By the same token, who are we to say that your (say) twelve year old daughter's next ovum wonn't contain the best genetic material on the planet?
You're letter her *not* have sex? How dare you waste such potentially valuable genetic material? The second she gets gives birth to her first baby, make sure her boyfriend starts going for number 2. One of her fifteen kids might be the next Beethoven, after all.
I realize I'm being inflammatory, but I'm making a serious point. Every menstrual cycle wastes an egg. Every ejaculation wastes billions of sperm. I don't see a whole lot of difference between wasting them a few seconds before conception and wasting them a few seconds later.
(Yes, yes, I know that some people believe that a single cell can somehow possess an invisible, incorporeal, supernatural entity which they term a 'soul', but that theory is every bit as plausible as saying that the zygote possesses an invisible super-powerful wombat. They might, but considering there's absolutely no evidence in favor of it...)
And we *are* focusing our efforts on curing AIDs and cancer. Solving these problems does not require every single human on the planet to devote 100% of his or her effort to their solutions. That's a pretty inefficient way to operate. For that matter, what are you doing here on Slashdot? Why aren't you working on something more important?
The human race multitasks. Nobody complained about Linus Torvalds writing the Linux kernel instead of working on a cure for cancer. Why are you complaining about fertility doctors working on this rather than a cure for cancer?
I'm sure a lot of people will be pissed off by my opinions, but at least we can all agree on one thing. Super-powerful wombats would be *damned* cool.
I don't normally reply to myself, but since everybody has completely and totally missed my point...
Yes, you are all absolutely correct that without the GPL, it is illegal to distribute the software at all.
However, I evidently didn't explain myself well enough. My point was not that it would be legal to distribute software without the GPL, far from it.
The GPL grants you additional rights if you follow certain provisions. If you don't follow those provisions, you're subject to ordinary copyright law (which prevents you from redistributing the work). If you do follow those provisions, you have the legal right to redistribute the software.
Now, work with me here. You cannot sue somebody for a GPL violation. Period, end of story. All you can sue them for is copyright violation, since without the GPL's provision you can't copy the software. *All* GPL violations will be tried in court as copyright violations, because that is the only law you could have broken. The only penalty for breaking the GPL is revocation of your license, which leaves you subject to copyright law.
You're all looking at the enforceability issue backwards. The enforceability of the GPL does not *ever* protect the people who offer to license the software. You don't need the GPL for that, because you have copyright law -- copyright law is completely sufficient to shut people down from using your software. You don't even really need a license for that, because you're free to sue company A because you don't like the way they are using your software, but leave company B alone because you're happy with what they are doing. This is completely legal, and you don't need the GPL for that. (I realize that the GPL fulfills a very important role as far as formalizing the agreement and making it easier to get people to comply, but legally it isn't necessary. You could just sue anybody whose use of your code you disagreed with.)
The GPL is just a formalized statement of "I won't sue you if you distribute source". It protects the people *using* the software, because while copyright law would ordinarily say "you can't do this", the GPL says "you can if you distribute source". The GPL does not grant one iota of extra power to the people licensing the software, it grants it all to the people using it -- a statement of protection from lawsuit.
So firstly, it's pretty much irrelevant. The legalese of the GPL could be replaced with "I promise I won't sue you if you..." and it would have exactly the same effect.
As far as the legal enforceability of the GPL, it may or may not hold up in court. Since everybody is going to get this backwards, I'll spell it out. "Hold up in court" means use it to *protect* yourself, not to sue somebody else. Again, we've already established that the only law being broken is copyright -- you cannot use the GPL to attack somebody for violating it. The GPL is only good for *defending* yourself, to say "no, look, I'm not violating copyright because the GPL allows me to do this". *That* is what needs to be tested in court, and that is what I'm not sure will necessarily work. Theoretically, you might be able to successfully sue somebody for using GPLed code completely in accordance with the license, and *that* would be the "not holding up in court" that I'm talking about.
It would obviously be horribly unethical to do so, and any reasonable judge might well throw the case out, but a good lawyer could probably make a case against the ability to use GPLed code in the absence of a formal agreement.
Hope that clears up what I meant by my first post.
(disclaimer: IANAL, but I have some real-world experience with IP law)
Enforceability of the GPL is problematic at best. It's no more legal than any other software license, and consider how many objections the average/.er raises to (say) Microsoft's clickwrap licenses. Those same objections apply to the GPL, but even more strongly.
After all, if you can make the legal case that "clicking OK doesn't really count as accepting a license", you can easily make the case that "doing absolutely nothing (which is all that is required to accept the GPL) sure as hell doesn't count as accepting a license". If Microsoft can't implicitly force you to accept a contract, neither can the FSF. The law doesn't care if you're nice or not.
However, even if (as I believe) the GPL is legally unenforceable, that probably doesn't hurt anything. GPLed code is still protected by copyright, so even if the GPL itself is powerless, the copyright holder (if such can be established) can still sue to prevent redistribution. The GPL, in this context, basically constitutes a non-enforceable statement of "we won't sue if you release source code".
Even this might not hold up in court. Trademarks are lost if you don't protect them. I don't believe the same applies to copyright, but only an IP lawyer would know for sure the legal ramifications of selectively suing people who don't follow your (arbitrary, non-legal) license.
Hopefully the courts will shed some more light on this soon.
For very large keys, where the definition of "very large" is not yet known, this is a 3x decrease in the (for lack of a better term) 'effective key length'.
In other words, it might be possible to crack a 1536 bit key in the amount of time it currently takes to crack a 512 bit key.
Since the 1536 bit key is 1024 bits longer, that means that it *should* take 2^1024 (1.79e308) times as long to crack.
So, for that specific example, assuming that this works it's actually cracking the key 179 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times faster.
Sorry, but... what the hell are you talking about?
Viewmasters, camera viewfinders, LCD goggles, and dozens of other devices project an image onto your eye from a small distance in front of it. The image is sharp and in focus, and in fact your eye focuses on it as if it were actually a certain distance away from your face.
If your objects held any water at all, *none* of these devices would be possible. Are you suggesting that 21st century optics technology is incapable of making light enter your eyeball at the right angle?
Do you wear glasses? Do you know somebody who does?
Perhaps they should do without, because evolution didn't intend them to be able to see. For the record, I'm almost legally blind without glasses. I'm utterly helpless, barely able to walk on my own. With glasses, my vision is 20/20. Should I stop wearing them because they're not natural?
How about diabetics? Maybe we should just let them die without insulin.
Kids with asthma? Screw 'em. Let's see how they do without their inhalers.
The point is, we are so far away from natural selection that it isn't even funny. Everything a doctor does is in complete violation of the natural order. If you want to say that this should be different -- that the right to have children is somehow different than the right to see well, or the right to have braces correct your bad teeth -- you'll need to explain why you're singling out this particular facet of health from any other.
A) average users could never do that
B) it doesn't allow for seamless installations
C) it takes forever
and,
D) it frequently doesn't work on the first try
Try out Java Web Start if you want to see how applications should be installed.
"but 'beats visual C++' ? firstly - what is that? you mean C++ (why should the ide affect benchmarks!?)."
I'm not sure I follow you. You can't debate the performance of languages without referencing specific compilers, since by definition a language doesn't perform without a compiler (or interpreter or VM or whatever). MS Visual C++ is a good choice for comparison, because the vast majority of commercial applications were compiled with it.
According to the Java Performance Report, the IBM JVM beat VC++ in a variety of standard benchmarks. These aren't artificial "allocate a million objects" benchmarks; they're things like neural nets and FFTs which are actually done in real life. Go read the report.
It's worth noting that the Intel C++ compiler did a lot better, but the fact is that if Java is better than Visual C++, it's good enough for the masses considering that the masses are happy with Visual C++. (Remember that GCC sucks ass performance-wise, and most Linux fans are perfectly happy with it).
A JIT does not interpret Java. Ever. Under any circumstances.
JIT is short for Just In Time *Compiler*. A JIT compiles Java bytecode to native code prior to running it. It is in fact this compilation which lead to the slow startup time visible under Java 1.1 and 1.2 (without HotSpot), because the JIT could not interpret code. It had to compile *everything*, even if it was just initialization code which would only run once.
HotSpot, the next generation of VM technology which is integral to Java 1.3 and 1.4, features an interpreter which is used initially. This gives HotSpot very fast startup time, because it initially does no compilation. As HotSpot decides that a particular method needs to be compiled, it does so in a background thread while continuing to run the interpreter. When the compilation is finished, it swaps in the native version (the current version can do this even if it is in the middle of running the interpreted version). This gives HotSpot two big speedups: firstly, because it uses the interpreter initially, startup is faster, and secondly because it compiles fewer methods (IOW, only ones which actually benefit from compilation) it can spend more time optimizing each method.
HotSpot beats Visual C++ in most benchmarks. It is damned cool technology, and most people that claim Java is slow haven't played around with it in a long time. Java 1.4 is ripping fast.
Computer geeks can "Do the TiVo thing anyway" without a TiVo? Technically, yes, but living in Silicon Valley as I do, I know six people (including myself) with TiVo or ReplayTV units, and not a single person who uses their computer as a poor-man's PVR.
In fact, one of my friends has two ReplayTVs, and is considering getting a third. He's also a Phoenix alumnus, the chief programmer of the Phoenix 4 BIOS. He knows more about computer hardware than almost anybody alive, and he never for a second considered using a computer to do this.
Similarly, many of us are fully capable of writing our own operating systems, or building our own cars. Very few of us have actually done so. Maybe the pre-packaged aspect has a lot of appeal to most people.
Anybody that is smart enough to set up their computer as a TiVo is also smart enough to know that the commercial boxes do a better job with less effort.
What VM are you using? I haven't seen a significant problem with moving apps between machine architectures since Java 1.3 came out.
I do most of my development on a Windows box, and deploy to Solaris and Linux. It's been years since I've seen a bug only manifest on one of the three systems.
"Apparently" high piracy? You're talking about a market in which people do not generally realize that software exists in shrinkwrapped form. I have talked to people that literally were not aware of shrinkwrapped software before coming to America. Most software is purchased in the form of $5 CDs containing EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM EVER MADE by a particular company.
I should know; I have a copy of just such a CD full of Adobe software;-).
This is hardly a new thing. If a jumbo jet's computers crash, you die. All sorts of bad things would happen if hospital equipment's computers went out. Even your car's computer crashing while doing 90 on the freeway could be deadly.
Embedded systems need to *not crash*, period. The industry has been dealing with this sort of requirement for decades, and doing a pretty good job of it, all things considered.
I never mentioned the word "sell" in my post. I merely said that I could release something previously open-source in modified form, without releasing the source, and there's nothing you could do about it.
It doesn't matter if nobody makes money off of it; people are perfectly happy to take credit for other peoples' work even if they aren't earning anything from it.
In fact, I could even loudly thank the original author, and make no secret of the fact that my code was based off of his. That still doesn't change the fact that under the GPL I'm required to release my source, but without copyright law nobody could force me to.
I'm just saying that the argument "We need copyright because it makes the GPL possible" is invalid.
Well, that isn't my argument. I never stated a position in favor of either copyright or GPL. In actuality, my argument is "if you're going to advocate the GPL, you are also advocating copyright law, whether you like it or not". I couldn't care less about the GPL; I'm just tired of hearing the we-should-abolish-copyright argument from overzealous open-source fans.
Utter nonsense. If there were no copyright law, the GPL would be unenforceable.
I could steal your open-source code, change the header information, and release it as my own, closed-source product, and there's not a damn thing you could do about it, because you never owned your code in the first place. Losing copyright law would mean losing all control over your code, including telling other people what they can and can't do with it.
The GPL *needs* IP law in order to force people to release their source. Without that, it would just be a polite request.
Linux *is* copyrighted. *All* GPL code is copyrighted.
Iit weren't copyrighted, the GPL couldn't tell you what to do with it. If it were truly in the public domain, I could ignore all the provisions of the GPL and do whatever I wanted, including incorporating it into the next version of Windows, and nobody would have any legal resource against me. Copyright law is what makes the GPL enforceable.
The request sounds simple in theory, but as always it's more complicated than this.
What if somebody is scanning through the code and finds
// we have to do it this way because Intel is a bunch of fucking idiots
Would you really want that being leaked into the public? Particularly if you have a close working relationship with Intel?
Or how about:
// Bob Martel isn't at the company anymore, so I can safely say that this is the worse piece of shit code I've ever seen. I'll rewrite it when I get a chance
Not to mention potentially plagiarized code, or patent violations, or any number of other nastiness buried in the code. Sure, it *probably* doesn't contain any of the above, but do you really want to scan through all two million lines of it just to make sure?
Further, every time somebody wants to see my source code, I find myself preparing it a little more thoroughly. Removing a few of those ugly hacks, documenting the ones I can't remove... sort of like quickly straightening up the house before visitors show up. I don't want people seeing my dirty laundry. If I don't have time to straighten up, I'd rather not let people in at all.
Source code is the same way -- you generally don't want other people looking over it until you've had a chance to clean it up a little bit. If you don't want to clean it up, you just don't release it. Releasing source code *always* costs time and money to a corporation.
I have to agree. I'm sure this will go down as Flamebait / Troll (take your pick), but I found LotR mind-numbingly boring.
I've read long books before -- the Wheel of Time series comes to mind, weighing in at something like 6,000 pages so far -- so I promise that it has nothing to do with a short attention span or lousy imagination. They're just boring.
The writing is mediocre, and Tolkien *really* likes listening to himself talk. The books just aren't that good. Fine, they helped set the direction for modern fantasy. I won't dispute that. Study them for the historical value then, but all of this gushing about them being the best fantasy novels ever is, IMNSHO, misplaced.
Most PC games only run on Windows, therefore he has a Windows box. Seems okay to me, but I suppose the only reasonable thing for a Linux fan to say is "It doesn't run on Linux, therefore I don't use it."
Question: if it turned out he owned, say, a Playstation 2, would you bother to mention that as a significant point? It's a non-Linux game console, no different than a Windows PC used exclusively for games. In fact, a PS2 is about the same price as a crappy Windows box. Chances are that you own a PS2, and don't see a problem with it not running Linux. So why does his owning a Windows box for that purpose deserve special mention?
I can't that you can blame him... almost all of the really good games at the moment are either console or PC only
If you can't blame him, then why the heck are you bothering to complain about this?
First off, I am a Yahoo employee by way of GeoCities. I worked for GeoCities during the Webring acquisition. GeoCities bought Webring, not Yahoo. Yahoo bought GeoCities some months later, and ended up getting Webring basically by accident.
Further, I was a member of the team talking to Webring about integrating their technology. At *no point* did anyone mention interstitial ads, nor did it come up during the transition to Yahoo. Given that I was one of the key contacts on our side, you'd think someone would have mentioned something like that to me.
Basically, Webring was bought by management -- all of our engineers thought the technology was crap. Their employees were incompetent. The integration was killed quickly and quietly when it became apparent that they had nothing going for them but some half-assed Perl scripts. I still have no idea why the company was actually purchased, but then I'm just a lowly programmer.
I second this. Super Monkey Ball is the best game I have played in years, and my wife likes it as much as I do. There's so much replay value that it's just insane -- seven (count 'em, seven) modes, most of which could stand alone as full-fledged games. Bowling, pool, golf, fighting, racing...
Unlocking everything is unbelievably difficult, to the point that I'm not sure any amount of practice will ever let me get Master Mode, but I'm certainly going to try. I can already get through Advanced without dying, but Expert makes that look like a walk in the park. If any other game were this tough, I would just throw the controller at the wall and stop playing. But somehow Monkey Ball has just the right level of insane challenge -- it's not quite enough to make you give up in disgust, but the challenge level is so high that when you finally beat a really tough level you feel a real sense of accomplishment. It took me around fifty lives to get through Advanced Extra 5 the first time, but when I did I felt more satisfaction at beating that one level than in beating any other entire game. Plus, now that I've learned the right way to tackle the level, I can do it relativey easily -- it's not just a matter of luck.
If you don't have it, go buy Monkey Ball now. Seriously. Go to the store now. Buy it. If you don't have a GameCube, pick one of those up too. And three more controllers. What, you're still reading this? Go buy it!
While I tend to agree with this -- I believe humans are likely alone in the galaxy -- it does rely on some very specious assumptions.
Other species may have no interest in space travel. They may well be shocked that at this point in our technological development, we *still* haven't developed the Microstatic Dweebelizer, while we would be shocked at how primitive their transportation technology is.
Other species may have no interest in colonization. Wanting to spread your seed among the stars may be a purely human affair.
Other species may not be as suitable for space travel as we are (not that we're particular suitable). If they are less able to survive a wide range of conditions, for instance if slight (to us) temperature variations are fatal to them, space travel might not appeal to them very much. Further, if they could only live within a narrow range of conditions then other planets wouldn't be particularly appealing. Maybe humans are particularly able to adapt to the physical and psychological rigors of space travel.
Again, while I do tend to agree with Fermi and assume that we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, there are a lot of unknowns about the way an extraterrestrial species would behave. We're *probably* an 'average' species, in the sense of intelligence, capabilities, and so forth, simply because being in the middle is a lot more likely than being one of the extremes, but for all we know we're exceptional in every way (for better or worse). Maybe we're the only species that wants to conquer space, or maybe we're the only species that has gotten this far and not even tried yet.
I confess to not having read the book, but I've never seen any decimal used in proposed SETI communications (nor, I suspect, have you).
Most "number" transmissions I have seen have been unary (in other words, three pulses equals three). I know binary was used on the plaque in (ummm) Voyager, was it? but that wasn't a serious attempt to communicate with other species.
Mathematicians aren't stupid, and I promise you that they know perfectly well that aliens aren't likely to use base 10.
A black hole is a singularity. It has no size, and therefore its density is infinite.
The sphere defined by its event horizon does have a size, but it will be very small (a few tens of miles across, perhaps). Maybe an astrophysicist in the audience will compute the size for us?
Slashdot Mirror
By the same token, who are we to say that your (say) twelve year old daughter's next ovum wonn't contain the best genetic material on the planet?
You're letter her *not* have sex? How dare you waste such potentially valuable genetic material? The second she gets gives birth to her first baby, make sure her boyfriend starts going for number 2. One of her fifteen kids might be the next Beethoven, after all.
I realize I'm being inflammatory, but I'm making a serious point. Every menstrual cycle wastes an egg. Every ejaculation wastes billions of sperm. I don't see a whole lot of difference between wasting them a few seconds before conception and wasting them a few seconds later.
(Yes, yes, I know that some people believe that a single cell can somehow possess an invisible, incorporeal, supernatural entity which they term a 'soul', but that theory is every bit as plausible as saying that the zygote possesses an invisible super-powerful wombat. They might, but considering there's absolutely no evidence in favor of it...)
And we *are* focusing our efforts on curing AIDs and cancer. Solving these problems does not require every single human on the planet to devote 100% of his or her effort to their solutions. That's a pretty inefficient way to operate. For that matter, what are you doing here on Slashdot? Why aren't you working on something more important?
The human race multitasks. Nobody complained about Linus Torvalds writing the Linux kernel instead of working on a cure for cancer. Why are you complaining about fertility doctors working on this rather than a cure for cancer?
I'm sure a lot of people will be pissed off by my opinions, but at least we can all agree on one thing. Super-powerful wombats would be *damned* cool.
I don't normally reply to myself, but since everybody has completely and totally missed my point...
..." and it would have exactly the same effect.
Yes, you are all absolutely correct that without the GPL, it is illegal to distribute the software at all.
However, I evidently didn't explain myself well enough. My point was not that it would be legal to distribute software without the GPL, far from it.
The GPL grants you additional rights if you follow certain provisions. If you don't follow those provisions, you're subject to ordinary copyright law (which prevents you from redistributing the work). If you do follow those provisions, you have the legal right to redistribute the software.
Now, work with me here. You cannot sue somebody for a GPL violation. Period, end of story. All you can sue them for is copyright violation, since without the GPL's provision you can't copy the software. *All* GPL violations will be tried in court as copyright violations, because that is the only law you could have broken. The only penalty for breaking the GPL is revocation of your license, which leaves you subject to copyright law.
You're all looking at the enforceability issue backwards. The enforceability of the GPL does not *ever* protect the people who offer to license the software. You don't need the GPL for that, because you have copyright law -- copyright law is completely sufficient to shut people down from using your software. You don't even really need a license for that, because you're free to sue company A because you don't like the way they are using your software, but leave company B alone because you're happy with what they are doing. This is completely legal, and you don't need the GPL for that. (I realize that the GPL fulfills a very important role as far as formalizing the agreement and making it easier to get people to comply, but legally it isn't necessary. You could just sue anybody whose use of your code you disagreed with.)
The GPL is just a formalized statement of "I won't sue you if you distribute source". It protects the people *using* the software, because while copyright law would ordinarily say "you can't do this", the GPL says "you can if you distribute source". The GPL does not grant one iota of extra power to the people licensing the software, it grants it all to the people using it -- a statement of protection from lawsuit.
So firstly, it's pretty much irrelevant. The legalese of the GPL could be replaced with "I promise I won't sue you if you
As far as the legal enforceability of the GPL, it may or may not hold up in court. Since everybody is going to get this backwards, I'll spell it out. "Hold up in court" means use it to *protect* yourself, not to sue somebody else. Again, we've already established that the only law being broken is copyright -- you cannot use the GPL to attack somebody for violating it. The GPL is only good for *defending* yourself, to say "no, look, I'm not violating copyright because the GPL allows me to do this". *That* is what needs to be tested in court, and that is what I'm not sure will necessarily work. Theoretically, you might be able to successfully sue somebody for using GPLed code completely in accordance with the license, and *that* would be the "not holding up in court" that I'm talking about.
It would obviously be horribly unethical to do so, and any reasonable judge might well throw the case out, but a good lawyer could probably make a case against the ability to use GPLed code in the absence of a formal agreement.
Hope that clears up what I meant by my first post.
(disclaimer: IANAL, but I have some real-world experience with IP law)
/.er raises to (say) Microsoft's clickwrap licenses. Those same objections apply to the GPL, but even more strongly.
Enforceability of the GPL is problematic at best. It's no more legal than any other software license, and consider how many objections the average
After all, if you can make the legal case that "clicking OK doesn't really count as accepting a license", you can easily make the case that "doing absolutely nothing (which is all that is required to accept the GPL) sure as hell doesn't count as accepting a license". If Microsoft can't implicitly force you to accept a contract, neither can the FSF. The law doesn't care if you're nice or not.
However, even if (as I believe) the GPL is legally unenforceable, that probably doesn't hurt anything. GPLed code is still protected by copyright, so even if the GPL itself is powerless, the copyright holder (if such can be established) can still sue to prevent redistribution. The GPL, in this context, basically constitutes a non-enforceable statement of "we won't sue if you release source code".
Even this might not hold up in court. Trademarks are lost if you don't protect them. I don't believe the same applies to copyright, but only an IP lawyer would know for sure the legal ramifications of selectively suing people who don't follow your (arbitrary, non-legal) license.
Hopefully the courts will shed some more light on this soon.
No, it isn't. RTFA.
For very large keys, where the definition of "very large" is not yet known, this is a 3x decrease in the (for lack of a better term) 'effective key length'.
In other words, it might be possible to crack a 1536 bit key in the amount of time it currently takes to crack a 512 bit key.
Since the 1536 bit key is 1024 bits longer, that means that it *should* take 2^1024 (1.79e308) times as long to crack.
So, for that specific example, assuming that this works it's actually cracking the key 179 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times faster.
Sounds like a few orders of magnitude to me.
Sorry, but ... what the hell are you talking about?
Viewmasters, camera viewfinders, LCD goggles, and dozens of other devices project an image onto your eye from a small distance in front of it. The image is sharp and in focus, and in fact your eye focuses on it as if it were actually a certain distance away from your face.
If your objects held any water at all, *none* of these devices would be possible. Are you suggesting that 21st century optics technology is incapable of making light enter your eyeball at the right angle?
Do you wear glasses? Do you know somebody who does?
Perhaps they should do without, because evolution didn't intend them to be able to see. For the record, I'm almost legally blind without glasses. I'm utterly helpless, barely able to walk on my own. With glasses, my vision is 20/20. Should I stop wearing them because they're not natural?
How about diabetics? Maybe we should just let them die without insulin.
Kids with asthma? Screw 'em. Let's see how they do without their inhalers.
The point is, we are so far away from natural selection that it isn't even funny. Everything a doctor does is in complete violation of the natural order. If you want to say that this should be different -- that the right to have children is somehow different than the right to see well, or the right to have braces correct your bad teeth -- you'll need to explain why you're singling out this particular facet of health from any other.
The facts that:
A) average users could never do that
B) it doesn't allow for seamless installations
C) it takes forever
and,
D) it frequently doesn't work on the first try
Try out Java Web Start if you want to see how applications should be installed.
"but 'beats visual C++' ? firstly - what is that? you mean C++ (why should the ide affect benchmarks!?)."
I'm not sure I follow you. You can't debate the performance of languages without referencing specific compilers, since by definition a language doesn't perform without a compiler (or interpreter or VM or whatever). MS Visual C++ is a good choice for comparison, because the vast majority of commercial applications were compiled with it.
According to the Java Performance Report, the IBM JVM beat VC++ in a variety of standard benchmarks. These aren't artificial "allocate a million objects" benchmarks; they're things like neural nets and FFTs which are actually done in real life. Go read the report.
It's worth noting that the Intel C++ compiler did a lot better, but the fact is that if Java is better than Visual C++, it's good enough for the masses considering that the masses are happy with Visual C++. (Remember that GCC sucks ass performance-wise, and most Linux fans are perfectly happy with it).
A JIT does not interpret Java. Ever. Under any circumstances.
JIT is short for Just In Time *Compiler*. A JIT compiles Java bytecode to native code prior to running it. It is in fact this compilation which lead to the slow startup time visible under Java 1.1 and 1.2 (without HotSpot), because the JIT could not interpret code. It had to compile *everything*, even if it was just initialization code which would only run once.
HotSpot, the next generation of VM technology which is integral to Java 1.3 and 1.4, features an interpreter which is used initially. This gives HotSpot very fast startup time, because it initially does no compilation. As HotSpot decides that a particular method needs to be compiled, it does so in a background thread while continuing to run the interpreter. When the compilation is finished, it swaps in the native version (the current version can do this even if it is in the middle of running the interpreted version). This gives HotSpot two big speedups: firstly, because it uses the interpreter initially, startup is faster, and secondly because it compiles fewer methods (IOW, only ones which actually benefit from compilation) it can spend more time optimizing each method.
HotSpot beats Visual C++ in most benchmarks. It is damned cool technology, and most people that claim Java is slow haven't played around with it in a long time. Java 1.4 is ripping fast.
Computer geeks can "Do the TiVo thing anyway" without a TiVo? Technically, yes, but living in Silicon Valley as I do, I know six people (including myself) with TiVo or ReplayTV units, and not a single person who uses their computer as a poor-man's PVR.
In fact, one of my friends has two ReplayTVs, and is considering getting a third. He's also a Phoenix alumnus, the chief programmer of the Phoenix 4 BIOS. He knows more about computer hardware than almost anybody alive, and he never for a second considered using a computer to do this.
Similarly, many of us are fully capable of writing our own operating systems, or building our own cars. Very few of us have actually done so. Maybe the pre-packaged aspect has a lot of appeal to most people.
Anybody that is smart enough to set up their computer as a TiVo is also smart enough to know that the commercial boxes do a better job with less effort.
What VM are you using? I haven't seen a significant problem with moving apps between machine architectures since Java 1.3 came out.
I do most of my development on a Windows box, and deploy to Solaris and Linux. It's been years since I've seen a bug only manifest on one of the three systems.
"Apparently" high piracy? You're talking about a market in which people do not generally realize that software exists in shrinkwrapped form. I have talked to people that literally were not aware of shrinkwrapped software before coming to America. Most software is purchased in the form of $5 CDs containing EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM EVER MADE by a particular company.
;-).
I should know; I have a copy of just such a CD full of Adobe software
This is hardly a new thing. If a jumbo jet's computers crash, you die. All sorts of bad things would happen if hospital equipment's computers went out. Even your car's computer crashing while doing 90 on the freeway could be deadly.
Embedded systems need to *not crash*, period. The industry has been dealing with this sort of requirement for decades, and doing a pretty good job of it, all things considered.
I never mentioned the word "sell" in my post. I merely said that I could release something previously open-source in modified form, without releasing the source, and there's nothing you could do about it.
It doesn't matter if nobody makes money off of it; people are perfectly happy to take credit for other peoples' work even if they aren't earning anything from it.
In fact, I could even loudly thank the original author, and make no secret of the fact that my code was based off of his. That still doesn't change the fact that under the GPL I'm required to release my source, but without copyright law nobody could force me to.
I'm just saying that the argument "We need copyright because it makes the GPL possible" is invalid.
Well, that isn't my argument. I never stated a position in favor of either copyright or GPL. In actuality, my argument is "if you're going to advocate the GPL, you are also advocating copyright law, whether you like it or not". I couldn't care less about the GPL; I'm just tired of hearing the we-should-abolish-copyright argument from overzealous open-source fans.
Utter nonsense. If there were no copyright law, the GPL would be unenforceable.
I could steal your open-source code, change the header information, and release it as my own, closed-source product, and there's not a damn thing you could do about it, because you never owned your code in the first place. Losing copyright law would mean losing all control over your code, including telling other people what they can and can't do with it.
The GPL *needs* IP law in order to force people to release their source. Without that, it would just be a polite request.
Linux *is* copyrighted. *All* GPL code is copyrighted.
Iit weren't copyrighted, the GPL couldn't tell you what to do with it. If it were truly in the public domain, I could ignore all the provisions of the GPL and do whatever I wanted, including incorporating it into the next version of Windows, and nobody would have any legal resource against me. Copyright law is what makes the GPL enforceable.
Or maybe you could just buy a nice digital camera.
I shoot using a Nikon D1X, which is a real camera and uses real lenses.
The request sounds simple in theory, but as always it's more complicated than this.
// we have to do it this way because Intel is a bunch of fucking idiots
// Bob Martel isn't at the company anymore, so I can safely say that this is the worse piece of shit code I've ever seen. I'll rewrite it when I get a chance
... sort of like quickly straightening up the house before visitors show up. I don't want people seeing my dirty laundry. If I don't have time to straighten up, I'd rather not let people in at all.
What if somebody is scanning through the code and finds
Would you really want that being leaked into the public? Particularly if you have a close working relationship with Intel?
Or how about:
Not to mention potentially plagiarized code, or patent violations, or any number of other nastiness buried in the code. Sure, it *probably* doesn't contain any of the above, but do you really want to scan through all two million lines of it just to make sure?
Further, every time somebody wants to see my source code, I find myself preparing it a little more thoroughly. Removing a few of those ugly hacks, documenting the ones I can't remove
Source code is the same way -- you generally don't want other people looking over it until you've had a chance to clean it up a little bit. If you don't want to clean it up, you just don't release it. Releasing source code *always* costs time and money to a corporation.
I have to agree. I'm sure this will go down as Flamebait / Troll (take your pick), but I found LotR mind-numbingly boring.
I've read long books before -- the Wheel of Time series comes to mind, weighing in at something like 6,000 pages so far -- so I promise that it has nothing to do with a short attention span or lousy imagination. They're just boring.
The writing is mediocre, and Tolkien *really* likes listening to himself talk. The books just aren't that good. Fine, they helped set the direction for modern fantasy. I won't dispute that. Study them for the historical value then, but all of this gushing about them being the best fantasy novels ever is, IMNSHO, misplaced.
Most PC games only run on Windows, therefore he has a Windows box. Seems okay to me, but I suppose the only reasonable thing for a Linux fan to say is "It doesn't run on Linux, therefore I don't use it."
... almost all of the really good games at the moment are either console or PC only
Question: if it turned out he owned, say, a Playstation 2, would you bother to mention that as a significant point? It's a non-Linux game console, no different than a Windows PC used exclusively for games. In fact, a PS2 is about the same price as a crappy Windows box. Chances are that you own a PS2, and don't see a problem with it not running Linux. So why does his owning a Windows box for that purpose deserve special mention?
I can't that you can blame him
If you can't blame him, then why the heck are you bothering to complain about this?
Ummm, yeah, right.
First off, I am a Yahoo employee by way of GeoCities. I worked for GeoCities during the Webring acquisition. GeoCities bought Webring, not Yahoo. Yahoo bought GeoCities some months later, and ended up getting Webring basically by accident.
Further, I was a member of the team talking to Webring about integrating their technology. At *no point* did anyone mention interstitial ads, nor did it come up during the transition to Yahoo. Given that I was one of the key contacts on our side, you'd think someone would have mentioned something like that to me.
Basically, Webring was bought by management -- all of our engineers thought the technology was crap. Their employees were incompetent. The integration was killed quickly and quietly when it became apparent that they had nothing going for them but some half-assed Perl scripts. I still have no idea why the company was actually purchased, but then I'm just a lowly programmer.
Woooo! Monkey Ball!!
I second this. Super Monkey Ball is the best game I have played in years, and my wife likes it as much as I do. There's so much replay value that it's just insane -- seven (count 'em, seven) modes, most of which could stand alone as full-fledged games. Bowling, pool, golf, fighting, racing...
Unlocking everything is unbelievably difficult, to the point that I'm not sure any amount of practice will ever let me get Master Mode, but I'm certainly going to try. I can already get through Advanced without dying, but Expert makes that look like a walk in the park. If any other game were this tough, I would just throw the controller at the wall and stop playing. But somehow Monkey Ball has just the right level of insane challenge -- it's not quite enough to make you give up in disgust, but the challenge level is so high that when you finally beat a really tough level you feel a real sense of accomplishment. It took me around fifty lives to get through Advanced Extra 5 the first time, but when I did I felt more satisfaction at beating that one level than in beating any other entire game. Plus, now that I've learned the right way to tackle the level, I can do it relativey easily -- it's not just a matter of luck.
If you don't have it, go buy Monkey Ball now. Seriously. Go to the store now. Buy it. If you don't have a GameCube, pick one of those up too. And three more controllers. What, you're still reading this? Go buy it!
While I tend to agree with this -- I believe humans are likely alone in the galaxy -- it does rely on some very specious assumptions.
Other species may have no interest in space travel. They may well be shocked that at this point in our technological development, we *still* haven't developed the Microstatic Dweebelizer, while we would be shocked at how primitive their transportation technology is.
Other species may have no interest in colonization. Wanting to spread your seed among the stars may be a purely human affair.
Other species may not be as suitable for space travel as we are (not that we're particular suitable). If they are less able to survive a wide range of conditions, for instance if slight (to us) temperature variations are fatal to them, space travel might not appeal to them very much. Further, if they could only live within a narrow range of conditions then other planets wouldn't be particularly appealing. Maybe humans are particularly able to adapt to the physical and psychological rigors of space travel.
Again, while I do tend to agree with Fermi and assume that we are the only intelligent life in the galaxy, there are a lot of unknowns about the way an extraterrestrial species would behave. We're *probably* an 'average' species, in the sense of intelligence, capabilities, and so forth, simply because being in the middle is a lot more likely than being one of the extremes, but for all we know we're exceptional in every way (for better or worse). Maybe we're the only species that wants to conquer space, or maybe we're the only species that has gotten this far and not even tried yet.
I confess to not having read the book, but I've never seen any decimal used in proposed SETI communications (nor, I suspect, have you).
Most "number" transmissions I have seen have been unary (in other words, three pulses equals three). I know binary was used on the plaque in (ummm) Voyager, was it? but that wasn't a serious attempt to communicate with other species.
Mathematicians aren't stupid, and I promise you that they know perfectly well that aliens aren't likely to use base 10.
A black hole is a singularity. It has no size, and therefore its density is infinite.
The sphere defined by its event horizon does have a size, but it will be very small (a few tens of miles across, perhaps). Maybe an astrophysicist in the audience will compute the size for us?