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Comment Re:Still.... (Score 5, Insightful) 1051

Or it looks like someone had a temper tantrum because he's a celebrity and doesn't have to be decent to other people.

He cares more about the product being right than other peoples' opinion of him.

And the thing is, that happens. A lot. Even at microsoft. "That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard!" - Bill Gates. And that was in Paul Allens book, and apparently an oft used phrase.

Sometimes the truth hurts.

Linux lives and breathes on its contributors, if you make too many public scenes you can end up with a lot of important people and companies saying it's not worth it to contribute to, or it's not worth it to contribute to under Torvalds, that would be a very ugly mess for the entire industry.

Nope. Linus has been Linus his whole life. This "story" isn't anything new. Oddly enough, Linux keeps marching onward, with plenty of contributors who are both volunteers and paid by various corporations to contribute work.

Worse still is if this sort of behaviour sets the tone for everyone else trying to be the next Linus, and they try to copy his to behavior (and that definitely happened at microsoft) and you end up with an organization full of asshole managers who no one wants to work for.

Again, the truth hurts. Projects like these don't tolerate stupidity well, especially given the fact that it's a community effort and there has to be a lot of lack of testing and communication on the part of the responsible party when something breaks like this. The price to be paid is twofold: (1) very public expressions of the harm caused by such issues, and (2) potential relief from duties related to the issue at hand, whether temporary or permanent in nature.

Granted, it's not really a shock that Torvalds likes to... speak his mind. That's part of his thing. Still, it poses a lot of questions about the sort of person who's going to be around to succeed him if he gets hit by a bus so to speak. Certainly Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer have not been able to find the right magic replacing their more famous bosses, and one would hope Linux manages better than Apple and MS have, admittedly, those jobs are completely different.

Step right up if you can do it better or know others who can. It takes strong leadership founded on the idea that others follow you primarily for you technical ability, and secondarily for your "soft skills" to manage a technical project of this scale. Sometimes people have problems replacing their famous bosses because while the old boss may have been widely regarded as an asshole, he was an effective asshole, and numbers (whether measured in uptime, lack of showstopping functional bugs, level of attention to security issues, or profit per quarter) don't lie.

All things considered, I saw far worse than this in my prior military service (Navy submarine force, ET-COM) in cases where somebody did something stupid that resulted in a systems failure, and oddly enough some aspects of this whole deal remind me a bit of organizational units in the services that pride themselves on putting job performance and technical ability first. Those who get butthurt about being dressed down are free to find something else to do with their time.

Comment Re:I was using Waterfrox (Score 1) 209

From your citation:

... that do not need to use either real mode or virtual 8086 mode in order to execute at any time ... Real-mode programs and programs that use virtual 8086 mode at any time cannot be run in long mode unless they are emulated in software ...

Speaking as someone who's been writing software since 1988, please enlighten us with more information on your background as a programmer. I strongly suspect the the GP was right in positing that you simply don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.

Comment Re:It's about time. (Score 3, Insightful) 180

Speaking as someone who deals with Cisco gear on nearly a daily basis, I fully agree with the premise of people needing to understand the difference between Cisco gear and alternatives designed for smaller environments. That said, most of the issues with Linksys products in recent years have been attributable to Cisco neglecting the hell out of Linksys branded product lines, and simply using the resulting failures to attempt to sell Cisco branded gear. It's been truly shameful, and I'd love to see it come to a stop.

Comment It's about time. (Score 4, Interesting) 180

Linksys produced some decent gear prior to the acquisition. After Cisco bought the company, the default answer for any sort of serious trouble with SOHO gear became "oh, I see you're referring to our Linksys brand; if you're serious about small office or branch office communications, you need to upgrade to our HOLY SHIT THAT'S EXPENSIVE Cisco brand gear instead." This applied nearly universally to cases where a prior generation piece of Linksys gear had performed quite well in the same role. Here's to hoping the brand can get back to its roots instead of serving as a loss leader for more expensive gear.

Comment Re:Title is misleading (Score 1) 510

Attempting to justify the continued existence of unions by pointing to past efforts that resulted in the creation of an entirely separate (and useful) entity is a logical fallacy. Prior good work alone doesn't support something existed in perpetuity, unless you're also of the opinion that going to work for a single day should result in continued pay for a year whether you show up or not. You may well have other justifications to present, but this one doesn't work. No pun intended.

Comment Re:Feel Free To Waste Your Money (Score 1) 100

While I strongly advocate for IPv6 adoption/support at the ISP, large scale network, and datacenter levels, I believe you're totally correct on your basic premise. Until having native IPv6 connectivity for your LAN devices represents a value add in terms of functionality, IPv4 only capabilities are fine for them. IPv6 and IPv4 can and do comfortably coexist; in fact, this is how the Internet will look for many, many years to come.

Comment Re:Insane (Score 4, Insightful) 858

For what it's worth, I've met the man, and I've seen no signs that he was 100% insane. And I've met people that were pretty insane.

A guy walking down the street wearing a bathrobe chanting odes to aliens that resemble giant bunnies is only dangerous to the extent that motor vehicle collisions might occur due to the distraction of the spectacle. Conversely, people who generally appear stable and sane, but hold deeply ingrained lunatic views and occupy seats of power are the ones you need to worry about.

Comment Re:Researchers use responsible disclosure (Score 1) 76

The first rule of software is that all software beyond the barest of trivial examples will have bugs. Compilers are software, and have the same long and sordid history of bugs. Since compilers have been mentioned specifically, you might be interested in the classic work Reflections on Trusting Trust (it was apparently written by a guy who knows a thing or two about the topic, some Ken Thompson fellow).The same goes for test suites. In many cases, bugs translate to security vulnerabilities. In some cases, perfectly rational behavior demonstrated by entities known as programs results in unexpected behavior when they are made to exchange data. This phenomenon is referred to as "novel outcomes" in some circles, and "wow, that's some fucked up shit" in others. There is a reason the field of information security is as broad as it always has been, is, and always will be.

Your post proves you have never worked as a professional developer, or for an organization where your role was deeply connected to systems or development work. Heck, it proves you've never worked on any major open source project either, for that matter. I suppose we should all stop using anything resembling software immediately to prevent the planet from caving in under the weight of its own failure. Or perhaps you should take your obviously extremely advanced software engineering skills and produce the one true invulnerable platform for everyone, one layer and application at a time.

As Bruce Schneier famously said, "security is a process, not a product." That process never ends, and involves complexities I believe could be delicately framed as things that aren't exactly your area of expertise. That's okay, though; you can always start educating yourself immediately. We're all looking forward to your next batch of brilliant revelations on infosec strategy.

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