I also question the benefit to open source java. Microsoft Java? Maybe, but they built C# because Sun took them to task for violating their license, and creating a "write once, run on Microsoft" version. I don't really see any compelling arguments for making it open source. IBM, BlackBerry, and other java SDKs without an open source license, and there is a community process for submitting changes to the specs.
It's not just about specs. Implementations matter. If Sun's reference implementation isn't open source, the language isn't really free.
I can understand Sun's initial reluctance to open-source Java years ago -- Microsoft would have (probably successfully) embraced and extended Java, as they indeed tried to do. At the time, the closed license was beneficial.
Here's the compelling reason for Sun to open-source Java now -- Microsoft no longer has an incentive to embrace and extend Java. They've done an end-run around the Java license by reimplementing a virtually identical language and calling it C# instead of Java. Microsoft will keep pushing C# over Java, and they're already successfully stealing away significant mindshare from Java. Microsoft has proven their ability to (illegally) leverage their monopoly position to acquire new markets. I hate to say it, but in the battle of C# vs. Java, the smart money is probably on C# unless something changes.
Making the Sun reference implementation completely open-source would change the rules of the game. Microsoft might try to subvert it again, but there really wouldn't be any point; C# does the job equally well. More importantly, the rest of the industry would embrace Java even more than it already has, and it could serve to steal mindshare back from C# despite Microsoft's monopoly advantage. This is a compelling reason to do it.
"Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets," was McNealy's response to IBM.
I have no doubt this remark was sarcastic on McNealy's part, but suppose IBM takes it seriously? If IBM wants Java open-sourced badly enough, would they consider making DB2 open-source as a sort of trade? If IBM responded with an offer to enter into a contract at Sun for both Java and DB2 to be open-sourced together (and conditionally on each other), would McNealy take IBM up on the offer? Or would he just find a new excuse to refuse to relinquish control over the code?
It seems that Sun still hasn't learned their lesson from the NeWS debacle of the late 80s. While NeWS was clearly superior technology at the time, X11 was free in every sense. And it mattered. NeWS fans (including me) could see the writing on the wall, and complained that Sun should make NeWS as free as X11. ("Open Source" wasn't a term coined yet, of course.) Of course, Sun refused, and NeWS died a slow and terrible death at the hands of an inferior (but free) competitor. Even now, Sun shows little interest in making NeWS free, when its value as an "asset" is zero. Will Sun maintain a similar deathgrip on Java until it too lands in the dustbins of history, while the world settles on C# instead of Java, as with X11 and NeWS?
Sun, learn from your mistakes. There was a time when Java's license prevented abuse by Microsoft, but that time has passed. C# is Microsoft's new approach to "embrace and extend" Java, and the only effective way to counter it is to make Java fully open-source now, before C# inexorably crushes Java. The writing is on the wall yet again -- don't let Java die the same lingering death that NeWS suffered!
Did anyone bother to check the facts? Don't just read the disturbingly uncritical ZDnet article that parrots everything they were told, dig deeper and read the press release it links to. Take note that "The City and Guilds of London Institute" is "the leading provider of vocational qualifications in the United Kingdom." They've obviously spin-doctored the numbers because they want vocational occupations to look better than professional ones.
This bogus "happiness index" only ranks the percentage of people who said they were "very happy", but look at their definition in the fine print of the footnotes: "Very happy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness as 10 out of 10. Respondents were asked to grade their level of happiness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy" The people who responded with a 9 probaby thought of themselves as "very happy", yet with this spin applied, they would seem to be unhappy, wouldn't they, since only 14% of IT specialists are "very happy" (10 of 10). However, elsewhere in the press release, it suggests that only 10% of IT workers are "unhappy" (1-3 of 10), which leaves 76% unaccounted for in the 4-9 range. What if most of those were 8-9? Would we still be talking about "The Unhappy World of IT Professionals"?
Without the raw data, this study is almost worthless. We don't even know the average rating for each category -- maybe IT workers are happier on average than florists, even if more florists are willing to rank their happiness at 10 of 10. Maybe IT workers are more reluctant to give the maximum score, realizing that there's always room for improvement. Does that mean most IT workers are unhappy?
People have been jumping to conclusions based on a biased study spun to favor vocational workers. Time for a reality check.
You sound so much like a marketing guy it's hilarious... so confident in your ability to brainwash physicians into being your corporate puppets?
I'm a computer programmer, not a marketing guy. I hate marketing. But I'm not blind. I can see how pervasive it is. I spent a year and a half working in a physician's office (programming software for physicians), and I saw the barrage of pharmaceutical logos on virtually every item in the office.
Drug companies are the ones fooling themselves... I chuckle every time I think about how little their billions actually buy.
Sure, keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, the drug companies are laughing themselves all the way to the bank. They may be sleazy, but they're not stupid. You can be sure they've measured the impact of their billions of dollars of investment and found it beneficial. You're a fool if you think you're immune. Nobody is immune, even if some are more susceptible than others.
Ask yourself why they pushed so long for direct-to-consumer advertising, and why it's increasing so dramatically.
I have no doubt that consumers are 100 times more gullible than doctors, so of course they'll prefer to convince the consumer. That doesn't mean that doctors are magically immune to marketing influences. Doctors have this bad habit of thinking of themselves as godlike. They're wrong. Doctors are human too, and they make mistakes and their subconscious attitudes are affected by marketing, whether or not they believe it.
Unlike consumers, at least doctors are likely to consciously avoid letting marketing bias their decisions, which helps -- but that doesn't mean they're completely successful at it. If they were, those billions of dollars wouldn't net any return, and the drug companies would have quit long ago.
Look, I don't mean to sound patronizing, but I don't think you really understand how doctors choose drugs: [...]
Yes, that's all well and good, but what if there's more than one option? In my experience, doctors often can come up with several different drugs that are viable choices, meeting all the factors you listed. At that point, the subliminal factor of marketing may indeed come into play, and you might not even realize it. As long as there's a plausible rationale for prescribing the drug, the marketing may influence you toward prescribing it.
Also, I seem to recall reading about studies that actually tested this, to see if the lack of bias doctors invariably perceive in themselves is true or an illusion. I seem to recall that such studies found objective evidence that strongly suggested that bias was introduced by the marketing, which is what you'd expect from the fact that drug companies keep spending billions on this. I'm sorry, but I don't have any references handy for such studies; if I knew where to find one, I'd point you at it.
Now free samples of drugs? I'll take those every day. Those are a great service, because I have plenty of patients who are too poor to afford even generic medications, and wouldn't get medication at all if it wasn't for samples.
This is a real issue, and it's a tough one. On the one hand, many patients truly would be out of luck without the free samples, because they can't afford the medication. At the same time, giving away the free samples gives you experience with the drug, and will make you more likely to prescribe the drug in the future to a patient who can afford to pay, rather than perhaps experiment with a drug that you haven't had patients use before. Or it can get you into the habit of using that drug even if you have experience with alternatives.
Free samples are valuable, yet insidious. And they are probably the single most effective marketing tool the drug companies have at their disposal, yet they're hard to refuse because you know some patients will suffer hardships if you don't have free samples available to give them.
What an insult... what a great way to piss off a group of people the military desperately needs to retain. My question was this: If they think I'm enough of a whore that I'd sell out my patients for the price of a pen, why even trust me to take care of people?
The pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars on various freebies for doctors -- free pens, free post-it notes, free lunches, free samples, etc. Invariably, the doctors receiving this largesse are utterly convinced that their behavior is unaffected. Of course they don't believe they're selling out their patients, or they wouldn't accept.
Instead of getting your feathers ruffled at the indignity of the implied accusation, stop and use your brain for a minute. Billions of dollars in freebies. The pharmaceutical industry isn't spending that because of their love for doctors. Obviously it works. The industry is getting a good return on their investment, or they wouldn't continue spending those billions, year after year. They see the big picture, unlike the highly-educated physicians who fall for the scam.
I'm glad to hear that the military is anal enough about the gifts doctors receive to insist that they refuse a 5-cent pen. Need a pen? Get one that isn't emblazoned with a brand name working its way into your subconscience. Obviously the cost isn't a problem, is it?
More doctors in private practice should follow the military's lead on this. Sure, everyone likes free stuff, but doctors make life-and-death decisions and should hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. Health care is too important to be so heavily influenced by marketing -- and anyone who can't see the influence of pharmaceutical marketing is just fooling themselves.
I mean, imagine that a law was passed to penalize big businesses from dumping garbage in rivers, and it would cost them $100,000 per incident. But since "incident" was so vaguely defined, even dropping a gum wrapper off a canoe would mean you violated the law.
You mean a law like Superfund? I've read that a pizza restaurant was forced to pay for toxic cleanup in a landfill because a few of its pizza boxes were found there. And you probably thought you were being facetious!
Does anyone know if there are implementations of NeWS available as open source now? Has anyone working on one of the "X Is Icky - I have a Better Way" window systems looked at NeWS for a model? Enquiring minds (however enfeebled) want to know.
Back in May 2000 (longer ago that I thought), I looked into this. I didn't really find any good clones of NeWS, but I was wondering whether Sun might consider open-sourcing NeWS since it had long since lost all commercial viability.
I ended up contacting James Gosling at Sun, who was the original author of both NeWS and Java, to ask him whether it might be possible for Sun to open the old source code to NeWS. His response was that he had already tried to make it happen several years before, but the source code was lost! Apparently the only source they could find was the NeWS 2.0 bastardized combination of X11, NeWS and Adobe's Display PostScript. The source to the original clean NeWS 1.1 release was nowhere to be found!
After a couple weeks of research, and asking a number of people, I found some leads on a couple places that might have had copies of the NeWS 1.1 source code (there were a few sources licensees around), so maybe it could have been repatriated back to Sun. The source may not be "lost to the ages" entirely after all.
Unfortunately, it seemed that James Gosling had by this time lost interest in pushing for NeWS to be released as open source, because he feels the world has moved on and PostScript is no longer the approach he would favor for a GUI system. While he's not opposed to the idea, it takes someone pushing internally to make it happen, because it takes time and effort to scrub the code for release, get approvals from executives and lawyers, etc.
Perhaps if enough people would take an interest in lobbying Sun for the release of the source, NeWS itself (the real thing) could potentially be released as open source someday, assuming the source can be recovered. If anyone is interested, please feel free to email me about it.
Alternatively, I have to wonder how much of the functionality of NeWS already exists in Ghostscript. Perhaps it would be feasible to adapt Ghostscript into a NeWS clone, and it probably has better rendering code than NeWS did. It might be an interesting project, though perhaps a daunting one...
If you're going to "out" someone by posting their email address for spammers to harvest, you ought to post your own email address at the same time so you can both "share the love" with all that lovely spam. (And yes, my real email address is deven@ties.org -- I never hide my email address as a matter of policy, even on Slashdot...)
I'm fairly sure that (a|b|c) will produce exactly the same DFA as [abc].
Well, in a perfect world, it certainly should. I'm just saying that it might conceivably matter, in our imperfect world.
In other words, although the regexp might be a bit smaller, and perhaps compile marginally quicker, it would make no difference to the running time.
What if the problem was the compilation process, not the runtime part? Even if it would generate an identical DFA, if the route to that DFA is sufficiently more convoluted to get there, perhaps it would be more likely to exceed some internal limits on the regexp complexity? Again, it's conceivable that making this change could help.
Not to say that I'd be holding my breath, mind you, but it might be worth some experimentation.
What I was interested in, however, was getting around the limit of the GNU regexp DFA. It seemed to use a 64K buffer, and 64K branch offsets, which means the maximum size of a regexp you can compile is comparatively small. (Much larger than anything you might write by hand, of course, but quite limiting when you start to write code which writes regexps). There was no easy way to get around these limitations, so I ended up using various hacks to limit the size of the regexp (splitting into multiple regexps), and also tried using a flex-generated lexer instead.
64K does sound quite limiting, but why couldn't you just increase the size of those buffers? (and change the branch offset size to 32 bits?)
A flex-generated lexer is an interesting idea -- how well did that work out?
If the GNU regexp library is just too limited, why not use a different one? PCRE jumps to mind...
The basic concept was to use a table of "equivalences" [...] we generate a regexp with (r1|r2|r3|...) for each letter [...] you can end up with a regexp which is too big for GNU regexp to handle...
Since many of your "equivalences" are probably a single character, it would probably simplify the regexp if you used character classes with [] whenever possible, and only fall back to grouping and alternation (...|...) when absolutely necessary. This might still be too complex, but it might help...
With regard to not being able to erase bit of a tape, all I have to say is how much time can your TiVO store? Tapes are cheap, reusable and there's no limit to how many I can use. Once the TiVO's drive is full, then what?
Each of my DirecTV/TiVo units can store well over 100 hours, but I added hard drives to them. Originally they held about 30 hours each. Of course, when the TiVo is full, old recordings have to be deleted to make room for new recordings, or you stop recording anything new.
You don't have to give up your VCR when you get a TiVo. The TiVo supports a "Save to VCR" option, and allows you to use the VCR more effectively. You can just record programs to tape that you want to archive, instead of recording "temporary" programs that may remain on that videotape indefinitely. Tape fragmentation is easily avoided, and you're more likely to actually watch the "temporary" recordings if they're on the TiVo... (Of course, this staging system works best with a DirecTV/TiVo unit where you don't have any recording quality loss on the TiVo!)
It sounds like the Telocity DSL people were incompetent, and maybe those same people were handling the billing when it became DirecTV DSL? I've had DirecTV for at least 5-6 years, and DirecTV receivers with TiVo for at least 2-3 years, but I've never had any problems with DirecTV's billing.
DirecTV is undeniably the best type of TiVo because of the 100% perfect recording quality and efficient disk space utilization, not to mention the dual tuners.
It sounds like you had a bad experience with one business unit of DirecTV (which started independent), but maybe you shouldn't blacklist the whole company for that. That's a bit like refusing to buy a GE microwave because too many GE lightbulbs burned out on you...
Wouldn't the two logically use similar codebases and thus be vulnerable to the same attacks?
You would think so, wouldn't you? No, a separate development team worked on IE for the Mac; the codebases weren't unified at all. From all reports, IE on the Mac was better than IE on Windows in many ways, particularly standards compliance. Go figure!
I was aware of the Uniform Driver Interface (UDI) project, but again, I don't think their goal was exactly what I had in mind. They specify a "UDI environment", which is an API to be provided by any OS that wants to support UDI drivers. What I'm talking about is making the proprietary driver code present an API much more like a device BIOS interface.
The "UDI environment" is just their way of saying that the OS has to implement UDI's API to run UDI drivers. (Well, duh!) UDI drivers can be proprietary code -- the UDI specification is not under the GPL, and is free for anyone to implement. There is also a reference implementation of a UDI environment (for Linux) which is open source.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can't fathom any argument for claiming an independently-developed UDI driver to be a derivative work of Linux, even if you choose to load it dynamically into a Linux kernel. (Obviously, static linking creates a binary which is a derived work of both, and therefore couldn't be distributed.) UDI effectively neutralizes the GPL at the device-driver boundary...
I agree that would be ideal, but it's easier said than done. I've got no other signatures on my GPG key now. I want to get some, but I don't know anyone else around here who does that sort of thing. How would I go about getting some? I know they have key signing parties at conventions and such, but I'm a college student, which means I have no money or time to attend such things.
People take advantage of conventions to organize key-signing parties because diverse groups of people from many geographic locales end up at conventions, and having people sign each other's keys strengthens the PGP "web of trust". However, you don't need geographic diversity for this to be useful.
Organize a local key-signing party. Surely there are many other computer geeks at your college interested in using PGP/GPG. Start getting the geeks together and sign each other's keys. If you can, try to get someone to join the party who is already connected to the worldwide web of trust that most well-known PGP keys are part of. If you can't get anyone well-connected to your key-signing party, don't worry! Creating a local web of trust at your college is a good start, and all it takes is one person who signed your key to get a signature from a well-connected key to get you well-connected yourself. And that can happen after the fact.
The PGP web of trust is a beautiful thing. You start out by creating little webs of trust amongst people you know. Over time, the little webs get linked together into larger webs, eventually getting linked into a global web of trust. Even if you don't know anyone in the global web of trust now, remember the "six degrees of separation" thing. If your friend signs your key, and his friend signs his key, and so on, sooner or later a signature is bound to create a path from the global web of trust to you, and bang! Now you're part of the global web of trust too, and can help link other people into it. Actually, it's better than that, because nobody needs to be your friend to sign your key -- just anyone who can verify your identity, whether friend, enemy or complete stranger.
When you create your local web of trust from scratch, take it seriously and do it right. Remember, you sign someone's key to indicate that you've verified their identity and that it's truly their key -- it's not an endorsement of the person in any way. If you despise the person and everything they stand for, but you're certain they are who they say they are and that the key you're asked to sign is their key and not another, then go ahead and sign the key. If you admire and respect a person who asks you to sign a key, but you can't be 100% certain of the person's identity and the true ownership of the key, don't sign it.
Key signatures aren't a popularity contest, it's all about verifying identity, nothing more. Don't sign a key just because someone you know appeared to email it to you; that email could be forged. Verify the key with that person through real-world mechanisms first, to make sure you aren't duped into signing the wrong key. This is where key-signing parties are helpful -- people can gather in a room, look at ID cards (e.g. driver's licenses), get a verified key fingerprint from the person, and sign the key, fairly confident that the identity they're signing is correct -- even if the key belongs to a complete stranger.
By the way, next time you complain that you can't get anyone to sign your key, you might specify your geographical location. Someone in the global web of trust with a well-connected key might offer to sign your key (especially if you'll organize a local key-signing party to "share the wealth"), but such a person is likely not to know you personally, so they'd have to meet you in person to verify your identity. And without knowing where you are located, nobody is likely to offer...
I'm so sick of hearing about lawyers "representing" the interests of millions of consumers, where the end result is that the consumer (who may well have been bilked out of hundreds or thousands of dollars) may get some token of $10-20 (only after jumping through hoops to "qualify"). Meanwhile, the lawyers walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars for their contingency fee. (The CD price-fixing settlement comes to mind, as an obvious example...)
Another thought. I ain't a lawyer, but I think 'deny' in this context probably doesn't have the same meaning it would have in normal speach; I think it may instead mean 'does not admit'.
This seems like a stretch. But it sure would be nice for an actual lawyer to clarify this for us!
They've certainly used it this way in other parts of the document, and have explicitly explained that they have done so, usually due to not having adequate information to determine the point one way or the other; this can't be argued in this case, which may be why they haven't said so here, but they're under no obligation to admit P28 even if it is true, I believe.
I have a hard time believing this argument, because IBM did not deny anything where they lacked information -- they said they lacked the information to admit or deny, and left it at that. Why didn't SCO do the same?
I suspect "deny" means what it normally means, and SCO is simply following a strategy of "deny, deny, deny" as much as possible.
Unless a lawyer tells us otherwise, I'm going to assume that this definition of "deny" (which doesn't mean what it means) is as bogus as SCO's ridiculous claim that copyright law does not permit a copyright owner to license free distribution of a work, merely because copyright law guarantees the right to make a single backup copy (in absense of any license)...
Certainly, including the GPL in an SEC filing would imply that they accepted the GPL. But so does distributing software accompanied by the GPL license. Yet here they seem to be directly denying having accepted the GPL. So which do we believe? The implied acceptance, or the nearly-explicit denial?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter -- either they accepted the GPL, and are liable for violating that contract or they didn't accept it and are liable for copyright infringement. Either way, they're liable, right?
I don't think so. A possible interpretation of your quote is that that at least one of the clauses of paragraph 28 is not true.
I doubt it. If you look at the rest of SCO's response, they carefully admit anything obviously, provably true (except the things which would destroy their case to admit), while denying everything else. I don't know the legalities of it, but it seems like that blanket denial would be equally applicably to each allegation in the paragraph, including IBM's allegation that SCO accepted the terms of the GPL (by modifying and distributing Linux products). IANAL; maybe a real lawyer can answer this?
This is poor phrasing on behalf of IBM's lawyers.
I think you're picking nits. No doubt IBM pays handsomely for their legal representation; do you really think they would make such a mistake in the wording if it mattered? IBM's wording seems pretty careful throughout. Actions of SCO's employees might bind SCO, acting as their agents, especially when SCO's management continued to distribute Linux under the GPL after filing a lawsuit alleging illicit SCO code being put into Linux. Surely the management was cognizant well before filing the lawsuit? It would be a bit disingenuous for SCO to claim that management was unaware of problems with their own Linux distribution after filing that lawsuit! (Not that I'd put it past them to make the claim anyhow.)
Also, if SCO believed when they accepted the GPL that certain portions of it were not enforceable, they may believe that they didn't accept those portions, while accepting the remainder.
Certainly, this argument could have been made, but then they should have admitted to accepting the "enforceable" parts of the GPL, while denying the rest. Instead, they seem to have denied accepting the GPL at all...
How can they be sued for violating a contract (the GPL) not entered into? If they don't accept the GPL, they're not bound by its terms. However, it leaves them wide open for a claim of copyright infringement, since the GPL was the only license available...
Keep in mind, the DOJ rolled over and offered a slap on the wrist after winning their case! There's no way IBM will do any such thing. IBM wants to crush SCO, and they will!
28. SCO accepted the terms of the GPL by modifying and distributing Linux products. By distributing Linux products under the GPL, SCO agreed, among other things, not to assert -- indeed, it is prohibited from asserting -- certain proprietary rights over any programs distributed by SCO under the terms of the GPL. SCO also agreed not to restrict further distribution of any programs distributed by SCO under the terms of the GPL.
They asserted a blanket denial of that paragraph, including SCO's acceptance of the GPL. While the GPL states that you don't have to accept the license, nothing else would give SCO a valid license to distribute copyrighted works of others licensed under the GPL. Since SCO's court filing (quoted above) indicates that they did not accept the GPL. However, without accepting the GPL, SCO had no valid license to distributed the copyrighted works covered under the GPL!
I am not a lawyer, but it appears to me that SCO has admitted in a court document (quoted above) that they did not accept the GPL -- couldn't this court document could be used as evidence for any Linux copyright owner to sue SCO for willful copyright infringement? How could SCO possibly worm their way out of this one without perjury?
IIRC the 10C/11C/12C/15C/16C were the 'Pioneer' series, and as an HP calculator collector they are still my favourite. Great compactness, usability, ruggedness. (These would date from about mid 80's.) If you don't need units, graphing etc. getting one of these would be well worth while.
That was the "Voyager" series. These calculators were awesome. Powerful, rugged, good form factor, great keyboard feel, unbelievably long battery life. I've had an HP-11C since sometime in high school (probably got it about 1985), and it's served me incredibly well. I got an HP-28C in 1987 as a graduation present; it's more powerful by far, but overall I like the HP-11C better -- I'm so glad I didn't sell it like I was planning to after I got the 28C.
More recently, I realized just how much I love my 11C, and realized I would be devastated if I ever lost it permanently. (In fact, I did lose track of it for a couple years, and was quite relieved when it finally turned up again.) I decided to buy a 12C and a 16C to add to my collection. The 12C was easy, but the 16C cost more from eBay (~$230) than the list price of the calculator when it was new! However, it was the only real programmer's calculator HP ever made, so it was worth it.
The incredible thing is that the HP-12C is still in production after 22 years. (It was introduced in 1981.) The rest of the "Voyager" series was discontinued in 1989, but business people are so conservative that they just keep buying the 12C year after year, so they still make it! I bought this one brand-new from a store, and it was obvious that they hadn't even updated the manual in 20 years! Sure, it's not made in the USA anymore, but it's the same design, and it's a great calculator. Of course, it's a financial calculator, so it doesn't offer scientific/math functions like the 11C and 15C, but it's great as a quick RPN calculator for simpler math, and you don't have to pay collector's prices to get one.
So now I have an 11C, a 12C, a 16C and a 28C. I never use the 28C in practice, but I use the Voyager-series calculators all the time. I wish I had a 15C for the set, but it's not worth it to pay another $200 for one, so I'll pass.:-)
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
How about the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once for another 14 years? Imagine that, the Founding Fathers had the right balance from the start!
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I also question the benefit to open source java. Microsoft Java? Maybe, but they built C# because Sun took them to task for violating their license, and creating a "write once, run on Microsoft" version. I don't really see any compelling arguments for making it open source. IBM, BlackBerry, and other java SDKs without an open source license, and there is a community process for submitting changes to the specs.
It's not just about specs. Implementations matter. If Sun's reference implementation isn't open source, the language isn't really free.
I can understand Sun's initial reluctance to open-source Java years ago -- Microsoft would have (probably successfully) embraced and extended Java, as they indeed tried to do. At the time, the closed license was beneficial.
Here's the compelling reason for Sun to open-source Java now -- Microsoft no longer has an incentive to embrace and extend Java. They've done an end-run around the Java license by reimplementing a virtually identical language and calling it C# instead of Java. Microsoft will keep pushing C# over Java, and they're already successfully stealing away significant mindshare from Java. Microsoft has proven their ability to (illegally) leverage their monopoly position to acquire new markets. I hate to say it, but in the battle of C# vs. Java, the smart money is probably on C# unless something changes.
Making the Sun reference implementation completely open-source would change the rules of the game. Microsoft might try to subvert it again, but there really wouldn't be any point; C# does the job equally well. More importantly, the rest of the industry would embrace Java even more than it already has, and it could serve to steal mindshare back from C# despite Microsoft's monopoly advantage. This is a compelling reason to do it.
"Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets," was McNealy's response to IBM.
I have no doubt this remark was sarcastic on McNealy's part, but suppose IBM takes it seriously? If IBM wants Java open-sourced badly enough, would they consider making DB2 open-source as a sort of trade? If IBM responded with an offer to enter into a contract at Sun for both Java and DB2 to be open-sourced together (and conditionally on each other), would McNealy take IBM up on the offer? Or would he just find a new excuse to refuse to relinquish control over the code?
It seems that Sun still hasn't learned their lesson from the NeWS debacle of the late 80s. While NeWS was clearly superior technology at the time, X11 was free in every sense. And it mattered. NeWS fans (including me) could see the writing on the wall, and complained that Sun should make NeWS as free as X11. ("Open Source" wasn't a term coined yet, of course.) Of course, Sun refused, and NeWS died a slow and terrible death at the hands of an inferior (but free) competitor. Even now, Sun shows little interest in making NeWS free, when its value as an "asset" is zero. Will Sun maintain a similar deathgrip on Java until it too lands in the dustbins of history, while the world settles on C# instead of Java, as with X11 and NeWS?
Sun, learn from your mistakes. There was a time when Java's license prevented abuse by Microsoft, but that time has passed. C# is Microsoft's new approach to "embrace and extend" Java, and the only effective way to counter it is to make Java fully open-source now, before C# inexorably crushes Java. The writing is on the wall yet again -- don't let Java die the same lingering death that NeWS suffered!
Did anyone bother to check the facts? Don't just read the disturbingly uncritical ZDnet article that parrots everything they were told, dig deeper and read the press release it links to. Take note that "The City and Guilds of London Institute" is "the leading provider of vocational qualifications in the United Kingdom." They've obviously spin-doctored the numbers because they want vocational occupations to look better than professional ones.
This bogus "happiness index" only ranks the percentage of people who said they were "very happy", but look at their definition in the fine print of the footnotes: "Very happy constitutes those who rated their level of happiness as 10 out of 10. Respondents were asked to grade their level of happiness on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being very unhappy and 10 being very happy" The people who responded with a 9 probaby thought of themselves as "very happy", yet with this spin applied, they would seem to be unhappy, wouldn't they, since only 14% of IT specialists are "very happy" (10 of 10). However, elsewhere in the press release, it suggests that only 10% of IT workers are "unhappy" (1-3 of 10), which leaves 76% unaccounted for in the 4-9 range. What if most of those were 8-9? Would we still be talking about "The Unhappy World of IT Professionals"?
Without the raw data, this study is almost worthless. We don't even know the average rating for each category -- maybe IT workers are happier on average than florists, even if more florists are willing to rank their happiness at 10 of 10. Maybe IT workers are more reluctant to give the maximum score, realizing that there's always room for improvement. Does that mean most IT workers are unhappy?
People have been jumping to conclusions based on a biased study spun to favor vocational workers. Time for a reality check.
You sound so much like a marketing guy it's hilarious... so confident in your ability to brainwash physicians into being your corporate puppets?
I'm a computer programmer, not a marketing guy. I hate marketing. But I'm not blind. I can see how pervasive it is. I spent a year and a half working in a physician's office (programming software for physicians), and I saw the barrage of pharmaceutical logos on virtually every item in the office.
Drug companies are the ones fooling themselves... I chuckle every time I think about how little their billions actually buy.
Sure, keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, the drug companies are laughing themselves all the way to the bank. They may be sleazy, but they're not stupid. You can be sure they've measured the impact of their billions of dollars of investment and found it beneficial. You're a fool if you think you're immune. Nobody is immune, even if some are more susceptible than others.
Ask yourself why they pushed so long for direct-to-consumer advertising, and why it's increasing so dramatically.
I have no doubt that consumers are 100 times more gullible than doctors, so of course they'll prefer to convince the consumer. That doesn't mean that doctors are magically immune to marketing influences. Doctors have this bad habit of thinking of themselves as godlike. They're wrong. Doctors are human too, and they make mistakes and their subconscious attitudes are affected by marketing, whether or not they believe it.
Unlike consumers, at least doctors are likely to consciously avoid letting marketing bias their decisions, which helps -- but that doesn't mean they're completely successful at it. If they were, those billions of dollars wouldn't net any return, and the drug companies would have quit long ago.
Look, I don't mean to sound patronizing, but I don't think you really understand how doctors choose drugs: [...]
Yes, that's all well and good, but what if there's more than one option? In my experience, doctors often can come up with several different drugs that are viable choices, meeting all the factors you listed. At that point, the subliminal factor of marketing may indeed come into play, and you might not even realize it. As long as there's a plausible rationale for prescribing the drug, the marketing may influence you toward prescribing it.
Also, I seem to recall reading about studies that actually tested this, to see if the lack of bias doctors invariably perceive in themselves is true or an illusion. I seem to recall that such studies found objective evidence that strongly suggested that bias was introduced by the marketing, which is what you'd expect from the fact that drug companies keep spending billions on this. I'm sorry, but I don't have any references handy for such studies; if I knew where to find one, I'd point you at it.
Now free samples of drugs? I'll take those every day. Those are a great service, because I have plenty of patients who are too poor to afford even generic medications, and wouldn't get medication at all if it wasn't for samples.
This is a real issue, and it's a tough one. On the one hand, many patients truly would be out of luck without the free samples, because they can't afford the medication. At the same time, giving away the free samples gives you experience with the drug, and will make you more likely to prescribe the drug in the future to a patient who can afford to pay, rather than perhaps experiment with a drug that you haven't had patients use before. Or it can get you into the habit of using that drug even if you have experience with alternatives.
Free samples are valuable, yet insidious. And they are probably the single most effective marketing tool the drug companies have at their disposal, yet they're hard to refuse because you know some patients will suffer hardships if you don't have free samples available to give them.
The right solution to this is
What an insult... what a great way to piss off a group of people the military desperately needs to retain. My question was this: If they think I'm enough of a whore that I'd sell out my patients for the price of a pen, why even trust me to take care of people?
The pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars on various freebies for doctors -- free pens, free post-it notes, free lunches, free samples, etc. Invariably, the doctors receiving this largesse are utterly convinced that their behavior is unaffected. Of course they don't believe they're selling out their patients, or they wouldn't accept.
Instead of getting your feathers ruffled at the indignity of the implied accusation, stop and use your brain for a minute. Billions of dollars in freebies. The pharmaceutical industry isn't spending that because of their love for doctors. Obviously it works. The industry is getting a good return on their investment, or they wouldn't continue spending those billions, year after year. They see the big picture, unlike the highly-educated physicians who fall for the scam.
I'm glad to hear that the military is anal enough about the gifts doctors receive to insist that they refuse a 5-cent pen. Need a pen? Get one that isn't emblazoned with a brand name working its way into your subconscience. Obviously the cost isn't a problem, is it?
More doctors in private practice should follow the military's lead on this. Sure, everyone likes free stuff, but doctors make life-and-death decisions and should hold themselves to a higher ethical standard. Health care is too important to be so heavily influenced by marketing -- and anyone who can't see the influence of pharmaceutical marketing is just fooling themselves.
I mean, imagine that a law was passed to penalize big businesses from dumping garbage in rivers, and it would cost them $100,000 per incident. But since "incident" was so vaguely defined, even dropping a gum wrapper off a canoe would mean you violated the law.
You mean a law like Superfund? I've read that a pizza restaurant was forced to pay for toxic cleanup in a landfill because a few of its pizza boxes were found there. And you probably thought you were being facetious!
Does anyone know if there are implementations of NeWS available as open source now? Has anyone working on one of the "X Is Icky - I have a Better Way" window systems looked at NeWS for a model? Enquiring minds (however enfeebled) want to know.
Back in May 2000 (longer ago that I thought), I looked into this. I didn't really find any good clones of NeWS, but I was wondering whether Sun might consider open-sourcing NeWS since it had long since lost all commercial viability.
I ended up contacting James Gosling at Sun, who was the original author of both NeWS and Java, to ask him whether it might be possible for Sun to open the old source code to NeWS. His response was that he had already tried to make it happen several years before, but the source code was lost! Apparently the only source they could find was the NeWS 2.0 bastardized combination of X11, NeWS and Adobe's Display PostScript. The source to the original clean NeWS 1.1 release was nowhere to be found!
After a couple weeks of research, and asking a number of people, I found some leads on a couple places that might have had copies of the NeWS 1.1 source code (there were a few sources licensees around), so maybe it could have been repatriated back to Sun. The source may not be "lost to the ages" entirely after all.
Unfortunately, it seemed that James Gosling had by this time lost interest in pushing for NeWS to be released as open source, because he feels the world has moved on and PostScript is no longer the approach he would favor for a GUI system. While he's not opposed to the idea, it takes someone pushing internally to make it happen, because it takes time and effort to scrub the code for release, get approvals from executives and lawyers, etc.
Perhaps if enough people would take an interest in lobbying Sun for the release of the source, NeWS itself (the real thing) could potentially be released as open source someday, assuming the source can be recovered. If anyone is interested, please feel free to email me about it.
Alternatively, I have to wonder how much of the functionality of NeWS already exists in Ghostscript. Perhaps it would be feasible to adapt Ghostscript into a NeWS clone, and it probably has better rendering code than NeWS did. It might be an interesting project, though perhaps a daunting one...
If you're going to "out" someone by posting their email address for spammers to harvest, you ought to post your own email address at the same time so you can both "share the love" with all that lovely spam. (And yes, my real email address is deven@ties.org -- I never hide my email address as a matter of policy, even on Slashdot...)
I'm fairly sure that (a|b|c) will produce exactly the same DFA as [abc].
Well, in a perfect world, it certainly should. I'm just saying that it might conceivably matter, in our imperfect world.
In other words, although the regexp might be a bit smaller, and perhaps compile marginally quicker, it would make no difference to the running time.
What if the problem was the compilation process, not the runtime part? Even if it would generate an identical DFA, if the route to that DFA is sufficiently more convoluted to get there, perhaps it would be more likely to exceed some internal limits on the regexp complexity? Again, it's conceivable that making this change could help.
Not to say that I'd be holding my breath, mind you, but it might be worth some experimentation.
What I was interested in, however, was getting around the limit of the GNU regexp DFA. It seemed to use a 64K buffer, and 64K branch offsets, which means the maximum size of a regexp you can compile is comparatively small. (Much larger than anything you might write by hand, of course, but quite limiting when you start to write code which writes regexps). There was no easy way to get around these limitations, so I ended up using various hacks to limit the size of the regexp (splitting into multiple regexps), and also tried using a flex-generated lexer instead.
64K does sound quite limiting, but why couldn't you just increase the size of those buffers? (and change the branch offset size to 32 bits?)
A flex-generated lexer is an interesting idea -- how well did that work out?
If the GNU regexp library is just too limited, why not use a different one? PCRE jumps to mind...
The basic concept was to use a table of "equivalences" [...] we generate a regexp with (r1|r2|r3|...) for each letter [...] you can end up with a regexp which is too big for GNU regexp to handle ...
Since many of your "equivalences" are probably a single character, it would probably simplify the regexp if you used character classes with [] whenever possible, and only fall back to grouping and alternation (...|...) when absolutely necessary. This might still be too complex, but it might help...
That was informative.
With regard to not being able to erase bit of a tape, all I have to say is how much time can your TiVO store? Tapes are cheap, reusable and there's no limit to how many I can use. Once the TiVO's drive is full, then what?
Each of my DirecTV/TiVo units can store well over 100 hours, but I added hard drives to them. Originally they held about 30 hours each. Of course, when the TiVo is full, old recordings have to be deleted to make room for new recordings, or you stop recording anything new.
You don't have to give up your VCR when you get a TiVo. The TiVo supports a "Save to VCR" option, and allows you to use the VCR more effectively. You can just record programs to tape that you want to archive, instead of recording "temporary" programs that may remain on that videotape indefinitely. Tape fragmentation is easily avoided, and you're more likely to actually watch the "temporary" recordings if they're on the TiVo... (Of course, this staging system works best with a DirecTV/TiVo unit where you don't have any recording quality loss on the TiVo!)
It sounds like the Telocity DSL people were incompetent, and maybe those same people were handling the billing when it became DirecTV DSL? I've had DirecTV for at least 5-6 years, and DirecTV receivers with TiVo for at least 2-3 years, but I've never had any problems with DirecTV's billing.
DirecTV is undeniably the best type of TiVo because of the 100% perfect recording quality and efficient disk space utilization, not to mention the dual tuners.
It sounds like you had a bad experience with one business unit of DirecTV (which started independent), but maybe you shouldn't blacklist the whole company for that. That's a bit like refusing to buy a GE microwave because too many GE lightbulbs burned out on you...
Wouldn't the two logically use similar codebases and thus be vulnerable to the same attacks?
You would think so, wouldn't you? No, a separate development team worked on IE for the Mac; the codebases weren't unified at all. From all reports, IE on the Mac was better than IE on Windows in many ways, particularly standards compliance. Go figure!
I was aware of the Uniform Driver Interface (UDI) project, but again, I don't think their goal was exactly what I had in mind. They specify a "UDI environment", which is an API to be provided by any OS that wants to support UDI drivers. What I'm talking about is making the proprietary driver code present an API much more like a device BIOS interface.
The "UDI environment" is just their way of saying that the OS has to implement UDI's API to run UDI drivers. (Well, duh!) UDI drivers can be proprietary code -- the UDI specification is not under the GPL, and is free for anyone to implement. There is also a reference implementation of a UDI environment (for Linux) which is open source.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can't fathom any argument for claiming an independently-developed UDI driver to be a derivative work of Linux, even if you choose to load it dynamically into a Linux kernel. (Obviously, static linking creates a binary which is a derived work of both, and therefore couldn't be distributed.) UDI effectively neutralizes the GPL at the device-driver boundary...
I agree that would be ideal, but it's easier said than done. I've got no other signatures on my GPG key now. I want to get some, but I don't know anyone else around here who does that sort of thing. How would I go about getting some? I know they have key signing parties at conventions and such, but I'm a college student, which means I have no money or time to attend such things.
People take advantage of conventions to organize key-signing parties because diverse groups of people from many geographic locales end up at conventions, and having people sign each other's keys strengthens the PGP "web of trust". However, you don't need geographic diversity for this to be useful.
Organize a local key-signing party. Surely there are many other computer geeks at your college interested in using PGP/GPG. Start getting the geeks together and sign each other's keys. If you can, try to get someone to join the party who is already connected to the worldwide web of trust that most well-known PGP keys are part of. If you can't get anyone well-connected to your key-signing party, don't worry! Creating a local web of trust at your college is a good start, and all it takes is one person who signed your key to get a signature from a well-connected key to get you well-connected yourself. And that can happen after the fact.
The PGP web of trust is a beautiful thing. You start out by creating little webs of trust amongst people you know. Over time, the little webs get linked together into larger webs, eventually getting linked into a global web of trust. Even if you don't know anyone in the global web of trust now, remember the "six degrees of separation" thing. If your friend signs your key, and his friend signs his key, and so on, sooner or later a signature is bound to create a path from the global web of trust to you, and bang! Now you're part of the global web of trust too, and can help link other people into it. Actually, it's better than that, because nobody needs to be your friend to sign your key -- just anyone who can verify your identity, whether friend, enemy or complete stranger.
When you create your local web of trust from scratch, take it seriously and do it right. Remember, you sign someone's key to indicate that you've verified their identity and that it's truly their key -- it's not an endorsement of the person in any way. If you despise the person and everything they stand for, but you're certain they are who they say they are and that the key you're asked to sign is their key and not another, then go ahead and sign the key. If you admire and respect a person who asks you to sign a key, but you can't be 100% certain of the person's identity and the true ownership of the key, don't sign it.
Key signatures aren't a popularity contest, it's all about verifying identity, nothing more. Don't sign a key just because someone you know appeared to email it to you; that email could be forged. Verify the key with that person through real-world mechanisms first, to make sure you aren't duped into signing the wrong key. This is where key-signing parties are helpful -- people can gather in a room, look at ID cards (e.g. driver's licenses), get a verified key fingerprint from the person, and sign the key, fairly confident that the identity they're signing is correct -- even if the key belongs to a complete stranger.
By the way, next time you complain that you can't get anyone to sign your key, you might specify your geographical location. Someone in the global web of trust with a well-connected key might offer to sign your key (especially if you'll organize a local key-signing party to "share the wealth"), but such a person is likely not to know you personally, so they'd have to meet you in person to verify your identity. And without knowing where you are located, nobody is likely to offer...
Where are class-action lawyers on the list?!?
I'm so sick of hearing about lawyers "representing" the interests of millions of consumers, where the end result is that the consumer (who may well have been bilked out of hundreds or thousands of dollars) may get some token of $10-20 (only after jumping through hoops to "qualify"). Meanwhile, the lawyers walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars for their contingency fee. (The CD price-fixing settlement comes to mind, as an obvious example...)
Another thought. I ain't a lawyer, but I think 'deny' in this context probably doesn't have the same meaning it would have in normal speach; I think it may instead mean 'does not admit'.
This seems like a stretch. But it sure would be nice for an actual lawyer to clarify this for us!
They've certainly used it this way in other parts of the document, and have explicitly explained that they have done so, usually due to not having adequate information to determine the point one way or the other; this can't be argued in this case, which may be why they haven't said so here, but they're under no obligation to admit P28 even if it is true, I believe.
I have a hard time believing this argument, because IBM did not deny anything where they lacked information -- they said they lacked the information to admit or deny, and left it at that. Why didn't SCO do the same?
I suspect "deny" means what it normally means, and SCO is simply following a strategy of "deny, deny, deny" as much as possible.
Unless a lawyer tells us otherwise, I'm going to assume that this definition of "deny" (which doesn't mean what it means) is as bogus as SCO's ridiculous claim that copyright law does not permit a copyright owner to license free distribution of a work, merely because copyright law guarantees the right to make a single backup copy (in absense of any license)...
Certainly, including the GPL in an SEC filing would imply that they accepted the GPL. But so does distributing software accompanied by the GPL license. Yet here they seem to be directly denying having accepted the GPL. So which do we believe? The implied acceptance, or the nearly-explicit denial?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter -- either they accepted the GPL, and are liable for violating that contract or they didn't accept it and are liable for copyright infringement. Either way, they're liable, right?
I don't think so. A possible interpretation of your quote is that that at least one of the clauses of paragraph 28 is not true.
I doubt it. If you look at the rest of SCO's response, they carefully admit anything obviously, provably true (except the things which would destroy their case to admit), while denying everything else. I don't know the legalities of it, but it seems like that blanket denial would be equally applicably to each allegation in the paragraph, including IBM's allegation that SCO accepted the terms of the GPL (by modifying and distributing Linux products). IANAL; maybe a real lawyer can answer this?
This is poor phrasing on behalf of IBM's lawyers.
I think you're picking nits. No doubt IBM pays handsomely for their legal representation; do you really think they would make such a mistake in the wording if it mattered? IBM's wording seems pretty careful throughout. Actions of SCO's employees might bind SCO, acting as their agents, especially when SCO's management continued to distribute Linux under the GPL after filing a lawsuit alleging illicit SCO code being put into Linux. Surely the management was cognizant well before filing the lawsuit? It would be a bit disingenuous for SCO to claim that management was unaware of problems with their own Linux distribution after filing that lawsuit! (Not that I'd put it past them to make the claim anyhow.)
Also, if SCO believed when they accepted the GPL that certain portions of it were not enforceable, they may believe that they didn't accept those portions, while accepting the remainder.
Certainly, this argument could have been made, but then they should have admitted to accepting the "enforceable" parts of the GPL, while denying the rest. Instead, they seem to have denied accepting the GPL at all...
How can they be sued for violating a contract (the GPL) not entered into? If they don't accept the GPL, they're not bound by its terms. However, it leaves them wide open for a claim of copyright infringement, since the GPL was the only license available...
SCO has basically told the court that they don't accept the GPL, so it should be a moot point...
Keep in mind, the DOJ rolled over and offered a slap on the wrist after winning their case! There's no way IBM will do any such thing. IBM wants to crush SCO, and they will!
The response from SCO's lawyers in their answer to IBM's counterclaim:
They asserted a blanket denial of that paragraph, including SCO's acceptance of the GPL. While the GPL states that you don't have to accept the license, nothing else would give SCO a valid license to distribute copyrighted works of others licensed under the GPL. Since SCO's court filing (quoted above) indicates that they did not accept the GPL. However, without accepting the GPL, SCO had no valid license to distributed the copyrighted works covered under the GPL!I am not a lawyer, but it appears to me that SCO has admitted in a court document (quoted above) that they did not accept the GPL -- couldn't this court document could be used as evidence for any Linux copyright owner to sue SCO for willful copyright infringement? How could SCO possibly worm their way out of this one without perjury?
IIRC the 10C/11C/12C/15C/16C were the 'Pioneer' series, and as an HP calculator collector they are still my favourite. Great compactness, usability, ruggedness. (These would date from about mid 80's.) If you don't need units, graphing etc. getting one of these would be well worth while.
:-)
That was the "Voyager" series. These calculators were awesome. Powerful, rugged, good form factor, great keyboard feel, unbelievably long battery life. I've had an HP-11C since sometime in high school (probably got it about 1985), and it's served me incredibly well. I got an HP-28C in 1987 as a graduation present; it's more powerful by far, but overall I like the HP-11C better -- I'm so glad I didn't sell it like I was planning to after I got the 28C.
More recently, I realized just how much I love my 11C, and realized I would be devastated if I ever lost it permanently. (In fact, I did lose track of it for a couple years, and was quite relieved when it finally turned up again.) I decided to buy a 12C and a 16C to add to my collection. The 12C was easy, but the 16C cost more from eBay (~$230) than the list price of the calculator when it was new! However, it was the only real programmer's calculator HP ever made, so it was worth it.
The incredible thing is that the HP-12C is still in production after 22 years. (It was introduced in 1981.) The rest of the "Voyager" series was discontinued in 1989, but business people are so conservative that they just keep buying the 12C year after year, so they still make it! I bought this one brand-new from a store, and it was obvious that they hadn't even updated the manual in 20 years! Sure, it's not made in the USA anymore, but it's the same design, and it's a great calculator. Of course, it's a financial calculator, so it doesn't offer scientific/math functions like the 11C and 15C, but it's great as a quick RPN calculator for simpler math, and you don't have to pay collector's prices to get one.
So now I have an 11C, a 12C, a 16C and a 28C. I never use the 28C in practice, but I use the Voyager-series calculators all the time. I wish I had a 15C for the set, but it's not worth it to pay another $200 for one, so I'll pass.
If I had my druthers I'd make it 15 years renewable once for another 15.
How about the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once for another 14 years? Imagine that, the Founding Fathers had the right balance from the start!