I have no experience in console games development, but I suspect that modern console SDKs have graphics APIs available to them that are higher level than hardware access. I believe the Xbox consoles use a DirectX-like API.
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I think the common assumption is that the freedom to run the program is guaranteed by free software licenses by virtue of them not restricting it. If I obtain the source code for an iOS port of an app, in order to exercise the freedoms the original software developer required to be passed on to me, I need to get an iOS developer license. The contract for receiving this license is not made public by Apple, but the EFF published one at some point (https://www.eff.org/files/20100302_iphone_dev_agr.pdf) which seems to indicate that you can register "authorised test devices" to run individual apps, but it does not seem to be the case that a developer phone is essentially unlocked:
You may obtain development related digital certificates from Apple, subject to a maximum number as reasonably determined by Apple, that will allow Your Application to be installed and tested on Authorized Test Devices.
Basically, it appears to me that getting a developer license as Tjp($)pjT suggested is not a valid approach for using free software on an iPhone. Furthermore the contract requires you to agree that the license of your app, or any third party code within it does not conflict with the digital signing requirements (so the GPLv3 is out of the question); and that the app store is the sole distribution channel for your application.
The GPLv2 and GPLv3 both require that you pass on the right to redistribute the software in modified or unmodified form to recipients of the software, thus by distributing a GPL licensed program via the app store would be in violation of the GPL and your rights under the license revoked.
The GPL does not limit "usage" in the sense of using the software. It limits distribution; there is a big difference. The problem with app stores are vendors that want to have complete control over what the OWNER of the device can do with it. The Android Marketplace is far from perfect (it probably needs better filtering for apps to avoid spammy shit or malware) but most Android devices I have seen still allow you to elect to run code from third party sources. This is not incompatible with the idea of free and open source software.
It's a violation of the fundamental principle of free software. If I stop paying Apple for the developer license, then I stop being able to USE the software on my phone. They hold the power over the owners of the phones to stop them from using the apps they compiled; and that restricts your freedom to use the software.
This doesn't seem to be a direct violation of the GPLv2 (the license claims no restrictions over using the program, but doesn't seem to require the distributor to ensure modified versions can be used). It is a violation of the GPLv3, which requires that object code distributed for a "user product" (something that is primarily used by a person; consumer electronics fall into this category) must also be distributed with:
any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you distribute software covered by the GPLv3 in the Apple App Store, you cannot satisfy the requirement of the license to also distribute whatever is necessary to ensure the continued functioning of the modified software; as Apple holds that power. The problem wouldn't exist if Apple allowed users to elect to run applications that are not authorised in the app store (such as with the Android market).
I have neither an iPhone nor Mac, so I'm not sure what the details of the developer license are, but from what I can tell it seems like that would also make it impractical to distribute modified copies -- chances are the app would be rejected from the app store on the grounds of being too similar to another app if it were merely an improved version; or you'd only be able to run it on other developer devices (and I'm not sure what restrictions are on that too).
Or less cynically, an attempt to make Chromium support smaller/more compact displays such as on netbooks where users are less likely to accrue lots of tabs anyway. Combining the navigation buttons and tab list seems like a good way to save a bit of vertical screen space.
I assume there will be a way to bring up a URL entry box in that mode (F6/Ctrl-L).
Recent versions of Chrome hide the scheme from the URI (tech.slashdot.org/story/... rather than http://.../ which makes it easier to see the domain name of the current site at a glance, and they use a different way of showing sites with a valid SSL certificate (it shows the owner of the certificate in a green box, or some serious warning for failed certificates. Looking at the images in TFA, it suggests it may still show the domain somehow for the current tab.
The Android browser approach of making the URI box at the top of the page once it has finished loading is an interesting move; maybe a similar thing would work for showing the domain name.
I assume the GP means better with respect to doing work. If your employees are having to unnecessarily wait for their software to do stuff, because the company is too tight-arsed to get the best available hardware for the task, then the employee probably isn't working efficiently. If your programmers get coffee while the code compiles, or your engineers are being held up because the CAD software is using all the memory, they probably aren't happy or productive.
I think it depends on the role the computer has for the employees job, and how technically competent they are. If you are talking about programmers or graphic artists etc. and that is important to your business, then you should make sure they have a good computer that lets them work productively, rather than some officially blessed IT department configuration. Give them a realistic level of control and responsibility to configure the computer in a way that suits them. I believe the same applies to the rest of their work space. If the employee wants to use their laptop, it's probably a sign something is wrong with the work environment which needs to be addressed.
To me it seems quite possibly FUD. I am not sure if it would be in their interests to sue yet; on one hand it could get WebM out of the way, but it could also go badly for the MPEG patent holders if some of the key patents are ruled invalid or too broad (which they possibly are).
It's the same as with Facebook applications. Alone, the UDID is not that useful, but what if you create a database across the different apps you publish, or give the data to a third party? You can identify which apps the person uses on a regular basis and that's a fucking gold mine of information to advertisers.
I always find the shared axis accelerate/brake to be a bit of a hindrance in decent racing games; the additional positional control you may get is probably outweighed by the difficulty of applying accelerator and brake quickly _and_ precisely. I prefer separate axes, analog triggers or even the analog buttons on the PS2/PS3 controllers (with a bit of practice and attention you can get reasonably good throttle and brake control in Gran Turismo using those)
The arguments presented in the Chamberlain v. Skylink case are interesting:
According to undisputed facts, a homeowner who purchases a Chamberlain GDO owns it and has a right to use it to access his or her own garage. At the time of sale, Chamberlain does not place any explicit terms or condition on use to limit the ways that a purchaser may use its products. A homeowner who wishes to use a Model 39 must first program it into the GDO. Skylink characterizes this action as the homeowner's authorization of the Model 39 to interoperate with the GDO. In other words, according to Skylink, Chamberlain GDO consumers who purchase a Skylink transmitter have Chamberlain's implicit permission to purchase and to use any brand of transmitter that will open their GDO. The District Court agreed that Chamberlain's unconditioned sale implied authorization. Id.
The authorisation argument seemed important to that case, and potentially to other cases where the manufacturer of a product attempts to use copyright law to control (fair) use of the device.
Also relevant to this discussion:
In a similar vein, Chamberlain's proposed construction would allow any manufacturer of any product to add a single copyrighted sentence or software fragment to its product, wrap the copyrighted material in a trivial "encryption" scheme, and thereby gain the right to restrict consumers' rights to use its products in conjunction with competing products.[16] In other words, Chamberlain's construction of the DMCA would allow virtually any company to attempt to leverage its sales into after-market monopolies—a practice that both the antitrust laws, see Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Tech. Servs., 504 U.S. 451, 455, 112 S.Ct. 2072, 119 L.Ed.2d 265 (1992), and the doctrine of copyright misuse, Assessment Techs. of WI, LLC v. WIREdata, Inc., 350 F.3d 640, 647 (7th Cir.2003), normally prohibit.
It seems like a genuinely useful service to offer in cases where communicating the information is more important than the physical letter; if implemented as an opt-in service for both sender and receiver. It seems like it would help reduce costs for transporting mail (transport larger amounts of mail at a time less frequently) which could be a big saving for a country with a sparse population and alpine conditions. Perhaps you could choose to have the original destroyed after reading it online if it had not already been sorted/distributed.
For me, it depends on the content of the directory. If the contents can be better identified by icon (i.e. a directory of images with thumbnails) then that is likely to be a more efficient view than list view.
I consider myself a pretty advanced computer user, but I can't stand list views for directories, except when I'm specifically interested in the attributes rather than the contents! Windows 7 annoys me how it defaults to such views where there is nowhere to right-click on the directory itself without hitting a file or other directory! The number of times I have used menu-operated copy/paste and accidentally put files into the wrong directory without realising!
I like the way in Nautilus I can easily zoom out the icon view to see more if necessary; beats list mode in most common use cases IMO.
The collections library. It's useless compared to Java (which is also a bit crufty, but at least complete). Sets were introduced in v3.5 Most of the classes are in System.Collections, System.Collections.Generic, there are a handful of more specialised implementations in System.Collections.Specialized. ReadOnlyCollection and Collection are actually in the meaninglessly named System.Collections.ObjectModel, apparently only because 'Collection' is a concept in Visual Basic.
Qt addresses the pathetic shortcomings of C++ as an object oriented language. The meta-object compiler provides better runtime type introspection than the standard library, as well as the power to lookup classes and members by name, and dynamic instantiation.
Providing fundamental classes like QString is an important step towards writing portable, internationalisable programs. The standard C++ library provides std::string and std::wstring. QString provides transparent Unicode support, has much more functionality than C++ strings (conversion between various representations and types), is immutable so QString objects can be copied around safely, rather than as pointers etc, etc.
Indeed. The Qt container classes are nice because they provide a consistent implementation and API. On top of that, they provide methods like QList::toStdList() to help with interop
By (acoustically) compressing the dynamic range (to make the music sound louder), the subtleties of the instruments are lost: cannot be perceived over the loudness, or from encoding the signal into 16 bit PCM.
MP3, Vorbis and other lossy (data) compression codecs work by applying a discrete cosine transformation to a block of audio data and then performing integer quantisation to remove the minute variations. The decoder applies the inverse transform and it gets a waveform that should resemble the first.
In music that has had its dynamic range reduced so that it can be made louder (a common, yet horrible practice for pop music recordings), the low intensity signals (that provide the timbre of instruments) are much harder to distinguish anyway, so when quantised by MP3 or Vorbis the difference is very unnoticeable.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no experience in console games development, but I suspect that modern console SDKs have graphics APIs available to them that are higher level than hardware access. I believe the Xbox consoles use a DirectX-like API.
From "The Free Software Definition":
Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
I think the common assumption is that the freedom to run the program is guaranteed by free software licenses by virtue of them not restricting it. If I obtain the source code for an iOS port of an app, in order to exercise the freedoms the original software developer required to be passed on to me, I need to get an iOS developer license. The contract for receiving this license is not made public by Apple, but the EFF published one at some point (https://www.eff.org/files/20100302_iphone_dev_agr.pdf) which seems to indicate that you can register "authorised test devices" to run individual apps, but it does not seem to be the case that a developer phone is essentially unlocked:
You may obtain development related digital certificates from Apple, subject to a maximum number as reasonably determined by Apple, that will allow Your Application to be installed and tested on Authorized Test Devices.
Basically, it appears to me that getting a developer license as Tjp($)pjT suggested is not a valid approach for using free software on an iPhone. Furthermore the contract requires you to agree that the license of your app, or any third party code within it does not conflict with the digital signing requirements (so the GPLv3 is out of the question); and that the app store is the sole distribution channel for your application.
The GPLv2 and GPLv3 both require that you pass on the right to redistribute the software in modified or unmodified form to recipients of the software, thus by distributing a GPL licensed program via the app store would be in violation of the GPL and your rights under the license revoked.
The GPL does not limit "usage" in the sense of using the software. It limits distribution; there is a big difference. The problem with app stores are vendors that want to have complete control over what the OWNER of the device can do with it. The Android Marketplace is far from perfect (it probably needs better filtering for apps to avoid spammy shit or malware) but most Android devices I have seen still allow you to elect to run code from third party sources. This is not incompatible with the idea of free and open source software.
It's a violation of the fundamental principle of free software. If I stop paying Apple for the developer license, then I stop being able to USE the software on my phone. They hold the power over the owners of the phones to stop them from using the apps they compiled; and that restricts your freedom to use the software.
This doesn't seem to be a direct violation of the GPLv2 (the license claims no restrictions over using the program, but doesn't seem to require the distributor to ensure modified versions can be used). It is a violation of the GPLv3, which requires that object code distributed for a "user product" (something that is primarily used by a person; consumer electronics fall into this category) must also be distributed with:
any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
If you distribute software covered by the GPLv3 in the Apple App Store, you cannot satisfy the requirement of the license to also distribute whatever is necessary to ensure the continued functioning of the modified software; as Apple holds that power. The problem wouldn't exist if Apple allowed users to elect to run applications that are not authorised in the app store (such as with the Android market).
I have neither an iPhone nor Mac, so I'm not sure what the details of the developer license are, but from what I can tell it seems like that would also make it impractical to distribute modified copies -- chances are the app would be rejected from the app store on the grounds of being too similar to another app if it were merely an improved version; or you'd only be able to run it on other developer devices (and I'm not sure what restrictions are on that too).
I suspect the GP was referring to Android when he said "you can install anything you want"
Like
Nice ad hominem. Some retarded babies aren't cute at all.
Thanks. I noticed that one afterwards, but I didn't want to bring it up and potentially lose more nerd-cred over it.
)
Sorry.
Or less cynically, an attempt to make Chromium support smaller/more compact displays such as on netbooks where users are less likely to accrue lots of tabs anyway. Combining the navigation buttons and tab list seems like a good way to save a bit of vertical screen space.
I assume there will be a way to bring up a URL entry box in that mode (F6/Ctrl-L).
Recent versions of Chrome hide the scheme from the URI (tech.slashdot.org/story/... rather than http://.../ which makes it easier to see the domain name of the current site at a glance, and they use a different way of showing sites with a valid SSL certificate (it shows the owner of the certificate in a green box, or some serious warning for failed certificates. Looking at the images in TFA, it suggests it may still show the domain somehow for the current tab.
The Android browser approach of making the URI box at the top of the page once it has finished loading is an interesting move; maybe a similar thing would work for showing the domain name.
DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS!
I assume the GP means better with respect to doing work. If your employees are having to unnecessarily wait for their software to do stuff, because the company is too tight-arsed to get the best available hardware for the task, then the employee probably isn't working efficiently. If your programmers get coffee while the code compiles, or your engineers are being held up because the CAD software is using all the memory, they probably aren't happy or productive.
I think it depends on the role the computer has for the employees job, and how technically competent they are. If you are talking about programmers or graphic artists etc. and that is important to your business, then you should make sure they have a good computer that lets them work productively, rather than some officially blessed IT department configuration. Give them a realistic level of control and responsibility to configure the computer in a way that suits them. I believe the same applies to the rest of their work space. If the employee wants to use their laptop, it's probably a sign something is wrong with the work environment which needs to be addressed.
To me it seems quite possibly FUD. I am not sure if it would be in their interests to sue yet; on one hand it could get WebM out of the way, but it could also go badly for the MPEG patent holders if some of the key patents are ruled invalid or too broad (which they possibly are).
It's the same as with Facebook applications. Alone, the UDID is not that useful, but what if you create a database across the different apps you publish, or give the data to a third party? You can identify which apps the person uses on a regular basis and that's a fucking gold mine of information to advertisers.
I always find the shared axis accelerate/brake to be a bit of a hindrance in decent racing games; the additional positional control you may get is probably outweighed by the difficulty of applying accelerator and brake quickly _and_ precisely. I prefer separate axes, analog triggers or even the analog buttons on the PS2/PS3 controllers (with a bit of practice and attention you can get reasonably good throttle and brake control in Gran Turismo using those)
Cheers for those references.
The arguments presented in the Chamberlain v. Skylink case are interesting:
According to undisputed facts, a homeowner who purchases a Chamberlain GDO owns it and has a right to use it to access his or her own garage. At the time of sale, Chamberlain does not place any explicit terms or condition on use to limit the ways that a purchaser may use its products. A homeowner who wishes to use a Model 39 must first program it into the GDO. Skylink characterizes this action as the homeowner's authorization of the Model 39 to interoperate with the GDO. In other words, according to Skylink, Chamberlain GDO consumers who purchase a Skylink transmitter have Chamberlain's implicit permission to purchase and to use any brand of transmitter that will open their GDO. The District Court agreed that Chamberlain's unconditioned sale implied authorization. Id.
The authorisation argument seemed important to that case, and potentially to other cases where the manufacturer of a product attempts to use copyright law to control (fair) use of the device.
Also relevant to this discussion:
In a similar vein, Chamberlain's proposed construction would allow any manufacturer of any product to add a single copyrighted sentence or software fragment to its product, wrap the copyrighted material in a trivial "encryption" scheme, and thereby gain the right to restrict consumers' rights to use its products in conjunction with competing products.[16] In other words, Chamberlain's construction of the DMCA would allow virtually any company to attempt to leverage its sales into after-market monopolies—a practice that both the antitrust laws, see Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Tech. Servs., 504 U.S. 451, 455, 112 S.Ct. 2072, 119 L.Ed.2d 265 (1992), and the doctrine of copyright misuse, Assessment Techs. of WI, LLC v. WIREdata, Inc., 350 F.3d 640, 647 (7th Cir.2003), normally prohibit.
Can you spell DMCA?
It seems like a genuinely useful service to offer in cases where communicating the information is more important than the physical letter; if implemented as an opt-in service for both sender and receiver. It seems like it would help reduce costs for transporting mail (transport larger amounts of mail at a time less frequently) which could be a big saving for a country with a sparse population and alpine conditions. Perhaps you could choose to have the original destroyed after reading it online if it had not already been sorted/distributed.
For me, it depends on the content of the directory. If the contents can be better identified by icon (i.e. a directory of images with thumbnails) then that is likely to be a more efficient view than list view.
I consider myself a pretty advanced computer user, but I can't stand list views for directories, except when I'm specifically interested in the attributes rather than the contents! Windows 7 annoys me how it defaults to such views where there is nowhere to right-click on the directory itself without hitting a file or other directory! The number of times I have used menu-operated copy/paste and accidentally put files into the wrong directory without realising!
I like the way in Nautilus I can easily zoom out the icon view to see more if necessary; beats list mode in most common use cases IMO.
The collections library. It's useless compared to Java (which is also a bit crufty, but at least complete). Sets were introduced in v3.5 Most of the classes are in System.Collections, System.Collections.Generic, there are a handful of more specialised implementations in System.Collections.Specialized. ReadOnlyCollection and Collection are actually in the meaninglessly named System.Collections.ObjectModel, apparently only because 'Collection' is a concept in Visual Basic.
Qt addresses the pathetic shortcomings of C++ as an object oriented language. The meta-object compiler provides better runtime type introspection than the standard library, as well as the power to lookup classes and members by name, and dynamic instantiation.
Providing fundamental classes like QString is an important step towards writing portable, internationalisable programs. The standard C++ library provides std::string and std::wstring. QString provides transparent Unicode support, has much more functionality than C++ strings (conversion between various representations and types), is immutable so QString objects can be copied around safely, rather than as pointers etc, etc.
Indeed. The Qt container classes are nice because they provide a consistent implementation and API. On top of that, they provide methods like QList::toStdList() to help with interop
By (acoustically) compressing the dynamic range (to make the music sound louder), the subtleties of the instruments are lost: cannot be perceived over the loudness, or from encoding the signal into 16 bit PCM.
MP3, Vorbis and other lossy (data) compression codecs work by applying a discrete cosine transformation to a block of audio data and then performing integer quantisation to remove the minute variations. The decoder applies the inverse transform and it gets a waveform that should resemble the first.
In music that has had its dynamic range reduced so that it can be made louder (a common, yet horrible practice for pop music recordings), the low intensity signals (that provide the timbre of instruments) are much harder to distinguish anyway, so when quantised by MP3 or Vorbis the difference is very unnoticeable.