Just wanted to add that our Rector (er,'Pastor' in the Church of England for them that didn't know) in his sermon said he didn't want us to be religious. He wants us to be Christians (i.e. faithful followers of the Christ) rather than just turn up at Church every Sunday. We have to walk the walk, not talk the talk.
It's instructive to consider/debate the difference between Faith and religion.
I was put off christians for a long time by religious people who claimed to be christian but weren't, or at least didn't behave in a manner I would recognise as being in accordance with an attempt to be such.
As I understand it the 'World' Wrestling Federation were using the WWF acronym under license (or similar agreement) from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (the trademark holder?) in some limited circumstances. The Federation are supposed to have gone beyond the terms of the agreement and got slapped down for it, it's not a similar situation. There was an agreement and it was broken and the Wrestling Federation have thus lost the rights to use the WWF acronym.
In other words I'm on the side of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
There is supposed to be a beta of kde to run on the version of X that runs on Cygwin....
I sort of got X running on Cygwin on Me & NT, but no further. Too many other things to do (like real work) to risk trashing one of the few things that makes WinXX vaguely usable. Along with Emacs 21 and GnuServ of course:-)
Personally I add emacs to my windows SendTo, rather than notepad:-)
I am also quite impressed with the latest version of Cygwin. When you have Emacs, Bash(CygWin), Ghostscript, Perl etc installed on a windows box it starts to get a lot more useful (and usable).....
DDS storage is notoriously unreliable - the tapes are OK and cheap but the drives are awful. We've dumped ours and gone for DLT, much more stable (AND expensive).
I know of places where they buy 2 dds drives at a time so they have a replacement for when the first breaks down - and then they dump the broken one and order a new spare. It's not many components where you order a replacement immediately you buy one....
I made a mistake a few years back and bought a dds drive as I figured the low media costs outweighed the high drive costs, sort of OK until the drive died. I then went the other way and bought a cheapish T20 (travan 5- 10/20GB) drive with more expensive media costs, but it's still working.
I know DLT is way too expensive (drive and media) for most people, but the there are better tape solutions than DDS.
Not to mention that some of us still have extensive collections of, and listen to, vinyl. I realise this probably says a lot about my age but I still prefer sounds generated by dragging a scrap of diamond along a spiral groove....
I'm not mad, LP still sounds better to me on my hi-fi than the alternatives. Having said that while I prefer to listen to vinyl, CD is more convenient and I'm in the process of backing up my vinyl to CD, and then the CD to mp3. I may miss the CD stage out eventually if I can figure out how to merge a RioVolt (nice kit) and a CD autochanger - the ability to have 6 mp3 CDs in the car is attractive.....
I agree with what you say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", etc. but....
To ride across the harbor, a hull, and hydrodynamics.
It's an impossible theory to prove but I strongly suspect that our ancestors made use of 'floaty things' before they got to 'rolly things'. Some South American civilizations never got 'round' to the wheel , the Toltec IIRC.
It's good if someone gives $1 to charity. It's better if someone gives $1000.
By that logic a poor person can never be as 'good' as a rich person. It's the biblical widow's mite. If some child gives their total savings of (say) $10 to charity is that not a better act than a billionaire giving $10000?
A EULA is a contract that can be terminated by either party at any time
Who says? you mean MS can turn round and say to me "OK, we know you paid for your win95 but we've decided you can't use it any more"? Most contracts I've signed don't have the proviso "When you don't like this any more you can just quit". Specifically, from the EULA in question:
4. TERM OF AGREEMENT. The term of this Agreement shall commence on the date accepted by Recipient and shall continue until terminated by Microsoft in writing at any time, with or without cause. This Agreement will terminate without notice upon the earlier of (i) commercial release of the Software or (ii) one year after the last date Recipient receives the Software or any Update thereto, unless terminated earlier by Microsoft. Upon the termination of this Agreement (or upon request by Microsoft), Recipient shall promptly return to Microsoft, or certify destruction of, all full or partial copies of the Software provided by Microsoft. The following Sections shall survive termination or expiration of this Agreement: Sections 2, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.
Nothing there about ending the contract except at MS choice. For a contract to be terminated there has to be provision for such termination, you can't just decide you don't want to play any more. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that because of the inequality in the contract it may be held unenforceable in court, but that's by no means certain.
Conversely from another, non-MS, EULA:
TERM.This license is effective from your date of purchase and shall remain in force until terminated. You may terminate the license and this License Agreement at any time by destroying the SOFTWARE and the accompanying documentation, toghether with all copies in any form.
Oh, and since when did common sense have that much to do with law? ----
Again from the EULA "You must upgrade" - where does it say I could stop using the SDK and not upgrade?
It's a moot issue anyway as I wouldn't agree to this EULA because of this clause, and not becasue of the GPL FUD non-clauses.
It's not FUD to consider the possibility that MS would use such a clause in another product(XP) - FUD would be saying that they are going to do so without any evidence. There is no FUD in speculating upon these possibilities. It's hard to deny that MS would like all users of non-supported version to pay and upgrade. ----
No, my definition is the same as MS (and most developers), it just provides me with an opportunity to evaluate the software before making that purchase decision, of course allowing for the beta nature of the product in the process.
However, if you want to look at beta software as a form of shareware, consider this -- the clause "you must upgrade to the final version" is the same as a shareware author saying "if you wish to continue using this product after the free evaluation period, you must pay me for a full version". No difference.
No, there is a difference. As you say I may choose not to use the shareware and delete it. With this beta SDK once I agree to the EULA "you must upgrade" I don't have the choice NOT to buy the software, and that is a major difference.
And I wasn't only talking about betas fpr support, MS don't support win 95,98 any more - and that's fine I really don't expect them to, but there are (probably) millions of people still using 95/98 quite happily (well for the sake of this argument) and are unsupported. What is new isn't that software becomes unsupported, but that the user has to upgrade. Previous MS betas have been time-limited and that's fine, buy it or stop using it, no problem. But I wouldn't have the choice to stop using it in this case. What concerns me is the possibility that MS may put these clauses in XP etc, because they'd love to make their users upgrade, got to find an ongoing revenue stream somewhere. ----
I often download beta software to see if I might be interested in buying the released product. I regard it as a form of shareware - I get the beta to try out and may, or may not, go for the real deal. With this eula I have to buy a pig in a poke, so no thanks.
They don't have to support anything anyway - read the EULAs. ----
"Potentially Viral Software" means software which is licensed pursuant to terms that: (x) create, or purport to create, obligations for Microsoft with respect to the Software or (y) grant, or purport to grant, to any third party any rights to or immunities under Microsoft's intellectual property or proprietary rights in the Software.
Now as I am not legally allowed (by real laws not a MS EULA) to do any such without MS explicit consent the whole clause is bollocks.
It's only put into the EULA what is the law in most jurisdictions anyway, they may as well say that while you are licensed to use the software you are not allowed to break the speed limit. It is brilliant FUD, by prohibiting something which is illegal anyway they may frighten people away from any Free/OpenSource software. Brilliant.
The other, worrying, bit from the license:
"In addition, Recipient agrees (i) to promptly upgrade to and obtain a license for the commercially released version of the Software when it becomes generally available to the public; (ii) to install all updates as 'mandatory updates' by Microsoft within 2 business days of receipt of such updates"
I personally won't agree to a EULA that commits me to buy something where I don't know the price, and to install SW with no idea what it does. And we all know MS never release a duff service pack.....
Oh - and you can only distribute (on the internet) via MS approved 'hosters', and that list is on the Visual Studio.NET web pages.:
The Approved Hoster may require a separate hosting agreement with the Recipient and Microsoft disclaims all liability related to any agreements or services provided by the Approved Hoster.
That's a whole lot of commitment for a beta SDK. ----
How close does it have to be, to be "typosquatting"- would microsloth be considered a typo, in extremis could 'sun' be a mis-spelling of 'microsoft'? It's another of those slippery slope things - it's not like a speed limit, it's a judgement call like obscenity, which is why there are some many court cases. And what about a misspelling which forms another comapny name - if I registered wibble.com would that mean I can stop another comapny from using wobble.com? If so why, if not, why not? In my opinion the fat lady ain't singing yet. ----
Frankly: the only way I like to live is making code and sell it.
I have no clue how to make a living with GPLed code (I make mey living as consultant, and make nearly no code, all companies which I programmed for filed bancruptcy. Now I founded my own one, but I still rely on SELLING the code!)
Which is it, "make nearly no code" or "but I still rely on SELLING the code"? I have been a consultant for 17 years and have made my living without selling a line of code. My income has been from selling my time and expertise designing and programming for other companies. Virtually all of this has been using proprietary software but it would have made absolutely no difference to my job if it had been GPL. Except that my clients may have had more money to give to me instead of paying 100K+ per year on software licences - so keep the GPL software coming. ----
Sorry, I was being light-hearted and not trying to be arrogant, which you might be reading into my comment. I wasn't being specific to/about multithreading, I was (humorously hence the smiley) commenting on what makes an advanced programmer - an ability to design and write programs rather than just churn out code. i.e. be effective. Very few can be good at all aspects of programming and I certainly am not expert at threading, but I would expect to get better as I need to. In other areas/languages I can definitely call myself advanced and can get into the arguments to prove it.;-) I was being general. ----
Java unfortunately makes threading so easy, it's one of it's shortcommings
(sic)
And if it made it difficult people would complain too. The fact that you can start using threads and not worry too much about language details and concentrate on the concepts should be seen as a strength.
I feel that being able to multithread code effectively in Java would make a programmer advanced in that topic.
True, but then
I'd just say that being able to program effectively would make an advanced programmer:-)
----
I'm just learning to code and both Java and C++ proved frustrating. I learned more with Python in a few weeks than I did in a few months with other languages. Python greatly simplifies coding. You don't need to deal with pointers or garbage collection.
Hmm, I don't remember ever having to deal with pointers or garbage collection in Java, come to that I don't remember ever having the tools to do so.... ----
Precisely - subpoenaed records are hardly public - and on what grounds was the subpoena issued? I suppose some judges are happy about fishing expeditions, now how many residents are there in the US whose electricity records can be examined?
Come to that how many ubergeeks have server farms that could cause a knock on the door? "ER well Judge the electricity usage was high for a few months while I set up my beowulf cluster so I could get first post on SlashDot........" ----
When an argument is exaggerated to the point that the result no longer resembles the source, does it not fall under both categories?
Perhaps. That's why I (briefly) created a chain showing the extremism : confiscation; mutilation; execution. Just a short way of indicating those little steps which can lead from banning a critical newspaper article to book-burning. Each step may seem reasonable but the journey is abhorrent, admittedly I left out an awful lot of little steps, but then this is/.
I think you can see that my extrapolation from the original premise to preventative euthanasia was a logical (but admittedly extreme) chain. Hence it is reductio ad absurdam and not arguing against a specious position which my 'opponent' had never held in the first place, but which I would find easy to defeat. Straw Man arguments aren't R.A.A. of necessity - sort of a "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" approach. Another example (in the context of this topic) is to say "Well I don't believe the police should be able to tap your 'phone lines without a warrant" - this implies that the other party believes something about which no opinion has been expressed.
BTW I believe that "straw man" comes from the dummy used for bayonet training in the forces, or possible even from the middle ages for similar purpose.
PS I also believe that while fun most attempts at categorisation ultimately break down, the Dewey Decimal system of book classification is a good example, there are lots of unassigned (highish) numbers but the CORBA book I borrowed has a classification of 005.712769, and it's not all due to the age of the Dewey. Also - when does a tadpole become a frog? ----
No, it's a different debating technique called ridicule. In this case I'm exagerating a position with which I disagree in order to highlight where an apparently reasonable position could lead. Also known as Reductio Ad Absurdam A straw man argument is to argue against something which was not said, to create a false opposing argument in order to easily defeat it. This I did not do.
In my opinion the job of the police is not to prevent criminal acts but to protect the public. This protection may well require the apprehension of wrongdoers and the prevention of acts of malfeasance, but the protection is paramount. In the UK there is a (low-key) debate about whether the Police should engage in routine high-speed pursuit because of a number of incidents involving injury and death to bystanders.
It's interesting to consider the dual nature of the police - are they to enforce government policy or to protect the populace? ----
Slashdot Mirror
He wants us to be Christians (i.e. faithful followers of the Christ) rather than just turn up at Church every Sunday. We have to walk the walk, not talk the talk.
It's instructive to consider/debate the difference between Faith and religion.
I was put off christians for a long time by religious people who claimed to be christian but weren't, or at least didn't behave in a manner I would recognise as being in accordance with an attempt to be such.
In other words I'm on the side of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
I sort of got X running on Cygwin on Me & NT, but no further. Too many other things to do (like real work) to risk trashing one of the few things that makes WinXX vaguely usable. :-)
Along with Emacs 21 and GnuServ of course
I am also quite impressed with the latest version of Cygwin. When you have Emacs, Bash(CygWin), Ghostscript, Perl etc installed on a windows box it starts to get a lot more useful (and usable).....
We've dumped ours and gone for DLT, much more stable (AND expensive).
I know of places where they buy 2 dds drives at a time so they have a replacement for when the first breaks down - and then they dump the broken one and order a new spare. It's not many components where you order a replacement immediately you buy one....
I made a mistake a few years back and bought a dds drive as I figured the low media costs outweighed the high drive costs, sort of OK until the drive died. I then went the other way and bought a cheapish T20 (travan 5- 10/20GB) drive with more expensive media costs, but it's still working.
I know DLT is way too expensive (drive and media) for most people, but the there are better tape solutions than DDS.
I realise this probably says a lot about my age but I still prefer sounds generated by dragging a scrap of diamond along a spiral groove....
I'm not mad, LP still sounds better to me on my hi-fi than the alternatives. Having said that while I prefer to listen to vinyl, CD is more convenient and I'm in the process of backing up my vinyl to CD, and then the CD to mp3. I may miss the CD stage out eventually if I can figure out how to merge a RioVolt (nice kit) and a CD autochanger - the ability to have 6 mp3 CDs in the car is attractive.....
It's an impossible theory to prove but I strongly suspect that our ancestors made use of 'floaty things' before they got to 'rolly things'. Some South American civilizations never got 'round' to the wheel , the Toltec IIRC.
If some child gives their total savings of (say) $10 to charity is that not a better act than a billionaire giving $10000?
Or in my case, I leave the cursor where it is and use the little wheel on the mouse to scroll the page.
Wth the whole 'commingling' issue with the OS and IE maybe SpyGlass should go back to MS and say "Ahem, about our share of your OS sales..."
Precisely my point, I suspect it's probably unenforceable, but it is there.
----
Most contracts I've signed don't have the proviso "When you don't like this any more you can just quit". Specifically, from the EULA in question:Nothing there about ending the contract except at MS choice. For a contract to be terminated there has to be provision for such termination, you can't just decide you don't want to play any more. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that because of the inequality in the contract it may be held unenforceable in court, but that's by no means certain.
Conversely from another, non-MS, EULA:
Oh, and since when did common sense have that much to do with law?
----
It's not FUD to consider the possibility that MS would use such a clause in another product(XP) - FUD would be saying that they are going to do so without any evidence. There is no FUD in speculating upon these possibilities. It's hard to deny that MS would like all users of non-supported version to pay and upgrade.
----
And I wasn't only talking about betas fpr support, MS don't support win 95,98 any more - and that's fine I really don't expect them to, but there are (probably) millions of people still using 95/98 quite happily (well for the sake of this argument) and are unsupported. What is new isn't that software becomes unsupported, but that the user has to upgrade. Previous MS betas have been time-limited and that's fine, buy it or stop using it, no problem. But I wouldn't have the choice to stop using it in this case. What concerns me is the possibility that MS may put these clauses in XP etc, because they'd love to make their users upgrade, got to find an ongoing revenue stream somewhere.
----
With this eula I have to buy a pig in a poke, so no thanks.
They don't have to support anything anyway - read the EULAs.
----
It's only put into the EULA what is the law in most jurisdictions anyway, they may as well say that while you are licensed to use the software you are not allowed to break the speed limit. It is brilliant FUD, by prohibiting something which is illegal anyway they may frighten people away from any Free/OpenSource software. Brilliant.
The other, worrying, bit from the license:
I personally won't agree to a EULA that commits me to buy something where I don't know the price, and to install SW with no idea what it does. And we all know MS never release a duff service pack.....Oh - and you can only distribute (on the internet) via MS approved 'hosters', and that list is on the Visual Studio.NET web pages.:
That's a whole lot of commitment for a beta SDK.----
How close does it have to be, to be "typosquatting"- would microsloth be considered a typo, in extremis could 'sun' be a mis-spelling of 'microsoft'?
It's another of those slippery slope things - it's not like a speed limit, it's a judgement call like obscenity, which is why there are some many court cases.
And what about a misspelling which forms another comapny name - if I registered wibble.com would that mean I can stop another comapny from using wobble.com? If so why, if not, why not?
In my opinion the fat lady ain't singing yet.
----
But it helps...
----
I have been a consultant for 17 years and have made my living without selling a line of code.
My income has been from selling my time and expertise designing and programming for other companies.
Virtually all of this has been using proprietary software but it would have made absolutely no difference to my job if it had been GPL. Except that my clients may have had more money to give to me instead of paying 100K+ per year on software licences - so keep the GPL software coming.
----
Sorry, I was being light-hearted and not trying to be arrogant, which you might be reading into my comment. ;-)
I wasn't being specific to/about multithreading, I was (humorously hence the smiley) commenting on what makes an advanced programmer - an ability to design and write programs rather than just churn out code. i.e. be effective. Very few can be good at all aspects of programming and I certainly am not expert at threading, but I would expect to get better as I need to. In other areas/languages I can definitely call myself advanced and can get into the arguments to prove it.
I was being general.
----
----
----
Come to that how many ubergeeks have server farms that could cause a knock on the door? "ER well Judge the electricity usage was high for a few months while I set up my beowulf cluster so I could get first post on SlashDot........"
----
That's why I (briefly) created a chain showing the extremism : confiscation; mutilation; execution. Just a short way of indicating those little steps which can lead from banning a critical newspaper article to book-burning. Each step may seem reasonable but the journey is abhorrent, admittedly I left out an awful lot of little steps, but then this is
I think you can see that my extrapolation from the original premise to preventative euthanasia was a logical (but admittedly extreme) chain. Hence it is reductio ad absurdam and not arguing against a specious position which my 'opponent' had never held in the first place, but which I would find easy to defeat.
Straw Man arguments aren't R.A.A. of necessity - sort of a "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" approach. Another example (in the context of this topic) is to say "Well I don't believe the police should be able to tap your 'phone lines without a warrant" - this implies that the other party believes something about which no opinion has been expressed.
BTW I believe that "straw man" comes from the dummy used for bayonet training in the forces, or possible even from the middle ages for similar purpose.
PS I also believe that while fun most attempts at categorisation ultimately break down, the Dewey Decimal system of book classification is a good example, there are lots of unassigned (highish) numbers but the CORBA book I borrowed has a classification of 005.712769, and it's not all due to the age of the Dewey.
Also - when does a tadpole become a frog?
----
A straw man argument is to argue against something which was not said, to create a false opposing argument in order to easily defeat it. This I did not do.
In my opinion the job of the police is not to prevent criminal acts but to protect the public. This protection may well require the apprehension of wrongdoers and the prevention of acts of malfeasance, but the protection is paramount. In the UK there is a (low-key) debate about whether the Police should engage in routine high-speed pursuit because of a number of incidents involving injury and death to bystanders.
It's interesting to consider the dual nature of the police - are they to enforce government policy or to protect the populace?
----