But as a developer I can easily set up another repository that can be used by the same installation software. I just tell the user to add a certain PPA and my app will be indistinguishable from apps in the Ubuntu repositories.
Personally, I think it is perfectly fine for Apple to have control over the branding of its repository. I have absolutely no problem with them exerting control over what kind of software they allow in their repository, or associate with their brand. I even think it is a good idea to make it very clear where an application is approved by the Apple brand and where it is not. But not supporting more than one repository in their main package management system is a very, very bad idea.
However, unlike most people, I don't care. I believe that in this day and age community based software development (the developers of which are unlikely to jump through the hoops to get into Apple's repository) is becoming important enough that this will become a significant issue to consumers. In the same way that I see Android being a serious threat to iOS due to a more open development environment, I see it happening with the desktop. Time will tell, of course.
As the AC mentioned, getting your ass kicked is the way you win. You allow your adversary to be evil and nasty and horrible to you. You let their free press report about it to the world. Then you let them feel bad about it. Then you win.
It's not even certain that Ghandi made the quote himself. People using it in these circumstances are simply ignorant.
My biggest problem with this is if I can't get it on my device, it still isn't open enough for me. Some manufacturers go to a great deal of effort to make sure I can't do that. Most (probably all?) include software which isn't open, some of which is required for the operation of the phone.
While I agree that Jobs' comment was intended to be highly misleading, he has a point that it is difficult to purchase a phone that I can actually modify entirely. Even though Android is open source, my options as a consumer of a device is generally limited to what the manufacturer allows me to do (or what some hacker has cracked his way into). This is not unlike the iPhone.
If my manufacturer decides not to release a 3.0 version of Android for their phone (hoping instead to force me to upgrade my hardware to get the next version), I may be stuck. This is actually important to me. I hate to bring software freedom into the conversation, but open source code isn't enough. Being able to modify, upgrade or compile the code is useless if I can't run it (freedom 0).
This is not a reasonable assumption. Our models are at best simplifications of reality. Do atoms *really* exist the way we envision them? Is there such a thing as an electron as a real finite particle? it wasn't that long ago that we believed that atoms were indivisible, discrete particles of matter. Our new models make that look ridiculously naive. 100 years from now I think it is likely that our current models will look ridiculously naive.
But older, naive models work fine for a lot of problems. We don't have to know how things *really* work at a low level as long as we can build a repeatable model that is useful for our tasks. The model can be (and almost certainly is) a black box with interfaces that we care about. Everything inside the box is up for grabs. Not knowing what is really going on inside doesn't affect our ability to solve our problem, so we ignore it (for now anyway).
The question you have to ask yourself is if the Universe can have a description which is isomorphic to reality, but still different. I suspect that there are several such descriptions. There are probably even an infinite number of such descriptions. Which is the correct one? If the descriptions are isomorphic, then it doesn't matter for our purposes what reality is. But a model that is isomorphic to reality is not the same as reality.
Why is this important? Because believing that science is true leads you into treating science as a religion. If you believe something is true, then you have a hard time changing it when it proves to be useful. Scientific models are meant to be useful. Assuming they are also true is very bad science.
Not taking the side of the parent, but from reading the summary I get the idea that the person asking *isn't* decent at C++ (at least by your definition of average-good). I base that only on the statement that they've used "some" OOP concepts in toy projects. To be decent at C++ you need to be able to understand the implications of the fact that it is statically bound. If you don't, you're not going to be able to write decent C++ code. You might be able to "make things work". A good programmer in C++ should also be able to grok most of the template code in Boost.
Having said all that, I think this person has picked a good project to work with. They can move from being a beginner in C++ and move through being decent to even being good. This is especially true because they are likely more than decent in the subject matter in the Boost library.
For advice, I recommend to keep following the development list. Check out all the changes and read them. Try to understand what they are doing. If you don't understand, it might be possible to ask specific questions to the person who wrote it (be diplomatic, though, as they may be tremendously busy). Try to fix a bug yourself. Send in a patch with the disclaimer that you are a beginner and would like feedback. There are many people who will be happy to help you.
There are some good books that explain how to do the template stuff that Boost is doing. Unfortunately it's been a donkey's age since I did any C++, so I can't remember the names of any. Perhaps someone here can help. If not, I'm sure you can post on the Boost mailing list that you want to find a book on C++ templates and are looking for suggestions.
I agree with you completely. But unfortunately people buy all sorts of loony things because they "might need it some day". Like buying a pickup truck for the 3 or 4 times a year they have to haul lumber from the DIY store. In the same vein, people are worried that they won't be able to drive to grandma's on Thanksgiving.
My solution to this problem has been: rent a car when you need it. I can't believe the amount of money I've saved by not having shit I "might need some day". Some people complain that they have a 2 hour commute or something. Again, I have a solution to this problem (based on personal experience with crazy commutes). Move. Seriously, you already spend half your day working. Is your current dwelling place *really* worth wasting the rest of your free time driving?
Personally, I think this range extension is a solution looking for a problem. But I suspect that I will be in the minority. Regular logic doesn't work on most people...
I'm in a very small town in Shizuoka prefecture. As someone pointed out further down, what they will accept depends a lot on the town (or the local garbage men). Mine is fairly strict and I have had my garbage returned for fairly minor mistakes (like accidently including non-recyclable plastic in my recyclable plastic bag).
That's funny, because I live in Shizuoka. Actually, it all depends on the city/town. My town is very strict. But my friend in the next town over can mix his burnable and non-recyclable plastic. I'm absolutely amazed that there's anyplace here that accepts pet bottles in burnable trash, though.
It is my understanding that the arrested captain tried to ram a Japanese vessel. This is certainly a crime in Japan, and probably one in China. In this case, it seems China is applying laws more selectively than Japan.
One thing to note is that there is a video of the event but it hasn't been seen by anyone other than the investigating parties. The Diet has asked to see it and there is a debate over whether or not to let the government see the video. Apparently there is some worries that making the video public (even to just the government) could incite China further. However, part of me wonders if that's the whole story. After all this fuss, I'd certainly like to see it...
it shows that current electronics recycling is not a gimmick, at least in Japan.
Not terribly sure about electronics, but with everything else you'd probably be amazed. I have 7 different garbage categories in my town. I have to put my name and location on my garbage bags. If I make a mistake in sorting the garbage, they send it back to me (it has happened more than once...). And it's not just gross sorting. With pet bottles I have to take the caps off (different category) and the labels off (different category). My yogurt containers are made from recyclable plastic covered with cardboard. I have to separate the cardboard from the plastic and put it in different containers. Etc, etc, etc...
Electronics is easy. You take it to the electronics shop and they take care of it for you. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but I'm assuming it's fairly rigorous. Japan just doesn't have any landfill space...
Honestly, what Linux injected was the development strategy. The whole Cathedral and Bazaar thing. Before Linux, it was considered a good idea to limit the number of people working on a project. I, myself, volunteered to work on the Hurd long before I had heard of Linux. I had done a project in an OS course on Mach and wanted to play with it some more, so I wrote to the development team and they rejected me without even seeing what I could do. Many of the development source repositories for various things were private at that time and you could only get the source for released code (well, the fact that the internet wasn't widely available didn't help things).
What Linux provided was the first really low barrier to entry project. You wanted to work on it, you checked out the code, modified it and sent in a patch. At the time, there were not really any big projects that worked that way. Linux injected life by making it exciting to contribute. After the huge success story of Linux, virtually every successful project moved towards doing things the same way. Most of what we see as common sense now with open source programming started with Linux. That's why it totally dominated free software kernel development (and still does, I suppose).
GNU relied on brilliant individual accomplishments, and in fact did struggle in the 90s. Well, that's to say that it continued as normal, but was overshadowed by spectacular growth of other projects, even if they were smaller in scope. And this is why we talk about Linux distributions rather than GNU distributions.
the rabid RMS followers feel that selling software is immoral. The really bad ones will the use it to justify piracy or if you must violation of the authors distribution license. Then try to pretend that they are being noble when they simply want Left4Dead but don't want to pay for it.
I don't believe that followers of RMS have this point of view. If I am to take the phrase "rabid" to mean someone who evangelically endorses RMS's position without questioning it (I suppose that's what you mean), then I have a very hard time imagining someone who could possibly endorse what you say.
The most "rabid" of RMS's "followers" routinely purge their computers of software that isn't free. They won't even use Adobe flash and instead use free software alternatives that don't work as well. They use ogg theora instead of mpeg4 because they don't want to help out people who patent software. They wouldn't touch Left4Dead with a ten foot pole. They are the kind of people who, if instructed to file their taxes using free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech software, they would rather go to jail.
I don't know who the people you're talking about are, but they must be ridiculously self-delusional to pretend to follow a set of ideals and then do the exact opposite. Characterizing them as "followers" of RMS is rather ridiculous. It would be like saying I follow the Pope but only in insofar as I worship the devil.
People get all bent out of shape because RMS thinks non-free software is immoral. If I buy a piece of software that isn't free and it doesn't work, I'm at the mercy of the guy who sold it to me. Even though I have the ability to fix it myself, they guy who sold it to me won't let me, because he can make more money by keeping me helpless. He might even say that I'm only allowed to use the software for certain purposes and if I want to use it for other purposes I have to pay him more money. Or he might just say, tough luck, I don't want you to be able to do that. Once you buy software you often have a technical lock-in too (proprietary file formats, etc, etc). By buying into it, I am letting that guy decide what I will be able to do in the future.
Well, caveat emptor, right? If you agree to buy into such a crappy situation, it sucks to be you. With such a situation, the vendor is putting themselves in a better position than the customer. And it is their right to do so, of course. As long as what they do is legal, they have a perfect right to extract as much money and power as they can. As software becomes more and more integral to the operation of a normal life, vendors can exert more and more control over consumers. It gets to the point where the distributor for a movie can tell me exactly what hardware I must purchase to watch the movie, even though there is no technical reason for it.
But what if I don't want to live in a society where vendors treat their customers that way? What if I want to live in a society where the customer is on an equal footing as the vendor. If I get fed up with the vendor, I can choose another one. Or if I can even just do it myself if I want. If I don't want to buy one vendor's hardware, I can write the software to do what I want on another vendor's hardware. Really, I want to live in this society. So I choose free software.
But caveat emptor right? Buyer beware. It sucks for all those other people who choose not to live that way. But how much choice do they really have? If it were not for RMS and the FSF, there might not have even been a choice. A lot of people get lured into giving up their equal standing with the vendor, and then they are technically locked in. Wouldn't it have been nicer of the vendors to voluntarily treat their customers as equals? Isn't it kind of crappy that they don't? In that way, I can see the moral argument.
Personally, I don't worry about it. I believe that if freedom is really desired by the people, they will eventually take it. People like RMS and the FSF give those people a chance. I believe that people will take it because freedom is an added value. It's a value that non-free software can't and won't give. Eventually that value will win out. (Well, here's hoping)
The difference is that after the film is made all of the assets (including the entire file) is available for use. The difference is that people are not buying a ticket to watch a movie for 2 hours. They are investing in the production of artwork, music, voice work and the tools associated with creating it. And when its done, they aren't keeping it to themselves. They are sharing these assets with others, even people who didn't pay for it. The difference is that the people who worked on this production are not simply allowing ticket holders to consume a movie experience. They encourage and enable others to do the same thing.
Finally, the difference is that they lay to rest the idea that nobody will pay for the development of something unless they get a huge return on investment. They dispel the notion that nobody except super rich corporations can create this kind of computer animation. They destroy the lie that creative people can only be enabled through a select few companies who own our cultural heritage. They prove that a group of ordinary people will fund something cool for no reason except that it is cool.
Not sure why I want to respond to this because it's unlikely the two of us will really agree, but perhaps responding to your comments will allow you to see some of the other side of the argument a bit more clearly. Having said that, I don't want to tell you what to eat. That's up to you. It would piss me off if people told me that I had to eat less vegetables, because it's something that works well for me. I'm sure what you do works well for you.
I can't speak for the original poster, but there are quite a few reasons for decreasing meat production (and by meat, I mean any animal flesh, including fish). For one thing, it's a fairly inefficient method of food production. We can feed cattle grain and soybeans, but we could feed a lot more people with those grains and soybeans than if we fed them with the beef. That argument is not very obvious when you look at it from the perspective of a person in a western country. People there are rich, there is a fairly low population density, etc, etc. But in other parts of the world, livestock cause a lot of environmental damage and is really insufficient to feed the population anyway.
We don't have to feed livestock food that we could eat ourselves. Most livestock can forage for food that humans can't eat (for instance grazing grass). I suspect that the original poster was referring to this when they were describing "better" meat. If you have ever tasted beef that has been fed an exclusively grass diet, the difference in flavor is amazing. It's not the cut of the beef (many of the cheap cuts have a lot more flavor anyway if cooked properly), it's the quality of the beef. Low intensity livestock farming where the animals forage for their own food generates much, much higher quality meat (from a flavor perspective -- I haven't seen any data with respect to health).
Where the animals are grazing in areas that are well adapted to grazing (hill farming for instance), this is not only a win for flavor but also for the environment. Over the last X-hundred years, many areas have specifically adapted to this kind of grazing and have become precious ecosystems in their own right. The problem is that if we were to limit ourselves to farming in this manor, the amount of meat we could produce would be significantly less than demand. Thus, if we want to do this, we must reduce consumption (and be prepared for higher prices).
Fishing presents even a greater problem. I don't have time to dig out references for you right now, but I have seen independent studies which claim that we have already fished out 1/3 of the oceans. It doesn't really even take studies to see that we have a problem. I come from Canada and the closing of cod and salmon fisheries is a huge warning sign. We can switch to intensive fish farming, but like other types of farming this results in poorer flavor and environmental problems. Again, I am not aware of studies that compare the quality of the fish from a health perspective.
Given that the context of this discussion is the overuse of antibiotics leading to environmental problems (new "superbugs" that we now have to deal with), perhaps you can see how intensive animal farming can lead to environmental problems. If you go out of your way to find entirely grass fed beef, for instance (and beware of beef that is mostly grass fed, but "finished" on grain -- you practically have to buy directly from a farmer to see what I'm talking about) I think you will be able to see the difference in quality -- on all cuts. Or just buy a wild caught fish and a farmed fish of the same variety and see the difference.
From those perspectives, it's probably a good idea to try to limit production in intensive farming. But we can also look at it from the perspective of health. I'm not going to try to argue that meat is bad for you. But the average westerner eats a *lot* more meat than they need. And in fact, many people eat a lot more meat than is healthy for them. Or perhaps I can put is another way. Many people eat a lot less veg
There are people who break stupid laws. There are also people who break good laws too, just because they happen to be inconvenient. Very often these people have the attitude, "Stupid laws don't apply to me", when they really mean "Inconvenient laws don't apply to me".
Selectively choosing which laws to follow and which ones not to follow is not a sign of thinking. It's a sign of selfishness. A thinking person will follow good laws even if they are inconvenient. A thinking person won't ignore bad laws, they will try to change them.
I'm continually surprised how many/.ers are really right wing, pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-tax freeloaders. 40 years of "government is bad" has become a lifestyle for a lot of people here.
They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.
What's worse is that the media has convinced you that there is only right and left. Your views are so polarized that you don't even realize that you are both right-wing. By keeping you at each other's throats the established players simply trade off with each other every couple of years. You get the hard nosed, realistic, back to basics guys for a while until they are villainized. Then you get the softer, expansive, healing guys for a while until they are portrayed as immoral doddering idiots.
By creating controversy about the differences between the two parties, the establishment conceals the fact that there isn't actually that much difference. Real change becomes impossible because while a person might get tired of their party's politics, they can't get over their hatred of the "other side". And so they stay steadfast with their position as a vote against the enemy.
Is it freedom when you choose to be dominated by a small group of rich and powerful people?
I'm not sure that other companies don't have "ulterior motives" depending on what you call ulterior. Companies like Google, IBM and Red Hat have a pretty clear strategy for making money from open source software. I doubt that their motives for cooperating come strictly from being altruistic. In some cases I'm pretty sure there is no altruistic motive at all.
If I were to characterize it, successful open source companies have found business models that work well with the open source development model. They contribute to projects because it is in their best interest to do so. Other companies haven't figured out how to do that. They are contributing because they have a legal responsibility to do so.
From a community standpoint the distinction is important because on the one hand, success of the company will bring success to the community and vice versa. On the other hand, success of the two entities is not related. We can't quite trust companies who haven't found out how to be successful using open source methods because they will always prefer to use methods that are successful.
It's interesting, though. Personally, I would have put both Sun and Novel into the category of open source companies that I don't quite trust, mainly because I could never see a coherent business model that derived money from their open source business. They both seemed to use open source as a kind of loss leader to sell their proprietary stuff (although less so Sun, as they didn't seem to have any coherent business model that would make money). Now Oracle has bought Sun and very rightly wants to shed the unproductive parts of the business. As their success is not aligned with the success of the open source community, I agree that they can't really be called as a central member of the community. They are just a group that has inherited ties to the open source community.
Having said all that, I think they are stupid. If you can't find a way to make money from Open Office, you have to have rocks in your head. Delivering customized office solutions to large enterprise businesses should be very lucrative. If you can offer a stripped down version of Office that offers exactly what a company wants (to reduce training costs, etc) at a fraction of the cost of the competitor, I can't imagine that you won't be successful. But having worked in large proprietary companies before, I can completely understand that they probably lack the vision to do anything other than what they have always done. It's too bad, though...
It might be just me, but who the hell does cold calling anyway. When I worked in high tech I always thought it was a rather impolite thing to do. If one of my friends was unhappy with their job I would never be shy to tell them to send a resume. But I would never randomly phone up people in another company and try to lure them to mine. In fact, I would consider that anyone who would accept such an offer to be somewhat suspect. It's not like these companies are unknown. Anyone wanting to work for these companies won't hesitate to send a resume in...
Collusion is bad and the companies ought to be reprimanded for it. But I have a very hard time seeing this as something that will actually affect labor prices in any great way. Instead, I suspect that it would only affect a very small handful of superstar employees, or executives. And it would be more about companies strategically hiring away key members of the other company's staff in order to sabotage them. As a consumer of goods, I would rather these big companies *not* mess about in this way. Let them each develop their own products and have the consumer decide which is better.
Well, also Pakistan allows the US to blow up its citizens in exchange for weapons. There is a decent possibility that some of those weapons will eventually show up in terrorist hands necessitating (at least from US government perspective) the need to blow up people in Pakistan. And the cycle continues.
A lot of the bad foreign policy that existed under the Bush administration still exists under the Obama administration. It would be nice to see some changes.
All rice sold in Japan is domestic. Japan buys rice from the US (due to a trade agreement), but dumps it (also known as "stockpiling", but it is *never* used and is generally not allowed to be sold). Last year there was a shortage of rice in south east Asia, so the Japanese asked for and got permission to sell some of their stockpile in Asia. Supermarkets label the origin of almost all food in Japan, so I can tell you that Chinese imports make up a large volume of non-staple foods. The vast majority of food imported from China (based on reading labels in the supermarket) is frozen vegetables, mushrooms, pickles and seaweed. If the Chinese were to stop exportation of food to Japan tomorrow, it would definitely have an impact, but not starvation.
Japan actually has a law on the books that disallows importation of staple foods into the country. It was put in place after WWII when many many people starved to death due to US blockades. Having said that, Japan is nowhere near self sufficient for food as lately they have relaxed their importation policies (due to heavy lobbying by the US).
It's not about the captain. It's about the territory. China claims the islands, but Japan controls them. If China can effectively nullify the control then they can take the islands (and the resulting territorial waters). There is a lot of disputed territory in that area. It could get messy.
And yet, as I'm thinking about it, why does it have to predict anything useful at all?
This is the crucial point. A model that doesn't predict isn't science. The point of science is to create models that predict future observations. You can easily create models that don't predict future observations. I can say that the world sits on the back of a turtle. The turtle sits on the back of another turtle. There are turtles all the way down. This is fine. But if I can't make a prediction that I can observe, then it isn't science.
Science is about useful models. The method has been refined over the centuries and has developed into something that allows us to do amazing things. That said, it isn't necessarily about discovering the truth. There is room for both approaches IMHO. You can believe whatever you like. But if you can't make a model that makes observable predictions, then it isn't science. Not being science doesn't necessarily make it bad, though.
It is an insightful comment, but it lacks enough information for some people to share the insight. Personally, I don't specifically blame people for an ignorance of scientific methods. It is extremely poorly taught (and very widely misunderstood by the majority of the population).
To be succinct, a scientific "theory" can't be proven at all. We can observe the universe, but there is no way of knowing whether or not the universe is *actually* behaving in the same way we observe it. The Flying Spaghetti Monster may be altering our perception of the universe so it only *seems* be be working that way. Or something more subtle.
Science makes observations. It then makes a model based on the observations. It then makes predictions based on the model. Finally it makes more observations and if they follow the predictions of the model, then we say the model is a good one. This is a scientific "theory". It's not the same as somebody's "theory" that rocks taste like marshmallows. It's something that has a simple model that is consistent with ongoing observations. Note that it is important that a scientific model makes predictions that can be observed. Without such observable predictions it is not a scientific theory. This is why many people object to calling String Theory a "theory". It currently has no predictions that we are in a position to observe.
If a scientific model remains useful (i.e., it's predictions are still consistent with observation) for a very long period of time, we upgrade the "theory" to a "law". Does this mean it's proved at this point? No. For example, Newton's "laws" of gravitation are almost certainly wrong in certain situations. But they have been and remain extremely useful in other situations. Whether a "theory" or "law" of science is truth is not a topic that science tackles. We are only interested in consistent observable results.
Before I conclude I want to quickly talk about the so called Occam's razor. If you have two equivalent models and one is more complex than the other, you should choose the simpler one. In other words, if you have two different models that explain the same observations and make the same observable predictions, then you should use the simpler one. Is that because it is more likely to be true? No. It's because it is simpler. Using a complex model when a simple one will do is just stupid.
How does this relate to evolution vs creationism? Evolution is a set of scientific theories (it's not just one -- there are many many theories relating to evolution). There are models that explain the observations to date. There are predictions that can be observed. Those predictions have been observed. (For example, if you give a disease to a large population of rabbits in Australia, those who are susceptible to the disease will die and those that aren't will live. You will end up with a population of rabbits which is immune to the disease). We use the theories in evolution every day to deal with environmental issues, medicine, etc, etc.
Creationism says that something created everything (what created everything, how it happened, etc, is dependent upon your belief system -- I won't try to go into more detail). Some observations are explained, but there is no model that I'm aware of. Using the bible (for instance) to make predictions about whether or not it is a good idea to try to wipe out Australian rabbits with a disease isn't going to get me anywhere.
Creationism is an extremely poor scientific model. The theories related to evolution are actually extremely robust and very useful. When we are talking about science, we must talk about evolution. When we are talking about religion, I don't suppose it really matters if we talk about evolution or not. You are free to believe whatever you like -- this is known as freedom of religion. But it is very unproductive (in the extreme) to impose religious viewpoints on the scientific method. The two are not related in any way.
I hope that helps some people who have a poor understanding of the scientific method (very likely not through their own fault).
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But as a developer I can easily set up another repository that can be used by the same installation software. I just tell the user to add a certain PPA and my app will be indistinguishable from apps in the Ubuntu repositories.
Personally, I think it is perfectly fine for Apple to have control over the branding of its repository. I have absolutely no problem with them exerting control over what kind of software they allow in their repository, or associate with their brand. I even think it is a good idea to make it very clear where an application is approved by the Apple brand and where it is not. But not supporting more than one repository in their main package management system is a very, very bad idea.
However, unlike most people, I don't care. I believe that in this day and age community based software development (the developers of which are unlikely to jump through the hoops to get into Apple's repository) is becoming important enough that this will become a significant issue to consumers. In the same way that I see Android being a serious threat to iOS due to a more open development environment, I see it happening with the desktop. Time will tell, of course.
As the AC mentioned, getting your ass kicked is the way you win. You allow your adversary to be evil and nasty and horrible to you. You let their free press report about it to the world. Then you let them feel bad about it. Then you win.
It's not even certain that Ghandi made the quote himself. People using it in these circumstances are simply ignorant.
My biggest problem with this is if I can't get it on my device, it still isn't open enough for me. Some manufacturers go to a great deal of effort to make sure I can't do that. Most (probably all?) include software which isn't open, some of which is required for the operation of the phone.
While I agree that Jobs' comment was intended to be highly misleading, he has a point that it is difficult to purchase a phone that I can actually modify entirely. Even though Android is open source, my options as a consumer of a device is generally limited to what the manufacturer allows me to do (or what some hacker has cracked his way into). This is not unlike the iPhone.
If my manufacturer decides not to release a 3.0 version of Android for their phone (hoping instead to force me to upgrade my hardware to get the next version), I may be stuck. This is actually important to me. I hate to bring software freedom into the conversation, but open source code isn't enough. Being able to modify, upgrade or compile the code is useless if I can't run it (freedom 0).
The Froyo 2.2 update has already been released and includes a GPS fix according to http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-galaxy-s-froyo-update-released-20101015/
It may take some time to get to you.
This is not a reasonable assumption. Our models are at best simplifications of reality. Do atoms *really* exist the way we envision them? Is there such a thing as an electron as a real finite particle? it wasn't that long ago that we believed that atoms were indivisible, discrete particles of matter. Our new models make that look ridiculously naive. 100 years from now I think it is likely that our current models will look ridiculously naive.
But older, naive models work fine for a lot of problems. We don't have to know how things *really* work at a low level as long as we can build a repeatable model that is useful for our tasks. The model can be (and almost certainly is) a black box with interfaces that we care about. Everything inside the box is up for grabs. Not knowing what is really going on inside doesn't affect our ability to solve our problem, so we ignore it (for now anyway).
The question you have to ask yourself is if the Universe can have a description which is isomorphic to reality, but still different. I suspect that there are several such descriptions. There are probably even an infinite number of such descriptions. Which is the correct one? If the descriptions are isomorphic, then it doesn't matter for our purposes what reality is. But a model that is isomorphic to reality is not the same as reality.
Why is this important? Because believing that science is true leads you into treating science as a religion. If you believe something is true, then you have a hard time changing it when it proves to be useful. Scientific models are meant to be useful. Assuming they are also true is very bad science.
Not taking the side of the parent, but from reading the summary I get the idea that the person asking *isn't* decent at C++ (at least by your definition of average-good). I base that only on the statement that they've used "some" OOP concepts in toy projects. To be decent at C++ you need to be able to understand the implications of the fact that it is statically bound. If you don't, you're not going to be able to write decent C++ code. You might be able to "make things work". A good programmer in C++ should also be able to grok most of the template code in Boost.
Having said all that, I think this person has picked a good project to work with. They can move from being a beginner in C++ and move through being decent to even being good. This is especially true because they are likely more than decent in the subject matter in the Boost library.
For advice, I recommend to keep following the development list. Check out all the changes and read them. Try to understand what they are doing. If you don't understand, it might be possible to ask specific questions to the person who wrote it (be diplomatic, though, as they may be tremendously busy). Try to fix a bug yourself. Send in a patch with the disclaimer that you are a beginner and would like feedback. There are many people who will be happy to help you.
There are some good books that explain how to do the template stuff that Boost is doing. Unfortunately it's been a donkey's age since I did any C++, so I can't remember the names of any. Perhaps someone here can help. If not, I'm sure you can post on the Boost mailing list that you want to find a book on C++ templates and are looking for suggestions.
I agree with you completely. But unfortunately people buy all sorts of loony things because they "might need it some day". Like buying a pickup truck for the 3 or 4 times a year they have to haul lumber from the DIY store. In the same vein, people are worried that they won't be able to drive to grandma's on Thanksgiving.
My solution to this problem has been: rent a car when you need it. I can't believe the amount of money I've saved by not having shit I "might need some day". Some people complain that they have a 2 hour commute or something. Again, I have a solution to this problem (based on personal experience with crazy commutes). Move. Seriously, you already spend half your day working. Is your current dwelling place *really* worth wasting the rest of your free time driving?
Personally, I think this range extension is a solution looking for a problem. But I suspect that I will be in the minority. Regular logic doesn't work on most people...
I'm in a very small town in Shizuoka prefecture. As someone pointed out further down, what they will accept depends a lot on the town (or the local garbage men). Mine is fairly strict and I have had my garbage returned for fairly minor mistakes (like accidently including non-recyclable plastic in my recyclable plastic bag).
That's funny, because I live in Shizuoka. Actually, it all depends on the city/town. My town is very strict. But my friend in the next town over can mix his burnable and non-recyclable plastic. I'm absolutely amazed that there's anyplace here that accepts pet bottles in burnable trash, though.
It is my understanding that the arrested captain tried to ram a Japanese vessel. This is certainly a crime in Japan, and probably one in China. In this case, it seems China is applying laws more selectively than Japan.
One thing to note is that there is a video of the event but it hasn't been seen by anyone other than the investigating parties. The Diet has asked to see it and there is a debate over whether or not to let the government see the video. Apparently there is some worries that making the video public (even to just the government) could incite China further. However, part of me wonders if that's the whole story. After all this fuss, I'd certainly like to see it...
it shows that current electronics recycling is not a gimmick, at least in Japan.
Not terribly sure about electronics, but with everything else you'd probably be amazed. I have 7 different garbage categories in my town. I have to put my name and location on my garbage bags. If I make a mistake in sorting the garbage, they send it back to me (it has happened more than once...). And it's not just gross sorting. With pet bottles I have to take the caps off (different category) and the labels off (different category). My yogurt containers are made from recyclable plastic covered with cardboard. I have to separate the cardboard from the plastic and put it in different containers. Etc, etc, etc...
Electronics is easy. You take it to the electronics shop and they take care of it for you. I'm not sure exactly what they do, but I'm assuming it's fairly rigorous. Japan just doesn't have any landfill space...
Honestly, what Linux injected was the development strategy. The whole Cathedral and Bazaar thing. Before Linux, it was considered a good idea to limit the number of people working on a project. I, myself, volunteered to work on the Hurd long before I had heard of Linux. I had done a project in an OS course on Mach and wanted to play with it some more, so I wrote to the development team and they rejected me without even seeing what I could do. Many of the development source repositories for various things were private at that time and you could only get the source for released code (well, the fact that the internet wasn't widely available didn't help things).
What Linux provided was the first really low barrier to entry project. You wanted to work on it, you checked out the code, modified it and sent in a patch. At the time, there were not really any big projects that worked that way. Linux injected life by making it exciting to contribute. After the huge success story of Linux, virtually every successful project moved towards doing things the same way. Most of what we see as common sense now with open source programming started with Linux. That's why it totally dominated free software kernel development (and still does, I suppose).
GNU relied on brilliant individual accomplishments, and in fact did struggle in the 90s. Well, that's to say that it continued as normal, but was overshadowed by spectacular growth of other projects, even if they were smaller in scope. And this is why we talk about Linux distributions rather than GNU distributions.
the rabid RMS followers feel that selling software is immoral. The really bad ones will the use it to justify piracy or if you must violation of the authors distribution license. Then try to pretend that they are being noble when they simply want Left4Dead but don't want to pay for it.
I don't believe that followers of RMS have this point of view. If I am to take the phrase "rabid" to mean someone who evangelically endorses RMS's position without questioning it (I suppose that's what you mean), then I have a very hard time imagining someone who could possibly endorse what you say.
The most "rabid" of RMS's "followers" routinely purge their computers of software that isn't free. They won't even use Adobe flash and instead use free software alternatives that don't work as well. They use ogg theora instead of mpeg4 because they don't want to help out people who patent software. They wouldn't touch Left4Dead with a ten foot pole. They are the kind of people who, if instructed to file their taxes using free-as-in-beer but not free-as-in-speech software, they would rather go to jail.
I don't know who the people you're talking about are, but they must be ridiculously self-delusional to pretend to follow a set of ideals and then do the exact opposite. Characterizing them as "followers" of RMS is rather ridiculous. It would be like saying I follow the Pope but only in insofar as I worship the devil.
People get all bent out of shape because RMS thinks non-free software is immoral. If I buy a piece of software that isn't free and it doesn't work, I'm at the mercy of the guy who sold it to me. Even though I have the ability to fix it myself, they guy who sold it to me won't let me, because he can make more money by keeping me helpless. He might even say that I'm only allowed to use the software for certain purposes and if I want to use it for other purposes I have to pay him more money. Or he might just say, tough luck, I don't want you to be able to do that. Once you buy software you often have a technical lock-in too (proprietary file formats, etc, etc). By buying into it, I am letting that guy decide what I will be able to do in the future.
Well, caveat emptor, right? If you agree to buy into such a crappy situation, it sucks to be you. With such a situation, the vendor is putting themselves in a better position than the customer. And it is their right to do so, of course. As long as what they do is legal, they have a perfect right to extract as much money and power as they can. As software becomes more and more integral to the operation of a normal life, vendors can exert more and more control over consumers. It gets to the point where the distributor for a movie can tell me exactly what hardware I must purchase to watch the movie, even though there is no technical reason for it.
But what if I don't want to live in a society where vendors treat their customers that way? What if I want to live in a society where the customer is on an equal footing as the vendor. If I get fed up with the vendor, I can choose another one. Or if I can even just do it myself if I want. If I don't want to buy one vendor's hardware, I can write the software to do what I want on another vendor's hardware. Really, I want to live in this society. So I choose free software.
But caveat emptor right? Buyer beware. It sucks for all those other people who choose not to live that way. But how much choice do they really have? If it were not for RMS and the FSF, there might not have even been a choice. A lot of people get lured into giving up their equal standing with the vendor, and then they are technically locked in. Wouldn't it have been nicer of the vendors to voluntarily treat their customers as equals? Isn't it kind of crappy that they don't? In that way, I can see the moral argument.
Personally, I don't worry about it. I believe that if freedom is really desired by the people, they will eventually take it. People like RMS and the FSF give those people a chance. I believe that people will take it because freedom is an added value. It's a value that non-free software can't and won't give. Eventually that value will win out. (Well, here's hoping)
The difference is that after the film is made all of the assets (including the entire file) is available for use. The difference is that people are not buying a ticket to watch a movie for 2 hours. They are investing in the production of artwork, music, voice work and the tools associated with creating it. And when its done, they aren't keeping it to themselves. They are sharing these assets with others, even people who didn't pay for it. The difference is that the people who worked on this production are not simply allowing ticket holders to consume a movie experience. They encourage and enable others to do the same thing.
Finally, the difference is that they lay to rest the idea that nobody will pay for the development of something unless they get a huge return on investment. They dispel the notion that nobody except super rich corporations can create this kind of computer animation. They destroy the lie that creative people can only be enabled through a select few companies who own our cultural heritage. They prove that a group of ordinary people will fund something cool for no reason except that it is cool.
Not sure why I want to respond to this because it's unlikely the two of us will really agree, but perhaps responding to your comments will allow you to see some of the other side of the argument a bit more clearly. Having said that, I don't want to tell you what to eat. That's up to you. It would piss me off if people told me that I had to eat less vegetables, because it's something that works well for me. I'm sure what you do works well for you.
I can't speak for the original poster, but there are quite a few reasons for decreasing meat production (and by meat, I mean any animal flesh, including fish). For one thing, it's a fairly inefficient method of food production. We can feed cattle grain and soybeans, but we could feed a lot more people with those grains and soybeans than if we fed them with the beef. That argument is not very obvious when you look at it from the perspective of a person in a western country. People there are rich, there is a fairly low population density, etc, etc. But in other parts of the world, livestock cause a lot of environmental damage and is really insufficient to feed the population anyway.
We don't have to feed livestock food that we could eat ourselves. Most livestock can forage for food that humans can't eat (for instance grazing grass). I suspect that the original poster was referring to this when they were describing "better" meat. If you have ever tasted beef that has been fed an exclusively grass diet, the difference in flavor is amazing. It's not the cut of the beef (many of the cheap cuts have a lot more flavor anyway if cooked properly), it's the quality of the beef. Low intensity livestock farming where the animals forage for their own food generates much, much higher quality meat (from a flavor perspective -- I haven't seen any data with respect to health).
Where the animals are grazing in areas that are well adapted to grazing (hill farming for instance), this is not only a win for flavor but also for the environment. Over the last X-hundred years, many areas have specifically adapted to this kind of grazing and have become precious ecosystems in their own right. The problem is that if we were to limit ourselves to farming in this manor, the amount of meat we could produce would be significantly less than demand. Thus, if we want to do this, we must reduce consumption (and be prepared for higher prices).
Fishing presents even a greater problem. I don't have time to dig out references for you right now, but I have seen independent studies which claim that we have already fished out 1/3 of the oceans. It doesn't really even take studies to see that we have a problem. I come from Canada and the closing of cod and salmon fisheries is a huge warning sign. We can switch to intensive fish farming, but like other types of farming this results in poorer flavor and environmental problems. Again, I am not aware of studies that compare the quality of the fish from a health perspective.
Given that the context of this discussion is the overuse of antibiotics leading to environmental problems (new "superbugs" that we now have to deal with), perhaps you can see how intensive animal farming can lead to environmental problems. If you go out of your way to find entirely grass fed beef, for instance (and beware of beef that is mostly grass fed, but "finished" on grain -- you practically have to buy directly from a farmer to see what I'm talking about) I think you will be able to see the difference in quality -- on all cuts. Or just buy a wild caught fish and a farmed fish of the same variety and see the difference.
From those perspectives, it's probably a good idea to try to limit production in intensive farming. But we can also look at it from the perspective of health. I'm not going to try to argue that meat is bad for you. But the average westerner eats a *lot* more meat than they need. And in fact, many people eat a lot more meat than is healthy for them. Or perhaps I can put is another way. Many people eat a lot less veg
There are people who break stupid laws. There are also people who break good laws too, just because they happen to be inconvenient. Very often these people have the attitude, "Stupid laws don't apply to me", when they really mean "Inconvenient laws don't apply to me".
Selectively choosing which laws to follow and which ones not to follow is not a sign of thinking. It's a sign of selfishness. A thinking person will follow good laws even if they are inconvenient. A thinking person won't ignore bad laws, they will try to change them.
They are right-wing, anti-union, anti-high-tax citizens. The left wing faction unfairly tacks on "pro-corporate" and "anti-tax freeloaders" to demonize them.
What's worse is that the media has convinced you that there is only right and left. Your views are so polarized that you don't even realize that you are both right-wing. By keeping you at each other's throats the established players simply trade off with each other every couple of years. You get the hard nosed, realistic, back to basics guys for a while until they are villainized. Then you get the softer, expansive, healing guys for a while until they are portrayed as immoral doddering idiots.
By creating controversy about the differences between the two parties, the establishment conceals the fact that there isn't actually that much difference. Real change becomes impossible because while a person might get tired of their party's politics, they can't get over their hatred of the "other side". And so they stay steadfast with their position as a vote against the enemy.
Is it freedom when you choose to be dominated by a small group of rich and powerful people?
I'm not sure that other companies don't have "ulterior motives" depending on what you call ulterior. Companies like Google, IBM and Red Hat have a pretty clear strategy for making money from open source software. I doubt that their motives for cooperating come strictly from being altruistic. In some cases I'm pretty sure there is no altruistic motive at all.
If I were to characterize it, successful open source companies have found business models that work well with the open source development model. They contribute to projects because it is in their best interest to do so. Other companies haven't figured out how to do that. They are contributing because they have a legal responsibility to do so.
From a community standpoint the distinction is important because on the one hand, success of the company will bring success to the community and vice versa. On the other hand, success of the two entities is not related. We can't quite trust companies who haven't found out how to be successful using open source methods because they will always prefer to use methods that are successful.
It's interesting, though. Personally, I would have put both Sun and Novel into the category of open source companies that I don't quite trust, mainly because I could never see a coherent business model that derived money from their open source business. They both seemed to use open source as a kind of loss leader to sell their proprietary stuff (although less so Sun, as they didn't seem to have any coherent business model that would make money). Now Oracle has bought Sun and very rightly wants to shed the unproductive parts of the business. As their success is not aligned with the success of the open source community, I agree that they can't really be called as a central member of the community. They are just a group that has inherited ties to the open source community.
Having said all that, I think they are stupid. If you can't find a way to make money from Open Office, you have to have rocks in your head. Delivering customized office solutions to large enterprise businesses should be very lucrative. If you can offer a stripped down version of Office that offers exactly what a company wants (to reduce training costs, etc) at a fraction of the cost of the competitor, I can't imagine that you won't be successful. But having worked in large proprietary companies before, I can completely understand that they probably lack the vision to do anything other than what they have always done. It's too bad, though...
It might be just me, but who the hell does cold calling anyway. When I worked in high tech I always thought it was a rather impolite thing to do. If one of my friends was unhappy with their job I would never be shy to tell them to send a resume. But I would never randomly phone up people in another company and try to lure them to mine. In fact, I would consider that anyone who would accept such an offer to be somewhat suspect. It's not like these companies are unknown. Anyone wanting to work for these companies won't hesitate to send a resume in...
Collusion is bad and the companies ought to be reprimanded for it. But I have a very hard time seeing this as something that will actually affect labor prices in any great way. Instead, I suspect that it would only affect a very small handful of superstar employees, or executives. And it would be more about companies strategically hiring away key members of the other company's staff in order to sabotage them. As a consumer of goods, I would rather these big companies *not* mess about in this way. Let them each develop their own products and have the consumer decide which is better.
Well, also Pakistan allows the US to blow up its citizens in exchange for weapons. There is a decent possibility that some of those weapons will eventually show up in terrorist hands necessitating (at least from US government perspective) the need to blow up people in Pakistan. And the cycle continues.
A lot of the bad foreign policy that existed under the Bush administration still exists under the Obama administration. It would be nice to see some changes.
All rice sold in Japan is domestic. Japan buys rice from the US (due to a trade agreement), but dumps it (also known as "stockpiling", but it is *never* used and is generally not allowed to be sold). Last year there was a shortage of rice in south east Asia, so the Japanese asked for and got permission to sell some of their stockpile in Asia. Supermarkets label the origin of almost all food in Japan, so I can tell you that Chinese imports make up a large volume of non-staple foods. The vast majority of food imported from China (based on reading labels in the supermarket) is frozen vegetables, mushrooms, pickles and seaweed. If the Chinese were to stop exportation of food to Japan tomorrow, it would definitely have an impact, but not starvation.
Japan actually has a law on the books that disallows importation of staple foods into the country. It was put in place after WWII when many many people starved to death due to US blockades. Having said that, Japan is nowhere near self sufficient for food as lately they have relaxed their importation policies (due to heavy lobbying by the US).
It's not about the captain. It's about the territory. China claims the islands, but Japan controls them. If China can effectively nullify the control then they can take the islands (and the resulting territorial waters). There is a lot of disputed territory in that area. It could get messy.
And yet, as I'm thinking about it, why does it have to predict anything useful at all?
This is the crucial point. A model that doesn't predict isn't science. The point of science is to create models that predict future observations. You can easily create models that don't predict future observations. I can say that the world sits on the back of a turtle. The turtle sits on the back of another turtle. There are turtles all the way down. This is fine. But if I can't make a prediction that I can observe, then it isn't science.
Science is about useful models. The method has been refined over the centuries and has developed into something that allows us to do amazing things. That said, it isn't necessarily about discovering the truth. There is room for both approaches IMHO. You can believe whatever you like. But if you can't make a model that makes observable predictions, then it isn't science. Not being science doesn't necessarily make it bad, though.
It is an insightful comment, but it lacks enough information for some people to share the insight. Personally, I don't specifically blame people for an ignorance of scientific methods. It is extremely poorly taught (and very widely misunderstood by the majority of the population).
To be succinct, a scientific "theory" can't be proven at all. We can observe the universe, but there is no way of knowing whether or not the universe is *actually* behaving in the same way we observe it. The Flying Spaghetti Monster may be altering our perception of the universe so it only *seems* be be working that way. Or something more subtle.
Science makes observations. It then makes a model based on the observations. It then makes predictions based on the model. Finally it makes more observations and if they follow the predictions of the model, then we say the model is a good one. This is a scientific "theory". It's not the same as somebody's "theory" that rocks taste like marshmallows. It's something that has a simple model that is consistent with ongoing observations. Note that it is important that a scientific model makes predictions that can be observed. Without such observable predictions it is not a scientific theory. This is why many people object to calling String Theory a "theory". It currently has no predictions that we are in a position to observe.
If a scientific model remains useful (i.e., it's predictions are still consistent with observation) for a very long period of time, we upgrade the "theory" to a "law". Does this mean it's proved at this point? No. For example, Newton's "laws" of gravitation are almost certainly wrong in certain situations. But they have been and remain extremely useful in other situations. Whether a "theory" or "law" of science is truth is not a topic that science tackles. We are only interested in consistent observable results.
Before I conclude I want to quickly talk about the so called Occam's razor. If you have two equivalent models and one is more complex than the other, you should choose the simpler one. In other words, if you have two different models that explain the same observations and make the same observable predictions, then you should use the simpler one. Is that because it is more likely to be true? No. It's because it is simpler. Using a complex model when a simple one will do is just stupid.
How does this relate to evolution vs creationism? Evolution is a set of scientific theories (it's not just one -- there are many many theories relating to evolution). There are models that explain the observations to date. There are predictions that can be observed. Those predictions have been observed. (For example, if you give a disease to a large population of rabbits in Australia, those who are susceptible to the disease will die and those that aren't will live. You will end up with a population of rabbits which is immune to the disease). We use the theories in evolution every day to deal with environmental issues, medicine, etc, etc.
Creationism says that something created everything (what created everything, how it happened, etc, is dependent upon your belief system -- I won't try to go into more detail). Some observations are explained, but there is no model that I'm aware of. Using the bible (for instance) to make predictions about whether or not it is a good idea to try to wipe out Australian rabbits with a disease isn't going to get me anywhere.
Creationism is an extremely poor scientific model. The theories related to evolution are actually extremely robust and very useful. When we are talking about science, we must talk about evolution. When we are talking about religion, I don't suppose it really matters if we talk about evolution or not. You are free to believe whatever you like -- this is known as freedom of religion. But it is very unproductive (in the extreme) to impose religious viewpoints on the scientific method. The two are not related in any way.
I hope that helps some people who have a poor understanding of the scientific method (very likely not through their own fault).
I always tell people that I don't have an irrational fear of heights. I have a very rational fear of engineers.