Your comment doesn't actually say anything. It doesn't answer any of the posed questions, and it doesn't offer any solutions to the real and genuine question of how to manage unusual configurations without editing/etc files.
Your suggestion to "forge" an alternate solution, by which I can only presume you mean do something other than edit config files - WTF does that mean, do you have something to add or is it just a masturbatory flame?
I have a solution to my problems, which is editing config files, or writing scripts which generate configs: it has so far always been the best solution that I'm aware of for the problems that I've encountered. You probably encounter different problems, so have different requirements.
But I am not wedded to the approach. Which is why I asked if all configuration options for apps on the Mac are shown in the GUI. It is a pretty straightforward question. An answer of "yes" would be nice. Even if the answer is "yes but only if it's a Mac app", that would be nice. But apparently you don't answer questions, preferring instead to be an unfriendly wanker who can't tell the difference between a question and stupid fight.
What happens when you want to change a setting that's not shown in the user-friendly GUI "Settings" editor?
Some programs have a lot of obscure options. Are they all presented in the nice "Settings" windows, for all Mac applications?
That's a problem I've encounted with the simplest of systems (e.g. webmin) which edit files in/etc on a Linux box. Occasionally I need a setting which the fancy settings-editor doesn't know about, and then I have to worry that future uses of the settings-editor will break essential
changes I had to make to/etc by hand, without me knowing until I observe the symptom maybe days or weeks later.
Once that point is reached, that risk is unacceptable and the only safe thing to do is stop using the settings-editor.
What is the solution to this? Making all the options visible in a GUI "Registry editor" type of program is not a solution, because if I've done something unusual to a file in/etc, then I will have added explanatory comments and grouped the unusual options together to make it obvious that they are related by my specific requirements. No "registry editor" I have ever seen offers that kind of functionality, which I find essential.
More accurately, the combined work of the new code and the GPL item is required to be under the GPL when you distribute it.
However, if you can extract the new code by itself from the combination (for example this is easy if they're separate source files), then the new code by itself can be under whatever license its author wishes. This is permitted even if you receive a combined work: you are free to extract pieces of it and use the pieces according to their individual licenses. The GPL has a clause in it permitting this.
I wonder if should I ask Sony for the source code for the TV.
Don't they provide a URL where you can download the source to the GPL'd components? Many companies host the source on a web site.
If they don't do that, and they don't provide the source with the TV, then they must provide a written offer to supply you with the exact source used in that TV, valid for 3 years.
You should definitely get the source, just to test that Sony do honour their obligations, and so they are aware that there are people who want to make use of those obligations.
By the way, you do realise that if you don't have the source, then you are forbidden from redistributing your HDTV to anyone else, right? If you give your TV to someone else, you must also comply with the GPL because you are redistributing GPL'd binary code.
I have not seen this implication discussed anywhere yet.
Because copyrights are healthy and patents, particularly patents on intangibles like software, are unhealthy. They're both artificial constructions of law, but their effects on people are quite different.
Your question is a bit like asking: This looks very like one of the food threads that run here regularly, but with everyone on the other side of the line. If fresh fruit & veg is so right, why are McDonalds burgers so wrong?
Copyrights promote creativity and competition. Patents punish creativity and competition. (And intangibles patents are worse as they also attack the basic human right of self-expression.)
If you're in some random coffee shop, you have no idea what CAs they've installed in the browser. You can't check them either: fakes can look exactly like real ones on somebody else's computer.
Maybe you trust the coffee shop owner?
Fine, but are you sure they don't have a virus or malware on there changing the browser CAs?
If you want a real secret handshake, you need to take some piece of your own key-verification hardware in which contains the CAs that you trust.
Either you would have to wait a year or two until you actually get out your software, or your will have to search all patents to see it any ideas you have used in your software have been patented. The latter will likely cost you more than actually developing your software.
Yes, I agree that no software patents are best. and I wholeheartedly want them out of the EU. See my other recent post on the subject.
(We have them here in the EU already, they're just illegal right now, but that doesn't eliminate the sense of ambiguity. Even though I write pure software, I am not sure of my risk in publishing it because it is highly technical software which definitely does things mentioned in EU patents).
I meant that reducing the term in the USA from decades to 2 years would be the single most effective thing from the parent's list for the USA apart from discarding software patents completely, and that the other things the parent poster suggested would not help.
Your idea of a register of prior art is fine, but there is a risk that the patent offices will begin searching only that register. Currently they are obliged to search all public sources.
That's not my idea, that's the parent poster's idea. I agree with you, that a registry is a bad idea precisely because it cannot ever reflect the true prior art.
I take that argument further: there is a lot of prior invention that has never been published even though it has been thought of and tried privately. So even searching public sources does not really give a fair representation of what other people are thinking up.
(And even if it did, I believe it is still wrong to prohibit people from sharing work they have done themselves, even if they are not the first to do it).
We're clever enough to come up with our own techniques in the short term to compete with closed source companies doing interesting short term things. I'd have no complaint with that level of competition. If a technique is really crucial and unavoidable, we can just wait a couple of years.
It's the medium to long term which is a problem, because we all converge on the same techniques - they are quite fundamental after all - and we need to be able to use our ideas in a reasonable time frame, not 27 years after having them...
A registry of techniques would be nice as a library, but it's not really workable for patent prevention.
Personally I come up with new techniques every day, as I'm sure many people here do. It's not feasible to write them all down, let alone register them in a formally searchable way. That's called "writing a book or article", and it's a lot of work in itself.
Part of the problem is that we've been inventing things at a rapid pace for decades, but most ideas are left unused and not written anywhere until an opportunity when it's _appropriate_ to use them crops up.
In other words, ideas sometimes get patented after lots of people have them, but before anyone actually uses them.
For example, IBM's patent on RCU - that's something I independently came up with when writing a small OS a decade before RCU was mentioned on the Linux lists. But, I didn't have a use for it in that OS (which I deleted all copies of anyway), and I can't prove prior art. I could have "published" it, but frankly publishing every idea like that is more work than it's worth. I'm sure that has happened with many people here.
(I don't know the filing date of IBM's patent; that example is just to illustrate how potential prior art is easily lost).
If good ideas (of the currently patentable kind) were rare, then a registry would work. But when you're coming up with neat ideas daily, then if there was a registry of "official" prior art, a lot of ideas that people have had and maybe talked about would not have the chance to get in.
So even if there was a registry, we would still have unreasonable problems caused by the patent system.
I am outraged at the apalling bias and factual misrepresentation in the BBC article, "EU software patent law faces axe".
First, the bias. The article presents the view of a limited sector of the IT industry with "CompTIA, an umbrella organization for technology companies, said only when intellectual property was adequately protected would European inventors prosper."
They certainly don't represent my technology business!
Where is the view of that other sector of the IT industry: those inventors whose intellectual property is placed in peril by these monopolistic "protections"? And the others: businesses whose work depends on access to open standards and open source infrastructure?
As an inventor myself, I am deeply concerned that my ability to publish my own works will be blocked, should patentability be extended to computer software. The danger to small business such as mine is of being sued to bankruptcy by large institutional firms with large and ever-growing patent portfolios, covering every nuance of technology, even the obvious stuff.
Only large, wealthy firms benefit in such a system: they cross-license with each other to avoid the expense of fighting. Not so for the small and growing enterprise with new ideas. Software patents are hardly good for small inventors: they're a closed club for the big boys.
Secondly, factual misrepresentation. The article says "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property". Wrong, wrong, wrong! The open source movement is absolutely dependent on notions of property and fully aware of this. Almost every piece of software - and even literature, music and science nowadays - produced as open source, makes use of intellectual property law for its protection. It is wrong to paint an unprofessional image of the open source movement, for it includes everyone: individuals, business of all sizes, and governments.
You are right, however, to say that open source "allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software." Is there anyone who doesn't believe in the opportunity to learn how things work, if they desire to?
Ironically, the stated official purpose of patents is to ensure everyone has access to the knowledge of how things work, so that anyone can learn to make better things.
It is ironic and frightening to see this getting lost among the backroom bribes, attempts to push dodgy laws through the back door against the wishes of parliament, "patent-acquisition" companies that sue easy targets but don't actually make anything themselves... and journalism parroting the propaganda of "umbrella" organisations that don't represent us.
I'm very glad, however, that the dodgy law didn't get passed through that dodgy back door after all.
Yours faithfully,
Jamie Lokier,
A businessman and inventor whose livelihood depends on the legal right to share his ideas freely.
How do reach that conclusion? I'm sorry, but I must be missing something because I reach a different conclusion from the text you quoted. Please read carefully, and if you disagree, please help me (and everyone who's reached the same conclusion as me) to understand why.
Section 3 says they must publically offer a Transparent copy for each Opaque copy distributed (more than 100 times, but that's not important).
In other words, for every HTML-formatted document they send to anyone, for 1 year (the time mentioned elsewhere in section 3) they must publically serve the editable source of those documents.
But if some of the Wikipedia documents aren't accessed by anyone for 1 year (the less popular articles), meaning that neither Transparent nor Opaque copies of those documents are distributed in that year, they aren't bound to publically offer a Transparent copy of those documents.
Furthermore, section 3 does not require them to offer HTML-formatted wiki pages to everyone: they are only required to offer the editable source documents (and only the above subset of source documents).
They can legitimately withhold the HTML-formatted service (i.e. Opaque copies) under whatever terms they like, including limiting page views to 50 per day per user. These are Opaque copies and nothing in the GFDL requires them to offer those publically. (The GFDL only demands access to Transparent copies, not Opaque copies).
They are not allowed to withhold the editable source (i.e. Transparent copies) in that way, but they can withhold access to editable source for documents that haven't been viewed in Opqaue form by anyone for 1 year. And since they can restrict views of the Opaque copies, that prevents people from mirroring all of the Opaque copies (i.e. mirroring the HTML web pages) in order to guarantee public access to the Transparent copies.
In short: they're not required to distribute HTML-formatted documents at all, so they can impose their own conditions on that. They're not required to distributed source documents unless the HTML-formatted versions of those specific documents have been distributed within the preceding year.
That combination allows them to prevent regular, full mirrors from being maintained, if they really want to, by denying access to source documents which have not been fetched within the preceding year as formatted HTML, and limiting access to the HTML pages so that less popular pages can acquire that status.
That's the conclusion I draw from section 3 (in combination with section 6).
(It's similar to the GPL, in the sense that publishing a binary requires publishing the source, but if there were an archive of ancient GPL programs over the last decades, it is permitted to restrict access to the archive so long as source is always available for binaries that have been accessed within the recent time limit.)
The GFDL requires them to publically serve a "Transparent" copy of each document they serve you. (It's much like the GPL requires source to be provided with each program, but stronger because the GPL doesn't require source to be served publically).
According to my reading, the GFDL does not require them to serve you all the documents of a collection in the first place! See section 6, "Collections of Documents". (There may be an argument for saying Wikipedia is a collection, and a counter-argument saying it is a single document.)
I believe they are entitled to serve you some of the documents (including Transparent versions which you can edit), while not serving you others, according to their choice: for example they may offer to serve you 50 formatted ("Opaque") documents per day before they cease providing service to you.
That is nondiscriminatory, provided everyone is subject to the same limitations. And it satisfies the Transparent copy requirement, provided they continue to serve transparent copies of each document for which anyone has been served formatted copies for 1 year.
They cannot restrict copying of the content, but they can limit access to it via Google's servers. The GFDL does not prevent this.
That's why it's important that there are always a few people maintaining mirrors of the entire Wikipedia.
It's also important that if Google ever stops the ability to make mirrors of the entire Wikipedia including updates and update history, that a big public fuss is made.
If you think it can't happen due to Wikipedia's license, think again: Usenet is presumably public domain, but Google aren't exactly falling over themselves to let people mirror that archive.
Some people will say that Google did real work to put together the Usenet archive, and it's within their rights as a business to limit access to it. Fair enough: just remember, that it's also within their rights as a business to limit access to their instance of Wikipedia in future, and if nobody has an up to date mirror, that will be a real limitation.
I'm not saying worry about it. Those are only possible scenarios. I'm saying: be diligent in keeping it open and fully accessible; don't let it slip like CDDB or the Usenet archive.
is it possible to use it with completely not related (by fork) processes ?
I believe it works with NPTL threads (the current Linux threading library) - if you map a file or shared memory so it's visible in both processes, then you can initialise the pshared mutex and use it from both.
With the older LinuxThreads, I'd be surprised if it works.
Mono needs a bit of work to work with PaX, but it's possible. I mentioned the necessary changes to the Kaffe team; but they apply to any JIT.
For the benefit of readers, those "necessary changes" are to require a JIT to generate shared libraries for each class that's loaded, and then dynamically load the shared libraries.
That's fine for a JIT that is only used to generate static code for each class. But it's not efficient for dynamic optimisation techniques, such as run-time profile-driven code optimisation, or run-time data reorganisation.
On a PaX system, perhaps you can work around the restrictions by mapping a shared memory segment in two places, one of them as an executable mapping, the other writable. Write to one address, and execute at the other. I don't know as I haven't tried a PaX system.
At the moment there is no standard way to map Wind0ze inter-process mutex to Linux
I don't know what special quirks Windows inter-process mutex have, but pthreads is recognised as the standard among many unixes for generic threading, and GNU/Linux provides pthreads inter-process mutexes just fine:
pthread_mutexattr_setpshared:
The process-shared attribute is set to PTHREAD_PROCESS_SHARED to permit a mutex to be operated upon by any thread that has access to the memory where the mutex is allocated, even if the mutex is allocated in memory that is shared by multiple processes. If the process-shared attribute is PTHREAD_PROCESS_PRIVATE, the mutex shall only be operated upon by threads created within the same process as the thread that initialized the mutex; if threads of differing processes attempt to operate on such a mutex, the behavior is undefined. The default value of the attribute shall be PTHREAD_PROCESS_PRIVATE.
Use that and your program will be portable to all platforms which implement pthreads properly. (Maybe even Win32 pthreads:)
I have to wonder why anyone wouldn't be using cached dynamic pages...
If your pages are cached with sensible conditions: that is, they depend on the content used to generate them, then you get marginally better performance than triggers which regenerate static HTML - and no briefly out of date pages.
If you're using a database to back the site's content, then you'll need simple triggers to flag those conditions. Otherwise, if you're using files to back it (e.g. a file per article), you don't even need that and you get up to date dynamic pages from templates with the performance of a fast optimised static server.
-- Jamie (who is building a server which works exactly like the latter...)
Specifically, ports 80, 8080, 3128 and 25 are blocked.
Port 25 (SMTP) is no big deal, but if you were hoping to run a web server or even just a backup web server for when your colo box fails...
The upstream bandwidth is comparatively low. With peercasting being the obvious solution to relieving popular free sites of their cost burden, the trend to highly asymmetric home links is not good.
The RADSL technology is intrinsically asymmetric. It sustains a fixed download rate, while doing its best for upload according to the line quality. To increase the upload rate, it would have to reduce the download rate for technical reasons due to using the same copper pair. That is one reason for the relatively low upload rate.
That, however, does not explain why nobody is making adaptive RADSL which can increase the upload rate at the expense of download when there is demand for that. Specifically, when peercasting, there is no technical reason why the modem could not balance the two rates, and when serving, no reason it could not make the upload rate higher than the download. Perhaps we'll have to wait a few more generations of ADSL before we see this. Or perhaps we're supposed to be "consumers" until the revolution;)
The functionality is much older than GCC, and even pre-dates the first ANSI C specification. Any ancient (i.e. 1970s onwards) unix C compiler will behave like this. In the old days (K&R C, before ANSI/ISO C), there were no function prototypes.
That's not an error, and if your OS prof said it was an error that was not picked up, he/she is mistaken.
The C language definition is clear that you can write the program you did, with a variable defined in "common" form (no initialiser and no extern) in both files, and a function called without a prototype, and it is a valid C program with well defined behaviour.
To put it a different way, voters cannot know when they vote for individual MPs which ministers will be appointed to the EU Council, nor the policies which will be represented by those ministers.
If voters dislike a bad EU minister, they may be able to vote that minister out of office, but they have no way to prevent another minister with similar policies being given the same appointment - a consequence of the diversity of MPs.
This means that the policies represented by the EU minister at any given time are determined mostly by who has the ear of the people deciding to appoint a minister to the EU council, not by the voting populous.
Naturally, that tends to run the way of corruption, bribery, and a shield of "advisers" with vested interests.
I have two Diamondtrons (Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 17s), and they both suck.
Don't get me wrong: they suck less than any other CRTs I've seen. The >1 pixel colour misconvergence in at least one corner (eliminate it and another corner gets it) and generally blurry pixels (compared with an LCD) do not make me happy, but are still better quality than the ~30 other CRTs I compared them with before purchasing.
I've tried working with the CRTs, but in the end I prefer my 5 year old Toshiba laptop LCD to either of the CRTs. I habitually move to it when I have the choice.
That's probably due to the digital video hookup on laptops. Every LCD that I've looked at which is connected by an analogue input sucks worse than either of my Diamondtron CRTs - because of the analogue signal artifacts. Some people don't notice the ringing around fine text, and shimmering, moving lines. I do. I have looked at quite a few LCDs driven by analogue signals, and without exception they were disappointing. (Otherwise I'd have bought one already).
I was one of the most academically capable people in my school classes, and easily ahead of everyone in hard science & maths. The latter were highly intuitive to me at school level.
I hated school, and by the time I was 15 years old I was skipping classes. At 16 I'd skip one or two whole mornings a week: deliberately miss the bus, and just walk for 2 hours to the school. I still don't know why, and I'm sure it wasn't just due to the quality or level of teaching, but the rigid structure was a factor.
I don't thrive in structures which limit my ability to explore, and to ask difficult questions. I also don't get excited by subjects i f I don't see their connection to things that I care about.
That's a shame, because I now find subjects like economics, geography, history and mechanical/artistic design very interesting, but at the time I took very little interest. My teachers didn't like me, and I didn't like them or their subjects.
At around 15, I vividly remember my chemistry teaching telling me off for asking questions "way beyond my level". In retrospect, I know that such questions weren't beyond my level at all. I understand why he said that: I consistently didn't do the regular homework, and kept falling asleep in class. But all those attitudes prevented me from exploring the subject to the depth I was capable of at the time.
It is possible that had I been supported in exploring what I enjoyed, and also taught why it was important to do the regular work (it was, but it's taken me a long time to grasp why), I would have done both enthusiastically and not have developed the negative attitude that I did.
I sometimes look back sadly and see that I could have done a lot of interesting and enjoyable things at school if I'd been encouraged to and responded to that encouragement. (The latter is not a given).
With a different structure in classes, I think I might have also have helped other pupils to more deeply appreciate the subjects I grasped intuitively - and vice versa in other subjects.
I think that many pupils have a special gift in one or two subjects, which ought to be used to help teach the other students.
Then everyone wins: some pupils race ahead because they can, and others gain the benefit of a peer who helps them to understand and conveys enthusiasm.
However, for that to work, pupils would need to be taught much more about communication skills, relating with other people, and patterns of personal development.
It is a shame that is not how I remember school.
I hope that schools of the future are more like that. Perhaps they are, in some places.
I've since learned about Steiner schools and I wish I was young again and could go to one of those! They sound like excellent fun, as well as a smart approach to learning. They teach some very important non-academic qualities which my schools did not begin to address.
Slashdot Mirror
Dear Anonymous,
What the fuck are you talking about?
Your comment doesn't actually say anything. It doesn't answer any of the posed questions, and it doesn't offer any solutions to the real and genuine question of how to manage unusual configurations without editing /etc files.
Your suggestion to "forge" an alternate solution, by which I can only presume you mean do something other than edit config files - WTF does that mean, do you have something to add or is it just a masturbatory flame?
I have a solution to my problems, which is editing config files, or writing scripts which generate configs: it has so far always been the best solution that I'm aware of for the problems that I've encountered. You probably encounter different problems, so have different requirements.
But I am not wedded to the approach. Which is why I asked if all configuration options for apps on the Mac are shown in the GUI. It is a pretty straightforward question. An answer of "yes" would be nice. Even if the answer is "yes but only if it's a Mac app", that would be nice. But apparently you don't answer questions, preferring instead to be an unfriendly wanker who can't tell the difference between a question and stupid fight.
-- Jamie
What happens when you want to change a setting that's not shown in the user-friendly GUI "Settings" editor?
Some programs have a lot of obscure options. Are they all presented in the nice "Settings" windows, for all Mac applications?
That's a problem I've encounted with the simplest of systems (e.g. webmin) which edit files in /etc on a Linux box. Occasionally I need a setting which the fancy settings-editor doesn't know about, and then I have to worry that future uses of the settings-editor will break essential
changes I had to make to /etc by hand, without me knowing until I observe the symptom maybe days or weeks later.
Once that point is reached, that risk is unacceptable and the only safe thing to do is stop using the settings-editor.
What is the solution to this? Making all the options visible in a GUI "Registry editor" type of program is not a solution, because if I've done something unusual to a file in /etc, then I will have added explanatory comments and grouped the unusual options together to make it obvious that they are related by my specific requirements. No "registry editor" I have ever seen offers that kind of functionality, which I find essential.
-- Jamie
More accurately, the combined work of the new code and the GPL item is required to be under the GPL when you distribute it.
However, if you can extract the new code by itself from the combination (for example this is easy if they're separate source files), then the new code by itself can be under whatever license its author wishes. This is permitted even if you receive a combined work: you are free to extract pieces of it and use the pieces according to their individual licenses. The GPL has a clause in it permitting this.
-- Jamie
Don't they provide a URL where you can download the source to the GPL'd components? Many companies host the source on a web site.
If they don't do that, and they don't provide the source with the TV, then they must provide a written offer to supply you with the exact source used in that TV, valid for 3 years.
You should definitely get the source, just to test that Sony do honour their obligations, and so they are aware that there are people who want to make use of those obligations.
By the way, you do realise that if you don't have the source, then you are forbidden from redistributing your HDTV to anyone else , right? If you give your TV to someone else, you must also comply with the GPL because you are redistributing GPL'd binary code .
I have not seen this implication discussed anywhere yet.
-- Jamie
Because copyrights are healthy and patents, particularly patents on intangibles like software, are unhealthy. They're both artificial constructions of law, but their effects on people are quite different.
Your question is a bit like asking: This looks very like one of the food threads that run here regularly, but with everyone on the other side of the line. If fresh fruit & veg is so right, why are McDonalds burgers so wrong?
Copyrights promote creativity and competition. Patents punish creativity and competition. (And intangibles patents are worse as they also attack the basic human right of self-expression.)
-- Jamie
True, they can't stop anybody from writing or using code, but they can take away all your money and your property.
-- Jamie
Good point, you're right. -- Jamie
If you're in some random coffee shop, you have no idea what CAs they've installed in the browser. You can't check them either: fakes can look exactly like real ones on somebody else's computer.
Maybe you trust the coffee shop owner?
Fine, but are you sure they don't have a virus or malware on there changing the browser CAs?
If you want a real secret handshake, you need to take some piece of your own key-verification hardware in which contains the CAs that you trust.
-- Jamie
Yes, I agree that no software patents are best. and I wholeheartedly want them out of the EU. See my other recent post on the subject.
(We have them here in the EU already, they're just illegal right now, but that doesn't eliminate the sense of ambiguity. Even though I write pure software, I am not sure of my risk in publishing it because it is highly technical software which definitely does things mentioned in EU patents).
I meant that reducing the term in the USA from decades to 2 years would be the single most effective thing from the parent's list for the USA apart from discarding software patents completely, and that the other things the parent poster suggested would not help.
That's not my idea, that's the parent poster's idea. I agree with you, that a registry is a bad idea precisely because it cannot ever reflect the true prior art.
I take that argument further: there is a lot of prior invention that has never been published even though it has been thought of and tried privately. So even searching public sources does not really give a fair representation of what other people are thinking up.
(And even if it did, I believe it is still wrong to prohibit people from sharing work they have done themselves, even if they are not the first to do it).
-- Jamie
to a year or two.
We're clever enough to come up with our own techniques in the short term to compete with closed source companies doing interesting short term things. I'd have no complaint with that level of competition. If a technique is really crucial and unavoidable, we can just wait a couple of years.
It's the medium to long term which is a problem, because we all converge on the same techniques - they are quite fundamental after all - and we need to be able to use our ideas in a reasonable time frame, not 27 years after having them...
A registry of techniques would be nice as a library, but it's not really workable for patent prevention.
Personally I come up with new techniques every day, as I'm sure many people here do. It's not feasible to write them all down, let alone register them in a formally searchable way. That's called "writing a book or article", and it's a lot of work in itself.
Part of the problem is that we've been inventing things at a rapid pace for decades, but most ideas are left unused and not written anywhere until an opportunity when it's _appropriate_ to use them crops up.
In other words, ideas sometimes get patented after lots of people have them, but before anyone actually uses them.
For example, IBM's patent on RCU - that's something I independently came up with when writing a small OS a decade before RCU was mentioned on the Linux lists. But, I didn't have a use for it in that OS (which I deleted all copies of anyway), and I can't prove prior art. I could have "published" it, but frankly publishing every idea like that is more work than it's worth.
I'm sure that has happened with many people here.
(I don't know the filing date of IBM's patent; that example is just to illustrate how potential prior art is easily lost).
If good ideas (of the currently patentable kind) were rare, then a registry would work. But when you're coming up with neat ideas daily, then if there was a registry of "official" prior art, a lot of ideas that people have had and maybe talked about would not have the chance to get in.
So even if there was a registry, we would still have unreasonable problems caused by the patent system.
-- Jamie
To whom it may concern,
I am outraged at the apalling bias and factual misrepresentation in the BBC article, "EU software patent law faces axe".
First, the bias. The article presents the view of a limited sector of the IT industry with "CompTIA, an umbrella organization for technology companies, said only when intellectual property was adequately protected would European inventors prosper."
They certainly don't represent my technology business!
Where is the view of that other sector of the IT industry: those inventors whose intellectual property is placed in peril by these monopolistic "protections"? And the others: businesses whose work depends on access to open standards and open source infrastructure?
As an inventor myself, I am deeply concerned that my ability to publish my own works will be blocked, should patentability be extended to computer software. The danger to small business such as mine is of being sued to bankruptcy by large institutional firms with large and ever-growing patent portfolios, covering every nuance of technology, even the obvious stuff.
Only large, wealthy firms benefit in such a system: they cross-license with each other to avoid the expense of fighting. Not so for the small and growing enterprise with new ideas. Software patents are hardly good for small inventors: they're a closed club for the big boys.
Secondly, factual misrepresentation. The article says "The open source movement, of which Linux is the flagbearer, eschews notions of property". Wrong, wrong, wrong! The open source movement is absolutely dependent on notions of property and fully aware of this. Almost every piece of software - and even literature, music and science nowadays - produced as open source, makes use of intellectual property law for its protection. It is wrong to paint an unprofessional image of the open source movement, for it includes everyone: individuals, business of all sizes, and governments.
You are right, however, to say that open source "allows anyone to examine and tinker with the inner workings of software." Is there anyone who doesn't believe in the opportunity to learn how things work, if they desire to?
Ironically, the stated official purpose of patents is to ensure everyone has access to the knowledge of how things work, so that anyone can learn to make better things.
It is ironic and frightening to see this getting lost among the backroom bribes, attempts to push dodgy laws through the back door against the wishes of parliament, "patent-acquisition" companies that sue easy targets but don't actually make anything themselves... and journalism parroting the propaganda of "umbrella" organisations that don't represent us.
I'm very glad, however, that the dodgy law didn't get passed through that dodgy back door after all.
Yours faithfully,
Jamie Lokier,
A businessman and inventor whose livelihood depends on the legal right to share his ideas freely.
How do reach that conclusion? I'm sorry, but I must be missing something because I reach a different conclusion from the text you quoted. Please read carefully, and if you disagree, please help me (and everyone who's reached the same conclusion as me) to understand why.
Section 3 says they must publically offer a Transparent copy for each Opaque copy distributed (more than 100 times, but that's not important).
In other words, for every HTML-formatted document they send to anyone, for 1 year (the time mentioned elsewhere in section 3) they must publically serve the editable source of those documents.
But if some of the Wikipedia documents aren't accessed by anyone for 1 year (the less popular articles), meaning that neither Transparent nor Opaque copies of those documents are distributed in that year, they aren't bound to publically offer a Transparent copy of those documents.
Furthermore, section 3 does not require them to offer HTML-formatted wiki pages to everyone: they are only required to offer the editable source documents (and only the above subset of source documents).
They can legitimately withhold the HTML-formatted service (i.e. Opaque copies) under whatever terms they like, including limiting page views to 50 per day per user. These are Opaque copies and nothing in the GFDL requires them to offer those publically. (The GFDL only demands access to Transparent copies, not Opaque copies).
They are not allowed to withhold the editable source (i.e. Transparent copies) in that way, but they can withhold access to editable source for documents that haven't been viewed in Opqaue form by anyone for 1 year. And since they can restrict views of the Opaque copies, that prevents people from mirroring all of the Opaque copies (i.e. mirroring the HTML web pages) in order to guarantee public access to the Transparent copies.
In short: they're not required to distribute HTML-formatted documents at all, so they can impose their own conditions on that. They're not required to distributed source documents unless the HTML-formatted versions of those specific documents have been distributed within the preceding year.
That combination allows them to prevent regular, full mirrors from being maintained, if they really want to, by denying access to source documents which have not been fetched within the preceding year as formatted HTML, and limiting access to the HTML pages so that less popular pages can acquire that status.
That's the conclusion I draw from section 3 (in combination with section 6).
(It's similar to the GPL, in the sense that publishing a binary requires publishing the source, but if there were an archive of ancient GPL programs over the last decades, it is permitted to restrict access to the archive so long as source is always available for binaries that have been accessed within the recent time limit.)
-- Jamie
The GFDL requires them to publically serve a "Transparent" copy of each document they serve you. (It's much like the GPL requires source to be provided with each program, but stronger because the GPL doesn't require source to be served publically).
According to my reading, the GFDL does not require them to serve you all the documents of a collection in the first place! See section 6, "Collections of Documents". (There may be an argument for saying Wikipedia is a collection, and a counter-argument saying it is a single document.)
I believe they are entitled to serve you some of the documents (including Transparent versions which you can edit), while not serving you others, according to their choice: for example they may offer to serve you 50 formatted ("Opaque") documents per day before they cease providing service to you.
That is nondiscriminatory, provided everyone is subject to the same limitations. And it satisfies the Transparent copy requirement, provided they continue to serve transparent copies of each document for which anyone has been served formatted copies for 1 year.
-- Jamie
They cannot restrict copying of the content, but they can limit access to it via Google's servers. The GFDL does not prevent this.
That's why it's important that there are always a few people maintaining mirrors of the entire Wikipedia.
It's also important that if Google ever stops the ability to make mirrors of the entire Wikipedia including updates and update history, that a big public fuss is made.
If you think it can't happen due to Wikipedia's license, think again: Usenet is presumably public domain, but Google aren't exactly falling over themselves to let people mirror that archive.
Some people will say that Google did real work to put together the Usenet archive, and it's within their rights as a business to limit access to it. Fair enough: just remember, that it's also within their rights as a business to limit access to their instance of Wikipedia in future, and if nobody has an up to date mirror, that will be a real limitation.
I'm not saying worry about it. Those are only possible scenarios. I'm saying: be diligent in keeping it open and fully accessible; don't let it slip like CDDB or the Usenet archive.
-- Jamie
I believe it works with NPTL threads (the current Linux threading library) - if you map a file or shared memory so it's visible in both processes, then you can initialise the pshared mutex and use it from both.
With the older LinuxThreads, I'd be surprised if it works.
-- Jamie
For the benefit of readers, those "necessary changes" are to require a JIT to generate shared libraries for each class that's loaded, and then dynamically load the shared libraries.
That's fine for a JIT that is only used to generate static code for each class. But it's not efficient for dynamic optimisation techniques, such as run-time profile-driven code optimisation, or run-time data reorganisation.
On a PaX system, perhaps you can work around the restrictions by mapping a shared memory segment in two places, one of them as an executable mapping, the other writable. Write to one address, and execute at the other. I don't know as I haven't tried a PaX system.
-- Jamie
pthread_mutexattr_setpshared:
Use that and your program will be portable to all platforms which implement pthreads properly. (Maybe even Win32 pthreadsEnjoy,
-- Jamie
I have to wonder why anyone wouldn't be using cached dynamic pages...
If your pages are cached with sensible conditions: that is, they depend on the content used to generate them, then you get marginally better performance than triggers which regenerate static HTML - and no briefly out of date pages.
If you're using a database to back the site's content, then you'll need simple triggers to flag those conditions. Otherwise, if you're using files to back it (e.g. a file per article), you don't even need that and you get up to date dynamic pages from templates with the performance of a fast optimised static server.
-- Jamie (who is building a server which works exactly like the latter...)
Specifically, ports 80, 8080, 3128 and 25 are blocked.
Port 25 (SMTP) is no big deal, but if you were hoping to run a web server or even just a backup web server for when your colo box fails...
The upstream bandwidth is comparatively low. With peercasting being the obvious solution to relieving popular free sites of their cost burden, the trend to highly asymmetric home links is not good.
The RADSL technology is intrinsically asymmetric. It sustains a fixed download rate, while doing its best for upload according to the line quality. To increase the upload rate, it would have to reduce the download rate for technical reasons due to using the same copper pair. That is one reason for the relatively low upload rate.
That, however, does not explain why nobody is making adaptive RADSL which can increase the upload rate at the expense of download when there is demand for that. Specifically, when peercasting, there is no technical reason why the modem could not balance the two rates, and when serving, no reason it could not make the upload rate higher than the download. Perhaps we'll have to wait a few more generations of ADSL before we see this. Or perhaps we're supposed to be "consumers" until the revolution ;)
Ho hum,
-- Jamie
The functionality is much older than GCC, and even pre-dates the first ANSI C specification. Any ancient (i.e. 1970s onwards) unix C compiler will behave like this. In the old days (K&R C, before ANSI/ISO C), there were no function prototypes.
-- Jamie
That's not an error, and if your OS prof said it was an error that was not picked up, he/she is mistaken.
The C language definition is clear that you can write the program you did, with a variable defined in "common" form (no initialiser and no extern) in both files, and a function called without a prototype, and it is a valid C program with well defined behaviour.
-- Jamie
I agree.
To put it a different way, voters cannot know when they vote for individual MPs which ministers will be appointed to the EU Council, nor the policies which will be represented by those ministers.
If voters dislike a bad EU minister, they may be able to vote that minister out of office, but they have no way to prevent another minister with similar policies being given the same appointment - a consequence of the diversity of MPs.
This means that the policies represented by the EU minister at any given time are determined mostly by who has the ear of the people deciding to appoint a minister to the EU council, not by the voting populous.
Naturally, that tends to run the way of corruption, bribery, and a shield of "advisers" with vested interests.
-- Jamie
I have two Diamondtrons (Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 17s), and they both suck.
Don't get me wrong: they suck less than any other CRTs I've seen. The >1 pixel colour misconvergence in at least one corner (eliminate it and another corner gets it) and generally blurry pixels (compared with an LCD) do not make me happy, but are still better quality than the ~30 other CRTs I compared them with before purchasing.
I've tried working with the CRTs, but in the end I prefer my 5 year old Toshiba laptop LCD to either of the CRTs. I habitually move to it when I have the choice.
That's probably due to the digital video hookup on laptops. Every LCD that I've looked at which is connected by an analogue input sucks worse than either of my Diamondtron CRTs - because of the analogue signal artifacts. Some people don't notice the ringing around fine text, and shimmering, moving lines. I do. I have looked at quite a few LCDs driven by analogue signals, and without exception they were disappointing. (Otherwise I'd have bought one already).
-- Jamie ("very fussy")
Yes it does. In single sex classrooms of the same size as the mixed, each boy gets less attention simply because there are more boys.
I dont necessarily agree with this explanation, but if the attention theory holds for girls, then it can also explain the boys' performance.
-- Jamie
I was one of the most academically capable people in my school classes, and easily ahead of everyone in hard science & maths. The latter were highly intuitive to me at school level.
I hated school, and by the time I was 15 years old I was skipping classes. At 16 I'd skip one or two whole mornings a week: deliberately miss the bus, and just walk for 2 hours to the school. I still don't know why, and I'm sure it wasn't just due to the quality or level of teaching, but the rigid structure was a factor.
I don't thrive in structures which limit my ability to explore, and to ask difficult questions. I also don't get excited by subjects i f I don't see their connection to things that I care about.
That's a shame, because I now find subjects like economics, geography, history and mechanical/artistic design very interesting, but at the time I took very little interest. My teachers didn't like me, and I didn't like them or their subjects.
At around 15, I vividly remember my chemistry teaching telling me off for asking questions "way beyond my level". In retrospect, I know that such questions weren't beyond my level at all. I understand why he said that: I consistently didn't do the regular homework, and kept falling asleep in class. But all those attitudes prevented me from exploring the subject to the depth I was capable of at the time.
It is possible that had I been supported in exploring what I enjoyed, and also taught why it was important to do the regular work (it was, but it's taken me a long time to grasp why), I would have done both enthusiastically and not have developed the negative attitude that I did.
I sometimes look back sadly and see that I could have done a lot of interesting and enjoyable things at school if I'd been encouraged to and responded to that encouragement. (The latter is not a given).
With a different structure in classes, I think I might have also have helped other pupils to more deeply appreciate the subjects I grasped intuitively - and vice versa in other subjects.
I think that many pupils have a special gift in one or two subjects, which ought to be used to help teach the other students.
Then everyone wins: some pupils race ahead because they can, and others gain the benefit of a peer who helps them to understand and conveys enthusiasm.
However, for that to work, pupils would need to be taught much more about communication skills, relating with other people, and patterns of personal development.
It is a shame that is not how I remember school.
I hope that schools of the future are more like that. Perhaps they are, in some places.
I've since learned about Steiner schools and I wish I was young again and could go to one of those! They sound like excellent fun, as well as a smart approach to learning. They teach some very important non-academic qualities which my schools did not begin to address.
-- Jamie