A brief look at the binary a complier generates shows this not to be true - there's more in there than a translation of your sourcecode. The compiler will generally put in inline sequences (e.g. for floating-point operations), and in lots of cases (especially DOS/windows) there's a lot of the CRTL (the C language runtime library) statically linked (i.e. included) in a final compiled binary.
Now, the legal-language Borland used previously was clear about what they felt able to stop you from doing - essentially you couldn't make a language runtime that included their runtime - so, for example, you couldn't write a fortran system and use Borland's CRTL to implement all of the runtime features of fortran - as you'd just be repackaging their CRTL.
If their language means "you can't distribute anything you compile with this", I doubt that would hold up in court.
Well, one could credit FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, with "inventing" hypertext (and "hypermedia" too), rather than Ted Nelson. Admittedly, it's made of metal and the size of a house, but that's still pretty advanced thinking for 1945, I figure.
A couple of years ago some Swedish guys implemented a basic quake engine in pure java, as an applet. You could walk around dm2 with a reasonable framerate, and they promised you'd get proper gameplay, including weapons and other players, in the next release - but I belive ID made them cease-and-desist, as they were using ID's textures, maps and models. I can't get the darn thing to work through the firewall, but (if you have a JIT enabled) take a look at : http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/fraggame.htm
I babelfished their press-release (at: http://www.touchphone.com/smau.html), and the 'fish was in its usual amusing form. Among the translation gems were: "the synthesis of worst electronic expressed in an intelligent product for one simple, fast communication and without limits." and "All the services of fixed telephony of Wind and all the resources of the Web within the new Touchphone immediately available on the tip of the fingers." Looks like babelfish has a sense of humour:)
That "million-dollar" valuation on the proto-board is, I fear, wholy specious. Whilst I'm sure MS spent $1M to produce the board, that cost was almost entirely spent on the _design_. Thus, if they lost the board, they only have to make another from the same design.
Now, a hand-stuffed custom board with a bunch of rework is still an expensive item (maybe $10-50K in engineer's time) and it's rare (they'll probably have a dozen or two of a given rev), but unless it's fabricated from pure gold, the board itself isn't hugely valuable.
It's also misleading to argue that, because the board embodies "trade secrets", its loss could cost the company millions of dollars - its a pretty opaque instanciation of a proprietary design, not that design itself. A prototype board is no more reverse-engineerable than is a production board, and no-one claims that by shipping production hardware they're losing valuable intellectual property.
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Now, the legal-language Borland used previously was clear about what they felt able to stop you from doing - essentially you couldn't make a language runtime that included their runtime - so, for example, you couldn't write a fortran system and use Borland's CRTL to implement all of the runtime features of fortran - as you'd just be repackaging their CRTL.
If their language means "you can't distribute anything you compile with this", I doubt that would hold up in court.
See: here
A couple of years ago some Swedish guys implemented a basic quake engine in pure java, as an applet. You could walk around dm2 with a reasonable framerate, and they promised you'd get proper gameplay, including weapons and other players, in the next release - but I belive ID made them cease-and-desist, as they were using ID's textures, maps and models.
I can't get the darn thing to work through the firewall, but (if you have a JIT enabled) take a look at :
http://hem.passagen.se/carebear/fraggame.htm
I babelfished their press-release (at: http://www.touchphone.com/smau.html), and the 'fish was in its usual amusing form. Among the translation gems were: :)
"the synthesis of worst electronic expressed in an intelligent product for one simple, fast communication and without limits."
and
"All the services of fixed telephony of Wind and all the resources of the Web within the new Touchphone immediately available on the tip of the fingers."
Looks like babelfish has a sense of humour
That "million-dollar" valuation on the proto-board is, I fear, wholy specious. Whilst I'm sure MS spent $1M to produce the board, that cost was almost entirely spent on the _design_. Thus, if they lost the board, they only have to make another from the same design.
Now, a hand-stuffed custom board with a bunch of rework is still an expensive item (maybe $10-50K in engineer's time) and it's rare (they'll probably have a dozen or two of a given rev), but unless it's fabricated from pure gold, the board itself isn't hugely valuable.
It's also misleading to argue that, because the board embodies "trade secrets", its loss could cost the company millions of dollars - its a pretty opaque instanciation of a proprietary design, not that design itself. A prototype board is no more reverse-engineerable than is a production board, and no-one claims that by shipping production hardware they're losing valuable intellectual property.