The rage comes in when you're already working at 95% capacity, and something simple turns into the mother of all clusterfuck-abortions. For example: You "renew" a Verisign class3 cert, only to find out that the "renewed" cert is in fact an entirely "new" cert because Verisign changed out its intermediate CA. So a drop in file replacement becomes:

Adding the new intermediate and hash symlink to the apache truststore
Adding a FileChain directive to all affected vhosts
Notifying all of your customers that they need to update their truststores in the next 30 days if they wish to continue doing business with you
Realizing that you're going to have to repeat this maintenance for all 400 Verisign certs for the next year (because business partners require yearly renewals)
Having to go through your companies bullshit change-management process, rather than using the rubber stamp renewal template that you spent 2 days creating.
And worst of all, trying to explain all of this to your manager, who has no understanding of the concepts "encryption" and "trust".
5-10 minutes (renew, propagate file, roll apache servers, update asset management) becomes a Full time job for one year.

The majority of which could have been avoided if they had followed your advice "7 years ago" and shelled out for a wildcard cert.

You've hit several of the nails on the head, but seem to have missed a couple.

We already have laws that charge fines for "Driving while Distracted" and "Dangerous Driving". If an officer sees that you are driving while distracted, and it appears that you are a danger to yourself and/or others, he can issue a ticket.

I want to take a moment to appeal to your sense of justice and remove the word "punishment" from consideration. You can't punish an adult human. It just doesn't work. What does work is restitution (for the victim) and rehabilitation (for the criminal).

When you get caught driving distracted, you get a ticket. Get another, you'll have the insurance increase and defensive driving course. Rack up enough and your public driving privileges get revoked. The existing laws are fully sufficient. No need for additional (unnecessary) bans on tech.

Hi there, The youtube video contains the qualifier "2: Both cars were moving at 40mph for a combined speed of 80mph". This is not correct. Both cars were moving at 40mph for a combined speed of 40mph. Whether you're hitting an immovable brick wall at 40mph, or an object of equal mass and velocity moving at the opposite direction, you're still accelerating from 40mph to 0mph (a 40mph crash).

BBH

From TFA:

They also destroyed three decades worth of handwritten research notes by a NASA scientist that had been locked in the safe.

Nasa locked a research scientist in the safe for 30 years?

@ Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Attrib -w? Flip the Writeprotect dword in StorageDevicePolicies?

BBH

You would pay $50.. for a ssl crypto PCI card, and you're implying that 'other' people are being suckered?

BBH

The best avenue for any business owner is to never, under ANY circumstances, do business with MS. This applies to being a reseller, partner, customer, or certification holder. Don't use hotmail. Stop using windows and MS applications. Stop using MS formats and file systems.

One of my projects a while ago was to develop a checklist that one could go through to be 100% MS free. It turned out to be larger than I thought, but I've been happy ever since with my technology.

BBH

Great! Now convert it all to caps, and add an exclamation point after each sentence. It will be indistinguishable from a Slashdot poster.

It's about time we got a new AliceBot.

BBH

However the free hosting services such as code.google.com and SourceForge all seem to require your project be open-source. I'm fine with my code being out there after I've turned in the project, but with very strict cheating policies at most schools, it seems dangerous to make your code available to others before the project deadline.

I still do not understand why this prevents you from making your source open on Sourceforge. Commits are tracked, dated, and tagged/labeled as you choose. As long as it's your name on the commit and not someone else's, you're all set. It also opens up your code to a wider audience for constructive criticism, flames, and possibly some laughs at your expense (We've all written some really dumb code). How is writing your own code cheating? How is someone else using your OSS code cheating?

BBH

If you truly and honestly believe that

I don't have to believe, I can simply point out all of the orgs that have a working Bugzilla implementation. Even DESC, a homeless shelter NPO, uses bugzilla.

Why the hell should I *have* to fill out the version number

So that the upstream knows what version you are running. Are you running foosoft 1.0, or foosoft 1.0-ubuntu6_AMD64_whining_willie. There's a big difference between the two.

The Internet of 2009? No.

You are mistaken. Checkout the irc.netsplit.de stats

I've had that problem with GTK+, Inkscape, Notepad++

Seeing the tone and demeanor of your posts here, I'd love to see your bug reports for these products.

BBH

If your project is using Bugzilla (or Sourceforge), the poor quality and usability of your bug tracker is driving people way

Bugzilla and sourceforge are perfectly usable, as are their alternatives. People don't like fileing defects because it requires some effort, such as filling in the version and repro steps. Most people don't want to do that, they just want to whine about usability. Whining is not criticism.

If you only speak to users via mailing list

Mailing lists exist so the users can speak to developers. Mailing list archives are for Devs to speak to users.

If you only meet on IRC, you're alienating the people who won't install and download an IRC client to talk to you

If you're using a free *nix, you probably already have an IRC client. IRC is a critical part of distributed software development on the internet.

Of course the next step is to actually read and act on that feedback. Considering most open source projects don't even read their own bug database, I don't hold out much hope in this area.

You're confusing Open source with Ubuntu.

BBH

I found that the author totally misinterprets "Linux is free, so why are you complaining?". Linux is free, as in speech. Don't complain... file a bug report, participate with the architect, write some code. All of these help solve the problem. Complaining does nothing. Criticism works, but works better in the context of a bug report or MList discussion.. Not in a pcworld/zdnet blog. The author isn't criticizing linux, he's criticizing the community surrounding Gnu/Linux.

After you have filed a bug report, and spoken to the devs on the mailing list, and written some horrible pseudocode to resolve an issue, you are now given the right to complain louder than Theo on the blog of your choice.

BBH

In the US, there are an many words for "carbonated beverage" as there are dialects. They are commonly referred to as "soda", "pop", "soda-pop", and "cola". Even worse than "cola" is a southern US dialect that uses the word "coke" to mean carbonated beverage.

I'll have a Coke.

What kind?

A coke, you know, a soda..

Yes, but what kind?

It's almost about as bad as the words for "long sandwich", which are "hero", "sub", "grinder", and "submarine sandwich". Then there are various definitions of what constitutes an "Italian sub". Moving from NJ/NY to the west coast was a shock for me.

The funniest US dialect uses the word "mash" instead of "push/press" when referring to pushing buttons on a remote or phone. You do not "press 1 for English", you "mash" 1.

BBH

Welcome to slashdot. It's the only place on the internet where a first post can be modded redundant.

BBH

A little competition between two rival Physics engines is a good thing for consumers. We can only hope that the few available gaming-oriented FOSS physics engines improve as well.

BBH