Go Back   Freethought Forum > The Marketplace > Computers & Technology

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #26  
Old 01-06-2012, 06:39 PM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeP View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
ETA: I know Word can export documents in XML, but it produces such mangled impenetrable XML as to be virtually useless. (In fact the standard .docx format that newer versions of Word save in by default is just zipped XML.)
Indeed. The idea that using XML somehow makes things portable is another marketing lie. Like claiming in decades past that saving files in ASCII was somehow portable (it isn't. UTF-8 FTW!)
ASCII is perfectly portable, it just lacks in expressiveness. That's a very different problem from what XML has going, which is that XML isn't really a file format, it's a set of rules for writing file formats.

The problem was the thing where people assumed that "save to XML" would mean anything but "it was slightly easier to write the parser and save routines than it would have been otherwise".
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Goliath (01-06-2012)
  #27  
Old 01-06-2012, 07:29 PM
Dragar's Avatar
Dragar Dragar is offline
Now in six dimensions!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: The Cotswolds
Gender: Male
Posts: VCI
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir View Post
Other people find Word much easier to use than LaTeX that's why :lol:

Like seriously, we had to use LaTeX for my syntax class (it's much easier to make sentence trees with it) and the people in my class were not all gushing over how they wished that they had used it long ago and not Word.

But I guess it's easier for you (maybe that's related to programming experience?).
I know that when I first found LaTeX, I wanted to kill whoever had made me endure ever trying to assemble a document in M$ Word. It's so superior it's almost terrifying. LaTeX just works, and so quickly. I have to fight Word every step of the way because it both wants to let me typeset my own document (someone with no knowledge of typesetting), and yet has the worst interface possible for letting me do so.
__________________
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
ceptimus (01-06-2012)
  #28  
Old 01-06-2012, 07:48 PM
LadyShea's Avatar
LadyShea LadyShea is offline
I said it, so I feel it, dick
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Here
Posts: XXXMDCCCXCVII
Images: 41
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

I don't really understand what you all are talking about, but I think Mozilla is open source so maybe my current problem is relevant.

For some reason Thunderbird 8.0 won't let me create a new account for my work email (it worked fine with older versions), so I had a choice of the shittiest webmail ever (squirrelMail) or Outlook. I tried Outlook and compared the Thunderbird it is the most confusing and useless piece of shit, so I am using the Squirrel!

I even understand Word and other MS products, so you would think I could figure out Outlook, right? I can't! It doesn't have any commands or tools that make a lick of sense.
Reply With Quote
  #29  
Old 01-06-2012, 09:30 PM
lisarea's Avatar
lisarea lisarea is offline
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: XVMMMDCXLII
Blog Entries: 1
Images: 3
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragar View Post
I know that when I first found LaTeX, I wanted to kill whoever had made me endure ever trying to assemble a document in M$ Word. It's so superior it's almost terrifying. LaTeX just works, and so quickly. I have to fight Word every step of the way because it both wants to let me typeset my own document (someone with no knowledge of typesetting), and yet has the worst interface possible for letting me do so.
To be fair, Word is a program and LaTeX is a markup language, so you can't really compare them that way. You could make a confusing and bloated LaTeX editor if there isn't one already.

Part of the problem is separating content and layout. Most markup languages I think recognize that distinction, whereas layout oriented tools like Word don't so much. (I guess they kind of do in the sense that you can mark things as headings and such or include separate and unrelated typesetting instructions, but it's not as explicit a distinction as it is with something like CSS.)*

I think maybe the problem with Word, as with a lot of really widely adopted software, is that it tries to accommodate too wide a range of needs and learning curves with a single interface, and you just can't do that well. You end up with one tool that's going to be used by everyone from casual users who use it to format one-off things to people using it to write big long complicated books every day. And it ends up failing both of them to some extent.

I do think it might be possible to serve a range of requirements like that with a single format, but probably not with a single tool.

* I think there should be THREE layers, though. The content layer with functional tags; then a presentation layer with instructions for displaying based on those functional tags; plus a third, optional, discrete design-only layer, for layout instructions that are unrelated to the content.

This should be a small matter of programming, so I assume you guys will have that ready for me in a week or so.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Adam (01-10-2012), Crumb (01-06-2012), Dragar (01-06-2012), Kyuss Apollo (01-07-2012), Pyrrho (01-07-2012), The Man (03-24-2015)
  #30  
Old 01-06-2012, 11:08 PM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Lyx is an editor that uses some TeX variant as its backend.

I still swear by using markup rather than WYSIWYG for a lot of stuff. For precise layout fiddling, like doing trifold pamphlets, I can get better results sometimes wih WYSIWYG. For large documents, though, markup is absolutely superior.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
  #31  
Old 01-06-2012, 11:39 PM
Goliath's Avatar
Goliath Goliath is offline
select custom_user_title from user_info where username='Goliath';
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Kansas City, MO
Gender: Male
Posts: MMDCCVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeP View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
ETA: I know Word can export documents in XML, but it produces such mangled impenetrable XML as to be virtually useless. (In fact the standard .docx format that newer versions of Word save in by default is just zipped XML.)
Indeed. The idea that using XML somehow makes things portable is another marketing lie. Like claiming in decades past that saving files in ASCII was somehow portable (it isn't. UTF-8 FTW!)
ASCII is perfectly portable, it just lacks in expressiveness.
ASCII?! Listen here, sonny boy, zeroes and ones are more portable than your newfangled ASCII. What if you're on a system that uses six bits for a char?

:P
__________________
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Godliness is next to impossible.
Therefore, cleanliness is next to impossible.
Reply With Quote
  #32  
Old 01-07-2012, 01:12 AM
lisarea's Avatar
lisarea lisarea is offline
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: XVMMMDCXLII
Blog Entries: 1
Images: 3
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
Medical and car people are heavily regulated, and whaddya know, we have a lot of customers demanding GPLv2 only for embedded apps. (Note: Actual medical equipment as such is even more insane, we're just talking about the stuff that talks to it and even if the stuff fails no one dies.)
Ha ha, I got totally distracted about boring word processing stuff, and forgot entirely about the stuff I wanted to fight about.

As far as regulations go, I waffle on that. I understand the need to limit interference, but I'm not sure that's the way to go about it. It might be a minor point, but I'd happily accept making it illegal to use equipment to interfere with certain signals, or to sell equipment designed to do that; but not making it illegal to own or build equipment that is capable of it.

Right now, I assume that most medical and other safety-critical equipment is closed source, yet it's already been demonstrated that you can hack a pacemaker or an insulin pump or a car, so keeping that information secret hasn't made it safe. In fact, the lack of public oversight and information seems to have made manufacturers and regulators pretty cavalier about safety issues. Security through obscurity never works in the long term; and trusting a corporation or a sloppy government agency with overseeing the security and efficacy of things like that just don't work.

Giving customers (drivers or patients or whatever) the information needed to make an informed decision means telling them exactly how the equipment they depend on works. True, most people wouldn't know what to make of the source code for a pacemaker, but the glorious thing about nerds is that there are always plenty of them out there who will be happy to pick those things apart, identify weaknesses, and suggest improvements.

The way I see it, if those things were open source and open for public comment, they would have been more secure to begin with.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Crumb (01-07-2012), Dragar (01-07-2012), The Man (03-24-2015), viscousmemories (10-02-2015)
  #33  
Old 01-07-2012, 01:35 AM
Pyrrho's Avatar
Pyrrho Pyrrho is offline
Man in Black
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Over here.
Gender: Male
Posts: MDCLXVII
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

A significant portion of my job involves explaining to people how to do things in Word. A more significant portion involves people sending the documents to me to fix things they try to do.

:capitalistpig:

That said, I do miss the classic WordPerfect.

I don't miss DisplayWrite, though. Or MultiMate.
__________________
The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
--
Official Bunny Hero :bugs:
Reply With Quote
  #34  
Old 01-07-2012, 02:58 AM
erimir's Avatar
erimir erimir is offline
Projecting my phallogos with long, hard diction
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Dee Cee
Gender: Male
Posts: XMMMDCCCVI
Images: 11
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Also

LaTeX and open source and all the things that lisarea likes are all CRAP AND MICROSOFT AND APPLE ARE SO MUCH BETTER.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
lisarea (01-07-2012)
  #35  
Old 01-07-2012, 03:25 AM
lisarea's Avatar
lisarea lisarea is offline
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: XVMMMDCXLII
Blog Entries: 1
Images: 3
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Ha ha, except that I've used LaTeX probably fewer than five times ever in my life, and in between those times, I forgot everything about it.

You're the one all doing stuff with it all the time, neckbeard.
Reply With Quote
  #36  
Old 01-07-2012, 03:28 AM
Jerome's Avatar
Jerome Jerome is offline
Dr. Jerome Corsi-Soetoro, Ph.D., Esq.
 
Join Date: May 2009
Location: The Land of Pleasant Living
Posts: XDXL
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

&feature=player_embedded
__________________
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. ... The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Reply With Quote
  #37  
Old 01-07-2012, 03:38 PM
erimir's Avatar
erimir erimir is offline
Projecting my phallogos with long, hard diction
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Dee Cee
Gender: Male
Posts: XMMMDCCCVI
Images: 11
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
Ha ha, except that I've used LaTeX probably fewer than five times ever in my life, and in between those times, I forgot everything about it.

You're the one all doing stuff with it all the time, neckbeard.
You shush.

If you got an Apple iPhone and only ever bought the programs they approved from the app store you would totally understand why everything Apple does gives me a hard on.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Demimonde (01-09-2012)
  #38  
Old 01-08-2012, 01:38 AM
Corona688's Avatar
Corona688 Corona688 is offline
Forum Killer
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: MVCII
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by erimir View Post
Like seriously, we had to use LaTeX for my syntax class (it's much easier to make sentence trees with it) and the people in my class were not all gushing over how they wished that they had used it long ago and not Word.
Did you have a WYSIWGY utility to switch between 'real' and 'code' view at your command? If not, that's probably why...
__________________
Reply With Quote
  #39  
Old 01-08-2012, 03:46 AM
Qingdai's Avatar
Qingdai Qingdai is offline
Dogehlaugher -Scrutari
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Northwest
Gender: Female
Posts: XVDLXVII
Images: 165
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post

I think maybe the problem with Word, as with a lot of really widely adopted software, is that it tries to accommodate too wide a range of needs and learning curves with a single interface, and you just can't do that well. You end up with one tool that's going to be used by everyone from casual users who use it to format one-off things to people using it to write big long complicated books every day. And it ends up failing both of them to some extent.
That fairly describes any medical charting or scheduling system I've ever worked with, man what a bunch of bloated useless crap. Also if you want to fix it so it works, you have to pay an expert an arm and a leg to fix it, then they update it so it's even more bloated, every time.
Reply With Quote
  #40  
Old 01-08-2012, 04:31 AM
Kyuss Apollo's Avatar
Kyuss Apollo Kyuss Apollo is offline
happy now, Mussolini?
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: location, location
Posts: VMCCCXI
Blog Entries: 7
Images: 17
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Hmmm...been over at the LaTeX site looking it over. For those of you that have used it, what would you anticipate the learning curve would be for someone like myself with no experience with in either coding or with LaTeX to combine 300+ pages in Word, currently divided into a half dozen separate word .docs, and loaded with footnotes, tables and a smattering of .pngs & .jpgs, and put that into LaTeX?

It sounds like the formatting would come out way better in LaTeX, but if it is going to take me 2 months to figure it out it wouldn't really be worth the investment in time.
__________________
This week's track: MINUTEMEN - History Lesson Part II



Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Demimonde (01-08-2012), SR71 (01-08-2012)
  #41  
Old 01-08-2012, 02:13 PM
Dragar's Avatar
Dragar Dragar is offline
Now in six dimensions!
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: The Cotswolds
Gender: Male
Posts: VCI
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Do you know how to use HTML?

Heck, in some ways it's not too different from making forum posts.

Footnotes are trivial in latex, images are easy (pngs and jpgs are bad, bad filetypes but can be used or converted easily enough). Tables are sometimes awkward.

It really depends how much experience you've got in things like HTML, making forum posts(!), and how quick you learn thing in general. It won't take you two months, but it might take more than a week.

My advice would be to stick your toes in the water and have a go at assembling a very basic document, and play from there by attempting to add new stuff. If it's incredibly confusing and you hate it, you can go back to Word.
__________________
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Demimonde (01-08-2012), Kyuss Apollo (01-09-2012), The Man (03-24-2015)
  #42  
Old 01-08-2012, 07:59 PM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Oh, I don't for a minute think that "closed source" makes medical equipment safe -- and actually, I was vaguely under the impression that a lot of it was published.

What medical equipment does need is very very thorough procedural validation of what the code is, how it got written, and so on -- and that means you probably can't use most open source projects, because the cost of completely evaluating every line of code would be insane.

As to regulation: I don't particularly think a lot of these regulations are good. But they exist, and the GPLv3 wouldn't work for a lot of this stuff.

Basically, I can see people not being willing to agree to an absolute mandate that the end-user of a pacemaker can reload the software with a modified version.. :)

So it's not that I think these regulations are good, or even in most cases necessary; I agree that we would be better off if medical devices had to publish their code.

But the GPLv3 has a lot more implications than that, and it's fundamentally broken.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
  #43  
Old 01-08-2012, 10:10 PM
lisarea's Avatar
lisarea lisarea is offline
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: XVMMMDCXLII
Blog Entries: 1
Images: 3
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
Oh, I don't for a minute think that "closed source" makes medical equipment safe -- and actually, I was vaguely under the impression that a lot of it was published.
I was vaguely under the impression that it was pretty much all closed and proprietary, based mostly on the way the articles about exploits talked about it.

Admittedly, I wasn't sure about that, but these articles seem to confirm that:

Proprietary software puts pacemaker users at risk • The Register
Killed by Code: Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices - Software Freedom Law Center

It looks like car computers are mostly proprietary as well. (I had a brief, terrifying moment when I found an article that said that most car computers ran Windows XP, before I realized they meant a different kind of car computer.)

How do I check for problems with the car's computers, the engine control unit?

Quote:
What medical equipment does need is very very thorough procedural validation of what the code is, how it got written, and so on -- and that means you probably can't use most open source projects, because the cost of completely evaluating every line of code would be insane.

As to regulation: I don't particularly think a lot of these regulations are good. But they exist, and the GPLv3 wouldn't work for a lot of this stuff.

Basically, I can see people not being willing to agree to an absolute mandate that the end-user of a pacemaker can reload the software with a modified version.. :)

So it's not that I think these regulations are good, or even in most cases necessary; I agree that we would be better off if medical devices had to publish their code.
Yes, that's all I mean by open source. The code should be publicly available for comment and input from those who are interested.

I should probably be clearer. By open source, I just mean open source generically, in that the source should be publicly available so that people can dig around and try to find bugs and security problems with the software before it's released, rather than waiting until someone gets access to an existing system and figures out how to hack it, which has been how a lot of the vulnerabilities have been discovered.

I'm not talking about making it a community project, or even about making it trivial to do firmware updates (in fact, I suspect that's one area where it should be much more secure).

The only thing I disagree with you about a little is that I think the owner of the device ultimately should be allowed to do whatever they like with it. The manufacturer could still void the warranty if someone decides they want to run BSD on their insulin pump or whatever, but as long as the software is updateable (which I think most implanted medical devices are), the user should be the ultimate arbiter of that. Insurance companies or public health officials could mandate or prohibit specific changes for coverage or something like that; but ultimately, if you've got a bought and paid for pacemaker, and you make an informed decision to install some risky third-party firmware or something on it, that should be your prerogative.

There should still be standards bodies overseeing official modifications, and regulating the software manufacturers supply for medical devices and car computers and so forth, and there should be 'street legal' standards for user-modified carputers and stuff like that.

I'm just saying that before a manufacturer releases software on a device that people are literally entrusting with their lives, that code should be made available to the public for comment and input to ensure that as many security and stability issues as possible are discovered and resolved before those devices are rolled out.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Adam (01-10-2012), But (01-09-2012), Crumb (01-09-2012), The Man (03-24-2015), viscousmemories (10-02-2015)
  #44  
Old 01-08-2012, 10:12 PM
ceptimus's Avatar
ceptimus ceptimus is offline
puzzler
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: UK
Posts: XVMMDCCXC
Images: 28
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
and that means you probably can't use most open source projects, because the cost of completely evaluating every line of code would be insane.
Surely you don't believe that closed source projects for the medical industry evaluate every line of code either?
Reply With Quote
  #45  
Old 01-08-2012, 10:27 PM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
and that means you probably can't use most open source projects, because the cost of completely evaluating every line of code would be insane.
Surely you don't believe that closed source projects for the medical industry evaluate every line of code either?
At least some of them, if they don't, they sure have a heck of a lot of people perjuring themselves.

The super-high-reliability stuff out there, you really DO have two or three teams writing multiple versions of something and additional people reviewing the code in multiple ways, both line by line and otherwise.

It's not cost-effective for most stuff, but it's pretty cost-effective for something with a small amount of code that MUST work or you are out millions of dollars or several peoples' lives.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
  #46  
Old 01-08-2012, 10:29 PM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
Yes, that's all I mean by open source. The code should be publicly available for comment and input from those who are interested.
Ahh, so you mean "source which is open", rather than "Open Source (TM)".

Quote:
The only thing I disagree with you about a little is that I think the owner of the device ultimately should be allowed to do whatever they like with it. The manufacturer could still void the warranty if someone decides they want to run BSD on their insulin pump or whatever, but as long as the software is updateable (which I think most implanted medical devices are), the user should be the ultimate arbiter of that. Insurance companies or public health officials could mandate or prohibit specific changes for coverage or something like that; but ultimately, if you've got a bought and paid for pacemaker, and you make an informed decision to install some risky third-party firmware or something on it, that should be your prerogative.
I would agree that this should be the case, but I don't think our current legal system could ever make it possible.

You simply can't get away from "but you're liable because you made it POSSIBLE for them to shoot themselves" reasoning. Stupid Deep Pockets rule.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
  #47  
Old 01-08-2012, 11:13 PM
lisarea's Avatar
lisarea lisarea is offline
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: XVMMMDCXLII
Blog Entries: 1
Images: 3
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by seebs View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
Yes, that's all I mean by open source. The code should be publicly available for comment and input from those who are interested.
Ahh, so you mean "source which is open", rather than "Open Source (TM)".
I don't know what you mean by Open Source (TM). I mean source code that is open and not closed.

Quote:
I would agree that this should be the case, but I don't think our current legal system could ever make it possible.

You simply can't get away from "but you're liable because you made it POSSIBLE for them to shoot themselves" reasoning. Stupid Deep Pockets rule.
As far as I'm aware, the only regulation prohibiting that now would maybe be the DMCA anti-circumvention rules.

As far as liability, are you saying you believe that device manufacturers would be held liable for damages done by intentional, warranty-voiding user modifications? I don't think that's likely.
Reply With Quote
  #48  
Old 01-09-2012, 04:17 AM
seebs seebs is offline
God Made Me A Skeptic
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Minnesota
Posts: VMMCMLXVII
Images: 1
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by lisarea View Post
I don't know what you mean by Open Source (TM). I mean source code that is open and not closed.
I mean Open Source (TM). That is to say, the thing that the trademark refers to.

Quote:
As far as liability, are you saying you believe that device manufacturers would be held liable for damages done by intentional, warranty-voiding user modifications? I don't think that's likely.
Yes, I am saying that. I think it's pretty likely, not because it's sensical, but because we have so many examples of people being held liable for ridiculous things that it's hard for me to imagine the courts suddenly turning sane.

Consider all the court cases that have led to all sorts of elaborate safety mechanisms and mechanisms for preventing people from intentionally disabling safety mechanisms, etcetera. The courts have consistently found that rich companies that could have taken more steps to prevent people from hurting themselves are liable for not having prevented people from going wayyyy out of their way to hurt themselves.

Basically, if a jury of people who don't know much about technology can be convinced that it was negligent of you to make it possible for people to hurt themselves, you can be liable.
__________________
Hear me / and if I close my mind in fear / please pry it open
See me / and if my face becomes sincere / beware
Hold me / and when I start to come undone / stitch me together
Save me / and when you see me strut / remind me of what left this outlaw torn
Reply With Quote
  #49  
Old 01-09-2012, 02:28 PM
Corona688's Avatar
Corona688 Corona688 is offline
Forum Killer
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: MVCII
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
Surely you don't believe that closed source projects for the medical industry evaluate every line of code either?
For a software engineering course I was told about the serious levels of rigor needed for military projects. When asked how much documentation they required, the officer held his hand a foot off his desk.

No amount of design spec or proper manuals would be enough; printing the source code wasn't enough; to fulfill this insane request they eventually fed their project and every library it used through a disassembler, then printed that too. Other filler was involved but the details are beginning to blur from time. Their masters seemed pleased enough with having killed several trees that they didn't care how fucking useless most of that paper was -- obviously too much to humanly read by any means, good or bad. It was enough that they had it, in case they needed it.

Rigorously examined doesn't always mean intelligently examined.
__________________
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
Dragar (01-09-2012)
  #50  
Old 01-09-2012, 03:24 PM
Chatter Chatter is offline
33% satisfaction guaranteed!
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: CDXXX
Default Re: The Official FF Open Source Fight Thrad

I believe Intel uses a lot of formal verification. At least, back with the P4, the floating-point unit and bus protocols were all mechanically verified, and I'd expect they still are in modern chipsets.

In terms of checking, it's very difficult to beat formal verification. It involves expressing the specification of a system in a formal logic and then using a computer to mathematically prove that the system meets the spec. This immediately raises the question of how we know that the program which does the mathematical proof is correct, but it's impressive to see what sort of smart engineering is used to get confidence there.

For software, mechanical verification is at least feasible enough for an academic group to have a completely verified compiler for a large subset of C in the Coq prover. And things such as the Java Modelling Language and Spec# are still kicking about somewhere.

It's still early days, and it's still all too academic. And this year, the UK saw massive cuts to university funding, with many research fields in computer science seeing themselves shrinking. Interestingly enough, of the only two research fields that are going to be expanded by ESPRC (the main research council for science and engineering), one of them is verification.

It's all very sci-fi, but I think it would be cool to have a world where any safety-critical system has to be machine-checked for correctness, and systems refuse to update themselves until the updates generate certificates that meet specification and safety requirements.

Then maybe we wouldn't have to worry about whether or not our software is open, only whether our specifications and proof certificates are open. So long as you can publish a proof certificate that your program meets its specification and that you do not violate user safety, it's entirely up to you how your system is implemented, and what intellectual property you use that you want to keep protected.
Reply With Quote
Thanks, from:
But (01-09-2012)
Reply

  Freethought Forum > The Marketplace > Computers & Technology


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

 

All times are GMT +1. The time now is 09:03 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.2
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Page generated in 1.17721 seconds with 15 queries