OK, GIF was passable for downloading pictures over a 9600baud modem, because you could accept 8-bit pictures for the increase in speed.
But these days--give me true colour or don't waste my time! GIF is only useful for charts and graphs which use a minimal number of colours; and even there, PNG is a comparable format.
JPG? Lossy.
How can you even bother comparing a lossless format with a lossy one, or an 8-bit ONLY format with a flexible depth one? There's no connection, no comparison, and no competition.
No, it's partly Microsoft's fault that their machines are so easy to break. It's called willful negligence.
A better analogy with Ford would end up getting really strained, but here goes: Ford has a near-monopoly on car manufacturing, and categorically refuses to put locks on them because it's "too difficult" or "too inconvenient for the drivers." Furthermore, they display an updated inventory of your car's interior reflected up against the side window when you're away.
When indeed. One might ask when will people stop buying software that allows stuff like this to propagate due to fundamental design flaws? When will Microsoft be forced to do their job of writing software, instead of marketing early betas of bad ideas? When will governments crack down on criminal behavior instead of trying to legislate the development of tools?
1) "OMFG!!! Dirty bastards with their filthy circuit board patents. Board design and circuitry is so OBVIOUS once you've seen it. DEATH TO SENDO!"
2) "We need to set up a free foundation where people can donate circuit designs for the good of all humanity."
3) "If they have a case, then let's see the circuit designs released to the public. Won't show them to me without requiring an NDA? I TOLD you they were dirty liars"
4) "WRITE TO YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS TODAY, AND TELL THEM YOU DON'T SUPPORT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PATENTS! DON'T EMAIL THEM, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT EMAIL."
This message has been brought to you by the Society for the Unveiling of Knee-jerk Reactions (SUKRs).
I can't stand 'em. The image is always gritty and pastelly, no matter WHAT angle you observe at, and REGARDLESS of the quality. The very very very best LCDs cost almost as much as a plasma display, and not only do they not hold a candle to a plasma, they don't even stand up against a moderate CRT.
Yeah, space is nice. I'll get a low-depth 30" flat-surface CRT for less than a third the price, and have a better display to watch movies and games on.
No offense, but why SHOULD I trust you? Even assuming that the name 'compulawyer' is indicative, the GPL still provides some fairly onerous and unlikely requirements on the licensee. Until I see a legally binding court ruling, I'm rather disinclined to believe that it carries more weight than a gentleman's agreement.
As someone else pointed out, the GPL requires you to release any code you modify and resdistribute. If they're using it in-house, they're probably fine.
As for the enforcement, has there ever been a ruling that's directly related to the GPL? As far as I know, there's no legal precedent for the GPL to stand, and thus without a court case, there's no telling how valid it is.
That's right, go get a lawsuit happening. Take that damned GPL to court (although he didn't necessarily mention GPL'd code--there are other licenses out there), and find out if it means anything.
This is neither a troll or a flame. I've seen damned little evidence that the GPL would stand up in court, and since the 'prevailing view' of what it implies seems to be getting more and more stringent, I'm thinking that the odds of it holding water are going down.
You can put anything in your licence agreement, but some items will be thrown out if they get to court, for being to onerous. Who can give me a reason why the GPL isn't in that category?
"Sure it's wrong. The correct methodology is to compare what is installed vs what is purchased."
This is true, and is exactly what the BSA is doing--with one crucial 'softening.' They are using predicted demand as an estimate for actual installation base. If their math and sampling on that estimation is rigorous enough, then the demand/sales estimate is moderately plausible.
However, the BSA are a bunch of lying stinkthieves, and should be butchered like mad cows.
Seriously, it strikes me that the BSA and the OSS people should be cosying up something fierce.
Imagine this: Due to a massive campaign against piracy (public education, worthwhile criminal charges, lawsuits, and so forth), piracy drops to some new record low (5%?) and the general public stops believing that they can get 'all that important software for free.' Now they're forced to pay nearly a grand for a Microsoft OS and Office suite, or......use software that they can legally obtain and use for free!
Seriously, what could be better for OSS than a massive crackdown on pirated software?
It makes no sense. Are 99% of ocean-front homes unsold and vacant? Or unsold and occupied by people who don't belong there? Or owned by pirates looking for a nice summer cottage with a private dock for their pirate ship?
I can't follow his mental gymnastics (gumbynastics?) this early in the morning.
You're quite right, but there is an answer to this--even a respectably fair one too. (shock!)
If someone uses software without paying for/licensing it, then they are pirating it in one way or another. The point isn't that the company is necessarily losing money, it's that the person doesn't have the right (legal or arguably moral) to use the software. Probably 60% of the software pirated in North America (and here I'm just pulling numbers out of a hat) is NOT revenue lost for the companies who create it, but 100% of pirated software anywhere is used by someone who doesn't have the right to do so.[1]
The BSA would win a lot of hearts and minds if they pushed this aspect, but they're preaching to the CEOs and CFOs out there, and so they talk dollars. The result is that they loudly, aggressively, and constantly remind us that Every Single Pirated Copy Of Software Is Lost Revenue.(tm) Utter bullshit, but effective.
[1] This is a very grey area morally, and to some extent, legally. Say I bought a copy of Office95, and am now using a pirated copy of Office2000, because MS no longer supports Office95. I don't feel too bad about that, especially since I haven't used any features that have been added to Word or Excel or whatever since 95. On the other hand, if I use a pirated version of Office2k because I NEED some new feature, then it's a bit nastier.
Thanks for ruling on the case for us. Now they don't have to go to court, since we clearly know it's a hoax.
For FUCK sake Michael and all you other crucifiers--SCO has made a claim, SCO has said they'll back it up this month by revealing code to those who sign an NDA (which is a LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO PROTECT AND CLAIMED TRADE SECRETS), and SCO will live or die based on the findings of a court. Remember the legal system? Right to a fair trial before being stoned to death? Impartial rulings based on fact?
No, of course not. Something threatened your precious open-source "revolution," and they must be killed at ALL costs! Demonize, slander, and boycott, that's how the revolution will be won, eh?
I don't believe SCO any more than most, but they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to aggressively protect their (claimed) trade secrets in order to keep them, and they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to keep them secret (i.e. NDAs) while pursuing protection for them (the case with IBM).
Michael, you're an immature asshole. Grow up and see how the worlds of business and law work before spouting off.
This is one of the reasons they have experts in such trials. Professional programmers and code reviewers will look at the so-called "offending code" and decide if (a) the code was copied, and (b) if it was worthy of trade secret status.
How many lines of printf statements would need to be identical in order for trade secret status to stand? There ain't enough in the world, baby! (theft is another story, though). However, how many lines of truly unique, original, ground-breaking code would need to be copied to be proven as theft of a trade secret? How many lines do you need to express a new idea?
Here's an example: I once worked on a small project that was about 30kb of code. It did some data processing, number crunching, display, graphing, etc. etc.; but the KEY ALGORITHM, that made the whole thing unique, different, effective, and original was contained in 17 lines.
17 lines, and the rest was structure/support for it. Furthermore, there's almost no WAY those lines could have been spontaneously recreated identically without stealing them. If they had showed up elsewhere (and if this software hadn't been released to the public domain--it was), it would be a smoking gun sufficient for most experts, in only 17 lines.
Now consider a device driver in the Linux kernel, which has a hundred lines or so of 'offending code.' The other 99% of the kernel is irrelevant, because this driver is a discrete program, and easier to track than the kernel.
When I was in university, the 386 had just hit the stores so this is a bit out of date. Nonetheless, even though I type faster than I write, I find that stuff sticks with me MUCH better when I commit it to paper with my own cramped writing hand. If you want it on a computer afterwards, then typing it in from your own notes is a GREAT way of reviewing--if you have the time.
However, try any note-taking methods that you can manage, until you find one that pushes data into your brain as effectively as possible. We're all built too differently to give anything more than rough guidelines.
That's one of the three categories. Nonetheless, you're right--the fundamental measure for the Bell prize is flops, which is a very exclusive way of measuring things--definitely not a fair measure of computing as a whole.
That said, flops/s ARE one important measurement to take, and for a certain subset of problems, are critical. Furthermore, what Bell and Gray are proposing is in a very different direction from blind FLOP grinding.
Basically all I intended was that these guys have been around the industry (and well respected within it) longer than Microsoft itself, and aren't just a 'couple of MS sockpuppets.'
These are not MS evangelists we're talking about here. Gordon Bell and Jim Gray know a 'thing or two' about high-performance computing.
If these guys weren't able to speak their minds on technical matters entirely without retribution from Bill and Steve, they wouldn't be at MS at all. They don't have to be. They CERTAINLY don't have to tow the party line and recommend the flavour of the week, because it messes with the latest Sun/IBM/HP/Linux/Mac threat.
Now if you actually look at the statement these guys are making and examine it based on their history, they've got a very good point. They're not talking even remotely about 'one-size-fits-all' systems--they're talking about the future of cutting-edge research.
Amusing link to point to. You may have noticed this statement in the preamble:
"The more arbitrary power a regime has, the less democratic it is, the more likely it will kill its subjects or foreigners."
And what's the US government doing these days? Amalgamating power, implementing regime change in foreign countries as a way of spreading their control, and restarting the arms race, with no one on the 'other side.'
No notable breakthroughs? You can buy robust, efficient (REALLY efficient!), safe solar panels now that were unheard of in the '70s. Unfortunately, they're expensive and rare, partly because governments don't particularly want to see them become commonplace (which is mostly because the oil companies REALLY don't want to see them become commonplace).
The technology is out there--we just have to use it.
Hmm. The question of what constitutes a monopoly is fairly straightforward, but the question of what LIMITS it isn't quite so.
AOL an ISP monopoly? Not even close. MSN? Even farther. (As an aside, CompuServe was bought by AOL some time ago--I remember that as being the last nail in the coffin of old-style network computing.)
But AOL and MSN aren't ISPs, or at least that's not what they're positioning themselves as. They're Value Added providers--call them VAISPs or even VARISPs. In that context, they are a two-party competition--there's no one else out there who is even at the table. (Yahoo and local ISPs tried to attack it from a different angle a few years ago via portal sites, but that turned out to be a different world.)
Now the two parties who form a VAISP duopoly are colluding. They're paying each other lots of money and presenting a united front, because together they ARE a monopoly in their current market, and the biggest piece of the ISP market as well.
How long before they push hard to squeeze out the regular ISPs?
Furthermore, Microsoft had a near-monopoly on the web browser market with IE, but Netscape 7 was actually gaining some popularity. How can this act be construed as anything but anti-trust behaviour?
First of all, if you want to read more SF/fantasy/geek books, then you should make a point of reading a few books out of that genre as well. Get away from the familiar.
Now having said that, most of these fall roughly into that category.:-) In no particular order, I give you some of the finest contemporary (mostly) literature available...
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Hiroki Murakami Fool on the Hill, Matt Ruff To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee Press Enter, John Varley Sewer, Gas & Electric, Matt Ruff the entire series of Sandman comics, Neil Gaiman Lord of the Rings. (go read it again) Harry Potter #1-5 (Yeah, they're that good!) The Persistence of Vision, John Varley Bringing Down the House (new nonfiction, about MIT math students taking on Vegas. Perfect summer fare)
The Varley books and possibly the Brautigan might be hard to find new--in anthologies if at all. Check the used bookstores for them.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, GIF was passable for downloading pictures over a 9600baud modem, because you could accept 8-bit pictures for the increase in speed.
But these days--give me true colour or don't waste my time! GIF is only useful for charts and graphs which use a minimal number of colours; and even there, PNG is a comparable format.
JPG? Lossy.
How can you even bother comparing a lossless format with a lossy one, or an 8-bit ONLY format with a flexible depth one? There's no connection, no comparison, and no competition.
No, it's partly Microsoft's fault that their machines are so easy to break. It's called willful negligence.
A better analogy with Ford would end up getting really strained, but here goes: Ford has a near-monopoly on car manufacturing, and categorically refuses to put locks on them because it's "too difficult" or "too inconvenient for the drivers." Furthermore, they display an updated inventory of your car's interior reflected up against the side window when you're away.
Now tell me that wouldn't be Ford's fault.
When indeed. One might ask when will people stop buying software that allows stuff like this to propagate due to fundamental design flaws? When will Microsoft be forced to do their job of writing software, instead of marketing early betas of bad ideas? When will governments crack down on criminal behavior instead of trying to legislate the development of tools?
1) "OMFG!!! Dirty bastards with their filthy circuit board patents. Board design and circuitry is so OBVIOUS once you've seen it. DEATH TO SENDO!"
2) "We need to set up a free foundation where people can donate circuit designs for the good of all humanity."
3) "If they have a case, then let's see the circuit designs released to the public. Won't show them to me without requiring an NDA? I TOLD you they were dirty liars"
4) "WRITE TO YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS TODAY, AND TELL THEM YOU DON'T SUPPORT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PATENTS! DON'T EMAIL THEM, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT EMAIL."
This message has been brought to you by the Society for the Unveiling of Knee-jerk Reactions (SUKRs).
I can't stand 'em. The image is always gritty and pastelly, no matter WHAT angle you observe at, and REGARDLESS of the quality. The very very very best LCDs cost almost as much as a plasma display, and not only do they not hold a candle to a plasma, they don't even stand up against a moderate CRT.
Yeah, space is nice. I'll get a low-depth 30" flat-surface CRT for less than a third the price, and have a better display to watch movies and games on.
Anyone else?
No offense, but why SHOULD I trust you? Even assuming that the name 'compulawyer' is indicative, the GPL still provides some fairly onerous and unlikely requirements on the licensee. Until I see a legally binding court ruling, I'm rather disinclined to believe that it carries more weight than a gentleman's agreement.
As someone else pointed out, the GPL requires you to release any code you modify and resdistribute. If they're using it in-house, they're probably fine.
As for the enforcement, has there ever been a ruling that's directly related to the GPL? As far as I know, there's no legal precedent for the GPL to stand, and thus without a court case, there's no telling how valid it is.
So sue him!
That's right, go get a lawsuit happening. Take that damned GPL to court (although he didn't necessarily mention GPL'd code--there are other licenses out there), and find out if it means anything.
This is neither a troll or a flame. I've seen damned little evidence that the GPL would stand up in court, and since the 'prevailing view' of what it implies seems to be getting more and more stringent, I'm thinking that the odds of it holding water are going down.
You can put anything in your licence agreement, but some items will be thrown out if they get to court, for being to onerous. Who can give me a reason why the GPL isn't in that category?
"Sure it's wrong. The correct methodology is to compare what is installed vs what is purchased."
This is true, and is exactly what the BSA is doing--with one crucial 'softening.' They are using predicted demand as an estimate for actual installation base. If their math and sampling on that estimation is rigorous enough, then the demand/sales estimate is moderately plausible.
However, the BSA are a bunch of lying stinkthieves, and should be butchered like mad cows.
Seriously, it strikes me that the BSA and the OSS people should be cosying up something fierce.
...use software that they can legally obtain and use for free!
Imagine this: Due to a massive campaign against piracy (public education, worthwhile criminal charges, lawsuits, and so forth), piracy drops to some new record low (5%?) and the general public stops believing that they can get 'all that important software for free.' Now they're forced to pay nearly a grand for a Microsoft OS and Office suite, or...
Seriously, what could be better for OSS than a massive crackdown on pirated software?
It makes no sense. Are 99% of ocean-front homes unsold and vacant? Or unsold and occupied by people who don't belong there? Or owned by pirates looking for a nice summer cottage with a private dock for their pirate ship?
I can't follow his mental gymnastics (gumbynastics?) this early in the morning.
You're quite right, but there is an answer to this--even a respectably fair one too. (shock!)
If someone uses software without paying for/licensing it, then they are pirating it in one way or another. The point isn't that the company is necessarily losing money, it's that the person doesn't have the right (legal or arguably moral) to use the software. Probably 60% of the software pirated in North America (and here I'm just pulling numbers out of a hat) is NOT revenue lost for the companies who create it, but 100% of pirated software anywhere is used by someone who doesn't have the right to do so.[1]
The BSA would win a lot of hearts and minds if they pushed this aspect, but they're preaching to the CEOs and CFOs out there, and so they talk dollars. The result is that they loudly, aggressively, and constantly remind us that Every Single Pirated Copy Of Software Is Lost Revenue.(tm) Utter bullshit, but effective.
[1] This is a very grey area morally, and to some extent, legally. Say I bought a copy of Office95, and am now using a pirated copy of Office2000, because MS no longer supports Office95. I don't feel too bad about that, especially since I haven't used any features that have been added to Word or Excel or whatever since 95. On the other hand, if I use a pirated version of Office2k because I NEED some new feature, then it's a bit nastier.
"Software analysts refuse to be part of the hoax"
Thanks for ruling on the case for us. Now they don't have to go to court, since we clearly know it's a hoax.
For FUCK sake Michael and all you other crucifiers--SCO has made a claim, SCO has said they'll back it up this month by revealing code to those who sign an NDA (which is a LEGAL REQUIREMENT TO PROTECT AND CLAIMED TRADE SECRETS), and SCO will live or die based on the findings of a court. Remember the legal system? Right to a fair trial before being stoned to death? Impartial rulings based on fact?
No, of course not. Something threatened your precious open-source "revolution," and they must be killed at ALL costs! Demonize, slander, and boycott, that's how the revolution will be won, eh?
I don't believe SCO any more than most, but they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to aggressively protect their (claimed) trade secrets in order to keep them, and they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to keep them secret (i.e. NDAs) while pursuing protection for them (the case with IBM).
Michael, you're an immature asshole. Grow up and see how the worlds of business and law work before spouting off.
Interesting and COMPLETELY irrelevant.
This is one of the reasons they have experts in such trials. Professional programmers and code reviewers will look at the so-called "offending code" and decide if (a) the code was copied, and (b) if it was worthy of trade secret status.
How many lines of printf statements would need to be identical in order for trade secret status to stand? There ain't enough in the world, baby! (theft is another story, though). However, how many lines of truly unique, original, ground-breaking code would need to be copied to be proven as theft of a trade secret? How many lines do you need to express a new idea?
Here's an example: I once worked on a small project that was about 30kb of code. It did some data processing, number crunching, display, graphing, etc. etc.; but the KEY ALGORITHM, that made the whole thing unique, different, effective, and original was contained in 17 lines.
17 lines, and the rest was structure/support for it. Furthermore, there's almost no WAY those lines could have been spontaneously recreated identically without stealing them. If they had showed up elsewhere (and if this software hadn't been released to the public domain--it was), it would be a smoking gun sufficient for most experts, in only 17 lines.
Now consider a device driver in the Linux kernel, which has a hundred lines or so of 'offending code.' The other 99% of the kernel is irrelevant, because this driver is a discrete program, and easier to track than the kernel.
When I was in university, the 386 had just hit the stores so this is a bit out of date. Nonetheless, even though I type faster than I write, I find that stuff sticks with me MUCH better when I commit it to paper with my own cramped writing hand. If you want it on a computer afterwards, then typing it in from your own notes is a GREAT way of reviewing--if you have the time.
However, try any note-taking methods that you can manage, until you find one that pushes data into your brain as effectively as possible. We're all built too differently to give anything more than rough guidelines.
That's one of the three categories. Nonetheless, you're right--the fundamental measure for the Bell prize is flops, which is a very exclusive way of measuring things--definitely not a fair measure of computing as a whole.
That said, flops/s ARE one important measurement to take, and for a certain subset of problems, are critical. Furthermore, what Bell and Gray are proposing is in a very different direction from blind FLOP grinding.
Basically all I intended was that these guys have been around the industry (and well respected within it) longer than Microsoft itself, and aren't just a 'couple of MS sockpuppets.'
crapcrapcrap.
I had it right, and for some strange reason, my fingers went back and 'corrected' (i.e. broke) the phrase entirely of their own volition.
Correction noted. No sleep this weekend.
In a word, Bullshit.
These are not MS evangelists we're talking about here. Gordon Bell and Jim Gray know a 'thing or two' about high-performance computing.
If these guys weren't able to speak their minds on technical matters entirely without retribution from Bill and Steve, they wouldn't be at MS at all. They don't have to be. They CERTAINLY don't have to tow the party line and recommend the flavour of the week, because it messes with the latest Sun/IBM/HP/Linux/Mac threat.
Now if you actually look at the statement these guys are making and examine it based on their history, they've got a very good point. They're not talking even remotely about 'one-size-fits-all' systems--they're talking about the future of cutting-edge research.
Amusing link to point to. You may have noticed this statement in the preamble:
"The more arbitrary power a regime has, the less democratic it is, the more likely it will kill its subjects or foreigners."
And what's the US government doing these days? Amalgamating power, implementing regime change in foreign countries as a way of spreading their control, and restarting the arms race, with no one on the 'other side.'
No notable breakthroughs? You can buy robust, efficient (REALLY efficient!), safe solar panels now that were unheard of in the '70s. Unfortunately, they're expensive and rare, partly because governments don't particularly want to see them become commonplace (which is mostly because the oil companies REALLY don't want to see them become commonplace).
The technology is out there--we just have to use it.
Hmm. The question of what constitutes a monopoly is fairly straightforward, but the question of what LIMITS it isn't quite so.
AOL an ISP monopoly? Not even close. MSN? Even farther. (As an aside, CompuServe was bought by AOL some time ago--I remember that as being the last nail in the coffin of old-style network computing.)
But AOL and MSN aren't ISPs, or at least that's not what they're positioning themselves as. They're Value Added providers--call them VAISPs or even VARISPs. In that context, they are a two-party competition--there's no one else out there who is even at the table. (Yahoo and local ISPs tried to attack it from a different angle a few years ago via portal sites, but that turned out to be a different world.)
Now the two parties who form a VAISP duopoly are colluding. They're paying each other lots of money and presenting a united front, because together they ARE a monopoly in their current market, and the biggest piece of the ISP market as well.
How long before they push hard to squeeze out the regular ISPs?
Furthermore, Microsoft had a near-monopoly on the web browser market with IE, but Netscape 7 was actually gaining some popularity. How can this act be construed as anything but anti-trust behaviour?
Two points for you.
1) You're absolutely right. I realised that when AOL lusers were first hitting usenet.
2) I still care for one reason: ***I*** don't deserve MS/AOL, and with them being a collusion of monopolies, it's damned hard to avoid them. Fuckers.
First of all, if you want to read more SF/fantasy/geek books, then you should make a point of reading a few books out of that genre as well. Get away from the familiar.
:-) In no particular order, I give you some of the finest contemporary (mostly) literature available...
Now having said that, most of these fall roughly into that category.
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Hiroki Murakami
Fool on the Hill, Matt Ruff
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Press Enter, John Varley
Sewer, Gas & Electric, Matt Ruff
the entire series of Sandman comics, Neil Gaiman
Lord of the Rings. (go read it again)
Harry Potter #1-5 (Yeah, they're that good!)
The Persistence of Vision, John Varley
Bringing Down the House (new nonfiction, about MIT math students taking on Vegas. Perfect summer fare)
The Varley books and possibly the Brautigan might be hard to find new--in anthologies if at all. Check the used bookstores for them.
Have you read Neverwhere, also by Gaiman? Probably my favorite of his books. As much as I liked American Gods, Neverwhere was better.
Gah!
None. Check this out:
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/s/scox.html