so it would be easier on the programmer to use a cisc instruction
Actually, it's "easier on the programmer" to use C. The true advantage of CISC "bytecode" style instruction sets is that they have a small binary code footprint, which improves the performance of instruction caches. Not that I'm implying x86 is good bytecode or anything...
It's the efficiency of the processor that matters, which is measured in IPC, the "instructions per cycle" that it can execute.
Be careful. Some architectures require more instructions to do the same thing. For instance, on 6502 or x86, you can load an integer from memory and add it to a register in one instruction, whereas on ppc, arm, or mips, this takes two.
I don't know about you, but some people define "crutchety shitty" in terms of a monolithic kernel design. (I don't; monolithic kernels have their uses.) Linux is based on the same sort of monolithic kernel design as BSD and UNIX® systems, and the GNU/Linux operating system is based on Linux. Thus, some consider GNU/Linux "crutchety shitty" in that sense. HURD, on the other hand, runs on top of the Mach microkernel (though it'll be ported to the faster L4 microkernel before 1.0). Darwin (the open-source core on which the proprietary Mac OS X GUI runs) is essentially FreeBSD ported to Mac hardware, running on top of Mach.
>[Qt is fully GPL] Only when compiling for the X11 target
Not if you purchase a license! Qt is well worth the money!
Only if you're in a for-profit business. Qt/Mac will expire after 30 days. Most hobbyist developers (such as myself) don't have upwards of $1500 for a widget set. And according to this FAQ entry, Trolltech releases Qt Free Edition only for operating systems that are free software. Thus, Trolltech will not release Qt for Windows until ReactOS is complete, nor Qt for Mac as free software until GNUstep is complete.
New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification
USA patent law already grants a term extension in such cases. The current term of a U.S. patent is filing date + 20 years + whatever time is necessary to secure a required federal safety certification for a patented product.
Perhaps the current period of copyrights is over-long, but how does that translate to the concept that such laws don't serve a useful purpose? It's a complete non-sequetuer.
What useful purpose does keeping "Happy Birthday to You" or "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Steamboat Willie" still locked up serve?
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
Being first to the patent office wasn't the only reason Bell got the patent. Alex Bell had a finished patent on a working invention, while Elisha Gray had at that time only a "caveat", an outline of the invention without a working model. (Caveat is apparently Latin for "vapourware".)
Extended copyright terms can't possibly encourage John Lennon and Janis Joplin to write more songs, so how does this promote science or usefull arts?
The government's position is that among other things, posthumous royalties help pay Gershwin's, Lennon's, and Joplin's heirs' way through music school. (Not that I fully agree with that position.)
If a copyright fails to "promote the progress of science and useful art", then congress is exercising a power it was never granted.
Ashcroft's position in Eldred v. Ashcroft is that the words "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" are a mere preamble that imposes no material limitation on the powers of Congress. A District Court and a Court of Appeals have agreed with the DoJ's position. Not that I agree with that position or anything; I'm waiting to see what the Supremes do with it.
He doesn't say _why_ IP "belongs to the public and is in essence leased to authors and inventors." As a content creator, I'd like some explanation there.
Facts: Copyright law considers "access" plus "substantial similarity" to constitute prima facie evidence of copying. Judges have considered access to FM radio to constitute prima facie evidence of "access" to a copyrighted work that has been played on the radio (Bright v. Harrisongs).
Hypothetical situation: All combinations of five notes are copyrighted. Now write an original song that infringes on no copyright.
Moral: Without a rich public domain upon which to build, how is it possible to create further works?
technology doesn't affect law. Technology can affect culture, which then affects prevailing laws.
Actually, the proper sequence is technology, then culture, then trenches, then laws. Technology affects culture. Culture may effect a revolution, which is often a war fought in trenches, and results in new laws.
Then some more popular songwriter will notice some sort of similarity between the "cool song" and a published musical work (inevitable given the limited vocabulary of the Western musical scale) and file a lawsuit against the "little guy". Then, because the "little guy" has no legitimate source of funding for legal representation (as public defenders in the USA handle only criminal cases), the more popular songwriter will win.
Exactly the event I described has happened. Read about Handel v. Silver.
There are individuals who can create, and those that do not. The vast majority do not, but still wish to benefit from the labor of others. In politics, this desire leads to socialism. On slashdot, it leads to whiny teenagers demanding the 'right' to steal music or books because the Internet has made it easy to do so.
Really? Given that nothing is created in a vacuum, and given the author's right under copyright law to veto derivative works, is it even possible to create anymore?
Trademarks can last different periods based on what kind of trademark
Trademarks last until the mark becomes a generic term (Aspirin® died in the USA as part of WW1 reparations; Kleenex® and Xerox® are on life support). This can approach perpetuity.
IIRC, NetMeeting allows you to plug in extra codecs.
Do plug-in codecs have to be signed by Windows Hardware Qualification Labs in order not to bark at the user for using a "potentially unreliable codec"?
More likely would be a simple man-in-the-middle attack that completely bypasses the MD5 check.
And that's harder than man-in-the-middling the current DNS how? Especially if your provider is in on it ($ under the table)? Until we get everybody n the Internet into a public-key circle of trust (Meet the Parents?), and these circles of trust become connected (in a graph theoretic sense) into a Web of Trust, I can see no way to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack on any anonymous network protocol.
Ever heard of compile time dependencies?
Ususally a file depends on other files being
compiled first.
But not every single file depends on all the previous files.
so there is no room for paralelism.
Most projects with heavy compile-time dependencies have several stages. I'll take the example of the Allegro library: 1. preparing include files, 2. compiling the.o files, 3. creating the library, 4. compiling and linking the driver programs, 5. make install. All the substeps in each major step can usually be done in parallel because they depend only on previous major steps.
Amdahl's law still operates, and you even say so yourself. There's a constant part that cannot be removed. Let's say it takes 50 msec to initialize gcc and 500 msec to compile the average source file. Then it takes 5.05 sec to compile ten files with one copy of gcc.
Then you go on to tell how using ten machines provides only a 9.2-fold speedup. But what about a project with 100 files? It would take 50.05 seconds to build everything on one machine, and it takes 5.050 seconds to build ten files on each machine. Now we have a 50.05/5.050 == 9.92 fold speedup. In practice, can you notice the difference between 9-fold and 10-fold speedup?
Does the speedup factor not approach the number of machines asymptotically?
(How can I "Use the Preview Button!" when an accidental Enter keypress in the Subject invokes the Submit button? Scoop gets it right by setting Preview as the default button.)
Slashdot Mirror
so it would be easier on the programmer to use a cisc instruction
Actually, it's "easier on the programmer" to use C. The true advantage of CISC "bytecode" style instruction sets is that they have a small binary code footprint, which improves the performance of instruction caches. Not that I'm implying x86 is good bytecode or anything...
It's the efficiency of the processor that matters, which is measured in IPC, the "instructions per cycle" that it can execute.
Be careful. Some architectures require more instructions to do the same thing. For instance, on 6502 or x86, you can load an integer from memory and add it to a register in one instruction, whereas on ppc, arm, or mips, this takes two.
Linux == GNU, which is not crutchety shitty UN*X.
I don't know about you, but some people define "crutchety shitty" in terms of a monolithic kernel design. (I don't; monolithic kernels have their uses.) Linux is based on the same sort of monolithic kernel design as BSD and UNIX® systems, and the GNU/Linux operating system is based on Linux. Thus, some consider GNU/Linux "crutchety shitty" in that sense. HURD, on the other hand, runs on top of the Mach microkernel (though it'll be ported to the faster L4 microkernel before 1.0). Darwin (the open-source core on which the proprietary Mac OS X GUI runs) is essentially FreeBSD ported to Mac hardware, running on top of Mach.
UI Builder, Project Builder, OpenGL Vertex Shader, IPhoto, ITunes, IMovie, the list goes on.
What are those? Aren't they either included with the Mac OS X distribution or available as a free download to all licensees of Mac OS X?
>[Qt is fully GPL] Only when compiling for the X11 target
Not if you purchase a license! Qt is well worth the money!
Only if you're in a for-profit business. Qt/Mac will expire after 30 days. Most hobbyist developers (such as myself) don't have upwards of $1500 for a widget set. And according to this FAQ entry, Trolltech releases Qt Free Edition only for operating systems that are free software. Thus, Trolltech will not release Qt for Windows until ReactOS is complete, nor Qt for Mac as free software until GNUstep is complete.
If it isn't true, explain to me why what are free utilities for Windows machines are $20-$30 extortionware for the Mac.
Which utilities that don't already have equivalents in Fink (i.e. d*b**n gnu/mac os x) are you talking about?
Qt is fully GPL.
Only when compiling for the X11 target, which requires Mac users to install XDarwin and Windows users to install Cygwin and XFree86.
New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification
USA patent law already grants a term extension in such cases. The current term of a U.S. patent is filing date + 20 years + whatever time is necessary to secure a required federal safety certification for a patented product.
Perhaps the current period of copyrights is over-long, but how does that translate to the concept that such laws don't serve a useful purpose? It's a complete non-sequetuer.
What useful purpose does keeping "Happy Birthday to You" or "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Steamboat Willie" still locked up serve?
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
Being first to the patent office wasn't the only reason Bell got the patent. Alex Bell had a finished patent on a working invention, while Elisha Gray had at that time only a "caveat", an outline of the invention without a working model. (Caveat is apparently Latin for "vapourware".)
Extended copyright terms can't possibly encourage John Lennon and Janis Joplin to write more songs, so how does this promote science or usefull arts?
The government's position is that among other things, posthumous royalties help pay Gershwin's, Lennon's, and Joplin's heirs' way through music school. (Not that I fully agree with that position.)
Rights to real estate are perpetual.
If a copyright fails to "promote the progress of science and useful art", then congress is exercising a power it was never granted.
Ashcroft's position in Eldred v. Ashcroft is that the words "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" are a mere preamble that imposes no material limitation on the powers of Congress. A District Court and a Court of Appeals have agreed with the DoJ's position. Not that I agree with that position or anything; I'm waiting to see what the Supremes do with it.
He doesn't say _why_ IP "belongs to the public and is in essence leased to authors and inventors." As a content creator, I'd like some explanation there.
Facts: Copyright law considers "access" plus "substantial similarity" to constitute prima facie evidence of copying. Judges have considered access to FM radio to constitute prima facie evidence of "access" to a copyrighted work that has been played on the radio (Bright v. Harrisongs).
Hypothetical situation: All combinations of five notes are copyrighted. Now write an original song that infringes on no copyright.
Moral: Without a rich public domain upon which to build, how is it possible to create further works?
technology doesn't affect law. Technology can affect culture, which then affects prevailing laws.
Actually, the proper sequence is technology, then culture, then trenches, then laws. Technology affects culture. Culture may effect a revolution, which is often a war fought in trenches, and results in new laws.
[Eldred v. Ashcroft] doesn't seem to have been mentioned in this thread
Really? Search this discussion for the word "Eldred".
Or look at the previous Slashdot discussion of Eldred v. Ashcroft .
What if the 'little guy' writes a cool song.
Then some more popular songwriter will notice some sort of similarity between the "cool song" and a published musical work (inevitable given the limited vocabulary of the Western musical scale) and file a lawsuit against the "little guy". Then, because the "little guy" has no legitimate source of funding for legal representation (as public defenders in the USA handle only criminal cases), the more popular songwriter will win.
Exactly the event I described has happened. Read about Handel v. Silver.
There are individuals who can create, and those that do not. The vast majority do not, but still wish to benefit from the labor of others. In politics, this desire leads to socialism. On slashdot, it leads to whiny teenagers demanding the 'right' to steal music or books because the Internet has made it easy to do so.
Really? Given that nothing is created in a vacuum, and given the author's right under copyright law to veto derivative works, is it even possible to create anymore?
Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work
You call life plus 70 years (USA and EU copyright term) "brief"?
Trademarks can last different periods based on what kind of trademark
Trademarks last until the mark becomes a generic term (Aspirin® died in the USA as part of WW1 reparations; Kleenex® and Xerox® are on life support). This can approach perpetuity.
problaby the Freestyle interface Microsoft is developing ... Also related is 'Mira'
Mira? Freestyle? What does Microsoft think it's making, a BMX simulation?
If they do use pallidium then no linux is not an option.
Well, can't you just turn off Palladium in the BIOS setup? The Palladium spec REQUIRES such an option.
IIRC, NetMeeting allows you to plug in extra codecs.
Do plug-in codecs have to be signed by Windows Hardware Qualification Labs in order not to bark at the user for using a "potentially unreliable codec"?
More likely would be a simple man-in-the-middle attack that completely bypasses the MD5 check.
And that's harder than man-in-the-middling the current DNS how? Especially if your provider is in on it ($ under the table)? Until we get everybody n the Internet into a public-key circle of trust (Meet the Parents?), and these circles of trust become connected (in a graph theoretic sense) into a Web of Trust, I can see no way to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack on any anonymous network protocol.
If they make a computer that looks like [a stereotypical two-slice toaster], I'll buy it just for a good laugh.
They already did. It's called the Power Macintosh G4 Cube computer.
You are allowed to revese engineer under the DMCA in order to create interoperable software, I believe.
True, under the letter of the law: 17 USC 1201(f). But good luck proving in court that your "means are necessary to achieve such interoperability".
Ever heard of compile time dependencies? Ususally a file depends on other files being compiled first.
But not every single file depends on all the previous files.
so there is no room for paralelism.
Most projects with heavy compile-time dependencies have several stages. I'll take the example of the Allegro library: 1. preparing include files, 2. compiling the .o files, 3. creating the library, 4. compiling and linking the driver programs, 5. make install. All the substeps in each major step can usually be done in parallel because they depend only on previous major steps.
Amdahl's law still operates, and you even say so yourself. There's a constant part that cannot be removed. Let's say it takes 50 msec to initialize gcc and 500 msec to compile the average source file. Then it takes 5.05 sec to compile ten files with one copy of gcc.
Then you go on to tell how using ten machines provides only a 9.2-fold speedup. But what about a project with 100 files? It would take 50.05 seconds to build everything on one machine, and it takes 5.050 seconds to build ten files on each machine. Now we have a 50.05/5.050 == 9.92 fold speedup. In practice, can you notice the difference between 9-fold and 10-fold speedup?
Does the speedup factor not approach the number of machines asymptotically?
(How can I "Use the Preview Button!" when an accidental Enter keypress in the Subject invokes the Submit button? Scoop gets it right by setting Preview as the default button.)