to, 2007-11-01 kello 19:57 +1030, Tim kirjoitti:
On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 09:46 +0200, Antti J. Huhtala wrote:
> I read there has been controversy about XML but I didn't know (and
> still don't) the details.
For the gory details on what is XML, visit the W3C website at
<
http://www.w3.org/>. For Microsofts dirtying of the waters, you'd have
to Google on that.
In a nutshell, XML is being used (amongst its other uses) as a data
format for some infamous office software. Of course, they're not going
to use it properly. So rather than join the bandwagon of using an open
format, they're going to try and dominate with their own version.
/me mutters something about leopards and spots, without referring to
Apple's leopard.
I know what you mean, Tim. Take *their very own* "Microsoft protocol",
TCP/IP, for example.
> On another note, how hard can it be to check checksums before
putting
> files on mirrors? It seems like a terrible waste of bandwidth to let
> hundreds, maybe thousands of users try one mirror after another only
> to fail updating at the end...
There's something strange about how it works. If it were me, I'd be
pushing the files to a server (or getting a server to pull them in),
then updating the list of what's available. And arranging it to be done
on some sort of time scale so that a service wasn't in an invalid state
for anything other than a few minutes.
Yes, and this brings along another question: is there any mechanism to
let the update packagers know there is a problem - other than posting
about it on fedora-list? As far as I know, corrupt metadata files were
there on all mirrors for at least a day and a half.
Regards
Antti