(The word "consumer" has always squicked me, I have to say .. what was wrong with "customer"? "Consumer" conjures up visions of something hippo-like lying on a sofa, watching daytime TV and ingesting liquidized burgers through a tube .. whereas a customer is somebody who exercises their own judgement and returns to vendors whom they have previous good experiences with.)

Commercial software always seems to pander to user's short-term needs .. "You want to do XYZ? Here, we'll automate it for you, make it happen at the click of a button." Whereas OSS is aware of future consequences, security, the risks to architectural integrity posed by feature creep, and that one size doesn't fit all. Stuff that used to be known under that now sadly under-used word "craftsmanship."

From an amateur sysadmin's PoV, I'd have to say "yes, looks like it." I trust dpkg. I know when I install something that dpkg WILL NOT proceed if that package overwrites files in another package. Years of experience of (admittedly earlier versions of) Windows have made me really appreciate that. Plus all the little elaborations like dpkg-divert, and the alternatives system, that allow people who understand their system to tweak things without tripping up the package manager later.

Having a user-friendly installer that runs everywhere is superficially nice, but I like the trust that comes from understanding the underlying architecture. And anyway, you could implement something like that on-top of dpkg/apt if necessary - simply detecting the distro version and adding an appropriate line to /etc/apt/sources.lists would have the same effect as far as user was concerned.

Actually being able to install the same .exe on multiple OS versions is a double-edged sword. You either have to statically link things like the C run-time library, upgrade the system-wide version (historically dangerous and avoided on Windows), or supply the app with a local copy - which means it won't get updated by security fixes released by the OS vendor.

Superficially easily installation is trumped in my book my a system which does the Right Thing and which has earned the trust I place in it ..

At the risk of being slightly controversial .. how much of the difference between commercial and OSS really is technical?

Don't get me wrong, I'm rabidly pro-F/L/OSS, and nudge "ordinary" people towards it wherever I can, but I think it's a bit of a simplification to describe it as purely technically superior. When it does push the envelope, it normally drives the commercial world to react and improve, so they're usually roughly level-pegging at the feature level.

Where it really shines, I think, is in harder-to-define areas. Ethics, for one. Architectural taste, for another (debian got package management right 10 - 15 years ago - has windows caught up yet?) Social/organizational factors - the maintenance and repository models used by open OS distributions works so well that the commercial world is mimicking it with "app stores." Lastly, of course, there's motivation - I trust Ubuntu and Mozilla to fix security holes because it's the Right Thing and because they want to do a good job, and not just because they're scared of getting caught out, which I always feel is the mindset in the commercial world.

I understand these things are probably harder to explain to the general public, but can we at least be a bit more honest / precise amongst ourselves?

If IE and Firefox were both using Sun's JVM (which I imagine they were), perhaps it was the JVM's security settings that got changed? That's my best guess for that one.

Because IE is almost always shipped with Windows, other apps often use its rendering engine to display HTML - they might be also be vulnerable if they use it to display untrusted content. The advisory mentioned the Outlook Express isn't vulnerable in its default configuration because of its use of IE's "zones" feature, but that does rather imply that it, and other apps, might be vulnerable in certain circumstances.

Usually, anything that uses IE's rendering engine to display untrusted content is also vulnerable. MS's advisory mentions that Outlook Express isn't vulnerable by default in this situation because of the it's use of the zoning stuff, which implies that it, and other apps, might be vulnerable otherwise.

I'm pretty sure MS's workaround here only prevents that one ActiveX control being instantiated.

Arguably, the Netscape / Mozilla plug-in API is just as vulnerable, though at least there the user has to do something to install it. It briefly looked like MS were going to be forced to do the same thing due to a patent issue, but sadly that didn't happen:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/11/08/ie-automatic-component-activation-changes-to-ie-activex-update.aspx

AFAIK, the meaning of "box" in that expression is much more general, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_outside_the_box

My issue is about effective use of limited resources. Slow road users + narrow roads + fast road users = hold ups.

Horse-drawn carriages are, as far as I'm aware, still legal on UK roads, and I'm sure they're great fun to ride in. Are you telling me you'd feel no frustration if you met half-a-dozen of them during your commute to work? As a driver it's hard to argue this without looking prejudiced, but my primary issue really is "turbulence" in the traffic flow, and I'd like to think it still would be if I rode instead.

If I'm doing 75 in the fast lane of the motorway, the traffic in the slower lane next to me is doing 70, and someone behind me wants to do 80+, I move over when its safe and let them. It reduces frustration and increases the throughput of the road.

(Incidentally, people cycling considerately and / or making necessary journeys really don't bother me. I suspect possibly I'm particularly unlucky with who I encounter on my local roads..)

Pay by mile would also suit me - probably reduce my tax, actually, at least if implemented as revenue-neutral.

If I can take on more hours at my place of work, I'll be eligible to live on-site, assuming there are any residences available. Driving is getting aggravating enough (and petrol expensive enough) that I'm seriously considering doing that - a bus trip *out* of the village once a week to go shopping would be much more plausible than than trying to get in and out every day.

I *am* trying to reduce my footprint, but practicality is still a huge obstacle. And more to the point, I'm plagued by a continual nagging doubt that *all* our efforts are going to be overtaken by events anyway - and not necessarily the good kind.

Not sure about the conversion of rail corridors to cycle paths - at least this way the land is getting used, and if the line turns out to be needed in the future, I can't imagine the cost of laying the rail is the biggest part of the outlay in building rail routes.

I think a large part of cyclist elitism might stem from a mentality which is still in "treadmill" mode.

Aha. That crystallizes an idea I was groping towards but couldn't verbalize. Yes. It explains why country cyclists bother me more than town cyclists, too, I think. There's a bloody great hill just outside of where I work - I have no idea how anybody manages to cycle up it at all, but I do know that nobody does it very fast. It's a very twisty road, very few places where it's safe to overtake, and to be fair there aren't that many places a cyclist could safely pull over either -- but nobody uses the ones that *do* exist. Also, IIRC, there's a footpath that runs parallel (albeit a fair distance away) to that road, which could be turned into a cycle route if some money was thrown at it.

It's easy enough to have one's judgement swamped by testosterone while driving, I guess it's even easier when cycling.

As long as the roads are to be used by everyone with equal right of access, including bikers, you're going to have to gain some patience.

I'll remember that next time I'm in town and see the cyclists weaving dangerously through the slow moving (but not stationary) traffic, jumping red lights, and going the wrong way up one-way streets.

Mind you, my most recent horrifying experience was a roller-blader, in the cycle lane, going *against* the flow of the traffic, with headphones in .. *and* texting. I saw her again a few hours later this time on the pavement (sidewalk), so obviously natural selection didn't take its course that time.

(FWIW, I live in the UK. Dunno how many of your assumptions apply.)

Anyway, I go to town once a week (and park as far out of town as I can, which isn't very), the supermarket once a week, the rest of my driving is to and from work. If the bus journey to work didn't take four times as long, cost about eight times as much, and actually run at the hours I need to use it, I'd use it - the traffic is bad enough around here that driving stopped being fun years ago. My car's 10 years old, low fuel consumption, meets all the emissions standards. I'd happily see my road tax double, I'd happily have a gadget that would allow me to pay by the mile. How much congestion and pollution am I causing, exactly?

In towns the speed differentials are lower, and congestion's already a problem, not much need for totally independent cycle routes. Cross-country cycle routes *can* be built, because they have been - in the tourist parts of the UK - but nobody seems to give a toss in the areas where most people actually live and work.

The thing that really bugs me is the idea that other people's recreational activities trump my need to get to work and earn my living.

For small numbers of cars, or in towns or other low speed limit areas, certainly not. I do think, though, that there's an argument to be made that on derestricted, major country roads a convoy of cyclists is as much of an obstruction as a tractor or similar vehicle, and I think the highway code over here suggests, even if it doesn't mandate, that the civilized thing to do if you're a tractor with a huge queue behind you is to find a safe place to pull over.

The real answer of course is more decent cross-country dedicated cycle routes.

Some motorists do have what I see as too great a sense of entitlement, particularly in towns where there are lots of non-motorized road users, and usually reasonable alternatives to cars. Out of town though, I think we're entitled to a reasonably efficient flow of traffic -- particularly as in the UK, there is often little room for road widening, bypass-building, etc., etc.

Next time you're in Kent, UK I will :-)

Some nice ideas in that presentation, though it's difficult to interpret some of it in terms in UK road designs. Looking at the road markings seems to imply that cyclists on sidepaths have priority when crossing side roads? Eek. Bringing them closer to the road is definitely a win.

Shared space / home zone-type ideas are appropriate in some residential areas too - it's unnerving as a driver to start with, but negotiating (eye-contact, etc.) with other road users in these sort of spaces is fairer, and strangely, apparently, safer (I guess it takes away the "Nuremberg defence" for drivers who just follow the road markings without paying attention.)

I guess we all get bees in our bonnets over this stuff. To be fair, AFAICT it's not normally commuting cyclists that wind me up - they tend to be pretty alert. Most town cyclists seem to pay attention, even if they bend the road rules and weave in and out more than I'd prefer (I would like a dash-mounted video camera with a 60 second buffer though - I'd hate to have to defend myself in the event of an accident without it, it's amazing how quickly witnesses disappear when something like happens.)

It's the convoy-forming recreational weekenders around here that bug me - I'm sure it's great to take the whole family out for a ride and enjoy the fresh air and the scenery, but the queue of drivers behind you probably have places to get.

As for lane hogging - if you need it for safety, go for it. Believe it or not, I actually prefer this - as a driver who isn't going to overtake you until I'm damn sure it's safe, I prefer it if the cars behind me can see that you've given me no choice.