The AdaCore libre version doesn't allow you to distribute your executables under non-GPL license. You'd have to buy the super-expensive pro version instead. The FSF version of Gnat, on the other hand, does allow you to distribute your executables under any license you like because it comes under the Gnat Modified GPL (GMGPL).
What's the problem of this AC asshole and why on earth have some people mod this obvious troll "insightful"? You can google anything, by that reasoning there would not be any need for/. at all.
The OP asked a question on ask slashdot that surely interests many students in science and engineering. It is certainly more interesting than any of the cellphone bullshit slashvertisements we are bombarded with constantly.
Given that IBM starts this as a commercial service, I was wondering what happened to Cyc? It created a lot of (partly negative) fuzz amongst computational linguists in the early/mid 90s and they have been entering common-sense knowledge into their database since the 80s. (There's also OpenCyc if you want to play around with it.) People used to be undecided between "it's crap from the 80s, entered by disgruntled ex philosophy students and unmaintainable" and "it's the next A.I. revolution and every product will be based on it once the big companies jump on the bandwaggon".
So what happened to them? Is Cyc already in some products?
Not necessarily. A high rate of false positives isn't so bad if you build up an oppressive totalitarian police state at the same time, one in which a myriad of intelligence agency employees investigate every positive match with the aid of targeted surveillance measures and tons of pre-existing data on file.
Why? Because the attacks on RC4 are becoming feasible for ordinary well-organized criminals, and there might be other agencies aside form the NSA who might try brute-forcing SHA1.
The NSA is mainly a danger for business outside the US - and perhaps for Megaupload-like companies within the US for which some state prosecutor could imagine and construct some criminal copyright infringement case, although it seems that the NSA doesn't habitually help out the FBI.
It's basically a way to keep the price of consoles at a point where people will still lease them, while being able to offer the level of processing power that would be too expensive.
Fixed that for you. This has nothing to do with buying anything, it's a temporary lease and the servers will be shut off sooner than later.
The claim I responded to was "math isn't patentable".
The claim you were responding to was "math isn't supposed to be patentable". You quoted it! If you want to distort facts, you should at least take a quote out of context that supports your position...
The theory that you presented is that mathematical work shouldn't be patentable because mathematical work shouldn't be patentable, and software gets converted into math.
Epic reading comprehension fail. The above is not at all what I defended. I did not say that software gets converted into math. Software is math. That is a huge difference that you apparently fail to understand. Secondly, math work shouldn't be patentable not "because math shouldn't be patentable" (which I have never said, of course), but for a vast variety of reasons that I did not mention. These reasons should be obvious to anyone who knows something about math and the history of mankind. The idea that mathematics could or should be patentable is simply ridiculous. Mathematics is not invented by humans, not the product of human activity. It's like saying the earth or the sun or Newton's laws of gravity should be patentable. The problem is that you can, and people do, disguise general everyday mathematics in algorithms, successfully patent it, and later sue people who use general, everyday mathematics to solve their problems. This is insane. The laws and applications of law regarding software patents should be the opposite of what they currently are in the US.
That's a common misconception, started and encouraged by people with a particular agenda. The rule in the US is:
...snip stupid, broken US rulings...
You're making two grave errors here.
First, people you confuse the claim that math isn't supposed to be patentable with the claim that math isn't patentable. You're mixing up the status quo with how the world should be. It's circular reasoning, like saying that the most stupid laws are alright, because they are laws.
Second, you either misunderstand or ignore the formal theory behind the claim that software should not be patentable, because it is math. Every computer program corresponds to a mathematical proof. Some programs might be less interesting than others, but all of them are math, and patent applicants have already in the past found and used loopholes to patent basic mathematical principles. If actual mathematicians working in math departments at universities would take the current law seriously - thank God they don't! - they could patent nearly every aspect of future mathematics and potential future software methodology just by packaging it in a smart way as some "method for doing blablabla". Fortunately most of them have better things to do. Let's hope it stays that way.
And these two points do not even address the real problem yet, namely that programming is like playing with Lego bricks and it's already nowadays impossible to write any program whatsoever that is not already patent encumbered.
Okay I hate to say this, because I like A.I. research a lot. But I've also met A.I. and robotics researchers personally and know how (some of them) work, so I'll say it anyway:
The safety of these A.I. prototypes is not trustworthy. Especially if they are being "taught" how to handle a knife or, to give another example, not to accidentally kill someone with their huge arm, I would not want to be anywhere near them for extended periods of time in everyday life. A.I. researchers tend to use cutting edge programming techniques and extensive safety auditing is not part of their job. They are not proving the correctness of their algorithms, as is for example done in the aerospace industry. Their programs are fairly ad hoc and buggy, after all they also need to get their papers published, and if they use sophisticated techniques like neural networks, support vector machines, or decision forrests they won't even be able to tell what exactly their little pets have "learned".
Apart from that general worry, you wouldn't give a knife to a little child, so why would you give one to a much stronger, hence much more dangerous robot whose general level of cognitive development is much lower than that of a six year old?
When 'spies' from the diplomatic corps are leaving the embassy, they are being tailed in every country of the world you can imagine and they will try to shake their pursuers off. That are just ordinary counter-intelligence operations as opposed to NSA's spying on ordinary citizens (including citizens of their own country) on a widespread scale. The two issues are barely related to each other.
If Snowden had followed your advice, he would have been arrested immediately and then charged with treason, espionage and/or theft of classified data.
Even his lawyer would have been gagged by secret courts under the Patriot act and nobody would have ever heard of any of this except as a little side note ("cranky former contractor in clinch with US government about handling of classified data").
The US government isn't pissed about Snowden because "the entire US population" learned about their foreign eavesdropping operations, but because foreign intelligence agencies did.
Contrary to what you think, they are pissed about both, and more so about the US population because it consists of their voters...
What will this end up with? Everyone paying 2-5 dollars more per phone.
Unfortunately this is the most likely outcome. A much better outcome would be if sale of all Android, iOS and Windows phones and tablets was prohibited world-wide, but this is not going to happen.:(
Snowden's just a guy who did what he thought was the right thing to do. Even if he did the US a disfavor, which is unlikely, he did the majority of the world a big favor.
Slashdot Mirror
The AdaCore libre version doesn't allow you to distribute your executables under non-GPL license. You'd have to buy the super-expensive pro version instead. The FSF version of Gnat, on the other hand, does allow you to distribute your executables under any license you like because it comes under the Gnat Modified GPL (GMGPL).
That's why I wait. :-)
Where do such negative comments come from? Have programers generally left /.? :-/
I for one welcome gcc 4.9, as it allows me to use the full Ada 2012 language. Good job!
What's the problem of this AC asshole and why on earth have some people mod this obvious troll "insightful"? You can google anything, by that reasoning there would not be any need for /. at all.
The OP asked a question on ask slashdot that surely interests many students in science and engineering. It is certainly more interesting than any of the cellphone bullshit slashvertisements we are bombarded with constantly.
Given that IBM starts this as a commercial service, I was wondering what happened to Cyc? It created a lot of (partly negative) fuzz amongst computational linguists in the early/mid 90s and they have been entering common-sense knowledge into their database since the 80s. (There's also OpenCyc if you want to play around with it.) People used to be undecided between "it's crap from the 80s, entered by disgruntled ex philosophy students and unmaintainable" and "it's the next A.I. revolution and every product will be based on it once the big companies jump on the bandwaggon".
So what happened to them? Is Cyc already in some products?
Not necessarily. A high rate of false positives isn't so bad if you build up an oppressive totalitarian police state at the same time, one in which a myriad of intelligence agency employees investigate every positive match with the aid of targeted surveillance measures and tons of pre-existing data on file.
Intellectual property is a useful social construct.
Well, let me guess guess for whom it is useful...
That's not the definition of "broken" that cryptographers use.
Why? Because the attacks on RC4 are becoming feasible for ordinary well-organized criminals, and there might be other agencies aside form the NSA who might try brute-forcing SHA1.
The NSA is mainly a danger for business outside the US - and perhaps for Megaupload-like companies within the US for which some state prosecutor could imagine and construct some criminal copyright infringement case, although it seems that the NSA doesn't habitually help out the FBI.
You have no idea what you're talking about (at least not this time).
It's basically a way to keep the price of consoles at a point where people will still lease them, while being able to offer the level of processing power that would be too expensive.
Fixed that for you. This has nothing to do with buying anything, it's a temporary lease and the servers will be shut off sooner than later.
But the inkjet cartridges will costs thousands of dollars each ...
The claim I responded to was "math isn't patentable".
The claim you were responding to was "math isn't supposed to be patentable". You quoted it! If you want to distort facts, you should at least take a quote out of context that supports your position ...
The theory that you presented is that mathematical work shouldn't be patentable because mathematical work shouldn't be patentable, and software gets converted into math.
Epic reading comprehension fail. The above is not at all what I defended. I did not say that software gets converted into math. Software is math. That is a huge difference that you apparently fail to understand. Secondly, math work shouldn't be patentable not "because math shouldn't be patentable" (which I have never said, of course), but for a vast variety of reasons that I did not mention. These reasons should be obvious to anyone who knows something about math and the history of mankind. The idea that mathematics could or should be patentable is simply ridiculous. Mathematics is not invented by humans, not the product of human activity. It's like saying the earth or the sun or Newton's laws of gravity should be patentable. The problem is that you can, and people do, disguise general everyday mathematics in algorithms, successfully patent it, and later sue people who use general, everyday mathematics to solve their problems. This is insane. The laws and applications of law regarding software patents should be the opposite of what they currently are in the US.
> math isn't supposed to be patentable.
That's a common misconception, started and encouraged by people with a particular agenda. The rule in the US is:
You're making two grave errors here.
First, people you confuse the claim that math isn't supposed to be patentable with the claim that math isn't patentable. You're mixing up the status quo with how the world should be. It's circular reasoning, like saying that the most stupid laws are alright, because they are laws.
Second, you either misunderstand or ignore the formal theory behind the claim that software should not be patentable, because it is math. Every computer program corresponds to a mathematical proof. Some programs might be less interesting than others, but all of them are math, and patent applicants have already in the past found and used loopholes to patent basic mathematical principles. If actual mathematicians working in math departments at universities would take the current law seriously - thank God they don't! - they could patent nearly every aspect of future mathematics and potential future software methodology just by packaging it in a smart way as some "method for doing blablabla". Fortunately most of them have better things to do. Let's hope it stays that way.
And these two points do not even address the real problem yet, namely that programming is like playing with Lego bricks and it's already nowadays impossible to write any program whatsoever that is not already patent encumbered.
Okay I hate to say this, because I like A.I. research a lot. But I've also met A.I. and robotics researchers personally and know how (some of them) work, so I'll say it anyway:
The safety of these A.I. prototypes is not trustworthy. Especially if they are being "taught" how to handle a knife or, to give another example, not to accidentally kill someone with their huge arm, I would not want to be anywhere near them for extended periods of time in everyday life. A.I. researchers tend to use cutting edge programming techniques and extensive safety auditing is not part of their job. They are not proving the correctness of their algorithms, as is for example done in the aerospace industry. Their programs are fairly ad hoc and buggy, after all they also need to get their papers published, and if they use sophisticated techniques like neural networks, support vector machines, or decision forrests they won't even be able to tell what exactly their little pets have "learned".
Apart from that general worry, you wouldn't give a knife to a little child, so why would you give one to a much stronger, hence much more dangerous robot whose general level of cognitive development is much lower than that of a six year old?
It's probably because they have some patents on it that Apple doesn't have.
When 'spies' from the diplomatic corps are leaving the embassy, they are being tailed in every country of the world you can imagine and they will try to shake their pursuers off. That are just ordinary counter-intelligence operations as opposed to NSA's spying on ordinary citizens (including citizens of their own country) on a widespread scale. The two issues are barely related to each other.
I'm skeptical about that. Wasn't Intel's compiler supposed to produce the fastest binaries - on Intel machines, at least?
If Snowden had followed your advice, he would have been arrested immediately and then charged with treason, espionage and/or theft of classified data.
Even his lawyer would have been gagged by secret courts under the Patriot act and nobody would have ever heard of any of this except as a little side note ("cranky former contractor in clinch with US government about handling of classified data").
The US government isn't pissed about Snowden because "the entire US population" learned about their foreign eavesdropping operations, but because foreign intelligence agencies did.
Contrary to what you think, they are pissed about both, and more so about the US population because it consists of their voters ...
Wow, this is just completely stupid. Is the purpose of these tests to eliminate all forms of imagination in children once and for all?
It may seen obvious now, but it wasn't then.
Bullshit. It was as obvious then as it is now.
What will this end up with? Everyone paying 2-5 dollars more per phone.
Unfortunately this is the most likely outcome. A much better outcome would be if sale of all Android, iOS and Windows phones and tablets was prohibited world-wide, but this is not going to happen. :(
Blablabla National security babble.
Snowden's just a guy who did what he thought was the right thing to do. Even if he did the US a disfavor, which is unlikely, he did the majority of the world a big favor.
That's for the illegal wiretapping.
If you buy an iPhone, you have already given up most of your freedoms (regarding your phone), so what's the point bitching about it afterwards.
Please mod this "+1 Insightful Troll" -- oh wait, this category doesn't exist. :O