I live with two pit-bull terriers (both rescued strays), and unfortunately I must keep them in separate rooms because of a traumatic event where during play the one's jaw got caught under the other's collar -- They remember this episode, but confuse it with each hurting the other; Ever since they fight if left together unsupervised for a length of time.
The one dog, TC (named after the street T.C. Jester where she was found), likes being in the larger part of the house, and would rather not be in the den. So, when I say that "It's time to switch the dogs", and try to put her in the Den, she runs to the back door instead, as if she needs to relieve herself. She knows that the dog in the house usually ends up in the den when the outside dog is let back inside -- to keep them separated.
If while coming back inside she realises that I'll be putting the other dog outside -- making her more likely to be the dog in the den, then she's resistant to coming back inside... She not only thinks ahead, she's worked out several plans to achieve her goal. If TC knows its her turn to have run of the house, then none of this is an issue, she goes in and out without a care, knowing that it's the other dog that'll be relegated to the den -- Even if she sees the other dog going out when she comes in, she's not reluctant to come inside because she's not planning on being put in the den.
Furthermore, I'm beginning to run out of ways to say "Walk" and "Car" -- The dogs love riding in the car, and have learned that "C.A.R." means car, "Truck" and "T.R.U.C.K" is also out, can't say or spell "go" without them getting excited to leave -- Currently I've taken to saying, "Vamonos en el Auto" which is me butchering Spanish (never formally studied it, but I've run out of French and English words), because they've also learned "coche"; However, TC has started to pick up on this too -- You can see her perk up and look between the parties as if she's sussing out whether or not we'll soon be leaving. Names of vacation places, such as "Kerville" must be avoided at all cost -- I sometimes attend the Kerville Folk Festival for a week or so and have the neighbour care for one dog at the house while the other is in a kennel (to ensure separation), TC gets distressed when Kerville is mentioned -- She picks it up even in the middle of rapid speech with other parties. TC normally loves to get the leash so we can go for a walk, but Mention Kerville at all and she runs away from the leash for several days. She's planning not to be the dog in the kennel.
Humans are so damn chauvinistic. There's no such thing as "sentience" -- That's some made up Bullshit right there. There is only varying degrees of awareness and intellect depending on the complexity of the neural network. Bigger network? Smarter. That's all there is to it.
When (not if) machine learning neural networks surpass the complexity of the human mind by leaps and bounds: I sure hope they're understanding enough of our primitive nature, and don't treat us lesser minded humans as we treat the apes and other creatures with proportionally less neurons. Note that I didn't say I own the dogs...
Oops, forgot to escape the tags, what a joy --- that's supposed to be a JS game in IE6 dom (on a Pentium III) beating out the port of the same game in HTML5 + <canvas> & <audio> (on a 2.3Ghz dual core P4). So, it's like watching that car from "The Beverly Hill Billies" winning a Formula One race because "the state of the art" cars have to many crazy carbon-fiber wings attached.
I used to be excited about the web, until I realised it was a document display network that's being shoehorned into an application delivery platform using a woefully ill equipped scripting language -- Protip: It's called JavaScript because you're supposed to do little with it, and leave the heavy lifting to Java. Google Drive is out! To use it in a web app (JavaScript) I'm supposed to use to Base64 encode the data and manually construct a multi-part POST request and send it through an iframe proxy -- WHAT THE HELL.
I'm still excited about the Internet! It's great! We're finally getting that Precise Application Feel by..... APPLICATIONS. App Store, Android Market, Ubuntu Software Store, MS's offerings, etc -- I thought this distribution model was AWESOME when I first saw it in the 90's on GNU/Linux. I looked to the web and thought: "Damn, we need a common application platform for All systems on the Internet"
Suddenly: Java is Everywhere! Yay! We can do the app model for the web! You can have your UI as uber fancy and precice as you want! Oh, but the web devs didn't want to actually program... Some of that is the language's fault. Not to mention the stupid TCK forcing implementations to provide backwards compatibility, and booting up the VM taking several seconds or a minute on machines back then. DAMN! If it wasn't forced to be so all encompassingly compatible with the full desktop stack we could have made Java lean and mean, but Sun dropped the ball and now Oracle is kicking it around with spiked boots...
I'd rather support Android, iOS, OSX, Linux, & Windows with my cross platform toolchain, have really slick UI for my web enabled app, and be able to actually USE THE HARDWARE, than do web development today -- Ugh, talk about fragmentation. Oh, it'll happen eventually, in some form. Google's trying, so is MS, Apple's bringing the i to their OS too. What we want is cross platform support though, that's the power of the web. When you take a step back and look at the web you can see where it's heading. Hardly any websites are just pages, but doc repositories need to exist too. I look at HTM5 / CSS3 / JS and think: "Make up your MINDS people! Basic things like Sound and Video don't work? CSS has Animations?! Trying to get performance from non compiled Languages?! -- YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG." -- My DOM + JS + Object embed for sound Pac-Man clone runs better in IE6 than + HTML5 port in latest versions of Chrome & FF... Not just Better -- No, in FF12 it's unplayable due to the DOM lag, and crappy way you have to use multiple tags to play concurrent sounds. In IE6, it blazes, in FF, half second stutters between frames. Yep, that's what we call progress now.
Applications want to be active. Docs want to be static. Let's pull the web so far in opposite directions that it takes A DECADE just to make one major version change. GREAT WORK GUYS, but I'm out.
Developing on dual 30" screens is certainly nicer, but it you can't develop on a 13" screen, then you're not terribly effective
Effective? What good is having all those inches if you can't use them all at once?! There are limits to human physiology, you animal! You'd have to take a step back to even use the thing. Five inches is all you need.
I developed software on a 23Lb Osborne1 'portable' with a screen 5" across having 52 columns and 24 rows of green monochrome text. And I Liked It! Didn't have to move my eyes to see a thing.
Now, excuse me while I lug my lawn away from your vicinity.
This is one of those "I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you" type of situations.
And this is where you lose 99% of the people who had an interest in running Linux at all, which is probably already less than 1% of the general population
That's how we sandbag against the tides of the eternal September. If you don't like it -- GOOD!:P
In all seriousness - Do you really give a damn which OS people are using? I mean, I don't... and I'm a software developer (cross platform is the future). The real problem here is MFG support for the OS. Windows has massive MFG support for their OS. Linux doesn't. The fact that it's usable at all is fucking amazing. That some hardware is being sold with pre-installed Linux is proof that some MFGs care. Hell, I've even seen Toshiba is making available driver sources for a laptop's wifi & fingerprint reader.
It doesn't matter one bit to me if Linux runs on your computers or not. Fact is: It runs most of "the cloud" that your computers connect to... That's good enough for me.
As a game dev, what I just heard was: Insist on Single Player Games! That's fine, but you want the game closed source at least initially if it's got multi-player components. Security through obscurity is the ONLY security we have. It's not about the game being insecure. With traditional security stuff you're not trying to prevent the client machine from subverting its own operations. With single player stuff, sure, fine, cheat all you want, it doesn't spoil the game for anyone else.
However, EVERY experience I've had working on and playing open source multi player games was rife with cheating.
Without registered players/copies you can't enforce online bans very well. We've tried. Time and again, as soon as the game gets a bit popular a few hackers let their prankster ways show to the detriment of all. One bad apple spoiling the bunch, etc.
I'd agree to some form of stipulation like: If the game isn't released by $DATE, it goes open source and all assets released under creative commons. Hell, most indie devs I've talked to plan to release their game's source code after the next project's footing is stable, anyway.
However, not everyone is just asking for handouts. Lots of projects give you a real tangible perks (such as a free existing game) as incentive for making the donation. I think it would be sort of wrong to also insist on dictating the licensing arrangement -- You may not get the game at all if you do; I.e. yours may not be the only funding they're taking. It's called "Kickstarter" not "Fullfunder" -- If I can't recoup my time by selling the game, then it's going to be a much larger price tag on that progress bar -- One that has a much lower chance of being reached...
In other words: Oh, Hi! I remember you. You're one of those sleazy Publishers? Right? I mean, you're acting just like one... You want to fund the initial investment, then we'll work like dogs to get the game made, and you'll preclude us from reaping any benefits long term... Good luck with THAT! (That's the same behaviour we came to Kickstarter to escape from)
As an unfunded (self funded?) indie game dev Kickstarter has been on our radar for quite a while. In the course of building out our technology we're making smaller games (1st a puzzle game, then a freescrolling shooter, etc). Our plan has been to get one of the smaller games totally finished and polished up a bit, and use that as one of the perks for a donation campaign to help fund the next larger game, eg: you donate $X, and you get a free game right now while also helping fund the next. I'd feel weird just asking for a hand out with nothing of value to immediately give in exchange... I mean, you'd still have the free game in hand even if I do get hit by the bus I'm always coding in fear of.:-P
I'm sort of shocked at all the attention Kickstarter is getting now, and yes, I do feel like we may be coming to the table a bit too late. Things will change. What's shocking to me is that people are funding IDEAS for games -- Ideas are less than a dime a dozen, I've got literally hundreds of game designs in my "tome of magic" (awaiting only my arcane finger movements to be made real). Personally, I wouldn't donate to anyone's cause until the game developers have shown at least some progress and dedication and gotten at minimum some coloured boxes flying around and doing stuff (primordial gameplay tests -- you know, prototypes to see if the game will actually be fun).
The interesting thing is that I do see some other folks like our own team who are doing this because we love games, not because we can make a bunch of money -- That was explicitly laid out at our inception: "You *might* make a living working hard doing something you love (making games), but don't work on this project if you're doing this to get rich." So, the completion of our games don't depend on any outside funds: Grants, donations, or revenue will only help us make the games faster (we could do less non-game work). Our incentive to make games is purely because the designs are exciting to us, we love to create, and just want play them ourselves... I think projects like this have the best chances to be successful.
I think that change is coming in the crowd funding space -- Funding ideas before ANYONE knows if they're fun to play or not is VERY odd to me. I mean, it only takes a few hours with Ogre3D, Unity, (or other free engine) to crank out a basic mechanics prototype, even for complex stuff like Portal. I think what we'll see in the future is less "I have this great idea, I just need to pay $ARTIST + $PROGRAMMERS to make it real," and more "This game idea is so fun and interesting, these level designers, programmers, artists and composers have rallied around it. Here's a sample of what we've done, and if you donate we'll get it to you faster / you'll ensure the project's future." If you can't even show me a prototype, then I doubt the seriousness. "Hey, $coder_friend, I have this idea for a game and I've made/got a few art assets, would you make a simple gameplay mock-up in some free engine so I can show the idea on Kickstarter" -- Yeah, if you can't get that to happen, I'm not sure why anyone should fund it.
To put it another way: If you start with just an idea, and are relying on the Kickstarter funds to get the project done, then you can actually run out of money to pay the programmers, level designers, composers, and artists -- then a project will actually fail to be delivered, or you may have to cut back on the ambitious plans and do a smaller game... However, if you've got a team together like ours, and they aren't relying on funds to keep working on the project (I have a "day job" game coding is my fun, our mapper maps for fun, our composer composes for fun, ect), then even if the project runs out of money you still get the game you funded eventually.
What I'm seeing right now is a bunch of game devs trying to catch this wave. There are lots of game devs who are still in early stages of production, or even haven't even started who wanted to wait until later to put som
Isn't that somewhat the expected process of evolution in general? Genetic mistake happens; proves to actually be useful to reproduction/beating the competition (as opposed to the vast majority that are either useless or detrimental); and then due to being in the most successful breeders, becomes "standard".
Yet. In fact, the machine learning system I've evolved to recognise speech and images of postures WOULD NOT have been trainable nearly as quickly if I had not EXPLICITLY introduced errors in the genetic copying program. Multiple neural networks compete, they are selected against based on group performance, and the 256 top performers then get to "breed" via genetic program. Zero mutations means that the traits simply shift around in the network, and you can reach an somewhat optimal configuration of the CURRENT intelligence patterns in the system, but to advance (evolve), I MUST pseudo-randomly introduce an error whilst copying from the parents' genomes into the children.
Higher mutation rates cause faster evolution up to a point -- beyond which the chaos overwhelms the genome and you begin to lose valuable traits. I put it to you that only the chemical chains that had an acceptable, but not perfect error rate in their copying system would have evolved into what we call life. It's not that an intelligent designer made a mistake -- It's just that the fault tolerant erroneous copy creating chemical chains are best suited to create life.
Furthermore, when I create a "primordial" simulation of blocks that can link or that can't, and which have various attraction and repulsion properties between them, and randomly distribute them (yes, with quantum RNG hardware), then run the simulation the blocks that form chains and copy themselves ARE THE ONLY patterns that survive -- the non linking blocks get used by the linking ones -- The non copying chains get destroyed by the copying ones or other configurations. The copying chains which have a small error rate, yet keep the general structure of the "parent" pattern end up evolving and out competing those with less optimal error rates.
So, you see: If you have such a primordial pool of chemicals, and any CAN form chains over time they WILL, because that's the simplest (cheapest) structure with sufficient fitness to survive. Additionally the chains of chemicals that copy with errors are the only ones that get more complex over time, and will thus result in life given enough time. There are many things that can go wrong, but if the blocks can link and happen upon a sufficient way to duplicate with error -- You get life.
Were it not for preserving a little of the chaos from which life sprang, life would not evolve.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
Hmm, this is a bit off topic, no? OOoh, n/m... You mean like LDAP, rsync and/or FTP?
Herp! Hey guys Google drive's JavaScript authentication API is broken, so just MANUALLY craft a base64 encoded multipart form post with JavaScript and post that to an iframe proxy to do an upload! Derp! And You Think I'm Joking!
These folks claiming to be "unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way" are still doing it the easy way. They want to do it the hard way? Rally a bunch of supporters and go to Parliament and MAKE them unblock it. Rouse friends and family in support of sharing of information (the BASIS OF HUMANITY) and don't let anyone forget who the bastards are that blocked it in the first place and why they should be voted out. Get some money together and run smear campaigns on the media networks if you dare.
"Oh that's too hard", yes well, that's why it's called the HARD way. "Oh, I'll just use $NEXT_ON_THE_BLOCK_LIST tool or service to get around the censorship", not only are they not doing it The hard way, they're just plain doing it wrong.
Absolutely! Positively, Without a Doubt! Why, That's EXACTLY how you use that word! Stunning use of vocabulary and sentence structure too! Where did you attend school? I want to commend your English teacher for doing such a fine job and recommend them for a Nobel prize in Education!
Blocks outgoing cookies
All web browsers (known bugs notwithstanding) are able to block incoming cookies and prevent them from being stored and used either temporarily or permanently. But only Firefox and Opera are designed to block the sending of any cookies they might have previously acquired but which the browser's cookie policy now blocks. If either Internet Explorer or Safari are set to block cookies, only newly arriving (incoming) cookies are blocked. They will both continue sending any (undesired) cookies outbound that they had previously acquired . . . which is almost certainly not what their user intends.
From GRC's cookie research pages -- Which is what I've also observed. You disable 3rd party cookies, and yet it continues sending out any 3rd party cookies they already have set. The page is a bit outdated, since FF3 is out, but the statement about Safari holds true.
Sure doesn't sound like it's Disabling 3rd Party Cookies to me....
Safari does block third-party cookies. Google fooled Safari into thinking they were first-party cookies so that they would be accepted by the browser. RTFA next time.
Safari does NOT block third party cookies. Safari blocks SOME third party cookies -- You know, unless the user interacts with 3rd party assets, then they don't block the 3rd party cookies at all. The issue is caused by Safari's erroneous concept of what a user initiated event is. Which it damn sure knows how to tell the difference between a user initiated event! That's how pop up blocking has worked for over a decade. It's defective by design. Submitting a form to a hidden iframe is how we made Ajax work before XML HTTP Request was born, so it's not like Google did some magic mojo. I used to be able to pass JS variables across domains via iframe, but now browsers don't allow that -- Was I fooling the browsers by using their features before they disabled the feature?
Oh I can hear the apple sauce sloshing already! But you're WRONG. You see -- There's this thing called JavaScript, and using it I can hover a 1px invisible iframe around under your gods damn mouse cursor -- And within that iframe: A 3rd party site. Now, just try and click anything. TADA Safari not blocking 3rd party cookies again. BECAUSE THEY DON'T. Well, actually yes... Safari does block a few 3rd party cookies -- But only if the 3rd party doesn't really want you to have the cookie. That you can't easily tell your browser WTF to do and have it just do what it says the option is Ridiculous. Here, I'll show you:
if ( Third_Party_Cookies_Disabled && window.top.location != window.location ) return;// without setting the cookie.
But NOOO! Safari has some other explicit BS logic that makes EXCEPTIONS to the rule. On Purpose! Google used such features that Apple devs made... And the dumb ass users got pissed off because their browser wasn't doing what they told it, but they couldn't blame Apple -- NO! Not Apple! So who? Google -- Protip: Google's not the only one bypassing your 3rd party cookie "blocking" system... Hey, doesn't Apple sells ads too? I bet they want them to "just work" too.
Google was only serving up the form to people who were logged in to the service and had accepted their privacy policy stating that GOOGLE WOULD DO THIS.
Also, if you disable all cookies in Safari -- It keeps sending my sites your cookies. You have to restart the browser before that setting takes effect. Why? Why doesn't that just work?! Every other browser just stops sending the cookies. Why? Because the names of the settings in Safari are specious. They're misinformative to say the least! "Disable 3rd party cookies unless you just recently changed the setting, or you accidentally click a 3rd party site, or the page submits a form or some Javascript puts a button under your cursor, or a bunch of other BS logic that we added to specifically ALLOW 3rd party cookies." -- THAT is what Safari does. RTFM next time, then test the software to be sure the manual's not lying. -- That's what I did.
I mean, if two parties have pre-shared a key phrase, then there's nothing they can do to prevent any "bad guys" from encrypting their data. I mean, this just makes it possible to spy on innocent citizens. Bad guys who blow shit up aren't going to care about violating a gods damned law about social sites they run. >_< DERP!
I created an algorithm that turns a one way hashing algorithm into a two way cipher via key expansion, HMAC, and Cypher Block Chaining. My fellow indie game devs and I use the Retrograde Cipher to exchange credentials related to our project (like our Youtube account password) on our forums. (Yes, it's open source and registered with the BIS, per requirement). If anyone gets access to our SQL database or private forum archives, they don't get all our other passwords in the posts with our encrypted blobs.
If I can invent an extensible encryption system just for grins, then what can the "bad guys" do?
So, what about bugging every house in the nation? I mean, do we still have the right to whisper in each other's ears?! If so, then I don't think any sort of online back-doors are going to help against anyone who really wants to secure their data. This is a very slippery slope.
Now, I'm required per export control regulations to provide the source code of my encryption algorithm at a specified address (the above address is the one registered) -- The source code is JavaScript (the horror!), but that means that I'm legally required to provide *this* encryption service to the world, not some changed version with a back door -- Even if I did put a back door in, I'd still be LEGALLY required to provide the old version too! There is NO WAY for me to insert a back door! If you encipher something with Retro Cipher, I can't decrypt it! Say you enciphered a message and posted it somewhere, like, on Faceblock or even in this very post. Tap as they might, it's not going to help anyone decipher the data without the secret key! Furthermore, you can download the code and run it locally. Post enciphered blobs all over the net and only your buddies with the secret key can read it. WHAT'S THE POINT OF TAPPING? All they'll really get is IP addresses to prove who sent what to whom (Thank gods for TOR), but that's already recorded elsewhere -- They don't need to do this.
I run a "social network" (an online forum), and I CAN'T COMPLY WITH THEIR DEMANDS, per US law. How the hell will Slashdot or Facecrook or Twanker change their code to decipher such enciphered blobs? If we Really wanted, we could be using PGP keys to encrypt our posts. Is that what they really want us to do?! Cryptography has already made Wire Tapping obsolete.
Here's a Retro Cipher sample:
cJTF22rC292_8d5hw-aTsCYefnY.40mum
Kh0G0xToPXIAJzAJynBPzg.0rnI5Tft6i
n05ftyYSKRlCowxAyZlIHgA5lb9XVFxQ
So you have to opt into porn, some people feel uncomfortable about making private things, like if they watch porn or not, into public things. To me it's an invasion of privacy. I guess I'd just be shame free and opt into any and everything they would otherwise block.
This is the equivalent of posting the fact you purchased a skin flick or nude magazine on your facebook page for all the world to see...
What's next is that every book, periodical, or website you consume will be "opted in" ie, you'll enter it in their logs, so we can see exactly what you're doing -- They'll do it to close the cash loophole. What?! You want to be Anonymous? Like the Evil Hackers?!
It's a fine distinction, but it essentially says that if you can reverse engineer the requirements of an API by observing it's behaviour, you are free to re-implement that functionality. i.e. You have to use so-called "clean-room" techniques, where the team that did the functional analysis of the APIs to write the specs have absolutely nothing else to do with the team that writes the implementation.
Heh, I like how If I take the API specs and create my own implementation, I'm guilty until proven innocent of infringment, and surely guilty unless I used a clean room technique.
Except that's just wrong! I can think of one very important instance: Stallman's part in the Lisp Machines, Inc. and Symbolics debacle over Lisp. Symbolics Lisp shared code with MIT Lisp, but Symbolics didn't want their improvements used by the competition. Stallman didn't use a clean room, but he re-implemented feature per feature what Symbolics added.
So Symbolics came up with a plan. They said to the lab, “We will continue making our changes to the system available for you to use, but you can't put it into the MIT Lisp machine system. Instead, we'll give you access to Symbolics' Lisp machine system, and you can run it, but that's all you can do.”
This, in effect, meant that they demanded that we had to choose a side, and use either the MIT version of the system or the Symbolics version. Whichever choice we made determined which system our improvements went to. If we worked on and improved the Symbolics version, we would be supporting Symbolics alone. If we used and improved the MIT version of the system, we would be doing work available to both companies, but Symbolics saw that we would be supporting [Lisp Machines Inc.] because we would be helping them continue to exist. So we were not allowed to be neutral anymore.
Up until that point, I hadn't taken the side of either company, although it made me miserable to see what had happened to our community and the software. But now, Symbolics had forced the issue. So, in an effort to help keep Lisp Machines Inc. going — I began duplicating all of the improvements Symbolics had made to the Lisp machine system. I wrote the equivalent improvements again myself (i.e., the code was my own).
After a while, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I didn't even look at their code. When they made a beta announcement that gave the release notes, I would see what the features were and then implement them. By the time they had a real release, I did too.
In this way, for two years, I prevented them from wiping out Lisp Machines Incorporated, and the two companies went on. But, I didn't want to spend years and years punishing someone, just thwarting an evil deed. I figured they had been punished pretty thoroughly because they were stuck with competition that was not leaving or going to disappear.
Emphasis mine. Note that he had access, and did look at their code... It was not a full clean room operation, and LMI used Stallman's contributions. Symbolics threatened lawsuits -- I wish they had filed them; It may have cleared this API SSO crap up a lot sooner, and we'd have a work around for them by now even if they were copyrightable. The above instance had a large part to play in the creation of the GPL, which Java is now licensed under.
So, Unless I have TWO SEPARATE MINDS AND BODIES, then there is no way I -- a single software developer and entrepreneur -- could EVER create a "clean room" implementation as you've defined it. That's anti-competitive and unconstitutional IMO.
This seems strangely relevant to the Oracle vs. Google case that's going on right now over Android and its usage of Java APIs. Does anyone know how much of a coincidence this EU court ruling is, that it occurs in such close proximity to its US analogue?
100% coincidence.
Also the judge has instructed the jury to deliberate assuming that the structure, sequence and organisation of the API is copyrightable; They're to determine given if the APIs are sufficiently similar, comparing all 166 Java packages not just the 33 accused,)and if so, if Google has infringed and whether or not they're use is allowed under fair use.
The Judge has not said that APIs can be copyrighted. He reserves that decision for himself, and will only be forced to make such a decision if the jury finds that Google has infringed (assuming the SSO of an API is copyrightable). Since the jury is already deliberating in the Oracle v Google case no new evidence will be presented to them. Although US copyright laws are different than EU law, the Judge knows that his decision could have huge impacts on the software market.
I like Judge Alsup, he's smart. He only has to decide if Google's found to be infringing... Furthermore I think he's begun to understand the absurdity of Oracles claims:
Judge: Question about specification. Your description made it sound like a black box with something inside. You have input on that side and output on that side, and the spec says what the inputs gotta be, and the outputs gotta be, and the implementation is what's in the black box.
Owen Astrachan: That is a very good explanation. I like that explanation.
In the black box analogy the API would be like Google and Oracle both labeling their volume knobs the same name and making clockwise rotation increase the volume... It sounds intuitive that if Google's black box has all the same placement and functions and labels as an Oracle box that they coppied the SSO of the Interface (API) -- However, they must have done so in order to provide interoperability, and courts have made exceptions for such use in the past. As long as the operation manual (code comments) are sufficiently dissimilar I can't see where Oracle has a copyright case. Their patent case is another story.
This EU ruling is interesting to me as a software developer... My fellow game devs are dispersed globally. In the near future we'll be selecting a home base of operations. If the APIs are found copyrightable in the US, but not EU, we may opt to have our base of operations outside the US. (we may do so any way for patent concern reasons -- Fix the damn copyright and patent system USA, it's HURTING your business)
I apologize if it's a dumb question, but isn't the whole point of a black hole that not even light escapes?
The gravity tore apart the star before it entered the black hole. Watching all the videos about black holes and space might lead one to think that orbits are easy to achieve, but after I ran some particle simulations using simple Newtonian physics in my game engine, I noticed that most particles will slingshot around a source of heavier gravity when they approach, and be flung too far away for gravity to recapture it. In a stellar nursery this sling shot effect places a limit on the star's size, the other main contributing factor being initial density of the nebula. This is true for black holes as well as planets or asteroids approaching a star. So, although some of the star will fall into the black hole, a lot more of it gets flung away from the black hole -- It's a classic case of Conservation of angular momentum...
They're seeing what happens when something gets close to a black hole, not goes into it. You can see things "going into a black hole" before they've reached the event horizon. Also: In my sim, elliptical orbits that didn't result in the object being flung away became tighter and rounder orbits over time.
That schools don't have kids play with simple sims like these in class is Ridiculous! My high-school age little brother hasn't played a traditional game in three weeks. Since I gave him the gravity sim (particle engine stress test) to play with -- all he does is simulate solar systems and formation of stars, or big stars eating little stars, etc. It's the first time I've ever seen him interested in space beyond the Halo Universe! He asked me about Quantum Physics yesterday!
We'll never get to witness that, either Sol will become a red giant first, consuming anything that still lives on the earth, or, the gravity of the black hole with eat the earth before Sol succumbs. Either way, we'll already be dead.
Unless, of course, you have reservations at Milliway's
Slashdot Mirror
I live with two pit-bull terriers (both rescued strays), and unfortunately I must keep them in separate rooms because of a traumatic event where during play the one's jaw got caught under the other's collar -- They remember this episode, but confuse it with each hurting the other; Ever since they fight if left together unsupervised for a length of time.
The one dog, TC (named after the street T.C. Jester where she was found), likes being in the larger part of the house, and would rather not be in the den. So, when I say that "It's time to switch the dogs", and try to put her in the Den, she runs to the back door instead, as if she needs to relieve herself. She knows that the dog in the house usually ends up in the den when the outside dog is let back inside -- to keep them separated.
If while coming back inside she realises that I'll be putting the other dog outside -- making her more likely to be the dog in the den, then she's resistant to coming back inside... She not only thinks ahead, she's worked out several plans to achieve her goal. If TC knows its her turn to have run of the house, then none of this is an issue, she goes in and out without a care, knowing that it's the other dog that'll be relegated to the den -- Even if she sees the other dog going out when she comes in, she's not reluctant to come inside because she's not planning on being put in the den.
Furthermore, I'm beginning to run out of ways to say "Walk" and "Car" -- The dogs love riding in the car, and have learned that "C.A.R." means car, "Truck" and "T.R.U.C.K" is also out, can't say or spell "go" without them getting excited to leave -- Currently I've taken to saying, "Vamonos en el Auto" which is me butchering Spanish (never formally studied it, but I've run out of French and English words), because they've also learned "coche"; However, TC has started to pick up on this too -- You can see her perk up and look between the parties as if she's sussing out whether or not we'll soon be leaving. Names of vacation places, such as "Kerville" must be avoided at all cost -- I sometimes attend the Kerville Folk Festival for a week or so and have the neighbour care for one dog at the house while the other is in a kennel (to ensure separation), TC gets distressed when Kerville is mentioned -- She picks it up even in the middle of rapid speech with other parties. TC normally loves to get the leash so we can go for a walk, but Mention Kerville at all and she runs away from the leash for several days. She's planning not to be the dog in the kennel.
Humans are so damn chauvinistic. There's no such thing as "sentience" -- That's some made up Bullshit right there. There is only varying degrees of awareness and intellect depending on the complexity of the neural network. Bigger network? Smarter. That's all there is to it.
When (not if) machine learning neural networks surpass the complexity of the human mind by leaps and bounds: I sure hope they're understanding enough of our primitive nature, and don't treat us lesser minded humans as we treat the apes and other creatures with proportionally less neurons. Note that I didn't say I own the dogs...
Oops, forgot to escape the tags, what a joy --- that's supposed to be a JS game in IE6 dom (on a Pentium III) beating out the port of the same game in HTML5 + <canvas> & <audio> (on a 2.3Ghz dual core P4). So, it's like watching that car from "The Beverly Hill Billies" winning a Formula One race because "the state of the art" cars have to many crazy carbon-fiber wings attached.
I used to be excited about the web, until I realised it was a document display network that's being shoehorned into an application delivery platform using a woefully ill equipped scripting language -- Protip: It's called JavaScript because you're supposed to do little with it, and leave the heavy lifting to Java. Google Drive is out! To use it in a web app (JavaScript) I'm supposed to use to Base64 encode the data and manually construct a multi-part POST request and send it through an iframe proxy -- WHAT THE HELL.
I'm still excited about the Internet! It's great! We're finally getting that Precise Application Feel by ..... APPLICATIONS. App Store, Android Market, Ubuntu Software Store, MS's offerings, etc -- I thought this distribution model was AWESOME when I first saw it in the 90's on GNU/Linux. I looked to the web and thought: "Damn, we need a common application platform for All systems on the Internet"
Suddenly: Java is Everywhere! Yay! We can do the app model for the web! You can have your UI as uber fancy and precice as you want! Oh, but the web devs didn't want to actually program... Some of that is the language's fault. Not to mention the stupid TCK forcing implementations to provide backwards compatibility, and booting up the VM taking several seconds or a minute on machines back then. DAMN! If it wasn't forced to be so all encompassingly compatible with the full desktop stack we could have made Java lean and mean, but Sun dropped the ball and now Oracle is kicking it around with spiked boots...
I'd rather support Android, iOS, OSX, Linux, & Windows with my cross platform toolchain, have really slick UI for my web enabled app, and be able to actually USE THE HARDWARE, than do web development today -- Ugh, talk about fragmentation. Oh, it'll happen eventually, in some form. Google's trying, so is MS, Apple's bringing the i to their OS too. What we want is cross platform support though, that's the power of the web. When you take a step back and look at the web you can see where it's heading. Hardly any websites are just pages, but doc repositories need to exist too. I look at HTM5 / CSS3 / JS and think: "Make up your MINDS people! Basic things like Sound and Video don't work? CSS has Animations?! Trying to get performance from non compiled Languages?! -- YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG." -- My DOM + JS + Object embed for sound Pac-Man clone runs better in IE6 than + HTML5 port in latest versions of Chrome & FF... Not just Better -- No, in FF12 it's unplayable due to the DOM lag, and crappy way you have to use multiple tags to play concurrent sounds. In IE6, it blazes, in FF, half second stutters between frames. Yep, that's what we call progress now.
Applications want to be active. Docs want to be static. Let's pull the web so far in opposite directions that it takes A DECADE just to make one major version change. GREAT WORK GUYS, but I'm out.
Developing on dual 30" screens is certainly nicer, but it you can't develop on a 13" screen, then you're not terribly effective
Effective? What good is having all those inches if you can't use them all at once?! There are limits to human physiology, you animal! You'd have to take a step back to even use the thing. Five inches is all you need.
I developed software on a 23Lb Osborne1 'portable' with a screen 5" across having 52 columns and 24 rows of green monochrome text. And I Liked It! Didn't have to move my eyes to see a thing.
Now, excuse me while I lug my lawn away from your vicinity.
sudo lshw > pc1.txt
...
...
sudo lshw > pc2.txt
diff pc1.txt pc2.txt
And this is where you lose 99% of the people who had an interest in running Linux at all, which is probably already less than 1% of the general population
That's how we sandbag against the tides of the eternal September. If you don't like it -- GOOD! :P
In all seriousness - Do you really give a damn which OS people are using? I mean, I don't... and I'm a software developer (cross platform is the future). The real problem here is MFG support for the OS. Windows has massive MFG support for their OS. Linux doesn't. The fact that it's usable at all is fucking amazing. That some hardware is being sold with pre-installed Linux is proof that some MFGs care. Hell, I've even seen Toshiba is making available driver sources for a laptop's wifi & fingerprint reader.
It doesn't matter one bit to me if Linux runs on your computers or not. Fact is: It runs most of "the cloud" that your computers connect to... That's good enough for me.
As a game dev, what I just heard was: Insist on Single Player Games! That's fine, but you want the game closed source at least initially if it's got multi-player components. Security through obscurity is the ONLY security we have. It's not about the game being insecure. With traditional security stuff you're not trying to prevent the client machine from subverting its own operations. With single player stuff, sure, fine, cheat all you want, it doesn't spoil the game for anyone else. However, EVERY experience I've had working on and playing open source multi player games was rife with cheating.
Without registered players/copies you can't enforce online bans very well. We've tried. Time and again, as soon as the game gets a bit popular a few hackers let their prankster ways show to the detriment of all. One bad apple spoiling the bunch, etc.
I'd agree to some form of stipulation like: If the game isn't released by $DATE, it goes open source and all assets released under creative commons. Hell, most indie devs I've talked to plan to release their game's source code after the next project's footing is stable, anyway.
However, not everyone is just asking for handouts. Lots of projects give you a real tangible perks (such as a free existing game) as incentive for making the donation. I think it would be sort of wrong to also insist on dictating the licensing arrangement -- You may not get the game at all if you do; I.e. yours may not be the only funding they're taking. It's called "Kickstarter" not "Fullfunder" -- If I can't recoup my time by selling the game, then it's going to be a much larger price tag on that progress bar -- One that has a much lower chance of being reached...
In other words: Oh, Hi! I remember you. You're one of those sleazy Publishers? Right? I mean, you're acting just like one... You want to fund the initial investment, then we'll work like dogs to get the game made, and you'll preclude us from reaping any benefits long term... Good luck with THAT!
(That's the same behaviour we came to Kickstarter to escape from)
As an unfunded (self funded?) indie game dev Kickstarter has been on our radar for quite a while. In the course of building out our technology we're making smaller games (1st a puzzle game, then a freescrolling shooter, etc). Our plan has been to get one of the smaller games totally finished and polished up a bit, and use that as one of the perks for a donation campaign to help fund the next larger game, eg: you donate $X, and you get a free game right now while also helping fund the next. I'd feel weird just asking for a hand out with nothing of value to immediately give in exchange... I mean, you'd still have the free game in hand even if I do get hit by the bus I'm always coding in fear of. :-P
I'm sort of shocked at all the attention Kickstarter is getting now, and yes, I do feel like we may be coming to the table a bit too late. Things will change. What's shocking to me is that people are funding IDEAS for games -- Ideas are less than a dime a dozen, I've got literally hundreds of game designs in my "tome of magic" (awaiting only my arcane finger movements to be made real). Personally, I wouldn't donate to anyone's cause until the game developers have shown at least some progress and dedication and gotten at minimum some coloured boxes flying around and doing stuff (primordial gameplay tests -- you know, prototypes to see if the game will actually be fun).
The interesting thing is that I do see some other folks like our own team who are doing this because we love games, not because we can make a bunch of money -- That was explicitly laid out at our inception: "You *might* make a living working hard doing something you love (making games), but don't work on this project if you're doing this to get rich." So, the completion of our games don't depend on any outside funds: Grants, donations, or revenue will only help us make the games faster (we could do less non-game work). Our incentive to make games is purely because the designs are exciting to us, we love to create, and just want play them ourselves... I think projects like this have the best chances to be successful.
I think that change is coming in the crowd funding space -- Funding ideas before ANYONE knows if they're fun to play or not is VERY odd to me. I mean, it only takes a few hours with Ogre3D, Unity, (or other free engine) to crank out a basic mechanics prototype, even for complex stuff like Portal. I think what we'll see in the future is less "I have this great idea, I just need to pay $ARTIST + $PROGRAMMERS to make it real," and more "This game idea is so fun and interesting, these level designers, programmers, artists and composers have rallied around it. Here's a sample of what we've done, and if you donate we'll get it to you faster / you'll ensure the project's future." If you can't even show me a prototype, then I doubt the seriousness. "Hey, $coder_friend, I have this idea for a game and I've made/got a few art assets, would you make a simple gameplay mock-up in some free engine so I can show the idea on Kickstarter" -- Yeah, if you can't get that to happen, I'm not sure why anyone should fund it.
To put it another way: If you start with just an idea, and are relying on the Kickstarter funds to get the project done, then you can actually run out of money to pay the programmers, level designers, composers, and artists -- then a project will actually fail to be delivered, or you may have to cut back on the ambitious plans and do a smaller game... However, if you've got a team together like ours, and they aren't relying on funds to keep working on the project (I have a "day job" game coding is my fun, our mapper maps for fun, our composer composes for fun, ect), then even if the project runs out of money you still get the game you funded eventually.
What I'm seeing right now is a bunch of game devs trying to catch this wave. There are lots of game devs who are still in early stages of production, or even haven't even started who wanted to wait until later to put som
Isn't that somewhat the expected process of evolution in general? Genetic mistake happens; proves to actually be useful to reproduction/beating the competition (as opposed to the vast majority that are either useless or detrimental); and then due to being in the most successful breeders, becomes "standard".
Yet. In fact, the machine learning system I've evolved to recognise speech and images of postures WOULD NOT have been trainable nearly as quickly if I had not EXPLICITLY introduced errors in the genetic copying program. Multiple neural networks compete, they are selected against based on group performance, and the 256 top performers then get to "breed" via genetic program. Zero mutations means that the traits simply shift around in the network, and you can reach an somewhat optimal configuration of the CURRENT intelligence patterns in the system, but to advance (evolve), I MUST pseudo-randomly introduce an error whilst copying from the parents' genomes into the children.
Higher mutation rates cause faster evolution up to a point -- beyond which the chaos overwhelms the genome and you begin to lose valuable traits. I put it to you that only the chemical chains that had an acceptable, but not perfect error rate in their copying system would have evolved into what we call life. It's not that an intelligent designer made a mistake -- It's just that the fault tolerant erroneous copy creating chemical chains are best suited to create life.
Furthermore, when I create a "primordial" simulation of blocks that can link or that can't, and which have various attraction and repulsion properties between them, and randomly distribute them (yes, with quantum RNG hardware), then run the simulation the blocks that form chains and copy themselves ARE THE ONLY patterns that survive -- the non linking blocks get used by the linking ones -- The non copying chains get destroyed by the copying ones or other configurations. The copying chains which have a small error rate, yet keep the general structure of the "parent" pattern end up evolving and out competing those with less optimal error rates.
So, you see: If you have such a primordial pool of chemicals, and any CAN form chains over time they WILL, because that's the simplest (cheapest) structure with sufficient fitness to survive. Additionally the chains of chemicals that copy with errors are the only ones that get more complex over time, and will thus result in life given enough time. There are many things that can go wrong, but if the blocks can link and happen upon a sufficient way to duplicate with error -- You get life.
Were it not for preserving a little of the chaos from which life sprang, life would not evolve.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
Hmm, this is a bit off topic, no? OOoh, n/m... You mean like LDAP, rsync and/or FTP?
Herp! Hey guys Google drive's JavaScript authentication API is broken, so just MANUALLY craft a base64 encoded multipart form post with JavaScript and post that to an iframe proxy to do an upload! Derp!
And You Think I'm Joking!
These folks claiming to be "unblocking The Pirate Bay the Hard Way" are still doing it the easy way. They want to do it the hard way? Rally a bunch of supporters and go to Parliament and MAKE them unblock it. Rouse friends and family in support of sharing of information (the BASIS OF HUMANITY) and don't let anyone forget who the bastards are that blocked it in the first place and why they should be voted out. Get some money together and run smear campaigns on the media networks if you dare.
"Oh that's too hard", yes well, that's why it's called the HARD way.
"Oh, I'll just use $NEXT_ON_THE_BLOCK_LIST tool or service to get around the censorship", not only are they not doing it The hard way, they're just plain doing it wrong.
Isn't it ironic...
Absolutely! Positively, Without a Doubt! Why, That's EXACTLY how you use that word! Stunning use of vocabulary and sentence structure too! Where did you attend school? I want to commend your English teacher for doing such a fine job and recommend them for a Nobel prize in Education!
No mystery; From the article :
"the learnings (sic) Apple gains from building the 32nm
I saw the (sic) and thought they had mispelled "lemmings". Need more coffee.
Blocks outgoing cookies
All web browsers (known bugs notwithstanding) are able to block incoming cookies and prevent them from being stored and used either temporarily or permanently. But only Firefox and Opera are designed to block the sending of any cookies they might have previously acquired but which the browser's cookie policy now blocks. If either Internet Explorer or Safari are set to block cookies, only newly arriving (incoming) cookies are blocked. They will both continue sending any (undesired) cookies outbound that they had previously acquired . . . which is almost certainly not what their user intends.
From GRC's cookie research pages -- Which is what I've also observed. You disable 3rd party cookies, and yet it continues sending out any 3rd party cookies they already have set. The page is a bit outdated, since FF3 is out, but the statement about Safari holds true.
Sure doesn't sound like it's Disabling 3rd Party Cookies to me....
Safari does block third-party cookies. Google fooled Safari into thinking they were first-party cookies so that they would be accepted by the browser. RTFA next time.
Safari does NOT block third party cookies. Safari blocks SOME third party cookies -- You know, unless the user interacts with 3rd party assets, then they don't block the 3rd party cookies at all. The issue is caused by Safari's erroneous concept of what a user initiated event is. Which it damn sure knows how to tell the difference between a user initiated event! That's how pop up blocking has worked for over a decade. It's defective by design. Submitting a form to a hidden iframe is how we made Ajax work before XML HTTP Request was born, so it's not like Google did some magic mojo. I used to be able to pass JS variables across domains via iframe, but now browsers don't allow that -- Was I fooling the browsers by using their features before they disabled the feature?
Oh I can hear the apple sauce sloshing already! But you're WRONG. You see -- There's this thing called JavaScript, and using it I can hover a 1px invisible iframe around under your gods damn mouse cursor -- And within that iframe: A 3rd party site. Now, just try and click anything. TADA Safari not blocking 3rd party cookies again. BECAUSE THEY DON'T. Well, actually yes... Safari does block a few 3rd party cookies -- But only if the 3rd party doesn't really want you to have the cookie. That you can't easily tell your browser WTF to do and have it just do what it says the option is Ridiculous. Here, I'll show you:
if ( Third_Party_Cookies_Disabled && window.top.location != window.location ) return; // without setting the cookie.
But NOOO! Safari has some other explicit BS logic that makes EXCEPTIONS to the rule. On Purpose! Google used such features that Apple devs made... And the dumb ass users got pissed off because their browser wasn't doing what they told it, but they couldn't blame Apple -- NO! Not Apple! So who? Google -- Protip: Google's not the only one bypassing your 3rd party cookie "blocking" system... Hey, doesn't Apple sells ads too? I bet they want them to "just work" too.
Google was only serving up the form to people who were logged in to the service and had accepted their privacy policy stating that GOOGLE WOULD DO THIS.
Also, if you disable all cookies in Safari -- It keeps sending my sites your cookies. You have to restart the browser before that setting takes effect. Why? Why doesn't that just work?! Every other browser just stops sending the cookies. Why? Because the names of the settings in Safari are specious. They're misinformative to say the least! "Disable 3rd party cookies unless you just recently changed the setting, or you accidentally click a 3rd party site, or the page submits a form or some Javascript puts a button under your cursor, or a bunch of other BS logic that we added to specifically ALLOW 3rd party cookies." -- THAT is what Safari does. RTFM next time, then test the software to be sure the manual's not lying. -- That's what I did.
I mean, if two parties have pre-shared a key phrase, then there's nothing they can do to prevent any "bad guys" from encrypting their data. I mean, this just makes it possible to spy on innocent citizens. Bad guys who blow shit up aren't going to care about violating a gods damned law about social sites they run.
>_< DERP!
I created an algorithm that turns a one way hashing algorithm into a two way cipher via key expansion, HMAC, and Cypher Block Chaining. My fellow indie game devs and I use the Retrograde Cipher to exchange credentials related to our project (like our Youtube account password) on our forums. (Yes, it's open source and registered with the BIS, per requirement). If anyone gets access to our SQL database or private forum archives, they don't get all our other passwords in the posts with our encrypted blobs.
If I can invent an extensible encryption system just for grins, then what can the "bad guys" do?
So, what about bugging every house in the nation? I mean, do we still have the right to whisper in each other's ears?! If so, then I don't think any sort of online back-doors are going to help against anyone who really wants to secure their data. This is a very slippery slope.
Now, I'm required per export control regulations to provide the source code of my encryption algorithm at a specified address (the above address is the one registered) -- The source code is JavaScript (the horror!), but that means that I'm legally required to provide *this* encryption service to the world, not some changed version with a back door -- Even if I did put a back door in, I'd still be LEGALLY required to provide the old version too! There is NO WAY for me to insert a back door! If you encipher something with Retro Cipher, I can't decrypt it! Say you enciphered a message and posted it somewhere, like, on Faceblock or even in this very post. Tap as they might, it's not going to help anyone decipher the data without the secret key! Furthermore, you can download the code and run it locally. Post enciphered blobs all over the net and only your buddies with the secret key can read it. WHAT'S THE POINT OF TAPPING? All they'll really get is IP addresses to prove who sent what to whom (Thank gods for TOR), but that's already recorded elsewhere -- They don't need to do this.
I run a "social network" (an online forum), and I CAN'T COMPLY WITH THEIR DEMANDS, per US law. How the hell will Slashdot or Facecrook or Twanker change their code to decipher such enciphered blobs? If we Really wanted, we could be using PGP keys to encrypt our posts. Is that what they really want us to do?! Cryptography has already made Wire Tapping obsolete.
Here's a Retro Cipher sample:
cJTF22rC292_8d5hw-aTsCYefnY.40mum
Kh0G0xToPXIAJzAJynBPzg.0rnI5Tft6i
n05ftyYSKRlCowxAyZlIHgA5lb9XVFxQ
The secret key is: 1eyed-Kid
So you have to opt into porn, some people feel uncomfortable about making private things, like if they watch porn or not, into public things. To me it's an invasion of privacy. I guess I'd just be shame free and opt into any and everything they would otherwise block.
This is the equivalent of posting the fact you purchased a skin flick or nude magazine on your facebook page for all the world to see...
What's next is that every book, periodical, or website you consume will be "opted in" ie, you'll enter it in their logs, so we can see exactly what you're doing -- They'll do it to close the cash loophole. What?! You want to be Anonymous? Like the Evil Hackers?!
Thank the gods for Iceweasel.
It's a fine distinction, but it essentially says that if you can reverse engineer the requirements of an API by observing it's behaviour, you are free to re-implement that functionality. i.e. You have to use so-called "clean-room" techniques, where the team that did the functional analysis of the APIs to write the specs have absolutely nothing else to do with the team that writes the implementation.
Heh, I like how If I take the API specs and create my own implementation, I'm guilty until proven innocent of infringment, and surely guilty unless I used a clean room technique.
Except that's just wrong! I can think of one very important instance: Stallman's part in the Lisp Machines, Inc. and Symbolics debacle over Lisp. Symbolics Lisp shared code with MIT Lisp, but Symbolics didn't want their improvements used by the competition. Stallman didn't use a clean room, but he re-implemented feature per feature what Symbolics added.
From Stallman's side of the story:
So Symbolics came up with a plan. They said to the lab, “We will continue making our changes to the system available for you to use, but you can't put it into the MIT Lisp machine system. Instead, we'll give you access to Symbolics' Lisp machine system, and you can run it, but that's all you can do.”
This, in effect, meant that they demanded that we had to choose a side, and use either the MIT version of the system or the Symbolics version. Whichever choice we made determined which system our improvements went to. If we worked on and improved the Symbolics version, we would be supporting Symbolics alone. If we used and improved the MIT version of the system, we would be doing work available to both companies, but Symbolics saw that we would be supporting [Lisp Machines Inc.] because we would be helping them continue to exist. So we were not allowed to be neutral anymore.
Up until that point, I hadn't taken the side of either company, although it made me miserable to see what had happened to our community and the software. But now, Symbolics had forced the issue. So, in an effort to help keep Lisp Machines Inc. going — I began duplicating all of the improvements Symbolics had made to the Lisp machine system. I wrote the equivalent improvements again myself (i.e., the code was my own).
After a while, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I didn't even look at their code. When they made a beta announcement that gave the release notes, I would see what the features were and then implement them. By the time they had a real release, I did too.
In this way, for two years, I prevented them from wiping out Lisp Machines Incorporated, and the two companies went on. But, I didn't want to spend years and years punishing someone, just thwarting an evil deed. I figured they had been punished pretty thoroughly because they were stuck with competition that was not leaving or going to disappear.
Emphasis mine. Note that he had access, and did look at their code... It was not a full clean room operation, and LMI used Stallman's contributions. Symbolics threatened lawsuits -- I wish they had filed them; It may have cleared this API SSO crap up a lot sooner, and we'd have a work around for them by now even if they were copyrightable. The above instance had a large part to play in the creation of the GPL, which Java is now licensed under.
So, Unless I have TWO SEPARATE MINDS AND BODIES, then there is no way I -- a single software developer and entrepreneur -- could EVER create a "clean room" implementation as you've defined it. That's anti-competitive and unconstitutional IMO.
This seems strangely relevant to the Oracle vs. Google case that's going on right now over Android and its usage of Java APIs. Does anyone know how much of a coincidence this EU court ruling is, that it occurs in such close proximity to its US analogue?
100% coincidence.
Also the judge has instructed the jury to deliberate assuming that the structure, sequence and organisation of the API is copyrightable; They're to determine given if the APIs are sufficiently similar, comparing all 166 Java packages not just the 33 accused,)and if so, if Google has infringed and whether or not they're use is allowed under fair use.
The Judge has not said that APIs can be copyrighted. He reserves that decision for himself, and will only be forced to make such a decision if the jury finds that Google has infringed (assuming the SSO of an API is copyrightable). Since the jury is already deliberating in the Oracle v Google case no new evidence will be presented to them. Although US copyright laws are different than EU law, the Judge knows that his decision could have huge impacts on the software market.
I like Judge Alsup, he's smart. He only has to decide if Google's found to be infringing... Furthermore I think he's begun to understand the absurdity of Oracles claims:
Judge: Question about specification. Your description made it sound like a black box with something inside. You have input on that side and output on that side, and the spec says what the inputs gotta be, and the outputs gotta be, and the implementation is what's in the black box.
Owen Astrachan: That is a very good explanation. I like that explanation.
[Judge smiles]
- Reported Transcript
In the black box analogy the API would be like Google and Oracle both labeling their volume knobs the same name and making clockwise rotation increase the volume... It sounds intuitive that if Google's black box has all the same placement and functions and labels as an Oracle box that they coppied the SSO of the Interface (API) -- However, they must have done so in order to provide interoperability, and courts have made exceptions for such use in the past. As long as the operation manual (code comments) are sufficiently dissimilar I can't see where Oracle has a copyright case. Their patent case is another story.
This EU ruling is interesting to me as a software developer... My fellow game devs are dispersed globally. In the near future we'll be selecting a home base of operations. If the APIs are found copyrightable in the US, but not EU, we may opt to have our base of operations outside the US. (we may do so any way for patent concern reasons -- Fix the damn copyright and patent system USA, it's HURTING your business)
I apologize if it's a dumb question, but isn't the whole point of a black hole that not even light escapes?
The gravity tore apart the star before it entered the black hole. Watching all the videos about black holes and space might lead one to think that orbits are easy to achieve, but after I ran some particle simulations using simple Newtonian physics in my game engine, I noticed that most particles will slingshot around a source of heavier gravity when they approach, and be flung too far away for gravity to recapture it. In a stellar nursery this sling shot effect places a limit on the star's size, the other main contributing factor being initial density of the nebula. This is true for black holes as well as planets or asteroids approaching a star. So, although some of the star will fall into the black hole, a lot more of it gets flung away from the black hole -- It's a classic case of Conservation of angular momentum...
They're seeing what happens when something gets close to a black hole, not goes into it. You can see things "going into a black hole" before they've reached the event horizon. Also: In my sim, elliptical orbits that didn't result in the object being flung away became tighter and rounder orbits over time.
That schools don't have kids play with simple sims like these in class is Ridiculous! My high-school age little brother hasn't played a traditional game in three weeks. Since I gave him the gravity sim (particle engine stress test) to play with -- all he does is simulate solar systems and formation of stars, or big stars eating little stars, etc. It's the first time I've ever seen him interested in space beyond the Halo Universe! He asked me about Quantum Physics yesterday!
This scenario was observed twice in two years. Not exactly rare when you realize how little of the sky we watch.
So what if they're not early adopters? That doesn't make their statement invalid. Hell, most people don't even know about the new S.I. steak units.
We'll never get to witness that, either Sol will become a red giant first, consuming anything that still lives on the earth, or, the gravity of the black hole with eat the earth before Sol succumbs. Either way, we'll already be dead.
Unless, of course, you have reservations at Milliway's
Considering this year's Earth Day slogan,
There may yet be another option...
al-Qaeda wouldn't bother with royalties, they'd just deny the use of any number other than 1.
They can't do that, the Three Musketeers have a trademark on that: "All for One and One for All!"
Well, if your parents were infertile, it's likely you will be as well.
Uh... wait ... something doesn't sound right here...
...Only because you don't consider cloning an option.