The week in your words: Vista, file sharing and open source

• 
• 

 1 of 2

Gallery

Posted on 25 Jul 2008 at 16:23

"The problem is that the BPI want to be able to be judge, jury and executioner," responded hifidelity2, who was not only awake, but fed, watered and feisty. "Basically they want to be able to say 'We think that IP address X is downloading illegally and so cut them off without going to court and proving it'.

"As we know there are ways that people can spoof IP addresses - how would you like it if they used yours and didn't give you chance to argue the case? What if you have Wi-Fi and someone hacks that and uses it - should you be cut off? What if I steal your car and ram raid a bank should you go to jail for not securing your car to a high enough level to stop me being able to steal it?"

Meanwhile, schonyuk was hitting new heights of sarcasm: "Good idea, let the ISPs police the file sharers and Ford police dangerous drivers. Rayleigh can police errant cyclists and McDonalds can police litterbugs. What a load of cobblers."

Indeed, but the system does mean we'd get to police our readers. First law, anybody who writes in capital letters gets hung. See, we're stern, but benevolent.

Open source should be treated with "great caution"

That's right, according to security firm Fortify, using open-source software in enterprise businesses is the IT equivalent of hiking across the Serengeti in a pork-chop suit. gavomatic57 was not impressed.

"It sounds a bit like Danone. Its adverts for those silly health drinks lead the gullible to believe their digestive system will pack in without the aid of their life-saving yogurt drinks!"

"I would say that generally open-source software is no better or no worse than closed source software - with the exception that you can check for problems more easily," says Big_D. "I reported a bug in the beta of Microsoft J++ 1.0, it was still there in version 6!"

But just as everybody was getting nicely toasted at the "isn't open source lovely" party, bubbles15 decided to crash: "Not FUD, but fact. The issue that is of note is actually having the knowledge to unravel the code in the first place. As with all networks, use the best tool for the job. Sometimes that means Linux, sometimes a Mac sometimes Windows. Although if you use Linux you have my sympathies..."

"You have my sympathies not being bright enough to work it," shot back Gorillax, clearly channelling his inner eight-year-old.

The comment made paulzolo sad: "Here is the attitude which makes me steer well clear of Linux. Well clear. Clearly if you can not use Linux, then you are stupid.

We can't use the office toaster, imagine how we feel... but back to paulzolo.

"This is not the case. The simple fact of the matter is that Linux requires an in-depth knowledge of coding and command line chicanery which a lot of people don't have. If you ask for help, you get this kind of response... I use a Mac because I know I can just get on with things. I don't need a command line to do basic tasks, nor do I get snotty attitudes from other Linux users for daring to ask a question. When I ask another Mac user for help, I get a decent, polite answer. It's clear that if I ask a Linux user for help, I am very likely going to get attitude back. Linux is not a friendly place to be."

Which is much how we feel about Friday, so we're off to the pub instead. See you all next week.

Author: Stuart Turton