cobbled together. But you can't know it because they won't let you see past their glossy marketing flyers.
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My point stands exactly as it was. :rage:
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I'm gonna go with the hardware dying, or an OS upgrade being pushed through that stops anything from working, or everyone that they collaborate with moving on to something else leaving that software in the dust. In reality, most deployments of software and hardware as a combination have a relatively limited lifespan for a whole bunch of reasons.
There's a whole bunch of companies providing that sort of support. It tends to be pretty expensive for what it is IMO, but if something is business-critical then that might be a reasonable investment. (I know that ActiveState certainly do that sort of thing for a few software systems, such as several programming languages and associated support packages. Whether they support any of the software that you need isn't my problem; it's an example other than RedHat…)
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That's the point in an interview where I would say, "Linux, including what you buy from a vendor, is open source -- and Linux vendors ship monitoring tools in their distributions, tools which are also open source."
If they didn't have a reasonable, fully thought-out response to that, I'd politely end the interview right then with, "I think we're done here; you don't seem to understand what the term 'open source' means, and I see far too much trouble and busy work in my future, dealing with self-contradictory company policy. I'll leave now to preserve my sanity."
But then, I may be comfortable enough in my experience to be able to have that kind of leverage. Younger job seekers might not have as much leeway.
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I concede to you the point that you found another company acting like RedHat. Since ActiveState aren't doing anything in the space I was thinking of, though, the general point I was trying to make I think still stands ;)
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I don't think that's what @Vaire was looking for. I think he was just looking to have a(n unjustifiable) moan.
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Well, actually what I was looking for was exactly what I said I was looking for, a company one can call with an urgent issue, speak with a human, and get a time estimate for a fix and assurances that a solution is being worked on. Most open source projects offer support (via email and forums), but not THAT level of support.
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Do you always react to support request for your bugs like you described?
Also, maybe you want a suicide hotline, and not a software consultancy, after all. Ya know, just to assure you and pat you on your back, whether the shit gets worked on or not.
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A. you are being weirdly hostile for no apparent reason, I don't know why you are resorting to ad hominem ... ? You are behaving like I am attacking you personally, when all that I am doing is arguing against a hypothetical.
B. as I have stated previously, I am not speaking on behalf of myself or to a real scenario. I am representing the hypothetical case of a non-programmer trying to use software for business. In those cases, YES, those people want to be able to talk to someone on the PHONE right then and there. They need assurances that things are going to be OK, and their business isn't going to go up in flames. I have seen people react this way in large companies and small companies, often times over trivial issues. Not every company has an IT department, or even an IT person. If you have never encountered such a setting, that baffles me. Reacting to such people with scorn is not very professional. Just because they are overreacting, or one feels they are being overly needy, doesn't make the need to address their concerns less real.
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Leaving aside the fact that “most projects” includes a very long tail of total dross that's open but abandoned, and stuff that just doesn't get much effort from anyone at all… not everyone is willing to offer that sort of support in the first place, as they're already up to their eyeballs in work. Some people make their living providing the sort of support contracts you are looking for (and you won't get it without a contract sorted out somehow) but it sure isn't everyone.
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Please answer the question.
Do you, as a developer, have the will and resources to provide technical support as you described it? Have you been ever involved in cases like that on receiving side?
Why are you then thinking some company would want, or actually be able, to put up with phone babbling and making developers react to every whim? Running a company like that would involve lying to your customers, and if you are found out, you are sued.
Every company in the world that makes a product has a sane process for bugfixes which doesn't necessarily work as every customer would want it, but bugs are getting fixed. All other cases amount to playing a suicide hotline, the counselor having a thick Indian accent and being totally ignorant about the problem.
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I, as a developer, am not working in a capacity right now where my customers regularly call for me support (although it does happen), because we have a dedicated helpdesk for that, and our customers are internal to the company. However, if I was freelancing it again I would. Back in the day during my LAMP days, yes, I answered the phone when it rang at 2AM and talked people off ledges. It didn't matter that the issue was that they had used their own admin tools to screw things up. The buck stopped with me, and they were paying my bills. I didn't get panicked calls very often in those days, but yes, when I got them, I woke up, left plays, stepped outside from family engagements, etc, and handled business. That was also one of the reasons I jumped ship from LAMP and freelancing and went corporate. It is nice to have an 8 to 5 schedule and to get paid overtime if my phone rings after hours.
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I never said that wasn't the case. But, you must admit, it is far more common to even be able to get that kind of support in the paid software space as opposed to the open source space, right?
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Incidentally, are you aware that there number of people able to articulate their problem on the phone well enough to give a hint what's the actual problem is negligibly close to zero? Email at least forces to think about the problem and write it down, like a speed threshold.
I've been through phone support with people yelling "her dam ting no work at all!" at me. Of what should I even try to assure them?
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I...I don't know what to tell you. I have had that sort of experience myself but it has always been reversed when I was the one making the call for support. In my professional practice, both corporate and freelance, I have never had a problem understanding my customers, nor have they had a problem describing to me what the issue was. Language barriers are obviously issues when they arise, but in panic situations, the most important thing is putting out fires and calming everyone down. I have never been faced with a phone support situation where I wasn't able to do that. I am sure they happen, though.
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RedHat offers that sort of support but it is a premium and for special customers who know exactly what they want. No company wastes developers time with some random guy on the phone. Developers are expensive.
Does Microsoft let you talk to their developers on a direct phone line?
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Talking to a human being who can help you solve a problem doesn't necessarily mean talking to one of the developers. It sounds like he wants to deal with a company that has a professional support department - much like what he says his current employer has.
Interestingly, the first company I worked for after college had a policy where every developer was required to spend two days a month handling customer support via e-mail and phone. The idea is to make sure the developers get first-hand experience understanding customer problems, which they are less likely to get if all their requirements come from the sales, marketing and support teams. It also forces developers to become familiar with the parts of the code and platforms that they don't normally work with. Personally, I think it was a great idea. Unfortunately, I have not seen any other company do this.
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Only developers can give time estimate, and even them learn to assume that is the only issue they want to work on then x 3. Support cannot give time estimate.
Yes it is interesting! for any company of considerable size with customer oriented business model. The problem is I would leave such company, because I hate talking over phone.
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is tdw sponsored by a monitoring tool now? This article reminded me of the puppetmaster.
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Why do I get this feeling that the "correct" answer was "I'd set up an Access database to enter all the data into and then generate the monitoring report for the data centers"...
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Измучились промерзать зимой и излишне выплачивать за отопление? Теплоизоляция фасада – решение проблемы! Компания "Тепло и уют" с 2010 года предлагает специализированные услуги по теплоизоляции фасадов зданий любой сложности. За это время мы зарекомендовали себя как безопасный и честный партнер, о чем свидетельствуют многие отзывы наших к